Chapter 1: The Soft One

Friday, June 15th,2001

The final bell of eighth grade didn’t ring so much as it relieved itself, a tired metallic clatter echoing through the warping acoustical tiles of Madison Ridge Middle School’s ceiling. Walt didn’t hear it-his industrial-sized headphones were already clamped over his ears, hooked into a battered Sony Discman spinning a custom-burned CD labeled Terminal.wav Vol. III. The mix: glitchy ambient synth loops, distorted modem handshake samples, and a decaying snippet of mission control chatter he’d lifted from an Apollo-era archive. Signal decay, he thought absently. Everything fades. While the herd of students exploded toward summer freedom in a shrieking, backpack-swinging mob, Walt took the side exit, slipping through the east corridor where the janitor chain-smoked and a gutted payphone bled colored wires onto the linoleum.

Outside, the Indiana summer wrapped the school in a wet electric blanket. Heat shimmered off the cracked asphalt. Walt squinted against the glare, thick glasses sliding greasily down the bridge of his nose. His backpack-a faded JanSport sagging under the weight of a brick-like Compaq laptop and a dozen crumpled end-of-year notes he’d never read-thumped against his lower back with each step. “Have a great summer!” Scrawled lies on fluorescent paper. Instead of joining the parade toward the main road and its waiting parental chariots (or beat-up pickups), he cut behind the school, his worn sneakers crunching across the bone-dry drainage ditch, and into the cracked, weed-infested back lot of a shuttered K-Mart. Here, the only audience was a lone crow perched on a rusted shopping cart. Solitude. Breathe.

Internal Monologue (Walt): Final bell. Algorithm complete. Output: summer.exe. Duration: 89 days. Primary objective: avoid Garry Delano. Secondary objective: optimize storm-predict v0.7. Tertiary objective: ... survive. Sarah’s laughter in the hall-frequency 1200 Hz, duration 3.2 seconds, target: Melissa Cho. Probability of redirected mockery upon visual confirmation of self: 78%. Evasion protocol successful. Side exit vector optimal. Heat index: 94°F. Perspiration coefficient unacceptable. Glasses: recalibrate position. Backpack mass: approx 12.3 kg. Laptop battery charge: 37%. Insufficient for sustained runtime tonight. Require AC power. K-Mart lot: safe zone. No visual signatures detected. Proceed.

His movements had a slow, deliberate inevitability to them, like an old hard drive spinning up through bad sectors. Thirteen years old, carrying an extra forty pounds that felt like armor and anchor all at once, already balding slightly at the crown-a patch he compulsively checked in bathroom mirrors using precise angles, then pretended not to care about. Follicular apoptosis. Genetic predisposition + stress hormones. Inevitable. His mind, meanwhile, was already miles ahead, booting up command line prompts and parsing data sets like a second, humming circulatory system. Numbers were clean. Predictable. Unlike people.

Home was a low-slung beige ranch house crouched under the flat sky. A sun-faded flag hung limply above the porch. A giant satellite dish, relic of the 80s, tilted drunkenly in the side yard, its receiver head rusted solid since the non-event of Y2K. Walt entered through the garage, a dim cave smelling of stale beer, gasoline, and damp concrete. He weaved through teetering stacks of Coors Light cases, a leaking bag of lawn fertilizer, and the carcass of a busted push mower. The moment the interior door clicked shut behind him, he exhaled a breath he felt like he’d been holding since third period.

Internal Monologue (Walt): Perimeter secured. Minimal auditory signatures detected: Zenith TV static (living room), Sarah’s hair straightener (bathroom, cycle time 45 seconds), ice cubes impacting glass (kitchen, Garry, probability 99.8%). Dolly: low-frequency murmur. Location: kitchen? Tiff: door creak (single instance), followed by silence. Status: contained.

He was safe. For now.

Internal Monologue (Walt): Threshold crossed. Garage atmosphere: volatile organics (ethanol, petroleum distillates), particulate matter (dust), humidity 85%. Risk of Garry encounter: 22%. Decreasing with distance to bedroom. Sarah occupied (vanity protocols). Tiff: neutral. Dolly: ambient anxiety state. Optimal path: hallway vector Beta, direct to Room 4. Do not initiate contact. Do not attract attention. Mass = target visibility. Minimize profile.

His bedroom-designated Room 4 on his internal schematics-wasn’t just a room. It was a Faraday cage for his mind, a lab, a server closet, and a crash site. Dim and perpetually windowless, lit only by the pulsing, hypnotic blue glow of his massive CRT monitor warming up. The air hummed with the 60Hz drone of the overloaded power strip and clicked with the reassuring chatter of the surge protector-these were his lullabies, white noise erasing the chaotic frequencies of the house. He dropped his bag with a thud that vibrated through the floorboards, flopped into the creaky, duct-tape-patched office chair rescued from the school dumpster, and woke the machine with a precise sequence of keystrokes: CTRL+ALT+ESC.

Three monitors (two scavenged from the county recycling center, one a pity-gift from Mr. Henderson next door who “upgraded” to a sleeker beige box) blinked into phosphorescent life. His main tower-a Frankensteinian masterpiece of mismatched cases, exposed wiring, and salvaged components soldered together over countless nights-ran dual boot: Windows 98 SE for compatibility (games, mostly untouched), and Red Hat Linux 7.1 for everything real. A faded, peeling sticker on the dented side panel declared: Hack the Planet. It wasn’t irony; it was aspiration. Or delusion. Same diff.

He launched Lynx, the text-only browser, its stark green-on-black interface a comfort. He began scraping NOAA’s raw weather data feeds manually. No fancy GUIs. Just the raw stream, parsed through wx_predict.py, a script he’d wrestled into existence using Python 2.0-still new, still clunky, still his. The project: a predictive alert system modeling storm cell drift across the patchwork quilt of rural counties using scraped timestamps, triangulated radar summaries, and atmospheric pressure logs. It was primitive. It was messy. It consumed RAM like a beast. And it was beautiful. A tiny pocket of order imposed on chaos.

His fingers, thick but unnervingly precise, hovered over the buckling keys like a concert pianist poised above ivory. He tapped the command, the mechanical keyboard clacking like anxious teeth:

bash /usr/bin/python2 wx_predict.py

Text scrolled across the center screen in a rapid, hypnotic stream:

Fetching data from NOAA-GOES-8 ... OK Parsing station KPNT (Purdue University Airport) ... OK Analyzing radial velocity & reflectivity ... OK Calculating drift vectors ... OK Generating prediction map (5km grid) ... OK

He leaned in, the monitor’s glow etching sharp lines onto his face, reflecting in his glasses. The terminal blinked a final, triumphant line:

[WXALERT] Confidence: 78%. Severe T-Storm cell approaching from 225° (SW). ETA: 03h 47m ±12m. Impact probability (Madison County): High.

A tiny spark, a flicker of warmth in the cold circuitry of his chest. Accuracy within acceptable parameters. “Good enough,” he whispered, the sound swallowed by the room’s hum. He cracked open a warm can of Shasta Cola retrieved from under his desk, the metallic fizz a small celebration. The sweet, cheap syrup burned his throat. Fuel.

Outside the sanctum of Room 4, the house spoke its dissonant language: the maddening hiss of TV snow through the busted Zenith, the angry thunk-SIZZLE of Sarah’s hair straightener hitting the bathroom counter, the rhythmic, ominous clatter-rattle-settle of ice cubes in Garry’s ever-present glass. Dolly’s voice, a thin, anxious warble, murmured something about dinner, half-drowned. Tiff’s door creaked its single, mournful note again, then sealed shut. A world of unpredictable inputs, emotional static, and landmines.

But here, bathed in the cool, unwavering light of the cathode ray tube, surrounded by the comforting symphony of spinning fans and chattering hard drives, Walt Delano existed as something else. Not the “Soft One” spat out like a curse by his father. Not the disappointment whose report card never measured up, whose body refused to conform, whose very breathing seemed to irritate. Not fat. Not weird. Not less. Here, in the humming dark, parsing the raw language of the atmosphere, he was signal. Pure, clean, decipherable signal. Not the suffocating, crushing noise of everything else.

The dining room light flickered like it couldn’t decide if the Delano family deserved illumination, casting nervous shadows that jumped across the cheap paneling.

Dinner at the Delano house wasn’t a ritual. It was an obligation, a pressure-cooked convergence of incompatible personalities tethered only by meatloaf and reconstituted potatoes. The table itself-a faux oak slab scarred with water rings and supported by mismatched chairs-wobbled slightly every time someone cut into their food. Which meant it shivered constantly, a low-frequency tremor Walt felt in his bones.

Dinner.exe initiated. Runtime: indeterminate. Primary hazard: Garry Delano. Secondary hazard: Sarah Delano. Neutral entities: Dolly Delano, Tiff Delano. Environmental instability: Table oscillation frequency ≈ 0.8 Hz. Amplitude increasing with Garry input force. Light flicker: faulty ballast or voltage fluctuation? Probability: 65% ballast. Requires replacement. Not my problem.

Walt sat at the far end, strategically positioned nearest the wheezing window unit that exhaled warm, exhausted air directly onto his neck. His plate was a study in entropy: gray mashed potatoes already developing a desiccated crust at the edges, a geometrically precise square of dense meatloaf resembling a geological sample, and limp green beans that seemed to have surrendered their chlorophyll under duress. He hadn’t touched it. Caloric intake was secondary to threat assessment.

Across from him, Sarah popped her gum with metronomic precision, her thumbs flying over the keypad of a forbidden pink flip phone held just below table level. Her blonde ponytail executed a perfect, contemptuous bob as she snorted at a text message only she could see.

Input: Digital signal. Output: Social validation. Algorithm: Opaque. Sarah: Communication channel active (SMS). Recipient unknown. Laughter delta: 2.7 seconds. Target: External. Threat level: Low (distracted). Gum pop frequency: 1.2 Hz. Annoyance coefficient: 87%. Recommended action: Ignore. Do not establish eye contact.

Tiff sat to Walt’s left, her fork moving in small, precise, mechanical arcs – lift, pierce, convey, retract. Repeat. She wasn’t eating; she was executing a fuel-loading protocol. Her eyes, downcast, scanned the plate with an intensity that suggested she might be deciphering coded messages in the potato topography.

Possible ally? Status: Passive. Engagement risk: High (potential Garry attention). Maintain neutral posture.

At the head of the table sat Garry Delano-once a high school linebacker, now a monument to muscle gone to seed, crowned by a perpetually flushed face and a gut that strained his threadbare work shirt. His sleeves were rolled high, revealing forearms permanently tanned and scarred from the string of construction jobs he never managed to hold onto. A heavy glass of amber bourbon sweated condensation onto the faux wood beside his plate, untouched but recently topped off – a silent promise.

Garry Delano: Primary threat. Alcohol consumption: Moderate (glass ¾ full, condensation rate indicates recent pour). Posture: Aggressive dominant (spread elbows, leaning forward). Vocalization probability: 98% within next 120 seconds. Subject: Sarah (82%), Self (15%), Tiff (3%). Recommended defensive posture: Minimal profile. Minimize auditory signature.

Next to him, Dolly moved like a ghost haunting her own kitchen. She passed the salt shaker with trembling fingers, refilled water glasses without being asked, her smiles flickering on and off like faulty LEDs – brief, misfiring, and instantly regretted, especially when they accidentally landed on Walt. She laughed too quickly, a high-pitched chirp, when Garry grunted about “those damn tree-huggin’ pencil-pushers” costing him hours on the site.

“So Sarah,” Garry rumbled, spearing a green bean like it had personally insulted his truck. “Coach Wilson stopped me at the gas station. Said captain’s lookin’ likely for next season?”

Sarah finally looked up, a smirk playing on her glossed lips. “Probably. Kendra Morales blew out her ACL yesterday trying to copy my aerial. Serves her right.” She popped her gum again for emphasis.

Sarah: Input (Garry praise). Output (Validation + Schadenfreude). Target elimination confirmed (Kendra Morales). Social hierarchy reinforcement successful. Threat level remains low (focused externally).

“Damn right,” Garry barked, a note of pride warming the bourbon in his voice. He pointed his fork at Dolly. “Told your mom last year-told her plain as day-you got that leadership gene. Runs in my side. Born with it.” He took a satisfied pull from his glass, the ice clinking like tiny warning bells.

Walt reached for his lukewarm can of Shasta, the aluminum slick under his fingers. He took a small sip, the syrupy fizz doing nothing to ease the tightness in his chest.

Maintain neutral activity. Do not attract vectors.

Garry’s radar pinged. His eyes, small and hard like ball bearings, locked onto Walt. A slow, predatory smile spread across his face. “What about you, Walter?” The name dripped with faux concern, oily and cold. “Captain of anything? Chess club? Dungeons and ... whatever the hell that nerd game is?”

Threat vector acquired. Target: Self. Attack type: Mockery disguised as inquiry. Probability of escalation: 68%. Recommended response: Minimal data. Deflect.

Walt hesitated, the Shasta suddenly tasting like battery acid. “I’m ... working on a localized forecasting model,” he mumbled, staring at a particularly desiccated potato lump. “For predicting severe storm patterns. Microbursts, hail cores...”

The room’s ambient noise dipped for half a breath. The window unit groaned. Tiff’s fork paused mid-air for a microsecond, her eyes flicking towards Walt before darting back to her plate.

Tiff: Input received. Processing. Minimal visible reaction.

Garry made a theatrical show of blinking, leaning back slightly. “That so?” He chuckled, a low, grating sound. “Well, hell. That’s somethin’. Maybe next time the power goes out ‘cause of one of your ‘micro-whatsits,’ you can ... I dunno ... hook the generator up to dial-up? Predict when the satellite dish’ll fall off the damn roof again?” He grinned, inviting the room to share the joke.

Sarah snorted, a sharp, derisive sound. Dolly’s gaze snapped to her lap, her shoulders hunching.

Mockery algorithm executed successfully (Garry). Laughter subroutine activated (Sarah). Dolly: Withdrawal protocol initiated. System overheating. Blood pressure rising. Auditory input processing degraded. Focus: Plate tectonics. Plate tectonics.

Walt stared at his meatloaf square, willing it to absorb him. He could feel the heat flooding his face, the blood pounding in his ears like a malfunctioning pump.

Error: Emotional containment breach.

“Tell him what it does,” Tiff said, her voice so soft it was almost lost in the hum of the fridge from the kitchen. But it landed like a pebble in thick mud.

Garry’s head swiveled towards her, his expression shifting from amused contempt to cold surprise, like she’d just spat on the floor. “What was that, Tiffany?”

Tiff flinched, her shoulders curling inward. She didn’t repeat it. The silence stretched, taut and dangerous.

Tiff: Unexpected intervention. Motive: Unknown (Pity? Curiosity? Challenge?). Risk assessment: High (Garry attention redirected). Outcome: Negative (suppression successful). Tiff status: Withdrawn. Threat level to Tiff: Elevated. System error: Guilt subroutine activated.

Walt swallowed against the dryness in his throat. The words felt like broken glass. “It’s ... it’s a pattern recognition engine,” he forced out, his voice flat. “I feed it historical radar data, atmospheric pressure logs, surface temperature differentials ... it learns the vectors, calculates probable paths and intensi-”

“Yeah,” Garry cut him off, waving a dismissive, grease-shiny hand. “Sounds like real man’s work.” The contempt was back, thick and suffocating. He leaned back further, the cheap chair groaning in protest under his weight. “You know what your granddad Darwin was doin’ when he was thirteen? Baling hay under a July sun. Cleaning out pig stalls that’d make you puke just smellin’ ‘em. Built his own damn smokehouse out of scrap wood.” He took another sip, his eyes never leaving Walt’s burning face. “That’s work. Builds character. Builds a man.”

Comparison algorithm: Walt Delano vs. Darwin O’Doyle. Input: Manual labor metrics. Output: Walt deficiency = 100%. Character parameter undefined. Manhood parameter undefined. System conclusion: Inherent failure. Recommended action: Cease communication. Initiate shutdown.

Walt didn’t answer. He focused on a single green bean, tracing its tragic curve with his eyes. Signal lost.

Garry set his glass down with a decisive thunk. The remaining bourbon sloshed. “That’s why you’re goin’ out to the farm this summer. Starting tomorrow morning. Bright and early.”

Walt’s head snapped up. His glasses slid down his nose. “What?” The word escaped before he could filter it, sharp with disbelief.

Input: “Farm.” “Summer.” “Tomorrow.” Processing ... Processing ... ERROR: CORE PROTOCOL CONFLICT. Primary Objective (Avoid Garry) compromised. Secondary Objective (Optimize storm-predict v0.7) critically endangered. Tertiary Objective (Survive) parameters unknown. Farm environment: Hostile (physical labor, Darwin O’Doyle, limited AC power, no dedicated terminal space). Threat level: MAXIMUM. System panic: Initiating.

Garry didn’t repeat himself. Repetition implied the first statement hadn’t landed with sufficient force. “You need the soft burned right outta you,” he stated, his voice dropping into something almost resembling paternal concern, which made it infinitely worse. “And Darwin’ll do it. Always said he could. Fix what’s ... lacking.” His gaze swept over Walt’s frame, lingering for a brutal second.

Dolly’s mouth opened – a tiny, involuntary gasp – then clamped shut. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the edge of the table.

Dolly: Intervention attempt aborted. System override (Garry) absolute.

Sarah’s smile widened, pure predatory delight. She met Walt’s horrified glance for a fraction of a second, her eyes gleaming.

Sarah: Input (Walt distress). Output (Schadenfreude max). Threat level: High (active enjoyment).

Tiff looked away, out the darkening window, her expression unreadable.

Tiff: Withdrawal complete. Emotional signature: Null.

Walt’s pulse hammered against his ribs, a trapped bird trying to escape. His words, when they came, were stripped of all inflection, pure system report: “What about my computer?”

Garry pushed his chair back, the legs scraping like nails on the linoleum. He stood, looming over the table. “You can bring your little toy,” he said, his voice heavy with condescension. He paused, letting the word ‘toy’ hang in the greasy air. “Long as you bring your goddamn boots, too.” He emphasized ‘boots’ like it was a dirty word.

Then he turned and walked out of the dining room, his heavy footsteps echoing down the hall towards the living room and the blaring, static-laced TV.

No one stopped him. No one spoke. The flickering light cast jumping shadows over the ruined meal. The window unit choked on another breath of stale air. Walt sat frozen, the taste of Shasta and dread thick on his tongue, the humming sanctuary of Room 4 feeling light-years away. The farm loomed, a vast, unknown terrain filled with sweat, judgment, and the terrifying prospect of Darwin O’Doyle’s disappointment. His summer, his projects, his fragile sense of control – all just collateral damage in Garry Delano’s endless war against perceived weakness.

Directive received: Farm.exe. Execution: Immediate. System status: CRITICAL. Core functions compromised. Sanctuary (Room 4): Distance increasing. Threat environment (Farm): Loading ... ERROR: Insufficient data. Boots required. Boots ... unknown parameter. Seeking safe mode ... Seeking safe mode...

The door clicked shut behind him like a server disconnecting from a dying network. Walt stood motionless in the center of his room, letting the warm electronic hum of his desktop reclaim him from the dinner table’s gravitational pull. His hands hung limp at his sides, but his mind spun in recursive loops-if he’d spoken differently, structured his sentences with more defensive syntax, would the outcome have changed? What kind of algorithm could simulate Garry’s temper? Could you train a neural network on sneering laughter and the way bourbon made his pupils dilate just before impact?