Lost in Cyberspace

by Richard Peck

  Now she was looking at us. Fenella’s hat was still knocked sideways, with the skull on her cheek showing. Her cape was crusty with gutter slush. Heather’s turban was unwinding. But her drawn-on nose rings were hanging tough, and you could practically hear her snake rattle. She’d lost the pin, so she was holding what looked a lot like a narrow garbage bag around her waist. And she wouldn’t get another wearing out of those panty hose. We looked like we’d been in a wreck, but not serious enough to feel sorry for. I was wearing school dress code, which made me look responsible, though I wasn’t.

  4

  The Last of Fenella

  We took Fenella out to JFK for her flight back to London the next day.

  “As a single parent, I see I’m going to have to make a lot of split-second decisions,” Mom said. “Fenella goes.”

  Frankly, Fenella didn’t seem that surprised. This may have happened to her before in other countries.

  Coming back into the city, I wanted to sit up front with the cabby. He didn’t speak English. I thought that might be better than what Mom had to say. But they don’t let you sit up front. You could be armed.

  Mom sighed. “Fenella had no more judgment than you two.” I was on one side of her, and Heather was on the other, staring out the window and trying not to be involved.

  We’d been over everything last night. Now we had to go over it again. “All right, Josh,” Mom said. “Who should be out at night in New York?”

  “Adults,” I mumbled, “in cars or cabs. Above-ground.”

  “And where should they be?”

  “Well-lighted neighborhoods. Uptown, East Side preferably, except in the immediate Lincoln Center area.”

  But Mom couldn’t let it go. “Planet Hollywood, I could understand,” she said. “The Hard Rock Cafe maybe. Even the Harley-Davidson Cafe in a pinch.”

  “You could look at it as kind of a field trip,” I said.

  “Field trip, my foot,” Mom said. “The only reason Fenella came over here is to go to so-called clubs in Tribeca and other battle zones that sell drugs to New Jersey teenagers.”

  Heather sighed. She was waiting for Mom to say “disco,” which is a word out of Mom’s past she uses sometimes.

  “You could see at a glance Fenella was a night person,” Mom said. “All she wanted to do was go to discos.”

  Heather looked around her at me.

  “And don’t think she wanted the two of you along. She only took you because it was her first night. Later, she’d have dumped you. I wouldn’t know who was in charge of you or where you were.”

  “Mo-om, you don’t need to know where I am all the time,” Heather whined. “I’m virtually thirteen and emotionally—”

  “If you were half as mature as you think you are,” Mom said, “you wouldn’t have walked past the doorman last night, twice, wearing nothing but a rag on your head, a snake on your face, and a Hefty bag.”

  “The Zimmers saw us too,” I mentioned.

  Mom slumped. “You don’t mean to tell me that the Zimmers saw you.”

  “Put a sock in it, Josh,” Heather said.

  5

  Muggers to the Fourth Power

  The first field trip that next week was to the Museum of the City of New York. This is probably the most low-tech museum in town. But it’s worth a trip, though probably not twice a semester. They had us in with the fourth and fifth grades again.

  Most of what they’ve got in this museum is either under glass or roped off. But you have to watch the fourth and fifth graders. You’ve got to watch Buster Brewster like a hawk. Three teachers had to pry him loose from a scale model of the Empire State Building. Buster was being King Kong.

  After that we had to walk with a teacher according to grade. Mr. Headbloom ran us through the history of the city: dioramas and room settings like “A Dutch Kitchen in Old Nieuw Amsterdam.”

  Somewhere after “Washington Inaugurated in Wall Street,” I missed Aaron. He hadn’t been giving his own voice-over because we were too close to Mr. Headbloom. One minute Aaron was there. The next he wasn’t. I may have seen him darting up to the second floor. I may not have. Then we were gridlocked behind fourth graders who were hung up at “The Evolution of Hook and Ladder Companies.”

  Upstairs they’ve got complete rooms from historic houses. We were coming up on John D. Rockefeller’s bedroom (1880). He was a rich tycoon who gave away dimes to show he was generous.

  Heavy curtains, gas fixtures, many rugs, and a big bed, all in dim, old-fashioned light. The younger kids moved past the doorway at their top speed. We would have too, except Mr. Headbloom glanced into the bedroom and stopped cold. Sixth graders walked up his heels.

  Mr. Rockefeller was in his bed. He died in 1937 at the age of ninety-eight. It says so on a plaque out in the hall. But there was a lump in his bed. I thought of Fenella, but it wasn’t that large. What size Rockefeller was, I didn’t know. By now he probably wouldn’t be too big. The covers were pulled up. But the pillow was dented like there might be a head up there.

  Mr. Headbloom looked around for Buster. But for once, he was with the rest of us. The lump in the bed moved. You had to be watching, but it did. “Is this real or multimedia?” somebody said.

  Mr. Headbloom scanned up and down the hall, checking for a museum guard. Then he took a quick, giant scissor-step over the rope across the door. “You,” he said to Buster, who was about to go with him, “back.”

  We watched Mr. Headbloom tiptoe across the oriental carpets. It was cool because this was almost breaking and entering. How often do you see a teacher do that?

  He got closer and closer to the bed. He reached down and pulled back the covers. Another rule broken.

  There was a flash of red hair, and Aaron sat up in Mr. Rockefeller’s bed. His laptop was in his lap.

  “Where am I?” he said, looking everywhere except at Mr. Headbloom.

  He snatched Aaron out and tried to remake the bed with a few quick moves of one hand. It was the best part of the whole field trip. Mr. Headbloom sprinted out of the exhibit and high-jumped the rope. He had Aaron by one arm. The laptop was swinging from Aaron’s other hand. They both cleared the rope like champions. When they lit out in the hall, Mr. Headbloom was breathing hard.

  This museum has no cafeteria. We had box lunches in an area with tables. I couldn’t interface with Aaron because he had to sit next to Mr. Headbloom.

  “I am still shocked, Zimmer,” he said, “profoundly shocked.”

  “It was a project,” Aaron said in a small, mouselike voice. “I was doing an I.S.” Meaning Independent Study.

  “Zimmer, we don’t do I.S. until upper school. What you did was infantile. Preliterate. You were acting like ...”

  He was acting like Buster Brewster is what Mr. Headbloom meant. But teachers don’t mention Buster’s name lightly. Checking around for Buster myself, I saw him in the distance. He had a fourth grader up against a wall and was going through his backpack.

  “Profoundly shocked,” Mr. Headbloom said to Aaron again. But we were over the worst. At Huckley they don’t call your parents unless you’re in the actual hands of the law.

  We decided to bypass the school bus and walk home that afternoon. We live thirty-some blocks south on Fifth. And it was a fairly mild day, January thaw or whatever.

  Aaron strolled along, as normal as he gets.

  “Zimmer, I’m shocked,” I said. “Profoundly shocked.”

  “Knock it off, Josh. It was an independent study, like I told Headbloom.”

  “You were doing an independent study of Rockefeller’s bed?” At the Eighty-sixth Street intersection I had to play crossing guard to keep Aaron from walking out into the traffic.

  He sighed. “Look, I’m in early stages, but I’ll try to explain.”

  “Do that.”

  “And I’ll try to keep it simple.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  “You familiar with dark fiber?”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  �
�It’s the part of fiber-optic cabling that isn’t being used yet,” Aaron said. “The data being beamed over fiber-optic networks is rising exponentially.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “We’re beaming a whole lot more data every minute. But only point one percent of fiber capacity is being used.”

  “Right.”

  “The rest is dark fiber.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s a strand in there somewhere that’ll beam present-day people into the past. And probably back. I think it must be cellular reorganization.”

  “Says who?”

  “It’s my own theory. Hit the right digital frequency, and you’ll experience physical translation.”

  “When do we get to Rockefeller’s bed?”

  “I’ve got my theory reduced to numbers that I’m satisfied with. And I’ve worked up some graphs. Did you know that the computer printer at school can do transparencies?”

  “Hadn’t noticed that,” I said.

  We strolled on down Fifth Avenue. And I wondered if Aaron was too weird to know. The elastic on one of his socks had given out. The sock drooped down over his shoe.

  “It’s more than an equation. It’s all part of a larger internet,” he said. “I haven’t got it fine-tuned yet. It’s like I’m one number off. It’s like I’m shy one dark fiber. It’s like I’m one channel away. It’s like—”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I get your point.”

  “You know what I’m missing?” He elbowed my side. “It’s something like the will or the need.” He made a fist and looked at it. It was about half the size of Buster’s. “I want it, but I don’t want it enough. Something like that.”

  “Which means what?”

  “The Emotional Component.”

  Emotional Component?

  “It’s not just what you know,” Aaron said, “it’s what you want. Maybe you can only get to the past if you really need to a lot.”

  Then it happened.

  Four guys came out of Central Park a half block ahead. They were held up by a wagon train of city buses. Then they were crossing Fifth Avenue, giving cabs the finger.

  Ball caps on backward. Black leather jackets. T-shirts down to their knees. Ripped Levi’s. Two-hundred-dollar gym shoes. And eighth grade if not older. Trouble.

  I was trying to remember what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to run out into traffic and take your chances against vehicles. But this bunch was already out there.

  Then they spotted us. Aaron was still in his dream world of dark fiber and Emotional Component. I was screaming inside.

  We were right in the middle of a block. No side street, nothing. There were a few people on the sidewalk. But they were all don’t-get-involved types. Local people, and you’re really safer with tourists.

  The fearsome foursome was in the middle of Fifth Avenue and angling our way. They’d spotted us, and they’d talked us over. They’d probably even voted. Now they were heading for us, and they had public school written all over them. We were sitting ducks in Huckley dress code and still eleven blocks from home. Dead meat. You can count on your doorman, but not other people’s.

  I nudged Aaron, and for once this alerted him. “Yikes,” he said. “Muggers to the fourth power.”

  Then he must have freaked out. He lifted one knee to balance his laptop. He flipped it open and started to type up something, an equation or formula or whatever. I had about ten seconds left to look cool. Then I had ball caps on all sides of me.

  “Yo, preppy,” a ball cap said in an already-changed voice.

  I was worried about boxcutters. But all I saw now were big bunches of knuckles. The whole world turned black leather. And the first punch connecting with my head really unplugged my modem.

  6

  Aaron Up a Tree

  When I came to, I felt a wet nose in my ear. At first I had thought it was my own nose. I thought maybe my face had been that rearranged. But out of the swelling eye on that side, I saw it was a French poodle in a plaid jacket. Its owner pulled it away and continued on uptown.

  I was stretched on cold concrete. I hadn’t been this flat-out since Fenella got us thrown out of that club. At least this was Fifth Avenue. My backpack had broken my fall, more or less. I could feel the shapes of books still in it. Somehow the killer quartet hadn’t been too interested in books.

  I only had about an eye and a half. Trying to move set off car alarms in my head. Aaron was crouching over me. “You okay?” he said.

  “I been better. What did they get?”

  “What did you have?”

  “About four dollars and change.”

  “That’s what they got. They didn’t want your watch. They had Rolexes. You feel like moving?”

  He was talking to me, but he was gazing around at Fifth Avenue. Maybe he was worried that the gang would circle back and zero in on us again.

  My backpack weighed a ton, but I sat up. My nose was bleeding slightly on my shirt. When I looked down, I saw I had only half a Huckley tie left. It was sliced off just under the knot right through the dimple. So they did have boxcutters.

  “You got a handkerchief?” I said.

  “You kidding? Use your sleeve. This is an emergency.” But still he kept gazing over his shoulder at the street, which was nothing but cabs racing to make the light. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, and I only had one eye. I began to wonder about this. I looked him over. He had two eyes and a complete necktie, with traces of goat cheese.

  “What did they get off you?”

  “Nothing,” he mumbled.

  “Hey,” I said, “why me?”

  He shrugged.

  “You telling me that they walked right past you to get me? You’re smaller. They’d have gone right for you.”

  “They didn’t see me,” Aaron muttered.

  “You’re not that little.”

  “I wasn’t here,” he said, almost whispering.

  “You didn’t run,” I said. They’d have brought him down in three paces.

  “Not exactly. Let’s see if you can stand up.”

  I had to make two trips, but I got there. I found my feet while heavy metal played in my head. My eye on the poodle side was now swollen shut. Aaron just stood there. He was sneaking peeks at the street, or across the street at the park.

  “Let’s go home,” I said. “I can make it.”

  “In a minute.” Now he was edging away, out to the curb.

  “If you want a cab,” I said, “you’re paying.”

  But he wasn’t looking for a cab. He was looking across at the trees in the park. He was so cyberspaced I thought about limping home by myself. Then he came back and gave me one of his owl looks.

  “I was over there,” he said, “up that tree, the third one down from the trash can.”

  “You were up in that tree while I was being pounded on?”

  “In a sense.”

  “Wrong. You didn’t have time to get there. You’d have to shoot across three lanes of traffic and two parking lanes before you even squirreled up a tree. You’d have been flattened.”

  “The traffic was already stopped before I even started across. They’d all hit their brakes. It was deafening.”

  “They’d stopped for my mugging?”

  “No. There’d been sort of an accident down there, just past that manhole cover.”

  It made me look, one-eyed, out at Fifth. The cabs were flying by. There was no accident out there.

  I told him that. “Aaron, I’m the accident. Do you see an accident out there?”

  “Not now,” he mumbled. “Not today.”

  My left eye felt like a paperweight. A bunch of people were line dancing in my head.

  “It worked, Josh.”

  “What worked?”

  “My equation. My formula.” He held up his laptop. “It combined spontaneously with my need to escape. I was dark fibered into another time frame.”

  “And up a tree?”

  “I’ve got
some of my numbers wrong. Or something.”

  “Let’s have this in layman’s terms,” I said. “You turned invisible to get away from that gang and, pow, you’re up a tree and back in time?”

  “Not exactly. I didn’t turn invisible. I just suddenly wasn’t here.”

  “I was. They nearly beat the—”

  “And you weren’t here either. I looked over from my tree, and you weren’t here. Neither was the gang. And another thing. I didn’t go back in time.”

  “Aaron, trust me. I never thought you could.”

  “I went forward.”

  My eye bored into him. “You went forward? Like into the future?”

  He nodded. “I’m off on my numbers. I shouldn’t even be trying anything like this on a laptop. It’s going to need a new battery pack, at least.”

  “How far into the future do you think you went? Were there spaceships? Were there people here from other planets? Was the whole city climate-controlled under a dome? Was there trash collection?”

  Aaron’s eyes looked shifty. I may have looked bad, but he didn’t look so good himself. Under the red hair his face was so pale that he looked like a radish. “Not that far,” he said. “Maybe just a matter of days. A week or so.”

  “You mean everything looked the same?”

  “More or less. It was still winter. You weren’t here. You were probably someplace else that day. I probably was too. I didn’t see us.”

  “Then how do you know it wasn’t a few days ago instead of a few days from now?”

  Aaron looked really worried. “Because of the accident.”

  I try to be skeptical. “Accidents happen every day on Fifth,” I said. “Yesterday, today, tomorrow.”

  “Not this accident,” he muttered.

  “Like it was really bad? A big pileup or something?”

  “It wasn’t cars. It wasn’t that kind of accident. Anyway, I wasn’t there long enough. I was only gone about ninety seconds. What do you want from that, a miniseries?”

  This was weird talk, even from Aaron. “So how’d you get back?”

  “Well, I still had my laptop with me. I wedged it into that fork in the tree over there. I punched up my formula in reverse. Then I had these shooting pains all over my body. I’d had them before on the way out. That could have been my cells falling into place. Then I was right here on the sidewalk again, and you had a poodle in your ear.”