by Parker Tiden
An hour later, when I thought he'd be home from school, I bowed to fate and rang Nick's doorbell. I needed a second opinion, and Nick was, despite everything, the path of least resistance. Nick's mom opened the door. "Oh, Lily, we missed you at dinner yesterday," she said. She had the crow’s feet around her eyes of someone who smiled frequently, and for real. Without saying another word, she pulled me inside and gave me a warm hug. A hug that I hadn't known I needed. It felt good, and I didn't want it to end. Finally, she let me go. "Nick is in his room. You go on ahead upstairs."
I knocked on Nick's door but failed to get a response. I knocked again, nothing. I wasn't entirely comfortable walking in on a teenage boy. I had heard what they could spend hours doing to themselves and wanted desperately to avoid being a witness to it. I grabbed the door handle and carefully pushed the door open. I saw him before he saw me. He was bathed in the blue light of three screens. He was turned away from me and had the visor across his face and headphones over his ears. Both his hands were on top of the desk, thank you very much—the fingers of his left hand tapped away furiously at the keyboard, and the other hand was clicking on the mouse as he spoke commands into his mouthpiece. "Girth, take the alleyway to the east, and Jarno, you go up one flight and try to get a clear shot from the top floor." I was now not more than a foot away from him and he still had no idea.
"Any more headshots today?"
Nick shot out of his chair like a cat surprised by a cucumber and ripped off his headphones. "Jesus, Lily, you could have knocked!"
"Exactly," I said.
He caught himself and switched back towards the screen in time to see Nuffian blown to bits. He threw on his headphones, "You're on your own, guys! I've gotta go," and threw them off again, turned to me, and said triumphantly, “To what do I owe the honor of your visit?"
I pulled the snow globe out of the plastic bag I’d been carrying it in. "What, you’re practicing without me now?" trying to pretend that my feelings were hurt, unsure if they actually were. I held the globe towards Nick, he flinched instinctively.
"Not that thing again! Are you going to accuse me of having broken it or something? I deny all wrongdoing. You probably broke it when you tried to kill me with it," he said, backing away. "You weren't booted up, so, since both Jarno and Girth still aren't up to par, I thought we might do a skirmish or two while we waited for you."
"Anyhow... look at it, the globe, look. Come closer," I said, holding it up to the light. "Just look at it. Do you see anything odd?"
Nick's face was mere inches away from mine. I could see his eyes through the globe. "That thing looks just as redundant as it did the last time I saw it. There are some small pieces of plastic floating around in what, by now, must be biologically hazardous water."
"Look inside the moon," I insisted, "take it."
"Huh..." he said as he rotated the globe in his hands, finally getting his thick brain in gear, "intriguing." He put the globe down on his desk and walked right out of the room. I heard him go down the stairs, and for what probably wasn't more than a minute, I was completely alone. Finally, I heard him come up the stairs.
"There's no way we're going to get whatever that is, out…" he said, standing in the doorway. He pulled out a heavy-duty hammer from behind his back, "Unless we smash it," and held it out to me. "You do the honors."
"No fucking way! It's the last thing he gave me!" I cried as I lunged for the globe on the desk and held it to my chest.
"Your father gave it to you? Don't you want to know? What if he intended for you to find whatever is inside?"
I looked at the snow globe again, with its wondrous swirl of stars. Smashing it would be smashing a tiny universe of love. But I couldn't deny that Nick had a point. What if it was something for me? Something my dad left for me. I realized that I didn't have a choice.
"Give me that," I sighed, signaling to the hammer in his hand. I placed the globe on Nick's desk. He was quick to move his keyboard and other computer-related paraphernalia. I gave the globe a tap with the hammer. Nothing. I tapped it again. Nothing.
“The thing didn’t break when you threw it at me,” Nick said helpfully. “Use some muscle already.”
I raised the hammer higher this time and brought it down hard. The hammer clanged off the globe as the glass cracked and water started seeping out onto the desk. I tapped it again and the whole thing came apart, causing a miniature tsunami. The orphaned moon rolled onto the desk. Nick quickly soaked up the water with a towel. I picked up the moon and held it for the first time in my palm. The moon was made of smooth glass. There it was, the shadow in the moon, clearer than before. How the hell did my dad get something into it? I found no seams or evidence of tampering.
I put the moon back on Nick's desk. "Here goes nothing," I said as I tapped the moon carefully with the hammer. It broke and, again, liquid flowed out onto Nick's desk. I removed the shards and picked up the mystery rectangle—it was vacuum-packed in plastic.
"It's a memory stick," Nick said, looking at the thing between my fingers. "Looks like it's biometric."
"It's what?"
"It's a memory stick with a fingerprint scanner, so only the right person, with the right finger, can access whatever's on the drive," Nick explained, suddenly grabbing the stick from me. "There's one simple way to find out if this was intended for you. I should have a USB around here," he continued as he rummaged through various piles of technology. "Here goes nothing." He pulled off the plastic from the stick, attached a cable to it, and pushed the other end of the cable into the USB slot of his laptop. He opened file manager and clicked on the icon for the stick. A window popped up.
This device is protected. Please place your left index finger on the device and pull down.
Nick held the stick towards me. I did as instructed.
Not recognized (9 attempts remaining)
I tried again.
Not recognized (8 attempts remaining)
"Maybe it wasn't for me, after all," I said, my heart sinking.
"Try it again, these things are finicky."
I tried again.
First layer unlocked.
"How the hell did he get my fingerprints?"
Second layer - ID verification
Please scan passport or ID-card using the built-in camera.
"That's lit! What line of work was your dad in anyway?"
"Back in a sec." I bolted out of Nick's room, down the stairs, and sprinted the distance to my house. I hadn't felt this light-footed in ages.
I grabbed my passport from my desk drawer. The last time I had used it was well over a year ago for a family trip to England to watch the America's Cup sailing race. Dad had managed to get me and him onto the Oracle boat for one of those rides usually reserved for sponsors and their families. The boat was 44 feet long with a mast over 80 feet high. It was multi-hulled and hydro-foiled. It was serious business. As the boat caught the wind, it heaved its mass out of the water, with only two tiny curved fins keeping it ocean-bound. My dad held me tight 15 feet above the water as we flew 40 mph. I clung to him as we laughed hysterically like we couldn't believe our own luck.
"Let's see if this gizmo is as cool as it sounds," Nick said as he held the thumb drive’s camera above my passport and it emitted a pale blue light. Nothing happened for what felt like years, when suddenly…
Second layer unlocked
"Yes!" we cried in tandem.
Third layer - password protection
Please enter your password
"What! Must be some pretty heavy stuff on that thing," Nick said, "you know, like who killed Kennedy... or maybe even Kenny, for that matter."
I quickly typed in the password field.
Third layer unlocked
Access granted
Nick looked at me in awe. The folder in the finder window unveiled itself to us.
"Since my passport unlocked it, it must be for me, so it had to be a password that I could guess," I explained.
"Well?"
<
br /> "I don't know if I should tell you. It's need-to-know only."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Fine, it was, L - U - N- A."
I clicked on the dedicated folder and it opened. Among the files on the drive was a video. I figured that it would be the logical thing to open it first, but I was scared shitless. It would have been nice to have Nick by my side when I opened it, but I really didn't know him well enough to cry on his shoulder or show any other vulnerability. He sensed this and said he was going downstairs to talk to his parents. When the door closed behind him, I sat down on his bed with his laptop on my knees. I placed the cursor over the video file, took a deep breath, and double-clicked.
The contents on the drive wasn't what I'd expected, if I was expecting anything. Maybe it was more about hope. It wasn't the last words of wisdom from a father to a daughter. It wasn't like in the movies where they say something like: “If you're seeing this, I have been murdered—and the murderer is… your uncle Marvin. He wanted the family business—you know, the almond farm—for himself.” No, the video was grainy, shaky, badly lit footage of a meeting. What appeared to be four men… it's always men, isn't it? They were sitting around a low table, on a sofa and chairs. It was difficult to make out any details, but one thing was clear, my dad was not in the picture. I could only guess he was the one holding the camera. The sound was almost worse than the picture. Just muffled voices, some talking more than others, at one point what sounds like an argument, but with an unfamiliar cadence.
Apart from the video file, there were two other files. I could make no sense of them either. They both contained a bunch of seemingly random chains of numbers.
I heard a gentle knock and Nick's voice from behind the door. "You OK?”
I had no sense of how much time had passed. "It's fine, you may enter your own room now."
He scrutinized my face as he came back in, probably searching for traces of tears under the eyes or snot under the nose.
"I'm not so sure he left this for me. Maybe he put it in the globe just for safekeeping or something. He knew it was the last place anybody would ever look. He also knew that it would be safe, that I would guard it with my life, unaware of what it contained."
"Yeah, I mean, how could he have known that you would whip it out of your window in an attempt to kill your neighbor?"
"True."
"Well, what's in it?"
"Here," I said, turning the laptop over to Nick.
I thought that Nick, being a nerd and all, could help me figure out what the video contained. I was wrong. The video made little sense to him either. On the plus side, he did recognize one of the files on the drive, or rather a cluster of files. "Seems like you'll never have to set your foot in that damn school ever again, after all." Nick began to explain blockchain technology in detail. When he saw my eyes begin to wander, he stopped. Well, to make a short story even shorter, one of the files contained what seemed to be a motherlode of bitcoin, and that, at present exchange rates, I could live a gangsta life forever. "The fact that your father went to these lengths, covertly filming a meeting with a pinhole camera or something, putting a biometric thumb drive in a snow globe, is significant in and of itself." Nick closed the laptop. "The money is problematic."
I had never doubted for a second that my father was innocent of what they were accusing him of, and now the snow globe gave me something to prove it with. More importantly, it was a step in finding the bastards who did this to him—one step closer to wreaking unholy vengeance on them. We just needed some help in figuring out what we had. Nick, reading my mind, said, "I know a couple of guys".
"Jamaal and George?"
"George is, after all, a decent hacker, and Jamaal is not a complete idiot."
Learning to Fly
“Two incoming at 300 degrees!" Nuffian yelled. That same night we were at it again, honing our strategy and skills for the tournament. We'd finished off half a dozen teams with relative ease but were seriously pinned down by the Bloated Dragons. I was crouched next to Girth, behind a low-slung wall, while bullets and RPGs slammed into the wall or whooshed past our heads. I happened to glance over at him and regretted it immediately. I couldn't take my eyes off his Chewbacca nose, it seemed to have a life of its own, his left nostril, in particular. The nostril was pulsating. "Errr... Girth!" I said.
"What?"
"Get that finger out of your snout, will ya!” I yelled over the din of battle, and in an instant, Girth's left nostril returned to normal size.
In my headphones, I could hear the others chuckle. "You're such a dweeb. You keep on forgetting that you just spent 230 bucks on your visor," Jarno chimed in. "If you're gonna be data-mining your nose, you can't have the most accurate visor on the market."
"Fuck you both." Girth countered. "And Jarno, lucky for you they haven't developed a crotch visor yet."
It was time to end this battle. We’d been training for five hours straight and were getting tired and unfocused. My fearlessness, or to some, my recklessness, had become my calling card. One thing was for sure, it worked. I checked that my MP5 was fully loaded, turned to Girth, and said, "Now that you have both hands on your keyboard, think you can cover me?" I then jumped the wall without waiting for his response. I took several hits, but Nuffian, Girth, and Jarno all opened up with everything they had, and in less than a minute, the Bloated Dragons were history.
"Gotta go," I signed off, not even waiting for a response as I exited the battle zone. I mounted Prancer, who was waiting for me just outside the zone, and set out for the stream, not entirely sure what I was expecting or hoping for.
When I got to the stream, where the pixels were still doing their mathematical dance, there was no one there. It wasn't like it was a date or anything, far from it, but somehow, it hurt that he wasn't there waiting for me. That feeling of maybe needing someone scared me to the point where I was about to turn back to Prancer and leave this spot forever. Then I heard him.
"I didn't think you'd come," he was on the other side of the stream again, like he was shy. His cartoon eyes managed to convey a subtle melancholy, despite being painted with such broad strokes.
I walked up to the water's edge. "Neither did I," I said.
"What's really neat about this… our corner of Alphacore," he said as he produced what looked like a fishing rod from behind his back, "is that it is in constant flux." He hesitated as if waiting for a reaction. When none came, he continued, "The world is unpredictable, replete with randomness and on the cusp of deconstruction." As if on cue, a technicolored fish leaped out of the churning fractal water, and as it arced high between us, it seemed to merge with the air and reveal in flight the math from where it came. The creature caught the bate on the end of the fishing line and Broccoli pulled hard on the rod, whipping the line with such force that the fish burst into glittering pixels that rained down upon us.
Through the rain, his massive pupils fixated on me. "Makes you question what is real, doesn't it?"
"Things fall apart in all worlds, in all realities," I said.
It was the start of a friendship, I think. We would meet nearly every night after training. He didn't know me; I didn't know him. This made him mostly harmless, a risk-free bet. We had similar outlooks. The coolest thing about him? He had learned how to fly.
Broccoli whistled and, in the distance, I heard thumping. The ground shook, branches snapped, and a swirl of pixels could be seen rising from among the trees. Then it came crashing out of the brush mere feet from us and bounced up to Broccoli, wagging its tail like a dog. It was a two-story-tall kangaroo. "Meet Gilliad," he said as he grabbed the kangaroo's fur and swung up on its back. "Watch this," he said, beaming. He tickled the kangaroo behind the ears and the tail wagged faster and faster until the massive body started to slide across the ground. As they picked up speed, they began to heave into the air and the kangaroo tail rotated like the propeller of some freakish drone. Broccoli and his kangaroo were now airborne.
As they pi
cked up speed and height, the kangaroo banked left and completed a circle 100 feet above me, then they turned and started to dive. It took me a second to realize that they were diving right at me. I reached for my MP5 before remembering that it was useless, and resolved instead to stand my ground. "You better not!" I shouted into my microphone, but no answer came. I wasn't about to let some Japanese cartoon and his giant kangaroo make a fool of me. The mass of fur was closing in on me fast, I could just barely make out Broccoli’s grinning face behind the massive neck. I braced for impact, couldn't stop myself from squeezing my eyes shut, and whoosh, it buzzed by, mere inches from me. How I survived that twirling tail, I will never know. And then they landed, elegantly.
"Two questions, well… actually… three," I said as Broccoli came towards me with a wide grin. "What's wrong with you? How long have you known about this? When is it my turn?"
Broccoli explained that he discovered it as a fluke about two months ago, that it was probably some easter egg left by a programmer, which only works in this corner of Alphacore. "As soon as you try to fly beyond a certain invisible line, you basically disintegrate."
"Think I can do it with Prancer?"
"I've only ever flown a kangaroo, but I don't see why a deer wouldn't work."
I whistled, and a few seconds later, Prancer came strutting from behind some bushes. I grabbed him by the horns and swung up on to him.
"Now press R and T, and while holding those keys down, press the spacebar repeatedly.”
I did as I was told, and on my screen, Luna tickled Prancer behind the ears and we slowly lifted from the ground. Prancer, being a deer and all, didn't have much of a tail to speak of, but the little he had rotated at high speed like one of them wind-up bunnies.
