by Richard Bard
Chapter 2
I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE some sort of genius, but I got confused just as easily as the next kid. Even more so, since my brain never seemed to slow down. It gobbled up information day in and day out—cataloguing, memorizing, analyzing. A part of me realized it came naturally to me, but another part wondered how long I’d be able to keep it up. What happens when my brain gets overstuffed?
My dad had the same gift, if you want to call it that, though he wasn’t nearly as good with computers as I was, and Dad’s abilities seemed to be coming and going lately, like something was changing in him. I catalogued that in the Worried About Dad drawer.
I’d have to start a drawer on Mom, too, after the way she was acting this morning.
The drawer system worked pretty well for me. I kept the bad drawers closed so that the uncomfortable feelings they gave me didn’t distract me from the important stuff, like online gaming. There’s nothing like diving into a role-playing game, where you control the character’s choices and actions, or a first-person shooter where quick reflexes mean the difference between life and death. Living inside a good game pushed away the constant flow of data that bombarded me all the time in real life. In a game, the world is…finite. I liked that word, even though most seven-year-olds would screw up their face if I used it. But my vocabulary was pretty much only limited by whether or not I’d been exposed to a word. Between books, TV, and the Internet—not to mention my brother’s occasional bouts of jabbering—I’d learned lots of words. And I never forgot them. My brain stuffed them into drawers and I could recall them whenever I wanted. It’s the same with videos, pictures, people, and places. You name it, I remember it. And math and numbers? Don’t even get me started on that.
I had lots of drawers.
It’s pretty cool, I guess, but when most everyone around me had trouble even remembering what they ate for breakfast that morning, it kind of made me stand out. People look at you funny when you’re different. That’s why I didn’t play with kids my age.
They didn’t get me.
But my family did, and like my dad said, In the end, family is all that matters.
I was hungry but I figured I could wait a while. Mom should be home soon, and I was hoping she’d bring something good for lunch. I climbed up on the bar stool and scooched it up to the kitchen counter. I liked to sit on the end that butted up against the wall. My dad’s Snoopy helmet hung there on a peg. He liked to wear it when he flew acrobatics in one of the old planes at his work. Sometimes he put it on my head when he told me stories about his Air Force days. It smelled like old leather…and Dad.
Sarafina and Ahmed were at the kitchen table. She wore shorts and a cut-off tee shirt that Dad would say showed too much for a thirteen-year-old, and if Mom noticed the touch of makeup my sister had on, she’d be in trouble. I don’t know why she bothered with face paint, especially around her eyes. They were her best feature, big and friendly. As usual, she was texting someone on her iPhone. That’s what she did if she wasn’t playing music on her keyboard.
Ahmed was still in his board shorts and tank top. His right knee bounced up and down so I could tell he was anxious to go to the beach like he planned. He didn’t have many friends but he loved surfing at the beach down the street from our home. He said his Afghan skin was built for the sun, and oceans were among Allah’s greatest gifts. Right now, he was focused on his laptop, which was connected to two external speakers. He tapped a key and a loud karate kiai made me flinch.
Sarafina looked up and crinkled her brow. “You’re kidding, right?” she said. “Pleeease use your headset. Those screeches are enough to give a person a headache.” She should know since she had perfect pitch, and the ability to compose amazing songs in her head and play them with her eyes closed on a piano or keyboard. I loved listening to her play. We all had coping mechanisms. Hers was music.
“Uh-huh,” Ahmed said, without looking up from the screen—or putting on his headset.
He was studying a recording of his last sparring event, playing it over and over. When he focused on something, it could be hard to break him loose. I’d learned it was best to let him be when he got into that mode. Even though the brain implant he received years ago had done wonders to eliminate most of the adverse affects of his autism, he still suffered from bouts of paranoia. When that happened, he couldn’t stop talking. It could be annoying and he knew it. So over the last year or so, he’d been trying to channel that energy toward karate classes.
The video ended, and I cringed when he tapped the screen to start it all over again. Another loud kiai sounded. Sharper this time. I flinched again.
“Really?” my sister said, glaring at him. Ahmed didn’t notice, so she huffed and plugged in her own earphones, turning her back on him as she texted.
I pulled my tablet from my backpack and propped it up on the counter. Then I donned my neuro-headset, which was about the coolest thing ever invented. The wireless device was a human-to-computer interface that allowed me to control online games using nothing but my thoughts. Talk about hands-free! The game developer named it the Spider because of the way its eight legs draped around your scalp and forehead. If it had been up to me, I would’ve named it the Octopus, since each of the legs was embedded with rows of circular probes that reminded me of tiny suction cups. Either way, it was the latest device of its kind, way better than anything else out there. The headset was still in beta testing, but a bunch of them had been distributed to select gamers around the world—the best of the best—each user getting a unit registered exclusively for his or her use, no exceptions. It was no surprise that Uncle Marshall—who wasn’t my real uncle, either—was invited to join the beta testing group. He’d been a gamer elite for ages, same as many of his friends, and was probably on top of the distribution list.
But he’d been swamped lately with government contracts for his cyber-security consulting business, and right now he was in Rome visiting his wife, Lacey. She was an actress and she was on location for a film. So he’d let me test it out for him on the sly. I was supposed to pretend I was him whenever I used it online. He’d even added his own twist to the software so that when the server at game headquarters pinged for a location address, it was rerouted to wherever Uncle Marshall’s laptop was.
I slipped the Spider onto my head, activating the noise-canceling feature to tune out the world. It felt like home. The instant I switched it on, the application on my tablet responded with an audible cue. “Good morning, Marshall. Are you ready to play?”
Oh, yeah! I thought, and the screen automatically drew me into the online game in progress.
As usual, while I played, I blocked out the endless stream of underlying images, words, and numbers that accompanied the data stream, figuring it was some sort of subliminal advertising gimmick the game makers were testing out. As I dodged explosions and returned fire with all sorts of cool weapons, my mind drifted on autopilot, exploring the network of other players, connecting to their emotions and thoughts in a way that didn’t allow them to notice the intrusion. I could tell the exact moment when each of them recognized Uncle Marshall’s TurboHacker call sign—by their emotional groans. That’s because I didn’t lose very often, and when I did it was usually because Mom interrupted my play. But none of the other players ever gave up. In fact, they seemed more determined than ever to beat me.
My favorite weapon was the robotic swarm. It became available after you used conventional weapons to kill twelve players without dying yourself. The swarm consisted of twenty-four dart-sized drones that hovered and zipped around like hummingbirds. The player could switch his screen view to any one of them, and a single strike from a drone’s needle-tipped nose spelled instant death. The key to my success with them was multitasking. Players tended to maneuver a swarm as a single unit. A few of the better players had learned to split their drones into two groups and they had a far higher kill rate than everyone else—other than me, of course. I used an entirely different strategy, my brain s
eparating the drones into twenty individual units so they could either move with the swarm or operate independently. It came naturally to me, so I guess it wasn’t very fair to the other players, but heck, war isn’t fair, right? Besides, the better I got, the more the other players teamed up against me to even the odds.
I loved it!
