Sirching

“Dr. Sirch?”

He was a tiny dot in a room about the size of heaven. The back wall was covered with monitors that flickered every few seconds and Sirch clicked, absorbed, then changed to a new webpage. Sirch didn’t budge from his row of twenty monitors on the back wall of the Big Room. Maybe if he made no movement at all, she would stop calling his name and his headache would go away. And then he could sit and surge all day. And then -

“Doctor? Are you in there?”

The clacking of shoes approached. Sirch sighed, burying his hands in his sleek, jet black hair, trying to stop his headache and keeping his eyes glued to the screens.

Sirch drank a swig of backup juice for his head – the pain was starting to make his eyes water. Massaging his temples, he could feel the metal, the wires and the routers of New Brain, that he’d put in himself when he was five to keep his life while people plagued kids without cyberparts. Those were dark times. These were dark times. Twenty-one years had gone by and it had never ached as badly as this.

He absorbed and swung to the next set of monitors: the Void. He looked. Pictures of his father. His mother. His love, Demetria. The Void had taken them years ago. But the question lingered: Where were they?

Maggie, his assistant, pushed open the door without knocking. She hated when he took the Big Room, even though he insisted he was far more comfortable in wide spaces.

Time, Sirch thought, only half-listening, surging through the web pages on his one hundred monitors that lined the back wall of the huge white-walled room. Time was the problem. Because if there was more of it, he thought, massaging his head, his set of 100 monitors and his New Brain could help him surge frequently, and keep going, keep trying to find the Void -

“Doctor. Pierre Fander is here to see you.”

Sirch looked up.

“Doctor.”

The word slithered out of Fander’s mouth, making Sirch feel slimy.

He came with a stack of papers, forced Sirch to turn in his automatic swivel chair and pushed them into Sirch’s hands. Sirch saw a photo of a little girl shoved into the file with a brown bob and beaming eyes. She looked like a younger Demetria.

Sirch’s heart sunk.

“Fander,” he stuttered. “No. Please, no. Not her – ”

Fander paused, watching Sirch blubber as he realized who Fander’s next victim was.

“Alvin Sirch. Remember our little deal? I make you famous – the most famous researcher the world will see. I will do everything for you. The world will revere you. People will travel far and wide to see you.” Fander adjusted the claw on his right hand, which Sirch knew turned into a gun on command.

“Under one condition: you do all my research, exactly as I lay it out, which involves destroying the human race, child by child. Or your family and your girlfriend in my hiding explode into smithereens with the press of this button.” Sirch knew Fander wanted children just as every ruler of the Death did: because they didn’t have metal parts yet.

His New Brain pounded. He took a breath, unable to see clearly anymore, took the stack of paper and started netizen – searching all 100 monitors for the girl’s information, location, whereabouts. He felt sicker than ever. Surging the Void would have to wait.