The End of Ordinary

by Edward Ashton

  I caught her eye in the rearview mirror. She looked away. I have never in my life had a stronger urge to punch someone in the back of the skull. I started to speak, but then . . .

  What, exactly, was I going to say?

  Gee, Tara . . . what happened was that I’ve been spying on my dad for the last few weeks, at the request of the girl who puke-stomped you at Fairport, and her creepy friend Inchy. Then today I met the richest girl in the world, and she told me that her dad and my dad were plotting to wipe out the human race. So naturally, I invited them to try to break into my dad’s work system, despite the fact that my dad has emphasized to me many times over the years that if I ever so much as breathed on that system, he would literally murder me.

  Neurological research tells us that the adolescent brain is not fully functional. In particular, the part of the brain that causes us to think before doing incredibly stupid things rather than afterward just isn’t hooked up and running yet. I wasn’t aware of all that at the time, but I do remember having a sudden flash of insight: Holy shit. I am an idiot.

  “The truth is,” I said finally. “It was sexual embezzlement. Sexbezzlement. That’s why they’re after me.”

  “Great,” Sarah said. “Like I said—I don’t want to know.”

  Tara caught my eye in the mirror, shook her head, and sighed. I leaned back, took a deep breath in, and closed my eyes.

  We were sitting in the parking lot of a Home Depot in north Syracuse, trying to decide what to do next, when Tara said, “You know, sexbezzlement isn’t really a thing.”

  “Sure it is,” Sarah said. “It’s like regular embezzlement, only sexier.”

  Tara turned to look at her.

  “And you think that’s why two CorpSec goons tried to shoot me and Hannah this afternoon. Because she sexily embezzled from Bioteka.”

  Sarah looked at me, then back at Tara.

  “Please Tara? I’ve said this like twenty times. I don’t actually want to know.”

  “Fine,” Tara said. “Cover your ears, because I am going to go out on a limb and say that Hannah is not actually remotely sexy. And I don’t know her well enough to say this definitively, but I don’t think she’s an embezzler either. Am I right, Hannah?”

  I raised both hands in surrender.

  “You’ve got me, Tara. I am not a sexbezzler.”

  Sarah literally covered her ears.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “So listen,” Tara said. “Real talk now, Hannah. Time to fess up. What the hell is going on with you?”

  I sighed.

  “Fine,” I said. “Okay. The actual, non-sexbezzlement reason those CorpSec assholes were trying to shoot me is that my dad is an engineer with Bioteka.”

  Tara’s eyebrows came together at the bridge of her nose.

  “Does Bioteka always shoot their employees’ children? Because honestly, that seems like a really poor HR policy. My grandfather was with GeneCraft for a while, back in the day. He probably could have used that as a recruiting tool.”

  I rolled my eyes and sighed again, slightly louder.

  “No, Tara. Bioteka does not have a general child-killing policy, so far as I know. In this particular instance, though, my dad is working on a top-secret project called DragonCorn—and no, it’s not about creating an army of sentient corn.”

  “Thanks,” Sarah said. “I was just about to ask that.”

  I stared at her. She’d partially uncovered one ear. She squeezed her eyes closed and re-covered it.

  “I’m sure you were,” I said finally, “but I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s going on. They are up to something, though. That’s why CorpSec is after me.”

  “Oh,” Tara said. “That’s not so bad. So your dad is like a heroic whistle-blower or something?”

  “Well,” I said. “Not exactly.”

  “So what then? He stumbled on the truth, and had to flee for his life?”

  “Closer,” I said. “I mean, he didn’t actually stumble on anything as far as I know, and I’m the one who’s fleeing, but other than that, I guess you’re in the ballpark.”

  “Wait,” Sarah said. “I’m confused. What, exactly, is Bioteka up to?”

  She’d dropped her hands back to her lap. Apparently, she was losing her fear of the gulag.

  “Well, that’s the thing.” I looked around. A car was cruising back and forth at the other end of the lot. Something told me this was not a good thing. “To be honest, I don’t actually know.”

  “But you know it’s bad?”

  The car pulled into a spot, facing right toward us, maybe twenty yards away.

  “Well,” I said. “We definitely think it’s bad. We don’t really know anything, though. That’s why Devon was trying to break into my dad’s system. We wanted to find out what he was up to.”

  Tara’s jaw sagged open.

  “Wait, you let Devon Morgan get her hands on your own father’s system?”

  I nodded.

  “Holy crap,” Sarah said. “What’s wrong with you? Devon Morgan’s family basically got sent to a re-education camp at the end of the Stupid War. They’re like enemies of the state. She probably transferred all the money to her offshore bank account or something. No wonder those guys were trying to shoot you.”

  Tara rolled her eyes.

  “All the money?”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “You know—all that Bioteka money. She probably totally sexbezzled it.”

  “No,” Tara said. “Devon Morgan is definitely not a sexbezzler. A regular embezzler, though? That’s a possibility. I think Sarah’s on point here, Hannah. Letting Devon Morgan anywhere near your house was not a great idea—totally aside from the fact that if I’d known that you were palling around with her, I probably would have just let those CorpSec guys shoot you back there. I think you’re looking at a lifetime of being an international fugitive. Bioteka is not going to be forgiving of someone who took all their money.”

  I looked back and forth between them.

  “You guys are idiots,” I said.

  “Careful,” Tara said. “We’re idiots who just saved your ass from being darted with extreme prejudice.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said, “and then spending the next twenty years in the Bioteka dungeons, being tortured by sentient corn.”

  Tara shook her head.

  “There’s no such thing as sentient corn.”

  “Uh-huh,” Sarah said. “That’s what those guys at Bioteka want you to think.”

  That got us ten seconds of silence.

  “Look,” I said. “Is it too late to go back and get darted? Tortured by corn is sounding better and better.”

  It was maybe a half hour later, and we’d pulled into a service station because Tara needed to charge up and I needed to pee. The more I’d talked things through with them—the more I’d actually thought for a change—the stupider I sounded, even to myself. I mean, I’d known my dad for a long time. He was a doofus, and he was kind of stupid when it came to dealing with people, but he had never given me the slightest indication that he was interested in wiping the planet clean to make way for the master race, or whatever it was that Devon and her friend thought he was up to.

  The whole being-shot-at bit was a little weird, but I was sure there was some kind of reasonable explanation for that as well. Maybe CorpSec had gone to my house first, when Devon started trying to break their security, and Jordan or Micah had done something really stupid—or maybe it was more like a protective custody thing, and they were just trying to . . .

  Just trying to shoot me for my own good? No, that didn’t really make sense either.

  Tara pulled up to the charging station. I opened the door, climbed out and looked around.

  “That way,” Tara said, and pointed to the far side of the building. I went. It was pretty much as gross as you’d expect for a service-station bathroom—the kind of place where you think long and hard about washing your hands, because the sliver of soap sitting on the sink looks
more bacteria laden than your backside does.

  When I came back out, the car from the Home Depot lot was sitting behind Tara’s. Both she and Sarah were out of the car, talking to big men in black uniforms. Tara looked over and caught my eye.

  “Sarah never turned off her phone,” she said.

  Sarah looked down at her shoes, and gave me an apologetic shrug.

  “Now that I think about it,” Tara said, “neither did I.”

  One of the officers was walking slowly toward me. The other waited by the car.

  “Seriously,” I said, and put my hands in the air. “You two are idiots.”

  23. In which Jordan enters into the belly of the beast.

  As it turned out, Marta did not actually live in a house—unless you’d call the White House a house, I guess. We pulled off the highway just past Syracuse. Mr. CorpSec pulled off right along with us. We trundled through the toll booth, then made two quick rights, and turned off onto a private road.

  “Tell me this is your driveway,” I said. “We’re practically running on fumes here.”

  Marta leaned forward in between the seats to look at me.

  “Running on what?”

  I sighed.

  “It’s an expression.”

  “No,” Marta said. “Pretty sure it’s not.”

  I sighed again, louder.

  “Whatever, Marta. It means this car is going to stop moving sometime soon, so I hope we’re close to wherever we’re supposed to be going.”

  “Well,” Marta said, “In that case, you’re in luck. This actually is my driveway.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well . . . good, then.”

  Marta smiled.

  “Don’t get too excited. My driveway is like eight miles long.”

  That was not an exaggeration. We rolled through a mile or two of scrub, then through a thick stand of big, hoary old oaks and hemlocks, then a stretch of decorative things like weeping cherries and magnolias, then finally what must have been a mile or more of manicured gardens. By the time we got to the guard station, the needle on my gas gauge was distinctly below the big red E. We rolled up to the gate, with Mr. CorpSec close in behind us. A bored-looking middle-aged woman in a slightly more elaborate black uniform came out of a little wooden booth by the gate.

  “Turn around, kids,” she said. “This isn’t a tourist stop.”

  Mr. CorpSec was out and running toward her by then.

  “Stay back,” he yelled. “They’re dangerous!”

  The woman looked up at him, planted her feet, and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Really, Mike?”

  “Yeah, really!” Mr. CorpSec said. “They jumped me! They broke my taser!”

  Marta squeezed between me and Micah then, reached across me and dropped the side window.

  “Hi Gina,” she said. “Would you mind opening the gate, please?”

  Gina turned to stare at Mr. CorpSec. He’d pulled up short, his jaw hanging open.

  “Certainly, Ms. Longstreth,” she said slowly. “I’d be happy to.”

  Marta pulled herself farther forward until she could catch Mr. CorpSec’s eye.

  “Don’t worry, Mike,” she said. “I’ll tell Daddy you did a bang-up job today.”

  The gate swung open, and we coasted onto the Longstreth estate.

  I left the car parked just past the hedge maze that stood between the guard station and the main grounds. We climbed out, stretching and groaning, to get our first good look at the home of the world’s richest man.

  The house, if you could call it that, was set at the top of a low, conical hill. The hill, which was so symmetrical that it almost had to be artificial, was surrounded by a stone wall, maybe ten feet high and topped with jagged shards of something metallic-looking. The house itself looked to be stone as well, three hulking stories, with round towers at each corner that stood another ten or twelve feet higher. My family lived in a palace. This place was a castle.

  “Holy crap,” Micah said. “Your dad is not screwing around.”

  Marta shrugged.

  “I told you he was a little paranoid.”

  Micah laughed.

  “A little? Those towers are sniper’s nests, Marta. You could stand off an army from this place—as long as they didn’t have artillery, anyway.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Not sure artillery would help you much either. The stone is just a facade. The actual walls are made of the same stuff the army uses to line their command bunkers.”

  We all turned to look at her then.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Devon said after a long, awkward silence, “what does a place like this go for these days?”

  Marta folded her arms over her chest and stared at her.

  “You know what?” Micah said finally. “Let’s go inside. Your dad’s probably wondering what we’re doing out here.”

  I looked up at the nearest tower. There was a ring of open windows just under the eaves. Someone was watching us from one of them.

  He was watching us through the scope of a rifle.

  Micah had a tiny red spot on the back of his neck.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We should probably go.”

  The road led a quarter turn around the hill to a solid steel gate—the only way through the wall, as far as I could see. The doors slid silently open as we walked toward it, and then closed with a soft clang when we were through.

  “Now that was ominous,” Micah said. “Project Snitch? Not ominous. Giant steel gates sliding shut behind you? Definitely ominous.”

  “You get used to it,” Marta said.

  I glanced up. Señor Bang-Bang was still there. Micah had lost his dot, though.

  “Hey,” Devon said. “Nice zit, Jordan.”

  I did my best to pull my head into my chest like a turtle.

  “How about the snipers, Marta? You get used to those?”

  Marta glanced up at the tower.

  “They don’t usually put the crosshairs on me.”

  We turned off the driveway and onto a crushed-stone path that led to a heavy, arched wooden door.

  “Let me guess,” Micah said. “You’ve got a murder hole?”

  Marta gave him a sideways glance.

  “Yes, Micah. Obviously, we have a murder hole.”

  I groaned.

  “A murder hole?”

  Marta pressed her palm to a reader beside the door. The lock mechanism clicked, and the door swung open.

  “Oh, don’t be such a baby, Jordan. It’s mostly for show.”

  If the outside of Marta’s house looked like a castle, the inside looked like a cross between the fanciest bits of my house and the Taj Mahal. The floors were marble. The furniture was teak. The fixtures gave every impression of being solid gold.

  “They’re not,” Marta said when I mentioned that. “They’re just gold plated.”

  She led us into the kitchen. It looked like it had been lifted from the sort of restaurant that even my dad couldn’t afford.

  “Okay,” Micah said. “We’re in. What’s the plan, Marta?”

  “Well,” she said. “First, we get snacks.”

  Devon shook her head.

  “You’ve got to be freaking kidding.”

  She wandered around the prep station, past the industrial-grade stove, and through an arched entryway into the next room.

  “Hey,” Devon called. “Jordan. Check this.”

  Marta and Micah were rooting around in the walk-in refrigerator. As I watched, Micah pulled out what looked like a barbecued dinosaur leg.

  “Jordan,” he said. “Wanna go halvsies? Smells good, but it might be horse.”

  I shook my head and followed Devon.

  “Look,” she said when she saw me. “They’ve got a VR rig. Want to give it a spin?”

  I gave a long, low whistle. She was right. This wasn’t just one of those puke-inducing helmets that you could rent for a virtual tour of Mars. Marta had a full-immersion tank taking up most of the floor space in what wa
s supposed to be a breakfast nook or something. I’d never seen a VR tank in the flesh before. I’d seen them on the vids, though, and I had a vague idea of what they cost—lots more than my car, and just a little less than a private jet.

  Well, less than a brand-new private jet, anyway. Probably about on par with a used one.

  “No,” I said. “I do not want to give it a spin. If you break that thing, you’ll be in debtors’ prison until you’re a hundred years old. And anyway, aren’t we supposed to be doing something here?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and crouched down beside the tank. She ran one hand lightly over the control panel. “We’re supposed to be finding out how the 0.0001 percent live.”

  I took a step closer to her. She’d let her fingers settle on the controls.

  “Not to be a nudge or anything, but I’m pretty sure we’re here to stop Marta’s dad from killing me.”

  Devon sighed, and disengaged the lid lock.

  “He’s not trying to kill you personally, Jordan.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That makes me feel much better.”

  She tapped out a sequence on the panel, and the lid slid back.

  “Really,” I said. “I don’t think this is a great idea right now.”

  “Got it,” she said. “Fortunately, I wasn’t asking for your opinion.”

  She reached into the tank and slowly withdrew the helmet. It looked like the sort of thing an old-timey shuttle pilot would wear, but with lots more wires and tubes coming out of it. She turned it over in her hands.

  “Sweet,” she said. “You see those needles? This thing patches straight into your sensorium.”

  I grimaced.

  “Is that a good thing?”

  Devon laughed.

  “Yes, my simple friend. That is a very good thing. I thought they outlawed these things after the Stupid War. This was one of the ways that the NatSec propagandists said AIs could get inside your head. I guess those kinds of laws don’t apply when you’re a trillionaire, huh?”