Field Investigations

Chapter 15: A Tour

I opened my eyes to find myself lying on the floor. My head ached and my vision was blurred, but I felt fine otherwise. I was just anxious and disoriented. For a second, I thought that maybe this had all been a dream and I was just waking back up. Then, though, my vision cleared and I saw that I was still in the hallway. I sighed, closing my eyes again and praying with all my might that, when I opened them back up, I'd be looking up at the blue ceiling of my room instead of the bright ceiling of the AFS hallway. 

"Are you alright?" John asked, looking down from above me.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, brushing off my shirt as I got to my feet. "Just a lot happening."

He nodded. "You ready for a quick tour of the three-hundred and forty-seventh floor?" He started down the hallway. I followed closely behind.

"So," he told me. "This is the Academy. Of course, it seems quiet and empty from here, but there are hundreds of students in the rooms along this hallway. The soundproof walls used on this floor eliminate distractions that come when those in certain classrooms can hear and interact with those in others."

That sounded a lot like the explanation I'd gotten of what the Green was: a set of dimensions in which you could only see and interact with those within the set. Something about his choice of words struck me the wrong way. "Eliminating" distractions? I was probably reading into things too much, though, because I was already suspicious of everyone in this place.

"... this is the cafeteria," I heard him say, pushing open an unusually large door into an unusually large room with at least a hundred tables spread across the floor and a large buffet setup that stretched along the perimeter of the room. It looked nice, and I could picture myself sitting at one of the tables and chatting with a group of other kids. I wondered what the food was like. Anything would be a step up from what they served back at Washington High. No, I needed to stop thinking like that. This wasn't a place to socialize. The only thing I should be doing here is leaving. It didn't matter what the food here was like; I'd be out of here before I'd have the chance to try it. 

"Why is it so big?" I wondered, trying my best to interrupt my train of thought.

"There are a few hundred students here, so normally we only use about half of the space. Sometimes, though, we get visitors from other headquarters and the room ends up completely packed even with all the extra tables."

He walked back out, letting the heavy door swing shut behind him after both of us left. We continued, him commenting on the purposes of each classroom we passed as we walked along the seemingly endless hallway.

"And this room is used for hands-on experiments in the Field," he'd say, or "this room is used for teaching theory classes."

"How old are most of the students?" I asked, mostly out of boredom.

"Fifteen and up," he answered. "All the new members are high-school age, but as we find out more about the Field we create more and more classes that even the older members need to take."

So I'd probably be on the younger side. I wondered what the other people here would be like. They all just went through the same things I did, so maybe that would give me some common ground to try and make a friend. As soon as I realized I was thinking that, though, I pushed the thought out of my mind. This place was dangerous, and I couldn't afford to get attached to anyone here. The only thing that I should have on my mind right now is how I'll escape.

After another few minutes of walking, I saw a sliding glass door at the end of the hallway.

"What's through there?" I questioned. I tried to look through the door but it was so fogged up that I couldn't see a thing.

"That," he said, "is the balcony."

"The balcony?"

"You'll see in a second."

Once we reached the door, he slid it open and stepped outside, beckoning for me to follow. I walked through the door to see an enormous mountain towering before us, covered in snow with exposed, rocky cliffs peeking out here and there from the blanket of white. 

"Where are we?" I asked him. "I didn't think they had mountains like this in Canada, and certainly not-"

"The mountain isn't real," he explained. "It's just an image projected onto a large, curved screen, sort of like an IMAX movie except more immersive. The balcony is usually used for viewing footage from our... well, you'll find out later."

"Find out what?"

"It doesn't matter," he insisted. "Here, I'll show you how to control the image." We walked back through the door where he pointed out a small touchscreen on the wall. "You just plug in your phone here," he pointed to a USB port on the side of the screen, "and pull up any image you want. Of course, it works best for images of certain dimensions."

"I don't have my phone," I reminded him. "It was taken when they brought me onto the bus."

"You can use mine," he said, smiling brightly. Too brightly.

I was about to take him up on his offer when I realized what was really happening. This was just a trick. A ploy to get me to start liking it here and to forget about my real home. It made perfect sense. He could tell that I wasn't happy to be here, so he was trying to manipulate me into liking this place. Well, I wasn't about to fall for that.

I shook my head. "No thanks," I told him, a thin smile spreading across my face, sure that I had just dodged a bullet. "Let's keep going with the tour."