Viral Attack 5 - A Walk in the Park -- with Landmines.
How do you dress for a date with a crazy women? Danny wondered as he looked through his closet. Should he wear a jacket, dress shirt and tie? The orange jumpsuit his father always wanted him to wear was stuck in the back of the closet. It had 'FentonWorks' stitched over the heart. That certainly would remind Abigail that this wasn't a 'date;' It was strictly business. But he would be in the stupid jumpsuit all day. That was more humiliation than Danny needed. In the end he decided on a clear pair of jeans and the usual Tee. That would say he didn't think there was anything different or important their outing. Just plain ol' Danny flying 600 miles to drop in on a casual friend, who would kill him in an instant if she ever found out he was a half-ghost. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.....
Down in lab Danny walked past the Specter Speer on its cradle, opening instead and slipping into the Weapons Vault. His folks kept their most dangerous inventions here. Mostly to keep them from blowing up the house if they accidentally discharged. The vault was built of six inch thick titanium steel.
Pushed up against one wall was a seven foot tall metal man. The Fenton Super-Suit. It could amplify one's strength a hundred fold. Danny had used the Mk 1 to put Pariah Dark back into his sarcophagus-prison. This was the Mk 2. The first one had disappeared 'mysteriously,' though Danny and Jazz knew what had become of it.
Danny climbed inside and attached the cybernetic interfaces before powering up the suit. A quick check of the instrumentation showed that his father hadn't tinkered with the suit in a while. One never knew what his father would think to add or remove from something he was tinkering on.
With the suit powered up, Danny walked out of the weapons vault, closed the door, and crossed the lab to the mouth of the Specter Speeder's launch tunnel. He manually opened the inner door, activated the suit's impellers and cruised down the tunnel and out through the exit hidden under the backyard swimming pool. Once out in the open he opened up the suit's drive. Where the speeder could cruise at 200 miles per hour, twice as fast as Danny could fly as a ghost, the super-suit could cruise right up near the speed of sound, 600 miles per hour. He could reach Falls Church, Va where Abigail Farley-Smythe-Hyde live in just over an hour. And more importantly, get back home in just over an hour, greatly reducing the amount of time he had to cover for. And unlike the Specter Speeder, which sat right out in the open where it was sure to be noticed if it were 'borrowed,' no one was likely to enter the Weapons Vault that day so there was a good chance no one would notice that the suit was missing.
Danny flew as close to the ground as he could, to avoid FAA radar picking him up. But he couldn't fly as low as he'd like because even though he wasn't making a sonic boom, 600 mph is still pretty noisy. People would notice.
The on-board flight computer lead him straight to Fall Church, VA and to the address Abigail had given him. He found the old culvert she had mentioned easily and landed quietly and unobserved beside it. The culvert was eight feet high and covered with a heavy wire fence to keep homeless people for camping out in it. But it was easy for the super-suit to bend up a corner for him to slip through. He pulled the wire grate partially back in place, leaving just enough of a gap for a fourteen year old kid to slip through. Putting the super suit on "Sleep" mode, he popped open the back hatch and crawled out. He closed and locked the hatch in place with a conventional looking electronic car lock. Instead of beeping like a normal lock, this placed a bar from 'La Cuchacracha.' Danny rolled his eyes. What was his father thinking?
Danny scrambled up the slope of the ditch, avoiding what looked suspiciously like poison ivy. Abigail's directions lead him three blocks down then four blocks to the right, in a neighborhood of large, expensive houses, often behind fences, on large lots. The houses seemed ostentatious to Danny, who was used to run down brownstone rowhouses in Amity Park. Those looked like places people lives. These looked like....Danny couldn't think of a word. They just weren't the sort of place he'd want to live in.
Abigail's house was a faux Tudor building sitting on a good sized corner lot. A horseshoe drive sweep up from the street to the portico covered front door and back. A narrow lane split off leading to the rear where Danny surmised there was a garage.
Summoning his courage, Danny stepped off the sidewalk and walked up the drive.
The door popped open before Danny had time to ring the bell. There was a squeal of "Danny!" and he was engulfed in a tangle of arms; hot lips crushing against his.
After a long minute Danny had to turn his face freeing up his mouth to gasp "--n't -- mother -- home?"
"Oh, yeah." Abigail bounced back, pulled the front door closed and looping her arm around Danny's and all but dragged him off the porch. It wasn't until they were down the drive and hidden by the hedges along the sidewalk that she slowed up to a leisurely stroll.
"I am so glad you could make it," she cried, hugging his arm tighter.
"I didn't have much choice if I wanted to find out what the Guys in White know about Boucou Buxcs."
"Oh, lighten up. We are going to have so much fun today. I haven't been out of the house in a month. I felt like a prisoner in there."
"You will be again if your Dad catches you doing this." Danny warned.
"It's not going to happen! The old fart never comes home before six, and Agatha leaves in an hour or so for her club. She gets back at five sharp for Dr. Phil. No one -- absolutely no one -- ever bother to check on me during the day!"
"Who's Agatha?"
"My mother. Right now she's watching Montel do another "Baby Daddy" show -- paternity testing --" Abigail explained at Danny puzzled look, "I think she's trying to figure out how to prove I'm not her daughter."
"Why?"
"She thinks I gave her thick ankles, or something."
Danny looked to see if she was joking but found it hard to tell. Instead he asked, "What's up with the clothes?"
"Don't like the way I'm dressed?" She asked, stepping back and making a slow, fashion model spin. Abigail was wearing a long-sleeved white collared shirt buttoned up to the neck. Red roses and green leaves were embroidered around the collar. A matching floral design was stitched over her left breast. The shirt hung over white jeans with red, yellow and orange daisies running down the leg.
"No. it's nice. I just sort of expected you to be wearing something a little more..." Danny fumbled for the right word, "like what you did at camp."
"Miss the shorts?" she teased.
"You have nice legs." Danny flustered.
"Oh, my god, you were looking! I thought you only had eyes for that Goth girl." Abigail giggled, "There's hope for you yet, Fenton"
"Let's leave Sam out of this. But what's the deal with the long sleeves and pants in August? It must be a hundred degrees out."
"This." Abigail suddenly pulled the bottom of her shirt up exposing her torso. Beige bandages were wrapped around her chest in thick layers covering her from her belly button to her armpit. Danny was as much shocked that she would expose herself that way as by the mass of bandages covering her.
"Oh right, You broke some ribs." He said, trying to be cool. "They haven't healed yet?"
"I'll probably be starting school wrapped up like this. I feel like a mummy."
"Ouch. Do they hurt?"
"If I cough they hurt like heck and I've got to be careful about making sudden movements. But I could have worn a nice scoop neck Tee over that. It's all the other cuts and scraps I have to worry about."
She pushed up the sleeve of her shirt exposing a number of white lines running along her arm.
"They look like they're healing well." Danny offered.
"Yeah, but the plastic surgeon said I had to keep them away from sunlight until they've fully healed else they'll tan differently from the rest of my skin."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Bummer. It's 90 degrees in DC and I have to dress like its winter. I can't even go outside to the pool."
"I thought that was because you said your father forbid you from even leaving your room?"
"Well, since I can't go outside..."
"But he didn't actually ban you from using your pool."
"I can't have any friends over, so what's the point."
"Just that he hasn't grounded you as badly as you were letting on. And obviously he didn't take away your cellphone so your friends could have called at any time. They just haven't called, have they?"
Abigail stopped and pulled away from Danny. "So I exaggerated a little. This is the first time I've been out of the house since that fiasco at camp. And yes, you are the first person to come visit and yes I had to blackmail you to get you to do that. Do you think that doesn't hurt? But I don't want to think about that. I want to have fun today. I want to enjoy myself because this is probably the last time I'll get to have any fun before school starts. I hate school"
"And that stuff you said you'd look up for me, was that another of your exaggerations?" Danny was furious to think that he'd gone to so much trouble, risked getting into so much trouble, for someone who just wanted a day out. "Can you really, still log into the GIW computers?"
"That's all this is for you, isn't it. Getting some stupid information out of me."
"Yes, but at least I never said it was anything else."
Danny was getting nervous about the way they were just standing there in the middle of the sidewalk, yelling at each other while other pedestrians had to walk around them. He reached for Abigail's hand but she pulled away. "Look," he said. "We can either do this thing or just forget about it."
Abigail turned and started walking along the sidewalk again, refusing his hand, hugging her arms around her. "I've got a folder up in my room with everything you wanted.," she said to the air, assuming that Danny was following. "There's nothing about a Boucou Buxcs. Are you sure about the spelling?"
"That's how Tucker said it was spelled on the E-mail."
"And the other guy Beauregard C. Buchwald, is a consultant with the GIW. Must be an old guy. He's held contracts since the 60s. Mostly to do with theories about ghost communications.
"I didn't lie about having access. And I didn't lie about not seeing any of my friends." Abigail insisted.
Danny didn't say anything but came along side the angry girl. "I'm sorry I accused you of lying," he offered.
"But you were right. You were right about everything." She started crying and sat down on a short wall running alongside the sidewalk. "How can you bear to be always right?" she sobbed.
"Always being right is my sister's job. I'm the doofus in the family." He sat down beside, put an arm around her shoulder. After a moment he went on, "You were right back at camp. I should have called my father. I thought we could handle it but I had no idea how much more powerful and malevolent the ghost had become. If I had known, I would have called 'cause I didn't want anyone to get hurt. And you, and Sam, and everyone ended up in the hospital." He paused in thought. "I never intended for that to happen. So I was wrong. I'm wrong about a lot of stuff. I'm sorry you got grounded, I'm sorry your friends never call."
"How can you be sorry for people you've never even met?" She asked, trying to force a laugh. Abigail was dabbing her eyes with a bit of tissue she had pulled from her pocket. "I've got to stop doing this," she said after a moment.
"Doing what?"
"Crying. There's no crying in the Guys in White."
"I thought that was baseball."
"Same thing. Yeah. let's do this thing. It's probably the only time I'll get to run around DC with a cute boy."
"What cute boy?" Danny asked.
Abigail smiled and punched him in the ribs.
"So what are we going to do first?" Danny asked with false heartiness.
"You're the visitor, I guess we should do whatever you want to."
"I've never been to DC before. There's so many things to see."
"There's the Zoo, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Viet Nam Memorial..."
"I know exactly what I want to see,"
***
Danny peered through the small porthole and breathed, "Can you imagine living in there for a whole week?"
Abigail, trying not to look as bored as she was, bent down to look into the porthole of the Apollo capsule. She should have know. It was right there in Danny's Guys in White dossier. She had read it intently the night before. Career Goal: Astronaut. Where else would a space cadet want to go but the Air and Space Museum!
Through the porthole she saw three couches in a row in a cabin the size of a closet. A couple feet in front of the couches were panel after panel of switches, hundred, thousands of switches. Not only couldn't she see herself spending a week in such a tiny place, she couldn't see herself spending a hour there without going stark raving mad.
"Where's the bathroom?" she asked, trying to feign interest in Danny's hobby.
"There is no bathroom."
"They had to hold it in for a week?"
Danny blushed. "No, they had to -- ah -- go in little plastic bags."
"Ewww."
"Well, yeah. But these were like the first guys to ever stand on the moon. Think about it-- in all history only twelve guys have stood on the moon. I think I could put up with going into a ziplock for a week to be able to say that."
"Not me. Come on, Danny, there's lots of things I want to do today, let's not spend it all inside here."
"All right," Danny sighed. "But there's one last thing I want to see before we go. Come on, I think you'll like this."
He lead her back towards the center of the museum. In a large room filled with various rockets, satellites, and experimental space craft stood a huge cylinder reaching from the floor to the ceiling. A bridge reached out to it from the second floor balcony allowing people to walk through part of the structure. Even early in the day there was a bit of a line to get in.
"What is this?" Abigail asked while waiting their turn to enter.
"Skylab II. This isn't just some mock-up or training facility. This is a full and complete space station. Just like Skylab. Ready to launch at any time. There was even a Saturn V available to send it aloft."
"So what's it doing here?"
Danny didn't answer for a moment. They were inside the silvery tower and Danny was enrapt by the spectacle. They could look down through the clear plastic floor the length of the cylinder. Every bit of surface was covered with instrumentation, covered storage bins, sleeping hammock and more. Wire mesh panels formed two floors though in weightlessness the purpose of floors was a little pointless.
"There was no money to spend on launching it. AS it was NASA only made three trips to Skylab I before abandoning it. They had to pour all their money into building the Shuttle. Once the shuttle was flying NASA planned to send it back to Skylab, perhaps as early as the Shuttle's second flight. Mostly to bump it back up into a higher orbit. That was supposed to happen in 1979 but the Shuttle was running late. It didn't fly until 1981. By then Skylab had fallen out of orbit. It splashed down all over western Australia. NASA even had an Apollo-Saturn available for a mission to push Skylab into a higher orbit. But it costs so much just to launch a rocket, even when the hardware has already been paid for."
Danny sighed. "If they had spent the extra money, kept Skylab aloft those couple extra years until the shuttle was flying we could have had a manned space station years before the International Space Station. We could have given the Russians a run for their money on manned presence in space."
"In this?" Abigail was dubious.
"Sure. Look how big it is. And think what it would have been like if we had launched both Skylabs and docked them together? And once the shuttle was running we could have continued hauling modules up, expanding on all this."
"Sounds nice," Abigail said to be polite.
Danny ran his hand over the wall beside him. There was plastic sheeting screwed over the actual wall to protect it from what Danny was doing, but he didn't seem to mind.
"This--this is what I want to do with my life," he said. After a moment, he sighed again. "Come on, let's go."
***
They walked back onto the Mall without speaking. The Capitol building was to their right, shining white in the morning sunlight. To the left stretched the length of the Mall, down towards the Washington Monument and beyond, far in the distance, the Lincoln Memorial.
"We did what I wanted to do," Danny said, "So it's your turn to pick something to do."
"There's a new exhibit on ghost breaking at the Justice Building I'd love to see but the old fart works there and I don't want to take the chance of running into him." Abigail led Danny down the Mall. They walked slowly on the gravel paths that lined the sides of the grass.
"There's the Natural History Museum," she pointed across the grass to a large grey building. People were lined up to go into it. "The dinosaurs are kind of fun to look at."
"I like dinosaurs but you don't sound that enthused."
"Let's just walk down to the Washington Monument. I've been grounded for a month so just being outside is kind of nice."
She again took Danny's arm in hers and walked, leaning against him.
"So how did you get away from your family?" she asked.
I told them there was a Gaming Tournament across town. And that I had to leave early to help set up. And stay late to help clean up."
"What did you tell your two friends?"
Danny hesitated. "I told them I would be out of town on some corporate business."
"Corporate business? How convenient."
"I hate lying to my friends."
"Why didn't you just tell them the truth?"
Danny couldn't think of an answer. "Why is your father so opposed to you becoming a Guy In White?" he asked instead.
"I don't know. Sometimes I think he thinks women shouldn't work."
"That sounds retarded."
"Retarded? Yeah, that's him -- 'The retard'."
"You don't much like your father, do you." Danny wondered.
"All he ever does is tell me what I've done wrong. He gets upset if I ever suggest I'd like to be a ghost-breaker like him, he never takes me to his job..."
"I never get away from Dad's job," Danny interrupted. "Sometimes I envy your situation."
"At least your father cares about you. Mine..."
"I think you're being too harsh."
"You wouldn't think so if you had to live with him." Abigail snapped.
"So why do you want to be a Guy in White. Or would you be a Girl in White?"
" 'Guy' -- I'd be a Guy in White."
"Even though you're a girl."
"Whatever. I want to be a Gal in White -- OK? -- because that's the cutting edge of law enforcement. Every day there is something new being developed in the detection, capture and containment of ghosts. That, and no two ghosts are alike. Life would never be boring."
"I'd love a little boring in my life."
"How can you say that? Life as an astronaut would hardly be boring? Don't rockets blow up all the time?"
"Not all the time. In fact they almost never blow up. I want to be an astronaut because I've always wanted to see what is out there, go places where no one has ever gone before."
"But if they ever develop a portal to the Ghost Zone, that would be some place where no one has ever been before. Wouldn't exploring the Ghost Zone be just as interesting?"
"Nah, it's boring."Danny answered without thinking.
"Boring? Wait a minute! You make it sound like you've been there."
"What? No! No, no, no." Danny demurred in a panic. "How could I visit the Ghost Zone? No one has a working portal."
"Not even your parents?
"No. Believe me, if their portal ever works my Dad will be sure to tell the world."
"Oh." Abigail seemed not entirely convinced of that. Danny, himself, wasn't entirely sure whether his parents knew that their Portal actually worked. Sometimes his parents acted like they knew if worked, such as the time they added a biometric lock on the portal so only a Fenton could open it, but it also was true that Jack Fenton would not stop telling the world that he had created a portal if he knew it worked. Danny's unique existence, of course, results from his walking into the interface tunnel as the dimensional energies were collapsing. He had been twisted through multi-dimensional space and replicated in ectoplasm. That was how he could be both a normal kid and a ghost.
"You know, someone must have a working on Ghost Zone portal since these E-mail's from Boucou Buxs come from the Ghost Zone," Danny sought to change the subject.
"Which is what Dr. Buchwald was studying," Abigail said. "From what I've read of his dossier he never quite succeeded either. At least he could never reliably demonstrate communications with ghosts."
"But how does one digitize a ghost and attach it to an E-mail? Did Buchwald study that as well?"
"I don't know. I didn't have time to read everything I downloaded."
They had come down the length of the Mall to a street separating the Mall from the Washington Monument. Danny saw a bench under some trees and lead Abigail over.
"I didn't realize the Mall was so long," he said.
"This is only half of it. The rest continues from Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. They've got an elevator in the Washington Monument. You can ride to the top and look out over the whole city. Let's do that. I went there once on a school outing. It seems like the only times I've been in DC have been on school trips. The old fart never thinks of bringing me here."
"So this is as much new to you as it is to me?" Danny asked.
"Yeah, I guess so."
They sat in the shade for a moment, then crossed the street and climbed slope up to the foot of the monument. Danny brought tickets for the elevator then they walked around it while waiting for their turn. Danny pulled out his cellphone to take some pictures before remembering that since he had told no one of this trip he couldn't show them any pictures. Abigail suggested that he could always just keep them as a private memory but Danny wasn't convinced. The best kept secrets he suspected were ones that had no evidence.
His vow to take no pictures was sorely tested when they got to the top of the Washington Monument and could look out over the entire city. Because of the law limiting the height of construction in Washington, DC the view was unlimited. The whole city lay out before them like a map. They moved from one small window to the next, giving little cries of delight with each new view. Too soon they had to ride the elevator back down so the next group of tourists could come up.
Danny suggested they continue on to the Lincoln Memorial. The distance was great but they were young and didn't think it was a problem. Danny asked Abigail about her school, not wanting to talk any more about ghost, ghost-fighting, or parents. They chatted animatedly the length of the reflecting pool, before climbing the long flights of stairs to the monument.
They had seen many pictures of the statue inside the Lincoln Memorial but none of them really conveyed the awesome size and dignity of the statue. It was hard to look at it and not be momentarily proud to be an American. Intensely proud.
And then some young man jumped that barrier keeping tourists off the statue. He wore baggy shorts and a Tee shirt advertizing a punk rock band Danny had never heard of. He jumped on the base of the statue, turned to face a friend who held a camera and raised his arms in triumphant. The camera flashed and a second later the man had leaped off the statue and was mingling with the crowd.
"Bastard," Abigail growled. Danny had to agree. "Ruining it for everyone else."
But the man had hardly rejoined his friend with the camera when a half dozen Park Service Rangers surrounded him. Danny looked on, amazed, as the man was swiftly cuffed and lead off to a service elevator discretely built into a wing of the building.
"Well." Abigail said after a stunned moment. "Sometimes justice does get serviced."
"Yeah. And yet I never saw any guards around here." Danny agreed.
They went back out side and joined the crowds sitting on the steps. Danny glanced at Abigail in the mid-day sun, then looked at her again. He frowned
"What's the matter, Danny?" she asked. "Don't tell me I have a zit."
"You look awfully red in the face. Do you feel all right?"
"I'm fine," she snapped, but fumbled in her pants before pulling out a small compact. The inside lid was a mirror. She peered at herself in the glass."
"Snap!" She cried. "I'm getting sun burned! I forgot to put on any sunblock before leaving the house. Dad is sure to notice." She burned her head in her hands. "What am I going to do?"
"Maybe you're just overheated," Danny suggested. "Why do we find some shade and I'll get us some water from one of the vendors down there." He pulled her to her feet and lead her down the steps. Abigail followed blindly, more interested in studying her reflection in the mirror. "I am so dead," she murmured.
She followed Danny over to one of the souvenir shacks. While Danny was selecting a couple drinks Abigail went through the selection of hats there. "How do I look?" she asked, wearing a super-tall red, white and blue top hat. Danny just shook his head. Next she tried on a plastic imitation straw boater, which caused Danny to roll his eyes. After a couple more hats more goofy than practical she selected a wide brimmed straw hat with a low crown and a sprig of paper flowers stuck in the hatband. Danny joined her with a bottle of a popular sports drink for each of them. Abigail picked up a tube of sunblock and paid for her two items. She sat down on a nearby bench and started rubbing the lotion over her face. "Any better?" she asked.
"Maybe. Hey, you hungry? How 'bout I get us a couple sausages from that vendor over there?"
They sat and eat in quiet for a while. Abigail continued to monitor her appearance in her mirror. As Danny was carrying their trash over to a barrel she appeared to make up her mind, put the compact away, put on her hat and rushed over to Danny and pulled him off towards a taxi stand.
"We have just enough time to visit the zoo before we have to go home," she explained. "Maybe if we're luck the pandas will be out playing."
The zoo was pleasant even though the pandas were not out. In fact they seemed to be hiding. Abigail pointed to a white lump in a deep corner of their enclosure than didn't look like just of anything which she claimed to be one of the pandas, but that was OK. There were other animals to look at. Admittedly many of them were also resting/hiding from the heat of the day. Danny found himself frequently holding hands with Abigail as they walked. It just seemed natural to do at the time. Then when he became self-conscious of what he was doing he'd get cold shivers remembering the last time he felt comfortable holding as girl's hand. Valerie Grey. His Casper High classmate and self-declared ghost hunter. "Not again," a voice in his head would whisper. "She'll never find out," a voice from somewhere lower would answer.
"Danny, you are such an idiot!" That was Sam. Danny didn't recall just when she had said that but truer words he had never heard.
They were dwaddling over a frozen lemonade when Abigail glanced at her watch and cursed. "We're late," she said. "It's a long hike to the Metro station. We've got to go."
She set a rapid pace that Danny found hard to keep up with. And it was a long walk before the Metro station appeared. They sat down on the train and leaned against each other, Now that they had a chance to relax they realized just how tired they were. Danny was almost falling asleep when the Falls Church stop was announced.
They caught the bus to her house, getting out a stop early and walking the rest of the way. Around the corner from her driveway Abigail thrust her arm into the hedge, felt around and pulled out a thick manila folder wrapped in plastic. "Here's the stuff you wanted Danny."
"Thanks." He held on to the folder for a moment, feeling awkward, unsure of next to say.
"It's probably best if we split up here," Abigail said. She pulled off her hat and unceremoniously stuffed it and the tube of sunblock in a trash can. "So if I get caught sneaking back into the house you won't get into any trouble."
"Ok. You sure you're going to be alright? What about, you know, your face?"
"I think I can cover it up with foundation. If not, I'll just have to be sick for a couple days and hide in bed. Don't worry. I'll be alright."
"Ok. Ah -- thanks for all this information."
"Thanks for the day out and for telling me about this new ghost. Let me know how it all works out. I'm dying to know what's going on."
"Sure, I'll keep you updated."
"Well, I guess this is it."
"Yeah."
They stood there for a moment. Then Danny suddenly bent down and kissed Abigail. He kind of missed her lips. She threw her arms around him and pressed tight.
She was blushing when they finally split. "Thanks," she whispered. "This has been a wonderful day."
"Yeah. I had a good time, too."
She turned and ran around the corner. Danny stood there until he heard a door close, then he found his way back to the super-suit.
***
The suit was exactly as he had left it. Stuffing the folder into his waistband, he climbed into the super-suit and connected the cybernetic controls. The suit responded like a second skin, walked to the grate covering the culvert and bent it out of the way. Once on the outside he bent it back in place. A built in laser cannon let him spotweld the grate back in place. Danny activated the impellers and the autopilot. The suit flew itself back home while he took a short nap.
He flew back in by way of the Specter Speeders launch tube and parked the suit back in the weapons vault. He found a small mirror in the lab and checked his own appearance. He, too, was a little sunburned but hoped his parents wouldn't notice. There was something reddish on the corner of his mouth. He rubbed at it, found it was lipstick. He rubbed at his mouth some more, until he thought he had got all of it. The last thing he wanted was for Sam to catch him with lipstick on his face. She wouldn't understand. It was just a kiss. They were just friends. It wasn't anything serious.... "Who am I kidding," Danny thought. He had crossed a line by going on this "not-date" with Abigail. If Sam ever found out she would be royally pissed.
Danny hiked back down the launch tunnel out into the back yard, climbed over the fence and dropped into the alley behind their house. He walked around to the front and walked through the front door.
"I'm home," he called.
"Hey, Danny, my boy, how were your games?" Her father was in the living room, idling eating a hot fudge sundae and watching TV.
"Ok. I had a good time."
"How did you finish?" his father asked. Danny frozen, wondering if his father was trying to trap him in a lie. But no, his father wasn't the subtle type.
"Seventh. Not my best outing, but I had some stiff competition."
"I'm sure you'll do better next time. Hey, Danny, want some ice cream? The fudge is still hot."
"It's Ok, Dad. I'm pretty tired. I think I'll go straight to bed."
Upstairs Danny drew the folder out from under his tee shirt and flopped on his bed. He began leafing through the pages. He had been at it for a while when something made him sit up in surprise. He lay the sheet on his desk and began tearing through the pages he had already read and laid aside. Finding the sheet he was looking for, Danny compared the two closely. Puzzled, he reached for his cellphone and pulled up Abigail's number.
"I was about to call you," she said, answering her phone on the second ring.
"Huh?"
"Yeah, remember that ghost you were talking about, Technus 0.7?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, tonight when I was allowed to go on-line I found an E-mail from you..."
"But I never..."
"I know. I mean, at first I thought it was from you, which I thought was really sweet, but when I saw that it contained an attachment I recalled what you said had happened to your other friends. So I looked at the time it was sent. You were still with me then, so I knew it was a fake."
"What did you do about the ghost?" Danny was suddenly very worried.
"First, I did not open the attachment. Instead I found a can of Fenton Ghost-Be-Gone and liberally sprayed my computer with it. Then I opened the attachment. A ghost who looked a lot like the renderings of Technus on the GIW mainframe appeared and tried to take over my monitor but it hit the Ghost-Be-Gone spray and kind of sizzled away. I opened the attachment three more times and the same thing happened each time."
"Don't open it," Danny said. "You're asking for trouble."
"Relax. I stopped after the third time. I know the anti-ghost spray eventually evaporates. I wasn't going to risk Technus attacking our house. We have way too much technology."
"So what did you did?"
"Nothing, really. As long as I don't open the attachment nothing's going to happen."
"Don't depend on that. Did you tell your dad?"
"The retard?"
"Abigail, this is like camp all over again. Tell your father!"
"Tell him what?"
"Just tell him you heard from me about a ghost virus, and then you got one on your computer. He'll take the computer to work. They'd find the ghost and deal with it."
"I can't let the old man read my computer. There's too much stuff on it that I can't have him read!"
"Can't you delete that stuff first?"
"Come on, Danny, stuff is never completely deleted from a computer unless you melt down the hard drive."
"Oh. So you're not going to tell your father -- again."
"There's nothing to tell. I found a problem and I dealt with it. End of story."
"Ahhhh...."
"So why were you going to call? Couldn't get me out of your mind?"
"It was about these papers you got for me."
"Something wrong with them?"
"There's something odd here. One paper is a research paper published three years ago. Another is an obituary for Buchwald dated four years ago."
"So?' Abigail sounded confused on the phone.
"So he died a year before he published this paper. A paper on the digitalization of Ectoplasmic structures on electronic media."
"He was scanning ghosts into his computer?"
"Apparently. A year after he died!"
"After he died?" Abigail sounded puzzled but curious.
"After he died," Danny repeated.
"That's worth looking into," Abigail said. "I'll see what I can dig out on my end. Was there anything else?"
"That's as far as I've read."
"OK. Keep in touch."
"Abigail, what about the ghost on your computer?"
"I've got that under control, Danny. I'm not a helpless girl, you know. I can deal with things like this."
Danny recognized that there was nothing he could say that would change her mind. He wished her a good night instead, and hung up. There wasn't anything else he could do.
He closed his phone and placed it on his desk. Picked up the two sheets of paper, one the article and the other the obituary and looked at them closely, as if he could wring more information out of them. With a sigh he laid them back down on his desk, lay back on his bed and closed his eyes. He was still trying to figure out what they meant when he fell asleep.