Salience

Chapter 6: New Prison

Calling the following week a blur would be an understatement. Acher barely had time to breathe after his return. School was a mess and not a single student would give him a break between classes or in the class for that matter. Acher did his best to swat and curse everyone away but their curiosities got the best of them and they continued their bombardment of questions.

Lunch was the worst for him as all eyes constantly stayed on him. The whispers throughout the cafeteria seeped into his ears like the cold wind outside biting at his ears. He felt himself wishing to disappear or to become small and then found himself terrified as to actually do it. He hadn’t used his powers since he was hospitalized and almost hit his father. They haven’t spoken one word since and he aimed to keep it that way, perhaps forever.

The bell rang and he tried his best to blend in with the sea of students as they all flowed back to their classes crashing into seats with laughter and more whispers. These whispers had nothing to do with him now and more to do with who was kissing who and who was dating who. Acher strangely found himself sad at these giggles. The inner pangs of his adolescence drew his thoughts to Clara. She was a student in his tenth-grade classes; she was extremely smart and very funny. She was one of the few who didn’t ask him any questions besides his wellbeing and gave him plenty of space. Blonde with gorgeous emerald green eyes that seemed to sparkle even when the lights were shut off from the class. She was taller than him and on the basketball team for that very reason. He never saw her play and didn’t have the courage often to speak with her but he found himself thinking about her periodically.

The end of the week drew near and the students more or less calmed themselves and found that a grouchy Acher was not as fun to deal with and started to ignore him as they once did before his kidnapping. He didn’t know how to take it when at first he hated the attention but then found himself looking for it again once they classmates decided he wasn’t worth the hype. He even thought about showing off his powers a bit but quickly pushed that thought from his mind. He would be no one's monkey or zoo animal on display just for their entertainment and he would rather die than join the leagues of the SP.

Friday arrived and as the last class was about to be over Acher was staring out towards the fields. He blinked heavily, sporadically shook his head, and looked again quickly. No one was there but he thought he had to have seen that Gohm guy tapping his wrist.

“What’s he playing at?” he said to himself.

“Playing what?” a soft voice said.

“Huh?” Acher said as he looked up. There she was, those green eyes locking onto his pushing a bit of her blond hair behind her ears.

“Nothing, was kind of talking out loud.”

“Okay, well, I was wondering if you wanted to hang with me and a some friends tomorrow at the mall,” she said.

“Tomorrow? Mall? Uh –”

“It’s okay if not, I just thought you’d like something more normal after… you know… what happened and all,” she said.

“Yeah. Mall, tomorrow sounds good,” he said.

“Cool, here’s my number,” she said handing him a slip of paper. She smiled softly at him and bounded away as the bell rang. Acher sat there giggling goofily saying incoherent words after she left.

Acher floated all the way home while Astrid tried her best to not only annoy him but get any kind of attention. She yanked against his clothes and pushed him into a bush before stomping off with fire beneath her feet. He reached the house several minutes after her and she was already in her room with some music blaring loudly. He grabbed a bottle of water quickly from the refrigerator and went to his room. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the piece of paper, and stared at it for minutes. The more he stared at the paper the more he began to think about why she even asked him in the first place. She was a fairly popular girl at school but also they didn’t interact often so why now? He felt his anger flow up from the pit of his stomach until it completely covered his face in red.

“This is a joke isn’t it,” he said. “A way to embarrass me in front of others because of what happened. They just want to use me for some type of attention for themselves. The hell with that,” he said as he crumpled the paper and threw it at his desk.

He spent the night watching internet videos of SPs and random cat videos. His sister got over being upset and joined her brother in his random video-watching.

“What a loser! Look at that stupid SP just jump into that building,” Acher said.

“What’s he going to do? Huff and puff and blow the fire out?” Astrid said.

They both laughed and imitated being a building while the other blew on them watching them topple over leaving their body in mangled positions.

“I just want to say that I did what I could to save those people, but just the people didn’t have a chance cause I didn’t care that much to save them. I was flat as a pancake and could only blow on one of the flames with my super awesome powers of pancake breath,” Acher said pretending to be a SP.

“But sir, many people died don’t you think you could have done more?” Astrid said holding a stuffed animal as a microphone.

“Look I huffed and puffed and that’s all I could do. I’m a god and you all just need to deal with it. Anyway, I gotta go and make messes elsewhere.”

They continued their night mocking the SP heroes when an ad of Acher’s rescue appeared. They stared in silence and Astrid found herself looking hard at her brother and she grabbed hold of him.

“What are you doing? Get off of me,” he said pushing her off.

“I’m just happy you’re okay,” she said.

“Of course I’m okay.”

“But you could have been killed.”

“But I wasn’t.”

“But you could have been. What would I do if that happened?”

“You still have dad,” he said.

“Yeah, but I’m not sure he could survive another one of us dying after Mom,” she said.

“I’m sure he’d be fine.”

“He’s sad!”

“Stop saying that!” he said standing up.

“I’m sorry but it’s true. I feel like you don’t see that,” she said reaching out.

“I know he is, but so are we and we still have to live on,” he said, smacking her hand away.

“Live is right. It’s almost as if you didn’t care that you did.”

“And live as a what now? You don’t understand what I went through. What happened,” he said.

She looked at him and her eyes broke, “I know I don’t but it makes me sad to see you speak as if you don’t care that you lived.”

“Okay,” he said, “I’m sorry too.”

“Thanks,” she said grabbing on to him again. He surrendered himself this time and hugged her back. He didn’t want to admit that he thought of her while he was held captive.

“That Goomy guy is pretty cool. Nice I think, though he talks kind of weird,” she said letting go of him.

“Cool? You think SPs are cool now?”

“I said him, not all SPs, and honestly only you hate them that much,” she said.

“Wait, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that only you hate SPs that much,” she said again with more force.

“But we always make fun of SPs,” he said raising his voice.

“Calm down. Yes we make fun of them but only do it because you like it and I like spending time with you,” she said.

“I’m going to bed now, you can get out now,” he said pulling her towards the door.

“What! You’re kicking me out after that?” she asked.

“I’m tired and I don’t want to listen to you anymore,” he said. She gasped and left his room with the heat of anger on her tail slamming his door. Faintly down the hall, you heard his father yelling at them to stop slamming things. He ignored his father and lay in his bed thinking about the conversation he just had with his sister. How could she really care about SPs after what they did to their mother? Her cries and that final reach played in his mind on repeat. He couldn’t get those screams out of his head and he found himself tossing and turning for hours. He laid there trying his hardest to think of something else till he found himself wanting to pray. His mother prayed, she told him, when she had nightmares or hard times and he found this small comfort after her passing. He began praying about wanting to see his mother again and for the SPs to disappear and for his father to stop being a useless person. He fell asleep mid-prayer.

Acher sat up quickly to the sharp pain in his arm and hazily scanned the room, a blurry vision of a man was beside his bed kicking it and him.

“Time to get up!” said the man.

A few seconds passed and Acher turned to panic mode screaming, “Intruder in the house! Help! Intruder! Astrid get out and call the police!” Acher scrambled to get out of bed and ran for his door past the blurred figure. The moment he reached his door the figure grabbed a hold of him and held him back.

“Calm down, it is I, Gohm,” he said.

“Help! Intruder!” Acher said kicking outward.

A very sleepy and annoyed Astrid appeared in his doorway and smacked him on the head with a teddy bear of equal size to her.

“Shut up, some of us and trying to sleep,” she said as she zombie walked back to her room dragging along her giant teddy bear. Acher stared wide-eyed into the hallway as he tried to calm himself down. He looked back toward the figure and saw Gohm with a giant grin.

“Good morning sidekick,” he said.

“Don’t call me that, I’m not an SP and I’m never going to be your sidekick. Now get off of me,” he said breaking free from the grip and dusting himself off looking around the room from Gohm and other things very quickly.

“Well today is your day to begin repaying me as you so desired,” he said.

“Is it now? I never would have guessed.”

Fixing his hair Gohm said, “Now hurry along and get ready for today. You will mainly just need something that isn’t pajamas.”

“Luckily the style of pajamas or underwear on the outside look hasn’t been in style for decades,” said Acher.

Rolling his eyes he grabbed a pair of pants and a shirt with an eagle holding a battle axe. He held his clothes and stared at Gohm for a long time holding his clothes up into the air.

“Yes, those will be fine I think.”

Acher continued to stare at him and raised up the clothes again.

“Yes, I already agreed that those pieces of clothing will suffice.”

“You’re a blockhead, aren’t you? I want some privacy! Get out!”

Gohm flashed a face of laughter and then with a serious look took a bow and left the room and waited downstairs. Acher of course had to say several of his own thoughts on the matter as Gohm left before getting changed. He took as long as he could with it and met with Gohm downstairs. He found his sister locked in conversation with Gohm and paid him no mind as he walked closer. They ended with a quick laugh and Astrid shot him a worried look and hurried back up to her room. Gohm turned to him and gave a soft smile before patting him on the back.

“Ready?” he said.

“Leave her alone,” Acher said.

“She came up to me and wanted to chat, so I obliged.”

“I don’t care. Leave her alone,” he said.

“I can’t control others actions and you should learn to accept others actions as something you can’t control,” Gohm said.

“Don’t lecture me.”

“Not a lecture, more of an observation on how the world works.”

“Don’t tell me how the world works. I know plenty.”

“Unfortunately, you do. Shall we.” He said, holding his hand towards the door.

“Finally, let’s hurry this up so that I can be rid of you,” he said walking out the door.

Gohm followed behind him and ushered him to the black SUV out in the front of the street. He pressed a button on his uniform and the car door opened on its own to allow Acher to enter. Acher said thanks aggressively and jumped into the front passenger seat. His eyes lit up with excitement as he saw the gadgets and different types of screens. It came straight out of a video game he thought and he wanted to touch everything he saw. Gohm entered the vehicle and he found himself unnaturally still and expressed a plain amount of interest to anything Gohm explained what was what and how they worked.

Several minutes of driving went by in silence and then Gohm faced Acher, “I’ll put it in autopilot and the windows will go black. Don’t freak out.”

“Don’t freak out?” he said. “How do you expect me not to freak out?”

“Because I told you to. That simple.”

“Haha, yeah not that easy,” he said.

Gohm pressed a few buttons on the screens around him and the the light vanished from inside the SUV and Acher pressed hard against the seat.

“Remain calm, it’s just autopilot,” Gohm said.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Normal procedure.”

“What procedure.”

“Standard.”

“That explained nothing.”

“Why do you care about SP procedures?”

“I care when I can’t see what’s going on.”

“Do you need to see to know that we are driving or flying?”

“Flying?!”

“I never said we wouldn’t fly.”

“But why!”

“Procedure, I already said that.”

Acher crossed his arms in the darkness and leaned against the blackened window.

“Can we have light in here?”

“Yes we can,” he said flipping a switch. Lights grew in brightness and Acher couldn’t help but have a face of wonder. The light wasn’t a normal light, it was like each light was a miniature sun and somehow clouds and the sky were above him.

“How?” he asked.

“How what?” Gohm asked.

“How is it doing that?”

“Simple really. The roof is creating a virtual sky of what is outside so that we understand the weather for where we are even when we can’t see.”

“Buy why can’t we see?”

“Procedure,” he said.

“You said that already. What procedure?” Acher asked.

“Ah, now you’re asking good questions. Standard procedure or what I call a normal procedure is when new people are going to a base that they don’t know where it is for the safety of us and themselves. In case of capture or being a spy, this would keep our operations more safe. Only the computer knows where to go,” he said.

Acher saw him scratching his beard as he spoke without looking at him.

“So even you don’t know?”

“I do, but only because I have proven to be trusted and that is all I will say of that matter,” he said.

Acher sat there wondering what he meant to prove his trustworthiness but pushed those thoughts from his mind. He didn’t really want to care about what Gohm had done as an SP and was waiting for this part of his life to pass quickly.

Beeps and rings alerted them and a computer voice announced their arrival and time frame before landing and that they must wait a full thirty seconds before opening the vehicle in order to be scanned for weapons, bugs, and other dangerous items.

Acher opened the car door and found himself in a huge warehouse, larger than any building he had ever stepped in before. In radius he saw that the walls were further away than any football field and they were lined with weapons, computers, robotics, and other technologies he didn’t understand. A small robot with three wheels connected in a sphere rolled over to them and greeted them.

“Greetings Gohm, happy to see you arrived safe and sound after mission F.G. dash eight, three, six,” it said with only its head drooping forward as if to bow.

“Thank you four-u. I brought a helper to learn the ropes and work off some debt. See him to his quarters as I check in if you please,” he said pushing Acher closer to the robot.

“Affirmative sir. Right this way helper,” it said turning its head around like an owl and bolting off towards the elevator doors.

“Wait! You’re leaving me with this… Thing?”

Gohm had already walked off into the distance and yelled without turning around, “His name is Four-U. Follow him, see you later.”

“What!” Acher yelled.

“Follow! The! Robot!”

The robot returned quickly, opening a small compartment that released a robotic arm with two pincers that grabbed hold of Acher and pulled him to the elevators.

“Get off me!” he yelled.

“Please follow protocols until cleared with agency,” it said.

Acher batted the robot off and relunctantly followed the robot in silence up several floors. The elevator had a glass window on the outside and many floors and lights passed as they went down.

“How far down are we?” he asked.

“Not authorized to recieve answer,” it said.

“Figures… Stupid SP rules.”

“Not rules, protocol. Section three-a paragraph six states that in order to keep public safe the safety of the Salient People of Justice be high priority first so that their wellbeing allows them to protect others. Therefore those who oppose the Salient People of Justice can not harm the base of operations and thus keep the populace safe from harm as much as possible.”

“Wow, you just keep going on and on don’t you?”

“I’m sorry I don’t understand your question,” it said.

“Of course not,” he said.

“We have arrived to the appropriate floor. Right this way helper,” it said as it exited the elevator heading to the right of the hallway. Acher followed down the hallway and found the hallway more eerie than comforting like walking down a hallway to a dungeon. The top corners of the hallway were dim lights that were scattered every few feet. The doors were a blank gray metal with no door handles. The floors were in the shape of hexagons with a weird shine to them and the walls matched the same kind of gray as the doors.

They arrived in front of a door and the robot's body changed color to green and the door opened with a small green light above the door illuminated in unison with the robot. The room was plain as the hallway with a single dresser and bed. The bed had no comforter or blankets and the dresser was flat black matching the bed frame.

“Please get comfortable until given authorization to leave,” the robot said as it flashed red and the door shut in front of it.

Acher dashed to the door, “Wait what?” he turned to the look at the room again. “Authorization? Am I trapped?”

He walked over to the bed and touched it. The mattress was extremely soft like pushing into a slightly stale marshmallow. He fell backwards onto the bed and felt his body sink and his body grew warm like a summer day had hit him when he would nap under a tree. He sat up and looked around the room feeling like the walls were closing in on him. He walked to the walls and pressed against them to find some kind of relief. The wall itself felt oddly hollow and firm like something could be held behind it but strong enough that he couldn’t push through it or perhaps even bash through it.

Time went on and he found himself pacing more and more talking to the walls.

“Come on man! This is so boring, You couldn’t like put a T.V. in here or something?” he yelled.

The wall rippled the way a pond would after you throw a stone in it and something started to rise to the surface. It was rectangular and curving towards the front. Once the entire shape emerged the front of it lit up and had a movie playing. Acher stood there in awe not knowing how to react or respond. The movie played on.

“What about a remote?” he said.

Seconds later the wall spit out a remote. Acher stared dumbfounded to the wall and carefully picked up the remote. It didn’t have a single button on it. He flipped it over and turned it around to see that there was no way to change the channel or reach some menu of sorts.

“What in the world, how am I suppose to change the channel?”

“Voice recognition recognized. Changing channel,” said the TV.

Acher took a step back as the TV spoke and the channel changed. He held up the weird remote and asked it sevearl times to change the channel until he found a japanese cartoon about ninjas fighting giant tailed animals. The door opened and Gohm entered the room in a martial arts uniform with a “y” shape on his shirt, a black belt that was extremely dirty around his waste, and dark navy blue pants that were baggy.

“It’s time,” he said.

Acher looked weirdly at him and said, “Time for what? And where are your shoes?”

Gohm wiggled his toes and laughed, “Shoes are for the weak. Time for you to work.”

“Work where?”

“Obviously,” he said gesturing all around him, “Here.”

“Do you always talk like that?” Acher asked.

“Every time I speak, I sound like this, yes.”

Acher sighed heavily and walked passed Gohm bumping into him as hard as he could knocking himself off balance but pretended like it didn’t happen. The thought of being embarrassed by going to the mall seemed better than this new hell he found himself in. This new prison it seemed, just another place he couldn’t escape and what made it worse is tha the was stuck with the very people he hated most. SPs.