“Not even a dog or a cat. Or me either,” Lex chimes in, wrapping up leftovers.
“He understands,” she cuts her eyes at him, nodding. “My boy knows what he lives with, and I know that’s hard. He lost adoring parents, then ends up with his boring Nonna who turns into a prickly pear wrapped in a space blanket. But we get along fine. Or we were until he got accused of a crime.”
“I’m going to need that thumb drive,” I remind him. “Then I’ve got to get going,” and I give Nonna my card, telling her to call me anytime.
Placing neatly wrapped packages of leftovers inside the refrigerator, Lex wipes the counter with a sponge. He dries his hands on a dish towel, draping it over the edge of the counter to dry.
“We’ll be back in a minute,” he lets his grandmother know, her living quarters at one end of the trailer, his at the other.
I follow him past his tiny bathroom with its plastic fixtures, into his cramped bedroom with its twin bed covered by a colorful space-themed blanket. The desk is just big enough to fit his laptop, a printer, the wireless router. His bicycle leans against the dresser, and on top is a photo of him when he was much younger, at an observatory with a smiling couple, his parents I’m sure, both of them redheads.
He’s made his bleak surroundings cozier and more attractive, covering the gift-paper-shrouded window and vinyl wall paneling with art printed on copying paper. The dozens of mathematically inspired works he no doubt found on the internet, da Vinci, Escher and Dürer etchings, and Pacioli woodcuts, in addition to posters he’s been given at NASA.
“It’s in here,” Lex opens the door to a shallow closet, standing on his tiptoes, reaching for a shoebox on the shelf. “May not look like the safest place,” he removes the lid. “But I didn’t think it mattered as much as it does. And there’s really no good place to hide things around here.”
He hands over the thumb drive, and I zip it up inside a jacket pocket, asking again about the game he calls Helmet Fire.
“I’m going to need to see it,” I tell him as Fran texts that she’s in her car, headed in this direction, a little earlier than I told her, and that’s typical as impatient as she is.
“There’s a copy on the thumb drive,” Lex replies, and I look him in the eye, reminding him I’ve got to go in a minute. “And don’t you wander back to where we just were. Don’t show up to check out what we’re doing, you hear me?” sounding like Mom again.
“Why can’t you take me with you?” he says, not wanting me to go, I can tell. “I know how to be helpful.”
“Thank you but no.”
“I promise not to get in the way.”
“It’s not happening,” I walk toward the doorway. “You’re to stay home tucked in safe and sound with your grandmother. That’s how you can be most helpful.”
“Wait!” he demands, his eyes flashing. “You can’t just leave like that,” his cheeks are turning red, his lower lip trembling. “I don’t have a way to get hold of you. What’s going to happen? Who do I talk to? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he says, reminding me of how I felt earlier when Dick left me alone with ART at Dodd Hall.
“You’re going to be all right, Lex. I’m giving you my cell number,” I recite it to him. “You can call or text.”
If anything unusual happens, I want to know right away, I let him know as we return to the living room. Nonna has wheeled herself into the bathroom, and the door is shut, water running in the sink.
“Tell your grandmother I said good night,” I add, and I probably shouldn’t hug him but I do. “You know where to find me, Lex, even if you’re just uneasy and want to talk. If for some reason you can’t get me, you can call the emergency number. Or if all else fails, you call Deputy Chief Lacey.”
“She’s not all that nice.”
“She’ll take care of you, I promise,” I reply. “You behave, you hear? Remember I’ve got eyes on you,” pointing at his eyes and mine, and suddenly the car alarm goes off in my Tahoe as the engine roars to life.
“That’s weird,” and out the door I go.
My boots make a gritty sound as I walk down the makeshift wheelchair ramp, and I tell ART to turn off the car alarm and unstick the accelerator, and he does.
“What caused that?” I ask.
“An off-nominal command.”
“In other words, a bug in the software,” I reply, lifting my right hand in the dark, giving my digital signal to unlock the doors as the air stirs overhead like a frantic gust of wind.
Then it happens again, and looking around, I see nothing out of the ordinary, just quiet cars parked in front of snowy lots. Windows are lit up in the surrounding homes, and headlights move on the highway. The few small trees along Lex’s street rustle gently, the temperature well above freezing, and climbing into my SUV, I feel sad, a little tired and empty as I reach for my backpack.
Taking my PEEPS off the top of my head, I place them inside their plastic case. ART turns on all the displays, my cockpit lit up like Times Square, in audiovisual mode again now that we no longer have company.
25
“AN UPDATE on Ranger, please?” I ask.
“L-O-C. No longer transmitting data,” ART says.
His soothing androgynous voice through the Tahoe’s speakers is music to my ears even if his news is bad, and I realize I’ve missed talking to him out loud these past few hours.
“We can’t control our prototyped Aerial Internet Ranger, and he’s not talking to us,” I summarize. “Well it doesn’t get much worse than that,” I decide, driving off. “Do we have a location?”
“The transponder beacon has been picked up intermittently and erratically, suggesting the device is damaged. Possibly crashed,” ART says.
“But we should be able to lock in on the coordinates for where it is in real time.”
“The data is inconsistent,” he repeats. “The device is moving erratically.”
“It’s moving?” I puzzle. “At what speeds and altitudes?”