Zeke Bartholomew

by Jason Pinter

  “Sometimes you need to look closer,” I said. “Things can be more than they seem.”

  Inside the shed was a water fountain. It was caked in grime and sludge. Next to it was a grate that measured about eighteen by twelve inches. That was it. Nothing else. Except the dime.

  Inside the water dish on the fountain was a run-of-the-mill dime. I’d left it there the first time I found the shed, knowing what it was used for.

  I took the dime and knelt down. One by one I inserted it into the small slot at the top of each of the four screws holding down the grate. A little elbow grease and the grate was free. I pulled it off the opening and gently placed it to the side of the fountain.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Down there?” Sparrow said. She peered into the darkness, appearing hesitant. Strange for a girl who had just parachuted away from a damaged aircraft. My dad has a friend, Phil Bushwick, who served in the navy. Big, strong guy who looks like he wears his skin three sizes too small. Phil is afraid of frogs. I mean, once I brought a live frog home, and when he saw it, Phil, who was having a beer with my dad, fell over backward in his chair, cracked his head on the floor, and ended up in the hospital with a concussion. Maybe long, dark tunnels were Sparrow’s frog.

  “You can wait here,” I said. “I’ll take the ComLet and go myself.”

  This appeared to anger Sparrow. “I’d rather fall into a vat of boiling acid. Let’s go, tunnel rat. You first.”

  “No need to be so dramatic. Come on. “ I climbed into the grate opening.

  There were old metal footholds on the side where sewage workers must have climbed up and down at one point. Step by step I made my way down the ladder into the damp, smelly darkness. I’d made this trip many times, often with backpacks full of stuff. I felt a slight surge of pride when I saw Sparrow daintily making her way down, pausing every few seconds to check below her. For the first time all day, I felt like the braver person.

  “Careful,” I said, helping her the last few steps. A narrow stream of water flowed through the middle of the tunnel. The walls were slick rock, slimy, and the whole place smelled dank. There was barely any light. But I knew the way by heart. “Follow me.”

  I led the way, Sparrow’s shoes clacking on the rocks behind me. I’d memorized the path a long time ago. One hundred thirty-seven paces forward—to the T-junction. At the T-junction, we made a left. Forty-two paces to the next junction. From there we made a right.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Sparrow whispered.

  “Shh,” I said. “You’ll make me lose focus and then we’ll be lost.”

  “Lost? Are you kidding? Where are we, Zeke?”

  “Calm down. I’m kidding. I know exactly where we are. Geez, were you born in a dark tunnel or something?”

  Sparrow didn’t respond. I looked back. Something I’d said had clearly touched a nerve, because she was staring down at the rocks. Water whooshed between us. The mystery of Sparrow was deepening. I wanted to ask what the problem was, but if the goons were right, there wasn’t much time before Operation Songbird—whatever it was—took effect.

  At the latest junction, we took the roundabout until we came to a long, dark corridor. I remembered the very first time I’d come down here. It was three years earlier. Kyle had finished a little league game. He was pitching. At the time, he was only nine inches or so taller than everybody else. His blazing fastball made the other boys in our grade flail like they were swatting invisible flies. After the game, while the teams were shaking hands, one of the opposing kids tripped Kyle. He went down like a broken branch.

  Everyone laughed at him. Even the kids on his own team. The kids he’d just helped win. I was in the stands with my dad. I felt awful watching it. Kyle lay there, embarrassed. Finally the kids all left. I told my dad I’d meet him at home. I went out to the pitcher’s mound, where Kyle was sitting with his face in his glove. I told him he didn’t need those jerks. He didn’t say anything. We spent the afternoon talking. He said he wanted to play baseball in college, maybe the pros, but didn’t think he could handle it if things were like this. He said he didn’t want to be a geek forever. I told him that the kids who were geeks in school ended up the most successful people ever. Bill Gates was a geek. That guy who invented Facebook was a geek. George Lucas? Steven Spielberg? Mega-geeks. I told him he should be proud to be a geek—because we would inherit the earth. Or at least invent cool new software.

  We walked around the outfield and eventually stumbled across the shed. Kyle said sometimes he wished he could crawl into a dark hole and disappear. That’s when I took the dime out of my pocket and said, “Now’s our chance.”

  I unscrewed the grate, and the rest is history.

  Eighty-four paces after the roundabout, Sparrow and I came to a door. It was barely visible in the gloom. Kyle and I had found the door by accident. It was the greatest discovery of our lives. Kyle had put a large Master Lock padlock on it. The combination was 9-29-14.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “For what?” Sparrow replied. “More murk?”

  I ignored the comment. I gripped the lock and entered the combination. It released. I removed it and put it in my pocket.

  Then I gently pushed the door open. Sparrow’s eyes opened wide.

  “Whoa…this is…”

  “The GeekDen,” I said. “The name is a work in progress.”

  “Progress,” Sparrow said absently. “Right.”

  She stepped into the GeekDen and took in her surroundings. I felt a faint burst of pride as she surveyed the cave Kyle and I had built over the last few years.

  The walls were lined with dozens of shelves, each of which was piled high with circuitry, wiring, and various battery packs. A workbench at the far end held every kind of tool imaginable, all laid out as neatly as a surgeon’s table. A bookshelf was piled high with manuals, glossaries, instruction books, and how-to videos. Blueprints were tacked to the walls, each design one of our own making.

  There were screws, bolts, wires, tubes, cylinders, beakers, and everything a growing mad scientist could possibly want. It had taken Kyle and me weeks and weeks to gather everything, transporting it step by careful step down that dark hole and through the damp sewers. This GeekDen was everything I couldn’t do out in the open. In here I was allowed to be myself. In here I wasn’t Zeke Bartholomew, First-Class Nerdzilla. Here I was Zeke Bartholomew, Superspy.

  I turned the ComLet over in my hands. It was a fantastic piece of equipment, something that would have been impossible to manufacture given my relatively meager access to these kind of high-tech materials. Still, despite its technological advances, the ComLet was assembled in a pretty primitive fashion. Aside from the lack of waterproofing, the circuitry was all wrong. It was too bulky, too heavy. If I had the resources Sparrow did, I could make the most kicking ComLet ever.

  “Give me a minute,” I said. I took the ComLet over to the workbench. I unscrewed the battery chamber and pried open the circuitry board. The batteries were a little waterlogged and would need to be replaced. I didn’t recognize the type of batteries it used—but I could work around that. The wiring was another matter.

  Much of the circuitry board was fried. The wires had grown corrosive. Diodes ruined. I pulled a box off the shelf, rifled through it, and spilled a mess of pieces onto the table. I could feel Sparrow’s eyes watching me intently. I had no intention of letting her down.

  I put on a pair of magnifying glasses to get a better look at the circuit board close up. It didn’t look good.

  The first step was replacing the destroyed wiring. With a pair of tweezers, I gently removed the burned wires, including pieces stuck to the board. I opened up a fresh toothbrush from a box and dipped it in rubbing alcohol. Using my makeshift cleaner, I brushed away any residue and scraped off any bits of metal and wiring that had fastened themselves t
o the board. Any debris I threw into a small box. Some of it might be able to be repurposed later. Then I took a soldering iron and replaced the damaged wires with fresh ones.

  It was a painstaking, arduous process, not made easier at all by the fact that Sparrow spent the entire time leaning over my shoulder and asking unhelpful questions like, “Are you sure you’re not breaking it?”

  “Your ComLet fell from a plane, landed in a lake, and short-circuited. And you’re asking me if I’m breaking it?”

  Finally she got the picture and backed off a bit. I got the sense that Sparrow was not used to anybody other than herself having control over a situation. And it was just as strange for me. The only situation I tend to have control over is how much milk I pour into my cereal in the morning.

  Half an hour after I began, I’d done all I could. The wires were replaced. The board cleaned of all residue. I still had no idea if any of this would work—but there was only one way to find out.

  I handed the newly repaired ComLet back to Sparrow. “Give it a whirl.”

  She took it from me and turned it over in her hands. “Let’s see just what kind of whiz kid you are, Zeke.”

  Sparrow strapped the device back onto her wrist, then held a pair of buttons on the outer rim. For a moment, nothing happened. No sounds, nothing. My heart sank. Sparrow looked dejected. Then…a light began to blink. It was yellow. I pointed at it.

  “What…what does that mean?”

  Sparrow’s eyes lit up. “That means it’s recalibrating. It’s what happens after you restore the ComLet to its original settings. It means it’s working.”

  There was a faint humming sound. The yellow light began to blink, and then it turned green. And once it turned green, the computer inside activated. It lit up in front of us. I couldn’t tell what was beaming brighter—me or the ComLet.

  “It works!” Sparrow cried out.

  I smiled. “Of course it does. That’s what I do.” I had mentally given the ComLet about a fifty-fifty chance of actually working, but I didn’t tell Sparrow that.

  “This is incredible, Zeke,” she said, toggling around with the newly fixed ComLet. “How did you learn how to do all this?”

  “I taught myself.”

  She looked up from the hardware.

  “Seriously?”

  “Um…yeah. I’ve always had a knack for gadgets and stuff. Always wanted to make my own things. But science and physics teachers never really teach you more than what will help you pass pop quizzes. I wanted to go beyond that. I wanted to be like Q.”

  “Q?”

  “You know, from the James Bond movies. The guy who makes all the cool things, like grappling hooks that look like cocktail napkins and lasers built into rabbits’ feet.”

  “I must have missed those movies.”

  I laughed long and deep until my sides hurt. Then I stopped. “Wait…you’re serious?”

  “I never had time for movies. I was out actually saving the world.”

  “Yeah. I see how that could eat into your free time.”

  Sparrow fiddled with her ComLet. “We need to go back to the surface. It doesn’t get good reception down here.”

  “Are you kidding me? Who manufactures your devices, a blind marmot? I could build a cell phone that gets five-bar reception down here in one day, and SNURP, with all its resources, can’t do it?”

  I could see Sparrow beginning to boil under the collar. No sense arguing. We’d need to get back to the surface anyway. Hopefully at that point we could get her ComSuckLet working and figure out how to stop Operation Songbird.

  “Let’s go,” she said, and we both turned back to leave the GeekDen.

  “Oh, crap,” I said.

  Standing there in the doorway was Kyle.

  “Hey, uh, Zeke,” he said. “Who the heck is she, and why did you let her in here?”

  I’m Zeke’s cousin. Stephanie.”

  Sparrow responded without a moment’s hesitation. It led me to believe she’d been caught in predicaments like this before and had the lie well rehearsed. Sadly, I did not.

  “Your cousin?” Kyle asked, eyes narrowed. “I thought your aunt lived in North Dakota.”

  “She does,” I stammered. “They’re visiting.”

  “And didn’t you tell me you couldn’t stand your cousin Dougie? Didn’t he smell like kitty litter or something?”

  “Mixed with bacon,” I replied.

  “Yeah. Bacon. I don’t remember you mentioning a girl cousin.”

  “What, do I need to explain my whole life to you? Who are you, my boss? Boss Kyle? Huh? What’s your problem anyway?”

  Penalty on Zeke: being way too defensive.

  “Take it easy,” Kyle said. He was nearly as tall as the GeekDen ceiling and practically had to hunch over so as not to scrape his head on the rocks. “Look, I don’t really care. But you weren’t in school today. I called your house; your dad is freaking out. He said you weren’t home last night. Cops are everywhere looking for you.”

  “Cops?” Sparrow said, suddenly interested in the conversation.

  “Yeah. I stopped by your place, Zeke. Cops have been talking to your dad all morning. He said you two had dinner, and that’s the last he remembers seeing you. Where’ve you been, dude? The whole town is freaking out like it’s under alien attack. It’s actually kinda exciting. Like our town won the Super Bowl or something.”

  I sank backward, finding a stool, and sighed. Cops everywhere. Looking for me. My dad a nervous wreck. He’d always been protective, especially after my mom died, and my heart broke thinking about the grief this had likely caused him. How could I have been so selfish? Getting into that car like I was some stupid child being offered candy. I’d seen so many movies and read so many spy novels that I’d foolishly begun to think I really was one. And it had brought my father heartache and exposed him to people far more dangerous than anything I could have ever imagined.

  This wasn’t a game. There wouldn’t be any end credits. It was time to end this. It was time to go back to being Zeke Bartholomew, Übernerd. That’s who I was. That’s all I was.

  “Come on,” I said to Kyle. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Sparrow said, grabbing hold of my arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Home, to my dad,” I said. “Look, I don’t know anything. And if there are cops everywhere, we’ll be safe until this whole thing blows over. You have your wristband back and working. You can handle this. Nice seeing you again, ‘Stephanie.’”

  “You’re not thinking this through,” Sparrow whispered through gritted teeth. She was staring at Kyle, clearly not wanting to talk any specifics around him. I was glad she felt that way—enough people in my life were in danger because of me. “That ‘appointment’ is in just a few hours,” she said. “I need you there. I’m all alone on this.”

  I looked back at Sparrow. I didn’t know what she wanted from me, or what she needed me for.

  “It totally is appointment viewing, I know,” Kyle said. “I can’t wait.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked him.

  “Have you gone brain dead? The concert. Tonight at eight o’clock. The debut music video.”

  “What music video?” Sparrow said.

  “Duh,” Kyle said. “Penny Bowers and Jimmy Peppers. PB&J. They’re introducing the first single from their new album. It’s supposed to be, like, the most-watched event in TV history. Our whole school will be watching. Every kid in every school will be watching. Every kid in the world will be watching, and every parent who pretends to not like them. The news predicts more people will watch this new video than the moon landing.”

  Sparrow and I looked at each other. We were thinking the same thing.

  “Are you thinking…” she said, her voice full of trepidatio
n.

  “I am.”

  “Then…”

  “I agree. We need to go get sandwiches.”

  She looked at me like I’d just farted drumsticks.

  “Sandwiches. That was a joke,” I said. “I know. PB&J. Operation Songbird. The timing seems to make sense.”

  Sparrow spun around to look at Kyle. “How many people are going to be watching this video, did you say?”

  “I don’t know,” Kyle said. “Their last video supposedly was watched by, like, a hundred million people. And everyone expects this one to be bigger. If you’re not watching it, you’re a giant loser. And nobody wants to be the only one in school the next day who didn’t see it.”

  “Hundreds of millions of people…” Sparrow said, her voice trembling.

  “Maybe more,” I said.

  “You told me that this SirEebro device, that it could ‘hijack’ sound waves. Use them to embed subliminal sounds or other things.”

  Sparrow spoke in an emotionless tone. The enormity of what was happening was reaching her. “It was designed to use on our enemies. To hijack their communications systems. So that radio broadcasts, television signals could be commandeered. We could control what people thought, how they reacted. But it was never used. It was deemed by the Pentagon to be too unethical. Too dangerous. That’s why it was being transported to SNURP headquarters. We were going to study it, not use it.”

  “Well, somebody is about to use it. Le Carré is going to hijack the PB&J broadcast and brainwash hundreds of millions of people. He’s going to turn the entire world into brain-dead zombies at his control.”

  “Uh, Zeke?” Kyle said. I’d totally forgot he was standing there. “What are you two talking about?”

  2:43 p.m.

  Five hours and seventeen minutes until something really, really bad happens, and I don’t even want to think about, because I have kind of a weak stomach…

  We need to find where Le Carré is planning to broadcast from and stop him,” Sparrow said. She threw open the door and began to run through the sewers. Kyle was standing there, looking like a hurricane had just passed him by.