Jacked (22 page)

Dr. Pierinski took another drink, then looked at Tar. “The day the WorldWideMind was born. You will forgive me, I hope. It’s…it’s been years since I contemplated, uh…since I thought about those days.”

Tar nodded.

“So then what happened, Doctor?” Toby asked from behind Tar. “Why The Crash?”

The man took a deep breath. “Yes. What happened?” He set the empty glass down on a side table. Sally reached for the pitcher to pour him some more water but he took her hand instead and squeezed it. “I’m fine, dear,” he smiled at her and she eased back, putting her hand again on his shoulder. “We really didn’t have much to do with that portion of the project. UCLA was creating the hardware. Hisa, your mother,” he said to Tar, “and I were in your father’s lab to run code and data checks on the programming for the internal model, the software for the cortical implant that allowed jacking-in. The external pieces were on the market within a year, and then we were clear to begin human trials on the internal ops.” He smiled. “That was the best time of my life. We were working countless, ungodly hours, but we loved it. We all just loved what we were doing. And that was when your parents got married, Tar.” The doctor chuckled. “They spent their honeymoon with their team, six of us running code and eating cold pizza.”

“So what happened?” asked Tar.

The smile froze on Roger’s face and he looked away. He was silent for so long Tar thought the man was finished, but then the he wiped at his eyes and glanced up at Sally. She patted his shoulder. “We were hacked. Someone infected the system with an encrypted polymorphic code.”

“A what?”

“A polymorphic code. Hisa discovered it. We extracted it multiple times but the damn language kept replicating, reappearing in different strings of code. That polly was the nastiest virus any of us had ever seen…”

Tar’s eyes opened wide. “Uncle Jahn said that they had sent Polly riding inside on her horse. But he was looking for a person to stop. Is that what you’re talking about?”

The doctor narrowed his eyes. “We suspected the virus was delivered by a Trojan horse; time-released, as it turned out.” He leaned forward and looked Tar in the eyes. “I don’t remember your Uncle Jahn. How did he hear about Polly?”

“He wasn’t really my uncle. He raised me after The Crash but…” Tar paused before rushing on. “He used to be one of Father Eli’s men but when he found out what was going on he tried to stop him. Father Eli released Polly.”

Dr. Pierinski’s jaw clenched. His body tensed. “Then Father Eli is responsible for the end of the world.”

#

The doctor stood and left the room without another word. Sally smiled and led Tar and Toby to the basement, where there was a sitting area with a couch, several cozy chairs, and a bedroom. They decided to clean up a bit.

“So, what’re you thinking?” Toby asked as he pulled on a clean shirt. He was nearly the same size as the doctor so Sally had offered them some of the man’s clothes, and the shirt fit Toby well.

Tar shrugged. “I think they’re nice.”

“Tar, they lied to Nataly about her being the only fixer. How do we know Dr. Pierinski’s being honest with us?”

Tar bent over and finished tying his shoes. “Uncle Jahn lied to me my whole life, too, but he was doing it because he felt it was the best chance, you know, to keep me safe. I think Nataly’s dad was just doing the same thing, and who’s to say they’re wrong?”

A knock at the door stopped their conversation.

“Can I come in?” It was Nataly.

Tar walked over and opened the door. “Sure. We’re just talking.”

Nataly nodded as she walked in and sat down on the chair beside the bed.

“Sally said to tell you supper will be ready in about fifteen minutes.”

“That’s great,” said Toby. “We haven’t eaten since this morning.”

An awkward silence fell, only the sound of their breathing and the occasional squeak of the bed when Toby moved broke the quiet.

“You call your mom by her name.” Tar grasped at anything to make conversation. “That’s chilly.”

“Sally’s not my mom. She and dad got married a few years ago. My mom died during The Crash.”

“I’m sorry,” Tar said. “Did she go zom or hard boot?”

Nataly gave him a funny look. “She died right away. I was pretty young but I still remember her a little.” She opened her mouth as if she was going to say more but she shook her head and stopped herself. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“What’s it like for you? You know, when you’re doing…what we do.”

“Fixing?” Tar half-sat, half-leaned against the dresser. “Every brick’s a little different. But they all feel like I’m this light and I need to steer my way through a maze to get from one end to the other and connect both sides. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes it’s really, really hard.” He looked down at his shoes for a few seconds. He was finding it hard to look at Nataly for very long without feeling his stomach flop so he concentrated on her blonde hair, the shape of her ear, anything else. “Is that what it’s like for you?”

“Kind of. The maze is the same but I feel like I’m pulling something behind me.”

“He loses track of time,” said Toby. “He’s got no clue what’s going on around him when he’s doing it. Sometimes he hums, kind of like a song, but not really. Oh, and he dances.”

“Dances?” Nataly grinned from ear to ear.

“Well, not really a dance. More like swaying back and forth.”

Tar felt his face grow hot.

“Really?” She was still smiling.

“You hum, too,” said Dr. Pierinski. All three of them turned to see the doctor leaning on the door frame. They had not heard him come in. “You hum but I’ve never seen you move. As a matter of fact, you stand still for so long…that’s why we don’t like you to fix anything unless necessary.”

“He doesn’t let me fix much,” she admitted to them, but a twinkle in her eye made Tar think Nataly fixed more than her dad knew.

“Data pathways,” said the doctor. “That’s what you both see. I imagine it does look like a maze.” He walked into the room and sat on the bed beside Toby.

“How do we do it?” Tar asked. “How do we fix bricks?”

Dr. Pierinski rubbed his palms against the knees of his pants. “Some compromises were made. As an intracranial device, the smaller the implant, the better, so the unit had just enough computing power to send and receive data packages, plus do the translations. All of the heavy programming and computing took place in the Mind. When Hisa found the virus we knew it would shut everything down if we didn’t find a way to remove it. It never occurred to us what would happen to the people. We had fail-safes but they were in the Mind’s servers. All of us on the team had our own implants by then. We had to. I can’t imagine how long it would have taken us to achieve what we did if it hadn’t been for the MentConn. But the worst was not knowing
who
had created the virus. We thought at first maybe a foreign competitor but everyone’s scientists had MentConn tech, their militaries, their leaders—we were really all in the same boat at that point. That left the religious zealots and the kooks.”

“Like Father Eli,” Toby said quietly. Tar nodded his agreement.

“Yes,” Dr. Pierinski answered. “So we looked for a way to protect ourselves and the system. That’s where you kids came in.”

“Nine of us,” Tar interrupted. “You expected nine of us to somehow protect the Mind? I was a baby!”

The doctor winced. “You must have found the list on the handheld. I’d like to look at it later if you’ll let me. It’s yours, of course. I think it belonged to Marty.” He glanced at his daughter. “I know most of you were young. Nataly was only a couple of years older. There were two that were around ten when it happened and one was thirteen...”

“Dad,” Nataly cut in, her voice low. “You still haven’t said what you did to us.”

Tar was coming to realize the calmer and softer Nataly said something the more important it was to listen to her.

Dr. Pierinski looked at his daughter, then at Tar, and nodded. “Your hands contain a processing unit—the fastest, most powerful we could build at the time; over three terabytes of memory in each hand. It uses NFC, Near Field Communication, to connect to other pieces of technology. We also put in a way for you to connect remotely to the Mind but we kept those turned off, just in case. I think by then Hisa suspected what might happen and she insisted. We could always activate it later with a key. But the biggest thing you carry is the way to get through the maze, to fix the data pathways. You kids were the virus killer. You were the protection.”

The doctor looked at Tar. “We all helped—me, Marty, Earl, Janie, the whole group—but your mom wrote ninety percent of it. She was our hope to beat it and to keep you kids safe.” He smiled. “You were the youngest, Tar. You received the final implants with all the latest upgrades, the really good stuff.”

The room grew quiet. They could hear Sally moving around in the kitchen upstairs.

“Mr. Pierinski,” Toby finally said, breaking the silence. “My mom went hard boot after The Crash. Tar lost his mom and dad and we even found out Scooter’s parents died, too. Why didn’t you die?”

The man stared at his daughter and smiled. “It was her; Nataly saved me.” He looked at the boys. “Everyone on the project knew the dangers so we began taking turns being on the Mind, trying to protect as many of us as we could. We didn’t know if it would do any good or not but we had to do something.

“So when The Crash happened—October 29 at 10:30 at night—I wasn’t connected. I was rocking Nataly to sleep…and I happened to be holding her hand. It felt like I wobbled, dozed off, and when I woke up in the morning, everyone was dead, including her mother. But she was standing on my lap, holding my head with both hands like she used to do when she wanted to kiss me. Her implants must have provided the virus protection to keep me from losing my mind.”

“Here you all are.” Sally walked into the room. “Roger, I sent you down to bring everybody upstairs not to sit around telling more stories.” Her words were strict but she softened them with a little smile.

“Sorry, dear. I…” He smiled. “Let’s all go eat.”

As they headed toward the stairs the doctor hung back and stepped close to Tar. “Your friend said that both your parents were dead. I’m sorry. I always suspected about Marty but I never knew for certain. Did he die right away?”

Tar took another couple of steps before he answered.

“I guess so. Uncle Jahn told me that when he came to get me he found my dad sitting at his desk. Mom went zom and was there, too. I suppose she died there.”

Dr. Pierinski grabbed Tar by the shoulder, turning him on the landing. He shook his head. “Hisa wasn’t connected when The Crash hit. She lost her ability to think but they took her, afterwards, to one of those camps where they take care of…well. I visited your mother once.” He looked away.

“Dr. Pierinski, what are you telling me?”

He met Tar’s stare, and his gaze pierced almost as deep as his words. “What I’m telling you, Tar…is that your mother might still be alive.”

Chapter 30

The next few days were a whirlwind. He and Toby stayed in the house with the curtains drawn to hide them from people on the street. A few times, after dark, they escaped into the backyard for some fresh air without worrying about being seen.

Tar spoke with Dr. Pierinski and Nataly as much as he could. They played games with, read some books and old magazines in the room the doctor called his
man cave
, and spent hours listening to Nataly tell stories. That was Tar’s favorite part.

At night, however, he tossed and turned on the couch he now called his bed, his dreams filled with thoughts of his mother. In them he saw her wandering in dark hallways, bumping into walls and crying out in pain and frustration. She was young, her hair black, straight, and bobbed at her shoulders—just as it had been in the photo with his father and everyone else in the Mind project. Images tumbled together in the dreams, twisting on top of each other until he no longer knew which way was up, and Tar became lost as he tried to follow his mother.

“You look fragged,” Toby said.

Tar glanced up from where he was sitting on the edge of the couch, his shoulders and head slumped, turning himself into a short question mark.

“Yeah. I don’t feel so chilly.”

“Are you sick? Do want me to get Mrs. Pierinski?”

Tar shook his head before he fell back onto his side, the blanket wrapping around his waist. “I’m just tired.”

Tar stared at the table in front of him through half-open eyes. On it lay the game they had played the night before. It was called Tantrix and it involved laying down tiles with your color string on it. The goal was to connect all of your tiles to make the longest string in the group.

Tar had lost miserably while the other three laughed and yelled through the whole game. It should have been easy for him, imagining the ways to lay the tiles so his green string would grow. But he kept losing his train of thought. He watched Nataly hook her hair behind her ear and he nearly played out of turn. She dropped a tile on the floor and they almost knocked heads reaching for it at the same time. She told a story and he just sat and listened until a kick in the shin from Toby reminded him it was his turn to lay down a tile. It had been awful…and wonderful. He caught Dr. Pierinski—who insisted he and Toby call him Roger—staring at him once, not exactly frowning but more puzzled, as if he was trying to figure out some problem. Despite the man’s quick smile Tar had felt embarrassed.

It all came back to him as he lay on his side, his eyes tracing paths in the game. He knew he was following Nataly’s line—she had played yellow—and not his own, but he let his mind wander back and forth, just like the string. When they had both reached for the tile and bumped heads, they had also briefly touched hands as well. He could still remember the shock that had gone up his arm. What would it have been like to reach up and touch her face, trace his hand across her cheek…

Tar sat up with a jerk. He had moved so fast he actually bounced, making the old couch springs groan in protests. But he barely heard them. Something cried out in his mind, a flicker, just on the corners of thought, like a shadow dancing on the edge of his sight until he turned his head to look, and then it was gone.