THIRTY-ONE: LENNY

 

“Hey, kid.”

“Hold on a second.”

“Lenny—”

“What?”

“You can stop now.”

I glanced up. “Sorry?” I was still busy switching the steroids into caffeine molecules, with the rest of the line stretching all the way up the capillary bed. For the last twenty minutes I’d been yanking off the atoms of Lug’s crew and rearranging them on the nitrogen bindings, and the joints in my fingers were starting to ache, the way they sometimes did when I spent too long at the keyboard. I took a step back to shake off my hands when I realized the line had disappeared.

“Looks like they figured it out for themselves,” Lug said, beaming like a proud general over his troops. “Viral learning.”

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Astro said.

“Wait a second,” I said. “The steroids have started converting themselves into caffeine molecules?”

“Why not? Is that a problem?”

“Well, theoretically, yes. I mean, if every steroid in Zooey’s system spontaneously changes into a caffeine molecule...?”

“She’ll save a fortune on Diet Coke.” Lug shrugged. “Anyway, we’ve got more pressing matters to discuss.” He gestured, waving me underneath the archway of a vessel wall, and pulled out a big sheet of paper, scrolling it out to reveal a detailed diagram of Zooey’s brain with different parts labeled. “How much time do you have left?”

I checked the readout inside my face mask. “A little less than two hours.”

“You ready to talk about the plan?”

“Whenever you are.”

“Good, because we’ve got a lot to cover.” Lug pointed at the diagram, indicating the base of Zooey’s brain. “Now there are two main arteries into the brain, here and here. We’ll take the CSF through the cerebral aqueduct and come up here, the median eminence of the hypothalamus. Security-wise it’s our best bet. I’ve got a couple of good adrenaline molecules, Twitch and Surge, that can handle crowd control on this end. But once we breach the BBB...”—his expression darkened—“things start getting a little dicey. Brain’s got all kinds of defense mechanisms to guard against the slightest increase in osmolality in the plasma. If we trip any of the osmoreceptors in the hypothalamus, ADH production is going to go absolutely berserk.”

“Sounds like a tough maneuver,” I said.

“Oh, that’s not even the hard part.” He glanced over at me to make sure I was still following him. “Your pal Astro tells me this is an emotional mission, so that means we need to get you into the third ventricle, here ...”—he traced our route along the diagram—“to the limbic system.” He looked at me and grinned. “That’s where things get really tricky.”

“Tricky how?”

“How well do you know the terrain up there?”

“I studied the cranial nerves last year in science.” I’d actually audited a college-level class on neural anatomy, but now didn’t seem like a good time to be trumpeting my academics. “I picked up a few things.”

“Good,” Lug said. “Then you already know there’s a hundred billion cells up there, and the whole area is wired for sound. We’re talking millions of electrical signals traveling about three hundred miles an hour, which means they’re crossing the entire body in something like a hundredth of a second, giving us zero response time if things go south.” He turned back to the diagram. “At the center you’ve got the pituitary, the master gland, the sympathetic and parasympathetic centers, plus the paraventricular nucleus here, spitting out oxytocin on anything that moves. Basically, the whole thing is one big alarm system. And we’ve somehow got to move you through all of that without tripping any of these wires, and get up into hypothalamus. And that’s not even figuring in our exit strategy.”

“Exit strategy?”

“You’re not exactly sneaking in.” Lug waited while I digested this assessment of the situation. “If you haven’t already rung every bell in the place, that’s definitely going to do it.”

“Are you sure it’s safe?”

“Oh, yeah. We’ll be fine.”

“No,” I said. “I mean, safe for her. Us being up there like that.”

Lug just looked at me, then over at Astro, and both of them gave a shrug. “I don’t know, chief. It’s your rodeo.”

I took a step back, trying to get some perspective. The blood-brain barrier was there for a reason. It was Zooey’s most critical protection, her last line of defense, and we were about to punch a hole through it. Up till now I’d been swept along by sheer momentum of the operation, but after this, there would be no turning back. What if I did something to her that couldn’t be reversed? I needed some advice from somebody even smarter than I was, and that was a pretty short list.

“Hold on,” I told Lug. “I need to make a phone call.”

Before he could argue, I tapped a button on speed dial, waiting while it rang and rang.

They won’t answer. He’s busy. He won’t take your call. You made him mad, and now he’s just going to ignore you and—

Then a voice picked up.

“Hello?”

“Dad?” I said. “It’s me.” I swallowed hard. “It’s Lenny.”

 

There was a long pause.

“Dad, can you hear me?”

“Oh, I can hear you just fine, Lenny,” he said, and even though the connection wasn’t the best, I could hear the coldness running through his voice. “Where are you right now? The mall? Because we’ve already established that you’re certainly not in school.”

I sighed. Just the fact that he thought I would ever go to the mall made me realize how little he really knew me. “Dad, listen. I need to ask you something. It’s really important.”

“Let me ask you something first, Lenny. How do you think it makes your mother feel when you put us through something like this? You think it’s funny? You think it’s all a big laugh?”

“Dad, what are you talking about?” I turned around and saw Lug and the other molecules jostling around impatiently, eager to get started. “I already proved to you that I made the miniaturization process work, I shrank myself down, and I’m outside the brainstem of Zooey Andrews.”

“The Brainstem? What’s that, the name of some new video arcade?” There was a rustling noise as he covered the mouthpiece and spoke to my mom. “It’s Lenny. He’s claims that he’s calling from outside the Brainstem.”

“Dad, listen, okay? This is important. I’m about to go through the blood-brain barrier, and I need to know—”

“Don’t waste your breath,” Dad said. “Harlan already told us the truth.”

“What?”

“He let us in on the joke. You haven’t shrunken yourself down to the microscopic level any more than you’ve flown to the moon.” He gave a dry, humorless chuckle that came out more like a snort. “Frankly I can’t believe I ever fell for that in the first place. Serves me right for thinking you could do it, I suppose. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“Dad—”

“I’m only going to say this once, Lenny. Wherever you are, you’d better drop what you’re doing and get your rear end back home right now. We are extremely disappointed in you.”

“You...” I looked around again at the molecules and vessels, taking in a view of the human body that nobody else in the history of science had ever seen with his own eyes. “You’re disappointed?”

“Honestly, what did you expect? When you indulge in this kind of juvenile behavior, it only confirms our decision.”

“What decision?”

He cleared his throat. “Your mother and I are sending you to Brixton Academy.”

“What? When?”

“Immediately after the break. We’ve already spoken with the dean, and they’ve made a spot for you starting in January.”

“That school’s in Connecticut!” I was shouting now, but I didn’t care. “When am I going to see Harlan and Zooey?”

“You won’t,” Dad said. “That’s the point. After this little stunt, removing yourself from their influence seems like exactly what you need to apply yourself properly to your studies.”

“Apply myself? You don’t think that I apply myself?”

“I think that’s safe to say, yes.”

I paused and tried to calm myself down. “When I did this, I thought you’d be proud of me. I thought you’d realize that I’ve done everything you’d ever wanted me to.”

“Lying, skipping school, and pulling infantile pranks isn’t exactly living up to your potential,” Dad said. “Now, what was so important that you decided to finally call us?”

I held my breath for a second, unable to speak. My heart was thumping hard, and I could feel it throughout my entire body.

“Forget it,” I said, and hung up the phone, turning back to Lug and the others, who were crowding closer to me than ever.

“Well?” Lug asked.

I nodded. “Let’s go.”