“Very humanoid. Five fingers, five toes, and all that. But there were some differences. He had two sets of eyelids, one like ours and then another darker set inside those, like built-in sunglasses. I remember he had the most fascinating eyes, with several colors and intricate patterns in the irises. He had no vocal cords. His skeletal structure was much like ours, but reinforced with something similar to today’s carbon nanofibers. We learned that when we…surgically explored him.”
Winston wrinkled his face. “While he was alive?”
His mom nodded regretfully. “More importantly, we learned that there was another organism living inside of Bernie. It was similar to a virus. We called it a quasi-virus, or QV. But it was too regular and ordered. It didn’t have the genetic haphazardness you find in normal evolved organisms. The QVs were specifically designed for these aliens, probably by them.”
That made no sense. “Why would someone design a virus for themselves?”
“Not all viruses are deleterious,” she said, and both her tone and hand gestures reflected a world-class scientist used to lecturing, not some waitress in a Beaverton diner. Winston only half-listened. It was just too weird, trying to wrap his head around this new person in his mom’s body. “If you read about biological sciences today — and not just computer stuff…” She gave him a glance that reminded him that the regular mom was still alive and well. “…you’d see a lot of the work being done with genetic manipulation. We haven’t gotten to the point where we can create new life forms from scratch yet, but that doesn’t mean that Bernie’s race couldn’t. We thought they probably had.”
“What did these QVs do?”
She shook her head and smiled wistfully. “What didn’t they do? They helped to heal him. They were able to repair his body at the genetic level. They helped Bernie to communicate.”
“But you said he didn’t have vocal cords.”
She nibbled her bottom lip. The pieces fit together in his head.
“My telepathy. The Stadlerator 7000. That’s why you freaked out. So, you’re saying—” He held up his hand between them, turning it this way and that, as if he'd never seen it before. “That would mean…”
“We had no choice,” said his mother. “The Army had put us on a schedule to start testing QVs on humans. They wanted to build a super-army, and we had to know what would happen to people before the military did. We had to. But what we didn’t know…we didn’t know I was already pregnant.”
8
The Weirdest Bank Withdrawal
Winston’s mom exited Interstate 205 near Clackamas, continued east for a couple of miles, then pulled over to the curb. She turned off the car and stared at the steering wheel, deep in thought.
Winston waited. Finally, she reached into her pants pocket and handed a small silver key to Winston. The number 3227 was printed on one side. It was warm from her body heat.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“A key to the safe deposit box in the Wells Fargo bank around the corner. It used to be a First Interstate Bank…” She paused to consider. “…thirty-five years ago. When your father paid for it.”
Winston considered that, thinking of the photo in his locker, his father’s hand reaching toward him. In a way, that’s what was happening now.
“What do I do with this?” he asked.
Her expression showed carefully controlled anxiety. As he studied the narrow angles of her face and the deep green and brown of her eyes, Winston realized for the first time that his mother was actually a beautiful woman. Why was she still single? For that matter, why was a brilliant scientist wasting her life tossing eggs and coffee at people? She should be famous, not anonymous.
Then he realized the truth. She wanted to be anonymous. All of her decisions, from her job to their home to the way they avoided going out in public, were designed to avoid attention. For him. All of this was about him.
“You go in,” she said, “show them the key, and put whatever is in the box in your backpack.”
“You don’t know what’s in the box?”
She shook her head. “Oh, I know. I just hoped I’d never see it again.”
Winston closed his fist around the key and felt its teeth dig into his fingers. He dumped the textbooks out of his backpack and opened the van’s door.
When Winston rounded the corner, he saw the Wells Fargo up ahead, another bland community bank with a handful of shrubs breaking up the glass and concrete monotony. Inside the lobby, glass-doored offices lined one wall, and a row of teller windows filled the other. In the far left corner, a thick glass panel shielded the many-layered and bolted door of the bank’s vault. Coming in from the early afternoon heat, the bank felt cool and welcoming. Nevertheless, Winston’s heart hammered as if he were in an 800-meter sprint.
Two of the teller windows stood open. He approached the farthest one. The attendant was a young Asian lady dressed in a white blouse. She had green eye shadow and gold earrings that dangled an inch or two under her bobbed haircut. The little gold nameplate outside her window read JANET.
“Good afternoon,” she said as Winston stopped before her. “How can I help you?”
The other teller stood at her window, studying papers on the counter before her. Behind them, an older lady in a navy suit jacket and slacks stood with her back to Winston, typing at a computer. It was another lazy day at the bank. Nothing to worry about. No reason to feel he was doing something strange or wrong. At least half a dozen security cameras stared down at him.
He set the key on the counter. It clattered on the cool granite surface, surprisingly loud. The older bank lady peered at Winston from the corner of her eye.
“I’d like to get into—” Winston’s voice cracked, and he quickly cleared his throat. “Sorry. I’d like to get into a safe deposit box.”
Janet looked back at her manager. “Sue, do you have a sec?”
The older lady hit a few keys, triggering her system’s screen saver, then walked over. Sue had a leathery aspect. Her gray hair was cut short, and she wore thin, black-rimmed glasses.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a voice almost as deep as Winston’s.
Winston used an index finger to nudge the key through the teller window gap. Sue slid the key into her hand and examined it, one brow arching. She looked from the key to Winston, then at the white streaks in his hair. He fought the urge to swallow.
“Please step over to the glass door,” the manager said.
Winston obeyed, moving to a thick glass panel that shielded the many-layered and bolted vault door. Sue stepped in front of another computer near the floor-to-ceiling panel.
“Three…two…two…seven,” said Sue as she typed in the key’s numbers. “Your name?”
“Winston Chase.” It didn’t even occur to him to use a fake name.
Sue typed it in, confirming the spelling as she went. “May I see some identification?” she asked.
Winston suddenly became aware of how dry his mouth felt. He reached for his wallet.
“I don’t have a driver’s license,” he murmured.
“Birth certificate? Passport?”
He had a few dollars, a half-filled Taco Del Mar punch card, and his student ID. Feeling horribly young and awkward, he opened the wallet for the manager to see and handed her the Shifford Middle School card. She eyed it warily, turning it in the light, then handed it back to him.
“Where’d you get that key?” the manager asked.
“From my mom. It’s a…birthday present.”
Sue radiated skepticism, but she only offered a noncommittal “hm,” then leaned forward and hit a key. The glass door’s lock gave a soft buzz as its bolt clicked back.
“Step through,” she said, coming around the computer.
There was no temperature change on the other side of the door, but as the panel swung closed behind him, Winston felt the air around him grow closer, more confining. The bank vault’s rectangular doorway stood open, as did the inner doorway of iron bars ju
st inside of it.
“Sign here, please,” said the manager, pointing to a logbook beside the computer with a pen she then held out to Winston. He signed. She grabbed the white card that dangled from a strap around her neck and passed it before a sensor mounted alongside the vault door. A light on the sensor pad changed from red to green.
Sue handed the key back to Winston and motioned him into the vault.
Beyond the door waited a tall grid of safe deposit boxes. Unlike in the cartoons, there were no stacks of gold bars or piles of neatly bound bills. Whatever riches the vault contained lay in those hundreds of locked compartments.
Even with the vault open, the steel chamber felt immediately claustrophobic. The cool, dry air seemed to smother the sound of his breathing right in front of his face. He had the sense of being in a giant coffin, even though the space was the size of a two-car garage and amply lit by overhead lamps.
Sue stepped to the right, scanned across the numbers stamped on the small brass ovals attached to each box, and found number 3227. Each safe deposit box had two keyholes positioned alongside a small handle in the center. She inserted hers into the right keyhole and nodded at Winston. “Now yours, please.”
Winston inserted his key into the left hole.
“Please make one half-turn clockwise,” she said.
In his nervousness, Winston turned to the left, quickly caught his error, and turned the key the other way, feeling it click through gears as it twisted 180 degrees. Why was he so nervous? Would that make the manager suspicious enough to call security or the police?
Sue turned her key back to its starting position, and Winston followed her example. They both withdrew their keys, then she grasped the handle and pulled box 3227 from the wall. The surprisingly large container measured only six inches high but a foot wide and almost two feet long. Balancing it in both arms, the manager handed the box to Winston and led him across the vault to a counter where he could examine the box’s contents.
“This table is outside the view of our security cameras,” she explained. “You can take as much time as you like. No other patrons will be allowed inside the vault while you’re here. When you’re ready, just slide the box completely back into its space and tap on the outer door for someone to let you out. Any questions?”
Winston shook his head and watched as she left, making sure the iron-barred door shut behind her. Except for the barest whisper from the air vents, the chamber stood completely silent. Heart pounding, Winston tilted the box and set it on the bench, feeling objects inside slide from back to front. He lifted a hinged panel on the deposit box’s top and started removing the contents. He felt the urge to dump everything in his pack and run back to his mother, but curiosity held him in place. This was the closest he could remember ever being to direct contact with his father. He had to know. Now.
The first object baffled him. It was a leather pouch filled with thirty or forty sky-blue marbles, each of them about the size of a grape and shot through with sparkling veins of white. Why marbles? Maybe these were leftovers from his dad’s childhood that had some sentimental value.
Next came another leather pouch just like the first, but the clink of what had to be coins inside lifted Winston’s expectations.
Now, that’s what I’m talking about, he thought.
He undid the drawstring and, sure enough, the top of the pouch opened to reveal a folded stack of green bills. Removing the cash, he nearly jumped up and down at the sight of an inch-deep pile of gold and silver at the pouch’s bottom. These weren’t dollar and half-dollar coins, he confirmed as he examined one gold piece. It depicted a woman carrying a branch in one hand and a torch in the other. On the obverse side, an eagle flew from right to left under the words “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TWENTY DOLLARS.” It had to be some kind of collectible gold bullion. Winston had never heard of a twenty-dollar coin.
This sparked another idea in his mind. He thumbed through the wad of bills. Sure enough, the latest one was from 1974. Winston had watched enough TV to know that people could be tracked not only by their credit card use but also by the cash they spent if the bills were somehow exceptional. He suspected that a pile of money over forty years old could be pretty noticeable. He stuck the bills in his pocket.
Next, he pulled out a strange metal object. At first, Winston thought it might have some use in cooking. It was glossy silver and apparently made of hollow metal tubes and sculpted rods, roughly the size and shape of a wine bottle. From an oval ring at the large end sprang six slender shafts that connected to a second, slightly smaller ring. The rods continued on perpendicular to the ring, then swooped inward, twisting and weaving together as they formed the shape’s neck, and tapered toward a point. The object spanned a foot and a half from base to tip and had an interior crosspiece within the smaller ring.
On impulse, Winston slid his right hand into the oval and grasped the crosspiece. He didn’t know what to expect. Some little whirlwind of CGI special effects? The appearance of a time-bending wormhole?
Nothing happened.
Disappointed, Winston stuffed the thing into his backpack, then he noticed that the crossbar tube had turned from solid black to a dull, rusty red. OK, that was interesting. He’d have to come back to it later.
The next object looked to be a thin ring of stainless steel, no thicker than the end of Winston’s pinky, and about ten inches in diameter. Its slightly flattened sides were adorned with geometrical markings etched into the surfaces, and two opposing bulges on the ring, each the size of a silver golf ball, gave the thing an odd but graceful symmetry. The thing felt surprisingly heavy for its slender size — coated lead, perhaps. As the metal slid through his fingers, he had the sensation of static electricity on his nerves, like petting a cat during a dry, chilly winter day. The object aroused Winston’s curiosity, but he couldn’t take the time to puzzle over it now.
In his right ear, Winston felt a pressure building. After a moment, the pressure gave way to a high-pitched tone — his tinnitus. All his life, this ringing in Winston’s ears would strike randomly, blot out most of the hearing in one ear for several seconds, and then vanish for weeks at a time. He’d never seen any pattern to its appearance, but it struck him as oddly coincidental that it should strike right now. Perhaps it was stress-induced.
Again…weird. But into the backpack the ring went.
Winston removed the last object from the deposit box: a small photo scrapbook. The cover was a faded, powder-blue canvas. Each of the dozen or so thick black pages within lay protected by clear plastic sheets. Thumbing through the book, Winston found all but the first page empty. This page contained two 3”-x-3” photos with rounded corners. They had that grainy, rough feel he’d seen in Shade’s family photos from the 1970s. The first picture was a black and white of some guy in a fedora hat standing in front of a river, and the second showed a road construction crew in front of a pile of dirt.
This, Winston decided, was the worst family photo collection ever. Confused and frustrated, he dropped the album into his pack.
He inspected the safe deposit box and saw nothing left.
No way. That couldn’t be everything. Except for the money, he’d discovered nothing but junk.
Winston grabbed the back end of the box and lifted it, shaking the thing from side to side. Something tapped against the front of the box. Winston set the container down and lifted the lid. He found a piece of folded yellow paper inside. The cursive handwriting on it was somewhat messy but still legible.
Dear Winston,
I deeply hope that you, your mother, and I are able to share a long life together. I hope you are a strong, successful person, with a wonderful family of your own. I know that whatever happens, you will make me proud.
With luck, you will be reading this in a world where there is no more war, a world in which the mighty lift up the weak. That is why we all fought these terrible battles. Yet if that improbable world comes to pass, it will be the first such occasion of it in known hist
ory. That is why I am leaving you this, in case the unhappy day comes that you must use my past to protect your future. You may well need all of your wits and speed to find the other four items that brought us to this time and place. Guard them well, and destroy them if necessary. This is imperative.
You are so small as I write this, but already you are my alpha and omega, my everything. Be smart, be safe, always be cautious, and remember that you can achieve anything you know to be true and good, so be wise.
Never, never give up. I love you more than mind or heart can express, Winston, now and always.
Your Father
Winston refolded the sheet and placed it carefully in a backpack pocket where it wouldn’t get crumpled, all too aware of the tears obscuring his vision and rolling down his cheeks.
“Now you tell me,” he whispered.
Something nagged at the back of Winston’s mind, something he was both eager and terrified to recognize. At first, he pushed the feeling away. Simply reading the note had been enough. His father had thought of him, said he loved him, and taken enough care to provide these things for him at a time when Winston thought he had no family other than his mom. Before this moment, Winston had always believed that he’d been more or less abandoned. Proof to the contrary lay in his hands and ate away at a deep disappointment and anger that Winston had never fully acknowledged.
There was more, though, and before he consciously realized what he was doing, Winston turned the scrapbook page back to the first image.
Your Father.
Winston stared through brimming eyes at the man in the fedora. He did not recognize the man’s face. The jawline, the chin, the nose… They triggered nothing.
The eyes, however…
Even in shadow, those eyes held a sly wit, maturity, sadness, and quiet energy that seemed familiar. The angle of the brows. The way those brows half-hid a probing, sideways stare.
To share a long life together.
Winston felt the strength leave his legs, and only his elbows on the counter kept him from falling.
Winston Chase and the Alpha Machine Page 8