Lost Helix

4: The New Rules-1

4: The New Rules

The alarm clock sounded different, but DJ didn’t have his brain together enough to figure out why. What he did have was a driving need to get to school so his dad wouldn’t get a failure-to-report holo message from the principal again. “Lights…soft.” Nothing happened. What now? He shot out of bed, but the low ceiling knocked him back. “Dammit!”

Paul laughed. “Sounds like someone forgot they had the top bunk.”

As DJ lay there holding his head, the last couple of days came crashing around him. It wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t his apartment. His dad was gone. He took a deep breath, but it didn’t reach his lungs. He inhaled harder but couldn't expand his lungs, as if a steel band wrapped around his chest. He didn’t belong here. he didn’t belong anywhere. He had to get out!

Paul popped up and slugged DJ in the arm. “Adjusting, are we?”

Gazing at Paul’s goofy grin, DJ rubbed his arm. “What was that for?”

“Just hitting your reset button before you were in full panic mode. I’ve seen it before.” Paul turned away to pull out his coveralls for the day. “You think you’re the first kid to do that on your first morning here? Being screwed up is our thing down here. Now, get dressed. You don’t want to miss breakfast. Well, you do…but get dressed anyway.”

***

DJ drifted into his homeroom. Gawking eyes took in his change of clothes and status, but he didn’t have the emotional energy to care. He dropped himself in his desk and placed his palm on the glass top to sign in. It buzzed and displayed: UNREGISTERED. DJ huffed and marched to the front of the class. His teacher checked the database. “You’re not in here. No, wait, there you are. Looks like you need to go down to the office.”

“What now?” He sighed.

Whatever the situation, he'd miss first period, Visual Culture 101, a pre-college class and the only class he liked. Today, he would’ve watched a holographic projection of the two-dimensional movie East of Eden starring James Dean. A small part of DJ felt sad that he would miss it. But it also felt unimportant. Just a few days ago he'd been excited to see it but that seemed like a different DJ from a different time.

With his guitar on his back, DJ trudged through the vacant halls. The grow-shoes squishing under his feet with each step reminded him of his father. DJ stopped outside the office door. He considered walking away from school forever. But to go where and do what? DJ hung his head and went in.

“I think there was a screw-up. I wasn’t on the roll for my homeroom.”

The man behind the desk scanned DJ’s retina and danced his fingers over the holographic keyboard. “You’re going to have to reregister.”

“What?”

“Derik Malcolm Fletcher, Sr., is no longer listed as ‘Black Mountain Employee,’ so you’ll have to register again as an ‘unclaimed youth.’”

From there, they cast DJ into another bureaucratic sinkhole. Instead of going to his classes, he spent the day registering for the classes that he had already enrolled for months ago. By the end of it all, DJ wished he had walked away.

***

At dinner, DJ stared at a plate of something that was said to be meatloaf, but no matter how much Paul nudged him, he couldn’t will himself to lift the fork. Despite encouraging words from random members of his new Unclaimed family, DJ took his guitar and left. He intended to head for the solitude of his room, but he got off on the wrong floor. Realizing it used to be the right floor, he walked down the hall and stood outside his old apartment door. Beyond it, stood a hollowed-out chamber, computers and fixtures stripped by the company. Everything that used to be his life was gone, including his dad.

He started to leave, but Mrs. Schumer came out and said, “I am so sorry about your daddy, DJ.”

He kept his back to her and mumbled, “Thanks.”

“If that place is too horrible, you come stay with me, you hear? I don’t care what those company men say. I took care of you for twelve years. You’re my baby boy, too.”

DJ caught himself smiling. “Thank you, Mrs. Schumer. I appreciate that.” He wiped the tears from his eyes. “I’m okay. I’m rooming with Paul. It’s not as bad down there as people think.”

“Okay, if you say so, but you can come here any time, day or night. You got that?”

“I got it. Thank you.” Then he said, “You’re good people, Mrs. Schumer.”

“So are you, DJ. Stay that way.”

He looked back. “I will. I promise.”

When he got back on the elevator, something lifted away, as if a stupefying drug had worn off. Moping time needed to end. He tapped the icon for the cafeteria level. Food held no interest, but he wanted to talk to Paul. He had a new idea, a better idea than the personnel records, and he felt pretty sure Paul would know how to get him where he needed to go.

The elevator doors opened on the cafeteria level. A fat fist reached in and yanked DJ out by his coveralls. “Oh my god!” Shoving his smelly grin in DJ’s face, Bill Krieger bellowed. “The donor baby is a sysie, too!”

Most people were still eating dinner, leaving a lull in the corridor, one that Bill intended to enjoy. As he drew back his fist, DJ couldn’t even lift his arms to shield his face. He froze again, like a crashed computer.

Bill’s knuckles slammed into his jaw. The world shuddered and blinked. “That’s for getting me beat by my mama!” Bill smashed DJ’s jaw again. “And that’s because it’s fun!”

As he hung from Bill’s grip, his vision fuzzy and faded, DJ thought he saw a kid in coveralls peeking around the corner. A system kid? Maybe. But he vanished as fast as he’d appeared, probably to escape Bill.

Bill hit him again and let go. DJ sank through a grey nowhere until the cold, steel deck gathered beneath him. As he lay stunned, Bill grabbed his guitar and yanked it over his head. DJ reached out to stop him, but it felt as though he was reaching into a mirage. By the time his hand got there, Bill had melted away.

Bill strolled around him, taking practice swings with the guitar. “I always wanted to smash one of these,” he said wistfully. “What do you think it’ll do? Shatter? Crack? Think I can break it on the first hit?”

He lifted the elegant instrument high, nearly brushing the ceiling with it. DJ watched, unable to save his guitar and his songs, some of which were the sole copies, including “Lost Helix.” He’d been so afraid of people judging the song he wrote about his anonymous mother that he had never backed it up. Now, it hung on the edge of destruction.

Bill swung. The blunt body cut the air with a deep whistle. Seconds before impact, Paul dashed by, snatching the guitar from Krieger’s grip. Bill took one step in pursuit before he stopped cold. The corridor before him was blocked by a wall of system kids. After casting a scowl over them, Bill turned to lurk away, but found another wall of kids waiting to greet him.

Barry stepped out of the crowd. His pale complexion burned red, and his dark gaze drilled into Bill. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Barry barked. “DJ doesn’t even know if his dad is dead or alive, and here you are. We’re all sick of you. Now, it’s our turn.”

All at once, the system kids descended upon their long-time tormentor. One kid broke away from the pile with Bill’s sneakers and fed the shoes to the garbage chute. Next came Bill’s socks, their aroma preceding them. Then his T-shirt and pants. The pile soon parted, and the half-naked Bill Krieger ran off, crying. He wore nothing but a pair of torn and worn boxers, which was more than he deserved, but no one had wanted to do the honors.

***

School would be half empty the next day because no one from the Unclaimed Youths Ward would get up on time. Tonight, they celebrated their revenge. The kids had all their doors open, and, while Barry’s band played at one end of the main corridor, they shut down the gravity at the other end for a game of half-court ZeroBall with goals painted on the walls with Postir-Pins. All the system kids were invited. They even brought in girls from the other Ward. The girls weren’t allowed, but the boys had overwhelmed the floor monitors.

DJ hadn’t had a chance to talk to Paul, so he stood around with his Rigozy on his back, watching Paul’s game. DJ kept telling himself that, even after they’d talked, they wouldn’t be able to do anything until much later, but that didn’t stop DJ from endlessly bouncing on his heels. He’d spent the last day lost in bureaucracy, and today he watched ZeroBall. None of this helped him find his dad.

Lost in thought, he didn’t see Barry’s minion, Henry, until he pulled on DJ’s elbow. Like DJ, he was a donor baby, as were a third of the kids in this Ward. But only DJ possessed the skills to search for his lost helix.

“Barry wants you to jam with us,” Henry insisted as DJ stood firm. “And he wants to hear one of your songs.”

DJ could feel it already—everyone’s eyes on him, his fingers frozen, sweat pouring from every inch of his body. “Uh…I’m not very good,” he mumbled and pulled away.

Henry threw a shrug down the hall to his boss, but Barry wasn’t having it. Flanked by his other two bandmates, he marched through the crowd. “Don’t be a jack-knob,” he barked. “Come show us what you can do.”

“You know,” Henry mused, “in regards to ‘jack-knob,’ the original term was ‘you are as useless as a door knob on a car jack.’ It first appeared in a movie at about the same time that people stopped manufacturing doorknobs and car j…”

Barry slapped his own forehead. “Shut up, Henry. Shut up.”

“What’s a doorknob?” his drummer said.

“What’s a car jack?” his bass player wondered.

Barry released a demanding roar. “Oh, just shut up already! And, DJ, get down that hallway and play something.”

Thankfully, the ZeroBall game ended, and Paul came to his rescue. “All right, all right, you all have the rest of the school year to see how much he sucks.” He pulled DJ toward their room. “I need to talk to the guy.”

“You suck, Paul!” Barry cried.

Paul replied with a smile and a jovial one-fingered salute.

Back in their room, with the door shut, Paul plopped himself at the study desk and threw his feet up against the bedpost. “So, let’s talk about that personnel file we need to review.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.” DJ sat on the bed. “I have a better idea.”

Paul’s eyes grew wide as he said, “You’re gonna get us in a ton of trouble, aren’t you?”

“If we get caught, yes.”

“Awesome!”

Outside, the music began again, vibrating their dorm room door in time with Barry’s band. “What do you know about the corporate center?” DJ said.

Paul laughed, “Everything!”

“Good.” DJ nodded. His eyes looked past Paul as he imagined what he might find on the computer he had in mind. “We need to get to the executive suites, to the office of the ISO.”

Paul dropped his feet to the floor. “The Information Security Officer? The guy whose job it is to catch people like you? His office? For the love of reason, why?”

“There’s a dead zone there, and I think it’s connected to this other dead zone in the server farm,” DJ explained.

“Dead zone?”

“It’s not connected to the rest of the station’s computers, but I know it’s there. The addresses are missing, a whole server tower of them. It’s like if a space station skipped a whole section of module numbers. Space Stations don’t do that and neither do corporate computer networks. There’s a big void in the server farm and a smaller void in the ISO’s office. They have to be connected.”

“So?” Paul pressed. “What do you think is in there?”

DJ clenched his fists and said, “Answers.”

***

By one in the morning, the party petered out, and everyone crawled off to bed. After DJ hid his Rigozy under the floor in their room, DJ and Paul used crawlspaces to sneak out of their Ward and across the station. After a long, slow trek through wires and dust, they emerged next to the elevators that ran down to the corporate center. Somewhere down there, DJ hoped to find a piece of information that would help him find his dad.

Paul tapped the elevator call button. “This is the risky part,” Paul explained. “The one way down is in the glass elevators. Just hope no one spots us.”