Tuners Read online

  Tuners

  Aaron Frale

  The first book of the Tuners trilogy

  Copyright © 2020 Aaron Frale

  Other Books by Aaron Frale

  Comedy

  Time Burrito

  ORION

  Othello and Zombies

  Xmas Elf: Secret Agent

  Science Fiction

  Atmospheric Pressure Series

  The Robin Hood of Couches

  The Teristaque Chronicles

  Time Agency

  Horror

  Playlist of the Ancient Dead

  Desert During Day of the Dead

  Short Story Collections

  Cowboys and Drones

  Consider supporting me on Patreon!

  To my wife Felicia, who helped come up with the idea while walking in front of a Forever 21 commenting about how they are in every mall in America

  1

  Jon Xiong’s earbuds crackled, overpowered by a blast of static. His music interrupted like a radio station losing signal. In a silhouette of purple light, a blonde in a blue plaid skirt and a white button-up shirt seemed to step into existence in front of the Forever 21 sweater display a few feet from Jon’s location. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and he had a brief moment where he thought he had imagined her.

  As real as anyone else, she pulled a pair of pink headphones from her ear and stuffed them into a hipster backpack. She spoke into her phone. “I’m in U-42—In pursuit.”

  She turned and crashed into Jon. They tumbled to the floor. She was on top of him. He looked into her crystal blue eyes and was utterly lost for words. He stammered, but nothing came out.

  “Sorry,” she muttered and pushed herself up.

  Jon lifted himself to standing, and by the time he turned around, she was gone. The only thing that was left was her white smartphone with the pink case that she had dropped in the collision. He scooped up the device. The make and model were unfamiliar to him. The lock screen had a picture of her and another girl who might have been a younger sister.

  Jon was seventeen, had spiked hair and a skateboard. A white cord snaked from his backpack to his earbuds. He was always listening to music, and the soundtrack of his life irritated his dad. His father hounded him to take the earphones out and pay attention once in a while. Jon, on the other hand, wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he didn’t listen to music.

  A flurry of blond hair and a blue skirt zipped by the window of the store. He dashed after her. After a quick scan, he saw the direction she had gone. Jon darted off and wove in and out of the people. At one point, he got stuck behind a large group of elderly women power walking in their jogging gear. Another group of girls sneered at him when he pushed through.

  Finally, he made it to a large intersection where the mall branched in several directions. He looked every which way and didn’t see her. He thought he had lost her when he noticed that she had gone down a set of stairs. It was a small service entry. He had almost missed it.

  A man in a large coat held her by the neck. He had black hair, a black beard, and was missing a couple of teeth. There was a scar on his forehead. It looked as if someone had carved a star into his flesh. The man held a blade to her throat. It was an odd weapon that erupted from his knuckles like if Wolverine had one giant fierce claw. She struggled to free herself but couldn’t escape his grip.

  Jon thought fast and put his skateboard on the floor. There was a No Skateboarding sign right in front of him. As chance would have it, his favorite punk song, The Idiots Are Taking Over by NoFX, queued up on the playlist always rolling around his ears. Jon kicked his feet off the ground and skated toward the staircase. A hefty mall cop from across the way saw Jon and yelled, “You, stop right there!”

  He jumped the board onto the railing of the stairs. He ground his way down, and the black-bearded man turned at the last moment. The board cracked the dude in the teeth, and the guy went sprawling down to the ground, dropping the blonde in the process. Jon whirled around and stuck his hand out. She took it, and he helped her to her feet.

  He locked eyes with her for a brief moment.

  “You dropped this,” he said and handed her the device.

  His heart pounded because he wasn’t sure what to do next. He didn’t talk much to girls, much less ever saved one before. Jon had never been good with women. He didn’t really know what to say to them, and they always ignored him.

  “Thanks. I got it from here,” she said and swiped the phone.

  “Um—What about him?” he stammered.

  She ignored him and turned towards the man sprawled out on the ground. The guy was rubbing his head and groaning. She pulled out her pink headphones and put them in her ears and jacked into her device. She swiped at an app Jon had never seen before and placed her hand on the man’s shoulder. She said into her phone. “I got him. I’m tuning now. I just got a local to deal with. Hey, you.”

  “Jon,” he said.

  “Jon, could you go upstairs and get mall security. Don’t worry. This guy isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Um—okay,” Jon said and turned toward the stairs. He got up two steps and said, “Maybe I should just call…”

  The blonde and the man were gone.

  Seconds later, the overweight mall cop appeared at the top, gasping for air, exhausted by his run across the mall.

  “You come up here!” the cop said between breaths. “Don’t—make me—come down there.”

  2

  Jon buried his face on his desk. His bedroom was covered with posters of his favorite bands. Jon’s dad had grounded him for a week. His old man even locked up his skateboard for a month. It was the worst day of his life. Not only did he let the girl get away, but he was caught by the mall cop.

  His friends would never let him live this one down. Not that he planned to tell his friends. If he told anyone that he saw a hot girl disappear, they would think he was crazy. His friends would hide a blow-up doll in his locker. Jack Falshon’s dad had one of them hidden under his bed, and they found it one day and couldn’t stop laughing. The prank possibilities of such a find were endless.

  “You do your homework!” Jon’s dad yelled.

  “I can’t,” Jon said and didn’t look up.

  “You sit here all day. Is that what you want?”

  Jon turned his head to face the other way.

  “Three characters. By tonight.”

  “But, Dad!”

  “Three characters.”

  Jon’s dad would always force him to write in Chinese calligraphy. He would teach new words all the time. Jon didn’t see the point. It wasn’t like he was going to China anytime soon. He would be stuck in Montana his entire life, and now his one chance at meeting a girl was out the window.

  Jon turned up his music louder until the entire world was drowned out by the noise. He reached under his desk and hit the power button on his PC. It was an old hand-me-down computer that his father had cobbled together from spare parts. There was a surplus store that Jon and his father used to frequent with rows and rows of old electronic junk.

  When Jon was a kid, he used to love going to the surplus store with his dad. They would buy electronic parts and then make something fun. His father made Jon a box controlled by an old remote that would come to life with cascading LEDs, creating patterns, letters, and numbers. It even spelled Jon when he punched in a special code. There was a remote-controlled car with goggles to view through the headlight camera, and his dad also made an LED monster out of a crappy VW bus and took Jon trick-or-treating.

  It was cool when he was a kid. Now it was lame. Jon had refused to follow his dad to junksville and was no longer was excited by his father’s special projects. His teenage years marked the beginning of the end of their relationship that had
been so tight when he was a kid. Now it felt that his father might as well just go back to China because of the distance between them. Not that his father could; they were in the states because of some asylum case or something. Jon was fuzzy on the details.

  The computer booted to the start screen. Jon pulled up a browser window and began watching skateboarding disasters on the internet on silent while he listened to music from his phone. He had a website for Chinese characters bookmarked in case he heard his father stomping down the hallway. A video where this kid fell off the railing and smashed his face into a bar finished when he looked down to shuffle artists similar to The Weeknd. When he focused back on the computer, there was a list of suggested videos, and Jon was stunned by what he saw.

  One of the videos had a screenshot of the blonde he had seen in the mall earlier that day. He clicked on the video. It said, “WATCH THIS CHICK DISAPPEAR IN A CROWDED MALL!” The footage was pixelated and out of focus. The video began with a zoom on some girls’ butts as they walked. The camera jostled, and the operator darted to the side. It was too chaotic at first to see anything, but then he saw her, same blue plaid skirt, and same pink headphones.

  She ran past the operator of the camera, and he hustled to follow her. It was hard to follow the pursuit because of the shaky footage. Thankfully, a few seconds later, she ended up in a little nook created by two store entrances. She tapped and swiped at her phone and disappeared. Jon felt a bit of an adrenaline rush. There was another human being who had the same thing happen to them.

  The video was dated five months ago. It had over 10k views. Jon thought he was onto something huge and was about to add a comment of his own when he noticed the first one. “FAKE!” followed by more abusive ones like “You should have kept filming the butts,” and “This guy clearly likes big butts, and he cannot lie.” No one seemed to believe the video. Jon decided that he would rather not open himself up to being beaten up by the crowd on the internet and clicked on some of the other videos from the uploader.

  The next video was titled “BERENSTEIN BEARS PROVE PARALLEL UNIVERSES!” Jon snorted and laughed out loud. It was no wonder the freak got all these incredulous comments. The person behind the video was nuts and believed in all sorts of government conspiracies. For kicks, Jon clicked on the video.

  It was once again handheld footage. This time the pixelation was even worse as he was in a dark room. Jon could make out the cover of a Berenstein Bears book. The title was obscured. Jon remembered the books from when he was a kid and chuckled to himself. He couldn’t wait to hear what this crazy person had to say.

  “Take a good look at this book,” a voice came from behind the camera. “Who can forget the moral and safety lessons from these anthropomorphic friendly bears that captured our hearts? Except that it is not Berenstein Bears. It’s Berenstain.”

  The camera tilted upward, and now the title of the book was clearly visible. To Jon’s surprise, the book clearly said Berenstain Bears and not Berenstein. Jon could swear that he remembered Berenstein. There was an ‘e’ in the name from his youth and not the ‘a.’ He continued watching, entirely engrossed by the video.

  “Is it a global conspiracy?” the narrator continued. The video then changed to cheap animations to support the narration. “Did the government sneak into our houses and change our books out while we slept? It’s a much more straightforward answer. People from the ‘e’ universe somehow transferred into the ‘a’ universe. Science had confirmed that parallel universes could exist. Is it so crazy to think we aren’t in one? Or that they don’t sometimes bump into each other or that people can’t cross from one to another?”

  The screen changed to a picture of a ghost. It looked like a transparent man standing in a doorway. It was probably a fake, but after what he had seen earlier today, he wasn’t very sure anymore.

  “Take ghosts, for example. Are they spirits of the dead, or are they just people who briefly crossed over from another universe? No more dead than you or I. Is déjà vu an alternate universe sense? Do you feel that you’ve experienced something before because you actually did experience something before in a place much like our own but in different small, almost unnoticeable ways?”

  The screen switched again to pictures of Japan, passports, and other stock photos. The voice continued. “Take the case of the man from Taured. In 1954, Japanese Custom Agents detained a man from a European country called Taured. The man insisted that the country had been around since the Middle Ages. His passport, IDs, and even the stamps from his previous visits were all official. By all accounts, his identification documents were not forged even though his country didn’t exist. Is Taured the home of the Berenstein bears? Will children from their universe see Berenstein over Berenstain? Only time will tell as more clues to the true nature of reality arise.”

  The video ended with a “subscribe to my newsletter” button. Jon clicked it and entered his email address. In the “how did you hear about us” section, he clicked other and wrote, “I saw the girl in the plaid skirt.”

  He sent the form and forgot about it. He wasn’t sure why he subscribed to the newsletter. The guy was clearly crazy. Besides, he didn’t ever check his email. Anything worth reading was on Snapchat or Instagram. He clicked over to the calligraphy site. He had better get started on the characters or his dad would wig. He pulled a brush and thick paper from his desk and began to draw.

  3

  The next day, Jon was half asleep in the back of the class. The substitute was showing some boring documentary about a computer beating humans at Go. His best friend, Rashaun, flicked a paper football at his head. He snorted and sat up.

  Rashaun laughed. “You’re falling asleep.”

  “Does anyone care about some stupid robot winning a game? They are going to take us over and rule the world one day,” Jon huffed.

  “Meow! Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.”

  “My parents grounded me last night.”

  “Aww, yeah,” Rashaun said. “You bring a girl home?”

  He said it louder than a whisper, and the substitute teacher looked up from his book. Both Jon and Rashaun made it look like they were doodling in their notebooks. After the sub was satisfied, he lowered his head back into his novel.

  “What’s her name?” Rashaun whispered. “Don’t tell me it was Cindy because that’s just nasty.”

  “Dude, what’s your problem?” Jon asked. “It wasn’t a chick. A cop just caught me doing tricks at the mall.”

  “Did you get it on YouTube? Tell me you got it on YouTube.”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell were you skating at the mall then? There are parks where cops don’t hassle you.” His voice went louder again, and they had to pretend they weren’t talking for a little longer this time. Once the sub’s nose was back in the book, they continued.

  “I was trying to impress a girl,” Jon said.

  “Hells yeah! I knew it was a girl!” Rashaun couldn’t constrain himself. The sub stood up from his desk and walked to the back of the classroom. He pulled out a chair and set it near them. He sat and pulled out his reading material. They were silent for the rest of the class.

  ∆∆∆

  Rashaun pestered Jon all day about the girl. Jon didn’t say much about the encounter, so his buddy assumed they had sex. If Jon were to believe everything his best friend said, the guy was getting sex every week with one girl or another. In reality, Jon knew that Rashaun was having just as much sex as himself, somewhere between zero and none.

  Since Jon couldn’t say much about the encounter without his friends thinking he had gone crazy, Rashaun assumed that the mystery girl was Jon’s girlfriend. Not that Jon would mind having someone like her. She was someone worth pursuing, but there was no way he’d ever have a chance at her. Girls like that always had some boyfriend in college with a chiseled jaw and a football scholarship.

  Still, he couldn’t help but think of her. Knowing that she was out there was almost a worse punishm
ent than the grounding. Being grounded meant that he just sat around in his room. However, sitting in his room took on a whole new meaning when he had a girl on his brain. He couldn’t sit still for too long without an image of her popping up in his head.

  After dinner, Jon went to his room. Once all the nosedive videos began to look the same, he decided he needed a break and to get out of the room. Since he couldn’t leave his house to go see his friends, he decided to go down to the basement. On the way, he passed by the garage. He heard his father tinkering around in the workshop. His dad seemed to be in there a lot more and more lately.

  Without Jon’s mother around, there was no one to bring him out of the workshop. Her death weighed heavily on his father after they left China. His parents had gotten in trouble with the government or something. They had left the country in the middle of the day. Jon’s dad had picked him up from school. He had told Jon that his mom and sister would meet with them later.

  Jon remembered waiting at the airport in America and being shuffled around by all these government workers. Jon and his father had stayed in a facility for a couple days after they fled. They wouldn’t let Jon and his dad go home while they sorted out the mess. His mom and his sister never did show up. All Jon’s dad said at the time was that they didn’t make it. The garage had become a place his dad would go went he didn’t want to look at photos of their mother. Somehow, all their things got shipped to the states in plastic evidence bags. Jon didn’t know what deal his dad had cut between the governments, but the ghosts of his mom and sister were packed up in the basement.

  Jon wondered if he had stopped going to the garage because that was where he had heard his father cry. His dad hadn’t cried at the funeral. It wasn’t as much of a stigma to cry for the Chinese as it was for Americans. Even though his father had tried to hold it together, Jon would come to the garage every so often and hear sobbing. He would walk away, not wanting to see it.