CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Reflections
YEAR: 2006
Six years before the science experiment that brought about The Mapiya Event, Motega was at his computer in his dorm room, working away furiously, when Dravin entered. He sensed more than heard him, intent on his work as he was. Dravin went to the fridge and pulled out two beers, continuously talking. Something about a girl in one of his classes, a wild girl. There was an altercation after class. Motega didn’t pay much attention.
“So it ended in a dare,” Dravin said. “Let’s just say I lost and now I have to pay for a round of drinks at the bar tonight.” Dravin placed one of the beer bottles next to Motega, but he didn’t even look at it. “Whaddya say? You coming?”
Dravin dropped back on his bed. “I’m not going out tonight,” Motega said firmly. He rubbed his chin as he examined the results on his screen and his right cheek twitched nervously.
“Come on, Motega. You spend day and night on that thesis. You need a break,” Dravin pleaded. He took a quick swig of his beer. “You need a night off.”
“This is my life’s work,” Motega said, finally looking over at Dravin. Will be my life’s work. “I just found out that someone has been siphoning off data from my research.”
Dravin grew quiet, sipping his beer. “You’re too paranoid,” he said, getting up and plopping his empty bottle next to Motega’s unopened one. “Let’s go. You really need to relax, unwind.” He tugged at Motega’s shoulder, but Motega jerked back.
“This is serious,” Motega said sharply. “At best it’s a prank, but this could be as bad as plagiarism.”
“How do you even know?” Dravin said, opening Motega’s beer bottle and taking a drink. “You’re just imagining it.”
“I began to suspect last week when I noticed some numbers had been changed in the database. So I installed tracing software on my computer to trace back who’s been hacking in. Somehow they made it past my firewall.”
Dravin laughed and shrugged it off again. “You’re just being paranoid,” he said again. “It’s not healthy, Motega. You have to get out of this room once and a while. Experience life.”
“It’s almost finished,” Motega said, so they waited. Dravin sipped on his beer, watching the screen over Motega’s shoulder. Motega’s jaw hung open when the results came up on the screen. “I don’t understand this,” he said. “It says it’s coming from this room.”
“It’s tracking your own computer,” Dravin said with a grin. “See, I told you. Paranoid.”
“Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me,” Motega said, a line he had used a dozen times before. “Let me just check.” He made a couple selections with his mouse and waited for the screen to load. “It’s not my computer.” He spun around on his chair to face Dravin. “It’s coming from yours.”
“What?” Dravin exclaimed, nearly pushing Motega back to examine his computer. “That’s impossible.” Motega tried to judge his reaction. He almost appeared sincere enough, but this tracing software was very accurate.
“Get off of there,” Motega said, pushing him back. With a couple clicks of the mouse, Motega started downloading the data. He waited a few seconds, then pulled the flash drive from the computer. “This goes to the dean,” he said, holding the drive before Dravin for a second.
“Come on, just think about it for a second, please,” Dravin begged, confirming Motega’s suspicions.
“You’re a cheat. You stole my research and was going to pass it off as your own, and all for a stupid thesis.” Motega closed the lid of his laptop and strode out of the room, Dravin following behind.
“It was my idea in the first place, Motega,” Dravin said, trying a different tactic. “If anything, you stole it from me.”
Motega shook his head and continued walking. “You said I could. You said you weren’t even interested in it. This,” he said, holding up the drive again for a moment, “is blatant theft and plagiarism.”
“How about I make it up to you?” Dravin suggested. “How about that? I’ll find something else for my thesis; it’s all yours. And you, my friend, will have the finest steak and lobster dinner you can imagine.”
Motega curled his lip in disgust. “You can’t bribe me.”
“Then what is it?” Dravin said, stepping in front of Motega to stop his progress. “Is this because of me and Cindy? Is that it? Old fashion revenge?”
Motega gritted his teeth and swung in with his fist, catching Dravin in the gut. Dravin doubled over, clutching his stomach and moaning in pain. “No, Dravin. That was for Cindy. This — this is ethical.”
YEAR: 2094
Eric, now twelve years old, pounded the last nail into the last step on their tree fort. In Eric’s backyard, Chevelle and Eric together had made the entire fort themselves, or at least that’s what he would tell his friends. He found the ladder part was hard to use, though, so his dad bought larger boards for them, and longer nails, so he could redo it. “Perfect,” he said, hands on his hips he looked up at it.
“Come on, let’s try it out,” Chevelle said, racing up the tree. Eric followed behind her.
Eric checked out the window, leaning out and looking down. The ground seemed so far away. He looked up along one of the thick branches supporting the fort. “Hey, check it out,” he called to Chevelle.
“What? What is it?” she said, pulling him out of the window and sticking her head out.
“A bird’s nest up that branch,” he said. “Do you see it?”
“Yeah. No birds, though.”
Chevelle pulled her head back in and, as she walked around the small space, Eric took a spot in the middle of the floor and sat cross-legged. “First, we’re going to need some decoration,” she said, waving her hands around as she described it. “A rug there on the floor, drapes over the window here, and some pictures.”
“Lame,” Eric said. “We need man stuff.” That was a term he had been using more and more recently. Everything was “manly,” or “man’s work,” or it needed to be “strong enough for a man.”
“I helped build this fort, too. I get to make some of the decisions,” Chevelle said, standing before him and planting her hands firmly on her hips.
He looked up and cocked his head sideways, looking at her chest. “Hey, do you have...?”
Chevelle puffed her chest out proudly. “What do you think?”
“They’re too big,” he complained. They were just twelve. His dad said he would start thinking about girls soon, but he had never thought of Chevelle in that way before.
Chevelle smiled and sat across from him, folding her legs out to the side. He never did understand how she was able to sit like that. He tried it once and nearly broke his legs. “They just started coming in,” she explained, reaching into her shirt. “Mom took me bra shopping, but look.” She pulled out a wad of tissues and handed them to Eric. “They’re mostly tissue right now.”
It was so weird that this was happening to her now. His mustache hadn’t even started coming in yet. “What do you think we’ll be like in the future?” he asked. “You think we’ll still have this fort?”
She looked up at the plywood and two by fours around them. “I hope so. This took a lot of work.”
“We could make it again,” Eric said, though reflecting on what they put into it he certainly didn’t want to have to.
“Do you think we’ll both still be in Mapiya?” Chevelle wondered.
“Why wouldn’t we be?” They had both been neighbors for as long as they could remember it would be strange to think of living somewhere else. “Let’s make a pact,” he suggested.
“A pact?”
“Yeah, where we promise that we will always be friends and we’ll always stick together no matter what.”
Chevelle wrinkled her nose, thinking about it. “What do we have to do then?”
“Do?”
She nodded. “Yeah, they always do something, like in the movie or books. Spit and shake hands or something.”
Eric thought about that for a moment and put a finger on his chin. He didn’t know it would be more involved than just saying it. What was the easiest way they could do this? “Can we just pinkie swear?”
Chevelle smiled and held out her fist, pinkie pointed out. “Okay, pinkie swear. Friends forever.”
“Friends forever,” he repeated, wrapping his pinkie around hers. “Hey, you know what we should do?” he said, letting go. “I just had a great idea.”
“What?”
“We should break in to South Mapiya,” he said with a big smile on his face.
“No way,” she said, almost horrified. “We’d get in so much trouble.”
“Meh,” he muttered, shrugging off any danger. “It’d be a manly adventure.”
“Not on your life.” He let it go and they were silent for a moment. Chevelle looked down at her chest again, arching her back to try to make the small bumps more prominent. “Did you ever think, well— Did you ever think we’d get married some day?”
Eric shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Such an odd question. Why would she be asking about that? He supposed it made sense, but he hadn’t thought of it before. He was a boy and she was a girl. Wasn’t that what happened? Now that the idea was there, he looked over at Chevelle. She was leaning towards him and kind of puckering her lips. What had gotten into her? He opened his mouth, about to ask her, when she leaned in close and placed her lips on his.
He pushed her back. “Ew! Gross!” He spat to the side and wiped the kiss of his lips. “You gave me girl cooties.” Chevelle started crying. He sat there, watching her scramble to the entrance and down to the ground, going so quickly she missed the last step and fell on her face. He didn’t get up for a few minutes, not knowing what to do and now worrying that he had hurt his friend somehow, until he finally decided that girls were weird.
YEAR: 2012
It was the day before the scheduled first test of their big experiment and Cecilia had stayed late at the lab. Motega and Alina had gone back to the hotel for the night, all of them working late on a Sunday, but Cecilia stayed behind to finish up some paperwork and use Alina’s computer. She was just about to shut down and get to bed herself when a knock came at the door.
Cecilia wrinkled her brow and looked up. Normally she didn’t mind working at the lab; it was dark, windowless, and strange building noises seemed to appear at the oddest times, but she usually felt safe enough to ignore it, even when alone. As the disconcerting knock came again a dread filled her, reminding her of the time she got lost after hitting some clubs in Minneapolis at night.
After a third knock, Cecilia grabbed a pen, the first item nearby she could think of to use as a weapon, and made her way to the door. She opened it slowly, expecting the worst, when a nice man in a three piece suit greeted her with a smile.
“Can I help you?” Cecilia said, still wary.
“Dravin Davidson, FBI,” the man said, flashing a badge. “You must be Cecilia, just the person I was looking for. May I come in?”
Cecilia stepped back, opening the door for him. “How did you get in here? I thought the office was supposed to be locked up for the night?”
“It was,” Dravin said, stepping past her. He walked over to the desk and turned back to face her. “May I speak frankly, Cecilia?” She nodded, not bothering to ask how this FBI agent knew her name. “This experiment you and your friends are working on is very dangerous and can’t be allowed to proceed.”
Cecilia narrowed her eyes, making it obvious she didn’t trust him. “What have I to do with you, Agent Davidson?”
“I need to ask you to sabotage the device, just a little, so that tomorrow when they turn it on, nothing happens.”
She shook her head. “There’s no way I’m betraying my friends.” Dravin reached into his coat and pulled a stack of hundred dollar bills from his pocket. He placed the stack carefully on the desk; the wrapper read $1000. Cecilia shook her head, though slower this time. “Who are you, really?”
“I’ve been assigned by the FBI to oversee this project,” he explained. “It is being funded by a government grant, so the government owns it. And now we need it not to work.” To punctuate his claim, he took out another stack of a thousand dollars from his jacket pocket and placed it on top of the other.
“And you, what? Examined my file and determined I would be the easiest to bribe?” she said. She shook her head a third time. “No, I’m not doing it.”
“I haven’t approached until now,” Dravin continued to explain, “preferring to watch from afar. I’ve had someone watch you, too. I know about the recent trouble your parents have had with the mortgage. It’s a shame that your father had to lose his job after 15 years with the company, and unemployed for a year now? About... five thousand should cover the missed payments, you think?”
He took out and placed three more bundles on top of the others. Cecilia walked over to the desk and picked one up, thumbing through the bills. “How could this be official business?” she said, feeling her resolve slipping away.
“The project is owned by the government,” Dravin assured her. “We’re pulling the plug. It’ll just be,” he shrugged, “easier on Motega this way.”
“And easier on you?”
Dravin nodded slowly. “Easier on everyone.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal.”