4

Washington, D.C., a Capitol Hill press room-

It made for good television, but the timing might have been better. That was the news crews' general consensus, after a brief, shocking press conference held by Senator Stennis, and seen around the world.

He'd had a visitor, you see; a powerful and twisted man whose will could move from person to unsuspecting person, like caustic fluid eating its way through a succession of chipped and grubby cups. When his secretary shuffled in that rainy morning, still a bit sore from the 10-car pile up he'd staged, Stennis barely reacted. Jewel existed to serve him, after all, and the only thing he needed at the moment, besides coffee, was his 'legitimate' appointment schedule. (Meetings with Campfire Girls, crippled-kid photo ops; that sort of thing…)

He had no idea what had just entered his office, using the faithful Jewel as a conduit to obtain information. To his cost, Lamar Stennis was about to find out.

The battle was short, and one-sided. Stennis was a wily opponent, a snake and a plotter, but what faced him then was a thing dragged back from death; confused and filled with hate.

The senator lifted his head, saw a pair of flame-yellow eyes. He hardly had time to register shock before molten rage stabbed into him, taking hold of his mind as a parasitic wasp might sting its prey, leaving a paralyzed host forits hungrylarvae.

A few phone calls later, 'Stennis' lined up the press conference. It was lightly attended, for violent weather and rumors of a tragic apparition in Times Square had distracted the Capitol Hill press corps. No matter. Word, and fear, would spread.

Stepping through the heavy blue curtains and up to the wooden speaker's podium, squinting in hot camera lights, Stennis fiddled with a microphone and surveyed his small, puzzled audience. He gave them a brief nod, without the trademark earnest smile, gripped the top of the podium, and began to speak.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the press, thank you for coming out here on such short notice. I've got a few things to say, but I'll keep it brief. Most of you know me as Lamar Stennis, Texas' representative to the United States Senate. I am that… and a terrorist, a liar and a murderer, many times over. I am the secret head of an organization called 'the Red Path', whose sole aim is to overthrow the World Government and establish a newer, purer order. It's a simple vision, but it's meant a lot to me, and to my lieutenant, Vicente Vargas, whose body you'll find in the trunk of my car. Together we dreamt of peace and order; no one too smart, or too dumb, no corrupting technologies. Plenty of real food and hard work, with everyone free to do just as he likes… so long as it's upright and moral."

The sound of dropping jaws and flying eyebrows nearly buried his next few comments. Even the hardened D.C. news hounds were shocked. Was this some sort of joke…?

A young intern tried to pull Stennis away from the mike, but he shrugged her off, his thin face glowing with a sort of fanatical joy.

"I see now, ladies and gentlemen of the press, fellow politicians and valued citizens, that I've served my purpose. My job has been well and rightly done, and it's time for me to step down and claim my just reward."

He appeared to be seeing, not a mostly-empty auditorium, but a vision of martyred welcome in some moralistic worker's paradise. At any rate, when Senator Stennis pulled the ceramic handgun from inside his blue jacket, he looked like a man accepting the honor of a lifetime.

Aides sprang forward, interns screamed, reporters snapped to their cameramen,

'Are you getting all this?'

…But the crazed senator heard none of it. Instead, he pressed the gun's cool muzzle to his own chin, saying,

"I'm going on now, folks, but don't you fret," (His come-and-go Texas accent was back again, warm and thick as pancake syrup)

"The Red Path is in good hands, and the work goes on."

Next, smiling at them all, Stennis indulged himself witha last, obscure joke.

"So, 'goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are'." And then, he pulled the trigger.

Princeton, NJ, half a boy's lifetime earlier-

To John's surprise, classes here were different. For one thing, they were interesting. In each class… differential equations, Latin, computer applications, dark matter physics… he sat in the very back, slouched and silent. But he listened, taking in everything the grad student said, to make up for nine long years of bored emptiness.

He'd arrive with the bell and leave a bit early, trying to minimize contact with the other students. Didn't always work, though. The computer applications class, in particular, required him to interact, to cooperate. That was rough. Other than his brothers, he hadn't much recent practice at getting along, and even with them, the scorecard was spotty.

The computer guy was an actual professor, though a young and scruffy one. Dr. Page was his name, and he took an interest in John early on, due to several alarmingly high exam grades. John made sure to throw a few questions, in each test thereafter; he'd learned his lesson.

But, the damage was done. Page began holding the teenager after class, attempting conversations which John merely shrugged through. He didn't really want to be known, or liked; just to learn what he needed. Degrees were irrelevant, and so, at first, were people.

Most of his classes were anonymously vast, but computer applications, with its emphasis on internet security and high-level programming, had gathered a fairly select bunch. Mostly other males, each as different, in his way, as John was.

One of them had spiky brown hair, and wore the same Chicago Cubs jacket to class everyday. One night at the Underground, on level 3, John found himself a large, Brooklyn Dodgers tee shirt. After washing it about 10,000 times, he actually wore the thing. No big deal, except that it got a rise out of the Cubs fan, who stopped in front of his computer station to say,

"The Dodgers suck, man."

Okay. No, they didn't, and he had the baseball cards to prove it. An intense, heat-lightning war of statistics ensued, which soon got everyone's attention, including that of Doctor Page. One of the class's two females, a hard-muscled, unsmiling girl named Denice, broke in from time to time with points of order, but the end result was a draw… and a friend. Richard Cutter, whose internet handle was 'Backslash'.

The other female was a real cipher, one of those withdrawn human shadows that nevertheless screamed silently for attention. Her name was Autumn Drew, though at first John thought of her as 'Creepy Goth Chick'. He had no idea what her actual hair or eye color was, for she dyed her asymmetric mane jet black, with a neon-green streak, and wore garnet-colored contacts. Her clothing seemed equally peculiar. One of her black (always black) tunics displayed a row of skulls and crossed bones like this: X O X O X O. Beneath the symbols she'd Frankenstein-stitched the words 'Hugs and Kisses'. She wore torn lace skirts, striped hose and black high-tops. The picture of elegance, painted upside-down and backward, by a very shaky hand.

And then, there was the guy who never seemed to leave. No matter when John, or the rest of the class, arrived, there he was, sitting at his computer station, waiting. Even Page wasn't sure how he got in, what with the doors locked. Weird.

Entirely by accident, John had stumbled upon the holding pen for odd behavior at Princeton University. For the first time in his life, he was not the strangest person in the room.