Kobe set his sights on the remaining two racers. When they were both gone, a whoop came from a nearby cubicle.
He thinks he’s won.
Sammy dived down, just as he had with Jeffie, and came up targeting Kobe’s unprotected underside.
KABOOM!
Poor puke never saw it coming, Sammy thought with glee.
With no ships left in the game, Sammy sped off to the cruiser and gracefully landed—three games, three victories.
“No way!” Kobe’s voice boomed as he came down the hall toward Sammy. “I blew you sky high. How did you get behind me?”
Just as Kobe appeared at Sammy’s cubicle, Al put his hand on Kobe’s shoulder, laughing hard. “No, no, no,” Al jeered. “Don’t be mad just because you got beat. Sammy—just—absolutely brilliant!”
Al and Sammy exchanged fives. Kobe just stood there, demanding to know how Sammy had won. Sammy shrugged ominously and walked out past him. He almost gave Kobe the bird, but better wisdom prevailed. Al was laughing too hard to explain anything, and this made Kobe hopping mad. Sammy didn’t like Kobe, and he wasn’t going to stand around and talk strategy with a guy who got in his face.
“Puke luck,” he heard Kobe’s voice grumble in the cubicle.
The comment angered Sammy, but he realized Kobe had a point. How did I pick up on the game so fast? I was pretty good at the games back in the grocery store. Maybe I’m just good at games. He exited the VR cubicles and saw Brickert beaming at him and Jeffie scowling.
Determined to make a good impression on her, Sammy approached her with an outstretched hand and a smile. “Good game?”
Jeffie rolled her eyes and walked past him into the cubicles. Everyone else congratulated him or remarked on how impressed they were with his playing. But none of it meant anything after seeing Jeffie upset. Suddenly she seemed a lot less attractive. Stupid girls. He turned to Brickert. “Tired?”
“Not really,” Brickert responded. “Are you?”
“Yeah, kinda. I think I’m going to bed.”
On his way down, Sammy got the urge to stop at the cafeteria. The idea of having so much food available on a whim excited him. He helped himself to a large bowl of coconut ice cream, his favorite. His mom and dad used to make it for him on his birthday.
He thought of everything he had been through over the last several days, even months—everything was so jumbled. Maybe I’ll just wake up tomorrow on a stack of cardboard boxes in the store . . . or in a white room for loonies. Within the year, he’d gone from a home, to the Grinder, to being a runaway, and now here as a Psion Beta with some weird powers (if he even had them). Everything in his life now was based on Byron’s promise that he had an anomaly.
A simple bowl of ice cream became too emotional for Sammy. Without really knowing why, he was blinking tears from his eyes. He was scared and missed his mom and dad more than he had in quite some time. He wished they’d been there when he’d taken the oath to protect people. His father, especially, would have been proud of that.
Someone came into the room, and he turned to see Al.
“Hey, I was wondering where you’d—” he stopped as he saw Sammy’s face.
Sammy tried to turn back before Al noticed, but was not quick enough.
“Are you all right?” Al asked, moving over to sit next to him.
“Yeah,” Sammy quickly answered, “I’m fine.”
“You need to talk?”
“No! I mean—no, it’s nothing, I was just thinking about . . . stuff,” Sammy reassured him. Talking about feelings reminded him too much of the one-on-one and group sessions in the Grinder.
“What kind of stuff?”
“Just stuff,” Sammy replied in his most casual voice. “What did your parents think about you coming here?”
Al seemed caught off guard by the question, and he took a moment to think. “It was really hard for me and my dad both when I came here,” Al said. “My dad was worried.”
“And your mom?” Sammy asked, thinking back to what Brickert had said about his family. “What did she think?”
Even more time passed before Al answered this question. “She was really . . . proud of me. Really proud.” Sammy heard a finality in Al’s as he said this. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah,” Sammy answered, “seriously, I’m cool.”
Al gave Sammy a friendly pat on the back and left. Sammy sat in silence for a moment, thinking about the conversation.
Feeling more tired than ever and embarrassed about being caught crying, he dumped the rest of his ice cream and went to his room. Without much thought, he undressed, put his com on the charger, and turned out the lights. A bed, he thought when he hit his soft pillow. If Feet and the others could see me now. Sleeping in my own bed. Posh. Then he fell asleep. He only woke up once during the night to the sound of muffled sobbing; he was not used to sleeping above a very homesick roommate.
6. Headquarters
“Good morning, Psions. Good morning, Psions. Good morning, Psions,” a calm and soothing female voice repeated over and over again, stirring Sammy from his sleep.
His eyelids cracked open, and he saw his body covered in sheets. The familiar scent of moldy cardboard was strangely missing.
Who’s snoring below me?
“Good morning, Psions,” he heard again, and then he remembered: he was a Psion. He reached for his com. Putting it on made everything real again. He couldn’t help but be excited, especially when he thought about his training. If everything went well, he would find out if he had these abilities everyone talked about. Just as he thought to wake up Brickert, a loud thud shook the bed.
“OW!” Brickert cried in pain below.
Sammy laughed in pity as he hung his head over the side to look in the bottom bunk. Brickert clutched his forehead, hiding the purple lump forming there. He looked paler than usual and his eyes were a little red from being rubbed too much. Sammy guessed his roommate had not slept much last night.
“You okay?” Sammy asked over the female voice.
“My first night on a bunk bed,” Brickert whimpered. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll get used to it.”
As soon as Sammy turned the light on, the woman’s voice stopped. He reached over his ear, activated his com, and saw the holo-screen. With one command, he called up his schedule:
0600-0700 Rise/Exercise
0700-0800 Breakfast/Shower
0800-1200 Instruction
1200-1300 Lunch
1300-1700 Simulations
1700-2200 Dinner/Recreation/Retire
“I’m surprised they don’t tell us when to take a dump, too,” he said to himself.
His life had suddenly changed from anarchy to rigid structure. He wondered what his friends were doing at that moment. He had half a mind to just stay in bed, but rather than make trouble for Byron, he let out a long sigh and grabbed his exercise clothes from his closet. He noticed that the jeans and hoodie he’d worn when Byron had picked him up had been laundered and hung up. He took his hoodie off its hanger and threw it on over his shirt.
As they talked on the way up to the fitness room, Sammy and Brickert realized their schedules were identical. Sammy hoped his schedule mirrored Jeffie’s, too. He paused at the entrance. He hadn’t expected to see the room so busy, but it looked like all the Betas had morning exercise. Al and Marie sprinted on the same treadmill, Al taunting her to keep up. Rosa, Marie’s younger sister, ran alongside them. She looked like a miniature version of her sister, just with lighter hair. Kaden was surrounded by a bunch of guys his own age. But where is—And then Sammy saw her working out with Kobe, Natalia, and Kawai. A surge of jealousy pulsed through him. In the pit of his stomach, he knew Kobe had his eye on Jeffie . . . but did Jeffie already have her eye on Kobe, too?
The computer gave Sammy and Brickert their workouts. Sammy picked out two empty treadmills far away from Kobe, and said, “Let’s go over there.” Perhaps sensing Sammy’s sudden mood change, Brickert tried to strike up a conv
ersation about how the rest of their day would go. But as the treadmill picked up speed, he stopped talking to focus on breathing.
Sammy fueled his dislike for Kobe into the treadmill. The more he heard Jeffie and Kobe laughing, the harder he ran. He didn’t care if he would feel the burn later or if he had to suck down air to avoid passing out; he welcomed it. What does Jeffie see in Kobe? He’s a douche. As his mind raced, his feet flew gracefully on the exercise machine. Another thought struck him. Maybe Jeffie was more like Kobe than Sammy cared to admit. The idea occurred to him that maybe he wasn’t jealous of Jeffie talking to Kobe, but that she wasn’t talking to him.
As the workout wore on, he got tired of thinking about Jeffie. He wondered about the simulations in the afternoon. What if I can’t do it? Even if I actually am a Psion or whatever but I just sit in the simulation room for hours without accomplishing a thing? A monumentally horrifying idea struck him: Would they send me back to the Grinder? No, he assured himself. I’ll be gone before they realize it. But the possibility worried him.
Exercising in the morning was both invigorating and exhausting. When he stepped off the treadmill and threw on his red hoodie, his legs wobbled like jelly. He was looking forward to a hot shower. It had been almost a year since his last one. The Grinder only had cool water, and at the grocery store, when they started to stink, they borrowed someone’s garden hose or washed in the restroom at the nearby Burger Palace.
Brickert and Sammy picked out their jumpsuits and took them to the common bathroom. He undressed and laid his clothes over the door of his shower, then stepped onto the cool tile inside. He felt giddy. He had no desire to hurry. As he soaked in the warm water, his palms turned to raisins. After three washes, his hair started to feel normal again. How had he lived without simple things like shampoo or a change of clothes?
He turned off the water and started the dryer until he felt windblown but clean. After putting on a deodorizing powder, he reached over the stall door for his new jumpsuit, but couldn’t find it. His hoodie was gone, too.
Someone had taken them. Someone had taken his hoodie—a terribly foolish person.
He threw open the shower stall and scanned the ground. No clothes. Stark naked, he left the bathroom and marched down the hall to his bedroom. As he passed Kobe’s room, he heard laughter inside. Of course. He pounded on the door, cursing and yelling, “Give me my hoodie back!”
The door opened and Kobe, Ludwig, and Miguel stood inside laughing hysterically. Sammy knew they had no idea what the hoodie meant to him, and he didn’t care. He grabbed Kobe by the collar and yelled in his face, “Give me my hoodie back, dickhead!”
Ludwig and Miguel stopped laughing at once. Sammy was taller and built stronger than both of them. Kobe, however, did not seem to get the point.
“What’s your deal?” Kobe shouted back, wrenching his jump suit from Sammy. “It’s just a puke prank. Learn how to take a joke.”
“Kobe,” Miguel said, “maybe you’d better—”
“You really are a puke!” Kobe spat. “Here,” he shoved the clothes back at Sammy, “take your piece of trash hoodie.”
“Don’t ever touch my stuff!” Sammy roared, even more infuriated by Kobe’s response. “I don’t like you, and if you take my things again, I’m throwing it down. Get it?”
Miguel and Ludwig both muttered apologies to Sammy as he passed them. Kobe, on the other hand, did not. Rather, he added for good measure, “Well, don’t come into my room uninvited!”
Sammy didn’t need an invitation to leave. He crossed the hall, still naked, and entered his own room. Brickert had finished dressing, but noticed the hurricane that accompanied Sammy inside.
“What happened, Samuel—Sammy?”
Brickert’s question didn’t register with Sammy. He was so inflamed from the encounter that his arms and hands shook. He clutched the hoodie to his chest, replaying the encounter over again in his mind, only each time he imagined himself saying something much worse and then punching Kobe in the face and stomach.
It took several minutes before the anger collapsed on itself, and he came to his senses. He paced around the room to calm himself, afraid that he might do something really stupid. Byron had warned him about his behavior. It was hard, especially remembering the fights he had gotten into at the Grinder over lesser things.
“Sammy, are you okay?” Brickert finally asked again. He sounded so young.
“Fine,” he told himself more than Brickert. “They stole my clothes so I’d have to walk back here naked. I—I—argh!” The anger threatened to surge back again and he slammed his closet shut. For a moment, he thought he had broken the door. He blew out a long slow breath. “You wouldn’t get it, Brickert. Sorry.”
His mind went back to the day he got the sweater. No—Sammy corrected himself. The day I won it.
Sammy’s father had many hobbies but few passions. Chess was one of his passions. “Territorial tournament champion two years in a row,” he often told people, especially his son. He made it a point never to let Sammy win a game. “You’ve got to earn the win,” he always said. “You’ll appreciate it more.”
One night after dinner, Sammy tried talking his dad into playing without a queen, and if not the queen, at least a rook.
“You know I won’t go easy on you,” his father reminded him, “because then—”
“—I’ll always remember the first time I beat you,” Sammy finished from memory.
“Go get the board, smarty pants.”
I’m going to beat him, Sammy told himself, just as he always did before they played. He brought the board to the kitchen table, and they set up the pieces. Sammy was white, his father was black. Just as it always was. His father made a joke out of it because Sammy’s skin was much lighter than his father’s.
Though they occasionally played with a chess timer, tonight there was no rush. They sat opposite each other, Sammy Sr. still in his work suit, Sammy Jr. wearing jeans and a Drive Shaft T-shirt with a couple of designer holes. As was typical, his dad began with a strong Sicilian defense. Both took their time planning their moves. Sammy’s mother moved in and out of the background clearing the table around them.
It was almost like magic when it happened.
Suddenly Sammy saw the square board differently. He saw not only pieces and movements, but he also repercussion, potential, and his father’s flaws. Then he made his move.
His father stared at the board for almost a minute, then muttered, “Good move.”
Sammy took similar amounts of time to think after his father’s next few turns. He saw more flaws.
Absentmindedly, his dad loosened his tie and opened the top button on his shirt. “You’re playing . . . well.”
Samuel Sr. moved again.
There’s the position I need.
Three more turns passed.
“CHECKMATE!” Sammy yelled, jumping up and down, screaming at the top of his lungs.
His father stared at the chessboard, mouth open. “Are you sure?” he muttered to himself.
His mother, Sarah, came back into the room to see what all the commotion was about.
“I beat him, Mom! I beat Dad!”
“Is that true, Sam?” she asked.
Sammy’s father could only nod his head to acknowledge his wife.
“Wow, that deserves a celebration, don’t you think?” she said, smiling down at Sammy. “Want to go to the mall and pick out something?”
“Right now?” Sammy asked. “I’m spending the night at Denton’s house tonight.”
“Well, how about I drop you off there on the way back from the mall?”
“Can I get a new pair of jeans and that red hoodie?” he asked.
“Anything you want,” she answered. “You coming, Sam?”
Sammy’s father didn’t hear her. He was still staring at the chess board in shock.
No, Brickert, Sammy thought to himself. You wouldn’t understand at all. Not with your nine sisters and mom and dad, who may be poor,
but still—
He hung his hoodie back in his closet with care, and quickly dressed into a blue jumpsuit with black stripes. He left the room, ignoring the perplexed stare on Brickert’s face. By the time he reached the third floor, he’d decided to skip breakfast. He was in no mood to eat, and didn’t want to see anyone, particularly Kobe. Part of him felt embarrassed for getting so upset; he was already making waves, and had only been there one day.
But why did he have to pull a prank on ME?
It was time for instruction. The part of his schedule he looked forward to the least.
He found his name above a door and eye-scanned himself into the room. Instruction, Byron had told them, would not be held in a classroom setting. Rather, to facilitate maximum learning, each person could choose what he or she wanted to study for the block of four hours each day at a comfortable pace. To facilitate this theory, every room had a machine called the Teacher. It was a large armchair set on a large black platform that extended vertically, supporting a screen that faced the occupant of the seat. To Sammy it looked like a giant arcade game built for brainwashing people.
He sat down, and the screen automatically powered up to reveal Commander Byron’s face looking back at him.
“Good morning, Psion. Today you begin your personal instruction. The education you will receive is based around a core of information you need to become an effective member of a Psion Alpha team. You are expected to learn and understand all of the material presented. Part of the Psion Panel, which you must pass to graduate from Beta, is scoring high enough on the exams you take after completing each subject unit.
“See the subject units in which your aptitude will be tested.” An interface titled Main Menu replaced Byron’s image.
“Basic mechanics,” his voice continued, “weaponry, theory of combat, mission planning and execution, critical thinking, physics, history and political science, and geography. Parts of combat, mission functionality, and weaponry will be covered in your simulations and in the Arena; however, you must also learn the principles behind these subjects for the Panel. I encourage you to take advantage of the flexibility of your education. There is no homework, just exams. If you wish, both the Teacher’s menus and the library are available for you to explore sections more in depth.”
Psion Beta (Psion series #1) Page 8
