SEVENTEEN

It might have been satisfying to see Bugs, the truculent computer, in pieces on the ground, but Brooklyn pulled it out of its housing carefully and moved it to the table in the galley.

Work was good. Calm was good. Hard to do fine tech stuff with fists.

Float might’ve been able to set him straight, help him get things in perspective. He’d done some sneaky shit, too. Lie down with Sneaky-Snakes, get up slithering, she might say. Little lies and big ones. Secrets. But no tellin’ how deep she was in on it.

Brooklyn forced his hands open again.

How many times? he’d asked Demarco.

Six or seven I know about.

What did I do?

Only know for sure about one time, and I can’t say about that.

She woulda said something. The Jellies were brutally honest with each other and with friends. Brooklyn brewed a pot of strong tea, the professor’s so-called warrior blend. Focus, sharpness, and just a little lens flare. Perfect for fine work. No booze, no booze for a long, long time.

Float was a warrior by inclination and training, but there was no serving on a spaceship without accruing some knowledge of the systems that made them go. Over the years, she’d translated Jelly technical manuals so Brooklyn could add some of the good stuff, like the camoflage, to the Victory.

This job was something else again. He’d nabbed several Jelly Tech computers from the Boneyard, and they lay disassembled on his workbench. Four weeks until the next job, money in the bank, and a desperate need for distraction. Without Float, he would need some help flying the ship to Mars.

He hummed as he worked, trying and failing to harmonize with the best bits off Tom Petty’s Southern Accents album. Petty had punched a wall and busted up his hand pretty good recording the thing. Brooklyn would heal up pretty quick from something like that, but it would hurt like hell, so he didn’t.

The tea and tunes put him in the groove, his hands nearly moving on their own, his head doing its best to keep up. Jelly Tech was almost organic, somewhat self-repairing, and seemed to want to cooperate and fit together in ways that made mistakes unlikely. Processors welcomed compilers, embraced interpreters and memory with the ardor of long-lost friends. More grudgingly it accepted the Earth-built components and the small bits of First Tech he’d been accruing over the years. The need for sleep was distant and easy to ignore. The only measure of time that counted was the dirty dishes piling up in the galley. There was plenty of tea.

Brooklyn installed Bugs 2.0 as the operating system, a Linux modification of his own design, and ran a few orbital calculations through the thing. He’d barely punched the “enter” key when the answers came back. The Jelly navigational software was beyond anything humans had, and its precision would save time and fuel with every trip. His fingers, healing fast from solder-iron burns and stained with flux, ran through his hair. Might be time for a nap. It’s been… days, I think.

“The tea.” He glanced at the empty pot.

A series of numbers appeared on the modified flat screen. A basic equation, Intro to Algebra, at best. Brooklyn entered the answer, and a new one appeared, slightly more difficult. He grunted. You ain’t s’posed to do that.

“I checked everything I know.” A shower, a nap, and hours of tests later, the computer was still acting up. He placed the call after a long walk and some self-talk. Time of war. Needs must. Etcetera.

Demarco rubbed his mouth. “Maybe it knows you dumb and wants to help you out.”

“Seem to be keeping up okay.”

“I spotted th’ calculator, cheater. You playin’ one machine against t’ other.”

“You want to do sines and cosines with a pencil and paper, help yourself. That ain’t the point. It shouldn’t be asking me questions.” Brooklyn had tried to keep up by hand, and the walls were scrawled with numbers and cross outs. The computer dropped the difficulty of the questions it posed whenever he made a mistake. Using the calculator had been as much a matter of pride as anything else. “Was hoping to get more out of you than smart ass.”

“Smart ass is free. All I got an unlimited supply of,” Demarco said. “Computers ain’t really my bag, babe.”

“You read all that sci-fi shit, though, and this is… I don’t know what this is. Feels almost like it’s playing a game with me.”

“What else you tried?”

“Other than the pop quizzes, it’s working great. Answers any problem I give it so long as I answer one for it first.

“Maybe give it somethin’ else.”

“Like what, a compliment?”

“Hand job if you want to be real friendly.” Demarco worried the patch of hair below his lip. “You can program, like, dimensions and measurements, right? What happens you give it a shape?”

‘Round about midnight, after several hours trading shapes and math problems back and forth with the computer, Demarco had an epiphany.

“This gonna take a while. We friends enough that I can stay over?”

“Surprised you ain’t busy with your ‘Sneaky-Snake’ shit.”

“If there’s work, I do it. If it’s fun, I do it quicker.”

“Understand you keeping shit from me, but I ain’t happy ’bout it.”

“I wasn’t, either, if it makes you feel any better. Jus,” his hand fluttered, “had to be done.”

“Promise you won’t do it again, you can stay.”

In the morning, Demarco drove back to town, returning with his toothbrush, a change of clothes, two cases of beer, and all the books he could check out of De Milo’s small library.

“What are those for?” Brooklyn said.

“Gotta read to babies if you want ‘em to grow up smart.”

“It can’t hear or understand words.”

“You gonna fix that while I make breakfast. Give Baby some eyes, too.”

Demarco read Baby a book called The Poky Little Puppy while Brooklyn worked nearby.

“Never got the point of that story,” Brooklyn cut in at the end. “Ma used to read it to me. Slow dog sneaks, like, a dozen desserts. So, the fast dogs find ’im out, fix the hole in the fence. Poky misses out on dessert that one night, but he’s still up by like ten, right? He won. He beat the system.”

“And that why you a criminal, babe.” Demarco closed the book. “What the story’s about ain’t important right now. It’s about getting words into the kid. The sound of ’em.”

“You talk different when you’re reading,” Brooklyn said. “Sound like a news-radio guy or somethin’.”

“It’s an accent, my good man, not a speech impediment.” Demarco added the book to the stack near his feet. Two days of reading had consumed what there was of child-rearing and developmental psychology in the tiny library, and he’d traded a few bottles of vodka for a year’s worth of Psychology Today. “You done with that, yet?”

“Don’t get your hopes up.” Brooklyn had an idea that Demarco was expecting Baby to have some magical moment of recognition, maybe imprint on them like a duckling on its mama. “This ain’t ever gonna work right, and it probably won’t work at all.”

“Don’t let Baby hear you say that. Betcha a night at The Mush Room that your ass is ‘bout to get surprised.”

“You’re on.” Brooklyn flipped the switch that let the signal from the camera get to Baby’s processors. Nothing happened. “Told y–”

Demarco held up his hand for silence. “Give it a sec.”

Brooklyn had given Baby his old computer’s voice, the barely recognizable ‘naughty secretary’ and refined it with Jelly Tech. So far, Baby had used it to say “hello” twice and offer the names of shapes and numbers. Impressive for the slipshod construction maybe, but hardly amazing.

Brooklyn started to speak again. “Th–”

“Hello,” Baby said, its voice a smooth contralto. “Demarco one.”

Demarco waved his hand at the camera. “Pretty one is me. Demarco.”

“Brooklyn two,” Baby said.

Brooklyn blinked stupidly.

Demarco nudged him. “Wave to Baby.”

Brooklyn held up his hand. “Uhm…”

“Demarco one. Brooklyn two,” the computer said. “Baby three. Hello.”

Holy shit. “No idea why this is working. I do not have the skills for this.”

“Maybe it’s not all you.” Demarco patted the rough casing Brooklyn had built to keep Baby’s components organized and protected. “Jelly Tech, People Tech, First Tech, a little love, a little luck. Then comes two fools with a baby carriage.”

Brooklyn massaged the back of his neck. “Now what?”

“Now,” Demarco reached down and pulled another book off the stack, “it’s your turn to read to Baby while I go take a shit.”