Two months after KH2, the remains of a lost civilization struggle to surive with the Heartless knocking on the cities walls, while an autocratic government controls them from the inside. Enter Grace Porter, a girl that believes that an outside world exsists. Her dreams of three knights battle it out with an old man with magical keys is about to take her and those around her through not just a conspiracy but an adventure so deep, it lasted eight chapters. Chapters Two, Three and Four are on Page one. Five, Six, and Seven on Page Two. Eight is on Page Four! Now you can see the story from the beginning: I've added Chapter One! Enjoy!!! Please coment and tell your friends!
There is an urban legend told in the alleyways of Juno City…about a world that existed long ago…
The people of this world had everything and had nothing. They were at peace and they were at war. They were generous and kind and they were greedy and selfish. Then, an unknown enemy came to this world and attacked the people.
The people used everything they had to protect themselves against the enemy, even weapons of mass destruction that could kill thousands in an instant, but the enemy would only strike back with twice as much force. The enemy began to consume the planet.
Soon the world began to tear apart and the people left as the enemy took over their world and destroyed it completely. The lives that were lost were too terrible to even put in numbers, but what was worse was the people had to leave that beautiful yet terrible world behind.
No one knows for sure if such a world and such a people ever existed. The government denies any evidence of the people, the world, or even the unknown enemy.
But sometimes, the elders look towards the sky and silently, they cry. When they talk in groups, they whisper about the “Old World”. Their sons and daughters shake their heads, sigh “It’s only a fairy tale.” However, when they finished their crying and their whispers, they turn to their grandchildren and smile, as if they are the ones who will lead the great people back to the “Old World”…
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all heaven in a Rage.
A Dove house fill’d with doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.
A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus’d upon the road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fiber from the Brain does tear.
A Skylark wounded in the wing,
A Cherubim does cease to sing.
The Game Cook clip’d & arm’d for fight
Does the Rising Sun afright.
Every Wolf’s & Lion’s howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul.
The wild deer, wand’ring here & there
Keep the Human Soul from Care.
The Lamb misus’d breed public strife
And yet forgives the Butcher’s knife.
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that won’t Believe
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbeliever’s fright.
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belov’d by Men.
He who the Ox to wrath has mov’d
Shall never be by Woman lov’d.
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spider’s enmity
He who torments the Chafer’s Sprite
Weaves a Bowen in endless Might
The Caterpillar or the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mother’s grief.
Kill not the Moth or the Butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
Aguries of Innocence by William Blake
-Lines 1-40
CHAPTER ONE: AN INTRODUCTION OF HEROINES (AND HEROES)
At seven-thirty in the morning, the cluster city of Juno began to wake up. First, electricity followed through the magnets of the subway trains and they began to move to their programmed stops. Public transportation began as people emerged from their homes into their cars on the already hot asphalt pavement streets. With the humid dampness in the air, it would sure be a hot one again today. The streetlights turned off, however the rings of florescent light around the city walls and major streets remained on. These lights were always on 24/7, although no one really understood why. They just knew if they ever went off, something terrible would happen. But usually, no one took much notice of it, even when the lights began to flicker ever so slightly.
As the rest of the city began to rise with the sun, the bells of the St. Peter’s Orphanage and School for Girls, signaled the wake-up call for the girls in their dormitories for breakfast. Girls from as young as four or five up to that of seventeen and eighteen climbed out of their beds into the cafeteria, dressed in a uniform of a black skirt, white blouse, red tie, black stockings, and black shoes, with the red school jacket. Another bell rang at the end of breakfast at 8:05 AM to begin classes.
The teacher began to call role for homeroom. A girl walked in late with a black bag and wearing along with her uniform, black fishnets and dark eyeliner. Her hair was dyed black as well and she stared at the teacher vaguely with her brown eyes. She was from the Slavic sect; her fair skin was proof of that. She wasn’t technically an orphan, as she lived with her grandmother, the Great Physic Madame Radshaik. When the teacher called her name (“Radshaik, Michelle!”) she replied with, “Darkness is eternal,” her usual greeting, or at least until the teacher learned to address her as Mitch. Her bag felt heavier this morning. She reached down and felt something warm and large, Marshmallow, her ferret, no doubt. He probably found her turkey sandwich she would have had for lunch. “Stupid…” she began but thought better of it. The six sense was going off; she grinned. Was it the forces of darkness? She looked over towards a girl in the back.
A girl with fair skin but different shaped eyes was reciting some prayer under her breath. She looked up quickly when the teacher called her for role (“Su, Ling!”), then started to pray again. No one knew what sect she belong to but it wasn’t English, Slavic, or Romantic, but something entirely different. Mitch saw she was playing with her fingers: something was up.
Mitch looked towards the other side of the room where a girl with mousy hair and glasses wrote feverishly in a journal. Lucy Stuart was an orphan in the truest sense unlike Mitch or Ling. She belonged to the English sect and as everyone knew her family was rich but no one knew the reason why she was rich. Rumor was her family founded Juno City. The cheerleaders, grouped in the back, pointed in laugh, probably because they found Lucy lack of mammary glad funny. They stopped at once as soon as Mitch began to stare at them. They knew if they made Mitch mad, they would experience sudden nose bleeds and headaches.
Mitch then turned to the seat a little ways in front of her. It was empty. Of course…
These three girls are indeed involved in this story but the main character is still yet to be introduced. And she was the girl missing.
The teacher looked up from her roster and saw that “she” was missing. Usually when “she” disappeared, the other three of her entourage were gone as well. Mitch was the only one who usually went alone.
“Well?” she asked, flashing her spectacles, “Has anyone seen Miss Porter?”
“She wasn’t at breakfast,” replied one of the cheerleaders, trying to suppress a giggle.
“So then she’s ill?” the teacher looked around and her eyes landed on Mitch, “Well Miss Radshaik?”
“The forces of darkness aren’t talking, so it’s safe to say she still on this side,” Mitch replied. The teacher ignored this comment.
“Ling! Check Miss Porter’s dormitories, will you?”
Ling stopped playing with her fingers and left the classroom. Lucy mouthed to Mitch, “She’s gone out again?”
Mitch shrugged. The senses only told her so much. Instead, she pulled out a CD player, plugged the earpiece in her head and turned up the volume on max to a song called “Call Me When Your Sober”.
Ling returned ten minutes later. “She’s not there ma’am. Nor is Tai.”
“That Grace Porter!” fumed the teacher and went to her phone, dialing the headmistress number. “One of these days, that girl is going to get it!”
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The girl in question, Grace Porter, raised her head above the edge of the plateau. She pulled herself over and stood up. She brushed the red dust off her black pants and straightened her black leather jacket, pushing her black braided hair back. A small robot gleaned in stainless silver with blue markings, floated besides her.
“Gracey! Gracey! Are you sure we should do this? I mean we’re not even suppose to be out here,” said the robot, his circuits shaking.
Grace turned back to him with a smile, her cornflower eyes gleaming. “If we don’t get caught, then no one has to know we were out here. Besides, what’s there to worry about?”
“But what about the Heartless?” the robot followed close behind her.
“There’s no Heartless. They won’t show up in a place like this,” Grace walked forward, spotting something gleaming in the distance.
“That’s what you said last time, and the time before that, and even the time before THAT! And guess what? Everytime, they’ve shown up!” yelled the robot. “Gracey?”
The girl had run ahead of him, leaving him behind. The wind picked up, howling like a ferocious monster and he screamed, “GRACEY!” shooting towards her like a bullet. Grace turned to see what he was crying about when he flew right into her jacket.
“Aww, I’m sorry,” she said affectionately, petting his head gently, “Are you okay?”
“F-fine,” he stammered, still shaky, “J-just p-peachy.”
Grace turned her attention to object in front of her. It was a large as a house and was once white but now by wind and time, had rusted and blackened with dirt and dust. She touched the surface. “Weird…what do you think it is, Tai?” asked Grace.
The robot analyzed the surface with his sensors. “Seems to be titanium with some sort of heat resistant coating.”
“There’s a door here…maybe…it’ll…open!” She knocked her arm against the door and it jolted open. Old fumes of petroleum and death reeked out. “Egh…what do you think it is?”
“Hmm…my library isn’t recognizing any of this,” replied the robot. “There’s a lot of Carbon Monoxide though, not enough to kill but if we stay here long enough you might get sick.” The robot then turned back to her, “Gracey? Are you sure we should do this? I know you’re fascinated with the outside world but…”
“We’ll be in and out in fifteen minutes,” Grace stepped into the door. She looked around. It reminded her almost like the inside of a subway train compartment, with seats, but they seemed to be made out of the same material as chairs. “Seems like some sort of transportation vehicle but what’s it doing out here? Turn on your flashlight,” Grace added to Tai. One his small compartments of his head opened up and the light beamed across the room.
The beam fell on a rotting corpse.
“Now we know what smells,” complemented Tai, as Grace found something near the skeleton that peaked her interest. It was a black rectangular box, only unlike a box, it was very heavy. It opened strangely, popping up from the top. The girl stared at it with wonder. While the outside was smooth it was still rough, but the top portion of the box was very smooth and she could somewhat see her reflection. As for the bottom portion, there were letter keys, almost like…
“…a computer?” she lifted it up, “What a strange computer. The keys are attached to the software component. Either way…” she noticed the small ports and unlit LEDs, “…it’s some sort of machine. Wonder if it works? There should be a power switch here somewhere. Is this it?” Grace flipped a small button that looked important in the back.
The machine began to hum and the smooth portion of the machine flashed. “The screen?” Grace asked herself as it flashed again and words in white with a black background appeared. “It’s in an English sect. ‘Error… Detected…Please…install…Operating System’.” She read the words with her finger at the screen. “Operating System?”
Tai meanwhile had hovered into the back of the transportation vehicle. “Why do I always get dragged into these things? She never listens to me anyway, but yet I somehow get pulled along. One of these days, I’m gonna be like, ‘I told you so!’ or something rather. That is…as long as a Heartless doesn’t rip my circuits out before that.” Something from above him growled. He looked up and saw a dark creature hanging from the ceiling, its yellow pupil less eyes staring at him. “Why can’t she ever be right about them?” The creature pounced. “HEARTLESS!”
Grace heard the robot scream and quickly put away the computer, pulling out her LightLASER. Tai came squealing into the room towards her, the Heartless running behind him. She fired two shots of a bright light projectile, striking the creature in the shoulder and the chest. Tai cowered behind her, as she whispered. “It’s a big one. Wonder how many hearts that beast’s taken?” She fired again as the creature lunged at her and knocked her to the ground. It leaped on top of her but she blasted at its neck and threw it off.
“Let’s go!” she told Tai and she bolted out the door into the outside. She ran a few yards, panting and turned back to look at the transportation vehicle.
“Did you get it?” asked Tai, shivering.
She scanned the ground and saw a dark shadowing moving towards them. “Not quite. Run!” she yelled, running towards the cliff. Grace fired a few more light burst from her LightLASER, but it merely struck the ground. Then her pistol jammed. “Stupid thing!” she waked it hard with her hand.
She was at the edge of the cliff now, and the Heartless was about to emerge out of the ground. “Gracey, move!” shouted Tai and she jumped off the edge onto her sky board. She pulled the sky board away from the edge, just as the Heartless tumbled over the cliff.
“Take that you big bully!” cheered Tai and happily floated over towards Grace as she pulled on her goggles. She took one quick look at the Heartless far down on the ground below before starting up her boosters and zooming away from the cliff and off into the red wasteland.
Grace adjusted the wing of her diver turning left and right. The diver’s sensors picked up a wind coming from behind her, so she reduced the output of its boosters and let the wind take over. Almost like a hover board, the sky diver used the world’s magnetic field to let it float above the ground but not far away to over come the force of gravity. The computer chip inside was constantly readjusting the magnetic output to keep the board stable as any miscalculation could throw off the board completely and send it crashing. Because of the wing added to it, the sky diver could move faster than a standard hover board and was useful for travel across the terrain outside of Juno City. However, since no one had traveled outside the city in the decade that the Heartless had arrived and the computer chip that measured out all the magnetic calculations was expensive, only a few people had a sky diver and even fewer could repair it.
The city walls were now appearing over the horizon as Grace slowed down the sky diver enough so she could stop at the city walls. She jumped off her sky diver and pressed a small button underneath it. In the time it took to take off her goggles, the sky driver folded itself up to resembled that of a rectangular pole. It was no heavier than the books she carried around for school everyday. Sneaking through the blind spots of the video cameras above, she and Tai came to the opening of a storm drain. “Why do we have to go through here?” asked Tai, “It stinks.”
“Sorry, but you were the one who said that the storm drains were the weakest link in the city walls,” said Grace as she climb through the pipe. Tai sighed as he followed behind her, turning on his flashlight. They meandered through the pipe corridors, following a route that only a rat could know until a shaft of sunlight signaled the end of the tunnel.
They came out into a waterway in the South District of the city. South District was the most populated of the city and it was easy to blend in and get lost in the crowd from the eyes of the government. With the shops not yet overwhelmed by morning customers, the shopkeepers began to talk in all sorts of language sects: the English Dialectics, The Romanics, the Slavic, and the mysterious sets of the unknown. Others eyed their competitors with interested, checking prices and good deals.
“Where are we going?” asked Tai, “Don’t tell me we’re going to that guy!”
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Grace.
“One) He shows out of the blue two months ago, Two) He likes fire way too much, Three) He’s emo! Four) He’s scary…”
“He is not emo! Emo went out, oh god, years ago! Besides, he’s the only one who can fix the LASERlight,” she stopped. A group of old women who had been staring at her looked away and began to whisper in undertones. Grace was used to this by now, the elderly staring at her, before whispering to each other. Occasionally, she would get a smile, as well as some that would shake her hand for no apparent reason. Why, though? What was it that made them stare at her like that? Was it her purple eyes perhaps?
Grace and Tai continued to walk through the streets until they came to a shop with a sign hanging above labeled, “Fire Lucky Eight! Juno’s source for Firearms, Explosives, and Knives. We also repair Sky Divers!” In the window was a neat display of empty bomb castings and next to it was a shiny air rifle on display.
Grace opened the door ignoring the mandatory “Minors must be accompanied by an adult” sign and walked inside. The lights above were dimmed down so low that Grace almost needed to squint in order to see. The smell of incense and gunpowder swirled into her nostrils.
A man in his mid-twenties with flaming red hair hid underneath his hat came in from the back room. His suit reminded Grace of a mechanics; he had working on explosives from all the gunpowder on his shirt, especially a large stain underneath his name badge, “Axel”.
“Whatda’ya want this time? I fixed your Sky Diver last week,” he groaned.
Graced tossed him her LASERlight. “It jammed again.”
He examined the firearm closely, talking as he made observations, “Fighting Heartless I see.”
“I can’t help it if they keep on attacking me. This one was a little bit too close to the city. They seem to be getting restless,” said Grace.
The man’s eyes flashed at Grace for a brief second, just before opening up the gun casing. “No kidding. Where’d you go?”
“There was this weird transportation vehicle. I’ve never seen anything like it. I also found this,” Grace opened up her bag and pulled out the computer.
Axel immediately put the LASERlight down and picked up the computer.
“I’m sure it’s a computer. But there’s a problem with the something system…”
“Operating System,” Axel corrected her, watching the message flash up, “Give me some time and I’ll get it back together.”
“But it’s in American English, I think…”
“All computers are the same. They contain a Hard Drive, a Processor, an Operating System, the software, the RAM, the ROM, and a FILE drive. You don’t need to know the language in order to figure out how to put it back together. Besides, I can understand English, same as you. By the way,” he looked at her with his green eyes, eyeliner marks underneath them, “Shouldn’t you be in school today?”
“There’s nothing going on at school today, except…” She froze, “Oh dang it! Final preparation! Tai! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m not suppose to keep track of your schedule!” he yelled, “I told you! We should’ve gone to school!”
“Sorry! Got to go!” Grace grabbed her bag and ran out the door, Tai speeding behind her.
“Hey! Don’t you want your weapon?” asked Axel.
“I’ll come by for it later!” Grace called and she slammed the door behind her.
Axel sighed and began to take the computer apart. The lights above him began to flicker and suddenly went out.
“Oh boy…” he muttered but couldn’t help but smile. He sort of had a thing for chaos.
Outside in the city, people looked around suddenly as the subway stopped, lights went out, and air conditioning shut off. Then as soon as it stopped it all came back on. Nothing to worry about. The lights were still on.
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Now it is time to introduce another character of significance of this story. Joseph Carter sat at his computer, studying for his AP Computer Science Final. He careful thought about each answer provided on the holographic screen, just before touching the screen to choice his answer. Continuing to stare at the screen, he thought about his weird, yet fascinating conversation he had earlier with his grandfather.
His grandfather, William Carter, was an extraordinary man who helped in founding the last city of mankind. It was thanks to him, that all the people could live conferrable in Juno City. It was William Carter that built the waterways, the train lines, and more importantly the energy plant beneath the city that ran everything. Then William Carter retired and he was sent with most deemed respect by the government to the Elderly Retiree Center in the North End district.
Joseph Carter had visited his grandfather once a day after attending The School of Future Geniuses ever since he had hit the age of thirteen. “Now, Joseph,” he grandfather had said to him, “It’s time to learn the truth. We’ll begin with a story.”
Joseph had laid down his tea cup. Usually, his grandfather would call him Joey or Joe. Never before in his life had his grandfather refer to him as Joseph, not even when he was in trouble.
“Do you know what imperialism is?”
Joey nodded. “That’s when people buy houses to increase their owner ship.”
“Ah…” his grandfather sighed, “That is simply what they have told you. The type of imperialism I’ll referring to is conquering other lands.”
“Conquering…other lands?” he asked, but his grandfather silenced him.
“What I’m telling you is merely fiction. Simply fiction. Do you understand?”
Joey nodded his head but didn’t understand. His grandfather pulled out a book. It was an old book; the pages were stained yellow and it was covered in several layers of dust. When his grandfather opened up the book, Joey found himself staring at a map of colored shapes. “This is a map of countries, that is to say pieces of land that are home to different people. They make up a continent called Europe. These countries however, do not exist.”
“I know what countries are,” remarked Joey, “There used to be dozens of them before the Heartless came.”
“Well then, than I won’t have to explain as much. You see this large country here?” his grandfather pointed on the map. “This is the Austria-Hungarian Empire. Over here, is Germany and right next to it is France.”
“Austria-Hungarian Empire, Germany, France,” he recited. But wait a minute; a thought had suddenly occurred to him. German was one of the English Sects; French was one of the Romantic Sects. Could those languages have some relevance with these countries? But his grandfather had said that the countries did not exist.
His grandfather continued, “At what would be a time so long ago that my grandfather was not even a small boy, strong nationalistic, that is-”
“-extreme patriotism for one’s country-”
“Indeed, nationalistic feelings ran high in both Germany and France. You see, France had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War and as a result of the war, Germany now had possession of Alasce and Lorraine, two small provinces that were rich in materials for Germany’s factories. This help made Germany one of the leading economic powers in all of Europe. There was competition for colonies, especially in the continent of Africa, which is down here, and the country of India, which isn’t on this map. Anyway, France and Great Britain –this island country over here- were gaining up on Germany in the number of colonies they had. This also led to an increase buildup in their armies. Add the fact that none of the countries really trusted each other and you have a mess on your hands. Germany then signed a treaty with Italy –this one down here, the one touching France- and Austria-Hungary (I’m guessing you know what a treaty is) and Britain and France signed an entente. Sooner or later something was going to give.”
“So then, what caused it to give?” asked Joey, now interested.
“The assassination of Franz Ferdinand.”
“How was killed? Why was he killed?”
“Well it had to do with a conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. The countries of Bosnia and Serbia had recently been in a civil war and had been split apart. The Serbians saw Austria-Hungary as an enemy, so on June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip of Serbia shot and killed the heir to the Austria-Hungary throne and his wife while he was visiting Sarajevo, Bosnia,” explained his grandfather.
“1914?” asked Joey.
“Ignore the dates; it’s just to give you an understanding of the time. This is all fiction: remember that. Anyway, the Austrian government used the assassination as an excuse to crush Serbia for good so they sent them an ultimatum; the Serbs agreed but they did not follow all of the conditions. As a result, Austria declared war on Serbia a month later and because of the treaties the other countries had signed, they were thrown into it as well.
“Germany began to make plans. Under the Schlieffen plan, Germany would march through Belgium to defeat France,” His grandfather used his finger to show where the countries where, “Then Germany would fight Russia. As long as they didn’t fight two countries on both sides, they would be fine. On August 3, Germany invaded Belgium and Britain soon entered the war. The Germans would soon be blamed for the ones that started the war, as it was the first to invade another country. The war now had its two fighting sides: the Central Powers; Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire; and the Allied Powers; Serbia, Russia, France, and Britain. It was suppose to be a ‘summer war’ and many thought that it would only last a few weeks. How very wrong they were.
“The war was called ‘The Great War’. It would soon be remembered as World War I. On the Western Front between Germany and France, the Schlieffen Plan was working and Germany swept through Belgium all the way to the capital of France, Paris. However, some of the German generals changed the original plans, a costly mistake. Russia then mobilized quicker than the Germans had expected, and soon Germany was fighting on two sides. In September, British and French troops fought the Germans and destroyed any hopes for a quick in the battle of the Marre. Both sides now dug in for a long war, literally, with trench warfare, underground network linked bunkers, communication trenches, and gun emplacements covered the top. In between these trenches was called no man’s land. Sometimes, with a lot of luck, one side would take over a few trenches, but only about once a month. Any other attempts was met with death. It was now at a stalemate. The Germans launched the Battle of Verdun in 1916 against the French that lasted 11 months. The Allies launched the Battle of the Somme which lasted 5 months. Both sides now had access to new warfare: machine guns, poison gas, armored tanks, aircraft, zeppelins, and u-boats, but that still wasn’t enough to turn the tide. And before you knew it, everyone was involved. The Russians tried to combat the Germans with the Battle of Tannerberg, but lost. Bulgaria entered the war with Germany. Italy declared war on Austira-Hungary. Britain attempted to take over the Turkish trenches in the Battle of Gallipoli and the Allies invaded the African and Asian colonies owned by Germany. It was a mess.”
His grandfather stopped, taking a handkerchief out to wipe the sweat from his forehead, then said, “I think we’ll stop there for today.”
“But it was getting good!” whined Joey.
“Here,” his grandfather handed him an old book, “Thought you might like it.”
“Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Strange name; what’s it about?” Joey asked.
“Why don’t you read it and find out.”
Now, having finished his practice exam (his score was 120%), he looked over at the book, sitting on his desk.
There was a knock at his door. “Come in,” he said.
The door to his bedroom creaked open. In stepped a frail girl her hair as white as her skin, her hand against the wall as she walked inside the room. Joey got out of his seat, took her hand and led her over to his bed, where she sat down.
“How was the visit with Grandpa?” the girl asked, her pale eyes not looking at Joey.
“The same as it always is, I guess,” he replied, and her head turned in the direction his voice had come from. He looked at the girl with sadness in his eyes, even though the girl could not see that sadness, nor would she ever will, at least for now.
The girl that now sat on his bed, his little sister Margot, had the disease called blindness. It meant that she could not see and for the time being it was incurable. Blindness was so rare a disease, that only five people in all of Juno City had it. Because of it, people with Blindness couldn’t go to school like everyone else, simply because how could you teach a person who could not see how to read and write? Margot, was lucky though. Their grandfather suggested using the old language of Braille to teach her how to read and write, even though Margot could listen to most books to learn. The results were that Margot was intelligent as any other girl who could see, even though she still had to be led around like a little girl with someone at her side if she ever went out. Margot didn’t mind though. She often said she would rather be in someone’s company than to be alone.
But now Margot’s eyes would soon be developed enough to be fixed. Her blindness would be cured in two weeks time. She would soon be taken to the Revivitor to have her eyes corrected.
“Did he tell you anything interesting?” asked Margot.
“He did tell me about this really cool war between all these countries, but…” he stopped, thinking back to something he thought earlier, “All the countries, had similar names to Language Sects. But Grandpa said that the countries didn’t exist. Do you think he was lying?”
Margot was quiet for a moment. Joey could tell she was thinking.
“I don’t think Grandpa would lie to you. Maybe he meant that they existed at one time,” said Margot.
“Like before the Heartless came,” said Joey thoughtfully, “But the Government says that Juno City is only the real city left and maybe the only one that will be left. It’s the only home humans will ever have. We’re the only ones left. There’s nothing else beyond the city. This is the world. Besides, no one remembers anything from before Juno City was founded, except the elderly and half of them are dead or crazy.”
“But…it’s in human nature to lie. What if the Government is lying to us?” questioned Margot.
“Why would they lie? I mean, if they’re were humans still out there, don’t you think they would’ve contacted us?” asked Joey.
“I guess so,” Margot said quietly. Her hand reached out and touched the book. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Oh, Grandpa gave that to me. It’s called Fahrenheit 451.”
“Fahrenheit 451.” Margot fingers felt around the edges of the book. “Will you read it to me?” she asked, holding out the book.
“All right,” said Joey, turning to the first page, “‘In the Beginning…books bombarded Montag’s shoulders, his arms, his upturned face.’”
“Did someone say my name?”
A boy taller than Joey walked into the room. He was wearing a soccer uniform, having just come from practice, a pair of goggles holding back the mess he called hair.
“Oh, hi, Matti!” Margot said cheerfully, “How was practice?”
Montag, or Matti, put his bag down, “The same.” He saw the book. “What’s that?”
“Nothing you would find interesting,” frowned Joey.
“It has my name in it; it has to be interesting,” Matti grinned. Margot gave off a small smile.
Joey rolled his eyes, picking the book back up with a shrug and started to read again. “‘A book landed, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering. In the dim wavering light a page hung open and it was like a snowy feather…’”
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“Where have you been?! You’ve skipped almost three of your periods!” the Headmistress’s voice thundered.
Grace twitted her fingers, not looking at her, Tai sitting on her shoulder. Meanwhile, Mitch, Lucy, and Ling pressed their ears to the office door in the hallway, trying to listen in.
“I just don’t know what to do with you! Out of the four of you, you’re the worst! There is no reason for cutting class! NONE! Especially with finals around the corner! I know you assume that you’ll somehow manage to be in the top three of your class, but still, it’s time you act more grown up! You’ll be fifteen in one week’s time.” The Headmistress fumed, her nostrils flaring. She calmed down and then said in a much quieter tone, her fingers on a large file in front of her, “I have more than enough to see you expelled from the school, but given the circumstances…” She trailed off.
Grace knew what the circumstances were. She was an orphan and there was no where else she could go.
“However, you will be punished. And this I think is perfect for you.”
Grace could only imagine what the Headmistress hand in store. She was looking at her pants.
“You will wear the girl’s skirt uniform for a week. No pants, shorts or anything otherwise except for gym class.”
“But-” Grace tried to say something.
“No buts! It will serve you right!” The Headmistress closed the file as if her word was final. Grace bit her lip.
Mitch smiled a bit from outside the door. She knew it was all an act by Grace, trying to seem like wearing a girl’s skirt was the worst thing that could happen to her. They were all very well aware that there were worse punishments, but this was far from being extreme.
“Now get dress! Visitation will start in fifteen minutes; remember your manners around our guests,” said the Headmistress.
Grace frowned again, but this time it wasn’t an act. She hated visitation.
She simply nodded to the Headmistress and left the room. The Headmistress sighed, as her secretary looked around to see if it was okay to walk in. She gingerly crossed the room with several files in her hand. “Don’t you think she’s getting off a little too easily?”
“There’s no point in suspending her, after all, if what the counsel says will happen in just the next couple of days, I fear for all of us,” the Headmistress then said in a quiet undertone, “You did receive the memo, did you?”
“Oh, yes!” said the secretary, “I’m beginning to make preparations.”
“Good work,” nodded the Headmistress, “But I’m afraid that preparations will not be enough, if I’m to believe the reports we’ve received from…” she looked around cautiously as if someone was listening in on them, “…the outside.”
“Some of them are hard to believe,” admitted the secretary, “You don’t there will be another war, do you?”
“My dear, the war has already began.”
************************************************************************
Grace emerged from the bathroom, wearing the girls skirt uniform. She had borrowed a spare of Ling’s to wear.
“What did you see?” asked Ling, as they started to walk down the hallway.
“Find anything good?” asked Lucy, putting away her diary.
“There was some sort of transportation vehicle in the middle of nowhere. It was bigger than a train,” explained Grace.
“More like a truck,” added Tai.
“A train’s bigger than a truck,” Grace added to him, “Anyway, we something weird inside; a computer but it was really old. It still had the keyboard attached to the hardware component.”
“I think my grandfather told me about something like that. Back before computers went completely wireless, those that were, were called laptops,” explained Ling.
“Laptops?” asked Lucy.
“Yeah,” nodded Ling, “You would sit them on the top of your lap.”
“That’s strange,” complimented Lucy.
“We ran into a Heartless too,” remarked Tai.
Lucy gasped, Ling gave Grace a worried look, and Mitch just raised her eyebrows, interested.
“How big was it?” she asked.
Grace shrugged, “Pretty big.”
“That’s what? The third one this month you fought? They sure are popping up more,” said Lucy.
“They’re getting restless. Something’s happened…or will happen…maybe both,” remarked Mitch.
“What? You have another vision?” asked Grace.
“More like a premonition. But…” Mitch closed her eyes, “I don’t see anything.”
“Have any more dreams?” asked Ling, changing the subject, turning to Grace.
“It’s the same thing every night: knights and giant keys. That’s it,” explained Grace, frowning.
“You sure you haven’t been reading some fantasy-romance novel?” asked Lucy.
Before Grace could reply, the bell rung, signaling the start of visitation. “See you later,” Grace waved to Ling and Mitch, joining Lucy as they walked down the hall.
Visitation was when the orphan girls were summoned to meet with prospective adopters. If foster parents found a name worth looking into, they would meet with the child during visitation. As she was only a week away from turning fifteen, this was Grace last chance to be adopted; after she turned fifteen, visitation for her would end. No one would want to adopt a full-fledged teenager; even if they wanted too, it was against the law.
Visitation was also the time when the other girls who just attended the school could met with their parents or grandparents. Ling’s grandfather had recently been notified that he was too old to care for Ling anymore and had been shipped off to the Elderly Retiree Center. The only time he was allowed to see her was during visitation. Mitch, who lived with her grandmother would spend the hour performing a séance or something rather, talking to spirits or, as Mitch preferred, the realm of Darkness.
Grace checked for her name on the list posted outside the cafeteria to see if anyone had picked out her name. Lucy had already found she had two prospective couples and was already down the hall to meet them. “See anything?” Grace asked Tai.
Tai scanned the list. “Oh! Here’s one!” he pointed to a list next to the one she was looking at.
“Room 14,” she squinted, then read it again to make sure she had the right room.
Room 14 was at the far end of the hallway; here the rooms were hardly used at all except on special occasion. It was empty when Grace and Tai got down there and when Grace sat down at a chair outside the classroom, she wondered if she had gotten the room right.
They waited for almost an hour, but no one showed up. “Maybe it was a typo,” suggested Grace with a sigh. She didn’t feel disappointed; she sort of expected something like this to happen. But all the same, she felt as if maybe if she waited a little longer, someone would show up.
When the bell signaled for the end of visitation, Grace got up out of the seat. Then she heard someone snicker behind her.
“Well girls, would you look at that? Someone feels…rejected,” hissed a girl the same age as Grace with pink bubble gum hair streaked with blonde highlights, her eyes flashing.
Grace turned around and replied in a sarcastic tone, with a small curtsy, “Oh sweet Princess Anemone, your Royal Highness is right…for once.”
Anemone continued to smirk, “No need to act like that. We all know you’re hideous, with those freaks you call friends, and that old fashion toy,” as she said this, Tai began to charge forward as if to hit her, but Grace stopped him, “why would anyone want to adopt you?”
“If I’m so hideous,” remarked Grace, “Then that must make you grotesque.”
The girls in Anemone’s entourage gasped and looked towards their leader, waiting for her next move. The smirk on Anemone’s face disappeared for a brief second but then a grin reemerged. “Even if you think you’re prettier or smarter, there’s one fact that will always remain the same,” her eyes flashed again, “At least I wasn’t abandoned by my mother.”
Anemone arrow had hit its mark. “Shut up,” muttered Grace.
“I’m mean I guess that’s the worst thing that could happen: rejection by your own mother; how sad,” Anemone continued, her assault growing.
“Shut up!” Grace said louder, grabbing the necklace around her neck, her other fist clenched.
“There you go again,” Anemone’s grin grew wider, “Holding on to that necklace as it means something. You mother didn’t want you, just accept that, and no one else will.”
“SHUT UP!” Grace screamed.
“Anemone!” cried someone from behind Grace. It was Anemone’s younger sister, Clarise. Although she shared Anemone’s pale skin and obstruct hair (a shade of key lime green with blonde highlights), her personality couldn’t be more different.
Clarise turned to Grace, “I’m sorry if she said anything that offended you.”
“Clarise, I swear! If we didn’t have the same last name, no one would think we’re related, especially if you’re talking to this Nobody,” fumed Anemone.
Grace didn’t like the stress that was added on to the last word. It sounded as if it was more than just an insult.
The expression of Clarise face changed dramatically. She walked up to Anemone and whispered in her ear, “Father says we’re not suppose to use that word.”
“What Daddy doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Anemone pushed her hair back, “Besides, it’s not like she knows what it means.”
“And what is that suppose to mean?” said someone from behind Anemone’s entourage.
It was Mitch.
“It’s the psycho girl!” cried a cheerleader, before all the girls except Grace, Clarise, and Anemone nearly passed out of a sudden migraine headache.
“Speak of the darkness,” frowned Anemone, “The freaks keep on coming in waves. Talking to Heartless again?”
Mitch started to grin, “Maybe. And if I was, they might have told me that the Heartless would really like to have your heart,” Mitch reached out and lifted Anemone’s chin, “With all that darkness it’s holding, it must be really tasty to them.”
Anemone pushed Mitch’s hand away, the hint of fear in her eyes. “Let’s go,” she said to her entourage and to Clarise, her hand slightly shaking, “We’ll be late to see Daddy.”
Clarise waved goodbye to Grace and Mitch and followed Anemone down the hallway.
Mitch turned to Grace, “I had a premonition that you were in trouble. Looks like I was right. Is something wrong?” she asked, seeing the troubled look on Grace’s face, still holding the necklace. She watched as Grace opened the locket up to look at a faded picture of a beautiful woman: Grace’s mother.
“She called me a nobody,” Grace said slowly, but didn’t see Mitch’s reaction of concern, “But…she said it as if…it meant something else.” She looked up at Mitch, “You don’t know any weird meanings to the word, do you?”
Mitch shrugged. “It’s just a word.” The troubled look still remained on Grace’s face. It was time to change the subject. “Hey, Ling’s grandfather dropped off some food. Better not let it go to waste. And he also brought natural oil,” she added to Tai, who had been resting comfortably on Grace shoulder.
“Natural oil! Oh boy!” he jumped up and Grace smiled.
As they walked by the main office, the Headmistress looked up and watched them as she talked on the phone, “I understand. She seems to be fine, for the moment.” The Headmistress looked at her calendar, “You realize we only have six days left. I’ll be surprise if this all boils over with her unnoticed. The lights are already beginning to flicker. We’re running out of time.”
************************************************************************
The head of the government was the Commander. His word was law and whatever he ordered had to be done immediately or severe punishment would follow. Right now, the Commander was in his study, two guards posted outside the door.
A girl with pink hair, followed by another with green hair walked up to the door. The guard on the right side of the door stopped her. “Sorry miss, but you can’t come in here.”
“Excuse me,” glared Anemone.
“You idiot!” hissed the guard’s partner, “That’s the Commander’s daughter.”
But it was too late; Anemone had already grabbed the guard by his tie and dragged him down so low that they were eye to eye. She had quite a strong arm, thought the guard, almost like the Commander’s. Clarise shook her head.
“Daddy says we’re suppose to see him now. And if we’re even a second late, I’ll tell him why. And I hope he gives you more than a demotion to being a janitor.” And with that, Anemone dropped him; having been held down for so long he toppled over onto the floor. Anemone simply, “Hmph,” and walked over him, proceeding into the study.
The other guard shook his head. Didn’t they prepare these new guards nowadays?
Clarise bowed her head apologetically to both the guards and followed her sister inside the room.
The Commander sat behind his desk, reading a report when his daughters entered the room. He looked up with his gray eyes, like his daughters. He smiled warmly at them and began to speak in of one of the Romantic Language Sects: French.
“How are my two precious angels today?” he asked.
“Oh Daddy…” Anemone smiled brightly. She absolutely adored her father.
“Hello, Father,” Clarise gave a small smile.
“Now, is there anything I can do for the two of you?” asked the Commander.
“Daddy, about my education for next year…can’t I go to the military academy? I will need training eventually if I’m to govern the city,” began Anemone, but her father raised his hand.
“I don’t see a problem with you staying at the Girls’ Academy. Besides, the military academy would be dull for you. You wouldn’t like it, Anemone,” explained the Commander.
“But Daddy! I can’t stand that school. The orphans have no respect for me, especially that Grace Porter! If I had my way, she would’ve been long gone,” frowned Anemone, folding her arms across her chest.
“Ah, but you see Angel, we must all deal with people we do not like and in time comes the opportunity to get back at them,” the Commander placed his arm around his shoulder.
Anemone looked up at her father. “’kay.”
“Well, how about you Pumpkin?” the Commander turned to Clarise. “Is there anything you want?”
“Well,” Clarise looked at her hands, “It would be nice, if you would be at dinner every once and awhile.”
The Commander sighed. It was true he had not been at dinner with the girls for at least a month. “I will try, Pumpkin. But in the next week or so, Daddy will be very busy with his work. However, I promise, after that time, I will see you at dinner. Now,” the Commander glanced at the clock, “I have to get back to work. And you girls need to study. I expect nothing less than top marks on your Finals.”
“We won’t let you down Daddy,” Anemone then reached up and kissed her father on the cheek.
Clarise nodded in agreement and kissed the Commander on the opposite cheek.
When they left the study, Anemone turned to her sister. “I’m glad you actually wish for stuff like that, Clarise. I mean, Daddy really should come home and eat a decent meal. How he can stand eating that cafeteria food from the Mesh Hall is beyond me.”
Clarise couldn’t help but smile. As rude as Anemone was acting, she was giving her a compliment.
Meanwhile, the Commander returned to the report on his desk, the expression in his eyes greatly changed. It was the look of a hawk, searching for its prey. He looked at his calendar. Six more days…it would be six more days before they made their move and he still needed it.
It was referred to several names: the Oracle, the Seer, the Dreamer, the Guide, or the Key. Without it, he held no leverage, nothing to tie them down and to stop them from making their move. For ten years he had been searching and he was no closer to finding it as by the revised profile that had been updated for all these years; a female, still a virgin, of the ages thirteen to sixteen, with a double iris, the markings of those who wield the Key. He might as well be searching for the descendants of the Holy Grail.
The Commander started to chuckle. He had made an allusion to a forbidden book. He looked outside his window, starring at the setting sun.
“This world has been connected…tied to the darkness…soon to be completely eclipsed. You understand nothing. One who knows nothing can understand nothing.”
Those words had been engraved into his memory when he was just a boy, when he laid eyes on the man with burning eyes.
“I understand nothing, do I?” he questioned as if the man was standing there in front of him. “We shall see.”
Grace woke up with her head underneath a book. She had fallen asleep again while reading. She pulled the book off her head and laid it down on her bed. The title was Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, a forbidden book. Almost all the books she owned were forbidden supposed to have been burned almost thirty years ago. She had the Lord of the Rings, the Da Vinci Code, His Dark Materials, the Oz Books, Ghost in the Shell, Redwall, and even the Princess Dairies: all of them forbidden. She had checked the list herself. And stranger still all the books were found with Grace when she was left at the orphanage when she was just a baby.
Assuming they had been left for her, as soon as Grace could read, she picked up the Wizard of Oz and started to read it. Even at that age, she couldn’t still understand most of the vocabulary and she would often throw the book in a corner out of frustration, but in a week or so, she would pick up and started to read again. It helped that Lucy, who had grown up with Grace and was a better reader than her, read with her. Now she read every night and she had one of the highest reading scores of all the girls.
Sometimes, she wished she had magical powers or amazing sword fighting skills like the characters in her book. And, although she never admitted it to anyone, not even Tai, she sometimes thought she did have magical powers. Whenever she was very upset or angry, things would happen. Once Anemone had made her so mad after she ruined her Chemistry experiment, that Anemone’s skirt suddenly caught on fire. Another time, Anemone had deliberately melted Grace’s soft serve and as she was about to cry, the soft serve refreeze. That or it was just karma, considering it had been Anemone that had upset her every time in the first place. Still, it was as if the person who had left Grace the books knew she would experience such phenomenons. She half expected an owl to arrive from Hogwarts, telling her she was a witch. But that of course, was impossible.
Pushing the book aside, Grace placed her hand on her head, recalling her recent dream. It had been the same as the one before: three knights, in the middle of a barren wasteland, with nothing but large keys surrounding them. There were three large keys standing before them and they each pulled out one. Off in the distance, someone or something was coming towards them.
“Gracey?”
Tai pulled her back into reality. “Are you going to get up?”
“Yeah, just give me a sec,” she said getting out of bed.
Tai whirled around and unplugged his charger from his battery plug.
“Let’s see,” Grace walked into her small kitchen, “I need something sweet! Oh, haven’t had those in a while,” she pulled out a recipe book, along with flour, sugar, salt, baking power, baking soda, and cinnamon, “I’m making Cinnamon buns!” she smiled happily.
“Oh,” Tai said, drooping.
Grace sighed. She reached into a separate cupboard and pulled out a computer chip. “Here,” she held out the chip for him. It was a food chip, a microchip that allowed humanoid robots to simulate the taste of a particular food.
“I don’t want it,” frowned Tai, looking away.
“Why not?”
“It’s not the same,” he said.
It was now Grace’s turn to look away. “Okay,” she said quietly. She tried to hold back a tear, but Tai already heard her snuffling.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s okay,” she said, just before breaking down and throwing her arms around the machine.
“Gracey…” Tai whispered, “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head and held him closer. She had been having these crying fits over Tai for the past month or so, mainly because of the fact according to his programming, Tai would cease to function and shut down entirely in five days. His model type was only design to last ten years; after ten years it was shut down or get a replacement model. But because his model type came out at almost the exact time the Heartless appeared, manufacturing for his type stopped as the factory would soon be used to make weapons. It was too risky to move his hard drive into another humanoid robot; there was always the chance that his memory configuration wouldn’t run properly and Grace couldn’t stand if his personality changed.
But she couldn’t bear to watch him shutdown forever; he had now become the only family she truly had.
“Tai…don’t stop arguing with me, okay?” Grace said after she stopped crying.
“No,” he said and he looked up at her with a smile.
She kissed his forehead and let him go.
“You’d better make those Cinnamon Buns if you want to make it to school on time,” remarked Tai.
Grace nodded and, with Tai’s help, began to mix the ingredients together.
************************************************************************
“Cinnamon buns! My favorite!” Lucy reached out and grabbed two from the plate Grace offered to her. “You make them so perfect too! I wish I could cook like that!”
“Considering you burn everything you cook,” remarked Mitch.
“Even toast,” said Ling.
“That’s not true!” said a reproachful Lucy, “The toast I made this morning was fine! It was a healthy brown!”
“What kind of brown? A dark brown?” asked Grace. Everyone laughed except Lucy.
“So, what’s going on today?” asked Ling, opening up her locker for her workbook.
“Not much other than final preparation,” replied Mitch.
“Isn’t someone suppose to come from the Government to talk about what we’re suppose to do for the rest of our lives?” asked Lucy.
“Not that we need to know what we’re doing; we only got so many options. Let’s see,” Grace tailed off her fingers, “There’s the Military Academy, staying here for high school, or we get jobs that don’t need a high school diploma.”
“High school for me,” said Lucy, her eyes sparking with ambition, “I’ll need all the grades I can if I want to be an English Teacher!”
“Grandpa says I really don’t need to go to high school,” said Ling, “But since I’m here, I might as well go ahead. I would be nice to be a nurse or a doctor, I guess.”
“I really don’t need more of an education,” Mitch folded her arms, “But I have foreseen…” she began to whisper, “That we all must take a certain class that I am interested in known…as Health.”
“You mean…Sex ED?” asked Grace raising an eyebrow.
“No! Not just Sex ED, but Drugs as well! If I’m to make perfect potions, I need to know the fundamentals of each and every drug,” Mitch said firmly.
“But potions don’t have drugs in them…right?” asked Ling, now quite unsure.
“Now that I think about it, what do potions have in them?” asked Lucy.
“I figured it had to be something like Key Lime Pie filling, since it’s green,” suggested Grace.
“I was thinking Limes too,” remarked Ling.
“I thought it had to be Starfruit, since it’s star shaped. But maybe there really is drugs in it,” Lucy had a worried look on her face.
“Probably just Caffeine; I doubt it would be anything illegal,” said Grace.
“Not in mine,” muttered Mitch.
“So, how about you Grace? What are you going to do?” asked Ling.
“Me? I’m going to explore the wasteland outside the city. And I’m going to find a way to the Outside World!” Grace said firmly.
“But it’s so dangerous out there! And you know the law: anyone that goes outside will be severely punished!” said Lucy.
“Besides, how do you know if there’s an Outside World?” asked Ling.
“Have you ever looked up at the sky at night and all the stars come out? Well you don’t see most them because of the city lights but if you go outside the wall…man…there are thousands and thousands of them, maybe even millions; you simply just can’t count them all. Then possibility of another world out there just sky rockets and even if you don’t comprehend that, you get this weird feeling right here,” Grace patted her chest, “that maybe out there somewhere, is someone watching the same sky, doing what you’re doing.”
“But if there really are people out there, don’t you think they would send a message or something?” asked Lucy.
“The Government controls all the communications in the city and before the Heartless appeared all the communications outside for the colonies,” explained Mitch, “If someone we’re trying to contact us, their signals would go directly to them.”
“By why wouldn’t they say something then?” asked Ling, “Don’t you think a message from the outside world is important?”
“Not if the Government doesn’t want a rebellion,” remarked Mitch.
“Think of it this way: the Government has be telling us for almost a decade that we’re the only humans left and the rest we’re all killed by the Heartless. If something such as a message from the Outside World were leaked out, there would be a lack in confidence of the Government. They’re just trying to save their own skins, more or less,” explained Grace.
A bell chimed softly over the PA system.
“Oh! And this discussion was just getting interesting!” sighed Tai.
“Whoa!” Lucy jumped, “I forgot you were even here!”
“See you guys later,” Grace waved and headed off to English class.
It was until four class periods later in the middle of Chemistry class, that someone knocked on the door. The chemistry teacher frowned; whoever it was had interrupted her demonstration of the chemical reactions of copper.
Grace watched as the teacher opened the door and let a very short woman into the classroom. With a smug look on her face, she reminded Grace of a character she had read about: Professor Umbridge from Harry Potter. Then she saw the falcon brooch pinned on the collar of her shirt; this was the government official.
“Good morning, class!” she greeted.
A few of the students replied, “Good morning.”
“Oh that won’t do!” the woman tuted, “Come now! When someone says ‘Good morning!’, you should all as a highly respected class reply back. One more time now. Good morning class!”
“Good morning,” everyone replied back to her.
“Shut it git,” Grace could hear Mitch muttering from a few seats away.
“Now then! That wasn’t too hard!” smiled the official. “My name is Madame Demetera and I am here to talk to you about your future. Now many of you will be continuing your studies here and that is fine. Juno needs bright young minds to become teachers, doctors, and scientists. There is also the military academy, for if you wish to become involved with the Government. Some of you will not find either of choices within your reach and will instead become merchants and shop keepers, which Juno needs as well. Your teachers, as well as the Government and I, want you to do well for Juno future. In the next four years you will learn all that you need to know about keeping the city thriving as well as surviving comfortable in here.”
Before Grace could stop herself, she already asked, “But what about out there?”
Everyone turned to look at Grace.
“Excuse me?” asked Madame Demetera.
“I asked about the outside world. Shouldn’t we learn about what’s out there too?” asked Grace.
Madame Demetera smiled wickedly and then replied softly, “There is no outside world, young lady. This is the world. And we, unfortunately, are the last humans in existence. It would be foolish to attempt another colony when the last attempt left almost 90% of our colonists at the hands of the Heartless. And it is thanks to our superior technology, we can keep the Heartless from ever penetrating the inside of the city walls. You should be grateful for that.”
The woman turned away from Grace.
“But where did the Heartless come from then?” Grace suddenly asked.
When Madame Demetera looked back at her, there was uncertainty in her eyes as well as fear.
“They weren’t around when Juno was first built, and first colony outside the city was established long before they showed up, so where did they come from? Surely a high ranking Government official like you would know,” Grace looked up at her.
When Madame Demetera didn’t reply, Grace pressed on, “And how about…” she was already enough trouble; she might as well say it, “…the Thirteenth Order?”
“Did she say the Thirteenth Order? The terrorist group?”
“I had forgotten about them!”
Whispers began to run amok in the classroom and for good reason. A few months ago the Government had released the thirteen names of a dangerous terrorist group known as the Thirteenth Order. They did not release the crimes or the nature of how the group was considered ‘terrorist’, but people figured their crimes were so horrendous that they were deemed unspeakable and fear spread through the city. Most of the older students were shocked to find that one of the members was a boy not so much older than they were and refused to go out with any boy for fear of being attacked. Despite the large reward given for information on the group’s whereabouts, there were no reports of any of the members being spotted in the city. Soon the entire ordeal was forgotten until Grace brought it up again.
“Granted this is a city,” Grace continued, “But it’s as you said: we’re the only humans left. Surely someone would have spotted at least one of its members. Unless of course…” Grace was about to suggest that the Thirteenth Order was from another world, that one of the girls would certainly recognized the youngest member, when Madame Demetera held out her hand.
“That’s enough,” she said firmly, the smile no longer there, “Stand up.”
Grace reluctantly obeyed and got out of her seat.
“Your name?” asked Madame Demetera.
“Grace Porter,” Grace said glaring at the woman.
“Are you an orphan, Miss Porter?”
“That I am,” Grace replied.
“Ah,” Madame Demetera said as if that simple answer settled the matter, the smug look on her face returning. She took out a pink notepad and began to write with a purple pen. She then stared directly into Grace’s eyes as if she was looking for something. “So then, do feel…” she said something funny that Grace’s brain couldn’t comprehend. It was a word, but it didn’t seem like a word; something that seemed to be made up.
When she saw Grace’s puzzled expression, her smile looked even more malevolent than before. “You will find, Miss Porter, that those who share your rebellious attitude, do not live long and happy lives,” she finished her note, ripped off the piece of paper and gave it to Grace.
“Go to your Headmistress. As she is in charge of you, she will deal with you,” Madame Demetera ordered.
Grace was somewhat happy to oblige. She picked up her school bag and without a backward glance walked out of the classroom door. As soon as the door closed behind her, there was an outburst of talking, an order to be quiet and a muffled cry.
Grace walked down the corridor and into the main office.
The secretary looked up when Grace came through the door. “What are you doing out of…” she stopped when Grace held up the pink slip, “Oh. I’ll tell the Headmistress you’re here.”
Grace didn’t have long to wait. She heard china breaking and a door bursting open. The Headmistress thundered out of her office and when she saw Grace, her face was very thin and her eyes filled with anger. “In,” she ordered, pointing to her office door.
Grace walked into the Headmistress’s office and stood waiting until the Headmistress sat down behind her desk. Tai, who had been sleeping in Grace’s bag but had woken up during the past five minutes, sat himself on Grace shoulder. Grace reached up and rubbed his head as the Headmistress read over the pink slip. Her anger seemed to have subsided after she read it.
“It says here you asked about the Outside World. You also questioned about the Heartless as well as the Thirteenth Order. I don’t blame you for asking such questions but it was the wrong person to question. Madame Demetera is part of the Council and reports directly to the Commander. She seems at times ‘full of it’ but she is a very dangerous individual,” the Headmistress looked at the slip again, “She recommends that I suspend you immediately. However finals begin tomorrow, so it would seem fit to suspend you just for the rest of the day,” she took out a slip of paper and a pen, “If you miss anything important, I’ll daresay you’ll get it from your friends. You will report back after dinnertime and go directly to your dormitories.” She signed the slip of paper and handed it to Grace, “Do you understand?”
Grace nodded once and picked up her bag once more.
“And take this with you too,” the Headmistress handed her two five dollar bills, “I don’t want to hear you complaining about how you starved the entire day when you come back.”
“Okay Grandma!” Grace took the money, “Want me to promise to be a good little girl too?”
“Just stay out of trouble,” the Headmistress waved her away.
“I would if trouble didn’t find me first,” Grace remarked opening the door, but not before laying one of the fives down on her seat.
The Headmistress shook her head. “That should keep her out of my hands and let her cool off.” She then noticed the five on the seat where Grace had sat and couldn’t help but smile.
************************************************************************
Grace spent the rest most of the early afternoon in the Northern District, the entertainment center and shopping district of Juno City. She bought herself two Double Cheeseburgers and a pack of small fries at a McDonalds. She then bought a soft serve ice cream cone and went up to the Observation Deck at the top of the city wall. Usually there was no one up there at this time because there was nothing to look at except wasteland, but at nighttime, it was a great romantic spot for couples when all the lights were on and the occasional twinkling star in the night sky.
“That puffed up pastry!” Grace cursed, kicking a rolled up piece of paper, licking her ice cream, “Should be called Madame Demented! Did you heard how she treated us?” she asked Tai, but didn’t wait for an answer, “Like we were Third Graders! And that look she had when she stared at me! Like I was some piece of garbage!” She attempted to lick her ice cream some more but found that in the extreme ninety-degree heat it had melted. She threw it angrily in the trash.
“I don’t think you’re garbage,” said Tai honestly, “I think you’re pretty.”
Grace’s head did a slow one-eighty turn.
“She only looked at you like that because you stood up against her and you’re an orphan,” said Tai.
“Thanks Tai,” Grace said quietly before turning back to the wasteland scenery.
Tai hovered beside her. “What kind of world do you think is out there?” he asked.
“Who knows? But I imagine,” Grace started to sing, “There’s a little tiny island, where children play together, day after day, in a world I have dream’d. There’s a town that sits in twilight, where the trains are always running, and the people sit and talk for hours, in a world out there. There’s a castle in village, a happy village filled with people, living in the daylight, in a world I need to see. There’s garden in a small town, with someone very special waiting for me. I keep wishing it could be that way, because my home is out there somewhere.”
“That’s pretty,” complimented Tai, “Wait? Who’s the special someone? Is it her?” he asked, pointing to Grace’s locket.
Grace took the locket in her hand. “No,” she shook her head.
“Is it me?”
Grace smiled, “No, unfortunately it’s not you. It’s strange; I know it’s a boy but I can’t picture his face and I don’t even know his name. But I know he has a nice smile.”
“Who has a nice smile?”
Grace turned to see that she and Tai weren’t alone on the observation deck; Anemone and her entourage had arrived.
“Hello, your Majesty,” frowned Grace.
“Why aren’t you in school?” asked Tai.
Anemone looked shocked. “Excuse me? But did the toy just talk to me?”
“Fine. If you won’t listen to him,” said Grace, “I’ll say it. Why aren’t you in school?”
“School’s over. Like hang around that dump any longer than I have too. So,” her attention turned to the wasteland, “Thinking about the outside, are we?” Anemone mouth began to curl into a smile, “Because if you really are a Nobody, then you simply don’t belong in this realm.”
“Heh. You can insult me all you want, cause-” Grace stopped realizing what Anemone had just said, “Wait a minute…this realm? Anemone…what do you know that no one else does?”
Anemone had realized her mistake; her hand almost went up to her mouth as if she had said something she shouldn’t have. The girls in her entourage looked at her anxiously, waiting for her next move.
“Well, that is to say…if your hypotheses is correct…from your understanding that the Heartless came from another world,” Anemone regained her confidence, “Why don’t you prove it? All that you would have to do, is go over that wall.”
Grace took a quick glance at the edge of the wall behind her. “Okay then,” she took a step backwards and stepped on top of the edge of the wall.
Several girls gasped. “You wouldn’t,” smirked Anemone, folding her arms.
“Maybe I would,” Grace lifted one of her legs so that it hung over the edge, the wind lifting up into her skirt.
“Gracey,” pleaded Tai.
It was intense for several seconds, so much so that one of the girls passed out. Grace lowered her leg. “You honest think I’m that stupid?” she grinned, “I would to fall to my death if I jumped off.”
Anemone fumed with rage.
“Gracey,” Grace heard Tai call her name again.
“I’m fine,” Grace turned back to him, “Nothing-”
Tai was acting strange. His lights were starting to fade and he started to shutter, like an old engine before it gave out. “I feel really funny,” he said and he started to hover around strangely, as if he couldn’t focus where to go. Then he froze and his lights faded.
Grace caught him before he hit the ground.
“Looks like the toy went and broke,” laughed Anemone, “Better get a new one.”
“Shut up!” shouted Grace, “Move!” she pushed through the group of girls and ran down the stairs.
She wasn’t going to lose Tai. Not yet.
************************************************************************
“Anemone! Anemone!” called Clarise, “Oh! Where’d she go this time?” She was in the center of a park, looking for her sister, who had left school before she could return Clarise’s cellphone.
When she came to the conclusion that her sister wasn’t in the park anymore, she gave up, and started to walk home. As she walked down the path, she took a corner without looking and ran into someone.
Clarise fell to the ground, “Hey-” she started but stopped as soon as she saw the person’s face. It was a girl, a very pale girl with very fair hair, but what draw Clarise’s attention to her were the girl’s pale eyes.
“I’m sorry,” said the girl, “Did I hurt you?”
“Oh, no!” said Clarise quickly getting to her feet and helping the girl up, “It’s my fault! I wasn’t looking where I was going!”
“Well neither was I, to be honest,” said the pale girl.
Clarise didn’t know how to reply.
“Margot! Margot!” someone called.
It was a boy with brown hair wearing a pair of goggles ran up to them out of breath. “You shouldn’t wander off like that!” chided the boy to the girl, Margot, “You’re going to get lost if you keep it up!”
“I’m sorry Matti,” apologized Margot, “But I heard the noise again and I had to get away from it. It hurts my ears.”
“Well we don’t want that to happen,” remarked Matti with a smile, “But who’s this?” He took notice to Clarise.
“Just a friend I bumped into,” explained Margot.
“And you are?” asked Matti.
“C-Clarise,” she felt her face turn red, “Nice to meet you.”
“Oh,” said Matti, the tone of his voice suddenly changing, “Well, we need to be going, if you don’t mind.”
Matti turned away quickly so that Clarise didn’t see his face turning red. But why though, he asked himself. Why was it he found one of the Commander’s daughters beautiful?
Clarise watched them walked away, her face still red with blushing from seeing the boy. She thought back to the girl’s name instead. “Margot…All Summer in a Day…that forbidden story…” she looked up at the sky.
************************************************************************
“‘Out of the nursery into the college, and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern of the last five centuries or more.’” Joey lowered his book. He couldn’t exactly focus on the book, exciting as it was, when his head was wandering off. He had another visit with his grandfather that day, just as strange and peculiar as the last, but at least he found out more about the mysterious ‘Great War’.
“So then, where was I?” his grandfather asked when they sit down to chat.
“You were going on about how everyone was invading and going to war and the thing being a complete mess,” recalled Joey.
“Ah yes! As the war went on, it took its toll economically on every nation and not just the ones involved, what is called ‘total war’. Soldiers were recruited, armed and trained and the government had to pay for everything. Some foods, such as sugar and meat, were rationed as well as gas. Both sides used propaganda, to promote a cause and boost morale. Women were taking over men’s jobs to keep the economy going.
“But morale of both the troops and the civilians was dropping. Germany had to recruit 15 year olds for their army. Britain was almost bankrupt and desertions were common. The Russian czar, their term for leader, was forced abdicate and Lenin of the Communist party took over. Lenin then signed a peace treaty of Brest-Litovski with Germany; now the Germans only had to worry about one front.
“As part of their strategy, German submarines attacked merchant and passenger ships belonging to the Allies. They ending up sinking the British ship ‘Lusitania’, killing 128 Americans.”
“Americans?” asked Joey, once again recognizing the language connection.
“Those that belong to this large country over here, also known as the US,” his grandfather pointed to a big country on the other side of the ocean on the map he had pulled out, “The Americans were furious. But what also pushed them to war was the Zimmerman Note. Arthur Zimmerman of Germany was to get Mexico, right here, below the US, to attack the US but the British intercepted it. Then in April of 1917, the US declared War on Germany and they immediately started to recruit and send troops over seas. And that began the turning point of the war.
“With the US on the Allies side, Germany didn’t stand a chance. By the fall of 1918, the German generals told their leader, Kaiser William II that the war was lost. Uprisings exploded in the cities; the people wanted out. A month later he abdicated. On November 11, 1918 an armistice was signed ending World War I.
“The human toll was staggering: 8.5 million people dead, 17 million were wounded, and millions more handicap. In 1918, an influenza epidemic wiped out more than 20 million people. From France to Russia, homes, farms, factories, roads, churches, you name it were destroyed. The governments of Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire: all collapsed.
“Then came time for the peace talks. Woodrow Wilson, the US leader and representative wanted the conference to accept his Fourteen Points Plan for peace and pushed for a League of Nations, which would allow countries to negotiate rather than to fight with each other. David Lloyd George of Britain demanded very harsh treatment for Germany. Georges Clemenceau from France, also known as ‘the Tiger’ wanted to weaken Germany so they could never again attack France. Vitorio Orlando of Italy simply wanted more territory.”
“But what about Germany?” asked Joey.
“Germany? They were completely left out of the entire process. They weren’t allowed in until the end of it, when they had to sign the treaty. They were shocked to find out what they had just gotten into. One) Germany had to assume full guilt of starting the war. Two) They had to pay huge reparations, about 33 billion dollars,” explained his Grandfather.
“33 billion? Is that how much it would be now or back then?” asked Joey.
“Back then,” his Grandfather continued, “Three) The German military couldn’t reform. Four) The borderlands of Alsace and Lorrane had to return to France. And Five) Germany lost all of her overseas countries.”
“But that’s really unfair! How could they stand for that?” asked Joey.
“They had been defeated. They had no choice,” his Grandfather explained, “But they weren’t the only ones dissatisfied. New countries popped up as a result of the war. This made Russia unhappy as some those countries once belong to them. Many of the overseas colonies expected to gain their independence but instead France and Britain gained new ones. Italy never got the lands it was promised. The western nations didn’t recognize the rising power of Japan in the Far East. The League of Nations that had been established, well let’s say the US refused to join as it wished to return to normalcy.
“But all was not well. For you see, there would come a terrible war, far more horrific than the last, and it would all start with one man and a secret project that would change the world forever,” his grandfather finished in a whisper, as if he was trying to impress his grandson.
Joey pressed on for more but his grandfather said he would have to wait until tomorrow.
“Hey Joey! You awake?” Matti knocked on his door breaking his concentration.
“Yeah!”
“That Porter girl here’s to see you again! It’s about her robot.”
“It shouldn’t have crashed already,” Joey remarked getting of his bed. He took his tool kit from his desk and climbed down the stairs into his lab, formerly his father’s garage.
Grace was already there, very white in the face and looked like moments earlier she had been crying. Tai had been laid down on the worktable. Grace looked up when Joey entered the room.
“What happened?” he asked opening up his tool kit.
“I don’t know. He just…collapsed,” Grace said, almost like she was on the verge of crying again.
Joey examined Tai, turning him around, looking under his arms and the back of his head. “There doesn’t seem to be any damage to the exterior. It must be on the inside,” Joey then laid Tai back down and opened up his hardware. “His operating system is still running,” remarked Joey, “That’s good. And everything else seems to be intact. I wonder…does he receive any digital signals or even analog?”
“He gets a couple of e-mails and text messages but that’s about it,” said Grace, more at ease when she heard Tai would be all right.
“But none the less he gets some sort of signal. My guess is he picked up something strong enough that his processor couldn’t handle and that triggered his collapse. But what though? Cellphones aren’t that strong to knock him out; it would have to be a very high frequency ultrasonic sound to do that. Or it could be just the heat. A couple of friends said their computers crashed because of the heat yesterday,” explained Joey, “Any way, his memory configuration should’ve saved. Here we go!”
Joey messed with something and a second later, Tai miraculously came back to life.
“Ow!” He rubbed his head, “My head hurts.”
“Oh Tai!” Grace wrapped him up in her arms. “I was so worried!”
“Gracey, don’t tell me you’ve been crying again,” frowned Tai, but then started to smile.
“Joey, are you down there?” asked Margot from the stairs.
“I’m down here!” called Joey, “Grace Porter’s here too!”
Margot slowly climbed down the stairs and walked into the lab. Tai hovered up to her.
“Hi, Margot. It’s me Tai!” he said cheerfully.
“Hello Tai,” Margot replied.
“Margot, why don’t you and Tai play outside for awhile? It’s gotten cooler out know that the sun’s about to go down,” suggested Joey.
“All right,” said Margot as Joey opened the garage door.
“Come on!” Tai took Margot’s hands and led her outside.
Joey and Grace watched them from the doorway. “Only five more days,” said Joey.
“It’s just so stupid. Even if I try to save him, there’s always that risk that…he’ll never be the same, that he’ll forget about me,” Grace slammed her fist into the side of the door.
“If I had time and the resources, I could build him a body, a better body, a more human body,” Joey added, “But artificial skin is so expensive and he would need a new body almost every year and there’s still that risk with his memory. Of course, there is…one more thing…you could do,” Joey looked at Grace, “You could just shut him down yourself; it would put his programming on hold. It would be like turning off a computer, just never turning it back on. It would give me some time to work on a new body or something to override his programming.”
“I don’t think I could do that either,” Grace shook her head, “What if he never turn back on again? Or he’ll restart but he won’t remember me? Or what if so much time has pass before we find a solution that he won’t mean as much as he does now? Or what if something happens to me and he stays like that…”
“Well, in that situation, Margot and I would take care of him,” said Joey, “She loves him as much as you do. Her laughter’s different when she’s with him.” He smiled watching his sister play. “Don’t you worry Grace, we’ll find a way. But I got to say, for a machine, Tai’s the most human like one yet. He just too human to be a machine,” remarked Joey. “But…”
“He’s too machine to be human,” Grace finished his sentence.
They watched as Margot and Tai played in the garden, until Grace finally said, “Well, I better get going. Come on, Tai!” Grace called.
“Aw, man!” Tai moaned. “See you later!” he squeezed Margot’s hand.
“See you soon!” waved Joey, leading Margot back inside.
As Grace walked down the street, holding Tai in her arms. “What should we do now? We still got two hours left,” said Grace.
“I don’t know. You’re the one who usually decides where to go,” said Tai.
“Hmm…we need to go by and pick my weapon back up. I also want to know if Axel cracked that computer yet,” said Grace.
“Do really need to go by that place? That Axel guy freaks me out. My circuits get all weird whenever I’m around him,” complained Tai.
“Well I am out of money and I don’t have sub pass with me,” Grace sighed, “It’s too long of a walk to get there and go all the way back to school.”
“Hey, Gracey!” someone called.
“Ling?” Grace turned around when she recognized the voice. “What are you doing here?” Grace asked when she caught up with them.
“I got a call from one of Grandpa’s neighbors. They’re complaining he’s acting strange. Well stranger than usual, I guess, so I’m going to go check on him. It’s because he doesn’t like being cooped up in there. One of these days I’m going to get a phone call and they’ll say he broke out or something,” sighed Ling.
“That would be your Grandpa,” smiled Grace.
“Yeah. He’s been going on lately about how beautiful my mother was, blah blah blah, and how pretty I’ll be, yada, yada. It just makes me think that he thinks he’s going to pass on or something,” said Ling.
“But you’re Grandfather’s not that old!” Grace exclaimed.
“I know, but if something were to happen to him…” Ling shook her head.
“I know what you mean,” said Grace, rubbing Tai’s head.
“Oh, in case you were wondering,” said Ling, suddenly changing the subject, “Right after you left the room, there was this really big outburst of people talking, because honestly, I think they found a point your argument about the Heartless. Then when the teacher was trying to settle everyone down, Mitch did one of her psychic attack and made that government official’s nose bleed so badly, it was if she broke her nose and she started crying. Thanks to that we missed an entire review session because they had to clean the mess up. And, to top it off, everyone started talking about what you did.”
“That’s one way to end the school year,” remarked Grace, “Oh! Speaking of which, that old toad told me something but I didn’t understand what it was. She said, ‘Can you feel…’” Grace then told Ling the word she had heard as best to her ability.
“Strange,” said Ling and she took a moment to think, “In my language, the word ‘sora’ means sky.”
“But what kind of question is that? ‘Can you fell the sky?’” asked Grace.
“Sora is also a name, but there’s no one I know that has that name,” explained Ling. They had arrived at the Elderly Retiree Center at last.
“Do you want to come with me?” asked Ling.
“Sure,” nodded Grace. They both showed their school ID to the guards stationed at the entrance. When they were allowed in, they walked into the tiny little village, passing by houses for the residential people and the medical building for those who couldn’t continue to look after by themselves. As they walked by a group of the elderly enjoying the cooler temperatures, Grace saw that they had stopped talking with each other and were staring at them. Some of them were even smiling at them.
“I hate it when they stared at me,” remarked Grace, “It’s so weird.”
“You get that too?” asked Ling, “I wonder if it’s because we remind them of their grandchildren.”
They continued to walk over a bridge across a small stream until they reached a small one-story house with a large garden out front. “Grandpa!” called Ling, “Grandpa! Are you here? It’s Ling!”
There was a crash and shouting. “GET OUT OF HERE YOU MANGIES! YOU’VE ALREADY BEEN FED!”
There were several hisses and when Ling opened the garden door to find out what was going on, several cats ran out, chased by a short, old man with a long graybeard. “Damn cats,” he grumbled, “Don’t know when to quit.” He then realized Ling and Grace were there. “Oh Ling! And a friend. This isn’t the psychic girl, is she?” the man asked Ling.
“No,” whispered Ling, “This is the American…ish girl.”
“What’s with the cats?” asked Tai.
“Oh, they’re just strays. I usually fed them,” explained Ling’s grandfather, “But they’ve been trying to steal Fifi’s babies. What to see them?”
“Okay,” Grace shrugged, slightly confused as to why he would name his cat ‘Fifi’.
Ling’s grandfather beckoned them over to a flower bush and pulled back the leaves, revealing three black and white spotted kitten and their mother, a mostly black but with a white underbelly cat. “I just gave two away to the neighbor’s grandkids today. I want to get rid of the other two but keep one so the mother doesn’t get lonely. Want one? They’re really- I SAID OUT, DAMN IT!” Ling’s grandfather took a broom and began to chase away a stray that had tried to sneak back in.
“Gracey, can I have one? Please?” Tai begged like a small child that really wanted something.
“Are you going to take care of it? Fed it? Clean it? Play with it? Clean out it’s litter box?” asked Grace and to all these questions Tai nodded.
“Okay,” said Grace and with a huge smile on his face, Tai picked up one of the kittens and carried it in his arms like a baby. After rubbing under its chin, the kitten started to purr.
“I think I’ll call it Moo-Moo,” said Tai.
“Why?” asked Grace, suppressing a giggle.
“Cause it looks like a cow,” explained Tai. Grace and Ling tried hard not to laugh.
Ling’s grandfather invited them in for dinner, a bowl of noodles with boiled shrimp. As Grace and Ling talked about Finals, Tai played with the kitten. Ling’s grandfather was going on about how arduous Finals were in his day, when the kitten started to cry.
“Tai did you do something?” asked Grace, “Tai?”
Tai had his hand on his head. “Gracey, I feel funny again.” Grace took hold of him and held him, just as the lights started to flicker and die.
Ling’s grandfather stared at the lights, then said, “I think it’s time you should head back to your school. Now.” He said in a somewhat urgent manner.
************************************************************************
All across the city, the lights waned and died. Not too many people panicked. It was this heat wave, they reasoned, nothing more.
Joey wandered down into the living room, where his father had lit some candles. “Of all the times for it to go out,” groaned Joey taking a candle, “I was working on something important.”
“You were?” Matti came down the stairs, picking up a candle, “I was in the middle of intense boss battle.”
“Where’s your sister?” asked their father, Dr. Carter.
“She should be in her room,” said Matti.
“I’ll go check on her,” Joey climbed up the stairs, into Margot’s bedroom.
“Margot? Margot!” he raised the candle to look inside, then he heard a groan on the floor.
“Margot!” he almost dropped his candle and picked his sister up. “Dad! Get up here! Margot, what’s wrong?”
“That’s noise…it hurts my ears so much…” she said breathlessly, as if she was in pain.
“What noise?” asked Joey.
“The noise,” Margot went on, “Don’t you hear it?”
Dr. Carter and Matti ran into to Margot’s room and Dr. Carter took Margot’s hands, Matti watching helplessly nearby. “Margot, honey, what’s wrong?”
“It’s coming back,” she whispered and she tried to cover her ears but she couldn’t help but cry.
Then Joey heard it: a very low pitch noise, almost unnoticeable, but now that he heard it, it was annoying the more he listened to it. The lights then flickered back on and Margot took her hands off ears. The noise had stopped, but what was it that Joey had briefly heard that Margot could hear so strongly that it had made her act like that?
************************************************************************
“Then find out what’s wrong and fix it!” the Commander roared before slamming the phone down. He turned back to two men standing before him. “Now, where were we? Ah yes, you were telling me how after ten years, you cannot find one girl!”
“W-we had very close m-matches but none of t-them had the d-double iris,” stammered the one man.
“And you’ve check all the schools? All the districts?” asked the Commander.
“All of them,” replied the other man calmly.
“Well, there is one place we haven’t looked yet,” whispered the first man.
“What?” the Commander’s eyes flashed.
“Y-you see, s-sir-” stammered the first man, but his partner took over.
“According to Civilian Decree 19, none of the orphanages established in Juno City can be searched without an emergency cause that would put civilians at risk. Even if we were to fabricate an outbreak of a disease, they wouldn’t let us touch their children without solid evidence they were at risk. And with St. Peter’s-”
“Being the only orphanage in the city, it’s the only place left,” finished the Commander, “I had forgotten about the damn decree.” The Commander was silent for a while, then he said, “Do you think a child, given the information, would be able to distinguish the girl we’re looking for?”
“A child?” asked the first man.
“A more mature child; a teenager,” the Commander corrected.
“Most likely,” said the second man, “Why?”
“We cannot touch St. Peter’s, so we are going to need an inside man. Those fools would never suspect a child being a spy,” he smiled looking at a picture of his daughters, “We will find this little rat. No…no, no, no,” the Commander corrected himself, “‘Rat’ would be most unfitting for such a beautiful girl. She is a pretty little mouse that will soon be captured.”
There is an urban legend told in the alleyways of Juno City…about a world that existed long ago…
The people of this world had everything and had nothing. They were at peace and they were at war. They were generous and kind and they were greedy and selfish. Then, an unknown enemy came to this world and attacked the people.
The people used everything they had to protect themselves against the enemy, even weapons of mass destruction that could kill thousands in an instant, but the enemy would only strike back with twice as much force. The enemy began to consume the planet.
Soon the world began to tear apart and the people left as the enemy took over their world and destroyed it completely. The lives that were lost were too terrible to even put in numbers, but what was worse was the people had to leave that beautiful yet terrible world behind.
No one knows for sure if such a world and such a people ever existed. The government denies any evidence of the people, the world, or even the unknown enemy.
But sometimes, the elders look towards the sky and silently, they cry. When they talk in groups, they whisper about the “Old World”. Their sons and daughters shake their heads, sigh “It’s only a fairy tale.” However, when they finished their crying and their whispers, they turn to their grandchildren and smile, as if they are the ones who will lead the great people back to the “Old World”…
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all heaven in a Rage.
A Dove house fill’d with doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.
A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus’d upon the road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fiber from the Brain does tear.
A Skylark wounded in the wing,
A Cherubim does cease to sing.
The Game Cook clip’d & arm’d for fight
Does the Rising Sun afright.
Every Wolf’s & Lion’s howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul.
The wild deer, wand’ring here & there
Keep the Human Soul from Care.
The Lamb misus’d breed public strife
And yet forgives the Butcher’s knife.
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that won’t Believe
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbeliever’s fright.
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belov’d by Men.
He who the Ox to wrath has mov’d
Shall never be by Woman lov’d.
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spider’s enmity
He who torments the Chafer’s Sprite
Weaves a Bowen in endless Might
The Caterpillar or the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mother’s grief.
Kill not the Moth or the Butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
Aguries of Innocence by William Blake
-Lines 1-40
CHAPTER ONE: AN INTRODUCTION OF HEROINES (AND HEROES)
At seven-thirty in the morning, the cluster city of Juno began to wake up. First, electricity followed through the magnets of the subway trains and they began to move to their programmed stops. Public transportation began as people emerged from their homes into their cars on the already hot asphalt pavement streets. With the humid dampness in the air, it would sure be a hot one again today. The streetlights turned off, however the rings of florescent light around the city walls and major streets remained on. These lights were always on 24/7, although no one really understood why. They just knew if they ever went off, something terrible would happen. But usually, no one took much notice of it, even when the lights began to flicker ever so slightly.
As the rest of the city began to rise with the sun, the bells of the St. Peter’s Orphanage and School for Girls, signaled the wake-up call for the girls in their dormitories for breakfast. Girls from as young as four or five up to that of seventeen and eighteen climbed out of their beds into the cafeteria, dressed in a uniform of a black skirt, white blouse, red tie, black stockings, and black shoes, with the red school jacket. Another bell rang at the end of breakfast at 8:05 AM to begin classes.
The teacher began to call role for homeroom. A girl walked in late with a black bag and wearing along with her uniform, black fishnets and dark eyeliner. Her hair was dyed black as well and she stared at the teacher vaguely with her brown eyes. She was from the Slavic sect; her fair skin was proof of that. She wasn’t technically an orphan, as she lived with her grandmother, the Great Physic Madame Radshaik. When the teacher called her name (“Radshaik, Michelle!”) she replied with, “Darkness is eternal,” her usual greeting, or at least until the teacher learned to address her as Mitch. Her bag felt heavier this morning. She reached down and felt something warm and large, Marshmallow, her ferret, no doubt. He probably found her turkey sandwich she would have had for lunch. “Stupid…” she began but thought better of it. The six sense was going off; she grinned. Was it the forces of darkness? She looked over towards a girl in the back.
A girl with fair skin but different shaped eyes was reciting some prayer under her breath. She looked up quickly when the teacher called her for role (“Su, Ling!”), then started to pray again. No one knew what sect she belong to but it wasn’t English, Slavic, or Romantic, but something entirely different. Mitch saw she was playing with her fingers: something was up.
Mitch looked towards the other side of the room where a girl with mousy hair and glasses wrote feverishly in a journal. Lucy Stuart was an orphan in the truest sense unlike Mitch or Ling. She belonged to the English sect and as everyone knew her family was rich but no one knew the reason why she was rich. Rumor was her family founded Juno City. The cheerleaders, grouped in the back, pointed in laugh, probably because they found Lucy lack of mammary glad funny. They stopped at once as soon as Mitch began to stare at them. They knew if they made Mitch mad, they would experience sudden nose bleeds and headaches.
Mitch then turned to the seat a little ways in front of her. It was empty. Of course…
These three girls are indeed involved in this story but the main character is still yet to be introduced. And she was the girl missing.
The teacher looked up from her roster and saw that “she” was missing. Usually when “she” disappeared, the other three of her entourage were gone as well. Mitch was the only one who usually went alone.
“Well?” she asked, flashing her spectacles, “Has anyone seen Miss Porter?”
“She wasn’t at breakfast,” replied one of the cheerleaders, trying to suppress a giggle.
“So then she’s ill?” the teacher looked around and her eyes landed on Mitch, “Well Miss Radshaik?”
“The forces of darkness aren’t talking, so it’s safe to say she still on this side,” Mitch replied. The teacher ignored this comment.
“Ling! Check Miss Porter’s dormitories, will you?”
Ling stopped playing with her fingers and left the classroom. Lucy mouthed to Mitch, “She’s gone out again?”
Mitch shrugged. The senses only told her so much. Instead, she pulled out a CD player, plugged the earpiece in her head and turned up the volume on max to a song called “Call Me When Your Sober”.
Ling returned ten minutes later. “She’s not there ma’am. Nor is Tai.”
“That Grace Porter!” fumed the teacher and went to her phone, dialing the headmistress number. “One of these days, that girl is going to get it!”
************************************************************************
The girl in question, Grace Porter, raised her head above the edge of the plateau. She pulled herself over and stood up. She brushed the red dust off her black pants and straightened her black leather jacket, pushing her black braided hair back. A small robot gleaned in stainless silver with blue markings, floated besides her.
“Gracey! Gracey! Are you sure we should do this? I mean we’re not even suppose to be out here,” said the robot, his circuits shaking.
Grace turned back to him with a smile, her cornflower eyes gleaming. “If we don’t get caught, then no one has to know we were out here. Besides, what’s there to worry about?”
“But what about the Heartless?” the robot followed close behind her.
“There’s no Heartless. They won’t show up in a place like this,” Grace walked forward, spotting something gleaming in the distance.
“That’s what you said last time, and the time before that, and even the time before THAT! And guess what? Everytime, they’ve shown up!” yelled the robot. “Gracey?”
The girl had run ahead of him, leaving him behind. The wind picked up, howling like a ferocious monster and he screamed, “GRACEY!” shooting towards her like a bullet. Grace turned to see what he was crying about when he flew right into her jacket.
“Aww, I’m sorry,” she said affectionately, petting his head gently, “Are you okay?”
“F-fine,” he stammered, still shaky, “J-just p-peachy.”
Grace turned her attention to object in front of her. It was a large as a house and was once white but now by wind and time, had rusted and blackened with dirt and dust. She touched the surface. “Weird…what do you think it is, Tai?” asked Grace.
The robot analyzed the surface with his sensors. “Seems to be titanium with some sort of heat resistant coating.”
“There’s a door here…maybe…it’ll…open!” She knocked her arm against the door and it jolted open. Old fumes of petroleum and death reeked out. “Egh…what do you think it is?”
“Hmm…my library isn’t recognizing any of this,” replied the robot. “There’s a lot of Carbon Monoxide though, not enough to kill but if we stay here long enough you might get sick.” The robot then turned back to her, “Gracey? Are you sure we should do this? I know you’re fascinated with the outside world but…”
“We’ll be in and out in fifteen minutes,” Grace stepped into the door. She looked around. It reminded her almost like the inside of a subway train compartment, with seats, but they seemed to be made out of the same material as chairs. “Seems like some sort of transportation vehicle but what’s it doing out here? Turn on your flashlight,” Grace added to Tai. One his small compartments of his head opened up and the light beamed across the room.
The beam fell on a rotting corpse.
“Now we know what smells,” complemented Tai, as Grace found something near the skeleton that peaked her interest. It was a black rectangular box, only unlike a box, it was very heavy. It opened strangely, popping up from the top. The girl stared at it with wonder. While the outside was smooth it was still rough, but the top portion of the box was very smooth and she could somewhat see her reflection. As for the bottom portion, there were letter keys, almost like…
“…a computer?” she lifted it up, “What a strange computer. The keys are attached to the software component. Either way…” she noticed the small ports and unlit LEDs, “…it’s some sort of machine. Wonder if it works? There should be a power switch here somewhere. Is this it?” Grace flipped a small button that looked important in the back.
The machine began to hum and the smooth portion of the machine flashed. “The screen?” Grace asked herself as it flashed again and words in white with a black background appeared. “It’s in an English sect. ‘Error… Detected…Please…install…Operating System’.” She read the words with her finger at the screen. “Operating System?”
Tai meanwhile had hovered into the back of the transportation vehicle. “Why do I always get dragged into these things? She never listens to me anyway, but yet I somehow get pulled along. One of these days, I’m gonna be like, ‘I told you so!’ or something rather. That is…as long as a Heartless doesn’t rip my circuits out before that.” Something from above him growled. He looked up and saw a dark creature hanging from the ceiling, its yellow pupil less eyes staring at him. “Why can’t she ever be right about them?” The creature pounced. “HEARTLESS!”
Grace heard the robot scream and quickly put away the computer, pulling out her LightLASER. Tai came squealing into the room towards her, the Heartless running behind him. She fired two shots of a bright light projectile, striking the creature in the shoulder and the chest. Tai cowered behind her, as she whispered. “It’s a big one. Wonder how many hearts that beast’s taken?” She fired again as the creature lunged at her and knocked her to the ground. It leaped on top of her but she blasted at its neck and threw it off.
“Let’s go!” she told Tai and she bolted out the door into the outside. She ran a few yards, panting and turned back to look at the transportation vehicle.
“Did you get it?” asked Tai, shivering.
She scanned the ground and saw a dark shadowing moving towards them. “Not quite. Run!” she yelled, running towards the cliff. Grace fired a few more light burst from her LightLASER, but it merely struck the ground. Then her pistol jammed. “Stupid thing!” she waked it hard with her hand.
She was at the edge of the cliff now, and the Heartless was about to emerge out of the ground. “Gracey, move!” shouted Tai and she jumped off the edge onto her sky board. She pulled the sky board away from the edge, just as the Heartless tumbled over the cliff.
“Take that you big bully!” cheered Tai and happily floated over towards Grace as she pulled on her goggles. She took one quick look at the Heartless far down on the ground below before starting up her boosters and zooming away from the cliff and off into the red wasteland.
Grace adjusted the wing of her diver turning left and right. The diver’s sensors picked up a wind coming from behind her, so she reduced the output of its boosters and let the wind take over. Almost like a hover board, the sky diver used the world’s magnetic field to let it float above the ground but not far away to over come the force of gravity. The computer chip inside was constantly readjusting the magnetic output to keep the board stable as any miscalculation could throw off the board completely and send it crashing. Because of the wing added to it, the sky diver could move faster than a standard hover board and was useful for travel across the terrain outside of Juno City. However, since no one had traveled outside the city in the decade that the Heartless had arrived and the computer chip that measured out all the magnetic calculations was expensive, only a few people had a sky diver and even fewer could repair it.
The city walls were now appearing over the horizon as Grace slowed down the sky diver enough so she could stop at the city walls. She jumped off her sky diver and pressed a small button underneath it. In the time it took to take off her goggles, the sky driver folded itself up to resembled that of a rectangular pole. It was no heavier than the books she carried around for school everyday. Sneaking through the blind spots of the video cameras above, she and Tai came to the opening of a storm drain. “Why do we have to go through here?” asked Tai, “It stinks.”
“Sorry, but you were the one who said that the storm drains were the weakest link in the city walls,” said Grace as she climb through the pipe. Tai sighed as he followed behind her, turning on his flashlight. They meandered through the pipe corridors, following a route that only a rat could know until a shaft of sunlight signaled the end of the tunnel.
They came out into a waterway in the South District of the city. South District was the most populated of the city and it was easy to blend in and get lost in the crowd from the eyes of the government. With the shops not yet overwhelmed by morning customers, the shopkeepers began to talk in all sorts of language sects: the English Dialectics, The Romanics, the Slavic, and the mysterious sets of the unknown. Others eyed their competitors with interested, checking prices and good deals.
“Where are we going?” asked Tai, “Don’t tell me we’re going to that guy!”
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Grace.
“One) He shows out of the blue two months ago, Two) He likes fire way too much, Three) He’s emo! Four) He’s scary…”
“He is not emo! Emo went out, oh god, years ago! Besides, he’s the only one who can fix the LASERlight,” she stopped. A group of old women who had been staring at her looked away and began to whisper in undertones. Grace was used to this by now, the elderly staring at her, before whispering to each other. Occasionally, she would get a smile, as well as some that would shake her hand for no apparent reason. Why, though? What was it that made them stare at her like that? Was it her purple eyes perhaps?
Grace and Tai continued to walk through the streets until they came to a shop with a sign hanging above labeled, “Fire Lucky Eight! Juno’s source for Firearms, Explosives, and Knives. We also repair Sky Divers!” In the window was a neat display of empty bomb castings and next to it was a shiny air rifle on display.
Grace opened the door ignoring the mandatory “Minors must be accompanied by an adult” sign and walked inside. The lights above were dimmed down so low that Grace almost needed to squint in order to see. The smell of incense and gunpowder swirled into her nostrils.
A man in his mid-twenties with flaming red hair hid underneath his hat came in from the back room. His suit reminded Grace of a mechanics; he had working on explosives from all the gunpowder on his shirt, especially a large stain underneath his name badge, “Axel”.
“Whatda’ya want this time? I fixed your Sky Diver last week,” he groaned.
Graced tossed him her LASERlight. “It jammed again.”
He examined the firearm closely, talking as he made observations, “Fighting Heartless I see.”
“I can’t help it if they keep on attacking me. This one was a little bit too close to the city. They seem to be getting restless,” said Grace.
The man’s eyes flashed at Grace for a brief second, just before opening up the gun casing. “No kidding. Where’d you go?”
“There was this weird transportation vehicle. I’ve never seen anything like it. I also found this,” Grace opened up her bag and pulled out the computer.
Axel immediately put the LASERlight down and picked up the computer.
“I’m sure it’s a computer. But there’s a problem with the something system…”
“Operating System,” Axel corrected her, watching the message flash up, “Give me some time and I’ll get it back together.”
“But it’s in American English, I think…”
“All computers are the same. They contain a Hard Drive, a Processor, an Operating System, the software, the RAM, the ROM, and a FILE drive. You don’t need to know the language in order to figure out how to put it back together. Besides, I can understand English, same as you. By the way,” he looked at her with his green eyes, eyeliner marks underneath them, “Shouldn’t you be in school today?”
“There’s nothing going on at school today, except…” She froze, “Oh dang it! Final preparation! Tai! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m not suppose to keep track of your schedule!” he yelled, “I told you! We should’ve gone to school!”
“Sorry! Got to go!” Grace grabbed her bag and ran out the door, Tai speeding behind her.
“Hey! Don’t you want your weapon?” asked Axel.
“I’ll come by for it later!” Grace called and she slammed the door behind her.
Axel sighed and began to take the computer apart. The lights above him began to flicker and suddenly went out.
“Oh boy…” he muttered but couldn’t help but smile. He sort of had a thing for chaos.
Outside in the city, people looked around suddenly as the subway stopped, lights went out, and air conditioning shut off. Then as soon as it stopped it all came back on. Nothing to worry about. The lights were still on.
************************************************************************
Now it is time to introduce another character of significance of this story. Joseph Carter sat at his computer, studying for his AP Computer Science Final. He careful thought about each answer provided on the holographic screen, just before touching the screen to choice his answer. Continuing to stare at the screen, he thought about his weird, yet fascinating conversation he had earlier with his grandfather.
His grandfather, William Carter, was an extraordinary man who helped in founding the last city of mankind. It was thanks to him, that all the people could live conferrable in Juno City. It was William Carter that built the waterways, the train lines, and more importantly the energy plant beneath the city that ran everything. Then William Carter retired and he was sent with most deemed respect by the government to the Elderly Retiree Center in the North End district.
Joseph Carter had visited his grandfather once a day after attending The School of Future Geniuses ever since he had hit the age of thirteen. “Now, Joseph,” he grandfather had said to him, “It’s time to learn the truth. We’ll begin with a story.”
Joseph had laid down his tea cup. Usually, his grandfather would call him Joey or Joe. Never before in his life had his grandfather refer to him as Joseph, not even when he was in trouble.
“Do you know what imperialism is?”
Joey nodded. “That’s when people buy houses to increase their owner ship.”
“Ah…” his grandfather sighed, “That is simply what they have told you. The type of imperialism I’ll referring to is conquering other lands.”
“Conquering…other lands?” he asked, but his grandfather silenced him.
“What I’m telling you is merely fiction. Simply fiction. Do you understand?”
Joey nodded his head but didn’t understand. His grandfather pulled out a book. It was an old book; the pages were stained yellow and it was covered in several layers of dust. When his grandfather opened up the book, Joey found himself staring at a map of colored shapes. “This is a map of countries, that is to say pieces of land that are home to different people. They make up a continent called Europe. These countries however, do not exist.”
“I know what countries are,” remarked Joey, “There used to be dozens of them before the Heartless came.”
“Well then, than I won’t have to explain as much. You see this large country here?” his grandfather pointed on the map. “This is the Austria-Hungarian Empire. Over here, is Germany and right next to it is France.”
“Austria-Hungarian Empire, Germany, France,” he recited. But wait a minute; a thought had suddenly occurred to him. German was one of the English Sects; French was one of the Romantic Sects. Could those languages have some relevance with these countries? But his grandfather had said that the countries did not exist.
His grandfather continued, “At what would be a time so long ago that my grandfather was not even a small boy, strong nationalistic, that is-”
“-extreme patriotism for one’s country-”
“Indeed, nationalistic feelings ran high in both Germany and France. You see, France had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War and as a result of the war, Germany now had possession of Alasce and Lorraine, two small provinces that were rich in materials for Germany’s factories. This help made Germany one of the leading economic powers in all of Europe. There was competition for colonies, especially in the continent of Africa, which is down here, and the country of India, which isn’t on this map. Anyway, France and Great Britain –this island country over here- were gaining up on Germany in the number of colonies they had. This also led to an increase buildup in their armies. Add the fact that none of the countries really trusted each other and you have a mess on your hands. Germany then signed a treaty with Italy –this one down here, the one touching France- and Austria-Hungary (I’m guessing you know what a treaty is) and Britain and France signed an entente. Sooner or later something was going to give.”
“So then, what caused it to give?” asked Joey, now interested.
“The assassination of Franz Ferdinand.”
“How was killed? Why was he killed?”
“Well it had to do with a conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. The countries of Bosnia and Serbia had recently been in a civil war and had been split apart. The Serbians saw Austria-Hungary as an enemy, so on June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip of Serbia shot and killed the heir to the Austria-Hungary throne and his wife while he was visiting Sarajevo, Bosnia,” explained his grandfather.
“1914?” asked Joey.
“Ignore the dates; it’s just to give you an understanding of the time. This is all fiction: remember that. Anyway, the Austrian government used the assassination as an excuse to crush Serbia for good so they sent them an ultimatum; the Serbs agreed but they did not follow all of the conditions. As a result, Austria declared war on Serbia a month later and because of the treaties the other countries had signed, they were thrown into it as well.
“Germany began to make plans. Under the Schlieffen plan, Germany would march through Belgium to defeat France,” His grandfather used his finger to show where the countries where, “Then Germany would fight Russia. As long as they didn’t fight two countries on both sides, they would be fine. On August 3, Germany invaded Belgium and Britain soon entered the war. The Germans would soon be blamed for the ones that started the war, as it was the first to invade another country. The war now had its two fighting sides: the Central Powers; Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire; and the Allied Powers; Serbia, Russia, France, and Britain. It was suppose to be a ‘summer war’ and many thought that it would only last a few weeks. How very wrong they were.
“The war was called ‘The Great War’. It would soon be remembered as World War I. On the Western Front between Germany and France, the Schlieffen Plan was working and Germany swept through Belgium all the way to the capital of France, Paris. However, some of the German generals changed the original plans, a costly mistake. Russia then mobilized quicker than the Germans had expected, and soon Germany was fighting on two sides. In September, British and French troops fought the Germans and destroyed any hopes for a quick in the battle of the Marre. Both sides now dug in for a long war, literally, with trench warfare, underground network linked bunkers, communication trenches, and gun emplacements covered the top. In between these trenches was called no man’s land. Sometimes, with a lot of luck, one side would take over a few trenches, but only about once a month. Any other attempts was met with death. It was now at a stalemate. The Germans launched the Battle of Verdun in 1916 against the French that lasted 11 months. The Allies launched the Battle of the Somme which lasted 5 months. Both sides now had access to new warfare: machine guns, poison gas, armored tanks, aircraft, zeppelins, and u-boats, but that still wasn’t enough to turn the tide. And before you knew it, everyone was involved. The Russians tried to combat the Germans with the Battle of Tannerberg, but lost. Bulgaria entered the war with Germany. Italy declared war on Austira-Hungary. Britain attempted to take over the Turkish trenches in the Battle of Gallipoli and the Allies invaded the African and Asian colonies owned by Germany. It was a mess.”
His grandfather stopped, taking a handkerchief out to wipe the sweat from his forehead, then said, “I think we’ll stop there for today.”
“But it was getting good!” whined Joey.
“Here,” his grandfather handed him an old book, “Thought you might like it.”
“Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Strange name; what’s it about?” Joey asked.
“Why don’t you read it and find out.”
Now, having finished his practice exam (his score was 120%), he looked over at the book, sitting on his desk.
There was a knock at his door. “Come in,” he said.
The door to his bedroom creaked open. In stepped a frail girl her hair as white as her skin, her hand against the wall as she walked inside the room. Joey got out of his seat, took her hand and led her over to his bed, where she sat down.
“How was the visit with Grandpa?” the girl asked, her pale eyes not looking at Joey.
“The same as it always is, I guess,” he replied, and her head turned in the direction his voice had come from. He looked at the girl with sadness in his eyes, even though the girl could not see that sadness, nor would she ever will, at least for now.
The girl that now sat on his bed, his little sister Margot, had the disease called blindness. It meant that she could not see and for the time being it was incurable. Blindness was so rare a disease, that only five people in all of Juno City had it. Because of it, people with Blindness couldn’t go to school like everyone else, simply because how could you teach a person who could not see how to read and write? Margot, was lucky though. Their grandfather suggested using the old language of Braille to teach her how to read and write, even though Margot could listen to most books to learn. The results were that Margot was intelligent as any other girl who could see, even though she still had to be led around like a little girl with someone at her side if she ever went out. Margot didn’t mind though. She often said she would rather be in someone’s company than to be alone.
But now Margot’s eyes would soon be developed enough to be fixed. Her blindness would be cured in two weeks time. She would soon be taken to the Revivitor to have her eyes corrected.
“Did he tell you anything interesting?” asked Margot.
“He did tell me about this really cool war between all these countries, but…” he stopped, thinking back to something he thought earlier, “All the countries, had similar names to Language Sects. But Grandpa said that the countries didn’t exist. Do you think he was lying?”
Margot was quiet for a moment. Joey could tell she was thinking.
“I don’t think Grandpa would lie to you. Maybe he meant that they existed at one time,” said Margot.
“Like before the Heartless came,” said Joey thoughtfully, “But the Government says that Juno City is only the real city left and maybe the only one that will be left. It’s the only home humans will ever have. We’re the only ones left. There’s nothing else beyond the city. This is the world. Besides, no one remembers anything from before Juno City was founded, except the elderly and half of them are dead or crazy.”
“But…it’s in human nature to lie. What if the Government is lying to us?” questioned Margot.
“Why would they lie? I mean, if they’re were humans still out there, don’t you think they would’ve contacted us?” asked Joey.
“I guess so,” Margot said quietly. Her hand reached out and touched the book. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Oh, Grandpa gave that to me. It’s called Fahrenheit 451.”
“Fahrenheit 451.” Margot fingers felt around the edges of the book. “Will you read it to me?” she asked, holding out the book.
“All right,” said Joey, turning to the first page, “‘In the Beginning…books bombarded Montag’s shoulders, his arms, his upturned face.’”
“Did someone say my name?”
A boy taller than Joey walked into the room. He was wearing a soccer uniform, having just come from practice, a pair of goggles holding back the mess he called hair.
“Oh, hi, Matti!” Margot said cheerfully, “How was practice?”
Montag, or Matti, put his bag down, “The same.” He saw the book. “What’s that?”
“Nothing you would find interesting,” frowned Joey.
“It has my name in it; it has to be interesting,” Matti grinned. Margot gave off a small smile.
Joey rolled his eyes, picking the book back up with a shrug and started to read again. “‘A book landed, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering. In the dim wavering light a page hung open and it was like a snowy feather…’”
************************************************************************
“Where have you been?! You’ve skipped almost three of your periods!” the Headmistress’s voice thundered.
Grace twitted her fingers, not looking at her, Tai sitting on her shoulder. Meanwhile, Mitch, Lucy, and Ling pressed their ears to the office door in the hallway, trying to listen in.
“I just don’t know what to do with you! Out of the four of you, you’re the worst! There is no reason for cutting class! NONE! Especially with finals around the corner! I know you assume that you’ll somehow manage to be in the top three of your class, but still, it’s time you act more grown up! You’ll be fifteen in one week’s time.” The Headmistress fumed, her nostrils flaring. She calmed down and then said in a much quieter tone, her fingers on a large file in front of her, “I have more than enough to see you expelled from the school, but given the circumstances…” She trailed off.
Grace knew what the circumstances were. She was an orphan and there was no where else she could go.
“However, you will be punished. And this I think is perfect for you.”
Grace could only imagine what the Headmistress hand in store. She was looking at her pants.
“You will wear the girl’s skirt uniform for a week. No pants, shorts or anything otherwise except for gym class.”
“But-” Grace tried to say something.
“No buts! It will serve you right!” The Headmistress closed the file as if her word was final. Grace bit her lip.
Mitch smiled a bit from outside the door. She knew it was all an act by Grace, trying to seem like wearing a girl’s skirt was the worst thing that could happen to her. They were all very well aware that there were worse punishments, but this was far from being extreme.
“Now get dress! Visitation will start in fifteen minutes; remember your manners around our guests,” said the Headmistress.
Grace frowned again, but this time it wasn’t an act. She hated visitation.
She simply nodded to the Headmistress and left the room. The Headmistress sighed, as her secretary looked around to see if it was okay to walk in. She gingerly crossed the room with several files in her hand. “Don’t you think she’s getting off a little too easily?”
“There’s no point in suspending her, after all, if what the counsel says will happen in just the next couple of days, I fear for all of us,” the Headmistress then said in a quiet undertone, “You did receive the memo, did you?”
“Oh, yes!” said the secretary, “I’m beginning to make preparations.”
“Good work,” nodded the Headmistress, “But I’m afraid that preparations will not be enough, if I’m to believe the reports we’ve received from…” she looked around cautiously as if someone was listening in on them, “…the outside.”
“Some of them are hard to believe,” admitted the secretary, “You don’t there will be another war, do you?”
“My dear, the war has already began.”
************************************************************************
Grace emerged from the bathroom, wearing the girls skirt uniform. She had borrowed a spare of Ling’s to wear.
“What did you see?” asked Ling, as they started to walk down the hallway.
“Find anything good?” asked Lucy, putting away her diary.
“There was some sort of transportation vehicle in the middle of nowhere. It was bigger than a train,” explained Grace.
“More like a truck,” added Tai.
“A train’s bigger than a truck,” Grace added to him, “Anyway, we something weird inside; a computer but it was really old. It still had the keyboard attached to the hardware component.”
“I think my grandfather told me about something like that. Back before computers went completely wireless, those that were, were called laptops,” explained Ling.
“Laptops?” asked Lucy.
“Yeah,” nodded Ling, “You would sit them on the top of your lap.”
“That’s strange,” complimented Lucy.
“We ran into a Heartless too,” remarked Tai.
Lucy gasped, Ling gave Grace a worried look, and Mitch just raised her eyebrows, interested.
“How big was it?” she asked.
Grace shrugged, “Pretty big.”
“That’s what? The third one this month you fought? They sure are popping up more,” said Lucy.
“They’re getting restless. Something’s happened…or will happen…maybe both,” remarked Mitch.
“What? You have another vision?” asked Grace.
“More like a premonition. But…” Mitch closed her eyes, “I don’t see anything.”
“Have any more dreams?” asked Ling, changing the subject, turning to Grace.
“It’s the same thing every night: knights and giant keys. That’s it,” explained Grace, frowning.
“You sure you haven’t been reading some fantasy-romance novel?” asked Lucy.
Before Grace could reply, the bell rung, signaling the start of visitation. “See you later,” Grace waved to Ling and Mitch, joining Lucy as they walked down the hall.
Visitation was when the orphan girls were summoned to meet with prospective adopters. If foster parents found a name worth looking into, they would meet with the child during visitation. As she was only a week away from turning fifteen, this was Grace last chance to be adopted; after she turned fifteen, visitation for her would end. No one would want to adopt a full-fledged teenager; even if they wanted too, it was against the law.
Visitation was also the time when the other girls who just attended the school could met with their parents or grandparents. Ling’s grandfather had recently been notified that he was too old to care for Ling anymore and had been shipped off to the Elderly Retiree Center. The only time he was allowed to see her was during visitation. Mitch, who lived with her grandmother would spend the hour performing a séance or something rather, talking to spirits or, as Mitch preferred, the realm of Darkness.
Grace checked for her name on the list posted outside the cafeteria to see if anyone had picked out her name. Lucy had already found she had two prospective couples and was already down the hall to meet them. “See anything?” Grace asked Tai.
Tai scanned the list. “Oh! Here’s one!” he pointed to a list next to the one she was looking at.
“Room 14,” she squinted, then read it again to make sure she had the right room.
Room 14 was at the far end of the hallway; here the rooms were hardly used at all except on special occasion. It was empty when Grace and Tai got down there and when Grace sat down at a chair outside the classroom, she wondered if she had gotten the room right.
They waited for almost an hour, but no one showed up. “Maybe it was a typo,” suggested Grace with a sigh. She didn’t feel disappointed; she sort of expected something like this to happen. But all the same, she felt as if maybe if she waited a little longer, someone would show up.
When the bell signaled for the end of visitation, Grace got up out of the seat. Then she heard someone snicker behind her.
“Well girls, would you look at that? Someone feels…rejected,” hissed a girl the same age as Grace with pink bubble gum hair streaked with blonde highlights, her eyes flashing.
Grace turned around and replied in a sarcastic tone, with a small curtsy, “Oh sweet Princess Anemone, your Royal Highness is right…for once.”
Anemone continued to smirk, “No need to act like that. We all know you’re hideous, with those freaks you call friends, and that old fashion toy,” as she said this, Tai began to charge forward as if to hit her, but Grace stopped him, “why would anyone want to adopt you?”
“If I’m so hideous,” remarked Grace, “Then that must make you grotesque.”
The girls in Anemone’s entourage gasped and looked towards their leader, waiting for her next move. The smirk on Anemone’s face disappeared for a brief second but then a grin reemerged. “Even if you think you’re prettier or smarter, there’s one fact that will always remain the same,” her eyes flashed again, “At least I wasn’t abandoned by my mother.”
Anemone arrow had hit its mark. “Shut up,” muttered Grace.
“I’m mean I guess that’s the worst thing that could happen: rejection by your own mother; how sad,” Anemone continued, her assault growing.
“Shut up!” Grace said louder, grabbing the necklace around her neck, her other fist clenched.
“There you go again,” Anemone’s grin grew wider, “Holding on to that necklace as it means something. You mother didn’t want you, just accept that, and no one else will.”
“SHUT UP!” Grace screamed.
“Anemone!” cried someone from behind Grace. It was Anemone’s younger sister, Clarise. Although she shared Anemone’s pale skin and obstruct hair (a shade of key lime green with blonde highlights), her personality couldn’t be more different.
Clarise turned to Grace, “I’m sorry if she said anything that offended you.”
“Clarise, I swear! If we didn’t have the same last name, no one would think we’re related, especially if you’re talking to this Nobody,” fumed Anemone.
Grace didn’t like the stress that was added on to the last word. It sounded as if it was more than just an insult.
The expression of Clarise face changed dramatically. She walked up to Anemone and whispered in her ear, “Father says we’re not suppose to use that word.”
“What Daddy doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Anemone pushed her hair back, “Besides, it’s not like she knows what it means.”
“And what is that suppose to mean?” said someone from behind Anemone’s entourage.
It was Mitch.
“It’s the psycho girl!” cried a cheerleader, before all the girls except Grace, Clarise, and Anemone nearly passed out of a sudden migraine headache.
“Speak of the darkness,” frowned Anemone, “The freaks keep on coming in waves. Talking to Heartless again?”
Mitch started to grin, “Maybe. And if I was, they might have told me that the Heartless would really like to have your heart,” Mitch reached out and lifted Anemone’s chin, “With all that darkness it’s holding, it must be really tasty to them.”
Anemone pushed Mitch’s hand away, the hint of fear in her eyes. “Let’s go,” she said to her entourage and to Clarise, her hand slightly shaking, “We’ll be late to see Daddy.”
Clarise waved goodbye to Grace and Mitch and followed Anemone down the hallway.
Mitch turned to Grace, “I had a premonition that you were in trouble. Looks like I was right. Is something wrong?” she asked, seeing the troubled look on Grace’s face, still holding the necklace. She watched as Grace opened the locket up to look at a faded picture of a beautiful woman: Grace’s mother.
“She called me a nobody,” Grace said slowly, but didn’t see Mitch’s reaction of concern, “But…she said it as if…it meant something else.” She looked up at Mitch, “You don’t know any weird meanings to the word, do you?”
Mitch shrugged. “It’s just a word.” The troubled look still remained on Grace’s face. It was time to change the subject. “Hey, Ling’s grandfather dropped off some food. Better not let it go to waste. And he also brought natural oil,” she added to Tai, who had been resting comfortably on Grace shoulder.
“Natural oil! Oh boy!” he jumped up and Grace smiled.
As they walked by the main office, the Headmistress looked up and watched them as she talked on the phone, “I understand. She seems to be fine, for the moment.” The Headmistress looked at her calendar, “You realize we only have six days left. I’ll be surprise if this all boils over with her unnoticed. The lights are already beginning to flicker. We’re running out of time.”
************************************************************************
The head of the government was the Commander. His word was law and whatever he ordered had to be done immediately or severe punishment would follow. Right now, the Commander was in his study, two guards posted outside the door.
A girl with pink hair, followed by another with green hair walked up to the door. The guard on the right side of the door stopped her. “Sorry miss, but you can’t come in here.”
“Excuse me,” glared Anemone.
“You idiot!” hissed the guard’s partner, “That’s the Commander’s daughter.”
But it was too late; Anemone had already grabbed the guard by his tie and dragged him down so low that they were eye to eye. She had quite a strong arm, thought the guard, almost like the Commander’s. Clarise shook her head.
“Daddy says we’re suppose to see him now. And if we’re even a second late, I’ll tell him why. And I hope he gives you more than a demotion to being a janitor.” And with that, Anemone dropped him; having been held down for so long he toppled over onto the floor. Anemone simply, “Hmph,” and walked over him, proceeding into the study.
The other guard shook his head. Didn’t they prepare these new guards nowadays?
Clarise bowed her head apologetically to both the guards and followed her sister inside the room.
The Commander sat behind his desk, reading a report when his daughters entered the room. He looked up with his gray eyes, like his daughters. He smiled warmly at them and began to speak in of one of the Romantic Language Sects: French.
“How are my two precious angels today?” he asked.
“Oh Daddy…” Anemone smiled brightly. She absolutely adored her father.
“Hello, Father,” Clarise gave a small smile.
“Now, is there anything I can do for the two of you?” asked the Commander.
“Daddy, about my education for next year…can’t I go to the military academy? I will need training eventually if I’m to govern the city,” began Anemone, but her father raised his hand.
“I don’t see a problem with you staying at the Girls’ Academy. Besides, the military academy would be dull for you. You wouldn’t like it, Anemone,” explained the Commander.
“But Daddy! I can’t stand that school. The orphans have no respect for me, especially that Grace Porter! If I had my way, she would’ve been long gone,” frowned Anemone, folding her arms across her chest.
“Ah, but you see Angel, we must all deal with people we do not like and in time comes the opportunity to get back at them,” the Commander placed his arm around his shoulder.
Anemone looked up at her father. “’kay.”
“Well, how about you Pumpkin?” the Commander turned to Clarise. “Is there anything you want?”
“Well,” Clarise looked at her hands, “It would be nice, if you would be at dinner every once and awhile.”
The Commander sighed. It was true he had not been at dinner with the girls for at least a month. “I will try, Pumpkin. But in the next week or so, Daddy will be very busy with his work. However, I promise, after that time, I will see you at dinner. Now,” the Commander glanced at the clock, “I have to get back to work. And you girls need to study. I expect nothing less than top marks on your Finals.”
“We won’t let you down Daddy,” Anemone then reached up and kissed her father on the cheek.
Clarise nodded in agreement and kissed the Commander on the opposite cheek.
When they left the study, Anemone turned to her sister. “I’m glad you actually wish for stuff like that, Clarise. I mean, Daddy really should come home and eat a decent meal. How he can stand eating that cafeteria food from the Mesh Hall is beyond me.”
Clarise couldn’t help but smile. As rude as Anemone was acting, she was giving her a compliment.
Meanwhile, the Commander returned to the report on his desk, the expression in his eyes greatly changed. It was the look of a hawk, searching for its prey. He looked at his calendar. Six more days…it would be six more days before they made their move and he still needed it.
It was referred to several names: the Oracle, the Seer, the Dreamer, the Guide, or the Key. Without it, he held no leverage, nothing to tie them down and to stop them from making their move. For ten years he had been searching and he was no closer to finding it as by the revised profile that had been updated for all these years; a female, still a virgin, of the ages thirteen to sixteen, with a double iris, the markings of those who wield the Key. He might as well be searching for the descendants of the Holy Grail.
The Commander started to chuckle. He had made an allusion to a forbidden book. He looked outside his window, starring at the setting sun.
“This world has been connected…tied to the darkness…soon to be completely eclipsed. You understand nothing. One who knows nothing can understand nothing.”
Those words had been engraved into his memory when he was just a boy, when he laid eyes on the man with burning eyes.
“I understand nothing, do I?” he questioned as if the man was standing there in front of him. “We shall see.”
Grace woke up with her head underneath a book. She had fallen asleep again while reading. She pulled the book off her head and laid it down on her bed. The title was Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, a forbidden book. Almost all the books she owned were forbidden supposed to have been burned almost thirty years ago. She had the Lord of the Rings, the Da Vinci Code, His Dark Materials, the Oz Books, Ghost in the Shell, Redwall, and even the Princess Dairies: all of them forbidden. She had checked the list herself. And stranger still all the books were found with Grace when she was left at the orphanage when she was just a baby.
Assuming they had been left for her, as soon as Grace could read, she picked up the Wizard of Oz and started to read it. Even at that age, she couldn’t still understand most of the vocabulary and she would often throw the book in a corner out of frustration, but in a week or so, she would pick up and started to read again. It helped that Lucy, who had grown up with Grace and was a better reader than her, read with her. Now she read every night and she had one of the highest reading scores of all the girls.
Sometimes, she wished she had magical powers or amazing sword fighting skills like the characters in her book. And, although she never admitted it to anyone, not even Tai, she sometimes thought she did have magical powers. Whenever she was very upset or angry, things would happen. Once Anemone had made her so mad after she ruined her Chemistry experiment, that Anemone’s skirt suddenly caught on fire. Another time, Anemone had deliberately melted Grace’s soft serve and as she was about to cry, the soft serve refreeze. That or it was just karma, considering it had been Anemone that had upset her every time in the first place. Still, it was as if the person who had left Grace the books knew she would experience such phenomenons. She half expected an owl to arrive from Hogwarts, telling her she was a witch. But that of course, was impossible.
Pushing the book aside, Grace placed her hand on her head, recalling her recent dream. It had been the same as the one before: three knights, in the middle of a barren wasteland, with nothing but large keys surrounding them. There were three large keys standing before them and they each pulled out one. Off in the distance, someone or something was coming towards them.
“Gracey?”
Tai pulled her back into reality. “Are you going to get up?”
“Yeah, just give me a sec,” she said getting out of bed.
Tai whirled around and unplugged his charger from his battery plug.
“Let’s see,” Grace walked into her small kitchen, “I need something sweet! Oh, haven’t had those in a while,” she pulled out a recipe book, along with flour, sugar, salt, baking power, baking soda, and cinnamon, “I’m making Cinnamon buns!” she smiled happily.
“Oh,” Tai said, drooping.
Grace sighed. She reached into a separate cupboard and pulled out a computer chip. “Here,” she held out the chip for him. It was a food chip, a microchip that allowed humanoid robots to simulate the taste of a particular food.
“I don’t want it,” frowned Tai, looking away.
“Why not?”
“It’s not the same,” he said.
It was now Grace’s turn to look away. “Okay,” she said quietly. She tried to hold back a tear, but Tai already heard her snuffling.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s okay,” she said, just before breaking down and throwing her arms around the machine.
“Gracey…” Tai whispered, “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head and held him closer. She had been having these crying fits over Tai for the past month or so, mainly because of the fact according to his programming, Tai would cease to function and shut down entirely in five days. His model type was only design to last ten years; after ten years it was shut down or get a replacement model. But because his model type came out at almost the exact time the Heartless appeared, manufacturing for his type stopped as the factory would soon be used to make weapons. It was too risky to move his hard drive into another humanoid robot; there was always the chance that his memory configuration wouldn’t run properly and Grace couldn’t stand if his personality changed.
But she couldn’t bear to watch him shutdown forever; he had now become the only family she truly had.
“Tai…don’t stop arguing with me, okay?” Grace said after she stopped crying.
“No,” he said and he looked up at her with a smile.
She kissed his forehead and let him go.
“You’d better make those Cinnamon Buns if you want to make it to school on time,” remarked Tai.
Grace nodded and, with Tai’s help, began to mix the ingredients together.
************************************************************************
“Cinnamon buns! My favorite!” Lucy reached out and grabbed two from the plate Grace offered to her. “You make them so perfect too! I wish I could cook like that!”
“Considering you burn everything you cook,” remarked Mitch.
“Even toast,” said Ling.
“That’s not true!” said a reproachful Lucy, “The toast I made this morning was fine! It was a healthy brown!”
“What kind of brown? A dark brown?” asked Grace. Everyone laughed except Lucy.
“So, what’s going on today?” asked Ling, opening up her locker for her workbook.
“Not much other than final preparation,” replied Mitch.
“Isn’t someone suppose to come from the Government to talk about what we’re suppose to do for the rest of our lives?” asked Lucy.
“Not that we need to know what we’re doing; we only got so many options. Let’s see,” Grace tailed off her fingers, “There’s the Military Academy, staying here for high school, or we get jobs that don’t need a high school diploma.”
“High school for me,” said Lucy, her eyes sparking with ambition, “I’ll need all the grades I can if I want to be an English Teacher!”
“Grandpa says I really don’t need to go to high school,” said Ling, “But since I’m here, I might as well go ahead. I would be nice to be a nurse or a doctor, I guess.”
“I really don’t need more of an education,” Mitch folded her arms, “But I have foreseen…” she began to whisper, “That we all must take a certain class that I am interested in known…as Health.”
“You mean…Sex ED?” asked Grace raising an eyebrow.
“No! Not just Sex ED, but Drugs as well! If I’m to make perfect potions, I need to know the fundamentals of each and every drug,” Mitch said firmly.
“But potions don’t have drugs in them…right?” asked Ling, now quite unsure.
“Now that I think about it, what do potions have in them?” asked Lucy.
“I figured it had to be something like Key Lime Pie filling, since it’s green,” suggested Grace.
“I was thinking Limes too,” remarked Ling.
“I thought it had to be Starfruit, since it’s star shaped. But maybe there really is drugs in it,” Lucy had a worried look on her face.
“Probably just Caffeine; I doubt it would be anything illegal,” said Grace.
“Not in mine,” muttered Mitch.
“So, how about you Grace? What are you going to do?” asked Ling.
“Me? I’m going to explore the wasteland outside the city. And I’m going to find a way to the Outside World!” Grace said firmly.
“But it’s so dangerous out there! And you know the law: anyone that goes outside will be severely punished!” said Lucy.
“Besides, how do you know if there’s an Outside World?” asked Ling.
“Have you ever looked up at the sky at night and all the stars come out? Well you don’t see most them because of the city lights but if you go outside the wall…man…there are thousands and thousands of them, maybe even millions; you simply just can’t count them all. Then possibility of another world out there just sky rockets and even if you don’t comprehend that, you get this weird feeling right here,” Grace patted her chest, “that maybe out there somewhere, is someone watching the same sky, doing what you’re doing.”
“But if there really are people out there, don’t you think they would send a message or something?” asked Lucy.
“The Government controls all the communications in the city and before the Heartless appeared all the communications outside for the colonies,” explained Mitch, “If someone we’re trying to contact us, their signals would go directly to them.”
“By why wouldn’t they say something then?” asked Ling, “Don’t you think a message from the outside world is important?”
“Not if the Government doesn’t want a rebellion,” remarked Mitch.
“Think of it this way: the Government has be telling us for almost a decade that we’re the only humans left and the rest we’re all killed by the Heartless. If something such as a message from the Outside World were leaked out, there would be a lack in confidence of the Government. They’re just trying to save their own skins, more or less,” explained Grace.
A bell chimed softly over the PA system.
“Oh! And this discussion was just getting interesting!” sighed Tai.
“Whoa!” Lucy jumped, “I forgot you were even here!”
“See you guys later,” Grace waved and headed off to English class.
It was until four class periods later in the middle of Chemistry class, that someone knocked on the door. The chemistry teacher frowned; whoever it was had interrupted her demonstration of the chemical reactions of copper.
Grace watched as the teacher opened the door and let a very short woman into the classroom. With a smug look on her face, she reminded Grace of a character she had read about: Professor Umbridge from Harry Potter. Then she saw the falcon brooch pinned on the collar of her shirt; this was the government official.
“Good morning, class!” she greeted.
A few of the students replied, “Good morning.”
“Oh that won’t do!” the woman tuted, “Come now! When someone says ‘Good morning!’, you should all as a highly respected class reply back. One more time now. Good morning class!”
“Good morning,” everyone replied back to her.
“Shut it git,” Grace could hear Mitch muttering from a few seats away.
“Now then! That wasn’t too hard!” smiled the official. “My name is Madame Demetera and I am here to talk to you about your future. Now many of you will be continuing your studies here and that is fine. Juno needs bright young minds to become teachers, doctors, and scientists. There is also the military academy, for if you wish to become involved with the Government. Some of you will not find either of choices within your reach and will instead become merchants and shop keepers, which Juno needs as well. Your teachers, as well as the Government and I, want you to do well for Juno future. In the next four years you will learn all that you need to know about keeping the city thriving as well as surviving comfortable in here.”
Before Grace could stop herself, she already asked, “But what about out there?”
Everyone turned to look at Grace.
“Excuse me?” asked Madame Demetera.
“I asked about the outside world. Shouldn’t we learn about what’s out there too?” asked Grace.
Madame Demetera smiled wickedly and then replied softly, “There is no outside world, young lady. This is the world. And we, unfortunately, are the last humans in existence. It would be foolish to attempt another colony when the last attempt left almost 90% of our colonists at the hands of the Heartless. And it is thanks to our superior technology, we can keep the Heartless from ever penetrating the inside of the city walls. You should be grateful for that.”
The woman turned away from Grace.
“But where did the Heartless come from then?” Grace suddenly asked.
When Madame Demetera looked back at her, there was uncertainty in her eyes as well as fear.
“They weren’t around when Juno was first built, and first colony outside the city was established long before they showed up, so where did they come from? Surely a high ranking Government official like you would know,” Grace looked up at her.
When Madame Demetera didn’t reply, Grace pressed on, “And how about…” she was already enough trouble; she might as well say it, “…the Thirteenth Order?”
“Did she say the Thirteenth Order? The terrorist group?”
“I had forgotten about them!”
Whispers began to run amok in the classroom and for good reason. A few months ago the Government had released the thirteen names of a dangerous terrorist group known as the Thirteenth Order. They did not release the crimes or the nature of how the group was considered ‘terrorist’, but people figured their crimes were so horrendous that they were deemed unspeakable and fear spread through the city. Most of the older students were shocked to find that one of the members was a boy not so much older than they were and refused to go out with any boy for fear of being attacked. Despite the large reward given for information on the group’s whereabouts, there were no reports of any of the members being spotted in the city. Soon the entire ordeal was forgotten until Grace brought it up again.
“Granted this is a city,” Grace continued, “But it’s as you said: we’re the only humans left. Surely someone would have spotted at least one of its members. Unless of course…” Grace was about to suggest that the Thirteenth Order was from another world, that one of the girls would certainly recognized the youngest member, when Madame Demetera held out her hand.
“That’s enough,” she said firmly, the smile no longer there, “Stand up.”
Grace reluctantly obeyed and got out of her seat.
“Your name?” asked Madame Demetera.
“Grace Porter,” Grace said glaring at the woman.
“Are you an orphan, Miss Porter?”
“That I am,” Grace replied.
“Ah,” Madame Demetera said as if that simple answer settled the matter, the smug look on her face returning. She took out a pink notepad and began to write with a purple pen. She then stared directly into Grace’s eyes as if she was looking for something. “So then, do feel…” she said something funny that Grace’s brain couldn’t comprehend. It was a word, but it didn’t seem like a word; something that seemed to be made up.
When she saw Grace’s puzzled expression, her smile looked even more malevolent than before. “You will find, Miss Porter, that those who share your rebellious attitude, do not live long and happy lives,” she finished her note, ripped off the piece of paper and gave it to Grace.
“Go to your Headmistress. As she is in charge of you, she will deal with you,” Madame Demetera ordered.
Grace was somewhat happy to oblige. She picked up her school bag and without a backward glance walked out of the classroom door. As soon as the door closed behind her, there was an outburst of talking, an order to be quiet and a muffled cry.
Grace walked down the corridor and into the main office.
The secretary looked up when Grace came through the door. “What are you doing out of…” she stopped when Grace held up the pink slip, “Oh. I’ll tell the Headmistress you’re here.”
Grace didn’t have long to wait. She heard china breaking and a door bursting open. The Headmistress thundered out of her office and when she saw Grace, her face was very thin and her eyes filled with anger. “In,” she ordered, pointing to her office door.
Grace walked into the Headmistress’s office and stood waiting until the Headmistress sat down behind her desk. Tai, who had been sleeping in Grace’s bag but had woken up during the past five minutes, sat himself on Grace shoulder. Grace reached up and rubbed his head as the Headmistress read over the pink slip. Her anger seemed to have subsided after she read it.
“It says here you asked about the Outside World. You also questioned about the Heartless as well as the Thirteenth Order. I don’t blame you for asking such questions but it was the wrong person to question. Madame Demetera is part of the Council and reports directly to the Commander. She seems at times ‘full of it’ but she is a very dangerous individual,” the Headmistress looked at the slip again, “She recommends that I suspend you immediately. However finals begin tomorrow, so it would seem fit to suspend you just for the rest of the day,” she took out a slip of paper and a pen, “If you miss anything important, I’ll daresay you’ll get it from your friends. You will report back after dinnertime and go directly to your dormitories.” She signed the slip of paper and handed it to Grace, “Do you understand?”
Grace nodded once and picked up her bag once more.
“And take this with you too,” the Headmistress handed her two five dollar bills, “I don’t want to hear you complaining about how you starved the entire day when you come back.”
“Okay Grandma!” Grace took the money, “Want me to promise to be a good little girl too?”
“Just stay out of trouble,” the Headmistress waved her away.
“I would if trouble didn’t find me first,” Grace remarked opening the door, but not before laying one of the fives down on her seat.
The Headmistress shook her head. “That should keep her out of my hands and let her cool off.” She then noticed the five on the seat where Grace had sat and couldn’t help but smile.
************************************************************************
Grace spent the rest most of the early afternoon in the Northern District, the entertainment center and shopping district of Juno City. She bought herself two Double Cheeseburgers and a pack of small fries at a McDonalds. She then bought a soft serve ice cream cone and went up to the Observation Deck at the top of the city wall. Usually there was no one up there at this time because there was nothing to look at except wasteland, but at nighttime, it was a great romantic spot for couples when all the lights were on and the occasional twinkling star in the night sky.
“That puffed up pastry!” Grace cursed, kicking a rolled up piece of paper, licking her ice cream, “Should be called Madame Demented! Did you heard how she treated us?” she asked Tai, but didn’t wait for an answer, “Like we were Third Graders! And that look she had when she stared at me! Like I was some piece of garbage!” She attempted to lick her ice cream some more but found that in the extreme ninety-degree heat it had melted. She threw it angrily in the trash.
“I don’t think you’re garbage,” said Tai honestly, “I think you’re pretty.”
Grace’s head did a slow one-eighty turn.
“She only looked at you like that because you stood up against her and you’re an orphan,” said Tai.
“Thanks Tai,” Grace said quietly before turning back to the wasteland scenery.
Tai hovered beside her. “What kind of world do you think is out there?” he asked.
“Who knows? But I imagine,” Grace started to sing, “There’s a little tiny island, where children play together, day after day, in a world I have dream’d. There’s a town that sits in twilight, where the trains are always running, and the people sit and talk for hours, in a world out there. There’s a castle in village, a happy village filled with people, living in the daylight, in a world I need to see. There’s garden in a small town, with someone very special waiting for me. I keep wishing it could be that way, because my home is out there somewhere.”
“That’s pretty,” complimented Tai, “Wait? Who’s the special someone? Is it her?” he asked, pointing to Grace’s locket.
Grace took the locket in her hand. “No,” she shook her head.
“Is it me?”
Grace smiled, “No, unfortunately it’s not you. It’s strange; I know it’s a boy but I can’t picture his face and I don’t even know his name. But I know he has a nice smile.”
“Who has a nice smile?”
Grace turned to see that she and Tai weren’t alone on the observation deck; Anemone and her entourage had arrived.
“Hello, your Majesty,” frowned Grace.
“Why aren’t you in school?” asked Tai.
Anemone looked shocked. “Excuse me? But did the toy just talk to me?”
“Fine. If you won’t listen to him,” said Grace, “I’ll say it. Why aren’t you in school?”
“School’s over. Like hang around that dump any longer than I have too. So,” her attention turned to the wasteland, “Thinking about the outside, are we?” Anemone mouth began to curl into a smile, “Because if you really are a Nobody, then you simply don’t belong in this realm.”
“Heh. You can insult me all you want, cause-” Grace stopped realizing what Anemone had just said, “Wait a minute…this realm? Anemone…what do you know that no one else does?”
Anemone had realized her mistake; her hand almost went up to her mouth as if she had said something she shouldn’t have. The girls in her entourage looked at her anxiously, waiting for her next move.
“Well, that is to say…if your hypotheses is correct…from your understanding that the Heartless came from another world,” Anemone regained her confidence, “Why don’t you prove it? All that you would have to do, is go over that wall.”
Grace took a quick glance at the edge of the wall behind her. “Okay then,” she took a step backwards and stepped on top of the edge of the wall.
Several girls gasped. “You wouldn’t,” smirked Anemone, folding her arms.
“Maybe I would,” Grace lifted one of her legs so that it hung over the edge, the wind lifting up into her skirt.
“Gracey,” pleaded Tai.
It was intense for several seconds, so much so that one of the girls passed out. Grace lowered her leg. “You honest think I’m that stupid?” she grinned, “I would to fall to my death if I jumped off.”
Anemone fumed with rage.
“Gracey,” Grace heard Tai call her name again.
“I’m fine,” Grace turned back to him, “Nothing-”
Tai was acting strange. His lights were starting to fade and he started to shutter, like an old engine before it gave out. “I feel really funny,” he said and he started to hover around strangely, as if he couldn’t focus where to go. Then he froze and his lights faded.
Grace caught him before he hit the ground.
“Looks like the toy went and broke,” laughed Anemone, “Better get a new one.”
“Shut up!” shouted Grace, “Move!” she pushed through the group of girls and ran down the stairs.
She wasn’t going to lose Tai. Not yet.
************************************************************************
“Anemone! Anemone!” called Clarise, “Oh! Where’d she go this time?” She was in the center of a park, looking for her sister, who had left school before she could return Clarise’s cellphone.
When she came to the conclusion that her sister wasn’t in the park anymore, she gave up, and started to walk home. As she walked down the path, she took a corner without looking and ran into someone.
Clarise fell to the ground, “Hey-” she started but stopped as soon as she saw the person’s face. It was a girl, a very pale girl with very fair hair, but what draw Clarise’s attention to her were the girl’s pale eyes.
“I’m sorry,” said the girl, “Did I hurt you?”
“Oh, no!” said Clarise quickly getting to her feet and helping the girl up, “It’s my fault! I wasn’t looking where I was going!”
“Well neither was I, to be honest,” said the pale girl.
Clarise didn’t know how to reply.
“Margot! Margot!” someone called.
It was a boy with brown hair wearing a pair of goggles ran up to them out of breath. “You shouldn’t wander off like that!” chided the boy to the girl, Margot, “You’re going to get lost if you keep it up!”
“I’m sorry Matti,” apologized Margot, “But I heard the noise again and I had to get away from it. It hurts my ears.”
“Well we don’t want that to happen,” remarked Matti with a smile, “But who’s this?” He took notice to Clarise.
“Just a friend I bumped into,” explained Margot.
“And you are?” asked Matti.
“C-Clarise,” she felt her face turn red, “Nice to meet you.”
“Oh,” said Matti, the tone of his voice suddenly changing, “Well, we need to be going, if you don’t mind.”
Matti turned away quickly so that Clarise didn’t see his face turning red. But why though, he asked himself. Why was it he found one of the Commander’s daughters beautiful?
Clarise watched them walked away, her face still red with blushing from seeing the boy. She thought back to the girl’s name instead. “Margot…All Summer in a Day…that forbidden story…” she looked up at the sky.
************************************************************************
“‘Out of the nursery into the college, and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern of the last five centuries or more.’” Joey lowered his book. He couldn’t exactly focus on the book, exciting as it was, when his head was wandering off. He had another visit with his grandfather that day, just as strange and peculiar as the last, but at least he found out more about the mysterious ‘Great War’.
“So then, where was I?” his grandfather asked when they sit down to chat.
“You were going on about how everyone was invading and going to war and the thing being a complete mess,” recalled Joey.
“Ah yes! As the war went on, it took its toll economically on every nation and not just the ones involved, what is called ‘total war’. Soldiers were recruited, armed and trained and the government had to pay for everything. Some foods, such as sugar and meat, were rationed as well as gas. Both sides used propaganda, to promote a cause and boost morale. Women were taking over men’s jobs to keep the economy going.
“But morale of both the troops and the civilians was dropping. Germany had to recruit 15 year olds for their army. Britain was almost bankrupt and desertions were common. The Russian czar, their term for leader, was forced abdicate and Lenin of the Communist party took over. Lenin then signed a peace treaty of Brest-Litovski with Germany; now the Germans only had to worry about one front.
“As part of their strategy, German submarines attacked merchant and passenger ships belonging to the Allies. They ending up sinking the British ship ‘Lusitania’, killing 128 Americans.”
“Americans?” asked Joey, once again recognizing the language connection.
“Those that belong to this large country over here, also known as the US,” his grandfather pointed to a big country on the other side of the ocean on the map he had pulled out, “The Americans were furious. But what also pushed them to war was the Zimmerman Note. Arthur Zimmerman of Germany was to get Mexico, right here, below the US, to attack the US but the British intercepted it. Then in April of 1917, the US declared War on Germany and they immediately started to recruit and send troops over seas. And that began the turning point of the war.
“With the US on the Allies side, Germany didn’t stand a chance. By the fall of 1918, the German generals told their leader, Kaiser William II that the war was lost. Uprisings exploded in the cities; the people wanted out. A month later he abdicated. On November 11, 1918 an armistice was signed ending World War I.
“The human toll was staggering: 8.5 million people dead, 17 million were wounded, and millions more handicap. In 1918, an influenza epidemic wiped out more than 20 million people. From France to Russia, homes, farms, factories, roads, churches, you name it were destroyed. The governments of Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire: all collapsed.
“Then came time for the peace talks. Woodrow Wilson, the US leader and representative wanted the conference to accept his Fourteen Points Plan for peace and pushed for a League of Nations, which would allow countries to negotiate rather than to fight with each other. David Lloyd George of Britain demanded very harsh treatment for Germany. Georges Clemenceau from France, also known as ‘the Tiger’ wanted to weaken Germany so they could never again attack France. Vitorio Orlando of Italy simply wanted more territory.”
“But what about Germany?” asked Joey.
“Germany? They were completely left out of the entire process. They weren’t allowed in until the end of it, when they had to sign the treaty. They were shocked to find out what they had just gotten into. One) Germany had to assume full guilt of starting the war. Two) They had to pay huge reparations, about 33 billion dollars,” explained his Grandfather.
“33 billion? Is that how much it would be now or back then?” asked Joey.
“Back then,” his Grandfather continued, “Three) The German military couldn’t reform. Four) The borderlands of Alsace and Lorrane had to return to France. And Five) Germany lost all of her overseas countries.”
“But that’s really unfair! How could they stand for that?” asked Joey.
“They had been defeated. They had no choice,” his Grandfather explained, “But they weren’t the only ones dissatisfied. New countries popped up as a result of the war. This made Russia unhappy as some those countries once belong to them. Many of the overseas colonies expected to gain their independence but instead France and Britain gained new ones. Italy never got the lands it was promised. The western nations didn’t recognize the rising power of Japan in the Far East. The League of Nations that had been established, well let’s say the US refused to join as it wished to return to normalcy.
“But all was not well. For you see, there would come a terrible war, far more horrific than the last, and it would all start with one man and a secret project that would change the world forever,” his grandfather finished in a whisper, as if he was trying to impress his grandson.
Joey pressed on for more but his grandfather said he would have to wait until tomorrow.
“Hey Joey! You awake?” Matti knocked on his door breaking his concentration.
“Yeah!”
“That Porter girl here’s to see you again! It’s about her robot.”
“It shouldn’t have crashed already,” Joey remarked getting of his bed. He took his tool kit from his desk and climbed down the stairs into his lab, formerly his father’s garage.
Grace was already there, very white in the face and looked like moments earlier she had been crying. Tai had been laid down on the worktable. Grace looked up when Joey entered the room.
“What happened?” he asked opening up his tool kit.
“I don’t know. He just…collapsed,” Grace said, almost like she was on the verge of crying again.
Joey examined Tai, turning him around, looking under his arms and the back of his head. “There doesn’t seem to be any damage to the exterior. It must be on the inside,” Joey then laid Tai back down and opened up his hardware. “His operating system is still running,” remarked Joey, “That’s good. And everything else seems to be intact. I wonder…does he receive any digital signals or even analog?”
“He gets a couple of e-mails and text messages but that’s about it,” said Grace, more at ease when she heard Tai would be all right.
“But none the less he gets some sort of signal. My guess is he picked up something strong enough that his processor couldn’t handle and that triggered his collapse. But what though? Cellphones aren’t that strong to knock him out; it would have to be a very high frequency ultrasonic sound to do that. Or it could be just the heat. A couple of friends said their computers crashed because of the heat yesterday,” explained Joey, “Any way, his memory configuration should’ve saved. Here we go!”
Joey messed with something and a second later, Tai miraculously came back to life.
“Ow!” He rubbed his head, “My head hurts.”
“Oh Tai!” Grace wrapped him up in her arms. “I was so worried!”
“Gracey, don’t tell me you’ve been crying again,” frowned Tai, but then started to smile.
“Joey, are you down there?” asked Margot from the stairs.
“I’m down here!” called Joey, “Grace Porter’s here too!”
Margot slowly climbed down the stairs and walked into the lab. Tai hovered up to her.
“Hi, Margot. It’s me Tai!” he said cheerfully.
“Hello Tai,” Margot replied.
“Margot, why don’t you and Tai play outside for awhile? It’s gotten cooler out know that the sun’s about to go down,” suggested Joey.
“All right,” said Margot as Joey opened the garage door.
“Come on!” Tai took Margot’s hands and led her outside.
Joey and Grace watched them from the doorway. “Only five more days,” said Joey.
“It’s just so stupid. Even if I try to save him, there’s always that risk that…he’ll never be the same, that he’ll forget about me,” Grace slammed her fist into the side of the door.
“If I had time and the resources, I could build him a body, a better body, a more human body,” Joey added, “But artificial skin is so expensive and he would need a new body almost every year and there’s still that risk with his memory. Of course, there is…one more thing…you could do,” Joey looked at Grace, “You could just shut him down yourself; it would put his programming on hold. It would be like turning off a computer, just never turning it back on. It would give me some time to work on a new body or something to override his programming.”
“I don’t think I could do that either,” Grace shook her head, “What if he never turn back on again? Or he’ll restart but he won’t remember me? Or what if so much time has pass before we find a solution that he won’t mean as much as he does now? Or what if something happens to me and he stays like that…”
“Well, in that situation, Margot and I would take care of him,” said Joey, “She loves him as much as you do. Her laughter’s different when she’s with him.” He smiled watching his sister play. “Don’t you worry Grace, we’ll find a way. But I got to say, for a machine, Tai’s the most human like one yet. He just too human to be a machine,” remarked Joey. “But…”
“He’s too machine to be human,” Grace finished his sentence.
They watched as Margot and Tai played in the garden, until Grace finally said, “Well, I better get going. Come on, Tai!” Grace called.
“Aw, man!” Tai moaned. “See you later!” he squeezed Margot’s hand.
“See you soon!” waved Joey, leading Margot back inside.
As Grace walked down the street, holding Tai in her arms. “What should we do now? We still got two hours left,” said Grace.
“I don’t know. You’re the one who usually decides where to go,” said Tai.
“Hmm…we need to go by and pick my weapon back up. I also want to know if Axel cracked that computer yet,” said Grace.
“Do really need to go by that place? That Axel guy freaks me out. My circuits get all weird whenever I’m around him,” complained Tai.
“Well I am out of money and I don’t have sub pass with me,” Grace sighed, “It’s too long of a walk to get there and go all the way back to school.”
“Hey, Gracey!” someone called.
“Ling?” Grace turned around when she recognized the voice. “What are you doing here?” Grace asked when she caught up with them.
“I got a call from one of Grandpa’s neighbors. They’re complaining he’s acting strange. Well stranger than usual, I guess, so I’m going to go check on him. It’s because he doesn’t like being cooped up in there. One of these days I’m going to get a phone call and they’ll say he broke out or something,” sighed Ling.
“That would be your Grandpa,” smiled Grace.
“Yeah. He’s been going on lately about how beautiful my mother was, blah blah blah, and how pretty I’ll be, yada, yada. It just makes me think that he thinks he’s going to pass on or something,” said Ling.
“But you’re Grandfather’s not that old!” Grace exclaimed.
“I know, but if something were to happen to him…” Ling shook her head.
“I know what you mean,” said Grace, rubbing Tai’s head.
“Oh, in case you were wondering,” said Ling, suddenly changing the subject, “Right after you left the room, there was this really big outburst of people talking, because honestly, I think they found a point your argument about the Heartless. Then when the teacher was trying to settle everyone down, Mitch did one of her psychic attack and made that government official’s nose bleed so badly, it was if she broke her nose and she started crying. Thanks to that we missed an entire review session because they had to clean the mess up. And, to top it off, everyone started talking about what you did.”
“That’s one way to end the school year,” remarked Grace, “Oh! Speaking of which, that old toad told me something but I didn’t understand what it was. She said, ‘Can you feel…’” Grace then told Ling the word she had heard as best to her ability.
“Strange,” said Ling and she took a moment to think, “In my language, the word ‘sora’ means sky.”
“But what kind of question is that? ‘Can you fell the sky?’” asked Grace.
“Sora is also a name, but there’s no one I know that has that name,” explained Ling. They had arrived at the Elderly Retiree Center at last.
“Do you want to come with me?” asked Ling.
“Sure,” nodded Grace. They both showed their school ID to the guards stationed at the entrance. When they were allowed in, they walked into the tiny little village, passing by houses for the residential people and the medical building for those who couldn’t continue to look after by themselves. As they walked by a group of the elderly enjoying the cooler temperatures, Grace saw that they had stopped talking with each other and were staring at them. Some of them were even smiling at them.
“I hate it when they stared at me,” remarked Grace, “It’s so weird.”
“You get that too?” asked Ling, “I wonder if it’s because we remind them of their grandchildren.”
They continued to walk over a bridge across a small stream until they reached a small one-story house with a large garden out front. “Grandpa!” called Ling, “Grandpa! Are you here? It’s Ling!”
There was a crash and shouting. “GET OUT OF HERE YOU MANGIES! YOU’VE ALREADY BEEN FED!”
There were several hisses and when Ling opened the garden door to find out what was going on, several cats ran out, chased by a short, old man with a long graybeard. “Damn cats,” he grumbled, “Don’t know when to quit.” He then realized Ling and Grace were there. “Oh Ling! And a friend. This isn’t the psychic girl, is she?” the man asked Ling.
“No,” whispered Ling, “This is the American…ish girl.”
“What’s with the cats?” asked Tai.
“Oh, they’re just strays. I usually fed them,” explained Ling’s grandfather, “But they’ve been trying to steal Fifi’s babies. What to see them?”
“Okay,” Grace shrugged, slightly confused as to why he would name his cat ‘Fifi’.
Ling’s grandfather beckoned them over to a flower bush and pulled back the leaves, revealing three black and white spotted kitten and their mother, a mostly black but with a white underbelly cat. “I just gave two away to the neighbor’s grandkids today. I want to get rid of the other two but keep one so the mother doesn’t get lonely. Want one? They’re really- I SAID OUT, DAMN IT!” Ling’s grandfather took a broom and began to chase away a stray that had tried to sneak back in.
“Gracey, can I have one? Please?” Tai begged like a small child that really wanted something.
“Are you going to take care of it? Fed it? Clean it? Play with it? Clean out it’s litter box?” asked Grace and to all these questions Tai nodded.
“Okay,” said Grace and with a huge smile on his face, Tai picked up one of the kittens and carried it in his arms like a baby. After rubbing under its chin, the kitten started to purr.
“I think I’ll call it Moo-Moo,” said Tai.
“Why?” asked Grace, suppressing a giggle.
“Cause it looks like a cow,” explained Tai. Grace and Ling tried hard not to laugh.
Ling’s grandfather invited them in for dinner, a bowl of noodles with boiled shrimp. As Grace and Ling talked about Finals, Tai played with the kitten. Ling’s grandfather was going on about how arduous Finals were in his day, when the kitten started to cry.
“Tai did you do something?” asked Grace, “Tai?”
Tai had his hand on his head. “Gracey, I feel funny again.” Grace took hold of him and held him, just as the lights started to flicker and die.
Ling’s grandfather stared at the lights, then said, “I think it’s time you should head back to your school. Now.” He said in a somewhat urgent manner.
************************************************************************
All across the city, the lights waned and died. Not too many people panicked. It was this heat wave, they reasoned, nothing more.
Joey wandered down into the living room, where his father had lit some candles. “Of all the times for it to go out,” groaned Joey taking a candle, “I was working on something important.”
“You were?” Matti came down the stairs, picking up a candle, “I was in the middle of intense boss battle.”
“Where’s your sister?” asked their father, Dr. Carter.
“She should be in her room,” said Matti.
“I’ll go check on her,” Joey climbed up the stairs, into Margot’s bedroom.
“Margot? Margot!” he raised the candle to look inside, then he heard a groan on the floor.
“Margot!” he almost dropped his candle and picked his sister up. “Dad! Get up here! Margot, what’s wrong?”
“That’s noise…it hurts my ears so much…” she said breathlessly, as if she was in pain.
“What noise?” asked Joey.
“The noise,” Margot went on, “Don’t you hear it?”
Dr. Carter and Matti ran into to Margot’s room and Dr. Carter took Margot’s hands, Matti watching helplessly nearby. “Margot, honey, what’s wrong?”
“It’s coming back,” she whispered and she tried to cover her ears but she couldn’t help but cry.
Then Joey heard it: a very low pitch noise, almost unnoticeable, but now that he heard it, it was annoying the more he listened to it. The lights then flickered back on and Margot took her hands off ears. The noise had stopped, but what was it that Joey had briefly heard that Margot could hear so strongly that it had made her act like that?
************************************************************************
“Then find out what’s wrong and fix it!” the Commander roared before slamming the phone down. He turned back to two men standing before him. “Now, where were we? Ah yes, you were telling me how after ten years, you cannot find one girl!”
“W-we had very close m-matches but none of t-them had the d-double iris,” stammered the one man.
“And you’ve check all the schools? All the districts?” asked the Commander.
“All of them,” replied the other man calmly.
“Well, there is one place we haven’t looked yet,” whispered the first man.
“What?” the Commander’s eyes flashed.
“Y-you see, s-sir-” stammered the first man, but his partner took over.
“According to Civilian Decree 19, none of the orphanages established in Juno City can be searched without an emergency cause that would put civilians at risk. Even if we were to fabricate an outbreak of a disease, they wouldn’t let us touch their children without solid evidence they were at risk. And with St. Peter’s-”
“Being the only orphanage in the city, it’s the only place left,” finished the Commander, “I had forgotten about the damn decree.” The Commander was silent for a while, then he said, “Do you think a child, given the information, would be able to distinguish the girl we’re looking for?”
“A child?” asked the first man.
“A more mature child; a teenager,” the Commander corrected.
“Most likely,” said the second man, “Why?”
“We cannot touch St. Peter’s, so we are going to need an inside man. Those fools would never suspect a child being a spy,” he smiled looking at a picture of his daughters, “We will find this little rat. No…no, no, no,” the Commander corrected himself, “‘Rat’ would be most unfitting for such a beautiful girl. She is a pretty little mouse that will soon be captured.”
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(especially Aguries of Innocence!)