Unleashed

by Patrick McLaughlin

Chapter 29

  Shawn hopped a ride to Kona on Deep Surf’s media helicopter which was still hanging around after Drake’s Memorial. Cool pilot named Jonathan called a bro and they dropped off a jeep at the airport to borrow rather than Shawn having to rent a car.

  “Dudes, you are all right!” he thanked the pilot and his pal.

  “Pérez, no problemo muchachos. Must hurt a lot inside dude, everyone knows how tight you and the Drakester were!” They waved off as Shawn pulled away.

  He found his cell inside his backpack and checked his voicemails and then his texts. He read the one from Sally wondering how they can be in such close proximity to each other, but haven’t yet spent more than an afternoon together. He tried once more to reach her, but still no answer.

  Upon turning onto Ben’s access road and driving less than a half mile, he heard an odd hum and music playing from above. The song Angels from Montgomery, sung by John Prine, blared through the fabric roof of the jeep, but because the top was up, he couldn’t see where it was coming from. He slowed and the music and vibration became even louder, like it was on the roof itself. He stopped in the middle of the cane field. Shit, hope they’re not harvesting and about to chop me up! he thought, and stuck his head out the window a few inches. Looking up he spotted a spider-like copter, like the ones some surf photographers or videographers use to shoot over the surf, but this one was at least eight feet in diameter or five times the size of the ones they used for aerial surf footage. He had read they now use them for agriculture and thought, Wow, cool as shit, they must be using it to check the crops.

  He restarted the car, turned on and up his tunes from his iPod, and continued on. The drone followed him. It taunted him, coming near in the open clearings and then leading him, matching his speed as the road widened. He sped up a bit, hoping it was just a coincidence, but the remote control beast hovered in his review mirror, like it was peaking in his rear window. Now, he was getting pretty spooked. What the fuck is this thing? Why would anyone be on my ass trailing me?

  The drone dropped in again directly in front of his windshield less than two feet from the glass, forcing him to slow. What he saw, he didn’t understand. Someone was looking at him, or taking photos. One of Sally’s Sentients hung low from the belly of the craft watching his every move. Shit, who the hell else has a Sentient?

  He accelerated trying to hit the machine to knock it out of the sky, or cause it to crash into the sugar cane. Desperate, Shawn left the road, deciding his odds would be better in the brush, and drove blindly through the sugar cane hoping to God he didn’t run into a stump or ditch. He remembered the video guy telling him their batteries were limited, so if he could keep it chasing him without making contact, it may run out of juice. Well, no such luck. This thing must have been running on solar energy, it just kept coming!

  For ten more minutes this black creature stayed on his ass until he popped out of the cane fields within two hundred yards of Ben’s, where it appeared at the other end of a grove.

  “There is no way I’m bringing this thing to Ben’s with me.” Shawn stopped to deal with whomever or whatever was fucking with him. Shawn jumped from the jeep with his monopod in hand, ready to whip the shit out of the thing if it came near.

  “What the hell do you want? Why are you tracking me?” Shawn shouted as the device hovered just out of reach. Shawn heard the Sentient lens shooting like crazy. “Why are you photographing me?” he bellowed.

  Then, from a small speaker somewhere on the drone came a voice: “You never know, you just never know, and you would be wise to stop where you are. You wouldn’t want to run into maybe hundreds of attack rabbits, would you?”

  “Ben? What the hell you doing? I was going to start throwing rocks at you — or it!”

  “Not to worry, my water friend,” Ben’s voice came more distinctly. “This baby is situationally-aware; it knows whenever something gets closer than five inches from it, and moves to avoid. It could hail out here, which it won’t, and nothing would hit it. Gretchen is down, so come on up! I’ll put this thing away, pretty neat though isn’t it?”

  Relieved and somewhat pissed, Shawn got back in the jeep and came around to Ben’s lab.

  “Sorry Shawn didn’t mean to scare you, but damn that was fun! You’re the best driver I’ve been up against, and you pushed me to the limit! Where’s Dr. Evans? Thought she was coming up with you?”

  “I should have known it was you. Gonna change the name of your place here to Hideout of Terrors. Every time I come up here you scare the crap out of me. I was almost ready to bolt. Hell, I thought the CIA was after me!” Shawn walked with Ben towards the lab. “Sally sent me a text and I tried to call her when I landed, but she didn’t answer. She didn’t give a reason, but seemed like something important came up. Can we try her on Skype later?”

  “Yes, certainly as we may need her expertise. And Shawn, the drones are a new toy category for me, and if I told you about all my experiments, where would all the fun be? I acquired my first one for security and soon I built up to a squadron of them. I’ve even been able to sync three together to shoot in 3D video. Shame I only have one Sentient. Only recently I designed a new remote with one joystick which allows me to control more than a dozen at one time. Never ending fun for a hermit, wouldn’t you say? Let’s get to the lab; want to tell you what we might do to keep Drake around longer.”

  “Okay, but just promise me you’ll never chase me with one of those things again, got it?”

  They walked into the lab and Shawn noticed all the changes at once. The hologram platform was tripled-sized, gear was now strapped either up against the walls or down onto counter tops and an odd, metal spear was pointed at a pane of glass with the faintest mirror finish on one side.

  “Shawn, we have pretty much solved and eliminated the violent impact when the hologram locks in, but we haven’t been able to push it past a virtual level of communication. I haven’t tested the new method yet, but we should now be able to have Drake behave as if he is in our space, so to speak. Using my existing generators I’ve added a small laser, which shoots into the hologram when it reaches full maturity. What I think was happening was the power was driving the virtual image from behind, if you can call it that. With the laser, we will inject an independent source of energy. After all, energy to matter, matter to energy, is the very basics of physics. Sending a laser through the mirrored sheet of glass will split the beam. Each new beam will hit two full-resolution images of Drake, like the ones you used to create your composite image file. This is the traditional way to create holograms and by using this method, it will be like providing a transfusion to a person, but rather than blood, we will deliver a supplemental source of data and energy into the core of the hologram. It should cause Drake to be real and stay with us longer. And if it is he we are truly replicating, we’ll enrich his brief existence for a true level of communication. It’s going to take a bit more work to prepare, but with your help we should be ready to make our second attempt tonight. Let’s get to work!”

  “All in Ben, but we can’t mention this to Sally. She got all holy moly on me and said she was going to do her damn’dest to stop me or you from bringing Drake back again. Better she didn’t make it over ‘cause I think she would hit me over the head with the Sentient if she saw what we were up to.”

  Ben turned to Shawn. “Then we do our little experiment, bring Drake back, and tuck him away again neatly into his other world. Sally will never be the wiser.” He gave Shawn a little wink.