Black Box 2.0

"If I survive this, my parents and I are going to have quite the talk," he said. Leah said nothing until she stopped the TV again.

"Ah, here we go. I suspect this is one of the most important moments in your life," she said. The image on the screen was Kevin in the basement playing 'Final Fantasy'. After the shock of discovering he had a sister, Kevin noticed that Leah was interpreting the actions from his life. He didn't see things from his point of view but as if someone was directing his life. It was weird. On TV, his mom yelled out.

"Come up here for a moment!"

On-screen Kevin rolled his eyes. Adult Kevin remembered the futility and danger of arguing he was in the middle of a good game. His younger self sighed, paused the game, hit save, and trudged upstairs. He entered the living room, where his mom looked out the window. He stood beside her and saw what she was looking at.

"Someone moved next door?" he asked.

"Yes, and they have a daughter," his mom said, pointing to a kid standing under the tree next door. She was in the shade, so he couldn't see her well, but she looked tiny. "I'm going out to talk to her mom and welcome her to the neighbourhood. Go and talk to her daughter."

Kevin sighed, and his mom shot him a look, so he knew better than to protest too much. He trudged down the porch, shoved on his sneakers and went outside. It was July and hot outside. It was the excuse he'd used the last few days to hide in the basement and play video games. He strolled towards the girl while his mom made a beeline to a woman in her early 30s, wearing an Oakland Raiders cap.

Looking at Lillian on the screen confirmed his first memories of her. She was tiny with long blonde hair that hung limp past her shoulders. Later he found out she was his age but looked three years younger. She was wearing a Raiders t-shirt that floated on her. Kevin recalled seeing kids move into the neighbourhood that looked nervous or shy. He'd seen ones that looked cocky and started bragging. Looking at Lillian, she was none of those things. It appeared she was processing things.

"Hey, I'm Kevin. Welcome to the neighbourhood," he said. Lillian said nothing but looked at him. The image paused.

"What were you thinking there?" Leah asked.

"We had some special needs kids in our class. I assumed she was one of them," Kevin said. Leah started the images again.

Kevin knelt on the screen to look Lillian in the eye. She took a step back.

"Yeah, I know. Being the new kid in the neighbourhood sucks. I was born and raised here, but I know many other kids who have moved in. It can suck for a little while, but eventually you make friends and things work out. What should I call you?" he asked.

"Lillian," she said in a small voice.

"Well, welcome to Granville," Kevin said, holding out his hand. Lillian reached out hers and took it very gently. He smiled.

It was a nice moment. Kevin had always been proud of how he reached out to her. But he knew what was coming next.

"Hey, Kevin, who's your girlfriend?" came a voice from the street. It was Brit, along with her co-conspirators Christina and Tiffany. They were a grade ahead of him. Even at 11, Kevin knew they would be trouble for years. A few years later, Kevin saw an old 90s movie called 'Heathers' and thought those girls could have gotten tips from Brit and her co-conspirators.

"This is Lillian. She just moved here and she's a bit shy," Kevin said. In retrospect, pointing out any weakness to these three was a mistake, but at 12 they already had a finely honed sense of when they could terrorize someone without consequences.

"Oh God, is this another 'special' kid in our school? We're getting overrun with them," Brit said, walking over to look closer. Kevin tried to get between them, but Brit rolled her eyes and pushed him aside. Kevin didn't like bullies, but how to deal with female bullies was something he hadn't figured out yet. Brit towered over Lillian, but she stared back at her with no expression.

"Anything to say, you little retard?" Brit said.

"Brit, leave her alone," Kevin said and touched her arm. She whirled on her and pushed him.

"You don't get to touch me, you little piece of shit," she said. Then she looked at both of us. "Have fun with your girlfriend. We're going to make your lives hell next year. You'll wish you stayed wherever you were before you came here."

And to emphasize the point, she shoved Lillian to the ground, laughed and walked over to the rest of the girls. And at that moment, the image froze.

"You saw it, but didn't process it at the time," Leah said.

"See what?" Kevin asked.

"Look at her face."

He remembered being focused on helping Lillian and outraged that Brit was such a bitch. He missed an important detail. Lillian's face was no longer passive but twisted with rage and hate. If a look could kill, Brit would have dropped dead on the spot.

"How did I miss that?" Kevin asked.

Leah smiled, stood up and stretched. "I dislike being mean, but judging from your memories, you've never been a details person."

Kevin couldn't say much to that. He'd heard variations of that criticism over the years. On the screen, the tv started again, with Lillian's mom rushing out and lots of drama afterwards. Her mom was always very dramatic and fussy. The images began to accelerate again, but he recalled bringing her to the rec room later and showing her the PS2.

Within the hour, she mastered the game. Over the coming weeks, whatever game Kevin put on, she breezed through it. She could kick his ass in any competitive game. It was his first clue that maybe there was a lot more to Lillian than met the eye.

"You introduced her to computers?" Leah said. On-screen, Kevin's adolescence scrolled by. A growth spurt, a breaking of his voice. A helpless pursuit of cute girls.

"It was more my mom. She saw how good she was at video games and let her use our old MacBook in the basement. Once she saw how good she was with it, she talked to her mom and convinced her to get a computer. Next thing you know, universities are throwing scholarships at her when she was 16," Kevin said

"Mmmm," Leah said, as she watched Kevin's teen years fly by. "And what happened to the bullies?"

"They all kind of vanished. Christina's parents moved away. Melanie's mom died in a traffic accident a couple of years later. She moved to be closer to her dad's parents. And Brit..."

Leah looked at him. It was weird; she knew what he thought but was still asking. Probably some way of keeping him engaged.

"Her parents divorced. There was some scandal around his dad that never came out completely. There were rumours he was found with child porn or had some kind of...relationship with Brit. I never heard of any charges laid, but everyone talked about it. She left town at 15, and I never heard of her again," he said.

"Mmmm," she said. "And her?"

On-screen was red hair and glasses. Freckles and fair skin. A shy smile and curves. She was standing before him on the path he sometimes used as a shortcut when coming home from his summer job. Her hand was out towards him.

"Erin," Kevin said quietly.

"Your first girlfriend," Leah said. Kevin shook his head. She wasn't. Not really. He'd had a massive crush on her through high school. He even asked her out once, but she politely shot him down. At the time, he thought it was odd because he saw her looking at him repeatedly.

But after high school ended, she ambushed him while walking home. She kissed him, took his hand, and dragged him into the woods. Kevin had briefly thought maybe he was being set up, but then they came across a small tent. She looked at him, peeled her t-shirt off and crawled into the tent. Kevin didn't need to be asked twice and crawled in after her.

Frozen on screen wasn't that. This was weeks later. It was the last time Kevin saw Erin.

"Leah, please," he said. It hurt to look at Erin.

"No," she said, but not unkindly. "You need to see this."

"You're late," Erin said on screen, scolding him.

"Sorry, we had some late customers. I told my boss I had a hot redhead waiting to have sex with me, but he said he wasn't letting me leave early to jerk off to porn," Kevin said.

She gave him a dirty look, then grabbed his hand as they retraced their steps through the woods for the 20th or more time that summer. Kevin remembered the first time they fucked. Erin said she didn't want to go to UCLA as a virgin and he was cute enough to help her take care of the problem. Every other time after that she labelled it as 'practice.'

Kevin never complained. He'd turned 18 earlier that year and being a virgin was concerning. So they were on the same page. Her insistence he could never tell anyone about them hooking up was baffling at the time. They never dated because she was moving away and he was staying to go to university in-state. But she said it was over if she heard a hint of a rumour they had hooked up.

They came upon the clearing with the old tent. Erin said she found it when helping her mom clear out the basement. It took an additional beating that summer.

Erin paused at the edge of the tent and kicked off her sandals and pulled down her shorts. She made quick work of her t-shirt and just like that was naked except for her glasses. She did a little pose in front of him. Kevin recalled how hard he was at that moment and how stunned he was that she could just be that effortlessly sexy. Even now, processing the memory through whatever bizarre reality he was in right now, he could feel a chainsaw of emotions running through him.

"Hurry up and get undressed. Because you're so late, we'll have to be quick," Erin said.

Kevin undressed. He recalled how self-conscious he was, but looking at Erin now, he could see how eager she was for him to get naked. When he finally pulled down his underwear, he moved towards the tent. Instead, Erin cut him off, dropped to her knees and took his cock in her hands.

"Nuh-uh. It's almost dark. Tonight, I want to be outside," Erin said, taking Kevin's cock into her mouth before he could say anything. Once her lips and tongue began to work on his cock, Kevin stopped trying to talk.

It was a surreal thing watching himself have sex with Erin. He knew people recorded themselves having sex all the time, although he never had. But watching himself have sex, he was oddly embarrassed that Leah was there. Still, he remembered this night and thought back on it from time to time. It's not like he was the most skilled lover at 18, but he was proud to see that he wasn't terrible.

After she got him good and hard, Erin flopped back on the grass and spread her legs open. She was also the kind of girl who did her research beforehand about sex, so there was no way she was giving blowjobs if it wasn't reciprocated. Kevin dropped between her legs and began to lick. Erin had trimmed her bush a bit, but nothing too drastic.

"Oh, that's it, Kevin," Erin moaned on the screen. "Just like that. Now suck my clit hard."

Kevin listened. He hadn't had many girlfriends, but he'd always been eager to please. He could see that it probably started with Erin. She gave him directions on what she wanted; he listened.

"Oh yes!" Erin screamed out, grabbing his head as she came.

Kevin could see himself pop up from between her legs with a grin on her face. Erin was still catching her breath as Kevin reached over to his jeans and fumbled out a condom. He tore off the wrapper and slid it over his cock. Erin had laid down the law early about condoms. Kevin recalled knowing better than to ask for an exception for their last time.

He went to move back between her legs when Erin stopped him and gently pushed him onto his back. She threw a leg over him and climbed on top, taking his cock, positioning it upwards and slid down on it. Both of them groaned.

"You are in a hurry. You normally wait until you're closer before getting on top," Kevin on the screen said, reaching up and playing with her nipples. She moaned and looked down at Kevin through her glasses. Erin always left them on, saying she wanted to see what was happening. He had no idea what magic she used to keep them in place, but it worked.

Kevin watched as Erin bounced on top of him, her breasts moving back and forth. He recalled their earlier 'practices', when she was on top, was often playful and slow. But this time, there was urgency and focus. Kevin could see the look of concentration on the face of his younger self as he tried not to cum too quickly.

Erin's face grew more and more flushed as she bounced on him.

"I can't last much longer, Erin," Kevin gasped.

"Oh God!" Erin cried out, cumming and then collapsing on top of him. Kevin came seconds later, more from relief than anything else. For a few moments, neither one of them said much.

"Is this what you wanted to show me? A porn video starring me? A thrill to send me off to before my brain melts," Kevin said, looking at Leah.

She sighed.

"The last time you two had sex is a powerful memory, but it overwhelmed the conversation you had afterwards. I wanted you to see that so that you could put this into context," Leah said, nodding towards the screen.

On-screen, Erin draped Kevin's work shirt over her body to keep warm. She slid off his cock, resting her head on his chest. Kevin recalled finding dirt in interesting places when he got home, but at the moment, he didn't care.

"Not that I'm complaining, but I thought you had to hurry," Kevin said on screen.

Erin ran a hand over his chest and didn't say anything for a moment.

"If my friends knew I'd hooked up with you they'd kill me," she said, "It's kinda verboten to even think about hooking up with you."

"Why? I mean, I thought for years you kinda liked me, but you shot me down and some of your friends and other girls flirted with me, but then gave me the cold shoulder. I thought it was girls being girls..." Kevin said.

"No, I mean, we're still teenage girls, so there's always going to be games. But a couple of years ago, when we all started high school, a group of us all thought you were cute. It was kinda a joke which one of us was going to bag you first," she said.

The stunned look on Kevin's face mirrored how he felt at the time. He'd had zero luck with girls in high school and remembered being shocked there had been a competition to 'bag him.'

"But you have someone watching over you, and they're very protective."

"I don't understand. There's no one watching over me," Kevin said.

Erin lifted her head off his chest and then sat cross-legged next to him. The light was almost gone; at the time, her face was mostly in shadows. But looking at the conversation on the screen, Kevin could see her face clearly. She looked scared.

"Back in Grade 10, my girlfriends all joked that the first one who saw you after Christmas break would ask you out. I got food poisoning over the holidays and didn't stop vomiting for days. Jo went skiing with her parents and broke her leg. And Angela nearly drowned in Florida. After that, we took the hint," she said. "Every girl in the school took the hint about you."

On the screen, Kevin looked confused. Kevin was processing what he missed the first time in the here and now.

"Erin, that's just bad luck. I'm not cursed or anything. This is silly," he said.

Erin shook her head.

"Without fail, every couple of months, we'd hear about some girl saying you're cute or posting up on a chat group asking how come you were still single. And without fail, something bad would happen to her a few days later. You have a guardian angel and she's a jealous bitch," she said.

Kevin should have asked who she was talking about. Maybe things would have turned out differently. But he honestly thought it was just Erin being silly or deflecting why she shot him down. There was no way groups of girls out there thought he was cute. She couldn't be talking about a real person. And even if he had, he never would have believed she was talking about Lillian. Hurting people in the way she described was some serious supervillain shit.

Instead, he asked something self-centred and stupid.

"So if I'm cursed, why hook up with me now?"

The fading light made it hard to tell, but Erin looked wistful.

"I really do like you, and maybe I wished I'd taken the chance, cursed or not. I think we could have had a really good few years together and had a lot of fun. So I decided to take a chance just before leaving for California to have some good memories of you. I mean, we're not doing the long-distance thing, and I still want you to swear you won't talk about this. But yeah, maybe I'm crazy, but I wanted just some of this summer with you," she said.

Kevin could feel himself getting upset as the images on the screen began to speed up again.

"What happened to her?" Leah asked.

"You know," he said. "You've gone through my thoughts. You know what happened."

"She disappeared."

Kevin nodded. "She was at a party her second year at USC. She left to walk home and didn't make it. Nobody ever figured out what happened to her. It was a huge scandal."

"And you didn't suspect Lillian?" Leah asked.

Kevin had enough. Leah had the power to damn him, but he was done with her insulating that he was an idiot.

"No, I didn't! Why would I think a frail girl my age who barely communicated with the world, who lived in computers, was a goddamn super-villain! Why would I think she would set up people to be injured or killed? If you had told me then I probably wouldn't have believed it because it sounds insane," he said.

Kevin fumed, and Leah said nothing. He stood up and walked over to the bar, resting his hands on the top of it. He wasn't much of a drinker but wanted one now. He wanted to storm out of the rec room and leave all this bullshit behind but knew that would be foolish. It's not like he could go anywhere. He took a deep breath and looked back to the couch. Leah looked at him, nodded and looked back towards the TV set. The images stopped flipping and froze on a person he blamed for his current situation as much as Lillian.

"Mitchell."

It was impossible to miss the hate in his voice. He'd always loathed him, but now feared he would kill him if he got the chance and wouldn't lose a second of sleep over it.

"Do you recognize this?" Leah asked. Kevin moved back from the bar and sat in a chair next to the couch. It was foolish, but he didn't want to be that close to Leah at that moment. Oddly, her features seemed to shift. At this moment, she looked less like Leah, more like an approximation of how she might look if he described her to an artist.

"Until recently, it was the last time I saw him. Lillian introduced us a few years earlier, and we immediately hated each other. He thought I was some soft 'Libtard' and I called him the kind of person who would volunteer to serve coffee to Hitler in bed.

"This is him coming to brag he won," Kevin said. "I'd been trying to talk to her about using her skills to help people. He wanted her to go to a "think tank" that did shady work."

On-screen, Kevin was in the library when Mitchell came to his table and sat across from him. Kevin ignored him, hoping he would go away. When he realized that wouldn't happen until Mitchell had his moment, he looked up.

"What?" Kevin said.

"You've never understood Lillian. It baffles me that you don't understand her at all. You've had all this time and you treat her like she's some damaged child instead of who she is," he said.

Kevin had variations of this argument with Mitchell before, but he seemed more smug than usual.

"And who is that?" he asked.

"The most terrifying computer hacker I've ever met. You want her to go and help people, but your idea is teaching kids or creating a better app for ordering food. She's going to do good work, but for the people I work with," he said. Kevin looking at the screen was having the same thought as Kevin on screen; that Mitchell had the most punchable face of any human being he'd ever met.