Sally stood in the middle of the quad in the new world’s research center.
Thousands of people would pass through there each day, especially during lunch. The quad was always busy because it was in the middle of several buildings, and people often had to walk from building to building. There was also no dining area, and many people would sit and eat at the large fountain in the center of the square, or leaning against building walls near it. Sometimes people would have meetings on the quad during a sunny day.
Today was a particularly nice and cool, springlike day. Sally could hear the fountain, and could smell and feel the cleanliness of the greenery of the bushes that kept the quad cool. The bushes sat all around her that balanced the air near the quad. She breathed in the smell of pine. She was finally ready.
Sally focused on everything around her, and slowly closed her eyes, inhaled slowly, and exhaled. She felt her nostrils flare. There must have been at least three hundred people around the quad, and there were many more in the buildings surrounding it. Sally could hear people talking about the things that were important to them. Some people were alone, eating lunch and leaning against walls.
Geoffrey had the hour off, and was about to go outside to take a break when he noticed Sally through a building window. He knew what was about to happen. He could see it in Sally’s eyes.
He saw Sally standing there, quietly, not moving, staring off into the distance. He focused on her eyes. He could see her pupils open, widely. He knew what was happening. She may have been a little girl, but she was a small nuclear bomb just waiting to go off, and he knew, that unless he didn’t find a way to diffuse her, soon it would be too late. But he knew it already was.
He felt as responsible for the situation in as much he held Sally and Sonja accountable. He had failed Sally, the new world, what was about to happen to everyone in the near area, but most importantly, himself. He had not grown as a person in the new world, and he knew he didn’t deserve to be here. He felt that if he was really taking responsibility, he would have been sitting out in the quad with everyone else when this was about to go down. He would have let happen to him, what was about to happen to everyone else.
Sonja should have tried harder. She should have listened. She should have been more empathetic.
No. This wasn’t about Sonja. Geoffrey worked with Sonja to do the job. This was Geoffrey’s fault, and he knew it. People were about to die because of his ignorance.
Not only would his world have to wait another one hundred years or so for its next chance, but he knew he would never forgive himself for what was about to happen.
He put his palms on the window he was looking through to see Sally in the quad, and he slammed on it. “No! No Sally!”
But the windows were triple pained, with an airtight layer. She probably heard nothing.
He knew he couldn’t go out there. It was too dangerous. So he tried again anyway. He raised his hands even higher on the window, “No, Sally! No!”
But he knew he was far too late. He backed away, and left before he would be in danger.
Sally took a deep breath, closed her eyes again, and opened her eyes. In the distance, inside a building she could see a man with a fedora hat on. He was staring at her with a look of dismay, sadness, and failure. He was leaning up against a window in one of the buildings.
Sonja was sitting and having lunch, alone. A lot of people already weren’t too keen about Sonja. She was highly aggressive and abrasive. She cared little about how people felt.
Sally looked back at the man in the window. Then Sonja. Then back at the man. He reached higher on to the window and looked closer through it. He started slamming his hand against the window, and making ‘no’ movements with his mouth. Then he stopped slamming them. Then he tried hitting the window again, still saying ‘no’. He backed away, and then he was gone.
Sally closed her eyes again. She listened to the noises through the breeze, the sounds the of the in-between noise, and then the nothing noises. She felt the lives and needs of those around herself. She opened her eyes and listened to herself slowly breathe out. The world around her had slowed in her head. She could hear and feel the neediness of every person around her. She knew them all intimately, and then she loved them… and then she didn’t. She imagined a circuit board, and reached for a switch on it. She flipped the switch. Her body felt to her like it melted, throughout, as she stood there. Her pupils dilated hard, and her lips became a brighter red, and plumper. In that moment, she was hyper aware of most everyone and everything around her. She knew exactly their needs and wants in life. She wanted to love and hate them at the same time, just as many of them did, about themselves.
One person noticed Sonja leaning against the lower wall that made up the fountain. He walked over to her, picked her up, and threw her into the water. Another person joined in, this time a woman. She held Sonja’s head down in the water for about ten seconds, then she punched the first person who threw Sonja in the water, in the face. The first person grabbed Sonja in the water by the hair and pulled her out and onto the ground like a person might pull a fish onto a small boat.
Sonja was choking up water, but a third and fourth person grabbed her body and face. One of them tore at her face. Sonja was still alive, but, barely, and she was screaming.
Another woman slammed her palm into Sonja’s nose, but sideways, over and over again, and not quickly, but slowly, and repeatedly in a beat, like this lady was under some sort of spell.
The first three people took some blades they were holding for biology and swung at random strangers, cutting them deeply in their gut. Strangely, the people getting cut didn’t try to avoid the blades. They shoved some of those who swung at them in to the water. The water turned red, along with the sides of the fountain from the blood where one person missed it, so that it looked like it was spilling out on the edges of the fountain.
One rather strong man took the head of another woman, and began smashing it against the cement corner part of the fountain until it cracked, but he continued slamming it like he was some sort of machine.
Young Sally stood nearly at near the center of the quad, a tiny, completely calm and clean, breathing deeply, arms aiming downward, and palms, horizontal with the ground. The commotion had not affected her, and her breathing had not shallowed. She was taking deep breathes, and her pupils were heavily dilated as if she was looking at something that wasn’t there. She closed her eyes again, and listened for the non-existent whispers that only she could hear.
Twenty or thirty people tore through the glass doors of the outer quad buildings without opening them. Some of the people were heavily cut up from the glass, but they still continued in. The damage was growing exponentially.
Soon that day, the springlike quad would be covered in red blood. Thousands of people in the quad and inside the buildings would die.
Eventually, Sonja would die. At first, Sally wasn’t too happy about that. She wanted Sonja to suffer more.
In time, Sally would feel guilt, strongly, for what she had done, but it happened slowly at first. Over the years, she wished she would have just put a bullet in Sonja’s head and left it at that. No-one deserved what she had done to them all. Ironically, when she looked back at what she had done, she realized that she had become a product of what she was being taught by many of the people she killed, not to do, and become. She had failed as a Changer. She had become her own worst enemy.
She first decided that the death of her mother was equal to the deaths of all those people she had killed. But why did she believe that? She tried to understand what the checks and balances in that equation would have been. What was her mother worth compared to a hundred other people, or ten thousand people? How was it different than someone else’s mother? How valuable was her mother to a stranger as compared to the value her mother was to her. It all changed depending on the perspective, she decided. The value of any person changed in reference to who values that person. Was the value of people greater when separated per piece than the value of a person, alone? In other words, there is no value you could put on a person or people. Maybe she was still being taught as a Changer right now, and she didn’t know it. Maybe all these people had to die for this lesson.
But as years passed, she couldn’t help but think, why should she have been the one to make that choice? But then, she decided, well, I’m the Changer, if not me, then who? Right? I’m the Changer. I’m the Changer. She kept telling herself. That is why it was all OK. I must not be human. Changers must not be human. That is why.