Chapter 2

“Zuma, jump!”

The tawny, golden-eyed cat blinked, yawned slowly, stretched, and rolled onto its back.

“Well, it doesn’t seem to work on cats,” Angelina concluded, stroking her pet’s fur to a rumbling contented purr. “Not surprising, really.”

I nodded. “Dogs next?”

“The Nielsens have two. Let’s see if they’re in the back yard.”

We hurried outside.

The tan boxer and pitbull sat on the back lawn together, panting, tails wagging, looking at our faces over the fence.

“Up! Go play!” They took off with a happy yip, weaving around each other.

Angie lowered herself carefully from the fence. “So it works with dogs. But only with commands they already know.”

“Not much better than anyone else with a strong voice, really.” I was curiously disappointed.

“Have you tried it on yourself?” Angelina asked as we walked back to her patio.

“You mean ... telling myself to do something?”

“Yeah.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

Angelina rolled her eyes. “Of course not. Well, try now.”

“Okay.”

Angie took her place on the iron chair and waited. “Well?”

“I – I’m a little scared.”

“Now you know how it feels for me. Go on.”

“Okay.” I turned away from her – we had determined that the command effect worked best if the listener was directly in front of me, and I didn’t want Angie to be affected – and spoke out loud. “Jump once.” Simultaneously, a thought crept in my mind: don’t jump.

Nothing happened: I didn’t feel the slightest compulsion. I turned back. “How about you?”

“I kinda hopped a little,” she admitted. “I think you might be getting more powerful.”

“Then why wouldn’t it work on me?”

Angie shrugged. “Sounds are different in your head, I guess? The same way those voice recordings we made in media class sound strange. Your voice doesn’t sound the way to you it does to other people.”

“Maybe.”

One thing that remained unknown to us was how long the effect of a command might last: we were both scared that the Nielsen’s dogs would play forever in the snow-dabbled yard until they dropped from exhaustion, and kept running outside to check on them. But after a few hours both dogs appeared to forget the command, and padded inside their heated outdoor kennels to sleep.

Compelled by my voice, Angelina spent an hour trying to balance a pencil point-first on her fingertip, experiencing what she later described as a crushing sense of disappointment when it inevitably toppled over, which would immediately be followed by another compulsive attempt to balance it.

I could leave Angelina’s house, return to my room, and watch her continue at the task from my dormer window, her concentration unbroken. We also found out that – as I’d experienced with the elderly man in the library – my command voice didn’t work through electronics like hearing aids or phones. Something about their diminished audio clarity, Angie guessed.

By then, both of our parents were calling us for dinner.

Later that evening I texted Angelina from the warmth of my room.

Thanks for today, I know it’s strange. But I really need your help.

I only waited moments before her reply.

“Strange” doesn’t even. More tomorrow?

Yes. You have tests in mind?

Yes! We’ve barely started.

I spent some time that evening researching, listening to audio samples of significant speeches from world leaders. I heard traces of what I felt were close to the right tones, but never quite.

Looking back through history, I was pretty sure Alexander the Great had what I did: how else could one man have inspired thousands to march from northern Greece to India through two decades of continuous war? Perhaps also Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion in China.

Not exactly great role models.

Deeply troubled, I went to bed. Eventually, I slept.

The next day was Sunday. That morning, Angie presented me with a thick school notebook.

“We’ve been going at this all...” she waved her hands. “Mekarkeba. Good science is good observation. We haven’t even been taking notes.”

I opened the notebook to the first page. At the top, in her neat, precise handwriting, was a short hypothesis about one aspect of my control ability, followed by a protocol for testing.

I leafed through the book. There were at least a dozen more pages of proposed tests. “You’ve made me your new science experiment.”

Angie grinned. “I guess I have.”

“Alright. Where do we start?”

It wasn’t just commands: Angelina’s first formal experiment revealed that suggestions would work as well. But they weren’t as effective, and their effect tended to wear off quickly. Questions were tricky: ordered to tell the truth, Angie would answer with what she believed to be true; her responses did not necessarily reflect reality. Phrasing was vitally important.

By Sunday evening we were satisfied that the command tone wasn’t quite my regular speaking voice, but a very slight pitch down, easily achieved if I concentrated on my throat. I was intensely relieved by that discovery: I could live a normal life, if I chose to.

Returning to the social churn of school – which friendships had broken up, what meme was hot now – only highlighted how much things had changed over the weekend. Angie and I now shared a vast and terrible secret, a knowledge that made everything else appear mindlessly trivial by comparison. Classes that I had tolerated before suddenly seemed utterly pointless, the teachers capering in front of a sea of rolling eyes and jabbering mouths.

Angie and I didn’t particularly fit into any cliques; as a result, we often took lunch together in a quiet corner of the school, just outside the library, my oversized frame hunched into one corner. I tried explaining how I felt. Angie listened carefully before descending into silence, thinking.

“Do you think the world would be happier if everyone knew what you can do?” she said finally.

“No. They’d be terrified, probably. I’d be gagged and wheeled around like Hannibal Lecter.”

“And we’re not going to tell them. So you can’t blame them for not knowing.”

“Of course.” I felt stupid even as I said it: Angie had a way of stating things that made conclusions obvious.

“And as for classes ... you could get straight A’s by speaking to the teachers. But that doesn’t mean you would actually know anything. You’d only be fooling yourself.”

I nodded reluctantly.

“If anything, it means that you have to study harder,” she said.

“Huh? Why?” Angie had always been a much better student that I; the fact that she had been advanced two grades years ago allowed us to take classes together now. She was always gently pushing me to work harder, firmly believing I was not living up to my own potential. I wished I could see myself as she did.

“People always want to take the easiest path, Joshie. This power – “ she paused. “It’s going to tempt you to take everything. That means you have to fight it. Do the hard things by yourself. So you don’t become that monster.”

So I started to. Angie was right: the tone in my voice couldn’t make me a better person. It wouldn’t make me smarter or stronger. It could only give me power. But to use that power – to know how and when it might make a difference - I had to be better than I thought I could be.

That doesn’t mean I wasn’t tempted. Every day presented a dozen tiny interactions where it would have been so much easier to simply get my way.

The worst was sports. Due to my size – and, I suspected, more than a bit of casual racism – coaches at school were constantly encouraging me to sign up for teams and tryouts. But I didn’t enjoy sports; most team activities bored and irritated me. Still, PE was a required part of every week, and this week it was basketball.

We were playing in the high school gym, and it was hopeless. The other side had Jimmy Whelan, a lanky, naturally gifted athlete slightly shorter than me, but much faster. While I threw myself back and forth on the sweat-slick pine, Jimmy whirled and dodged, spun and threw with uncanny accuracy, draining three-pointers time after time.

I didn’t begrudge him any of this. I detested trudging back and forth on the court, waving my arms ineffectually as I gasped for breath, but I kind of admired Jimmy’s skill and grace.

He problem was, Jimmy knew he was good. And he reveled in it. Each fresh point on the board was celebrated with a crowing dance and a series of high fives with his team; each missed throw from our side was greeted with a smirk and a snide comment. He was arrogant, cocksure, and annoying, and I yearned to take him down a peg.

And at the tip-off, I realized that I could. Facing him, drenched in sweat, all it would take was a sentence: You’re going to miss the next five shots you try to make. It would fit in perfectly with the constant trash-talk in the gym. Jimmy’s confidence would be shattered; he’d probably quiet down, and I could get through PE period.

The words were on the tip of my tongue when I looked sideways. On the other side of the gym, Angie was playing with some other girls, her dark eyes looking at me. It was as if she could see inside me: all the frustration, the anger, the temptation. And she kept her gaze leveled at me.

I looked away, ashamed. Missed the tip-off. And lost the game, fifteen minutes later.

I knew what that gaze had been saying. You can’t make yourself better by making other people worse.

We met after school that day. Mercifully, she didn’t mention the game.

The afternoon’s experiment was about distance. By having Angelina step a little further away after each command, we worked out that my voice was effective to about ten meters, at least on a playfield covered in snow. I could stretch the command effect a little further if I raised my voice, but as I did so the tone wavered and became harder to sustain; when I shouted, it fell off almost entirely.

Angie let me use my power on her mother the next evening, just once, when I told her to pirouette in the kitchen. The response was a blank, confused stare. “Sorry, Joshua?”

From that, and testing a few control words in Arabic, we determined that a command had to be provided in a language that the listener understood. Clear pronunciation in the speaker’s native language was important; tone, doubly so.

“That means,” Angelina said quietly as we studied together in the dining room that evening. “You can control about 20% of the world’s population.”

“Hey, roach!” I heard the yell before I rounded the corner.

It was nearing the end of the semester. Angie’s tests and experiments had continued while we studied for exams. We were both fairly certain that my talent was growing as I matured, but our explorations had been limited by the need for secrecy.

“Hey, you fuckin’ terrorist.” Another voice, louder and more aggressive. “Anyone tell you you look like a burnt biscuit?”

There were three of them. Older kids. They’d already cornered Angie between some lockers and the wall, pushing in close, taunting. Angie had her head down, clutching her schoolbooks tightly against her chest.

“Fuckin’ fugee.” One of them raised a hand. Students scattered around them, pushed by a wake of danger.

“Hey!” I shouted, striding forward.

They turned as one. Muscled up. Three kids who had been riding Angie as long as I could remember.

I didn’t enjoy fighting. My size meant that a lot of potential schoolyard fights were over before the first punch was thrown. I knew I could take on any one of them. Two, if I had to. But the three of them, together, would probably kick my ass.

“Leave – “ I coughed. Something was stuck in my throat.