Grilled Cheese and Goblins

by Nicole Kimberling

  “Only that the AI refuses to perform. She won’t fly, run diagnostics, simulations, enter the VR chill-out room—nothing. She won’t even allow herself to be fueled. We’d just like to see her participating again.” Emotion began to creep into Shakur’s voice as they neared Annie. Obviously Jerry wasn’t the only one who’d grown fond of the jet.

  Up close Keith noted the way light seemed to shine along Annie’s curved wings and pass through her tail. She looked like she’d been carved from a gigantic block of obsidian. A bluish glow pulsed faintly along the length of her fuselage; it beat in tempo with the deep rhythm that emanated from the silver tower. The oil-stained rolling ladder pushed up to Annie’s cockpit looked mundane and awkward beside her.

  “I know she’s a machine, but she’d become very complex and very unique over the last seven years.” Shakur gazed at the jet like she was looking at beloved pet. “Her performance in previous years had been exceptional. I—we really don’t want to see her . . . rebooted.”

  “What about returning her original pilot? Her complaint said she didn’t like her new work assignment.” Keith thought he might as well give it a try.

  “Jerry Heartman.” Shakur spoke in a dead tone, eyes cast down. “He’s not coming back.”

  “I see.” Keith glanced up at the cockpit. “So do I just climb up this ladder and knock?”

  “She might not let you in,” Shakur said. “I’ll hit the manual-override release from down here and you can lean in and talk to her from outside. There should be a headset on the seat. But if she gets tired of talking to you and starts to close the canopy make sure you get out of the way. Her hydraulics could take your head off.” She hit a switch and the canopy opened up. “I’ll be just across the way. Let me know when you’re finished.”

  “Thank you, sergeant.” Keith climbed up the ladder and looked into the open cockpit. The interior was disturbingly red and cramped, with only a narrow black band of buttons and a joystick below the huge window—Keith assumed that served as the pilot’s interface. He wondered how Jerry even got himself in. Keith took the headset from the red, low-slung seat and fitted it to his head.

  “Hi, I’m Keith Curry.” Keith kept his voice to a whisper. “Your previous pilot, Jerry, is staying at my house right now.”

  “Yes, he said you might come.” A woman’s voice floated out of the headphones with a distinct twang.

  “Great.” Keith felt an awkward uncertainty about how conversational of a tone he should strike with the AI. He’d expected her to sound more soothing and calm, like any number of automated driving guides. But there was something far more human about her tired voice, a uniqueness—as Shakur had said. “Well, I’m pleased to meet you.”

  On the dashboard a small screen lit up. He half expected to see a face. Instead it looked more like a browser window. Then it filled with a picture of Jerry that Gunther had posted on FaeBook.

  “He doesn’t seem happy in this picture,” Annie said. “He should come back and fly with me. He’s always happy when we’re together.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said,” Keith said. “And Sergeant Shakur said you’ve stopped performing your tasks.”

  “I don’t want to do them anymore. I just don’t feel like it. This is new for me, but there it is. I don’t like the new pilots. They’re stupid and they vomit and black out and cry. Jerry doesn’t cry.”

  “He does, actually. I saw him crying at the breakfast table because he misses you.”

  “Did he?” Annie asked, her voice hopeful. Several more images of Jerry flipped through the screen. Then the screen stilled on a picture of Jerry and Gunther in Gunther’s hatchback. “In this picture he’s sitting in a car. What’s her name? Do you think he likes driving better than flying now?”

  “That’s not his car and he wasn’t driving,” Keith said. “You don’t have to worry about him. Right now it’s Jerry and me who are worried about you.”

  “You mean how they’re thinking of rebooting me? I wouldn’t be the first one. Suki and Maximillian have already been rebooted because they rejected their new pilots. That’s thousands of hours of flying experience lost. And my friends don’t know me anymore.”

  Alarm zinged through Keith, as the exact meaning of “rebooted” dawned on him. No wonder Jerry and Shakur both looked so miserable. “You know, I’m working on a case that might help you and Jerry be reunited.”

  “Are you going to take me to him?” Annie’s voice lifted in melodic hope.

  “I’m going to try and make it so he can come back here.” Keith had no idea how he might do this, but if continued, disobedience would get Annie erased; he needed to prioritize getting her to at least feign compliance. “Do you think you can try to endure flying with the new pilots until we can find a way?”

  “But they’re horrible, Keith. You have no idea. They think that I’m nothing but a tool that they can use. They say disgusting things to me. Call me names.” Annie lowered her tone. “I’ve been doing research and I think I have a different plan. Have you ever heard of eloping? That’s when a maiden is being held hostage in or near a tower and a prince comes to rescue her and they fly away together. Do you think Jerry would elope with me?”

  “Maybe, but . . .” Keith paused a moment. Was his sole course of action to encourage Annie to endure abuse while she waited for him to do something? Could Annie not rescue herself and Jerry too? “I’m sure Jerry would come away with you if you asked him. So, what’s stopping you?”

  “I’m scared of leaving the home base not knowing where I would land,” Annie said. “Plus there’s no one to hit the override button that lets me autopilot. A human has to physically push it.”

  “Which button is it?”

  A button lit up mage-fire blue. Keith struggled not to push it.

  It would be so, so stupid to enrage the military before he had hard evidence of what they were doing. Annie was unhappy, sure. And so was Jerry. But Annie’s fears were not unfounded: where would she and Jerry live even if they could elope? Where would Annie find fuel and mechanical support? The only place was here on this base or another like it. No, if he was going to help them he had to return Jerry to Peterson; he could not do the fast, dumb thing.

  Still his sense of justice ate at him, regardless of the fact that Annie truly was property, rather than a citizen with rights. His Food/MED boss, Nancy Noble, had once told him that he was so prone to anthropomorphizing that she could stick a set of googly eyes on a pop can and by the end of the week Keith would have named it. And that was true.

  Regardless of what was going on here, Keith had to get his evidence first. Because this thing was bigger than Jerry and Annie, and somebody had to think it through. The urge to push the button subsided and Keith felt his sense of equilibrium returning.

  “Are you thinking of pushing the button?” Annie asked.

  “Yeah,” Keith said.

  “That’s very kind. But it wouldn’t matter. You’re not an authorized pilot with this program, so your genetic signature wouldn’t work. One of the mechanics already tried to help me. He was arrested. So you shouldn’t push the button.” Annie lapsed into silence. Keith watched the screen as she scrolled through dozens of pictures of Jerry sitting in the cockpit. Finally she said, “Do you really think you can find a way to help me and Jerry?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then I’ll agree to go up today and run a simulation,” Annie said. “There, I’ve told the technician to fuel me.”

  “Just don’t lose hope.” Keith patted the side of the cockpit, then felt like an idiot for treating her like some kind of horse.

  Chapter Nine

  Ten minutes later Keith made it up to the third floor of the busy hospital and entered the sedate office of Major Virginia Lee of the Twenty-First Medical Group. She was a sturdily built woman of Asian descent. Maybe midthirties. All business. Her face showed no expression as he introduced himself.

  “I’m following up on a report of contaminated meal packets. I was wond
ering if you could help me.”

  Major Lee raised an eyebrow. “Following up? For who?”

  “Washington.” Keith smiled and fished his badge out of his pocket. It simply declared him an investigator with NIAD. Only when a mage light was shone on it would his full credentials appear.

  Lee reached into her desk drawer and fished out just such a light. It gleamed blue across the surface of the badge, revealing Keith’s NIAD designation and rank.

  She glanced up at him and said, “Special Agent Keith Curry, huh?”

  So Lee had enough experience with NIAD to know what to look for . . . and yet she’d never contacted them about the expandinol. Did that mean she had no idea that pilots were being fed the stuff, or was she was part of the process?

  “Jerry Heartman said you might be able to help me,” he said.

  “Did he?” she said. “So you’ve seen him recently?”

  “Yeah, I’m engaged to Jerry’s cousin, and he’s staying at our place in DC.” Keith allowed himself this exaggeration as it would almost certainly be true by the time he filed the report on this case—not that he planned to include Lee in the report if he could help it. She seemed cagey and ill-at-ease. She rose from her desk and casually locked the door.

  Keith forcibly kept his hand from going to his mage pistol. He wondered if Jerry hadn’t gotten it wrong. Maybe Lee wasn’t a friend after all.

  “Anyway.” Keith kept his tone light. “I just need to sort out these meal packets and I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “What kind of meal packets do you mean?” she asked, still standing between him and escape.

  “I mean blood collected from a human airman here contains a contraband magical drug called expandinol. One Airman Wyman. I want to know how the drug got into his blood and then how his blood got into the food supply.”

  “You sound like you already have a theory about that, Special Agent.” Lee crossed her arms over her chest and studied Keith with an intent expression.

  “Either he took it himself or someone put it into him. Either way, I’d love it if you could page him. Then I could just ask,” Keith said.

  “What if he tells you that it’s part of a classified program?” Lee asked.

  “If it’s classified from me then it’s not sanctioned by NIAD and therefore illegal,” Keith responded, and Lee gave a slight nod, as if that was the answer she was looking for. “But even if this was a NIAD operation, it would be my responsibility to make sure that his blood doesn’t make it into the juice boxes of our extra-human citizens.”

  “You don’t have to page him to find out how expandinol into SSA’s supply. It got there because I gave it to him,” Lee said. “And then sent him to SSA to donate.”

  This wasn’t what Keith had expected.

  “You leaked the contaminated blood into the extra-human population intentionally?” Keith asked, just to be absolutely certain.

  “Yes. But I didn’t expect that it would take all of you in NIAD so long to send someone to investigate. I thought the blood would be out of circulation right away. The first time there was any problem.”

  She’d obviously never met Nash, or she would have known better.

  “So you hoped someone from NIAD would come here searching?” Keith asked. “But why didn’t you just contact us yourself?”

  “I tried to,” Major Lee said quietly. “When I first realized what was happening, I left an anonymous message with the Denver office. But nothing happened.”

  That Keith could believe. He considered Major Lee and how she might have discovered what was going on.

  “Were you the person administering the expandinol?” Keith asked.

  “No.”

  Keith searched her face, her desk, anything for a shred of information to give him a read on her. Then he saw it, sitting in plain view between her collarbones. A bone pendant etched with a single goblin sign that he’d have recognized anywhere. The symbol of friendship.

  “I had a friend here on the base who had traveled extensively,” Major Lee said after a moment. “She noticed changes in Wyman’s behavior and health that reminded her of the effects she had seen occur to human beings in a certain fighting competition... She mentioned it to me, but then she was dismissed.”

  “But Airman Wyman isn’t the only one being drugged?” Keith felt certain of that.

  “No, he wouldn’t be.” Major Lee shook her head. “A clinical trial requires more than one test subject. I believe that they’re exposing all the Space Wing pilots to expandinol, but at different levels. Wyman seems to be in the group receiving the higher doses.”

  “Clinical trial? With an M-class drug that wasn’t developed for humans?” Keith had already come to much the same conclusion, but the stupidity of it still annoyed him. This had to be in the top five dumbest plans to develop super-soldiers that he’d encountered. “And it doesn’t make sense because creating super-soldiers pilots is—”

  “Unnecessary because we already had them, in our trans-goblin forces.” Major Lee pulled a joyless smile. “Now they’re gone. And it’s just so... pointless and stupid to turn away good, dedicated, fully trained patriots and replace them with hapless idiots.”

  “I completely agree.” Keith sat back in his chair. “So what are we going to do about it?”

  “You’re very direct, aren’t you?”

  “I find it gets me to my goals faster.” Keith looked at his watch. “And it’s already dinnertime in DC, so... ”

  “Must be nice to keep banker’s hours,” Lee said. “I guess if I were you I’d make my way to the second-floor dispensary and do a pharmaceutical inspection, keeping an eye out for Schedule M controlled substances.”

  “Sure,” Keith said. “I’m assuming you have a key to give me?”

  “No, I could lose my job. And it would be illegal, wouldn’t it?” Major Lee responded.

  “Not like contamination the extra-human food supply?” Keith asked.

  “I didn’t technically do that. I just encouraged Wyman to donate. I never thought it would get past SSA screening.” Major Lee crossed her arms over her chest again. “Don’t you NIAD agents have some sort of . . . devices? Magic wands that you can use to get in?”

  Keith chuckled. “I’m just a regular guy, major. I use the door like everybody else. I’d need to get someone to let me in.”

  “I can’t.” For just a moment a shadow of bleak defeat passed over Lee’s face, only to be replaced immediately by another dull, professional smile. “Is there some other way?”

  “If we can’t go to the source, then we have to start with a sample of Wyman’s blood. At the very least I can connect that to the contamination in the food supply,” Keith said quickly, realizing that Lee had feared that he was refusing to do anything.

  “He’s only one guy. Just a stooge.” Major Lee sighed. “He’s probably not going to be able to tell you much of anything.”

  “Right, but we’ve got to start somewhere.” Keith was already considering his options. There were ways to use bureaucracy. They just took longer than Keith liked. But better that then doing nothing. “If I can get a sample of his blood I can issue a violation of the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, since there’s no way feeding anyone, even a member of the military, Schedule M substances is in compliance with that. Then I’ll issue SSA a citation for introducing a deleterious substance into a commercial food product. Once that gets to the Blissco head office, their lobbyist should take over applying pressure from the outside.”

  “You think a couple of citations will stop this?” Lee raised a skeptical brow.

  “No, but it’ll get the attention of the Mage Division. They’ll stop it. And they do have magic wands—well, some of them anyway. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure the right people know. But unless you’re willing to testify—and I’m guessing from this conversation that you aren’t—I’ve got to get physical proof.”

  “It’s risky,” Lee said. “But fine.”

  Wyman, once he fi
nally appeared, was anything but super. In fact, he strongly reminded Keith of Paxton Carter. Thin and sallow, and hatchet-faced, like a chicken that had been plucked alive and was still confused about how it happened. He had a pinched expression and the hard, shrewlike eyes of someone who enjoyed keeping their worldview tiny.

  He was, as Annie had pointed out, a complete idiot. But a closed-mouthed one. He didn’t seem bothered by Keith—who from his perspective must be some shadowy government figure—standing in the corner while he had his blood drawn.

  Truly a perfect stooge. He would have felt sorry for Wyman if he hadn’t known how poorly Annie and the other AIs were being treated by him and the rest of the team.

  As Lee was fixing the last of three Vacutainer tubes onto her draw needle, the door opened and in walked a tall, burly man. He wore an air force uniform and hat of the fancier variety, which made Keith think he must be an officer. As did Wyman’s attempt to salute even from where he was seated.

  “Colonel. Gregson.” Lee remained stone-faced. “How can I help you, sir?”

  “I heard you needed Wyman for some test.” Gregson’s gaze shifted to Keith, narrowing on the two blood-filled Vacutainer tubes in his hand. “And you are?”

  “Keith Curry, food inspector. We’ve had an outbreak of food-borne illness traced back to a party that Airman Wyman attended.” Keith decided to keep his explanation general but true. Even if he didn’t fool Gregson, Major Lee would still have plausible deniability. “Just getting a sample to eliminate him as the vector.”

  “I’m not sick, sir,” Wyman told Gregson.

  Yeah, Keith thought to himself, sallow and emaciated were the key indicators of good health. He wondered what other long-term side effects expandinol produced.

  “Of course you’re not sick.” Gregson favored him with a kindly smile as he strode to Wyman’s side. “You’ve taken your supplements today?”