Amped Up Read online

  Amped Up

  Merrell Michael

  copyright 2012 @ Merrell Michael

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual living persons is coincidental.

  email the author at [email protected]

  also by Merrell Michael

  Marine at War

  the Junker Girl and her Droid

  Wounded Warrior

  This book is dedicated to all the fire breathing woman in Crossfit Beaumont, and the real K.P.

  O, me alone! make you a sword of me?

  William Shakespeare

  Coriolanus, Act 1 Scene IV

  the First Commercial

  The woman in the ad has been chosen through a series of focus groups based on both attractiveness and inoffensiveness. She is Caucasian, presumptively, with short brown hair and bright blue eyes. She is wearing a pastel pink button up shirt and white khaki Capri pants.

  The woman says "Our son struggled for years with his learning disorder. I thought there was nothing else we could do." She makes sure to break into a careful smile, showing well-kept teeth, before saying, "then I found out about the Actuator."

  The commercial cuts away, to a new scene, the woman and a young boy, meant to be her son, talking to a handsome man with grey hair and a white lab coat. The choice of the doctor in the commercial, is even more important than the woman. People with actual greying hair, old people, seem too creepy. The doctor is only thirty five, and he has dyed his actual hair silver for these purposes. He is pointing to a pamphlet, and the woman is smiling and nodding, while holding an arm around her sons shoulders.

  The voiceover tells us. "In many cases, an active Actuator has been shown to improve long term concentration, and higher learning skills."

  The commercial cuts again, to a man in a buzz cut, wearing a camouflage Army uniform. He says, "After my deployment, I was told that my brain damage would be permanent. The Activor Actuator helped control my symptoms."

  The camera cuts away to a scene where a little girl runs up to the soldier, while he bends down to scoop her up in his arms. The voice over says "The Activor Actuator has also been proven to treat the symptoms of many disorders, including traumatic brain injury and epilepsy."

  While the heartwarming scene continues, the voiceover says grimly, "In some cases, the Actuator may cause side effects, including dizziness, nausea, and severe migraines, talk to your doctor if you have these symptoms, or experience the following; hallucinations, bleeding from the eyes or ears, or blackouts. In a small number of cases the body may reject the Activor Actuator, which will result in irreversible brain damage, or total brain death, including loss of life."

  The voiceover continues, "The Activor Actuator is covered by most health plains, including Medicare and for Veterans."

  The woman reappears at the end, saying, "Talk to your doctor today, to find out if the Activor Actuator is right for you."

  The corporate symbol. The voice over says simply, "Activor!"

  One

  I’m standing on the roof of Lincoln Jefferson High School, in Alexandria, Virginia. It’s been raining, and the roof is wet, which is amplified by the fact that I’m standing in heels. Twenty feet away from me is a student, standing at the edge of the roof, one foot leaning over. Owen Meany.

  "Don’t come any closer, Kara." He says. "I mean it."

  "Let’s talk about this." I say, using my best calm down voice. "Let’s talk about what we can do."

  Owen Meany taps the side of his head, where the maintenance port is. "I can do whatever I want." He says. "I’m an Amp, remember? I'm smarter than you. I already figured out how this is going to end."

  "I’m an Amp too." I tell him, and I sweep the hair back on my temple, so he can see the mark, where the Actuator maintenance port is. "Were the same. Just come down, so we can talk all this over."

  Owen shakes his head. "All yours does is make it so you don’t spaz." He says. "Sorry. I mean, control your Epilepsy. We all know about it. Your less of a freak. All yours does is fix you. Mine fucks me up."

  "I’m not a freak." I tell him. "And you’re not a freak. Were better."

  "Oh yeah." Owen looks down. "Sixty feet down. I'll have to aim for the concrete in order for this to kill me. Too much grass around. Lucky for me, I’ve got the reflexes to twist in mid- air. Like a cat. Better."

  Four years ago Owen Meany was a normal, quiet kid, who sat in the back of a special ed class and didn’t talk. One week his parents pulled him out of school, claimed he had chicken pox. When he came back, he was different.

  Owen Meany had received a very special sort of elective surgery. A Mental Actuator amplification device. This device turned changed his life completely. And now, thanks to the Supreme Court, it’s changed the lives of everyone. Including me. The Court has just ruled that the Actuator constitutes an "unfair advantage" for the million and a half people that have one. So those folks are now not a protected class.

  Meaning Owen is kicked out of school, for what he is.

  And I've been kicked out of a job.

  And both of us are up here, on the roof.

  "Do you know why they gave it to me?" Owen says, one foot dangling off the roof. "My parents."

  "They wanted the best for you." I tell him. "They still do."

  He shakes his head. "They thought I was gay." He said. "Gay and retarded. They heard the Actuator could cure both. It was a big marketing ploy, to get in parents with." He holds up both his hands and makes the quotation mark symbol with his fingers "Traditional values."

  I don’t say anything, just try to inch closer to Owen, get to where I can grab him before he plummets.

  "Now it’s worse." Owen said. "Now I'm gay and an Amp. Kids here are now saying amp instead of faggot. But even the actual gay kids, some of them say amp like that. Because it’s okay. They made it okay to hate us."

  "No one hates us." I tell him. I’m close enough now to grab his fingertips if I wanted to. "People are just scared. It’s okay to be scared."

  He shakes his head. "You've got it all wrong Ms. Pierce." He says. "It’s all downhill from here. They'll be putting us in concentration camps before all this is over. All this has happened before."

  And just like that, he leans back just enough, so that his body slips free, plummeting through space, and I get to the edge just in time to see the impact, as Owen Meany's Amplified head breaks like an eggshell, and his brains become useless, red hued, decoration on the pavement.

  Two

  I leave before the police arrive. I'm shivering a little. Maybe I’m in shock.

  I had seen someone die before. There was a woman when I went to college, overweight and elderly. Checking the box for a lifelong dream, getting a degree. We were eating lunch in the cafeteria, and she stopped and said "There’s something wrong with mah ah-rum." Holding up the limb in question. "It’s ahwful tingulee." She shook her hand back and forth, the loose flesh on her forearm flapping around.

  Then her face turned blue.

  It was a massive heart attack. No one knew what to do. We stood around and watched her die, for a full few minutes, before thinking of calling for help. No one did CPR, until the paramedics came. Maybe that’s why this was worse. I knew what to do. Get up on the roof, talk Owen down. A good kid. I could do it. He trusted me. Instead he tore me apart with his words, and killed himself anyway.

  I take the bus back to my apartment. No one really rides the bus in Alexandria, that can afford not to. Mostly poor migrant workers, housekeepers and landscapers, and a few people that could be described as just shy of vagrant, with rotten clothing and a ripe body aroma. Lately, I've been seeing quite a few other amps, though. There’s been situations on the news, amps carjacked and gunpoint at red lights, taken out and beaten in the middle o
f the street. Other cases of a few eighteen wheelers, deliberately ramming amps of the road. Things are bad out there. People have died.

  I check my IPhone. There’s a few texts. My e-mail has a message saying that all Teachers with an Actuator have been immediately placed on unpaid administrative leave. My mother wants me to stop by the lab right away. I flip over to the net, and the news. The President took a big upset, with the Supreme Court ruling, and now Congresswoman Bachmann is playing it up for all she can. The Republican party is up in the polls, bolstered in no small part by Michelle Bachmann's Humans First platform.

  As if we weren’t human.

  One of the vagrants is staring me down. I try to ignore it. I can see where his eyes are fixed, like a laser beam, to the maintenance port on my forehead. I wonder what he will do. I’ve been thinking about buying a hat, to cover up, but trying to hide your temple marks you for an amp as much as a port does.

  The laser beam stare. I decide to ignore it, and go back to my IPhone, fixated myself on some cheap game or another. Doodle jump. Angry Birds. Fruit Ninja. When I get off at my stop, and walk the three blocks to my apartment, all my things are on the front lawn.

  Mr. Mergeson, my landlord, is the sort of immense, red faced man, I imagine was a union boss in a former life. When there were factories in America, that made things, and workers that ran them in unions. He's wearing a white t-shirt stained brown around the collar, and his man breasts jiggle over a cardboard box filled with my belongings.

  "What’s going on?" I say.

  "I don’t need to talk to you." He says. He starts to set the box down gently, and then, thinking differently on it, upends the contents so they spill half into the grass, half into a bush. My hairbrush and jewelry. A book by Anias Nin, that a boyfriend gave me in college. "You’re out." He says.

  "I have four months left on my rent." I tell him. He doesn’t turn around, huffing as he walks back into the apartment. "I'll call the police!" I say, louder. He turns at that and looks at me first with fear, and then something scary, that I'd have to call Rage.

  "You call who you want, Amp whore." He spits. "Won’t do you no good. Court ruled that amps can’t enter into contracts, so that lease don’t mean a thing."

  People are gathering around, curious. "Take what you want!" Mergeson shouts, tapping a burly forefinger to his temple. "She's one of those. You might want to wash the stink off it, first."

  To my horror, that’s just what they do. Someone snatches up my blu ray player. Someone else is plucking my grandmothers earrings out of the bush. Its crazy time. I think about the school, and the bad news on my phone. Is this what’s happening everywhere, all across the country? Mergeson comes out with a handful of all my good clothes, I kept in the closet, and dumps it right there, a smattering of good Victoria’s secret lingerie on top of it. The crowd actually cheers, and he raises his hands as if he’s done something important, win an athletic event, or some such great victory.

  My eyes are blurring up. I turn to leave. I make it about a block and a half before I devolve into a blubbering mess. It wasn’t anything I had seen coming. Mergeson wasn’t unkind to me. Maybe even a little flirtatious, in a no chance in hell way. Was that what it was about? I didn’t give him a shot? It seemed like something worse. Like a switch had been flipped in his head, that gave him a permission he had been waiting for. A permission to hate.

  I calm down just in time to realize I am in front of an ATM. I count to ten in my head. Slow down my breathing, and thinking. How long until my bank account is closed? The Jews get sent to Auschwitz, the Nazis steal their luggage. I insert my card, and withdraw the max amount, eight hundred. People are watching me now, people with clean temples. I think. My apartment is gone. Where can I go? Mother sent me a message. I will go to mother.

  It takes me fifteen minutes to walk to the laboratory. I’m vaguely surprised not to find protestors. They were there every other day of this week, with signs and hate, screaming, throwing things. An Activor based laboratory has become the new abortion clinic, the new global warming. Science says one thing, and on the other side people like Congressman Bachmann stand up and scream, "Look what Jesus said!" Which is almost exactly what the graffiti says on the building, LOOK WUT JESUS DID AMP LUVERS.

  When I open the door I notice Grace, the secretary is gone, from behind her bulletproof Plexiglas. The lobby is empty, a few year-old copies of Time magazine and Martha Stewart Living scattered on the seats, across the floor. The door to the back is open. I think of my mother, and the small Glock pistol she keeps in her purse. I hope she has it now.

  But when I open the door, everything is much the way it should be. My mother is tapping on the keyboard of her IMac, that I bought her two years ago. All the usual trappings are there, undisturbed. It’s comforting. My mother looks at me, smiling sweetly in the way she sometimes does, and says, "Can you please shut the door, Kara?"

  I do, and she says, "Directly by your left foot there is a tripwire located three inches up from the floor. Please avoid disturbing it."

  I am only able to see the cord when I focus on it, a silvery strand that belongs in a Vietnam movie. My gut churns as I follow it to the side of the room, it ends in a mess of electronics that I imagine as a detonator, and several large containers of something marked FLAMMABLE and CAUTION.

  "The easiest way." My mother says. "Is to take a big step over. You might want to take the heels off first, if you trip on it, we might not be able to continue our conversation, among other regrettable side effects."

  I do what she says, bare skin cool on the floor through my stockings. My mother continues her rant. "Honestly." She says. "Why do you bother with such impractical dress?"

  "Its business dress." I say. "I have to look professional."

  "The purpose of heels." My mother says. "Is that, when the foot is elevated, the buttocks twitch with every step, thus providing a sexual response. It also serves a dual purpose, of hampering the females movement while objectifying her, in the same manner as a girdle, or Chinese foot-binding."

  "Do we really need a history lesson?" I ask, "That’s my job. Why do you have a tripwire set up by your front door?"

  My mother pulls out a stool next to her, and I sit down. When I look at her I can see the lines on her face, that run down from the bridge of her nose, to the corner of her mouth. They make her face look affixed in a permanent frown. Frown-lines. My mother could care less about the way she looked, most of the time. Everything she valued was stuck behind her glasses, behind her cateracted eyeballs, in a brainpan moisturized by scientific journals and peppermint schnapps.

  "Let’s say." She tells me. "That this is the last conversation that you will ever have with me in your life. What would you want to ask me?"

  "Why are you such a bitch?" I say. That takes her back.

  "Oh very good," She sneers. "Sarcasm."

  "No, I mean it." I tell her. "You don’t take anyone else’s thoughts or feelings into account. Apparently you've decided to fucking nuke your building without telling me about it, and when I ask you about it, you criticize my choice of footwear! And this is, like, a reoccurring thing. My entire life. So, yes, my last question to you, before you kill yourself in your lab, is why are you such. A fucking. Bitch."

  My mother takes her glasses off and blinks rapidly. For a minute I think she is about to cry, but then she recovers. "It is possible." She says. "That I suffer from an undiagnosed case of Asperger’s syndrome."

  "Do you want to get help for it?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, counseling, or medication, or something."

  "Counseling." My mother blinks. "Medication."

  "I mean, those could be options."

  "I don’t know." She says. I’ve dealt with it, up until this point. And there is, of course, the possibility that I’ve simply decided to deal with my issues. At a certain point, the things that make you up, you can call them disabilities, but they really are part of who you are, don’t you think?"


  I can’t help but laugh. "I just think that’s a healthier option." I say. "Then self-vaporization."

  "Like your issues." My mother taps me on my temple, on the Actuator maintenance port. "That was a part of who you were, and now this piece of hardware in your head, that's what you are. What I turned you into. I thought I was doing the right thing, and maybe I was, and maybe I was just being selfish. I didn’t feel like having a vegetable for a daughter."

  "Why would I be a vegetable?" I ask. "I thought the Actuator was just for my seizures."

  "I lied to you." Mother said. "After the car accident, you were done. No way around it." She does the rapid blinking thing, and this time, for a first, I can see actual tears coming out. "I had nightmares." She says. "Did you know that? I had nightmares, about you being trapped there, that way, not being able to- not being able to think. I couldn’t live like that. I couldn’t let you live like that."

  "I understand." I say, trying to be reassuring. If I had a normal mother, I'd put my arms around her, give her a hug. But she doesn’t like human contact. "You gave me the actuator."

  Mother shakes her head. "I gave you something." She says. "I broke a lot of rules. I gave you something better. I turned you into something better, and now you’ve got to use it." My mother takes out a small flash drive. "This is everything you need to know." She says. "Read it when your somewhere safe."

  "And where is that?" I ask. "Where is safe?"

  "A place called Haven." Mother says. "In Oklahoma. Get there any way you can. They'll be looking for you, so be careful."

  "Who?" Dread is rising, in the small of my back, deep in my gut. "Who is looking for me?"

  "Who do you think?" She says. "The government." She swivels around her laptop so I can see the screen. "It’s happening already."

  On CNN news post is a large banner SCHOOLTEACHER AMP WANTED IN CONNECTION TO STUDENTS DEATH. A picture of me, and Owen Meany, both from an old yearbook. A video feed of Lincoln Jefferson High School. All this has just happened, and is happening now. How can they know about it?