Ascent (16 page)

Then the air in the desert changes. Blurry little pockets surround Rick. He holds the Slider up and starts turning the dial. Dr. Thompson takes a deep breath.

Rick doesn’t move. The Slider starts to vibrate in his hand. The hum threatens to split our ears.

“Run, Rick. It’s time to go.”

He doesn’t move. It’s almost like he has crazy glue stuck to the bottom of his shoes. For a brief moment I’m worried he’ll back out.

“Go, Rick, go! It’s time! Run into the vortex.”

He hesitates. And then he starts running. He runs straight into one of the blurry patches of air.

And disappears.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Rick

Eighteen Months Earlier

It feels like a vacuum cleaner pulling you through time. Everything around you is a blur. You feel the pull. It’s like all the molecules in your body are being pulled apart. I feel time pulling me. I look at my hand and it’s a million different dots. I watch the dots zoom through the air. The world blurs around me as I reach out I can feel time slipping through my fingers. I close my eyes.

And hope this isn’t the end.

***

The news plays in the background. It’s news about the election. That’s all that’s on TV now: election coverage and the affect of the recession on politics. The country is eager for change – they just don’t know how much change is possible. Dad’s home from NASA, watching the news. He logged into his work computer and didn’t log off. He didn’t know better.

I stand in the doorway, waiting for Dad to turn around to say hi. But he doesn’t. I might as well be invisible. That was his other mistake. Not paying attention. Like I was never even there.

“Dad?”

He doesn’t look away from the TV. “Yep?”

“Can Ryan Morgan come over?”

“Yep,” he says, still without looking.

“Okay, thanks.”

I leave the room. Ryan was already coming. Asking was just a courtesy.

***

“Dude, this is your dad’s computer though. Are you sure we should be doing this?”

Ryan’s always such a pussy. He doesn’t know I’ve gone into the future and figured out what I did wrong. That’s what I realized. I should have been able to go in undetected. They want me to change my past? Well, I
am
changing my past. But not in the way they want. Last time I just pulled out random secrets. This time I know what I’m looking for.

I check my thumbnail. Underneath the nail is a speck of dirt. The speck of dirt I hoped would make it through the travel.

I know I shouldn’t be doing this. Lisa told me not to. Lisa gave me a list of things I have to change. Everything else is to remain the same. That’s what she said:
Only change what’s on the list
. But what Lisa doesn’t know is that I can hide my tracks. And now I’m looking for something else. I’m looking for the Party’s secrets. Back then I was just hacking in to show off. I needed to prove myself to the Cons. Now I’ve got something to search for.

“Look, he won’t know. I have the code to cover my tracks. No one has to know it was me that logged in.”

“Isn’t this, like, illegal or something?”

I nod my head. “Of course it’s illegal. But I need to do research.”

“What?”

I want to tell him everything I know. I want to tell him about the Party. I want to tell him about the future. I want to tell him I’ve already been here and I’m changing what happened. About the ePrivacy device that fits under my thumbnail that no one knows about.

But I can’t.

And, anyway, I don’t want to boggle his mind.

“I’m just looking for information.”

“Well…” Ryan looks nervously at the door. “Don’t tell anyone I was here when you logged in. I don’t want any part of this.”

“Fine, pussy. But you have nothing to worry about. They won’t even know I’m here.”

Ryan walks over to the door and locks it. I sit at Dad’s desk and rub my thumbnail across the back of the computer. The screen flickers: it worked. I take Dad’s password and log into his remote account. His account doesn’t have what I’m looking for – but it’s the first step in.

After ten minutes I’m past all the layers of security. Amateur hour. That’s what it is: just a bunch of crap any kindergartner with half a brain could figure out. That’s the thing about old people and government workers. They think they have all the answers. It doesn’t matter I have a face full of zits and no high school degree.

I’m not an amateur. It’s why the Party chose me. It’s the same reason that they should have given that selection more thought.

Anyway, the one thing different this time from last is that I know what I’m looking for, and I have the ePrivacy to cover my tracks. Lisa would be so pissed if she knew what I was doing. There’s no way for her to know, though: she’s waiting for me a year and a half in the future.

Ryan is sitting with his back against the door. “What’s taking so long?” He yawns and looks at his watch. I know he wants to take the bus down to Red Robin. That’s what everyone does on spring break.

“I’m almost there.”

I look through the files on the computer. The closer I get to the Party’s secrets, the tougher the security.

I can’t be online too long. That’s other trick. Get in and get out. Cover your tracks. Go undetected.

I’m starting to think it won’t work, when I look up and see …

The personnel files of all the Party members.

“Ah …
this
is what I wanted.” I scan the notes. Pictures of the future leaders of America. If I’m going to be able to find out the secrets in the desert I need to know what I’m dealing with, who the important people are. I put a memory device the Cons gave me. I can download anything undetected.

It only takes a couple of minutes. Ryan’s not paying attention. He’s too worried about my dad walking into the room. He’s got his ear against the door. I’m surprised he hasn’t peed his pants and watered down the floor.

“Okay, let’s go.” I log off the computer, take out the memory device, and scrape the ePrivacy back under my thumb.

This is what I need to uncover what’s going on. I don’t trust the Party and they shouldn’t trust me.

This time I covered my tracks. This time no one needs to know I logged into Dad’s computer.

I came back and got exactly what I needed. I did everything Lisa said – just not the way she wanted. And now I’ve got something better.

Blackmail material.

***

I appease Ryan with a trip to Red Robin. I have to go, it’s on the list. We get to Red Robin and it’s the regular crowd. The crowd that always ignores everything we do. I don’t know why we even bothered coming. But Ryan has it bad for Kailey Morgan, and he’ll go anywhere she is so he can stare at her from afar.

The restaurant is packed with our classmates on a Saturday night. Ryan gives our name to the hostess. I have twenty dollars in my pocket that I lifted out of Dad’s wallet. I doubt he’ll even notice. He obviously doesn’t keep track of his things. His lack of attention to detail is what got me where I am.

We’re shown the same crappy table at the back of the restaurant by the swinging doors we always get. It’s like it has got our name on it or something.

“Anything to drink?” The waitress barely looks at us when she asks.

“Coke,” Ryan answers.

“Same for me.”

“Nachos, and we want nachos.”

The waitress glares like we’ve thrown her off. You order food
after
you’ve received your drinks. Apparently Ryan didn’t get the memo.

She disappears with our order and I look around the restaurant. The noise is deafening, the words impossible to make out. Ryan spots Kailey in the corner. She’s laughing with her friends. She swooshes her hair over her shoulder and her teeth sparkle when she smiles. Ryan is wasting his time. I’ve been to the future and I know Kailey will never give him the time of day.

But he won’t stop staring at her.

We sit at our empty table for twenty minutes. No drinks. No food. People around us are served. My stomach growls. The waitress talks to a guy about her age two tables over.

This is what happens when people don’t know who you are. They don’t care. I should take names. The people in here don’t know who they’re messing with.

The waitress walks by us for like the fifth time that night. She doesn’t even glance our way.

Ryan and I are skinny and I have a face full of zits. But I also have forty dollars in my pocket I swiped from dad’s wallet and the same rights as everyone else to be served food.

I wave at her as she walks by. “Hey, where’s our food?”

She keeps walking.

“Ma’am?” My voice is louder this time. I want to make sure she hears me.

Ryan gives me a worried look. Things are different this time: I’m not going to be dissed twice. “What are you doing?”

“Getting our food. What else?”

She finally approaches, looking more disinterested than ever. “Yes?”

“We’ve been waiting for a half hour and we don’t even have our drinks.”

She looks down at our table like it’s just now occurred to her we even exist. And that was the thing then, one of the reasons I hacked Dad’s computer. I hated being invisible. I want people to know who I am.

“Oh, I guess I forgot. I’ll be right back.”

***

Five minutes later we have our food and drinks. Ryan reaches into his pocket and pulls out a mini bottle of rum. He dumps half the contents into his drink then passes the bottle under the table so I can dump the other half into mine.

A warm buzz floats over me. I look over my shoulder at Kailey. She doesn’t even know we exist. I can change that though. Back then I felt invisible. Like I really had to do something to get attention. Now I know better.

Ryan won’t stop looking over to where Kailey is sitting. No one stops by to say hello to us. We’re sitting on a deserted island in a restaurant.

It’s not on the list, but I want to do this for Ryan. It’ll save him from the years of rejection I know are coming. Even if Lisa has a total cow, I’m sure a minor change isn’t going to set time on a path to destruction.

“Dude, just go talk to her.”

Ryan comes out of a daze. Like he’s hearing me for the first time. “Huh?”

“Go talk to her, don’t just sit there staring. You look like an ape.”

“Don’t say that! That’s awful!”

“Well.”

“I …” He looks back toward Kailey. “I … can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because she doesn’t know I exist. And she’ll tell me to get lost.”

“Then why are we here?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess it is kind of pathetic, sitting in the back of the restaurant where no one even stops to talk to us.”

Last time we just sat here. Sipping rum and Cokes and watching the world happen all around us.

This time is different.

I stand up.

Ryan panics. Like the sight of me doing anything but sinking into invisibility will send him into a fit of hysteria.

“What are you doing?” His voice is high, piercing. Screeching, even. “Sit down!”

But I know it doesn’t matter. High school never gets better for us. What I do know is it won’t make a difference at all.

I walk over to Kailey’s table.

“Hey.”

It takes a minute. They’re deep in conversation. Kailey’s friend looks my direction and dismisses me.

“Hey, Kailey.”

She stops talking and looks at me. Her eyes narrow. Her friend crosses her arms over her chest and glares. I’m not welcome here. They look at me like a bug has flown to their table and they forgot the repellant.

“Can we buy you something to drink?” I nod my head back at Ryan who wants to crawl under the table. He looks like he might die. I hope they have a defibrillator in the restaurant.

“Um …” she looks at her friends. One shakes her head and stifles a laugh.

“What’s your friend’s name?” She motions back to our table.

“Ryan.”

“He’s in my Chemistry class,” she says to her friend. “I need help with Chemistry. Isn’t he some kind of genius or something?”

I shrug. “He’s pretty smart.”

“Well,” she says, and her voice wavers. Her friends giggle and shake their heads. She ignores them though, which is a total surprise. “Do you want to come sit with us?”

I can’t believe it. I was expecting to be rebuffed. Sent away. I had a list of smart retorts.

“Sure.”

I wave Ryan over. He shakes his head like I’m pulling something on him. That’s the way things were for us. But not now. I’ve changed things. Lisa thought the world would end, but instead it made our existence just a little bit better.