The Rendering

by Joel Naftali

  “One at a time,” my aunt said through the computer. And even though it wasn’t her voice, she sounded like her old self. “Jamie first. My scans reveal that the dragonfly data Doug was sending when he fell into the Holographic Hub merged with the CircuitBoard code on your laptop.”

  “Um, what?” Jamie asked.

  “The Holographic Hub automatically combines, refines, and optimizes all available code,” my aunt explained. “It turned your laptop into a supercomputer. The Center is gone, but your laptop is now a miniature version of the Holographic Hub. You’ve got more computing power than NASA.”

  “But …,” Jamie said. “How did I unlock those doors?”

  “The hub also upgraded your computer game to a Net-based utility,” my aunt said. “A semiautonomous codelink webform, passlocked to you alone.”

  “Vocabulary,” I reminded her.

  “Ah. Well, apparently the dragonfly probe can travel through cyberspace just like Jamie’s cursor travels in the CircuitBoard game. Not only travel, but manipulate.”

  “Like a hacking tool?” I asked.

  “Like an incredibly powerful hacking tool,” my aunt said.

  Jamie shook her head. “But what happened to you, Dr. Solomon? That’s the most important thing. Are you … Where are you?”

  “I thought you were dead,” I said, my throat suddenly tight. “You were lying there … I thought you were dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Doug. I—”

  “I left her there,” I told Jamie. “I left her behind.”

  “Douglas!” my aunt said through the speaker. “I was dead. There was nothing you could do.”

  I swallowed. “I should have—”

  “You were dead?” Jamie interrupted.

  “When Roach scanned me into the Net, my body died, and he thought my mind did, too. But the Center’s AI routed the data through my personal directories. Every synapse, every quark and neuron. I imprinted on the Center’s intranet.”

  “Wait,” Jamie said. “He scanned you into a machine? That’s just … not possible.”

  “The technology of the Center is light-years beyond anything you can imagine.”

  “Okay,” Jamie said, biting her lower lip. “So he scanned your brain into the Center’s computers?”

  “That’s right. I used several sectors to protect my data, and transferred everything off-site before the final explosion.”

  “You mean you uploaded yourself to the Net before the bomb went off?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So … where are you now?” I asked.

  “Distributed through the Internet, on corporate data banks and military hardware, on home computers and telecommunications networks.”

  “Um. That’s good, I guess.”

  “It is, except one of my sectors was corrupted during the transfer.” There was a pause. “And the data seems to have developed a rudimentary self-consciousness.”

  I shook my head. “That’s crazy. How do we even know you’re—” I turned to Jamie. “What if this isn’t my aunt?”

  “I know about the root canal, Doug,” the laptop said. “I know about your Spider-Man pajamas—”

  “That was years ago,” I said.

  “And the time your Chuckle Me Aldo went on the fritz.”

  “Which totally wasn’t my fault!”

  “You flushed a stuffed animal down the toilet.”

  “That thing was freaky.”

  “The plumber cost me four hundred dollars!”

  “Okay,” I said to Jamie. “This is definitely Auntie M.”

  Jamie snorted. “Yeah, I figured.” She looked at the laptop in the dim light of the dirt cellar. “What do you mean it’s developing self-consciousness?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” my aunt said. “But the corrupted sector seems to be self-aware. This new Awareness isn’t just code, it’s a—a person.”

  “Corrupted” was not precisely correct.

  I’ll get to that later.

  ANOTHER COUNTDOWN

  Jamie asked, “So after Roach scanned your mind, some of that data started … changing?”

  “Yes. Usually before scanning in a mind, we format the computer to preserve the data exactly. But Roach wasn’t trying to scan my mind; he was trying to kill me. To erase my mind. And it would’ve worked, but the Center’s AI recognized me and sent the information into my personal sectors. Except nothing was formatted, so the data is behaving … oddly.”

  Jamie took a breath. “Okay. So what do we do? How long do you have?”

  “I can maintain the integrity of my data for another three hours—”

  “Three hours?” I interrupted, hope sparking in my chest. “You mean you can come back?”

  “You can reconstruct your body?” Jamie asked.

  “If you locate a Bio-Gen Uplink within three hours, I can rebuild my body. Otherwise, I’ll remain in digital format.”

  “Like, forever?” Jamie asked.

  “No,” the laptop said. “Eventually, my data—my mind and personality—will lose coherence.”

  “Lose coherence?” I asked, even though I was afraid of the answer. “Vocabulary, Auntie M.”

  “Without access to an uplink within three hours,” she said, “I won’t be able to rebuild my body. I’ll become pure data. And after that, my mind will die, too.”

  Jamie bit her lip again. “What’s an uplink?”

  “You mean like that HostLink thing?” I asked.

  “Yes, the HostLink was effectively a superpowerful uplink. A prototype, one of a kind. Gone forever, thank God.”

  “Why is that a good thing?”

  “Because Roach could’ve used it to scan in millions of people almost immediately. That’s why destroying the HostLink was so important. Regular uplinks, on the other hand, just transfer digital format into biological form, and vice versa.”

  “Like those T-bone steaks?” I asked.

  “Exactly. Except the uplinks work both ways—from digital file to physical body, and from physical body to digital file.”

  “The Center’s a heap of charcoal,” I said. “Are there any uplinks left?”

  “Only three.”

  “Then we’ll get one,” I said. “Where are they?”

  “Roach stole two of them last night, and the third’s in a heavily guarded military installation in San Diego.”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I left you for dead once. I’ll never do that again.”

  And you know what?

  Sure, I’m an ordinary kid, but after seeing what I’d seen the day before—after surviving what I’d survived—I didn’t care. I’d get my aunt one of those uplinks if I had to crawl over broken glass.

  Three hours.

  I had three hours to save my aunt, to bring her back to life.

  Maybe I’d never done anything with three hours before, except waste them playing video games. But this time, I would not fail.

  For the first time in my life, I couldn’t.

  SPIN DOWN

  “After I pinpoint the location of an uplink …” The laptop’s hard drive whirred. “Your battery is damaged, Jamie. I have only thirty-eight seconds before power-down.”

  Jamie gave me a dirty look. “Bug knocked me over.”

  “Oops.”

  “You need to recharge the battery,” Auntie M said. “And stay out of sight. They’re watching for you, Doug.”

  “Me?” I yelped. “Who?”

  “Roach and Hund. And the army. And police.”

  “What?”

  “Roach hacked the military net—and the government, the schools, the police. He controls satellite feeds and security cameras. He edited the report from last night to show that you vandalized the Center, causing the explosion and my death.”

  I swore.

  “On the bright side,” Jamie told me, “you’re famous.”

  “I always thought I’d be famous for my music.”

  “What music? You don’t even play an instrument.”


  “Yeah, but I’m awesome at Rock Hero Four.”

  “This isn’t a time for jokes,” my aunt said. “They assume that you’re dead, but Roach noticed the shuttle leaving. Expect him to double-check.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out.

  “Doug, run to Jamie’s house and get online. I’ll talk to you there. Keep a low profile, in case Roach is watching. Jamie, go to school and pretend none of this happened. If they realize you’re absent, they’ll know you’re involved. And hurry.”

  “But—the uplinks?” Jamie said. “Three hours? We need to start—”

  “Just go,” my aunt said. “And be careful.”

  Then the laptop powered down, and we were alone.

  SHOPPING TRIP

  When I was a little kid, they bulldozed some fields and pastures across town and built big-box stores. Huge warehouses with acres of aisles selling everything from underwear to lawn mowers to jelly beans.

  To Jamie’s disgust, I liked them. I liked getting lost in there for hours, just messing around and looking at all the stuff. Jamie, on the other hand, headed into the city with her mom every six weeks for a whole new wardrobe.

  Anyway, if you start wondering how I know what I’m about to tell you, remember what I said about digital reconstruction.

  After Roach was fired from the Center, my aunt developed a technology that could eavesdrop through electronic equipment—not just security cameras and cell phones, but wireless devices and even fiber-optic outlets. And since merging with the Net, she’s learned to reconstruct almost anything that happens.

  And of course, breaking into personnel records is far easier.

  Which is how I know that Letitia Harrod worked at Tar-Mart for eight years. She was a model employee, without a single hiccup, until early that morning, when she opened the doors and found a huge mess: security cameras ripped from the walls, packaging strewn everywhere.

  They’d been robbed. So Letitia called the cops and checked the store, to figure out what had been taken. Some clothes and a bunch of equipment from the hunting and fishing section. Tools, definitely. Sporting goods. Even some toys from the children’s department.

  She grabbed her inventory sheet … then heard a noise.

  The robbers were still in the store. She pressed herself against a display of nonfat cookies and trembled as she listened to them.

  “Check this,” one of them said. “A slingshot. You see any ball bearings?”

  “Try aisle nine,” came another voice, deep and slow.

  “A slingshot,” a female voice said disgustedly. “Grow up.”

  “Don’t blame me,” the first man said. “I’m born to not kill.”

  “Fine, you’re stuck with nonlethal weapons … you don’t have to like them so much,” she said. “Is that a Ping-Pong gun?”

  “You fill these balls with the right chemicals …”

  The female snorted. “A Harley, that’s what I need.”

  “At least you found the motorcycle chain,” Deep Voice said.

  “Yeah, this isn’t bad,” the female voice replied. “Tensile strength to eight thousand pounds. Still, I’m gonna need to special order.”

  “You don’t have enough gear?” Deep Voice asked.

  “Easy for you to say,” the female said. “You are gear. Toss me that crowbar.”

  Something clanked, and Deep Voice said, “We should check on the boy, now that you’re equipped.”

  “Our scrawny sleeping beauty,” the first voice said.

  “What about her?” the female voice asked.

  Letitia shivered, like she knew they were talking about her.

  “I’ll fix her,” the first voice said.

  The owner of the first voice vaulted over four aisles of breakfast cereals and home-repair tools and landed two feet in front of Letitia.

  His furry ears pricked and his muzzle rose in a smile. “Boo,” he said softly.

  Letitia fainted.

  MY SCIENCE EXPERIMENT

  We climbed the root canal stairs—a rotting wooden stair-case—into the corner of the abandoned weed-ridden lot. I took a few deep breaths and blinked against the morning sun.

  “I don’t mind the lack of indoor plumbing,” I said. “But I’d kill for a convenient tree.”

  “Uh,” Jamie said. “Gross?”

  “Well, at least I slept like a baby.”

  “Yeah, on soggy cardboard.” She glanced at me. “You still don’t remember how you got there?”

  “No. I mean, I guess not.”

  “Which means you kinda do know?”

  “I have a theory,” I said. “The only problem is, it’s insane.”

  “That never stopped you before.”

  I tried to laugh but couldn’t. Why? Well, take a peek at my little Checklist of Weird:

  whispering snakeskin refrigerator

  battlefield-medic centipede

  rampaging killer monkeybeast

  Fine, no problem. I hadn’t collapsed into a jabbering wreck at any of that.

  But those things I’d seen outside the shuttle? I couldn’t handle them. Not only because the weird factor blew everything else away, but because if I saw what I thought I saw …

  Then I’d created them. I’d created them, and that simply blew my mind.

  Jamie stopped and looked at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. I mean, I guess.” I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, that’s clear.”

  Her expression almost made me grin.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I’m glad they didn’t kill me.”

  She nodded. “I’m happy about that, too.”

  “And once we get Auntie M back, I’ll be fine.”

  Jamie nodded again as we crossed the weedy lot, and we got four blocks before—

  A GIRL

  Okay, time out. Jamie just texted me. She wants me to describe her, I guess so you can picture us walking down the sidewalk.

  She’s kinda skinny. And if I remember right, she was wearing a T-shirt with this logo:

 

  And jeans. Probably a fancy designer brand with a goofy name. Like once she told me her jeans were “Grass Station Mars” or something.

  Oh! And sneakers. Definitely sneakers.

  WHERE WAS I?

  Right. Jamie nodded and we—

  A GIRL, CONTINUED

  She texted me again. She says that describing her T-shirt isn’t enough.

  Fine. She’s sorta tallish. Brown eyes, brown skin. Two ears, two legs. The regular number of teeth, I guess.

  To be honest, I never counted them.

  What I’m trying to say is we got four blocks before the cops spotted us.

  Municipal Police Department

  Automated Crime Report

  TDS Number: 75639 Complaint Number: 200346

  INCIDENT TYPE

  Negligent Homicide - Criminal Trespass - Malicious Endangerment

  Vandalism - Destruction of Government Property

 

  How Received: Radio Time of Call: 0149 HRS

  Car Number: 04/K Arrival Time: 0704 HRS

  District: 3 Copies To: Muni Court

  Weapon Used: Unknown (military grade) GEO Code: 42-Y8

  KNOWN SUSPECT

  Name: Solomon, Douglas J. Sex: Male

  Race: Caucasian SSN: 123-12-1231

  Home Address: 81 Park Terrace Occupation: Student

  At 0704 hours, pursuant to a BOLO (Be On the Look Out), after the alleged domestic terrorist incident at the Center for Medical Innovation, Car Number 04/K identified the suspect, DOUGLAS J. SOLOMON, crossing from the north side of Elm Street at the intersection with Third Street. Accompanied by an unidentified female between the ages of 12 and 14, the suspect fled on foot, with officers in pursuit.

  THREE BLOCKS EARLIER

  “I’ll call my parents,” Jamie said, stepping onto the sidewalk.

  “What for?”

  “They’
re lawyers.”

  “What are they gonna do, sue Roach? Or turn me in?”

  “They won’t turn you in.”

  “Yeah, the cops say I’m guilty, but they’ll believe I was framed by mercenaries with monkeybeasts.”

  “Mm.” She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe I’ll call them after we find proof.”

  We stopped at the corner and I said, “Gimme your laptop.”

  “No way.”

  “You’re going that way.” I pointed toward school. “And I’m going to your house.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Auntie M said—”

  “I don’t care,” Jamie interrupted. “If she’s in trouble, I’m gonna help.”

  “You want to help? Then go to school. Maybe she—”

  “No way, Doug. Three hours. That’s all we have.”

  “These people are scary,” I told her. “Seriously scary.”

  “You’re not the only one who loves her.”

  From her tone of voice, I knew that Jamie had made up her mind. After a certain point, I don’t argue with her. Doesn’t do any good.

  Still, I felt kinda odd. Usually Jamie is the good kid, the responsible one. If she started slacking, did that mean I’d need to buckle down?

  Nah.

  Anyway, we headed behind the Wilkersons’ house—there’s a shortcut through the hedge—and past the spot where we once built the Headless Snowman, and through the playground for toddlers learning to climb stairs and high schoolers learning to smoke cigarettes.

  Back on the sidewalk, we turned left, and a siren

  A police car squealed around the corner, coming fast.

  I started to run toward Jamie’s house, but Jamie yelled, “This way!” and took off toward the school.

  I followed close behind.

  We cut through the Nguyens’ backyard, around the swimming pool, where Stacy Nguyen sunbathed a cop car couldn’t follow. We ran behind the garden shed and into Mrs. Klein’s yard, then alongside the Coopers’ porch.