The Rendering

by Joel Naftali

  They boarded a helicopter, to fly away before the whole place blew—with me and my aunt still inside.

  WEEKS OR DAYS

  I was five feet below them, listening to every word. The blue shuttle the banner had mentioned was a supply monorail, part of an underground bullet-train system that served the Center.

  I’d squeezed through a duct and crawled to the shuttle system. I’d found the blue line, then stopped, listening to the conversation overhead.

  And I’d shivered at the tone in Roach’s voice when he’d said, In weeks—maybe days—they will all see what perfection is.

  If he stole the Protocol cube and the HostLink, nothing could stop him.

  And guess what? He’d stolen the Protocol cube and the HostLink.

  I hadn’t done anything right. They were gonna get away with this, with looting the technology and bombing the Center. With hurting Auntie M.

  In the gloomy duct, I closed my eyes.

  She couldn’t be dead. Maybe she was stunned, maybe comatose. Not dead. Not dead forever, like my mother and father, and never coming back.

  You know how I said I don’t remember my parents? Well, I don’t—but I’ve seen pictures. I’ve seen video. I’ve watched my mother holding me, this squirmy pink infant, in her lap and kissing the soles of my chubby feet. I remember the look in her eyes, the expression of awe and adoration.

  I’d never gotten that, the misty-eyed delight, from Auntie M. Instead, I’d gotten love; I’d gotten guidance; I’d gotten solidity. I’d gotten the ironclad guarantee that she’d always be there for me.

  Always. And you know what? She’d never let me down. Not once.

  And now she’d gone and left me forever, like my parents?

  No, I couldn’t accept that. If only I could get to her somehow, drag her away from the Center, away from the explosion …

  Then the speakers said, “Detonation sequence in two minutes.”

  Two minutes until the explosion, and my aunt was at least five minutes away.

  Well, you’ve seen it on TV a hundred times: There’s a chase, and the hero’s partner gets shot. He tells the hero to go on without him, but the hero never does. Instead, he grabs his buddy and brings him out alive. That’s why he’s the hero.

  I guess I’m no hero.

  The shuttle door opened. I hesitated a moment. Then I stepped inside, and the door closed behind me.

  I still have nightmares about that. Leaving her behind.

  Your only option was retreat, Douglas. Even if you could have dragged my body from the Center—a physical impossibility—I was beyond your help.

  Maybe.

  Anyway, I got into the shuttle and looked through a window. I saw the last of the crates—the HostLink—being lifted to a helicopter.

  Then things got even stranger.

  DOUBLE CLICK THIS

  I stood beside the shuttle window, scared and shaking and imagining all the terrible things I wanted to happen to Roach. I won’t go into detail, but I was hitting him with some very nasty vibes.

  I mean, pure dripping evil.

  Then I felt another dizzy spell: the shuttle seemed to tilt crazily around me, and I dropped to my knees and felt something click in my head.

  Hard to describe. Like when you’re looking at a jigsaw puzzle and the right piece suddenly clicks in your mind. Everything comes together in a sudden deciphering and you know the piece fits. That’s what I felt in that moment.

  The cable holding the HostLink snapped.

  The sheared end of the cable whipped through the air with a shrill whistle, and the HostLink crashed to the parking lot, transforming instantly from $250 million of biodigital wizardry into $1.95 of scrap metal.

  I did that. I snapped the cable.

  I didn’t know how, but I snapped that cable.

  Your inborn ability to cause mishaps with electronic devices was magnified and focused when the Holographic Hub compromised your brain waves.

  Yeah, we know that now, that falling into the Holographic Hub juiced my streetlight-flickering and kiln-zapping skills. And the first thing I’d snapped was that cable.

  But at the time, I had no idea how I’d done that—or even if I really had.

  I freaked.

  Still dizzy, I barely managed to pull myself to my feet and started hammering on the shuttle door, trying to get out. I don’t even know where I wanted to go: back into the bomb zone?

  Not smart, even for me.

  But I’d lost it. So I pushed. I pulled. Nothing.

  I slumped against the wall in defeat. Then:

  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

  The sound of the shuttle door unsealing. I turned, and the edges of my vision darkened into a tunnel.

  The door slid open. I saw that someone was out there. Something.

  I looked for a long moment.

  Then everything went black.

  DROPPING THE EAVES

  “That’s the boy?” a deep male voice said.

  “Kind of scrawny,” a female voice answered.

  “Cut him a little slack,” a different man said. “He took a bullet in the leg—oh, and saved the world.”

  “The world?”

  “If Roach had stolen that HostLink, not even we could’ve stopped him. At least now we have a chance. The kid bought us time.”

  “He’s still scrawny,” the female said.

  PLAN B

  One of the things you learn when you’re fighting a supergenius like Roach is that there’s always a plan B. And a plan C. And D, E, and F.

  And don’t get me started on plans G through R.

  The guy never ran out of plans. Ever.

  I didn’t know this at the time, but in Roach’s helicopter, he and Hund looked at the smoke curling from the wreckage of the HostLink.

  “Someone’s gonna pay for that,” Hund spat. “With blood.”

  “Most assuredly,” Roach said.

  “What now? We’ve got nothing.”

  Roach slipped the Protocol cube from his pocket. “Wrong, Commander. We have Plan B. Instead of a single, massive scan, we’ll progress in stages.”

  “You mean digitize them a few at a time?”

  “Precisely. We’ll scan in a dozen and use them to power our scans of the next hundred. Then those hundred will prepare my servers to scan the next thousand—and the ten thousand after that.”

  “Won’t they notice?”

  Roach chuckled drily. “The idiot meatpeople, trapped in meatspace? Until I show them the glory of cyberspace, they’ll always be sluggish and stupid and disconnected. They notice nothing at all.”

  “When do we start?”

  “Immediately. Look down. See that nice little town?”

  Hund nodded. “Sure.”

  “Tomorrow, that town will be pristine: a stream of pure ones and zeros. And after I scan them, my research will progress by great leaps. Oh, the experiments I’ll perform! The freedom they’ll discover from those fleshy anchors—”

 

  Yeah, a little of Roach’s ranting goes a long way.

  The thing is, I guess I stopped him from scanning in thousands—tens of thousands, millions—of people at once. Which was good.

  Go me.

  But Roach seemed pretty content to take this one step at a time. To scan hundreds of people into his machine first. To run experiments on them. To make his digital realm stronger and stronger every time he digitized another brain, ended another life. To exploit the power of scanned minds as his own private data banks.

  Starting with my hometown.

  And I’m no hero. I know that. If you’ve read this whole blog, you know that, too. I’m just an ordinary kid … with one quirk. And some friends.

  Of course, I hadn’t even met them yet. Right then, I was unconscious in the blue shuttle, a hundred feet underground, hurtling away from the nuclear blast at ninety-five miles per hour.

  Good thing they used a “cone” nuke, one of Roach’s inventions, which funneled the blast into a small
perimeter and minimized fallout. See, that way—

  Douglas.

  Yeah?

  You are done posting for today.

  What are you talking about? I can’t end with me unconscious. I mean, Roach still got 99 percent of everything he wanted, and planned to scan in my town the next day. All my teachers, all my friends … Jamie.

  You haven’t yet started your science assignment, which is due tomorrow.

  Well, the due date is kinda flexible.

  I am monitoring your teacher’s computer. The due date is tomorrow, with no extensions. And you are currently receiving a C in class.

  A C? Sheesh. I’m aiming for a B-minus.

  Still, I’m not really done with this—

  You lived, Douglas. You saved the Protocol and the skunks. You smashed the HostLink.

  I didn’t keep that Memory Cube from Hund. I didn’t save my aunt.

  Without you, we’d have lost already. Take your victories as they come.

  NOBODY READS MY BLOG

  After all these posts, my blog traffic is still pathetic. But I don’t care. I’m gonna keep writing.

  Maybe one day more people will stumble across this. Maybe one day they’ll understand.

  For those of you who aren’t only reading, but actually e-mailed … thanks. We’re investigating every report of cyber crime, every whisper of VIRUS activity. We’re doing everything we can to make sure your town doesn’t end up like mine.

  I GOT THE B-MINUS!

  Now, where was I?

  Oh, right: in the shuttle, when everything went black. Time passed. A hum surrounded me, the shuttle rocked me, then a crack of thunder split the world in two.

  I mumbled in my sleep and fell back into nothingness.

  When I finally woke, the first thing I noticed was the smell. Before I even opened my eyes, I knew where I was.

  CATCH THE BLUE SHUTTLE IN SUBSECTOR 2W … GO TO THE ROOT CANAL …

  Well, I’d caught the shuttle and somehow woken in the root canal, that dark, dingy basement I’d found when I was ten. I hadn’t been there in years, but I still remembered the smell.

  Mud and mildew. And apparently, I’d slept on a slab of cardboard. I sat up, leaned against the dirty concrete wall, and moaned. I ached everywhere.

  For a minute, I rubbed my temples and tried to convince myself that I’d had a bad dream. That everything that had happened the night before … hadn’t happened. The explosions, the gunshot, the look in Hund’s eyes when he drew his knife.

  My aunt lying motionless on the floor.

  A wonderful vacation from reality, but a lie. I knew all that had happened, all that and more.

  I pressed my palms into my eyes, to rub away the cobwebs. And to keep from crying as the image of my aunt flashed inside my mind. I needed to focus. I didn’t even know how I’d gotten there. I stared into the dark corners of the cellar. At least I was alone.

  First I needed to call the cops. My aunt was dead. If Roach’s scanning her brain into his machine hadn’t killed her, then the tactical nuke had.

  No way around that. I needed to tell the cops.

  Plus I’d seen Roach and Hund invade the Center with a mercenary force and steal millions of dollars in biodigital tech. Oh, and I’d snapped a cable with my mind—though I didn’t know that then but only suspected.

  Still, on second thought, if I told the cops everything, they’d send me to a psych ward. Maybe I’d just give them the abbreviated version.

  So I stood and stretched and rubbed my bruises. Then I stepped toward the crumbling stairs—and froze.

  A shadow fell across the stairs. Someone was coming into the root canal. Someone coming for me.

  CATCHING THE BUG

  This is what I imagined was stalking down the steps into the root canal:

  I backed into the darkness and groped around until I found a nice-sized rock. I breathed through my mouth, trying to stay completely silent.

  And as the shadow loomed closer, I tensed. No way was one of Hund’s soldiers gonna corner me in here. I’d bust his head open first.

  The shadow stepped into the room and I lunged forward, swinging the rock.

  “Bug?” the shadow said.

  Jamie!

  I had too much momentum to stop the swing, so I heaved the rock past Jamie, barely missing her head, and lost my balance. I stumbled and knocked her to the ground, sending her laptop crashing down.

  “Bug!” She cursed at me. “Right in the dirt!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Who were you expecting, an ax murderer?”

  “Worse,” I said.

  She grabbed her laptop, then eyed me. “You look terrible. What happened last night?”

  “What happened? The whole place exploded—and the—the centipede saved me from that thing—and ohmigod, my aunt is—” I swallowed. “And Hund pulled a knife and the monkeybeast—”

  “Bug!” Jamie said. “Take a deep breath.”

  I breathed. “Okay. Okay, everything started with the first explosion—”

  “What happened to your pants?”

  “I got shot.”

  She looked at my leg. “Holy crap. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. No. Kinda.”

  “You’re starting to scare me.”

  “My leg’s fine. Listen, these guys took over the Center and—” I stopped and stared at her. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I got your e-mail,” she said, checking her laptop for damage from the fall. “With all the news about an accident at the Center, I—”

  “You got my what?”

  “E-mail. To meet you here with my laptop.”

  My stomach twisted. “Oh, no.”

  “What?”

  “This is bad, this is very bad.…”

  She tapped a few keys, then looked relieved when her laptop responded. “Don’t worry, it’s still working. Even logs on. That’s weird. You’d need a satellite to get wireless here.”

  “Not that. We’re being set up, Jamie. We can’t stay here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s happening.”

  “Jamie,” I said. “Let’s go—now.”

  “First you send an e-mail saying meet you here, then—”

  “I didn’t send an e-mail.”

  “Someone spoofed your address?” She clicked her touch pad. “Who?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out. We have to go.” I started pushing her toward the exit. “Before they show up.”

  “Who’d send a crazy message about blue shuttles and the root canal and—”

  “The blue shuttle?” I stopped pushing. “The message mentioned the blue shuttle?”

  Nobody knew about the blue shuttle except the Center’s AI. And I could trust the Center’s AI.

  I hoped.

  Then I remembered. I remembered what I’d seen outside the shuttle the night before—and I felt a little unsteady. Because what I’d seen was impossible. Some things are simply too strange to exist.

  “Doug!” Jamie grabbed my arm. “Stop freaking, and tell me what’s happening.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. “Okay, where do I start?”

  “At the Center last night, in your aunt’s office. Something happened when you were sending me that dragonfly file for our project.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The building exploded. And I fell.”

  “Into that room, the Holographic Hub.”

  I nodded and looked away, afraid she’d see something different in my eyes: brain waves compromised. I didn’t really want to think about that.

  “And then,” I said. “And then …”

  A flat computer voice said, “I will provide the necessary background information.”

  Jamie yelped and I spun and looked frantically around the cellar. Still alone. Then, slowly, we both turned toward her laptop.

  “My apologies,” the laptop said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Jamie,” I said. “That isn’t funny.”<
br />
  “No joke,” she said, looking as scared as I felt.

  “Douglas,” the computer said. “This is Aunt Margaret. I’m speaking to you through the laptop.”

  “Auntie M!” I blurted, relief washing over me. “You’re alive!”

  AN ERUPTION OF CORRUPTION

  “Not entirely,” the voice said. “I’m neither alive nor dead.”

  “She’s alive!” I told Jamie.

  “Doug, I—”

  “Thank God,” I breathed. “You’re alive.”

  “Doug, shush! I’m neither alive nor dead. I’m in a liminal state. Let me tell the story.”

  “Fine,” I said, grinning hugely. “As long as you explain words like liminal.”

  “Liminal means on the threshold between life and death.” The laptop fell silent for a moment. “Now, Jamie, listen closely.”

  Jamie stared at her laptop in disbelief as my aunt told the story. The basics, at least: the mercenary attack, Roach and Hund stealing the Protocol, Roach scanning her into the Net, and me escaping in the blue shuttle.

  To be honest, I didn’t listen all that closely, because I was too busy doing cartwheels and setting off fireworks in my mind. I couldn’t believe it. My aunt was still there, still with me. She hadn’t died; she hadn’t left me behind.

  “What about the dragonfly?” Jamie asked when my aunt finished talking through the laptop speaker.

  “Are you crazy?” I said, still smiling. “You’re worried about our homework?”

  “Not the homework! I mean on CircuitBoard. When you were in trouble, I saw the Holographic Hub on my computer screen. The cursor looked like a dragonfly.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Yeah. How’d you manage to unlock the hub for me?”

  “No idea.” Jamie bit her lip. “I mean, I just solved the puzzles on the screen.”

  “Sure, you reprogrammed a military installation with a video game. And, um, what about the cable that snapped?”

  “And what happened to you, Dr. S?” Jamie asked the laptop. “Where are you?”

  “And how did I get here?” I asked. “The last thing I remember, the shuttle door opened and I saw—”