Chapter Thirteen
February Myths
1
Another month, but I have very little to say. It wasn't quite like October that passed by
in a blur of tears and depression. It
was more of a willful disengagement. I
didn't want to think about the things happening around me, so I stay buried in
writing my stupid little soap, and ignored most everything else.
If we thought that Grani-Knights controlling the Student
Council would immediately change our lives, we were wrong. At least for the month of February, things
rocked on as they had always been. Food
supply was secure, and our new classes were in full swing. The weather was the same, and we lost very
few people. There were a couple of
accidents, and someone succumbed to a condition that thee was no longer
medicine to keep at bay. And there were
a handful of unexplained disappearances, although they continued to be at the
periphery of people that I or my friends knew.
Artie attended his first council meeting, and said it was a
little chaotic, but not as bad as he feared.
The Grani-Knights seemed focused on learning procedures, and only
brought up increasing the sports and dance schedule. There was talk of revising the policy on
allowing marriages. My Dad vetoed that,
and instead proposed a commission composed of students and faculty to study its
feasibility. It had three of Mark
Granite's people on it, including Morgan, and only one from our side, Lindsay
Starn. The faculty had several representatives, including Mrs. Forsyth, the
World Humanities teacher (a class I had just started taking) and the new Vice
Principal, Mr. Charles Stein.
The only disturbing note to come out of that early meeting
was that Mr. Tate's selection for a student security staff was going to come
almost exclusively from friends and associates of Mark Granite. My Dad listened to the names Mr. Tate
announced, and said he wanted a better balance between different student
groups. He told Mr. Tate to revise his
list, show it to him in a week, and then there would be a vote on it in
March. Artie said this frustrated Mr.
Tate a great deal, and he emphasized the urgency of getting something in place. It didn't help. My Dad refused to budge.
There were some bylaws and rules of order that were created
early last summer, that helped determine protocol and power issues. It gave a lot of authority to my Dad and the
administrators, somewhat less to the teachers, and mostly advisory powers to
the students. Wilbur James had proposed,
in light of the Trap continuing way past anyone's expectations, and the
students getting older and more experienced, that perhaps that should be
changed. Another committee group was
formed to look at that. That group
actually had the famous Mark Granite on it, and also Wilbur James and Artie
Pentler. The faculty representatives
included Mr. Tate and Mr. Branch. Now,
that's a group I wish I could have at least eavesdropped on.
Theories as to what was going on varied almost as much as the
number of students. The most popular was
still the military, some grand experiment to see how we would survive adverse
conditions. This was Sue Boschman's main
theory, and she would be delighted to see it so popular, had she not died. I don't know.
I could believe that something slipped up with a military weapon or
experiment, but I found it hard to believe that they were watching us or
manipulating things. To what end? Although it might explain the discovery of
new supplies. Someone might be on the
other side of the tunnel slipping in new stuff for us. But again, why?
A related idea was this was the result of not just the
military, but of a military conflict.
Some horrible weapon used by terrorists or invading forces that somehow
destroyed our connection to the outside world.
That maybe we should be grateful for the shield, as what was on the
other side was now a radioactive wasteland.
But that would mean that our parents (or, in my case, my mother) and
family, everyone outside of the school, was dead and gone. That was too much for me to handle.
There were some religious zealots who thought this was some
kind of purgatory, or maybe even hell.
Steve Smelther from my sleep room was part of a small group that met
regularly, and believed the Trap was divine judgment for our sins. They even incorporated the fact that some
students had just disappeared as a confirmation that some had been found worthy
and had been ruptured. I thought that
was crap, and couldn't see any rhyme or reason behind who disappeared and
why. But then again, I didn't know very
well any of those that had vanished.
Then there was Geoffrey Spivey, the theatre student, who
thought that our patch of ground had turned into a spaceship and that we were
flying to another planet. How that fit
in with Larry Wiseman's discovery that the star-scape was staying constant, I
wasn't sure. Larry and I had only
discussed it with Artie, who suggested we check with a Science teacher before
we panicked everybody. We tried a
couple, including Mr. Bruchow and Mr.
Walthers
Some thought something happened at Gregor Robotics, one of
the research centers on the cutting edge of science, located near Huron University
Others though that maybe it was just a freak weather
occurrence and that it would eventually dissipate, and that the trap barriers
would eventually fall. The Trap
boundaries had shifted some since the beginning. How else do you explain the sudden discovery
of the farm? And maybe some found weak
spots in the boundary, and that's why we had disappearances.
Most frightening though, is that many simply did not care
anymore. They were beginning to just
accept the world as it was, and were beginning to lose curiosity about how it
started and when it would ever end. It
was our world now. And some were slowly
losing touch with anything else.
As to me, what was I thinking? Well, now that I know what did cause it, it's
hard for me to piece together what I was thinking at the time. I guess some combination of the military and
Gregor Robotics. Some horrible accident,
that somehow messed up time, or how we perceived time. And that although they could not rescue us,
they could do enough to sustain our water and electricity, and slip supplies in
some way I could not fathom, but they were as yet unable to rescue us. But I did not believe they were observing us
as part of some terrible experiment.
That would just be too cruel.
