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

been picked for this. Even before it happened. Before the Trinity test. I remember putting my hand on the Gadget and feeling it wanted something from me. There was some plan in place that I was part of.” Avi thinks about the IED that took his leg, the feeling that that particular bomb had been waiting for him, that they’d been moving toward each other his whole life. “Planning indicates sentience, the existence of a plan. Why couldn’t the world be sentient, too? I’m not going to stop it by executing every thermic teenager who torches his middle school. It’s not for me to decide.”

“What about the decision to go public?” Avi says. “Why do you get to decide that?”

“I was the one who told them to hide,” Bishop says.

“And they listened?” Avi asks. It’s something he hasn’t been able to make any sense of. These people, these Resonants, have existed for almost seventy years. And in all that time, not one has gone rogue, not one has gone to the press and announced himself. You could argue that Owen Curry had, but Owen Curry only proved the point. He’d blown up twenty-one people, and the public didn’t know about him or that there were more like him.

“I’m going to tell you this because I don’t think you’ll understand it, which makes it safe to say,” says Bishop. “The Hive is like a place, but it’s not a place. It’s also like a conduit through which the energies that provide our abilities pass. It’s not necessarily transparent. That’s not exactly the word, but maybe you get my meaning.” He holds up his drink between himself and Avi so that the Christmas lights behind the bar twinkle inside it. “Light can pass through glass, but it’s bent in its passing. A lens carver knows this and can use the properties of the glass to shape light.”

“You’re right,” says Avi. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I like to think I’ve been a good influence, is all,” Bishop says. “I like to think that I’ve bent our light toward the good.” He lowers his glass. “Any other questions?”

“What’s Emmeline’s ability?”

“I can’t answer that any more than you could have guessed what she’d grow up to be on the day she was born,” Bishop says. “We look at them for hints. We jump to conclusions at each developmental milestone. He walked at eight months, he’s going to be an Olympic runner. She knows so many words already, she’ll be a novelist. But in the end, they turn out to be themselves and we can only sit by and watch. Anything else?”

“Do you have kids?”

Bishop smiles. “Hundreds. Thousands.”

“Why are you paying my wife?” Avi says. He expects it to be a question that stops time, but Bishop rolls over it as if it were nothing.

“I wanted her involved in a way she’d understand,” he says. “Same as you. I made a promise a long time ago to keep the two of you in the fold.”

“A promise to whom?” Avi says.

Bishop tips his glass all the way back, gulping the last bit of gin. His head clicks to the side, and he smiles, contented, then returns to the conversation, staring into the bottom of his glass. “Emmeline.”

“What does that mean?” Avi asks, setting his glass down harder than he intended. Of all the advantages Bishop holds, this one is the most unfair. Avi would trade every other answer to know what Bishop knows about Emmeline. But before his anger can build, he feels a cool wave wash over his brain. It’s as if he’s gotten his answer even though he doesn’t know what it is. It’s the first time Avi is aware of Bishop using his ability on him. It’s like being shoved away from the things you actually think while also being made to feel completely at ease with being shoved. Later he’ll understand what’s been done, and he’ll question every interaction he’s had with Kevin Bishop.

“These glasses are very large,” Bishop says. “The ones I’m used to are half this size. I think I’m a little drunk. Let’s pick this up again tomorrow or next week. I’m assuming we have time.”

“My editors think it should wait until the new year,” Avi says. He’s nagged by something he’s forgotten, a question he meant to ask. “They’re worried if it comes out around the holidays, it’ll read like some hokey Christmas miracle story.”

“These are the editors at the Tribune?” Bishop says.

“The first piece will be in the Trib,” says Avi. “The in-depth stuff will be in The Atlantic. First issue of the new year.”

Bishop slides his glass across the bar and signals for the bill. “That’s good. I like that,” he says. “Beginnings. Fresh starts and that kind of thing. It’s strange, knowing that people out there know about us. Not bad. New.”

The bartender arrives, and Bishop covers their drinks. Avi hasn’t asked him where the money comes from. How he bought a building on 57th and Lexington, how he pays faculty and staff without apparently charging tuition. There are so many questions left.

“What about the academy?” he asks. “Will you keep it hidden?”

Bishop smiles: an old New York grin full of slightly crooked teeth. “I haven’t decided,” he says. “I’m thinking it might not be my decision to make. Have a good night, Avi. Happy holidays if I don’t see you.” He signs the credit card slip and excuses himself, disappearing back into the men’s room and the door that waits for him there.

Kay tells him they’re going to meet her mother out. It’s unusual for Kay to drive, but she plays this off with a half-truth. “You’re too responsive in the snow,” she says. “You start to slide, and you slam the brakes and try to correct. You have to go with it.”

“Fine,” Avi says. He spends the drive fiddling with the radio, trying to find a station that isn’t playing Christmas