Trivia #3 Answer: I think the description I gave for the symbol on Natalie's key might have been too obscure, seeing as nobody submitted any guesses. Well, I promised to reveal the answer, so here it is: it's the logo of the United Nations. The splotches are the continents and the circles are the longitude and latitude lines of the globe. We'll see what the UN has to do with all of this very soon…
A/N: Somehow, I got 3rd place for Best Grammar and Spelling in Divergent Awards! A million thanks to whoever nominated and voted for me!
I apologize for not updating in three weeks; a lot of stuff came up that I had to deal with. Just so you know, I might be too busy to stick to my weekly update sometimes. But hang in there, I'll always come back. Like it says on my profile, I finish all my stories, whether it's in a week or ten years…
July 10
Tori
Choooooooooo! The kettle whistled and blew out jets of steam. Tori sprang to turn off the gas. When she turned back to the cutting board, however, the knife was gone.
"Rawr! Rawr!"
Tori spun around and spotted her brother behind her, brandishing the chopping knife with a look of glee on his face. "George, give it back," she warned him, gesturing frantically upstairs to where their mother was, hopefully, still asleep. For the past several years, Naomi Wu had been getting increasingly frequent migraines that left her dangerously crabby. Tori had since taken over most of the household chores. "How am I going to chop the cabbage if I don't have a knife?"
"I am a Dauntless guard! I will NEVER let you steal the Amity's cabbage, you factionless hobo!" George laughed and lunged towards his sister with the knife. Without thinking, Tori picked up a nearby meat cleaver and swung. Clang! The knives clashed in midair.
The siblings paused for a moment, feeling the vibration of the impact move up their arms. Both knew they should've been frightened, but they felt a strange sense of elation instead.
"Hiya!" Tori suddenly jumped at her brother with the cleaver.
"YAH!" He blocked her blow with a frying pan.
Before they knew it, Tori and George were mock-dueling, using all manner of kitchen utensils as weapons. They moved in perfect harmony—brother and sister blocked blows from knives with well-placed pot lids or chopping boards seconds before they would've been impaled.
I haven't felt this alive in years! thought Tori gleefully, ducking and twisting around her brother's attacks. George seemed to feel the same way. He laughed wildly as he attacked and counterattacked. Tables, chairs, plates…nothing escaped their roughhousing.
BOOM! The door banged open. The siblings froze and turned slowly towards the doorway.
"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, YOU WORTHLESS KIDS!" screamed a tousle-haired, red-eyed Naomi. "WHY CAN'T YOU GIVE A BREAK TO YOUR POOR MOTHER? ARE YOU TRYING TO DRIVE ME TO AN EARLY GRAVE?!"
Before Tori or George could utter a word, Mrs. Wu stumbled back up the stairs, slamming the door behind her. Tori glanced at her brother, feeling guilt and elation battle inside her. "I think we got a little too carried away, Georgie."
The young boy returned her gaze with a small glimmer in his eye. "Well, perhaps we should do our jousting outside from now on, Tor."
July 29
Jeanine
"Are you sure this is going to work?" Andrew held Kyle Matthews's ancient security pass up to the sun, examining it with an extremely skeptical expression.
"Of course it will," snapped Jeanine, checking her own pass, which was labeled "Nora Matthews." "I found these passes in the attic. It's not like they've been subjected to demagnetization or abrasive surfaces."
"No, I mean, your parents have been dead for eight years. Don't you think the Erudite would've changed the security systems at least once by now?" asked Andrew incredulously.
She shrugged. "It's worth a try. The worst that could happen is that the system will send a message to my parents' now-defunct e-mail accounts telling them they need a new card."
Andrew looked nervously around at the large stone buildings of Erudite headquarters. "And what happens if we get caught?"
"Tell them we're ghosts," she replied sarcastically.
"I'm serious!"
Why does he keep questioning me? Jeanine thought, irritated. Does Andrew think I'm stupid enough to not think through every single possibility before executing a plan? "I spent my childhood exploring Erudite headquarters, Andrew. I know more secret passageways than most people find in a lifetime."
"Fine..." Andrew agreed reluctantly.
Jeanine pushed open the glass doors to one of the smaller buildings. By the looks of it, it had once been an assembly hall of sorts, for it had a raised platform at one end and tiered steps all the way to the door. Now, it was stacked to the ceiling with file cabinets, spare chairs, outdated computers, and old lab apparatus. Good. Nobody will come through here. She skirted the edge of the room and opened a side door at the far end. A glowing white hallway met her gaze, the kind that filled most of the Erudite buildings. Jeanine stopped and pressed her head against the wall, listening for the vibrations of distant footsteps. There was nobody within earshot.
When Andrew had picked his way through the maze of ancient equipment, she turned and strode quickly forward, turning down corridor after identical corridor. Had it not been for the sweeper-bots that periodically cleaned the whole building, Jeanine guessed the floor would've been covered with a thick carpet of dust by now. They were, after all, at the far reaches of the web of hallways that connected the headquarter buildings. Though the Erudite were curious by nature, the ones who did manage to wander down here found nothing of note and never bothered to come back. After about five minutes, Jeanine found the small door that led to the stairwell.
"Where exactly are we going?" Andrew demanded.
"To the basement," Jeanine replied, turning deftly down the concrete steps. "There are several banks of computers that link directly to the classified database, but this is the only one that's not regularly used. It serves as a back-up."
Jeanine vaguely wondered what would happen if someone got lost down here. For a moment, the ridiculous image of a skeleton collapsed against a wall appeared in her mind. That's illogical, she told herself sternly. They could simply follow the sweeper-bots out of here. At long last, the descent ended in a set of heavy metal doors with some kind of electronic panel by the side of it.
"I never knew this place was so big!" wheezed Andrew. "Can we use the elevator next time?"
Jeanine ignored him and took out her mother's pass. "Let's hope this works." She swiped the silver rectangle across the electronic panel and waited. The panel flashed green and the thick doors slid open. Hmm, whoever's in charge of security around here obviously isn't too bright.
"I can't believe that actually worked," marveled Andrew, peering at the vast room beyond. "Why are the walls made of concrete?"
"This part was built before the rest of the city, so it isn't as refined," said Jeanine knowledgeably, reveling in her triumph. "Now be careful, there's a sensor on the door to make sure only one person enters per swipe."
"You told me that already," Andrew scowled as she stepped over the threshold.
The computer lab was about twice the size of the assembly hall at school. Row upon row of box-shaped computers took up most of the space, all an identical silvery-blue. At the back, a shelf of giant black data servers stood like sentries against the wall.
"If any of Wyatt Matthews's files on Operation Convergence are still in existence, they'll be here," said Jeanine, grabbing the nearest computer. "Let's log on separately so we can cover more material." Her companion nodded and settled in the next row.
Within seconds, the Erudite girl had located the server with all of her grandfather's files. Leaning forward in anticipation, she clicked on the folder. A screen popped up: "Restricted Information. Password Required." I was not expecting that.
Jeanine groaned. "Why would anything be locked on these computers? It's already in a secure room, for goodness sakes!"
"Don't bother trying to use brute force or a hash algorithm to guess the password," Andrew suggested.
Jeanine was alarmed to find she had no idea what he was talking about. "What?"
"I suspect the passcode is extremely long," Andrew explained. "I'd try using nmap to run a port scan and figure out a point of entry."
Right, I forgot he's obsessed with computers. "Um, can you come over and help me log into the system?"
With a faintly surprised look, the Erudite boy took her keyboard and began typing in an intricate series of commands. Window after technicolor window appeared on the screen, which rapidly filled with hundreds of lines of code.
"Where did you learn to do that?!"
"What, you mean this?" Andrew nodded towards the screen. "That's basic hacking strategy, using buffer overflow to create a root account with super-user privileges…"
He proceeded to spout technical jargon that made absolutely no sense to her. "Stop," Jeanine groaned, feeling her head spin as she attempted to follow the ten-key sequence her friend was explaining. "Just…open the system for me."
Andrew gaped at her. "Jeanine, you taught yourself differential calculus in third grade, and you can't understand simple bash scripting?!"
"Second grade," Jeanine corrected him through clenched teeth. "Are you mocking me, Andrew?"
He didn't reply. At that moment, the layer of windows cleared away, revealing an "Access Granted" screen that was quickly replaced by a gigantic list of folders. "There you go."
Feeling slightly unsettled, Jeanine began sifting through her grandfather's long-lost records.
The first document was titled "Faction Experiment Locations" and contained a long list of strange words:
Beijing, China
Bogotá, Colombia
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Cairo, Egypt
Chicago, United States
Delhi, India
Dhaka, Bangladesh
etc...
Despite reading the whole list, Jeanine didn't recognize any of the words, nor could she figure out why "Chicago, United States" would be bolded. Frustrated, she moved on to the next document. This one proved more interesting: it appeared to describe a mission for some kind of secret agent. Included was a picture of a bony, angular man with short graying hair and dark gray eyes.
[Picture]
ID: 3479287057
Mission ID: 49680-349523750-AHFPBI
Full name: Avery Tyrone Maddox
Mission alias: Wyatt Matthews
Position: ICL Special Unit—Operation Convergence
DOB: 05/18/2170
Place of Birth: Toledo, OH, USA
Nationality: United States of America
Height: 6' 2"
Weight: 170 lb.
Mission Abstract: To infiltrate Faction Experiment YCG-38 [Chicago and Greater Area]. To detect presence of Divergence within test subjects in said faction experiment. To eliminate, with any means necessary, such individuals, as well as implement appropriate alterations within governing body in aforementioned experiment to hinder further appearances of Divergent…
It took Jeanine a full hour to read through the entire mission abstract. Though the document was filled with names and places she didn't recognize, Jeanine did understand enough to be deeply stunned.
My grandfather was working for someone on the outside, she concluded, closing her eyes to allow her mind to grind through all of the information she had just absorbed. Our city is part of some kind of twisted worldwide genetic experiment to produce a mutant kind of human, the Divergent. Wyatt was part of an organization that was trying to sneak in, kill off the Divergent, and reorganize the city so that they could never appear again.
Jeanine had brought an external hard drive to copy the data, but as she scrolled through the thousands of files, she realized that her grandfather had pulled so much information from the Erudite databank into his folder that it would take many hard drives to hold it all. I suppose I will have to resort to duplicating only the most critical pieces of information, she thought, greatly disappointed. To cheer herself up, Jeanine reminded herself, You were right about Operation Convergence. It was for a good cause. Surely these files will be enough to make Andrew stop doubting the plan.
November 4
Natalie
Rissmann. Ritchie. Ritson. Rivers. Natalie glared at the space between "Ritson" and "Rivers," as though by staring hard enough she could magically make "Ritter" appear between them. Angrily, she slammed "Genealogy Across the 5 Factions" shut and stuck it back on the shelf. Who or what was this Ritter and why isn't he or she or it in any of the reference books? Not even the sources suggested by the school librarian had been of any use. Not that she would know much about this sort of thing. She's just an Abnegation volunteer, Natalie mused. If months and months of searching had turned up nothing, it was time for desperate measures: ask one of the Erudite. Let's see if they really do know everything.
She scanned the library for someone to ask, immediately ruling out the large groups clustered at the tables. In a far corner of the library, she spotted a lone boy slowly surveying the shelves. Making sure none of her Dauntless buddies were there to see her actually asking an Erudite for information, she walked over to him.
"Excuse me," she said softly, tapping the boy on the shoulder.
He turned quickly around, startled. The boy had tousled black hair and a hooked nose and seemed vaguely familiar. "Y-yes?" he stammered, his cheeks turning red.
Poor thing. He's probably freaked out because he's grown up hearing that the Dauntless stab people for fun or something, Natalie thought sadly. In as soothing a tone as she could muster, she asked, "You're Erudite, right? Do you know any good reference books for historical figures, or maybe family records, that sort of thing? I, um, need to write a school paper for a certain person and I can't seem to find their name anywhere."
The boy thought for a minute. "Hmm…for biographical stuff I would normally use the Milligan's Directory, but if it's a specific family line you're searching for…if you told me the name of the person, I might be able to give you better suggestions."
Natalie hesitated, looking behind her towards the other people in the library. If "Ritter" was somehow bad, the last thing she wanted was for some Erudite to figure out that she had some kind of connection to it. On the other hand, maybe this sense of caution is what stopped her ancestors from solving the mystery. "Alright," she decided, "I need info on someone called…Ritter."
"Is that a given name or a surname?" asked the boy dazedly. "And was the person a man or a woman?"
"I think it's a last name," answered Natalie, "But I have no idea whether that was a man or a woman." Seeing the confused expression on his face, she added hastily, "I guess I wasn't paying enough attention in class."
"I'm sorry," the Erudite apologized, looking genuinely distressed. "I've never heard of a Ritter. Is there anything else you'd like to know?"
Natalie sighed, feeling the key around her neck grow heavier with the unsolved mystery. "It's okay, never mind."
The boy looked as though he were about to say something more, but he evidently thought better of it. Natalie turned and walked out of the library. She was halfway down the hall when she realized why the boy looked familiar: he and another blond Erudite girl were known collectively among the Dauntless as the "Freak Duo" for the extraordinary number of science fairs and academic competitions they had won as a team. I don't think he's a freak though, Natalie decided. In fact, he seemed pretty nice.
December 12
Evelyn
Evelyn slammed the door to an empty classroom shut behind her and sank to the floor, allowing the sobs to overtake her.
Why, why, why can't they pick on somebody else for once? she screamed in her head. Am I really so worthless that everyone has to attack me wherever I go? Not for the first time, Evelyn wished Zachary weren't factionless. He protected and comforted her during her walks home, but at school, there was nobody to defend her.
"Are you okay?" asked a voice.
Evelyn whirled around. In her haste to find shelter, she hadn't realized that the room was already occupied. A girl and boy about her age sat on adjacent desks. Evelyn caught a glimpse of what looked like red welts on the boy's arm before he hastily rolled down his sleeve to cover it.
Drat. Evelyn quickly opened the door again, wondering if there were any empty rooms down in the history wing.
"Hey, wait, don't leave!" the girl called after her. She slid off the table and caught Evelyn by the arm. "What's wrong? Why are you crying?"
"Leave me alone!" Evelyn wailed, twisting out of her reach. Why do I always run into people at the worst possible times?
The boy hopped off the table and joined the girl while Evelyn peered down the hall. "Say," he remarked after a few seconds, "aren't you that Evelyn that the Erudite are always teasing for her horrible test scores?"
"Marcus!" hissed the girl. "Do you always have to be so insensitive?"
"What? I was just asking…"
Evelyn let the door slam shut again when she spotted a few Dauntless prowling the school corridors. Great. Now I'm stuck in here with these two morons. "So what if I am?!" she spat, feeling fresh tears well up in her eyes. "I'm stupid, okay? There, I said it! Laugh if you want. I don't care anymore!" Evelyn clenched her fists and waited for the jeering to start. Instead, the girl winced in sympathy, while the boy nodded as though he had finally solved a mystery.
"We would never laugh at you," said the girl firmly. "That's horrible of the Erudite to insult you like that. I didn't know they were so depraved they would turn against one of their own members!"
"Johanna, Johanna, Johanna. When will you learn that not everyone is a good little angel like they told us in preschool?" chided Marcus.
"I'm Candor," the one called Johanna retorted. "Nobody tells us lies like that. I just believe that people are born good, not bad."
"Agh! Never mind." The boy shuddered and turned to Evelyn. "But anyways, my friend's telling the truth. We have no reason to make fun of you. We're outcasts, too, sort of."
Evelyn looked back and forth between Johanna and Marcus. Were they trying to lure her into some kind of trap? It wouldn't be the first time something like that had happened to her. They don't look like the bullying type, though, she observed, noting Johanna's kind smile and Marcus's Abnegation clothes. Among the many survival skills Evelyn had developed over the years, one of the most critical was detecting potential aggressors. "Well, then, don't go telling those arrogant eggheads I've been hiding here, okay?"
"Why would we do that?" Johanna seemed genuinely confused. "We don't like the Erudite any more than you do."
"In fact, I probably hate them more," said Marcus grimly. "At any rate, it's nice to hear an Erudite insult her own faction from the inside. Thank you."
"I'm not Erudite!" snapped Evelyn. "Somebody up there made a horrible mistake by dropping me here, and I as sure as heck am going to correct that in June!"
"So, where are you going, then?" asked the Candor girl curiously. "Candor, Abnegation, Dauntless, or Amity?"
"Amity or Abnegation," Evelyn answered automatically. "I haven't decided which one, though." Gosh, I only have half a year left to think about it.
The Abnegation boy looked up quickly. "You should join Abnegation. That's where the decent people are."
Johanna looked at him strangely. "You still think that after…?"
"He may be crazy, but I've come to see that his beliefs are actually correct," Marcus muttered to her in an undertone.
Who's crazy? Evelyn wondered.
"Anyway," Marcus continued, "If you really are anti-Erudite, Abnegation's the place to be. Amity's way too close to them."
"Hold on a second," interjected the Candor. "Amity's a perfectly fine faction! You can't say it's bad just because it's friendly with the Erudite!"
"Of course I can say that! Those who associate with evil are evil themselves!"
"Come on, not all Erudite are so nasty…"
Sensing an unpleasant argument brewing, Evelyn quickly checked the hallway again. All clear. "Well, that's interesting, but I think I'll go now."
Marcus and Johanna stopped midsentence and looked at her. "You sure you're okay?" asked Johanna worriedly.
"Yes, yes," said Evelyn hurriedly, longing for the comforts of isolation.
"Well, think about what I said!" Marcus called after her.
What weird people, thought Evelyn as she scurried towards one of her other hiding places. Still, maybe one of them has a point. But which one?
December 19
Andrew
Silence. Andrew sat alone in front of the computer, deep underground within Erudite headquarters. Months of hearing Jeanine's never-ending lectures about the virtues of Operation Convergence had taught him that he needed to work alone if he wanted to think straight. Strangely enough, despite Jeanine's prodigious brainpower, she was terrible at hacking through firewalls and needed to drag Andrew along every time they came here in order to access the database.
But I'm perfectly capable of doing research by myself, so long as I have the security pass, thought Andrew as he prepared for another long session of data sifting. The more he learned about Operation Convergence, the more sinister-looking it became. While Jeanine had spent hours combing through her grandfather's files, Andrew had used the time to look at old newspaper archives and more general sources about precisely why the factions had been formed. The information he had dug up was quite alarming.
From what Andrew had been able to figure out, things had happened like this: about 200 years ago, there were billions and billions of people in the world. These people lived all over the Earth, divided into large organizations called "countries" or "nations." These countries were huge—each contained thousands of cities like the one he lived in now. Representatives from each of the countries were part of a system called the "United Nations," which met periodically to decide on global issues. During the 2050's, the UN was forced to place a limit on the amount of natural resources each country could use in response to rapidly diminishing supplies, sparking global protests. An informal coalition, known as the International Convergence Legion, or ICL, was promptly formed to fight the new measures. Including over a billion members worldwide from all walks of life, the ICL smuggled precious oil and coal from secret reserves and sold them on the black market. Before long, this activity had gotten so out of hand that the UN was forced to mobilize its troops, leading to a 21-year-long war that devastated virtually every corner of the world. All rules went out the window. The years 2065 to 2086 saw a constant shower of nuclear bombs, super-viruses, nano-killers, and other Weapons of Mass Destruction scattered across the globe. As time passed, a strange brand of insanity formerly unknown to mankind took over, so that what began as a struggle for resources soon spiraled into an all-out quest for world domination.
After more than two decades, when nearly three-quarters of the world's population had been wiped out, the battered and greatly weakened ICL was forced to surrender to the UN. Recognizing that a widespread gene causing rigid-mindedness was the root cause of the chaotic power struggle, the UN isolated the most flexible-minded individuals among the remaining population and sealed them in former major cities on every continent. The goal behind this genetic experiment was to produce a population completely free of the rigidity gene, called "Divergent." Theoretically, such people would be capable of reforming society for the better. The city in which they were living was apparently one such isolated habitat.
"Obviously, the ICL wasn't really disbanded, though," Andrew muttered to himself as he brought up Wyatt Matthews's mission profile. Wherever the ICL was hiding now, they were still sending in secret agents to the faction cities, hoping to terminate the Divergent and convert the people into anti-UN militia. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Operation Convergence was the code name of one such plan. Disturbingly, Andrew's own family, the Carrs, had been planted by the ICL in the very beginning and tasked with halting the growth of the Divergent. Somewhere along the line, though, the details of their mission had been lost.
Andrew sat staring at the blank search bar, wondering what aspect of the faction experiment he should research next. There's really not that much left to know, he realized. There are thousands upon thousands of pages of specifications, but I've seen all the general plans. Now, the question comes down to whether the Divergent are actually evil mutants, as my parents and the Matthews family think, or saviors of the world, as the United Nations believed. Andrew pondered the idea but came up with no fresh revelations.
As often happened in such situations, his mind wandered back to the day in the library when the pretty Dauntless girl had asked him about the strange "Ritter." Not for the first time, Andrew wondered if it had been a dream. No, it couldn't have been. I remember everything that happened before and after perfectly. He felt rather depressed that he'd been unable to help her. Without meaning to, Andrew typed "Ritter" into the search bar and hit "enter."
To his shock, the search turned up about a hundred results, all connected to the name "Amanda." Most included her only as one entry in a gigantic list of other bizarre names, but there were several documents that appeared to be biographies and personal profiles of her, along with a video file. Andrew eagerly clicked on the video file.
A window opened showing a young woman with chin-length auburn hair sitting in a dark room. "Hello," she began, her voice warm and strong. "My name is Amanda Ritter. In this file I will tell you only what you need to know…"
The plot thickens.
R&R!