Chapter Two of Powers Awakening

Chapter 2

Growth

I awoke suddenly, in the dark, knowing that something was wrong. As I looked around, trying to determine the danger, I realized that I couldn’t breathe. Something was around my neck, cutting off my airway. I tried to get my fingers underneath it, but it was too tight, and my muscles didn’t want to cooperate. I still had enough presence of mind to not just yell out, and so used some of the little breath I had left to let out my best impersonation of a baby’s cry.

It seemed to do the trick, because immediately, I heard feet jump to the ground off of a bed somewhere. A door creaked, the hallway light came on, and those same feet walked quickly down the hall. The door to my room opened, and Susan came through it to stand over me. Light spilling from the hallway illuminated my face that must have now been turning purple.

“Oh my goodness!” she shrieked, “You’re choking!” She rushed over and pulled down the blanket. I couldn’t see the problem, but her gasp made me realize that it was something bad. She looked wildly around the room, and then lunged for something out of my line of sight. When she came back, she had a pair of scissors in her hand.

“Hold still, Garrett, I’m going to have to cut your shirt,” she said as she grabbed the bottom of my shirt and started clipping it. As she got closer to my neck, she added, “I’m so sorry, but this might hurt. I might cut your skin.” I didn’t care, as long as I could breathe again. It had been 20 seconds since I had last been able to breathe, and my newborn lungs couldn’t hold much air. I was slowly losing consciousness.

Suddenly, with a loud snap, accompanied by a sharp pain in my neck, the constriction was gone. I inhaled long and deep, never tasting anything so delicious in my very short lifetime.

Susan gave a whimper of consternation, and then pressed the cloth that had previously been my shirt against my neck. My neck still gave out twinges of pain, but I didn’t feel any warm liquid running down. Susan must have been stopping the blood flow.

“What’s the matter?” “Is the baby ok?” Todd and Jason’s voices came through the door. It appeared that my cry and Susan’s shout had awoken the children. One person came into the room, and I could tell by the height and age that this was Jack, the father. The light from the hallway cast his features into shadow, so I couldn’t see exactly what he looked like.

“What’s all the commotion, Susan?” he asked.

“Everything’s ok now, it’s just that Garrett’s t-shirt was choking him. I had to cut it off, and I accidentally cut him in the process,” she replied.

“Why was his t-shirt choking him? It looked fine on him before.” Jack came over and picked me up.

“Whoa, he’s heavier than I remember him being. Wait a second…” Jack trailed off as he looked me over.

“Kids, it’s time to go back to bed. And I mean now.” There were some grumblings, but everyone did as they were told. Jack waited until the last straggler was gone. “Susan, turn on the light.”

Susan flipped the light on, and gasped. I glanced down on myself, and joined Susan with my own quick intake of air. I was bigger. If I had to gauge my age now, I would have put it at two months old. Gone were my newborn hands and feet. My body was longer, and I even looked a little pudgy. I couldn’t remember eating anything, so that kind of threw me for a loop. While making this assessment of my new body proportions, Jack and Susan were doing the same. Even though I was again thrust into a new situation, I still scolded myself. I was trying to be a perfect, normal newborn. Newborns don’t gasp. I think it was only because of my new dimensions that neither of the adults noticed my un-baby-like action.

“He’s so much bigger,” Susan whispered. “What’s going on, Jack?”

Jack looked just as flabbergasted as Susan. “I don’t know,” he whispered back. “Maybe he has one of those rare diseases, one that makes people grow really fast. Maybe that’s why he was left outside. Someone didn’t want to have to deal with the added expense of raising a child like this.”

“But you said that no one in town had heard anything of a baby.”

“I don’t know, Susan,” he repeated. “Maybe it was someone from far away that drove here and left him behind.”

“What should we do now? Should we take him to a doctor?” wondered Susan. “I doubt that Dr. Johnson has ever come across something like this. We’d probably have to take him to Iowa City or Omaha to see a specialist.”

Jack visibly pondered his wife’s words. “I think that for right now, we should all go to sleep. We’ll get him some new clothes in the morning. Then we can decide what to do.” Jack laid me back down, and rearranged the blanket to fit over me.

Susan turned and reached for the light switch, when she stopped. She turned back around and stared at my face. “Jack, do you realize that Garrett only cried the one time? He didn’t cry when I cut him, and he’s looked back and forth at us the whole time we were talking. Any normal baby would have been crying this entire time.”

I realized belatedly that she was right. A normal baby would have cried as soon as the t-shirt was gone. I was so busy being upset with myself for gasping, that I forgot about other normal baby actions. Of course, it was too late now. If I tried to start crying, right after she had said something, it would only confirm Susan’s suspicions.

“In fact, it even looks like he knows what I’m talking about right now,” Susan said. “Do you think he can understand us?”

Jack, however, was not so easily persuaded. “I think that might be pushing it, Susan. True, he hasn’t cried, but some babies don’t. Remember Michelle? She almost never cried.”

“I suppose you’re right, but still…” Susan gave me one last look before turning off the light. Both she and Jack went through the door, and Jack closed it afterwards. And that left me in the dark, contemplating what was happening to me, and trying to figure out why. I was too tired to think for long, though, and fell asleep shortly after.

* * * * * *

It was after all that drama that I had my first dream. I was sitting in a dimly-lit room, sketching out a diagram of some kind of complex machinery. I could see that I was good at this, as I quickly traced various parts of the diagram. I finished one aspect, and sat back in my chair. I noticed that I was in a windowless room, the walls cracked and broken. I was sitting in a utilitarian chair that was quite uncomfortable, but that I knew my body had learned to ignore long before. The sole illumination was a single panel of light, set flush with the ceiling. I could tell that there were other panels up there that at one time had had the task of lighting the room, but they were all burned out. There was only one door leading out of this room, made of steel and inlaid with wood, in the far corner from where I sat. My dream-self looked towards the door, as if he were waiting for something. As I gazed through his eyes, I realized that I was included in him, but not entirely. It felt like I was a conscious person, occupying a part of his body. I thought the things he thought, but I couldn’t access any memories, or take over his actions. I was just along for the ride. But when parts of his body moved, it felt like my body moving, too. It was very disconcerting. He and I shrugged our adult-shoulders, and went back to drawing.

Suddenly, we heard a rush of footsteps beyond the door. We stood up from our chair, not really knowing whom to expect. My dream-self hoped that it was the news that he had been waiting for, but also knew that it could be someone very unwelcome. He enjoyed being in this out-of-the way, secluded room, far from the populated areas, but it was also out of the communication loop. We reached down and grabbed a bizarre-looking gun, set in a holster at our waist. The gun had two barrels, set on opposite sides of a grip, so that the grip connected the two. It was black, and small, but something about it made me realize that it was lethal. We didn’t draw it, but left our hand around the grip, ready to use it at any moment. There was a familiar way in which he grasped it that made me realize that my dream-self had become quite adept at using it. I also realized that he had worn it for a long time, so long that it was a commonplace feature on his hip. We braced ourselves behind the steel table, ready to employ it as a shield if needed.

The other-Garrett had a sense of dread as the footsteps echoed closer. He knew that alarms were supposed to go off, but it was always a possibility that they had disabled the perimeter system. It was so antiquated that he was vaguely surprised that it still worked during tests. My dream-self knew that if they were coming, he wouldn’t have much of a chance before he died. But I could see that he hoped to give a good fight before going down.

The footsteps stopped at the door, a good sign. A knock sounded, rapping twice rapidly, then twice more slowly. We sighed, rolling our eyes as we let go of his pistol, and walked over to the door. We opened it quickly, pulled in the person waiting, and shut the door.

“Do you know how idiotic that knock sounds?” we asked. “If it was the Shock Squad, they would have just busted down the door.” We surveyed the person before us: my dream-self’s friend, Greggor. His clothing was slightly tattered, and there were pieces of dirt in his short, black hair. His dust-lined face made him look five years older than his actual age, which my dream-self knew to be about the same as himself, twenty-one. He also wore a holster with a double-barreled gun, though it looked like he didn’t wear it as easily as we did. He peered at us with his brown eyes, waiting for us to ask the question. We sighed again. The other-Garrett hated it when Greggor made him wait.

“So, did it work?” we asked, eyebrows raised.

“Well, it did, and it didn’t.” He paused again.

“Greggor,” we began exasperatedly, “I feel like I’m pulling teeth here. What do you mean?”

Greggor scrunched up his face in an expression the other-Garrett knew all too well. He wasn’t going to tell us anything more. “Maybe it would be best if you came and saw for yourself, Garrett. I don’t think I can do the telling justice.”

We sighed for the third time, something the other-Garrett did quite regularly around Greggor. “OK, lead on.”

We both exited the room, Greggor leading the way. Pools of light lit the corridor, but it was mostly dark. I could see other hallways branching away, each one suffering from an absence of light. As we walked, I learned the facts as my dream-self reviewed them in his mind. He wasn’t involved in this stage of the Project, so he didn’t know much. I perked up at a mention of this Project, but the other-Garrett didn’t dwell on it. I only saw a brief glimpse of the drawing he had been working on, and then his thoughts turned again to this area of the Project. He knew, and I learned, that it was something to do with charging different frequencies that the brain used. This was supposed to unlock areas of the brain that no one had uncovered yet. I also knew from my dream-self that they had just completed their first test on a rat, to see if it worked like they had been theorizing. That’s why Greggor’s statement was so puzzling: “It did, and it didn’t.”

As we walked, Greggor turned to us. “Hey Garrett, did you know that when glass breaks, the cracks move faster than 3,000 miles per hour? So, if you want to photograph the event, you’ll need to find a slow-motion camera that can film at a millionth of a second. Isn’t that weird?”

We gave a glimmer of a smile. From my other-self, I learned that Greggor was full of these little factoids, most of them pretty useless. But my dream-self enjoyed learning them. They took his mind off life, the utilitarian surroundings, the bland food, and the threat of the Shock Squad. These factoids were absolutely worth it.

My dream-self was about to respond with a factoid of his own (the world’s oldest piece of chewing gum is nine thousand years old), when we turned a corner, and came to our destination. It was a small door that looked too short for our height. We opened it and entered. I tried to duck, but my dream-self didn’t. Since I didn’t have control over our body, nothing happened. However, I could see that the other-Garrett knew from experience that there was a one-inch clearance for his head. Still, I would have felt better if we had ducked.

The room beyond was bigger than I had anticipated, given the relative smallness of the door. Five people were inside, three women and two men, all standing around different pieces of equipment. A young woman and older man were talking together in front of a large screen, and the other woman and men were by themselves. They were all wearing the same type of clothes as my dream-self and Greggor, in what looked like the standard-issue. All of the clothes were in the same style: a long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of pants, with unassuming gray shoes. The colors differed, so that there was some individualism going on, but the cut was exactly the same. From the clothes that my dream-self was wearing, I could tell that even though they didn’t look like much, these vestments were extremely comfortable.

Greggor turned his head in a weird way, and we looked over at him. He was looking at the young woman, a pretty, twenty-something girl with dark hair. It looked like he was trying to catch her eye. From my dream-self’s thoughts, I knew that Greggor liked this girl. We cleared our throat, and Greggor snapped his head around to the front, red staining his cheeks at being caught.

The woman standing alone finished her work, and turned to us. She had blond hair, and looked to be about thirty-five years old. From the other-Garrett’s thoughts, I knew that this was Dr. Alice Pearson, one of the lead scientists in this part of the Project. “Ahh, Garrett, you’re here. Did Greggor bring you up to speed?” Alice turned her gaze to Greggor, who seemed to shrink within himself to escape that glare.

“No, he didn’t,” my dream-self replied. “Greggor offered a cryptic statement, how it worked, but didn’t work, which explained nothing.” We gave Greggor a hard look, who cringed a little more, and continued, “so here I am.” Before Greggor could feel too badly about it, we sent him a wink, letting him know that we were joking with him. He smiled back. Alice shook her head, and turned away, but not before I heard her mutter, “Why am I not surprised?” In a normal voice, she continued, “Well, you’re here, so let’s show you what happened.”

My dream-self and I started to walk over to a shelf. On the shelf was a large, box-like structure, totally covered by a sheet. Loud, unpleasant screeching emanated from the box, like nails on metal.

“We had to cover the cage with this blanket,” explained Alice, “to hide ourselves from its sight. Otherwise, the rat was hurting itself against the bars, trying to claw its way out. As you can hear, it’s still trying, but believe it or not, this isn’t nearly as loud as when it could see us. So, the experiment worked in this way, but not in another.”

As soon as Alice finished speaking, the screeching greatly diminished in decibels, as if the rat’s strength had given out. “Ah,” she said, “and here’s why it didn’t work.” I was curious about that, and Alice looked like she was about to explain, as she reached for the blanket. However, I could feel myself waking up. I tried with all my will to stay there longer, but my consciousness didn’t cooperate. I woke up, again in my bassinet, everything still dark around me.

As I came awake, the memory of the dream faded quickly. I tried to hold on, but already all I could really remember was looking at a sheet-covered cage. Soon, even that was gone. I was still extremely tired from my near-choking, and again sleep quickly pulled me under.