Chapter One

The bright morning sunlight burst into the small bedroom as the pixels in the window, one by one, switched off revealing the world outside. The effect was rather interesting and could be programmed with special messages, images, or even simple video games by dropping a new program “coin” into the slot in the windowsill. Right now, it was simply on a timer.

True, by the standards of the day, this was rather old technology, but not everyone could afford the new Trans-Passive™ plastic, full-color display windows that could show a virtual sunny Spring day even on the darkest Winter night.  The effect was so real, it was said to be able to fool a virtual rooster!

But this was not a new window; it was a new day - and time for someone to get up.

Snoring softly, Rod lay motionless in his bed.  He turned from the window as the light began filtering in.  In so doing, he became twisted up in his bed sheets and even more imprisoned in his sleep.

Rod was twelve, too old for childish things, but too young for adventure… so his adoptive parents, kept saying.  Rod was an orphan.  The Kings, a young couple eager to have a family, adopted him two years ago. It was a friendly but strict home. The Kings believed in God and enjoyed going to church.  Rod listened patiently when his new parents or the preacher talked about Jesus Christ, heaven and hell, but it didn’t make any sense to him.  He just smiled and nodded his head.

Rod had been told that his own parents disappeared in a freak lightning storm at his father’s laboratory.  Perhaps this is the reason the other kids at school mockingly called him, Rod Lightning.

“Rodney?” A soft comical voice emitted from the pillow under Rod’s sleeping head.  “Oh, Rodney!  A wonderful new day is here and you don’t want to be late!”  The voice was of a cartoon character printed on his pillowcase.  It was intended to wake a sleeping child up in a good mood… it rarely had that effect on Rod.

“Come on, Rodney!  It’s time to get up!”  Rod really disliked being called, Rodney.  Someone must have reprogrammed the pillow-clock after washing it.

“Let me sleep!” Rod mumbled, issuing the voice command to set the pillow into sleep mode. Unfortunately for Rod, this voice command program didn’t understand sleepy, groggy voices.

“Wakeup!!!!!” The pillow cheered. “If you don’t wake up, you know what will happen.”  Whoever it was must have really had fun re-programming his pillow this time.

“No” Rod said as clearly as he could, “what will happen?”

As if in answer - and maybe, this time it was - the bed automatically rolled the bed sheets down into the sheet roller and the bed sprang into an upright position leaving Rod standing momentarily before he slumped to the floor onto a floor mat. The mat was composed of thousands of miniature motorized and computerized ball bearings capable of moving any object, regardless of weight – anywhere – up and down stairs if necessary!

Rod tried to get up but it was too late, the floor mat sensors already detected his weight – and receiving a command from the alarm pillow, it took its turn with him.

“Hi, Rod, it’s me, MAT!  Your Motorized Automatic Transit.  Let’s get that sleepy body of yours into the bathroom and get you ready for your day at school!  Ha-ha, this will be fun!  Hold on tight!” 

This was a present from his new parents. MATs were all the rage at school when they were kids, so they assumed Rod would love it, too.  It wasn’t that he hated it, but the trouble with parents is they sometimes forget how important staying fashionable is.  For instance, kids today all used hover blades to get around.  They would laugh at anyone caught riding an old-fashioned MAT.  Rod never told them why, but he never took it to school, he told them he preferred to walk.  At least that was socially acceptable, now that enviro-laws were in place.

“RRRRRRrrrrr…” Rod’s eyes opened wide as MAT rushed him out his bedroom door, down the hall, and half way around the 20 foot circular fish tank at the center of the round home.  One small dolphin seemed to laugh at him as Rod rode by like this every morning.

Rod always TRIED to get up on time, even early, but he always stayed up too late working on his inventions and doing research.  Last night he finally made some progress on the miniature plasma power generator. If Rod could finish work on this new invention, he was sure to be able to build a powerful, hand-held DataPad. It would be considered a child’s toy to the other kids in his class, but at least it would work, and besides… it was all he could afford.

All the other kids at school had mobile Personal Cyberbots, or Shoulder PaC’s.  They came in many shapes, colors and sizes.  Using a shoulder ID link they all hovered around and in front of students to allow them to read computerized textbooks on a holographic projection screen.  Of course, they also allowed students to scan the GlobalNet and even Vid-Chat with others.  Many times you could see PaC’s hovering in front of two girls sitting side-by-side, engrossed in a Vid-Chat – with each other!

MAT finally reached the bathroom, so Rod prepared to stand up and get ready for the day – all at his own pace – as usual.  This was not to be a usual morning.

MAT didn’t stop in front of the bathroom door this morning, but seemed to pick up speed and issued a command for the doors to open and quickly continued on inside with Rod. Rod was too busy trying to recover from the near miss with the door to notice that MAT had deposited him directly in the shower stall.

As he tried to stand up, the shower erupted with a gusher of ice-cold water from above and all four sides, soaking him instantly.  Screaming as the near freezing water washed over him he stood up and in a frantic voice yelled, “All right, I’m up!  I’m up! Stop the water, stop the water!!!!”

With that the water shut itself off, and Rod, clothes dripping with the chilly water thought that he almost heard a small laugh emanate from MAT.  Rod looked around the shower and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.  His red hair was flat against his head, but the yellowish lightning streaks on his temples were still visible.  Most people thought that they were bleached, but they weren’t.  He was too young to remember it, but he’d been told that they appeared the very night his parents disappeared in the lightning storm.  That is why Rod was so interested in science and inventing.  Someday he hoped to discover the answer to his parents’ mysterious disappearance.

For now, Rod was too busy shivering from the unexpected cold shower to think of any of this.  He just looked at his drenched reflection in the mirror and thought to himself, “I have got to stop getting up this way”.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The walk to school that day was pleasant enough, if not for the other kids whizzing by him on their hover blades, but Rod was used to that by now.  His adoptive parents couldn’t afford things like that so he learned to do without – or make it himself.  Rod loved to invent, he’d spend hours in his workshop piecing together parts from old or broken items he’d find at the city recycling center.  Fortunately for Rod, they couldn’t recycle everything at once, and they let Rod search through the mountains of old electrical parts and find what he needed for his workshop.

“Hey, Rod!”  Rod glanced to the other side of the street in time to see someone speed past him and then double back.  It was Archie, one of the few friends that Rod really had.  He was well-off and loved to show it.  But money aside, Archie was a true friend.  “Did you get you report done last night?  Dr. Gant is collecting them today.”

Rod nodded.  “Yea, but the hardest part was finding actual paper to write it on.  I can’t believe he won’t accept simple file transfers.”

“Me, too!  But that’s probably why they call him “Arrogant”!  Archie laughed so hard he just about flew backwards on his hover blades.

Rod shook his head.  “Archie, they call him that because that is his name!  R. A. Gant – say it fast and it just sounds like arrogant!”

“Oh…” Archie mouthed the name to test the theory then quickly changed the subject, “I need a favor.  My Shoulder PaC is acting up.  Can you look at it?”

“Sure, but it’ll cost you this time.  I keep telling you be more careful when you scan the GlobalNet.  You know how easy it is to pick up viruses, but you never listen.”

“Sure, sure.  I’ll give you a pair of my broken hover blades, okay?  Deal?”

Rod wasn’t sure. He really wished he had a pair, but he didn’t want something he couldn’t use or at the very least ,fix.  “That depends on what’s wrong with them.”

“Remember my accident last month when I tried to perform the three-point landing on the school memorial?  Well, one of the hover… thingies…”

“Hover-emulsion engines…”, Rod corrected.

“Oh, anyway, one of those emulsifiers took some damage so mom bought me a new pair.”

“A new pair?”  Rod yelled.  “You can buy the replacement engines at the mall!  Why didn’t you just replace the engines?”

Archie motioned his PaC to hover in front of him and activated its holographic display.  It appeared fine for a few seconds then turned into a three-dimensional bubble then burst. 

“Look, do you want them or not.  This thing is driving me crazy.”

Rod wasn’t sure he could fix them but he decided to take a chance. “Yea, okay, but what caused your display to do that bubble thing?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t need you to fix it…” Archie smiled sheepishly.  “Oh, ok, I would still need you to fix it, but I don’t know what it is.”

Rod pushed for an answer, “Come on, you know what they taught us in computer studies, ‘if something’s changed, then something’s changed’.  Something caused it to do that. Did you hit it against the wall? Spill something on it? I can’t fix it if I don’t know where to start looking.”

“You’re just gonna say, ‘I told you so’.  I, uh...  I accidentally scanned in a virus last night, okay?  I don’t know what the program is supposed to be doing, but now my Shoulder PaC won’t work anymore. Right before that bubble bursts, it says something about a lack of power and the 3D interaction has been cancelled.  Weird, huh?”  

Archie gets an idea.  “Say, do you think you could boost my power so we can see what this really can do?”

“No,” Rod exclaimed.  “You saw it distort the holoscreen into a bubble.  And it looked like it wanted to get bigger.  With more power, there’s no telling WHAT could happen.”

“You think it could actually interact with the real 3D world?”  Archie sounded excited.  "That would be so cool!  I think the documentation said something about spatial transference… but I have no idea WHAT that  could that mean!  Do you?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care!  It’s too dangerous to play with.”  Rod took Archie’s PaC shoulder ID pin and stuck on his own shoulder.  At this the PaC moved from hovering in front of Archie and hovered over Rod’s shoulder in the Reset position.

Archie laughed, “It looks funny seeing you with a PaC.  Everyone will know it isn’t yours.”

Rod tried hard not to appear insulted.  “I don’t want one.  Besides, I’m building my own... kinda.  See?”  Rod reached beside him and pulled a shiny silver device out of a leather pouch on his side.

“That’s not a PaC.  What is that?” Archie decided to tease Rod a bit.  “You have to actually HOLD it?  That is so retro!  Like a baby’s toy!”

Rod ignored his jabs.  “It isn’t done, yet.  It still needs a power unit.  I’m building a plasma power unit for it.”

“Plasma power?  Don’t be crazy, Rod!  That’s too dangerous, you’re going to vaporize yourself!”

Rod remained calm.  “It isn’t dangerous… exactly.  It’s just unstable, under certain conditions.  But, I’m being careful.  Besides, it was the only thing I could put my hands on at the recycling center.”

Archie was unconvinced but leaned forward on his hover blades to move forward, “Well, just don’t say I didn’t warn you.  See you at school… unless you get vaporized, first!”  In moments, he was gone, laughing in the distance.