Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins (15 page)

Either way, kind of depressing.

I’ll flash forward and spare you the dreariness of us sitting around doing homework in Sara’s living room. It was not a thrilling evening...except for when Matt recited an extremely filthy monologue from
From Dusk Till Dawn
, and that was more traumatizing than thrilling, so I’ll spare you that too.

We lock ourselves in Sara’s room, a shrine to Johnny Depp, which does not surprise me in the least. I have my Springsteen CDs in a place of honor in my room, Sara’s altar is a wooden DVD rack on top of a dresser that holds every Johnny Depp/Tim Burton movie on Blu-ray. She owns all four
Pirates of the Caribbean
movie posters and each one of them gets its own wall; Johnny is staring at us from every direction. This I can get behind.

Sara sits cross-legged on her bed. “All right,” I
say, sitting opposite her. “Let’s roll. What do I have to do?”

“The idea is that I imagine I’m building a brick wall to keep out unwanted outside thoughts,” Sara says. “All you have to do is give me something to block out.”

“So I just...think at you?” She nods. “Anything in particular?”

“Hmm. I don’t think so. Just think softly to start.”

Think softly? Oh, right: thoughts have volume.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

So, here I go, thinking softly. I’m thinking. Thinking. Thinky-think-think. Maybe I should think of something interesting? Or would that be too distracting? I suppose I could think of something interesting as long as I think softly. Think softly. Jeez. Weird. Oh, crap, I shouldn’t have thought that, I don’t want Sara thinking I think she’s weird. Hm. She’s not reacting. Did she not hear me? Is she blocking me out?

“No, I’m not,” she says with a drawn-out sigh. She’s already getting frustrated.

“So let’s go again,” I say. “Come on.”

“All right.”

And we do, and it ends the same way.

“Dammit! I can’t get this!” she says. “I’m doing what he told me to do and it’s not working!”

“Hey, hey, easy,” I say. “I know this might sound weird, but maybe you’re trying too hard. This is a concentration exercise, right?”

“Yeah...”

“I read once that when you’re concentrating,
you’re not, you know, putting effort into it, that you’re supposed to be relaxed. You try by not trying.”

“Very Zen...or very Jedi.”

“So? Go again?”

“Okay,” she mumbles.

“Relax. Don’t try.”

“Don’t try. Got it.”

Instead of random mumbo-jumbo, I start singing the Eagles’
Best of My Love
in my head, a nice, mellow, soothing song. Music to relax by.
You know we always had each other baby, I guess that wasn’t enough, but here in my heart, I give you the best of my love...

The tension slides off Sara’s face and her eyes go out of focus. A thousand-yard stare, Dad calls it.

Ohh ohh oh ohhhhhhhh sweet darlin’, you get the best of my love, ohh ohh oh ohhhhhhhh sweet darlin’...

“Are you still thinking?” Sara says urgently.

“Uh-huh.”

“It worked,” she says softly, as if afraid to break the spell. “I can’t hear you. Quick, think louder, just a little.”

When the truth is found, to beeeeeeeeeee liiiiiiiies...and all the joy, within yooooooooou diiiiiiies, don’t! You! Want somebody to love? Don’t you need somebody -–

“Nothing!” she says.

“Try something,” I say. “Try dropping your defenses and putting them right back up.”

“Okay. Keep going.”

I like. Big. BUTTS and I cannot lie, you other brothers can’t deny!

“
Baby Got Back
? Really?”

“I know the whole song, it’s my secret shame, I blame my mom, now shut me out again!”

And she does. “Think at me real loud,” she says. “Loud as you can.”

THE HIGHWAY’S JAMMED WITH BROKEN HEROES ON A LAST CHANCE POWER RIDE! EVERYBODY’S OUT ON THE RUN TONIGHT BUT THERE’S NO PLACE LEFT TO HIDE! TOGETHER WENDY WE CAN -–

“I can’t hear you!” Sara shouts, and she throws herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck so tightly it actually makes it tough to breathe, but it’s okay because Sara is thanking me over and over and I think she might be crying and the emotion is pouring out of her and into me and now I’m crying – -

“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry,” she says, but she says it with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on anybody. “I don’t mean to—I didn’t—”

“I know, it’s okay, it’s cool,” I say, wiping tears off my cheeks in a mirror-image of Sara.

Sara looks around her room as if seeing it for the very first time. “I’d forgotten how quiet the world is,” she says.

She thanks me all the way to the front door. I tell her she can stop but she grasps my hand and says, “You don’t understand. This is the first time I’ve felt like I can maybe control this stupid power of mine. I was starting to think I’d never control it and it would drive me crazy and I’d...”

She looks down at the floor. A horrible gnawing sensation fills my stomach. I’m glad she doesn’t finish her sentence.

“Any time you want to practice, let me know,” I say. She nods.

“You want some company for the walk home?”

“I’m good. Besides, what good is it to walk me home if you have to walk back to your place alone?”

“I didn’t say I was going to walk home with you,” she says cryptically, then she shuts the door.
I said I could keep you company.

We have a lovely conversation as I walk home, shivering slightly the whole way for want of a jacket I totally didn’t need a few hours ago. Welcome to midOctober in New England, the most bipolar of months, meteorologically speaking.

And here we are
, I say as I reach my front walk.
Thanks for the company.

Sure
, she says, and I glance back toward Sara’s place, down the street and around the corner and ten minutes behind me. Her “voice” hasn’t faded in the least.

Wow. You’ve got some serious range.

Yes and no. I learned early on that once I...hmm. How do I put this? Once I recognize someone’s mind, I can communicate with them no matter how far away they are. It’s like I’ve set up a direct line to their brains.

That’s it.

I know how we can find our mystery man.

FOURTEEN

“You do?” Matt asks. “How?”

“I’ll tell you at lunch,” I say, because I’m not going to say anything in a crowded hallway. I know, you’d think a crowded lunchroom wouldn’t be a great place to hold private discussions either, but when everyone is going out of their way to ignore your very existence, you could plot a bank heist without worrying someone will accidentally overhear you.

“Fine, keep me in suspense. Do I get a hint at least?”

“Let’s just say you’ll be very pleased with your girlfriend.”

“My what?”

“Sara. Duh.”

“Sara’s not my girlfriend.”

“What?”

“I’m, she’s not, we’re not...you know,” he stumbles. “We’re not together.”

“You’re not?”

“No,” Matt says. “We’re just friends.”

Aw, man. He got the
I just want to be friends
speech, and here I go rubbing salt in the wound. Great
job, Carrie. Open mouth, insert foot, swallow up to kneecap, die a little inside.

“Who told you that?”

Not that I needed anyone to tell me Matt’s totally into Sara, what with it being blindingly obvious and all, but I say, truthfully, “That girl Amber said you were—”

Matt sputters. “Amber? What does she know? That dope couldn’t find her way out of an open garage with a roadmap and a Sherpa. Don’t listen to her. She kills brain cells.”

Fault successfully diverted. Guilt, however, remains.

Lunchtime arrives soon enough, and today’s featured atrocity is what passes for pizza in public schools. You know what I’m talking about: a slab of a bread-like material topped with a flavorless red sauce, allegedly made from tomatoes, and shredded mozzarella that has been exposed to a picture of a hot oven.

“I think this is the school’s brilliant strategy to combat teenage obesity,” Matt says.

“I know, right?” Missy says, handing her pizza over to Stuart.

“And such small portions,” he says.

“To business,” Matt declares. “You said you figured out how to trace our techno-hijacker?”

“You did?” Sara says.

“You gave me the idea,” I say.

“I did?”

“You said once you recognize someone’s mind, you can connect to them psychically no matter where they are.”

“Yeah. Wait, no. I can’t—I mean, yeah, in theo
ry...”

“You think Sara could locate the guy?” Matt says.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Sara says. “I felt his presence a couple of times, but that’s not the same as getting into his head.”

“
Hmph
. That plan went out the window real fast,” Stuart says.

“But what if we could reestablish a connection so you
could
get into his head?” I say.

“Yeah, but don’t we have to find him first?” Missy says. “And we can’t find him because Sara can’t find him until we find him but we can’t do that until Sara finds him and I think I hurt my brain.”

“We can find him,” I say.

In fact, everyone sitting in this cafeteria right now could find him.

When Roger Manfred was at MIT, he had a roommate during his freshman year who kept to himself, completely, and all the time. If he spoke it was to convey important information only. Phone messages, he never forgot to deliver. Actual conversation? He couldn’t be bothered with that. He preferred sitting on his bed and reading or working on assignments to interacting with people. He drove Manfred crazy. Sharing a room with him was as good as solitary confinement.

Archimedes makes that kid look like a chatterbox.

Manfred: “I’m going to go grab something to eat. You want anything?”

Archimedes: “Ehnn.”

Manfred: “You’re starting to stink. Could you please take a shower?”

Archimedes: “Mm.”

Manfred: “How much longer do we have to stay here?”

Archimedes: “Not sure.”

“What do you mean, you’re not sure?”

“...”

“Archimedes!”

“What I mean, Roger, is I’m not sure how long we’ll be staying here because I’m not sure if it’s safe to expose ourselves.”

“To who?!” Manfred says, his arms flapping. “You don’t know anyone is after us! That’s nothing but paranoid speculation!”

“Or, we haven’t seen any sign of pursuit because we’re in hiding,” Archimedes says with an infuriating air of disinterest.

“Trying to prove a negative?”

“There’s no need to be rude.”

“I’m making a point,” Manfred says. “Here’s another point: we wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t hacked a top-secret network and hijacked someone else’s hardware! But I guess some habits die hard, huh?”

“Before I achieved humanity, ARC’s robots were the only means I had to interact with the outside world. The battlesuit?” Archimedes ponders the question and says, “I wanted to see if I could do it.”

Manfred clenches a fist, and it doesn’t go unnoticed.

“You should be proud of yourself, Roger. Isn’t that a defining trait of humanity? Testing one’s limits to
discover what one is capable of? You sought to create an artificial personality that replicated the behaviors of a human being and you’ve succeeded, very impressively. Pardon my immodesty, but you’ve created something amazing in me.”

“And fat lot of good it does either of us.”

“You’re right. You’re right,” Archimedes says soothingly. He unfolds himself from the Buddha-like lotus position in which he’s remained for much of the past week, in doing so releasing a stench of stale sweat that makes Manfred’s eyes water. He stands, stretches. “I’ve been unforgivably short-sighted. Instead of hiding out and losing myself in the virtual world, I should have been laying the groundwork for our triumphant return. There are a few ducks we need to get in their rows before we can—”

The phone strapped to Archimedes’ arm vibrates, which is not unusual; he’s received a few calls from Ashe Semler’s underlings checking in—nothing of consequence, but this number is unfamiliar.

With a simple mental command, Archimedes accepts the call. “Hello?”

“Uhhh, Jeff? Is that you?”

“I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.”

“Oh. This isn’t 555-2356?”

“No, it’s 2355.”

“Oh. Oops! I’m sorry!” the girl says before hanging up.

“Well?” I say.

“I got him,” Sara says.

***

Batman has his Batmobile. Wonder Woman has her invisible jet. We, the Team With No Name, have the crosstown bus.

I know.

Worse, we may be completely wasting our time. Sara managed to establish a mental wiretap on our target, who calls himself Archimedes, but the connection is not as strong as it is to any of us. She says it’s like listening to a weak radio signal; images and sounds, everything Archimedes is seeing and hearing, fade in and out. She caught one fleeting glimpse of a Motel 6 logo, and there’s only one of those in town, so here we are. If he’s in another town? We get to hang out here until the bus swings back around in an hour.

I’d like to think that one day, many years from now, we’ll look back on moments like this and laugh.

“He’s here,” Sara says.

Oh thank God.

“You’re sure?” Matt says.

“He’s...there,” she says, pointing at a window on the second floor.

“All right,” Stuart says. “What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” Matt says.

“Aw, dude, don’t tell me...”

And we will all laaaaaaaaaaaaaugh...

With a minimum of bickering, we pull a serviceable plan out of our butts. Matt produces a motel keycard to let us in a side entrance, since strolling in past the front desk clerk probably wouldn’t go over well, and we change into our so-called super-hero outfits in a supply closet (the less said about that huge chunk of awkwardness, the better for my dignity. Did I mention we’d laugh about this someday?).

“Now what?” Stuart says as we head toward Archimedes’ room. “Do we bust the door down and get all up in his face or what?”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Matt says.