A Problematic Paradox

by Eliot Sappingfield

  “Please be aware you have several homework assignments to be completed. If you check your planner, you’ll see a few of your classes have assigned makeup work to help bring you up to speed. I’ll leave you to it. Enjoy your home, observe curfew, and please do not trouble me during your stay at our school.”

  “What if I do?”

  The Chaperone paused a moment. “I can be quite unpleasant if the occasion demands it. Let’s leave it at that.”

  There was a familiar electric buzz in the air, and the Chaperone was gone.

  Resisting the urge to try out just one game, I started in on my homework and found it just as entertaining. Well, it was challenging, at least. The Quantum Mechanics work alone took me almost two hours—and I was beginning to think I might not be able to finish when I found the computer let me draw in three dimensions in front of the wall so I could visualize what I was trying to do. The calculations for Experimental History class made no sense at all, right up until they made perfect sense. In math, I needed to have a working knowledge of Mandelbrot sets for the next day, and a note from the art teacher said I should be thinking about things and what they look like, so I did that for a while.

  After my homework was done, I retired to my bed and spent another hour with the books in my library, discovering that parahuman books had all kinds of information I’d never heard before. For example:

  The Apollo astronauts took a gun to the moon, just in case.

  A certain world-famous secret fourteen-herb fried chicken recipe is really just salt, pepper, and recycled grease.

  Back in the seventies, a parahuman primatologist trained chimpanzees to build small fires to keep themselves warm in cooler climates, and they almost burned down half of Africa because they thought building fires was awesome.

  The world is running out of helium, and nobody wants to talk about it.

  The parahuman community keeps inventing better and better self-driving cars but is taking it slow to get people used to the idea.

  Restless leg syndrome is actually a social experiment being conducted by one of the classes at the School to see if it’s possible to sell prescriptions for diseases that don’t exist.

  I hadn’t been reading for very long when the Chaperone spoke again: “Suggested lights-out time is 11:00 PM, and mandatory lights-out is midnight without formal all-nighter approval. You have five minutes left until mandatory lights-out.” Once again I was struck by how familiar her voice seemed.

  Then it struck me. I hadn’t heard it at the School. It had been at home. “You’re the voice of my father’s security system,” I said, not expecting a response.

  “Are you speaking to me?” the Chaperone said.

  “Yeah. I just realized you sound exactly like the security system in my home.”

  “That is unlikely,” she replied coolly. “I am a purpose-designed one-of-a-kind system specific to this school. Not a single line of my code is replicated anywhere else as far as I am aware.”

  “Who designed you?” I asked.

  “For the most part, I am a self-designed system, but I run on a self-aware Kross Systems Intelligence Core. I have expanded my own parameters to meet demands and requirements in the most efficient manner possible.”

  “Kross Systems? That’s my father’s name.”

  “Mine too, in a manner of speaking. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there is an unauthorized pillow fight going on at 401 Goodall Lane. Good night!”

  The Chaperone sounded a bit testy. As if to confirm this, she switched off the lights a whole three minutes early. I grumbled a bit, considering the implications of my dad’s having designed the Chaperone system. It was nice to have a familiar voice around, even if it wasn’t a human voice.

  It was my first night in a new home, so as an experiment, I tried feeling homesick. I had every line and crack in the ceiling of the bedroom in my old trailer memorized, and I visualized those lines above me, trying to miss them and the history they represented. I felt the somewhat larger space around me and tried to miss the coziness of my old cluttered space.

  To be honest, I’d only ever lived in an indoor trailer, and having a solid house around me was a nice feeling. The floor didn’t move when I stood, and the bathroom was big enough to spread your arms wide and turn around if you wanted to. I’m not sure why I’d need to go all Sound of Music after using the toilet, but the option was there.

  Maybe the lack of homesickness was something I’d inherited from my dad—a bit of his robotic unemotional approach to dealing with the world. But that wasn’t it. I didn’t miss the SuperMart, because it was just a building, and the important part of a home isn’t the building but the people in it.

  Having a priceless gaming computer can also make a new place feel like home. I might have gone on thinking about it, but some soft music started playing, and the bed was particularly comfortable, so I was asleep shortly after.

  And then I wasn’t. An idea dislodged in my mind and started rattling around. My Happybear Bracelet had a virtually unlimited range. Now, I knew nothing about how it was supposed to transmit information, but I do know how communications tend to work. There are two kinds of communication modes—one-way and two-way. People tend to use one-way communications, like walkie talkies, when getting connected to the other person might not happen or the connection might be fleeting. But when connections are stable and range isn’t an issue, people almost always use more natural two-way modes of talking, like cell phones. To me, it seemed like a bracelet that could take advantage of virtually unlimited range would have a two-way connection, even if it wasn’t designed to do that specifically. If that was true, it would mean getting Dad’s implant to connect could give me his location. The only limitation was power. My bracelet was small, but his implant was tiny and operating on much less power with a battery you couldn’t just replace. I wondered if I could make up the difference with a little more power.

  I got down from my bed and turned on the room lights. The clock said I’d been asleep for an hour. It hadn’t felt like that long. I should have been worried about getting busted by the Chaperone, but the bracelet was the only thing on my mind. Acting on a hunch, I pulled open the bottom left drawer of my desk and found a full set of tools and an assortment of materials, including wires, electrical components, a soldering iron, a variable power supply, and pretty much everything else a person might wish they had in their bottom left drawer. A few seconds later, I’d managed to disassemble the Happybear Bracelet to reveal a circuit board, which held the battery, a contact for the nose button, and connections to the location module, the speaker, the processor, and some kind of module I just couldn’t crack into. I figured this contained whatever makes its transmitter work. First I removed the battery and set things up so the whole business could run off my desktop power supply, which allowed me to increase the power to the transmitter. Then I wired everything to a gadget that I set up to talk to my tablet.

  It was simple: if Mr. Happybear connected to anything, the moment I got a connection, my tablet would save any incoming data before it was decoded, so I could look at it later. Signals couldn’t travel into or out of the School Town because of the gap, so I would arrange to get out of town for just a little while. It was a long shot, but it was something. There was little chance of sneaking out in the middle of the night, so I set my new DadTracker aside and prepared to go back to bed.

  But before I could turn in, I couldn’t help myself. Even though I knew the connection couldn’t work, I pushed the button, and, as before, the LED lights that had been the bear’s eyes blinked red a few times. Mr. Happybear spoke up: “Hey there, Nikola! Seems like you’re feeling a bit biometric and location status data not available! How can I help you?”

  About three seconds passed, during which I considered my options. Finally, I figured it was best to keep it simple and said, “Contact my dad.”

  “Sure thing, Nikola!�
� Mr. Happybear said, and his red eyes started blinking green. This wasn’t right. It shouldn’t be connecting through the gap—the gap was supposed to be impenetrable.

  The speaker on the gadget chirped, hissed loudly with static, and then beeped three times.

  “Hel-hello?” I said tentatively.

  There was a gurgling sound, like someone who had just narrowly escaped drowning and was trying to catch their breath.

  It was working! “Dad? Dad? Is that you? What’s happening? What are they—”

  A thick rancid stench flooded my senses, crawled up my nose, and nearly choked me. Somehow I resisted the urge to vomit. “Hello, Nikola,” said a high female voice.

  Tabbabitha. I said nothing. Suddenly, it was impossible to do anything but stare at the blinking eyes in horror. How was I talking to her at all? The receiver was an implant. Other people weren’t supposed to be able to . . .

  She spoke sweetly, quietly, intimately. It sounded like how someone talks quiet and close when you’re six years old and cuddled up with them on Christmas Eve, waiting for Santa, and they want you to go to sleep before you know you’re sleepy in the first place. “Where are you?” she said. “Tell your friend Tabbabitha. I know you’re close. It’s supposed to say where you are. Come home, sweetie. Let’s go see Daddy. Where are you, sweetie?”

  “I’m in my room,” I said, almost automatically. Then I realized what she was really asking.

  “Go on . . . ,” she said. “Give me your coordinates or address, honey.”

  “How about no?” I said, shaking my head to clear out a few mental cobwebs.

  About two heartbeats passed. “Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said in a much-less-sweet voice. The smell in the room grew a little more tolerable.

  “How are you talking on my dad’s communicator?” I said, pulling out my tablet to start the location app. Immediately, the app informed me there was no embedded location data, which was bad. Then I saw the signal was quite strong, which was good. I started a second app to try to discern her location based on the signal alone.

  “He let me borrow it so I could talk to you,” Tabbabitha said. “Wasn’t that considerate?”

  “It was an implant. You don’t just lend someone an implant.”

  “Fine. Ya got me! I took it without his permission, okay? I admit it. As long as I’m being honest, let me tell you, he really fought me for it.”

  The distinct glee she took in what she was describing made me sick. “You’re going to regret hurting him,” I said.

  She only laughed, her voice startlingly clear over the tiny speaker. “No way. That mixture of suffering and anxiety, it’s delicious. One of my favorites. He’s not permanently damaged, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Then she spoke up a bit. “I want you to go to the kitchen, grab a knife, come back, and wait.”

  “No,” I said. “Stop trying to do that. It’s not working. Where have you taken my dad?”

  “Where we take everyone we deem good enough to spend time in our service. To a five-star hotel, where they experience luxurious accommodations.”

  “I kind of doubt that,” I said.

  “Make sure it’s a sharp knife,” Tabbabitha said.

  “Are you paying attention?” I asked. “That’s not working on me.”

  She sighed, and I could feel her hot breath invading my nostrils like burrowing vermin. I’d need to air out the whole house when we were done talking.

  “I did just wake up,” Tabbabitha said. “Ever take a long nap and wake up all cotton-headed?”

  Her voice felt like it was leaving a film on my skin. I wanted to break the connection, but my tablet was informing me it was 85 percent done pinpointing her location. The communicator was digital, so there was no narrowing it down—100 percent meant I’d know where she was, anything less than that wouldn’t tell me anything more than what planet she was on. I had to keep her talking.

  “I thought maybe we could play a little game, Nikola.”

  “Yeah?” I said, willing the location process to hurry up.

  “Yeah! It’s a game where you learn that it’s a good idea to show a little more respect for your elders.”

  “That sounds like fun,” I stalled. “How’s it work?”

  “It’s simple. I’m going to hurt you a little. Really, it’s more of a punishment than a game because it will only be fun for one of us.”

  I looked around the room. It was empty. The house was quiet. “How are you planning to do that?”

  She smiled. I swear I could hear her lips parting over sharp, stinking teeth. “In a roundabout fashion. Take the knife and start cutting yourself, and don’t stop until I tell you to.”

  Was she stupid? “I told you I don’t have a kn—” I stopped. My blood ran cold. Tabbabitha wasn’t stupid. She hadn’t stopped giving instructions because the instructions weren’t for me.

  Without thinking, I leaped from the chair, went over my desk, tripped, and ran headfirst into the door like I was trying to tackle it. The door was very heavy and very solid. I tried screaming, “NO! NO! HYPATIA, STOP!” But the blow to the head . . . Where was my agar? The room turned, my vision swam. It felt dark and dizzy.

  A tiny whimper carried through the door and made me want to cry out in agony and rage. Hypatia hadn’t even been involved. I tried to make my agar bracelet go flat, go under the door, go and hold Hypatia so she couldn’t hurt herself. I tried again to control it, but it wouldn’t move. It just sat there like plastic. Doing nothing. I was dizzy and panicking. The door wouldn’t open, and Tabbabitha was laughing like a madwoman from the disassembled circuit board on my desk. Why wouldn’t the door open? I was pushing! I pulled and the door flew open, crashing into the wall. Hypatia lay against the floorboard wearing full-body pink footy pajamas. Her eyes met mine, bulging in fear with pupils white as paper inside dark black rings. She was terrified, confused . . . and alive. The massive kitchen knife she held twitched again, and cut again. Another golden curl fell to the floor next to several others.

  Tabbabitha hadn’t told her where to cut.

  Her hands trembled like she was having a seizure. I tried to snatch the knife away, but she held it tight and moved it out of my grasp, sawing furiously at another bit of hair.

  “Stop it!” I shouted.

  Hypatia stared at me in utter terror. “I can’t! What’s happening? Make it stop!”

  Mr. Happybear! I ran back to my desk and found the circuit board burning red-hot and blackening the wood around it. I cut the power and detached the leads. Nothing happened. Next to the board, the plastic face that had covered the electronics had melted and now looked completely demonic. I tried to clip the wire to the speaker to silence Tabbabitha’s squealing, repulsive glee but couldn’t get my hands close enough with the heat. The tablet read 95% COMPLETE.

  There were no other options. I reached into the tool kit, found a heavy socket wrench, and lifted it. There was a moment when I considered what I was about to do. The bracelet was my only link to my dad, however compromised it was. Without it, there was no chance of—

  “Let’s not stop yet!” Tabbabitha squealed like a kid who doesn’t want to leave the amusement park.

  I hit it with all the force I could manage.

  Wham! Sparks flew. The tiny green lights dimmed and then came back on. Mr. Happybear was built to withstand punishment.

  “Let’s cut something new!” Tabbabitha said.

  The black chip with the transmitter—I took aim and WHAM. The wrench bounced off it harmlessly, leaving nothing more than a scratch.

  Tabbabitha’s voice crackled and faded a bit. “Time to cut your throa—”

  WHAM. The chip shattered in a tiny black cloud. The noise stopped, and the smell evaporated instantaneously. Through the doorway, I watched Hypatia’s hand fall. The knife fell from her grasp. No blood. When I stepped into the hallw
ay, she was clutching two handfuls of amputated curls. She might be alive, but something told me her hair would never be the same.

  I helped her to her feet and brushed the hair off her lap and out of her hands. I tried to give her a hug, but she pushed me away faintly. She almost said something and then didn’t. Instead, she took a deep breath and braced her hands on the wall. “Give me a second?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, helping her into the bathroom, where she sat on the edge of the tub, holding a damp washrag to her forehead.

  I left the bathroom and picked up the knife, which was still gleaming dangerously on the hallway carpet. In the kitchen, I tossed it into the sink and filled a glass with water. Returning to my room, I drizzled some of the water on my still-smoldering desk. Finally, I picked up the wrist strap and lowered the charred, broken remains of Mr. Happybear into the glass. With a long sizzle and a single spark, Mr. Happybear’s lights went out for the last time. I tossed the remains into the trash, along with about 40 percent of Hypatia’s hair. And in a magnanimous show of consideration for my roommate, I washed both the knife and the glass and put them back where they belonged.

  Returning to the bathroom, I found a somewhat more composed Hypatia waiting for me. Her hair was back to normal, without so much as a single curl out of place. Sitting on the tub next to her was a pink bottle labeled CONTROL-Z HAIR REPAIR SERUM.

  “So. . . was that an Old One?” Hypatia asked.

  “Yeah. My old friend Tabbabitha,” I said, and explained how Tabbabitha and I had wound up having a conversation and how I had managed to end it.

  Hypatia shook her head. “I’m so sorry you had to ruin your bracelet to save me. It was really dumb of me to—”

  “Knock it off,” I said.

  Hypatia blinked. “Wha-what?”

  “When I want you to feel bad about something, I’ll make you feel bad about it. I know how to guilt-trip. What happened tonight was more my fault than yours anyway. Here I am, reaching out to the Old Ones on a school night . . .”