by E. L. Aldryc
Tammy will be absolutely thrilled. And you should be too! Can you continue with the class?
She nodded again. She probably couldn’t, but she already looked weak in front of everyone.
Augustina continued talking even while she had a separate conversation telepathically, but changed up her speech in the meantime, and was now going on a tangent about paragnosts. She explained how they can remotely view places of their choosing all the time if they want, or set up triggers, to tune into them under certain conditions. This was a laughably impossible feat according to every trainee who was still hiding from the influx of information. Elodie hated the way it always crept up. If she let her mind slip into a slightly more inquisitive mode, she suddenly knew where the girl next to her had her hair done, what the salon smelled like, what were the stylist’s kids’ names, which was their favourite teacher, and so on. By the time she pulled herself back, twenty minutes of completely useless daydreaming had passed. Elodie wondered if it would be best to just sleep until she regained the will to be the great A-class paragnost she was meant to be. Or until everyone forgot that this was the expectation.
As if this was a cue, Elodie heard her name.
“... so for instance, our lovely Elodie, who will in time be a bit of a superhero, seeing through space and time, is currently having a more challenging time than all of you put together. Imagine. Those of you who are digging yourself from the flow of futures. Imagine what it would be like if you got out of it, opened your eyes and wouldn’t even be able to look at the floor before you were dragged into knowledge about other rooms in the world that have floors of this particular colour. There are no safe spots for her. You think you have it rough. Maybe that will give you some perspective.”
The classroom stared at her now. One of the Spanish girls from the corner passed out. An accurate reaction.
If there was ever a time when the Earth should have opened and swallowed somebody whole, this was it. Elodie was already dazed from coming back from the vision and the encounter with Soraya, and now the junior gifted were staring at her with their empty eyes and admiration. She didn’t need to know what they saw when they looked at her. This was the damned cafeteria scene all over again.
Elodie, you’re gifted.
Elodie, you’re like, really gifted.
You can’t escape it. You can’t change your mind.
Does the term ‘A-class paragnost’ mean anything to you?
Pain. It meant pain.
Augustina felt that she was uncomfortable and dismissed the class. Elodie wasn’t in the frame of mind to get up by herself. She waited until they all left. Augustina waited and dimmed the glass. This better be an apology.
“The remote viewing,” Augustina said. “You don’t understand how big this is.”
The lack of sorry-ness was extra rude considering the telepath knew exactly what she was expecting.
“It wasn’t that great,” Elodie said. Augustina was being all fanatical too. She didn’t like it. “Definitely not great enough to justify putting me on the spot like that.”
Augustina shook her orange mane, as if struggling to understand why Elodie wasn’t ecstatic.
“You do remember what Nada Faraji’s objective for elevating humanity into the Universe of Infinite Wonder is, right?”
“Making the world gifted,” Elodie said.
“Wrong,” Augustina replied. “It is to produce gifted individuals strong enough to see the path towards it. And lead humanity through it.”
“I thought she was the one who already saw the path. And that we’re following it.”
“She saw something. She saw that it was possible. That there is a path. And she revealed it to the most powerful prognosts she trusted, to always keep the path active. In the realm of possible. This is the objective of Rising Dawn.” Augustina came closer, as if she were telling her a secret.
“Some say that we’ve lost the Universe of Infinite Wonder. We celebrate whenever we catch it for a split second. But those of us who are devoted know that there are always ways to get ahead. My teacher read Nada Faraji’s mind. Telepaths hold the memory of what it felt like to see the path. We hope.”
“That’s bad news,” Elodie said.
“There’s a lot of bad news there, yes,” she said, “but remember, Tammy saw a glimpse of the path. And it led her to put together Testing Tuesday. To find a person strong enough to uncover the path again.”
No way.
“She doesn’t want me to tell you these things. Because you’re not ready to take the pressure. But know. There’s a reason you’re here. That you’re this powerful. That you can go into a remote viewing just like that and come back unscathed.” Augustina leaned even closer. “There are limits to how much I can read. I can’t see what you saw. I’ll only know if you tell me.”
“I only saw Seravina talking to Soraya. It wasn’t very exciting,” Elodie said.
She needed time. And space to think. Every time the gifted spoke to her, they threw all these revelations. Too many, too overwhelming, and most importantly, all at the same time. She felt the claw of the current searching for an opening, an amount of stress that would cause her to lose control.
She had promised Soraya that she’d tell her if she saw anything that related to her. Their friendship was about to be tested. First touch after the augmentation. First problem.
Augustina let it rest, but Elodie had an odd feeling about their interaction. She was pushing her too hard, too quick. Tammy was right. She wasn’t ready for the pressure. Her stomach was in knots when they mentioned taking a walk outside. And now they expected her to take care of humanity?
She made it back to the recovery unit. This was reality, not the whole “chosen one” fable Augustina was trying to sell her.
Elodie Marchand. So gifted she couldn’t even stay awake.
Elodie was given the same timetable for the rest of the month. There was an exercise in routine to be learned here, and she wanted to learn it without thinking about Soraya and how she should go and meet her.
This was until Tuesday, when she realised her comms were unblocked.
[Are you angry with me?]
She wrote, and it stung her. Soraya’d said she looked like she was dying.
The message came back momentarily, but in a much more private channel. Elodie thought she probably shouldn’t have used the public Institute network.
[No, but I’m not allowed near you apparently, at least while I’m considered a “harmful influence” in your sore mind. Are you okay? Do you still remember my name? Your non-gifted little sidekick?]
A rock lifted from her chest. Of course it was all fine. This was all precaution. Tammy didn’t want Soraya around, criticising everything they did to her while they were doing it.
[Am awful but also fine.]
And then Augustina looked at her and asked her to stop texting, as if this was an unspeakably vile thing to do.
[Let me see. Do I remember you? Was is Sameera? Samiya?]
[So funny. I’ll work on it…Eloïse? Elenie?]
Elodie was thirsty for some normal talk.
There was one more thing. She scribbled hastily, and it hurt her head, the tola network used for comms wasn’t quite used to her mind patterns anymore.
[I know about the conversation you had to take over AI training. You said to tell you if it happened.]
This was the real moment of truth. Augustina glared at her again, but Elodie just couldn’t close the app. This was it. She was getting nervous. What was taking her so long? One word would do.
[Look at you, Miss Remote Viewing. All good. Don’t get cocky.]
The relief. So immense. Elodie closed her comms and tried to get back to concentrating on the lecture. She decided that she wanted to get better. And get out. And prove that she could still be herself.
The Hopefuls
Thursday, 4 April 2363
Augustina was late for their class, and the trainees were agitated. The gifted tutors were nor
mally punctual for the precise reasons of routine. The workbooks all said little touches like that made trainees comfortable and rooted.
After ten minutes, one person went straight into seizure. This was Alessio, the freshest from augmentation.
They didn’t all start a domino effect this time, but Elodie had been feeling weird all morning.
Augustina’s bushy hair barely kept up with her as she finally made her way towards them in the busy corridor. She opened the door and asked them all to be quiet and collected no matter what happened. Augustina’s naturally sympathetic voice quickly turned into a tool for perfect orders. No one questioned it, not after being exposed to a stark change to the normally smiley tutor. When she closed the door, the wall was suddenly no longer transparent, and exits were no longer showing as available.
And quiet they were, in a box with no explanation or windows. They were soundproof. Nothing came in or out.
Elodie looked at Augustina for guidance, but she gave up nothing but the silent instruction to be still and quiet. This was different than the usual reach inside her mind—it felt like it had seized control, and even when Elodie tried to move a muscle, she couldn’t.
She looked for a trace of consolation on any of her classmates’ faces, but while about three of them had already gone straight into seizure, the rest weren’t faring too well either. An indeterminable dread settled quickly, and even though they weren’t explicitly told to hide, they all had the same instinct. It just didn’t feel right to sit down relaxed while a conscious decision was made to conceal their location. What was going on?
Everyone but Elodie moved towards the outer wall, as far away from the glass as possible. Light dimmed, and emergency lighting, which appeared in calming blue hues above them, now turned on. It was real. Something bad was happening, and no one was telling her what it was, or what to do. Her mind raced in multiple directions, the paragnostic vision forcing fragments of strange people running through their white corridors, lost and confused. If they didn’t have this odd, sickening quality about them, she’d think they were the ones being raided and running around. There was no order to their movement.
She was pulled back into the classroom when a visual disturbance frightened her. A part of the wall suddenly became transparent. A circular shape, through which a man looked inside, searching frantically. His eyes were glossy and distant, as if he were sleepwalking in this chaos. He wore a suit with something that resembled metallic gloves, around which a great amount of distortion was gathering. This is what revealed the wall as false, hiding the room they were hiding in. The man’s face was covered, all apart from the eyes, which made contact with the two girls at the front, who immediately passed out and began convulsing on the floor.
“No, you can’t take them,” Augustina said desperately, but the door opened right next to her.
The man outside made eye contact with Elodie. The current clawed to pull her in, and an indistinguishable whisper appeared, getting louder by the second, making her shiver in this perfectly air-conditioned unit. As she clung on, footsteps approached from behind the man, and an assembly of six security guards moved their fingers through the air, which triggered the surrounding tola. The man gasped, his skull cracked, and a stream of blood ran through the middle of his forehead. Defence apps.
As he fell, the opening he had made to look through the wall closed in, and they were alone again. The door rematerialised.
The breathing was the loudest sound in the classroom, apart from one girl, whose arm was hitting the floor while she continued to convulse.
Elodie could only focus on the sound of her own breath to overpower the high-pitched voice of the current that threatened to pull her in.
There was a tremor to the floor, and then three more, the last being so strong that even the handful of the remaining trainees that were still considered standing lost their balance. Elodie foolishly thought about whether Soraya was fine. Final straw.
The current thrashed her around like a little leaf in a current, but it was like she tasted something, something that matched the questions she asked herself before going in. And it said that Soraya was safe, with Seravina, shouting at the security to focus on defending Rising Dawn. And she let the information go when she read it. One small piece was orderly, in a sea of billions per second.
She did something useful. With her gifts. She’d answered a question.
The distance between her and the current was increasing, and she dug herself out of it. She did it. She did something.
Augustina was tending to one trainee with her typical sympathy. Tammy barged in.
“Did they take anyone?” she said fearfully and counted the trainees.
“No, nobody,” Augustina whispered.
“Take?” Elodie asked. Why would someone want to take a trainee? They were the definition of useless.
Tammy didn’t seem sure she wanted to answer that question.
“Technology that can harvest the sublime is impossible to replicate,” she finally said. “Tola can’t be studied and cracked. People who want to exploit the forces need a way to tap into it. Some believe that instead of tola, you can use brains of newly augmented people to access sublime forces. But that won’t happen. I don’t want you to worry about this. You are safe. There is no remotely probable future where you are ever harmed. Remember that.”
There was a danger. These people were ready to kill her for the sake of what? The possibility of not needing tola? Competing with the Institute? The pettiness of it got to her. She remembered Soraya’s words. “You perform a function.”
Two of the trainees began to come back, and Augustina called two carers in for outside, who brought tea and reset the room to its former glory, windows and all. When the wall regained transparency, there was no trace of the man outside. Seravina walked past them, glancing inside and scanning the damage. She seemed to find them unremarkable and walked away on her highest heel Elodie had seen so far and motioned Tammy to join her. She was in for some serious questions. How did Rising Dawn not see this? They were supposed to be almost infallible.
As Tammy followed Seravina and left, Elodie wanted to know what went on in there so badly that she dared to feel for a way to follow them with her conscience. She was pushing it. She shouldn’t be doing it. And yet… she did. This paragnosis thing. Not bad. Not bad at all.
It was like a minuscule window opened and she could see. Tammy and Seravina were in a dark nook, not far away. It was hard to keep looking here, but there was no protection against remote viewing in the training block.
“Look at this, are you kidding me? Intruders. Intruders, Tammy. In my Institute. What were you doing, huh? What was the whole hub doing?”
“A half an hour ago, they didn’t know they were doing this. The moment they developed intent, I picked it up. They were literally landing,” Tammy said calmly.
“I don’t believe that.” Seravina shrugged. “Someone equipped them. Some improvisers invaded us, and you completely missed it.”
“There was no intent. These people are mentally unstable. Petty criminals. I checked the timeline; there were no threats up until the moment they landed. My guess is they were chancers. They roam around and randomly select targets,” Tammy said.
“There were too many,” Seravina said, “and your investigation better give me a clear answer. Let Augustina do her thing. Learn from it. We need to identify any weakness that enabled this. We’re working on a new tola generation, and what we need is stability. No surprises.”
“I’ll get my team on it. We’ll make it happen,” Tammy assured her.
“It needs to be soon, Tammy. First you try to pitch me this whole ‘I’ve seen the Universe of Infinite Wonder’ thing and then you can’t predict an attack? I’m losing trust in you. Maybe you should focus on your trainee and let Mircea take over.”
Seravina didn’t flinch when attacking, but neither did Tammy on the receiving end.
She looked to the side, and straight at the point f
rom which Elodie was peering.
“She’ll be ready in no time, don’t you worry,” she said and smiled.
Of All the Homes in Madilune
The wounds of the augmentation had become dull aches and scars. The current was always there, but Elodie surprisingly got used to the constant prickling and threats of pulling her in. Even when it happened, and yes, it did, she knew what to do. Stay calm, think of your root. Don’t panic. Most importantly: don’t drown.
Rising Dawn had a hard rule against using gifts while still in recovery. This problem was new.
Elodie would often have seizures when she tried to use her gifts, which meant her official training still hadn’t started. She voiced her frustrations to Tammy and Augustina daily. Telepathically and otherwise.
The answer was a categorical no.
Rising Dawn as a whole let go of Elodie, and at first she was happy about it. Tammy, Augustina, Dr Rusu, and other members of the board were constantly in meetings to find out what happened with the intrusion. That was the talk of every day. Elodie had messages asking if she was really killed (again), but the thing that interested her more was the narrative of who had attacked them.
Every country had criminals, but Madilunian criminals were apparently the worst thing that could happen to a scientific institution. The school message board speculated that the attack was done by followers of the often forgotten Fourth Philosopher, Green Garcia, which was absolute rubbish. If you dug through the conspiracies deeply enough, you’d hear a term—the Hopefuls—and it described people who claimed they were receiving instructions from Green Garcia daily. Elodie was running out of books to read about the gifted craft. This was a great distraction.
But when she pressed Tammy for answers on whether any of that was real, she got another categorical no.
According to her, Green Garcia was a humanist. His destructive damage was highly debatable. In the few books that referred to his work, the authors described him as a theorist who translated the cryptic words of Ai Kondou into actionable things and was consulted by the other three. Why people would follow him, let alone put themselves in danger by attacking an institution that he would have most likely approved of, was beyond Elodie.