Cyborgia

by D. M. Darroch

Inside the jar, the cockroach spun in a circle. Angus rotated the joystick in the other direction, and the cockroach spun in the other direction. He pushed the joystick forward, and the cockroach ran at the front of the jar.

  “Hmmm. Interesting,” said Angus. He released the joystick and heard a high-pitched squeaking coming from inside the jar.

  “Okay, CATT. Thanks for showing me AC’s lab and his bug collection. Looks like he’s found some way to make them do tricks, too. But where are all the kids? The ones who drank the solution?”

  The robot seemed to shrink into the door and watched him with steady, unblinking red eyes. Angus stared back at it. “Well? All I see here are bugs. No kids. What do you want me to do?”

  The high pitched squeaking intensified.

  “That is one noisy cockroach,” said Angus turning to look at it. The bug was running from one side to the other inside the jar. Out of the corner of his eye, Angus saw movement on the shelf. All of the insects in the jars, cockroaches and wolf spiders, daddy longlegs and beetles, even a lone earthworm were wriggling and writhing and squeaking inside their clear prisons.

  Angus clamped his hand over his mouth. “Are you serious?”

  He looked at CATT.

  “Is that them? Are those the kids?”

  The robot buzzed.

  “Holy cow, AC. What did you do?”

  13

  Family Therapy

  “So what brings us here today?”

  The little man smiled reassuringly at the Clark family, pencil poised over a steno pad. His blue eyes twinkled behind his spectacles. Light from the Tiffany lamp beside his chair reflected off his smooth, bald head. The lack of hair on his head made him look older than he was; his thick beard and mustache were brown with barely a hint of gray.

  Beard, glasses, bald head: His appearance was not unlike that of the most famous psychiatrist of all time, so it should have come as no surprise to anyone that AC3.0 mistook him for that very man.

  “Dr. Freud? Or may I call you Sigmund? If you permit it, I’d like to record our proceedings,” said AC3.0.

  “This,” Mr. Clark said pointing at the boy. “This is what brings us here today.”

  The psychologist’s eyes had widened ever so slightly after AC3.0 had spoken, but his smile had not dimmed.

  “Angus, my name is not Dr. Freud. I’m Dr. Dave Grosvenor. You are welcome to call me Dr. Dave, Dr. Grosvenor, Dr. D, any of those. But not Sigmund. Okay?”

  AC3.0 had pulled his recorder from his lab coat and held it up for the psychologist to see.

  “Dr. Dave, my name is not Angus. I’m AC3.0. You may call me AC3.0 or AC. But not Angus. And you’ve not yet answered my question about the recording.”

  “Angus,” growled Mr. Clark, but Dr. Dave held up his hand indicating he had not taken offense.

  “I apologize AC. May I see your recorder?” He extended his open palm.

  AC looked at him closely. Dr. Dave continued to smile. AC noticed the psychologist had the largest, whitest teeth he’d ever seen. He wondered if they were real. He placed the recorder in Dr. Dave’s hand.

  “Be gentle. The electronics are delicate,” said AC.

  Dr. Dave held the recorder between his thumb and forefinger and rotated it by the corners. He pulled the spectacles down to the end of his nose to get a better look, making him look even older.

  “Fascinating,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  AC held his hand out. The gesture was both expectant and commanding. Dr. Dave’s smile slipped for a moment, and he handed the recorder back to the boy.

  “So, what is your answer? May I record our meeting?”

  “No, AC. I’d prefer you didn’t. Patient confidentiality laws and all that,” smiled the psychologist.

  “But I’m the patient. By recording the proceedings, I am ipso facto releasing you from the terms of the doctor-patient privilege,” said AC.

  “He said NO,” said Mr. Clark.

  “AC darling, please put away your little gadget,” said Mrs. Clark.

  AC rolled his eyes and stuck the recorder back into his pocket. He had wanted to document this historic example of pre-modern medical practice. Without a recording, he’d have to recreate everything later, which would introduce human error caused by personal interpretation and memory lapses. Far from ideal scientific observation, but he had no alternative. With a sigh, he returned his attention to the adults.

  The parental figures seemed to be discussing the past behavior of their son, Angus with the smiling psychologist. AC had missed the beginning of the exchange, but from what he could gather at this late stage, their son had displayed multiple personalities over a short time frame. The father figure was apprehensive about an emotional disturbance; the mother figure assumed her son had an over-active imagination; the psychologist had nothing to add other than another tooth to his unwavering smile.

  Only AC knew what was going on: Each of the personalities was clearly an alter ego from a parallel world. But AC also knew that these adults were far too obtuse to understand such a concept. The question was, how could he garner the greatest amount of personal amusement out of this situation?

  Dr. Dave turned his teeth on AC.

  “So, AC. What do you have to say about all this? Did you really believe you were a pirate? Or were you just pretending?”

  AC considered his options. If he admitted that he’d believed he was a pirate, he’d be prescribed some medication he didn’t need, and this being such a primitive world, they’d probably get the dosage wrong. If he said he’d been pretending, everyone would smile and be happy and go home.

  AC was bored and had been so for some time. School had been closed for months, all his friends were in the hospital, and he’d had nobody to show his experiments to but a robot. This was the perfect opportunity for a little diversion.

  So he looked the psychologist straight in the eye and said, “Dr. Dave, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I just got here.”

  Dr. Dave asked, “AC, please explain that to me. What do you mean, you just got here? That you just got to my office?”

  “No, Dr. Dave. My meaning is that I’ve just arrived in this world. My world is on a different axis in space, perhaps time also. I’m not entirely sure. The science behind interworld travel is still in its infancy. Suffice it to say, I’m not the child of these two adults you see before you.

  “I suspect that their son, who I surmise looks like me, is spending time in my world with my parents while I spend time in his world with his parents. Consider it a student exchange across parallel worlds.”

  AC smiled hugely at Dr. Dave, who himself had stopped smiling midway through this explanation.

  Mrs. Clark was clutching Mr. Clark’s hand while he repeated the mantra, “Worse than I thought. Worse than I thought.”

  Dr. Dave stood.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Clark, would you please wait outside for a moment? I’d like to speak with Angus alone.”

  After Dr. Dave had smiled them both out of the office and had closed the door behind them, he spun around and looked at AC. “Angus, I’d like to ask you a few more questions.”

  “Sure, but please call me AC.”

  Dr. Dave was no longer smiling. “No, I think I’ll call you Angus. AC3.0 sounds like a computer program to me.”

  “Well, it’s my name. I’m sorry it doesn’t please you, Sigmund.”

  Dr. Dave ignored this. “How many hours a day do you spend on the computer?”

  AC stared at him. What was this question he was asking? It was as ridiculous as asking how many hours a day do you breathe? How many hours a day does your heart beat?

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  “There’s not much to misunderstand. Do you play video games?”

  Of course AC played games. Before his friends had all gotten sick, he, Billy, Ivy, and a few of his other classmates met up every night on the virtual playground and competed head to head or made teams to play all sorts of ga
mes. On the weekends when he wasn’t performing experiments, AC and his parents played together on their home interface.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “How many hours a week?”

  AC didn’t even know how to answer that. He slept, he used to go to school, but he learned online now. If he wasn’t performing experiments, he was playing games. And all of his experiments were on his desktop. He said, “I’m not sure. Do you mean how many hours do I play games? Or how many hours do I use a computerized device?”

  “Either. Both. How many hours are you on the computer a week?”

  AC thought for a moment and then asked, “How many hours a week does a person sleep?”

  “The average is eight hours a night. Some sleep a little more; some sleep a little less. Is that how long you sleep?” asked Dr. Dave.

  “No, of course not. I would never waste an entire eight hours sleeping.”

  “So, are you saying that’s how much time you spend on the computer? Eight hours five days a week? You’re on the computer forty hours a week?” Dr. Dave raised his eyebrows so high it looked like some of his hair was growing back.

  “Of course not!” AC snorted. “The opposite of that. Plus weekends.”

  “The opposite?” asked Dr. Dave.

  AC sighed and shook his head. Such a primitive world where the adults didn’t understand basic mathematics. It made the achievements of his alter, Angus Clark that much more impressive.

  “No, Dr. Dave. I sleep for fewer than 50 hours a week. The balance of weekly hours I spend studying, performing experiments, and playing. And yes, I do most of that on computerized devices.”

  Dr. Dave slumped into a chair. He expelled a world-weary sigh. “How many hours a day do you play outside?” he asked.

  “Outside?” AC was appalled. “Are you insane? Why would I go outside, let alone play there?”

  “Thank you, Angus. Would you please wait in the lobby? Send your parents in, please.”

  Mrs. Clark’s heart pounded beneath her rib cage. She felt the anger building in her chest and radiating upward. She couldn’t think straight; the fury nearly took her breath away. She knew her ears had gone bright red as they always did when she was livid. She clamped her lips together in a thin red line and crossed her arms across her chest.

  She wasn’t sure who would get the brunt of her anger: the male person who said her son was a computer addict and thus implied that she was a terrible mother or the male person who had forced her to come here and thus implied that she was a terrible mother.

  “He must spend some time outside in the fresh air. I prescribe physical exercise, plenty of it, accompanied by no technology whatsoever. In fact, I recommend you unplug for an entire weekend. No video games, no TV, and absolutely no YouTube. Kids today are too wired. Angus is crying out for attention. He wants you to play with him,” said Dr. Dave.

  Mrs. Clark glowered at the psychologist. She had painted the boy’s entire bedroom, made pancakes and hamburgers in animal shapes, worn a costume to connect with him. And he’d told her clearly that he didn’t like the costume, the bedspread, that he didn’t need any of it. The other day, he’d hugged her and told her he loved her. And a few days before that, she couldn’t keep him inside the house if she’d tried. Her son a computer addict? Never. Not on her watch.

  Mr. Clark had stopped listening as soon as he’d heard the word fresh air. He had some vacation time coming up and had been thinking about taking his family away for a few days: nothing extreme, but it had been a while since they’d embraced the wild blue yonder. He ticked off the packing list in his head: propane tanks, cooking stove, tent, sleeping bags. They’d pack weenies and marshmallows, bug spray and hiking boots. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d all been camping together.

  As soon as Dr. Dave began lecturing about parents who used technology to babysit their children, Mrs. Clark knew she’d heard enough. She was going to knock that patronizing smile off his face.

  “That’s it!” she exploded. She clenched and unclenched her fists. “I’ve heard enough! I have never used technology as a replacement for love. Angus and I cook and paint together, we hike together, and his father spends a lot of time with him, too.

  “And outside? We love being outside! In fact, there’s nothing the three of us love more than spending time together outside.”

  Mr. Clark began listening again in time to hear his wife utter that last sentence. She would regret that sentence spoken in a moment of anger for a long time to come.

  “Perfect!” he said, his smile sparkling brighter in that moment than Dr. Dave’s had all afternoon. “I’m glad we agree! We can throw our gear into the truck, grab some food at the market, and get to the campground before sundown.”

  He shook the bewildered psychologist’s hand with gusto. “This was what our family needed! Thanks, Dr. Dave!”

  Mr. Clark rushed out of the room, slamming the door into the wall in his excitement.

  Mrs. Clark looked out the window at the rain streaming down the panes and said, “Thanks a lot.”

  A trace of Dr. Dave’s former smile crossed his lips, but one look from the indignant mother sitting across from him vanquished it. “Ummm ... I guess I’ll send the bill in the mail?”

  “Hummphh,” she said and strode out of the room.

  14

  The Cockroach

  Angus bent down and peered into the mayonnaise jar. “Billy? Is that you in there?”

  The cockroach ran at the side of the jar and propelled itself halfway to the top before sliding back down to the bottom. It tried to reach the top again and again. Angus unscrewed the top and heard a squeaky voice.

  “AC! You jerk! Why’d you stick me in this jar? Get me out of here!”

  “Oh man, Billy. Are all those other jars full of kids, too?”

  “Our entire science class! We’re gonna get even! You wait.”

  “Cool it, Billy. I may look like AC, but trust me, I’m not.” Angus grabbed his backpack off the floor, unzipped it, and pulled out the World Jumper. “See this? I invented this so I can jump between parallel worlds. My name is Angus, but I didn’t do this to you. AC did.”

  “Yeah, you’re from a parallel world. Right. Prove it!” The cockroach propped its front legs against the jar and stared at Angus with its bulbous brown eyes.

  Wordlessly, Angus pulled a pinecone out of his backpack and held it up to the jar where the cockroach could see it. He placed it on the edge of the desk, plugged in the code for the pirate world, pointed, and pulled the trigger. A puff of baking soda, and the pinecone disappeared.

  “You burned it up. So what?” said the dubious Billy.

  “No, I didn’t. That’s what it looked like to you, but I sent it to a parallel world. Let me explain.”

  “I don’t believe a word that comes out of your lying mouth. Look what you did to me!” The cockroach waggled its antennae angrily.

  “Well, I’m going to tell you anyway. It’s not like you have a choice. You’re kind of a captive audience.”

  “Jerk. That was low, even for you,” said the roach.

  “You’re right. I shot below the thorax. But just listen, okay?” And with that, Angus told the insect Billy about the pirate world, the sloth world, his inventions in the garage, the fight between Ivy and herself, and his jump into this strange world to find his friend and bring her home.

  Angus thought the bug was listening, but it was difficult to tell. When he’d finished his story, Angus asked, “So? What do you think? Do you believe me?”

  “If you’re really Angus, not that jerk AC, prove it.”

  “Okay,” said Angus dumping the jar on to the desktop.

  The cockroach sped out of the jar and hid behind the first piece of lab equipment it saw. The tips of its antennae stuck out from behind a microscope.

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me,” said Angus. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not AC. Would AC have set you free?”

  The cockroach poked its head out
and regarded Angus with unblinking eyes. “Maybe. If he wanted to play with his little toy.”

  “What toy?” asked Angus.

  The lid of the jar caught the corner of his eye. He picked it up and touched the tiny joystick atop the circuit board with the tip of his finger. The cockroach flinched.

  “Do you mean this?” The cockroach ran behind the microscope again. Angus put down the jar lid and pushed it across the desk toward the roach. “Hands off. I promise.”

  A minute passed in silence. Then two. Angus had some patience, but not much. “Oh, come ON, Billy. I need your help. I have to find Ivy and get out of here. While I’m here, AC is at my house. Who knows what he’s done to my parents? If he hurts them or turns them into insects, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  The roach scuttled out and stood in front of Angus. “Okay. I believe you.”

  “Why? What did I say?”

  “It’s not what you said. It’s how you said it. You asked for help. You’re worried about your parents. You feel guilty. AC doesn’t do any of those things,” said Billy. “Welcome to our messed up world, Angus. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Angus. “But if we can find Ivy, we’ll figure it out.”

  He reached for the jar lid, and Billy wiggled his antennae with agitation.

  “What are you going to do with that?” asked the roach.

  “I won’t touch the top, I promise. I won’t move you around. Does it hurt?”

  “No, it doesn’t. But it feels weird. Imagine if you were going about your day, minding your own business, and all of a sudden your body started running around in circles.” The roach clicked its mandibles angrily. “If you had no control over yourself. If some gigantic human that could squash you with his shoe decided it would be fun to drive you around like a robot. How would that make you feel?”

  “Really angry. Like I wanted to punch someone,” said Angus. He put down the lid and rested his chin on the desk so he could look at Billy eye to eye. “How did it happen? How did you and the others become bugs? Why did AC do it?”