The Rendering by Joel Naftali

Roach wasn’t trying to scan my mind; he was trying to kill me. To
erase
my mind. And it would’ve worked, but the Center’s AI recognized me and sent the information into my personal sectors. Except nothing was formatted, so the data is behaving … oddly.”
    Jamie took a breath. “Okay. So what do we do? How long do you have?”
    “I can maintain the integrity of my data for another three hours—”
    “Three hours?” I interrupted, hope sparking in my chest. “You mean you can come back?”
    “You can reconstruct your body?” Jamie asked.
    “If you locate a Bio-Gen Uplink within three hours, I can rebuild my body. Otherwise, I’ll remain in digital format.”
    “Like, forever?” Jamie asked.
    “No,” the laptop said. “Eventually, my data—my mind and personality—will lose coherence.”
    “Lose coherence?” I asked, even though I was afraid of the answer. “Vocabulary, Auntie M.”
    “Without access to an uplink within three hours,” she said, “I won’t be able to rebuild my body. I’ll become pure data. And after that, my mind will die, too.”
    Jamie bit her lip again. “What’s an uplink?”
    “You mean like that HostLink thing?” I asked.
    “Yes, the HostLink was effectively a superpowerful uplink. A prototype, one of a kind. Gone forever, thank God.”
    “Why is that a good thing?”
    “Because Roach could’ve used it to scan in millions of people almost immediately. That’s why destroying the HostLink was so important. Regular uplinks, on the other hand, just transfer digital format into biological form, and vice versa.”
    “Like those T-bone steaks?” I asked.
    “Exactly. Except the uplinks work both ways—from digital file to physical body, and from physical body to digital file.”
    “The Center’s a heap of charcoal,” I said. “Are there any uplinks left?”
    “Only three.”
    “Then we’ll get one,” I said. “Where are they?”
    “Roach stole two of them last night, and the third’s in a heavily guarded military installation in San Diego.”
    “I don’t care,” I said. “I left you for dead once. I’ll never do that again.”
    And you know what?
    Sure, I’m an ordinary kid, but after seeing what I’d seen the day before—after surviving what I’d survived—I didn’t care. I’d get my aunt one of those uplinks if I had to crawl over broken glass.
    Three hours.
    I had three hours to save my aunt, to bring her back to life.
    Maybe I’d never done anything with three hours before, except waste them playing video games. But this time, I would not fail.
    For the first time in my life, I couldn’t.
SPIN DOWN
    “After I pinpoint the location of an uplink …” The laptop’s hard drive whirred. “Your battery is damaged, Jamie. I have only thirty-eight seconds before power-down.”
    Jamie gave me a dirty look. “Bug knocked me over.”
    “Oops.”
    “You need to recharge the battery,” Auntie M said. “And stay out of sight. They’re watching for you, Doug.”
    “Me?” I yelped. “Who?”
    “Roach and Hund. And the army. And police.”
    “What
?”
    “Roach hacked the military net—and the government, the schools, the police. He controls satellite feeds and security cameras. He edited the report from last night to show that you vandalized the Center, causing the explosion and my death.”
    I swore.
    “On the bright side,” Jamie told me, “you’re famous.”
    “I always thought I’d be famous for my music.”
    “What music? You don’t even play an instrument.”
    “Yeah, but I’m awesome at
Rock Hero Four.”
    “This isn’t a time for jokes,” my aunt said. “They assume that you’re dead, but Roach noticed the shuttle leaving. Expect him to double-check.”
    I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out.
    “Doug, run to Jamie’s house and get online. I’ll talk to you there. Keep a low profile, in case Roach is watching. Jamie, go to school and pretend none of this happened. If they realize you’re