The Rainbow Maker's Tale

by Mel Cusick-Jones

“I’ve never been able to decide what it means. I couldn’t ask Father because I would get into trouble for what I’d done. I couldn’t tell anyone else in case it got Father into trouble – maybe he’d been into an area he shouldn’t have been in – or someone who worked on the outer structure had given it to him and he had hidden it…”

  Cassie sat back, simply watching me, her expression sympathetic.

  A heavy sigh squeezed out of my lungs, huffing into the space between us. “I just didn’t know what to think,” I told her, being completely honest. “Then over time I found more pieces – I know I shouldn’t be searching through Father’s work stuff, but I couldn’t help myself – I had to know more about them.”

  “And now you think there’s something else to it.” Cassie spoke slowly, framing her words carefully as she correctly guessed why I had such issues over such a small thing. “It wasn’t just a one-off and so you think your father is involved in something he hasn’t told you about because he shouldn’t be doing it…? Or, that he’s lying to you about what he does…?”

  I nodded, in answer to her half-asked questions. “I just can’t believe there’s any reason Father would have these things, if he wasn’t working on the outer structure.”

  Cassie’s head bobbed, as she silently agreed with my theory.

  “And, if he is working there – why are we being lied to about the work engineering do?”

  “I always thought we were situated centrally in the space station; that the outer structure was quite separate from the Family Quarter and closer to the Retirement and Married Quarters.”

  I could see Cassie working through each element as she spoke, seeing the ways in which what I was telling her didn’t fit with the world we were told existed around us.

  We all knew that the overarching rule of the Family Quarter was to stay safe and protect the family unit: the future of the human race was always the most important thing. Outer structure work was dangerous, so it was done by people from the Retirement Quarter who were past the age of having and raising children. Only very occasionally would trained people from the Married Quarter work there, because they still had an important role in the propagation of the species. And never did anyone from the Family Quarter go to the outer shell – death was not supposed to be a part of our lives here.

  Cassie was still mulling over her thoughts out loud, and I tuned back in to her voice. “You can’t pass between the zones unless you make a permanent personal change – so how would your father be working in that area?”

  “Another thing I don’t know!” I laughed, turning away before she saw the bitterness I felt, at having struggled with this same question for so long.

  I gazed out across the Family Quarter, taking in the neat lines of the avenues, the green parks and white buildings. It didn’t look real from up here. It looked like something a child might build, tidy and perfect, but lacking the reality of life. Only dolls could live there.

  “Do you ever feel that thing? That there’s something not right with how we live here?”

  “How do you mean?”

  I turned back to face her. “Like when you and I are talking about things like this – you hit a point where there is no reasonable answer only more questions… How would Father get metal in his toolkit and why would he lie about where he works? Why is the population of the space station not shrinking with the one-child policy, when simple maths tells us that it should be? Why can’t we pass between the Married Quarter and the Family Quarter? Why do the viewing screens have a secondary transmitter?”

  Cassie just stared back at me.

  “I can’t find reasonable answers, no matter how hard I look.”

  “Don’t you think we might feel like this because there is something missing?” Cassie suggested. “We don’t live like humans were meant to. Surviving in the space station, in such a controlled environment, we’re bound to feel something’s missing.”

  “I can accept that. But, I don’t see why The Council and our parents need to lie to us. It seems to me that we have enough information to make general sense of the world surrounding us, but when you look any deeper it begins to unravel.”

  Cassie gazed at me for a long while, not offering anything else, until she bluntly demanded: “Tell me something else. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  I was taken aback by the frankness of her question, and so I answered without thinking about it too hard. “It’s not just the screens that are monitoring us. Every time a scanner records our mark a second measure is taken.”

  “What kind of measure?”

  “A full body scan is completed, detecting your body heat, heart rate, heightened brain wave activity. Each scan is designed to monitor your emotional state; looking for extremes of mental agitation. The scans become more in depth for everyone between the ages of twelve and twenty-one.”

  “And it’s some form of social control?” Cassie guessed.

  “I think so.” With our society’s abhorrence for violence and aggressive behaviour, I had come to the same conclusion. “The data is fed into a monitoring system that looks at virtually every aspect of our daily lives. There are other less pleasant areas where monitoring is carried out – you’ll notice there’s a scanner outside every toilet you can access?”

  “Urgh!” Cassie’s lip curled in disgust.

  “Exactly,” I nodded. “Your vitamin supplement is as much hormones as vitamins and other chemicals, used to restrict your emotional range as is seen fit. That’s why it quite often changes.”

  It was hard to resist telling Cassie what I’d found in her files, but without any explanation for why it was being done, it would sound crazy. I didn’t want to scare her, especially not when she was taking everything so well.

  “Yesterday you didn’t take your tablets with dinner,” she recalled.

  “No,” I agreed, deciding that even if I didn’t reveal her issues, I would quite happily share my own. “I have elevated testosterone levels, according to my data feed, and they’re trying to bring them down to normal levels. High testosterone levels are connected with a proclivity for violent behaviour in the system.”

  “What will happen if you don’t take them? Won’t it show up in the monitoring?” Cassie looked worried.

  “It would show up… But, only if I stop hacking the system and changing my data feeds.”

  “You’re doing WHAT?!” Cassie exploded, her voice reaching a high-pitch squeak. “You’ll be brought up before The Council if you get caught!”

  “You don’t need to worry about that.”

  “But –”

  I held up my hands to interrupt whatever she was going to say. “It’s OK – you don’t need to worry.”

  Cassie fell silent and stayed that way for a long while. I could tell that she was trying to process everything I had thrown at her during that last few minutes, and so I stayed quiet and left her to it. Finally she spoke.

  “You’re right,” she said, reaching over to me and taking my face in her hand.

  In the face of all my questions, all my frustrations, this one small gesture gave me hope. My mouth twitched into a small smile, as I allowed myself the fantasy that I might not be alone any more. Cassie’s face loomed before mine, filling every space I could see with her. As her eyes burned into mine, she leaned forward the last few inches and brushed her lips over mine. And then she spoke the words I longed for.

  “You’re not alone anymore. You have me.”

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. I had been alone for so long with my questions and theories and anger – and now this beautiful, fantastic girl was saying she believed me.

  When she closed her eyes and kissed me, I finally let go of myself. Everything I had held in before, didn’t have to be hidden anymore – not from Cassie. My eyes drifted shut as she kissed me harder, her arm winding around my shoulders to pull me close.

  Without her having to say anything more, I just knew – maybe part of me always had – that Scarlett was right. C
assie was the answer…

  Chapter 15

  “I’ll come with you!” I said again, shouting my offer this time. But, Cassie’s steps didn’t falter. Before I’d even had time to collect my belongings to follow, she had already gone. It was obvious she couldn’t wait to get away.

  What just happened?

  My internal voice sounded just as confused as my conscious mind. And it raised a good question. I had no idea what had happened to make Cassie behave the way she had, just now. As I muddled over the last few minutes of our conversation, I began to gather up my things from the ledge and my training spot. I bent up and down slowly, exaggerating the process of picking up a few items and stuffing them into a bag: more focused on what was replaying in my head, than what I was doing.

  Cassie had just told me everything: about her problems hearing voices inside her head, the disturbing dreams, what had happened between us… And she had seemed fine – better than fine, even – she had seemed relieved, to be able to talk to someone about what was happening to her…

  What had she said just before she freaked out?

  We had been talking about her talent getting stronger, hadn’t we…maybe that had scared her?

  I shook my head, dismissing the idea. It didn’t feel like the right answer. She seemed scared because of something else, some connection she made after we’d talked about that.

  What was the last thing she asked me?

  Something about her dreams being real, other people’s thoughts drifting into her head, when her conscious mind wasn’t in control. Then she’d said something about it “being Ami, not me,” and had run off.

  Having picked up everything I could see from the ground, I patted my pocket out of habit, to check that the wristband was there. It wasn’t. I realised that Cassie must still be wearing it, from when I put it on her. I only hoped that she had remembered to take it off before leaving the park, otherwise I’d be claiming a system malfunction much sooner than I’d been anticipating.

  Looping the strap of the bag across my shoulder, I set off at a brisk jog, hoping I might catch up with Cassie. From what she’d said, I guessed she would be heading home or to Ami’s – maybe she’d forgotten they were meeting up – and so I headed in the direction of the Green Zone.

  In frustration, I slammed my palm onto the panel at the entrance to our apartment. It took a moment or two, longer than usual, to register my mark and open the door. Once it was halfway open, I shoved my way inside, scraping my arm as I went.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  As I expected, silence was the only answer I received. Mother and Father must still be at work. Slipping into my bedroom, I pulled the bag from my shoulders and began peeling off my sticky day-suit. I’d ended up running all the way home from Park 42, not seeing any sign of Cassie. I could only assume she’d taken a different route back…either that, or she’d sprinted all the way!

  Letting my suit fall into a heap on the floor, I walked across the hallway to the bathroom, not bothering to cover my body as I would normally when my parents were home. They were not big on nudity.

  The water in the shower was warm as I got in. I turned it down as low as it would go, and within a few seconds it had cooled. Sticking my head into the spray, it washed away my sweat and irritation. As I relaxed, I let my thoughts drift back to Cassie, and the secrets she had told me that afternoon…

  * * *

  We had been silent for a while, but that seemed to be OK. Cassie had accepted everything I’d told her about the scanner systems and how I used the band to get around them. I’d given her a lot to think about; it was her turn now.

  I rolled closer to Cassie, interrupting her quiet musings. She turned towards me and I cupped her cheek in my palm, making sure I had her full attention again. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you have something to tell me…” I let my thumb trace the half circle beneath her eye, where the skin was darker than usual. “You still look tired you know?”

  “Thanks!” She spun away immediately.

  “I’m just concerned,” I said, rolling after her, so she couldn’t avoid me. “And you can’t exactly tell me that there’s nothing wrong. I already know you’re hearing things that no one else can!”

  “That makes me feel much better,” she grumbled, still avoiding eye contact.

  “It should make you feel better.”

  I pulled her back to face me, despite her resistance. I already knew enough about her secret that she couldn’t deny it, so why was Cassie so against us finding out more? I tried to encourage her to see it the way I did.

  “What you’re able to do might be a new step in evolution for mankind…or something special to you…or a result of living on the station…” Or caused by something they had given us, disguised as vitamins…

  I decided to store that last, random thought away for later. It was something I hadn’t actually considered, before it popped into my head just now, but it sounded plausible. Or, as plausible as anything else! I knew it must be scary for her, but how could she not find this exciting? Just a little bit?

  “Are you trying to tell me that I’m hearing what people are thinking because of cosmic radiation or exposure to some unknown chemical?”

  They were certainly possibilities.

  Cassie scoffed at her own suggestion. “To be honest I think that’s the least likely explanation of any!”

  “Really…? So, you have given this some thought already.”

  “A little,” she conceded, “maybe…”

  “You’ve heard my guilty secrets.” I pointed out. “It’s good to share and I’ve got the time right now. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  And she did. Cassie told me that it had started with her dreams, several weeks ago – I made a mental note to go back and check her records to see if anything specific had happened around that time. At the beginning it had been snatches of words and sometimes images of places around the space station: very normal and familiar, but not hers.

  Cassie had put this out of her mind, but when the examinations started and she began using the automatic discourse headsets, it got worse. Although she hadn’t fully guessed at the time, it sounded like she had been picking up on other people’s thoughts and answers to the exam questions.

  The headsets had been the main factor today when Cassie had heard me. Perhaps there was something in their construction, or the way they extracted information directly from our minds, that Cassie was picking up on…

  I sat back when she finished speaking. There had been a lot of information to take in and it would take me some time to process it. To help me along, I wanted to clarify some things.

  “From what you’ve said, there’s been a complete shift from this being something that affected you subconsciously – you were always asleep – to now, when you heard me, and that woman today. You consciously tuned in to what we were thinking.”

  Cassie shook her head. “I wasn’t trying to hear anything from you today, remember? The first time I heard you was just because we both had the headsets on. But, the woman on the way over here…”

  “You said you felt like she tried to hear you? As if she was able to do something similar – consciously – that you’ve been doing by accident?”

  Cassie nodded.

  That was interesting. If Cassie was right, then it made this much bigger than something that only affected her… The key elements: the effect of the headsets; subconscious and then conscious ability to do this; maybe other people being able to do it… It couldn’t all be a coincidence, could it?

  We lapsed into silence for a while. In the quiet I turned over ideas in my head and wondered what possible options there were to connect the strange things happening with Cassie, to everything else I thought was wrong with the station – perhaps the link was there?

  “So…what do we do?” Cassie asked, eventually interrupting my thoughts.

  What could I say?

  When I looked at Cassie I saw fear in her eyes, and I ha
ted that. It was even worse that I had no real answer for her.

  “What can we do, when we don’t really know what’s happening?” The question was more for me than her, but Cassie answered anyway.

  “Perhaps we need to pay more attention – to try and figure it out.”

  I tipped my head to the side as I considered her suggestion, before concluding that it was the only choice we had right now. “I’ve done this for a long time already, but you’re right. We need to think about everything we know, everything we’ve been told – there must be some clues in that to what’s happening with you.”

  Cassie nodded back.

  I wasn’t convinced that she was going to like what I was about to suggest. “I think we need to do some more experimenting – to try and work out what the limits are to what you’re able to do – and maybe work out how you’re doing it.”

  She groaned. “Always the scientist.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I laughed, trying to lighten her mood. “Think about it – if we look at how your talent works, we might be able to understand why it’s happening.”

  “That’s true,” she agreed. Her eyes clouded with fear. “So, you don’t think I’m going mad then?”

  Was that what she thought – that she was mentally ill? No wonder Cassie hadn’t wanted to talk to me about what was happening to her.

  “In all honesty – if you were just hearing random voices, then I’d have to say maybe...”

  Cassie’s eyes nearly popped out of her head, and I couldn’t help but laugh, which probably wasn’t the most reassuring thing to do. I held up my hands to ward off her anger.

  “But, but, but… We know that you’re hearing what people are actually thinking. It’s not your imagination creating the voices, but something real – something that would seem almost impossible – but it’s happening.”

  Apparently Cassie accepted this, as the anger emptied from her face. “So, what now?” she asked.

  “We review the facts…”