Dot Robot

by Jason Bradbury

  He continued to talk, squatting in the rain, recounting the incredible events that had led to him being duped, implicated in robbery on a grand scale and left in fear of his life. But a strange sense of relief came over him as he told his mum everything – the secrets he could never tell anyone else outside MeX. He missed his mum so much.

  Mr Farley returned, said a few meaningful words and kissed the top of the wet headstone as he always did at the end of each visit. Jackson looked back at the sunflowers as he and his father walked away. There were plenty of flowers about, but the handful of radiant yellow blooms stood out. Good choice, Mum.

  Jackson’s dad was trying to keep at least one of his promises. He was nattering about the time the three of them had gone camping and he’d forgotten to pack the tent. And the time Mum insisted they try horseriding, which ended with her in hospital thanks to a newly discovered allergy to horses. But Jackson was finding it hard to listen – his thoughts back to finding Brooke and then the twins.

  ‘Well, I think we did it, son. We didn’t turn into blubbering idiots,’ said Jackson’s dad as they reached the gates. ‘I promise to eat doughnuts at work tonight and I think you should go and enjoy chess club. It’s what Mum would have wanted.’

  ‘But, Dad, I’ve got so much homework to do.’

  His father wasn’t interested.

  ‘We gave Mum our word. Now go and enjoy yourself … or you’re grounded.’ And he pushed a fiver in Jackson’s palm and walked away.

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘If a game of chess is like a drawn-out tank battle,’ declared Willard, ‘Bullet Chess is a fast and furious knife fight in a dark alley.’ With a quick shuffle, the stringy historian snatched a bishop from his chess-board and thrust it forward like a blade, its black wooden point ending up a millimetre from the nose of Otis Gibbs who sat at the front of the group. Gibbsy, who was just about the smallest boy in school, broke into a broad smile beneath his considerably round spectacles as Willard placed the chess piece-cum-switchblade back on its square, between the knight and the queen.

  ‘One minute thinking time each, for the whole game. That’s all you get!’

  ‘One minute? I normally need more than that for one move!’ volunteered Olga, the geeky Russian girl whose surname Jackson had never heard pronounced the same twice and hadn’t managed to remember yet.

  ‘Yes! And if you’re playing it right, if you’re digging deep into your chess-playing soul, it should be more than enough time to mount a murderous assault.’

  Jackson wasn’t really listening. He sat at the back of the class, his attention on the mobile phone he had surreptitiously switched on. Too much time had passed since he’d extracted Brooke’s location from the lines of her poem and he was desperate to find out where they pointed. With the handset’s full-colour display glowing in his hands, he stroked his index finger down its touch-sensitive screen until he found a tiny icon that looked like an old-fashioned antenna and poked it. The icon belonged to a program called Terminal Link, which Jackson had downloaded a few months ago. It was supposed to allow anyone with a compatible mobile phone to use their handset to remotely operate their desktop computer. Even with his phone’s ability to connect to the Internet, there was little he could do with the longitude and latitude figures from Brooke’s poem. But if he could link to the Google Earth program on the computer in his bedroom, he should find where she was being held.

  ‘Farley, what’s your favourite chess strategy?’ Willard was looking directly at him. Jackson thought how uncanny it was that teachers always chose to single him out when he was trying his best not to be noticed.

  Willard’s question referred to the chess tactics he had drilled into Jackson and the rest of the club during their run-up to the County Cup. Jackson had found himself obsessed by the legendary formulas of the game of chess. If Willard mentioned a famous ‘play’, a word used by chess players to describe a series of predetermined moves, Jackson would look it up to study the moves in detail. He’d practise them, playing against himself or online, and committed each play to memory by using algebraic notation.

  These famous chess moves had elaborate names: the English Opening, the Elephant Gambit, the Vienna Game – each a clever combination, like a dance routine or a martial arts display. Willard had even concocted his own adaptations of tried and tested chess stratagems which, naturally, he’d given suitably historical handles: Zulu Dawn, Agincourt and one of Jackson’s favourite manoeuvres that involved sacrificing his queen, which Willard tagged Queen Boadicea.

  ‘Queen Boadicea,’ replied Jackson.

  ‘Well, even the brave queen of the Iceni people would find the pace of a Bullet game frightening,’ replied Willard. ‘Strategy, you see, requires thought and consideration. But this is different. In Bullet Chess, there’s no time for either. Just guts and, hopefully, glory! So, come on, people,’ he continued, sitting swiftly down in front of Otis. ‘Let’s fight!’

  Then, in a blur of beige, he punched his side of a chess timer and moved a pawn directly in front of his bishop, two spaces forward.

  There was a clamour of scraping chairs as the other chess clubbers followed suit. The program on Jackson’s phone was just loading when Taylor Dillon pulled a chair up to his table. Jackson considered asking him to move on so he could concentrate on his phone, but then he remembered why he was there. Something you really enjoy. He had made a promise – he at least had to go through the motions.

  Taylor started the game by advancing his white king’s pawn two squares. Jackson considered his next move. A procession of practised shapes and patterns rose from the board. If he advanced the pawn in front of his black queen by two squares and could persuade Taylor to take it, then his own queen would be clear to begin the rampage that had won him so many games in the past. Or he could follow up with a knight, or lead his rooks to either side of the board in readiness for an assortment of premeditated pincer attacks.

  Taylor coughed politely and the matrix of moves in Jackson’s mind vanished. He looked at the clock. So far he’d taken forty seconds and he hadn’t moved a single piece.

  ‘Er … sorry, Taylor,’ he said and simply followed his opponent’s lead, pushing his king’s pawn forward so the two foot soldiers faced each other in the middle of the board.

  Taylor’s response was wickedly quick, his queen shooting crossways in readiness for an early charge on Jackson’s king.

  Jackson considered his answer. It was clear from Taylor’s feeble smile and the way he was bouncing his knee up and down that he was gagging for his opponent to get a move on. But Jackson just sat there, pondering the possibilities, while at the same time glancing anxiously from the chessboard to the screen on the phone in his lap. Eventually he placed a hesitant hand on his knight, just as the chess timer started to buzz.

  ‘Taylor wins!’ said Willard, who was fresh from demolishing Otis and was watching from the front of the classroom. ‘Always remember the clock,’ he said, wagging his finger in Jackson’s direction. ‘You can be one or two moves away from winning with a checkmate, but lose to the clock.’

  Jackson could see that Willard wasn’t going to let him escape the obligations of being the resident chess-club champ and so was forced to continue playing against a string of opponents who kept arriving at his desk. In the midst of each breakneck battle Jackson furtively entered details to establish a connection with the computer that buzzed away under his desk at home.

  By the time the familiar image of his home desktop had loaded in miniature on his phone’s small screen, Jackson had lost three games in a row. His only compensation was the look on Gibbsy’s face. His classmate was so delighted to have beaten Jackson that he jumped from his chair and did a little dance, punching the air like a little featherweight boxer. Jackson knew Otis had also been on the wrong side of Tyler Hughes and didn’t begrudge him winning something for a change.

  Jackson took the opportunity to move the cursor quickly down the screen of his phone, using just a finger. When his nai
l was hovering over a markedly scaled-down Google Earth symbol, he tapped it and waited impatiently for the program to load.

  ‘You’re not playing like the Farley I know.’ Willard pulled a chair up to Jackson’s table and started setting up the board.

  ‘If you don’t mind, Sir, I think I’ll sit this one out,’ said Jackson, rising from his chair.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do! Now sit down,’ he said firmly. ‘Who would have guessed it?’ Willard continued. ‘Our inimitable champion is slain. Please enlighten us as to why you are playing like you’ve been flogged with an idiot-stick.’

  There were several sniggers from around the room and a look of outright amazement on the face of Otis and Olga who had never heard Willard talk to anyone like that, least of all his golden boy, Farley.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got things on my mind, Sir.’

  ‘Well then, I suggest you squash them.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sir?’

  ‘Crush everything but your killer instinct. I told you, this is a different kind of chess game. I know you can think, Farley. The question is, can you fight?’ The question hung there between them as Willard whacked his first piece down and thumped the timer.

  Jackson was beginning to feel agitated, pushed beyond the limits of his patience, even though he knew Willard was only baiting him. Well, if it was a fight he wanted, then fine.

  Jackson made his first move and then, in the split second that Willard’s attention was on his own side of the board, Jackson entered the first of the red numbers that stained the inside of his hand into his phone. Willard made his move. Jackson didn’t flinch, pushing his piece in an aggressive counter-attack.

  As play commenced, Jackson was barely thinking at all, just moving his pieces and secretly entering the map coordinates while his opponent came back at him repeatedly. The two contenders signalled the end of each move with a jab to their side of the chess timer until they were coming in such a blitz that it looked as if they were in danger of pummelling each other. Jackson continued his lightning assault on Willard as he waited for the 3D mapping program on his home computer to return a result to his handset.

  Suddenly Willard, who had been swallowing piece after piece of Jackson’s most valuable soldiers, realized that he was now confronted by a lowly black pawn, just one square away from his own back row. Jackson had sacrificed his knights, his bishops and his two proud rooks in a fearless march forward.

  ‘I’m promoting my pawn to queen,’ said Jackson. It was one of the quirkier rules of the ancient game. Get a humble pawn to your opponent’s back row and you can promote him. With two powerful queens now at his disposal, Jackson had Willard’s king on the run.

  The history teacher stared at the board. He was in a zugzwang, a no-win situation, whatever move he made. He knew he was defeated.

  Jackson quickly glanced down at his phone. He could see an aerial view of what looked like a range of mountains with a canyon between them. At the top of the screen the word ‘Arizona’ was written in clear white text and, in the very centre, a small circle representing the precise location of the co-ordinates, just above a town called Mammoth.

  ‘Splendid!’ Willard said, with the zeal of someone who had just won, rather than lost. ‘That’s more like it, my boy. I concede!’ And with that he knocked over his king with a spindly forefinger and winked at Jackson.

  As Willard walked away, Jackson stared at the fuzzy moonscape of mountains and canyons above the town called Mammoth on his phone’s screen. He had found her.

  He had found Brooke.

  CHAPTER 24

  Jackson’s tired eyes felt like two dry-roasted nuts. It was only 11 p.m., but it was yet another sleepless night to add to the debt he owed his body. Luckily, his dad had done a shop and there was plenty of chocolate available. He’d get a rap on the knuckles for the missing bars, but they were a crucial part of his strategy to stave off sleep. Strong black tea, toast and chocolate, and the knowledge that Brooke was now in perilous danger were keeping him sharp.

  Jackson looked again at the Google Earth program that filled his monitor. From 200 metres up, the desolate hills about Mammoth certainly looked like a candidate for a kidnapper’s hideout. He could see from the program’s map overlay that there were no main roads nearby and no visible tracks. The assemblage of satellite pictures lacked detail, but it was obvious the area was a ragged collection of boulders, cracks and fissures, the perfect 4×4 off-road challenge, according to one blogger. The only other habitable place that Jackson found in the area was Copper Creek – a deserted mining town he discovered when he zoomed in. According to the web log, the old copper-and-silver mining town was now unreachable by all but the most die-hard off-roaders.

  This, according to Brooke’s coordinates, was the place. But how could Jackson get there?

  Jackson dragged the blog page into line with his own, so both websites – Google Earth and his search screen – were in perfect symmetry. He did this sort of thing when he was deep in thought – laid out pens and pencils equidistantly for exams and made sure his pieces were positioned at the exact centre of each square before an important chess match. Once the mental housework was done, he could focus all of his grey matter on the problem.

  He could let Brooke’s father, J.P., know of his daughter’s location – he must be worried stupid. But no matter what assurances he gave, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t contact the authorities, and Jackson was sure Lear would be tapped into all official sources. It was unfortunate, because the English family ranch was in California, and couldn’t be more than a few hundred kilometres from Brooke’s Arizona location. Her father could be there in a few hours, assuming he had access to a 4×4 or … Brooke’s Hummer!

  The answer had been in front of him for hours. There were even pictures on the guy’s blog showing modified pick-up trucks with colossal tyres and souped-up army vehicles tackling Copper Creek’s knotty trails – although Jackson knew they were mere toys compared to Brooke’s remotely enhanced vehicle.

  Username: GeekSugar. Password: UWill-Nev3rGuess. Jackson had no trouble recalling the login details that Brooke had sent him to access the Hummer’s web interface and that had permitted him to rev the vehicle.

  He selected the HISTORY tab in his browser’s file menu and was offered a list containing every web page he’d visited in the last seven days. They stretched back, like a diary of the last week of Jackson’s life, starting with the original search for Elan Drivel and the site that contained MeX’s hidden portal, doyouknowanysecrets.com. There was the link to Brooke’s YouTube video; Jackson’s math-fu blog. Each link was proof it had all happened. He spotted what he was looking for under ‘Friday’: ‘http://’ followed by an incomprehensible collection of letters and numbers, leading to the simple graphical display that would give Jackson remote control of Brooke’s two-tonne machine.

  The final detail to load was the video feed, a large rectangular black box which filled all of Jackson’s twenty-one-inch monitor and over which all the other readouts floated: speedometer, gear-box selector, ignition button. He keyed in his login details and hit ENTER. Nothing changed. His heart sank. If he couldn’t rely on Brooke’s Hummer, he’d have no choice but to go to the authorities; and Lear, who had already taken his friends, had made clear what the consequences of that action would be.

  Then he noticed a faint glow in the jet-black of his flat-panel screen, a soft scarlet speck that wasn’t coming from his own reflection.

  He leaned forward until his breath was fogging the glass and he could just make out the traces of two or three lacklustre red LEDs. Instantly, Jackson realized that the video feed was live – he was connected to the vehicle! It was just too dark inside Brooke’s garage to see anything. Jackson moved his cursor over a small column of buttons on the left of his display and clicked a square labelled LIGHTS. He winced as the garage’s whitewashed interior was bathed in the output of six halogen beams. Now he could see the bank of computers that had provided the tiny telltale L
EDs.

  Jackson could also see the reflection in the mirror at the top of the video display, showing the inside of a firmly closed garage door. In all likelihood there was some clever way of opening it, but Jackson had little time to figure it out and a feeling that one of the US Army’s preferred modes of transport wouldn’t have any trouble with a bit of wood and aluminium.

  The video feed trembled as Jackson clicked the ignition icon and the V8 engine barked itself awake. Next he dragged the small graphic of a gear selector into the REVERSE position and moved the throttle slider halfway up. Jackson barely had time to blink as the Hummer exploded backwards out of the garage and bright sunshine bleached his screen. The high-definition camera behind the vehicle’s windshield adjusted to the change in brightness and Jackson saw a Hummer-sized hole in the garage door, which was now about twenty metres in front of him. He decided that if his plan worked, and Brooke was ever free to do so, he’d have her explain the hole to her dad.

  The vehicle’s rapid exit from the garage had been halted by J.P. English’s station wagon, its classic wooden panelling smashed to pieces between the monstrous jeep and the largest pine tree on the ranch. Jackson’s headphones emitted an ear-splitting screech and it took a shell-shocked moment before he registered it was the Hummer, still at full revs. He slid the gear stick into PARK and the throttle to ZERO %, then tried to steady his breathing.

  This is never going to work, he told himself. Three hundred kilometres with a mouse for a steering wheel! Jackson rummaged through his desk drawer, fishing out a small wireless dongle from the snake pit of wires and connectors, along with a PlayStation controller he had modified to within an inch of its life. Then he crawled under the desk to insert the device into the back of his PC. As he sat back down, Jackson was presented with a close-up view of a middle-aged man in a blue velvet dressing gown and slippers, standing in the driveway and peering inquisitively into the Hummer’s camera. Jackson realized he’d just met Brooke’s dad.