Caeli Widger - Mother of Invention

“Then help us investigate again. That’s why I asked to talk to you, Tessa. Because your project has the potential to throw AG back into the national spotlight. To make people interested again. A spontaneous aberration of indeterminate cause might be good enough for most people, but when you’ve got a weird dent in your head”—Viv tapped her cleft—“that you try to hide from everyone, especially your boyfriend, plus a birth story that’s downright bizarre, it’s not good enough. I need to know why I’m like this.”

“You’re right,” said Tessa. “We should do better.”

Viv stood up from the table. Tessa could see her lips quivering.

“Then make it better,” Viv said and walked out of the café, gingerly on her left leg, heavy on her right, obviously in some discomfort from her injury. Tessa watched her recede, imagining her fall on the lacrosse field: the stun of the crash, the swift free fall through the air, her dark curls flaring, then the sickening crunch of the landing, her left leg bent at an impossible angle. As Viv disappeared from view, Tessa had the sudden, intense urge to run after her, to protect her from some looming threat out in the world, though she could not name what it was. Perhaps, she thought, this was what a mother’s instinct felt like.

2021

Outside the Albuquerque airport, Wayne spotted the black car idling at the curb and angled for it. As he approached, the driver popped the trunk. Wayne set his duffel inside it, keeping his hard rectangular case of work supplies on his person at all times, per ISA code. He slid into the back seat of the Lincoln, the Freon chill of its AC enveloping him instantly, and nodded hello at the driver, a kid with a fresh buzz cut in aviators and camouflage.

“Morning, Mr. Theroux,” said the driver. “Any stops before we head south?”

“Negative,” said Wayne. They exited the airport and swung onto the I-25, the landscape all hues of brown and dull green, the Sandia Mountains bulging like turtle shells in the distance. An all-body weariness seeped through him; he’d barely slept the night before. The drive to the Colony would take two hours, and he certainly wouldn’t have any downtime once he arrived. The tight-asses of the Inner Panel liked to book him solid for a full three days. In addition to an assessment of the preso he’d written of Viv, Wayne would have to attend endless meetings, trainings, and strategy sessions, a biannual requirement of all ISA agents, no matter how senior. No matter how close to retirement.

At least he would get to pay a quick visit to Irene. Seeing her was the only thing he ever looked forward to at the Colony.

Two hours later, he woke from his nap in the car in time to see the familiar sign: ENTERING U.S. MILITARY GROUNDS. NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS.The Internal Stability Agency’s headquarters. Wayne sighed and pulled his badge from a pocket of his camo pants, then looped the lanyard around his neck. The rest of the world was trusting retinal and handprint scans for IDs, yet the ISA still clung to physical badges after consultants deemed the newer technologies too vulnerable.

The driver slowed at the guard booth and Wayne rolled down his window. He recognized the guard on duty as Mike Jensen, the pale-complected, orange-haired rookie from Nebraska.

“Theroux,” Jensen said as he held his scanner to Wayne’s badge. “Nice to have you back.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Wayne said. The scanner flashed green and the guardrail rose.

The driver steered the Lincoln onto the curved road that lined the crescent of low-slung buildings where the Inner Panel and their minions worked. A ring of squat stucco buildings rose from the desert floor, all roughly the same color. The structures blended right into the landscape of scrubby trees, rocks, bleached dirt studded with noxious weeds, and lizards.

At one end of the semicircle, a building differed from the others: no windows. Quarantine, “the Quarry,” as staffers called it, was where all Contacts went first for examination and confiscation of their phones and other electronic devices. They would stay at the Quarry for a week or so, for general observation and communication designed to help them understand and accept their situation. Eventually—it might take a week or a month, or longer—they would either be deemed “compliant” and released, or “noncompliant” and moved to the residences until they reconsidered accepting a revision.

The Quarry would be the first place Viv would go, when he brought her, that blank beige building. Wayne looked away from it.

“Where to, Mr. Theroux?” asked his driver.

“The Blue Room,” said Wayne, checking his phone. His presentation was slated to begin in less than fifteen minutes.

“Straight to a meeting with the IP, eh?” said the driver, pulling up to the entrance of Building 3.

“None of your goddamn business,” said Wayne.

“Sorry, sir.”

The kid hopped out, extracted Wayne’s overnight bag from the trunk, and handed it to Wayne with a salute.

“Pleasure, sir. See you on the drive back.”

Wayne grabbed the bag without answering. Overhead, the sun was dead center in the sky, a burning hole.

Wayne took the elevator down to a subbasement where the Blue Room was. Inside, it was the same as always. Same dim lighting, same faux-wood conference table at the center with cushioned swivel chairs clustered around it, same strange sky-colored walls that gave the room its name. The bright paint was meant to add some levity to the grim space, Wayne supposed, but he’d always found its effect destabilizing; it made him feel like he’d walked into a break room at a mental institution. Three of the blue walls were blank and the fourth displayed two massive monitors, mounted side by side. One ran a constant stream of data from the Colony, while the second was dark, waiting for a presenter to exhibit his latest findings upon it.

Wayne was the first to arrive. He unlocked his computer case and set the machine up at the head of the table, synced it with the wall screen, and pulled up the preso, though he’d already sent it to the IP. They would want it up and waiting for them.

He clicked to the opening slide: a photo of Viv, taken for lacrosse when she’d made the team her first year at Weldon, with text below it.

PIT #1999-42:Bourne, Vivian Summer

Age:21

Categorization:Accelerated Gestation (child)

Current residence:Newport Beach, CA (family) and Weldon, MA (college)

Legal guardians:Elise Summer Bourne and Lawrence Dylan Bourne

Activity of Concern:Widespread online distribution of alarmist content pertaining to accelerated gestation; creation of undue panic among other AG individuals; fixation on physical developments

Threat Assessment:Moderately Severe

Viv’s hair had been shorter when the photo was taken, her face slightly rounder and fuller, her expression open and hopeful, more childlike. In the four years that had passed since the photo had been taken, Wayne saw, she’d transformed from a teenager into a woman.

Threat assessment: Moderately Severe .

He’d wanted so badly to downgrade Viv to merely Moderate , thereby postponing the next steps by perhaps a couple of months, but he hadn’t been able to justify it. Viv’s LikeMe posts were becoming more vehement, while at the same time, her symptoms had become more abundant: the persistent limp in her leg (the fall she took in lacrosse would not have caused such damage in a typical healthy twenty-one-year-old), the shallow wrinkles around her mouth and eyes, a few patches of whitish hair in her dark mane, indicating her melanin levels were decreasing.