Fifteen
Eenie
A flash of light. I giggle. Mommy took a picture of me. She says I’m really messy. It’s not my fauuult. They served us spaghetti. I looooove spaghetti!
I make the biggest smile I can for her and she laughs. There’s another flash as her tablet takes another picture of me.
“Can I have mooore?” I ask with a smile.
Mommy shakes her head.
“No, Eenie. I think you’ve had enough for tonight.”
I cross my arms.
“But I want more.”
“I know, Eenie, but you already ate everything you were given. You don’t want to get a strike now, do you?”
I shake my head.
“No. But that’s not bad enough to get a strike.”
“Are you sure?” Daddy asks.
He takes another bite of his spaghetti.
I shrug. The government wouldn’t give me a strike for eating more than I should, would they?
“You can get a strike for all sorts of things.” Daddy smiles and looks at Mommy. “That’s why you have to always watch your step.”
I nod, wide-eyed. That means I have to be careful. Really careful ‘cuz I don’t want to be thrown out of the Dome. I wouldn’t be able to stay alive out there.
o0o0o
“Mommy!” I shout as she comes through the front door. “Guess what daddy taught me today!”
She grabs me and hugs me tight.
“What did he teach you, Eenralla?”
“Mommy!” I stomp my foot. “I like Eenie more! Eeeeenie!”
She laughs, and sits on her knees.
“What did he teach you, Eenie?”
I jump up and down.
“Daddy taught me to shoot an arrow!”
Her face isn’t happy anymore. She looks sad or mad.
“Why aren’t you happy mommy?”
She smiles and gives me a kiss on my head.
“Happy birthday, baby girl.”
o0o0o
“In three days, you will choose the jobs that you will train for until your Final Training Test when you turn thirteen.”
The class starts to talk in loud voices. Our mommies and daddies have been telling us about that day for a loooong time now. I know a little bit about every job, but I’ve always known what I want to be.
“Does anyone know what they will choose?”
My hand flies up.
“I do!” I yell. I almost fall out of my chair. “I want to be a Hunter, just like my daddy!”
Some of the boys laugh.
“But you’re a girl!” One of them shouts to me.
“So?!” I say, angry. “You were saying you wanted to be a Cooker! Isn’t that for girls?”
I stick out my tongue. Everybody laughs, and his face gets all redish. He runs from his seat to where I am.
My eyes get all wide, and I stand up. I squint my eyelids and squeeze my teeth together. I can’t look like a baby in front of everyone!
He jumps at me, and I try and make him go away. I push him, and I hit him with my hands.
“Peter! Eenie!” The teacher shouts louder than everybody. She gets in between us so we stop fighting. He tries to find a way to me, but he can’t get away from her arm.
His eyes have angry tears in them, and the teacher talks to him quietly across the room where she took him.
I stand at my desk. I’m happy I didn’t look like a baby. Cause then I would look like he does. I stick my tongue out at him, and he looks at the floor.
Why did he do that? The floor isn’t that interesting.
The teacher stands up slowly and looks at me. She walks over to me and sits on her feet in front of me.
Uh-oh.
“Why did you do that?”
“He started it!” I cross my arms.
“But does that mean you can make him feel bad too?”
I open my mouth and close it again.
I don’t know what to say.
“You didn’t like what he said to you very much, did you? So how do you think he feels?”
My shoulders fall down with my arms. Now I know why he looked at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I won’t ever do it again, I promise.”
And I never break my promises.
o0o0o
The artificial wind brushes my face as I walk to the park—the only place we are actually allowed to go at this time. Curfew is in about two hours anyway, and I don’t want to go home just yet. My dad is out hunting, and my mom is working from home on the computer.
I sit on the safety swing, and its white belt buckles around me with a loud click so I don’t fall off.
Back and forth I rock, looking at the top of the Dome, also known as the ‘sky-lid’. The simulated stars sparkle and twinkle, and a few zip across the simulated sky every once in a while. The moon, a ball of light hung by a large pole from the center of the sky-lid, lights up the world around me, making it come alive. In a few hours, it will slowly morph into a brightening sun, reaching its full potential of brightness at exactly noon.
I wonder what they would really look like, the sun and the moon. Out there, beyond the Dome, behind the walls, past the panels that deceive your brain into thinking there’s more to them than just little holograms.
An image in my head. Fire. Melting glass, people shouting—
Going higher, the safety swings’ bars start to send off a warning signal that I am swinging too high.
I ignore the beeps and I just swing higher and higher until I’m parallel with the top of the swing set, the bar that holds the entire thing up off the ground.
The joints of the swing start to spurt out smoke.
As I swing back, I can see the machine start to break, and I swing forward one last time before it falls apart. I go flying through the air, my heart thumping in my chest as I start to tip backwards.
Explosions flash before my eyes as the ground comes rushing up to me, the moon disappearing in between the flashing of the memories—no, not memories—they couldn’t be memories—visions—that’s what they are. Visions.
I feel the ground meet my shoulders and neck with a loud crack. I lay there, for who knows how long, staring up at the artificial sky. My vision is all blurry, and my mind starts to wander as the pain becomes dull and my vision starts to waver.
Maybe that’s why our Domes are so safe, I think. So when we fall, we don’t get hurt.
I feel urgent hands grabbing at me, and I see blurry faces with white hats hovering above me, touching me with their rubber-covered hands.
The last thing I see is another artificial shooting star, and I feel some strange urge to make a wish.
Deja-vu.
o0o0o
Brynlea stands above me, working on a light panel. Her short, dark hair sways with each movement and her brown eyes dart back and forth as information drifts about in her brain.
“Come on, Newbie,” She says. “Hand me that.”
She’s my mentor for the next six months. Well, five, I guess. She’s really nice and doesn’t treat me like dirt, like how some of the other Mechaneers do to their girls.
“Did you want to be a Mechaneer?” I ask her, handing her the tool.
I hear the echo of footsteps. Footsteps that aren’t supposed to be here yet. Not yet.
No—no, never mind. I don’t. I don’t hear them. Visions. That’s what I once called them. But they feel so much like… like memories. But they can’t be.
I’ve slipped into the habit of not talking anymore. Not even to Brynlea. Some people call it antisocialism or whatever—or the Doctors do, at least. They say it isn’t healthy, that I should talk to more people, but there isn’t time, what with me trying to relearn everything I learned about a Mechaneer and fifty-times that. Even if I didn’t have to do that, there would still be no time to make friends like Nad.
/> Nad?
Who’s Nad?
Brynlea laughs. “Of course.” She looks down at me, and I bite my lip nervously. Of course she wanted this job… how stupid of me to ask…
“How else would I be mentoring you? You know the process, Eenie.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
I am alone in this Dome. No one could understand what it is I’m going through. And I can tell no one… That’s just how it is—how it always will be.
o0o0o
“Eenralla Land,” The woman Safety at the front calls me forward.
I walk quickly over to her. We stand inside the entrance to the Government Building in lines, waiting to be called up by the Government Officials. Hearing my name from one of them and not my number sends the hair raising on the back of my neck. They only call you by your name when something’s wrong or if you’re in trouble. Or if the President needs you. I hope it’s not that one.
“Yes?”
“You’ve been a Mechaneer for two years, but you’ve had no real training. Is this true?”
“Well Brynlea mentored me and she taught me everything I needed to know, and I researched a lot of things and…” I trail off awkwardly, realizing she doesn’t care. She’s asking if I trained as a Mechaneer in school, which, I didn’t. I gulp. “Yes ma’am.”
The sudden change of plans for me to become a Mechaneer had me scrambling to figure out how to be one. I trained to be a hunter, and then I trained some-what to be a Safety. I only learned about what the Mechaneers do.
The woman nods and hands me a clipboard.
“Go to this room. The President needs to speak with you.”
My heart beats faster. So it is that last option. What would the president need to talk to me about? I haven’t done anything wrong. Is he going to make me change jobs because this was my third choice and I got stuck with it? Have I been doing terribly? Does he hate me as a Mechaneer? Am I not cut out to be one?
These thoughts, although they should scare me, almost excite me, except for the fact that I’d have to learn how to be something else all over again, and I’m not thrilled about doing that. Maybe he’ll give me what I trained for back. No matter how much I would hate to be directly controlled by him and the Government Officials, I wouldn’t mind being a Safety. I mean, I at least know more about that job than being a Mechaneer. Well, maybe not now. Maybe I don’t want my job to change… Maybe I like it as a Mech. I don’t know.
I quiet my brain.
I walk down the halls and count up to the room number one thousand and two. Questions rise into my brain. I’ve worked just as hard as any other Mech, and possibly harder. I had to start from scratch. Start from nothing. I knew next to nothing about technology. The only thing I knew was how to be a Hunter and how to be a Safety. He has to understand that, just in case I did anything wrong that I don’t know about. It’s not my fault. The only thing I’ve done that was bad enough to get a strike is breaking that stupid swing eight years ago.
I reach the room and take a deep breath before making my presence known to the most powerful man in all the Domes.
Here goes nothing.
My knocking echoes through the hall, and is followed by a low voice telling me to enter.
President Murkas is sitting in a black chair behind a clean black desk. He looks at me through cold eyes and tells me to take a seat as he reaches for the clipboard.
“I see you’ve been working hard, Eenralla Land,” He says, glancing up from the clipboard he holds.
“Eenie,” I correct.
“Excuse me?” He asks, peering through his lashes.
I clear my throat. “I go by Eenie.”
He grunts and nods.
“So, Eenralla Land,” He says looking over his papers at me, and my face grows hot from embarrassment. “You were bumped down to your third job option. Do you know why?”
“Yes sir…” I say, my voice unsteady. “I broke a swing when I was seven.”
He nods and leans back in his chair, putting the papers down.
“Have you been learning quickly?”
I nod. “Yes.”
He looks at me for a moment.
“Well, good. You can go now.”
“That’s all?” I ask, a heaviness lifting off my chest.
“Yes. That’s all. Go. I’m sure you have work to do.”
I nod and shuffle out of the door, feeling my stomach knot itself in my body. That couldn’t be all… there’s got to be something else. But what?
A black eye.
I see a fully black eye behind a door as it shuts.
A vision.
That’s all that is.
A vision.
o0o0o
I lay down in the bed of my lonely Domeshouse. There isn’t much in it, just the standard things. I shut my eyes. I dream. But I don’t remember having this dream…
I see Ken’s face—Ken? Is that his name? He doesn’t look like a Ken… But the screen says it is…
Oh, no… his name… His name is Hemmings. He’s walking toward me now—no, wait…
An explosion. Melting glass. Fire.
Stuck.
I’m stuck.
I can’t go home. The glass has me trapped—I’m trapped outside of the Dome—
Maybe they were memories, those visions…
The girl on the bus—Lease… She wasn’t there on the way back…
My mother’s white dress… Bow and arrows… a bear… Justin… Doug… Lease…
Lease is the girls’ name… She’s not very nice—not very nice at all… Ken… Ken is the other one… the other guy—
I need to wake up.
Hemmings is shot—shot by me… in the leg… Hemmings? Hemmings… no, Peter… Peter is his name… I remember him now—the classroom…
Wake up, I tell myself.
Darkness now. Now I’m in darkness.
In a tent. In my dress. The girl on the bus… She hands me clothes…
Darkness—trees.
Peter is gone…
Explosions…
Fire…
Eenie, wake up!
Tent burning…
People dying…
Doug burning…
A voice telling me to wake up…
…wake up, Eenie…
So I do.
Sixteen
I open my eyes.
I had been dreaming. Remembering.
I’m in a spherical room. There are no corners and the walls are shiny and reflective. It’s like I’m in a giant marble.
I stand up and look into my reflected blue eyes.
“Eenralla Land,” Rebecca’s voice echoes into the room.
And then I remember where I am.
“We will now conduct the next test.”
I was being tested—examined. My memories were flashing before my eyes and I was watching them. Rebecca and whoever else is up there probably were watching as well… I look down at myself and pick at my clothing.
“Black spandex?” I ask to the floor. The material covers my entire body. The only things not hidden by it are my hands, head, and my bare feet. My hair is thrown up into a sloppy bun, blonde wisps of hair spilling down into my face.
What’s wrong with my hand? I ask myself, looking at it in my reflection. It looks unnaturally bruised and purple—
“Are you ready for the test?”
“What is it?”
“These past few days we have gone through a series of tests with you. The first one was to prove that you are who you say you are. The second one was an IQ test. The third one you just woke up from. You weren’t supposed to wake up until we got to present day.”
“So I failed it?” I ask, looking around inside the sphere. Where is her voice coming from? “Why did I wake up?”
“Good question,” I hear a smile in her voice. “Lights out, Eenral
la Land.”
Everything goes black. The sphere begins to vibrate, and blue light slowly starts to illuminate from the silver walls.
“What’s happening?”
Suddenly, the room springs to life, and I stand before a speeding bus. It flickers.
It’s not real.
My body moves to the side as it passes and it clips my hand.
I cry out in pain as the sphere flickers around me.
It sure feels real, I think to myself as I rub my hand.
I see gray matter in the shape of tiny little squares moving and shifting between the flickers as the bus disappears.
It changes again, and this time it wraps all around me, and the hologram flashes to look like water.
It’s not real… It’s not real—but it feels real.
I gasp for air, and water-matter fills my mouth as it pushes me up to the top of the sphere. I thrash and kick my feet. What the heck is the point of this? Why do they need to torture me with simulations? Why not just ask me more questions?
I scream out and tread some more. The water-matter gets thicker and thicker. I see blurs of flickering gray fish swaying back and forth in the water, circling me. Their gills glow bright red against the bright blue hologram of the water-matter.
One of the fish charges at me.
I move to my left, not fast enough. It bites into my arm, the one that’s bruised. I scream, water filling my mouth. It holds me lightly, as if it doesn’t want to cut me open, as if it can’t. I thrash around, my body’s energy draining.
It’s not real, I remind myself.
Another fish clamps down onto my ankle and begins to drag me to the bottom. I struggle against it as another takes my other ankle and pulls me down even more. My lungs cry out and burn. I need air.
With my free hand, I start to hit one of the fish. It’s as if it doesn’t know what I’m trying to do, as if it doesn’t feel it. It doesn’t budge.
The last fish is overhead. It turns down towards me, flickering. Suddenly, it charges towards me faster than the other three. It gets closer and closer. I see its jaws open up to close around my head, around my neck. I close my eyes.
Nothing.
I open them back up. The fish have disappeared.
Suddenly, the flashing matter drains out and seeps back into the walls of the sphere, disappearing. I fall to the ground, hard, choking and sputtering. Rolling on to my back, I try to control my breathing and my heart rate.
“What is that stuff?” I ask, suddenly angry. “What is it?”
“What is what?” I can almost hear Rebecca grinning.
An arrow.
A flashing arrow flies at me, and I duck as the arrow disappears into the trees. In the distance, I see a figure flickering wildly with its surroundings.
Me.
Another arrow flies at me, flashing back and forth between the image of the arrow and the gray shifting matter.
I keep my eyes on the figure in disbelief. It’s me.
She smiles and ducks behind a tree as a bird flies over my head, swooping low, its talons extended out toward me, as if it was trying to hurt me. I duck and turn around to watch it go.
A brown bear swaggers up to me and roars. Its black eyes flicker.
This isn’t real, I remind myself. It’s just a hologram.
I plant my feet on the ground as the bear lunges toward me. All of the air is knocked out of my lungs as its shoulder rams into my stomach. I’m thrown back, and the hologram disappears as I hit the mirror-like wall of the sphere.
I roll to the center of the rounded floor and try to catch my breath once again.
“How did you make this?” I sputter. “What is it?”
I look around the sphere, and I see my reflection. I’m all red in the face and my hair is misshapen, more than it was when I first woke up. I watch myself as I stand slowly, pathetically.
“Where am I?” I breathe.
“You are in a Simulation Sphere.”
“Why?” I ask her, my brain whirring.
The sphere shifts a little, and another hologram appears in front of me.
Peter.
He stands, flickering, his spandex suit matching mine. He holds two long wooden rods at his sides, his grip tight. His face is turned down to the sphere’s bottom, sending red flags flying up in my brain. Something isn’t right about this. The hologram flickers madly as his face begins to turn towards me. His eyes meet mine, and the flickering stops.
And suddenly, he’s not a hologram to me anymore.
I can’t keep my eyes off of his, looking for a flicker, looking for a shimmer.
But there are none. No matter how many times I tell myself he isn’t real, my brain argues against it.
He stands perfectly still, his eyes locked on mine.
“Hello, Eenie,” His voice comes out smooth and strong. No muscle is moved from either of us. I have to remind myself he’s not real, that he’s a hologram.
“What is this?” I ask Rebecca, not taking my eyes off of Peter. My heart races, half scared, half happy to see him.
But it’s not him.
“Your mom is looking for you,” He says. It says.
“You’re not real,” I tell it.
“She wants you dead.”
My body goes cold, and I swallow, fighting back the knot in my throat, fighting back the trickery Rebecca wants me to fall for.
“You wouldn’t kill me, Rebecca,” I shout, still watching Peter and backing up up the side of the sphere.
“Oh, Eenie,” Peter says, smiling virulently. “Only you can keep yourself alive.”
With that, I slip a little down the wall, and Peter lunges at me. I spin to the right, the cracking of the wooden pole onto the floor echoing around me as he misses. He stands straight and the sphere flickers a little from the impact. His head turns toward me and I scramble to my feet.
“What is this sphere made of?” I ask aloud, as Peter lunges toward me again, and I jump out of the way just in time.
Suddenly, he flickers.
Why does he flicker?
He’s a hologram, I remind myself.
I twist around and quickly knock on the bottom of the sphere with my knuckles.
Glass. It’s made of glass.
I spin just in time to dodge the stick again.
“You’ll have to be faster than that, fake Peter,” I say, circling him slowly. My breathing is fast, and I try to slow it and my brain down so I can pay attention to his movements.
He twists, and comes at me with both sticks ready to take me down. I leap out of the way, but he whacks my calf, and my knee collides into the ground. I hear a crack, but it’s not my bone.
The sphere.
Peter jumps with the stick perpendicular to the floor as if he is going to stab me with it. I roll away from it, and a loud cracking sound sends a smile over my lips. My reflection on the wall disappears, and so does Peter’s face. The hologram is gone now and the gray matter retreats to the top of the sphere, churning like a pot of boiling water.
The sphere has gone clear, and water is seeping through the growing cracks Simulated Peter and I had created. I see the sphere is submerged under water and hooked up to large pipes to for oxygen. It seems like there are also some pipes and tubes to keep it submerged it in the water. The cracks in the glass widen as the water pushes its way through, and soon the water is up to my neck.
And I still can’t swim.
The water rises higher and higher, until I can’t fit my mouth in the top of the sphere for air anymore. I need to get out now, or else I’ll drown.
I thrash around, my lungs burning, and reach the bottom of the sphere where the crack is. I can see through the blurriness that it’s wide enough now to pull myself through, if I break a few of the pieces away. As I push against the glass, it grows larger, each piece drifting away in the water.
I pull myself through, using the wires attached to the outside of the sphere to propel me through the water and up towa
rds the surface. My head reaches air, and I breathe in as much of it as I can.
I look up to see a black lid above me. I’m not free just yet.
I stand up on one of the wires to keep my head above water, then groan out of annoyance and fatigue. There’s a ladder leading to the black roof. At least it’s an easy task, though.
I carefully walk over to it, splashing at the water with my hands to keep my balance.
Then something hits my legs.
The fish.
They’re ramming into me. Their bodies flash, and I can see the gray matter churning inside the holograms. I try to keep my balance, but one hits me hard enough to knock me off of the wire I’m trying to walk on.
The water grabs me and I hold my breath. I reach out for another wire to hold on to, and I feel a fish ram into me from the back. I hold in a shout and try to make my way back to the wire.
Another hit on my legs makes me spin sideways.
I reach up and grab the wire, and start to pull myself up.
One of the fish clamps around my leg and starts to pull me down. My fingers start to slip as I try to kick it off.
With one last painful kick, the fish lets go, and I’m able to pull myself up the rest of the way. I see the top fin of another fish heading towards me, and I move as fast as I can in the water to get to the latter.
The fish is right next to me. I leap over it, almost losing my balance in the water. The flickering fish keeps going straight as another one circles around to attack. It’s closing the space between us quicker than I think is a comfortable pace.
I reach the latter.
I grab it with both hands and start to climb. The fish circle where I was a moment ago as I scramble up quickly, my body sore and tired. I push the lid open, and I am blinded by white light. Hands grab me and pull at me, helping me out, but they don’t let go.
I hear slow clapping as I open my eyes. Rebecca walks up to me and crosses her arms, smirking.
“Just like your mother.”
I glare at her.
“You’re a bright one,” She says, smiling. “Welcome to my office.”
Everything is white, and her clear computer screens are buzzing with information, constantly flashing.
“You will fight, Eenralla Land,” She says. “But not like everyone else. You learn fast. Really fast. It’s almost… Alien.” She chuckles, pacing the room.
“And if I refuse?”
“You won’t.” She smiles, turning to walk the other direction. “Something about you is different.”
“From what?”
“Show me your hand,” She says, planting her feet to look at me. I close both of my fists, but the two men holding me yank my arms out toward her and pry my hands open. The one I thought was bruised while I was in the simulation sphere is the one that catches her eye.
I look at it more carefully, trying to understand why fascination has taken over her face. I realize it isn’t bruised. The purple isn’t the deep purple you get with bruises, but more of a bright, pinkish-purple color.
It’s not normal.
I try to jerk it back to me anyway, ignoring the thousands of questions burning in my mind, but the men are too strong. Rebecca gently touches the purple with the tips of her fingers. Her eyes widen and a smile grows on her face.
“It’s begun,” She says, almost awestruck.
“What’s begun?” I ask, trying to pull my arm back.
“Take her to the room with the other one.”
They pull me down familiar hallways as I struggle to pull away, to escape. Not a word passes their lips and their eyes stay staring forward the entire time, seeming unfazed by my wriggling. They open a familiar door and shove me into the darkness.
“Get… out…”
The click of the lock echoes past the voice.
“I’m back,” I say.
The voice chuckles airily. “Not because you escaped though…”
I turn into the darkness of the room.
“I want my three questions.”
The voice chuckles again. “That… was not the deal…”
“It is if you want out of here,” I say sternly into the room.
There is a shuffle of feet and a sigh.
“All right…”
I nod and straighten my back, my brain suddenly going blank. I had so many questions… and now they’re gone.
“I touched the wall. Is that the reason why holograms flicker?”
“Is that your first question?”
“No… um… um… what’s wrong with my mom? With Ream Land?”
“The injections… the brain steroids the Dome would give… they are wearing off… she’s going through withdrawals… she gets seizures… her brain is wearing away… she is dying…”
Withdrawals. From the stuff they put in our brains to make us learn faster. Could I be having withdrawals? Is that possible for me? Or is everything that is happening to me just because of the wall?
“Next question.”
“Uh… gosh, um… Why do the holograms flicker?”
“Because… you touched… the wall…”
I hit my palm to my forehead.
“Yes, but why?”
“There is a serum… in the needles on the Dome… all it needs… is one layer of skin… it seeps into every part of you… and your brain begins to rewire itself… your brain becomes smarter… holograms are primitive… you can see past them… you start learning faster… you remember better… you change…”
“Change how?”
“Is that your third question?”
I groan in frustration.
“Fine! Why are you in here?”
“Because I’m different… I’m like you…”
I stare into the darkness. Like me?
“I’m different… I’m a…”
“A what?”
“You have no more questions left…”
“But that is part of my last question,” I counter.
I glare into the room as silence answers me instead.
“Fine,” I mutter. I could always find out what he means later. “Can you pick a lock?”