Bot Wars, Line Zero

by J. V. Kade

  Aaron Dekker is a Net star who lives in Texas, the only remaining state that’s separate from the Districts. My history teacher said that Texas was full of a bunch of “no-good bot supporters” and that they thought “they were better than the UD.” Texas is super-rich, and was during the financial collapse, so it didn’t need to join with other states or the new Congress. Its government didn’t one hundred percent agree with banning robots either.

  Aaron doesn’t have to follow the UNDC’s restrictions, since he isn’t part of the UD. He posts whatever he wants on the Net. That doesn’t mean the UD doesn’t try to stop him. His site is shut down like every day, but it usually only takes him three seconds to find a way around the block.

  “My mom interviewed him forever ago,” Tellie explains, “and I was traveling with her that day. We’ve kept in touch.”

  I lick my lips. “So he linked up to my vid?”

  “I guess so, but I wonder what changed his mind.” Tellie pulls the rubber band from her hair and the blond ringlets fall across her shoulders. I can’t stop a stray thought from running through my head. Wow, she’s pretty, the thought says. And then I squash it like a meaty bug.

  “Before we delete it, want to do a search and see if people are talking about it anywhere else?”

  “Sure.”

  After Tellie divides the pizza between us, we go to the living room. She brings up the Net interface on the vid panel and types in “Robert St. Kroix.” A bunch of results appear. Tellie picks the first link and it takes us to a site where people are placing bets on Dad’s location. There’s even an interactive world map where you can pin a virtual tack to any location and write in your name.

  At another site, a girl named Heller tore apart the family photo from the vid and animated the three of us, putting us in some ridiculous Wild West action comic. Dad’s name is Sharp-Shooter St. Kroix and Po is Po the Piper and I’m Wily Fish.

  At first I think it’s funny, because Po looks ridiculous in a cowboy hat and leather chaps, but the longer I stare at it, the angrier I get. Because my dad is missing and there he is dancing around, looking like a joke.

  I grit my teeth, take in a gulp of air.

  Tellie glances at me. “It’s just a bunch of drain cloggers. What do they know?”

  I can’t stand to look at the screen for one more second. “My brother was right. We should take it down.”

  She types in two quick commands and when the screen reloads, it says: Your media has been deleted. The speakers belch out a crunching sound, like the vid was a piece of trash crumpled up and tossed into a Dumpster.

  “There. Done.”

  “Thanks.” But even though the vid is gone from Tellie’s Luna page, we both know the vid isn’t gone for good. I wanted it to spread through the Net and I got my wish. It’s all over the Net.

  At least I did what Po asked.

  “It was worth a shot,” Tellie says quietly. “If your dad is out there somewhere, he knows you’re looking for him. He knows you love him.”

  “Yeah.”

  We’re both quiet for a long time. The air-conditioning turns on with a click, and whirs through the vents. “I wish I had a family like yours,” Tellie says.

  I frown. “What do you mean? I have no parents.”

  Tellie snorts. “Neither do I. I mean, yeah, they’re here, but they’re not really here. Which is almost worse.”

  “That’s stupid.” And unfair, I think, but I don’t say that, because of the way her eyes get all watery-looking. Now Tellie is the one who’s crying? “I mean . . . I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re right. That was wrong of me to say.” She leaps off the couch and grabs both our plates. I follow her to the kitchen.

  “Your mom and dad are never home?” I try. She’s been a big help to me, and she’s listened to me whine about my own family. I should have been more of a friend when she wanted to talk about hers. But are we friends? I still don’t know.

  She slides the plates into the dishwasher. “I see the housekeeper more than I see my mom.”

  “That’s notched.”

  “Yeah.” She turns on the dishwasher and the light glows red. “And my dad . . . sometimes it’s like he doesn’t even know I exist.”

  I shove my hands in the pockets of my shorts. I don’t know what to say. I guess it’s better not to say anything. Tellie seems okay with that anyway. She quickly changes the subject and shows me her stash of chocolate. It’s more candy than I’ve ever seen outside of a store.

  We spend the rest of the afternoon stuffing our faces. And by the time I go home, I think maybe Tellie and I really are friends.

  ELEVEN

  LOX CALLS THE next day. I grin big when I see it’s him, and I can’t wait to tell him everything that’s happened. But when I pick up and his big face comes on the screen, he doesn’t waste a second before opening his mouth.

  “Thousands of girls all across the world are writing your name in hearts right now,” he says. Then he raises his voice real high. “I heart Trout. XOXO. Forever.”

  I move outside of the phone’s camera range. “Come on! Or I’ll make you talk to the toilet.”

  “Trout is so cute!” he goes on. “Marry me, Trout!”

  I go into the bathroom and point the phone at the toilet.

  “Dude,” he says, his voice echoing in the bowl, “you need to scrub that thing.”

  At least he isn’t making fun of me anymore. I pull the phone back so that the camera points at me. “Can we have a normal conversation now?”

  Lox scratches his scraggly blond hair and says, “Define normal.”

  “Well, if you shut up long enough to let me talk, I’ll tell you all about Tellie’s bedroom.”

  Lox’s expression inflates like a balloon. His eyes get bigger, his nostrils flare, his eyebrows creep up his forehead. “YOU WERE IN TELLIE RIX’S BEDROOM?”

  I laugh, because that’s exactly what I wanted him to say. “You should have seen your face just now.”

  “You’re changing the subject!”

  “All right. All right!”

  “Details, my friend.”

  I start by telling him about the hoverboard I found in her room the first time I was there, and then about the Junction Box poster. But somehow I veer off in a totally different direction about how funny she is, and how she started calling me Goldfish because she thought I looked more like one than a trout.

  And before I know it, Lox is pointing his phone at the toilet.

  “Hey!” I shout.

  “You need to bring it back and take it down a notch.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You sound like a fangirl at a Tanner Waylon concert. You got the fiery hots for Tellie now?”

  I snort and pretend like I’m turning off the Link.

  “Wait!” Lox says.

  I pause.

  “All right, I’m done.” Lox puts on his most serious face, which looks like a horse eating a sour gummy worm. “Any word on your dad?”

  All the laughter dies in my throat. “No. Not yet.”

  “I bet news is just around the corner. Your vid is spreading through the Net like the screaming memes.”

  I wrinkle my nose. Screaming memes is Lox’s term for the flu. And not the kind that comes out your mouth.

  “That’s gross.” The doorbell rings from the front of the house. “Someone’s here. Hold on.”

  I make my way down the hallway and to the front door. I check the tiny screen in the security pad to the right of the door. It’s an old system. The screen is the size of a peanut and it’s really fuzzy.

  There’s a woman standing on the stoop holding something in her hand.

  “I think it’s just a delivery person,” I tell Lox as I open the door, but once I g
et a good look outside, I see that it’s not a delivery person at all. And it’s not just one person.

  News vans hover along the curb. More people stand on the brown lawn. Cameramen zoom in on reporters. The woman in front of me leans in with her sleek microphone. “Mr. St. Kroix, can you comment on the latest development on your father?”

  “What’s she saying?” Lox says. “Point me at the action!”

  “What development?” I blurt.

  A cameraman turns and the light on his camera blinds me. People rush toward the house once they realize I’ve opened the door.

  The reporter looks pleased to spill the bolts. “Your father’s ID thread came back online this morning.” She jams the microphone in my face.

  I stammer out several syllables, but none of them actually make words.

  “Dude!” Lox shouts.

  “Mr. St. Kroix!” someone else yells.

  “Trout! Where did you get your nickname? What does it mean?”

  The crowd is suddenly crushing. There are so many people crammed on the stoop and gathered around the three steps that I can barely see past them to the street. Their voices mix together in an ear-scraping sound. My heart hammers against the hill of my tongue.

  I back into the house and slam the door shut. Lox yells through the Link to get my attention. I bring the phone back up so we can see each other.

  “What was all that noise?” he asks.

  I get far away from the door, taking off like I’m on a hoverboard, and hurry into my bedroom. I slam the door shut and drop down on the bed.

  “That was crazy,” I say. The reporter’s words bounce around in my head like stray laser beams. Dad. Thread. Online. ZING. ZING. How? When? ZING. Does Po know?

  “I gotta go,” I say.

  “What? Now?” Lox shouts. “You didn’t tell me what was going on!”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  I hit the END button and the screen goes back to my default picture—a scientific diagram of a wolf monkey. Dad loved wolf monkeys.

  My stomach twists up in knots thinking about him. Did his ID thread really come back online?

  Is he alive out there somewhere waiting to be saved?

  TWELVE

  IT TAKES PO twice as long to get inside after work because of all the reporters and cameramen. And when he finally does burst in the door, his face is all screwed up and he’s breathing like a racehorse.

  “Mother son of a—” he shouts once he’s safely inside, cutting himself off when he sees me. “You,” he says, pointing. “This is your fault!”

  I set down the box of crackers I’m feeding off of and jump to my feet. “I’ve been trying to call you. Where have you been? Did you hear about Dad?”

  Po ignores me and disappears into the kitchen. I follow him and find him rooting around in the freezer.

  “Dad’s ID thread came back online,” I say.

  Po chips away at a mound of frost. I think there’s a box of frozen macaroni and cheese under it, but I can’t be sure.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  The freezer kicks on and cold white air pumps out. Po makes quick work of the frost, tears out the box of macaroni, and rips open the top. He digs inside and pulls out a tiny black stick attached to a ball chain.

  He presses his index finger to one end of the stick and his thumb to the other. When it beeps, a blue light . . . blinks on.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “It’s a scrambler. For your ID chip.”

  “You hid a scrambler in a box of macaroni?”

  “It’s pretty old,” he says, totally ignoring me, “but it’ll do the job.” He slips the ball chain over my head. “Tuck it in your shirt. Keep it close to your heart.”

  I do as he asks. “Why am I wearing a scrambler?”

  “Shh,” he says, and points at the ceiling.

  “I—”

  He cuts me off with the shake of his head. He whirls around and taps the faucet. Water comes gushing out. Next, he pulls out his Link, punches in a few commands, and plays a French lesson. Marsi Olsen knows French, and Po bought an app a while back thinking he’d learn French too.

  Lot of good it did him. How do you say “drain clogger” in French? Because that’s something I’d like to know.

  With the water running, and a dude rattling off French words, Po gets in real close to me and whispers in my ear. “Just a precaution. You can never be too careful. Dad taught me that.”

  “Dad? When? I don’t get—”

  He points to his ear and I grumble before leaning in. He smells like fried food and cornbread. The smell of Chinley’s always sticks to him after he gets out of work. I used to hate the stench, but now I think of it as the smell of my brother being home.

  “You’ve notched this whole thing, you realize that?” he says.

  I pull back and roll my eyes before saying, “Tell me what’s going on then!”

  “I can’t!” Po whisper-shouts.

  “Try!”

  “Trout.” He makes my name sound like a growl.

  “Did Dad’s thread come back online or not?”

  The French lesson switches to popular phrases. “Avec plaisir. It was my pleasure. Pas de quoi. It was nothing.”

  Po stares at me for a long time and the longer he stares, the harder my heart beats. I can’t tell if it’s because of the anticipation of his answer or the chip in my heart reacting to the scrambler.

  “Yes,” he finally says, and all the air rushes out of my lungs.

  “When?” I lean in closer. “Where is he?”

  “It’s probably a decoy, the thread. To move the attention away from where Dad’s really at. Or maybe it’s to lure us in . . .”

  My eyebrows sink into a frown. “Where is he really at?”

  “I’ve already told you too much. The less you know, the better. Trust me.”

  “Is Dad alive?” I blurt.

  Po makes a face like he’s afraid to tell me the truth. Finally, he nods his head.

  I feel like my insides have turned to stone. I grit my teeth. “How long have you—”

  He holds up a finger again, reminding me I have to watch what I say and how loudly I say it, even though I have no idea who would be listening.

  All those months I’d been waiting around to hear the news that Dad was okay. And Po knew the whole time. The anger is like a cannon-laser bursting out of me. I shove him. He stumbles back, slamming into the counter. I throw a punch, but my aim is bad and it lands on his biceps. He grips my arms and pushes me into a chair.

  “Calm down!” His face goes red.

  “You knew! This whole time you were lying to me.” I flail, kick, hit. Not that it does any good.

  “STOP!” Po yells.

  I slump against the chair and swallow a growl. I try to hold in all the things I want to scream. I’m so mad, I feel like an X-bomb about to go off.

  “You won’t tell me any of the important things!” I shout. “I’m not a little kid anymore!”

  “I never said you were.”

  “Then tell me what you know.”

  Po shakes his head. “I can’t, little bro. Not yet.”

  “Fine.” I get up and shove the chair away. “Let me know when you can tell me.”

  “Trout,” he calls as I stomp down the hallway.

  I slam the bedroom door behind me and sink against it as I try to make sense of all the crud filling my head. All those visits to the Heart Office were pointless. I feel stupid now realizing I went in there all full of hope, wishing with everything I had for a different answer than sorry.

  And Po knew all along.

  THIRTEEN

  AROUND TEN O’CLOCK the next morning, my ex-brother comes out of his room. “I got some er
rands to run.”

  Errands is probably code for “I’m going to the Smoothie Shack to ogle Marsi while she works.”

  “Sure,” I say, not even looking at him. If Po kept it a secret that Dad was alive, what else is he keeping from me? And why did he keep it a secret to begin with? I sit parked on the couch staring out the front window, my head buzzing like a broken hover rail.

  Po stalls near the front door. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”

  I keep my face blank.

  “I didn’t mean to yell at you,” he adds.

  “Sure.”

  “Will you at least look at me?”

  Sighing, I turn his way, arms crossed over my chest. “What?”

  “I wish I could tell you. I do. It’s just . . . it’s better if you don’t know. You’ll understand one day.”

  “Fine.” I turn back to the window. Part of me hates being mean to Po, but the other part of me is still ticked off, and that part is definitely winning.

  “You want to come with me?”

  “Nah.”

  He lets out a breath. “All right. Don’t leave the house. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  I grunt as he leaves.

  Reporters start showing up an hour later. Some of them ring the doorbell. I ignore it, wishing I had an underground sprinkler system like Tellie so I could turn it on. That’d send them running.

  Two hours later, the doorbell has rung so many times, I start plotting ways to break it. But Lox is the one who’s good with tools and electrical things. I’d probably burn the house down.

  After three hours of cartoons, I realize it’s closing in on dinnertime and Po still isn’t home. I check the driveway and find it empty. There are still reporters hanging around, but they’re thinning out. Probably because we haven’t talked to them, and also because we’re pretty boring.

  When I’ve had enough TV, I search for my Link, thinking I’ll call Lox or Tellie, but before I can find the stupid thing, it starts ringing. I dig it out from beneath my bed and see it’s Po calling. I don’t know if I feel like talking to him, so I let it ring a few seconds as I decide.