Following a nearly silent dinner, once the table was cleared, his father told his new wife, “Why don’t you show him?”
She extracted an envelope from her purse, pulled out a group of photos, and spoke directly to Colin for the first time that evening. “These are pictures of our new home.”
His father took the photos, sorted through them, and slid one over in front of Colin. “This is your room.”
The words chilled him to the point where his tremors could not be fully suppressed. Colin sat with his head bowed over the picture, clenched tight with the effort required to remain as still as possible. The pale ivory room contained a caramel-colored carpet, a small desk, empty bookshelves, a narrow bed. Lifeless and deadly.
He endured an endless parade of pictures, each one marked by his father’s description. Front yard, living room, kitchen, den, office, on and on the parade of images continued. Each one hammering the same message with massive force. Colin was almost out of time.
His father directed Colin into the front passenger seat for the drive back to the academy. His new wife took up a place between her sons. When they pulled into the academy forecourt, Roger Eames broke the silence with, “When school isout, we’ll start making some changes. Jessica is home schooling her two boys. We’ll just add you to the mix.” He watched Colin open his door. “You’ve been involved with these liberal nutjobs long enough.”
Colin stood by the academy entrance and watched his father drive away. As the Escalade pulled into traffic, the two boys leaned toward the side window and shot Colin a warning look.
He had to get this right.
CHAPTER9
Sundays meant most of the Sojourn House rules were relaxed. Their breakfast was half an hour later than the rest of the week, and many of the students did not attend at all. Their rare shopping expeditions took place Sunday afternoons. Clothes came from Walmart. Their hair was cut by a barber who stopped in once every month. They waited in either the television lounge or the computer room for their turn. The barber was a woman whose fingers stank of cigarettes. She had a way of twisting her wrist slightly that painfully pulled Colin’s hair. She started every trim by warning them, boys and girls alike, not to fidget, else she might take off an ear. Allowances were handed out by Mrs. Fitzgerald, along with any admonitions or warnings. They were then free to do whatever. When it was Colin’s turn, Mrs. Fitzgerald greeted him with, “Come in and shut the door.”
She pointed him into the chair opposite her desk. “Well, Mr. Eames, it seems that your studies are about to undergo a significant change.”
He had no idea how to respond. The chair was solid oakand uncomfortable where the hard wood touched the bare skin below his shorts. Colin refused to let himself fidget and sat perfectly still.
“You are not the first student who has been granted the opportunity to attend college classes. Ah, I see that surprises you. It’s been a while, but there are precedents.” She lifted a page from the file open on her desk and slid it across to him. “As far as the other students are concerned, you are now in transition. Which means some of the regulations that frame the other students’ lives here are, well, I suppose relaxed is the best term to use. But there are still rules, and you must closely adhere to each and every one of them. Tell me you understand.”
He had heard some of this from Arnold on the way to and from the swimming pool. He had spent much of the previous night preparing his own list. “I need to be allowed to study later at night.”
“Do you, now.”
“And I need a personal computer. And permission to keep it in my room. I can’t have other people using it.”
Her expression tightened. “It is not customary for a student—”
“I’ll be missing meals. I need money for food. At the university. And books.”
She inspected him with a distinctly frosty gaze. “It would be advisable not to use your newfound duties as an excuse to overreach.”
“A laptop would be best,” he persisted. “Something I can carry with me to class. And a backpack. And a key for my room. I can’t allow other people to mess with my work.”
He knew he was taking a big risk, making the woman angry. But he could feel Arnold and Sandrine standing behind him now. Allies on his side. And something more. The conversation with his father stayed with him, the pressure of the ticking clock. There was so little time to get this right.Colin slid from the uncomfortable chair and picked up the sheet of new instructions.
She was still sitting there, studying him intently, when he left the office. Colin glanced over the page as he climbed the stairs to his room. The heading read “Colin Eames: New Daily Schedule.” He shut the door, crumpled the page, and threw it in the trash.
When he returned back downstairs, Mrs. Fitzgerald’s office door was closed and the ground floor was quiet. One young girl played a game on a computer. Colin walked to his favorite machine, set in the inner corner so that light from the front window fell over his right shoulder. He dropped the bag with his swimming gear and towel to the floor. He had almost an hour before he needed to leave for his Sunday lesson.
He worked on his secret project. He rarely used the Sojourn House computers for this anymore. Virtually all his computer time was spent in the school library. He had no evidence that Mrs. Fitzgerald monitored the in-house computer files, but he had learned to take great caution.
What initially had been a few vague ideas had grown and developed and hardened until it occupied virtually all his waking hours. His classwork required no time whatsoever. The instructors were supposed to set challenges for him in monthly tutorials. But they had no idea how far ahead he had become. He told them what he thought they wanted to hear, at the level they counted as accelerated. He accepted their accolades, agreed to whatever new assignment they selected, and pretended he was kept fully occupied. The subterfuge had grown and expanded until he had spent months living a myth. All so he could hide from everyone his true work.
He had hacked the academy’s mainframe and set up private files that only he could access. He would have preferreda cloud account, but those firewalls were impenetrable and he didn’t have any money. So he employed a double-blind system to hide his presence from anyone who might go hunting. The school’s computer geeks were good. But their primary focus was on protecting the financial accounts and academic grading and student files.
The school was big on teaching current affairs, which Colin found increasingly bizarre, since so much of its structure was designed to keep the worldout. But it served his purpose now, since the library system had subscriptions to the major online news feeds. Colin focused on the sources he had come to trust: theNew York Timesbusiness section, theWall Street Journal, theFinancial Times, theFortunedaily feed, and the online zines he had decided were mostly reliable. He had been doing this twice daily for four and a half months, building his system in the process. The result was an ability to scan the articles and see not news but data that he would then translate into numbers and input into his newly developed algorithmic system. After that, he began the real hunt.
As he checked the latest updates on the house computer, he occasionally lifted his head and scanned the room. But it was just him and the girl. Mrs. Fitzgerald was gone for the day. When he finished, he still had fifteen minutes left. He switched over to his favorite pastime. Cartoons. They had taught him to read, and held him still. Only now he was rarely interested in the cartoon itself. What fascinated him was the changing landscape. CGI work was driven increasingly by new software designed to insert ever-higher degrees of reality into the story. Colin switched to the websites catering to software designers and was scanning for the latest development and news about upcoming films …
When he saw it.
The rumor was couched in geekspeak, little snippets about a major change to the gaming landscape.