They filed in gracefully and she took a seat. He reached out a hand to shake the director’s hand, then sat as well. They watched the Director passively and he shifted under their gaze.
Jorgun had never been so unnerved in his life. As Director of Admissions he’d seen hundreds of parents pass through his office – nervous mothers, proud fathers and protective guardians. Yet these two simply looked back at him emotionless.
That, he knew, was inbred. Long ago a small group of humans had decided that their perfection was in their own hands and took it upon themselves to engineer their DNA until it was attained. Over generations (and with significant help from leading scientists) they improved upon their strengths, allowing them to see farther, run faster, endure longer, heal faster, and bred out their weakness.
That included emotions, though he had never considered it the oddest entry in the long list. They had also blocked off all sense of taste for one all-important reason or another. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to raise children that would never complain about eating their vegetables. Not that any argument would arise at the dinner table with these statuesque parents presiding over it.
They waited for him speak, the corners of their mouths turned up. In anyone else he would have called it a smile, but the more he looked at them the more he realized that a smile was really formed by the eyes. There was no spark in these people, only an unerring steadiness and assurance.
“So…” Jorgun forced his hands to be still, folding them under his desk where they wouldn’t see. “I trust your trip was…” He stopped himself, about to say “pleasant” and chose a more appropriate word. “Safe?”
She nodded. “It was.” Her voice was gentle, carrying a tone cultivated exclusively for those who were not of her kind.
The man noted the Director’s nervousness and glanced askance at his wife before speaking. “If we might simply turn to our business?”
Hurrying to agree, Jorgun began rifling through the papers on his desk, scanning the lines of document in front of him. “Yes, yes, of course,” he babbled. “Your daughter, uh…” His eyes caught on a particular line: Shereth Vien Endrel, aged twelve. “Shereth, correct?”
“Yes.” They offered nothing more.
He set the papers down, swallowing. “Well, as you know, our admissions requirements are quite, uh, lofty.” He laughed tensely and stopped quickly. “We require excellent grades and recommendations as well as a certain level of character strength that would allow us to believe that the child would be able to cope with our coursework.”
“All of which she has,” the man replied.
“Yes, well…” Jorgun leaned back, finally hearing something that he had heard before. He was only another proud father, certain of his child’s accomplishments. “We generally like to decide that for ourselves.”
“Should she not be the one in this interview then?”
And their abnormality was pulled back to the surface almost as quickly as it had disappeared. The Director swallowed again. “Yes, but… we don’t like to bring the children in until they’ve passed every other requirement. They tend to take things personally and… well, we just don’t want that.”
They remained silent.
“We have some concerns about admitting your daughter.” Still nothing. “Our student body is seventy percent human and as you know there is little love lost between humans and…”
“Enhanceds,” Mr. Endrel finished.
It was an understatement. The two governments hadn’t been able to find common ground in hundreds of years. At the humans insistence, they existed separately from one another, with several hundred light years between them.
“Your people come off as proud and condescending, not—“ He hurried to amend his words. “That you are, but you seem that way. And especially with children, we are afraid they will not be able to look past your advantages and your lack of emotion.”
They looked at one another and then back at Jorgun.
“You should meet her,” Mrs. Endrel said.
Before she could be stopped, she called to her daughter and the door swung open to admit a slim girl with dark hair. She wore the same smile as her parents, though by her appearance he never would have expected them to be related. Thin Purple and blue streaks had been dyed into her chin-length locks at even intervals and one side spiked away from her head persistently. Her clothes were simple: a grey-blue short-sleeve tee and khaki cargo pants with plain brown shoes peeking out of the folds of cloth that gathered at her ankles. Were they trying to make her fit in with humans? Was this how they thought a human child ought to look?
She shook her hair out of her face as she came to a stop in front of him, hands folded behind her back and met his gaze evenly. Jorgun paused. There was a spark there.
The girl took a moment to look at him, then twisted around to face her parents, who nodded solemnly. When she turned back, a full out smile broke out on her lips and the spark flared up further.
Jorgun leapt to his feet. “You asked her to pretend?” he demanded. That was too much. How low could they sink, to force their child to live like that only to fit in and enter into this elite academy? “I do not mean to offend, sir and madam, but how could you?” He could see now why humans hated them and refused to live with them. He said as much, hardly bothering to restrain his words. They had no emotions, there was nothing to wound in them.
The grin fell from the girl’s face and it only served to strengthen his resolve that he was correct. The spark faded and died until she looked exactly like her parents, a little robot, whose key needed re-winding to be brought back to life.
The three of them didn’t say a word until Jorgun had finished his rampage and even then, it took a moment for them to formulate a response.
Choosing his word carefully, Mr. Endrel spoke, his tone careful, but solid. “I would ask you, Sir, to be careful of what you say in front of her. She is not as impervious as she seems.” The Director glanced at her with disdain. “We did not ask her to pretend and neither did she. When she was born, we chose to keep her emotions intact.”
“Did you?” the Director snapped. The way the girl’s smile had dissipated replayed in his mind. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Shereth,” Mr. Endrel murmured. “Open the shutters.”
There was a pause and then she did. The Director watched in surprise as her eyes seemed to open up again, almost as if she had opened a set of shutters to reveal raw emotion underneath. She was hurt and a little bit angry, though she was trying to keep him from seeing that, even with her feelings showing. The bottom line of her eyes glistened and a moment later a tear rolled down her cheek. She reached up and swept it from her cheek with her knuckles, swallowing to keep more from coming. Staring, the director sat down. Her parents waited a moment longer for the girl to resume control and exited, leaving her to speak for herself.
“I wasn’t pretending,” she told him. “They made a mistake with my brother, at the hospital. They left pieces of his emotions intact. After how great he was, my parents decided they wanted to know what the full package would be like.” She shifted, lifting her chin. “They wouldn’t have asked me to pretend. My father works for the government, but he’s no ambassador and neither am I. I know I’m the first Enhanced to try to get in here, but I’m not doing it because of that. I don’t like the schools back home. I don’t fit in with the other kids.”
Jorgun nodded, looking at her with better understanding. He hadn’t met many Enhanceds, but he seen enough of them to know that she’d displayed more emotion in the last thirty seconds than the others would in a lifetime. She’d found a way to block it away, so that people like Jorgun couldn’t see it, but the other Enhanceds wouldn’t fall for it. Her parents certainly hadn’t.
“The streaks,” Jorgun questioned, gesturing toward her hair. “Whose idea were they?”
“Mine,” Shereth said, a smile returning. “I did them. Then my mother fixed them and made them more even.” Reaching up to run a hand through her hair, she stopped, uncertain. “Is there something wrong with having them?”
“Oh, no,” Jorgun assured her. “They, uh…” He hesitated. “They suit you.” He turned back to the papers on his desk, thankful for the break from meeting her gaze. After the abrupt change in her attitude, he was finding it had to adjust. “Can you tell me what, uh, modifications you have?”
“You mean enhancements?” she questioned.
“Is that what you call them?”
Shereth hesitated. “We are Enhanceds, we have enhancements.”
Jorgun nodded. “Enhancements then.”
She began to recite, focusing on a point in the air between them as if the words had been burned into the atmosphere at that place. “Improved agility, plus thirty percent. Aging rate minus sixteen percent. Bone strength, plus fifty-five percent. Endurance, plus sixty-eight percent. Immune system proficiency, plus fifty-nine percent. Improved Memory, plus forty-four percent. Improved reflexes, plus twenty-one percent. Improved recovery speed, plus seventy-six percent. Improved muscle strength, plus twenty-five percent. Improved Distance Vision, plus forty percent. Improved Night Vision, plus fifty-five percent.”
Jorgun stared. According her application paperwork, she wanted to be a pilot and according to what she had just said he could believe that she was bred for that. She was a machine.
Realizing that that was indeed a possibility since some of the Enhanced had mechanical components he asked and she shook her head.
“I don’t have anything that I wasn’t born with,” she told him. Whether she was proud or ashamed of that, he couldn’t tell.
“Why do you want to come to Rwrendren’s Academy?” he asked.
She looked down, biting her lip as she formulated her answer. “My father says the best pilots come from here. He says only the best make it here and only the best of the best graduate. He said that I’d have to work hard if I came here.” She met his gaze again. “I like working when I’m flying a ship. The harder the better. I want to be the best pilot ever seen in the stars. I think you can help me.”
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