Unbound

by J. B. Simmons

  A few minutes later our food came out of a panel by the booth’s wall. The plate set before me had a bare salmon fillet, a pile of raw kale, and three odd-shaped mushrooms. Naomi’s plate had a small chunk of steak and a beet salad. Everyone was given water and a stack of pills.

  “Cool, huh?” Patrick said, as he poked at his salmon and zucchini. “Last time I was here they served me an avocado and a stack of blackberries. Of course, we all get the pills.” He held up a small clear capsule. “These are the best on the market.”

  “I like it,” Aisha said. “If the Captain were here, I’m guessing they’d give him a plate full of prunes. The man needs to lighten up.”

  We laughed and dug into the food. Halfway through the meal, I saw my opening to pull Naomi into a side chat. She turned slightly in my direction as she brought her glass of water to her lips. I caught her eyes and smiled.

  “This morning,” I said, “you were going to tell me where you traveled growing up.”

  “Oh, was I?” She set her glass down gently. “Something must have interrupted us.”

  “I hate it when that happens. So…you lived abroad?”

  She nodded. “Didn’t we all? You lived in Jerusalem for two years.”

  I started to ask her how she knew it but stopped short. Of course her precept could have tracked that down. My excitement about her looking me up outweighed my frustration that I had not yet done the same for her. Shame on V for letting me get lost in news and messages in the short time before dinner. And too bad looking up Naomi while talking to her would be a major social faux pas. It was time to get creative.

  “Notice anything else about my profile?” I asked.

  Her eyes looked into mine as if she were dissecting a frog. “Your family and schooling make you privileged,” her voice dropped so only I could hear, “but I think you’re running from all that. Rich boys from Manhattan don’t join the ISA. You’ve got too much to lose. Why are you here?”

  My mouth had fallen open. She could’ve gotten those facts from public data, but she couldn’t have read my intentions anywhere. I was starting to like this girl, and not just because she was incredibly attractive…though that didn’t hurt.

  Keep it cool, I told myself. “The Captain said you were the best of us. Why is that?” I nodded to the others at the table, who were talking about the drone missions in South America. Their plates were almost empty.

  Naomi opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated.

  “I’ll offer you a trade,” I said. “Interested?” My feet were bouncing under the table, but I kept my face calm as I thought of my next move.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Let me guess. We tell each other why we’re here?”

  “No, I wouldn’t dare ask for so much so soon.” I held her gaze, thinking hard. What would a good southern girl want from me right now? I had an idea. “You let me buy you ice cream after this, and then I’ll tell you why I’m here.”

  “Ice cream?” she asked, with a curious smile.

  “I know,” I shrugged, “old school. You like butter pecan?” It was a hunch.

  She nodded, her smile wavering almost imperceptibly. “You’re full of surprises, Elijah. Fine, I’ll let you buy me ice cream.”

  “So it’s a deal?” I asked.

  “Deal,” she said.

  “COOKIES AND CREAM,” she placed her order and turned to me with a grin. “Sometimes I stray from my favorites.”

  “Butter pecan,” I ordered, holding my wrist to the scanner to pay.

  Our cones showed up a moment later. We took them and walked outside. The streets were emptier now that the city’s lights had dimmed for the night. We found a bench beside a fountain in a park. The grass, flowers, and trees had the sheen of plants in a greenhouse.

  “Have you been to the museum?” I pointed to the White House at the far end of the park.

  “Yeah, it’s great.” She crossed her legs and took a lick of ice cream. “You?”

  “Nah. My dad knew the past couple Presidents. He’s a big donor, so I’ve gotten to meet them, too. I figure that’s better than learning from a museum.”

  “You might be surprised,” she said without a trace of being impressed. “You know, after dinner, you were a little rude to Patrick.”

  “What?” The abrupt subject change made me miss slightly as I took my next lick. I thought she hadn’t heard me talking to him.

  “You have a little…” She pointed to my nose and laughed. She reached up and wiped off a drop of ice cream with her napkin. “Patrick,” she said, “he wanted to join us for ice cream. You were rude to not invite him.”

  “He wasn’t part of the deal.” And, yeah, maybe I’d told that to Patrick with a touch of pride.

  “Whatever you said made him look a little down,” Naomi said. “We should be building each other up.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, “but you wanted to know why I’m here, and I can’t just tell everyone that.”

  “Why not?” Her open demeanor was disarming.

  “Aren’t we learning to be spies?” I asked.

  “Spies are not what most people think. We don’t have to hide everything. Be kind to Patrick. You never know when you might need him to return the favor. Okay?”

  “Okay.” This was not going as I’d planned. My confidence was being licked away as fast as her ice cream.

  “So how about the other half of our deal?” she asked, her voice light again.

  “The part where I tell you why I’m here?”

  “Yeah, that part.”

  “You seem to know a lot about me. What do you think?”

  “That’s not the deal. I want to hear it in your words.” She bit off part of the cone. Her hair matched its honey color.

  “Maybe it’s fate,” I said.

  “Fate?”

  “Yeah.” I decided it was no use hiding my interest in her. “You know, some unseen pattern leading me to enjoy this ice cream with you.”

  “I doubt that,” she said. “Besides, you can’t believe in fate unless you believe in a higher power. Try again.”

  “Here’s what I believe.” I opted for something close to the truth. She seemed to bring it out of me. “Higher powers must be so high up that they forgot about mankind. The world is spiraling out of control. The wars are getting worse, disasters are everywhere, and most people are content to let the decay continue as long as they have full bellies and entertaining shows. We’ve got plenty of those where we live.”

  “I agree with you about the people, but not about the higher powers. You still didn’t answer my question, though. Why you? Is it your fate to stop the decay?”

  “Shouldn’t that be everyone’s fate?”

  “Maybe it should be,” she said, “but it’s not. You have every reason not to join ISA. Your family’s banking fortune awaits you. You have an elite education and a life of pleasure ahead. You could be shielded from the world’s worst.”

  Her words were another version of the same story everyone was always telling me. The story I was going to prove wrong. “I never liked the easy path,” I said. “It’s too boring, too weak. By joining ISA, I get a chance to make a difference, to fight the decay, to become part of something bigger.”

  Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “Sounds impressive,” she said, but she was clearly not convinced.

  “I also think you exaggerate the risks,” I continued. “Our group will have hardly any time in the field these first few years. We may be the chosen fellows, but we’re still trainees. We go back to school in a week and leave this behind except for virtual work and occasional trainings.”

  “I doubt that, after what the Captain said.” She studied me. “But you’re still hiding something.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “What troubles you, Elijah?” Her doe eyes demanded honesty. She took the last bite of her cone.

  “Not much, Naomi.” I mocked her serious tone. “As you said, I have it all. Riches, status, dashing good looks.” I smiled. “
You forgot to say that last part.”

  She smiled back. “You’re nice, and you might be handsome in the right light. But…” She pressed her eyes closed and held her hands out as if ready to catch a feather floating down in the space between us. She just sat there, saying nothing, eyes closed. This was getting awkward. I don’t know why, but I reached out and put my hands in the air just above hers. I could have sworn there was energy there—between us. I lowered my hands until they just grazed hers.

  She yanked her hands away. Her eyes opened wide. They blazed like a supernova about to gobble up a tiny, cold planet. “Something looms over you,” she said, “like a shadow over your mind. Tell me what it is.”

  “No clue,” I shrugged, “maybe my dreams?” The words slipped out, and I immediately wished I had them back.

  “You have troubling dreams?”

  I nodded.

  “These dreams are unusual, maybe similar over time?”

  I nodded again.

  “What did you dream last night?”

  Great. Apparently this pretty girl was a psychic. My dream was the last thing I wanted to share with her. No better way to win her over than to tell her I’d just had visions of a dragon destroying St. Peter’s Basilica. I might as well have worn a sign saying, “freak approaching.”

  “Tell me, please,” she said. “I promise I won’t hold it against you.”

  “It was just a dream,” I downplayed. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “How about I make you another deal?” she asked.

  “I like deals.” Especially deals with her. The hair was standing up on the back of my neck. No one had ever put me on edge like this.

  “You tell me your dream now, and I’ll invite you on another date.”

  A date—she called it a date. I controlled my excitement and played it cool: “When?”

  “This week. I choose the time and place.”

  “Done.” Why not? I figured she was going to keep prying until she learned about the dream anyway. I finished off my ice cream cone and organized my thoughts.

  “Don’t leave out any details, or the deal’s off,” she threatened. “I won’t interrupt.”

  I nodded and began to tell her what I’d seen in the dream. St. Peter’s Basilica, the huge crowd, the earthquake, and the lightning. I described the chaos and the dragon rising up from the abyss. I described the man, the stunning man who walked towards the dragon. I did not tell her how the dream made me feel. I did not mention my terror, but when I finished, her expression told me she knew.

  “Thank you, Elijah.” Her voice was steady and intense. “Wednesday night,” she said, “after our training, let’s meet here at 8. Let’s keep this dream a secret from ISA-7, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Don’t tell anyone, not even Charles. Got it?”

  “Yeah.” It’s not like I was desperate to tell people a dragon visited my dreams at night.

  She stood from the bench and reached her arms high in the air to stretch. Her long body had the elegance of a model on a catwalk. “Come on, let’s get back to the hotel.” She sounded almost playful again. “We have a long week ahead of us, if today was any indication.”

  We talked of little things on the short walk back, and then we parted in the lobby. No hug, no handshake. Just an awkward exchange of “goodnights.”

  As soon as I was back in my room, I asked V to run a report on Naomi. I changed clothes, brushed my teeth, popped a dream pill, and fell into bed. By then the report was ready.

  Words, images, and videos began flashing through my lenses. I learned that Naomi came from a huge family. Her mom was a white southern belle. Her dad was a black basketball star who’d given away his money to serve the poor abroad. She had an older sister and four younger brothers. None of them were psychics, but they were all religious.

  V flagged a series of odd gaps in the info about her family’s faith. Public records showed membership in some megachurch, but left out details. The government required reporting on religious attendance and giving. That data was missing, even though the rest of the report seemed complete. It made me think of the video of that fanatic being hauled into a police van.

  I shifted the focus to Naomi in particular. She had lived with her family in seven African countries, but spent the past four years home-schooled in North Carolina. For a decade, every picture had showed her wearing that golden cross necklace with the red ribbon.

  It all screamed: she’s not your type!

  But then came the similarities. We were both Leos, born in the year of the dragon, on the exact same day: July 26, 2048. Her mom had died when she was eight, just like mine. She’d always been exceptional. In every group, she was the smartest, the most driven, the most successful—just like me. She’d won national competitions in both math and music. I’d won in science and debate. At sixteen, she’d just missed the U.S. Olympic team for the mile. And hey, last year I’d made my school’s track team.

  I honed in on one of the videos from the report. It showed Naomi dressed in a stunning black gown, singing solo before a packed music hall. I motioned for V to increase the volume. It was a song in French. Naomi’s green eyes stared through the screen in bright, open beauty.

  As I lay on my back in the hotel bed, Naomi was looking down at me, singing to me. Her voice was the most amazing I’d ever heard. I had V loop the video, and Naomi serenaded me to sleep.

  Apparently the dream pill was a dud, because the dream came again, with the dragon and the man, for the fourth straight night. When I woke, drenched in sweat, V confirmed St. Peter’s Basilica was still standing. I wished I could’ve said the same about myself. But the past day and night, between the dream, the training, and Naomi—especially Naomi—were making me stagger. Cracks were spreading through my foundations. Part of me feared I was swaying like the Basilica after the quake, just waiting for a knockout punch.

  I PRESSED MY hands against the cool, white stone and craned my neck back. The Washington Monument was not budging. It hadn’t budged in ages. It just stood there, simple and straight as its namesake, while the city and the world buzzed around it in dizzying circles.

  “Ever been to the top?” Patrick asked.

  “Nope,” said Charles.

  “Me neither,” answered Aisha.

  “Only once,” Naomi said, “when I was a little girl.”

  “Same here,” Patrick added.

  “You were a little girl?” Charles mocked.

  “Very funny, Charles,” Patrick said. “The view from up there is amazing. How about you, Eli? Been to the top?”

  I pulled my gaze away from the obelisk and turned to the others. The four of them were staring at me. “Yeah, a few times,” I said. “You think robots are going to spring out of the Monument to attack us now?”

  “I doubt it,” laughed Naomi. I smiled at her, pretending that her laugh didn’t make my head spin.

  “But something should have happened by now,” Aisha said. “We’ve been here since 5, like Wade asked. The city’s overnight curfew ends soon, so people will be about.” She motioned around us, to the open space of the national mall. It would be at least an hour before the first light of day, but spotlights around the monuments made the mall glow in the predawn mist. There was a slight chill in the air. Not even the city’s shield could keep it balmy in January. “How long are we going to have to wait here?” Aisha asked.

  “I don’t know,” Patrick shrugged, “maybe they want us to get to know each other better.”

  “What’s left to learn?” asked Charles. “The Captain told us the basics, and last night I learned Patrick needed zucchini. Plus, by now we’ve all run reports on each other, right?”

  An awkward silence followed, with each of us avoiding the others’ eyes. Of course we’d run the reports. Maybe I’d spent a lot more time on Naomi’s, but I’d squeezed in Aisha’s and Patrick’s this morning. The ISA wouldn’t have picked us if we weren’t the type to do our homework.

  “You might
be right,” Naomi eventually said, “but even the best minds and precepts can miss the full story. Not everything can be gleaned from public data.”

  Her mysterious tone begged me to pry further, as did the missing info from her report. “What’s not public these days?” I asked in an innocent tone.

  “How about thoughts, beliefs, and dreams?” Naomi held my gaze.

  “Oh, those things are not as safe as you think,” Charles said. “They’re not public, but I bet when we link our precepts with the ISA network, they can hack in and learn more than we’d like.”

  “What do you mean?” Patrick asked. He glanced furtively at Naomi, then back to Charles. Had something passed between them? “There’s no way they can know what we believe just because our precepts link to their network.”

  “Patrick’s right,” Aisha chimed in. “Beliefs require more than the mind. I think what Charles means is that, whenever you link your precept to a network, there’s a risk your incoming and outgoing precept data will be compromised. So whatever you’ve sent or received through your precept could be hacked into. Right, Charles?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Precepts are playgrounds for hackers like me. And think about it, is there anything you think or do without transmitting data through your precept?”

  “Yeah, I’m a purist with dental hygiene,” I deadpanned, “so I shut down my precept when I brush my teeth.”

  “Smart move,” laughed Charles. “That means you can think whatever you want for one minute a day. But for me, well, I don’t take a breath without my precept. I prefer not to live with an animal brain.”

  “It’s not like that,” Naomi objected. “We don’t need precepts. We wouldn’t even have them if the human mind lacked the spark of creation. Precepts are just our newest tools.”

  “But some tools change everything,” Charles said.

  “Hey,” Patrick interrupted, “what’s that?” He was pointing to something zooming toward us over the mall’s long reflecting pool.