Intrepid (6 page)

“Exactly,” Nobu said. “Watchers are like a camera zooming in and out of the picture until we understand every component that forms the image.”
 

I nodded with a new understanding. “So, with Arti, if we focus on how impossible it is to find her, we can’t see the clues that actually lead us to her!”
 

Nobu grinned his knowing grin.
 

“Dang it. When did you figure it out?” I asked as disappointment flooded my chest.
 

“An hour ago, but you’ve got it. Like the Optimal Path, we’ll find Arti when we are meant to, but that doesn’t mean we have to rely solely on luck. What else can we rely on?”
 

“We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants,” I said, and suddenly the solution was so simple that it almost made me angry. “We can look into
Geeta
’s Captain’s Logs to see what they knew about the red-whales, and build on what they knew.”

And that was how our Arti logs began. We collected all the information we could from the Logs, and although the migration of the red-whales were not studied, the yuppy-pups were because they were an amazing source of food. Then we read in several entries that the red-whales were seen feeding on yuppy-pups, and that was our first clue. Track the yuppies, find the whales.
 

This was year seven, and we’d already gathered so much data on Arti that it filled up a couple volumes in the new Captain’s Logs.
 

 
I was three when Corbin brought me to
Geeta
, and Nobu, at the age of twelve, became my main guardian. Nobu had a Watcher before I came, but he never talked about her. I didn’t even know her name, but I did know he worked really hard to pretend he didn’t miss her. Before the accident, Corbin checked on us at least once a week, bringing us supplies and clothes and lessons, but since I was fourteen, it’d just been Nobu and me. I think these past three years, we searched for Arti more to honor Corbin than to learn anything new.
 

Nobu pressed his hands into the windowsill. “Whoever sees Arti first gets out of gardening maintenance for the entire month,” he said. As much as Nobu loved being in the gardens on the top deck, he hated cleaning the mold off the automated maintenance machines and sprinklers.
 

“Deal, and the loser also has to—” but I didn’t get to finish the sentence. There was a buzzing on my wrist, and I looked at my Planck Activation Bracelet. Nobu felt the same buzzing and pulled up the message.
 

 
“Update on the most
intractable
girl in all the Multiverse.—S.O.” Nobu read out every word, mimicking the voice of the person who wrote it.
 

“That’s it. Who gave the Stupid Ox a dictionary?” I asked.
 

“Liam…” Nobu warned. “Be nice. He’s trying to be more serious in his correspondence. At least he didn’t say, ‘Update on the mutant,’ like last time.”
 

“So, you get to mock him, but I can’t?”

Nobu grinned. “I’m older, wiser, and more handsome. I can do what I want.”
 

“So. No Arti today?” I asked, already knowing the answer as I slowed the boat to a stop. I didn’t want to let on how much it disappointed me, but I knew soon the headaches would prevent us from continuing the search for the year. Instead of voicing this, I placed a new wager. “Whoever condenses the data first gets out of dishes for a week.”
 

“Deal,” Nobu said, and he raced out the door towards his office, leaving me to secure
Geeta
.
 

“Cheaters never win!” I yelled and pressed the button to release the anchor.

Chapter Seven
 

The screen was bright where it spread out on the wall. Every time I zoomed in and out of the picture, I thanked whoever invented the projector codes that allowed the data-feed from my bracelet to turn into any sized computer I wanted on any surface I had available. I didn’t even need the Planck Activation Bracelet to stay in one place to project. The data simply traveled to where it needed to be.
 

I couldn’t imagine being one of the original Watchers, tied to the default screen that hovered above the Planck Activation Bracelets. It was a good thing our kind had superior vision, or when my ancestors pulled their noses out of their work, they would have looked like cross-eyed, squinting moles from all the staring they had to do at the tiny, tiny screens. Technological advancement let me see more than my predecessors, but that didn’t mean it altered the level of respect I felt towards them. I knew beyond knowing that I stood on the Shoulders of Giants, and it was my predecessors that allowed me to move past them. So when I thanked the inventor of the projector, I thanked those who suffered through earlier models at the same time. They made my job easier.
 

I had a good life on
Geeta
, and living in isolation on the boat made it so I’ve always known who I was and what I was created to do.
 

Always.
 

I was destined to be the greatest Watcher in my generation because I had an abnormal gift of connection. This was paired with the honor of being trained in this task from the very beginning. My entire life was about sharpening my skills on perspective, and I knew it would lead me to great discoveries.
   

I felt bad for the Explorers like the ones in Geronimo. They didn’t find out who they were until they were old enough to handle secrets. That’s the curse of being raised in a highly populated culture. But Nobu and I had always been old enough to know the truth because there was no one on
Geeta
to share our secrets with.
 

As I watched Texi year after year, I grew up alongside her. Lately, I wondered if carrying the weight of truth is just as difficult as carrying the weight of lies. She had to know something was off about her, and it must be disconcerting not being able to pinpoint just what it was that made her feel different. I knew more about the girl than she knew about herself, but that was my job. As a Watcher, I was trained to sift through data until my eyes burned from forcing my inadequate brain to process what was gathered by the Explorers.
 

There were so many differences between the lives of Explorers and Watchers, but both jobs are equally important. Some might argue the Explorers have a more exciting time, but I disagree. Watchers? We find the connections Explorers miss because they are too close to the problem, and we help give meaning to a system that otherwise appears to be random and haphazard. To me, that’s far more exciting.
 

I sat in my chair that used to be plush but now was worn from the hours I sat in it, and I replayed the feed. I ignored the snarky message that came with it, and wondered what was so important about it. The scene in this feed didn’t seem special. Texi leaned on a wall between the gym doors, clearly not partaking in all the cheer.
 

I’d always wondered what a pep rally would be like, and I wished I could experience Collective Energy for myself, especially when it was so young and contagious. Young Energy inspired the inert into motion and had its own gravitational pull like a current in the tide. Yet this current bounced off Texi. Even if she wanted to be pulled into it, there was something beyond herself holding her back, like when a baseball player revs his arm back before the pitch releases a flurry of movement.
 

That girl was a rubber band being pulled back, alright.
 

We all waited to see if the mutation caught—to see if she was a threat, an asset, or dead.
 

I looked for any information I could pull out to prove the Change was coming, and I jotted down notes in the journal. I wrote down every thought, even the ones that seemed unimportant, and I wondered if I was finding anything Nobu wasn’t. Then I shook my head to get Nobu out of it. It was important that Condensing happened in solitude. It allowed us to draw our own conclusions before the Calibration, and I’d have to wait for this evening to find out what Nobu thought. Being a Watcher was all about the checks and balances to filter which data is important and which is not. After we Calibrated our conclusions, our Calibration Reports usually went up the Hierarchy of Watchers to a Level Two Watcher. They Collaborated our work with other Calibrations, and this process was repeated until it finally reached a Grande Master.
 

The Grande Master was the most objective position in all the Multiverse and had the most comprehensive access to the bigger picture. One day… I was going to be a Grande Master.
 

But for now? Condense. Calibrate. Collaborate.
 

Texi was a strange case, though. Nobu and I were told we were the only two who saw these feeds in order to protect her. The more people who knew about her, the more danger she was in, and analyzing her data was terrifying because Nobu and I could only figure out so much with our limited perspectives. We both knew there was too much at stake, and whenever we got data on her, there was an intense amount of pressure to find everything we possibly could. Our chain of command stopped at an unnamed Level Two Watcher, and we suspected that there was no Collaboration going on beyond that. Whoever our Collaborator was simply double-checked our Calibrations and attempted to make them as useful as possible.
 

So when a vid like this came in, it was extremely frustrating to discover it was useless. It appeared that there was nothing important going on, and it was the same thing we saw every day.
 

I replayed the vid again, and groaned. Why was this sent to us? It wasn’t showing us anything special, and by now, something
should
be happening if the Change was coming. I stood up to try and readjust my perspective. “Expand images in the doors to her right,” I said, and the double doors next to her blew up so I could see a reflection of the bleachers and the cheerleaders tumbling through the air. One of girls was her friend, Lindsay, and I paused the screen just as she was about to be pulled back down by gravity. I penned in some more notes, but there was nothing extraordinary about the moment. Lindsay wore the same cheerleading outfit, with the same bright, white high-top sneakers, and the same array of beaded bracelets around her both of slender wrists. There was nothing special about Lindsay, but I wrote down what I saw anyways before I looked past her towards the football players. I scanned to the crowd to see if there were any new faces I should be worried about, but it was the same group of tired kids from the little tired town Texi grew up in.
   

I sat down on the desk and pulled my legs up into a pretzel, and I hovered my fingers over the screen to pinch the image back into its original format. An hour went by with me changing where I sat or stood so I could watch the video at different angles. Corbin always told us, “A limited perspective is a surefire way to jumble up the truth. We have to remember that we are simultaneously infinite and insignificant, as well as simultaneously the most important and the least consequential component to the bigger picture. No matter where you stand, you can never see the picture from all angles, but Watchers must try to be all-seeing because we are the mergers of perspective.
 
When you are stuck? Sit. Stand on your head. Run in place. Step away from the problem. Do whatever you can to change how you see things.”
 

The video stilled when I pressed pause. I’d watched it too many times, and it made me more aware of the headache in the back of my head.
 

The pain was expected, but it was still distracting.
 

Maybe a run would clear the mind and distance would give me a new lens to see everything through. Sure, taking a break only gave Nobu time to figure it out first, but my brain was mushy and not much help to me at all. I’d have a better chance of finding whatever there was to find if I just came back to it.
 

But as I got up, my perspective shifted slightly. Her face was magnified and morphed so that every pore and the beginning of a pimple on her chin took up the wall. I moved my fingers over the screen to zoom in and spread out the colors of her eyes.
 

Something was there.
 

In the eyes.
 

It was there.
 

I highlighted the screen, condensed the data into a few bulleted points on my personal log with a time stamp, and then typed a message to Nobu:
I found it first.—L.M.

I pressed send and left for my jog in higher spirits. We may not have found Arti today, but we were one step closer to finding what made Texi tick. Plus, I loved beating Nobu to the punch as much as I hated doing dishes.
 

Chapter Eight
 

When I came back from my run, there was a message ready for me.
 

Dearest Home-slice… Old Proverb: Don’t count baby pterodactyls before all the eggs hatch. We’ll see who won when we Calibrate the data. Went to get groceries. Be back in an hour.—N.S.
 
I laughed. Nobu was a hyperbolic dork with an annoying obsession with the pterodactyls from the 2040s. He kept visiting them on his Vacation Leave to track alterations in nesting patterns from Vein to Vein. In that way, we were the same. Even when we had time off, we couldn’t get data off the brain.
 

But I got the message loud and clear. We still needed more information before we could draw a conclusion, and he suspected I thought I had more than I actually did. Boy was he wrong, and I considered sending him a message about upping the wager: dishes for a week and cleaning maintenance checks for the year.

My mood was inflated, because I was the one who found what needed to be found this time. Not Nobu.
 

I went to turn the projection off, but another update pinged across the screen:
New Post to The Eightieth Generation
.