The Rendering (5 page)

“Then tell me where to find it,” Hund said.

“One moment.” Roach clicked off his communicator and eyed my aunt. “You didn’t get far.”

“You’re being videotaped, Roach,” my aunt said. “You’re
not going to get away with this.” She was calm and unafraid. Amazing.

“I already have,” Roach said. “I was right all along: my theory about uploading the human brain is correct. And soon, with my scanning booths and the HostLink, we’ll be digitizing entire organisms. Mind and body both.”

“Your experiments almost killed the test subjects—”

“Everything can be scanned in, Margaret,” he interrupted, eyes shining. “Not just a few stray impulses.
Everything.”

“Even if that’s true, it’s not worth the risk.”

“That’s always been your problem.” Roach sneered. “Lack of vision. I can digitize towns, states, entire countries. With the right tech, I’ll scan in the world. Think of it!”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Aunt Margaret said. “I think you’re insane.”

“A perfect world! No human error. Everything reduced to code, eternal and pure. Imagine a world without hunger or pain or death. Without ugly messes and stupid mistakes. No muss, no fuss, no disgusting fleshy bodies.”

She looked at him and—I swear this is true—said, “If you want to get rid of disgusting fleshy bodies, go to the gym more often.”

He glared at her. “And no disobedience. Everyone will follow the program. Everyone will have a function and will perform that function perfectly.”

“Or what?” she asked.

“Or the programmer will modify the faulty code.”

“You’re gonna digitize people against their will,” she said, realization dawning on her face. “Scan them into your machine, even if it kills them.”

“They won’t die. They’ll be reborn in new forms, immortal and perfect. They’ll expand my digital realm, making me stronger—so I can digitize more, and get stronger still. Until there is nothing left of this foul world but acres of supercomputers humming in my underground vaults. And on those computers, we’ll live forever—in perfect order.”

“And you’ll delete the mind of anyone who objects?”

“Of course not. I’ll merely debug them.”

“You
are
insane,” my aunt said.

“Madness and genius …” Roach grabbed a pair of handheld scanners, like those shock paddles you see on TV shows when doctors jolt someone back to life. “They’re two sides of the same equation.”

Then he pressed the paddles to my aunt’s temples.

You know what’s worse than suddenly falling through the air? Suddenly
stopping
.

I hit the ground hard and groaned for a few seconds. Then I felt something digging into my face and realized I was clinging to Auntie M’s computer—which was still, somehow, sending data to Jamie’s laptop.

Directly under my aunt’s office was the Holographic Hub, the main CPU of the Center. I’d peeked inside on that tour I mentioned, through the observation window, and you know what I saw?

Nothing.

An empty white room. But inside that room, every molecule, every electron and atom was imprinted with information, like a track on a CD. It looks empty, but it’s coursing with energy, with data.

And I fell right into the middle of it.

I didn’t know that the explosion—the
first
explosion, I mean, a thousand times weaker than the final blast—was a mercenary attack. I didn’t know they’d targeted the blast to neutralize the backup security while sparing the rest of the building so they could steal the technology. I didn’t know anything.

To be honest, I thought the explosion was probably
my
fault. Not that I really cared, because I suddenly remembered the sign on the hub’s door:
HIGHLY VOLATILE—APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION
.

I needed to get out of there.

Yet I couldn’t even stand. My strength was gone, and I felt myself getting weaker every second. Being inside the hub sapped my strength, made my brain buzz and my vision blur.

I forced myself to roll over and crawled toward the door.

Locked.

I looked for something to smash the observation window with. Everything from Auntie M’s office had fallen through the floor with me. I saw her chair ten feet away. A scattering of books from her shelves. A few drawers from her desk, with the contents spilled everywhere.

I dragged myself back to her computer, figuring I could use it to break the window. It took all my strength to cross those ten feet; then I was too weak to lift the monitor. Instead, I keeled over. I lay there, staring at the white floor and the white walls and a scattering of junk from Auntie M’s drawers:

I blinked a few times, first watching a strange foggy glow around the Memory Cube, then peering at the picture. They
say I look like my father. He was tall and lanky with messy dark hair—and always smiling or laughing in every picture I’d ever seen.

I smiled back at him.

Then I collapsed.

Roach pressed the paddles to my aunt’s temples and pulled the triggers.

The machine hummed, and my aunt screamed. Then she fell to the floor, where she lay unmoving. He’d erased her brain, transferred every synapse through the paddles into the Center’s data banks. But he hadn’t formatted the mainframe to accept her data, so her mind would soon fade into the darkness of the hard drives. And a few minutes later, her body would shut down completely.

Roach stepped over her like she was yesterday’s laundry. “Now, Hund,” he said into his communicator, “explain the problem. You’re having trouble with security?”

“No. We breached the vault easily enough.”

“But didn’t find the cube?”

“We found the cube,” Hund said.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“It’s blank.”

“What?
Impossible. You have the wrong cube.”

“I have the cube that the Protocol was saved onto.” Hund’s voice crackled over the communicator. “Exactly as described. Except it’s blank.”

“I need that Protocol.” Roach stepped up to a keyboard and clicked the keys. “Here we are. The cube with the Protocol on it was stored in the archive vault.”

“I’m standing in the archive vault.”

“Ah, yes. You blasted the doors and … let me scan the cube you found.” Roach tapped a few more keys. “That’s the right cube.”

“As I said, Doctor. And it’s blank.”

“You’re right. I don’t understand. Unless …” Roach’s fingers blurred over the keyboard; then he paled. “Dr. Solomon erased the contents two minutes ago.”

That was what she’d been doing at the computer. At least,
part
of what she’d been doing.

“The Protocol is gone?” Hund asked.

“No. She can’t have—there’s an override on deletion. Wait a moment.…” Roach eyed the data scrolling past. “Ah! Before she erased the cube, she transferred the contents into the Holographic Hub. Into a
new
cube. We’ll retrieve the Protocol from there.”

“I’m on my way,” Hund said, his voice crackling.

“The hub is extremely dangerous, Commander. Do not enter until I tell you it’s safe.”

“Roger.”

“And on your way,” Roach said, “kill anything that moves.”

I could’ve told him that in the Holographic Hub right then, absolutely nothing was moving.

Not that I wasn’t trying. I didn’t remember the whole lecture my aunt had given me during that tour, about getting stuck in the hub, but the phrase
vaporize all the synapses in your brain
stuck in my mind.

And I couldn’t even lift a finger.

Luckily, my face was scrunched against the computer I’d been using to send the dragonfly data to Jamie. That’s what saved my life. If I’d been an inch farther away, I never would have made it. But I was close enough to hear Jamie’s voice.

“Bug!” she said through the half-smashed speakers. “Bug! Can you hear me?”

I gurgled. It was all I could do.

“I can see you here, on my screen. In
CircuitBoard
, I mean. You’re showing up on the game interface. What’s going on?”

I tried to say, “Get me out of here!” But all I could manage was “Out!”

“You want to get out?”

I gurgled again, more insistently.

“Well, there’s a … let’s see, I’ll connect the positive to the negative here, and …” And she was off, talking nonsense about winning her
CircuitBoard
game.

Meanwhile, my synapses were getting fried.

Jamie kept blathering about her game: “Then I close this circuit and move to the next level. I’ll power down the grid, and …”

Everything was fading away,
fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading …

Until I heard a click.

The humming in the room quieted and I took a sudden gulp of breath. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped breathing.

“You look terrible, Doug,” Jamie said through the speakers. “I’m zooming in on you. Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

I croaked, “Yes.”

With the hub powered down, I felt stronger already. Then I noticed that the door was unlocked. Somehow Jamie had turned off the power and unlocked the door using
CircuitBoard
commands from her laptop.

She’d saved my life.

Talk about humiliating. Saved by a girl game.

“What on earth is going on?” Jamie asked. (But of course, she didn’t put it so politely.)

“I don’t know.” I pushed myself onto my knees. “I gotta get out of here.”

“What’d you
do
?” Jamie asked.

Then another voice came from the computer: “The Center has been taken over by mercenaries. Douglas Solomon, you must take that Memory Cube and flee.”

“This one?” I asked, grabbing the cube. “Jamie? Is that you?”

“No, I—”

The mechanized voice cut her off: “You must prevent the intruders from stealing that cube. You must not fail.”

“But no pressure, right?” I said.

“And you must vacate the hub,” the voice said. “You have nine seconds before permanent brain damage.”

“Eight.”

“Seven.”

“Six.”

Thirty seconds later, Hund and his soldiers closed in on the Holographic Hub. They moved like the elite mercenary
commando force they were—with a deadly silence.

“Wait while I power down the hub,” Roach’s voice said. “It’s a complex procedure and—What’s this!”

“What?” Hund asked, raising his gun.

“Impossible!” Roach said over the communicator, still clicking the keyboard in the other room. “The hub’s already off-line. Someone got there before us. Commander, get that cube.”

Hund kicked down the door to the Holographic Hub.

He dove inside, rolled, and came up standing with a huge gun in each hand. The whole thing took him about a nanosecond.

The total time elapsed between Commander Hund’s ingress into the Holographic Hub and—

Give it a rest, Auntie M, okay?

Sometimes she’s a little obsessive about numbers.

If you could only see them as I see them, Douglas, you’d understand. It is one of the few advantages of my new state
.

Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—

Apology accepted, Douglas. Please continue the story
.

Okay. Commander Hund battered through the hub door, with three soldiers behind him. They fanned out and found … nothing but wreckage. Just the shattered furniture from my aunt’s office, the scattered junk from her drawers.

Hund hit the button on his communicator. “Doctor, the Protocol cube isn’t here.”

Roach had left my aunt on the floor and headed for the loading bay to prepare the helicopters to transport the HostLink, because that thing was
huge
. He paused when he got Hund’s message, and checked a monitor. “I’m tracking the cube in corridor 6B. No, wait. It’s moving.”

“Patch into the security cameras.”

“One moment. Yes. Focusing. Ah! That’s Dr. Solomon’s brat. He spilled coleslaw on me at one of those insufferable company picnics. He has the cube. Get the Protocol and dump the body.”

“My pleasure,” Hund said, and started hunting me.

About a minute earlier, I’d lunged across the hub and tugged on the door handle.

“Quantum entanglement at critical levels,” the voice said. “Brain waves compromised.”

I recognized the mechanized tones. That was what the Center sounded like when the scientists set the output to “voice.” The same bland voice said, “This is a no-entry zone,” and “Download complete,” and “Please fasten your seat belt.”

Somehow, the Center itself was telling me that my brain waves were compromised, and in two seconds I’d have permanent brain damage. In a panic, I yanked open the door and fell into the corridor, breathing hard.

“Now hide, Douglas Solomon,” the voice said. “Before they find you.”

“What?” I blurted.

“Before they find the Protocol,” the voice said. “Do not let them get that cube.”

“But who—”

“The future is in your hands.”

“How—”

“Flee now,” the voice said. “Or die.” So I fled.

Down the hallway, hurdling a heap of rubble on the floor, then swerving into a stairwell with a door half blasted off its hinges. I pressed myself into the corner, holding the Memory Cube in a white-knuckled grip.

I didn’t know what was going on. The explosion, falling into the hub, the threats of brain damage and prowling mercenaries—it was all too much.

They wanted this cube? For the Protocol? And I was the only person who could stop them? I mean, me?

I couldn’t remember to take out the trash. I couldn’t gather the courage to ask Stacy Nguyen to dance. I couldn’t sit
through an entire English class without fidgeting. And
I
was gonna keep the Protocol from a gang of mercenaries?