A Problematic Paradox

by Eliot Sappingfield

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, I do. It’s in the tunnel system beneath the streets. Crazy stuff down there. Miniature fusion reactors, chemical and quantum fuel cells, all kinds of communications, and other infrastructure. It’s a maze—and I know it all.”

  “Good for you?”

  “The only reason that thing didn’t blow up thirty seconds earlier—the reason you’re still alive—is because I was down there sending it shutdown commands and trying to kill the power supply. Didn’t you see it turning off and back on again?”

  I stepped around him and started down the hill again. “Yeah, but it was malfunctioning.”

  “Because of me,” he said, more than a little smugly.

  “Hypatia and I asked the Chaperone about fifty questions about the incident, and she didn’t mention you at all.”

  “She didn’t tell anyone. I think she was covering for me. Most of the tunnel system is off-limits—we’re not supposed to have access, and we’re absolutely not supposed to know how to shut down critical defense systems. I could have gotten expelled.”

  “They wouldn’t expel you for trying to help.”

  “You only think that because your last name is Kross. You’re an honorary parahuman. It isn’t like that for everyone.”

  Warner seemed determined to hold on to his sense of persecution, and I didn’t have the energy to dissuade him. “It still boggles my mind that Dad kept this place from me. He was always so rotten at keeping secrets.”

  “He probably knew what he was doing. Lots of people go into hiding after they leave school. They try to integrate into the normal human world anonymously when they can. The choice is either that, take up residence in a secured parahuman community, or keep looking over your shoulder to make sure the Old Ones aren’t creeping up on you.”

  “I wonder why we weren’t in hiding. We never even changed our name. Heck, our number was in the phone book,” I said.

  Warner chuckled. “Yeah, it’s in them all.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I tried to email your dad once for a project. We were supposed to interview a famous parahuman for Xenosociology class, but I convinced Mr. Eichen that your dad was just as important as any parahuman. I tried to look your dad up online, and there were no social media accounts of any kind attached to him. Then I checked the phone directories, and there’s a number for Melvin Kross everywhere.”

  “What do you mean, everywhere?” I asked.

  “Every single town, village, and city in North America has a telephone number listed under the name Melvin Kross.”

  “Seriously?”

  Warner nodded. “He never returned my calls, but I only tried four or five of his eight hundred thousand phone numbers.”

  “So we were hiding in plain sight. Sorry you never got the interview,” I said, a bit honored that Warner looked up to my dad in much the same way I did. “So how about your parents?” I tried. “Are they in hiding?”

  “No,” Warner said. His tone said I shouldn’t ask more about that particular subject.

  I looked ahead. At the bottom of a long hill, down a canyon of unoccupied brick buildings, stood a rusted disaster of a factory—a hulking structure with tilting inactive smokestacks, an arched metal roof, and huge sliding doors that I assumed were broken because of their slightly off-kilter angles. A long and inconsistent barbed-wire fence that ran around the perimeter was decorated with cheerful metal signs that said things like BIOHAZARD, DO NOT ENTER and FEDERAL LAW PROHIBITS ACCESS WITHOUT PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT.

  I said, “That’s not—”

  “That is,” Warner said.

  At least the name finally made sense. It hadn’t always been the “orriso A besto Pr sing” building. Those were just the letters that hadn’t fallen off the side of the building yet. According to the faded paint where the missing letters had once hung, the full name had been Morrison Asbestos Processing.

  Inside the factory was an expansive concrete floor, a ceiling that must have been a hundred feet high, various rusted metal drums, dangerous-looking machinery, and rickety catwalks running here and there. The place was well-lit in the center but dark and foreboding at the edges near the walls. I couldn’t shake the idea that the whole thing might collapse if someone kicked the wrong beam.

  “Good luck,” Warner said as he walked off on his own and sat atop a rusty oil drum just outside the circle of students.

  The class had few other recognizable faces. My pal Ultraviolet was in attendance but without Tom, thank goodness. She was always more obnoxious when he was around. Bob was also there, looking twitchy and nervous. And I recognized Percival, the seven-foot-tall bearded satellite designer Hypatia had pointed out to me the day I arrived. I decided to stand near him—I figured he would be good to have on my side if actual combat was going to happen. He’d make a good meat shield, in any case.

  After a few minutes, a metal door opened and Ms. Botfly emerged, wearing what looked like a bulletproof vest and only one extra pair of glasses atop her head.

  “Class,” she began as she wandered distractedly toward us, “we have a new student. This is Miss Nikola Kross, and she is a girl.” She winked at me as she said this, which led to a few confused glances in my direction. I mastered the urge to hide behind Percival and waved at everyone instead.

  “Now everyone say your name and something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know one another.”

  All twenty students said their names and something interesting about themselves simultaneously, so I learned nothing, except maybe that Percival either has a pet chinchilla or doesn’t know how to pronounce quesadilla.

  “Wasn’t that nice? The purpose of this class is simple, Nikola. The entire parahuman community and all humans associated with us are under threat from a variety of sources. Most notably, we have been at war with the Old Ones for thousands of years. The Old Ones seek to terrify, capture, or kill us. We are hunted wherever we go and must be able to defend ourselves at all times. Communities like the School can protect us from them, but you must be prepared for attack if you ever wish to travel or live outside a protected parahuman community. Other classes help you understand the Old Ones. Some teach how to avoid them. In this class you learn to fight them off and escape when all else fails.”

  I noticed her accent had changed a bit. When we’d first met, she had sounded vaguely Germanic, but she was now sounding a bit like a British person who spent a lot of time in New York City.

  Ms. Botfly took a tiny bite out of her thumbnail, surveyed the result, and continued, “It’s an unpleasant truth, but the day will come when you will be confronted by an Old One or one of their minions. My class will ensure you are proficient with common weapons and tactics shown to be effective, that you possess the right instincts regarding what to do and when to do it, as well as the physical ability to put those tactics into action.”

  She kicked a large plastic tub. Objects inside it rattled and settled against one another. “I have a bin here of gravitational disruptors. In honor of our new student’s weapon of choice, we will all be using disruptors today. Your assignment”—she checked a notebook—“howler killer monkeys! Courtesy of our friends in Creative Robotics. You, the blue one, you’re in that class, aren’t you? Any tips for defeating them?”

  Bob looked truly afraid. “Ma’am, they’re not ready to work with. Most of them are overpowered, and a couple exploded when they—”

  “Okay!” interrupted Ms. Botfly. “So we can count on a few of our targets to explode. Use that to your advantage. Remember to strike in teams, use cover, and move under covering fire. These machines learn and communicate among themselves, so change tactics as you go, and don’t forget to cover your behind and keep an eye out above you. They’re quick little devils. The disruptors have a wide angle of effect, so you don’t have to be a crack shot, but be careful of friendly fire, please. I
’ll be in the bubble if anyone needs me, and as always, paramedics are standing by. Bonus points go to the last surviving student, or, if we have more than one, the student with the most kills. Good luck!”

  With that, Miss Botfly sat in a comfortable-looking chair in the center of the floor, pressed a button on the arm, and was encircled with an iridescent blue sphere, which must have provided some kind of protection. The students rushed the bin in the center of the floor, fighting over the best disruptors. Some looked like they had seen better days. Thankfully I didn’t need to worry about that since I had my own. Once everyone was ready, Ms. Botfly pressed a button, a loud horn sounded from somewhere in the gloom, and the monkeys were released.

  We didn’t see them at first, but from the clattering noises and insane shrieks echoing through the building, it sounded like they were everywhere. At first, everyone kind of stood around the weapons bin, but eventually someone said, “Uh, shouldn’t we take cover?” And the entire class kind of wandered into a spot behind a low metal wall near the office. I could hear the hooting growing closer now. In the distance, I spied a figure vaulting acrobatically from one catwalk to another.

  Bob was nearby, and I tapped him on the shoulder. “Are they armed with anything?”

  “Well, they have a kind of explosive charge—not very powerful for class purposes, but they’re still bad. They make a lot of noise. That’s the worst part.”

  There was a clattering directly over us, and to my surprise, it was little blue Bob who snapped his weapon vertically and fired the first shot—before I’d even processed the idea that there was something to shoot at. Given Bob’s ability to see a little forward in time, there might not have been something to shoot at until after he shot, of course.

  The gravitational disruptor emitted a strange BLOOP sound and made a path through the air that looked a bit like something falling upward through water. Everything went swimmy, and I was able to look up in time to see the beam strike something mechanical that must have been hanging from an overhead pipe. Whatever it was crashed into the ceiling and returned to the concrete floor in the form of spare parts. I did not like the look of what landed: a clawed hand and a rather vicious-looking metallic monkey’s head with some kind of circular thing in its mouth that could have been a speaker.

  Ms. Botfly’s voice spoke through a loudspeaker: “One point for BIIIIIG BLUUUUUUE.”

  Percival, my first choice for partner, had reacted to all this by crouching down as low as he could, covering his neck, and sidling behind Ultraviolet VanHorne. She looked at him in disgust and then stared off into the darkness, waiting for her own target.

  What I was seeing, I decided, was stupidity. Here we were, several students against some kind of extremely agile enemy armed with explosives, and the approach was to stand in a small clump, waiting for them to take us out as a group? I had decided to break off from the rest when I noticed Warner slipping off on his own, without a partner. He pulled open a heavy metal door labeled ACCESS and walked in.

  A student tried to join him, but Warner shook his head. “I work alone,” was all he said. More cowardice, I decided.

  “Bob,” I said, “you’re my partner now.”

  “Oh, ah, okay?” he said.

  “Isn’t it a bit daffy for us all to be here in one spot waiting for them? Shouldn’t we spread out?”

  “Uh, yeah,” he said, apparently surprised that someone was talking to him. “I was thinking the overhead crane booth would be a good vantage point.” He pointed up. Sure enough, there was an orange metal box a crane operator would stand in. We could see the whole facility from up there.

  “There are monkeys afoot. Should we really be climbing up? That’s kind of their territory,” I said.

  “They look for heat, noise, and mass. Both of us are smaller, and I think we can manage to be quiet.”

  “Okay, let’s roll,” I said, jogging to a metal staircase not far off.

  A few of the other students watched us go, but none of them followed. Maybe they didn’t feel like climbing stairs. The catwalk level had a wider view, but seeing into the gloom was harder than I had thought. I didn’t see any monkeys yet but heard a couple shots fired below. I was right—they were targeting the larger group first.

  Then I saw them—a large group of monkey-shaped robots was organized into ranks behind a huge rusty drum. My best guess was that the bots were modeled on slightly larger and bulkier gibbons. They might have looked like animals, but they behaved like soldiers. They were saluting a larger monkey, which was standing atop the drum, gesturing proudly. One of the “soldiers” leaped up next to him and appeared to argue about something. At least, that was what he was doing until his head was detached and sent flying across the room by a crack shot from the main group.

  “One point for . . . Ultraviolet,” Ms. Botfly said, “my favorite color.”

  “I could hit the lot of them from here,” I said.

  “No. They’re still too far—the beam takes a second or two to get where it’s going. They could dodge the shot and then they’d be after us.”

  Another monkey—probably a scout—climbed a chain hanging from the ceiling and mounted a catwalk opposite us. Bob and I took aim at it, but we were too slow. Another shot came a second before I could fire.

  Warner had appeared from nowhere and had scored a direct hit, but instead of being blasted across the room away from him, the monkey did the opposite. It was as if Warner had ensnared it with an invisible lasso and jerked it with infinite force back toward where he was standing. It landed right at his feet, either broken or stunned. Warner leaned down calmly, grabbed the monkey by an ankle, and dragged it back into the shadows.

  “He must have reversed his disruptor,” Bob said. “Can’t see how that would be an advantage—you really don’t want one at close range.”

  The monkey general, as I had taken to thinking about him, hooted angrily and sent his troops into action. They sprang atop their cover, produced smallish metallic capsules, and hurled them toward the students. The capsules flew toward either side of the low wall where they were hiding. Instantly, I saw it was a trick. As soon as the students saw a threat coming, they would instinctively dive to the right or left, which would land them right in the line of fire.

  It worked perfectly. The students dived and the capsules hit the ground all around them and exploded with a weird glomph noise, spraying out a thin layer of . . . something pink. In a single attack, half the students were coated head to toe in sticky pink goop.

  “Death paint,” said Bob, in answer to the question I was about to ask. “They’re out.”

  The remaining students scrambled for new cover, and the monkeys divided into three teams, moving almost too fast to be seen through dim canyons of rusted metal and industrial machinery. The first group ran right below us. I had a perfect shot. Taking careful aim, I fired, my disruptor said BLOOP, and the entire team was instantly smashed against the floor.

  “Nikola the newbie!” Ms. Botfly exclaimed. “Six points in one shot! Well done.”

  “Wow,” said Bob. It occurred to me that he must have let me take the shot, since he probably saw it coming a few seconds before it happened.

  I had started to thank him when a monkey leaped up from below and landed just behind me on the catwalk. I turned to blast it, but before I could, it opened its mouth.

  A blue light came on in its mouth, and it shrieked, “AAAAH-AAAAAAAAAAAAAH.”

  Shriek isn’t the right word, really. It wasn’t a blast like the sonic cannon, more like a torrent of mind-erasing noise that struck all at once. I suddenly experienced the worst migraine ever. I could have shot it at point-blank range, but because of the pain and disorientation, I couldn’t open my eyes or even point my arm at it. Bob collapsed, and I stumbled backward, almost tripping over him as I retreated. Several paces from the monkey, I was able to think a little more clearly. I raised my weapon
and took aim. Before I could act, there came a loud BLOOP noise, and the shrieking monkey was completely obliterated by a disruptor shot from below. This might have been wonderful news had Bob not been close enough to catch almost all the force from the blast, which seemed to spread outward from where it hit the monkey. It threw his still-conscious body sideways down the clattering catwalk in my direction.

  He said, and I quote, “AaaahAAAEEEEAAAYA!”

  My oh-so-intelligent response was: “I’ll catch you!”

  So that’s what I tried doing. I tried stopping his body by putting mine in front of it.

  Let’s work out the math on this one: Bob was moving at around fifteen meters per second and weighed about sixty kilograms, whereas I was moving at zero meters per second and weighed about fifty kilos.

  If you came up with: I failed to stop or even to slow him down much at all, and was instead knocked violently backward off the side of the rickety catwalk, then give yourself one point.

  I hate falling. I do a lot of falling and have never gotten used to it. But falling from about a hundred feet in the air in a building with a hard concrete floor and rusty metal junk all over the place is a special kind of unpleasant. As we spun, I saw we were plummeting into a huge metallic cauldron of some sort. I hoped they had bothered to remove whatever chemicals it had held before turning the factory into a classroom.

  I screamed something unintelligible, and Bob gave me a hug.

  I appreciated the sentiment, but the situation didn’t exactly call for a warm embrace, and frankly, it was a bit creepy. Still, I prefer not to evaluate socially awkward gestures while in free fall, so I decided to think it over after I was dead.

  “Grab the ceiling on our way back up!” Bob shouted into my ear.

  I had no idea what he meant, but a second later, it made sense. Just as we tumbled wildly into the vat, he fired a single shot from his disruptor into the bottom. Instead of spreading upon impact in all directions like the disruptor shots normally did, this time the blast seemed to echo outward against the sides of the container and back in again. It was like how a drop of water falling into a cup causes another smaller drop to leap back out of the surface it hits. That rebounding drop, perfectly timed, rose to meet our falling bodies. We slowed in midair and were rising again, except at a rather more terrifying speed. We flew up and stopped just beneath the ceiling, where I was able to get a tenuous grip on one of the metal poles that ran along the building’s roof.