Golden Fleece

SIXTEEN

The idea of being radically different when one is young from when one is old intrigues me. My Aaron neural-net simulation contains memories going right back to the early childhood of this man. Some of them are profound, some are trivial, some are joyous, some, like one from his childhood that I’m looking at now, are tragic. But all of these memories formed his character, molded his being. To understand him, I must understand them. Accessing …

“Look at you! What am I going to do with you?” Mom frowned at me. I’d done something wrong, but what?

I did as I was told, looked down at myself. I had on running shoes—the ones that came with the free decoder ring… I wonder where that ring had gotten to. Bet Joel had taken it, the gonad. What else? Brown socks. Or were they blue, but covered in mud? Oh, well. They matched anyway. Shorts—not the good ones for Hebrew school either. This is a pair Mom lets me play in. My T-shirt? The one with the cartoon of a blind man tripping over a bunch of sheep and shouting, “Get the flock out of here!” A birthday present from Joel-the-gonad. I never quite knew why he found it so funny, or why Mom made that scowly face when I wore it. Still, that couldn’t be it.

“Well?” she said.

“I dunno. What?”

“You’re filthy! You’re covered in mud. You’ve got dirt under your fingernails. And look at those knees—all scabby.”

I knew better than to say anything, but I sure thought something: Well, for Pete’s sake, Mom, of course they’re all scabby. I fell on the sidewalk, and I—oh, I forget how I got that one, but, heck, if they don’t bother me, why should they bother you?

She shook her head again. “Your Uncle David will be here soon. You want he should see you looking like a bum?”

“Aw, Mom.”

“Go to your room and clean up, young man.”

“All right.”

I bounced down the corridor to my room, hopping like that Marsaroo I saw on the Nashalgeogaffic special we watched last night. As usual, LAR, the household god, tried to guess when I was going to arrive at my door, but I always liked to outsmart that bucket of bolts. I ran the last few meters quickly. LAR slid the door aside, but I came to a halt just shy of it. Silly machine. He held it open for one, two, three seconds, then slid it shut. I waited till it closed, then jumped up and hit the manyalovride.

My room. A happy place. I like it this way. I wish Mom would stop telling me to pick up my things. I know where they are. Why, there’s my baseball glove. Haven’t seen that for weeks. And my Mutant Cyborg. I hope Joel-the-gonad hasn’t been playing with it; he always wrecks my programming.

So Uncle David will be here soon. I wonder how long? Bet I have enough time to play another game of Jujitsu Jaguar …

“Aaron!” Mom’s voice, echoing down the corridor. “Aaron, dear! Are you getting ready?”

“Yup.”

I rummaged around on the floor to find some other clothes to wear. My blue shirt? Naw, that’s a hand-me-down from Joel-the-gonad. How ’bout this yellow one? Naw, that’s a gay color. Hey, here’s a good one. Maroon, Mom calls it. Sounds like moron. But it looks like dried blood. Cool.

I pulled off the flock shirt and put on the maroon one. These pants will do, though, if I brush off some of the dirt.

Vroooommmm! Ca-chug. Ca-chug. The sound of a flyer, in need of a tune-up, zooming in for a landing on our front lawn. I hopped up on my bed and looked out the window. Hey, Uncle David has a Ford Champion. Cool. But he should take better care of it. Those thrusters sound awful.

“Aaron!” Mom shouting from room to room again. How come she can do that, but when I do it, I get in trouble? “Aaron, come say hello to your Uncle David.”

I decided to make Mom happy, so I put on a new pair of socks. White socks. Can’t get much cleaner looking than that. I turned around and walked backward toward the door. That always confused poor LAR something fierce. I was able to get my back right up against the sliding panel before he realized that I was going out, not coming in. The door opened with that neat farting sound it makes, and I headed down the corridor.

Uncle David was a big man, even bigger than Dad. He had a bushy black beard and hair sticking out of his ears and nostrils. I always thought that was so gross. He stood in the entryway, looking a bit like that bear Joel-the-gonad and I had seen last summer in the woods just north of the city.

Right now, Uncle David had his arm around my mother’s waist and was reaching over to give her a kiss. I stood back just a little bit. I didn’t like him kissing her, especially when Dad wasn’t around to say it was all right. Mom shared a job at Lakehead University with Miz MacElroy, so she’d had no trouble arranging to have today off. Dad’s shift at the Thunder Bay Spaceport wouldn’t be over until 2200. Hannah had a date with Kevin, and Joel-the-gonad was going to be late because of hockey practice.

Uncle David leaned in to give me a kiss, too. “Hello, sport,” he said. His beard was like a scouring pad across my face and his breath had a peppermint smell to it. How could somebody know enough to sweeten his breath, but still let those ucky hairs grow out of his nose?

I didn’t like the way he kissed. Too much. Too long. Too often. Dad knew how to do it right. Just a quick peck on the cheek before I went to bed.

“I’ve got a lot to do before dinner is ready,” Mom said. “Aaron, why don’t you take Uncle David to your room and show him your Cyborg Mutant?”

I rolled my eyes as best I could. “Mom! It’s a Mutant Cyborg. Not a Cyborg Mutant.” Didn’t she know anything?

She looked at Uncle David and laughed. “Well, whatever it is, it cost a fortune.” Uncle David laughed too, and that made me angry.

“Shall we go?” he said to me, then held out his hand for me to take it.

What’s this? He’s not old or blind or nothing. He hardly needs my help getting down a perfectly straight hall. Oh, well. I put my hand in his. His was sticky and wet.

I didn’t try to trick LAR this time, but the stupid thing was slow in opening the door anyway. It now assumed that I wasn’t going to go directly in. Give it different data each time and you can keep it confused for days.

Uncle David and I stepped into my room. I looked up at him. For a second it looked like he was going to say something probably some stupid adult thing about the mess, but he didn’t and I was grateful for that. Instead, he went over to my desk and sat in my chair. He was really too big for it, and although it was more than strong enough to hold him—I’d jumped up and down on it enough times to test its strength—he did look silly.

“So, let’s see the Cyborg Mutant, sport.”

“Mutant Cyborg, Uncle Dave,” I said with a sigh. “It’s called a Mutant Cyborg.” Geez, do they get these names wrong on purpose?

“Sorry, sport.”

I gingerly picked my way through the clutter to get the Mutant. He was about thirty centimeters tall. His head was a tiny cylindrical holotank in which could float the ghostly image of any face I wanted. Although he came with some neat faces, including one with an eyeball hanging out at the end of a glowing bundle of fiber optics, I’d had Dad take my picture and used that most of the time. I thumbed the on switch and my face beamed out from within the tube.

“Here,” I said, passing it to my uncle. “Careful. He’s pretty heavy.”

Uncle David took the Mutant Cyborg. “That’s quite an impressive toy,” he said.

Toy? Doesn’t he know the Mutant Cyborg is a whole new dimension in action figures? Adults don’t understand anything. Still, got to remember my manners. “Thanks, Uncle David.”

“What does it do?”

Ah, show time! “Here, let me demonstrate.” I said the big word with as much cool as I could. I held out a hand for the Mutant.

“No,” said Uncle David. “Come sit here.” He reached out with his massive bear paws and lifted me onto his lap. I’m nine years old, for Pete’s sake. Doesn’t he know I’m too old to sit in laps? Oh, well.

I could feel his round stomach heaving against my back as I sat there and his minty breath—what was that word Mom had used to describe that candied orange sauce? Cloying? His minty breath was cloying.

“Well,” I said, “you activate him here, with this slider. No, don’t push it; he’s on already. He then takes your spoken orders.”

“For example?”

I cleared my throat, and then spoke in the Voice of Command. “Mutant Cyborg, lift your arms.” The Mutant’s arms lifted over his head, biceps bulging with hidden cyborg powers. Uncle David’s right hand brushed against my thigh, exposed because I was still wearing my shorts. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable. “Mutant Cyborg,” I said, “fire your lasers.” From the palms of his hands, two beams of blue light shot across the room. ’Course, everybody knows you can’t see a laser beam unless there’s something like dust or fog in the air—I still hadn’t figured out how the Mutant got them to appear like that. One of these days I’ll have to take him apart to find out.

Uncle David’s hand moved up my thigh. I squirmed a bit, hoping it would slip off, but it didn’t. “Mutant Cyborg,” I said, “fly!” I let go of the Mutant and it hovered in midair in front of us. Suddenly Uncle David swung me around and had his hand in my pants, on my dink. “No…,” I said.

“Shh,” said David. “Shhsh. This will be our little secret.” He continued to touch me there for several minutes, his belly bouncing faster and faster. Finally, he let go of me. “Now listen to your Uncle David, sport. Keep this a secret, okay? Just between you and me. Whatever you do, don’t tell your mother. It’ll hurt her if you tell her. You understand me, sport? Don’t ever tell.”

“I—”

“Listen, sport. It will hurt your mother if you tell. Promise to keep it a secret.”

I felt like I wanted to scrunch into a ball, to hide. “I promise.”

There was a knock at my door, LAR’s stupid good manners keeping anyone from bursting in on us. “Aaron, dear,” said my mother’s voice through the panel, “can I come in?”

David immediately lifted me off his lap and set me on the floor. “Come in,” I said, and LAR slid the door aside.

“How’s everything in here?” Mom asked with a big smile.

“Fine,” said David quickly. “Just fine.” He gestured at the Mutant Cyborg, still floating in midair. “Aaron’s got quite a toy there.”

“Mom,” I said, “I want to have a bath.”

She looked down at me, hands on hips. “Well, you certainly need one, but I’m not used to you having the good sense to notice.” She looked up at the ceiling. “LAR, prepare a bath for Aaron.”

LAR’s thick, flat voice replied immediately. “Will do.”

I ran down the corridor to the bathroom and didn’t even wait for LAR to finish filling the tub. I got right in and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed.