Assured Destruction

by Stewart, Michael F.

  “Zombies eating brains!” Karl shouts.

  “What’s so funny about zombies?” I ask, serious. Everyone’s quiet and then I burst out cackling again.

  Muhhh. Chippy doesn’t even look up, eyes intent on his work.

  It’s unclear whether Chippy groaned at us or at what’s on his screen. Still giddy, I kick backward and roll to the whiteboard from where I can see his computer. His finger shoots out and hammers the monitor power button. In the flash before he shuts off his screen, I see a glittering website with a rainbow banner. The color scheme alone hurts my eyes. His face scrunches in worry. Chippy clears his throat and delivers a warning glare. I scoot back to the computer a little shaken.

  “Where were we ...” I boot up an old version of Photoshop, the humor bled out of me.

  “Paris was cool,” Ellie says. “The Louvre is gorgeous.”

  I just nod at the screen thinking about how I’d never left the country let alone flown to Europe.

  “Stars, I like stars.” Hannah giggles. “The Big Dipper is my favorite.”

  Yellow stars had speckled the website on Chippy’s screen. I wouldn’t be so intrigued if he hadn’t reacted so strangely.

  I search for stars in Google.

  Hannah hums a familiar tune, but I can’t place it. Ellie cracks a smile and joins in. When Karl suddenly starts to sing, I nearly fall off my chair.

  “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens ...” He belts. My mouth is hanging open which he must take as encouragement because his tenor strengthens. “Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. Brown paper packages tied up with strings. These are a few of my favorite things.”

  I shake my head in wonderment.

  “What, you never see the Sound of Music?” he asks.

  “Sure, but I don’t go around singing the soundtrack,” I say. His voice was clear, strong, beautiful. It’s what should be going up on the screen, his voice.

  “I know. Let’s put the things from the song into a collage,” Hannah says.

  And it’s a good idea, not to mention pretty easy. So I set about collecting mittens and kittens, snowflakes and geese flying in front of a moon. It’s weird because I just think of geese as noisy things that crap all over the park, but it’s in the song and we’re a team.

  While I’m at it, I show everyone how to bring a file into the program, cut it out of the original image and paste it somewhere else. It’s all really basic but they listen rapt. Chippy eyes me suspiciously, and I bet it’s because I’m covering weeks of his material in five minutes. As I’m working I sense Karl leaning in closer and closer. When his bare arm brushes mine it sends a megawatt of long inhibited desire through my bones. My hand with the mouse shoots out and he grabs it.

  “Whoa!” he says, giving my fingers a squeeze and guiding the curser back on to the screen.

  I grin.

  Ellie’s watching Karl’s hand.

  She coughs hard and bangs her fist on the desk: “This looks like a two year old cut pictures out of a magazine from the forties.”

  “Did they even have magazines then?” Hannah asks.

  “Ask Mr. MacLean,” I say.

  “Who cares, it still isn’t beautiful,” Ellie huffs. And I can tell this is about Karl’s hand, which he’s shifted a million miles away.

  “Who cares, it’s the idea that counts,” I reply, my voice rising.

  “I’m not sharing that.” She sneers at it and it’s too much for me—her expression is too ... French.

  “Well, you do it then,” I blurt. My chair rolls back a couple of feet when I stand. “Throw in some pictures of your happy family all standing in front of the Eiffel tower wearing berets and stuffing your faces with chocolate croissants.”

  Chippy is staring. The echo from my screaming fades.

  “You’re excused,” he says.

  “What about the something beautiful?” I demand.

  “You have done enough for today.”

  Hannah’s chin drops to her chest, while Ellie’s tilts toward the ceiling. She slides my chair away and slips hers next to Karl’s, taking command of the keyboard.

  “Fine.” I grab my bag and tramp out.

  As I jog to my car, I can’t stay grumpy about this ugly beautiful project. What a strange day. Laughing, singing, painting and interest from not one, but two, boys?

  Chapter 10

  Listening to The Death March, JanusFlyTrap tweets.

  Ashes to ashes, Heckleena pipes in before I climb out of the car to face my mother.

  My palms are sweaty as I grip the handle to Assured Destruction’s door. My mom is going to ask why I’m late, and then I’ll have to tell her, and there’s no way she’ll let me keep Shadownet.

  As I open the door, laughter washes over me. The door jangles my arrival, and I cringe.

  “Jan? Come and see!” My mom wheels into the store and then spins so fast I worry she’s going to roll the chair.

  As the door shuts behind me, a clattering rumble fills the front area. Fenwick pushes a huge TV with his pinky and the TV shoots from the store into the warehouse.

  “Isn’t it great?” my mom says as she chases after it. I haven’t seen her so excited since they discovered the whole neck treatment for MS.

  A conveyer of silver rollers runs from the retail counter into the cavernous warehouse where the echoes of the TV’s passage are starting to fade. At the tail end of the conveyor, in the staging area for the truck, sits the TV. Fenwick beams beside it.

  “You’re wonderful,” my mom says to him, and he gives this odd little bow before delivering his coup de grace. The last part of the conveyor detaches, and he pushes it into a cube truck that’s backed up to the loading bay. Rolling the TV into the back with one hand, he then cantilevers the conveyor down inside by pulling a pin so that it rocks like a teeter-totter.

  “Genius!” my mom calls.

  And I admit I’m actually a little jealous I didn’t think of it earlier. The conveyor is a holdover from when we used to recycle and needed a disassembly line to sort component parts into bins. It’s been lying against the wall for years.

  “Careful, Fenwick,” I say. “You’re going to think your way out of a job.”

  “Janus,” my mom says with a glare.

  All the blood has drained from Fenwick’s face.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean …” I raise my hands. “It was a joke.” Why can I never say the right thing?

  “You’ve got homework?” my mom suggests.

  “I’m supposed to cover the front.”

  “Let me,” she says. My mom hasn’t run the cash at this hour for a year. I should be happy she’s feeling so well, but I can’t help but sense I’m being punished and left out.

  I let my arms drop and listen to my mom cajole Fenwick into better humor as I head for Shadownet, sorry I broke the spirit of the evening. I inspect the paint covering my hands and smile. Not my spirit. The paint has given me an idea for an app.

  I sit down at JanusFlyTrap and start. Apple has made the programming for apps really, really easy. The hard part is creating the design, and I agonize over what a thumb should be able to reach and what not. What happens if the user is left handed versus right. All sorts of things that sound small—and they are, but only if you think of them before you start writing code.

  I can’t wait to show this to Jonny, but it’ll take a while.

  I turn on some Feist and I’m counting away, unable to get out of my head how I always think she’s going to sing 1, 2, 3, 4, I declare a thumb war. I start multitasking. Heckleena’s Tweeple deserve their heckles. And I want to set up a fake bank website I’ll use to trick scammers into thinking they can download Frannie’s nonexistent money. If it works, I may be able to lead the police right to the bad guys! At least Shadown
et understands me and knows when I’m kidding. I can trust everyone on it not to freak out when I say or do anything. I open an email to Frannie marked For You and stop. I shut off the music and read the email again.

  I can hear my breathing over the hum of computers.

  Dear Frannie,

  You’ve been a bad, bad girl. Maybe you should go to the police. What will it take for you to realize how very evil you are? Frannie done a bad thing.

  Frannie has done a bad thing, or are they really talking to me? And who is they?

  I print off the email. I check the metadata and already suspect it won’t lead me very far. A search of WHOIS leads me to a Japanese server.

  Why is someone torturing me? And why would they want me to go to the police? Unless they said that to make me question telling the police. Reverse psychology? This is a threat of some sort and maybe I should. But then why didn’t I go to the police when I found Harry’s pictures on the network? Or when I suspected that the thieves learned of Ellie’s family vacation via Shadownet? Now I’m cracking because of an email? Somehow it feels more threatening.

  I pick up my phone and dial 9, and then 1, and stop. If I dial another 1, I’m guaranteed to have a police car, a fire truck, and an ambulance here in five minutes. I search for the police department’s main line and punch it into the phone. It starts to ring, and I’m ready to ask for Constable Williams, the officer who had stopped by asking questions, when suddenly, I realize what was nagging me last night.

  “Ottawa Police Department, how may I direct your call?” a voice asks.

  “I … uh …”

  I can’t go to the police. I can’t even tell my mom, because she’ll go to the police. If we do, my mom will lose her business. Nobody will trust a computer recycler that doesn’t destroy its customers’ hard drives. Icy cold spreads throughout my groin. I’m alone in this. “Sorry, I made a mistake,” I say and hang up.

  Suddenly I want to be closer to my mom, and I leave Shadownet and climb the stairs into the apartment. It smells amazing and my mom is not much of a cook. Our kitchen is in the old staff room and the door is shut, but my mom is sitting on our big couch with a glass of wine nearby, her head buried in a book.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say. “Sorry about Fenwick, I—”

  “It’s okay,” she checks over her shoulder toward the kitchen, then back. “Fenwick’s English isn’t great and I just waved it off, hoping he didn’t understand.”

  I brighten. It’s clear she’s still in her good mood. Her hair is piled on top of her head and she’s wearing makeup. A half moon of pink lipstick lies against the rim of the glass. Quite the celebration for a conveyor line.

  “What happened to your hands?” Her eyes widen; they’re green, unlike mine. Mine are so dark that they’re almost black.

  “Oh.” I sit on my hands and lift my legs up so they’re sticking out. I love my mom, and although I don’t tell her everything, I really do want to share this: “Some boys totally like me.”

  “A boy did that? To your jeans, too?”

  “No, well, yes.” I look at the ceiling and see water marks—repair needed, more money. “He’s a graffiti artist and he let me do some painting on a wall.”

  “He’s a vandal?”

  “No!” Argh. “It’s a graffiti wall. A legal one.”

  “So how do you know he’s not a gangster?”

  “Because we live in Ottawa, okay, Mom? The most boring, not cool city in all of Canada. The place fun forgot. And we’re not even dating or anything so don’t worry about it.”

  I can tell she’s biting back another comment. There’s a knocking coming from the kitchen. It sounds like someone is chopping something.

  “Is someone here?” I ask. We haven’t had company in months. Not since my aunt came over for Easter. Months. Unless I count my mom’s secret dates. A date!

  “I’ve met a boy, too,” she says and then blushes.

  “What? A man?” I should have known. The food smells, the kitchen noise, the makeup, the wine. I check the wine to see how much she’s had. I know she likes wine, but she can never finish a bottle so never opens one.

  “Don’t seem so surprised.” She cocks her head.

  “I know I shouldn’t be after our conversation but to actually have another man over in our house …” I don’t know why, but I don’t like this. Not with everything that’s going wrong right now. “Who is he?”

  “You can meet him yourself.”

  The kitchen door is open, and the fluorescent lights inside silhouette his tall frame. He picks up a tray and strides toward us, features becoming clearer as he nears. Gray hair, face slightly mottled with age, but a strong jaw. His eyes are a little watery.

  “You said you’d met a boy,” I whisper.

  My mom’s arm sweeps over and whacks my shoulder. If she could have, I bet she would have kicked my shin.

  “Peter.” She pauses and shows teeth. “I’d like to introduce my daughter, Janus.”

  He puts a platter of steaming dumplings in front of my mom and takes my hand. His is cool and clammy, and I don’t like holding it.

  “Hello, Janus.” His voice resonates in a rich baritone. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Pleasure,” I say and slump down to put my hands back under my thighs. “So, where’d you two meet?”

  And there goes my mom, blushing again.

  “I told you, the Internet, honey.” She takes a sip of wine. “It’s not like I get out much.”

  This guy could be a predator. I’ve heard stories—geez—I’m in the middle of one! I eye him more closely. I suppose that if she’s gone gaga over some geriatric, it’s my job to play the role of parent and be suspicious. Peter’s wearing several gold rings, one with a big ruby. Like a lot of old people, he’s dressed too well for the event and has on a neat suit and tie. My mom is way too young for him. It isn’t right. Worse. It’s gross.

  “The Internet. That’s interesting,” I say. “You must know a lot about each other then.”

  The air has been sucked out of the room. It’s a bell jar.

  Neither can tell if I’m being facetious, and I feel like a third wheel. But I can’t help but think that this is a car accident waiting to happen. What should I do? Be a bitch and ruin the night? My mom doesn’t get out, it’s true. So maybe I should just let it go.

  “Actually, this is our third date,” my mom says.

  I release a long breath. The two lovebirds share a look. How gross!

  “Please.” Peter holds up the dumpling platter and smiles. I can’t tell if his teeth are dentures or not. I take a dumpling, and they’re really good even if it’s not pizza. My phone is buzzing (it’s always buzzing) and I use it as an excuse to flee back to work.

  I take the exit stairs instead of the elevator, punching through the door at the bottom so it slams hard against the wall. In the dark, the emergency light glows red and the roller line glints. I go to the window and peer out at a nice-looking, powder blue Mercedes. I try to think like my mom. We need money so she finds an old guy who won’t be around too long? A year ago I would have done anything to support the family. Maybe I’m driving her to this by demanding fewer work hours? My stomach twists. Powder blue. I mean, who gets a Mercedes in that color?

  I can’t decide if I don’t like my mom dating online, or dating at all. The only obvious thing to do is find out who the heck he is. I wander down to Shadownet, comforted by my network of friends.

  I click away the image of my healthy mom and bring up an old picture of my dad. In it, he’s holding out his hand, face earnest, as if beckoning me to follow.

  “She’s moving on, dad,” I say in a warning.

  I slump into my chair and suddenly realize I don’t have Peter’s last name, Googling Peter won’t help. I don’t feel like creating a
nything beautiful either, so instead complete my ritual of updating everyone’s walls, feeds, and blogs.

  Is ten too young for a boyfriend? Frannie tweets the world.

  Ten is too young for Twitter. And tweeting for boyfriends is never a good idea, Paradise57 says.

  Oh come on @paradise57says, I want to see what happens to @Franniemouth, Heckleena replies.

  NO! JanusFlyTrap tweets. I won’t let anyone else get hurt!

  And it’s so weird because there are tears in my eyes as I send off an imaginary tweet to protect imaginary friends.

  I wipe my eyes and inspect Frannie’s spam folder. She has another ream of it, and I scan through carefully to see if I’d missed any other threats. At the last second, I catch a weird email. It’s a comment notification like I receive when someone comments on my blog posts—an email saying someone left a comment. But Frannie doesn’t have a blog. Who is commenting on a nonexistent blog?

  Other notifications I missed are scattered amongst the hundreds of spam emails. I let out a small whine and click on the link. There it is: the mystery site. Except, it’s not a mystery; I recognize it.

  Chapter 11

  The website glitters with leprechauns and pixies that dance on rainbows, hearts, and stars. It’s like a box of Lucky Charms barfed on my screen. It’s the same site Chippy had up on his monitor this afternoon. I’m positive.

  Everything is in shades of pink and purple, including the barely decipherable text. I highlight the whole thing and doing so makes the font legible. A series of short topics have been posted, and everything is anonymous, including comments—at least, that’s how it appears at first. The blog posts are in hot pink and the most popular as measured by comment count are:

  Who does she think she is?

  What do you get when you cross a donut, a dog, and a fart?