Forever Begins Tomorrow

by Bruce Coville

  “True,” conceded Roger. “But she had a lot of fun along the way. Besides, Alice will live forever.”

  “I sincerely doubt that you will be so lucky,” replied the chestnut-haired scientist. “In fact, at the rate you’re going, I would consider making it through to the end of the year a real victory. Now take your pill. I’ve got work to do.”

  With that, she spun on her heel and disappeared through a door at the back of the treatment room.

  Roger looked at the tablet and wondered vaguely if Dr. Clark might be the spy, and was using this as a way to kill him off.

  Stop being paranoid! he ordered himself. Besides, she’s too tall and has the wrong color hair.

  He tossed the pill into his mouth and turned to Rachel. “So just what did they do with the robots?” he asked, returning to the original question.

  “They gave them to ADAM.”

  “Say what?”

  “They worked out some device so that the robots only respond to commands issued by the main computer—via shortwave radio broadcasts, of all things. Brody’s control panels send a message to the computer, then the computer verifies it before issuing the command to the robots.”

  “Well, that system shouldn’t be too hard to break,” said Roger. “After all, we’re on pretty good terms with ADAM ourselves.”

  Rachel shook her head. “Not this good. Every morning the computer randomly generates a new fifteen-digit number, which is given to the official control units by plugging them directly into the mainframe. Only units first broadcasting that number get a response from the computer.”

  Roger shook his head and gave a low whistle. “Fifteen digits! That’s a quadrillion possible access codes! They’re really getting nasty, aren’t they?”

  “Not nearly as nasty as I feel,” said Dr. Phillips, stepping into the room.

  Roger groaned. His father’s face had lecture written all over it.

  While Dr. Phillips was expressing his opinion of the evening’s activities, the person the gang had come to think of as “MF” (for “Mysterious Friend”) huddled in a steaming shower and tried to stop trembling. What a close call that had been!

  The trembling was not caused solely by fear. News of Roger’s mishap had reached the MF through the island communications system. With it had come a heavy burden of guilt.

  I shouldn’t have left him!

  Turning off the shower, the damp figure grabbed a large, thick towel. But I really did believe the kids had the robot situation under control. Otherwise I wouldn’t have taken off as I did!

  MF sighed. Pleasant as it would have been to believe that, it really wasn’t true. Capture at this point was unthinkable, and no matter how appalling it might be, the fact was that the mission took precedence over the life of a single teenager. The world had too much at stake to let sentimental concern for an individual stand in the way of what had to be done.

  That may be. But it’s still important that I alert the kids to the identity of the enemy before I leave the island tomorrow. That communications blackout may have slowed down Black Glove, but it’s certainly made my job harder, too. And they’re the only ones who can keep an eye on things until I get back.

  For probably the tenth time in as many days the gang’s unknown friend made a mental note to find out who had left Sergeant Brody in charge of security for Anza-bora Island. Whoever it was, I’ll have the nitwit’s head on a platter when this is all over!

  Then MF stretched out on the bed and began a series of relaxation exercises. A little sleep was a necessity right now. Tomorrow was going to be a real challenge.

  “So, what did your father have to say?” asked Wendy the following afternoon, when the group had once again gathered at their headquarters.

  “It would be easier to tell you what he left out,” said Roger with a sigh. “Which was basically nothing. I’m thinking of contacting the Guinness Collection of Records to see if I can get dad listed in their next edition for having made the longest nonstop lecture ever given to a kid.”

  “My circuits are still in a jangle,” said Paracelsus.

  “I can’t believe I missed all the action,” said Trip. “I wish I’d been there!”

  “Forget it,” said Hap. “This was not one of your all-time fun evenings. Other than having your parents decide to cancel your freedom to ever leave the house again as long as you live, I doubt your presence would have changed much.”

  Trip sighed. It wasn’t easy being the most “protected” kid in the group.

  “Don’t feel bad,” said Roger. “You’re not the only one on a short leash. My father’s on the verge of canceling my right to breathe.”

  “My parents told me how pleased they were that I was home in bed where I belonged,” said Ray, sounding disgusted. “I thought I was going to throw up.”

  “You have to train them better, Ray,” said the Wonderchild. “Now, in my case—”

  She was interrupted by the buzzer that indicated a message coming in on the computer.

  “This should be interesting,” said Rachel. “Everybody who’s supposed to know the direct access code for that terminal is already here. So it’s got to be either our mysterious enemy—or our mysterious friend!”

  It turned out to be the latter..

  “Greetings,” said the message that appeared on the monitor. “First, my apologies for last night. I thought you had the robot situation under control.”

  “So did we,” said Roger ruefully. As he spoke, he adjusted the sling that held his cast-laden arm in place.

  “Quiet!” said Hap. “I want to read this.”

  The computer continued to print the message word by word—an indication that it was being typed even as they read it.

  “I called for that meeting because I didn’t want to take the risk of sending this message over the computer. Unfortunately, as it turned out, my alternative was no improvement. I still don’t like doing this; you can never be sure someone won’t intercept it. But now I have no choice. I must leave the island almost immediately, and it is vital that you keep an eye on Black Glove until I return.

  “However, it is equally vital that you DO NOT make a move unless a major emergency arises!

  “You will understand why when I tell you that Black Glove’s real identity is—”

  Suddenly the flow of words ceased. An instant later a burst of letters and symbols exploded across the screen, as if someone had slammed their fists against the keyboard.

  “Chips!” exclaimed Wendy. “Now what?”

  “Get on that keyboard, Rachel!” cried Roger, seething with frustration because he couldn’t do it himself. “Put a trace on that transmission.”

  Rachel was already calling up the program they had been developing to track down some of their mysterious messages. But it was too late. The connection had been severed.

  The Traitor

  Less than an hour after the transmission from their mysterious friend had been so strangely interrupted, the A.I. Gang could be found gathered outside the door to Dr. Hwa’s office.

  “At least his message was complete,” said the Gamma Ray, speaking of the summons that had brought them here. “Even so, I wish it had been a little more specific. We’ve had enough little mysteries in the last few days.”

  “Well, the fastest way to find out what the good doctor wants is to ask,” said Roger. Without further hesitation, he pushed open the door and stepped in.

  To his surprise, one of Sergeant Brody’s air police was slouched in the chair behind Bridget McGrory’s desk.

  “He’d better not let Bridget catch him there,” whispered Wendy. “If she does they’ll be able to use what’s left of him for meat loaf tonight.”

  The guard barely looked up from the book he was reading. “Go on in. The boss is waiting for you.”

  As they filed into Dr. Hwa’s office, Ray lingered for a moment to see if the guard would reach under the desk, as he had seen Bridget McGrory do on several occasions. While the movement had always seeme
d suspicious to him, he had admitted to himself that she might simply be releasing an electronic lock of some kind, or doing something else equally innocent.

  But the guard was completely absorbed in his book; he didn’t move at all.

  Scratch the electronic lock theory, thought Ray, following the others into Dr. Hwa’s sanctum sanctorum.

  The little scientist was sitting behind his desk, studying a thick file of papers. An atypical clutter covered the rest of the surface. In fact, an air of disarray seemed to have descended over the entire office—right down to Dr. Hwa himself. The scientist’s usually neat hair was rumpled, his tie askew, his lab coat only half buttoned.

  He didn’t look up until Roger cleared his throat to indicate that they were waiting for him. When he did, his face appeared drawn and weary, as if he had not slept for many hours. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the large conference table on the other side of the room.

  The gang exchanged uneasy glances. In their numerous interviews with Dr. Hwa he had rarely invited them to sit. When he did, it was generally a sign of something big.

  “Please,” said Dr. Hwa, rising from his chair and coming around the desk to join them. “Have a seat.” They let him lead the way to the conference table. When he had taken his place at the head of the table, they sat three on either side of him, eager to discover what came next.

  “This is hard for me,” said Dr. Hwa.

  He locked his fingers together and stared into the little cave made by his hands. The gang, even Wendy, remained silent, waiting for him to speak.

  Finally he looked up. “I do not make many mistakes. However, I now find that when I do make one, it is—to use an appropriate Americanism—a dilly.” He turned to look directly at Roger. “I owe you an apology,” he said, his eyes straying to the cast on Roger’s arm. “And the rest of you, as well, though it is Roger who has suffered most recently, and most severely, as a result of my disbelief.” He sighed. “Please accept my sincere regrets for having ignored your warnings.”

  A look of puzzlement passed among the gang. What was going on here?

  “You spoke to me of a spy,” said Dr. Hwa. “I would not listen. Now I find, to my dismay, that there was indeed an agent on Anza-bora who was hostile to my interests. Worse, it was someone I trusted as I would have trusted my own parents.”

  He sighed and stared into his hands again.

  “Well, who the heck was it?” cried Wendy.

  When Dr. Hwa looked up, his face seemed twisted with sorrow. “Your mysterious Black Glove has turned out to be my secretary, Bridget McGrory. We caught her red-handed, so to speak. She has been going through classified files in my desk.”

  He sighed. “I have not felt so betrayed since… well, that was a different time and place. Suffice it to say that this discovery has pained me more than I can tell you.”

  “I can’t believe old Bridget had it in her,” said Hap when the gang had gathered in their headquarters to digest this latest piece of news.

  “Watch it, bub,” said Wendy. “That comes perilously close to being a sexist remark. Bridget McGrory is one tough cookie. I bet she can do just about anything she puts her mind to. And don’t forget that Ray’s been babbling for months now about some mysterious move she makes at her desk whenever we go in to see Dr. Hwa. We should have paid more attention to what he was saying.”

  “Thanks,” said Ray. “I think. I was getting tired of all of you acting like I had several screws loose when I said there was something strange about her. My theory is, she was switching on a remote recording device or something like that.”

  “I feel silly for not having figured it out ourselves,” said Rachel. “I think I ignored her because she was ‘just’ a secretary!”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” said Roger. “I’d like to get a chance to talk to her. I’ve got a lot of questions about what’s been going on here for the last several months, and she might be able to answer them.”

  “Well, she’ll be here for a while,” said Trip. “Dr. Hwa said they were going to ship her out on the next supply plane. But the plane was here just yesterday, so it will be another six days before they can send her off island.”

  “What difference does that make?” asked Hap. “They’re not about to let us in to see her.”

  “So?” asked Wendy. “We haven’t let that kind of thing stop us yet, have we?”

  “Why, no,” said Roger, with a widening smile. “I can’t say as we have. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “If I’m not, you’re dumber than I thought,” said Wendy.

  Rachel sighed. “Oh, great. Most people want to break out of jail. Now we’re going to try to break into one? That should do wonders for our reputation!”

  “It’s not like we’re going to try to get right into her cell,” pointed out Wendy. “Just up to the door of it, so we can talk to her.”

  “But how are we going to do it?” asked Trip. “Now that the robots are back in Brody’s control, we can’t just walk into the place.”

  “So we’ll have to find some other way,” said Wendy. “I’ve done my part; I got the brilliant idea to begin with. Why don’t the rest of you figure out how to pull it off?”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” said Trip. “Let’s put the question to Sherlock. This will be a good test for him.”

  “If you’ve made that machine smarter than I am, I’m going to be very jealous,” said Paracelsus.

  “Hey, baby,” said Wendy, patting the automaton’s shiny skull. “You gotta roll with the punches. Now be quiet, or we’ll take you apart and make transistor radios out of you.”

  “Call the SPCA!” shrieked Paracelsus.

  “Don’t even ask,” said Roger, before Wendy could open her mouth. “Just ignore him.”

  “Well, I like that!” said Paracelsus. Then the automaton shut off its own circuits and went to sleep.

  “This was harder than I thought,” said Trip after the gang had spent nearly fifteen hours of programming and careful questioning to get Sherlock to come up with an answer. “But I think he’s ready.”

  “How come it took so long?” asked Hap. “Sherlock figured out that code for where the transmitter was located in almost no time.”

  “Different kind of question,” said Roger. “Different thought processes. Ready, everyone?”

  When the gang had gathered around, Roger said, “Sherlock, what are your conclusions?”

  “Find out the robot’s patrol schedule,” replied the computer in its crisp British accent. “Then either try to slip in when there is a brief break, or else use the knowledge of where the guard will be to prepare a distraction.”

  Ray snorted. “This is not a fifteen-hour answer! I worked out the same strategy yesterday.”

  “Yes, but you were operating from a base of common sense,” said Rachel.

  “Tell that to my parents! They don’t think I have any.”

  “Well, they may not agree,” said Rachel. “But the truth is, common sense is a heck of a lot easier to come by in a person than in a machine. Remember that guy who spent a year trying to program a computer so it would know enough to come in out of the rain?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Hap. “Why was it out in the rain to begin with?”

  Rachel made a, face “It wasn’t really out in the rain, silly. It was a simulation program. The researcher set up the situation, then asked the computer what it would do.”

  “If it didn’t know, why didn’t he just tell it?”

  “Because he wanted the machine to figure it out on its own! That was the whole point. As it turned out, teaching a machine to add and subtract is a snap compared to teaching it to do the kind of things we take for granted.”

  “Enough theory,” said Trip. “The question now is whether or not we take Sherlock’s suggestion. If we do, we’ve still got to get the robot’s patrol schedule.”

  “It’s probably in the main computer,” said Hap. “Do you think we can pull it out?”

/>   “I expect so,” said Wendy. “I’m guessing they hardly bothered to protect it, since they would figure they had already taken care of security with their access code plan. I bet I can find it without much trouble.”

  “I hope so,” said Rachel. “We’ve only got four days before the supply plane lands and Bridget is gone for good. If we’re going to talk to her, we’ve got to move fast.”

  “I’ll start on it right away,” said Wendy.

  “Good,” said Roger. He lifted his arm to glance at his watch, realized that he was wearing a cast instead, and moved his attention to his other wrist. “I have to be at the infirmary for a check on my arm in fifteen minutes. I’ll leave this in your capable hands.”

  “Aye-aye, Chief,” said Wendy, snapping him a salute. “Come on, Ray. I can use your help on this one.”

  To Roger’s surprise, the infirmary was empty when he arrived.

  “Dr. Clark?” he called, standing at the door to her office.

  That’s funny. She’s usually right on time. I wonder if anything is wrong.

  He called again.

  Still no answer.

  He stepped in and looked around. The office was empty. Walking through it, he entered the examination room, where he took his usual place on the high-topped table.

  Several minutes went by. After a while Roger got up and began to poke through the equipment arrayed on the shelves. I wonder when they’ll invent an electronic tongue depressor, he thought, looking at a jar of wooden strips. He took one out and clenched it between his teeth, plucking the end so it made a strange vibrating sound.

  Where is she, anyway?

  Making another circuit of the room, Roger noticed that the door in the back wall was slightly ajar. He pushed on it, and it swung open.

  “Dr. Clark?” he called.

  Again, no answer. He was about to pull the door shut when he noticed a strange odor drifting through from the other side. Curious, he stepped into the next room. What he saw there made him feel as if his world had turned upside down.

  Project Alpha was a high-tech hardware operation.

  So what were all these rows of tanks filled with bubbling yellow water and something that looked disturbingly like flesh?