Mute (Muted Trilogy Book 1) (10 page)

LibraryLibrarian011: Especially after seeing how comfortable you seemed today, I fully agree. This branch has been nearly deserted, too, since telepathy developed, so I don’t believe you are at all responsible for this week’s decline, and you’ve already got plans in place for helping the number grow again.

Jemma ran her hand through her hair, avoiding eye contact while she thought. While this had been one of the things she’d considered a possibility for the day, she hadn’t actually thought it a serious enough option to decide what she would do. She knew there were more additional duties, things she’d helped with occasionally since they didn’t have as many employees as the larger branches. Jemma would be in charge of ordering books, allotting funding, and monitoring employees, among other things.

This was a position she’d sometimes considered working toward. She’d pictured it happening years later, when she was her mother’s age or older. Was there anything to prevent her accepting this now? If they thought she was capable, if she herself felt as capable as she had in recent weeks, she didn’t think there was any reason not to take the position. She nodded slowly as she came to this conclusion, and she saw Jessica smiling as she typed her response.

LibraryLibrarian012: I would be happy to accept the position. There are some duties I’ve dealt with less than others. Cecily, will you help me get the hang of things?

LibraryLibrarian011: Of course. I have a copy of my availability. I’m willing to work between ten and twenty hours a week, preferably only as little as you need me. This will be more, at first, and I’ll make sure I’m available via text for any questions that might arise while I’m not present.

Cecily stopped typing long enough to slide a folded piece of paper to Jemma, presumably her availability.

LibraryLibrarian011: I suspect you will pick everything up very quickly. You have always been curious about the needs of the library, even if they didn’t fall under your list of duties. It’s an excellent quality in a researcher, and it suits your new position well, too.

JessicaTLibrary1: You’ll report directly to me for anything that needs approval above the level of branch director, but there shouldn’t be much.

Jessica smiled, looking much more relaxed than she usually was at work.

JessicaTLibrary1: Welcome to the management team! Let’s go join the others, shall we?

Jemma nodded again, and the three stood, moving to the larger staff room. The library was deserted even though there were a few minutes still left before closing time. Set up along a table was a small buffet, an assortment of burgers and hot dogs, chips and soda spread along it.

The city’s library system included the main branch and six other, smaller branches or more specialized collections scattered around the county, even outside of city limits. The directors of each appeared to be present, along with spouses of the ones who were married, twelve people in total. Jemma waved at the people she knew well enough to greet, and she was treated with warm smiles in return. She found a chair at the edge of the room, taking a seat and watching.

It appeared most were communicating via text; people were mingling with phones in hand. After a few minutes, Jessica approached her carrying a piece of paper she couldn’t immediately read, typing on her phone and then turning it toward Jemma.

May I share your cell number? It makes for easier socialization and communication.

Jemma nodded, and Jessica beamed, turning to the room and clapping her hands. The sudden loud noise was effective at gathering attention, and everyone immediately faced them. Jemma resisted her desire to shrink back into the wall to avoid so many eyes on her at once. Jessica held up the paper, and there was a sudden flurry of cell phone activity as people programmed their phones and then sent her texts.

Jemma’s phone started vibrating and didn’t stop for several minutes as a wave of
Hello, Jemma
s arrived well after their senders had turned attention elsewhere. Person after person approached her one at a time, using her number for communication. When finally Cecily and her husband came to stand next to her, Jemma felt herself looking at Cecily wide-eyed, and Cecily smiled, one of the first real smiles Jemma had seen on the woman.

Don’t worry
, she texted Jemma.
These happen just once every month or two.
She cocked her head to one side, then typed another message.
You don’t get overwhelmed by patrons. What makes this different?

Jemma had to think for a minute before responding.
Most of the patrons don’t really see us. They don’t expect real responses. Everything’s pretty automatic. Most of the people who try to genuinely interact are regulars, and if I know people better, I don’t get quite so flustered.

Cecily patted her on the shoulder and nodded toward the table.

Go get yourself some food before it’s all gone
, she wrote.
People will give you some space if you don’t have any free hands to type with.

By the end of the gathering, Jemma had relaxed a little. She now knew everybody by name and by library branch, and she’d gotten a feel for some of their personalities. She doubted she’d ever quite look forward to these gatherings, but she did feel optimistic that they wouldn’t remain stressful or taxing.

***

Jemma was exhausted by the time she got home, but she knew if she went straight to bed, she’d be awake much too early the next morning. She was tired enough that she thought she might fall asleep if she curled up with a good book, so instead, she settled herself in front of the computer. She caught up on Facebook, where it seemed everyone was quite focused on who they could or couldn’t Talk to, and then she switched to the news sites, where the focus seemed to be the same, for the most part. She skimmed the headlines, finally settling on an article toward the end of the page.

Advanced Telepathy or Evolved Rumors?

Despite the lack of pre-Event standard communication, rumors continue to spread just as quickly as ever. While the newsroom typically declines to comment on stories it can’t substantiate, this particular one reached us via an undisclosed source who hasn’t been wrong before.

According to our source, some individuals have developed an advanced form of telepathy. This isn’t just to the degree of being more advanced in use of “standard” telepathy, not referring to those who can Talk across a house instead of across a room; it is referencing an entirely different class of telepathy.

Since The Event, our lives have been a bit more unstable, as has our society. It seems extremely possible that telepathy has developed much further in some instances, but if so, why are we unable to confirm this?

Our source alleges that those who have this level of telepathy, said to have the range of a telephone rather than the range of a voice, have been disappearing as soon as they make their abilities known.

With the high number of people who continue to disappear for completely ordinary reasons, to take vacations and spend money and live the way they always meant to, one budding expert in telepathy says that this rumor is no more than the efforts of some to stir things up, to “troll” the general public and to spread conspiracy theories.

Chances are good that the expert is correct, that this is merely an attempt at sensationalism that we are making worse by reporting .

However, if this rumor proves to be true, you heard it here first.

—Katie Brink, Staff Writer

Jemma clicked through a few more pages, then switched to Netflix, listening to her favorite time travel show while playing Flash games until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. Yawning, she got ready for sleep and then collapsed into bed, closing her eyes gratefully. She replayed her day, which had started so slowly and ended so eventfully. She sorted through her plans for the next day as she sank closer to sleep. She’d need to figure out what her newest duties were, to make a schedule for Cecily, maybe even another schedule for if Susan returned. She definitely needed to get the employee roster up to date, with contact information that was actually useful.

Finally, her thoughts slowed, spinning into comfortable darkness. Before her mind and body could take the final step into slumber, she was startled awake by an unknown male voice echoing in her mind.

“Good night.”

She jerked and sat up, fumbling for the light switch next to her bed. The room lit up, the light filling a space that was unoccupied save for Jemma and her furniture. She reached for her phone, opening an app that was designed to send a video stream to 911, her thumb hovering over the activation button as she stood. She checked under her bed first and saw nothing. She then checked the master bathroom, again seeing nothing out of place. She went through the rest of her house, checking windows and doors as she passed, finding everything still locked.

She was the only one in the house, so how had she heard another voice?

She closed the emergency app and made her way back to her room, sitting on the bed for a few minutes before lying back down. Jemma couldn’t hear any noises out of place, no dogs barking or people shouting, no sirens blaring. The automatic lights on her house and on her neighbor’s house remained off, giving no indication of someone lurking just outside. She turned the bedroom light back off and closed her eyes, opening them again almost immediately.

She’d just read that article about people who had really strong telepathy. She’d been very nearly asleep after a taxing day. The noises in the parking lot earlier must have put her on edge more than she’d realized, and she’d just been close enough to sleep that her subconscious had taken something from her evening reading and projected it at her.

It had felt so real. Even if she was wrong, though, even if it wasn’t a dream and someone had just spoken to her, how? It wasn’t a voice she’d ever heard before, she thought. At minimum, it wasn’t a voice she was familiar with enough for there to be any possibility of the communication she shared with her immediate family.

She closed her eyes again, trying to recall the nuances of the voice, but nothing stood out that might help her identify its source if it wasn’t her imagination. The accent had been unnoticeable, so probably local. It held a husky quality, as if its owner were near sleep himself. She hadn’t gotten to Talk with people frequently enough to know whether this was a normal characteristic to come through the unspoken speech.

Her heart rate was still slightly elevated as she slipped closer to sleep. She made herself a mental note to look into what could be conveyed via telepathy. If it was impossible to convey whether or not one was tired enough that his throat, not involved in the process, had taken on a gravelly tone, that would confirm that the voice had been just in her imagination.

Sighing, Jemma turned her mind firmly back toward her plans for the next day, working with schedules and phantom spreadsheets until she finally fell into a restless sleep.

CHAPTER TEN:

Voices

One week passed, and then another.

Jemma settled quickly into her new role at work. Weekly dinners with her family continued, and Jemma spent the rest of her nights at home. She didn’t hear the voice again and had decided it was a dream. The parking lot had been quiet, and only once more had she felt like somebody else might be there.

She and Cecily had worked out their schedule; Cecily took the first two hours every weekday, and Jemma made sure she ate an early lunch before she came in. She also brought a snack that was easy to hide behind the counter, just in case, usually trail mix with some extra M&M’s mixed in.

Jack had taken to coming in around noon each day and staying until closing. A number of other patrons had fallen into similarly predictable schedules.

Jemma looked around now, a surge of pride filling her as she saw how well the library had rebounded. People were more likely to come in with others than alone, but the library seemed to be a popular destination. Every table was taken. A few kids were spread out on the mat at the children’s corner, those unable to Talk using dramatic gestures for communication, often leading to little bodies collapsed on the ground, shaking in silent fits of giggles.

She closed her eyes, enjoying the quiet sounds of the library, the shuffle of footsteps, the turning of pages. The evening sun streamed through the window, and she smiled before opening her eyes again. A woman approached her, Mariah, the woman who’d been unable to speak with her boyfriend.

“How was your week?” she typed, the tablet translating Mariah’s words using the voice of radio hostess Delilah. Jemma had acquired a female option after Cecily came back; though she’d somehow forgotten about getting it after her mother’s visit, hearing her coworker talk in a man’s voice had been jarring enough to remind her, and Cecily preferred using the voices to typing silently. The app made it easy to switch between the voices, the same tool bar that helped with keyboard rotation also allowing up to five voices to be accessed without a separate menu.

“Uneventful,” typed Jemma. “I’m usually here, and work’s been going well. How about you?” She scanned Mariah’s library card and started scanning her books.

“I’ve been okay. Did I tell you last week that I’d found a new place to live?” Jemma shook her head, and Mariah continued typing. “It’s across town. I’ll probably need to switch to a different library branch after I move in, but for now, I wanted the one that was familiar, you know?” Jemma nodded, stacking the books neatly by the tablet, tucking the due date receipt inside the cover of the top book. “If I do switch, can I return these to the closer library?”