As we drove back to campus, GI Jamal tossed something small and squarish at me.
I caught the phone with slightly fumbling fingers - I was still on a bit of a sugar rush thanks to the doughnut test and I hadn't had a Bull to offset it - but managed to hang onto it in the end.
"We took the liberty of charging it for you," Jamal said casually as he tossed Sharsky's to him. "And you had a few updates to install."
That was more chilling than the thought of alien diarrhea. I didn't want no damn apps - or malware - that the Federal Bureau of Centrally Intelligent Aliens decided to put on there. I was going to have to try a factory reset as a basic precaution and maybe get a new SIM card.
I hit the power button with what was probably-thinly-disguised trepidation, but it didn't explode or anything. I had to grudgingly admit that they had gotten it to start up a little faster than the last time I'd laid hands on it. At first glance, I couldn't find anything more suspicious than usual.
I did, however, find something very confusing. Somehow, in the last five-plus hours, I'd gotten seventy-two texts and nineteen voicemails. And they were all from one number.
Why the hell had Cami Rawlins suddenly developed a life-altering crush on me?
Deciding to play dumb, I went to my contacts and punched up her number. She answered on the first ring.
"Nadipati."
My stomach sunk to somewhere around my left kneecap. I didn't want to be on a first-name basis with anyone who controlled my employment status. It was like my parents calling me by my first, middle and last name in rapid succession.
"Camilla," I said respectfully. "I saw you called."
"Nadipati Baalaaditya Fassbinder," she said. "You are an on-call tutor for Dr. Evan Langstraad's computer science courses, are you not?"
"Last time I checked," I responded.
"Can you tell me what on-call means?"
"That you call me up and…"
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW ASININE IT IS TO TURN YOUR PHONE OFF WHEN YOU'RE ON-CALL?"
Technically, I hadn't. Special Ops had. I thought I'd left it in my dorm room. But the towering inferno of all things psychotic didn't need to hear that.
"Technical difficulties with my phone," I defended weakly.
"Technical difficulties with your phone don't keep you from answering your e-mail, checking the dorm room voicemail or checking your employee schedule for the weekend."
I hadn't looked at my schedule in a week, but Friday was my light day. In fact, Friday was my best day to be on-call, since I only had two classes and they started at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Friday was my day to catch up on either sleep or modding and, if Cam Romero hadn't decided to haze us E.T.-style, I'd have been waking up around now.
"I'm sorry I couldn't call you back," I said meekly.
"It wouldn't have done any good, you Bill Gates wannabe," she hissed. "I've been in meetings all morning."
"Well, it's good to keep busy," I pointed out. I let the Bill Gates dig slide; she wasn't very rational, from the sound of things. "Working hard or hardly working, eh?"
"I'VE BEEN IN YOUR…"
"Cami," I interrupted suicidally, "it's been a long night. Could you please use your inside voice?"
The pitch and volume went up so that I could hear her from arm's length. "I'VE BEEN IN YOUR MEETINGS WITH FOUR UNSCHEDULED AND VERY HYSTERICAL FRESHMEN WHO NEEDED TUTORING BEFORE LANGSTRAAD'S FIRST MAJOR TEST," she roared.
Oooh. Now I understood the towering inferno of psychosis. Given her OCDness about liquid damage, Cami wouldn't deal with sobbing freshmen very well. She'd be handing them super-absorbent tissues and making sure they stood over a drain.
"I'm…" So screwed. "I didn't…" So very screwed. "It won't happen again."
"No," she snarled, "it won't. We have a three strikes policy and you have just used your first two strikes."
This was bad. This was very bad. National security breaches I wasn't all that worked up about, but I was about to be pink-slipped by the job I never wanted in the first place. Theoretically, I should have been able to tell her to shove her third strike up...somewhere the suns didn't reach, but a very weird part of me panicked at the idea of having to go back to helping people unofficially. Part of me had hated Cami Rawlins from the first time I laid eyes on her favorite twinset, but part of me had gotten a rush out of being a fount of all wisdom. The idea of losing that made me want to barf up that maple bar.
"Yes'm," I whispered.
"You are out of class at 5 o'clock," she recalled. "You have no social commitments tonight…"
"Actually, I was planning on…"
"You will have no social commitments if you want to retain connection between your head and your spinal column," she said very fast.
I wanted a nap, not a date. I also wanted something with less sugar content than a maple bar. "Yes'm," I responded.
"You will report to Langstraad's office immediately after your class where you will assist any and all students who show up in the tutoring lab for the rest of the day, even if it means staying late. And tomorrow," she emphatically continued, "you will help score the tests."
"But…"
"Two strikes! You're already at two strikes. I dare you to push it."
"Yes'm," I miserably agreed. Then there was the silence of the grave as she cut the call. I turned and thumped my head against the car window. And then I caught the reflection of Sharsky's smirking face.
"Trouble in paradise?" he asked. I scowled and clenched my hands before remembering that I wast still holding my phone. I eased up on the pressure.
Up in the front seat GI Jamal didn't seem to bat an eyelash. I'm pretty sure he was ignoring us. Hell, he didn't even need to eavesdrop considering he probably had my phone bugged to get both sides of the conversation. I glanced at the phone suspiciously and powered it off just to be safe (from the government or Cami Rawlins, I wasn't sure).
We arrived back at campus soon thereafter. GI Jamal pulled into a VIP parking spot near the student center and gave us a sharp eyed glare in the rearview mirror. That's all the prompting we needed. We both stumbled out of the car and beat it out of the soldier's line of sight as quickly as possible. I slowed down and peeked back around the corner of the building, only to see him still parked, talking on a phone, and staring straight at me. I shivered and sprinted off.
...
Sharsky had beaten me back to the dorm room, as he hadn't stopped to look back, but he stood frozen in the doorway when I caught up with him.
"Dude," I said, annoyed when he wouldn't move to let me past. I did have a class to get to at 2. He turned to look at me, face pale, eyes wide and stricken.
"What the frack is that look for?" I asked.
He mumbled something and made a vague motion with his hands into the room.
"Ok, Lurch," I said impatiently, "want to try that again in something besides Neanderthal?"
He just shook his head again. Finally, I pushed him out of the way and walked into our bedroom.
Which was completely bare. Now it was my turn to freeze.
Well it wasn't completely bare. My clothes and bed were just as I had left them, books and movies were untouched. Even Boba Fett was exactly where he should be.
But for all intents and purposes, it was bare. My desktop, laptop, backup harddrive, NAS, USBs, even my memento zip disks were all gone. There wasn't even a cable in sight. Dumbfounded, I pushed open the door into the server room. It was also empty; the server racks had disappeared, along with all the other hardware for The Real Effing Deal (most of which had been Leo's), the ceiling mounted projector, the TV and DVD player, the PlayStation, and even the original NES system Leo had enshrined on a shelf.
"Did we get robbed by some really techie nerds?" I blurted out.
"No, dude," Sharsky said. "I think it's GI Jamal."
"Couldn't be," I scoffed. "He would have had it done while we were on his turf."
"So, if it's not the NSA, it's…"
"The bots," I asserted. "But if they're alien tech, why would they need ours?"
"Hybrids?" Sharsky suggested.
"Confiscation?"
A light bulb practically went off over his head, like in the cartoons. "Collaboration," he announced. "GI Jamal got us out of the way so they could get what they needed."
"I still don't get why they had to strip the place down."
"Misdirection," he said confidently. "They took everything and left something behind so once we get it all back…"
"If we get it all back," I corrected.
"Oh, we will," Sharsky intoned. "Once we get it all back, we'll be too busy looking for the new installs on our own stuff to notice what they've had here all along."
It was paranoid enough to possibly be true.
In the meantime, I dug through yesterday's jeans from some cash because, for the first time since junior high, I was going to need an effing pen and paper to take notes in class.
A quick stop at the university bookstore for an honest-to-God spiral bound notebook had me running late for class, but my 2 o'clock never took attendance so it didn't matter. I despaired, though, of ever being able to interpret my chicken scratch on Kant and figured that the first time I'd had to take hand-written notes it would be in the class that required the most notes. Most of the time I could transcribe the lecture typing on auto-pilot, but writing it longhand took concentration.
I emerged from my Philosophy class in a seriously bad mood and, in order to help myself feel less groggy, bought a Red Bull from a seriously over-priced vending machine. I had an hour to kill until my 4 p.m. class, so I searched out a computer lab. I entered with some trepidation looking around furtively. Did I have to sign in on a list or scan my ID? The only lab I was familiar with was the tutoring lab which surely had a different procedure.
A girl walked in behind me and scooted over to a desk giving me a small glare, apparently for standing in the doorway. But at least she showed me there wasn't any sort of reservation policy, just take an available chair and sign in with your university ID.
I took the nearest computer and signed in. I relaxed, letting go of some of my anger as I checked my email and the Real Effing Deal and all my other lifelines. Twenty minutes later, as I was vociferously defending my position on the Star Wars Holiday Special, I heard a slight cough of the kind that is supposed to be subtle and polite, but really isn't at all.
I looked up and saw the same girl who had glared at me when she came in, glaring even harder.
"What?" I asked defensively.
"Are you done yet?"
I blinked...there wasn't any sort of timer showing that I had a time limit. "Huh?"
She pointed impatiently to the sign taped to the top of the monitor.
This station is for use with the scanner only. Please do not use for other purposes or for long periods of time. Be considerate to your fellow students.
"Oh." Sheepishly, I posted my final comment and then logged off. I left the lab, swearing to never use one again. I resolved I'd buy a stupid netbook.
I still had twenty minutes until my next class, but since I didn't have anything better to do, I decided to start walking that direction. Before I even made it out of the building, my phone buzzed. I blindly jabbed at the screen, too worked up to pay attention. I first got to my screen brightness settings, but on my second try, I got to the notifications.
There was one post on the Buzz and nineteen -NINETEEN - replies. Optimust had posted frigging SIX TIMES in ten minutes. Whatever we'd done, we'd gotten their attention. I waggled my fingers enthusiastically and called up the first one.
The screen flashed blue and I started breathing hard out of instinct - any blue screen equaled death for me. I tapped the screen rapidly and hit the home button, but everything I did generated the same creepy blue-screen effect.
I turned my phone off, praying to the Spaghetti Monster that it would turn back on when I tried. When I powered it up again, the home screen appeared with no problems and I breathed a sigh of relief. When I hit the post, though, it flashed blue again. I stared blankly, not sure if I should cry or call for backup. Before I could decide, though, the blue screen disappeared and a single message scrolled across the screen in a very Matrixy manner: YA FEELIN' LUCKY, PUNK?
What? Had Camaro76 hacked my phone? I tried again, rebooting and trying to get into the post alert. That horrific screen-of-death blue popped up again, this time with another message that had to be Leo, superimposed over SadMac: MIJO, THIS IS JUST GETTING EMBARAZANDO.
No! No, no, no! There was a post - I was still getting comment alerts - but the aliens were effing taunting me. The next time I booted up, Cam weighed in again: SKYNET, JUDGMENT DAY, THE HISTORY OF THINGS TO COME.
Gritting my teeth, I tried again, only to be insulted by S&M this time: YO, LUBE-LEAK! WE'Z HEARIN' YA KNOCKIN' BUT YA AIN'T GETTIN' IN.
Sharsky was in class, but I knew he'd pick up in an emergency and we were in the hacker equivalent of DefCon-1 right now. He picked up on the third ring, presumably after he'd tripped over everyone in his row to get out of the classroom.
"Yo."
"Sharsky," I hissed. "Go to the Buzz."
"Yes, sir."
He usually wasn't this cooperative, but going through Gitmo-with-crullers and sharing the same trunk space had brought us a little closer. He was willing to follow simple instructions.
"What am I...oh, holy mother of…WHAT THE FRACK DID YOU DO TO MY PHONE?!"
"Blue screen of death?" I prompted eagerly.
"RICKROLLED," he barked.
"Reboot," I ordered.
"Can't until the vid's done," he said. "I tried."
I waited impatiently until Rick Astley was done with his never-gonnas and Sharsky got up and running again.
"There again?"
"What da...Why has Beyonce taken over Area 51?"
Last time I checked, Skynet didn't speak pop. "What do you mean?"
"I don't think you're ready for this jelly," he read. "What da hell is that supposed to mean?"
"I think it's pretty self-explanatory," I considered, "but that ain't what I got."
"What'd you get, Britney Spears?"
"Sarah Connor," I corrected. "And Leo."
"You're sure it was Leo?" he challenged, sounding a little breathless.
"No one else speaks Spanish that badly," I asserted. "Try it again."
"Do you know the muffin man," he read. "Dude, they're even watching Lisbeth!"
"Cool it," I snapped. "I think they're...aware of her, but I don't think they're dragging innocents into this."
"Oh yeah?" Sharsky squeaked. "We're innocent!"
If the FBI ever caught on to what we'd done over the years, they'd disagree, but that wasn't the point.
"She's a by-stander, a non-issue," I responded. "Can't hack her way out of a paper bag. It's not like she'll rewrite their programming in her spare time."
"Yeah...yeah…" He was sounding a little less frenetic now and I could hear his breathing slow down. "Worst she'll ever do is recite Shakespeare at 'em."
"And we want to keep her a non-issue," I stated. "She's not to get involved, even if we have to flat-out lie."
His breathing stopped for a second and I thought he'd passed out, but when he spoke up again, he sounded like he'd just gotten a punch-line.
"You like her," he commented.
"Well, yeah," I said. "Don't you?"
"I like her muffin tops," he granted. "But you like her like her."
National security and possibly NASA itself was on the line here and he was being a middle-schooler. "Sharsky," I snapped, "I swear to Cthulhu, if you start singing Lisbeth and Binder, sittin' in a tree…"
"I wasn't going to," he promised hastily. "It's just good to know."
"And now you know," I said. "Alienboy and Bossman don't need to."
"'Specially since they went all Benedict Arnold on us," Sharsky agreed. "Your secret's safe with me."
He'd successfully distracted me, but my phone buzzed three times and that meant more alerts were coming in as we spoke.
"Refresh again," I ordered. "What now?"
"Something about Slapsgiving," he said. "Dude, this is getting down-right nonsensical."
"It's white noise," I decided. "They don't want us to eavesdrop, so they make sure we can't get through the signal. But you can't stop the signal, Mal."
"Darn right," he said. "I'll see you at five…"
"You'll see me after I've sacrificed a few virgins to Cami Rawlings," I corrected.
"Dude! We're virgins." I could hear laughter on his side of the phone and his voice got whisper quiet. " I'm not gonna be sacrificed!"
"It's a figure of speech, no more...are gonna get hurt than already have been." I hissed. "You keep working on this. See what resources we've got..." I insisted. We didn't have time for him to get side tracked.
"Like Lian?" he suggested. "She got us in in the first place."
Yeah, but she wouldn't like to know that we'd blown all her hard work on a vanity exercise. And she definitely wouldn't like it if the men in black came after her next. I didn't want her getting any more involved than she already was.
"Negatory," I said. "Let's do her a few favors and work on our own."
"You're sure?" he pressed. "She owes me a favor from January and this is - I hope - a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing."
"Positive."
...
Before I'd even clocked in on my lab computer, there was a line at my desk. Fortunately, I'd learned during my first week on the job that group therapy usually resulted in me having the most down time. "Okay, who's here about question #24 on the practice test?"
About four of the dozen or so panic-stricken freshmen raised their hands.
"And the rest of you?"
Two were stuck on question #15, one was stuck on #8, and five hadn't made it past the first question. It was going to be a looong night.
"Does anyone not here about #24 understand question #15?"
A skinny kind of redhead wearing a Halo shirt raised her hand and I gave her a Matrix-style beckon. Her work checked out, to my relief.
"Fifteeners, this is…"
"Lydia," she supplied.
"Lydia's going to see if she can teach you the ways of the Force and when she's done with you, I'll take over. Lydia's also next in line."
The rest seemed to grasp the idea that they could band together for help and shuffled around accordingly. After two minutes on Question #8, I set my temporary minion free and turned to the twenty-fours.
"All right," I announced. "The answer to that question is 42. If everyone can look this way, I'll be explaining how we got to that answer."
I couldn't ask for a PowerPoint projector - I was only a tutor, after all - but I had a second-hand white board that Cami had left for me. I took them through the binary conversion a few times, then threw up two more practice examples. The Chinese guy in back was the one to get the next one right and by the second one, a few of them had stopped looking panicked. It was the look of a job well done.
"If you look at the practice exam, you should be able to apply what we just went over to questions 29 and 31, too. Come find me if you get stuck. NEXT!"
A few of them stuck around for the explanation on question #1, and on principle, I made them at least try the rest of the questions on their own first before I swooped in to save them.
In the meantime, my next victim had closed in, and his face made me do a double-take.
"Cam?" I hesitantly asked.
His brow furrowed in confusion. "Gopher," he responded. "Do I know you?"
Well, yeah. He'd tried to distract me from the freaking yellow Camaro by throwing a beer can at my head the first time we met. Not to mention all the skulking he'd done around Sam. And the guy had practically had an orgy during our Valentine's Day Indiana Jones spree. I wasn't playing dumb.
"Services for students only," I snapped.
There was a slightly awkward pause as I glared at him and he looked surprised.
"Do ya...need, like an ID?" he offered dumbly.
"I need some space," I insisted. "It's bad enough you jerkwads hauled me off to Buddha-knows-where at frigging four a.m. What, you want to probe me on my lunch break?"
He was looking a little alarmed now. Good, it was time to get some payback.
"I'm here about Javascript," he blurted out. "And, y'know, the thing he was talking about last week with…"
"IT'S NOT WORKING!" I roared.
This time, he actually cowered.
"Okay, okay," he said. "Forget the Javascript. Can you help me with HTML?"
"I ain't helping you with Sesame Street," I growled. "I'm in enough trouble with my boss. Can't you give me one frigging hour when you don't expect me to save the world or something?"
He was completely wordless at that point. Probably, there weren't any good quotes for that. He was being a hell of a lot more talkative than he'd ever been before and this was getting weird. Plus, I couldn't get why he was giving me this kicked-puppy look.
"Please, Mr. Computer Man," he practically whispered. "I can't go snowboarding if I flunk."
Somehow, this was sounding like Lisbeth and either Cam had learned how to act or there was something very weird about this.
"Not Cam?" I challenged.
"William Abernathy," he whimpered. "I've got ID."
"Really?"
I'd been expecting Deke or Brock or something like that, not a WASPy name like William.
He dove for his backpack and frantically rifled through it until he produced a wallet with the student ID in the clear, plastic sleeve. "See?" he babbled, handing it over. It was as solid as mine and even had the hologram thing that set it apart from fakes. The derpy ID pic was pretty human-looking, too. Cam would have looked photoshopped.
"William Abernathy. But everybody calls me Gopher. Not Cam. I'm no good at photography. Even my selfies come out wrong."
I gave him a baffled look.
"Call me Gopher," he repeated, edging closer like I was a wild animal or high or something.
"Gopher?" I echoed him. That did fit better. A lacking-opposable-thumbs name for someone who got lucky in evolution.
He nodded his head eagerly, relief making his shoulders slump a little.
"And you...want me to help you learn Javascript? Not, like, hack Area 51 so you can rescue the rest of your kind?"
"What, like Texans?" His chest puffed up a little. "I think we can pretty much rescue ourselves, dude."
"Unless Javascript is involved?" I reminded him.
"Yeah…"
"Yeah," I said a little more cheerfully than necessary so I'd sound like I was on his side. "Get your notes and tell me where your hangup is."
Authors' Endnote: If you're as confused as Fassbinder by Cam's doppleganger, kindly look up Aaron Hill on IMDB. When Bumblebee first got a holoform in the Botosphere, we'd chosen Aaron as 'Bee's template before realizing that Aaron had a bit part in RotF as a student at Sam's school. The young man Fassbinder mistakes for Cam Romero/Bumblebee is that student.