Anton's Odyssey Read online

  “Good! Looks like they figured picking on you isn’t worth the trouble.” I said. Allen nodded. “What do you need us to do?” I asked.

  “I need you guys to go somewhere nobody else can go.”

  “What for?”

  “I need to get something.”

  “I dunno,” I said. “We’re not exactly ninjas or cat burglars or nothing.”

  “Well I know you’re not,” Allen said, “but Cotton is.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” I lied.

  “Yes you do,” Allen said. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” He reached into his school bag and took out his backup deck. It was almost as fancy as the one he had in the archives. He tapped the datapad, and a dark image appeared on the screen. I couldn’t make the picture out, exactly. It appeared to be some sort of amorphous mound of cloth jammed in a tight tunnel. The camera pushed up against the mound. It went out of focus for a while and then seemed to jiggle. A metallic probe extended into the field of view and pushed into the mass. The mound wiggled again, only faster this time. A blue electrical arc shot out of the probe into the mound. The mound lurched forward, and an instant later Cotton’s face appeared wearing a rather pained expression. He pounded his fist into the camera and the screen went blank. I frowned and shook my head.

  “Does Jim Boldergat know about this?” I asked.

  “No.” Allen said. “This isn’t from the ship’s security feed. When you started the rumor about the rats in the ventilation system, I didn’t buy the official explanation that turbulent airflow was causing the ducts to rattle. So I commandeered a jano-bot from the clean utility, and modded it out into a pest control hunter-killer.” I chose not to challenge Allen’s assertion that I started the rodent rumor. No doubt he had found the essay I wrote for English class on one of the ship’s servers.

  “I am sorry I shocked your brother’s butt,” he said. “I didn’t know what was causing the obstruction in the ductworks until after the fact.”

  “Well, I am sorry he broke your robot.” I said.

  “That’s my point exactly!” Allen exclaimed. “The robot belongs to the ship, and sooner or later someone is going to miss it and come looking for it. I need your brother to help me retrieve it.”

  “Actually, my mother works as a janitor, and she says she’s had to put in longer hours these past few weeks because one of the jano-bots went missing.”

  “Awe crap! They already know — wait, your momma’s the woman in the red jumpsuit? Your momma’s Melinda D. Dullwid?” He asked in disbelief.

  “You know my mother’s name?” I asked. No doubt Allen had poked his nose into my mother’s business via the Global Comprehensive Background Search Engine just as he had with Jim Boldergat. That’s kind of creepy, I thought.

  The rest of our gang picked that exact moment to return to the table, but thankfully they only caught the tail end of our conversation.

  “Whose momma?” Hammond asked.

  “No one’s momma.” Allen said conscientiously.

  “You telling momma jokes?” Hammond asked, optimistically.

  “Oh! Oh! I have a good one.” Cotton said.

  “Let’s hear it!” Hammond commanded.

  “Anton’s mommas so ugly, she don’t need no mask for Halloween!”

  Hammond laughed.

  “You mean our mother?” I reminded Cotton.

  “Oh! Whoops!”

  Ellen buried her face in her palm. “What is with you boys and your stupid momma jokes?”

  “Yo momma so stupid,” Allen said in his emboldened state, “she tried to join a ceramic dissipator to a titanium conduit using a palladium brazing alloy.”

  No laughter. Allen frowned.

  “Jim Boldergat’s momma so fat, she sweats gravy!” Hammond said.

  Cotton and I chuckled. Allen smiled again.

  “Hey that is kind of funny.” Ellen said, removing her hand from her face. Hammond beamed.

  “You try!” Allen said to Ellen.

  “I dunno.”

  “Do it!” Cotton and I commanded in unison.

  “Okay, Allen’s mother is —”

  “Don’t you be talking about my momma!” Allen protested with faux menace.

  “Okay, sorry! Anton’s mother —”

  “You can’t say ‘mother!’ You have to say ‘momma!’” I advised.

  “Okay, okay. Anton’s momma is so poor —”

  “No you gotta say ‘po’ not ‘poor!’” Hammond corrected.

  “Why would I say that?”

  Hammond didn’t have a very good answer and shrugged.

  “It’s the unwritten rule of yo momma jokes.” Cotton said.

  “Actually, the contraction is rooted in a long, painful history of racism against black people.” Allen explained.

  “Well what if I can make a rhyme with ‘poor.’” Ellen asked.

  Hammond shrugged again.

  “Then I guess it’s okay.” Cotton said.

  “Okay,” Ellen started again, “Anton’s mother is so poor, she works as a fene whore!”

  “Naw!” Hammond corrected. “You could have easily rhymed ‘po’: Anton’s momma’s so po, she works as a fene ho!”

  “Yeah but her version has a better rhythm to it.” Cotton said.

  “Cotton, Hello!” I said. “Our mother again!”

  “Oh yeah! I forgot.”

  “Actually the charges against Melinda D. Dullwid for prostitution and possession of paraphernalia were dropped by the district attorney in San Bernardino County for lack of sufficient evidence.” Allen explained. I felt my heart sink into the pit of my stomach.

  Ellen and Hammond looked confused.

  “What’s he talking about?” Cotton asked with concern. He had finally remembered that, as brothers, we shared the same mother, and, like myself, he could tell from Allen’s tone that the small boy was stating a fact and wasn’t trying to crack a joke. My face turned red. Ellen looked shocked. Hammond’s jaw dropped. I was so angry. I wanted to punch Allen in the face, tear off his glasses and flick the lenses until he puked his guts out, but it wasn’t exactly a fair fight, and Jim Boldergat would have caught me.

  “I have to go.” I said.

  Cotton followed me out of the mess hall. Hammond called out after me. “Where are you going? You mean you’re not going to hit him?” I didn’t turn around. I didn’t look back the entire trip to our living quarters.

  “What was Allen talking about?” Cotton asked.

  “Nothing,” I tried to lie. “He just made a bad joke. It was stupid. Don’t worry about it.”

  “No, he wasn’t!”

  I was silent for a while, lost in contemplation. Eventually, I decided Cotton was old enough for the truth.

  “You remember a few years ago, mother said she was sick and had to go to the hospital, and these guys came and took her away in what she said was an ambulance.”

  “Yeah, she had female problems.” Mother often used the term “female problems” as an answer to any line of inquiry we made that made her feel uncomfortable. Earlier, the tactic was an ace in the hole because she knew any mother’s woman parts would freak out a young boy. The strategy became less effective after I attended mandatory sex education in middle school. When she said, “because I have female problems,” after I asked her, “Why didn’t we pay for our meal?” I knew something was amiss.

  “You remember how we had to stay with ‘some of her friends?’” I asked.

  “Yeah, so? Mom sent us to her friends’ houses all the time.”

  “Yes, usually after you broke something or got into big trouble, and she didn’t want to have to deal with us for a few days, but these friends were different weren’t they?”

  “Yes, they lived in a big house out in the country.”

  “Well, sort of, they were only about twenty minutes away.”

  “But it was a nice house.” Cotton remembered. “Really nice and clean. It didn’t smell like cat piss, and all thei
r stuff was pretty fancy. There weren’t any empty beer bottles around or cigarette burns on the couch.”

  “Remember their kid?”

  “Yeah Toby. He was a real wimp.”

  “Well, he was three years younger than you,” I said. “Remember how you two got in a fight over his Macho Moe, Space Marine action figure.”

  “Yeah, that was an awesome toy! He had a phased plasma rifle in the forty watt range!”

  “What happened to that toy?”

  “Well, I sort of pulled Moe’s leg off by mistake when we were tugging on it.”

  “And then Toby’s dad came over, and you flinched, right?”

  “Yeah, I thought he was going to hit me?”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because momma’s boyfriends used to hit me all the time.”

  “But he didn’t, did he? He didn’t even holler at you. What did he do?”

  “I don’t remember.” Cotton was obviously lying, his eyes darting deceptively.

  “He calmed Toby down and the two of them went out to his shed. They used some tools to put Moe back together.”

  “Yeah, that made Toby pretty happy.”

  “What else did Toby’s dad do?”

  “I don’t remember.” Cotton lied again.

  “Yes, you do. He bought you your own Macho Moe Space Marine action figure. That was very nice of him, wasn’t it?”

  “No, not really. My Moe was much smaller and didn’t come with a phased plasma rifle in the forty-watt range, just a dinky little gyrojet pistol. Also, he only bought it for me so I wouldn’t mess with Toby’s.”

  “Cotton! You just don’t get it do you?” I said, shaking my head, exacerbated. I altered my line of questioning. “Remember another of mom’s ‘friends’ would come out and check on us?”

  “Yeah, the nice black lady.”

  “You ever remember mother having black friends?”

  Cotton shrugged.

  “Okay, did it seem like the nice black lady knew Toby’s parents well?”

  “No,” Cotton said insightfully. “She didn’t even know where the bathroom was.”

  “That’s a bit unusual for mother’s friends isn’t it?” Mother’s friends were pretty tight nit from countless hours spent sitting around in our living room listening to really loud, really bad music and drinking really cheap, really bad beer.

  Cotton shrugged again, and I felt it was time to spring my trap. “Okay, what was Toby’s dad’s name?”

  “I dunno. Gary?” Cotton guessed.

  “No his last name.” Cotton shrugged again. “When we went to visit mom in ‘the hospital?’ what did she call them.”

  Cotton thought for a while, “the Forresters. Yeah, they were the Forresters because they lived out in the forest.”

  “It was hardly a forest, but you’re close, she called them ‘the Fosters.’”

  “So?”

  “Remember how she asked you if you liked the Fosters and when you said, ‘they were okay,’ she seemed pretty upset.”

  “So?”

  “Well, if we were staying with one of her friends, wouldn’t she want us to like them?”

  Cotton shrugged indifferently.

  “Okay, what if I told you they weren’t called ‘the Fosters?’”

  “Huh?”

  “Mother was actually being a bit sneaky. Think about it!” Cotton scratched his head, but after a while he still had a blank look. “Fosters? Foster? Foster parents?” Still a blank look, so I made my point blunt. “Back then we were in foster care, and the nice black woman was our social worker.”

  I could see on Cotton’s face that a dim light was starting to flicker in the far reaches of his mind, but I still had not quite driven the message home.

  “What was mother wearing in the hospital?” I asked.

  “Pajamas.”

  “Really? What color were they?”

  “Red.”

  “Right. Bright Red. You ever seen bright red pajamas before?”

  Cotton shrugged dismissively.

  “Okay, what else were they like?”

  “Huh, you mean the pajamas?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you mean, ‘what else were they like?’ They were pajamas.”

  “Okay, how was the fabric cut?”

  “What? I have no idea what you are talking about!”

  “In your mind, picture the pajamas she had to wear back then.”

  Cotton closed his eyes.

  “Okay, you’ve since seen another set of pajamas like hers haven’t you.”

  “No… wait, yes I have.”

  “But they weren’t pajamas were they.”

  “I’m not sure.” Cotton opened his eyes.

  “Think! Where have you seen a similar garment?” Silence. “Visualize our ship.”

  Cotton closed his eyes again but they promptly popped open. “Everyone here wears them!”

  “Yes, all the starmen wear them don’t they. Mom wasn’t wearing pajamas. She was wearing a jumpsuit, and they don’t wear jumpsuits in hospitals do they?”

  Cotton looked despondent, but I had to make my point unequivocal. “Close your eyes again, picture mother in her jump suit and read the lettering off the front.”

  “That was a long time ago.” Cotton often underestimated his own memory, which was actually rather rich and able to recount vivid detail.

  Cotton closed his eyes tight and thought. “S… S… A….” starting over, “S-A-N….”

  “San Bernardino County Corrections,” I said.

  Cottons eyes shot open. He looked thoroughly dejected. I knew he would no longer argue with me. “I think I’m going to go read a comic book,” he said sheepishly. He slunk into our bedroom and closed the door behind him.

  A few minutes later I put my ear to the door. I could hear Cotton weeping, which made me sad in a way, yet I was relieved that his emotional reaction was appropriate given the unpleasantness of the situation.

  I passed about an hour staring at the blank vid screen, quiet reflection punctuated by brief surges of anger. It didn’t seem fair to me that Allen had access to my family’s darkest secrets and that he would divulge our dysfunction to my friends as if he were citing some sort of boring science fact. After a while, I had a rather sinister thought, Perhaps I can make things more fair.

  I plugged my pocket module into our vid screen, and after a painstaking search, I managed to locate the Global Comprehensive Background Search Engine on one of the ship’s security servers. I logged in as “James Boldergat” using “Magic Sky Daddy” as the password. Immediately a message popped up warning me — Sergeant at Arms Boldergat actually — that his password was at very high risk for a security breach by hackers. On the left side of the display was a list of recent queries that indicated where Allen had been poking his nose. My own name was on the list so I selected it. My file had been compiled from a handful of external links; my academic records, and some news stories about my mother’s arrest and the fire Cotton and I accidently started at the Yucaipa New Bible Church. I clicked the box titled “formulate assessment.” A text box appeared that read: “Based on disciplinary records from primary and secondary schools, this minor is at moderate to high risk for petty infractions and creating minor disturbances. Profile indicates poor initiative and lack of ambition; so risk of developing ties to organized crime rings is low as is risk for becoming a significant labor-relations agitator. Several documented episodes of fisticuffs but negative arrests or links to hospital records with fellow combatants indicates low risk of committing accidental or intentional homicide.”

  Who uses the term “fisticuffs,” I thought.

  My brother’s name was also on the queue, so I selected it. Again I skipped directly to “formulate assessment.”

  “Lack of social withdrawal precludes mental illness from accounting for minor’s erratic, difficult to interpret behavior. Risk assessment not possible. Trial of surveillance may be indicated.”

  My mother’s nam
e appeared even more recently on the queue than Cotton’s and my own, but I ignored it fearing I might learn additional disturbing history best left uncovered.

  Next to “query,” I entered “Allen Bendrich.” I expected to find only a few links to academic and medical records, but surprisingly the computer spat out hundreds. I skipped ahead to “formulate assessment.”

  “Highly intelligent with numerous exceptional academic achievements. Minor at risk of mental illness as social construct from physical deformity. Biologic parents likely fugitives or deceased. If minor is in contact with biologic parents, then risk of engaging in antisocial activity could be severe. Psychological inventory performed by experienced psychometrist indicated to properly formulate risk assessment.”

  Scrolling down Allen’s queue, it was apparent he had never queried himself. I returned to Allen’s profile and randomly selected a link on the earlier section of the list, which turned out to be a short article from the Salt Lake City Morning Sun:

  “Miracle Baby Survives Surgery. Questions Remain as to Next of Kin.

  “Baby boy James Doe survived what turned out to be the first of a series of surgeries at University Hospital to reconstruct his frontal bone and install a hybrid stem-cell-prosthetic cerebrum. Neurosurgeon Dr. Jarold Klee emerged from the forty-hour procedure tired but gleeful. ‘We in our field have been waiting for decades to perform this experimental procedure. I can say that, without a doubt, we were successful. The child’s condition is so rare that only one in a thousand neurosurgeons will ever see it during the course of their careers. Adults and older children lack the neuroplasticity required for a prosthetic implant, and to find an infant lacking most of a cerebrum but with an intact thalamus and brain stem is rare indeed. This is a once in a life time opportunity, and I look forward to publishing my results in the Journal of the Western Medical Association.’

  “When asked to expand on the child’s prognosis, Klee explained, ‘within a few hours of installing the femtoprocessor, the child’s neurophysiology responded positively, which has profound implications for my career.’

  “When asked to comment on the moral ramifications of the experiment, Dr. Klee dodged the question and drove away in his Edison Speedgator.