by Joel Naftali
“Scanning … Digitizing … Rendering … Rendering …”
Inside the machine, the skunks were being transformed into patterns of subatomic particles and encoded as digital information.
Sure, that’s clear.
Basically, the machine downloaded three skunk brains into computer files. Every instinct and memory was written onto software. Meanwhile, their furry little skunk bodies went limp, into a deep unnatural sleep, with only the machine keeping them alive.
Nothing could live for long after having its brain digitized. Well, not yet.
But what was happening inside the machine wasn’t very important right then. Because outside the machine, a warning chime sounded on Aunt Margaret’s computer.
“ ‘Test authorized’?” Auntie M murmured to herself. She knew that nobody was authorized to run tests, not right then. “ ‘System overload’?”
A map of the Center appeared on her screen, with the animal research section flashing. She frowned, stood from her workstation, and headed into the hallway.
She trotted around a corner, through a sliding security door, and past one of the guard stations. Maybe if she hadn’t been distracted by wondering who’d authorized the test, she would’ve noticed that the guard stations were empty.
The guard stations were never empty.
But she didn’t notice. She hurried into the animal research section, where she heard the Quantum Bio-Map Generator humming. She crossed toward the machine, then saw that she wasn’t alone.
“Roach!” she said. “What are you doing here?”
He smiled coldly. “Tidying up some loose ends.”
“You were banned from the Center. Get out.”
“After all the trouble I took to get in?”
“You’re lucky they only banned you,” she said. “They should’ve tossed you in jail—you know that scanning an entire organism into the databanks kills the subject. Your reckless experiments—”
“Those ‘reckless experiments’ are the future,” he said. “Who are they to fire me, the greatest mind in ten generations? I’ll show them. I’ll show you all. Did they think I’d crawl into a hole to lick my wounds? No, I sold my technology to the highest bidder. I bought equipment on the black market and I continued my work. My scanning booths are operational. You’ll see—all you meatpeople, you’ll see what true genius is!”
“Stop with the crazy talk,” Auntie M said, crossing to the security button on the wall. “You’re breaking the law just being inside the perimeter.”
“I write my own laws.”
She pressed the button, but nothing happened. No alarm, no alert. She turned slowly back to Roach, her eyes worried.
“Ah,” he said with another cold smile. “You begin to understand.”
“You disabled the security.”
“You can’t imagine I’m here on a whim.” He glanced at his watch. “No, this is planned to the millisecond.”
“What do you want, Roach?”
“First the Protocol,” he said. “Then the HostLink. How does that sound?”
Auntie M snorted. “Over my dead body.”
“Now that,” Roach said, taking a gun from his pocket, “is a deal.”
And he pulled the trigger.
THE VOCAB
Okay, so what are the HostLink and the Protocol?
The Center’s top technicians had been working on the HostLink for years, trying to build a machine that could digitize minds from a distance. They planned to use it as a research tool so scientists in the United States could work with teams in Japan and Norway.
They’d just gotten a prototype working—which, I later realized, was why Roach finally attacked. He knew how to make the HostLink hijack any device connected to the Net, to scan in minds through Web-enabled cell phones and desktop PCs. Thousands of minds at a time. Maybe millions.
And you’ve probably never heard of the Protocol, either—the Biogenic Protocol, the most advanced software produced by the Center. My aunt and Roach had slaved over that code for years, before Roach went insane.
Or more insane. He was never what you’d call a poster boy for mental health.
So what is the Protocol? Some kind of programming wizardry that switches seamlessly between digital and biological systems.
In other words, I’m not sure. But my aunt said the Protocol was the closest thing to a magic wand you’d find in the digital world. Kind of a universal translator, able to convert brain waves, for example, into software.
That is hardly what I said, Douglas.
Well, close enough. If anyone wants more info
All that really matters is this: in the right hands, the HostLink and Protocol are stunning technological advances. But in the wrong hands, they’re deadly weapons that bring biodigital monsters to life and transform real people into digital code. And when people are reduced to code, they don’t just die: their minds are stolen, transformed into processors more powerful than the most cutting-edge computer, and exploited by the person who scanned them.
Only two things limited the HostLink and Protocol’s power: the user’s skills and imagination. Which kinda sucked, because Roach coded better than anyone alive, and he imagined bloodthirsty hordes of biodroid soldiers.
READY, FIRE, AIM
Back to Roach, pulling the trigger.
Now, nobody doubts that Roach is a stone genius. As far as pure brainpower, the guy’s basically unrivaled.
But you know what? He’s still a crappy shot.
He fired at my aunt and hit the wall behind her. Then he fired again and hit the ceiling. No kidding. He took a breath and steadied the gun, and my aunt ducked behind an aquarium, and the next shot missed her and shattered the fish tank.
Water sloshed everywhere and dozens of guppies splashed to the floor.
Auntie M raced for the exit.
Roach fired three more shots as he ran toward her. He missed and missed and missed and lost his balance on the wet floor. He fell onto his butt and slid across the tile, through all the guppies flipping and flopping in the shallow puddles.
By the time he stood up again, Auntie M was long gone.
Doc Roach pressed a button on his communicator and said, “Commander Hund?”
AN UNFORTUNATE INTRODUCTION
At that point, I’d never even heard the name Hund, much less seen the man. Still, here’s a little preview:
Hund probably isn’t seven feet tall, but I bet he’s close. He has dark hair and a scar across his face and usually about a hundred pounds of killing machines strapped to his body—a dozen weapons, each one deadlier than the next.
But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is his eyes.
One glows yellow under some kind of an implanted lens. And the other stares at you like Randy Pinhurst (this freaky kid I knew in fifth grade) used to look at flies before he ripped off their wings.
Hund is the commander of Roach’s mercenary army—and a recurring character in my nightmares.
EVERYTHING’S A BLUR
Roach murmured into his communicator: “Commander Hund?”
“We’ve neutralized the guards,” Hund reported. “The building is ours.”
“Not quite. Dr. Solomon is on the loose. I’m pushing the timetable forward.”
“The explosives will be armed in five minutes,” Hund said.
“Then I’m setting detonation for ten.”
Roach tapped a few times on his communicator, and a digital display started running down in a blur.
10:00
9:59
9:58
9:57
9:56
You know how in movies the good guy always stops the timer when it’s at 00:02 or something? I hate that. I always root for the bomb, and the bigger the explosion, the better.
Not this time.
This time, I wanted the timer to stop at 9:56.
Still, here’s a little spoiler. Plenty of stuff happened in the next ten min
utes: armed mercenaries, technological miracles, and digital murder. But one thing that didn’t happen? A hero swinging into action and stopping that clock.
So pretty soon, that timer showed
00:09
00:08
00:07
00:06
00:05
00:04
00:03
00:02
00:01
Then the detonator fired.
BACK UP
When Roach had started scanning the skunks, I’d been sitting in Auntie M’s office. Not her lab, of course; that was off-limits. But she’d given me a pass to visit the low-clearance offices, after I’d tagged along on an official tour the year before. I think she’d wanted to get me interested in science class.
Anyway, I’d finished playing Street Gang, and I was bored.
I’d surfed the Web for a while, but that had gotten stale fast, so I’d called Jamie.
“Hey,” I said when she picked up.
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “You finished playing video games and now you’re bored.”
“That is completely unfair.”
“So what’s up?”
“I finished playing video games and now I’m bored.”
Jamie laughed. “Then start the biology project. Unless you want to get a C-plus again.”
“You sound like Auntie M.”
“Yeah, and I’ll be a world-famous cybernaut when you’re just a loser video gamer.”
We bickered for a while, like we usually did; then I decided to do what she said, like I usually did. I logged in to the Center’s library on my aunt’s computer. “I’ll search the databases for dragonfly stuff,” I told her, “and e-mail you what I find.”
“Focus on that stealth flight ability,” she said. “And their eyes. They have thirty thousand lenses in each eye.”
“Is that a lot? How many do we have in each eye?”
“One.”
“Oh.” I snorted. “Insects.”
“You ought to love this project,” Jamie said. “Bug.”
Yeah, the other kids sometimes called me Bug, because it rhymes with Doug, obviously, and because of what I said before. Things happen around me. Electronic stuff breaks down. Computers crash and DVDs freeze up. Kilns go haywire in art class and melt all the sculptures.
Have you ever walked down a sidewalk and the streetlights flickered when you passed? Happens to me all the time. And forget about using a microwave. I mean, usually they’re fine—but every six months, one bursts into flames while nuking a pizza bagel.
That’s why I like my pizzas delivered.
Amazingly, nothing had ever gone haywire at the Center.
Until that night.
“Let’s see … eyes and flight,” I said, tapping a few words into the search field. “Gimme a minute, I’ll send you the results.”
“Sure, and I’ll end up doing all the work.”
“You like work,” I said.
“Doug …,” she said warningly. “Not this time.”
“Fine. We’ll work on it in school tomorrow.”
She said okay, and I found a bunch of information about dragonflies. More than a bunch, actually: six gigabytes, including partial DNA mapping and six hours of video.
I liked the common nicknames best:
devil’s needle vagrant emperor scarce chaser
waterfall redspot sigma darner azure hawker
golden spiketail wandering glider dark mossback
“Ready for the file?” I asked, and clicked Send.
“I’ve got CircuitBoard open,” Jamie said. CircuitBoard is a girl game—no fists, no knives, no guns, no blood, no violence. You just try to connect these circuits before the time runs out. Thrilling. “Wait a second.”
“Um,” I said.
“Let me finish, or you’ll mess with my Net connection.”
“I already hit Send,” I said. “Here it comes.”
“Bug! I was at my high score.”
And right then, the timer hit 00:00, and—
THE DETONATOR FIRED
The floor collapsed
GET WITH THE PROGRAM
Back to Aunt Margaret. Before the detonator fired, she escaped Roach, raced to processing lab three, and locked herself inside.
She tried calling the cops, but all Center communications were frozen by that power-draining test on the skunks. She knew she didn’t have much time, so she launched her personal encryption and burrowed into the system, desperate to stop Roach.
Desperate to keep him from getting the Protocol and the HostLink.
Two minutes later, a pounding sounded in the hallway. Then silence for a few seconds, until the door burst inward and Roach’s mercenaries poured inside. Auntie M didn’t even look up from her computer. She just tapped a few more keys and hit Enter.
The mercs pointed these futuristic-looking rifles at her—only the best for Roach’s army. Although I didn’t know it then, he’d spent the past few years working for shadowy corporations and Third World tyrants, multiplying his fortune and perfecting his own technologies. And designing weapons that violated every treaty and moral scruple.
But the mercs didn’t fire; they grabbed Auntie M instead.
“Do you have any idea who you’re working for?” she asked them.
“The guy who signs our checks,” one said.
“Roach isn’t just a guy, he’s a madman.”
The merc shoved her. “Shut up.”
“And if he gets away with this …” She shook her head. “He’s a madman with access to weapons the Pentagon’s never even seen.”
“Yeah?” the mercenary said. “Then I’m gonna ask for a raise.”
Before she could reply, Roach stepped inside, murmuring into his communicator: “What do you mean you can’t find the Protocol?”
“It’s not here,” Hund’s voice said through the speaker.
“We need that Memory Cube, Commander. It’s the key to everything.”
Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of a Memory Cube; they’re not on the market yet and probably won’t be for another twenty years. I’ve seen a few around the Center, though. They’re about the size of a deck of cards and they store data like a hard drive or a USB stick. Except Memory Cubes are so advanced they make your laptop look like a number two pencil.
“Then tell me where to find it,” Hund said.
“One moment.” Roach clicked off his communicator and eyed my aunt. “You didn’t get far.”
“You’re being videotaped, Roach,” my aunt said. “You’re not going to get away with this.” She was calm and unafraid. Amazing.
“I already have,” Roach said. “I was right all along: my theory about uploading the human brain is correct. And soon, with my scanning booths and the HostLink, we’ll be digitizing entire organisms. Mind and body both.”
“Your experiments almost killed the test subjects—”
“Everything can be scanned in, Margaret,” he interrupted, eyes shining. “Not just a few stray impulses. Everything.”
“Even if that’s true, it’s not worth the risk.”
“That’s always been your problem.” Roach sneered. “Lack of vision. I can digitize towns, states, entire countries. With the right tech, I’ll scan in the world. Think of it!”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Aunt Margaret said. “I think you’re insane.”
“A perfect world! No human error. Everything reduced to code, eternal and pure. Imagine a world without hunger or pain or death. Without ugly messes and stupid mistakes. No muss, no fuss, no disgusting fleshy bodies.”
She looked at him and—I swear this is true—said, “If you want to get rid of disgusting fleshy bodies, go to the gym more often.”
He glared at her. “And no disobedience. Everyone will follow the program. Everyone will have a function and will perform that function perfectly.”
“Or what?” she asked.
“Or the programmer will modify the faulty code.”
&
nbsp; “You’re gonna digitize people against their will,” she said, realization dawning on her face. “Scan them into your machine, even if it kills them.”
“They won’t die. They’ll be reborn in new forms, immortal and perfect. They’ll expand my digital realm, making me stronger—so I can digitize more, and get stronger still. Until there is nothing left of this foul world but acres of supercomputers humming in my underground vaults. And on those computers, we’ll live forever—in perfect order.”
“And you’ll delete the mind of anyone who objects?”
“Of course not. I’ll merely debug them.”
“You are insane,” my aunt said.
“Madness and genius …” Roach grabbed a pair of handheld scanners, like those shock paddles you see on TV shows when doctors jolt someone back to life. “They’re two sides of the same equation.”
Then he pressed the paddles to my aunt’s temples.
FALLING DOWN
You know what’s worse than suddenly falling through the air? Suddenly stopping.
I hit the ground hard and groaned for a few seconds. Then I felt something digging into my face and realized I was clinging to Auntie M’s computer—which was still, somehow, sending data to Jamie’s laptop.
Directly under my aunt’s office was the Holographic Hub, the main CPU of the Center. I’d peeked inside on that tour I mentioned, through the observation window, and you know what I saw?
Nothing.
An empty white room. But inside that room, every molecule, every electron and atom was imprinted with information, like a track on a CD. It looks empty, but it’s coursing with energy, with data.
And I fell right into the middle of it.
I didn’t know that the explosion—the first explosion, I mean, a thousand times weaker than the final blast—was a mercenary attack. I didn’t know they’d targeted the blast to neutralize the backup security while sparing the rest of the building so they could steal the technology. I didn’t know anything.
To be honest, I thought the explosion was probably my fault. Not that I really cared, because I suddenly remembered the sign on the hub’s door: HIGHLY VOLATILE—APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION.