QUALIFY: The Atlantis Grail (Book One)

CHAPTER SEVEN (draft)

This time the class is paying a bit more attention.

“So,” Mr. Warrrenson picks up one of the weirdo gadgets on the table. “What we’re going to do in the very brief time we have, is learn how to use their technology, their computers, their engines, their mechanisms. We—or better to say, you—won’t know how or why it works, but at least, by the time we’re done here, you will all know how to use it!”

A curly-haired girl raises her hand. “Okay, does this mean we’re going to be singing in this class?” she quips.

“Actually—” Mr. Warrenson smiles. “You’re not too far off.”

And then he kind of launches into a rambling lecture on music theory. In a nutshell—and believe me, even I am a little bored with the thick overload of theory and mega-rambling in this one—in a nutshell, different notes, scales, tones, and progressions of sound waves create real usable energy.

“The Yellow Quadrant,” Mr. Warrenson tells us, “is directly related to sounds and musical notes that are classified as sharp. That’s one of the four sound divisions within their system—with the Green Quadrant representing flat notes, Red Quadrant referring to major musical keys, and Blue Quadrant related to minor musical keys. Supposedly they all have special functions and very important roles and meanings in Atlantean science and physics. But all we need to know is how to make the correct musical sounds at the appropriate times and in the right places.”

So, we are going to be singing indeed.

I feel myself freezing up on the inside. . . .

I haven’t mentioned it previously, but I don’t sing.

And I don’t mean I cannot form notes—I can, reasonably well, otherwise apparently I wouldn’t have passed Preliminary Qualification. What I don’t do is sing for pleasure or for entertainment or for anything. I used to love to sing, when I was younger, a tiny little kid, singing along in delight to her opera singer Mom’s arias and solo repetitions. If I can even remember any of it, I think I was even kind of good at it. . . .

But none of it matters.

Not anymore. Not since Mom got cancer and it metastasized to her lungs, and caused her to stop being able to make the gorgeous mezzo-soprano notes, and forced her to quit her musical career and then stop working altogether. At that time something weird happened to me also. I don’t know what it is, and no, I am not being dramatic or a pretentious jerk.

It’s just . . . something.

So, I don’t sing. My brothers and my sister, sometimes they still sing a little, the way we used to do all together, and they still play their instruments—but I don’t.

And so, as Mr. Warrenson starts explaining Atlantean audio gadgets to us, and then makes us echo the notes he makes in a chorus, demonstrating random levitation and other fascinating mechanical functionality, I keep as still as possible, and barely open my mouth.

This class is going to be hell after all.

* * *

At noon, we break for lunch.

I get up and follow the stream of jostling Candidates downstairs. Some of us stop in the girls or boys dormitory floors to grab our stuff, or a fifteen minute nap, or check our belongings to make sure nothing has been taken from our beds, whatever—not that it would be, considering the immediate threat of disqualification, and all the supposed security cameras (I haven’t seen any beyond ordinary yet, but it doesn’t mean they’re not there).