The Cupel Recruits (6 page)

“This device is called a sensory awareness platform. It will measure the ability of your bodies to respond to a variety of stimuli. A test for each of you is necessary to ensure your bodies are operating properly and prepared for steps in the coming weeks. It is not a comfortable test. Nausea is fairly common. Should you feel ill, there is a bin behind this soundproof screen. Who would like to go first?” Saraceni saw an opportunity to give the recruits some control over their own destiny by picking the order, so he liked to provide freedoms whenever possible. David Running Wolf stood up immediately. ‘The bravest’ Saraceni thought to himself at the speed of David’s ascension.

Running Wolf proceeded through the test as Wood and Stone had the day before, but without the benefit of experience, and remained stoic throughout the process. He correctly identified each experience and, thus, passed the test. He became ill immediately following and dove behind the screen, emerging shaky and somewhat green. And so it proceeded through the remainder of the recruits. Near identical experiences, except George, who did not become ill, just slightly queasy, and Jane Gray Windsor, who did not pass the test.

“It’s not uncommon with more petite frames to require subtle recalibration,” Saraceni informed her when she failed. “Jane, please remain here and I will see you to our medical team for attention. The rest of you are free to return to your rooms. Your doors are no longer locked, so you have access to the common area for your team, but your quadrant is still closed from the rest of the facility, so please note the doors at each end of the master hallway are locked. I know this has been a long and difficult day. I encourage you all to get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”

The recruits, still tired and now queasy, returned to their rooms on shaky legs. Gabriel walked with his father and Enam down the hall toward their rooms.

“Dad, I have a lot I think we should all discuss, but I’m so exhausted. Can you wake me up as soon as you get up in the morning and we can all discuss before this “training” class starts again tomorrow?
" Gabriel asked with the heavy eyelids of a newborn child. Gabriel knew his father naturally awoke very early, so they should have some time to talk then.

“Yes, Gabriel, I think that’s a good idea. Normally, I don’t think we would sleep, but my body is tired as if I’ve been up for two days,” Alexander Aquila replied.

“Mine, too,” agreed Enam.

“The morning, then” Gabriel affirmed, giving his father a hug. He entered his room and collapsed on the bed fully dressed, asleep within one minute.

As Gabriel predicted, Alexander Aquila did rise early. Even though he’d been exhausted, his body still was not one to sleep late. He showered quickly, brushed his teeth and donned clothes from the assortment hanging neatly in the closet. The clothes had been there, perfectly his size, but slightly different from his own taste. An array of jeans, slacks, shirts and shoes with no bright colors, no tags, labels or designs, all comfortable, all functional, and a few sets of athletic gear. He didn’t really care about the lack of selection much, but just noticed in the inquisitive way that was his trademark.

After hanging his robe neatly back in the closet, closing the door and making the bed, Alexander turned his attention to the window. He examined the frame and the seals. There was no way to open the window and the construction appeared to enter directly into the wall for some depth. If the glass had been set into a window frame resting in the opening, it would have been fairly easy to chisel along the edge with a knife or some implement and remove the window. This, however, was not the case. He put the nearest dark mahogany chair in front of the door to his room and climbed up on the bed to check out the ventilation system. It was barely large enough for a cat, much less a person. ‘Not even one of the smaller females’ he thought, dismayed. There was no crawl space outside of the ventilation system either; the ceiling tiles were only a few inches below the subfloor of the floor above them. He knocked above his head on the subfloor of the room above him. It appeared to be something similar to concrete, maybe a bit thinner.

Removing the chair from against the door and replacing it at the small matching desk in the alcove area of his suite, which was identical to the suite of every other recruit, Mr. Aquila left his room and ventured out into the hallway. Assuming they had cameras in the common areas, he wanted to check things out without appearing to be looking for an escape route. He could hear mild stirrings in the quadrant of running showers, muffled voices and the whirr of a coffee machine down the hall with the occasional splunk of dropping water. A few others were starting to rise and prepare for their day. George emerged from his room across the hall from Mr. Aquila’s.

“Good morning,” George said, barely awake, moving on autopilot toward the cafeteria for some coffee. While each room had a refrigerator for drinks and snacks, they did not have their own microwaves or coffee pots. The recruits had to eat in the common area for their main meals. George turned the corner into the cafeteria, disappearing from Alexander’s sight and the hallway was once again empty. To Alexander’s left stood about four or five steel doors before the door leading to the training room. To his right was a long hallway. These doors were not all being used as living quarters. In fact, they seemed to be spaced to one vacant suite between each occupied suite.

Fortunately, Gabriel’s room lay at the very end of the hallway, just prior to the opposing door. Gabriel moved down the hallway, looking at the floor boards and ceiling structure subtly as he walked. There were no additional vents in the hallway and the general construction seemed to mirror what he had found in his room. At the end of the hallway, he stood by Gabriel’s door and cocked his head, for the benefit of any rolling cameras he was clearly listening to see if his son was awake yet. The interior was silent.

The door at the end of the hallway swung open and a man carrying a tray of baked goods entered. Alexander didn’t jump even an inch, though he was startled.

“Good morning,” said Stone to Mr. Aquila with a small nod. The door swung shut and Alexander heard a lock reengage when it did. His other question had been answered.

“Good morning,” Alexander replied politely as Stone quickly moved past him toward the cafeteria. Not knowing who this new person was or if he was sent to check on them, Mr. Aquila knocked loudly on Gabriel’s door. “Gabriel, time to get up,” Alexander said in a moderately loud voice. He had not intended to wake his son up this early, though it was not very early. He had wanted to allow him to sleep as long as possible, but…plans change. Gabriel’s sleepy face appeared at the door and pushed it wide for his father to enter.

“Gabriel, get ready and I’ll get Enam and be back in ten minutes.” Gabriel nodded wordlessly and returned to the depths of his room. Mr. Aquila gathered Enam from his room and returned in ten minutes as promised. The door shut behind them.

“We were just told by that new fellow that we have about twenty more minutes to eat breakfast. Most of our class is in the cafeteria already, so we had better speak quickly,” Enam informed Gabriel as he sat in the chair at the desk while Alexander and Gabriel sat on the sleek bed, facing him.

“I checked this place out. Looks pretty tight structurally. I think we could get out one of the end doors pretty easily if we wanted, but no telling what’s on the other side. We’ve only seen two people, and there are ten of us.” Mr. Aquila summarized.

“So we’re looking for a way out? “ Gabriel asked, “Does that mean we don’t believe what they’re saying about dying?”

“It just means we’re assessing all our options,” Mr. Aquila replied, patting Gabriel on the shoulder like when he was thirteen.

“Well, do you actually think we’d die if we left? Sounds pretty implausible.” Gabriel looked between his father and Enam expectantly.

“Well, we have no evidence that this story of some medical miracle is true,” Mr. Aquila began, but was cut off by his dark friend.

“I’m not sure, Alexander, we should at least consider it a possibility,” Enam stated. Considering the alternative was death, Gabriel thought considering it a possibility was at least a given.

“Well, of course, we need to gather information. I’m just saying I haven’t seen one single thing to make me think that’s true. I mean, we don’t have memories, we don’t really know what happened with the bus. Hell, maybe it turned into a plane and flew us away for all we know. We may not have been harmed at all,” Gabriel said.

“Maybe not,” said Enam, raising the side of his shirt to reveal obliques in good shape for a man of his age, “but I used to have a long scar here from the war and it’s gone. The skin seems so smooth, like maybe they used a high-yield human growth hormone for burn victims or something. I’m just saying something must’ve happened to us, even if we don’t know yet exactly what it was.” Gabriel and Alexander Aquila looked at each other seriously, carefully digesting this new piece of information.

“
Well, they’re obviously part of a pretty upscale think-tank. I’ve never seen anything like that sensory acclimation test, and Enam and I have both worked on some pretty high-level projects,” Alexander added.

“We’d better get with the others. We’ll talk more later. On breaks, let’s split up and each talk to three of the others in detail and see how much information we can gather,” Enam concluded.

The three men joined their newfound colleagues and ate quickly, enjoying the brief meal for its stark contrast to the uncomfortable eating of the day before. Without a look or any coy smile, Juliet handed Gabriel an orange juice. A drop of condensation fell from the carton onto the table. Though nothing like her, the mere action somehow reminded Gabriel of Gretchen and he wondered how she was doing. ‘She must be worried sick that I’m missing’, he thought to himself. He hoped she would keep the wedding plans going so they could get married on schedule. He hated the thought of pushing it back because of this, whatever
this
was exactly. ‘So you steal a bus full primarily of scientists, plus a few random folks who were mixed in’ he thought. His first thought was that it must be a weapons project. Why else all the cloak and dagger? He’d never worked on a weapons project in his life, and he absolutely refused to start now. ‘The first sign that we’re being used for a harmful purpose, I am NOT participating,’ he promised himself. Gabriel would sit in his room alone for the next four weeks before doing anything that might do harm.

David Running Wolf sat alone eating breakfast of eggs, bacon and bagel at the adjacent table and was thinking the same thing. An MIT graduate, he’d turned down many lucrative jobs in bioweapons design to continue working on genetic mapping and testing. His work allowed pregnant mothers to be aware of markers for certain illnesses and conditions early enough to take preventive action, like beginning vitamin therapies or medication to ensure a healthy child.

The man Mr. Aquila had seen in the hallway earlier appeared at the door to the cafeteria accompanied by another, taller man that had the look of a soldier. Stone spoke, since they had seen him bringing in trays of food and were no doubt more comfortable with him.

“It’s time for class, everyone,” he said and started to clear the tables. The recruits cleared their tables quickly and began clearing the room and heading down the hallway to the training room. The last to exit, Juliet, dropped her tray. Wood rushed to help her pick it up.

“Are you shaky at all?” he asked, still on the watch for medical side effects of the day before.

“No, just a damn klutz,” Juliet responded. She left the room and jogged a bit to catch up with the tail end of her class. Wood watched her go.

“She’s not even a Circle One yet, my friend, as in off limits,” Stone said to Wood. Wood’s voice responded about a half octave above his normal decibel,

“I know.” When Stone and Wood entered the training room, all recruits were already sitting and Saraceni stood at the front of the room. Saraceni addressed them as they entered.

“Gentlemen, thank you for your assistance. Team, I’d like to introduce you to two men who will be assisting us throughout your training experience, Wood and Stone.”

“Who’s who?” Juliet asked Saraceni, glancing back at the two men. ‘The one is clearly the brawn of the outfit, but why the muscle? Do they think we’re going to make a run for it?’ she thought to herself.

“On the left is Wood and on the right is Stone,” Saraceni answered.

Juliet summed the two up to herself. ‘So, the slightly shorter one is Wood . He seems smart and alert. The other one is harder to read, but they’re clearly friends as well as coworkers,’ she thought.

“Now that the introductions have been made,” Saraceni slightly raised his voice to regain the attention to the front of the room, “we will commence our lesson for today. We have a lot of material to move through in the next few weeks, so I will be moving at a quick pace, summarizing some pretty large areas of study and have a specific order of approach. This may not fit with your questions. I’ll make every effort to answer them, but we will have occasions where we have to parking lot them to revisit later or where we just have to move on. I’m saying this to acknowledge that there is a much deeper layer to this subject matter and you will likely want to learn it at that level of detail in the future, but for now, think of this as an overview class.”

“An overview of what-what’s the subject matter?” Gabriel asked, eyeing Saraceni intently for signs of lying.

“Let’s call it ‘Nature of the Universe 101’, for now. Today’s a pretty basic day, foundational information, so let’s begin,” came Saraceni’s reply. Gabriel’s gaze remained on Saraceni like a laser, but could find no signs that Saraceni was hiding a weapons program or something equally dubious. The class looked at each other measuring reactions to this.

“So, you mean like how the universe was created and all that?” asked Kyle Chambers, the sixteen-year-old.

“Among other things,” Saraceni confirmed.

“Most of us are scientists. We know this already. Or at least have pretty definite opinions of our own, I imagine,” David Running Wolf observed.

“Oh do you?” answered Saraceni, “I don’t deal in opinions in here. I deal in fact, but we are not starting with how it all began, we are instead going to start with what it is, the basic nature of the universe. Much of what we discuss here is not as much for you to
learn
, but to relearn-to take what you already know and put it in the proper context.”

“So what is the universe?” asked Saraceni. The room was silent for about ten seconds before a voice ventured to enter the discussion.

“A collection of planets and other astronomical occurrences, like black holes,” answered Kyle.

“In part. So, what are those things called at a simple level?”

“Matter,” offered Jane Gray Windsor

“Right, mostly, but is it correct to say the universe is matter? What else is it?” Saraceni continued.

“Space,” added George.

“In part, what else is it?” Saraceni looked at the class wondering who would get the closest answer. None of them would get the whole answer, of course, but conceptual thinking showed promise and he tracked his recruit’s participation carefully.

“An interaction of matter, space and time…” Gabriel began and then paused

“Good, they interact-for what purpose?” Saraceni walked toward Gabriel at the back table with enthusiasm, as if to encourage his thinking with proximity, offering some of his own energy.

“To further life?” Gabriel answered.

“Okay, let’s assume it’s to further life. Why? Why further life? What difference does it make?” Saraceni asked.

“Well, if we don’t further life, we don’t exist. Our species doesn’t continue, or any other species, for that matter,” Kyle responded again from the front of the room. Saraceni backed up to be more inclusive.

“For that matter,” Saraceni laughed, “excellent double entendre, Kyle, but what does it matter if life continues. Who cares?”