I stepped back and looked up at the screen above the door. It was a recorder. I knew it because we had them all over our ship for safety. "What more do you want?" I yelled right into it.
The door opened suddenly. Lena peeked her head around it and before she knew what was happening, I grabbed the door, pulled it from her hand, and pushed by her.
"Jake!"
I turned left. We never turned left. We always went right, straight to the conditioning room. I turned left this time. I could hear Lena's steps behind me, and started running. I could do 5k in my sleep by then. Could she?
The hall was long. Long and empty. There were no doors, either. Just a long, straight hallway leading to a door at the very end. I ran until I was at the door, then put my hand on the panel. Again, I was "denied". Frustration bottled up inside, and I slammed my body against the door trying to get out.
You have to believe me that this was not normal for me. Not at all. I've never been violent. I've never punched or hit anything. I've never had an outburst. And frankly, it was all as scary to me as it must have been to the others.
"Jake," came Lena's voice behind me. "Calm down. You're going to hurt yourself."
I stood with my head pressed against the door. "I want to leave."
"You can't right now. You've got your reconditioning."
"I want to leave. Now."
"Calm down." It was Ralph's voice.
"No." Unreasonable? Sure. And I'm not sorry.
"Maybe we should head back to the conditioning equipment. Let you work off some of this angst."
I turned around. "I demand to see my doctor."
Lena looked to Ralph. "I..."
"No. I demand to see my doctor." I sat on the floor then. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know if it would do any good at all. But I did it. I just sat there, against the door. "I'm not moving until I do."
Ralph sighed and threw his hands up. "You're on your own, kid."
"Wait! Don't let him do this," Lena said to Ralph quickly.
"What do you want me to do? Pick him up and drag him back? Kid's got a point. Let him see the doc and let the doc start answering his questions. My excuses aren't working anymore. Neither are yours."
"You don't want him to defy them," she hissed. I wasn't supposed to hear her. But she was panicked, and panicked people cannot whisper to save their lives.
I saw an opportunity. "I'm not defying anyone. I just want answers."
She turned to me and crouched down. I felt like a little kid again, getting a lecture from Daniel on stealing sweets or from Mother about why I shouldn't put my fingers in the power ports. "Jake. Come to your room. Come eat your dinner and..."
"No."
She pursed her lips. "I'm telling you, you don't want to do this. Eat dinner, and while you're doing that I'll get on the com and put in a request for a visit and..."
"I'm not moving."
She stood and crossed her arms over her chest. "You do realize this will accomplish nothing, don't you? This is StarTech you're dealing with. They don't cave. You can't have a battle of wills with them because they will simply refuse to get involved."
I thought I had her. I'm sure of it now. "Oh, yeah? You work for them. But I don't. I'm the first person born off world." As I spoke, I felt the truth of it. It was finally something I could hold on to, hold over them. I stood up, but didn't leave the spot by the door. "You think I don't know how much they're looking at me to prove it's fine? I'm a kid, but I'm not a moron. You don't think I get that I am the experiment?"
Lena did not know what to say. Ralph looked as if he was biting back a smile. I hit the nail on the head and ran with it.
"That's right. I know. I know I'm being watched, that everything I do is being recorded. I'm the lab rat. I'm the alien. Don't you think I get that?"
"Jake," she said, trying to regain her composure. "Even if you are..."
"There's no 'if' about it."
Lena pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. "I understand your frustration..."
"You don't understand anything!" I screamed. To my humiliation, my voice cracked and I felt tears building. "I want to go home. I'm done being an experiment. Can a space kid adapt to human life? Nope. Sorry. There's your answer." I turned and yelled into the recorder above the locked door. "Experiment failed! Now send me home!"
The door opened. It simply turned green and swung open. Lena gasped. I turned to Ralph, looking for approval. He shrugged. I put my hand on the door and pushed it the rest of the way open, half expecting...something. Someone to stop me. Some alarm to sound. Someone to come running. But none of that happened. The door opened to reveal a small room with a keypad. I stepped in and Ralph came with me.
"It's an elevator," he said.
"Oh."
On the keypad, two numbers were lit, one green, one red. "Hit the green one," Ralph said. So I did, then the other lit up. "Now that one." I hit the second and the door shut behind us and it started moving. "It's like the garbage chute," he told me, then laughed at the look of horror I knew I was making. "No, no. Just goes up and down to another section. We're not going to be incinerated."
We stood in silence while the room moved us. "I'm not sorry," I said after a minute.
"I know. I'm not either." He gave me a grin to let me know he meant it and I felt tremendously better. I didn't want Ralph mad at me. He was all I had.
The room stopped and the door opened. We both stood looking down another hallway, this one completely of thick glass. It lead to another building. "Please exit the elevator," came an electronic voice that made me jump. We stepped out. Even the floor of the hall was glass and we could see we were very high up, the red rocks of Mars impossibly far below us. I froze, for a terrifying second feeling as if there really was no floor under us.
Ralph whistled. "Well, StarTech still knows how to make an impression." He thumped my back and urged me forward. "Eyes up and you'll be fine. Hell, you were walking in space before you could read. Just pretend."
The thing with that is that in space, you really aren't going to fall. The worst that could happen is that you'd float off the wrong way and someone would have to go and grab you. And the very worst would be that nobody did grab you, but even that would be a gentle death. You'd simply float around until you went to sleep. My point is that there was never a threat of splattering on jagged rocks when you walked in space. It was not at all the same.
We made it to the other side. A door opened for us when we were still a few steps away and a man in a nicer suit than ours stood waiting. As soon as we got near, he stuck his hand out to Ralph. "Mr. Buttrick, let me welcome you home." He sounded friendly enough, but his expression did not change.
Ralph shook the hand, then gave a small laugh. "Not home yet, but thanks."
The man turned to me and stuck his hand out. "Young Master Cosworth, welcome."
I shook the hand and was startled to realize it was not a man, but a bot. I shot a look to Ralph who gave me a little nod. "Uh, thanks," I said.
"This way, gentlemen." He turned and walked down a hallway. Unlike the one in our quarters or the glass one we just crossed, this hallway was something entirely different. It was wood, for one thing. Ralph told me later that it must have cost a fortune to get Earth wood up there just to make the office pretty. It did, though. I'd never seen wood like it. The wood on Laak'sa is always shades of green and very smooth, more like a stalk of broccoli. On v-2445, the "wood" they had was pulpy, too smooshy to use as a building material. And though Ralph tried to jog my memory about another planet we orbited when I was young that was very similar to Earth, only without sentient life, I don't remember anything like it. This wood was brown, with almost swirly patterns. And it almost gleamed in the soft lights that lined the walls. It felt very calm. And I could smell it. I could really smell the wood. I like the hallway. If I ever get my own ship, I don't care how much it costs. I will line my entire cabin with wood.