The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  “Twenty five people died tonight,” Cynthia said.

  “I heard. I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s meet tomorrow. I need to understand the software function and parameters for the . . . what do you call it?”

  “Captai—” he stopped himself. That was his inside joke. “Tank Major. It’s a Tank Major battle chassis.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Chapter 3

  It took two days for Justin to re-acclimate to his normal. The night they got home from Chicago he had been almost catatonic. Charlene tried to put Justin down in his own bed and he clung to her like a monkey and whimpered deep in his throat. For the last two nights, he had slept with them. During the day Frank took him on long walks in the fields and pointed out birds and deer beds. That always seemed to calm him. The city is too dangerous, Frank thought. Out here in the fresh air, out here where everyone grew up together and knows each other’s history. It may be the only safe place left.

  They got back from their walk and were greeted by two familiar faces. Fernando and Margarito were migratory workers that went farm to farm during the harvest seasons, literally jumping rail throughout the country. They had worked on the McWilliams’ farm since Frank was Justin’s age.

  Fernando was tall and handsome. The years in the sun had baked his skin dark and the deep lines from a lifetime of hard, outdoor labor enhanced his already good looks.

  Margarito was short and fat. He had a loopy mustache and curly black hair that fanned out from a perpetually worn baseball cap. Justin liked both of them and when they met at the front of the house, Justin threw a quick wave and pressed into his dad, almost hiding.

  “Hola, Justin. Como esta?” Margarito asked.

  “Esta bien,” Justin replied. “Y tu?”

  “Soy MUY Bien!” He put his fist out and Justin bumped it.

  “How have you been?” Frank asked.

  “Good. Good harvest this year,” Fernando said with a thick accent. “Clara sends her best.” He turned to the fields. “The crops came in.”

  “We’ve had the perfect amount of rain this year,” Frank said. They walked inside and Charlene brought them beer and Justin lemonade. They caught up. Frank noticed that Justin had grown restless.

  Margarito was setting up a joke.

  “A three legged dog walked into the sal—”

  “I want to go upstairs!” Justin interrupted.

  “Sorry, Margo,” Frank said. “Are you okay?”

  “I want to go upstairs. I want to try the Mindlink.”

  “We have guests.”

  Justin got flustered. He rocked back and forth. Charlene pleaded to Frank with her eyes. He acquiesced.

  “Okay. Say goodnight to everyone.”

  Justin said goodnight to Fernando and Margarito and quickly hugged his mom and dad. He took the Mindlink box with him.

  In his bedroom, Justin inspected the device. From the top, it looked like the skeleton of a bicycle helmet. It was machined from one piece of aluminum. The interior had LED-like red sensors that ran around the interior and two larger green sensors that pressed onto the top of the head. He unrolled a separate fiber line that connected the Mindlink to his home’s data terminal. The brochure was a slip of paper:

  Thank you for purchasing the Mindlink!

  The Mindlink will provide you access to cyberspace and all of the programs and functions in it. These include:

  –Work

  –Social

  –Games

  –Misc.

  To start your journey, unpack the Mindlink, plug it into your data terminal (50 megabyte up/down minimum required) and wait for the sensors to self-check (30 seconds). A reclined position is recommended. Put the Mindlink on, following the prompts to set up your account and access cyberspace!

  Warning: 0.3% of the population is susceptible to seizures.

  With reverence, Justin plugged the fiber line from the Mindlink into the data terminal near his desk. The sensors of the Mindlink playfully pulsed and danced while it booted up.

  Justin went to the bathroom and peed. He didn’t want to be mid-game or chat and have to get off. He came back, plopped into his dad’s old recliner and gently put the Mindlink on his head.

  As he did, his bedroom disappeared from top to bottom. In its place was a GUI screen that asked his name, his social security number, and a few more questions to confirm his identity.

  He thought his name and it appeared. While he thought his name, his social security number filled in, because his brain—unconsciously to him—had answered that question on another level. The other questions he didn’t even know he answered.

  The first interface felt like he was in front of a gigantic touch screen. The next interface did not. He floated in a room. The room itself had no physical characteristic to it, no physics such as gravity or the faint movement of air we all take for granted. It was yellow and calming. He heard far off wind chimes. A question hung in the air:

  –What would you like to do?–

  It bobbed up and down in a friendly way. The Mindlink was a two-way highway and while the options weren’t listed, suddenly he knew all of them.

  Find Jared Stachowitz, he thought. He had never met Jared, but they shared a common interest in mathematics and software programming. Justin had won a speed math contest hosted by MIT’s online university the year prior. Jared had come in second and when it was revealed that Justin was only eleven and he won without a Mindlink, he had become a micro-celebrity. Jared and he had corresponded over the year.

  –Hey JM! You finally made it! (Jared has accepted your invitation)–

  The words appeared in his head. The yellow room faded over to an auditorium with the longest chalkboard he had every seen. It was as tall and wide as a football field. Jared was heavy, balding and in his twenties. His eyes sparkled with humor. He was at the giant chalkboard. About one hundred people sat in rows of seats behind him. Some looked like models, some looked like superheroes, some looked as plain as they were in real life. Including Jared.

  JM! Jared said/thought. I didn’t know if I’d see the day!

  “I finally got a Mindlink,” Justin said aloud.

  You don’t have to talk out loud, you look like a noob. Just think it to us, Jared said back. Justin heard other voices too, but he realized none of their mouths were moving. Online telepathy.

  Ok, Justin projected. Is that what you look like?

  Yep. Young, fat, and bald. God gave me everything (LOL).

  What do I look like?

  Frankly, spooge.

  Everyone laughed.

  What’s spooge?

  (Frown) I forgot, you’re twelve. Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I’m teaching these snickering assholes Sleeper software programming. A lot of them are my students, if you can believe that. I’ll be done in an hour. Do you want to come back then? I can show you what I do.

  That’d be great! Justin said. Where should I go?

  When I first got on, I went to a racing simulator.

  This flight simulator is cool, another voice interjected. Jared and Justin turned to a zombie named AAARGH4237.

  I like planes, Justin said.

  Send him the link. Jared allowed AAARGH4237.

  –AAARGH4237 has bookmarked a flight simulator he recommends. Would you like to go?–

  Yes, Justin thought.

  See you in an hour, Jared said.

  The classroom faded as Jared went back into his lesson and an airfield materialized. Justin stood on an airstrip. Planes he was familiar with were already on the tarmac, but the one he really wanted to fly wasn’t. He saw a shimmer to the left of the vision. He turned and instead of a Harrier, a Blackbird SR-71 sat there. His favorite plane.

  In his head, he was asked if he’d like a tutorial. He said he would. A man appeared next to him. Justin understood it was a simulation, not a real person. Already, easily, it was clear who was real and who was fake. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did. Like it was built in.


  “Good morning,” a young Chuck Yeager said to Justin. Justin immediately knew all of Chuck Yeager’s accomplishments, as if he had known for years.

  Chuck walked Justin toward the Blackbird.

  “You’re about to fly an SR-71 Blackbird, one of America’s finest aeronautical marvels. A plane so advanced, that at one point it was thought that it couldn’t be done.”

  Chuck went on about the Blackbird as they climbed up into it.

  I want to fly, Justin thought. He had been given the option to either fly or ride.

  Chuck helped him taxi the plane toward the runway. When they got to the long tarmac and the tower gave them clearance, they roared down the asphalt and into the air.

  “You’re doing good, son,” Chuck said. Justin could tell he was impressed.

  “We’re gonna get’er up to eighty thousand feet and let her stretch’r legs,” the legend said with a smile.

  The SR-71 sliced through the air and pushed Justin and his virtual friend toward the heavens. The deep blue of the sky began to turn pale and then at sixty-five thousand feet, a sheet of star speckled black poked through.

  Space! Justin thought.

  “Alright, we’re easing up to seventy thousand feet, we can now make a gradual ascent to eighty,” Chuck said in the calm voice of a man who had tested the limits and come back to talk about it. “We are flying at Mach 3, that’s two thousand one hundred and twenty-four miles per hour. We have fifty percent fuel reserve.”

  Justin suddenly had a thought. This was a video game, nothing more. There were no real world consequences. You could drive a funny car into a tanker full of fuel and nothing would happen.

  “I want to fly into space,” Justin said.

  “That’s a negative, the SR-71’s peak altitude is eighty-five thousand, five hundred feet. We’re on the wire.”

  “This isn’t real. I want to go to the moon.”

  “Son, we all do and with American ingenuity someday we will.”

  Justin pulled up on the flight stick. The nose of the Blackbird tilted up and then, without his input, the nose dropped back down. The altitude meter said eight-five thousand, five hundred feet.

  “That’s all she’s got,” Yeager said.

  A switch went off in Justin’s mind and the hull of the plane flickered beneath him.

  This is a program.

  It seemed real, but it wasn’t. The back of his mind felt like a muscle on the verge of cramping. It was uncomfortable, but at the same time, the strangeness wasn’t unwelcome. It almost felt good.

  I can go anywhere, the back of his mind whispered, and when it did, the plane shuddered and once again the hull went clear. But this time, all the way. He was riding on air. He still held the yoke, but beneath him was just earth. He didn’t like it. The hull reformed beneath his feet like a piece of plastic that had melted in reverse.

  “Son—”

  Quiet, Chuck.

  Chuck fell silent. Justin looked at his partner and Yeager was frozen like an animatronic doll shut down mid-movement.

  Justin was too young to equate it, but his mind burned pleasantly like the beginning build of an orgasm. When he first put on the Mindlink, he became aware of the user options and search categories as if it was an old memory. It was the same for this program. He felt its processing, he sensed the root files that held the high resolution textures, the voice recognition software, the programming that weaved it all together. With that pleasant burning, his mind raced past the computational cycle of the server it resided on and subconsciously, he began to reconstruct it to his desires.

  I don’t want the plane.

  The plane vanished, and with it, Chuck. It was now just him in the quiet void between earth and space. He rolled onto his back to look at the stars and the moon. They were bright and welcoming. They beckoned him.

  I miss Duke. One of Justin’s dogs passed away that year.

  And Justin knew that against all odds, when he got to the moon, Duke would be there waiting for him. Maybe in a doggie space suit with jets. They could play fetch. Justin didn’t have much of an arm, but he knew in space he could throw a baseball a hundred miles.

  He rocketed toward the moon like Superman. Surrounding his periphery, gelatinous floating tubes nipped into his vision like a ball of parasitic worms. But they didn’t bother him. They felt like they were a part of him. Like a jet’s contrail, he left an oily mist in his wake. But it wasn’t exhaust. This world had no pollutants. It was the mindscape of the most powerful Sleeper that had ever connected into cyberspace. It was the mindscape of a boy that was excited to see his dog on the moon.

  He landed on the moon. He didn’t know that the simulator didn’t have this programmed. In it, the moon was a high-resolution texture, nothing more. But he landed on it anyway. Dust swirled up from his feet like snowflakes from a snow globe.

  He saw the moon lander from Apollo 11. He saw the American flag, wavered and unmoving. Both were in the wrong location because he didn’t know the particulars of the moon. He subconsciously filled in the blanks from his experiences and conjectures. For him, the surface felt like his sand box at home because it was what he knew. It wasn’t a talcum powder-like dust, because those facts had never entered his mind.

  He heard Duke before he saw him. And then Duke crested a gray hill and ran down wagging his tail in a custom made doggy space suit!

  Awesome!

  “Ruff!” he heard Duke say. How did he hear that? He knew that space didn’t have oxygen.

  Then, Justin caught a slight reflection of himself in the clear glass of his space suit helmet.

  Ah, intercom.

  The next bark was in crackling, low fidelity as Justin imagined it’d be.

  Justin had a tennis ball in his hand. Duke jumped around him, wagging his tail furiously. Justin wound up and threw the ball. With no arc, it launched like a cannon shot over the hill that Duke had just come over, waaaay too far to run after. But Duke had a few tricks. His jet pack fired up and with another bark he shot after it.

  Within seconds he was back with the green ball somehow in his mouth, beneath the doggy shaped glass helmet.

  Justin looked down and the ball was in his hand again. The dog was just as excited for another go.

  This is awesome, the King Sleeper thought as he watched his long dead dog fly after another low gravity pitch.

  = = =

  Justin played with Duke for the hour and he was sad to go. But Duke wagged his spacesuit-lined tail and Justin bookmarked the simulator for another visit before vanishing back to the classroom.

  Jared was seated in the first row. A knight Justin had seen earlier was in the process of building a noble steed. The legs and the head were completely formed, but the rest was wireframe and code.

  Remember the intrinsic order of Revo, Jared reminded. The knight nodded. Behind him on the giant chalkboard, some lines of code vanished and with it part of the wireframe of the horse. New code appeared on the board like a typed sentence and the wireframe of the horse’s back appeared.

  Good, Gegard, Jared said. Sit down Justin. It’ll be just a minute.

  Justin could tell that message was just for him. Justin sat down and watched while Jared taught the knight to build a horse for his role playing game.

  After thirty minutes the horse was complete, if a bit wonky. For some reason it kicked with its front legs and one eyeball was bigger than the other.

  Save it and we’ll work on it tomorrow, Jared said.

  Gegard stepped away from the chalkboard and as he did, the chalkboard flexed out and snapped back when he walked to the first row of seats.

  Justin is the one who won the speed math contest last year, Jared announced to the dozen or so students.

  Still looks like spooge.

  Trent, I’ll mute you.

  A jock-type avatar threw his hands in frustration. I’m just observing my surroundings.

  Jared turned to Justin. How was the simulator?

  I went to space! Justin said. />
  You can’t go to space, the zombie said knowingly.

  I did.

  Ok, you did. For being slack jawed and rotting, the zombie was surprisingly sarcastic.

  Justin. Go up to the whiteboard.

  Justin hesitated. He didn’t like people watching him.

  It’s ok. This is a beginner’s class. This is where we can trip and get back up, Jared reassured. Normally Justin would have shied away. In the real world he always felt like he was at the bottom of a crushing sea waiting to drown. But here he felt airy. Exceptionally aware. He wondered if this was what it was like to be normal.

  Walking up, Justin hadn’t noticed all the strange things in the room. Some objects were three dimensional like the horse. A race car sat to the left. When Justin focused, the object shimmied and he could see the flat screen of all the code that went into its design. Other creations looked like small floating mirrors. Some of the people held them in their hands. When Justin focused on them, he could see their application. Some were shareware programs, others plug-ins to some software application that Justin had never seen.

  When you approach the chalkboard it gives you access to the programming software. It’s Revo based.

  MindCorp had its own programming language derived from Linux. It was the universal language of cyberspace. Justin walked up to the interface. He felt the giant chalkboard lock onto him and in the upper left-hand corner, a cursor blinked. They’ll watch me build the code?

  That way we can offer suggestions. This is for practice and fun, Jared said.

  What should I program?

  Revo is very flexible. You can code anything you want to.

  I’ll create a Duke. My dog. He was in space with me.

  Okay, good challenge. The dog must behave like a dog, it can’t be static, and it must obey commands. Tough first test.

  Justin closed his eyes. He could still feel the program. He saw the string of code in his head to build Duke. Black and brown. Lean and strong. Always wagging his tail.