The Rendering

by Joel Naftali

  I needed to get out of there.

  Yet I couldn’t even stand. My strength was gone, and I felt myself getting weaker every second. Being inside the hub sapped my strength, made my brain buzz and my vision blur.

  I forced myself to roll over and crawled toward the door.

  Locked.

  I looked for something to smash the observation window with. Everything from Auntie M’s office had fallen through the floor with me. I saw her chair ten feet away. A scattering of books from her shelves. A few drawers from her desk, with the contents spilled everywhere.

  I dragged myself back to her computer, figuring I could use it to break the window. It took all my strength to cross those ten feet; then I was too weak to lift the monitor. Instead, I keeled over. I lay there, staring at the white floor and the white walls and a scattering of junk from Auntie M’s drawers:

  Paper clips and sticky notes and pens.

  A bottle of vitamins.

  An old smartphone, the screen now broken.

  A framed picture of me as a baby with my parents.

  A Memory Cube with an orange label.

  I blinked a few times, first watching a strange foggy glow around the Memory Cube, then peering at the picture. They say I look like my father. He was tall and lanky with messy dark hair—and always smiling or laughing in every picture I’d ever seen.

  I smiled back at him.

  Then I collapsed.

  MY CUBIST PERIOD

  Roach pressed the paddles to my aunt’s temples and pulled the triggers.

  The machine hummed, and my aunt screamed. Then she fell to the floor, where she lay unmoving. He’d erased her brain, transferred every synapse through the paddles into the Center’s data banks. But he hadn’t formatted the mainframe to accept her data, so her mind would soon fade into the darkness of the hard drives. And a few minutes later, her body would shut down completely.

  Roach stepped over her like she was yesterday’s laundry. “Now, Hund,” he said into his communicator, “explain the problem. You’re having trouble with security?”

  “No. We breached the vault easily enough.”

  “But didn’t find the cube?”

  “We found the cube,” Hund said.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “It’s blank.”

  “What? Impossible. You have the wrong cube.”

  “I have the cube that the Protocol was saved onto.” Hund’s voice crackled over the communicator. “Exactly as described. Except it’s blank.”

  “I need that Protocol.” Roach stepped up to a keyboard and clicked the keys. “Here we are. The cube with the Protocol on it was stored in the archive vault.”

  “I’m standing in the archive vault.”

  “Ah, yes. You blasted the doors and … let me scan the cube you found.” Roach tapped a few more keys. “That’s the right cube.”

  “As I said, Doctor. And it’s blank.”

  “You’re right. I don’t understand. Unless …” Roach’s fingers blurred over the keyboard; then he paled. “Dr. Solomon erased the contents two minutes ago.”

  That was what she’d been doing at the computer. At least, part of what she’d been doing.

  “The Protocol is gone?” Hund asked.

  “No. She can’t have—there’s an override on deletion. Wait a moment.…” Roach eyed the data scrolling past. “Ah! Before she erased the cube, she transferred the contents into the Holographic Hub. Into a new cube. We’ll retrieve the Protocol from there.”

  “I’m on my way,” Hund said, his voice crackling.

  “The hub is extremely dangerous, Commander. Do not enter until I tell you it’s safe.”

  “Roger.”

  “And on your way,” Roach said, “kill anything that moves.”

  SAVED BY THE BARBIE

  I could’ve told him that in the Holographic Hub right then, absolutely nothing was moving.

  Not that I wasn’t trying. I didn’t remember the whole lecture my aunt had given me during that tour, about getting stuck in the hub, but the phrase vaporize all the synapses in your brain stuck in my mind.

  And I couldn’t even lift a finger.

  Luckily, my face was scrunched against the computer I’d been using to send the dragonfly data to Jamie. That’s what saved my life. If I’d been an inch farther away, I never would have made it. But I was close enough to hear Jamie’s voice.

  “Bug!” she said through the half-smashed speakers. “Bug! Can you hear me?”

  I gurgled. It was all I could do.

  “I can see you here, on my screen. In CircuitBoard, I mean. You’re showing up on the game interface. What’s going on?”

  I tried to say, “Get me out of here!” But all I could manage was “Out!”

  “You want to get out?”

  I gurgled again, more insistently.

  “Well, there’s a … let’s see, I’ll connect the positive to the negative here, and …” And she was off, talking nonsense about winning her CircuitBoard game.

  Meanwhile, my synapses were getting fried.

  Jamie kept blathering about her game: “Then I close this circuit and move to the next level. I’ll power down the grid, and …”

  Everything was fading away, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading …

  Until I heard a click.

  The humming in the room quieted and I took a sudden gulp of breath. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped breathing.

  “You look terrible, Doug,” Jamie said through the speakers. “I’m zooming in on you. Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

  I croaked, “Yes.”

  With the hub powered down, I felt stronger already. Then I noticed that the door was unlocked. Somehow Jamie had turned off the power and unlocked the door using CircuitBoard commands from her laptop.

  She’d saved my life.

  Talk about humiliating. Saved by a girl game.

  “What on earth is going on?” Jamie asked. (But of course, she didn’t put it so politely.)

  “I don’t know.” I pushed myself onto my knees. “I gotta get out of here.”

  “What’d you do?” Jamie asked.

  Then another voice came from the computer: “The Center has been taken over by mercenaries. Douglas Solomon, you must take that Memory Cube and flee.”

  “This one?” I asked, grabbing the cube. “Jamie? Is that you?”

  “No, I—”

  The mechanized voice cut her off: “You must prevent the intruders from stealing that cube. You must not fail.”

  “But no pressure, right?” I said.

  “And you must vacate the hub,” the voice said. “You have nine seconds before permanent brain damage.”

  “Eight.”

  “Seven.”

  “Six.”

  FIVE, FOUR, THREE …

  Thirty seconds later, Hund and his soldiers closed in on the Holographic Hub. They moved like the elite mercenary commando force they were—with a deadly silence.

  “Wait while I power down the hub,” Roach’s voice said. “It’s a complex procedure and—What’s this!”

  “What?” Hund asked, raising his gun.

  “Impossible!” Roach said over the communicator, still clicking the keyboard in the other room. “The hub’s already off-line. Someone got there before us. Commander, get that cube.”

  Hund kicked down the door to the Holographic Hub.

  He dove inside, rolled, and came up standing with a huge gun in each hand. The whole thing took him about a nanosecond.

  The total time elapsed between Commander Hund’s ingress into the Holographic Hub and—

  Give it a rest, Auntie M, okay?

  Sometimes she’s a little obsessive about numbers.

  If you could only see them as I see them, Douglas, you’d understand. It is one of the few advantages of my new state.

  Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—

  Apology accepted, Douglas. Please continue the story.

>   Okay. Commander Hund battered through the hub door, with three soldiers behind him. They fanned out and found … nothing but wreckage. Just the shattered furniture from my aunt’s office, the scattered junk from her drawers.

  Hund hit the button on his communicator. “Doctor, the Protocol cube isn’t here.”

  Roach had left my aunt on the floor and headed for the loading bay to prepare the helicopters to transport the HostLink, because that thing was huge. He paused when he got Hund’s message, and checked a monitor. “I’m tracking the cube in corridor 6B. No, wait. It’s moving.”

  “Patch into the security cameras.”

  “One moment. Yes. Focusing. Ah! That’s Dr. Solomon’s brat. He spilled coleslaw on me at one of those insufferable company picnics. He has the cube. Get the Protocol and dump the body.”

  “My pleasure,” Hund said, and started hunting me.

  HAVE A NICE DAY

  About a minute earlier, I’d lunged across the hub and tugged on the door handle.

  “Quantum entanglement at critical levels,” the voice said. “Brain waves compromised.”

  I recognized the mechanized tones. That was what the Center sounded like when the scientists set the output to “voice.” The same bland voice said, “This is a no-entry zone,” and “Download complete,” and “Please fasten your seat belt.”

  Somehow, the Center itself was telling me that my brain waves were compromised, and in two seconds I’d have permanent brain damage. In a panic, I yanked open the door and fell into the corridor, breathing hard.

  “Now hide, Douglas Solomon,” the voice said. “Before they find you.”

  “What?” I blurted.

  “Before they find the Protocol,” the voice said. “Do not let them get that cube.”

  “But who—”

  “The future is in your hands.”

  “How—”

  “Flee now,” the voice said. “Or die.” So I fled.

  Down the hallway, hurdling a heap of rubble on the floor, then swerving into a stairwell with a door half blasted off its hinges. I pressed myself into the corner, holding the Memory Cube in a white-knuckled grip.

  I didn’t know what was going on. The explosion, falling into the hub, the threats of brain damage and prowling mercenaries—it was all too much.

  They wanted this cube? For the Protocol? And I was the only person who could stop them? I mean, me?

  I couldn’t remember to take out the trash. I couldn’t gather the courage to ask Stacy Nguyen to dance. I couldn’t sit through an entire English class without fidgeting. And I was gonna keep the Protocol from a gang of mercenaries?

  No.

  I don’t want to sound like a baby, but I needed my aunt.

  So I slipped downstairs and through another door, then trotted along the corridor until I came to a console on the wall. I pressed Locate. Those things would find any authorized person in the building. Then I said, “Dr. Solomon.”

  “Dr. Solomon is in processing lab three,” the computer voice said. “Vital signs negligible. Have a nice day.”

  Vital signs negligible?

  I started running.

  TARGET PRACTICE MAKES TARGET PERFECT

  I’d never seen the processing labs—too highly classified—but I knew they were in one of the subbasements. And after that explosion had blasted the security systems, every corner of the Center was wide open.

  So I took the stairs five at a time, until halfway down, a shadow fell across the landing below me.

  A mercenary. I saw his uniform and his rifle, and my heart clenched.

  He took a step into the stairwell. I stood there, in plain view: I couldn’t move; I couldn’t think. I just … froze.

  Let me tell you something. Maybe you have daydreams where something bad happens and you’re the hero. You’re smooth and quick and fearless. Maybe you foil a robber or stop a sniper attack.

  The kind of thing that happens in movies and video games.

  Well, in real life, you’re not smooth and quick and tough; instead, your body shuts down. You think that you are in charge, but suddenly your legs turn into string cheese, and your brain takes a nap.

  So you stand there in the open, gaping at an armed mercenary with orders to kill you on sight. You don’t run or jump or plan a clever counterattack.

  You just stand there.

  In the open.

  Like you want to be used for target practice.

  And despite all that, despite doing everything wrong, maybe you get lucky. Maybe the merc turns without looking toward you, and heads back down the hallway on his patrol.

  I slumped against the wall in relief, my head spinning and my hands shaking. Until I heard the footsteps. A dozen mercenaries thundering downstairs from above me.

  That time I moved.

  I darted through a door and heard someone shout, “There he is!”

  I fled from the stairwell to the hallway, hearing boots pound behind me, and ran blindly through some smoldering wreckage from the explosion—just in time to see a patrol rounding the corner.

  One of the mercs raised his rifle and I screamed and flung myself through a hole blasted in the opposite wall.

  I tumbled into a vast cubicle farm two levels beneath the ground, as big as a football field: hundreds of cubicles, each with a computer and telephone and file cabinet.

  Some had houseplants and family photos, but they all had cubicle dividers that transformed the room into the world’s biggest maze.

  I dove in like a rat.

  SURROUNDED BY CATS

  I can describe the next four minutes in one word: terror.

  They stalked me through the maze, and I scurried away. I crawled around cubicles and hid beneath desks. Once, a merc stopped three feet from me, on the other side of a divider, and I heard him sniffing. Like he could smell me.

  He started into the cubicle, and suddenly, all the phones in the room rang at the same time—and abruptly cut off.

  The merc stopped, spun, and headed away.

  I thought, Saved by the bell.

  And almost laughed hysterically. Good thing I didn’t, or they’d have shot me.

  After a blur of fear, I found myself in a big cubicle with five workstations, crouched underneath a table holding a coffeemaker and doughnuts. Listening to the ominous silence. Waiting for them to find me, scared and alone.

  Beep

  Beep-beep

  I trembled in my hiding spot. What was that?

  Gurgle

  The coffeemaker, set on automatic drip, had just started brewing. And making a racket: the coffeemaker was gonna lead them right to me!

  I listened but didn’t hear anyone close. So I crawled over to turn the coffeemaker off, and the digital display said:

  DOUGLAS SOLOMON

  PLEASE RESPOND

  ?

  I huddled over the coffeemaker and whispered, “Hello?”

  In a moment, the display changed.

  INSUFFICIENT AUDIO

  USE KEYPAD

  Like everything else in the Center, the coffeemaker was pretty futuristic: the programmable keypad looked like an iPhone.

  I tapped out Here.

  I AM BLOCKING SURVEILLANCE

  AND TRACKING

  FOR NOW

  BUT SOON THEY WILL FIND YOU

  TAKE THE PROTOCOL CUBE

  AND HIDE

  Yeah, I got that much. Thanks for the wise advice.

  I typed Help my aunt!

  SHE IS BEYOND HELP

  YOU MUST ESCAPE

  “I’m not leaving without her,” I whispered to the display.

  Which was just great. Now I was talking to coffeepots.

  I breathed and typed How?

  MEMORIZE THIS:

  BLUEPRINTS OF THE CENTER

  FIND A WAY OUT

  Blueprints scrolled past on the little display. Because that was me, the guy who could memorize blueprints. Sure, and I could leap tall buildings in a single bound, too.

  “Are you c
razy?” I muttered. Then I typed Are you crazy?

  NEGATIVE

  EXPLAIN

  So I told whoever was on the other end of this coffeemaker display that I couldn’t read blueprints, I couldn’t do any of this. I could handle Arsenal Five and Street Gang and pizza … but escaping from a top secret weapons lab with mercenaries stalking me?

  Not really my strength.

  REFORMATTING …

  A second later, I heard a loud hum. All around the room, printers suddenly sprang to life and spit out sheets of paper. Everywhere except in the big cubicle where I was hiding, which must’ve been the only place in the entire cubicle farm without a printer.

  Then I heard beeping: loud at first, though getting fainter.

  I AM ATTEMPTING TO LEAD THEM

  AWAY

  MEMORIZE THE OUTPUT OF MONITOR

  NEAREST YOU

  ESCAPE

  WITH PROTOCOL CUBE

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said.

  BE CAREFUL, DOUGLAS SOLOMON

  NOW GO

  !!!!!!!!!!!

  That was a lot of exclamation points for a coffeemaker, so I went. Well, first I checked that none of the mercenaries were nearby. Then I breathed.

  Then I breathed some more.

  Then I stopped trembling and stood from my hiding spot and darted across the big cubicle to the nearest monitor. I don’t really know why. It wasn’t like having blueprints on a bigger screen was gonna help; I still didn’t know how to read them.

  But if I wanted to find my aunt, I needed a map, so I checked the screen. This is what I saw:

  Gingerbread muffins

  2 cups flour

  1 tablespoon ground ginger

  1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

  1/2 cup sugar

  1/2 cup light molasses

  2 teaspoons baking soda

  1 scant teaspoon ground cinnamon

  1 stick salted butter

  2 large eggs

  1 cup cold water