The Scientist by Sian Webster (top rated ebook readers txt) 📕

Hollywood, 2516 C.E

“Calliope Olivia Jackson, get up here right now – dinner’s ready!”

I groaned, setting the tweezers down on the workbench beside me. “One minute, Dad!” I called back, before picking up my tweezers once more and going back to work.

“Hurry up!” He yelled down the stairs. “And bring your little sister with you. She shouldn’t even be down there with you; you know that.”

I sighed loudly in annoyance, hoping he’d hear. “Yes, Dad,”

I was in the basement of our four-storey house; a place I more commonly referred to as my workshop. Mum and Dad refused to let me experiment upstairs – the furniture was far too expensive and they would never forgive me if I wrecked any of it. It wasn’t like we had over five spare bedrooms that we weren’t using that I could renovate into a better working space than what I had down in the basement, but my parents were adamant; no experiments upstairs.

In the dim light, I could see the smiling face of my younger sister, Libby, sitting across from where I was working. The two-year-old was so fascinated by the things I could do with a few wires, a battery and a handful of scrap metal; I couldn’t wait for her to grow up so I could teach her everything I knew. She had blonde hair that fell in untamed ringlets to her chin, and the same bright blue eyes as me and my two brothers. Every now and then whilst watching me work she would clap her chubby hands in excitement as something sparked or lit up; a reaction that never failed to make me smile.

Another thing Mum and Dad hated was Libby being down here with me whilst I was doing things like this; it was a widely known fact that only licensed Scientists were legally allowed to open up their inventions and fix them. Then again, it was also a widely known fact that I tend not to listen to people’s warnings. They probably hated me tinkering with all the possible things that weren’t supposed to be tinkered with, but I hadn’t accidentally exploded anything yet, so they had no reason to make me stop when it was so clearly something I was good at.

I knew it annoyed them; any normal thirteen-year-old girl is out nearly all day every day, going to the shops and the movies, going to parties and generally growing up far too fast. I stayed home and locked myself in the basement all day, pretending I didn’t exist. At least, unlike normal thirteen-year-olds, there was a method behind my madness. Those “normal thirteen-year-olds” as my parents called them, spent their time at school teasing me because I hadn’t met my Soul Mate yet. I was trying to find a way to make it look like I already found him. If there was a way to make the screen of my watch display those twelve consecutive zeroes I wanted so badly without having to wait three more years, I would figure it out. There was no ‘maybe’, no doubts; I would find a way, even if it was the last thing I ever did.

Just before Dad had called, I had found a way to the controls in the back of my watch. Now, eyes wide, I fiddled around with free wire around the edge of the inset. I needed a passcode. Then a fingerprint. I needed to hack the system; find the passcode, replicate a fingerprint.

I needed to go to the Scientists.

But patience had never been one of my strong suits.

“Can you do it?” Libby asked, her eyes wide.

I looked up at her, a smirk on my face. “Do you even have to ask?”

Returning my smirk, she shook her head. “You’re going to be one of them one day, a Scientist,” she said in awe, “aren’t you?”

“Anything to get out from under Oliver’s shadow.” I said coolly. I reached to my left and grabbed the tiny screwdriver from where I had last left it on the bench, and started working on taking out the screws of the inset.

My brother. Oliver Jackson. Hollywood’s Golden Boy. Singer, songwriter, dancer, actor, model. Four months at number one on the Aria charts. Sold over a million records in the first month. Constantly followed by paparazzi and screaming twelve-to-fifteen-year-olds. My parents didn’t care what I did as long as it didn’t ruin his reputation. I imagined they’d be the same with Libby when she got to my age, and my little brother Josh, who was ten. Nothing really mattered as long as their golden boy Oliver was still rich and famous.

“But…” Libby struggled for words. “He doesn’t make everyone ignore you on purpose,”

I sighed. “I know, Lib, I know. It’s just… hard.”

Libby cocked her head to the side thoughtfully. “If something’s hard,” she said, “it’s normally for a reason.”

I sighed again, then motioned for Libby to come closer and take a look. I had managed to take out all the screws holding the inset of the watch in place. No lasers. No fires. No explosions. Everything anyone said would happen, didn’t happen.

“Ready?” I asked Libby.

She nodded in earnest, her chin resting on her hands that were resting on the table, her face right in front of the over turned watch.

“Ok,” I smiled, reaching out to squeeze her hand before placing the screwdriver back on the bench and reaching once more for my tweezers. Slowly, carefully, I began to work the edges of the inset free.

Then, “Calliope, get up here. Right. Now.”

I jumped.

Then the explosion went off.

That’s how I nearly lost my right arm.

And that’s how I killed my younger sister.

Brooklyn, 2518 C.E

“I don’t see the point of being back here,” I grumbled, opening the car door and clambering out. Nineteen hours in any car would have been torture, but I got stuck in the car with my family who hated me with a passion.

In front of me was the house I grew up in until I was eleven. It looked exactly the same as it did when we left, bringing childhood memories to mind; Oliver and I jumping on the trampoline in the back garden whilst Josh sat in his ball pit throwing plastic balls at us; having splash fights in the swimming pool; stereotypical sleepovers of a ten-year-old girl featuring games of truth or dare and spotlight; a baby girl’s bubbly laugh that could be heard constantly throughout—stop. I threw up a block inside my head. No. I wouldn’t break down again. I couldn’t; I was the strong one.

“Oli wants to go back to school this year, Calliope,” My mum said.

“He could’ve gone to school in Hollywood. Would’ve saved us moving back here.” I mumbled. “I was happy there.”

“Calliope Olivia, will you think about someone other than yourself for a minute?” Mum cried exasperatedly. “We promised Oli one year where he didn’t have to put up with the stress of Hollywood. You know how he gets… This will be good for him, psychologically. Besides, it will help him get over that Clarissa girl. Why he went out with her when they weren’t Soul Mates, I’ll never know…”

“Oliver just wants to have a new lot of teenage girls screaming over him. You know how he gets.” I muttered under my breath.

Mum sighed and hid her face behind her hands. “Calliope, I can’t do this now.” She muttered. “All I’m saying is, this will be good for us all. I couldn’t stand living in that house any longer. Not since…” She broke off, but the ending of her sentence hung in the air between us like a dark cloud of despair.

Not since Libby died.

Not since I killed my little sister and nearly lost my arm as karma. I would do anything to change that; anything to bring her back, anything to change it so that I was the one who died and she nearly lost her arm. Or just so that I was the one who died and she survived perfectly healthy and well. No matter how many times they said it, I knew Mum and Dad would never forgive me for it. It may have been an accident, but if I hadn’t been playing around with the inset of my watch and being impatient, Libby would still be alive. I knew they blamed me for it. They had good reason to; I was the only one to blame. Most nights I woke up in a cold sweat calling out for her, grasping at empty sheets. She was never there, though, and I knew she never would be.

I sighed and turned away from my mother. I couldn’t face her; she looked far too much like Libby. She had Libby’s blonde, bouncy curls and the bright blue eyes that our whole family inherited. She was slim and tall yet still felt the need to wear huge heals the size of every skyscraper in New York piled on top of one another. I never understood why. She always looked ready to walk out into bouts of paparazzi with my Hollywood Golden Boy of a brother, unlike me. Despite the good looks my brother got, I wasn’t anywhere near pretty enough to be the sister of Hollywood’s Golden Boy. I had brown hair that came just past my shoulders – it bugged me a lot because it could never decide if it wanted to be wavy or straight, and the majority of the time, one side would be as straight as a ruler whilst the other was almost in ringlets. I had bright blue eyes and long, dark eyelashes, but anything pretty about me was immediately counteracted by the ugly scar tissue that wound itself all the way up my right arm to my throat. The scar tissue that was my penance for killing Libby.

I looked up to walk around to the back of the car and felt my stomach fly into my throat. “Josh!” I cried, panicking, running over to him. “Hey, Joshy, you might want to pass that here,” I said softly, ruffling his hair.

“Your experiments stuff?” He asked quietly, careful of Mum and Dad hearing; they still let me experiment, but they didn’t like it at all.

I nodded, carefully taking the bag from his grip. “I can’t lose you, too.”

“Hey,” he said, grabbing my hand as I went to walk inside. “On the bright side, we’re closer to the Scientists here. You won’t have to move away if you get a job there,”

I smiled a cold smile, hastily grabbing another one of my particularly dangerous bags from his hand. “Honestly, Josh, I would prefer to move far away from wherever they are.”

“Take me with you,” he whispered.

I smiled again, a real smile that time. “I wouldn’t even think about leaving without you,” I promised him. “I’ll see you later,”

I trudged inside the familiar house; it looked exactly how we had left it. It should have made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but it only brought guilt and nostalgia. Sighing, I lugged my bags upstairs into the bedroom I grew up in