by A. J. Low
“We-could-build-that-if-we-wanted-to,” Watson said.
“Maybe it’s some mutant with the power to create futuristic technology?” Eliza said.
We stared at her.
“What? You guys are rubbing off on me.”
I was thankful my friends were all trying to make me feel better, but I knew what they were saying.
“Thanks for your ideas, guys, but Dad’s right,” I said. “We need to make our theories fit the facts, not make the facts fit our theories.”
“Well, one of the facts is that there’s still somebody running around with my face,” Uncle Saad said. “We saw him on camera.”
“That’s true, and Tall Wendy saw him too,” Mom said. “He could still be a visitor from another dimension.”
“I think we should go back to the public library, and find out how Uncle Baad made us think we were looking at a portal to other universes.”
“Yes, especially when we all know there can’t be any universes where ninjas actually exist,” Nazhar said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
We walked back to the office, and took Officer Siva’s minivan. When we reached the Queenstown Public Library, we got out and went straight to the open land behind. We walked up the hill and saw the same flickering light in the middle of the forested area.
“Are you sure about this, Sherlock?” Officer Siva asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Since the ‘bleed from the other universe’ was actually just a hologram, it stands to reason that this ‘portal’ can also be explained by technology.”
We walked up to the portal and after a few minutes, saw ourselves again in the same strange costumes and uniforms. The portal flickered on and off, so we couldn’t see ourselves too well, but they moved about differently from us, so this wasn’t a simple mirror, or camera and screen like we saw in the malls.
“Look around for… Well, I don’t know what,” I said. “Maybe another hologram cube.”
“You think this is another hologram?” Eliza asked. “How would Uncle Baad have gotten our likenesses?”
“That’s a good question,” I said.
“Look!” Jimmy shouted. “I found a camera!”
“Those are our cameras, Jimmy,” Officer Siva said, not looking at where Jimmy was pointing. “The police officers put up a bunch up here, remember?”
“Oh, right,” Jimmy said, wrinkling his nose.
“Whoops.”
“Wait. Everybody, stop what you’re doing and come look at this,” Wendy said. She hadn’t stopped staring at the portal since we arrived.
“What is it, Wendy?” Mom asked.
“Just, look at them—I mean, the not us— I mean, the people in the portal,” she said.
“Yes-they-are-us-but-dressed-differentlyandmoving-differently,” Watson said.
“No, that’s not all,” Wendy said. “Just look.”
So we did. Wendy’s double had stopped moving and was just staring off into the distance, but the rest of them were still moving around and doing things: looking up at trees, looking down at the ground, walking to and fro.
“What are we supposed—”
“Just watch,” Wendy said, interrupting me.
So we did. For another couple of minutes, until all the rest of our other selves stopped moving too. They stared off into the distance as well.
“It’s on a time delay,” Wendy said. “It’s us, but on a time delay.”
She was right. I hadn’t seen it because of all the flickering, but our other selves were moving exactly as we had two or so minutes ago.
I stepped forward and reached towards the “portal”. When I touched it, I felt a warm screen. It was sturdy, but clearly not a portal to other worlds.
“Jimmy, show me that camera you found,” Officer Siva said.
Jimmy took him to the camera he had found and Officer Siva confirmed his suspicions. “I was too hasty earlier, Jimmy. I’m sorry about that. You were right to point this camera out because it isn’t one of ours,” he said. “We need to tag all these non-police-issued cameras. And figure out what’s powering that screen.”
After looking for a few minutes, we found another 10 cameras that didn’t belong to the police. Nazhar pulled out his Post-it notes that he just happened to have on him (I noticed that the heritage trail guide he had been holding all this while was neatly tagged with multi-coloured Post-its), and we stuck them on all the cameras that were presumably left by Uncle Baad. I also found a small generator that was powering the large screen. Dad and Uncle Saad were excited because the generator was quite small and quiet and had a motion detector so that it only turned on when someone was nearby.
“The costumes we were wearing must have been superimposed, just like in those Augmented Reality games in the mall,” Nazhar said. “But much more advanced.”
“Yeah, it really looked like we were wearing them,” Eliza said.
“Whoever built this stuff is a real genius,” Uncle Saad said.
“Does this mean nothing has been from an alternate dimension?” Jimmy asked. “Is Uncle Baad just wearing an Uncle Saad mask?”
“We need to go back to the swing,” I said. “And figure out how he did that.”
“Uh, really?” Dad said. “I mean, do we have to?”
Mom nudged him in the ribs, and we walked back to Officer Siva’s minivan and piled in.
He drove as close to the swing as he could, but we still had to walk a short way over.
As soon as we were in sight of the swing, the whispering, groaning, muttering started up again almost immediately. Dad was visibly worried, but I loudly said, “Look for the speakers.”
Dad seemed to calm down when I said that, and the sounds lessened in intensity. Jimmy refused to leave Mom’s side, but Watson and Moran quickly looked around the leafy areas behind the swing.
“I-have-found-a-speaker,” Watson said.
“As have I,” Moran said.
“I found one too,” Wendy said.
“They-seem-to-be-connected-to-something,” Watson said.
We followed the wires to a laptop, which had a visualisation of sound waves going up and down. It took me a second, but then I realised that they matched the sounds we were hearing. When I disconnected all the speakers, the sounds around us stopped immediately, but the sound waves kept dipping up and down though with lesser intensity.
Rhythmically. Almost like a—right then, something occurred to me.
“That’s odd,” Dad said next to me. “It’s still going even though there are no more creepy sounds.”
I had to test my theory.
“DAD!” I shouted. The waves on the screen immediately spiked up as Dad jumped.
“Sam, don’t scream out like that!” Dad said, his eyes wide with shock. “I’m already very nervous!” He put a hand to his chest.
“Sorry, Dad,” I said. “I was just testing out a theory. Does your fitness device have a visualisation of your heartbeat?”
“It does,” Dad said, immediately lighting up. “It also has a little walking man when I’m walking and a—”
“That’s great, Dad, but I just need to see the heartbeat visualiser for now.”
Dad looked a little deflated.
“I promise you can show me the rest later,” I said.
He grinned and showed it to me. Just as I suspected, it matched the visualiser on the laptop exactly.
“I suspect that Uncle Baad has somehow hacked into the cloud where all your WalkMan data is stored, Dad. Given his tech skills, it wouldn’t be all that hard for him to crack your password.”
Dad looked shocked. “You mean...you mean he knows how many steps I’ve walked today?!”
“Maybe, but more importantly, with access to the cloud, he was able to use your heartbeat to control the sounds. The more agitated you got, the faster your heartbeat got, the louder and faster the sounds got.”
“He used my—I mean, our fears against us?!”
“So like a high-tech version of what those bo
otleggers were doing in Fort Canning when we first met, Sherlock,” Officer Siva said. “A spooky sound to scare people away.”
“But what was he scaring us away from?” Eliza asked.
“And who exactly is Uncle Baad?” Wendy asked.
“I really think at this point we can drop the Uncle from his name. He doesn’t deserve to be Uncle Saad! I mean Uncle Baad!” Uncle Saad said.
“We know how all these things were done now,” I said, “but we still don’t know who is doing them or why.”
CHAPTER NINE
Officer Siva made yet another call to the nearby police station to request that officers head down to the railway tracks, the forested area behind the public library and the not-actuallyhauntedbut-still-scary swing area to ensure that all the relevant clues we had found were properly documented and tagged (and not just with Post-it notes that had been bought from a school stationery shop).
It was about 5am and it was still really dark. I tried to convince everyone that we should head down to Tanglin Halt Market to see if any of the stalls at the coffee shops would be open. If they weren’t perhaps we could still grab a snack from the 24-hour curry puff place that Mom had been talking about earlier. However, Officer Siva said that it would be best if we stayed around and waited for the rest of the police force to show up.
“Besides, Sam,” Wendy said, “Maybe Uncle Baad might come back to check on his equipment and we can catch him red-handed!”
I sighed deeply. Foiled yet again by proper investigative procedures. Thankfully, Dad asked Moran if he had any coffee hidden away in his hot-cold compartment and Moran pulled out biscuits and sandwiches along with the coffee.
Uncle Saad stared with his mouth hanging open. “How on earth does he do that?”
“It-is-because-robots-are-cool,” Watson replied on behalf of his metallic kin.
“But the coffee is hot!” Uncle Saad exclaimed, taking a tentative sip.
“It-is-because-robots-are-also-delightfulmessesof-contradictions,” Watson continued.
Uncle Saad looked mighty confused. I finished off my third scone with raspberry jam and butter, conveniently not looking at my mom and decided that it was time to review the case and the clues we’d discovered so far.
“Someone seems to have gone through a whole lot of trouble to set all these up. And why have an Uncle Saad lookalike commit the break-in at the lab? I can’t think of another reason to do it unless it’s someone who really, really dislikes Uncle Saad,” I said, looking at Dad’s colleague. “Uncle Saad, do you have any enemies? A competitor maybe?”
“Enemies? Erm…I-I can’t think of anyone, Sherlock,” he replied, frowning. “Mike? Any ideas?”
Dad took another big gulp of his coffee and furrowed his brow. “I really can’t think of anyone either, Son. Everyone likes Saad. Even the fishball noodles auntie at the kopitiam near our office always gives him extra fishballs.”
“But someone clearly made a lot of effort to set these things up,” Eliza said.
“About that,” Uncle Saad said, “I can understand the tech behind the phenomena, but how did Uncle, I mean, how did Baad get footage of the police chasing after Lim Ban Lim?”
I had been thinking about that for a while now and I think I figured it out.
“It was a re-enactment,” I said.
“A what-and-what-ment?” Jimmy asked.
“A re-enactment, Jimmy,” Nazhar replied. “Like when we were investigating the missing script in Balestier. What Sherlock is saying is that Uncle Baad got actors to act out the scene and filmed it.”
“The footage was grainy enough that we couldn’t really see the finer details. Also, with all the gunfire and shouting, everyone was too distracted to take a really good look at the person who we were supposed to think was Lim Ban Lim. Not many people would be able to recognise him at first glance, but Uncle Baad didn’t want to take any chances and used an actor or mask that looked just like Lim Ban Lim,” I said. “Lucky for us, we have Nazhar on our team!”
Nazhar looked at me and grinned.
“We could probably find out if any actors matching the description of what we saw had been hired by anyone to perform that specific scene,” Officer Siva said, scratching his chin. “But that’ll have to wait until morning.”
“And we’ve already figured out how he did the holograms of not-us because Wendy is super observant,” Dad said with a huge grin, giving my sister two thumbs up. Wendy smiled back.
“And Sam figured out that your Walk-Man was giving all of us heart attacks,” Mom said. Dad blushed.
“But the one thing that we’ve not figured out is how Uncle Baad looks exactly like Uncle Saad,” Eliza said.
“Perhaps-it-is-also-a-hologram-that-isprojectedfrom-a-device-attached-to-hisperson,” Watson said.
“Do you mean that perhaps Mister Baad looks nothing like Mister Saad, Master Watson?” Moran asked.
“What? Now he’s Mister Baad?” Uncle Saad said, rolling his eyes.
“That would be super advanced holographic technology though,” Dad said, scratching his head.
“But Uncle Baad has already proven that he has access to super advanced tech, Dad,” I replied.
Dad nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. I understood what he was saying because in order for such a hologram to work, it would have to be extremely realistic.
“He could have been wearing a mask?” Wendy said. “We saw some really realistic masks at Comic-Con, remember, Sam?”
That was true, but it would have had to have been extremely close-fitting for Tall Auntie Wendy to mistake—
“Unless…” I said, trailing off.
“Unless what, Sam?” Mom asked.
“Unless Tall Auntie Wendy was in on it as well,” I concluded.
Everyone stared at me.
“No way,” Uncle Saad said. “Tall Wendy, I mean, Wendy would never do that. She’s the most loyal person I know! I mean, she ties with Mike as the most loyal person I know!”
“Also, she’s called Wendy, Sam!” Wendy exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air.
“What? What does that mean?” I asked.
“No way a Wendy could be the villain!” my sister replied, looking exasperated. “Anyway, didn’t the camera capture Uncle Baad’s face? We all saw it.”
“But camera footage can be altered and doctored, correct, Saad?” Officer Siva said. “Even live feeds can be manipulated if someone has the skills to pull it off.”
Uncle Saad nodded.
Officer Siva had remained silent until now, but I knew he had been listening closely and assessing everything that we were discussing. However, before he could say anything more, someone called out his name. It was the team of police officers that had initially set up the cameras. Officer Siva gave them instructions to search the three areas more thoroughly for clues. They immediately set out to do it.
Officer Siva then stood in front of Uncle Saad looking quite serious. “Saad, perhaps we should head back to the office and pick Tall Wendy up. I think it’s best if the both of you came back with me to the police station.”
“The police station?” Uncle Saad said, looking confused. “You’ve already taken our statement at the office, why do we have to go to the police station?”
“There are some things that I need to clear up with both of you,” Officer Siva calmly replied.
I realised what he was thinking. Unlike my sister who absolved Tall Auntie Wendy because of her name, Officer Siva wasn’t as forgiving. As a skilled investigator, he was aware that it was entirely possible that Tall Auntie Wendy was in on what had been going on. And his remark about how camera footage could be altered meant that he might also suspect that Uncle Saad was in on it. After all, Uncle Saad was clearly a tech genius with cameras and video footage. Still, I found it very hard to believe.
“Officer Siva, I don’t think—” I said.
“It’s okay, Sam,” he replied. “I just need more details from both Tall Auntie Wendy and Uncle Saad that
they might have forgotten while we were talking earlier today. They were both in shock and now that things are a bit calmer, maybe they’ll remember more important details. I’ll be in touch once I get their written statements.”
With that he escorted Uncle Saad away. As they left, I saw Uncle Saad turn back and look at Dad, who waved and looked at Mom. Mom looked at me and said, “I think we should head back home, kids. It’s been a long night and we might all be better able to think after we’ve had some sleep. Officer Siva will surely call us once he has more information.”
“Also, we’ve walked over 15,678 steps today, and my feetsies are really painful,” Dad said.
We had to walk back to where Dad parked the minivan, which was really near Queenstown MRT, and not that close to us. Dad complained about his feetsies the whole way. We piled into the minivan and Dad drove us home.
Once we reached home, Mom started to usher all of us to wash up and head to bed, but to my surprise Nazhar said that he was feeling a bit hungry.
Mom looked stunned that someone other than me had said that.
“Did-Sherlock-bribe-you-Nazhar?” Watson asked.
“I guess I can make some tuna sandwiches,” Mom said.
“MEE SIAM!” Dad and I both shouted at the same time, causing everyone to jump.
Mom smiled and said, “Okay, okay, since we walked a lot, I suppose we can have mee siam for breakfast. By the way, dear,” Mom continued, looking at Dad. “Did you know that Auntie Kim Lian had an older sister who was put up for adoption when she was a baby? That’s whom she learnt to cook from.”
“Oh, I didn’t! But that wasn’t too uncommon back then. Some families were also forced to give their younger children up for adoption because they just couldn’t afford to keep them,” Dad added.
He and Mom continued talking as they walked into the kitchen together and emerged with bowls of mee siam.
The aroma of Mom’s mee siam soon filled the air. As I breathed in the heavenly scent of the coconut milk and spices, something hit me. Not literally of course, we were not allowed to have food fights in our house. But something about the mee siam triggered a memory…