Unmatter and the meaningful haikus

This story is inspired by the Rumplestiltskin fairy tale and is for children ages 8-12

Here’s how I get abducted: I’m bashing my hiking boots against the front steps of our townhouse, dislodging clumps of earth from the tread, when the Securitechs come for me.

There’s three altogether, dressed in matching black pants and suit jackets like they were 3D printed from the same program. I’m in Mum’s vintage Earthpeace t-shirt (holey and streaked with dirt) and shorts.

They walk up the steps in unison until they’re right above me, blocking out my sun which, I won’t lie, kinda ticks me off.

“Luke Woods?” says the middle one, voice all monotone. It’s like they want to be robots or something.

“That’d be me.”

I make a big thing of shuffling over so the sun’s on my face again but then he bends down towards me and despite the warmth, a chill runs down my spine. Cause here’s the creepy thing about the Securitechs: you can’t see their eyes.

See, most people that live in Sanfog city – even the Coders – wear the clear ispecs so you can at least tell where they’re looking when you talk to them, even if they’re actually watching cat vids or something. It’s just kind of polite, right? Dad and I have these ancient, held-together-by-tape versions that still fog up if you breathe too hard so we hardly wear them. But not the Securitechs. Their ispecs are black and glossy and reflective like spider’s eyes.

I shake off a shudder. “What’s up, automatons? Out shopping for some personality?”

At this point, I have no idea why they’re here. Dad’s inside making me my favorite post-hike PB&J sandwich with sprinkles. They can’t be here to see him though cause he’s about the only person in the neighborhood that isn’t a Coder for Codelabs. Codelabs is where the Securitechs are from.

It’s not about Mum, either. She works as a keeper at the Endangered Species Zoo on the other side of the city. Correction: used to work. 

Mum loved her job, even though it was mostly picking up lion crap. She used to say it felt so good to do something she believes in, that means something to her. Dad’s a writer, a novelist, but he’s totally embarrassed by it cause it’s low-tech and makes basically no money. 

Whenever our neighbor asks Dad about work he goes all red and starts bragging and totally exaggerating my tech skills because of one good grade from school that was a fluke. He wants me to be a Coder. Work in a world of zeroes and ones. Build a career in something people respect. But I kinda want to be a poet instead. I just can’t bring myself to tell him that.

I write where I hike, in the small patch of redwood forest near our house: the last one in the state. I used to go with Mum all the time. It’s where we scattered her ashes last year.

Chest.

Ache.

Anyway. The abducting.

So then the middle Securitechs steps forward so I’m in his shadow again. “You’re coming with us.”

Um, like hell I am. “Actually. You’ve got the wrong person. I’m about to go eat my weight in sandwiches and read a book but thanks for playing.”

I go back to banging my boots clean, purposely flicking some dirt on the Securitechs’ immaculate boots. But they’re not going away. 

“You will come quietly or we will take you with force.” 

That’s when I feel a trickle of foreboding like water running down my back. I pull on my boots and stand up. “Let me just get my dad.” I turn to go inside then one of them grabs my arm and starts pulling me down the steps towards their electric van.

“Oi!” I try to pull away but his jacket swishes to the side and I see a laser gun in its holster. I scream for Dad and I scan the street for help. Then I see him. Our neighbor. Our neighbor who works for Codelabs. And it hits me like a falling tree.

Dad. 

The neighbor’s sneering now. “You thought you could keep it a secret but your father just loves to boast about your tech talents.”

Suddenly I’m being pushed into the van and my mind’s going crazy trying to figure out what he could have said. Just before the van door slams shut our front swings door opens. Dad’s standing there with a jam covered knife. “LUKE!”

Thud and the sun’s warmth vanishes behind tinted windows.

In the seat next to me is a woman with no ispecs but her actual eyeballs are black (and I’m going to have to take back the spider analogy I used before because I really, really need to use it now).

“So, you’re Luke Woods,” Spider Eyes says and smiles. “The boy who can code gold.”

***

In case you literally don’t have the internet:

Codelabs is this company in Techvalley that’s supposed to be at the forefront of a new technology using this weird UnMatter stuff they’ve started mining in space. It’s like this non-substance, right, something that hasn’t become what it’s meant to be yet so it’s nothing but it still exists somehow. Like a thought before you think it. They reckon they can transform UnMatter into anything if you can input the right code into it. 0 and 1s and all that. You just tell it what to be and its molecules just morph into that thing. They say they’ll be able to make unlimited amounts of plastics and oil and synthetics except they haven’t really figured it out the right codes for them yet and I don’t think they’ve made anything.

So here’s what I’m thinking as we zoom through about ten security checkpoints and right into the guts of Codelabs: I’m thinking a) no one knows how to code gold from UnMatter and b) no one knows how to code anything from UnMatter and c) I’m screwed.

Spider Eyes drags me out of the van and into the atrium of an enormous building I’m guessing is Codelabs HQ. And while there’s definitely some kicking and screaming, I’m mostly staring around me because wow. This place is basically the future.

What look like flying electronic carpets whisper Coders up, down and around. An AI robot transports quivering containers of what I’m guessing is UnMatter from one room to another.

As we move through the lobby, no one questions the fact that Spider Eyes is in possession of a dirt-streaked, sweaty 13-year-old kid. I’m thinking this means she’s not a Securitech and is maybe kind of a big deal. Then, in about 10 seconds flat, an electronic flying carpet has shot us up and up and through a gliding trapdoor into a huge room made of black glass.

No windows. No doors.

“Welcome to Codelabs. Mr Woods.” Spider Eyes is smiling again and I realise her eyeballs have actually been removed and she’s had some kind of ispecs implant which is, obviously, completely insane. I wonder what information is shooting across them right now. Stuff about me. About Dad. About Mum. And suddenly I want to rip her glass eyeballs right out of her smiling head. “I trust you had a comfortable ride.”

I shrug. “As far as abductions go, I give it an 8 out of 10. I deducted two points for the ‘you’re coming with us’ cliché. I mean, I thought you guys were meant to be innovative.” 

And she laughs. “I like that. Now, Luke, as you’ve become aware, a trusted employee of mine has let me in on a talent of yours that I’m very interested in.”

“He’s wrong! I can’t do it!” 

But Spider Eyes ignore me.

“Here’s the thing,” she says and sighs. “The company’s not doing so well. We’ve burned through out grant money and well, people aren’t so happy with me. I’m broke.” She starts pacing in circles around me. I watch her closely. She seems tired.

“The truth is, Luke – can I call you Luke?” I nod warily. “I’m sick of working in tech. I don’t care about UnMatter and writing programs for plastics. My heart’s not in it.” She pauses now and admits: “I don’t know what I do want but it’s not this.”

And for a second, I almost feel sorry for her.

“But I need money,” Spider Eyes continues. “Money to get out of this place. Money to go and find out what I do want.” She stops and looks right at me and I realise what’s coming. “Fill this room full of solid gold bars in three days and I’ll let you go without a fuss. Don’t and, well,” she shrugs, “the company’s always looking for low-tech coders to tend to our cleaningbots.”

“No.” I try but fail to stop my voice wobbling. “You don’t get it.” And I’m angry now. Angry that I’m not smart enough for my own dad. “I CAN’T!”

But it’s like she can’t hear me. “Happy coding, Luke.” 

And then she’s gone down through the trapdoor leaving only a smooth glass floor behind her.

***

The girl appears at midnight.

I don’t see at her at first because I’m staring into the screen of this Mattertransformer® machine in the corner, furiously typing. It’s this keyboard and screen with wires trailing off into the luminescent UnMatter that sits in a glass case. Well, sometimes it sits. Sometimes it hovers. And sometimes it’s black. And sometimes it looks like it’s not there at all. I’ve bashed out every variation of code using its symbol AU and atomic number 79 and 01010101010101 but nothing’s working. The UnMatter just wobbles and vibrates gently.

“Hey golden boy.”

I spin my chair around, bracing myself for more freaky black eyeballs except hers are green. Like, first day of spring green. Green green. She’s not wearing ispecs and she’s dressed in white pajamas. Bare feet.

“Um. Hey.”

Earthpeace, she mouths, scanning me not like ispecs do but like people do. Then her eyes light up. “Is that dirt?”

“Ahhhh...it was a post-hike abduction.” Suddenly I feel self-conscious. “I wasn’t exactly given time to shower.”

“Cool! I’ve never even seen vids of hiking. Mum says it’s outdated.” The girl plonks down on the floor cross-legged.

“So, ah, who are you?”

She smiles and for a second I feel like the black room’s the universe and the stars have just come out. 

“I’m your fairy godmother,” she says. “And I’m about to grant you a wish.”

***

Her name is Acer and get this: she’s Spider Eyes’ daughter!

She lives here in an underground tech-suburb that definitely does not have any dirt or hiking trails and she’s pretty much been brought up by the Securitechs and the Coders. She’s never left TechValley.

I wonder what it must be like, to only know glass and plastic and metal and electricity. To never have dirty feet or sunburn or sand in your hair. Being in nature’s like breathing to me and I wonder how Acer hasn’t suffocated yet.

I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor with her now munching on some chips she’s brought.

“So,” she’s saying, “I overheard a coder saying they saw this kid my age and he’s all covered in dirt and I think to myself I gotta see this. And then they said that you can code gold which I think to myself nuh uh, no way. Cause only I can do that.”

“Say what?” I jump up, head spinning. “You can code gold?”

She smirks again. “Been able to do it for years. Just never told my mum or she’d probably chuck me up here like she’s done to you and I don’t really dig the princess-in-the-tower Rapunzel vibe.” She runs a hand through her pixie short hair. “So I play dumb and she buys it.”

I pause, imaging my dad finding out I’m too dumb to be a coder. “Don’t you care what she thinks about you?”

She pauses for a moment then shrugs. “It doesn’t matter, does it? It doesn’t change who I am.”

It’s then I decide I like Acer Green Eyes.

“Okay, okay,” I say. “This is awesome.” I’m kneeling in front of her now, stomach bubbling with excitement. “So, you’ll help me. Right?”

She screws up her nose.

“Right?!” I ask again and I wonder for a second if she’s actually on my side.

“I’ll code it for you.” She hesitates. “But I want something in return.”

“Anything. Whatever. What do you want?”

The request comes out all soft like a secret. “Show me a tree.”

***

Now here’s one really cool feature of the new ispecs: you can show someone else your memories. You can’t duplicate them (something about the risk of memory tampering) but it projects them right into their brain.

Acer hands me a pair and for a second I hesitate. My memories of nature are also my favourite memories of Mum. What if this damages them somehow? But I decide I have no choice.

So we hold hands and I show her a giant redwood. She cranes her neck to see the tree tops a thousand light years above us.

“That’s awesome,” she whispers, gripping my hand in a tight squeeze before slipping off the ispecs.

I’ve left mine on and made the mistake of looking next to me and there’s Mum. She’s wearing the Earthpeace top. Her hair’s golden in the sunlight. I rip off the ispecs and Acer’s already over at the Mattertransformer®.

“Right,” she says, mostly to herself. “Let’s do this.” 

Her pale fingers dance over the keyboard and she types and sways like she’s moving to music. I take gold out and refill the glass case with more and more UnMatter that’s sometimes piled in the corner and sometimes floating around the room. She types so fast I can’t figure out how she’s doing it but by morning the room’s a third full of gold bars.

“I’ll be back, golden boy." 

Then she’s gone through the trapdoor.

***

The next day I’m pacing in the dark and thinking about Dad and why he lied about me and I figure it’s that he thinks people are like gold bars. 

Because gold, right, gold’s only important, only valuable, because humans say it is. Like it wouldn’t be worth a cent without someone else saying so.

I think we should be more like trees. Because trees are amazing in their own right. They can just stand there all proud not caring what anyone else thinks and it’s not humans telling them they’re special that gives them their worth.

At midnight on the second night, Acer appears. She’s brought lemon cake with a sticky glaze this time. I tell her about my mum and she tells me about her dad.

Her parents aren’t together but her mum got custody mainly because of her job. Her dad works as a small-time coder somewhere in Techvalley. When her dad got sick a few years ago he had to stop working and that’s when Acer learnt to code gold. To help her dad pay for his treatment. Except the treatment didn’t work.

Acer wipes away a tear and I tell her I understand what it’s like to have to sit around and wait for someone to become a memory.

I tell her about my favourite kind of poetry. Haikus. I teach her the structure (five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables). Recite one, she says, but I tell her I don’t have any memorized. 

“My dad always wanted to be a singer,” Acer says. “He used to sing me these jazz songs when I was a kid. He wrote lyrics about how sometimes music can mean so much it’s like food if you’re starving.”

She starts humming and the whole rooms feels electric but her voice catches and she sighs. “My mum’s going to leave me here.” 

I freeze. “What?”

“When she goes. Mum says she can only afford for one of us to follow our dreams. The Secuitechs will be my official guardians.” She sighs. “But a life of tech till I’m 18… I can’t.” Her voice hardens. “I won’t.”

“I...I wish I could do something.”

She smiles. “You are.”

We finish the cake.

“What do you want this time?” I ask her.

She takes out the ispecs. “Show me an animal.” 

Together, we watch a graceful black tail deer drink from a stream, nose and ears dark like they’ve been dipped in ink. And there’s Mum again, holding her breath in awe of the animal.

When morning comes the room is two thirds full of gold. Before Acer finishes she hesitates, then her brow furrows in concentration and she codes herself a pure gold saxophone.

So cool.

She picks it up with a smile and then she’s gone.

***

The next day I’m pacing and thinking about nature and how I love it because it’s somewhere I don’t have to be anything but me. Because the thing about being in nature is, your clothes and your hair and how smart you are and what job you have doesn’t matter. Nature doesn’t judge you.

That's when I decide to tell Dad. About the poetry. About being a tree, not a gold bar. And I decide I’ll show Acer anything she wants tonight to get out of here and back to him.

At midnight on the third night, Acer appears.

“What do you want?” I ask.

She looks down then up at me. “Leave me your memories.”

For a second I don’t think I hear her right but then she keeps talking, looking desperate like she’s clinging to a cliff edge. “I can’t live in this fake world till I’m 18 without your memories of nature! Leave them to me. Download them into my ispecs.”

“But...” I start feeling sick. “But I can’t duplicate them! I wouldn’t have them for me anymore.”

She sighs. “I know.”

And my head’s spinning. My memories? Of nature. Of Mum. There’s no way. But if she doesn’t code the gold I can’t go home. “Acer. No.”

“Then I won’t help you,” she says, although it looks like it hurts her. 

I slump to the floor, without a choice really, and I’m on the verge of saying yes when –

“Unless,” Acer says.

“Unless what?” I jump up.

“Code me some nature of my own.” She grabs my hand and squeezes. “Leave me with a single leaf and I’ll finish the gold.”

And before my heart can sink properly, before I can tell her what she already knows – that I don’t know how – she’s gone.

***

I’m pacing in the yawning black universe of a room again and thinking how? How can I change UnMatter into something else if I don’t know the code for it?

I think about Acer, fingers typing like mad. I race over to the Mattertransformer® and look down at the keyboard. How? I see traces of sticky lemon icing from last night’s cake on the keys but I notice something strange: it’s only on the letters! The numbers haven’t been touched at all.

I rack my brain. Think, Luke, think!

So I think about how badly Acer must have wanted to code gold when her dad got sick. I don’t know what she was typing but I know it must have meant something to her. And whatever it was, it wasn’t ones and zeroes.

Then the sound of a saxophone playing jazz floats up through the floor. Of course! Her dad’s lyrics. She was typing her dad’s song lyrics! I place my fingers on the keyboard and the UnMatter shivers with anticipation. I start typing.

Golden hair shining

Dappled light through vivid green leaves

She’s like the sunshine 

Because of course I’ve memorized my poems. The haikus. The ones about nature and Mum. I’m shaking as my fingers dance across the keyboard. The UnMatter stretches and warps, infused with meaning because I’m not telling it what it should be, I’m letting it be what it thinks it should be.  

Over and over I type my poems and then I start to smell earth and the molecules are morphing now into green and brown and GREEN!

The trunk of the giant redwood smashes through the roof of Codelabs HQ like it’s breaking through the ceiling of the world. It’s growing up, up, up, like some kind of freak Jack and the beanstalk plant and black glass comes tumbling down all around me, shattering by my feet, moonlight pouring in after and turning the room silver. Next to me, the roots of the massive tree have ripped the Mattertransformer® into a million pieces and are spreading across the floor like snakes, trying to find earth.

“Woah,” is all I can mutter. “Awesome.” I’ve coded an entire redwood! Maybe I’m not so bad at this. Then the glass below me starts to break. 

Uh oh.

The weight of the gold and the tree is too much for the fragile floor and there’s a huge cracking sound like thunder and then I’m falling.

And I’m trying to grab at tree roots but I keep missing them and I’m falling.

Falling.

Falling.

THUMP.

It’s Acer on one of those electronic flying carpets and she’s swept up underneath me and we’re swooping through the empty Codelabs HQ atrium dodging falling glass and gold bars and tree roots like electronic flying carpet ninjas!

We come to a smooth landing a few blocks away from the imploding building, just where the carpet loses range. Acer tumbles into my arms and my stomach jolts.

“You did it!” she screams and she’s laughing. “You coded me a tree!”

“Yeah,” is all I can say back, dazed. “Yeah.”

We stand there for a while, watching Codelabs HQ crumble around this tree and coders emerge from underground tunnels, complete shock on their faces, until a soft thwomp thwomp thwomp sound starts coming from Sanfog City, getting louder and louder until the newscopter is right above us.

***

A week later I’m back hiking in the redwoods near my house. Dad’s up ahead, leading the way to Mum’s resting spot, and he’s saying sorry for the billionth time. Turns out, he’d figured out the 'humans are more like trees than gold' stuff all on his own. He even gave the neighbour a copy of his latest book. Also, he loves my poetry so I totally forgive him.

“Thank god you got out of there in time or I never would have forgiven myself,” he calls back to me, panting. “The cops were right to shut that place down.”

I’m just smiling and sucking in the earthy smell of cool, morning forest.

The news has been asking me for interviews about what happened but I’m staying quiet. I don’t want Acer’s mum to be arrested – she’s already out of a job. The official story is that the UnMatter is too unpredictable for humans to safely work with. The UnMatter division of Codelabs is shut down for now and they had to move their HQ because, well, there’s a giant tree where it used to be.

Acer’s going to take care of the redwood and who knows? Maybe there’ll be a forest again there one day.

The cops took away the gold, except for a few bars Acer kept in secret. Enough for her and her mum to survive on until her mum can find a job she cares about in Sanfog.

Finally, Dad and I reach Mum’s spot and I pull out my notebook of poems. The golden sun shines through the trees and lights up the ink and I don’t need a memory. Because she’s here right now.