The Prodigy Project

Being a child prodigy does weird things to you. Your sense of perspective gets messed with constantly as soon as the label is attached to you. Once you're old enough to realize what it means, it's an unending tug-of-war for your identity.

Parents often have it worse. My parents went way into debt to enroll me in an elite college prep boarding school, you know, the kind where future Senators and military flag officers go. The kind where the campus looks like Texas A&M and the extra-curriculars include a summer glider school. The kind where you have to be careful to even admit you went to depending on the crowd.

My specific area of "prodigy" was art, though I was always one of those kids who sped past their peers academically in almost all subjects (in my case, chemistry was my weak point. I didn't and still don't get it at all.) I was on the debate team, chess club, etc. My parents wanted to send me to a conservatory, though that would mean even more debt.

I realize I haven't exactly painted a picture that invites pity, but in retrospect I don't think all the pressure was good for me. It certainly wasn't good for my parents. I suppose in the end it all worked out for the most part, but there's one experience from this setting that makes me uncomfortable to think about to this day.

Junior year was the point where all the students at my school were supposed to start finalizing our goals for the future. We spent a lot of time meeting with college and company recruiters. During that time we were also bombarded with notices of various opportunities related to our specific skill sets. I was given a lot of fliers for various summer art programs, for example, and we all got materials for various "leadership" programs of the type that cater to rich kids.

It was in this hyper-competitive environment that I was introduced to the Zodiac Institute. When the juniors were invited to take a "personality test"after school I almost didn't find it worth my time. I was juggling a lot of these different "opportunities" and I horded every moment of free time I could get after school. But the constant pressure I was under to excel demanded that I never let a chance at success pass me by, so I decided to see what this personality test was all about.

So I got the test proctored for me at our testing center (yes, our high school had a large exam center of the kind normally only found at colleges). Of course, it turned out to be more than a personality test, it was a full intelligence test in all but name. It was stranger than an IQ test or SAT, however. Questions involved math problems where the rules of arithmetic were change upfront, short essay questions that involved interpreting very obscure literary themes, and visual puzzles that literally hurt to look at. It was all so weirdly esoteric that I finished the test convinced I had done very poorly.

There were a fair number of normal personality and career interest questions as well, though. Well, normal except for the fact that the questions tended to envision loftier goals than a normal career interest inventory would. Questions such as "Would you rather be the CEO of a large company or a federal politician?" for example.

The test was all paper and pencil. Not even our school had computer testing, for this was during the early 1980s.

Two weeks later I received the results. I had by that point almost forgotten about the test. The document was handed to me during our home room period by one of the students who had the volunteer "job" of delivering stuff.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had not done poorly as I had anticipated, and in fact had placed in the top percentile of those who had taken the test.

Some time later I was called to the principal's office and informed that the Zodiac Institute had invited me to submit a portfolio of my artwork. I agreed, now growing intrigued as to what this institute was all about.

In addition, they wanted me to make detailed drawings of various scenes described in text. The scenes ranged from rush hour traffic over a bridge to massive battles. There were also prompts to draw vaguely described character portraits, such as "a devious but charismatic man."

It was the most fun I'd had drawing in a while. I submitted the portfolio to the assistant principal who would give it to the Institute representative.

Next was a geopolitics exam. I was informed that I would have two weeks to prepare by researching. With the Web 1.0 still a few years in the future, all I had to go on were almanacs, encyclopedias, and periodicals. Luckily, our school library was well stocked and had all the latest editions.

The test was easier than I expected. There were questions about the Vietnam War, the recent Falklands campaign, the current stages of the Cold War, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, etc. However, much of it was just naming people and places, and most of it was multiple choice. There was also a blank world map for me to fill out as many countries as I could.

I didn't hear again from the Zodiac Institute for several months. During that time I was up to my neck in various projects and studying. A few weeks before finals, I got another letter from the same messenger girl. I was next invited to apply for the Zodiac Institute's summer leadership program via essay application. The essay prompt was simple enough: how would I change the world?

I came up with something about changing the world through public art projects and programs and sent it in. I got a letter some time later informing me that I had been selected as an alternate for the program.

Fate has a funny way of working. It could have ended there. I could have remained an alternate, gone to some other summer activity, and possibly even forgotten about the weird Zodiac entrance tests by this point in my life.

That's not how things turned out. I was not selected for any of the other programs I applied for that year (perhaps I had aimed too high for all of them, given that they were all programs that catered to students from "elite" schools), and one student, for whatever reason, could not make it to the leadership school.

Did he or she get selected for another program with an overlapping time commitment? Did something come up in his or her personal life? Who can say, but I have not stopped wondering since that summer. The opportunity thus became mine, and I accepted. The die was cast.

That summer, dozens of students from my school, and many thousands more across the nation, went to extra-curricular programs. Band camps, trips to the US capital, service academy seminars, you name it. They'd come back with stories, memories, and maybe some new friendships. My experience would be different.

They sent me a package, a single book which was to be my sole reading material prior to the activity. It was a primer text on critical theory from the 1950s. Pretty bizarre for a high school program. Pretty bizarre overall.

They arranged first class plane tickets for me to fly to their location. The flight was to Dallas, where I was to meet them and be transported to wherever the thing was being held. No exact address.

I'd flown once before, for another summer activity the last summer. This would be my first time flying first class though.

There's no point in describing the flight except for the fact that I ended up being seated next to another kid who was going to the same activity. Turned out he was a math prodigy. He'd done the same weird admission tests as I had, except the last one for him was to do complex math problems by hand.

He didn't know anything more about the Zodiac Institute than I did. We spend a lot of time speculating. Like me, he was from an elite high school, a Jesuit school in his case. Like me, this was just one of many activities he had been recruited or applied for.

When we landed at DFW, it was still early in the afternoon. We were greeted by someone holding a sign with our last names, who was apparently hired by the Zodiac Institute but not actually a member. He couldn't tell us anything about the leadership program and was just there to help us with our stuff and escort us to the next terminal. Apparently we were supposed to fly again to someplace else. That was not disclosed to us in the itinerary we were given.

We met some other kids in the waiting area who were all booked for the same activity. There were maybe a dozen when we got there but more continued to trickle in over the next few hours until there were exactly 40 of us in total. Talking with each other, we quickly learned that our two things in common were that we were all upperclassmen and that we were each a prodigy in one or more areas. Most of us were also from elite prep schools like myself, but not all. There was a homeschool kid there who said he had been recruited for this activity after winning some arcade tournament, this being a time when such things were first becoming really popular. His area of prodigy was computers and he wanted to be a video game designer, again, this being a time when not many kids could say they knew computers.

There were also three or four of these sign holders who were apparently also there to be chaperone over us, although they pretty much let us do whatever we want until it was time for us to board our next flight.

As the group grew larger, it became progressively harder to mingle. I drifted in and out of the smaller social groups that formed, spreading out to eat at the food court or watch the planes taking off and landing, which were pretty much the only two things to do really.

Our plane didn't arrive until the late evening, a DC-6 bearing the brand of a now-defunct charter airline. That really should have been the first major sign to me that something was off. The admission fee my parents paid for this thing had been pricey, but it wasn't that pricey. Not enough to cover a charter flight and still have enough for whatever our rooming arrangements would be.

Our chaperones led us into the turboprop, letting us all choose our own seats. I sat with the kid who had accompanied me on my first flight, aisle seat.

I remember being really uneasy as we taxied to the runway. We didn't have cell phones, and I'd only had a brief conversation with my parents over a pay phone at the terminal letting them know I was flying again, which they seemed confused but not alarmed by. Where were they taking us that required them to charter a DC-6?

As we launched into the night sky, I had the feeling that I'd gotten into something I might regret. I began wishing the kid I was subbing in for was here instead of me. Our chaperones had gone back to the terminal without telling us where we were going, and there was no one else on the plane besides us and a single stewardess.

I was lulled to sleep by the hum of the turbines and woke up what felt like minutes later, though my seatmate said it had been about two hours according to his watch. We were preparing to land.

We didn't get off at another passenger terminal. Instead, we sat on the apron for about 30 minutes and then were taxied into a hangar illuminated by overhead lights, where we sat inside for another 30 minutes with the hangar door open before deboarding, I guess to make sure the engine fumes were aired out or something.

I could barely see anything out the hangar door as we were herded through a set of double doors through a dingy hallway by someone who came out to greet us, whom we never saw again after that point. The hallway ended in a lobby area, barely large enough to contain all 40 of us and our luggage.

After some more waiting, we were then directed through another hallway leading to another room to have our stuff searched for contraband and to be in-processed. We were directed to take our stuff up to the third floor where our rooms were.

The elevator terminal listed 12 floors, but all above 5 were access-restricted. This was my first clue to how big the building was.

Our rooms were all single-occupancy with no windows, no television, radios, or phones, but they did have private bathrooms.

We were all directed to meet in the auditorium, on the first floor.

The auditorium was very spacious, with a seating capacity of over 500, though we were only 40. The walls were painted beige. There was a stage and simple podium.

At the far back of the auditorium, almost too far away to read, was a mounted digital LED clock. You had to really crane your neck to even see it clearly from where we were gathered in the front rows. The clock read 12:45 AM when I looked at it for the first time. It would be the only way of keeping time any of us had during the whole activity.

We waited in the dim auditorium for about 20 minutes before a man walked up to the podium. We'll call him Colonel Thompson. He introduced himself as a retired US Army Colonel. He thanked us all for coming and began telling us about the Zodiac Institute. He wasn't very clear about the exact nature of the Institute, but it seemed to be a fraternal organization dedicated to educating and networking leaders of society. Like I hadn't heard that before. He said each of us was there because we were all special in some way, meaning we were all prodigies.

The Colonel's own information about himself was vague. He said he had commanded an armor unit in the Vietnam War and then retired to teach at West Point before working for the Zodiac Institute.

It was at this moment that it hit me that I had never met another child prodigy before, let alone a room full of them. It had always been a lonely state of being, but whereas you might have expected me to feel relief at being around others of "my kind," instead I felt more distant than ever. There was something that felt deeply wrong with this whole situation, something I still couldn't place.

He told us we would be challenged like never before, but that the reward would be opportunities we never dreamed of.

We were then given our group assignments. The Colonel rolled off the names of all of us for our respective groups, A and B, directing each group to gather at opposite entrances to the auditorium.

I was in group A. The Colonel led our group to a room on the same floor, while group B was taken to an adjacent room by someone else.

Inside the room were several tables arranged in a conference rectangle. We were directed to sit wherever we liked. I sat next to my seatmate from the flights.

Colonel Thompson addressed us again, saying he would be the instructor for Group A as well as the head of the whole activity. He repeated much of what he had said to us in the auditorium, then added that those of us who did especially well would be eligible for an international youth seminar the next year.

He gave us a rundown of how the seminar would be structured. Each day we would attend one or more presentations in the auditorium, before retreating to the classrooms to discuss. We would then be given a combined writing and speaking assignment for a specific topic.

Colonel Thompson then switched rooms with the instructor from group B to speak with them while group B's instructor introduced himself to us. Group B's instructor, we'll call him Mr. Greenwood, said he was the director/chairman of a large environmental non-profit group. He said he and the Colonel would act more as facilitators than as instructors as such. I guess that line was less cliched back then than now.

The two instructors switched back to the respective groups. The Colonel told us to rise and assemble again at the classroom. He led us down another hallway to the facility cafeteria.

The cafeteria had no windows and was laid out like a hotel cafe. It could seat maybe 200 people among tables of various sizes. It was constructed in a rough bracket shape with a serving bar and buffet on one end and a lounge area on the other.

At the buffet were a young man and a young woman. In brief conversation I learned that they had been through the same program we were now beginning, and were now doing a sort of work study with the Zodiac Institute. The same was the case for those who had helped us with our luggage at in-processing. They said all the Institute's programs were challenging, but the reward was opportunities they had scarcely imagined.

The food that night was a selection of pancakes, bacon, and other breakfast items. We were all too tired at that point to do much talking.

The Colonel led both our groups back to our quarters. We took a detour through the building that we would never take again throughout my time there. I don't know why he chose this corridor that time, but it brought us past two large rooms that I also never saw again. The first was what looked like a conference room, with a huge ovular conference table and chairs. The next was far larger, a vacuous chamber with a parliament setup. It looked like it could fit at least 300 people. Everyone else looked too tired to pay attention.

I'd probably been awake for about 20 hours by the time we reached our rooms, not counting the brief naps on the two plane flights. I immediately got in bed and blacked out.

Day 1
I was woken up by a loud warble, eminating from the wall-mounted speaker in my room. I got up, showered, and dressed. It took me some confused wandering to find my way back to the dining hall.

At breakfast, everyone seemed more lucid, the travel shock and fatigue having given way to alert curiosity. Students were once again chatting about the possibilities of the activity, like they had been at the airport.

To my chagrin, the cliques had already been set in stone back there, and I was never really able to join up. I mainly hung around my seatmate and whomever he was talking to.

I was fast developing a crush on a certain tall redhead in Group B. She was already getting involved with a boy from her group, a chemistry nerd. Go figure.

After breakfast we were directed back to the auditorium. We sat according to group now, Group A sitting up front at stage right and Group B at stage left. The clock at the back read 9:00 AM and this would be the typical time for our lectures to start from then on.

Colonel Thompson addressed us. He gave us a lecture about basic principals of leadership, things he had learned in the miltiary and so forth. He also let us in on some ways he thought US military leadership was lacking.

What struck me is that the Colonel's views were not jingoistic, as one might expect, yet he was clearly not a pacifist or an isolationist either. He blamed both conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, for the failures of the United States in Vietnam. It was never clear whether he thought going into Vietnam itself was a good idea, but it was clear that he would have managed it differently.

He said one of his goals in working for the Zodiac Institute was to help raise a new generation of national and world leaders who wouldn't bungle things as easily.

Mr. Greenwood spoke next. His presentation contained less detail about his own life, but its focus was something he was passionate about: the physical future of the planet. Specifically, he focused on overpopulation. Back in the 80s overpopulation, particularly in the Third World, was a big topic of discussion among academics. His broke down the options for dealing with the problem, which mainly involved various forms of birth control.

I was a little disturbed. At points Greenwood seemed to speak in terms just shy of eugenics. It was during his presentation that I first learned about Malthusian theory, which Greendwood subscribed to. He really believed there was a population-driven calamity on the horizon, perhaps even within our lifetimes.

Next up was a guest speaker. We'd have several of those, each a member of or at least affiliated with the Zodiac Institute but not an instructor for the seminar. This one was a stock market mogul, the senior vice president of a large trading firm. His piece was an analyses of the 1929 stock market crash.

Afterward, we retreated to the classroom for discussion of the presentations, which lasted about an hour. Next was a journaling period, where we were to write down anything that came to mind in our composition notebooks. At the time, all that came to my mind were the events of the past day and a half, which I began jotting down.

The journaling period lasted 20 minutes. This gave me time to reflect on how strange everything had been so far. I felt thoroughly disoriented, the journaling period being my first chance to really gather my thoughts.

Next we did some debate practice. The topic was school uniforms. We divided into two subgroups, for and against. Each group happened to have someone who was on their school debate team, who led each side.

The debate excercise took 40 minutes. At noon we went back to the cafeteria for lunch.

I realized my sense of disorientation may have been due to the fact that we had yet to see an exterior window since we were admitted to this building. Lunch was around noon by my internal clock, which was usually pretty accurate, but it felt like late at night.

After lunch we were directed back to our rooms to change into our PT clothes and then meet back up in the corridor outside the auditorium. Our two instructors led us through another series of hallways to a gymnasium.

The gymnasium was about the size of a typical highschool gym, but eliptical rather than rectangular. The walls were all off-white, lit up by overhanging flourescent lights. Hugging the wall was an indoor track, which we were later told was was one tenth of a mile.

Thompson told us we would be running on the track every day. We would not be timed, but the distances we were expected to run would be gradually increased over the course of the seminar. He reassured us that the increases would be slight and easy to progress to. No one needed a waiver, and I still wonder if that was just happenstance or due to the activity selection process.

First we formed up in our respective groups in rows in the middle of the gymnasium to do strectching exercises. Then we formed up again on the track, in staggered rows for safety, and did two walking acclimation laps. We then ran two laps around the track, followed by two cooling laps.

It turned out some of the kids there, while physically able to complete the run, were really easily winded. One had asthma but seemed to be fine with his inhaler, and the two instructors even told him he could opt out of the runs and it would not be marked against him, but he always did better than some of the other pupils.

We retreated to our rooms to shower and change, then met back up in the auditorum. It was already 2PM according to the clock at the back. The Colonel addressed us and indicated that we, the students, had yet to be properly introced to each other, so we would take care of that right now. He had us come up on the stage one at a time to introduce ourselves, where we were from, and our areas of prodigy.

During this period I did something that at the time I didn't quite know the reason for. I opened one of my notebooks (we were expected to bring writing materials with us every time we went to the auditorium) and wrote down the name of every other student along with all the information they relayed. I wrote down their first and last names, the names of their schools and home towns, and everything else they said about themselves.

When it was my turn, I gave scant information about myself beyond the requested first and last name, school and home town, and main talent. I didn't really have stage fright (the next year I gave the keynote address at my school's graduation and was just fine), but I felt a sudden need to guard myself and not be too open. This would be the only time I would ever be on that auditorium stage, and it occured to me that I really never wanted to be again, but I might if I completed the seminar. I scanned over the two groups in their seats, trying to memorize everyone's face.

It took a full hour to get through everyone. Once we were done, we had another guest lecturer, this one a woman who had gone through the same program we were now in.

Her thing was biology. She had gone through the seminar 14 years prior. Apparently, the program was held irregularly, not annually, a couple times a generation, actually.

She was now a ranking officer in the World Health Organization.

From that point we were treated to more presentations, each by someone in a position of midlevel influence. These lasted until about 7PM, at which point we were then directed to the cafeteria for dinner.

We hadn't really had a chance to properly celebrate our arrival the previous night, the instructors said. We would do so now. The dining tables had been rearranged in an elbow banquet configuration.

It was the best meal I've ever had in my life. The student servers waited on us hand and foot with whatever we wanted from a menu given to us. One told me the meal was nothing compared to the banquet they had at the end of these seminars.

There was a drink I had, a kind of sparkling de-alcoholized wine made from cherry and grenadine, that was the most delicious drink I've ever had. It brings back a weird painful nostalgia for that moment whenever I think about it, despite the surrounding events, like a song you hear and fall in love with but are never able to find again.

We finished up around 8:00 p.m. From then on it was personal time until lights at out midnight. We disperesed among the various places available for us to go, some staying in the cafeteria while others went to the classrooms, the auditorim, the gymnasium, their own bedrooms, or a lounge area on the second floor.

Reading assignment: Selected works of Plato.

Day 2
The second day followed the same pattern as the first. We had a lecture by the two instructors on basic Socratic method, then retreated to the classrooms for practice Socratic discussion. We did our morning run around the gym track.

End
It's been decades since fate selected me to participate in what was probably the most elite but least advertized program for high school students. The incident is so bizarrely disconected from my other memories of my youth that part of my mind has trouble believing it actually happened. But then there's the other part, the part that knows it did happen and refuses to stop dwelling on it. Plus I still have my notes, my mementos from the activity, my sketch diagrams, and my acute memory.

Over the years I tried finding information about the Zodiac Institute, with little success. The rise of web search engines the next decade gave me hope of finding easy information, but instead all my searches just returned results about other organizations with similar or identical names. They have never had a web presence and believe me, I've tried every way of finding them if they did.

Asking about it in forums and chat rooms was just as fruitless. I specifically focused on asking people who had attended upscale prep schools. One guy said he remembered getting a flyer from the Institute like I had, but he'd been so busy with other stuff he'd either lost it or thrown it away. Lucky him. He happened to be a junior the same year as I was though, which makes me wonder if the activity was only ever held once in a great while.

I did countless keyword searches of public libraries across the country. My searches for "Zodiac Institute" all returned results with either "zodiac" or "institute", with only one with that exact keyword. When I saw that it was an autobiography by a former piano child prodigy, I ordered a copy through ILS.

One line, that's all the book had concerning the institute. The author mentioned in passing that she had been contacted by them in high school to participate in an activity for juniors and never mentioned them again. Beats me why "Zodiac Institute" was even listed as a keyword, but there you go. The interesting bit for me was the fact that she had attended senior high in the 1950s, so at least I know that the activity has been hosted other times besides the one I went to.

I did some digging in military records on Colonel Thompson. Turns out he did command an armor unit in Vietnam, but he left a lot out of his story. He was implicated in a village massacre but managed to clear all charges. I also found someone in close association with him who would go on to work for the CIA. That's about all I was able to find on the Colonel.

I have a box with all the books I manged to take home, all my notes and sketches, and that wrinkled brown flyer, the one piece of physical proof I have that the Zodiac Institute exists or existed. Included in these items are the sketch portraits of the 39 other students who were there, plus the instructors.

Depsite all the information I had collected on them, I was never able to find any information on any of the other kids. Even in the couple yearbooks from their schools I was able to get from those websites that sell old yearbooks, those two students are simply listed under "not pictured" for both.

However, several years ago, the red haired girl, the biology prodigy, turned up in a state senate election (in a state other than where I live.) She's going by both a different last name and maiden name now than the one she had back then, but I remember faces and it's her.

Her husband: the chemistry kid, also with a different surname.

Her opponent in the race: the astronomy genious. Same last name as before this time, but it's a highly common one anyway.

She had recently resigned from the board of a major pharmeceuticals conglomorate in order to run. Her husband was on the board of a big non-profit.

Her opponent, the astronomy kid, is part of some obscure think tank which doesn't have anything to do with astronomy, but I'm sure he was always smart in other areas.

I learned about that race by pure chance. I actually thought about turning up at either of their campaign functions, just to see if I could lock eyes with one of them and search for a reaction.

Apart from that blast from the past, I have no information on any of the other 39 students who were there. But maybe I'm just not looking high enough.