Ordinary Page 2

  Employment Booth Listings: 1,298

  Great. Jimmy the Idiot has so many listings he will have to filter them to choose what he wants. Mine would fit on the top quarter of the tablet’s surface. There’s no justice in this world.

  I head toward the nearest location dot on the 3D map, keeping my head down. I also have no desire to see all the opportunities that I am literally passing by.

  A friendly, broad-shouldered man with skin even darker than mine hands out samples of food to the students who stop at his booth. It creates quite a crowd of hungry teens.

  “You on my list?” he asks a young man across the table from him, his voice deep and booming.

  “No,” the boy laughs as if it were the most insane idea out there.

  The man shrugs, revealing his nametag. Harvey Worthington, Owner. Harvey hands the boy a square of a sandwich anyway.

  “Nothing nobler than filling a man’s stomach,” Harvey says.

  I nudge my way forward inch by inch as students take a sample, engage briefly in conversation with Harvey or his assistant, Joan, before moving on. The banner on the wall of the booth reads “Lettuce Eat: Where our meals are about more than just food.”

  “You look like you could use a whole plate,” Harvey says, eyeing me up and down as I nudge my way to the front of the crowd.

  Subconsciously, I glance at my shirt and dress pants. There’s no denying that I’m like a pencil, lanky.

  “You look lost.” Harvey laughs, and the sound booms over the noise around us. “You on my list?”

  “Y-yes.”

  Harvey reaches a colossal hand out toward me, and I extend my own to shake, but he takes my hand and pulls me behind the table where two chairs face each other. Joan closes the space he previously occupied, engaging with the students in his absence.

  “So, tell me a little about yourself,” Harvey says, settling back comfortably in the chair across from mine. I can’t help but notice how dwarfed the Somatic brand is on his bicep, barely peeking out from his shirt sleeve.

  “Don’t you want to look at my rank?” I ask, shifting my own tablet across my lap, turned off.

  “Does it matter?”

  I then realize Harvey doesn’t have a tablet. I glance around the booth and see it on the floor inside one of the boxes of supplies he brought along.

  “I guess… not?” I bite my lip again and try to gather some sense of confidence. “My name is Ugene Powers. I go to Memorial High, but I don’t know what I want to do with my life yet.” Well, that was a lie. I’m forming a habit of lying today.

  For a second, I think I might have said the wrong thing, but Harvey smiles at me. “I don’t think anyone ever knows what they want to do with their life,” he says. “We all just move from one thing to the next, searching.” That seems interesting to me. “What’s your core focus at Memorial High?”

  That’s the dreaded question. Harvey hasn’t looked at my rank yet, or he would know I’m Powerless.

  “Sciences, mostly,” I answer. “And writing.”

  “What sciences are most interesting to you?”

  “Biological, mostly,” I say. “I’m interested in how the body works.” Truth. There must be some reason I am the way I am. The answer is somewhere in science. Unfortunately, only Divinics—like Bianca’s older brother, Forrest—and Naturalists land those jobs. I’m severely unqualified.

  “So, you’re a Divinic?” asks Harvey, brows lifting. Is he impressed?

  Well, time to let him down gently. “No.”

  “Naturalist?” he guesses, and I shake my head. Harvey sits forward, massive forearms resting on gigantic thighs. The chair creaks a little under his weight. “You aren’t a Somatic.” His calculating look makes me uncomfortable. I hate when people look me over and just assume I can’t possibly be a Somatic just because I’m not stocky enough. Not strong enough. “So, you’re a Psionic. Well, that could make for a good dishwasher or busboy, I suppose. What’s your specialty?”

  The words come out slowly. “I don’t have one.”

  Harvey just stares at me like I grew an extra head. The silence is awkward and painfully long. Suddenly, he bursts into laughter.

  “Oh, now that’s a clever joke!” The depth of his voice vibrates against my chest. “I like you! I never would have thought to answer with that.”

  Harvey wipes tears from the edges of his eyes. Not exactly the reaction I was expecting. The amusement dies with slow, awkward chuckles as he notices my deadpan expression. Then, the silence becomes very real. The calm before the storm. Harvey and I just watch each other.

  Finally, he cocks his head. “You’re serious.”

  I nod again.

  Harvey sits up straighter, smoothing his pants with those enormous hands. “So,” he pauses to clear his throat, “you have no Powers? At all. You’re Regressed?” He rubs at his brow and sighs heavily, adjusting in his seat. The news has made him anxious. “Well, Ugene, I—”

  The clock is ticking, and I know any moment he will dismiss me politely. This is my last chance to sway him.

  “Mr. Worthington,” I say. “I know I’m not your typical dishwasher or whatever, and I can’t keep the plates from hitting the floor with Psionic Powers, but it doesn’t mean I can’t do the job.” Am I really so desperate that I’m struggling to hold on to a dishwasher job?

  “Ugene,” Harvey sighs so heavily his whole body appears to deflate. There’s something in his eyes I can’t identify. “It isn’t that. It’s just… with the current climate around Proposition 8.5, it puts my business in a tricky place. If I hire you, it could come back to my restaurant. I could lose business.”

  The implication is clear enough. Harvey shifts and I can tell he is about to get up. I hate it but realize that if I don’t succeed here, I only have two more prospects.

  I jump to my feet. “Please. Just give me a week to show you I can do this. One week. You don’t even have to pay me for that week.”

  The students at the table watch us now. I try not to look, not to let them know I notice.

  But Harvey notices and hesitates.

  Fear! That’s what it is. The look in his eyes is fear. People fear what they can’t understand, and apparently, Proposition 8.5 has some significance I don’t understand. I understand fear of regression, but this is something else. Something deeper.

  One week of free labor must be enticing. If I can just get that one week to show him I can do the job, it could make all the difference.

  The slope of his shoulders gives Harvey away.

  “Ugene, I’m sorry,” Harvey says, and I can tell that he really is by the way his brows pull together. His hand falls on my shoulder like a weight. “I wish you all the best, but I won’t lie. It’s gonna be tough. You might want to learn a little more about what’s going on out there. But stop by any time for a meal, on the house.”

  Harvey’s expression suddenly changes back to the jovial, smiling man he was earlier as he approaches the table again. The weight of his hand shifting off my shoulder feels like a mountain sliding into place.

  I want to stand on the table and scream that there is nothing wrong with me. But it won’t do any good. People already fear the danger of Power regression, and whatever this Proposition is, that fear seems to be growing. With a sigh, I pull up the second employer on the map. It takes about five minutes to make my way through the crowded aisles of the exhibition hall to the right booth.

  No tables or chairs occupy the second booth, nor are there pamphlets or digital sharing links for the tablets, allowing me to scan a code for more information. Two men in plain grey uniforms talk to one another, one of them holding a tablet and both ignoring me standing there. The sign that hangs behind them on the booth wall is plain, displaying a white trash can logo with thick arrows circling each other. City Waste Management stands out against the green banner in white letters.

  “Look at this one,” one of the men says, huddled over a tablet with the other.

  “Even Gus’ rank is hig
her than that, and he’s worthless,” the other says.

  “Excuse me.”

  Both stop and look at me blankly. After a moment, the one holding the tablet says, “Name?”

  “Ugene Powers.”

  He taps the screen, and his brows shoot up his forehead as he passes the tablet off to his partner without comment.

  “Is this for real?” the partner whispers back, his disbelief evident across his wrinkled brow.

  The first guy squares his shoulders, making his shirt shift enough to reveal the Somatic brand on his arm. “We don’t got an opening for you, Powerless.”

  I lick my lips and prepare for protest, but the way their brows draw down and their jaws set in contempt forces me to take a step back, then a couple more until my back bumps into a student from another school.

  “Watch it,” she says, brushing her hands over her peach dress.

  I turn to her and apologize, then move up the aisle quickly to the first corner and bolt out of the crowded walkway. I have to twist sideways to get by a group blocking the path.

  The next listing is in the Somatic area as well, but I’m in no rush to get there. Instead, I move toward the back wall of the exhibition hall, shifting and twisting to make my way through the crowd. The voices sound louder, and, for some reason, my heart is racing. I press a hand to my chest as my back finally rests against the cool brick wall. A chill bleeds through the cloth of my dress shirt, relieving some of the tension.

  “Ugene?” Bianca approaches, the heels of her red dress shoes making her muscular calves stand out. She wasn’t wearing those on the tram. “What’s going on? Why are you over here?”

  “I’m fine,” I lie. “Just some jerks reminding me I’m Powerless is all.”

  “Don’t let them get to you,” she says. “Jerks will always be jerks, but you’re smarter than anyone I know.”

  “Anyone?” A smirk tilts the corner of her mouth.

  “Well… maybe not smarter than Forrest,” she admits, referring to her older brother. For a moment, her face takes on a haunted expression, but it quickly passes.

  Forrest has the job I dreamed of one day attaining at Paragon Diagnostics. But without a Power to give me an in, there was no way it would ever happen. “Glad you’re okay. I gotta run. I have, like, a few hundred booths to make my way through and so little time. Good luck.”

  Right. A few hundred. And she probably narrowed her list based on her own interests. Bianca Pond: Somatic Muscle Memory 68th Percentile. She could pack more punch in one finger than I could with my whole body.

  With a mutter of disgust, I turn my attention to my tablet and tap the dot for the last prospect while making my way back into the flow of the aisle.

  The name pops up from the 3D display and pulls me up short.

  Paragon Diagnostics.

  I blink, my breath catching, and my feet become rooted to the floor. There must be some mistake. I tap the screen to bring up the booth’s location on the exhibition hall map. Swallowing hard, excitement and hope pumping through me for the first time in years, my feet carry me swiftly along the crowded aisles from one end of the hall to the other.

  5

  Paragon Diagnostics’ booths consume more than half of the long aisle. So many, in fact, that my contact is specifically marked out among their booths. Three booths line either side, and each of them could fit just one of the standard-sized booths within it. I have to pass five of them to get to the pulsing dot on my map, and along the way it’s impossible to resist my curiosity, pausing at each booth to learn a little more.

  Four of the booths are set up basically the same, with a massive silken banner in each color bearing the logo for the Power represented. The banners stretch the full length of the booth.

  First is the Psionic section, with its long yellow banner and Psionic brain logo and the recruitment slogan: “Become a Psion of knowledge. Join Paragon’s Psionic Department.” The back-to-back PD logo fills the lower half of the banner. Students have crowded around as a Paragon employee stands at each of the four tables with two students, their hands calmly resting on the yellow cloth-covered high-top pedestal table.

  One cluster of students watches a candidate on a simulation platform—similar to what they used on us in testing—as she focuses on the sim around her. Objects fly at her, and she easily knocks them aside with her Telekinetic Power as she hoists massive pieces of equipment and moves them across the sim station. Some of the students cheer her on. But she performs pretty basic Telekinetics—even if they are heavy objects.

  My attention turns across the aisle, where the Naturalist section spreads out. The setup is much the same, but this banner is Naturalist green with their tree logo and the slogan: “The Power to affect change begins with nature. Join Paragon’s Naturalist Department.” I glance at the tables, with three students crowded around each of the four, green cloth-covered high-tops with an employee of Paragon. The crowd around the simulation platform is so thick on this side that I have to stand on my toes to see who is using it. As I bounce up for a better view, the crowd collectively releases a gasp of awe followed by thunderous applause.

  Jimmy the Idiot stands on the simulation platform in front of a sim-table containing vials of various liquids. Some are clear, others milky or blue or green. One of the stands includes a host of empty vials with traces of what appears to be blood. Jimmy chews his lower lip as he leans closer to something on the table. I can’t quite see through the crowd. A moment later the applause sounds again, and Jimmy beams in that arrogant way he has mastered, raising his arms victoriously above his head as the simulation disappears.

  Disgusted by Jimmy’s antics, I move on. These people are all sheep, too stupid to understand that knowledge is more potent than Powers.

  The Divinic booth is much the same, but in blue colors with the slogan: “Without Divine Power, we are but heathens,” followed by the same recruitment line. At one of the tables, Forrest talks to a couple of recruits. Their conversation is lost in the cacophony of cheers as students watch the sim tests. A boy on the Divinic simulation platform reads the history of items by touching them and predicting their potential future. I would guess that his Cass Scale rank is around the 40th percentile based on the accuracy of his predictions—marked on a display where he can’t see them.

  I turn to the Somatic booth in its bold, bright red to find another crowd gathered. It’s hard to see what’s going on over the other heads, but I recognize the movement of silky black hair on the simulation platform. Bianca. Hopeful to see more, I nudge my way through the crowd a little more, but most of the students crowded around are also Somatics, which means their bodies are broader and more muscular than mine by far. It makes me look like a twig among branches.

  Still, I manage to nudge forward just enough to see flashes of her movement between heads. A simulated instructor shows moves in quick, fluid motions, and Bianca has no trouble keeping up. Her Muscle Memory allows her to watch actions, register how each muscle acts during those moves, then mimic them perfectly. I’ve never watched her copy so fast before. The simulation finishes and a holographic graph of her results appears in the air above the simulation platform.

  Speed: 92

  Accuracy: 89

  Power: 75

  Balance: 81

  I can’t see her face from here, but those results send a bolt of awe through me. Her rank is in the 60’s, and she just scored an 84. How is that even possible?

  The Paragon employee running the simulation directs Bianca to one of the tables and the next student steps on the platform. I glance up at the slogan: “The mind cannot exist without the body. Join Paragon’s Somatic Division.”

  Excitement pumps through my veins as I approach the next Paragon booth. Unlike the others, this booth represents all four of the Branches of Powers. A holographic recording plays on repeat, touting the importance of the research at Paragon, and how it wouldn’t be possible without the bravery and selflessness of the medical test subjects who volunteer the
ir time to the betterment of mankind.

  A soothing, prerecorded voice beckons me as I approach the booth. “Why be ordinary when you can be extraordinary?”

  A simple table covered in light blue cloth and a stack of fanned-out brochures stands to the corner of the booth near me. I grab one of the brochures as the Paragon employees talk to a few other students. Before reading it, I consult my map.

  A lump of saliva forms in my throat. This is where I’m supposed to be. Helping with research, just like I always wanted. But when did they expand out into a fifth division, and what does it do? Excited, I glance up the aisle at the other booths crowded by students—unlike this one. Eagerness makes my limbs heavy. Just go and talk to them.

  But what if it’s a mistake? Three matches are far more than I ever could have hoped for. What if this one was a glitch in the system? And why are there so few students at this booth?

  “Ugene Powers,” says a young man in a red collared shirt embroidered on the left side of his chest with the PD logo.

  “Um, yes.”

  He thrusts out a hand, a broad smile on his face. “I’m Devon, and I’m so thrilled to meet you.”

  I take his hand, getting a waft of sarsaparilla from his clothes as we shake. The smell reminds me of home. His handshake is firm.

  “Me?”

  “Of course! Your name is at the top of our list.” He taps his tablet and shows me the list, and sure enough, there is my name right at the top, along with my abysmal rank.

  I only have a few seconds to scan the names beneath mine, more interested in their ranks. All of them are low. Mo’s name catches my interest, but Devon pulls the tablet back to his side before I can see anything more.

  “So, what is it about me that interests you?” I ask.

  “Your potential,” Devon says. His pleasant demeanor doesn’t slip once. “Our research is the fuel for the future of everyone with Powers, and you have the potential to help us find the answers.”