The Post Sunday Experiment | COMPLETED 2020

Chapter 27

Back in the artificially lit bedroom, a scientist led Mae and Penny to a makeshift dining room for breakfast. They sat down at a table next to each other in a small concrete room much like the one they'd just left. Mr. Aldrich came and sat across from them with the hint of a smile on his lips.

The three of them sat in the room silently. Mae refused to make eye contact with the man. Her mind was far too full of thoughts to be able to deal with his intrusive questions at the moment. Noticing Mae's frigidity, Mr. Aldrich turned to Penny.

"Have ya found him yet?" Penny smirked with her mouth full of pancakes.

"We haven't, but we know he's here."

"And how do ya know that?" teased Penny in such a playful manner. Her tone made Mr. Aldrich shift his weight in his seat.

"May I ask you, Penny, what makes you so confident he'll outsmart us?"

"I asked ya a question first," Penny snapped. Mae's attention snapped to her daughter with surprise, then back at the smirk on Mr. Aldrich's face. Confused as to what was going on between the two of them, she waited for them to speak.

"Very well then." There was no point in Mr. Aldrich hiding the little he knew about Ody's whereabouts. "I know he's here because my authorities followed him outside of the building last night. They watched him enter the building again with an African American man through one of our tours."

Frowning, Penny responded in slight mockery of the man, "Very well then, my turn. I'm confident he will outsmart you because, like I told you, he's not alone. And..." Penny's voice trailed off as she spoke, and a grin crept across her face.

"And, what?"

"And because he's different. He isn't who you think he is."

Mae directed her full attention to her daughter now in utter embarrassment. Penny was talking to the man that provided the very food in front of them in such a way. She had to sit on her hands to keep them from rising to cover her flushing face. "What makes you so sure of that?"

"Ma, Devlin's with him." Penny turned to face her mother. "How else would he have brought us here by stupidly going in that car? How else would he have been able to escape from here? How else would he run into Er- the African American man? How else would he have escaped... it.

"Just look at it, he's got more going for him than luck. He's smart and knows what he's doing even though it doesn't look like it."

"What do you mean escaped 'it'?" Mr. Aldrich was nothing if not perceptive. He completely ignored the rest of Penny's exclamations.

"What do you think I mean? He's one of the few of us left who was completely exposed but still didn't contract it. Face it, sir, nearly everyone else has it but not him."

"I don't have it and we just tested you for it!"

"What exactly, again?" Mae murmured but Penny's attention was too focused on Mr. Aldrich to answer her mother.

"Nope, ya know yourself that ya have no idea what you're testin' for and that is why ya had me plugged into machines for so long. If ya knew what it was, ya wouldn't have to leave me there for so long.

"You're scared because ya don't know what ya are lookin' for because nearly no one else believes it's even there."

"And you know what it is I'm looking for?" Mr. Aldrich spoke as he folded both hands together on the tabletop and Penny took another sip of her orange juice.

"Yes."

"Well, do tell then. What is it that he did to evade the Technasma?"

"Oh, I can't tell ya now," Penny smiled.

"And why is that?" frowned Mr. Aldrich.

"Because if I told ya now, you wouldn't need me." Triumphant, Penny, leaned back in her chair and ate the rest of her pancakes.

Mae was confused. She knew of the disease from what had happened to Devlin. Although she didn't know the science they believed to be behind it, she wondered if Penny did. Yet by the way Mr. Aldrich looked at the little girl, she had a strange suspicion that somehow Penny did.

The whole situation confounded her. With the different pieces of the story hidden with different people, Mae wondered if she ever would understand it all.

After breakfast, an escort showed Mae and Penny to their room. When they were finally left alone in the room, Penny skipped over to the paper and pens that were set out on the desk and gleefully began to draw.

Still struggling to follow Penny's logic, Mae sat down across from the child. She looked at her with bewilderment. Penny felt compelled to meet her mother's searching eyes.

"How on earth do you know this? Is it all just a lie, Pen?"

"Nah, it's not a lie at all. I just listen." Penny smiled and she returned to her drawing.

"Where did this all come from? How long has this been going on?"

"Nah, I learned it after I left. And a lot of this I really don't know for sure, I just knew that what happened to Devlin was strange and all you really need to know are his symptoms to know that something was not right. I listened and watched people push him to get help, but help wouldn't have done anything. He needed the cure."

"And what is the cure? Actually, what is Technasma in the first place?"

Penny raised her finger to her lips and pointed up at the cameras above them. "They are listenin' and if I tell them now, how else are we supposed to get outta here?"

Mae nodded and sighed. "What is it you are drawing?" Mae put on a smile as she pulled her chair around to look at Penny's piece of paper in her attempts to steer the conversation to a lighter topic.

Examining the paper, Mae's brow creased. Penny pulled the paper up from the table to show her mother.

On the paper were two eyes with the slitted pupils of snakes and yellow coloration that made them look almost cat-like.

"Mr. Aldrich's eyes, Ma. He's sick, in stage three. Why else do ya think he wears those sunglasses and is so desperate to find out the truth? He can't afford to give up on the case like so many others have."