***
Dear Alyssa,
I’m really sorry I missed our study date. I’m sure you’ve heard about the locker room by now, and the news, and whatever else is being said. You probably don’t want to speak to me again. I totally understand. All I can say is that I’m not a terrorist. I haven’t done anything wrong.
Some things have happened with my family. I’m going to be gone for a little while. I’m not sure how long, and I might not come back. Right now, I sort of have nothing to lose by saying that I really like you. Actually, I’ve liked you ever since second grade when you told Mrs. Robertson that her choice of “Sneakers, the Seaside Cat” for reading time was stupid and we should do “The Hobbit” instead. But I’ve always been too shy to say anything. Stupid, right? I mean, what was the worst that could happen? You tell me you’re not interested, I get over it, life goes on. Or just maybe, something else happens. Something great.
The future is a weird thing. I’ve learned over the last couple days that we have a lot more control over the future than we think. If I ever get the chance to come back, I hope you’ll let me fix some of my dumb mistakes. I’d like to know you better, and a future where that doesn’t happen is…not a future I want.
If you haven’t deleted this email already, I hope you’ll do one favor for me. I’d like you to find Shade’s mom. Please tell her I’m sorry that Shade got mixed up in this. But Shade is fine. We’re together. I think it’s all going to work out.
Thanks, Alyssa. You’re amazing, and I can’t wait to study math with you.
Winston
Winston sent the message. He relaxed his grip on Little e and opened his eyes.
A blue sky darkening into cobalt stretched overhead, punctuated with occasional feathers of red and purple clouds. The boys’ field of view was bounded by steel shipping containers painted in red, blue, and green, each stenciled with large white alphanumeric codes. Everything smelled of paint and rusty metal. The containers were stacked four high, towering on platforms above them while the boys hunkered down amid several large wooden crates. The enormous ship’s engines thrummed below them, vibrating everything. In the thin gap between the deck and the platform, Portland International Airport slipped slowly by. The Willamette lay behind them, and now the Columbia River bore them west toward the Pacific Ocean.
Winston and Shade had found the Hanjin Portland II revving up for departure from the North Portland dockyards, where Winston had persuaded the kind couple in the fishing boat to drop them off. A little manipulation of the yard’s security system got them through the outer fence, and, after about half an hour of hiding and watching, a lucky break had allowed them to slip inside a jumbo-sized palette full of crates as a crane lifted it onto the vessel. Before anyone could discover them, they dashed into the shadows under the container platforms, found a secluded spot near the deck’s edge in case they needed to jump overboard, and did the two things any teenagers would immediately do after a crisis: eat and log in to the nearest Wi-Fi connection.
Fortunately, they had one mobile computing terminal left after the day's many dunkings and losses: the one between Winston’s ears. Wi-Fi access points dotted the ship’s length and breadth, all connected to the ship’s satellite uplink. It had taken whatever cryptographic engine was baked into Winston’s brain about half of a second to crack the local router’s encryption. With that done, the router was kind enough to assume he was a friendly laptop and issue him everything he needed to hop on the Internet.
“Done,” said Winston. “And I asked her to tell your mom you’re OK.”
“Thanks,” Shade mumbled around a mouthful of granola bar.
“How’s your head?”
Shade rubbed the new, walnut-sized knot on the back of his skull. “It hurts, but it’s a little better. I’ll be fine.”
Both Shade and Winston’s mom had thought to pack small first aid kits in their backpacks. Between the two sets, Winston had been able to clean both of Shade’s wounds and put a bandage on the shoulder gash he’d suffered in the tunnel.
Shade popped open a can of tea, took a long swig, and handed it to Winston.
“You know the funny thing, right?”
“What’s that?” asked Winston.
“All the writing on this boat is Chinese. We’re probably headed to Shanghai.”
Winston stared at him blankly.
“We more or less shanghaied ourselves. Kind of ironic.”
Winston gave a little laugh, but the more he thought about it, the funnier it got. Shade caught the giggles with him, and in a moment they were both rocking back and forth, hands clamped over their mouths, tears running down their cheeks. It was funny, sure, but not that funny. In the back of his mind, Winston knew that they were laughing at being alive. They were laughing because they still could.
When they finally settled down, Winston spotted the first star in the evening sky.
“I wish…” he said quietly, pointing up at the little speck of light. “I wish we get through this quickly. I wish we stay safe and stay together and in no time I’m going to be standing with my mom on Council Crest two hours ago, just like I said I would, and this will all be a memory for you and me.”
Winston felt an intense desperation coil around his heart like an overwound spring. With his father captured, the old motivation for leaving Winston and his mom free no longer mattered. In fact, the people holding Bledsoe’s leash might only see her as a liability, especially if Bledsoe had an emotional interest in her. That thought made Winston’s guts knot in revulsion. No matter what, no one would be getting out of this alive unless Winston could recover those Alpha Machine pieces and find a way to eliminate this threat to the world at its source…and maybe discover more about his own unique nature in the process.
Shade took a deep breath, wrinkled his brow in thought, and said at last, “I wish for peace.”
Winston blinked at him. “That’s it?”
Shade shrugged. “Yeah. But that includes peace with my pain-in-the-butt sisters. I’m totally going to need alien technology to pull that one off.”
“Ha! I’ll do what I can.”
“Speaking of.” Shade tapped the edge of the coffee can peeking out from the lip of Winston’s backpack. “You going to open that?”
Winston hefted the can, dented but still sealed, in his hand. He felt something heavy and metallic rolling about inside, although the clanking of the piece was muffled on one side. Winston guessed this was because of their next photographic clues. There was one way to find out.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
Shade fished a multi-purpose tool from a cargo pocket. He also found a pinky-sized flashlight at the bottom of his bag that proved to be waterproof. Winston took the tool, found its can opener, and, using the tiny beam of light Shade allowed between his fingers, set to work on their prize. The coffee can was decades old, and the metal sliced under the blade almost as easily as butter. In a minute, Winston had the top peeled back far enough to empty out the contents.
Not surprisingly, the coffee can held no coffee. Instead, two objects rolled out onto the deck between them. The metal object was either the one from the Portland map photo or another one just like it — smooth but for the slightest markings and rippled texture, polished and reflective as chrome, palm-sized, and cool to the touch. Beside it waited a sealed sandwich bag containing three photographs.
“My mom described it as a torus, not a doughnut,” Winston said as he ran a fingertip over the metal’s markings.
Shade nodded. “Like the model of the universe.” When Winston only stared blankly, he added, “There’s some evidence for the universe being shaped like a torus. It’s even called the doughnut theory.”
“The food of the cosmos. You should have been the alien.”
“Now I know what I wanna be when I grow up.”
As Shade lifted the light higher, Winston opened the bag and carefully examined each photo. They had that old, dusty smell, like libr
ary books that hadn’t been opened in decades.
The first showed a painting of an old sailing ship. Winston didn’t know much about boats, especially historical boats, but this one was on the open sea, with three masts and wind filling its seemingly dozens of white sails.
“A galley,” Shade said. “Probably sixteenth or seventeenth century.”
Winston peered at him quizzically. “How would you know that?”
“Because that’s what the ships looked like in our textbooks when we covered the Age of Exploration last year. Where were you during fourth period?”
“Thinking about lunch,” said Winston as he flipped to the next photo.
This one left him even more baffled. It showed a collection of tall white candles, all lit and resting on ornate golden stands. These in turn sat atop a red cloth embroidered with a golden cross.
“Candles on an altar?” mused Winston. “With a ship.”
“A galley,” clarified Shade.
Winston flipped to the final shot. It showed an ocean shoreline at night, just empty sand and surf in the foreground with empty dark sea behind it. But lighting up the scene was a ragged tail of lightning cutting from left to right, its one bolt splitting into two forks as it turned night into near-day.
“So, the first picture shows a European galley and the third also shows the ocean,” said Shade. “And we’re heading to the ocean right now. Coincidence?”
“Mom said my dad spent years arranging all of this, in case she or I ever needed to find the pieces. I doubt there’s a lot of coincidence happening.”
“Because…”
“Time machine,” they said together.
Winston put the three photos back in their baggie and carefully inserted them into one of his backpack’s inner pockets to not get get wrinkled. He might place them into the small photo album he’d retrieved from the bank later, if it hadn’t been destroyed by water.
“Speaking of,” said Shade. “We know the chronoviewer lets you see into the past. What if the doughnut lets you see into the future? Maybe you could see what we’re supposed to do.”
“Maybe,” said Winston, but he was doubtful. If it were that simple, why bother with the photographic clues?
Still, he didn’t have any better ideas. He picked up the piece, clenched it in his hand, and concentrated.
Winston felt that increasingly familiar tingle in his fingers he got when handling the alien artifacts, but otherwise there was nothing. No pressure in the back of his head. No visions of other times or places. Nada. For now, as weariness sank deep into his core, he didn’t mind leaving the new object a mystery. He had no more energy left to give the Alpha Machine — or anything else.
“I need an hour or two,” he sighed as he set the device on his pack and leaned against a wooden crate. “I need to reset a little, you know?”
Shade popped open a can of tea and drained half before handing it across to Winston. “Yeah. I know.”
They contemplated the sky for a long while as more stars joined the first, all of them full of dreams and wishes and, perhaps, observers watching their planet and the insane plans and efforts of everyone on it. Did the aliens who made the QVs know that Winston was here? Did they care? Probably not. But…maybe. The thought comforted him. It was good not to feel alone.
“Shade?”
“Uh huh.”
Winston shoved his friend’s leg and relished the cool evening breeze blowing over them. “I’m glad you’re here, man.”
Shade smiled. “Wouldn’t be anywhere else. In it to win it, right?”
“Right.”
The stars wheeled by. The Hanjin Portland II made its rumbling way down the Columbia. The impossible but inevitable overtook the boys, and there, nestled among the crates and untold tons of steel, they slept.
Epilogue
A Meeting Missed
Although Amanda tried to think about nothing but the city below her, worries kept eating at her attention.
At over a thousand feet above sea level, Council Crest marked the highest point within Portland’s boundaries, commanding a spectacular, 180-degree view of downtown Portland and its surroundings. In the hazy distance, under a sky fading from pastel blue to orange, emblazoned with sprays of brilliant pink cirrus clouds, Amanda could see the Cascades. Mount Hood lay almost directly to the east, largest and closest, with only a swatch left of the prior winter’s snow blanket. Mount Jefferson stood farther to the south, and to the left, facing north, she could see Mount Adams and the flat-topped remains of Mount Saint Helens. On a clearer day, she would have made out Mount Rainier.
Amanda remembered several days during her pregnancy when she and Claude had come up here to picnic and all five mountains had been visible. Those had been amazing times. With other families rollicking about the park and nothing but fresh air and the city spread below them, those moments had felt strangely timeless. It was easy to forget that they’d fallen decades out of sync with their lives. After Claude left, Amanda would still bring Winston up here for picnics and play when the weather was fair. At some subconscious level, she thought perhaps being there, in that same strikingly beautiful place, might bond the three of them together.
Now, though, watching the sun set only served to heighten Amanda’s anxiety. Where was Winston? He had said that they would meet here, at their “favorite picnic place,” around dinner time. That would have been at about 5:30, nearly two hours ago. She’d passed the day driving absently around the sparsely populated areas south of Portland. She’d returned to Council Crest at 4:30 with deli sandwiches, crackers, and drinks. Now her appetite was long gone. She wanted to scream and cry, but all she could do was pace around the park, study the trees, and hope against hope to see him emerge from them.
And if he didn’t show up, what then? They had no backup plan. There hadn’t been time to make one. Obviously, neither of them could go home. Amanda hadn’t seen enough of Claude’s scrapbook to memorize its photos or make sense of them. Moreover, she only had the few stray bills Winston had left for her. It was enough to keep her in gas and food for a day or two, but then what? All of the money she had stashed under her second false identity might still be connected to her somehow, but, even if it wasn’t frozen, there was no way she could access the funds until Monday morning.
Only in that moment did she realize how much Winston had started to become a man. She was the mother and parent, still the only authority in their family, but she found herself standing there helplessly. This morning, Winston had taken command, deftly moved her aside to protect her, and issued instructions on the spur of the moment. The trouble was that he was still only fourteen and maddeningly inclined to think he could do everything on his own with no awareness of his own limitations. That also meant he felt no need to consider others in his plans, which was why she was standing here, overlooking the glass-and-steel panorama of Portland glinting in the sunset, with no idea what to do next.
Amanda had to know whether to stay at Council Crest and what had become of her son. There was only one way she could think of to do that.
Amanda walked down the grassy slope that surrounded the park’s paved peak. The grass was bounded by a circular avenue for traffic and parking. She slid into the silver van’s driver's seat, hardly noticing the thick heat trapped in the vehicle. The center console contained two drink holders. The one on the left held Amanda’s cell phone, the one on the right its battery. She picked up both pieces and studied them.
Pull out the battery on your phone, Winston had said. Don’t put it back in, no matter what.
Amanda didn’t know much about cell phone technology, but she had to assume that Winston’s warning stemmed from a fear that the phone would be somehow open to prying eyes or ears if she left the battery in. On TV, they always showed police needing a minute, give or take, to trace a call. Was that true of cell phones? She didn’t know, but she was past caring. She only needed twenty seconds with him, maybe even ten.
She clicked the battery into
the back of the phone and held down its power button. The device went through its minute-long boot-up cycle, found the closest cell tower, and showed her four bars. Winston was #1 on her speed-dial. Before Amanda could talk herself out of it, she hit the button.
The phone rang once. Twice. Amanda had the handset pressed painfully hard to her ear, fingers clenched around its edges.
Another ring.
“Come on,” she breathed. “Come on, come on.”
The line clicked as the call connected.
“Winston?” she gasped.
Silence.
“Winston, are you there?”
No, not silence. There was a sound on the line. At first, she took it for static popping from the cellular network.
“Winston?” She was almost whispering now. “Can you hear me?”
Amanda strained to listen. She heard it again. Pop…pop-pop.
No, those weren’t static pops. They were taps — the sound of someone typing on a keyboard.
The pulse pounded in her head, and it was all she could do not to scream into the phone. She was about to turn the phone over and rip out its battery when she heard the buzz of the line ringing again. The strangeness of that was enough to make her pause.
Then her blood seemed to freeze in her veins when a man’s voice answered and said, “Amanda?”
No, she thought. Please, not him.
“Amanda, I know you’re there.”
That dry, Southern lilt. The wary, half-mocking slowness, as if he knew that any evasion or argument against him would be pointless.
“Devlin.”
The word squeezed through Amanda’s throat.
“I’m glad you called,” he said. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
A hundred possible scenarios flashed through her mind, none of them good.
“Where is Winston?” Amanda asked.
“He’s safe. He’s…relatively comfortable.”
“Have you hurt him? So help me, Devlin, if you’ve touched my boy—”
Bledsoe chuckled. “Touched him? Lovely lady, he attacked me. I’m not sure you appreciate what's happened to him. He shot one of my agents and nearly killed him. He drowned his best friend, that Tagaloa boy, who’s only alive now because I saved him. Your son, Amanda, is out of control.”
Winston Chase and the Alpha Machine Page 30