Chapter One
"Try it know Earl!" Byrd yelled. I threw the switch and nothing happened. We were in Byrd's basement which his dad turned into a lab. Byrd's dad is a scientist and he has a bunch of equipment set up down there to work on his latest inventions. He gave Byrd a third of the lab for his own quirky experiments- and believe me they are quirky. One time he tried to make a gizmo that automatically shaved your cat and ran on oxygen. The result was six months of being grounded for killing the neighbors feline friend Ms. Kitty.
"I'm telling ya' Byrd," I said as Byrd sat down hard on the cold concrete floor. "This isn't going to work. If there really was a digital world then we would need a D-3 digivice to open it- I can't believe I'm saying this. Look this is ridiculous. Why don't we go outside? Remember your old friend sunlight? Summer's over in three days. You wasted your whole vacations putting this together."
"I can't understand it!" Byrd said completeley ignoring me. "I look over my calculations dozens of times but it still won't open."
I said something that I'm not going to repeat in this story. Byrd had been obsessed with opening this gate a long time but he devoted his entire summer to working on this machine which he simply calls: The Gate. Real original, huh? Anyway it was this big metallic archway that looked like one from a garden only more metal-like and less...er...wood-like I guess. Connected to the left side of the arch was a computer which held coordinates not only for the Digital World but for several other worlds that Byrd had been trying to get into. On the right side was a big silver bos which held the main ciructry for The Gate. The box was open with the wires hanging out and a pair of needle nose pliers were connected to one of them.
"If only we had...," Byrd's eyes lit up. "HEY! Of course!"
Like a maniac he scrambled to his feet and ran over to one of his dad's computers and started typing fruirously. I ran over to him looking over his shoulder at the screen. He had opened up his father's prototype designer.
"Byrd you know your suposed to stay on your side of the lab-," I began. Seeing that Byrd was in computer mode I sank back and cooperated. Once that kid gets his hands on a keyboard if you say something unrelated to what he's working on- don't hold your breath. I sighed. He was starting to create something in one of those three dimensional grid grafics. I couldn't tell what it was yet.
"What are you designing?" I asked now curious. Maybe he had something. If he did he didn't tell me because he was in Super-computer mode and not even things dealing with the matter at hand reached him. I just watched the screen as new lines appeared making the device whole. It looked like a pentagon connected to some kind of wrist band then he started to color it in with three-d paint that made it look like it was real. It was-
"You created...oh my god," I said. Byrd had really done it. I knew that this was for real when he finished coloring it in. It was mainly metallic gray with rides around it. There was a gray circle in the middle of it and a little screen centered in that.
"I got the idea in my head last night," Byrd explained eyes still glued onto the computer. So were mines. "I call it... the X-Digivice. It's basically a new digivice modle that goes on your wrist like a watch... and once I finish the inner circutry, print up the blueprints and actually make it... we will both have the keys..."
He looked over at the gate and pointed at it.
"To Digiworld...and nothing and nobody can stop us," he said.
We starred at it for a few minutes before Byrd started designing the inner circutry which got pretty boring so I said bye (even though he didn't hear me, he was to comatose) and started up the stairs before he stopped me.
"What color do you want yours?" he said. I stopped at the stairs. I knew it was ridiculous and that it probrably was insane but I believed in it. You know how they say we all have our purpose in life? That we can feel our destiny radiating as we nearred it?
"Make it gold with a gray band"
I felt destiny eminating from that computer screen.
I didn't talk to Byrd for a long time after our episode in the basement. With the work that came with the nineth grade and the fact that Byrd spent all of his time working on the X-Digivices we just didn't have time to talk. Every now and then when I got online I found an e-mail with updates on the X-Digivice and The Gate. So far he had started working on the blueprint while still trying to finish The Gate. Now that I look back on those days where MADSCIENTIST8712 kept appearing in my e-mailbox I keep thinking that I could have stopped it before it got as crazy as it did. I could have but I didn't and that's why I don't blame Byrd for what happened.
"Earl honey," my mother called up from the kitchen. "Come down for dinner!"
I was at my laptop computer reading Byrd's latest report. I don't rememer exactly what it said but for some odd reason I remember dinner that night. We sat at the table eating roast beef, we being my big brother Mick and my mom Darla, but no dad. His plate sat steaming on the west side of the table by the window. It was snowing outside I remeber now... pretty strange seeing as how it was the second week of spring but who am I to define weird? My mother sat at the east of the table staring down at her food, she was obviously worried. She pursed her lips and starred out of the window at the tumbling snow.
The food stopped steaming and our plates had long been clean. Still we didn't want to leave mom. She hadn't said anything or moved since we had sat down to dinner and she realized her husband wasn't home. Finally much to our surprise she broke her silence.
"Where is your father?" she asked looking at the two of us at oposite to each other knowing we had no answer for her.
Dad was often late coming home. We had gotten used to it by now. Finally some time after ten o'clock mother told us to go to bed since we had testing tomorrow. We knew we usually stayed up until three in the morning but we just left. Father's food was almost as cold as the snowflakes melting on contact outside in the yard. Then the same thing that happened every night occured again. We layed in our bunk beds eyes wide open silent in the dark. Ding Dong! went the doorbell and we heard footsteps as mother left the table to open the door. I was too young to know what to do about my step father then but now as I look back on those events I feel like hurting him so badly it's criminal. Beyond all else even then I felt sorry for mom.
"Where have you bean Daryl?"
"I was out"
"Out where? It's one o'clock in the morning?"
"Look babe, I just went to go get a drink."
"Since you left work at five? I find that hard to believe Daryl!"
"Look you ---- it's none of your damn buissness where I was so get off my back! I'm here now so go upstairs!"
"NOT UNTIL YOU TELL ME WHERE YOU WERE"
A pause.
"I told you to get off my back. Do I have to show you Darla?"
My mother's defiance, I am sure, shocked even him.
"What the ---- are you gonna' do? You come in here like checking into a hotel every night. Well no more Daryl! Get out or I'm calling the cops."
I swear I felt like whispering "Go mom!" but I knew better. The pride faded as I heard my mother scream. I heard the smacks and glass shattering and then I heard as Daryl got really serious.
"Now I'm going to whip your --- like a little girl"
Tears welded up in my eyes as the screams became leather accompanied with the sound of leather meeting skin. I couldn't see but I knew above me Mick was crying too. I couldn't sleep and I couldn't go downstairs. I couldn't see my mother as she was then. Mick was too scared to face Mick and so was I. Every night the same thing and every night for nearly twenty minutes Daryl beat my mother until finally he grew tired and trash talking went upstairs and got in the bed. We tried to block out my mother's horrible groans as she cried herself to sleep on the hard wooden floor downstairs.
If only that coward in the lower bed sleeping with drying tears on his face could see me know.
"Try it know Earl!" Byrd yelled. I threw the switch and nothing happened. We were in Byrd's basement which his dad turned into a lab. Byrd's dad is a scientist and he has a bunch of equipment set up down there to work on his latest inventions. He gave Byrd a third of the lab for his own quirky experiments- and believe me they are quirky. One time he tried to make a gizmo that automatically shaved your cat and ran on oxygen. The result was six months of being grounded for killing the neighbors feline friend Ms. Kitty.
"I'm telling ya' Byrd," I said as Byrd sat down hard on the cold concrete floor. "This isn't going to work. If there really was a digital world then we would need a D-3 digivice to open it- I can't believe I'm saying this. Look this is ridiculous. Why don't we go outside? Remember your old friend sunlight? Summer's over in three days. You wasted your whole vacations putting this together."
"I can't understand it!" Byrd said completeley ignoring me. "I look over my calculations dozens of times but it still won't open."
I said something that I'm not going to repeat in this story. Byrd had been obsessed with opening this gate a long time but he devoted his entire summer to working on this machine which he simply calls: The Gate. Real original, huh? Anyway it was this big metallic archway that looked like one from a garden only more metal-like and less...er...wood-like I guess. Connected to the left side of the arch was a computer which held coordinates not only for the Digital World but for several other worlds that Byrd had been trying to get into. On the right side was a big silver bos which held the main ciructry for The Gate. The box was open with the wires hanging out and a pair of needle nose pliers were connected to one of them.
"If only we had...," Byrd's eyes lit up. "HEY! Of course!"
Like a maniac he scrambled to his feet and ran over to one of his dad's computers and started typing fruirously. I ran over to him looking over his shoulder at the screen. He had opened up his father's prototype designer.
"Byrd you know your suposed to stay on your side of the lab-," I began. Seeing that Byrd was in computer mode I sank back and cooperated. Once that kid gets his hands on a keyboard if you say something unrelated to what he's working on- don't hold your breath. I sighed. He was starting to create something in one of those three dimensional grid grafics. I couldn't tell what it was yet.
"What are you designing?" I asked now curious. Maybe he had something. If he did he didn't tell me because he was in Super-computer mode and not even things dealing with the matter at hand reached him. I just watched the screen as new lines appeared making the device whole. It looked like a pentagon connected to some kind of wrist band then he started to color it in with three-d paint that made it look like it was real. It was-
"You created...oh my god," I said. Byrd had really done it. I knew that this was for real when he finished coloring it in. It was mainly metallic gray with rides around it. There was a gray circle in the middle of it and a little screen centered in that.
"I got the idea in my head last night," Byrd explained eyes still glued onto the computer. So were mines. "I call it... the X-Digivice. It's basically a new digivice modle that goes on your wrist like a watch... and once I finish the inner circutry, print up the blueprints and actually make it... we will both have the keys..."
He looked over at the gate and pointed at it.
"To Digiworld...and nothing and nobody can stop us," he said.
We starred at it for a few minutes before Byrd started designing the inner circutry which got pretty boring so I said bye (even though he didn't hear me, he was to comatose) and started up the stairs before he stopped me.
"What color do you want yours?" he said. I stopped at the stairs. I knew it was ridiculous and that it probrably was insane but I believed in it. You know how they say we all have our purpose in life? That we can feel our destiny radiating as we nearred it?
"Make it gold with a gray band"
I felt destiny eminating from that computer screen.
I didn't talk to Byrd for a long time after our episode in the basement. With the work that came with the nineth grade and the fact that Byrd spent all of his time working on the X-Digivices we just didn't have time to talk. Every now and then when I got online I found an e-mail with updates on the X-Digivice and The Gate. So far he had started working on the blueprint while still trying to finish The Gate. Now that I look back on those days where MADSCIENTIST8712 kept appearing in my e-mailbox I keep thinking that I could have stopped it before it got as crazy as it did. I could have but I didn't and that's why I don't blame Byrd for what happened.
"Earl honey," my mother called up from the kitchen. "Come down for dinner!"
I was at my laptop computer reading Byrd's latest report. I don't rememer exactly what it said but for some odd reason I remember dinner that night. We sat at the table eating roast beef, we being my big brother Mick and my mom Darla, but no dad. His plate sat steaming on the west side of the table by the window. It was snowing outside I remeber now... pretty strange seeing as how it was the second week of spring but who am I to define weird? My mother sat at the east of the table staring down at her food, she was obviously worried. She pursed her lips and starred out of the window at the tumbling snow.
The food stopped steaming and our plates had long been clean. Still we didn't want to leave mom. She hadn't said anything or moved since we had sat down to dinner and she realized her husband wasn't home. Finally much to our surprise she broke her silence.
"Where is your father?" she asked looking at the two of us at oposite to each other knowing we had no answer for her.
Dad was often late coming home. We had gotten used to it by now. Finally some time after ten o'clock mother told us to go to bed since we had testing tomorrow. We knew we usually stayed up until three in the morning but we just left. Father's food was almost as cold as the snowflakes melting on contact outside in the yard. Then the same thing that happened every night occured again. We layed in our bunk beds eyes wide open silent in the dark. Ding Dong! went the doorbell and we heard footsteps as mother left the table to open the door. I was too young to know what to do about my step father then but now as I look back on those events I feel like hurting him so badly it's criminal. Beyond all else even then I felt sorry for mom.
"Where have you bean Daryl?"
"I was out"
"Out where? It's one o'clock in the morning?"
"Look babe, I just went to go get a drink."
"Since you left work at five? I find that hard to believe Daryl!"
"Look you ---- it's none of your damn buissness where I was so get off my back! I'm here now so go upstairs!"
"NOT UNTIL YOU TELL ME WHERE YOU WERE"
A pause.
"I told you to get off my back. Do I have to show you Darla?"
My mother's defiance, I am sure, shocked even him.
"What the ---- are you gonna' do? You come in here like checking into a hotel every night. Well no more Daryl! Get out or I'm calling the cops."
I swear I felt like whispering "Go mom!" but I knew better. The pride faded as I heard my mother scream. I heard the smacks and glass shattering and then I heard as Daryl got really serious.
"Now I'm going to whip your --- like a little girl"
Tears welded up in my eyes as the screams became leather accompanied with the sound of leather meeting skin. I couldn't see but I knew above me Mick was crying too. I couldn't sleep and I couldn't go downstairs. I couldn't see my mother as she was then. Mick was too scared to face Mick and so was I. Every night the same thing and every night for nearly twenty minutes Daryl beat my mother until finally he grew tired and trash talking went upstairs and got in the bed. We tried to block out my mother's horrible groans as she cried herself to sleep on the hard wooden floor downstairs.
If only that coward in the lower bed sleeping with drying tears on his face could see me know.