The Nancy Experiment

by McKenna, Tess

  “So if I stay, what would I have to do?” I ask. “If I stay.”

  “If you stay, that’s all you would have to do,” he says.

  “Stay? How long?”

  “However long you would like. I would ask that you try to get along with the Metanites—not that they’d give you much of a choice.”

  “No special rules?”

  “Well, I’ll ask you to live by the same safety and procedural rules as the other students here. Don’t pull the fire alarm, check in once a day, the usual.”

  “And I’m allowed in the Base?”

  “You are if you’re with a Metanite.”

  “You want me to help you catch the people who are after me?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “And Dr. Nancy? You will stop him?”

  Dr. Reins stands up and smiles. He tosses the remains of his cigarette in the garbage and buttons his suit.

  “We will have a better chance of stopping him if you stay.” He turns and starts walking toward the elevators. I find myself smiling and look down at the mints and chocolates.

  “Oh, Moton,” I say.

  He turns around, and I toss him the purse.

  “Don’t tell Marissa and Zoë.”

  He smiles and leaves, opening a chocolate candy and tossing it in his mouth as he goes. I take one last look out the front doors before I too stand up and head toward the elevators.

  In the Metanites’ Base there is little to do without anyone else here. I explore what I can of the place, but most of the compartments or interesting aspects of the Base require hitting some button or breaking some lock that’s foreign to me… besides, I feel like I’m intruding. Well, Moton did just say that I should be with a Metanite if I’m down here, so I guess I am intruding.

  I walk over to the arena. The Metanites changed the set-up so now an army of mannequins fill the arena, but these are no ordinary statues. They look more like robots. I guess the Metanites are serious about fighting the hunting crew.

  I step onto the arena. My footsteps echo on the hard floor as I walk past the statues. Even with almost a hundred bodies spread through the area, the place feels lonely. My thoughts still swim around Peter, Austria, the woman on West Third Street… the emptiness of the base isn’t distracting enough.

  “What are you looking at?” I say to a mannequin. Its robotic head replicates a human face, and the flat eyes stare at me.

  So I punch it. The mannequin wobbles back and forth then comes back to its solid stance. It worked, a little. Peter, the dark girl, and the others were out of my head for a sliver of a moment.

  I punch the mannequin again, and then another one. I swing around and kick a mannequin in the head. It falls to the floor with an echoing thud. Running, jumping, smashing—I tear through the arena with a fire burning so hot inside me that the steam seems to be screaming out through my fists. All the mannequins are down, but the thoughts return.

  Not enough, not enough, I think to myself. I pace over to the stand next to the arena where the Metanites all stood to take turns playing “darts.” I punch the red button. The mannequins stand up and face me; large rifle-like machines open from the arena walls.

  Here we go… I sprint toward a mannequin and begin to tear the arena apart. Striking moving mannequins and dodging beanbags pelted from the machines on the wall, I struggle to keep the offensive. I remember a time when this course would have been a piece of cake, a time when I could control my abilities.

  No one’s here, you might as well try it, a voice in my head taunts me.

  No way… I’m not going to risk what damage that would do, I think to myself.

  What would you be risking? the voice says. No one’s here. No one will know.

  No, I can’t. I know what happened under the bridge by the Cuyahoga River… what happened in Austria.

  You had control once. You can control it still.

  Maybe, maybe not.

  Trust yourself.

  I dodge an attacking mannequin and throw it to the floor. I see a beanbag flying toward me. I stretch my arm toward it and shoot a white and gold photon of energy at it. The photon and the beanbag collide, and the beanbag explodes in a firework of glitters kernels. I turn around and blast a line of mannequins backwards with a beam of energy. Three more bean bags fly at me. I dodge two and shoot the last.

  Shooting, blocking, exploding—I heat up the arena. I feel on fire but not in danger. I’m in control, and I’m destroying the challengers and self-doubt with each blow, each shot, each deflection. Finally, the last mannequin falls, and the machines stop. My arms fall to my sides, relax my stance, and let the gold shining off my hands fade back under my skin.

  A sharp clap reverberates from the middle of the Base. I turn: Nate and Cliff lean against the side of the open elevator, clapping their hands together and smiling. A covered tray sits on the floor next to them, and I wonder where Nate’s crutches are.

  “Wow!” Nate says. He walks toward me, and Cliff follows behind him. “Who knew you could do that?”

  “So you—how long have you been standing there?” I say, still panting from the exercise.

  “Long enough,” he says. “You were so impressive, we didn’t want to disrupt you.”

  “You’re very good,” Cliff says.

  That doesn’t make me feel any better, I think to myself. But I keep it to myself and just say thank you because it’s Cliff.

  “Shouldn’t you be at dinner with the others?” I ask, walking toward them.

  “You want to get rid of me already?” Nate says.

  “A little…” I mumble. Cliff giggles.

  “It’s St. Patrick’s Day, so we wanted to do a family dinner. Hungry?” Nate says.

  Cliff picks up the covered tray, and they walk toward the round table to the left of the elevators. Steam raises off the edges of the tray, and I can smell the corned beef and potatoes. I am starving. I follow them to the table.

  “Isn’t it late for dinner?” I ask, glancing at the time on one of the billboard screens. It’s nine-twenty.

  Nate lifts his pants to reveal a fitted, black boot around his foot and shin. Or is it a sock? It looks flexible by the way the black wrapping crosses over his ankle and hugs his foot.

  “Just got my crutches off. I couldn’t wait to walk normally again,” he says.

  “Yeah, you weren’t so good with the crutches,” Cliff teases him.

  “Well crutches are better than a chair,” he says.

  He lifts the lid of the tray to reveal a large plate of corned beef, cooked cabbage, mashed potatoes, and Irish soda bread. Cliff grabs three paper plates from a kitchen cabinet. I want to be strong and resist his gesture of friendship, but my stomach wins over my pride. I take a seat and wait for Cliff and Nate to start eating before I serve myself.

  “Thank you, this smells amazing,” I say.

  “If we couldn’t convince you to stay for your own safety, then we figured we could bribe you with food,” Nate says. He smiles.

  I shake my head.

  “What?” he says.

  “You’re crazy for wanting me to stay.”

  “Why does that make me crazy?”

  “Because I am literally a bomb,” I say.

  Cliff chokes on a bite of potatoes and starts laughing.

  “Well, I trust you not to explode,” Nate says. “At least not on purpose.”

  “Trust me? You don’t even know me.”

  “I know you saved that woman on West Third—saw it from the video cam,” Nate says.

  “Do you and Zoë tell each other everything?”

  “No. Why didn’t you mention it to anyone?”

  I shrug and look down at my plate. “Because I almost got her killed.” There were others there, too… I don’t even want to think about what happened to them.

  “That’s not your fault,” Nate says. “If I were you—”

  “Exactly. You’re not me. You guys are used to playing the ‘good guys.’ I’m not, and that’s
how I know it was my fault.”

  “Nope. I refuse to believe that.”

  “Crazy…” I mutter. Cliff laughs again. At least I seem to be getting along with someone.

  “What do you think, Cliff?” I ask him. He looks up, but he doesn’t seem afraid of me. “Is your brother crazy?”

  “Oh yeah. Completely,” he says. “It even says so on the Mind.”

  “Oh thanks, Cliff.”

  “The Mind?” I ask.

  Nate points to the billboard screens and the Bleu counter below them. “That’s the Global Mind, or we just call it ‘the Mind.’”

  “How does it work?”

  “Let me show you,” he says. He stands up and walks toward the large screens with Cliff right behind him. He sits down at the chair in front of the Bleu counter and types in a long keycode. Cliff squeezes next to him on the chair, and I pull my chair up next to them. As Nate types into the Bleu screen counter, the screens change like they did the day I first walked into the Base.

  “It’s a giant program that acts sort-of like a mind of the world. We can access cameras from anywhere around the world, pull off documents from any database, even evaluate the levels of radio and Internet waves anywhere. Then there’s the classification system,” Nate says.

  He types out a long password, and a giant image of a folder forms on the screen. Then, the screens each show what looks like an FBI document of a person’s background information except the amount of information is tenfold.

  “It’s called the Finder. We’re very creative with names here,” Cliff says.

  “Every person ever born—no matter what country—has a file in here. The more we find out about a person or the more that is downloaded about that person through the Web, the bigger the file becomes. If we know the name of a person then we can look them up here,” Nate says.

  “Wow,” I say. “I bet the CIA would kill to get their hands on this. Where did you find it? Black market?”

  “Haha, no we created it, actually,” Nate says.

  I turn and stare at him, but he looks away, blushing.

  “You created it?”

  His cheeks turn a deeper red, and he refuses to look me in the eyes.

  “You made this?! Nate, this is… incredible.”

  “I didn’t make it by myself. Kiaria helped me with a lot of it,” he says.

  “So modest… liar,” Cliff says.

  “Honestly, that’s why she’s so adept with it. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her help.”

  “Find someone,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Do me!” Cliff says.

  Nate turns to Cliff and smiles. He types the name Cliff Duane Reilly, the file on the screen vanishes, and Cliff’s folder materializes before us. He’s fourteen years old, born June 2nd, 2051. Highlighted below his name and birthday is the word TELEPORTATION.

  “Hey, we have the same birthday,” I say.

  “Really?” Cliff says, turning to me.

  “Uh, oh. Double birthday party here we come,” Nate teases.

  “You hate birthday parties,” Cliff says.

  “Only my own. If it’s someone else’s birthday, then it’s fine.”

  They argue back and forth, and thoughts of the young girl with curly blonde hair return to my mind. She looks like them, too, more than she ever looked like me.

  “I have to go. Thanks for dinner,” I say. I stand up and start walking toward the elevator.

  “Okay, everything okay?” Nate asks.

  “Yeah, just tired.”

  I take the elevator all the way back up to the seventieth floor, and when I step out of the elevator, the rest of the Metanites are scattered down the hall and returning to their rooms.

  “You’re still here,” I hear. I spin to my right and see Zoë stepping toward me. “I thought for a moment that I had scared you away.”

  “Not yet. It takes a lot to scare me,” I say.

  She smiles.

  “Well, if you’re still here tomorrow, come to lunch with us. We can meet you outside your room at twelve-thirty, if you’re interested.”

  “Thanks, Zoë.”

  “Don’t mention it,” she says. She walks down the hall toward her room. “And don’t tell anyone that I changed my mind about you.”

  I smile. She returns to her room, and I return to mine. Of all the thoughts spinning through my head, the good ones win tonight. As soon as I fall asleep, I don’t have any nightmares, and I don’t wake up until almost ten the next morning. So much better than sleeping on a damn boat.

  X: Intruder

  Tuesday, March 18, 2065; 12:50 p.m.

  First person

  “And so I just walked away! I didn’t know what else he expected me to say,” Marissa says.

  Zoë starts laughing, and I force a smile. I’m not surprised Marissa gets a lot of attention from guys. Maybe it’s the nose.

  We sit our lunch trays at a table by the window. The window spans almost the entire wall to give a remarkable view of the southern part of Cleveland. Well, it would be a nice view if there wasn’t a classic Cleveland storm with snow pouring out from the clouds. I sit with my back to the window knowing that if I can see out it I will completely exile my mind from our conversations.

  “Lunch here isn’t that bad,” Zoë says. She takes off the top half of her burger and squirts a helping of ketchup onto it.

  This is my first time eating in the unusual cafeteria at Kenyon, but it’s not really the space itself that is unusual. The Kenyon students, spanning as young as six or seven to twenty-one, make it… strange. As I look around the spacious room, I see a girl with purple skin, a heavy boy with six arms, a teenager with elongated spikes on his head where his hair should be, and a young girl with one eye. But I’ve seen strange before. At Dr. Nancy’s factory, many of the kids looked like this but with a distinctly different expression on their faces, behind their eyes, in their voices: loss.

  “So, tell me about the Metanites,” I say.

  “Hmm,” Marissa says, taking a sip of her electrolyte drink. “Well Moton had the idea to form a group of young people with special talents who could protect—”

  “Oh, no. I mean, how long have you all been friends?” I ask.

  “Depends on when people came here. Some have spent nearly their whole lives here, but most of us have been friends for at least two years,” Zoë says, smashing her burger back together and flattening the bun. Excess ketchup seeps out the sides.

  “Kia and Kono are the most recent addition… they came, what—two years ago? Just six months after I got here.”

  “Are you all pretty close, then?” I ask.

  “Oh yeah! We’re like family to each other.”

  “Hi guys!” Kiaria says, skipping toward our table for four.

  She is petite, unlike Marissa and Zoë who have more muscles and curves. Kiaria’s hair is as black as night, cut at a short bob with bangs just above her almond eyes. She’s wearing a silky, red dress with a white collar and black tights, which far exceeds my pitiful abilities—or lack thereof—in fashion. Around her neck hangs a necklace with a small, plastic watermelon at the end, matching the bracelet around her wrist. On the same wrist, I get a glimpse of a black ink tattoo, but I can’t make out what it is. Marissa and Zoë are dressed nicely too, though they’re not wearing dresses. Perhaps I’m underdressed in my jeans and black T-shirt.

  “Hey Kia,” Marissa says.

  Kiaria looks at me and smiles. She puts her tray down across from me and extends her hand.

  “Hi! I know we met, but I feel like we really haven’t met yet. I’m Kiaria, or Kia… whichever works.”

  “Nice to re-meet you,” I say, shaking her hand.

  “What are we talking about?” she asks.

  “Introducing Annika to the Metanites,” Marissa says.

  “And all our intertwined drama,” Zoë says.

  “Careful—Kono and Izzi are right over there,” Kiaria says. She nods to her left, and s
ure enough, a girl almost identical to Kiaria sits at a table with Izzi, the dark skinned girl with the short, curly fro. Despite her tomboy appearance, the biggest contrast between Kono and Kiaria is Kono’s long, straight hair. She and Izzi glance over at us, and we turn back to our food.

  “They’ve been together for over a year, which is nice since they can calm each other’s tempers,” Zoë says.

  “Xander and Izzi are cousins, which you can only tell because they have the same temper. Shoot, I forgot silverware. Be right back,” Marissa says. She leaves and marches to the other side of the cafeteria.

  “Let’s see… Zoë and Elijah are dating,” Kiaria says. She smiles. “Although, sometimes I feel like Abe and Eli are a couple, too.”

  “I can’t compete with that bromance,” Zoë says.

  “And Marissa and Nate are…?” I ask.

  “OH no… don’t bring that up,” Zoë says. “They broke up a few months ago. Don’t let Marissa start talking about it again.”

  “I thought they were cool,” Kiaria says.

  “They are, but Marissa is… she likes having a boyfriend, and she hasn’t found anyone else since,” Zoë says. “New topic.”

  Marissa returns to the table within seconds, and Zoë, Kiaria, and I all take a bite of our food.

  “So what did you do last night, Annika?” Marissa asks.

  “Not much. I talked to Nate and Cliff. He showed me the Mind. I can’t believe you two made that,” I say to Kiaria.

  “Oh, well it was mostly Nate, but I helped a little with the design aspect and the Finder.”

  “Still, it’s really impressive.”

  “What did you guys talk about?” Marissa asks.

  I feel a knot in my stomach because I honestly can’t remember what we talked about, and now I’m afraid to say something to trigger Marissa.

  “Mostly the equipment in the Base and all the stuff you can do with the arena,” I come up with.

  “Hey, Kia, you think we’ll have that new training thing up soon?” Zoë asks.

  “We should,” Kiaria says. She turns to me. “Nate and I are working on a training sequence-setup-thing that will help up stop these guys from coming after you.”