Chapter 14
Group 2
The Conner’s were kind enough to invite all of my group and another group over for a cookout and swim party today. This worked out great since I had been so busy with the three basketball games I hadn’t gotten over to see Melissa like I had wanted to.
With Marty driving just under the speed of light it took no time until we were pulling into Mr. And Mrs. Conner’s drive way. Their house was located right on the beach and absolutely beautiful. It was a large ranch house that favored Spanish architecture, with lots of beautiful tile and detailed stuccowork with intricate designs.
We all piled out of the truck and Marty and I both grabbed hold of Stacy’s buggy and dropped it onto the drive. Meea had Stacy in her arms already; Stacy was just a tiny thing so Meea had no problem lifting her to help her in and out of the truck. Meea slid Stacy down into her buggy and Stacy leaned back up and gave Meea a thank you kiss on the cheek.
We all made our way down the tiled walkway leading between the four-car garage and the main house. The walkway led back to the pool and guesthouse, where the sound of music and the smell of steaks being grilled permeated the air.
“Hello, everyone!” I announced as we pushed through the gate to the pool area.
“Boy!” squealed Melissa, as she dropped the sandwich she was nibbling on and came running. With one leap she was up in my arms and attached to my hip like a little magnet. She was so easy to hold onto, you could forget you were holding her.
She put her hands to my face and leaned forward so our foreheads were touching. “And how is my favorite little girl today?” I said hugging her tightly.
“Em good,” she cooed as she rubbed noses with me.
“Hi, Melissa, do you remember meeting me from school?” Meea asked.
“Girl!” Melissa leaned from me to go into Meea’s outstretched arms. I let her loose and she was instantly attached to Meea’s hip. “Girl.”
“Meea, my name is Meea. You try... Meea.”
“Meeya!”
“Very good, Melissa.”
“Wilson!” Mrs. Conner came running from inside the house. She just about knocked me back into the pool she hit me so hard. Good thing she wrapped me in a bear hug or I would have fallen into the pool. “Oh, Wilson…” She kissed me all over my cheeks as she hugged me again and again.
Mr. Conner came just in time to rescue me. “Sorry, Wilson, but my wife has been waiting to thank you for a long time.” He laughed quietly.
I struggled to get my breath back as I tried to extricate myself from Mrs. Conner’s grip. I was quite amazed at how strong she was.
“I’m very sorry I didn’t stick around that day of the fire, Mrs. Conner.” I said.
“Please, call me Julie. And don’t apologize to me. I’m so grateful for you and what you did. I’ll never ever be able to thank you enough. Melissa is the most precious thing on earth and you gave her back to me. I’ll never be able to repay that. Thank you!” She said, her eyes glossy with unshed tears.
“Why don’t we start showing our appreciation by letting Wilson meet our other guest and get something to eat?” Julie looked at her husband and laughed, understanding his implied point that it was time to lighten the mood and enjoy the day.
“First, let me introduce my friend’s and group members. This is Meea, Stacy and Marty.” I said pointing to each one.
“Welcome, everyone, please get something to eat and enjoy.” Julie looked over and smiled to Meea who was playing and rubbing noses with Melissa.
Meea gave Julie a warm smile in return conveying that Melissa would be plenty happy and safe today.
“Wilson, allow me to introduce the members of group two if you haven’t had the pleasure yet. This is Rachel, Chels, Tony and Steven.” Mr. Conner said gesturing to each person.
Coincidently, I had met everyone but Steven, but I was fascinated to see who had been chosen to team up with Rachel and Chels. I knew the girls would be quite an asset for any team.
Mrs. Conner being the good hostess, and trying to spoil me a little I felt, handed me a fruity drink with slices of pineapple and banana sticking out the top, and naturally she added one of those little umbrellas that I was never quite comfortable with. Do you drink around them or take them out, and then what do you do with them…?
Marty and Meea were working out their own umbrella dilemmas when Stacy asked Julie if it was ok to take a swim before eating.
“Please feel free to do or have anything. We’ve got all day and it’s a perfect day, so let’s enjoy the time we have, yes?” Julie said that like we wouldn’t always have time to enjoy each other, like there were limits coming. Or maybe she was still a bit shaken up, reminded of everyone’s mortality by seeing me for the first time since the accident at the gas station.
Melissa was in the pool the second Stacy got in. She was showing us that she was an excellent swimmer. Stacy was also swimming amazingly well for not having the use of her legs.
Rachel sat down with a plate of hors D’oeuvres beside Julie, Meea and I. “I haven’t seen you in a while, Wilson, what have you been up to?”
“Mostly attending a lot of basketball games.”
Meea scooted a bit closer to me as soon as Rachel sat down. Maybe Meea wanted to give off a subtle primal signal that I was spoken for or something, or maybe it was because she was just trying to get in more of the sun on my side of the bench.
“I met Rachel and her sister on opening day. They have the ability to see with radar and sonar.” I said trying to reassure her that she had nothing to worry about. I only had eyes for her.
“That’s very special.” Meea acknowledged with no tension or harshness to her voice.
Chels and Tony came over dripping wet from the pool, and lifted a few goodies from Rachel’s plate. “Have a look at Marty and Melissa.” Chels said pointing back at the pool.
We all looked over at the same time to see Mr. Conner in the pool and Melissa floating in the air. Melissa was suspended three feet above the water, while Marty sat on the end of the diving board and used his skills to levitate her over the water like he did with the cannon balls.
“‘Kay, Marty, let me go!” Marty released his hold on her and she dropped into the pool with a splash. She came up right away sputtering and chirping orders for Marty. “Again, peez. Again, peez!”
Mr. Conner, laughing said, “Ok, just remember, Marty, you started this. It may take her an hour before she’ll let you stop.”
“Again, Peez.” Melissa had swum back to Marty at the diving board.
“OK … Ready?” Melissa just waved her arms into the air. Marty without bending down levitated her out of the water again and moved her towards the middle of the pool.
“Once she’s amused by something she has quite a bit of staying power,” Julie said, watching Melissa getting levitated and dunked over and over again.
After watching Melissa and Marty’s water antics for a short while, Steven, the fourth member of group two went over and laid out on one of the lounges that were facing the beach, directly in the sunlight.
Steven was a small guy about 5’6” or so, probably not over one hundred and thirty five pounds soaking wet. I thought it seemed a bit odd that he sort of secluded himself from everyone, but I suppose everybody relaxes in his or her own way.
Apparently Mr. Conner had noticed me watching Steven most likely with a questioning look on my face. Mr. Conner then called for Chels to come and take his place as a safety spotter for Melissa. As Mr. Conner stood next to me drying off, he told me we needed to speak before I left for the night and he would explain a little about Steven.
After spending hours in the pool and eating all day, and Stacy giving Melissa countless dune buggy rides up and down the beach everyone was pretty much worn out. Julie invited everyone to take showers in the guesthouse and then come to the main house to relax in the movie plex room, as she called it.
Mr. Conner had built a movie theater room with a g
iant screen, surround sound and a popcorn machine, the works. Teaching at PBHU must be a lucrative way to earn a living. During the opening credits of the movie, Mr. Conner motioned to me to excuse myself and take a walk with him.
“Thank you for coming over today, Wilson, it means the world to Julie, Melissa, and me as well.”
“It was all my pleasure, sir, I can assure you.”
“When we’re not in class you can call me Brian.”
I could tell this walk wasn’t going to be about the formalities of how to address Mr. Conner. I wished Stacy were here to read between the lines for me. Something was up and it felt like it was big. I just wasn’t sure what to expect from Brian and maybe that’s how he wanted it, that’s probably why he separated me from Stacy or….
“Sure, Brian it is. Is there more you need to tell me sir… er, Brian?” He laughed but never turned his head to look at me.
“I want to explain a little about the team members of group two. Every four years we get a new group of students and you guys seem to get more outstanding with each new class.
“Yes, sir.” Calling him Brian when we were back to business didn’t seem right. He nodded gravely, confirming my feelings that this was deep and going to get deeper.
“You’ve already met Rachel and Chels, and I believe they have given you a basic understanding of their abilities. I know you have met Tony but have you gone into any detail of what he is capable of?”
“No, sir, none.”
“Tony is what you would have referred to back in high school as a techie nerd, but he’s not your typical techie nerd. He can use, build, infiltrate or hack into anything we have thrown at him that runs by computer programming. From reprogramming a garage door opener to infiltrating a military mainframe, he may just be the best hacker in the world today. Tony was born and raised in Brazil and holds the title of master in three different martial arts. I guess he got tired of being called a nerd or something.” Brian said smiling slightly.
Usually, guys that stand 6’2” and weighs one hundred and eighty five pounds don’t get call nerd a lot in Michigan. “You say he’s a master in three different martial arts?” Man, am I glad we weren’t cheating at poker the other night.
“Yes, he is. Now with Tony teamed up with Steven and the girls you have the best intelligence team in history. You’d be able to get, hack, and decipher any communications made around the world.
“What does Steven do?” I asked curious to find out about the last member of the group.
There was a strain in Brian’s eyes that hadn’t been there all day. Not when he was playing in the pool with Melissa or when he sat with his arm around Julie watching Melissa getting buggy rides. He was a different man now, so serious and burdened.
“Steven is another one of a kind. You’ve heard the term photographic memory I’m sure. Well, that’s not exceedingly special since there have been quite a few people to some degree that have photographic memories. But Steven has perfect and instantaneous recall of anything he has ever read, heard, or seen…ever. I’m sure you’ve also heard the term autistic. Steven is the most unique autistic person discovered.”
“Discovered?” Discovered makes it sound like they found him in a deep jungle somewhere hiding in a cave.
“Yes, discovered. You see most autistic people are very gifted at certain things like music or mathematics but normally struggle with communication. Steven has used his photographic memory to adapt his communication skills that other people take for granted. Let me give you an example. If Steven is asked do you want a bowl of cereal for breakfast. He’ll recall a response from anything he has ever seen and then mimics it back as his reply. So if he’s hungry, he responds with ‘Yes, thank you that would be great.’ He may have gotten this line from a TV show or book where that was a reply given to get the object asked about. It was amazing that we caught onto the fact he was autistic at all.”
My interest was piqued. “How did you discover he was indeed autistic then?”
“Steven was in advanced college classes when most kids his age were starting fifth grade. That year, one of Steve’s professors was in the teacher’s lounge watching the weather channel on TV before class. Steven was in the lobby where the same program for the weather was on. When they both met a few minutes later in class the teacher making small talk asked him what he thought about the weather coming in. Steven repeated word for word what they had just heard on the broadcast.
They knew Steven had a photographic memory at the time, but since his response was identical to the broadcast, the teacher knew this wasn’t normal. The professor left the room to get help and asked Steven just to sit tight for a few minutes. He then returned with Dr. Ishmail and a tape recorder and had him ask Steven the same question. In turn, Dr. Ishmail recorded the same reply verbatim. Then the SA council got involved and started to investigate. After some testing they realized all Steven’s replies were coming from his photographic memory word for word as they had went in. We also found that Steven carefully chose his replies to answer exactly the way he felt and believed. He just did it with memorized replies.
The interesting part of this is that Steven was so good at pulling up replies that applied directly to the situation, no one caught on. We brought him in under SA care then and have worked with him one on one, ever since. Now that he’s nineteen years old and we’ve had many years to monitor his behavior, we feel comfortable he’s safe to join a group.”
“Let me recap to be sure I understand correctly, because this seems a little complicated. Steven instantaneously can recall anything he has ever seen, heard or read at the blink of an eye. He can also communicate what he thinks and feels by using regurgitated verbiage someone else has spoken or written?”
“That’s correct. Another way to tell that he’s doing this is, if he speaks something that was read and not watched or heard, he’ll say it with no expression on his face. If he replies using something he watched either in real life or on TV he mimics the expression that was used as well. In some ways, he’s easily the smartest man in the world.”
“Uh-huh.” I tried not to sound inundated, I really did.
“Look, I know this is a lot to take in but I’ve personally worked with Steven over the last five years, and he is truly an amazing person. Yes he's a bit quiet, but for what his brain is capable of he is incredible. He will know the answer to anything you will ever ask him. He also has a pleasant personality, and you'll find he's quite a giving person.”
“This is all quite interesting, sir, but why are you taking the time to tell me all of this?” I asked trying to get to the heart of the matter.
“Something critical has come up. You may not know this but Julie and I graduated and worked for the Governments SA program for ten years. After our active tour with SA we decided to come back here to teach SA students and raise our daughter. Unfortunately, we’re now being called back for a special assignment and we have to leave tonight. I am not at liberty to tell you about the assignment but there are a few more things I need to cover with you before Julie and I leave.”
By this time we had walked miles down the beach and Brian was turning us around to head back.
“Some of this will be completely up to you and some of this you have no choice in. The council is making you group leader for group two in addition to your own group. That part is not negotiable. The part you do have a say in, is this. Julie and I need your help again. You have every right to turn us down and we would completely understand, so please don’t hesitate if this is asking too much.”
Brian’s eye’s squinted a little as the stress emanated out of his eyes now.
“Julie and I don’t have any family so we would like to ask you to stay with Melissa while we’re gone. We trust you implicitly with our special little girl and besides Melissa loves you to death.”
“I would love to watch her, sir. She’s incredibly special.”
“Yes, yes… but that’s not the kind of special I meant.” Mr
. Conner said staring me in the eye.
“You’re kidding!” he’s got another weird thing to add to the list!
The tension now eased a bit from his expression. “I wish I was. Haven’t you noticed how light Melissa feels when you hold her?”
“Well, sort of, I just blew it off to me being strong and her little legs holding on so tight.”
“She’s somehow controlling the magnetic field around her body. That’s why we have that special movie plex room set up for her because she makes a normal TV go completely fuzzy. Let me put it this way, like birds use magnetic functions in their brain for guidance during migrations, Melissa sort of does the same thing, just on a much grander scale and with her whole body. She also holds onto people so easy because she’s using the magnetic field from her body to attract and stick to the iron and magnetic field in other peoples bodies.”
“Yeah, I sure noticed that, I just thought… well, I guess I didn’t really think at all. When she’s around I just get mesmerized by her cute little face.” I smiled picturing how she looked in Meea’s arms today.
“We don’t know everything yet, but we want her to enjoy growing up before being bothered with any tests. Maybe when she’s older we can explain it to her and start to get deeper into it, but for now we just want to enjoy being a family. I hope you understand, Wilson.”
“Yeah, growing up normal is tough enough I guess.” Brian smiled, knowing I had no mixed feelings about their decision.
“One last thing, Melissa we believe is about four times as light as a normal child her size. We believe this is caused by the atoms in her body having four times the space between them as normal.”
“You’re losing me again.”
“Actually it’s not hard to understand. If you compress all the empty space out of the atoms that make up all the cells of a human body the actual mass would only fill a teaspoon. We believe from us looking at a lock of Melissa’s hair that she carries one-fourth the mass that’s normal. Carrying less mass hasn’t seemed to affect her in the slightest, other than she’s actually faster and stronger than normal children her age. Like I said we just want to enjoy her while she grows up and that’s what is most important to us.”
The stressed out look started to crowd back into Brian’s face again. “We hate to leave Melissa this way, but I really can’t share any more details with you, you’re just going to have to trust me for a while, sorry.”
“That’s okay. Do you think Melissa will be okay staying with me?”
“Actually, if you wouldn’t mind, we would like you to stay here with her. We think she’ll handle the time apart from us better if she’s here in her own room and such. Also we would like to invite you all to stay here. We have plenty of room to accommodate everyone. That will give you more time together to learn about each other and a few extra bodies around to take care of Melissa, because she may be more than one of you can handle alone.”
I laughed out loud in an effort to relieve my tension as much as seeing the humor of Melissa keeping all eight of us busy. “Why again did I get a second group to lead?”
“I can’t really go into that either just try to get a handle on them and see if you can pull them all together… it may be more important than you know.”