The Rainbow Maker's Tale by Melanie Cusick-Jones
* * *
“What about now?” I was hoping for a different answer to the twelve previous times I’d asked the question.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Cassie hissed. “I CANNOT hear what you are thinking!”
“Maybe it’s something to do with attunement?” I mused, ignoring Cassie’s angry expression and staring at her head. Or maybe the key was not in conscious thought, but subconscious…
“Can you let it go?” Cassie turned away, focusing her attention back on her screens. “I feel like I’m some sort of experiment or research project for you!”
“Come on – I’m not that bad – I just want to see if you can do it again.”
Cassie spun back around in her chair to face me, and I thought she was just going to tell me again that nothing had happened. So, I was surprised when she actually said: “I’m dealing with it.”
Dealing with it? If that was the case, then it meant that there was something to deal with, didn’t it?
“It was just a strange coincidence,” she added.
The two statements didn’t add up. She was saying it was nothing but a coincidence, but also telling me that she was dealing with it. It couldn’t be both. And, the fact that she was avoiding eye contact only made me believe it more. There was something.
“You’ve barely looked at your screen since we’ve been here.” She admonished. “We’ll not find anything to discuss in our research document if you don’t at least try and focus – I don’t want to fail this.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “Firstly, we can’t fail as it isn’t a test. Secondly, I don’t need to focus to pull together observations on the data they’ve given us: I’ve already got five lines of investigation searching as we speak, with research hypotheses ready for each. And thirdly, you are a much more interesting subject than any of the stuff we’ve got here.”
She scowled in response. “Thanks for not making me feel like an experiment.”
I tried not to laugh. She was very cute when she was angry, and it was quite distracting.
As I watched, Cassie pulled out an automatic discourse headset, and very deliberately pulled it on. I assumed this was to let me know that the conversation was over. I chuckled, then picked up my own headset and put it on, mimicking the extremely serious look on Cassie’s face.
“So – can we try again?” I asked, when I caught her peeking back at me.
At first I thought she was wavering. Her face relaxed from the frown momentarily, and I took that as a good sign. But, she didn’t answer me and the silence began to fill the small room, like an invisible, suffocating cloud.
Reluctantly, I turned back to my own screens, ignoring the data scrolling across them. All the joking had gone now. It just hurt that there was obviously something she knew about this, and that she was hiding it from me. How could anything be that bad, compared with what she knew about me?
“Why are you hiding this from me?” I asked her silently, unable to say the words aloud.
“Look…” Cassie said, pausing and taking a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to hide anything from you. It’s just this whole thing, with you believing that I can hear what you think…it’s too strange. Implausible”
My heart stopped. I swear it did – just for a second, but it did stop. I turned to stare and found myself looking at the back of Cassie’s head. The headset was in position, above the cascade of dark hair, and her eyes were fixed on the screen in front of her. I couldn’t have said a word then if my life had depended on it. Cassie was answering the question I had just asked myself, not her. But, the important thing was that it was in my head – I hadn’t said it out loud. If I were going to say it, I probably would have worked harder to sound a little less hollow and despairing.
My heart re-started. Where my badgering had failed, it seemed straight forward honesty had succeeded. Albeit, honesty that I had not offered her through choice… Cassie was still talking, and I realised that I was getting exactly what I’d wished for. Cassie was revealing secrets about herself, to me, that I doubted she had ever told anyone before.
“I can’t really understand it. And, more than anything, I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of freak.” Cassie broke up her serious words with a soft scoff, and sounded lighter when she continued. “I promise, once I’m feeling a bit better we can experiment all you want. As long as you promise not to try and dissect me or anything.”
I couldn’t believe it. Whatever had happened the day before in the park, was happening again now! But this time Cassie was fully conscious, and appeared to be controlling whatever it was that made it possible for her to hear what was in my head, rather than what I said aloud. If I was allowed to experiment, as she had just said, then I might as well start now.
“You promise?” I asked, letting the words hover inside my head; just as I had a moment before when I thought I was just talking to myself.
“I promise,” she confirmed.
“Can you look at me and say that again?” I asked internally. “I want to see your eyes and make sure you’re telling me the truth.”
“Fine,” she grumbled, whirling in her seat to face me. “I promise that you can experiment all you want with me to see if I can hear what you’re thinking.”
“Thanks – that’s all I wanted to hear.” I replied silently, and watched as Cassie’s jaw dropped to the floor.
“I – just – heard – you – ” she stammered,
“I know,” I told her, pulling the headset off and speaking out loud again. I was unsure if it would scare her if I kept just thinking things at her. Cassie seemed almost as shocked as me, which was odd. A few moments earlier, I had been convinced that she knew what was going on and was just hiding it from me. Is it possible she had been hiding it from herself, too?
It would probably help if I explained what I thought happened. She just looked confused, and a little unwell if I were truthful.
“It started when you put the headset on – or when I put it on – I’m not sure which.” I tilted my hand from side-to-side as I tried to work out what had happened first. I found I was confusing myself now, which wasn’t a great start. I decided to try a different approach. “What was the first thing you heard?”
Cassie was still staring at me. Her eyes were half-glazed, as though she was just waking up and not completely aware of what was happening. I waited for her answer.
“You asked me why I was trying to hide this from you… You sounded a bit…”
Upset? I didn’t bother to say it when her words trailed off, although I guessed that was what she had heard in my head. Instead I muttered “I know,” and then let the enthusiasm take over. “Try it again!”
Without seeming to consider what she was doing, Cassie did as I asked. Her eyes found mine and locked on. I tried to be as calm and focused as possible, hoping it might help her.
There we sat. I pushed words, thoughts, questions, at Cassie… Nothing happened. I waited and tried again. Her eyes remained on mine, but as more time passed there was only silence in the room.
“Nothing?” I asked eventually, although I already knew the answer.
“Nothing,” she confirmed, sounding a little disappointed herself.
“OK.”
Cassie still had her headset on, but I had taken mine off. We’d both been wearing them a few minutes earlier, and I wondered if perhaps that was the connection. I pulled the band around my head and settled it into place.
“What about now?”
Cassie re-focused on my eyes, just as she had last time. I stared back at her and waited, willing her to hear me. “Come on…come on…” I pleaded, desperate for something to happen. Cassie gave a small nod. “You can hear me?” I asked. She nodded again, giving me a small smile, as my own face split into a wide grin.
I was about to jump up and start bouncing around. This was huge! This was amazing – something I’d never heard of, or read about, or e
Maybe I should try something more difficult than words…? We’d come this far, after all. “I wonder if…”
I concentrated on building a picture in my head. I imagined one of my favourite parts in Park 42 and began filling in the details. The grasses, bushes and trees: all different shades of browns and greens. The dappled light coming through the overhanging branches, different to the usual flood of brightness from the mirror-sky.
As an afterthought I added Cassie and me to the scene. Working with things I had definitely daydreamed about before, I let Cassie see one of my own secrets. We were standing close together and I pictured wrapping my arm around her waist, just as I had earlier. In my head, Cassie’s body moved easily into mine and I used my other hand to stroke across her cheek and turn her face to mine. I leaned in and –
“Hey!” Cassie exclaimed. “You can’t do that!”
She sounded breathless, which made me smile. I grinned, but thought back at her: “I think you’ll find I just did.”
The door to the records suite slid open and Medic Jones entered. We both jumped at the intrusion and turned guilty-looking faces in his direction. It wasn’t difficult for him to guess that we had been doing very little work. At least, not research that The Clinic would be happy about.
“I need some assistance in Records.” Medic Jones was addressing me.
“Of course,” I replied. Pushing back my chair I threw Cassie a look over my shoulder. “I’ll see you later?”
Cassie agreed. “I’ll meet you after I finish.”
“OK,” I pushed the image of the hill path in the park we had taken yesterday out to her. I half-wondered if she wouldn’t understand, but hoped that she would. She nodded once without looking away from her screen, which I took to mean that she’d got my message.
Reaching up, I pulled the headset from around my ears and placed it carefully back into the holder beside the screen. Pointing my finger towards the streams of research that were still churning on the monitor, I was about to ask Medic Jones if I should leave the system on, but before I could speak he was already nodding at me to leave the program running. Shaking off my irritation at the Medic’s brusque attitude, I stepped around him and through the opening, only to find myself stood waiting in the corridor whilst he stayed in the archive room.
“Did you need me to come as well Medic?” Cassie’s voice drifted from inside the room. She’d obviously noticed him waiting around too. The only response was a slight shake of the head and then he was beside me.
Pointing a single finger along the corridor, he silently indicated the route we were to take, before turning away and leading me off. Behind his back I shook my own head. Adults could be so odd sometimes.
When we reached the new room – another small, research space – Medic Jones was swift to show me what needed doing before excusing himself. It was a simple analysis of blood types within the Family Quarter residents and current stock levels of donor blood. That was easy enough. I programmed in the parameters I needed to get the search report underway. Then, finding myself alone, I decided to begin some research of my own. There was even more reason to look at what Cassie’s records showed now.
Using the spare terminal I logged in to the main population data system – using Father’s administrator passcode – and pulled up my personal file. My morning waste sample analysis was in, showing heightened levels of testosterone and flagging a note for further investigation. With a couple of key strokes I returned the figures to the normal range, repeating the action I’d been taking several times a day since I discovered what was in my vitamin tablets and stopped taking them.
Once my own data was looking perfectly normal – I also had to reduce my heart rate anomaly which registered on two scanners yesterday afternoon as Cassie and I had walked back from Park 42 – I turned my attention to Cassie’s records. At first I was intending only to check that her body scan results had shown nothing problematic after yesterday’s accident. But, once I was inside her profile, I couldn’t help but look further.
The first thing I noticed was that Cassie’s vitamin supplement had recently been adjusted. Until the time we started the placement it had included a small amount of lithium. The only purpose for lithium I was aware of was as a mood suppressant, which was troubling; but then, two days after we finished school, this element had been removed. It was replaced with small doses of dopamine and norepinephrine, alongside a standard vitamin complex.
Flicking further back in her records, I noted that Cassie had a lithium component to her daily vitamins virtually every day. The dose had been steadily reducing over the past six months, until it was removed as we started the placement at The Clinic.
I made a mental note to go back and check our classmate’s records. It would be interesting to see if the lithium was just something Cassie had been given, or whether others were affected. It would certainly explain their lack of interest in the problems I found with the Family Quarter.
From my previous research, which I’d taken back several years, I did not recall lithium being added to my supplement. The Council’s main interest in my health profile appeared to be testosterone levels: I’d noted a fluctuating pattern of adding the hormone, and then counteracting it with doses of oestrogen. My chart read as if two people were fighting over my tablets, without knowing the other was doing anything.
I was ready to look at something else, my finger hovering over the close command for that page. Then a single entry from a few weeks ago caught my attention.
Cassie had received an additional injected vitamin on the morning of our last school examination, for iron deficiency. It reminded me that I’d received exactly the same shot that day. I remembered being pulled aside, with Cassie and two other boys from our class after initial registration at school, before we entered the examination room.
We were told that our recent blood tests – taken two days earlier – had shown low iron levels and we would need a concentrated supplement now. The remainder of our dose was to be managed through diet and had already been scheduled into our meal program. I recalled that a mountain of green vegetables had been added to my plate for the next five days.
Curious, I clicked on the link to open the chemical analysis of what Cassie had been given and a small pop-up appeared:
Supplement Composition: 50% liquid iron, 25% vitamin C, 10% pheromone-A, 5% pheromone-D, 5% testosterone-F, 5% serotonin
I frowned as I read the breakdown of the ingredients. That was not an iron injection; it was something else entirely. And, it had been given to me, and Cassie.
Why?