Nightmare Academy (38 page)

The perfect, heavenly Elisha leaned forward, her eyes intense. “It doesn't mean you can't believe something. No, it's even better than that: You can believe
anything,
anything you want, because if you believe it, that makes it true.”

Elijah could only rest his head on the pillow and close his eyes as his sister went on and on.

“. . . I love being able to create my own reality. I can be what I want, do what I want, believe what I want, and I don't have to worry about what God thinks . . .”

He was disappointed. After all he'd been through, he was actually hoping this was heaven. He was even hoping this was really his sister. Now his jumbled mind was beginning to put a few pieces together: If there was no reality, then he certainly couldn't count on there being a heaven; if nothing was really true, then even what this girl was saying wasn't true; if this girl really believed what she was saying, she wasn't his sister. All this left him with a discouraging conclusion: He was still in the middle of a waking nightmare and he was probably going crazy.

Tap,
tap, tatap, tap tap . . .

What was that sound? He cracked one eye open. The pretty girl was still talking, her eyes focused somewhere across the room and not on him. His eye was drawn to her right hand, rest ing on the arm of the chair. Her fingers were drumming out a little rhythm, over and over again.

Elisha watched the big screen on the wall, trying to look as amazed and distraught as before as she drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. God was answering her prayer: The other Elisha, while droning on and on about there being no truth, was drumming her fingers the very same way. The computer had picked it up as just a mannerism and sent it through to the phony image.

Mr. Bingham's eyes were glued to the big screen, and his voice squeaked a little with nervous anticipation. “Theoretically, his mind should be adequately erased by this point, ready to receivethe input from what he thinks is his sister. If this works, we will have broken the last barrier to global control.”

“Theoretically, his mind should be
adequately erased by this point,
ready to receive the input from what
he thinks is his sister. If this works, we
will have broken the last barrier
to global control.”

A man in the audience asked, “And what if it doesn't work?”

Mr. Bingham kept watching the screen as he answered. “That would be unthinkable. If it is the truth that sets people free, then we can't allow people to have it or even believe in it. They must follow, do, and believe what we say, or we cannot enslave them.”

“Unthinkable,” the man in the audience agreed.

Now everyone watched the screen with all the more interest and anxiety.

And Elisha kept tapping away, sending the same message.

“Truth is just what you make it, whatever you want it to be, and no matter what you choose, it isn't wrong if you sincerely feel it . . .”

Elijah closed his eyes and tried to block out the girl's endless ramblings. He was listening to those finger taps, the only thing that made sense.

It was code. Springfield code: OR60CLOCK . . . PROJECTOR60CLOCK . . . PROJE . . .

Then again, maybe it wasn't code. Maybe it was just silly rhythms that he was making into code in his poor, tired mind.

But the letters kept repeating, like an endless loop, the same number of seconds every time.

Same number of seconds. Same length of time. Repeating pattern. A rhythm, a beat, a pulse.

Whoa, hold on, hold on.

He knew this pulse, this beat. For the past eternity of chaos, he'd been living in it. It was everywhere. The
rushing, rushing, rushing
of the wind, the
throbbing, throbbing, throbbing
of the ground, the
swaying,
swaying, swaying
of the trees, the rhythm of the rooms, the halls, the colors. It all kept time to this beat, like a big clock ticking, like a machine running, around and around, over and over. He could feel it like the beating of his own heart, like it was a part of him.

“They're at the gate!” shouted Easley, switching one of the monitor screens to a shot of the big iron gate.

Everyone in the room gasped, leaned forward, watched in awe.

Almost every kid on the campus was there, an angry mob of nearly fifty, armed with axes, picks, rakes, shovels, banging, prying, bashing, digging away at the gate.

But the letters kept repeating,
like an endless loop, the same
number of seconds every time.

Bingham was impressed. “Nearly all of them, and so early in the morning!” He turned to the audience. “You see? After four years of research, we can now choose our raw materials, create the right circumstances, and in less than two weeks produce a dictator and his followers!”

The audience applauded. It was apparently a great moment.

Bingham mused to himself, “This 'Alexander' could have done very well as a global dictator.” He laughed. “And I think he knows it, too. Why else would he choose such a name?”

“How long do we keep them there?” asked a technician.

“Stand by for closing procedure,” Bingham answered. He turned to the thin guy in black. “Begin shutdown and evacua­tion.” The man hurried from the room. Red lights began to flash overhead. Bingham turned to the audience. “We are reaching the end of the experiment. Please prepare to evacuate at any moment.”

The audience began to stir around in the dark, shuffling papers, opening and closing briefcases, grabbing coats.

Elisha was watching her image. Her entire message wasn't getting through, only the little part about the projector, repeating over and over. The computer must have hit a glitch or something. Her plan wasn't working. “Mr. Bingham!”

He was quite occupied. Teachers and technicians were starting to scramble everywhere. Some of the equipment was closing down, the red and amber lights blinking out, the whirring of the processors going silent. At the far end of the room, a door slid open and the audience, faces still in the dark, began heading for it.

Her plan wasn't working.