Noology (10 page)

“Let me think about it,” I finally reply.

Rian struggles not to appear crestfallen,
but I can tell he really wants me to accept this honorable offer. “Sure, sure.
Take your time.”

“I think it’s time for me to get some
shuteye. I’ve had a long and physically exhausting day,” I emphasize, stepping
from behind the kitchen island. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Avey. Sleep tight.” Rian
reels me in for a suffocating embrace and a messy kiss. “See you in the
morning.”

I grip the decorative handle of my modest
brass candlestick and lurch up the stairs. As I push open the door to my
bedroom, Tate isn’t inside and I swiftly change into a plush flannel nightgown.
I wonder where he could be at this hour. Tucking myself into the cozy bottom
bed, I snugly curl into a ball under the simple bedspread. One final
jaw-wrenching yawn splits my mouth before I gently blow the candle out and
instantly succumb to the power of my dreams.
  

           
I
ease back into consciousness as a persistent tickling sensation spreads across
my face and neck. Before opening my eyes, I take a moment to try and determine
what could possibly be caressing me ever so gently with spindly fingertips that
glide along my gullet and trace my jaw line. The pressure is too flimsy to be
Tate (he doesn’t possess that much graceful precision), and I didn’t hear
anyone enter the room. Suddenly, I freeze realizing who the culprit must be,
and my heart gives a lurch of fear. It takes all of my energy not to bolt as a
jolt of electricity courses through my veins.

“Tate,” I whimper meekly. “Tate…” Panic
blooms in my chest, and I feel my lungs constrict. I can hear him lazily turn
over in bed, but he doesn’t budge from his resting place.

“Tate!” I grunt, careful to remain
completely still.

“What?” he groggily replies, eventually
hopping down from his nest. He rubs his eyes with balled up fists, and erupts with
a gaping yawn. “What do you…. Oh my gosh! Okay! Just don’t move, Avelyn.”

He darts out of the room, and I hear him
bounding down the stairs two at a time. Returning to the room, he dashes across
the floor before caution immobilizes him. Slowly, deliberately, he brings a
supple leather shoe closer to my cheek until at the last moment, he whacks me
square in the face. I sputter in disorientation as he clambers across the
shoddy carpet, pounding the floor in intervals. Finally, he ceases battering
the floor, and looks up to measure my reaction to the events that have
transpired.

I return his loaded gaze, briefly glance
at the flattened, hairy tarantula lying in a heap on the rug, and am
instantaneously sick. My body writhes and contorts as my stomach expels all of
its contents. Tate immediately exits the bedroom, sending my poor mother in his
stead to monitor me.
 

“I hear you got all flustered by a
teensy, tiny, little spider this morning,” Rian taunts. I just stumbled my way
into the crammed kitchen, and I grip the counter fiercely to avoid toppling
over. At this reminder of my ordeal, my reflexes erupt and I gag violently.

“Okay, okay!” Rian hysterically waves his
hands in a pacifying gesture. “Too soon. I get it.”

After a moment of mental gymnastics, I
mollify my system and am able to sit still in one of the rotting stools behind
the kitchen island. Tate slides in next to me without making a noise, not even
scraping the scoured tile with the brittle chair legs.

“Thanks,” I whisper into my unkempt hair
as it conceals my face. “I know it’s just a spider, but they’re poisonous. Who
knows what could have happened if you hadn’t been there.” A shiver ripples
through my limp body, raising the blonde down along my arms.

“It’s no big deal. You are just being
melodramatic,” he scoffs. Yet he still reaches out to squeeze my hand firmly in
support. “I have an idea to get your mind off of it. Meet me back here in a
half hour.” Tate abruptly jogs off down the hallway and out the front door.

Strange, I think to myself. Rian deposits
a mouth-watering plate of the remaining rich blueberries accompanied by a stiff
disc of sun-baked grains in front of me. Before I have a chance to assert that
I am not hungry, my plan is foiled by growls echoing from my stomach. I
delicately consume the eye-catching display, leaching the juice from one plump
berry at a time. Studying the final orb between my fingers, I shove it in to my
eager mouth. I roll the globe across my tongue, enjoying the sensation as it carves
smooth tracks in its wake until I firmly pierce its skin and drain the tart
contents.

I sigh in sheer fulfillment, having
treated my palate to this culinary treat. Pushing myself off of the wobbling
stool, I maneuver around the granite block to suffocate Rian in a constricting
embrace and to attack him with a shower of brief kisses.

“Get off me,” he barks, straining to
break out of the bonds. I finally release him, and we depart, both chuckling
and brimming with sibling love.

I scamper upstairs and rapidly change
into fresh clothes: fluid denim jeans, a flamboyant yellow crewneck, and an
alfalfa-colored pea coat. When I feel refreshed both mentally and physically, I
return to the kitchen to find Tate already perched at the counter.

“You look ravishing,” he professes,
twirling me in a tight pirouette. “Ready for an adventure, my rose bush?”

“Rose bush…?” I inquire, perplexed by his
characterization of me.

“Yeah, not one of my best quips. Oh well,
can’t be on my game all the time,” he concedes, shrugging playfully.

“Where are we going?” I whine.

“You’ll see,” he replies, refusing to
submit to my questioning.

We ramble through the house and glide
through the hefty front door. Once outside, we continue along the street, past
all of the neighboring houses and out towards the expansive semi-cultivated
farmlands.
 
 

I squint against the blazing shine as the
sun droops on the horizon like a tantalizing low-hanging fruit. Tate still
refuses to reveal where we are headed, and as feet become miles I grow restless
and impatient. We come upon a rusty red barn squatting in fields of tilled
wheat. Instead of continuing along the marked pathway, Tate leads me towards
the slumping structure despite my protests and objections.

“Hello,” he calls, leaning through the
cracked door. “Is anyone in here?”

A gruff response drifts up from behind
the vat of toxic sludge along the far wall. We trace the sound to its owner,
finding a middle-aged man in grimy overalls with honey-colored irises. His eyes
are branded with the number “15”.

Certet prizes intellectual prowess that
is demonstrated through superior performance in educational evaluations
revolving around medical knowledge. The attainment of success and prosperity
through the pursuit of doctoral degrees and titles fueled an evolution favoring
individuals that excelled in academia. In a city reliant on social conditioning
to reproduce a universal system of values that supplements evolutionary
developments, how are rebellions suppressed? What happens to deviants that
challenge the established ways?

The governing body responded to this
internal threat by harnessing the medical brilliance of its citizens and
applying this technical understanding to the problem of handling individuals
that refused to conform. Through a series of simple and safe surgical
procedures, specialists can create lesions on the surface of the brain that
arrest mental development. In the case of troublesome children that resist
traditional values, neurologists will halt further brain development, thus
suspending the individual in a mental stage immediately before dangerous ideas
are able to flourish and poison society. Not all patients are children.
Sometimes adolescents or adults that fail in attempts to commit suicide or show
signs of dissention are also frozen in their current developmental state in an
effort to rehabilitate disturbed souls.

Following the procedure, individuals are
relocated to the farmlands on the periphery of the city and relegated to a life
of servitude as food producers. Each outpatient has his or her iris tattooed
with the age at which brain development was terminated. This branding allows civilians
to identify the mental capacity of the individual they are speaking with.
Additionally, much like cattle, this marker denotes that a person is a food
producer, and therefore can no longer accept the responsibilities or titles
reserved for average citizens.
 

“Excuse me, sir,” Tate begins. “My name
is Tate, and this is my friend Avelyn. We are students at the university, but
are visiting home for break this week.”

“What does that have to do with me?” the
farmer sharply replies.

“Avelyn has had a rough morning, and I
wanted to cheer her up a bit. I was wondering if you had any sairns we could
take a look at. She’s a bit of an aficionado when it comes to sairns; I have to
drag her out of the campus barn!” He smiles warmly.

“I’ve got a few nags, to help harvest the
wheat and such. But I don’t want any strangers poking around in my barn.”

“It would mean the world to us. Honestly.
And we promise we won’t harm a fly while we’re here,” Tate pleads.

The farmer sighs reluctantly. “All right,
but make it snappy. They’re working sairns.”

We follow our unenthusiastic host down
the aisle, and wafts of syrupy aromas flood my nostrils. The familiar scent
soothes my body and nourishes my soul. We approach the box stall containing two
massive creatures, bulging with muscles resulting from months of hard labor.
There is no shortage of radioactive matter for the sairns to consume in this
reconstructed society, thus they are rarely emaciated or scrawny.

I gradually raise my right hand, edging
it closer to the closest sairn. She tenses, leaving her meal unfinished, and hesitantly
unfurls her coiled nose. As she sniffs my extended palm, I gently blow into her
dilated snout as a friendly greeting. Finally, after thoroughly examining my
hand, she wraps this soft tentacle around my arm and constricts like an
anaconda subduing its prey. I contract my own muscles in response, and bite my
lip to prevent an agonized cry from escaping my lips.

“Are you okay?” Tate blurts, his eyes
wide in alarm. I nod resolutely, and stare into the eyes of the sairn. After
another long moment, she releases and I have won the battle of wills. I stroke
her gingerly across her neck and shoulders, and she resumes eating her meal.

“Do you have a damp cloth?” I ask the
farmer. He wipes an astonished look off his face before running to fetch a rag.
Upon his return, I carefully mop the sticky residue from the sairn’s back. She
whinnies in appreciation, and playfully butts my rear with her forehead. I rest
my head on her temple and all is quiet for a moment. The world fades into
oblivion, and I am absorbed in the infinite pools of the sairn’s eyes. Eventually,
I whisper my goodbyes into her relaxed muzzle and turn to leave. She unleashes
one last rumbling neigh as I retrace my steps to the flaking barn door.

“Thank you, sir. I really appreciate your
cooperation. It means a lot to me,” I gush.

“Call me Benny. I wasn’t sure about you
two, but I rarely see anyone with a natural connection to sairns like you,
missy. It was a pleasure to witness.”

“Thanks again Benny.” I shake his hands
tightly between my own. After one final wave goodbye, I exit the barn and
saunter down the path once again.
 
 

“Thanks Tate. I needed that,” I proclaim,
communicating my gratitude through a sincere smile that overflowed into my
shining eyes.

“I am glad you enjoyed that pit stop, but
we aren’t done yet.” Before I have a chance to complain, he leaps over the whitewashed
fence beside us, and bounds across the field. It is all I can do to keep up as
he gallops through the pasture.

Despite the crisp autumn breeze, I am
beginning to roast as we trudge through tall weedy grasses under the late
morning sun. An endless expanse of regal pines lines the horizon, with no
remnants of humanity to interrupt the procession. Where could we possibly be
headed? Every second that passes, I expect Tate to pause and announce that he
has been stringing me along and we are actually going to turn back towards the
house. Instead we persist through the dense foliage as it snags my clothing and
snares wisps of my blonde locks.

I have given up trying to reason with
Tate; he refuses to divulge even the slightest hint as to where we are going.
He marches in stubborn silence, his jaw set in a determined line. I resign
myself to the journey and hustle to remain in synchrony with his extended gait.

We cross the threshold of the forest and
penetrate the pungent thicket without hesitation. Our progress becomes impeded
as we wrestle with desiccated tree limbs and fallen timbers. After an eternity
of slogging through the hostile undergrowth, I hear a faint whooshing and a
gentle gurgling. We hack through a diseased fir, and I see a placid lake
feeding from a noble waterfall. Just to the right of us, a slithering brook
bubbles as it slices a channel through the sediment. I listen to the serene
twittering of ruby-breasted finches as they swoop through the clearing.