Chapter
Twenty-0ne
IHT v1.0
Cameron and Rosa were worried and on edge.
“Has Mr. Anderson installed your IHT yet?” asked Cameron.
“No, not yet.”
“The orientation is tomorrow morning!”
“No duh? Aren’t you good at stating the obvious, Cheese Boy!”
“Hey, watch it, Cowgirl!” snapped Cameron.
They both looked away from their screens, silent. Rosa couldn’t stand it for more than thirty seconds. “Sorry, Cameron. I’m not upset with you. I’m just…”
“Nervous? Anxious?”
“Upset,” said Rosa.
“Perturbed,” said Cameron.
“Really pissed off!” said Rosa before flopping her head onto her desktop and clutching it with both hands. Her muffled voice was barely audible. “What if it was all some terrible joke?”
Cameron had never seen her so down. “C’mon, Rosa! You know GundTech’s flare for the dramatic. They like to do everything at the last moment.”
Rosa sighed, shifted her head so she could look up at the screen, and said, “Yeah. You’re probably right.”
Meagan Fletcher met Pieter Olsen, the GundTech representative who had been present for the first IHT news conference, in her office at 1:30 AM local time.
“What an ungodly hour for a school orientation,” said the reporter as she handed Olsen a cup of coffee.
Pieter sipped his cup before making a reply. “Ja. That’s why there will be only a few academy-wide meetings during the school year. We have students in almost every time zone around the world.”
After he leisurely finished his coffee, Olsen plugged the small IHT adapter into the spare multiCom port in Meagan’s office. “This setup is different than the one you saw during the demonstration,” he said as he removed a compact black cube from his titanium case and set it on Meagan’s desk. “We aren’t generating a holographic image, so the installation is much smaller.” Finally, he handed her the familiar IDO pin.
Cameron noticed immediately that Debbie White was not carrying the titanium case containing the IHT. Something was wrong. He wanted to run upstairs and contact Rosa. Was she being cut from the Academy, too?
Max Anderson saw the look on Rosa’s face as he entered.
“You’re probably wondering where the case is.”
Rosa nodded nervously.
“Well, I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news,” said Max.
“The bad news is Headquarters didn’t send us the cases…”
“The good news,” said Debbie, “they sent us these, instead.” She withdrew an ornately carved wooden box from her bag. It had “The Rush Family” etched in scrolling letters on the top.
Max Anderson displayed the box so all the family could see COSTAS engraved on the lid. He then handed the box to Rosa. “This is for you to open, young lady.”
Mama and Papa crowded in close, their arms locked around their daughter as she unfastened the polished brass latch and lifted the lid.
The entire inside of the box, both top and bottom, was padded with soft foam rubber covered in heavy blue velvet. Nestled in spaces in the bottom pad, cut to fit their exact shapes, were three golden objects.
“These are your personal IDOs,” said Max. “The two pins are for your parents so they can participate at any time. The pendant is for you.”
Rosa’s parents recognized it right away. “May I?” a proud father asked his daughter, gesturing toward the pendant.
Rosa nodded. As her father carefully removed the pendant from the box and placed it around Rosa’s neck, she noticed tears trickling down her mother’s cheek. “What is it, Mama?”
Esmer Costas walked over and lovingly touched an old photograph on the mantle above the fireplace. “It is the pendant my grandmother and mother wore, which was to be handed down to me. It was lost when our house burned down. I was very small then.”
“Well, at least it’s a close reproduction,” Max corrected.
“When you showed me that photo of Rosa’s great-grandmother and told me the story of the pendant, I scanned the picture and sent it to Oslo.”
“The three pins are for your parents and Jenny so they can join you in a simulation from time to time,” said Debbie as Cameron lifted a gold pocket watch and examined it carefully. “Your dad told me of your fascination with your grandpa’s old watch and how you couldn’t get it to work. Well I borrowed it and sent it to Oslo. Now it keeps perfect time —and a few other things as well.”
Cameron flipped open the cover of the watch, then held it close to his ear. He found comfort in the gentle tick, tick, tick of the timepiece.
“Now I wasn’t totally accurate when I said these were your IDOs,” Debbie went on to explain. “The pins are of a different design than the previous ones, but they are really only updated ID Objects. What is different is…”
“The difference is,” said Max, “Rosa’s pendant is not only an IDO; it is the IHT transmitter as well. Anyone wearing an IDO within a 10 foot radius of her transmitter can participate in the simulation.”
Like all the other reps with the other families around the world, Debbie and Max had their wards settled into comfortable seats by noon, Oslo time.
The first thing Cameron noticed was the room didn’t turn to gelatin. It just sort of started to fade away then magically dissolved into a large auditorium. He recognized it at once. It was the place in which the demonstration was held. Rosa appeared, in tones of gray, to his right. Malik and his family faded in two rows ahead of them and Cameron could hear Becky’s unmistakable giggle from behind and to his left.
“Rosa, Cameron!” she called across the hall as she gave her excited little wave. “And Malik!” she cried joyously when she discovered him.
Malik tried to act like the responsible older brother. He smiled pleasantly and gave each of them a curt, two-fingered salute in greeting. But he couldn’t hold out this display of maturity for long. He suddenly rose in his seat, turned to face his new friends, and shouted “Yeah!” He thrust both hands high into the air in a gesture of victory.
“It’s good to be a geek!”
The hall exploded with cheers and laughter in response.
“Go on,” came a woman’s voice from the podium. Gwen Johanssen stood at center stage, dressed in an expensive business suit. “You deserve to congratulate yourselves. Students, families, stand up and cheer!”
The room got even louder and more raucous. Students and families were leaning to the rows in front and behind, spontaneously introducing themselves to their neighbors.
Gwen Johanssen let the celebration go on until it started to subside on its own before she pounded a gavel on the podium and called the group to order. “Well, you’ve finally made it.”
More applause.
“The IHT Academy will officially open its doors on Monday.”
A burst of cheers.
Gwen held up her hands in an effort to suppress the cheering. She couldn’t help but laugh as the hall finally became silent. “Now, if you keep interrupting like that, these boring opening remarks could take an hour.” She paused dramatically and surveyed the audience with an authoritative gaze. “I don’t know about you, but I want to get to the good stuff!”
Pandemonium ran rampant through the hall on that remark, just as she had expected. She turned to search for the man deep in the shadows of the auditorium’s backstage area. She could sense the motion of his hands applauding in the darkness. She smiled as she once again struck the gavel weakly on the podium. “Order,” she said so softly that the din of excitement drowned it out. Finally, she gestured with her index finger making small circles above her head, as if to say “crank it up.”
A deep, resonating roll of kettledrums filled the voluminous cavern of the auditorium. The hall quickly settled down into something that resembled order.
Gwen again surveyed the audience, playing the moment. She sipped at a glass of water then slowly shuffled through the thick stack of papers that was her speech. She looked up from her notes with a sly grin and paused. Beginning with an apologetic tone, she started to speak, “Please pardon my language, but… to hell with it!” She tossed her notes high above her head. As they started to drift back to earth, they froze in mid-air – hanging there like a giant grey chrysanthemum bloom.
The audience, as one, held its breath in anticipation of the flurry of papers resuming their fall.
She continued in her best ringmaster voice, “Students, families, faculty, and honored guests! The good stuff! IHT version 1.0!”
It started at the center of the suspended faux flower, and radiated outwards in all directions. Color! The paper petals blossomed in a rainbow of brilliant shades. As each petal flushed with its vibrant hue, it began to drift downward, only to dissolve into nothingness before touching the ground. The audience ooh-ed and ah-ed as if they were at a display of fireworks.
The growing sphere of chromatic tones reached the back wall of the stage, which not only changed colors but also transformed into a colonnade of thin, spiraling pillars. The floor flattened out to one level wherever the color bled. It was a vast mosaic of polished marble. The change of scene had the fluidity of a dream. The ever-expanding transformation revealed a grand ballroom topped by an ornate gold, blue, and white vaulted ceiling supported by the stone columns. Immense crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling and other cut-crystal lighting fixtures adorned every other column. Beyond the colonnade, which encircled the entire room, was a sweeping balcony that overlooked a moonlit valley with a peaceful river running through it.
A platform with elaborately carved railings rose from the floor at one edge of the room. It completely filled the space between two sets of columns. As Gwen Johanssen ascended to the platform, the ballroom dimmed. The audience was awestruck, for as she climbed the stairs, her dark blue business suit was transformed into a stunning gown of shimmering blue and silver; a delicate mask of satin and feathers graced her face. A soft pool of light illuminated her as she stood atop the dais.
“We thought, as an icebreaker, a masked ball would be in order.” With a sweeping gesture of spreading arms, like Moses, Gwen seemed to cast a spell over the gathering. But instead of parting waters, members of the audience were randomly placed within the ballroom. Each was clothed and masked in a grand style.
– End Chapter Twenty-one –
