Genius--The Revolution

by Leopoldo Gout

  “Mr. Oni,” he said, “you will be flown back to Akika Village. I will join you on the journey, as I have business in Nigeria. I’ve heard rumors of a celebration in your village, and I’m eager to see what they’ve planned. I hope, on the way, that you and I can have a conversation about some of the technology you’ve developed. Our organization certainly has some open spots for minds like yours.”

  Tunde nodded. “I would be more than happy to talk, but more than that, I would be absolutely delighted to have you come tour my beautiful Akika Village and meet my proud and incredible people.”

  Lastly, Mr. Reddy turned to face me.

  “Painted Wolf,” he began, “amazingly, you’ve somehow managed to leave the fewest bread crumbs of the group. We don’t know much about you, but I suspect you’d like to keep it that way. Our friends at the Chinese embassy are familiar with your work. Some of it they’re willing to turn a blind eye to; some of it they’d rather talk with you about in more detail. Regardless, you’ll be flown back to Beijing from Buenos Aires this evening.”

  Mr. Reddy then spoke to all of us as a group.

  “You’ve done excellent work here,” he said. “I don’t think anyone at Interpol would agree with all the tactics you used, but the end result was impressive. You managed to not only stop the most dangerous technological threat we’ve faced since the Internet age began, but you led us to the mastermind behind it. For that, we thank you. I’ll give you all a moment to say your good-byes.”

  Mr. Reddy stepped back, and Rex and Tunde walked over to me. We all hugged and laughed. Though we all had things to say, we didn’t speak. We just looked at each other, eyes dancing with emotion, and smiled.

  We might be separating for now, but we knew this wasn’t the end of the LODGE.

  I walked with Rex to the waiting helicopter.

  We held hands as we walked, no longer caring if anyone saw us together.

  After we’d strapped into our seats, Rex and I kissed.

  “Even though it was tense and crazy and there were moments there where I thought everything was going to fall apart,” Rex said, “I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat just so I could spend time with you.”

  “So would I.”

  Tunde climbed in beside me and put his arm around my shoulder.

  The helicopter lifted off and began its winding way down the mountain before vanishing into the low clouds.

  Shouting over the turbines, Tunde said, “We have done an amazing thing here! When we were inside the bunker, I could not help but watch the screens on the walls. What I saw was exactly what we had wanted: a revolution. A revolution of young people, some of them prodigies but a lot of them not, using their talents to protect their world and change their stars. It was a glorious thing.”

  “It’s not over, Tunde,” I replied.

  Tunde beamed.

  I said, “It’s just begun.”

  23. Rex

  “No,” I told Tunde, “that’s not going to work.”

  We were sitting at a large desk beside each other, both wearing virtual reality headsets that made us look like cyborgs. Tunde had wired gloves on that allowed him to manipulate digital objects in his field of vision.

  Though our bodies were in California, we were looking at a rural village in Bangladesh. It was beautiful, surrounded by jungles. We could even see the ocean in the distance, sparkling and cobalt blue.

  Tunde was attempting to assemble a computer-generated solar composting machine—it looked like a silver cube the size of a doghouse—in a clearing between two houses. He was totally struggling with the solar panels for the top.

  “You need to move it to the other side,” I told Tunde.

  “You think this is so easy? You assemble it.”

  We were working on our latest LODGE program, which we’d dubbed Project Solar. The goal was to build solar composting machines in rural villages across Southeast Asia. We’d gotten funding from a large multinational, and the first of the machines was due to ship in a few weeks.

  There was a team in Bangladesh called the ALLIANCE, and they’d set up the augmented-reality live stream we were watching through our headsets. ALLIANCE, like ULTRA and the dozen other teams we were currently running on various projects across the globe, were young people eager to make big changes in the world.

  Unlike ULTRA, they were not prodigies.

  Just regular kids—three girls, one from Tasmania, one from Italy, and one from Bangladesh—who impressed us with their passion and quick-wittedness. It didn’t matter that they weren’t taking biochemistry at age eight. They were self-taught coders or engineers, and they thought of incredible things every day.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Come on in,” I said.

  The door opened, and Alfonso, from the Mexico City black box lab, walked in with a tray filled with random computer components. He had been working with several other brain trust members from Mexico City to design a waterproof tablet computer for a project we had going in Mauritius.

  Alfonso set the tray down on the desk.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  Tunde groaned. “Rex is making this difficult.”

  “Well, today’s a special day,” Alfonso said. “Maybe you want to take a break from that until tomorrow. Don’t need to have that up and perfected until next month anyway.”

  “Yes,” Tunde said. “But I hate to leave things half-finished.”

  I took off my VR headset and stood and stretched.

  “Everyone else still here?” I asked Alfonso.

  “A few of them have left, but there’s a meeting going on in the conference room,” he said. “You want to come down and listen in for a minute? They’re talking about that self-driving car tech from the India lab.”

  I slapped Tunde on the back and told him I was leaving.

  “You should finish tomorrow,” I said.

  “Fine. Fine,” he said. “But I really do not like—”

  “Leaving things half-finished,” I said. “We all know.”

  Tunde and I followed Alfonso down the hall to the conference room where fifteen of the LODGE members had gathered. It was a sunny room, designed so that the big windows looked out over the desert and got as much sunlight as possible every day.

  The fifteen people in the conference room were all former brain trust members—some from Kolkata, some from Beijing, and a bunch from Mexico City. Tunde and I took a seat quietly so we didn’t interrupt the conversation.

  Truth is: I didn’t listen that carefully.

  I sat down and looked around the room and was again amazed at how quickly our grand plan had come together. After taking down Kiran in Argentina, I returned home to face the legal music. Considering how many laws I’d broken—I’d had no idea there were so many—I’d gotten off fairly easily. Instead of the jail time I’d half expected, I was asked to issue a formal apology and then work for the government until my debt to society was paid off. And while that sounds pretty boring, my new government job turned out to be something kind of amazing.

  Inspired by the results of Kiran’s black box labs, I was allowed to refurbish an abandoned government lab in the middle of the Californian desert—can’t tell you where ’cause it’s highly classified—and, under government supervision of course, bring in my own team to run programs like the two I mentioned.

  Basically, I was given the chance to continue the LODGE’s work but expanded in crazy new ways. Tunde, Cai, and I recruit geniuses and passionate young people from all across the world to make a difference.

  Sometimes that difference is here in the United States; most of the time it’s not. Sometimes it involves environmental work—like creating a swarm of small bots to locate land mines in the leaf litter of a Zambian forest—and sometimes it’s about spreading information—like the drone library we operate in Yellowknife.

  We were doing amazing work.

  Work all of us were incredibly proud of.

  But every now and then we
needed a break, and to take time to celebrate.

  Don’t you?

  LODGE lab

  23.1

  We left the LODGE facility—don’t really have a better name yet—and headed home.

  Tunde and I rode our bicycles because we lived only a few blocks away.

  My parents had just finished construction on a duplex house. It wasn’t anything major, three bedrooms each, but it was new and we could call it ours. My family had moved into one side of the duplex and next door … Tunde’s family.

  Crazy, right!?

  With the LODGE going wide, I couldn’t exactly run the show by myself. So I called in Tunde and Cai. It was difficult for Tunde to consider coming all the way to California. Though he wanted to stay with his people in Akika Village, he realized that this was an opportunity to make real change and didn’t want to miss it.

  His parents agreed to move with him.

  So now my best friend was my neighbor.

  We arrived at the duplex and went over to Tunde’s side first. The living rooms of both houses were still stacked high with boxes.

  We’d only moved in a couple weeks earlier.

  Tunde gave me a quick tour of the modifications he’d made on his bedroom. He’d set up a workstation in one corner with a CB radio; he had what looked to me like a junk pile under his bed (he insisted it was parts he’d scavenged for a bio-fuel engine); and he was prepping to do something with a hydroponics system for a project we had in Yemen.

  Typical Tunde. Always planning ten things at once.

  A car horn sounded outside, and I knew exactly who it was.

  “Come on, Tunde,” I said, grabbing his sleeve. “Reunion time.”

  We ran down the stairs and out into the street to find a ride-sharing car idling in front of my house. The front passenger door opened, and Teo stepped out. I gave him a great big hug. He messed up my hair—which I’d cut recently, shorter than usual—and then waved to Tunde before he closed the car door and thanked the driver.

  “Welcome home, brother,” I said. “What do you think?”

  Teo surveyed the duplex and nodded.

  “What’re we going to do with all this room?”

  “I set you up in the basement,” I said. “Moved all your stuff down there. I know you like having your peace-and-quiet space. Hope you dig it.”

  “I’m sure I will. Folks inside?” Teo asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Mama’s cooking up a storm.”

  “Can’t wait. Tunde, you joining us?”

  Tunde shook hands with Teo.

  “It is a true delight to see you again, omo,” Tunde said. “My parents and I will be joining you for dinner. My parents are planning to bring along egusi soup, one of my very favorite dishes. You will love it; it is made with fermented beans and fish.”

  “Awesome,” Teo said. “The food in prison was … well, not good.”

  Teo and I walked to the front door together.

  “You got all my letters?” I asked.

  “Read them each two, maybe three times. You guys … I can’t even tell you how impressed I am with what you did. Not only did you stop Terminal but Kiran’s in prison. That’s all thanks to you and your team. Incredible.”

  I put my arm over Teo’s shoulders.

  “Couldn’t have done it without your sacrifice, brother.”

  “Maybe…”

  “Come on,” I said. “It’s time to celebrate. Head on inside and say hi.”

  Teo went into the house with Tunde. I stayed outside because I could hear the hiccuping engine of a scooter approaching. Twenty-two seconds later, Cai rounded the corner on her black Peugeot Iceblade. Helmet and leather riding gloves on, she looked as effortlessly cool as ever.

  Cai pulled the scooter into the driveway. Then she got off, took off her helmet, and gave me a bit of a shock. I hadn’t seen her for about a week—she’d been traveling in the Caribbean to interview a new LODGE team—and wasn’t expecting much of a change.

  “What do you think?” she asked, running her fingers through her blue hair.

  Yeah, blue.

  “I love it,” I said. “Can’t imagine it helps with blending in, though.”

  Cai laughed. “I’m just in for the night. Thought I’d have fun.”

  “Come over here.”

  She did and we kissed. Her hair was not only shocking blue but it smelled like fresh citrus. I couldn’t get enough of the scent. I hadn’t realized we’d been kissing for as long as we had until Papa cleared his throat behind me.

  “Dinner’s ready,” he said.

  Suddenly embarrassed, I turned beet red and said, “Papa. Cai’s here.”

  “I noticed. Come on, food’s going to get cold.”

  We were having dinner early because it was going to be a huge meal. Ma had gone nuts in the kitchen, and Cai and I walked in to find a good half-dozen dishes already on the table. We sat down next to each other, Teo on my right, Tunde on Cai’s left. It was amazing seeing us all sitting at that table, crammed in together.

  Tunde’s parents alongside my parents.

  My best friend and my girlfriend sitting with my brother.

  How could anyone ask for more?

  We ate until our stomachs were near to bursting. Seriously. I had to kick back my chair from the table just to stop myself from having another serving of this or that. Tunde’s parents made this incredible dessert with plantains that I couldn’t get enough of. It was embarrassing. As the meal wound down, Teo told us he’d heard news about Kiran. An old Terminal pal had an insider at Interpol.

  “Apparently,” Teo said, “he’s up to amazing things.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “Like what?”

  “Going back to his guru roots,” Teo said. “He’s been writing these inspirational essays that have been popping up on social media. I don’t know how he’s getting them out of wherever they’re keeping him—”

  Cai said, “I warned them.”

  “Anyway,” Teo continued, “a few of the other hackers I met while I was … incarcerated were familiar with his work. Apparently, he’s preaching a new gospel of change and transformation. I didn’t read any of the essays he’d written, but they were all about making a new life for yourself and discovering the true nature of the world via minimalism and stripping away technology.”

  “That doesn’t sound like our Kiran,” I said.

  Teo shrugged. “Maybe it isn’t, but I like to think the guy has an interesting second life. Reinventing himself as a champion of analog technology is pretty clever if you ask me. And who knows, it just might work.”

  We all mulled that over.

  Tunde said, “In my country we have a saying: ‘No matter how dark it is, the hand will always know its way to the mouth.’ Kiran is the same way. It is in his nature to always create. So long as his creations benefit humanity and this world, I think we should take them seriously. If we ever meet him again and he truly has changed as you say he has, I would gladly shake his hand.”

  Tunde looked to me and gave one of his classic smiles.

  “You’re a good person, Tunde,” I said. “And you make us all better.”

  Tunde shrugged. “Wit the LODGE everything be yori yori.”

  23.2

  After dinner, Cai and I took a long walk to the LODGE facility.

  We climbed up onto the roof to look out at the stars.

  Being far from most of the large cities, the sky was clear and you could see a lot of the Milky Way. Not the fine detail that you get in photos but enough of the density of stars that it gave the night sky a shimmering look.

  Four months after our time in Argentina it felt a bit crazy to be sitting, literally, on the fruits of our labor. We had the LODGE building, and the LODGE program was something we’d only ever dreamed of doing. The revolution that Tunde had envisioned had become a reality—there were now a dozen teams of young people across the planet doing incredible things to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty, out of ignorance, and out
of persecution.

  And yet, there was one downside.

  Cai would be leaving in the morning.

  She was the voice of our movement, the face of our revolution.

  Before we were even the LODGE, Cai was out there exposing corruption and persecution. She wasn’t going to stop that just because we’d taken down Kiran. No, that was just one step in a much larger goal.

  Truth is: There are many more Kirans out there.

  Cai, of course, was determined to get them all.

  As we sat on the rooftop of the LODGE facility, Cai sighed and took my hand.

  “It’s a big world out there,” Cai said. “Gets lonely.”

  “You weren’t lonely before,” I joked.

  “I wish you could come with me,” Cai said. “You can code anywhere.”

  We’d discussed this before, when she was in Russia a few weeks back, and I’d considered asking to transfer over to Interpol or something so I could go as well, but there was just so much going on at the LODGE facility that I wouldn’t feel right leaving yet, even if I had been allowed to.

  “I know,” I said. “And I will, later, once I’m eighteen, legally allowed to leave the country, and we’ve got all this set up properly. In the meantime…”

  I reached into the pocket of my hoodie and pulled out a small package.

  Even though I’d planned this for weeks, my heart was racing.

  “I have something for you,” I said, handing it to Cai.

  It was a small box, the size of an index card. I couldn’t find any wrapping paper in the house—likely it was still boxed up somewhere—so I had to use newspaper. I picked the weather page because of the colors.

  Cai looked the box over. “What is this?” she asked.

  “Well,” I said, “you have to open it to find out.”

  She tore off the paper carefully, which was silly, considering I’d pretty much used scraps. Then Cai looked over at me. I was anxious enough about her seeing what was inside; her gaze made my heart race even more.

  Cai opened the box.

  Inside was a pendant I’d made for her. It was an oval with several spirals circling a central geometric shape. Very simple. She lit up seeing it.

  “What does it mean?”