by Dima Zales
This is all to say that when I think Ada’s code looks too clever, it doesn’t mean I’m too dumb to get it, though I guess someone too dumb might say something similar. It’s just that, like with some of her speeches, Ada didn’t bother making this code easy to read. To be fair, as a bit of code that’s meant to be used once and thrown away, its illegibility might be excused, especially since she wrote it in a rush. But part of me cringes whenever I see her use the more obscure “?” format for her conditional statements instead of “If, else.” Call me lazy, but something like “if statementVar==true, consequenceOfTruth, else consequenceOfFalsehood,” reads much better to me than “statementVar?consequenceOfTruth:consequenceOfFalsehood.” She also didn’t include any comments explaining her code. Yet despite all these minor gripes, I get the feeling I’m looking at the work of a genius as I review line after line of the app.
I get so engrossed in the code that I automatically accept and eat the fruit salad my uncle brought me and then gobble down the Jell-O.
“I don’t know what any of the APIs you invoked do,” I say at the end. “But aside from that, this all looks good to me.”
What I don’t say is that I’m slightly disappointed by how error-free it all is. Had I found something wrong with her code, I could’ve shown off my skills. Then again, since this stuff will be running in my head, and since its purpose is locating Mom, Ada’s competency is a good thing.
“Great,” she says. “While we wait for Mitya’s feedback, should we proceed with the next part of the plan?”
She glances at my uncle. Her unasked question is obvious. Do we want to do the Brainocyte thing in front of him?
“Uncle Abe, can you please get me more food?” I ask. “Maybe mashed potatoes?”
If my uncle caught on to our scheme, he doesn’t show it. He simply says, “Ah, you’re getting your appetite back.”
In the Russian culture, having a good appetite and, relatedly, being slightly overweight is a sign of health. As a result, my grandmother had always tried to overfeed me.
“Yes,” I lie. “Starving.”
“How about you, Ada?” my uncle asks. “Can I get you anything?”
“I had a smoothie on the way, thanks,” she says. She watches my uncle leave before retrieving the giant syringe from her bag.
“Ready?” she asks and approaches my IV bag.
“I guess.” I look at the needle in her hand with distrust.
“Look, Mike, I can see you don’t like hospital stuff. I understand. I don’t like it either. After my mom got sick…”
Ada’s eyes look distant, and it’s clear she’s reliving the day her mom succumbed to cancer. I want to jump up and give her a comforting hug, but since I don’t think it would be appropriate, I just say, “It’s okay. Let’s do this.”
“You sure?” she asks, regaining her composure.
“Just one question,” I say. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Yes, I’ve done something like this before.” She rubs the corner of her eye with her finger. “You’ll be fine. I promise.”
She puts her hand on mine and gives it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. In an ironic turn of events, she’s the one comforting me.
I wish I knew where Ada got her unshakable optimism from, but I do feel a modicum better. Capitalizing on this, I remind myself that what’s about to happen is critical to locating Mom. I also tell myself that my fear of all things medical is irrational, a condition I developed from getting my teeth drilled without anesthesia—something that isn’t relevant to my current situation.
When I feel like my voice won’t quiver, I swallow and say, “Yes, I’m ready.”
Ada doesn’t give me a chance to change my mind. In a swift, confident move, she sticks the needle into the IV the way I saw the nurse do to Mom what feels like a year ago.
The clear liquid fills the bag, and the Brainocytes start their trek up my veins.
Chapter Twelve
As soon as I picture the stuff swimming in my bloodstream, my already bad nausea intensifies.
“It’s making me lightheaded,” I gasp. “There are also all these odd sensations in my body.”
“Lightheadedness is normal, but I doubt you can feel more than that. It’s not possible to actually feel the nanobots swimming through your bloodstream,” Ada says. “But you might feel a slight burning at the entry point.”
As soon as she says it, I notice there’s indeed a burning sensation around the spot where the IV connects to my arm. And then my lightheadedness evolves into something worse, and the hospital room spins around me faster than my dorm room did on the morning after I drank half a bottle of vodka with Mitya.
“You’re turning white,” Ada says worriedly. “Breathe.”
I take quick, shallow breaths, in and out, figuring what works for panic-attack victims should work for me. The breathing helps a little, though I can’t inhale too deeply without feeling pain in my ribs.
“That’s good,” she says. “Keep doing that. It’ll be okay. Trust me.”
I keep breathing and try to relax. When I put Mom through this yesterday, I didn’t stop to think how I would feel about tiny machines messing around with my brain. Now I realize I’m terrified, but of course, it’s too late.
“When can we test the app?” I ask, desperate to distract myself.
“After Mitya is done reviewing the code,” Ada says. “But before we get to that, there’s something I need to tell you. Something important. I—”
She stops talking when my uncle enters, carrying a tray of food.
“You were saying?” I say to Ada.
“Later.” Ada’s lips press together in a slight, but surprisingly adorable grimace. “You should eat first.”
I look at the tray of food and realize my appetite is also similar to that hangover incident. Nevertheless, I reach for the mashed potatoes and valiantly swallow as much of it as I can, figuring food should help me heal faster. I wash it all down with a little square box of whole milk while Ada mutters something negative about dairy consumption.
“I want to try standing,” I say when I can’t ignore my bladder anymore. “Uncle Abe, can you please give me a hand?”
Ada frowns. “Is that a good idea?”
“I need to use the restroom,” I explain. “I wanted to try getting up anyway.”
“The doctor said it was okay.” My uncle looks at Ada to see if she’ll contradict him, and when she doesn’t say anything, he extends his hand to me.
I lean on him and place my feet on the floor. My head is pounding with agony, and the pins and needles in my legs join the already crowded party of unpleasant sensations in my body.
“I think I need a nurse or a doctor,” I say, realizing I’ll have to pull the IV with me to the bathroom otherwise.
Ada walks off to get someone, and I use this chance to wince in pain.
“Maybe you should use one of those metal bucket things instead?” my uncle suggests. “I can see you’re hurting.”
“I’ll be fine,” I grit out through clenched teeth and attempt to put the least amount of weight on my uncle’s hand as I stand up.
Just as swiftly, I sit back down again.
“I’m just warming up my legs,” I say defensively. “They fell asleep.”
The second attempt hurts more, but the room doesn’t spin as fast and I can stand straight for a few beats before I need to rest again.
“What are you trying to prove?” my uncle asks in Russian. Then, more conspiratorially, he adds, “Are you trying to show off in front of the girl?”
“To help Mom, I need to be on my feet,” I say and get up again.
Grabbing the IV stand, I take a shuffling step. The worst pain is coming from my side, as if something isn’t letting me take in a full breath. Must be the bruised ribs. My left elbow hurts too. I don’t recall why, but my shoulder and face are particularly painful. My face is also burning from the blood that, for some reason, rushed to my head. On top of that, I feel l
ike I’m about to lose both the food I just ate and my bladder control. Otherwise, I’m feeling great.
A male nurse I don’t recognize comes in with Ada. With unprofessional surprise, he says, “You’re standing.”
“Yep. And please tell Dr. Katz I’m checking out. Also, can you take this out?” I shake the IV tube.
The nurse looks at me suspiciously but does as I requested.
“Help me get him to the bathroom,” my uncle says and grabs my right elbow.
“I don’t need help,” I say and take a firm step.
My next step is far less firm, but I make it anyway. The less I shake, the better I seem to feel, so I shuffle forward slowly.
By the time I make it to the bathroom, I’m ready to spill national security secrets just to make the pain stop. Though I only need to go number one, I do my business sitting down so I can catch my breath.
My nose decides to bleed again, or, more specifically, my left nostril. I stuff it with rolled-up toilet paper, a trick I learned when I was a teen.
“Is everything okay in there?” the male nurse booms from outside the door.
“Loving it,” I yell back. “I got this.”
Cutting short the toilet rest, I get up and wash away any sign of my nosebleed, which has already stopped.
I examine myself in the mirror and chuckle humorlessly. My face looks way more purple than it feels.
Leaving the restroom, I refuse the nurse’s help again. The trip back to my bed hurts a tiny bit less—maybe because my brain is adapting to the constant pain.
“Where’s my uncle?” I ask when I lie back down.
“I’m not sure,” Ada answers. “I think he left to make a call. I tried explaining how we’ll find your mom, and he seemed excited.”
“Well, we’re not waiting for him to return,” I say, “assuming we can use the app already. Or do I need to call Mitya and hurry his ass up?”
“No,” Ada says, her forehead wrinkling. “He finished the review.”
“But?”
“No buts.” Ada clears her throat. “It’s just that I only have the most rudimentary tools on this laptop. I’d be far more comfortable if we could get you to the Techno headquarters or the NYU Langone Center, though the most optimal option is my apartment. This way, I’d get to keep my job in the end.”
“Are you saying you don’t have what you need to make the app work?”
“No, I can make it work,” Ada says, “but just barely. You’ll get the most vanilla build of the interface, and you’ll have to use the laptop inputs to work with it. No debugging will be available, and the worst part is this version doesn’t collect much data. I figured since you’re doing this anyway, we might as well learn as much as we can about—”
“Time is of the essence,” I remind her. “No offense, but I couldn’t care less about Brainocyte research right now. Once we locate my mom, you can collect all the data you want.”
“Okay,” Ada says and sits next to me on the bed. “Here goes.”
She does something on the laptop.
“Did it work?” Ada asks after a few seconds of silence.
“I feel something,” I say. “Like the world is getting a little clearer.”
“I think that’s a purely psychosomatic response,” Ada says, waving dismissively. “Can you see it?”
She points at the screen, but I can’t tell what she’s pointing at from my angle.
“See what?” I ask, but then I do see it.
The “it” in question is a golden sphere floating in the middle of the room. It doesn’t look like a hologram or a computer image. It looks solid and very real.
“I see it,” I say. “What is it?”
“Just an icon you need to click.” She puts her computer on my lap and points at the trackpad, saying, “You’ll be able to do this with your mind after some training, but for now, you should use that.”
I drag my middle finger across the trackpad’s cold surface and notice another artifact move next to the base of my bed. This object looks like a square piece of white marble the size of a matchbox. When I study it more closely, I realize it has a triangular shape that leads its movements.
It’s a three-dimensional version of those classic computer arrows I’ve used all my life, only bigger.
“The pointer,” I say. “It looks so real.”
“We’re dealing with your vision center,” Ada explains. “It doesn’t take a lot of effort to make things look solid.”
Determined to locate Mom, I suppress my awe and use the trackpad to move the white arrow toward me, then away from me, then left and right. It looks kind of spooky when it passes through my body like a ghost on its second trip toward me, but that’s how it should be since the arrow is simply in my mind.
“Use the up and down key to make it move vertically,” Ada suggests.
I do as she says. The process reminds me of flying my Phantom 3 drone or playing some kind of video game.
“Press the Enter key or left-click to initiate the icon,” Ada says before I get a chance to ask her what to do.
“Okay.” I navigate the white pointer to the middle of the room so it touches the golden sphere. “Done.”
As soon as I press Enter, the room disappears and the world falls into a bright tunnel of static and colors.
The tunnel ends abruptly, and I’m back in the room. A text box that resembles a street sign hangs in the air. I guess this is how Mom’s Phase One reminders must look from inside her head. The box says, “Connection failure.”
I explain what happened and see Ada’s face drain of color. I know what she’s thinking—I saw the code after all—but given the gravity of the situation, I say, “Please tell me what this means.”
“A connection failure message can mean many things.” Ada’s voice is unsteady. “It could be a problem with the hospital Wi-Fi, for example.”
“My phone is on the same network, and it’s working fine,” I counter. “Besides, doesn’t cell connection kick in when Brainocytes aren’t on Wi-Fi?”
“You’re either on Wi-Fi or a cell network, and when on Wi-Fi, the firewall can still create this situation,” she mutters. “Let me try a different port.”
She appropriates the laptop, changes a variable in her code, recompiles the app, and—I’m guessing—reloads it into my head.
“Let’s try again,” she says. “The new icon should show up in a moment.”
The golden sphere returns, and I repeat my earlier actions.
The result is the same: connection failure.
“It’s happening again,” I say, a heavy feeling growing in the pit of my stomach. “What else might be causing it?”
“It could still be the hospital firewall,” Ada says. “But it could also be an issue with the connectivity on the other end. It’s hard to say. I doubt it’s because your mom’s Brainocytes are disabled.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as though I got electrocuted. “Ada… the only way the Brainocytes can be disabled is if the host brain is dead, right?”
This is when I notice my uncle is standing there. I’m not sure when he returned, but judging by the stark paleness of his face, he at least heard the last thing I said.
I stare at him, icicles floating in my blood, and he stares back at me. Through all the mishaps of the day, I didn’t let myself consider the possibility that my mom might not survive her kidnapping. Yes, it would’ve been a rational thing to worry about, but I just couldn’t dwell on it, maybe because the idea is too unthinkable. Now that I’m forced to consider it, though, dark specks dance in my vision.
Despite Ada’s reassurances, the evidence we have points to this horrific possibility.
Mom might already be dead.
Chapter Thirteen
Seeing our faces, Ada quickly says, “Those are just a few possible explanations. Instead of speculating, let’s rebuild the app with debugging capabilities and maybe expand it so we can see where the connection is going awry.”
“Okay,” I say, grasping at the thread of hope Ada gave me. “We have to get to your place to retry this, right?”
“Ideally, yes,” Ada says. “Though it might be closer to—”
“I don’t want to get you into trouble,” I cut in. “So as long as you have all the tools you need at your place, that’s where we’ll go.”
“I might be even better equipped there than at Techno,” Ada says. “I was going to tell you—”
I make a slicing gesture through the air. “I’m already sold on going. Uncle Abe, did you drive here?”
“Yes,” my uncle says.
“Can you give us a lift to Williamsburg?”
“Of course,” he says. “But—”
He stops and I follow his gaze to the somber countenance of the law enforcement official I labeled as the beet-potato guy. Now that my mind is no longer under the influence of drugs, I see that he doesn’t really look like either one of those vegetables, per se. He looks more like the Mr. Potato Head toy—which only vaguely resembles a potato—and his complexion is a lighter shade of red than a beet.
“Detective Sawyer,” my uncle says, his voice turning hopeful. “Do you have any new information for us?”
At the detective’s expression, my hands and feet turn colder than when I nearly got frostbite in Moscow.
He’s got bad news, I can feel it.
“There’s something I want you to look at,” Sawyer tells my uncle, and his tone intensifies my fear. Taking out a large phone from his jacket, he approaches Uncle Abe. “We found the black Mercedes Metris minibus,” the detective explains. “There was one body discovered inside it, and I’d like you to take a look at it. My partner is on the other end; he’ll point the camera for you.”
My uncle takes the phone and looks at it for the ten longest seconds of my life. Then he screams the Russian equivalent of bloody murder, drops the phone on the floor, and covers his mouth with both hands as he doubles over. I look incredulously at my tough-as-nails uncle as he whimpers softly. This is a man who fought in Afghanistan, and the Soviet version of that conflict was a nightmare.