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Chapter 4: Acclimation aka Boredom
Weeks later, or it may have been months for all I knew, I was getting tired of looking at white walls, pale faces, and a green giant.
They were keeping me isolated in a ‘secure’ bunker somewhere in the middle of nowhere, so I hadn’t the foggiest clue as to the time of day or year. I had learned in my internment in the facility that I was watched almost constantly by hidden cameras and the people I like to refer to as my babysitters.
I was pretty certain they weren’t observing me use the restroom. At least, I hoped that was the case. In any matter though, I was being slowly acclimated to my new life.
Perhaps one of the strangest new developments while living with those two in a white world was the fact that I wasn’t ever called by my name. It was always “the girl” or “child”. No one called me Lulu. What was that all about? Is it too hard to pronounce two syllables? In any case, after a few weeks, I had even begun to forget that I actually had a name, and it’s not like I truly needed one down there. I was the only girl, so calling me that might just be a matter of convenience for them. Who knew.
Acclimation, according to the ‘official’ definition of the word as Verdant told me, meant that I was being transitioned into my new abilities. Verdant described the process in detail one day, but unfortunately, I managed to drown out most of it by singing all the Dixie Chicks songs in my head. (I learned later that they weren’t exactly popular anymore, but at that time, I loved them. So sue me.)
I did remember a few keys points though. For one thing, Verdant said that sometimes it takes new Supers weeks to discover their powers. Great. I had already been dead for seven years, according to them, how much longer was this going to take?
You might wonder why I wasn’t more actively interested in learning about my new life, and that would be a perfectly logical question to ask. The truth is, I was devastatingly interested. I asked so many questions my first few days after I woke up, that I almost lost my voice. The problem lay in my mentors. They couldn’t—wouldn’t—answer my questions properly. I was so frustrated, that eventually, I gave up, and just sat around trying to listen to Verdant’s boring lessons on Power harnessing. SO, if there was anything important about Super life, I wasn’t going to learn it from them.
I had asked Verdant one time if there was a shortcut, but the look of exasperation he gave me was enough of an answer. No shortcuts, dutifully noted. Asking Mr. Smith anything was out of the question, and there was no way I was going to subject myself to his presence any more than I had to when he came to check up on my progress.
I had the eerie feeling that he didn’t really like me, and that he knew he made me uncomfortable, so his little visits were something he forced upon me due to his inner malevolence. But that was just my interpretation. I’m not a mind-reader. At least, I didn’t know if I was or not. Still no Powers.
I was getting a tad impatient. Okay, more than a tad. Try a lot. Strangely enough, I didn’t enjoy being kept away from the sun and living in a white box. I know? Weird right? Who doesn’t enjoy that? Patience may be a virtue, but I never said I wanted to be virtuous.
One rather boring, eternally white day though, it all changed. I was sitting through another of Verdant’s boring blah, blah, blah training sessions about learning to harness my powers when I felt a little odd. It was like—like—I was burning. From the inside. Hardly an event that happened every day or at all for that matter. And it’s not something I ever wanted to happen again.
I felt little licks of flame building and spreading inside my bones, carrying messages of heat and burning throughout my body. You know that feeling when you stand too close to the fire and it feels like your face is melting? Well, that was how my entire insides felt. Flame-kissed.
“Verdant…” I said uneasily. “I think something I ate isn’t agreeing with me.” Heartburn had taken on an entirely new offensive.
He glanced at me intently, searching my face for a joke, but seeing that I was serious he got up to look at me more closely.
“So this is how the marshmallows felt,” I remarked internally as the feeling of burning grew more intense—and HOT. “I think my colon is on fire,” I stated out loud while staring down at my stomach area with trepidation.
That little tidbit got his attention for some reason. Maybe it had to do with the fact that colons were not supposed to catch fire, or something along those lines.
“Okay, take deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and look at me!” He replied hurriedly.
“I’m not going into labor, Verdant!” I snapped back. What good would breathing do for me?
However, just in case he was right, I did as he said, and surprisingly started to feel a bit better.
Not a minute later, to my consternation, I was shivering. It was freezing-butt cold, and I felt like I had more than just brain freeze. I felt like I was frozen. A human popsicle. I hate the cold.
I was chattering and my skin was turning blue.
“V-ver-verdant?” I managed to say as I slowly grew number and speaking was ceasing to be an option. Fire to ice, the way to start your day if you are an up-and-coming Super. All the cool kids do it. Not.
“Just breath, child!” He said. Again with the breathing.
I pushed through the cold, thinking, “Breath, breath, why don’t you just breath? Sure, I would Verdant, except my lungs are frozen solid.”
Miraculously, the cold went away as quickly as it had appeared. I took a deep breath and looked at Verdant hopefully.
“Is it over?” I asked wincing as I saw him breaking icicles off of his clothes and I saw that ice had formed in a perfect circle around me. Send me to the polar ice caps; I’ll put an end to Global Warming in a lickety-split.
He glanced at me, and said, “Not quite,” as he backed slowly away from me to stand on the other side of our classroom. His dark eyes were wide with some emotion, most likely fear, as he almost cowered behind his desk. It was difficult for him, being almost seven feet tall to manage such a feat, but people are capable of great things when confronted with terrifying situations.
I wondered momentarily what he was talking about until I felt something rising away from my head and I reached up to see what it was. It was my hair. I had a major case of static electricity. Troll dolls had nothing on me.
“Ah! My hair!” I cried with amazingly astute observation.
I reached up and grasped the strands, trying to force them to fall back naturally. No such luck for me.
I did however manage to cause a massive spark of electricity to fly into the ceiling, making the fire alarms go off, but other than that, nothing happened.
Oh yeah, and the resulting cascade of water from the sprinkler system finally tamed my static head. Lovely.
Soaking wet, always a nice treat when you’ve just been assaulted by your own powers, because that’s what I decided had just happened. I had finally discovered my abilities in the most inconvenient manner possible. Obviously, I have a talent for things like that.
I glanced at Verdant, who was not amused at the sudden wetness escalation in the room and I took another deep breath to show him I hadn’t forgotten how. (Breathe!) However, when I released that breath it came out like a blast from a wind-tunnel.
Unfortunately for Verdant, he was directly in front of me when that happened and he caught the full force of Hurricane Lulu.
As it was happening I thought, “You told me to breathe,” and also “Oops,” as he was thrown violently backwards and held against the wall by the blast issuing from my direction.
It all stopped and Verdant fell down to the floor, looking up at me as if I had done it on purpose. I had felled the Un-jolly Green Giant. Wonder if that can go on my resume?
As if I would attack anyone on purpose, it wasn’t my style…at least, it hadn’t been my style before. Now, I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t though. Verdant was annoying, and Mr. Smith was creepy. Why couldn’t I have been given to nicer trainers?
Believe me, I was already beginning to think that they were the rejects, and I was their last chance at becoming full “whatever’s” in the Organization that they never told me about, even when I asked them repeatedly until they locked me away in my room. Apparently even though I was technically—and according to human standards—really an adult, (twenty-three years old here!) I was still going to be considered an adolescent by them.
Verdant stood up, his face wary as if he was considering whether or not any more violent acts of power manifestation were going to erupt upon him.
“Are you through, child?” He asked tiredly as he shook wet shanks of black hair hanging from his green head.
He was the tired one, and that whole shebang was just supposed to invigorate me, was it? I don’t think so.
It ain’t easy causing all sorts of mayhem to erupt unexpectedly, and it sure ain’t fun to experience burning alive, freezing to death, electric shock, and a tornado all in one day.
I should know.
I shrugged and smiled deceptively sweet. “I suspect so, but you might want to give up on lessons today, I might have another power revelation at any time.”
I was fishing for a free day. I put on my most serious face to see if he would take the bait. Pleasepleasepleaseplease…
He frowned at me and began to wring out his clothes.
“I don’t think so,” he said in that dream-killing voice of his.
My hopes were crushed. I sighed and pouted; I never got to decide what I was going to do. Life here was boring, and all about work, work, work. That’s all I did. There wasn’t any time for play or fun. I don’t even think Verdant or Mr. Smith knew those were even words.
They probably were born with missing amusement centers in their brains. That’d explain why they were always insisting that I ‘practice’, ‘try’, and ‘learn’. Ugh. As if any teenager enjoys having those words directed at them a billion times a day.
I yearned for freedom. I understood to a certain extent that they were pushing me so that when I became a ‘member of the Organization’ ( I always said it with a snooty voice for some reason) that I’d be able to do the most good. But sometimes…I wondered what my life would have been like if they hadn’t found me.
I might have woken up in a swamp, or buried in mud. Yuck. No more wondering about that.
After all, I was here now and I had promised to do my best. And I had learned from the beginning that temper tantrums didn’t earn me any points in life, they just made me look silly.
Verdant had almost finished wringing out his shirt when it occurred to me that I had no idea what his powers were. I guess I had always assumed that his ability was the power to be green, which now that I’d discovered my insanely amazing powers, I was beginning to doubt was the only thing he could do.
“Hey…Verdant. What’s your Super power?” I asked finally.
He looked over at me as he was still wringing out his wet clothes having moved on by then to his pants. I had by that time figured out that if I concentrated I could heat myself up and my clothes were perfectly dry. Voila!
I smiled encouragingly at his dubious look. Usually, I didn’t ever ask any questions about him or very useful ones at all, but I guess he decided that it wouldn’t do me any harm to learn some more so he told me.
“I can control plants,” he stated simply and returned to his wringing. Little drips of water falling on the white tile floor.
I smiled even wider. “Cool. So, do you like…speak to them?” I asked and then concentrated the thought of heat on his clothes. I figured that if I helped him out he’d tell me more about himself.
I watched as he jerked his hands away when his clothes started to steam as the water heated and evaporated out of the fabric. He glanced at me worriedly.
When the steam stopped I released the thought of heat and returned his gaze. He was looking at me in wonder; there was a slight scared smile on his face.
“Well?” I asked. He still hadn’t answered my second question.
“Uh,” he stammered for a moment, “no. I can’t speak to them, but I can make them grow or die depending on what’s required of me.”
His black eyes were still watching me warily as if I’d go all “Flame on!” on him at any second. Please. That’s for amateurs. And the silver screen. I’ll leave the catch-phrases to the fictional characters.
“Huh,” I said. “Well, in any case, plant powers are cool. I bet you hate being away from them all the time.”
He frowned and nodded his head. “Yes, but I do what is required of me. One does not disobey orders, and right now…I’m following mine.”
His words made me feel odd. The organization had always been described to me thus far as kind and for the greater good of the world. All that noble stuff about being a hero and sacrificing oneself for the greater good. Hearing Verdant talk about having orders that required him to stay away from the things he cared the most for was disturbing. What would they require of me?
I didn’t let any of this show on my face though. I knew Verdant would tell Mr. Smith about the incident involving my powers and I didn’t want him to find out I was having doubts about his employers, and in a sense my employers.
I still didn’t like Mr. Smith. The pale man freaked me out. His dark fathomless black eyes gave away no indication that he had feelings. Even his laughter was mirthless and seemed to me to be mimicry of someone laughing. He was creepy, as I’ve no doubt made crystal clear.
Verdant was less sinister than Mr. Smith, and was by far my favorite of the two, but even Verdant was alien to me. No pun intended.
I had noticed in my time in the facility that they both had the same black eyes. The pupil was indistinguishable from the iris. I wondered many things about that fact, but none made enough sense to actually be true.
“What are Mr. Smith’s Powers?” I asked with hardly contained disgust.
Verdant gave me a reproachful look, and shook his head, “You don’t want to know.”
I wondered what he meant by that and was about to ask him, but decided against it. He was probably right. Mr. Smith probably had an absolutely horrible Power, like the ability to disgust people or something. Or he might be able to turn into a spider. Like I needed another reason to hate him.
So, I shrugged my interest away. I was content to hate Mr. Smith with the reasons I had now. One day during class I had made an actual list of all the reasons why Mr. Smith was a big fat creeper, but Verdant had found it and taken it away with an unreadable look on his face. After that, I had decided to keep my reasons to myself.
Verdant walked sedately over to the door of the classroom and opened it while motioning for me to follow.
I got up because there wasn’t anything else that I could do. There weren’t a whole lot of options for environments in this subterranean fort, or a whole lot of options about anything really.
The hallway outside the room was lined with doors without windows, and I didn’t know what lay behind any of them. I was never taken to any place other than my room and the classroom. I wasn’t exactly sure I wanted to know what was hiding behind those doors. One night, when Mr. Smith had exiled me to my room, I had heard someone screaming, and then just...stop. It was frightening, and I had lain awake for a long time after that playing the sound over and over in my head, trying to forget, yet holding onto it because it was something different.
I think Mr. Smith must have figured out I had heard something, because the next morning after my first lessons, he told me he had soundproofed my room so I “could sleep better.” Ha! He didn’t care how I slept. I didn’t even bother asking how he knew I hadn’t slept well. So, I tried to forget about that screaming person, because that’s what I knew he wanted me to do, even though he wouldn’t ever admit that there was a screaming person in the first place--even if I had brought up the subject. Which I never would dare to do. Yeah, it was mess.
Needless to say, staring at white walls, white tile, and white everything was past being old. I was simply looking forward to the day when color was once again in my life. Well, other than green of course.
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