by Korn, Tracy
"Your room is J-717. Please follow the blue arrow," it says in a pleasant enough sounding woman's voice as an arrow begins to take shape in front of the disk, then begins to move. I turn around to see Jax coming out of the med-bay, but when I stop to wait, the arrow does not. Crite.
"Jax! It won't wait—I have to go. I'll find you at…dinner?" I wave at him as it occurs to me I have no idea what the rest of the itinerary is for today. What if I don't see him at dinner? What if I don't ever see him again? He stops in front of the disc and tries to talk to both of us at the same time.
"Don't worry—uh, Ripley, Jaxon," he says, "I'll find you if you don't find me. Hurry up, your arrow is leaving!" He points down the hall to my left, and I smile at him one last time before running to catch up.
The hall it leads me down is narrow with long arched doorways made of opaque glass with dark blue carpeting. Room J-311…J-313… I can see shapes of people moving behind the doors, but not in enough detail to make out what they're doing, or even if they're male or female. The hall winds around and up, the floor ramping just slightly.
"Jazwyn Ripley," the arrow, or at least, the voice from inside the arrow, says as we approach the end of the hallway. "Your roommate for this quarter will be Vox Dyer."
My blood instantly turns to ice and stops cold in my veins."What? No!" I say out loud, then, quickly turn around to make sure she isn't within earshot. The arrow doesn't stop to discuss my protest.
"Your aptitude scores are complimentary, indicating you will provide ample academic motivation for each other. Your compatibility scores fall within the acceptable limits. You may improve these scores further by talking about common interests," the arrow voice says as we approach the door. "Arrived, Jazwyn Ripley. Welcome to Gaia Sur," it says before it flickers, then completely fades away.
"Are you split? Hello?" I stop myself, realizing this is not a person, not to mention the arrow is now totally gone. I'm left standing just outside of an opaque, arched door like the others I've passed, and look for a knob or some way to get in. I reach for the archway to feel around for a button I should push, and halfway up the door, a blue light travels over my bracelet cuff until I hear a little bell ping. The door whooshes open, and inside, Vox is lying on a bed with her arms folded under her head on the left side of the room. She props up on her elbows and stares down her etched nose at me with her yellow eyes.
After I take a step inside, the door slips closed, and it's clear I can't avoid this anymore.
"All right, well my name is Jazz," I say, and take a step toward the empty bed on the other side of the room, the head of which faces the wall nearest to me. The blanket on it is woolen gray, tucked in on all sides, and the pillow is almost a perfect rectangle with a white case. A small metal desk connects to the wall across from the foot of the bed, and a simple steel legged chair is tucked underneath it.
"I know who you are," she says, still watching me. I realize I have nothing to put into the half dresser that doubles as a nightstand next to the bed, but I assume I will at some point, and there doesn't seem to be a closet.
"Where are we supposed to put things?" I ask, and Vox's eyes dart under my bed.
"Shoes go in the footlocker under there. They gave us two pairs—they're inside."
"What about a closet?"
"Closet is by the desk. Wave your bracelet over the wall like you did with the window covering," she says, folding her arms behind her head, then turning her eyes back on me. Her pale legs stretch out toward the door, and from the side, I can see the ends of the same roadmap lines that are on her arms peeking out on her thighs from under her canvass skirt. "Hey…" she says, raising her wrist cuff, then looks at mine, which now has a blinking green circle of light in the middle. "Push it," she says.
I touch it, and a holograph screen about 12 inches tall appears, a 3-D disembodied face looking straight into mine, the corners of its green eyes crinkling into a smile.
CHAPTER 16
Playing with Buttons
The hologram version of Rheen starts to speak, her voice instantly on the inside of my head. I look to Vox, whose wolf eyes are already wide with expectation. Apparently, she's been waiting for this.
"Hello, Miss Ripley. This is a neural connect, and the way you will receive most transmissions specific to you here at Gaia Sur. Your bracelet cuff will not always project a hologram, but sound will always travel through a neural link that has been constructed in your inner ear by the nanotechnics in your recent injection. The process takes roughly ten minutes. If you can hear my voice, Miss Ripley, you are now biologically equipped to be a cadet at Gaia." My hands instinctively fly to my ears, and the realization that I have miniaturized robots in my blood—in my ears—hits me like a wave in the face. I sit on my bunk watching the hologram as Rheen continues. "Your afternoon meal will be served in the cafeteria in approximately 30 minutes. The guide arrow that brought you to your room will return in 20 minutes and will direct you to each of your destinations throughout orientation tomorrow. Your section color is blue, signifying that you are a first year cadet. Please intermingle only with others in your section color until matriculation is complete in three months. Welcome to Gaia Sur, Miss Ripley."
The hologram of Rheen's face smiles thinly before the screen fades to nothing, and the audio stops. I look over at Vox, who has moved to her stomach, her bare feet swaying behind her like wheat in a field as she props her head up with her hand and drags her pinky nail over her bottom row of teeth.
"Bugs in our ears…how about that?" she says under an arched brow, which is quite possibly the worst thing she could have said to me at this moment.
"Thanks for that," I say, narrowing my eyes at her.
"I'm here to help," she says, rolling back onto her bed and throwing her arm over her eyes, her dark, knife's edge of hair in a wild fan all around the right side of her head and shoulders. A cold tingle crawls up the back of my neck, and the sight of her there and the sudden vibe like she's bored fills me with contempt. Before I know it, I've launched a barrage of words at her.
"Are you here to help, because it really hasn't seemed like it so far today. You know, with almost getting half of us vaporized within the first 10 minutes of boarding the sub."
She smiles underneath the forearm draped over her eyes, which makes me ball my fists at my sides. A tingle starts at the base of my skull, and I realize I'm shaking and short of breath, and wonder if I will actually hit her. It's almost a compulsion, like I have to hit her. I hate this girl, and I barely know her.
"Temper, temper," is all she says, but at least she finds the decency to look at me this time. I drill my teeth together, and I know if she says one more thing I will leap on top of her. "Sorry. I didn't know you had a problem with swarms of things swimming around inside your head," she laughs the words rather than says them as she leans forward on one elbow and flutters her fingers next to her ear with the other hand, then laughs again. The sight of her teeth opening so wide that I can see her long, narrow tongue slapping up and down behind them in guffaws sets me off. I hear nothing, see nothing, and want nothing else in this moment than to feel my fingers wrap around her long, ink-tracked neck and squeeze until I feel things break inside.
I launch myself at her, and within two strides am flat on my back, the ceiling black with white flecks and a furiously pulsing heat in my nose. For the second time in two days I taste blood in my mouth, this time running down the back of my throat. I turn my head to the side, caught in a gagging cough, and it's then that I feel the hot, wet deluge of blood pouring down over my lips and chin. My hands rush to my nose and are almost immediately filled with blood. Vox hasn't left her bed and is laughing, now, harder than ever.
"You should play with more buttons," she says, and presses a red one on the wall above her nightstand that turns green before she takes off her pillowcase and throws it to me. I press it to my nose, almost immediately saturating it.
"What was—?" I start, but cough on the blood pooling in my sinus
es.
"Crite, sponge, pinch your nose shut," Vox's voice is full of equal parts amusement and disdain. I remember that this actually is what you're supposed to do for a bloody nose, and am even more quickly reminded that it's enough to give you tunnel vision if your nose is broken, which, my buckling knees tell me, mine, apparently, is. I sit down on my bed and wait for the world to stop spinning, blood streaming down my arm now and beating a steady tattoo on the floor. "You're a disaster," she says, punctuating with something that is mostly a chuckle. I look up at her and find her blurry, suddenly realizing that the burning in my eyes is not from the impact as I'd thought, but from tears, which I immediately wipe away with the heel of my free hand. I try to talk, to call her something, to threaten her, but my throat is closed too tightly to say a word.
"The bugs will have that fixed by morning. Should be fun at meal call, though." She lifts herself to her feet and pushes the white button next to the green one above her nightstand again, but it doesn't change color like the red button did. I look over my shoulder and see an identical set of buttons on my side of the room.
"May I help you, Miss Dyer?" the guide arrow's voice says.
"Biohazard clean up, and intermediary med kit—broken nose."
"Please stand by," says the arrow voice. Vox shakes her head at me after looking me up and down, the blood running in a heavy stream now and pooling between my feet. How can a nose bleed this much?
"I'd say you could tell everyone at dinner that they should see the other guy, but security screens are, well…invisible." Vox smirks and winks at the same time as she stands and walks over to me. I wait to feel the urge to lunge at her again, but surprisingly, all the violence I felt seconds ago is gone. In fact, I'm almost…happy, comfortable. What is happening? I close my eyes, sure that this weird euphoria is the result of what is evidently, by now, a liter of blood loss.
"Medical reporting—entry in three…two…one…" I hear the arrow voice from outside the room just before our door opens suddenly. Vox steps back to her bed, and a floating metal sphere sends a sweeping blue light along the floor. It detects the blood, then positions itself in front of me. Another metal sphere extends from the top of this one, and the voice speaks again.
"Please place the soiled material in the receptacle, then, extend your hands in front of you, Miss Ripley," it says. I drop the pillowcase inside and immediately feel the blood rush over my lips again. "Please remain still, Miss Ripley, and look at the green light," the voice says again, and a blinking light appears in the first sphere. I look at it until a beam of what feels like cold water suddenly hits my forehead and begins traveling down my face. "Scanning…" I hear it say. As the freezing sensation passes over my nose, I notice the flowing wet and sticky warmth of the bleeding stops. "Isolating fracture… nano-restructuring already in progress. Elapsed time, sixteen hours, 17 minutes."
"See, good as new in the morning," Vox says from the other side of the room, but when I try to look at her, I discover that I can't break my eye contact with the light because my face, my eyes, are locked in place. "Remain calm, Miss Ripley. Sanitizing…" I can feel the pulse in my throat and chest pounding, but from the neck up, I feel nothing but cold. After another minute, the light releases me, and the sensation begins to return to my face. The pain is dull now, and I can't breathe through my nose at all. Both of the metallic spheres line up next to each other, and when I look at my hands, which feel dry now, I notice all of the blood is gone, my shirtsleeves and the floor are clean again, and it's like nothing happened here at all. "You have received a neural interruptor for pain while your internal nanotechnics repair your injury—a nasal bone fracture and slight cerebral contusion, Miss Ripley. Please avoid situations that require judicious consideration or prolonged concentration this evening," the sphere says, but the blinking light is gone. They both exit our room, and Vox calls after them.
"Hey, can I get another pillowcase!?" I feel pain in my left cheek as the corner of my mouth inadvertently turns up.
"What happened?" I ask. "What did I hit?" I look around the room, but nothing seems out of the ordinary until she pushes the green button, which turns red, and tiny silver threads weave themselves through the air in a crosshatched pattern, then almost immediately disappear between us. "Touch it," she says between attacks of residual laughter. There is nothing there to touch now, but I reach out and feel the pads of my fingers flatten against something cool and smooth, like a mirror or a window.
"So you did that on purpose—raising that screen when I wasn't looking, and then…" I realize I have no idea what she did to provoke me, not really. What did she say that was so irritating? I replay what I remember of the conversation in my head, but nothing comes to me except her lazy sarcasm, her indifference and boredom, and I can't understand why that was such a trigger. Yes, I was—am—upset with her about all the trouble she's caused today, but not enough to want to strangle her the way I did. "What did you do to me?" I say to her, both my giddiness and violence now gone.
"You're a receiver; I thought you were, but I had to be sure."
"A what?"
"Didn't your people tell you anything about yourself? At your interview?"
"I don't know…they said that my strengths are in communication I guess, so what? What's a receiver?"
She rolls her eyes and falls back onto her pillow, extending her hand in the air so her bracelet cuff slides up her arm. She lifts it back to her wrist with her other hand and lets it slide toward her again and again, her shirt having risen up on her stomach to reveal more inked map-like lines.
"I'm a transmitter. I emit, you receive." In a sudden, singular jolt she rolls to her side to face me and props up her head with her hand. "Didn't you feel stupidly happy right after wanting to tear my throat out a minute ago?" She smiles too sweetly at me and flutters her eyelashes. Oh, no way…does she really think she can control me?
"Is that what they told you, that you're some kind of puppet master?"
"They told me basically what they told you, but it's easy enough to figure out our strengths."
"I'm not your puppet," I say, a fever of adrenaline washing over me as Vox's eyes widen and her smile spreads.
"Of course not," she says, mockingly. "How's your nose, by the way?" She lowers her chin, grinning.
"You will never do that to me again," I say, fighting to keep down the heat I feel rising in my chest. "Did you hijack Sarin back there too? Did you make her pick a fight with Rheen? Or with you just now at the med-bay?"
Vox wraps one of her long braids around her finger and searches for something on the wall behind me.
"No, that could have been fun, though. Trust me, I tried. I thought it was working when she lipped off at the director. That was inspired. Is she always like that?" Vox's yellow eyes dart back to me, and she stops wrapping her hair around her finger. "Or is she just your average mean skag?" I nod and fight back a smile partly because it hurts to smile, and partly because I don't want to give her the satisfaction. "Thought so."
"So you think you can just program people—the receivers—and they act the way you want them to act?" I feel my steadiness returning, but it's not enough to keep the edge out of my voice.
"Not exactly. I have to sort of shoot a feeling at them, and if they're receptive—I mean, if they already have the start of that same feeling in themselves somewhere, it catches, like an ember that I just have to blow on then. Tricky work, really. Exhausting."
"Why can you do that? How?"
"Same reason you can pick up on what everyone else is putting out there, whether they know they are or not. We are what we are."
"So there are others who don't know? Others who are like you and me? But you do know. Is that why you pushed the button on the matter board? Why you started all that trouble? Were you trying to see who would pick up on your…whatever that was, your complete insanity?"
She works her mouth into a bent smile and furrows her brows. "Harsh. I prefer to call it excavating the ground I'm goin
g to be walking on for the foreseeable future. Send out some impulsiveness, some rebellion…hey, a girl has to find out who the fighters are, who can be tapped for action if the need arises." She meets my eyes again and angles her head to the side. "You, for example. And that Liddick." She raises her eyebrows and nods, a devilish smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth.
"I told you that will never happen again, and you didn't control me in the galley. I helped stop you because I wanted to—it was my choice."
"Like I said, I just put it out there. I don't make you act, only react. What's in you is in you."
"Where did you go after that anyway? After they got the door open?"
"I never left."
"Yes, you did. I know you did because I looked for you."
"Think what you want," she says, then meets my eyes again and winks. "I'll let you."
I narrow my eyes at her stupid smiling face, and the lights on our bracelet cuffs begin to blink. I push mine, and hear the arrow's voice behind a dull throbbing in my ears—it's time to go to the meal hall. We both get up to go to the door, and I stop short, catching the glowing red button in the corner of my eye.
"Do me a favor before we go," I say, angling my head until I can see the spiderweb crosshatching all the way to the doorway it bisects. I press my palm against the invisible wall floating in the middle of the room between us and cock an eyebrow at her. "Turn off the security screen."
CHAPTER 17
Food-Shaped Food
"What happened to your face?" Jax's eyes widen as he approaches me from the side, a thin, silver tray in hand. I look down at his food—differently colored geometric shapes—and instinctively wrinkle my nose while wincing at the jolt of pain it causes.
"What happened to your food?"
"I know. They say it tastes better than it looks. You'd think living actually in the sea they would be able to do better than this. Anyway, your face?"