Induction

From the moment I stepped in I felt out of place. I didn’t belong there, no matter what their tests said. But, laws tend to be black and white, and don’t consider anything grey might exist between the extremes.

“Sand-ra Crook-shank, room two. Sand-ra Crook-shank, room two.” The voice over the intercom was mechanical, the machine trying its best to pronounce my name. I made my way to room two, through the hallway marked “Induction.”

The room was small, a single desk, two chairs, a photo on the wall, and nothing on the desk besides a folder, opened to a page with my driver’s license photo and stats. Behind the desk sat a small balding man, cheeks pink as if he had been running, short brown hair circling his porcelain dome, and thick, horn-rimmed glasses hanging precariously at the tip of his short nose. “Miss Crook-shank,” he said.

“Sond-ra Crow-shonk,” I pronounced for him.

“Spell it again?” he asked.

“S-a-n-d-r-a, C-r-o-u-q-s-h-a-n-q.” He hadn’t offered but I sat in the chair across from him anyway.

I contemplated my fingers, chipped pink polish bright against dark brown skin. They were long, like the rest of me. Maybe I just felt out of place because I always have. A girl at six feet already has trouble fitting in. My skin is dark reddish brown and my hair is either in braids or an uncontrolled afro, which made me stand out even more in the small Oregon town where I grew up.

“So, miss Crouqshanq, I assume you know why you’re here.” He flipped to the next page and began filling out the forms there in a small, cramped script, his fingers gripping the pen so tightly they were turning white with pink splotches.

“Because I got a letter, yesterday, telling me to show up here today or go to prison.” I crossed my arms and let my best “I ain’t scared of nothin’” attitude out. “And because whoever wrote the stupid powered people law was an idiot.” I shot my growing anger at him. “I rode 16 hours by bus and train to get here, and because you idiots couldn’t give me the time to plan ahead I’m missing work. I want compensation for the tickets and the lost wages!”

“Y-yes, miss, I understand.” He pushed his glasses up his nose with a stubby finger. “I’m sorry that the letter didn’t arrive sooner, but it should have been there last week.”

Of course, maybe it had been there. I don’t check my post office box very often, and I couldn’t recall checking at all in the week prior. My posture relaxed, along with my attitude. “Well, I’m here now, but I really shouldn’t be.”

“No no,” he said, tapping on the paperwork with the pen. “It’s all right here. You’re a muta…, super…, uh, powered person.” He shifted in his seat as though it were made of needles. “I’m sorry, I’m still not used to… uh, how do you people prefer to refer to yourselves these days?”

“You people!?” I could feel the anger rising. “What kind of backwards shit-hole do you come from that you think can get away with saying shit like that?”

I didn’t think it was possible, but he seemed to shrink even smaller in his seat. “Please, I, uh, really… sorry miss Crouqshanq.”

I’m not really sure what it was, but every minute I spent in his presence dragged annoyance to rage. “Enough of that! Just call me Sandra and let’s finish this, mister…?”

“Oh sorry,” he said. He sat up a little straighter. “Kevin McNalley. Please, just call me Kevin.”

“Sure thing Kevin.” He relaxed and it was as though he returned to his previous small size. In fact, his dress shirt filled out a little. “Are you… powered?”

“We always called ourselves mutants, but powered works. No one like the m-word any more.” He smiled and pushed his glasses up again. “Right, so, we know you’re powered, but we need to know what your power is.”

“So you can figure out whether to put me in the military or prison?” I huffed. “I’m not dangerous to the government, or the enemy, or anyone really. Look Kevin, I really shouldn’t be here.”

“Perhaps your power hasn’t manifested itself yet.” He continued filling out the form with his vice-grip hold on the pen that made my hand cramp looking at it.

“Oh, it has, for years now.” I was sure that when they found out what it was they’d want to let me go. Except the law wasn’t written that way.

“Fantastic! So,” he asked, “what’s your power?”

“What’s yours?” Turn about is fair play, and all.

“I, uh… shrink.” He said it so softly that I wasn’t sure I heard it right, until he shrank down to half his size and returned to normal, his glasses barely hanging on.

“Well, that would be useful.” I pointed at myself. “Not sure you noticed, but I have a hard time finding a date being this tall.”

“Nonsense, you’ll find someone.” He stopped writing for a moment. “In fact, I married a tall woman… w-well, taller than me at least. She’s, uh, five-seven.”

“Well, look at you, Kevin. Little guy making it big.” As angry as I was, no sooner had I said it than I wished I hadn’t. “I’m sorry, that was rude and insensitive.” Why am I being a bitch!?

He just laughed. “Call it even?”

“You know how long the trip up here was?” I asked.

“Not sure. Why?”

“It was approximately 20,011,875,840 inches.” I pulled out my phone and opened the calculator. “So that’s… roughly 562 miles.”

“Why inches?”

“Shush, Kevin,” I said. “I’ll explain.”

I pointed to a picture on the wall, Kevin and his “tall” woman standing in front of a mid-sized car. “The car in that photo weighs around 1,519,988 grams. Don’t ask for pounds because I can’t remember the formula to convert it.”

“Look up at the ceiling,” I said. I pointed at the acoustic tiles. “There are about 2,816,112 little holes in the ceiling tiles.”

“Is that your power?” He looked confused. “You count fast?”

“Not quite.” I hadn’t talked about this with anyone. It was too uncomfortable, but now I had no choice. “They’re… guesses, but they’re accurate to within two percent.”

He opened a drawer and pulled out a bundle of pens. “How many pens are here?”

“I don’t know.” I wondered how to explain it. “I can accurately guess physical counts and measures, but only for large numbers.” I pointed at the ceiling again. “I can tell you within two percent how many little holes there are, but couldn’t tell you how many tiles there are without counting them.”

“What’s the cut-off?” He leaned forward, his shirt tight. He looked a little larger than before. “What’s the smallest number you can guess?”

“Not sure. Probably around a million and a half or so. The car in grams was pretty close to being out of my range.” I groaned. “I told you I don’t belong here. I’m not dangerous, and I’m certainly not useful to the military. Hell, I can’t even do simple arithmetic without a calculator.”

He dropped the pens back in the drawer and pulled out a notebook and began flipping through it. “Mm-hmm, where is it…” he muttered as he flipped through the pages. “Ah! There it is.”

“There what is?”

“Let’s see, ‘enumeration of large star clusters…, simple test…’, ah.” He opened the notebook flat and flipped it around. There were a bunch of dots on the page, but not enough to guess at.

“I-I know this is less than what you usually coun… er… guess, but look at this for a moment.” He pointed to one of the dots. “Imagine starting here, a-and traveling around to every dot on the page once, then doing it again in a different order, and again in a different order, and so on.”

“Okay, wouldn’t be hard. It’s not like a maze or anything is it? Can the lines cross?”

“Sure, sure. But, I want you to guess how many line segments,” he said, “connections from one dot to another, you would have if you drew out every possible route, starting from this one dot.”

“183,377,413.” The answer came without hesitation, like it always does.

“Let me check…” he pulled the notebook back and looked on the next page. “Missed it by one. That’s phenomenal!”

“And useless.” I was getting tired of the whole thing, and just wanted to get back home and go back to work.

“Well, looks like that’s sorted out then.” He put the notebook away, pulled stamps out of the drawer and carefully inked two stamps on the last page in the folder. He wrote something else on the page and handed it to me. “Take this down the hall to room 9, and welcome to government service, Sandra.”

“Wait a damn minute!” I jumped to my feet, ready to fight. “I’m not a soldier, and I don’t want to be one! You can’t make me!”

Kevin shrank again, and I felt bad for scaring him, but I wasn’t going to let him off the hook. “P-please, miss, just…” he was trying to point at the paper, but had gotten so small he almost couldn’t reach across the desk. “R-read the stamps.”

I had partially crumpled the paper in my anger, but I opened it up and looked. “Non-combatant/No Threat” the first one said. The second stamp, in the box labeled “Recommendation” was “NASA” and next to it he had written “Deep field star study.”

“I flunked math,” I said. “Twice. Never got past algebra.” As much as working at NASA would be nice, they’d never have me. “What happens when NASA says they don’t want someone with no degree who can’t do math?”

“That’s the only part of the law that’s in our favor.” He grew a little larger than his normal size again. “They have to take you, since your power is so specific to their needs. And if they decide they don’t need you any more, they have to give you a full pension.”

“Wait, are you serious?” I felt skepticism creeping in. “If that’s true, why are you doing this job?”

“Oh, because I am very specifically powered for this position, by my shrinking and m-my other power…” he looked down at the desk where his fingers worried at the folder. “I… make people angry, but I can’t control it.”

“That’s a real thing?” I asked. “I know a bunch of guys with that ability, and they aren’t powered people.”

“It’s a real thing,” he said. “B-but it’s good! It means that when I mark a file no threat, they really are no threat.”

“And the ones that are?”

“I have a very small escape hatch under the desk. I can be out in a second or less.” He smiled but his eyes seemed sad. I imagine he’s had to escape a few times at least.

“Well, Kevin, it was nice meeting you.” I offered my hand to shake and he accepted, and for a moment I just wanted to punch his smug face. His power, I reminded myself.

“Thank you Sandra. Maybe you have a second power like my wife’s power,” he said.

“And what’s her power?”

“She’s immune to my anger power.”

“I’m not immune, but that’s still no reason for me to lash out at you.” I looked directly in eyes, swimming in the blur behind his thick glasses. “Again, I’m sorry for yelling, and I’m sorry I said hurtful things.”

His smile this time was complete. I went into the hall and continued deeper toward room 9 while the intercom called out “Da-nee-rees Ran-ga-nay-than, room two” and I wondered how butchered that name was.