4
THE STICKY BALANCE OF KNOWLEDGE
ROUGH HANDS GRABBED Darwin under his arms, lifting him from the ground. His toes dragged across the parking lot, leaving two lines in the thin layer of dirt and weeds that covered the asphalt. A wave of nausea threatened to consume him, and it felt like someone had driven a pickup truck into his head and was doing donuts. He lifted his chin, still in a daze, and smelled old dirt and sweat. The windows of the Quantum Labs building—wavering in a liquid wash as his eyes tried to focus—gave off a faint glow of cold light in the warm dusk of late August. As he was pulled into the black maw, he struggled to get his feet under him, managing only a couple of half steps before tripping. The men carrying him groaned as they took his weight again.
Rebecca stood waiting on the balcony overhanging the reception area, the suspended blue QL logo partially covering her face.
“Bring him up to me,” she said.
He glared at her for a millisecond before dropping his gaze, squinting against the overhead lights that pierced his eyes, struggling to form a complete thought. He knew he should be trying harder to get away—every part of him screamed it—but his body was barely listening to the commands his brain was trying to send. He was half dragged and half carried up the staircase to face Rebecca.
The men hauled him to an office and tossed him into a chair across the desk from her. The desk was huge and gray, industrial, resembling an aircraft carrier more than anything else. Darwin concentrated on the monstrosity in front of him, focusing on the single object, attempting to fight through the turmoil in his head as his view of the metal twisted and morphed.
“Please be gentle with him. Darwin is our guest and should be treated as such.” Rebecca’s voice was warm and inviting, a complete contrast to the one she had used in the closet.
The two men bowed and walked backward out of the office, closing the door behind them.
“It seems we got off on the wrong foot. I apologize and take full responsibility. Sometimes my zeal comes through a little strong.” She paused, waving at a side table. “I’ve taken the liberty of having some food and water brought in for you.”
He shook his head. More to try to get the cobwebs out of it than in response to Rebecca. She must have taken it as a no, turning away from the food. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep anything down anyway.
“Here, you really should have some water at least. It will make you feel better.” She stood and poured him a glass, placing it gently in his hands. “Please, drink.”
Darwin raised the glass to his lips on reflex alone and took a sip. The water was cold and refreshing as it slid down his throat. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. He finished the glass and held it out for more. She refilled it, smiling, and handed it back to him, putting the half empty pitcher on the desk. The liquid eased the pounding in his skull.
“Good,” she said as she lowered herself back into her chair. “What happened earlier in the Sanctum was unfortunate. Lyell—the man who helped you—was having . . . problems that seemed to manifest into anger against us. We managed to talk some sense into him, I think. I need to fill you in on some things, so we don’t have another incident, and I need you to listen closely. Can you do that?”
At the mention of Lyell’s name, he took another swig of the water. It took a second or two for the name to register, followed by surprise that he hadn’t wondered what had happened to him. Even though his headache was rapidly receding and the buzzing had all but disappeared, his brain still wasn’t working, still refused to respond.
Rebecca cleared her throat and continued. “You being able to See changes everything. We need you, and you need us. You don’t know it yet, but you do. In our world, when your dad—when Henry Lloyd—turned on the QPS, the world changed. Shifted. It didn’t take long for people to realize everything was different, they just didn’t know what. Or why. To some, things just started falling apart. To those who could See, the Threads began appearing. Some sensed the outcome of events before they happened, could sense how random events tied together. To revisit an old trope, if a butterfly flapped its wings in Japan, people over here who could See noticed the effects. It wasn’t until they realized they could alter what they saw that the world started changing.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself.”
She refilled his glass of water and he took another big gulp. This time it left a faintly bitter taste on the back of his tongue.
“The people of the world were split into two groups. Those who could See the Threads, and those who could not. Those who could not became almost useless.”
He rubbed his eyes, still confused. He still couldn’t seem to form a clear thought. If anything, it was getting worse. Even through the numbness, he knew what she was saying didn’t make sense. How could all of that happen when his dad just turned on the QPS today? And people were never useless. He focused on her face, watching her lips move.
“Some of those who could See became ruthless. They ruled over everyone around them like queens and kings, dictators, treating the less fortunate like slaves. Others, like us, tried to maintain society, tried to keep everything from disintegrating.” Rebecca sighed. “We failed. The world has become fractured. Our society has broken down to its base qualities. War started, the technological people against us and those that supported us. The only way we won was by destroying the technology they depended on. Shipments of crude oil from Canada and South America stopped, and with it came the complete destruction of everything we knew. Most of us now live as we did hundreds of years ago: small communities, distrustful of outsiders. Ruled by those with power. Those who See.”
Darwin finished his glass of water and put it beside the pitcher on the desk with a shaky hand. A full thought had finally formed. “Send me back home.”
“We can’t. We . . . we don’t even know how.” She leaned forward in her chair, her elbows on the gray surface of the desk. “But you might. You came here in the first place. We need you to tell us what you know.”
“Why?”
“Imagine the possibilities! A chance to regain what we’ve lost, to trade with other worlds that haven’t had the QPS turned on, to learn new things from those that have. We can’t trade with Europe or other countries anymore; the distances are too great, and the skills required to build seafaring ships are still being relearned. But other worlds only a step away?” The last part of her sentence came out sounding like a question.
“And if the link can only be made here?” He noticed his headache was completely gone. He didn’t even hear the faint buzzing he had lived with for the last few weeks, though it still felt like he was walking through a dense fog and his tongue had a hard time shaping the words as he spoke.
“The Qabal are known for their generosity. We would build a better world.”
“And how do I know you would do that?”
Rebecca let out a slow breath and leaned back, eyeing Darwin’s empty glass of water. “Those who See are a limited number. It’s our duty to take care of those who are weaker and less fortunate. Without us, we would have the same scenario I described earlier: the stone age and the extinction of our species.”
Something inside him wanted to shout, to scream out in anger. But even now, he could feel that voice receding behind a thick curtain. He knew he should care, that what she was saying was wrong—had to be wrong. Somehow, he couldn’t muster the strength to do it. He shook his head again, trying to shake off the heavy feeling inside it.
“Enough questions for now, Darwin. You look tired. I’ve had a room made up for you. There’s a bucket of water in the washroom to clean up a bit and flush the toilet with. Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
As if on command, the door opened and a man stood there waiting. Darwin tried to get to his feet, bracing himself on the arms of the chair before falling back into it. Hands grabbed his arms and lifted him up, steering him out the open door to the balcony, back to his room. He twisted back to look at Rebecca.
“Where’s Michael?”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “He wasn’t there when we found you.”
His escort pulled him through the door back to his prison.
Darwin woke to daylight streaming in through the office windows. He got out of the cot—not quite sure how he or it had gotten there—and looked out over the almost empty parking lot. The sun shone in a perfect clear blue sky.
Something was wrong . . . felt wrong. Looking out the window, everything was messed up. There was no traffic on the overgrown expressway, no movement or noises or city life. But all that was wrong yesterday. This was something new, something different. If he could only figure out what it was. At least the headache and buzzing hadn’t come back.
Yesterday . . . was it only yesterday? It felt like a lifetime had passed since he’d been in the lab with his dad. Yesterday, Lyell had told him this was his dad’s office, that this version of his dad had died five years ago when the QPS had been turned on. He found it hard to believe, but if it was true . . . did that mean his mother was alive in this world? Was there another version of him walking around somewhere? The thoughts both soothed and terrified him. His mother possibly alive, with a son that both was and wasn’t him. Schrödinger’s cat on a larger scale. What would they do if they all met? Images of old Star Trek episodes where matter met anti-matter flashed in front of his eyes. It was stupid, but he couldn’t help it. He forced himself to think of something else before his brain exploded, like how to get out of here and get back home.
A quiet knock on the door broke his reverie. It swung open, bringing with it the aroma of fresh coffee. A young girl carried in a covered tray and placed it on the desk. It wasn’t the same girl as yesterday; this one was much younger, with dirty blond hair. She removed the cloth covering the food with shaking hands before turning and practically running for the door. She hadn’t said a word.
He let the breakfast sit as he washed the sleep from his eyes using some of the water left over from the night before, before using the rest to flush the toilet one more time. The smell of coffee drifted into the tiny room and he moved back to the mesh-backed chair.
His nose had let him down. The tray held a steaming mug of whatever he had been given yesterday. He picked up the mug and took a tentative sip. It was definitely the same crap as yesterday. At least it was hot.
The bread tasted like it had just come out of the oven, warm and soft with the butter melting into the pores. He ate as if he hadn’t eaten in days, jamming the bread in his mouth and licking the butter that ran down his fingers. The final sip of fake coffee slid down his throat just as there was another knock on the door. This one was harder, less timid than the previous one.
He waited for the door to open, wiping his mouth and hands on the cloth. When no one came through he answered with a firm voice. “Come in.”
Rebecca stood in the doorway, smiling. It looked genuine, but he wasn’t quite ready to buy into her newfound friendliness, and yet . . . there was something pushing his natural distrust for people off to the side, and he almost welcomed the presence of another person.
“Good morning, Darwin. Are you ready to start your day? It’s going to be quite busy.”
“I just want to go home.”
“And you will, as soon as we figure out how you came across in the first place. The answer is in your head, but your being able to See makes it almost impossible to get unless you are trained in the Threads. Without conscious control of them, your unconscious mind will fight our attempts to pull out the information. That could damage you beyond repair. We don’t want to do that.” She paused. “Come with me, I’d like to introduce you to your teacher.”
He hesitated before he moved to the door and followed her out. He thought he saw a smile flicker across her face for a brief moment, but he couldn’t quite tell.
How was he supposed to give what he didn’t have? Still, if there was a chance it was going to get him home, it was worth a shot. “Teacher?”
“Yes, teacher. Today you’ll start to learn how to control the Threads enough to help us get you back where you belong.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Here we are. Bill is waiting for you,” Rebecca said, opening the door. She stood off to the side and waited for him to enter. The door thudded closed behind him, leaving him alone in the dark space. She hadn’t answered his question.
As his eyes adjusted to the low light, he made out a simple desk with two chairs. A shelf-lined wall was filled with boxes and things made of wire and wood and string. A small man stood behind the desk, watching him intently. It felt like he was being judged. The man’s long white hair was thin and unkempt. When Darwin spotted him, he stepped further into the room.
“Ah, Darwin. It is good to finally meet you. I apologize for the lack of lights, but it is often easier for beginners to See the Threads when it is a bit dark. Please, sit down.” He pulled out a chair and sat. “Did the Revered Mother give you the inhibitor?”
“What?”
“The inhibitor. It blocks the ability for you to See the Threads. The untrained and emotional human mind can only get a tenuous hold on the probabilities and possibilities before it loses control and snaps. Almost everyone who loses control requires constant care for the rest of their lives. A very few come back from that precipice, but they have no ability to See. We found the older you are when taught to use them, the more chance there is for immediate and irreversible brain damage. Since the inhibitor stops you from Seeing, it stops you from using, and there is less chance of damage.”
He waved his arm through the air. “How many Threads do you See?”
Darwin squinted in the dark room. “Umm, one, I think. It’s very faint, though.”
“Good. As you gain more control, we’ll lessen the amount of inhibitor you take.”
“So you are saying you drugged me?” That would explain how he felt last night when he was talking to Rebecca.
“Well, yes.” Bill looked him in the eye, a quizzical expression on his face. “Would you prefer the alternatives I just told you about?”
Darwin lowered himself into the offered chair. So that’s what was different this morning. When he had looked outside, there were no Threads. Not even a flicker in the corner of his eye. When had they given him the drugs? Maybe in this morning’s breakfast, or more likely in the water he drank last night. Maybe both. He knew it should bother him more, but he couldn’t seem to muster the strength to do anything about it. Was that a side effect of the inhibitor, or did they slip something else in?
“The Qabal—”
Bill waved his hand, interrupting Darwin’s question. “There will be no talk of the Qabal in here. I am to teach you how to safely See and use the Threads. No more, no less. Whatever philosophies you decide to wrap around the Threads make no difference to their usage, or how I will teach.”
He turned and fetched a small device from the shelving on the wall. It was made of two tall rails parallel to each other with a loose stick resting on the base. Bill grabbed the stick and placed it between the rails, balancing it on its end with his finger.
“When I let go of this stick, there are basically three possibilities: the stick will fall to the left, the right, or it will balance on its tip. The rails stop any other motion, so it limits what we can See.” He let go of the stick and it dropped to the left. “Now, we have a narrow stick, the probabilities of it falling are quite high, while the probability of it balancing on its tip is extremely low. Our lesson for today will be to simply predict the direction of the fall. By watching the Threads, we’ll be able to See its motion before it actually happens.” He picked up the stick again. “Are you ready?”
Darwin felt a small wave of resentment build and struggled to hold onto it. He wasn’t sure what to do or who to believe, and interaction with others was something he always tried to avoid, even if it was one-on-one. He got ready to stand. “And if I choose not to do it?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the faint strand of rebellion slipped from his grasp as quickly as it had come. Even though the thought of it stopped, the emotion behind it remained. Before he could apologize, Bill spoke again.
“The Revered Mother will deal with that situation. I cannot help you there. Now, concentrate on the stick. Left or right?”
“What if one of the rails breaks? That changes the . . . the possibilities.”
“True, but the probability of the rail breaking is extremely low. A beginner would have no hope of Seeing that Thread, and those of the rails, to manipulate them. Especially with the inhibitor.” His voice became clinical as he continued. “Now, concentrate. Can you See the Threads around it?”
In the darkened room, light wispy threads began to appear around the stick. The harder he looked at them, the clearer they became. “Yes.”
“Good. I’m making the Threads stronger so you can See them. Watch the Threads. In which direction do they seem thicker? Is the thickest Thread pulling or pushing the stick in a particular direction?”
He watched the Threads as they wove around the stick. They all looked the same, thin and translucent, ethereal, like gauze pulled through liquid. He concentrated harder. The Threads partly disappeared as images flashed in their place. They were almost carbon copies of each other as the images of the stick split, and split again. Suddenly, in one, the stick fell to the right, while in another it fell to the left and in a third the stick remained upright. He raised his hand to his head, expecting the pain he’d felt earlier with his Coke can. Only a faint buzzing came through.
The images disappeared, and with it the faint background buzz.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah . . . yeah. Last time that happened it felt like my head was going to explode, and I passed out.”
“And this time?”
“Nothing, just a small buzzing in my head.”
“Good! That’s the inhibitor doing its job. Even the noise will disappear as you get stronger. Let’s do it again. Concentrate on the Threads.”
It was easier this time. The Threads appeared as insubstantial as before, and then disappeared, replaced by the images. The image of the stick tipping left seemed stronger, brighter, more real than the one falling right and definitely more substantial than the balancing stick.
“It will go left.”
Bill let go of the stick and it fell to the left. “Excellent. Let’s do it again.”
They spent the morning predicting how the stick would fall. He was right about eighty percent of the time. Enough to beat the odds of guessing. By the time Bill called it a day, he was really beginning to hate the damn thing. A headache was building behind his eyes, and it felt like he hadn’t eaten in days. Yet he was filled with an excitement and yearning to learn more. The thirst for knowledge was difficult to control.
When the door opened, he followed the men waiting for him back to his room and devoured the meal already sitting on the desk. He barely registered there was a full bucket of water in the washroom before collapsing on the cot and falling into a deep sleep.
The next day it started all over again. Darwin walked into the dimly lit room with anticipation. Even the thought of spending another day in close quarters with someone else wasn’t enough to dampen the excitement. Most of it washed away when he saw the parallel bars device already waiting for him on the desk, and Bill sitting patiently behind it.
The session went for close to five hours before he was escorted back to his room, a headache smoldering in the background. A meal waited for him, and he wolfed it down before falling into his cot. That night he dreamt that Rebecca entered his room and stood by his cot, Threads moving toward his head, probing, adjusting. Beside her, his mother crouched near his feet, a knife in her clenched fist. He woke to a room that was as empty as always, with the door still locked.
The pattern with Bill continued for two more days before he’d finally had enough.
“This is stupid. How long am I supposed to look at a stick?”
“Until you get it one hundred percent right. Some students get stuck here for months. If you don’t have a solid base to build off of, you’ll never be able to get up to something bigger. Now, which way will the stick fall?”
Darwin stood and pushed his chair in, pacing behind the desk in the small space. Every time he changed direction he stole a glance at the parallel bars. The Threads around it swirled with no concept of time, of how long he had been pacing. Bill seemed to be taking his cue from the Threads, his finger holding the stick in place as if he had nothing better to do.
Darwin sighed and pulled his chair back out, dropping into it with resignation. He looked at the Threads, not even waiting for the images to form. “It will fall left.”
Near the end of the day, he had predicted every fall with the one hundred percent accuracy Bill was looking for.
Bill picked the device up off the table and returned it to the shelf. He poked around for a while, picking up and putting back several of the constructs before apparently finding what he was looking for.
The device he came back with looked as simple as the one he had just returned to the shelf. Instead of the parallel bars, this one looked like a plus sign. Bill balanced the stick in the center of the plus and waited for Darwin to tell him which way the stick would fall.
The Threads were more complex this time. Instead of indicating only two ways, there were now four, plus the chance of the stick balancing on its end. More comfortable with what he was looking at, Darwin quickly said it would fall toward Bill.
He was wrong.
“You didn’t take the time to look at all the Threads,” Bill said. “And you’re still agitated. Remember the exercises. Remember how emotions can lead to insanity, how a calm mind helps you with the Threads. Breathe in and hold it for a moment. Be calm and try again.”
Darwin leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. It had been another long day, and he just wanted to go back to his room and sleep. Last night had been miserable. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw images of his room at home. Of the lab when the test was being done. Of his dad. Of Rebecca standing over him as Threads slithered over his body. Of his mother. He would start awake and toss and turn until sleep called again. It went on for most of the night.
“How is this helping me to get home?”
“Rebecca believes you know how you came across, that the information is in your head just waiting to be pulled out. Because you can See, but don’t have control, getting that information would be almost impossible. There is a far greater chance of destroying you and permanently losing the information than there is of getting it out.”
“So the more I learn the better chance I have of getting home?”
“Right. Think of your untrained mind as a fine glass. If you wet your finger and run it along the rim, the glass starts to vibrate and hum. The small amount of liquid inside begins to ripple, and there is a chance the glass will break. That’s what happens when you See without knowing how to control. If you keep it up, your brain will be like the liquid, and your sanity, the container. Now, think of the glass, and take your other hand and wrap it around. The vibrations stop. The liquid stills. That is where we need you to be, but it’s a process. First you need to know you have a hand, then that you have fingers. Once that is done, that you have muscles that move the fingers. Muscles that have atrophied from not being used. It takes time, constant exercise, and monitoring.”
Darwin nodded. It all made a kind of sense.
“Now, which way will the stick fall?”
He studied the Threads until the images came.
The lab was filled to capacity. Darwin stood crammed with Bill near the empty window frame. Inside the QPS room were Rebecca and her twelve disciples. She called them her Quorum, which didn’t make a lot of sense to Darwin. Unless there were more in the group than the ones here with her.
Darwin silently counted the number of people in the lab and stopped at twenty-two. Several smiled when they caught him looking and a couple waved. These were the people that he met in his short forays—always escorted—around the Quantum Labs building. A few had even stopped and spoken to him before continuing on with their days. Despite his hope that he would see Lyell, the young man had never crossed paths with him.
He stopped counting and stared through the empty window frame at the QPS. There were more than the twenty-two here, but with the mass of bodies, there was no way he could see them all. Only a few weeks ago, when he first came here, being in a stuffy room with this many people would have sent him running for the nearest exit. He wasn’t sure what had changed, or when, but besides a mild discomfort, he was feeling okay.
The number of people in here was only a small fraction of how many were in the Quantum Labs building and part of the Qabal. Bill had told him there were several hundred, though only a few of those knew how to use Threads. These were the ones that wore the anti-static jackets.
The tension in the room had increased the moment Rebecca had walked in—last, of course, so everyone could watch her. He’d felt the tension on his skin and in the way the Threads—the ones he could See—slowed and became stiffer. He couldn’t help but let it affect him, and for a moment, the old feelings came back. Bill placed his hand on Darwin’s arm and whispered for him to breathe. Even after only a couple of weeks of classes, Bill’s voice and whispered instructions were enough for him to relax a little and pull away from the Threads.
Rebecca took her place behind the QPS and the room got quieter. There weren’t even the minute sounds of cloth rubbing against cloth, or of a foot shifting on the floor. Everyone was as still as the view out of the window in his room.
The chanting he’d heard during his first time here, when Rebecca had tried to find out how he’d moved between the worlds, started up. The same strange rhythm of church hymns and 80s pop music blended into a whole that sounded wrong to his ears and grated along his spine.
This time, when the chanting stopped, he caught the flicker in the Threads that kept the group in sync. Everyone dropped to their knees, leaving Rebecca standing behind the QPS. Darwin knelt down beside Bill.
“Praise the Source, for all it provides to us,” Rebecca said.
“Blessed be the Source.” Again, the reply was in perfect unison.
“May the Source guide us along the path.”
“Grant us the ability to follow where it leads.”
Everyone fell silent once more, staring with what he could only describe as rapture toward Rebecca and the QPS. He opened himself to the Threads the way Bill had taught him, and gasped at what he saw.
The QPS room was laced with color and light. It was . . . he struggled to find the words and settled on alive, though he knew it was inadequate. It was alive with Threads. The Threads were the fourteenth person in the QPS room and showed a freedom he had never seen before. The way they moved between the Quorum and Rebecca was languid and smooth. Directed, yet seeming to have a mind of their own. What would he be able to See if he didn’t have any inhibitor in his system?
He shifted his focus to Rebecca, enthralled by what was happening. Every Thread in the room was so obviously under her control. He marveled at the ease she displayed with them.
Bill’s touch on his arm pulled him from the display.
“Easy. Remember to control what you See. Don’t get pulled in so far you forget everything you’ve learned,” he whispered.
Darwin saw Rebecca’s gaze flick toward them. Bill hadn’t spoken that loud. How had she heard him? Once again, though, Bill’s calming voice worked its magic and he reined in the awe that bubbled through him, limiting what he saw to only the strongest of the Threads. Occasionally, a sense of family would fill him, a sense of belonging. Images of his mother bubbled to the surface. Where the hell had they come from? Despite his silent questions, he felt as though she was here with him, guiding him. He’d never felt closer to her than he did here. Not since the accident.
The ceremony continued for at least another hour before the final Threads disappeared and people followed Rebecca out the door. She waited as everyone walked past her and stopped to say a few words. He could see that each person who went through the door was infatuated with her. It was visible in the deferential postures of their bodies and in the way they wanted to hold onto her hands for as long as they could.
There was a difference when Bill spoke to her. Although he said the same words as everyone else, he didn’t have the same posture, and didn’t reach out to touch her.
It was his turn next. He tried to say thank you, but all that came out was a squeak. He cleared his throat and tried again.
“Thank you, Revered Mother.” It was the first time he had called her that, mimicking what the others had said before him, and somehow it felt right. Rebecca was too personal in this place. He moved on before he could embarrass himself any more. He didn’t reach for her hand, following Bill’s lead. If it bothered her, he didn’t see it on her face. It wasn’t until later when he was alone that he realized that he actually liked Rebecca and the Qabal. Another change that had crept up on him.
His standard escort of two guards picked him up just outside the lab and followed him back to his room. Now that the service was over, he had no idea what to do with himself. There were no lessons from Bill, and without that, he was lost and bored. He sat in the mesh-backed chair and stared out the window.
For the first time since his lessons had started, he pulled out his cell phone and tried to turn it on. The battery was dead. He didn’t even have his music to help pass the time.
What if he tried to do some Thread stuff without Bill around? He’d never tried anything on his own; he’d always been too exhausted after his lessons. He only hesitated for a moment before leaning back and opening his Sight the way Bill had taught him.
The first thing that came into view was the blue mesh surrounding the Quantum Labs building. It wavered at the edge of the parking lot, protecting everyone inside it from scavengers and thieves. He sat forward in his chair, the thought coming as a complete shock. He didn’t feel like he was a prisoner anymore. He was part of the community inside the protective barrier. It was an interesting day for revelations.
A knock on the door pulled him from examining the change anymore.
“Come in.”
One of his guards walked in. “The Revered Mother would like to see you.”
Darwin got out of his chair, suddenly filled with apprehension. Maybe she’d found a way to send him home.
“Darwin, please come in. Sit.”
He shuffled in, leaving the guard at the door, and lowered himself slowly into the offered chair. He couldn’t explain the anxiety twisting through his gut and the fine layer of sweat that covered the palms of his hands. He gave them a quick wipe on his pants and waited, trying to analyze what he was feeling.
Why did she have this effect on him? What was it about her that made him want to either run and hide or confide his deepest darkest secrets to her? The longer he sat, the more the feeling faded, replaced with a calmness that left him even more confused, until even the confusion disappeared.
“What did you think of today’s services?” Her voice was serene and conversational.
“I, uh . . .”
“They can be a bit disconcerting when you’re at the early stages of learning. There’s so much going on, it can be overwhelming.”
He stayed silent, not sure how to respond to her and waiting to find out why she had called him here in the first place. There was no way he was going to tell her how the Threads in the QPS room made him feel, how it brought memories of his mother back so vividly.
“Well.” Rebecca paused as if waiting for him to say something. “I asked you to come to see what you thought of your progress with Bill. Is he pushing you too hard? Not hard enough?”
Darwin shrugged.
“Well. Good. He is quite pleased with where you are. He thinks we’ll be able to find out what you know in a couple of months.”
“Months?” A pit yawned open in front of him and he felt himself falling.
“Yes. We need to make—”
“Two months? I thought . . . I thought we could try sooner . . .” The calmness, overriding the background anxiety he felt, drained from him faster than he thought possible, pushed out of the way by the sinking feeling in his stomach.
“We want to make sure we don’t harm you when we start looking. You need a base knowledge so you don’t fight our attempt.”
“I know, but . . . but I thought it would only be a week or two.”
Rebecca stood and moved around the desk, sitting in the chair beside him. She rotated to face him and grabbed one of his hands. “I know it feels like a long time, but it’s better for both of us. There’s less chance of harming you, and a significantly higher chance of finding the information we need to send you back home.”
“I need some air.” He pulled his hand from Rebecca’s grip and lurched to the door, filled with a sudden distrust he couldn’t explain. He yanked it open, only to be blocked by the man who had brought him here. Darwin glanced back to look at Rebecca. She nodded her head and the guard stepped out of the way. Darwin moved to the railing overlooking the entryway and placed both hands on it, leaning over to look at the floor below. The receptionist desk below him lay empty and abandoned.
He breathed in through his nose, the way Bill had taught him, and out through his mouth. Two months? It was a long time to be away. He’d miss the start of the new school year. How was he supposed to catch up? He stopped a quick, panicked laugh. What a stupid thing to think of when you were trapped in another world.
He was left alone for a few minutes before Rebecca joined him at the railing. She stood beside him without speaking.
He was the first to break the silence, asking a question that had been on his mind since Michael had tried to pull him through the blue mesh. This was the first time he’d had a chance to ask it.
“Where’s Lyell? I haven’t seen him since my first night here. You said you talked some sense into him. Where is he?” He was afraid of what the answer would be, but at the same time so desperate to hear it.
Rebecca paused for a brief moment before responding.
“He decided not to stay here anymore. He went off to look for Michael. We gave him what supplies we could and sent him on his way.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. What else did you expect? That we would punish him?”
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. The warnings from Lyell and Michael, the hints from Bill about how he didn’t allow politics or philosophies into his classroom, made him imagine the worst. He gave a small, wavering smile, unsure of how to feel.
None of it made sense or fit in with what he had seen of them, and he was too tired to fight about it. He just didn’t want to anymore. The wave of calmness weaved back into him, and he pushed off of the railing.
“Can I go back to my room?”
“Of course. Monty here will walk with you.”
He sighed. Of course he would. He found that he just didn’t care anymore.
Darwin’s waking hours turned into a comfortable pattern of classes with Bill, deep blissful sleep with the occasional dream of Rebecca standing over him benevolently, trays of food delivered to his room, and the intermittent sightings of his mother that he wrote off as exhaustion and the young teenager that had brought him food once. In the third week, he watched as Bill manipulated the Threads, pulling here or pushing there, thinning or thickening the Threads to make the stick fall where he wanted it to, though he didn’t teach Darwin how to do it. By the fourth week, he had difficulty remembering any other way of living. All that mattered were the Threads and the Qabal. They had become his life. Defined who he was.
He didn’t even think of questioning it.
By the time the second month rolled around, he truly felt like he belonged. Most of his meals were taken in the large cafeteria of Quantum Labs, where he’d found a group of people to sit with. People he thought of as friends, who cared about him. He left most of those meals feeling happier than he had in years. The anxiety of being around so many people had receded into the background.
He opened up to Bill. In between lessons they would talk about life, about their pasts, and in Darwin’s case, what he hoped for the future.
His future plans shifted the longer he stayed with the Qabal, from wanting to go home to wanting to learn more about the Threads, to how he seemed to fit in. At times like these, Bill would stop the conversation and start a new lesson.
Darwin didn’t notice.
He tried to talk to Bill about the images more than once. Each time, Bill was sympathetic, trying to convince him that Seeing anything more than the Threads would slow down his progress and make it harder to move forward. That perhaps the images were vestiges of an emotional connection and should therefore be shunned. Emotions and Threads were never to be mixed.
Darwin didn’t notice when the second month slid into the third.
His walks to the classroom went unescorted. There hadn’t been a guard outside his room or Bill’s class in he couldn’t remember how long, and the doors were no longer locked behind him. The limited free time he had away from class was spent with his new friends or practicing. The Threads were a constant part of his life, and he lived with them, breathed them in, until he couldn’t imagine being without them. The Revered Mother continued her visits, though they had slowed down somewhat. He looked forward to them. Forward to the wisdom she had to share, to the one-on-one time.
Today, he pondered the words she had spoken during the last service. Her talk of family, of how family encompassed more than blood ties, spoke to him. He felt the same toward Bill and the Revered Mother as he had with his dad. They had more than filled the hole in his heart that had been created when he’d come over. The Qabal was family . . . not just the few that attended the services in the sanctum, but everyone in the building. Even those who couldn’t See the Threads. He had more friends now than he’d had since the day he was born. His life had become richer, more complete, since he had met them. He tried to remember the last time he thought of his dad and couldn’t. He knew he should have felt guilty, but when he searched, there wasn’t anything there.
He remembered that the service had been subdued, muted. The Threads less vibrant and less active than he had ever seen them.
He hadn’t noticed that Bill wasn’t in his usual place beside him, by the empty window frame.
Today, when he opened the door to the classroom, Bill wasn’t sitting behind the desk. Instead, he stood near the back of the room, where he had been the day they had first met. This time, Darwin saw him easily by the movement of the Threads.
Bill moved to the desk and sat down. None of his fancy instruments sat on the table. Darwin took his place without a word and waited. Bill smiled, though Darwin thought it had a sad edge to it.
“I have only seen one or two people learn as fast as you have, Darwin,” he said. “It is really quite remarkable. The Revered Mother has informed me you no longer have the inhibitor placed in your meals. It’s been missing for the last few days, though you probably didn’t notice. I’ve been told she’s been reducing the inhibitor since your first lesson, so there wasn’t much to get rid of. You’ve already noticed, but you will See all the time now, if you’re not careful. Listen to what I’ve taught you. Don’t try to follow every Thread. Your brain will snap at the effort. As my teacher once told me, a bird can roost but on one branch.”
“Am I getting any more classes?” Darwin sat still, too scared of the answer to move.
“Maybe in the future, but not now.”
He suddenly felt empty and hollow. What was he supposed to do now? His life had become classes with Bill and long talks with Rebecca. He leaned back in his chair as the realization of how he felt drove home. He cared for Bill and the Revered Mother—for his life here—more than he did for his life back home.
“I couldn’t have done it without your help.” He stumbled over the words, not willing to say what he was thinking, what he was feeling. It was all too new to him.
“You should know a teacher is nothing without a good student, and you have been very good.” Bill sighed. “I have taught you all I am allowed about Seeing Threads, but there is so much more. Only experience will allow you to master the intricacies, the possibilities, of the Threads, allowing you to manipulate them as I showed you months ago. And I’m afraid only experience will teach you about life. That is the way with everyone, but more so for you. The Qabal limit what I See. Especially when it comes to you. But what I do See . . . you have some difficult decisions to make, Darwin. And the Qabal have already started changing you. I don’t need the Threads to see that. Remember, the Qabal is but one way. Do not discard the others simply because you do not understand them. A wise man first learns, and then chooses. Not the other way around.”
Darwin latched on to Bill’s comment about manipulating Threads, ignoring the inherent distrust of the Qabal in Bill’s words. “When will I learn to do it, to manipulate Threads?”
“I don’t know.” Bill sighed again. “My task has been to teach you to See and to control yourself, so you don’t try to follow every Thread. From here, you would normally be tested for your strengths, to find out which Threads you have more affinity for. If you can See and follow the Threads in the human body, healing would be a good path. If you can follow the Threads of a bird flying through the air, hunting and tracking may be a good path. Or war. Most pupils would go from here and apprentice with a Master for a few years.” He paused, obviously thinking about his next words. “The Qabal may not let you do that.”
Bill got up, walked to the wall shelves, and picked the two rails and stick device Darwin had first worked with so long ago. He brought it back to the table and balanced the stick under his finger. “I’d like you to have this, as a memento. It is the simplest test, but shows that no matter what, there is always an alternate choice, an alternate way.”
Darwin sat in silence for a minute before asking, “What do you mean, the Qabal may not let me do that?”
“Nothing. I’ve said too much already.”
“This is my life, Bill. I have the right to know.” For the first time in months, he felt uncomfortable to be in the classroom.
Bill searched his face before coming to a decision. He lowered his voice and leaned forward, still balancing the stick under his finger. “The Qabal limits everyone’s rights. Yours and mine.” He looked over Darwin’s shoulder at the closed door. “Trust the Threads. Read them. Follow them. And trust your heart. Your mind can be easily fooled, but the heart is stronger. Listen to it.”
Darwin didn’t know what Bill was talking about, but the words sent a shiver down his back that he couldn’t control. Suddenly filled with dread, he pushed the feeling aside, choosing instead to focus on the stick under Bill’s finger. The Threads wrapped around it, embracing and permeating the wood, constantly thickening and thinning, always moving. Images of the stick split from the original. But not just the three images he had seen when he started learning. This time, there were five. The months of training had focused his Sight, and the Threads held a faint hint of green, like the skin of a ripe pear. When he’d asked Bill what it was, the answer had led into a dissertation of color and Threads. It all came down to green indicating an element of time, and since Darwin was essentially predicting the future, time was a part of the Threads he saw.
“Let go of the stick.”
Bill hesitated. “But why? This is child’s play for you now.”
“Please, let go.”
Bill released the stick. It balanced on its tip for a long second, until a rail snapped and the stick fell, free from the confines created for it. Darwin fell back into his chair, an acute, piercing pain slicing through his head before disappearing as quickly as it had come. He tried to hide the sudden exhaustion that swept through him.
Bill stared at the broken instrument and then up at Darwin, a smile on his lips. “Do you know how you did that?”
Darwin paused for a long while. The last time he brought up the topic Bill had dismissed it as a distraction, something to be discarded. But he knew he couldn’t lie. Not to Bill.
“I chose the image that showed it.”