The Inadequate Experiments: 1. White Noise [Rough Draft]

Part 2; Inequity - 9. Psychosomatic

Calliope’s eyebrows furrowed into a straight line in concentration as soon as we handed her Oli’s phone, making her look almost like Oliver himself. That was another thing that was odd about Calliope; I’d seen Oli’s parents, his little brother Thomas, even photos of Libby. They all looked like mirror images of one another. Yet, when you add Calliope to the mix, with her dark hair and pink skin, the scar from the explosion that caused Libby’s death clawing its way up her arm, she immediately looked like she didn’t belong. The only characteristic connecting her to the rest of the family was her bright blue eyes, but even they were different to a certain degree. I couldn’t help thinking that I had seen those eyes somewhere before; somewhere that wasn’t Oliver or any other member of the Jackson family, yet I couldn’t pinpoint where.

“What did you do to it?” She asked curiously, her eyes scanning every static pixel of the phone screen. “What did you do to it to make it show you this?”

Oliver looked taken aback, as if he hadn’t thought about what would happen if Calliope asked that certain question. “Well…”

“Maybe you can help us understand that.” I said hopefully, going on to explain the whole deal with The Watch Liaise.

“On that screen,” Oliver said, “when Sera looks at it, it flashes on and off. The message. But she’s the only one who can see it.”

Calliope flinched when he mentioned that part of the explanation and I wondered why that was flinch-worthy. Maybe it was some secret Scientist stuff she knew about.

“I could…” she stared at the screen wide-eyed, her expression a mixture of curiosity and what almost looked like… fear. “I could probably program it so the message will reveal it to all of you,” She said.

I found it curious that she said ‘all of you’ instead of ‘all of us’, but following what Oliver had told me, I supposed that was just Calliope. She didn’t see herself like everybody else, and right now she was in Scientist-Mode, setting herself apart even more.

“To be honest,” Oliver said, his voice strained, “I was just wondering if you could fix it.”

“Fix it?” Calliope cried, suddenly looking up from the phone and standing up straight, piercing Oliver with her gaze. “This… this is incredible. Why would I fix it?”

Oliver gaped at his sister. “Because… it’s my phone, Calliope. I can’t go without a phone.”

“Yes, yes,” she said exasperatedly, under her breath, “you’re Oliver Jackson, Hollywood Golden Boy, and you can’t live without a phone.”

“Calliope…” I could see him resisting the urge to have a screaming match with her.

“Luckily for you, I can live without a phone.” She said, leaning across the cluttered table and grabbing a phone identical to Oliver’s before breaking the back of Oliver’s phone – it had melted and fused to the front, almost – and swapping the sim cards before handing her phone to him. “Go for your life, big brother. Nobody texts me anyway.”

“But this won’t have any of my photos. Or my messages. Or anything.” He complained.

She sighed exasperatedly, snatching the phone back off him and placing it screen-down on the table. Five minutes later she had swapped the memory boards of the phones, giving Oliver nothing more to complain about.

“Fine.” He said, his voice still as stiff as ever. “You keep the piece of crap.”

She whipped around as fast as a lightning strike, her hair swirling around her in a dark halo, one strand getting caught on her long eyelashes. “Crap?!” She asked exasperatedly. “This,” she motioned to the phone sitting face-up on the table, “could be the answer to all my problems.”