The Rendering (2 page)

Get the idea?

Yeah, I thought you might.

My aunt Margaret used to work there. She was an expert in tachyon mapping, subatomic interfaces, stuff like that. I’ll skip the technical details, but—

You do not understand the technical details, Douglas
.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. That was my aunt—or what’s left of her—hacking my Net connection again.

Only to monitor the security of your link and ensure your safety. You know the searchbots never stop hunting for you
.

I’ll explain later how Aunt Margaret hacks the Net, if she can manage to keep from interrupting.

I will try to restrain myself
.

Thanks.

Back when life was normal, Aunt Margaret worked at the Center, doing high-tech top secret stuff. Of course, she never told me exactly what she did other than “medical research”—that’s why it’s called top
secret
—but I’ve learned a lot since then.

I used to hang at her office sometimes, just in the public areas, not the archives or the tech-development labs. And if you’re expecting to hear that I followed in her footsteps, that I’m some boy genius, let me disappoint you right now: I’m barely passing science.

I’m not an athlete; I’m not a gifted student; I’m not a singer or an artist or a poet.

I’m a regular kid. Just like you.

Well, except for one little quirk.

Remember that kiln that went haywire and ruined all the sculptures in art class? I guess I wasn’t
completely
ordinary, even back then. Things like that sometimes … happened around me.

The first time I remember, I was six years old. My remote-control car smashed itself into pieces against the fridge, ignoring the controls completely. Then cell phones stopped working and cameras malfunctioned. Not always, but often enough that I learned not to stick around for group photographs. When a camcorder bursts into flames every few years, you start to notice.

Other than
that
, though? Call me Mr. Ordinary.

You want to know
why
I’d hang around an office building instead of watching TV at home? I mean, considering I’m not exactly the Einstein Kid, eager for some alone time in a science lab. And considering they didn’t let me into the top secret areas, just the parts that looked like any other boring big business.

Video games.

An entire wall of them, a long line stretching down the length of the employee lounge in the Center. All flashing, beeping, whirring, and absolutely free:

The employee lounge smelled of microwave popcorn, and sometimes my aunt’s coworkers chatted at me, but still: free video games.

Heaven.

So that’s why I was there that day.

And, um, I don’t want to get all Movie of the Week, but sometimes I don’t like being alone. The thing is, my parents died in a car crash when I was a little kid, so I lived with Auntie M, just the two of us. I used to call her that, to make her laugh.
Auntie M
. And because, you know, there’s no place like home.

I guess I’m supposed to be depressed about my parents, but I don’t even remember them. So Auntie M is my whole family.

Well, she
was
. Whatever.

At least I still have Jamie.

Looking back, I realize that living with my aunt was great. And that was how I met Jamie, because she lived next door. I don’t want to give her a big head or anything, but … you know how I keep saying I’m a regular guy?

Jamie is different. Irregular.

Well, maybe she’s not that bad, but she was a little too rich and way too smart to fit in at our school. She wore designer clothes while the other girls wore chain store stuff. She rode a Diamond Royce bike instead of a Huffy. And I’m not sure if she’s officially a genius, but she took calculus in the sixth grade.

Plus she’s one of those kids who, for some reason, deal with adults better than they do with other kids.

For example, my aunt’s the one who introduced us.

When I was in elementary school, I came back from dirt biking one day and shoved through the front door. “I’m home!”

“In here,” Auntie M called from her study.

I poured a bowl of cereal in the kitchen and found them in the study: my aunt and this girl wearing a floofy pink dress and
pink tights. Jamie denies this, but I swear there were at least three bows in her hair. All pink.

“This is Jamie from next door,” my aunt said. “She’s helping with my filing.”

“Why?” I asked, crunching my cereal.

“Because you didn’t want to.”

“No, I mean, what’s in it for her?”

“When I grow up,” the girl told me, “I’m gonna be a scientist. I’m gonna be just like your aunt.”

I ate another spoonful. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because my aunt doesn’t look like an explosion in a Barbie factory.”

So Jamie hurled a book at my head. Not much aim, but plenty of power.

My aunt had the window repaired, and Jamie outgrew her pink phase. Mostly. And over the next year, we became best friends. I’m still not exactly sure how; it doesn’t matter anymore.

I just knew that clearing a level on
Arsenal Five
was more fun when Jamie was at her laptop, memorizing the periodic
table or whatever she did before VIRUS destroyed our lives. Kicking back and watching TV was better with her, too.

Plus, in her post-pink phase, Jamie was willing to get her hands dirty. For example, she was up for going to these empty lots near our street to race dirt bikes and light firecrackers and rebuild an old laser printer.

Well, that last one was Jamie’s idea. I’d wanted to smash the printer with hammers.

Anyway, I went poking around one day and found the basement of a house that used to be there. A dark, mildewed, slimy cave. I was ten years old at the time and thought it was the best thing ever.

My aunt found out and didn’t care. Told you she was cool. In fact, she gave the place a nickname: the root canal. Because it was like a root cellar, but painful as a toothache. Don’t get me started on my aunt’s sense of humor.

For two weeks that summer, Jamie and I worked on the basement: shoveling, laying down a plywood floor, dragging an old couch into the hole.

Jamie wanted to install wireless.

Then a rainstorm hit, and the root canal turned into a mud pit.

The thing is, Jamie didn’t exactly love hanging around a nasty abandoned basement, but she spent two weeks remodeling the root canal because she knew I wanted to. And I
don’t care about science, but if she needs help measuring the effect of magnetism on mitochondrial output, I’m game.

And I don’t even know what
mitochondrial
means.

I guess that’s enough background. The point is, my life was pretty great back then: good friends, free video games, and no worries.

And I loved my aunt. I never would’ve done anything to hurt her.

So where should I start? That morning, I guess, the morning everything changed.

The alarm went off, as usual. And ten minutes later, my aunt opened my bedroom door: “Time for school.”

“Mmph.”

She prodded my covers with a hockey stick. “You’re going to miss the bus.”

I rubbed my eyes. “It’s Saturday.”

“In what universe?”

I shook away the last bits of my dream. Something about it being Saturday, and me getting the high score on
Xtreme Racer 500
. “Oh.”

“Welcome to Wednesday,” she said. “Get dressed.”

Downstairs, I reached for the cereal and saw a pizza box on the kitchen table. Three slices left from the night before—but Auntie M didn’t usually think pizza was an appropriate breakfast food.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“Breakfast.”

“What’s the catch?”

She sighed. “I may need to work late for the next few weeks.”

“Oh.” I grabbed a slice. “You’re feeling guilty. Is this a bribe?” I looked at the pizza. “Maybe I should hold out for a Zii game console.”

“I could get a babysitter instead,” she mused.

“No, pizza’s great! We’re good.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” she said.

Which was typical. Auntie M had never wanted kids, but she managed surrogate motherhood the same way she did everything else: like a science experiment.

Douglas!

Kidding, kidding! Wire yourself a funny bone.

No, my aunt and I liked living together. I’m not saying we never fought—we did, but not often. We just sort of … got along.

Anyway, after the pizza, I reached the bus stop three minutes early, then took a seat in the middle and watched Jamie’s
house slip past. Her parents always dropped her at school an hour before first bell, for advanced tutoring.

The day was warm, so at lunchtime Jamie and I and some other kids went outside and ate at the stone fence.

I hardly remember what we talked about. Nothing much, I guess.

Your biology project
.

Oh, right! Jamie wanted to stay after school to finish the research. “The project’s due next week,” she said.

“That’s plenty of time,” I told her.

“What’s the project?” another kid asked.

“Entomology,” Jamie said. “Insects. We haven’t even chosen which one yet.”

I grinned. “Sure we have. Gimme.”

She handed me her laptop, and I tapped a few keys, then showed her the screen. She read aloud:

“Butt propulsion,” I said.

Everyone started laughing.

“Plus,” I continued, “they’re the world’s fastest insect. Clocked at sixty-two miles an hour.”

Jamie rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s a rigorous scientific reason to study them. How about we do honeybees?”

“No, listen to this.” I scrolled down. “Dragonflies use an optical illusion called motion camouflage to stalk other insects. They look like stationary objects while attacking prey.”

I knew she couldn’t resist that: Jamie liked strange interactions of complex systems.

Me? I liked butt propulsion.

Then we went inside for more classes; then we went home. You know—an ordinary day, like most of my days before I started living under a fake identity. Before I started appearing in headlines:

Then there were the grainy screenshots on TV, of a blur-faced kid wearing my favorite T-shirt and sneaking a bomb into the Center. It’s amazing how VIRUS can manipulate video. I almost believed them myself.

After dinner, I tagged along with Auntie M to the Center. She drove through town, then the two miles of no-man’s-land, before hitting the outermost security fence.

She passed the first two guard shacks by flashing her ID.

“If you need to spend the night,” I said, “I can take the shuttle bus home.”

She shook her head. “Shouldn’t take more than a few hours, unless the wetware interface is acting up.”

We waited at the automated guard shack while a bio-resonant scanner checked that we were actually Margaret and Doug Solomon.

“Jamie said something about a biology project?” she said when the crash gates opened. “On insects?”

“Dragonflies. I’ll do some research tonight.” The Center had priority access to every database in the world—even from the unclassified areas they let me into—which really made school projects easier.

“Don’t expect Jamie to write the paper for you.”

“I
said
I’ll do the research.”

“E-mailing her search results isn’t enough.” Auntie M pulled into her parking space. “Don’t make her do all the work.”

“Yeah, because I’m too stupid to help write the paper.” “Doug, I never said—”

“You don’t think I’m stupid.” I shoved open my door. “You think I’m lazy.”

“You
are
lazy!”

I slammed the door and stormed through the visitors’ entrance. A stupid fight, the kind that doesn’t mean anything, just blowing off steam.

Then why did I even mention it?

Because that was our last real conversation.

Here’s a pop quiz. After slamming from the car, did I: