Chapter 19

Oak Ridge, TN – Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 7:05 PM

Jon stared numbly at the contents of the black folder. In retrospect, he supposed he should have, but he hadn’t really expected this.

His first task after closing his room and locking the door had been to put the contents of the briefcase back in the briefcase, as carefully as possible, taking some time to examine portions but mostly trying to get the material off his bed and at least somewhere a little less conspicuous.

It was a potpourri of technology the good doctor had put together. The portable holograph recorder/projector was just the beginning. There was a black box with a belt-clip with pretty basic instructions: Press for Invisibility. There was a pen that was straight out of James bond—it was a variable length laser, and Jon tried it out, only to slice a razor-thin line, a good five inches deep, in the small table beside his bed. There were almost two-dozen blue chrome disks that had, in tiny type, the words Cryogenic Mines on them. You apparently pressed the small blue button on top to activate them, but Jon thought perhaps he’d wait until later to try out anything that had the word “mine” in its description. There was a black and silver gun—it looked vaguely like some hokey Buck Rogers prop—that read: Magnetic/Electrical Field Disruptor. He only had one of those. He had two devices that resembled old-fashioned cigarette cases, made in burnished silver and black. The tops of them had several sliders and small knobs, and an inscription that explained that the devices were Inductive Hyper-Hypnotic Suggestive State Generators. Bernhard had had quite a way with names.

A small plastic case he hadn’t even noticed before opened up to reveal several pairs of contact lenses. Bionic Vision was all it said on the inset. Jon stopped for a moment, and then put those to the side. He was going to have to give them a try, later. Similarly themed was a series of small button-sized devices, of which he had half-a-dozen, that simply said Ear. Jon went ahead and put those away. There was something that said Fit Over Teeth, though the purpose wasn’t immediately clear. There was a watch and six rings in two different styles—one design was gold, with a stone that appeared to be onyx, and thinner and more feminine, and one with a thicker silver band and a flat black ring face with a small white diamond in the center. He suspected that they were more than just jewelry, but how much more was not exactly clear. There was a pen light on a small chain. When he touched it, he saw the tiny type read: Car Starter: Touch to Car Ignition. There was an odd assortment of bracelets, some of which had apparent purpose—Magic Handcuffs read one pair of bracelets, but only when he was holding them. A necklace with a medallion that resembled a compass. Several small capsules that read things like oil slick and smoke field and devil’s stench.

Jon continued putting the items back into the briefcase. Coins that weren’t really coins, what appeared to be a transistor radio, what looked to be small, unremarkable black boxes, what seemed to be a plain Rubik’s Cube and didn’t do anything special even when he messed with it for a while, what seemed to be a pair of sunglasses, and a few dozen other items that either appeared to be everyday objects or didn’t appear to be anything very specific at all; they all went in. After he was done, all that was still out was the container of contact lenses and the black three-ring binder. While many of the items had at least basic descriptions or a name and sometimes even instructions either on them or as part of their function, many of them left Jon clueless as to just what they were supposed to do. He figured that Dr. Bernhard had to have left him some instruction on exactly how he was supposed to use these things, either in a form something like the holograph projecting video cassette or just plain written instructions. It turned out to be the latter, although “plain” wasn’t exactly the word to describe the contents of the notebook. Initially, he was a little nonplussed to note that the first page started out with a disturbing political screed:

Imperialist America has been a cancer on the world, injecting pollution into the body of nature for profit and murdering millions in war for the wealth and power of military contractors, and the imperialist advancement of exploitive Western class-structures and caste systems on the indigenous cultures of other countries—especially those countries where most of the population has darker skin than those of us in Imperialist America. America is the biggest blight on the West and the West is the biggest blight on the world. The oppression of other, non-Western countries for our absurd, pampered lifestyles artifact. There is no doubt it is the genuine article. I’m sorry to put you through this, Jon, but my options. I found, were vanishingly small. I--

Jon stopped reading. There was a disconnect there somewhere. Had Bernhard been addressing all that gobbledygook about “imperialist America” to him? Then, Jon saw what the issue was. The neatly handwritten words changed to a completely different set of words when his finger touched the paper. Jon just shook his head. “Damn,” he said. “Something else.”

He decided he would start reading again from the top, firmly gripping each page, when he noticed what looked like a twenty dollar bill poking out of the back of the notebook. He flipped to the back and then saw something he hadn’t expected, that at once made him feel giddy with excitement yet made the circumstance seem that much more soberly real. In the back of the book, each in its own neat pocket, there were 50 hundred dollar bills, 50 twenty dollar bills, and 50 ten dollar bills. Jon counted it. It came to six-thousand five-hundred dollars. It was more money than Jon had ever seen in his life. And that wasn’t the end of it. There were also 50 hundred peso notes and 50 five hundred peso notes—Mexican money. There were 50 Canadian hundred dollar bills and 50 Canadian fifty dollar bills. And about 500 British pounds. And four thousand dollars worth of American Express Traveler’s Checks, made out in Jon’s name. With Jon’s signature already on the first signature line.

“Holy shit,” Jon murmured, shaking his head. “Where the hell do you think I was going to be going, Dr. Bernhard?”

Obviously, Bernhard had thought Jon was going to be doing a lot of traveling. It was why, no doubt, he had included passports—three blanks and one prepared with Jon’s picture and vital information. And it wasn’t over yet—there was a Diner’s Club and a MasterCard, both in his name. Jon shook his head. He couldn’t use those cards, could he? What place would let a fourteen year old use a charge card?

It wouldn’t matter much, if the last card was the genuine article, though. It was a blank gray card, the size and shape of a credit card, but it didn’t say anything. However, when Jon picked it up, the surface illuminated with a set of buttons. Automated Bank Teller Card, it read. Choose Dollar Amount and Insert in Machine. Buttons with prepackaged amounts from $100 to $1000 filled up the rest of the card. Jon shook his head. The good doctor, crazy or not, had been a busy, busy bee. Jon put the card back into the small slit cut for it in the back of the notebook, and the type immediately faded.

Jon nodded to himself. Well, that answered the question of how they would pay for hotels and motels, at least. They certainly had the money to do it, and apparently getting more money would be as simple as finding the closest ATM. He was no more certain of the wisdom of that strategy than ever, but most of the practical objections seemed to be addressed. They had money. Apparently, they wouldn’t have much trouble finding a car with the pen light car starter. He had credit cards—of dubious use, he thought, but he had them—and passports. He didn’t know how he was supposed to fill in the blank ones, but didn’t think it was very likely to come to that. And if the pursuit got too close . . . he had weapons. He could make weapons, too. There was a lot nastier stuff in the book than Bernhard had seen fit to prepare for Jon. There were cryogenic mines and the magnetic/electrical disruptor, whatever that was supposed to do, the laser pen, and a few other geegaws that looked pretty dangerous to him. Then, there were the holographic decoys and what appeared to be clip-on invisibility. And there was a lot of stuff in Dr. Bernhard’s bag of tricks that Jon wasn’t sure just what it did yet.

So they might actually be able to pull it off. They might be able to, for all practical purposes, disappear. Not just run but vanish without a trace.

Assuming, of course, that the worst they had to expect was going to come from the FBI and the CIA and the Army and whoever else. Since it had occurred to him, he had not been able to get the image of a meat thermometer popping up out of his head. Or the end of “To Serve Man”. Whoever developed all this technology would hardly be significantly off-put by it, and could probably easily overwhelm or disable all of it. Pop! Turkey’s done! It’s a cookbook!

Jon shook his head, turned back to the front of the notebook and began reading, gripping the page firmly so the page on display remained consistent.

Jon, it began. I believe some background information may be helpful to you . . .

Chapter 20

The Black Notebook – Part 1

Jon, I believe some background information may be helpful to you. Both in terms of informing your planning and helping you decide which path to choose. I know it’s not an easy decision you face. Additionally, I have included instructions on how to use and, in most cases, make duplicates of the items in the briefcase. I know that by now you have seen the current form of the artifact—my idea, actually—and have probably noted some of the capabilities of the items in the briefcase, and the “impossible” things done by the artifact itself. Enough, I suspect, to assure you that, whatever else I am, I’m not crazy. This is a actual alien artifact. There is no doubt it is the genuine article. I’m sorry to put you through this, Jon, but my options, I found, were vanishingly small. I would have chosen another course, had I seen one.

The artifact was discovered, for the first time as far as we know, as part of the “clean up” for the Mosaic G2 nuclear test, conducted by the British on Christmas Island off the coast of Australia on June 19th, 1956. There are indications that the British were aware of the artifact as part of the debris but did not follow up on observations regarding both the conspicuous presence of the artifact near the center of a nuclear blast, where everything else was simply leveled, or observations of unexpected radiation levels. In any case, they did not retrieve the artifact; we did. Prior to the use of Christmas Island for Operation Domino (nuclear airburst testing, mostly focused on improving weight-to-yield ratios) by America in 1962, there was a survey team that collected comparative data for before/after snapshots of radiation levels, air quality, water quality, etc. Field surveys revealed a “gap” of radioactivity—an almost perfect 22.5 yard “hole”, a concentric circle, of no radioactivity that abruptly resumed expected levels within seven inches at its border. We believe the data was ignored as flawed although there isn’t much documentation—at least that I was given—to confirm or deny that. Given that the center of the circle was not thirty yards away from the Mosaic G2 tower, I expect the data was disbelieved.

I suspect some of the field team took a greater interest than their superiors, having seen the reality of the data first-hand. The G2 area had an unusually high rate of sampling and unusually detailed cataloging of contents, from dirt and sand to nuclear glass and other blast debris to, of course, the artifact itself. The material was crated up, shipped to the U.S., and put in a government warehouse and probably would still be there today had congress not formed an oversight committee to investigate America’s role in the Christmas Island testing. Apparently, some congressman’s wife had read an article on aborigines in Australia drinking radioactive water and suffering from breast and testicular cancer and whatnot and insisted that congress investigate the United States’ responsibility for that sorry state of affairs. I haven’t spent that much time in Washington, D.C., and for good reason, but you’d be surprised how much the government does is dictated by politician’s wives, and how much of that comes from articles in popular magazines or stories on the news. They have good intentions, of course. They always have good intentions. Without such good intentions, the artifact would, even now, be sitting in a government warehouse—and I would not have put this burden upon you. Good intentions, I think you might agree, can be a terrible thing.

The investigation began in 1976. Because of the classified nature of the materials involved, the investigation was conducted by the military under the oversight of a congressional fact-finding committee. In 1977, it moved beyond the review of documents and data to pulling everything taken from Christmas Island—tons of material—out of storage. Routine precautionary measures involved constant monitoring of radioactivity levels, and I doubt I have to tell you there weren’t any. There was no radioactivity. At all. Jim Turney, who was heading up the investigation, ordered a full battery of tests on all the objects, because he thought there had been tampering. This was 1976, remember, and anything odd in any investigation was seen as evidence of a cover-up after Watergate. The materials were carbon dated, x-rayed, tested for composition, analyzed sonically and magnetically. Jim even got an electron microscope to run everything under. While the materials turned out to be mostly normal, although the carbon dating simply didn’t work—everything appeared to be five billion years old, which was assumed to be related to the lack of radioactivity—the materials appeared to be normal. The idea of tampering seemed to make less sense—of course a nuclear test site was radioactive, and half the material was gathered before the American Domino tests, and there was nothing to be gained from tampering with the soil, glass and rock retrieved before our own testing. During the electron microscope review, it was discovered that one item—the artifact, this dull-looking blackened metal pyramid, was covered with ideographs, diagrams, and symbols. None of which could be seen except through an electron microscope, all at a size at a nanoscopic size that humanity simply could not produce. The materials were sealed, everyone involved was extensively debriefed, everything was classified, and the investigation—the congressional one—was closed. Then, a new one started, and I got involved.

I thought it was all foolishness at first, but I was not welcome at Berkley—I had students boycotting my classes, these beautiful young girls calling me a “pig” and expressing what were sometimes alarming and explicit fantasies about my incipient death. I’ve told you something about how things were for me at Berkley. The students and the faculty hated me, and I didn’t much care for them. Given the basic outline, ending my career with research rather than teaching seemed extremely appealing. I wanted to get out of California and I did not want to return to New Mexico. After my wife died, there wasn’t anything there for me. Although government research is rarely terribly productive in my experience, the pay was unusually high, and the mountains of Tennessee seemed wonderfully far from the mountains of California and the deserts of New Mexico.

So I moved to Tennessee and began my final research project. And it wasn’t long before I was convinced. As you might imagine, the amount of data was quite large. It was difficult to decipher. We would often spend days, hundreds of photographs pinned to the walls, trying to piece together the relationships that would “crack the code”. By this point, I had already made at least one observation that I hadn’t reported or shared with the rest of the team: the artifact was changing. The symbols and diagrams were in flux; they were not constant. Second and third passes over several grid points—we had broken the artifact down into 4560 grid points for analysis, so dense was the information on it—revealed what I saw to be clear variations in the same area, from pass to pass. I can’t say why I didn’t note this observation then—it seemed likely to me that somebody else would see it soon. I told myself I still wanted to reflect on it and, frankly, I was not fond of paperwork and had often been months behind on doing reports on fairly significant work at Los Alamos.

This time, though, I didn’t even tell anyone. Something was telling me—perhaps had been telling me for a while—to play this one closer to the vest. So, I didn’t say anything about what I had observed. I just meditated on it.

When the solution came to me, I was at home, preparing for bed. In fact, I had been thinking about the conversation I had had with you earlier that day. It was in your words to me that I suddenly saw the obvious. What all the brilliant linguists and physicists and cryptologists were missing. I spent the night staring at my ceiling, thinking about it. Wondering if I was right. What it might mean if I was. What I should do if I found out that I had, indeed, cracked the code. And, yes, how I could test my hypothesis without anyone else knowing.

There had been a few incidents that established the mechanical nature of the artifact. It had released a powerful electric shock at one point, doing a quick $100,000 in damage to our only real laser, projected what was certainly a hologram illustrating molecular bindings and had shown a capacity to absorb radioactivity, radio waves, microwaves, ultraviolet radiation, heat and infrared and even visible spectrum light. Also, I had observed on my own that the intricate web of ideograms on its surface changed over time—they weren’t “etched” at all, it was some form of impossibly microscopic display terminal.

But our approach—dissect, analyze, categorize, tag, photograph, and stick on the wall—it was all wrong. It was waiting to be shown. We had to teach it. I felt an unshakable clarity that the key was not analysis but input, and it kept me up all night—just as it absorbed heat and light and radio waves, it would absorb knowledge. And eventually, it would react. It had been trying to react when it had projected the holograms. It had be trying to communicate—to respond to materials in its environment.

I had thought for a while about the source of the hologram—not its mechanical source, as that appeared to be all but invisible to us, but why, exactly, had it projected what it had, when it had. It had come out of nowhere—we had run no tests for hours. I was one of the two people to see it live, and it did not translate well to the video tape. Perhaps it wasn’t supposed to. Only myself and my immediate assistant saw the projection, and he believed it was some sort of “alien language primer”. I considered that possible, but the projection appeared to me to have been a series of molecular bindings. An alien language based on illustrations of molecular bindings? That made no sense.

While brushing my teeth, I recalled that the fluorescence microscopic measurements—that, frankly, hadn’t told us much—were conducted with a brand new, state-of-the-art fluorescence microscope, custom built for us by the Bio-Instrumentation Laboratory at MIT. It was a beautiful thing—10,000x magnification, mounted on a hydraulic arm and gimbal with a fluorescent projector, and a brand new Sony Betacam. It’s usefulness for this project was questionable, but large budgets often turn into less-than-useful equipment.

The manual was almost a thousand pages, much of it photocopied or mimeographed and sloppily three-hole punched and put into a 3” binder. Most of what we were referencing the manual for was the operation of the Betacam and the fluorescent projector—not unlike a laser, given the intensity of the light—and the multiple filter wheels and other extras I expect the “technology enthusiasts” at MIT that built it for them convinced the bureaucrats were necessary. Mostly, the extras just slowed us down.

Because of how they had constructed the gimbal for the microscope lens and camera armature, we were having a tough time getting the Betacam to focus. Initially, we weren’t sure why—it turned out that the focus ring of the Betacam lens was hit by the armature every time we moved it even a few inches, in almost any direction. At the time, as the Betacam was new, we thought the problem might be with the camera itself. We removed the Betacam from the armature, following the poorly written instructions on how to remove it in the manual, and ran some fairly basic tests and determined it was not the problem. In one of the tests, I had flipped to one of the pages of the manual that had pictures. The first one I ran across was a tutorial on the analysis of kinetic information on molecular bindings via fluorescence resonance energy transfer. I pointed the camera at that page, focused it as tightly as I could, and let it run for an hour to make certain the focus didn’t drift in or out. The page I picked had contained two illustrations of molecular bindings. Very similar to the ones it would projectout—of nowhere, it would appear to us—a few days later.

I was up at four and dressed and to the lab before anyone else that morning. The first thing I did was take a look at the manual for the fluorescence microscope—and indeed, the illustrations of the molecular bindings were almost identical to what the artifact had projected.

I requisitioned additional video equipment, radio equipment and optical equipment. Ostensibly for testing and recording—but I intended to transmit. At first, I was able to locate classroom videos that covered subjects that seemed appropriate—foreign languages, since I couldn’t find any on English but that didn’t much concern me as I speak French and German both reasonably well. Physics classes, biology, history. I found several documentaries, and used those. I bought a video camera for myself and began recording textbooks in the same manner we had focused the Betacam on the fluorescence microscope manual—from reading and language primers and math primers to calculus and physics—and instructional materials, on how radio and television work, telephones, basic computing, automotive engineering, aeronautics, building construction, electricity—anything I could think of to provide the artifact with the context of humanity.

I also put together a video of it—drawings and illustrations I made, along with pictures and video.

One drawing featured a drawing of the artifact from several angles. In one corner of my simple illustration, I drew a dot. Then, I drew successive pictures, at increased magnifications, indicating with greater detail each time what was on the dot. I video taped the material, and brought it into the lab with me the next day.

At Oak Ridge, I had become something of a taskmaster. I had harangued, at one time or another, all of the team members on the lack of progress. There were a number of linguists and cryptologists on the team—it was not difficult to give them the challenge of “breaking the code”, meaning they spent most of their time confined to conference rooms littered with some of the 4560 photographs of the artifact’s grid points, laboring to make sense of the artifact through decryption. I kept them busy, overworked and preoccupied, while only I and two assistants conducted actual work on the artifact itself. Those two I tried to keep busy writing and filing reports most of the time. While there wasn’t any hiding the equipment that I had set up, I tried to keep every other person on the team busy while using the transmission equipment for superficial tests to make it appear as if I were laboring on some foolish pursuit without success.

It wasn’t very difficult to do. It’s not difficult work to get people to underestimate you.

The day I came in with the tape of my drawings—what I was beginning to think of as a command, actually, and I have you in some ways to thank for this idea—there were only three team members in, and they had been there all night, in a conference room, struggling to make sense out of patterns they thought they had observed in a hundred or so photographs. I had the lab to myself, with only the military security guard outside the lab to keep me company—and he spent most of his time reading magazines. I put my tape in and played it, broadcasting it out across the entire UHF and VHF spectrum. I ran the tape twice, then—as I wanted to do this part before either of my direct assistants showed up—I made a circle with the fluorescence microscope, camera on but not recording. I didn’t want a record of this anywhere except my mind.

On the second pass, I saw it. A small dot in the corner. I moved the microscope in and magnified to 5000x—roughly the size I had attempted to indicate for visibility. And there it was, exactly as I had drawn it, in clear relief. There was no mistaking it at magnification for a blemish on the object or some extra-large example of the nanoscopic alien symbology etched on the object itself.
It was a smiley face.

Chapter 22

The Black Notebook – Part 2

It had done it. It had, essentially, responded to a command for output, based on my input. As I said, I have you, in a way, to thank for this epiphany. You had complained to me earlier that day about trying to program your computer—your struggle with assembly language and the lack of feedback. You were upset that you had to craft line after line of code, only to have it lock-up your computer without any indication as to what was wrong. You complained about how difficult it was for you to work with and understand the manual—I believe you said that it was written as if you already knew how to program in machine language, plus had an engineering degree in microprocessor design.

It had occurred to me that our struggle with the artifact was not dissimilar—we were, in our way, struggling to read a manual that was clearly constructed with different assumptions about the level of knowledge of its intended audience. There was no official theory as to the origin and intent of the artifact at the time, but the general consensus was that it was something like a lost communicator, a field manual or a map, dropped by some alien soldier a millennia ago. There was also speculation that it was, in fact, a piece of an alien computer—only I and my immediate assistant were solidly in that camp, but that was fine.

However, your complaints illustrated for me what had been our oversight. It was obvious, and yet a team of post-graduate degree-holding cryptologists and research scientists that were all triple-dipped in doctorates had not thought of it. If it was a computer, then to operate, it needed commands.

You could look at the outside of a computer all day long and accomplish nothing. You had to interact. You talked about how you had tried studying assembly language during lunch and study hall at school, yet you were no closer, when you got home, to solving your problems than you had been when you left in the morning. To make progress, you had to be interacting. You had to issue commands, in the form of a program, request they be executed, observe the results, and adjust accordingly.

All we were trying to do was read the manual. Most of the team was open-minded to the idea of the reality of an alien artifact; a few were even enthusiastic about the idea. Yet almost all of them approached it as if it were an archeological problem. As if the challenge before them was to decipher this alien language and then write out the history of this lost civilization. I had seen it, indeed, as an archeological and perhaps cryptological problem at the outset. That any advantage to be gained from the artifact in terms of advanced technology or advanced knowledge would come from, in essence, “breaking the alien code”. After which, we could all read how to build bigger bombs, faster cars and personal rocketships.

What we needed to be doing, I saw, was issuing commands. We needed to help it translate us, not the other way around. If it was an alien computer, we needed to try and program it. I needed to try and program it.

If I was right, and it was as I thought—that the key to unlocking the knowledge and technology of the artifact was not via deciphering and decrypting but by instructing and commanding, and if the artifact were indeed an alien computer flexible enough to learn from and be instructed by a completely alien race—that is, us—what sort of Pandora’s box would we be opening? What if someone in 700 B.C. had stumbled over something that, at little more than his word, would produce for him guns and cannons and battleships and even nuclear bombs, or instructions, at least, on how to make them? Would there be any way to put this genie back in the bottle?

At the time, the concern was real, but still vague. When I first started programming the artifact, I had no idea what it was capable of. No idea at all. The “genie in the bottle” metaphor came to seem singularly appropriate; the more I worked with it, the more it seemed it was just a matter of time before one could rub the bottle, make their wish, and get whatever they asked for. Such an attractive idea when we are young, I suppose—I spent more than one idle school day as a boy wishing I had a magic lamp. It would grow to terrify me.

Einstein said that what science gives to one, it gives to all. While this is certainly true in the normal course of events, how could one nation duplicate the advantage of another nation, if that nation were given a 10,000 year head start? Technology that was microscopic, immune to analysis and deconstruction by anything but similarly advanced technology? How could a people defend themselves against an oppressive dictatorship, if it had technology that was indistinguishable from magic? What would happen if we were developing items with the technology, and some of it got back to the U.S.S.R.? That’s not uncommon. Space shuttle navigational computers and fuel systems are one thing, and not necessarily so bad—it is a very expensive business for the U.S.S.R. to keep up with the United States. But technology light years beyond anything we’ve ever known?

The safety net with our nuclear program, as I have told you, is the mutual assurance of destruction. The key point there is assurance—the Soviets know that we could turn every square inch of their country into a black, uninhabitable nightmare, and they know, as exactly as one can in the abstract, what that entails. They know, if they were to attempt a first strike on American soil, that we would retaliate. We are in the same position in regards to their own capability and willingness.

That will almost certainly prevent them or us from ever actually using the nuclear arms we’ve built. But it doesn’t prevent the Soviets from conducting wars of acquisition. For the same reasons, they know we will not use nuclear weapons to prevent those wars of acquisition. Many would argue that America is similarly imperial—I hardly think that is the case, but there are certainly individuals in positions of power and access at every level of ever government who probably shouldn’t be there. What would they do if handed Aladdin’s lamp? I suspect most of them would rub it and wish for unspeakable, terrible, unstoppable power. Without even knowing what it was they were doing.

As I worked at night, sketching and then video taping what I had drawn, flipping the pages of textbooks in front of my video camera, I would think about that. I had devoted most of my working life to making an already terrible weapon that much more terrible, and making it so that it could be so with much greater efficiency. While I understood and still understand the importance of nuclear deterrence, I was not always pleased with what I was doing.

But a nuclear missile is, when it comes down to it, just a very big bomb. Tough to hide, difficult to be very specific, and demanding of terrible reprisal if ever used in a first-strike. A very terrible weapon, yes, but also the best sort of weapon—one that is almost never used. One that every politician and general is terrified of ever actually using.

But what about lasers on satellites, that could assassinate people at a distance—in their backyard or possibly in their house? In their bunker? That was, in fact, the program we were working on at Oak Ridge—at least, as far as everybody except those most directly involved were concerned. Such things are not out of our reach with the technology we have already developed. When we can build such things, will we use them? I am sure. Will others? Yes, any nation that can build one and deliver it into space will use such weapons.

What about defenses that could keep planes, vehicles, and people virtually undetectable by radar or even human eyes? What about weapons that could freeze entire armies? Or weapons that were so small you couldn’t see them—microscopic machines that could recognize and take apart certain, specific people at the cellular level? Or give them heart attacks, or strokes, or cancer? At a distance, with no fingerprints leading back to you? What if we could create super-soldiers? Or super-assassins—people so equipped they could see huge distances, in the dark, through walls, finger prints on door knobs and so much more? Hearing so enhanced they could hear a pin drop, climb walls and ceilings like spiders, envelope themselves in silence, breathe underwater—surely, the stuff of comic books and fantasy. Even after I had begun my private dialogue with the artifact, I wouldn’t have let myself think of those sorts of things. They were all still safely absurd. But the idea that this artifact was real, that it could genuinely shift the balance of power—quite possibly with technologies a man might walk out with in his pockets, or even under his skin—kept me up at night. I did know, even then, that this was a terribly dangerous thing.

By the time I decided to take the artifact and then deliver it into your care, I knew quite a bit more. The artifact represents the end of technology, Jon. The end. I do not believe there is anything that can be done within the laws of physics that is not represented by the information contained in, and the mechanics of, the artifact. The end of technology—in a 8” pyramid. More than that, it was a genie in a bottle—and it was designed to be a genie in a bottle. I learned over the course of just a few weeks that it understood and acted on commands, presented in almost any form—it just required input.

Unlike the hydrogen bomb or a nuclear missile or lasers on satellites, this “technology genie”, as it were, could potentially spit out almost anything anyone could ask for, on request. I worked on our nuclear program for 20 years—I can tell you, it was a difficult and expensive process. Such things are not lightly or inexpensively undertaken, many people must approve and supervise and participate, progress is slow and the process is known and documented, mostly. The difficulty and expense of making such progress is natural and important. Only two nuclear bombs out of the hundreds of thousands made have ever been used tactically—both of them directly after their development. Forty years later, the price of entry to the nuclear club is still prohibitively high. Progress in improving yields was long and arduous. Even now, as so many in the scientific community scoff at the idea of SDI, I can tell you such things are possible. But at great expense and difficulty. And admission to the laser-equipped-space-satellite club will be of considerably higher price than admission into the nuclear one.

That is, of course, assuming a few ambitious bureaucrats or scientists or generals can’t rub a magic lamp and make it happen for them, seemingly without effort or cost. The idea of some bureaucrat demanding a death ray and having one pop out would seem nonsensical, but is not that far from the truth. The idea of some petty tyrant demanding technologies to enslave the world doesn’t seem all that far-fetched to me now, as I write this. Nor does the idea of some well-meaning good Samaritan trying to end war and feed the world and cure disease and instead doing immeasurable, incomprehensible damage. Make no mistake, Jon. The most brutal oppression mankind has ever known was done in the name of social equality.

Technological progress is wonderful; I have spent the better part of my life devoted to one small area of it. I cannot emphasize enough, however, the danger I see in skipping over a hundred or a thousand years of difficult and expensive natural technological development in the blink of an eye. I have seen very little evidence in my 64 years that anything in life is free; there is always a trade-off. You always pay the price. That is why I talked to you about what happens to lottery winners—that they usually end up worse off than before. That bank robbers either get caught and end up with nothing, or spend most of their lives in fear or on the run. And they normally spend all their ill-gotten gains and have to do it again, until they do get caught—or shot dead. Why should it be different if we rob the technology bank? I do not think it will be.

Since before I began communicating with—indeed, programming—the artifact, I have had a growing sense that it is too good to be true. That it may be, or at least can be, the doomsday device I discussed with you—a magic genie that will cheerfully let us destroy ourselves with our own wishes. A cornucopia of technology beyond what we have previously been able to imagine or will be able to deal with. Something that, if it fell into the wrong hands—an imminent possibility, believe me—could allow one person to rule or destroy the world. And one person, even from the noblest of motives, attempting to rule the world with this technology would destroy it. I am certain of it.

I developed a code for asking simple questions. One dot, visible to me in the room but undetectable to the video cameras documenting our research, for yes. Two for no, three for maybe or it did not know or it did not understand, but most of my questions were in the form of establishing capability—could it do this? Could it do that? I mostly saw one dot.

In the morning, I’d bring in my video tape and play, usually questions, sometimes with diagrams, I had written out in plain English. I recorded the answers on a piece of graph paper. When recording, I made sure each query was displayed for 10 seconds exactly, so I could time them and not lose my place. Could it understand plain English? One dot. Did it understand our mathematical systems? One dot. Did 2 + 5 = 11? Two dots. I’m sure you get the idea.

Do you obey commands? One dot. Will you do anything I tell you? Three dots. Can you become invisible within the electromagnetic spectrum between 400 nanometers and 700 nanometers? One dot. Can you manufacturer a non-functioning duplicate of yourself? One dot. Can you make that process invisible? Conceal it from the cameras or any person in the room? One dot.

Sometimes I drew the cameras, security guards watching on monitors—just to make sure I was absolutely clear. Then, on September 23, 1982, I walked out with the artifact in my briefcase, a non-functioning but otherwise remarkably similar duplicate in its place in the lab. As I write this, seven months have passed and only now is the lack of progress at Oak Ridge drawing any real suspicion. I’ve used some of the technology available to me through the artifact to keep an eye and an ear out, and only now are they showing real concern. They are planning to start an investigation of me, specifically. While I can keep them misled for awhile, I think it is time I prepare to take my leave.

By the way, I asked the artifact if it could be destroyed. Three dots. I asked if it could be commanded to self-destruct. Two dots. I asked if we, humanity, could get rid of it. Three dots. And so on. As I write this, I am as unsure as ever as to how to dispose of the thing. Or even if that is the best course of action. If you choose the route I think you will, I wish you better luck than I. Over time and long examination, I became certain my path lay elsewhere.

Indeed, I became certain that the fate of the artifact belonged in other hands. I became certain that the hands they belonged in were yours. I am not ignorant of the terrible burden, of the terrible responsibility, I have put on you by doing what I have done. I am not unaware of the profound effect it will have, permanently, on your life and the life of most everybody you know.

Yet I knew, with certainty, that I had to do it. There was a reason I came to Oak Ridge. There was a reason I happened to run into you, to meet you, the very day that I began to realize I could not let the artifact stay in the hands of governmental bureaucrats. That I happened to go to a convenience store that I never stopped at. I think you must know it—certainly, you launched into a compelling, ninety-minute dissertation on programming and technology that I found enormously impressive, coming as it did from a boy your age—a young American boy born and raised in the south, no less. No, there are reasons for everything. And we all have jobs to do. Yours is to decide the fate of the artifact. Mine was to deliver it you. I hope you can see that, although I suspect it will be very hard for you. I apologize for my deception, but time was limited and I saw no other way.

Although I know it is certain that I am dead as you read this, just as I am certain that you will read it, I do hope for their to be a miracle. I hope, somehow, I am wrong. I do hope to see you again. I hope there is a way.

Hope is an important thing.

Chapter 26

Oak Ridge, TN – Sunday, May 29th, 1983 – 8:25 AM

Jon rolled over and looked at the clock. It was 8:25. Hot damn, he had actually managed to get back to sleep.

He sat up suddenly. Where was the notebook? The contact lenses? He had been so addled when had woken up from the dream last night, he hadn’t thought about them, but he didn’t remember seeing either of them. He glanced beside his bed—the plain gray contact case was still on the nightstand, undisturbed. He patted down the sheets until he found the black notebook, safe and sound. He looked in the back, making sure all the money was still there. Nothing missing. It was strange, he thought, that the pages were rigged to his finger prints, he thought as his finger brushed them and the type changed, and the same with the ATM doohickey, but the money and travelers checks were just there, unconcealed.

Or, then again, maybe it wasn’t so strange—it wouldn’t really prove anything or lead to anywhere, and if something had happened and somehow a stranger found the notebook, the money would probably serve as a distraction. Or maybe Dr. Bernhard had just run out of time. Or had had Alzheimer’s and forgot. Or maybe he hadn’t known what the hell he was doing. Bingo, Jon thought.

He shrugged, putting the notebook down. He actually felt a little less judgmental this morning. He had decided to go on the run from the government and the police and who knew who or what else, with some very powerful and very dangerous technology, on the advice of a manic-depressive girl who was, weird suicidal tangents aside, really cool and, yeah, Jon had kind of had a thing for her all year. Admittedly, over the past two days it had gone from “having a thing” to being entirely consumed with her, so perhaps his judgment wasn’t really in the best shape, but maybe he could sort of see how Bernhard had ended up making some of the decisions that he had.

Jon didn’t guess, from the outside, it would look like he knew what the hell he was doing. Hell, from the inside it didn’t really look like he knew what he was doing. But, after talking to Megan, he felt sure it was the right thing to do. After several hours of thinking about spending the indefinite future on the run, the two of them together, staying alone in cheap motels across the country, with a potentially endless supply of cash–assuming the ATM do-jigger Dr. Bernhard had left him actually did what it was supposed to–it actually seemed like a good idea. After the dream, it just seemed inevitable. Inexorable. Perfect.

Also, considering that he had only seen a little of what the artifact was able to produce, and what he had seen so far was pretty damn cool—well, that figured in there, too. Mostly, though, he saw a summer alone in hotels and motels and motor lodges across the country with Megan.

He still wasn’t exactly happy that Dr. Bernhard had stuck him with this thing, put him in this position, and lied to him since pretty much the moment they met—but he was beginning to understand how something that seemed irrational to one person could make perfect sense to somebody else. Or how even if something seemed crazy, not just to other people but maybe even to you, you still might go ahead and do it. You still might want to do it. You might want to do it so much that it didn’t really matter how poorly thought out or irrational a thing it actually was.

Jon, when I met you, I hadn’t talked with you for an hour before I knew you had been sent into my life for a reason, Bernhard’s disembodied head had said. That in sixty-eight years of life, you were one of the few people I had met that I knew I could trust. That I felt for sure that I should trust. Even with great power. Perhaps especially with great power.

“Doc,” he murmured. “I’m afraid you were misinformed.” He couldn’t get the idea of getting a chance to peak into the shower while Megan was washing at the hotel out of his head. Or what if she was taking a bath and wanted him to wash her back? Or he could leave something in the bathroom, and have to come get it while she was taking her shower. That was a good one. And what if they could only get a room with one bed? The possibilities were intoxicating. And he was supposed to be entrusted with great power? He couldn’t go five minutes without thinking about how she had kissed him—the flick of her tongue across his lips. The softness of her skin. How she had put her hand behind his neck, pulling his head forward with her thin fingers, the slow, brief caress of her fingertips across the nape of his neck. Great power? He couldn’t be trusted with his own brain!

He had dreamt that he had been present at something like the creation of the universe—something incredibly huge and immeasurably powerful had been happening in front of him and all around him for almost the entire dream. Yet now, all he could think about was Megan, lips full and wet, rolling her tongue around his forefinger. That was where his head was at. Could something like that really happen? Or maybe even better? Even now, he knew he ought to care more about the artifact than getting to spend time with, and maybe even fool around some, with Megan. That if he was going to do this thing—and he was—then it ought to be for the sorts of reasons Dr. Bernhard had said. The sorts of social, geopolitical things Megan had alluded to. Not because he had a crush—well, let’s be honest, more than a crush—on Megan. Not because he wanted to get to spend a lot of time alone with her. Not because he might get to sneak a peak at her in the shower. But because there was something worth going on the run for.

They might end up in jail, or shot and killed, or blown up somehow by the artifact itself. It seemed like a remote possibility, but he thought it was possible that they could unleash the artifact—accidentally do something that started some internal doomsday clock. Or make it radio back to the Kanamits that supper was ready and they could have their cookbook back. Some risks were more likely than others, but when the most minor of them was jail, they were risks to be considered carefully.

In the end, he knew he’d think it was too risky. He knew common sense would tell him that he wasn’t the guy, that Dr. Bernhard had made many terrible mistakes of which picking Jon as the steward of his precious artifact was just one, and that Jon needed to turn it all back over to whoever it belonged to. That, yes, there was risk there, too, but it was much more limited, and allowed him to wash his hands of the whole mess as much as he could. Given that he had no practical idea of what to do, or what he should do, except start running, packing it all up and going on the lamb made no sense. Considering that Dr. Bernhard picking a fourteen year old kid he had known for a year as the custodian of some super-powerful alien artifact was patently irrational, it would follow that doing anything consistent with what the patently irrational person had wanted him to do was even more irrational. Considering the risks extended beyond Jon but to everybody Jon knew, including his mom and Stacey and Megan and Johnny Two and on and on, he was going to be responsible for what happened to a lot more people than just him. Viewed from a detached, outside perspective, Jon could see clearly how what he was going to do made no sense.

But Megan trumped that. Completely. Given a little time to ripen, his acquiescence to Megan had become a purpose of its own. As trite as his reasons seemed when he put them into words, the physical sensation in his body was one of mission. That this was something that he had to do. The reasons in his mind seemed small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but they had a fundamental logic all their own which could not be resisted. Like the needle of a compass always pointing north, no matter which way he turned it, Jon was drawn—magnetically, gravitationally—in one direction. No matter which way he looked at it, there was really only one way to go. And the more he thought about it, the more powerful that force became. He was being drawn, inexorably, to Megan.

But not just by Megan—he was drawn by what was drawing her. There was a true north, a direction they were both supposed to go together and, even if it didn’t make any sense, he knew he was going to go that direction.

No, he didn’t think Bernhard had made any sort of rational decision, sticking him with the book—but Jon thought he was beginning to understand it a little better. Sometimes, he thought, maybe you did things because you had to do them. You just made up the reasons for why you did what you did later on. You made excuses, because you really couldn’t explain why you chose the path you ended up going down. And Jon could not rationally explain why he was embarking on the path he was. It was going to make a mess of everything in what had been, with a few minor exceptions, a pleasantly uneventful life, up to this point. He was going to do something that was going to change it significantly. Forever. He was actually excited about it.

Because of Megan, yes. But not just because of Megan. For once, he was going to jump into the water without testing it with his toe. He was going to live life, really live it, not just sit in his room and fantasize about living it. His mom sometimes explained her seminar and continuing-ed addiction—and her perpetual serial dating—like this: Jon, life is short. You’ve got to grab it by the balls. While he didn’t guess she had meant that to advocate running from the FBI and the government and who-knows-what-else with an incredibly hot girl—a girl more than a year older than Jon—he didn’t think seminars on how to find himself and classes on how to become a paralegal would constitute “grabbing life by the balls” for him.

Megan had kissed eight boys and two girls—one a college girl. She had dropped acid—at school! On exam day! While, yes, one part of him did think that was monumentally stupid, another part—the part that hadn’t really looked forward to sitting around the house programming and playing video games all summer—had been impressed when he had heard it. That part would have been actually been impressed had she stopped and told him at school. Impressed and, yeah, a little jealous. He would never have done it himself, even if given the opportunity, but still. It was a big world, and life was a busy, bustling place, and he had been sitting at home, programming his computer, playing his videogames, and fantasizing about . . . new and improved chemistry sets. And spending his summer reading textbooks, for God’s sake.

Pathetic, he thought, feeling not a little disgust towards his initial urge to just hand the book and briefcase over to the authorities, whomever they might be. Megan, who was the one who had gotten zapped at the bus station, was not nearly such a pussy. Maybe she was manic-depressive or bipolar or just nuts, but she definitely wasn’t a wimp. She didn’t wring her hands over what might happen if she went off the beaten path—hell, she wasn’t afraid of completely uprooting her life. At all. She was excited by the prospect.

And there was something else. Megan saw something in Jon. Something exciting. She saw something that was interesting to someone like her, someone who had done and seen and been so much more than he had. She saw someone who would completely, permanently alter his life, for her and, perhaps, for some noble principal that she saw but, frankly, he still didn’t. But she saw that potential in him. She saw something in him that Doreen did not. That the teachers at school did not. That almost everybody he knew—well, except for Dr. Bernhard, who had apparently figured that Jon would just love to go running across country with stolen government research—did not. To them, he was dull, boring, geeky Jon.

Megan, on the other hand, saw someone that she wanted to go on the run with, staying at seedy motels and hiding out, indefinitely, completely changing her life, unalterably and forever, to go with him. Not Johnny Two, not the eight guys and two girls she had previously locked lips with, but one wholly unremarkable Jon Edmonds.

Jon picked up the gray contact case and opened it. Fuck it, he thought, flipping open the case as the words BIONIC VISION glowed faintly on the top at his touch. No time like the present. If he really was going to live life, it was time to start getting busy.

Gingerly, he pulled one thin, filmy lens from the contact case. There was a stack of them in each compartment, and no contact solution, but getting just one out was easy—it almost seemed to jump onto his fingertip. He held it up to his left eye, trying to remember how Doreen put her contacts in—didn’t she use a squirt-bottle or something?—when it jumped from his finger, onto his eyeball.

“Yaagh!” Jon yelped involuntarily. For a second, it felt like something big—a peace of grass or a hair or something—had gotten stuck in his eye. As he blinked, the sensation faded, and glowing green type floated, semi-transparent, in front of him. INSERT OTHER LENS, the words instructed.

“Okay,” he murmured, picking up another lens—this time, he looked more closely, and as he put his finger near the stack of lenses, one did seem to launch itself off the stack and adhere to his finger. “Wow,” he murmured. When he held it up to his right eye, he was a little better prepared, and didn’t jump when the lens leapt from his fingertip and attached itself to his eye. He blinked, as green type began to scroll across his room, from ceiling to floor.

TO ACTIVATE/DEACTIVE, BLINK: SHAVE-AND-A-HAIRCUT.

Jon did blink. Huh? Shave-and-a-haircut? Oh, yeah: the old cartoon gag. Knocking out shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits, on a door or a table or a wall. Dr. Bernhard had asked him, actually, if he had been familiar with the old shave-and-a-haircut routine, Jon recalled, casually introducing the topic into a discussion about old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Another entry in the Dr. Hermann Bernhard Hall of Bullshit, apparently.

ACTIVATE/DEACTIVATE PERPETUAL ZOOM/WIDEANGLE, BLINK TWICE, LOOK: LEFT-RIGHT, LEFT-RIGHT.

ACTIVATE/DEACTIVATE INFRARED/NIGHT VISION: LOOK UP-DOWN, LEFT-RIGHT.

ACTIVATE/DEACTIVE X-RAY VISION. BLINK THREE TIMES, LOOK UP-DOWN, UP-DOWN.

Jon’s eyes widened. X-ray vision? No way. No-frickin’-way.

ACTIVATE/DEACTIVATE VISION SHARING. LOOK: LEFT-RIGHT, UP-DOWN, BLINK TWICE.

WINK TO SCROLL THROUGH AVAILABLE SIGNAL FEEDS. TO ACTIVATE/DEACTIVATE BROAD-SPECTRUM MULTI-VARIABLE ANALYSIS, BLINK FOUR TIMES, LOOK: LEFT-DOWN, LEFT-DOWN.

FOR ADVANCED SETTINGS, BLINK TWICE, LOOK RIGHT-UP, RIGHT-UP.

TO DISPLAY INSTRUCTIONS AGAIN, ACTIVATE/DEACTIVATE BIONIC VISION BY BLINKING SHAVE-AND-A-HAIRCUT.

Jon knew what he was doing first. He blinked three times, then looked up and down, up and down. For a moment, he couldn’t see a real difference. Then he noticed that his room seemed absent of color. Then, he noticed, there were stains on the wall. Shapes. As he looked closer, he realized they weren’t on the wall, but in it. He was seeing the framing and electric wires beneath the plasterboard. And something else, he realized, trying to discern the outlines—and as he did so, his wall seemed to all but disappear, plasterboard, wiring and wood framing, and he was just looking into the bathroom, as if someone had some and removed the wall. It was largely colorless and everything in it seemed a little plastic, as if all the surfaces had been coated in a uniform, matte-finish polyurethane. But everything was distinct. It was like he was look straight into his bathroom—like his wall had just disappeared, and, if he wanted to, he could just stand up and walk right in. The bathroom mirror did not appear to be reflecting anything, not even the bathroom, but there was a faint glow in the middle of it. Jon stared, focusing on the glow, and the back wall of the bathroom seemed to fade away, and he was looking directly into his mother’s bedroom, where she lay in bed, propped up on a pillow, reading a magazine. She was brighter than most of the neutral gray stuff around her—she was the glow. She was outlined in a halo of white light. What was that? Heat detection or something?

Jon lifted up his hand, focusing on that, as the bathroom wall and the wall to his own room seemed to magically restore themselves. At first, his hand looked like nothing more than an inky outline, and then he saw bones.

“Yikes,” he said. He wiggled his fingers. He could see translucent muscle and sinew moving his finger bones around. “Cool!” He tried to focus a little short of his hand, and the bones and muscle vanished, replaced with luminous white skin, a fuzzy halo of incandescence radiating outward from his hand. He thought of the dream—how he had watched as his hands disappeared. How Megan had glowed, seemingly illuminated from the inside. Strange, the similarities.

Jon tried looking in the mirror on his wall, but he didn’t see his reflection—instead, the mirror looked gray, and when he tried to look closer at it, it seemed to disappear, revealing the wall behind it. Then that faded away, and he was looking outside at the ratty bushes and the garbage cans. He looked up, trying to focus just beyond the ceiling, and—even though expecting it—he gave a little yelp as the ceiling vanished, and he was looking straight into the attic. Then, he was looking at the morning sky, which was a neutral, undifferentiated gray in X-Ray vision mode. Then, suddenly, that vanished—and his entire field of vision was full of stars.

“Holy crap,” Jon muttered, looking back down. At first he wasn’t even able to make sense of the visual static, and he instinctively tried to focus on something closer. For a bare instant, he recognized the outside wall of the house three houses down, then the furniture in their next door neighbor’s dining room, then the inside of the laundry room, then his own bedroom. “Holy crap,” he repeated. Then his brow furrowed. He focused back on the inside wall, looking through the bathroom and then into Doreen’s room. She had shifted in bed, but was still otherwise preoccupied reading a magazine. It was Sunday morning. Shouldn’t she have been busy getting ready for church? Jon glanced over at the old digital clock on his nightstand, which was a mess of screws and wires and a circuit board. Whoops. He tried to refocus so he was looking outside the clock and could make out of the time: 8:37. But he could still see the inside of the clock, like fuzzy stains that receded into the surface, beneath the face. Okay, that could get irritating. He blinked three times, then looked up and down, up and down. The stains on his clock quickly faded, and color returned.

He looked around his room. Everything looked normal again—well, almost normal. He noticed after a moment that everything seemed crisper. Sharper and more distinct. He could make out stains on the ceiling—real stains—that he hadn’t noticed before, faint but distinct. He could make out cobwebs in the corner and dust on the blinds. He saw a tiny spider-web crack in the corner of the lower left window pane. Then he noted with a start he could clearly read the copyright statement on Blondie poster hanging on his wall—even though it still looked incredibly small, he could clearly read the tiny type: Copyright © 1980, Island Records, it warned him. Wow.

Apparently, in addition to the extra added features—X-ray vision, infra-red vision, etc—it also just made his vision better. A whole lot better. That was something else. Megan would be blown away.

Which made him think about Megan, and the fact his mom was apparently planning on skipping church this morning. She’s going to be getting ready for her ex-boyfriend reporter, he realized. She’s probably reading Newsweek or something. Then, he knew, she would probably do all the housecleaning Jon never did—mopping the floors, dusting on top of things, getting the gross stuff out of the tub and from around the toilet in the bathroom.

So, if Megan was planning on dropping by this morning, and just hanging back until his mom left, she was going to be waiting a long time. He hoped she’d call, like he had suggested. He could call her, but didn’t want to risk disturbing her parents early in the morning. Well, maybe she’d see his mom was here and just come on and knock on the door, anyway. It wouldn’t hurt anything for Doreen to see that Jon could have an attractive lady caller, early Sunday morning. Why, she might suspect that her geeky son might actually have a girlfriend. Heh!

She was going to be in for the shock of her life, when she found out Jon and Megan were had run away together. He had started composing his “Dear Mom” letter in his head, because he didn’t want to just up and disappear. He thought he might try and throw Doreen off the scent, once they left, by writing that he and Megan were eloping. At first he had thought of maybe actually explaining at least some of what was going on—that Dr. Bernhard had stolen something, say it was for a good reason even though Jon really wasn’t so sure that was true, and that he was going on the run with it, and maybe leave some stuff behind from Dr. Bernhard’s briefcase for Doreen to protect herself with. The more he thought about it, the more he thought that was not a good strategy, and thought it was probably more likely that the less she knew, the better off she was.

So, he’d leave her a note that explained everything—it just wouldn’t be entirely true, was all.
Jon got out of bed, grabbed a fresh t-shirt and some underwear, and went to take a shower before his mom got up and got busy cleaning. After drying his hair and pulling on his pants and putting on his sneakers, he sat back down on his bed and pulled out the black notebook. He found the last place he could remember reading from last night, but after just a few sentences found he just wasn’t in the mood right now. He was more interested in trying to get some specific information about the stuff in the briefcase. There was a blank tab about three-quarters of the way through the neatly written pages, which Jon turned to. There was nothing on the tab itself, but as he turned to the following page of college-ruled notebook paper, he saw Dr. Bernhard had written, in large block letters, ENEMIES OF A FREE AND DEMOCRATIC PEOPLES, followed by an extensive list. The first one was the United States of America. The next was The U.S. Military. Next was Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Jon glanced down to the bottom of the list, where it read: Sanitation Department. Sanitation Department? Jon chuckled. More of that rarefied Bernhard wit, no doubt.

Jon let go of the tab and touched Dr. Bernhard’s enemies list. Immediately, the type changed—to a manifest of contents for the briefcase, as Jon had suspected.

Jon paused. The first item on the list was BIONIC VISION, the one he had picked out on a lark. Odd. He guessed Dr. Bernhard had known that such an idea would have immediate appeal to Jon—they had, after all, spent almost an entire afternoon once discussing the merits (and flaws—oh, the tragic flaws) of The Six Million Dollar Man. The description in the notebook touched on the basics that Jon had already read, scrolling by in wall-high green type, when he first put the contact lenses in. He also noted something else he had kind of figured he was going to need—a process for letting someone other than himself use them. As far as he had been able to tell, Dr. Bernhard had keyed everything he had left for Jon to work for Jon only. Megan had been able to see the book itself in action, but Jon wasn’t sure if that was because Jon had just been holding it, or because he had been in the room, or something else. He still didn’t know what had precipitated the transformation of the dull-looking college textbook into the ornate book of magic it had become. Had it happened when Jon had activated the video cassette? Or had it been something else entirely?

Hard to say. What he did know now was the HOLOGRAPHIC DECOY Megan had been so excited about taking home and playing with hadn’t worked for her because he hadn’t activated it to work for her. It wasn’t complicated–all he had to do was tap out shave-and-a-haircut (ha, ha) on the backside and have Megan touch it, and her fingerprints would be added to the list of authorized users. Most of them worked like that, he noticed as he read. BIONIC VISION required that he put the contacts into the other person’s eyes, and some of the smaller items weren’t actually keyed, they just required an activation code—the INSTANT OIL SLICK and STICKY SMOKE SCREEN and SUPER-HILARIOUS LAUGHING GAS—good grief, super hilarious laughing gas?—just required he tap a code or twist the capsule back and forth for activation. The BIONIC EAR just required that the user already be wearing the BIONIC VISION contacts. And the list of things it could do—long distance listening, hearing through walls, listening to—was that serious? Listening to wires? He was supposed to be able to hear phone conversations and other land transmissions by listening to the wire?

It also sported some heavy duty radio reception. Pre-configured for police band and military radio frequencies, including encrypted communications, it also featured it’s own long-range communication band, “that does not even use electromagnetic frequencies for conduction, thus completely beyond the ability of anybody on earth, except you and anyone you choose, to use it to communicate.” Holy crap.

Even though he had already found what he was most worried about—how to make it so things like the contact lenses would work for Megan—the list of pre-packaged items that Bernhard had prepared was incredible. Some items, like BIONIC VISION and BIONIC HEARING were flagged with little red exclamation points, apparently emphasizing their importance, as was the one labeled NANOCOAT AEROSOL. He paused, reading the description. It was apparently one of the non-descript silver cylinders—the one with the faintly embossed exclamation point on the side, and its feature list and instructions were something else again.

Apply liberally for enhanced tensile strength, projectile resistance
and impact distribution, surface traction, and force
focus/amplification.

Instructions included applying to shoes, "for undifferentiated traction on slippery or sticky surface, for preserving surface tension on soft surfaces, such as quicksand—“ Jon stopped, shaking his head. Again, where the hell had Dr. Bernhard envisioned him going? The Amazon jungle? He continued reading: “—quicksand, wet concrete, soft mud, even water or lighter liquids.” He stopped, looking up wide-eyed at nothing. No way. That couldn’t mean what Jon thought it meant. Was that seriously saying he could spray something on his shoes and—and what? Walk on water? No frickin’ way! Oh, wow, Megan was going to freak.

Applied to clothes, it made them fireproof and bulletproof. That was what it said. Bullet. Proof. Holy frickin’ mother of crap. It was just too much. Despite what he had seen, it was too much to take in. It was, like, spray on superhero. While it wouldn’t adhere to human skin—it said so in the instructions—it referred him to DRAGON SOAP—where the hell had Bernhard come up with some of these names, anyway?--which suggested it be lathered on completely “for maximum invulnerability”. Jon couldn’t help laughing. Soap that made you invulnerable. Soap. Damn. All the money Bernhard could have made, cornering the soap market. He certainly had already come up with some cool product names.

Jon continued to read the list, familiarizing himself with at least the basic purpose of everything in the briefcase. Some incredible stuff—although no flying shoes, skateboards, or jet skis, despite the book itself being full of instructions for making such magical stuff. Bernhard had apparently not cared much for flying. Jon was busy marveling over the SUPERKEY—not only did he have a penlight that would start cars, there was a SUPERKEY that would conform to the tumblers in any lock of any shape and size, and, in essence, open almost any door—when the phone rang.

He answered it immediately. “Hey,” he said casually, reasonably certain it was Megan. “Howzit doing?”

“Hey,” Megan said. “Doing great, actually. How’d you know it was me?”

“Nobody calls here at nine o’clock on a Sunday. Hang on for a second.”

“Sure,” she replied. Jon waited a few seconds, until he heard the click on the line. “Hello, hello?” Doreen asked breathlessly.

“It’s for me, mom. It’s just Megan.”

There was a pause. “Megan?”

“You know, from yesterday?”

“I know who Megan is,” Doreen snapped. Jon guessed she was expecting it to be for her—her reporter boyfriend, pining for her, calling from the road or some such nonsense. Despite the fact that Doreen’s boyfriends almost never called her, period.

“Hey, Mrs. Edmonds,” Megan said. “Hope I didn’t wake anybody up.” She sighed. “I just, you know—I couldn’t wait to talk to Jon.” Jon stifled a laugh. Megan was so great. He had always had a thing for her, but it hadn’t been until the last few days he had realized just how great she really was. She was, like, super-great. “I was hoping, if he wasn’t busy, that he could come to the library with me today.”

“The library doesn’t open until 2:00 on Sundays,” Doreen said, sounding cross. Almost jealous. “It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

“Oh, I know, I was hoping we could go to the park together, first,” Megan replied, not missing a beat. “Go for a walk and talk. I love talking with Jon. He is so great.”

No, Megan was so great. The wisdom of running away with her seemed clearer with each passing moment. Yeah, he did love his mom and, yeah, their relationship was pretty good. But—

As if to illustrate the point, Doreen said: “Isn’t—I mean, I thought you and Johnny Miller were dating, right?”

Jon frowned, his cheeks getting hot. That she would actually say something like that. Christ, Doreen! He thought. Get a freaking life, okay?

Megan laughed. Pointedly. “Oh, no, no way. I mean, Johnny Two is all right and all but, I mean, come on. I don’t think I’d ever see him if he and Jon didn’t hang together so much. I mean, Jon is just such a great guy. So smart. He listens, he thinks about what he says before he says it—” Jon wasn’t sure, but he thought he had just heard a fairly direct, and adult, slam at his mom come out of Megan’s mouth. What a babe!

“—not to mention, he’s, like, way cuter than Johnny Two.”

Hardly, and Jon new it. And so did Doreen. But maybe that was the point.

“I—ah, you know, I just—I didn’t know you guys had gotten so close. I thought you and—so, I mean, I don’t want to pry—you guys are—dating?”

“Mom!” Jon exclaimed.

“Jon never said anything about having a girlfriend, and—”

“Mom! Could you please stop it?”

“I mean, you’ve never gone out, both of you, except with Johnny Miller, and I always thought—”
Doreen paused, perhaps rethinking what she was about to say, and Megan filled with the gap nicely. “Well, we haven’t really discussed it, Mrs. Edmonds, but I’ve known for a lot longer than Jon has how much I like him. I sure hope I’m his girlfriend. I know I sure want to be. But no, nothing official. No rings or anything. Yet.”

“Oh,” Doreen said. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought maybe she was actually embarrassed. Jon smiled. Good. Baiting Megan on the phone, actively trying to get Megan to say something to the effect of Oh, I’d never like a geek like Jon—she should have been embarrassed. “Don’t stay on the phone long, please, I’m expecting a call,” she finished brusquely, and the line clicked.

“Damn,” Jon said, after his mom had hung up. “You are incredible. That was amazing. You are—you’re the perfect woman.”

“Ha! Trouble-maker is more like it. Larry is right about that—I just can’t help it. I’m sorry if I pissed her off, it’s just—it’s just that you are a great guy. Even if you do, you know, need to buy another pair of pants.” She giggled. “You don’t deserve that kind of shit. I know we’re always talking about my parents and stuff, but your mom is a ho.”

Jon laughed. “No, she’s not, she’s just a perpetual teenager—you know, like Muffy and Eva, only she’s forty years old and she’s still like that. If you had buckteeth and thick glasses—”

“—and no boobs!” Megan volunteered merrily. “Although my first two teeth do kinda stick out—”

“Hah! You still offend her sense of universal order. Girls as hot as you don't like you don’t like guys like me.”

“Maybe in her universe,” Megan said. “Anyway—”

“Anyway, thanks,” Jon interrupted. “You didn’t have to say all that.”

“Oh, yes I did,” she replied. “I’m not letting her get away with that bullhockey—I mean, what is she saying about me? ‘Wait, I thought you were a shallow, superficial slut’. I don’t know, I guess, but I think I’m better than that.”

“You are,” Jon agreed.

“But, just so we’re clear, I wasn’t saying all that just to piss off your mom. I mean, sure, that’s part of it. But I meant everything I said.”

Jon paused a moment, trying to digest that. Sure, he had sort of hoped that she at least sort of meant what she had been saying to his mom. He had kind of figured that, yeah, she probably did sort of mean what she was saying. But was she saying she just flat out meant it a hundred percent? Every last word? Jon opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of exactly what to say. In his mind, Megan whispered to him: I was waiting for you. I was waiting for you to touch me with your fingers.

“Okay, no noise on your end,” Megan murmured after a moment. “Let me re-state that. What I’m saying was that, yeah, if it was Johnny Two and it was his mom being a snot about him, I would have said the exact same thing, because I do like Johnny, and he wouldn’t deserve it, either. I just—I wouldn’t mean it as much about him.”

“I—” Jon started. What could he say? I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I want to have your baby! No, he couldn’t. Yet better words to say weren’t making themselves available. “—I mean, I—thanks. Thank you.” Thank you? Thank you? He couldn’t think of anything better than that? Shit!

“’Thank you’,” Megan repeated. “Hooo-kay, maybe on the phone with your mom wasn’t the best place to broach the subject. Sorry, I don’t—I mean, I know you probably think I’m a slut, but I haven’t ever done this—trying to tell a guy I dig him—and I’m just sticking my foot deeper in my mouth, aren’t I? Are you there? I hear you breathing.”

“I don’t think you’re a slut,” Jon blurted. “I never thought that. You are—I—you’ve got all these guys that hang around you at school—”

“See,” Megan said. “I told you you think I’m a slut.”

“No, I mean, I just don’t see why you would like me—I mean, Ron Derrick, he's always hitting on you. And he’s so good looking I’m attracted to him.”

Megan laughed. “I’ll see if I can set you two up sometime. Although I really don’t think you’re Ron Derrick’s type. He likes them that don’t think or talk too much, except about him—he’s a big, strong, clear-skinned, moony-eyed creep. Yes, I put up with him. Yes, I had a moral obligation to touch his stomach—and, damn, it is a washboard. But you know what? Ron is seventeen years old and he’s in ninth grade. He’s been in juvenile three times, each time because he got drunk and beat somebody up.”

“Yeah, I heard about that—”

“Uh-huh. And you think I’d go for a shallow creep because I could wash my socks out on his abdomen?” Her tone was humorous, but faintly scolding. “You don’t think much more of me than your mother does.”

“No, no. I’m sorry. Bad example. But Johnny Two is a good guy, he does good in school, he’s definitely got more money than I do—”

“And he's a blonde God on a skateboard," Megan finished. "But I like you. I don’t care what boys drool on me at school. They’ve done the same thing to Carla since she was thirteen—she went out with a guy almost exactly like Ron Derrick in tenth grade, and he broke two of her ribs. Johnny is a nice guy with a big house and I kind of had a crush on him last summer. I know I was moony about him and you probably got tired of hearing about it. But I’ve had a lot of time to spend with both you guys this year. And I like you. If you don’t like me—I mean, that way, you know—then that’s fine. I mean, we’re friends, no matter what, right?”

“You would actually want to be my girlfriend? You know, be seen out in public, at the mall, at school—”

“God! You are such a dweeb. Yes, of course! Though, sometimes, I’m not so sure what you think of me—”

“Sorry, I—I don’t have a lot of practice at this. I haven’t really, you know, actually—you know, dated anybody. And, I—would really like to—I guess, date, right?—do that with someone like—I mean, not someone like you, but you. Actually you. I mean—”

“Okay! Enough! It’s painful to listen to that. Let’s make it simple. I like you. Do you like me?”

“I—yes. Yes, I do. A lot.”

“And I like you a lot. Since—well, under the circumstances, we might be spending a lot of time together, right?”

“Yeah, actually–” Jon started.

“So it would make since for us to be, like, an item, right?”

Jon nodded at the phone. “An item. Sure.”

“And even if that wasn’t the case, that we wouldn’t be spending so much time together, I’d still like us to be, you know, an item.”

“Item,” Jon agreed.

“So, does that sound good to you?”

“Yes, that sounds—that sounds great. I’m just still—a little surprised, is all. I really did think you had a thing for Johnny Two.”

“I sorta kinda did, last year. But, you know, I thought I was dropping the hints pretty heavy since Christmas. I mean, I’ve known for the last six months I was going after you.”

“I—I guess I was just dense. Or—sometimes you can’t believe something, because it just seems to good to be true, right? I just—”

“I was just calling you three times a week and talking to you half the night. Asking you to walk me home—I’d go and find you, so we could get out of school before Johnny Two showed up. I even tried Carla’s show-way-too-much-cleavage strategy. You can’t tell me you didn’t notice that. That, you know, normally I didn’t walk around with my boobs practically falling out of my shirt.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Jon said, and felt his cheeks get hot. “I mean, yeah, I thought you had to have done that on purpose—”

“I was wearing a bra I hadn’t worn since I was twelve. To, make ‘em, you know, really stick out. I bent over and stuck them in your face to get the popcorn.” She laughed. “Hel-lo!”

“Hello,” Jon said. “You’re right. I should’ve seen it, I guess—”

“For future reference, when a girl keeps touching your hand and laughing in the cafeteria, in class, after school, then practically flashing you—she may be trying to tell you something.”

“Yeah—I—” Jon stopped. “Sorry. I guess I—look, you think maybe we can finish this conversation in person?”

“In person? And seal the deal?”

“Seal the deal,” Jon agreed.

“Then, I make my case,” Megan said, sounding as pleased-as-punch. “Kill two birds with one stone, actually.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Look, I called you because I thought I’d invite you over here. I’m home all alone this morning.”

“Huh? What happened?”

“Carla went out with her—ah, new boyfriend, freshly acquired after she got stood up last night, and hasn’t been home. I have a pretty good idea where they are, but, I sorta suggested some places I’m pretty sure they aren’t, to lead mom and Larry on a wild goose chase. So, they left me on my own. Anyway, I think I’m probably good for the morning. You wanna come over?”

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Jon said. “Bye.”

“See you in five,” Megan agreed, and hung up the phone. Jon grabbed his school knapsack out of the closet and tossed in the black notebook and the contact lens case in it. He rummaged through the briefcase, getting out the BIONIC EARs and the NANOCOAT AEROSOL—he had to use that stuff—and also the book itself, and put the collection into his knapsack. He pushed the briefcase towards the back of his closet, and tossed some shirts on top of it.

He almost flew across the living room. It wasn’t just talk—and sweet and wonderful enough, had it been just talk, just noise to irritate Jon’s perpetually teenage mother. But she had meant it. She wanted them to be an item. He had stammered and stuttered and said the wrong thing, just now and especially when she had kissed him last night. And she still wanted them to be an item. Jon and Megan. An item. He had never realized what a beautiful word “item” was. He murmured it to himself as hit the front door. “Item,” he whispered. “I-tem-muh.”

He looked back as he opened the door. “Bye, Mom!” he yelled. “I’m going out to see Megan! I’ll probably be gone awhile! Have a good day!” And without giving Doreen a chance to poke her head out, Jon hopped out the door and slammed it shut.

Jon marveled at the idea as he virtually sprinted the three blocks to Megan’s house. An item. Jon and Megan. Wow.

Life was good.