“No!”
“Jesus, Ray? Get out some games or something and play with your brother. Where’s the Mad Libs book?”
But now Thomas had undone his seat belt and gotten up on his knees on his seat, and was starting to bang his head against the window.
Dad said, “What the f-”
“Thomas!” Mom shouted.
I grabbed for him but he pushed me away. He kept banging his head against the window. A small smear of blood appeared on the glass.
Dad swung the car over onto the shoulder. Mom jumped out, nearly losing her footing on the gravel, and opened the back door. She wrapped her arms around my brother, pulling his bruised and bloodied head to her breast.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’re going to take 99. We’re going to go home just the way you said.”
I didn’t like going into Thomas’s room. Entering his domain made me uncomfortable in the same way the decorated hall did, only more so. Maps were stuck to the wall everywhere and scattered across the floor. The one set of bookshelves spilled over with various editions of atlases, old Auto Club TripTiks with the spiral binding (did anyone use those anymore?), large cardboard tubes with maps Thomas had ordered off the Internet, hundreds of printouts of maps he’d studied online. Satellite shots of cities I couldn’t instantly recognize.
It was hard to find the single bed pushed up against one wall, it was so buried with paper. It was like vandals had gone on a rampage at the National Geographic headquarters. I wondered how many fire codes were being violated. Between this room and the map-plastered hall, all someone had to do was wander through with a lit candle and this place would go up in smoke in seconds.
I seriously had to think about that.
Thomas was seated at his computer. He had one keyboard and three flat-screen monitors arrayed in front of him, each showing a different browser. On the screens were three images of the same street-left, middle, and right-side views. At the top of each screen was the Web site address: whirl360. com.
I had to admit, it was a pretty amazing Web site. Ten years ago I couldn’t have imagined anything like this.
Once you were there, you basically had the world at your fingertips. You picked a spot anywhere on the globe and initially viewed the location from above, either in a traditional map form, or in satellite mode, as though you were suspended in the sky. You could zero in right down to the roof vents on the skyscrapers.
Cool enough.
But it got so much better.
You could click on a specific street, and see it. Really see it. Like you were standing there, right in the middle of it. With each click of the mouse you progressed several yards ahead. When you clicked and held, you could move to the left or right, or all the way around for a 360-degree view. If something in a store window or a restaurant caught your eye, you could zoom in on it. Read the daily special-“Liver and onions $5.99”-if you wanted.
It was the kind of site I found myself on occasionally. The year before, on a trip to Toronto, I’d visited a friend from my college days who lived just south of Queen Street in the Beach, a trendy neighborhood in the city’s east end. In his e-mail, he told me to come by the house; then we’d head to an Italian restaurant that was only a short walk away.
I went on Whirl360, did the walk from his place up to Queen, then explored a couple of blocks in each direction. Only found two restaurants. I looked them up online, found the one billing itself as Italian, studied their online menu, and knew before I got there I was going to have the lobster ravioli.
So I could appreciate the fascination, understand how for someone like Thomas, the arrival of this kind of technology was a dream come true. Like a Star Trek fan waking up one morning to find out he was actually living on the USS Enterprise.
The street Thomas was currently fixated on was unknown to me. It was narrow, just enough room for one lane of traffic, with cars parallel parked down the right side. I was guessing maybe someplace in Europe.
I set the ice cream next to the phone. Thomas had his own line up here that our parents had put in back when Internet hookup was over the phone. Thomas spent so much time on the Net that our parents were missing calls and couldn’t place any, so installing a second line meant Thomas could be on as long as he wanted. Now, with Wi-Fi in the house, Thomas didn’t have much need for the phone, and about the only calls he got were from telemarketers.
He glanced at the ice cream and said, “No chocolate sauce?”
“We’re out,” I said. I hadn’t actually looked. “Where’s this?”
“Salem Street.”
“Salem Street where?”
“Boston. In the North End.”
“Oh, okay, yeah, of course. I thought you were spending all your time lately in Paris.”
“I get around,” Thomas said. I didn’t know whether he meant to be amusing, but I laughed. “You see anything weird?” he asked.
I looked. People, their faces blurred-that seemed to be a Whirl360 protocol, to blur faces that could be seen head-on, as well as license plates-were walking along the street. There were cars. Some street signs I couldn’t make out.
“No,” I said.
“See this silver SUV here?” He pointed. It was visible on the right screen, a profile shot.
“Yeah, I see it.”
“Look what he’s done. He’s backed into this car, this blue one. You can just see where he’s hit the blue car’s headlight.”
“Can you magnify it?” I asked.
Thomas clicked a couple of times. The image of the SUV’s rear bumper and the blue car’s front end got bigger, but blurrier.
“I think you might be right,” I said.
“You can see it, right?”
“Yeah. So just at the moment the Whirl360 people were driving around with their picture car, they got a shot of this guy backing into the blue car. Son of a gun. They caught an accident in progress, and you just found it. That it?”
“I bet the SUV driver didn’t even know he did it,” Thomas said, spooning some ice cream into his mouth.
“Maybe not,” I said. “I’m gonna watch some TV. Want to join me? We’ll order up a movie or something. Something with authentic locations that won’t annoy you.”
“We need to report this,” Thomas said. “The owner of the blue car needs to know who did this.”
“Thomas, honestly. First of all, they blur all the license plates, so there’s no way you could ever find out who owns the SUV, or the blue car. And second, this picture, this image of this street, has probably been up here for months, even a couple of years. I mean, you’re talking about some minor damage that happened God knows how long ago. The blue car’s owner got that fixed a year back, for all we know. He might not even own that car anymore. This is not some live stream, you know. These are snapshots in time.”
Thomas didn’t say anything.
“What?” I said. “Talk to me.”
“It’s not right to stand by and do nothing,” he said.
“We’re not-Jesus, it’s not like you just saw the SUV run some guy down. This is exactly what I’m talking about, Thomas. You’re spending too much time up here. You need to get out. Come down and watch a movie. Dad got this great TV. Wide screen, HD. It’s going to waste down there.”
“You go,” he said. “I’ll be down in a little while. You pick a movie and we’ll watch it.”
I went downstairs and turned on the television, then hit the right buttons on the collection of remotes so I could connect to a movie service.
I came across a film, only a couple of years old, made in New Zealand, called The Map Reader.
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “Hey, Thomas! There’s a movie here you’ll love. About a kid who loves maps!”
“Sure thing,” he said. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
