by Rob Vlock
I shrugged. “Why would you have to? We stopped Dix’s performance. Ivy is, like, a thousand miles away from the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, so I don’t see her starting World War III. And Thor? Without Dr. Schlumpf giving him commands, he’s just a big puppy. He wouldn’t . . . Wait. You’re not worried about them, are you? You’re worried about me. You think the voice is going to take me over or something?”
Sam frowned at me. “All I’m saying is maybe we could have modified your code to shut out anyone trying to hack into you.”
“You still don’t see me as a person, do you? I’m just a piece of technology to you! Something you can experiment on!”
And in that flash of anger, the voice spoke. Hit him, Sven.
Before I realized what was happening, my right fist shot out and slammed into Sam’s jaw. He stumbled backward and tripped over the curb, falling gracelessly to the sidewalk.
Instantly, the fiery anger that had flooded my body was gone. All that was left was a crushing sense of guilt.
“I’m so sorry, Sam!” I cried. “I didn’t mean to do that!”
Alicia darted over and twisted my arm behind my back. “Why did you do that, Sven?” she hissed.
“I . . . I . . . I don’t know. It was like I wasn’t in control of myself. I . . .”
Sam rubbed his jaw and stared at me. After a long moment, he spoke. “It’s okay. No permanent damage.” He got to his feet. “But I think this underscores the importance of finding the Tick that’s hiding out here in Seattle as fast as we can. He’s a next-level hacker. It’s reasonable to think he might be the one accessing Sven’s brain.”
“Can I let you go, Sven?” Alicia asked. “Or are you going to do something stupid again?”
I nodded. “I think I’m okay now. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”
Alicia let go of my arm. I rubbed the pain out of my shoulder. By then, Ivy, Will, Dix, and Thor had joined us and were looking at me like I was radioactive. I couldn’t meet their eyes.
“Listen, guys.” Will put his hand on my shoulder. “Whatever is going on with my best friend, we’re going to stop it, okay? All we need to do is find the kid with the butt.”
“You’re right,” Dix sighed. “But we still don’t know how.”
Ivy nodded somberly. “Well, I guess we’d better keep going, then.”
We all nodded and continued making our way toward the Space Needle.
The hilliness of Seattle didn’t make our walk particularly fun. When we weren’t slogging uphill, we were shambling downhill. By the time we had trudged another half dozen blocks, drops of sweat were running down my forehead. They gathered on the tip of my nose before plopping to the sidewalk.
We were halfway down a particularly steep hill when Will shuffled to a halt and leaned against a tree. “Let’s stop for a minute, okay? I’m wiped.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but I didn’t have the chance. Because a city bus screeched around the corner and came barreling right toward me.
CHAPTER 34.0:
< value= [Bus Stop] >
I DOVE TO THE GROUND. The bus passed so close by that its slipstream ruffled my hair. I looked up just in time to see it plow into a row of parked cars.
“Sven!” Will and Alicia cried in unison, rushing over to where I sprawled on the sidewalk.
Alicia leaned in close. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I replied, slowly sitting up. “I’m all right.”
Will extended his hand and helped me to my feet.
“We need to check on the people in that bus!” Dixon yelled over his shoulder, already sprinting toward the wreck. “They might be hurt!”
He pried the doors open and disappeared inside. By the time we got to the bus, Dix was helping the driver down the steps. She looked shaken up, but unharmed.
“Oh my gosh!” The driver looked at me with concern. “Are you okay? I . . . I ran out of gas. The power steering went out just as I was making the turn and I lost control. I was hoping I had enough fuel to make it to the depot. I’m so sorry!”
“It’s fine,” I told her. “You missed me.”
She let out a relieved sigh. “Thank goodness!”
“What about your passengers?” Will asked.
“No passengers,” she replied. “I wasn’t picking up, just getting back to home base. Call came over from dispatch. The electricity just went out everywhere. I heard the whole country is in the dark.”
“Electricity has been cut too?” Sam asked, scratching his chin fretfully. “It’s getting worse. He’s disabling key infrastructure. Who knows how long it’ll be before we fall into complete civil unrest?”
As if on cue, a series of angry shouts echoed through the mostly deserted streets. They were silenced by what sounded like a gunshot.
Ivy pointed to the driver. “Maybe she can help. She drives a bus. She probably knows every inch of this city.”
“Seriously?” Alicia scoffed. “ ‘Excuse me, but we’re looking for a kid with a butt who lives in Seattle.’ I have a feeling no matter how well she knows the city, she can’t help.”
The woman laughed. “Well, you’re right there. I can’t say I know which kid with a butt you’re talking about. A lot of kids have them these days. Besides, the only part of this city I know every inch of is my route. That’s all I’ve been driving since I took this job three years ago.”
She extended her thumb toward the back of the bus, where her route information was displayed on an illuminated sign over the rear window.
QUEEN ANNE AVE N & W ALOHA ST
A thought in the very back of my mind stirred to life. There was something about that sign. . . . What is it? I whispered the words aloud, turning them over in my head, trying to make the connection.
Aloha.
What was it about the word aloha?
And then it clicked.
“Sam!” I exclaimed. “The limerick!”
He scratched his tangled nest of hair. “What?”
“The limerick! The one that was embedded in the source code of the butt picture! You copied it down! Do you still have the paper?”
He nodded uncertainly. “Oh, that? Yes, I think so. Hold on. . . .”
After he produced it from his pocket, I smoothed it out on my thigh.
there once was a butt like a STar
whose owner was bound to go far
ALOHA, he said
you’ll all soon be dead
in the WEST I am called chapeau noir
“Look! Aloha!” I held the paper up for my friends to see.
Ivy frowned at me. “I don’t get it.”
“It says aloha on the bus, too!” I explained.
“And?” Alicia said. “It’s a Hawaiian greeting. Probably just a coincidence.”
“Yeah, well, is it a coincidence that it also says west?”
“Maybe,” Alicia countered, a little less certainly.
I gestured to the bus again. “And what about the fact that the first two letters of star are capitalized? ST, like ‘street’!”
“Wait! West Aloha Street!” Dixon cried excitedly. “Sven, I think you might be onto something here!”
Thor nuzzled my hand encouragingly.
Will blinked at me. “No way! You’re saying you think that hacker put the name of his street in that limerick? Seriously, dude? Why the heck would he do that?”
“It’s like an Easter egg,” Sam suggested. “A hidden joke or clue. Back when my team and I were working to develop the early AI used by the Ticks, we were always hiding little inside jokes in the code. We figured no one would ever find them. Whoever hid that limerick in the source code was probably doing the same thing.”
“I don’t know . . . ,” Alicia mused. “This kid’s smart enough to take down the whole Internet, but he’s stupid enough to leave a clue like this?”
I nodded. “That’s just it. He probably thinks he’s smarter than everybody. I bet he counted on no one being able to figure it out.”
> “Well, he has a point,” 808 remarked. “Humans do tend to be . . . how can I put this delicately? Dumb as a box of rocks.”
Ivy turned to the bus driver. “Can you tell us where West Aloha Street is?”
“Just head up that way about, oh . . . twelve blocks or so. Turn left on Mercer, right on Queen Anne, and you’ll run right into West Aloha on your left. It’s just a block long, so you should have a good chance of finding what you’re looking for.” She peered at me. “You sure I didn’t clip you there? I think I’m supposed to report it when I hit people with the bus. But it’s so much paperwork.”
I nodded. “Believe me, I’m fine.”
“All right, then,” she said. “Good luck with that butt.”
* * *
It was early evening by the time we reached West Aloha Street. The sun was hanging low, throwing slanting shafts of light through the trees. Even though it wasn’t quite dark yet, a sort of gloom hung in the air.
The streets were practically empty.
We made our way along West Aloha Street, scanning every building for anything out of the ordinary. Most of the structures were apartment buildings, anywhere from two to six stories high. I sighed. West Aloha might only have been one block, but that didn’t mean it was going to be easy to find what we were looking for.
Will picked up a twig and started tapping it seven times against every tree and telephone pole we passed. “I hope we find this place soon. With the power out, we’re going to be searching for it in the pitch dark before long.”
“My feet hurt,” Ivy complained. “What are we even looking for, anyway?”
“Just anything that doesn’t look right,” Alicia responded.
“What about that, chief?” From my shoulder, 808 pointed half a dozen legs toward a little statue in front of one of the buildings. It was a garden gnome sitting on a little toilet reading a newspaper. “That definitely doesn’t look right.”
“Maybe not.” Sam chuckled. “But I don’t think that’s what we’re looking for.”
Will looked pale in the fading light. “We’re not going to find him, are we?”
No one answered.
By the time we reached the end of the street, we hadn’t seen any sign of a superhacker Tick programmed to destroy the world.
Until Dix stopped so abruptly, I walked right into his back.
“Look!” he cried, extending an arm toward a three-story brick building on the corner. “Do you see it? Right there!”
I looked eagerly to where he was pointing. That’s when I saw . . .
CHAPTER 35.0:
< value= [Monkey Business (Literally)] >
. . . ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
I squinted toward the building. It was made of red brick with white trim and black shutters. The front yard consisted of a small patch of grass encircled by a chain-link fence. A blue minivan sat in the driveway. “I don’t see anything.”
“Yeah,” Ivy added. “It’s just a house.”
He jogged to the building and gestured toward a little button to the right of the door.
“Um . . . Dix, that’s a doorbell.” Will shrugged. “You might not realize this because you’re, like, famous, and so you’re probably used to staying in hotels and stuff, but most houses have them. You see, you push the button and it goes ding-dong so the people inside know there’s someone at the door—”
Dix cut him off. “I know what a doorbell is, man. But look at the doorbell!”
It took a second for me to realize what he was talking about. Then it hit me. The button was illuminated. “Wait! They have electricity?”
Dix placed his hands on his hips and nodded. “Looks like it. The whole city is in the dark except this one house on West Aloha Street? Seems kinda significant to me.”
“It is. And that’s not all,” Sam added. He nodded toward a tall cell phone transmission tower right next to the building. “See that? There’s a cable leading from that tower to a window on the third floor.”
Alicia slid her knife out of her backpack and clipped the sheath to the waist of her pants. “Okay, looks like we found it!”
Before anyone could even begin formulating a plan, she dashed up the steps and joined Dixon on the porch.
She pounded on the front door, ready to leap into action, her knees bent, her fingers arched like talons.
After several agonizing seconds, during which I imagined a whole range of nightmare-inducing Ticks, a light came on in the front hallway. The door swung open. A wedge of warm electric light cast its glow onto the dusky porch.
A shape was silhouetted against the light spilling from the building. It was short. It looked kind of human. It was . . .
“A monkey!” Dix squealed. “It’s a monkey! Oh my gosh, it’s a monkey!” He scooped the little primate up in his arms and cackled with delight.
“Oh, I see you’ve already met Oscar,” a woman’s voice said from inside the house. “He loves company. Won’t you come in?”
I cautiously climbed the steps with Thor at my side. Will, Ivy, and Sam were right behind us. Alicia stood motionless on the porch. Her hand rested on the hilt of her knife, but she hadn’t removed the blade from its sheath. I could tell from her posture that she was confused. But when Dix eagerly strode into the house, she shrugged and followed him inside.
I entered right on her heels.
The first thing I noticed was the wallpaper. It was printed with a repeating pattern of palm trees and coconuts. As far as I could tell, it covered every wall in the place. The second thing I noticed was a middle-aged woman sitting in a wheelchair, dressed in a floral-print dress that clashed with the walls. She had a warm, friendly face and a welcoming smile. Salt-and-pepper hair was piled atop her head in a loose bun. Her red horn-rimmed glasses perched happily on the bridge of her nose.
“Well, it’s nice to finally meet you,” she said, extending a hand to Sam.
Sam cautiously shook her hand. “You were . . . you were expecting us?”
“Of course,” the woman replied. “I’m Janet Ito. And you’re here to pick up Oscar, right?”
“Yes!” Dix enthused. “Yes, we are!”
Sam shook his head. “Actually, no. I’m afraid I don’t understand. Do you give away monkeys to everyone who comes to your door?”
Janet Ito laughed. “No, we don’t give away monkeys to just anyone. You have to go through a rigorous application process. You see, I train helper monkeys.”
Ivy asked, “What are helper monkeys?”
“They’re service animals that have been taught to help people who are visually impaired, have difficulty with mobility, have lost the use of their hands, or are dealing with other disabilities. My husband, Seiji, and I train them. We like to call this Monkey University.”
“Monkey University?” Dixon’s eyes lit up. “Wait! Does that mean you have more monkeys?”
“Oh, yes,” Janet replied. “At any given time, we usually have about eight monkeys in training. I wish we could take on more, but getting them ready for placement takes a tremendous amount of work. About three or four years of classes on following commands and doing household chores and . . . well, answering the door like Oscar just did.”
“You’re a good boy, aren’t you, Oscar?” Dix told the monkey.
Oscar nodded and pinched Dix’s nose.
“So, if you’re not here for Oscar, what can I help you with?” the woman asked. “Oh, no. You’re not here about Mi, are you?”
I blinked at her. “Are we here about you?”
She shook her head. “No, not ‘me.’ Mi. Mitsuo Tanaka. He’s always getting into trouble on that computer of his. Do you know what he did last month? He somehow hacked into the data the Mars explorer was transmitting back to Earth and made the scientists at NASA think there was an alien on Mars mooning them.”
“Mooning them?” I shot Alicia a knowing glance, then continued. “Who exactly is Mitsuo?”
The woman’s friendly smile disappeared instantly. She glanced up the
staircase behind her, then turned back to us with a frown. “Who are you people? Why are you here?”
The room fell silent as we struggled for something to tell her. I picked up Alicia’s tension as she trained her eyes on the staircase.
I knew the look on her face. She was going to do something. And it would probably result in injury or destruction. Or, I thought with a shudder, maybe both.
CHAPTER 36.0:
< value= [Working. Shut Up. Kthanksbye.] >
BEFORE ALICIA COULD PUT HER plan into action, Dix spoke up. “Don’t worry. We’re just here because Mitsuo Tanaka is the grand-prize winner!” He waved his hands in the air excitedly to accentuate the point.
A look of confusion passed over Janet Ito. “What are you talking about?”
Dix turned up the charm even more. “You don’t recognize me, do you? I’m Dixon Watts. And Mitsuo Tanaka entered the Go on Tour with Dixon contest. We drew his name at random from over a million entries. And he won! So my crew and I are here to take him backstage for my next show. With your permission, of course.”
For a moment, the woman just stared at him. “You’re pulling my leg,” she said at last. “You’re not Dixon Watts! If you are, let’s hear you sing.”
My stomach dropped somewhere down to the region of my ankles.
But before I could even think about stopping him . . .
Girl, you are my scrambled eggs.
I love you and your bacon legs!
To me, of course, it sounded like a cat coughing up a hairball. But Janet Ito must have heard something else entirely. Her face lit up. So did Alicia’s, Will’s, and Sam’s. They all looked at Dix like he was some kind of musical god.
“Yikes,” 808 whispered into my ear. “What the heck is that noise coming out of the hole in his face?”
“It’s true! You really are him!” Janet Ito leapt up from the wheelchair and threw her arms around Dix. “That was amazing!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Ivy cried. “What the heck? That no-talent eardrum mangler can make people in wheelchairs walk again?”