by Ralph Rotten
Living off of their meager inheritance, the brothers instead focused on their own business. With their above-average intellects they had no trouble creating new devices and products that generated acceptable revenues for their fledgling tech company. Working out of the basement, the Sparks brothers had managed to amass a respectable workshop where they breathed life into their inventions. It is here that they prospered and developed as young adults. But more importantly, it is here that Jamie made the discovery that changed everything.
The Discovery
“What are you doing to my car?” His voice held a hard edge to it as Jack stopped short in the doorway. Wearing a light windbreaker and keys dangling from his hand, it was obvious that he was about to go somewhere. Staring at the rows of parts that were intricately laid out on a rubber mat, he could tell at a glance that his brother was in the middle of another unauthorized upgrade. While several of the improvements had indeed been of useful value to their little company, it bugged him to no end to see Jamie installing unknown technology in his baby. Candy-apple red and powered by a carbureted 302cc engine, the classic 1965 Ford Mustang convertible was a flawless example of automotive restoration. Inherited from their father, Jack had long since assumed the car as his own. Leery about whatever his brother was doing to the vehicle, Jack eyed the work being done as he awaited a reply from his brother.
“Micromic field progression system. It will be the greatest invention since…tea and crumpets.” Standing upright, the wiry savant gave a terse smile as he spoke with a flawless British accent. His face stretched oddly, it was as if he were new to smiling.
Exhaling sharply, Jack gave a defeated sigh at the sound of his brother’s accent. No stranger to Jamie’s voices, he had long ago come to terms with his brother’s various characters.
“I told you not to mess with my car. If you need a test bed then use the vacuum chamber.” Breathing deeply, Jack suppressed his instinct to yell at his brother for the sacrilege he was committing upon the classic car. Leaning over he could see the device being mounted in the trunk.
“Unfortunately, the test chamber is of insufficient length for a fully rigorous examination.” Shaking his head, Jamie considered how to explain his quandary. “The test-bed needs to have a momentum factor of at least nine point two six to the negative tenth of C before it will function within measurable tolerances. Hence, it must be mounted to a fully mobile platform.” Shrugging as if it were common knowledge, Jamie lectured as if he were a professor at Oxford. It had been his way since childhood, to use his various personalities to express his current emotional state. The Professor James avatar was essentially his way of indicating that he was fully focused on his current project.
Taking a minute to run the calculation through his own head, Jack showed obvious irritation.
“So it needs to be travelling at least seventy-nine klicks per hour?” Giving a smug grin, the older brother was pleased with himself for the calculation.
“To be completely precise; seventy-seven kilometers per hour.” Blinking his eyes as he corrected his brother, Jamie’s expression remained blank.
“So this thing only works when I get her up to seventy-seven KPH? Seriously? Did you install a flux capacitor too, Professor Brown?” Jack gave a loud belly laugh at his brother.
“The purpose of a capacitor is to store and discharge a specific amount of energy. It would be contrary to the basic function of the device if it were to fluctuate.” His eyebrows raised, he failed to grasp the cinematic reference. Fiction was not something that Jamie studied much; most of it abounded in scientific inaccuracies that he simply found intolerable.
Shaking his head, Jack knew better than to try to explain to his brother. That approach rarely yielded anything but the kind of brain-twisting argument that made his head hurt. Instead he took another path.
“You need to wrap this up; I got a date with Cindy McDonnell.” Tapping his wrist, Jack indicated that he was on a schedule. “You remember Cindy, right? About this tall, and legs that go on forever.”
“Giraffes have an average leg length of one point eight meters.” Ever pleasant as he spoke in a flowing British accent, Jamie gave a nod before he returned to his work in the trunk. Tinkering away as he hummed God Save the Queen, the quirky savant ignored his brother’s sense of urgency.
“I’m not dating a giraffe! I date humans, unlike my brother who doesn’t even date mammals.” Giving his voice an acrid tone, Jack leaned over to see how much work remained.
“I don’t date at all.” Never looking up, the savant made the finishing touches on the mounting bracket that sat squarely in the middle of the trunk. “I have already calculated the odds of finding a suitable match and statistically speaking I should not even waste my time.”
Jack raised his eyebrows as he considered the equation. “Yeah, you got a point there. Your perfect match would probably be a face-hugger.” Jack pretended to have a creature clamped onto his face.
Professor Jamie simply raised a Vulcan eyebrow as he quietly regarded his brother. While he had never seen any of the Alien movies, he could infer from the context that the comment was derisive in nature. Not content to let his brother ponder the matter deeper, Jack used his hand to slap the edge of the trunk to get Jamie’s attention.
“Don’t stand there looking at me like I’m Doc McCoy. Get to back to work! I got places to go and women to defile. Let’s get a move on there hombre, we’re burnin’ daylight.” Jack used his John Wayne voice for the last part, though he doubted that his brother would get the cultural reference.
“There is a fixed amount of work, and it will require a fixed amount of time to complete. Your bimbo will wait.” His face blank, Professor Jamie simply flashed a stretched smile, as if it pained him to bend his face.
“You say bimbo like it’s a bad thing. Bimbos have feelings too y’know, and usually they feel pretty good.” Pretending to be sympathetic to their plight, Jack’s face quickly split into a grin. “At least my women only have silicone implants; your digital bimbo is almost entirely silicon.”
“I’m not a bimbo.” A woman’s voice spoke up, the sound emanating from the vehicle’s sound system. “However, online evidence indicates that your date certainly is, complete with a tramp-stamp. This was just posted on Cindy’s FaceBook page: I am soooo in love with these new shoes from Manolo. I feel like I have died and gone to shoe heaven when I wear them. Additionally she has forty-three other pictures of shoes on her page. Who does that?”
Co-opting the monitors on the nearby work bench, Alexis rendered a dizzying slideshow of shoes and selfies. The photos seemed to go on forever. Shrugging it off, Jack was dismissive.
“First off, with her legs, I couldn’t care less if she even has feet. Secondly,” Grabbing his brother by the shoulder, Jack yanked his sibling around to face him. “I told you not to install Alexis in my car again. Get her outta there.”
“I fail to understand why you would not enjoy the companionship and assistance of another sentient being during your travels.” Jamie had just started to defend his actions when his brother cut him off.
“One; she’s not sentient, she’s just a pile of code compiled on an advanced processor…” Jack was just ticking off the reasons on his fingers when the woman’s voice interrupted him.
“Oh, that’s mean. I would never trivialize your existence by pointing out that you are nothing but a series of synaptic links, strung together in a cohesive network, or the fact that your DNA operates suspiciously like the Windows registry. Calling me code hurts my feelings.” With an edge to her voice, Alexis sounded anything but hurt.
“You’re a machine, you have no damned feelings!” Raising his voice, Jack was losing his patience fast. With images of Cyndi McDonnell in a mini-skirt dancing around in his head, he was quickly becoming exasperated by the delay. “And the last time you were installed in my car, you completely ruined things with Shaniqua. I was totally about to score on that ass when you had to go and open your big, virtual mou
th and ruin everything.”
“She called your brother a retard; I was only defending his honor, as you should have done. What kind of a sibling lets a woman talk that way about his own brother?” Her tone surprisingly incredulous, Alexis raised her voice angrily.
“The kind of brother who was about to get hip deep in some of that, that’s what kind of brother I am.” Standing with arms folded, Jack was on his last nerve with the two of them.
“I did you a favor.” Her voice suddenly sweet, Alexis pointed out the logic behind her intrusion that night. “Based on my research, you and Shaniqua had less than a one percent chance of long term success. The relationship was doomed to failure.”
“I only needed it to work for another ten minutes.” Raising his eyebrows, he doubted either of them would understand his needs.
“I would have guessed closer to four minutes, based on your performance during your frequent practice sessions.” A happy lilt to her voice, Alexis refrained from laughing out loud as she played an audio file that sounded suspiciously like Jack talking dirty to Rosy Palm. “That is quite a workout regimen you keep, I have to say. You must have massive forearms. I should call you Popeye.”
Jack’s eyes flared as he balled his fists. “Get her outta there, or I’m pouring an espresso over her CPU.”
“That would be uncalled for…” Jamie began to dismiss the threat.
“A double latte.” Jack upped the ante.
“Oh, cool your jets” From the speakers in the trunk, Alexis’s voice piped up. “I’m not actually installed in your precious car. I’m just here by a digital link to your stereo system. James knew that you would object to him installing extensive telemetry sensors so I have been linked to the package in the trunk to record the outputs and results.”
“She is much more efficient that a non-sentient telemetry package.” Nodding his approval, Jamie agreed with her diagnosis.
“Is it done yet? Can I go now?” His hand on the trunk lid, Jack was ready to get gone.
Nodding, Jamie flashed one of his classic smiles. Really more of a grimace that upturned on the ends, he was not very good at expressing himself in colloquial mannerisms.
Pausing before he slammed the trunk shut, Jack gave the device one last glance before raising an eyebrow in inquiry.
“Assuming it works, how much increase in velocity will it give me?” A skeptical look on his face, he interrogated his younger sibling. “This isn’t like that ion engine you built, with the output of a mouse fart, is it?”
“Assuming it functions as designed, and is properly employed, it should yield a nine percent increase in velocity. However, this is only a prototype, and as such there is no guarantee it will even function at all. Additionally, it is only charged with twenty-eight point three-five grams of reactant, providing a maximum boost duration of less than six minutes.” His face neutral again, Jamie explained as his brother slammed the trunk. “I have scheduled tomorrow morning for the testing phase. Zero-seven hundred hours at the drag strip.”
“Seven AM?” Frowning, Jack showed his irritation at the plans. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I was planning on sleeping in.”
“Translation:” Alexis chimed in, her voice emanating from Jack’s smart-watch. “He plans on working-out more in the morning.” Emitting a laugh, she included the sounds of Jack’s heavy breathing.
“Get outta there!” Shouting at the smart-watch on his wrist, it irritated him to no end the way Alexis was prone to invading connected devices at will.
“Good luck with your efforts to copulate.” Bobbing his head, Jamie again faked a smile before turning away.
Intent on leaving, something made Jack pause halfway into the car.
“What reactant?” He called out, concerned that his brother may have used some form of hazardous material as fuel. It would not have been the first time.
Half turning in the doorway, Jamie responded without hesitation. “Element forty-seven met the criteria for abundance, affordability, conductivity, and lowest initial ionization rate of any of the elements.”
Taking a minute to run through the periodic table in his mind, it took Jack considerably longer to come up with an answer than his brother had.
“Heh, silver?” Giving a shrug, he relegated the atomic properties of silver to the back of his mind. Preferring to spend his brain power on the image of Cindy in yoga pants, his brain returned to coarser considerations.
Although he had known his date from elementary school, it had been years since Cindy had lived in their neighborhood. Like most people in their class, she had moved out not long after reaching adulthood. Living in the neighboring town now, she kept an apartment on the west side, not far from the interstate. Navigating the surface streets, he was within two blocks of the highway when a familiar rumble could be heard through his open window.
“Well if it ain’t one of the mulatto boys.” The gruff voice from the car beside him was echoed by a laugh from the passenger.
Turning to one side Jack found himself looking at the Burke brothers in the car next to him. Although they were a familiar sight from his childhood, they were not a welcome sight. In fact he had a hard time remembering a single positive interaction with the two.
Smiling from the passenger seat, Chauncey corrected his older brother. “Chet, you can’t use that term no more. Don’t you know that the term mulatto is no longer considered politically correct? Nowadays you call ‘em mudbloods.”
“No, no, you got it all wrong.” From the driver’s seat Chet used a beefy hand to wave away his brother’s assertion. “Mudblood is just some Harry Potter faggotry. But good ol’ Jackie is just plain old mud-people.”
The two shared an open laugh as Jack tried to conceal his irritation. Although it had never worked, he hoped that ignoring them would make the Burke brothers go away.
“Oh, I see my mistake, a thousand pardons.” Smaller by a head, Chauncey pretended to speak in an elite New England accent. “How’s yer retard brother? Still a retard?”
Turning to one side, Jack looked over the Burke brothers. With thick necks and muscular forearms, they had been his nemesis since kindergarten. In truth, they had been at least partially responsible for his efforts to graduate from high school early. Even now he could remember the indignities he had suffered at their hands. Flashing them a smile, Jack returned the insult.
“Hey Chet, I heard you got fired from the hardware store and had to move back in with your mommy and daddy.” Flashing them an easy smile, Jack knew exactly how to get under their skin. Irritating them had never been a problem; it was not getting his ass kicked that had always been the elusive part.
“Hey, fuck you Neeeegro!” Flashing him an extended social finger, Chauncey Burke was expectantly coarse in his reply.
“Yeah, like you’re one to talk. Still living in the old homestead ain’t ya?” Chet called out from the driver’s seat. “How’s yer Mommy? Oh that’s right, she’s fuckin dead. I totally forgot she got her head all smashed up. Sorry man!” Feigning an apology, the older of the brothers pretended to be remorseful for what he had said.
Flashing smiles that were clearly not apologetic, the brothers also knew how to infuriate Jack. Glancing up at the stop light, the oldest Burke brother estimated the time remaining before the automated signal changed.
“Still driving Daddy’s jalopy I see. I’m surprised that thing even runs still since your daddy was such a shit mechanic.”
Frowning, Jack looked over his shoulder at them. “That’s because Dad was a theoretical physicist, not a mechanic. Say, what did your dad do for a living? Wasn’t he the school janitor? Or at least he was until they fired his ass for stealing pills from the Nurse’s office, wasn’t it?” Giving them a smug grin, Jack dropped the clutch and darted ahead as soon as the light turned green.
Leaving them to fume behind him, he was disappointed when the next light turned red before he could reach it. Within seconds the brothers were there beside him again as Chauncey waved a tire iron at him t
hrough the open window.
“Hey, fuck you. You ever talk about m’ daddy again and I’ll give you an atomic wedgie like we was back in Miss Johnson’s class.” More than an empty threat, Chet promised violence for a repeat offense.
Looking ahead, Jack evaluated the on-ramp ahead. Starting out with two lanes, the roadway would merge into a single track within a hundred yards. Knowing how much it would gall them, he looked forward to cutting them off at the top. Glancing over at the perpendicular traffic signals, he could see them going yellow, then red.
Knowing that his own signal would have a 1.5 second delay before going green, Jack again dropped the clutch as the Mustang spun its wheels before darting ahead. Glancing back at the surprised brothers behind him, he knew they had not been expecting him to jump the light. Fueled by testosterone and primal instincts, they would make every effort to catch up with him. While his classic Mustang had a hearty engine, it was no match for the factory fresh Dodge Charger they drove. With a supercharger under the hood, they would likely overtake him in time to flash him the bird as they roared past, much to his humiliation.
Shifting through the gears as fast as he could, Jack knew that their automatic transmission was yet another advantage the Burke brothers had over him. With the latest in electronic controls, the Charger was a superb beast with more than enough power to upstage a fifty year old Ford, regardless of how well it had been restored. Glancing down at the tachometer, he noticed the array of switches his brother had mounted on the dashboard. Almost as if Jamie regarded him as a simpleton, the switches had been labeled 1 through 6 to ensure he did not foul the process.
“Asshole!” Grumbling to himself, Jack enabled the first two switches before a familiar voice cut through the roar of the engine.
“That’s not a good idea.” Alexis cautioned him, no doubt alerted by activation of the device.
“Shaddup!” Angry at her intrusion, he quickly flipped the next three switches. Glancing down at the speedometer he could tell that he was well in excess of 77kph.