“Yeah,” Kyle said. “It’s him.” He crouched down next to his old foe. A shiver ran through him as he remembered — mere weeks ago in his personal timeline — thrashing his way through a small army of look-alike MadDroids in order to finally turn the brain-wave manipulator on his enemy and end Ultitron’s rampage through Bouring.
And to save Mairi …
Kyle sighed. He’d been forced to wear the Mad Mask’s mask, and when he’d taken it off, Mairi had seen …
“He’s older than the last time we saw him,” Kyle went on, tamping down the memories. “And he looks terrible. Underfed. Exhausted. He must be from some point in our future.”
“This is getting ridiculous,” Erasmus complained. “Is everybody a freaking time traveler?”
Kyle chuckled. “I should have realized it the first time Lundergaard used that force field against me — it’s the exact same force field the Mad Mask used.”
“Kyle, if this is the Mad Mask, then you can’t trust him. You need to —”
“He’s been chained up in a dungeon by Lundergaard for who knows how long. Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’?”
“Yes. I’ve also heard the expression ‘There is no honor among thieves.’”
“Well, I —” Kyle broke off as Jack mumbled something and then woke up as if he’d been set on fire, jerking into a sitting position and nearly ripping the cornstalk out of the ground.
“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” the Mad Mask screamed. “Don’t hurt me! Don’t …” He stopped, looking up. “The stars …” he whispered in amazement. “I’m outside….”
“Jack.” Kyle took the Mad Mask’s chin and turned his face so that their eyes met. “Jack, listen to me. How long have you been chained up in there? What was he doing to you?”
The Mad Mask blinked once, very slowly, then several more times, very quickly. It was as though something deep within him had broken and was now repairing itself. “Kyle?” he asked after a long moment of silence. “Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me. But how did you get so old?”
The Mad Mask laughed, his head thrown back, and for just a second or two, Kyle thought he detected some of the old bravado of the enemy he’d once known. But it faded quickly, replaced by the new, humbled, broken man before him.
“That’s funny,” Jack said. “I was about to ask you how you got so young. But it must be the time travel, right? We’re both in the same time period right now, but we’re both from different time periods. Right?”
Kyle nodded.
“So I’m from your future.”
Kyle nodded again.
Jack took a deep breath. “I think I need something to eat. It feels like it’s been years. And then, oh, boy, have I got a story for you….”
Kyle felt bad about doing it, but the Mad Mask did seem to be starving — Kyle thought he could see Jack’s ribs right through the holes in his old, ripped-up shirt — so he moved at superspeed and snagged a sandwich, a soda, and a couple of bags of chips from a convenience store on Major Street. The convenience store itself was no longer around in Kyle’s time — it was a bank — and he wondered if the mysterious disappearance of some of its inventory back in 1987 had contributed to it going out of business.
Jack tore into the sandwich as if he’d been starved for days. And maybe he had been.
“How long has Lundergaard been holding you like that?” Kyle asked.
“Pretty much since we got here,” Jack said around a mouthful.
“How long have you been here in 1987?” Kyle asked.
“1987?” Jack almost choked on his food. “It’s 1987? We’ve been here years, then. It’s been so long and I’ve been locked up, but I know it was much earlier than that when we arrived.”
Kyle swallowed hard, as if trying to gulp down a steel ball. Years? He’d been trapped in the past for a day or so and it was already driving him nuts. How could anyone have tolerated being in the past for so long … and being locked up and tortured and made a slave on top of all that?
“Lundergaard has a lot to answer for,” Kyle said.
Jack nodded knowingly. “He’s some sort of … He’s some kind of time-traveling bandit,” he said. “I don’t know where in the timestream he comes from, to be honest. At this point, maybe he doesn’t even remember anymore. I don’t know. He’s crazy, so who can tell? At first I thought I could trust him. He said …” Jack shook his head. “I should start from the beginning. Or my beginning at least.”
“In my future,” Kyle said.
“Yes.”
“This is crazy,” Erasmus said.
“Be quiet and listen,” Kyle scolded.
Jack grinned. “Talking to Erasmus, huh? Hey there, Erasmus.”
Kyle had almost forgotten — in his own time, the Mad Mask had learned about the existence of Erasmus. And now — at some point in his future — he would let Walter Lundergaard in on the secret, too. Why?
“I’m not talking to him,” Erasmus said. “I don’t trust him. His superpower to make electronics do whatever he wants is dangerous to me.”
“He probably doesn’t trust me,” the Mad Mask said, even though he couldn’t hear what was in Kyle’s earbud. Or could he? Did his power let him eavesdrop on Erasmus’s digital voice?
“Just tell me what happened,” Kyle said. “Tell me how you got here.” Because maybe that will help me get home.
Jack nodded. He looked down at the sandwich as though he didn’t know what it was, as though it had turned into a hamster in his hands. Kyle realized that Jack had been stalling — he didn’t want to talk about the future. He didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to forget everything that had led him to this moment.
And maybe part of that is my fault. After all, I did erase part of his memory with the brain-wave manipulator. Kyle shivered with guilt. Was this broken man in front of him the result of the brain-wave manipulator? If so, what fates awaited his parents?
What would happen to Mairi?
“There was a battle …” Jack began, his eyes haunted. He stopped himself, blinked one supremely slow, endless blink, then shook his head. “A war,” he emended. “There was a war. Will be a war, I guess, is the right way to put it. In the future. Your future.”
“There’s always wars —”
“No. This one is …” Jack paused to think. “There was you. And me. And Mike, of course. And the Giggler —”
“The Giggler?”
“Never mind. He doesn’t matter. You won’t meet him for a while. But there was Lundergaard, obviously, and it was all tied up in the Heroes’ Club and the secrecy and —” He babbled on and on, his words slurring together as he spoke, as though he had to speak them as quickly as possible. Kyle finally reached out and took his hand to guide him back into the moment, into the real and the now.
“Jack, talk to me. What’s going on here?”
“I … I don’t know how much of it I can tell you. Time paradoxes …”
“Forget about time paradoxes. Just focus. Tell me how you got to 1987.”
The Mad Mask nodded. “Okay. Right. During the war … Let’s just say there was a betrayal, okay? And Lundergaard and I ended up thrown back in time. Together. And he swore he’d get us back to the present, but then …”
“Another betrayal,” Kyle guessed.
Jack sighed. “Yeah. He was obsessed with my superpower. And it made sense — he was a genius. He is a genius. So I listened to him and I did what he told me to do. I thought it would get us home. At first it was just, like, ‘Help me get this computer running, Jack.’ ‘See if you can make this laser more powerful, Jack.’ ‘Make this toaster generate a Wi-Fi signal, Jack.’ But the next thing I knew, he’d had me create a gadget that gave him control over me….”
“And then used you to create more gadgets.”
“Yep.”
Kyle sat back on his haunches, thinking.
“You can’t trust him,” Erasmus said. “He’s in
sane. Remember Ultitron? Remember how he kidnapped Mairi?”
“That was a long time ago,” Kyle murmured, hoping Jack couldn’t hear.
“It was only a couple of weeks ago!”
“To us. To him, it was years ago. More than fifteen, from the looks of him.”
Jack opened one of the bags of chips and pawed around inside it. “You don’t trust me, do you?” he asked idly, as if unoffended by the idea.
“You have to admit —”
“I did some crazy stuff to you when we were kids,” Jack admitted. “I don’t blame you for being suspicious.”
“Well, there’s that,” Kyle said, “and also, since the time travel, my brain’s been kind of on the fritz —”
“Don’t tell him that!” Erasmus cried.
“— so I’m thinking extra hard about things.”
Jack frowned. “Your brain …? Oh, right. I remember now. I remember you telling me how the first time you traveled through time, it affected your intelligence. I can fix that.”
“What?” Kyle and Erasmus said at the same time.
“Sure. Piece of cake.” The Mad Mask dropped the chips and scrounged around the spare parts Kyle had strewn around the chronovessel. He started snapping pieces together, humming a little under his breath as he did so.
“What are you doing?” Kyle asked.
“Just building a little gadget that will restore your intellect. It’s easy. Remember: The electronics don’t actually have to work. My superpower makes them work.” He brandished his device, a motley collection of twisted wires, screws, bolts, and a single burned-out circuit board.
“That won’t do —” Kyle stopped speaking as Jack’s brow furrowed, his mouth tightened in a thin line….
And the device flared to life! A burst of light erupted from the dead circuitry and zapped Kyle right between the eyes. He jerked back, but there was no pain.
It must have been an electrical neuron burst piggybacked on a neutrino carrier wave, he thought. That could pass through me harmlessly and still —
“I have some good news,” Kyle announced to Erasmus. His memory of Wikipedia was nearly complete now, and when he glanced at the sky, he found that not only could he identify each star, but he could also remember when it had been discovered and by whom. “My thoughts are more complicated. I think my superbrain is back online.”
“Great. Use that superbrain to figure out if we can trust the Mad Mask. I doubt it, though.”
Kyle looked over at his old nemesis, who looked twice as exhausted now. “Sorry,” Jack whispered. “He’s been pushing me so hard lately … I just need some rest….”
He started to lie back down in the corn, but Kyle couldn’t let him crash on the cold ground again. “Hang on, Jack.” He gathered up the Mad Mask in his arms and took to the night sky.
Soon, they were in the backyard of the Camden house. Kyle scouted quickly and when he was sure no one was looking, he darted into the tree house. The sleeping bag was still there, and he tucked Jack into it.
“Thanks, Kyle,” the Mad Mask mumbled. “You’re a good friend….”
Kyle watched him drift off into a smooth and untroubled sleep.
A good friend … to my enemy? Maybe. But what about to Mairi? I have to make up to her what I did. Somehow. I have to get back to my time.
Kyle eyed Erasmus’s power reading. He’d been able to charge up the iPod during the day, but his battery power was pretty low again. “Let me fill you up. Then we’ll see what we can do now that my brain is back online.”
Dressed in his father’s hand-me-downs, Kyle headed back into town and looked for a twenty-four-hour gas station or convenience store. Only … no such thing existed in Bouring in 1987, it seemed. The place where he’d swiped Jack’s sandwich and chips was now closed and dark. So he went back to the junior high, since he knew he could get in. In the Attendance office, he plugged Erasmus into the wall and waited as he charged, strumming his fingers on the keyboard to the ancient computer.
“I bet I know what you’re thinking,” Erasmus said.
“Given that our brains are nearly identical, that’s a pretty bad bet for me to take.”
“You’re wondering if Jack’s superpower could fix the chronovessel.”
Kyle shrugged. The movement was lost on Erasmus, but sometimes you just need a good shrug. “I don’t know. I wasn’t really wondering it. I was more thinking in that direction.”
“I don’t trust —”
“It’s a moot point. He’s so weak and his power takes so much out of him that I doubt he could handle something that big at this point. And besides, he’d need to make a —” He broke off and sat up straight. “Hey, Erasmus!”
“Yes?”
“We need a supercomputer to run the chronovessel, right?”
“Right.”
“What if we had a supercomputer, but it was really big, not really small?”
Erasmus pondered. “How big?”
“As big as the world,” Kyle said, grinning.
Kyle’s fingers pounded the keyboard before him, bringing the computer to life.
“Kyle, what are you talking about?” Erasmus demanded. “A computer as big as the world won’t fit in the chronovessel.”
“It doesn’t need to!” Kyle exclaimed. “We just need the computing power, not the computer itself. If I can calculate all the possible vectors and odds of our trip, I can preload them into the system before we leave. It’ll be slower, but we should be able to make it!”
“That won’t work! First of all, it’s too slow. It’s like counting from one to a million by ones instead of by thousands. And second of all, you don’t have a supercomputer to begin with.”
“Yes, I do! It’s called the Internet.”
“The Internet doesn’t exist —”
“— yet,” Kyle finished. “Yet. But all of the infrastructure is there. You said it yourself. There are 56 Kbps backbones in place. Military and government and academic networks already connected. It’s just a matter of getting them to talk to one another.”
“But they don’t know one another!”
“It doesn’t matter!” Kyle crowed. “Have you ever heard of six degrees of separation?” Before Erasmus could say, “Of course I have,” Kyle went on, typing as he spoke. Talking through this out loud helped him.
“Six degrees of separation is a theory that everyone on Earth is interconnected, that I know someone who knows someone who knows someone else and three more someones in the chain until you can reach any other person on the planet. The president, the pope, the guy who washes cars in New Zealand. Anyone.
“This computer is just sitting here in this office,” Kyle went on, “but it knows the county school board computer.” At the Main Menu, he typed C for County. “Now I’m logging into the county computer. And the county computer knows the state board of education computer. And that computer knows a bunch of other computers. And eventually one of them — one of them is all it takes — will know a university computer. And that computer knows a bunch of other university computers, and one of those computers will know a military computer because the military does a lot of work with colleges. Get it?”
“Kyle … the security …”
Kyle laughed. “What security? Computer security is a joke in this era.” He typed furiously. “I just hacked into the governor’s computer from the state board of education. Computer viruses barely even exist at this point. No one’s even really seen a dangerous Trojan horse. And encryption is weak, weak, weak!”
Kyle kept typing, connecting to more and more and bigger and bigger computers out there in the world. “I’m hacking the entire Internet!” he chortled. “This is the greatest prank ever!”
“You’re not hacking the Internet,” Erasmus whispered. “You’re inventing it.”
Around the country — and then around the world — computers began misbehaving. No one knew why. No one could figure it out. It seemed to be a hacker attack, but on a scale no one could imagine ?
?? it would have to be thousands of hackers, all working at the same time….
Or one superintelligent twelve-year-old with all the knowledge of the next few decades.
In missile silos in Nebraska, soldiers panicked as they lost control of their systems. Banks in Switzerland were suddenly unable to calculate balances. In Moscow, airlines shut down as their computerized control systems began calculating physics problems that no one could understand.
There was no Internet in 1987, but that didn’t mean Kyle couldn’t create one for himself.
There was only one problem: It wasn’t enough.
Even with all the processing power of thousands of computers around the world, Kyle couldn’t attain his goal. The systems were too weak, their connections too tenuous and slow. It was like swimming in tar. By the time one computer was ready to hand off its conclusions to another, the next computer in the chain was just coming online due to slow data transmission speeds. Kyle tried to compensate, but nothing he did worked. He could type at his top speed and it didn’t matter — the computer in front of him could only receive those keystrokes so quickly. Kyle was too fast for it. Too fast for the slow data backbones.
Too fast and, paradoxically, too late.
There was nothing he could do.
He’d failed.
Kyle slumped in the chair, not moving. He didn’t know how much time had gone by. It felt like days — like weeks — but the sky was only now beginning to lighten to the east, so he knew it had only been a few hours.
He had done his best. No one could say otherwise.
With a few keystrokes, he disconnected from the proto-Internet he’d created. Poof. It was like it had never existed. In a few years, though, an even better version would come into existence, and this time it would stay.
With a sigh, he said, “Lundergaard said this was my first trip through time. Looks like it’s my last, too.”
“But if he knows for sure that you travel again …”
“Sorry, Erasmus. You have the schematics yourself. The chronovessel isn’t going anywhere. Er, anywhen, I mean.”