Brother, Frank, Page 3

  “All right, people, we’re finished here,” Carlos says. “Light it up!”

  I notice the men unconsciously covering up their private parts with their hands, so I do the same, not knowing what’s about to happen but feeling queasy about the whole thing.

  Patrick presses a button on his smartphone and a loud buzz-pop comes from the toaster, followed by a frazzled clap that sounds something like lightning snapping through the air. The compact fluorescents blink and go dark. A door opens in the back of the room and everyone starts moving toward it. Carlos throws his smartphone on the smoking stack of electronic hardware and then jerks his thumb at me.

  “Your phone’ll be dead too. It’s fried. Don’t leave it here because yours is traceable, but when you get wherever you’re going, make it disappear completely.” He turns his back on me and heads for the light that shines through the open door to the alley.

  “Really? I just got used to this phone.”

  “Get another one,” Carlos says over his shoulder. “It’s probably time to put the rest of the plan into action anyway.”

  I follow him toward the exit. “Are you sure they can’t retrieve any data from all of this stuff? I’ve heard they can do that.”

  We step outside, and the bright sunlight causes us both to blink and squint. Carlos puts on his sunglasses and throws his bag over his shoulder. “That stuff is toast,” he says with a grin. “They can try all they want to salvage data from that pile—it’ll be a waste of time. And that’s why we leave it all. To make them waste time trying to get something on us.” He winks at me. “Besides, you’re rich.”

  That’s when it hits me. The cigarette butts. DNA. I’ve watched CSI and those other forensics shows. I head back toward the door.

  “We got everything, Chris,” Carlos says. “Even the ashtray. We even took the trashcan liners. We’re good at what we do.”

  We start walking to Carlos’s car, an old beater he must have picked up at a used lot for a few hundred bones. I notice that the license plate is just a piece of paper that says “In Transit.” Great. That can’t be legal. That was something I didn’t notice when he picked me up to bring me to the location. I look over at Carlos; he shrugs again.

  Just then, the high-pitched squealing of brakes and the sound of tires sliding over pebbles come from the front of the building. I’m glad we’re in the back. Carlos bolts for the car, and I follow. Something is going down.

  Carlos and I jump in and slam the doors before we can be seen, and in a split second the car is moving. Half a block and he hooks it to the right, then left again down the next alley.

  A few more turns and a double-back, and we’re gone. We pass under an overpass with a parking lot built under it, and I notice that the rest of the team has already arrived and the lot is filled with cars manned by people who work for Carlos.

  I get it: he’s hiding us from satellite surveillance. Making sure they can’t “roll back the tape.”

  For me, actually. They all really work for me. Half are BDD members, many of whom I recognize because they worked at my lab. Half are unemployed day laborers, I suppose, whom Carlos has paid twenty bucks to be parked there at that moment.

  We all pull out at the same time, like fans letting out of an NBA game, and each vehicle heads in a different direction. Whoever was on our tail never had a chance to catch us.

  “You spend my money quite freely,” I tell Carlos as I reach in my pocket for a cigarette. “But I thank you. I thank you with all my heart.”

  “I’m not doing it just for you, Doc.”

  “I know.”

  “There are other agendas. Things on the breeze. It’s a dark world out there, and a darker world coming.”

  I go to light the cigarette, but Carlos stops me with an upraised hand.

  “Not in here, bro,” Carlos says. “This is my real car, and Brenda doesn’t like anyone smoking in it.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Back at the motel room, six miles out of town, Frank is sitting on the edge of the bed watching cartoons. Or at least, he’s looking at the television. I don’t know if he’s actually seeing the cartoons playing on the screen or not. He barely reacts when I come into the room. That’s when it hits me that he’s probably never seen a television before.

  Highly nuanced facial expressions are not the hallmark of an autistic child, but Frank’s overall demeanor indicates that he’s not finding the experience with the TV to be a pleasant one. It’s hard to be sure—I’m a scientist, not a psychologist—but he is, after all, a robot now, and the mechanical brain interface may be enhancing his ability to communicate what’s going on inside his head. Studying his face, I imagine I see a blend of alarm, curiosity, and terror. I turn off the television, and his eyes blink, and at last his head turns toward me.

  Frank is only moderately autistic, and I have worked with him on and off for over a year. He knows me—and, as much as he can, he trusts me—but everything has changed for this boy. He’s in a new body, away from his family, thrust into the world of the English. It has to be like waking from a dream to find that you’re someone else entirely. Perhaps someone worse, and probably in a world you don’t like.

  His normal rocking back and forth becomes more pronounced. Then it stops. I fear he’s about to “blow,” like autistic children often do, and this time he isn’t an almost paralyzed Amish boy with dwarfism and severe physical limitations. This time he just might be the most dangerous fighting weapon in the world.

  His projectile weaponry is not a threat, thank God. I was smart enough to leave those utilities uninitiated and disarmed. Still, he’s capable of “the change.” I wasn’t able to put in an override for that. It had to be hard-wired into his brain. Because if I could turn him off permanently, then someone else could, too. An enemy. A hacker. Anyone with a computer and the knowledge of how Frank works.

  “The change” is when he morphs from his human form into his battle configuration. You don’t want to see it.

  Isn’t that what they used to say about The Hulk?

  But The Hulk was pretend.

  When Frank changes, his human hybrid skin, almost invisibly segmented into sectors, will fold inward and roll up as the graphene exoskeleton deploys; his human form will then disappear inside the weaponized robot that he becomes. He will gain four feet in height, and his overall size will nearly triple. Not his mass—his size. And unlike movie robots, he doesn’t somehow gain mass and weight for no real apparent reason. When this robot walks, the ground doesn’t shake, the concrete doesn’t crumble under his feet, and houses don’t shift from their foundations. I wasn’t creating a monster to terrorize children in a theater. I was making a tool to protect and defend them. Or so I thought. But this robot is agile—like Baryshnikov—only more so.

  I say it is agile. It is now Frank. I don’t know how agile Frank is yet. Not really. Frank is the pilot in this weapon. And right now Frank is pissed.

  The graphene exoskeleton armor is lighter than paper and just as thin. It’s constructed of sheets of carbon, bonded with a polymer to keep them flat and separated. The sheets are only a single atom thick, with the carbon atoms linked up like chicken wire, but that crazy geometry gives it crazy properties.

  Frank’s armor is three hundred times harder than steel. It’s even harder than a diamond. It’s flexible, sheds water easily without rusting or corrosion, and doesn’t burn.

  In full battle mode, Frank is over a thousand times stronger than a man. I’m just guessing here, because we don’t really know how strong Frank could be. His strength doesn’t stem from brute force alone, although he can crush a bowling ball in his hand when fully deployed. His computer/brain interface allows him to calculate things like angle, stress, weakness, fulcrums, resistance, leverage, and every other conceivable element of physics that can be used to gain an advantage. And, like I said, he can move like Baryshnikov, only in full battle gear.

  Frank’s computers—protected from both EMP and brute force attack by shielding and by
being hard-wired into his brain—control his joint movement and articulation, along with every other element of his movement and carriage, whether he is in human mode or killer-robot configuration. Every movement provides feedback that gets processed instantly. The computer/brain interface is seamless: Frank doesn’t even know yet that he’s constantly receiving information on facial recognition, IFF (Identify, Friend, or Foe), weather, environment, hazard, threats. Even his robot feet don’t just support the rest of the machine, but provide yet more feedback—like a human foot does, only better. Everything from the temperature, texture, and makeup of the ground underfoot, to the speed, vector, and Coriolis effect of the Earth. It’s all calculated in microseconds.

  And he has access to an unimaginable amount of information. We copied every accessible government database we could find or hack (and some that were inaccessible) and mirrored all of that information on tiny drives the size of thumbnails, which we then wired into Frank’s system. Had the project continued, this data stream would have been constantly updated wirelessly. But the HADroid program is over. It exists now only for the hunters and the hunted. So Frank is stuck with the data he has. If you still owed fifty thousand dollars on your house yesterday, Frank knows it. Or has access to it. But he doesn’t know whether you paid it off this morning.

  Of course, Frank doesn’t know any of this, really. Not yet. He just knows that his world has gone wrong-side up and he doesn’t like the TV and he needs his perseveration object. Perhaps he thinks cartoons are of the Devil. I don’t know how much Amish training he’s had. Probably more than I’d previously considered. I know he prays out loud and sometimes sings bits of hymns from the Ausbund, the Amish hymnbook. But right now he’s neither praying nor singing.

  Frank’s head is down and he sits on the edge of the motel bed. All the way against the headboard. His fists are clasped tightly around nothing, and I see the edges of the skin around his neck and face begin to flutter—right along the usually invisible lines where the lab-grown skin panels come together. One or two small panels flip up, exposing the graphene exoskeleton, and then flip back. One of his human eyes rotates back and is replaced with a multifaceted deep blue orb, like the eye of a fly or a spider. If I don’t do something, Frank is going to change right in this motel room—like a Transformer/Hulk mash-up gone nuclear. And his full, almost ten-foot robotic frame is not going to fit under this eight-foot ceiling. Not without a lot of destruction and sheetrock and rafters coming down.

  I rush over to the small dresser and grab Frank’s bolts.

  Like Frankenstein’s bolts. I wonder why I never thought of that before—the ironic connection to Frankenstein’s monster? Especially with the name. Frank. Of course, in Mary Shelley’s tale, Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster. Most people get that wrong. And I am probably the monster in this tale, so if you think about it long enough, most of it fits.

  I dash back to Frank and kneel so I can look up into his eyes, if only he’ll look back at me. I pry open his hands, one at a time, and place a bolt in each. Frank’s head comes up slowly, and the rocking motion returns. He’s perseverating. It’s a good sign.

  An autistic child sometimes latches onto something. A something that means the world to him for some reason beyond the scope of our understanding. That something provides comfort and the illusion of security. That object is called a “perseveration object.” It can be anything, from a doll, to a stone, to a set of car keys or a picture frame. Frank’s object was a bolt. Actually, two bolts: one for each hand. When he perseverated, he had to have both bolts. Not just one.

  Now I talk to Frank in soothing tones, and I begin to rock back and forth with him, mirroring him. Frank’s head drops again.

  “I need my Amish clothes,” he says, deadpan.

  “I know you do,” I say.

  “I need my Amish clothes.”

  “I know.”

  Great, I think, now I have to run out and buy him some Amish clothes.

  I can get authentic homemade Amish clothing at any flea market or thrift store in Amish country, but I’ll have to go an hour south of Cleveland to find what he needs. Well, we’re heading south soon enough anyway. Way south. Because that’s where the safe house is.

  Until then, he’s stuck with the Cleveland Indians T-shirt, jeans, and slip-on sneakers I gave him to wear, and I’ll just have to do my best to manage the rest of his environment. Again I have to remind myself: Frank is Amish. Leave the TV off. Don’t let him get overwhelmed. No matter what else changes, Frank is Amish.

  And no matter what he looks like, he’s still just a boy.

  CHAPTER 4

  I’m driving the Excursion, making our getaway to a new place down south, and I’m thinking about Frank and the Amish and my pro bono work among the plain people.

  Don’t get me wrong: I knew they needed my help, and I was glad to be able to do something for them. But I had higher priorities than just philanthropy when I started the clinic. And when I met Frank, things changed a little for me.

  Listen, it’s not like my small heart grew three sizes that day. But something did change in me. Like a tiny spark was ignited in the deep, dark chasm of my soul. Despite Frank’s prognosis, I put him on the front burner in my life. I had to learn everything I could about autism just to work with the boy, so I buckled down and studied as much as I could. I checked out every cutting-edge treatment I could find in the journals. I searched out medical quackery and fringe treatments online. I left no stone unturned. The mainstream medical system had given up on Frank. I suppose I should have too, but I couldn’t.

  A year later, I’m on the run, and Frank is asleep in the back of my car.

  “Powered down” might be more accurate, but I’m trying not to dehumanize him. Even to myself. I don’t take putting him into sleep mode lightly, but it’s all part of the plan. I’m implementing training and treatment protocols with Frank that are intended to short-cut the long process of intervention. I call this protocol Computer-Aided Intervention and Neurostimulation—CAIN—and I call the process CAINing. In short, I’ve programmed the computer that interfaces with his brain to run exercises that will subconsciously draw Frank out of his autism shell. Step by step.

  So now he’s lying unconscious across the back seat. He’s almost six feet tall, so he’s folded up a bit. I glance back at him. His face looks serene, but I know the computers inside him are hard at work.

  I light a cigarette and take a deep draw. I’m not really a full-time smoker. At least, I wasn’t before I became a fugitive and a thief. Now I’m smoking like an old pro.

  I pull out of the parking lot and take the southbound on-ramp, get up to speed and merge onto the highway. We’re heading way south. Down to Louisiana, the bayous, one of the places where the Brazos de Dios folks have a safe house. I can’t put Frank on a plane. Not now. None of us would be safe. So we’ve got a long drive ahead of us.

  But first, we need to find a place to eat. I haven’t eaten since... when? I’m not even sure. I ate sometime before the feds crashed our little party back at the warehouse, and I haven’t been thinking about food much since then. I’m thinking about it now. The feds will still be looking for me though, and I wonder how safe it is to show my face in public.

  It’s all a risk. I’m certain my face must be plastered all over the place by now. I’m probably a wanted criminal for the first time in my life. Even if they haven’t tied me to the Social Security breach yet, they know the HADroid project disappeared, that I’m gone, and that the top-secret files that identified my staff and detailed my work have all ceased to exist. They’ll want to arrest me. To make an example out of me.

  The rest of my team is safe, or at least they should be. None of the higher-ups even knew who was on my staff; the HADroid program was that secret. Though I suppose they could find out if they tried hard enough. I mean, Carlos and the rest of the team had to have been vetted by someone at DARPA at some point before I picked them out of a slew of options. It might not be too har
d for whoever is chasing me to find out just who was working for me. But the Arms boys and girls are smart—they’ll have taken a bunch of my money and dug in deep somewhere. And the rest of the team—those who weren’t part of the BDD—well, they won’t know enough to hurt me.

  I glance back again at Frank. Somehow I find it hard to just let him rest and run through his cycles. I constantly want to hover over him.

  And I know I can’t leave him in the car alone. Even if he’s powered down. If someone sees him, or steals the car, or if a glitch happens and he powers up and he’s alone—any of those things, or a million others—he could change. He could kill anyone he wants. Heck, he could kill everyone.

  So I’m going to have to take him in to get food. Either a restaurant or a grocery store. I’m probably better off in a restaurant. I’ve eaten with Frank in a restaurant before, back when he was a boy. He wasn’t too bad. I think if I’m sitting with him I can manage him.

  I wonder if the CAIN training he’s running right now will help. I hope he progresses. But how can I know without long periods of testing and evaluation? No one has ever done this before. It could fail completely. What do I do then? I’m resting everything on the CAIN Floortime protocols. Everything.

  As I said before, I’m not a behavioral psychologist, but I worked with the Millers—Frank’s parents—and a brilliant BP named Dr. Marcus Rinaldi. He’s the man who developed a plan for the Millers based on a treatment method called Floortime. Floortime is centered on the idea of opening “circles of communication” with an autistic child. A circle is initiated by interacting with the child and having them respond. For example, if an autistic child is sitting on the floor bouncing a ball, the parent might sit down with him and start bouncing another ball. The hope is that by mirroring the behavior, the parent might get a reaction. A spark. A connection that cuts through the fog.