Rod Wars

by D. J. Hoskins

  Sierra walked past him without so much as a glance. "But not grandchild right? Unlike Aaron."

  One could hear the bitterness in her voice a mile away and the auditorium became deadly silent. Mr. Goethe, the smile sinking back to a frown, didn't reply. Sierra placed her hand on the sphere and waited. The number eight formed underneath her palm and removing it, she brushed past her grandfather, head held high. Descending the stairs quickly, she disappeared backstage before the crowd had the chance to clap.

  "Level eight? Damn her, she’s catching up to me,” Melissa griped, clenching a fist as she approached the steps, chin up and reeking of confidence. Scanned by the woman, she received the green light and stepped onstage.

  "Ah...if it isn't Melissa Bellheart,” Mr. Goethe said, the smile returning, though it didn't reach his eyes.

  "Hi, Mr. Goethe,” Melissa said pleasantly, returning his smile.

  Melissa put her hand on a glassy surface of the sphere. After a moment, the sphere formed an infinity sign. Smoothing out a smug smile into an emotionless facade, acknowledging the crowd cheers with a nod, she flashed teeth as she shook the Principal's hand.

  She turned and walked through the backstage doors without so much as a glance Alex’s way.

  Chapter 14

  Tiers

  For a moment, Alex stayed where he was, unwilling to move. What if I'm a one? What if I fail? If I do, will the government stop paying for my tuition?

  "Chop, chop young man, we don't have all day," the woman by the stairs hissed, waving him over impatiently. Scanned and waved along by the green light, he placed a tentative foot onto the first step leading to the stage and exhaled.

  What if I fail? Walking across the stage, he passed Mr. Goethe who raised his eyebrows. "Why, if it isn't Alex Mulholland? Our very own oddity! Wilson told me you’d be attending. Good luck young man!"

  The crowd overcame their initial shock and prematurely cheered.

  "Yeah..." His uneasy smile evaporated as he stood before the sphere. Reaching out halfway, he drew in a breath. Exhaling he placed a hand onto the dark sphere's glassy surface. White flecks stirred up, reacting almost immediately. Holding his breath as the seconds ticked out of existence, the specks swarmed beneath his palm and merged, forming an infinity sign. He removed his hand, stunned.

  He was infinity?

  “What does this even mean?” he exclaimed, staring anxiously up at Mr. Goethe, then at the silent crowd.

  “Lift your hand up,” the principal ordered.

  Alex did so.

  “Now put it back down.”

  Obeying his order, Alex set his hand back against the sphere’s glass and watched the flecks gather together once more to form the infinity sign again.

  “It must be broken,” Mr. Goethe said, nodding his head. “There’s no way. There’s no way an oddity can be…no. No, no there’s no way.”

  Muttering arose from the crowd as Mr. Goethe stared at Alex intently.

  “What am I?!” Alex demanded, tired of the suspense.

  “An Eleven!” Uh kid yelled out from the crowd.

  “But—but it says infinity!” Alex shouted back, pointing at it. “Why is it like this?”

  “Silence!” Mr. Goethe roared. “I will have quiet in my auditorium!”

  “No one’s really talki—” Alex began.

  “You, shut up. You’re the problem.”

  “But I’m an eleven,” he said doing a little fist pump. “That’s good right?”

  “No, because I lost the bet.”

  “Bet?”

  “Damn Wilson…ah, never mind, just go backstage.”

  "Okay?" Alex said before scuttling away from the crowd's applause and Principal's unwavering scowl which was matched by his piercing green gaze.

  I wonder how much he lost, Alex wondered as he passed through the thick curtains leading to the backstage doors. He breathed a sigh of relief as he turned to push them open.

  "So you have the same number as me after all...imagine that,” Melissa said leaning on the wall by the doors, arms crossed and lips pursed. She'd been waiting for him.

  "Huh?" Alex jumped. "Oh, it's just you."

  "I can't believe you actually made it. The average level here is normally six."

  "Uh, yeah..." Alex said quickly, running a hand through his hair in a subconscious effort to abandon his embarrassment. "You too."

  "How is it a surprise for me? I was born this way."

  "Born?"

  She nudged him with her elbow, a teasing smile on her face, and winked. "I’m joking…"

  “Really?”

  “Stop digging.” She snapped and turning she began to walk down the backstage stairs.

  Grabbing her arm, he turned her around. “Wait Melissa I have a question.”

  “What?” she said, glancing down at his hand. Letting go of her, he took a step back.

  “Why was there an infinity sign when I put my hand down on the thing?”

  “The thing? You mean the Goethe Sphere?”

  “Yeah that, thing.”

  Melissa rolled her eyes. “The lower levels want to feel close to me…err, us. I guess now.”

  Giving him a look of bitter resentment, she turned and descended the last of the steps.

  ~*~*~*~

  Backstage, unlike the dim auditorium, bright fluorescent lights lit up the spacious area. The majority of the students were scattered about the room, lounging under numbered sections despite the table of refreshments at the room's center. Only a few, what Alex assumed were students of the highest tier, associated themselves even remotely with the snacks. The students who kept away from the complimentary goods had a consistency to them, similarities tracing to their uniforms. Uniforms that, like the red of Sierra's, were segregated by a color code.

  Freshman milling within sections whose wall was labeled by the numbers five through seven displayed bright green on their uniforms. In the sections across from them, their cuffs and collars a dark gold, spanned the levels descending from four to one. The classification's extent however, did not simply end there.

  A level two sitting on a plush rug stared blankly at his phone while a four sat in a bean bag chair, her eyes trained upon the higher tiers bled envy. Both were quarantined within the bounds of a dark gold line which closed off their tier; the line halted a few feet from the refreshments which was in turn, encircled by red.

  The second tier was not much better off. Situated at one of three wooden tables, a cluster of level fives exercised their board game privileges while a pair of sevens engaged in a bout of table tennis. But they too were fenced in, locked in by a green line rather than gold.

  Tier one, however was a different story. The level eights enjoyed the seating of a simple couch and TV while the nines walking along carpet and enjoyed a broad range of small luxuries—a long couch complimented by a coffee table and a flat screen TV. They, like the other tiers, were blockaded by lines but the lines were red and thus possessed a straightaway connecting them to the island of refreshments.

  The tens on the other hand, were wholly separated from their fellow tier-mates by a sheer red curtain and easily topped the nines' territory with an extra couch, mini fridge and video games. Such base accommodations weren't to be compared with level eleven, however, which albeit vacant, had true privacy—blurred red glass severing prodigy from genius. It triumphed the tens with three distinct spaces: gaming, entertainment and tech.

  Alex, taking it all in, almost forgot to breathe, it was so ridiculous. The favoritism was beyond surreal...it was a new reality.

  Melissa looked back at him; hand on hip, eyebrows raised. Realizing he'd stopped, Alex quickly caught up with her.

  "Where's Sierra?" he asked.

  Melissa turned and then resumed her pace.

  "With the rest of the eights,” she said nodding to an alienated Sierra sitting dejectedly on one of the couches, staring at the canned soda in her hands.

  "But aren't levels...um—"

  "Categorize
d by tier? Yeah, but levels are grouped with levels."

  "Meaning what exactly?"

  "Ugh, you're so dense."

  "Dense? I'm not dumb. You’re just vague—"

  "Our classes may be in the same building but what we learn isn't the same."

  "A difference in status?"

  "That and skill." Melissa waved as she passed Sierra. The brunette girl held her gaze, but didn't wave back. Melissa narrowed her eyes, dropping her hand abruptly. "Hmm...that bitch." Curling it into a fist, she shook it at Sierra. "Ooh!"

  "What do they learn?" Alex prompted, trying to steer the conversation back onto its original course.

  Melissa smoothed her hair back, and turned into their section. She flopped onto the couch's end. "Humph...oh, more complexly intricate ways to manipulate titus."

  Alex after a moment of hesitation, sat beside her. "So what? There's a way to grow more or something?"

  "More of what? Titus?"

  He nodded.

  "Practice usually does the trick. The more you manipulate, the better you get and the more gain...or so the theory goes but I’m an eleven I wouldn’t know."

  "Then I won’t know either.”

  “You wouldn’t know anyway!”

  “It’s not my fault I’m an oddity.”

  “Then whose fault is it?”

  “Well…then explain the theory. What do you mean by gaining titus?"

  "You have to believe."

  "In what?"

  "A goal, a purpose, yourself...but I just repeated myself."

  "That makes sense."

  "Of course it does. If you don't believe you can level up, you won't begin to strive for anything. Only the confident who expect success achieve it. That expectancy is what people like Alice are missing." She shrugged. "But oh, tier-jumping demands diligence, practice, discipline and the like. Which is why the majority of those losers out there still have the same colors as last year. That reminds me, where's your uniform? You don't have any colors. What, did you get accepted late or something and not get it in the mail?"

  Alex broke eye contact sheepishly. "Ah...yeah. Something like that."

  Her question raised a silent one for him. If everyone received their uniform and colors through the mail, then did that make the orientation some sort of vain formality?

  "Hey Melissa!" A voice called from across the room. Turning they spotted a guy of average height with black hair and dark eyes, a silver earring piercing one ear. Around his neck rested a plant necklace encased in glass. The youth sported the bright red of a tier one. He made his way over to them almost at a jog, teeth flashing in a wide smile.

  Behind him trailing his light like a shadow was a short slender girl. She resembled a black orchid, mysterious and beautiful, the stormy gray of her eyes strong and fearless. Her long black hair extended past her shoulders and fell onto one side of her face.

  She was almost cat-like in her mentality of awareness. Her eyes darted about with an analytical curve which, masked by the downward angle of her head, indicated a false focus on her phone. As if compelled, her eyes stony and cold fell upon Alex intensely. A hand loosely grasped the cord of her headphones tightened and for a second he sensed animosity, listless, aimless, with target undefined yet realized. Her unprovoked hostility was as off-putting as it was confusing.

  "Hey Daniel. How are you?" Melissa replied, waving. The girl beside Daniel waved back absently. Pulling out an ear bud, the girl's stormy grey eyes searched and fell to the red of their tier, raised a questioning eyebrow.

  Alex shoved by Melissa, was forced to scoot over to the middle cushion to make room for the newcomers.

  Daniel sat next to Melissa. "Pretty good, you?"

  "Same."

  "Who's that? He's new,” his companion said pointedly, plopping down beside him.

  "I'm Alex." They looked at him blankly as if expecting more.

  "Are you a scholarship student?" Daniel asked.

  "No. I'm an Oddity."

  "Whoa, an unknown?"

  "You mean those people who fall off the Miron wall?" his companion asked, her apathetic expression unchanged.

  "They don't fall Katelyn, they're...um, teleported or something." Melissa tried to correct her.

  Katelyn ignored her. "Why are you here?"

  Alex gestured from Daniel to Katelyn. "Are you two related?"

  Katelyn crossed her arms, her scrutiny upon him intensifying.

  "Yeah, we're siblings. Katelyn's older than me by a year."

  "You avoided my question,” Katelyn said undeterred.

  "Could you repeat it?"

  "He's an eleven like me,” Melissa answered for him, running a hand through her hair.

  “The teacher’s coming, Daniel,” Katelyn said, jabbing him in the side with a finger. “Time to head back. Meet and greet is over.”

  “We’ll come with,” Melissa said, getting up. Throwing an elbow Alex’s way, she indicated for him to follow.

  ~*~*~*~

  “All right, listen up oddities." A high voice rose above the conversation. The tens quieted. Alex and the other three slipped into the group.

  Where is everybody? Alex wondered, eyes sweeping over the few dozen students making up the class. Or is this it?

  Compared to the other level's hundreds, the tens were little more than a handful of individuals, a small percentage belonging to tier one, the top ten percent of the freshman class.

  Standing on the red line was a short woman dressed in business attire of dress shirt, jacket, pencil skirt and high heels. She had short dark brown hair curled just above her shoulders and sweeping bangs that cast a shadow over dark eyes the color of red wine.

  "Excuse me?" One girl murmured incredulously.

  "She didn't just compare us—" Started another.

  "Just kidding, just kidding." The woman laughed harshly. "No one wants to be one of those. My name is Mrs. Quill and for all you T-ten freshmen, your teacher. Now with that being said, let's start the tour." She glanced down at her tablet. "We're already behind schedule."

  Pushing open the exit door, she stepped out onto the whitewashed sidewalks expecting the class to follow.

  Alex fell in beside Melissa as their group split the moment they set foot out beneath the late summer sun. Daniel, sparing neither Melissa nor Alex a second glance, merged quickly into a neighboring group's conversation while Katelyn trailed after her brother, returning earphones to ears, and immersed herself in music.

  Chapter 15

  Tour

  Stepping from sidewalk to tile, the class entered a large building, Tier 1 labeled gold across the brick red texture. The building beside it was labeled, Tier 2 in silver, while the third and largest next to it carried the bronze lettering, Tier 3.

  Alex looked over his shoulder and saw another larger class break off from the sidewalk and onto cobblestone as they entered the tier two building. He blinked, pausing before the automatic doors. Only tier ones, he realized uncomfortably, had a sidewalk which linked and branched off from the main paths to lead directly to their designated building.

  "Hey Alex, you coming?" Melissa asked, waiting impatiently between the automatic doors.

  Well she'd gotten friendly.

  "Yeah,” he replied trailing after her through the double doors. Inside, he appraised the building's immediate interior, an area whose theme exalted a scale of studious refinement that Alex had never before encountered. Expensive bamboo flooring touched and rose to walls which displayed little decoration. The sparse furnishings of the lobby were shadowed in the background by large leafy plants which grew within the confines of squares and rectangles embedded in the floor. The ceiling was but a glass skyline and wide open windows beckoned both natural light and students to step through automatic doors; floor lights wrapped about the room in rings in comparison to the sun, did little to illuminate the area further.

  "This is the lobby,” Mrs. Quill announced, introducing the surrounding area with a brief gesture.

  "Nice p
lace..." Alex said.

  "You're impressed by this?" Melissa scoffed, her eyes passing over the area with careless indifference. "It barely has four tables."

  "And that over there is the office,” Mrs. Quill continued. "If you have a problem don't bring it to me, that is what the counselors are for. Now chop, chop. Finish grabbing your passes so we can move on."

  Joining one of the four dwindling lines, following Melissa's lead, Alex scooted just behind the recommended red line, reached out a hand. Flattening palm and fingers against the glass of the scanner, a cry escaped him as a blinding flash of light went off the moment he touched it. Blinking rapidly as he fished a card out of the dispenser, ignoring the snickers at his back, he joined Melissa waiting for him off to the side.

  “All right, moving on,” Mrs. Quill said clapping her hands spontaneously before continuing down a hall, heels clicking. She led the class past three large rooms, the first with books and tables, and the other two sporting rows of high tech desktops.

  "You’ll find the research wing quite useful when completing my assignments." Though words left Mrs. Quill's mouth, the sharp click of her heels did not waver and the pace did not slow.

  Alex glanced at Melissa. "Titus is really hands on right? So why do we need computers?"

  "Term papers?"

  "You don't know?"

  "I know rumors."

  Alex gave her a dubious glance. She raised her chin a few notches as she held his eyes squarely. Her intelligence, her knowledge, the legitimacy of her sources had been called into question.

  "I might have been raised in a government facility but Corpus is more of a private institution. They keep info regarding the curriculum for all grades, tiers and levels on the down-low. Though there's some base rumor that the info's withheld to keep everything well and fair. Some vague explanation revolving around restricting prior advantages students may have over their peers, but really it's all to keep their methods under lock and key."

  Her eyes began to wander as a few students glanced their way.

  Raised in a government facility? Alex thought, as puzzled as he was intrigued. That was a first. What is Melissa, some sort lab rat? Ex...lab rat? Maybe her parents are military? They obviously work for the government. Does Kaiga require those who’re working directly for it to live in some sort of regulated suburb?