The Zen Gene (19 page)

Her eyes widened and her breath sucked in with disbelief at what she saw. The stuff from his bedroom was scattered on the lawn. His clothes, his bed, all his science junk, everything from his room was scattered all over. She saw pieces of lab equipment which looked like they’d been smashed. His bedding was spread all over the place, along with books and shoes and the shower curtain from the little bathroom in the basement. His mattress was cut open, the wood frame of the box spring was showing, and stuffing and fabric was flying around. The entire yard was cordoned with yellow police tape. How they can do that to someone like Tyler she wondered. She did not want him to wake up and see this. She did not want to see it herself and she blinked back tears unable to look away. She jumped with a startled cry when Tyler put his hand on her side. He was right behind her.

“Why?” he asked.

She did not have an answer. They stood together at the window for a long time and then he turned away.

“I’m going home,” he said.

“Tyler no, you can’t they’ll get you too. We need to go away somewhere we need to hide until I figure out what is happening.”

”Why?” he said.

She could not answer him. She did not know for certain the police were looking for him but it was mostly his stuff spread all over the yard. She decided if the police went to all the trouble to destroy his stuff they would likely have someone watching the house which meant he could not go back home. The police must be looking for something they believe he has or why would they rip open his mattress?

“I’m going to ride around and see if the police are hanging around outside watching your house. I need you to promise you’ll stay inside and watch TV until I get back. Don’t even look out the window. Okay?” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

She used the washroom and got changed and put on her helmet and when she went out into the backyard to get her bike he was watching NOVA. She pedaled away from their houses and made three wide sweeps of the area. She stopped at the 7-Eleven for cherry Freezies before heading home. She was riding and balancing the Freezies with one hand when she turned the corner and saw a dark blue sedan parked down the street from her house. There was a man sitting in it and she pretended to ignore him as she rode past but she snuck a quick peak at him and he definitely looked like a cop to her.

When she rode her bike into the backyard she saw someone bent over and rummaging through the stuff in Andi’s backyard. She prayed Tyler would not pick that moment to look out the window. As she got closer she saw the person rummaging was Tyler.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“I’m getting my stuff,” he said.

“Oh my God Tyler come inside,” she said.

I Have a Plan

Zen had to admit it. He looked ridiculous with a fake mustache. But she liked the Chinese dragon tattoo which curled around his neck and onto his cheek. She started applying it on his lower back and it tickled like crazy. She had to stop and remind him every two seconds to hold still. His shirt was off because the tattoo was drying and she was admiring her handiwork as he channel surfed.

She also put lime green and baby blue spikes in his almost white hair which looked good, she thought, but she was not happy at all with the wispy glued on mustache. For one thing it was not cooperating, it drooped to one side.

She opted for a Goth look for her disguise with raven black hair and way too much black eye makeup and white face powder. In her estimation they looked nothing at all like their former selves and she was confident they could leave the house and no one, including the police, would recognize either of them.

That was when he told her that face recognition software was hard to beat and nothing short of plastic surgery would fool a computer. At first she was pissed at him that he had not mentioned this important detail until after she was finished but upon reflection she suspected that he went along with the disguise idea because it kept her busy.

She smiled when she realized he had allowed her to put shoe lifts inside his sneakers to make him taller and the lifts made him misjudge his step and stumble a lot. The tattoo and hair colour would eventually wash off but she giggled when she wondered how long it would take him to learn to walk again.

While she was working on their disguises he was thinking about how to get his computer back. He assumed it was the police who took it from his room but when he said he wanted to phone them and ask for it back Zen told him he was not allowed to phone them and made him promise not to. His computer was what he was looking for in the backyard when she came home. He needed to get it back, but aside from calling the police, all he could think of doing was calling Colonel Western. He knew Zen would not like that idea.

Calling Western was the only solution to the problem he could think of now that Dr. Mann was gone. He needed his computer to work on stuff but with it gone there was no choice he would have to ask him. He was the most logical person to ask to get it back; without it he could not finish his work.

He looked down at the items arranged on the bedroom floor. The bits and pieces from his room that he retrieved from his backyard were scattered everywhere. He thought if he could view them maybe it would help him to determine what else he needed to complete his project. None of the individual pieces were particularly useful but together, he thought, they might hold some of the answers he needed.

He was having trouble visualizing the formula and sequence he had originally used. The problem was he could not recall the details without referring to his computer. He was hoping the Colonel might be able to get it for him. If all he could get back was the hard drive from the lab computer he could recover enough data for the primary sequencing and modify the virus to do what he now wanted it to do.

The unknown in this plan was Colonel Western. Would he go for it and could he get access to his computer? He was not sure if a Colonel could boss the police around. He had no concept of how the civil or military hierarchy of command was structured.

Zen came back into the room flopped down on the bed and stared at him. She wore a pink bathrobe and a towel around her wet hair and her face was no longer white with makeup and her skin looked scrubbed and healthy.

“What is all this junk anyway?” she said.

She surveyed the mess on her bedroom floor and made a face.

“My stuff,” he said.

“I know that. Is any of it salvageable?” she said.

“No,” he said

“Why is it all over my floor?” she said.

He looked at her and considered the question. He could not adequately explain what he was doing because he did not know himself. It was simply necessary for him to do it because it was the way his mind processed information.

There was something about the relationship between the various bits and pieces, though they were now destroyed, that made his thinking flow in a productive way. It always worked that way. He would look at something and without knowing how or why he would imagine a change or improvement to the design or a new combination which worked in a novel way.

He would find himself with the solution to a problem without conscious thought or knowing how he arrived at the answer. If he tried to explain it to her she would not understand and he did not want her to think he was weirder than she already did.

“I need to look at these things to remember stuff,” he said.

She rolled her eyes at his answer but thankfully she seemed to accept it. She found the remote control and turned on the television and started scanning channels and when she came to The Learning Channel she stopped and turned up the volume. She knew it was his favorite channel. She stopped and realized that she, without thinking about it, did it to make him happy.

That was a change in her thinking she never would have let him watch a program without arguing over it. They used to wrestle over the remote, and because she was bigger, she made him watch all her girl shows. She wondered about this change and what it meant.

“What is your big plan, Tyler? What are we supposed to do now?” she said.

He got up off the floor and sat beside her on her bed.

“What’s on?” he said.

“Never mind what’s on. What the heck are we going to do now?” she said.

She was exasperated. It felt to her like they’d been cooped up in the house for a long time and she was getting antsy to do something, anything. They had no idea what happened to Andi and Dr. Mann. She was afraid to call the police and ask about them in case they traced the call. He kept telling her he had an idea but would not share it with her and she was beginning to think he did not have a plan at all.

“Tyler my mom’s going to show up any day now and she will want to know what’s going on. When she left on her trip I didn’t have a boy living with me. What do we tell her about that?” she said, “and what do we tell her about the SWAT team raiding your house?”

She used her mother as a prod because she knew he was a little afraid of her.

“Colonel Western,” he said.

“What about him?” she said.

“I will call him,” he said.

“Are you kidding? He’s the guy who started all this in the first place,” she yelled with disbelief.

“I need my computer,” he said.

“What if he locks you up and throws away the key?” she said.

“He won’t,” he said.

“How can you be sure?” she said.

“He wants to know about POrna,” he said.

“What do you think will happen to you after he gets what he wants? They won’t need you anymore. They will put you in prison for being a dumbass!” she said.

She was upset and worried that he would end up in prison or dead or something and all because he did not understand the seriousness of the situation.

“You made this virus thing and let it loose on their soldiers. Do you think they are happy about that? Do you think Colonel whatever is gonna say, ‘
Hey, Tyler. Here’s your computer back by the way great job on the Porno virus
’,” she said.

“They will not do anything to me. POrna does not work without you and me,” he said.

“How do you know? They got their own scientists and computer people. What makes you so sure?” she said.

“Trust me I have a plan,” he said and grinned.

“Yeah that’s what I’m afraid of you have a plan,” she said.

He gave her his best don’t worry I’ve got this covered look and threw in a double thumbs-up for good measure. She was doubtful about his plan but she had to look away from him because she did not want him to see her smiling at his crazy optimism and have him think she agreed with him.

It was sweet that he tried to make her believe he had everything under control but she knew he was clueless about the real world. Although she did not like his idea at least he was suggesting some course of action. Her big plan was for them to put on disguises and go downtown and take a Pacific Coach Lines bus to Vancouver and stay with her aunt Amy, her father’s twin sister, someone she has not seen since she was six years old. It was doubtful Amy would remember her let alone let them stay at her house. The good news was the policeman watching his house was gone but she made him promise he would not go outside anyway.

***

As soon as Zen rode away he ventured out to retrieve a bit more of his stuff. When she went out the most important thing she brought back from her trips was food. He was hungry and having Andrea gone was inconvenient because she knew what he liked to eat and how to make it and Zen was not good at cooking.

He had never learned anything about food other than how to open a bag of cookies but she was trying hard and they were both learning and trying to help each other. When they were kids they always used to sleep together but it was a few years ago and now he was not used to sleeping with anyone. It was hard to get used to it.

On the second night he suggested she should sleep in Mom’s room. When he said it her face got red and she was upset for a long time. Andrea tried to teach him about other people’s feelings but he did not understand much of what she said. He did figure out if someone’s face was red they were upset but it only told him after they were already upset and he kept on saying the wrong thing to people’s feelings.

On the second morning they woke up together she insisted he have a shower and wash his hair, which he hated, but he did it to make her happy. She also wanted him to change all his clothes, including socks and undies, which was not difficult because his clothes were all outside on the lawn but she got upset with him when he went outside after his shower and got dressed in the backyard.

She told him he was lucky there were no neighbour on their street that could see because they would have called the police. When he pointed at the farmhouse across the road she said they were too far away to see anything. He asked her what it was they should not see but he dropped the topic when her face got red.

She was also upset to discover he did not wear pajamas to bed and slept in his undies but she got over it when he agreed to brush all his teeth and let her watch him to be sure he did it. Since he was a little kid he wondered why there were so many rules to remember and why it was always women who enforced them.

Andrea, Zen, and the teachers at school never failed to remind him when he got one of the “unwritten” rules wrong or missed it completely. His grade three teacher, Mrs. Horn, laughed at him when he asked her why no one ever wrote the unwritten rules down so he could read them.

What to do?

Zen was thinking over his plan, not that she liked it, but she could not think of anything else to do. She considered phoning her grandfather and asking him if he could find out what happened to Andi and Dr. Mann but she already knew the police took them and they were probably looking for Tyler.

She was afraid her grandfather would ask her if she knew where he was and she did not think she would be able to lie to him. He was a Judge after all, and judges have a lot of experience catching liars, at least that is what her mom told her.

She held the belief, without her mom actually admitting it, that her grandfather had caught her mom lying to him when she was growing up and that was part of the reason they did not love each other anymore. She wished she could think of a way to ask him for advice without giving him any of the details of their situation but she knew it was impossible. He would ask her questions and eventually he would get it out of her.

“Okay, so we contact this Colonel guy what then?” she said.

“He gets my computer,” he said.

“What if he can’t?” she said.

He shrugged because he did not have a plan for that possibility.

“What did you mean Porno won’t work without me? What do you need me for?” she said.

“To be with me.”

“To do what?”

“I need you.”

“For what?”

“I need you-because.”

He tried to put extra emphasis on the word “because,” dragging the sound out a bit longer than the other words. He darted a quick look at her eyes to see if she got it.

He struggled to put meaning into words. He knew what he was trying to say to her but he could see she didn’t understand. He was young when he first learned that it was better not to talk because words made people upset. He understood that spoken words contained hidden information that he was unaware of. He did not understand these extra meanings and it was risky using words without knowing, so he didn’t. She was looking at the television when he glanced to see her reaction and that is when he was distracted by the loose strands of hair against the curve of her neck.

The electronic glow from the television was harsh and thin and that weak light became entangled in the damp strands. She had washed out the Goth hair colour and her natural golden brown hair turned the TV light into a coppery fluid. As it dried and shifted temperature he could feel something like sun-warmed iced tingles.