Paul shared a bedroom with Alberto. Two twin beds, two dressers, and two desks were about all that fit in the room. There was only one closet with two rods; Alberto got the upper rod and Paul the lower. Despite the close quarters, the brothers peacefully coexisted. They really had no choice as there was nowhere else for either of them to go. Three bedrooms, one bathroom, an eat-in kitchen, and a living room made up the entire Ambrosi home.
On his first day of Academy, Paul waited his turn for the bathroom, quickly did his business, then went back to his bedroom to get dressed. Looking at the lower closet rod, Paul wished he had a better choice of clothes. “Just make do,” he thought as he decided on his outfit. He pulled out a light blue button-down oxford shirt with an off-brand emblem on the pocket. The shirt was neatly pressed and fit his slim physique well. He slipped on neatly-creased beige khakis and his only pair of nice dress shoes. The look was simple, but he thought it worked.
Paul shut the light off in his bedroom and made his way down the short hallway to the kitchen. As a child Paul would count how many “big-boy” steps it took for him to get from his bedroom to the kitchen. Now he could do it in three big strides, which he playfully did each time he left his room. He smelled warm croissants that Ida had just baked. One, two, three, he stepped. The rest of the family was already at the table.
“Hey all.” Paul said.
“Good morning, Paolo,” Ida said as she put a basket of croissants on the table. Paul sat down at the table, his mouth ready for a croissant with honey-fig jam. He reached across the table to get a still-warm croissant, tore it open, and slathered it with the jam. He took a bite and savored the flaky, buttery, and sweet breakfast as Anna, Alberto and Joseph all made their way to the table.
“Paolo when are you going to be home?” Ida asked as she sat down with her espresso.
“Debate ends at six, should be about seven.”
“OK, dinner at seven.” Ida was insistent that the family eat together as much as possible. She was raised in a household where the entire family ate together and saw the importance of connecting at the dinner table. She wanted the same for her family. “Remember, I need some help at the store tonight after dinner.” Joseph said.
“Cool.”
Paul got up from the table deciding to finish his croissant on the 10-minute walk to the Academy bus stop. He put on a light jacket, grabbed his backpack, kissed his mother and headed out.
“Later”
“Don’t break too many hearts today!” Anna said. Anna’s friends loved to come over to the Ambrosi’s apartment just to get a glimpse of Paul’s good looks. She admired her brother not only for his brains, but for how kind he was to other people.
Paul walked out of the apartment into the cool morning air, reflecting on how fortunate he was to have this opportunity to attend Academy. He was humbled by the supermarket customers choosing to help pay for his tuition with no expectation of anything in return, other than Paul using the experience to do something great later in life. He thought of his father’s example of the perfect father and husband and the seemingly perfect marriage that his parents shared. He remembered how one of Anna’s friends fawned over him the day before, how cute she was, but how he didn’t see her as anything more than a nice girl. He then playfully mused about how many big-boy steps it would take to get from his apartment to the bus stop. Doing the math subconsciously triggered him to take big-boy steps as he walked. His pace was brisk, purposeful and straight as he counted one-and-a-half-meter lunges. He was big-boy stepping as he approached the bus stop and saw the boy already there eyeballing his strange gait. Embarrassed, Paul caught his gaze and realized how ridiculous he looked. He quickly adjusted his stride, walked up to him and extended his hand.
“I’m Paul,” he said.
Caleb Todd
2030
C aleb Todd hated history, math, science, and everything else school. “Some of the richest people in the world were college dropouts,” he would justify to his parents. Despite being 14, Caleb displayed the maturity of a 10-year-old and the stubbornness of a child going through the terrible twos.
Caleb’s father, Aidan, was raised in Dublin in a blue-collar household. Being uneducated, Aidan learned early on that survival meant hard physical work. He applied at the Guinness brewery on his 16th birthday, starting work the week following. He enjoyed traveling around Europe when he could get time off from the brewery and had a love for Italy. He met his wife Gloria while in Naples. He went in for a sandwich at the supermarket where she worked and talked with her for only a few minutes, but that was all it took. He was so smitten that he went back each day to buy random items as an excuse to talk to her. After he left Naples he called and messaged her daily. He ultimately quit his job at Guinness, moved to Naples, and got a job at the Naples shipyard. Eight months after first meeting they married.
Gloria Ambrosi was raised in Naples. She worked at the family supermarket along with her brother Joseph. From the moment she met Aidan she felt in her heart they were going to marry. Every conversation, date, and kiss further confirmed her feelings. Gloria stood about four-foot-eleven but had the imposing disposition of a burly, six-foot tall man. She feared no one and had no problem at all putting an unruly person in his or her place. She could hit a fly on the wall at five paces just by flicking the slipper from her foot. She dearly loved her husband and children and served the role of protector well. If anyone in any way threatened Aidan or the kids, they would experience Gloria’s wrath. She ruled the roost, and Aidan was fine with that.
Caleb was the third of five children, with older brothers Philip and Frank, younger brother Luigi and younger sister Carolina. Philip and Frank teased Caleb mercilessly, they thought it fun to see their younger brother squirm and cry. They became expert at doing it behind Gloria’s back, their physical and emotional bullying creating deep fissures in Caleb’s personality--craving attention, lashing out at others, obsessively seeking positive reinforcement.
Caleb was five feet, two inches tall with wavy black hair, brown eyes, and a baby-face complexion. When he was around others his age, he looked more like one of their younger brothers than a peer. They towered over him and frequently teased him about his diminutive stature. The worst part for him was not having gone through puberty yet. Changing clothes in gym class was torture, with others openly laughing at his hairless features. Even though he coveted attention, this was not the type he wanted. He loathed it, and it led to deep-seated insecurities and bitterness which stayed with him the rest of his life.
Attending Academy was not a privilege for Caleb, it was meant to instill discipline. He had already been kicked out of two other schools for bad behavior. In one he set a bag of dog poop on fire in one of the classrooms, setting off the sprinkler system and forcing the entire school to evacuate. In the other he threatened to kill a teacher if she gave him a failing grade. With each expulsion, Aidan and Gloria tried everything they could to get their wild child to behave. Their last resort was a special program at Academy for students with disciplinary issues.
An Academy program called “tiering” had a 90-percent success rate of rehabilitating problem students into productive, law-abiding adults. The program had two tiers. Tier one was for less-serious offenders who attended Academy during regular school hours. Tier two was for more serious offenders that Academy referred to as “guests.” Guests lived at Academy for the entire semester. Guests were told when to eat, sleep, shower, attend class, exercise, and relax. Guests wore standard gray uniforms and electronic ankle bracelets which tracked movement. Because guests attended classes with other Academy students, the uniforms made the tier two students obvious to the others. Tier two looked and felt like prison and putting it on display to the other students only added to the shame.
Caleb was admitted into tier one under probation; if he demonstrated good behavior he would stay there. His conduct was reviewed weekly by a three-person review board for infractions that, if committed, could get him “guested” to ti
er two. The only way for Caleb to graduate from tiering and attend as a regular student was if he received at least a 3.0 grade point average for two semesters and committed no infractions during that period. Caleb was happy that no one knew he was in a disciplinary program. Caleb hated tier one, but tier two scared him nearly to death. The only saving grace about Academy was knowing that his cousin Paul was also attending, even though Paul wasn’t in the tiering program.
On this first day of Academy classes, Caleb jumped down from his top bunk, showered, and returned to his room to dress. His brother Luigi was still sleeping on the bottom bunk. Caleb intentionally made noise while dressing just to get under his little brother’s skin, a warped kind of payback for how his older brothers treated him. When Caleb slammed the dresser drawer loudly, Luigi shook, looked at his brother and gave him a “what the heck?” look. Caleb mocked, “Sorry, dude,” and continued banging around the room. Recognizing he wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon, Luigi got up and headed to the bathroom, bumping Caleb with his shoulder like a hockey player checking an opponent into the wall. Caleb looked in his closet to decide what to wear. Being so fearful of tier two, he refused to wear anything gray to avoid someone thinking he was guested. He chose a bright yellow shirt that hung off his bony frame, looking about the same as it did on the hanger. Blue jeans and dark shoes completed the outfit. He made his way down the hall to the breakfast table of yogurt and Nutella-filled croissants. Aidan and his older brothers Philip and Frank were already at the table.
“Hey, Squirt,” Philip teased. Not saying a word, Caleb gave Philip the evil eye.
“That’s enough!” Gloria the matriarch piped in.
Aidan ripped open a croissant, the Nutella gently oozing from the flaky crust. After taking his first bite, he looked over at Caleb. “Academy’s a great opportunity for you, Caleb. It’s got what you need to straighten your life out before it’s too late. You need to make the most of it.”
“Making the most of being stuffed in lockers!” It was Frank’s turn to tease Caleb.
Aidan continued, “Caleb, take this seriously. Tier one is a gift right now. You don’t want to end up in tier two, right?”
“Right.”
“Good. Let Paul help if you need it.”
Caleb took two croissants, grabbed his backpack, and headed out the door for the ten-minute walk to the Academy bus stop.
“Try to stay out of lockers, little one!” Philip got in one last jab as Caleb left.
“Screw you!” Caleb muttered so his mother couldn’t hear.
Caleb stormed out of the apartment down to the street entrance. As he hit the first of three steps at the apartment front door he lost his footing and fell face-first to the street below. No broken teeth, but he split his chin and grazed both his palms trying to break his fall. Better that he just kept going to the bus stop with a bloody chin and scraped palms than go back to the apartment and be ridiculed by his brothers. His walk to the bus stop was a tornado of angry thoughts about Academy, the tiering program, being teased about his size and delayed puberty, and his relentlessly mean brothers. He had been in the eye of this storm many times before. His escape from the storm was an imaginary world he had cultivated over the years. In his world all the people who were mean to him were forced to follow his orders. He was bigger and stronger than everyone else, and millions of people worshipped him. Women wanted to be with him and men wanted to be like him. In his world he had more money than he would ever need, lived in a huge mansion, and drove the nicest cars. As he saw the bus stop with two guys standing there, he came back down to the reality of who he really was--the son of a shipyard worker, incessantly teased by classmates and brothers, and one bad report away from being guested as a tier two ankle bracelet-wearing Academy prisoner.
Paul saw his cousin Caleb coming and met up with him before he got to the bus stop.
“Hey, Cuz, you alright?” Paul said as he looked at Caleb’s split chin.
Caleb just looked at him and rolled his eyes.
“Sorry, man.” Paul knew that look. He wished Caleb’s family would ease up on him. They walked up to the bus stop where Sal was already standing. Paul introduced the two. “Caleb this is Sal. Sal this is my cousin Caleb.”
“Hey, Caleb.” Sal said.
Caleb nodded his head backwards, not saying a word.
Bert Winn
2030
A t 7 each morning, 14-year-old Bert Winn got out of bed. He typically woke up earlier, but he had to stick to his routine. After a bathroom stop, he went downstairs to breakfast. At 7:10 he ate a breakfast of three ciabatta slices with ricotta cheese and a glass of milk. He prepared his own breakfast every day even though his mother was already awake and completely willing to do it for him. If she interrupted Bert’s routine in any way it created unnecessary stress for him. She stood by while he executed his routine the same way at the same time every morning.
Bert was a happy baby. His six, nine and 12-month check-ups indicated he was developing exactly as expected. At 18 months, Bert would only say “ball,” which he used to describe just about anything or anyone he saw. This concerned Bert’s mother, Hayley, as her older daughter Morgan was using many more words and forming short sentences at 18 months. Bert’s pediatrician said to “give him time” and that “girls typically talked more than boys.” At two years of age Bert was only using a few words and appeared to just mimic others. If Hayley said, “Do you want me to carry you?” Bert would respond, “Carry you.” He would spend hours doing things over and over again, his favorite being puzzles. He had a wooden puzzle of the United States that he would do repeatedly, seemingly never getting bored of the activity.
He had difficulty maintaining eye contact, as if it were painful for him to look others directly in the eye. He didn’t like to be cuddled, which upset Hayley. She discussed Bert’s symptoms with her pediatrician again, who this time recommended she have Bert tested at the Children’s Hospital Autism Center at Naples. The test results came back conclusive; Bert had Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Bert’s father, Ryan, was a cybersecurity naval officer at Naval Support Academy Naples Military Complex. He participated in many strategic initiatives during his career, the most important being the peacekeeping assignment during the ethnarchic consolidation. He loved his career with the Navy and saw to it that he obeyed orders from his superiors, so he could continue his climb up the chain of command. He used the right words, “family first” when asked about his priorities, but his actions unfortunately didn’t match his words. With Ryan, it was “Navy first, family distant second.” With each set of relocation orders, Ryan was quick to justify to Hayley why it was so important that they move. The Winn family had lived in each of the ten regions at one time or another, and while Hayley wanted to be a supportive wife, she was getting tired of the relocations and the stress that went with them.
The stress was even more pronounced with Bert, who required much more preparation and expectation-setting than his neurotypical sister. While Ryan was an attentive and responsible father, he didn’t really understand why things were so much harder for Bert. Though he loved both his kids, he related better to his daughter. Thus, more of Bert’s caretaking and nurturing fell on Hayley.
When Bert was diagnosed with ASD, Hayley immediately began learning as much as she could about autism. She took copious notes on Bert’s actions, what made him happy, what agitated him. She worked hard at creating as much stability in Bert’s life as she could, particularly considering their frequent moves. Each time they were given orders to move to a new location, she took detailed pictures of their current home to record what was in each room and where it was located, as well as the wall colors and flooring types. When setting up the new home, she would diligently recreate these elements of the previous home to try to reduce the impact and stress of the move for Bert. He was agitated by changes, so she would do all she could to alleviate his stress. Hayley dutifully accepted this responsibility without complaint or making her dau
ghter feel as if Bert was favored over her.
At 7:25, Bert went upstairs to his room to make his bed and get ready for his first day at Academy. As with prior moves, the first day of school in a new place was always stressful. He had been through it so many times, though, that the change in routine almost felt like routine itself. He began to accept that each September he would start a new school, and while it was trying, expecting the change each September helped alleviate the stress. After showering at 7:30, he brushed his teeth at 7:45, and headed back to his room at 7:50 to get dressed. His room was sparsely appointed with a bed, nightstand, dresser, and closet. On his nightstand was a lamp he had since he was five. On his dresser were three pictures lined up like soldiers; one of his family, one of the family cat that died when he was ten, and one of him when he was eight. Each evening before bed he would lay the clothes he planned to wear the next day on the floor at the foot of his bed. The shirt, pants, socks and shoes looked like someone had been lying there, then suddenly melted into the floor leaving his clothes behind. Bert always wore button-down shirts because he hated how it felt to pull a shirt over his head. Because he was sensitive to certain fabrics, all his shirts were cotton. It was important to him to follow the same dressing routine every morning. At 7:58 he left his room. He grabbed his backpack and approached his mother to kiss her goodbye. Being careful not to get too close, he and his mother followed their ritual of pretending there was a beach ball between them when they kissed hello and goodbye. It was a compromise that Hayley had to negotiate with Bert; she wanted him to kiss her but had to respect his discomfort with being touched. They created an imaginary beach ball that gently squeezed between their chests, which caused them to extend their necks over it to peck each other on the cheek. Though it looked peculiar, it was the closest Hayley could get to her son.
The Lawless One and the End of Time Page 2