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

“Of course,” Sarah says. “Cortex will show you the way.”

This must be exactly what Emmeline hoped for, and she follows the dog out of the room. On her way out, she reaches out her little hand and rests it, just for a moment, on Carrie’s. Carrie jumps, visible for a flicker, but the kid is gone before Carrie can read anything off her face. Darren puffs his chest back up and begins.

“I’ve been working on 3D projection,” he says. “It’s tough, because video is already so much more information than audio.” He shoots Lynette a withering look. “And for 3D you need two different camera angles. You need to find two people with a shared experience. I’ve been fishing around, and I finally found one.” He smiles, a terrible wolf grin. “Jovan and Maya have an experience they’ve shared.”

Jovan and Maya go pale as an image appears on the screen. It’s fuzzy but resolves, rising out of the static the way Lynette’s song did. It’s a hand stroking an erect penis, seen from above.

“This is Maya jerking Jovan off,” Darren says. He sounds like he’s narrating a nature video. “The reason I chose it is they must have their heads very close to each other. Like, Maya is sitting right next to him in his dorm room and stroking him off. But there’s enough distance between the two points of view that you get this great depth of field. Wait till he comes; it’s like it’s shooting right at you.”

The class reacts with a mixture of shock and giggles. Carrie doesn’t join in. She thinks about sneaking up to the front of the class and punching Darren Helms right in the dick. Hayden’s already on their feet, about to do just that, when Sarah shuts the television off and turns on Darren. “You think it’s funny using your abilities against people who can’t defend themselves?” She reaches out, rests her fingertips on his forehead. Her eyes glaze over with a milky whiteness, and Darren’s whole body shudders. His posture straightens, and he turns to the class.

“My name is Darren Helms, and I’m a spiteful little shit,” he says. His voice is even, affectless, as if he’s reading off a teleprompter rather than processing the words he says. “Other than the occasional unlucky medical professional, the only person who will ever touch my sad micropenis is me.”

Carrie has to stuff her fist in her mouth to keep from laughing. Even Maya and Jovan laugh, if only to hide how mortified they are. Carrie’s a little horrified by the class’s willingness to turn on their own, to pivot at the scent of fresh blood in the water. Darren’s body shakes like he’s come up from a bracing swim. Sarah’s eyes return to their normal green. Darren drops to his knees, clutching his head in both hands.

“You can’t do that!” Darren shrieks. “There are rules against—”

“You want to cite rules as soon as you think they’ll protect you?” Sarah towers over him, and Carrie regrets ever thinking of her as a priss. “Here are the rules. What a person can do to you is limited by their ability and constrained by their ethics. If I were you, I would pray the people you meet have a higher moral code than yours, which is a fairly low bar to set.”

“I’ll report you,” he says. “I’ll go right to the headmaster.”

“Report yourself while you’re there,” says Sarah. “Get out of my classroom.”

He brushes by Carrie as he gathers his things from his desk, stomping the whole way. On his way out the door, he nearly knocks over Emmeline, who’s returning from the bathroom with Cortex behind her. She looks around at the faces in the room as if to ask what she’s missed. Avi gathers her up protectively.

“Please don’t put this in your article,” Sarah says to Avi. Avi shies away from her, pushing Emmeline farther back. Carrie knows what he’s afraid of and why this is exactly what they wanted to keep hidden from him. They’re all towing the line of look how normal we are, but now they’ve given him a glimpse of how powerful some of them are.

Carrie smiles. If she was writing about Resonants, introducing them to the world of normal people, that’s the first story she’d tell. You don’t have to worry, she’d say. Sure, a couple of us are total dicks. But we police our own. We won’t let people like Darren Helms hurt anybody.

Things get shuffled, changes in a schedule Avi isn’t privy to. After the debacle in Sarah’s class, they sit in on a high school English lecture that’s indiscernible from any other high school English class in America. The same picking apart of themes and symbolism. The same vacant, sleepy looks on half the students’ faces as the other half passionately discuss the relevance of Octavia E. Butler’s Mind of My Mind. They want me to see all this as normal, he thinks. They want to lull me into forgetting what they are.

At lunch in the teachers’ lounge, Sarah embarrassedly recounts the incident with Darren Helms to the engrossed faculty, all of whom agree that Darren Helms is the worst. There’s debate whether he is the worst currently or the worst ever, with older teachers reaching back in their memories to find truly abhorrent alumni. Whenever Avi tries to ask a question, he’s put off: The headmaster will go over that with you or Mister Bishop will want to discuss that directly. They’ve been media trained, and they’re hewing to it.

Sarah hands them off to Kimani, whose door appears next to the vending machine in the teachers’ lounge. Emmeline looks happy to see a familiar face.

“Have they had you sitting around classrooms all day?” Kimani asks Emmeline.

“It wasn’t too bad,” says Emmeline. “Everyone was nice. Except the boy that wasn’t. I helped play a song in everyone’s heads.” She looks