Brother, Frank Read online

  A reaction is an interaction. That’s the first circle.

  The goal is to start chaining these interactions, creating more and more complex interactions. Adding circles. In this way, the child is being drawn out of the dark hole that autism has them trapped in. You create bigger and bigger circles until, hopefully, one day the child is able to exit from the darkness of self and emerge into the outside world. You hope that a somewhat normal life is possible.

  But there is nothing normal about Frank, and there never will be.

  What have I done?

  As a parent or worker who is performing this kind of laborious intervention, you deliberately start out in their world, and eventually introduce your own world—the outside world—to the child. All by interacting with them. But with Frank, I’ve programmed the implanted and integrated computer systems to interface with Frank’s brain and make these chained interventions happen faster. They can even do it while he’s asleep. Powered down.

  But now there’s another trick. A new concern. The world I introduce him to through CAINing... it’s not the real world either. It’s just another closed system, a mental construct, like the trap of autism itself. So the interactions CAIN creates for him have to be so real as to be indiscernible from the real world. If they’re not, I’ll have to create yet another system of chains to get him from this virtual reality over into the real world.

  I hope I’ve succeeded with all that, but I don’t know. None of this has been done before. We’re treading new ground.

  Still, CAIN is a huge leap forward, if it works. If I were just using normal Floortime exercises with Frank, it would take years of work, with twenty-five, sometimes even forty hours a week of training. And I don’t have years. I might have days. I could have weeks. We’re on the run, and probably for our lives. Definitely for Frank’s life.

  I would imagine that in all the world, there is no entity the U.S. government wants to destroy right now as much as it wants to destroy Frank. And that’s saying a lot. If the government finds him, he’ll be disposed of. Like an old fax machine or a laptop that no longer works and can’t be salvaged. Because to the government, Frank is a device. A tool. A piece of lab equipment they purchased with black funds and laundered tax dollars. He’s a rogue missile, or a missing nuke. A broken arrow. In their ecosystem, Frank isn’t a person. He isn’t an eleven-year-old Amish kid whose parents think he’s dead. He isn’t a part of a simple community that has existed for fifteen hundred years and outlasted every kingdom and empire that has risen and fallen in all of those centuries.

  To them, he’s a mistake. One that needs correcting.

  I already admitted that I didn’t really think this through when I made the selfish and emotional decision to save Frank’s life. Now I have to do what I can to save him. So I need to get him functioning in the real world, and I need to do it quickly. Technology will help, and that’s really the irony of ironies. Frank is a machine. An Amish machine, with a computer that aids and informs his brain. And he could kill everyone around him with little effort, if ever he had the mind to.

  I have my work cut out for me.

  * * *

  A highway patrol vehicle passes us. The trooper looks over at me but doesn’t slow down. I’m traveling alone, it seems, and I have a three-day growth of beard and an Indians ball cap pulled down low and the bill is curled like the kids wear them sometimes. The Excursion is new, but not too new, and the paperwork should be clean and unobjectionable if the cop calls my plates in. Carlos made sure of all that. There are cute little stick-man family stickers with soccer balls and a puppy on the back glass, so maybe that helps too. I have three more vehicles scattered around the state, each with full new identities for me and Frank, all placed in small warehouses on darkened back streets. Carlos is expensive but good.

  Warehouses work better than mini-storage units for subversive crap like this because the cops and feds have been on to the whole “store illegal stuff in the mini-storage” routine for a very long time. But anyone can lease warehouse space in the industrial part of any town, large or small, and no one asks any questions. Especially in this economy. It’s just the way it is. You just tell the owner or agent that you’re restoring a car, or stashing pallets of flooring tile for your work, or that you’re importing faux Persian rugs from Mexico. Frankly, they don’t care—they’re just glad to be getting some rent on their derelict building. So long as you don’t look like Al Pacino in Scarface, or pull up in a gray-market Maserati obviously bought with drug money, you’re golden.

  The cop takes the next exit, and as I pass, I glance over and see him drive up to a gas pump and pull out his cell phone. He’s not worried about me. I suppose if he was going to call me in as a suspect he would just use the radio. No, he’s probably just calling his wife to tell her he’s on the way home.

  But who knows?

  I doubt a single cop all alone would try to arrest me anyway. Not if the feds think I have a killer robot on hand. They might not even send the whole Ohio State Highway Patrol after me, for that matter. If Frank were armed and activated (and they have no way of knowing he isn’t), no amount of police power would be able to stop him. It’d be War of the Worlds shit.

  I suspect when they do come, it’ll be with Special Operations operators dropping silently from black helicopters. We’ll never see ’em coming. Maybe that’s for the best.

  I crush out the cigarette and adjust the mirror so I can see Frank. He looks like he’s sleeping, even though his brain is being trained. At least I hope it is. For a moment I don’t know whether to feel dirty or proud, so I feel neither. I just need a drink.

  The human mind is capable of rationalizing any behavior.

  * * *

  I see a diner and I know it’s time to stop for food.

  I pull into the parking lot and park far away from the entrance, with the vehicle pointed out, so I can’t easily be blocked in. I make sure I have a clear shot back up to the highway in case I need to run for it. Of course, like I said, most likely I’ll never see them coming.

  I reach back and activate Frank. There’s a button you can’t see if you don’t know it’s there. It’s a small piece of ligament, under the “skin” just behind the jaw on the right side of the face, near the neck.

  It’s a button that’s not always going to work. If he can be turned off by a friendly, then he can be turned off by an enemy. Remember that? So the power-down utility was designed to work for only sixty days. That was part of the program the government insisted on. They didn’t want a spy or a traitor teaching terrorists or enemy states how to shut down our weapons. Sixty days was the beta-testing window. We had to make a decision within two months whether to keep the HADroid activated or shut him down permanently—and at the end of those two months, if we didn’t shut him down for good, the robot would be officially activated.

  So, unhappily, I’m on the same schedule now. I have a stopwatch running. If Frank isn’t ready to live in this world of adults in sixty days, I’ll have to pull the plug myself. And if I don’t...

  Then the only person who’ll be able to power Frank down... is Frank.

  CHAPTER 5

  I get Frank seated in a booth and I push in beside him. There are eyes on us. Some filled with pity, some with curiosity. Check it out! Freak life in view. Like reality TV. Everybody stares because everyone else’s life is their business. Frank is different, and they know it. It’s the flock mentality, just like chickens. If they had beaks, they’d peck at Frank until he was dead.

  Maybe I’m just being sensitive. I really, really need a drink.

  “I need my Amish clothes,” Frank says, just a little too loud for my comfort.

  “I know, Frank. I’m going to get them for you after we eat, I promise.”

  The waitress comes and I order myself a Denver omelet and Frank some French toast.

  “No,” Frank says.

  “No?”

  “Two eggs. Gooey eyes and orange mouth. That’s what I eat for breakf
ast.”

  “I already ordered you some French toast, Frank.”

  The waitress hasn’t left, and she’s staring at Frank with what looks to me like curiosity. Or maybe it’s fear. Her name is Thelma, according to her nametag.

  Frank starts to stim, rocking silently against the back of the booth. He crosses his arms over his chest. His bolts are in his hands, but he seems to shrink before me as he rocks backward and forward.

  “I don’t know what gooey eyes or orange mouth means, Frank.”

  “Two eggs. Gooey eyes,” Frank mutters. “Breakfast.” His head drops again. “Orange mouth.”

  I turn to the waitress, awash with frustration and panic. I don’t know what to do. My eyes scream “help me,” though I don’t expect that she can.

  Thelma smiles. “I got this. I think I can help. Tell him his gooey eyes and orange mouth will be coming right up.”

  * * *

  I’m explaining to Frank that his breakfast is coming soon when I see three cops—a constable and two deputies—walk into the diner. And why wouldn’t they? Murphy’s Law, right? I can feel myself sweating, and my heart begins to pound in my chest. Nothing outside of the lab ever goes smoothly for me. Just ask my ex-wife.

  I hope this is where they usually like to eat a late breakfast—that they aren’t here on business. But they aren’t sitting down at the counter. They’re talking to the manager and looking around. Both deputies have their thumbs hooked into their utility belts, and each has a hand resting on his weapon.

  The conversation goes on, and then the constable looks over at me. He’s wearing a dark blue raid jacket with the word “Constable” written in white down the arms, and printed again where the front pocket would go. He’s not taking part in the conversation at the register, so he breaks off and walks over to our booth.

  “Hey, pal,” he says to me.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Yeah, I need to ask you a question,” he says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Not exactly like he’s nervous, but like he’s uncomfortable at his job. Like maybe he’s not used to doing real law enforcement work. Like he’s used to serving papers to people whose houses are being foreclosed on by the banks. A lot of that goes on these days. But he’s here for another reason. He’s not serving papers on this diner, I can tell. Not with two deputies in tow.

  I look over to Frank to see if he notices what’s going on. He’s stimming a little, rocking back and forth with his arms crossed and his head down. His bolts are clutched tightly in his hands.

  “He all right?” the constable asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “He’s autistic. My brother.” I sit back and turn my shoulders a few degrees, trying to make full eye contact with the man. But I’m ashamed and embarrassed, and that makes me feel worse. Sometimes I hate me.

  “All right,” the constable says. “Do you know who owns the red Buick out there?”

  “Red Buick?”

  “Yeah.”

  I look over my shoulder into the parking lot, as if somehow that will help jog my memory, when I know it won’t.

  Just then Thelma walks up with our food. She steps around the constable as if he’s not even there, almost hitting him in the face with the tray.

  “Food here,” she says by way of an apology. “All right, so I have a Denver omelet for you, sir. And... two eggs sunny side up and an orange slice for your buddy.”

  Frank sits forward and uncrosses his arms. He looks at the food and then slams his back against the booth’s backrest.

  “It’s not right,” he says. “It’s broken. It’s yelling.”

  “Isn’t this what you wanted, Frank?” I say. I look up at the constable, but he’s taken a few steps backward, not sure what to think.

  “It’s yelling,” Frank says. “It’s not right.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say to Frank. “Tell me how to fix it.”

  “It’s yelling,” Frank repeats. Just then, I see a flap of skin fold back on the side of his neck.

  Please, God, please make us invisible to our enemies. Please make it so that no one saw that. Please don’t let him go off right here.

  Now I’m praying. That tells you how scared I am. I haven’t been to church in ten years. Not since I met my wife. My ex-wife. I look up again and the constable is glancing over his shoulder, back at the sheriff’s deputies, who are still at the register. They’re talking to another customer now.

  I look down at my orange juice. If only it were mixed with three shots of vodka.

  “I can fix it,” the waitress says. She takes a knife from the table and cuts the orange slice in half, then arranges the half slice on Frank’s plate so that the two eggs and the orange slice make a smiling face.

  “There,” she says to Frank. “Gooey eyes and orange mouth.”

  Frank drops the bolts on the table and picks up the fork. He bows his head and mutters a prayer, but it’s in Pennsylvania Deutsch, the dialect of the Amish, and I can’t understand it. When he’s done praying he starts eating without saying a word. There is no “thank you.”

  The constable points over his shoulder like he needs to leave. “The Buick, sir?”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t know anyone in a red Buick.”

  He mutters an awkward “thanks” and then walks away. He probably wanted to say more. Like, “Keep an eye on it and if you see anyone approach it, let me know.” He probably wanted to enlist me or ask me more questions. But he saw me with an autistic man and couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Like I said, maybe I’m sensitive. I look up at the waitress with a look that says, You saved me.

  Thelma smiles. “I have an autistic nephew,” she says in a whisper.

  “Thank you,” I mouth silently. Her beautiful grin broadens and then she walks away. When she does, I miss her already.

  * * *

  Frank cleans his plate and I offer him the rest of my omelet. Now he’s not bothered. He eats the rest of the omelet peacefully and then picks up his bolts and looks around. For the first time, he looks at me. I’m surprised when he speaks.

  “I need my Amish clothes,” he says again.

  “I know, I know.” I smile at him. “I’m going to get you some Amish clothes as soon as I can.”

  “Because I need my Amish clothes.”

  “We’ll get ’em soon, Frank.”

  “Okay.”

  “What kind of Amish clothes do you want, Frank?”

  Frank looks at me again. “Amish clothes.”

  “Okay,” I say. “What else do you need, Frank?” I ask. I’d like to get him talking if he’s coming out of his shell. The only way I can judge how well the CAINing process is working is by interaction.

  He looks down and doesn’t reply for a moment. It’s like he’s thinking about my question.

  “Not the car,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Not in the Excursion.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Frank,” I say.

  “It’s not safe in the car.”

  “Okay.” I don’t want to get in an argument—which would consist of him repeating the problem over and over again while I tried to figure out what he meant—and I hope he forgets whatever he’s thinking before we actually do have to get back in the vehicle.

  We sit for a while, and I’m hoping Frank’s CAINing is really starting to work. I’m also hoping it hasn’t messed with his sleep cycles. When CAIN is operating, during the time when Frank is powered down, he’s not really sleeping. He’s working. He’s not getting rest. That means he should still be tired when darkness falls. I really hope so. I’m counting on it. Like I said, I really need a drink.

  We tried to think of everything, but who can?

  Eventually I drain the rest of my coffee, pay the bill—and believe me, I leave Thelma a well-earned tip—and tell Frank we have to go. He slides out of the booth and we walk to the door.

  * * *

  Outside, we stop for a moment and I take in a d
eep breath of fresh air. No cops are after us, it seems, and we’re still incognito. I unwrap a stick of gum and pop it into my mouth, then grab for my keys.

  “Let’s go, Frank,” I say. “We have to go get you some Amish clothes.”

  “No,” Frank says.

  “No? Don’t you want to get some new clothes?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “No.”

  “Frank,” I say, and then I realize my tone is sharp and harsh. I can’t let my frustration show, or I might make him shut down. I take in another deep breath and try to sound calm. “I thought you wanted to go get Amish clothes?”

  “Not after breakfast. To the barn and back. Four hundred and twenty-two steps.”

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “After breakfast. Four hundred and twenty-two steps. To the barn and back.”

  “The morning is over, Frank,” I say. “The milking was done hours ago.”

  Frank ignores my protest. “I usually go with Father. He has to milk the cow. There are no cows here. But to the barn and back after breakfast is four hundred and twenty-two steps.” He grips his bolts tightly and looks up at me. “Four hundred and twenty-two steps after breakfast.”

  Frank starts walking away along the sidewalk, counting his steps as he goes. He turns left at the edge of the building, past the bushes, and keeps counting. He’s walking away from the Excursion, but I follow along, not wanting to set him off.

  Through the rear parking lot and onto the grass behind the restaurant, I follow close behind. Frank is counting the whole way. At the base of a big hill that rises away from the highway through low pines and maple trees, Frank stops at precisely two hundred and eleven steps.

  We’re standing at the foot of the big hill when my cell phone rings. Frank steps off back toward the restaurant and says, “Two-hundred and twelve,” so I turn and follow, answering my phone as I do. It’s a burner phone, and I’m carrying a backup in case I need to ditch this one. Carlos set me up with a pretty in-depth system of communications, but if I have to burn both of these phones, I won’t get another unless we go to one of the warehouses where I’ve stored stuff.