The Rendering Read online

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.

  AN ORDINARY DAY

  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.”

  THE DRAGONFLY

  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:

  The dragonfly spends most of its life in the nymph form, beneath the water’s surface. Nymphs use extendable jaws to hunt. They breathe through gills and rapidly propel themselves by expelling water through the … (Jamie glanced at me, then changed the next word) backside.

  “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.

  AN ORDINARY DAY, CONTINUED

  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:

  VIDEO GAMES DROVE BOY TO MURDER

  THE AFTERMATH: FROM HYPERACTIVE TO HOMICIDAL

  BOY HOPED TO SLAY 666 NEIGHBORS

  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.

  THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD

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

  A) head immediately to the only unclassified library in the Center to start researching dragonflies?

  B) find an empty office and sit in the corner weeping, because nobody understood me?

  C) go directly to the employee lounge, flick the Start button on Arsenal Five, and blast away with the carapace rifle?

  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 H
og 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:

  HAPPY 37TH BIRTHDAY ELISE N!!! … DON’T FORGET–SOFTBALL PRACTICE IS NOW ON WEDNESDAY … CONGRATS TO WALTER P, EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH! … HAPPY 37TH BIRTHDAY ELISE N!!! … DON’T FORGET–SOFTBALL PRACTICE IS NOW ON WEDNESDAY … CONGRATS TO WALTER P, EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH! …

  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.

  A BIODIGITAL INTERLUDE

  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.

  You want to know why I killed my aunt. You want to look inside the mind of a killer, to discover what turned a regular kid into a terrorist.

  You figure I didn’t kill my aunt and want to know what happened to her. What happened to my entire town? And are you gonna disappear next?

  You heard about the skunks. Maybe you saw one of the video captures and didn’t dismiss the whole thing as a hoax.

  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.

  BACK TO THE CENTER

  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:

  the BattleArmor development lab,

  virtual reality combat simulators, and

  the animal research section.

  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.

  EYES EVERYWHERE

  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.

  THE BAD DOCTOR

  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.…”

  GRAYBAR AND GUNFIRE