“Wow. A heat wave.”
“Oh, yah, you betcha. Much nicer. But cold weather builds character, ya know, so get out there and enjoy it now.”
“What’s your name?” asked Will again.
“I’m just one of the switchboard operators, Mr. West. So are you awake now, then? That time change deal can be a real bear—”
“I promise, I’m awake.”
“Good, good, good. They’re serving breakfast in the cafeteria if you want to grab a bite before your meeting. Have yourself a great day now, Mr. West.”
The operator, whoever she was, ended the call. Will heard something like elevator music. He hung up and really looked at the phone for the first time. He lifted it; it felt inordinately heavy, at least two pounds. He couldn’t find any seams or screws, as if it had been constructed out of a solid block of material. There were no numbers to push. Just one big round button in the middle of its face: glossy white enamel, with a black capital C in the center.
He picked up the receiver again and pressed that big C button. Instantly, an operator responded: “Good morning, Mr. West. How can I help you today?”
If this wasn’t the same woman, it was someone who sounded exactly like her. Will hung up without speaking. He quickly showered and dressed in his new school threads: blue long-sleeved polo, gray khakis, and winter boots. He clipped the black pager onto his belt and slipped Dave’s dark glasses into his pocket, then checked himself out in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. A shiver of strangeness ran through him; he looked like one of the kids in the school brochure.
That’s me. I’m a student at the Center now.
“Good to be alive,” he muttered.
Ajay was in the great room when Will came out, and offered to join him for breakfast. They walked outside together. The operator had been right; it was nowhere near as cold as yesterday. This time it took three whole minutes before Will felt like his face had frozen through to his skull.
“What’s with the ladies on the phone?” he asked.
“The switchboard operators?” Ajay’s eyes widened. “Oh, they’re very mysterious.”
“In what way?”
“No one knows who they are or where they work. They’re always there, instantly, when you pick up any phone, but no one’s ever seen them. And they never tell you their names.”
“But they must be somewhere on campus. She sure sounded local.”
“I know,” said Ajay. “Like everyone’s favorite auntie. You can almost smell the apple pie she’s baking in the oven for you.”
They entered the cafeteria. The room was as big as a department store, teeming with teenagers who seemed far more alert and energetic than any kids he’d ever seen this early in the day.
Maybe it’s the coffee. They fell into one of two lines around a massive buffet that offered a staggeringly comprehensive breakfast. The roommates loaded up their plates and sat at a corner table. Will thought of himself as a big eater, but for the second meal in a row, he watched Ajay shovel enough down his gullet to power a Clydesdale. Pound for pound, the little guy ate at a championship level.
“Look at this,” said Will. “Must cost a small fortune to go here.”
“I’m told it’s a large fortune, but I don’t actually know. I’m here on full scholarship.”
“You too?”
“I told you, old boy,” said Ajay. “We’re kindred spirits.”
“How did they find you?”
“A test I took at my old school in eighth grade. Dr. Robbins showed up two months later—four-fifteen p.m., Wednesday, February fourth, 2009—and that was that.”
“Did anything specific about you interest them?” asked Will.
“Not at the time. But since then they’ve shown some interest in an ability of mine.” Ajay looked around furtively. “Do you want me to tell you?”
“Okay.”
“I have unusually good eyesight,” said Ajay, lowering his voice. “The standard for excellence is 20/20. Meaning one sees at twenty feet what most people see from that distance. Top-gun fighter pilots average 20/12, meaning they see at twenty feet what most people do at twelve. Mine, they think, is 20/6.”
“Man, that’s like an eagle.”
“I’m told eagles are 20/4, but they’ve never persuaded one to take the test. And this doesn’t run in my family. Both my parents wear glasses, and without them my father’s blind as a bat.” Ajay hesitated. “And that’s not all.”
Will waited patiently.
“I have a second ability,” said Ajay, “but you have to assure me you won’t tell anyone.”
“Absolutely.”
Ajay leaned in and whispered, “In the last few years, I’ve realized that I possess, quite literally, a photographic memory. I remember everything I see.”
“Doubtful.”
“That’s the usual reaction. Hand me that newspaper.”
Will handed him a copy of the school paper—the Daily Knight—that had been left on the next table. Ajay took a quick glance and handed it back. Then, as Will read along, he recited the entire page word for word, without pausing.
“You could have memorized this earlier,” said Will, still skeptical.
“I could have. But I didn’t.”
“So you not only see everything,” said Will, “but you also remember everything you see.”
“I haven’t even told them this part,” said Ajay, leaning in farther. “I remember everything that’s ever happened to me.”
“Really? Could you always?”
“I must have been able to, but I never really thought of it as out of the ordinary. Until I realized”—he tapped his head—“everything’s in here, filed and stored by day, date, and time, like a hard drive.”
Will asked carefully, “Why don’t you want anyone to know about this?”
“I’m afraid that if word got out, other students would pester me to help them study. Or cheat. Or the school would start examining me. Perhaps I’m paranoid, but I’d just as soon keep it to myself.”
“I know the feeling,” said Will.
“Why? What brought them to your door?”
“That same test.” Will hesitated again. “I got an … unusually high score.”
“So we have that in common as well.”
Will wondered if that was true about all his roommates—surely not Nick—and his mind drifted back to what he’d learned about their pod the night before. “What was Ronnie Murso good at?”
“Everything,” said Ajay. “He excelled at excellence. Smartest kid I’ve ever known. He was designing computer games at seven. He spent most of last year in the labs working on some massive project but never told us what it was.”
“Why?”
“He had hopes of selling it, I suppose. Students can patent anything they develop here, and a few have made piles of money. I got the impression Ronnie was afraid someone might steal his idea.”
“Was it a game?”
“I don’t know. I’m a hardware man myself. Give me a tool kit and a bucket of bolts and I’ll tinker till the end of time. Ronnie was a dreamer, with a grand perspective. A visionary, really. Which makes his loss all the more painful.”
Glancing around, Will noticed Brooke at a table on the other side of the room, sitting across from the same cocky jerk he’d chased off the day before, Todd Hodak. Brooke looked tense and, Will thought, unhappy. This guy Todd is pressuring her.
“Will, call me meshuggener but I have a good feeling about you,” said Ajay, flashing his big bright smile. “You feel as solid to me as a beam of cobalt steel. I don’t say this lightly, to anyone, but I know I can trust you.”
Will wasn’t used to people speaking so openly to him. Not even people he’d known much longer than Ajay. He liked Ajay a lot, but he’d never really had a close friend before. He wanted to say “I trust you, too,” and felt like that was true, but his thoughts got so tangled up with his cautious past that he didn’t know how to begin.