by Scott Rhine
Classes went smoothly for Red that day, eerily so. For the most part, people saw her staggering around with the new name tag and stayed clear of the victim, for fear it might rub off. When Sojiro asked, “What fiendish punishment did she devise for the first day?”
Red still looked a little dazed. “Did you know the force that a spin cycle exerts?”
“Dude, don’t freak me out. Did she leave any marks?”
“No, but I still don’t know what the tennis balls on her shelf are for. She says she only uses them when it rains.”
All day, she kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
However, other than extra homework to catch up in her math class, it was an unremarkable day. Over the dinner hour, she received a package from Miss Mori containing paint-stained clothes. Her note said, “Clean it or buy it!” Enclosed were a list of preferred dry cleaners and copies of shopping receipts totaling over $5000. Red’s eyes bugged out. “My allowance was cut to only two thousand a month.”
Risa had no sympathy. “I get less than one thousand, Señorita Monita.” The Spanish word for cute little monkey girl had become her favorite zinger.
“I can’t fly them to the dry cleaner because I’m grounded,” Red complained. She still got no sympathy. “Fine, I’ll wash them myself tomorrow.”
“Who are you, and what did you do with the princess?”
Red gave her a fake, catty smile.
At 2000, when Zeiss tapped on her door, her heart jumped into her throat. This had to be it—the second demerit. This was going to be the lash on the back. “Follow me,” he said, and she obeyed.
He led her to the restaurant kitchen. When they arrived, he introduced her loudly enough for the lingering patrons to hear. “This is François. You will be cleaning his kitchen every night. He’s very exacting in his standards. If he’s not satisfied, you will clean it again. You’re his for the next three weeks.”
“But. . .”
“Is there a problem?” Zeiss dared her, raising an eyebrow.
“No, sir.”
“Good.” Lowering his voice, the TA told her, “In payment, you’re permitted to make your own dinner with whatever you can find in the freezers, including Professor Sorenson’s. He has the same standards as you for dining.”
She held her breath, hardly believing her ears. He’d turned the remaining punishment into a lifeline. “Thank you, Z. I’ll never ask you for another favor as long as I live.”
He snorted. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I’ll get started cleaning now. I’ll make you proud.”
The TA nodded and started to leave. The moment he touched the swinging door, the girl exclaimed, “Wait!”
“A favor already?”
Red bit her lip. “It’s not my fault, okay?” She changed to a whisper. “I don’t know how to cook. I’ve never had to do it before.”
Zeiss rubbed his face. “Clean first. I’ll be back in half an hour. I have classes to prepare for. Then I’ll show you something basic.”
“You cook?”
“Most adults do, Red. Since my mother was incapacitated much of the time, I had to learn. It’s not magic. Risa or someone should be here, too. I won’t be alone with a female student. Understood?”
She nodded and dialed up her roommate. Risa agreed to meet them at the half-hour mark. “But no cleaning. Just because I look like your maid doesn’t mean I do grease stains, chica.”
When Zeiss arrived in an old overshirt, he started by showing her basic rice and pasta preparation. “Simple, but with the right sauce, quite tasty.” Giving her badge back, he said, “Lock up when you’re finished.”
Red told him, “Z, I talked to the Sunday Dinner Club. We’d like to know if you’d agree to be our faculty adviser.”
“Does the post come with five-star food?”
Red smiled. “Spaghetti?”
“Sold.”
Once back to his room, he sent a text to Daniel. “I’m in.”
Chapter 12 – Day of the Dolphin
A month later, on a beautiful Saturday morning, Zeiss sat in his bedroom, staring at his Go board. It was a grooved, maple square covered with polished black and white stones. His opponent was Johannes Solomon, the small, dark math professor from Ethiopia. The TA had hidden his dissertation notes and map in his safe before the game. “We could do this during the week if you used a computer.”
In a sing-song voice, the African genius in the rattan chair said, “Then I would miss the social aspects and body cues. Through a machine, Conrad, you would crush me like a bug.” The last word had been loud and enthusiastic for emphasis. “In person, I can sense which moves are important to you. Besides, I like the company. You need more socialization.” Listening to the longer words felt like riding an ocean swell.
Zeiss wore a T-shirt featuring da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man playing an electric guitar. “I work for the Academy five hours a day, security five hours, and help students in my ‘spare’ time. My dissertation is taking a back seat and I have no social time to speak of.”
“Ach, to you this hunt for sneaky people is like this game. It stimulates you.”
“I guess,” Zeiss admitted. “I found another covert channel for information this week.”
“I won’t understand it, but please tell me and I will pretend to be fascinated.”
“When people send email, the word processing documents copy information left over in computer memory onto the end of the file. The censors don’t see it because the program doesn’t display it. So now I have to read over thousands of emails checking for inadvertent leaks of sensitive information.”
“This does not happen when you write it on paper like a civilized person.”
“I don’t understand how you can live without email.”
When the Ethiopian laughed, the sound was high and sharp. “People existed for millennia without this nuisance. How many hours a week do you waste on this email?” At last, he placed a black stone on the board, changing one of the whites to his color.
Zeiss shrugged. “At least four hours.”
“Everything important, people tell me in the hallway, in two minutes,” the math teacher said. “That is, as you say a lot of noise and very little signal.”
Zeiss placed a white stone and flipped three of his opponent’s pieces to white because of it. “Is this because of the whole Mennonite anti-tech thing?”
“We are not the Amish. We object to pride, not science. My objective is to teach my students to think on their own,” he said, placing another black stone. “Speaking of students, how is your special project, the one on probation?”
“This is the last day of her grounding and kitchen duty. She’s still assigned to Horvath, though.”
“I think she would rather keep the other two punishments.”
Zeiss laughed. “Horvath made her do pushups, clean, referee sparring, and help students with their martial arts.”
“The freshman child is teaching?”
“She’s older than she looks and quite talented in several martial arts forms.”
“Then you were wise to choose this.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but she definitely made the Grunt-Monkey job her own. The students changed her name tag to Señorita Monita or Monkey Girl for short.”
“So no more problem child?”
The TA waggled his hand. “There’s still her cold war with Kaguya Mori. Not all the paint-ball stains came out of the silk. I also have to monitor her while she does her Tensor Mechanics homework.”
“Cheating?” the Ethiopian asked, placing a stone.
Zeiss placed his next piece in a heartbeat and flipped all but one small corner to white. He couldn’t tell his associate that she’d found a way to use a little calculating power from each person in the crowded cafeteria without triggering the bio-monitors. “More like I want her to learn to think for herself.” He was so busy switching stone colors he didn’t see the little man react. The cryptic reference h
adn’t been obscure enough.
When Dr. Solomon left the pod, he passed by the clinic garden. Casually, he bent over and turned the garden gnome to face his office. He needed his agent to contact him about several problems.
****
The days had passed in a blur. At last, Red was caught up on everything except a few quantum physics essays. That morning, Red slept in for the first time since her arrival at the academy. With no emergency drill or extreme environment test to complete, she pulled the comforter over her head and luxuriated. She told Risa to go walking with the guys instead of her.
In the middle of a dream about a dessert bar at a steakhouse, she sensed the contacts—twelve Actives moving toward the prow of the island. Their craft was closing fast. Red grabbed the goggles from her dresser and hit the microphone. “Priority channel, board-level clearance, Trina Horvath.”
She jumped into pants with the survival knife already in a pocket and left the Disney princess shirt on. She grabbed her emergency gun from under her pillow and ran out the door without bothering to slip on a bra.
Seconds later, Trina answered. “Hello? Red? Are you okay?”
Building up speed as she cleared the front door, and snapping the goggles into place, the girl said, “Active team inbound, a dozen. Landfall on agro meta-pod four. Moving to intercept.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
Red sprinted out the front gate of her meta, past the library, agro meta six, the faculty meta, and reached the jogging path that meandered around the green space. She was breathing heavily when she reached the scenic point with benches that provided a splendid view of the ocean, isolated from the rest of the academy. A windbreak row of palm trees provided a modicum of shade and privacy. This was the perfect spot to invade.
Kaguya was leaning against some boy on one of the benches. He looked nervous when Red lingered. After a few seconds, he rose and departed casually. He had lipstick marks on his neck. Miss Mori glared at her and said, “This is my bench Saturday mornings. Get your cardio exercise somewhere else, Princess.”
Red glanced down at her night shirt and blushed. They were squaring off for a cat fight when Trina walked up. The overdressed debutante left when she saw the professor but did so slowly.
“Did you just call me to ruin everyone’s day at make-out point?” Trina laughed.
“No, there are Actives,” Red pointed.
Trina nodded. “Daniel said they’re friendlies. It’s classified. Come to the railing and watch with me.”
“Is it a strike team doing covert training? A mock invasion? Are they changing the crew of our guard submarine?”
“Shh. Watch.”
Growling, Red obeyed. After a few moments, she saw the pod of dolphins leaping through the waves. “Ooo, they’re gorgeous.” More than just visually, on the mental wavelengths, the aquatic mammals were all play and love. “Dolphins are Active?”
Trina nodded. “Not freshwater ones, but these bottlenoses feel like very young human children. It’s something we want to keep secret.”
Unaware of what she was doing while watching the happy event, Red reached out and took her aunt’s hand. Trina allowed her to. Neither spoke for several minutes, until a pair of joggers passed them and raised an eyebrow. When Red saw what they were staring at, she pulled her hand back.
“Dolphins don’t have talents, but they share,” Red noted.
“Sometimes that’s enough.”
“Why didn’t I notice them before?” the girl asked.
“The medication we had you on to suppress normal development is wearing off. Tell Dr. Marsh today. He’ll need to adjust your dosages and add some new monitoring,” Trina said with a gentle smile. “You’re becoming a woman.”
Her aunt wanted to touch her face, but Red dodged, wary of more witnesses. The girl asked, “What about other higher mammals?”
“Extend your senses downward.”
When no more information was forthcoming, the girl complied. Red pushed as deep as possible, but felt no minds. In fact, she felt pushing back like a giant air bag. “Something’s there, preventing me. Wait; is this artificial silence what Professor Sorenson needs?”
Trina nodded. “It helps us all.”
“But the zone is moving. We’re following it,” Red recalled. “It feels like several big pillows.”
“They have their own Collective, and we’re not welcome,” Professor Horvath hinted.
“Whales?” asked Red.
“Board-level clearance. Don’t tell your friends. Only five people alive know the secret, and one is the island’s navigator.”
“Too cool,” Red said, leaning over the rail to feel the animals better.
“What are you going to do with your newfound freedom now that you’re no longer grounded?” her aunt asked.
“Toby needs Lasik surgery if he’s going to qualify for Extra-Vehicular training. That’ll be next month.”
“Jet packs are fun, but does he want to train with them?”
“The team needs it.”
“You’re a control freak,” Trina warned. “The world can’t be controlled.”
“You’re calling me a Jezebel?”
“One of your dad’s favorite books was Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.”
“The short one with the beach picture?”
“You should read it. And remember one word: be,” Trina requested. “Every person in your life has sweat bullets to be there. No complaints. However, you need to learn to loosen your stranglehold on this obsession or you could miss something really important.”
“Huh? I’ll start slow.”
“That would be a first.”
Red grinned sheepishly. “Thanks for this. It felt nice not to be Monita for a while. Now I need to change my shirt before anyone else sees it.”
Trina laughed. “Follow me. My pod’s the closest.” She led the girl to her apartment. Having Red wave her badge over the reader, the professor said, “Grant access.”
The reader light turned green. Once inside, Trina said, “This room is really just for quick changes; I sleep through that door with you-know-who. You won’t get in there, but you can ransack my closet in an emergency. You’re only a couple inches shorter than I am.”
Red picked a cute top from the US Virgin Islands. “That’s bamboo, very comfortable,” noted her aunt. “Now stay out of trouble.”
****
Monday morning, someone had added the word ‘Princess’ to Red’s name tag. She swore while she scraped damaged tile off the floor of a shower. Because she had upgraded the dojo controls to respond to her goggle commands, she was able to listen to music while she worked.
Trina wandered in about twenty minutes later. Red muttered, “Music, off,” and it went silent. To her aunt, she said, “I suppose you’re not going to sing me a song for being late?”
“I just had the oddest discussion with the dean. Wow, you finished that tile yourself. I thought it’d take both of us.”
“I was motivated. So we have some free time. What’s up Stanton’s craw?”
The instructor closed the bathroom door. “There’s been an allegation that I’m dating you in a homosexual relation.”
“That vindictive slut. I’m going to . . .”
“Calm down and leave the teacher business to teachers,” Trina insisted. “There were multiple complaints: the handholding, the hug, and photos of you going in with one top and coming out with another. I was able to prove no physical relationship by playing the tape from my room, but the dean said I can’t supervise you anymore.”
“But you’re as het as they get. Daniel can vouch for you.”
“Not if I want to keep my cover. And this identity has been known to frequent gay bars. My sister Una got sloppy and they found photos from almost twenty years ago.”
“This is asinine,” Red protested.
“You’re free. Your indenture is over.”
Far from being excited, Red felt disappointment. “You didn’t fight for me?”<
br />
Trina looked at her, struck by the wording. “I thought this is what you’ve been praying for.”
“Well, not like this.”
“Daniel would laugh his ass off at this,” Trina said, eyes sparkling with amusement. “You’re saying you want to work for me?”
“With. Not for,” Red clarified.
The instructor raised an eyebrow. “If you get your black belt, you can instruct. Then there’s nothing anyone can object to. What changed?”
“Nobody tells me who I can love.” Red took advantage of the last time they’d have together until Christmas and hugged her aunt.
Chapter 13 – Celebration
There were now seven members of the Sunday Supper Club. All of them wanted to help Red celebrate her freedom. The day she flew Toby to Thailand for successful Lasik surgery, she purchased party supplies. That Sunday, from morning till night, Sojiro organized a movie marathon in the basement of the simulation facility. Each person except Red contributed a DVD. The girls in pod three had donated a sofa without their knowledge.
Zeiss hung a stuffed monkey from the ceiling bearing the infamous name tag. Sojiro even crafted a crown for it.
Sojiro was ecstatic. “The mils have stopped picking on me. Hanging with Herk gives me street cred.”
“No, shooting the Herminator in the chest and surviving gives you cred,” said the bomb technician.
“People are still too afraid to stand next to you when the wrath of Horvath strikes you down,” guessed Risa.
“The professor’s not that bad.” Red tried a piece of popcorn after scanning it with her watch.
“You’re James Bond,” commented Herkemer.
“Gross. He hated women in the books,” exclaimed Red.
“I think Pierce Brosnan was cute,” said Risa.
“Connery was the only real Bond,” insisted Zeiss.
“Come on, they played theme music each time he punched people,” Herk complained.
“The Nogala remix fixed that,” Sojiro countered. “I have a copy at my place.”
“Come up and see my etchings,” laughed Auckland.