Season 1, Episode 5 - The Boxtops VIII - "The Eleven-Node Examination"

“I’m as healthy as an ox!” Audrey declared, standing proudly in a laboratory below the Support Building, that same Thursday following the after-school training session.

“It’s as strong as an ox, Sis.” Esther sat in a nearby chair, one hand tapping away on a typewriter, another doing complex calculations on grid paper.

“Oh.” Audrey rubbed her chin. “Then what's a healthy animal?”

“Fish are great for your diet,” Ms. Essex said, her voice dripping with amusement. After she finished her work with Audrey, she took her seat in another chair, one leg folded over the other. She wore a labcoat and dark skirt; Audrey thought that, while Ms. Mogami was a pleasant, soft sort of beautiful, Ms. Essex had a more dangerous allure to her, the slight arrogance in the corners of her mouth, the way she felt amused by everyone and everything.

Audrey grinned. It reminds me of myself! Just kidding, I’m not just dangerously beautiful or pleasantly beautiful, I’m both! I’m Audrey!

“Sis, are you having another mental monologue?” Esther asked. “As much fun as it is to have you here, you’re all set and we have a long line to get through.”

“Ah, Esther, you know me so well. Take care!” Audrey waved goodbye to her sister and Ms. Essex and departed the laboratory, opening a thick metal door. Everyone participated in the combat simulation stood around in the long, thin, subterranean hallway, lit by the occasional metallic light fixture, waiting for Essex to examine and test them for data collection.

“I passed!” Audrey exclaimed to the waiting Isaac and Reed. “I didn’t even have to study! I’m as a healthy as a salmon, perhaps even a mackerel!”

“That’s fantastic,” Reed said dryly. “They’re not even testing you for your health, in case you didn’t know. They’re testing your Rddhi flow and all that vague scientific mumbo-jumbo with an even vaguer price tag that lets the Academy take my hard-earned tax dollars.”

“Do you even pay any taxes?” Isaac asked her.

Reed side-eyed him. “...no.”

“Reed, turn that frown upside down!”

Reed eyed her indignantly when Audrey patted her on the shoulder, making Audrey laugh. “Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”

Reed rolled her eyes. “No, I’m in a fantastic mood. It’s just that somebody doesn’t like dinosaurs and SOMEBODY won’t give me my fair share of the cake.”

From the back of the line, Mackenzie stuck her head out. “I’m right here, you know!”

“Such fantastic classmates,” Reed muttered. She headed past Audrey and pushed through the metal door. Audrey looked at Isaac; all he could do was shrug.

Reed entered the laboratory. Having been here several times before, she already knew what to expect. Long, metal pipes jutted out at random angles stretched their way across the ceiling, occasionally intertwined by wires, colored red and black and blue. Being below ground, under the Support Building, there were no windows, just ventilation ducts that provided a dull background noise to the room. The room felt smaller than it actually was due to the number of counters and tables housed inside of it, various experiments and chemicals and experimental chemicals held in vials and tubes on top of them. The walls were covered with papers and graphs, some of them linked by red string attached to pushpins and thumb tacs.

Amid the organized chaos of the labratory, the only empty spot on the back wall featured the emblem of the Academy’s Support Department. In contrast to the emblem of the Technical Corps – the golden, galactic spiral behind the New England pine tree – the emblem of the Support Department featured the same golden, galactic spiral but instead ringed by eleven nodes arranged in a circle around it, the words A NATURE TAMED AND GROWN DOMESTIC below them.

Reed thought that was a little over the top. She also thought Ms. Essex herself was over the top – the arrogance attached to her beauty rubbed Reed the wrong way, though she also supposed that recently, it seemed like everybody rubbed her the wrong way. Ms. Essex, the way she lazed around in her chair, the way she gave Reed that sly grin full of superiority as she entered, almost made Reed turn around and leave.

But Reed liked to eat, and skipping Essex’s examination would result in a loss of meal privileges. Reed slumped into an empty chair next to Essex.

“Hibiscus, always a pleasure,” Essex greeted as she stood up. She stretched her arms wide and yawned, readying herself for another examination.

Reed heard the clattering of a typewriter. She glanced around a stack of papers and saw Esther hard at work at a nearby desk. “Hey, Esther,” Reed greeted, since at least Esther had never wronged her.

Esther flinched. “Oh...hey, Reed. Sorry...when Audrey left, I got so into my work I didn’t notice you entering.”

“I see.” Reed rested her head on a palm. “You like working with typewriters? I’ve tried it a few times for class, but I can never get my fingers to tap the button they’re supposed to.”

“Typewriters contain a surprising learning curve,” Esther admitted. “Um...I’ve heard they’re attempting to recreate the computer in Shenzhen. I would very much like to try out a computer someday.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Reed said, remembering tales she heard about that long-lost invention. “They say you could talk to anybody through a computer, anywhere on Earth. Imagine that. I could just wake up, go on my Internet, and instantly start arguing with Europeans. That would be the life.”

Essex finished stretching. “Alright, enough small talk. Reed, you should know the drill by now.”

Reed groaned and reluctantly took off her greatcoat, her trenchcoat, and her blazer. She tugged at her shirt a few times uncomfortably, then took it off as well.

“I don’t know how you don’t overheat in all that,” Essex commented. “And I need everything on the upper body off.”

Reed scratched her arm, then did as instructed.

Essex frowned. “Your scars from the earlier battles aren’t looking so good.”

“Is that the scientific term?” Reed muttered, looking down at her exposed upper body. In the fight in the sewers, Reed broke an arm, sprained an ankle, and shattered several ribs. Rddhi users possessed accelerated healing, so her body returned to normal in only a week, but nothing was normal when it came to the Rddhi.

“Wounds healed by the accelerated Rddhi process are gray at first,” Essex explained, sizing up Reed’s scars on the side of her body. “When the healing process is over, they should turn back to your usual skin color. But look at this. The area over your ribs is still a faint gray, and you got black spots forming there, too. A Rddhi infection is no good.”

“Rddhi infection?”

“When the healing process doesn’t successfully complete itself.” Essex searched through the vast array of notes on her desk until finding the ones she needed. “If you don't get better, the infection might start to overtake your whole body.”

“That would kinda suck.”

“It would indeed ‘kinda suck’,” Essex repeated, a hint of mockery in her voice, as she jotted down notes. After a moment, she raised her head. “You’re not going to ask how to fix it?”

Reed shrugged. “It is what it is.”

Essex shook her head. “Thinking like is what makes the Rddhi infection appear in the first place. As with all healing, accelerated Rddhi healing requires a sound body, mind, and soul. Have you tried eating better, getting mental stimulus, and feeling happy?”

Reed almost laughed. “Some of those are a lot easier than the others.”

“Then have you tried to easy ones?”

“I don’t owe anybody anything.”

“Um...I think you owe it to yourself,” Esther chimed in, looking away when Essex and Reed glanced at her.

“She’s right,” Essex said. “But much more importantly, you owe your compulsory period of military service to the state and a lifetime of loyalty to the Academy. It’s our job to get you there in good condition. However, from the look on your face, it's clear you don't want to either hear this or be here, and we have a long of users to test, so let’s just start with the examination.”

Reed scratched her arm, just wanting to put all layers back on.

Essex raised her hands, Red rddhi sparking through them. “Alright, this should only take a minute.”

She performed the usual routine, one that Reed never particularly liked. The worst part was the start; Essex placed a hand right on Reed’s pelvis, right above the hem of her skirt. Reed flinched from the slight shocks as Essex’s Rddhi ran through the spot, as well as from the coldness of her hand.

Essex slowly brought her hand up Reed’s pale skin, reaching her stomach, over the dantian. She let her Rddhi run through it for a moment, then brought her hand diagonally upwards, toward the center of Reed’s side, within her ribcage.

As she ran Rddhi through it, the look on Essex’s face briefly changed. “So, your body now knows it’s true...in addition to manipulating sound waves, you can manipulate electromagnetic waves as well, even if it’s just barely...”

Just barely!

Despite the coldness of Essex’s touch, Reed simmered, waiting for this all to be over.

Still though, I guess the routine is a little weird today, she supposed. Usually she goes through all eleven spots just like that. But today, she stopped at the third spot...does it have something to do with being able to use electromagnetic waves too?

Oh, well. I’m not paid to think.

After taking notes with her spare hand, Essex continued her examination. She brought her testing hand back down to the midpoint, then reached across to Reed’s other side. Nothing new there.

Essex brought her hand back to the midpoint, then headed upwards, arriving at Reed’s heart, or perhaps just about it, since her hand stopped in the exact midpoint of Reed’s chest. Reed grimaced as Essex traced her hand diagonally across once more, unable to avoid bringing her rough hand across some sensitive areas in the process, ending with an examination the shoulders on each either side.

Reed sighed in relief as Essex traced her hand upwards, away from her chest, though the usual examination at the midpoint of the throat was never pleasant. Essex concentrated more deeply now, bringing her hand diagonally to the outermost bottom corner of Reed’s eye, repeating the process for the other eye afterwards.

Finally, she brought her hand back to the throat, then straight upwards once more, stopping at the midpoint of Reed’s forehead, the eleventh and last point. After the usual moment of examination, Essex smirked and tapped her forehead a few times.

“Looks like your flow’s doing alright,” Essex commented. Needing a minute to regain her strength for the next examination, Essex relit a half-used cigarette from a nearby ashtray on a counter and took long pulls from it.

“I don’t even get why you gotta test the whole upper body,” Reed complained, getting seriously annoyed – and, though she would never admit it, a little self-conscious, especially considering that Esther was in the room - that she had to keep her shirt off until Essex completed the other examination. “Our ranking system uses five classes, and the next examination tests the five points that corresponds to each class. So what’s the point of this examination?”

Essex watched smoke drift away into a vent. “Didn’t you listen to anything I said the last time you were here? The Five-Class-Point Examination measures you for the Class Ranking...but the Eleven-Node Examination is for your overall health. We want to make sure everything in your body flows nicely. There’s still a lot we don’t know about the Rddhi. We just want to keep you safe, especially with the first signs of a Rddhi infection showing on you.”

Reed burst out laughing. “Keep me safe? I go to a physic academy with creepy-looking emblems painted on the walls. There’s a conspiracy here, and I bet you’re not telling me the truth. You’re probably harvesting my organs and such, or measuring my strength until I’m ready to be sacrificed in a city-wide transmutation circle.”

Essex snuffed out her cigarette, her mouth still curled in amusement. “You sound like you watch too much television.”

Reed sighed. “Well, I guess that last one did come right out of television...can we just finish this?”

Essex chuckled. “I’ll do the Five-Class-Point Examination now.”

Essex placed a Rddhi-charged palm back on Reed’s dantian; Reed gritted her teeth at the cold contact. The movements of Essex’s palm seemed much simpler this time; she ran her palm up to Reed’s right shoulder, then down to her right palm. She then traced her hand back to the dantian and repeated the process for the left side.

When it was over, Essex nodded at Reed, who sighed in relief as she put all of her layers back on. Essex herself relit the cigarette, down to just a stub now. “You’re still blocked at the palms,” Essex informed her. “Still at Class 3.”

“I’ll cry myself to sleep over it,” Reed muttered, throwing on her trenchcoat.

“Your goal was to reach Class 4 this semester,” Essex reminded her.

Reed shrugged. “My family’s goal was for me to be Class 5 by age ten. Life doesn’t always work out, you know?”

Essex spoke more firmly. “I’m talking about the here and now. Forget about the past. Right now, right this minute, are you working as hard as you can? If your palms are still filtering the flow, but you’re doing the nightly meditations and working as hard as you can at training, then that’s alright. But if they're still filtering because you have a horrendous diet, don’t sleep enough, and slack off in training, then that’s unacceptable. And if you continue to live a lifestyle like that, the Rddhi infection is only going to spread.”

Reed crossed her arms. “I do actually eat better now. I can make a mean thing of rice, fried or otherwise.”

Essex reached the end of her cigarette. She snuffed it out for good in an ashtray that would need to be emptied soon. “Beats junk food at convenience stores, right?”

Reed stood up and threw the greatcoat around her shoulders. “No more Ring Dings for dinner. But that’s something I chose for myself – well, I had help from a friend – but it’s something I’m doing for myself, not for this school or its science fiction conspiracies.”

Essex grinned. “Glad to hear it. Take care, Hibiscus.”

“Yeah, yeah. See you, Esther.”

“Bye, Reed. Um...good luck in your combat simulation.”

Reed nodded at that, then departed.