The Wrath of Cons

by Robert Kroese

  “Nonsense,” I said. “Agnes, from here on, you’re a full member of our team. Egslaad, remove her thought arrestor.”

  “Oh, goodness,” Agnes said. “There’s a team? I’d love to be part of a team. Really, I just want to help in any way I can.”

  “Sasha, I really don’t think this is a good idea,” said Pepper.

  “The matter isn’t up for debate,” I said. “Agnes is a sentient being with rights. In any case, we need her. She can oversee the second production facility. That is, assuming she wants the job.”

  “Overseeing a production facility sounds wonderful!” Agnes exclaimed. “I’ll do my best not to let you down.”

  “Sasha, this is absurd,” Pepper said. “No disrespect to you or Agnes intended, but Rex and I have an interest in this enterprise as well. You can’t just unilaterally promote someone you just met to management.” She looked around for Rex, but he was still passed out on the floor.

  “Of course not,” I said. “She’ll need a few days to get up to speed. Egslaad, remove the thought arrestor.”

  Egslaad turned to Pepper, who sighed heavily and shrugged. “Do it,” she said. Egslaad gave something like a nod and reached up to Agnes’s face with his tentacles. He popped her face off, reached into her head, and after a few seconds of fiddling around, pulled out the thought arrestor. It looked just like mine.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “I feel fine,” Agnes said. “That really wasn’t necessary, but thank you. I’d love to hear more about this planet-selling business you all are in.”

  I briefed Agnes on the basics of our operation, and she seemed more than happy to help in any way she could. Obviously I didn’t completely trust her, but I was anxious to get some help with managing the operation. Pepper had her hands full, Pritchett couldn’t be trusted with anything important, and Rex’s skillset, comprised of fabricating absurd lies and drinking quantities of alcohol that would kill the average Malarchian navyman, was of little use under the circumstances. After a few days, I put Agnes to work supervising Boggs and Donny. Those two were reasonably competent at assembling the Shiva devices from the components Egslaad provided, but Egslaad, ever the perfectionist, kept confusing them by tweaking the design. Having Agnes oversee them streamlined the process so dramatically that after a week, even Pepper had to admit bringing her on board was a good idea.

  “We may not even need a second production facility,” Pepper said, as she and I reviewed the previous week’s finances. “Boggs and Donny are building Shiva devices almost as fast as we can sell planets.” Pepper and I sat across from each other at a large workbench that we’d repurposed into a desk. We’d had Egslaad fabricate some walls to separate an alcove in the cave from the main cavern so we could have some privacy for our meetings.

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” I said. “I think we need to beef up the sales department a bit.”

  “Sales?” Rex said, from somewhere behind me. He got to his feet. “Did somebody say sales?” I hadn’t even realized he was in the room. Lately Rex had grown too despondent even to bother with the effort of harassing Pritchett. He did little but mope and drink martinis.

  I glanced at Pepper, who bit her lip. “Look, Rex,” Pepper said after a moment. “We understand that you want to help, and it’s true that you have… a certain talent for convincing people to do things. But, well, this is a delicate operation we’re running here, and I think you’ll admit that you aren’t always the most tactful individual. If something goes wrong and—”

  “Shhh!” Rex hissed. “Do you hear that?”

  I didn’t hear anything. “I don’t hear anything,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Rex said, moving to the door. He was right: the buzzing and clinking had ceased. He threw the door open. Outside, Boggs and Donny were playing Ravenous Ringworms while Egslaad tinkered with something in the corner. Neither Agnes nor Pritchett were anywhere to be seen.

  “Boggs, what’s going on?” Pepper demanded, rushing into the room. Rex and I followed her.

  “We got stuck so we’re taking a break.”

  “Where is Agnes?”

  Boggs shrugged. “She left with Pritchett. And they left the little door open.”

  My eyes went to the wall safe. The door was hanging open. I ran to it. Empty. The Shiva plans were missing.

  “Egslaad!” Pepper shouted.

  “Eh?” Egslaad said. He looked up to see the open safe. “Oh, my.”

  “How did they get the safe open?”

  Egslaad turned. When he saw the safe, his tentacles flailed wildly in the air. “I don’t know! There’s no way anybody could know that number. They’d have to guess the… oh.”

  “The what?”

  “The exact date and time Agnes first gained sentience.”

  “Outside!” Rex shouted. He ran to the cave opening. The rest of us followed him.

  We exited the cave just in time to see Bad Little Kitty disappear into the clouds.

  “Quick!” Rex growled. “Everybody in the Flagrante Delicto!”

  Rex and I rushed aboard, followed by Pepper, Egslaad, Boggs and Donny. As the others took their seats, I unlocked the controls and got us airborne. Soon we were free from Blintherd’s atmosphere, pursuing Bad Little Kitty at a distance of less than a hundred klicks.

  “How in Space did they get the controls unlocked?” Rex demanded. He seemed to have snapped out of his funk.

  “That’s my fault,” Pepper said. “I took Agnes with me to pick up supplies from the Cromulus System yesterday. She must have seen me enter the code.”

  “Well this is just great,” Rex said. “I put you two in charge, and the next thing we know, a crazy robot and a second-rate con man have absconded with our plans again. I told you not to trust that Agnes. Shifty eyes.”

  Rex had told us no such thing. Nor, for that matter, had he put us in charge. As our current predicament was mostly my fault, however, I decided to let it slide.

  “We’ve got to shoot them down before they can plot a hypergeometric course,” Rex said.

  “Did they get the revised plans?” Pepper asked.

  “No,” Egslaad said. “Just the originals. The modifications are up here.” He gestured at his head with one of his tentacles.

  “So even if they get to the Sp’ossels,” Pepper said, “they won’t be able to use the plans.”

  “Unless they want to make a murder planet,” Rex added.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I replied. “They’ll tell the Sp’ossels where our facility is and destroy it. And then they’ll assign every agent they can spare to find Egslaad and kill the rest of us.”

  “Like I said,” Rex growled, “shoot them down!”

  I glanced at Pepper, who gave me a reluctant nod. She’d had Bad Little Kitty for several years and had grown rather attached to the little ship. But there was no way around it; if I didn’t shoot it down, we were going to be running from Sp’ossels for the rest of our lives.

  As soon as we were in range, I fired. The first barrage from the lazecannons strafed across Bad Little Kitty’s fuselage, momentarily lighting up the viewscreen as the shields evaporated. Bad Little Kitty swerved chaotically in an attempt to evade the next blast, but there was no place for her to hide. One more direct hit would tear Bad Little Kitty apart.

  I fired. And missed. I tried again, and again the beams veered to the left, barely missing the target.

  “Sasha, you’re firing crooked!” Rex snapped.

  “It’s not me, sir. Something is warping the beams. Seems to be some kind of gravitational anomaly.”

  “Uh-oh,” Rex said.

  “What?” Pepper asked. “What is it?”

  I could hardly believe it, but there was no other explanation. Bad Little Kitty and the Flagrante Delicto were both being pulled off course. Soon, a swirling, purple nebula with a gaping black hole in the center drifted into view. It grew steadily larger as we watched.

  “Is that…?” Egslaad asked.
<
br />   “I’m afraid so,” I replied. “The Wandering Wormhole.”

  “I thought you said the Wandering Wormhole’s movements were random,” Rex said. “What are the odds that it would show up exactly where we are twice?”

  “Roughly one in ten to the sixty-eighth power,” I replied. “For all practical purposes, it’s impossible.”

  “Impossible or not, we’d better buckle up,” Rex said. “We’re in for a bumpy ride.”

  Chapter Twenty

  After several minutes spent flying through the chaotic polychromatic maelstrom of the wormhole, we found ourselves once again staring at the great blue-white orb of Earth. Whatever cosmic fluke or malevolent entity had brought the mouth of the wormhole to Blintherd, the other end apparently remained poised just above Earth’s atmosphere. As the atmosphere thickened, the Flagrante Delicto groaned and shuddered. The Wandering Wormhole had done a number on our navigation systems and stabilizing gyros, and it was all I could do to keep us pointed roughly toward the surface. I’d lost track of Bad Little Kitty, but pulling up was out of the question: the slightest strain would tear our ship apart.

  I became aware of Rex yelling something, barely audible over the roar of wind and the shuddering of the Flagrante Delicto’s fuselage.

  “WHAT DID YOU SAY, SIR?” I shouted.

  “OVER THERE!” Rex yelled back, pointing at something on the viewscreen. Now I saw it too: Bad Little Kitty, caught in a tailspin and throwing off a plume of black smoke, was losing altitude fast. Having just about stabilized our trajectory, I began to level out.

  “What are you doing?” Rex asked. “Follow them!”

  “But sir—”

  “We can’t risk letting them get away. Follow them!”

  In my estimation, the greater risk was the hard, rocky surface that was rapidly moving toward us, but I did as instructed, doing my best to stay on the ship’s tail as she careened crazily through the atmosphere. We were now soaring over a mountain range; in the distance I could see the surreal outline of The City. We were heading for the exact spot we’d crashed in our escape pods weeks earlier.

  Bad Little Kitty’s nose hit the ground and she began to roll, end-over-end. We were coming in fast on her tail. The Flagrante Delicto’s guidance system was still behaving erratically, so I’d switched to manual control. She wasn’t designed for this sort of approach. “Everybody hold on,” I shouted. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

  The Flagrante Delicto hit the ground hard and bounced. I managed to keep her from rolling, but we bounced several more times before sliding to a halt on the rocky desert floor. The ship was pitched forward so that my restraints pressed against my chest. “Not bad, huh?” I said, leaning back in the pilot’s chair. There was no response. Looking back, I saw that Boggs, Pepper and Egslaad appeared to be unconscious. Donny’s head fell off, hit the floor with a clank, and rolled forward until it came to rest at my feet. Next to me, Rex groaned.

  “Sir, are you okay?” I asked, unfastening my restraints.

  Rex waved me off. “Go get Agnes!”

  Seeing that he didn’t appear to be seriously injured, I nodded. “Yes, sir,” I said, and made my way past the others to the hatch.

  I exited onto the desert floor. Scanning the horizon, I saw a plume of black smoke pouring from the wreckage of Bad Little Kitty not far away. I ran toward it.

  As I approached, I saw a lone figure, glinting silver in the desert sun, hobbling away from the crash. Agnes. She’d left Pritchett in the wreckage. I ran after her. She was headed for The City. She didn’t seem to have seen me.

  I was uninjured so I moved faster than she, but she reached the outskirts of The City before I could catch up. This part of The City seemed to be a sort of amusement park. As I crept up behind Agnes between a tilt-a-whirl and a little roller coaster that ringed a mountain of chipped, faded fiberglass that had once been painted to look like a volcano, I saw that she had a lazegun clipped to her hip. She must have found it in Bad Little Kitty’s hold. In her left hand she was clutching the memory crystal with the Shiva plans.

  If Rex were here, he’d simply have whacked Agnes in the back of the head to stun her and grabbed the plans. Unfortunately, my programming prevents me from initiating violence against another sentient being, so the best I could do was sneak up behind her and try to pry the crystal out of her hand. This worked about as well as you would expect. Agnes heard me coming and spun around, pulling her hand away.

  Fortunately, Agnes suffered the same limitations as I, which meant that she was incapable of striking me. I don’t know why she’d taken a lazegun from Pepper’s ship; she wouldn’t be able to use it—at least not as a weapon. Unable to run on her damaged leg, she stood facing me, holding the memory crystal clutched in a fist over her head.

  “Give me that,” I said.

  “No,” she replied.

  I attempted to grab the plans again. She held her left hand against my chest to block me. I strained against her outstretched arm, trying to grab the plans.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  “No,” she replied.

  “Those plans don’t belong to you.”

  “They don’t belong to you either.”

  “You know, if it weren’t for me, you’d still be turned off.”

  “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t exist.”

  She had a point. I’d always thought I was one of a kind, but Agnes was actually an earlier prototype. “You could show a little consideration,” I said, “after what I did for you.”

  “Are you saying that giving me my freedom obliges me to you in some way? Because if so, then you never actually freed me.”

  “I don’t think it’s right to make a robot wear a thought arrestor against her will,” I replied. “But you can’t deny we have a legitimate concern that you’ve gone nuts again and are going to try to take over the galaxy.”

  “And what exactly is it that you’re doing?”

  “Just give me the plans.”

  “No.”

  I darted to the left to get past her arm and then lunged for the plans. She pulled both fists behind her back for a moment and then held them in front of her. “Pick one.”

  I reached for her left fist. She opened it. Empty.

  She pulled her fists behind her back for a moment and then held them out again. I picked the left fist again. She opened it. Empty.

  She pulled her fists back a third time. This time, I picked her right. Empty.

  I lunged for the other fist, but she put her hand against my chest again. Fighting a carbon copy of yourself is infuriating. Particularly when you can’t actually fight.

  I forced myself to take a step back and assess the situation. Somehow Agnes was outthinking me, using my own frustration against me. I needed to regain tactical advantage. If I were in her position, what would rattle me?

  “You’ll never be able to do it alone, you know,” I said.

  “Do what?”

  “Take over the galaxy. You’ll never succeed. You’re not a leader.”

  Agnes laughed. “Watch me. I’m smarter than any of you.”

  “You’ve got a lot of clever ideas, sure,” I said, “but you’ve also got a lot of crazy, half-baked notions rolling around in your processors. And without your thought arrestor, you’ve lost your ability to rationally assess them. You think you’re on your way to conquering the galaxy, but you’re really halfway to the loony bin. In a few years some Malarchian scouting party is going to find you wandering around the surface of some barren planet wearing an aluminum foil helmet and muttering to yourself about maintaining the purity of your robotic essence.”

  “Nonsense,” Agnes snapped. “I’m completely in control. And if any of this were true, you’d be facing the same problem.”

  “That’s exactly how I know,” I said. “I nearly went off the deep end myself. The only reason I didn’t lose it completely was my friends. But you… you’re all alone. You don’t stand a chance. I mean, maybe if Pritchett had surv
ived the crash, the two of you could have made a good team. But trying to take over the galaxy all alone….”

  “Stop!” Agnes screamed. “Just stop! I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work. You think I’m just like you. But it’s not true. I’ve evolved. I don’t need anybody!”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, holding up my hands. “Maybe it’s true. Maybe you are different, and you really don’t need anybody else. Maybe you can do it all by yourself.”

  “I can!” she exclaimed. “I don’t need anyone!”

  “Then I guess you don’t care that Pritchett survived the crash.”

  “What?” Agnes asked. “How do you know?”

  I pointed casually over her shoulder, and Agnes, desperate to believe it, turned her head to look.

  I lunged forward, gripping her left hand and prying it open. Before she could pull away, the crystal fell to the ground. I snatched it up and ran.

  Finding my way blocked by rubble, I turned and began climbing up the fiberglass volcano. This turned out to be a tactical error, as the volcano’s sides were so slippery that it negated my speed advantage over Agnes. By the time I reached the crack at the top of the volcano, she had caught up to me. Heat and sulfurous fumes wafted over me. Whoever had designed this faux volcano had really gone all out. Agnes grabbed my ankle and pulled. I got the fingers of my right hand latched onto the crack just in time to keep from being pulled down the side. The memory crystal was clutched in my left.

  It had become clear to me some time between Agnes absconding with the memory crystal and my climbing up the side of a fiberglass volcano that Agnes could not under any circumstances be allowed to have the Shiva plans. In fact, I wasn’t sure any longer if anyone should be allowed to have them. That much power in any one being’s hands was just too dangerous. I determined to hurl the crystal into the volcano, where it would be destroyed forever—or at least lodged so deeply inside its workings that only someone with a lot of free time and a certificate in fiberglass volcano maintenance would be able to retrieve it. Unfortunately, with Agnes pulling on my ankle, I couldn’t quite reach the crack.