Prodigy

by Dave Kalstein

  You’re done, old boy. Game, set, and match, if I do say so mah-self.

  11

  The plasma ions on Goldsmith’s Nature & Co. window broadcasted a dark blue sky dotted with white stars. The moon hung in the corner, so ivory and bright that it hurt the eyes to look at it, as if this lunar body were just another ambitious young planet that dreamed of one day giving the constellations themselves a run for their celestial money. The display was artificially digitized, but Goldsmith was grateful for it nonetheless: staying awake for a Stimulum-enhanced seventy-two hours could drive a specimen batty if he didn’t keep himself anchored in something resembling a reliable time frame. Morning, noon, and night must still exist, even if they had no effect on you or your productivity. The Stimulum formula managed to transform debilitating exhaustion and fatigue into a mild case of jet lag wherein time itself became an imaginary friend, an apparition that helped one keep his bearings. Sleep, of course, was not necessary, but it always helped to be aware of the fact that yes, it was in fact one o’clock in the morning and no, you were not the least bit tired.

  “Ready?” asked Camilla, who was seated on the opposite side of the table in Goldsmith’s dorm room. Placed in between them was a black octagonal flash card projector.

  “Sure,” said Goldsmith. She pointed a small remote control and hit a button. The octagon produced a hologram of a protein structure with seven prongs extending from a diamond-shaped bulb. It glimmered and rotated in midair. Through its hazy gray body, he looked at her. She looked at the timer on the remote control, waiting for him to identify the projection. Camilla was headed to Yale next year, having won a spot in its prestigious creative writing program. He wanted to join her. Not in the program—Goldsmith was more of a science-and-numbers guy—but at the college itself. He casually floated the idea back in autumn, but she went cold on him as usual.

  “Another four years of being number two to you?” she’d said through a thin smile. “No thank you.” Then she went back to her homework, mumbling something about visiting him in Cambridge before the winter chill set in. Goldsmith smiled good-naturedly, made a crack about Yale being a safety school for Harvard, and wondered if that line about being number two was sarcasm or the real thing.

  “Five seconds,” said Camilla, her eyes still fixed on the flash card apparatus’s timer.

  “Minocycline and iron five,” said Goldsmith, focusing on the protein. She didn’t look up, but hit the remote control’s button once again and it created a new hologram. This one looked like four oak trees sans leaves in November sprouting out of a twenty-sided pyramid.

  * * *

  Last August—the night before the Selmer-Dubonnet test—they ran into each other up in the atrium along a path by the river. The other finalists isolated themselves around the tower to gear up for whatever myriad horrors awaited them the following morning: rumors about the test always ran wild and tended to be more than a little absurd, touching on everything from no-holds-barred kickboxing matches to lying in a coffin full of live snakes. Camilla and Goldsmith never had much to say to each other before that evening, but she asked him to join her for a stroll anyway—she was polite, saying she was fretting the coming morning, couldn’t sleep, and just wanted some company to pass the time. He was jumpy too, and grateful for any kind of camaraderie. He walked silently by her side as the reputed purebred ice princess of Stanbury nervously rambled on and on about everything: her absentee father, her mother who was having an affair with another former specimen, how Camilla always wanted a big brother to protect her, how the tiny goldfish she bought for twenty-five cents somehow stayed alive for seven years and grew to be the size of her hand, how her roommate Miss Eliza Anne Petersmarck farted relentlessly in her sleep. They stopped to take in the view near a digitized wooden fence that overlooked an illusory cornfield and a computer-generated red barn in the distance.

  “I should probably shut up,” Camilla suddenly said. “I can be such a … dork sometimes, you know?”

  No, Goldsmith remembered thinking, Stansbury’s very own gray-eyed Athena a dork? Never. “I’m nervous about tomorrow, too,” he said out loud. “You’re going to win. Everyone thinks so.”

  She turned to him. A single lock of long brown hair fell loose, lightly clinging to the outline of her face. Camilla looked down and tucked it behind her ear. “Well, what if I don’t?”

  “I…”

  “And what if you don’t win, Mr. Goldsmith?”

  “Then someone else will. Probably you.”

  “If that happens, will you think of yourself as a failure?”

  “No.”

  “Would you think of me as a failure if I don’t win?” she asked. Her eyes moved quickly back and forth, scanning his face. Goldsmith knew he wanted to say no but faltered: being valedictorian was, as far as the school’s specimens (himself included) were concerned, an integral part of the legend of Miss Camilla Moore II. She read his thoughts immediately. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re not the only one.”

  “No, Miss Moore,” he said. “Really. I wouldn’t think of you as a failure.” Then she smiled, raised herself up on the balls of her feet like a ballerina and kissed him on the cheek. Goldsmith glanced around quickly, wondering if anyone saw and if they’d get in trouble, maybe even somehow get disqualified from the test the following day. Her lips lingered for a moment and lightly drifted down the side of his face as she pulled away. They smelled like cherries and made him think he could handle disqualification just fine, eleven years of hard work notwithstanding.

  “I’m holding you to that,” she said.

  “Go ahead.”

  Camilla then looked up at the artificial moon and blushed. “God,” she giggled. “I am such a dork.” And then she headed down the path, one foot kicking the heel of the other and a light, fairy-like sashay in her step brushing up a cloud of digital dust.

  Somehow, watching her go, he already knew that it would be a long time before he and Camilla ever got back to this place they discovered in the atrium, just a guy and a girl talking, getting to know each other like they were regular kids. His conditioned, Harvard-bound brain told him to act like it was no big thing. His orphan’s heart told him it was the only thing.

  * * *

  “Heteracyl-chloride,” answered Goldsmith as he watched the rotating flash card image on the table between them. Camilla pursed her lips and hit the remote control one more time. Another shape popped up. It looked like jagged bits of orange pasta linked by pencils. “Amino six and trylo…” She dropped the remote to the table with a clatter and leaned over, flipping off the projector.

  “That’s three errors in a row, Mr. Goldsmith. You’re not focused.”

  He looked at her. His heart started to beat up into his throat. Just tell her. “I quit today,” he said.

  “Quit what?”

  “Valedictorian duties.”

  “What?”

  “I guess … after twelve years I’m finally ready to leave this place.”

  “They’re letting you quit?”

  “I didn’t give them much of a choice.”

  She fixed him with her patented cold gaze. “It’s not going to be that easy, Mr. Goldsmith. Think about the consequences of your actions.”

  “You don’t think I already have?”

  “No.”

  “Well, Miss Moore, that’s just—”

  “Because if you had, you’d have realized that the entire structure of Stansbury society is predicated upon the existence of a valedictorian to inspire and lead four thousand specimens,” she explained with all of the assurance of a true believer. As if what she was saying was the most obvious thing in the world. “The administration relies on that individual to instill order, to enforce policy. If that position is vacant—especially if it’s rejected by the chosen specimen—it sends a signal to everyone inside this tower that there is something wrong with our way of life. It could indicate a fundamental problem with Stansbury itself.” She paused to look at him, seeming
to be searching for signs of waning belief in the gospel of Stansbury in his eyes. “It could also indicate a problem inherent in the method of selecting the top specimen, or, perhaps worse, a behavioral anomaly within the specimen himself, and, since all specimens are brought up and engineered by the same system, this would bring us back to the existence of a fundamental flaw in the institution. The only thing that can follow is chaos, anarchy, or both.”

  “It’s been twelve hours since I informed the headmaster of my decision. Everything’s normal.”

  “Because they haven’t made that information public yet. The masses haven’t had the opportunity to react. Or…” Camilla broke off eye contact with him and looked down at her feet.

  “Or what?”

  “Or they don’t plan on allowing you to quit in the first place.”

  Goldsmith stared at her. It always struck him as funny that Camilla wanted to be a writer. Listening to her postulate and extrapolate logic so articulately always made him believe she’d be more suited for a position on the Supreme Court, or perhaps as a dictator of a third world nation. Didn’t a photographic memory like hers get in the way of the imagination necessary to create the fantasies found in literature? To her, a horse would always be a horse. A vividly recalled, extremely detailed horse, no doubt, but ultimately realistic and based in fact. Goldsmith always thought a writer needed to have the capacity for error, to remember that horse well enough to craft a picture, but simultaneously forget just enough detail to be able to imagine it sprouting wings and soaring up into the sky of a world unlike our own. Sitting there listening to Miss Moore’s parsing of his situation, he couldn’t imagine her ever disassociating herself from practicality long enough to act on impulse, on feeling, and not pure utility. He glanced at the stack of books peeking out of her bag on the floor and smiled: dog-eared novels by John Grisham, Stephen King, Helen Fielding, and something by an author whose name actually seemed to be Plum Sykes.

  “You’re still reading that twentieth-century shlock?” he asked. She immediately grabbed the bag and zipped it up, blushing.

  “It’s none of your business what I’m reading.”

  “I’ve looked at that stuff before. Isn’t the prose style a little banal? How can someone with your mind not find each chapter utterly predictable? Or maybe that’s exactly why you like those books.”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “I’m just suggesting that maybe even Camilla 2.0 likes to escape her workload to have some mindless fun every now and then.”

  “I have my motives.”

  “What are you reading now?”

  “Something called Catcher in the Rye. It’s about a young man who runs away from home.”

  “Why?”

  “Frankly, this is what I find so confusing. He seems upset about something, but never specifies what it might be. He harbors unexplained animosity toward the world despite his stable, nuclear family’s comfortable economic status. He deems the people and institutions around him to be quote-unquote ‘phony’ when they are merely fulfilling the functions society has assigned them. This neurotic behavior is the central reason why I find the book, well, so implausible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because neither I nor anyone I know of a similar age has ever felt anything remotely similar.”

  Goldsmith tried to suppress a smile. Angst. She’s the smartest specimen he’s ever met and she’s got no idea what it means to be angst ridden. A petulant, angst-ridden teenager was as foreign to her as an extraterrestrial from another galaxy. “How are you ever going to be a writer?” he blurted. “You’re too stuck on how things are. Not how they could be. Or ought to be.”

  “I fail to see how my being a writer has anything to do with the central point of our larger discussion, which would be the situation regarding your valedictorian’s duties.”

  “But … what would you write about?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I’m only asking.”

  “Specimens aren’t exactly big on life experience,” she said, glancing in the direction of her secret book stash.

  “That’s my point.”

  “I’ll probably end up writing about this place, unfortunately.” Camilla shifted her gaze downward, seemingly ashamed by this confession. “That’s why they’re so good at making us what we are, Mr. Goldsmith. They make us trade in all the stories we could’ve told for this one, long, twelve-year epic on their terms. And by the time we’re finished, Stansbury is the only language we know how to speak.”

  He reached across the table and took her hand in his. It was cool and dry. He could see the red flashes of her fingernails in the gaps between his fingers. They looked like buried, shining jewels aching to be unearthed. Camilla looked up at him. For a moment, Goldsmith caught her—that dorky, giggling Athena in the holographic mirage of a field at night—and he smiled at the glimpse of this old friend. She did not smile back.

  There was a knock at the door. Camilla pulled her hand back from his and stood up. He followed suit. After a single beep, the door opened and President Lang entered, her key card in hand. She looked at them standing at attention before her and smiled.

  “Mr. Goldsmith and Miss Moore. Studying hard?” They nodded in unison. “For which progression?”

  “Biochemical Compounds and Analysis,” said Goldsmith. Lang smiled again, studying him. He glanced over at the Nature & Co. window that hung next to her on the wall. A cloud passed the moon, eating up an awkward ten seconds of silence.

  “Miss Moore, would you mind excusing us?” she finally said.

  “By all means, ma’am.” Camilla picked up her books and headed for the door, not making eye contact with Goldsmith before she exited. Goldsmith looked at the president, watching her gaze as it passed over the contents of his room.

  “Professor Harking showed us a clip of that talk show you did yesterday,” he said, trying to keep the nerves out of his voice, “when you defended the school. Sometimes I feel like no one understands what this place is about—much less outsiders—and somehow, you made it seem so simple. Like good versus evil.”

  She gave him a warm smile, the kind she would never have betrayed before the cameras, lest it be interpreted as a sign of weakness or sentimentality. “I think she likes you, Mr. Goldsmith.”

  “Uh … beg your pardon?” Goldsmith felt his face erupting in a burning shade of red right before her very important, very official eyes. President Lang slowly raised her hand up toward his head. If Goldsmith did not know better, he would have thought she was about to stroke his hair or cheek. She stopped short and smoothed out her own hair instead, making it seem like the most natural motion in the world.

  “Well, Miss Moore, of course,” she smiled. “Time goes by so quickly around this place. Just when I get used to familiar faces on the young specimens it seems that they’ve suddenly become adults while I was occupied with some staff meeting.”

  “Um, yes, ma’am.”

  “But back to that broadcast you were shown. Yes, good and evil are precisely what we’re dealing with. Progress versus stagnation.” Her smile disappeared and she established eye contact, indicating that it was high time to get down to business. “Now, I am aware of the conversations you had today with Captain Gibson and the headmaster, but…” Her normally confident voice trailed off into an uncharacteristically stammering muck.

  “Ma’am?”

  “There’s been an incident, Mr. Goldsmith.”

  “What kind of an incident?”

  “A very grave one. Rest assured that I have no problem with the decision you have made and do not hold it against you. But nonetheless, as president of Stansbury, it is my responsibility to ask for your help.” She turned toward the door.

  “Can you elaborate?” He asked as he watched her hand on the doorknob. Just before she pulled it open, Lang looked back at him over her shoulder.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Mr. William Winston Cooley.”

  Goldsmith grabbe
d his blazer and followed her out the door toward the elevator bank. On the way it occurred to him that sacrificing all of the friendships he could have had over the years for this one shot at the punk hero of Guernica was a trade he was more than willing to make.

  12

  Pete’s watch read five A.M. as he sat at his desk inside the spare guest suite on Level 7 provided to him by the Stansbury public affairs office and sipped a nutrient-enriched coffee from the cafeteria, wondering if it was really going to make him smarter like everyone said it would. The Nature & Co. window on the wall showed a broadcast of a sunny field of daisies in what looked like the Napa Valley. Pete grinned to himself and reckoned that the abnormal success of this strange school was maybe 25 percent actual genius and 75 percent the power of positive thinking. Something about the famed specimens—the focused stares plastered on their faces, perhaps—made his neck prickle. The way their uniforms were never dirty and how they always seemed to know when to applaud in the coliseum, before marching off like soldiers in unison down the tower’s cold hallways, just plain freaked him out. He’d never seen so many tall, beautiful children in one place at one time. Twelve-year-old girls looked down on him in the hallways. Nerdy chemistry whizzes had the physiques to stand up to any number of bullies that ruled the parking lots of the proletarian public schools he had become familiar with over the years. But it was those weird gazes that stuck in his mind; they put the kids somewhere between the lifelike androids in campy sci-fi movies and the budding ubermensch youth of some fascist regime. And then they’d spring the cure for cancer on you. Say what you will about Stansbury, Pete mused, but they, like Mussolini, made the proverbial trains run on time.