"Let's go to the Beijing Duck Restaurant," suggested Laura. She reached out, grabbed his hand, and took off into the air. In a moment, they had flown across the wide floor of the casino and arrived at a round table in a finely appointed restaurant. Laura slid smoothly from midair into her seat, while Nick landed off balance and nearly fell out of his.
She thought aloud. "Hmm... let's get a whole roast duck with plum sauce, and some zajiang noodles, and fried jinying mantou with lianru."
"You're mixing buns with noodles?" asked Nick, screwing up his nose. He'd grown up eating with his discriminating mother, and as a result he had mastered most of the world's culinary traditions. "That's a bit of a faux-pas in Beijing cuisine... Why don't we have some basi xiangjiao instead of the mantou? I love fried bananas with caramel!"
Laura raised her eyebrows. Nick guessed she wasn't used to being corrected. But then she shook her head and smiled. "For someone whose family got rich making food in laboratory vats, you know your way around a kitchen." She waved her hand in the air and the three dishes appeared, along with a pot of steaming tieguanyin tea.
Nick used the chopsticks that had appeared in his hand to pull a sliver of meat off the golden brown duck. The greasy flesh melted in his mouth, while the crisp skin remained for him to chew, releasing new flavors with every bite. "Wow! This is amazing. The flavors -- it's the best duck I've ever had!" he exclaimed.
"Try the noodles."
"These are amazing too! What spices did they use? I can make out the thyme and ginger, with a light jiangyou... and there are other things in here that I can't even name!"
"Food is always better in the ether."
"But at home I only eat the finest foods! How can this fake, imaginary stuff taste better than gourmet cuisine made from fresh produce by a Michelin-starred chef?"
"You really haven't been making the most of your MindWave. If you think the food is good, you should try the sex."
"Uh..." Nick paused with a piece of basi xiangjiao hanging tenuously off of his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. A long hair-thin strand of molten caramel that had stretched between the fried banana and his plate hardened and cracked, slowly floating back down to the table.
"Don't worry, I'll show you after lunch," said Laura with a flirtatious smile. "Now, what were those questions you wanted to ask me?"
Nick blinked, making a concerted effort to get his mind back on topic. He looked around to ensure they were alone and then leaned towards Laura to ask in a low voice, "Why is everyone in the ether a teenager? And why do they all look like supermodels?"
Laura gave him a once over. "You're not so bad looking yourself, Nick."
"Um, thanks."
"Do you look like this in real life?" Her tone was that of a teacher using the Socratic Method to lead a slightly slow student to an obvious solution.
"Well, mostly," he said, slightly uncomfortable at the question. "I mean, pretty close."
"You're about two inches shorter and your shoulders aren't this broad, but yes, basically you look like this in real life. Why's that?"
There was no use hiding anything from Laura. "Well, my parents had me designed this way. Genetic engineering."
"And is that procedure inexpensive or expensive?"
"Pretty damn expensive."
"And what about your MindWave? Expensive or cheap?"
"That was even more expensive."
"And why did you have your MindWave implanted when you did?"
"Because it's only suited to be implanted in brains at a certain stage of development, around age 16 or 17."
"And when did the inventor of the MindWave, Dr. P.J. Arora, start selling it?"
"About three years ago," responded Nick.
Laura gave him another once over and stated impatiently: "Nick, you have all the information you need to answer your own question. Just think for a second."
Nick stared across the restaurant for a moment, feeling very silly. Then it dawned on him. "Oh, only the same parents with the wealth and craziness to genetically engineer every aspect of their kids would also be wealthy and crazy enough to implant MindWaves in their children. And those kids have to be teenagers, and the MindWave's been around such a short time that everyone who has one is twenty or younger. Duh."
"Good job. Are you done eating?" She wore a sly smile. "I've got something important to do with Kobus this afternoon. But first, I promised to show you something after lunch."
He took a sip of tea, trying to look nonchalant. He was glad that he'd recently learned how to stop himself from blushing in the ether. "OK, my place or yours."
***
Once Sarah and Michael had fully recovered from the implantation surgery, they had begun undergoing intensive training, for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.
Sarah had quickly learned that the ranch was much larger than she'd initially thought. The three drab looking wooden buildings she'd grown used to housed concealed entries and air circulation vents for a larger underground space.
This subterranean part of the ranch hosted the operating rooms where Dr. Lee had implanted their TacWaves, facilities far more modern than the clinic above where Willy had treated her foot all those weeks ago.
The underground space also included a generously-sized physical training center, small living quarters, and a briefing theater equipped with a podium and holovision projector, where she and Michael met with Willy early every morning to review their training assignments for the day.
Willy told her that the ranch was completely off the grid. It had its own power source – thorium generators like the ones that had blown up at Hurricane, but a smaller, simpler design that had been used by the navy to power battleships for two decades without incident. The facility also drew its water from the same spring that fed the stream that ran across the ranch, and it could fully detach itself from all communications networks.
Willy also explained that the ranch facility had originally been built by NASA, then had been abandoned for decades before Rad – properly known as Colonel Rad Jaeger – had requisitioned it for a new use.
That new use was to train Sarah and Michael. In addition, the orphans who had seemingly been sent away during the competition had really just been relocated to the underground section of the ranch. Now they were undergoing brutal conditioning intended to turn them into a commando team capable of rapid deployment to raid criminal and terrorist facilities.
Sarah and Michael were receiving training that was different, yet no less rigorous. At the end of every long day, after finishing a late dinner, Sarah would drag herself, exhausted, down a long hallway to her quarters. These consisted of a small square room, furnished with a bed, desk and closet. In the closet were her clothes – mostly additional sets of the same gray T-shirts and shorts she'd been given on her first day at the ranch. She also had a small private bathroom with a simple plastic toilet and a weak shower with tepid water.
There was no phone or computer in her room. The only communication device was an internal voice paging system.
The door to her room automatically locked from 9PM till 5AM every morning. Whether or not she was sleeping, she had to be in the room during this time. In her few moments of spare time, her only choice for entertainment was to flip through well-worn soft cover romances from the small library near the mess hall. She had no idea how such old-fashioned novels had come to be at a computerized military facility, but she secretly suspected Dr. Lee had brought them.
Michael lived in a similar room at the other end of the long hallway. In between were four rooms that belonged to Willy, Rad, Dr. Lee and a muscular man named Hank Green who was mostly focused on training the other orphans.
Sarah had never been in Michael's room and he had never entered hers. Even if her shaved head hadn't robbed her of her social confidence, all of Sarah's thoughts of flirting with Michael had been drained out of her by the intense training program. Romance, she told herself, was something to look forward to after they graduated.
It seemed Rad was the most senior officer present at the ranch and didn't trouble himself with keeping day-to-day tabs on her. That was fine with her. His condescending manner was off putting, and she still was bitterly anger about how violently he had treated her when she tried to escape before her implant surgery.
The training was mostly run by Willy, and consisted in horribly tedious drills. During the sessions, Michael and Sarah lay in what looked like metallic reclining chairs. The headrest of the recliner had a curved metallic cooling system built into it, which closed around her entire skull, just leaving her face free. This system prevented the two students from overheating as they ran through their drills. Even with the cooling equipment, they had to keep their TacWaves only partially powered up.
The first few weeks of drills were incredibly mind numbing. She and Michael had spent an entire afternoon watching an animated ball bounce around a holovision. The purpose of the drill was to calibrate the TacWave with their visual cortexes. Another drill consisted of aiming a small laser pointer at a screen on which a red "x" would periodically appear. This drill was intended to allow the TacWave to begin improving their reflexes.
They also practiced simple movements, such as walking in a circle, to teach their TacWaves what nerve endings to stimulate to move which muscles. To keep their TacWaves from overheating, they detached the coolers from the chairs and strapped them to their heads and shoulders. The bulky devices looked like comically large collars from a cheesy vampire movie.
Sarah was getting frustrated by the slow progress. The sense of accomplishment and belonging that she had felt right after winning the competition was fading, and being replaced with her old anxieties. She was disturbed by visits from her mother on more nights than not, which left her feeling exhausted the following mornings.
"I thought these TacWaves are supposed to be incredible communications devices," muttered Michael to her one day during their short lunch break. As usual, they were sitting at their own table away from the other orphans. "Why the heck are we wasting our time with these stupid training drills?"
As Michael spoke, one of the other orphans was walking past with a tray. He stopped and turned towards them. "What kind of drills are you guys doing?" he asked.
Bob was his name, Sarah recalled. The bully who had tried to shoot her with his harpoon gun.
"Just calibrating our implants," said Michael through a mouthful of potatoes.
"Sounds easy. We've been training in tactical combat with Sergeant Green." Bob put down his tray on the table loudly. Across the cafeteria, several other orphans turned to watch.
Sarah knew what was coming. Maybe she could defuse the situation. She lowered her loaded fork to the table and forced a grin. "Cool. That sounds like fun."
"Yeah, it is fun." Bob slapped Michael's shoulder hard. "So much fun I want to practice right now."
"I don't have any beef with you," said Michael angrily. "Save it for the training room."
"You afraid? Good thing you run so fast because you fight like a wuss." Bob shoved Michael so hard he slid off the bench onto the floor with a thud.
Sarah started to stand up but some instinct told her to duck instead. As she lowered her head, a steel bowl full of mashed potatoes sailed over her and hit the ground.
She wanted to turn and face whoever had thrown the potatoes but felt a strong urge to move to the right around the table instead. This maneuver put her out of reach of Olivia Freeman, who was trying to tackle her from behind.
"You think you're so damn cool because you cheated and beat us?" demanded Olivia from across the table. "Just let me go toe to toe with you in a fair fight!"
Sarah's movement had positioned her behind Bob, who was ignoring her as he raised his leg to stomp on Michael. Not knowing quite what she was doing, Sarah obeyed her impulse to kick the back of Bob's knee while thrusting her left hand into his neck. Bob fell sideways and banged his head on the edge of the next table over.
Before Bob slumped to the ground Sarah heard clumping on the table to her left. She ducked just as Olivia's roundhouse kick cut through the air where the back of her head had been. Sarah raised her right arm and push on the back of Olivia's ankle as it passed overhead, sending the girl spinning off the table onto the floor in a hail of falling dishes and cutlery.
Michael reached up and Sarah grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. They turned together to see that five more orphans had formed an arc around them.
As the five moved in, Sarah heard rapidly approaching footsteps from the right. But she didn't dare tear her gaze from the nearest orphan, a big muscular boy just out of kicking range.
Suddenly, the small, compact form of Greg Silverstein appeared in her peripheral vision and shoved the boy back. "Cut this bullshit out!" Greg yelled. "And get back to our table."
The five orphans exchanged uncertain glances and then stepped backwards. They helped Bob and Olivia to their feet and then silently trudged back across the room.
Greg remained behind and turned as if to address Sarah and Michael. Instead, his gaze fixed on something behind them. Sarah turned and saw that Rad was standing in the doorway, arms crossed, face expressionless.
"I wonder how long he would have let it go on," said Greg.
Before Sarah or Michael could respond, an alarm began pealing.
Please don't hesitate to leave comments or vote! I always appreciate reader feedback.
False Idols (and its sequel Do No Evil) are available for sale elsewhere but this novel is free on Wattpad.
You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net