Chapter 3

The Council who ran the country welcomed the enhanced humans into the society, provided of course, that they abided by the Council's list of rules, many of which paid scant attention to personal privacy and shackled the enhanced humans in lifelong servitude to the Council.

Margarth grimaced as she thought of some of the rules, which had been drummed into them through Community Education classes.

Rule 1. Enhanced Humans must declare their powers to the Council as soon as the powers are apparent. Failure to inform the Council is punishable by death.

Rule 141. Enhanced Humans must be embedded with a tracking device. Removal of the tracking device is punishable by death.

Rule 209. An Enhanced Human must only marry another Enhanced Human.

Rule 217. Any union between Enhanced Humans must be approved by the Council before it is allowed to proceed.

Rule 278. Enhanced Humans must work for the Council and not hold any employment external to that of the Council. Failure to do so is punishable by death.

The rules held special significance for Margarth because on her 16th birthday, she had felt a tingling sensation in her fingertips for the first time. She had arranged to meet Ren at the park that afternoon. Hell, it was her birthday, and she wasn't going to spend it cooped up in school with two periods of Calculus and even worse, three periods of Community Education. As she skulked behind some bushes (cutting classes was a transgression, just like almost anything fun was), she noticed an unkempt individual dressed in threadbare clothes and a shabby cap pulled over his forehead trailing a young girl. The girl, engrossed with the doll which she held tightly in her arms and cooed lovingly to, must have wandered away from her parents. Margarth had earlier noticed a family having a picnic on the grass, and thought she saw the little girl eating sandwiches along with the rest of the family. Faint alarm bells went off in Margarth's head. Why was this scruffy man shadowing the girl? At the same time, a queer sensation came over her fingers and almost by instinct, she lifted them up and pointed them hesitantly at the man. Her prey stumbled and then, like a movie in slow motion, a shiny spot grew increasingly larger on the back of his head and he developed an unsteady gait. The ragged clothes became ill-fitting as his shoulders drooped and his posture took on an exhausted slouch. His pant bottoms pooled around his ankles as he lost inches off his height. He threw up his arms in shock and tried to scream but the decline was inexorable. A defeated old man was soon seen shuffling into the cover of some rain trees.

Thus did Margarth discover her ability to control age. 'Boy, am I going to have news for Ren,' Margarth thought gleefully, spotting him in the distance and signalling madly. It turned out that Ren had his own update to share. Late for school that morning, as he was most days, his mother had handed him a steaming cup of hot chocolate on his way out. Intent on checking the arrival time of the next bus on his phone, he unwittingly loosened his grip on the cup, with the unhappy result that some hot liquid splashed on his wrist. Amazingly, he was not scalded. He experimented with an iced mocha on the way to the park, letting the ice cold beverage run through his fingers. As with the hot chocolate, the temperature of the drink was comfortable and the ice cubes felt like smooth pebbles.

Margarth and Ren broke into excited chatter when they met. Later, when they had calmed down somewhat, and had also shown off their respective abilities in a secluded part of the park, they made a solemn vow to keep their powers a secret from their parents and the Council. They reckoned that the Council had enough Enhanced Humans on their payroll; they would not miss two more. Margarth smiled as she recalled the mounting risks they took — staying out after the curfew, experimenting in abandoned buildings, honing their powers in their bedrooms with the curtains drawn. The Council should be happy that she and Ren were dating, Margarth mused. After all, they were adhering to the spirit of Rule 209.

Margarth forced herself to concentrate on what Bacchus was saying. She heard Ren asking dubiously, "Break into the cloud?" Ren had always been the circumspect one whereas Margarth was the one who would rush headlong into a situation and panic later.

"Why, yes," replied Bacchus. "I'm convinced that with Margarth's admirable code-breaking skills, we'll be able to bypass the multiple firewalls and locate the master database of the Enhanced Humans. The Alternative believes strongly that people should be allowed to lead their lives the way they want. This is a right that should not be taken away by anyone. People may mess up their lives, but they should be given the prerogative to do so." His voice rang with conviction and Margarth looked at him in awe.

"The code to such an important file would have been written by their army of code specialists," Ren derided the proposal. "No offense, darling," he said as an aside to his girlfriend, then turning back to Bacchus, "but how is Margarth going to compete with these people? Code development is their raison d'être!"

"That's where you're wrong, Ren," said Bacchus. "We have this from a reliable source, but it seems that the Council have become a victim of their own success and can't bring themselves to trust humans, preferring to put their trust in technology. The codes to the cloud and database are created with a computer programme and not humans, enhanced or otherwise. Now you know as well as I do that programmes, no matter how good they are, work based on an algorithm. It may be an extremely long and complicated algorithm but there has to be a start point and an end point, after which it has to repeat itself. They can't be truly creative, which is where I think Margarth can help us."

"By reliable source, I take it you mean spy," deduced Ren. "Well, let's hope that the spy doesn't turn out to be a double agent, in which case we're all screwed!" He scowled, his anger at being deemed seemingly less useful to the Alternative than Margarth causing him to lash out.

"Let's take a chance, Ren," Margarth argued. "We're going to get in trouble anyway, with the number of transgressions we've been chalking up. Lead me to a terminal, Bacchus. And may I say, you have a most appropriate name."

"I see you've read the Classics. Just a word of caution, don't bother looking me up anywhere. Like forgotten luggage at airports, I've left my given name behind." There was a sudden air of menace about him, even though the words were uttered in an even tone. Sensing a line which was prudent not to cross, Margarth asked whether the Alternative had their own server.

"Naturally," the man replied, back to his ebullient self. "Come this way." The teenagers followed in Bacchus' wake as they left the room.