Anomaly (16 page)

When I am done, Berk has his face in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. “I can’t believe it.”

“I thought you knew.” I want to comfort him. He seems so . . . sad. “I’m sure they were going to tell you. You are being prepared for something great. Dr. Loudin told me so himself.”

Berk slams his hand against the wall screen. It pulses blue and purple, then returns to black. “Dr. Loudin is lying to you, Thalli.”

“What?” I grab the end of the sleeping platform for support.

“He is testing you.”

I have never seen Berk so angry. “Of course he is testing me.” I put a hand on Berk’s arm, but he pulls away. “He is making sure I am capable of surviving outside.”

“There is no outside, Thalli.” Berk’s voice is quiet, but sadness lies underneath it.

I start to speak, but Berk lifts a hand to stop me.

“Sit down.” He guides me back to the sleeping platform. We sit. He rubs his palms against his blue pants. “Thalli, Dr. Loudin is experimenting on you.”

“Experimenting?”

“I had no idea,” Berk says. “I promise you. The tests I was running were meant to demonstrate your superior intellect. I was trying to prove that annihilating you would be a loss to the State.”

“But you stopped testing me.”

“Because I was forced to.” Berk rubs his temples. “The other Scientists saw that I was getting close to you. But I was assured they would continue running the same types of tests. I told them with your talents and intelligence, you could stay here, work with us. We haven’t tried to connect music with technology, but I was sure we could. We could do so much. Together.”

“But Dr. Loudin told me I was distracting you.”

Berk lets out a loud sigh. “You are not a distraction, Thalli. But I was—am—getting close to you. That’s why he warned you away.”

“So what kind of experiments was I being used for?” I have a sinking feeling as Berk takes my hand.

“Remember I told you Dr. Loudin’s specialty is the brain?”

“Yes, but he has just done what you did—tested me in the cube, with different simulations. In the last few days, he hasn’t even tested me at all. He has been allowing me to visit Progress instead.”

“He has been testing you, Thalli.” Berk rubs his temples again.

“No, that’s impossible. He has just talked to me, that’s all.” I don’t remember having anything ever hooked up to my brain. Every other part of my body, but not that.

“I didn’t know this was happening.”

“You didn’t know what was happening?” My heart feels like it is being squeezed. Berk won’t even look at me. He is staring at the ground.

“It’s new. I’ve only heard discussions about it.” Berk is speaking slowly, like he doesn’t want to have to say the words. “Dr. Loudin thought he had come up with a way to create a virtual reality that involved all the senses. He was trying to develop scenarios, places, people with histories and personalities, all within a computer program.”

“A computer program?”

“Dr. Loudin spends a lot of time in his laboratory.” Berk shakes his head. “A lot of time. He doesn’t really say much about what he is doing. I’ve just heard bits of conversation from some of the younger Scientists like me. He doesn’t allow anyone in to see what he is doing. But we hear hints every now and then, when he gets stuck on something and needs to ask advice from one of the other Scientists. When I was working with the cube, I heard Dr. Williams mention that Loudin was close to completing his project.”

“But it can’t be this.” I can barely speak. “You have to be mistaken. You said yourself you only heard hints of it. You’ve never seen it, right? Never been in his laboratory?”

“No, but Dr. Williams confirmed what I’ve heard—that Dr. Loudin is working on a complex simulation, one that would
engage the whole mind. It would transport the person so she wouldn’t even know she was in a simulation.”

“No.” Progress couldn’t be just a computer program. I would know. I would be able to tell.

“I’m so sorry, Thalli.” Berk finally looks at me. I look away. The pain in his eyes is too much. I cannot believe what he is saying. I won’t believe it.

“Isn’t it possible that Dr. Loudin knows about the community aboveground and just doesn’t want to tell you? Maybe he is making you think he is creating this so when people like me come back from it, you’ll just
think
it isn’t real.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Why would he create a virtual reality?” I argue. “What is the point of going to all that work?”

“I don’t know.”

“Isn’t it possible that the air above isn’t toxic?” I twist my hands in my lap. “Isn’t there a chance that people could survive aboveground?”

Berk closes his eyes. “That’s what the Scientists are discussing now.”

“So it is possible?”

“We don’t know, Thalli.” Berk’s voice is loud. I know he isn’t upset with me, but he is upset. “That’s why they are testing. To see if the air is less toxic. But no one even knows that yet. And even if it is less toxic, people can’t live there right now. We are just hoping we can use more of the atmosphere from there quicker.”

“Why?”

“We are running out of some of the necessary ingredients to allow for continued growth here. If something isn’t done soon, we will have to eliminate people.”

“Eliminate?”

“There isn’t enough oxygen to sustain all of us.” Berk frowns. “Not unless the Scientists can uncover a new formula using what we already have.”

“So why would Dr. Loudin be working on this mind experimentation when that is going on?”

“He started it years ago. It was originally intended as a learning module. Rather than reading about history, you experience it. Scientific testing could be completed without using up resources here. It is brilliant.”

“But Progress doesn’t do any of that. In fact, they live without adhering to many of the rules here. They don’t even always agree with the Scientists.”

“That is strange.”

“Maybe it’s real, Berk.” Hope begins to surface. “Why would Dr. Loudin go to all the trouble to create a place like that, when it has no value? Why, especially if he is just going to annihilate me, would he waste his time on it?”

“I don’t know. He has to test on someone.”

“But if you are right, those tests would be academic.” I am growing more confident.

Berk stands. “Then let’s conduct an experiment on our own.”

“What kind of experiment?”

“Play along with the Assistants, the Scientists, everyone. Try to return to Progress.”

“All right.”

“When you’re there, take something with you.” Berk is speaking quietly. “Something small. Put it in your pocket.”

“But I always change clothes before returning—so no one sees the dirt.”

Berk looks at me. I know what he is thinking. But I refuse to believe Progress isn’t real. I will prove it to him.

“Keep it in your hand, then. Or on you. Maybe you can take something that will stick to your skin.”

“All right.”

“But be subtle about it,” Berk says. “If they are watching and know what you are doing, this won’t work.”

I nod.

“If it is there when you are back in your room, then we’ll know it’s real.”

The wall screen flickers to life and Berk rushes me out the door. He points to my medical chamber and disappears down the hallway. I lie down and close my eyes. But I cannot sleep. I keep replaying our conversation, hoping that Berk is wrong. That Progress is real. That I am being prepared for a long life aboveground.

Because the alternative is too horrible to even consider.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Y
ou haven’t eaten.” The Assistant is back in my room. I can’t tell her that I don’t want to eat because my world has just been turned upside down. “You must finish this to be released.”

I sit up. I will eat.

I swallow the bread and fruit, barely tasting it. I keep thinking about Progress. And Berk and Stone. I am so confused. It is a strange feeling. But I am also feeling something else. Something new. I can’t define it. Knowing I am the only one who can uncover whether or not Progress is real is frightening and exciting at the same time. I will do this. I will bring
something back, and I will prove that Progress is not a cerebral simulation concocted by Dr. Loudin. And then . . . what?

Will I finish my testing, as Dr. Loudin said, and live above? Leave Berk?

But what if Berk is right, that Progress isn’t real? That I am going to be annihilated?

I close my eyes and lean back on my pillow. Life was much easier when my biggest difficulty was trying to complete a lesson on my learning pad.

“Time to go.” The Assistant comes. Not the one who has been in my medical chamber, but the one who comes to take me to the isolation chamber. I try not to smile. I am going to Progress.

Same hallway, same door, same pink room, same white chair. And then . . .

“Stone?” I can’t believe he has come down here. “I thought you never came below.”

Stone reaches me in three huge steps, kneels by my chair, and cups my face with his hands. “I couldn’t wait to see you. I was so afraid you had changed your mind and weren’t coming back.”

I want to tell him about my conversations with John and Berk. But I can’t. I don’t want Stone to know about Berk. Not yet. And if there is the possibility that he isn’t real, that he is just a technical construct, then everything I tell him goes straight to Dr. Loudin. I don’t want to take that chance.

“Thalli?”

I shake myself from my thoughts. “I’m sorry. It is good to see you.”

Stone stands. “Something has changed.”

“No.” My heart beats faster. I must be careful not to be so obvious. “I have just been a little sick.”

Stone kneels again, his eyes searching mine. “Are you all right?”

I place my hand on his face. I feel the stubble on his cheek, see imperfections on his nose. He has to be real. “I am fine now. Don’t you ever get sick up there?”

“Of course. But I didn’t think that was allowed down here.”

I think of Rhen. “It isn’t, normally. Not in the pods. And I wasn’t ill, just feeling a little strange.”

“Too much popcorn?” Stone laughs and I know the subject has been successfully navigated.

“Perhaps.” I stand and Stone walks behind me, out the door and into the hall. “I don’t feel much like sliding today. Could we just go out the way we come in?”

Stone’s face registers something like shock. “But you love sliding.”

“I know, but I just don’t feel like it right now.”

“Oh, all right.” Stone steps in front of me. “It’s this way.”

We go down two levels and walk through the washing room, where my clothes for the return are laid out.

“Who does this?” I point to the clothes.

“What?” Stone is opening the door that leads outside.

“Who puts clothes out for me?”

“My mother.”

“Oh,” I say. “Why?”

“That is her job.” Stone smiles. “One of them, anyway.”

“And what are her other jobs?” I want to know more about life here, life with mothers and fathers and children.

“Why don’t I take you to see her and you can find out for yourself?”

We walk into the town, past Stone’s pod to a large building.
It has many rooms. April is in one of the last rooms. She is sitting at a machine. It looks somewhat familiar.

“This is the textile department.” Stone smiles and April looks up from the machine.

I am amazed again at how similar April and Stone look. The same dark hair and dark eyes. Their olive skin isn’t identical, but it is obvious they are related. The idea of it still seems so primitive. Strange.

“You make clothes.” I realize the machine is an older version of what we have back in the pods. Bhor is responsible for making our uniforms. But those are white, plain. April is making colorful clothes. She is combining different fabrics. I look around the room and see her creations hanging on racks. What would Bhor think of this? Would he enjoy working with all of these colors? Would his brown eyes light up at all of this fabric? Longing for my friends at Pod C clogs my throat.

“What is this?” I need to think about something else. I touch what looks like a long shirt that gets fuller at the bottom. The top part is made of a bright-green fabric. It reminds me of Berk’s eyes. The bottom has several fabrics, with many different colors in each. It is lovely.

“This is a dress,” April says. “Would you like to try it on?”

I look at Stone.

“Go ahead.” He takes the dress down and walks me to a small room where I can change.

I slip the dress over my head. It doesn’t feel like the material we have below. It is coarser. And when it is finally on, it comes only to my knees. I have never walked out in public without wearing pants. I am a little embarrassed to be doing so now.

“Is everything all right?” April calls out.

“Yes.” I am still frozen in place.