The four hour train ride ended in a forty-five minute drive through a one-stop town and around a growing number of rolling hills. After initial awkwardness on learning their destination, Decon had gotten their cabby warmed up enough he kept up a constant stream of chatter – sometimes with heartwarming stories of youth, sometimes with slightly disconcerting generalizations about who’s on welfare. Fortunately, participation was optional.
Decon didn’t know what to do with countryside. He watched it go by but couldn’t quite make himself feel whatever Seth was feeling, that put that unconscious smile on her face. He could walk out the cab door and touch the grass, but it was still somehow like looking at a postcard or a pretty piece of art on an office wall. Frankly, none of those offices gave him a great feeling of contentment. Even if they did stop to admire the grass, or whatever, he would want to stay crouched in the cab. That felt like home.
“Geez, how far is this place?” Seth asked.
Decon looked at her for signs of cunning, but it seemed to have come out completely naturally. ‘Geez’. She was apparently a ‘Geez’ kind of girl. At least sometimes.
“We entered the grounds about five minutes ago – didn’t see the gate didya?”
After a moment’s delay, Seth let out a low whistle, and, puffed by the attention, the driver launched into an explanation of the land’s ownership unto prehistory.
The paved road turned to white gravel, and an enormous, gothic-looking facility popped up from behind a hill topped by trees.
It was the biggest damn building, horizontally, Decon had ever seen outside a YMCA. A sigh of relief escaped when he saw an ugly, industrial extension sticking out the back and a couple of squat, poorly-imitative additions sitting around it.
Decon narrowed his eyes as they slowed to a stop. It was a pretty place, and trying desperately to stay a pretty place, which on the one hand seemed silly, but on the other seemed kind of nice. Now that they were at the front doors, he could see people actually wandering through the little gardens and stuff, often in pairs, some in white, some in those scrubs that had all the little pictures, and a bunch in this olive-y, drab teal-ish color scrubs.
Seth head popped down into the frame of the window and he started. A muffled ‘come on’ sounded through the glass and he got out.
She gave him a weird look, but paid the taxi driver handsomely with Mr. Tenor’s magic card and her winning smile.
Decon watched the taxi pull away like an old friend leaving.
“Come on,” Seth said again, but quietly, coming up beside him, “you’re not scared of this place, are you?”
“I was always afraid I’d end up somewhere like here when I was a kid – you know, locked away forever – once I knew what was up with me. I spent a few years throwing up before adoption meetings because I thought if I got turned down one more time, this was the only other place I could go.”
It just came out that way and he smiled to make up for being so serious, but Seth wasn’t fooled. She pulled herself straight and turned towards the building, probably cursing up a storm in her head. He would bet she never had that worry. Divorce meant her folks might fight about which of two places she would end up before a place like this. Not ideal that they didn’t get along, but she still had two parents to his none.
It was a little hot standing next to her, but it would be weird now to mention how appreciated the literal warmth of her presence.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Seth was, indeed, cursing herself, though such a description for it would have struck her as quaint.
“Let’s talk outreach and example,” she muttered, as they went up the steps together. “I think it will reflect better on us to be like… show ponies, sort of.”
“Got it,” Decon said, but she was almost certain he was going to just let her do the talking.
Decon’s qualifications for being the first recruit after her were legion, but not least among them was how much more typical his experience of being an Islander was than hers. Most Islanders either lost or were abandoned by their parents. Most would have some interaction with governmental entities from an early age, either punitive or as assistance. Still, it was stupid of her to think his experience in state facilities would make him more comfortable with this environment than her: familiar, yes; comfortable, no.
They opened the big, wood, brass-handled doors together, and it was like they had chipped the paint off old furniture – the outside was all country mansion, and the inside was just like a hospital waiting room. Taking in the mahogany columns on the stairs and the fancy moulding over the check-in window, maybe a fancy hospital.
They had both stopped in the doorway. Neither wanted to go up to the window first. There was an awful lot of metal grating and wire-supported glass in here.
A woman in a white coat stood up from one of the plush chairs before the window, setting a newspaper aside.
“Decon and Seth? From Mr. Tenor?”
She walked up to them, and Seth stepped forward, automatically, to meet her.
“Yes, hello,” Seth said, trying to get just the right chirp in her voice. “How’d you guess?”
The woman smiled, then let the smile drop, and Seth knew she was pinned. “Not too many Islanders walking in here by themselves. Also it’s the time Mr. Tenor said you would arrive, give or take five minutes. I’m Dr. Hardwell.”
She was shaking hands with Decon now, and they were smiling at one another, and Seth wondered if it had been that obvious when they had been shaking hands that she was sizing them up so effectively. Decon, meanwhile, seemed to be instantly enamored, his whole body relaxing, hands going casually to his pockets like a satisfied farmer looking at his crop. Maybe familiarity with officials gave him a better eye towards who to trust.
Maybe he just always responded that way to authority.
“Could you tell we were Islanders?” Seth asked, still trying to seem a little over-eager and under-informed. Not that she wasn’t curious.
Dr. Hardwell didn’t bother to look at her. “Who else comes here?”
Decon, asshole, chuckled.
“Okay,” Dr. Hardwell said, going back to her chair and picking up a stack of papers and clip boards she had left on the table beside it, “Let’s get this rolling.”
She led them to the massive, gated hallway just behind the reception area. The whole hallway mouth was covered with centimeter-thick, slightly curled wire, with a counter and a guard, like a prison, but she didn’t even have to unlock the door to lead them through. She set off in front of them, not fast, but not exactly strolling speed.
“I wanted to greet you personally so that any questions you might have would be answered in full and with the greatest authority immediately, so feel free to skip to you deepest darkest troubles about the arrangement with Mr. Tenor. Unfortunately, it’s a busy day for me, which is true every day, but today is badminton between A and C wings and we’re being audited. Handling this now saves me having to be interrupted later, or you having to make an appointment to return to discuss things with me.”
“Well…” Seth said, but she wasn’t quite sure how to go on. Decon loped beside her, taking in the sights without so much as a furrow in his brow, so he was no use.
“For example,” Dr. Hardwell said, having glanced back at them to judge their response, “I’m worried you won’t provide the stimulation which has led to such growth for Firmament over these last few years. Not that it would be your fault – the two of you I’m sure will take your responsibilities very seriously – but I think being in large group settings has been integral, and I find it difficult to believe that either Mr. Tenor will allow large gatherings of peers to occur in his building, Islanders or not, or that you will take responsibility for moving Firmament out into public spaces.”
She glanced back again, outwardly sympathetic, but her tone was hard. “It would be an undue burden on two teenagers to take care of a semi-invalid in public.”
“Uhh,” Seth said, trying to decide whether to be offended at her assuming them incapable, or to assure her, yes, they did plan on gathering potentially dangerous numbers of Islanders together.
“How invalid are we talking?” Decon asked.
Dr. Hardwell shrugged. “We’ve had a good run of him mostly following verbal instructions with an occasional touch-prompt. You know – ‘eat your cereal’ and if he doesn’t move himself, kind of push his elbow and he tends to get it after a minute or two.”
“Aw, that’s not so bad,” Decon said. “We once had a kid almost catatonic, but if you touched her she freaked out. Had to do a lot of getting very close but not touching and, like, miming, practically. That was a trip.”
“And, well, I mean, we do plan on having a larger group than just the two of us, too,” Seth added. “You know, not, like, parties, but we do want to be a group thing. You know, like, mutual support?”
“Good,” Dr. Hardwell said, perfunctorily. She had led them down a couple of hallways, and now they almost seemed to be doubling back – the inner walls had apparently been stripped down to some extent but to fit so many people still required a maze-like interior.
“I would prefer a group setting, eventually, though of course it should go slow to be sure a new environment won’t trigger anything.”
“You mean like putting people through walls?” Decon said.
Seth scowled at him, but Dr. Hardwell smiled.
“It’s a valid concern and you should never forget the potential is there. But not through walls, just up against them very firmly.” She paused to let them through a part of a hall guarded by a twin set of thick metal bars. “Break a few ribs firmly. But it was brick.”
“Well, we got glass walls, so that’s not great either. But Dr. Hardwell, I don’t get that,” Decon said, “I thought, you know, ‘one Islander, one trick…’”
“Many drawbacks,” Dr. Hardwell finished the saying – or a politer version of it – for him. “Throwing things about was always his specialty, so maybe this is just a new kind of that, triggered by the coma. Either way, you are contractually obligated to keep Firmament away from any kind of telepathic Islander, and vice versa.”
She relocked each gate after them. They had turned to face her, but when she turned back around to them, she smiled, very distinctly not at them.
“Hi.”
They both jumped. The voice belonged to a short kid in a hoodie and jeans, standing just behind them. As they turned to face him, his eyes dropped to the floor, and he seemed almost to step back, ready to run.
Dr. Hardwell stepped up between them. “This is Decon and Seth,” she indicated to the boy.
“I’m Peter,” the boy said, after a moment’s hesitation and a glance at Dr. Hardwell. He stuck his hand out, barely half way to them.
Seth put on her best smile to shake his hand, “Hello.”
Decon raised his chin, smiling, too. “Hey.
Dr. Hardwell said nothing for a moment, looking at the boy, then, re-hefting the stack of papers in her arms, “Well, you know where to find me.”
“No we don’t,” Seth said, looking up at her.
“Peter does. His help in this case is almost as good mine. Perhaps better. At any rate, he can cover the important parts – everything official, legal, and therapeutic is already arranged between Mr. Tenor and myself. And if you don’t have deeper questions…” they looked at each other, but neither could conjure anything in the bare seconds she gave them.
“This is much better,” Dr. Hardwell said. “I’ll leave you to it.”
She sifted through the papers as she spoke, pulled out a thick file, and handed it to Seth. “That’s the official stuff – it can’t leave the premises, but if you’re curious, that’s the most interesting parts. If you don’t come by my office, just leave it with the front desk. If you do leave with it, we will prosecute. You kids have fun.”
And with that, she smiled one last time and went right back through the double bars, while they stared.