“They started schooling us six years ago,” Jess said.
“The councillors realised they couldn’t have an uneducated bunch of spies running around who couldn’t understand half the things they were hearing,” Suyin said.
I didn’t tell them I had secretly read all of my brother’s schoolbooks, right up to when he left school at the end of year eleven. I doubted I would get in trouble for it now, though, since I had been shown the error of my ways.
“Makes sense,” I said finally. “Hey, Suyin, who’s been here the longest – you and Romy?”
“No, Bhagya and Madison were brought in when they were five,” she replied.
I glanced about the room looking for Bhagya, and saw her sitting alone at the table in the back corner, picking away at her breakfast.
“What’s her story – why does she look so – um, detached, for want of a better word?” I whispered.
“Chelsea, you have to remember that we all hear everything – even whispering.” Jess looked at me with a disapproving gaze.
I blushed and turned my eyes quickly away from Bhagya, feeling like an insensitive heel.
After an awkward silence, I forced myself to ask the question that had burned in my mind ever since Madison brought me to the lab. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask – where are our male counterparts. Are they in a different part of the lab?” From across the room, I noticed Bhagya suddenly glance in my direction before looking away.
The girls shared an uncertain glance.
“May as well tell her now, she’s going to find out eventually,” Liz said, looking downcast.
“What?” I said.
“The original plan was for all the echolocators – male and female – to serve the chancellor. Sadly, the boys proved to be unmalleable. They wouldn’t submit to the Founders’ teaching or do what they were told,” Jess explained.
“Okay, so where are they?” I asked.
Chapter Five
Suyin touched my wrist. “You have to realise that if allowed to go unsupervised, echolocators pose the greatest threat there ever has been to town security. Our enhanced hearing could allow us to overhear things that should be kept private, things that if shared would cause untold damage. Not to mention that we could use it for our own personal gain, such as blackmail and getting inside information.”
“That doesn’t answer my question, Suyin.”
“They were euthanized,” Jess said bluntly.
“They murdered them?” I was aghast.
“No, euthanized.” Jess glowered at me.
“It’s the same thing!”
“No, it isn’t! It was necessary, and merciful. For the boys’ sake, and for the town’s.”
“The chancellor made the decision to euthanize the boys, but he didn’t make it lightly. Please bear in mind that it was a decision he would not have been forced to make if Dr. Zhao hadn’t secretly and illegally modified us all in the first place,” Suyin concluded.
I didn’t know what to say. I could tell the girls were saddened by this, but at the same time, supported the chancellor’s decision. I thought of my brother, of how liberal minded he was, refusing to submit to many of the town’s strict rules and regulations. I pictured him, locked in the Round Room, and imagined him going crazy, throwing the food away, trying to smash the toilet and basin, even attacking Mr. Cho. Anything, rather than submit to any of this. However, surely imprisonment was a more humane option than death?
“You’re thinking of your twin brother, aren’t you?” Suyin asked.
“You know about him?”
“Mr. Cho told us he was killed two years ago.”
“Yeah.” I stared at my half-finished breakfast as unwelcome images of my brother’s broken and bloodied body flashed past my eyes.
“Was he, you know, like us?” Jess asked.
“Yes.”
“Sorry, we shouldn’t pry. You clearly miss him,” Suyin said.
They didn’t know the half of it. Being twins, my brother and I had an incredible, intimate connection. We developed our own sign language when we were small, we would hold secret conversations right in front of our parents just below their hearing range, and we shared every thought, every idea, all of our dreams and aspirations. Until he became a forager at seventeen and was corrupted by his teammates, Con, Matt and Jack. Couldn’t blame them for it entirely, though. He chose to go along with their immoral, criminal lifestyle of his own free will.
A gong rang out, interrupting my ruminations and saving me from having to answer. My brother’s death was not something I wanted to talk about. The memory was too painful. I still had nightmares where I pressed a jacket against his stomach in a vain attempt to staunch the blood gushing from the bullet wounds.
All the girls leaped to their feet and quickly put their dirty dishes in the sink. I did likewise.
“School,” Suyin said when we were out in the corridor. “We do lessons before lunch, then Korean, taekwondo, espionage techniques, and weapons training in the afternoons.”
It was my first time in a classroom, something I would have enjoyed were I not so burdened with guilt and despair. The room was quite impressive, with a large whiteboard at the front and a digital projector mounted in the ceiling. The girls collected maths textbooks and student workbooks from the bookshelves covering the rear wall and seated themselves at sturdy desks made of metal and plastic. Furniture in North End was of much better quality than in Newhome Proper, where the bulk of the population lived.
I grabbed a copy of the same books and sat at the back next to Jess. I stared at my hands, trying not to remember the photos Mr. Cho showed me. Photos of broken, twisted, and decaying bodies. Photos I shouldn’t have looked at.
Mr. Cho walked in and the class stood and bowed in respect. He bade them sit and open their textbooks at chapter two, titled “Real Numbers.”
He looked at me. “Follow on best you can, Chelsea. I will arrange for you to receive private tuition afterhours. You will catch up soon enough.”
“Soon enough? She’s years behind,” Romy whispered under her breath, well aware I could hear her, even though she sat at the front
Mr. Cho went on to teach the class how to solve problems using direct proportion. The girls caught on quickly, but it was only year nine maths.
The teaching segment concluded, the girls opened their workbooks and got stuck into the exercises at the end of the chapter.
Desperate to distract myself from the feelings of guilt and condemnation that curled in pit of my stomach like a writhing, poisonous snake, I asked Liz if she had a spare pen and piece of paper. I soon lost myself in the engrossing task of answering the exercises, even though I found them rather elementary. It was five years since I self-taught myself year nine maths by reading the school books my brother brought home for me to read – but it was still fresh in my mind.
“How can you...” Jess was looking at me as though I was a freak.
“What?” I asked, wondering what I was doing wrong.
“You’ve answered all the exercises. How’s that possible? I’m only halfway through, and I’ve been doing maths since I was twelve!”
“Something the matter, Jessica?” Mr. Cho demanded. He walked down the aisle between the desks, clearly unimpressed.
Jess stood quickly to her feet. She glanced at Mr. Cho and then at me, eyes wide with fear when she realised she’d inadvertently landed me in it.
The councillor saw my worksheet and picked it up. “Care to explain yourself, Miss Thomas?”
Every girl in the room turned and stared.
For a fraction of a second, I considered saying I answered the questions because I understood the lesson, but with Bhagya the living lie detector present, discarded the idea. With butterflies churning in my stomach, I went for the truth.
“I used to get up in the middle of the night and read my brothers school books, Sir,” I said.
“Why?” His eyes bore holes right through me.
I looked down. Why c
ouldn’t I have been more careful!
“You can tell me the truth, Chelsea – I will not hold you accountable for past misdemeanours.”
“Well, Sir, basically, it had been my plan from a young age to escape Newhome when I was older. So I tried to learn as much as I could about everything that might aid my attempt to survive out there.”
“I see. What level of schooling did you achieve?”
“Year eleven, Sir.”
“What subjects did you study?”
“English, maths, physics, chemistry, biology, and history, Sir.”
“I see. Well, I think we can safely scratch the private tuition classes. In fact, your level of education presents me with an opportunity, but more on that later. In the meantime, grab the year twelve books from the shelves during class time and go through them yourself. If you need help with anything, come and see me after school hours.
“Yes, Sir.”
“I also have some light reading for you.”
He plucked a thick tome from the bookshelf and dropped it onto my desk with a resounding thud. “I’m assuming you didn’t read this in your midnight study sessions?” The book was titled: A Better Way. Creating the Model Society in the Post Apocalyptic World.
“No, Sir.” I had heard of the book, of course – everyone had. Written by the Founders, it was the foundation on which our society was built. We had to listen to the Chancellor and councillors quote it during the Solidarity Festivals. And when my mother often parroted the parts she knew at me day after day.
Mr. Cho returned to the front of the classroom and continued the lesson.
I considered getting the year twelve maths textbook from the bookshelves and start on it now, but didn’t want to disrupt the class by getting out of my chair. So I opened the three-inch thick A Better Way and tried to read, but found it hard to concentrate, especially since my face was burning with embarrassment. Drawing attention to myself on my first day of school had not been my intention. I noticed a few dark looks sent in my direction from the other girls. In particular, from Romy, who looked positively incensed.
Sorry, Jess wrote in diminutive letters on the corner of my worksheet.
It’s ok, I wrote back.
As the lesson resumed and I began the slow, tedious task of memorising five-hundred pages of the Founders’ philosophies and teachings, I wondered what Mr. Cho meant when he mentioned that my level of education presented an opportunity. What had I gotten myself into now?
I sat through another period of maths and two of English, memorising page after page of the Founders’ guidebook until it felt like my brain was turning to mush.
The gong finally sounded the lunch break. My classmates put their books away and filed from the room in an orderly manner.
I was about to put my book away and follow them when Mr. Cho called me. He was still at the teacher’s desk, going over the worksheets the girls’ handed in.
“Keep that with you and study it in your free time. You need to know it by heart.”
“As you wish, Sir,” I said, tucking the thick tome under my arm. I hurried from the room and headed after the others.
A middle-aged Asian man was in the cafeteria, wearing a black smock and hairnet. He stood behind a heated buffet food warmer, which contained trays of vegetables, pasta, and chicken.
Suyin was standing in line with several girls, waiting their turn. Others were already seated, digging into plates of steaming hot food.
She beckoned me over. “Better grab yourself a plate – unless you want to eat on that.” She tapped the book under my arm.
“You could have served yourself more than that,” Jess said between bites after we sat down with our meals.
“Does everyone eat like this in North End?” I asked. With my father having wasted most of his wage on his illegal gambling habit, my family used to eat frugally, existing on homemade bread, vegetables and fruit.
“This is simple fair compared to what’s served in the restaurants,” Suyin said.
Our conversation came to an abrupt halt when Romy unexpectedly dropped into the opposite chair, plonking her plate in front of her.
“What did you think you were doing?” She exuded so much hostility that I felt I could reach out and touch it. I wondered why she had such issues with me.
“Excuse me?”
“You think you’re better than us?”
The room fell still, all sounds of eating and conversation ceasing as the girls fixed their attention on us. For the most part, their expressions were not sympathetic, either.
Confused, I glanced at Suyin, then back at Romy.
“Of course not.” Quite the opposite, when I remembered the fate of the escapees and the role I played in it.
“Yet you couldn’t resist the chance to show us all up in maths class? Boasting how you’d completed through to year eleven all on your own.”
“That was not my intention.” I tried to speak with humility, but her accusations had gotten my back up, so I met her gaze defiantly. If people pushed me, I pushed back.
“You’ve been trying to establish your superiority since the moment you sauntered in here two weeks ago, boasting about how you turned the town upside by shamelessly masquerading as your brother and instigating the breakout.”
“Mr. Cho said that, not me.”
“And you smirked like it was one big joke. Did you think he was complimenting you? He was trying to shame you!”
“I am not the person I was, Romy,” I said, thinking of the Round Room and the effect it had on me.
“Prove it. What is a woman’s role in society?”
“Romy–” Suyin began.
“Let her answer!” said a girl at the adjacent table, her countenance fierce, gaze accusing.
Chapter Six
“A woman’s role, for which she is uniquely suited and amply gifted, is to be a home maker. She is to pursue the twin virtues of a servant’s heart and subordination to her husband as she waits on him and his sons, providing meals, clothing the family with her skills as a seamstress, and raising her children according to the Founders’ dictates.”
“When did you learn that? From reading A Better Way today?” Romy snapped.
“From my mother and the Solidarity Festivals.”
“And yet you turned your back on it, choosing your own way instead.”
“You’re preaching to the converted, Romy!”
“Give me–”
“Just drop it, will you Romy? Let us eat our lunch in peace,” Madison called out from the other side of the room.
Romy glanced at Madison and then fixed her gaze on me again, but only for a moment. She suddenly pushed back her chair, scooped her plate off the table, and went back to where she was sitting before.
“You okay?” Suyin asked. The genuine concern in her face was moving.
“I’m fine.” It would take more than awkward questions from Romy to make the day any worse than it already was. I wished I could actually go back in time and find a different solution to the debt collectors’ terror campaign. Organising the breakout to escape their attentions was the worst decision I’d made, a mistake I would have to live with forever.
Suyin touched my shoulder. “Sorry about all that. You’re the first new girl we’ve had in eight years, so it’s going to take some time for us to get used to you.”
I nodded and resisted the urge to look around, aware that everyone heard Suyin’s comment. I concentrated on picking away at my lunch, much like I saw Bhagya doing earlier. What was her story? Why did she seem so different from the others? Had she been wounded deeply by a past traumatic experience? I wished I could get to know her and find out what troubled her so.
We had Korean language class after lunch. Mr. Cho handed me a Korean for Beginners workbook with its accompanying CD, CD player, and headphones.
“What, isn’t she going to tell us she speaks Korean fluently?” whispered the girl sitting beside Romy, giving me a dark look over her shoulder. She was a thicks
et, Aussie girl with straight blonde hair that reached halfway down her back.
Romy stared at me for several seconds, and then turned to her companion. “Maybe she doesn’t know everything after all, Claire.”
Ignoring their snide comments, I raised my hand.
“Yes, Chelsea?” Mr. Cho said.
“If I may ask, Sir, why do we learn Korean?”
“Because the chancellor and councillors – the Founders’ descendants – are Korean. To talk to them in their native language is a sign of respect. Being able to speak in a second language also has a number of cognitive benefits. It improves your ability to multitask, your memory, and helps you become more perceptive.”
“Thank you, Sir.” That was news to me. I didn’t know that the Founders were all Korean and that the chancellor and the councillors were their descendants. I knew the chancellor was Korean, of course, but had always presumed the councillors to be from different Asian backgrounds. I wondered what caused a contingent of Koreans to found a town in the ruins of Melbourne a century ago? If I remembered correctly, Korea was some distance from Australia.
I raised my hand again.
“Chelsea.” Mr. Cho seemed most unimpressed at my continued interruptions.
“Sir, what transpired to bring the Founders to Melbourne?”
“Anyone?” he said.
Almost every arm in the room shot up, but Romy was the fastest. Mr. Cho indicated for her to go ahead with the barest nod of his head.
“Sir, a Korean submarine was on patrol in the South Pacific when World War Three broke out. When the captain learned that Korea was completely destroyed by nuclear weapons, he sought a safe haven for the crew. He headed for Melbourne, thinking it may have escaped destruction as it was at the southern end of the Australian continent. Upon reaching the city, he found that the south-eastern suburbs were a radiated nuclear wasteland, but the rest of the city was intact. Although the city had been evacuated by most of its population, the captain found many survivors in the city centre and surrounding areas, leaderless, and lost, like sheep without a shepherd. So he founded this town and took them in. He led them, provided for them, and gave them hope. The captain and senior officers of the submarine became known as the Founders, since they founded Newhome.”
Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series) Page 103