The Rendering (3 page)

Yeah, too easy.

After I incinerated a few levels on
Arsenal Five
, I played two arcs of
HARP
. That stands for
High-Altitude Recon Protocol
, if you didn’t already know, and the game’s based on real NASA research of the upper atmosphere using instruments shot from a cannon.

Seriously. That’s what they do at NASA.

The game starts at home base, where you’re briefed and you choose your gear. Then they launch you into suborbit and you arc through the atmosphere, incinerating the baddies and racing against the clock until—

Pardon me, Douglas, but is this information essential?

Well, I guess it’s not
essential
.

Is it relevant in any way whatsoever?

Um, not really. I mean, unless you’re playing
HARP
. If anyone’s playing
HARP
, I know some killer shortcuts. E-mail me.

Perhaps you might focus on matters more directly related to the upcoming events?

Sure. Good point. Where was I?

Oh, right. After
HARP
, I started my current favorite game:
Street Gang
.

I don’t know if you’ve played
Street Gang
. First you choose which gang you want to be (I chose the Hog Stompers, a biker gang) and which gang you want to fight (in this case, the Fists of Kung Fu, these ninja warriors).

Most people like the Fists better than the Hogs, because the ninjas are, well,
ninjas
. They’ve got a killer stealth attack, and their throwing stars are awesome.

But the Hogs can soak an endless amount of damage, and the limited-range attack with the motorcycle chains is devastating, if you know how to use it.

Which I do.

The best way is by—

Again, Douglas. Relevance?

Hey! You
know Street Gang
is relevant. I’m living with a ninja-powered biker chick as I type this.

Indeed. But the mechanics of specific attacks?

Fine, fine. Just trying to help.

Anyway, that’s the employee lounge: basically a video arcade with a snack bar attached. Plus an exercise room and a bunch of couches and a digital banner right below the ceiling:

As for the Center itself, picture an
enormous
warehouse with an office building attached, surrounded by two miles of no-man’s-land, four fences, and a minefield.

And for that extra layer of security, a dozen biodigital tanks.

What are those? Picture an Abrams tank with steel-plate armor and a rotating turret—except run by an artificial intelligence as vicious as a junkyard dog.

I’m not gonna pretend I understand exactly what
biodigital
means, or Auntie M will interrupt again. But the basic idea is transforming biological stuff—brain stems, nervous systems, animal instinct—into digital code.

And there are only three good reasons why you’re reading this blog.

Well, biodigital technology is the key to the skunks. So if you’re here for reason number three, this is how it works:

First you translate biological systems into digital code. Then you combine that code with cutting-edge hardware (and wetware and fluxware). And congratulations, you’ve stumbled through a hidden door into the future of technology!

Maybe an example will help.

Say you want to create a world-class fugitive tracker. You digitize a bloodhound’s sense of smell, to get a scent-hunting ability that’s generations beyond anything you could invent. Then you build a handheld “sniffer” that uses that bloodhound-based software, and
ta-da
!

A fully networked, portable man hunter that doesn’t stop to pee on trees. Plus you throw in night vision, maybe sonar from a bat, and whatever else strikes your fancy.

That’s the basic idea, the beta version of biodigital tech. The more advanced applications are endless, and dangerous. And like nothing the world’s ever seen.

You know those videos of the skunks that appear on YouTube for a few minutes before someone crashes the whole site? They’re not hoaxes. They’re not jokes.

They’re snapshots from a secret war.

Inside—at least in the public areas, the unclassified zones where the secretaries worked and the nephews visited—the Center looked like a regular office building, with water-coolers and workstations and cubicles. My aunt was the head of research, so her office, on the second floor, had windows and a Persian rug and a comfy couch.

Wandering around, you wouldn’t stumble on anything interesting. Well, except for the armored doors and
NO ENTRY
signs. And the guards with assault rifles.

Other than
that
, though, just your ordinary office building.

To tell the truth, I’d never wanted to get behind those locked doors. I figured you could search for a month and not find anything cooler than a Bunsen burner.

Well, I learned later that night how wrong I’d been. Because
behind those doors, down wide bright hallways, you’d walk right into:

In the BattleArmor lab, they’d built a prototype suit that would turn an ordinary soldier into a tank. Think RoboCop crossed with Iron Man. There was just one problem: nobody could wear the armor.

They needed a soldier genetically designed for the suit, and that was generations beyond their abilities. Or so they thought.

As for the virtual reality combat simulators: if I’d known that
those
were behind the locked doors, I’d have broken in somehow. Because they were the ultimate video games, offering complete immersion in millions of combat scenarios, to train elite Special Forces soldiers.

At least, in theory. In practice, they hadn’t deployed the sims, because they were
too
realistic. Users might actually die of simulated wounds. That’s like if you really broke your leg every time you fell off a roof in
Smash and Grab III
.

And finally, the animal research section. They had rabbits and parakeets and snakes and monkeys and beetles and on and on.

Yeah, and skunks.

They used the animals for digital imaging. They’d scan them, digitize them, basically reduce them to binary code:

This was supposed to have all kinds of medical and military applications—like the bloodhound—but sometimes the information would degrade, and there would be problems. My aunt said they were decades away from digitizing a human.

They
were.

Doc Roach was another story.

Two more things before I get back to that night.

First, I’ve changed some details to protect myself—and Jamie, and the skunks. So no, Roach and VIRUS can’t track us down with anything posted here. Maybe I’m living on the outskirts of a new city; maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m in the seventh grade now; maybe I’m in the ninth.

And second, you might wonder how I know what happened when I wasn’t around. Like when I was miles from the action.

You’ll probably think I’m lying.

I’m not. If I didn’t personally witness something, my aunt digitally reconstructed it, using technology she’d developed at the Center. With satellites, security cameras, resonant audio pickup from telephone wires and radios, there’s almost nothing she can’t reconstruct. Trust me on that.

Actually, Douglas, approximately 4.22 percent
of the continental United States has highly, extremely, or absolutely limited surveillance–reconstruction potential
.

Well, I said
almost
. Sheesh.

So that’s the setup. And this is how everything came crashing down.

Other than me, my aunt, and a few guards, the Center was empty. At least, that’s what the sensors recorded … but they missed the man in the animal research section.

Dr. Ronald J. Roach: a bony, thin-lipped creep with cold eyes and a colder heart. And an IQ too high to measure.

There’s no record of how he entered the building. He used to work at the Center, until he was fired for conducting unauthorized experiments. Security cameras—which cover every inch of the place—went mysteriously dark and Auntie M presumes he smuggled himself inside during that period, hidden in one of the biodigital tanks he designed.

I presume nothing. I simply state that the probability of his having done so approaches 91.62 percent
.

Anyway—

I would be pleased to see scores exceeding 90 percent on the papers you bring home from school, Douglas
.

Okay, okay, I’ll finish my homework as soon as I’m done with this.

You mean start your homework
.

Do you want me conjugating Latin verbs or warning people that the country—the
world
—is in danger?

Preferably both
.

Anyway, my aunt thinks Roach used a secret override code to hitch a ride inside one of the tanks. Then he let himself into the animal research section and walked down the rows of cages, rattling his pen along the bars. The animals knew him, and they feared him. They cowered and hissed as he passed.

“Seventeen minutes,” he said, glancing at his watch. Yeah, he’s such a mad scientist he actually talks to himself. “Then the second stage begins.”

He rattled a few more bars, and a little white rabbit bounded away and trembled in the corner.

Roach glared at the bunny. “I should take your foot for good luck.” He didn’t do anything to the rabbit, though. Instead, he checked the device in his hand and said, “And now for the final procedure.” His icy gaze probed the room. “Should I use the hamsters? The monkeys?” He crept down a few rows, then stopped. “Ah! The skunks.”

He tapped on a keypad attached to the cage containing three skunks. There was a label on their cage:

Some clown had named the skunks after flowers.

Hilarious.

A robot arm scooped the skunks from their cage and deposited them in a clear tube. They scrabbled against the sides but couldn’t grab anything, and in a moment, the tube retracted into the center of the Quantum Bio-Map Generator.

Roach dialed the power to critical levels, and a warning light flashed. He didn’t care; he wasn’t running a real test. He’d already taken control of the automated security and now needed to overload the communications systems so nobody could call for help.

Then he entered a password and a computer voice said, “Test authorized. Scanning bio-forms … Digitizing … Imaging … Please wait.…”

“Scanning … Digitizing … Rendering … Rendering …”

Inside the machine, the skunks were being transformed
into patterns of subatomic particles and encoded as digital information.

Sure, that’s clear.

Basically, the machine downloaded three skunk brains into computer files. Every instinct and memory was written onto software. Meanwhile, their furry little skunk bodies went limp, into a deep unnatural sleep, with only the machine keeping them alive.

Nothing could live for long after having its brain digitized. Well, not
yet
.

But what was happening
inside
the machine wasn’t very important right then. Because
outside
the machine, a warning chime sounded on Aunt Margaret’s computer.