One (One Universe)

another torturous several minutes of waiting for the map of the school to appear. Through the thick, translucent office wall, something catches my eye. A tall, middle-aged man with glasses and black hair slicked back from his forehead pushes out the door. I swear the faint scent of licorice wafts out after him. He looks just like my organic chemistry professor from Superior High.
    Maybe not everything about Normal High will be awful and unfamiliar after all.
    I wave my wrist under the ID scanner in a variety of positions, but it just won’t register. It’s all I can do not to growl at it. Finally, it beeps its recognition, and I push out through the door as the stilted robotic voice croaks, “Good morning, sophomore Merrin Grey.”
    The hallway teems with students, but I think I see him. Yes. The black hair and those thick-rimmed glasses. That’s got to be him. He’s talking to a petite woman in a navy suit at the end of the hallway, leaning close to her ear, his eyes darting around at the students. They both nod at each other and start to walk down the hall, away from me. She motions toward a door.
    As I get closer, I see the placard next to it reads “Principal Lee.” I push through the crowd, but just as they reach the door, some clumsy kid rams into my shoulder, spinning me around. I don’t even care enough to be embarrassed or yell at the jerk because, when I look up, the door’s closing behind them.
    I pinch my lips together, cursing under my breath. Mr. Hoffman is the one who came and dragged me out of the first horrific day of freshman biology, gave me a test, checked it over in about three minutes, and walked me to his class full of AP organic chemistry seniors without another word. While the other freshmen were trying to impress each other with their superpowers, I was staying behind in his classroom while he graded assignments, building models and generally kicking Orgo’s ass. By the end of the year, I was working from a college textbook.
    Mr. Hoffman’s the one who made me think I could score a spot in the Biotech Hub’s summer internship. Only five kids get to go every year, and I don’t think a One has ever landed a chance.
    I slump against one of the walls and check my schedule on my cuff. Nothing with Hoffman. I’m sure that, whatever he’s teaching, it’s so high level I’ll have to get notes from Mom and Dad and a meeting with the principal just to get me a seat in the class. That is, if I actually did see him. I can’t imagine why he would actually leave the state-of-the-art Superior classrooms to come teach at this dump.
    I pass my locker, number 5637, noting its location. I have nothing to put in it yet and don’t feel like programming the new print-scanning lock Mom slipped in my bag, so I don’t even stop.
    My first class is History: Modern American. I sigh with relief. At Superior High, freshmen take this class, so I should’ve already learned all this stuff. When I click through my reader to find the textbook, though, it’s not AMERICA: PATHWAYS TO PROGRESS , the one we used last year. Instead, it’s AMERICAN HERITAGE AND YOU .
    There’s no teacher’s desk at the front of this classroom. When one of the few adults I’ve seen walks into the classroom, plugs a cartridge into a port on the back wall, and a 3-D projector displays a life-sized image of a teacher at the front of the room, I almost cry with disappointment.
    This year, the weird projected holo-teacher says, we’ll be focusing on American history post-Uranium Wars, but that she wants to go through a brief summary of that thirty-year period before we begin.
     
“Seventy-five years ago, foreign missiles suddenly and deliberately attacked a transport of uranium cores being transported to safe storage in the American desert, triggering the Uranium World Wars. The leakage into Lake Michigan made thousands sick, killing some and fundamentally altering the genetic structures of thousands of others.
“Many of these individuals developed extraordinary powers: for example, super-speed or -strength, control of natural forces, teleportation, or telekinesis. Twenty years later, a diabolical group of five of these mutants, all leaders in their communities, formed a plan to assassinate the President of the United States and overthrow the government. Thankfully, it was stopped before damage was done.
“Never had our nation experienced such a threat from within our own borders.
“Most of the mutant population, some