Field Investigations

Chapter 29:

A few hours later, I stood outside of the Field Studies classroom in a line of thirty students. There were a few new students who I didn't recognize from the previous classes. It was probably their first day, a conclusion that was supported by the confused looks on their faces. Then again, everyone (with the possible exception of Melanie) wore that expression.

When the classroom door opened, I was surprised to see a woman with crutches and a bandaged leg standing in the doorway. The last couple of classes, our teacher had been a man with both legs intact. And it wasn't just that. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something familiar about her. When I walked by her to enter the classroom, though, she looked even more surprised to see me. She quickly masked her expression, but I thought that for an instant I had seen her mouth go wide with shock. Did she recognize me?

And that's when it came to me: she was Kenna. I wasn't sure of it, but it seemed like the only possibility. Where else could we have met without me clearly remembering it? There was only one problem with that conclusion, and it was that I didn't remember her having a cast. Of course, I didn't remember the bus ride well at all, so it was possible that she had been on crutches then and I had just forgotten.

The classroom, which used to be pretty normal except for it's high ceilings, now looked like an indoor ropes course. There were large pipes of different materials threading their way across the room, with small platforms placed sparingly along their paths. Looking up from the ground, the room felt impossibly massive. Despite its size, the room was not spared the consistent lighting present everywhere in the building, creating an unsettling lack of shadow.

Scattered across the floor were folding chairs of different colors. I sat down on a bright green chair towards the center of the room and waited for everyone else to enter. Once everyone was in the classroom, the teacher (Kenna?) let the door close, walking to stand in front of the rows (well, more or less) of chairs.

"Hi," she began. "So, you're probably wondering what happened to the room, and, on a not-unrelated note, to your teacher, Thomas Wilson. Thomas was invited to travel to headquarters in Hong Kong, and he might be gone for some time. While he's away, I'll be your teacher. You can call me Ms. Rainer."

Ms. Rainer... I didn't really recognise that name. There was still a chance she was Kenna. After all, all the other teachers so far had gone by their first names. Why shouldn't she, unless she was trying to hide her identity in some way?

"My belief is that the best way to learn about the Field is through experimentation. As you've probably - well, hopefully - noticed, this room is set up a little... differently than it was before. The obstacles overhead are designed to challenge your skills at navigating through various Field and Green dimensions. Some obstacles are hybrid; some aren't. Another thing: you might have learned about how temperatures can be extreme in Field dimensions. This room has been designed so that the Field temperatures are also varied, changing from each tenth of a second to the next. But enough talking; let's get started."

She passed out Transporters to each of us; large spheres of metal covered in various dials and etchings. Transporters looked heavy, but the first time I'd held one a few days ago, I'd been surprised at how light it was. Even though they weren't too heavy, holding them was scary. When she handed me one, I almost dropped it three or four times before it finally settled in my hands.

When she finished handing them out, she walked back to the front of the room and explained what we would be doing for this class.

She reached down into a metal bucket filled with white keycards. "I take it you've already learned a little about reading a Field Interface, but you're still missing one of the most crucial aspects of planning a trip into the Field: entering coordinates into a Transporter."

She explained our project for the day: we would be assigned a certain path on the obstacle course to travel through in the Field, and we would have to not only find the correct coordinates but to enter them into our Transporters ourselves.

My route looked difficult: a path a few thousand feet long that passed through a few non-hybrid elements, meaning that I would need to exit and reenter the Field multiple times. There weren't any desks in the room, so I kneeled to lean my notebook on the floor.

It took me about a half hour to find all the numbers I needed. Once I had everything written down, I raised my hand, waiting for Ms. Rainer (Kenna?) to show me how to enter the coordinates I needed. Looking around the room, most people were still getting their coordinates. A handful of people were already on the course, though. Probably more than that, because most of them were invisible right then.

I chided myself for not working faster. Even if my escape plan wasn't looking so good, I still wanted to be out of these basic classes as fast as possible. I needed to be the fastest in the class, because I needed to find out more about this place, and the only way to do that would be to become more trusted.

A few minutes later, Kenna walked over, showing me the dials I needed to use. She handed me a chart that converted the symbols on each dial into recognizable numbers and then showed me how to unscrew the cap on the bottom of the sphere to reveal a graphing calculator.

"The calculator is where you enter the people and objects you want to transport into the Field," she explained, demonstrating the correct way to enter names and things so that the Transporter would be able to recognize them. I couldn't quite get the hang of it, though, and she ended up entering the information for me after enough failed attempts.

"It's alright," she consoled. "This takes a lot of practice. It's a complicated program, so most people can't figure it out on their first try. Come on, let's see how you do on the course now that you've set everything up."

"The people up there," I started shyly. "Did they enter the coordinates on their own, or did they need help too?"

"Hey, listen, that doesn't matter. Just focus on getting it for yourself," she advised. "It doesn't matter how other people are doing. Focusing on that will just distract you."

That sounded like good advice generally, but there at the AFS I knew I had to move through the classes quickly. Knowing that I was behind... it was stressful.

I wasn't top of the class at Washington High or anything. No, I was average. I got mostly A's, but I was in lower level classes. And I didn't mind it, either. Really, I was kind of glad that I wasn't too smart, too advanced, because that would give everyone one more reason not to like me.

I hoped at some point I would find out why I was at the AFS in the first place. I couldn't have been chosen to go there. After all, why would they choose me if there were much smarter kids at my school who could've figured out this Transporter code in less than a minute? No, there had to be some other reason. My mom wouldn't have sent me here. She didn't even go to parent-teacher conferences at Washington High, so there was no way she would have taken the time to send me to a place like this.

"Hey, Isabel," Ms. Rainer nudged my shoulder. "It's your turn to head onto the course."