Free Beacon 23: Part Five: Visitor by Hugh Howey Page B

nav beacon. I sit still and concentrate before I answer. How am I feeling? Stressed out? Depressed? Mellow? Content? I want to get it right. I’m trying to prove a point here. I’ve been trying to prove it for over a week.
    I rest my head against the dome of the GWB, which has always relaxed me in the past. I’m supposed to guess if Claire has the power to the dome on or off (and yeah, we only do this when there’s no traffic passing through). She keeps the results tallied, won’t tell me how I’ve fared thus far, doesn’t want me to have any feedback. Claire contends that I’m imagining the effects of the GWB on my brain, says she doesn’t feel anything when she sits in the same spot. But I know I do.
    “The power is . . . on,” I say, giving her my answer. “I think. I’m pretty sure.”
    “How sure?” She makes a note on her tablet.
    “It’s . . . there are confounding variables.”
    “Like?”
    “You,” I tell her. And it’s true. Just being around her, I can feel my pulse race less, my breathing grow deeper and more relaxed, my limbs feel free of the trembles and shakes.
    Claire leans over and kisses my cheek. “I think that’s enough for today,” she says.
    “So how’d I do?”
    She laughs at me for asking. Like I should know better. Cricket burrows her head into my hand, reminding me that I’ve stopped scratching her. I resume. “I swear I can feel the difference,” I say. “I can tell when it’s on. It feels so soothing.”
    Claire puts the tablet away. She takes a deep breath, like she’s contemplating something. Then she turns to me, her guise suddenly serious. “I believe you,” she says. “I do. I’m starting to believe you. I’m just curious if it’s really the GWB or something else.”
    “Like . . . you think it’s all in my head?” I touch the rock I wear around my neck, which I thought for a while was an alien life form capable of communicating with me. I even named the guy Rocky. Ever since a cargo out of Orion bound for Vega splashed into a trillion pieces across my asteroid field, I’ve had a pretty loose grip on reality. Looser than normal, I guess I should say.
    “I don’t know.” Claire bites her lower lip. “I guess I just know the spectrum the gwib works on, and they’ve been tested like hell to make sure they don’t have any biological effects, otherwise we wouldn’t let you all come up here while they’re running and even get close to them—”
    “Maybe there’s something wrong with me ,” I say.
    Claire nods. “Maybe.” Somehow she misses the very loud and obvious cast from my rod as I go fishing for a compliment, or for reassurances. Or hell—I’d be happy with a little bit of a pause before acknowledging that, indeed, there might be something wrong with my head.
    And then it hits me like a frag grenade with its fuse delay set to max. I finally get that she’s sharing with me the results of our tests, that she’s admitting I’ve been getting them mostly right.
    “So I’ve been scoring pretty good?” I ask. Otherwise, why would she be worried about me?
    Claire bites her lip.
    “How good? Have I gotten many wrong?”
    Claire glances at her tablet. She’s back to biting her lip. There’s no way she’d worry something was wrong with me unless I’m nailing it better than chance would dictate. Something statistically significant. I reach for the tablet. “Can I see? Please. C’mon, Claire.”
    And she can see that it’s important to me. Cricket licks my arm as I lean over and take the tablet from her. Claire lets it go. There’s a spreadsheet on the screen. I scroll up, seeing all the check marks from our past dinner dates, and it takes a moment to see where the Xs would even go. Because there aren’t any. I’ve been right every time.
    I feel an immense sense of relief. I might be crazy, but I wasn’t wrong. I’ve always known the GWB messes with my head, and I’ve always assumed it messes with everyone’s head, but Claire