Chapter 5
Blame the Gunman Not the Gun
Carlie
Once again, the scene before me felt surreal.
Dad's eyes were glassy and his mood was somber as he wrapped his arms around my tearful mother's waist in a way that made it look as if he were having to hold her up and offer her the strength she needed to keep from crumbling to the ground.
Jayden, self-proclaimed king of the world and Surrogate Soldier extraordinaire, was as muted as me by what we walked in on. Vanishing into nowhere was his lopsided grin and his smug arrogance.
Distancing himself from my family in just the way he'd always done, Jayden stepped away from us and moved toward the door as if he were the sentinel assigned to guard us rather than the actual family member he was. I didn't have time to scold him for isolating himself from us. Instead, I ran in the opposite direction and toward my family: Mom, Dad, Gran, and Tawney.
"Is someone going to tell me what the heck is going on here?" I demanded.
I wanted to use language a lot more colorful but had the common sense to think those words rather than say them. The last thing my parents would have appreciated was glaring proof that I was quite nearly an adult because that—I suspected—was the sole reason we were all cowering inside this barn in the middle of the night.
"Is all of this because I'm almost seventeen?"
No one needed to answer me. They were all uncomfortably fidgeting and glancing toward each other like they were trying to decide who was going to tell me what was going on.
Finally, Mom stepped out of the line and toward me. Face to face and bravely staring me in the eyes, she said, "Carlie, sweetie…" She breathed a shaky sigh. "Sweetie, i-it's time for all of us to separate."
I'd known since she woke me what was happening. Still, I felt like someone had just socked me in the stomach. With a loud harrumph, I wrapped my arms around my midsection and mumbled through the phlegm clogging my throat.
As if all it would take to make my parents change their mind, I shook my head and shouted, "No. No, it's not. We're a family, and we're staying together. I don't want to go to the academy. I don't want to leave you and Dad." I glanced in Dad's direction, praying I could make him see the light. "Dad, you know without Mom, Barone will use the MicroPharm to turn me into a mindless, robotic vegetable.
"By the time he's finished with me, I'll be some kind of frighteningly submissive housewife who claims Aspect Nation is the only nation, and my uber dominant husband will be allowed to decide if and when I have a kid, what sex it will be, and the kid's every distinguishing feature. All President Barone cares about is creating his perfect society. I can't be part of that. Please let me stay with you. Please don't make me go through that," I begged.
Before that moment, I'd have sworn that living on a farm surrounded by separatists was the thing that frightened me the most. Now, I knew going back to the nation's capital without my parents—with Barone—was a hundred times worse.
Barone, the things he'd done to me and the way he studied me—like he had plans especially for me—was scarier than anything I could imagine. In the past, my parents had been there to protect me. Without them, there was no telling what he would do to me.
As if she could hear my thoughts, Mom visibly shivered. On cue, the rest of the room grew absolutely quiet. They all realized that my speaking up, doing anything but remaining reserved and under the radar, was out of character for me. Tawney, who'd been curled in on herself sobbing just seconds before, stood tall and stared toward me, while Gran's furrowed brows and Jayden's complete attention fixed in my direction. Comprehending that I was suddenly—and unwittingly—the center of attention, I gulped back the rest of what I wanted to say.
I have to do what they're asking. I have to be brave. For them I have to do this.
Dad warned, "Don't ever say anything like that aloud again, Carlie. There are people who'll consider it treason and kill you."
It was the first glimpse I'd ever given him as it related to the knowledge I'd acquired working in Mom's lab.
He has no idea what I know.
One of my biggest discoveries came when Mom had asked me to compile pre-MicroPharm statistics with post-MicroPharm statistics. It took me several months to realize the data I'd been given, posted on every website as factual, was not as accurate as had been claimed.
While analyzing the numbers, I sorted them in new and creative ways, identifying and pulling to the forefront statistics that proved the ones published by Barone's cronies were manipulated to minimize the big changes to our nation's population. The numbers I'd pulled had been hidden deep within Barone's statistics and had proven that the MicroPharm had impacted Aspect Nation's population figures in significant ways, effectively altering the genetic landscape of the population.
Under everyone's nose and without the first ounce of suspicion the nation's average age had decreased from 37.3 to 26.7. The nation's average body mass index, BMI, had been reduced from twenty-nine to fourteen. The nation's average height for men had grown from five feet and eight inches to six feet two inches and for women had grown from five feet three inches to five feet nine. Finally, the average American IQ had increased from ninety-eight to one hundred and twenty-five.
With my research, I'd had my first scientific discovery, one that had proven that the citizens of Aspect Nation were becoming younger, leaner, taller, and smarter. My hypothesis had included a theory that President Barone had begun using the MicroPharm, the ultimate evolutionary technology, to create the ideal nation.
I concluded my research with a very subjective determination about how Darwin's Theory of Evolution would have nothing on Barone's actual intervention with evolution. I'd known when I wrote my opinion that Mom would not appreciate the way I'd let my emotions show through in my paper. She'd drilled into me the importance of remaining objective no matter what. That didn't change the fact that my findings had been supported and accurate. They'd been so obvious once compiled that I couldn't pretend I didn't know what was happening within our nation's borders.
Unlike Hitler, Barone's version of the perfect society had nothing to do with race or religion. He made his decisions in the same pragmatic way a horse owner chooses mares and stallions for breeding, in a way that increased the odds of creating a colt worthy of winning the Triple Crown. Barone wanted citizens that were young and healthy, ones who gave their nation more than they took and required very little support from the government.
I saw in Mom's face that she was silently screaming and begging for me not to say anything more about what I knew to be true. She didn't need to tell me my findings were as secret as they were dangerous.
"If not us, Mom… who? If not now, Mom… when? If we don't tell people what we know now, who will?" My voice was quiet and pleading.
In some ways, those words and my desperation behind them tore Mom up more than anything I'd said or done in the last few minutes. Her mouth opened. At that moment, I was sure she had enough information to fill dozens of books and that she'd like nothing more than to share her every secret with me.
In the end, she shook her head and remained quiet, deciding it was safest for us all if she kept what she knew to herself. I could tell by looking at her that she knew more than she'd ever told me… more than I'd heard through eavesdropping. I could also tell that she didn't believe now was the time or the place for her to share her information with me.
Maybe one day, I thought sadly before determination won out. No… not one day. Today. She needs to come clean today.
I was just about to open my mouth and insist that her secrets—Barone's secrets—be aired here and now when Dad stepped between Mom and me and leaned down into my face. Just like the night he'd admitted he'd been forcing Jayden to spend time with me, he'd decided I needed a healthy dose of reality, and he was going to give it to me.
"Carles Anise Enoche, you and I need to speak outside," he said, wrapping his hand around my arm and dragging me toward the door where Jayden stood watch.
> Jayden stared at Dad's hand on my arm like he wanted to snatch it off me. In the end, he respected Dad's position enough to stand mute and let us pass without saying or doing anything.
Coward, I thought, rolling my eyes his way.
Dad's disappointment, the solid grip he had on me, Mom's pleas coming from behind us (begging Dad to forget what I'd said), and Jayden's willful ignorance exasperated me.
Instead of speaking near the barn where we could be overheard, Dad pulled me toward the reek of the chicken pen. The hens were beyond perturbed that we'd had enough nerve to get so close to them. They balked and clucked so loudly that our words were quite nearly drowned out. Only Dad and I would ever know what was said, and that's exactly what he wanted.
"What in the hell are you doing, Carlie? Do you have the first inkling of what's going on here?" Dad's words may have been discreet, but there was no missing his anger.
"I-I'm just trying to figure everything out. We've been here for six months. I might know a few things, but Mom knows more. I can't understand why she's not telling everyone who will listen what President Barone is doing. It's the only way to get him out of office," I said, my voice small.
Like a pin popping a helium-filled balloon, Dad's stare burst my fervent appeal that we do the right thing.
"And who, pray tell, do you think the citizens of this great nation are going to blame for giving him the technology he's used?" he asked.
Stopped short, my brows raised as the realization sank in. It had never occurred to me that anyone would believe that my objectively thinking and sensible mother, my compassionate mother, would ever invent anything that was specifically geared toward killing people in pursuit of the perfect human race.
That is not who Mom is.
"I-I didn't think of it that way," I mumbled.
"That's right, Carlie. Now you're getting it. They'll hold President Barone responsible for its uses, but they'll blame your mother for inventing the MicroPharm. She'll become a villain alongside the president. She'll be in more danger than she is now if that happens because people want to blame the gun and not the gunman, the laws and not the lawbreakers."
"I'm sorry, Dad. I-I hadn't thought about that," I said quietly.
"That's really the problem here, Carlie. You don't think before you speak. You and your mother are so much alike. Like her, you'll do great things. You need to learn from her mistakes. After she made her discoveries, she knew they were important. She wanted the world to know about them. She wanted them to be used for all of the great things they could be used for.
"Gran warned her there would be people who would want to use them to carry out genocidal activities. She refused to believe the technology she'd so carefully developed would ever be used to murder and manipulate." Dad took a long, angry breath. "Do you see where that got her? Do you see where that got all of us? Learn from her. Learn from us," Dad said, waving his hands around the farm, showing for the first time since we'd arrived just how disgusted he was with where we'd ended up.
"I…" My voice was hoarse and cracking. "I never knew."
"Until now, your mom's never really wanted to admit that she's the reason we are where we are, that her technology has been President Barone's greatest weapon when it comes to silently executing by the hundreds anyone who doesn't meet his expectations of the perfect citizen. She…" Dad put his hand to his mouth and choked on his own words.
I'd only ever seen Dad cry one other time, and that was when Aunt Christi, Tawney's mother and Mom's sister, and her husband Uncle Ron had been violently murdered while Tawney slept the night away in the safe room Gran had built for her.
I felt guiltier for making Dad cry than I had all night long… than I had in a long time. Maybe ever.
"You have this all wrong, Carlie. Your mom's the one leaving us tonight. Not you. At first, we were going to send you back with Jayden. Actually, he probably thinks that's still the plan. The thing is… she's worked out a deal with Barone in hopes that he'll leave us alone. Leave you alone," Dad said, having to clear his throat several times afterward.
What the hell?