Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe

by Preston Norton

  And then I saw Frankie.

  He was standing a good forty feet away, with tables and students and noise between us like a glass wall. His lips were pinched into an oddly timid line.

  Tegan met his eyes. Then she smiled and waved him over.

  “What are you waiting for, an invitation in the mail?” said Tegan. “Get your ass over here. We got room—even with Cliff and his chimichangas.”

  “Hey, leave my chimichangas out of this,” I said.

  Frankie laughed as he sat down.

  “Where’s Noah?” said Jack. His head rotated, scanning the cafeteria.

  “I haven’t seen him since he walked out of the Sermon Showdown yesterday,” said Lacey.

  “He missed it?” said Aaron. “He’s been fighting for this longer than any of us. I can’t believe he missed it.”

  I couldn’t believe it, either. In fact, the sheer injustice of it made me kind of dizzy. I whipped my phone out of my pocket and hastily texted him.

  Hey, are you at school today? You walked out of the Sermon Showdown right before we WON!!!

  Okay, we didn’t really win. But it was close enough. I consider it a metaphysical victory.

  Noah texted back almost instantly:

  i left after first period. wasn’t feeling well. and yeah, robin told me about it. she said you read a letter from shane. sounds like it was really good.

  And then:

  although esther doesn’t seem to think she lost.

  I texted back:

  Dude, it doesn’t even matter. She’s basically the ONLY person who doesn’t think she lost.

  Noah:

  classic esther. too bad shane wasn’t there to say those things in person. he may have sucked at math, but he was quite the orator.

  Actually, that was an understatement. Shane never gave a formal speech that I was aware of, but when he wanted to, he had a bizarre eloquence. He made the words come alive, made them perforate your every pore, made them stir up your insides until you were ready to viva la résistance!

  Yeah. I texted. It’s too bad.

  Just mentioning Shane, and the irrefutable fact that he was no longer here, almost brought me down. But then Julian said, “You know, maybe I would bang Fluttershy,” and Jack said, “Dear god,” and Lacey complimented Tegan’s Gorillaz shirt, and Tegan said Lacey’s shoes were “bomb,” and I was just grateful to God or Morgan Freeman or whoever for friends.

  As poetic justice would have it, my perfect day ended in a confusingly imperfect way. I was almost home—hadn’t even made it up the front steps yet—when I heard the screaming.

  It wasn’t my dad.

  I hesitantly opened the front door like it was a Pandora’s Box.

  “Like, who are you?” said my mom. “I don’t even know anymore! I’m done. I’m done with your alcoholism, your unemployment, the fact that you have absolutely no aspirations in life. None whatsoever! Unless, of course, bullying our sons is an aspiration! Jesus Christ! Do you ever wonder if you’re the reason Shane killed himself? Because I do. I wonder that every fucking day. And I wonder if I killed him because I let you treat him the way you did. I have to live with that guilt. Well, guess what? Not anymore. I’m—”

  She screeched to a halt, midrant, when she noticed me in the doorway. With a mental flip of the switch, her muscles and jaw relaxed. She swallowed hard, like she was digesting pure hate. And just like that, it was gone.

  She ran a hand through her hair and smiled. “Hey, sweetie. How was school?”

  I cast a timid, indirect glance at my dad. He was standing—something he only did when he was angry. But he wasn’t angry now. Right now, he was cowering, shoulders hunched, with his hands buried deep in his pockets.

  “Uh…good?” I said.

  My mom kept smiling. It wasn’t even a fake smile, and I didn’t know how that was possible. “Could I have a word with your father in private?”

  “Sure…?” I said.

  “Thanks, sweetie.”

  I walked slowly into my bedroom. Closed the door. It was a moment or two before my mom continued her rant—several notches lower than before. But what she lacked in volume, she made up for in venom.

  “Give me a reason,” she said. “Give me one, and we’ll be gone before you can get your ass out of that fucking chair.”

  I thought those words would make me happy. I thought I would feel victory.

  Instead, all my brain could process was a single memory—one that I had all but forgotten.

  Shane’s seventh birthday.

  I remembered us—all of us—going out for pizza and ice cream. I ordered a chocolate ice-cream cone, and Shane got cookies and cream—although we switched halfway through because that’s what brothers do, and what are germs anyway? Shane opened his present—an official Grizzlies football. (Shane secretly hated football, but he never told my dad that until years later—in a fight that left Shane with a broken tooth.) Instead, he grinned and acted like it was the greatest present in the world. We drove to Meyer Park, and all four of us played catch until the sun sank beneath the trees. Shadows stretched across the park, but we kept playing until we couldn’t see anymore. Because that’s what Shane wanted.

  The next morning, I woke up to the Apocalypse.

  It was delivered to every student and faculty member in his or her HVHS e-mail. The subject line read: “The End is Coming” and it contained a single website link:

  happyvalleyapocalypse.com

  Naturally, I clicked on it. We all did.

  Fortunately for our dumb asses, it wasn’t some all-powerful computer virus with the capabilities of breaking the Internet. Instead, the Happy Valley Apocalypse website was a plain black screen with only two features: (1) a timer that was actively ticking down from 22 hours, 53 minutes, 18 seconds and counting, and (2) a video.

  The video thumbnail was the iconic camera lens eye of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Glowing neon red. Watching endlessly.

  It didn’t take a detective to know who was behind this.

  Naturally, I pushed Play. We all did.

  There was no video component—only audio to the static image of HAL 9000. But that didn’t make the message any less disturbing. HAL (or Haley, as I knew her) was using a voice distortion tool to mask her voice. She sounded like a genderless robotic drone.

  This is what she said:

  I am HAL.

  Up until now, my hacks and pranks have all been in good humor. My better half always liked to make people laugh. Unfortunately, that part of me has been gone for a while now. And in the interim, I’ve discovered something about myself.

  I really don’t like people.

  Students and faculty alike—I kind of hate you all. And I mean that in less of a My Chemical Romance way, and more of a V for Vendetta way. In the immortal words of V, “Love your rage, not your cage.” Therefore, I’ve spent the better part of a year collecting things. Private messages and texts, pictures and videos—all the things you’ve never wanted anyone to see. The secrets. The lies. The truth. When this timer reaches zero, that information will go public. What happens next—who knows? When the masks all drop, and we see ourselves for who we really are…well, sometimes a little anarchy is the best means of purging the filth.

  We’ll see who survives the Apocalypse.

  The video ended.

  “What do you think?” said Aaron.

  He had showed the video to me (and Tegan) on his phone. Tegan had already seen it, but judging from her face, it didn’t seem any less unsettling the second time around. I was now staring at the end-of-video replay option, and the timer that was tick-tick-ticking away. All the while, in an alternate reality at the back corner of my brain, I was staring at the fifth item on the List.

  Find and stop HAL.

  Tegan was on the same page.

  “Do y’all even have a clue how to stop this clown?” she asked. “Or how to find him, even?”

  “Her,” I said. “Her name’s Haley.”

  “Her, wha
tever. Jack and Julian told you that there isn’t a Haley who goes to school here. So I’d say you’re at ground zero.”

  “Yeah, but she was in a relationship with Shane. And she dropped off Shane’s journal on my doorstep.”

  “So?”

  “So I think she wants me to figure out who she is. I mean, she gave me her name! Why would she do that?”

  Tegan pursed her lips skeptically.

  “I think she knows why Shane killed himself,” I said.

  “Also, it’s on the List,” said Aaron. “So obviously we’re gonna find and stop her.”

  Tegan rolled her eyes. “You and your goddamn List.”

  “I think you mean god-given List,” said Aaron, winking.

  At that moment, my phone vibrated. I fumbled to pull it out of my pocket. It was a text from Jack.

  Julian and I just did something. You need to see this.

  Jack and Julian were simultaneously hunched over the same computer. Jack had commandeered the mouse, scrolling slowly. Julian’s jaw was steadily dropping. At one point, they scrolled past something that almost caused Julian to have an anime-fan-service-level nosebleed.

  “Sweet baby Jesus in a manger,” he said.

  Jack spotted us in the doorway.

  “Oh, thank god,” he said, and immediately jumped out of his seat to greet us. Sort of. It was more of a passive-aggressive Secret Service greeting, planting a hand in the middle of my and Aaron’s backs, forcefully guiding us to the computer of interest. Tegan followed awkwardly.

  “I knew you guys would want us to try to hack HAL’s countdown site—what with the List and all,” he said. “So I took the liberty of getting a head start.”

  We crowded around the computer.

  “Well. We cracked it.”

  There were dozens upon dozens of open windows scattered across dual monitors. I leaned forward and absorbed them all. I determined that they could essentially be broken down into three categories: (1) screenshots of achingly private conversations, (2) embarrassing and/or incriminating videos and pictures, and (3) lots and lots and lots of nudes.

  “We’re only inside the cache,” said Jack. “I haven’t managed to disable anything yet. It was encrypted, but not very well. Like HAL decided to code this thing overnight. Which is weird because he obviously spent a lot of time collecting this dirt.”

  “Damn,” said Tegan. “I’ve never seen so many tits in my life.”

  “Alas, the ghost of Snapchats past,” said Julian.

  “We need to shut this thing down,” I said. “Like, ASAP. Can you guys do that?”

  Ding.

  A message box popped up in the bottom right corner. All six of us leaned forward.

  HAL9000: do you like what you see?

  Ding. Another message.

  HAL9000: i’ve spent a long time collecting these skeletons. saving them for a rainy day.

  Ding.

  HAL9000: a day of reckoning.

  Everyone stared absently at the messages. Exchanged blank glances with each other. Said nothing.

  I shoved myself between Jack and Julian, and seized the keyboard. (It helped that they were both on rolling chairs. My girth sent them careening.)

  “Whoa!” said Jack.

  “Hey!” said Julian.

  I typed desperately and hit Enter.

  LADY_KILLAH: You don’t have to do this.

  “Lady…Killah?” said Tegan.

  “Yeah, Gibson, my man!” said Julian, clapping his hands. “That’s rad. I especially like the alternating caps and lowercase. Very edgy.”

  Ding.

  HAL9000: i don’t expect you to understand.

  Ding.

  HAL9000: sorry, cliff.

  That’s when I noticed the webcam light—but only as it flickered out.

  HAL was spying on us.

  Before any of us had a moment to adequately WTF, the screen disintegrated, obliterating into a million disjointed pixels.

  “No,” said Jack. He stood up, cradling the monitor gently by the sides. “No, no, no, no, no. Don’t you die on me. Don’t you die!”

  The system crashed. When the fritzing and spazzing came to an epic cease-fire, all that was left was a blue screen, a frowny-face emoji, and a message that essentially said: Your PC ran into a problem that it couldn’t handle, and now it’s fucked.

  That’s not actually what it said. But we all knew that’s what it meant.

  HAL was a bigger threat than Aaron and I knew how to handle. There were so many factors working against us, we didn’t even know where to start. Such factors included:

  1. We had no idea who Haley was.

  2. We had no means of contacting her.

  3. Time was an unstoppable force working against us. (The countdown was set to end tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m.)

  4. Jack and Julian refused to let us use another computer in the lab.

  5. Even if we found another computer on which to hack happyvalleyapocalypse.com, Jack and Julian refused to help us.

  “HAL’s a better hacker than us,” said Jack. “The only reason we got in is because HAL let us in.”

  “Not to mention the fact that we don’t wanna piss HAL off,” said Julian. “I’ve got so much dirt HAL could pull on me. For example, there was this one time Jack dared me to stick my dick in a toaster, and he recorded the whole thing, and it was on his computer for a whole year because every time he had a bad day, he would watch the video of his BEST FRIEND HURTING HIS DICK IN A TOASTER, and while I’m glad that I brought so much joy to my best friend in times of hardship, I’m not gonna lie, that’s a seriously messed up thing to do.”

  Jack was laughing his way into critical condition. “Oh my God. Thank you for bringing that up. I feel so much better now.”

  In conclusion, Aaron and I had no clue how to find and stop HAL.

  Aaron offered to drive me home, but I was too distracted by the utter hopelessness of our situation.

  “No thanks, man,” I said. “I think we both just need time to think. Brainstorm. You know?”

  Aaron bit his lip and nodded. “Oh. Okay. Yeah.”

  I walked home. And as I walked, I racked my brain harder than it had ever been racked before. Searching for some clue. Some puzzle piece I had overlooked.

  Why did Haley hate everyone so much?

  Why did she give me Shane’s journal?

  What was Shane keeping from me?

  Something was missing. Something so big, it left a chasm in the picture.

  Without it, I was building half a puzzle.

  When I left school, I thought I was leaving the Apocalypse behind me—if only temporarily.

  Instead, I came home to it.

  The first things I noticed were the three trash bags stacked by the front door. Then I heard the voices in the bedroom. Actually, it was just a single voice—my dad’s—but instead of yelling, he was participating in a desperate, pleading, one-sided conversation.

  Somehow, that only made the tension worse.

  “Don’t do this, baby. Please don’t do this to me. Goddammit, please!”

  I didn’t need to see his face to know he was crying. Which was weird, because I’d never even heard him cry before. Not once in my entire life.

  My mom barged out of the bedroom. Except it wasn’t my parents’ bedroom. It was my bedroom. She was also carrying a fourth and final trash bag—one that I realized was filled with my stuff. The sleeve of one of my long-sleeved shirts was hanging out of the top.

  When my mom saw me, there was only a moment—a split second—of hesitation. “Grab a trash bag, Cliff. We’re leaving.”

  My dad followed after her, and he looked even worse than he sounded. His raw, tear-stained eyes shifted to me.

  “Cliff!” he sobbed. “I’m sorry! Tell her I’m sorry!”

  My mom was doing a stellar job of ignoring his existence. Instead, she brushed past me, walked out the open front door, and yelled, “CLIFF. TRASH BAG. NOW.”

  I stared at my dad. Sad and p
athetic. Broken and defeated.

  Then I grabbed a trash bag and followed my mom out the door.

  It took us three whole minutes to pack the car with four trash bags (poor-people luggage) and a few miscellaneous items my mom had failed to pack: Speaker for the Dead, a half-eaten box of Pop-Tarts, 2001: A Space Odyssey, not to mention the most important document ever written—Shane’s journal.

  When we climbed inside and shut the doors, my dad was at my mom’s window, crying harder than ever.

  “I can change!” he said. “You always believed I could change, didn’t you? Don’t you think I can change?”

  “I don’t care anymore,” she said.

  My mom started the car, and we drove off.

  She didn’t look in her rearview mirror. Not once.

  We were driving to a Motel 6. My mom informed me of this the moment we pulled out of Arcadia Park, and we’d been driving for ten minutes now.

  We hadn’t spoken a word since.

  I wasn’t trying to give my mom the silent treatment. God, I wanted to say something. But what? I’d been waiting for this moment for years—longing for it, fantasizing over it—and now here it was. It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life. So why did my stomach feel like it was being knitted into a scarf?

  My mom didn’t look victorious at all. She just looked stressed out.

  Burned out.

  Done.

  I watched the houses and trees and shadows of sunset slip by in a sleepy haze. They were just moving things, and I was moving, and time was moving, and God, I wished that for one moment it would all just stop.

  “How are things?” said my mom, finally.

  “Things?” I said. “How are things?”

  “How are you?”

  I opened my mouth. Closed it. Bit my lip and shrugged. “I don’t know. How should I be?”

  “This sucks,” she said. “It shouldn’t suck. But it does.” She peered over at me, digging for a sign. “Am I close?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t really know what to think anymore.