Beth looked back to Phil, who'd been hovering in the corner, looking very worried. “Can you pull up Mrs. Claus? I don't have access.”
Phil pushed himself away from the wall like he'd been glued to it. “I can.” He could have said “I’d rather die first,” and it would have sounded the same.
“Are you ready to see the biggest secret of all?” Beth asked.
Whatever doubts Tracy had about the computer, those words made Tracy's heart leap in excitement. She looked Beth in the dead center of her eyes, and knew that despite her comments about magic, that woman was the real deal. “Yes.”
“All right then. Phil, show her Mrs. Claus.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tracy
Tracy stood up and let Phil take the seat in front of the computer. He may have looked young, but his shoulders curled like he carried more years than her dad. He hunched over the computer, his head held up by one hand while he worked the mouse with the other. He mumbled things Tracy couldn't quite understand, although they sounded an awful lot like words she wasn't allowed to say. How did anyone get to be such a grump?
Phil double clicked on a folder on the desktop. A login box appeared with the user name already populated—Mary Christmas. Phil glanced at the hallway to make sure no one was coming, then typed in the password. Tracy watched his fingers very carefully as he entered Nicholas343.
Numerous files popped up with titles like The List, Inkling Profiles, Sleigh Routes, Employee Selection, Holographic Imagery, and Inventions. Phil skipped all of those, going straight to a file labeled Mrs. Claus. He double clicked that, and a list of names appeared.
Tracy gasped when she recognized one of them. “Edward Higgens.”
“Do you know him?” Phil asked.
Tracy felt like she was at school, being asked a question she didn't know the answer to. “No, well, it's just…um…” She stuffed her hands in the Santa coat's pockets.
“Ah.” Beth got it before Phil did. “The name tag.”
Phil nodded, then clicked on Edward's name. A full profile opened up, complete with a picture of a man who looked very much like Santa, one with a curly beard.
Name: Edward Cornelius Higgens
Age: 75
Address: 11 Maple Drive, Sarasota, FL 34230
Occupation: Retired air force pilot
Recruitment date: July 31, 2009
Recruiter: Phil Marlin
Side effects to Santa program: None
“Side effects?” Tracy asked.
“Nausea, vomiting, disorientation, memories of the sleigh ride…” Phil might have kept going with his list if Tracy hadn't stopped him.
“Memories. Are you saying this guy pretends to be Santa, then you take away his memory?”
Phil sighed. “It's more complicated than that. You wouldn't understand.”
Tracy placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head in a way that would have gotten her sent straight to her room if she'd done it in front of her mom. “I'm ten. Not an idiot. Try me.”
Phil looked to Beth like he was asking for help. The two of them exchanged a few silent gestures which Tracy took to mean they were fighting over who talked next.
“Oh, for Pete's sake. Someone answer me.”
“Hey,” Beth said. “Cut the attitude. We're trying to figure out the best way to address this.”
“Which is not at all,” Phil insisted. Again, he glanced at the door. “If Walt finds out, it doesn’t matter what you think or how much you trust this girl, he is going to wipe her mind.”
Beth didn't speak for a long time, and Tracy realized it was because the woman was scared.
Now, Tracy was scared. Who was Walt? “What's a mind wipe?”
“It's nothing you have to worry about,” Beth finally answered, but she didn't seem too sure about it. She shooed Phil out of the chair, and he went back to lean against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. He looked like a statue that was about to crumble. For the first time, Tracy wondered if Santa's place was safe after all. Well, if they were in Alabama, it wasn't really Santa's place, was it? Who owned this operation? Who was in charge here? And if they wiped her mind, how badly would it hurt?
Beth took over the seat and babbled on about the process of choosing Santas. Tracy only half listened. What was the point if they were going to make her forget anyway? She had worked so hard to save Pim, and now instead of saving her, she'd gotten herself kidnapped. Would she ever see Pim again? And would she remember her if she did?
Tracy's knees started to shake. She clutched the edge of the desk, and her stomach clenched itself into a little ball. She felt herself sinking to the ground.
“Um, Beth…” Phil interrupted.
Beth stopped her monologue long enough to look at Tracy. Her eyes grew wide with horror. “Oh, honey. No.”
Tracy sat on the floor with her knees folded against her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Her mind felt as vacant as the pretend Santas.
Beth slid down to the floor beside Tracy and scooped her up into her arms. “Sweetie, no. We didn't mean to scare you. It's just, you've thrown us for a loop here. We're still trying to figure things out.”
“Are you…” Asking the question meant that she might get an answer she didn't want to hear, but she had to ask it anyway. “Are you going to let me go home, or am I trapped here?”
“Trapped is such an ugly word,” said a squeaky voice from the doorway, “but I'd say it's accurate.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tracy
The elf wasn't as cute as the ones back at the house. Then again, the ones at the house hadn't been so cute either once they turned into wolves. What was this guy going to turn into?
Phil jumped to attention. “What are you doing here, Erlek?”
“Walt sent me because you weren't back yet.” A sly smile spread across the elf's face. “I think he will be very interested to know what I found out."
Beth slipped a hard mask onto her face. Yet, her arms were still gently wrapped around Tracy. “What? That we found Tracy lost and scared? That we were comforting her?”
“Inside the main computer room?”
“She didn't see anything.” Beth spoke calmly, as if she hadn't just showed Tracy the biggest secret in the world. Of course, it helped that Beth had put the computer in sleep mode before she slipped to the floor. Once again, it showed nothing but the crackling fireplace. Because of that, Tracy knew that she could trust Beth. “Tracy woke up in a strange place, wandered off, and got lost. When we found her, she was in hysterics because one of your brothers scared her half to death. This was the closest room we could find to get her away and calm her down. Fat lot of good that did. You've gone and freaked her out again.”
Tracy knew a cue when she heard it. She buried her face in Beth's shoulder and wailed. In truth, the cries were only half-fake. She remembered what those elf things did to her on the roof. Through her tears, she kept one eye on the creature in case he decided to turn into a dragon or a rattlesnake.
Erlek folded his wrinkly brown arms across his chest.
“Whatever,” he said with a sneer. “Walt said no more stalling. He wants you in his office, and I have a feeling I know why.” He patted the tiny pouch of dust hanging from his belt.
Phil dropped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Tracy guessed what was inside the pouch. They might wipe the Santas’ minds every Christmas Eve, but nobody was coming near her with that stuff. She needed her memory of this night more than she ever needed anything in the world. She had to trust that she had enough evidence to win the fair, because with the elf stepping toward her, she could only think of one out. Tracy let out another wail. “I want to go hooome.”
“Of course you do.” Beth smoothed Tracy's long black hair, then addressed Erlek with her eyes narrowed. “A wipe is completely unnecessary, and I won't let it happen. Tracy understands how important it is to keep our
secret. Don't you, Tracy?”
Tracy lifted her head and gave a pitiful nod.
“It's true,” Phil said. “She does.” He didn't sound quite as convinced as Beth, and Tracy wished he'd just kept his mouth shut.
Erlek returned Beth's glare with one of his own, one that made a shiver run down Tracy's spine. “Oh, she may understand, but you don't. Walt wants to see all three of you. You're done at Santa Command.”
And with that announcement, even Beth lost her cool.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tracy
“Out in the hall, now!” Beth pushed herself to her feet, leaving Tracy in a lump on the floor.
Tracy got up to follow her, but when Beth gave her a look that said, “Stay here,” Tracy sank back to the floor and did her best to look pathetic. That involved putting on the puppy dog eyes that her dad fell for every time.
Erlek humphed and shuffled into the hall. Phil followed, and Beth brought up the rear, shutting the door behind her. But just before she did so, she poked her head back through the doorway to say, “Don't worry. Everything will be fine.”
Tracy wasn't worried anymore, because she spotted something on the ceiling that made her smile. With some quick thinking, she had a revised two-part plan.
Beth's voice carried through the closed door. “…only place we're taking her is home.”
Then, there was some mumbling. Tracy was dying to know what was being said about her, but the computer was just sitting there, hers for the hacking. That was part one of her new plan. Tracy situated herself in the chair, and within seconds, she had logged in using the password she stole from Phil. Her first selection—Sleigh Routes.
When she opened the file, a little box popped up, asking whether she wanted text or graphics. She chose graphics and hit enter. A map of the world filled the screen, with the land divided into colored sections. Her own region—Florida, Georgia, and Atlanta—was purple. And within her region, there were several dozen colored lines criss-crossing the entire area.
At the bottom right corner of the screen was a button that said, “Mouse over for more information.”
“I don't care what you think.” That was Erlek. “You are coming with me, and so is that little nuisance.”
The doorknob twisted, and Tracy froze, her heart pounding in her chest. Would they notice the screen if she turned around and blocked it with her body? She was about to do just that when she heard Beth's protest and Erlek's hand being yanked from the door handle.
“Ouch!” the elf cried.
“You will convince Walt to give us more time,” said Beth, “or I'll tell him what you did last Thursday in toy storage.”
“I didn't break that many toys.”
“Five Leappads, two bicycles, and a Furby!"
"If you do that, I'll tell him about the time you…"
Tracy was still for a moment more, but when it seemed the argument was continuing, she sighed with relief and continued her task. She hovered the mouse over the Orlando area, and a text box appeared.
Name: Eugene Albert Blankenship
Region: East Orlando
Number of Houses: 708
Santa Command reloads: 5
So the guy who delivered presents to her house was named Eugene? Couldn't they have picked a guy who sounded more, well, Santa-y? Then again, if they were fooling the whole world, what did names matter? Santa was all about the look, and as long as the guy had the white beard and red suit, no one would know a thing. From what Phil and Beth had said, even Eugene didn't know it. His memory got wiped every Christmas.
Tracy's head hurt just thinking about that. She'd seen enough Star Trek to know that when people started messing with the mind, things got ugly. Did he forget other things too, like his wife's name, or his grandkid's birthday, or what he had for breakfast? Did they replace his memory with things that never happened, like a bad dream? And most importantly, did it hurt? It had to, considering Beth's reaction.
For the first time, Tracy realized she might not be safe after all. Beth seemed nice, and Phil seemed harmless, but they had a boss. And from what she'd heard, Walt wasn't a jolly guy in a red suit. He was someone to be afraid of.
“You have thirty seconds to get her or I'm calling Walt!” Erlek's voice boomed through the door.
“Oh no!” Tracy mumbled to herself. She moved the mouse to close the file, but instead of clicking the x in the corner, she moved her hand to her pocket instead. Her goal had been to find out the science behind Santa, and that hadn't changed. If she didn't get out in time, and they did manage to wipe her mind, she was going to need proof.
She pulled the turtle shaped zip drive from her pocket, plugged it into a slot on the computer, and started dragging files over to it. While the computer was transferring the third file, she got an error that said her drive was full.
“Oh no!” Tracy opened her drive, selected a bunch of files she'd downloaded at home from some video site, cut them from her drive, and moved them to the desk top. She was in such a hurry that her finger slipped, and she accidentally clicked one open. A string of numbers and letters filled the screen. She frowned. That certainly wasn't the TV show she downloaded. With no time to think about her messed up program, she closed it back up and started dragging files again.
The computer didn't like the next file. It was so big, a box appeared on the screen showing the slow, slow, slooow progress of the transfer. Tracy glanced toward the door. Phil, Beth, and the…creature were talking too low to hear again.
“Come on.” Tracy drummed her nails on the desk, and then because she thought it couldn't hurt, she took a couple of other Santa files and dragged them over to her zip drive too, hoping they'd just queue up and save her a little time.
A loud buzz came from the computer. The hard drive whirred loudly, and the mouse froze in place on the screen.
“Uh oh!” Tracy tapped, then pounded on the keyboard. The whirring sound got louder and a bright red light came on inside the computer tower. She glanced toward the door, but thankfully no one else seemed to hear it. She tapped enter a few more times, and then it happened.
The blue screen of death.
Tracy bit off a scream as she read the words on the screen.
A problem has been detected and your operating system has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. Beginning dump of physical memory.
And then a second later…
Dump of physical memory complete.
“No!” Tracy cried. “No! No! No! No!”
She pounded the keyboard, but nothing happened. The blue screen sat there, taunting her.
“Fine,” Beth yelled from the hallway, “but you need to let us talk to her first!”
Then, the doorknob turned.
Tracy yanked her turtle out of the computer and enacted part two of her plan.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Santa Command—Main Frame
December 25th
0140 hours
Phil hovered behind Beth's shoulder as she opened the door. He had no idea what she was going to tell Tracy. This was about as bad as things could get.
But when the door was fully open, he saw the frozen computer. He also noticed that the girl was nowhere in sight, and he realized things were about to get a lot worse.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Tracy
Tracy barely fit into the crawl space above the ceiling. When she first spotted the hatch, she assumed it was like her attic back home, large enough for her to walk through without ducking her head. Instead, Tracy found it difficult to even crawl. The floor was made up of narrow strips of plywood with nothing but the drywall of the ceiling and fluffy white insulation on either side of it. Tracy had no choice but to follow the path laid out by the boards. Because of the pipes and cables running across that path, she had to sometimes stretch out on her belly and wriggle herself through like a snake.
Also, it was very, very dark. She heard skittering all around h
er and wondered if she was hearing birds and squirrels, which would have been okay with her, or roaches and rats, which were not.
She was still wearing E. Higgens' coat. That made it harder to get through the tight spaces where she had to squeeze beneath the overhead support beams, but if she was going to escape, she was taking the coat as evidence. Maybe the computer files had finished uploading to her zip drive, maybe not, but she wasn't going home empty handed.
That was another problem, getting home. Her new plan involved getting to the loading bay and sneaking back on Santa's sleigh. She had gotten a good look at her Santa's picture on the computer and was sure she could figure out which one was him. His entire route was pretty close to her house. Ideally, she'd be able to get off close enough to walk home. If not, maybe she could call Ellen. She hadn't counted on Santa's crew being so uncooperative. Then again, she'd counted on Santa being real.
That was what made her head spin. For all of her life, heck, for all of her parents' and grandparents' lives, and on back for centuries, the Santa Commission had told them one thing above all else: that Santa was real.
But he wasn't. He was just some guy in a suit who never remembered a single Christmas Eve. He was worse than department store Santas. At least they knew the truth of what they were.
The dust in the crawl space tickled Tracy's nose. She lifted her hand to her face and discovered that her cheeks were wet, and it wasn't from her outburst back in the computer room. She had set out to find the truth behind Santa. Where she'd expected to find rocket engines and fireproof clothing, she found instead something very different. And a lot more upsetting.
Who were Beth and Phil? What kind of people worked for someone who wiped minds? That wasn't science. It was science fiction. She half expected little robot elves with red eyes to come marching through the crawl space chanting, “You are mine! You are mine!”
Tracy Tam: Santa Command Page 5
