Coming Soon Enough: Six Tales of Technology’s Future
Page 9
“I don’t have the address,” Natalie realized.
“The GPS has already been programmed. The house number is 107; don’t get confused and knock anywhere else.”
“What if someone else offers to help us?”
Lewis said, “The street will be as good as empty. The crash will be right outside her door.”
Natalie turned to Sam, who’d joined her on the floor of the workshop. “Are you OK with this?”
“As opposed to what?”
Lewis walked up to Sam and put a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry about the déjà vu, but it will make the whole thing more authentic.”
Sam stared at him. Natalie felt the blood draining from her face. The waiting men converged on Sam, one of them carrying a wrench.
Sam didn’t fight them, he just bellowed from the pain. When everyone separated, the bandage was gone from his finger and his wound was dripping blood.
Lewis said, “Better put that in your pocket for the drive, so no one sees it before the crash.”
The figures on Natalie’s watch had turned blue to remind her that it had auto-synched to the new time zone. It was 10:46. The GPS estimated two minutes to their destination. They’d be outside the house in plenty of time—but they needed to be seen by the drones, indoors.
She glanced over at Sam. He was still pale, but he looked focused. There weren’t many cars on the tree-lined streets, and Natalie had yet to spot a single pedestrian. The houses they were passing were ostentatious enough, if not exactly billionaires’ mansions. But then, half the point of putting assets into digital currency was keeping a low profile.
“Destination in fifteen seconds,” the GPS announced cheerily. Natalie resisted glancing in the rearview mirror as she braked. The red pickup that had been following them since the garage slammed into the back of the sedan.
The airbags inflated, like giant mushroom caps sprouting in time-lapse. Natalie felt the seat belt dig into her shoulder, but when her ears stopped ringing she took stock of her sensations and found no real pain.
“You OK?” she asked Sam. She could hear squealing tires as the truck did a U-turn and departed.
“Yeah.”
“Our phones were in the hands-free docks,” she reminded him. “The airbags are blocking them.”
“We’ve just been in a crash,” Sam said. “No one’s going to ask us where our phones are.”
Natalie got her door open and clambered out. They were right beside the mailbox of number 107.
As Sam joined her, his severed finger exposed, the front door opened and target C ran out toward them.
“Are you all right? Is anyone else in the car?”
Natalie said, “I’m OK. It’s just me and my brother.”
“Oh, he’s bleeding!” C was carrying her phone; she hit some keys then raised it to her ear. “A traffic accident. The other driver’s cleared off. No...they’re both walking, but the young man’s hand...that’s correct.”
She lowered the phone and motioned to them to approach. “Please, come inside. They said the ambulance will be a few minutes.”
Sam pulled out a handkerchief and wrapped it around the stump of his finger. He couldn’t quite look their Good Samaritan in the eye as he stepped through the doorway.
Target C led them into her carpeted living room, unfazed by Sam’s blood. “Please, take a seat. I’ll bring you some water.”
“Thank you.” When the woman had left, Natalie checked her watch. It was 10:53. The six drones would be performing sweeps of all the rooms where she and Sam might plausibly have ended up, mostly staying near the ceiling, out of people’s normal lines of sight. She looked up, and after ten or fifteen seconds she saw it: her own tiny, loyal slave, confirming her safety before fetching its brothers to resume the original plan.
“Are we safe now?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe we should warn her,” he suggested.
Natalie was torn. Lewis’s people might still come after them, whatever they did. But which action would nudge the odds in favor of survival—enraging their enemies but weakening them by depriving them of part of their haul, or placating them but making them stronger?
“We can’t risk it,” she whispered.
Target C came into the room with a pitcher of water on a tray. She poured two glasses and handed them to her guests. “I can’t believe that maniac just drove off,” she said. She gazed forlornly at Sam’s hand. “What happened?”
“I was opening the glove compartment,” Sam replied. “The doors on those things are like guillotines.”
Target C’s phone beeped, not a ring tone but some kind of alert. She spent a few seconds trying to ignore it, then lost the fight and examined the screen. Natalie could almost read the woman’s deliberations from the movement of her eyes and the changing set of her jaw. This was the trigger: either a grave threat to her wealth, or an irresistible opportunity.
The woman looked up. “I’m so rude. My name’s Emily.”
“Natalie.”
“Sam.”
“Are you folks from around here?”
“New Orleans.”
Emily nodded, as if she’d guessed as much already. “Where is that ambulance?” She turned to Sam. “Are you in agony? I have Tylenol. But maybe you’ve suffered some other injury that could make that the wrong thing to take?”
Sam said, “It’s all right. I’ll wait for the paramedics.”
Emily thought for a few seconds. “Let me just check in the medicine cabinet, so I know exactly what I’ve got.”
“Thank you,” Sam replied.
Natalie watched her leave, and saw her take the turn toward the study where the wallet was held in its safe. The fake would already be waiting on top of a bookcase, invisible to anyone of normal height. The drones would be watching, parsing the scene, determining when the safe had been opened and the wallet taken out.
Water began drumming against stainless steel, far away in the kitchen. Natalie heard Emily curse in surprise, but she didn’t run out of the study immediately.
Three seconds, four seconds, five seconds. The sound of the torrent was hard to ignore, conjuring images of flooded floors and water damage. Most people would have sprinted toward the source immediately, dropping almost anything to attend to it.
Finally, Natalie heard the hurried footsteps as Emily rushed to the kitchen. She could not have had time to execute whatever actions the trigger had inspired—but she had certainly had time to put the wallet back in the safe. Nothing else explained the delay. With strangers in the house—and more expected soon, from the emergency services—she wasn’t going to leave the keys to her fortune lying around unattended.
It took Emily a few minutes to assess the situation in the kitchen—unsalvageable by merely tinkering with the faucet—then go to the water mains and shut off the flow at its source. She returned to the living room drying her hands on a towel.
“That was bizarre! Something just...burst.” She shook her head. “We’ve only got Tylenol,” she told Sam. She took her phone from her pocket. “Do you think I should call them again?”
Sam said, “It’s not like I’m having a heart attack. And who knows what else they’re dealing with?”
Emily nodded. “All right.” She waited a few seconds, then said, “If you’ll excuse me, I just need to clean up. Before it soaks through...”
Natalie said, “We’re fine, really.”
Emily left the room to avail herself of the opportunity to move some of her money around. Whether the market signal proved misleading or not, the outcome was unlikely to ruin her. But the drones were helpless now; there’d be no prospect of them making the switch.
Natalie stared at the carpet, trying to assess the situation. She’d shafted Lewis’s
gang—entirely by mistake, and only partially: Emily would have no suspicions, no reason to raise the alarm and derail the rest of the heist. Lewis might well deduce exactly what had happened. But what would that lead to? Leniency? Forgiveness?
After half an hour and still no ambulance, Emily phoned 911 again. “They said there was nothing in the system!” she told Natalie. “That fills you with confidence!”
The paramedics declared that Sam needed to go to the emergency room. One of them spent a couple of minutes searching the wreck for his severed fingertip while the other waxed lyrical on the wonders of microsurgery, but in the end they gave up. “It must have gotten thrown out and some dog took it.”
An hour later, while Natalie was dealing with paperwork at the hospital, two uniformed police approached her. “We had a report of a hit-and-run,” the older cop said.
“Can you protect us?” Natalie asked him. “If we’re being watched by someone dangerous?”
The cop glanced at his partner. “You’re shaken up, I understand. But this was probably just some drunken fool too cowardly to own up to what he’d done. Nothing you should be taking personally.”
Natalie’s teeth started chattering, but she forced herself to speak.
“They kidnapped my brother,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything, but I need to know: If they can see everywhere, and reach anywhere, how are you going to protect us?”
About the Authors
Nancy Kress
Kress, a resident of Seattle, has won two Hugos and five Nebulas, among other awards. Her work often focuses on the implications of genetic and biomedical technologies.
Brenda Cooper
The author of seven novels, Cooper also writes and speaks about nonfiction topics as a futurist. She works for the city of Kirkland, Wash., as its chief information officer.
Geoffrey A. Landis
A Hugo and Nebula award winner, Landis is a scientist at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, in Ohio, where he has worked on missions such as the Mars Exploration Rovers.
Cheryl Rydbom
Rydbom is an aerospace software engineer in Huntsville, Ala. Her first science fiction short story was published in 2011.
Mary Robinette Kowal
A Hugo award winner, Kowal writes both novels and short stories. Based in Chicago, she is also a professional puppeteer.
Greg Egan
A Hugo and Locus award winner, Egan writes some of the most scientifically rigorous science fiction around. He lives in Australia, and there are no photos of him on the Web.