S'wanee: A Paranoid Thriller (21 page)

“What was considered science fiction as recently as thirty years ago is now, increasingly, very much a reality.”

“Tracking and hijacking is the simple part, really. The ‘money shot,’ so to speak, is the actual programming: what you tell the brain to do. That’s the magic we’re creating, and once human trials are complete, we’ll selectively start to license out the patent.” He eyed the crowd. “And worth every penny…”

In the now-lit hall, Cody noticed a white coat with a “DARPA” name tag on the back row looking at him curiously. Cody smiled and nodded. The man looked familiar. Cody realized he had once mistaken him for a parent during orientation week. Evidently, he was a professor or visiting researcher from someplace Cody had never heard of.

“Why test it on dogs?” another white coat asked.

The DARPA not-a-parent white coat nodded back at Cody and started typing on his phone.

“A dog’s brain is remarkably similar to a man’s, which will come as no surprise to the ladies in the audience.” More laughter from the hall. “But seriously,” Ross continued, “thousands of years of canine domestication have synched the two, in temperament and emotional comprehension, which makes a dog a better testing subject for this particular technology than, say, a lab monkey. Although tapping into the more complex human brain requires a different frequency and, naturally, a much stronger signal.”

Cody studied another brain tissue labeled “Trixie.” It was a small brain. The name rang a bell from somewhere.

“Certainly, it hasn’t been easy,” Ross added. “Puck is the successful culmination of lots of trial and error, with more to come as we work out the inevitable kinks.”

Stage-side, Dean Apperson checked his own phone and read the screen.

“So when will human trials be complete?” a woman in the audience asked.

“We wrap up phase one on January fifteenth,” answered Ross, “at which point we will analyze the data and present it for peer review in due course.”

“Can’t you give us a midtrial update?” a white coat asked. “Since your license fees are so, shall we say, top of the market?”

Ross laughed and said, “I can probably give you a teaser.” Dean Apperson leaned in to his ear and whispered, and then Ross laughed again.

“Well,” he said, scanning the audience. “We seem to have an eager beaver in the house.

“Cody? What the hell are you doing here, Tiger?”

•   •   •

“Dude, you crack me up,” Ross said, his arm around Cody’s shoulder, leading him back upstairs at Spencer. “I swear, when we’re ready, I’ll bring you on as assistant for the final data report. Fact-checking, spell-checking, all that stuff, cool?”

Ross explained that university scientific research departments had long been the genesis for cutting-edge stuff that eventually filtered into everyday life. “Harvard made gazillions by developing the retrovirals that have saved millions worldwide,” he insisted. “The University of Wisconsin derived the first human stem cell line and funded their new stadium to boot.

“S’wanee actually discovered the active ingredient in most of today’s anxiety and sleeping meds,” Ross continued as they strolled toward the exit. “That earned gowns for five juniors here,” he added, looking around, “and paid for this whole damn building and then some.

“But it’s proprietary information.” Ross stopped at the glass door. “You know what that means, right?”

“Down low.” Cody smiled.

“It means
down low
, Tiger.” Ross nodded. “Seriously. Until we’re ready to publish. My gown kinda depends on it, you know?” It was more a plea than an order.

“No clue what you’re talking about.”

“Good answer, Tiger. Keep it that way.”

“But seriously, your radar tree thing?” Cody added. “It would never make me like broccoli.” Ross laughed and said, “I’ll bring you in when the time is right. Believe me, with a breakthrough this big, there are plenty of gowns to go around…”

Cody was late to work and told the Widow, truthfully, that he’d been with Ross and Dean Apperson, which befuddled her and inoculated him from scolds. He was too revved up to concentrate on his Western Civ essay due the next morning and looked around the lobby for the phantom camera, which could have been tucked into any corner or light fixture or one of the thousands of origami birds that flocked from the ceiling. Cody shot a smile and the finger into the air for good measure, just in case Ross was watching.

•   •   •

S’wanee threw a big bonfire party on the Quad to celebrate a rare football victory over MTSU. The Tiger Girls were too intoxicated for a coordinated stunt show, but they gamely cheered the crowd into a frenzy nonetheless. It was the biggest student crowd Ross had seen since the Signing Ceremony, because the school provided gourmet hot dogs and live music and, more important, premium kegs. S’wanee, Cody had concluded, had no qualms serving alcohol to minors, or maybe the laws were different here.

Even Beth showed up. She was on the far edge, trying to blend in but failing wonderfully. Bundled against the slight chill in a black sweater and leggings with white dabs of hat and fingerless gloves, she resembled a high-fashion cat burglar or a very sexy chimney sweep. She winked and smiled from across the Quad, but all this school spirit was too much for her. Rocking on her black boot heels, she seemed on duty, waiting to clock out and get back to whatever “mysteerious” life she led way out at Tuckaway Hall.

As he passed, Ross winked at Cody, too, and Cody nodded back, coconspirators in the scientific secret they alone shared. Ross smiled and kept going, trailed, as usual, by girls who pretended not to be trailing him.

“Dude, let’s hit the Lodge,” Banjo grumbled over the loud music, watching the girls migrate away. “It’s kicked here.”

Across the way, Vail begged off as Skit and Houston tried to drag her along for the night’s adventures. Vail had been increasingly detached and withdrawn, the fallout from her now-official-and-final break up with Bishop. She’d been glum for days.

“I’ll catch up with you guys there,” Cody said, feeling duty bound as section president to make sure she was holding up.

“What the fuck did you just say?” Banjo asked, and Elliott said, “Dude, what was that?”

Puzzled, Cody repeated himself.

“That’s not what you said, dude.” Banjo guffawed. “Are you wasted already?”

“Like tongues or something,” Elliott added, laughing.

Cody raised his voice over the music and his third beer. He didn’t feel slurry at all.

“Oonga boonga yourself, paleface,” Banjo said, as he and Elliott wandered toward Manigault Park with the others. “I want whatever
you’re
on.”

“I’m fine, Cody, really,” Vail insisted, as the Quad cleared out and workers extinguished the bonfire. “But thanks for asking. That’s sweet of you.” Moments later, she was sobbing and telling him all. She sat on a bench and choked out the whole time line, as she had surely done for countless others, for anyone who asked or cared. She was heartbroken.

“But I’m fine, Cody,” she repeated through tamed sniffles, wiping mascara from her lower lids. “It’s not the first time I’ve been dumped.” Then she laughed almost philosophically. “And, you know, it probably won’t be the last either.

“Don’t worry about me, mister,” Vail said with a hug and a smile. “You’re a good man. Now, go have fun. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Cody was later glad he had taken the time to talk and listen to Vail, because a few hours afterward, she jumped from the Observatory and landed on her neck.

T
he trees crackled orange and yellow and copper across the Cumberland Plateau, a glorious sea of fire from high atop Morgan’s Steep. The air snapped, and the skies turned crisper blue, and the hydrangeas stayed green but nonblooming. Shorts and flip-flops got packed away and then brought out again, and the weather banged about, resisting the new season.

S’wanee held a low-key, sparsely populated memorial service for Vail at All Saints, two days after drunken stragglers came upon her broken, twisted body on the dark Carnegie Hall sidewalk. Ross led the service, which wasn’t advertised by S’wanee e-mail. (“It’s not the kind of thing a school brags about,” Ross explained when Houston wondered why. “In any event, it was her parents’ request.”) There were hugs and tears among Rebel’s Rest, but the eulogies were brief and awkward, since the well of memories to draw from was only six weeks’ deep.

Vail’s suicide shocked Cody. She had seemed hurt and troubled, certainly, but also grounded and resilient. He’d learned in high school the telltale signs of teenage suicide—depression, paranoia, aberrant behavior, changes in sleeping/eating habits, feeling trapped—all so vague and commonplace among Cody’s peers that his whole generation could technically be at risk. Vail didn’t fit the profile. She’d just been temporarily bummed out on the cusp of bouncing back.

But now, three weeks later, Rebel’s Rest was back in high gear. Midterm exams were right around the corner, students were conjuring their Halloween costumes, and Cody had a sorta/maybe new girlfriend. With strange conditions.

“Meet me at the Steep,” Beth quietly ordered him at McClurg one surprising Indian-summer day. “After class. Today.”

She was twenty minutes late, and he thought he’d decoded her orders incorrectly. It was worth the wait.

“Give me a five-minute lead,” she said without looking at him, as she stretched in gym shorts and T-shirt at the foot of the memorial cross. “I’ll find you on the trail.” She grimaced at his oxford and khakis and bluchers. “You dressed all stupid.”

Deep down on the Perimeter Trail, Beth
psst
ed and signaled him off course, through a dense, unchartered thicket. Cody hustled to keep pace as she scaled boulders, leaped over creeks, and sandwiched through crevices. She knew her way.

“This is a weird place, Cody,” she said, winding toward a narrow, jumpable bend in a brook. “Don’t you find it weird?”

“S’wanee? I think it’s pretty awesome,” Cody said. “Where are you taking me?”

“I heard a girl from your section killed herself,” Beth said, ignoring his question. “Is that true, Cody? Is that the real deal?”

Cody instantly filtered the “down-low” versus “non-down-low” information in his brain and determined this was fair game. It was sometimes hard to keep the two categories straight.

“Yeah. Vail.”

“Huh. ‘Cause that was just a rumor, you know. The school kept it quiet.” Beth was hiking faster and not winded at all. She moved like a cat. “And didn’t someone else from your section disappear?” she asked.

Filter, filter. “Caleb transferred. To Georgetown.”

“Huh. And then whatever that thing was that canceled class?”

Filter overdrive. “Yeah,” Cody said. “That thing.”

“All the action seems to happen at Rebel’s Rest.” Beth pushed through a thick overgrowth that muffled water sounds just beyond. “It’s sorta the Domain’s Bermuda Triangle. You notice that?”

She stood at the edge of a blue, tranquil pool, surrounded by tall stone bluffs covered in moss. A waterfall poured over the top. It was a remote, private paradise. “Bridal Falls,” Beth said, kicking off her shoes and pulling her T-shirt over her head. Without flinching, she waded in naked and tattoo-free. “I discovered it my first week here.” Halfway in, she turned back. “Can you swim?”

“Sure,” Cody said, peeling off clothes.

“I thought this was only fair,” she said before she submerged. “After all, I’ve already seen
you
naked.”

Beth was hard to figure out. Playful and flirtatious as she splashed him, elusive when he asked her questions, and positively erotic when she showered directly under the falls.

“People talk,” she explained, when Cody finally asked why she was so sketchy with him. “That’s how I know all this stuff about that death trap you live in. A place this small and detached and dull, word gets around. I don’t want that.”

“And if you tell anyone I brought you here,” she added, “I’ll deny it and say you’re just a creeper. A stalker.”

Beth grabbed his face and kissed him deep. They kept each other afloat in the center of the pool, but when Cody’s hands found her breasts, she pushed him off forcefully.

“Dude, I’m not a slut,” she corrected him. “Not a Wellington Lodge Crow’s Nest
slut
.” Word did get around.

“I just wonder,” she said as they hiked back, Beth in her wet shirt and Cody squishing in his bluchers as he carried his good clothes, “what kind of fog you really live in. It’s interesting to me, that’s all.” It got dark much earlier now.

“I’ll go back first,” she ordered as they neared the Perimeter Trail proper. “Wait five minutes.”

“Come to Rebel’s Rest for dinner,” Cody said.

Beth laughed. “I don’t
want
to come to Rebel’s Rest for dinner.”

“So invite me to Tuckaway Hall,” he pressured, and she said, meaning it, “No, Cody. You can’t come there.”

“I do like you,” she said. “You’re sweet and probably clever. I’m just curious what goes on in your head.”

“Can I text you?” he asked, his last chance as she peered down the trail.

“No need,” she said. “You’re easy to track down.” And she was gone into the dusk.

•   •   •

Clouds brought back the cold, and it stuck this time.

The schizophrenic weather had taken its toll on the creatures of the Domain. Long gone were Cody’s window bees, whose fuzzy striped carcasses had littered his sill for days before being swept away by the breeze. Gone too were the fireflies that had bedazzled the campus that first week but had been missing since. Pearl said they’d be back in the spring.

Cody had a brief flashback by Burwell Fountain one morning as a worker scooped out dozens of floating goldfish into a garbage bag. Cody had offed his share as a child through negligence and dirty water. Goldfish were a delicate bunch.

More notable were the bluebirds and mockingbirds and squirrels that increasingly lay strewn about the sidewalks and lawns and that workers picked up with long, clawlike reachers. One day Cody counted eleven workers roaming and reaching at the same time.

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Ross agreed when Huger brought it up at dinner. “The school’s checking them for jet-stream trauma or avian virus or something. I’m sure it’s harmless.” Skit said, “It’s totally disgusting,” and Banjo said, “Sin, you didn’t bring over the hen flu, did you?” “You might like them, Banjo,” Sin shot back. “I hear they taste like fried chicken.”