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Multiplication Table

Interlude 1 : In the Grip of Paranoia

–K’Mehne Ambuba–

Some of the women in the Border Tribe would call recording and watching everything your son does or reads without you around, a bit weird.

Okay, they called it stalking but the point was that they were wrong.

Her son, Aeon, was  a literal gift from heaven for her. Someone who came to her in her moment of need and kept her from falling apart, both due to the use of her powers and also due to the realisation that nothing she could do would help the world in any meaningful way. Even the work she did for the Wakandan Royal Family could only be counted as furthering the goals of a small particularly wealthy subset of humans.

So, she had to do everything in her power to protect her son from everyone that could harm him, especially from the people who were closely monitoring her and her husband.

The King and the rest of the higher authorities of Wakanda were understandably surprised when her husband cut off every single avenue of the Wakandan Royal Family from maintaining surveillance over their house. It was mutual understanding between them that the surveillance would be a tolerated trade off for taking time off from active duty.
After all, no “gifted” person had ever been discharged from active service this early in their life, certainly not without a debilitating injury at the very least. 

It was only due to her being so far above the strongest of the previous generation and the influence that she wielded, that she was able to safely retire from active duty especially since she knew a lot of stuff that the Royal Family would not want to see the light of day.

She had also been informed by the tribe elder about her husband’s true nature. The fact that he too was a gifted person, a rarity amongst the gifted as he was blessed with not one but two extremely strong powers, making him the strongest person that was ever born in Wakanda.

The King was understandably surprised and more than a little inquisitive regarding the secretive birth of their son but they made sure to block every attempt made by anyone to gather any information about their son. Ofcourse, they didn’t take her warnings to heart and sent some undercover people, along with tasking the nerds to hack all her belongings but a few dead bodies along with a dozen broken ones made sure that they knew she was serious this time.

Ofcourse, even if she was successful in foiling their plans, that didn’t mean that she was not afraid for her baby.

In fact, the incident had raised her paranoia levels to such heights that she refused to let Aeon out of her sight for a few months. It was actually Bangam who convinced her to ease off a little and give Aeon his space, especially since he was showing signs of remarkable intelligence at such a young age, evidenced by his extreme fascination towards books or literature of any sort. It didn’t matter to him what genre or how long the books were, if he saw a book, it didn’t matter what toy he had in his hand, it would be dropped immediately.

Even stuff that should be boring for him, like current events and history, he devoured with gusto. 

She had been worried for a minute there because she thought that her son’s gift was being manifested in terms of enhanced mental prowess rather than the bog standard physical enhancement set that everybody in Wakanda had.

But then, after months of watching over him, she realised that he was just naturally inquisitive and while his vocabulary had gotten advanced enough that she could hold a full fledged conversation with him easily, Aeon had yet to display any physical anomalies that would set him apart from a bog standard baby of his age, well, as standard a baby could be while being a child made up of someone literally divine.

Of late, he was also making repeated requests to set out of the small piece of world they had carved out of the Great Forest, for themselves. She had been vehemently against such an idea from the beginning and denied his requests, citing a different reason each time while also giving out a different concession each time, something that the brat was quick to catch on.

His last request, in particular, pushed her to build him a particularly dangerous jungle gym in their backyard, at her husband’s behest, no less. His reasoning being that it was good for Aeon to exercise his muscles, especially since his powers could end up manifesting themselves that way as well because Bungam was still not convinced that a little bit of early mental growth was the pinnacle of what someone brought to them by such bizarre means could really do.

So, reluctantly, she watched as Bungam, with the help of the house robots, built the Jungle Gym. Many times she had been tempted to argue with them and lower the heights of it but a quick look at Aeon’s excited face had her resolve faltering like a candle flame in the wind.

Ofcourse, once it was built, she had tested the entire thing personally, making sure that nothing would be able to harm her precious son and credit where it was due, Bungam did a really solid job. She literally had nothing to complain about, a fact she detested as it would have very easily allowed her to get some sort of compromise regarding the height of the pillars at the very least.

Alas, Bangum was not a tardy handyman and did the entire job properly so she had to suffer the injustice of watching her son swing around on swings made up of sturdy materials on dangerous heights. Seriously, multiple times, she had to wrestle back control of herself as she found herself at the door, wanting to pull Aeon back in her safe embrace.

..

“Will you please calm down, my dear. Nothing happened to him. He is at the hospital just as a precaution,” Bungam said, trying to maintain a calm facade but the beads of sweat on his forehead were doing him no favour.
So, it was no wonder she was very very mad at Bungam for installing that gym in the first place.

“If it really is nothing, why is my baby boy in the Royal Hospital and not at the Border Tribe Hospital and in the hands of Dr.Kefner whom we both know and trust.” She said while urging the sky car to go even faster, something that was made impossible for her due to the traffic laws laid by the King recently since there has been an exponential growth in their sales.

“Listen, honey, he is fine. I have sent all the reports of the tests they have done on Aeon, to Dr.Kefner and he said  that they all look fine to him. PLus, he is on his way as well. In fact, he should arrive even before you do. Now, will you please stop trying to destroy the accelerate button on the sky ship, you know how expensive they are to repair.”

Her only reply to that was the sound of the button being pushed again and then she cut the call, her mind finally beginning to calm down from the sudden shock it was given when Bungam informed her that Aeon was found unresponsive on the floor of the Jungle Gym by Bungam when he got the alert of Aeon’s  body colliding with something from the sensors installed in Aeon’s wristband. 

There was a reason they hadn't gotten him the Kimoyo beads even when they would have been very much helpful for them as well as Aeon. It was because all the data that the Kimoyo Beads collect is  collected in a central repository that the King can access at his will. Giving Aeon the beads would have only brought him further in the King’s eyesight and that was something they were trying to avoid for as long as possible.

Look where that left them.

With Aeon in the same place that they had been trying so hard to avoid. The King will definitely have access to the reports now and might just have ordered specialised tests for him to see if he was born with the sparks of being gifted. That was precisely why they had been consulting Dr.Kerner and only him because as far as the Border Tribe was concerned, the data was never recorded digitally and as soon as the consultation was over, the physical copies were printed out and the machines are cleared of  all the data of the patients, ensuring confidentiality.

Most of the country would call it regressive and if it was before Aeon, she would have agreed with them but now?

Now she found herself being glad that such a policy existed for her, allowing her the peace of mind that her son would not be thrown to the wolves, especially since she had heard some disturbing rumours about her former division being run by Thala Zaba of all people.

That sadistic bastard would have destroyed her son’s childhood without even losing an ounce of sleep  and she, in turn, would have burned down Wakanda in order to get to him. 

Just what was the King and the Council thinking when they promoted him to lead the division? It was not as if they did not know Zaba’s history with her and his crazy tendency to lose it instantly and pounce on his enemies like a rabid animal only to then regain his clinical thinking and clarity out of nowhere?

She just hoped that he was not present in the same building as her baby boy or else there would be hell to pay.

Word Count - 1700