Bright Star did not answer the question. Instead, she shook her head as if she’d been preoccupied by something. She took a deep, cleansing breath then opened the wooden box drawer by the refrigerator, the one with worn polish and a dark brass knob. Inside was a knife. It had a yellow clear plastic handle and a glinting blade. At Bright Star’s nod, Point came over to stand next to her. Bright Star waited. Then she removed the knife and went to sit at the kitchen table.
They sat at the table that way for hours. There had been long, stretching silent moments. There had been moments when Point had been compelled to confide in Bright Star in a way she had never confided in anyone. And of course, Bright Star had taken moments to speak reverently of Rush. There was always the knife nestled there in her lap.
She could already feel this change inside of her. She knew that Bright Star’s Shift had started it, but she didn’t know what was propelling it forward faster than the speed of light. This was a transformation from skeptic into believer? From fatalistic despair to overwhelming hope, to the knowledge that she had received a confirmation she didn’t even comprehend. Where did these answers come from, the answers that explained so much of her life? The one hundred percent confidence with which Bright Star could tell her that all would be well if she only chose this path. All would be well. Everything in her life would be good if only she surrendered herself to this new truth. Point was willing, and Point believed.
She swallowed, then gave a reassuring look to Bright Star. She didn’t want to appear more nervous or afraid than Bright Star expected. She wanted to ignore the quivering in her stomach. She wanted Bright Star to know that she believed. But there was the pain. Point had never been one to tolerate much pain. As a child, she had screamed for hours until her throat went raw and her muscles ached from skinning her knee after she took a tumble from a bike. She’d never in life ridden a bike since. She couldn’t take the pain. She kept telling herself this was worth it. Besides, she kept telling herself she was going to die anyway. What did this matter? What did this one little cut matter? She swallowed again. She didn’t know if she could do it.
In the end, she couldn’t. “Bright Star,” Point pleaded, “please don’t hate me. Please don’t send me away. I believe! I do! Just don’t send me away.”
“Why would I hate you or send you away?” the smaller woman inquired.
“I don’t know if… Can you do it for me?”
Bright Star scooted back and away from Point, shaking her head. She pressed a hand over her heart and her mouth opened. No words came out. She just kept shaking her head.
“Please,” Point begged.
“No!” Bright Star piped abruptly. “I couldn’t. He may see it is as my doing, not your willing sacrifice, not your faith. No. I can’t.”
“But…”
“I can’t, Point,” she reiterated with a firm tone.
For a moment, the older woman just sat at the table with the knife in hand. Then, in a quavering voice she asked, “Will it hurt?”
Bright Star didn’t say anything. “It will. I know from time and time again that it will hurt. But, I have grown to welcome the pain. It is my sacrifice, my appreciation for a gift that always reaps a reward that is incomprehensible to one who has not experienced it. There are no words to describe how you will feel, the good that you will be doing, the global importance of this one assignment.”
“It will hurt,” Point nodded, pressing the tip of the knife to her finger and twirled it. She focused on the tiny spot of crimson, the pain. That tiny discomfort could be reasoned away when she concentrated. It wouldn’t be like that if she were dying. But, a wry and bitter smirk settled on her lips, she had already been dying before she was saved. She sat up quickly and started to suggest—
Bright Star abruptly interrupted her. “If you are not conscious when he saves you, you won’t feel your rebirth. You won’t know it like I know it. It will be there, but you won’t recognize it for what it is. You won’t believe in it. It won’t be like last time.”
“I believe—”
“You won’t believe in it,” Bright Star insisted. “You must experience the destruction of your rebellion and pride, then the revolution within as you are—”
“Rebuilt,” Point finished.
“Reborn,” Bright Star corrected. Then after studying Point’s face, she sighed doggedly. “You don’t have to do it. There is another way. We have a mutual friend, you and I. You will have your time later.” She patted Point on the back of her hand supportively.
The Cleric
Thaddeus Okwenuba stayed home from work on Thursday. He told Katie Ann, his boss’s administrative assistant he was sick. She’d giggled at him and said something fatuous about playing hooky. Of course, he’d probably never told a more obvious lie. He smiled to himself wryly. Thad rarely missed work because he was physically ill. There were plenty enough other times when he had to miss for other reasons, so he couldn’t waste the days. He never even called in sick. He was proud to announce to anybody in the firm that he had contaminated the office with the flu every year for the past six. Nope, his last hospital stay had been in a locked cell about 175 feet below ground. Now that had taken him off work a couple months ago, but the episode had been the only one in almost three years, and it had—luckily—happened during a planned two weeks of vacation. He really wanted his deposit from that cruise back.
True enough, Thad had lied to Katie Ann, but he hadn’t known what else to say. He had been at a complete and total loss. Was he supposed to tell her that he couldn’t come to work because Frankie wasn’t there? Nope, he couldn’t say that. After all, he did have his pride. Everybody in that building knew Frankie Monnish was not interested. The other problem was that no one else seemed to be worried about Frankie’s absence in the least. He’d made mention of her absence and Katie Ann had just raised one eyebrow as if he was only worried because of his futile and obvious crush. Granted, she’d told them all that she was going to take some time off, and as the boss she had that right. However, Frankie had planned time off more instances than Thad could count, but she had never, not once, actually stayed out of the office.
He saw her last at the investors’ meeting. Frankie had seen them all off at the hotel three nights before. She’d left a message at the hotel telling them that she was going out of town for a few days, and later, she’d left word with Katie Ann about her impromptu vacation. Rather than be concerned, they—idiots all of them—thought this was good. Katie Ann speculated that Frankie’s doctor had recommended she get away from the stress for a while. The fact she had even seen a doctor caused Thad to have mild palpitations. But he knew a doctor’s recommendation would not have stopped her from coming in, either. Not with the new money they’d generated. She’d be all over planning its disbursement. Other people might have seen the investment as a time to celebrate and relax before getting down to business. Frankie saw it as the most important time for strategic planning. Frankie did not take time off work. According to Katie Ann, their fearless leader wasn’t expected back into the office until that following Monday. Thaddeus knew he wouldn’t return to work before that day.
So why did he sense something was terribly wrong? That something was completely out of whack in the cosmos? In truth, he didn’t know how staying home from work was going to help unless he went out searching for her. But he wouldn’t do that, either. No matter what was wrong, Frankie would not appreciate him seeking her out like some love-starved kid with the excuse of verifying her well-being. Instead, she would smile at him and patronize him the way that always seemed to get him hard. What the hell kind of reaction was that? Frankie was probably fine. Frankie was always fine. Thad desperately needed to believe that Frankie was fine. He really didn’t know what he’d do if she wasn’t. Really. No… really. He didn’t know what he’d do, because he’d always been a bit… erratic. He made a fist, then opened his hand and looked at his palm. There was a small, oval-shaped indention in the middle. He exhaled heavily.
Around six in the evening, already dark outside, Thaddeus considered the project waiting for him at work. Last week, yesterday even, it had seemed important. It didn’t anymore. There was something happening, something coming soon that made work unimportant. He didn’t know what that something was, but it was near, and it had something to do with Frankie Monnish. He knew it because every time he thought of her, his palm started to itch and he could feel his hair stand on end, his body grow hot and his hearing become hypersensitive. It was like electricity everywhere, assaulting every one of his senses. It was a feeling he rarely felt, but when he did, it usually foreshadowed catastrophic events in his life. It was a feeling he had told Sandoval he never got without that damn rock. And it had been true, until Frankie left. It was the hum of High Energy.
He needed to know where she was. Since the day he’d met her, he’d needed to be near her. He’d accepted a middle of the road offer with her company right out of his PhD program for that reason alone. There had been plenty of companies that would have paid more, but he stayed. Thaddeus had stayed with the company and made every move possible to get into her department. He’d been working at a desk in the same lab with her for the past eighteen months.
Schroedinger’s cat told him that he wouldn’t be at his desk that next day. He either would, or he wouldn’t. He wasn’t there then, but tomorrow… He wouldn’t be there. His quantum state would cease to be a mixture. He smiled at that thought. Stupid physics experiment. It wasn’t Schroedinger’s cat, an experiment that naively challenged fate; it was intuition, plain and simple. He’d learned long ago not to deny his intuition when it was this strong.
The center of his palm began to itch again. It always did when he felt the call of High Energy. He craved the small, smooth rock the way heroin addicts craved their next fix. He had never been considered a strong Shifter. Actually, he wasn’t even sure if they considered him a Shifter at all, since he had such little control over his High Energy. What had he seen on that orientation film? It had mentioned human focal points, or some such nonsense. But those were only people who could harness High Energy to be used by others. That wasn’t exactly his situation. He could use it, he just couldn’t control it. And he couldn’t use it without that damn rock. God, how he hated that thing even as his hand flexed again and he desired it almost more than he did the woman he loved.
Thad had never exhibited any predisposition towards High Energy until he was about fifteen, when he found the rock while hiking on a class field trip. In retrospect, it had been the worst day of his life. The defining moment that changed him into the man he was. Just like that, he had found the rock, and attacked. He hadn’t had a moment to process what was happening to him or to even get a grip on what he was feeling. No. The High Energy exploded through him, through veins and pores, it raged through him. The elemental reaction blinded him, deafened him, choked him, then burst from him in a brutal force that took control over everything. Violence spawned from rage greater than he had ever felt before in life. His body seemed to recall every slight, every moment in which he had felt cowardice stifle his words and actions. Every time in life when he watched something he wanted go to someone else flashed in his mind. Every time when he had been ignored, forgotten, or discounted, every time he’d felt someone take a look at him and come to the wrong conclusion, everything fueled his primal fury.
He didn’t kill Matthew. Matthew told him afterward that he wished Thad had. He would never be able to walk or see properly again. He would never be able to function independently again.
Thaddeus hadn’t even gotten into trouble, although he didn’t find that out until later. It took six grown men to wrestle his small, wiry body to the ground and sedate him. When he came to, his mother was peering at him and silently weeping as she held his hand in hers. His wrists had been pinned down at his sides by chrome fastenings with a company name embedded in them in white enamel. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember the name of the manufacturer and couldn’t figure out why it even mattered to him.
“Is Matthew mad at me?” Thad asked. He already felt like he knew the answer. Matthew didn’t even like to be touched. He cried like a girl when he was hit. Matthew hated him.
“No,” his mother told him as she sat at his side and stroked his hair. It wasn’t until later that Thad understood the extent of what he had done to Matthew. It wasn’t that he didn’t remember the episode. No, it played in his mind over and over and over again. He couldn’t get it to stop. But somehow, his brain could not accept that he had done those things. He could not reconcile the violence with his desire to please people and his true faith in harmony. He had always been a mild-mannered, calm boy. He hated to hear people yell. He couldn’t imagine that he had done extreme violence to his friend. Even as he struggled with it, though, he remembered all the malicious feelings that had taken hold of him. Those were things he had truly felt, but the mechanism that reasoned through those feelings and kept them from overcoming him had been dismantled by the little winking rock he found on that trail.
Not long after he woke, a doctor came in and released him. The man was tall and blond with thin features. He didn’t talk much, but he watched Thaddeus in a way that made him uncomfortable. It wasn’t that the doctor seemed rude, cruel or dishonest. Thaddeus just had a feeling that Dr. Randall Sandoval was a man who had already accepted his own death. An odd thought for a child, but he felt it nonetheless.
His mother hesitated for a moment before grabbing him and squeezing too hard.
“Where does he have to go now?” she asked.
“You can take him home, Ms. Okwenuba.”
“Home?” she repeated in disbelief. She didn’t even move, she just watched the doctor in her wary émigrée fashion.
“Yes, home,” the doctor told her. “We’ll come by to pick him up tomorrow.”
“Pick him up?”
They tested him and tested him and tested him. For months, they had tested Thad and found nothing. No residual High Energy, not even the smallest trace of Talent. His eyes crossed and he got a headache every time they tried to force him to Shift. They had been very near to calling what had happened on that field trip a fluke. That is until they decided to sign his belongings back over to him. They’d been confiscated for testing right after the incident.
By the time the staff was able to sedate him again, the boy had nearly ripped out the heart of the nurse holding his bag. Again, he had to be subdued. Again, they put him through test after test after test. He failed all of them. He felt like a bee. They weren’t supposed to be able to fly, but they could. He had no High Energy of his own, but he could Shift. Dr. Sandoval himself came to check Thad every single day and was nice, however, most of the comfort he got during that unsure time was from his mother’s near ubiquitous presence. He knew she had to work, and he asked about it. Dr. Sandoval had been the one to assure him that they would find a way to take care of his mother even though Thaddeus was not a part of the Service family. That knowledge had frightened him. They wouldn’t take care of him forever if he couldn’t do any of the things they asked. For that reason, he demanded the rock again. He needed them to take care of his hardworking mother as promised.
Thaddeus had felt the presence of the thing when they brought it in locked in a box. He couldn’t reach for it with his mind as he had been instructed to do time and time again, but he knew it was there. It took a huge effort to rip his attention from the box and realize the scientists were leaving him in the locked room, again. But he did lift his gaze when he realized there was another kid about his age, maybe younger, in the room. He was shorter than Thad, but certainly more muscular and fit. He had blond hair and eyes that were light brown. He was fresh faced and he seemed friendly.
“What are you doing here?” Thaddeus asked him.
“I’m about to give you the rock in this box.”
Thad’s eyes widened as they focused on the child waiting quietly to the side. He heard his own panicked voice, “No!”
&
nbsp; “Hey.” The other boy held up a hand. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay! You don’t know what it makes me do.”
“Sure, I do. They let me see footage.” The kid had the nerve to smile at him. “I’m telling you it’s okay. My name is Jackson, and I’m a part of the test.”
“What part?”
“I’m here to tire you out.” The boy grinned again. “Randall will probably want to record things like how long and how much it takes for your High Energy to diminish.” Then he took the rock out. With another grin, he said, “It’s okay. I’m Precocial.”
After the attendants and Dr. Sandoval left the room. Without a shadow of hesitation, Jackson gave Thad the rock.
When Thad was lying on the ground breathing so hard it made his chest hurt, he said, “I don’t know if my mother knows what I’ve done. I don’t know if she would understand this.”
“My mother would not be happy if she knew what I just did, either.” Jackson laughed out loud.
They did not become best friends, or maybe they did. It was strange. For sure, they had something in common. They were both the rules and the exceptions of the Parameters of Shift. They would also both be experiments for Randall Sandoval.
Over the years, Sandoval and his team would conceive and test theories about why Thad’s High Energy manifested itself through violence, but none of them would be conclusive. He would continue to cross paths with Jackson, but unlike Jackson, he was allowed to live a normal life outside of the Service. He changed schools and cities. No one knew him or what he had done. As long as he was without the rock he was normal. But every now and then, the Service would contact him and they would give it back, and the nightmare would start all over again.
Bright Star Page 13
