“How old were you?” Lana interjected.
“Maybe six. Anyways, he picked me up and literally shook the fear out of me. He looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Cory, stop your crying! You gonna cry forever? Look at your sister - you think she’s crying because of you or your dad? You’re the man of the house now; you have to be strong for them.’ Ever since that day, I stopped going to my mom with my problems. I saw her cry less, and even my sister didn’t cry as much.”
“He shouldn’t have done that,” Lana rebuked, shaking her head. “You were only six. Of course you would act that way.”
“It’s funny; at times, his voice still rings in the back of my head. I promised myself that I would put no one in a position where they felt sorry for me ever again. Lana, I’m the last person you should waste your tears on. When you’ve bottled everything up for so long, you forget how to let it out, and that’s not fair to you or anybody else.”
Lana had no response but to hold him tighter. But the ghost of her guilt returned to haunt her, depriving her of her sleep. She had to tell Cory what had happened with Doug. It wasn’t a secret she could keep; Doug wouldn’t let her keep it secret.
Either she told him, or Doug would. Fuck! She tightened her grasp on Cory. All she wanted to do was bottle up the feeling of his body on hers, just in case this was the last time she ever got the chance to be this close to him again.
13
Isabel pushed open the door.
“Cory,” she called, trying to wake him, “the old man is at the door looking for you.”
“What?” Cory responded, still half-asleep.
Isabel repeated it until Cory registered what she was telling him.
“All right, tell him to come inside. And close my door. Let me get dressed,” he ordered.
“Okay, but hurry. I have no business entertaining a homeless man,” Isabel replied as she shut the door behind her.
Cory turned his head and saw Lana, still passed out from the night before.
“Lana,” he called out, shaking her shoulder, “the old man is here. Get up and get dressed so we can talk to him.”
“Go on ahead. I’ll be out in a minute,” she mumbled with eyes still shut, not moving a muscle.
Not wanting to waste any more time, Cory walked into the bathroom and made himself presentable before heading to the living room.
His sister sat across from the old man, who wore the same ripped jeans and dingy T-shirt as always. A torn book bag rested at his feet. Cory felt awkward. The man had never given him his name, so he had no idea what to call him, and he didn’t want to disrespect him. He thought fast before making his presence known.
“How are you doing, Boss?” he said.
The old man got up and greeted Cory with a firm handshake, “Ah. All is well, son. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”
“Oh no, not at all,” Cory replied.
“Good, cause this is the only time I’ve got,” he joked.
Cory led him to the dining room table. They sat and stared at each other for a moment until Isabel broke the silence.
“Well, I’m off to my room. You holler at me if you need anything,” she told Cory.
“No, stay. You might need to hear this,” Cory replied as he looked back at the old man. “So what brings you here?”
Before he could answer, Lana came strolling in, wearing a white robe.
“Good morning, darling,” the old man said. “Come join us at the round table.”
Lana took her seat and the old man began explaining the reason for his visit.
“Yesterday we had some suspicious guys roaming our neighborhood.”
“The guys in black!” Isabel interrupted.
“Yes, them,” the old man continued, “You guys need to tell me what you guys did to bring them here.”
“Whoa,” Cory shouted. “What makes you think we brought them here?”
“Son, I don’t know if you guys did or not. But here are the facts. They were looking for something or someone, and they snatched folks off the streets. You guys are next.”
“And why us?” Isabel asked.
“I’ve been around those out in the streets for a long time now. And not one of them thinks of you guys as their own. You don’t act like them, you don’t look like them, and you especially don’t live like them. I mean, look at your established home here with no broken glass or bullet holes. Now I’m warning you, one of those folks are going to rat on you for their own sake, so if you want my help, you better come clean.”
Isabel sat there with a confused expression on her face, but Cory and Lana had an idea of what the old man was talking about. Cory got up from his chair and headed to the basement. When he came back, he was holding the device Lana had analyzed, along with the blueprint.
“Here. We took these from a government convoy,” Cory said, handing the items over to the old man. “Oh, and it was also addressed to a man named Damian Phils.”
Damian, Damian…why does that name sounds so familiar? Lana pondered. She shot up from her seat. “Oh shoot! Wait, I got something,” she said as she ran to fetch the folder Doug had given her yesterday.
“Here,” she said as she tossed the folder on the table in front of the old man.
“Where did you get that?” Cory asked.
“Doug,” she replied.
The old man sat there, overwhelmed with the things being presented to him. Letting out a huge sigh, he picked up the folder and skimmed through the documents inside. He had a focused look on his face, so in return, the others kept quiet. He picked up the blueprint while placing the folder back on the table. He analyzed it for a few minutes before placing it alongside the folder. At last, he picked up the device.
Holding it in his hands, he said, “What can you guys tell me about this?”
Cory waited for Lana to respond.
“Umm, well, not much, but there’s a small computer chip inside the device. It’s something biometric judging by the blueprint and the image inside of it. I think— ”
“What image?” the old man interrupted.
“Well, there’s an image of the sun, and inside the sun, there’s another picture of a brain, and the blueprint is shaped like a brain too,” Lana responded. “But other than that, there’s nothing more that I can tell you. I tried running a diagnostic on it, but the encryption on it was impossible to crack.”
The old man pressed on the side of the device and it popped open revealing the computer chip inside.
How’d he know where to press? Cory pondered, surprised at how familiar the old man seemed with the device. They sat there in silence, waiting for the man to speak.
The old man rubbed his hands together and said, to himself, “Ah, where should I begin?” He nodded his head. “Okay, listen up, and be careful who you share this information with. For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it…
“Awhile back, a company named IBM announced to the world that they were planning on building a new programming architecture for chips inspired by the human brain: a chip that can copy the brain’s capacity for perception, action, and thought. In other words, it would be the first of its kind to think like human beings, but at a more superior rate. This made many people upset, and I couldn’t blame them. Giving machines the ability to think is dangerous in its own accord.”
Cory and Isabel exchanged confused looks.
“I don’t get it,” Isabel confessed.
“Wait, let me finish,” the old man continued, “Anyway, in a public expo of their work, IBM showed their brain-inspired computer chip. The exposition was very impressive, but caused a lot of uproar, and in the end, more and more people protested this revolutionary computer chip, causing the company to stop their advancement.
“It looks like Dr. Phils continued their research and created this device you see before you. Some say that if this was inside a human brain, the computer chip would fu
nction as neurons and communicate with nerve fibers. It would replicate and improve the brain’s ability to respond to biological sensors and the handling of huge amounts of data from numerous sources at once.
“For those who aren’t following me, this chip in a human brain can sense, remember, and cause that individual to act depending on the situations at hand. Now, just as any other computer chip, it can be programmed, giving the programmer the ability to subconsciously influence the decisions we make in our daily lives.”
“What do you mean? Are they trying to control us?” Isabel cried out.
“Not control you like robots, but at a subconscious level, yes. This is another way for them to control us,” the old man replied.
“How? They can’t just force this on us. No-one will line up to get this implanted in their head,” Cory blurted out.
“Yeah, you’re right,” the old-timer nodded. “They will sell it to the public as being something convenient and needed. That way, they wouldn’t have to force it on anyone. People will line up to get this implanted inside them without knowing its implications.”
The old man surveyed the room at the fretful faces.
“This device is dangerous, and the Government will do anything to get it back. I’m willing to bet when you tried to break its encryption, the chip sent out a signal back to home base giving off the location of this area. You guys are lucky. That signal must have failed to give them your exact location, which would explain why you guys haven’t been caught yet.”
The old man reached into his bag, pulling out three bracelets and tossed them on the table.
“I don’t have to tell y’all that your lives are in danger. These bracelets are durable and hard to take off. There’s also a tracking chip inside, so if anyone of you goes missing we can find out your exact location. Also, I will take these items with me to do further research, and in return, I will share everything I discover.”
Lana and Isabel looked at Cory to figure out if he would let the old man take their things. Cory nodded in approval as the old man slid the device, folder, and the blueprints into his bag. He swung his bag over his shoulders as he got up.
The old man tossed a card on the table. “Here. There’s my number. If one of y’all do go missing, that’s how you contact me,” he said as he walked toward the door.
They all sat lost in their own thoughts, looking at the bracelets and a card with just numbers on it.
“Is he telling the truth?” Isabel spoke out.
“Yes, I remember Doug telling me that the device was supposed to go to every city and that there was just enough to match the population,” Cory responded. “Here, put the bracelet on. I got to figure out what we’re going to do next.”
“We shouldn’t have given him everything we had though, especially the folder. I didn’t have time to look through it,” Lana said.
“Really?” Cory asked. “I figured you would have. Oh well, at least we have more of those devices left…I don’t know; I just feel like we can trust him.”
“Okay, so what do we do now?” Isabel asked.
“Not sure…amp up the security. And until we know what we’re dealing with, everyone is staying indoors,” Cory suggested.
*
A few days went by with no sign of the mysterious men in black. Cory knew he couldn’t keep them inside for much longer. Their blood was boiling - they all felt like prisoners in their own home. But Cory still wasn’t sure if it was safe enough to leave. After all, you needed heavy artillery to breach their house, and a step outside was a step out of their fortress.
“I can’t stay in here for a single minute, let alone another day,” Isabel cried out.
“Isabel…we talked about this,” Cory tried to reason with her.
“She’s right. This is too much,” Lana agreed with Isabel. “We haven’t seen those guys in days. It’s possible they were looking for something else and moved on.”
“Nope. They’re out there. I can feel it.”
“You’re over reacting again,” Lana told Cory. “Maybe those guys weren’t looking for us at all, and they were just after some guy in the neighborhood.”
Cory was very analytical, and that was what attracted Lana to him. His ability to strategize and come up with complex plans had saved their lives more times than she could count. And although she believed everything the old man had said about the device, she thought Cory and he were just being paranoid about the men in black.
“Lana, as much as I want to agree with you, I can’t. This is too important to be taken as a mere coincidence,” Cory continued, “If what the old man said is true, and I think it is, then somebody knows we have this device and wants it back…”
Cory paused and scratched his chin. “But why haven’t they come? The only reason must be not everyone in the Government knows about this computer chip. Only a select few do, and they’re not trying to draw any more attention to themselves than they already have. But they’re out there waiting for us.”
He put his hands on Lana’s shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “And it makes sense too. There’re so many different parties working for the Government, not everybody would sign off on something like this.” He looked over at Isabel, took a step away from Lana and said, “Yeah, this whole thing, the missing people, the device… Just a select few know about it, and one of them is on the corner…”
Great, another conspiracy theory, Lana thought. She blamed the Government for the missing people as much as Cory did, but Cory was letting the old man control him. Lana wanted to find out the truth her own way. She didn’t want Cory to trust in everything the old man said, seeing as they didn’t know him at all - not even his name.
Isabel had been putting on her sneakers, and strutted for the door. “I’ve had it! I don’t care anymore…I’m going for a run.”
Cory jumped in front of her, “You’re not going anywhere.”
Isabel took a step back and froze. Her eyes hardened as she lifted her chin. Stabbing her finger at him, she barked, “Cory, you must’ve lost your goddamn mind! Thinking you can talk to me like that, let alone control me - you better do your best to remember who’s older!”
Cory felt humbled at the sight of his sister’s rage.
“Isabel, please, just stay indoors. They’re out there watching us,” he pleaded to his livid sister.
Lana sat back and watched the situation unfold. She figured Cory wouldn’t let Isabel go, but she also expected Isabel to stand her ground and do whatever she wanted either way. She needed to defuse the situation quick before things got uglier.
Jumping between the two, she reasoned, “Hey! Calm down guys. How about this - Cory, how about if I go running with Isabel? That way we can look after each other. I’m pretty sure both of us can handle any scum that’s out there.”
Cory’s lips twitched and he opened them and took in a deep breath. Then his lips closed into a hard line. He knew, short of tying her up, he couldn’t stop Isabel from leaving. On the one hand, he didn’t want Lana to go, either, but on the other, she had made a good point.
“All right, go with her, but you guys make sure to flash your guns at anyone who might cause you trouble,” he instructed, stepping away from the door.
Lana left the room and returned with her running shoes and two holsters with handguns, and handed one to Isabel. They strapped the holsters around their waists as Cory escorted them out. Before closing the door, Cory scanned the streets for anyone suspicious. As he watched them move down the block, he pulled his mother’s picture out of his wallet.
“I can’t lose them too,” he said.
He let out a sigh and went back inside. Something wasn’t right. He had a nasty feeling he would soon regret letting the girls leave their home.
14
Isabel and Lana started running as soon as their feet touched the concrete. Isabel led them into the park, where they jogged for fifteen minutes until Lana couldn’t take it anymore.
“Stop!” Lana pleaded wit
h her hands stuck to her knees.
Isabel was running ahead when she heard her. She jogged back to find Lana bent over trying to catch her breath.
“I take it, it’s been a while,” she joked, patting Lana on the back as she laughed.
“Ha! Yeah, I had no idea you were in great shape like this. You should meet my grandmother,” Lana replied, still trying to catch her breath.
“What, she runs too?”
“Every day.”
“Wow, good for her! This should be fine for today. Let’s head back.”
“Okay, but can we walk first? At least for a little while, my legs can’t take it,” Lana asked.
“Hahaha! Yes, we can.”
They walked back, talking and laughing about anything that crossed their mind. More importantly, Lana could answer all the questions Isabel had about the device and their first conversation with the old man. It was the first time Lana had felt close to Isabel since The Sabbath.
“You really do care about my brother, don’t you?” Isabel asked.
“Yes, but he’s so freaking stubborn!” Lana replied.
“Trust me, girl, I know. Try living with him for nineteen years.” Isabel said, laughing. “But in all honesty, he cares about you too; he just doesn’t know how to express it… he’s been through a lot.”
“Yeah? But how about you, though, didn’t you go through the same things?”
“Meh, I did, but it was different. I had outlets to relieve my frustration, and he didn’t. I kinda blame that on my uncle, but that’s another story. Anyways, they treated us differently.”
“How so?” Lana asked.
“Well, whenever I got upset, they would console me - but when Cory showed any emotion, he got the, ‘Stop. You’re the man of the house’ speech. So, soon enough, he stopped expressing himself altogether. When he was happy, he was happy; but when he got sad, he would disappear somewhere and come back when he seemed happy again.”
“How was he when he found out about your mother’s cancer?”
“Umm. It was a different reaction to what I was used to. Cory was quiet about the whole thing. He just locked himself in his room for days and only came out to eat. Then, once he got over the news, he started talking again.”
The Sabbath Page 9