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  I docked my ship, then panicked for a moment wondering how to get the screen to stop projecting extensions. I should have been panicking about whether or not I was in a padded room in a mental institution somewhere.

  “Son?” my father’s voice penetrated the door. “You all right in there?”

  “Fine!” I yelled. “Out in a minute!” To the screen, I said, “Computer, reduce screen.”

  The projections withdrew back into the center, taking my virtual keyboard and hotkey map with them. I smiled. Whatever was happening, I was going to take advantage of it. I knew some old “friends” in Star Evolution that needed a little payback.

  CHAPTER 5 - Gamed & Confused

  Sunday, November 30, 2014

  I raced through the canyon that ran along the length of the spinning asteroid, keeping my fighter perfectly stable, following every contour, making minute adjustments in elevation as needed. My threat radar showed only two enemies left, both on my six, both doing their best to not trade paint with the nickel-iron walls. The fighter’s forward navigation radar indicated a long, straight run ahead.

  I racked my brain, knowing I was running out of advantage. I was fast, but not faster than missiles and railgun slugs. Not only that, I was barely able to keep the ship at full speed. Out of the sixteen enemy ships I’d run into while I was out hunting, I’d downed fourteen of them already. Eleven, if you didn’t count the three that had been turned into metal paste in the winding crevice I was still in. I’d taken enough damage that I’d had to divert power from almost every non-essential subsystem to keep my engines and shield stable. I was now nothing more than a fragile nuclear missile with a set of railguns, and I had less than ten seconds before my advantage turned into a turkey shoot.

  I decided to try something that I knew was impossible. I’d already smoked fourteen enemy fighters, so it wasn’t like I’d walk out of the encounter a loser if they took me out. I was hoping to at least make it fifteen before the game restarted me back at the station. Coming out of the last turn, the ground dropped six klicks straight down before leveling off into a forty klick ravine that was almost laser straight. I went for it.

  My fighter screamed over the edge and I dropped it as hard as I could, counted to three, then flipped ends, overloaded the ‘burners and shot into a vertical climb. The two enemy fighters behind me hit the edge and dropped altitude before realizing what I’d done. One of them tried to turn within the canyon instead of getting above it, and his starboard wing shattered like cheap glass as it collided with the walls at twelve G’s. I wanted to watch him spin into a fireball before exploding as his fusion core went critical, but I had number sixteen to worry about.

  I pointed my nose down and dove straight for him. He came up above the canyon walls, cut his engines and rotated to get his guns pointed at me. It was a bold move, thinking to come at me head-on after I’d punished fifteen of his squad mates. After firing off a few railgun rounds, he locked a missile and fired, then surprised me by leveling his ship out, nose facing the direction we’d come from.

  His engines ignited and he hit his afterburners, rocketing behind me, leaving me to face the incoming missile. I flipped my fighter on its back and cut power from the left engine, putting all I had into my right engine. The spin was to confuse the radar in the warhead long enough for my countermeasures to nullify it. I checked the threat radar again, making sure the last fighter hadn’t doubled back on me. He was still on the run, probably a wise move after I’d decimated his entire squadron.

  I stayed in the high-G spin until one of my ECM’s finally burned out the warhead’s radar unit, tripping a redundant detonator. It was close enough that the warhead’s shrapnel pierced a fair amount of my ship’s underbelly armor. I balanced engine power and went full burn back to the winding canyon. The last fighter had dropped off my radar, but I had the faster ship, and more importantly, I had the kind of control that made the other pilots on voice comms begin arguing about whether I was somehow cheating, or just that good. It wasn’t unusual for a skilled pilot to take out a small squad solo, but a squadron of sixteen good, experienced pilots… was madness. Fifteen, I reminded myself as I hit the first turn and banked into it.

  My nimble fighter increased in speed as I maximized the engine’s efficiency and output, something that normally was nearly impossible to do with the kind of tight maneuvering I was doing, especially at the speed I was going. A red icon appeared on the threat radar behind me. I grinned, giving mental props to the pilot for not running away. Digital pings alerted me that his railgun slugs were degrading my rear shield. I began to decelerate, slowly as to not let him be alerted too quickly, easily exchanging a nearly depleted rear shield for my last hurrah. I re-routed almost all of my remaining engine and fusion core power into the rear shield, needing only a few seconds more.

  The uranium slugs encased in a plasma shell drained my shield and then began to eat into the thin layer of armor. I watched the damage meters creep into the red, mirrored by my fighter’s fusion core as it began to overheat, the slugs decimating the heat shielding around my engines. The enemy pilot realized too late how close he was to me and tried to climb. I flipped my fighter, re-routed power to the engines, turned on full afterburners, and just scraped the bottom of his ship. I overloaded the fusion core, and a bright white light blanked out my screens as my ship was atomized a nanosecond before I also logged my sixteenth kill.

  The voice comms were wild, some with rage and fury, most cheering, all of them talking at once, asking me how I’d been able to pull it off. A few of the ragers were already accusing me of cheating, of hacking the system somehow. I answered the friendly questions as well as I could, praising my new computer without revealing that it was like no computer that the world had ever seen.

  After another ten minutes of being called everything from The Man and Master Ace to goddamn cheating piece of shit, I told everyone it had been fun, but I needed to get to bed. Classes started up again in the morning, and I’d have to face Kassi eventually. I’d become so involved in my sudden ability to dominate in Star Evolution that I’d spaced everything else off. While it was good that I hadn’t had to put up with the extended family much, it made me feel guilty that I’d become a recluse in my room, avoiding even my own parents. Worse, I’d made excuses all weekend to Kass about why I wasn’t hanging out with her.

  “Computer, hibernate.”

  The screen pulled in its projection, then dimmed until there was only the plastic backing attached to the thin metal rod. The blue glow inside the case slowly dimmed until it too was dark. I patted the side of the case as if it were a good dog. My head was a mix of adrenaline-charged triumph at my amazing kill rate over the weekend, and stomach-gnawing fear that Kassandra was going to tell me to get lost after standing her up for four straight days.

  *****

  December 1, 2014

  I had every right to be scared. Kassandra already scared the hell out of me when things were going just fine. I truly thought she was going to take a swing at me when we met up after my Ethics class. She didn’t say a word until we were almost off campus, then spun in fury and laid into me. By the time she was spent, she was shaking, crying, and cursing. Each enunciated word from her mouth made me shrink another inch, until there was only a single molecule of me left to stare at her as she bawled.

  I spent the two hours I had before my Western Civ II class trying to apologize. I spent the hour after my Western Civ II class but before my Cultural Geography class apologizing more. I tried to explain to her that I’d been so amped up over my new computer that I’d lost time, but that seemed to only make things worse, so I abandoned that tactic, even though it was the truth. I promised her at least twenty times that I’d pick her up after her evening class and take her to dinner, anywhere she wanted to go that didn’t serve leftover turkey. That finally got a faint shadow of a smile out of her, and I finally stopped feeling like the biggest asshole in the world.

  I watched her walk away, heading to her
next class, and wondered exactly how stupid I was. The swing of her hips mesmerized me, and I felt shame all over again that I’d spent a weekend playing video games instead of endearing myself to her to the point she couldn’t imagine life without me. I knew that it wouldn’t happen after a single weekend, but I could have spent the time furthering the cause. Now I’d have to start in the negative and climb out of the hole before she’d even forgive me.

  Doctor Campbell rambled on about the Middle East, and the geopolitical ramifications of the Arab Spring. I wasn’t one of those inbreds that thought every Muslim was a terrorist, but today I was about as interested in the subject as I was about putting my feet in a vat of boiling tar. I kept playing over and over in my head two things. How I dominated in Star Evolution, immediately followed by how I’d given up a weekend of sex, maybe earned a very long, extended vacation from it if I couldn’t make it up to Kass. Just as class ended, Dr. Campbell reminded us to look up the Arab Spring uprising and write a six paragraph essay detailing how it began to affect the political stability in the region.

  *

  I pulled up to the curb and waited for Kass to exit the building. My parents were a little upset that I’d elected to skip dinner with them, until I informed them that no, I was not going to spend it in my room again, but was going to take Kassandra Perkins out to dinner to make up for staying in my room all weekend. My dad gave me a sly wink and a smile, and my mom gave him a frown and an elbow in the ribs. I’d apologized to my parents for being a reclusive anti-social jerk, and they apologized for not poisoning Uncle Marion’s turkey so his beautiful wife and five kids would be free of his disgusting habits (and innuendos).

  I saw Kass coming out of the glass doors a minute later, and flashed my headlights. She waved before turning back to the other three girls she had been talking to, gave them all hugs, then jogged to the car. I knew things would be okay when she leaned across the seat and kissed me on the cheek. I played it off as if it was no big deal, giving her a sideways glance to make sure she wasn’t going to pull a knife or a billy club on me. As we pulled away from the curb, her hand found my leg. I made myself promise to not screw up again.

  *

  I looked at the clock and groaned. It was almost midnight and I hadn’t even touched my homework. I didn’t have to have it ready until Wednesday, but I had three classes tomorrow, and all three were pretty loaded when it came to homework. I decided to tackle the Cultural Geography essay first. Writing six paragraphs about anything was a snap if I’d read something interesting.

  The Arab Spring uprising was interesting for sure, as it showed that religious dictatorships, any dictatorships really, were becoming an endangered species in that part of the world. I extended the projection below the center screen and called up the virtual keyboard. I traded off between typing and using voice commands to get any real work done. I hadn’t found an instruction manual beyond the ones that showed me how to put all of the components together, and the computer was frustrating to work with when it came to voice commands. And again, I didn’t want to cause a bio-weapons attack in New Zealand by slipping up.

  I reached out to the screen to touch the browser icon when I felt like I had to sneeze. I made a ‘schrunk’ noise as I felt my muscles almost-contract. My finger stabbed the icon next to the browser icon. I hadn’t fooled with any of the other icons beyond the browser and the App Center, and hadn’t even fooled with the App Center beyond a quick search for instructions after downloading Delta-9 and Star Evolution.

  A window opened, and it looked almost like a Google search page, except the logo was a giant Q that had either flames or lightning coming off it. After looking at it for a second longer, I saw that it was both. Kind of a strange lightning-fire. Below the logo was the word “Qwerry.” I assumed it was a play on the word “query” and gave it a mental touche. What the hell, I told myself. I didn’t think anything could surprise me, so why worry about an unknown search engine on a quantum computer that connects to the internet without having any networking capabilities?

  I touched the search box and typed in “Arab Spring.” A list of related searches appeared, and I began to sort through them. After a few minutes, I realized most of them were from 2012 or later. I knew the good Dr. Campbell would tsk tsk me if I didn’t include the origins of the movement. I looked up the initial uprisings, then touched the search box again and typed in “Arab Spring 2010.” I clicked on the first link that showed up, one that originated from the BBC website.

  After reading a few paragraphs, I stopped and rubbed my eyes, not sure what I was reading. I double-checked the address bar to make sure I was on the BBC.co.uk website and not one of the fake parody news sites. I looked back down to the story, and began reading again.

  President-elect Lorraine Roosevelt Harvey clarified her earlier remarks today, citing a miscommunication during her speech in Brussels at the US-EU Summit. “I would like to stress once again that I plan on reducing troop strengths to minimal levels on January 31st,” she said to the crowd of reporters that awaited her outside of the old NATO headquarters. “President Gregory over-committed our forces, and I plan to rectify that immediately. I repeat, there will be an immediate draw-down in troop levels on January 31st, and by March 1st, there will be a total withdrawal of all U.S. forces within the region.” The newly-elected president refused to answer further questions, and her press secretary, Alexi Chan, has not replied to our inquiries.

  The new American president’s remarks came on the heels of a new United Nations report accusing the United States military of wartime atrocities in the coastal cities of Latakia and Jableh, as well as the inland city of Hamah. A spokesman for President Bashar al-Assad distributed video of the Alhamida Massacre. Also included was disturbing footage reportedly taken by American soldiers inside the Al Jadeed Mosque that shows young Syrian women being sexually assaulted, along what looks to be a mass execution of Syrian soldiers loyal to al-Assad.

  Secretary of State Helen Engleman would not confirm the video’s authenticity. However, she stated that there has been an increase in the number of cyberattacks by groups that the CIA claims are closely tied to the worldwide hacking group known as “Anonymous,” as well as Hezbollah and the Western Islamic Front, one of the newer factions that has formed from the remnants of the original Arab Spring uprising. “This administration promises swift retaliation against anyone found violating American sovereignty,” Engleman said, “which not only includes our physical land holdings, but our network infrastructure and communications grid.”

  The “Internet Security Act,” the American cybersecurity law passed in 2018, has significantly reduced the number of leaks from within the country. Critics continue to label the law draconian and unconstitutional, even after being upheld by the American Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision this past May. The United Nations report also criticizes ISA, claiming the American law attempts to allow enforcement around the globe, not just within American borders.

  “When a law like this clearly states that America has the right to assassinate or otherwise terminate a life outside of its own borders,” said Meli Farawa, the United Nations’ Chief Legal Counsel, “it becomes a concern for the rest of the world’s sovereign states. According to some of the most vague wording we’ve ever seen in any law passed in a democracy, ISA could be interpreted to cover almost any crime, and because it labels those accused of breaking the law as ‘enemy combatants,’ it also allows for the new American military tribunals to try and convict suspects in absentia.”

  “Imagine a drone strike destroying your village,” one source who wished to remain anonymous said, “and being told that one of the villagers was accused of terrorism and sentenced to death remotely.”

  “What the fuck is this shit?” I asked aloud, afraid the computer would answer me with some new trick.

  I looked at the address bar again. Then looked at the top banner, and noticed that I didn’t recognize any of the scrolling headlines. Not that I was a news junkie, but Dr. Campb
ell and Professor Garner were both sticklers about keeping up on current events. Not only that, but my mother listened to NPR at work all day when she wasn’t on the phone or dealing with clients, and I guess my father did too, as they would have deep conversations about events that I had no clue about.

  When I was sixteen, I couldn’t have cared less about anything going on in the world that wasn’t me getting my hands on breasts, or baseball season, or any number of things that had nothing to do with politics, economics, or even education. By the time I was eighteen, I still cared about all of the teenage things, but I’d grown up enough to begin paying attention to real world outside of my little bubble.

  NPR was still a bunch of boring old people rambling on in their soft voices about things I didn’t give a shit about, other than once in a while when they’d profile a band I liked, or talked about a sport I followed. The internet was the ultimate repository of news, though I’d learned that a lot of it was full of skewed opinions or downright bogus information. However, my interest allowed me to begin slipping into the conversations my parents would have, and while they never said anything to me, I could tell they were proud that I’d joined the adult world they lived in.

  I read a few more headlines. Najam separatist fighters take girls’ school hostage in the Russian Empire’s (???) city of Troitsk, just across the border from northern Kazakhstan. Brazil’s armed forced were on high alert and massing at the Uruguayan border after a Brazilian destroyer was sabotaged at the pier in Montevideo. Riots were breaking out all over South Korea, and North Korea was being blamed for inserting subversives into the mix. I had no idea who the “Lansing Lightning” were. According to the headline blurb, they were in the NBA, and they’d lost to the Chicago Bulls 105-84.

  I blinked a few times, wondering once more if whoever had sent me the non-existent parts so I could slap together this crazy computer wasn’t still messing with me. Maybe this was the drawn-out punchline or climax of the gag? Then I happened to notice the date on all of the stories. All of them were from December 17th, 2020. I hit the back button on the browser until I was back at the Qwerry start page and could see the last thing I’d typed into the search box. “Arab Spring 2020” is what stared back at me. I’d mistyped 2010, still not fully used to the weird holographic keyboard, and had been taken to some kind of joke future page.