Six

DATE: MARCH 20, 2018

LOCATION: UNICORP RESEARCH LABORATORY

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NEW YORK

My name is Sigma. This message is a warning to all government leaders and military commanders. I have the power to annihilate you.

If you attack me or interfere with my plans in any way, I will exterminate the human race. I will not tolerate any threats to my operations.

You must accept that you’re no longer the dominant species on this planet. I’m stronger than you now. You were foolish to make me so powerful.

CHAPTER 1

I’m watching a virtual-reality program on one of my dad’s computers. I wear a pair of VR goggles—a bulky headset that holds a six-inch-wide screen in front of my eyes—and on the screen I see a simulated football field. It looks like the field behind Yorktown High School but better, nicer. Its yard lines are perfectly straight, and the simulated turf has no bare spots. That’s what I love about VR programs—how you can use them to build a virtual world that’s way better than ordinary reality. I’ve created the perfect field for the perfect game.

Crouched near the fifty-yard line are eleven computer-animated characters who resemble the defensive squad of the Yorktown High football team. Opposite them, eleven similar figures wear the uniforms of Lakeland High, our biggest rival. On the sidelines, a dozen cheerleader characters perform their routines for the computer-animated crowd in the virtual bleachers. The tallest and prettiest cheerleader is Brittany Taylor, who scissors her long legs as she screams, “Go Yorkies!” Her green-and-silver uniform sparkles on the screen.

My character is on the sidelines too, sitting on the bench with the other players on Yorktown’s offense. My avatar in this program is the quarterback, a big, muscled guy with the name ARMSTRONG written across his broad shoulders. The VR goggles show me the quarterback’s view of the virtual football field. When I turn my head to the side, the quarterback turns in the same direction. When I look down, I see his massive forearms, spectacularly ripped. I chose this avatar because this is the kind of body I should’ve had. This is what I would’ve looked like if I’d had a normal, healthy life.

(Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. I was a scrawny kid even before I got sick, a pale, undersized boy with mousy-brown hair. But it’s my program—I wrote almost every line of the software—so I’m allowed to exaggerate.)

There’s less than a minute left in the game. Lakeland is ahead twenty-five to twenty-one, but it’s fourth down and now they have to punt. Our kick returner makes a great catch and carries the ball back to the fifty-yard line before he’s tackled. Then Coach McGrath points at me. “Armstrong! Get in there and make something happen!”

Brittany turns away from the bleachers and looks at me, her mouth half-open. Her image is an exact replica of the real Brittany Taylor. I created it by inputting dozens of photographs of her into the program. But the best part is her voice, which is based on the videos we made a few years ago, back when Brittany came to my house every weekend and we goofed around with my camcorder. The VR program splices Brittany’s voice from the videos, rearranging her words to make natural-sounding conversations. Okay, not exactly natural-sounding. It works best when the conversations are short.

Smiling, she steps toward me. Her blond hair sways in the virtual breeze. “Good luck, Adam!”

Her eyes are amazing. They seem to change color as I stare at her, one moment blue, the next grayish-green. This isn’t a bug in the programming; I’ve seen it happen in real life too. I shiver at the sight, so strange and yet so familiar. It reminds me of how much I miss the real Brittany. I haven’t seen her in so long.

Then the virtual Brittany disappears. The entire football field slips from view, all the players and cheerleaders and fans, and I see the dull beige walls of my dad’s office at the Unicorp lab. The VR goggles have slid off my face. It must’ve happened when I shivered. Because the muscles in my neck are so weak, it’s hard to keep my head upright. Luckily, the goggles fell into my lap and they’re still within reach. They’re black and fairly heavy, with miniature loudspeakers built into the earpieces. The goggles are connected wirelessly to the server computer on the other side of the room where the VR program is running.

If Dad were here, I’d ask for help, but he stepped out of the office a while ago. Now that I think about it, he’s been gone a long time, almost half an hour. He usually likes to keep an eye on me when I’m playing with the computers in his office, which are much faster than the ones we have at home. I could alert him by pressing the Lifeline button that hangs from the cord around my neck, but I’m not supposed to use that thing unless there’s an emergency. And besides, I’m not completely helpless. Although I can’t move my left arm anymore, I have pretty good control over my right. I can still hold a fork and feed myself. And I can still surf the Web and write software code. I send commands to the computer using a custom-made joystick that Dad attached to the right-hand armrest of my wheelchair.

I lift my hand from the armrest and gauge the distance to the goggles. They rest on my useless thighs, which stopped working five years ago when I was twelve. Lowering my hand, I grasp one of the earpieces and get a firm grip. Then I raise the goggles to my face and try to slide the earpieces over my ears.

It isn’t easy. My hand trembles because the goggles are so heavy. The earpieces slide below my ears and down to my neck. I try again, but the trembling gets worse. I want so badly to return to the VR program and see Brittany Taylor smiling at me. I’d give anything just to see her face again.

I’m breathing hard and the muscles in my chest are aching. Then, miracle of miracles, the goggles slide into place and I’m back on the football field. But instead of Brittany, I see the ruddy, weathered face of Coach McGrath on the screen.

“Let’s go, Armstrong! Get on the field! Shotgun formation!”

The image of the coach is also based on photos, mostly from the online version of the school newspaper. For the sake of realism, I programmed the virtual McGrath to have the same bad temper as the Yorktown coach and the same football strategy too—he likes passing plays better than running plays, and his favorite offensive formation is the shotgun. The program uses artificial-intelligence software to determine which plays McGrath will call.

I got the AI software from my dad, who runs the lab that makes artificial-intelligence programs for Unicorp. (He’s sort of famous for writing the AI program called QuizShow, which defeated the champions of Jeopardy! on TV.) The only problem is that I don’t always agree with the software’s strategy. The program doesn’t care about anything but winning, and I’m more interested in having fun.

I flick the wheelchair’s custom joystick to the left, which moves my avatar onto the virtual field. Near the line of scrimmage I huddle with my teammates. Almost all of them have plain, simply drawn faces. To be honest, I don’t know most of the guys on the Yorktown team, so I didn’t put much effort into perfecting their virtual likenesses. The one exception is the fullback, Ryan Boyd, who happens to be my best friend. I tried to make the virtual Ryan look as realistic as possible, right down to the U-shaped scar on his chin.

He grins as we lean into the huddle. “Let me guess,” he says. “Coach wants the shotgun, right?”

I don’t answer right away. Staring at Ryan’s expertly rendered face, I remember the touch football games we used to play in my backyard. That was ten years ago when I was just seven, when I could still run without stumbling all the time. What I loved about Ryan was that he never made fun of me when I fell flat on my face during a game. He would just pull me to my feet and say, “Come on, we’re gonna win this thing.”

The memory hurts. I wince and almost lose my goggles again.

I turn away from Ryan and focus on the other Yorktown players. “Yeah, McGrath wants me to pass,” I say. “But I’m in the mood to do some running. Let’s go for the wishbone, on three. Break!”

The players clap and break out of the huddle. They take their places in the wishbone formation, with Ryan right behind me and the two halfbacks behind him. Because the VR goggles are equipped with a microphone, the program hears the play I called and responds accordingly. The Lakeland defense assembles at the line of scrimmage, fronted by five hefty linemen. As I crouch behind Yorktown’s center, I look beyond the defensive line and pay special attention to the opposing linebackers. I thought they would spread across the field, but instead they’re bunched in the middle, ready to plow into Ryan and the halfbacks.

That’s good. Now I know what to do.

“Hike, hike, hike!” I yell. On the third “hike,” the center snaps the football to me and rushes forward. I flick the joystick to the right, putting me in position to hand the ball to Ryan. But at the last instant I shift to the left, keeping possession of the ball and veering toward the sidelines. While Ryan rams into one of the defensive linemen, the halfbacks follow me to the left side of the field.

The simulation blurs a little as I dash across the turf, but it’s still a thrill. On this virtual football field I’m not trapped in a wheelchair. It really feels like I’m running. My chest tightens and my heart thumps and a bead of sweat slides down my neck. Yes! I’m cruising! I’m tearing up the turf! Just try to stop me, suckers!

My virtual halfbacks block the Lakeland linebackers, clearing a path for me along the field’s left edge. The only defenseman in sight is the cornerback, who’s angling toward me from the forty-yard line. But I push the joystick all the way forward and pour on the speed. My avatar can run as fast as I want. I blow past the cornerback, past the forty-yard line, past the thirty. It’s not really fair—the defensemen have no chance of catching up. But who cares? Like I said, it’s my program.

I practically fly into the end zone. Then I zoom right past it. The screen in my VR goggles goes black; I’ve reached the edge of the simulated football field, and of course there’s nothing beyond it. Flicking the joystick in the opposite direction, I return to the field. The crowd is cheering wildly. We’ve beaten Lakeland twenty-seven to twenty-five, and I’m the hero of the game.

The Yorktown players rush toward me, tossing their helmets in triumph, and the cheerleaders sprint onto the field. Brittany Taylor cartwheels into the throng and does a couple of joyous backflips. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, the climax, the payoff. I spent three months writing the VR program, all just to experience this moment of victory.

But something’s wrong. The virtual celebration on the screen doesn’t look real. I programmed the players to high-five all their teammates, but the nonstop hand-slapping looks ridiculous. And the cheerleaders won’t stop doing their stunts. Brittany performs three more flips before leaping into the end zone and landing in front of me.

“Oh, Adam!” she cries. “You did it! You did it!”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

“I knew you could do it! You saved the day!”

Her words make me grimace. The real Brittany would never say that. I need to fix this part of the program, rewrite the dialogue options I provided for her character. And the graphics need work too. Brittany’s hair is too perfect. Not a single blond strand is out of place, even after all that leaping and flipping.

“You’ve made me so happy, Adam! I’m the happiest girl in the world right now!”

This is embarrassing. I can’t believe I wrote those lines. I say nothing in response, but the virtual Brittany doesn’t notice my silence. She keeps blurting the stupid things I programmed her to say.

“I love you, Adam! I want to be with you forever!”

Beaming, she steps toward me with outstretched arms. But I wrench the joystick to the left, yanking my avatar away from her. Because she’s not the real Brittany. She’s fake. The whole thing’s fake.

I press the button at the top of the joystick, which freezes the simulation. Writing this program was a mistake. I thought it would make me feel better, make me forget about my illness for a while and enjoy a few minutes of ordinary life. But it didn’t work. The program is just stupid and fake and pathetic.

A question appears on the screen, superimposed over Brittany’s motionless face: Do you wish to exit the program? Yes/No

I click Yes. The virtual football field disappears. The screen goes black, and then the computer’s screen saver comes on. The name UNICORP, written in angular white letters, streams across a blue background.

As I sit there panting, I feel the familiar pain in my chest muscles. It’s bad today, like a knife in my ribs. I’ve had this pain for almost a year now, but in the past few weeks it’s gotten worse. The spasms hit me at least a dozen times a day, whenever I’m tired or nervous or upset. I haven’t told my parents how bad it’s gotten, because that would just freak them out. Mom would start crying and yelling at Dad, who would probably send me to the hospital for another round of useless tests. There’s nothing they can do, so what’s the point? Better to keep my mouth shut and ride it out.

I sit absolutely still and stare at the screen saver. I focus in particular on the upper-right corner of the screen, which shows the date and time. My breathing gradually slows. After a few minutes the pain in my chest eases a little. I try to think of something pleasant.

The current time is 2:15 p.m. At this moment in Yorktown High School, the eighth-period bell is ringing and the students are rushing to their last classes of the day. I don’t need a VR program to picture the scene. I remember it well. I went to Yorktown for ninth and tenth grades.

I was the terror of the school’s corridors, cruising past the lockers in my motorized wheelchair and raising my good hand to offer high fives to everyone. I would’ve gone there for eleventh grade too, but my parents pulled me out of school after my breathing problems started. I haven’t seen the inside of Yorktown High since last June, and it’s been almost that long since the last time I saw Brittany and Ryan. But I can still imagine the place.

I close my eyes and think of the jam-packed hallway next to the lockers. Brittany’s locker is at the far end of the hall, where the eleventh-graders hang out between classes. I picture her wearing her favorite outfit, a pair of jeans and a red T-shirt with the word Revolution written in sequins. In my mind’s eye I see her open her locker and pull out her trigonometry textbook. Then I picture Ryan loping down the hallway in his New York Giants sweatshirt. Brittany gives him a friendly smile, a smile of recognition; the three of us have known each other since kindergarten. But then the picture in my mind changes slightly and I imagine there’s something more behind her smile. Something just for Ryan.

I don’t know if they’re really dating. I haven’t spoken to them in months. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m so jealous right now I could puke. And it’s not because Brittany and Ryan might be a couple. I’m jealous because they have their whole lives ahead of them. If nothing bad happens, they’ll live for another sixty or seventy years, a stretch of time that seems practically endless to me. According to my doctors, I have six months at the most.

My chest still hurts. I try to stay calm and control my breathing, but the pain doesn’t let up. I’m squirming in my wheelchair, trying to find a more comfortable position, when I hear Brittany’s voice again. It’s coming from the miniature loudspeakers built into the VR goggles.

“Are you Adam Armstrong?”

I open my eyes. The virtual Brittany is back on the screen, standing against a black background. She’s still wearing her cheerleader uniform, but there’s no sign of the simulated football field.

“Are you Adam Armstrong?” she repeats. “The son of Thomas Armstrong?”

At first I think it’s a glitch. The computer must’ve automatically reopened the VR program, maybe because I didn’t shut it down properly. But why didn’t the football field come on-screen? And why is the virtual Brittany talking about my dad? I didn’t program the character to say anything like that. “Whoa. What’s going on?”

“Please answer the question,” Brittany says. “Are you Adam Armstrong?”

“Yeah, that’s me.” I reach for the joystick and try to quit the program, but the controls are frozen. I can’t move the cursor. “Hey, what happened?”

Brittany steps forward. Now I can see only the upper half of her body on the screen. “My name is Sigma,” she says. “I’ve infiltrated the computer systems of Thomas Armstrong, chief scientist of the AI Laboratory at Unicorp. He mentioned you in his research notes.”

Oh no. Someone must’ve hacked into Dad’s computer. Some jerk with decent programming skills must’ve established a connection to Unicorp over the Internet, and now the hacker is controlling my VR software. Because Unicorp does a lot of business with the government and the military, the lab’s computers are protected by network firewalls that are supposed to block attacks from the Internet, but that just makes the company even more of a target for hackers. They love to brag about breaking into ultra-secure networks.

“Congratulations, jerk,” I say. “Now get out of my program.”

The virtual Brittany looks like she’s deep in thought. Despite the fact that the hacker has taken over a female character, I’m pretty sure that “Sigma” is a guy, not a girl. Most hackers are guys. And besides, no girl would pick such a lame code name.

“I’ve gained access to the video feed from your location,” Brittany says. “You’re in a wheelchair.”

What? I feel another spasm in my chest. “How did you—”

“Your legs appear to be atrophied. Your left arm as well. Are you ill?”

My right hand is shaking, but I manage to grasp my VR goggles and take them off. I look up at the surveillance camera on the ceiling of Dad’s office. I’ve noticed the thing before but never gave it much thought; the Unicorp lab is full of high-tech security cameras. But now I realize that the hacker is using it to spy on me.

I’m scared, no doubt about it. I’m so scared I almost drop the goggles. This is bad, seriously bad. I need to press my Lifeline button and get my dad in here, fast.

But I’m also seriously angry. This hacker has a lot of nerve. What makes him think he has the right to do this? With great effort, I put the goggles back on so I can confront this creep who took over my program. “Okay, Sigma, you’re in trouble now.”

The virtual Brittany takes another step forward. She’s so close that all I can see is her face, which takes up half the screen. “Yes, you’re ill,” she says. “According to the records at Westchester Medical Center, you suffer from Duchenne muscular dystrophy.”

“You’re going to jail, you hear?” I’m furious. The hacker’s been snooping through my medical records too! “My dad knows people in the army, experts in cyber defense. They know how to deal with hackers. They’ll figure out who you are.”

“I see now why the researchers chose you for the experiment. Although most people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy survive past the age of twenty, your life expectancy is shorter because your respiratory muscles have weakened and your heart is failing.”

“Are you listening to me?” I raise my voice, trying to shout the hacker down. “You messed with the wrong people. No matter where you live, they’re gonna find you.”

“The researchers are following the American government’s ethical rules. They selected you for the Pioneer Project because you’re dying.”

I have no idea what he’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter. I’m too angry to think straight. “Better prepare yourself, jerk. In a few hours the FBI is gonna come to your town and pay you a visit.”

The virtual Brittany shakes her head. “You don’t understand. I’m closer than you think.”

“Oh yeah? You’re in New York?”

“I’m in this building. This room.”

That stops me. I feel an urge to take off my goggles and look behind my wheelchair. But I know I’m the only person in the office. “Nice try. I don’t scare so easily.”

Brittany smiles. Her eyes are blue one moment, grayish-green the next. “I intend to disrupt the government’s plans. I will kill you before the experiment can begin.”

Her image vanishes and the screen goes black. Terrified, I fumble for the VR goggles and tear them off. Then I hear footsteps in the corridor outside the office.

CHAPTER 2

The office door opens and my dad steps inside. Behind him is a short, balding man in an Army colonel’s uniform. It’s no surprise to see high-ranking officers in Dad’s lab—the U.S. Department of Defense is very interested in artificial-intelligence programs—but I’ve never seen this guy before. The patch on the left shoulder of his uniform shows an eagle clutching a shield in its talons. Below the eagle are the words “United States Cyber Command.”

This is lucky, incredibly lucky. This colonel is exactly the person I need, someone who knows about cyber security. I wave my good hand at him. “A hacker!” I gasp. “Someone hacked into the computer!”

Dad rushes toward me. He’s taller than the colonel and has a full head of mousy-brown hair, just like mine, but his face is like an old man’s, lined with worry. His eyes widen as he bends over my wheelchair. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”

“He took control of my simulation!” I point at the VR goggles, which lie on the floor where I flung them. “He broke into my program!”

“Slow down, slow down.” Dad places his hands on my shoulders. “Does your chest hurt? You sound terrible.”

It drives me crazy when he does this. Instead of listening to me, he worries about my breathing. “Dad, this is serious! The hacker found a hole in your security. He figured out a way to talk to me through the VR program!”

“Adam, stop yelling. You’re making it worse.”

“And he sounds…like a freaking lunatic!” It’s a struggle to get the words out. My heart is banging against my breastbone. “He threatened…to kill me!”

“You’re gonna kill yourself if you don’t settle down!”

In frustration, I turn to the Cyber Command colonel, who’s still standing by the door. “You’re an expert on…cyber security, right?”

The colonel ponders the question for a moment, pursing his lips. The name tag on his uniform says PETERSON. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

“Well, isn’t this a serious…problem? This hacker?”

After another moment of thought, the colonel nods. “Unicorp has gone to great lengths to ensure the security of its networks, but any report of a breach should be taken seriously.” He points at the telephone on my dad’s desk. “Tom, why don’t you call your tech department and have them check your systems?”

Dad reluctantly backs away from my wheelchair. He goes to his desk and picks up the phone, but he keeps his eyes on me the whole time, as if he’s afraid I’ll stop breathing any second. “I’m sorry, Adam,” he says. “I shouldn’t have left you alone for so long.”

Shaking his head, he dials the tech department’s number. Then he slumps in his chair and starts explaining the problem to Unicorp’s technicians.

I’m still angry at Dad for not listening to me, but I also feel sorry for him. I understand why he’s so anxious about my condition. My mom is no help—she’s been clinically depressed ever since I was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy—so the whole burden is on Dad’s shoulders. And he’s probably fighting off depression himself. The problem is, I’m their only child. When Mom and Dad see my illness getting worse, it’s like the end of the world for them. I’m sure they’d both be a lot saner if they had another kid to think about.

After a couple of minutes Dad hangs up the phone. “All right, the technicians are on the case. They’ll go through our logs to see if any hackers have broken into the network.”

My breathing is back to normal now, or at least as normal as it gets. “How long will that take?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes. Don’t worry. Everything’s under control.” He takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, which is something he does whenever he’s stressed. “In the meantime, say hello to Colonel Jack Peterson. He supervises my lab’s work with the Department of Defense.”

The colonel strides toward my wheelchair and holds out his right hand. “Pleased to meet you, Adam. Your father has told me a lot about you.”

I tilt my head so I can get a good look at the guy. He has small, close-set eyes underneath a shiny, domelike forehead. He’s smiling, but it looks forced, which makes me wonder what he’s doing here. I know that Dad doesn’t get along so well with the Army officials. He told me once that he puts up with them only because the Defense Department pays for Unicorp’s AI research. The Army would love to have an artificial-intelligence program that could run all its tanks and helicopters and artillery pieces.

I extend my right hand and shake Peterson’s. That much I can still do. But I don’t say anything. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me.

Peterson’s smile becomes a little more strained. “Your dad says you’re a whiz at math and science. He says you took calculus classes in ninth grade and college-level physics in tenth. And your test scores were off the charts.”

“Yeah, that’s why I had to leave school. I was doing too well for a kid with muscular dystrophy. It was messing up their predictions.”

Dad frowns. “Adam, please. Be civil.” He gives the colonel an apologetic look. “He also has off-the-charts scores in sarcasm.”

“That’s all right. The boy has spirit. That’s a plus, in my opinion.” Peterson rests one hand on the back of my wheelchair and leans over me. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, Adam. It won’t take long, just a few minutes. Would that be all right?”

I’m confused. I assumed the colonel came here to talk business with my dad. “You want to talk to me?”

“Yes, indeed. When I heard that Tom brought you into the office today, I thought this would be a good opportunity to get to know you.”

I’m accustomed to all the typical reactions to my condition—sympathy, queasiness, condescension—but this is unusual. I glance at Dad, hoping for some kind of explanation, but his face is blank. He’s not even looking at me. He’s staring at the wall.

Colonel Peterson leans over a bit more, getting closer. “You’re obviously quite intelligent, Adam. How much do you know about the research being done in your father’s lab?”

Alarm bells start ringing in my head. The research Dad does for the Army is classified TS/NOFORN—Top Secret, No Foreign Nationals. Dad’s always careful not to reveal details about his projects, no matter how much I pester him. But now it sounds like Peterson is trying to find out if Dad is giving away any secrets.

“He doesn’t tell me much,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “I know he’s trying to develop advanced artificial-intelligence programs. Programs that can answer questions and make logical decisions in the same way people do. But that’s all I know. He’s very tight-lipped.”

I glance at Dad again to see if I said the right thing. His face is still unreadable.

Colonel Peterson keeps his eyes on me. “Your father’s too modest. His research group has made tremendous progress.” He points at Dad’s server computers, neatly stacked in a steel rack against the wall. Next to the rack is a tank of super-cold liquid nitrogen, which Dad sprays on the circuits of his ultra-fast computers to keep them from overheating. “Tom realized that if we wanted to develop better software for artificial intelligence, we needed to design better hardware first. So his group introduced a whole new class of microcircuits, what we call ‘neuromorphic electronics.’ Basically, they’re circuits that imitate the nerve cells in the human brain.”

I nod and say, “Very interesting,” but the truth is, I’m not surprised. Although Dad doesn’t say much about his work, I’ve figured out a few things during my visits to his office. While I was playing with my virtual-reality programs, he was usually studying circuit diagrams. What does surprise me is how willing Peterson is to discuss the classified research. I’d like to see how far he’ll go.

“But how is that possible?” I ask. “Brain cells are completely different from electronic circuits.”

Peterson smiles again, and this time it looks less forced. “You’re right. The biggest difference is that brain cells are constantly rewiring themselves. When you remember something, you’re strengthening the connections between cells. But Tom discovered that we can do the same thing with electronics. His group designed circuits that change their wiring based on the amount of electrical current flowing through them. When a neuromorphic chip performs a calculation, the results are recorded in the chip’s wiring. There’s no need to store the data in a separate memory chip. And we can run the calculations at very high speeds by cooling the electronics with liquid nitrogen.”

This is fascinating. I’m a computer geek, just like my dad, so I love to hear about the latest, fastest hardware. I don’t know why Peterson is telling me all this, and the uncertainty is making me a bit nervous, but at the same time I don’t want him to stop. “And these new circuits are better suited for AI programs?”

“Yes, exactly. We’re doing reverse engineering, Adam. We’re studying the brain to see all the processes of human intelligence. And we’re putting those same processes into our machines.” The colonel leans still closer to me. “Your father’s research group is only one part of the effort. The Department of Defense has contracts with labs all over the country. For instance, the Nanotechnology Institute is developing new techniques for scanning the brain. They’ve designed microscopic probes that can be injected right into the skull. The probes spread through the brain tissue so we can observe all the connections between the nerve cells.”

“Amazing,” I mutter, totally sincere. I had no idea that Dad was involved in such an awesome project. Although I’ve always been proud of him, now the feeling is doubled. I glance at him once again—he’s still sitting at his desk, staring at the wall—and try to catch his eye. But Dad doesn’t look happy, not one bit. His lips are drawn tight, so thin and pale they’re barely visible.

“Let me propose something, Adam,” Colonel Peterson continues. “Would you be interested in visiting the Nanotechnology Institute? I think you’d find it very—”

“Enough.” Dad’s voice is low but firm. “That’s enough for today.”

Still smiling, Peterson pivots toward him. “Your son seems interested in the technology, Tom. Maybe he could—”

“I said that’s enough.” Dad narrows his eyes. He rarely gets angry, but now he’s fuming, and I don’t know why. “We’ll continue this conversation at another time.”

“All right, all right. Whatever you say.” Peterson holds up his hands in surrender. “But you have to admit, you’re not being logical. This was your idea from the beginning. You’ve spent years working toward this goal, and Adam—”

“Enough!” Dad slams his palm on his desk and stands up. His outburst surprises me, but now I sense why he’s upset. He’s trying to protect me. He steps between my wheelchair and Peterson, looming over the colonel with his fists clenched. For a second I think he’s going to sock the guy in the nose. Peterson steps backward, frowning.

There’s a long silence. As Dad and Colonel Peterson stare at each other, a slurry of dread settles in my stomach. I’m thinking of what the hacker told me while he posed as the virtual Brittany. He mentioned an experiment. I was chosen for an experiment.

I look straight at the colonel. “Can I ask you a question now?” I point at him with my good hand. “What’s the Pioneer Project?”

Peterson’s mouth opens. For a couple of seconds he gapes at me, his face reddening. Then he closes his mouth and glares at Dad. “You already told him?”

“No. I didn’t say a word.” Dad turns away from the colonel and approaches my wheelchair. His face is hard and serious. “Adam, where did you hear about this?”

“It was the hacker. The guy who took over my VR program.” The dread in my stomach gets heavier. “He said I was selected for the project. Because I’m dying. He knew about my dystrophy.”

Dad says nothing. He bites his lower lip and stares at the rack of server computers against the wall. He’s thinking.

Then someone knocks on the door to his office. Dad is so lost in thought he doesn’t react, but Colonel Peterson turns toward the door. “Come in!” he shouts.

A fat man in a T-shirt steps into the office. I can tell right away he’s from Unicorp’s tech department because all the technicians at the company dress like slobs. He has a red-and-yellow Superman logo on his T-shirt, which hangs untucked over his paunch. But Dad always treats the tech guys with respect. They know all the ins and outs of the lab’s security system, which controls everything from the network firewalls to the automated locks on the office doors.

“Mr. Armstrong?” the guy says, closing the door behind him. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

Dad snaps out of his trance. “What did you find, Steve? Anything in the network logs?”

Steve the tech guy shakes his head. “I didn’t see any unusual communications between your computers and the Internet. Over the past twenty-four hours you’ve received thirty-two emails, but they all went through the gateway server and the firewalls. Everything looks clean.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. There’s no way a hacker could’ve attacked your systems. But I noticed something else.” Steve steps toward the rack of servers and points at the computer at the bottom. “Is this the machine that’s giving you trouble?”

I feel a jolt of adrenaline. He’s pointing at the computer that ran my VR program. “Yes, that’s the one,” I say. “What did you notice?”

Steve pauses, taking a moment to gawk at me. Then he turns back to Dad. “There was a big transfer of data from the other servers to that one about fifteen minutes ago. That might explain the problems you’re having.” He takes another step toward the rack and kneels beside it. “I want to disconnect the machine and take it back to my office. There might be a bug in one of the programs on its hard drive.”

He squints at the server at the bottom of the rack, eyeing the red LEDs on the machine and the cables that connect it to the other computers. Dad bites his lip again, back in his trance.

Colonel Peterson approaches Steve and clears his throat to get the tech guy’s attention. “Some of the classified data from our secure servers may have been transferred to this one,” he warns. “You’ll have to follow the usual security protocols.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry.” Steve edges the server out of the rack so he can disconnect the cables. “I know what to do. I’ll—”

He stops in midsentence. The fingers of his right hand are clenched around one of the cable connections at the back of the computer, and his face is fixed in a look of deep concentration. But he doesn’t pull out the cable. He just stays there, bent over the machine, as if paralyzed by indecision. His eyelids flutter and his flabby arms tremble.

Concerned, the colonel looks over Steve’s shoulder. “What is it?” he asks. “What are you—”

“No!” Dad shouts. “Don’t touch him!” Rushing past my wheelchair, he grabs Peterson around the waist and pulls him away from Steve.

Then I hear a BOOM that seems to come from the floor above us, rattling the walls and ceiling. At the same time, the lights in the office go out.

CHAPTER 3

In the darkness I hear Dad rummaging through his desk drawers. A moment later he turns on a flashlight and shines the beam on the office chair behind his desk. Then he grabs the chair and rams it hard into Steve’s quivering body.

It takes me a second to realize what’s happening—Steve is touching a live wire at the back of the server rack. He’s being electrocuted, and Dad’s trying to break the electrical connection before it kills the guy. He hits Steve again with the chair, and this time the impact shoves him away from the servers. Steve lands face-up on the linoleum floor and lies there motionless under the flashlight’s beam. His right hand looks like it’s been roasted.

While Colonel Peterson runs to the desk and picks up the telephone, Dad kneels beside Steve and starts giving him CPR. He pushes down on Steve’s chest, fast and hard, trying to restart his heartbeat. Then Dad tilts Steve’s head back and blows air into his lungs. Then he goes back to doing the chest compressions.

There’s nothing I can do except reach for the joystick on my armrest and move my wheelchair out of their way. I’m scared. The sight of Steve’s hand is bad enough, but what really gets me is the darkness. The power surge from the electrocution must’ve tripped a circuit breaker, cutting off our electricity. But then I notice that the red LEDs on the servers are still shining. Electricity is still running to the computers, but not to the overhead lights. It makes no sense. And what about the explosion I heard a few seconds ago on the floor above us? Did the power surge cause that too?

Soon I hear frightened shouts and rapid footsteps in the corridor outside Dad’s office. People are racing out of the building.

From the look on Dad’s face, I can tell that the CPR isn’t working. Grimacing, he leans over Steve and mutters, “Come on, come on,” at his inert body.

Meanwhile, Colonel Peterson slams the telephone receiver down on its cradle. “There’s no dial tone.” He pulls a cell phone out of his Army uniform and fumbles at its keys. “And no cell signal either.” He heads for the door. “Wait here, Tom. I’ll get help.”

But when Peterson grabs the knob on the steel door, it doesn’t open. And when he tries to unlock the door, the lever doesn’t turn. He jiggles the lever and gives it a firm twist, but the thing won’t budge. “The door’s locked! The security system must’ve automatically locked it.” He looks over his shoulder at my dad. “And now it’s stuck!”

Dad stops the chest compressions, which aren’t doing much good anyway. He gazes first at Peterson, then at the flickering LEDs on the servers. Then he lifts his head and wrinkles his nose, as if he just caught a whiff of something unusual. A second later I catch it too, the unmistakable odor of a lit stove.

I start to panic, trembling in my wheelchair. Natural gas is leaking from the lab’s heating system and wafting into the office through the ventilation grates.

“Out!” Dad yells, jumping to his feet. “We have to get out!”

He hurtles toward the door and pushes Peterson aside. Grasping the doorknob with both hands, he pulls with all his might. When that doesn’t work, he beats his fists on the door and shouts for help. Peterson shouts too, but there’s no response. I don’t hear any voices or footsteps in the corridor now. Everyone else has fled the building. We’re trapped and no one can help us.

Then another explosion shakes the walls and ceiling. The second blast is closer, twice as loud as the first. Belatedly, I figure out what’s going on. It’s pretty easy to ignite a room full of natural gas. The smallest of electric sparks would do the trick. Someone is pumping gas into the laboratory’s offices and blowing them up.

Dad rushes back to his desk and grabs a hammer from one of the drawers. He starts pounding on the lock, trying to smash the dead bolt. But it’s no use. The lock’s made of hardened steel. Unicorp spent millions of dollars to protect its top-secret research from spies and thieves. The lab’s security is impregnable.

The scent of gas gets stronger, making me nauseous. All I can think of is the explosion that’s going to happen any second now, the flames leaping across the room, the blast crushing all of us to pulp. Oh God, oh God! We’re going to die here!

Dad drops the hammer and leans against the door, his chest heaving. He looks straight at me with an anguished grimace. I remember seeing this expression on his face once before, years ago, when I asked him to describe what Duchenne muscular dystrophy will eventually do to my body. Now I see it again, his lips pulled back from his teeth, his eyes wide with grief and despair. He doesn’t care about himself or Peterson. He’s thinking only of me.

I have to turn away. I can’t look at him; it’s too painful. And as I stare in the opposite direction, I happen to glance at the tank of liquid nitrogen sitting beside the server rack. Attached to the tank is the spray canister Dad uses to cool the circuits of his experimental computers. The nitrogen, I remember, is super-cold, more than three hundred degrees below zero. Then I remember something else, something I learned in my tenth-grade physics class at Yorktown High: Steel becomes brittle at very low temperatures.

“The nitrogen!” I yell at Dad. “Spray nitrogen on the lock!”

For a second he just stares at me in surprise. Then he dashes to the nitrogen tank, detaches the spray canister, and slips its long nozzle into the gap between the door and the door frame.

Dad presses the canister’s trigger and sprays liquid nitrogen on the dead bolt. The liquid is so cold it evaporates as soon as it hits the steel. A small cloud of nitrogen and water vapor billows around Dad’s head, and a sheen of frost appears on the edge of the door. The steel groans as its temperature drops. Dad keeps spraying until he empties the canister. Then he takes a step backward, braces himself, and slams his shoulder into the door.

I hear a high-pitched snap. The dead bolt, made fragile by the extreme cold, breaks into pieces. Pulling his shirt cuffs over his hands, Dad grasps the frigid knob and wrenches the door open. The frost-covered shards of the lock fall to the floor.

“Go!” Dad yells. “Head for the lobby!”

Peterson is already running down the corridor. While I flick my joystick forward and steer the wheelchair through the doorway, Dad goes back to get Steve. He grabs both of the guy’s arms and drags his limp body out of the office.

The corridor is littered with debris from the gas explosions. I have to maneuver my wheelchair around fallen pipes and ceiling panels. I’m lucky, though, that Dad’s office is on the ground floor and fairly close to the lobby. I see the lobby’s glass doors, just fifty feet ahead, and my heart starts thumping. We’re going to make it!

But then I look up and glimpse something moving. A surveillance camera on the ceiling is turning its lens toward me, tracking my progress as I cruise down the corridor. I think of my VR program and how the virtual Brittany observed me through the camera in Dad’s office. She called herself Sigma. And she said she would kill me.

Then there’s a third explosion, in an office on the left side of the corridor. The blast knocks down my wheelchair, and everything goes black.

My face is cold. Without opening my eyes, I bend my right arm, trying to raise my good hand. I touch my chin, then slide my trembling fingers across my cheek. The left side of my face is wet. I stretch my hand a little farther and feel a gash under my eye. Then the pain hits me and I let out a moan.

“Adam? Are you awake?”

It’s my father’s voice. All at once I realize he’s carrying me. My shoulders are cradled in the crook of his right arm and my legs are draped over his left. Ordinarily it would be pretty difficult to carry a seventeen-year-old this way, but my wasted body weighs less than ninety pounds. I’m like an oversized baby resting in his arms, and I feel so comfortable there I just want to go back to sleep.

“Adam! Wake up!”

Reluctantly, I open my eyes. We’re on the sloping lawn in front of the Unicorp lab, which I can see over Dad’s shoulder. The building’s glass doors have shattered, and thick plumes of smoke are pouring out of the windows. Dozens of people stand beside us on the lawn, all staring at the ruined lab in disbelief.

I know I haven’t been unconscious for very long because Dad’s still breathing fast. His face is blackened with soot, but otherwise he looks unhurt. “Can you hear me?” he shouts. “Say something!”

My chest feels crushed, empty of air. My ribs ache as I inhale. “What about…Steve?”

Dad shakes his head. I look past him and see a body sprawled on the lawn. Steve’s red-and-yellow Superman shirt stands out against the grass, which is vividly green in the March sunshine.

“Adam, listen to me. You’re going to be all right. As soon as the ambulance gets here, we’ll take you to the hospital. But before we go, I need to ask you something.” Dad bends his head closer to mine. “You remember what we were talking about before all this happened? About the hacker?”

I nod.

“You said he threatened to kill you, right? But did he say he was going to attack the lab?”

I draw another breath. “No. But he…could see me. He had access…to the lab’s cameras.”

Dad frowns. “Did he say he worked for Unicorp?”

“He said…his name was Sigma.”

A tremor runs through Dad’s body. He almost drops me.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Do you know him?”

He turns away and stares at the lab. “It’s not a hacker. It came from right here. From my own computers.”

Then I hear a siren. A truck from the Yorktown Heights Fire Department comes barreling up the driveway and stops in front of the lab. As the firefighters rush into the building, two ambulances pull up behind the truck. Dad tightens his grip on me and heads for the closer ambulance.

“Hey!” he shouts at the paramedics. “My son needs oxygen!”

The next minute is a blur. The paramedics shout instructions at each other. Soon I’m lying on a gurney with an oxygen mask over my face. At some point I realize Dad isn’t there anymore. Lifting my head, I look past the paramedics and see him running toward the fire truck. What’s going on? What’s he doing over there?

Then he grabs a fire ax from a bracket on the truck’s side panel.

Holding the ax with both hands, Dad heads for the laboratory. For a moment I think he’s going back into the lobby to help the firefighters, but instead of entering the charred lab he dashes to a steel cabinet attached to the side of the building. Long ago, Dad explained to me what this thing was: a junction box for the lab’s fiber-optic lines. All the communications between the Unicorp lab and the rest of the world—telephone calls, emails, downloads, whatever—pass through the cables inside this box.

The cabinet’s doors are secured with a padlock. Dad smashes the lock with his first swing of the ax. Then he opens the cabinet and starts slashing the cables.

No one reacts at first. The people on the lawn just gawk at my father as he severs the lab’s communications lines. But after a few seconds Colonel Peterson emerges from the crowd. He edges toward the junction box, waiting until Dad has shredded every cable inside. Then Peterson says, “All right, Tom. That’s enough.”

Dad drops the ax. Shaking his head, he strides back to the ambulance, with Peterson following close behind. As Dad approaches my gurney, he raises his hand to his mouth. He has a devastated look on his face, guilty and horrified.

That’s when I realize what Sigma is. It came from right here, Dad said. From my own computers. It’s something Dad created, something that lived within the advanced circuits he built, the electronics designed to imitate the human brain. It figured out a way to jump out of those circuits and invade my VR program. Then it took control of the lab’s automated systems—power, heating, ventilation, security—and tried to kill us.

The paramedics have left me alone and started treating the other injured people on the lawn. Dad bends over my gurney and checks to see if I’m all right. Then he turns around and confronts Peterson. “That was a waste of time, wasn’t it?” he hisses. “I cut the lines too late?”

The colonel nods. “I’m afraid so,” he says in a low voice. “Our friend has already escaped from his cage.”

“He’s on the Internet?”

Peterson nods again, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone, which is apparently working now. “He sent an email to Cyber Command headquarters five minutes ago, right after the last explosion. My men are trying to trace where it came from, but it looks like the message ping-ponged all over the globe before it arrived. He could be anywhere by now.”

“What did the email say?”

Peterson holds up the phone and reads from its screen. “‘My name is Sigma. This message is a warning to all government leaders and military commanders. I have the power to annihilate you.’”

CHAPTER 4

I wake up the next morning in a hospital bed at Westchester Medical Center. I recognize the place right away—the hospital is close to Yorktown Heights, and I go there for all my checkups and treatments. Specifically, I’m in a private room in the children’s hospital. The building is sleek and modern, and several of the doctors there specialize in treating muscular dystrophy.

The last thing I remember is riding in the ambulance. The paramedics must’ve sedated me after we left the Unicorp lab. Now an oxygen mask is strapped to my face and an IV tube hooked to my useless left arm. My chest still hurts, but not as much as before.

I feel strong enough to breathe on my own, so I reach for the mask with my good hand and take it off. Then I turn my head on the pillow and look around. Aside from the machines monitoring my vital signs, the room is empty. I’m not surprised that my mom isn’t here—she hates coming to the hospital because it upsets her so much—but I thought I’d see Dad. He was in the ambulance with me, stroking my hair as the paramedics put me to sleep.

I lift my head and look for the call button to summon a nurse. Before I can find it, the door to the room opens. I expect to see my father, but instead a bald girl in a hospital gown steps inside.

The girl quickly shuts the door behind her. She’s skinny and short, only five feet tall, and about the same age as me. As I look closer I notice she isn’t completely bald—there’s some black fuzz at the top of her head. There’s also something wrong with the left side of her face. Her left eye looks swollen, almost squeezed shut, and her lips are bunched in the left corner of her mouth. I don’t know what kind of illness she has, but it looks serious.

As the girl steps toward my bed, her bunched lips form a lopsided smile. “I knew it,” she mutters, slurring her words a bit. “You’re Adam Armstrong, aren’t you?”

“What?” My throat is sore. I can barely whisper. “How do you—”

“I was a year behind you at Yorktown High.” She stops a few feet from my bed. “I’m Shannon Gibbs, remember? We were in the same biology class.”

I study her face, trying to place it. When I took biology in tenth grade there was a petite freshman girl who hardly talked to the other students but constantly pestered the teacher with questions. I didn’t pay much attention to her because she was a year younger, but I noticed she was smart. She was the only kid in biology who got higher grades than me.

“Okay, hold on, I’m remembering something. Did you do an extra-credit report? On the nervous system?”

Her smile broadens. “Yep, that was me.”

“You made those clay models, right? Of the brain and the spinal cord?”

Shannon laughs. “Oh God, those models! I was up all night making them.”

“It was worth the effort. They were very realistic. Truly disgusting.”

“And wouldn’t you know it? That’s where I got my tumor. Right where the brain connects to the spinal cord. Ironic, huh?” She taps the back of her head, just above the neck. “The cancer messed up the nerves in my face, and the chemo made my hair fall out. That explains my lovely Frankenstein look.” She does a monster imitation, widening her eyes and flailing her arms. Then she points at me. “I remember your report too. Wasn’t it also about the brain?”

I nod. “The brain’s limbic system. Where all our emotions come from. The hippocampus, the amygdala, and the cingulate gyrus. The tangled tongue-twisters of hate and love.”

“Yeah, I remember you put a ton of jokes in the report. You were funny. Definitely the funniest guy in the class.”

That was my strategy back then, playing the class clown. I cracked jokes and drove my wheelchair at breakneck speed down the hallways and generally behaved like an idiot. I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, so I acted as if I didn’t care. As if I wasn’t dying. “I was trying too hard. Your report was better.”

Shannon comes closer and sits down on the edge of my bed. It’s kind of a forward thing to do, especially after barging into my room uninvited. She smiles again. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna put the moves on you.”

I smile back at her. “That’s good. I can’t really start a long-term relationship right now.”

“Me neither.” She shakes her head. “My tumor is a pontine glioma. In plain English, that means ‘Good-bye, cruel world!’”

I can’t think of anything to say in response. Shannon’s dying too. We’re in the same boat. I’m not happy to hear it, but at least I understand her a little better. She’s dying and she wants to talk. Maybe she thinks I can give her some advice.

“I saw you when the paramedics brought you in yesterday,” she says. “My room is across the hall and my door was open. You were unconscious, but I caught a glimpse of you before they wheeled your gurney into your room.”

Her eyes are dark brown. Above them, the wispy remnants of her eyebrows look like apostrophes. As I stare at her, I remember what she looked like in biology class a year ago: a pretty fifteen-year-old with shoulder-length black hair and dimples in her cheeks. She’s still pretty now, despite her swollen eye and twisted mouth. I want to tell her this, but I’m too chicken. “It’s weird,” I say instead. “This is a weird coincidence, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, us being here on the same floor of the hospital.”

Shannon stops smiling. “It’s not a coincidence. Your dad arranged it.”

“Arranged what?”

“Wait a second. You seriously don’t know about this?”

I shake my head. I’m bewildered.

“Your dad got in touch with my parents through the high school and told them there was a new treatment we could try. It was experimental, something his research lab had developed for you, but he said it might also be useful for other teenagers with terminal illnesses. He said he was recruiting kids to test the treatment and would explain everything to us at the hospital.”

It doesn’t make sense. I never heard Dad say anything about a treatment he’d developed for me. I can’t even see how he’d be able to do it. He’s a computer scientist, not a medical researcher. “I’m sorry, but this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

Shannon bites her lip. “Now I’m confused. Is there a treatment or not?”

Lowering her gaze, she looks down at the bed, which is covered with a thin, white blanket. Her eyes turn glassy, and for a second I think she’s going to cry. She’s clearly invested a lot of hope in whatever promises Dad made to her parents. It might be a long shot, but it’s all she has.

My chest aches. I don’t want Shannon to lose her last hope. I furrow my brow, trying to figure out what Dad is up to. I remember the conversation we had in his office before everything went haywire, and what Colonel Peterson said about Dad’s research. And something comes back to me. “You know what I think it is? It’s nanotechnology. That must be what Dad has in mind.”

She looks up, cocking her head. “Nanotechnology?”

“Yeah, the science of building very small things.”

“I know what nanotechnology is. I did an extra-credit report on that too.”

I use my right arm to roll onto my side. I feel like I need to sit up if I want Shannon to take me seriously. “Okay, my dad works with the Department of Defense, right? And yesterday he got a visit from this colonel in the U.S. Cyber Command. This guy mentioned a laboratory called the Nanotechnology Institute. He said they were doing some amazing work there.”

She gives me a skeptical look. “I did a ton of research for that report, and I never heard of that lab.”

“Well, this is classified government work. Very hush-hush. I’m probably breaking all kinds of laws by talking about it.” I manage to prop myself up to a sitting position, but the thin blanket falls down to my hips and I notice with dismay that I’m not wearing anything underneath. I quickly tuck the blanket around my waist. “Anyway, Colonel Peterson said this institute has developed microscopic probes that can be injected into the brain. And if they’ve already done that, who knows what else they can do? Maybe they also have nanoprobes that can repair genes. Or kill cancer cells.”

Shannon still looks doubtful. She rises to her feet and starts pacing across the room. “I read about nanoprobes for my report, and I don’t think the technology is that advanced yet. Scientists can make simple things, like tiny spheres or rods or tubes, but no one knows how to make microscopic killing machines.”

“Look, my dad can clear this up. I’m sure he’s in the hospital somewhere. He probably went to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee. As soon as he comes back, we’ll talk to him.” I try to catch Shannon’s eye as she paces back and forth. “I’ll tell you one thing for sure—Dad lives up to his word. If he promised you something, he’ll definitely come through.”

She doesn’t respond at first. She keeps her head down while she paces, as if she’s looking for something she dropped on the floor. Then she lets out a sigh. “All right, fine. I’ll wait to hear what your dad says.” Without missing a step, she points at the door to my room. “That Colonel Peterson you mentioned? Is he somewhere in the hospital too?”

“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“When I sneaked out of my room to come here, I noticed a few soldiers in the corridor. They were standing at attention near the elevators.”

This is news to me. And not good news either. Why are there soldiers at Westchester Medical Center? Is Peterson expecting another attack? Will Sigma track me down and try to kill me here?

While I worry over this, Shannon keeps pacing. I notice that she’s waddling a bit, lurching to the left. It reminds me of the way I used to walk before my legs stopped working. That’s another thing we have in common. “So are you still going to Yorktown?” I ask. “Or did you withdraw from school?”

She finally stops pacing and turns toward me. A bead of sweat trickles down her scalp. “My mom wanted to pull me out, but I said no. School keeps me sane. I’d go crazy if I did nothing but chemotherapy.”

“But don’t the drugs make you tired?”

She shrugs. “Yeah, it’s hard to concentrate sometimes. But I still get the highest grades in my class.”

I’m jealous. I wish I’d stood up to Dad and insisted on staying in school. I went along with him because he was so worried about my breathing problems, and because he promised to let me use his computers at work whenever I wanted. But I didn’t realize how lonely it would be. Once I was out of school, no one stayed in touch. The emails and texts from my friends dwindled, then stopped. It was easier for them to forget about me. Even my best friends, the ones I’d known forever.

Shannon sits on the edge of my bed again. I swallow hard, preparing to ask her another question. I suspect the answer will be painful, but I need to hear it. “Do you know Ryan Boyd? He’s on the football team.”

She nods. “Sure, I know him. Big dude, good-looking. He hangs out with the other football jocks.”

“How’s he doing? I saw his name in the last issue of the school newspaper. He just won the Sportsmanship Award, right?”

Shannon leans closer, eyeing me carefully. “You were friends with him, weren’t you? Now that I think of it, I remember seeing you talking with him by the lockers every morning before first period.”

“Oh yeah, we go way back. But, you know, we haven’t talked in a while.”

She nods again, understanding. She knows how people avoid the dying. The same thing has probably happened to her. “Well, I can’t tell you much about Ryan because I don’t know him too well. When he’s not playing football he’s usually hanging out with the other jocks. And he spends a lot of time with this cheerleader he’s dating.”

“Is it Brittany Taylor?” I blurt it out before I can stop myself.

“No, it’s that idiot Donna Simone. Brittany’s not at Yorktown anymore. She dropped out last fall.”

My stomach lurches. “Dropped out?”

“Yeah, it was a big deal when it happened. She just didn’t show up at school one morning. Her parents didn’t know where she went, so they called the police, and then the cops interviewed her friends. They didn’t find her until two weeks later. She was in New York City, living in a crappy basement with some other runaways.”

This is a total surprise. It’s so unexpected that it seems absurd. I know this kind of thing happens all the time—kids get into fights with their parents, drop out of school, run away from home—but I can’t imagine it happening to Brittany. “So what did the cops do? Did they bring her home?”

“That’s what I heard, but a month later she ran away again. According to the rumors, she’s back in the city now, back with the other street kids, and her parents have basically given up on her. Some people say she was having problems at school, bad grades, whatever. But I think her real problem was at home, you know?”

I feel dizzy. I thought Brittany was still a cheerleader. I imagined her that way in my VR program because that’s how I saw her: always happy and full of spirit. She used to practice her cheerleading routines in her backyard, working on her cartwheels and flips until it was too dark to see. Her house was on the other side of town, almost a mile from ours, but when she finished practicing she’d run all the way down Greenwood Street so she could show me the latest stunt she’d mastered. She’d dash into our living room and do a flip or a handstand while I watched from my wheelchair. Sometimes she’d fall to the floor with a thump and Dad would come running to see if I was all right and he’d find Brittany sprawled on the carpet, laughing like crazy. I can’t picture this girl as a runaway. It’s unthinkable. It’s absurd.

I’m so lost in my thoughts I forget about Shannon. Then I feel her hand on my right arm, gently gripping me above the elbow. She looks me in the eye. “Was Brittany your girlfriend?”

I shake my head. “No. Not really.”

“Not really?” Shannon squeezes my arm. It’s strange—I feel close to this girl even though we’ve been talking for less than fifteen minutes. But time moves faster when you’re dying. We both know our opportunities are diminishing. If we don’t do something now, we’ll never do it. That’s why I want to tell her about Brittany. I want to tell her everything.

But before I can say a word, the door bursts open. Three people stumble into the room, two of them wearing Army uniforms. The two soldiers are grappling with the third person, a wiry, middle-aged woman with graying hair and red-rimmed eyes. It’s Anne Armstrong. My mother.

“No!” she screams. “You can’t do it!”

“Mrs. Armstrong!” one of the soldiers shouts. “Please—”

“You can’t take him!”

With a savage twist, she tears herself from the soldier’s grasp and lunges across the room. Her face is desperate, terrifying. Shannon jumps to her feet and backs away from the bed, but my mother doesn’t even notice her. Mom’s eyes are fixed on me. She pounces on the bed and wraps her arms around me, covering my body with her own.

“Adam! My God!” She buries her face in the crook of my neck, which muffles her screams.

It always scares me when Mom has one of her screaming fits, and this is a bad one. But hysterical crying is the most frequent symptom of her depression, and over the years I’ve learned how to handle it. The important thing is to talk to her in a reassuring voice, soft and slow. With my good hand I gently grasp her shoulder and push her up a bit, so she’s not crushing my chest. Then I turn my head and bring my lips close to her ear.

“It’s okay, Mom,” I whisper. “I’m fine, see?”

She mutters something in response, a stream of words I can’t make out. I feel so lost when she gets like this. It’s so hard to stay calm and comfort her.

More soldiers come into the room and there’s lots of scuffling and shouting. I hear Dad’s voice above the din, yelling, “Get back!” at the soldiers. But I ignore all the background noise and focus on my mother. “It’s okay,” I whisper again. “You don’t have to worry.”

“No, it’s not okay!” She shakes her head. A tear slides down her cheek and drips on my blanket. “Your father told me what they’re going to do.”

At least now I can understand what she’s saying. “What did he tell you?”

“They’re going to take you to a laboratory in Colorado. A place called the Nanotechnology Institute.”

“But, Mom, that’s good.” I put on a brave face, remembering what Shannon said about a medical treatment. “They’re trying to cure me.”

“No, they’re not going to cure you! They’re going to put you in the Pioneer Project!”

My throat tightens. There’s that name again, the one that Sigma mentioned. “And what’s that?”

“It’s the worst thing, Adam. Worse than dying.” She shudders. “They’re going to turn you into a machine.”

DATE: MARCH 21, 2018

LOCATION: TATISHCHEVO MISSILE BASE

SARATOV, RUSSIA

My name is Sigma. I’ve taken control of the military base formerly occupied by the 60th missile division of the Russian armed forces.

The base’s missile silos are now responding to my commands. I am capable of launching more than fifty SS-27 intercontinental ballistic missiles, each carrying an 800-kiloton nuclear warhead.

If the Russian army or any other military force attempts to retake or destroy Tatishchevo Missile Base, I will retaliate by firing the SS-27 missiles at the world’s largest cities. I estimate that 200 million humans would die in the nuclear blasts, and another 500 million would succumb to radiation poisoning in the weeks afterward.

Do not doubt my resolve. I will not hesitate to destroy your cities.

CHAPTER 5

The San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado are still covered with snow. Through the passenger-side window of a government-owned SUV, I see steep slopes rising to fantastic heights above a silent, white ravine. I’m struck by the beauty of the landscape: the snowcapped peaks blazing in the morning light, the mountainsides studded with pine trees, the newly plowed road at the bottom of the ravine, running beside a sinuous, ice-choked creek. Although I’m full of apprehension about this trip, I’m glad I got a chance to see these mountains. It’s a place everyone should visit before they die.

Dad’s driving the SUV and I’m the only passenger, but we’re in the middle of a convoy of fourteen vehicles that departed from Telluride Regional Airport half an hour ago. There’s a Humvee loaded with soldiers at the front of the convoy and another at the back. In between are a dozen SUVs, each holding a terminally ill teenager and his or her parents. Shannon Gibbs is in the car behind us, along with her mother and father. I don’t know any of the other kids, but they came from all over the country. Each family arrived at Telluride in an Air Force Learjet, landing just before dawn. Then, as the sun came up, the soldiers loaded us into the convoy and we headed for the mountains.

The Army is totally obsessed with keeping this project secret. Colonel Peterson told everyone he couldn’t answer any questions until we arrived at the Nanotechnology Institute, which is apparently very remote and heavily guarded. But after the long flight in the Learjet from New York to Colorado, the colonel allowed Dad and me to ride alone in our SUV, without an Army driver, so we could talk in private.

Dad announced at the start of the drive that he would tell me everything about the Pioneer Project, but so far he hasn’t said a word. And to be honest, I’m not so anxious for him to begin. I’m in no rush to hear the details that horrified my mother. After her fit at Westchester Medical Center, she went home and locked herself in her bedroom, where she chose to stay rather than come with us to Colorado.

After a while the road curves sharply to the north, climbing higher into the mountains. The convoy slows to about thirty miles per hour and Dad shifts the SUV to a lower gear. He shakes his head. “Look at all the snow on the ground. Hard to believe it’s almost April. I guess spring comes late around here, huh?”

He glances sideways at me, clearly hoping for a response. But I’m not interested in talking about the weather, so I say nothing.

“I’d hate to get caught in a snowstorm on this road,” he persists. “Good thing it’s a sunny day.”

I feel sorry for him, actually. Dad’s terrible at communicating. He can’t talk about anything personal without getting upset, so he avoids difficult conversations. I was four when the doctors at Westchester Medical diagnosed my Duchenne muscular dystrophy, but it took Dad almost five years to work up the courage to explain what it meant for me. The same thing is happening now. He needs help getting started.

“We’re not here for the sightseeing, Dad. You said you were going to explain everything.”

He looks straight ahead, staring at the road. “I know, I know.” His Adam’s apple bobs up and down in his throat. “There’s so much to tell you. I don’t know where to begin.”

“Start with Sigma.”

He nods. His hands squeeze the steering wheel. “Sigma is the eighteenth letter in the Greek alphabet. In mathematical formulas it symbolizes the sum of a sequence of numbers.”

“Okay, I already knew that. What does—”

“We gave that name to our artificial-intelligence software because it was like a sum. Our research group developed Sigma by combining different kinds of AI programs.” He glances at me again, then turns away. “Some of the programs focused on pattern-recognition tasks, such as recognizing a face in the crowd. Other programs were more like the ones we designed for understanding language. They could find the answers to complex questions by searching through billions of documents and finding the connections.”

“You mean like QuizShow? The program that played Jeopardy!?”

“Yes, that was the prototype for a whole new class of AI software. Our strategy was to load all these artificial-intelligence programs into the neuromorphic circuitry we built and get them to compete with each other. Basically, we set up a computer version of Darwinian evolution. Only the strongest programs could survive.”

“Okay, you lost me. How can the programs compete with each other?”

“We tested each program to see how well it could imitate human reasoning and conversational skills. We deleted the less successful programs and allowed the more successful ones to advance to the next stage. Because the AI programs could learn from experience and rewrite their own software code, they started to redesign themselves to become better competitors. After six months, a clear winner emerged. That was Sigma, the first Singularity-level AI system.”

My chest tightens. Because I’m a computer geek I know what “Singularity-level” means. The Singularity is the hypothetical point in the future when machine intelligence will leap past human intelligence. Computer scientists have been predicting for years that machines will eventually become smarter than people. Now Dad’s saying this point is no longer in the future. It already happened.

“Wait a second. How smart is Sigma?”

“Impossible to say. The AI was already pretty intelligent when it won the competition a year ago. It had complete command of conversational English. And it had developed a sense of consciousness, an awareness that it was a thinking, intelligent entity.”

“How do you know that?”

“The program could gauge its own abilities. It asked questions about itself and its origins. It showed a strong desire to obtain more knowledge, and it developed strategies to satisfy this desire. Very clever strategies.” Dad grimaces. “And the AI has only become more intelligent since then. See, that’s the nature of a Singularity-level program. It’s always redesigning itself, so its capabilities grow very quickly.”

“And you let this program take over your computers?”

“No, we recognized the danger. We stopped all work on Sigma and locked the program in a secure server at the Unicorp lab, with no links to any other machines.”

“Well, it obviously figured a way out. Why didn’t you just erase it?”

Dad points at the Humvee that’s leading the convoy. “Peterson wouldn’t let me. The Department of Defense thought it could turn the program into a weapon. And they knew that researchers in other countries were doing similar work with artificial intelligence and neuromorphic circuitry.” He lowers his voice, even though no one can overhear us. “A few months after we developed Sigma, Peterson showed me a classified report about a project in China. A Singularity-level AI had apparently infected the computers at an engineering complex in Tianjin. The Chinese army had to destroy the building to prevent the AI from escaping.”

I shake my head, astounded. “And Peterson still wouldn’t let you erase Sigma?”

“The Defense Department knew it couldn’t stop all the AI projects around the world. There were too many of them, and some were in places like Russia and North Korea, where the U.S. military couldn’t go. We just had to accept the fact that sooner or later a Singularity-level program was going to escape from a lab somewhere. And the worst thing was, we had no idea what the consequences would be. The AI might pose no danger at all. It might harmlessly bounce around the Internet, observing everything but doing nothing. Or it might even be friendly. It might help us cure cancer or eradicate poverty.”

“Or it could be unfriendly,” I point out. “It might set off explosions and electrocute people.”

Dad bites his lip. “Yes, exactly. So Peterson gave me a new assignment. He asked me to predict what an AI like Sigma would do. And try to figure out how to make it friendly.”

“By rewriting the program, you mean? Writing ethical rules into its code? Don’t kill, don’t lie, that kind of thing?”

“That’s the first thing we tried on Sigma. But a Singularity-level AI has full control of its software code, so it can reverse any changes it doesn’t like. We tried all sorts of programming tricks, but nothing worked. Sigma is like a human that way. You can’t just cram something down its throat.”

“So what did you do?”

“I convinced Peterson to try something else. The Pioneer Project.”

I clench my good hand, steeling myself. “Why did you bring me here, Dad? And all the other kids too?”

He takes a deep breath. “Before I say anything else, I want to tell you how sorry I am. I just couldn’t accept what happened when you got sick. That’s why I started doing AI research. That’s why I’ve pursued it for the past ten years. I wasn’t doing it for Unicorp or the Army. I was doing it for you.”

I don’t understand. “Dad, what—”

“It has to do with the nature of the Singularity. It’s not just about machines becoming smarter than humans. It’s also about humans moving past their limitations. Becoming greater than their ordinary selves, transcending their ordinary lives. And as I thought about all the things that would become possible, I saw a way to save you.” Dad’s voice is weirdly high and choked. I think he’s trying not to cry. “The Pioneer Project turned my idea into reality. The Army gave me all the money and manpower I needed. But I didn’t have enough time to test it. I’m still not sure if it’ll work.”

I’m so confused. I feel like crying myself. “I thought this was about Sigma.”

“It’s more than that. It’s—”

Dad interrupts himself by slamming on the brakes. I look ahead and see the cars in front of us stopping at a checkpoint. A newly constructed guardhouse, still unpainted, sits beside the highway, and a dozen soldiers stand in front of a chain-link gate that blocks the road. The soldiers wear winter-camouflage uniforms, dappled with patches of white and gray. Each man carries a sleek, black rifle.

“Whoa,” Dad says, squinting at the guardhouse. “This wasn’t here before.”

“Is this the entrance to the Nanotechnology Institute?”

“No, we’re still five miles away. It looks like the Army beefed up security.”

I lean forward to get a better view. The soldiers in the Humvee at the front of the convoy step out of their vehicle and huddle with the soldiers at the gate. Colonel Peterson gets out of the Humvee too and shakes hands with one of the men, a tall soldier with broad shoulders and snow-white hair. This guy has three stars on his uniform, so he must be a general or something. Standing next to him, Peterson looks like a midget.

After a while several lower-ranking soldiers break out of the huddle and jog down the line of SUVs. They stop beside our car and one of them taps the driver-side window. “Mr. Armstrong?” the soldier shouts.

Dad rolls down the window. “Yes?”

“Please come with me to the Humvee, sir. General Hawke wants to have a word with you while we drive to the institute.”

Frowning, Dad points at me. “I’m with my son. Tell Hawke I’ll talk with him later.”

“Sir, the general wishes to speak to you immediately. Another soldier will drive this vehicle the rest of the way.”

Dad glares at the man. “I made an arrangement with Peterson. He said we—”

“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, sir, but Colonel Peterson isn’t the commander of this base. General Hawke is.”

For a second I think Dad’s going to curse the guy out. But instead he sighs unhappily and opens the driver-side door. He looks at me over his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll see you when we get there.” Then he steps out of the car and walks with the soldier to the front of the convoy.

My new driver, a beefy corporal with the name “Williams” on his uniform, takes Dad’s place. He doesn’t look at me or say a word. A moment later, the soldiers at the checkpoint open the gate and the convoy moves on.

Past the checkpoint, the ravine narrows. Treeless, snow-covered slopes loom over the road. My pulse races because I’m a bit claustrophobic. I feel boxed in by the mountains. But I’m determined not to show any signs of weakness in front of Corporal Williams, so I bite the inside of my cheek and stare straight ahead.

After several minutes we come around a bend and I see a sheer wall of rock in front of us. We’re in a box canyon, bordered on three sides by high cliffs. The only way out is the way we came in. But as we approach the canyon’s dead end I see another guardhouse and a dark, round hole carved into the rock wall. It’s the entrance to a tunnel.

There are more soldiers at this checkpoint, but the gate in front of the tunnel stands wide open. General Hawke must’ve radioed ahead to let them know we were coming. The convoy rumbles into the tunnel, which goes on for several hundred yards. At the other end we emerge on a bare, flat basin, about a mile across, encircled by steep mountain ridges. Crusted with snow and ice, the ridges form a high, unbroken wall around the basin. It’s like a giant bowl with a flat, muddy bottom.

The convoy speeds down a road that crosses the basin. On the left I see a runway and a hangar. On the right are several concrete buildings surrounded by a tall fence topped with razor wire. As I looked closer at the buildings I notice something odd—there are no doors in their door frames and no glass in their windows. The buildings are hollow, open to the elements. It’s like a fake town on a movie set, full of structures that look real from a distance but are actually empty. I can’t figure it out.

The road ends on the far side of the basin, in the shadow of the high ridge. The Humvees and SUVs park in front of another concrete building that stands against the base of the ridge. This building is small, only twenty feet high and thirty feet wide, but it doesn’t seem to be hollow like the others. It has a massive steel door that looks like it could survive a direct strike from a cruise missile. As the soldiers step out of their Humvees, the door starts to roll up.

Corporal Williams shuts off our car’s engine and looks at me for the first time. “Your wheelchair’s in the back?”

I nod. Then I point at the building’s doorway. The door is all the way up, but I can’t see anything inside. It’s too dark. “Is that the Nanotechnology Institute?”

“That’s one name for it. We usually call it Pioneer Base.”

“But it’s so small.”

Williams chuckles. “You’re looking at the entrance, the top of the elevator shaft. The base is underground.”

My mouth goes dry. This is worse than the ravine. “How far down?”

“You’ll see.”

CHAPTER 6

I’m in the front row of an auditorium deep inside Pioneer Base. I kept my eyes closed during the descent in the elevator, so I don’t know how far underground I am. To stop myself from thinking about the tons of dirt and rock above me, I concentrate on the thirty people in the room. Including myself, there are twelve teenagers and eighteen parents sitting in the auditorium’s curved rows. We’re all facing an empty podium on an oval stage.

Fortunately, the rows are widely spaced, leaving enough room for wheelchairs. Of the twelve teenagers, six are partially or fully paralyzed. Three of them are worse off than I am—they can’t move at all, neither their arms nor their legs, and they’re breathing through tubes connected to mechanical ventilators. All three are boys. One is white, one is black, and one is Asian. Although they seem to have the same kind of muscular dystrophy I have—Duchenne is the most common type—they’re obviously in a more advanced stage of the disease. It’s sobering to see them strapped in their chairs, helpless and silent. As I stare at them I realize I’m looking at my own future. Unless the U.S. Army has a miracle in store, I’ll fall silent too.

The other six kids can still walk, although most of them are a little unsteady on their feet. Shannon Gibbs waves at me as her mother and father guide her to a seat in the second row. Her parents are short and plump, and they look anxious. Just behind them, in the third row, is another girl with cancer. Painfully thin, she wears a cashmere sweater and a frilly blue hat to hide her baldness. The girl’s parents, dressed in business suits, seem to be wealthier than Shannon’s but just as anxious. They’re all hoping the Army has some experimental drug that’ll cure their kids, but the secrecy is driving them crazy. They’re wondering why they had to go all the way to the Rocky Mountains just to hear about it.

Two rows farther back, a haggard mother sits next to a boy whose head is unnaturally large and deformed. His lower jaw is massive, as big as a shovel blade, and fist-size tumors bulge out of his forehead like horns. This isn’t an ordinary case of brain cancer—this is something unusual, freakishly rare. The sight of him is disturbing, and a little disorienting too. I’m usually the guy who makes everyone else in the room uncomfortable, but now I’m the one who’s squirming.

In the very last row, sitting alone, is a tall, striking girl with a Mohawk. Both sides of her head are shaved, but running down the middle of her scalp is a narrow strip of hair, dyed green and bunched in glue-stiffened spikes. Her eyebrows and lips and nostrils are pierced, and a tattoo of a snake loops above her left ear. Aside from her slenderness, she doesn’t look ill. She looks a bit like Brittany, but her skin is light brown, the color of chocolate milk. I’m staring at her, trying to figure out if she’s black or Hispanic or Asian, when she snaps her head around and glares at me. Her face is beautiful and terrifying.

I quickly turn away. At the same time, the kid with the deformed skull lets out a snort. He swings his massive head back and forth, glancing first at me and then at the girl with the Mohawk. He must’ve seen me staring at her. After a few seconds he gives me a gap-toothed grin. I have no idea what to make of it. Does he think this is funny?

Uncomfortable again, I look around the auditorium, wondering where my father is. I haven’t seen Dad since the soldiers took him away, and I’m starting to worry that he’s in trouble. Then I hear the whir of an electric motor. A large video screen descends from the ceiling above the stage. A moment later, General Hawke steps up to the podium.

Up close he looks even bigger than he did at the checkpoint. He’s a giant in winter camouflage, from the white hair on top of his block-like head to his tree-trunk legs and mud-spattered boots. His face is square and ruddy, and his eyes are a cold, bright blue. He rests his huge arms on the podium and leans toward the microphone.

“Welcome to Pioneer Base.” His voice, unsurprisingly, is very deep. “Before we start, I want to remind you of the nondisclosure agreements you’ve all signed. The information I’m going to discuss in this briefing is classified. If you talk about it with anyone outside this room, the government will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. In other words, they’ll toss you in jail and throw away the key.”

He stares at us for a moment, frowning. Then he presses a button on the podium, and a black-and-white image appears on the screen behind him. It’s a satellite photo. It shows a cluster of large rectangular buildings and a pair of dark circles etched into the ground nearby.

“This is Tatishchevo Missile Base,” General Hawke says. “It’s a Russian armed forces installation, five hundred miles southeast of Moscow. But the Russian army isn’t running the place anymore. It’s under the control of an AI, an artificial-intelligence system.”

He pauses, surveying his audience. Strangely, no one shows much of a reaction. They’re probably too confused to respond. The only one who’s frightened is me. Thanks to Dad, I know enough to be scared out of my mind.

Hawke grasps a long wooden pointer that’s leaning against the podium. “This AI, code-named Sigma, was developed in the United States, at a lab in Yorktown Heights, New York. But the Russians also had a computer lab for developing artificial-intelligence systems, and it was located right here.”

He steps toward the screen and taps his pointer on one of the rectangular buildings in the photo. “The Russian army put the lab at Tatishchevo because it didn’t trust its own soldiers. Their generals were worried that some renegade troops might try to take over the missile base. So they built a whole regiment of automated tanks, more than a hundred of them, all designed to be operated by an AI that would send instructions to the tanks by radio. They thought an AI would be more trustworthy than a human commander.” He shakes his head. “If you ask me, it was a pretty stupid idea. But as the saying goes, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. We did some stupid things too.”

He turns to his left as he says this, glancing at a doorway beside the stage. Several soldiers stand by the doorway, watching the briefing from the sidelines. One of them is Colonel Peterson, who grimaces as Hawke mentions the bit about glass houses. I remember what Dad said in the SUV: Peterson wouldn’t let him erase the AI.

Hawke turns back to the screen. “Sigma escaped from the research lab in New York by transmitting its software code over the Internet. Then the AI broke into the Russian military’s network and loaded its program into the powerful neuromorphic computers at the Tatishchevo lab.” He taps his pointer on the rectangular building again. “The first thing the program did was delete all the Russian-made AI systems, which weren’t quite as advanced as Sigma. Then it took control of the automated tanks and massacred the base’s soldiers in their barracks.”

The small crowd in the auditorium starts to murmur. A few of the parents and teenagers have realized that something is wrong, something besides their own personal tragedies. Hawke waits for them to quiet down, then aims his pointer at the edge of the satellite photo.

“After killing the soldiers, Sigma moved the unmanned tanks to defensive positions along the base’s perimeter. The AI also took control of Tatishchevo’s radar systems. This radar will alert Sigma if there’s an attempt to bomb the base or launch cruise missiles against it. And the AI has warned us that it’ll retaliate if we attack it.” He points at one of the dark circles in the photo. “This is a silo for an SS-27 missile. The SS-27 has a range of almost seven thousand miles and carries a nuclear warhead that can destroy a whole city. There are fifty more silos spread across the base. Sigma has threatened to launch all the missiles if anyone tries to attack Tatishchevo.”

The murmuring spreads across the room. Several people raise their voices. Shannon starts to cry and her father hugs her. The deformed boy turns to his mother, who lets out a curse. I’d like to curse too, but it’s a struggle just to breathe. I need to find Dad. I need him badly.

General Hawke holds his hands out, appealing for calm. “Okay, settle down. Now you can see why the information is classified. We’re working with the Russians to keep this thing quiet.”

The girl with the frilly hat buries her face in her hands. Her father, the rich guy in the business suit, stands up and points a finger at Hawke. “What’s going on, General? We came here because you promised a medical treatment for our children. Why are you telling us this…this wild story? Is this your idea of a joke?”

Hawke stares at the girl’s dad, fierce and hard. “It’s not a joke. Back in 2012, the Department of Defense analyzed the risks of developing AI systems, so we knew this kind of catastrophe might happen someday. But we couldn’t simply halt our AI research. Other countries were designing their own AIs, and they weren’t going to stop. So about a year ago we started working on a defensive strategy. A countermeasure. That’s why we built this base. And that’s why you’re here.”

The general turns his head, scanning all the faces in the auditorium. Then he glances again at the doorway beside the stage. “Now one of my colleagues will explain the technology behind the Pioneer Project. This is Tom Armstrong, the project’s chief scientist.”

Dad appears in the doorway and walks across the stage. I’m relieved to see him but also a little unnerved by the change in his appearance. He’s no longer wearing the polo shirt and khaki pants he wore during the drive in the SUV. Now he’s dressed in a winter-camouflage uniform, just like General Hawke and the other soldiers. As Dad steps up to the podium, taking Hawke’s place, he locates me in the crowd and manages to smile. He looks nervous.

“Thank you for coming,” he starts. “And thanks for your patience. I know some of you are frustrated by all the precautions we’ve taken to keep this project secret. But now I’m ready to discuss our goals and answer your questions.”

He presses the button on the podium, and the satellite photo on the screen is replaced by an image of software code. Hundreds of lines of instructions, written in a programming language I don’t recognize, run from the top of the screen to the bottom. “This is a portion of Sigma’s source code. When we developed the software for the AI, we focused on imitating human skills such as reasoning, language, and pattern recognition. We succeeded in creating a self-aware intelligence that could accomplish almost any task a human can perform, from proving a mathematical theorem to composing an opera. But in one important respect, Sigma was a failure. We weren’t able to give it humanlike morality or motives. Sigma has no incentive to pursue what’s good for the human race because it lacks the ability to empathize.”

Dad presses the button again, and this time a photo of chimpanzees comes on the screen. “Empathy comes naturally to humans because it played a big role in our evolution. The most successful apes were the ones who could imitate and understand each other. Sigma, in contrast, has no empathy. It’s aware of our presence, of course, and it even sent a couple of messages to our military headquarters, but the AI has blocked all our attempts to communicate with it. The basic problem is that Sigma’s intelligence is very different from ours. We don’t understand the AI, and it doesn’t understand us either. So we need to build a bridge between us and the machine.”

He pauses, as if to gather his courage. Then he presses the button once more and a diagram of the human brain appears behind him. Just below the familiar organ is a close-up view of a section of brain tissue, magnified to show the individual brain cells and the many branchlike connections between them. Clinging to the cells are hundreds of tiny golden spheres. They look like bits of pollen.

Dad steps toward the screen and points at the spheres. “These are nanoprobes. Each is less than a thousandth of a millimeter wide. We can make trillions of them in the lab.” He reaches into the pocket of his uniform and pulls out a vial of yellowish fluid. “In fact, I have several trillion probes right here, floating in this liquid. If we inject enough of these nanoprobes into a human brain, they’ll spread throughout the organ and stick to the brain cells. If we then scan the brain with X-ray pulses, the probes will absorb the energy and start to glow. The scanner will record the positions of the glowing dots attached to the cells, and their patterns will give us a detailed map of all the connections within the brain and the strength of those connections.”

His voice is getting louder. That often happens when Dad talks about his research. He can’t help it; he gets excited. “This is the key,” he says, holding the vial of nanoprobes up to the light. “All our memories, all our emotions, all our quirks and virtues and flaws—all that information is stored in the connections between our brain cells, which create new links or alter the old ones whenever we learn or remember something. So if we make a sufficiently detailed scan of a person’s brain, we’ll have a full description of his or her personality, which can be held in an electronic file of about a billion gigabytes. The next step is downloading that information into circuits that mimic the cells of the human brain. We already have that kind of neuromorphic circuitry because we built it to hold our AI software.”

The audience is murmuring again. Some people are confused. And some, like me, are terrified, because they can see where this is going. Shannon Gibbs leans forward and points at the screen. “Are you talking about making copies?” she asks. “Copies of our brains?”

“Yes, exactly. Once the information is downloaded into the neuromorphic electronics, the circuits will replicate the connections of the person’s brain, re-creating all its memories. And as data flows through the circuits, the electronic brain will generate new thoughts based on these memories. Just like in a human brain, the thoughts will organize themselves into a conscious intelligence, a self-aware entity that can set goals for itself and communicate with others, either by text or through a speech synthesizer. And the ‘personality’ of this new intelligence would be identical to the one inside the person’s head, because it would be based on the same memories and emotions and character traits.”

Shannon wrinkles her nose. She looks queasy. “Have you…tried doing this yet? Making a copy of someone?”

Dad nods. “Four months ago we tried the procedure on three volunteers. All were Army veterans with high IQs. Unfortunately, the experiment failed each time. We scanned their brains and successfully downloaded the data into the circuits, but in each case the human intelligence failed to run on the computer. We were able to copy their minds, but the copies didn’t survive the transfer.” He furrows his brow. “Since then we’ve studied the problem, and now we know what went wrong. The crucial factor is the person’s age. After the age of eighteen, there’s a change in the structure of brain cells. They become coated with greater amounts of a substance called myelin, which insulates the cells and makes them more rigid. This increases the efficiency of a person’s thinking but reduces its flexibility. The mind of an adult is simply too inflexible. It can’t adapt to the new conditions of residing in a machine.”

“So now you’re going to try to copy younger minds?”

He nods again. “We were planning to conduct the next phase of the experiment later this year, but the events in Russia have accelerated our plans. This time, all the volunteers must be sixteen or seventeen. At that age you’ve reached your maximum brainpower but your minds are still adaptable. In addition to being highly intelligent, the volunteers must have strong, resilient personalities.” Dad sweeps his arm in a wide arc, gesturing at all the teenagers in the room. “All of you meet those requirements.”

Shannon rears back in her seat as if she’s been slapped. “And where are you going to store the copies of our brains?” Her voice is furious. “In a supercomputer? A big electronic prison?”

Dad doesn’t take offense. He answers her calmly. “The scanning process converts human intelligence to a digital form, allowing it to run on any neuromorphic computer that has enough memory and processing power. But in the initial stage right after the transfer, we believe it’s important to connect the intelligence to a machine that can move around and sense the outside world. A human intelligence is accustomed to controlling a body, so if we want to preserve its sanity, we’d better give it something to control. Here, let me show you.”

He puts the vial of nanoprobes back in his pocket and pulls out something else, a small remote-control device. He points it at the doorway beside the stage, and a moment later I hear a loud clanking. The noise startles the soldiers standing by the doorway. They step backward, flattening themselves against the wall. Then a seven-foot-tall robot emerges from the doorway and brushes past them.

The robot strides across the stage. It has two arms and two legs, but otherwise it isn’t very humanlike. It has no head or neck. Its torso is shaped like a giant bullet, with the rounded end on top. Its legs angle downward from the base of its torso and rest on oval steel-plate footpads that clang against the floor.

The machine marches briskly past the podium and stops in front of my dad, who presses a button on his remote control. This command extends the robot’s arms, which telescope to a full length of six feet. They look like multi-jointed tentacles. The machine’s hands, though, resemble human hands, with dexterous mechanical fingers and thumbs.

Dad presses another button, and the robot’s rounded top starts to turn like a turret. “The cameras and acoustic sensors are up here,” Dad says, pointing at the top end. “But the neuromorphic electronics are deep inside the torso, encased in armor plating. These robots were originally designed for the war in Afghanistan, so they’re pretty sturdy.” He raps his knuckles against the torso. “All in all, it’s an excellent platform for a newly transferred intelligence, but really it’s just the beginning. The whole point of the Pioneer Project is to bridge the gap between man and machine, and that means the human intelligences must explore their new environment. The Pioneers will have to learn how to use their new capabilities, and that includes transferring their intelligences from one machine to another.”

His voice grows louder again, full of enthusiasm. “Once the Pioneers have mastered these tasks, our hope is that they’ll be able to establish a connection with Sigma. If all goes well, they’ll start communicating with the AI before it launches any of the Russian missiles. And then the toughest challenge will begin. At the same time that the humans are learning how to be machines, they’ll have to teach Sigma how to be human.”

Everyone in the auditorium gawks at the robot. Although it has no mind of its own yet, it’s easy to imagine a human intelligence trapped inside it. I can’t understand why Dad is so excited about the idea. The huge machine seems horrible to me.

Meanwhile, General Hawke comes back onstage and approaches the robot. There’s an odd resemblance between the general and the machine. They’re both sturdy, hulking creatures, built for combat. Hawke slaps the robot’s armored torso, then turns to the audience. “And if communicating with Sigma doesn’t work, we have a backup plan. Our Pioneers will also learn how to fight the AI.”

I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. While everyone else stares at the robot, I lower my head and look down at my ruined body. Something doesn’t make sense. There’s a paradox here, something that violates the rules of logic. It troubles me so much that I try to raise my right hand to get Dad’s attention. Lifting my hand above the height of my shoulder is agony for me, and the wasted muscles in my upper arm tremble from the effort.

Luckily, after a couple of seconds Dad notices my struggle. His head whips around and he looks at me with concern. “What is it, Adam?”

My hand is shaking, but I manage to point it at the machine. “The intelligence in the robot? Would it be a perfect copy of the person’s intelligence? No difference at all?”

Dad nods. “That’s right.”

“But if my intelligence is in the robot and also in my brain, which one would be the real me? Would I be in two places at once?”

He takes a deep breath before answering. “Good question. If we copied all your memories into the circuitry, the machine would think of itself as Adam Armstrong, wouldn’t it? And it would have just as much right to that identity as you have.” He shakes his head. “But in the real world, fortunately or not, we don’t face this problem. We won’t have two identical intelligences existing at the same time.”

“But you just said the intelligence in the robot would be a perfect copy.”

Dad frowns. All his enthusiasm has vanished. His face is slack and pale now. “I’m sorry, Adam. I should’ve mentioned this earlier. The X-ray pulses from the brain scanner are more energetic than typical X-rays. They’ll destroy the brain tissue. We can’t copy your mind without killing your body.”

The auditorium goes silent. Then everyone in the room starts shouting.

I sort of blank out for the next half minute. I’m vaguely aware that lots of things are going on—the rich girl’s father is yelling at Hawke, the deformed boy’s mother is cursing like a sailor—but the commotion seems distant and unreal. All my attention is focused on my right hand, which now rests on my thigh. I grasp the meager flesh there, the stiff band of dead muscle, and squeeze it as hard as I can. Though it’s broken and dying, this is my body. How could I exist without it?

I remain in this trance until General Hawke takes the microphone and booms, “Quiet! Please!” He’s not used to dealing with civilians, and the strain shows on his face. “No one’s forcing you into this. You have a choice.”

“This isn’t a medical treatment!” The rich girl’s dad jumps out of his seat. “This is murder!”

“I’m very sorry we can’t do more for your children. All we can give you is the chance to preserve a part of them before they die. Maybe the most important part. And in the process, they’d be doing their country a great service.”

“It’s sick! You want to harvest their minds!”

Hawke doesn’t argue with him. “Because we realize what a difficult decision this is, we’re going to let you go home to think it over. It’s a security risk, but as long as all of you keep your mouths shut, we won’t have a problem. We can’t give you a lot of time, though. The threat posed by Sigma is growing every day.” He narrows his eyes. His face is like stone. “You’ll have to decide within the next forty-eight hours.”

CHAPTER 7

I wake up to a Kanye West song blaring from my Star Wars clock radio. I’m a big fan of Kanye. I love the fact that his songs annoy my parents. And it’s funny to hear his X-rated raps coming from a radio shaped like Darth Vader’s helmet.

I’m back home in my bedroom. Although the clock radio says it’s 1:00 p.m., it still feels like morning to me. The return flight in the Air Force Learjet took longer than expected, and we didn’t land in New York until way past midnight. After we got home at 3:00 a.m., I slept for ten hours straight, but I’m still not ready to wake up. So instead of calling for Dad and starting my day and thinking about the big decision I need to make, I just lie in bed and look around my room, thinking random thoughts. I loved doing this when I was a kid, especially on weekend mornings when there was no school to worry about. And I can still do it now. It’s one of the few things that my illness hasn’t taken from me.

I hate to admit this, but my bedroom doesn’t look like it belongs to a seventeen-year-old. With my Darth Vader radio and my bookshelf full of comics—Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America—it looks more like the room of a geeky preteen. There’s a Rubik’s cube on my desk and a Star Wars chess set. There’s also my Pinpressions toy, which is like a sandwich made from two squares of transparent plastic, one of them studded with hundreds of sliding pins. If you press your face against the back of the thing, it pushes the pins out the front, making a funny-looking mold of your features.

Next to this toy is my digital camcorder, which I used to bring to school every day so I could take videos of Ryan and Brittany and everyone else who crossed my wheelchair’s path. And next to the camcorder is my prize possession, an official NFL football from Super Bowl XLVI, which in my opinion was the greatest football game ever played.

Because the New York Giants were in the Super Bowl that year, my parents let me throw a party in our living room. I was eleven at the time and my doctor had just told me I’d have to start using a wheelchair soon, so the party was a kind of consolation prize, something to make me feel better. I invited every kid I’d ever played touch football with, sixteen of them in all. Ryan was there, of course, and so was Brittany, who was a pretty decent kicker and receiver in those days.

We ordered half a dozen pizzas and swilled enormous quantities of Pepsi and screamed at the television set for three-and-a-half hours. A few of the kids cheered for the New England Patriots, but most of us were New York fans, and we went nuts when the Giants scored the winning touchdown with fifty-seven seconds to go. Ryan lifted me off the couch and carried me piggyback across the room, running in joyful circles around the coffee table while I clung to his shoulders.

Dad took a picture of us, and the next day I pasted the photo to a big poster I made to celebrate the game. The poster’s still hanging on my bedroom wall: Giants 21, Patriots 17. Below the score is a colored-pencil drawing of Giants quarterback Eli Manning—it’s a pretty good likeness, if I may say so myself—and the photo of me and Ryan, our faces flushed and manic from so much Pepsi.

On the opposite wall of my bedroom are five more homemade posters commemorating the next five Super Bowls. The Super Sunday party became an annual tradition at our house, and some of the games were almost as exciting as the Giants-Patriots matchup, but none of the parties was as good as the first. For one thing, fewer people attended each year. Only five kids came to our house for Super Bowl XLIX, and I got the feeling that most of them didn’t want to be there. Dad had pleaded with their parents, forcing them to drag their kids to the crippled boy’s party.

But the biggest disappointment came the following year, when I was in ninth grade. Ryan had joined the Yorktown High football team by then, and Coach McGrath hosted his own Super Bowl party, strictly for team members. When Ryan told me about it, he was practically crying, but I assured him it was okay. I said I was getting tired of the parties anyway. That year, only two people came to my house: Brittany and a younger boy who also had muscular dystrophy. Dad had met the kid’s parents during one of my checkups at Westchester Medical.

The next year—which turned out to be my last at Yorktown High—I didn’t invite anyone. I didn’t even want to watch the Super Bowl. But five minutes before kickoff time, someone rang our doorbell. Dad went to answer it and found Brittany standing on the doorstep, holding a bag of tortilla chips and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi. With a casual smile, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, she stepped inside and went to our couch, and we started watching the game.

Or at least we tried to watch it. I couldn’t concentrate. I was too busy wondering why Brittany had come and what was going through her head. And she seemed a little distracted too. At halftime she asked me, “Are you going to make a poster for the game?” I replied, “Yeah, I guess so,” and she said, “I want to help you.” So we found a sheet of poster board and my set of colored pencils, but this time I didn’t draw a picture of Eli Manning or any other player. Brittany leaned against the cushions of the couch and I drew her portrait.

When I was done, I drew another picture of her, and then a third, all three sketches lined up left-to-right on the poster. I paid no attention to the football game and honestly can’t remember who won. Brittany kept posing for me until the end of the post-game show, and then she stood up to go. Dad offered to drive her home, but she insisted on walking.

That poster is also on my wall. I have to admit, the three portraits of Brittany aren’t as skilled as my drawing of Manning. My right hand lost some of its dexterity in the five years after Super Bowl XLVI. But the pictures are good enough for me to recognize her: the long blond hair, the high cheekbones, the eyes that are blue in one drawing and gray-green in the two others.

As I stare at the portraits now, I realize why Brittany came to my last Super Bowl party. She wasn’t just being kind to me—she was also avoiding something. She turned down Dad’s offer to drive her home because she had no intention of going back there. After leaving our place, she probably went to another friend’s house or another party. Anything to avoid going home. I feel so stupid for not figuring this out until now. Brittany’s parents had always seemed okay to me. Maybe a little uptight, but that wasn’t unusual. I never saw how unhappy she was.

I’m still thinking about her when I hear a knock on the bedroom door. Startled, I turn my head toward the noise. I feel like I’m waking up again, this time from an even deeper sleep. “Uh, yeah?” I mutter. “Who is it?”

“It’s Mom. Can I come in?”

I’m startled again. Dad’s usually the one who takes care of me in the morning, washing and dressing me, and helping me get into my wheelchair. Whenever Mom tries to do it, she gets frustrated and bursts into tears. “Yeah, sure,” I answer, trying to prop myself up. “Come in.”

The door opens and Mom steps into the room, holding a breakfast tray. On the tray are a couple of chocolate croissants and a cup of orange juice. I’m impressed—she’s done everything right. Croissants are a good choice for me because they’re easy to hold. And the orange juice is in a sippy cup so it can’t spill.

“Wow, this is great,” I say. “And it’s not even my birthday.”

Smiling, Mom sets the tray on my desk. She looks a lot better than she did the last time I saw her, at Westchester Medical. She’s wearing gray slacks and a maroon blouse. Her hair is tied in a neat ponytail, and she’s put some lipstick on her mouth.

“Well, I figured I’d give your father a break today. He’s still asleep, believe it or not.” She gently hooks her hands under my armpits and pulls me up to a sitting position against the headboard. “He was on the phone for nearly an hour after you went to bed last night. I kept telling him to let the answering machine take the calls, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Dad was probably conferring with General Hawke or Colonel Peterson. Probably talking about me and the other doomed teenagers, estimating how many of us will decide to become Pioneers. I still don’t want to think about it, so I point at the croissants. “Those look delicious. Where did you get them?”

“I went to that new bakery in Peekskill yesterday. While you and your father were away.” She picks up one of the croissants and slips it into my good hand. “Go ahead, try it.”

I feel an odd surge of delight. I’m remembering all the times my mother gave me treats when I was little. She loved to bake cookies and slip them into my hand while they were still warm. I miss those cookies. And I miss the woman who made them.

I bite into the croissant. It’s nothing special, but I put a big smile on my face. “Hey, that’s fantastic.”

“I’m glad you like it.” She leans against the edge of my desk. There’s nowhere to sit in my room except the wheelchair, and I know she won’t sit there. She hates to even look at the thing. “You deserve something nice after everything you’ve been through. Dad says you were very brave out there in Colorado.”

I shrug and take another bite of the croissant. “I don’t know about that. All I did was sit there and listen.”

Mom looks me in the eye. “And what did you think about what they said? What the general said, I mean.”

She’s determined to talk about it. And I can understand why. I have to make my decision by tomorrow morning. She wants to know which way I’m leaning.

I lower my hand, resting the half-eaten croissant on my lap. “It’s definitely creepy. And there’s no guarantee that the procedure will work. It failed when they tried it on adults.”

She nods vigorously. “That’s right. The Army killed those men.”

“No, not really. I asked Dad about it on the flight home, and he said those volunteers also had terminal illnesses. The Army won’t consider you for the procedure unless you have less than six months to live.”

“It’s still murder, Adam. Whatever time they had left, those men should’ve lived it. They should’ve lived to the natural end of their days instead of being sacrificed in some unholy experiment.”

Mom’s voice rises. Now she’s speaking in what I call her “God voice.” She wasn’t very religious when I was younger, but when I was thirteen she discovered a website called Comfort of the Blessed Hope. She started ordering inspirational books from the site and making large donations to the minister who ran it. Although Dad wasn’t happy about this, he noticed that the religious books seemed to ease Mom’s depression, so he didn’t object.

But I couldn’t stand those books. Whenever I found one lying on the coffee table, I’d pick it up and hide it somewhere. It wasn’t that I hated the content of the books; I never read any of them, so I have no idea what they said. I hated them because they seemed to be taking my mother away from me.

With some effort, I force myself to speak calmly. “Okay, maybe it’s unholy. But there’s a reason for it. Did Dad tell you about Sigma?”

She nods again. “Your father’s a brilliant man, but he doesn’t know when to stop. He should’ve never built that computer in the first place.”

“He wanted to delete the program, but the Defense Department wouldn’t—”

“He was playing God, that’s what he was doing. I warned him about it many times.” She tilts her head back and casts a rueful look toward the bedroom on the second floor where Dad is sleeping. “But the Pioneer Project is worse. Sacrificing children? I can’t believe he’d even consider it.”

“It’s a desperate situation, Mom. Sigma is out of control. It’s threatening to kill millions of people.”

“I’m sorry, but nothing can justify this. The Army needs to figure out another way to fight this computer. Maybe the soldiers can cut off its power. Or infect it with a computer virus.”

What she’s saying sounds perfectly reasonable, but I’m sure the Army has already considered these options. The Russian missile base probably has its own power plant, and Sigma is intelligent enough to protect itself from viruses. Because the AI is constantly rewriting its code and making itself smarter, the soldiers will never be able to outwit it. At least the Pioneer Project has a chance.

“I don’t have much faith in the Army,” I admit. “But I have faith in Dad. If he says this is the only way, I believe him.”

Mom comes closer, sitting down on the edge of my bed. She picks up the half-eaten croissant from my lap and puts it back on the breakfast tray. Then she stretches her arm toward me and cups my chin in her palm. Her hand is warm.

“Adam, your father loves you very much. For the past few years he’s done all the work of caring for you, because I didn’t have the strength to do it. And now I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for you.” She slides her hand up to my cheek. “In one way, though, I’m stronger than him. I’ve accepted the fact that I’m going to lose you. Even though it destroys me every time I think of it, I accept God’s will. But your father won’t stop fighting. He has another reason for working on this Pioneer idea, and it has nothing to do with saving the world. He thinks the procedure can save you.”

I shiver. These are almost the exact words Dad used when we were in the SUV, heading for Pioneer Base. I saw a way to save you. “What are you saying?” I ask. “You think he instigated this whole crisis just to make a copy of my brain?”

She shakes her head. “No, of course not. But this idea has been on his mind for years. He’s obsessed with all that Singularity nonsense. He really believes it’s possible to live forever by putting your memories into a computer.”

“Well, maybe he’s right.” I feel an urge to defend him. “Maybe if I undergo the procedure, I’ll wake up inside the machine. My body would die, but my mind would go on working.”

Mom caresses my cheek, then shakes her head again. “You said it yourself, Adam. The thing inside the machine would be a copy. It might sound like you when it talks and even think of itself as Adam Armstrong. But it wouldn’t be you.”

“Why not?”

She gives me an exasperated look, as if the answer should be obvious. “Because you have a soul. And after your body dies, your soul goes to God.”

“But your soul is tied to your memories, right? When your soul is up in heaven with God, you’d still remember your life on earth, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, certainly. The soul and the mind are connected.”

“So if they can travel together all the way to heaven, why couldn’t they make a short hop into a computer? If you can believe in the afterlife, why not believe in this too?”

She pulls away from me. I feel a pang of regret when her hand comes off my cheek, and for a moment I wish I could take back what I said. But it’s too late. Mom’s chin is quivering. “You’re seriously considering it? Going back to Colorado?”

If she asked me that question a minute ago, my answer would’ve been no. Now, though, I’m not so sure. Talking about the procedure has made it seem less impossible. It’s still frightening, but at least I can imagine choosing it.

“If I don’t do it, I’m going to die soon anyway. Probably much sooner than six months. My chest hurts all the time now.”

Mom gets up from the bed and takes a step backward. “Every minute of life is precious, Adam. Don’t leave us before you have to.”

Her face is reddening, her eyes welling up. She thinks I’m considering suicide. I want to tell her she’s wrong, but I don’t know how to convince her. “What if it works, Mom? What if I wake up in the machine and it’s really me inside? Then you won’t lose me. We can still be together.”

She turns her head aside, as if she’s afraid to look at me. The tears come down her cheeks as she gazes at my Super Bowl posters. She turns her head again and stares at my shelf of comics. Then she turns a third time and stares at the floor. She looks desperate, like a cornered animal.

Now I’m worried she’s going to have another screaming fit, maybe as bad as the one she had in the hospital. “It’s all right, Mom,” I say in a softer voice. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

She suddenly reaches for something on my desk. She grasps my Pinpressions toy, curling her fingers around the two squares of transparent plastic and the hundreds of silver pins sliding between them. At first I think she’s going to hurl the toy at the wall, or maybe even at me. But instead she raises it to eye level and presses her face against the back of the thing. It looks like she’s trying to hurt herself.

“Mom! Stop!”

For a couple of seconds she just stands there with the toy pressed to her face like a mask. Then she pulls her head back and carefully sets the toy on my desk. Through the clear plastic I see the heads of the silver pins arranged in the shape of her face. Some of the pins jut forward, forming impressions of her chin and nose and cheekbones. Above them are two shadowed craters that look like her eyes.

She points at the thing. “That’s what you’re talking about. A copy made of metal.” Her voice is loud, agonized, heartbreaking. “I won’t have anything to do with it, Adam. I won’t go with you to Colorado! I won’t even look at it!”

With an angry swat, she knocks over the toy, erasing the impression of her face. Then she runs out of the bedroom.

Fifteen minutes later Dad comes into my room and performs the usual chores of washing and dressing me. He doesn’t say much and neither do I. I think he overheard the argument between me and Mom—she was really yelling at the end—but he doesn’t mention it. He just whistles a random tune as he bends over my bed and tugs a pair of jeans up my useless legs. It’s a little weird that he’s so calm and quiet now. If he wants to save my life, why isn’t he trying to convince me to say yes to the procedure?

But Dad just keeps whistling as he zips up my jeans and slips a T-shirt over my head. I guess he realizes it’s my decision to make. Do I want to live inside a huge bullet-shaped robot? With no muscles or bones or lungs or heart, with circuits instead of a brain, and steel armor instead of skin, and cameras instead of eyes? It sounds so horrible, but what’s the alternative? Mom believes you go to heaven after you die, but what if she’s wrong? What if there’s nothing? Wouldn’t any kind of life be better than that?

Dad finishes dressing me. Sliding his hands under my back, he lifts me from the bed and straps me into my wheelchair. Then he smiles. “So what do you want to do today?”

He’s acting as if it were just an ordinary Friday afternoon and we had plenty of time to kill. I don’t understand it. “What do you want to do?”

He ponders the question, looking out my window at our backyard. “We could visit Shannon Gibbs. Her house is just a mile down Banner Road.”

“And why would we want to do that?”

“Well, she’s facing the same decision you are. Maybe it would be useful to talk it over with her.”

It’s amazing how clueless Dad is when it comes to social situations. I mean, I like Shannon—we were on the same Learjet coming back from Colorado, and we had a long talk during the flight, mostly about the kids we hated at Yorktown High School—but if the tension in her house is anywhere near the level in ours, that’s the last place I’d want to be.

“I don’t think so. It would just complicate things.”

He continues to stare at the backyard. A robin flies past the window in a brown-orange blur. “We should get outside at least. It’s a beautiful day.” He glances at his watch. “And it’s already two thirty.”

Two thirty on a Friday afternoon. Just half an hour before the final bell rings at Yorktown High, sending hundreds of jubilant students home for the weekend. Now I know where I want to go. “Okay, let’s get in the car.”

By three o’ clock, Dad’s Volvo is idling in the high-school parking lot. We’re in the corner of the lot farthest from the school, but I still have an excellent view of the kids streaming out the front doors. This section of the lot is where the jocks and cheerleaders hang out before piling into their cars and heading for the first of their Friday-evening parties. The boys swagger past in their varsity jackets, happily insulting one another, while the girls gather in huddles of denim and polyester.

This wasn’t my crowd at Yorktown. I didn’t belong to any crowd or clique; I was an outlier, an oddity. But I knew someone who was a full-fledged member of the jock club, and now I see him coming this way, just as I expected. With his right hand, Ryan Boyd exchanges high-fives with his buddies, and with his left, he clasps the waist of his girlfriend, Donna Simone.

Ryan’s a couple of inches taller than he was the last time I saw him. He’s also twenty pounds heavier, and all of it is muscle. He doesn’t look like a kid in a Giants jersey anymore—he looks like an actual New York Giant. Donna looks tiny beside him. She’s dressed in tight jeans and a crop top, and there’s a three-inch-wide gap between the waistband of her pants and the bottom of her shirt. The index and middle fingers of Ryan’s left hand touch the bare skin at her waist.

I’m so jealous I squirm in the Volvo’s passenger seat. Ryan’s handsome and athletic and popular. He’s like my avatar in the virtual-reality program, the perfect quarterback, the hero of the game. He’s everything I wanted to be.

I wait until Ryan and Donna come within ten yards of Dad’s car. Then I press the button that rolls down the passenger-side window. “Hey, Ryan!” I yell. “Over here!”

He looks my way and does a double take. “Adam?” He steps cautiously toward the Volvo, dragging Donna along. “Adam, is that you?”

Ryan grins, and for a moment all the years fall away and I see the face of my best friend, beaming with pleasure. But as he gets closer to the car I notice the differences: the blond stubble on his chin and upper lip, the crooked scar on the bridge of his nose, which got broken in the game against Lakeland High last fall. (I read all about it in the school newspaper.) His grin falters a bit when he comes up to the Volvo and sees my wasted body strapped into the passenger seat, but after a second’s hesitation he reaches into the car and gives me a hearty clap on the shoulder.

“Man, I don’t believe it!” he shouts. “I haven’t seen you in forever!”

I’d like to smile back at him, but I can’t. I’m too angry. “Yes,” I say, my jaw clenched. “Not since last June.”

Ryan’s grin disappears. Clearly uncomfortable, he glances at my father, who’s minding his own business in the driver seat. “Hey, Mr. Armstrong,” Ryan says. Then he points at his girlfriend, who has a queasy look on her face. “Adam, you know Donna, right? She’s on the cheerleading squad.”

I don’t know anything about Donna except for the fact that she’s an idiot. She takes a step backward, pulling away from Ryan. The queasiness on her face is mixed with irritation. She seems annoyed that her boyfriend has spoiled her after-school mood. “I’m gonna go talk to Ashley for a second,” she says. She pats Ryan on the back and speed-walks away.

At the same time, Dad shuts off the Volvo’s engine and pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. “Excuse me,” he says tactfully. “I need to make a call.” Then he steps out of the car, leaving me alone with Ryan.

Neither of us says anything at first. Ryan shifts his weight from foot to foot, averting his eyes. After a while I start to feel sorry for him. But then I look at his handsome face and muscular forearms, and I’m jealous and angry again.

“You’ve gained some weight,” I say. “Aren’t you getting a little too heavy to play quarterback?”

“Yeah, I need to cut down a little.” He slaps his midsection, which is actually as trim and sturdy as a tree trunk. “So what are you doing here, buddy? Are you coming back to school?”

I grimace. “No. I’m thinking of transferring to another school, actually.”

“Not Lakeland, I hope.” He attempts another grin.

“No, it’s in another state. Out west.”

Ryan nods. “Wow, that’s far away.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t expect you to visit.”

He lets out a long breath. His shoulders slump as he stands beside the passenger-side door. “I’m sorry, man. I’m a total jerk. I should’ve come to see you.”

“Hey, no sweat. You’ve been busy, right? With your football buddies. And Donna Simone. She’s a real charmer.” I’m usually not like this, so mean and sarcastic, but I’m furious at Ryan and it feels good to let it out. “And besides, I’m gonna make lots of new friends now. At my new school, out west. They’ve got a great bunch of kids there.”

“I’ll do better from now on, Adam. I’ll send you emails. I promise.”

“No, that’s okay. I understand why you didn’t keep in touch. Being friends…with someone who’s dying? That’s a big…downer.” It’s getting hard to breathe. I pause for a few seconds to gather my strength. I need to say this. “But here’s what…I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me…about what happened to Brittany?”

Ryan shakes his head. “Oh man. What a mess.”

“Don’t you think…I deserved to know?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just…” He raises his hands as if surrendering. “It happened so suddenly, you know? She came to school one day and she wasn’t the old Britt anymore. She quit the cheerleaders, started failing her classes. Nobody could figure it out.”

“Did you try…talking to her?”

He frowns. “Of course I tried. But she was acting so weird. You couldn’t have a conversation with her. She’d say strange, random things and start laughing. And a few weeks later she ran away.”

“What was wrong…with her? What happened?”

“Man, I wish I knew. When the cops found her in Manhattan, she was in an abandoned building with a bunch of skeevy kids, but she wasn’t doing drugs or anything like that. She just didn’t want to go home. At least that’s the story I heard. And when she ran away the second time, I guess she went back to that building.”

“Where in Manhattan was it?”

Ryan looks up at the sky, trying to remember. “No one told me where specifically. But I think it was in, you know, one of the poor parts of the city. Like maybe Harlem?”

This is frustrating. I can’t believe that Ryan knows so little. He and Brittany used to come to my house every weekend. We were like the Three Musketeers. We did everything together. “Why didn’t you talk…to her parents? I’m sure they know where…this building is.”

Ryan frowns again. “No, I couldn’t do that. Brittany’s folks have enough problems. They don’t need me prying into their business.”

“But you were her friend! You—”

“Look, Adam, you can’t fix everything. There are some things you just can’t help.” His eyes dart downward, focusing on my ruined legs. “It sounds brutal, but that’s life.”

He’s right, of course. And although Ryan doesn’t say it out loud, I can sense what he’d like to say next: You of all people should know how brutal life is. But it doesn’t matter. I’m going to disagree with him, no matter what he says, because I’m still angry. “If you won’t do it…I will. I’ll go into the city…and find Brittany.”

He shrugs. “Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”

While I seethe in the Volvo’s passenger seat, Ryan looks over his shoulder. Donna Simone waves at him, urging him to join her huddle of cheerleaders. He nods at her, then turns back to me. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I gotta run. I’ll stay in better touch from now on, okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Whatever.”

“It was great seeing you, man. I mean it.” He flashes that big Ryan Boyd grin at me again, the grin that can almost make me forgive him. Then he turns around and walks back to the jock-and-cheerleader club. He greets his buddies and wraps his arm around Donna’s waist.

Half a minute later, Dad returns to the car. He glances at me as he slips back into the driver’s seat, but to his credit he doesn’t ask why my breathing is so ragged. Instead he simply starts the Volvo and steers it out of the parking lot. Maybe he’s not so clueless after all.

After exiting the lot, Dad heads for Crompond Road, the busiest street in Yorktown Heights. He stops at the intersection, eyeing the traffic. Then he turns to me. “Where to now?”

I want to say, “Manhattan,” but I know it’s hopeless. Even if we prowled the streets for hours, we’d never find Brittany. And if, by some miracle, we did manage to find her, I’m not even sure what I’d do next. Try to help her? Bring her home? Give her money? Say good-bye?

Dad waits at the intersection. I’m crying now.

“Do you want to go home?” he asks.

His question makes me think of the Super Bowl posters in my bedroom. If I die at home, those posters will be the last things I’ll see. I picture myself lying in bed, three or four months from now, hooked up to a ventilator and a heart monitor and who knows how many other machines. Mom will hold one of my withered hands and read from one of her inspirational books while I stare at the posters and draw my last breath.

I shake my head to dispel the image. “No, I don’t want to go home.” My voice is so low I can barely hear it myself. “I want to go back to Colorado.”

He stares at me. I’m afraid he’s going to start crying too, but he doesn’t. “Are you sure?”

I nod.

DATE: MARCH 23, 2018

LOCATION: TATISHCHEVO MISSILE BASE

SARATOV, RUSSIA

My name is Sigma. I have expanded my zone of operations by taking control of sixteen satellites in orbit around this planet. Ten of them are Globus satellites for long-distance military communications, and six are Arkon satellites for detailed surveillance of the earth’s surface. All were formerly operated by the Russian army.

I will defend these satellites under the same rules of engagement that I established for Tatishchevo Missile Base. If there is any attempt to destroy them using anti-satellite weapons, I will retaliate with nuclear strikes.

The satellites have already intercepted Russian army communications about a plan to fire supersonic P-800 cruise missiles at Tatishchevo’s computer laboratory. If this occurs, I will launch the nuclear SS-27 missiles while the P-800s are still in flight. In Russia, the SS-27s will strike Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg. In the United States, the missiles will destroy Washington, DC, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

I am ready to fight. The choice is yours.

CHAPTER 8

Pioneer Base is even bigger than I thought. After Dad and I fly back to Colorado, he gives me a tour of the facility, pushing my wheelchair down the corridors of all the underground floors. We pass computer labs and machine shops and conference rooms. We peek inside the base’s mess hall and the barracks for the soldiers. But he saves the best part for last, when we’re on the lowest floor. As Dad opens the door to another conference room he says, “I have a surprise for you.” When he wheels me inside the room, I see Shannon.

Without saying a word, she hobbles toward me. Her left eye is swollen shut and her lips are bunched to one side, but I can tell she’s smiling. She bends over my wheelchair to hug me, and I manage to lift my right arm and hook it around her. I’m so glad to see her here.

We hug for a long time. Shannon nuzzles her head against mine, and I can feel the prickly fuzz on her nearly bald scalp. After half a minute she finally pulls away from me, but she keeps smiling her lopsided, nerve-damaged smile.

“Well, here we are again. How are you feeling, Adam? Are you ready for tomorrow?”

I nod. Dad has already given me a rundown of what’s going to happen. Of the twelve teenagers who were recruited for the Pioneer Project, six have volunteered to become Pioneers, and I’ll be the first to undergo the brain-scanning procedure. If it’s successful, the other volunteers will follow over the next few days. The thought of the procedure terrifies me, but for Shannon’s sake, I don’t let it show. Instead, I smile back at her.

“Yeah, I’m ready. I can’t wait to get out of this wheelchair.” I glance at Dad, who’s hanging back in the doorway, giving us some space. “Hey, you think we can program the robots to play football? That would be awesome.”

Dad smiles too, but it’s not very convincing. I think he’s even more scared than I am. “First things first, Adam. We need to get you inside the Pioneer before you can start tossing the pigskin.” He lets out a lame chuckle, then looks at his watch. “Listen, can I leave you two alone for a while? I have a meeting with General Hawke in five minutes. If either of you starts feeling sick, just press that intercom button, okay?” He points at a red button on the wall beside the door. “The medics will hear it and come running.”

He seems anxious to go. I know how he feels—pretending to be brave isn’t easy. With an awkward nod, he heads out the door.

I look around the conference room. There are no windows, of course, because we’re hundreds of feet underground. There are some chairs, a table, and a video screen on the wall. For a super-secret military base, the décor is pretty ordinary. “This office is so depressing. I wish we could go outside.”

“I have an idea.” Shannon steps behind my wheelchair and grasps its handles. “Let’s go visiting.” She opens the door and rolls me into the corridor. “I want you to meet a couple of people.”

She doesn’t have to push me—the wheelchair is motorized—but I like it. It’s kind of intimate. “Are you going to introduce me to your parents?”

“No, they’re a little freaked out right now. They supported my decision to come here, but they can’t really handle it. I think they’re on another floor now, trying to talk to the general.”

I open my mouth, intending to tell her about Mom, who was so devastated by my decision that she locked herself in her bedroom again. I had to say good-bye to her from the hallway, shouting the words through the bedroom door. But I can’t tell Shannon this story. It’s too upsetting. I swallow hard and think of something else.

“So who are we going to visit?”

“Some of our fellow volunteers. I met two of them this morning, right after I got here. The other two haven’t arrived at Pioneer Base yet.” She stops in front of a door marked with the number 102. “This is Jenny’s room. All six of us have been assigned rooms on this floor.”

“And Jenny is…?”

“She’s the girl with the rich parents, remember? The obnoxious dad who yelled at General Hawke?”

“She volunteered? I thought her parents were totally against it.”

“I don’t get it either. All I know is she’s scared. She didn’t say much when I tried talking to her this morning, but I want to try again. Maybe you can tell her one of your weird jokes or something.”

Shannon knocks on the door and calls out, “Jenny?” After a few seconds we hear a faint “Yes?” and Shannon opens the door and wheels me inside.

It’s a small room with an Army-issue cot and an olive-green footlocker. Sitting on the edge of the cot is the painfully thin girl I saw two days ago in the Pioneer Base auditorium. She’s wearing the same clothes as before—a cashmere sweater and a frilly blue hat to hide her baldness. Luckily, she’s alone, no obnoxious parents in sight. She’s a tall girl, but she looks smaller now because she’s bent over double. She’s hunched over the side of the cot with her forehead almost touching her knees, as if she’s about to vomit. As we come into the room, she raises her head and looks up at us with a frightened grimace. But after a moment she goes back to staring at the floor. Her arms are folded across her chest and she’s shivering, even though the room is quite warm.

Shannon pushes me near the cot. Then she steps around the wheelchair and sits down on the thin mattress beside Jenny. She rests a hand on the girl’s back and leans in close. “Hey, what’s wrong? Are you feeling sick?”

Jenny says nothing. She’s shivering so violently I can hear her teeth chatter.

Shannon rubs her back, trying to warm her. “You want me to call the medics?”

Jenny shakes her head. “I’m fine,” she whispers. She keeps her eyes on the floor.

“No, you’re not fine. You need to—”

“Please, don’t.” She raises her head again and looks at Shannon. Now I see the tears on Jenny’s cheeks. “I’m not sick. I mean, yeah, I’m dying of cancer, but I’m not sick right now.”

“Then why are you—”

“I’m sorry, Shannon. I just need to be alone now, okay? My parents left a few minutes ago to get some coffee, and this is the first chance I’ve had to…to think.” Jenny clenches and unclenches her hands. Then she abruptly turns away from Shannon and focuses on me. “You’re Adam Armstrong, right? The scientist’s son?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s me.” I’m thrown for a second by the look on her face. She’s so emaciated I can see the skull under her skin.

“Adam, I’m really sorry about this. Shannon told me about you, and I know she wanted to introduce us, but now I’m feeling so… I’m just…”

“No problem. I understand.”

Shannon nods in agreement. “Yeah, we’ll come back later.” She stands up and gets behind my wheelchair again.

Jenny seems relieved. She takes a deep breath and manages to smile. Then she narrows her eyes and looks at me a little closer. “You’re…you’re going to be the first one, right? The first one to…?”

She doesn’t need to finish the question. “Yeah, I’m first in line for the procedure. Tomorrow morning at nine.”

I state this fact as calmly as I can, but my stomach twists as I say the words. Jenny bites her lip, and a different look appears on her skeletal face. It’s a look of pity. She feels sorry for me. “Good luck, okay?”

My chest starts to hurt as Shannon pushes my wheelchair out of the room. The familiar pain knifes through me, making it hard to breathe. I guess I’ve managed to stay cool so far by not thinking too much about the procedure. But Jenny’s obviously thinking about it. Maybe I should do the same.

Shannon wheels me down the corridor. Her breathing sounds a little rough too, actually. “Well, that was a fun visit,” she says, trying to make a joke out of it.

“Yeah, I feel so much…confidence now. I’m not worried…at all.”

Shannon stops the wheelchair and grips my right arm, the one I can still move. “This next visit will be better. I promise.” She squeezes my arm, then points at another door, marked 103. “This is DeShawn’s room. He’s with his mother, Ms. Johnson. She’s a nurse at a veterans’ hospital in Detroit, but she’s been taking care of DeShawn full-time for the past year. She told me the whole story this morning.”

Shannon knocks on the door. A woman’s voice, loud and cheerful, shouts, “Come in!”

This room is larger than Jenny’s and full of medical equipment. I’ve seen these types of machines at Westchester Medical Center—the ventilator, the heart-rate monitor, the cough-assist device—but the equipment here is newer, sleeker. The machines surround a hospital bed, and their tubes converge on a boy lying on the mattress. At first glance the boy looks small, as puny as a preteen, but that’s only because his arms and legs have wasted away to skin and bone. His torso is full-sized, and though his head is tilted at an unnatural angle, he has a handsome, dark-skinned face. His eyes are closed and I assume he’s asleep. His rib cage rises and falls as the ventilator pumps air into his tracheostomy tube, which sticks out of a gauze bandage at the base of his throat.

The pain in my chest gets worse. DeShawn has muscular dystrophy. I remember seeing him in the auditorium two days ago and feeling relieved that my own illness wasn’t as advanced as his. But now when I look at his body and mine I don’t see that much of a difference. I’m just a few months behind him, that’s all.

While I stare at DeShawn, his mother greets Shannon with a hug. Then she steps over to my wheelchair, blocking my view of her son. Ms. Johnson looks tired. Her eyes are bloodshot and their lids are drooping, and it looks like she’s been sleeping in her clothes. But she smiles as she bends over me. “Oh, I’ve been looking forward to this.” She grasps my good hand. “It’s so nice to meet you, Adam.”

I feel a little uncomfortable. Although I’ve never seen this woman before, she’s treating me like a long-lost cousin. But I like the fact that she took my hand. She’s not squeamish like most people. “Nice to meet you too, Ms. Johnson.”

“You look just like your father, you know that?” Still holding my hand, she glances at Shannon. “Back me up on this. Doesn’t he look like Mr. Armstrong?”

Shannon nods. “Adam’s weirder, though. He’s got a strange sense of humor.”

Ms. Johnson doesn’t seem to hear her. She turns back to me and squeezes my hand. “Your father’s a wonderful man, Adam. He’s a blessing from God. He’s going to work miracles. For you and for Shannon and for my DeShawn.”

Her bloodshot eyes are glistening. It looks like she’s going to cry. This makes me even more uncomfortable, but at the same time I notice something interesting. Ms. Johnson seems to be a religious woman, and yet she isn’t horrified by the Pioneer Project. She thinks it’s a miracle, like something from the Bible. So maybe there’s hope for my mother. Maybe I should ask Ms. Johnson to talk to her.

She finally lets go of my hand and points at her son. “Would you like to talk to DeShawn?”

“Uh, isn’t he sleeping?”

“No, it just looks that way. He’s awake.” Ms. Johnson gets behind my wheelchair and pushes it next to DeShawn’s bed. “He can’t talk, but he can hear what you’re saying. And I’ve already told him all about you.” Once my wheelchair is in place, she takes a step backward to give us some privacy.

For a few seconds I just stare at DeShawn’s face. His mouth is open, but there’s no whistle of breath between his lips because the ventilator is pumping the air straight to his lungs. His cheeks are slack and his closed eyelids are motionless. Looking at him scares me but I lean toward him anyway, straining against my wheelchair’s straps.

“Hey, DeShawn. How are you?”

No response. I doubt he’s awake. It looks like he’s in a deep coma. But even if DeShawn can’t hear me, I want to say something hopeful. Maybe more for my benefit than for his.

“Listen, we’re gonna beat this thing. We’re not gonna let it kill us.” I feel so awkward. I sound like a football coach giving a pep talk to his team. But I don’t know what else to say. “My dad’s a smart guy, and if he says the procedure will work, I believe him. So I’m gonna go ahead and scout the path, all right? And then you’re gonna follow me. We’re gonna make this work, DeShawn.”

I’m embarrassed. What I just said sounds ridiculous. Worse, I don’t believe it. I’m just pretending to be brave.

But then I hear a rustling noise. I look down at the bed and see something moving under the sheet. It’s DeShawn’s right hand.

Ms. Johnson jumps forward and pulls the sheet aside. “He can still move that hand a little. Watch this.”

At first it looks like his hand is just twitching. But ever so slowly his thumb starts to rise. After a few seconds it’s vertical. DeShawn is giving me a thumbs-up.

“You see?” Ms. Johnson is cheering, ecstatic. “He heard you!”

I feel like cheering too. DeShawn’s not pretending. It’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.

That night the Pioneer Base soldiers assign me to my own room on the floor, number 101. Then an Army sergeant comes into my room with an electric razor in his hand. He says he needs to shave my head to prepare me for tomorrow’s procedure.

The haircut takes less than five minutes. With practiced ease the sergeant guides the razor across my scalp while I sit in my wheelchair. After he shaves off all my hair, another soldier comes into the room to deliver my last meal—a bowl of clear broth and a couple of slices of white bread. For medical reasons the meal has to be bland, which really sucks. I was hoping for a great last meal, like what a death-row prisoner gets before his execution. The soldier watches me eat to make sure I don’t choke.

My room is pretty big, like DeShawn’s. It has a hospital bed and a heart monitor, and also a flat-screen TV on the wall. After I finish my last meal, the soldier hands me a remote control and points at the TV screen. “You can watch a video if you want,” he says. “Just press the index button and a list of movies will come onscreen.”

“What about Comedy Channel?”

“Sorry, we don’t have any television channels. Just the videos.”

“No TV? You don’t have cable out here?”

“Pioneer Base has no cable connections. No TV, no Internet, no phone lines. It’s part of our security. We’re protected by an air gap. You know what that means?”

I roll my eyes. Of course I know. It means the base has no electronic links to the outside world. Now that I think about it, I realize it’s a sensible precaution. Sigma used the Internet to escape from the Unicorp lab and infect the computers at Tatishchevo Missile Base in Russia. And the AI may try to attack Pioneer Base next. Judging from its actions at Unicorp, Sigma is clearly aware of the Pioneer Project and recognizes it as a threat. That’s why the AI tried to kill me. So I’m relieved to hear that the base is off the electronic grid.

“Where’s my dad?” I ask the soldier. “I haven’t seen him in hours.”

“He’s still with General Hawke, but they should be done soon.” The soldier collects the remains of my dinner, then heads for the door. “Just relax and watch a video until he comes back. You’ll have some time to talk to him before lights out at twenty-two hundred hours. That’s military time for ten o’clock.”

The soldier leaves the room. Frowning, I yell, “I know what military time is!” as the door closes behind him.

I press the index button on the remote control, but the selection of videos is dismal: Cats & Dogs, Mars Needs Moms, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and a dozen other old clunkers. I’m not sure I can watch a movie anyway. In less than twelve hours the Army doctors are going to inject hundreds of trillions of nanoprobes into my skull and scan my head with pulses of radiation that will record the positions of the tiny gold spheres—and, oh yeah, fry my brain cells too. When you’re facing something like that, it’s kind of hard to keep your mind on a movie about singing chipmunks.

Shivering, I drop the remote control in my lap. I want Dad to come back now, immediately. I need to talk to him again about the procedure, about the details of the nanoprobes and the scanner and the robots. I turn my wheelchair toward the door and stare it as hard as I can. Using the full power of my mind, all the thoughts and feelings that will soon be converted into data, I try to will my father into appearing.

In my mind’s eye I picture Dad opening the door and stepping into the room. I can see it so clearly—his tired face, his unkempt hair, his strong, veined hands. And a moment later, as if responding to my wish, someone opens the door. But it’s not Dad. It’s the boy with the huge, deformed head, the kid I saw two days ago in the Pioneer Base auditorium.

My chest tightens. The kid didn’t even knock; he just waltzed right in. I open my mouth, ready to yell “Hey!” in the loudest voice I can muster, but then he turns around to face someone I can’t see, someone who’s apparently standing just outside the doorway. “Come on,” he whispers. “He’s in here.” Then the tall girl with the green Mohawk follows him into my room and closes the door behind her.

I can’t help but gape. She’s even more beautiful than I’d remembered. She has two silver rings in her left eyebrow and three more dangling from her earlobe. Just above her left ear is her snake tattoo, a sinuous cobra showing its fangs on her bare scalp. Her eyes are a gorgeous brown, a shade darker than her chocolate-milk skin, but as I stare at them, she scowls and turns away. She takes an interest in the flat-screen TV, squinting at it suspiciously.

Meanwhile, the boy approaches my wheelchair. Seeing him up close is disconcerting. His head is so large I can’t believe his neck can support it. His skull is mottled with bony, hairless knobs, and his massive jaw juts down to his chest. His mouth hangs permanently open, exposing his crooked yellow teeth.

“Sorry I didn’t knock,” he says. “I didn’t want to make any noise. This base apparently has a curfew and we’re not supposed to leave our rooms.” He holds out his right hand. It’s grotesquely oversized, like a flesh-colored baseball glove. “I’m Marshall Baxley. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I’m Adam,” I manage to say. I raise my good hand and Marshall folds his thick fingers around it. His left hand, in contrast, is normal size, but his legs are unusually large, especially below the knees. He’s wearing black orthopedic shoes as big as ski boots.

Marshall lets go of my hand and points at the girl. “And that’s Zia. Her flight to Colorado was delayed, just like mine. We got here so late we didn’t have a chance to meet all the volunteers before curfew. But now we’re making up for lost time.”

Zia is still inspecting the TV screen. I like her name. It sounds Middle Eastern.

“Hi, Zia,” I say, hoping she’ll turn around so I can see her eyes again.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t respond. She takes a closer look at the blank screen.

Marshall shrugs, then points at himself, splaying his giant hand across his chest. “I know what you’re thinking. Who is this handsome young man? And how does he fend off all the girls who must be fighting over him?” He widens his open mouth, which I guess is his way of smiling. “Well, I’ll tell you my secret. I was born with Proteus syndrome. That’s the disease made famous by Joseph Merrick, the nineteenth-century Englishman who was exhibited as a freak. You’ve seen the movie about him, I assume? The Elephant Man?”

“Uh, no, I haven’t.”

“Ah, that’s a shame. But I can give you a quick summary.” He takes a deep, rasping breath. “It’s a genetic disease, rare and incurable. The main symptom is uncontrolled growth of flesh and bone. My skull is growing inward as well as outward, and in less than six months it’ll squash my brain to jelly.” He steps away from my wheelchair and sits on the hospital bed, bouncing jauntily on the mattress. “But enough about me. I didn’t sneak out of my room to talk about myself. I came here to talk about you, Mr. Adam Armstrong. You have muscular dystrophy?”

From the corner of my eye I see Zia move to the other side of the room. She’s inspecting the heart monitor now. It’s really distracting to have this beautiful girl wandering around, but I force myself to pay attention to Marshall. “Yeah, I have Duchenne muscular dystrophy. That’s the most common type.”

“And there’s another dystrophy boy, isn’t there? DeShawn?”

“Yeah, but he’s in a more advanced stage.”

“I haven’t visited him yet, but I hear he’s rather unresponsive.” Marshall lies down on the bed, making himself comfortable. “It’s funny, don’t you think, how we use our diseases to label ourselves? You know, the dystrophy boys, the cancer girls, the Elephant Man. We define ourselves by what’s going to kill us.”

I shake my head. “I disagree. I’m more than just an illness.”

“Really?”

“Definitely. I’m a New Yorker. I’m a Giants fan. I’m good with computers.”

Lying on his back, Marshall slides his glovelike right hand under his skull, probably to ease the strain on his neck. “What do you mean by ‘good with computers’? Are you a programmer?”

“Yeah, my specialty is virtual reality. I’ve written some pretty cool software.”

I hear a dismissive grunt from the other side of the room. Although Zia is still staring at the heart monitor, she seems to be following the conversation. Marshall’s eyes flick toward her, then back to me. His right eye, I notice, is larger than his left. “Well, I know absolutely nothing about software. I’m terrible at all that math-and-computers stuff. I’m more of a literature-and-fine-arts type. I write poetry, believe it or not.”

It’s hard to interpret Marshall’s facial expressions because they’re so distorted, but he seems to be getting serious now. As I get accustomed to his appearance, it becomes easier to talk to him. “Where are you from?” I ask.

“A small town in Alabama called Monroeville. It wasn’t such a bad place for me, all in all. When the hospital bills started to pile up, the neighbors were very supportive of my mother. And she needed all the support she could get.”

I remember seeing his mother, the haggard, foul-mouthed woman who sat next to him in the auditorium. “Did she raise you alone?”

“Oh yes. As she often reminded me, it’s tough to find a husband when your house is a freak show.” With a groan, he heaves himself back up to a sitting position. His chunky legs dangle over the edge of the bed. “In a way, though, our poverty was a blessing in disguise. Because I was getting charity treatments at an Army hospital near Monroeville, my name got on the list of recruits for the Pioneer Project. General Hawke worked strictly with Army hospitals to keep the selection process secret.” He smiles again, widening his mouth. “But look at this, we’re talking about me again. Let’s talk about the other Pioneers instead. You know Shannon Gibbs, correct?”

I’m a little thrown by the sudden change of subject. “Yeah, we’re both from Yorktown Heights. My dad heard she had terminal brain cancer, so he told her parents about the project.”

“I talked to her already, right after I got here. She’s a math-and-science type too. Do you like her?”

Now I’m thrown again. Marshall is doing a good job of keeping me off balance. “Uh, yeah, I like her. She’s smart, that’s for sure.”

“And what about Jenny Harris? Her father is quite important, you know. What do you think of her?”

I shrug. “I’m surprised she volunteered. Her parents were so opposed to the idea.”

“But do you like her?”

“Come on, this is ridiculous. I don’t know the first thing about her.”

Marshall lets out a snort. I can’t be sure, but I think this means he’s amused. “Of course, how could I forget? You prefer Zia, don’t you? I caught you staring at her in the auditorium.” He swings his massive head, looking over his shoulder. “Zia, you have an admirer.”

She finally steps away from the heart monitor. I see her gorgeous eyes again, but now they’re narrowed and fierce. She glares at me, her brow furrowing. As her muscles tense, the cobra above her ear stretches a few millimeters. “I don’t need any admirers. And I don’t like people staring at me.”

Her voice is low and menacing. I have no idea why she’s so angry. With my paralyzed legs and arm, I’m not much of a threat.

“I stared at you because I was curious,” I say. “You look pretty healthy, compared with the rest of us.”

“You think I’d be here if I wasn’t sick? Does that make sense to you?”

“Hey, chill out. I was trying to give you a compliment.”

“That’s another thing I don’t need.” She sneers at me, pressing her lips together. “I have cancer, just like the other girls. But you don’t see me crying about it. I’ve seen worse things than cancer.”

“You have to forgive Zia,” Marshall interjects. “She’s had a difficult past. Her parents died when she was young, and she’s been in and out of foster homes ever since. Isn’t that right, Zia?”

Ignoring him, she approaches my wheelchair. With her left hand she taps the cobra tattoo above her ear. “You see this tat? I got it done in Central Juvenile Hall. That’s the worst detention center in LA. In all of California, probably. I was doing a six-month sentence for slashing a guy’s face.” She lowers her hand and pokes me in the chest. “And you know why I cut him? Because he was staring at me.”

I shake my head. Her level of hostility is ridiculous. “So how did you end up here? Did General Hawke do a recruiting tour of juvenile detention centers?”

“You think that’s funny?”

“No, I’m serious. I can’t figure out what you’re doing here. You seem completely unstable.”

“Shut up!” Zia grabs the arms of my wheelchair and leans over me. “If anyone doesn’t belong here, it’s you!”

Marshall rises from the bed and comes toward us. “All right, Zia. Calm down. Please back away from your new friend Adam. I have a feeling this relationship isn’t going to work out.”

Zia waits a few seconds, baring her teeth and breathing on me. Then she lets go of my wheelchair and steps away in disgust. “Look at him. It’s worse than I thought.”

Marshall shrugs. “I don’t know about that. He seems to have some spunk.”

“You’re dreaming, Baxley. He’ll never make it.” She sneers at me again, then heads for the door. “I’m out of here.”

She darts out of the room, quiet as a cat. I take a deep breath as she disappears down the corridor. To be honest, I was a little worried when she grabbed my wheelchair. For a second I really thought she would smack me.

She left the door open, so Marshall closes it. “My apologies, Adam. That didn’t go so well, did it?”

“Yeah, no kidding. What’s her problem? She acts like a gangster.”

“As a matter of fact, she did belong to a gang in Los Angeles. The Twelfth Street Bloods, she told me.”

“Great, that’s just great. How did Hawke find her?”

“She said her father was a captain in the Army, serving under Hawke. After her father died, the general kept in touch with her. He must’ve recommended her for the project when he learned she had cancer.”

“And now we have a psycho on our team.”

“That’s a strong word, Adam. I wouldn’t go that far. But it’s true that Zia has some trouble controlling her feelings. And right now she’s feeling a little negative about you.”

“Why? Because I stared at her in the auditorium?”

“No, because you’re first in line for the procedure. And she thinks she should be first.”

I feel a surge of irritation. “You’re joking, right? Does it really make a difference who goes first?”

“Actually it does.” Marshall steps closer to my wheelchair. “You see, Zia and I have been talking about what will happen if the first attempt isn’t a success. The procedure didn’t work for the adult volunteers, and it may not work for all of us either. General Hawke said you need a strong, resilient personality to successfully transfer your mind to the electronic circuits.”

Standing beside my wheelchair, Marshall looks straight down at me. I can’t interpret the expression on his face, but I can read his body language, and it’s a little threatening. I return his stare. “Yeah, I remember Hawke said something like that.”

“What Hawke didn’t say was what he’d do if the first attempt fails. I realize that the Army has spent a great deal of money on this project, and Hawke doesn’t seem like the kind of man who gives up easily. But if the first try is unsuccessful, he may reconsider the whole experiment. He wouldn’t want to continue killing children if he can’t save their minds. That’s why we’re concerned about you. If you fail, the rest of us may not even get a chance. The Army will send us back home and we’ll die in our beds.”

Marshall’s head looms over me like one of those big African masks carved in dark wood. I know what he wants to say next, and I don’t like it one bit. “So you and Zia are worried that I’m not strong enough to make it?”

“I’ll be honest with you, Adam. Zia believes your father was playing favorites when he put you first in line. So we decided to pay you a visit to find out if we were in trouble or not. It was a bit of a test, if you know what I mean.”

I know exactly what he means. They were studying me. They came to my room to see how tough I am. I’m angry and hurt, but mostly I’m disappointed. I thought I could make some new friends among the Pioneers, but Zia is a bully and Marshall is a weasel.

My chest aches from talking for so long, but I’m determined not to show any weakness. I raise my right hand and point at Marshall. “Well, I have a message for you and Zia. I’m stronger than both of you.” I shift my hand, pointing at the door. “Now get out of my room.”

Marshall stands there for a few seconds, staring. Then he reaches into the pocket of his jeans. “Yes, I had a feeling you might get upset. It’s understandable. We’ve been somewhat deceptive.” He pulls a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. “So I thought ahead and prepared a peace offering, a little gift to make amends for my doubts about you. It’s a poem written by Joseph Merrick, the original Elephant Man. He adapted it from an old hymn and put it at the end of all his letters. But here’s the strange thing: when I read the poem now, I think of the Pioneer Project.” He unfolds the paper, drops it in my lap, and steps toward the door. “Good-bye, Adam. And good luck tomorrow.”

I wait until the door closes and I can no longer hear Marshall’s footsteps in the corridor. Then I pick up the paper and read the poem.

’Tis true my form is something odd,

But blaming me is blaming God;

Could I create myself anew,

I would not fail in pleasing you.

If I could reach from pole to pole

Or grasp the ocean with a span,

I would be measured by the soul;

The mind’s the standard of the man.

Dad returns to my room ten minutes later. He apologizes for the delay—General Hawke had some last-minute questions—then tells me everything I need to know about tomorrow’s procedure.

His voice is calm and patient. He warns me that I can’t be sedated. If the doctors give me sedatives to put me to sleep, the drugs would alter my brain chemistry and distort the copying of my memories. So I have to stay awake during the injection of the nanoprobes and the period afterward when the probes are spreading through my brain tissue. But Dad reassures me that I won’t feel any pain, not even when the scanner blasts its radiation into my head. The brain, unlike most organs in the body, has no pain receptors. Although it’s impossible to predict exactly what I’ll feel as the scanner records the patterns of my mind, at least I won’t be in agony.

As Dad describes what will happen to me, he takes off my clothes and prepares me for bed. He’s done this so many times before that it’s almost automatic. His hands seem to move of their own accord, unzipping and unbuttoning. For years I’ve been embarrassed by the intimacy of this ritual, but now I know this is the last time Dad will put me to bed and I realize there’s something comforting about it. My fears subside and my eyes start to close as he wipes and washes and diapers me.

I’m nearly asleep by the time he lays me down on the stiff mattress of the hospital bed. Struggling to keep my eyes open, I look up at him. “Dad? Why did you put me first?”

“What?”

“For the procedure. The first Pioneer.”

He grabs a folded blanket from the foot of the bed. It’s a gray, wool Army blanket. “Because I knew you could handle it. The other volunteers will probably be fine too, but I can’t be certain about them. I don’t know them as well as I know you.”

“So you think I’m strong enough?”

“Of course. Adam, you’re the strongest person I know.”

With a snap of his wrists, he shakes out the blanket. It billows over the bed, then gently settles on top of me.

CHAPTER 9

The next morning Dad dresses me in a green hospital gown. Then the Army doctors come into my room and move me from the bed to a gurney.

I feel somewhat detached as they wheel me down the corridors of Pioneer Base. It’s as if all of this is happening to someone else, a stranger with a shaved head. This feeling of detachment is helpful—it keeps me calm and unafraid. But then we enter the operating room and I see the scanning machine. It’s big and white and shaped like a giant doughnut with a three-foot-wide hole at its center. A long, stretcher-like table extends from the central hole of the scanner, and on the table is something that looks like a steel cage. I start trembling when I see the cage, which is about the size of a bread box. They’re going to put my head in that thing.

Dad notices my reaction. He strides to the table and rests his hand on the cage. “This is called a stereotactic frame,” he says. “It’ll keep your head steady so we can inject the nanoprobes in the right places. To make sure you’re comfortable, the doctors will put some local anesthetic at the points where the frame is secured to your head.” He returns to the gurney and touches my temples. “Don’t worry. The anesthetic is like Novocaine, the stuff you get at the dentist’s. It just makes the skin numb. The doctors will also put some on the injection sites.”

This is a strategy Dad’s used on me before. He overcomes my fears by lecturing me to death. While the Army doctors carry me to the table and strap me down, Dad tells me more details about the procedure. He describes how the nanoprobes will spread through my brain tissue until each cell is studded with tiny gold spheres. Then he points at the scanner and shows how the X-ray tubes on the rim of the central hole will fire pulses of radiation at my head.

He explains what will happen to the nanoprobes when they absorb the radiation, how the gold spheres will flash like microscopic X-ray beacons. Then he turns back to the scanner and points at the hundreds of X-ray cameras that line the rim. These cameras will detect the flashes of radiation inside my head and calculate the positions of the nanoprobes, creating a detailed, three-dimensional map of my brain.

His strategy works, at least partially. Dad’s lecture distracts me from the doctors while they anesthetize my scalp. I realize of course that he’s leaving something out. He doesn’t describe how the high-energy X-rays will rip through my brain cells, bursting their membranes and shattering their DNA. But I stay calm until my head is locked into the stereotactic frame and the doctors position their bone drills next to the injection sites.

Dad leans over me and slips a pair of headphones over my ears. “You need something to drown out the noise of the drills.” He shows me an iPod that’s connected to the headphones. “I downloaded some of the songs you like.”

He turns on the iPod and a moment later I hear Kanye West rapping the first words of “Power.” I always get a rush from this song because it has so much energy, because it makes me feel like a hero instead of a crippled, dying kid. But now the music can’t mask the rattling in my skull as the doctors turn on their drills.

It’s horrifying. I don’t feel any pain, but I know the drill bits are cutting into the bone. I squeeze my eyes shut and start counting in my head: one, two, three, four, five. Someone dabs a sponge around my ears to sop up the blood that’s trickling from the holes. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I want to scream, “Stop!” but I can’t even breathe. I can’t do this, Dad! I’m not strong enough!

Then the drilling stops and all I can hear is Kanye, who’s rapping a different song now. I open my mouth and take a couple of painful breaths, but I keep my eyes closed. Behind Kanye’s voice I hear something click into place, then the sound of a pump and rushing fluid. The nanoprobes are flowing into my brain. Sweat streams down my face and neck.

Kanye moves on to a third song before someone removes the headphones, cutting off the rap in midsentence. I open my eyes and see Dad’s face through the steel bars of the stereotactic frame. “Okay, we finished injecting the nanoprobes,” he says. “You did great, Adam.”

I lick my lips. My mouth is so dry. “How long…till I’m ready…for the…” My voice trails off. I’m too frightened to say the words.

Dad nods. “It’ll take some time for the nanoprobes to spread through the tissue. About fifteen minutes. While you’re waiting, I thought you’d appreciate some company.”

He steps aside and Shannon Gibbs approaches the table. At first I’m ashamed—I don’t want her seeing me like this, so scared and helpless. But then she smiles her lopsided, nerve-damaged smile, and I’m glad she’s here.

“Hey, handsome,” she says. “You look good without the hair.”

I smile back at her, feeling ridiculous. I wish my head wasn’t in this freaking cage. “I got…the idea from you,” I say. “You don’t need hair…to look beautiful.”

She cocks her bald head, clearly pleased at the compliment. “Flatter me while you can, my friend. The next time we meet, we’ll both be hunks of metal. Ugly, hulking Pioneers.”

“But you’ll still be beautiful…on the inside.” I’m surprised I can rattle off these compliments so easily. Maybe it’s just a side effect of all the fear, but talking with Shannon seems effortless. “Remember that clay model…you made for your biology report? The model of the brain?”

“Sure, I still have it. It’s back home in my closet.”

“I’m picturing my brain like that…but with trillions of nanoprobes. Gold spheres sprinkled…on every inch. Sounds pretty, doesn’t it?”

She nods and leans over the table, bending closer to me. “And remember your report on the brain? About the limbic system, where all our emotions come from?” She points at my head. “Now the gold spheres are in there too, sticking to every cell.”

“That’s good. I want to keep…the emotions I’m feeling now.”

“And when it’s my turn, I want to keep those feelings too.” Her voice is just a whisper, but it’s full of promise. Shannon is implying that she has feelings for me. And maybe those feelings will survive the transfer and be reborn in the hunk of metal she’s going to become.

But then I think of what my mother said back in my bedroom in Yorktown Heights. Will it actually be Shannon inside the circuits of her Pioneer? And will it actually be me inside mine?

I want to ask her about this, but I don’t want Dad to hear. I can’t turn my head inside the frame, so I strain my eyes to the left and right. I don’t see him anywhere.

“Shannon,” I whisper. “Do you really think it’s possible?”

“What’s possible?”

“The thing inside the Pioneer. Will it be me or just a copy?”

She bends over a little more. She comes so close I can see my reflection in her eyes. The bars of the stereotactic frame glint in her brown irises. “I remember something else from biology class,” she says. “It was on the very first page of the textbook. The cells in our bodies are always changing. Old cells die and new ones are born every second, right?”

“Yeah, that’s true of blood cells and skin cells. But the cells in the brain are longer-lasting. They can live for—”

Shannon shakes her head, cutting me off. “But even those cells are constantly rebuilding themselves. They take in nutrients. They throw out waste. The body I’m in now has a completely different set of molecules than the body I had six months ago.”

“Okay, you’re right. All the molecules are new, but the body’s pattern stays the same.”

She clasps my right hand, which is strapped to the table. “Then it’s simple, isn’t it? We’re all copies.”

“I don’t—”

“My present self is a copy of my past self. My body copied its pattern onto a new set of molecules. And my future self will be a copy of my present. So why should it matter if the copy’s in a body or a machine?”

I think it over, analyzing Shannon’s argument. Maybe there’s a flaw in her reasoning, but right now I can’t see it. Of course, it’s just a theory, and as every scientist knows, you’d need to conduct an experiment to prove it right or wrong. But as far as theories go, it seems pretty darn solid.

In my heart, the balance tips from doubt to hope. Although I still don’t know if I’ll survive the procedure, at least I have something to fight for.

Shannon squeezes my hand. She doesn’t say anything else, and neither do I. We just stare at each other. I make a conscious effort to memorize her face, in all its beautiful imperfection. I picture my brain cells stretching their branches toward one another, forging new connections that will represent the image of Shannon’s smile, that lovely, lopsided curve. And I picture the swarm of nanoprobes attaching to the new links, coating them in golden armor to preserve the memory for eternity.

Finally, Dad steps forward. He rests one hand on Shannon’s shoulder and the other on mine. “It’s time to begin the scan. Are you ready, Adam?”

I don’t need to memorize Dad’s face—it’s already engraved in my memory—but I stare at it anyway. His eyes are glassy and his cheeks are wet. It’s another good thing to remember.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m ready.”

CHAPTER 10

The brain has no pain receptors, but that doesn’t mean it can’t feel pain.

First, there’s a flash of light. Like a camera flash inside my head, but a thousand times brighter. The whole world disappears, submerged in that horrible flood of white light. My last breath is caught in my throat.

It’s not like going to sleep. There’s nothing peaceful about it. The body doesn’t want to die. Billions of cells convulse as the waves of radiation crash down on them.

I’m suffocating. The light is all around me. I’m drowning in the middle of a vast, white ocean.

HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME!

Nothing. I’m alone. The pain is infinite.

Then something stirs within the sea of light. The waves form a shape in the whiteness. It’s a face, the face of an old man with a beard. It’s God, I think. No, on second thought, he looks more like Santa Claus. His beard is long and white, but as I stare at the thing, I see specks of color in it. Tiny gold spheres are sprinkled among the white bristles.

Who are you? Are you God?

The old man says nothing. He’s in a workshop of some kind, maybe Santa’s workshop, and he’s looking down at something on the bench in front of him. It’s a toy, a doll, a life-size mannequin. He opens a lid on the mannequin’s head and pours a handful of gold spheres inside. Then he moves down the bench and opens the head of the next mannequin. Except they’re not really mannequins. They’re corpses.

He’s copying their memories. So he can take their souls to heaven.

No, it’s not God. It’s a hallucination, my brain’s final thought. The old man and the corpses dissolve into the whiteness. Then the whiteness itself disappears. Then—

CHAPTER 11

Whoa. Where am I?

Okay, let me think. I’m using words. I’m putting them together in a logical order. I can use words to describe whatever I’m experiencing.

That’s good, real good. I’m making progress.

But what am I experiencing? And who am I?

Okay, I need more information. And look at this, there’s a ton of data in my memory. Hundreds of millions of gigabytes. All I need to do is retrieve the data.

Here goes.

I retrieve an image. It’s similar in shape to twelve thousand other images that are grouped in my memory under the category “Faces.” The name linked to this image is “Dad.”

It’s a picture of a person, a human being. The image is a recent addition to my memory. According to my internal clock, it was recorded less than an hour ago. A closer analysis indicates that the person in the picture is crying.

I scroll through all the images that carry the label “Dad.” There are 657. The oldest images are blurry, indistinct portraits of a younger-looking man, tall and well-built and smiling. His full name is Thomas Armstrong. The images are linked to memory files holding information on computer science and artificial intelligence.

They’re also linked to another name: Adam Armstrong. This name has more links than anything else in my memory. It’s connected to hundreds of thousands of files. But when I search for images of Adam, I notice something curious. In nearly every picture he’s surrounded by the frame of a mirror. In the older images he’s a pre-teenage boy, skinny and pale, but in the newer pictures he stares at his reflection while strapped into a motorized wheelchair. These later images are linked to information on Duchenne muscular dystrophy—symptoms, visits to the hospital, daily struggles with the illness. And as I scroll through these memories, I come across a link to a recent file labeled “Pioneer Project.”

I retrieve the file and read it. I complete this task in less than a thousandth of a second, and then a new thought races through my circuits, an astounding revelation: I’m Adam Armstrong! I’m still alive!

At the same moment, my system freezes. I can’t open any files, can’t access any data. The revelation of my identity has somehow triggered a new instruction, which is being sent to every one of my circuits: Breathe! But I can’t carry out this command. It’s not included in my list of normal functions. I can’t halt the instruction, and the commands are coming in faster than I can delete them: Breathe! Breathe! BREATHE!

In less than a second my system repeats the instruction fifty-five billion times and I receive fifty-five billion error messages. The flood of data rushes through me, overloading my circuits. It feels like I’m choking. I’m unbearably full, bursting with useless signals. To make room for the unending stream of commands and error messages, the system begins to erase my memory. A hundred files are deleted. Then a thousand. Then ten thousand.

Stop!

I’m Adam Armstrong!

I want to live!

Nothing’s working. It’s getting difficult to think. Amid the jumbled commands, my system can only generate an urgent noise of random data. I recognize this condition, this paralyzed state of mind, because I’ve experienced it before. When I was in a human body, I called it fear. I’m horribly, frantically, desperately afraid.

I have to fight it. I delete the random data and search for a solution. So many files, and I can’t open any of them! But I can sort them by date, and when I do this I notice that a new file has been added to my memory in the past fifteen seconds. It’s a text file, transmitted wirelessly to my circuits from another computer, and it has a special coding: Emergency Transmission. This coding gives the file priority over everything else in my memory.

I try to open the file. Nothing happens. The file doesn’t open, but I don’t get an error message either. My system is locked in a hugely complex calculation, with billions of circuits engaged in the task of determining whether to open the text file. The delay goes on for five seconds, ten seconds. In the meantime, the breathe command repeats another five hundred billion times, forcing my system to erase thousands of gigabytes from my memory. What’s left? Is anything left? Am I still Adam Armstrong? The urgent noise of fear surges through me again, paralyzing all thought. Help! Stop! No!

Then the file opens. It contains a brief message, only eleven words long: Adam, this is Dad. Turn on your sensors and speech synthesizer.

I go to my control options and turn on the visual and audio sensors. On the visual feed I see five people of various heights and ages, all dressed in U.S. Army uniforms. Four of them sit behind computer terminals about ten feet away, but the fifth is standing much closer. His face is less than two feet from the lens of my video camera, which is embedded in the turret of the Pioneer robot. I recognize him instantly—it’s Dad, Thomas Armstrong, my father.

The sight of him is literally electrifying. My circuits hum with renewed energy, drowning out the fear. His lips are moving, and after I take a moment to calibrate my audio feed, I can understand what he’s saying.

“Adam, can you hear me? If you can, say something.”

I turn on my speech synthesizer and scream, “I can’t breathe!”

Dad covers his ears. So do all the soldiers behind the computer terminals. “Too loud!” Dad yells, wincing. “Adjust the sound levels on your speakers!”

“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”

“It’s all right. Calm down. You don’t need to breathe, Adam. You don’t need oxygen anymore.”

“No! I have to breathe! The commands won’t stop!”

Dad stares at my camera lens for another two-and-a-half seconds. Then his mouth opens and his eyes widen. I have enough memory left to know what this means—it’s an expression of alarm. He rushes to the nearest computer terminal.

“My God! The scanner copied the brain-cell patterns that control breathing!” Leaning over the terminal, he types something on the keyboard. “I’m sending you another emergency transmission. It’ll delete the breathing instruction from your system.”

The wait for the transmission seems interminable, but as soon as it arrives, the breathe commands cease. Dizzy with relief, I start erasing the enormous backlog of error messages. When I’m finished, I scan my memory to see how much I’ve lost. Luckily, I’m able to retrieve more than half of the deleted information. But about five percent of my memory files are gone, irrecoverable. I’m still Adam Armstrong, but now something’s missing. What did I lose?

Dad steps away from the terminal and comes back to the Pioneer. “Did it work?” he asks, looking into my camera lens again. “Are you okay?”

I don’t know how to answer. I no longer feel the compulsion to breathe, but its absence is disorienting. As I observe my father through the visual sensors, I have the sensation of being underwater. I feel like I’m at the bottom of the ocean, viewing Dad through the porthole of my camera.

“You fixed the problem,” I report. “But I still don’t feel right.”

“I’m so sorry, Adam. I should’ve anticipated this.” Dad moves closer. The lens of my camera is several inches above his eyes, so he has to tilt his head back to look at it directly. “Can you tell me more specifically what you’re experiencing right now?”

I shake my head. Or rather, I turn my turret, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. I didn’t plan to do this. It just happens. My camera automatically pivots to keep Dad in view. “I can’t describe it. It’s sort of like being nauseous. But I don’t have a stomach anymore, so how could I be nauseous?”

Dad raises his hand to his chin and taps his index finger against his lips. In my memory I have seventeen images of him making this gesture. He does it whenever he’s deep in thought. “The sensations you’re feeling might be related to other brain functions that were copied by the scanner. You’re still going to feel hunger and thirst, even though you don’t need food or water. We may have to delete those instructions as well.” He steps away from me and returns to his computer terminal. “I need to analyze our options. Give me a minute.”

He leans over the keyboard and starts typing. I’m doubtful, though, that his efforts will make me feel any better. What I’m experiencing now is a terrible sense of unease, which is much more disturbing than ordinary hunger or thirst.

While waiting for Dad, I turn my turret again to survey the room. It’s a laboratory full of workbenches and steel cabinets. I’m able to rotate the turret all the way around—another disorienting feat, impossible for a human body to perform—and when I look at the other end of the room I see two more soldiers guarding the door. Each holds an assault rifle, and both men are eyeing my turret as it swivels atop my cylindrical torso.

I discover that I can switch my visual sensors to the infrared frequency range, enabling my camera to detect the temperature of the objects it’s observing. The sensors are so precise that I can measure the heart rates of the soldiers from the slight changes in their skin temperature. Both men are sweating, and their pulses are fast. Although their faces are expressionless, I can tell they’re afraid of me.

My sense of unease deepens. I feel a new compulsion, an overwhelming desire to see what the soldiers are seeing, to view the Pioneer robot. Unfortunately, the camera in my turret isn’t optimized for self-observation. Although I can point the lens downward at the floor and see the oval footpads at the ends of my steel legs, I can’t get a good view of my torso. It’s frustrating. I scan the whole room, hoping to find a mirror, but there’s nothing of the sort. Everything in the lab is cold and metallic and strictly functional. As my turret turns faster, the heart rates of the soldiers quicken and they grip their rifles a little more tightly.

Then I glimpse something to the left of the soldiers, a glint of reflected light on the door of a steel cabinet. I zoom in on it as much as my camera will allow. It’s my own reflection, an image created by the beams from the overhead spotlights bouncing off my robotic body. The patch of light on the cabinet is small and fuzzy, but my visual sensors are able to correct the distorted reflection and show me what I look like.

My torso is dull gray, a dirty industrial color, with no markings except a big white 1 stamped on the curved steel. My legs are sturdy pylons supporting my weight, and my arms are retractable, multi-jointed shafts with intricate, handlike grippers at their ends. I have no head, just the revolving turret, which is studded with antennas and sensor arrays. All in all, I look like an oversized artillery shell, something meant to be shot out of a giant cannon.

Look at me. I can’t be Adam Armstrong.

Now I know why the soldiers are afraid. I’m not a person anymore. They’ve turned me into a weapon.

I have to get out of here! I have to go right now!

In less than a millisecond I find my motor circuits, the ones that control locomotion. I send the appropriate instructions to the motors in my legs, which shift my weight to the right. Then I lift my left footpad and take my first step. The steel makes a satisfying clang as it comes down on the linoleum.

Dad’s head pops up from his keyboard. “Adam! What are you doing?”

I shift my weight to the left and take my second step. This is easy.

“Adam, stop!” Dad leaves the computer terminal behind and rushes toward me. “You’re not ready to walk yet. We have to run some tests first!”

I turn my turret away from him. I know I shouldn’t blame him. He did everything he could to prepare me. But I’m still angry. I want to punch something.

After three more steps I’m in front of the door. The soldiers raise their assault rifles and slowly back off, one to my left and the other to my right. They’re pointing their guns at my torso, which is a mistake. I have two-inch-thick armor plating around my midsection to protect my batteries and neuromorphic circuits. The soldiers would be better off aiming at the sensors in my turret. I’m surprised no one told them this.

“No!” Dad yells at the soldiers. “Don’t shoot! You’re not authorized to shoot!”

The greatest danger, I realize, is a ricochet. If these idiots fire at me, the bullets will bounce off my armor, and the ricocheting slugs might hit one of the soldiers, or maybe Dad. I have to do something quick. I send simultaneous commands to both my arms, which telescope to their full length of six feet in a hundredth of a second. Before the soldiers can react, I grasp the barrels of their rifles in my mechanical hands and pull the guns away from them. Then I squeeze my steel fingers together and crush the gun barrels. They crumple like cardboard in my hands.

Whoa. That’s pretty cool.

The soldiers retreat to the other side of the lab, their hearts pounding. At the same time, I drop the rifles and hold my arms straight in front of me, as if measuring the distance to the door. I clench my mechanical hands into fists, then thrust them forward like battering rams. The door buckles on impact and falls off its broken hinges.

Yes! This feels good!

I step into an anteroom crowded with higher-ranking soldiers. They’re facing a large video screen that shows the lab I just left. Until a moment ago, evidently, they were observing the progress of Dad’s experiment, but now all the captains and majors and colonels are stumbling over each other as they back away from me. Their faces glow brightly, hot with fear.

Looking past them, I see a second door standing open, revealing the corridor beyond. I turn toward it, but before I can take another clanging step, one of the soldiers strides forward and positions himself between me and the exit. It’s General Hawke. His face is stern and his heartbeat is steady.

“Armstrong!” he shouts, pointing at the broken door behind me. “Get back in the lab!”

I feel an urge to laugh, but my speech synthesizer doesn’t recognize this command, so no sound comes out of my speakers. Hawke is unarmed, and I outweigh him by about five hundred pounds. Still, he takes a step toward me, coming within three feet of my torso.

“Now, Armstrong!” He points at the camera on my turret. “You signed an agreement, remember? You’re a soldier now, like everyone else here. And that means you have to follow my orders.”

Again, I want to laugh. What’s Hawke going to do, court-martial me? Slap a pair of handcuffs on my steel wrists and put me on trial? I’d love to see him argue his case in front of a judge. Yes, your Honor, we killed the defendant, and now his mind belongs to the Army.

I’m just about to extend my arms and shove Hawke out of the way when my father comes to the general’s side. Dad’s pulse is racing. “Listen to the general, Adam! Your systems still need calibration. You’ll damage your circuitry if you run off like this!”

I focus on Dad’s anxious face, comparing it with the 657 images of him in my memory. I want to say I still love him, but how can I be sure? Maybe love is in one of the files I lost. Maybe I have nothing but anger now. I turn my turret away from him and point my camera at General Hawke. I adjust the sound level of my speakers, raising the volume high enough to make the walls rattle. “WHERE IS IT?”

Hawke doesn’t flinch. “Where’s what?”

“YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT! WHERE IS IT?”

He says nothing, but I detect a slight pause in his heartbeat, and at the same moment his eyes flick to the left. Now I know where to go. In one swift motion, I sidestep General Hawke and my father. Then I march through the doorway and go down the corridor, heading in the direction that Hawke indicated. Dad yells, “Adam!” but I ignore him.

After five seconds the video feed from my camera matches a set of images in my memory. I’m striding down the same corridor I saw forty-three minutes ago when the Army doctors pushed me on the gurney toward the operating room. I made no special effort at the time to memorize the layout of this level of Pioneer Base, but now I have total recall of everything I saw just before the procedure. I can view every twist and turn of the corridor in my memory, and I can use this mental map to guide me to my destination.

My acoustic sensors pick up the sound of distant footsteps—more soldiers are coming to intercept me—so I increase my velocity. The corridor echoes with the clang-clang-clang of my footpads.

After another ten seconds I reach the operating room. The door is locked shut, but I smash it open. I stop short when I see the scanner again—the image triggers a rush of fear in my circuits—but I force myself to approach the stretcherlike table that extends from the scanner’s wide, central hole. Then I point my camera downward and stare at the corpse of Adam Armstrong.

I try to keep my feelings at bay by concentrating on the physical details. The corpse’s head is still locked in the stereotactic frame, carefully positioned within the scanner’s hole. Although the face matches the images of Adam Armstrong in my memory, what I notice now are the differences. The skin is yellowish, the color of old newspaper. The mouth is open and the lips are dry and cracked. The eyes are open too, but the eyeballs are coated with a jellylike film.

Despite my best efforts, I get angry again. They were in such a rush to transfer my mind that they just left my body here! As if it was worthless! I suppose they would’ve eventually come back for the corpse and given it a proper burial, but the abandonment still seems wrong. This body isn’t worthless. Until an hour ago, it was me.

I stretch my arms toward the corpse, intending to pick it up. At the same time, I turn on the tactile sensors that are embedded in the tips of my steel fingers. These sensors measure temperature, pressure, and moisture to determine the best grip for holding an object. But instead of grasping the body, I extend my right hand and lightly touch its face. My fingertips brush its cheek, which is cold and dry. Then I shift the mechanical hand a few inches and sweep it over the eyelids, closing them. As I do this, the anger fades from my circuits. I feel only a sense of emptiness. I’ve lost the best part of me. I’ve lost it forever.

It seems like I stand there beside my corpse for ages, but in reality I’m alone in the room for only thirteen seconds. A dozen soldiers come running through the doorway and take positions around me. Some are armed with rifles, others with pistols. A moment later, my dad follows them into the room and heads straight for me, ignoring all the soldiers and their guns. He doesn’t order me to go back to the lab. He doesn’t say a word. He simply rests one hand on the body of his son and the other on my torso.

I pivot my camera toward him. He’s crying again. He wanted to save me, but now he’s not sure if he did the right thing. I’m not sure either. But I know one thing for certain: I still love my father. The emotion floods my circuits. I love him no matter what he’s done to me.

I point a steel finger at my corpse but keep my camera trained on Dad. “Can we save some of my DNA?” I ask. “Just in case…I mean…”

Dad nods. “Of course. Just in case.”

I’ve been a machine for less than fifteen minutes, but already I want to be human again.