Up front… is a front. A computer parts store in a nondescript strip mall. And it actually sells computer parts and supplies. A working store to cover for the private operations going on in the rear. The Laptop Depot, it’s called. A sign on the wall behind the register reads, “WE DO REPAIRS ON ALL MAKES AND MODELS,” but if you ask for repairs you’ll be informed that all the service techs are booked through the end of the month.
Carlos scans the store and sees nothing amiss. He smiles at a pretty desk clerk. The store employees have no idea what goes on in the way back. They probably think it’s drugs or guns or meth, but they won’t ever talk. They’re all hand-picked from the families of felons doing real hard time at David Wade Correctional Center over in Claiborne Parish.
Wade only holds about fifty prisoners or thereabouts, but they’re all locked up for specific offenses that require extra special protection: contract killers who’ve talked, ex-cops from Nawlins who wouldn’t live long on the outside, prison officials who got busted for corruption, serial child molesters who’d be murdered even in the tightest maximum security lockup. Basically, felons who really don’t want to be transferred. And a hacker group like the Arms, well, they know just how to apply pressure to scumbags like that.
So an arrangement was made. Their loved ones get nice jobs that pay well and offer benefits. The wives and children of Louisiana’s most endangered prisoners can sell RAM chips and motherboards to millennials with Justin Bieber hair, and just by cashing their paychecks and keeping their mouths shut they can ensure their criminal relatives don’t get transferred to Angola and released into gen pop.
Nothing like employee loyalty, Carlos thinks.
He passes back through the parts warehouse and stops at the heavy reinforced door. His body is scanned, and when he hears a ping, he leans in and stares into a retinal scanner. The lock pops open, and he waits as the heavy steel bar rises again before he pushes the door open and rejoins his BDD brethren in the way back.
Paula, one of his best and most loyal comrades, walks over to him. She isn’t smiling.
“He’s pulled over,” Paula says.
“By the cops?” Carlos asks.
Paula flips a hand up in frustration. “Nah, he’s stopped on his own and he’s interrogating Frank’s computer with his phone again.”
From a dozen feet away, Patrick looks over at Carlos. “He thinks we’re tracking him,” Patrick says. “You did tell him you’d stop.”
“I told him I’d close the vulnerability,” Carlos says and pops another Marlboro out of the pack. “Which I did. I didn’t tell him I’d stop tracking him.”
“The doc may not appreciate the nuance,” Paula says. She waves at the smoke and glares at Carlos. “You’ve been smoking again ever since the doc went underground, and now you’re frickin’ chain-sucking Marlboros like a trucker.”
“Report me to OSHA,” Carlos says.
“I’ll report you to Brenda.”
Carlos winces. “She knows. She’s not happy about it either, so you stay out of it.”
Paula turns and walks back to her station. “I am staying out of it. You’d power dump all my questionably legal selfies on 4chan so fast I’d be notorious in countries I haven’t even heard of.”
Carlos smiles. “That I’d do.”
“He’ll be pissed if he finds out,” Paula says.
“What do you want me to do?” Carlos says. “He’s our big investor. He’s a major element of the bigger war… and he’s also my friend.” Carlos takes a deep drag on the cigarette. “We need to try to keep them both alive.”
“What do you want me to do?” Patrick asks.
Carlos sighs. “Cut the link. We’ll catch up in a half hour or so.”
* * *
“There it goes again,” Frank says.
I only barely hear him. I’m deep in thought. Constantly checking my rearview and my blind spot. Paranoid, like I have every right to be. Even on my lackadaisical days, after a weekend bender and nothing but research going on at work, I was still hyper-aware. That’s the LLI at work. The low latency keeps my mind flooded with details, but I can normally handle it all without much trouble.
Today, I’m like a cup running over.
You always knew what the last billboard said, but you couldn’t remember your wife’s birthday.
Stuff it, Cruella.
But it isn’t Marilyn. It’s me.
“Yep, there it is,” Frank says.
I turn to Frank and see that he’s staring into nothingness, obviously functioning mostly inside his own head. “What is it, Frank?”
“A something,” Frank says.
“Something in your head?”
“Yeah. A something there that’s different.”
“How long has it been there?” I ask.
Frank reaches up and flips down the sunshade, then snaps it back up. “Since four hundred twenty-two steps. To the barn and back this morning.”
I pull over at the next exit. There’s a truck stop with an automated car wash, so I pull up to the kiosk, and before I pay, I grab the boxes of clothing and supplies from the back of the truck and put them behind the front bench. I push a crisp ten from my new Claude Roberts wallet into the machine, then roll into the wash. The machine hums and spits and clanks to life as the pre-wash arms begin soaking the truck.
I reach over and put my hand on Frank’s shoulder. He pulls away a little, but I leave my hand there until he sits still.
“I need to do something to your head again. Is that okay?” I ask.
“The lights will go out.”
“Yes. The lights will go out, but it’ll only be for a minute.”
“Okay.”
A flick of the little ligament behind Frank’s jaw—and his body relaxes. His head rolls back and I push aside his hair and expose the port hidden there. In seconds I have the phone jacked in and I’m watching numbers and lines of code scroll by. I don’t have Carlos’s expertise in this interface stuff, but I know enough about the system to see patterns and pings.
There.
An anomaly in the wireless protocols—the systems Carlos had been using to communicate with Frank. Someone’s there. Tracking, at the very least, but maybe more. It’s hard for me to tell without a laptop and some software I have hidden in the cloud, but it’s pretty plain to me that Frank is still being tracked.
“Son of a…” I say out loud and smack the steering wheel. “Carlos.”
I decide to shut all the doors myself. I go into Frank’s main comm portal and I start to manually close every means of access into Frank’s system. But now I’m noticing interference. Real, tactical interference, and this interference isn’t coming from the outside. I notice a spike in Frank’s brainwaves as each attempt to alter the HADroid’s operating system is foiled.
“Frank,” I say. “I need you to help me out, man. Stop fighting me.”
The brain activity continues to spike.
“Frank. I’m trying to keep us alive, don’t you see that? Please let me do what I need to do.”
A pause, and the brain activity returns to normal. I flip my thumb across the screen and bring up the code again. I’m watching as the tracking interference ceases. Whoever was tracking us has just logged out.
I flip back to the comm ports and continue doing my best to shut down any external access other than my own. But I don’t know what good it’ll do. If Frank is actively, willfully accessing his own programming, there’s no telling what he could do once I log off.
“Frank,” I say. “I need you to leave everything in here the way I put it, okay?”
Frank doesn’t move. He’s shut down. Technically, he should be no different when he’s in this state than a toaster, a vacuum cleaner, or a microwave, but I know that this is no longer true. Frank has figured out how to access his own system, and this cannot be good.
For a split second, I consider activating his terminal shutdown procedure. I actually think about killing Frank.
I think about it
, but I can’t do it. Not yet.
Still, I reach over and open the glove box and pull out the Glock. The 26. It’s the smallest of the Glock 9mils and the one I feel the most comfortable with. I’m no gun guru, but I did get trained when I first went to work with DARPA. Mandatory dark site security training at a facility in Northern Virginia. The first time in years I’d been sober for two weeks straight. I didn’t like it.
The unpleasant thought of shooting Frank flits unbidden across my mind. I push the two pint bottles of scotch back into the box—they slid out a little bit when I grabbed the gun—and close the compartment.
Wouldn’t do any good, shooting Frank. Because my young friend here, a boy trapped in the body of a full-grown adult, is bulletproof. I look over at him. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him. Looks like just a young man sleeping in the car wash. But even if a bullet hit him just right—even if it slid into one of the indiscernible cracks between two squares of artificial skin—it wouldn’t do any damage to the HADroid inside. Even if. Because Frank is the ultimate war machine.
It’s unlikely a bullet would pierce the skin anyway. And believe me, we tried. Over forty thousand rounds of all kinds and calibers fired at a quilt of the stuff, from every conceivable distance and angle. And after that many bullets fired, only one—one—ever hit the seam just right to perforate the quilt. And, like I said, even if it did happen, the bullet would merely bounce around for a few seconds; it wouldn’t do any real damage.
I shudder a little, even though I’m not cold. I don’t like thinking about killing Frank.
I put the gun in my right front pocket. It’s a small weapon and doesn’t bulge much. I grab the two spare ten-round magazines and slip those into my back pocket. Who knows what we’re going to face today. And if someone is tracking us… well, I don’t know what to think about that either.
I just hope it’s someone I know.
And I hope it isn’t someone I know.
Hope is a fickle friend. Kind of like working for the government. Nothing good can come from it, but you still like the paycheck.
Still, I hold out hope. I’m a fool and I know it.
* * *
We’re back on the road and I’m quizzing Frank on his new identity. Central Ohio whips by in browns and greens and beautiful farmhouses set off the highway. Occasionally a new state license plate or some other wonderment appears and Frank will always comment on it.
“Massachusetts,” Frank says. “First one of those.”
“Yep,” I say. “But pay attention to the question I asked you, okay? What’s your new name?”
“I’m Lawrence Roberts,” Frank says, and then, “I don’t like to lie. It’s a sin.” And then, “Massachusetts is in New England. Boston is the capital and largest city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, according to Wikipedia.” And then, “We shouldn’t lie, okay?”
I grimace and exhale. I’m irritated, and Frank has no idea why.
“Lawrence,” I say. “Lawrence Roberts. Where are you from?”
“Lawrence Roberts is from Missoula, Montana. I don’t like to lie.”
I take a deep breath and pause so that I don’t communicate too much hostility to Frank. After a few moments, I speak. I try to keep my voice steady and level.
“Listen… I know you don’t like to lie. I don’t either. But sometimes… just sometimes, in order to do the right thing, or in order to survive a bad situation, you have to tell a lie.”
“Mother says not to lie.”
“I know, Frank.”
“I’m Lawrence Roberts from Missoula, Montana. But that’s not true,” Frank says.
“Okay, Lawrence,” I say. “Your mother was right to tell you not to lie to her. That’s how all mothers should teach their children. But when we get older… when we have to live and function in this screwed-up world… sometimes telling a lie is the right thing to do.”
“It’s a sin.”
“No,” I say. “Not always. I seem to remember a famous lie in the Bible that got rewarded.” I couldn’t remember the lie, only that it existed. It came up once in an argument at a bar after work. I wince and hope that Frank doesn’t call me on it.
“Rahab the harlot lied to the Jericho men and it is accounted to her as faith,” Frank says.
“Yes. See there? Sometimes you have to lie.” I’m shaking my head now, because it’s obvious that Frank is accessing his full arsenal of data. He has the whole Internet in his head. Not live and online, of course, but everything that was live when we uploaded it to his computer—which was plenty. I can see that Frank’s CAINing has been working, too. He hasn’t been showing many signs of his autism at all, other than his awkward way of communicating, and though he still clasps his bolts, one in each hand, he hasn’t been rocking or stimming in any way.
“Keep your lips from speaking lies,” Frank says. “That’s in the Bible too.”
“Don’t ask me to harmonize the Bible for you, Fra—Lawrence—because I’m the wrong man for that job. I’m just saying that if you don’t become Lawrence Roberts right now—if you don’t actually believe your new identity—you’re probably going to get both of us killed.”
Frank sits awhile in silence. He rolls his window down for a moment, then rolls it back up. After several minutes, he speaks again.
“I’m Lawrence Roberts from Missoula, Montana,” he says.
“That’s right, Lawrence! That’s right!”
Frank almost smiles. “And you’re Claude, my brother.”
“Right.”
“And we’re Englischers?” Frank asks.
“Just for right now,” I say, “until we can get you some Amish clothes.” I turn to Frank. “Do you… do you still want Amish clothes?”
Frank’s head dips in agreement. He exchanges the bolts in his hands and then puts them both in his left hand. “Uh-huh. I’m Amish. I prefer Amish clothes.”
“Okay,” I say. “We’ll get you some Amish clothes real soon.”
“I need my Amish clothes. Got it.”
I look at Frank and smile. I’m amazed at his progress. The CAIN protocols really appear to be working; it’s like he’s matured in just the last couple of days.
“And how old are you, Lawrence?”
“I’m twenty-three years old, Brother Claude.”
Excellent.
There’s a long pause, and then Frank turns to me. I can feel him staring for a long time. I turn my head and see his eyes fixed on me. I have to keep an eye on the road, but my curiosity makes me constantly glance over at him. When he knows he has my attention, he winks with his right eye.
“What are you winking at, Lawrence?”
Frank’s eyes meet mine. Then he looks back to the front, and, for the first time since I’ve known him, I see a full smile on his face. A full expression of enjoyment. “I just took a picture of you and put it on the Internet.”
What the…
I panic and lock up the brakes. The old Chevy fishtails, and I wrestle it as it finally comes to a gravel-sliding stop on the shoulder of the highway. My heart is pounding and it takes me a minute to process what Frank just said.
“YOU DID WHAT?” I say.
“I just took your picture and put it up on the Internet,” Frank says. He’s still smiling, and the grin looks authentic on his face. Not like a machine interpreted his feelings, but like the machine and the boy have become one.
“No… no… NO,” I say. “Tell me you didn’t!”
Frank laughs and slaps his thigh. “I didn’t. I lied.”
“You—!” I say. “That… that kind of lie is not acceptable, Frank, do you hear me? Not acceptable!”
Frank laughs. “I’m Lawrence Roberts from Missoula, Montana.”
“Do you understand me, Lawrence? No lying to me, got it?”
“Yeah,” Frank says. “I understand. No lying to my good brother Claude Roberts.”
When I pull the truck back onto the highway, I look over, and Frank is still smiling.
A
mile later, I ask him, “How did you know about the Internet?”
He points at his head. “I read about it. In here.”
“Don’t ever get on the Internet, Frank,” I say.
“My name is Lawrence. And okay, if you say so, Brother Claude.”
And then…
“That was a good joke,” he says.
“It was,” I say.
* * *
I pull off and follow the signs to a small town just east of the highway. I figure we’re getting close enough to Amish country that I might be able to find a secondhand store that sells clothes for Frank.
Eight miles down a back road, we come to an intersection. There’s a general store on one of the corners and nothing on the other three, so I pull over and we go inside. A small mom-and-pop operation. Probably does a little drive-by business during tourist season, but the owners look mostly retired. Mom and Pop are the only ones in the shop when I go in. They don’t sell Amish clothes, but they’re friendly and give me directions to a thrift store only six more miles south. As Frank looks around the store, the old man tries hard to sell me some peanut brittle—tells me how good it is and how I shouldn’t miss out—but I smile and tell him I’m diabetic and wave to both Mom and Pop on our way out.
Frank stops and turns to the old man. “I’m sure your candy is very delicious, and I’m sorry that my brother is… whatever he said he is.”
The old man raises a hand in peace and winks at Frank, who winks back.
“You shouldn’t lie when you don’t have to,” Frank says as we’re walking back to the truck.
“You’re probably right,” I say.
“I would have liked to have tried some of that peanut brittle,” Frank says. “My mother made it, and it was delicious.”
“All right,” I say. It’s all I can say. Frank’s right: I shouldn’t lie so much. But I don’t like peanut brittle. Excuse me if I forgot to ask the robot if he wanted candy.
As we’re pulling out of the general store parking lot I see several Amish buggies pass by, heading north on the farm road. This is a good sign, and other than the lie I told Pop, I feel pretty good for the first time in days.
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