Sugar Coated

by Shannen Crane Camp

  “Bennett, Amber, and Ty are in the main office,” Allen’s voice told her pleasantly.

  “Thank you,” Brynn responded, already moving toward the room. She knew Bennett’s house almost as well as her own. The four friends were always together at one of their houses, so it was almost like having three roommates who just never spent the night.

  As Brynn walked down the very flowery smelling hallway, she thought back to the force of the ocean. Even though she had been terrified for her life, the feeling of being completely out of control was thrilling. She had never had her legs taken out from under her like that before. The sensation of having your feet fly up over your head was one she wouldn’t forget any time soon and was currently recreating in her mind.

  Bennett, Amber, and Ty were all crowded around the Interactive Movie Creating Screen when Brynn walked in, and she wondered for a moment if they had finally made the movie they always talked about making. The one that would earn them global recognition.

  For a week.

  Ty was the first to hear Brynn’s footsteps and he spun around with a worried look on his face. Taking in her appearance, his worry only deepened. “What happened to you?” he asked, his almond shaped brown eyes roaming over her disheveled hair.

  “It was really windy outside,” Brynn lied, self consciously giving her shirt a squeeze to make sure it had dried enough to validate her story.

  It had.

  “That sucks,” Amber said over her shoulder, still not turning around to look at Brynn.

  Whatever was going on with their screen had them completely enthralled. Brynn could even tell that Ty wanted to turn back to it, but wasn’t rude enough to do so.

  “We found something weird,” Ty began, looking unsure of how he was going to word his story.

  “Correction, I found something weird,” Bennett said, giving Ty a mock challenging look out of the corner of her eye.

  “What is it?” Brynn asked, moving closer to the screen. The audio track for their movie took up the whole display, showing nothing but different audio layers and jagged green lines that looked like rising and falling mountain ridges.

  “We finished all of the visual effects on our movie and we were laying down the audio but we kept getting this weird static.” Amber sounded very put out by this fact as she turned towards Brynn. Her face registered that Brynn’s appearance was worse than she had thought, but Amber ignored this fact and continued. The story was more important. “We thought maybe the software was on the blink or something,” she said, sounding like that was a juvenile explanation at best. “So when we played it back—.”

  “We heard a voice!” Bennett finished, unable to contain her excitement any longer.

  “A voice?” Brynn asked, not quite sure what her friends were talking about.

  “I think it sounds more like a conversation. Like two people talking.” Ty looked over at Brynn seriously and gave an involuntary shiver. “It’s actually really creepy.”

  “What are they talking about?” Brynn asked.

  “We can’t actually make any of the words out. It’s really muffled. But you can definitely tell there are voices,” Ty answered, leaning over the console to press the play button. “Listen.”

  As the track began there was just static.

  “So are we just going to do the dialogue first and then the sound effects later?” Brynn heard Bennett’s recorded voice ask.

  “Yeah, and we’ll do a soundtrack last. That part always takes the longest,” Amber’s voice answered her.

  Ty tapped Brynn on the shoulder and then pointed at the screen, indicating she needed to start listening for the voices. Right as he pointed, Brynn could make out the faintest trace of a voice talking right over Bennett and Amber, but the two just kept conversing as if they couldn’t hear it.

  “This track is picking up a lot of static,” Amber’s recorded voice said as the tone that sounded male continued to talk.

  Ty was right—Brynn couldn’t make out a single word but she could tell it was a voice. It had the cadence and inflection of a sentence being spoken.

  “Message Ty, he’ll know how to fix it,” Bennett’s voice said.

  “Okay, that’s where we stop talking,” Amber told Brynn. “But we forgot to turn off the recorder so it just keeps going.”

  Brynn closed her eyes, not wanting to be distracted by anything else in the room. She wanted to make out what the voices were saying. She could hear Amber and Bennett’s footsteps retreating out of the room as they went to message Ty, then the audio track was nothing more than static and the occasional sound of the male voice.

  “Here comes the girl,” Ty said from somewhere beside Brynn, and right on cue, a female voice materialized on the audio track.

  “What?” Brynn exclaimed, her eyes snapping open. “I know that voice!” she told her friends frantically.

  “You do? Who is it?” Bennett asked, but Brynn instantly shushed her, trying harder to hear what the woman was saying.

  Her voice had the deep, rich timbre of thick honey and Brynn would know it anywhere.

  It was the voice of her Angel.

  The voice she had dreamed about for so many years and tried to recreate with her house voice options. It was the most soothing and perfect voice that still somehow managed to hold so much menace.

  As she heard it now she could recognize the underlying hints of something more sinister and she wished she could understand what the Angel was saying.

  “How long do they go on like this?” Brynn asked, closing her eyes once more and trying desperately to listen.

  “It’s almost over,” Amber answered.

  “They have about three more sentences I think,” Ty added.

  The male voice said one more muffled sentence, which made the Angel laugh. It was a slow, deep sound that wasn’t exactly happy.

  “Here’s the one word you can understand,” Ty said, preparing Brynn to listen even harder.

  The female voice went on for a few more seconds in her smooth, easy rhythm, and Brynn hoped she hadn’t already missed the one word they were supposed to be able to decipher.

  But then she heard it, loud and clear as the Angel’s voice formed the word:

  “Waves.”

  Chapter 4: Trains

  “Waves,” the Angel’s voice said calmly, as if it were an important message that needed to be understood.

  “Waves,” Brynn repeated to herself, her eyes closed and her forehead resting on her knees.

  She sat on the floor in her room with her tablet in her hand. She had convinced Amber and Bennett to burn the audio from their movie onto a micro-card for her so that she could take it home and listen to it.

  After having reviewed the same muffled conversation hundreds of times, she finally came to the conclusion that whatever she was going to learn from this, she’d need some technological help. She’d recruited Ty to pull apart the audio tracks until Amber and Bennett’s voices were deleted, leaving only the Angel and her male companion on the card. Unfortunately, that hadn’t exactly made it easier to figure out what they were talking about, it only made it more frustrating that she still couldn’t translate it.

  “Brynn, I think you’re getting a little obsessed with this,” Ty had told her one day after hours of trying to locate the source of the interference.

  Ty had hacked into the city’s main computer to see if it had come from someone’s house nearby, but the signal seemed to be even farther away than Seaside. It was something even Ty, the computer genius, couldn’t track down.

  “Doesn’t it seem weird to you that you can’t find its source?” Brynn asked, getting a little defensive at his accusation.

  “Not really,” he answered with a shake of his head, his sandy blonde hair falling into his brown eyes. “I’m really not as good as you think I am.”

  “You’re the best person I know when it comes to computers. If this conversation had come from within Seaside, you’d know about it,” Brynn insisted, not willing to back do
wn.

  Now as she sat in her room with her tablet clutched in her hand, the conversation between the Angel and the man on repeat, she began to wonder if maybe she was taking the whole thing a little too seriously. Just because she’d heard the voice before didn’t mean it was the same person. She was sure a lot of people sounded similar when distorted with static.

  “What about the ocean and the waves?” she thought aloud, voicing her fears that the only word they could make out happened to correlate with her near-drowning during that exact same time frame.

  “The ocean is a dangerous place, full of uncertainty and death. Studies indicate that you should avoid it at all costs to ensure a long and happy life,” her house told her, yet again misunderstanding the fact that Brynn often thought aloud.

  “Thank you, Charlie,” she said automatically, humoring her house.

  “Studies also indicate that the ocean is so vast, it would be faster to travel by long-distance train to cross to the other side of the world than to travel by water,” her house went on, undeterred by Brynn’s obvious annoyance.

  “How would you even travel by water anyway?” Brynn asked, almost laughing at her house’s ignorance.

  “You cannot. It is scientifically impossible to travel by water,” the house responded, providing Brynn with the answer she already knew.

  “Not to mention you’d have to be an idiot to try in the first place,” Brynn added.

  “Yes,” the house agreed in its little girl voice. “That is a fact.”

  Brynn let her head fall back against the foot of her bed, staring up at the ceiling intently, her memory sparked by something her house had said.

  “But traveling by train. that’s something everyone does,” she began, now actually talking to her house.

  “Yes. Travel via train is a very popular method,” the house confirmed.

  “It’s the only method,” Brynn corrected.

  “Yes. The only method to travel long distances is to travel by long-distance train. Hence the name,” her house responded with a little more attitude than Brynn was used to.

  “But the trains don’t have windows,” Brynn continued, trying to get some sort of answer from her house.

  “That is correct. The long-distance trains do not have windows because they are a safety hazard. Glass can break.”

  “But every building in the city is made of glass.”

  “Stationary glass is not a safety hazard. Only glass put under pressure from a great deal of speed is. That is why there are no windows allowed on trains,” the house reiterated.

  “So you can’t really see what you’re passing by.”

  “The long-distance train routes were built for efficiency of travel, not scenic enjoyment. They cut through the most barren and desolate landscapes in order to save time. There is no need to see what you’re passing through,” the house assured her, the attitude gone from its voice.

  “So they say,” Brynn said with a furrowed brow.

  “So facts say,” the house corrected.

  “Charlie, I need you to check on train stops for me,” she said suddenly, standing up and pulling her long black boots on.

  “Would you like to take your regularly scheduled monthly trip early?” the house asked, sounding about as surprised as a house could.

  “I want you to see if there’s a train stop in Aywon,” Brynn said, ignoring the house’s question.

  There was a slight buzzing sound for a moment as the house searched its database, and Brynn held her breath, wondering if it was really this simple after years of searching.

  Could she really just need to ask her house?

  “No such city exists,” the house finally informed her after the buzzing had subsided. It was the same answer she’d gotten about Aywon since her search began. “Would you like to pick a different destination?”

  “No,” Brynn said, disappointment lining her words.

  “Would you still like to take your monthly trip at its regularly scheduled time?” the house asked.

  “Yes. And I’m going out for a bit, but I need a new grey jacket. I ripped mine yesterday,” she said, running her fingers through her long, black, hair to make sure it looked halfway decent.

  The clothing dispenser in Brynn’s closet made a little popping sound as a brand new grey jacket, identical to her old one, fell onto the floor.

  “Thanks, Charlie,” she said as she headed out the door.

  * * *

  The gentle rocking of the train had lulled Brynn into a state of complacency as she and her parents sped along on their trip. Brynn was nine years old and her parents were taking her on her first long-distance retreat ever. Taking a vacation wasn’t a difficult thing to do when you simply had to tell your house to print you a ticket and pack a bag for you, but most people didn’t take many trips in their lifetime.

  There was a time when vacationing had become the new trend, but for the past few decades, most people couldn’t see the point of it. Why leave your home behind just to stay in a strange house that didn’t know you nearly as well? You’d just spend most of your vacation eating food at the wrong temperature, looking at wall art you didn’t particularly like, and talking to a house whose voice you didn’t recognize.

  Even with travel becoming less and less popular, Brynn’s parents thought it was time they take her away from Seaside to see a little of the world. Aside from whatever city she had come from before her parents adopted her as an infant, Brynn hadn’t set foot anywhere that wasn’t Seaside, and the prospect thrilled her.

  Her parents always called her ‘The Little Adventurer’. While most children her age were content to sit at home learning on their interactive education screens, Brynn would beg her parents to let her go outside to see the plants and animals she was learning about in real life. A screen was never good enough for her.

  As she sat on the train in her plush maroon armchair, she read a book about birds on her portable education tablet. Her waist-length hair fell onto the screen of the tablet as she swiped her finger across the display to turn the page.

  “Are you learning a lot, sweetie?” her mother Lia asked, her warm hazel eyes looking kindly at her only daughter.

  “Why can’t people fly?” young Brynn asked, her bright blue eyes looking up at her mother in wonder.

  She believed that her mother knew everything and would be able to answer her question easily. There were few doubts in her mind where her parents were concerned. They had told her at a young age that she was adopted, but that hadn’t stopped them from acting like a biological family. About half of the kids in her city were adopted, so it wasn’t an odd situation, and Brynn’s parents had always been nothing but kind to her.

  “Because humans don’t have wings,” her mother answered, smoothing Brynn’s long hair behind her ear.

  “If we can build a train, why can’t we build a mechanical bird to fly us over the ocean?” Brynn persisted.

  Her mother thought for a moment, looking up at the ceiling and biting her bottom lip in concentration. After a moment she looked over at Brynn’s father Orson.

  “Humans were never meant to fly darling,” he said kindly, kissing his daughter on her forehead and turning his attention back to the news scrolling across his tablet.

  Young Brynn sighed deeply, troubled by her parent’s lack of interest in the topic.

  Humans weren’t meant to run at impossible speeds either, she thought to herself. But we still have trains to take us places quickly.

  Trying to erase the thoughts from her mind, she turned back to her tablet and continued reading about flight.

  Brynn was used to leaving her questions unanswered. She just had so many of them. Most kids her age didn’t ask many questions, and the questions they did ask were easily answered by their interactive education screens. Brynn’s questions always seemed to be the tricky ones that no one could answer.

  Turning the electronic page on her tablet, Brynn popped a sugar cube into her mouth.

  “Where
did you get those?” her mother asked, her voice chiding, but her expression one of amusement.

  “The house gave me a bunch of them before we left for our trip,” Brynn answered, smiling mischievously.

  “Well, I know one house and one little girl who are in big trouble then,” her dad said, leaning over and tickling Brynn’s stomach until she squealed in delight, her tablet falling onto the soft carpet soundlessly.

  “Stop!” she yelled between bouts of laughter, just as the train came to a halt.

  Her father stopped tickling her and looked over at Brynn’s mother. “Why did the train stop?” he asked in a truly puzzled voice. “We shouldn’t be there for another six hours.”

  “The train’s never stopped on this trip before,” her mother agreed. “Check the tablet and see if there’s an error message.”

  Brynn tried to see the screen on her father’s tablet to find out what they were reading, but her mother was blocking her view. She looked at the half-open door to their compartment and made a decision. She didn’t need the computer to tell her what was going on; she would find out herself.

  Trying to be silent, she slipped out of the train compartment and made her way down the long, narrow hallway toward the front of the train. She knew the whole thing was automated, so she wouldn’t find a conductor at the front, but she thought that maybe, if she was clever enough, she could find some sort of answer near the control room.

  A few people watched her pass by as they poked their heads out of their own compartments, wondering, as her parents had, what was wrong. No one tried to stop her, however, assuming that if she was wandering around the hallway alone, she had a good reason to be. This was one thing that Brynn found advantageous when trying to explore. Most people didn’t ask any questions, so she seldom got stopped when she was trying to learn something new.