She glanced around the room, looking for anything she might be able to use to escape.
“Nothing here will help you,” the voice said from the ceiling.
It made her flinch. She heard footsteps in the corridor and left the bedroom, seeing Ray, Bethany, Derrick, and Viv come out of their rooms. All wore caps, coveralls, wool socks, and hiking shoes. Ray’s were green, Bethany’s gray, Derrick’s red, and Viv’s brown. Because of Ray’s pilot background, he was the only one who looked at ease in the jumpsuit.
“Well, at least I can tell the rest of you apart,” Derrick, the only black person in the group, tried to joke.
“I think that’s the idea,” Ray said, pointing toward the ceiling. “For him to tell us apart, especially at a distance.”
Glancing nervously around, they descended the staircase to the large open area in front of the door. Ray pulled out his lighter, opening and snapping it shut. Amanda tried not to let the sound get on her nerves.
“Now what?” Viv asked the voice.
“Go into the dining room,” the voice commanded. “Put on your radio headsets. Turn them on.”
“Wait a minute.” Bethany’s eyes looked fierce. “The sink in my bathroom didn’t work! I’m thirsty!”
“I’m hungry,” Ray said. “God knows how long it’s been since—”
“This is Monday,” the voice said.
“Monday?” Bethany’s voice dropped.
“But the last thing I remember…” Derrick shook his head. “My God, I lost…”
“Two days.” Viv looked stunned.
“So, of course, you’re hungry and thirsty. The fact that you weren’t active during the interval prevented you from expending energy. You still have strength. As I noted when telling you about Bethany’s experience on the ocean, you can survive for as long as three weeks without food.”
Amanda felt her lightheadedness return.
“Contrary to popular opinion, going two or three days without food is hardly life-threatening,” the voice assured them. “People have been known to hike great distances during that time.”
Obeying instructions, Viv went into the dining room. But she kept going into the kitchen.
Understanding, Amanda and the others followed, watching Viv put on the rubber gloves she used earlier. She opened the refrigerator. It was empty. She opened all the cupboards, but they too were empty. She tried the tap on the sink. It no longer worked.
She moaned.
“Fasting purifies,” the voice said. “Now go into the dining room and put on the headsets. Otherwise, I won’t let you outside.”
With no other choice, they did what they were told.
Amanda adjusted the headset, then put her cap back on. As she pulled her blond hair through the back of the hat, the sonorous voice through the ear buds was disturbingly intimate. “Put your GPS receiver into a pocket. Be careful to protect it. You’re going to need it.”
Again, the group obeyed.
“Now I’ll tell you about Scavenger,” the voice said. “In 2000, President Clinton signed legislation that allowed global positioning satellite receivers available to the public to receive signals that were accurate within ten feet, almost as accurate as military GPS receivers. Prior to that time, the public could receive GPS signals that were accurate only within twenty-five feet, reserving greater accuracy exclusively for the military. Almost immediately, someone in Oregon posted map coordinates on an Internet site, explaining that anyone who used a GPS receiver to search that area had a chance to find a hidden treasure. The treasure was only a metal box of dime-store novelties. That wasn’t the point. The objective wasn’t what was in the box but rather the pleasure of the hunt. Even with coordinates as accurate as ten feet, the box was difficult to locate.”
Amanda was so accustomed to hearing the voice come from the ceiling that she felt disoriented now that it sounded inside her head.
“From Oregon, this version of a scavenger hunt spread rapidly around the world. It bore similarities to a similar scavenger hunt called letterboxing, but the GPS version is called ‘geocaching.” Players use an Internet site to learn the coordinates of something hidden — a cache — in an area they want to explore. They program these coordinates into their GPS receiver, then let the receiver guide them to the spot they need to search. Often, within a ten-foot-square area of trees or rocks, the object is so small or so disguised that it’s almost impossible to find. A cache might look like an insect, such as a grasshopper, for example. It takes a careful eye to notice that the grasshopper is made of rubber. Or the object might look like a rock, but when examined, it turns out to be plastic, containing a cheap ring or some other type of nominal treasure. The player who finds the object leaves something comparable in return, or sometimes just a note, and then reports the victory to a website like geocaching-dot-com. Players gain stature for the number of caches they discover. Only a few years after President Clinton signed that GPS legislation, there were a quarter of a million caches in two hundred and nineteen countries.“
Ray interrupted angrily. “Grasshoppers? Cheap rings? What the hell do you want with us?”
“No need to shout, Ray. The microphone next to your cheek will supply the proper sound level. What do I want? Step to the front door.”
Amanda tensed as she heard an electronic beep from the door. The lock made a clunking sound, the bolt sliding free.
“You can open it now,” the voice instructed.
“Not until I know I won’t get electrocuted.” Viv tapped a rubber glove against the door’s handle. Getting no reaction, she pushed down and pulled.
Sunlight streamed in, accompanied by a pleasant breeze.
“Damn, that feels good,” Derrick said. He went outside, as did Viv and Ray.
Hesitant, Amanda and Bethany followed.
2
The sun was warm. The grassy, sagebrush-dotted field was more open space than Amanda had ever seen. All her life she’d lived in cities, where the buildings permitted a view of only a portion of the sky. The trees in parks created a similar limitation. But here, the view was immense. Snowcapped mountains rose in the distance, but they made no impression on the sky. The canopy of blue was vast.
“As you see, you’re in a valley surrounded by mountains,” the voice explained in Amanda’s ears. She noticed everyone else concentrating to listen. “On your right, far off, there’s a break in the mountains. That’s the only exit. I don’t advise you to go in that direction.”
Amanda stared at it longingly.
The group walked farther from the building, which reminded Amanda of a log-walled hunting lodge she’d once seen in a magazine. She noticed Viv put the rubber gloves in a pocket of her coveralls. Good, Amanda thought. Save whatever resources we can get our hands on. But the farther she went from the building, the more insignificant she felt in the vastness around her.
“Please, take out your GPS receivers and turn them on,” the voice said.
Everyone complied.
Except Amanda, who was baffled by the unfamiliar object she removed from her pocket. “Where…”
“On the right side,” Derrick said. “Two buttons. The bottom one. It’s got a symbol of a light bulb.”
Amanda pressed the button and heard a beeping sound. The unit’s screen glowed, revealing a cartoon of a globe with satellite icons over it.
“Mostly because of the United States and its military requirements, there are a large number of global positioning satellites, twenty-six that the government admits to having,” the voice continued. “But your receiver needs only to establish a link with three. More is better for accuracy, but three is sufficient. In this valley, the usual number of links is five. The satellites are thirty miles above us, beaming signals at a mere fifty watts, and yet they’re amazingly precise.”