“It’s so good to finally have you here.” A warm voice welcomed Sidney and Hari. They turned to see a tall, middle-aged woman striding across the carpeted floor. Sid recognized her from his intermaze searches on Sci Hi. She was one of the scientists who built the Beta Space Station orbiting Earth. She shook their hands firmly. “I am Dr. Macron, the Sci Hi headmistress. I wanted to meet you both before getting you squared away with your room assignments and orientation. Traditional schools may be halfway into the term, but the school year is just getting underway here.”
Dr. Macron’s hair was gray and tucked neatly in a bun. Her face had deep smile lines engraved on it. Her dark-green eyes were partially hidden behind dataglasses, but they sparkled with intelligence.
“I’m happy that you both took advantage of the opportunity to attend Sci Hi. I have read through your files, and I think you are exactly the type of students we look for. I can guarantee the curriculum at Sci Hi will give you opportunities to think in ways you haven’t before.
“I’ve been a scientist my whole life. I’ve had the chance to work on many different projects and experiments, even working in space for a while. But this is the most exciting position I’ve ever held. Sci Hi is preparing the planet’s next generation of scientists, engineers, and problem solvers. I hope you’ll both be counted among that number.” She smiled at them and said, “Here is a datacube with orientation materials, personal data that need to be completed, and a nanochip that contains a digital map of Goddard Island. You can submit the datacube to the floor proctor in your dormitory. Talos, please take Sid and Hari to the quartermaster to get settled.”
“Yes, Dr. Macron.” Talos’s head swiveled to gaze at the boys with his glass eyes. “This way.”
As the last students to arrive for the term, Hari and Sid were placed together in the Tesla dormitory. Students in the hallways glanced curiously at them as they walked by, but the boys barely noticed as they tried to take in their surroundings. The glass and steel corridors were etched with Nikola Tesla’s patent drawings and plans of the electrical transformers he constructed. The Tesla building was divided into four dormitory floors. Hari and Sid’s room was on the first floor, which had a large laboratory that served as a common area where students could work on projects together. All the necessary tools were built into hidden cabinets, available at the touch of a button. In the center of the room, a giant Tesla coil shot sparks into the air. A girl wearing dark protective goggles and heavy gloves adjusted a control at the base of the coil. A single bright spark snapped at the top of the coil, once every second. She smiled and waved as they walked past.
Sidney and Hari’s room was small but comfortable. Beds and worktables folded out from the wall. A couple of swivel chairs and a low table were at the center of the room. There were no windows, but a large video screen showing a feed from the Mars colony covered an entire wall.
“I trust you will find everything in order,” Talos said. “You may use the touch pad on the wall to contact the staff. Your floor monitor is due to arrive in approximately five minutes, thirty-two seconds.”
“Thank you very much for your help,” Hari said.
“Yeah, thanks,” Sid said.
“My pleasure. Welcome to Sci Hi,” Talos replied. The boys watched the machine smoothly turn and leave the room. As the big robot walked down the hallway, its arms rotated and retracted, its head sank down into its chest, and caterpillar treads folded down to the floor.
“Whoa….” Sid said as the robot’s new form disappeared around the corner at the end of the hall.
The boys spent a few minutes unpacking and goofing around with the video wall, looking at feeds from the far side of the moon, a space probe traveling with a comet, and a rover on Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon. While Hari watched the screen, Sid started taking apart the tiny spherical remote that controlled all the room’s devices. He had just pried open the cover when there was a brisk knock at the door. He looked up guiltily.
“Hi, guys,” a cheerful voice said in a British accent.
A smiling girl with brown skin and jet-black hair was poking her head in the door. She wore a pair of jeans and a dark-blue Sci Hi T-shirt. “My name’s Penny Day. I’m one of the assistant floor monitors. Sidney Jamison and Hari Gupta, right? Your class schedules are in the school brain, and you can access them on the wall screen like this.” She touched a button at the corner of the table, and the wall screen shifted to its data voxpod mode.
Continuing her bustle, Penny brought up their schedules. “You’ll be starting with Introduction to Mutations at 8:00 tomorrow morning. Your voxpods have been linked to the Sci Hi system, and they’ll show you where to go. Oh, and there’s plenty of information on Nikola Tesla. This building is named after him. You should read it. He was an amazing guy.
“Bathrooms and showers are down the hall. Dinner is in an hour, in the subfloor 1 cafeteria. If you need anything, my voxpod contact is T-5032-A. I think that’s everything. See you guys around!” She gave them a wave as she left.
Hari and Sid were still trying to catch their breath after the Penny whirlwind when the room suddenly shook. They could hear a distant rumbling roar. On a hunch, Hari checked the school channel on the wall display, which showed an overhead view of the campus. Something was happening on the east end of the island. Several of the buildings were sinking into the ground, and a graceful aerospace vehicle was rising from an underground launch facility to ground level. As the boys watched, the engines ignited and the spacecraft lifted off into the sky, with thunderous clouds of smoky red flames trailing behind it.
Hari murmured, “Pradeep’s high school doesn’t have a rocket launcher.”
Sidney grinned. All he could say was, “This place is lethal.”
CHAPTER 4
“Class, this term we’ll be discussing what mutations are and how they work.” Dr. Vary, the Mutations 101 instructor, was a short, portly man with a bushy beard. He looked as if he had just stepped into class from a jungle expedition. He wore a brightly colored tropical shirt and a khaki vest with multiple pockets. Worn shorts and boots completed the look. His voice echoed in the dark lecture hall. He circled his desk at the front of the room, looking at the glittering word MUTATION that floated in the center of the room. As he talked, the letters morphed and grew legs, wings, and fins. Then, they zipped away.
“Before we start, let me ask a question. Who thinks mutations are a good thing?”
No one raised a hand.
“Who thinks mutations are bad?” Dr. Vary asked.
Sid was shocked when, before he could get his hand even halfway up, every hand in the class shot up. His mouth hung open in surprise. He couldn’t remember a single time at Bleaker High when the entire class wanted to answer a question. He was so surprised that he still had his hand up after everyone else’s went back down. Dr. Vary was looking right at him, eyebrows raised. “Do you have a question?”
“Um, no…no, sorry. I just…um, no.” Sid could feel the blood warming his cheeks. Usually, you can make it through the first week without everyone thinking you’re some kind of freak, he reminded himself. Be cool.
The girl sitting in front of him turned around in her chair. Sid instantly recognized Penny from his dorm building. She gave him a quick grin before facing forward again.
Sid bristled for a second, expecting a snarky remark, but her smile hadn’t been mocking him. It was just a smile. Maybe things will be different here, he thought.
Dr. Vary continued his lesson. “Okay, let’s take a look at how mutations have historically been shown in popular culture.” Dr. Vary opened several image windows showing gigantic ants, spiders, and a praying mantis. The huge insects were terrorizing cities. People ran back and forth, screaming wildly toward the camera.
“These are scenes from films that were made during the 1950s and ’60s. They showed insects that were mutated, usually by atomic radiation, and grew to be enormous. In reality, arthropods could never grow this large.” Several awwws were h
eard from the class in response. “But let’s leave that for a second. The reality is that mutations are simply tiny changes at the genetic level. Those changes are happening all the time, to every living organism.
“The changes happen randomly. If those changes, or adaptations, help an organism survive a new predator or a drought, then that genetic mutation is passed along to its offspring. If an organism can’t survive a change to its environment, it dies, along with others of its kind, resulting in extinction. Over time, small genetic changes add up to new species. Talos, if you please…?”
The large robot moved from an alcove in the back wall to the center of the room, where a DNA strand was being projected. With a glowing fingertip, Talos reached in and moved or deleted several pieces from the coiling DNA structure. A new series of images flickered to life on the virtual screen, floating in the middle of the room. Sid squinted, absorbing the sight of tiny flies with short, crumpled wings and strangely shaped eyes. Weird, he thought.
“Beginning in 1910, scientists began experimenting with fruit flies to track down adaptations to specific genes. They found that radiation can cause radical mutations, which we can study and track through generations. The mutated genes are passed from parent to offspring. Talos has just altered the fruit fly’s genetic string here, and the images show the resulting mutations to the fly.
“Which brings me to our term project: You will form groups of three or four to design an organism that will experience mutations, utilizing our special THING 2.0 software.
“I have created the digital world your creatures will exist in. All you will know about this world is that it has breathable air, the same gravity as Earth, and several different biomes.
“Your creatures will be inserted into the simulation. Over the term, we will see if they survive or become extinct. The team that designs the creature that survives most effectively will be announced at the Sci Hi Student Symposium at the end of the term.” A hologram of the trophy appeared in an image window. “The trophy is based on a cartoon from a hard-copy publication in 1871, portraying Charles Darwin with the body of a monkey, showing the disdain his ideas were treated with during his life. We now consider Darwin’s revolutionary ideas about evolution as the basis of modern biology. They have withstood scrutiny for nearly three centuries. Now it’s time to see how long your creatures will last.”
Sid wasn’t sure how he felt about the project. He had never tried anything like it before. It sounded exciting to work on something so interesting, but he was also nervous. His specialty had always been taking things apart, not putting things together. He was worried he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the other students. He leaned over to Hari. “Same team?”
Hari nodded. “Sure. We need one more. How about Penny? She seems pretty smart.” He tapped her shoulder. “Penny? Do you want to work on our team?”
She turned around, flashing Hari a smile. “Cheers. That would be brilliant.”
“Great,” Hari said. “We can start working tonight.”
The next class was Physical Education, with Ms. Newton. The students were dressed in white shorts and T-shirts covered with the Sci Hi emblem. They stood in a large gymnasium with cinder block walls and a rubber floor. Large steel beams crisscrossed the ceiling. Narrow windows spaced around the walls of the gym let in thin columns of sunlight.
“All right, everyone, listen up!” Ms. Newton shouted from the center of the gym. Her dark, spiky hair stood out in all directions. She was only a little taller than the students and wore a Sci Hi T-shirt with “Instructor” printed on the back and red sweatpants. She held what looked like a yellow soccer ball in a bulky glove on her right hand. The ball was covered with deep seams that emitted a bright blue light. “We are about to put the ‘physics’ into Physical Education. We’re going to play a game called Zero-G Ball. It’s just like dodgeball, except for one thing—the ball.”
She tossed the ball into the air. Instead of falling to the floor, the ball flew up until it bounced off the gym’s ceiling, then off a wall, and finally to the floor. Ms. Newton reached out with her gloved hand. The ball changed direction and stuck to the glove.
“The balls we are using for this game have been fitted with gravity nullifiers. They will continue moving until they are stopped by friction from the air, impact with the walls, or you.
“The motion of the ball is a perfect illustration of the property of inertia, which states that an object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest will stay at rest unless an outside force acts on that object. You will be that outside force.
“The rules are the same as regular dodgeball, except you can’t take someone out of the game by hitting them directly with a ball. To knock a player out, the ball must first bounce off at least one surface: a wall, the floor, or the ceiling. So, keep that in mind.
“Each team will have either red or blue balls. Let’s separate into teams, with Tesla being red on that side of the gym, and Edison as blue on the other.” Edison was one of the other dormitory buildings, and just as the scientists themselves were, the students in the Tesla and Edison dorms were fierce competitors.
As they took their places, the students shirts’ turned red or blue. Ms. Newton tossed each side six balls, which seemed normal until the teams picked them up. Then, each ball began glowing with its team color.
A buzzer sounded, and suddenly a dozen glowing balls were bouncing around the room in every direction. The bombardment came from all sides. The shirts of those struck by an opponent’s ball turned to white, and those players left the field to sit on the sidelines.
Within the first few minutes, Sid took a ball to the head. Sports had never been his thing, so he didn’t mind being knocked out early and getting to watch the other players instead. Hari lasted maybe a minute longer.
They sat on the sidelines, cheering the other players on. It was hard to keep up with the crazy bouncing balls and the running, shrieking students.
Soon, there was only one player left from each team.
“That’s Penny!” Hari cried.
“Yeah, she’s still in the game! C’mon Penny,” Sid shouted.
Neither Penny nor the boy on the Edison team could hit each other. Penny pitched a ball up to the rafters, way over the boy’s head. Then, she started tossing balls straight at him, not fast enough to hit him, but enough to keep him in one spot. He continued to fling balls back at her.
The ball that Penny had lobbed at the ceiling bounced off it gently and hit the back wall. Everyone watching the game could see what was going to happen. The spectators jumped to their feet, shouting and calling warnings. But the Edison player was so caught up trying to hit Penny with a ball that he wasn’t watching anywhere else. The ball touched the floor about three feet behind the unsuspecting boy, bounced up slowly, and just touched his back. A buzzer sounded loudly as the Edison shirt turned white, and everyone cheered for Penny. Sid and Hari grinned, glad she was Tesla—and on their team.
“Now, that is a great illustration of inertia!” Ms. Newton declared.
The gravity of the balls shifted back to normal, and the balls dropped to the floor with a thud.
Penny, still elated by her victory in Zero-G Ball, led the boys to the lunchroom in the Tesla dorm. The menu was inspired by the school’s international faculty and students. Hari decided on pad thai, and Penny’s plate held broiled zucchini and couscous. Sid wasn’t sure what he wanted to try until he spied a stack of sandwiches. “Tuna salad!” he cried excitedly, grabbing a sandwich on rye bread. He added a few pickles on the side and a large apple for dessert. He sat down with Hari and Penny and took his first bite of the sandwich. It was perfect, with just the right amount of mayo. He chewed contentedly. Sidney had no idea what the rest of his classes would be like, but at least he knew Sci Hi had tuna-salad sandwiches.
Sid’s last class of the day was Microbiology. Before the class started, Talos came to the classroom to collect Hari and Sid’s orientation datacubes. Hari had his ready to han
d in, but Sid had only gotten through the skills and interests section. The class waited while he raced through the health questionnaire, marking the appropriate answers. For the allergies, previous conditions, and injuries boxes, he quickly selected “None,” hoping he hadn’t forgotten anything.
Once Sidney handed in his datacube, Talos led the class on the short walk over to a large room in the Asimov building. The sign on the door said MINIATURIZATION. A huge circular mirror hung from steel beams stretched across the ceiling, dominating the inside of the warehouse. The mirror was made up of thousands of tiny hexagonal lenses. Each lens had a small projector in the center of it. From below, it looked like the eye of some kind of huge insect. Mutating bugs and gravity-defying games were one thing, but Sid had a feeling that things were about to get really weird.
Technicians directed the students to climb a short flight of stairs and stand in the center of a shallow platform. A technician’s voice echoed from a control room supported high above the ground by metal scaffolding, saying, “We’re just going to jump right in here. I’ll explain everything in a minute. But right now, eyes closed, everyone. Keep them closed until I give you the all-clear to open them again. This will help with disorientation during the miniaturization process.”
Miniaturization process? Sid thought.
Suddenly, Sidney felt dizzy. His skin broke out in goose bumps, and he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. A shiver ran down his back. His fingertips felt warm, then cold, then warm again. His stomach rolled queasily, and strange colors and patterns flashed against his closed eyelids.
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