The Academy: Book 2 (90 page)

             
For reasons he couldn’t understand, Asa’s anxiety flashed back up as he walked past the birds and over to the edge of the stone pool. He expanded his wings out beside him, and when the time was right, he flew over the water towards the third part of the room. He landed, looked back, and gave Boom Boom a thumbs-up.

             
The double doors were ten feet tall, and the handles were crafted to look like a crow’s wings. Asa turned one of the handles and slipped inside of the room.

             
There were candles burning, and a fireplace along the far wall. Again, Asa found it eerie that all the candles turned on automatically—it gave him the feeling that someone lived down here. The floor was ivory, which was so dusty that little clouds came up where Asa walked.

             
The vaccines were in glass boxes on pedestals in the center of the room. There were two separate enclosures, one for each vaccine. The solutions weren’t labeled, but Asa knew that one must cure Multipliers, while the other allows them to Multiply even more frequently.

             
The door behind Asa shut automatically, and then the fire in the fireplace grew to a blinding wall of light. Asa had to turn his head, and was momentarily blinded by the strange flare. After a moment, the fire was back to normal, and Asa could look back in the direction of the fireplace.

             
A man had appeared there. He looked very similar to Asa, but there were some differences. He was shorter than Asa, and not as well built. His face was covered in a prickly beard. His hair was longer than Asa’s, and messier. He wore glasses, but the blue eyes that looked through the lenses were identical to Asa’s. Asa had seen the man before, first in a polaroid that a David had given him in the woods.

             
“Who are you?” The man asked. He crossed his arms.

             
Asa stepped forward until he was standing with only one yard in between himself and the newcomer. “Do you not know who I am?” Asa asked the man.

             
The man’s eyes ran over Asa’s face, and Asa thought he saw the slightest hint of recognition.

             
“I’m your son. I’m Asa Palmer.”

             
Edmund Palmer bit the side of his hand and stepped back with emotion. Asa didn’t know how his father was here.
Allen said that he shot himself.
He didn’t care, though. Asa didn’t need to know why his dad was here. What mattered was that he was immensely grateful to be staring face to face at his dad for the first time. He didn’t consider that this could be a trap, or some kind of test. Asa stepped forward, arms wide to embrace his father.

             
Only, there was nothing there. His arms sliced through his father as though he were only air. Asa looked back and saw that Edmund Palmer was now standing behind him.

             
“I’m not your actual father, Asa. Your actual father is dead. You do know that, right?”

             
Asa’s heart ached in his chest. “I know that,” he said. “It’s just…I saw you, and…”

             
Edmund, or the thing that looked like Edmund, smiled. “I know. I look very real.”

             
Asa agreed. The illusion of his father was indiscernible from a real person. Asa could see the pores on his father’s face, bits of red mixed into his brown beard, and tiny green striations that ran along his blue irises.

             
“So what are you?” Asa asked.

             
Edmund paused for a moment, thinking of how to word it. “I am an artificial representation of your father. Your dad built me to think like him, act like him, talk like him, and, of course, look like him. I am made to, on some level, feel like your father. I feel like I am him, and looking at you, my heart breaks for the son I never got to meet.”

             
“I don’t understand,” Asa said.

             
Edmund looked at the gold watch on his wrist. “We don’t have much time. I’ll go away in four minutes.”

             
“Go away?” Asa said. Even though he knew that he wasn’t looking at his real father, he still didn’t want this representation to leave him. It was like looking at a picture of his dad, or watching old home videos, except better.

             
“Yes, I must go away. When I created myself…or, when your father created me, he decided, wisely, that there should be limits put on me. Anyone with a big enough skill set can create something extremely powerful, but it takes a strong moral compass to impose limits upon the creation. My limits are time. I am only alive for five minutes. My time is slipping.”

             
“But what are you?” Asa asked, getting somewhat frustrated. “What’s your purpose? Why are you here?” his eyes filled with tears. “Just to taunt me or something?”

             
Edmund’s expression showed sympathy. “Asa, no. I love you. I would never want to hurt you. I’ll quickly tell you what I am; your father created a super computer that followed him around—that’s me. I learned what your father thought, hoped, said out loud, and I was instructed to learn to copy it. Your father created me in case he died. I am a substitute for him, and I am here to explain to the first person to walk through that door what these vaccines are for.

“I am a computer that was given the skills to be able to imitate. I am like a
parrot, only my imitations go beyond speech to thinking styles. Your father put a monitor in his wristwatch that fed me data about him at all times. And I used that data to learn to imitate your father. I’m not perfect. If you asked me a question that your father never answered himself, I wouldn’t know what to say. Much of these words I’m saying were words that your father said to people asking him about this imitation super computer.”

             
“But why do you have to go? Can’t you stay? Can’t I ask you some questions about my dad? Can’t we sit and talk? If it’s more power you need, I can plug you in or something…”

             
Edmund put up a hand to stop his son’s fast speaking. “Asa, it’s not a power issue. I am a computer. Computers obey orders. Your father ordered that I destroy myself after five minutes, so that is what I will do.” He looked at his watch again. “Well, in a little under three minutes now.”

             
Asa felt panicky. There was so much he needed to know—so much that he wanted to know. He also wanted to spend more time with this strange machine that acted like his dad. He started with one of his most pressing questions: “So my dad put something into my DNA, right? He coded something in it?”

             
“There are two vials here. Just like in the riddle I wrote. One takes down Multipliers restriction on multiplying, and another is a cure for Multipliers. But both are also stored in your DNA, but in a peculiar way.”

             
“How do I get it out of my DNA and made into a real substance?”

             
Edmund looked at his wristwatch again. “I am sorry Asa, but I don’t have time to explain that.”

             
“You’re right,” Asa said, but he clamped his teeth together in frustration. “We have to make this time count.” He did his best to try to think of the most succinct way to word the biggest problem that he had. It took him ten seconds, and Edmund watched him think patiently. “Multipliers are trying to take over the world,” Asa said. “There are a quarter million of them. Robert King is aware, but I don’t think that he knows how to stop them.”

             
Worried lines appeared on Edmund’s forehead. “This was my biggest fear. I killed myself so that they wouldn’t use me as a weapon.”

             
“What should I do?” Asa asked.

             
“I don’t know,” was all Edmund responded.

             
“YOU DON’T KNOW?” Asa said, frustration and fatigue making him lose control.

             
Edmund raised his own voice,
“How am I supposed to know?
You think that I can devise a plan with so little information? Impossible. Edmund didn’t know about this situation, and I’m not the best critical thinker. I’m mostly an imitator. Although,” the hologram said, rubbing its chin, “I do have one piece of advice for you. Find Francine Black. From what I know about your dad, that’s what he would do.”

             
“Francine Black,” Asa repeated the name. He had heard it before, but didn’t know where. “How am I supposed to find her?”

             
“I don’t know,” the computer that looked like Edmund Palmer told Asa. “I have been dormant for over sixteen years. She could even be dead. We have under two minutes now.”

             
“Well do you have some advice? Something to leave me with, to help me? I’m scared, dad.”

             
His father’s eyes again showed sympathy for Asa. Asa found it odd to speak with this machine. Sometimes he felt like he was talking to an actual person. The machine didn’t seem bothered by this, and answered as though it was indeed Asa’s father. “Go and find the Davids. They are the monkeys that I have mutated. They are oddly intelligent. Go to them. They can help you. They have a very large underground community that not even Robert King knows about.”

             
“How do I find them?” Asa asked.

             
Edmund smiled. “That’s the thing about Davids. You can’t find them, they’re too smart. Don’t bother looking for them. They’ll find you.”

             
Asa didn’t understand, he couldn’t see how that helped. “How do I get them to find me, then?”

             
Edmund paused again, considering his wording. “If you show compassion for the Davids, they will find you. Honestly love them. Develop a charitable heart towards them. Don’t think that you will ever control them. Do these things, and they will find you.”

             
“Dad! That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

             
“We have seven seconds left.”

             
Asa started crying again. “I love you, dad.”

             
“I love you too.”

             
“Can’t I have more time? Can’t you stay a little longer?”

             
But then Edmund flickered out of existence. He was smiling as he left, and Asa walked forward and stood in the spot he had disappeared. The air in that area was warm, as though his father had actually been standing there just moments before.

              Three minutes later, Asa had developed a plan and walked out of the double doors. He had decided not to destroy the vaccines, and he carried them in his hands. They were both purple, thick, and in glass tubes.

             
Mike Plode had been waiting on him to come out. “You can cross on your left side. I’d go now. It’s perfect.”

             
Asa jumped, shot his wings out, and flew safely across to the other side.

             
Jen looked down at the vaccines in Asa’s hands. She had used her dress to clean up her bloody neck, and Asa could see a jagged cut there from Ned’s knife. “Mike said that you were going to destroy the vaccines,” she said.

             
“I was,” he explained, “but then I thought that I could use them. I want to take them to Mama’s house and inject Teddy. One of these will cure him—will turn him back human.”

             
“But how will you know which one to inject him with?” Boom Boom asked.