Bobby’s neck tingled as he watched video of the crash scene. Fires burning. Scattered pieces of jet. Could some of those pieces be parts of his body? He asked if he could change the channel. Nobody answered, so he scanned through channels until he found a show talking about Peter Wooley and Newton, and all the FBI and reporters there. The reporters were there for Peter, but no one seemed to know why the FBI was there. Bobby wondered what his mom was thinking of all this. And then there was his other self. Thinking about that made him feel wretched, so he got up and paced around the tiny room. The clock on the night table said a quarter after ten. Addison had been gone for an hour. How long would it take him to fly to Newton? Could he even make it there without getting shot down? He had said he could survive a plane crash, but what about a missile?
Bobby stopped pacing. “Mr. Darnell? Can I talk to you about something important?”
He and Mrs. Darnell were sitting on one of the beds with their backs against the wall. Mr. Darnell grunted and got up. “Let’s take a walk.” He opened the door to look around and then waved for Bobby to follow. The night air felt dry, but it was filled with the familiar sounds of crickets and cicadas. And it smelled like home.
“I needed to get out of there anyway,” Mr. Darnell said. They headed toward the bridge. There were no streetlights here, and the road was very dark. “Something on your mind, Bobby?”
“Yeah, everything.”
“I know what you mean.” The crickets got louder as they approached the river.
“When Addison gets back, I don’t think we should take him to Newton,” Bobby said.
Mr. Darnell kept walking.
Bobby went on. “He’ll be caught, then the government people will tell him what to do.”
“That is why we brought him to the United States.”
“But it was a bad idea, and now we’ve messed things up. We keep messing things up. Addison’s smarter than us. We should let him decide what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
Bobby shrugged. “I mean let him make the decisions. Instead of giving him over to the government, we could hide him somewhere. We could tell him to only do things to help people. We could teach him what’s right and what’s wrong.”
Mr. Darnell stopped walking. “We should probably head back.” They turned and started back. “Bobby, I’ve never told you about my father, have I?”
“No, but I’ve heard things.”
“Then maybe you know my dad was an anthropologist. A linguist, to be precise. He and my mom introduced me to Papua—actually it was West Papua. My dad was a good person, Bobby. The Papuans he worked with fascinated him. He believed he was helping them by exposing them to the rest of the world. But if there is one thing I know—one thing I feel deep inside me—it’s that my father was wrong. He knew it too, but not until it was too late.”
Mr. Darnell stopped again. “My parents didn’t do anything bad, Bobby. They didn’t force anything on the Papuans that was not wanted. But think about it. If you introduce metal knives—or maybe guns—to an isolated tribe, they are happy to use them. But then they become so good at hunting that they wipe out the game in their area. They have to switch to trading with other people, and using money. And then they can buy things like alcohol. Soon they are a changed people. The old ways of life are just a memory.” Mr. Darnell kicked at something on the ground. “My dad couldn’t live with that.”
“And you think the creators of the Lamotelokhai are kind of like your dad, right?”
“Maybe. We probably won’t know until it’s too late.”
“So, why don’t you like my idea?”
Mr. Darnell started walking again. “Bobby, you’re talking about giving up any control we might have and letting the Lamotelokhai make decisions that could affect everyone. What if its purpose is to change us into something we’re not?”
“Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”
They walked in silence until they were at the corner of the motel. Mr. Darnell stopped. “Bobby, you’re a smart kid—probably smarter than I am. But we’re talking about humanity’s future. Don’t you think we need to have control over that?”
Bobby looked him in the eye. “I guess so.”
They checked around the corner and then snuck back into the room. Everyone was now awake, and there in the middle of the room stood Addison.
Addison had flown three hundred miles to Newton in ninety minutes—in the dark. And instead of flying the van back, he had left it sitting in Mr. Darnell’s front yard, surrounded by men with guns. Bobby was beginning to fear what might happen when they all showed up there.
They talked to Addison for a while, but soon Ashley and Carlos crashed and Bobby’s eyes grew tired. He glanced at the clock on the night table, but then he noticed the little pod by the phone. Apparently the motel didn’t even have Wi-Fi. Bobby looked from the pod to Addison. “Addison’s a computer,” he said. He pointed to the pod. “Maybe he can connect to the Internet.”
Mrs. Darnell said, “Why would we want him to do that?”
Mr. Darnell slid his feet off the bed. “Maybe it would help. Even if the news people get the word out, Addison will be taken away from us in a few hours. For all we know he could be hustled off to some military bunker and experimented on. If he knows more about humans and our history, maybe he’ll recognize if he is being used recklessly.”
He touched the port. “Addison, this is a connection to the Internet. It’s how millions of computers share information. If you can connect to it, you could learn almost everything about us. Would you like to try that?”
Addison stepped over and put his finger on the cable port. His finger went inside, even though the hole was too small. For several seconds he didn’t move. Finally, he looked up at them. “I can do this. But it will take some time to understand how the information can be learned.”
Bobby thought about this. He knew information was sent in little packets, and Addison would have to figure out how to decompress those. Even then, the decompressed packets would result in typed information that was encrypted, such as HTML and Java code. Most likely, Addison had never seen typed words before. He probably couldn’t even read. And then there were all the pictures and videos and animated Flash stuff.
Addison looked up again. “I understand now. You are right. This is a way to learn. I would like to learn more with the Internet.”
Mrs. Darnell spoke up again. “The Internet has a lot of misinformation. This may be a bad idea.”
“Yes, I see there is misinformation,” Addison said. “I understand. I would like to learn more with the Internet.”
Mrs. Darnel frowned, but Mr. Darnell just shrugged and said, “We’re losing him soon.” He rubbed his eyes. “Addison, will you be okay doing that while we sleep?”
“Yes,” Addison said.
Ashley and Carlos were sprawled out in different directions on one of the beds, so Bobby grabbed a pillow and flopped onto the floor. His eyelids grew heavy as he watched the Lamotelokhai. Addison simply stood in place, his eyes seemingly focused on nothing.
Standing on his porch, Quentin glanced at his watch—ten-thirty a.m. It had been a long night. The place was now crawling with FBI and Homeland Security people. Guys with bombproof suits had inspected the extraordinary aircraft sitting in the front yard. After deciding it wasn’t going to explode, they had brought a flatbed truck, winched the thing onto it, and took it away. Quentin never got a chance to go near it.
For several hours after the aircraft incident the feds had questioned Quentin, Lindsey, and Addison. Quentin had told them everything he knew, which wasn’t much. There had been the strange phone call yesterday morning, and last night the aircraft had landed in his yard. He had no idea where it had come from or what it was. The one thing he was certain of was that the boy who’d emerged from the aircraft looked exactly like Addison. He had even called him Dad.
The boy had said he would be back at noon and the others would be with him. Who exactly were the ot
hers? Quentin was sure as hell going to be here at noon to find out. The feds had evacuated most of the surrounding homes, but Quentin had insisted that his family be allowed to stay near the front porch until the boy returned. And apparently they would be waiting there with several hundred armed men and women. Trucks and SUVs were parked haphazardly everywhere, including on the neighbors’ lawns, forming a barrier around the house. Video cameras on tripods were stationed around the yard, many of them pointed at the porch. Addison’s look-alike had said to keep the porch clear, and Quentin was determined to do so, even if it was the only place in the entire neighborhood clear of equipment and people.
Though there was a general air of excitement, Quentin was disturbed by all the guns. Many of the feds carried pistols in holsters. Some held larger automatic weapons as they paced back and forth between the vehicles. There were even truck-mounted, belt-fed machine guns.
“Mr. Darnell?” A federal agent approached from the street, followed by two armed men. The man stopped in front of Quentin and nodded. “My name is Darron Mesner, Federal Bureau of Investigation. May I ask you a few questions?”
“They’ve already asked everything,” Quentin said.
Mesner’s gaze was unwavering. “Humor me.”
Quentin sighed and nodded.
Mesner looked at his watch. “Seventeen hours ago I spoke on the phone to a man who claimed to be you.”
This got Quentin’s attention. “So did I.”
“You sound very much like the man I talked to. And then eight of our men claim they saw a boy identical to your son get out of an unidentified aircraft and speak to you.” He waved to where the aircraft had landed in the yard. “So I’m trying to make some connections. Other than this man who claims your identity and the boy who looks like your son, have you made contact with anyone else in the last forty-eight hours?”
“You mean besides a hundred or so federal agents? No one out of the ordinary.”
“Do you know Peter Wooley? Have you ever spoken to him?”
Quentin recognized the name. Wooley was the one making the big announcement in Newton that day. “I know who he is, but I don’t know him personally.”
Mesner studied him for a moment. “Wooley arrived here this morning. The guy has surrounded himself with an army of reporters. He’s just down the road.” Mesner nodded to the east. “Says he has scheduled a live announcement at noon. Do you know where he wants to make the announcement?”
Quentin was completely alert now. “He wants to do it here?”
Mesner gave him a look indicating he was correct.
“Why?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me. The guy’s got more media cameras focused on him than I’ve ever seen in one place, and I’ve seen a lot. He’s live on the air and demanding to know why he can’t show up for his appointment at your house.”
Quentin could see that Mesner was scrambling for answers, almost pleading for him to shed some light on the situation. But Quentin was looking for his own answers. A boy who was Addison—but wasn’t—had appeared in his front yard. And when Quentin had looked into the boy’s eyes, he had begun to suspect this was not about terrorists or threats to national security. It was about something else entirely.
“Here’s what I can tell you, Mr. Mesner. I don’t believe the people coming to our house have any intentions of hurting anyone. And I would like to invite Mr. Wooley and his reporters to our house to make his announcement. Do you have any kind of real evidence that Peter Wooley or our other expected guests are a threat?”
Mesner’s steely eyes appraised him. “You sure sound like the man I talked to seventeen hours ago.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of uncanny to me too.”
Mesner sighed. “We’ll escort Wooley and a limited number of media teams through the cordon.”
Quentin jerked his head up. He thought he had heard voices. Bright sunlight made its way through slits in the motel room’s curtains. He squinted at the clock on the night table. It was late—after ten-thirty. He looked around. The others were sleeping, but Bobby and Addison were gone. He heard the voices again. This time they were recognizable. Bobby and Addison were talking in the bathroom.
Quentin laid his head back down and closed his eyes. In the next few hours the world would know what he knew. Lindsey shifted next to him. What would become of them? Where would they even live? They couldn’t just show up in Newton and expect to share their house with their original selves. And then another thought hit him. He had lost Addison, and Addison’s replica—the Lamotelkhai—would soon be taken from them. Today they would show up at their home, and there Addison would be, vibrant and alive and innocent. But that Addison was the son of another Quentin and Lindsey, and they would have no choice but to walk away from him—possibly forever. Remorse welled up in Quentin’s consciousness.
He groaned and rubbed his temples. He needed to focus on other things, so he got up, woke the others, and then knocked on the bathroom door. “Bobby, we need the bathroom.”
“Just a second!” There was whispering. The door opened and Bobby and Addison came out. Bobby said, “I wanted to talk to Addison, since they’ll probably take him away today.”
“What were you guys talking about?”
“Just talking,” Bobby said. “Addison was on the Internet all night. I think he knows everything now.”
Quentin appraised Addison. “Then maybe he can tell us what to expect when we get home.”
“People are there,” Addison said. “They are waiting.”
Quentin was mildly surprised to get an answer. “How many people?”
“I cannot know how many. When I was there last night I saw eleven people, including you, Lindsey, and Addison. This morning I saw photographs of your house. The photographs showed ninety-four people. It is likely there were more the photographs did not show.”
“That many? Did any of the people have cameras?”
“The photographs I saw were taken with cameras.”
Quentin was too nervous to laugh at this. “No, I mean TV cameras. Were there television cameras there?”
“Yes.”
Lindsey turned on the TV, and suddenly they were staring at the front of their house. In the foreground a reporter talked about the upcoming announcement. After listening for a moment, it was clear the reporter had no idea what the announcement was about.
Lindsey turned it off. “We’d better get ready. We don’t want to disappoint them.”
An hour later they were cleaned up and ready to go. They still wore t-shirts and shorts from a truck stop, which were tacky and pungent, but at least they had showered.
Quentin had asked Addison to explain what would happen to their bodies as they were transported three hundred miles in a split second, but the answers were invariably frustrating. Would they be dismantled into atomic particles, transported at the speed of light, and reassembled? Addison more or less indicated this was not the case—so much for the Star Trek theory. Was the fabric of space somehow twisted so that they simply stepped from one location to another? Addison indicated this was closer to the truth. When asked for details, he started going on about entropy and quantum uncertainty, the inherent duality of space-time at its most basic level, alternate time lines, probability adjustment, stabilization—Quentin couldn’t keep up.
Regardless of the exact mechanism, Addison had made one thing perfectly clear: they might get hurt. By hurt, Quentin assumed he meant mangled, boiled, or possibly exploded from the inside. As the minutes dragged by, he tried to avoid thinking of all the things that could go wrong. Finally, at six minutes before noon, they assembled in the center of the room.
“Addison, what can we do to make this safer?” Quentin said. “Should we hold hands?”
Before Addison could answer there was a loud knock at the door. They all froze.
“Yes?” Lindsey called out.
“Hello?” It was the lady from the front office.
Quentin stepped to the door and opened it just
a crack. “Good morning.”
“Hardly morning now, sir. Checkout was at eleven-thirty.”
“We’ll just leave the key here in the room, okay?”
“Supposed to check out at the front desk.” The woman turned and walked away.
Quentin looked at Lindsey.
“Forget it,” she said. “That woman only frustrates you.”
“Are you suggesting I can’t handle her?”
The kids laughed nervously at this. Lindsey said, “This is serious, Quentin.”
He glanced at the clock—five ‘til noon. He was so nervous that those minutes would be excruciating if he didn’t find a distraction. “It won’t take but a minute.” He slipped out the door and headed to the office. The woman was already behind the counter watching TV. She looked up at him and glared. He smiled anyway. “I’d like to check out.”
She still glared at him. “I was right.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re one of them.”
Quentin’s smile faded. “What do you mean?”
“You’re one of them people on the TV. The ones they’re looking for. That’s why I called Chief Sommers.” She nodded over Quentin’s shoulder. He turned around in time to see a police car pulling to a stop directly in front of the office door.
Infusion: Diffusion Book 2 Page 21