Sole Survivor

feet of the point of intrusion.
        Near the geographical centre of these peaceful acres is the orphanage, a cheerless three-story brick structure that resembles a hospital. Forty-eight children currently reside herein, every one below the age of six-though some appear older. They are all residents by virtue of having been born without mothers or fathers in any but the chemical sense. None of them was conceived in love, and none entered the world through a woman's womb. As foetuses, they were nurtured in mechanical wombs, adrift in amniotic fluid brewed in a laboratory.
        As with laboratory rats and monkeys, as with dogs whose skulls are cut open and brains exposed for days during experiments related to the central nervous system, as with all animals that further the cause of knowledge, these orphans have no names. To name them would be to encourage their handlers to develop emotional attachments to them. The handlers-which includes everyone from those security men who double as cooks to the scientists who bring these children into the world-must remain morally neutral and emotionally detached in order to do their work properly. Consequently, the children are known by letter and number codes that refer to the specific indices in Project 99's genetic-profile library from which their special abilities were selected.
        Here on the third floor, southwest corner, in a room of her own, sits ATX-12-23. She is four years old, catatonic, and incontinent. She waits in her crib, in her own wastes until her nurse changes her, and she never complains. ATX-12-23 has never spoken a single word or uttered any sound whatsoever. As an infant, she never cried. She cannot walk. She sits motionlessly, staring into the middle distance, sometimes drooling. Her muscles are partially atrophied even though she is given manipulated exercise three times a week. If her face were ever to be enlivened by expression, she might be beautiful, but the unrelieved slackness of her features gives her a chilling aspect. Cameras cover every inch of her room and record around the clock, which might seem to be a waste of videotape-except that from time to time, inanimate objects around ATX-12-23 become animated. Rubber balls of various colours levitate and spin in the air, float from wall to wall or circle the child's head for ten or twenty minutes at a time. Window blinds raise and lower without a hand touching them. Lights dim and flare, the digital clock speeds through the hours, and a teddy bear that she has never touched sometimes walks around the room on its stubby legs as if it contains the mechanical system that would allow it to do so.
        Now, come here, down to the second floor, to the third room east of the elevators, where lives a five-year-old male, KSB-22-09, who is neither physically nor mentally impaired. Indeed, he is an active redheaded boy with a genius-level IQ. He loves to learn, receives extensive tutoring daily, and is currently educated to a ninth-grade equivalent. He has numerous toys, books, and movies on video, and he participates in supervised play sessions with the other orphans, because it is deemed essential by the project architects that all subjects with normal mental faculties and full physical abilities be raised in as social an atmosphere as possible, given the limitations of the Institute. Sometimes when he tries hard (and sometimes when he is not trying at all), KSB-22-09 is able to make small objects-pencils, ball bearings, paper clips, thus far nothing larger than a glass of water-vanish. Simply vanish. He sends them elsewhere, into what he calls “The All Dark.” He is not able to bring them back and cannot explain what The All Dark may be-though he does not like the place. He must be sedated to sleep, because he frequently suffers vivid nightmares in which he uncontrollably sends himself, piece by piece, into The All Dark-first a thumb, and then a toe, and then his left foot, a tooth and another tooth, one eye gone from a suddenly empty socket, and then an ear. Lately, KSB-22-09 is experiencing memory lapses and spells of paranoia which are thought to be related to the long-term use of the sedative that he receives before bed each night.
        Of the forty-eight orphans residing at the Institute, only seven exhibit any paranormal powers. The other forty-one, however, are not regarded as failures. Each of the seven successes first revealed his or her talent at a different age-one as young