Welcome to the Blue Parade
Caleb's POV
We walk through the spotlessly clean and well maintained road. I almost have an urge to wipe my grey sneakers with my shirt so as to not dirty the road. A number of Erudite walk through the road, eyes glued to their portable screens. One person almost bumps into me but I step aside at the last moment. The same happens to Tristan. I make a mental note to walk on this road carefully.
We reach the Erudite compound. A dignified guard greets us with a nod. All of us, transfers and Erudite born, walk through the humongous glass doors, etched with the eye symbol. Various potted plants kept on both sides of the door display various plants. Once we pass the main door, an enormous glass sculpture kept in the centre of the hall comes into my field of vision. It is really beautiful, a blend of light blue glass, transparent glass and water. All the transfers gawk at it, mesmerised by its magnificence. It is shaped into a kind of an abstract wave, with half of it solid and the other half fluid. Some parts of the sculpture appear to be shattered, contributing to the beauty. The water almost caresses the glass, flowing within and without the glass structure.
"Really beautiful, isn't it? I bet there is a hidden meaning behind it, far too complex for us humble mortals to decipher." says Tristan.
"I think Jeanine would give us the answer, being the one to provide answers."
The transfers are engaged in their own interpretation of the message behind the sculpture but the Erudite born are unimpressed. They see this sculpture daily.
There are ancient, musty books kept in glass shelves. The shelves wrap around the circular central hall. Computer desks wrap around the book shelves. Most of the Erudite members stare at the computer screens, hypnotised by the blue light emanating from the screens. The book shelves seem to have very few visitors.
An Erudite member clears his throat, signalling everyone to keep quiet. His face is deadly serious although his blue eyes are not cold. He looks pretty young, early twenties maybe. I guess it's a job requirement for instructors to have deadly serious faces.
"Listen up, everyone! I am your initiation instructor, Alev. The transfers and Erudite born will be taught and evaluated together, unlike the other factions."
"The transfers have a lot of catching up to do since the Erudite born are already accustomed to the level and intensity of the tests." Jeanine says, in her trademark cold and condescending tone.
Alev takes us around the Erudite compound which is again all white walls. I wonder how someone can navigate through this mess of corridors. I can spy a few laboratories here and there, full of chemicals and other stuff. The libraries must be further ahead. Alev leads us to our dorm. The dorm is a completely different story. It has light blue walls and a marble floor. Alev says,
"This is the transfer dorm, I guess the Erudite born don't need guidance." Alev says with no expression. I thought he would say this with a smirk.
The Erudite born make up for his lack of expression. They look at each other with smirks. One of them says to me,
"You're going to have it hard here, Stiff." A guy with a wicked face says. The face is not wicked in a naughty troublemaker way but in a totally sadistic and sinister way. Those creepy blue eyes radiate malevolence and chills travel up my spine. Either he is not human or it could be my hyperactive imagination. I don't think he knows how to smile, save giving a smirk every minute or so.
"Stop it, Xander; don't think you are only intelligent one here." An Erudite guy says.
"Shut up, you smart mouth." Alev directs this necessary statement toward Xander.
"Listen up, initiates! Erudite initiation is divided into three phases. The first phase tests your theoretical knowledge. The first phase will comprise of written tests on different subjects. The second phase tests your practical knowledge. It will comprise of experiments and projects. The third and the toughest phase tests the application of whatever you have learnt. You will be provided with simulations and situations in this phase. Today is your rest day and a chance to get accustomed to this environment. Tomorrow you will be giving the entrance test, which tests your ability to retain knowledge. Every subject and every level, whether it be Middle Levels or Upper Levels will be tested."
He guides us around the Erudite compound. The next stop is the chemistry lab. Xander messes around with some chemicals while Alev isn't looking. Xander decides the next best idea is to drop some sodium in some water. He reaches his hand out and I look at him at the same moment.
"Stop it; you're going to blow up the container." I say in a whisper and smack his hand away.
"Why do you care, Stiff? What if that is my intention?" Xander says with an evil sneer.
Okay, so this dense Erudite isn't going to learn. He knows what is going to take place and yet he doesn't do the right thing.
"A lesson in human psychology, knowing what is going to happen and yet doing stupid things." Alev says, appearing silently behind Xander.
Xander gets a heart attack. He jumps a foot high and looks at Alev. I almost laugh at his idiotic expression. With this all initiates look at Xander. His sneer is wiped off his face for once. I almost slap myself on the back for catching him red-handed.
The next place we go to is the library. It has glass doors and a granite sculpture beside the door which looks like a maiden with a harp. The library is gargantuan and all other adjectives which describe something big. The shelves wrap around the walls, with other shelves in front of them. The whole design reminds me of the layers of an onion. I know it's a weird comparison but it is the most similar. I go to the Biology section and grab a book on plant biology. The Biology section is on the opposite side of the room, which means a lot of walking. I see another Erudite girl reading a book. I know that this is my new favourite place in the whole compound. I see all the transfers engaged in a book or two but most of the Erudite born are uninterested in the books. I gaze at the clock, it's almost 12 pm.
"Okay initiates, time to get out of here. It is lunch time now." Alev says.
The cafeteria is situated in the beginning of another corridor. I wonder how many floors and corridors and rooms are here. Alev goes to his friends' table. I go to a table on the side of the room and Tristan follows me. The food system is like a buffet. Tristan comes up to me and says,
"Welcome, my dear sir, to the blissful world of intelligent food." He extends his hands and bows to the food.
"Thank you, my honourable servant; I didn't know that food was being served here." I wouldn't have dared to say all of this in Abnegation but my idiot side is shining here. Tristan looks at me and bursts out in a loud laugh which is highly contagious. I laugh too, mine sounding a bit cracked from disuse.
We walk in a line and grab whatever looks good. The trays are fitted with screens that display that dish's calorific value. I pick up a rice dish and some chicken gravy which looks really good. Tristan runs to the dessert counter. I go with him, with the intention of knocking some logic into him.
"You begin with dessert first?" I say like a strict governess.
"Madame, you need not begin with main course. Come along with me and experience the joys of eating dessert first."
"Okay, but just for once."
The dessert table is laid out with cake, muffins and a strange cold white dessert. I stare at it, having no familiarity with it. It's not my fault that I only got squishy rice pudding in Abnegation. Tristan notices me.
"Dude, have you never seen ice-cream before?"
"What is ice-cream?"
"O ye ignorant earthly being, it is the most accurate description of heaven in the mortal world."
"Alright, let me taste this heaven that you say."
I heap some ice-cream in a bowl. I grab a glass of strange fizzy water. We go to our table. I taste some of the ice-cream; this is my favourite dessert now. Heck, this is my favourite food now. I finish the ice-cream first before touching the rice dish, it is that good. Tristan is starting to rub off on me.
"Told you, Caleb, it is heaven. Not only that, ice-cream radiates positivity, it is the best cure after a break-up with your girlfriend."
"I don't know about girlfriends but this ice-cream is heavenly."
Tristan gives an angelic smile and a told-you-so look. I can practically see the halo on his head. I eat the rice dish and almost sing its praises. What have I been missing on?
"We had ice-cream and chocolate cake in Dauntless. Although all of the Dauntless liked the cake, I always liked ice-cream better."
"Dissension in the desserts!" I say, pretending to give a war cry. I sit there for a minute until Tristan finishes his ice-cream.
"Tristan, let's see who can gulp this drink the fastest."
"Challenge accepted" He says and pretends to flex his biceps.
"Raise your glass, to your mouth, one, two, and go!" I say and gulp the drink.
I spit it out and Tristan does the same. The drink tastes sickly sweet and almost gives me a headache. It tastes somewhat like a lemon, if only that lemon was submerged in a ton of sugar syrup for three days.
"Yuck, what is this?" Tristan says after taking a big swallow of real water.
"Ask Jeanine Matthews" I say after doing the same.
A lost Amity transfer comes to us and asks if she could sit beside us. She holds a plate filled with bread, gravy and ice-cream. I allow her, who could say no to that lost-sheep face? She is somewhat beautiful but she doesn't care to show it. She has fiery red curls, leaf green eyes and freckled fair skin. I can already see Tristan giving looks at her.
"What is your name?" Tristan's goofiness is replaced with shyness. Huh, what a Dauntless.
"I am Anahita, often shortened to Anna or Ana. Who are you?"
I am Tristan, often shortened to Tristan." Anna smiles at this.
"Who are you?" She asks me.
"I am Caleb, nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet both of you, Tristan and Caleb, although you do seem like a pair of goofs. I could hear your laughs from the other side of the room."
"I am hurt, Anahita." Tristan says sorrowfully while placing his right hand over his heart.
She seems fun to be around. At least she wasn't deterred by a 'Stiff' like me. It is nice to have some friends with whom you can joke around with.
"Do you know Anna, that my friend here, had never seen ice-cream before?" Tristan says.
"Yeah, I transferred to Erudite just to find out how ice-cream tasted like." I deadpan.
Tristan smiles but Anahita bursts into a laugh. My cheeks would probably twitch after so much of smiling.
"Okay, so how was Abnegation food?" Anna asks.
"It wasn't anything special. My day began with some plain chicken, plain oatmeal, plain peas etc. But everything was the epitome of plain."
"Aw, poor guy" Tristan says while pretending to wipe a tear.
"Shut up, Tristan. Hey Anna, how was life in Amity?" I say eager to change the topic.
"We had good food. My day began with an hour of fruit-picking, milking the cows or something farm related. Then I went to school. The rest, they say is history because I'm an Erudite initiate now." She says the last part dramatically.
"It is such a common observation that everyone is eager to leave their past behind." I speak. It is true for me; this grey is so unappealing in this blue.
"I am amazed at the amount of intelligence stored in such a mushy brain." Anna replies.
"I am hurt now, Anahita." I say while placing my right hand over my heart, just like Tristan.
"Hey, you didn't ask me about my Dauntless life." Tristan says, sounding like a toddler.
"I know about Dauntless, since my younger sister chose to live in that faction." I reply.
"What is her name?"
"Her name is Beatrice."
"Oh, even I have a younger brother. His name is Trevor. He is going to choose after five years. He is the most annoying person in this city."
"You said that Beatrice is your younger sister, how did she choose in the same year as you did?" Tristan says solemnly, changing the topic yet again. He must be thinking of leaving everyone he loved behind. Even I did that for joining Erudite.
"We don't have that much of an age difference. You see, Beatrice is just ten months younger than me."
Tristan sits there with his head down on the table. His face must be completely emotionless or he is trying to hide signs of emotional weakness. I think it is a Dauntless trait, to not show any 'weak' emotion. Anna pats his back, not saying a word. I guess she knows better than to say sorry. Sorry and pity is useless in these situations.
"Lunch time is up, initiates." Alev says standing up.
All the transfers walk to the dormitory. Alev stands there and speaks in a booming voice,
"Transfers, you are advised to change your clothing now."
We go to the clothing store, where it looks like an ocean has puked on it. Ninety percent of the clothing is blue. I might faint from all the clothing choices displayed here. I went to the store every six months with dad to pick an identical set of grey clothes. I never did care much about clothes. Abnegation never taught me about the real life of all the other factions. I stare at the clothes like an idiot. This time, Anahita notices me.
"Never saw clothing which wasn't identical?" She asks.
"Yeah, I guess that defines my Abnegation upbringing."
"You need to learn about real life, man." Tristan replies.
I choose a plain powder blue t-shirt and a pair of dark blue jeans. I go into the nearby trial room and change my clothes. I almost cannot identify myself as I look into the mirror. This version of Caleb is completely different from the Abnegation one. I am not scared to look into the mirror. The only thing required would be a pair of thick-framed glasses.
I get out of the trial room and see that my friends are dressed in blue. Tristan wears a dark blue t-shirt in which one atom says 'I lost an electron.' The other one says 'Are you positive?' That tee made me smile. Tristan smiled at Anahita. Anna wore a light blue tee which says, 'Cognito, ergo sum'.
"May I ask the meaning of this lovely Latin phrase?"
"It means, I think, therefore I am" Anahita says with a smirk.
"When did you learn Latin?" I say.
"I used to sneak away from my morning farm duty most of the time."
"That, my friends, is a rebel and the Dauntless love a rebel." Tristan speaks dramatically and looks at Anahita.
We get out of the clothing store when all the transfers finish changing their clothes. We carry our old clothes in paper bags. Outside the store, a big basin of yellow liquid awaits us.
"Transfers, you are requested to deposit your clothes in this basin of pure Sulphuric acid." Alev says.
"What a bunch of show-offs. Couldn't they just burn these clothes?" Tristan whispers.
"I guess it would be too Dauntless or not worth showing off." Anahita replies.
All the transfers including me get rid of their clothing reluctantly. I wanted to cling to a little piece of home but that is not the case now. I throw my old clothing in the basin, watching the acid eat them away. At least I am wearing my grey sneakers.
"You are free to do whatever you like but remember, you have to report to the main hall at 8.30 am tomorrow and the days after that. If you fail, you will be given one chance and after that you will be defected to factionless." Alev says.
We walk to our dorm. I look around the room and under the bunk beds. I see a dark blue bag on the nightstand. I open it and see a toothbrush, soap, shampoo and other stuff inside. A portable tablet constitutes most of the other stuff. The rest is too embarrassing to speak about. I decide to take the bottom bunk on the right wall of the room. Tristan takes the bunk above me. I keep the small amount of luggage I own into a frosted glass cabinet.
I choose to go to the library. Tristan probably wants to raid the cafeteria. I decide to save raiding the cafe for another day. I make my way to the library, looking at the glass doors properly. They have an eye surrounded by a circle etched into them. I enter the humongous glass doors and into the equally humongous library. A small wooden counter greets me. It says 'deposit books for borrowing here.'
I go to the English section. I choose a book called 'Macbeth' by William Shakespeare. The yellowed cover page shows a bald old guy that probably must be Shakespeare. I go to the tables meant for reading. The library is mostly empty but this is my favourite kind of situation, no chattering Erudite making a show of discussing the plots in books.
I go to a table and open the book. The play begins with three witches speaking to each other. I read a couple of pages; the book is kind of interesting when taken in small doses. I see another Erudite girl reading on the table in front of mine. This girl must also like quiet places, like me. I stare at her out of the corner of my eye. She is really beautiful, with sparkling hazel eyes fixed downward on the pages. She has short, choppy brown hair, different among long-haired Erudite girls.
I know that if I ask her name, I would start stuttering, which is worse than Tristan's shyness when he asked Anahita. She looks up for a second and in that second my heart travels into my small intestine. Those beautiful hazel eyes look even more beautiful when locked with mine. I know that my brain is turning into cheese right now and my words would be equally cheesy, so I look down into my book but it fails to catch my attention. My mind is fixed on that girl, whose name I don't know yet.
I get that Macbeth book from the table, intending to read it later. I go to the counter and a batty old lady with a bad temper sits there. She must be the nightmare of all Lower Levels kids.
"Are you an initiate? If so, you can borrow books from the library only after the initiation process ends."
"Yes madam, I am Caleb Prior, an Abnegation transfer going through the process of initiation." Weird, the lady asked me a question and gave the answer herself.
The old lady gives me an evil look, although it is not more evil than that initiate Xander. I say all of this a bit loudly so that the girl knows my name indirectly. She must be deciding whether to even look in my direction because I said 'Abnegation'. The girl goes to her place, not borrowing the book; I guess she is an initiate too. She must be Erudite-born, since she wasn't present in the transfer dorm.
I roam around in the library, occasionally going to the Math section. I don't pick a book from there. Math never interested me. I get bored of the library and head towards the dorm.
I get my tablet from my bag. This is the first time I got my hands on a portable device. There were computer labs in the school but again, all the Abnegation except me didn't use the lab. A kind lady, her name was Katherine, taught me about computers and programming. She was an Erudite member too but there was nothing condescending about her, just like my Aptitude Test administrator, Aster. Katherine treated everyone as an equal, no matter how technologically backward that person was.
I switch the device on. The first thing the tablet asks me to do is set a password. I set the password as mom's birthday, 12 June. A blue glow comes from the tablet. There is a map of Erudite built into the tab but it doesn't show the details of the fourth or fifth floor. It merely says, 'restricted research laboratories'.
It takes a good two hours to explore the tab. There is a built-in intranet for all Erudite. Anyone can post any query, no matter how silly or unimportant, anonymously. The programme, known as 'Quaestiones' promises to answer your question in a day or two. I'm sure it means 'questions' in Latin. Honestly, the whole of Erudite seems to have a Latin obsession, just to make them look intelligent. I decide to post a silly question. My post says,
'Why do cows moo?' by anonymous C.
I can't help laughing over that silly question. Hey, that question rhymed. Let me see who answers that correctly. Tristan, who was sitting above my bed looks down and is concerned about my mental stability.
"What happened there, Caleb? Have you gone crazy?"
I don't say anything; I just show him the post. He laughs a loud belly laugh.
"Man, let me see who answers this question."
"Don't tell anyone. I am incognito for a reason. If Jeanine Matthews knows, I'll surely be put into a padded cell." I whisper.
"Your secret is safe with me, Mr. Anonymous C." He whispers back.
My day ends like this. I am kind of happy that I chose Erudite. The real tests would begin from tomorrow. I settle down in my bed, my thoughts occupied by a certain hazel-eyed girl.
Hey there! Did you see what I did to the chapter title? The answer will be revealed in the next chapter. The Quaestiones programme was my play on Quora.
Hugs and tons of ice-cream
TheVibrantNight