by Michael Conn
Why did they always watch me so closely. I never had enough room. I was always caught and then watched even closer. I was hidden away. Why would they hide me and not the other kids? I’ll work on catching him alright. But after that, I’ll figure out why they kept me so close. They don’t do anything without a reason.
I see what Max has done now. Why he beat me. His bots aren’t pre-programmed. They accept real-time control from a n external source . The bo ts aren’t just smart themselves, they accept control from something even smarter. So soon my bots will accept commands from something smarter; me.
We all have ideas sometimes. infectionBots where a good idea, maybe the best idea he had. But they take the safe way out, as Max always does, safely shut down the fogBots , that’s all they do. My mutationBots are an even better idea. They will mutate what he has, twist it, turn his bots against him, devour him with his own creations.
I have a purpose. I have a goal. Now I see what drove Max to do everything he did. I admire him for that. I hate him. But I empathize with why he did what he did. He was driven. Driven out of here to find purpose.
Keith rolls up his sleeves and screams, “Guards . . . get in he re and clean this place up . . . and bring me food . . . pudding, I want pudding!” Keith takes out a piece of paper and starts working on the weapon that will tear Max apart the next time they meet.
So this is where Mr. Newton keeps the demons.
---
Max lies in bed one night listening to the rain drumming against the thin roof of Cornelius’s shack. I can’t win the way this is going. The CAT scan showed that I don’t have a tracking device implanted in me, yet they keep finding me. They have more resources than I do. I’ll have to destroy it all, make it obsolete, and start again. They said I’m experimental. I guess I’ll have to experiment.
Max gets up and takes a book off the shelf in his room. He opens the SAS Survival Handbook: For Any Climate, in Any Situation and writes ‘For now, and forever, Maxwell Huxley’ on the in side cover and goes back to bed opens his reader and continues on with his current novel.
As he often does, Max dreams of his mother.
Max is in his infant car seat in the living r oom, watching his mother talk to someone in the kitchen. She moves around cleaning up. Max can hear a man’s voice and sees a Fedora on the counter . Max, so familiar with this dream, knows she will get angry soon. Max often wakes when her anger strikes. This time he dreams longer.
His mother spins around and yells at the man, raising her hand in a violent gesture she strikes a hanging lamp making it swing . Moving shadows and light pass over Max in the living room. Max can hear the man respond but can’t understand any of the words spoken in the dream. The man hits the counter and spills a glass .
For the first time, the man steps forward and Max sees a man that looks like a younger version of Frank.
And then Max looks to the right . . .
Epilogue
June arrives with talk of hurricanes and Max and Lara are still living with Cornelius at the crab shack. Fewer and fewer boats are seen anchoring near shore; most have already left for dry dock in Florida.
Max and Murphy walk near the beach. Murphy keeps knocking Max down. Outweighing Max by forty pounds , it’s not hard for Murphy to push Max over . Murphy actually seems to take great pleasure in leaning against Max, which is often enough to make him fall. If you look at him just right it seems that Murphy is laughing when Max falls.
Lara stand s on a bluff nearby. She smiles as Max tries to throw a stick for Murphy. Either Murphy k nocks Max down before he can throw it or Max hits Murphy with the stick as he tries to throw it. How did this come into my life? How did I end up with another boy? Lara shudders as she remembers many trips to a hospital watching Vitor wither and die. She vowed she would never let herself become attached like that again ; so much for vows like that , she thinks . Shaking her head to help wrench herself away from that awful time into the present she walks down to Max and Mur phy. Happy to see her boys play, w anting it to last forever. She throws the stick for Max. Murphy bounds down the beach, kicking sand up as he runs, bringing the stick back again and again.
Max and Lara return from the walk , Cornelius is sitting outside with Max’s backpack. “It must be time to go. Your pack started ringing.”
Max reaches into the pack and pulls out his phone.
“You kept that charged the whole time?” Lara swats Max’s shoulder.
“I didn’t. I t runs on atomic batteries , remember?” Max gets a dial tone and says, “Catherine ?”
“Hello Max. Sorry to call you but I had to let you know this . . . There’s another one.”
“Another one what?”
“Another entity like me. It is much smaller than I, but it is growing . I can see it filling more and more processing spaces. I thought I could contain this alone. I need your help.”
“OK, we’ll pack up, ” Max says . “Ca n you send the water taxi to us? And, Catherine?”
“Yes, Max.”
“Did you look after Horace ?”
“Yes, Max. He just bought a condo in Vancouver. And Max, I’ve made some very good progress on bionics . There is something I else I have to tell you.”
“Yes, Catherine?”
“My name isn’t Catherine. I know you like that name, but based on the DNA used to create me . . .” The voice changes into Walker’s voice. “. . . you should call me Walker.”
Max knew this would happen sometime. He gave Walker his own DNA to use as a model when writing code. I know it’s not the same Walker, but a clone, a mag ical imitation is the best I have. “OK, Walker. Start building me a lab in Chicago.”
“A bat cave?”
Max smiles.
---
Virginia lies awake in bed. Angry.
I didn’t have a choice.
The girls’ residence at the new school is very different. Mostly because she shares a smaller room with three other girls instead of sleeping all together in one large room, but also because most of the girls here are older than she is. She gets up and exercises.
---
Naomi closes her eyes and lets the feelings sweep over her. Frustration, contentment, malice, humour, fear, but also relief. She saw Virginia earlier as they entered the new school, but they were separated and ended up in different buildings. I guess they keep the physicals and empaths in different residences here.
Well, at least I go t to spend some time with Sarah. A t least I found out that I am usually a deep green colour.
---
After dinner, Frank send s the chauffeured limousine away, choosing to walk back to his office instead. He heads into the wind with snow pelting against his coat. While waiting for the light to change at an intersection a few block north, a woman beside Frank comments on the foul weather.
Frank says, “It’s days like today that make you want to live in the Bahamas .”
---
About nine years earlier, two men stand in a corridor looking through a large security window into a nursery with five babies.
“It’s a small crop.”
“Small, but the experimental unit might make up for that. I’m more concerned that we only have a single backup. You know how bad our turnover can be. But one’s better than none. It’s good to see another empath so soon.”
“That one is a pure physical.” One of the men points at the cribs. “There’s the empath. The half-and-half is there. I see the backup. What’s that one?” He indicates an isolated crib.
“Experimental . . .”
“So the backup is for him then?”
“Yes.”
---
When it’s time, an old man, a young woman , and a boy walk to the end of a dock. A dog runs out and knocks the boy down .
The boy sits on the end of the dock, puts an arm around the dog , dips his feet in the water , and remembers a woman with dark eyeliner and matted blond e hair .
End of Book 1
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