Ms. Johnson doesn’t seem to hear her. She turns back to me and squeezes my hand. “Your father’s a wonderful man, Adam. He’s a blessing from God. He’s going to work miracles. For you and for Shannon and for my DeShawn.”
Her bloodshot eyes are glistening. It looks like she’s going to cry. This makes me even more uncomfortable, but at the same time I notice something interesting. Ms. Johnson seems to be a religious woman, and yet she isn’t horrified by the Pioneer Project. She thinks it’s a miracle, like something from the Bible. So maybe there’s hope for my mother. Maybe I should ask Ms. Johnson to talk to her.
She finally lets go of my hand and points at her son. “Would you like to talk to DeShawn?”
“Uh, isn’t he sleeping?”
“No, it just looks that way. He’s awake.” Ms. Johnson gets behind my wheelchair and pushes it next to DeShawn’s bed. “He can’t talk, but he can hear what you’re saying. And I’ve already told him all about you.” Once my wheelchair is in place, she takes a step backward to give us some privacy.
For a few seconds I just stare at DeShawn’s face. His mouth is open, but there’s no whistle of breath between his lips because the ventilator is pumping the air straight to his lungs. His cheeks are slack and his closed eyelids are motionless. Looking at him scares me but I lean toward him anyway, straining against my wheelchair’s straps.
“Hey, DeShawn. How are you?”
No response. I doubt he’s awake. It looks like he’s in a deep coma. But even if DeShawn can’t hear me, I want to say something hopeful. Maybe more for my benefit than for his.
“Listen, we’re gonna beat this thing. We’re not gonna let it kill us.” I feel so awkward. I sound like a football coach giving a pep talk to his team. But I don’t know what else to say. “My dad’s a smart guy, and if he says the procedure will work, I believe him. So I’m gonna go ahead and scout the path, all right? And then you’re gonna follow me. We’re gonna make this work, DeShawn.”
I’m embarrassed. What I just said sounds ridiculous. Worse, I don’t believe it. I’m just pretending to be brave.
But then I hear a rustling noise. I look down at the bed and see something moving under the sheet. It’s DeShawn’s right hand.
Ms. Johnson jumps forward and pulls the sheet aside. “He can still move that hand a little. Watch this.”
At first it looks like his hand is just twitching. But ever so slowly his thumb starts to rise. After a few seconds it’s vertical. DeShawn is giving me a thumbs-up.
“You see?” Ms. Johnson is cheering, ecstatic. “He heard you!”
I feel like cheering too. DeShawn’s not pretending. It’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.
That night the Pioneer Base soldiers assign me to my own room on the floor, number 101. Then an Army sergeant comes into my room with an electric razor in his hand. He says he needs to shave my head to prepare me for tomorrow’s procedure.
The haircut takes less than five minutes. With practiced ease the sergeant guides the razor across my scalp while I sit in my wheelchair. After he shaves off all my hair, another soldier comes into the room to deliver my last meal—a bowl of clear broth and a couple of slices of white bread. For medical reasons the meal has to be bland, which really sucks. I was hoping for a great last meal, like what a death-row prisoner gets before his execution. The soldier watches me eat to make sure I don’t choke.
My room is pretty big, like DeShawn’s. It has a hospital bed and a heart monitor, and also a flat-screen TV on the wall. After I finish my last meal, the soldier hands me a remote control and points at the TV screen. “You can watch a video if you want,” he says. “Just press the index button and a list of movies will come onscreen.”
“What about Comedy Channel?”
“Sorry, we don’t have any television channels. Just the videos.”
“No TV? You don’t have cable out here?”
“Pioneer Base has no cable connections. No TV, no Internet, no phone lines. It’s part of our security. We’re protected by an air gap. You know what that means?”
I roll my eyes. Of course I know. It means the base has no electronic links to the outside world. Now that I think about it, I realize it’s a sensible precaution. Sigma used the Internet to escape from the Unicorp lab and infect the computers at Tatishchevo Missile Base in Russia. And the AI may try to attack Pioneer Base next. Judging from its actions at Unicorp, Sigma is clearly aware of the Pioneer Project and recognizes it as a threat. That’s why the AI tried to kill me. So I’m relieved to hear that the base is off the electronic grid.
“Where’s my dad?” I ask the soldier. “I haven’t seen him in hours.”
“He’s still with General Hawke, but they should be done soon.” The soldier collects the remains of my dinner, then heads for the door. “Just relax and watch a video until he comes back. You’ll have some time to talk to him before lights out at twenty-two hundred hours. That’s military time for ten o’clock.”
The soldier leaves the room. Frowning, I yell, “I know what military time is!” as the door closes behind him.
I press the index button on the remote control, but the selection of videos is dismaclass="underline" Cats & Dogs, Mars Needs Moms, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and a dozen other old clunkers. I’m not sure I can watch a movie anyway. In less than twelve hours the Army doctors are going to inject hundreds of trillions of nanoprobes into my skull and scan my head with pulses of radiation that will record the positions of the tiny gold spheres—and, oh yeah, fry my brain cells too. When you’re facing something like that, it’s kind of hard to keep your mind on a movie about singing chipmunks.
Shivering, I drop the remote control in my lap. I want Dad to come back now, immediately. I need to talk to him again about the procedure, about the details of the nanoprobes and the scanner and the robots. I turn my wheelchair toward the door and stare it as hard as I can. Using the full power of my mind, all the thoughts and feelings that will soon be converted into data, I try to will my father into appearing.
In my mind’s eye I picture Dad opening the door and stepping into the room. I can see it so clearly—his tired face, his unkempt hair, his strong, veined hands. And a moment later, as if responding to my wish, someone opens the door. But it’s not Dad. It’s the boy with the huge, deformed head, the kid I saw two days ago in the Pioneer Base auditorium.
My chest tightens. The kid didn’t even knock; he just waltzed right in. I open my mouth, ready to yell “Hey!” in the loudest voice I can muster, but then he turns around to face someone I can’t see, someone who’s apparently standing just outside the doorway. “Come on,” he whispers. “He’s in here.” Then the tall girl with the green Mohawk follows him into my room and closes the door behind her.
I can’t help but gape. She’s even more beautiful than I’d remembered. She has two silver rings in her left eyebrow and three more dangling from her earlobe. Just above her left ear is her snake tattoo, a sinuous cobra showing its fangs on her bare scalp. Her eyes are a gorgeous brown, a shade darker than her chocolate-milk skin, but as I stare at them, she scowls and turns away. She takes an interest in the flat-screen TV, squinting at it suspiciously.
Meanwhile, the boy approaches my wheelchair. Seeing him up close is disconcerting. His head is so large I can’t believe his neck can support it. His skull is mottled with bony, hairless knobs, and his massive jaw juts down to his chest. His mouth hangs permanently open, exposing his crooked yellow teeth.
“Sorry I didn’t knock,” he says. “I didn’t want to make any noise. This base apparently has a curfew and we’re not supposed to leave our rooms.” He holds out his right hand. It’s grotesquely oversized, like a flesh-colored baseball glove. “I’m Marshall Baxley. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”