Belated thanks to Varda's Servant, Agent Five, Tikatu and Eternal Density for the reviews. Your suggestions and comments are a sourch of inspiration!
5
Wharton Academy, New York State-
Over breakfast at Stanton Hall, in the midst of the worst, least seasonable Nor'easter in living memory, the boys attempted to plan. It was a frantic, guilt-ridden effort, conducted in rushed whispers, over a background of clinking china and howling wind. Twice, the lights went out, but there were proctors and teachers aplenty to maintain order. Through the long, mullioned windows, Fermat could see gusts of sweeping rain blown nearly horizontal by the gale. What a day. What a situation.
Shoving aside his Eggs Benedict and melon salad, the boy leaned as close to Daniel and Sam as he could. Like him, they'd hardly slept for worrying.
"S- So, if we… somehow m- made this," Fermat was saying, wishing fervently that Ms. Wilde wouldn't hover, so, "then it's up to… to us to un-make it."
But Sam shook his head, pretending to take a mouthful of tomato juice when the Headmaster, Edgar Case, looked their way.
"Fermat… how? Only that weird power surge provided the energy to make all these changes, in the first place. Design a new scenario and upload it, if you want to, but without sufficient power to execute the commands, all you've got is a cute story."
Daniel wasn't even pretending to eat. The only thing on his gilt-edged plate was a sprig of parsley. Quite obviously, the older boy blamed himself for everything.
"D- Dan," Fermat said to him, "You've g-got to… to focus. If we… can't overwrite th-the program, we've got to… to deal with th-the situation as… written. That's what m-my father will… t-try to do, but he's… an adult, and th-they… don't understand… c-comic book scenarios, or s-self aware computers."
Daniel Solomon managed a nod, then earned himself three demerits by wiping his nose on the linen napkin. Grief, shock and guilt were certainly present, but he couldn't allow them to paralyze him. Not now. Once the elderly proctor had stalked off to record his demerits, the boy began reasoning aloud.
"Right… So, if it runs as written, if this uber-computer of yours doesn't make any changes, then the storm will last for three weeks, altering entire coastlines and wiping out several major cities (not the people, though; they all escape, because of the Thunderbirds)."
Sam opened his mouth to say something, but a swift kick beneath the table from Fermat convinced him that now was not the time to discuss odds. Daniel continued,
"The astronauts should start reappearing, soon, except for McCord…"
Cut in Fermat, sharply,
"And, why n-not… the m-mission commander?"
Daniel shot him an impatient scowl.
"Because he sacrifices himself nobly, to make up for what he did, remember? It's a tried-and-true plot device: last minute redemption!"
And then, hit afresh by what he'd done, Daniel whispered,
"I'm so sorry…"
Fifteen minutes till clean-up, and the start of morning assembly. They had to get a plan worked out, soon.
Sam, who'd been surreptitiously consulting his PDA beneath the pearly tablecloth, said,
"I've been hacking wireless communications between WorldGov and NASA. Three astronauts have apparently called Houston from phones in Samoa, Florida and New York City."
Fermat did some swift mental juggling, and came up with a figure he didn't like.
"Not… another P-Pacific island?" he probed urgently, "or, Wyoming? Maybe K-Kansas?"
Sam shook his head, dark almond eyes utterly solemn.
"No. I'm sorry. Only the three, so far. But, John Tracy has to be alive, if we're sticking to the script. Any idea where else he might have been transferred to? The theme here seems to be 'refuge'. A place of relative safety. Where could he go, and be right at home?"
Like Daniel and Fermat, Sam was a fan of NASA and the Mars mission, and he knew a fair bit about the background of each astronaut. Not as much as his friend, though.
A virtual floodlight exploded in Fermat's head, suddenly.
"Princeton!" he cried out, loudly enough to draw stares from the trio's long-suffering fellow diners. With murmurs of 'geek' and 'weirdo', the affronted students shifted themselves a bit further down the long table. As this gave Fermat, Daniel and Sam greater privacy, the three friends minded not at all. But, only five minutes left till the end of breakfast…
"He'd g-go to… Princeton, or around… there, s-somewhere. Un-until Mr. Tracy pulled… everyone b- back to the island… he lived at th-the university, and h-had friends… there. That's where John would end up!"
Daniel lifted his head, briefly.
"We'd better find him quick, then, before the Hood does. Remember the story…" Brown eyes returning to his empty plate, the boy continued heavily,
"The Hood's back, too, and he's trying to capture John Tracy as a hostage."
"G-great…" the brief flare of excitement died as Fermat contemplated what seemed like a truly impossible task. Two minutes remaining.
"S-so… we've got to find… some way to… to stop a g-grown up villain, who… y-you've written as… a t-total psychotic. We're… d-doomed."
The headmaster had risen from the teacher's table, was striding to the dais at the front of the dining hall. Sam hissed, in the few short moments before prayer and dismissal,
"What's his weakness? Every pulp bad guy has an exploitable weakness, to ensure a tidy storyline."
Daniel's eyes lit up, and he nodded vigorously.
"Yeah," the pudgy boy replied, straightening suddenly. "And the new, improved Hood does, too. I was in a hurry, and couldn't think of anything else, so I made his resurrection temporary. The Hood's got 48 hours before he gets sucked back into oblivion, and..."
Following three sharp raps of an ebony gavel, the headmaster's deep voice intoned,
"Young gentlemen of Wharton Academy, rise, and let us give thanks for what we have received."
Under cover of scuffing chairs and rolling thunder, Fermat said,
"S-so if we can… just get to P-Princeton, we…can find John, and w-warn him to… keep out of… harm's way f-for two days. D-Daniel," he turned to his friend, as hands were folded and heads bowed,
"…how well can you drive?"
Thunderbird 2, after blasting away from a Hawaiian hospital-
If anything, the storm was growing worse; bigger and fiercer, with winds that shook Thunderbird 2 like a plastic toy. How he'd managed to rescue so many people, Virgil Tracy had no idea. Somehow, everything seemed to be going just right, events coming together with almost impossible, split-second timing.
Shoving at the steering yoke, Virgil wrestled his Bird toward the island, through what felt like a hurricane. Not that he was headed home for good, or anything. There was yet another rescue to perform, an extremely dangerous one.
As Alan and TinTin made their cautious way up the vibrating cargo pod ladder, Virgil stubbed out his cigarette and called an absent brother. The left view screen flickered in 2's darkened cockpit, then lit up with an image of Gordon.
He looked rather sooty, seeming to have burned himself, somehow. Nothing beyond a reddened shoulder and some charred clothing, though. Virgil smiled, and shook his head.
"You been playing with matches again, Kiddo?"
The red-head gave him a wicked, slightly lop-sided grin.
"Eh. The usual sad tale. Dousin' fires, rescuin' maidens. All in the day's work. And you?"
Virgil laughed. Had they been together in the cockpit, he'd have knuckled the top of his young co-pilot's head.
"Fishing," the big pilot replied, music and coordinates swirling through the back of his mind, "and looking for a partner. Got a major situation off Curacao I could use some help with. There's a drop-off to make, still, and a yellow 'boat' to pick up, and then I'm off. Care to come along?"
In Madrid, in the lobby of the Santa Clara women's dormitory, Gordon stepped away from Anika, and the others. Curacao? As in… the Sea Base?
"You're havin' me on," Gordon objected. He'd considered the terrorist threat to the domed city well over with. "Alpha's been hit? When? How badly?"
Virgil's smile had vanished. Over the wrist comm's little screen, his image shrugged.
"According to dad, it's serious. Storm and seismic damage, apparently. There's, uh… something else, too. Something about Times Square, and maybe John. The explanation wasn't too clear, but we're to handle Sea Base, first, regardless. Pack your stuff, and get ready to go."
And then he gave the younger brother his pick-up coordinates and rendezvous time. After signing off, Gordon started for the doors. He had an hour, barely, in which to reach his own dorm, make some sort of excuse to Coach McMahon, and get his arse to the remote collection site… with a damn thunderstorm brewing, yet.
The young athlete had a palm upon the glass, ready to stiff-arm his way through the doors, when a sudden thought struck him. Pivoting, Gordon raced back over to where Anika was comforting little Sharon. Bela Stepanovic was there, as well. He'd wielded the extinguisher that had created a path for Gordon and the little lass. Anika, it was, who'd pulled them the last few feet to safety.
Excusing himself to the coach and Sharon, Gordon drew Anika aside. A little away from the others, he kissed her, the way he'd seen in the movies; the way that meant 'you are all that really matters'.
He'd had something fine-sounding in mind to say, but what came out was just this:
"I love you. I have t' go, but this time, Nika, I'm comin' back. My word on it."
She looked up at him, small hands complicated in the scorched material of his blue tee-shirt. She'd loved Gordon Tracy since the Portland Olympics, with a constancy that hadn't once faltered, and her green eyes fairly glowed with it.
"Have carefulness," she managed to say, knowing, in that way lasses had, exactly what he was about. "I wait for you."
When he'd gone, Bela came over to place a big hand on the girl's bowed shoulder.
"He is good boy," Her coach decided, giving the little gymnast a comforting pat. "I think I am liking him, after all."
Tracy Island, the med lab-
Scott Tracy was a hero in the quiet sense, as well as the flashy ones. Thunderbird 2's ground-shaking touchdown had waked him from drugged slumber, so up he got. With effort, unhealed but determined, Scott forced himself off the treatment table.
Grandmother Tracy started to protest, but he shook his head.
"No, Grandma," he told the tiny old woman, patting her wrinkled hand, where it rested upon his arm. "They need me out there, and I'm going. Virge can't handle all this alone. I'll be fine, I promise. Just get me some aspirin, and point me in the right direction."
Victoria Tracy glanced over at Gennine, just stepping back in through the office door. From the look on her former daughter-in-law's face, things out there were grim, indeed.
Reluctantly, then, the old woman nodded, biting her lip against a sudden stab from her injured collarbone.
"You take Alan and TinTin with you, Boy." She commanded. "And don't you do nothin' stupid, neither! Hear? Bad enough, we got one a million miles away, digging holes on some rusty-damn space rock!"
"Yes, Ma'am."
Gennine shied herself up to them, hesitant as ever. In so many little ways she was the very mirror of lost Lucinda, but without the other's boldness, her 'spit in the face of disaster' confidence.
For some reason (maybe it was the painkillers, or the slowly dissolving nanobots still fizzing through his blood stream) Scott gave her a brief, clumsy hug.
"Wish me luck, Mom," he said with a smile.
Kennedy Space Center, Florida-
Being closest, Linda Bennett was picked up first; returning to the Cape in an unmarked van, through a fierce and toothy storm. The dark-suited men brought her directly to the medical center for examination, politely putting off her questions with,
"I'm sorry, Captain Bennett, we weren't given any information on that,"
Or…
"No, Ma'am, I'm sorry, but I don't know what's happening, either."
Very polite to a former officer, very firm and very uninformative. Linda was ready to scream. She was confused, and worried, and angry. She'd had a mission, dammit! She'd been exploring Mars, building a colony with the best friends she'd ever had. And now, somehow, she was back on Earth. Alone, and decidedly under the weather. Where were the others? Pete and Roger and Kim Cho? Where was John?
Linda flushed a little as she recalled part of the wild dream she'd been having, when everything went terminally wrong. On the one hand, thank God it was just a dream. On the other… Well. She was certainly beyond that sort of thing. Wasn't she?
More frustrations followed, as medicos and lab technicians poked, prodded and tested her, asking the same stupid questions over and over. They kept their lab results a secret, finally shifting the former Air Force nurse to a windowless waiting room. It was a bleak place, almost a cell, its single locked door guarded by secret service types.
Then Cho arrived, looking tense and pale in her night shirt and cotton sleep pants. The two women embraced in the midst of the waiting room, sitting down upon the vinyl couch to exchange stories.
"I was asleep," the Korean exobiologist told her, voice ragged with fatigue and hysteria. "…and then, back at my high school, PS -21, in Manhattan. There was a terrible explosion from mid-town, and then no lights, and everyone was screaming and running into the halls. I thought that it must be a nightmare, Linda, but some of the students, and a horse officer during the evacuation, recognized me. I called as soon as I could find a phone."
Bennett nodded.
"Me, too, once the shock wore off, and I could get through. I was having this really weird dream…"
Once again, uncontrollably, Linda blushed. Cho's eyebrows lifted delicately, but she held her silence, allowing Linda to regroup and continue.
"Anyway… one minute I'm, um, on the flight deck… occupied… and the next, I'm back home, walking into the 'Get-n-Go' for a soda. But, you know what's really strange, Kim?"
Cho, who'd risen to fetch them both a paper cone of water from the cooler, shook her head. She seemed calmer, now; as though having one friend show up made it inevitable that the others, too, would be safe.
"I checked the timing… my wristwatch, the calendar… and it turns out that I showed up back homealmost threehours before the night watch ended. Kim, I was in two places at once, somehow."
After a bracing sip from her limp and soggy water cone, Linda said,
"Dan gave me the soda for free, and let me call Houston from his phone at the shop. I thought Gene was going to cry, he sounded so relieved."
Dr. Kim started to respond, then paused, hearing something from out in the corridor. Nobody, then or now, could curse like a Marine, and no one but Roger Thorpe in so many colorful languages. Paper cone and chilled water went flying, and so did Kim Cho.
She met him at the door, where he all at once ceased threatening his guards, and hauled her into his arms. Linda bit her lip, staring at the tiled floor as whispers and tears and soft, searching kisses passed between Roger and Cho. That was love, and it wove a circle about the two of them that for many long minutes, nothing else could penetrate.
She was happy for them… and very, very lonely. Kind of ironic, Linda thought to herself, that the one person she hadn't thought of, till just that moment, was Spencer, her (sort-of) boyfriend.
She looked up when Roger and Cho, slightly flushed and still holding hands, came over. Said the Marine, frowning puzzledly,
"Where're Pete and John? Still in testing?" For he, too, had been subjected to every medical exam known to man, and a few newly invented ones. "Or, en route?"
"I don't know," Dr. Bennett responded grimly, now the mission's de facto leader, "But I aim to find out. With your cooperation, we're still a flight crew, this is still a mission, and we don't quit till everyone's accounted for. Deal?"
Roger and Cho glanced at one another, then back at Linda. The big Marine nodded, speaking for both of them.
"Yes, Ma'am. You've got the con. Orders?"
The doctor turned toward the door, and started walking.
"First," she said, "we get out of here, and figure out what the hell happened."
Underground, Trenton NJ-
According to rumor, three astronauts had been sighted, and a body pulled from the wreckage of what reporters were now openly calling Endurance. Three astronauts… from New York City, Florida, and Samoa…
There was a Senate press conference scheduled for 12:00, but John switched off the television. He hated politics. Nothing but lies, and organized theft, all of it. Shifting his physical attention back to the work at hand, a series of glitching circuit boards, John considered the situation.
His family was still in danger from mysterious assailants… three astronauts were more or less accounted for… he'd gone to ground in DNC's shop… and an unidentified set of remains had turned up. His own? No way to tell, really. Not yet. The medical examiners weren't talking, and neither was NASA. As far as John knew, his old body had been pretty much incinerated, obliterating all trace of the alien intelligence. There shouldn't have been that much left to cart off, and poke around in. So, that left him with…
From force of habit, John rubbed at his left wrist, but this body… this transplanted kid… had no ID chip. Evidently, things were different, where he'd come from.
Okay, then: next option. Looking over at the shop security monitor, currently scanning Denice talking with a pair of customers, he said,
"Where's Pete McCord, Five? What's happened to him?"
He hadn't invoked her before then, not quite knowing how not to blame her for all that had happened; for kidnap, death and disaster. Words appeared, scrolling suddenly across the bottom of the black-and-white security screen.
What had passed between them, back on Mars, had yet to be dealt with. No longer in a human body, Five exhibited a logical, rather than chemical, response to his question. Maybe too logical.
'John Tracy, the entity David-Pete-McCord has not been reinserted. Entity David-Pete-McCord is deemed a security risk, hazard level 3.'
Reinserted? Like a file, or symbol? John pushed the hair from his face and stepped closer to the screen, avoiding piled junk as best he could. The 'David-Pete' thing was surprising, at first, until he recalled that 'Pete' was just a nickname. The rest, though…
"What do you mean, 'security risk'? He's the mission commander, Five. A family friend."
More scrolling words, then a series of images.
'John Tracy, the organic entity David-Pete-McCord is in possession of sensitive data. Entity has attempted to gain access to secure files. Entity has been labeled malware.'
And then, she replayed digital footage taken from Endurance's security cameras, showing the mission commander interrogating a drugged and stuporous John, just prior to his cryo-sleep. Leading questions were asked, about International Rescue and the World Unity Complex attack.
'He didn't trust me,' John realized suddenly, blue-violet eyes locked on the floor. 'He thought I had something to do with the UC collapse.'
Somewhere inside him, things shifted around. Sharp things, edged in betrayal. He closed them off with a single, icy shrug. No time, and beside the point, anyway. What mattered now was the mission commander, who surely had had a reason…
He said aloud, thinking of Stephanie, and Aunt Lydia,
"Bring him back, Five. Reinsert entity David-Pete-McCord. Now." He was careful to copy her terminology, aware that wording was never an accident, with Five.
'File not found.' The letters scrolled past, implacably calm, and utterly false.
"Bullshit. You're not running Windows, Five, and you know as well as I do that the file's been backed up, somewhere."
Maybe another line of argument?
"Also, there is no security risk, because…" (Sudden brain wave) "I was about to make Pete an operative. Bring him back."
Operatives, she understood. They were subroutines, variants in the main program with access to certain secure files. The actions of David-Pete-McCord were allowable, in this context.
'Data file located. Opening David-Pete-McCord. Error, John Tracy. File insertion requires greater system power than is currently free.'
Deep breath. Start again.
"Where did you get the power from, the first time? To move us all back here, I mean?"
On the security screen, the customers had grown angry, leaning a bit too close to Denice, who calmly pulled out a large fire arm. All at once, the burly shoppers became much more polite. John stepped out, though, to give DNC a little backup. The underground was a freewheeling sort of place, a former parking garage taken over by hackers, vendors, college students and outright thugs; interesting, but potentially dangerous.
Fortunately, the matter outside resolved itself pretty quickly, coming down to a dispute over the price of a pirated password cracking device. Denice gave the men a discount, and they went away happy, presumably to raid a few data files. John kept his mouth shut, and returned to the back, where Five's last response still flickered on the security monitor.
'Power to shift probable locations acquired from trans-dimensional wormhole, John Tracy. This source is no longer accessible. Remaining memory assigned to storm.'
Square one…
Returning to the circuit board he'd been soldering, John picked up a set of goggles, and said,
"The storm is eating up memory? So, get rid of it, then. Drop the bad weather and reapply freed space to moving a few more people."
'Searching. Done. Power accessible for insertion of David-Pete-McCord or deletion of organic entity Hood.'
All at once, he set aside the soldering iron, goggles and circuit board, admirably controlled, under the circumstances.
"Deletion of what?"
'Entity Hood. Reinserted after power surge, according to scripted command.'
Hell, no. Not again.
"Either-or, huh?" He questioned, still trying to come to grips with the notion that a few lines of script and a massive power surge could not just move things around, but alter reality. "Insert Pete, or delete the Hood?"
A thin curl of smoke twisted into the air, as the tip of the soldering iron touched an old monitor case. He moved the tool.
'This has been stated, John Tracy. Attempting to run both commands will temporarily exceed available memory and power.'
Shit.
"Wait a minute… it could be done, but you'd… what? Brown out for awhile?"
'A 36 hour power-down will result from these actions, John Tracy.'
The words flitted across glass, then paused, blinking upon the screen while Denice sold a highly modified laptop, and John considered his options.
"Never mind the Hood," he decided. "I can handle him. What about this guy?" And he pointed at his new body's slender chest. "Can you replace his memory files, and send him home?"
'Negative. Transfer of current physical housing will lead to cessation. Cessation of John Tracy is not an allowable option.'
John stood up and approached the screen, again; arguing with coldly blinking letters.
"What about duplicating him, then? Five… this kid needs to go home. Someone out there is wondering where the hell he is, and I can't just…"
For an instant, he was unable to continue speaking. Then,
"Stealing someone is not an allowable option to me. Can you understand that? Any more than deleting a friend is, or letting you be destroyed by a virus."
She'd listened, but more than that, she'd understood.
'Requested operations: insert David-Pete-McCord/ duplicate John Tracy file will require all available memory and power. A 72 hour brown-out will follow. Do you wish to run operations?'
72 hours. Three days. What the hell, huh? Might as well roll the dice.
"Yeah. Execute. I can take care of myself and my family for a few days, Five."
She responded at once, blanking out the screen's security images to display enlarged text, and a familiar lavender icon.
'There is a convention among your species, John Tracy: Good luck. Appropriate help commands will be entered with the over system.'
John folded his arms across his chest, wishing suddenly that she had an actual, physical presence. On Mars… But he pushed the thought away.
"Right. Thanks for the wishes, Five. See you in a few days."
26