pursed her lips to scream, but the fury quickly fled. How could she stay angry for more than a few seconds, while he stared at the puzzle in his hands so intently? He had no idea she was even upset. Just like his father. It was a logic puzzle, his mother realized, and a familiar one at that.
“Howard, can you look at me?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Howard. Look at me,” she tried again. The boy lowered his puzzle half an inch. It was physically taxing for him to force his crystalline blue eyes up at her. But he did. They were still full of the wonder imparted to him by the riddle in his hands. “If you hear me calling you, you have to answer. Just tell me where you are, alright?”
“Alright,” said Howard.
“Do you understand why?” his mother sighed, tapping her foot. Howard took too long to answer to deceive her. “You’re my responsibility, Howard. Even though you’re very smart, you’re still very small. You need a grownup with you… or at least a grownup to know where you are.”
“I understand,” said Howard. His lip twitched up in the vestige of a grin to show he meant it. His eyes, though, already inched back down at his puzzle.
“You didn’t eat today, did you?” his mother realized. When she’d heard him head downstairs early this morning, she’d assumed he made a stop at the fridge. Now that she saw the caliber of what he was working on, she knew eating was the last thing on his mind. Howard confirmed it with a head shake. “Howard… you need to- you know what? It’s alright, I’ll bring you a sandwich,” she grinned. She disappeared for what was ten minutes to some, two cube twists to her son.
“Thank you,” said Howard, when his mother plopped a plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the workbench with him.
“Mmhmm,” she grinned, and lingered long enough to watch him work. His pupils flicked back and forth across the cubes, just like he was reading a book. “Howard, where did you get that puzzle anyway? It looks just like…”
“It’s a matrix cube knot. I got it from the desk upstairs,” Howard told her. His smirk twitched back again for a second when he found the hole for a troublesome peg.
“The desk… you went through your father’s things again?” said his mother. A vein throbbed through the outside of her forehead. “What did I tell you about going through your father’s things?”
“Not to,” Howard answered. Another peg clicked in. He twisted the cubes with a new spark in his eye.
“And you did anyway?”
“I did,” Howard bobbed his head without looking up. His mother’s mouth pursed to scream again. She reminded herself what happened last time. Howard lived in cabinets and under beds for a week. In the time it took her to think of what to say, Howard turned the cube knots one last time. They clicked together perfectly. “The ones you get me are too easy. Dad’s are better.” His mother’s face drained of color as the two cubes joined together as one. Howard snapped the halves apart. He did it.
“Your father is thirty-five years old, and a fusion engineer! You’re eight!” his mother cried out, “You’re supposed to play with connector-blocks or tiny hover-trains… you’re not supposed to spend all morning solving logic puzzles that your father couldn’t even…” his mother fell away to a mumble when their doorbell resounded through the drywall. She turned back to the house to answer it.
Howard gazed down at his separated shaped for all of two satisfied seconds. He took an idle bite of his sandwich. For once, he wondered about the meaning behind the puzzle, a realm into which he didn’t usually venture. He lived for the solution. But this was no typical mind bender. A matrix cube knot was a visual representation of an AI personality matrix and its great duality. Core programming and learned responses. Those were the cubes. The puzzle was to separate them. Now Howard saw: there was no way to separate them. The two pieces he pulled apart were not cubes anymore, but rectangular prisms. In his attempt to separate the shapes, he had joined them permanently. The puzzle, now complete, was broken.
“No…” Howard heard his mom through the wall. He wandered after her for lack of anything better to do. He left his prisms and his one-bite sandwich on the workbench. Howard found his mother hiding her mouth behind a clutched hand. It stifled her whimpers. There was a man at the front door he recognized from his father’s office. There was a box in his arms.
“Mom?”
“Howard, go back inside. Find another puzzle to play with… but eat first,” his mom choked.
“I’m so sorry, Marissa. Howard,” said the man in the door. His mom reached for the box twice but fell back with a cough to hide her cries.
“I’ll…” Howard’s eyes filled with water. He forgot about his puzzle. He forgot about his sandwich. “I’ll take it.” Just then, he looked almost like the child of eight he was.
“Howard, no,” his mom tried to step between them, to block him from the truth as much as the weight of the box. But Howard was a smart boy. He already knew what was inside.
“Actually… it’s for Howard,” said the man in the door.
“You can’t drop this on him,” his mother shook.
“Marissa, I have to. It was in his will,” the man winced. Then he turned his eyes down on little Howard. He lowered the box into the boy’s arms. Inside was a collection of files, tapes, and tiny fusion tools. The items of highest intrigue, though, were right on top of the mound. Two high-density memory drives. One was labeled Tim. The other said Sheba. “Just like your grandpa, Tim willed his research to your father upon his death… your father willed his to you.”
His mother put an arm around him. She knew how little he usually enjoyed hugs, but then, this one was more for her anyway. She pulled him in close, the sum total of two Carver generations of research between them.
“Howard…”
“Howard? Howard!” shouts pierced the veil of his recurring nightmare. Howard snapped upright in his bed, suddenly twenty-eight again. The voice came from the speaker of his answering machine. He jumped back from the edge of the bed at the sound of a second voice.
“Mr. Carver, your phone is ringing for the fifth time in two minutes,” said a tiny, featureless body the size of a child. It stood beside his bed, staring at him with its glossy black egg for a head.