Final Battle

by Sigmund Brouwer

  It was her! Put on the platinum wig, smear lipstick across the lower part of her face, and it was the mysterious nurse who had visited me in the hospital! Only now she was the picture of dignity.

  She spoke calmly. “If this young man can control a robot capable of going places humans can’t, wouldn’t he make an ideal soldier?”

  A hush fell on the reporters. They all looked at the general.

  “He is not a soldier, Ms. Borris,” Cannon answered.

  “Are there others like him?” she asked.

  “Ms. Borris,” he said firmly, “for reasons of national security, I cannot—”

  “Can you tell us about an incident on 04.01.2040 at the World United Federation Summit of Governors?” she persisted.

  My guess was that only someone like Ms. Borris dared interrupt the general, for he didn’t give her the same cold, hard stare he’d given the man who had been escorted out. Instead he seemed to squirm.

  “And can you confirm or deny rumors that robot soldiers were involved in an assassination attempt?”

  “Unlike you,” Cannon said, biting back his anger, “I am not in the business of selling rumors to the public. Again, for reasons of national security, I cannot confirm or deny.”

  Muttering grew rapidly through the crowd, moving like a wave of water. Cannon had not denied it. And I guessed Ms. Borris was not known for asking questions unless she had a good source. To all the reporters, then, the general’s refusal to answer said a lot.

  “And lastly!” Ms. Borris now had to shout to be heard. When the others realized she wasn’t finished, they quieted instantly. “General, is it true that children have been forced into robot control as slaves in a tantalum mine on the Moon?”

  “Ms. Borris,” the general said, the intensity of his voice like the crack of a whip, “I thought a respected reporter like you would not have to stoop to creating your own headlines to sell newspapers.”

  “Yes or no, General,” she insisted. “Child slavery? If a child like Tyce Sanders is able to control a robot, who controls the child? And who controls those who control the child? Especially if the interests of national security make it so possible to keep this secret?”

  The general drew a deep breath. “Interesting speculation, Ms. Borris. Perhaps you might be on the verge of a new career as a fiction author?”

  “Hardly,” she snapped back. “Not when this is far more bizarre than fiction. My sources tell me—” She didn’t get a chance to finish.

  Without warning, four soldiers stampeded through the middle of the crowd, shoving reporters in all directions. Without hesitation those soldiers leaped upon the stage. Two of them grabbed me out of my wheelchair. The other two yanked the wheelchair away and began running with it.

  I watched helplessly as they sprinted toward the nearest exit with my wheelchair, leaving me behind. My feet dangled off the ground as the two soldiers held me by the arms.

  “Hey,” I said to the nearest soldier. “What’s the—?”

  “Not a word in front of the cameras,” the soldier growled. He leaned forward and whispered in my ear. “There’s a bomb. In your wheelchair.”

  The wheelchair they had run with.

  Ten seconds later a loud boom from outside shook the entire room.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Tyce, what do you think we’re up against?”

  This came from Cannon. He and I were in a huge Combat Force helicopter, skimming along the Atlantic shoreline as we flew from New York City to Washington, D.C., where I was supposed to meet with Ashley before we moved to a Moon shuttle launch site in Florida. The roar of the engines was far too loud for us to talk without help of the headsets both of us wore. The vibrations of the helicopter engines rumbled through my body as I answered the general’s question.

  “We’re up against someone wanting me dead,” I said. Only a half hour had passed since soldiers had whisked all of us out of the media conference center. I was still shaky. I sat in a new wheelchair, taken from a hospital. It had no electric motor. And it seemed far too heavy with Earth gravity.

  “What else?” Cannon said.

  “There’s your son,” I answered. “He’s still missing. I know you want to find him.”

  Cannon nodded. Beyond his large, square head, I saw the endless blue of the ocean through the window of the helicopter. All I had to do was turn the other way to see the green and brown of the shoreline, with the ribbons of highway and an occasional inland city.

  “I want my son,” the general said. There was a catch in his voice. “Nothing is truer than that. Just like the robot kids want to find their parents.”

  It hadn’t been that long since Cannon had discovered his son was still alive. Although it appeared he’d drowned in a boating accident, Chad’s body had never been found. Then one day a stranger had walked up to the general on the street and told him that Chad was alive and being held hostage. Once Cannon found out about the robot control, he assumed the robot-control operation had been done to his son too. Just like it had been done to hundreds of other kids across the world, all kidnapped in situations that made it look like deaths where the bodies couldn’t be found. And each of those kids was a child of a high-ranking politician, World United Federation official, or Combat Force general.

  Twenty-four kids made up each group, called a pod, and there were 10 pods total. Nine of the pods of kids had been rescued. But when they arrived at the location of the 10th pod, the jelly tubes were empty. Those were the kids who were probably on the Moon, held hostage to do tantalum mining.

  “Yet,” Cannon said, interrupting my thoughts, “this is even bigger than what matters to you or me. Or for that matter, to all the other robot-control kids.”

  The nine pods of rescued kids were now safe in the mountain retreat in Parker, Arizona. There the Combat Force was conducting DNA tests on their blood samples to help match them to their parents. Most of the kids were still in shock, for it was only recently they’d found out their parents were alive. They’d assumed they were orphans. Ashley too. She could have had the DNA test in D.C. but wanted the chance to be with some of her pod brothers and sisters before she went to the Moon with me to look for the last pod.

  As I was thinking this, Cannon stopped speaking, as if he, too, were lost in thought.

  I let my gaze drift to the horizon of endless ocean. It fascinated me. All that water, when on Mars there was nothing. No water. Which meant no life. Why was it that Earth had that one-in-a-hundred-billion-billion-billion chance that led to the right combination of sunlight and water and oxygen that allowed life? Most of my life involved science of one sort or another, so I thought about this a lot. Some people believe this happened through random chance. But for me, the more I learned about science, the more it pointed me toward God.

  “Tyce.”

  I looked at Cannon.

  “I wish I could tell you more of what’s happening,” he said.

  “What’s happening?”

  He looked sad, tired. “There’s some unfair stuff that I …” He took a breath. “Look, about the bomb. Don’t worry. All right?”

  “But it was a big bomb. Bad bomb. Like blow-up-and-make-lots-of-noise bomb. I—”

  “Don’t worry. That’s all I can say.”

  This is what he’d been thinking about? That I shouldn’t be afraid of bombs? Before I could say anything else, our pilot interrupted.

  “Sir.” Our pilot tapped his own headset. “There’s an incoming call for you to take.”

  “Excuse me,” Cannon said. Then he switched to a different channel and began speaking into his headset.

  I thought of Ms. Borris. How did she know what she did? And that led me to thinking about her question about kids as slaves. Of anyone in the world, Ashley and I knew what that meant, for we’d seen it firsthand in the kids in the jelly tubes in Parker, Arizona. Even more than that, Ashley herself had been part of the Arizona pod before Dr. Jordan forced her to go with him to Mars for the deadly Hammerhead torpedo mission
.

  Suddenly the roar of the helicopter’s engines seemed to drop. Strange, I thought. We’re still above the water. The D.C. base wasn’t anywhere in sight.

  Then my stomach rose to my throat. The helicopter had just pitched straight sideways!

  Wind hit my face.

  I looked away from the general and saw that the pilot’s door was wide open. With the pilot gone!

  Then the roar of the engines stopped completely.

  With all the power off, the helicopter began to fall toward the ocean!

  CHAPTER 8

  There it was. Our helicopter. Tumbling. Tumbling. And at the last minute, just above the water, straightening. And leveling.

  On television, it didn’t look real. But seeing it—even from the safety of my wheelchair in a secure room on the D.C. Combat Force base—brought back to me the horror of thinking we were about to hit the water at well over 100 miles an hour.

  “Wow,” Ashley said from her chair beside me. “Heaven’s going to be a great place. But let me be selfish here. I’m just glad you’re not there yet.”

  It was good to be alive. And good to be with the only friend my age I had. Ashley was a year younger than me, nearly 14. With her short, straight black hair and almond-shaped eyes that squinted when she grinned, she looked like a tomboy. But when her face was serious, she could have been a model from the cover of a magazine.

  Although Ashley and I had only met a little over nine months ago when she’d arrived on my dad’s shuttle to Mars, we had become close friends quickly. We’d been through a lot together in that short amount of time. I could really trust her, and she trusted me.

  “Wow is right,” I agreed. Even though it was the next morning, I could still feel the sensation of falling toward death.

  The television announcer’s voice broke in as the clip of the tumbling helicopter ran twice more. “Although General Jeb McNamee, known as Cannon by his military comrades, had not been behind the controls of a helicopter for more than 20 years, he was able to avoid what would have been certain death for himself and Tyce Sanders. It is speculated that the pilot who abandoned the helicopter parachuted to a waiting boat. Neither the pilot nor the boat has been found, but authorities are certain this assassination attempt is linked to the Terratakers, the worldwide terrorist group that reflects much of the world’s opposition to outer space expansion. This was the second attempt in one day to assassinate Tyce Sanders.”

  There was a quick close-up of me looking into the camera, taken at the media conference yesterday, before the bomb blew. I was grateful not to see anything hanging from my nose. But I hated the goofy smile I wore.

  “Reaction around the world shows mounting sympathy for the World United Federation’s Combat Force, a military organization that, until now, few people seemed to like. But when the Terratakers try to kill a teenager, it should be no surprise that they lose some of their popular support. Now to New York, where our network political analyst has this to say.”

  The screen immediately showed a serious man in a three-piece navy blue suit holding a clipboard. “Yes, Fred. As our viewers probably know by now, the first assassination attempt occurred less than an hour earlier yesterday at a news conference in New York City. There Combat Force officials had just announced to the world the incredible ability of Tyce Sanders to handle a robot by hooking up his brain to the robot’s computer. As if this unveiling of technology that fuses human with machine wasn’t enough to get the world’s attention, it was also announced that Tyce Sanders had controlled the robot that prevented a nuclear plant meltdown outside Los Angeles earlier in the week.”

  The analyst’s image faded as the network logo appeared on the screen. A deep voice said, “Robot control. Colonization of Mars. And terrorist assassination attempts. More on this when our one-hour special returns… .”

  The television image switched quickly to two women in business suits. One sniffed under her armpit, hoping the other wouldn’t notice. But the other woman did notice and began to recommend a brand of deodorant.

  “Strange planet you live on,” I mentioned to Ashley. “Life or death situations on the news. With breaks to bring us really important things, like controlling body odor before important meetings.”

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that serious issue,” she said, grinning and plugging her nose. “Now what was the name of that deodorant you could use so badly?”

  “Ha-ha.”

  We were interrupted by the opening of the door.

  Cannon moved into the room. “I’m sorry I had to leave you two alone for so long. But I knew you would be safe here.” Then he paused and sat down next to Ashley.

  I knew something was up just from the way he sat down.

  “Ashley,” he said slowly and kindly, totally unlike his normally brusque self, “I have some news for you. The computers have been humming 24-7. They now have a match to the results of your DNA tests.”

  “My parents?” Her voice trembled.

  He nodded.

  Ashley’s eyes widened, and she turned to look at me.

  I was as startled as she was. After all, Ashley had spent her entire life thinking she was an orphan and had only recently been told by Dr. Jordan that her parents were alive. Now we knew it was true.

  The look in her eyes was a mix of fear and excitement. What will they be like? it seemed to say.

  My stomach fluttered nervously for her. What would it Robot Wars be like to find out you had parents after all these years? And to finally meet them? Then another thought struck me. Will it change Ashley’s and my friendship? What if her parents don’t want her to return to Mars? Or she decides to stay with them and not go?

  “Ashley? You okay?” the general asked.

  Ashley just nodded.

  “They’re here right now, ready to meet you,” the general continued. He stood up, walked toward the door, and opened it.

  I could tell Ashley was holding her breath.

  A man and a woman stepped into the room. They looked approximately my parents’ ages. The man was of medium height, with thick, dark curly hair. He looked stiff in tan pants and a golf shirt. The woman was petite and Asian like Ashley. She wore a red hat that matched her dress. Her eyes looked misty, as if she’d been crying.

  They ignored me and stared at Ashley. They smiled, but with hesitation, as if they weren’t quite sure how to react.

  “Ashley, please say hello to your parents,” Cannon said.

  CHAPTER 9

  Late night 04.05.2040

  Before, I thought I was lonely. Before, when I remembered Mars and my mom there and how she and my friend Rawling McTigre were millions and millions of miles away. Before, when I hoped and prayed my dad was okay wherever he was. But before, even at my loneliest, at least I had my best friend, Ashley, nearby.

  And now she isn’t.

  Or at least she won’t be when her parents take her away.

  In the darkness, I stared at my computer screen and rubbed my face. I had been given a standard sleeping room somewhere in the depths of the military base. Two soldiers stood outside in the hallway to guard my room. It felt like I was in a prison cell again.

  I kept seeing Ashley’s stunned face and feeling the grip of her hand on mine. What would it be like, I asked myself again, to meet parents you didn’t remember? When she’d left the room with them, she’d stared back at me with a sad and scared face. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

  As a result, I hadn’t been able to sleep, so I’d decided to add to my journals. These had begun when the dome on Mars started to run out of oxygen. Mom had said it might be good for people on Earth to see life on Mars from a kid’s point of view. Even though the dome had survived the crisis, I had continued with my journal entries. Although I’d never admit it to Mom, now I liked typing my thoughts. It helped me sort them out.

  And now, at least, focusing on what to put in the journal might take my mind off my loneliness.

  I began to type on the keyboard, try
ing to put together all the things Cannon and I had talked about in some kind of order. The things I’d been thinking about a lot lately.

  Someone tried to kill me today. Not because of anything I’ve done, but because of a worldwide political divide that began before I was born. Because of water and food and energy shortages from massive population overgrowth, it became apparent that a nuclear war might break out and cause human extinction. Out of all the proposed solutions, two became popular enough for debate. One side said humans should seek to expand beyond Earth. The other side, which became known as the Terratakers, called for “drastic reduction of growth.” They didn’t want to waste valuable resources on space exploration.

  I stopped. I felt like I was writing an essay as homework. But I knew it should be in my journal. Sometimes I daydreamed that my journals would survive on DVD-gigarom for hundreds of years and that far, far into the future, a kid like me might stumble across them and begin to read.

  Whenever I had that daydream, I realized how amazing reading and writing were. Without them, humans would not be able to pass on much information from one generation to the next. And reading what someone wrote was like hearing them speak in your mind, no matter how much time and distance had passed. So, in a way, I had the chance to talk to someone hundreds of years in the future. If they happened to find my journals… .

  So as I keyboarded, I began to imagine I was telling this directly to a kid living in another solar system. He or she might think this was so ancient, hearing about the squabbles on the tiny planet of Earth, billions of miles away. But if it was ancient history to him or her, it was also important. Because if the Terratakers succeeded in stopping space expansion, the chance to read it from another solar system would never happen.

  Fortunately, as the issue was debated country by country, the voters rejected mandatory population control. It was too dangerous to allow government officials to play God by deciding who lived and who didn’t. So the end result was to expand beyond Earth. This led to a whole new set of problems.