The Glader

The Long Story

  For this gathering, I was sitting in my normal spot, which was at Alby's side, not in Alby’s chair. It was really nice, actually, not being the one to lead the whole shucking gathering. On the list of not so nice things, unfortunately, were the three empty seats. Zart’s, Adam’s and Gally’s. I bit my lip and stared at my lap.

“All right, Greenie, forget all the beat-around-the-bush klunk,” Alby said, snapping me out of my silent mourning, “Start talking.”

Tommy, standing in front of us, took a deep breath. “It’s a long story,” he finally said, “We don’t have time to go though it all. When I went through the Changing, I saw flashes of images- hundreds of them- like a slide show in fast forward.” Next to me, Alby nodded. This must have been what he had been seeing.

“A lot came back to me, but only some of it’s clear enough to talk about. Other stuff has faded or is fading, but I remember enough. The Creators are testing us. The Maze was never meant to be solved.”

My heart sank down to my shoes at those words. The words that had echoed in my nightmares for years.
Hadn’t Tommy said there was a way out? If it was all a test, if the Maze was impossible, what would happen when the test was over? Would all of the Gladers that passed their trials get flat-transed out, leaving the rest for Griever chow? 

“It’s all been a trial,” Thomas said, “They want the winners- or survivors- to do something important.”

“What?” I asked. What important thing? Hadn’t we done enough already? My chest was so tight I could barely breathe.

“Let me start over,” Tommy said, “Every single one of us was taken when we were really young. I don’t remember how or why- just glimpses and feelings that things had changed in the world, that something really bad happened. I have no idea what.”

Thomas’s words came back to me again. Are they changed because they want to go back to their old life, or is it because they’re so depressed at realizing their old life was no better than what we have now? I had been depending on Escape to be the magic key that made the rest of my life a perfect heaven. An old saying surfaced in my mind. 
Out of the frying pan and into the fire...

I had to repress a shudder.

“The Creators stole us,” Tommy said, “and I think they felt justified in doing it. Somehow they figured out that we have above-average intelligence, and that’s why they chose us.”

Me... a genius? I hadn’t even figured out the shuck Maze.
I didn’t make comment.

“I don’t know, most of this is sketchy and doesn’t matter that much anyway. I can’t remember anything about my family or what happened to them. But after we were taken, we spent the next few years learning in special schools, living somewhat normal lives until they were finally able to finance and build the Maze. All our names are just stupid nicknames they made up for us- like Alby for Albert Einstein, Newt for Isaac Newton, and me- Thomas. As in Edison.”

I couldn’t breathe. It felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest. The one thing I had always been sure about, even when I had just woken up in the stupid, bloody Box, was that my name was Newt. My one possession hadn’t even been mine.
What had my real name been?

It was amazing how attached one could get to something so simple. 

A word to identify with.

The word that was mine. 

It wasn’t anymore.

Newt. 

I had always known Newt. But I hadn’t, had I? What had my name been before?
 Now that I thought of it, a Newt was some kind of amphibian, wasn’t it? So why would any parents in their right minds name a kid after that? The fact that I was named after Isaac Newton made far more sense. I vaguely remembered that he had something to do with gravity.

But if I wasn’t actually called Newt...

My head hurt.

Gravity. Newton. I wondered if the Creators had been laughing as gravity had carried me downwards. Laughing as gravity snapped my leg.
What a bloody awful thing to name a kid.

Alby summed up my thoughts in one sentence, looking incredulous. “Our names... these ain’t even our real names?”

Thomas... Edison... shook his head. “As far as I can tell, we’ll probably never know what our names were.”

“What are you saying? That we’re freaking orphans raised by scientists?” Frypan asked.

What kind of scientist was Frypan? No, wait, I vaguely remembered, He was actually called Siggy. Even he seemed to forget that sometimes. 

After who, though?

“Yes,” Thomas said simply in answer to Frypan’s— Siggy's— question.  “Supposedly they're studying every move we make, analyzing us. Seeing who will give up and who won't. Seeing who’ll survive it all. Then of course," he shuffled his feet awkwardly, "Some of us have things... altered in our brains.”

My jaw dropped open. Our brains altered? How? My head hurt worse. This was ridiculous. The Creators were ridiculous.

“I believe this klunk as much as I believe Frypan’s food is good for you,” Winston growled. 

“Why would I make this up?” was Tommy’s reply, “Better yet, what do you think is the explanation? That we live on an alien planet?”

“Just keep talking,” Alby said, interrupting Winston’s reply, “But I don’t get why none of us remembered this stuff. I’ve been through the Changing, but everything I saw was...” he trailed off, then said quickly, “I didn’t learn nothin’.”

“I’ll tell you in a minute why I think I learned more than others. Should I keep going or not?”

I didn’t care what the others said. I wanted to know. 
I wanted to know who had played me, what my life was worth. How little control I had.
But all I could do was listen.
“Talk, Tommy."