“No, I promise.”
“Good,” I reply. “Because if I can’t trust you, then we’re done,” and we gather up the boxes and bags of fried chicken.
“Are you going to lock me up?” Lex asks as we climb out of my truck.
“For now, you’re going to stay home and behave while I look into a lot of things,” I tell him as we shut our doors.
“But what if it’s not safe?”
“That’s one of the things I’m looking into. And if I think you or your grandmother are unsafe, we’ll do something about it,” I reply as ART lets me know in my lenses that Ranger isn’t responding to commands anymore.
24
LOSS OF CONTROL, flashes in yellow in my lenses.
Oh great, I think dismally. The first time out of the box, and Ranger’s already compromised or worse. In terms of bench testing, this hasn’t been a banner day, and Lex and I follow a path he must have shoveled, our feet sounding on the handicap ramp that’s been sprinkled with rock salt.
Digging in a jacket pocket, he pulls out an old-fashioned brass key attached to part of a rawhide bootlace, “Nonna? It’s me,” as he unlocks the door.
I feel a wave of cloying heat as I follow him inside a living room of brown carpet and old furniture. A space heater blows loudly near the faux fireplace, the evening news playing.
“I was starting to worry,” his grandmother says from her wheelchair in front of the TV, an obsolete one on a stand near a bookcase crammed with old volumes, clothbound and well worn.
“It’s nice to meet you . . . ,” I start to say as Lex and I set down boxes and bags on the counter.
“Who are you?” she interrupts, her bright-blue eyes fixed on me like lasers, her spun-sugar white hair pinned back, her keenness snapping like sparks. “You’re not who picked him up this afternoon. That dark-haired woman who didn’t bother coming inside, hauling Lex away like a serial killer.”
“I’m Captain Chase, in charge of cyber investigations at NASA,” I walk over to shake her hand, and she recoils.
Shying away from me as if I have the plague, she stares wide eyed and unblinking as a drop of blood trickles down from her left nostril. For a panicky instant I think she’s had a stroke. But she digs a tissue out of the sleeve of her cardigan, pinching her nostrils together, leaning back her head.
“Holy smoke. Is she okay?” I ask Lex.
“She’s having one of her spells,” he closes a kitchen cabinet as if what’s happening is business as usual. “Nonna? Do you want the shield?” he asks, and she nods, the tissue she’s holding spotted bright red.
Turning off the TV, Lex opens a drawer in a mahogany breakfront that might have lived in a finer place once. He finds a silver emergency space blanket, the kind we sell in the Langley exchange. Shaking it open, he wraps it around her, the shiny Mylar making a whispery noise and reflecting lamplight.
“Is there anything I can do?” I ask him. “Do I need to radio for an ambulance?”
“It has to pass,” he replies as Nonna pins me with her startling blue stare, holding the bloody tissue to her nose.
“Would you like to take your coat off?” she demands more than asks in a nasal tone.
“I’m not staying very long,” and I don’t know what to make of her but she’s not pushing me around.
Eccentric. Crafty. A force of nature. Or she might be crazy as a bat like Fran said.
“There, I think that’s better,” taking a deep breath, she holds out the bloody tissue to Lex, who wraps it in a paper towel to throw away. “Not as strong a reaction as I’ve ever felt,” she evaluates, and I have no idea what. “But there’s a field I’m picking up.”
“She’s hypersensitive to electromagnetic energy,” Lex explains as if describing the symptoms of something mundane like hay fever or arthritis.
“And what’s the cause of this hypersensitivity?” I reply, thinking of my PEEPS, SPIES, my CUFF in addition to everything implanted inside me. “And is that why you have your windows covered?”
“It’s the main reason,” Lex answers. “But after dark the headlights of cars turning on and off the highway shine right in our windows. Nonna was fine until she was struck by lightning,” he adds as if it’s a normal thing to say.
Placing a chicken breast on the plate, he prepares dinner for her as she sits in her wheelchair, covered in her silvery mantle.
“Even weak electromagnetic fields, and she’s going to be affected,” he slices open a biscuit, buttering each half.
“The TV doesn’t bother you?” I ask Nonna.
“It’s a field I know.”
“She goes into a trance for a few seconds,” Lex explains. “And her nose bleeds, always the left side. When it’s really bad she has a headache and nausea, like being motion sick. She manages okay as long as she has a way to shield herself.”
“Are you feeling better?” I ask her.
“I’m going to need to keep this on when you’re around,” she ominously clutches the space blanket around her as if I’m Typhoid Mary as ART shows me that the disorder Lex describes hasn’t been proven scientifically, and I could have guessed as much.
His grandmother isn’t the only person to report experiencing electromagnetic sensitivity, but research has yet to support that the condition is real. Most believe it’s a manifestation of hysteria or some other disorder. But it’s freaking me out a little that Nonna might have sensed my SIN even if she can’t identify the signals I’m receiving and sending.
“I don’t know what to make of you,” she scrutinizes me suspiciously. “I do feel I’m in the presence of something. I know that sounds kooky, and you wouldn’t be the first to say it. Kind of like believing in extraterrestrials, God, germs, those things you feel but can’t see or explain. Maybe it’s just your intensity I’m honing in on, and why are you wearing sunglasses at night?”
“They’re not really sunglasses. Just tinted,” I reply.
Taking off my PEEPS, I park them on top of my head as I nervously rub my right index finger. And it’s probably my imagination that it’s tingling more than it was.
“What kind of trouble is my boy in?” Nonna wants to know as Lex brings her dinner.
“That remains to be seen,” I reply honestly. “You’re aware of the prepaid phone found in his backpack at the rocket launch? What a lot of people call a burner phone?”
“Yes, yes, and it’s hogwash,” she says as Lex sets her plate on top of a TV tray he moves closer. “He’s never had anything like that in his possession, and didn’t the other night. I should know. I got him all packed and ready to be picked up.”
“Picked up by whom?”
“The teacher who gave him a ride. Lex was so excited I thought he’d pop like a piñata,” she says, as I dig his phone out of my pocket, returning it to him.
00:00:00:00:0
I TEXT FRAN the address on Lost Farm Road, warning her that it’s as dark as pitch in the mobile home park, and I’m uncertain what we’re walking into.
Dress accordingly, I add our euphemistic code for gearing up. Specifically, I’m talking about body armor, and tactical boots, gloves and helmets. I want gas masks, large flashlights, and our Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns.
Do we want HPD BU? she writes back, and I reply, no.
We don’t want the Hampton Police Division or any other backup at this time.
I tell Fran to meet me in 15 minutes as Nonna dips her fork into a mound of mashed potatoes and gravy. She dips a butter-drenched crust of biscuit into a puddle of honey, stabbing a chunk of fried chicken into a dollop of hot sauce.
It’s almost more than I can bear, and I resent having a real problem, a worse one than before, my cravings off the charts. After what I ate on the way here, I shouldn
’t be hungry. But I’m ravenous, and I fully intend to confront Dick about this particular manufacturing error. My SIN should remove temptations instead of making them stronger, and if I were a vehicle, I’d demand a recall.
“I’m sorry you didn’t know me before,” Nonna volunteers as if I asked a question. “I’m 75 years old, and until 18 months ago could do anything. Far more than a lot of people decades younger.”
She says she could have kept up with me, and I seem in reasonably good shape. I’m probably the type who works hard at it, watching calories, exercising.
“While I barely had to try to be lean and mean, fit as a fiddle,” she says. “Any-hoodles, nothing like a lightning strike to change your destiny in the blink of an eye.”
“What lightning strike are you referring to?” I act like I know nothing about it while ignoring her insinuations about my appearance.
“Well, I don’t think they’re given names like hurricanes,” she shakes open a napkin. “June before last I was outside with the hose, washing a MINI Cooper we don’t have anymore. It was about to storm, and next thing you know, I’m on the ground. They said it was a seizure.”
“It wasn’t,” Lex is back in the kitchen, getting out baggies and aluminum foil. “I was riding home on my bike when I heard the thunder crack. She had a nosebleed like she still gets, and this weird fernlike burn pattern called arborescence on her back. Also, the silver-plated steel necklace she had on burned her and became mildly magnetic. So that’s not a seizure.”
“It doesn’t sound like it,” I have to agree.
“An act of God, not some medical misfortune. But either way this is what I’m left with,” Nonna says as she eats. “Barely mobile enough to drag myself in and out of bed. And there are other side effects.”
At times she has an overwhelming awareness that she’s living in virtual reality. Now and then while sleeping, she feels she’s moving in and out of multiple dimensions. And on occasion she has flashbacks of being adjusted and tampered with by beings from another planet.
“As part of their ongoing experimentation with what they created down here,” Nonna adds. “And heaven knows what a mess they’ve made when they didn’t mean to, as you might expect. But the end result is I can’t walk anymore.”
She cuts off bites of chicken, dipping them in honey and hot sauce, eating as if she’s never in a hurry.
“And I don’t like anybody touching me,” she adds. “I don’t care who it is. I got zapped and woke up not wanting any physical contact with anything or anyone.”
“Not even a dog or a cat. Or me either,” Lex chimes in, wrapping up leftovers.
“He understands,” she cuts her eyes at him, nodding. “My boy knows what he lives with, and I know that’s hard. He lost adoring parents, then ends up with his boring Nonna who turns into a prickly pear wrapped in a space blanket. But we get along fine. Or we were until he got accused of a crime.”
“I’m going to need that thumb drive,” I remind him. “Then I’ve got to get going,” and I give Nonna my card, telling her to call me anytime.
Placing neatly wrapped packages of leftovers inside the refrigerator, Lex wipes the counter with a sponge. He dries his hands on a dish towel, draping it over the edge of the counter to dry.
“We’ll be back in a minute,” he lets his grandmother know, her living quarters at one end of the trailer, his at the other.
I follow him past his tiny bathroom with its plastic fixtures, into his cramped bedroom with its twin bed covered by a colorful space-themed blanket. The desk is just big enough to fit his laptop, a printer, the wireless router. His bicycle leans against the dresser, and on top is a photo of him when he was much younger, at an observatory with a smiling couple, his parents I’m sure, both of them redheads.
He’s made his bleak surroundings cozier and more attractive, covering the gift-paper-shrouded window and vinyl wall paneling with art printed on copying paper. The dozens of mathematically inspired works he no doubt found on the internet, da Vinci, Escher and Dürer etchings, and Pacioli woodcuts, in addition to posters he’s been given at NASA.
“It’s in here,” Lex opens the door to a shallow closet, standing on his tiptoes, reaching for a shoebox on the shelf. “May not look like the safest place,” he removes the lid. “But I didn’t think it mattered as much as it does. And there’s really no good place to hide things around here.”
He hands over the thumb drive, and I zip it up inside a jacket pocket, asking again about the game he calls Helmet Fire.
“I’m going to need to see it,” I tell him as Fran texts that she’s in her car, headed in this direction, a little earlier than I told her, and that’s typical as impatient as she is.
“There’s a copy on the thumb drive,” Lex replies, and I look him in the eye, reminding him I’ve got to go in a minute. “And don’t you wander back to where we just were. Don’t show up to check out what we’re doing, you hear me?” sounding like Mom again.
“Why can’t you take me with you?” he says, not wanting me to go, I can tell. “I know how to be helpful.”
“Thank you but no.”
“I promise not to get in the way.”
“It’s not happening,” I walk toward the doorway. “You’re to stay home tucked in safe and sound with your grandmother. That’s how you can be most helpful.”
“Wait!” he demands, his eyes flashing. “You can’t just leave like that,” his cheeks are turning red, his lower lip trembling. “I don’t have a way to get hold of you. What’s going to happen? Who do I talk to? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he says, reminding me of how I felt earlier when Dick left me alone with ART at Dodd Hall.
“You’re going to be all right, Lex. I’m giving you my cell number,” I recite it to him. “You can call or text.”
If anything unusual happens, I want to know right away, I let him know as we return to the living room. Nonna has wheeled herself into the bathroom, and the door is shut, water running in the sink.
“Tell your grandmother I said good night,” I add, and I probably shouldn’t hug him but I do. “You know where to find me, Lex, even if you’re just uneasy and want to talk. If for some reason you can’t get me, you can call the emergency number. Or if all else fails, you call Deputy Chief Lacey.”
“She’s not all that nice.”
“She’ll take care of you, I promise,” I reply. “You behave, you hear? Remember I’ve got eyes on you,” pointing at his eyes and mine, and suddenly the car alarm goes off in my Tahoe as the engine roars to life.
“That’s weird,” and out the door I go.
My boots make a gritty sound as I walk down the makeshift wheelchair ramp, and I tell ART to turn off the car alarm and unstick the accelerator, and he does.
“What caused that?” I ask.
“An off-nominal command.”
“In other words, a bug in the software,” I reply, lifting my right hand in the dark, giving my digital signal to unlock the doors as the air stirs overhead like a frantic gust of wind.
Then it happens again, and looking around, I see nothing out of the ordinary, just quiet cars parked in front of snowy lots. Windows are lit up in the surrounding homes, and headlights move on the highway. The few small trees along Lex’s street rustle gently, the temperature well above freezing, and climbing into my SUV, I feel sad, a little tired and empty as I reach for my backpack.
Taking my PEEPS off the top of my head, I place them inside their plastic case. ART turns on all the displays, my cockpit lit up like Times Square, in audiovisual mode again now that we no longer have company.
25
“AN UPDATE on Ranger, please?” I ask.
“L-O-C. No longer transmitting data,” ART says.
His soothing androgynous
voice through the Tahoe’s speakers is music to my ears even if his news is bad, and I realize I’ve missed talking to him out loud these past few hours.
“We can’t control our prototyped Aerial Internet Ranger, and he’s not talking to us,” I summarize. “Well it doesn’t get much worse than that,” I decide, driving off. “Do we have a location?”
“The transponder beacon has been picked up intermittently and erratically, suggesting the device is damaged. Possibly crashed,” ART says.
“But we should be able to lock in on the coordinates for where it is in real time.”
“The data is inconsistent,” he repeats. “The device is moving erratically.”
“It’s moving?” I puzzle. “At what speeds and altitudes?”
“The altimeter and speed sensors aren’t functioning.”
“Possibly, Ranger’s down somewhere, crashed, smashed up, being blown around,” I think out loud, and the idea is somewhat nauseating.
“I have no further data,” ART informs me.
“Then let’s talk about Lex Anderson for a moment,” I head back in the direction of the dead assassin’s trailer. “I don’t know if you’re good at character assessment. Likely it requires an emotional capacity and perception you don’t have, not that I really know for sure since I didn’t do your programming. But teaching empathy to artificial intelligence hasn’t been all that successful.”
“I don’t understand your question.”
“So far today you’ve basically downloaded the same data I have,” I do my best to explain what I doubt he’ll comprehend. “That’s inevitable since you’re part of my SIN, both of us controlled by a quantum computer. A copy of which has been built on a chip that’s missing, by the way.”
Spin (Captain Chase) Page 20
