OtherEarth

by Jason Segel

I don’t get it, but Kenji nods. “He said he wanted a replacement. I don’t know how far he got, but it’s all on that.”

  Kenji points at the laptop, and I see inspiration light up Kat’s face. “We need to take the computer,” she says.

  “No,” Kenji tells her. “That’s the number one thing I’m supposed to destroy. Milo told me it should never end up in the wrong hands.”

  “I assure you, kid, we are definitely the right hands,” Elvis tells him.

  “It’s true,” Kat says. “We can use this laptop to make sure what happened to Milo won’t happen to anyone else.”

  “Yeah? And how are you going to do that?” I’m glad Kenji asked. I’m curious to know too.

  Before Kat can answer, a fan kicks in. Frigid air pours from a small grate in the wall and surrounds us. In a few seconds, the room is as cold as a meat locker.

  “Shit,” Kenji says, shivering.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “Someone’s trying to get in upstairs,” he tells us. “It’s a level two alarm. That’s what happens when someone doesn’t tell the joke right. Milo knew he’d feel the cold—even if he was in Otherworld. I don’t know why it’s a level two alarm, though. That means whoever’s up there made it past the palm print, but I know for a fact that the only two prints in the system are mine and Milo’s.”

  I turn toward the door so he can’t see my horror. I know how the Company got Milo’s palm print.

  “Wanna guess who that is?” Elvis asks Kenji. “What do you want to bet it’s guys Milo didn’t want getting their hands on his computer?”

  Why the hell is Elvis still so focused on the laptop? Whoever’s upstairs will find their way in eventually. And when they do, we’re totally screwed.

  “Fine,” Kenji huffs. “Take it.” He doesn’t seem too concerned about the intruders, either.

  “Where are we supposed to take it?” I ask Elvis. “We’re trapped.”

  “Oh, come on, Simon,” he says as he pulls USB cords out of the computer. “You think Milo didn’t design this place with an escape route?”

  “Did he?” Kat asks hopefully.

  “Follow me,” Kenji tells her, and I sigh with relief.

  There are no lights at the far end of the bunker, but Kenji seems to know where he’s going. The rest of us feel our way along the cold concrete wall. When we reach the end, I hear Kenji straining to move something. Then one by one we’re ushered through what must be a hole in the wall. There’s a ladder that leads up. Kenji and I are last to climb. As we push the door closed behind us, a loud crash can be heard at the other end of the bunker. They’ve blown the kitchen entrance open.

  “Will they find this exit?” I ask Kenji.

  “Not unless they’re geniuses,” he says.

  That thought doesn’t bring me much comfort. Even the Company’s thugs are probably Mensa members.

  I follow Kenji up the ladder. At the top is a shack of some sort. The moon is shining through a plastic window, illuminating a rack of what looks at first to be torture equipment.

  “Is this a toolshed?” Busara whispers.

  “Yep, we’re in my backyard,” Kenji confirms.

  I suddenly hear the sound of sirens in the distance. The police could be on their way.

  Kenji cackles softly. “Bet my mom saw people go inside and called the cops,” he says.

  “Stay here. I’m going to take a look,” I tell the crew.

  “Yeah, right,” Kat scoffs. “I’m coming with you.”

  Together we slink across the lawn and peer through the fence. There’s a black SUV idling outside Milo’s house. The windows are tinted—there’s no way to see if anyone’s inside.

  The sirens are getting closer. I can’t wait to see what happens when they arrive. Then Milo’s front door opens and two men walk out. Neither is rushing. It’s as if they know exactly how much time they have before the cops show up.

  I can’t get a good look at either of them until they step off Milo’s porch onto the path that leads to the curb. Their faces come into view, and Kat gasps and lurches backward, landing on her butt in the grass.

  I don’t blame her. I almost did the same thing. One of the men is Wayne Gibson.

  “Do they know we’re here?” Kat whispers. “Is that why they’ve come?”

  I don’t know the answer. I do know that our car is going to stay parked right where we left it.

  At first I didn’t realize how important the laptop could be. But as soon as I saw what was on it, I came to recognize it for what it is—serious leverage. Thanks to Milo’s digital clone, we should be able to demand the release of Marlow, Gorog and Busara’s dad, James Ogubu. We may even be able to force the Company to kick the headset players out of Otherworld. Whether the contents of the laptop will be enough to take down the entire corporation remains to be seen.

  “Ready?” Elvis calls from the bathroom.

  Kat looks at me and rolls her eyes. We’ve been holed up for two days in a Best Western in Brooklyn, not far from my mother’s childhood home and the fragrant waters of the Gowanus Canal. We drove straight here from Milo Yolkin’s house in New Jersey, and aside from a single excursion, we haven’t left the room since we got here. I couldn’t possibly be more ready than I am right now.

  “Ready?” Elvis asks again when neither of us answers immediately.

  “Yes!” Kat shouts back.

  The bathroom door opens. A second later, Milo Yolkin strolls out, a small metal sphere trailing behind him. He’s wearing his trademark hoodie and gray sneakers. His curly blond hair bounces a bit with each step. Milo stops in front of us, pivots slightly, smiles and waves. Then he walks on. When he reaches the door of the hotel room, he and the sphere both come to a stop. And then Milo Yolkin disappears.

  Kat and I break into wild applause, and Elvis and Busara emerge from the bathroom to take a bow. They look remarkably fresh for two people who stayed up all night resurrecting Milo Yolkin.

  “That was amazing!” Kat gushes. “What else can he do?”

  “That’s it for now,” Elvis says.

  “That’s it?” I ask.

  I can tell from the frown on Busara’s face that it wasn’t a smart thing to say.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it was to put that together?” Elvis chides me. “Yolkin had just started cloning himself. We didn’t have much to work with.”

  “It’s more than enough for now,” Kat says unconvincingly. “You guys did great.”

  “See?” Elvis says to me. “She knows how to recognize genius.”

  “Still—is it going to be enough? We’ll need the hologram to do more, won’t we?” I ask. “We have to convince the Company that Milo 2.0 is under our control.”

  If hologram Milo shows up in public, investors will assume the boy genius is alive and well. The price of the Company’s stock is bound to soar. But if he happens to get hit by a New York City bus in front of thousands of witnesses, the stock price will tank and never recover. The Company needs to believe that we’re capable of destroying them financially—otherwise they’ll never meet our demands.

  Elvis starts to argue, but Busara puts a hand on his arm. It’s the first time I’ve seen her make such a tender gesture toward anyone. Elvis seems surprised too. He’s marveling at the hand like it’s the most magical object in the universe. I’m starting to wonder if he’s actually made some progress with Busara when she blinks and appears to come to her senses. In a flash, the hand gets snatched away. It all happened so fast that I’d probably doubt my own eyes if Kat hadn’t caught it all too. I know because one of her bony fingers is currently poking me in the thigh. It’s the private language Kat’s used since we were both eight years old.

  “It’s good enough for today,” Busara says. “You and Kat go out and bring Milo back from the dead. Elvis and I will stay here an
d get back to work.”

  “Another deranged Milo Yolkin hologram coming up.” Elvis is suddenly chipper again.

  “By tomorrow?” Kat asks. “That’s when we’ll need the second hologram if the plan’s going to work. So no screwing around.”

  “Excuse me?” Busara asks as if the idea of screwing around simply does not compute. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  Kat rolls her eyes. “Never mind,” she says.

  * * *

  —

  It’s been a long time since I’ve been around so many people. Rockefeller Center is packed for the filming of a top-rated morning show. Today the crowd might even be bigger than usual. A teen star is here to promote his latest movie, and the square is filled with squealing ten-year-old girls and their indulgent parents. The adults all look the same to me, like mannequins dressed in slightly different outfits. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear they were NPCs.

  The interview they’re waiting for will be taking place on the other side of a giant window positioned a few feet above street level. The movie star and the show’s host are milling about the studio, chatting while a news segment is filmed. I recognize a publicity photo that flashes up on a monitor. The subject of the news segment is a well-known movie director.

  “Who’s that?” someone beside me asks.

  “Some Hollywood guy. They say he attacked an actress and tried to kill her. She had to hide in a bathroom to get away.”

  Inside the studio, a picture that must have been taken at the crime scene replaces the first photo. It’s the same guy, his shirt wet with sweat and his chunky black glasses askew.

  I turn my attention back to the task at hand. “You sure this is going to work?” I ask Kat.

  “I keep forgetting that you never watch television,” Kat says. “The cameras always pan the crowd between segments. Someone watching will spot Milo. That’s all we need. The footage will be all over the Internet by noon. You have the projector ready?”

  “Yep.” I lift the shopping bag in which digital Milo is waiting.

  “Don’t get caught on camera,” Kat says, pulling the bill of my baseball hat down.

  “I’ll try.” I grab her and kiss her. “Let’s do this.”

  There’s a roped-off path that cuts through the crowd. I station myself behind a giant dad at one end of the square. Kat’s on the other side, crouched behind a lady with a cloud of curly hair. I put the projector down on the ground. All it has to do is roll sixty feet in a straight line. I wait until the people in the crowd throw their arms in the air. Then I turn Milo on.

  The small silver ball produces its three-dimensional hologram. As it rolls silently across the concrete, Milo takes his first few steps. A little girl barreling down the path runs straight through him. My heart is pounding and I feel a bit dizzy, but everyone’s arms are still in the air and no one else seems to have noticed. Inside the studio, the teen star has come to the window to wave at the crowd. His face is at least sixty percent smile and he can’t be more than four feet tall. He doesn’t look totally human, if you ask me. Then I see him do a double take and point outside. I can’t hear what he says, but his lips seem to form the words Milo Yolkin. The television show host rushes to the window for a look. He says something to the crew and the cameras are suddenly up against the window. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. At that very moment, Milo stops, pivots and waves. Then he continues walking. Once he’s behind a lamppost on the other side of the square, I make him disappear. I see Kat snatch the sphere and vanish into the crowd. I meet her on the corner of Fifty-Sixth and Sixth Avenue as planned, and we catch the subway downtown.

  Our next stop is a computer store in another tourist-trap part of Manhattan where we can use the devices on display to check out the news. The employees are all too busy staring at their own phones to pay us any mind. The video of Milo is everywhere. It’s trending on every social media outlet. Even the newspapers have already picked up the story and are reporting that the boy genius is alive. In the thirty minutes it took to get here, the Company’s stock price has shot through the roof.

  “That was fast,” Kat notes merrily. “Ready for stage two?”

  We picked out the spot yesterday—a café on a side street in lower Manhattan. It met our two big requirements—lots of people inside the café, but not many people on the sidewalk outside. There’s also a mailbox in front of the building where we can leave a hidden message for the Company to spot. Today it will be a single word written in Sharpie—Nemi.

  Kat and I loiter outside for fifteen minutes, waiting for the sidewalk to clear completely. Then, standing out of view, I set the projector down on the sidewalk. Milo Yolkin appears, walking slowly past the café window. Once he’s past, the hologram disappears and Kat snatches up the projector on the other side. I’m starting to worry that no one in the café witnessed the show. Then two people rush out the door, their smartphones in their hands. They look both ways, but Milo is gone. They’re already typing away as they return to their tables inside.

  Success achieved, Kat and I head to another computer store, this one in SoHo. Two pictures of Milo outside the café are already making the rounds on Twitter. One is little more than a blur. But the second is clear as day. Milo Yolkin is already trending on Twitter, just a few places down from the homicidal movie director.

  “Do you think they’ll notice our message?” Kat asks.

  I expand the photo.

  “Yeah, they’ll notice.” The word on the mailbox is perfectly legible. Nemi will mean nothing to anyone who doesn’t work for the Company. It’s a deserted realm Kat traveled through during her time in Otherworld. Wayne and the engineers will be scouring all the images for information. They’ll know how to interpret it. We’re arranging a meeting. The where has been answered. The when is yet to come.

  * * *

  —

  Kat and I head back to Brooklyn to drop off the projector with Elvis and Busara. Then we leave them to work their magic in peace. Wandering the nearby streets, Kat and I end up on one of the bridges that span the Gowanus Canal. The surrounding neighborhood isn’t what I was expecting. It used to be one of the most desolate parts of the city—and the Mob’s favorite dumping ground for dead bodies. There are still a few scrap metal yards and a couple of coffin factories, but now luxury apartment buildings are rising up among them. The buildings along the banks of the canal are some of the priciest addresses in Brooklyn. Which is doubly surprising considering the whole place smells like crap.

  Kat and I stop on the south side of the Union Street Bridge and peer down at the water. A wave of brown foam is making its way toward New York Harbor, carrying lumps of fecal matter along with it. I feel Kat’s hand on the small of my back, and I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing I am. Somewhere down there, among the oil spills and chemicals, is my grandfather’s final resting place.

  “We haven’t had much time alone together,” Kat says.

  I turn my attention to her. Whenever my eyes are on her, I can’t imagine ever looking at anything else. “Yeah, when I daydreamed about the two of us, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” I admit.

  “You daydreamed about us?” she teases me.

  “Every single day since I was eight years old,” I tell her.

  “Liar.” She laughs.

  But it’s the honest truth. I can’t remember daydreaming about anything else. I lean down and kiss her. Just as our lips make contact, I feel a strange tingling at the base of my skull. I glance up to see that we’re being watched. There’s another bridge a few blocks down, and a man is standing at the railing looking north at us. He’s wearing a plaid suit that belongs to a different era and a fedora cocked at a raffish tilt. I’m too far away to see him clearly, but when he turns to the side, the outline of his giant nose makes him easy to identify.

  “Do you see the man watching us from the oth
er bridge?” I ask Kat before it even occurs to me that I shouldn’t.

  “What man?” she asks. If he were really there, she’d be looking right at him. He hasn’t budged an inch.

  “Never mind,” I tell her. My grandfather wants to speak to me. Until recently, he only appeared in Otherworld or my dreams. But this is broad daylight. There’s not even a cloud in the sky.

  “Simon?” I feel Kat’s fingers slip though mine. She’s concerned. She should be. “Are you okay?”

  “Yep. Forget it,” I say, squeezing her hand and forcing a smile. “I think the stress is starting to get to me.”

  I finally get time alone with Kat, and my brain betrays me. My luck’s never been great, but it keeps getting worse. For the next hour, Kat and I walk in silence around the neighborhood until we turn back toward the motel. We’re still a couple of blocks away when we see the building. It rises several stories above the rest of its neighbors. Bland, new and clean, it hardly fits in with the weird, old and grimy. It’s like something sculpted out of plastic with a 3-D printer.

  Suddenly I lurch backward. Kat’s come to a stop and grabbed my arm. “Look.” She points up at the roof. There’s a figure standing on the edge, staring down at the earth like a gargoyle on a French cathedral. I know what it is, and Kat does too. We don’t need to discuss. We both break into a run.

  We stop across the street from the motel’s lobby. We can see him clearly from here. Milo Yolkin is standing on what must be a ledge that circles the roof. The tips of his sneakers are sticking out over the side and his curly blond hair is dancing in the breeze. It’s so brilliant I almost want to applaud. Elvis and Busara have taken the simplest image imaginable—a man standing still, facing the camera—and turned it into someone who’s literally on the edge.

  A cab pulls up in front of the motel, and a couple of Midwestern tourists wearing the pastel costumes of their native land climb out. They notice Kat staring at the sky and glance up to see what has her so mesmerized. They don’t look like the sort who’d be able to identify Milo Yolkin. All they see is a man who’s dead set on testing the laws of gravity.