Switch Child 2

by David Howells

What’s Watt

  Karl disliked long goodbyes. It looked like he was in for a week and a half of farewell-related stress. The nurses, aides, business staff, receptionists, guards and even the doctors and interns were overstocking his shelves with smiles and hugs and handshakes and recalls of poignant events that ranged from hilarious to heart rending. It was like attending his own pre-wake. For the second time that day, he had been called to a floor under the pretense to check a loose wire under a station desk, only to find a gift of Ring Dings. One had a bow, the other had a little tag with a smiling Reddy Kilowatt face on it. How’s that for irony, he thought.

  Buster MacElvoy, yes, that was his name, faithfully followed Karl around the Facility. The wizard-in-training took notes in his Tablet constantly, for in a short time it would fall upon Buster to fill the shoes of this man whom everyone seemed so gaga about. Buster had a girlfriend, who by the way was showing some hints at future relationship strain with him working at an institution full of nurses. Truth be told, Buster’s eyes found themselves to being pulled away from one set of mechanical considerations to another. To quote one of his favorite cartoon characters, “Hellooooo, nurse!”

  Karl made it through the day, reasonably pleased with his protégé’s growing abilities to handle day to day stuff. If something came up in the future they hadn’t covered, well, that was all part of the growing experience. Karl had been at it for over three decades under his current title, and things still cropped up he’d never faced before.

  “Boy, was THAT an understatement,” he thought as he shook Buster’s hand and turned to leave. While waiting at the elevator, he looked back and noticed Buster was chatting with Rebecca Fielding, LPN. Ah, youth. The kid would do alright here.

  Once home, Karl did a quick stir-fry for dinner. His wife had shown him that this tasty dish was really very easy and quick to make, while being reasonably healthy. Odd that he hadn’t cooked it for a while.

  Colin and Karl chatted about the upcoming visit regarding how to ‘break the news’ to Alice when she got there. Ideas were batted back and forth while Karl cleaned up, put away, and started tidying up the apartment a bit. It seemed to help him to keep his hands busy and feet moving, for nervousness was a shadow that wanted a larger role to play. Colin figured that his father just wanted the place to look nice for police-lady, and that was fine by him.

  Karl vacuumed, dusted, wiped, scrubbed, rearranged, aligned, untilted, hid, shut, stacked, and other busy-work verbs. He even pulled out a long-retired table cloth for the dinette, which amused Colin. He didn’t know they had one until now.

  Finally, the knock at the door echoed the heartbeat Karl felt in his throat. This time, she was perfectly punctual. He took a breath, then went to the door after insisting Colin kept his face image stock still until he was called for. Dad admonished son with, “No more winking!”

  “Hello, Alice. Please, come in.” He noticed the smile on her face wasn’t over-warm, but not dishonest, either. Did something happen to her today? In police work, something sad or stressful probably happened every day. “Coffee?”

  “Yes, please, Karl. Thank you.” Alice sat down at the table, pulling out her own chair. She took another snapshot.

  First on the list was that she was back on a first name basis for Karl Hoffman. That felt nice.

  Second was that the apartment had undergone some serious sprucing. She had trouble putting a finger on any specific item for a major change, other than the table cloth. It seemed like there were lots of tiny changes.

  Third, there was that smell of soy sauce again, though not nearly as strong as before. Either he ate earlier, or he made it himself and cut back on the sauce amount.

  Finally, she noticed that the child’s image was still on the iPad. Was the man obsessed with that child? She was now even more curious, given the news she had received today from the investigation team on the electrical fluctuations. The room the anomalies had been first reported in was occupied by said child. In the break room today, she had been talking to Sgt. Polocco who had given her a bit of news about Colin Craft. It could very well have strong bearing on how this evening would pan out. She felt bad in a way, for it would seem like she only angled her way back here for more interrogation. Duty, she learned long ago, was often deaf to what people asked of life.

  Karl sat down and caught the pensive look on Alice’s face. Something was up, and it would probably be best to get it out in the open before he raised his own curtain. “OK, Alice, something happened and it’s heavy on your mind. Let’s get it out in the open now before we go any further.”

  Alice looked at the cream as it went from coffee-clouds to coffee-medium light. She sighed as she stirred. “Karl, please believe me. I didn’t know about this until a few hours ago. What I said before about nondisclosure? I may have to change that. It depends on what you tell me.”

  That was honest, he thought. He liked that, despite the wrench his stomach felt at her statement. Women. They always kept you off balance. “Then tell me straight out. I prefer honesty and brevity to diplomacy.”

  She began, with the ‘ting’ of her spoon against the cup to shake off the last drop serving as the starting gun. “That child, the one that’s haunting your iPad, the one you told me about you reading to. The team that’s still looking under rocks and pebbles about that power fluctuation thing came up with something. Colin Craft had an inheritance, and it was being funneled into his life-time care at your Facility. When Colin died, that account disappeared. The bank that was functioning as Colin’s executor was able to discover that the funds were shunted to several accounts, including other banks, charity funds, and even a pension plan for a battery manufacturing plant. Records of the last transfer were purposefully corrupted and, so far, no one can figure out how to get past that point. This was one of the most elegant hack jobs any of us have dealt with. Karl, is this friend of yours the one who did this? I’m so sorry, but this has crossed the boundaries of annoying to seriously criminal. Please, be honest with me.”

  Well, well, well. Today’s tsunami is brought to you by our sponsor, Reddy Kilowatt. The image of that electric power mascot appeared before Karl’s inner eye as he witnessed that smiling face flipping the switch to his future, which happened to be sitting in an electric chair. But once again, no choice seemed like an option but the one his mother would have insisted on, and his father would have whacked him for not taking. He wondered where he would be spending the night tonight…in his bed, or behind bars.

  Karl started his response feeling a little betrayed, as Alice had feared he would. But the more he unloaded, the more his shoulder burden seemed to lighten. “Alice, it’s time you knew the whole truth. All of it. I will trust you to make the right decision. Yes, my ‘hacker friend’ deleted the funds in that account, and he did so because it was earmarked for him in the first place. Those funds went into an account that I have access to, and so does my friend. It is the only time he has ever appropriated funds, and I believe it will be the only time it will ever happen. NO, wait. Don’t say anything yet. Hear the whole story.

  “Colin Craft. Lord, how do I explain this? I’ve been practicing all evening, but now I’m tongue tied. OK. When I was called to Colin’s room to check out the monitor, the light flashing pattern suggested a book I had been reading him; One Fish, Two Fish, by Dr. Seuss. I didn’t see the significance until later. I have a device called the Volt Wizard, and I used it to analyze any disturbance to the current supply. What I got was a garbled text message. Later, I received another one. Now, you can check with the Volt Wizard company’s tech support on this. I contacted them and even uploaded the readouts from my device, and they couldn’t figure out what was going on. Bottom line was that I sat in the parking lot that night and couldn’t force myself to move the car. Something was trying to get my attention, and I couldn’t figure it out until it hit me. I went back to Colin’s room and plugged the Volt Wizar
d back into the socket. Alice, I held a conversation with a brain-dead child. He could hear me; that much was intact in his damaged brain. But, he couldn’t speak, and his eyes could only see dimly from what he told me.

  “It was him, reaching out through the electrical conduits, talking to me. He was terrified of the state he was in, and I was the first person he was able to connect with. I didn’t know what to do. If I told anyone, Colin might be sent to a secret lab somewhere and dissected. I don’t know. Do they do that? So I kept it to just him and me. Colin was able to connect to my Volt Wizard when I plugged it into my home sockets, then later he could text me over my cell using the Facility’s switchboard circuits. I picked up an iPad later because I have trouble with the cell’s finger pad…too small for my old fingers.

  “As time went by, Colin got better able to reach out and explore the world on the other side of the computer screens and power plugs. When his body died, Colin did not. Well, he did and he didn’t. Damn. I’ve been having to learn a whole new way of thinking about existence. I’m too old for this new age stuff.

  “Any way, after his body died, Colin told me that he had found his financial records in his file at the Facility and managed to transfer the funds somehow that wound up in an account that I have access to. Before you say it, now, yes, he’s six years old. How could a kid have the mental skills to accomplish hacking and embezzlement? Alice, how does a child manage the miracle of walking? The mind that exists inside a body finds a way to perform that and many more miracles. Colin’s mind lives in our electrical infrastructure. All those fluctuations and anomalies were his clumsy first steps, like he was learning a new way to walk. Now, his subconscious, or whatever passes for it, is figuring out how to exist and grow in this new world, in a new…body? Host-brain? See how hard this is? We don’t have the vocabulary for what’s happening.

  “It was Colin who sent you that text message, and he also sent the response last night through using my iPad. At least that second message had my approval. Well, there you have it. Any…questions?”

  Alice’s coffee had been sipped once. The story left her mouth still open, but nothing was going in or out. The rug hadn’t been pulled out from under her. Reality had. This was an Outer Limits episode, it had to be. Her eyes pulled away from what must be either a mad man or con man and focused on the three-dimensional image of Colin Craft.

  Karl took that as his cue and said, “Alice, may I introduce you to my adopted son, Colin. Colin? Say hello to Detective Alice Roland.”

  Whatever shred of reality she had left to protect her from what had to be a world-class wool-puller, shredded. The boy’s eyes shifted to look right at her. His mouth bent upwards into a smile, and a child’s voice came out of the iPad speaker in a surprisingly clear level of quality, “Hello, Ms. Alice. I’m Colin Craft, and I’m pleased to meet you.”

  No. It was a hoax. It had to be. It was recorded, faked. She gasped, “I can’t believe this is real.” What was real was a strong desire to faint. It was only her many years of weathering one shock after another in her dance with the seamier sides of humanity that kept her from fleeing into unconsciousness.

  The face continued. “Dad said you’d probably say that. It’s pretty strange for us, too. Is there something I can do or tell you that would help you accept me as real?”

  Alice turned to Karl, afraid to address the whatever-it-was, “He doesn’t talk like a six year old.”

  Karl agreed. “Yeah. I blame the internet. Kids are exposed to so much more than they used to be.”

  “He…he surfs the net?”

  The face looked concerned. “I stay away from the naughty stuff, honest! Dad told me to.”

  Karl sipped his coffee. No sense on letting it get cold. “That’s true. I’ve set very strict guidelines on what sites he can visit. Would you like to see the list of webcomics he’s allowed to read?”

  It’s all rehearsed, prefabbed. It had to be. This was impossible. But it did explain just about everything that had happened. Nothing else fit. Didn’t Sherlock Holmes say something along those lines? The image requested a test. How the bloody hell was she supposed to test...THAT?

  “Karl, I’m not convinced yet. I’m sorry, but this is all too fantastic. Test your image? Hmmm. All right. Colin? You sent me a text message to my phone. Could you do it again?”

  “Bzzzz.” Alice pulled out her cell and opened it. There was a ‘message received’ indicator, and the time signature when she opened it was ten seconds ago. ‘You mean like this?’

  The fall back of ‘prefabbed conversation’ was getting a whole lot shakier. Could this be an artificial intelligence thing? She’d heard of computers that were getting scary close to seeming human, but that wouldn’t fill in the other blanks of hacking and fluctuations like this impossible thing before her would. Was this a monster with a child’s face? She had a passing desire to pull her service piece out of her purse and blast the frightening thing before her out of her awareness. But, it was a child, a six year old child that talked more like a teenager.

  The image spoke, “You know, I could get you two a real good deal on a Disneyland package. I was reading where they’ll let people who are in the travel business go on free trips. Just start a travel company.”

  Karl called out, “Colin! Now that was just uncalled for. Remember what we said about assuming things other people are thinking?”

  “But Dad, she looks like she needs a vacation, and I know you need one, too. I’d really like to see Disneyland. So, everybody wins.”

  Alice felt the need to set boundaries. “Young man, your father and I just met, and I am NOT going to take off with anyone…wait. What am I saying?”

  Karl smiled this time. “You’re saying that you’re starting to believe that my son, Colin, really does exist. Nice ‘mommy voice’, by the way.” He took her hand. It was time to move to the next step. “Alice, I need your help. Colin needs me, but I need you. This whole thing is a miracle that needs people like you and me to safeguard and direct. I won’t always be here. Colin needs guidance and companionship. He could be a huge benefit to mankind, and I want to give him the chance to make something of his life, after his original life plans were robbed from him. Please, help us. I’m not that smart in matters like this.”

  Alice’s command center was balanced between fear and maternal based reactions. She could feel her index finger want to squeeze a virtual trigger, while her arms wanted to embrace a child who lived in an iPad. She smiled a little at that. So many kids seemed to do just that…live in their electrical devices. Colin appears to have taken it a huge step forward. Her eyes widened. Maybe this was not a monster. Maybe what was before her was something more like evolution. There were stories she read where people went beyond physical bodies and reached out by paths yet undiscovered to vistas yet unseen.

  Colin Craft. Was he the ‘craft’ who would lead to a brave new world? Would, as the Bible said, the children lead? And if so, would this ever be something that would happen in her own lifetime? Probably not, and that was just as well. The future was supposed to be in the hands of the next generation that we pass it to, like a baton in a relay race.

  She looked at her hand, being held in the nice man’s own. She had no desire to withdraw hers from that comforting warmth. It was giving her sanity, and offered a hint of something more. Something she missed very much.

  Detective Alice Roland had seen misery and miracles in her life. Given her job, the first had been far too weighty. Time to balance things the other way.

  “So…Disneyland?”