The Rendering

by Joel Naftali

  “Stage one is complete?” Hund asked.

  “Indeed. And nothing can—”

  “Then it’s time for my payment.” Hund tossed me to the floor and I fell on my butt. “My upgrades.”

  “Patience, Commander.”

  “I want those—”

  “I’ll activate the upgrades when we return to base.”

  The soldier holding Jamie grabbed me, too. “What should I do with these two?”

  “Toss them into the mix,” Roach said, nodding at the scanning booth.

  “Together?”

  “Oh, yes. Quite an interesting experiment. Finish the ones in the queue; then add the children. They’ll be our last two uploads.”

  THE GRUESOME TWOSOME

  They scanned in the last few people. I’ll skip over the crying, the screaming, the pleading. Then the soldier holding me and Jamie started dragging us forward, toward the scanning booth.

  Jamie caught my eye and mouthed, One, two … three!

  At exactly the same time, we both shoved and tugged and kicked and pulled, trying to get away.

  No good. The soldier just scoffed and tossed us into the machine.

  A moment later, the door shimmered closed.

  Pitch-black. Not even a hint of light. And we were about to be scanned into Roach’s world.

  “Jamie?” I said.

  “Right here,” she answered, and took my hand.

  The machine started to hum.

  AND KNOW WHEN TO RUN

  CHUNG CHUNG CHUNG CHUNG CHUNG: a dozen security droids advanced in a phalanx.

  Poppy cartwheeled behind them and tore through armor with her crowbar while Cosmo blasted away with his stun guns. In a moment, four of the security droids were smoldering wrecks, but the rest kept attacking with mindless ferocity.

  Then Poppy fuzzed, and a mini-missile exploded behind her shoulder. And when Cosmo fuzzed, too, a robot arm smashed him across the hall.

  Larkspur stepped in to protect them from an electronic pulse, which shorted his circuitry. “We have to disengage!” he yelled, head-butting a droid into smithereens. “The children need us.”

  “Without the uplink?” Cosmo asked as he fired a volley of ball bearings.

  “We have no other choice,” Larkspur said.

  “Not me,” Poppy said. “I don’t run from—”

  As a missile flung her backward, she fuzzed again—her edges frayed even more. Another power-down. Another step closer to dissolving

  “Jack in!” Larkspur roared. “The children are in danger, and this isn’t a fight we can win.”

  The security droids launched a barrage of missiles. Poppy dodged, Cosmo fired countermeasures, and Larkspur shrugged off the impact … but one missile struck home.

  Direct hit on the uplink: the missile blasted it into a charred husk.

  Completely destroyed. Now there were only two uplinks, and Roach had both.

  DOESN’T FEEL LIKE VICTORY

  Cold. Dark. The scent of fear. The feel of Jamie’s hand in mine. The sound of the machine humming. The end of everything.

  And then, from outside the scanning machine, a familiar voice: “Now this is a fight we can win.”

  The darkness seemed to brighten.

  “Cosmo,” Jamie whispered. Then she yelled, “We’re in here! Cut the power!”

  I heard the sharp whistle of Poppy’s chain, and the humming stopped with a sudden crackle-ffzt. Then someone screamed and thudded heavily to the ground.

  “You threatened the children,” Larkspur said, his deep voice suddenly unfriendly. “That was a mistake.”

  Gunfire sparked and a guard screamed. Bullets ricocheted and something exploded: FWOOOM.

  Cosmo laughed. “You call that a grenade? No, no. This is a grenade.”

  FWOOOOOOM!

  For about two minutes, screaming and gunfire and explosions echoed in the auditorium. Sounded like a full-scale war out there. Instead of being the last place on earth I wanted to be, the scanning booth suddenly seemed like a nice, safe hideout.

  Then we heard Roach’s voice: “Terminate encounter. Evacuate.”

  “No!” Hund yelled. “I can beat them.”

  “Perhaps,” Roach said. “But I won’t risk it. We have work to do. Evacuate.”

  A loud rumble came from all around us, and the booth trembled and shook. Felt like the auditorium walls were collapsing and the roof was falling in. Then the rumble grew fainter, moving away—Roach’s evacuation vehicle—and a second later, the door opened.

  Cosmo.

  Jamie burst out and gave him a big hug. “Cosmo!”

  “Owwwww!” he said.

  “We have to get my paren—” Jamie started. Then she saw him, all his burns and cuts. And the other two skunks looked even worse. “We have to get you all to a hospital.”

  “A hospital can’t help us,” Larkspur said. “Only the uplink can help us. Only the uplink can save Dr. Solomon.”

  “So where is it?”

  The skunks looked glum standing there, backlit by the fires burning on the floor and the daylight streaming through the demolished ceiling.

  “We lost it in the cross fire,” Cosmo said. “We failed.”

  “How are we supposed to get an uplink now?” I asked in a whiny voice. “You’ll revert, and my aunt’ll fade into the Net. We’re not just gonna stumble on an uplink. Unless …”

  I stepped aside and gestured with a sort of triumphant flourish. There, behind the scanning machine, was the uplink I’d seen earlier.

  Poppy’s ears perked and Cosmo cheered and tossed me about ten feet into the air. Luckily, he caught me, too.

  Larkspur grabbed the uplink. “Let’s get this to Dr. Solomon without delay.”

  “To her where?” I asked. “She’s in the Net.”

  “Jamie’s laptop is the best conduit, synchronized with the—” Larkspur stopped. “Where is the laptop?”

  “Um,” I said. “Still in Jamie’s bedroom.”

  He nodded. “Then let’s have a Coke and smile.”

  I looked at him. “What?”

  “Cosmo told me I should say that.” His metal brow furrowed. “No?”

  “No,” I said, and we headed outside.

  THE BIG LONELY

  Halfway to the auditorium doors, I noticed Jamie lagging behind, looking around the now-empty room at the wreckage and the flames.

  Her eyes sad and her head bowed in grief.

  Maybe her mom and dad worked too many hours; maybe they gave her too many things and not enough time. Maybe they hardly saw her and didn’t really know her—maybe they even called her princess sometimes.

  But they loved her. And they were all the family she had.

  Except me.

  I stood beside her. “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, biting her lip.

  “I promise …”

  “What?”

  “We’ll get them back. With the skunks on our side … we’ll get them back.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  I hope she believed me. But the truth was I wasn’t so sure myself.

  I didn’t say anything else; I just walked beside her back to her house. The streets were empty. The town looked like a ghost town. The skunks kept watch from rooftops and telephone poles, but we walked straight to Jamie’s house, and nobody tried to stop us.

  I paused outside her front door, thinking about the family who’d lived there before Jamie. When I was a little kid, I used to spy on them with my aunt’s binoculars, especially at dinnertime. Watching them together talking and laughing like the McCheerfuls from Planet Perfect, I’d feel a hot bubble of envy in my stomach.

  Then Mr. and Mrs. McCheerful divorced.

  I’d realized there was more to family than having a mom and dad, and vowed never to take Auntie M for granted again. And instead of being jealous, I’d always felt bad that Jamie only saw her parents a few hours a week.

  Now she didn’t even have that.

  We crowded into Jamie’s bedroom
with the skunks, and Larkspur talked to my aunt for a few minutes, reconfiguring the uplink, while Jamie vanished into the house somewhere. Maybe her parents’ room, I don’t know.

  When she returned, Larkspur asked her to check the configuration with her dragonfly. At first I thought he and Auntie M were just trying to keep Jamie occupied, to take her mind off her loss. But she fired up CircuitBoard and started muttering about codelinks and optimal routing, until finally they were satisfied.

  “Here goes,” Larkspur said, and vanished.

  “How long’s this gonna take?” I asked Jamie.

  “Not sure. A minute or two.” But she was distracted, chatting with Auntie M on the keyboard—typing a private conversation.

  So I took the hint and crossed the room toward Poppy, who was lounging in Jamie’s chair, brushing her tail and watching Cosmo tinker with an old CD player and some party supplies.

  “I could’ve taken Hund,” Poppy was saying.

  “Sure,” Cosmo said, pouring silver powder into deflated balloons. “I could tell by the way you kept hitting his fist with your face.”

  “Hund’s not so tough. If I was at full power …”

  “He’s not human, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Who isn’t?” I asked. “Hund?”

  “Born human,” Cosmo said, “but someone’s been messing with his code. He’s genetically altered or something.”

  “Upgraded,” I said. “That’s what Roach said. Something about his upgrades.”

  “Well, next time we meet,” Poppy said, “I’m gonna downgrade him.”

  Just then, Larkspur reanimated through the uplink.

  “Much better,” he said, his injuries gone and his armor repaired.

  “My turn,” Cosmo said, and digitized into the uplink.

  He reappeared in two minutes, his cuts healed and a dozen new devices on his belt and bandolier. Grappling hooks and flash grenades and smoke bombs, all small and brightly colored.

  Maybe he really had spent too many iterations in SimToys.

  Poppy raised an eyebrow at him. “Do any of those come in black?”

  “We’re black and white enough already.”

  “They look like toys.”

  “For the element of surprise,” he said. “There’s no better way to make an adversary underestimate you.”

  “And …?” Larkspur said, prompting him.

  Cosmo looked a little abashed. “And I like ’em colorful.”

  Poppy snorted, but I saw a glint in her eyes in the instant before she digitized. And when she reanimated, she had not only a new, longer motorcycle chain but throwing stars.

  Yet she grumbled unhappily.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “No Harley,” she said.

  “We can’t download objects that size,” Larkspur said. “The weight limitations are fairly stringent. The algorithm, if you’re interested, is—”

  “I’m not,” Poppy said, still scowling.

  “The only thing I wanna download,” I said, “is my aunt.”

  The skunks turned to Jamie, who was still sitting at the computer, tapping on the keyboard. For a moment, nobody spoke: nobody wanted to interrupt her conversation after what had just happened to her parents.

  “Pardon me, Jamie,” Larkspur finally said.

  Jamie looked up. “Mm?”

  “We’re not sure how to configure the uplink for Dr. Solomon.”

  “Oh,” she said, and glanced at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Um,” she said. “The thing is, Doug …”

  “Let me explain,” Auntie M said through the computer speakers. “I’ve been scanning the information Jamie downloaded from Roach’s site.”

  “Did you get a lock on his base?” Poppy asked.

  “Not yet.” The hard drive spun, then quieted. “However, I’m stunned by his technical advances. Those scanning booths are frightening. He really is evil—and he really is brilliant.”

  “An evil genius,” Cosmo murmured. “Excellent.”

  “Plus the attack on the auditorium …,” my aunt continued. “Scanning in hundreds of people … He’s even more of a threat than I’d realized.”

  “That’s why we need his home address,” Poppy said. “End the threat once and for all.”

  “During my conversation with the new Awareness—” my aunt started.

  “You spoke to it?” I asked.

  “To her,” my aunt said. “Yes.”

  “Her? The computer is a she?”

  “The Awareness is me, Doug. That ‘corrupted’ data emerged from my brain. I am me, and the Awareness is also me. Mostly. But she’s better integrated into the Net; she won’t lose integrity. She will never dissolve.”

  “What about you? Can’t you reanimate through the uplink?”

  “Yes, I …” She paused. “I could, Doug.”

  “But?”

  “But I won’t.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m sorry, Doug. I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” I looked at Jamie. “What is she saying?”

  Jamie just shook her head, her eyes big and sad.

  “Here are the facts,” my aunt said. “Roach is more powerful than I imagined. His software is generations beyond what I expected, both the scanning technology and the biodigital weapons he’s developing. He’s a threat to the entire country. The entire world.”

  “Yeah, I got that,” I said. “Reanimate, and we’ll fight him together.”

  “No one knows about him but us, Doug. The skunks are the only weapon that can touch him—they can fight in both reality and virtual reality. They can switch back and forth without an uplink. They’re our only hope.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And the Awareness projects that cybercriminal activity and the virtual underworld are going to explode.”

  I shook my head. “You mean like credit card fraud? Who cares?”

  “I mean a crime wave like nothing we’ve ever seen.”

  “But what about you, Auntie M? What about you?”

  “If I reanimate,” she said, “the Awareness will cease to exist.”

  “But you will—you’ll exist.”

  “I’m going to stay on the Net, Doug,” my aunt said. “I’ll merge with the Awareness to fight VIRUS and—”

  “You’re leaving me. You promised you’d always be there—and now you’re leaving and you’re not coming back.”

  “I—”

  “You’ll die,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “But I will change. I will be part myself, and part data network. Yet as long as VIRUS is a threat … I have no choice. Once I merge with the Awareness, I can monitor Roach. It’s the only chance we have.”

  I stormed away and slammed the door behind me.

  AND WASH BEHIND MY EARS

  Jamie found me in the guest room five minutes later.

  “Bug?” she said.

  “Go away.”

  She sat beside me on the bed.

  If she said anything, I was gonna scream. I knew that Auntie M didn’t have a choice—of course she had to fight Roach. And I knew that Jamie had just lost her parents to Roach’s cyber domain.

  But I’d already lost my parents. I needed Auntie M.

  Maybe that makes me selfish, but … sometimes I thought I was cursed. They call me Bug because things break down around me. I didn’t care about that.

  But what if people broke down around me, too?

  My aunt, Jamie’s parents. My whole town. My mother and father.

  But Jamie didn’t say anything. She just sat there beside me. And after a while, I felt better. Having a friend like her—at least that didn’t break down.

  Finally, I turned to her and said, “Thanks.”

  She smiled a little sadly. “I needed that, too.”

  “I’m sorry about your mom and dad. You know Auntie M—or whatever—will try everything to get them back.”

  “I know.” She touc
hed my arm. “That’s one reason she’s … merging, I think. Joining with this Awareness, or whatever. For me. To try to help me.”

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  “You’re not mad?”

  I shook my head. “Not at you.”

  She squeezed my hand. “What are we going to do?”

  “Fight,” I said. “Fight until we get your parents back. Until we get everyone back.”

  HELP

  That’s why I started this blog: because we can’t do this alone, we can’t win without help. Without you. Act as our eyes and ears. Watch for Roach and VIRUS, and don’t believe the lies. Stay alert, stay focused—stay sharp.

  Now you know about the skunks. Yeah, they’re ridiculous, but they’re also real and the most powerful weapon we have. The most advanced biodigital life-forms on the planet.

  But Roach? He’s getting stronger every day—every minute—expanding his domain and creating new weapons.

  We got the uplink from the auditorium. We stabilized the skunks. My aunt could’ve regenerated … but fighting VIRUS was more important. I’m not gonna pretend I’m happy about that, but she didn’t have any choice.

  We’re in this fight together. Me and Jamie. Auntie M—or whatever’s left of her. The skunks.

  And you.

  BORDER PATROL

  After Jamie and I talked for a while, we headed back to her bedroom.

  “It’s done,” Larkspur told me as we stepped inside. For a guy in a deadly combat suit, he sure had kind eyes.

  “Auntie M?” I asked.

  “I am here,” said the voice from the computer.

  “Is it really you?”

  Random images flashed on the screen: train tracks, a hummingbird, mathematical equations, a palm tree. “I have integrated with the Awareness and transformed it.”

  I swallowed and didn’t say anything. Because that didn’t sound like Auntie M.

  “And she has transformed me, too,” the voice continued. “I am still me, Doug—just a slightly different me.”

  “In what way?” Larkspur asked, hunched over Jamie’s laptop.

  “My mind is spread throughout cyberspace, running thousands of operations at any given moment, monitoring tens of thousands of channels. I do not see through eyes or hear through ears; instead, I patch into security cameras and cell phones and electrical outlets. I am like the Center’s AI, but I have several new parameters of concern.” The pictures on the screen started flickering too fast to recognize. “For example, I am concerned that Douglas does not eat a sufficient quantity of vegetables to maintain optimal health.”