The Flinkwater Factor (18 page)

47

Jailed

The DHS holding facility was a prefab ­plasticized-concrete block house—a single open space with three small cells along one wall. They put me in the middle cell with Billy. My parents were in the cell to our left, and Gilly was on the other side of us.

Mom was in a really bad mood.

“They left our front door wide open.” She kept repeating that over and over. “We could be robbed.”

“Mom, nobody steals anything in Flinkwater.”

That earned me a glare. “Just last week, Mavis Dunhill's wheelbarrow was stolen.”

“J.G. took it,” Billy said. He was untying his shoelace.

“I thought J.G. was reformed,” I said.

“He's gone into the food business,” Billy said.
“He buys pizzas and burritos and delivers them to the DHS guys. That's what the wheelbarrow was for. Those DHS guys love him.”

“They don't know him,” I said.

Billy pulled the shoelace from his sneaker and looked at Gilly, who was gnawing on his thumbnail.

“Yale-Kalichnikov Model Five Thousand,” Billy said. “You ready?”

Gilly said, “Go!”

Agent Ffelps was no mental giant, and he clearly had no understanding of the Flinkwater Factor.

What is the Flinkwater Factor, you ask?

The Flinkwater Factor was one of Gilbert Bates's most brilliant ideas. When you put a large number of Very Smart, Very Geeky persons in a confined space where there is nothing to do but compete with one another, remarkable things are bound to happen. That was the main reason he'd put ACPOD in the tiny town of Flinkwater, Iowa.

Something similar happened in Silicon Valley back in the 1900s. In fact, many of the ACPOD engineers had been born out there. But it was in Flinkwater that the geeky-techie concentration reached critical mass. Gilbert Bates had dubbed it the Flinkwater Factor and claimed it was the reason for ACPOD's remarkable success.

Putting the two geekiest, smartest hackers on
the planet in adjacent cells was like a miniature version of the Flinkwater Factor.

Billy, using the hard plastic tip of his shoelace, opened our cell door in three minutes flat. Gilly used a paring from his thumbnail to pop his open a few seconds later.

They gave each other a high five, then quickly dashed back to their cells when we heard the sound of the outer door opening. A moment later Agent Ffelps entered the holding area, followed by the handsomest man in the world.

You know, of course, who I'm talking about.

48

The Uncanny Josh Stevens

People can disagree about who is or isn't handsome. But most people would put Josh Stevens at the top of their list.

According to his official bio, Josh Stevens was one quarter Korean, one quarter Irish, one eighth Ethiopian, one eighth Native American, one eighth Norwegian, and one eighth Basque. If all that were true, he had inherited all the best-looking features from each of his ancestors.

Allow me to describe him. Classic, chiseled features with a slightly arced nose, glittering hazel eyes with a hint of epicanthic fold from his half-Korean grandmother, flawless skin of burnished bronze, thick black hair with a few nicely placed auburn strands, and a smile showing the optimum number of toothpaste-ad-perfect teeth. He was impeccably dressed, as always, in a perfectly
fitted suit, his jacket casually unbuttoned to show off his trademark black silk collarless shirt.

A few years ago a rumor that Josh Stevens was actually a computer simulation went viral. I have to admit, I almost believed it. He was just so perfect-looking, it was hard to believe he was real. I figured that the photos and broadcasts had to be tweaked, the same way Professor Little and Hillary had made themselves look mole free when they chatted online.

Which was why I was amazed to discover that in person he looked
exactly
like his virtual image. Unbelievably handsome.

But at the same time he was even more repulsive than Professor Little, pre-mole-removal. He looked like a refugee from the Uncanny Valley.

The only thing creepier than a robot that looks almost exactly like a human is a human that looks like an uncannily handsome and human-looking robot. Nobody likes people who have no flaws, and except for being flawless, Josh Stevens was as flaw free as it is possible for a person to be. In other words, he was really creepy—and never more creepy than when he bestowed his five-hundred-watt smile upon us all. His glittering hazel eyes flickered across me and Billy, instantly dismissing us. The eyes paused a fraction of a second on my
dad, and a bit longer on my mother, then moved to Gilly. Target acquired. The five-hundred-watt smile jumped to one thousand watts.

“Gilbert!” he exclaimed.

Gilly, his long fingers wrapped around the bars of his cell, glared at Stevens.

“Josh. I am surprised.”

“Surprised?” said Stevens.
“Pourquoi?”
That means “why” in French.

“
Parce que
I detect a hair out of place,” said Gilly, countering Stevens's pretentious French with sarcastic French.

Stevens's right hand jerked toward his perfectly tousled hair. He caught himself, threw his head back, and laughed. A little too loudly, I thought.

“Same old Gil,” he said. He looked around the facility as if seeing it for the first time. “How are they treating you here?”

“As well as can be expected. We will not be staying long.”

“Really! That's not what I heard. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security recently informed me that you have been involved in terrorist activities. I was quite surprised, of course. Ffelps here seems to think they will need to hold you indefinitely.”

Ffelps nodded grimly.

“In the meantime, the DHS has asked me to
take over the reins at ACPOD.”

Gilly's eyes bulged slightly and his knuckles whitened. I half expected him to throw open the cell door and strangle Stevens, but he kept his cool.

“George George might have something to say about that,” Gilly said.

“George is fine with it,” Stevens said. “He and I have become quite close over the past several months.”

“Why would George G. George want anything to do with
you
?” I blurted.

Josh Stevens looked at me as if I were a piece of furniture that had suddenly spoken.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Your worst nightmare.” I'd been waiting my whole life to say that.

“Well, your
hair
certainly fits that description.” He turned back to Gilly. “George realized that he needed some help, especially after the SCIC event. Clearly, ACPOD is not capable of handling its own security. I proposed a friendly takeover, and of course the DHS was delighted that D-Monix could be of assistance. Isn't that right, Agent Ffelps?”

Ffelps nodded. Meanwhile, I was about to explode. I think it was his remark about my hair. I could see that my dad was reaching critical pressure as well, since he was supposed to be in charge
of ACPOD security.

Gilly said, “This is highly illegal. I will not let you get away with it.”

“Illegal?” Stevens chuckled. “Flinkwater is under martial law, which means that the government can do whatever it pleases. I am simply performing my role as a patriot. You, on the other hand, are a terrorist and a Sasquatch, and have no legal rights whatsoever.”

“I am not a terrorist.”

“Ah, but you are! For one thing, you have been lurking about in the woods for months and making visits to the ACPOD laboratories for unknown purposes. We have video.” He looked at my father. “I'm really surprised at you, Royce. We know you had access to that surveillance footage. You should have reported a Sasquatch breaking through ACPOD security.”

“You're saying I should have reported that the majority shareholder and chairman of ACPOD entered his own facilities?” my dad said.

“I was just keeping an eye on things,” Gilly muttered.

“The DHS disagrees,” Stevens said. “And you are a known associate of a known terrorist who stole a working prototype of a Projac and engineered the SCIC outbreak.” He smirked at Billy, who was staring at him openmouthed. “Furthermore, another of
your associates was heard to threaten DHS officers with bodily harm.” He looked at my mother. “You're fired, by the way.”

My mother attempted to kill him with her eyes. Alas, she failed.

“As for curly top here,” he said, showing me his perfect teeth, “she is suspected of abducting a valuable experimental animal.”

“Mr. Stevens,” my father said, his voice carefully controlled, “all of your allegations are unproven and, in fact, dead wrong—”

Not
entirely
wrong, I thought.

“—and you have no right to keep us here. I demand to speak with George G. George. This is all a simple misunderstanding. I'm sure we can quickly clear things up.”

Josh Stevens hit him with his megawatt smile. “You're fired too. In a few hours, you will all be transferred to a high-security federal facility in Des Moines. Until then, you folks will just have to make yourselves comfortable. And rest assured, ACPOD is in good hands.”

With his gloating session complete, the handsomest and most repulsive man in the world left the room, followed by the smarmily smiling Agent Ffelps.

49

Jailbreak

For several seconds after Stevens and Ffelps left, none of us spoke. I could hear the faint whistle of my mother breathing through her nose, like a bull preparing to charge.

Finally, Gilly said, “Well,
that
was unpleasant.”

“I will pull out his teeth one by one and make him swallow them,” my mother said—a rather shocking statement, even from my mom.

“If they put us in a federal prison we might be there a long time,” my father said.

Gilly and Billy pushed open their unlocked cell doors. While Billy opened my dad's cell, Gilly went to the outer door and looked through the tiny window.

“There are three guards,” he said.

As much as I liked being out of my cell, I didn't see what good it would do us. Even if we
somehow made it past the guards and escaped, we would be fugitives, Flinkwater would still be under martial law, and ACPOD would remain at the mercy of Josh Stevens. I pointed this out to Gilly.

“Freedom is the first step to enlightenment,” he said cryptically.

Billy examined the outer door. “This one won't be so easy,” he said. “It's not keyed from the inside, and I don't see how we can slip the bolt.”

“It hardly matters,” said my father. “Even if we could get it open, there are three men outside with guns.”

“Only two now,” said Gilly, who was peering out the window. “One of them just ran off. He seemed to be in a hurry.”

“Still, two is two too many.”

“They're arguing about something,” Gilly said. “Now another one has run off. He's sort of bent over, like he has a stomachache. And the other one looks rather ill. Oh—there he goes too! They're all gone.”

“Can you see where they went?”

Gilly stepped back from the door. “Judging from the way they were moving, I'd say they're headed for the latrine.”

The latch clicked. Billy jumped back. The door swung slowly open.

“Good job,” Gilly said.

“It wasn't me,” said Billy.

The door opened all the way and the last person on earth I expected to see stepped into the room.