The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

looking unimpressed. Sarah will never be impressed. The Gates are a big stupid attempt to wow Sarah with technology that bends and bruises the laws of physics.

“You’re going to love these,” Fahima says. She compensates for Sarah’s lack of enthusiasm with an overabundance of her own. Cortex gives a bored whine.

Each of the three Gates is a freestanding doorway of exposed wire and coil. Fahima ordered chrome casings for them from a fabricator in the Bronx to make them look less janky, but they weren’t ready. She wanted to mount them on the walls, but she can’t figure out how Kimani’s door manifests along a solid surface without disintegrating the matter of that surface. Small-scale tests turned pieces of drywall into so much fine dust. The Gates create a membrane, a physical interface between the real world and Hivespace. It turns out that the real world can’t stand the strain.

Fahima flips the first Gate on. It’s as loud as a jet engine, the other problem she hasn’t been able to fix. The best modes of travel should be deafening, she tells herself. Cortex cowers under a chair, and Sarah is on her feet, mouthing something angry but inaudible. Fahima points at the empty space within the Gate. The round tables and empty vending machine waver like a heat mirage as another room superimposes itself on the space, becoming more solid until the only image there is the Gate room in the new Bishop school in Chicago. Karen Nowak, formerly a psychic defense teacher and now the headmaster of the Chicago school, is on the other side, hands clamped over her ears.

“Go through so we can turn it off,” Fahima shouts to Sarah. She gestures in case she can’t be heard.

Sarah, Fahima, and, begrudgingly, Cortex step through the Gate. Karen powers it down behind them, and the sound dwindles away to nothing.

“I’m working on that,” Fahima says.

The Gate room is in the Chicago school’s basement, the concrete walls sweating, thick air warm with heat pouring off the air-conditioning units, which are cranking to ward off the early onset of summer. The school is an old community center on North Avenue and Washtenaw, one of the churches that sprang up at the eve of the millennium and struggled through the decade after it before folding.

“I’m so glad you had time to be here to see how we’re doing,” Karen says. She’s one of those white women whose skin is turning into porcelain as she eases into her sixties.

Sarah has spent every hour since the Pulse scrambling to set up three new schools. She and Patrick tapped their parents for cash to add to the endowment Bishop left. A network of old Resonant money emerged from the shadows, allowing Sarah to make cash buys of property in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston. None of the buildings are perfect. The building in LA is an old dance studio, and although the one in Houston once had been a school, it’s been closed for years because of hurricane damage. Sarah drafted Bishop’s teaching staff as administrators and called in alumni to pick up temporary teaching jobs at all four schools. Fahima and Sarah used to approach new Resonants who popped up in the Hive individually, laying out the philosophy and ethics of Bishop, extolling the academic benefits of the academy. Now Sarah can’t hang a Bishop sign in front of a building without a queue forming.

“We have Kimani for this,” Sarah says, waving dismissively at the Gate.

“Kimani is busy as fuck,” Fahima says. “The Gates are locked paths between the schools. They fold the user through Hivespace.”

“Fold?”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Fahima says. “They’re key-coded so only administration can activate them. I can upgrade that to biometrics if you want.”

Sarah’s face indicates that she doesn’t care about biometrics. “How many are there?”

“Six. Each school connected to all the others. When you close on the place in Phoenix, I’ll network it in with the rest.” She’s lying. Both doors of the Phoenix Gate are built. The Phoenix half is sitting in Fahima’s lab, ready to be shipped to the former Sunkist Growers’ Association Building that Sarah is buying to serve as the site for the fifth school. When that goes live, it’ll make sixteen Gates. Four only Fahima and Patrick know about. Two only Fahima knows about.

Trust is difficult for lots of people.

—

Fahima spends more time in the Hive now. She feels a sense of ownership she didn’t before the Pulse. She walks among crowds of new Resonants like a mafia don walking down Main Street, bolstered by the sense that they all are indebted to her in ways they might not recognize but that are there nonetheless.

The walks are data-gathering missions. She has stacks of papers about the new applicants to the schools. Problem cases Patrick and Kimani deal with. She’s been able to glean a few things from those reports. There are new ability sets, ones they haven’t seen before or only rarely. There are the ones who can produce or manipulate the black glass. There are more Resonants exhibiting abilities like Owen Curry’s, able to null out matter, though on a smaller scale. As reports pile up, statistics rise out of the anecdotes. But in the Hive, Fahima can observe the new herd and spot trends. She’s convinced if she figures out who changed and who didn’t, she can address it in subsequent machines. If machines are even the way to go. Maybe a change in approach is what’s needed. She’s been wondering again about Rez, the drug that’s big around the North Avenue community in Chicago. Chemistry isn’t her wheelhouse, but it might be worth exploring.

Since the Pulse, Fahima’s Hivebody feels more solid, but the Hive itself feels like more of a physical presence. When she feels the tug at the back of her brain as James Lowery gently reminds her that she’s keeping twelve senators and twenty-six members of the House of Representatives waiting, Fahima tries to move