The Annihilation of Foreverland (23 page)

“Daniel Forrester,” he said. “Let’s see what you got.”

He touched the cover. The book opened. There were no words on pages, only the colors of raw data. He put his hand on it and knew.

I’m Daniel Forrester.

Daniel Forrester was born in
Gilbert
,
Arizona
.

A healthy boy and an only child. His parents were John and Maggy Forrester. They were both only children, as well. The grandparents all deceased. The only extended family was a great aunt that lived in
Rockford
,
Illinois
. She was in her eighties and suffering from dementia.

Ideal candidate,
it said
.

That’s what Danny was labeled, an ideal candidate for the program. He didn’t know if that referred to his health or the dementia. Or maybe the lack of extended family.

His father was
a
finish carpenter.

Memories emerged of his father coming home when it was dark. Danny would be parked in front of the television when his truck pulled into the driveway. His father smelled of sweat and cedar. Sometimes he’d lug his double-saddle tool belt into the house loaded with every tool ever invented and work on a project at home, fixing a doorframe or building a new room. He knew where every tool was located in the tool belt, finding it without looking. And when he was done, he always slipped it back where it belonged, without looking.

He was very good.

Until he fell from a roof and severed his spinal cord.

Danny was nine when it happened. He was on the computer in the attic when his mother took him to the neighbor’s house. She was crying and didn’t tell Danny anything. She didn’t come back to get him for three days. She didn’t talk much then, either.

His father died on the operating table.

Danny held her hand at the funeral. It was cold. When he squeezed, she didn’t squeeze back. Her eyes had become blank. No family attended, only neighbors and woodworkers. The house was very quiet that night.

His mother was not home much. She worked a lot. She had a prescription drug problem and washed it down with gin. She often never made it off the couch. This suited Danny’s lifestyle just fine.

Danny learned how to hack computers when he was six. It started with online games. He and his friends hacked Xbox and PlayStation databases, rewriting the code for unlimited weapons. They downloaded free music, movies, and games. Sometimes they had games before they were released.

By the time he was nine, it wasn’t even a challenge. After his father died, he stepped up the stakes.

They hacked into the school and planted porn in the principal’s inbox. They changed all the jocks’ grades to Fs. They set off fire alarms ten times in a month.

They hacked their first bank when he was 10.

They set up a dummy account with false ATM deposits. They never let the balance go over five hundred dollars and they never withdrew the money as cash, simply used it to pay for things online. Because his mother was never home, they had clothes, shoes, computers and software shipped directly to his house.

It was a parole officer that busted him.

Danny skipped school, sitting up in the attic on the computer for days at a time. The cops came to the house and wanted to speak to his mother. It pissed Danny off, so he swiped the officer’s identity, repossessed his car and foreclosed on his house. The man’s credit was trashed. They couldn’t prove he did anything.

He had all the money an 11 year old would want, but he wanted more. He began trolling
Las Vegas
casinos. At first, it was just jacking accounts and hacking online poker games. But the real money was in Vegas. His friends came over. It took a weekend and a case of Red Bull, but they managed to set up a dummy account with three million dollars and a penthouse timeshare waiting for them at the top of a resort. Their biggest problem was the fact that they were a bunch of eleven year olds.

But they ended up with bigger problems.

At first they thought they’d been discovered by Vegas security and they’d lose all the bones in their thumbs. They were relieved that it was just the FBI. They’d be in trouble, but at least they wouldn’t be hung from a hook through the tongue.

The
rest of them wanted to stop, but Danny wasn’t going to
lie
down. He planted a data bomb inside the FBI network and wiped it out. Their evidence disappeared. But not all of it.

They came to the door disguised as the UPS man dropping off another package. Danny answered the door in his sweatpants. They put him in the back of a black Suburban. His friends sat next to him.

He was back home by the time he was thirteen.

Despite the federal shadow watching his every move, he went back to his Vegas accounts and set up two more. He could retire when he turned eighteen.

That’s when the house burned down.

That’s when Danny’s life – as he knew it – ended.

Danny Forrester was acquired by Franklin Constantino.

The file said he’d been acquired by this man.

Acquired
.

Franklin Constantino made his money in real estate and other businesses. He had lung cancer and had not been seen in public for quite some time. Some reports stated he had died in a boating accident.

But Danny knew he wasn’t dead. Franklin Constantino stood in front of him as the record book projected his image before him.

Mr. Jones.

The house had burned down. The police found two bodies. One was a woman and the other was a boy. Each was beyond recognition but assumed to be the bodies of Danny and his mother. The fire started when she fell asleep on the couch and dropped a lit cigarette. Danny was asleep in the attic and couldn’t escape.

None of it was true.

He didn’t fall asleep in the attic. On the nights he did sleep, he went to his room. It was too cold upstairs and there was nowhere to lie down. But to the world, Danny was dead.

And there was no family left to care.

No family left to look.

Like the database at the Federal Bureau of Investigations, he had been erased from the world.

He had been
acquired
.

The record ended there.

No explanation how he got to the island. Only when he got there and who he belonged to.

Danny closed the book. It flew back to the shelf. So many books, each someone that had been acquired. And every one of them boys, each of them brought to the island, fed and cared for, each marched to the Haystack where they gladly stuck a needle in their head. Every one of them doing what they were told to do and the world would never know.

All of them following this trail to Foreverland. All of them but one.

[Reed…]
Danny thought-commanded.

The room shifted. One book came out, front and center.

Reed Johnston, born in
Wooster
,
Ohio
.

He was an only child, too. Grew up on a farm. His mother had died when she delivered him.

He was raised by his father. He stopped going to school before he
graduated
so that he could help with the crops.
Reed
planted the fields and helped harvest at the end of the season. He also cleaned out the bottles of vodka that rolled from beneath the seat. When his father went on a real bender, he’d be the only one in the fields. He was the one that answered the door when the creditors came knocking and he was the one that called the bank when they needed money for seed.

Reed didn’t socialize much. He wouldn’t talk to anyone at school except for a girl that sat behind him in most of his classes. Her name was Lucinda Jones.

Lucinda lived with her aunt and uncle and their twelve kids. They weren’t thrilled about it; they had enough mouths to feed. She was given custody to them when her father died serving in the military and her mother died of breast cancer two years later. Lucinda was only five.

She made plenty of trouble by the time she was ten.

Reed spent years watching her. He even went to church just to see her walk back from communion. He’d sit in the back row while his dad was sleeping off a long one and slip out before mass was over. But she knew he was watching.

She would meet him out in the field and they’d find the shade of a tree to sit and talk. She would sometimes sneak out after midnight and meet Reed waiting on the road in his father’s old pick-up. They would drive the deserted country roads and look at the stars until she fell asleep in his arms. He would take her home and help her back through the window.

There was no mention of Reed being an ideal candidate.

When Reed was seventeen, he finished the morning rounds. The tractor needed parts. He ate lunch before heading into town. When he got back, his father was still asleep. At supper, he finally checked on him, found him dead in his bed.

Reed didn’t bother calling an ambulance.

He buried his old man in the soybean field out behind the silo. No tombstone, no cross or words. He put him in the ground still wearing coveralls, his mouth slightly agape, and covered him with dirt. When he was done, he dropped the shovel and went inside and called Lucinda.

The next day, they were hundreds of miles away from home. Lucinda’s suitcase was in the back. Reed’s few belongings were in a paper sack. They were driving south. They didn’t know where, they were just going to drive until they felt like stopping. They wanted to get married but they’d have to find someone that would wed seventeen year olds without parental consent. There was always Vegas.

Their truck went off the road somewhere in
Oklahoma
. The bumper wrapped around an oak tree.

Both of them went through the windshield.

Reed survived. He saw her body next to a tree. She wasn’t moving. He tried to get to her, to help her, to breathe into her lungs, to touch her once more…

The record ended.

Reed Johnston was
acquired
.

And woke up on the island.

The Nowhere room was empty.

Lucinda wasn’t there when Danny returned from the Records. He was relieved. He considered staying in the Records until the round ended but it was too risky. Lucinda would know his thoughts the moment he arrived. She would know that she was dead.

Lucinda is a memory.

When Reed arrived on the island, somehow she slipped out of his memories and came to life in Foreverland. She didn’t know that she didn’t exist outside in the real world.

She thinks she’s alive. Does that make her real?

Did Reed know?

No, Reed was just as confused as she was. He dreamed of her, didn’t know her name. Only Danny knew they had a real past. He knew they had parents, they were real people before they woke up on the island. But their parents were gone. There was nothing left of their lives.

No one would look for them.

Danny drifted back to his body, back to the Haystack and cold reality. He sat up, groggily. The cells were open and empty. Reed was gone. Zin, too. A few Investors were standing outside his cell. They were looking across the
aisle
. They didn’t pay attention to Danny quickly getting dressed.

Two more Investors came inside with a stretcher. They placed it next to Sid. He was still lying flat on the floor. The Investors began to dress him. His eyes were open. His mouth, too.

“Let’s go, Danny Boy.” Mr. Jones reached for him. “There’s nothing to watch.”

Danny pulled his arm away.
Mr. Constantino.

“Come along, son.” Mr. Jones blocked the view into Sid’s cell. “Why don’t you get to your room and get some rest. This was a long round.”

“What happened to Sid?” Danny said.

“He just progressed a little faster than expected, nothing to worry about, son. Come along.”

Danny hurried into the
aisle
so that Mr. Jones wouldn’t touch him. He went to his room alone and looked across the Yard. A flatbed cart emerged from the trees. Someone was lying on the back of it, covered with a sheet and his Investor riding next to him. They went around the dormitory. Toward the Chimney.

You can stay here.

Lucinda pulled him into Foreverland, like she ripped his identity from his body.

Where was he now?

It didn’t matter.

A satellite would soon be punching a crater in the Mansion.

LAST

ROUND

Foster Parents Arrested for Neglect and Abuse

CHICAGO
,
Illinois
. – Cynthia and John Halner were arrested for neglect and physical abuse of twelve foster children living in their home. The Department of Child and Family Services investigated claims of children complaining at school about being punished with belt buckles, bamboo sticks and screwdrivers.