Not Alone

by Frederic Martin

  “Snack time, are you hungry?”

  As Will got closer she closed her pad purposefully, but not evasively. He caught a glimpse of drawings of faces on the page. They were really good.

  He held out a granola bar and juice bottle

  Blue took them from him and said, “Thanks.”

  Will sat down on the bench and said, “Looks like you do a lot of drawing. It’s good, what I saw just now.”

  “Thanks,” said Blue again. She looked around the park thoughtfully while she sipped on her juice. It didn’t feel like she wanted him to leave, so he sat there and drank his juice too. He wanted to try voxing with her again, but something told him he should wait for her to make the first move. As it turned out, Blue did start a conversation. Out loud.

  “See those two guys over there?” asked Blue. Will looked where she was nodding. He saw a couple of young adult guys sitting on a bench smoking cigarettes and talking. “Don’t stare,” she said. “Just check them out while you’re scanning around the park.”

  Will was bemused by Blue’s directness, but he did as she said. He sat back and pretended he was just looking around, but as his eyes passed by the two men, he checked them out quickly before continuing his scan. They weren’t old, in fact, one looked familiar—a high-schooler he thought. The other one didn’t look familiar and was bearded and older, but not much more than late twenties or early thirties. They looked plain enough.

  “Looks like they are a couple of guys taking a smoking break from work,” said Will after a minute.

  “They’ve been here at least two hours. They were here before us. They’ve just been moving around,” said Blue. “They’ve only been on that bench a few minutes. They were down by the parking lot earlier. I could see them from the swing.” She looked at him. “You’re gaping.”

  Will snapped his mouth shut and then asked, “So you’ve been watching them the whole time we’ve been playing basketball? Were you even reading?”

  “Of course I was reading,” she said in a slightly put-out tone. “But it’s good to look up from time-to-time and rest your eyes.”

  “Hmm, you sound like my mother.”

  “Hmm,” said Blue, and she grabbed her book in such a way that made it clear she was ready to read again and the conversation had ended.

  Will got the message. He wasn’t offended. Somehow she communicated in body language in a way that was clear but not impolite. But he also picked up that there was something about those two men that had gotten her attention. “So is there something about these guys that bothers you?” asked Will. “If they are making you uncomfortable, we can go back whenever you want.”

  She looked at him. Again she had that impenetrable expressionless look, only this time she rolled her eyes. “Go play,” she said and she opened her book.

  Will grinned. She spoke so rudely, but it didn’t come off as rude. He shook his head and got up and ran back to the court. He turned around and said, “It’s also good to get up and throw a basketball from time-to-time. Wanna give it a try?”

  She looked up and gave him a wry look and replied, “I think not,” and went back to reading. As she did, he thought he saw the tiniest hint of a smile in one corner of her mouth.

  10

  Routine

  The next couple of weeks fell into a rhythm of short work weeks and long weekends. Will spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at the college lab. After he got used to the schedule, it didn’t seem so bad. He actually liked getting up early in the morning, even on his days off. It meant more time before the heat of the day set in. Besides, it wasn’t like he was the only one busy. Wu spent mornings Monday thru Thursday at a basketball camp at the college gymnasium. Nate worked all week at a hardware store, so he could only join them on Saturday and Sunday. From Wu’s reports, Blue spent the days helping out Ma Beth around the house or hanging out in her room, or when it was too hot, hanging out on the porch drawing or reading. Sam was home all the time, too, but apparently off in his own world of fantasy games and science fiction books. The park became the weekend rendezvous spot for all of them when the weather was good. Blue even started to join in some of the sports—frisbee or basketball or catch, but only for very short periods of time. Most of the time she seemed wrapped up in whatever inner world she was living in. And as for vox . . . nothing but the occasional comment. It was almost like she was avoiding it. It was vexing to Will, but what could he do?

  After a couple of more work days fixing lab equipment, Will helped his dad set up some of the research equipment. His dad also started to fill him on what he was doing and why.

  “You know when I grew up, I had to learn to fit in the rest of the world just like you are now. Back then, I couldn’t find any information on what makes us so different. We didn’t have the internet or home computers. We just had encyclopedias, TV, and National Geographic. It was National Geographic that turned me on to what I’m doing now. They had issues with articles about different light—laser light, ultraviolet, infrared, radio waves, x-rays. I was fascinated and started to get an understanding behind the science of vox.”

  It was at that moment that Will realized that his father had never really talked to him about vox in this way. Plenty of talk about rules and guidelines, but never the science. In fact, it seemed weird to be talking about it in terms of science. Of course, he had spent plenty of time wondering what it really was, and why they had it and no one else, at least not to his knowledge. When he was young, he would ask his parents, but their explanations had always been superficial—“It’s genetics,” “We just are what we are,” “One of our ancestors a long time ago was born with a mutation.” Great, his super smart parents who always had to give him the scientific answer weren’t super smart enough to know that they freaked out their kid by saying he was the descendent of a mutant. Thanks, Mom and Dad. He was going to lie to his kids.

  But now that he was older, talking about the science of it with his dad was starting to interest him. A lot.

  “Dad, why isn’t there any information about us, about vox oculis, I mean. I can’t even find it on the internet.”

  Will’s dad was concentrating on a fitting for a lens on his optics table. He paused and then said, “Well, first off, just because it’s not on the internet doesn’t mean the information doesn’t exist, don’t forget that.”

  “Don’t worry, Dad, you never let us forget that.”

  “And second of all, consider this. How many people have you known that can vox?”

  “Just us. Just you, Mom, Rose, and me. And Grandma and Grandpa Woods.” He felt a twinge of guilt that he was leaving out Blue, but he held back from mentioning her.

  “Right,” said his dad, “And I have only run across half a dozen others, including your mother. Fact is, we are extinction in-process. It’s natural selection—thank you, Charles Darwin.” His father returned to fiddling with his lens. He looked over toward Will. “Hand me that Phillips screwdriver there, the small one.”

  Will handed him the screwdriver. His father turned back to concentrate on the lens bracket.

  “So you think that natural selection is the reason we are so few? You think that vox is a disadvantage to survival now rather than an advantage?” He had learned about Darwin and natural selection just that year.

  “Exactly!” said his dad. “Consider how annoying it can be in school or crowds of people without your coated glasses to shut out the cacophony of their thoughts. It’s a handicap in a crowded busy world. On the other hand, imagine being in a world where you have a small group of families like ours, living in the woods, where it is much quieter, and every small sound could reveal the location of prey or alert them to your presence and scare them away. In that world, we can communicate in the light or dark without making a sound, just like the games we played when you were younger.” He looked over his glasses at Will, “Find-the-fox, night-tag. You remember.” He returned to focusing on the optics table. “Now think about what an advantage that would be if you were a h
unter. You could coordinate a group of hunters without making a sound. You would rule the hunting ground. That’s what I’m sure our ancestors were—social hunters. The problem was, agriculture came along, and agriculture worked better than hunting. It made a stronger society and civilization. Now our kind could survive in that kind of world, but since there was no advantage, we didn’t seek each other out. Eventually, genetics diluted everything, and there are only a few original pure vox speakers left.”

  “Yeah, but Dad, we could take advantage of that, couldn’t we? I mean, you have made sure we are careful and polite, but wouldn’t it be tempting to take advantage of it to steal passwords and combinations and stuff like that? It seems like we could take over the world.”

  “Yes, people are weak, and they tend to take advantage of situations. However, nature has a way of ridding itself of creatures that are too clever. If they are outnumbered, those that stand out are often pecked to death. You know what it is like to get pecked.” Will knew. He had several experiences revealing secrets he shouldn’t have. Those experiences usually involved fists and kicks.

  Will’s dad looked at him significantly. “And that is why we are so strict about how and what you do with your abilities. With great ability comes great responsibility. There is no action without reaction, et cetera, et cetera . . .” He winked at Will.

  Will rolled his eyes. His dad rarely lost an opportunity to drive home platitudes.

  “Now imagine growing up without that kind of guidance,” his dad continued. “Without someone to carefully protect you, you would quickly stand out and be feared because you can read people’s thoughts. ‘Remember, the Salem witch trials!’ That could be our family motto!”

  Will thought of Blue. She acted like she had been pecked a lot, and that is probably where all those defense mechanisms were coming from. He had a sudden urge to tell his dad about her. God, he was bursting to talk about it with someone. He wanted it to be Blue, but he had failed so far. There was that bit of contact while they were in the park, but there was very little opportunity for a private conversation there, even a vox conversation. And when he hung out at their house, she was almost always cloistered in her attic room.

  “Right now, we have to focus on the task at hand,” said Will’s dad, interrupting Will’s thoughts. “I think it will help us both to understand more about ourselves if we get this optical bench set up and calibrated. Then we can have some fun!”

  They spent the rest of the afternoon working with some very cool optical apparatus and it kept most of Will’s mind occupied, but there was a corner of his brain that continued to grind away at his real problem. He had to come up with something other than a chance encounter with Blue at the park or their house. Should he ask her on a date? That was crazy. He didn’t know the first thing about dating. And it would be totally weird. She was still a kid. Even though she was fourteen, it was clear she was a late bloomer. The cell phone thing was frustrating. If she had a cell phone he could at least text to her and talk that way, maybe even call her, but it wouldn’t be the same if they couldn’t vox. And email was out, she didn’t even have an email address yet. She seemed totally isolated from any modern means of communication.

  By the end of the day, he was no closer to solving his problem, but together, he and his dad were a lot closer to getting his dad’s research off the ground. It looked like his time spent in the lab just might satisfy some of Will’s curiosity. But not enough. Not by a long shot.

  11

  Home

  Blue couldn’t help herself. She was wary of too much of a good thing but couldn’t help letting herself relax just the tiniest bit. For the first time in her life, she felt she was living in a state of stability and safety. At least the first time since before the fire. That had been four and a half years ago. Four and a half years of hell. She was beginning to think that hell was the new normal and she was just going to have to learn how to survive. But now everything had changed. It seemed like that chapter had ended. Her former life seemed just that—a former life. Her former foster families seemed just that—former foster families. They were just stepping stones to a different life.

  And now, at this moment, this very real and present moment, she was sitting on the porch in the summer twilight listening to the summer sounds—birds, peepers, crickets, muted music from neighboring houses, and the sounds in the house behind her.

  Sam was inside the family room at the computer. He was the geek of the household, completely engrossed in adventure games and science fiction. Nate was more than likely reading sports magazines up in his room, and Wu was watching TV while Pa Bill sat on the couch and read the paper. It was like a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting. And she was a part of it but also still on the outside of it. She felt like she was on the verge of entering the painting, but not quite ready.

  Ma Beth was finishing up some things in the kitchen. Blue did her part in the household chores, but Ma Beth always did the final touches. She came out and joined Blue on the porch.

  “I like it out here. It is so nice and peaceful in the evening. Do you mind if I join you?” She settled into the porch chair and sat back with her eyes closed.

  “Sure,” said Blue. “I mean no, that’s fine.”

  Ma Beth never pressured Blue to talk, which made Blue feel at ease when she was close by. It was nice. She tried to savor the moment, at least a little, and she was partly successful, but there was a lot still going on in her mind. Two things in particular. The first was trying to find a way to talk with Will alone. She was desperate to communicate with him now that she finally made contact with one of her own kind and yet she was oddly frightened of what might develop. Would it bring back too many memories too fast? And what about the rest of his family? Was he the only one? She didn’t think so. She knew he had a little sister, Rose.

  A familiar hot panic surged in her gut. She instinctively closed her eyes and drew in a breath, evenly and slowly. Then just as slowly she let the breath out. Breathe in . . . breathe out. She kept at it until the panic subsided. It had been a while since she’d felt a surge that strong. It caught her by surprise but she was practiced in handling it. Not like in the early days before she’d learned to put that dark episode away in a box and slide it into the back of a closet in her mind and close the door. Since then, she’d learned to avoid the triggers, stop thinking about what might have been, what had been, what was her life before. But there were still times she got caught off guard by some thought, or sound, or picture and that box lid would crack open and she would have to push it shut again.

  She shook it off and turned her thoughts to Will’s parents. They must be able to vox if Will could. Where else would it come from? On the other hand maybe he was adopted. She hadn’t thought of that before. Maybe he was an orphan like her. It didn’t matter. What mattered is finding a way to talk to Will alone. It had been weeks since they had first discovered each other, and still, they hadn’t exchanged more than a few words and even less through vox. It was strange. She found it difficult and that frustrated her. It had been so long since she had anyone to share with, it was like she had to learn all over again.

  Then there was the other thing that was bothering her—those two men in the park. Whenever she went to the park with the boys, it seemed that at least the younger of the two men was there somewhere. The older guy, the bearded one, only showed up once or twice after that first time. The two men didn’t seem to take that much notice of her or the boys, and she took advantage of that to keep an eye on them. What she had learned over the past couple of weeks confirmed what she had sensed about those two since that first day in the park, when she had pointed them out to Will. And she was taking notes. In her own way.

  She had been drawing pictures of them, along with other people she saw in the park. She liked to make people into anthropomorphized animals (she had loved the word ‘anthropomorphize’ ever since she’d learned it). She tried to match their personalities with animals. She had drawn Wu as a mink because
he was long and lean. Nate was a bear, and Sam was a goat because goats looked awkward but were very smart and clever. Will, she hadn’t figured out yet. She tried him as a Collie, but that didn’t seem right. She was thinking more along the lines of a Husky and was going to try that next time.

  She drew the two men in the park as a pig and a lizard. And she had given them names—Gronk and Greazal.

  They were dealing drugs. She was sure of it.

  She caught a lot of their chiss over the past few weeks. They were easy to pick up, especially Greazal. Gronk was a little less open. It was like that with normal people—some were an open book and others you could only hear the shallower thoughts. Deep thoughts stayed buried almost as if they knew how to hide them, but she knew they didn’t. They were all vox-deaf, every one of them.

  One of the things she learned the hard way was when to listen to people’s chiss and when to block them out. If you listen to the wrong ones and give away the fact that you heard them, that’s when you get enemies. She had made a lot of enemies when she was a kid, at school, at her foster homes, at institutions. When she finally caught on, she started to learn to ignore the insincere people, the ones that were nice to your face but whose thoughts revealed that they were jealous, or bored, or hateful, or you name it. The list of horrible things people think is long. Of course, she thought bad things about some people, too, but she was not nice to them either. That, at least, is sincerity.

  She listened to these two, however. She had a particular visceral hatred of drug dealers. They were the low of the low, the scum of the earth, the sociopaths that didn’t have empathy for anyone. All they wanted was easy money, not caring how the drugs they were selling were ruining lives. To her, these two men were already enemies, so eavesdropping on their chiss had no downside. Instead, it had an intoxicating potential upside. She could make sure they were caught. She just wasn’t sure how.