Cool City Limit

Cool City Limit
by W. David MacKenzie

Jimmy bounded out of the minivan as soon as his mom opened the sliding door and tugged at her jacket excitedly. "Did you see that sign back there, Mom?" he shouted as he pointed back down the winding road. "This is where I wanna live. Cooooool!" He drew out the word into a whole sentence and stuck out his thumbs like Fonzie from Happy Days.

His mom tousled Jimmy's hair affectionately then met her husband at the front of the minivan where he was already stomping his feet for warmth. "They sure named this place right," she said as she zipped up her jacket and looked around at downtown Cool. The sign showed a population of 235, but the isolated convenience store and the solitary clerk inside made her wonder where the other 234 people were hiding.

While his parents were talking Jimmy slipped quietly into the shop. The clerk had his back to the counter as he tapped keys on his notebook computer and watched the array of colored dots swirl around in different patterns. Different keys strokes made different patterns and the clerk jotted down notes about each one, oblivious to the young boy staring over his shoulder.

Jimmy, too, was engrossed in the colorful display and noticed a pattern to the flying dots on the screen, a tendency for them to congregate in a certain way. When Jimmy said "Try pressing Control G three times then Option W," the clerk jumped like he'd been bitten by a snake. He stared wide-eyed at the boy, but Jimmy just nodded at the computer. "Try it, I wanna see if they'll all line up."

The clerk, a twenty-something man with a buzzed haircut and smooth face, shook his head and drawled "Kid, I've been working on this simulation for almost a month and they ain't gonna do no such thing."

Jimmy arched his eyebrows and said, "Try it."

The clerk shook his head again, turned back to the keyboard and tapped out the key combinations Jimmy had rattled off. With each keystroke the dancing dots moved closer together; when he'd finished all four he gawked at the screen. The thousands of individual points had formed a solid column of light on the screen. Slowly, the clerk tapped two more keys on his own and the column changed from red to green. He flopped back into his chair and gawked at the boy. "How did you...."

"I hope Jimmy's not bothering you." the man and woman said as they entered the shop. They walked to the counter and the clerk pushed the notebook screen closed as he stood up, but his eyes never left Jimmy's.

"I'm just watchin' him play a computer game, Mom." Jimmy said.

"It's always computer games with you, kiddo." His dad snorted then turned to the clerk. "It's impossible to beat him on any computer game, even ones he's never played before."

"Ya, he just taught me a new move," stammered the clerk.

Jimmy's parents grabbed a few snacks and drinks, paid the clerk, and the three of them returned to the minivan. The clerk was watching them climb into the vehicle when the store's backdoor opened and a soldier walked in.

"What are you staring at, Lieutenant?" he barked.

The clerk snapped to attention. "Sir, that boy..." his gaze drifted back to the minivan as the family backed out of the parking lot and into the quiet road, then turned back to the Captain. "He solved the cryo-stabilization simulation."

Both men turned to look out of the store's large front window just as a logging truck sped around the curve in the mountain road and barreled into the minivan sending flames and shredded metal flying everywhere. The Lieutenant and Captain raced out of the shop, their screams of "medic" echoing through the air as they ran toward the wreckage and were joined by a dozen camoflaged soldiers who emerged from the shadowy forest to aid in the search for survivors.

******

The Colonel paced back and forth in the dimly lit observation area. Just beyond the foot-thick glass wall the Army's best cryo-surgeons worked quickly and carefully on the mangled body of a ten year old boy while a score of thermal-suited technicians hovered nearby, ready to leap into action as soon as the extraction was completed. The boy should never have been here, but now the Colonel and his team were this boy's only chance at life and the boy was their only chance of progressing this program beyond the theoretical stages.

He had always argued that this installation needed a secure perimeter, but his superiors believed hiding in plain sight was a less costly option. So few cars used the mountain road that it seemed impossible an accident like this could ever happen. That was one of the reasons why the Army had bought the town in the first place. The other reason was that someone higher up had a sense of humor and couldn't resist placing the Cryogenic Operations and Optimization Lab in a place actually named Cool.

For the tenth time the Colonel asked "Are you really certain the boy solved the simulation?"

The Lieutenant stepped out of the shadows. "Yes sir. Jimmy, ah, the boy, seemed to sense what needed to be done. I just pressed the keys he called out and then tweaked it a little."

"And why did you have the simulation above ground in a non-secure area in the first place?" the Colonel moved toward Stephens as his face reddened. "You were supposed to be on store lookout duty!"

A cough from an aid diverted the Colonel's wrath, turning his attention back to the operating room where the surgeons seemed to be finishing up their procedure. The cryo-surgeons stepped back from the operating table and the technicians elbowed their way in and surrounded the table, bringing new equipment and bizarre appliances with them. The Colonel moved to an intercom and pressed a button. "How long before I can speak with the boy?"

The technician replied without even looking up from his work. "It'll take us a couple of hours to hook up the interface wetware and test the new cryo-stabilization paramaters." said the tinny voice from the intercom. "If that works then give us another hour to make sure he's acclimated and the wetware actually functions in real-life conditions, then you can speak with him."

"And if these new parameters don't test out?" questioned the Colonel.

"Then as soon as we make the insertion the cryo-solution with flash-crystalize and we'll have another freezer-pop on our hands just like every animal test we've run before now." The technician pause then faced the Colonel. "I sure hope you know what you're doing with this boy's life, Colonel."

"So do I." the Colonel whispered under his breath as he clicked off the intercom button and the technician went back to work.

******

"Colonel," said the female cryto-tech as they stood outside the recovery room, "we've dimmed the lights to be on the safe side and Jimmy is aware of his surroundings to some degree, but he's having a little problem with visualization at the moment." She paused to consult her clipboard full of charts.

"And his hearing?" asked the Colonel?

She smiled, "Oh, his audio pick-ups and comprehension are perfect and the speech synthesis is working better than expected. He actually sounds like a kid and that has some of the technicians stumped since the vox unit should be nearly monotone."

"What about movement?"

"We have not connected the relays for any of the mobility servos," she said. "We didn't want to take the chance that he might injure himself accidentally. He'll need a lot of retraining until he's able to move on his own."

The Colonel considered a moment and then asked, "Does he know what's happened?"

"No," she answered. "I'd say he's recovered from the anesthetics, but he may be experiencing some emotional shock. He's been pretty quiet, just giving simple answers to our simple questions."

The Colonel turned to enter the boy's room. "I don't want to be disturbed unless your monitors show he's in some sort of danger."

"Yes sir."

As the technician had said, the room was nearly dark except for the soothing blue glow emitted by the equipment. The Colonel walked quietly over to Jimmy and put his hand on a piece of equipment. "Hello Jimmy. My name is Joshua Hood," he said quietly. "Can you hear me."

"Yes sir, but I can't see you very well, it's dark." His voice did sound like a boy's to some degree and Colonel Hood detected a note of worry in the mechanically accented sound.

"Your vision will improve in a day or so." Colonel Hood paused and the whirs and clicks and beeps of the machinery filled the silence. "Jimmy, there's no easy way to say this so I'll just say it. Your family was in a bad accident and your parents, well, they did not make it, but they didn't suffer either."

He watched as the patterns on Jimmy's EEG monitors became erratic and a few other machines beeped faster than before, but soon they all settled down and Jimmy asked, "Did I die, too?"

"You were seriously injured, and we thought we wouldn't be able to save you, but that trick you did with the man's computer game helped us. It's hard to explain, but you solved a problem that we've been working on for a long time."

"And that saved my life?" asked Jimmy's new voice.

Colonel Hood walked forward and placed his hand on the side of the clear insulating cylinder on the table in front of him. Though it was warm to his touch, it was filled with a super-cooled blue fluid that was in no danger of crystalizing thanks to Jimmy's help with the simulation. Inside was the delicate brain and portion of spinal cord that was everything that remained of Jimmy. Micro-thin wires extended from the organ like a wild head of hair and connected to a host of equipment that replicated Jimmy's senses and allowed him to experience and interact with the world.

"Yes, Jimmy." He patted the cylinder as he would have patted the boy's shoulder. "And you're going to be one amazingly important young man."

"Cooooool!" came the boy synthesized voice.

******

Lieutenant Stephens made a short sweeping motion with the paint brush and stepped back to admire the small change he'd made to the sign: Cool City Limit pop 236.