Rhiannon's POV
What an odd request. Why did Caleb want the archived media docs of that year? It seemed like he had some other purpose than making a history project. Whatever, she did not have any compulsion to help him but she would ultimately do so. It was in her nature. She takes the boy along with him, although he was a little too eager to follow.
"Where are you going?"
"Just somewhere I thought I would go." With you, she has definitely gone crazy.
"It this the visitation of the great vending machines?" Ugh, he guessed it right but she would like to keep up the suspense.
"No, but it is something better than that."
"Okay, let's go then."
They walk silently and she leads them. The green eyed boy follows with an expression of childish wonder in his eyes. The girl does not know that he isn't enchanted by the thought of vending machines but with the human being, probably a female, standing before him.
They enter the café. A couple of middle aged ladies attend the desks although the place is empty as a ghost town. She disappears into a door set into the farthest wall which was almost the same colour as the wall.
"This looks pretty illegal." He whispers.
"Trust me, it isn't. Those ladies would have already registered a complaint if it was."
It is a tiny room, three by three metres and it is swallowed by the archaic boxlike machines that cover one and a half walls.
"Okay, so this is one of your favourite places in the whole compound?"
"Yeah, but I don't come here often. I wouldn't want anyone to discover it."
"You took me here."
"Well, you aren't anyone. You are a specific someone." She replies.
What am I speaking? He doesn't reply, digesting the fact which she presented her with.
"What are these machines used for?" Caleb says.
"I don't know, these were certainly used for vending food products, though the food inside them looks like something you would feed to your enemy to kill them with food poisoning. I had taken them apart once but I got caught and the mummified food inside was something I'd rather not look at."
"Oh sure, I reckon I'm on your secret hit list then? Kill 'em with food poisoning isn't it?" He jokes around.
"Oh no! Who gives their enemy poisoned food after telling them about it?"
She gives a huge, real smile. Not the ones she gives others. Caleb can't help but think she looks absolutely stunning. Her hazel eyes shine with unadulterated joy. He gives one of his real smiles in return.
"Tell me how you got caught." He says.
"It's a long story."
"Tell me anyway, not that I have something else to do."
"Alright, so here goes. I did this probably a few weeks ago. One day, I was really bored; this has been on my favourite places list for quite a few years so I decided to come here. There isn't much to do here so I thought I'd take a small tool kit along. I went inside and worked on the machines, the hinges were soldered onto the surface with rust and grime. I had to run to the forge to get some dilute acid to dissolve the rust away. I poured that on the whole thing and it started smoking like crazy. Bad smells erupted and I was almost suffocated in here. My mistake, I guess. I poured the whole litre of dilute acid in there. You can see the places where some of the paint has melted off." Rhiannon looks at him, he didn't interrupt once. A very good listener.
"That's an enjoyable story. Those ladies must have registered a complaint, isn't it?"
"Yeah, they did. My mom had to come from her office to take me away. I got grounded for the entire week. I found out later that the stuff was concentrated acid."
"Well, I don't have such amazing stories but I would like to tell you, what you did was awesome, I don't see many people engaged in the art of deconstruction as you are."
"Thank you so much." She replies with a hint of sarcasm but she cannot deny herself the compliment.
"I wonder who left these machines here in the first place."
"I love to imagine that this was a miraculous machine which dispensed dragon food and people who had dragon companions would take food from here." There I go, dropping word bombs again.
"It's a rather small place, isn't it?" He changes the topic. It really is; her face is only a metre away to his, although it was more than half a foot in the height wise difference.
"You didn't ask why it was my favourite place."
"No, everyone is allowed to have at least one weird hiding place."
A shuffling (a parade, actually) of feet is heard.
"What is that?" He asks.
"I don't know" He grabs her wrist, "It is certainly wiser to wait here for a while. I wouldn't want to bump into someone." Her brain erodes away and the only thing she thinks is along the lines of 'ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod'. He realises what he's doing and jerks his hand away. "Let's get out of here now."
"Yeah"
They get out of the café and an unmistakable pair exits the corridor, flanked by a parade of subordinates. Max and Jeanine.
…
"I need a wrench to take the engine apart, Rhiannon."
"Walk fifty feet, go to the supply cabinet and get the tool kit. I would advise adjusting the junction between the n-type and p-type silicon. Also, I think the storage battery is running low."
"Thank you, miss." Ryan says with a wicked sneer.
No wonder you couldn't figure it out. She thinks to herself.
There are primarily two types of people in this atmosphere, the ones who did the manual work and the ones who did the actual thinking work. People often referred to the manual workers as 'grease monkeys'. Not to poke fun at them but these people had one of the lowest paying jobs if you exclude the compound maintenance people. Once again, do what you are told or be factionless.
She observes this with a common example. Ryan was one of those people who had great potential but were swallowed by the initiation process. He came fifteenth in his year, which was about ten years ago. Now he refuses to use that potential and has completely drowned in the hopelessness of his job. This desperation made him really jealous of all the people in the forge with higher positions than him.
Rhiannon wasn't exactly someone on the higher positions list but you could count her as an unofficial worker. Her dad got her in two years ago and she refuses to look back. She prefers to say it as 'volunteering' but she would get a job here as soon as initiation ended. The manual workers were employed in the repair and maintenance department while the others were in manufacturing and research.
She was fascinated by the research and maintenance department but there was no scope for unofficial employees like her. She had to work from the bottom up that is from the repair department.
Ryan walks reluctantly from underneath the car and towards the supply closet. She looks up from another little project she was working on, a kinetic sculpture made of discarded engine parts. The only things she needed were a pair of broken silicon panels. It looked so beautiful, complete in her mind's eye. The only way she could drown the din of the forge was plugging in her earphones and playing the music so loud that your mind simply refused to think.
She takes her earphones out and brings her tablet out of the little contraption she had made herself. This one could hold onto any surface and stay there. The gadget is brought out from under the table she was working on. The sun has set and the workers would probably leave after a few minutes. She scours the enormous compound, looking for her dad. There he is, tired after working for so long. His eyes light up the way they do when he looks at his daughter.
"Hey dad, where is your key? I want to stow this little sculpture in your locker."
"It is with me." He glances at the unfinished sculpture. "It looks so stunning! Where did you get this idea from?"
"Just something I came up with. Although it needs a pair of small broken solar panels."
"Broken panels?"
"Yeah, I realised a sculpture made out of junk looks much better with broken parts."
"A very good idea dear, although I think you should put one broken panel in there. No pressure, but I remember building junk sculptures like you do in my days. My biggest trick was to keep them incomplete in some way."
"Nice isn't it? Broken and incomplete?" She says. Just like her, although the causes of it were something she didn't like to think about.
"At least they weren't bizarre as the ones you make now." He attempts to poke fun at her.
Rhiannon realises that it does look bizarre, a kind of a hybrid between an engine and a child who is somewhat of a stick figure. The child looks as if he is drowning in the engine and is not able to find his way out. It would look gruesome in someone's mental image but it looks oddly beautiful as a junk sculpture. The child is made up of a few circuit boards and he looks like a weird green alien baby. The engine looks as realistic as possible.
She imagines zooming away on that engine, as the child. Up, up and away from this city and into the great unknown. An idea as radical as that would possibly get her executed. She did have a small prototype of a flying airplane at home which worked very well but it was impossible to imagine it big enough to carry her.
Stop. It. Right. Now. She screams out loud in her head.
She runs out of the forge before her dad. It was a very creepy place at night, when the big solar lamps were switched off. Or it could simply be her hyperactive imagination. There was no cause for hurry nowadays, the lights in the whole compound usually burned away the whole night. No one from the other factions had cared to register a complaint.
She runs to the main hall and into the Erudite dorm. Everyone stares at her for a second and gets ready for dinner. A few glances are thrown at her way but she brushes them off.
She walks into the dinner hall. She grabs whatever looks good and goes to her table.
"What's up?" Willow asks her.
"Nothing, I'm fine. Initiation effed me up."
Willow gives a wince due to her poor choice of words.
Hey, I used a euphemism, no need to get weird. Why do I drop word bombs whenever anyone tries to talk to me? It seems especially bad with Willow. Bless that poor soul. I need to tape my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
"Whatever, what do you do all day? I never see you around." Willow voices her concern.
"I am usually in the library."
Please don't find me there. I would be third-wheeling completely if she finds out about Caleb.
…
Dinner ends. The initiates are requested to go to sleep but she hangs around for a while. She sneaks to the back of the forge where an enormous dump yard of mechanical junk lies. A small but dense thicket of bushes and trees lie half a kilometre beyond. The junk yard is really hazardous with old and smoking stuff lying around but it is her routine. She remembers scouring the yard with her best friend.
STOP THINKING ABOUT THAT! She couldn't stop the flashbacks running through her head. She reflects on the last meeting two weeks ago. The meeting which could mean so many things to so many people but had a truly sad one for her.
Broken, sharp and rusted metal pieces are the norm of this place. A wrong step could guarantee a tetanus shot from the hospital or something even worse. She looks around; ninety percent of her stuff was sourced from here.
She climbs on the top of the pile and shouts out loud, not caring about any kind of audience.
"HEY CRUEL WORLD! COME AND GET ME! I DON'T CARE IF I HAVE….." She can't muster the courage to shout the words out. She liked to do this; she loved to pretend that she was the only one in the whole world.
Everyone had their own ways of release, of simply letting it all out. This was her preferred method; at least it was better than drowning in alcohol like the Dauntless or chain smoking like the Candor. She also liked listening to music, made by the Amity although they usually had the 'love and peace' kind of music. She liked something a bit energetic and since she discovered Green Day she couldn't take her earphones out of her ears.
The music that she discovered was purely out of chance. It was more than one and a half millennia old. She was wandering around one of the buildings and had found a really old flash drive tucked away inside an ancient cabinet. 16 GB only, who made those nowadays? 16 TB flash drives were pretty common in Erudite, although no one cared much for music. She had asked her brother to restore it and make it into audio files. The whole process had a few hiccups but now she had Green Day music in her tablet.
This could be counted as a kind of a favourite place but she didn't like it in here. This place was simply crying to be cleared up but not a damn person would care.
A few car wrecks could be found a couple hundred metres ahead. She had even screwed away parts of doorframes for some of her bigger projects. Her room was seventy percent full of these sculptures and her mom would grumble although she wouldn't have the heart to tell her daughter to throw or give a couple away.
Rhiannon scours the huge pile with her eyes. She sees a radiator, some rusted nuts and bolts and… Aha! A solar panel. It is located at the very top of the pile but she climbs onto it and grabs the panel. It is medium sized with a huge crack running down the side. She would probably have to break it or cut it with a circular saw.
She goes to her apartment and knocks on the door. Her mom opens the door.
"Hey mom, could you keep this in my room for a while?"
"Oh sure, dear. What are you doing at this time?"
"Nothing mom. I got to go! Goodbye!" She hurriedly hugs her mom and runs into the dorm. She sets the alarm for 12.30 am. She was sure that she would find the one she would she was looking for.
She gets into her bed but she knows she would have to wake up a couple hours later. She sets the alarm under her pillow, a trick she learnt from her mom. She pretends to sleep for a minute or so and falls asleep after.
A loud but muffled ringing and strange vibrations wake her up. She checks the time, 12.30 am. The dorm looks like an experimental lab; she imagines that the victims are in their own individual glass cases, covered with sheets that are purely for ornamentation purposes.
Why am I even doing this for Caleb? No time for questions, it is time for action right now.
She gets up from her bed and gets out of the dorm. She crosses the comm desk and goes into the sim room. Alev had shown it to her on the very first day the location of his office. She enters it and there he is, bent over a screen and his eyes are bloodshot. He looks up and gives a tired smile.
"Hey bro, what are you doing here right now?" She knew the answer already; this was the usual time for his brother to get out of the office.
"I could ask the same of you and do try to keep your voice a bit down, nobody having the clearance of your level is allowed here." He rubs his eyes for a while.
"I didn't know this job would be so taxing."
"Yes, it is. You have the habit of finding me at the oddest times. Either you'll come so early or you'll be so late."
"What can you do? I don't think you'd like to handle the bedlam."
"I don't think you have come here for small talk. Come on, spill."She looks at him with a sheepish expression.
"I need your help." She doesn't say that a boy needs his help. Alev would probably put an electrocuting pen in his stationery case.
"Tell me the entire story please." He gives a big yawn.
"I need all the media articles of this year." She quotes the year.
"What so exactly need them for?"
Here comes the million dollar question. "I need them for a project."
"Who are you fooling? Do you know that I plan the whole initiation process? I did not assign a history project to any of you."
"I am doing this with someone just as a curiosity project."
"Who does that anyway in the middle of initiation? And may I ask who are doing this with?"
"Stop asking so many questions. I will tell mom that you threw a party last month at our house and got drunk and made out with…." He claps his hand over her mouth. His face turns white.
"Don't you ever tell that to anyone. I'll do your job but don't think I'll hesitate to report if anything's illegal. "
"Thank you so much! I love you!" She slathers the butter on.
"Okay, no need to do me in. You'll get the files tomorrow after lunch break, although I really want to know what exactly you would be doing with them."
"I told you, I need this for a project." Caleb, you better not be doing something illegal.
"I don't believe you."
"Alright. I don't think anybody does."
"Don't worry sister, your ideas and creativity are amazing but are way too radical for these mundane machines known as Erudite." She goes quiet.
"We'll have a big party after this ends, okay? Rather, we should do it on visiting day." Alev says.
"NO alcohol please. I think 'drunk Alev' is way too much to handle for me. Where did you source the alcohol from last time?"
"I have my contacts, and no alcohol. The last time was a very very big mistake. I got a hangover headache the size of the moon."
"Don't puke on the dining table like you did last time. I don't know how I would clean something like that again."
"Don't remind me." His usually stoic face gets an expression which is highly embarrassed.
"Go to the dorm right now, Rhian." He uses the nickname that anyone barely uses.
"Okay, believe me, you and I have the same amount of blackmail material, so better do my job quickly." She drops the last word bomb and exits the office like a boss.
So, how did you like it? The last reference was from the song 'Time of Your Life (Good Riddance)' by Green Day. It was from their album 'Nimrod' which was released in 1997. In this story, Caleb seems pretty OOC but I want to show how a faction influences each one's behaviour. Just like how Tris went through a radical change after coming to Dauntless, Caleb did the same thing. Hope the explanation's enough for you. And, Rhiannon's character is very loosely based on mine. Even I drop word bombs without thinking. Try to guess this reference. A hint, this is an Imagine Dragons song.
Reviews of all kinds appreciated,
TheVibrantNight