Alex Armstrong: Awakening (7 page)

Alex nodded and offered up his glass to Nate in a mock toast.

“Well, I’m still not hungry.”

“And that’s okay,” Nate said. “We should head out, anyway. Don’t wanna be late on the first day. Where’s Patrick?”

“Right here,” he said, walking up to the table. “I ate my omelet while I was waiting for the fresh biscuits. You guys want one?” He held out a plastic plate.

“Maybe on the way over,” Alex said. “Let’s get out of here.”

8 - Professor Startsman

8

Professor Startsman

Alex grabbed the door and ushered his friends into Blue101 with a little bow and sweep of the arm.

“Why, thank you.” Patrick shoved the last bite of biscuit in his mouth and placed his balled-up napkin in Alex’s hand. “You mind taking care of that for me?”

Alex flipped it at the back of his head.

“Gah! Don’t get crumbs in my hair. I gotta look good for the ladies!”

“You wish.” Eva picked up the napkin and tossed it in the trash.

“Whoa,” Patrick said. “You guys gotta get in here and check this out. Looks a little different with the lights turned on, huh?”

“Like we’re outside,” Alex said. He looked up and down the LCD panels covering the left and right walls of the auditorium.

“It’s a live stream,” Nate said. “Must be from those cameras on top of the building.”

“Oh yeah. Good call,” Alex said. He looked at the left wall. A couple squirrels hopped about in the ankle-deep grass under the large oak. Pink windows glinted in the background. “You guys wanna sit toward the front?”

They nodded and Alex led the way down the aisle and turned in at the third row. He smiled to himself because he knew without looking that Eva had filed in right behind him. He caught a whiff of her perfume as she sat down and it filled him with an urge to say something to her. Something witty. Alex waited until she finished unloading her backpack, then he took a deep breath and smiled and turned to her. And then his mind went blank. He sat there, mouth gaping, filled with that same sense of panic he always felt around pretty girls. But why now? They had talked plenty of times the last few days. Why was this different? Alex realized he was still looking at her and quickly turned away, unsure if she noticed. His heart was racing. He stared at the table at the front of the room, studying it as if it were something worthy of a museum. He began counting its dowels.

“That’s Agra, isn’t it?”

Alex stopped at eight. He looked up and peered through the large panes of glass at the dorms in the distance. “Yeah. And you can just see the edge of Hope.”

“Where?” Eva said.

Alex pointed. “There. Look about five feet right of the table and ten feet up.”

She leaned over and her blonde hair draped across his arm. “I see it,” she said, nodding.

Alex noticed she stayed there a beat longer than necessary. His face reddened. It may have been uncharted territory, but Alex knew a sign when he saw one. Of course, knowing the signs and doing something about them were entirely different things. He doubled down on his search for a witty comment, wading through memories of movies and TV shows for something he could use. He was about to give up and go back to the dowels when his phone vibrated. It was a text from Patrick:

She wanted to sit next to you!! She likes you! She wants your WANG! Lololol.
It buzzed again.
SMOKIN THE DONKEY!!
Alex laughed and tucked his phone under his leg.

“What’s so funny?” Eva said.

“Nothing…‌just my dad texting me.”

“What’d he say?”

“Oh, just how he put out the garbage this morning wearing only his boxers. Our neighbor passed by and beeped at him. We always joke that she likes him.”

Eva grinned. “So is that gonna be you one day? Walking around in public, not caring what you look like?”

“Maybe. Although, I’m thinking by that age I’ll have ditched my boxers for tighty whities. That’s a good look.”

“Sexy,” Eva said.

Alex felt his phone vibrate again. He waited until Eva turned around. It was another text from Patrick:

Well played, son. I’m very proud of you. –Dad.
Alex closed his eyes and tried not to laugh. He’d have to thank Patrick later for giving him an opening.

“So I told my parents last night.”

The three boys looked at Eva.

“You mean, about this place?” Nate said.

Eva nodded.

“Like,
all
about this place?” Patrick said.

She nodded again.

“But you can’t. We signed that paper at registration,” Patrick said.

“Oh, please. That was just saying we promised not to go off telling the news or something like that.”

“Yeah but…‌our course info…‌there were red letters that said we’re not supposed to tell our parents,” Alex said.

“No, it said they ‘highly recommend’ we don’t tell them. There’s no
can’t
.”

“Same thing,” Patrick said.

“No it’s not. Besides, it’s not like I told just anybody. They’re my parents. I’m not even going to tell my sister.”

“But your parents might,” Nate said.

“No. Definitely not. Besides, I made them promise. If anybody ever tells my sister, it will be me. What? Don’t look at me like that. I
had
to tell somebody. This place is incredible. They had to know.”

“They didn’t
have
to know anything,” Patrick said.

“Of course they did! We’re talking about our parents. The people who brought us into this world. The people who have sacrificed so much of their lives for us. My mom’s like my best friend. We talk about everything. It doesn’t even register in my brain how I could
not
tell them.”

“We obviously have very different brains,” Patrick said.

“So what did you tell your parents?”

“I didn’t tell them anything. I haven’t spoken to them since I got to campus.”

“What?”

“I sent them a text,” Patrick said. He turned on his phone and held it so Eva could see.

“I’m having lots of fun…‌campus is pretty,” Eva said, reading his phone. “That’s it?”

Patrick nodded and tucked his phone away.

“But moms want to know more than that. You can’t just send them a text.”

Patrick shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll call them sometime.”

“That’s terrible,” Eva’s voice started to rise. “What about you two? Did you at least call?”

Nate and Alex nodded.

“And did you tell them anything?”

“Not really,” Alex said. “I just told my dad about the room, meeting you guys, the dinner…‌stuff like that.”

“Same here,” Nate said.

Eva just sat there shaking her head. “Guys are the worst.”

“So…‌what did they say?” Alex said.

“My parents? Well, after promising me for like five minutes that they’d keep everything a secret, they basically just had a bunch of questions. I answered as much as I could. I told them I’d know a lot more after today. They were excited, though. My mom said she always knew something was special about me, but that’s something all moms tell their kids, so who knows if it’s true or not. My dad tried to look it up on Google Maps, but couldn’t find any trace of the campus. He could see the brick one—the one we visited this summer—but nothing but green on this side of the mountain.”

“That explains the green roofs,” Alex said.

“And I told him that,” Eva said, “but he said there wasn’t any sign of any kind of development over here, even after zooming all the way in. He said it almost looked like that part of the map was an older image of the mountain.”

The squirrel on the left wall caught Alex’s attention. He watched it grab an acorn with its mouth. It moved off the grass and into the dark soil near the base of the tree and sniffed the ground, whiskers twitching. When it found the right spot it hunched forward and dug a hole and lowered its head and dropped its prize. Alex watched its deft little hands perform the task for which they were perfectly designed. The squirrel gave a few final tamps and then went off in search of another acorn.

CLICK

The wall monitors went dark.

“Good morning, class!”

****

The students turned at the sound of the nasally voice to find their professor plodding down the aisle. He had long legs and long arms and a long neck and his head bobbed along with each step like a giraffe moseying to a tree. He had a pot belly the size of a basketball but no butt to speak of, so his unhemmed pants rode low and bunched around his ankles. The only thing protecting his modesty was a four-sizes-too-big braided leather belt that he cinched as tightly as possible, stuffing the remainder back into his trousers with no regard for his belt loops.

He hefted his briefcase onto the desk and it immediately flopped on its side. He paid this no mind and instead shoved his hands down the back of his pants and tucked in the shirttails of his button-down and then turned to the class. His thin lips formed a hard line and his eyebrows furrowed as he squinted at the faces of his new students.

“This is a helluva small class.” His voice pierced through the auditorium. “Would you believe that this room used to be full back in the day? There were a couple years where we had to split the freshmen into two Intro classes. But I’m not complaining—it’s a good thing. It means that shitty drug got off the marketplace.”

He sat hunched on the desk with his gut spilling over his belt. He grabbed his briefcase and placed it on his lap and pulled out his tablet and tossed his briefcase back on the table and began swiping his finger across the tablet. The glass windows frosted over. He turned around and gave a little nod. He began typing and instantly the words
Intro to Pal Tech and Telekinesis
appeared across the windows and along each wall. “My name is Bill Startsman, and it’s my job to introduce each of you to telekinesis.”

He scanned the auditorium again, drumming the table with his right hand. He sat there thinking for a while. Then he pushed himself off the desk and hitched up his pants in one smooth, well-rehearsed motion. He propped his tablet against his chest as if he were holding a clipboard. The glow from the screen highlighted his crow’s feet.

“Those were some pretty neat tricks Monday night, weren’t they?” Startsman spoke with the air of someone discussing last night’s ball game. “We had, what, eight floating students? Over sixty dessert plates? Speaking of which, did anybody else think the apple pie was a touch on the dry side?” He lowered his tablet. “No one? Hmm. Maybe it was just me.” He shrugged.

“So, how many of you hurried back to your dorms and stayed up all night practicing?” He raised his eyebrows and his thin smile turned into a smirk. Only a few hands were in the air. “Five of you, huh?” He rolled his eyes. “Come on, now. I like to keep my classroom as lie-free as possible.”

This time almost everyone raised their hands. Startsman nodded. “So that brings me to my next question: Did any of you actually
move
anything? Anyone? Maybe just a teensy bit?” He pinched his fingers together.

A boy sitting in the front row began to raise his hand.

“I remember reading that every time someone tells a lie a hawk swoops down and kills an unsuspecting Golden Retriever puppy.” Startsman glanced at the boy and he lowered his hand.

“There’s a reason none of you moved anything that night. It’s because none of you are Naturals. None of you.” He paused. “And that’s precisely why this school exists. To act as a training ground for you and others like you once your powers are unleashed. And the story of Pal Tech starts with the man who performed all those tricks the other night.”

He went back to his tablet. A recent picture of President Joyce popped up on the two walls and the back windows. A few seconds later it morphed into a picture of a child. “Chris is a Natural, one of only a few in the world. And like all Naturals, he started showing signs of telekinesis when he was just a toddler.” An old video of a child surrounded by floating toys played on the back windows.

“Eventually they had to pull Chris out of school. But of course that didn’t curb his telekinesis; there were still incidents. And so it’s not surprising that after one particular episode at the local diner, word of Chris spread to some very influential people who were familiar with his gift.” Startsman brought up a map of Virginia and the CIA’s logo. “They found a place for him at Langley not long after he finished high school.

“Chris began his training as a scientist, but with his abilities, it wasn’t long before he was assigned to field work. By the time he was in his thirties, he was a high-level special-ops agent, leading missions even
beyond
the scope of the CIA. So valuable was his skill set that the military decided they needed more people just like him. So they went searching—searching for what made Chris special.

“Brain scans came first.” A dozen MRIs popped up on either wall. “As you can probably imagine, the results were extraordinary. It was the largest cerebral cortex they’d ever recorded, with far more active synapses than a normal brain.” Two different brains began rotating on the back windows. One was alive with red light. “Next was a thorough study of his genetic code. Not surprisingly, they found several anomalies. It was determined that these irregular genetic markers were the drivers—the
cause
—of his telekinesis. And
voilà
,” he said, spreading his hands like a magician after a trick, “they had a blueprint.”

He checked something on his tablet and started pacing the length of the classroom. His neck jutted forward at a forty-five degree angle. Whenever he looked toward the class, his head swiveled so that one eye was always higher than the other.

“So now they just needed to find people who met the parameters. They began testing. And they started in a pretty logical place. Any guesses as to where that was?” Startsman raised his eyebrows. “Anybody?”

“Schools.”

“Incorrect, but not a bad guess. Anyone else?”

“Blood drives.”

“That would have worked, but the sample size would’ve been much too small.”

“Doctor’s offices.”

“Getting warmer,” Professor Startsman said. “But you need to think younger.”