by Kirk Dougal
“Nine of us,” Tar interrupted. “You expected nine of us to somehow protect the Mind? I was a baby!”
The doctor winced. “You must have found the list on the handheld. I’d like to look at it later if you’ll let me. It’s yours, of course. I think it belonged to Marty.” He glanced at his daughter. “I know most of you were young. Nataly was only a couple of years older. There were two that were around ten when it happened and one was thirteen...”
“Dad,” Nataly cut in, her voice low. “You still haven’t said what you did to us.”
Tar was coming to realize the calmer and softer Nataly said something the more important it was to listen to her.
Dr. Pierinski looked at his daughter, then at Tar, and nodded. “Your hands contain a processing unit—the fastest, most powerful we could build at the time; over three terabytes of memory in each hand. It uses NFC, Near Field Communication, to connect to other pieces of technology. We also put in a way for you to connect remotely to the Mind but we kept those turned off, just in case. I think by then Hisa suspected what might happen and she insisted. We could always activate it later with a key. But the biggest thing you carry is the way to get through the maze, to fix the data pathways. You kids were the virus killer. You were the protection.”
The doctor looked at Tar. “We all helped—me, Marty, Earl, Janie, the whole group—but your mom wrote ninety percent of it. She was our hope to beat it and to keep you kids safe.” He smiled. “You were the youngest, Tar. You received the final implants with all the latest upgrades, the really good stuff.”
The room grew quiet. They could hear Sally moving around in the kitchen upstairs.
“Mr. Pierinski,” Toby finally said, breaking the silence. “My mom went hard boot after The Crash. Tar lost his mom and dad and we even found out Scooter’s parents died, too. Why didn’t you die?”
The man stared at his daughter and smiled. “It was her; Nataly saved me.” He looked at the boys. “Everyone on the project knew the dangers so we began taking turns being on the Mind, trying to protect as many of us as we could. We didn’t know if it would do any good or not but we had to do something.
“So when The Crash happened—October 29 at 10:30 at night—I wasn’t connected. I was rocking Nataly to sleep…and I happened to be holding her hand. It felt like I wobbled, dozed off, and when I woke up in the morning, everyone was dead, including her mother. But she was standing on my lap, holding my head with both hands like she used to do when she wanted to kiss me. Her implants must have provided the virus protection to keep me from losing my mind.”
“Here you all are.” Sally walked into the room. “Roger, I sent you down to bring everybody upstairs not to sit around telling more stories.” Her words were strict but she softened them with a little smile.
“Sorry, dear. I…” He smiled. “Let’s all go eat.”
As they headed toward the stairs the doctor hung back and stepped close to Tar. “Your friend said that both your parents were dead. I’m sorry. I always suspected about Marty but I never knew for certain. Did he die right away?”
Tar took another couple of steps before he answered.
“I guess so. Uncle Jahn told me that when he came to get me he found my dad sitting at his desk. Mom went zom and was there, too. I suppose she died there.”
Dr. Pierinski grabbed Tar by the shoulder, turning him on the landing. He shook his head. “Hisa wasn’t connected when The Crash hit. She lost her ability to think but they took her, afterwards, to one of those camps where they take care of…well. I visited your mother once.” He looked away.
“Dr. Pierinski, what are you telling me?”
He met Tar’s stare, and his gaze pierced almost as deep as his words. “What I’m telling you, Tar…is that your mother might still be alive.”
Chapter 30
The next few days were a whirlwind. He and Toby stayed in the house with the curtains drawn to hide them from people on the street. A few times, after dark, they escaped into the backyard for some fresh air without worrying about being seen.
Tar spoke with Dr. Pierinski and Nataly as much as he could. They played games with, read some books and old magazines in the room the doctor called his man cave, and spent hours listening to Nataly tell stories. That was Tar’s favorite part.
At night, however, he tossed and turned on the couch he now called his bed, his dreams filled with thoughts of his mother. In them he saw her wandering in dark hallways, bumping into walls and crying out in pain and frustration. She was young, her hair black, straight, and bobbed at her shoulders—just as it had been in the photo with his father and everyone else in the Mind project. Images tumbled together in the dreams, twisting on top of each other until he no longer knew which way was up, and Tar became lost as he tried to follow his mother.
“You look fragged,” Toby said.
Tar glanced up from where he was sitting on the edge of the couch, his shoulders and head slumped, turning himself into a short question mark.
“Yeah. I don’t feel so chilly.”
“Are you sick? Do want me to get Mrs. Pierinski?”
Tar shook his head before he fell back onto his side, the blanket wrapping around his waist. “I’m just tired.”
Tar stared at the table in front of him through half-open eyes. On it lay the game they had played the night before. It was called Tantrix and it involved laying down tiles with your color string on it. The goal was to connect all of your tiles to make the longest string in the group.
Tar had lost miserably while the other three laughed and yelled through the whole game. It should have been easy for him, imagining the ways to lay the tiles so his green string would grow. But he kept losing his train of thought. He watched Nataly hook her hair behind her ear and he nearly played out of turn. She dropped a tile on the floor and they almost knocked heads reaching for it at the same time. She told a story and he just sat and listened until a kick in the shin from Toby reminded him it was his turn to lay down a tile. It had been awful…and wonderful. He caught Dr. Pierinski—who insisted he and Toby call him Roger—staring at him once, not exactly frowning but more puzzled, as if he was trying to figure out some problem. Despite the man’s quick smile Tar had felt embarrassed.
It all came back to him as he lay on his side, his eyes tracing paths in the game. He knew he was following Nataly’s line—she had played yellow—and not his own, but he let his mind wander back and forth, just like the string. When they had both reached for the tile and bumped heads, they had also briefly touched hands as well. He could still remember the shock that had gone up his arm. What would it have been like to reach up and touch her face, trace his hand across her cheek…
Tar sat up with a jerk. He had moved so fast he actually bounced, making the old couch springs groan in protests. But he barely heard them. Something cried out in his mind, a flicker, just on the corners of thought, like a shadow dancing on the edge of his sight until he turned his head to look, and then it was gone.
“Tar! Are you all right?”
He caught Nataly’s hand as she reached out to shake him. They met, palm to palm, and his hand tingled stronger than he had ever imagined. Her eyes grew wide and he jumped into them, his body a beam of light racing along inside her. Suddenly, another light appeared and they moved together, leaping along her body and then abruptly over to his. The beams raced, one surging ahead before the other bounded past. They moved toward each other and touched…
Tar let go. They were both breathing hard, sweat dotting their skin.
“What…what was that?” Nataly panted, her chest heaving.
Despite the intensity of what had just happened his mind had only one thought. “I can do it,” he said, his voice steady and strong. “I can save them.”
“Who? Tar, save who?”
“Everyone who ever went zom.”
#
“Whoa, whoa.” Dr. Pierinski shook his hands above the sink, throwing droplets of tea
off his fingers. “Slow down. Tell me again.”
“Sorry about the tea, Doc, er, Roger,” Tar said. He and Nataly had sprinted up the stairs, yelling the whole way, and ran into the kitchen. They had startled the doctor, causing him to spill half a cup of tea on the counter top.
“Don’t worry about it. Just…” The doctor’s hands hung in the air, tea falling from his fingertips. He looked for a towel, but then dried them on his shirt and turned. “Slow down and tell me what you just said.”
Tar slowed his breathing as much as his racing mind would allow. “I can save the people who went zom.”
The doctor’s mouth moved several times before a small croak came out. “How?”
Tar held up his hands. “With these.” He sat down on the stool. “You told us that we have the virus killer inside these apps in our hands, right? All these years I’ve been fixing apps but they don’t have Polly in them. They’re just bricks. They can’t talk to the Mind anymore. So all we’re really doing is clearing a path so they can work without talking to the air.”
Sally had entered the kitchen and offered the doctor a towel.
“Yes, that makes sense,” Roger accepted the towel and kept nodding his head as he dried his hands. “You’re re-establishing communication inside the machine. There is really no pathway to connect remotely with the Mind.”
“Okay, but what if I kill the virus in the Mind? All the zoms would be able to connect remotely again.”
“No.” Roger shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t work. That’s…it’s too dangerous. We don’t know what that virus could do to you if it gets access to your implants. It could kill you…or who knows what.”
“It won’t,” said Tar.
“How do you know, honey?” Sally said, laying her hand on Tar’s arm. “It’s an awfully big risk to take.”
“Besides, there’s no way of even knowing if it will work,” Roger said.
“It will work,” Tar said, “because it already has. On you.”
The doctor blinked and leaned back on his counter stool.
“You told me you were rocking Nataly to sleep the night of The Crash. Where did she have her hands when you woke up?”
Roger reached up and put his hands behind his ears, turning his head for a moment so he could smile at his daughter. “Right here. She would do that to pull us in for a kiss.”
“Where’s your implant?”
Roger let his left hand drop but his right never moved. “Here.” His voice was quiet.
Tar glanced at Nataly, then looked back at the doctor. “You were right, Roger. Nataly protected you that night. Just not in the way that you thought. She kept the virus out of your head because her tech was touching yours. She killed Polly before Polly killed you.”
Silence fell over the kitchen.
“So what’s the plan?” Toby said from behind Tar, having entered at some point without being heard.
“If Polly was gone the Mind would work again, wouldn’t it?” said Tar “Everyone who went zom should come back.”
Roger slowly nodded his head. “Theoretically…sure. If the virus was purged from the system it should work just fine. We would need to reboot the main drive but that would be all it should take.”
“Chilly.” Tar nodded. “Then I’m going to kill Polly…inside the Mind.”
Chapter 31
The shouting was over and the tears were dry by the time Tar, Toby and Roger slipped out into the street before dawn two days later. Tar had wanted to leave the day before but Roger insisted on scoping out downtown Santa Clara first. He returned with a report of Black Shirts roaming the streets in groups of five and six, searching shops and breaking down the doors of buildings that had long since been boarded shut.
Nataly had been surprisingly vocal against Tar and Toby going to the Mind. Like One Shoe, she suggested they go as far away as possible, up into the mountains. Tar tried to explain why they needed to do this but she turned her back to them and stared at the kitchen wall.
Roger did not join the discussion. At first, Sally had begged him to convince the boys to stay.
With no memories of his parents talking and arguing and doing all the things husbands and wives do in their daily lives Tar had wondered if all couples developed that sixth sense to know one another’s thoughts. It didn’t take long for Sally to realize what her husband was thinking: Roger meant to go with them.
The yelling that followed was all aimed at Roger, a double-barreled shotgun firing desperate slugs of love and emotion. Eventually Toby had tapped Tar on the arm and motioned at the stairway to the basement. They escaped below, Tar catching a brief, troubled glance from Nataly, a precursor to the same look she gave them just prior to them leaving.
Now they made their way down dark streets, backpacks filled with food and extra clothes. They stayed away from the main routes. Roger led them down side streets and through block after block of houses. Many homes were deserted and showed signs of being broken into. Others were occupied in defiant solitude, the yards somewhat kept and the doors still on their hinges, but the farther north they traveled the more desolate things became.
When they crossed into Sunnyvale they saw the worst of the remnants of The Crash. Roofs had caved in and knocked down walls on homes, exposing the insides to the weather. Vines encapsulated whole buildings, turning them into green blocks. While plenty of birds and small animals roamed the area no people walked the streets.
They ate quietly in the shadows of an abandoned grocery store, the glass in the windows a distant memory and any scrap of food that had been left behind long since stolen or rotted away. They sat in a dark aisle near the back of the building, only the rustling of their clothes gave off any sound, until Roger sighed and leaned his head back against the metal shelf.
“Why’d you come with us?” Tar asked in a loud whisper. “No reason for you to go 404. I’ve been greppin’ on my own for years and Toby knows what it’s like out here.”
Roger looked up but Tar could only see his dark outline, not his eyes.
“Your mom and I were best friends. We were close. My wife—Nataly’s mother—I think she couldn’t handle that kind of friendship. She accused me of having an affair with Hisa. Ciana had quite the imagination. She was an artist, painted these lovely abstracts, but she could also be pretty insecure, well, very insecure, and when she got something into her head it stayed there. So one day she shows up at the lab and lays into your mom. I went to intervene but Hisa waved me off. She let her go on and on until Ciana wound down like an old toy. Once she was done Hisa finally took her by the arm and led her to one corner. Next thing I know they’re hugging and laughing, and the very next day Marty and Hisa announced their engagement to the project team. Your mom had told Ciana to allay her suspicions, you see, and then swore her to secrecy. And, uh, well, we were both in the wedding.” Roger sighed, his breath making the floating dust dance in a swirl. “Hisa was my best friend…your father, as well, so you can understand why I couldn’t let you and Toby just go off and do this on your own. But even forgetting all that the Mind will likely need a hardware fix before we reboot and I’m probably the only person alive who can still do it.”
“I’m glad you’re here, Doc,” said Toby. “I don’t even want to think about trying to do this without you.”
“But,” Roger said, “Tar’s right. I don’t know the streets like you two. What we’re doing is way too important for us to get captured so you boys lead and when the time comes I’ll do my part. What do you want to do now?”
Tar did not hesitate. “I think we stay here until dark. Travel mostly at night.”
“Do you think that’s safe?” Toby looked worried.
“Safer than being out there during the day. We haven’t seen anyone else on this street for a long time. I’m thinkin’ the only people here are us and the Black Shirts. Am I right?” Tar looked at the doctor.
“Well, yes. We are on the north side of Sunnyvale.” He sig
hed again. “So many people died here during The Crash. It’s basically deserted. All the bodies made it uninhabitable around here for a long time. I think we head up to Highway 101 and go around Mountain View and then on to Palo Alto. We should probably avoid people, if at all possible.”
“I’m not worried about people,” said Tar. “I’m worried about the men chasing us. One of them most of all.”
“Ludler,” said Toby with a nod.
“And we know he uses horses. We can hear them coming at night, gives us time to hide.” Tar stopped for a few seconds. “How long will it take us to get to the Mind?”
Roger snorted. “It’s not far to the campus. We can get there on foot overnight if we keep moving.”
Tar nodded, not sure if the other two could even see him. “Chilly,” he said. “We’ll leave when it’s good and dark.”
Chapter 32
A hand shook Tar’s shoulder, snapping him awake.
The familiar sound of hooves on the street resounded through the store’s huge broken window. Tar reached carefully under his head for the strap of his backpack. If they had to run for their lives he could not leave behind Jahn’s app folded so neatly into one of his shirts.
He squinted into the gloom. The hand shook his shoulder again, this time accompanied by Roger’s hushed voice.
“Tar, horses. Wake up.”
He sat up and looked toward the front of the grocery. The setting sun cast its last golden rays through the empty window panes and reflected off the shards of glass scattered on the floor. Except for the first few feet beyond the window Tar imagined they were obscured by darkness. “You think they see us?” he asked.
“Not that I can tell. A few have gone back and forth in front of the store but no one has come in here yet.” Roger stood and helped Tar to his feet. “Toby went to see if there is a back door.”
Tar leaned down and grabbed his backpack from where he had been using it as a pillow. “Chilly, let’s go.”