Chapter 6
Day one
On the first day of college, Marty and I, along with the entire freshman SA student body were required to attend a morning introduction meeting. The meeting was held at the Mendon Hall Liberty conference room on the first floor. This worked out nicely for me since my first class, Advanced Communications, was on the second floor of the same building.
We got there early and grabbed a couple seats up toward the front. The conference room only had seating for about thirty people. Twenty students had strolled into the room before the bell in the hallway started to clank like an old tin can. I noticed that the two back rows were completely empty. That was odd that out of twenty people, no one had chosen to sit in the back.
I was pretty sure the message on my computer said this was a mandatory meeting for all SA freshmen, so this was going to be a small graduating class I thought, chuckling to myself. A minute after the bell silenced, Dr. Ishmail and professor Hoob walked in and closed the door.
“Welcome. Welcome all. I’m Dr. Ishmail.” He said as he gave a slight bow. “We begin each new freshman class with and introductory secession, so let’s begin.
We are honored you’ve chosen to attend our Special Abilities program here at PBHU. For those of you who are not familiar with our programs let me explain in more detail.
The program you are entering has just graduated a senior class of eleven. There are no sophomores, juniors, or seniors this year. We only have one group of students going thru the four-year program at a time. This year, you are a part of the largest starting SA freshman class in our Universities history. Look around, if your curious about the people around you, let me give you a brief example of some of this year’s talent. Wilson, how many students are in the room?”
“Twenty, sir. Thirteen males, seven females. Seventeen right handed and three left-handed. There are four brunettes, three blond and one redhead.” I responded without hesitation.
“That’s more than enough, Wilson, and that’s also correct. Now did anyone else in the room know the answer to just how many people were in the room?”
No one raised their hand or spoke up. “So, no one knew how many students were in this room but Wilson. Let alone, how many people were left handed and excreta. Since I knew Wilson would have already figured this fact out and I chose to call on him, who is special, Wilson or myself?”
“That would be you, sir,” I blurted out. The class broke into laughter breaking the tension. Both Dr. Ishmail and professor Hoob laughed as well.
“Very good Wilson. Now, Mr. Lambert, pass me the book on your desk without getting up please.”
The book levitated in the air and then smoothly crossed the five-foot distance between them, hovering in the air until the doctor raised his hand to take it. There were a few ohs and ahs from the back of the room. Now that was a cool example, and I must admit, I felt sort of proud of the fact Marty was my roommate. Marty looked at me like I should have shown them my “get a free meal” voice trick, but no way I was getting laughed at on my first day. Ok, I already got laughed at, but that’s different.
“Thank you, Marty, very good.” Dr. Ishmail said tossing the book back through the air to Marty’s ready hand.
“This year we will be breaking this class up into groups of four. You will be in the same group for the next four years. The council has put a lot of time and effort into making each of the five group pairings as strong as possible. It will be up to each group to ensure not only the success of the group but also the growth of the individuals. As we continue professor Hoob will be passing out your group assignments. Each group has been assigned a group leader. Please understand, being a group leader is an honor and comes with great responsibility. Do not take it lightly.
We also want to impress upon you at this time that in accepting a position in our SA program there is a ninety-nine percent probability you will be requested to accept a position for the United States government. You may also possibly at some point in your career be put in life threatening positions. We can’t say that for sure, but the jobs that you could take may often be in troubled areas. You would be considered at that time an authorized agent for our government.
So that there is no misunderstanding, I want to be very clear. It may be necessary for you at some point to take lives in order to save lives. Being an authorized agent gives you the authority to make life and death decisions, for not only yourself but for others.
Not all of you may be in this situation but the SA program does produce many front line operative agents. If you believe this is not within your abilities, now is the time to step aside. Please wait and see me after this meeting if you need to resign. For the rest of you that still choose to stay, thank you and God bless. You may now take a few minutes to meet one another before your first class.”
Marty said he would catch up with me at lunchtime, as he took off for his aviation class at the airport. There was about ten minutes before most of us would have to rush off for class, so I decided to meet some of the other students to see what other abilities were here.
Dr. Ishmail and professor Hoop had excused themselves and took their leave. Milling around at the front podium were two black girls that had been sitting in the front row. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. They were very pretty… but something was different about them. I figured I might as well meet the two girls since I couldn’t stop staring at them anyway.
When I got closer I realized what was so different about them. They were twins… and that wasn’t the strange part. It was their eyes. Their eyes were blue, and when I say blue, that’s such an understatement. Their irises were completely blue, the Bahamas clear ocean blue. They looked like tiny snow globes filled completely with blue water. And pupils, they had no pupils… no black at all in their eyes, just blue liquid globes surrounded on the far outsides by white.
“Hi, girls, I’m Wilson.” They had followed my approach to them from the second row so I assumed that they weren’t blind.
“Hi, I’m Rachel, and this is my sister Chels. Good thing you knew how many people were in the room or Dr. Ishmail would have looked pretty stupid.” They both giggled at the thought. I laughed along as well but I was thinking how I would have also looked pretty dumb, but I don’t think she meant it that way.
“Pardon me but I noticed how pretty…and unique your eyes are and wondered if that had anything to do with why you’re here?”
Rachel replied. She seemed to be the more outgoing one. “Yes, the council has known about us since birth. Our parents were both stationed on a nuclear sub during the gulf war. Our mother had gotten pregnant with us on board but she didn’t know about it for a few months. They believe the nuclear radiation may have attributed to the birth defect, or modification, as we like to call it.”
“Can you see alright?”
“We don’t see like you do, we see more like a bat would, with sound waves. Not only can we see in the dark, but we can see many different ranges of signals too, like TV signals in the air and also radio waves. The government has had us in and out of hundreds of testing sites all our lives. The SA council lobbied on our behalf to the Military to get us out from under the microscope and in here where we can kind of fit in and have a semi-normal life again.”
Chels shook her long black hair back off her shoulders as a signal, letting her sister know she was now comfortable enough with me to join in the conversation. Both girls had their hair cut just the same, playing into that cute twin girl fantasy most college guys have. Their hair was very smooth and shiny, hanging down to the middle of their backs and the front was cut off straight across giving them solid bangs just below the eyebrows. “So how did you know there were twenty people in the room… is counting your gift?” They giggled again.
“Well sort of… I like to be prepared and look for angles, if that’s a gift.” Feeling a little inferior around all these talented people I decided I had to pull out all the stops. “Since you see sound wav
es, there’s something I’d like to try with you. I sort of have this other little thing I can do.”
Their heads both twisted to the side a tiny bit and their eyebrows rose.
“What is it?” Chels asked. They seemed excited to see something new.
“Can you see my voice when I speak?”
“Sure, not only do we see the sound waves of your words streaming out of your mouth but we can also hear the sound waves in our ears, like you do.
“Can you see a sound wave and interpret it at a greater distance than you can hear one?”
“Oh… by far,” they shared a giggle again looking at each other. “We can talk to each other about 3 miles apart. We just angle our voice in the correct direction. We can pick out our own sound waves much easier than picking out random voices.”
“So, you two don’t need to hear each other… you can just see what the other is saying, is that right?”
“Yes, but you’ve got to understand, we need to be outside or at least have a clear path between us. If we’re indoors the place can’t have walls in between us, we need open space like in a convention hall… you know.”
“Yeah sure, I get it, very cool stuff.”
I glanced around to see that no one was paying attention to us and most of the other students were filing out for class now. It felt safe enough to show them and I was curious how my voice would look in a sound wave. “Look at the back wall… ready?”
“Yeah but what are we ready for?” Rachel asked.
I threw Rachel’s voice over to the wall. “Chels, I hear you’re glad to be at PBHU.”
The girls stared at the wall for a few seconds and then turned toward each other. Then they burst out in laughter, and reached out and held hands.
Still laughing Chels turned to me. “What the hell was that? It looked like an arrow flying at the wall and then when it hit the wall it exploded into Rachel’s voice. We haven’t seen anything quite like that. Where did the voice come from?”
“It came from me, I threw it over there.”
“Do it again, can you do me?” Chels asked excitedly like she had a new toy to play with.
“Sure, look at the door.” This time I threw Chels voice over to the door and the girls once again jumped up and down and laughed. I wasn’t sure what was so funny about this, but I haven’t lived all my life seeing sound waves. “Well, I have to take off for my first class, but I enjoyed meeting you both.” They danced quickly over to me and gave me a big hug.
“You know, in a four year program with just twenty people, we’re going to become very close friends, Wilson.”
I smiled and nodded at them as I left. But just because I smiled at them, I wondered did they see me smile, or understand facial gestures. Maybe I needed to make sure I verbalized my thoughts and emotions to them. I don’t know what’s appropriate, but like Rachel said, I’d have the next four years to figure it out.
I walked into my first class, Communications 101, and found a seat at the back of the room this time. There were fifteen of us in the class, figured I better count in case I got asked again for the head count. The professor was a woman from the council, Mrs. Limbert. She was pulling down charts that hung over the front white boards. Looking around the room I tried to get a look at some of the students, to see if there were any three legged men or girls with eyes in the back of their heads. Nothing stood out that obvious so far. My eyes were attracted to the front row where a girl in a wheelchair was sitting and talking with another girl with beautiful long black silky hair. She had the kind of hair that was silkier than any of the ladies in the shampoo commercials on TV. She had it pulled back into a loose thick ponytail. The girl in the wheel chair had black hair as well but it was cut short and spiky. She was very cute, a patch of freckles running across the bridge of her nose. She looked petite and light as a feather. I could tell how little she was even though she was sitting in a small antique looking wooden wheelchair.
The other girl that had most my attention was nicely built, with perfect muscle tone. She was long and lean like she had a swimmers frame. She was probably five foot six, one hundred and fifteen pounds, just beautifully built in my humble opinion.
Mrs. Limbert handing out cell phones to each of us interrupted my admiration of the girls. She said for our first lesson she would teach us how to program any cell phone to link up to communication and weather satellites for free direct dialing to anywhere, at anytime. We proceeded to make phone connections all over the globe using six different satellites for the remainder of the class. So much for a phone bill the rest of my life. This SA training really had some cool perks.
I stopped in the hall to grab a soda before my biology class when Chels tapped me on the shoulder to see what my next class was. Chels, Rachel and Marty hadn’t been in my communication class that had just ended.
Chels said that she and her sister had biology now too, and then their next class would be a language class, something about Arabic and common slangs. I was glad I was not enrolled in Arabic, it just sounded a little boring.
We walked into biology just as the attendance bell sounded. It looked like all twenty of us were going to be in this class. I wondered if all twenty of us would be in most of the same classes. Probably not, since we all had such a variety of talents to work on.
Since everyone was in this class I quickly looked around to try and find the long black haired girl. Marty waved to me and pointed to the seat that he had saved beside him.
There were just two seats per lab desk. I spotted the wheelchair girl first and then her friend with the long hair sitting with her at the table to Marty’s left. I walked up slow angling around the front of our desk so I could see the girl’s face. Oh…. Unbelievable, she had light green eyes, a smoldering tan, and the most beautiful features. It looked like she was carved from stone, with high cheekbones and a nose straight as an arrow. Her teeth were amazingly white against her deep dark lips. I just knew her talent must be the ability to break a heart with one look. Marty saw me hesitate looking over to the girl’s table and he tensed up immediately. I walked around and took my seat.
“Hi, Marty, how were your flying lessons?” I asked distractedly.
“Good, I saw you looking at that table. You don’t like her do you?”
“Well… She is incredible… I don’t know her but…. I would like to.”
“So the chair doesn’t bother you!?” He huffed in disbelief.
“Not the one in the chair… the one beside her with the long hair”
Marty burst out in a smile of relief. “Oh good… because I like the one in the chair! Man, I’m glad we don’t like the same girl. That would have been… well I’d have had to drop a steel ball on your head or something.”
We both sort of sat there grinning at each other knowing we dodged a bullet, but the real thought on both our minds was, now what? How do we meet and win the hearts of the two girls that just took both our breath way. Levitating silverware and talking like Sylvester Stalone was not going to win a girl in this school.
The girl in the wheel chair had pale blue eyes that dominated her pixie like face. Marty had great taste, I was happy for him, especially if he could figure out how to meet her. But for me, the other girl had to be the most gorgeous girl I had ever seen.
Everyone was getting kind of quiet now, anticipating the beginning of class. The door up front opened and in walked a professor and in his arms was the little girl I had rescued a few days ago at the gas station.
“Welcome, class. I am Professor Conner. Today, I would like you to meet a very special young lady, my daughter, Melissa.” The class broke into a soft round of applause for her. “Unless you have been living under a rock the past four days I am sure you have seen the news coverage of Melissa being saved from a gasoline fire.”
From the moment she was carried into the room the little girl hadn’t take her eyes off me, her face beamed with excitement. I was mesmerized and couldn’t take my eye
s off of her either. Melissa leaned in my direction still in her father’s arms. She leaned further and further toward me prompting her father to move forward. When Mr. Conner was standing in front of my desk he shifted Melissa to his left side and reached out and shook my hand.
“Thank you.” Was all that the professor managed to get out. His eyes staring down at me seemed to covey so much more gratitude than words ever could.
Melissa still squirming turned to look at her father and said “Boy!” in her own little demanding way, letting him know she wanted down to me.
Smiling, he gave in to her demand readily and lowered her to me as I reached up to help ease her down into my lap. She looked up at me and touched my face filling me with pure joy. I had really missed her, but hadn’t actually realized it until now. I had never understood the bond you could develop for a child in such a brief amount of time. I guess this is what new mothers feel the moment they see their children born. It’s a feeling that just engulfs you in seconds, like jumping off a diving board into a pool. One moment dry the next you’re completely submerged.
Melissa settled comfortably right into my lap and was now facing front like she was ready for class to begin. Mr. Conner, content to let her sit with me, walked back to his desk in the front of the room.
“Normally, I wouldn’t bring my daughter or any other personal matters to the classroom. I hope you’ll understand, how this is one of those times you make an exception. I’ll quickly summarize, for anyone that arrived late in town for classes. A couple days ago, Wilson walking past a fire at a gas station, saw that Melissa’s car was engulfed in flames. Wilson acting quickly and selflessly rescued Melissa, and to that end, I am blessed to have my daughter here with us today. Since the accident, Melissa has been asking for the “Boy” everyday. And as you can see, Melissa can be very persuasive.” Laughter softly rose from the class.
Mr. Conner turned to address me directly. “Wilson, my wife who is also a professor here at PBHU, would like you to come to dinner one night this week so she can thank you properly. I’m sure Melissa will be thrilled if you could stop by as well. It looks like she’s really taken to you.”
“Yes, sir. You really don’t need to thank me, really. But dinner and seeing Melissa again would be great, thank you.”
“Alright then, now with that behind us, let’s see if we can get through class today with one extra student. I expect straight “A’s” Melissa.” Mr. Conner said as she looked at her father and smiled knowingly.
As Mr. Conner started his lecture Melissa watched him like most little kids would watch Barney or Sesame Street, as if she was able to grasp everything he explained about the introduction to organic biology.
From off to the side it looked like I wasn’t the only one taken with Melissa. The two girls that Marty and I were infatuated with were staring over at Melissa affectionately and making little waving gestures to her.
After class pretty much everyone wanted to stop and see Melissa.
While Marty was having fun with her, floating white board erasers in front of her so she could swing at them with a ruler someone had handed her. The two black haired beauties had hung back to meet Melissa and introduce themselves.
“Hi, I’m Meea Suntree and this is my roommate Stacy Winters.”
“Hi, I’m Wilson McClain and this guy playing with erasers is Marty Lambert.”
Briefly acknowledging my introduction with a slight smile Meea bent down to Melissa and said brightly, “Hello, Melissa, I’m Meea.”
For the first time since I had taken her at the beginning of class, Melissa released her hold on me to go to Meea and held out her hands willingly. Handing her up to Meea was like passing a magnet to another piece of steel. Melissa was firmly attached to Meea on impact. Melissa was amazingly strong for a two year old, and the fact that she could hold her focus long enough to actually sit through an intro biology lecture was extraordinary.
“She is sure something isn’t she,” I said looking into Meea’s green eyes.
“Yes, she is. She is also very blessed that you were there for her when she needed you.” Meea said meeting my stare. Neither of us seemed to want to look away.
Shattering the moment, I heard Stacy exclaim. “That’s quite a trick you have there Marty,” Tearing my eyes away from Meea I looked over to catch Stacy looking up at Marty intimately. Marty looked at Stacy and smiled and then looked back to Melissa who was still zealously swinging at the floating erasers.
Each time Melissa hit an eraser Marty would reconnect with it and bring it slowly back in range for her. She was still attached to Meea’s hip, as Mr. Conner finished up with a few students after class questions. As the last student left Mr. Conner walked over to our desks.
“OK, Melissa, lets get you back to your mom now so I can teach another class.” Melissa held her hand up to Meea’s face and purred “Girl.”
“I’m sure well see you again soon Melissa, you be a good girl.” Meea said handing her back to me.
“I will.” Melissa chirped.
“Well see you two boys later,” the girls chimed as they headed toward the door.
“You can count on it,” Marty replied with a wink. I just shook my head, he’s too smooth.
“Now say goodbye to Wilson,” Mr. Conner said.
Secure on my hip, Melissa leaned her head against mine letting the ruler she held fall to the floor so she could hold my face with both of her tiny hands and whispered. “Boy.”
She gave me a smile that not only showed she cared but also told me she would expect to see me again soon. She had a way of communicating that really didn’t require a lot of words, but you knew too well what she wanted to convey.
“Good bye, Melissa, I’ll see you soon.” I promised, returning her to her fathers waiting arms.