13
Orientation
When Daniel woke up the next morning in a strange bed, the smell of the sea having been replaced by an unfamiliar mix of pine forest and wood smoke, he felt uneasy at first, not entirely sure where he was or why he was there. But then a single thought floated into his mind, and he was settled again, everything falling into place, the day suddenly full of hope and possibility.
Kaitlyn.
He couldn’t explain it, but he felt as though he had seen her face a thousand times before. That thick, dark hair. Those beautiful brown eyes. The light peppering of freckles across her nose. She was not, at least according to popular standards, the most beautiful girl in the world, but he would have argued the point intensely if anyone had tried to say so in his presence. She was happy—genuinely happy—in a way that so few people were, and her smile just lit up the room.
He rolled out of bed, grabbed a pair of jeans and a random T-shirt out of his duffel, and headed straight for his guitar.
He sat on the edge of the bed, fine-tuning the strings and then strumming a few chords just to test the sound. Perfect. He didn’t turn on the amp because he didn’t want to wake anyone; he just started to play. He didn’t have any particular tune in mind when he started, but his fingers, as usual, had a mind of their own, and they started playing “Flower,” by Cody Simpson. The words flowed through his mind, but he was too embarrassed to sing, knowing that he shared the suite with Rush and Roman, so he just played through the song and hummed a little.
But when he finished, the tune still echoed in his mind. Hesitating for a moment, he finally plugged the guitar into the amp and turned it to the lowest setting, testing the volume in the stillness of the morning. He turned it up just a little bit louder, so he could sing along quietly and the guitar would still drown out his voice on the off chance that anyone heard him. He played the entire song again, and before the last note had entirely dissipated, his fingers started in on “Gone, Gone, Gone” by Phillip Phillips.
He sang through that one also, turning the amp up just a bit more and then launching into Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl.” The grin on his face just kept getting bigger, and after the final notes had echoed away, he was in such a good mood that he turned the amp up again and started singing “(I Can’t) Forget About You” by R5, just for fun.
At this point there was a rather insistent pounding on the door, followed immediately by Rush’s head poking through it.
“Dude. We get it. You like her. Could you please, by all that’s holy, play something that is not a love song. Seriously. Anything. Sketch and I are dying in here.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes at Rush without saying a word, flashed him his most villainous smile, and then turned the amp up even louder and plucked out the opening bars of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees with unmitigated zeal, popping his chin and rolling his shoulders to the beat with exaggerated flair.
“This better?” he asked innocently.
“It’s time for breakfast,” Rush growled. He withdrew his head from the room and stalked out of the suite, followed by a chorus of Roman’s uncontrolled giggles.
• • •
When the boys arrived downstairs, the girls were already seated around one of the small, round tables, eating breakfast. Miss Williams sat at another table next to them, accompanied by a man they had not seen before. He appeared to be in his forties—a handsome man of just less than average height, with short, dark hair, a swarthy complexion, a proud patrician nose, and a close-cropped beard. He smiled at her gently, almost shyly, as they spoke in muted tones.
A buffet had been set up in the back of the room, complete with large silver tureens of eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, potatoes, fruit, and pancakes, with butter and several different choices of syrup for toppings. Silver jugs of milk, juice, and water stood next to an array of plates and glasses and silverware—a help-yourself dream that Roman wasn’t sure he was ever going to get used to.
Daniel kept sneaking wistful glances toward the one empty seat at the girls’ table, but in the end he joined Rush and Roman, pushing his food around with his fork without ever raising the utensil to his mouth. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Miss Williams provided a distraction.
“Good morning, everyone!” she said, placing her elegant, cloth napkin on the table and rising to her feet. “I hope you all slept well. I’d like to welcome you formally to the ICIC. We hope you’ll be as happy here as we are to have you with us. If there is anything I can do to make your stay more comfortable—”
“How do we get on the Internet?” Rush asked immediately.
Miss Williams barely hesitated.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “The lodge is upgrading its service, and the network is not available yet. We had expected the process to be complete before you arrived. The system should be back up in the next day or two.”
Mackenzie frowned.
“You OK?” Kaitlyn mouthed the question silently, having noticed her reaction, but Mackenzie only nodded. If she missed one of her father’s weekly calls, it wouldn’t be the first time. The news had just taken her by surprise. She shook it off and smiled reassuringly at Kaitlyn.
“There isn’t any cell service either,” Rush added.
“We will make a land line available so you can call home, of course,” Miss Williams assured him. “I only became aware of the situation this morning, and we’re already working to rectify it. There should be a telephone in each suite by this afternoon. The Internet, I’m afraid, will take longer.”
Miss Williams waited a moment, but Rush just scowled grimly and said nothing else, so she continued with her original speech.
“I’d like to introduce Professor Amr Mubarak. He will be in charge of your training here at the ICIC. I believe he has some opening remarks, and then you’ll be welcome to ask any questions you might have. Professor?”
Professor Mubarak stood up to address them. There was a certain stillness about him, even when he moved—a sense of silent, thoughtful reflection. And as he began to speak, his soothing voice (infused with a British accent and a hint of something else) seemed to glide through the air, his words perfectly clear despite their quiet tones.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name, as Miss Williams has said, is Amr Mubarak. I am from Egypt, but I have had the pleasure of working with many Americans over the years. You may call me Amr, or Professor, or Professor Mubarak, as you see fit. It is my great honor to meet you all.” He smiled when he said this, his expression surprisingly humble.
“You have been invited here, as you all know, due to your excellent scores on the Intuition Assessment Battery. The test is new, designed to identify exceptional students, such as yourselves, whose minds operate in a very particular way.
“All human beings process information in both conscious and unconscious ways. When thought is conscious, we are aware of it. We know how we traveled from point A to point B in our thinking process. But we are also very strongly influenced, in the thousands of decisions we make every day, by unconscious thoughts of which we are not aware. And this kind of thinking is highly intelligent and adaptive in its own right.
“For example, if someone needs to cross a river, they might think, ‘I can swim across,’ or, ‘I can walk across in a shallow place.’ But then if a bird lands on a vine and makes it sway a little, most people will suddenly think, ‘I can use a vine to swing across.’ But they will not know why they thought this. If we ask what made them think of the idea, believe it or not, most people will say, ‘I just came up with it.’ They have no idea how the unconscious mind solved the problem!
“What we believe to be special about each of you, is that your conscious mind is in contact with and aware of your unconscious mind to a much greater degree than usual. You have the ability to use the power of your unconscious mind on purpose, thereby blurring the very definitions of conscious and unconscious thought. You might not see the importance of this right now, but rest assured that to me, the prospect is very exciting. Very exciting, indeed.”
Professor Mubarak looked around hopefully, but the expressions that greeted him ranged from confused to skeptical. He laughed and waved a hand in the air, dismissing their concerns.
“Over the course of the summer, we will investigate this phenomenon together—cooperatively—both what you can do and how you can do it. My expectation is that each of you has a certain prevalent pathway by which your unconscious mind sends messages, if you will, to your conscious awareness.
“This pathway will manifest itself in certain talents that you possess, talents which are far more profound than you might realize. We will spend our time exploring these talents together. If we are lucky, by the end of the summer they will be even more pronounced, and more conscious, than ever before, and I will have learned something about how to awaken these pathways in other students, even in those who have not previously enjoyed such wondrous abilities.”
He finished with an enthusiastic grin, his gentle eyes smiling at each and every one of them in turn, and then nodded at Miss Williams after waiting a few moments to see whether anyone wanted to ask any questions yet, which no one apparently did.
“Thank you, Professor,” she said, rising to stand by his side and addressing the students again. “I’ll give you some time to finish your breakfast, and then we’ll take a brief tour of the lodge, after which I will return you to Professor Mubarak’s capable hands for the remainder of the morning.
“In the meantime, there are a few rules I’d like to go over. The six of you are all exceptional young men and women. These rules are not being implemented out of any concern over your behavior, but only for your own safety.
“The lodge is located on several thousand acres, most of which is forested. That’s a lot of ground to get lost in, and there are bears and other potentially harmful creatures besides.” Roman couldn’t help but sneak a glance over at Mackenzie, suppressing a giggle as the big golden bear nodded sagely. “You are more than welcome to visit the landscaped area around the building itself, but please do not enter the woods—not even on marked hiking trails—without a guide.
“We also ask that you be inside the building by 8:00 p.m., but you do not need to be in your individual suites until 10:00 p.m. on ‘school’ nights, and until midnight on the weekends. I will be doing head counts, again for your safety. Think of yourselves as national resources. If you go missing, no expense will be spared to locate you, and I do mean no expense. So please be kind to the National Guard and respect the nightly curfew.”
She smiled when she said this, but Mackenzie had the feeling she wasn’t joking.
“There is an exercise space you may use at will. There is also an indoor pool, but this will be off limits except for specific hours on the weekends when a lifeguard will be on duty. The rest of the time, the door to the pool will remain locked. Please respect this precaution.”
She seemed to aim this comment particularly at Kaitlyn, who raised her hands slightly as though to say, ‘Who, me?’ managing to look both smug and casually offended at the same time.
“I think that’s about it,” she finished. “Enjoy your meal. If there is anything specific that any of you would like for breakfast in the future, please let me know. Anything that is even remotely within reason can be arranged.”
As the students finished eating, they did not speak amongst themselves, all of them intrigued by their new teacher but also profoundly aware that Miss Williams and Professor Mubarak were sitting well within hearing range. Privately, of course, they each had their own first impression of the man.
Kaitlyn liked him, but then again, she liked just about everyone. Mackenzie simply accepted him as yet another new teacher in an endless litany of new teachers, without holding any other opinion on the subject, but Sam appreciated his intellectual nature and found herself looking forward to her studies. Rush had no more interest in Professor Amr Mubarak than he did in anything else about the ICIC. Daniel, however, was reminded oddly of his mother—mostly because he heard the gentle reeds and chimes of her favorite yoga music every time he glanced in the man’s direction.
As for Roman, he already loved Professor Mubarak’s calm demeanor, and he was intensely relieved not to see anything dark about the man, especially after the demon-winged Mr. Lockhart of his own personal third-grade hell. In fact, Roman saw very little out of the ordinary about Professor Mubarak at all, which was somewhat extraordinary in and of itself, the only exception being a round, golden seal, about the size of a man’s fist, emblazoned in light directly over his heart: the side view of a lion, standing on its rear legs, its body struck through by a single bolt of lightning.