by K. C. Finn
“To all those other robots,” Cae breathes as he catches Fowler’s train of thought. “Oh hell. Are you saying they’ll have all become infected with the murderous programming?”
The doctor nods his balding head solemnly. “From these signal patterns, I’m almost certain of it,” he replies.
“So every one of my family’s robots will have gone rogue,” Thomas confirms glumly.
“Yup,” adds Kendra. “And they’re all on their way to us.”
A cold shiver passes up Cae’s spine that tells him his drugs are wearing off. The previous shred of HOPE he’d had left is now most certainly out of his system. He looks between the three other people with despair creeping onto his young, pale face.
“Now it’s my turn to have an idea,” says Doctor Fowler, getting to his feet unsteadily.
He turns first to Thomas Watt, putting a firm hand on his shoulder and giving him a serious look. “Thom,” Fowler begins. “Through those doors at the back of here is the staff kitchen. Inside the kitchen there will be industrial refrigerators. The doors and outer rim will be filled with very powerful magnets.” He takes the fire axe from Kendra and gives it to the young man. “Take this and break open the fridges. Bring me all the magnets you can, and as quickly as you can. You know how fast those robots run; we haven’t got very long.”
“Yes sir,” Thomas says with an eager nod, rushing off for the kitchens.
Now Howard turns to Kendra, who smiles at him proudly. “Always knew we could count on you,” she beams.
“This is the most important thing of all, Kendra,” the doctor begins. “I can only trust you to do it.” The ex-sergeant nods repeatedly, listening close. “On the outskirts of Dartley is the Brandt Electricity Plant. Do you know it?”
“Yeah,” she confirms. “Out on the sand dunes. I know it.”
“I want you to drive there right now and bring me as many heavy duty batteries as you can commandeer,” Howard continues.
Kendra frowns. “But that place is at least a half hour away, maybe more!” She protests with a wave of her dark hands. “We don’t have time to-‘
“That’s an order sergeant,” Fowler adds in harsh tone, and Kendra falls silent immediately.
“Yes sir,” she states, her stern hazel eyes now focused on her duty. She leaves immediately and without another word.
“Now Caecilius,” Fowler says, turning Cae’s attention from Kendra’s exiting form. “You are going to show me the way to the Generator Room, and on the way there we’re going to rip out as many sets of wires and internal circuitry as we can get.”
“Wires?” Cae repeats.
“Yes,” the doctor confirms. “From computers, telephones, radios. Anything we can find that we can unplug from the main electrics. Let’s go.”
The chubby man moves off at a pace with Cae following diligently, but the young detective’s dark eyebrows are still furrowed with worry.
“What exactly are we doing, doctor?” Cae asks.
Fowler keeps on walking, barging into a nearby computer suite and starting to uncase the closest machine. He looks up at Cae, that same grave expression in his little eyes.
“We’re making a bomb.”
32.
“Tell me,” asks Howard Fowler as he pulls out all the internal workings of the fourth computer in the suite. “Do you have any metal in your body?”
“Pardon?” Cae questions as he too cannibalises a laptop and places the parts in a plastic box.
“Any plates?” The doctor continues. “Pins? Prosthetics with metal parts anywhere in your anatomy?”
“Oh, uh, no,” Cae answers, a little confused. “No, nothing like that.”
“Good,” Fowler sighs. “Then you’ll be safe from the explosion. Make a phonecall to someone outside and tell them nobody is to re-enter the building until you say so.”
Cae gets up from his work and makes the call exactly as he is told, reaching a senior sergeant who tells him that they are already cordoning off the building. The young detective warns him of the advancing robots, and orders him to stay out of their way.
“You must let the robots enter the building,” Cae warns. “Do not try to obstruct them, they’re highly dangerous.”
“Right,” answers the sergeant. “What will you do, sir?”
“We’re going to disable them from inside,” Cae replies, not daring to mention the word “bomb”. “I’ll call you back when we’ve got the all-clear.”
And with that he hangs up the phone.
“No you won’t,” Howard says flatly. “That phone’s going to be fried after this blast.”
“Didn’t you just say it wouldn’t harm us?” Cae questions, concerned again.
Howard stops removing wiring for a brief moment to give Cae a serious look. “The explosion in the Generator Room will send out an electromagnetic pulse through the building; like a giant wave of magnetic force flying through the air.”
“And what will that do?” Cae asks, starting to fill the plastic box with Howard’s huge pile of electrical supplies.
“Well the Clockworkers’ robots are highly magnetised to attach themselves when travelling,” the doctor explains. “Even their self-winding mechanisms run on magnetic force.”
“So the explosion will immobilize them?” The detective asks.
“No dear boy,” replies Fowler, “It’ll tear them to pieces.” He gives the box of wires a sad look as he picks it up, heading for the door. “I hate to have to do it; since they’re such advanced technology. But we have no other option.”
“There you are,” says Thomas Watt, arriving at the door. He is pushing a kitchen trolley filled with large, black magnets. “Where am I going with these?”
“Marvellous!” Cries Fowler, inspecting the trolley. “I was worried there might not be enough, but these should do fine.”
“I’ll show you to Generator Room,” Cae says, stepping out into the corridor in front of the other men.
As they begin to walk, the sight of two robotic figures down the corridor startles them for a moment, but Cae breathes a sigh of relief when he recognises them as Nag and Boa, the cleaning bots.
As the three men approach the two robots Cae looks at their friendly faces, then glances back to Doctor Fowler.
“What will happen to them in the blast?” The detective enquires.
Fowler looks at them sadly. “The same thing that happens to the others, I’d imagine,” he remarks. “They will have to be rebuilt after the event, I’m afraid.”
“Detective Rex,” says Boa in his generic male tone. “Where are all the staff?”
“It is not closing time,” adds Nag with her feminine voice box.
A strange sense of guilt flows over Cae. Even though these figures before him are only machines, he feels an affinity with their practical, focused natures.
“Here are your orders,” he says softly. “Your services are not required at present. Power down, all of you, until the station is back its to normal operations.”
“Very well sir,” nods Boa.
They pass the robots and hurry down towards the Generator Room, Thomas pushing the magnets all the way on the trolley.
“So what are we doing Howard?” He asks with a horde of nervous energy in his face.
“You’re going to help me build an electromagnetic bomb,” Howard explains.
“Piece of cake,” replies the young man enthusiastically.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” adds the doctor. “We’ll use the power from the generator to set off the pulse and maintain it.”
But something isn’t right in that statement, and Cae snaps his head back to Howard as they continue down through the maze of corridors.
“Then what are the batteries from the power plant for?” Cae asks.
“To keep Kendra out of the way,” replies the doctor.
33.
Caecilius Rex can’t even pretend to understand what Howard Fowler has just told him, but the rotund doctor will say no mor
e on the subject. Kendra, it seems, has been sent away from the explosion, and that is that.
“But she could have helped us fend them off!” Cae protests. “Why would you send her to-‘
“Enough!” Says Fowler harshly. “I will explain everything to you Caecilius, I promise. But afterwards. We have to set off the pulse as soon as those bots arrive, and that’s not a very long time from now.”
When the trio reach the Generator Room at last Cae opens it with a swipe of his key card. Thomas thunders in first with the trolley, looking around at the large, metal casings with a variety of wires and switches poking out at all angles.
“Set the magnets up in the middle,” Howard orders, spying a toolbox on a nearby shelf.
Caecilius Rex is not a scientific man, and he cannot for the life of him begin to understand the moves that the two men are now making. Thomas Watt sets his magnets into peculiar geometric shapes and then starts taking wires from the big plastic box. At the same time Howard Fowler has fired up a portable soldering iron and is following Thomas around, attacking each carefully placed wire with the iron and more bits of wire.
Feeling rather useless, Cae coughs awkwardly at a bitter taste in the back of his throat. There seems to be a fair amount of smoke coming from the tools the doctor is using, and the clanging and clunking of the equipment starts to make the detective feel a little light headed.
“Not much longer,” Fowler promises in a throaty tone. He too is coughing as he kneels around the magnets, switching between laying wire and soldering things to the outer casing of the generator. “How long have we had since the first bot went down?”
Cae has a vague recollection of the time on the clock that he smashed. He checks his wristwatch briefly.
“About twelve minutes,” he replies.
“She’s not far enough away,” Howard says, and Cae is surprised to see he is talking to Thomas, as though the boy knows exactly what he means.
“Of course she is,” Thomas grunts as he begins to open one of the generators’ switch boxes. “This many magnets will only send the wave building-wide, maybe across the street if we’re lucky.” He looks at the fuses in the box anxiously as he starts to tamper with them. “We might not even disable them all in one go.”
“We will,” Howard comforts him, and as he slaps the boy on the back Thomas Watt too joins the collective coughing fit.
Cae can feel his blue eyes stinging red, a wisp of smoke passing his vision by. A surge of impatient anger overcomes him.
“Will somebody please tell me why Kendra can’t be near this thing?” He demands.
“She’s got metal in her system,” Thomas answers all too quickly.
“How would you know that?” Cae questions suspiciously.
“It’s not going to matter if we all get strangled before I can set this thing off!” Howard gasps, sitting back and looking at all the connections he has made. He inspects Thomas Watt’s work at the switch box too, his wide face now red, beady eyes streaming from the heat and the smoke filling the Generator Room.
“Shall I switch it on to charge?” Thomas asks with a splutter.
Howard nods, clearly exhausted. He clutches his chest protectively.
“It’s the only way to see if the circuits will hold,” he answers in a weak tone.
The detective watching the exchange starts to cough again, this time much more violently, smoke stinging the insides of his nose. This is the moment that his keen eyes catch sight of the soldering iron, which is now no longer in use.
And no longer producing smoke.
“How long,” Thomas starts, choking, “do you think until the robots arrive?”
“They’re already here,” Cae answers, scrambling for his belt in a panic.
“How can you possibly know that?” Splutters Fowler, watching the young detective intently.
Cae manages to get his gas mask free, waving it at the other two men. He looks quickly at his watch again.
“Because they turned off the air filters three minutes ago,” is his reply.
34.
Thomas Watt fits himself with a spare mask hanging on the wall of the Generator Room whilst Cae and Fowler manage to scramble into their own masks.
“We’re going to have to get lung scans after this,” Howard observes breathlessly.
“That’s assuming we survive this,” Cae adds warily. He breathes heavily into the mask to activate its filters, hoping to expel as much unclean air as he can.
“If they turned off the air but not the electrics, then the robots don’t suspect what we’re up to,” Thomas Watt supposes, watching a series of lights above the switch box as they flicker.
“Good,” Cae says. “That means it’ll take them some time to find us down here.” His blue eyes now too fall on the lights and switches. “How long will it take you to get a big enough charge to send out the magnetic pulse?”
Howard lets out a sigh into his mask, getting to his feet. His beady eyes tensely check the lights.
“There’s no way to tell for certain,” he murmurs, still coughing between words. “But I’d want to give it at least ten minutes at full power before even attempting to set off a wave.”
The sound of doors opening and closing on the floor above makes all three men tremble.
“I don’t think we’ve got ten minutes,” Thomas breathes.
The toxic smoke creeping in through the air vents is now starting to obstruct vision in the Generator Room, and Cae has to keep flapping his gloved hand about in order to clear the tendrils of smog from the path of the flickering lights. Although he doesn’t understand at all what the lights mean, some of them are getting brighter, and he takes this to be a good sign. Then a horrid thought hits him.
“When this smoke fills the place up, those robots won’t be able to see anything that’s broken,” he begins.
Thomas’s eyes frown above his mask. “So we’ve no chance of distracting any of them while this thing charges up,” he completes.
“That’s why they’ve turned off the filters!” Howard blurts with more than a trace of joy in his voice. “My, my, they have gotten clever. It’s such a pity we’re going to blow them all up.”
“I’m sure you can rebuild less homicidal versions in the future,” Cae remarks. He realises now that this is why the original killer bot did not attempt to repair Kendra’s air vents in her home after destroying them, and also why the clocks in the dim, smoky shop-front of Wincher’s Clocks remained broken. “Their vision’s pretty poor in smoke and darkness I reckon,” Cae continues, filled with a little more enthusiasm than before. “I think I could get out and move around without them seeing me, if I’m careful.”
“Get out?” Asks Howard, waving his chubby fingers around the smoky space where the switch box is. “Whatever for?”
“I’m going to try and put the filters back on to buy us some more time if we need to distract them,” Cae explains. “But first I’m going to help you set up a barricade.”
Charging from the room with a new sense of purpose, Cae starts pushing any and all objects that he can find in the smoke into the Generator Room. Catching his purpose, Thomas Watt comes to the do the same, and between them they transport chairs, lamps and all manner of portable objects into the room to create the obstacle.
“When the door closes it’ll lock automatically,” Cae says, holding the key card in his hand. “You’ll be able to get out, but it’ll be locked to anyone trying to get in.”
“But they’ll work out the override code and unlock it,” Thomas protests, taking the key card from the slightly older man.
“Hence the barricade,” Cae returns. “With any luck they won’t even think to look in here for you until it’s too late.”
Thomas Watt’s young blue eyes smile over his mask.
“You know detective,” he begins. “Sometimes I think you’d make a better criminal than a copper.”
“Rebellious natures are genetic,” adds Fowler, and though Cae now cannot see him throu
gh the smog, he knows the diligent doctor is still carefully placed at the switches.
Cae takes the remarks in with more pride than he really should, but his little moment is cut short when a loud clanking from somewhere very near catches his ears.
“Right you two,” he orders. “Get yourselves locked in and set that thing off as soon as you can.”
“How long has it been now since the signal went out?” Fowler asks again.
“Twenty-two minutes,” Cae answers after a brief check.
“I reckon all the bots will be here by now,” Thomas adds.
“And Kendra will be miles away,” Fowler breathes with relief.
More clanking and door slamming echoes towards the trio’s nervous ears.
“Get in! Get in!” Cae urges, and Thomas obeys instantly.
With the sound of the barricade forming in his ears, Caecilius Rex heads off slowly down the smoky corridor, turning off the lights on his way.
35.
The tension of creeping down the dark corridors sets the detective’s mind raging with all sorts of issues. Though discovering the identity of The Face and thoughts of his mother rank highly on the agenda of the young man as he stalks towards the security officers, Kendra is now his top priority.
There is something still not right about Howard Fowler’s behaviour. If Kendra has metal in her body, she will presumably be aware of this fact. This begs the question as to why Howard felt it necessary to deceive her into driving a fair few miles away from the scene of the explosion on a completely unnecessary mission. Surely, Cae supposes, a simple explanation that the bomb could harm her would have sufficed?
Then again, Kendra is not well-known for her rationality, which has been a big bone of contention in the Dartley force since she was given the post in charge of them all. But she had apparently received a shining letter of recommendation from the Lachrymosa military base despite her dismissal last year, and now that he thinks about it Cae suspects that Doctor Fowler must have had something to do with that too.
It is just slightly possible that the good doctor does not want Kendra to be involved in any potential damage to Dartley Station for the sake of her current job as chief. But such benevolence in a time of crisis seems too absurd to be legitimate.
