RESTORATION (a science fiction novel) (RESTORATION (the science fiction trilogy)) (38 page)

“Well we didn’t exactly have this planned!” 

“Would someone please tell me what is happening here, is he all right?”  They filled her in as they transferred Toby to the kitchen chair and taped his ankles securely to the chair legs and taped his hands behind the back of the chair.  Dodge took the medallion off from around Toby’s neck and looked it over.  It did seem to be more than just a piece of jewelry.  It was some type of transmitter for sure.

Bobby grabbed the bag and started going through all Toby’s things to see if there was anything else interesting that may be a clue to what this kid was up to.  They got his pants and retrieved his wallet out of them.  His student I.D. card read Toby Allan Lansing.  Dodge got on Bobby’s
PC and searched for the name. 

There it was, Toby Allan Lansing, Born to Robert and Alisha Lansing of Detroit Michigan on Feb 4th, 1989.  Deceased on March 22nd, 2056.  Hmm, apparently this kid was using the I.D. of a recently deceased man for a cover.   Either that, or there were two Toby Allan Lansing’s from Detroit, not likely, but possible, or maybe a Grandson named after his Grandfather. 

He was waking up, soon they would have some answers.  Toby lifted his head and looked around the room.  Linsey had her hands on her hips, Bobby was sitting on the bed looking at the floor in disappointment while Dodge and Sarah stood there glaring at him with their arms crossed.
         “I guess I’m busted, huh?”
         “Do you mind telling us why  you’re wandering around our house in the middle of the night talking to someone on this ear piece and toting a loaded 9 mil around in your overnight bag?” said Dodge. 

“I was checking in with my, well whatever he is, it doesn’t really matter I’m a dead man anyway, what time is it?”
         “What? What are you talking about?” Demanded Dodge.
         “Yeah!” added Bobby, “I thought you were my friend man, what gives?  Who are you?”  Toby shook his head.

“I’m sorry, but what time is it PLEASE?”
         “It’s 4:27” said Linsey. “Why is that so important to you?”
         “Because If I don’t contact my handler between 6:00 and 6:15, I’ll be dead for sure.  I didn’t know how long I had been knocked out.  The ER will tell you that it was an aneurism in my brain but the truth is that my handler can detonate a tiny explosive charge in there that will kill me.” 

“Your handler?” said Dodge.
         “Oh, come on everyone knows you can be restored,” said Bobby.
         “No, not in this case, I won’t just be dead, I’ll be permanently dead.”

“What are you talking about Toby?” said Dodge.

“Okay, look, I was born in Michigan on February the fourth, 1989 to Robert and Alisha Lansing.  As an adult I worked for a computer file backup company designing software for years, I was their senior software consultant.  I have some really valuable computer skills.  Skills that in the wrong hands can be used in a very dangerous way.  I was going to retire before the holidays. 

Some men grabbed me one night outside the office when I was working late.  They had a body that looked just like me, a clone of me I guess.  They put the body in my car and dowsed the inside with gasoline.  That is the last thing I remember from my former life because they put a bag over my head and tossed me in the back of a van and took me away. 

When I woke up again I was just a boy.  They showed me news  files and a picture of a car that looked like mine and told me the story of how I was killed at this railroad crossing.  My family attempted to have me restored but my lifefile was corrupted at the back up company and my lifecorder malfunctioned in some weird way. 

My family received a huge wrongful death settlement from
LifeTech, buried my remains and moved on.  The only way I would ever see my family again was to do everything they told me to do.  They promised if I did exactly as I was told they would restore me later and claim that there was some crazy mix up at the Lifecenter with identities.

They would see to it that my family and I would be reunited and that my family could keep the settlement money from the lawsuit, you know mental distress, pain and suffering, that kind of thing.  I really had no other choice, it was, do as told, or be
erased.  They made Dodge here out to be a really bad man posing as an ordinary family man, but I’m not buying it, from what I have seen, you’re just a normal family.”

Dodge was starting to understand what was happening.     

“So they cloned you up and stopped your growth at about 15 years of age, then gave you this mission, which is to do what?”

“Well, I was supposed to plant some software into your new security system that would allow these guys to see and hear everything going on in your house, seems they are upset that they have no access now.  Apparently they’re looking for information about your work at ESS.”

“Why should we believe you?” Asked Linsey, “And even if we did believe you, what are we supposed to do now?”
         “It doesn’t really matter, when I don’t check in they’ll detonate the charge in my head and I’ll be dead.” 

“Why were you going for that medallion around your neck when I zapped you?”
         “Oh, you noticed that huh?  Well that is a panic button.  If I hit that they are supposed to rescue me but I doubt that they would.  Still I went for it because based on what they told me about Dodge I was pretty scared.  If you people are anything like the others I have encountered then it’s likely you would torture or kill me too.  I figured they would either rescue me or detonate my head bomb, either way it would be better than torture.  My family already believes that I am dead and they have money now so it would be easier for everyone that way.”

This man’s story was getting to Linsey’s emotions a bit because she was beginning to believe him.  Bobby was still sulking.     

“Man I can’t believe you lied to me, I thought you were such a good friend.”
         “I’m sorry Bobby” Toby said, with a genuine tone of regret in his voice.
         “I sure do wish I had a friend like you when I was a kid for real.  I was such a wall flower, everyone called me a geek, my childhood wasn’t much fun at all.  It wasn’t until I became an adult that I learned to play basketball.  I started going down to the gym between writing code to clear my head.  I got really good at free throws and then starting running around a bit making shots on the move.  When I was about 45 years old, I was invited to join an office team.  I sucked bad, but I got better with time.  I could shoot, but didn’t understand any of the rules.  I read books and watched games to teach myself all about the sport, and then my teammates taught me a lot of things too.  Now that I got to be a kid again, I felt cool because I knew with you and Matt helping me I might have a chance to be on the team at school.  I was so excited about it that I actually got lost in being a kid again for a while, foolish I guess.  Now it’s back to reality and here I am, an old man in a kid’s body waiting for my head to explode.” 

Dodge thought for a minute.      

“You mentioned a handler, who is this person that you’re working for?”
         “Well, I don’t really know exactly, they don’t use their names in front of me, in fact they call each other numbers instead of names.  They always talk about ‘the big dog’ or ‘CS’, I guess that is their boss they are referring to.  They said that if I did a good job on this then I would get to meet him.”  Dodge stood up and motioned for Linsey to follow him.     

“We’ll be back in a few minutes.   Bobby, Sarah,
keep an eye on him, holler if he gives you any trouble.” 

They stepped out and went down the hall to their bedroom.  Dodge wanted to call John for advice and Linsey agreed that it was a good idea.  John was surprised at the timing of the call.  He was awakened from a dead sound sleep. 
“What could possibly be going on at Fort Knox that would require a call at this hour?” 

Dodge told John the whole story but in a nutshell, it was getting close to 6:00 a.m. and they had to make a choice.  Should they help this guy?  Should they allow him to check in with his handler and take the risk of him using a code word of some kind to warn them of the situation? 

John and Dodge agreed that they should allow him to make the call.  If he didn’t they would know he had been discovered anyway.  Even if he was lying about the tiny explosive charge being in his head, it was irrelevant because they could keep him locked up for at least most of the day before he was supposed to return to the house. 

John had an idea so he told Dodge he would be over later that day with some cool stuff that would reveal whether or not this kid was telling the truth. 

“Are there any birthdays in the household any time soon or an anniversary or anything like that?” Asked John.

“Well no, but my Dad’s birthday is next week, why?”
         “I need to bring in a big box and I need an excuse to do that.  I’ll be there at about 10:00 a.m., I think you should go ahead and let Toby check in but keep the entire family home today.  You shouldn’t go out at all.  Call Alan and have him come over.  Tell him that you have something for him and you want him to come get it.”
         “Okay, will do.”

Dodge didn’t really know what John was up to but he trusted him completely.  They went back up to the room where Toby, Bobby, and Sarah were talking about everything that had happened. 

“Mom, Dad, I believe Toby, I think he’s telling the truth.”
         “Well Sarah that is kind of you to want to believe him but at this point we need proof that he’s telling the truth not just a feeling, okay?” 

Dodge knew that Sarah was soft hearted like her Mother so he tried to let her down easy.
         “John’s coming over and he says he’ll be able to help us with that.”  Bobby looked a little worried.     

“What’s John going to do?  You guys aren’t going to hurt my friend, I mean Toby, are you?”  Toby smiled, he was glad that Bobby still liked him, in spite of his befriending him under false pretenses. 

Bobby still felt betrayed, but he believed that Toby was who he said he was, and that he had been forced into carrying out the orders of his handlers.  Until now, Sarah and Bobby had been kept in the dark on some of the more dangerous aspects of what was going on, but now they were beginning to understand the true gravity of the situation.

They all continued talking with Toby right up until 6:00 a.m.  At about five past the hour Dodge cut the tape off of Toby’s right wrist and handed him the little ear piece that they found in the bag.
         “Okay, do what you have to.  If you say anything stupid I’m gonna zap you again so don’t try.”

Dodge put the taser against the back of Toby’s neck, all he had to do is push the button, and it be would ‘lights out’ all over again.  Toby put the ear piece in and turned it on.      

“T to 711, do you copy?”  They could only hear one side of the conversation.
         “Package is ready but not delivered, waiting for the right time.  Okay, T Out.” 

He removed the earpiece and turned it off.     

“There it’s done,” he said, “I don’t have to check in again until 3:00 p.m.  Sometime after that I’m supposed to go to my house.” 

Dodge thought for a second.     

“Where do you really go?”
         “Well, that house that you drop me off at, does have a man and woman there posing as my parents.  I don’t know who they really are, but they only take me there when I’m going to be picked up by you guys, or when I return.  As soon as I get there, they put a bag over my head and put me in the van in the garage.  Then they take me on a drive that last about ten minutes, where they pull inside a building.  It smells different inside like, um, I don’t know maybe, an old factory or machine shop or something, kind of like burnt oil.” 

Dodge thought for a minute.     

“It might be one of the old factories on the north side, there were several buildings of that type within a ten minute drive that he could think of. 
“I’ll have John check it out
.” 

It was time for some breakfast so they moved Toby downstairs to the kitchen table and only retied his feet with some rope instead of tape.  He didn’t complain about being tied up, in fact he was glad just to be alive and he figured at least he got to eat a hot home cooked breakfast, well maybe. 

Dodge was anxious for John to arrive to find out what he had up his sleeve.  It felt a little weird now that they knew this boy was actually an old man who had lived a whole other life.  This new information made Dodge wonder. 
“If they can clone people and load them up, why do they need anything from us?”

Dodge really hadn’t seen anything like this
coming, he certainly never thought they would use a mole in the body of a child to infiltrate his home, very diabolical minds. 

Toby’s undelivered
package, was a hack to the Kerrington’s new state of the art security system.  It was designed to take over one of the unused I/O channels  allowing Glitch direct access to the cameras, microphones, and other sensors, the hackers would have gained better access than anyone could imagine.  The new access would be far superior to any equipment the tail could install that ran on tiny power cells.

John arrived with a huge box in hand and rang the front door bell.  It was wrapped in brightly colored paper that said “Happy Birthday” all over it in bold lettering.  He even stuck a big ‘to/from’ tag on the box that could be easily read by watchers if they had even the most basic skills and equipment.