LOCK

by Hollis Shiloh

  There was a rather old-fashioned jewelry box, a child's locked journal, and a key-operated padlock closed and without the key. My heart had begun to pound, and I could feel my face flushing as I reached for the first one. I wasn't convinced — I didn't want to get my hopes up — but this was clearly the closest I was going to get to having some kind of power. I really hoped he wasn't messing me around with broken locks.

  The old jewelry box popped right open. It didn't feel like it had been locked at all. I tried not to give him an accusing look. Maybe tricking people was part of the test. If so, it was a shitty part. I still needed to take this as professionally as I could. The little pink journal had a broken lock, because it opened right away; I didn't even have to tug.

  The padlock, though. It certainly looked locked, but I didn't think it was going to be, either. It was probably broken, and they were making a fool out of me to get my hopes up, so I wouldn't be paying attention to the rest of the tests, or something, and they could get a better result. Well, I wasn't going for it. That was a shitty way to test, and I didn't like it.

  I nodded to Neal. "Could you try it first, please?" I said crisply.

  He glanced at Shapiro, who shrugged. Neal rose, walked over to the table, picked up the lock, and tried to open it. At least, he looked like he tried to open it. After a bit, he shook his head and handed it to me.

  I opened the lock.

  At this point, I felt very close to crying. Unfortunately, I'm one of those people who is as likely to angry-cry as sad-cry (believe me, this has not made my life any happier). I put the lock down with dignity and stood up. "I don't know why I should take this seriously if you're not going to," I said, my voice shaking only a little.

  "What do you mean? It was locked," insisted Neal.

  I shot him a betrayed look, hoping I wouldn't ruin it by sniffling.

  "Sit down, Mr. Palmer," said Shapiro. "The items were locked."

  "But I didn't feel anything. I'd feel something if I was doing it, wouldn't I?" I almost pleaded.

  "We'll try a few more. I have no reason or desire to trick you, Mr. Palmer."

  He went out of the room.

  Neal said, "It really was locked."

  "If you're tricking me..." I said.

  "You'll what?" He tried not to sound amused...kind of.

  I shot him an irate look. I didn't know what I'd do. "Well, it's not very nice, that's all."

  "I wouldn't do that to you." He clapped a hand on my shoulder.

  Great. Bros again.

  Shapiro returned with another man in a lab coat and a woman in a dress suit. She looked slick and professional, a little bit too thin, with a brisk walk and high heels. The second man was large and round, with unruly facial hair, large glasses, and an eager expression on his face. They were both a bit older than Mr. Shapiro, probably in their forties, at least.

  They watched with interest as Shapiro set out more locked items, a random assortment, a bit more self-consciously than he'd done before. "Now, if you'll just open some more of these, Mr. Palmer," he said, trying not to sound nervous. He clutched his clipboard as if for security.

  I kept my hands in my lap. "Can you prove they're locked first?"

  They exchanged looks. "We've no interest in tricking you, Mr. Palmer," said Shapiro again. "Please, just open the items."

  "You can't prove it, then?" I demanded.

  "Someone can try to open them, if you wish," said Shapiro cautiously. "But you didn't believe Mr. Webb when he showed you. Please, just complete the test, and then perhaps we can discuss the results to your satisfaction."

  I glanced at Neal, who shrugged. The ball was in my court, but I could see he thought I'd be being a bit silly if I kept kicking up a fuss. Mouth tight, I reached for the items one by one and opened them. Not a single one was locked.

  The extra visitors watched like it was the most fascinating thing, and Shapiro made notes quickly.

  I still didn't see why they felt the need to trick me, but the least I could do was not fall for it. I'd go along with the stupid charade, but they were going to hear about it later. Somebody was, anyway, even if I had to settle for writing a complaint. I definitely had a strongly worded letter in me at the moment.

  "I think that's enough for the applied section," suggested the woman, who still hadn't introduced herself. It was definitely an order.

  Shapiro nodded quickly and flipped through some pages on his clipboard. He began to read questions off to me. "Have you previously noticed an ability to open locked doors, safes, locks, or similar items?"

  "No." I managed not to snort.

  "Have you ever locked yourself out of your car, a building, etc.?"

  I had to think for that one. "Not that I recall." Despite myself, it was hard to be mad at Shapiro. You could see he was feeling the pressure, having his technique observed by people who were senior to him.

  He flipped a page. "Have you ever accidentally entered a building outside normal hours of business?"

  I had to think longer for that. He probably meant something like entering the mall after it was closed, not realizing, and being chased out by a security guard or something. "If I did, it wasn't memorable."

  It was an intriguing thought. I let the idea of this not being a trick settle over me, something to contemplate. Assuming I could open locks without trying, and that this was an unusual ability I'd been born with, did that mean I just hadn't noticed up till now because, what, I'd thought things weren't locked when they were? Or because I'd been so good about observing CLOSED and KEEP OUT signs and the like that I simply hadn't had a realistic chance to test it?

  "Have you noticed many doors, windows, cars, and the like not being locked when one would think they ought to be?"

  "Besides today, you mean?" I said, giving him a stern look. But he just waited for my answer. I sighed. "No, I haven't. But I'm also not in the habit of tugging on doors that should be locked."

  He made a note, nodding quickly. "Do you happen to recall if you were known, as a child, for 'getting into everything,' or that your parents had any particular trouble keeping you out of dangerous spots?"

  I had to think. "Yeah, I think, um..." It took me a minute, drawing back on fuzzy memories of childhood. "I was the youngest, and my — my brother and sisters always got in trouble for letting me out to play with them. I did get into cupboards and drawers a lot, but that's pretty normal."

  Could it be that my brother and sisters hadn't let me out, that I'd had an innate ability to escape the playpen or unlock the child safety gate, things like that? If so, why hadn't I remembered I could do that when I got older?

  This was becoming fascinating. I leaned forward before he could ask more questions and interjected one of my own. "How can we prove it if I have this ability?" I was thinking there must be some more certain test, something that couldn't possibly be faked.

  Shapiro glanced at his clipboard. "Ah, we've already proven it to the — the satisfaction of the ESRB. The next steps would be to quantify your ability and its limits, train you to use it the best of your ability, and assign an ESRB rating. This is a non-standard ability, so the ESRB rating will be provisional."

  I digested that for a moment, blinking. "You're saying there aren't enough, er, psychic lock pickers to have a standardized rating system?"

  Shapiro flashed me a smile that was surprisingly shy and made him look much less like an official science-y person. "Essentially, yes."

  I looked at Neal to see what he thought, and he gave me a big, proud smile and a thumbs-up. It still didn't seem real; it didn't seem possible to have an ability and not know it. But it was starting to seem a bit more plausible all the time.

  #

  The first thing I did, of course, was to call my parents. It was exciting, telling them I was going to be trained by the ESRB. "I can't talk about what the ability is right now," I told them. "But it's pretty cool, if it all works out."

  Okay, so maybe I was making myself sound better than I was. But I really
wasn't supposed to tell anyone what, exactly, my ability was. It was a security thing; I wasn't allowed to just go announcing to people what I could do, especially over the phone — even to family members.

  Neal stayed with me through briefings and congratulations and such, hovering politely in the background, bodyguarding me even here, where I was almost certainly perfectly safe.

  He didn't stay in the same room as me that night, but that was because we weren't stuck in my tiny apartment. We had rooms next to each other in the facility. And, yeah, they were kind of plain, but well laid out, with soft mattresses and good WiFi. The cafeteria food was pretty tasty for institutional cooking.

  I had a lot of questions, but they had only vague answers for me at first. It took me a while to get to sleep.

  I wished Neal would knock on the door and offer to watch TV with me, but, really, that wouldn't be very professional, would it?

  He stayed in the exam room with me the next day, though, when an expert sat down with me to answer some questions. I was grateful for Neal's presence, even if he didn't say anything. It felt like moral support, even though it was probably just him being the best bodyguard he knew how to be. Which was pretty good, as far as I was concerned. I mean, he'd folded laundry with me and everything. (What do you mean, my priorities are skewed?)

  The expert had glanced between us when she entered the room, as if she was trying to decide who was the one she was here to see. Neal rose immediately and offered to shake hands, saying, "I'm Neal Webb, bodyguard for Drew. There are some security issues."

  The expert raised her eyebrows at that but accepted the hand to shake. "Dr. Julia Arnside. Normally, these consultations take place privately."

  "I can wait outside, of course. I'll leave anytime Drew wants me to." Neal glanced at me, but I shook my head quickly. Even if it was just his job, I felt in grave need of moral support.

  The doctor and I shook hands as well, and we sat down again. "I'm here to answer some questions you might have, as well as discuss your future with the ESRB."

  "Will I have a future here?" I asked immediately. That was the biggest question I had. "It doesn't seem like opening locks has much use, unless you're a criminal." And believe me, that thought had been bugging me. It made me feel downhearted, that my special ability might only be useful for theft. I wasn't interested in becoming a master thief, even if I could have.

  "There are certainly practical applications that do not involve crime," said the doctor carefully, looking at my face with interest. "It depends on how your training and certification go, of course — but even at the lowest levels, there are legitimate jobs."

  "Such as locksmith services, I suppose."

  "Essentially, yes."

  "Well, what if I get a high rating? What then?" I hoped it didn't involve running around and doing secret shit for the government. I didn't want to invade people's privacy, even for "legitimate" reasons. Even if the pay was great. Working at a bookstore, at least I didn't feel slimy at the end of the day.

  She hesitated enough to let me know it wasn't something she wanted to share. I sighed. "Do you mean I'd end up working a shady government gig? Breaking into people's stuff?"

  She did smile at this. "It's possible, yes. But the real question is whether you can break only physical locks. That will have a huge impact on your future."

  "What do you mean, physical locks?"

  She got more comfortable and settled in to tell me, her eyes brightening as she got into the topic. This was clearly something that interested her a lot. I wondered just how many people like me she'd actually had the opportunity to work with. There couldn't be many, if they were still working out the classification system.

  "There are all kinds of locks, such as digital locks — passwords and encryptions, that sort of thing. If you were able to get past digital locks and safeguards as easily as you open locked boxes, then you would have a very good — and very secure — job for the government. There's always a need to access hidden information — terrorism, gangs and crime organizations, child pornography rings, things related to hate group recruitment. Technology is constantly evolving. But if you can open digital locks, there's no outpacing that. That's one thing training and testing will determine."

  She smiled at me, bright and hopeful then. "It's too early to get our hopes up, but I suspect you're quite talented. You didn't even seem to know you were opening locks, you did it so automatically. Of course, that could be an issue during training — to teach yourself to recognize when you're unlocking something and when it's already open."

  "I'm still half-afraid this might just be a trick," I confided. "It didn't feel like I was doing anything."

  "That's quite amazing."

  She seemed excited about my ability. I wished I was. I'd tried to be, talking to my family last night.

  "Um, I won't be — uh — used to do anything fishy, will I? Because if that's the case, I'd rather go back to working at the bookstore. I don't want to be some kind of creepy voyeur, either for the government or anyone else." It wasn't like I trusted the government to always have people's best interests at heart. Did I really want to be another tool in their arsenal, if I was powerful enough to be of use to them? It freaked me out a little, to be honest.

  Her expression grew serious. "That's an important point, and one reason that anyone certified by the ESRB has oversight from us no matter where they work. There's always a danger, with any of these abilities, that people could be coerced into doing inappropriate things. Wherever you work, you would have regular check-ins with coordinators from the ESRB to make sure you weren't being taken advantage of, used for illicit purposes, or mistreated."

  If it was just me, high-powered or not, I knew it would be pretty easy to force me into a situation I would find untenable. I didn't want to become a robber or something; knowing they'd try to have my back was some weight off my mind.

  "Even if I ended up working for a locksmith?"

  "Even if you ended up working for a locksmith." She smiled again, her eyes warm. Her friendliness made me feel safer asking my questions, and I relaxed a little.

  "Um, how many people like me are there in the ESRB? Assuming the lock thing is a real talent, and actually useful, it didn't seem like a common one."

  "It isn't. There have been three confirmed people with some degree of the same ability. We don't have an official name for it. Locksmith is the colloquial term, though the higher levels tend to be referred to as hackers. If there were more around, I'm sure we'd have come up with something suitably important-sounding." She smiled. "But, as it is, it simply hasn't come up much. We have far more empaths, even more people with some degree of telekinesis than locksmiths."

  "Isn't it kind of like telekinesis, if I can open a lock without a key?"

  "That's still an area of study and debate," she admitted. "It doesn't seem appropriate to refer to it as telekinesis when that is the only thing you can affect — and it doesn't explain the digital component that sometimes goes along with it. Though it still might be related to telekinesis," she conceded.

  It seemed crass to ask about money, but, well... "Would I earn a good salary, doing something with this talent? I'm working just above minimum wage now, and I have a lot of student loans." I grimaced, embarrassed to be bringing them up. But they sure hung over my head often enough, the interest racking up, the required payments keeping me from saving anything, and the general weight of "Why the fuck did I pay for an education that isn't earning me anything?" adding more stress to my life. I wanted them gone; I wanted them off my back. And working at the bookstore wasn't going to make that happen. I was lucky to make my minimum payments there.

  "You should have a reasonable chance of earning a good salary," she said. "I've printed out some job basics here." She handed over a piece of paper. Apparently, this question wasn't unexpected. She pointed to the top line. "That's the average nationwide for a locksmith. The other options are higher."

  My brows rose as I looked at the list,
and a little grin crept onto my face. I felt a lot lighter suddenly. Even a locksmith's earnings would be more than I made now. I'd actually have a chance to have a decent life and pay more than the minimum on my debts. "This is...wow. This is great," I admitted, putting the paper down. "I haven't, uh, had a lot of chances to find a better job. This would make a big difference for me, even the lowest amount." I tapped the paper as well and started to hand it back.

  "You can keep that," she told me, her expression friendly and sympathetic. "We can start your training and the certification process as soon as you're comfortable. We generally recommend starting right away, but sometimes people need a few weeks or months to adjust themselves to the turn of events. Not everyone takes well to being discovered as having a talent. Of course, you're not legally obligated to be trained or certified at all, although we do have to keep something of an eye on anyone with a talent that could be dangerous or used badly, if they refuse bureau training. Nothing strenuous, just some check-ins and oversights. We wouldn't want you falling into the hands of a master criminal, would we?"

  "I can see the point of that." I looked at the paper again. "Um, what are the other three doing? I'd like to talk to them sometime, if I could." Maybe that would make all of this seem more real. Maybe I could get some pointers.

  She seemed prepared for this as well. "One is a locksmith in Boise, Idaho. Another works for the government. A third is a private consultant for a software developer. She's the strongest one, actually. Because she can open digital locks as well as tell us how she does it, her skills are useful for research and development on security issues. That," she added, "is a high-paying job."

  "I'll bet. Can I talk to some of them sometime?"

  "I'll see what I can arrange, although it's up to them, of course."

  "Sure. Did any of them know they had this ability before they were tested?"

  She hesitated on that. "Yes. It seems to be more common than not. Our software consultant was discovered because she regularly accessed high-level security on the internet, as well as changing the grades of several high school students. That's the only way they found her. If she'd been a bit less sloppy, she'd still be out there, hacking away without consequence."