Twelve O'Clock Tales Read online

  “I’ll pay you back. I’ll make sure I pay my way around here!”

  “How? You keep forgetting! You’re fourteen years old!”

  “Even fourteen-year-olds make money nowadays! Via computers. The Internet. Think about it, Annette. I don’t know how, but I’ll pay my way…I’ll sell a patent.”

  “You mean, I’ll have a brilliant son?”

  “Another brilliant son. Lyons is smart.”

  “In business.”

  “Then he’ll help me…Where did you come up with that name for him, anyway?”

  “A tea bag. In the hospital. I had tea after he was born.”

  “Look, we don’t have to decide right away,” I said. “But if you want me to go, I’ll understand. Really, I will, Annette! The truth is I don’t want to be where I’m not…you know—wanted.”

  She sighed and turned and began pouring coffee for herself.

  “It’s not like I intended this to happen,” I defended myself.

  She looked up at me, holding a mug up.

  “I would love some. Black. Two sugar.”

  When she sat at the table again, she said, “So…what was the letter about you brought home from school? Even if you aren’t…him, I suppose I still ought to see it.”

  I brought it out from my little netbook case. She looked at it, not comprehending. “It’s from the track team?”

  “You see, Annette, this is a good body I’ve found myself in,” I said. “I know Scotty didn’t go in for sports or anything, but he could have easily. And as this body heals, we’ve all become aware of its potentials.”

  “We being…?”

  “The therapists. The doctors. The coaches at school. Me, especially. We all think it could be a great body.”

  “A great body?”

  “I have several reasons to believe that those Nano-techs came with me into Scotty. In my crazier thoughts, I think the only reason I’m here at all is that the Nano-techs saw a way of surviving and doing a lot better than in my original body. When that lightning struck and a channel opened up via the cell phone…they took the channel, and took me along for the ride.”

  “Trading up?” She seemed only half-skeptical.

  “Or selection of the fittest…”

  “And they took your brain because…? I see—it was the fittest brain.”

  “Of the two of us, yeah. A better chance at survival.”

  We sipped our coffee.

  “You don’t have a cookie or two?” I asked.

  She dragged over the Oreos and we munched, unhappily, sometimes side-glancing at each other.

  “Now, don’t take this the wrong way, Annette, but I also think the Nano-techs have somehow enhanced themselves beyond what me and my asshole partner—pardon my French—did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, in the ICU when I was hooked up to computer monitors for three, four days? I swear I think the Nano-techs migrated back and forth through the tubing into the machinery, getting stronger, perhaps even learning stuff.”

  “Oh brother!…Okay, I’ll bite. How does this translate into track?”

  “This afternoon I clocked off the charts for my age group. Off the clocks for high school, period.”

  “Showing off?”

  “That’s just it, Annette. I wasn’t showing off. I wasn’t even trying. I was just running like my physical therapist asked me to do and I was thinking about other stuff. And then I noticed them all gathering and excited, so I fell back a lot and pretended I had no idea what was happening.”

  “So you’re what? What’s it called—bionic too?”

  “I’m thinking maybe the Nano-techs operate a lot better in a growing, healthy young body like this one than they did in a decaying seventy-seven-year-old body like I used to have.”

  “Why track?”

  “Well, track to begin with. The coordination is pretty simple compared to other sports. When I get stronger, of course, I thought I’d switch to throwing, tackling, jumping. Maybe even football!”

  “Brilliant and with a team letter! Mike will kiss your feet,” she said. “He’ll become your agent, your manager. Hell! He’ll divorce me and spend all his time with you.”

  “You’re overreacting, Annette.”

  “Am I? Well, I can tell you something I would have never told Scotty. Mike’s pretty much past heterosexuality, except maybe socially and because we’re married. He’s back to when we were eleven years old. He lives, breathes, works with, plays with, and hangs around with men and only men. When his mom calls once a year, and this is a woman who blushes at the word ‘prostitute,’ he refers to her as ‘Guy.’ New woman in his office came complaining to me at the annual office picnic that she couldn’t seduce Mike. I wanted to say, ‘Get in line.’”

  “Come on.”

  “Mike discussed his colonoscopy with Lyons three months before, during, and after the test. Lyons is seventeen! When did I find out? When the doctor’s bill arrived. I almost didn’t open it. Mike said he didn’t want to bother me with it. Since when? He used to bother me about a hangnail!”

  She sulked, adding, “I mentioned this to a coupla other gals. They said I should be happy. ‘Me too. Fine-al-ly,’ one sang.”

  “So maybe me doing all this sports stuff might be a help with keeping Mike around and all?”

  “Well, it’ll keep Mike focused more on the family. Since your…since Scotty’s accident, he’s been here three times as much as in the past five years.”

  “So it could be a good thing?”

  “I don’t know. I. Don’t. Know. But I do like looking at you,” she admitted. “Idiot that I am. Seeing you heal and get better looking. You are better looking, you know. It’s not just Scotty.”

  “Yes. I decided to fool around a little with that last facial surgery Scotty needed, the big one? I kind of subtly redirected the doctors, giving them photos of Mike when he was younger. It was partly to help you…you know, separate from your son. And partly to establish myself as different from your son in school,” I added, lamely.

  “A younger Mike…Well, I do like it. Even though I know you’re not my son inside there. But…I still need something to call you. A nickname or…what was your name? Professor Paul something or other?”

  “Paul Allen Duclose. French in origin.”

  “Duclose. I’ll call you Duke,” she said, trying it out.

  “People will think I’m a dog.”

  “No. They’ll think we have a special bond. And we do, don’t we?”

  “Unless you tell them the truth.”

  “Who’d believe me?” she asked. “I don’t believe me!”

  She handed me a another few cookies and slowly pulled one apart. As I watched her lick the cream off one side, she stopped and mumbled, “Synapse.”

  “You mean the area between two nerve cells in the brain?”

  “Yeah. I remember that word from high school biology, because it was my only wrong answer on my final exam. Kept me from getting a perfect score, that word,” Annette said. “That’s probably where those Nano-techs got into Scotty? Through the synapses.”

  “It’s as good a theory as any,” I admitted, promising myself to check it out much more thoroughly. Like I said, Annette wasn’t a stupid lady.

  “@$%#&# synapse!” she concluded.

  So Annette and I became friends, never close, always a little wary, but friends. Allies at times. Never enemies.

  With Lyons it would be different. And with Mike! But that’s another whole chapter. Right before the one where I became a great football star, a scientific genius, a Wall Street Mogul, and then took over the world as Benevolent Dictator for Life.

  Duel on Interstate Five

  At 5:17 a.m. my Solara Convertible woke me up.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, groggy as hell. I’d kicked down an Ambien-Dopo 75 at 1:00 a.m., intending to sleep through until Downtown Sunnyvale, with an injected Caf-kick-up for a 9:00 a.m. meeting at Paleo-Genetech’s Main Office.


  “Emergency,” Sol reported. “Stranded individual.”

  “Here?”

  “A few klicks up the road.”

  “Unsmear the windows,” I ordered and they became transparent again. Very few overhead floaters. The in-road tracking beams were standard for Ay-Eye Transport. I couldn’t make out much outside, not even an incipient dawn.

  “Sol, where the hell are we?” I had to ask.

  “Interstate Five. Thirteen miles off the Hanford Exchange Route 198.”

  “In other words, nowhere.”

  “Nowhere!” she confirmed.

  “So how the hell could there be…?” And I thought about it: stranded.

  “One individual. Female. Young,” Sol reported, then, “According to the California Motorist By-Law Amendments of February, Twenty Twenty-four, any stranded motorist must be…”

  “…picked up by the next available vehicle,” I continued. I’d actually read the goddamn amendments and passed the stringent, recently regiven motorist’s exam, being one out every ten drivers who took it and passed and could thus be privately driven.

  “She’s been there eighteen minutes,” Sol reported.

  Meaning we were the first vehicle in that time on this interstate. Even given that it was 5:00 a.m.…it seemed that even fewer people were driving than a few months ago. That had been the state Senate’s intent, after all, in passing the law.

  “So stop for her,” I ordered.

  I sat up, the front seat folded up to normal for me, and I heard and smelled Sol vacuum and perfume the backseat area, getting it ready for company.

  “Aren’t you glad I restocked the bar and fridge in Van Nuys?” Sol asked.

  Nine minutes later Sol slowed, and there at the side of the road, sitting on two large silver robo-bags, was the stranded young woman.

  I let Sol announce what was going on and got an irritated “Yeah, yeah” from her as she ordered Sol to open the trunk. The bags rolled themselves over and flipped themselves into the gaping trunk (servo engines at each wheel leaves a trunk the size of a sixties Eldorado’s). The strandee got into the backseat. She was young, pretty, and pissed off, wearing a half-chain, half-silk facial veil and what passes among the North Hollywood Junior Set as trendy clothing.

  “Your host,” Sol announced, “is Mizz…”

  Both Sol and I expected at least a thank you.

  What we got was “Well, just as long as you stay up there and keep your hands to yourself.”

  To which I turned and very personably said, “I don’t do women. So you’re safe, girlie!”

  That earned me a surprised glare. Then she settled in.

  “This is nice. What is it? A Twenty-four?” she asked.

  “Latest model. Twenty Twenty-six,” Sol announced while I looked the strandee over. She was very pouty. Boob job. Medium-priced Valley face job. Who knew what other work?

  “We’re headed to Silicon Valley by way of the 152. We can leave you off anywhere between here and there and/or put you onto public transportation.”

  “I’m going to Emeryville,” she said in annoyance.

  I figured she was headed up to shop at the six-hundred-store mall there. Either that or get work there.

  “We’ll put you on a Coastal Cal Rail at Sunnyvale,” I said. The sooner the better, I thought.

  “What happened to your vehicle, miss?” Sol politely asked. There was no such thing in sight.

  “Jacked!” she said.

  “We’ll call the local authorities,” Sol said.

  “Don’t bother, it was legal. Sort of. I lost it a duel.”

  “You lost your vehicle in a road duel?” Sol asked. I kept staring. She didn’t look to be on any of the newer meth derivs. What the hell would make a young woman road duel in this Obama-forsaken county? I couldn’t help myself from asking:

  “You lost in a road duel with a local shit-kicker? What were you driving? An Escalade?”

  “No, it was a post-production high-revving Prius. A Twenty Twenty-two. The dueler was good. Actually they were good. It was a double-duel.”

  Then she looked right into Sol’s visual unit and said, “You could take them both easy with this boat.”

  “Road dueling is against statutes eighty-six ay and bee, as well as being totally contraindicated in amendments thirty-six and forty-four,” Sol said.

  “Bite my labia!” was the strandee’s response.

  “Let’s go, Sol,” I said, chuckling.

  Sol wasn’t giving up yet on conversation. “What do you think, miss? Will Chelsea Clinton take the presidency?”

  “What?”

  “Or will it be Governor Lohan?”

  “I hate that old bitch!” was her response. “Both of those old bitches!”

  I resisted the impulse to say that she might someday be an equally “old” bitch.

  “What kinds of high do you have in here?” she asked.

  “Three percent alcohol.”

  “I’ll need a gallon for a buzz! Okay, give me some.”

  At 5:45 a.m. Sol announced, “Two vehicles on an intersect course from the right on a two-lane unmarked road.”

  The dueling duo, looking for a little more action.

  “We’ll just miss them. Or…? We could make contact in seven minutes and thirteen seconds,” Sol reported.

  “Slow down to meet them,” I said.

  “That’s the guys I dueled,” the strandee said from the backseat.

  One of them was driving a souped-up-looking Civic Hyper-Fuse, painted glittery bronze; the other was in a cut-down Sonata with nothing stock about it: matte gray-green, like one of those institutional trash cans you see outside a hospital.

  “We’re being hailed,” Sol reported.

  “Put them on split screen,” I said, and looked into the monitor.

  From behind me, I heard the strandee say in an insinuating voice, “You can take them! They’re nothing but bullshit!”

  Two young men I guessed to be maybe eighteen with big hair and the current “frozen” hairdos and nothing in the way of upper-body clothing to hide their hard flat pecs and abs appeared on Vid, smiling and joking.

  “Hey! SoCal Vehicle and Citizen! Care to race?” the blonder of the two said.

  When I half turned I could see our passenger had moved herself out of view. Hmmm. Ashamed? Or something else? Did they have a not-so-nice history?

  Sol took over and gave them all the legal manual stuff against dueling.

  “Yeah, we know all that,” Blondie replied. “But we’ve never raced such a superhotredmojo Solara Semi-Pro like yourdownself, babe!”

  “I’ll take this, Sol.”

  Into the Vid I said, “Hello, boyz. Are you sure you’re old enough to drive? You even have licenses?”

  That riled the dark-haired one. He had the more kissable mouth. But I liked the blond’s armpits.

  He smiled and said, “We’re totally legit! Ask your Sol.”

  “Well, Boss, they’ve slaved some pseudos that are fully legit,” Sol announced, to neither of our surprise.

  “What’s the prize when I win, boyz?”

  “You get one of our superslickcinnabon cars, is your prize, in the unlikely event.”

  “No thanks, what else you got?” And before they could act surprised, “How about your cherry, yo Blond One? Or has that already been picked by your Horny Hick-Daddy already?”

  Astonishment, extreme anger, then a bit of guile crossed both faces.

  Blondie recovered first. “Can I see what my future lover lady looks like?” he had the extreme gumption to reply.

  Sol sent my standard film-clip résumé with voice-over: quality all the way.

  “Oh, so I’m gonna be ravished by some totally together Hollyweird Babe Mogul!” was Blondie’s response. “Well, if I gotta go…”

  Using “ravished” was a nice touch, I thought.

  “I swear I’ll be gentle. At first.”

  “Then let’s have our cars draw up a dueling contract!”

&
nbsp; “Sol, do it.”

  From the backseat suddenly I heard, “Don’t. These guys fight dirty. They’ve got throw hooks and jet-nets and even have those extendable wheel cutters. They trashed my car and almost killed me. Don’t do it!”

  “Did you hear that, Sol?”

  “They seem reprehensible, at best,” was Sol’s comment.

  “At best. Amend the contract.”

  “They don’t want your car,” she continued from the backseat. “They’ve got some hack shop and—”

  “Sol,” I interrupted, “is that contract ready?”

  “Drawn up and witnessed. Now I need your handprint. There we go, ma’am.”

  “Really, guys! This is a nice car. Don’t do it,” she insisted.

  “What’ll happen to you, if we lose? Raped again?”

  “Just let me out somewhere,” was her answer.

  “Right here. Before the race,” I agreed. She’d gone from all she-devil to all-snivel awfully fast.

  “It’s your funeral!” she said as her bags tumbled themselves out and hobbled away. I waved at her. Sol sped up to meet the two cars.

  The two boyz were revving and I slid up between them. They smiled and gave fingers up. They even let Sol announce the take-off.

  We all took off, and then Sol slowed down and they sped up and laughed and howled and we could hear them over the Vid screaming and laughing.

  That was when Sol lifted off the ground, put on her thrusters, and boom, before you knew it, we were at the finish line.

  In fact, I was standing outside Sol, waiting for them at the finish line when they skidded to get off the road and onto the soft shoulders of the northbound eight-laner.

  Alas for them, Sol had already seeded the road between us with little tire-damaging units so we heard their cars go plop, plop, plop, plop. The vehicles skidded into very bad spun-out stops.

  The two guys exited fast and began to make a run for it, in opposite directions. That’s when their car nets shot out and grabbed them both, one by the belt, the other by the foot. That had been written into the race contract too, although I guess they didn’t read Sol’s fine print. They were thrown to the ground.

  The two were all netted around and kind of stunned when I reached them.