The Institute Trivia Quiz

Answer: Night knocker

After Tim Jamieson takes a deal to have his Delta flight refunded (in addition to $2,000), he decides to hitchhike from Florida to his destination, New York, where he has security work set up for himself, but no real rush to get there. Along the way, he decides to take the scenic route, working a bit here and there to take the extra time. It's during this time that he rolls, unexpectedly, into the South Carolinan town of DuPray.

During an evening in DuPray he comes across a job posting for a Night Knocker, essentially a member of the police force without any firearms of authority assigned to making sure the town is secure in the evening and overnight hours. With a long track record of being a cop in Sarasota, Florida marred only by a circumstance that left him with no choice besides resignation or dismissal, he's given the job the following morning. His boss, in fact, finds him overqualified.

Tim decides to stay through the summer; he even thinks of staying longer. But his time in DuPray gets more complicated when he stumbles upon a robbery at the local gas station. He manages to think quickly, saving the shopkeeper and allowing the sheriff to apprehend the perpetrators just outside of town. It's enough for his boss to offer him a full-time job with the DuPray police. He decides to think about it...but he doesn't have much time to. Hell breaks loose that summer.

Answer: Eidetic memory

In Minneapolis, a couple of months before Tim Jamieson arrived in DuPray, Luke Ellis' parents were brought before the guidance counselor at the Broderick School for Exceptional Children, where Luke was enrolled. Although assuming a possible worst-case scenario, they were told that his exceptional eidetic memory allowed Luke to surpass all scholarly expectation and, at that point, there was very little else the faculty could teach him with their resources. As such, it was their recommendation (and Luke's) that he take the SATs and advance to a major in engineering at MIT as well as a major in English at Emerson. The catch? He was only twelve years old.

That night, over dinner, the Ellis family discussed the real possibility of moving to Boston to pursue this unexpected venture, and in the weeks to follow, Luke took the SATs, finding them easy. But one night in June, an SUV arrived at the Ellis household before its passengers disabled the alarms, killed Luke's parents, drugged him, and kidnapped him.

Luke awakens in a room in a facility in an old growth forest in Maine, and while the room looks like his bedroom, it's just off from the real thing. The room attaches to a common area and in there, Luke meets Kalisha, who greets him and explains what happens in the Institute:

First, there are many tests. Kids who are in the Front Half of the Institute receive a battery of them. Kids in the Back Half leave and never come back.
Second, the kids brought in are either TP or TK. She's TP, a telepathic, but Luke is TK, a telekinetic. It explains why, in addition to having a brilliant mind, he can make things move with it, even if only unintentionally.

Answer: Shots for Dots

After meeting the other kids in the Front Half-- Iris, George, Nicky-- Luke is led on a day in the life at the Institute, eating at the canteen, chatting in the common area, and trying to figure out what the Institute is all about. He and the others are aware they're being listened to; Mrs. Sigsby watches from her office as the kids discuss 'Shots for Dots', a system in which kids are taken for inoculations that may make them see pink dots. Whether or not they want this is up for discussion. In any case, on average, guests stay in the Front Half for a few weeks.

Luke realizes what he's up against when a nurse, Gladys, takes him down to B-Level for his first check-in with a scientist, Tony, who doesn't beat around the bush in giving Luke a microchip (in his ear) and his first shot. This ordeal starts with a slap in the face, just so that Luke knows how serious the proceedings are.

When Luke is brought back upstairs, he encounters Maureen, the housekeeper who Kalisha claims is amongst the good ones at the Institute. While helping Maureen make beds in the new tenants' quarters, Luke asks questions and attempts to gain tokens, which he can spend on items in the canteen or other privileges (like using a laptop). Little do he and the others know, but Maureen is also a spy for the Institute who, intentionally, gets close to the children to learn more than the other staffers.

Before long, Luke is brought to meet Mrs. Sigsby, who runs the Institute. She claims to him that the children brought to the Institute are soldiers in an undeclared war-- not an arms race, but a mind race. He and the others have been drafted. After spending time in the Front Half he will spend time in the Back Half and then be discharged to his parents who, she lies, are still alive. Mrs. Sigby says that he can trust her; Luke knows better than to believe her, however.

Answer: Avery Dixon

Days go on and new children are brought to the Front Half, amongst them Helen Simms and little Avery Dixon, who proves to be a strong TP. After Luke is brought in for more tests, he finally gets a chance to help Maureen, conveying how she might be able to settle some of her debt issues by pursuing proper legal representation. They have their discussions close to the ice machine, which she claims is the only place that happens to be a proper dead zone for audio surveillance.

The tests put to Luke become more gruelling. A dot test (or a Stasi Test) is employed and as the dots (shots for dots!) multiply for him, he has a seizure. He's awakened in time to perform a TP test, forced to try and determine what's drawn on cards he can't see. What he doesn't know is that Dr. Hendricks believes there's a latent link between telepathy and telekinesis, and all he needs to do is activate it. These tests are secondary to the ultimate goal of the Institute. Really, they just need to send the pinks to the Back Half.

Luke has recurring issues with the dots for the next while, feeling them coming back. The truth is that he could see what was on several of the cards that were drawn during his test, an indication that he may have TP powers after all. He keeps this knowledge close to his chest. Over the next days, during several more tests, Iris is taken to the Back Half. Then Nicky. Then Kalisha, who leaves without saying goodbye.

Before Kalisha leaves though, she tells Avery to stay close to Luke since he can hear her messages from afar and relay them. At night, Avery stays in Luke's room and lets him know what's happening in the Back Half, where she's reunited with the others who've been taken. She thinks that he needs to think quickly; he's the only one smart enough to get them all out.

Answer: A knife

After three weeks in the Institute, there's little change for Luke. He stays quiet and obedient, even after George is taken to Back Half, leaving him as the longest-tenured child in the Front Half. There, as Kalisha communicates through Avery, the pinks are put to work watching movies that give them headaches, all of these films ending with Dr. Hendricks holding up an unlit sparkler, something that Luke believes may be an intentional trigger. Kalisha speaks of dreams involving the other kids, all protecting each other from the dots. The dreams, she says, are of the kids being used as psychic drones, which Luke believes may be reality if the articles on the internet are to be believed.

Soon after a pair of noteworthy deaths in the Front Half (and Helen Simms is taken to the Back Half before him), Luke realizes how limited his remaining time is and he tells Avery that he needs to get out soon. While he runs out the clock, the kids in the Back Half face worse and worse trials. Maureen returns the next day, giving Luke a hidden note thanking him for everything involving her debt (she acted on his advice) and apologizing, telling him he needs to get out; he doesn't have long.

Luke is brought to 'the tank' soon after, where he's forced to undergo a test akin to waterboarding. There, he holds out, holding his breath to the point of near-drowning while maintaining the untruth that he can't see the dots. More than this, he knows everything his captors are thinking. Little does he know, his perseverance is enough to get the scientists to tell Dr. Hendricks that he has absolutely no TP ability. They just have to wait for the green light to send him to the Back Half.

Mrs. Sigsby, meanwhile, watches the cameras to find Luke and Avery talking to Maureen. It's okay though, she reasons, as the boys are gone to the Back Half in a few days anyways. Nonetheless she talks to the children in the Front Half the next day, lying with every word that all is fine. She doesn't know that everything was worked out during the meeting with Maureen since Avery read her mind for the directions they needed to plan an escape. The next day, Luke checks the fence outside, finding the weak spot right where she said it would be.

This couldn't come at a better time as tests stop being performed on Luke. With no time to spare, he awakens one night to find a knife under his bed, placed there by Maureen, and a flash drive. Pocketing both, he heads to the fence, uses the scoop from the ice machine to dig under it, uses the knife to remove the tracker in his earlobe, and flees into the woods.

Answer: Rowboat

Luke stumbles through the dark following nothing more than Maureen's rudimentary directions to Dennison River and a waiting rowboat. From there, he has to paddle himself to Dennison River Bend and a set of red stairs leading to a train yard where, with any knowledge he can, he needs to jump onto a freight train bound for anywhere far enough away. He gets on one bound for Sturbridge, Massachusetts, eventually swapping trains from there and heading southward to what turns out to be a whistlestop destination: DuPray, South Carolina.

No one notices Luke's disappearance until much too late, and it's mostly due to complacency. The day at the Institute begins with a janitor finding Maureen's dead body in a vacant bathroom; she committed suicide after leading Luke to his escape plan. Mrs. Sigsby is able to reflect on the carelessness of her and her staff at this moment, and she has Trevor Stackhouse, her Head of Security, do a sweep of the premises. Perhaps ironically, he has everyone accounted for by their earpiece trackers. In the meantime the staffers bring Maureen's body through the Back Half to the crematorium. The kids there know that Luke got out (through Avery's messages), but none of the staff knows at this point.

Gladys catches Avery and one of the new kids, Stevie, filling in the hole that Luke created at the fence line and she calls in Stackhouse as quickly as she can. They find Luke's blood on the fence and in the bushes beyond the wall...and soon they find his earlobe, left in the playground yard where he cut the tracker off.

Mrs. Sigsby quickly realizes that Avery was in on the plan, gleaning this from the video of him, Luke, and Maureen from the previous day. She has her men use their taser batons to encourage the truth out of him, but at this point it's too late. Luke is long off the river, his boat's been washed away, and he's been gone, at this time, for nearly eighteen hours

Answer: The motel owner

Luke's boat is quickly found, but off-course from where he ended up disembarking. Unfortunately for him, one of the girls in Front Half tries to cut a deal, revealing that she knows (through Avery) that Luke climbed the red steps at the train station. Once her men go digging into the departure times, they narrow down his whereabouts to a couple of southern locations, amongst them DuPray, SC. They contact the motel owner, Norbert Hollister, as he's a contact in the Institute's intricate web of spies, to keep his eyes peeled for sight of the missing boy.

In the meantime, Mrs. Sigsby plans to rendezvous with the Opal and Ruby Red Extraction Teams and head to DuPray to get the boy back. She insists that Avery be in Back Half by the time she's back, but first, the scientists should put him in the tank, just as a point of retaliation. This backfires on her, however. Due to Luke's high capabilities as a TP, activating the dots, for him, makes him realize his true capabilities. He rejoins his friends on the other side just in time for their new move.

Luke finally disembarks in the small town of DuPray, but in an eager effort to get off the train, he falls face-first into a signal-post, knocking himself out while Tim Jamieson, there to pick up the cargo, helps him up. It's most problematic that Norbert Hollister also witnesses the event and calls in the tip for the reward from the Institute. All Hollister needs to do is make sure Luke stays in town.

Tim keeps Luke safe while he unloads the train's cargo, and in doing this he leaves the boy with Annie Ledoux who, prone to conspiracy talk as it is, believes every word Luke tells her about his kidnapping and the psy-ops. She worries that they need to look out for unmarked, black vehicles before she departs. Tim, meanwhile, brings Wendy in to help him talk to the boy (over a meal) and after hearing his story they opt to bring him to the police station. Before they do though, Luke hands over Maureen's flash drive. It's all he has left.

Answer: A battery

The Back Half kids, with Avery's help and supercharged abilities, realize they need to take the place over. After they watch a movie that specifies their next target to be an American preacher with deep political ties, Kalisha knows what comes next: they'll be set upon Paul Westin of Deerfield, Indiana and he will meet a horrible end because they will stop at nothing to stop themselves from experiencing the pain of the dots. Eventually, some of the kids would join the husks that live in the Back Half of the Back Half. Avery realizes that those kids, the ones who are beyond saving, are the battery of the operation, and the new, unfinished kids are the ignition switch. They need to exploit this while Mrs. Sigsby is distracted with Luke.

Before they're taken away to their rooms, Avery makes the Back Halfers stand in a circle. Through their thoughts, they join with one another, hold hands, and chant, seeing the sparkler from Dr. Hendricks' videos in their mind and activating their powers. What they find is that they can be outright damaging, if not compelling through their thoughts. They're able to fend off threats from the guards if not kill them outright, and they're almost able to make it out when the alarms start to sound.

During this time, Mrs. Sigsby flies into South Carolina with the Ruby Red and Opal teams. An hour from DuPray they arm themselves with supplies they traveled with, make a game plan, and hop into a trio of SUVs. Before long, they drive into the town limits. Annie Ledoux, already on high alert, sees the cars coming up and runs for help, arming herself to the teeth with the help of a local.

Luke, meanwhile, verifies that his parents are dead upon a Google search at the police station, adding credence to his stories to Tim and Wendy. He's able to nap for a short time, but when the sheriff eventually arrives, he surges awake on his own, seeing the sparkler in his mind, having had it transmitted to him by the Back Halfers from a thousand miles away. His telekinetic abilities flare in this moment, giving the police a first-hand view of his abilities.

For further proof, they all watch the flash drive Luke smuggled across the country and it contains a video from Maureen. She explains everything process-wise from the children's capture to Ward A and how the kids are able to kill people. At great risk to herself, she then shows footage from within Ward A showing the most damaged children in the Institute, those tortured to within the final days of their lives. Tim and Wendy take a distraught Luke outside to Annie's alley for fresh air. Coincidentally, that's when they see the couple-- familiar to Luke, since they took him from his bed months before-- coming to the police station.

Answer: A telephone

Once the couple enters the police station and Luke, eager to point the finger, is spotted, the bullets start flying. Most of DuPray's police force is killed in the ensuing action while, outside, Mrs. Sigsby finds herself surrounded by Annie Ledoux and a number of armed townspeople. When the dust settles, Opal and Ruby Red teams are wholly defeated and Luke is able to use Sigsby's phone to call in to Stackhouse and attempt to cut a deal. Both Stackhouse and Sigsby, however, feel that letting Luke live is a good way to kickstart the end of the world.

In the tunnel between Front and Back Half at the Institute, the captured kids gather on both sides of the doors connecting the wards. Trapped in the tunnel, they take the time to rest and wait, reaching out to Luke for help, but Stackhouse, still in the office, builds out his contingency. Knowing that Luke is planning to save his friends, he has Gladys put together the materials to gas the children out, combining cleaning supplies to pour chlorine gas into the HVAC.

Over the phone, Tim and Luke request a trade before heading out to Maine, using Sigsby to fly by her still-waiting plane. They decide to leave Wendy behind with the flash drive as a contingency plan for themselves while Stackhouse relents to their request for vehicles at the airstrip and at the Institute. Stackhouse, also thinking ahead, plans it as an ambush with his loyal soldiers waiting in the wings.

Off the line, Tim and Luke both admit the plan has holes, but really Luke believes he just needs to buy time for the other kids. He theorizes that there are more Institutes out there, and that tapping into that power is difficult. In the tunnel, all of the Back Half kids dream of answering a massive phone-- one that connects them to others who might be able to help. Kalisha worries that if they answer, they might not be able to turn that power off. But it's their only chance.

On the roof, Gladys finishes preparing the gas. She waits to hear gunfire, on Stackhouse's request, and then she'll set her plan into action.

Answer: Avery

When the Institute's plane lands in Maine, Tim and Luke and Sigsby get in the waiting Suburban and drive. As they do this, Avery wakes the other children on the tunnel. Things will happen soon. Avery admits that he plans to talk to all of the far-away kids on the big phone in their dreams, but to do that he has to stay back. He asks Kalisha, Nicky, George, and Helen to stay until he tells them, and then they must run to the Institute's playground as fast as they can. Joining hands in their circle, Avery visualizes the phone in the playground, tips the receiver off its cradle, and starts the flow of power.

Outside Stackhouse sees the vehicle approaching and, despite knowing Mrs. Sigsby is in the driver's seat, has his team open fire. In that moment, Gladys dumps her chlorine gas concoction into the HVAC and seals it shut, racing across the roof of the Institute as she feels the building heave. Tim and Luke barely dodge the bullets in the back seat of the vehicle, but they survive the encounter and look up just in time to see what the children have done-- they've combined their powers and caused the Front Half to rip from its foundation.

Kalisha and the others manage to make a break through the building and up the stairs despite the gas starting to flow in through the vents. Although everything in the building quakes around them, they manage to make it to the playground just in time to witness the spectral avatars of the Back Halfers, all forming a circle around the giant phone, before escaping altogether. The Front Half manages to levitate over its spot in the Maine forest and come crashing down on the admin building next door, killing everyone still present. Shortly thereafter, the tunnel beneath collapses, killing Avery and the kids who remained.

In the aftermath, Luke is reunited with Kalisha, Nicky, Helen, and George. Although Stackhouse and a few men remain, Tim helps the kids take a truck and leave Maine entirely. On the way out, they call Wendy. Tim says he'll tell her the story when he sees her, if it's even believable.

Three months later, on a farmstead in South Carolina, just outside of DuPray, Tim is visited by a man with a lisp, a man Mrs Sigsby expected to hear from in her final days as the situation surrounding the Institute came to a head. Nicky, Kalisha, and Luke are still in South Carolina with him though Nicky and Kalisha are expected to leave next, returning to family with cover stories already conceived. Luke, he notes, will stay until he resumes his life-- what he can of it.

The man explains that in the aftermath of the events in Maine, twenty Institutes from around the world became inoperable the result of a number of mass suicides. It's a bad thing, the man says, because these Institutes have saved the world from nuclear holocaust time and time again. There are types of exceptional individuals rarer still than people like Luke and Kalisha and Nicky-- precognitives. After all, they got their psychic targets from somewhere. The world relies on these people, protecting it from long-term harm.

Luke, present and listening to this somewhat-expected revelation, doesn't believe the man buys his own idea. Luke did the research on this when the dust settled, and it appears that precognitive flashes, even for those without powers, are most effective the closer they are. With this in mind, the Institute kills people years out from when their actions would take effect. And worse, there's no accounting for if the precogs are intentionally wrong. There are too many variables. The man claims, nervously, that they will rebuild. He then leaves.

In the days to follow, the kids depart one by one, saying their goodbyes forever.