Genius

by Leopoldo Gout

  I left Edith’s office reeling.

  Tunde was in shock. At first he didn’t believe me, still thought there must have been a mistake. When I assured him that I was telling the truth, that I cheated to get into the Game, he looked wounded. As we left the room, I tried to apologize and tell him I’d make it right. He just walked away shaking his head.

  “How could you?”

  He was right, of course.

  I betrayed him. I betrayed the LODGE.

  Edith told me where I’d find Kiran and that he was waiting for me. As I ran across campus to Kiran’s apartment, every step I took hammered home the feelings of guilt and remorse. By the time I reached his building I was determined to do anything I could to make up for everything I’d done.

  I had to make it right.

  20. TUNDE

  01 DAY, 14 HOURS, 05 MINUTES UNTIL ZERO HOUR

  My best friend had vexed me so!

  After the meeting with Edith, I did not know what to do.

  How could Rex have betrayed us?

  How could he have been so thoughtless?

  I decided I had to see the only person I could talk to about this matter. I found Painted Wolf in the library, down in the stacks, working at an ancient computer quite similar to the one I have in Akika Village. She was wearing a green wig and a matching pair of neon green sunglasses.

  Painted Wolf could see immediately that I was very upset.

  “What happened? Are you okay, Tunde?”

  I told her I was not okay, that we came within a millimeter of having our entire plan fall apart. I told her the truth of what Rex had done. I must say, I was completely startled by the response she gave.

  “So cool! What a coup,” she said with a tremendous smile.

  I was stunned. “But he almost ruined everything!”

  I could not believe that Painted Wolf would say such a thing to me. I had almost been ejected from the competition. Had that actually happened, my parents and Akika Village would have surely paid the cost. Rex cheating in the Game was a risk I could not stomach.

  “Almost,” she said. “Remember, Tunde, Rex came here to help. I know he took a huge risk, but he did it from a good place. He wants you to win and he was willing to do anything to make sure that happened.”

  “But he took such a big risk. He could have…”

  I took a deep breath and let my emotions subside a bit. There was quite a storm of worries and fears battling it out inside me and it took several moments of logical, focused thought to bring me back to a place of careful consideration.

  “Okay,” I said. “All is not lost. You are right, Painted Wolf.”

  “That’s it. Good. Where is Rex now?”

  “With Kiran,” I told her. “He offered himself up. Admitted he was behind the hack and that he was willing to accept his fate.”

  “So we can assume he’s been kicked out?”

  “I do not know what we can assume. What do we do now?”

  Painted Wolf thought for a moment.

  “Rex knows what he’s doing. Regardless, we need to move on. You need to go back to work with your team. How is development of the jammer going?”

  “It is going well.“

  “And Team Mitra?”

  “Team Mitra is excellent,” I said. “But … I am very shaken by what has occurred. I do not think I can focus until we know what has become of Rex.”

  “You have to focus,” she said. “The Game is tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I know this. Still … are you not deeply upset?”

  “We’ll get through this, okay? You are brilliant, Tunde. You are kind. And you’re going to win tomorrow. You’re going to return home a champion. You’re going to have that jammer done. Your family will be safe. That is what is important now. Understand? The rest of it … we’ll figure out later.”

  I hugged her and instantly felt relieved.

  “It is good to talk to you, Wolf. I appreciate your friendship.”

  I stood up to leave but Painted Wolf stopped me. “Not to add anything to your plate, Tunde, but can you look at something for me? This is from a disk I found in Kiran’s office. I think it’s related to why he was in China.”

  “Certainly.”

  Painted Wolf directed my attention to the computer monitor.

  Displayed on it were blueprints of what appeared to be a factory, though the technical information was all in Chinese characters.

  “Do you know what this is?” She pointed to a box on the lower left-hand corner of the blueprints. There I found a diagram of a complicated tool.

  “This is what the factory will create?” I asked.

  “I think so.”

  I leaned in to get a better look at the diagram.

  “It looks like part of a camera sensor array. Not unusual, but it has several modifications that I do not think I have seen before. It is highly advanced and to be housed in … Ah, I see what this is,” I said as it became clear to me. “This is a camera system to be placed in the nose of an aircraft.”

  “A plane?” Painted Wolf asked.

  “No,” I clarified. “More like a drone aircraft.”

  “Drone? For what? The military?”

  “Could be anything,” I said. “It could be military, could be for domestic use. Do you suspect this has something to do with what Kiran has been planning?”

  “Yes,” she said, clearly very concerned. “It has everything to do with it.”

  21. CAI

  01 DAY, 13 HOURS, 49 MINUTES UNTIL ZERO HOUR

  I went into research overdrive.

  I gathered any and all information related to the production of drones in China. I read every article I could in any of the languages I know: Mandarin, Cantonese, French, and English. First thing I had to do was narrow down the search criteria to just target places that manufactured cameras for drones. There were dozens of them, many with subsidiaries in China. I scanned through them all, but most were for commercial use. Tunde said this camera was modified, it was advanced. I needed to find a company on the cutting edge of camera research.

  Sure enough, I discovered several specialized camera companies that designed camera arrays for military contractors. They were all located in Dongguan.

  Linking satellite data with the schematics, I zeroed in on one factory in particular: Wise Eye Intl. Co. Ltd. They had a very basic website with little information, but it was enough to begin the real work.

  Considering the roughly twelve-hour time difference between Boston and China I was lucky that Rodger Dodger, my microblogger friend, was online.

  Painted Wolf: Rog, can you do me a favor?

  RoDo: Hey! You all good?

  Painted Wolf: I’m all right. A bit crazy right now. I have a request: I need to know what’s being made at a factory in Dongguan called Wise Eye Intl. Any thoughts?

  RoDo: Okay. You caught me at a good time. I’m visiting All-Star, you know him? He’s insane. Brilliant hacker and a supersmart engineer.

  Painted Wolf: Of course. Say hi for me.

  All-Star: yo, Wolf. Hey. Hang on, let me look.

  Painted Wolf: Thanks, All-Star. Thanks, Rog.

  RoDo: From what I can find, it looks like they make camera stuff. Mostly lenses and those bubble things on the bottom of drones that take all the pictures.

  Painted Wolf: Anything else? Anything new in their internal docs? Few weeks back?

  All-Star: yeah, yeah, a new order with a company called Shiva Tech based in the States.

  RoDo: I got nothing on them. No websites. Nothing.

  Painted Wolf: Anything from Wise Eye about what this mystery company is? What it’s doing in China?

  All-Star: Hang on … Need to get deeper …

  I realized immediately that Shiva Tech was Kiran’s. I assumed it was either a shell company or something he’d spun off of OndScan.

  Painted Wolf: Any luck?

  All-Star: Getting there …

  RoDo: So, Wolf, when’re we gonna see you again?

  Pa
inted Wolf: Soon, next week maybe.

  RoDo: Awesome. That last video, man, you killed it.

  All-Star: Okay. Okay. It took some serious work but I got it. Shiva Tech is pretty well hidden, but it’s part of this conglomerate called OndScan in India. That’s weird, ’cause those two aren’t exactly … Hang on, there’s something here. Let me drill down into these plans and I’ll hit you in a second.

  I waited a few agonizing moments, my mind racing ahead with all sorts of ugly scenarios. What was Shiva Tech really up to and how did it relate to my father? Finally, All-Star reappeared.

  All-Star: Those drones are programmed to snoop on people’s cell communications. Crazy, never seen anything like it …

  Painted Wolf: Spy software.

  All-Star: They hoover it up. Just, whoosh, get it from the passing towers. Probably e-mail, too.

  Painted Wolf: Thank you so much, both of you. See you.

  RoDo: Keep knocking ’em dead, Wolf.

  All-Star: Rock ’n’ roll, baby!

  Shiva Tech made spy software that collected cell communications and e-mail. That meant Kiran was in China to get the software loaded onto the drones. It struck me then that Kiran had already told me what Stage One of Rama was. When he was giving me the tour of OndScan, showing me the quantum computer, he said Stage One was called Shiva.

  Just like Shiva Tech.

  What Kiran had neglected to mention was that he was naming these programs the same way he’d named our teams, after Hindu deities. Rama was the Hindu god of order, reason, and virtue. He made things right. Shiva, on the other hand, was the Hindu god of destruction and transformation.

  Shiva Tech, the drones, no doubt that was why Kiran was in China. I recalled what he had said. He’d told me that Stage One was all about bringing down corrupt governments and institutions. I didn’t want to imagine the kind of destructive power someone like Kiran might be able to harness. Making hacking software for drones? Meeting with people like General Iyabo? The puzzle pieces were certainly adding up to an ugly picture.

  And somehow, my father had gotten himself mixed up in it.

  22. REX

  01 DAY, 11 HOURS, 28 MINUTES UNTIL ZERO HOUR

  “There’s this assumption that great coders make great hackers, but it’s wrong.”

  It was after midnight and Kiran sat across from me in his apartment a few blocks from the Boston Collective. Barefoot and cross-legged, he sipped from a glass of sparkling water. The apartment was on the fifteenth floor of an ultramodern building and took minimalism to the extreme. The furniture was low to the floor, the walls were bare, and the color scheme was white, off-white, and gray.

  He’d offered me a drink, but my stomach was in knots.

  “Thing is, it takes a certain personality to really be successful at hacking. You can’t have the sort of moral hang-ups that most people have. I don’t want to call it sociopathic, but you need to be able to not care. And, frankly, you care too much. That’s not a ding against you. If anything, it’s a plus. I knew it was you, Rex. I knew from day one.”

  “Why’d you let me stay?”

  “Because you’re talented. You remind me of me, in a way.”

  “So, am I out? Should I pack up?”

  “That’s your decision.”

  I was confused. What did that mean?

  “Are you going to the cops?” I asked. “I need to know. Now.”

  Kiran shook his head, gave me this look like he felt sorry for me.

  “Of course not, Rex,” he said as he stood up. “There are some people I’d like you to meet upstairs. Come on, I’ll introduce you and we’ll talk more there.”

  We took an elevator to the penthouse.

  Kiran was still barefoot.

  During the brief three-floor ride I found myself replaying the day’s events. Emotionally, I’d gone from summer to winter in a matter of hours. I wanted to talk to Tunde, to try to explain myself to him. I wondered what Painted Wolf would think. Would she understand? Would anyone?

  The doors opened and we stepped out into a crowded lounge.

  I didn’t recognize most of the people in the room. There were snacks and coffee and energy drinks and the air was electric with conversation. The clatter of fingernails on laptop keyboards was like a storm of cicadas.

  If they were contestants, they didn’t seem fazed about being out.

  As Kiran and I walked through the room I noticed four girls constructing some sort of biological model with straws and toothpicks. A table over from them, two guys ate chips as they worked on a homemade computer housed in an old Connect Four game. Behind the two guys, a boy with a Mohawk was pipetting a steaming liquid over his salad. Next to him, a girl with Coke-bottle glasses was playing three chess games at once.

  Who were these people?

  “This is the Salon,” Kiran said.

  We pushed past a large table where a girl had moved aside her plate and tray to clear room for what looked like a tangled pile of multicolored yarn. Freckled, with hair in a ponytail, she was knitting, and she looked up at Kiran and smiled. “What do you think?”

  Kiran picked up the yarn. As he did, it fell into shape.

  Well, a sort of shape.

  It was more like a 3-D squiggle, yarn twisted into loops and whorls, all of it circling back on itself in unpredictable ways. If a hundred cats spent a hundred years in a box of yarn, this is the sort of thing they’d come out with.

  Kiran said, “Looks amazing. Almost finished?”

  The knitter grinned. “Almost. A few more peptide bonds.”

  Kiran looked over at me. “Tori’s a molecular biologist. This is her protein.”

  “It’s novel,” Tori said. “If I can get the microglobulin right, it’ll be targeted for connective tissue disorders. Not sure if it’ll work, but I call it Henry.”

  I reached out, took a dangling bit of yellow yarn in my hand, and shook it. “Nice to meet you, Henry. I’m Rex.”

  Tori chuckled. “You’re not the first to think of that,” she said. “What do you do, Rex? I’m guessing computers.”

  “Well, coding, among—”

  “Oh, there are a ton of you here,” she said condescendingly.

  Ouch. Tough crowd.

  Kiran stepped in. “Rex is new here.”

  We moved along, toward an empty table at the back of the Salon.

  “So who are all these people?” I asked.

  “This is my brain trust. People I’ve hand-selected to join OndScan for a revolutionary project,” Kiran said. “These are my people. These are your people. And these are Teo’s people.”

  22.1

  Hearing my brother’s name was like being kicked in the stomach.

  It left me spinning.

  Kiran eased himself into a chair at an empty table at the back of the Salon and motioned for me to sit beside him. I couldn’t sit. All the muscles in my body were tensing. How did Kiran know Teo? Why would he bring his name up?

  What did he know?

  “Tell me where Teo is,” I said, my hands shaking.

  “I don’t know,” Kiran said. “But he’s not here.”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  Was this a cruel joke?

  “He’s been gone for two years. He never talked about you or—”

  “But he knew me,” Kiran said. “Please, Rex, sit.”

  I sat on the edge of the chair, as tense as Kiran was relaxed.

  “Your brother reached out to me, several years back. It was when I had just started transforming OndScan into something much larger. I had epic visions that, over time, only got bigger. Teo and I frequented some of the same sites and forums. We were inspired by the same thing, had the same drive to make the world a better place. Just like everyone here. But, unlike them, Teo wasn’t so good at communication. In fact, I haven’t heard from Teo in at least ten months.”

  “Ten months?” I nearly spat it out. “Was he okay?”

  “He was fine. Just as passionate as ever. This was all over
e-mail, of course. In fact, he’d sent me a self-destructing message through a secure, deep Web URL. One of the first of its kind that I’d seen, very clever.”

  Kiran was toying with me. I didn’t care about a secure URL or a self-deleting e-mail. I wanted to know where Teo was. And just knowing that he was in communication with Kiran, even if it had been ten months ago, was like getting a message from the depths of space. It left me both saddened and newly energized. Regardless of whether I was kicked out of the Game, I needed to make sure that WALKABOUT continued to run. Still … Kiran was being coy.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Kiran?”

  “I wanted Teo to join me,” he said. “I’m rebooting the world from this very spot. It will be ugly at first. Institutions will fall, borders will be erased, and, sadly, people are going to lose their lives. But out of the ashes, something miraculous will emerge. I wanted Teo to be a part of that. He worried. He thought it was all going too fast. He wanted to slow down the implementation. Honestly, Rex, he was afraid. And fear is crippling. So he ran away and joined Terminal. Despite all the optics, deep down they’re just nihilists. They revel in the destruction they cause. For them, there is no endgame.”

  My blank expression failed to hide the fact that I already knew Teo was involved with Terminal.

  “You’re not surprised?” Kiran asked. “Well, it’s what he wanted. What he believed in. You, on the other hand, you don’t have his fear. That’s really great. That means you’ve got your head screwed on right. But … you’re not driven enough. I don’t think you see the bigger picture. That’s why I didn’t invite you to the Game.”

  “Not driven?”

  I wanted to smack the smirk off Kiran’s face.

  “You’re one of the best coders that I’ve ever encountered. Hands down. I’ve done some digging, read through all the LODGE posts, downloaded and messed around with most of your programs. Some of them, with a few tweaks, could be game changers. Real next-level stuff.”

  “But…?”

  Kiran smiled. “But you needed a push. You aren’t realizing your potential. You aren’t hitting the levels I know you’re capable of. I realize now that it was likely because of Teo. That really threw you off track, which is totally understandable. I don’t know what I’d have done in your situation.…”