The Secret Diary of Cameron Baum

FRIDAY(CONT.)

We are met at the entrance to the house by a tall man dressed in a business suit. My facial recognition doesn't ping. He isn't Davie. He introduces himself as Desmond, head of security.

"The boss has agreed to meet you folks. Still gotta search you though. Raise your arms."

We oblige. This causes my already short skirt to ride up even further. It is fortunate I remembered underwear or else my noo-noo would be on view-view. This is a joke. It is funny because I have taken the hyphenation of the first word and applied it to the second, making them phonetically similar. It appears the joke is less funny if you try and explain it.

The search is brief but thorough. He finds no weapons. Or rather he does he just doesn't realize it.

"Okay, come with me."

We follow Desmond into the house.

"You're the first people he's seen in months. Even his ex-wives can't get inside anymore."

"How come?" John asks.

"You'll figure it out when you meet him,' Desmond replies enigmatically. He shows us into a large, well-appointed sitting room. "Wait here. Don't know how long he'll be; he's kinda unpredictable lately. If you want anything to eat or drink ring the bell. Don't go wandering off."

Desmond leaves us. I take up station in a corner where I am able to observe both entrances. I am not expecting trouble. Then again trouble won't be expecting me.

John is too full of nervous energy to sit still. He tours the room, looking at the paintings on the wall, the photographs of Davie gladhanding the rich and powerful, including the last five Presidents. For a man who was once a hippy bum he has done exceedingly well for himself.

On a side table are three photos in gilt frames. John examines them. He frowns. "Look at this. Notice anything odd about them?"

The pictures show Davie at various stages of his life. By his side is a woman, a different one in each shot. I see nothing amiss.

"These are his wives. And they all look like you. Petite brunettes."

"Petite?"

"Slender. Brown eyes. Long brown hair parted in the middle. Minimum makeup. You suppose another reason I sent you back is because you're his type?"

I am about to ask what type I am when a whirring noise comes from the open doorway. A motorised wheelchair enters the room. Seated in it is an old man with a pure white beard. The hair on his head has receded but the eyes are still green and radiate the intelligence that once caused me to seek this man out all those decades ago.

"Cameron? Is that really you?"

The voice too is a match, though wheezy with age. And possibly... something more?

"Hello, Davie," I greet him. "Long time no see."

"No, it can't be you. It's been over forty years and you look exactly the same as you did then. This is some kind of trick."

"It's no trick."

"Prove it. What were the first words you said to me in 1969?"

I consult my database, extracting the information held in the appropriate memory kernal.

"Hello. Can you help me put up my tent? Tents are very hard to get right."

"My God, it is you! But how...it has something to do with that contraption we built, doesn't it? I always suspected it was a time machine."

"I know you did."

Davie glances over at John. "And who are you?"

"My name's John, sir. It's an honour to meet you."

Davie's brow furrows. "John, you say? Not the John? Cameron mentioned a John from time to time. When I asked who you were she said you were the greatest man who ever lived."

John smiles sheepishly. "Cameron's prone to exaggeration."

"Somehow I always pictured you as a much older man."

"He will be," I assure him. "One day."

Davie turns back to me. "Why have you-"

He begins to cough. His face grows red and he struggles for breath. John steps forward and says, "Sir, are you alright? Should I call someone?"

Davie holds up a hand. "Wait..." He jabs a button on the arm of the wheelchair. A woman in a starched white nurse's uniform enters as if on cue. She places a plastic mask over Davie's nose and mouth. The mask is connected to an oxygen cylinder.

Davie's breathing returns to normal. The coughing ceases. "That's all. Get out!"

The nurse leaves, seemingly unperturbed at being so brusquely dismissed.

"Are you sure you're okay, sir?" John asks.

"Oh far from it, son. Cancer. Third stage melanoma. All that California sunshine. Luckily I'm responding well to treatment. However, as you can see it's taken a heavy toll."

"Is that why you don't have vistors?"

"I'm CEO of one of the biggest software companies in the world - no matter what that SOB Gates says. If I'm seen as anything less than one hundred percent fit the shareholders get restless. Just ask Steve Jobs." Davie removes the oxygen mask from his face. "Come with me. Both of you. I want to show you something."

We follow the motorised wheelchair through the corridors of the vast house. The wheels make deep indentations in the thick carpeting but very little sound. The security chief Desmond appears in an open doorway. "Is everything okay, sir?"

"Fine, Desmond. Hold all calls. I'm not to be disturbed."

"Nurse Carmela told me you had another episode."

"Did she, indeed? Tell the little tattletale she's fired."

"Sir, you can hardly fire the staff for doing their job. The medical advice is to get as much rest as possible."

"I'll rest aplenty when I'm dead."

We leave Desmond behind. "Good man," Davie confides. "Ex-navy seal. Must get very bored guarding this old bag of bones. Ah, here we are."

We enter a large room with banked seating at one end facing a blank screen at the other. It resembles a small cinema.

"Home theater," Davie explains. "State of the art. George hooked me up."

"George?"

"George Lucas."

"Star Wars George Lucas?"

"That's right. We go way back. Many of the programming techniques I learnt from Cameron are used in the modern special effects industry. In fact, without her many movies would never have been made in the first place."

"You know what this means?" John says staring at me. "You're responsible for Jar-Jar Binks!"

Oops. My bad.

Davie presses some buttons on a console and the vast screen flickers into life. A film begins playback. It is grainy, black and white footage without a soundtrack. Very lo-tech for such surroundings.

"Oh wow..." John sighs.

On the screen is a young girl in a plain dress that barely reaches her hips. She is barefoot and has flowers in her hair. Her eyes are closed as she dances to unheard music.

The girl is me.

Occasionally a man intrudes in the shot. He is barechested with long dark hair and a full beard. He is tapping a tambourine.

"The hairy oaf is me," Davie admits, watching his younger self. "I was 30 years old at Woodstock. I'd quit my teaching post at MIT three years previous. I'd embraced the counterculture in a big way. Pot, mescaline, LSD...you name it I took it. I told myself I was expanding my consciousness. We all did. It was the way things were back then."

On the screen I watch myself pirouette. Hard to do with any grace when your toes are buried in mud. Yasgur's Farm was not conducive to good ballet.

"Then Cameron entered my life. She told me she needed my help, had rented a house for us to live in while we worked on a project she said might interest me. I mean, what kind of man would I be to turn down an offer like that from such a pretty girl? Especially one that danced like an angel."

"I understand, sir. Believe me. I've been there."

"Turned out the project was something quite extraordinary. It stretched me intellectually the way nothing ever had before. Or since."

The film ends then begins to repeat. It must be on a loop.

"Six weeks later I woke to find the house empty. The contraption we were working on was gone. As were all the notes I'd written. There was no chance I could duplicate it without them. We didn't have backup drives in those days."

A single tear leaks from Davie's right eye and runs down his wizened cheek. He still stares up at the screen, seemingly mesmerised by our younger selves.

"Once I had my software company up and running I hired a team of private investigators to try and track her down. They searched every state looking for a Cameron Phillips who matched her description. Nothing. Not a trace. Until thirteen years ago a Cameron Phillips finally turned up - at a New Mexico high school of all places. I'd pretty much given up hope by then. By the time my PI arrived a teacher lost his mind and began shooting the students. Going postal, I believe it's called. One of the students gunned down was Cameron Phillips. A dozen witnesses testified to the fact. Yet no body was ever found."

Davie finally turns from the screen to face me.

"It was you, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Obviously you weren't shot and killed."

"I'm tougher than I look."

"And I bet you looked exactly the same then as you do now."

"My hair was an inch shorter."

Davie nods then begins to cry, great wracking sobs that shake his frail body. "How many times did I say I loved you?" he demands.

The answer appears in my HUD. "Forty-eight. Seventy-three if you include I adore you, which is not the same thing at all."

"You're some kind of savant, aren't you? It explains your intelligence, the efficiancy, the indifferent way you treated me. Of course, we didn't have the term in those days. Yet knowing it now doesn't make the pain any easier to bear."

Davie wipes away his tears with the back of his sleeve. His voice takes on gruff tone. "I must have sat in this room alone and watched this film a thousand times. Why have you come back now? When I'm old?"

It's John who answers for me. "We need your help, sir."

"Ah. That's it, is it? I should've suspected. You want money. Of course. I'll write you a cheque."

"Not money, sir. We need your expertise." He takes the chip from his jacket pocket. "I'd like you to take a look at this."

-0-

"This is incredible. Where did you get this?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that, sir."

We are in another part of the building. A fully equipped laboratory. Everything is state of the art. Computers and electron microscopes such as the one Davie is using to examine Cameron subprime's chip.

"The architecture is extraordinary. I've never seen anything like it. It must have several million terabytes of data storage arranged in ways I never imagined possible. I'll give you a million dollars for it."

"It's not for sale."

"Ten million."

"Sorry. No can do."

"Son, a teenage boy can have quite a few adventures with ten million dollars."

"I have all the adventures I can handle, sir, thanks all the same."

"But this could revolutionise the industry! It'd certainly knock that bastard Gates off his perch. Windows 8, my ass! Twenty million."

"Professor, if you don't want to help us then hand the chip back and we'll leave."

Davie reluctantly acquiesces to John's bluff. "Very well. Encrypted files, you say?"

"That's right. D'you have any idea how to crack them?"

"Won't know until I try."

-0-

And try Davie does. He works on the chip for several hours straight, no mean feat for someone of his age. Occasionally he asks a question of John or myself. Mostly he is utterly absorbed by the task in hand.

At the four hour mark Davie suffers another coughing fit. Nurse Carmela is summoned. The oxygen mask goes on once more accompanied by a hypodermic injection. A stimulent of some sort. All the while Desmond watches from the doorway, mouth pursed disapprovingly. Davie ignores all entreaties to rest. He is in the Zone. I remember it well. Age might have claimed his body but his mind is as strong and agile as ever.

At midnight Davie finally slumps back in his wheelchair. "I have it," he announces in a tired yet triumphant voice.

"You opened the files?"

"Not files, son. It's a single video file. Quite short yet devilishly hard to decipher. Whoever did this knew their way around a computer. And then some."

"Thank you, sir."

"Just plug and play." Davie laughs. "Christ, I'm starting to sound like Gates in my old age! Come, you can play it back in the theater."

"Stay right where you are."

The three of us turn round. Desmond is standing in the doorway. He is holding a gun.

"Desmond? What's the meaning of this?"

"I took some video stills from the security footage and sent them to a contact in the police department. The boy is John Baum. That's his sister Cameron Baum. Along with their mother they're wanted for murder and other crimes stretching back years."

"There must be some mistake. This girl is Cameron Phillips. I've known her for-well, a very long time."

"No mistake, sir. The police are on their way. And the FBI. These two are staying right here until they arrive.

-0-

Don't feel too much sympathy for Davie. He's about to make John very angry indeed...