The Madman and His Little Sister

Abby stuck her head around the door and whispered, “Well I do declare, what are you still doing up, Mr. Rhett?” It was a silly accent and a silly question. Her big brother was always up.

Bob was click-clacking away on his computer and didn’t look over, which was okay with her. Abby was used to being ignored by Bob, and she assumed most little sisters were probably also used to being ignored by their big brothers, though in this case, Abby was thoroughly convinced none of those little sisters ever had a big brother quite like the one she did.

Hers was both a genius and a madman.

Abby shut the door with well-practiced delicacy, then ghosted across the room to bounce herself once at her usual spot at the end of Bob’s spaceship bed. Sitting here, she was far enough away so she wasn't going to bug anybody, but still be close enough to watch Bob's fingers dance across the keyboard of his computer.

Abby had never seen anyone work a keyboard like her big brother. He was a genius, no doubt about it. All you had to do was watch him on his computer to know that. All you needed to know he was a madman was listen to the schemes he came up with.

Abby sat silently waiting on the bed for the right time to speak. Exactly when that "right time" would arrive was difficult to say. It varied. One thing Abby learned for sure was, you don’t make a peep when he's going good and while his fingers are a blur. No, you wait for him to slow a bit, then watch his face for that little smirk to appear, and now his fingers will usually come to a full stop before making one final pièce de resistance clack, at which point he will sit back, raise his arms in the air, and nod his head to some invisible standing ovation going on inside his head. It was when his eyelashes began fluttering that Abby sat forward.

“Well, I’m telling Mom,” she informed him casually. "I'm sorry, but I have to."

“Ooh! What a surprise.”

“And if I don't tell Mom, I want a raise for sure. After what you put me through these last weeks, I definitely want a—”

“You’re getting your usual.”

“In Pounds!” Abby stated firmly.

“Doll-Hairs,” Bob cooed in a voice one might use when having the same exact argument with the same exact person so many, many times before that it almost drives you insane.

“When I tell Mom, you’re going to get into so much trouble! I mean it! I truly can’t believe how much trouble you’re going to get into. You’re looking at prison time, pal.”

“I’m thirteen, and they don't throw people like me into prison. They sign us up in the CIA. Now, which account do you want it? The Seychelles?”

“Nix.”

“Mauritius?”

“Double nix.”

Bob now turned fully around in his chair to sneer at his total brat of a little sister. As expected, there she sat dressed in her pink butterfly pajamas buttoned up tight to her hard-nosed little chin.

He raised one eyebrow and waited. Abby almost told him he looked just like a total nerd when he does that, but it would only anger the boy-genius, which was the last thing she wanted at the moment.

“St. Lucia, I guess. No! Make it…yeah, send one thousand pounds to St. Lucia.”

“Dollars,” Bob said under his breath and began doing his special banking whistle, which he saved for hacking corporate accounts. It was a strange, windy sound, a cross between a whistle and a hiss through his teeth. Whatever it was, and however it sounded, he always seemed totally unaware he was making it.

She watched his fingers again. Abby knew he was bringing up his famed, yet not to be ever spoken of, self-designed algorithm which, in this case, would carry out $0.25 withdrawals 4000 times from an assortment of fifty different international banks located around the world. This process would take less than three minutes for all monies to be accumulated and then another five or so for it to hop about from one off-shore account to another before finally arriving safe and sound into her very own numbered account at Bank of Saint Lucia.

This account held nearly $7000, which was about par with her other three accounts. Having a genius madman big brother wasn’t all bad, especially when you had a mom you could use for blackmail. The only problem was that Abby would need her brother’s say-so to get to any of it, and her money would just sit where it was until she turned something like 106. This was obviously not something she could complain to her mother about.

The whole bedroom began to fill with whirring sounds as three separate hard drives from three separate five foot tall mysterious black boxes went to work.

When the machines went silent, Bob and Abby stared at each other. Abby knew he was waiting for her to thank him. She said, “You’re the greatest gosh darn big brother in the whole wide world.”

“Bite me.”

“They almost got you, Bobbie. I mean it. I was so scared!”

“Yeah, it got hairy there for a moment.”

“For a moment! They almost got you, Bob!”

“Hey, they didn’t almost get me. It got bad, and I told you it would, and I told you it would get worse. And then it would be alright. And it was, wasn’t it?”

“I guess.”

“Thirteen more days, and it’s a done deal, right?”

Abby began to walk toward the bedroom door. “Mom says you need to take the garbage out to the curb tomorrow.”

“Fine, fine. Look, Abby, don’t worry, ok? One day I’m going to make you the President of the United States too.”

“All in the algorithms, right Bob?”

“You know it, kid,” he whispered. "And now, we go after the guns."

--994 Words—