Chapter Three

Zach

“Not feelin’ the Mastermind thing.” Zach shrugged out of the headlock Mike had him in. “I think I’ll just hang out here for the rest of my life.”

After an amazing dim sum breakfast, Zach had spent his first day back home lounging in his room with his brothers. Hanging out with them was the thing he missed most while in prison. And wrestling. Lounging always turned into a wrestling match. It used to be pretty even, but after a year of having to defend himself for real every time the warden turned his back, Zach had the advantage now.

“What did they feed you in there?” Mike said as Zach flipped him onto his back. “You go in Clark Kent and come out Superman.”

“Incoming!” Nolan flew off the bed and landed on his brothers, pinning them both to the floor. “Be on the alert for friendly fire.”

Zach laughed. He was home.

“You don’t have a choice, Zach.” Mom poked her head through the door.

Suddenly Zach’s temper darkened. She was right. He didn’t. “I know, condition of my parole. Ruining the mood, Mom.” He crawled out from beneath the brother pile and sat on the floor. “How do you always manage to walk in just in time to hear what I don’t want you to hear?”

“Mom power.” She came in the rest of the way. “Hey, at least you get to finish your senior year studying under the most brilliant scientists in the world. You even get to live in their Student Residence Center. I would have preferred to keep you home, but at least I’ll be able to visit any time I want. Mastermind Special Program. Sounds impressive.”

Zach huffed. “Yeah. Special, as in ‘specially made for ex-cons.’ Mikey and Nol get to be in the internship program, but I’m stuck in some special program that says ‘This dude was in jail.’ Forgive me if I don’t do backflips.”

“You’re not an ex-con, Zachary.” Mom’s voice softened. “You are a juvenile offender who has done his time. Once you turn eighteen, you won’t even have a record.”

“Doesn’t give me back the 6 percent of my entire life that I spent in jail for something I didn’t do.”

“5.9 percent,” Nolan said quietly, then shrugged. “If you want to be exact.”

Zach smirked at him.

“My sons, the math whizzes.” Mom shook her head. “Speak English.”

“He went in at sixteen,” Mike said. “Spent one year locked up, then out at seventeen. One seventeenth is 5.9 percent. Sucks, right?”

“Long time to spend locked up,” Nolan said.

“For something I didn’t do,” Zach repeated.

“You’re free now.” Mom looked away and disappeared back the way she had come. “Wash up. Supper in five,” she added from the hall.

“Do you think Mom thinks I’m guilty?” Zach blinked back tears. “She didn’t say—”

Suddenly both his brothers dove on top of him, pinning him to the floor.

“Nobody thinks you’re guilty,” Mike snarled from the top of the pile. “Mom hates it as much as we do. So don’t go all ogre on her, or even if it takes both of us, we’ll kick your butt. She just feels like there’s nothing she can do. But we don’t do helpless.”

“We have a plan,” Nolan said. “Orientation for the internship starts tomorrow, and you have to be the brainiac you used to be. Because the Mastermind Complex has the tech we need.”

“I might need a translator.” Zach shoved Nolan off. “I don’t speak science anymore. I just drool.”

“Bring a bib.” Nolan shoved back. “Zach, turn your brain back on. This internship will give us everything we need.”

Mike threw a headlock around him. “I told you we have a plan.”

“Yeah, right.” Zach fought the urge to escape. Last person who put him in a headlock went to the infirmary with a cracked ulna.

Mike released Zach and shouldered him onto the bed. “We get to use LYDIA.”

“Seriously?” The talking supercomputer that runs the Mastermind Complex. The one with the voice that sounds human. Zach hadn’t thought about that. His mood lightened a bit.

Mike nodded. “So powerful she makes China’s Sunway TaihuLight look like a flip phone.”

“Research power,” Nolan said. “Imagine what we can get with computing capability like that.”

“Retribution,” Zach said under his breath. His year of planning revenge hadn’t resulted in anything solid, but having that kind of tech available to him…his chances of success just improved exponentially.

“Exactly,” Mike said.

Zach closed his eyes to think.

“Look out, here he goes,” Nol said. “Hear the synapses firing?”

“Oh, yeah, the turbos just kicked in,” Mike said. “Our brother’s back. What’cha got, Zach?”

He opened his eyes. “Mikey, can you write me an algorithm to identify anyone who’s done research on the Supercompact Muon Solenoid?”

“Dude, I like where you’re going,” Mike said. “And Nolan can design a detector to pick up on the high-frequency signals it emits.”

“Then we’ll trace it to its current location, and BAM!” Nolan held out a fist. “We’ll find the unsub who set you up.”

“Unsub?” Zach flipped his hands. “Are we filming a police show?”

“Just trying to set the mood.”

“But we can’t do any of that without LYDIA’s horsepower.” Mike held his fist out as well. “Which we’ll have once we’re in the Mastermind program. Tomorrow.”

“Okay, but the first person who mentions my ‘special program’ will feel the wrath.” Zach reached out and they did a three-way fist bump.

…

The Mastermind Complex sat in the heart of Quantum City, just south of Chicago. While Chicago had long been known as one of America’s most advanced cities for its cutting-edge tech, Quantum City was the world-renowned center specializing in robotics. Zach had seen the Mastermind Complex plenty of times on video and in magazines, but up close…

“This is amazing,” he said, but even that word didn’t do it justice.

The Complex was built entirely of crystal. It filled twelve city blocks and rose so high it blocked the sun. Air traffic had to be routed away due to the glare from the glass structure. The Mastermind Complex housed LYDIA, and to Zach, that made it the eighth Wonder of the World, because it would give him the power to take his life back and ruin the swine who’d taken it away.

“It’s like a freakin’ space station in here,” he said as they entered the lobby. The tech surrounding them made his heart thump. Glass hovervators reached into the stratosphere, drones zipped back and forth like hornets between floors, thousands of people funneled through the multi-field science exhibits that the Complex was so famous for. Monitors the size of houses hung from every wall, advertising exhibits and special sessions that went on in other parts of the Complex. Sunlight shattered like a laser light show as it passed through the glass walls and ceilings.

And there were robots everywhere. Bipeds served drinks in the café. Guard-bots stood at every entrance. Bio-bots that could almost pass for human led group tours on hovercraft that defied gravity on a proton force field. The Complex was nearly its own city, and it was all powered by LYDIA.

Zach noticed a massive wall monitor above the hovercraft and saw himself standing next to his lanky brothers. He waved, and his image waved back.

“A latte, Mr. Keen?” a jerky electronic voice said. “Or perhaps some tea?”

He turned to find a biped holding a tray of drinks. It was an early model robot, the kind with the plastic, emotionless face and tinny voice. “You don’t sound like LYDIA.”

The biped’s head tilted to the side. A badly designed attempt at body language. “I’m not a Synthetic. Only a Synthetic would logically be given a voice indistinguishable from a human’s.”

“Logically,” Zach agreed. “How do you know my name?”

“I am coded with facial recognition algorithms.” The biped stood straight and tilted its chin up. “Your face and other pertinent data were made available to me when you entered the Mastermind Complex. You are Zachary Keen, a seventeen-year-old male with an extraordinarily high IQ, who was recently released from prison and assigned to the Mastermind Special Program.”

Zach grunted. Special Program—even the robots thought he was a criminal. He turned his back on the robot. “Great start. Let’s tell the whole world I’m an ex-con.”

“You’re the only one who’s worried about that,” Nolan said.

Before he could respond, the perky voice of a female announcer echoed through the Complex. Zach was not in the mood for perky.

I trust you are enjoying your time at the Mastermind Complex, home of the world’s foremost in scientific advancement. Don’t forget to read the schedule for upcoming events of interest. Thank you for stopping by. Be sure to add your name to our holo list for Mastermind Complex updates.

Nolan took a deep breath. “Did you hear that?”

“LYDIA,” Mike said with awe.

Laced Yottabyte Dynamic Intelligence Algorithm. LYDIA was the world’s first supercomputer with advanced AI programming and a human personality. And now, she was Zach’s best chance at revenge.

Mike added, “She sounds even better in person than she does in my collection of internet clips.”

It took a second for Zach to realize what he’d heard. “You collect clips of LYDIA talking?”

“Hacked them, technically. They’re not public domain.”

“And I thought I had a lot of time on my hands in juvie.”

“They did an amazing job designing her voice.” Nolan folded his arms and gazed around the Complex. “Laced artificial intelligence algorithms with enhanced phonetic code powered by Radium-Xenon processors. Nothing like the old tech that dumps clumpy speech clips into a legacy synthesizer. Finally. A computer that sounds like a real human. They took third generation AI to its limits. Passed every Turing Test like a rocket. Voice inflection, emotion…LYDIA has it all.”

Zach cocked his head at his brother. Nolan’s passion for cutting edge tech was legendary. “Did you get this excited when Siri came out?”

Nolan smirked. “LYDIA makes Siri sound like a troll.”

“Thank you,” LYDIA’s voice said, but it didn’t echo from the walls this time. It was right behind Zach. “That is an unusually kind thing for a human to say.”

Zach turned slowly, expecting a robot channeling LYDIA’s voice. But what he saw didn’t look mechanical at all. It looked so human he did a double take. A cute girl with an enormous smile and bright eyes. This android looked about his age, totally gorgeous, and wore a formfitting lab coat as though the robot were trying to play scientist.

Wow. “So this is what a Synthetic looks like.”