by Scott Meyer
Corporal Bachelor said, “Ma’am, his only injury is the fracture, but he suffered some nausea during the flight. He’s mostly just dehydrated.”
“Ah, I see.” The colonel nodded, then turned to the medics as they scrambled out of the ambulance. “Give this man soda crackers and Gatorade; that’s what my mother always gave us when we were dehydrated. Fix him right up.”
Eric said, “Thank you, ma’am. But wouldn’t soda crackers soak up the moisture and make me more dehydrated?”
Dynkowski asked, “Are you saying my mother was wrong, son?”
“What?” Eric stammered. “No, I would never say that.”
“So you’re saying that I misunderstood you.”
As the medics took over supporting Eric, he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m not myself right now. I’ll eat the soda crackers.”
“Good man, and drink the Gatorade.”
“I don’t actually like Gatorade. Is there some other—”
“Grow a backbone, kid.”
Before Eric could say anything further, the medics hustled him into the ambulance and out of the colonel’s sight.
The colonel’s gaze traveled over the group and found Jeffrey, rubbing his eyes, clutching his tablet, standing beside and partly behind his mother.
“You must be Jeffrey,” Dynkowski said.
Dr. Madsen said, “Yes.”
Dynkowski nodded to Dr. Madsen, then looked back at Jeffrey. “Welcome, Jeffrey. Have you ever been on a real army base before?”
Dr. Madsen said, “No, he hasn’t. Isn’t that right, Jeffrey?”
Jeffrey just gave a tired nod.
Dynkowski smiled at Jeffrey. “Well, I know it’s all new and scary right now, but I think you’re going to find that there are a lot of fun and exciting things to see here. First, though, we need to find you somewhere to sleep. Lieutenant Reyes, perhaps one of your squad could show Jeffrey to the VIP quarters and get him bunked down while I talk business with his mother.”
Reyes said, “Cousins, show Mr. Madsen to his room.”
Cousins put a hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder and led him away. “Come on, Jeffrey, let’s get you to bed.”
Jeffrey said, “Okay,” looking down at his tablet.
Dynkowski said, “Everybody else, please follow me. We’re going to have a quick briefing, then you’ll all be shown to the VIP quarters as well.”
She turned and started walking toward a nearby hangar without waiting for agreement or looking to see if everyone had fallen in behind her. They had—even the civilians.
“Mr. Torres,” Dynkowski called back. “Good work sourcing that plane for the trip over. We’ll give the pilot a place to get some shut-eye, fill his tank for his flight home, and he’ll be reimbursed for his time.”
“That’s good,” Torres said. “I was thinking it might be smart to keep him around a little while, though, in case we need to fly somewhere else.”
“That’s good thinking, but not necessary. If we go anywhere else, I’ll be coming too, and I refuse to fly in any aircraft that predates the invention of seat belts. No, they’re busy modifying two cargo planes at McConnell Air Force Base to sever them from any kind of network connection to the outside world. We’re doing the same to some of our own vehicles and equipment. When the time comes to move out, we won’t be doing it in an antique or a school bus.”
Good, Hope thought. That should be more comfortable, and the pilot won’t be one of Torres’s random friends. I don’t know why the idea of the pilot not knowing or caring all that much about the passengers makes me feel better, but it does.
Torres asked, “Has Agent Taft arrived yet?”
“No. He’s flying in from DC in an old Cessna. It should take him quite a while.”
“That won’t be a fun trip,” Torres said.
“No, he should be miserable. And that’s not the only good news. In the time since we spoke, the A.I.’s random mischief attacks have dwindled down to nothing. We haven’t received a report of anything strange in hours. And the two-robot reign of terror in Vegas seems to have ended. The robots fell off the Vegas PD’s radar sometime after six thirty last night, and there’s been no new activity since. They’re out searching for them now. Their cars didn’t start working again until sometime after midnight.”
Reyes asked, “Ma’am, what about the other eight robots in the personnel carrier?”
“We’ve received spotty reports of sightings on the highways and at gas stations in northern Nevada and southern Oregon. It’s hard to get a real fix because there’s a time lag. Everyone who gets within a half mile of the personnel carrier finds that their cell phone stops working for at least an hour afterward.”
They walked into the interior of the hangar, where three light tactical vehicles were waiting to drive them to the colonel’s command center. They quickly divvied themselves up among the vehicles. Hope started toward the same one as Lieutenant Reyes, then decided it might be for the best if she chose to ride in another. She had turned and taken two full steps when she heard Reyes say, “Miss Takeda?”
Reyes stood beside the LTV, holding the door open for her. Hope said thanks and got in.
The LTVs were starting to pull out of the hangar when Cousins ran up, carrying Jeffrey on his back.
“Have you already run out of things to do, Private?” the colonel said.
“No, ma’am. It’s Jeffrey’s tablet, ma’am.”
“What about it?”
Jeffrey held the tablet up. “My friend wants to talk.”
“You connected this child’s tablet to the Internet, Private?”
“No, ma’am,” Cousins said. “It seems to have connected itself automatically.”
“I’m sorry, Jeffrey,” Dynkowski said. “You can’t talk to your friend. We have to keep your visit here secret.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to me,” Jeffrey said. “He wants to talk to Hope or Eric.”
Cousins said, “Tell them your friend’s name, Jeffrey.”
“Al.”
25.
The police car pulled into the convenience store parking lot. Cold, blue-tinted light streamed out of the store’s windows, providing more illumination to the empty parking lot than the streetlights did. Two officers stepped out of their car and surveyed the scene. One was short and stocky. The other was tall and stocky. Both looked tired.
“Christ,” Officer Collins, the short one, said. “We’re really on the ass end of the ass end.”
Officer Hay, the tall one, said, “You’d rather have early-morning drunk-herding duty out on the Strip? I’ll take the ’burbs any day. Besides, if the cars hadn’t started working again, we wouldn’t have been able to respond to the call at all.”
“Yeah, but tracking down a report of ‘something weird behind a Circle K’ doesn’t exactly make me feel lucky.”
The officers stepped toward the entrance but stopped when the cashier came out to meet them. He was tall, thin, and young, with the kind of complexion you’d expect from someone who worked nights handling taquitos. “Hey, thanks for coming out. Took you a while.”
“Yeah, it’s been a tough day,” Officer Collins said. “What’s the problem?”
The cashier said, “Come here. I’ll show you. I don’t know what to make of it.” He motioned for them to follow as he walked around the side of the building.
“I noticed it when I went to take the garbage out,” he said. “Usually I’d just call a tow truck, but then I got to looking at it, and, well, take a look for yourselves.”
The three men rounded the rear corner of the building. The officers had been briefed about the day shift’s experiences, and the sight of the bullet-riddled pickup sitting on four destroyed rims in the dark alley gave them an instant shock of recognition.
“People dump their trash back here all the time,” the cashier said. “They figure the garbage truck’ll take it when they get our dumpster. We get broken TVs and old couches all the time. Never had a car be
fore, but I’ve heard of it happening. I figured that’s what this was until I saw the extension cords.”
Two thick extension cords trailed from the driver’s-side window to the back of the building, where they were plugged into a power strip, which was plugged into an outlet. The outlet had been sealed in a locked metal box. The mangled remains of the box’s lid hung by one badly bent hinge.
Officer Hay asked, “Did you look in the truck at all?”
“I started to, but I didn’t want to get too close. That camera there started following me.” The cashier pointed to the escaped bomb squad robot, which still sat silently in the bed of the truck. “I got close enough to see that the bed’s full of guns and electronics and stuff, so I called you.”
Officer Collins turned on his flashlight and pointed its beam at the truck. Nothing happened. He took two tentative steps toward the truck. Still, nothing happened. He looked back at his partner and shrugged.
“How long has it been here?” Officer Hay asked.
The cashier said, “I found it, I don’t know, an hour and a half ago? It was the first time I came back here this shift, so it could’ve been here a lot longer.”
Officer Collins said, “They lost track of it at around seven last night. It might have been here ever since.”
“Wait,” the cashier said. “You guys were tracking this? What is it?”
Officer Hay said, “It’s what it looks like. It’s a shot-up truck full of guns.”
“Yeah, but what’s its deal?”
“We really don’t know. Sir, it might be better if you went back inside.”
Officer Collins took two more steps toward the truck. The bomb squad robot’s camera tracked him.
“Yeah,” the cashier said. “I think I will go inside.”
The cashier slipped around the corner of the building and out of sight. Officer Hay called in for backup while his partner continued to examine the truck.
Officer Collins kept his eyes trained on the bomb squad robot’s camera as he continued toward the truck. Beyond the camera, which was still following him, there was no other motion or sign of life from the truck. He shone his flashlight into the truck’s bed, verifying that the bomb squad bot was indeed sitting in the middle of a huge pile of stolen firearms and boxes of ammunition. He thought about getting close enough to take one of the stolen guns, but the robot was watching his every move.
He walked to his left, toward the cab of the truck. He was still five or six feet away from the ruined vehicle. Close enough to get a decent look, but far enough away not to feel too threatened.
He trained his flashlight into the cab. His view was totally unobstructed, as a ragged, frosty-white fringe of shattered safety glass was all that remained of the windows. The damage to the truck and the complete lack of any motion gave the scene an eerie, dead feeling.
Officer Collins knew what he was looking at from his fellow officers’ descriptions, and from the video footage he’d been shown, but he could understand why the cashier had mistakenly thought the truck’s load contained simple electronics. The other robots appeared to be deactivated, and the cylinders that served as the robots’ de facto heads were protected by windows that revealed an array of lenses, reflectors, and grilles.
“So these are what caused all of that trouble.”
Officer Hay said, “Backup’s coming. We should wait until they get here to make a move.”
“Yeah,” Collins said. “Hey, what do you figure these extension cords are for?”
“Can you see where they’re going?’
“No. Just that they go down into the cab. I might be able to see if I get closer, but that ain’t happening.”
“I hear you.”
“I don’t see anything moving. I doubt they’re charging their phones.”
Officer Hay said, “I bet that’s it. I mean, you’re right, they aren’t charging their phones, but they’ve gotta run on batteries, right? I bet they’re charging themselves.”
“Yeah. I like that. They spent the whole day robbing gun shops. That’s gotta take a lot of power. They’re out driving around, running low on juice, so they pull in back here to lay low and recharge.”
“So what do we do?”
Officer Collins kept his feet rooted to the ground but twisted to look at his partner. “I say we unplug ’em. What’s the point in letting them get stronger while we wait for backup?”
Officer Hay nodded, then followed the cords back to the power strip. He paused to make eye contact with his partner, then yanked the power strip’s plug from the wall. Both police officers looked at the truck, waiting for something to happen. Something did, and it was enough to send both officers ducking and running for the corner of the building.
Razor-sharp lines of light shot from the heads of the two robots in the truck’s cab. One went sideways, toward the convenience store’s back wall. The other projected into the sky at a forty-degree angle. The lasers remained stationary for a few seconds, then they started sweeping up and down, tracing a vertical red line on the wall and projecting a red wedge down the hood of the truck and onto the fence that surrounded the dumpster.
The two cops peered around the corner of the building. They took a few heartbeats to collect themselves, then the shorter cop started to speak, only to be startled and interrupted by a sound like two electric motors whirring to life. The lasers continued to move up and down, faster than the human eye could track, but they also started sweeping to the right, like the beacon on top of a lighthouse, or an old-school revolving police light. They moved slowly at first, but accelerated quickly. Soon the lasers were moving so quickly that the cops could no longer see the lights at all.
Officer Hay muttered, “Quieter than the guys said.” The sound was steady but fairly mild.
Then, as if prompted by his comment, a sound like many power tools operating at once shattered the peace. The two cops ducked back around the corner and pressed their backs firmly against the wall.
“Yeah,” Officer Collins said, nearly yelling to be heard. “That’s more like it.”
Officer Hay cocked an ear toward the noise. “Did you hear that?”
“What are you, stupid?”
“Not the racket from the bots—under it. It sounded like they started up the truck.”
The electric motor noises died down a little, but a metal scraping noise had indeed joined the chorus. Moments later, the cops watched in disbelief as the truck rolled past on four bare metal rims, dragging both extension cords from the window and a badly damaged set of oversized brass testicles from the trailer hitch.
The bomb squad robot’s camera remained locked on the officers as the truck drove out of the parking lot and down the road.
The two cops ran to their car. Hay shouted, “You know what’s coming next, right?”
Collins said, “Not necessarily.”
Hay said, “The car won’t start.”
Collins repeated, “Not necessarily,” as he threw himself into the driver’s seat. He fumbled for a moment with the keys, finally got the right one into the ignition, turned it, and heard absolutely nothing.
Officer Hay opened the passenger-side door, leaned down, and smiled at his partner.
Officer Collins said, “I suppose you’re gonna say ‘I told you so.’”
“Not necessarily.”
The truck didn’t have far to drive, and all of the traffic lights worked in its favor, whether they were supposed to or not. There was little traffic this early, and the few people on the road were dragging themselves to an early shift or home from a late shift and as such were not particularly alert or quick with their smartphone cameras. Even when some did manage to get their phones out in time to take a picture of the robot-driven junk wagon, they found that their phone had no connection, meaning they couldn’t upload the photo to any backup services or sharing sites.
The security gate of the private airstrip rolled open before the truck had even started turning. The truck zipped through, moving p
ast the security guard, who stopped shouting in anger at his misbehaving gate and started shouting in disbelief at what he was seeing drive through it.
The guard found it surprisingly difficult to call in backup, and those people he did reach found it surprisingly difficult to start their cars. The robots had no problem unloading the contents of the truck bed into the back of a private jet, fueling up the jet, taking off, and heading north.
26.
“It’s no good,” Ma Kuo, the product inventory manager for the Houndio manufacturing complex, said, holding his phone up to his ear with one hand and holding his tablet with the other. He was standing in his domain—the finished-product storage facility at the Houndio manufacturing plant in Shenzhen.
He looked out over the storage floor. The space was vast and mostly empty, for the moment. Only the back wall was obscured by a single row of pallets, each filled with freshly manufactured products.
“Yes,” Ma Kuo said, “I understand that there’s plenty of room right now, but I’m telling you that at a production rate of two units a minute, the space will fill up faster than you think. When can I expect the client’s trucks to show up to start taking these things out of here?”
Ma Kuo listened for as long as he deemed necessary, then continued, “How many times have we been through this? If the client opts not to have us handle the shipping, then they need to arrange it themselves. That means scheduling a whole lot of trucks. If the trucks aren’t scheduled, then I have to assume there are no trucks. If there are no trucks, this place is going to fill up, and that’s not good for anybody.”
He paced for a moment, then said, “Here’s how I explain it to the trainees. The Houndio factory is like a living thing. An enormous animal that eats raw materials and . . . yes, I know I’ve told you this before. I’m telling you again right now, and I’ll keep telling you until you act like you understand it. The factory line is like the digestive tract, and we here in finished-product storage are Houndio’s colon. We can store up some of the line’s products for a little while, but we have to keep it moving, because there’s always more coming. If we don’t get stuff out of here, my department will become impacted. There will be pain, unpleasantness, and products will start spilling out into the parking lot . . . yes, that’s right, Houndio’s underwear. You have heard this speech before. That’s why it’s vital that we make sure that we get all of these products out of here, and into the toilet, which in this analogy represents North America and Europe.”
