Reaction

by Seth M. Baker

  “Still looks dangerous,” Gravity said.

  “Thank you for your astute observation,” Jones said. “Of course it’s dangerous, it’s an experimental aircraft. But our young friend being wanted for murder and pursued by paramilitary hit men is pretty dangerous as well. In fact, I think he’s damn lucky to have gotten here.” He looked around the room. Amadeus nodded and took a deep breath.

  “So how do you fly this thing?”

  *

  Under optimal conditions, the Pachyderm could be flown entirely on autopilot, thanks to a proprietary GPS navigation system Jones had hired a company to develop. However, Jones insisted that Amadeus learn to fly the Pachyderm using entirely manual controls. Amadeus, more aware than anyone that optimal conditions could turn to nightmares within minutes, was more than happy to oblige.

  The first four times Amadeus crashed the Pachyderm, he hadn’t even got off the mountain. The fifth time, the simulator informed him he was safely in the air.

  On a smaller computer nearby, Gravity was learning to operate the Pachyderm as well but having less luck. He had said the craft handled like a floating barge. Most of his crashes occurred when he changed directions too fast. The Pachyderm would tip over; upside down, the turbofans would make the ship rocket towards the ground.

  “I need at least seven days to get her flight worthy,” Jones had said. “We'll need to have you both do a couple of test flights. A simulator's one thing, but it's just that, a simulation.”

  The contractors showed up early in the day, a group of four Asians, three men and a woman. The men went right to work on the Pachyderm. “They’re Koreans,” Jones said, nodding to them, “but they’re shy about speaking English. Terrified, in fact. Su Min, that’s the girl, she’s the team lead. I flew them in from Seoul a few months ago. I’ve never seen a harder-working team.” As if hearing him talking about her, Su Min walked over to Jones, said something in Korean, gave everyone in the room a little nod, and hurried off to work on the Pachyderm. Jones rolled out of the room behind them, talking to them in Korean.

  Amadeus spent the rest of the morning on the simulator. Eventually, he could remain stationary in the air, take off, and turn around. He still crashed on almost every landing. Banking still baffled him. When the Pachyderm crashed, a little cartoon angel floated up from the wreckage, playing a harp on its way to the sky. “That was me,” Lilly said. “I had the programmers put that in there. Every action has consequences.”

  That afternoon, he returned to his father's journals, starting with the last entry.

  July 16:I have decided to suspend this project. Results not consistent with hypothesis. Potential for harm is too great.

  July 12: Same result, different creature. Like the others, it has mammalian, reptilian, and arachnid features, and I'm up to my elbows in the damn things. A cryptozoologist would have a field day if they dug up my back yard. Anyway, today I saw a claw; just the tip came through but it was the size of my head. I shut the machine down, severing the claw. Had to use the engine hoist to move it. I buried it back in the demon graveyard. I hope Amadeus doesn’t someday decide to build a pool.

  Most days had a short entry, usually no more than two hundred words. Amadeus scanned through the entries; most talked about having the same results as the day before. One entry caught his eye:

  June 7: I've made a terrible mistake. I forgot to password-protect the server, and I'm pretty sure someone has gained access and downloaded the schematics and research. Not sure who, but the strange IP address makes me think it's the fourth partner. Maybe I’m blaming him because I already don’t trust him. Need to implement tighter security measures.

  Amadeus looked up from the computer. “Who is the fourth partner? Lilly, have you found anything else out about the other partners?”

  “Only that your father did an excellent job of keeping them anonymous,” Lilly said. “We’ve got Esther, that’s it.”

  “I think I figured out why he decided to use biometric security,” Amadeus said. “Someone downloaded the schematics. I thought he was paranoid, but Gravity is right. Somebody out there knows how to make a demon gate.”

  17

  In the evening, Gravity told Amadeus that, while they were waiting on the Pachyderm to be finished, he would teach him some basic self-defense. “Just in case this shit storm turns into a turd typhoon. Kung fu, karate, though, most of that's not really going to help you. It's not really practical. You need to know some judo and hapkido moves, get a guy in a position you can either punch his throat or kick him in the balls.”

  “Isn't that fighting dirty?”

  “Sorry, Amadeus, but you’re a scrawny bastard. Would you rather fight fair and die or fight dirty and win? If someone is attacking you, are you really concerned about fighting clean or dirty?”

  “Guess not.”

  They rolled out an old carpet in the hangar. Gravity showed Amadeus how to throw a punch, break a hold, and the best way to fall. Nearby, the contractors drilled and welded as they disassembled and reassembled various parts of the Pachyderm. Occasionally showers of sparks would light up the room. When caught in freeze frame as they rained to the ground, they looked like the glowing branches of a weeping willow.

  After only an hour of lessons, sitting on the mat after his last fall, Amadeus' lungs burned, his sides hurt, and his legs quivered like custard. “Enough, enough,” Amadeus said. Gravity smiled, helped him up, and slapped him on the back.

  “Not bad for a coddled suburbanite,” Grassal said. Gravity smirked. Grassal had quietly rolled himself into the hangar to watch them train. He was in a manual wheelchair, his foot wrapped and elevated on a stirrup. He still looked spaced out, but he had just awakened from two days of sleep.

  “Hey Grassal,” Amadeus said, kneeling next to his friend. “I am so sorry for what happened to you. This is my fault. You never should have been involved in this.”

  “Damn it Amadeus, stop saying that. You’re like a brother to me, and your father was like my father, okay? Of course I’m involved. We’re entangled. And did you shoot me?” Amadeus shook his head. “Then relax.”

  “Still, it feels like it’s my fault.”

  “Okay, fine, it’s your fault. You shouldn’t have shot me, you trigger-happy bastard.”

  “Grassal, I really am sorry—” Grassal interrupted him.

  “No worries. Okay?” Amadeus looked at Grassal’s elevated leg and furrowed his brow. Grassal smacked his head. “Okay?” Amadeus nodded as he stood up.

  “How's that foot?” Gravity asked.

  “Lilly’s a good nurse. She gives me all the pills I want, said she's going to help me forget about the gaping hole in my calf.”

  “That’s great news. About the pills. Not about the gaping hole. Just don’t enjoy them too much.”

  “Grassal is a trooper,” Gravity said. “And we’re all entitled to a little vice now and then.”

  “That’s right, listen to the big guy there,” Grassal said, rolling his chair around in a tight circle. “I'm getting a little better on this thing. Next I’ll be entering races.”

  “You'll be able to walk without a cane in a couple months,” Gravity said. “You’ve just got to give it time to heal.”

  “Were you a medic?” Amadeus asked. Gravity nodded.

  “Among other things.”

  18

  After a shower, Amadeus settled into the data center with Grassal and Lilly. They ran a split screen on the wall, each of them sorting through different parts of the files. Grassal downloaded some scripts and cracks, trying to unlock the encryption. After an hour, Grassal pushed the keyboard away in frustration.

  “Damnit, you just can't crack these biometrics. Impossible,” Grassal said.

  “It’s all good,” Amadeus said, “We’ll get what we need. I've got to track down all these people anyway; I'll get their fingerprints while I'm there.”

  “Or their fingers,” Gravity said, leaning against the doorframe.

  “God, Gravity. Real
ly?” Amadeus said. Lilly giggled. Amadeus wasn't sure if she was giggling with him or at him.

  “You do what you have to do,” Gravity said, “and sometimes that includes partial dismemberment.” Gravity winked at Amadeus.

  “Um,” Amadeus said. He imagined cutting off the fingers of the people who came into his house and found the thought not entirely unsatisfying.

  “Amadeus, I think you should read this,” Lilly said. She passed him a tablet computer. Running her hand across the top, she moved all the layers and files aside except for one, his father's journal. “This is an older entry, one of the longest, and, well, it's kind of personal. I stopped reading about halfway through.”

  Amadeus peered down and read words his father had written almost a year and a half ago. This, Amadeus realized, would've been after the one and only time he tried his hand at deviance and was caught shoplifting some electric wire from the local Mega-Mart.

  November 22nd: Amadeus is a resilient kid and I'm proud of him, but he’s so scared of everything. This paper eating habit, it can’t be good for his intestines. Maybe he’s like me when I was his age, only he shows it in a very different way. One shoplifting charge? That’s nothing. The Mega-Mart is a shithead company anyway.

  Hell, I was a lot worse, drugs, fights, vandalism. I had my own crises, sure, my parents had divorced and I had to live with my dad, except the difference was my dad was a bastard drunk. Is it any wonder I did what I did? But one day, I think my son's going to be a better man than I could ever hope to be. He’ll be strong, stronger than me I think. God, if it weren't for him...after Celia died, I would've given up. I just hope he can find his focus. UConn’s a great place, but he’d get so much more out of it if he really knew what he wanted. Maybe I’ve coddled him too much. I really should tell him all this.

  Amadeus felt the tears start. He tried and failed to hold them back. Too much had happened. The world had changed. He didn't even care if anyone saw him cry. Seeing his father’s words laid out like this, he felt like he had lost the world. He almost wished he hadn't seen this; seeing it written made everything he lost so real. Amadeus thought about grief, then realized he hadn’t even given his father a funeral. He owed his dad that much. Closing the file, Amadeus addressed the room.

  “We're having a funeral for my dad in two hours,” he said, his voice a little too loud. “Grassal, I'd like you to say a few words. Gravity, you too, and maybe Jones can speak as well. Lilly, can you print off a picture of my dad? You should be able to find one online.”

  Two hours later, they stood outside the hangar near the edge of a rocky cliff. Gravity had picked some wildflowers. Lilly had arranged the flowers around a picture of Tommy Brunmeier, adding a row of short candles in the front. The Koreans stood back at a respectful distance, silent, their hands crossed behind them. The wind tried to extinguish the candles, but they kept burning. Jones and Grassal had made it up the hill without any trouble; the path was smooth enough for wheelchairs. Grassal spoke first.

  “Tommy Brunmeier was like a father to me. No, not like a father, he was a father, at least as close as I ever had to one. He was a man who couldn’t let go, and I think we could all learn something from his persistence,” Grassal said, tearing up. He sniffled and gazed down into the valley. Lilly placed her hand on Grassal’s shoulder. Jones spoke next.

  “Once, back in the old days, when I was at MIT with your father, when we were just a little older than you kids,” he nodded at Lilly, Amadeus, and Grassal, “and mastodons roamed the earth, Gravity, you probably remember those days, we were up on the roof of our apartment drinking beer, the old kind that came in cans, I forget the brand. After a few, your father, Amadeus, stood up and began making a speech to the woman who would become your mother, only at that time she was just a girl, a couple years older than Lilly is now. He said, and I remember this clearly enough to quote it, ‘one day, you mark my words, I will change the world.’ Well, now, here we are, Tommy. Your words have been duly noted and marked in the unwritten book of the word. You have indeed changed the world… only the world doesn't know it yet.”

  They all nodded after his speech. Gravity began to sing “Amazing Grace” a cappella. His rich, battered baritone sounded like honey on sandpaper, with a vibrato that wavered like a flag in the breeze. The wind picked up even more and Amadeus began to sing. Lilly joined him, taking his hand in hers. Grassal, Jones, and the Koreans joined in as well, their voices blending in harmony. The candles flickered and danced as the wind carried their song out over the cliff and across the rocky valley into the approaching night.

  19

  During the following weeks, when he wasn’t learning to fly the Pachyderm, Amadeus learned the arts of war from Gravity: judo, hapkido, and shooting, as much of each as Amadeus could handle. “Maybe you’ll never use these skills,” Gravity had said, “but just knowing them will make you stronger.” To teach him to shoot, Gravity took Amadeus into the woods, setting up targets first at ten, then thirty, then at one hundred meters. At first, Amadeus had been gun shy, jumping like popcorn at every shot, timid as a politician at an anarchist rally. This fear soon passed. After two weeks and four hundred rounds, Gravity said he was impressed with his progress and thought Amadeus would have made a good sniper.

  Amadeus pushed himself. When each day came to an end, Amadeus felt tired and spent, as empty as the shell casing he kept in his pocket, but he began to wake earlier in the morning, full of energy and anger. He wanted to make his body strong and his mind as focused and sharp as possible so, if and when the time came, he could take his revenge. In his dreams, he was chased by something shrouded in blackness. After the first week, Jones reported that the Pachyderm wouldn't be ready for at least another three weeks, that the new stabilizers were taking longer than they had expected, and he still awaited the arrival of a new batch of nanosteel. Amadeus shrugged and said that was fine; he still had a lot to learn. He didn’t say that he rarely hungered for paper.

  In the evenings, after hours of flight and fight training, Amadeus spent his time with Lilly and Grassal, his personal CIA, working to crack the encryption, sort out the schematics, and piece together a comprehensible narrative. So far they had had little luck. Too many things remained hidden. “This is the tightest security I've ever seen. The algorithm for the biometric, I think it uses alpha-numerics from outside the Latin alphabet,” Grassal had said. Most nights they worked late, trying to piece everything together, tweaking and refining the story, not unlike the contractors perfecting the Pachyderm: piece by piece. So far they had a pretty clear idea of what his father had made, and why, but not the how, the whos, or the whens. The identities and actions of the partners remained hidden. Amadeus had to assume that at least one of them was connected, involved, or holding information that could help him.

  One evening, two weeks after they had arrived, Grassal had retired to bed early, grumbling about his leg, leaving Lilly and Amadeus alone in the lab. Lilly had loaded The Band’s The Last Waltz on the music player. Amadeus was studying a journal entry. He called Lilly over and asked her to look over it. He watched her lips as she read the entry, mouthing the words. He wanted to pull her close, to feel her lips against his. Stretching his neck like a turtle, he tried to plant a kiss on her face. As soon as he felt her soft lips against his, she grabbed his wrist, twisted it behind his back, and leaned him back in his chair.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Lilly said, looking down at him and digging her fingernails into his forearm. “Do I look like your fuck puppet?”

  “Oh my god, I’m sorry, I just thought that…”

  “You thought I was being nice to you because I was in love with you? Is that it?”

  “Um. Not love, but—” Lilly let the chair fall backwards. Amadeus broke his fall with his hands.

  “Let me tell you something, Amadeus Brunmeier. We knew each other when we were kids, but that doesn’t mean we have some automatic relationship. I’m not helping you because of that. You make me nervous. I
get tense around you. You’re weird. And you smell like cheese.” Amadeus looked away.

  “Then why are you helping me?”

  “Besides the morbid curiosity factor? Because the sooner we get your shit straightened out, the sooner I can get out of here.”

  “You want to leave?”

  “You’re as dumb as a dumpster, aren’t you? Before you showed up, I was going out of my mind. My father and I were weeks away from leaving. We had just submitted a bid on a huge house near Seattle. The movers were ready to go.”

  “Why do you want to leave?”

  “Why do I want to leave? Look around you, Amadeus. We live in the goddamn middle of nowhere. In an underground bunker. My god, you’re thick. Come on. My father has to import expensive contractors to work here. And look at my situation. I want to live, to go to concerts, to be able to walk outside and see something besides scrub pine. Besides, who would date a girl who lives in an abandoned military facility? Come on.”

  “Why not just leave by yourself?”

  “It’s not that simple. My father, he depends on me. You’ve seen him, you know he’s very ill. And nurses, he scares them off. We’ve gone through three LPNs and an RN just in the past year. But then you come along, and poof!” She made a gesturing of a celebrant throwing confetti into the air. “All our plans are gone. I’m stuck. With you. A weird skinny kid with the social skills of a tree stump.”

  “Lilly, I’m sorry, I just misread the situation.”

  “Misread? You’re not even using the same language. You don’t know a damn thing about the world.”

  “You’re right. I am a nerdy kid. I don’t have any social skills. And I’m sorry for trying to kiss you. It seemed like the right thing to do. But don’t think I’m not grateful. For your help, your company, it really makes things easier, right now is…with everything. You make things less awful.” Amadeus began to cry. He put his hands over his eyes and turned away from Lilly. She couldn’t see him like this.