Ivy

by William Dickstein

  “I understand what you’re saying, but this is my life. I don’t see why-”

  “Ivy, you need to trust me on this. No good can come of you knowing.”

  Well, this is infuriating.

  We agree.

  What am I even supposed to do here? How do I convince him to tell me anything?

  We have no idea. He is afraid. Does that help?

  “Hunter,” I said, cutting him off from whatever he had been saying. “Why are you so scared to tell me?”

  “You think I’m scared?” he asked. “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s obvious,” I lied. “I can tell you’re afraid of something.” It may be worth noting that, while I was fully animated thus far throughout the conversation, Hunter had remained still, sitting back in his large and comfortable-looking chair. He had worn the same expression the entire time he’d been sitting, making me question whether or not the voices had been correct about how he was feeling.

  You can trust us. We would never lie to you.

  I’m not saying you were lying, just wondering if you were wrong.

  Oh. Well, we weren’t.

  “Are you… talking to them now?” Hunter asked, successfully catching me off guard.

  I quickly coughed, trying to mask my surprise at the question. “Maybe,” I said as sternly as I could. “Does that have anything to do with how you knew that my meeting with Sink wasn’t going to go the way I wanted it to?”

  “Perhaps,” Hunter said, finally moving to lean forward. “What do they sound like?”

  “Like a hundred little voices all talking at once.”

  “And you can understand what they’re saying? They don’t drown themselves out?”

  “They all say the same thing at the same time, so no.”

  “Do they echo?” he asked me, a question no one had ever voiced before about the voices. I had to think for a moment about the answer.

  “No,” I started to say. “Actually, hold on a second.”

  Hey, are you echoing when you all talk to me?

  What is an echo?

  “Okay, no, there’s no echo. I can hear them clearly,” I said.

  Hunter’s eyebrows crinkled, and his left hand came up to his chin as he leaned back again in his chair. Then, he said, “Actually, I’ve known a couple Communicators. Not many, but a few. I can tell you one thing for sure: I don’t think you’re talking to machines. Every Communicator I’ve ever known who could communicate with machinery, they all say the same thing about what they hear in their head. It comes with a strong echo. The echo makes some of them go insane, so I didn’t think you’d have it, but I figured I’d ask.”

  We could have told you we were not machines.

  But you won’t actually tell me what you are.

  We already have. We are like-

  Right, right. You are like me.

  “You’re talking to them again!” Hunter nearly yelled, an open smile across his face. “Your voices are really chatty. That’s a bit uncommon too. Most things don’t have an inclination to openly communicate. Like people who can talk to animals, they might have regular conversations with their dog, but you take them to a zoo and most of the animals there won’t bother without heavy prompting.”

  “That’s all really interesting,” I said. “It’s been great to finally learn so much. I guess I just wish I knew what they were. With Sink not being able to tell me, and you also not letting me know, I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Wait,” Hunter said. “You think I know what you’re communicating with?”

  “You mean you don’t? Isn’t that what you’ve been saying?”

  “How could I know that? Better question though. Why don’t you just ask whoever you’re talking to?”

  “I have asked them so many times!” I nearly screamed. “All they ever tell me is that they’re like me, or I’m like them, or something like that. And then, just now, they confirmed that they weren’t machines.”

  “They say that you’re like them?” Hunter asked.

  “Yes. So damn often. And if they aren’t machines… I mean, I don’t see any animals in here.”

  “Ask them where they are.”

  We are with you, always.

  “They said they’re with me.”

  Hunter exhaled, his arms dropping onto the armrests of his chair. “This is really quite the riddle. I wonder if we know anyone whose gene works on those...”

  “Great! Great… just great. So, I don’t know. What do I even do now?”

  “I still have faith that you’ll figure out where the voices are really coming from. And even if you don’t know right now, I think the important stuff is still going to work out for you. What you’re feeling is completely justified, but trust me when I tell you that what is happening right now does not need to define your future in the GHS. You’re wondering what you can do? You go and be a Cape. You graduate, and you do your job.”

  I closed my eyes, taking a breath to try and deal with the anger and frustration like I’d learned growing up. After I opened my eyes, I stood, then reached my hand out to Hunter. “Alright. Thank you for your time today, sir. I’m going to get a bit of reading in, I think.”

  Hunter tried to ask me if I was alright, but I didn’t say anything, and continued to hold my hand out. He got the message after a moment and shook my hand, and I turned around to leave his office.

  I wandered around a bit once I left. I went back outside, and ran into Tristan. He was still pretty mad, said I cheated or something. I told him I had tried not to use my powers, but ran out of options. He asked me what my powers were and I talked around it like I normally did. We didn’t speak for more than a few minutes, but I was able to leave the conversation feeling like things were cool between the both of us. Recruits didn’t have any more classes for the rest of the day, the expectation being that we would keep sparring without Hunter’s direction in the soft-sand pit or somewhere else. Eventually I walked over to one of the paths that ran around the entire campus, the length of which was nearly equal to that of one of our regular runs. I walked slowly, letting my thoughts wander along with my feet, comfortable in the warmth of the setting sun. There were rose bushes at one point along the walk, and I remember thinking there were a surprising number of bees. One of them slammed directly into my forehead and I had thought that it was surely going to sting me. Instead, it sort of fluttered backward and down, perhaps dazed, and promptly flew over my head, going wherever it had originally intended. Outnumbering the bees were mosquitos, the wet landscape of the academy continuing to prove itself to be the perfect breeding ground.

  I passed a lot of places that looked comfortable, and considered stopping once or twice to sit, but I was afraid of ticks. I still am, really, and have been since one of my caregivers had to burn four of them out when I was ten. I don’t like even going near tall grass anymore. All I see are those bulbous little bugs behind every blade. I can’t help but imagine each of them waiting patiently for the perfect moment to strike and insert itself where it doesn’t belong.

  We don’t like ticks either.

  While the path couldn’t have been more than a few miles all around, I had been walking slowly enough that I’d managed to kill an hour simply taking in my surroundings. Soon, I was thinking about everything, like I’d learned as a ward of the World Government, trying to decide what I was angry about. Globally funded psychiatrists will tell you that sometimes your brain has thoughts that don’t cross over the parts that have language, and sometimes these thoughts are feelings, and that thinking too much about something you don’t have the right words for will normally just make you more frustrated. Searching for the right words, they’ll say, is what helps you to deal with your feelings. That’s why it feels good to talk about them, because when you understand them better, you can really deal with what’s got you upset. At that moment, during that walk, I was putting nearly all of my energy into determining exactly why I was upset, and so I stopped payin
g attention to where I was going. The rose bushes had long given way to a raised portion of the path, two small lakes on each side keeping the air just a little cooler, especially with the sun still racing away from its meridian. There were little hidden pools, I knew, of stagnant water, the primary sources of our mosquito problem. The tiny lakes were landscaped perfectly, with smooth rocks at the edges along with wooden handrails outfitted to the side of the path to turn it into a sort of country-style bridge. But I could barely register where I was going.

  Then, I bumped directly into Fibre, who was standing at the far edge of the path, throwing pieces of cracked corn to some ducks.

  “Ah!” I managed to shout as we collided. Fibre was nearly knocked off balance. He seemed completely unaware I had been walking along the path, my slow speed keeping me practically silent.

  “Woah!” he said as he caught himself with the railing. “Hey, you okay?”

  “Yes, no harm here. Sorry! I wasn’t looking, I guess.”

  “No problem,” he replied. I remember thinking that he looked a little different, and I wondered if it was because I was looking at the actual man, rather than a copy. “I didn’t mean physically, though. You’re looking pretty bummed. What’s up? You want to throw some corn?” Fibre reached down to a bag at his side and unzipped it, drawing out a big bag of cracked corn. He held it out for me to take some, and I did. I’d actually never fed ducks before, or been so close to one.

  “I’m alright,” I replied. “Just a little lost in thought. Wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  “Uh huh,” he said, sarcasm dripping heavily. “Likely story.”

  I tried to play it off with a laugh, but I could feel that he wasn’t buying it.

  “Come on,” he continued. “Let’s hear it. Was it your meeting with Sink? I expected you to still be busy doing pistol squats or something.”

  “You didn’t hear about it?” I asked.

  “Oh, man. Did someone already tell me? I’ve had a few copies all over the place today. Sometimes it takes a while for the information to catch up. When they dissolve, it comes back eventually, but it can take some time.”

  “Uh, well… it didn’t go that great. I mean, Sink was able to tell me what my gene does, and I got my classification, but it didn’t really help.”

  “What? How could it not have helped?”

  “She told me I’m a Communicator.” I said flatly.

  “That’s great! That’s an awesome power to have, Ivy! What can you talk to?”

  “I have no idea, and neither did she, and neither does Hunter, and somehow neither do the voices I hear.”

  We know exactly-

  Not now, thank you.

  “Oh…” Fibre trailed off, looking back at the ducks. “Well, you said you talked to Hunter? What did he say?”

  “He told me to graduate, become a Cape, and do my job.”

  Fibre chuckled at that. “Sounds like Hunter. So what’s up, you don’t agree?”

  “Isn’t the whole point of coming here to be assessed so I can be placed onto a team?”

  “Not even close!” Fibre laughed. “You want me to tell you what the goal of the academy is?”

  “Sure.”

  He turned to me after throwing the last few pieces of corn in his hands to the ducks, who had begun to quack somewhat angrily as the flow of cracked treats had slowed with our conversation. “The point of coming here is to do exactly what Hunter said. You train, you graduate, you become a Cape, and you do your job. A lot of people leave here with just as little idea about who they are as you. You can trust me on that. I am, of course, speaking from experience.”

  I wanted to trust him, but I knew I couldn’t. At least not all the way. I needed to know who I was—what my power was—so that I could be as strong as possible. I needed to be on a good team or I’d never find my brother. But it was better to just go along a bit with what Fibre was saying. He was just trying to help.

  “What? Haven’t you always been able to multiply? I thought your father could too, or something. Didn’t I read that somewhere?”

  “You might have, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Sure, I knew what my power was, and Sink was able to help me get a lot better at controlling it, but I had almost no identity outside of what my Ch05En gene could do. I didn’t know I liked to cook for myself, I didn’t know how much I liked helping people, and I didn’t know that I liked to sneak away sometimes to feed cracked corn to ducks.” Fibre threw another full handful into the middle of the pond, watching as a few of the ducks chased the morsels and gobbled them up two at a time. “It’s like that for a lot of people when they leave here. That advice that Hunter gave you, that’s good stuff. If you can focus on making sure you graduate, and you focus on doing your job once you leave, you’ll be just fine. Everything else has a way of working itself out.”

  “I guess. I mean, alright.”

  “Alright! So, you feeling better?”

  I smirked, “No. Not really. It’s a lot to process, I guess. I’m going to finish walking the loop and head back inside, relax a little before dinner.”

  “You do your thing. Try to get some sparring in, though, if not tonight, then tomorrow. That’s sort of the expectation, you get me?”

  “Yea, alright. Thanks, Fibre. See you around.”

  “Okay, kid, see ya.”

  I tossed the last few pieces of cracked corn from my hand, catching a glimpse of one of the ducks as it caught a piece right from the air when I turned to walk away. I thought a little more about what, specifically, I was angry about. I went over what Fibre had said, as well. That plenty of people leave the Academy having no idea who they really are. I guess it did make me feel a little better to know that, but not by much.

  Feeding the ducks had been fun, at least.

  Tristan is sharing a room with Hiltrude in the hospital wing.

  How do you know that? And what happened?

  We can hear them. Hiltrude is not as angry now, if you want to talk with her.

  I had finished my walk around the path, coming nearly back to where I’d begun, which was not too far from the side entrance to the hospital wing. Tristan wasn’t hurt at all before I ran into Fibre. How could he have ended up in the hospital so quickly? Did he get hurt sparring someone else? I hoped the voices hadn’t done more damage than they’d promised.

  Who else can you hear right now? Why didn’t you ever tell me you could do this before?

  A lot of people, and you have never asked us before.

  Can you hear Fibre right now?

  Many of him, yes.

  Can you hear Hunter?

  No. We hardly ever hear him. He is very quiet.

  What are Tristan and Hilly talking about?

  Asking was almost a silly thing to do. I would be there in just a few moments, but a part of me wanted to see if I could catch the tail end of whatever the voices told me they were saying. Double check to see if the information I was being given was wrong.

  Tristan’s head hurts, and he is wondering where his medicine is. He doesn’t know the nurse is in the bathroom.

  “Oh awesome, my head-” Tristan said as I walked in. It was obvious he thought I was the nurse at first. “Oh, never mind.”

  “Hey,” I squeaked to them both.

  “What are you doing here?” Hilly asked.

  “I came to check up on you again. Tristan, I’m surprised to see you here. What happened? We were just talking.”

  “I also just told you I wasn’t feeling good when we were chatting. Like four minutes after you walked away, I sort of collapsed. I’ve been here maybe half an hour,” Tristan said. “But Hiltrude, I thought you said Qek had put you in here. Did Ivy do this to you too? Is that why you’re here to check up on her, Ivy?”

  “It was Qek,” she replied. Hilly already looked back to almost a hundred percent. She was probably going to be training the following day, from what I could tell. Tristan looked alright too, at least outwardly. “Ivy came to check up on me
for… another reason, I suppose,” she said.

  I had started to feel awkward, the both of them staring at me. “Tristan, did I hear you say something about your head?”

  “Yea. I got a massive headache from when we were sparring. What did you do to me?”

  “Yes, Ivy. What did you do?” Hilly repeated for him.

  Tristan looked at her inquisitively, obviously trying to pick up on whatever she was implying. Of course, she wanted me to mention the voices. To this day, I don’t know why she was acting that way, where the behavior came from, or why I cared so much. Either way, Tristan didn’t say anything, waiting for me to answer. “I have powers.” I said. “They do different things.”

  “Obviously you have powers,” Tristan replied. “Did you do something to the sand? Or, wait, is it something to do with your skin? Are you, like, venomous? I think I heard there was a guy in South America, some poison-dart-frog Specian. Are you like that?”

  “Uh, not exactly, no.” I searched for the right thing to say and glanced over to see Hilly with the same, knowing look on her face. I took a minute to weigh my options, asking myself whether I thought the information about me being a Communicator would get out. One of the first things wards of the state learn how to do is lie at a moment’s notice.

  You don’t need to lie to anybody, Little One.

  “There!” Hilly shouted. “You’re doing it right now.”

  “Hilly, what is your problem?” I yelled back.

  “What? What’s happening?” Tristan asked. He kept turning his head back and forth to look at Hilly and me as he asked. Hilly’s face had turned into a sort of angry smile, and I felt for the first time like she was getting something more out of the conversation. It felt like she was trying to, I don’t know, mentally dominate me. I wondered if that was what she had been doing when we’d talked earlier, and thought that it might just have been her reaction to Qek getting the best of her. But she had been so mean for so many weeks already, and I couldn’t help but think it might all simply be coming to a head. Either way, if I didn’t think of something, Tristan was going to start pressing the issue, and then I’d never be able to get in front of whatever story came out. It might not have mattered–there was little to be gained from holding onto my pride or worrying about my reputation, especially since most of us weren’t likely to see each other again. Really, outside of Tristan and Hilly, I only knew a couple of the other cadets’ names. Still, I felt like I couldn’t let Hilly do whatever she was trying to do.