The Annihilation of Foreverland

supposed to happen,” Zin said. “I shouldn’t be here and Sid shouldn’t be wherever he is. Did you do something?”
    “No. Not really.”
    “Well, what did you do?”
    Danny sat down, rested his elbows on the tabletop. All the dorm windows were open except Reed’s. The curtains were drawn. He was probably curled up in the dark recovering from God-knows-what they did to him. And now Danny had to tell him that he had another round to go.
    “I blew it, man.”
    “Ah, yes. You’ve got the world by the balls here on the island. You can do whatever you want, as long as you go to the Haystack and let them drill your head. Yeah, how could you blow that?”
    “You really want to know?”
    “I’m all about knowing.” He held out his hands and smiled, typical Zin fashion.
    Danny sat nodding and thinking. He got up, walked around. The sundial was fifty feet away. It was the center of Foreverland. Maybe it meant nothing in the real world, but he didn’t like being that close to it, not when he was about to tell Zin everything.
    “Let’s go see Reed,” he said.

46
    The Director draped his floral shirt over the back of a chair and button ed up a beige long sleeved one. He had not been for a walk on his island for quite some time. Lately, it had been all work, work, work.
    When he first arrived on the island some thirty years earlier, he hiked every day. He could also see his abs. Now he couldn’t see what color flip-flops he was wearing. It was the price of intelligence, he often told himself. That, and becoming a lazy slob .
    It was an abandoned resort when he first arrived. Most of the buildings were in severe disrepair. The jungle was taking them back. It wasn’t worth much. So he bought it.
    He didn’t know why he was so hasty. At the time, he just wanted to escape the world. He’d seen his share of heartbreak (his fiancé was having an affair) and disappointment (his business partner died of a stroke at the age of 41) and wanted to heed the advice of a famous philosopher, one Henry David Thoreau.
    Simplify.
    He planned on living out his life on that island. But nothing stays the same. That was the only guarantee life gave you: things change.
    Yes, they do.

    He needed to get out. He was nearing the most critical point of the program, of his life, and he needed to be thinking with a clear head. He had just returned from the fourth floor and had seen what Danny had done.
    He spent some time contemplating it, but his penthouse was suddenly suffocating. Now he was lacing up snake boots to get outside for awhile. He shirked the flip-flops and shorts. He wasn’t opposed to risk, just not when there wasn’t a payoff. And what he’d seen on the fourth floor was a risk, indeed.
    But the payoff was worth it.
    The boy became data.
    The fourth floor analyst, Mr. Jackson, advised him to remove Danny from the program. When boys went inside the needle, they needed a digital body. Once that was gone, the identity would scatter into the Nowhere, bodiless. Lost. Nothing.
    But Danny didn’t need a body. He became data, floating through the system like a ghost. He had done something no one had done before. Something the Director didn’t know was possible. He had no idea what kind of power he had. It came too easy.
    He could bring everything down the next time.
    Danny had sensed the trap. The Director made it obvious, rigged it so that Danny would suspect it was too easy. He knew the boy was brilliant, and with brilliance comes patience. He wasn’t hasty. He would look for another way to escape the island’s network to get into the outside world, and the only other way was to infiltrate the heart of the Chimney.
    Right where they wanted him.
    Danny moved inside the Loop P rogram: a digital environment that simulated the outside world. There was a chance he would recognize it was a mock-up, but he didn’t. Danny thought he had escaped again and went right through the United States military firewall like it was a video game.
    His infiltration of Milstar was all inside the network of computers on the fourth floor. If he had actually been in the real world, there would be a satellite-filled crater somewhere on the island.
    Brilliant.
    Mr. Jackson suggested Danny be removed from the program permanently. What if he knew it was the Looping Program and slipped out?
    Well, he didn’t.
    Mr. Jackson didn’t understand what the Director saw. He didn’t see the potential. He knew that Lucinda was an anomaly that escaped from