Over the next few weeks, I fell into a routine. I was woken up by that obnoxious alarm every morning at seven. Then I'd have breakfast and get ready before doing my mandatory morning work out until lunch. After lunch, I'd participate in whatever testing Wescott wanted for the day, have a few free hours outside and then go back to my room for dinner and to relax before lights out at eleven. I despised that I was getting used to it, but I really had no choice.
I wasn't going along blindly, though. Every morning, I made Wescott prove to me that my mom was fine. After the first few days, he set up a surveillance camera that faced into the kitchen window, so I could see her for myself. Of course, I knew he wasn't above lying and telling me she was fine while using old footage and slapping today's date on it, so I demanded more sometimes. It was amusing watching him come up with plausible excuses to have someone knock on the door.
But it broke my heart to see my mom the way she was. I was really all she had left. My dad died a few years ago and even though she had other family, she wasn't very close to any of them. Now, whenever I saw her, she seemed so lonely and broken. She didn't exactly mope around or go catatonic or anything. She just seemed so sad. Her eyes had a sort of hollow look and whenever I heard her speak, she sounded exhausted. Usually I couldn't bear to watch her for more than a few minutes, just to ensure that Wescott hadn't done anything to her.
After I was satisfied that she was safe, Wescott would proceed to threaten me by telling me I better cooperate completely, before telling me the unpleasant and/or inane tests he had in store for me that day. He also assured me that he had a pretty good idea of what my results should look like and if they weren't at least in the ballpark, he'd assume I wasn't cooperating.
It became part of my daily routine. I'd demand to see my mom and he'd threaten me.
The testing hadn't actually been too bad. The first week, I'd been running laps and doing other types of exercises, testing my speed and endurance. Then it had been puzzles and things, testing my logic and sequencing skills. Now, I was onto some hands-on tests, taking things apart and putting them back together.
Thankfully, that was over for the day. It wasn't difficult, just boring. I'd much rather be doing the mind puzzles than the mechanical stuff.
At the moment, I was sitting outside in the courtyard during my free hours, which was really a joke. None of my time was free. I couldn't even opt to stay inside for my supposed free time. I was forced to at least sit outside to get sun.
It was pretty cruel, I thought - being so close to the highway, yet not being allowed to go near it. There wasn't even a fence to hold me here. Just three or four guards, hovering around me and surveillance cameras trained on me.
Most days, I'd just sit and stare at the road, fantasizing about my escape. But of course, it was completely impossible with so many people watching me.
Now that I'd sort of become resigned to staying here, at least until some miraculous circumstance arose, I started noticing that many of the guards looked familiar. I realized that I'd been seeing them all my life. Not that I ever met any of them, they'd just been hanging around in the background of wherever it was. Some of them I could place, others I couldn't.
The tall blond guy had been one of my coworkers at my summer job at the super market, during college. The petite red-headed girl had been a camp counselor when I was about twelve. Another man had been the guy I always assumed was homeless, who I saw when I would walk to and from my car at one of my jobs a few years ago.
It was crazy how many people I recognized. I really had been watched my whole life. It was so creepy.
"Where do I know you from?" I asked the guard who stood a few feet to my left. He looked to be about my age. He had black wavy hair, brown eyes, and was fairly short for a guy. Unlike a lot of the guards around here, I noticed that he seemed to be relatively human. He never made rude comments or looked at me like I was beneath him. If I wasn't mistaken, he actually looked like he felt a little sorry for me. Not that pity was something I necessarily wanted, but decent human contact wasn't easy to come by here.
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Insubstantially Me
خيال علميSam always had a good life. It was never perfect, of course. She never had many friends and had no idea what she wanted to do with her life, but she knew it would all work out eventually. She just has to figure out what she wants. But when Sam is ki...
