“That’s me! It’s me! Me! Me!”
Nish was screaming and pointing, though there was no need for either. They were in their hotel room – Travis, Nish, Andy, Simon, Jesse, and Derek – and no one had trouble recognizing their friend. Of course it was him: who else? Nish, flat on his back, his helmet rolling along the ice, snow falling and melting over his hot, beet-red face.
The neat thing was, this was NBC Television, the nightly New York City newscast, and after nearly twenty minutes of traffic accidents and closed schools, the anchor had turned to a “lighter side of the storm.” Suddenly there were shots of people cross-country skiing in Central Park and of the great shinny game between the Burlington Bears of Vermont and the Screech Owls from some small town in far-off Canada.
“It’s Tamarack, idiot,” Jesse shouted at the screen. “Tamarack! And we don’t live in igloos, and we don’t eat snow, and we weren’t all born with skates on!”
“Speak for yourself,” Nish said. “I could skate before I was toilet-trained.”
Andy held his nose. “And when did you get toilet-trained? We must have missed it.”
They were all laughing when there was a knock at the door. Andy jumped up, peeped out the spy glass, and announced, “Fahd.”
“Let him in,” said Derek.
“See me on da news?” Nish called to Fahd in his stupid New York accent.
Fahd shook his head. He looked excited.
“We’ve got something far more interesting to see,” he announced.
“What?” several of the boys asked at once.
“You want to talk to Lars?” Fahd asked.
“He’s here?” said Simon.
“Kind of – come on!”
The room Fahd was sharing with Data was on a lower floor, and everything was spaced out a little more to allow easy passage for Data’s wheelchair. There was even a closet with the shelves and rails set low so that Data could arrange his clothes without having to stand. No closet, of course, was ever as low as Nish’s; his closet was the floor, where he dumped all the clothes he’d need at the start of every tournament.
Data and Fahd had been busy. Fahd had brought along his father’s digital video camera, which was now connected to Data’s new laptop, which in turn was connected to the phone. Somehow, Fahd and Data had figured out how to hook up to the Internet, dial free of charge to Sweden, and connect with Lars, who had a similar setup at his uncle’s place in Stockholm.
Data was on-line with Lars as they came in. Fahd’s camera was set up to take in the room, and as they entered, they saw Lars on Data’s computer screen. He was smiling and waving.
“Hey, guys!” a disembodied voice said from the computer. It sounded a little tinny, a bit hollow, a bit scratchy – but it was Lars’s voice, no doubt. “Yo! Nish!” the voice crackled over the computer. “How’s it going? You moon the world yet?”
“I’m working on it,” Nish said. He looked slightly confused, almost as if he suspected this was some sort of weird trick Fahd and Data were pulling on him.
“Hi, Trav,” Lars said, waving.
Travis waved back, uncertainly. Lars seemed both there and not there. His movements weren’t as fluid as they would be on a video. It was as if a new picture of Lars was being received every microsecond, which, Travis figured, is probably precisely how it worked.
“Hey, Lars!” Travis called back. “You playing any hockey?”
“I’m in a tournament,” Lars’s voice crackled back. “Same as you guys. It’s with my old team. I can hardly remember how to play the game the way it’s played over here,” he laughed.
“Simple,” said Nish. “Never shoot, pass backwards, take a dive whenever anyone comes near you.”
“Thank you, Don Cherry!” Lars shouted, sending Nish a raspberry across seven time zones.
They talked a while longer. Data used the mouse to control the camera, zooming in and out and focusing on whichever Owl happened to be talking to Lars.
Nish took very little part in the conversation. He seemed too interested in how the whole video-telephone call was happening. Travis had never before seen his friend so keenly interested in anything to do with computers. If it was a computer game, in which Nish could destroy the world with bombs and flame-throwers, then he was interested. But never before in how a computer actually worked.
Nish came back to life after they’d all said goodbye to Lars and promised to check in on him each day. They’d tell him how they were doing in the Big Apple tournament; he’d bring them up to date in how the peewee tournament in Stockholm was going.
But Nish had other ideas. “How’s this work?”
Data explained. He talked about Internet long-distance calls and video transmission and how the cameras sent images so quickly it was almost as good as television reception.
“Television, eh?” Nish said.
Travis had seen that look before. He half expected to hear Nish’s little brain shift gears, grinding and whining like a truck attempting to break free of a snowbank.
“Tell me, Data,” Nish began, “when they broadcast the New Year’s Eve countdown, how do they do that?”
“It’s live television,” Data said. “It’s simple. They have cameras on the guy doing the countdown and project it onto the big screen. They’ll have a temporary studio set up at Times Square.”
“As simple as this?” Nish asked, nodding at Data’s laptop.
“No. But not much more complicated.”
“Can you ‘bump’ a broadcast?”
“I don’t follow,” Data said, turning his chair around to stare at Nish. He clearly had no idea where Nish was going with this. Unlike Travis, who was cringing at the thought.
“You know, can you cut in? Could you run your own broadcast and bump the one they’re showing?”
Data thought about it a moment. “I suppose so. There’d be two or three cameras and a director controlling the shots. You’d have to break into their feed.”
Nish sat, silently working his mouth.
If a brain could chew gum, his was blowing bubbles.