A Grand Experiment

Prompt: All people have a rank of their intelligence. The top 10 are incredibly famous, living spectacular lives. One day an expedition sent to the middle of nowhere meets a mysterious person living completely isolated from society. What's more, over their head is a glowing number. #0

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The house was average. The most average thing the team had ever seen. White, black trim. Shutters on the windows, the decorative kind that don’t actually close. Bushes grew under the front window. There was even a little patio in the front with a wrought-iron railing and three steps to get to the door.

After much deliberation, Stevens was deemed the one to go press the doorbell to the house that should not by any reasonable stretch of the imagination have been there. He walked up those three steps like he was going to the executioner, with much backward glances over his shoulder, making his Intelliscore – an admirable number in the top twenty percent – bobble back and forth. His finger hovered an inch from the doorbell – illuminated from behind, a generic orange-yellow bar on a white panel – before he pressed it.

A simple “ding dong” echoed back from within, and was soon followed by a female voice.

“Hang on, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Stevens turned back to look at the rest of the team, a panicked look on his face that the team returned with much shrugging and looking to one another. What if she was armed? What if she had a big dog or something? What if she was one of those people who could talk for hours without ever taking a breath, trapping you in a conversation about her left toe that had no exit? The team was only there to survey the woods, not to talk to crazies in cookie-cutter development houses that…now that they looked, wasn’t even connected to the power lines.

The door swung open and Stevens leapt back, nearly losing his balance on the edge of the patio. A serious-looking woman stood framed in the doorway, her long hair done up in a tidy braid pinned at the back of her head. Black-rimmed glasses drew rectangles around her eyes. She didn’t look crazy. In fact, she almost looked like she could be a member of their team if she put on a climbing harness. The pale white Intelliscore above her head was unreadable against the white door.

“You are not the pizza guy,” the woman said as she observed the lot of them. She crossed her arms and stuck out a hip, an action that made her look like a teenager instead of a middle-aged woman. “What are y’all doing here?”

“We’re surveyors, ma’am,” McMurdoch replied. “And we’d like to ask the same of you. This doesn’t seem like…” He trailed off, trying to find the right words.

“Like a place anyone should be living?” she finished for him. “Yeah, that’s because it’s not. This house –” she slapped the siding “– really has no right being here.”

The team exchanged bewildered glances. Maybe she really was crazy.

“Look, I can see y’all are confused, and I bet y’all’d like to take a rest and have some water, yeah?” the woman said. She waved them into the house. “I’m not a hoarder or a serial killer. Y’all don’t gotta worry. Come on in, and leave your shoes by the front door, all right?”

She turned and disappeared into the house. The team hesitated for a moment, Stevens looking like he might pass out. He peeked inside and, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, shrugged and went in. The rest of the team followed suit, awkwardly removing their boots and lining them up beside the woman’s three pairs of identical sneakers.

Inside, the house met all expectations. Comfortably out-of-date print on the couch and easy chair, generic art on the walls, an upright piano just to the side of the window. But once they turned the corner, the team froze.

Beyond the house’s average living room was an array of computer screens and towers to rival – no, far outstrip the most powerful data processing centers of the world. Thousands of lines of code flashed across the screens faster than any of them could read. McMurdoch turned around to look at the living room again, then back to the computer screens. It was like being in two places at once.

“Have a seat,” the woman ordered gently, and the ten men and women all sank into various chairs around the room as she passed out glasses of ice water.

It was then that they all saw it at the same time: the woman’s Intelliscore was zero.

She noticed them looking as she settled before the computer array.

“Yup, it’s real,” she said. “I’m the zero.”

“But – but how?” Van de Waal spoke up. “That would make you smarter even than – than –”

“Everyone,” the woman jumped in without a hint of bragging. “That’s me.”

“How?” Stevens parroted.

The woman extended her arms, indicating the computers around her.

“Isn’t it obvious? I wrote the code. The Intelliscore was my design. The most ambitious thesis project ever designed: a multi-generational study to observe how visibly ranking people by intelligence changes society. And I do believe it has been a massive success.”

“Wait,” Liu said, “did you say thesis project?”

The woman nodded, absently keying in a few lines of code.

“Been at it for a few hundred years now, yes. But I think I’ve just about got enough data to go back.”

“Back? Back to where?” asked Stevens.

“The simple explanation is a parallel universe. The complicated explanation…well, let’s just say it would take a few years.” Her eyes flicked between the Intelliscores before her. “Fascinating.”

“I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” McMurdoch said. “If this is all a thesis project, is any of it…real?”

The woman gave him a magnanimous smile.

“Of course not, dear. The numbers are made up.”

The team erupted in questions. The woman just sat there, taking them all in, not saying a word until they quieted by themselves.

“Oh, haven’t you ever noticed that some people seem far beyond their Intelliscore?” she asked them. “Thad Wright, he’s barely in the top fifty percent, but he’s ranked number three. It’s amazing that no one ever comes out and states that all his good ideas actually come from his employees. And Mensa! What a racket – most of the people there never would’ve made it back before the Intelliscore, not that Mensa ever did anything useful to begin with.”

The woman stopped, then shook her head.

“Well, anyway. It looks like you’ve all finished your water. Perhaps it’s time you’re all on your way.”

“What’s to stop us from spreading this information when we leave?” Van der Waal demanded as she shepherded them toward the door.

The woman grinned her serene smile one last time.

“My dear, who would believe you?”