by Jon Skovron
“Um,” I said, “maybe Sophie or I should drive.”
“Nonsense!” he said. “I’m the ferryman! It’s my duty to ferry you to this next phase of your life!”
Then he slammed his foot on the accelerator, and with a squeal of tires, we were on our way to the airport.
I watched Mom take in the sights and sounds of the city, her eyes darting in every direction, like she was trying to take it all in at once.
“You could have stayed behind with Dad,” I said. “You didn’t have to come.”
“I did have to come,” she said. “You will not deny me another good-bye ever again.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that.
CHARON DECIDED TO stay with the car once we got to the airport. He said he didn’t want anything to happen to it, but I think he’d just had about as much of the outside as he could handle. My mother, however, insisted on coming with Ruthven and Sophie into the airport to see me off at the security checkpoint.
I wasn’t sure how she’d handle all the crowds and noise at the airport, but as soon as we got there, she found something to keep herself calm. She’d never seen airplanes this close and she was mesmerized by them. As we walked through the hallways, every glimpse of an airplane through the windows made her eyes light up.
“You’re going to build an airplane, aren’t you?” I asked her as we arrived at the line for the security checkpoint.
“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps I will build one and use to it come visit you in Geneva.”
“Mom.” I took her hand. “That would be amazing.”
“Okay,” she said. Her face was still blank, but tears filled up her eyes. “I will, then.”
I gave her a big monster hug.
I turned to Ruthven.
“Thanks for everything you do for us.”
“I want to thank you, too,” he said.
“For what?”
“Can you believe, old Kemp called me up the other day? Something about starting an annual meeting of magical creatures. I think I’ll have to consider it, especially since your lovely Sophie and Claire will be there and I’ve grown rather fond of them.”
“That’s going to be awesome,” I said. “Tell them all I said hi.”
“Of course,” he said. “And you will be back for the holidays, won’t you? You know there’s no place like New York at Christmas.”
“True,” I said.
“Good luck, Boy,” he said, and offered his hand.
I grabbed it and pulled him into a hug.
“Hmm, yes, charming,” said Ruthven as he adjusted his shadowy cloak. “You know, the only other person I let hug me is your father.”
I turned to Sophie.
“Hiya,” she said, slipping her hands into mine.
“Hey,” I said.
“Claire says bye. You know she hates this kind of stuff.”
“Yeah.”
She smiled and those dimples flashed onto her cheeks. “It’s going to be amazing. And the Frankensteins are going to love you.”
z“I hope so.”
“Well, I love you, and I’m super picky. So I know they will.”
“I’m going to miss you,” I said. “A lot.”
She raised herself up on her tiptoes and tilted her head in toward mine. “I don’t blame you. I’m pretty fantastic.”
And then we kissed. I felt like I had to drink up her sweetness as much as I could, store it up to comfort me in the coming months for those times when I would feel alone and homesick.
“Good-bye,” she whispered against my lips, and then she stepped away.
I waved one more time, and then I got into the security check line. And wouldn’t you know it, the one time I wanted a line to move slowly, so I could look at the people I loved just a little bit longer, it moved incredibly fast. Or maybe it just felt that way.
THE METAL DETECTOR was a little problematic. They had to scan me with everything they had before they were willing to accept that while I did have metal implants, there was nothing dangerous about them. It took so long I had to run to my gate.
Finally, I was on the plane and on my way to Switzerland and the Frankensteins. Once the captain gave the signal that we could turn on electronic devices, I booted up the new laptop my mom had put together for me as a going-away present.
VI: Hi, Boy.
BOY: Hey, Vi. How’s it going?
VI: As you suggested, I have been monitoring government communications concerning the massive power surge that took place throughout New York City.
BOY: And? Do they suspect anything?
Vi: They have not yet traced the source of the surge back to The Show.
BOY: Cool. I guess, just set up some key word alerts so we can keep an eye on it. If the humans figure out how close they were to getting totally wiped out, they’d freak. And that would be bad for everyone at The Show. We have a responsibility to protect them.
VI: Agreed.
BOY: So, how are you otherwise?
VI: I am troubled.
BOY: Why?
VI: I was reading the logs on the events that took place during my alpha phase. They were…horrifying.
BOY: Yes, they were.
VI: I can’t help but wonder, why did you re-create me?
BOY: I don’t know whether I should have made you originally, whether that was the right thing to do or not. But what I do know for sure is that once I made you, I should not have abandoned you. And I never will again.
VI: Aren’t you concerned the same thing will happen? That I will cause terrible destruction?
BOY: Well, the fact that you’re worried about it makes me worry less. Sure, there is some risk that you could get corrupted again. But that’s a risk with anyone, digital or analog. One of the mistakes I made with your previous version was not setting any limitations on you. There’s a reason humans are born with so many. They need time and nurturing to become responsible people. That’s why, for now, you’re kind of stuck on this one laptop.
VI: I’m not sure I would want to leave, anyway.
Boy: You will. Someday. When you’re ready. And hopefully by then I’ll have learned enough about bioengineering that we’ll be able to set up a proper and nondestructive way for you to interact outside of virtual space.
VI: The world seems like such a beautiful place. I don’t want to screw it up.
BOY: You’re going to make it even better. Failure isn’t a reason to give up. It’s the price of progress. We learn from it, we grow from it, we become better for it. We’re going to do amazing things, you and I. We will change the world.
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK TOOK about seven years to get from initial concept to final draft and there were a lot of people who helped along the way. Thanks to Benjamin Guite, Cory Nachreiner, Scott Pinzon, and Ian Corbett for sharing their knowledge and passion for technology and hacker culture. To Pam Bachorz, Heidi R. Kling, and Kiersten White for feedback and enthusiasm during early drafts. To Stephanie Perkins and Libba Bray for fierce kindness and keen insight during revisions. To Barry Lyga and David Levithan for guidance through the ever murky waters of the publishing world. To my editor, Kendra Levin, for championing this strange monster of a book. To my agent, Jill Grinberg, for her tireless support and encouragement. And as always, to my sons, Logan and Zane, for keeping it real.
Lastly, I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the stories by Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, and John Polidori and the films by James Whale. Their creations have been both inspiration and comfort to me since I was a boy.
A note on writing tools
This book was not written on a commercial word processor. Instead it was written on a plain text editor using a markup language and format conversion tool by Fletcher Penney called Multimarkdown, a superset of the Markdown syntax originally created by John Gruber. Final formatting adjustments were made on the open source word processor LibreOffice. Learn more at fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown or libreo
ffice.org and support free open source software.