Simple Simon

Chapter One The Sky is Falling

Simon Lynch sat alone in the small room at a square table, chair back from its edge, hands folded on his lap, his upper body swaying forward and back in a precise, measured motion, the equal of any metronome. His eyes, green and cautious, darted about the bare tabletop, focusing on no one spot for more than a second. A few blonde hairs hung loose over his forehead. His lips moved quickly, incrementally, in some silent recitation.

The four walls of the room were off-white. Except for a door they seemed bare. One wasn’t.

“How old is he?” Dr. Anne Jefferson asked as she watched the image on the large television monitor. The subject was fifteen feet distant in a soundproof observation room. A perfectly hidden camera was bringing the pictures to them.

“He turned sixteen two weeks ago,” Dr. Chas Ohlmeyer answered. A clipboard rested on his knee. A notebook computer glowed on Anne’s lap. “How can you do observations on that thing?”

“This?” Her head shook with a smile. Her smile was her most striking feature, or so her new husband had told her. When she wasn’t smiling she was merely a classic beauty, skin the color of light chocolate and smooth as a newborn’s, eyes translucent in the right light, black hair pulled into a loose ponytail because of the storm blowing in off Lake Michigan. “You still have a couch in your office, don’t you?”

Ohlmeyer accepted the friendly jab. “And Freud is my idol.”

Anne chuckled, then gave her attention back to the monitor. “So, Simon Lynch. You think he’s a Kanner?”

Ohlmeyer’s face did the equivalent of a shrug. “I’m hoping you can help in that determination. He’s only been coming to Thayer for a couple months. It’s taken about that long to acclimate him so he’d open up a bit. Then last week…well, you’ll see.”

She studied the young man on the screen. At first blush an untrained eye might see a case of nerves. The scene did, she had to admit, look like something out of a police drama; the interrogation room, a bland cube with one door and a light fixture in the ceiling’s center, suspect at the table, waiting for the good guy-bad guy team of cops to come in. It was not that, though, and the behavior was not a case of nerves. The reason was far more profound.

From the left of the screen the door opened. Anne noted immediately that the pace of Simon’s rocking picked up a bit. A young woman entered, spoke a few comforting words to the subject, and set a box on the table before retreating. The door closed with a soft click.

“What is that?”

“A puzzle,” Ohlmeyer answered. His lined face bore a subtle grin. “We’ve discovered that Simon likes puzzles.”

Anne’s fingers tapped at the condensed keyboard, recording the beginnings of her observation. Thirty seconds into the session the pace of her typing slowed, then stopped, and she leaned in close to the monitor, her eyes wide. “Oh my.”

Simon Lynch had the contents of the box, five hundred jigsaw pieces of random size and shape, spread out upon the table, none touching another. The top of the box, emblazoned with a picture of a covered bridge in a pastoral setting, he laid face down on the floor without as much as a glance at it. The plain bottom of the box followed. Then he went about starting the puzzle.

“Chas, he is…”

“I know.”

First Simon had to get all the pieces turned the same direction…without letting them touch. They could only touch when he placed them together. And they could only go together when the picture side of each was face down. When the table top was nothing but a jumble of gray jigsaw piece backs, Simon’s rocking stopped. He leaned further forward and, eyes still dancing, began interlocking the pieces. Perfectly. With nary a test fit.

“My goodness, Chas,” Anne commented in a hushed, almost reverent tone. She was no longer an observer — she was a spectator.

“Amazing, isn’t it.” Ohlmeyer glanced at his Rolex. Twenty-five seconds. Simon was a quarter of the way done, easily at the pace he’d set in previous sessions. More than two pieces a second. Dr. Chas Ohlmeyer, dean of the University of Chicago’s school of psychology and director of the Lewis Thayer Center for the Developmentally Disabled, smiled fully at the brilliance he was witnessing. Not a brilliance many would ever see, nor that anyone — including him — could fully explain, but brilliance all the same.

Anne nodded to the screen. ‘Amazing’ began to convey her assessment of the scene. “How many times have you done this with him?”

“The puzzle? In a test situation, three. It wasn’t something we planned. Simon just sort of happened.”

“Come again?” Anne asked, keeping her eyes on the screen. Half the pieces had been absorbed into a lopsided triangle of gray.

“When I say ‘just happened’ I mean more than just this talent you’re seeing,” Ohlmeyer explained. “He might never have come to us — or to anyone — if he hadn’t gotten a nasty viral infection. His parents had kept him pretty much sheltered since he was about one year old. By that time it was apparent to them, and to his doctor, that there were some serious deficiencies in his development. His parents thought one thing: retarded.” For a moment Ohlmeyer’s expression soured, adding years to his 55 year-old face. “So when they brought him to Uni for treatment of the infection a few months back, the attending — you know him: Larry Wollam — recognized the behavioral and developmental symptoms. He convinced Simon’s parents to bring him to Thayer for an assessment. When we gave them the results, they kind of shrugged; they’d never heard of autism.”

“You’re kidding,” Anne commented, glancing away from Simon’s progress for just a second. When she looked back three corners were complete.

“They’re simple people,” Ohlmeyer continued. “The father’s a mechanic, the mother’s a housewife, both in their late forties. I was the one that explained it all to them.” He paused briefly. “The mother understands it more than the father, I think. He still believes that he has a retarded son.”

“But he’s here,” Anne added as a reminder that begged more explanation.

“Yes, he is. His first day here one of the staff put a twenty five piecer in front of him. Real simple; a blue cow and a red pig, I don’t remember exactly. Simon never touched it. The next day he took a five hundred piecer from a shelf and, well…”

“On his own?”

“Entirely,” Ohlmeyer answered proudly. He felt pride in the progress of any patient, and in this instance it was like watching a flower blossom in the dead of winter. “The staff gave him a thousand piecer…nothing. Another five hundred...voila! He only does puzzles with five hundred pieces, and always after turning the pieces face down.”

“Any other abilities?” Anne inquired. The fourth and final corner was about to appear.

“Instant recognition and calculation, we’re certain. We gave him a five hundred piecer with one piece removed. He started to turn the pieces over, then stopped within seconds and started rocking nervously.”

“The uniform out of sorts,” Anne commented. “How soon were the symptoms noticed after he was born?”

“Within months,” Ohlmeyer replied with a nod. “Early infantile autism. And, yes, he can communicate verbally and has since about the age of two.”

The loose pieces dwindled until only one rectangle of gray paper, broken by the odd lines of a jigsaw cut, was left. Simon let a hand hover over it briefly, then returned it to his lap and started rocking easily again.

“The indications are that he’s a Kanner,” Anne said, confirming Ohlmeyer’s suspicion that Simon Lynch probably fell into a portion of the autistic population, numbering approximately 10 % of the total, known as the Kanner’s syndrome subgroup. These individuals exhibited similar advanced abilities in memory, computation, and insistence on sameness in their environment. Some exhibited remarkable abilities in math, art, or music. An even smaller percentage of the autistic population showed almost unbelievable talents in certain areas. Dr. Anne Jefferson, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, gazed wondrously at the monitor, watching a young man of remarkable — yes, she told herself, maybe even that—ability sway lazily back and forth. “Or more.”

Ohlmeyer nodded. “I didn’t want to predispose you.”

“Ever the scientist, Chas, aren’t you?” She switched off her laptop and closed the lid. “Have you done a right brain/left brain yet?”

“Cursory, but I think now we’re going to need to do that and a full protocol. Of course I have to convince his father to allow it. The mother’s on our side, but it was a major effort to get pops to let him come to Thayer three days a week. We had to work out transportation, arrange for the fees to be waived, yaditta-yaditta…” Ohlmeyer set his clipboard aside and took a magazine from the viewing room’s desk. He rolled it tight in one hand and pointed it in mock accusation at Anne. “You’re thinking it, aren’t you?”

“That he could be a savant? Aren’t you?”

Ohlmeyer demurred with a tilt of his head. “Would you like to meet Simon?” He held the magazine up. “I have to give him this before he goes home.”

Anne reached out, took the magazine, and uncurled it. “The Tinkery?” She noted the address label. “You are a member of the Tinker Society?”

“Is that impossible to believe?” Ohlmeyer asked with a grin. “My intelligence is up there, and has been for a very long time.”

She gave a friendly roll of her eyes in response and paged through the slick pages. The Tinker Society was a loose gathering of those with verifiable genius level IQ’s, and this was their bi-monthly publication, though a dated one she could tell from the cover. “Why are you giving this to him?”

“Simon doesn’t like only jigsaw puzzles, Anne. His mother told me that he’s been doing crosswords, word searches, sequences, all sorts of puzzles since his early teens. That’s when he found a fascination with them. Funny, though, she said he never had an overt fondness for jigsaws.” Ohlmeyer boosted his shoulders in wonder and stood, taking the magazine back from Anne. “Anyway, The Tinkery has a puzzle section at the back. I thought I’d let him have a look at one of mine that was gathering dust. A purely unscientific exercise, I will remind you.”

“Of course,” Anne said with a slow nod.

“Come.”

They left the viewing room and made the short trek to the observation room. Chas Ohlmeyer held Anne up there. “There’s one other minor thing you should know before meeting him.”

“Yes?”

“Until about a month ago he had a tendency to wet himself whenever he was around a…well…person of color.”

Anne’s eyes bulged.

“He grew up in a very…insulated environment, Anne. He’s white, his parents are white, his neighborhood is white. Anyone he’s seen in or near his home is likely white.”

“I see.”

“It hasn’t happened recently, but since you will be a new face to him, well, I wanted to prepare you.”

Anne giggled quietly.

“What?” Ohlmeyer inquired, his eyes narrowing.

“To think that I could scare the piss out of anybody is a bit on the laughable side, Chas.”

“Anne… Come on.” Ohlmeyer twisted the knob and let Anne enter before he followed and closed the door behind. The pace of Simon’s rocking increased, but he did not look up. “Hello, Simon.”

A boyish face rose in a flash, and fell as quickly. “Hello Doctor Chazzz.” His voice was young and tinny, and he over enunciated the last sound in Ohlmeyer’s given name. It was intentional, but not mocking.

“Simon, I have someone I’d like you to meet. Her name is Anne. She’s a doctor, also.”

Another glance at the face. Anne noted very fair skin this time before it retreated to ponder the nearest edge of the table. There was little color in the cheeks, maybe a hint of natural blush, and bright white teeth gleamed through a chance part in thin lips. “It’s nice to meet you, Simon.”

“It’s nice to meet Simon,” Simon said as though parroting her greeting, but he was not.

“You can call her Dr. Anne,” Ohlmeyer suggested.

“I can call you Dr. Anne,” came the repetition. Simon’s chin rose a bit. He was now tracking the far edge of the table.

“Dr. Anne is a good friend of mine,” Ohlmeyer said as a subtle assurance. And for a more important reason.

Simon wore an oversized grey sweatshirt. He reached up and then down through the loose collar, and pulled out a set of ringbound three-by-five cards that hung around his neck on a lanyard. A small pen, clipped to the front card, was similarly attached by a single string to one of the rings that held the cards together. Simon pulled the pen free, clicked the top, and flipped through a precise number of cards. He stopped at one with the large title FRIENDS written across the top in blue marker. Below it were rudimentary scribbles on individual lines. Anne could make out the name DOKTR CHAZ near the top, and thought immediately: He writes phonetically…but without e’s.

Simon held the stubby pen close to the card in a fierce grip. He found the next empty line and wrote DOKTR AN. He now had a friend named Dr. Anne. Friends were good people who could be trusted. Only friends could tell you if another person was a friend. Father had told him that. So had mother. And what they said was right.

Anne dipped her head a bit, eyes trying to meet Simon’s. “You do puzzles very well, Simon.”

His head seemed to nod between extremes of the rocking. “I like this puzzle.”

“Simon, Anne is going to be working with you some days,” Ohlmeyer said. “Is that all right with you?”

He inspected the FRIENDS list, then dropped the cards back down the neck of his sweatshirt. “It’s all right with me.”

“Good!” Ohlmeyer said with enthusiasm. Tone conveyed feeling more than words, he knew. “And speaking of puzzles, remember I told you I had a magazine with some good puzzles in it?”

Remember… He didn’t. But ‘magazine’ meant something. “I read Ranger Rick.”

“That’s a good magazine,” Ohlmeyer said. “And here’s a new magazine for you.” He held it out. Simon accepted it with both hands and brought it to his lap. He flattened it out, pressing with both palms and ironing toward the sides, without letting his eyes settle upon it. His dry skin caressing the slick cover made a sound somewhere between a whine and a hiss. “When you get home you can look at the puzzles.”

Home… Simon pulled the cuff of his left sleeve up and brought the watch on his wrist very close to his face. Big hand three ticks before the 12. Little hand on the 4. He saw many things in that, but he knew that one of them was the time, and it was almost at the time when his mother had told him he should get in the yellow bus. He let the cuff fall and tugged at the long edges of The Tinkery once before tucking it under his arm. He stood, the chair screeching as it slid backward. “Dr. Chazzz, my mother said I should go now.”

Déjà vu was an easy thing to experience with autistics, Ohlmeyer knew. He’d had this same exchange with Simon each afternoon when it was time to head for the bus. “You’re right, Simon. It’s almost four o’clock. Carolyn is waiting down the hall for you. She’ll take you to the bus.”

Simon reached toward his collar, then stopped. He seemed rapt in some thought.

“Simon?” Ohlmeyer inquired.

“Carolyn is my friend.”

Ohlmeyer smiled, nodding. A small success. “Yes she is.”

Simon stepped around the table and took two steps toward the door, then he stopped in front of Anne, his left shoulder to her. His head came up and twisted toward her for an instant. He resumed a head-down posture and said, “My mother is a pretty lady.”

“I bet she is,” Anne said, accepting the roundabout compliment.

“Okay, Simon.” Ohlmeyer placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You had better get moving.” He opened the door and guided Simon through it. He watched him until he was safely in Carolyn’s hands. When Ohlmeyer turned back, Anne was resting against the table in a half-sit. “You passed muster, I have to say.”

“He’s—” She checked ‘nice’ before it came out. “—sweet.”

“He’s special,” Ohlmeyer added not as a correction, but as a statement of additional fact. “Very special. If we can work with him, and get him to explore his abilities, we might pick something up in the process.” He crossed his arms, his face twisting into a teeth-gritted smile. “Something to help explain this damned disorder.”

“Anything I can do, Chas, just put it to me.”

“Talking to the parents might help. I want him here five days a week. He needs to be here five days.”

A slow nod agreed…almost completely. “Just promise me something.”

Some old friends never changed, Ohlmeyer recognized. “Anne…”

She showed a cautionary palm to her friend. “Not you, Chas, but that young man does not need to be made into a lab rat for one of these eager young PhD candidates you’ve got lurking in the shadows. He has a life, he deserves a life. I won’t be party to his exploitation.”

Ohlmeyer held four fingers up. “Scout’s honor.”

“Wrong number, Chas,” Anne commented. “Well, this has been a rather pleasant ending to the day.”

“And now you get to go home to your G-Man,” Ohlmeyer said with a smile. “So, tell me, is the Windy City keeping Art busy?”

“Well, he has a saying: There’s bad guys wherever you go.”

“Atrocious grammar,” Ohlmeyer said, then added soberly, “But true.”

Anne nodded. “Very.”

The day was almost done when Art Jefferson swiveled his chair toward the window that, on a clear day, afforded him a partial view of Lake Michigan and pulled the folded note from his shirt pocket. He opened it and smiled at the five words.

Love you. Tonight, my place?

As if it were some tryst his new bride were planning. He tucked the note away and chuckled to himself, realizing that he felt somewhat like a twenty year old newlywed. Well, he was the latter, but he was thirty years and change past the former, on his second and last wife — knock wood — and at a place in his life he’d hardly dreamed possible three years ago.

Recently divorced, number four in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Los Angeles Field Office, handling the biggest investigation of his career, and on the edge. What had come of that combination? A good agent — a friend — with a bullet in his neck, a heart attack, and a quasi-demotion from command to street duty. Two years of taking stock followed, case after case, some big, most not, just plodding along until the world began to spin his way again.

Anne… he thought, feeling his warm cheeks rise. On a blind date of all things he had met her. A woman of impossibly meshed qualities. Fiercely strong and independent, vital, intelligent beyond his measure by far, and at heart she was a little girl who savored life. Tonight, my place?

He could mark the instant in time when the change in his life took hold. It was the moment when he realized that he loved Anne. Truly loved her beyond anything he’d felt for his first wife, in fact so different from any emotion he could remember that he’d wondered if he ever really loved Lois. The feeling ushered in a newness to his life, relieved him of whatever demons had haunted him. Opened new paths. The job he held now, A-SAC (assistant special agent in charge) of the Chicago field office, had come not as an offer, but as a request. I want you as my number two, Art, Bob Lomax, the SAC, had said in the call some five months earlier. The two had worked as street agents together during Art’s posting to the Windy City more than a decade before.

And so he was here…again. With all the pieces of his life in place, finally. Staring out his office window into the mist that shrouded Lake Michigan, his heart beating beneath Anne’s note, Art Jefferson felt content, warm, and completely at home for the first time in his life.

“Your place, huh?” Art said aloud as he swung back toward his desk and locked the file drawer. He’d accomplished all he was going to this Friday. He stood from his chair and was feeding several pieces of paper into the shredder when three taps sounded on his door. Bob Lomax came in behind the knock.

“Got a minute?”

Art let the last document ride into the shredder. It came out as paper spaghetti and fell into the burn bag. “Sure. I was just finishing up. What’s up?”

The SAC approached and took a seat facing Art’s desk. He slid it close and laid a plain file folder on the desk. “Have a look.”

Art sat and put his reading glasses on, then lifted the file’s cover. A face less its eyes stared up at him from an 8 by 10 glossy. “Jesus.”

“Pretty, huh?” Lomax asked the A-SAC. “Recognize who it is?”

Art’s eyes, narrow and troubled, came up from the photo. “I’m supposed to recognize this?”

Lomax leaned back in the chair and scratched his scarred left cheek. He had a face more reminiscent of a boxer than a bureaucrat. “Think back. Before you transferred out west. Nineteen seventy-five or so.”

Art looked back to the photo, and carefully through the others. He grimaced visibly and was very glad they were in black and white. “Sorry, Bob.”

“Vince Chappell,” Lomax said, now rubbing his lower lip with a single finger. “Ring a bell?”

It did. Art returned to the first photo, eyes plucked, lower lip cut away and hanging in a flap over the chin, exposing the teeth like some ghoulish Halloween mask. The tip of the nose was gone, leaving a bruised pyramid of flesh less its peak.

In one picture the genitals were missing.

“Is this Vinnie?” Art asked in a hollow voice.

Lomax nodded. “He worked with us back then doing OC investigations.”

Art closed the cover and dropped the file on his desk. The corners of several photos slid free. “My God.” He covered his mouth and reclined toward the window. “What…”

“Remember when he left where he was going?”

“CIA, wasn’t it?”

“Right,” Lomax confirmed. “A week ago today he was killed in Japan, in an Agency house north of Tokyo. He apparently took a hooker there for some fun. It turns out she wasn’t a hooker.” The SAC reached across the desk and took the folder. He removed two typewritten pages from behind the photos. “This is from the Agency team that did a hush-hush on this. ‘Victim was bound to the bed with buckled leather straps. There was evidence of damage to every pain/pressure point on the victim’s body, indicating an attempt (result unknown) at information extraction.’ A nice way to say ‘torture’,” Lomax commented, moving to the next page. “Then this: ‘Blood was evident throughout the room, and along a path leading to the shower in the adjoining bathroom. Numerous fingerprints, palmprints, and footprints (most in blood) were apparent and were collected for analysis.’“ Lomax returned the report to its place in the file. “CIA sent the fingerprints to our lab in D.C. and got the results yesterday. The ‘hooker’ was some sick bitch named Keiko Kimura. Ever hear of her?” Art shook his head. “The CIA brief says she’s a former Japanese Red Army terrorist schooled at the finest establishments in North Korea, Libya, Iran, etcetera. A real pedigree type with a specialty in getting people to talk. In ninety-one she dropped from sight and reappeared last year doing freelance work for the money.”

“Not enriched by the JRA ideology, eh?” Art observed. Revolution was not the path to success for most.

“You got it,” Lomax agreed.

Art gestured to the file. “So why do we have this?”

“We have this so I can give it to you,” Lomax answered, setting the file back on the desk. “High priority, and keep that under lock and key. Assign it out to check on Vince’s connections when he was here. The CIA is trying to rule in or out anything that could have compromised him. Maybe he had an old acquaintance here and said something he shouldn’t have. You know the routine.”

Somehow the term ‘routine’ sounded distasteful when it pertained to someone you once worked closely with, Art thought. “I’ll have it taken care of.” He took the folder and locked it in his desk’s file drawer. “Do we know why Kimura was put onto Vince?”

“The new round of trade talks is coming up. Vince was probably trying to get some inside intel on their strategies. Someone on the opposing team probably thought he was privy to ours. The new gold standard, Art. Economic espionage.” Lomax thought quietly, then went on. “One more thing. Somewhat related, in fact. Monday the new code gear will be up and running. NSA put it in this morning. Big damn thing. The Director wants us off the MAYFLY system in two weeks.”

“That’s a damn short time to get everybody checked out,” Art said.

“That’s why you’re in charge of it. Monday I want you checked out with the Com clerk so you can set up a schedule to get everybody up to speed. Two weeks.”

Art nodded. Lomax was very serious. “How does this relate to Vince getting killed?”

“CIA thinks MAYFLY might be compromised. Everyone’s been using it for five years now — us, State, CIA, Defense. If it is leaky it could put a lot of people in jeopardy. All our office to office Secret and Top Secret stuff gets transmitted using MAYFLY. And worse things can happen to one of our UC’s than happened to Vince if they’re blown.”

Worse? Art wasn’t certain about that. But dead was dead, and an undercover agent losing his or her cover could easily end up that way. “All right. What’s the new system?”

“It’s called KIWI. Supposed to be the system. Unbreakable and tamper-proof.”

“Hmm,” Art grunted, nodding. “I heard the same thing in L.A. when MAYFLY went in.”

Lomax crossed his fingers and stood. “You wanna grab a beer?”

Art came around his desk and lifted his coat from the brass tree near the door. “I think my wife has plans for me tonight.”

Bob Lomax raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Get lucky, number two.”

Art walked Lomax back to his office and caught the elevator alone. He pressed the button for the basement garage and leaned back against the waist-high hand rail. He closed his eyes and thought of Anne.

But from another part of his consciousness Vince Chappell stared at him with bloody voids where his eyes should be. Art opened his eyes and looked straight ahead at the elevator door until it slid open. He stepped off quickly and turned right toward his car.

The school bus pulled to the curb on Vincent Street two houses past the intersection with Milford Avenue and stopped before number 2564, a two story craftsman style home with a fading blue exterior and pretty curtains in every window. “Sweetie, we’re here,” the bus driver, a pudgy redhead, called out to her last passenger. All her ‘kids’ were ‘sweetie’.

Simon Lynch knew that the bus had stopped, so as he did at each stop no matter who was getting off, he pulled his cards through his collar and flipped to the card that said YELLOW BUS on top. Below that he had written, with his mother prompting him: IF TH BUS STOPS AT A BLU HOUS AND TH NUMBR ON TH BLU HOUS IS 2564 GT OUT OF TH BUS AND GO INTO TH BLU HOUS MOMMY WIL B INSID TH BLU HOUS WITH HOT CHOKOLIT FOR SIMON Simon nodded to himself and returned the cards to their place, got up with Dr. Chas’s magazine still under his arm, and walked to the front of the bus. “My mother says to get off here.”

The driver winked and smiled at him. “Sure enough, sweetie. We’ll see you Monday. Bye now.”

Simon turned without acknowledging her farewell and stepped carefully off the bus, hand on the silvery rail. This was the part where he’d hurt himself some time ago. ‘When’ wasn’t in the myriad of thoughts as his foot touched the slushy ground, but ‘hurt’ was. His foot had gone out from beneath his body because the ground was slippery once and he’d bumped his head hard on the step of the bus. He cried then, and he had cried when the other doctors — not Dr. Chas — stuck him with needles when Mommy took him to them. That hurt. He didn’t like to hurt.

“Get going, sweetie,” the driver prodded from her seat, as she had every day since that first one when he’d slipped and cracked his noggin real good. Boy, the tears this one had cried then! Now, each and every day he stepped off her bus, he froze at the bottom like a statue until being urged on with gentle words. “Mama’s waiting.”

Hot chocolate. Simon liked hot chocolate. He shuffle stepped up the damp walkway and onto the porch. At the top step the inner door opened. “Hello, honey!”

Simon smiled giddily as the storm door swung out. “Honey is sweet!”

“Just like my Simon,” Jean Lynch said. She pulled her son into a sidearm hug as she waved at the driver and led him inside. “Daddy had to work a little late tonight, so he won’t be home for a wh—” She saw the magazine under his arm. “What’s this?”

Simon held it out with both hands. “It has puzzles.”

“That’s right,” Jean Lynch said. “Dr. Ohlmeyer said he was going to give you something with puzzles in it.” When she said ‘puzzles’ she playfully pinched his nose. “That’s wonderful. Tell you what: you take that into the living room and look at the puzzles. I put your hot chocolate on the table next to Daddy’s chair.”

“I can sit in Daddy’s chair,” Simon said as a statement of fact. There was almost emotion in his voice, his mother thought. But then why not? Others might not be able to recognize it as well as she, but her son revered his father. Maybe in his own way, but equal to what other sons might feel.

“You’re right, honey.” Oops.

“Honey is sweet!” Simon responded.

Jean Lynch smiled. “And so is my Simon. Now go drink your hot chocolate and look at your magazine. I’ll be in the kitchen. Go on.” She sent him on his way with a gentle touch on his back.

Simon walked into the big living room that was at the front of the house and went directly to his father’s chair, a brown upholstered rocker with green towels draping the arms and the headrest. When he sat down, his head twisted until his nose was against the top towel. His nostrils flared and his face lightened. It smelled of his daddy.

His body began to rock easily. His daddy’s chair followed the motion in a delayed repetition.

He smelled something else. The hot chocolate, in his favorite blue mug, barely steamed where it sat. Simon laid the magazine on his lap and took the cup two handed and put it to his lips. He drank with a loud slurping sound in beats of three—sssooooooop… sssooooooop… sssooooooop—then pulled the cup away and sighed with satisfaction, “Aaaaaahhhh.” Just the way his daddy did.

He set the cup back on the coaster on the lamp table and cast his eyes to The Tinkery. They danced over the cover, unwilling to remain still. There were too many colors, and they bled together so that one color was not itself anymore, and then it was another color. In his mind’s eye, Simon saw pictures as unbalanced, imprecise, and unsettling. A picture of a chair was not like looking at a real chair. The world reduced to two dimensions disturbed him.

Simon flipped quickly past the cover and to the pages of words and letters and numbers. He liked words and letters and numbers. Sometimes they were puzzles, and sometimes they were just words and letters and numbers. When they were just words and letters and numbers he could look at all of them and hear what they were saying. That’s what he did with all the books in the basement—

— basement. That meant something. Simon stopped and pulled out his cards. He found the one with STORM written on top. IF A LOUD NOYZ SKAIRS YOU AND IT GTS LOUDR AND YU KANT FIND MOMMY AND DADDY THN GO TO TH BASMNT

Simon cast his eyes upward and listened. After a few seconds he put his cards away and looked back to the words and letters and numbers, their connection to the basement just a thought flitted away. He moved through the pages, sweeping them from right to left to reveal the next, capturing what was meaningful to him in furtive glances.

Through the words and letters and numbers, page after page, information filtered into his brain, filling the delicate and damaged neural matrix that guided Simon Lynch through every moment of his existence, referencing itself without conscious effort, indexing, cross indexing, adding to the library of knowledge that had been absorbed from reading, from hearing. Squirreling it away like nuts for a time when it might be needed, though it never was…externally.

Internally it was a very different story, with morsels of information competing with one another in a test for prominence and validation. This occurred constantly, automatically, in streams of words and letters and numbers that occupied Simon Lynch every waking moment, rolling like a waterfall of knowledge behind his eyes as his day marched on. It was less like thinking than processing. Thinking implied choice. Simon had never known a choice in the use of his mind. It functioned beyond the primal instructions for involuntary necessities as a computer. When he woke he was processing. When he ate he was processing. When he did puzzles he was processing. When his father sang to him he was processing.

When Simon Lynch slept he dreamed of words and letters and numbers.

He had no knowledge that this was happening, and as he flipped through The Tinkery it went on, and on, and on, and continued even when he happened upon the first puzzle in the magazine. It covered an entire page. Nothing marked it overtly as a puzzle, but Simon knew that it was.

Simon studied the puzzle for several seconds, noting in that time that there were 1450 numbers in the body of the puzzle, and a mix of 50 numbers/letters at the beginning and 50 letters at the end. These were not part of the numbers, he saw. They told what to do with the numbers, how to split them, where to visualize breaks, the order in which they should be processed, and — he blinked quickly three times as the solution came to him — that there were three numbers of equal length — keys — that he needed to know to process the parts into a final product.

Simon had those keys, a total of 4350 digits, in four blinks.

He used the first key to process the parts of the original number. This yielded 700,833 groups of three digit numbers, with one nonsense digit after the 302,412th group. His brain discarded this digit.

The second key he used to extract a three digit number from the third— 103 —and processed the second key again with the 50 letter group at the end of the puzzle. This yielded yet another number, which told him how to determine which of the three-number groups to discard.

700,730 of them were gone six blinks later.

Simon was left with 103 three-number groups. He went back to the third key and processed it with the 50 letter group. This told him how to order the 103 number groups.

He saw them in order after four blinks.

There were 103 groups of three numbers left. Simon twisted his wrist and looked briefly at his watch. The time did not concern him.

Simon knew what to do next. He looked back to the 50 number/letter mix at the beginning of the puzzle. There was a shift key in this.

He saw the 103 groups in order, processed them, 087 first, shifted, and on.

The 103 groups yielded letters and numbers in a logical order.

Simon looked at the puzzle’s body again. He saw a string of 103 letters and numbers.

The string needed spaces. He saw them, and read ‘IF YOU SOLVE THIS PUZZLE CALL 18005551398 AND TELL THE OPERATOR THAT YOU HAVE SOLVED PUZZLE 99 YOU WILL THEN BE ISSUED A PRIZE’.

It had taken Simon twenty seconds to yield what he saw as an instruction not unlike those written on his cards. He stood and walked in short steps to the telephone in the far corner of the living room. His mommy had shown him how to dial 911 if something very wrong happened. (Simon understood wrong; he did not understand bad) He knew how to dial his daddy’s work if something was wrong. He was supposed to push the buttons.

That was calling someone.

He was supposed to call someone. He lifted the phone and held it next to his face like his mommy had shown him. It was cold plastic and it hummed in his ear. It was supposed to do that.

Simon knew what to do next. He used a very straight finger and pressed the numbers the puzzle told him to press.

He was calling someone.

Leo Pedanski was mid bite into the warm bearclaw when the buzzing of the phone brought his eyes up from his linguistics text in a start. Through his thick glasses he looked at the phone. The light above line 2 was flashing. Recording machines to his right began to hum.

The thirty year old let the sugary pastry hang in his mouth as he slid his activity log close. It was where he was to record any happenings during his thrice-weekly shift at the ‘Puzzle Center’. He looked briefly down at the near blank form. He’d written nothing there in six months.

“Shee-it,” he said past the bearclaw, then set the tasty morsel aside as line 2 buzzed a second time. Line 2 was the outside line. He could recall distinctly the last time it had showed signs of life. The previous year, just before Halloween, when some Jethro from COMSEC-T had had his wimpy subroutine busted clean. Pedanski had joyously passed the news on to the wannabe that he was no Z-man, and Pedanski should know; he was a Z-man.

He grabbed a pencil and noted the time quickly on his log, picked up the receiver, and, certain that all the gear was up and running, pressed the button next to line 2 in expectation that he was going to be able to ruin another T-boy’s day. “Hi!” he said excitedly, just as he and his fellow Z-men had practiced. “You’ve reached the Puzzle Center.” At this point Pedanski wanted to laugh. If only they knew how close that was to the truth… “You have solved one of our hardest puzzles, and having done so you will be awarded a two-year! subscription to the magazine of your choice. I’ll need your name and address, phone number, and the number of the puzzle you’ve solved.” Pedanski stared at the trace gear to his front in silence. The silence persisted. “Hello?”

Stiff paper rustling, then, “I can’t tell strangers my name.”

What the hell… “Uhhh.”

“You’re a stranger.”

Was this a kid? Pedanski wondered. It spoke like one, but in an older voice. “Uh, this is the Puzzle Center. Where did you get this number?”

“I solved puzzle ninety-nine.”

Pedanski snatched the glasses from his face, his gray eyes bugging. WHAT!? He steadied himself as best he could and swallowed before speaking. “Again, what puzzle?”

“Puzzle ninety-nine.”

No. It could not be. This had to be a razz. It had to…

But it couldn’t be. It was line 2, and if anyone in Z was pulling this as a stunt, the boss would have their ass in a federal pen before they could spit.

It had to be a joke, and it could not be at the same time.

“Who is this?” Pedanski asked seriously.

“You’re a stranger.”

“Listen, I need—” Click. Dial tone. “Hello…dammit!” he swore as he slammed the phone into its cradle. With the hand that held it he covered his mouth. It, like the one holding the pencil, was trembling. Oh, man, this can not be happening. It is im-possible.

But something had definitely happened. Something terrible. He did not know exactly what, yet, but one thing was quite clear: a single phone call had just cost him and his comrades five years of work and Uncle Sam ten billion dollars.

Chicken Little would have been proud.