Golden Goose, Chapter 1

*copyrighted material*

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    The air conditioner hummed at the back of his mind, his feet on the theater seat, his chin resting on his knees. The sixteen-year-old still wore yesterday’s pullover, hood over his head, Willard had not even bothered taking off his school pants, and required black socks. The boy always sat in the last row of the theater room, that way he’d know when someone would come in by the sound of their footsteps. His large home in Washington D.C. had quite an echoey personality to it, grandma thought that keeping it as grandpa Boone had left it would make his spirit come back. She’d swear up and down that she’d seen him sitting by the vestibule looking out the large window seat with a cigar between his fingers and his other hand in his pocket.

    Willard pressed his legs together knowing Mac was right about him using the A/C like he was about to cryopreserve himself. “Squad! Wake up! I’m not peeing in a bottle again!”

    Brock rose from between the fourth and third row, stretching his upper back. “I think it’s my turn, the alarm should have gone off thirty minutes ago.”

    “Mac forgot about the alarm clock again.”

    “It’s because I truly want to play video games during these sleepovers, not fly a drone to South America over the course of weeks to talk to a stranger.” Mac protested turning in his sleeping bag.

    “Grow up Mac, we are saving the world!” Willard scoffed, passing his console controller to Brock, and sprinted to the bathroom in the hall, coming back less than a minute later.

    “But actually . . . ” Brock began, chewing on a KitKat he snatched from their Target sugar supply to keep them strong during the mission. “Doesn’t your grandmother suspect anything at all? The amount

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of times my mom has asked me why she needs to drop me off every so often at your house to stay the night is already giving me a lot of anxiety.”

    “Guys.” Willard paced in front of the lit theater screen that showed the sun rising from a beautiful violet dawn, their solar-powered drone filming as they moved forth with the help of a GPS at a corner. “I thought we all agreed we’d tell grown-ups that this is for the robotics club project and that we’d stay in the theater room to play video games as well, a boys' thing!”

    Mac rose really quickly and put on his glasses, “Well, point A, you bozo, my mother is asking me all the time why I'm working on this robotics club project without actually being in the stupid robotics club. And B, we are still not playing any video games!”

    “No video games until this God damn drone gets to Buenos Aires! And besides, Brock and I are actually in the robotics club! Tell your mother we need your—”

    “Surely my weekly drama lessons will come in handy! Note that I'm being sarcastic!”

    Willard sighed and placed his palms together. “I’m sorry if you are still butthurt but I’ll keep telling you this, you need to quit that club. You are seriously becoming a diva.” Then grabbed his laser pointer and a single-button remote he had lying around.

    “Willard, we do NOT need to see your stupid PowerPoint slideshow again. It’s 6:47 A.M. and I can’t eat any more Airheads! My saliva is basically syrup at this point!” 

    But their friend puffed his chest, this mission could topple Ikarus once and for all. One of the seven supercomputers that had been installed by what experts at NASA had chosen to call the Conquerors—an alien civilization that was estimated to be at least 300 million light-years from Earth. Ikarus was assumed to be somewhere along the Eastern coasts of the North American region while the rest of these supercomputers had scattered all over the planet. After grandpa Boone’s passing eight months ago, Willard had spiraled into an existential crisis that instead of bringing him down, had made him rise like foam at the very end of grief.

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    There was simply no bottom to hit hard on in his mind, after being raised by a worldwide acclaimed hero. The name of Boone Armstrong had been heard in every corner of the globe after saving millions of lives in just forty-eight hours. Destine had been quickly rebooted after falling prey to the Conquerors’ first cyberattack, leaving thousands of people vulnerable at great heights. But his grandfather, a team of engineering experts and consultants had mysteriously solved the problem permanently sixteen years ago. Yet, old Armstrong had never revealed the secret of how such a primitive, human program had beaten that of an alien civilization that broke minds and kept doing it until today, but that clearly hadn’t found any other way to interfere with it after that first attack. Such a fascinating story was told to Willard by his role model hundreds of times, but even after raising that boy to be his successor, there was no instance for Boone to reveal such a secret to the boy. And suddenly, one day, he took it to his grave.

    Grandpa Boone had done with this child what neither of his deceased parents could have. He’d shaped him with bravado, given him what his wealth had to offer but constantly ensured that his beloved grandson knew he lived in privilege. Taught him about the solar power industry with Ophiuchus Corp’s old analytics, graphs, and figures, as well as the history of the company. Because of his grandfather’s wits and vision, Destine was still running to this day. Hopefully helping travelers in their quest to find a better home beneath the watchful eye of the Conquerors, who monitored the masses through brain signals that translated into thoughts and dreams. In a few words, the Conquerors’ supercomputers read, controlled, and observed minds for data purposes or much more. Years after their settlement on Earth, scientists had concluded that these beings—just as humans did in their years of complete free will—had deployed errant satellites into space to detect life. One of their satellites had found its way into Earth’s orbit and had begun an automatic invasion as it should, detaching what they called digital debris as it fell which polluted all devices, making these supercomputers omniscient across the world. The location of their origin programs yet remained an

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enigma, that which would be needed to destroy them for good, one by one. Ikarus in North America, Ivy in Central America, Marshall in South America, Oberon in Europe, Zofia in Africa, Nadine in Asia, and Calliope in Oceania.

    True there, many saw grandfather Boone as a hero, but some resented the secrecy of his corporation and his abandonment of it shortly after. Revolts had taken not just the nation but the world as people believed his knowledge and the technology handled to power Destine could have been shared to break free from the Conquerors or at least, attempt to do so. Still, Armstrong had doubled down in not sharing the said information, particularly because he had claimed the world wasn't ready to know, and that the risk was too high. He did, however, provide the right evidence to the American government but that meeting too would remain obscured.

    “So, let’s do a quick recap! Before Mac starts popping the bubble wraps that came with the 3D printer again!”

    “Shaming me! How Willard of you!”

    “Whatever.” He changed tabs on his projected laptop screen, and pressed his silly little button, circling with his pointer happily. The image of a hearing aid device appeared over a black background. “As you know, gentlemen, this all started with a dedicated search on technology forums on the dark web that met my expectations. After hours of investigation, I came upon an anonymous user’s recipe to put together a device to deflect Ikarus’ electromagnetic waves, gamma rays radiation as you might know.”

    “Basically we are all gingerbread man cookies in an oven without them.”

    “Precisely, Brock.” Willard tapped his earlobe with a grin, a black bean-like widget—beaming a tiny green light fitted perfectly in it. “I bought a 3D printer online as the model required, and SHAZAM! I put together ten of them! Three of these on board our drone. I can't stress enough—”

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    “WE ARE SUPPOSED TO WEAR THEM AT ALL TIMES. COMPLETELY WATERPROOF.” Brock and Mac joined Willard in unison. 

   “Exactly! The same goes for the phone, and laptop adapters. Never, EVER take them off! Remember, NO—”

    “NO RESEARCHING ABOUT THIS MISSION ON ANY OTHER DEVICES.” They all chanted again.

    “How did you make those, again?”

    “I repurposed the original recipe. Blocking the electro waves from hardware has the same science. Making the adapters block the waves from the software was the real challenge. But not impossible, my genius cannot be compared—”

    “NEW ROUTE ADJUSTED.” The computer announced out loud for the three of them to look at one another and stumbled around the seats to grab the console controller, changing the browser tabs again to look through the drone’s camera and map. The machine had been forcefully re-routed in a new direction.

    “Oh uh. Guys, the controller isn't working . . . ” Brock reported with a nervous laugh, showing his orthodontics. His stoic father had been known for his faultless dental work back in Hong Kong. Willard snatched the remote while his friend looked through his pockets to use his nasal spray. Sudden anxiety attacks always obstructed his left nostrils.

    “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What do we do!?” Mac curled up on a seat. His puffy ginger hair and face were covered up beneath his blanket.    

    “Go to the kitchen and grab a bucket,” Willard ordered. “Act normal, okay?”

    “A BUCKET!?”

    “MAC, PLEASE!” His friend stormed to the kitchen. “I SAID ACT—Never mind.” He struggled to try to break the drone free. Brock, despite his panic attack, looked through the map to realize the drone had just flown through San Miguel de Tucumán, the kids began to deduce. Marshall could have accessed 

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coordinates from both Ikarus and Ivy as the machine invaded their spaces. The battery of his toy drone had been purposely drained to red after having just had a three-quarters refill. Willard had chosen this type of amateur drone because he had figured it would pose less of a threat flying inland. The home-use mini solar panels that had been installed on the drone were not powerful enough to fly above the sea without overheating and dropping to the ocean with the important package he was transporting. With the said mini panels it had taken him weeks to get to South America leaving it on someone's rooftop for each city stop to resume the charging process, and just then continue the trip. His plan was crumbling down before him, and he had to act fast for the sake of everyone inside his home.

    He pushed an emergency key on his laptop, and the drone immediately dropped the tin box secured below it. Brock had customized a medium size compartment within the toy with a silicone lunch box and foam wrap that would prevent the electronics in it from cooking inside the tin. Then he rushed to meet Mac by the door and grabbed the plastic bucket from his hands sprinting again to the bathroom.

    “YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY NUTS!!!” Mac hollered as he saw him come back with the bucket full of water, yet took a step back to let him through.

       “Unplug. NOW.” Brock complied, pulling the charging cable. “Ikarus!! Eat my shorts, you son of a bitch!!!” Willard foredoomed before showering his own laptop with the bucket’s clear content. There were bolts then sparks, and finally, smoke before the screen flashed colors and crashed completely fried.

    “Oh boy . . . I hope this doesn't come back to bite our asses.” Mac sighed, then silence took over the room. Willard didn't seem to be fazed by this, he paced in the room collecting his thoughts. He needed to solve this in record time.

   He finally said, “Brock . . . Call your sister to pick you guys up. If adults ask why the sleepover was canceled on a Saturday morning . . . Eeehhh . . . just say too much candy got my bowels fucked up.”

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   The next ten minutes were spent mopping the expensive marble floors of the theater room in secrecy, but when the maids came by to check wherever the smoke came from, they caught a glimpse of the roasted laptop Brock carried which he proceeded to dump in a black trash bag while Mac looked through the T.V. channels on the big screen nonchalantly—Willard assured them everything was fine and closed the door on them. The women looked at each other worriedly but didn’t mention their concerns to anyone.

    Once the kids checked the rest of the equipment worked properly, they got rid of the candy wrappers lying all around and the rest of their trash and packed their stuff sometime after that. At 10:14 A.M. all three boys had sat on the sidewalk waiting for Kimberly—Brock’s universitarian sister—to pick them up. Willard had taken a warm shower moments before, combed his sleek black hair back, and slipped into a gray hoodie, some jeans, and black sneakers. The kids waited there, staring at their phones in silence, except him, who could only stare at the hovering Destine system above his home vanishing on the horizon above the city of DC. Elias Luna, the man he wanted to reach so badly, had called it the first ‘up-way’ transport system. A young visionary in the project and a hero, those had been Boone’s exact words as he recognized a decade and more of working around the gears, and his valuable assistance the tragic day Destine hung petrified. The boy huffed and pressed his back onto the concrete, extending his arms on each of his sides. 

    “Elias. Pick up.” He muttered to himself. “. . . How can I talk to you?”

    Brock's phone began to ring shortly after with heavy metal music, the lyrics repeating ‘She is dead inside!’ “Kimberly is nearby, you guys.” He announced. 

    The kids had taken a cereal box oath of allegiance against her, all of them swearing to program the same ringtone once they got home from their school's annual camping trip. The stuff kids did when there was no signal on their phone for two days straight. Still, the camping trip was a useful survival guide in case the world ended a second time. Or in case 'The Adorers' invaded Washington D.C., still 

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unlikely with the Capitol and the White House in the same place. The military guarded the borders well. Camping in Oregon had traumatized a lot of his classmates and himself, but it was a requirement for every working school in the United States, a circuit accompanied by real U.S. soldiers. High school seniors had it tough with camping activities all year round and semester exams on survival to graduate completely. The highest scores usually received a visit from the army to talk them into joining, more than not, freshly graduated students said yes to secure benefits. Monthly basic food baskets, winter clothes, sturdy footwear, and medicine. Ethanol was hard to come by due to the lack of starch-based feedstocks like wheat, corn, and tubers, most of which were mainly used to feed people. Imported alcoholic drinks were very expensive and the shelves emptied in a heartbeat. The problem was The Adorers—whom the army regularly fought over territory—took over roads, power plants, mines, crop fields, and in some cases offshore petroleum platforms at the request of Ikarus or any of the supercomputers in charge of that region. As their name suggested, The Adores worshiped their ‘mind fuckers’, as some would call these alien creations. Regular people became worshippers under severe mind control that came with ecstasy, usually feeling energized with deranging levels of dopamine and adrenaline that left them twitching and captivated by the machines causing their spiraling to delirium as if they had consumed a love potion. No cure, no improving treatment had been discovered yet, and pioneering had not led anywhere. Sedatives were the only thing that kept them from flapping their arms and legs before being strapped to hospital beds, surrounded by specialists that did not know how to proceed. Once the effect of the drugs was gone, the cycle kicked off again. What do we do with them? Strangely enough, it had been noted that patients required no ingestion of food to survive under this mental illness—it had been required to be called that, sadly—except for water.

    Brock hung up. “Says she’ll be around the corner any minute now.” 

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    Mac stood up and looked far into the street. “Yep. It's her in Nascar again. Come on now, hide.” Willard ran to one of the azaleas shrubs before his home’s pristine, white fence. Boone Armstrong’s last standing home—his other states had been lost to no repair under the opposing protests—was certainly the one he’d been happiest his grandson had grown up in. A high, bent stairway topped with white pillars, surrounded by tufted greenery that gradient from pinks to oranges to faint yellows in the shape of worms that took to the streets along the steps. Two garage doors on the side, with windows everywhere and of all sizes in dark green. The sort of house that could have belonged in the countryside with a lake at the back. This home had been everything to Boone and his wife Agatha, Agatha had survived him, and found him in a coma next to her one morning. She had not been herself ever since, just a soul, sick at heart walking through the halls.

    Kimberly Choy drove too fast to be three months pregnant. She had the habit of getting lost in this neighborhood because she didn't know what equanimity was, a sophomore astrophysics student with a major iced caramel macchiato addiction. She hit the brakes and put the car in reverse at the sight of Mac and her baby brother Brock, waving at her through the wing mirror. Not an uncommon ‘Kimberly Tolerance’ decorum, she was the accelerated, outgoing but caring type, it's just that sometimes she was too straightforward. 

    The pregnancy news had taken everyone by surprise, her parents had lost their minds after setting a whole career path for her in a way to ensure her success. But the words ‘I'm moving in with Benson’—her college athlete boyfriend and father of the baby—had come out of her mouth with so much confidence after years of academic pressure. All while she squeezed Benson’s hand like she was about to catapult that baby out of her any moment, the young football player had frozen under the killing gazes of Mr. and Mrs. Choy. It had been his family who had funded the couple’s idea of getting their own apartment. The Choys could not understand this.

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    “Alright, little freaks! Get in!” She said, then snorted at the sight of Willard’s converse under the bushes. Mac and Brock got into the vehicle protesting over her 2003 Lincoln LS being jam-packed with cardboard boxes full of her belongings, she was moving out from the Choys that weekend. She put her sunglasses at the top of her head full of straight, black hair, and picked up her phone to give Willard a buzz.

    He winced at his phone and hung up, waiting for her annoying laugh with embarrassment. “Get out of the bushes, you psycho!” She cackled.

    “I’m not a psycho, Kim!” He squeezed through the fence and brushed the leaves off his shirt. He stopped by the passenger window, “I—I was checking the . . . the cutting job . . . ”

    “The cutting job?”

    “Yeah . . . ”

    “Oh, you mean, the gardener mowed the lawn.”

    “Y—yeah . . . It’s not . . . short enough.”

    “So, your bowels . . . ?” Kimberly frowned, yet smiled.

    “I'm about to burst, I'll go back inside soon.” He stepped back. “Adios . . . ?”

    Kimberly rolled her eyes and put both hands on the steering wheel, about to look ahead, yet she sighed. Turned to the children at the back of her car and then back to Willard. “Listen up, amigos, I don't know what you guys are doing. Or . . . even want to know. The thing is, I won't be telling our parents. Because I doubt you guys all combined can top my own little fuck up. Right?” Willard, Mac, and Brock laughed, looking with despair at one another but Kim took that as it seemed. Three teenagers that had probably run short on weed on a Saturday morning.

    The boy saw his friends drive away and let out the air he had been holding back since Kim had arrived. He placed his palms on each of his eyes and growled in frustration. He dragged his feet back into the house. He needed a new plan to get to Elias with all the care in the world, he was 

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experiencing guilt yet an unending desire to fuck these machines over for good. He pressed his finger over the bean widget inside his earlobe and trudged around the house feeling that this was exactly what he needed to come up with something fresh. Boone’s Washington home was one hell of a giant ghost town all 365 days of the year. The house had an indoor garden at the core, with a rock fountain and plants that somebody was taking care of. Done so early in witching hours he didn't know what the guy actually looked like. Willard saw at most five visitors a year, one of them was his grandfather’s lawyer, Herbert. Sign here, here, and here. Then he was gone for months to look over what Boone had left unfinished.

    He stopped by the master bedroom, his grandmother's chamber. Willard knocked at the white wood before peeking and coming in. Agatha was still fast asleep, in a large, white, and billowy bed for two. She was tall, taller than her husband had been, and boney. Long peppery hair, so straight and soft she could never keep it up. Green eyes, just like her grandson but he didn't see them much because she was always napping.

    The boy sneaked to the bed, the room was pristine, barely touched and a light breeze came through. He sat at the edge, looking at himself on the other side of the wall through a large oblong mirror that made the room look bigger. He huffed and wormed down onto the carpet, back pressed on the mattress and the light winds coming from the window right in front of him. He felt the blues coming, but then heard the familiar yet synthetic bleep of his phone, he pulled it out from his pocket and noticed a new email at the top of his screen. He clicked on it. His blood ran cold at first, but as his eyes followed through the composed belt of words in it, he anticipated hope building inside of him. And he was right, after a couple of minutes in, there was so much joy in him he could barely contain it. He jumped to his feet and raised his arms high while stopping himself from 

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celebrating out loud. Willard left the room immediately in quietude and sprinted to find his bike as soon as he was out of ear’s reach. 

    In seconds, he was at the garage pushing his bright red bike and hitting the electric door button with a fist before his feet left the ground for good in a rush. Agatha flinched at Willard’s howls of victory and at the sight of his figure dashing past her windows as he speeded out of the neighborhood.

    Willard rode away from Berkley’s suburbs, and on his way to Georgetown heading east. He would have taken Destine’s up-way but the matter at hand would have to leave no records. For extra measures he would take the woods, breaking a sweat was on his to-do list this morning. He pedaled through Glover-Archbold Park following the nature trail going south, dead leaves crumbled to dust and loose sticks crunched beneath him. The round-lobed foliage itched under the bottom hems of his jeans. The weed had grown to his calves and was tangling under the bike chain, but he moved past it regardless. Bulky tree roots stuck out like bone-dried worms and from above, the sun came through in warm patches feeding the white oaks and sycamores.

    Georgetown had been no ashen place in the past, but it was now with its dead greenery and ramshackle framework, vandalized to obscurity. The place was a single canvas of slate gray and not even one lightbulb remained attached to the disassembled lamp posts. Handrails, bollards, flag posts, and benches had been stolen to be sold as scrap. The asphalt was muddy and dilapidated as many came here with their pickup trucks from distant states to resupply at some of their markets, and also because fire hydrants were used to get vital liquid in scarcity. These habits had chipped onto the roads pretty badly.

    The teenager was five blocks away from his destination when the rain began to pour in merciless douses. Willard dried the sweat and rainwater from his face with a sleeve before putting his hood on. Got off his bike and guided it into a jilted, and démodéd shopping arcade that Georgetown University students had turned into a bazaar as well as a place to get high in all sorts of ways, play poker, have

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coffee breaks talked about American football amongst other things, it all depended on your interests plus you'd probably find anything you wanted in their stores. Students had founded their businesses in these funky-smelling lobbies to help themselves pay for school, making their own economy.

    Willard dried his shoes on the entrance mat and shouldered his way through amongst the grown-ups as they worked on covering the leaks from the walls with towels and newspaper. He stopped by a coffee shop lit in yellow and placed two steaming coffee cups in takeaway container holders in his bike’s basket before moving on, the storm had started to darken the halls. He walked all the way to the end of the bazaar, where it was quieter.

    He waited patiently looking at his phone until three figures joined him at that side of the building. Two football players from the Georgetown Hoyas football team, drenched from head to toe in their sportswear, still holding their helmets to one side as they had just finished a game that morning. The third figure was the sweaty mascot of the team, Jack the Bulldog, in a furry gray costume with a bobblehead sort of helmet of a furious canine. All three of them smelled pretty badly as they walked past him. Jack the Bulldog unlocked the iron curtain to his place of business in the bazaar, and let the two gentlemen into his technology den, full of cardboard boxes, bubble wraps, and fancier packaging protectors that came with what he ordered for his clients, all sprinkled across the store. He took off the bulldog's head. Clean-shaved, he had brown skin and hair in a half bun. Dean Santana waved at the sixteen-year-old before going in and showing some microcomputer replacements to his friends.

    He watched Dean pressed against the countertop chit-chatting for another fifteen minutes before the football players left with the merchandise. Willard brought the bike in, and silently granted him one of his coffee cups, now mildly warm. The mascot dude grinned looking at what was written on the side of his cup. ‘Suck My Pee Pee Asshole’. Then pointed at the activated earpiece in his earlobe beneath his bangs.

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    “Ha! How far did you get? Where are my ten bucks? And is this a latte?” The computer engineering student sneered, sipped his coffee, and said, “Yep! It is!”

    “San Miguel de Tucumán, I was kicking ass.” He frowned, taking out his ten bucks which the college student snatched from him.

    “I’m sorry to tell you this bud . . . but Marsh was playing with you all along. There’s no way Ikarus and Ivy didn’t see you travel that far without alerting their brother before you entered his airspace.” He gulped more coffee. “It’s just facts!”

    “Okay! Okay! I was wrong, but . . . ” Willard smirked, placed his phone on the countertop, and spun the screen around. Dean picked up the phone, stared, and lost his breath scrolling. “It is a WHOLE blueprint, Dean. Please, I need you . . . I need you to help me build it!”

    “Where did you get this?”

    “Well . . . Someone might have . . . Realized what happened . . .”

    “Willard, be more specific.”

    “The anonymous user that shared the deflector recipes in the dark web . . . sent me this email. It contains a step-by-step recipe to build the most accomplished data processor we could ever imagine. This could . . . This could not just help me reach Elias, we could overturn this empire if we get a bunch of people involved. In and out of the country.”

    “HOLD UP RIGHT THERE!” Dean dried his chin with a furry arm as coffee slipped off his mouth. “First, this stranger stole data from your computer to know if you used his recipe, ALLEGEDLY, and he also knew you were doing something that ABSOLUTELY NOBODY SHOULD KNOW!” He took a deep breath and said, “And also, it lists 3050 steps, Willard, I’m quickly reading through these and this computer will take a LOT of physical space. I mean, three walls or maybe two and a half. Like the 1950s kind, it would take months.”

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    “I have space at home and a lot of free time! My friends and I can clean up the storage behind the home theater!”

    “Did you not listen to what I just said!?” Dean squeezed out of his stall crowded with hollow CPU bodies, and drawers full of screws and cables, and grabbed the boy by the arm. “I’m not joking. Go home now, and smash that damn phone when you get there. Willard, priorities, think about those. Now, out!” The boy scowled, kicked his bike onto some new keyboard boxes, then straightened it up and left.

END OF CHAPTER #1