Dominy exploded out of his chair, standing nose to chest with Pandor.
All the Alliance members stared at Dominy.
“A little sensitive?” Cal stood next to Pandor, in Dominy’s face. The two boys were similar in size, but Pandor was soft, everywhere. Cal poked Dominy. “Be careful or you’ll earn your victim status.”
Stand tall. Dominy pounded the fragile table with his fist. “The only thing we know for sure is that the Meritocracy is crumbling and outsiders are disappearing. He caught that chemical smell coming from Pandor. “The reforms are Sergian’s and nobody has the will to stop him. We’ve all tried to question our masters. Nobody will unless—”
“Unless…?” Pandor stretched out the word as if afraid of the answer.
Dominy stepped onto his chair’s seat. He shifted his body weight, balancing, as the flimsy chair shook spastically. He paused for attention and jumped, his sandals slapping hard on the floor. “We stop him.” The words hung in the air with flecks of dust.
“We? Unless we stop him?” Pandor balled his pudgy fists. “I thought this was a club. Are you on another all-nighter? We’re worms! Decidedly. What can worms do that masters can’t change?”
“Not can’t—won’t.”
Pandor pressed his soft belly against Dominy. “We’re just students.”
Dominy held his ground. “Truth knows no age.”
So did Pandor. “Quoting the cadaver again.”
Dominy’s jaw clenched. He glared and pumped his fist at Pandor.
Genna jumped in between the boys. “Shockingly, the Dreamer’s right. If we don’t, nobody else will. But what do we do?” The chemical smell hadn’t dissipated. Dominy wanted to bury his nose in her robe, her fresh robe.
“Hey, we could fight them.” Cal punched one of the hanging lamps, sending it on an elliptical orbit. “I wouldn’t mind going after the head of council.”
Dominy dodged the swaying lamp. “We do more than fight.”
The room froze, words evaporated.
Dominy looked into their frightened faces, accentuated by shape-shifting shadows, and backed away from the table. With the release of his weight on the warped table, styluses shot into the air and came down rolling. “We revolt!”
The outsiders stared back at him, bug-eyed. Even Genna was stunned.
“We, outsiders, are under siege. The Meritocracy is under siege. And the solution?” Dominy paused, extending his arms toward them. “We eight worms, we must seize the leadership of Aspiria. We have no choice. He’s getting rid of us outsiders, one at a time.”
Cal laughed. “Easy for you to say. You’re one outsider not leaving anytime soon.”
“Huh?”
Cal stuck out his stomach and imitated Sergian. “You’re the face of New Aspiria. He can’t get rid of you.”
“That’ll change soon. I’m putting in twenty-hour days, multiple subjects.”
Genna grimaced at Dominy. “You’re building dreams in the sky again. Actions talk. Words—your words—not so much.”
“Here are our actions. First, we find out what’s happening to outsiders. Save ourselves. Then we save the Meritocracy.”
“Has your brain decomposed into worm food?” Pandor’s voice rose an octave. “What chance do worms stand against leadership?”
“Clever, Pandor. Worms can’t stand.” Genna turned to Dominy. “But how? We have no rights.”
No rights? Dominy groped for the elusive answer. “Problems have solutions.” That was another of his mother’s favorite sayings. He searched Genna’s eyes and nodded. “Yes, worms have no rights—except one. Actually, not a right but an obligation. According to Aspirian Code, we’re obligated to use our minds, to search for the truth. They can’t prevent us from using our minds. We wield our only weapons—our brains.”
Pandor shook his head.
Genna crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Crazy Dreamer.”
Cal stuck out his thumb and turned his hand down.
“Either we’re all in or we don’t go forward.” Dominy turned to his oldest friend. “You’ve been quiet.”
Tears filled Nalton’s eyes. He bowed his head and rolled up his right sleeve. He twisted his hand and displayed the inside of his forearm. “I never wanted to show this again, to anyone.” Thick scar tissue bubbled up from his frail arm.
Dominy stepped in closer, the other outsiders too. “Oh, Divinity, what happened? Is that, is that the letter M?”
Nalton, his eyes red and glistening, nodded. “I was branded at age six. The M stands for Malformed.”
Genna gently rubbed her hand over his mutilated skin.
“A virus, a nasty nervous system virus, swept through P7. It was eradicated only after Aspiria designed a vaccine. Too late for me.” Nalton hobbled over to the book stacks. “The Meritocracy means everything to me.” He swept his finger across a row of ancient books in a glissando motion. “Sure, I get stared at here, but only because students are curious—they’ve never seen anyone like me. But back home, I was a freak. Judged by my handicap. I won’t go back.”
“My opinion? All of our worlds are horrible.” Genna turned to Dominy. “Sure, you’re crazy.” She surveyed the basement.” This is crazy. But let’s do it.”
Dominy smiled, but a cold sweat crawled down his arms. “If you’re in, there’s no turning back. Anyone out?”
Faint creaks of the floorboards came from the outsiders shifting their weight from foot to foot.
“Okay, then, I’ll need help. From everyone.”
They nodded, warily.
“First, I need someone to teach me how to access the Data Center.”
Cal laughed. “Access? You mean hack.”
“It’s not hacking. There are no restrictions on data access.” Not yet.
Genna pointed at Pandor. “Any coding issues, he’s your go-to hacker.”
Pandor took an aggressive step forward and raised his fist over his head. Dominy jumped back. Pandor grinned, flattened his palm and pressed up on a sagging ventilation duct. “I’ll do it.”
Dominy and the others sighed.
“Don’t look so surprised, everyone. I know I’m cautious. But if I’m in, I’m in a hundred percent.” Pandor nodded at Nalton. “I can’t go home either.” He nabbed Dominy’s notepad. “Still, I can’t have any of this traced back to me. I’ll drop this off in your cell when I’m done. I’ll set it up so that in Study Dome 1A you can access the Data and Simulation Center and the Dome’s laser system. Just use plain language commands from there.”
“Okay, let’s meet at Dome 1A.” Dominy turned to Cal. “We’ll need some muscle at the doors. “Genna, I’ll need you to go with me to opening day of the Games. I’ll explain later. Nalton, you snoop around for clues on this infamous Lucean and that ancient history pamphlet.”
Revolt? Was it ridiculous? Dominy raised his gaze to the WA members. “Are you willing to give your ultimate effort? Who’s with us? Who’s with the Revolution!” He wrote thick letters with his finger on a dusty partition: W. A. R. Worm. Alliance. Revolution.
Chapter Twelve
Dominy sat on a high-back swivel chair in the center of Study Dome 1A before dawn. Streams of mathematical equations cascaded down the dome’s curved walls in thirty-six sectors. He slowly scanned the thirty-fifth from top to bottom. He closed his eyes, concentrated and rotated ten degrees.
“Another all-nighter?”
Dominy opened his eyes. “What time is it?”
Nalton shook his head. “Very early. Or very late? I guess it’s all relative.” He chuckled and turned to a door at the far end of the dome. “The Alliance is here.”
Dominy nodded, scanned the thirty-sixth sector and closed his eyes. “I imagine the Dome as my brain. I’m compartmentalizing everything in my mind for storage and future retrieval. Using a mnemonic system for recovery.”
The two boys walked over to a large sunken performance arena in the middle of the dome. Dominy tapped his notepad. The building’s clamshell cover
opened and the glass dome glimmered with the twinkling stars of predawn. Uncovered, the dome reminded him of his old ash-globe toy—with a quick shake, that half globe would transform into a spewing volcano. He imagined molten lava flow suffocating the WAR team if they failed.
Nalton pulled out a stylus and wrote the words Statements and Reasons on an electronic white board. “I’ll be going up against Matham in the prelims of Math Proofs. He said he’s submitting a wild one, the only clue he gave me was that it had something to do with infinity.”
Over at one of the activity centers that encircled the perimeter of the dome, Genna examined reproductions of famous statues. In the adjacent station, Cal and Pandor leaned against the ten-centimeter-diameter copper tubing, studying the control module of a scaled-down model of the particle accelerator. The other Alliance members were scattered about the building studying and researching.
Genna, her skin patched white with marble dust, skipped over to the arena and clapped, sending a plume of particles in the air. “Nice proof, Nalton.” Cal, Pandor and the others followed her to the arena. “The Games are coming!”
Dominy smiled. “As a kid, I read about the stars, dreaming one day I’d become a champion.” The Aspirian Games, where dreams became reality and winners became legends. “They can’t exile legends, right?”
Genna flipped her cascading hair to the side. “No First has ever won an Individual Games championship.”
Stand tall. “Maybe not, but no one’s heard my entry into the finals of Music Composition.”
“Tah-tee-tah-tah-tee.” Genna hummed a few bars. “That the one?”
Pandor popped his head up and squinted at Genna.
She skipped back over to the sculpturing activity station and punched the shoulder of a male training model that bore a striking resemblance to Dominy. “But with your track record, Dreamer, you might not get out of prelims.”
Dominy tapped his notepad and thin streaks of light showered down along the curvature of the dome’s walls.
Genna shifted her head around playfully as if dodging falling rocks. “Awesome, a simulated meteor shower.”
“Pandor’s a hacking genius.” Dominy grinned and strutted over to Pandor. “Hey, great work on the programming.” He bit his lip. “I-I was wrong about you and, well, I haven’t apologized, and, uh, thank you.”
Pandor’s eyes lit and he slapped his heavy arm over Dominy’s shoulder in a best-friends gesture.
“C’mon, we need to do Alliance work.” Dominy pointed at the front of the Dome. “Cal, secure those doors with something.”
Cal surveyed the room. He shrugged, stripped out his robe belt, tied the door handles together and returned.
Genna laughed. “You’re easier on the eyes than the Dreamer.”
Dominy straightened his back and patted down his wild hair. “Let’s go, everyone.” They gathered in the performance arena. His hands trembled as he tapped his notepad. “I’m accessing the Data Center and showing colonized worlds.” The dome went dark. The twenty-five worlds glimmered, P1 at Dominy’s eye level and the other twenty-four cascading up toward the dome’s ceiling. “The holos are so lifelike.”
Pandor shrugged. “This is nothing. I was constrained by the hardware. Wait until you experience Marika SkyDome stadium where they play MetaMath. There, the images refresh at over a thousand times a second. It’s a mind freak-out.”
“Stellar. Now, let’s find out what happened to Petrece and Shalene.” He spoke into his notepad: “Show recent departures from Aspiria.” Two vibrating gold lines curved away from P1 and headed toward the ceiling. They struck P23.
Genna pointed at the distant planet. “Hey, that’s the Commonwealth’s headquarters.”
Dominy nodded. “Shalene said the Commonwealth had contacted her, said that someone wanted her shipped out.” His gaze darted repeatedly from the performance arena to the door.
Nalton popped a pebble in his mouth. “Was that the last thing she said to you?”
Dominy closed his eyes. “Her exact words were, Sergian needs to see me, posthaste. And I never spoke to her again.” He flashed a laser pen at P23. “So all outsiders are being shipped to P23?”
“We’re doomed, decidedly doomed.” Pandor’s face turned iron-gray and his eyes froze like the marble statues. The Hacker cowered next to copper tubing. “Doomed.”
Dominy waved his hand. “Not necessarily. Petrece and Shalene were exiled, supposedly, for cause: Shalene, a transgression, and Petrece, the low test scores.”
Streaks of reflected light off the tubing painted Pandor’s face rusty orange. He pointed up at P23. “It’s now run by despots. It’s a tyranny, a reign of terror.”
Dominy ran over and put his hand on Pandor’s forearm. “How do you know?”
“I came from there and—”
There was a knock on the door.
Dominy jerked back and gasped. He turned to Cal. “Keep it closed. I need to get more data.”
The knocking turned to banging.
Cal leaned against the doors with his broad back. “Hurry!”
Dominy typed away with shaky hands.
The doors rumbled against Cal’s weight. “Sounds like the whole academy’s out there. Hurry! I can’t hold them longer.”
“Done!” The dome lights went on. Dominy threw his notepad on an activity table.
Cal stepped away from the door.
Several Provisioners stormed the dome. A student trailed them.
“What’s going on?” Dominy’s heart rate rocketed. The sight reminded him of a militia drill on P9. “Matham?”
“I should be asking the same question.” Matham looked back at the door and shook his head, sending long bangs sweeping over his eyes. “We’ve been searching for someone.”
The veins in Dominy’s wrist thrummed. He and the other outsiders shuffled a couple of steps back. They shot furtive glances at each other.
Matham swung his arm down the line of outsiders, his forefinger extended. His finger stopped.
Pandor.
Matham swiped his bangs from his eyes. “Sergian, he says he needs to see you. Posthaste.”
Chapter Thirteen
The spacious second floor of the Mathematics Testing Center was filled with row after row of Firsts, all lined up in front of their own electronic white boards. Dominy glanced at the last calculus problem and scribbled the answer:
y(x,t) = 22 sin 2x cos 2t + 8 sin 6x cos 6t
He set his stylus down. Overhead, a telescopic camera lens whirred and extended. He looked up at the hardware and fluttered his fingers. I didn’t sleep through this one. He inhaled the foul smell of perspiration—stress-induced for sure—and coughed.
A bell chimed, ending the test. Dominy’s board flashed his score. He extended his arms over his head.
Genna skipped over from the adjacent row. “Let me guess, more stretching?”
“I’m off probation!”
A Provisioner descended upon him. “Watch the excessive celebrating.”
Everywhere, students were staring at their white boards and cheering. Dominy pointed at the celebrants and shrugged. The Provisioner leaned in and whispered, “I don’t recommend you doing it. Leadership has certain expectations.” She nodded at the surveillance cameras.
Dominy grimaced. Several students sauntered by, looked at the familiar face and pointed. “It’s the Victim.” One stopped and wrapped her arm around his shoulder. “You’ll do better next time.”
“I-I—never mind.” He wriggled out from her, shook his head and grabbed Genna’s hand.
They headed toward the door. “Time to catch the last MetaMath game. I have a wild plan to meet Everlen. Once I meet him, I’ll find out what’s happening to the Meritocracy, the outsiders, I’ll try to save Pandor, and…”
Genna laughed. “You are crazy. I’ve never heard of any student ever talking one-to-one with the guardian.”
Dominy swiped his palms under his armpits. “I’m sure it’ll be easy.” He billowed his ro
be at the chest.
“Ugh. Why me, anyway?”
“Well, your master’s a MetaMath champion. You can show me around the stadium. Oh, and one more thing.” He smiled. “I’ll get to know you better.”
“Ugh cubed.”
“Yeah, that part will be hard. One can dream, right?”
She half-smiled.
They walked to the front of the elevator door. Dominy pointed down a corridor. “Let’s take the stairs.”
“The stairs?”
“A series of steps, placed in buildings, in case of emergencies—” He slapped his forehead. “Uh, oh, sorry, c’mon, it might be fun.”
Genna extended her arm and fingers. “Show me the way.”
The stair rails were close enough together that Dominy could grasp them and swing his lower body down. At first, he cleared three, then four and even five steps at a time. He couldn’t wait to compete. At the bottom, he pivoted to see her still standing on the second-floor landing. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve never seen anyone so excitable.”
“What!” He rapped the back of his head against the stairwell wall. “No!”
“You don’t understand. That’s what I like about you.”
“That’s what you like about me?” Genna’s words and his mother’s collided like particles in an accelerator. “That’s, that’s, illogical?”
She laughed and ran down the stairs to join him. “C’mon, let’s go, partner.”
They stepped out of the building. Dominy inhaled. The air was fresh, clean and had a strange sweetness.
“So what’s your great scheme to meet Everlen? Tackle the old guy?” Genna’s smile came often and effortlessly.
“On Opening Day, he congratulates all the winning players. It’s a tradition, right?” He shrugged with a sly smile.
She spun to face him, her mouth gaping, her eyes like saucers. “You’ve never played the game.” She tossed her head side to side. “And you’re our leader? The WAR is over. You’re not even on a team!”
The Games Complex covered the northeast end of Aspiria, with the largest venue, Marika SkyDome stadium, casting shadows across most of Sector Eight. Dominy stared in disbelief at the size of the rectangular building, the venue for MetaMath.
Aspiria Rising Page 7
