The Impossible Fortress Read online

  “You think I type slow?”

  “You’re hunting and pecking. Your fingers are nowhere near home row.”

  “What’s home row?”

  “Exactly,” Mary said, as if this proved her point. “Sister Benedict clocked me at ninety words a minute. She called my typing skills a miracle. And coming from a nun, that really means something.”

  We settled the debate by unpacking a second 64 from inventory, placing the machines side by side, and then racing to input the first paragraph of the user’s manual word for word, no mistakes, on your marks get set go! I was lightning quick, my fingers flying all over the keyboard with perfect accuracy, but when I shouted, “Done!” I heard Mary echo me. We had finished together in a dead heat.

  So our contest had settled nothing, but going forward we moved twice as fast, because Mary convinced her father that two computers increased the persuasive power of the store’s showroom. “It’s like walking into the Gap,” she explained. “They never show just one T-shirt. There’s always a table with six or seven. Products look better in groups.”

  I didn’t totally buy her logic—for starters, T-shirts come in different colors—but Zelinsky seemed willing to try. “It’s not doing anything sitting in a box.” He shrugged. “Three months we’ve had these damn machines, and we’ve yet to sell a single one of them. ‘The Most Popular Home Computer in America.’ ”

  He glared at me like somehow I was responsible, like I had personally invented the 64 and then petitioned Zelinsky to stock the machines.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  His glare intensified, and his eyebrows arched to epic heights. “Why do you keep apologizing?”

  “Dad, we’re on a tight deadline,” Mary said.

  “I want him out by seven o’clock,” Zelinsky said. “You’ve got homework.”

  We spent the next three hours testing patches of code and reading aloud from How to Learn Machine Language in 30 Days. The mixtape looped from Howard Jones (“No One Is to Blame”) and Bruce Hornsby (“The Way It Is”) to Marshall Crenshaw (“Someday, Someway”). A pattern quickly presented itself: Mary would read aloud a dense and difficult passage, I would fail to understand it, and then she would re-explain the concept using her own words until it made sense to both of us.

  This happened so often, I soon felt embarrassed. I knew Mary would be turning the pages much faster without me, that my “intellectual shortcomings” (or whatever Hibble had called them) were holding back our progress. I hunched forward in my chair, biting my cuticles and sighing and watching the clock. But Mary didn’t seem flustered. She’d repeat herself three or four times without ever sounding aggravated. She acted like we had all the time in the world.

  “I’m sorry I’m such a dummy,” I said.

  “This is tough stuff.”

  “But you understand it.”

  “Because I’m explaining it to you,” she said. “Saying it out loud helps it make sense to me.”

  We ended the day with a practice exercise from the book. Each of us created a mini-program that utilized graphics in machine language. Mine flashed the words PLANET WILL SOFTWARE in different colors. Mary’s featured a boy and girl dancing, popping and locking and moonwalking like Michael Jackson in the Motown 25 special. I realized the boy was wearing a white shirt and jeans, and the girl had long dark hair. Mary had programmed them to look like us.

  “How did you make this in forty-five minutes?” I asked.

  “Yours is good, too,” she said.

  The crazy thing is, she actually managed to sound sincere. I listed the commands and studied her code, a long block of ideas I’d never considered and strategies I’d never tried, an entirely different approach to programming. I felt like I was finger painting next to Pablo Picasso.

  1100 REM *** DRAW GUARD 2 SPRITE ***

  1110 POKE 52,48:POKE 56,48

  1120 FOR GU=0 TO 62:READ G

  1130 POKE 12480+GU,G

  1140 NEXT GU

  1150 POKE 2043,195:POKE V+21,8

  1160 POKE V+42,4

  1170 POKE V+6,GGX

  1180 POKE V+7,GGY

  1190 RETURN

  ONCE AGAIN ZELINSKY BOOTED me out of the store at seven o’clock, and I left to find Alf and Clark waiting on their bikes. Alf had the Beast perched on his handlebars—this was our nickname for his massive Sony boom box, an enormous radio with giant speakers, twin cassette decks, and a hundred useless lights and levers. The Beast weighed a ton, but Alf had rigged a small platform onto his handlebars so we could bike around accompanied by movie soundtracks. He saw me coming and pressed Play on the cassette deck. Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” came blasting out of the speakers, turning heads up and down Market Street. Alf pantomimed a performance on the sidewalk, using a Coke bottle as a microphone—Ohhh, won’t you take me home tonight?—until I hurried over to the Beast and spun down the volume.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

  “Take it easy,” Alf said. “She can’t hear us.”

  He cranked the volume up, even louder this time—fat bottomed girls, you make the rocking world go round!

  I ejected the tape and pocketed it.

  “Hey, what’s your problem?” Alf asked.

  I stepped off the sidewalk into traffic, and the driver of an Oldsmobile stomped the brakes, screeching her tires and stopping just inches from my knees. I wanted to put some distance between us and the store. I didn’t stop walking or say anything until we were across Market Street and around the corner.

  Then I ripped into them. “You’re being too obvious! If you keep hanging around the store, they’re going to know something’s up.”

  “Did you get the code?” Clark asked.

  “Sure, I was like, ‘Hey, what’s the security code for your father’s store?’ And she told me, because she’s an idiot.”

  “If you’re not getting the code,” Alf said, “what the hell are you doing in there?”

  “We’re working on a game,” I explained. “I told you I needed time.”

  “My customers are getting impatient,” Alf said.

  “What about Arnold Schwarzenegger?” I asked. “How do we pass a guard dog that sits in the window all night long?”

  “We’re working on it,” Alf said. “We’ve got a couple ideas we’re testing.”

  Street traffic was already thin by seven o’clock—most of the commuters were home for the night—so we all noticed when two cute girls came walking down the block. They were fifteen or sixteen years old, with short-shorts and skinny legs. I recognized them from Video City, the store where we rented our movies. Clark stuck his claw in his pocket, and I stared at my sneakers, pretending I was too busy to notice them. Alf dropped the Top Gun soundtrack into cassette deck one so that “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins came thumping out of the speakers. Then he reached in his pocket for a bankroll of wrinkled bills. It was an enormous wad of cash, about the size of a hockey puck, and he counted it casually as the girls sauntered past.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “I’m giving an early-bird discount,” he said proudly. Alf explained that fifteen of our classmates had already paid for their Vanna White photos in advance, with the understanding that the photos would arrive before the month ended.

  I turned to Clark. “And you’re okay with this? Are you selling to early birds, too?”

  He shook his head. “Naw, I just want a copy for myself,” he said softly. “But I don’t see the harm in it.”

  Alf spread the bills into a giant fan of money, like he was Mr. Monopoly on a Chance card. Then he waved the bills in front of my face. “Smell the profit, Billy.”

  I slapped the money away. “Do not spend it,” I warned him. “Not a penny.”

  “Why not?”

  “In case you have to give it back,” I said. “In case something goes wrong.”

  “What could go wrong?” he asked.

  I wasn’t ready to explain. I couldn’t tell him there was no chance of get
ting the alarm code, not yet. I needed to keep trying, or pretending to try, until The Impossible Fortress was complete and submitted to the contest.

  “Anything could go wrong,” I said.

  Almost on cue, a uniformed Wetbridge police officer rounded the corner of Market Street, walking toward us.

  “It’s Tack,” Clark said. “Put the money away.”

  “Where?” Alf asked.

  “Don’t turn around!”

  Tack’s real name was long, Polish, and impossible to pronounce; we all called him Tack because he reminded us of young, super gung ho Eugene Tackleberry in the Police Academy movies. At six foot four, he was the tallest cop on the Wetbridge Police Department. Twice a year he visited our high school to screen horrifying movies on the dangers of drugs, alcohol, and Communism; he warned that movies like Red Dawn “could really happen.” When he wasn’t educating the children of Wetbridge, he patrolled downtown wearing a Kevlar vest and papered windshields with five-dollar parking tickets.

  “Evening, boys,” he said, shaking hands slowly and deliberately with each one of us. His grip left my hand feeling hollow and deflated, like a bike-tire flat. “Any signs of trouble tonight?”

  This was his default greeting to all the little kids in Wetbridge; Tack warned there was an army of Dolph Lundgren clones just waiting to descend upon our town, and the patriotic youth of America were its last line of defense. At age fourteen we all felt like we were getting too old for this routine, but tonight we were happy to play along.

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “No sign of trouble,” Alf said.

  “No Russkies for miles,” Clark added.

  “I’m not talking Russkies,” Tack said. He gathered us into a huddle and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m being completely serious, boys. We had two attempted break-ins on Market Street last week. The pet store and the travel agency. Crowbar marks all around the back doors. Like someone tried to pry off the hinges.”

  We were all too panicked to respond. I worried even the slightest phrase might betray what we’d been planning. The bankroll of cash created a very conspicuous lump in Alf’s Bermuda shorts, like he’d pocketed a tennis ball.

  “And then last night someone broke a window at Video City. Ran off with a brand-new VCR and a bunch of those head-cleaning tapes. You boys hear anything about that?”

  “No, sir,” Clark said.

  “Nothing,” I added.

  “But we’ll be on the lookout,” Alf promised. “Is there a reward if we catch the guy?”

  “I’m sure they’d come up with something. The Merchants Association is freaking out. So city council has us doing night patrols until the ‘crime wave’ tapers off. Dusk till dawn. It’s costing a ton of overtime.”

  “Dusk till dawn?” Clark asked.

  “Our presence is what we call a deterrent. If a bad guy sees a police officer walking Market Street at four in the morning, he’s likely to think twice. That’s the idea, anyway. In the meantime I need you guys to keep your eyes peeled, understand? Let me know if you see anything squirrelly.”

  We all promised to stay vigilant. Tack thanked us for our service to the community and insisted on shaking our hands again before heading on his way. He walked down Market Street and turned left at the train station; minutes later, he arrived on Lafayette, traversing the downtown shopping district in a figure-eight loop.

  “Dusk-till-dawn patrols,” Clark said.

  “First Arnold Schwarzenegger and now Tackleberry,” I said. “Maybe we need to rethink this plan.”

  “I’m not rethinking anything,” Alf said. “You promised to get the code, Billy. We had a deal.”

  “Exactly!” Clark said. “You can’t wuss out at the first sign of trouble. Are you saying you want to quit?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not quitting.” There were still eleven more days until the contest deadline. Eleven days to learn ML and get The Impossible Fortress into working order. “But I will need more time.”

  They both seemed relieved. Alf rewound Top Gun to the start of Side 1 and pressed Play, blasting Kenny Loggins and redlining the equalizer lights. “You just get that alarm code,” he said, “and leave the rest to us.”

  1200 REM *** ADVANCE COUNTDOWN ***

  1210 TIMER=TIMER-1

  1220 PRINT "{HOME}TIME LEFT:",TIMER

  1230 IF TIMER=0 THEN GOTO 1600

  1240 IF TIMER<25 THEN ER=25:RETURN

  1250 IF TIMER<50 THEN ER=20:RETURN

  1260 IF TIMER<75 THEN ER=15:RETURN

  1270 IF TIMER<100 THEN ER=10:RETURN

  1280 IF TIMER<150 THEN ER=5:RETURN

  1290 RETURN

  I STARTED GOING TO Zelinsky’s every day. I worked with Mary from three until seven, when her father promptly kicked me out. At first we made nothing but mistakes. Learning machine language was the hardest thing I’d ever tried, and I’m sure I would have quit if Mary hadn’t shown so much confidence. She acted like we’d already won the contest, and now programming the game was just a simple formality. I kept expecting her to lose interest in the project. Every time I arrived at the store, I expected her to tell me she’d made other plans—that she was going to the mall or babysitting or whatever normal fourteen-year-old girls did. But Mary never failed me. Every afternoon, she was waiting in the showroom, ready to work.

  We fell into a routine. We started every afternoon with a Dr Pepper and a bag of pretzels. We took a Skittles break at five o’clock, when our energy flagged and we needed a sugar rush. Her mother’s mixtape played on an endless loop, the same fourteen songs over and over. Soon I had the entire sequence memorized and I was quietly anticipating my favorites.

  On our third day working together, Mary explained that her mother had created the tape in the waning days of her illness, and the track list was a sort of poem. That didn’t make sense to me until I saw the whole sequence written out, in her mother’s delicate handwriting, on the liner notes of the cassette itself:

  Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You

  No One is To Blame . . . It’s Just the Way It Is

  Someday, Someway . . . Against All Odds . . .

  Things Can Only Get Better.

  Don’t Give Up . . . Be Good to Yourself.

  I Won’t Hold You Back.

  Dance the Night Away!

  You Know I Love You, Don’t You?

  (You Were) Always on My Mind

  You Are So Beautiful

  You Make My Dreams Come True

  I could hear Zelinsky muttering at the cash register, cursing the stubborn gears of some ancient typewriter, and I couldn’t believe he had ever convinced a woman to love him. And yet here was a mixtape to prove that he had.

  I returned the case to Mary. “I can see why you never get tired of it.”

  Mary laughed. “Oh, I’m sick of it! But my dad and I can’t agree on anything else. Picking out the music was always Mom’s job.”

  Mary explained that she had grown up in the store, playing on the hardwood floors with Weebles and Tinker Toys while her parents renovated the interior, painstakingly cutting and sanding and hanging all of the shelves, and hand-lettering all of the signs. The store was a lot busier back then, Mary explained, because so many regulars would stop in just to chat with her mom. “It was like Cheers in here. Three hundred people came to her funeral. The priest said that was a Wetbridge record. And so of course I fainted.”

  She’d lowered her voice to a whisper. There were two women browsing nearby in the stationery aisle, comparing two different boxes of ivory linen resume sheets, and Mary was being careful to not broadcast her story.

  “Did you say fainted?”

  She nodded. “We’re at the Mass, and I’m standing in front of the whole church. And I’m doing okay. Crying a little, but I’m not hysterical. Then I make the mistake of looking at my dad, and he’s crying, he’s hysterical. I’d never seen him cry, ever. And that’s when I lost it. I fell on this giant spray of flowers from the Merchants Association. Knocked it
over and cut my lip on the wire stand. It was awful.” She cringed at the memory, and then shook it off, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You were only asking about the stupid music.”

  “It’s not stupid.”

  Mary put her back to me and leaned toward her monitor, like she was trying to immerse herself in the code. “Let’s get back to work.”

  We were supposed to be animating the legs of the guards so they would bend their knees when they ran. But within minutes, I found myself telling Mary how my father lived in Alaska, how he and my mother were never even married, how we’d probably be in the poorhouse if it wasn’t for my aunt Gretchen. These were my biggest secrets and I was deeply ashamed of them, but I felt like I owed Mary a story in return.

  “I wish I knew why he left,” I told her. “That’s one thing I’ve never understood.”

  She had stopped typing and turned to face me. “He’s going to come back someday,” she said. “Sooner or later, he’s going to want to meet you.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” Mom didn’t offer a lot of details about my dad, but she’d spent hundreds of hours discussing him with my aunt Gretchen, and I’d become an expert at eavesdropping on their phone conversations. Mom described him as “reckless and irresponsible” and “a narcissist” and (this one hurt the most) “a loser.” She insisted he was never coming back, that there was a better chance of Paul Newman showing up on our doorstep.

  “Your mother’s wrong,” Mary said. “One day your dad is going to get curious about you. It’s bound to happen. But by the time he gets here, it’ll be too late, because you’ll already be living in California.” She tapped the monitor with the pink eraser at the end of her pencil. “As soon as Fletcher Mulligan sees this code, he’s going to insist on adopting you.”

  I laughed. “I’m not sure my mom will agree to that.”

  Mary didn’t let logic get in the way of her fantasy. “First it’ll just be a job offer. He’ll want to hire you for Digital Artists. But once you get out there, you’ll need a place to stay, so he’ll give you a spare room in his mansion. You’ll start hanging out, eating dinner with Fletcher and his wife. And once they get to know you, they’ll insist on making it legal. So you can inherit the entire company after Fletcher dies. Like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”