“Well, it’s very good to see you.” Principal VanWeider gives me a polite grin before he turns back to Garrett. “I was quite surprised to see your older brother and younger sister here, Garrett. Oh yes, and Zane’s twin sister is here too. Have they all been Impressioned?”
Garrett shakes his head as Mrs. Reese appears beside him.
“Hello, Van,” she says. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too, Miranda.” He leans in and kisses her cheek. It’s super weird to see my high school principal kissing anybody, especially Garrett’s mom. The only place he seems to fit is in the school auditorium, giving monotone announcements before a pep rally.
“I was just mentioning to Garrett that it was odd to see Sean and Iris and Zaneen Middleditch here, at the Totus,” Principal VanWeider says in a careful, friendly tone, as if he’s talking to the mother of somebody who just got suspended. Mrs. Reese pushes her shoulders back.
“It is odd, but under the circumstances, necessary,” she says. Larson steps up beside Principal VanWeider. He dunks a teabag in his cup so quickly, it splashes a little over the edge. Larson lets go of the bag and takes a loud slurp before he speaks.
“What’s necessary?” he asks. Principal VanWeider takes a little shuffle step backward.
“I was just mentioning that I was surprised to see the Simple members of some families here,” he says.
“Yeah, I noticed that too.” Larson takes another slurp of tea. “Who okayed it? It wasn’t the Addo, was it? Totus has never been open to the Simple folk. Never. And this one especially. I’ve gotta say, having them here for this one is a safety breach if I ever saw one.”
“I can assure you, David, there is no breach,” Mrs. Reese tells Larson.
“I respect what you’re saying, Miranda, but the way I see it, the only way it’s not a breach is if all of them have been Impressioned.”
“All I can do,” Mrs. Reese says with a stiff smile to both men, “is assure you that the Simple relatives who are here tonight aren’t going to present any problems.”
“Well, there’s no way of knowing that until something happens,” Larson says with a shrug.
“Well,” Principal VanWeider says, “on that note, I’m just going to say a few more hellos before we get started. If you’ll excuse me.” His fingertips are light on my arm, scooting me out of his way. Larson just takes another long slurp of tea before he bobs away too. When they’re gone, Mrs. Reese just gives Garrett and I a goofy shrug like there’s nothing she can do about it and then she heads back across the room to the Addo.
The last people to come in are two more teenagers who drift down the steps, so close to one another that they look like they are hinged at the ribs. They look mismatched, since he’s a refrigerator of a guy with a baby face and biceps that could crush watermelons, while she only stands about as tall as his armpit and looks like she should have rainbow hair that stands on end. I remember Zane mentioning a Vieo girl that looked like a troll, but now I realize he wasn’t being mean. She’s adorable and Zane was accurate.
At the opposite end of the room, Addo hoists himself onto the top of one of the chairs, tottering to keep his balance. Mrs. Reese and Ms. Fisk stand on either side of the groaning chair, ready to catch him.
“Looks like we’re all here. Is everybody here?” he booms. The murmuring dies down. “It’d be lovely to go on chatting all night, but it really is time to get down to business, kids. I’m sorry that there are no cookies to ease us through this, but truly, every moment that we spend here together has to be productive. Until we know how The Fury has managed to extract their heads out of their hind quarters and become an actual threat, we’ll all need to be the masters of our p’s and q’s.”
That puts a cork on any stray conversations. There’s just scraping of chair legs as everyone takes their seats or lines up against the walls. Garrett brings two cups of tea, sliding one in front of me. He removes his suit coat and hangs it on the back of his chair before taking his seat. Zaneen doesn’t miss any of it.
Larson slaps his palm on the table and our cups jump.
“Alright, let’s get on with it. I’ll start. Aside from the Simple being part of this Totus…” He lingers at the end of the sentence, staring at the Addo as if the Addo will explain why they’re here. But all the Addo does is stare back, so Larson finally gives up and continues. “Welp, okay…everybody’s been watching the news, right? I gotta say, I think things are going down pretty fast.”
An excited murmur jumps up, carrying words and horrible bits of stories past me like they’re stuck in a current. Three more riots were reported…did you hear about the rash of murders? There have been so many abductions…our children aren’t safe anymore…Three countries threatened nuclear warfare…Did you hear five more huge companies are going under due to corporate scams?…They’re reporting unprecedented hikes in divorce rates and unemployment and suicides…Last thing we need is a hard crash of the global economy…How many more oil spills before we’re destroyed?
The Addo leans back in his chair, scanning the faces at the table. I set my mug down, in case he calls my name, but his gaze passes over me. Instead he stops at a man sitting at the far end of the table, who isn’t talking to anyone, but remains reclined in his chair.
“It looks like you have something to say, Ash,” Addo says.
Just like there was no mistaking Zaneen as Zane’s sister, it’s obvious that the man at the other end of the table is Zane’s dad. Ash Middleditch is everything that makes up Zane- height and weight and hair and face—except that Mr. Middleditch’s skin is etched with the deep lines of a longer, harder life.
“We need to work on what’s in front of us. We need heightened security on our communication system. The Fury could be tapping our cell phones for all we know,” he says. He tips his head to look at a man wearing a cowboy hat, who is leaning on one shoulder, against the wall. “What can you do for us, Trig?”
I catch Zaneen watching me from across the table. I take another drink of tea, spotting the half of the gear-flower design that the tea leaves make in the bottom of the mug. It makes the tension around the table a little less sharp, knowing that the other half of my design is formed in the bottom of Garrett’s mug.
The man in the cowboy hat, who seems to be chewing on an invisible piece of straw, finally replies, “I’ve got a pretty strong encryption program on the phones already, but I suppose I can look into beefing it up some more.”
“I gotta say,” Larson leans back in his chair, one hand on the table. “If the other Curas come in, they’re going to need accommodations. I can help with that.”
Some more murmuring jumps up, pulsing with a worried pitch. How can we bring in the other Curas? We don’t know if one of them was responsible for the massacre! We can’t be indiscriminate! We need to protect our last, remaining Addo. They should understand that.
A dark man, with tattoos that peek out from beneath his shirtsleeves, speaks up from his place on the wall beside Trig.
“Addo,” he says, tucking one hand in the front pocket of his dark blue jeans, “How well do you think the other Curas will accept ranking out of their own infrastructures?”
Addo puts down his mug of tea, licking his lips after he’s swallowed.
“Yes, about all that,” he says. “There’s something I need to tell you all.” Addo’s laugh is nervous, tight, high. “I think you’ll find it quintessentially human. Maybe even ironical. But most definitely, I’m sure that everyone in this room will agree that what I have to confide in you is completely unforgivable.”
Chapter 6
THE SOUND EMPTIES OUT OF the room and everyone seems to lean off their chairs.
“Do you mean to say that there’s been a breach?” Principal VanWeider asks. All kinds of voices fill up the room then, all asking the same thing in different ways: Was there a traitor in the outer Curas? Was it here? Do we know who it is?
Addo raises his hands to hush everybody.
“There wa
s a breach,” he says. “But it’s far worse than anything you could ever imagine. It has nothing to do with any of you, but everything to do with the thirteen Addos.”
There’s a collective gasp and everyone shuts up at once. The whole room holds its breath and the Addo doesn’t even stop for air himself.
“Let me start at the beginning. You all know that the Addos have an annual Indicium, where we come together in order to exchange information about our Curas. It’s time I tell you some of the inner workings of those confidential hotel meetings, in hopes that you will be able to understand the nature of the misfortune that has occurred.
“I believe that all of you,” the Addo’s eyes roll over me. “Or most of you, know that the main function of the Indicium has always been for the Addos to bring one another up to date on new members, any changes in our sectors of the world, and to chew the fat concerning any what-not that the Fury is stirring up. We gather input from the Veritas and try to anticipate changes. We talk strategy and achievements. And, in the midst of this incredible amount of work, we even have our personal moments.
“On that note, the Indiciums could sometimes be compared to a very productive AA meeting, where the Addos could safely complain to each other, as one Addo to another, about the ups and downs of Addoship. As much as we might try to pretend to be something more, Addos are not exempt from being sorrowfully human. And that means that sometimes, even the best Curas can really get on our nerves.” Addo chuckles and rubs a spot on the table top with his thumb, but the silence is back, holding up the hair on my arms.
“Any who,” he continues, “over the years, the nature of the Indiciums changed. Whereas the Addos once locked themselves away in cheap hotel rooms for an entire week, to scour Cura logs and exchange stats, about, oh, seventeen years ago, our Addo Chad—may he rest in peace—developed some marvelous and innovative spreadsheets along with a filing program that made tracking our updates cinchy.
“Keeping records and sharing information became a breeze. At a glance, we could track the comings and goings of all you yahoos, along with any situational changes. We even had quick reference pages with alphabetized tabs. Our notes could be uploaded and combined instantly. At the Indiciums—kaboom! We handed around our packed thumb drives like Halloween treats.
“The beauty of it was that we could download each other’s information and read the files at our leisure. It changed how we did business at home as well as at the Indiciums. Instead of having to rush through the updates of all 13 Curas in one week, the technology made things lickety-split. So much so, in fact, that we suddenly found ourselves with time to relax and mingle.
“I like to think it even improved relations, since we Addos began connecting with one another on deeper levels, beyond just business. Some of us even met up online after the Indicium last year for a rather spirited Farmville competition. I learned a great deal about how time consuming it can be to farm.”
Addo pauses, dragging his hand from brow to chin.
“However, since technology changed how we did our work, it was only natural that other aspects of our jobs changed as well. The Indiciums evolved into a different type of meeting. Instead of a week cramped in a hotel room together with miserable amounts of information to process through, the Indiciums became wonderful parties where we could let off steam and recuperate from our responsibilities as Addos. We began to award ourselves with Indicium weeks full of massages and poolside banter and video game tournaments. We looked forward to booking lodges and luxury resorts, since we had finally found an efficient solution that allowed us to explore more than just the four walls of our hotel rooms.
“The trouble is that as the years went on, all of your Addos became a little careless. The floating bars were too alluring and the time that we spent relaxing began to stretch, almost from one Indicium to the next.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to be your Addo, friends, that’s not it at all. It’s just that I no longer felt I needed to be all the Addos. I didn’t see the point in spending even the couple of weekends it would require, with the new technology, to catch up on the other Addo’s Curas, when I still had so much to keep track of in my own. Especially since it was available, anytime I might need it, from the pile of thumb drives I’d collected.
“And, I’m sorry to say, it wasn’t just me that felt like that. Last year, the thumb drive exchange dropped off all together and we felt justified to just let one another know that all was well in our individual Curas. The gossip and complaints we had seemed sufficient as updates.
“I’d like to tell you that I remained a diligent Addo and avoided temptation, but that only seems like a good idea now that I’m standing here, sweating, if you must know. It’s a horrendous shame that the other party goers can’t be here tonight to face this last bit of music with me, but I suppose that’s just the way this cookie crumbled.” He sighs and his shoulders droop. No one else in the room moves a muscle.
“You deserve the truth and the truth is that I’ve spent the last five Indiciums solidly poo-faced, lucky not to have slipped from my inflatable donut and drowned at the bottom of a resort swimming pool. I am truly ashamed, and more sorry than you can imagine at this moment, not to have expired in a sauna room when I had the chance.”
If my eyes were shut, I could believe that there was no one else in the room. But with my eyes open, I see the shock wave gush silently around the table. Some shake their heads, some look like they might cry, and some glare at the Addo. Mrs. Reese sets down her mug with a clink.
“Alright,” she says softly. “We appreciate your honesty, Addo. This is awful news, but now that we all fully understand what has happened, we can all work on finding a solution. If we can just look through the last thumb drives you received, we might still be able to determine who will be our allies in the other Curas.”
“His honesty?” Mr. Middleditch interrupts. “I can’t say I appreciate one damn thing that just came out of him! The Indiciums were just parties where all the Addos got together to blast the Curas? The Contego paid for those luxury motels with their overtime hours and financial sacrifice. That’s not just some mistake of humanity. That stinks of Selfish to me.”
The anger springs up around the table.
“This bad.” Mrs. Neho shakes her head. “If we not working for greater good, what make us not The Fury?”
“Gotta say, the only difference between us and communists was that we never had the corruption,” Larson squawks. “Guess that’s out the window.”
“Well,” Principal VanWeider says, his hands laced on the table in front of him, “I have to agree that this development is quite shocking.”
“I’m thinking,” Larson adds, “there oughta be some kind of consequence for getting us into this mess!”
Mrs. Reese stands up at the head of the table, her beautiful sand-colored dress flowing around her like an emptying hourglass. She waits a moment while the firing squad continues to blast the Addo. Then, she adjusts the comb holding the swirl of her hair before she slams her fist down so hard on the table that the teacups rattle all the way to the opposite end.
“Enough!” she booms. It even shuts Larson’s mouth. “We can get caught up in what’s happened, but the fact is, The Fury is on our doorstep right now. We need to pull the Ianua together, not push it any further apart. Our Addo has obviously made some devastatingly human mistakes, but it doesn’t change the fact that he is our Addo and that we can’t waste any time in moving forward. The first thing we need to do is get a hold of those thumb drives and get an idea of who’s out there. Without those, we don’t even know who is in the outer Curas. Anyone could say they’re in the community.”
“I’m not sure it will matter,” Principal VanWeider says. “If we only have old files, we still won’t know who’s gone to The Fury and who hasn’t.”
“We could track patterns and consistency,” Trig offers. “It’s not fool-proof, but we could at least narrow down the members with long-term, loyal standing.”
> “Yes, all the information on the drives would be lovely,” the Addo interrupts with a frown, “if I had them. Each Addo keeps a vault and I’d be willing to bet the Fury hoisted mine out of the rubble after they burnt down my trailer. At least the refrigerator should’ve been inconvenient to carry.”
“We can’t be sure until we’re sure, though,” Freddie says.
“True,” Zane’s dad agrees. “We’ll have to get out there and sift through what’s left of all the Addo’s houses and see if we can locate some of these vaults. Are they all in the fridges, Addo?”
“No, they could be part of anything. I’ll draw up a list of possibilities. I do know there should be two at Addo Gita’s home, since she inherited Addo Chad’s vault when he passed,” Addo adds with a solemn bow of his head. “However, if you fail to recover them, the only shameful comfort I can offer is that all thirteen of the Addo’s thumb drives might be empty anyway. I know for a fact that last year, Addo Gita admitted that she hadn’t recorded anything for the previous year on her own drive.”
Trig glares from beneath the brim of his ten-gallon. “Are you serious? Didn’t the other Addos have a problem with her saying that?”
“Well,” Addo coughs into his hand. “They weren’t exactly present when she told me.”
“Where they were then?” Mrs. Neho asks.
“Who knows?” Addo says. “I just know they weren’t in bed with Addo Gita and I.”
Zaneen, across the table, gags into her hand.
“Sweet tangerines!” Larson explodes. “So now what do we do? We’re getting blasted on all sides by the Fury and now we have absolutely no way of knowing who’s on our side and who’s not?”
“We duck sitting.” Mrs. Neho crosses her arms on her chest with a frown. But then she looks at the Addo and shakes her finger at him with a smile that’s almost joking. “They other Curas going to come after us for you. We should give you them, crazy man.”
Cornerstone 02 - Keystone Page 9
