Chapter 1 -- That Sound, Those Tears...

         

Chapter 1 – That sound, Those tears....

         That sound, the sound of a hand coming down on my little sister's face, it stuns me every time.  That feeling, the feeling of my entire body wincing, it happens every time I hear that sound.  The sound of my little sister screaming for help. Those tears, the last tears sliding down her cheek as she stares at me with her big blue eyes begging.  That sight, it always wakes me up.

         

         Brings me back into this world. But why? What does this world have for me now? Fancy cars, beautiful women, money? No, I don't even have that.  This place will lead me nowhere. Too many children, like me. Who have nothing left.  I've been here for too long. I've seen too many children leave, return, and be disappointed numerous times. This is why I've made my decision to make myself the most undesirable child here. Only 3 more years until I could leave this place but unlike the others, I will never return. I have a plan.



         There's Jimmy, my roommate, not very tall, short hair, and dull eyes, not very attractive by any means. It's okay though, he likes it that way. He has been here even longer than I. Something to do with computers, smartest kid I know. We have quite a bit in common, we both lost our families early on. He keeps to himself, spends a lot of time writing out some computer stuff I can't understand. We don't have computers here so I guess that's the closest thing available to him.



         “Hey Jimmy, what are you up to today?” I asked as he was passing by in the narrow hallway.



         “Gotta get more paper, I'm very close to creating an algorithm that will simplify solving advanced mathematical equations. See you at dinner!” Jimmy replied as he quickly spun around returning to his quest for more paper.



         This place, Auschwitz we call it. No, it's not that bad. We chose the name because this place is a prison that only time will allow us to escape.  Because we are all “wrongly” forced to stay here. It rests on less than 40 acres of land with more than half of that outdoors and they cram 2300 of us in here. We work, get a couple of hours of “play time” a day, are given 3 meals, if you can call them that, daily, now that I think about it Auschwitz isn't too far off. The real name of this place, well, what the adults call it, is A. Schwitz “Second Home” Facility, named after it's founder, Alfred Schwitz. Is that what this place is? A second home?



         The only person here that I talk to other than jimmy is Mrs. Finch, but that is really because I don't have the choice. She runs A.S. and has been trying to get rid of me for quite some time now. It never works. She tells them “He's a good kid, well behaved” and “He's been here long enough hasn't he? He needs to be allowed to spend what is left of his childhood before he looses the opportunity”. It never works. They don't care about me, about the fact that I lost my family at a very young age, about how “traumatized” I was.



         “Dinner is now available in the Cafeteria, B wing is to report first. That is all.” Mrs. Finch's secretary announced over the audio system. Jimmy and I were B wing residents but we always eat with A wing because Jimmy has friends in that wing. More computer geeks.



*



         Jimmy was standing in line with his A wing friends when I finally made my way to the cafeteria. They were talking about advancements they made in their “al-go-rhythms” or something. As always I stood next to Jimmy and said nothing.  As always, Jimmy's friends ignored me and made comments about me as if I couldn't hear them but I really just ignored them all. After all, I had wanted people to think poorly of me.



         The line moved slowly and when I finally reached the counter they were down to nothing but mashed potatoes, gravy, and some old macaroni and cheese that looked like it was ordered from some low quality chicken restaurant and left sitting out for a couple of hours. The cheese had a rubbery consistency and a metallic taste.



         “We have to use the values stored in these variables so that the maths remain constant!” Jimmy's friend Albert argued. As far as I could tell he was the second smartest in the group even though he had the tendency to create illogical theories about things of little importance. I always assumed that it was his own little way to entertain his complex mind.



         “No, using those values doesn't work because they are taken from the position of the object in 3d space. That doesn't work because two out of the three variables ...” came Jimmy's annoyed reply.



         These guys go on every day, talking about these “algorithms” . For once I wish they would just figure it out already.



         “Let me see that..” I said grabbing Jimmy's notes. I don't understand much of what is written here but Jimmy tells me that computer programs are all primarily based on logical conclusions. “I think the issue is that you are changing the variables in this thing which is causing the first call to this thing here to produce wrong values, try moving the changes to the thing to just above the first call to that thing that needs new values..”



         “He talks?” Albert asked. “Does anything he said make sense to you Jimmy?”



         “Computer programs are all primarily based on logical conclusions. Toby is the most logical person I know. Even though he knows nothing about computers!” Jimmy said as he snatched his notes back. Jimmy quickly ran the calculations with random values to determine if the objects were manipulated properly with my alterations. Realizing that I was correct, he angrily left the table without finishing his food and his followers.. followed him leaving me there, alone. I can under stand though, I wouldn't want someone to take a puzzle from me and solve it that simply. I would feel inferior.



         That's my thing, puzzles. I love to solve all kinds of puzzles. Word searches, Sudoku, Crossword Puzzles, if it's out there, I can solve it. In fact, Sometimes I read news articles about unsolved murder or robbery cases and send letters to the authorities with my own personal insights. I send them anonymously because I'm sure they wouldn't except them if they knew who they were coming from. I remember watching a press conference on T.V, before mine was taken away, about a “mysterious letter writer” who's insight led to the capture and conviction of a cereal killer. They gave the mysterious writer a police badge as a reward. The entire time I watched the Detective in charge of the case twist and turn in frustration.



         After dinner I went to the commons room, it's like a living room that occupies twenty families at a time, and grabbed the Sudoku book that is available to the public. People have the tendency to leave puzzles unfinished and mark the pages so they could return later to solve them. Most of the time, they return to be frustrated with the fact that their puzzles have been solved.



         I went back to my room to fall asleep and Jimmy was their, sitting on his bed staring at the completed algorithm. It was than I realized just what solving the algorithm had done to him. That puzzle was all that was keeping him thinking. Now has nothing left to solve.



         “Hey Jimmy, what's next? Time travel?” I asked as I entered. He didn't laugh, didn't say anything, he just stared at his paper.



         Realizing that I wouldn't be able to sleep, mostly because of the images still fresh in my head from the previous night, I threw some pillows on my bed, covered them with a blanket, and announced to Jimmy that I wouldn't be returning for the night. Again, no response.



         I left and hid in my usual place, outside in my favorite corner of the “play area”, behind a dog rose bush that no one ever went behind, not even the evening guards. This was my favorite spot because it was small, only enough room for me. And I could see the stars. A. Schwitz is an under funded facility and as such, cannot afford outdoor lights for the night time, not that it would matter because we were all supposed to be asleep anyway. The lack of lights made it significantly easier to see the inhabitants of the nighttime sky. Once I even saw mars, at least, I think I did, there was no way to be sure.



         Tonight was worse, I couldn't even close my eyes without seeing hers staring back at me. I wish it would have stopped that night, wished that hand would have hit her just one less time. Things would be different now. I would have her with me, in my arms. But there is that part of me that I can't shake. That part of me that believes that they deserved it. That if they wanted it to stop they could have just done what “he” said. It wasn't too much to ask of “him”... was it?