The Flinkwater Factor (20 page)

54

Unnatural Selection

The story Agent Ffelps told us later became front page news. I'm sure you've read about it. But just in case you've been in a coma for the past several weeks, allow me to explain.

A decade ago, around the time that ACPOD became the largest and most successful robotics, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence company on earth, Gilbert Bates had been happily married to an ACPOD researcher named Jenny Winedot. The couple had one child, a bright, cheerful three-year-old boy named Nigel, who disappeared one day. His disappearance led to the suicide of Jenny Winedot and the depression that had caused Gilbert Bates to abandon the company he had founded.

Until Agent Ffelps told us his story, young Nigel Bates was presumed to have drowned in the Raccoona River.

“This all happened while I was a junior agent for the Iowa branch of the DHS,” Agent Ffelps recounted. “Naturally, we kept close tabs on everything that happened in Flinkwater because ACPOD is a Department of Defense contractor. When one of the ACPOD executives and his wife decided to adopt a child, we monitored the process. George G. George was that executive, and the child he adopted was you.” Ffelps looked at Billy.

“I'm adopted?” Billy said. “You mean I'm not related to J.G.?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“Fantastic!” Billy looked delighted.

“You were formally adopted two months after Nigel Bates disappeared,” Ffelps said.

“Are you saying  . . . I'm Nigel Bates?”

Ffelps nodded.

“Nigel?”
Billy said.

“How can you possibly know this?” my father asked.

Ffelps's mouth curved into a prim, intensely irritating smile. “I know a great deal. George George was the vice president of ACPOD at the time. George has always been an ambitious man, and as long as Gilbert Bates was running ACPOD, George had no opportunity for advancement. For a man like George G. George, that was intolerable.

“George was part of the search party after Nigel's disappearance, and he found the boy, alive and well, sitting on a driftwood log on the bank of the river. Instead of returning Nigel to his parents, George G. George took the boy home and concealed him in his subbasement. I suspect that George simply wanted to punish Gilbert Bates. He probably only planned to hold the boy for a day or two before pretending to find him and making himself a hero. But once he saw how miserable Gilbert and Jenny had become, he decided to keep the boy for a while longer, purely out of spite. Then, when Jenny threw herself into the river and drowned, he saw a new opportunity. If Gilbert Bates, in his grief, was unable to perform his duties at ACPOD, he would have to step down, and George George would be promoted to president.

“So he made private arrangements to adopt a child. Using bogus papers and a crooked adoption service, he adopted Nigel, gave him the name Billy, and the rest you know.”

“How is it that no one recognized Nigel?” my father asked.

“They bleached his hair, for one thing.” He looked at Billy. “Have you ever wondered why your hair is blond in the photos of you as a toddler?”

“My mom said it got brown later,” Billy said.

Ffelps nodded. “Gilbert and Jenny were the
only two people who knew their child well, and they were both gone. By the time you were old enough to go to school, you looked different enough that no one who knew you as a three-year-old suspected your true identity.”

“When did you learn about this?” my father asked.

“Oh, I've known it all along. We monitored the adoption, and I saw right away that the boy was the Bates boy.”

“And you didn't tell anybody?”

“It wasn't a security issue. Also, I thought it might be a piece of information that would come in handy some day. And it did.” He frowned. “Although I must admit that the end result is not what I would have hoped.”

“How did Josh Stevens become involved?”

“I'd been doing private work for Stevens for years. Mostly I just let him know what was going on at ACPOD—shipping manifests, movement of executives, presentations to the Pentagon, and so forth. Last year I traded him my information about Nigel Bates in exchange for a boat.”

“A boat?” Billy said.

“It is a very nice boat,” said Agent Ffelps proudly. “A twenty-nine foot Amberjack with twin diesels. Sleeps two.” His face fell. “I suppose now I'll have to sell it to pay my defense lawyer.”

“What did Josh Stevens do with that information?”

“He spoke with George G. George, I imagine. A few months later George ordered a special shipment of D-Monix tablets for all the ACPOD engineers and their families. You know the rest.”

55

Back to Normal—for Flinkwater, That Is.

The video of that interview, along with a signed confession by Agent Ffelps, went out within the hour to my uncle Ashton, who made sure it was instantly picked up by all the major news organizations. Uncle Ashton is good at things like that. And I'm sure you know what happened next: splash page on all the news sites, congressional hearings, the media circus. There was even a short-lived boycott of D-Monix tablets, but that didn't last. As I've said before, D-Monix tabs rock—even without the infrasonics.

George G. George avoided prison by testifying against Josh Stevens. George was put on probation. He now works on Elwin Hogg's pig farm.

Former DHS agent Franklin Foster Ffelps spent a few months in prison, but was released
on a work program. He is now employed as a janitor for ACPOD and reports directly to my mother, who has been happily making his life as miserable as possible.

Josh Stevens fled the country to seek asylum in Venezuela, where he is now the National Director of Cyber-security. D-Monix has been taken over by McDonald's and has shifted its business model to the production of interactive talking hamburgers—a big hit with the preschool crowd.

Gilbert Bates was reinstated as the president and CEO of ACPOD, and of course my parents got their jobs back.

The DHS, badly embarrassed by the whole fiasco, has withdrawn from Flinkwater, except for the TSA agents at the airport, who continue to confiscate dangerous contraband such as baby bottles and plastic butter knives.

One of the first things Gilly did when he took back the reins at ACPOD was to dismantle the animal research program and turn the Area 51 building into a free walk-in veterinary and adoption clinic. Myke volunteers there on weekends.

Professor Little married his fiancée, Hillary, and opened a mole-removal clinic in St. Petersburg, Florida, the world capital of unsightly moles.

J.G., after his brief stint as the most popular boy in Flinkwater, and after “heroically” engineering
the jailbreak that allowed us to defeat the forces of evil, slipped back into his old ways. While visiting his father at Elwin Hogg's farm, he was caught in the act of spray-painting Garganchewous, Elwin's prize boar, with lime-green and pink graffiti. Elwin was understandably upset, as he had planned to sell the enormous pig at a breeders' auction that week. Instead of letting J.G. off with a stern warning, he called the FBI and told them he had captured an agricultural terrorist. J.G. and his mother were forced to leave town. I hear J.G. is now conducting his reign of terror in a small town west of Omaha, Nebraska.

Redge the talking dog became famous when Gerald Ruff put him online to advertise his roofing business. The video went viral, and “Ruff! Roof!” became a catchphrase. Last I heard, Gerald had hired sixty new employees and was doing roofing jobs from Dubuque to Council Bluffs.

Dipwad the talking monkey remains at large and was last seen in the snack aisle at the Economart tearing into a bag of peanuts and calling the employees “stinky no-tails.”

As for Billy, he's moved in with his real dad, Gilly. But he didn't actually move. Billy did not wish to give up his subbasement hideaway, so Gilly bought the house from the Georges and moved in. Also, Billy insists on keeping the name Billy.

“Who names their kid
Nigel
?” he asked—but he didn't say it in front of his father.

Other than that, our lives returned to what passes for normal in Flinkwater: lots of boring stuff interrupted from time to time by moments of terror.

For example, just last week, on my fourteenth birthday, I walked over to Billy's and found him standing stock still in his backyard. He saw me coming and said, barely moving his mouth, “Do not move.”

I did not move.

He rolled his eyes up and to the right. I followed his glance and saw a black, disk-shaped object hovering fifteen feet off the ground.

“Seeker-killer drone,” he said through his teeth.

That sounded ominous, to put it mildly. Had Josh Stevens sent a drone assassin all the way from Venezuela to kill us?

“What do we do?” I said, imitating Billy's clenched-jaw speaking style.

The drone rotated, then sank slowly to head height and moved toward me. I stared at it like a deer hypnotized by oncoming headlights. A small tube telescoped from the disk, pointing directly at my face. In that moment I was certain I was about to die, and I had never been kissed.

Billy yelled and jumped up and down, waving
his arms. The drone spun and fired. Billy's chest blossomed blood red; he staggered back and fell.

I screamed. The drone, having successfully performed its task, fell to the ground. I ran to Billy and threw my arms around him, sobbing hysterically as he gasped his final gasp.

Of course, it was not really his final gasp.

“Gin, you're choking me!” he gasped again.

“You're alive!” I exclaimed unnecessarily.

“It's just red paint,” he said, sitting up. “I borrowed the drone from the ACPOD test labs and loaded it with mini paintballs.”

I punched him on the shoulder, hard.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“For scaring me. I thought you were dead.”

“Well, I'm not.” He stood up.

“Are you getting taller?” I asked.

He smiled. “A little. I think I'm having a growth spurt.”

That was when I kissed him.

There was a moment when I thought I might have made a mistake. Our lips mashed together, and at first it was like all the kissing was happening on my end.

And then he kissed me back.

Science or Fantasy?

The Flinkwater Factor
is science fiction. That can mean a story with lots of “sciency” things in it, or a sciency story with lots of fiction. This book has both. Many of the inventions in the book are either real or will be soon. Some are possible but unlikely. And some are flat-out fantasy. Here are a few of them.

Chapter 1 •
DustBots

The DustBot is fictional, but it's really just a fancy, semi-intelligent, self-propelled vacuum cleaner—like a smartphone compared to an electric typewriter. Science!

Chapter 3 •
Gyroscopic unicycle (WheelBot)

Powered unicycles that hold themselves upright are real. You could buy one today. Science!

Chapter 7 •
Dial phones

Yes, as ridiculous as it may seem, dial phones are real. They were found in nearly every household as recently as thirty years ago. Retro science!

Chapter 8 •
Subliminal messaging

Advertisers have experimented with inserting subliminal messages into movies, television, and print ads. Do such messages work? Not very well, according to most studies. Sciency!

Chapter 9 •
Corpus callosum

The corpus callosum is real—it's a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the left and right halves of the brain. Science!

Chapter 9 •
Positronium gamma-ray laser

It could be a real thing soon. Science!

Chapter 10 •
Poopnet

Fantasy! I hope. Nobody wants a stinky Internet connection.

Chapter 11 •
Projac

Wireless electric stun guns that can operate over a distance are not real—yet. But wait a few more years. Science!

Chapter 11 •
Smart-O-Rang

Kind of like a futuristic high-tech Nerf ball. I'm sure it will be invented any day now. Science!

Chapter 12 •
The WDK Factor: Do computers ever make mistakes?

Yes, and no. Errors in computer output can always be traced back to errors in hardware or software construction or design. If your computer tells you that 2+2=5, the answer is wrong, but it's not the computer's fault—somewhere along the line, a human being messed up. Science!

Chapter 13 •
Electroconvulsive therapy

Electric shock treatments are still used today to help people with serious depression and certain other ailments. Science!

Chapter 16 •
Talking dogs

As any dog owner knows, dogs do have thoughts, and they do communicate. So do lizards and octopuses. A device that turns a dog's electrical brain activity into human speech is already being developed by a company in Sweden. How well does it work? No idea! Sciency!

Chapter 21 •
Cybernetics

In 1948 scientist Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics as the “scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine.” Today the term covers a very broad range of scientific endeavors. Science!

Chapter 21 •
The Uncanny Valley

Robotics professor Masahiro Mori coined the term “Uncanny Valley” back in 1970. It describes the way people react to a robot that looks creepily human. Science!

Chapter 23 •
Sasquatch

Tales of hairy, manlike creatures have been told for thousands of years. In the Himalayas it is called the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman. In the Pacific Northwest it is called Sasquatch, or Bigfoot. Are these creatures real? Probably not, but who knows?

Chapter 31 •
Grey Goo

Nanotechnology is real, but we're still a long way from self-replicating mole-removing nanobots. As for “grey goo,” who knows? Science!

Chapter 35 •
Computer-assisted hydrogen-fiber waldoes

Waldoes are mechanical “hands” controlled by a human operator moving his or her real hands. Waldoes were first described and named by sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein back in 1942. Today the term waldo is sometimes used to describe many types of remote-control devices, such as those used in microsurgery. But waldoes small enough to manipulate molecules do not exist  . . . yet. Science!

Chapter 42 •
Infrasonics

Whales and elephants and other animals really do communicate using low frequency sounds that humans can't hear, and there is evidence that such sounds cause anxiety and discomfort in humans, even though they are not consciously perceived. Science!

Chapter 47 •
The Flinkwater Factor

When a bunch of smart, geeky people get together, lots of smart, geeky things happen. It happened during the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, and it's happening right now at Apple, Google, and other high-tech companies. Science!