House of the Galactic Elevator

by Gerhard Gehrke

  But Jeff didn’t answer her. Instead he closed his eyes and went to see if Zachary was still alive.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Jeffy, you don’t have enough to foot this bill,” Zachary said. “Let me show you a few things that you can afford.”

  Jeff found him and all of the game functions still installed and no worse for wear since the worm removal. That meant the game framework was no longer a resident of the translator but had been installed in its entirety into his brain without consent.

  They were standing in front of the screen of available games. Zachary gestured and the monitors filled with avatar options galore. Jeff saw himself superimposed on each avatar, with more muscle, fancy clothes, a black silk hospital gown for Doubt and Apprehension, and extra limbs for Invasion: Target Earth! Purchasable accessories came next. Tanks, weapons, rideable beasts with zero to a hundred legs, gadgets, and virtual companions all scrolled by.

  “I don’t want any of that,” Jeff said.

  “Okay then. How about place? Remember that island? You can upgrade that experience so you’re on a low-G world. Imagine touring a tropical locale where you can leap like a superhero or run across the water with the marine life. We have astronomy packages that will give you ring planets that set and rise at different hours. It’s spectacular!”

  “No. But you’re capable of accessing the creators of the AI you piggybacked on? Giving payment for the AI and completing a purchase? This entire gaming suite is based on a credit system, isn’t it?”

  Zachary smiled. The expression looked both devious and proud.

  “Yup. But again, you don’t have the bank.”

  “How much will I need?”

  Zachary told him. Jeff stood for a moment in silence.

  “I guess I am a bit short.”

  Zachary offered a thumb and a forefinger an inch apart.

  “Any wiggle room on that price? Can we just get an extension on the trial period? I mean, come on, this is to rescue two thousand potential customers. Think of it as goodwill. On my world, that’s tax deductible. The good press you can make on this is huge.”

  “No, I’m sorry, but I don’t have the latitude to do that. The price is firm.”

  “So what do I need to do to get any additional donors on board? If enough people pay you directly, you can keep a tally, and if we make enough, the AI will become fully enabled?”

  Zachary flickered and for a moment Jeff thought there was a glitch in the application. His image stabilized again. Zachary pointed to the monitor. A contract appeared. The signer, Jeff Abel, Human, was listed at the top as an organizer of a fund drive to pay for purchase of one (1) Authentic Jinong Instant AI. Jeff saw the amount owed before purchase would be considered complete. It made his mouth dry. A tiny credit appeared in another column. This number matched the small amount in his personal Galactic Commons savings account.

  “I took the liberty of applying your current credits to this transaction,” Zachary said. “Prime the pump, eh, Jeffy?”

  “Let me guess your name,” Jeff said under his breath.

  Zachary chuckled. “Hey, I wouldn’t set this up if I didn’t think it was possible. This is a business after all. Besides, if you’re at the head of this thing, I’m sure I can pass some in-game love your way. Call it a little incentive. And you know what might sweeten the deal further? Letting others in on the fun. Think you can do that?”

  “I’ll think about it. The deal first. Let’s see how we do.” Jeff took a deep breath. He was sure this was a mistake. But they needed the AI to get back home. “If you’re ready, then so am I. Time to make some new friends and pass the plate.”

  ***

  Ceph, along with his force of a hundred other officers and two hundred security bots, stood at the outskirts of the large plaza in front of the transportation terminal. In their current positions they had the place surrounded. Lights flashed on each of the bots, and silent alarm beacons warned off the public, notifying any that got close enough of a police matter and telling them to leave the area at once. Ceph saw no one moving inside the terminal and had no views from any of the surveillance cameras. The first officers and bots that had gone in to investigate the initial alarm and to apprehend Irving the Grey still weren’t answering their coms. The bots that had been with them were not only offline but perhaps compromised.

  How Irving the Grey had gotten inside the transportation terminal still wasn’t clear. Obviously there were access points and passageways in the Commons that Irving had used to escape and no doubt it could use these same secret tunnels to move about the city. Rumors of such an extensive network of abandoned underground halls and galleries had been around since he was a larva. Ceph continued reviewing surveillance footage to look for any possible clues.

  “Detective, we have movement,” an officer next to him said.

  Ceph looked out across the plaza. A single security bot rolled through one of the terminal’s front doors. Ceph checked his security app, but didn’t see an active bot at that location. That bot must be offline. Yet there it was, and it moved towards the cordon. The bot’s stun blaster popped up from its shoulder and it began to fire.

  Ceph sent a stand-down order to the bot. It was ignored. Ceph accessed one of the bots on his perimeter and ordered it to open fire.

  Three yellow bolts in quick succession impacted the charging rogue bot. With a zip zip zap the bot went limp and puttered to a stop, and a trickle of smoke rose from its head.

  The other security officers raised their weapons and took aim at the front of the building. A second bot appeared, an older maintenance unit that security could commandeer during emergencies. Otherwise, this particular bot performed janitorial duties, as was evident by a coil of hoses attached to one arm and a variety of brushes and vacuum attachments on its front. Still, this bot was armed. It too had a stunner aimed at the security detail. Ceph shot the bot down, and it went limp like the first. They waited. No more bots came.

  “Maybe that’s it,” a security officer said. “There weren’t that many bots in there since the terminal stopped being used. We should go in and see what happened to our people.”

  Ceph closed some of his apps so he could see the officer next to him without distraction.

  “Perhaps we are at the first flush of their escape,” Ceph said. “And perhaps this is bait to draw us in. We wait.”

  They waited. Ceph saw something move on one of the downed bots. Something small. He activated his magnification app. He got a closer view of something emerging from the bot’s head. He had one of his own bots take a look, as its visual pickups were far superior to what his app could do with his own eyes.

  A worm came out of the bot and dropped to the ground. It began a slow crawl towards the line of security officers. The officer next to Ceph shot it. A yellow blaster bolt vaporized the little thing. A second worm appeared out of the second downed bot. This worm also got fried.

  “What are those things?” the officer next to Ceph asked.

  “Perhaps the source of our troubled waters surfacing,” Ceph said.

  For a moment nothing happened. The security personnel began to relax. Then the bots in the plaza began to vibrate. First the one and then the second burst open at the waist. Hundreds of worms emerged, all inching forward towards the line of cops.

  “Do not spare them!” Ceph yelled. “Fire!”

  The line opened up, bots and security officers both, snapping off hundreds of rounds into the advancing worms. Their targets were quite small and difficult to hit, but half of the worms died in the first few seconds. The barrage continued, officers pausing only long enough to slap fresh energy cells into their weapons. The surviving worms inched closer. A pop-snap-sizzle cadence filled the air, joined by loud exclamations from the security officers that whooped, swore, and roared. The worms made no sounds as they were vaporized, none getting within reach of the line of officers.

  Ceph paused to rub his eyes. He scratched his ringing ears with his face tentacles. That w
as when he felt something crawling on his head. It was a worm. He swatted it away. He checked the rest of his body and saw more worms on his legs and feet. Beneath him he saw dozens of fresh holes in the street and more underneath each of his officers.

  The officer next to him started to jerk about, his stunner falling from his grip. He fell to the ground with a final twitch and stopped moving. Other officers began to move from their positions, jumping up and batting at worms crawling on their bodies. Hundreds of worms swarmed about, having come up through the very street. The security bots on the line had worms on them as well. The tiny creatures drilled, and the bots went limp on their treads.

  Ceph had one worm on his hand. He tried to flick it away, but it clung to him. Ceph put his weapon against the thing and fired. His whole arm went numb, but the worm disintegrated. He felt another one on his neck. It crept to the back of his head and wriggled into his null-space pouch where he kept his translator. Ceph reached in and yanked out the translator. The worm was already boring into the unit with its monospike. He flung both away.

  “Fall back!” Ceph shouted.

  He did a tip-toe pirouette around more worms, shooting one in the air as it sprang off the ground towards him. He continued to bat the stunner against himself at every part of his body. The tiny creatures flew everywhere. With a quick examination, he confirmed none still clung to him. Ceph climbed on top of a grav sled and looked back at his fellow officers.

  Some still stood in their place on the line, stomping furiously at the wave of wiggling attackers. Most were lying where they had fallen.

  “Retreat,” he said into his com, knowing that anything he said without the benefit of translation might not be readily understood. He also could make little sense of the many apps still open, meaningless images and data beaming across his eyes and in his head. He closed all of them.

  Worms began to head his way. Some used one another to hop onto the sled. He also saw the security bot that had gone down next to him reactivate. He felt queasy as it turned in his direction with its weapons powered up.

  Ceph dove from the sled as the bot began to spray blaster bolts in his direction. Ceph rolled upon landing and found cover behind a map and city orientation kiosk. An automated voice asked him a question, but to Ceph it just sounded like the nonsensical parched-throat rasp of every other dry-land creature. Two buildings rose up behind him with an alley cutting between them. Ceph paused to catch his breath and broke for the alley. Shots pierced the air on either side of him, but he just kept his head down and ran.

  ***

  Ceph made it to an overpass and looked down at the plaza. He watched as a hundred security bots swarmed about. One occasionally fired at something just out of sight. He didn’t see anyone from his command still moving. The worms were there, too. The bots scooped these up. Ceph opened his com, but it flashed him an error message that he couldn’t read.

  He had a good guess what it said. It wouldn’t function properly unless a translator was installed. Ceph’s hands trembled from the excitement. How he wanted to retreat to his favorite restaurant and fill his mouth with something still squirming. But he had never shirked his duty, always going above and beyond the call oft ignored by the typical Galactic Commons citizen. He needed to get back to security HQ and report. No doubt the feed from the local cameras had been seen by Captain Flemming.

  He began to run for the nearest transit station. He made it to one of the pedestrian tunnels that would take him down to a subway line. He hesitated. The worms had come up from the ground. There was no telling how many there were and how far they had spread.

  So he jogged along the street, looking for oncoming traffic. One grav car with two long-necked herbivores in its seats came speeding up. Ceph waved his hands, got close to the vehicle, shouted “Stop!” but the grav car swished around him like he was a mere traffic obstacle.

  A large hovering truck with an open rear cargo bed approached next. It had no driver or passengers, one of many automated vehicles that filled the roads of the city. It sped towards Ceph with no indication that it would waver from its course.

  “Sometimes you just have to grapple with the hormonal ruminating river mammal by its elongated underbite,” he said.

  Ceph held out one hand and flashed his badge in the other. The truck tilted forward as it came to an abrupt stop, bobbing in the air. It honked, and a recorded verbal message blasted that Ceph didn’t understand, but he could guess the meaning. Get out of the road. Other vehicles sped around the halted truck. Ceph kept a hand on the vehicle and walked forward to the cab. He placed his badge against one of the truck’s visual inputs.

  “Security headquarters,” Ceph said with deliberate slowness. “Take me.”

  Maybe the truck’s programming would understand. Maybe it would ignore him and drive to its original destination. Perhaps it would summon more security in the face of a gibbering hijacker. He climbed onto the truck’s running boards and the truck started moving.

  “Security headquarters,” he said again. “Time to lick our wounds.”

  ***

  “Have your car turn here,” Jordan said.

  They propelled forward past bot trucks and other slower-moving machines and through the agri-belt on the outskirts of the city. Shannanon sat in the second front seat, her feet tucked under her and her arms crossed behind her head on the headrest. She had her dress tucked demurely around her groin. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth moved slightly like she was trying to speak. At first Jordan thought she was asleep and didn’t hear her.

  “Are you in-game?” Jordan asked.

  “Just a sec,” Shannanon mumbled. Then it sounded like she blew a raspberry.

  Jordan checked her friend list and saw that Ceph was in the center of the city and on the move.

  Her other new friend, whatever this Zachary character was, remained silent and appeared offline.

  Shannanon’s grav car sped up, now moving along an expressway that took them above much of one of the outlying industrial districts. The car’s automatic programming made for a smooth ride even after Shannanon had given it the instructions to travel as fast as possible. Jordan heard no road noise and only the faintest hum from the vehicle’s power plant.

  Fang slept in the footwell next to her. Perhaps it was the excitement or the quiet rhythm of grav car travel, but her adopted baby monster was zonked out.

  Jordan checked the programmed destination on the vehicle’s navigation screen. The car was taking them to Shannanon’s apartment building, located in one of the mixed residential zones not dominated by any sovereign building. Anyone could be your neighbor here from any one of thousands of worlds. Jordan touched the destination point and moved it over to Detective Ceph’s general location. She checked her own map app and saw that Ceph’s last few pings took him in a straight line away from the transportation terminal. An alert continued to warn all citizens away. She examined the map and saw that Ceph was heading straight for security headquarters. He had to know what was going on.

  Jordan changed their destination again. Security HQ, here we come.

  Shannanon didn’t respond to any of the course changes and was oblivious when the grav car crossed eight lanes to make it to an off-ramp. Her hairy fingers moved as if they were typing. Her head bobbed ever so slightly as if she were listening to music.

  They descended down the off-ramp to surface streets. The car slowed to accommodate the increase in traffic. Another alert appeared. The zone around security headquarters flashed red. All citizens were under orders to evacuate the area. No cause of the emergency was listed. Traffic began to slow to a crawl, with automated barriers directing the flow away from the unseen hazard. Suddenly they were driving through thick dust, as if a sandstorm was blowing through the city. She had never encountered bad weather before. All of that was somehow regulated by unseen tech. Was a dust storm the cause of the trouble?

  Ceph’s indicator had stopped just outside of the red zone on an overpass just ahead. But their car was b
eing diverted.

  “Shannanon, I’m going to pull us over here and go on foot,” Jordan said.

  Shannanon continued to sit, oblivious to Jordan, her mouth twisted into a half-smile. She chuckled with a muted huff-huff-huff. Somewhere online, something funny was happening.

  Jordan ordered the car to the curb. When it balked, citing “mandatory traffic flow considerations” as a reason to not park, Jordan hit the override, pulled over onto the sidewalk, and got out.

  “Stay here. Watch Fang. I’ll be right back.”

  She closed the car and ran. The floating dust irritated her mouth and nose. She found a pedestrian ramp that led up to the overpass. The elevated road was free of traffic, and no wonder. It led straight in the direction of the security headquarters building, the epicenter of the alerts. The air was oddly clearer up here. Blinking signs warned everyone to turn around and go back. She followed the sidewalk along the side of the road. Ahead she saw a group of security personnel and their vehicles. Ceph stood among them.

  “Detective!” she shouted. “I’ve been trying to reach you!”

  She pushed through the other cops. It was strange. They were all just standing there, staring. A few glanced at her but returned their attention down the road.

  She put her hand on Ceph’s shoulder. The tentacle-faced detective looked at her with a grim expression. His skin appeared to be the deepest shade of purple, abnormally dark. This translated as intense emotion and sadness.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Ceph could only shake his head. A bubbling, popping sound came from his mouth.

  “His translator is gone,” one of the cops said.

  “Where do we get another one?”

  “The store, I guess.”

  “What the hell is going on? Why are you douchebags just standing around?”