He was right of course. But what he didn’t know was that I hadn’t been idle. I’d sublimated that pain into WALKABOUT, into the program that was running on his quantum computer that very moment.
“I invited Painted Wolf and Tunde and I wondered if it might give you something of a jump start, propel you into action. Force you to jump.”
“You mean you wanted me to hack my way in?”
Kiran shrugged. “I wasn’t sure what you’d do.”
“So then why the drama?”
“Well, there are rules. Edith is something of a stickler. Not a bad thing, honestly. But trust me, Rex, if you didn’t have the promise I see in you, I most certainly would have sent you packing. But you have even greater potential than I first thought. I’m offering to let you stay if you agree to be part of my team. To embrace what Teo rejected. To be part of this…”
He gestured to the busy crowd around us.
“You deserve to be here,” Kiran said. “This is the future, Rex. You would have complete freedom. I would encourage all your ideas. Together, we’ll tear down the system and put a new one in its place.”
“Rama?”
“Yes, Rama.”
“And what about the part before that. The tearing-down part?”
“Every revolution begins with action. Sometimes, people don’t realize what’s best for them until after it’s happened. Sometimes, they need a little push to get them to realize. They have to reach a tipping point. A situation that threatens the structure of their lives so profoundly, they have no choice but to embrace change. I want you to be part of that push, Rex. Sure, it will be difficult work. It will—”
“You’re talking about chaos. People will die, Kiran. I know you’re working with bad men. Killers. This idea of yours, it’s crazy.…”
“So simpleminded, Rex. So very, very simpleminded. Please, accept my offer. Join me here and I will show you how it will work. If you do that and still decide it’s against your nature, you can leave.”
“You made this same offer to Painted Wolf?”
“Yes.”
“And Tunde?”
“Perhaps later, depending on the outcome of the Game.”
“Can I think about it?”
Kiran nodded. “Take the rest of the night. Let Edith know in the morning. Why don’t you hang out here a little? Don’t be shy. You’re on the ground floor of the next stage in human history.”
23. TUNDE
01 DAY, 10 HOURS, 17 MINUTES UNTIL ZERO HOUR
Reinvigorated by my conversation with Painted Wolf and still having heard nothing from Rex, I knew I had to return to Team Mitra and our work on Efiko.
She was right. I had to focus.
Luckily, I was blessed with an extraordinary team.
Na we dey run things!
After a short but productive meal of pizza, I marshaled my teammates as I imagined Painted Wolf would have: with an eye to expediency and efficiency. It was crucial that each of us knew exactly what we needed to do and to get it done as effectively as possible.
After a fresh infusion of caffeine and sugary food, Anj, Halil, and I set about creating Efiko. After going over several hand-drawn diagrams I had prepared, Halil and I began transforming the wasted battle robot into a thing of immense beauty. While I was gone, Halil had developed a wiring diagram for a robotic arm the likes of which I had not yet seen.
“This is brilliant,” I told him.
“Thank you, omo,” he replied.
I laughed. The Naija lingo was catching on!
Anj was my go-to for the integration, which was the most important role on the entire team. It was her job to make sure that we were all on the same page and that each separate piece would fit. This was good for her! She was so very shy that giving her a job that required much communication was a real boon. Na so!
As a group we designed the electronics, hydraulics, and servo-controlled driver and vision system for our machine.
A blueprint for the design of Efiko
Many hours passed in a blur of sparks and motion. Night became day. We were all in our element, working in harmony like a hive of bees. I was so concentrated on the task at hand that I nearly forgot my worry over Rex. Nearly.
That, of course, changed when he walked into the lab near dawn.
I will admit I was stunned to see him.
Part of me had hoped that if he was sent home, he would just leave, without saying good-bye, because I was not sure I could handle it. But a larger part of me prayed that he would come around and talk with me, if only to say good-bye.
“Hi, Tunde,” he said, looking at Efiko. “That machine is incredible.”
I turned off the torch I was using and pushed my safety goggles up.
My heart was thrumming in my chest and my stomach was a toxic brew. I was happy he had returned, yet at the same time my anger was as fierce as ever.
“I was not sure I would see you,” I said.
“Can we talk in private?” he asked.
“I have a few minutes, yes.”
23.1
“I’m sorry,” Rex said, after we had stepped out of the room and into the hallway.
His voice wavered. He clearly felt terrible about what he had done.
“I don’t have any excuse. I was selfish. I needed in to the Game to run WALKABOUT and I should have told you that I wasn’t invited. But I was too proud. You have to believe that I never wanted to hurt you or Wolf or put any of this at risk. Don’t know what else I can tell you but I’m sorry.”
“Are you out of the Game?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Rex said. “Kiran made me an offer.”
“And will you accept it?”
“Probably. I need to be here for you. But I don’t want to make a decision without discussing it with you. This isn’t about me anymore, it’s about us.”
These were nice words, but I was still hesitant to trust him again.
Rex pulled a squashed roll of papers from his back pocket and handed them to me. They were computer printouts and filled with rows and rows of numbers.
“Spent the last couple of hours in the library,” Rex said. “Wrote a program for your jammer. Think this might be exactly what you’ll need.”
I glanced over the printouts but could not make heads or tails of them.
“Thank you,” I said. “Please, come into the lab.”
Rex followed me inside. Halil and Anj gave him cursory waves, entirely absorbed in their work. Then, sitting at a bench at the back of the lab, I spread out the plans Rex had drawn up. Rex explained as best he could what he had devised, and it sounded good, though my knowledge of this sort of programming was very limited.
“You need this thing to be real. You need the general to be blown away. So instead of just writing a code that would make it a working jammer, I wrote the code for the best damn jammer ever created.”
Hearing this, Norbert walked over, leaned in, and read the lines of code over my shoulder. If his quickened breathing was any indication, he found the material very impressive. “Oh man,” Norbert groaned. “Unbelievable. I guess I should just toss what I’ve been working on, because looking at this, I’d say Rex isn’t exaggerating. This is a piece of art. I’m totally serious.”
That was very reassuring to hear.
“Since you’re making this for a monster,” Rex said, “I added a back door to the program. There is no way any of the general’s people can find it, not unless they’re sitting in this lab right now. It’s invisible. And it will give us the ability to shut down the jammer from a remote location. Even better, when the jammer’s shut down, it can’t be reactivated. It will overheat and fry its components, and anyone trying to fix it will think it was user error.”
“This is brilliant. Are you telling me that the jammer will break and the general will think he did it?”
“Yes.”
I reached over to Rex and we shook hands.
I could not help but shine my thirty-two.
“You
are indeed an excellent friend. Shall we test it out?”
24. CAI
01 DAY, 01 HOUR, 09 MINUTES UNTIL ZERO HOUR
I found Tunde, and Team Mitra, sitting on the lawn outside his dorm.
They had a large suitcase on the ground. Attached to it were numerous wires connected to an array of antennae. At first I wondered if this was what Team Mitra had developed to crack the safe, but as I got closer the device’s true significance became clear: My cell phone went into a frenzy in my purse.
I pulled it out to see the screen flickering before it crashed.
“It works!” Tunde shouted as he ran to me. “Did you see that?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling because he was so happy. “But what was it?”
“The jammer! It works!”
“I thought it was a GPS jammer, not a phone destroyer.”
Tunde laughed. “Your phone will be just fine. It was merely too close to the equipment. Have a look over there.”
Tunde pointed between some trees, and in the far distance I could see Rex standing on the roof of a building. He waved.
“Rex is holding a GPS device,” Tunde explained. “It is completely jammed.”
“Must feel good to have it done,” I said. “But maybe you should stop testing it here. I’m worried you’re going to bring down a plane or something.”
“You’re right,” Tunde said, and quickly shut the jammer off. “I called the general and told him. He was very pleased. He has only one more demand.” Tunde’s eyes were filled with concern. “I must win the Game.”
“You will. I promise you.”
As Tunde packed up the jammer, Rex ran over to us.
He and Tunde performed a complicated handshake before he turned to me and smiled. “Walk with me and Tunde for a minute.”
We strolled around the grounds of the dorm as the sun played hide-and-seek in the patchy sky. Rex told us about his meeting with Kiran. Both Tunde and I were shocked to learn that Teo had been involved with Kiran. I informed them of what I had found on the disk and how I suspected that the drone spy software was related to Shiva, Stage One of Kiran’s Rama program.
“I don’t know what he’s actually planning,” Rex said. “But from what he told me and from what you’ve discovered, it sounds kind of like the end of the world.”
“A little overdramatic,” I said. “But not by much. At least your father isn’t caught up in it like mine. I don’t know what I’m going to do.…”
Tunde spoke up. “I do. This means that after we have won the Game, given the general his GPS jammer, and found Teo, we are going to have to stop Kiran.”
“Woooooollllllffffff!”
I spun around to see Rosa racing toward us, tears streaming down her face.
“What’s wrong?” I called, as I ran to her. As sleep deprived and emotionally exhausted as I was, I moved with surprising speed.
“It’s Charlie,” Rosa said between big gasps.
“What is going on?” Rex appeared at our side.
Rosa looked up at us, lips trembling. “He’s dead.”
24.1
We found Ambrose in his dorm room.
Charlie lay on his back, legs curved in rigor mortis, in the center of Ambrose’s palm. Ambrose looked surprisingly calm considering.
“I’m guessing either old age or something viral,” he said.
“Stress?” Rex asked.
Ambrose shrugged.
“Can you revive him?” Rosa said between jagged sobs. “I mean, just give him a shock like in the ER. He only has to last another day.”
“He’s gone,” Ambrose said. “RIP, Charlie.”
I suggested we should bury Charlie beneath an oak tree right outside the dorm. Though a bit confused by the idea of burying an insect, Ambrose still said some kind words about how Charlie had been a good friend and a hard worker. As soon as the dirt was shoveled over Charlie’s tiny grave, Rex said, “How hard will it be to wire up another one?”
Ambrose shrugged. “If we had another one, maybe a day.”
“We have a day,” I said. “Where do we find another Charlie?”
Rosa said, “It’ll have another name, you know.”
“I like the name Charlie,” Ambrose said. “Woods, maybe. But we’re in a city.”
“How about a pet store?” Rex asked.
“Yeah,” Ambrose said. “But we won’t find a Hercules beetle in a pet store.”
“What can we find?” I asked, trying not to be impatient.
“Probably a cockroach.”
Rosa ran off screaming.
We found a pet store on the other side of the river. It was a two-mile walk past a park, but it was cool and not raining. Even though having us all go wasn’t the best use of our time, we all felt a fondness for Charlie. Even Rosa. And so we all wanted to be there when his replacement was chosen.
The store was filled with fish tanks. Rosa found some mice, but Ambrose insisted they wouldn’t work. “Too intelligent,” he said. “And that’s gnarly surgery.”
In the back of the store, Rex discovered several tanks with crickets for feeding amphibians and reptiles, but none of them were big enough to carry a USB. Ambrose had a heart-to-heart with one of the clerks; turned out they both had an affinity for beetles, so he let us see some insects he had in the back room. They weren’t usually for sale, but, for us, he was willing to “make a deal.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
Rex’s reaction was much like my own. The clerk opened the lid of a tank, pulled out some of the leaves at the bottom, and uncovered something that looked like an armored snake. It was ten inches long and had way too many legs.
“It’s an African millipede,” the clerk said. “Biggest you can buy.”
Ambrose beamed. “We’ll take it.”
We had a late dinner at a Thai place. Rex was very critical of the dishes, but we were all famished. During the meal, Charlie 2 sat in a bag on Ambrose’s lap. “I can’t let him get too cold,” Ambrose explained.
Once we had the millipede back on campus, we split up to get to work. Amazingly, Rosa wasn’t as disgusted by Charlie 2 as she had been by the original, so she joined Ambrose for the surgery.
“We’re going to attach the harness, then we’ll wire up the electrodes. Millipede muscles are different, a lot of legs to work with, but I’ve got a cool work-around for that,” Ambrose explained. We trusted him.
While Ambrose and Rosa prepped, Rex and I worked on the programming for the USB. Well, really, he worked on it and I tried to help.
Rex coded like a somnambulist. He moved from a computer where his fingers darted across the keyboard to sheets of scrap paper I’d taped to the wall. There, he’d work out the math longhand. After several hours, his fingers were black with ink and his hair was in total disarray.
When Rex was done, we loaded the program onto Teo’s USB.
Near dawn, we watched Ambrose and Rosa run Charlie 2 through a pop-up obstacle course in the basement of the library. The millipede was so much faster and stronger than the first Charlie that we all agreed his passing was something of a blessing. “Though we’re not going to ever say that again, right?” Ambrose clarified.
“He’s amazing,” I said.
A diagram of Charlie 2
I was so sleep deprived by that point that it may have just been my brain shutting down, but I actually worried that with Charlie 2, we might accidentally win. Rex noticed my exhaustion and dragged me to the café in the student center. We promised to pick up stuff for Ambrose and Rosa; he wanted a bagel, she wanted gummy candies.
“Find sour ones, if you can.” She grinned.
“And get a cucumber for Charlie 2!” Ambrose shouted. “He deserves a treat.”
25. REX
06 HOURS, 32 MINUTES UNTIL ZERO HOUR
The student center was deserted.
With only hours to go before Zero Hour, everyone else was tucked away with their projects, heads down, putting on the finishing touches.
&n
bsp; Painted Wolf was zonked. Her costume was slipping a bit. Her wig, her sunglasses, her earrings. She was tired and even though everything was in place, it looked slept in. Ruffled. Honestly, it was a breath of fresh air. She was always so put together it was nice to see her relaxing a bit.
She grabbed some coffee and an apple. I picked up a big bottle of water, Rosa’s sour gummies, and managed to drum up a few cucumber slices. The man working the counter seemed annoyed at having to turn on the register to ring us up. He lit up, however, when I asked him about his sneakers.
“Nice kicks. Chang Pumps, right?”
“Yeah.” The guy leaned over the counter to get a look at my shoes. “Dang, Forbes Dunks?”
“Swapped a guy a laptop I built for them.”
“Dope.”
We exchanged fist bumps, while Painted Wolf put cream and sugar in her coffee and then found a seat near a window. It was threatening to rain outside.
“That thing you do,” I said as I joined her, “where you scrunch up your face. I noticed it the other day. It’s because you have a feeling, like tingling, right?”
“Yes.” She seemed surprised. “How did you know?”
“I get it, too. Sometimes when I come across a particularly amazing line of code, it’s just ziiiiip across my shoulders. They call it ASMR, autonomous sensory meridian response. It’s a weird thing. Totally unaccepted scientifically, but … well, it’s real. You and I both know it. We have that in common. A shared chemistry.”
“I want to thank you,” she said.
I wasn’t sure what she meant.
What could she possibly thank me for at this point?
“Thank me for what?”
“For not asking me to take off my disguise.”
I laughed. “Seriously, I think you look really cool. I’m not just saying that.”
“I’ve gotten used to it.”
“I was thinking of maybe getting my own look,” I said. “I was thinking something Sherlock Holmes–like, you know? Maybe a houndstooth coat and a pipe? I wouldn’t smoke it, just chew on the end and look thoughtful.”
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