by Leito, Chad
“So what are you?” Asa asked.
Edmund paused for a moment, thinking of how to word it. “I am an artificial representation of your father. Your dad built me to think like him, act like him, talk like him, and, of course, look like him. I am made to, on some level, feel like your father. I feel like I am him, and looking at you, my heart breaks for the son I never got to meet.”
“I don’t understand,” Asa said.
Edmund looked at the gold watch on his wrist. “We don’t have much time. I’ll go away in four minutes.”
“Go away?” Asa said. Even though he knew that he wasn’t looking at his real father, he still didn’t want this representation to leave him. It was like looking at a picture of his dad, or watching old home videos, except better.
“Yes, I must go away. When I created myself…or, when your father created me, he decided, wisely, that there should be limits put on me. Anyone with a big enough skill set can create something extremely powerful, but it takes a strong moral compass to impose limits upon the creation. My limits are time. I am only alive for five minutes. My time is slipping.”
“But what are you?” Asa asked, getting somewhat frustrated. “What’s your purpose? Why are you here?” his eyes filled with tears. “Just to taunt me or something?”
Edmund’s expression showed sympathy. “Asa, no. I love you. I would never want to hurt you. I’ll quickly tell you what I am; your father created a super computer that followed him around—that’s me. I learned what your father thought, hoped, said out loud, and I was instructed to learn to copy it. Your father created me in case he died. I am a substitute for him, and I am here to explain to the first person to walk through that door what these vaccines are for.
“I am a computer that was given the skills to be able to imitate. I am like a parrot, only my imitations go beyond speech to thinking styles. Your father put a monitor in his wristwatch that fed me data about him at all times. And I used that data to learn to imitate your father. I’m not perfect. If you asked me a question that your father never answered himself, I wouldn’t know what to say. Much of these words I’m saying were words that your father said to people asking him about this imitation super computer.”
“But why do you have to go? Can’t you stay? Can’t I ask you some questions about my dad? Can’t we sit and talk? If it’s more power you need, I can plug you in or something…”
Edmund put up a hand to stop his son’s fast speaking. “Asa, it’s not a power issue. I am a computer. Computers obey orders. Your father ordered that I destroy myself after five minutes, so that is what I will do.” He looked at his watch again. “Well, in a little under three minutes now.”
Asa felt panicky. There was so much he needed to know—so much that he wanted to know. He also wanted to spend more time with this strange machine that acted like his dad. He started with one of his most pressing questions: “So my dad put something into my DNA, right? He coded something in it?”
“There are two vials here. Just like in the riddle I wrote. One takes down Multipliers restriction on multiplying, and another is a cure for Multipliers. But both are also stored in your DNA, but in a peculiar way.”
“How do I get it out of my DNA and made into a real substance?”
Edmund looked at his wristwatch again. “I am sorry Asa, but I don’t have time to explain that.”
“You’re right,” Asa said, but he clamped his teeth together in frustration. “We have to make this time count.” He did his best to try to think of the most succinct way to word the biggest problem that he had. It took him ten seconds, and Edmund watched him think patiently. “Multipliers are trying to take over the world,” Asa said. “There are a quarter million of them. Robert King is aware, but I don’t think that he knows how to stop them.”
Worried lines appeared on Edmund’s forehead. “This was my biggest fear. I killed myself so that they wouldn’t use me as a weapon.”
“What should I do?” Asa asked.
“I don’t know,” was all Edmund responded.
“YOU DON’T KNOW?” Asa said, frustration and fatigue making him lose control.
Edmund raised his own voice, “How am I supposed to know? You think that I can devise a plan with so little information? Impossible. Edmund didn’t know about this situation, and I’m not the best critical thinker. I’m mostly an imitator. Although,” the hologram said, rubbing its chin, “I do have one piece of advice for you. Find Francine Black. From what I know about your dad, that’s what he would do.”
“Francine Black,” Asa repeated the name. He had heard it before, but didn’t know where. “How am I supposed to find her?”
“I don’t know,” the computer that looked like Edmund Palmer told Asa. “I have been dormant for over sixteen years. She could even be dead. We have under two minutes now.”
“Well do you have some advice? Something to leave me with, to help me? I’m scared, dad.”
His father’s eyes again showed sympathy for Asa. Asa found it odd to speak with this machine. Sometimes he felt like he was talking to an actual person. The machine didn’t seem bothered by this, and answered as though it was indeed Asa’s father. “Go and find the Davids. They are the monkeys that I have mutated. They are oddly intelligent. Go to them. They can help you. They have a very large underground community that not even Robert King knows about.”
“How do I find them?” Asa asked.
Edmund smiled. “That’s the thing about Davids. You can’t find them, they’re too smart. Don’t bother looking for them. They’ll find you.”
Asa didn’t understand, he couldn’t see how that helped. “How do I get them to find me, then?”
Edmund paused again, considering his wording. “If you show compassion for the Davids, they will find you. Honestly love them. Develop a charitable heart towards them. Don’t think that you will ever control them. Do these things, and they will find you.”
“Dad! That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“We have seven seconds left.”
Asa started crying again. “I love you, dad.”
“I love you too.”
“Can’t I have more time? Can’t you stay a little longer?”
But then Edmund flickered out of existence. He was smiling as he left, and Asa walked forward and stood in the spot he had disappeared. The air in that area was warm, as though his father had actually been standing there just moments before.
Three minutes later, Asa had developed a plan and walked out of the double doors. He had decided not to destroy the vaccines, and he carried them in his hands. They were both purple, thick, and in glass tubes.
Mike Plode had been waiting on him to come out. “You can cross on your left side. I’d go now. It’s perfect.”
Asa jumped, shot his wings out, and flew safely across to the other side.
Jen looked down at the vaccines in Asa’s hands. She had used her dress to clean up her bloody neck, and Asa could see a jagged cut there from Ned’s knife. “Mike said that you were going to destroy the vaccines,” she said.
“I was,” he explained, “but then I thought that I could use them. I want to take them to Mama’s house and inject Teddy. One of these will cure him—will turn him back human.”
“But how will you know which one to inject him with?” Boom Boom asked.
“I don’t,” Asa responded. “I’m going to inject him with both. One will make him Multiply more, but that won’t matter, because the other one will cure him.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Jen said. She caught Asa’s eyes for a moment, and he wondered how she felt about the situation with Charlotte. It wasn’t the time to ask, though.
“Someone should take Mike to Missus Ida. He needs medical attention,” Asa said.
“Nah, I’m good,” Mike waved a hand. “I’ll go after you inject Teddy. I want to see this.”
Asa put the vaccines in his pocket and was about to lead them out of the room when he turned and looked over the ground. “Where i
s Allen’s body?” he asked.
The others were looking too.
“Allen is the blond one, right?” Roxanne asked.
“Yeah,” Jen said. “He’s tall.”
“I think I pushed him in the water,” said Roxanne.
Asa shook his head, panic starting to pull at his throat. “No. You just punched him in the back of the head. His body should still be here. Where is it? Where the hell is it?”
“I think that Roxanne is right,” Mike said. “He was pushed into the water.”
Asa wasn’t sure. He looked around the floor again, still hoping to find Allen’s body. “Let’s get over to Conway’s house.” He didn’t voice any more concerns, but Allen’s absent body made him very frightened.
45
The Tape Recorder
As Asa flew through the foggy night, he tried to convince himself that Allen’s body had indeed been dropped into the pool of water in the center of the room. The alternative was terrifying. If he crept away early on in the fight, he may have had time to get to Conway’s by now. Asa recalled that Allen planned on freeing Teddy after he had secured the vaccine.
He probably also wanted to show me to Teddy—to demonstrate that I had indeed turned into a Multiplier, Asa thought. Allen is the kind of guy who would have loved to prove Teddy wrong. Maybe he’ll be too embarrassed to show up empty handed and just run off.
The fog made it impossible to visually locate Conway’s cabin from far off. The Sharks did not want to lose sight of Asa, who was most familiar with the area, so they followed closely behind, their wings flapping in the cold.
Asa talked to himself, trying to ease his nerves. I’m going to land on the front porch, and the door will be intact, as normal. There will be no sign of a struggle. Even if Allen escaped, he probably just took his losses and ran off.
As he dipped down closer to the wooden structure, Asa’s hopes vanished. Something was very wrong. He landed ten feet back from the door, and the other Sharks came in behind him.
“Oh, God,” Jen said, contracting her wings.
Asa couldn’t agree more. He began to trot towards the doorway. The door had been torn off its hinges and strewn roughly aside in the grass.
“Asa,” Mike hissed. “What if someone is in there waiting to attack us?”
Asa didn’t listen to Mike’s warning. He stepped over chips of wood and broken glass into the cabin. His heart was thudding in his ears. He looked around the living room and saw that all the lamps were still standing; each was covered in a different colored shawl, sending various shades onto all surfaces. The cuckoo clocks on the back wall ticked off the seconds. Ozzie’s bathtub of dog food still sat on the ground.
“Ozzie?” Asa said, running deeper into the house. The polar bear always came out to see who was at the door. Something is very wrong. Asa turned around and saw Ozzie, lying lifelessly on the floor. Asa’s heart rate quickened.
Asa peered into Mama’s bedroom, which was open. Lights from the living room spilled in, illuminating Mama, who was lying facedown on the floor. Asa flicked on the bedroom lights, and knelt down beside her, shaking her frail back. “Mama! Mama! Wake up!” He turned her over and saw that she was breathing, but shallowly.
Asa’s teammates were now in the hallway beside Mama’s bedroom. “Roxanne, go check on Teddy,” Asa said. Roxanne took off down the stairs. Asa was not optimistic about what she would report back.
I should have just kicked Allen’s body into the water, Asa chastised himself. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Why did I just assume he was dead without even checking?
Asa looked over and saw a red gas canister on the floor. This one was smaller than the ones Allen had used in the Shop, and only had one nodule, instead of two. Asa wondered what the side effects of this gas were. He shook Mama again, hoping she wasn’t dead. “Mama, you’ve got to wake up!”
Mama’s eyes flickered open, and then widened. The cloudy pupils moved around the room, not able to see. “Who’s there?” she demanded.
“It’s me, Asa.”
Her face relaxed. “Asa? Asa, what happened? I was sleeping and then some man came in. He broke down the door. My head feels woozy. There was a gas canister. I think that the gas made me tired.”
“Where is Jul?”
Mama had to think about this for a moment. Her eyes were still groggy. “He is on a mission. Don’t know where. Don’t know when he’ll be back.”
A succession of clacks came from the basement where Roxanne was sprinting up the stairs. She reached the top, panting. “He’s gone,” she said. “Teddy is gone.”
“Oh, Lord,” Mama said.
Asa pulled at his hair in frustration. “Where could they have gone? What should we do?” He asked no one in particular.
Boom Boom answered: “There’s nothing we can do. In this fog, they’re probably able to fly away, no problem. Teddy will be carrying Allen. They’ll have no worries of being detected.”
Asa wanted to scream at someone for not making sure that Allen was dead. He bit his tongue. It had been just as much his responsibility to make sure that none of the Multipliers got away as anyone else’s. He said, “I guess Allen crawled off when no one was looking.”
“What is going on?” Mama asked. “You all sound exhausted, and you smell like sweat and blood. What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” Asa said.
“I have carrot cake. Let’s go into the living room, and I can listen to this long story. I’ve got whole milk, too.”
“There are six of us,” Viola informed Mama, worried that the blind woman was offering more than she knew.
“I know, Viola,” Mama said back. “I can hear each of you breathing. Help me up, Asa.”
Asa grabbed hold of Mama’s bony hands. Her skin felt soft and fragile. As he helped her stand, something clattered to the ground. Asa looked down to see a small, square electronic device. “What’s that?” he asked.
Mama was smiling. “I had forgotten. I got so tired, I guess. When I thought something might be wrong, and that fella started shoutin’ outside, I turned on my voice recorder.”
“Do you think it picked up anything that happened?” Asa asked.
“Only one way to find out.”
A few minutes later, the Sharks and Mama were seated around the different couches and chairs in Conway’s living room. Roxanne had propped Mama’s door back up into the frame, but it was broken and only served as a crude barrier.
Asa sat with Mike on his right, and there was enough room for Jen to sit on his left, but she walked passed this spot and sat across the room; Asa felt a heavy pang in his chest. Mama cut everyone huge slices of refrigerated carrot cake, which was topped with thick white icing. Everyone was also given a large glass of milk. Asa ate greedily. The cake was delicious, and the milk was cold enough that ice crystals were inside of the glass. Asa realized that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He felt himself perk up a bit with food in his stomach.
Asa was content to stay quiet while Boom Boom relayed the entire story to Mama, beginning with Teddy’s suggestion that Asa should drop the bombs.
“Asa, you should have known better than to listen to him! Conway said Teddy would try to trick you,” Mama interjected.
Asa agreed. “I shouldn’t have trusted Teddy,” he said.
When Boom Boom finished the story, it was quiet. “So what do you think?” he asked Mama.
Mama put her plate down on the floor and let Ozzie lick up the crumbs and stray icing. “I haven’t heard the whole story yet,” she said. “We’ve still got the recording to listen to.” She picked up the recorder and rewound the tape, listening for the right spot. When she found the appropriate place, she sat it down on the tree-trunk coffee table and let it play.
For a moment, it just reeled on without any noise. Then, Asa could hear Ozzie growling on the recording. Ozzie, who was still licking Mama’s plate, looked up as he heard the sound, his ears pricked up.
“Who is it?” came Mama’s voice fro
m the small speaker. She sounded scared.
Then there was the sound of shattering glass, and Allen’s voice boomed through, very clear: “HOLD YOUR BREATH, TEDDY! THIS IS ALLEN!”
At this point, Ozzie was growling like crazy, and Mama’s nervous breathing was picked up by the recorder. There was the sound of the canister clanking over the wooden floor, and then of the sleeping gas hissing out of one end. There was a loud clatter, and then a booming THUMP, which Asa believed were both Ozzie and Mama collapsing. Silence came through for a few moments, and then the sound of the door being ripped off the hinges. Allen’s footsteps echoed inside the living room. “You’re a big guard dog,” he said to Ozzie, his voice muffled by the gas mask. They heard his footsteps as he descended the stairs.
“Put this on,” he said, his voice further away, down in the basement.
“Where is Asa? Why are you so beat up? What has happened?” Teddy’s voice asked, muffled by a gas mask.
“Palmer got away. We were ambushed,” Allen said back.
“AMBUSHED? By who?”
“Asa didn’t change. A bunch of his teammates showed up while we were in the hidden rooms under the Shop.”
Teddy screamed, “I told you he wouldn’t change! Why didn’t you listen to me? Why did you even go down there—I said all you needed was his blood!”
“Relax,” Allen said. “I made a mistake.”
Teddy’s voice calmed. Asa leaned forward so that he could listen to the recording better. “At least tell me you got his blood. Please tell me you got his blood.”
“I didn’t.”
“Did you get the vaccines?”
“No.”
“Allen! How could you have not gotten his blood! I told you not to trust Palmer!”
“Wait!” Allen said. “Wait! Look, on my shirt. This is Asa’s blood, right here. I bit him, and some of his blood squirted onto my shirt.”
“Are you sure its his?”
“Positive,” Allen said back. “Now how do I get you out of here. I want to be long gone by the time Jul gets back.”