CHAPTER TWO
Chevelle
YEAR: 2099
Chevelle glanced up at the teacher, his long crooked nose firmly planted in the class textbook, and tapped nervously on her desk with the stylus. She contemplated the question glowing on her desk screen — a question on a flat from the 2000’s, or the Aughts as they used to call that time period. How was she supposed to know? She wasn’t really interested in classic movies.
It was your assignment, she thought, her inner critic rearing its ugly face again. But at a time when movies can surround you in all their glory, there’s so much more she can do than watching the old flats. Like boys.
She stole a sidelong glance at the guy on her right, Blayze Clay, quarterback on the football team, the Mapiya Moonbacks, and a definite hottie. He seemed to be getting along on his test just fine. She leaned over a bit farther to catch a glimpse of the answer. Chevelle grinned as she turned back to her desk and scribbled the answer with the stylus.
Next question. Blayze caught her with a glance and she smiled wide. He tossed her a wink and shifted his posture so she’d be able to read his desk easier.
“Forgot to study the assignment again, Chevelle?”
Chevelle jerked back and looked to the front of the room. The teacher’s textbook lay lonely on his desk. She turned slowly and looked up at him with the best puppy dog face she could manage. “My... dog ate the assignment?”
The teacher folded his arms. “You’ll have to do better than that. You’re going to spend the afternoon in detention with me. And you, Mr. Clay...” Blayze snapped to attention. “Accomplices get to come, too. I’ll see both of you at three o’clock.”
After class, Chevelle shut off her desk and filed in line to exit, disappointed only in getting caught. Chevy, you’ve got to do your own work to get ahead, Eric would say. Bah! Next time she’d get the SparkNotes.
“Hey, Chevelle,” Blayze said, stepping out of the classroom behind her. “You got a minute?”
She tucked her bangs back behind her ear. “Sure. Sorry... about getting you in trouble back there.”
“Nah, no worries,” he said. “I wanted to ask you a question. The Summer Dance is coming up this weekend, and I was wondering if anyone had asked you yet.” Ever since there was a federal law making school a year round event, summer vacation sprinkled throughout the year instead, the Summer Dance had become big. Almost, but not quite, prom big.
Chevelle perked up — she had been waiting for this question — and shook her head. There was this one kid, and she felt sorry for him, but word from her girlfriends was that someone on the football team was going to ask her, so she held out.
“Would you go with me?” he asked.
Chevelle tilted her head with a smile, slipped on her overly large sunglasses, and nodded before she started to turn away. “I’d love to,” she said, not letting him see the smile that beamed from cheek to cheek. She put a sway in her walk for Blayze’s benefit. Just wait until I tell Eric, she thought. He won’t believe it!
***
“Whaddya think?” Chevelle asked. She stood in Vis á Vis, a top name fashion store at the mall, in one of their forty holorooms. The shopping style of using hologram fitting rooms became popular when effective holograms were invented. Instantly being able to see yourself in a piece of clothing required a lot less floor space for the actual clothing, replaced by open rooms with a human size holoprojector and computer interface.
Chevelle held her head up with an air of entitlement. Eric, her best friend since childhood, sat loosely draped over the couch and she did a little twirl in front of him. It was so exciting! This red one came down just enough in the front with the V-Neck to say, “available, but not to just anyone.”
Eric waved his hand to say the dress was just so-so. “Okay, I’ve got three others lined up. Just hang on.”
She turned back to the computer’s holographic interface, glad to have Eric with her to get it right. Yeah, it was girly stuff, but this was their thing; he was up for anything. They had been hanging out so long, he was more like her brother than anything, she figured.
The red dress shimmered away. The next dress was short and blue, still sparkling, but with a sharp black outline and a very low back. Chevelle looked at herself in the mirror and decided it said gorgeous and modest in the front, but the back said that she also had a wild side.
When she turned out to Eric, though, he quickly shot it down. “Too revealing,” he said, sounding like that overprotective brother again. Chevelle sighed and turned back to the computer. Well, that was why she brought him with, right? Besides the fact that he had the air to get her here; she hadn’t yet bothered to get her driver’s license.
The third dress she wasn’t so sure of. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with it; it just seemed a bit... boring? And she couldn’t figure out if sequins were her style, but the black certainly complimented her hair. She finally decided she’d try it out anyways.
She noticed Eric’s eyes widen when she made the selection and the hologram covering her shifted to the black dress. “That’s the dress,” he said.
“Are you sure?” She looked down at it again. The dress went all the way to the floor, and the slit only brought it up to the knee.
“Turn around,” he said, and so she did. “Yeah, that’s definitely the dress.”
“I don’t know. You think he’ll like it?”
“I’d date you with that dress,” he blurted out, and it kind of took her aback. He doesn’t really think that... “I mean, that’s how much he’ll like it. Trust me,” he quickly corrected. Whew.
“Okay, let’s get it then.”
***
Chevelle tossed her new dress over the back of the chair at her desk and plopped herself down on her twin bed. She propped herself up with a large pillow and shoved a purple lollipop in her mouth. She looked at her left hand. Three thin metal strips conformed to her hand, reaching from her wrist to the tips of her fingers; it was the latest in mobile phone technology. Clenching her hand like she was holding a brick, the metal strips glowed and a holographic computer interface formed in her hand.
She found Eric’s number and let the phone dial. Pulling back the silk curtains just above her bed, she saw the lights in her next door neighbor’s window switch on and soon Eric came online. Her window looked across a short gap of yard straight into Eric’s room. “Hello?”
“You’re not asleep yet, are you?” she asked, a bit of a tease in her voice.
“No. Just got upstairs. The nurse is making dinner,” he said.
Chevelle dropped her voice to a more serious tone. “How’s he doing?”
“Not so good. I’m trying not to think about it.” Chevelle’s heart went out to him; he didn’t sound so good. She could hear his voice squeak as he talked. “I just wish my mom were here.”
Probably best to change the subject. She saw Eric pull open his curtains and sit at his desk, feet up on the table and snacking on a half-eaten box of Fig Newtons. “So what do you think of Blayze?” she asked, a bit concerned now. Eric always tried to be upbeat, but Chevelle wasn’t certain whether he really approved.
“I don’t know,” Eric said with a shrug.
“Come on. You play on the same team. You must know something about him.”
“Blayze is okay, but he’s not exactly known for paying attention to the girls.”
And that might be okay, she thought. She was uncertain yet whether it was social status or the thrill of a new boy that excited her. Chevelle played with the lollipop in her mouth. “We spent lunch together talking, and we have a couple of classes together,” she said, taking the lollipop out for a second to examine it. “He seems all right.”
“Well, I hope you have fun at the dance, then,” Eric said.
“You’re really not going to come?”
He shrugged again, chomping down on another Fig Newton. “I’ve got no one to go with,” he said with his mouth full.
“Just ask someone, anyone. It’s not that hard.”
He laughed. “Yeah, maybe not for you, Chevelle Ewens, Princess of Mapiya High,” he teased.
“You know what you need to do, for your school project?” she said with a smile.
“What’s that?”
“You need to investigate. Tomorrow is Wednesday, right? We could skip lunch, check out the town, and be back for 3rd Period.”
“We can’t just go there,” he said, taking his feet off the desk. “South Mapiya is cordoned off by the government for one thing. There’s a guard and barb wire fences...”
“Aw, come on. It’ll be fun,” she insisted.
“Do you know how disappointed my dad would be if he found out I was skipping school?” This was Eric, though. He’d cave if she put enough pressure on him. “And what do you think we’ll find? It’s a wasteland; there’s nothing to see.”
Chevelle crunched down on the lollipop and threw the now empty stick in the trash. “So you think the government fenced off the place and put up guards because there was nothing to see?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? We’re still minors. If we got caught they’ll yell at us a bit, have our parents give us a slap on the wrist, and we’ll be ready for the dance on Saturday.”
“Yeah, back to that...” Eric said.
“Be nice, Eric. Blayze is a good guy.”
“No, that’s not it. He’s fine, sure, but...”
“How about Dorothy from second period? You’d like her; she’s kind of hot.” It was Tuesday, July 7th, so he had only three days left to find a date.
Eric shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t feel like going. Dances aren’t really my thing.”
Now he was just making excuses. “That’s not what you said last year when Caydance invited you to the prom.”
“Ha! She was three years older than me and it was the Senior prom!” Then he had to cover for himself. “I mean, not that proms are my thing either, but...”
“But she was certainly better — how do you want to say it — better built than us Sophomores your age,” she finished for him.
“Heh, can you blame me?”
“Anyways, I’ll see you tomorrow, Eric. You’re taking me to South Mapiya.”
“Yeah, yeah. Goodnight, Chevy.”
“Night, Eric.” The phone clicked as he hung up and the hologram disappeared when she stretched out her palm. Crazy idea, that, to go to South Mapiya, she thought, pulling the curtains closed. But it’ll be fun.
THE EVENT
Chevelle grabbed onto the sides of Eric’s leather jacket as he whipped the bike around a corner and pulled to a stop on the side of the road, not quite out of sight of the guard station. Across a swampy area littered with cattails, and over a barb wire fence, was South Mapiya. The guard station stood on the only short stretch of road crossing the swamp.
They both stared over the cattails. South Mapiya — Wasteland. The Event that put the name Mapiya, like Roswell, on the tongues of people across the country, even across the world, left the town empty and chilling.
There was something about mystery and the unknown that peaked people’s interest, not to mention the 5,000 people who disappeared that day. According to the stories, and they were all told the stories, no one had a clue as to what really happened. The evidence left behind in the wasteland of South Mapiya pointed to a catastrophic disaster, but there was no explosion that day. No boom, no flash of light, no mushroom cloud. So what really happened?
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Eric asked.
“It was my idea, silly,” Chevelle said back, slapping Eric’s shoulder as she slid out from behind him on the bike. Eric shut the bike down and the blue light underneath it turned off; it hovered down to rest on the curb. “Now, you sneak across while I go distract the guard.”
Eric waited as she walked up to the guard station. Slow and steady. Give the guard no reason to suspect she was up to something. She was just a flirtatious, young girl who didn’t want to go home yet. She risked a glance back to Eric, who was starting into the swamp now. The weather had been relatively dry lately; hopefully it wasn’t too wet for him.
She came within earshot of the guard sitting behind the glass booth. “Oh, just what I needed,” she called out. He was pretty handsome, too. I won’t mind doing this dirty work, she thought with a smile. “A strong man to keep my mind off things.”
The road was set up with long mechanical arms, as if he could let traffic through at any time, but she had never seen a car go into South Mapiya. “Go home, lady,” the guard said. Tough crowd.
“Just let me rest for a bit,” she said, pulling down the bottom of her T-Shirt as if trying to be modest. “It’s been a hard day. I can’t go home to my husband just yet. I just can’t. Can we just talk? Your job lets you talk, doesn’t it?”
“What’s wrong?”
“After working hard this morning at the restaurant the boss threw me out just before lunch. You know, when the tips start getting good.” Chevelle tossed her long black hair over her shoulder and tilted her head to the side. “And I can’t go home to my husband. I don’t know if he’s drunk yet today; he beats me less when he’s drunk.” She looked up at the guard, trying to tell if he was buying it, and moved a little closer. She needed to add... a bit of something. “But you look like you know how to treat a woman.”
“How old are you?” he asked, sounding suspicious now.
“23,” she lied.
Chevelle glanced down at the security monitors on his desk. The center monitor showed Eric just about to try to climb over the fence. Before he could find any other reason to object she leaned up on her tiptoes, wrapped her arms around the guard’s neck, and gave him a nice long kiss, keeping one eye on the monitor to see Eric fall to the other side of the fence. With Eric over, she let go. “Can we just talk for a while?”
“Sure.” So they talked. The guard sat down and she leaned up against the wall. This was as far as she had planned, so she just talked to keep him busy until Eric came back. She talked about her husband, Fred, a real monster of a man, and how he beat her in the mornings if she didn’t sneak out early enough for work. And her dream to find true love.
“Have you told anyone about this?” he asked. “Like the police.”
“I tried once. I don’t know. They just made it worse. I didn’t have any evidence to keep him away so they couldn’t protect me.” She started thinking that maybe this wasn’t the best lie to dwell on.
It wasn’t long after that when something really strange happened. Chevelle was trying to change the subject, and talk more about the guard, when she looked behind him to see buildings in South Mapiya. “What in the...” she muttered. The guard turned to see. Not just buildings, but streets, streetlights, traffic signals, mailboxes, everything. South Mapiya was back, looking very much like an authentic early 21st century suburban town, all the way up to the guard station and the fence, as pristine and new like it had never gone.
“No way,” the guard said, standing up slowly. With the buildings came a sudden fierce cold, though it was the middle of June, and a strong wind of warm air flew in from the north, so strong it tore off one of the mechanical traffic arms and ripped of the top of the guard station. Dark gray clouds rushed in, spinning fast in the sky.
“This way,” Chevelle said, leaping towards the swamp and not even waiting or watching to see if the guard followed. Fighting against the wind and against fear, she slid off the road into the swamp. The tornado forming just above her, she lay flat on her stomach with her hands over her head.
The guard joined her soon after, kneeling beside her and putting an arm over her in protection. She waited as her shirt and pants soaked up the muck of the swamp. The tornado spun up around them with a heavy noise like a freight train, and all the time she was just hoping Eric was okay. When the tornado passed, she struggled to get back on her feet.
“Oh crap,” Chevelle said. The front of her shirt and pants was now caked with mud. A crash and a bang came from the north as the tornado touched down. “It’s headed for my house.”
At that moment, with a loud gargled roar, a motorcycle — one with wheels! — flew past them. She recognized the rider on the back as Eric, with his arms around a skinny blond.