Amanda Lester and the Gold Spectacles Surprise

by Paula Berinstein

  “Yes, sir,” Simon said. He’d lost the opportunity to print Ivy’s instrument, at least for now, but two weeks of detention was nothing compared to what might have happened. So he’d sit in a room for a couple of hours after class each day. At least he wasn’t suspended. He’d think of another way to construct the ivy-forte. He was Simon Binkle, possessor of the finest brain at Legatum. He’d be back in business by breakfast.

  By the time he’d sat down in his first class, Crime Lab, Simon had a new plan. He was going to buy his own 3D printer and install it in his dorm room. Of course he’d have to find a way to damp the sound and there was the issue of the cost, but this way he’d have complete control over it. And later, after he’d made the ivy-forte, he could rent time on it and recoup the money. It was a perfect plan, if only he could figure out how to raise a bit of upfront cash.

  But before he could contemplate that he was bombarded with questions.

  “Was that you making all that noise last night, Binkle?”

  “What happened? We heard a ruckus out in the hall but Mrs. Scarper wouldn’t let us go out there.”

  “Meeting your girlfriend for a midnight tryst, Binkle?”

  He wished. Having a secret assignation with Ivy was one of his favorite fantasies. If only he could make it come true.

  “No, he was sneaking out to see Buck. I hear he has a nice warm bed.”

  Suddenly Professor Stegelmeyer’s voice broke the din. “Silence!”

  Everyone looked up. It seemed that no one had noticed the teacher enter the room.

  “Mr. Binkle’s midnight ramblings have been dealt with,” he said. “You will be silent and turn to page 346 in Chemical Characteristics of Barnyard Soils. And I’ll have no tittering. This is a serious subject. There’s a lot to learn about ruminants and swine. So much that I’ve arranged a field trip to a nearby farm. And before I hear one word of protest, you will go, and you will conduct experiments with the materials. No exceptions. Miss Lester, you will be in charge of gingersnaps. Please bring enough for the entire class.”

  Simon thought he was just about going to lose it. The idea of digging in pig and cow excrement and viewing it under the microscope was so hilarious—as long as he didn’t have to be the one to dig—that he could scarcely control himself. But the idea of Amanda having to bring the nausea treatment, that was priceless. Fortunately the subject seemed to provide a sorely needed distraction from his adventures. Thank goodness for mean old Professor Stegelmeyer.

  Gordon, who was sitting next to him, elbowed him and said, “No tittering, Binkle.” Wink, wink.

  “Real mature,” said Simon under his breath.

  “It is,” said Gordon, who had grown up on a farm. “Do you have any idea how much crap a mature sow produces?”

  Professor Stegelmeyer caught sight of the conversation and motioned to the two boys. “You two, up here.”

  Simon and Gordon shared a look and trudged to the front of the room.

  “I’m glad you find the subject of animal excrement amusing,” said Professor Stegelmeyer. “The reward for your enthusiasm will be to conduct a special experiment on horse droppings. You will perform a battery of tests and write a thirty-page report comparing the leavings of several different breeds. Then you will deliver your findings in front of the class, and I do mean deliver. You will demonstrate as well as narrate. I’m sure the class will find your contribution most elucidating. Happy digging!”

  As he trudged back to his seat Simon caught Amanda’s eye. She looked like she was about to burst. He scowled at her. That did it. She exploded, doubling over with laughter and holding her stomach. Stegelmeyer’s dictum notwithstanding, the entire class did likewise, screaming with laughter until tears ran down their faces—all except Gordon. He turned a bright shade of red and slunk back to his seat, refusing to look up for the rest of the class.

  Needless to say, Professor Stegelmeyer was not amused. He sent the entire class to detention and instructed the cook to withhold their afternoon tea.

  The courtship of Ivy wasn’t going well but Simon wasn’t deterred. What was a little detention and some poop when the object of his heart’s desire might finally be his?

  His next task was to raise money to buy the 3D printer. As he saw it he had three options: earn it, borrow it, or convince his parents to give it to him. The last was out of the question. Hamlet and Tamsin Binkle were strict budgeters. Scientists they may have been, but they wouldn’t see the necessity of such a device and would tell him to drop it. Borrowing, well that required either a rich, willing friend or credit, and he had neither. None of the wealthy kids he knew would give him the time of day—especially Amphora—and he had never borrowed before, so he had no credit history. He wasn’t sure banks even loaned money to kids. So he was left with earning it, and that meant only one thing: programming. He would have to come up with a killer app and sell it.

  He considered his history machine. Should he devise something similar for popular use? It was a tempting idea but the thing did give the detectives unique advantages. If everyone had one they’d lose their edge. What about an app that, when used together with everyone else who owned it, sent out some kind of waves and helped nudge the tilt of the earth to solve global warming? Nah, too unreliable. If anyone hacked it they could make things worse. Maybe some modification of his cell phone microscope? It was an attractive notion but he couldn’t see a mass market for it. He needed something everyone would want—instantly.

  What would Simon give his eyeteeth for, other than Ivy? If it was something he wanted he was sure everyone else would desire it too. He’d love a magic way of getting Buck off his back, but that didn’t exactly translate to a mass application. He’d also appreciate getting that stupid cowlick under control, but you couldn’t do that with an app either. A Nobel Prize, world peace, better vision. Now there was something: eyes that could actually see. But he couldn’t imagine how an app would do that—not without a lot more knowledge about how eyes work and he didn’t have that kind of time.

  He was getting nowhere, and Simon Binkle did not like getting nowhere. The more he thought the less he produced and the more he panicked. If he didn’t get that printer he wouldn’t be able to make the ivy-forte, and without the instrument he wouldn’t be able to win his love. He had to calm down, fast. Maybe he should go to the gym and punch something. Or take a walk. Maybe Ivy would let him bring Nigel.

  Wait a minute. Nigel. He loved that dog. He wished he had a dog like that, but you couldn’t keep one at school unless it was a service dog. Of course Ivy let him play with Nigel, but he had always wanted a dog of his own. And then it came to him: a virtual pet. He could write an app that created a holographic pet. No shedding, no mess to clean up, always there whenever you wanted it, affectionate and fun to play with. Everyone would want one. Everyone desired a little love. Yes, yes, yes!

  He was so excited he just had to high-five someone, but no one was around so he high-fived himself and booted up his laptop. And then, in one marathon session, he wrote the best app of all time and created a new friend for himself: a bow-tied corgi he gleefully named Mr. Fluffybottom.

  Before long almost everyone in the school had a new holographic pet and Simon was rolling in dough. He was also handling gazillions of bug fixes because, after all, he had written the thing all at once and had barely tested it. But he didn’t care about the extra work or the fact that everyone started calling him Mr. Fluffybottom. He bought the 3D printer and in between maintaining his app, doing his schoolwork, attending class, and sleeping, machined his parts. Of course that meant he didn’t actually have time to play with Mr. Fluffybottom, but that could come later. Soon he would present the love of his life with his amazing gift and his world would be complete.

  11

  Him

  Nick knew that Blixus was gunning for him, but he never saw the attack coming. He’d been hiking back to his tent after one of his tracking expeditions and there his adoptive father had stood, waiting for him with a gun
in his hand. Then had come unfathomable pain and he’d fallen to his knees and lost consciousness, unable to think anything at all.

  The next thing he knew he was in a strange room. He couldn’t place it. It wasn’t the boat or his dorm cubicle at Legatum. Not the tunnels underneath Penrith, nor his tent in the mountains. And then the darkness came again, and everything went blank.

  Now someone was talking to him—a young woman with freckles. He couldn’t hear her but he could see her mouth moving. What was it she was saying? He tried to read her lips but couldn’t make out the words. Whatever it was she just kept going on and on. It was so frustrating not to be able to understand her that it just came out, the scream. He couldn’t tell if it was loud or soft, but it stopped her cold.

  Then she was writing. She took her tablet and showed it to him: “Do you speak English?” Was that what she’d been trying to say? He nodded as hard as he could, but it felt like his head wasn’t moving. It must have done, though, because she smiled as if she understood. And then she typed some more.

  “What is your name?”

  She handed him the tablet and he stared at it. He couldn’t remember how to use one of those things. She smiled and motioned for him to go ahead. What the devil was his name? He couldn’t remember. And then it came to him and he typed “Wink Wiffle.”

  They started him on physical therapy right there in the hospital. Every morning and every afternoon he would walk a little and do some strength training until finally he was ready to be discharged. They’d figured out that he was deaf, of course, and suggested that he learn sign language. One of the nurses was fluent in it—Francesca was her name and she had flaming red hair from a bottle. By the time he was discharged he had learned enough to carry on a simple conversation with her. On the day he left she gave him a book of exercises, handed him the phone he’d come in with, and wished him well. “It’s been a pleasure, Wink,” she said as she wheeled him out the front door and back out into the world.

  Nick had no idea where he was going but he knew he couldn’t go back to his tent. He would have to move farther into the wilderness or find some other place where he’d be safe from Blixus. And so he moved deep into the Scottish Highlands, a million miles away from the Legatum Continuatum Enduring School for Detectives.

  In order to take his mind off Amanda, Holmes had been playing an online game, a battle of wits as well as force. The idea was to pick a historic army and employ its weapons and tactics to fight other known armies. A typical quest might consist of Romans vs. Vikings or Sparta vs. the Confederacy or even several armies at the same time, such as Samurai vs. the Nazis vs. the Normans. It was thrilling, it was endless, and best of all, it had nothing to do with her.

  Holmes found that he enjoyed hand-to-hand combat the most. Those bloody battles where medieval soldiers ran at each other with swords and pikes gave him the best arena for working off his aggression, and he took satisfaction in cutting down his enemies with his own hands. He could feel himself vault down the battlefield with the clanging of metal ringing in his ears, the war cries of his fellows and his enemies piercing the air. He would whoop like a fiend and mow down one man after another, oblivious to their anguish. Perhaps it was his fury that kept him alive on that bloody terrain, or his skill, but he survived and thrived, and began to feel invincible. And then he discovered the Mongols.

  Although there were many fierce warrior cultures, Holmes found himself attracted to what he deemed the fiercest of them all. There was nothing like streaming down the plain on a devil steed, the wind whipping around him, the sound of hooves in his ears. As he sallied forth to meet the chaos, shrieking like a wild man, he felt positively superhuman and would find himself bathed in sweat right in his chair, oblivious to his actual surroundings. One time he yelled so loud that Professor Browning came running and after that he retreated to the house he had inherited from his mother so he wouldn’t disturb anyone, but also so no one would know. His life was no longer anyone’s business but his own.

  It wasn’t that he was ashamed of the changes in himself. Indeed he was proud, prouder than he’d ever been, and for a descendant of the world’s greatest detective that was saying something. But he was developing an inner life that was too precious to share. His new core sustained and protected him, made him strong, and he guarded it as if it were the Hope Diamond. He had finally determined where the Holmes legacy should head, and he was thrilled.

  He was sitting in his mother’s study one day when he encountered the player he had begun to think of as “him:” one soldier so vicious, so determined to kill him that he would switch personas in the middle of a battle, morphing from a Tatar into an Apache into a Turk. Each time his weapons would change with him, which Holmes hadn’t realized was even possible. It wasn’t actually. His opponent was obviously hacking the game. But instead of reporting him Holmes decided to meet him head on, so he hacked it too.

  Soon the two of them were facing each other in one battle after another, morphing at will. “He” would throw a spear, blast a machine gun, launch a grenade. Holmes would meet each challenge with a response that was even more lethal: a musket for a mace, an Uzi for an arrow. His successes would enrage his enemy, who would escalate, attacking with even more ferocity until it seemed that the two would destroy each other for good, and yet never did.

  Holmes enjoyed the contest immensely, so much that he found himself staying up half the night and neglecting his studies. He would wander into his first class with a surreptitious cup of coffee, shoulders slouching, circles under his eyes. Then he would half-hear the lecture, scribble a few notes, fake answers to the teacher’s questions, all while dreaming up exquisite punishments he would inflict on “him.” And then one day Professor Hoxby of all people said something that got him thinking.

  They were analyzing a skeleton, searching for a cause of death when the pathologist said, “Look at this injury to the scapula.” He showed them a deep gash in the bone. It looked horrible. “See how severe it is. As we know, the shoulder blade is so strong and well protected that it takes an enormous amount of force to damage it. That means this fellow was subjected to massive trauma, which caused the other, more obvious injuries you see here.” He pointed to the ribs, clavicle, and sternum. “It almost looks as though someone took a meat cleaver to his shoulder blade. See this indentation?” He pointed to a portion of the crevasse. “This was personal. I guarantee it.”

  Holmes started. He’d sustained the exact same injury in his game, several times. And yes, that had been personal because “he” had caused it, this injury to the scapula. Scapula, Scapulus; the similarity between the two words was striking. Could it be purposeful as well? What if his opponent knew who he was and was trying to send him a message—him, Scapulus Holmes?

  No, it couldn’t be. He’d been losing too much sleep and his mind was running away with him. There was no way his opponent, probably some kid in Silicon Valley or South Korea, could know who he was. They’d have to have hacked his account, and anyway he hadn’t given his real name. Maybe he should cut back on his gaming and get some rest. He was getting carried away.

  But then something happened that struck fear to his heart, which was freaky because Holmes was rarely frightened. During one particular battle, “he” said, “Come and get me, red leaf.”

  Holmes froze. He was certain now: “he” knew who Holmes was, knew Redleaf was his mother. Their battle was indeed personal. But since he had told no one about his relationship with the cyberforensics professor, he couldn’t imagine who the soldier could be. Who else could possibly know and why would they be targeting him?

  Perhaps it was a joke. Maybe someone had snooped in his personnel records, or Okimma’s. He hadn’t thought their relationship was documented but perhaps he was wrong. Certainly some of the teachers knew because someone had placed that secret in the trove. But perhaps it had also been in his file and someone, maybe David or Simon or even Amphora, had unearthed it and was having him on. Or maybe it was Nick Moriarty. />
  Of course! How could he not have seen it? The fiend. Even from his supposed self-imposed exile the eejit was still tormenting him. Couldn’t he give it a rest? He’d won Amanda—won her and thrown her away like so much trash. And pretending he couldn’t hear. Did he really think anyone would fall for that? No, he was out there with Blixus, thinking he’d fooled everyone, plotting—still—and would be forever if Holmes didn’t stop him. But the joke was on him because this time he would stop him once and for all. This time Nick Moriarty was a dead man.

  12

  The Metadata Woman

  The day the metadata woman turned up everything changed. Of course no one knew she was the metadata woman—not at first—but she had to be someone significant: she was that odd.

  Simon was standing in the hall talking to Fern when the old woman came through the front door and stood in the hall looking confused.

  “Hey, who’s that?” said Simon, pointing.

  “That old lady?” said Fern following his finger. “I think she’s Sidebotham’s sister. I’ve seen her once or twice. Poor woman. She must be coming to get some of her belongings.”

  “But why do you suppose she’s wearing a disguise?”

  Fern started, then turned to look at the woman again. “What?”

  “Look at her,” said Simon, chin motioning. “It’s obvious. That’s a wig and she’s wearing padding. Are you sure she’s Sidebotham’s sister? Maybe she shouldn’t be here.”

  Fern gawped. “I think you’re right. Wait, she’s going into Buck’s office. He’ll spot the disguise in two seconds. Which means . . .”

  “Either she’s stupid or he knows her.”