The Rendering Read Online Free PDF Page B

paddles into the Center’s data banks. But he hadn’t formatted the mainframe to accept her data, so her mind would soon fade into the darkness of the hard drives. And a few minutes later, her body would shut down completely.
    Roach stepped over her like she was yesterday’s laundry. “Now, Hund,” he said into his communicator, “explain the problem. You’re having trouble with security?”
    “No. We breached the vault easily enough.”
    “But didn’t find the cube?”
    “We found the cube,” Hund said.
    “Then what’s the problem?”
    “It’s blank.”
    “What?
Impossible. You have the wrong cube.”
    “I have the cube that the Protocol was saved onto.” Hund’s voice crackled over the communicator. “Exactly as described. Except it’s blank.”
    “I need that Protocol.” Roach stepped up to a keyboard and clicked the keys. “Here we are. The cube with the Protocol on it was stored in the archive vault.”
    “I’m standing in the archive vault.”
    “Ah, yes. You blasted the doors and … let me scan the cube you found.” Roach tapped a few more keys. “That’s the right cube.”
    “As I said, Doctor. And it’s blank.”
    “You’re right. I don’t understand. Unless …” Roach’s fingers blurred over the keyboard; then he paled. “Dr. Solomon erased the contents two minutes ago.”
    That was what she’d been doing at the computer. At least,
part
of what she’d been doing.
    “The Protocol is gone?” Hund asked.
    “No. She can’t have—there’s an override on deletion. Wait a moment.…” Roach eyed the data scrolling past. “Ah! Before she erased the cube, she transferred the contents into the Holographic Hub. Into a
new
cube. We’ll retrieve the Protocol from there.”
    “I’m on my way,” Hund said, his voice crackling.
    “The hub is extremely dangerous, Commander. Do not enter until I tell you it’s safe.”
    “Roger.”
    “And on your way,” Roach said, “kill anything that moves.”
SAVED BY THE BARBIE
    I could’ve told him that in the Holographic Hub right then, absolutely nothing was moving.
    Not that I wasn’t trying. I didn’t remember the whole lecture my aunt had given me during that tour, about getting stuck in the hub, but the phrase
vaporize all the synapses in your brain
stuck in my mind.
    And I couldn’t even lift a finger.
    Luckily, my face was scrunched against the computer I’d been using to send the dragonfly data to Jamie. That’s what saved my life. If I’d been an inch farther away, I never would have made it. But I was close enough to hear Jamie’s voice.
    “Bug!” she said through the half-smashed speakers. “Bug! Can you hear me?”
    I gurgled. It was all I could do.
    “I can see you here, on my screen. In
CircuitBoard
, I mean. You’re showing up on the game interface. What’s going on?”
    I tried to say, “Get me out of here!” But all I could manage was “Out!”
    “You want to get out?”
    I gurgled again, more insistently.
    “Well, there’s a … let’s see, I’ll connect the positive to the negative here, and …” And she was off, talking nonsense about winning her
CircuitBoard
game.
    Meanwhile, my synapses were getting fried.
    Jamie kept blathering about her game: “Then I close this circuit and move to the next level. I’ll power down the grid, and …”
    Everything was fading away,
fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading, fading …
    Until I heard a click.
    The humming in the room quieted and I took a sudden gulp of breath. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped breathing.
    “You look terrible, Doug,” Jamie said through the speakers. “I’m zooming in on you. Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
    I croaked, “Yes.”
    With the hub powered down, I felt stronger already. Then I noticed that the door was unlocked. Somehow Jamie had turned off the power and unlocked the door using
CircuitBoard
commands from her laptop.
    She’d saved my life.
    Talk about humiliating. Saved