Mind Games (7 page)

12

The tables in the hall are mostly full when I arrive. I scan along the room for table six, and anxiously check the faces when I find it:
relief
. No Jezzamine, no Melrose. No Gecko, either, which gives a weird mix of disappointment and uncertainty at why I feel that way. There is a girl I recognise from my room: was her name Anne? The one who pushed her bed as far away as possible from mine.

Bet they’ll be pleased when I join them. I stand straight, smile, and head for the last empty seat at the table. ‘Hi, everyone!’ I say, and sit down.

Eyes swivel in my direction. It is a mixed group of boys and girls, two from each school, going by what they are wearing; in their midst is a boy I vaguely recognise but have never spoken to from mine. Judging by the looks of dismay, they know who I am. The taint of crazy is upon them.

Anne manages to curve her lips in something resembling a smile. ‘Hello, Luna,’ she says, and gets everyone to introduce themselves. The unknown boy from my school is Ravi; I’m so uncomfortable that most of the other names slip past me without registering.

Dinner is brought in. Conversations start up and lag now and then. There are curious questions about what we’re doing together, and why. How they picked the groups, with a few glances at me. I look around at the other groups. Unlike the night of the formal dinner when we were all clustered together, tonight the tables are spread far around the edges of the hall, not close enough to easily overhear each other. I spot Hex at a table on the other side, Gecko on another, then look around again.

‘There is a Hacker at every table. Except ours,’ I say, voluntarily speaking without being spoken to for the first time. The others look around the hall.

‘I wonder if group make-up has anything to do with IQ test ranking,’ Ravi says. ‘What ranking was everyone in?’

They start calling them out until I’m the only one who hasn’t. ‘I was in the top group,’ I admit. There are a few looks of surprise; others’ reactions, like Anne’s, suggest they already knew. So it turns out Ravi was right: now that the bottom two groups have left, our group of eight has one person from each of the remaining ranked groups.

So that is why our group is the only one without a Hacker: like Gecko said, I really was the only one in the top group who wasn’t one of them.

Pudding is served, and I can’t get the instruction in my folder out of my mind: to not tell anyone what I perceive with any of my senses. Does everyone have instructions in their folder? If they do, are they the same, or different? Unease swirls in my stomach. Why can’t I say what I can see, feel, hear, smell or taste? Lucky nobody asks me what I thought of dinner.

Then a test official comes in with a pile of folders in his arms, hands one to each group, and leaves.

Ravi holds up our folder. ‘Shall I?’ he says. He draws out a sheet of paper, clears his throat, and reads. ‘Your task is to devise a test for one of the cognitive biases that prevent rationality. Begin this evening with choosing a bias that you, as a group, share and must guard against, and discuss the dangers it presents. Tomorrow you will continue with formulating a test for the bias.’

He puts it down and we exchange glances.

Anne takes the sheet. ‘A bias that we share? What if we don’t share the same biases?’ Just what I’d been thinking. ‘How about we all say what we think is our worst bias? You go first, Luna.’ She looks at me, an eyebrow raised.

I might have been stumped, but my chat with Rafferty earlier brings it to mind. ‘Negativity bias – paying more attention to bad news.’

Others say theirs. We have a few with projection bias: assuming others think as we do; a few confirmation bias: referencing only perspectives that agree with our own views; some in-group bias: over-valuing opinions of those we know over those we don’t.

‘How are we going to pick one over the others?’ Ravi asks.

‘Let’s list them all,’ suggests a girl with a notebook. ‘And then everyone give their top three, and whichever carries the most votes we pick?’ They start going through them while she writes them down. There are fifteen officially recognised biases; even in my class of Refusers they’d been hammered in enough to know what they are. They can all be bars to rational thought and decisions.

Everyone is looking at the list, fiddling with which ones they think they will admit they suffer from to see if there is a common element between us all. My eyes wander around the room, at the bent heads and heated discussions going on around us.

‘Maybe it’d be more
rational
to pick one that is easier to test for than the others,’ I say. ‘Since it is a test we’re supposed to—’

The lights go out, and I don’t finish my sentence. They don’t flicker or stage down – the room goes from brightly lit to pitch dark in an instant.

‘Who didn’t pay the electrics?’ someone calls out from another table. A few boys start making ghost noises, and there is nervous laughter.

‘Has anyone got a torch?’ another voice says. No one answers.

The switches are by the doors we came in through. ‘I’ll try the switches,’ I say, get up and with hands in front of me, reach out blindly until I hit the wall, then follow it around to the doors.

It is so dark I keep opening my eyes wider and wider as if that’ll help, but can see
nothing
. I reach the door, and flick the switches up and down. ‘The switches aren’t working,’ I call out. I grasp the door handle, thinking I’ll see if the power is cut outside the hall as well, but it doesn’t turn. A sense of disquiet strengthens inside. The doors are locked? We’re locked in here, in the dark?

‘Luna?’ a voice says softly, close by. Gecko’s voice.

‘Yeah?’

‘I thought that was you.’

‘We’re locked in,’ I say, making my voice low. Shouting that one out might cause panic.

‘What?’ I hear a rattling noise – his hands trying the doors? ‘That’s weird. I don’t like this.’

Across the room a voice calls out, ‘We had candles at dinner the other night. I’ll see if they’re in the serving area.’ There are footsteps, a thud, and muffled curses. More footsteps.

‘I wonder if the doors upstairs to the balcony are open?’ I say.

‘Good thought.’ Gecko takes my hand and we feel our way along the wall until we find the stairs. I grip the handrail and start up them just as some candles are lit below; there are a few bobbing lights, then the light level goes up as some candelabras on the walls are lit, and tea lights passed around.

Gecko tries the first set of doors at the top: locked. We exchange a glance.

‘Try the others?’ I say, and walk along to the next set of doors. ‘Locked,’ I call out, and head for the doors at the end. I glance back; Gecko is leaning over the waist-high parapet, looking down at the ground floor of the hall. Has he given up, deciding that if someone has decided to lock us in they’ll all be locked? I’m too stubborn not to try each of them. I reach for the last door handle.

‘Locked,’ I say, just as the night is split by an ear-piercing scream.

13

‘Get down!’ Gecko says, and we both duck below the parapet. There is more screaming, shouting, running footsteps. Crashes and cries.

‘What the hell is going on?’ I say.

‘There are two men below, shooting into the crowd, and – and – people. Bleeding, on the floor, not moving.’

I shrink down even more, horrified, shocked, freaked out, and…
listening
. There’s mass hysteria – that I can hear. But no gunshots.

‘Are they shooting at people? Right now?’

But he is peeking over the top of the parapet, and doesn’t answer. ‘Stay here, keep out of sight. I’m going down the stairs; they shouldn’t see me if I go down low, under the height of the handrail. We have to get everyone to put out the candles, then we can tackle them in the dark.’ He slips away, down the stairs.

Once he is gone I cautiously peer over the parapet.

People are running, screaming. Some are sprawled awkwardly on the ground. The light is dim, true, but there isn’t any blood I can see. No gunmen, either. No sound of gunshots. I shake my head, stand up and look properly. It’s chaos and hysteria, but I can’t see a cause for any of it.

Then it hits me, and I sag back down on the floor.

Don’t say anything you perceive with your senses
– my instruction. I’m the only one here without an Implant. This is all fake, is that it? Like the wall Gecko could see and I couldn’t. And I’m not supposed to tell anyone?

Thinking you’ve been shot might not make you bleed, but it’s a bloody rotten thing to do to somebody, just the same. I’m gripped with fury. If I can’t tell them it isn’t real, I’ll show them.

I head down the stairs.

Jezzamine stands at the bottom of the stairs; she turns when she hears my footsteps.

‘It’s finally happened,’ she says. ‘Your crazy has rubbed off on me.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve gone mad, haven’t I?’ She stares back at me, eyes round and uncertain, and very un-Jezzamine-like. Is she in some kind of shock?

‘It’s OK, Jezzamine; this isn’t real. It’ll be over soon and everybody will be fine,’ I say, pausing to reassure even though it is
her
, but trying to choose my words so I’m not breaching my instructions.

‘Of course it isn’t real.’

‘You can tell?’

Her face is puzzled. ‘I can see Implant images – obviously superimposed, not real. But everyone else thinks they’re real. I thought I was going nuts, but you can tell they’re fake, too?’

‘Jezzamine, I haven’t got an Implant.’

Realisation strikes her eyes. ‘So they really are just Implant images, like how I see them. But why does everyone else seem to see things different from me?’ She is horrified; she’s not the sort to like
different
anything.

‘Look,’ I say, and I point to the shadows along the wall. There is a boy there, not hiding or trying to get away. Instead he stands there, puzzled shock on his face. We walk across.

‘You just see what is happening as Implant images, right?’ Jezzamine says to him. He nods. Relief floods her face; she’s not the only one.

‘We have to put a stop to this,’ the boy says.

I nod. ‘Right. I’m going to knock the guns out of the fake gunmen’s hands, but I can’t see where they are. Give me directions?’

‘We’ll do it together,’ he says. ‘Come on.’

The candles have started going out one by one, darkness beginning to return. Gecko’s picking the wrong moment: we need everyone to see what we do.

We walk hurriedly across the room. There are students huddled behind upturned tables, others lying on the floor, eyes closed.

‘They think they’re dead?’ I say.

‘They’ve got fake blood all over them,’ the boy says. ‘Looks fake to me, anyhow.’

‘Where are the gunmen?’

‘There are two of them, in the centre. I’ll guide you,’ he says.

We start to walk forward, but then there is an anguished cry: Gecko? And then I’m knocked off my feet, and pulled away.

‘Luna, Luna,’ he says, running his hands over me.

‘Stop it!’ I snap. ‘This isn’t real. I’m not shot. Stop it!’ I slap him across the face.

‘Ouch!’

By telling Jezzamine and that boy I couldn’t see what they could I’ve
so
broken the tell-no-one-what-you-can-perceive rule now, it seems pointless to hold back any longer. ‘Listen to me, Gecko. It’s like the wall you could see, but I couldn’t.’

‘What? But you’re bleeding, covered in blood—’

‘Implant images: there is no blood.’

Understanding – and relief – start to cross his face. ‘But why—’

‘Listen up, everybody, and listen good!’ It’s Jezzamine? ‘This is all total bullshit. Stop screaming, stop bleeding, stop whatever you’re doing. This is like a virtual game. It isn’t real, it isn’t happening. You’re fine.’ She shakes someone who is lying still on the floor, a girl from her group of friends who always does exactly what she says when she says it. The girl sits up, a dazed look on her face, and looks around her.

‘See?’ Jezzamine says. ‘It’s not real. Stop being a bunch of follow-the-crowd cognitively-biased sissies. You’re all right.
Be rational.
’

Everyone looks at each other, then back to Jezzamine. By sheer force of her dominant will – and the threat of being labelled irrational, and all that goes with that – they are overcoming what they can see and hear. One by one the crying, the hiding and the dead stand up, and face her.

The lights come back on; the doors click unlocked.

‘The gunmen have vanished,’ Gecko says.

There are no gunshot wounds, but there are a few injuries. A sprained ankle; cuts and bruises from all the hysteria, but nothing serious. There could have been, though, couldn’t there? Why’d they do something so cruel, so crazy?

Everyone is looking at Jezzamine, me, and the other boy who helped – Danny, he introduces himself as – in some kind of awe that we were the only ones rational enough to see through the Implant simulation. But it wasn’t superior brainpower, was it? Just me not having an Implant, and them, for whatever reason, being able to see Implant images for what they were when the others couldn’t.

What was the whole point of it? I can’t grasp why they’d do something that awful.

But no matter the reason, when I told Jezzamine and Gecko what I could see, I broke the only rule they gave me. Consequence? I’ve failed the RQ test. Dysrationalia, here I come.

Gecko sticks close to my side, so close that when I turn I walk straight into him.

‘What’s with the puppy dog impression?’

He looks abashed. ‘Sorry. It’s just…’

‘What?’

‘I know it wasn’t real. But I saw it. I saw you walk up to that guy – he shot you point blank in front of me. I saw it all, and I can’t shake it off.’ He slips his arms around me in a tight hug, then abruptly leaves to help lift tables back to their places.

Well.

‘Looks like you’ve made a conquest.’ It’s Jezzamine, and she’s not even sneering.

‘Still talking to me?’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t make a habit of it.’ She looks uncomfortable. ‘Thanks for before. I owe you one, and I don’t like it. So I’m paying you back now.’

‘With what?’

‘Melrose didn’t tell me about your nutzoid grandmother, all right? It was my brother. He goes to school with your brother.’

I stare at her, shocked.
Jason
is the one who told?

‘Are we even?’ she says.

‘Sure. Whatever.’

And she turns, walks off. People have started trickling out, back to their rooms; I scan faces, but can’t see Melrose. I sigh. Something else I’ve got wrong. Was that my negativity bias again – expecting the worst of people? I deserve to fail.