Finally, the bus stopped, and Noah grabbed his bags before cautiously exiting, scanning the area.
The layout of the camp seemed fairly normal. A large mess hall stood next to the small office building with a sign labelled “Administration.” Next to the mess hall stood a giant open field of grass, wide enough to house two soccer goals and a small basketball court. Near the tree lines were wooden cabins of various sizes, each with their own sign–fun names and unique mascot animals like, “Goat Cabin,” whose mascot was, of course, a goat. The basketball court was littered with balls of various sizes, multi-colored jump ropes, scoreboards, and everything a kid might use to have good, clean, active fun.
As he stood there, the bus rumbled away–the goons in suits had stayed put, and so had M. Noah figured the military presence he’d passed on the way must serve as enough security for all the shady geniuses he’d apparently be surrounded by.
A cheery looking counselor, or who Noah assumed to be a counselor because of the T-shirt, burst out of the office building and rushed towards him, waving wildly. Noah frowned and thought, Well, this is weird, but maybe it won’t be so bad.
***
Two days later inside the mess hall, Noah glumly rested his head in his hands. This is miserable, he thought. He’d never been so bored since he’d been born in this lifetime. He hadn’t truly known what to expect at Camp Firestarter, but some part of him had wanted some sort of challenge. Maybe gritty competitions between the campers.
Instead, Noah had been forced to clap along to cheesy songs by the campfire and play circle games. There had been no strenuous obstacles to overcome, no battle of wits. On the first day, Noah had thought it all a necessary farce, fooling the geniuses’ parents that Firestarter was a camp for special kids—not a paramilitary training ground.
By lunch of the second day, the dread that had been steadily building in Noah’s body had made itself a comfortable home in the pit of his stomach. The reality of his situation actually made him feel ill. He had things to do, and none of them involved s’mores and singing kumbaya by the fireside. I could be purchasing more warehouses, or doing R&D, procuring rice and beans, buying farms, or re-establishing contact with Anonymoose. Heck, I could be doing practically anything else instead of wasting my time here.
Plastic strings of boondoggle sat unwoven in his hand as he fumed about his situation. Forced to wear a cheery camp T-shirt, he sat on a wooden bench with a group of children–not other teens—children. Out of the twenty-three geniuses at Camp Firestarter, Noah had been the oldest among them by at least two years. He was pretty sure the oldest in the group besides him was Pietro, a twelve-year-old from Russia.
Everyone but Noah happily weaved one plastic string over and under each other in simple, repeating patterns, creating lanyards which they could give their parents. The counselors, mostly in their early twenties, quietly shared stories from college or flirted with each other. Noah watched all of them, both the counselors and the campers, in stupefied disbelief.
Were these children actually the geniuses Burgess told me to watch out for? Noah wondered. Nothing about them gave him the indication they were even smarter than average, much less exceptional. They gossiped, giggled, and picked fights with each other like every other kid in the world. Even with [Listen], he hadn’t picked up whispers between the other campers that might have hinted at any secret motives or plans.
At this point, he didn’t care anymore. Noah wanted something, anything, to do besides weave lanyards to give away that would be thrown out a week later. Luckily, something new seemed to be happening. One of government goons who drifted through camp from time to time had entered the building, briefcase in hand. Each step the Interpol agent took quieted the voices in the hall a little more. When he reached the front, the room had fallen silent.
A few of the counselors went to the windows, drawing the blinds to stop the midday light from entering. The Interpol agent was a tall, severe-looking blonde woman, probably originally FBI or CIA and re-tasked to technically be Interpol. Noah was still a bit unsure of how the Merriweather organization was actually structured or funded, but he’d made an effort to keep his cyber snooping to a minimum lately. He’d probably be in the dark for a while about his new employers, a fact that didn’t sit really well with him. Some of his sources had confirmed that Merriweather was legit, they just couldn’t exactly explain how.
The blonde agent set the briefcase on a nearby table, opened it, and pivoted it around. Noah saw the familiar green light of a hologram computer spilling from the briefcase. The light expanded filling the entire wall it was adjacent to, displaying a screen.
One of the counselors, a petite, normally-bubbly young woman wearing a pink watch came to the front of the room, a serious expression on her face. Noah was suddenly reminded that all of the camp counselors were probably highly trained in their own right, a fact that had been easy to forget over the last couple days of boredom. The counselor—Noah thought her name might be Tiffany—said, “Hey, everyone, we’re going to have a little change of pace. We know that some of you need an outlet once in a while, and this might be a good bonding experience, so we are going to have a little game!”
The screen on the wall flashed, and lines of text appeared:
Scenario: Each of you has been assigned a country. On your papers you will find the various metrics and statistics for your country over the past ten years, including current budget and economic standard in comparison with other countries. Based on these metrics alone, you are tasked to prepare your country for war, and either repel invaders, or become an aggressor. First place gets extra material for s’mores. You will have two hours.
Tiffany, the counselor, said, “Okay, guys, get ready! We’ll be handing out VR rigs, and your login credentials should be the same as your username and password for the online Merriweather portal. I would give you instructions on how to retrieve a lost password, but I know in this group, that won’t be an issue.” She smiled, and some of the campers in the room smiled back, but Noah just watched curiously, his face neutral.
A few other counselors began handing out VR headsets and hand controllers. The battery-powered rigs were a little old, already out of date, but seemed to be in good working order. Noah put his on, and after logging in, using his hands to type, he found himself automatically loaded to the game.
He was in luck. The game seemed to be based off a popular strategy game he’d played for ages. Noah couldn’t start yet, but he quickly opened menus to check out what kind of information he’d be able to use in the game, a smile spreading across his face. Yes! I used to play stuff like this with Johnny and even Anonymoose! This will be a piece of cake!
In the upper left corner of his field of view, a screen showed the counselor at the front of the room, a camera slaved to his VR unit. She was giving out basic instructions for how to play the game and use the equipment, but Noah tuned her out. In the other corner of his vision, he could see an extended version of the game’s rules. He quickly scanned them, then began planning strategies. Suddenly, the rules blinked red, and the campers in the room immediately became icons in the game. Noah could invest in skills within the game to tell if any of the other leaders were talking, but he hadn’t bought any skills at all yet, so the other leaders just drifted as icons. Some of them flashed, noting activity. Noah assumed they were already chatting with each other, discussing trade agreements or forming diplomatic ties. A few of the campers pinged him, getting his attention to text, but Noah ignored them all.
His eyes widened as he opened his menu to see what country he’d been assigned. He’d been handed the United States of America. It couldn’t get better than this for him—one of the most powerful countries in the world that he was already intimately familiar with. He’d been thrown a soft ball, set up for a home run–it almost wasn’t fair. They couldn’t have given me a better test to stand out in, Noah thought before grinning confidently. He had been preparing the world for the Shift for years. No one in the room
would be able to touch him; he could effortlessly roflstomp all of them. The kids wouldn’t know what hit them.
Noah cracked his neck and calmed himself before suddenly breaking out into a series of gestures and finger movements, rapidly opening menus and investing resources. This was going to be a massacre.
***
The moonlight was Noah’s only company in the mess hall as he sat staring at the green hologram screen against the wall. The rest of the day had passed in a blur, and after eating hot dogs by the fire, he’d somehow made his way back here. The names of all the other campers, the children–no, the geniuses—burned in his mind. He would never forget their names.
His eyes traced each line one by one, he had lost count how many times he had done so. The situation hadn’t made sense at first. Hours earlier, the children he had spent nearly three days with had been happy to play kickball and call each other silly names, just like every other normal kid he had seen. But when the game started, they had completely changed—creating alliances, forming economic unions, and establishing trade embargos. A few of them had created military strategies the likes that Noah had never seen before. It had been like they’d been completely different people.
Noah had been stupid to ignore reality staring him in the face at first, so focused on winning. Of course, by the time he had made aggressive moves on Canada and somehow over half of his country had been occupied, it had been too late. He shook his head as his eyes finally trailed down to the final name on the list–his. Noah Henson. Last place.
He wondered for what felt like the hundredth time if there had been something wrong with the game, but he knew in his heart that this was not the case. Earlier, when he’d first come back to the mess hall, one of the counselors had tried to bring him back to the cabin to get ready for campfire songs, but a goon in a suit had stopped her, leaving Noah to figure out how he had gotten last place.
I know that I’ve been preparing the world for something Interpol could never imagine, but what I’ve been doing should have directly translated to skill in the game. In fact, I’ve even played a less realistic version online of the game we actually played before and did well! What the heck? When he had seen his name at the bottom of the list, a seed of doubt had been planted in his heart. Before that moment, he’d had complete confidence that he was on the right track for his mission to save the world.
He still believed that he was moving in the right direction, but his faith had been shaken. Thankfully, it would take a lot more than a VR game loss to ever revert to a pitiful version of his past self, like Worm. Noah had just been surprised, and the results had hurt his pride.
This was his first real failure in his new life with something he had really tried at. Things had come easily to him this time around because of his core skills like [Jack of All], and his past experience. Of course, this didn’t mean that he hadn’t worked hard to get to where he was. In fact, he had worked his butt off to get away from his lowest point, moving as far away from Worm as possible. He’d pushed his limits to create a new and better version of himself.
But sitting alone in the mess hall, staring at the screen made him want to reevaluate if not his plan, then definitely himself. Is there something wrong with me?
Lost in thought, it took him a second longer with [Listen] to realize that someone had stepped into the mess hall. The steps were small but deliberate. A young girl’s voice echoed in the room, “Carlo from the Philippines said you were still in here, sulking. I came to see if he was just being crazy again or if you really are as emo as everyone else thinks you are.”
Noah turned around to see Yoko Terada, the twelve-year-old girl from Japan, standing in the center of the mess hall with her arms crossed. Beneath her camp T-shirt, she wore jean shorts with flowers embroidered on the pockets. Her jet-black hair had been cut in a bob, and her bangs fell down to her thin eyebrows, one of which was raised. Noah was certain that he was being judged.
“I’m not sulking,” he replied, and immediately regretted sounding so defensive.
Yoko chuckled, her tone strange for her age. “Not just Carlo, Pietro too. Pietro says he’s been watching you since you came. He’s been through worse than any of us here, so if he says you’re being emo, you are.”
Noah let out a sigh. “What do you want?”
“I just wanted to talk to the boy who’s had Interpol running around like chickens with their heads cut off, or so I hear.”
“And?”
Yoko uncrossed her arms and tapped her lower lip, eyes locked on his. “I’m disappointed.”
Noah nodded at the rankings on the wall. “You and everyone else. I’m older than everyone here, and I still got last place. I guess I really am surrounded by geniuses.”
A faint frown twitched Yoko’s lips. She said, “You know, genius is a title, or a measure. I am more than any title anyone ever gives me, so are you.” Then she made a subtle gesture at the cameras in the mess hall. The young girl briskly walked to Noah and stretched to whisper, overcoming their difference in height. “I’m not disappointed by your intelligence. We know all about you, Noah Henson. In fact, we know more than Interpol.”
Noah froze and decided to be cautious. “Like what.”
She spoke even more quietly, “Like how Caleb McMahon-Eagan isn’t your only fake identity. Or how all of your identities combined make you one of the wealthiest people in the world and the youngest billionaire in history. Or how Carlo, Pietro, and I managed to find out you’ve been making some very interesting purchases for several years. Interpol and other feds don’t know the half of it. You own patents!”
Noah’s jaw clenched, and he felt all of his blood drain to his feet. He could sense that a denial would be pointless, and he really didn’t want Yoko to drop any more verbal bombs. “How did you know?”
She stepped back and tilted her head. “Did you think your Anonymoose pals were the best hackers in the world, or even top tier? The smartest people in the world hide their skills, Noah. When you know you’re the best, you don’t need to boast.”
Noah’s Charisma helped him gain some ground. After feeling the familiar tickle, he countered, “You don’t look so hiding-in-the-shadows to me.”
Yoko screwed up her face like she’d bitten into a lemon and looked away. Her tone bitter, she whispered, “Even so-called prodigies make mistakes.”
In that moment, he really understood who he was dealing with, what Yoko really was—a real genius. This girl, and probably the rest of the camp, were not like him, just someone powered with stolen magical abilities and impossible knowledge…no, these were truly special people. This girl standing before him talked like he did, differently to others his age, but her mind worked on another level than his. She’s only twelve, he reminded himself. I can’t believe how much control over her emotions she has at her age. In my first life, I would have just stomped off after saying a mean name.
The girl took in a deep breath and gave Noah a cool look. She said, “So anyway, after actually meeting you, I’ve been disappointed. This isn’t because of some stupid, arbitrary test though–you hadn’t tried to talk to any of us the past thirty-six hours. We gave you an entire day to introduce yourself to us, but you didn’t. Even during the test we just took, you didn’t try to make connections with any of us, and that was practically the point of the game. Any way you look at it, that was just stupid. Heck, you’ve been bunkmates with Pietro since you arrived and you haven’t exchanged a word with him…in any language. Everyone here is a polyglot. You’ve acted like all the adults, treating us like we were just children. This is not only narrow-minded, it’s dumb. I expected better of you.”
Noah closed his eyes and felt guilt creep up his spine. He said out loud, to himself, “I wonder what Doc would say?”
Yoko’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but she quickly reined them back in to form her cool mask. “Your most common handle.” She studied him for a long moment, perhaps wondering why he’d said what he’d said. Noah mentally smiled s
adly—she’d have a tough time finding any ulterior motive—there hadn’t been one. Finally, she said, “We won’t tell Interpol your secrets, Noah. My point is if there is anyone here who can understand you, it’s us. No need to get emo about it. If they succeeded in anything by bringing us all together, it’s proof that none of us are special. You aren’t special. Me, Pietro, not even Carlo.” She blushed and tried to hide a smile. “Maybe Carlo. He’s weird.”
The extreme irony of the situation actually made Noah start to feel better. He was getting a pep talk from a young girl about how he wasn’t special, and now he really did understand that he wasn’t. Oh, he might be trying to save the world, sure…but what if one of these kids at Camp Firestarter had gotten his magic, his skills, or his memory? While this was a good realization for perspective, Noah decided not to dwell on it.
The Japanese girl must have interpreted his silence for resistance. “This is probably one of the best chances you will ever get in your life to meet people you can relate to. From a Machiavellian perspective, it’s probably a networking dream, too.”
Noah let his smile show, all tension in his body relaxing. “So, you’re saying us geniuses have to stick together?”
Yoko nodded. “Yeah. Who else can understand what it’s like to run an international business at my age, or doesn’t run away when Carlo babbles on about weapon schematics or tech that is useless in peacetime? Yes, we stick together not only because we are thought leaders in our respective fields, but because we’re friends.”
She’s not saying it out loud, at least not spelling it out, Noah realized. Something inside of Noah fluttered a little, and the truth breezed over him like an uncomfortable chill. He had been lonely. Being focused on preparing the world for the Shift alone hadn’t left a lot of time for other things, even though he’d tried disciplining himself to also have a social life. Maybe solitude was a price of being a genius, even a fake one like Noah.
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