Junkers

by Benjamin Wallace

  “Jake?” Savant’s head appeared at the hole in the roof. “You can come out now if you’re not dead.”

  Jake pushed the body off of them and they each took a deep breath. “Are you okay?”

  Hailey nodded.

  Jake looked at Donovan’s corpse. “Well, if he is the bad guy, he’s doing a remarkable job of throwing us off his trail.”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “I have a new theory if you’d like to hear it.”

  13

  It isn’t easy to kick open a robotic door. The servos tend to hold it shut unless the proper command is given. To kick it open, one has to work against friction, the metallic gears and the will of the machine itself. But Hailey managed it just fine, and she did it with a fair amount of style.

  She spat at Jack Fox. “You son of bitch!”

  The CEO rose from behind his desk with a smile. “You finally read my biography.” He moved around the desk and opened his arms to hug her.

  “Don’t you touch me!”

  “Hailey, what’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with me? How can you ask me that after what you’ve done?”

  “Okay, this is about my biography. Look, those women are in the past. You know that.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Mr. Ashley, could you possibly tell me what’s going on?”

  “Sure,” Jake said. “Hailey is upset with you because you’re full of shit. DRT wasn’t setting up ZUMR for a fall. You were. And you were going to make it look like DRT was setting you up so you could expose DRT as setting you up even though you were doing the setting up all along.”

  The CEO stepped back from Hailey. “Oh, I see.”

  “And we slept together,” Jake added. “She’s not upset about that. I just wanted to say that for me.”

  Fox glared at Hailey. She only smiled in response.

  “It was a good plan. I’ll give you that, Jack.” Jake stuck out his chest, pulled back his shoulders and began a preplanned strut around the office. “Making your own machines go renegade would instantly take the suspicion off of you because what moron would give his own company bad press? But, in order to pin it on your competition, you couldn’t really investigate it yourself.

  “So you had to get a third party involved. That’s where I came in. Hailey already explained how her team was delayed in arriving at the farm. She said that wasn’t normal. It had to be arranged. Colton probably did that because he’s a dick. Hailey also said you weren’t that good in bed. Again, not really relevant to the case, I’m just throwing that in for myself.”

  Jake stepped behind the CEO’s desk as Jack Fox watched with an impartial expression. “So you got me wrapped into your fabricated conspiracy. The harvester would be enough to get me interested. I can’t say for certain you planned Glitch’s pantsing, but while I’m tossing out accusations I might as well throw it in the mix. The train. The reclamation units. All of it was you, and you did it from this computer right here.”

  Jake slammed his hand against the desk and the screen blinked on, showing nothing more incriminating than a schedule and a to-do list. An entry jumped out at him and it was startling enough to interrupt his speech.

  “But… but then you… the only thing that doesn’t make sense to me is why you tried to have me killed.”

  “I never tried to kill you.”

  “I have a soiled pair of underwear that says different, Jack.”

  “I never tried to kill you. That wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “I already said it didn’t make sense.”

  “Right. Because you had to expose DRT for me.”

  “And I’d have to be alive for that to happen.”

  “Right.”

  Hailey gave a mighty hrumph that turned Jack toward her. “You’re not denying the rest, Jack?”

  “Oh, I did the rest.”

  “Deny it all you want, Jackson Fox.” Jake dropped into the CEO’s chair and put his feet up on the desk. “We have the proof. You may have erased the trail and the backups. But your backups have backups and the memory traces prove you inserted the renegade code and then removed it moments before each machine was destroyed.”

  Hailey’s face had hardened. She was more angry at Fox than she had ever been at Jake. Quite an accomplishment. “He admitted it, Jake.”

  “I know, but I rehearsed this whole thing a few times so I wanted to see it through.”

  “How could you, Jack?” Hailey asked. “People died.”

  Jack shrugged. “Little people. People that no one would miss.”

  Jake laughed. “You don’t think anyone is going to miss Sheldon Donovan?”

  Jack’s head snapped back to Jake. “What are you talking about? I didn’t kill Sheldon Donovan.”

  “Right. I forgot it was just a renegade street sweeper.”

  “I didn’t—” Jack Fox turned and faced the wall. “Show me the feed. Subject: Donovan.”

  The wall responded by broadcasting the latest news feed. Stories of Donovan’s death were pouring in from a thousand sources. Footage of the wrecked limo and disabled sweeper led nearly every feed.

  Jack flipped through the feeds as reporters took reactions from the crowd that had gathered.

  “He was a true visionary,” a woman said in tears. “He will be missed.”

  “Looks like he got taken out with the rest of the trash,” said a man that identified himself as a member of Objective: Deactivate.

  “He did so much for mankind.”

  “He was just so rich.”

  “Go shots all robots.”

  Fox’s face turned white. “No, no this wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t me. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  “Oh really?” Jake laughed. “The farmer. The people that got hit by the train. Glitch’s pants.”

  “No one that mattered was supposed to get hurt.”

  Hailey turned away from her boss and former lover. “You’re a monster, Jack.”

  “No, it—” He began to pace the room. “It was all about winning. It was about showing that punk kid, Donovan, up. He was supposed to be here to see me ruin him. But he’s gone. And I’ve confessed. This is not turning out to be my day at all.”

  “Our day’s been pretty shitty, too, Jack.” The bile in Hailey’s voice was thick. “We were in that limo.”

  “Something has gone horribly wrong,” Jack pleaded. “It was supposed to be over by now. Something is not right. I’m sorry. To both of you, I’m sorry. Especially to you, Hailey. You were never supposed to get hurt.”

  Hailey’s tone softened and her eyes began to plead. “We can fix this, Jack.”

  “Well not the murder thing,” Jake said. “That’ll be kind of hard to undo. Or the conspiracy thing.”

  “No,” Fox said. “I can. I can fix this.” He turned to the kicked-open door and called, “Val-8!”

  A machine responded to the call and ZUMR’s version of Herman walked through the door. Roughly the same size and shape. Same stupid attire. “May I be of assistance, sir?”

  “It’s time,” Fox said.

  The Val-8 produced a gun.

  “I can fix it, but you’re both going to have to be dead. That’s why I’m sorry. I mean mostly for Hailey, Jake. I don’t know you that well and I’m sure I’ll get over it quickly. But I will say the whole sleeping with you thing is going to make it easier to get over her death as well.”

  “No, Jack.” Hailey backed away from the machine. It kept the gun on her as she moved across the room and joined Jake. “Don’t do this.”

  “I already said I was sorry,” Jack said. “Val-8, kill them.”

  The machine raised the gun.

  “Fight it, Val-8. Fight it.” Jake said. “Remember your programming.”

  “It’s a robot not a dog, moron,” Fox said and turned to the machine. “Kill them both.”

  The machine raised the gun and fired three times.

  The first bullet reall
y surprised Jack Fox. The look on his face when the round entered his stomach was one of shock. His expression turned to dismay as the second bullet struck his chest. By the time the third bullet entered, he looked really pissed and then fell to the ground much less concerned.

  Jake drew his own gun and fired as the Val-8 turned the revolver on the couple behind the desk. It made no attempt to evade the shots and took two slugs in the head. It was more concerned with emptying the gun.

  The monitor exploded as Jake and Hailey ducked behind the desk. Two more rounds hit the window behind them and let in the sound of the city far below.

  Jake and Hailey heard the hammer click against spent cylinders.

  Jake whispered to Hailey, “Do you think it knows how to reload?”

  The desk exploded in front of them as the machine tore it in two and sent both halves flying in opposite directions. The Val-8 pulled the gun from Jake’s hand and threw it across the room before reaching for the man himself.

  The robotic hands clamped on his shoulders and lifted him from the ground. The pain was excruciating. Jake struggled to get free. He flexed everything he had in his upper body just to keep from being crushed.

  There was a dull clunk and a sharp twang when Hailey brought the guitar down across the robot’s back. With two more swings she had succeeded in destroying the guitar and gaining the machine’s attention.

  The Val-8 threw Jake as it spun to confront her.

  He landed in ZUMR’s new chair and rolled across the office floor while the seat began adjusting to his size, weight and assonal dimensions. It crashed into the wall as Hailey screamed.

  Jake spun and put his feet on the wall. He launched himself back across the office screaming, “Get out of the way!”

  Hailey jumped aside as the heavy, motor-driven robot chair collided with the Val-8 and sent it crashing through the window to the ground below.

  Sensing danger, the chair’s wheel motors locked up and screeched to a stop. It dug ruts into the hardwood floor and toppled Jake over backward through the window.

  Everything slowed. He felt his center of gravity tip past the point of no return. He felt the wind blow across his face and through his hair. He felt gravity take hold as his stomach lurched, trying desperately to get back inside the building. If he played it right he might just be able to vomit before he hit the ground. He wondered briefly if the vomit would hit the ground first.

  Then nothing happened. The chair stopped tipping and his stomach lurched back into place. The wheels sat back on the ground and the chair rolled back into the office, away from the window and the deadly fall.

  Jake took a deep breath and looked down at his arms on the chair. “This thing is amazing! He’s going to make a fortune. Well, if he wasn’t dead.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Hailey grunted.

  Jake turned and saw her at the edge of the window, panting.

  “Why are you over there?”

  “I was grabbing the stupid chair.”

  “Oh.” That made more sense than what he had thought happened. “Thanks.”

  14

  It was quiet outside the office door.

  Jake had expected a lot more commotion after the shooting and the window crashing and all the dying, but the waiting room was empty with the exception of MAR-E, who sat quietly behind her desk playing solitaire at an amazing speed.

  Hailey rushed over to the desk. “MAR-E, call the police.”

  The feminine robot looked up from her game and scanned each of them. “You don’t have an appointment.”

  “MAR-E, call the police,” Hailey repeated. “Jack is dead.”

  “You don’t have an appointment,” the machine said again.

  Jake fired a round through MAR-E’s face.

  The machine tumbled out of her chair to the floor.

  “What are you doing?!” Hailey screamed.

  “She was about to attack us.”

  “No, she wasn’t, you trigger-happy idiot.”

  “She was. That’s the exact kind of thing they say just before they go nuts. Trust me.”

  “She wasn’t going nuts, she was…”

  “You don’t have an appointment.” MAR-E stood and launched herself over the desk. The secretary tackled Jake to the ground before he could shoot again.

  “Fine,” Hailey said. “You were right. Are you happy?”

  “Get her off me!” Jake held the robots arms back as they tried to claw at him. MAR-E sat astride his hips and tried to claw at his face.

  Gears clacked and skipped as the machine’s servos pushed against his grip. It wasn’t a tremendously heavy machine but the more it moved the more uncomfortable he felt pinned beneath it.

  “Do something. This is really awkward.”

  MAR-E’s eye glowed red. “You don’t have an appointment.”

  The machine’s head exploded in a shower of sparks and it fell limp on top of him. Jake pushed her off and stood.

  Hailey handed him his gun back and smirked. “Did you enjoy that?”

  He took the gun. “You’re disgusting.”

  Buzzing filled the air and footsteps echoed down the hallway. The din grew louder and louder. The elevator chimed and the doors opened to an army of office machines that flooded into the waiting room.

  Hailey grabbed his hand. “To the stairs!” She pulled him through a doorway into the floor’s remaining office space. It was filled with empty cubicles bursting with robotic life.

  “The stairs are at the far end,” she said and started rushing for the emergency exit.

  “They would be. Where are all the people?”

  “Jack didn’t want to share a floor with anyone. But he didn’t want anyone to think that, so he set this up and just never put anyone up here.”

  “What a guy!”

  A steaming stream of brown fluid shot across Jake’s vision as a coffee drone buzzed him.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  It turned to spray again and he shot it out of the air. Several more rounded the corner and soared toward them.

  “Okay, I’m doing the bullet-to-robot math and, uh, just run.”

  An office paper shredder came after them next. It was the size of a large waste can, it ran on all fours and bounded after them like a dog. Normally it would happily accept any materials that needed to be destroyed before trotting off to the next workstation but now it barreled at them with its shredding mechanism bared.

  A janitor burst out of a closet ahead of them with its mechanical tentacles waving. Aside from its size and the fact that it walked on two legs, the Glenn Matthews model service bot functioned much like ZUMR’s street sweeper. The tentacles began grabbing everything they could. The machine threw chairs and trashcans. It ripped walls from the cubicles and hurled them toward the fleeing pair.

  Jake and Hailey ducked behind a column as a wall panel crashed into it.

  “This is insane,” Hailey yelled over the noise.

  Jake looked behind them. They were quickly being surrounded. A bathroom attendant had joined in the march and the air from its hand-mounted hand dryers was sending dirt and dust into the air.

  Another robot that looked like MAR-E but was programmed for party planning held a cake that it was threatening to throw.

  Another similar machine was yelling at them to clean their old items out of the community fridge, punctuating every statement with, “Your mother doesn’t work here.”

  The now-faceless board members marched in sync from the end of the hallway forming a column of machines.

  It wouldn’t be long before the machines overtook the two humans.

  “Come on,” Jake said as he stepped from behind the pillar and shot the janitor to get its attention.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Follow me. Duck a lot.” Jake stepped to his left as an office chair sailed by his head and struck the party planner right in the cake.

  Hailey sidestepped a desktop that clipped a flying coffee machine before it crashed to the flo
or.

  Another chair bounced and toppled the document shredder. A cube wall plowed into the fridge monitor and a board member. The janitor was relentless and the pair were using it to their advantage until a stream of hot liquid poured down Jake’s back. Having a wet spot in the small of his back was about the most uncomfortable thing there was. It would cool eventually but it wasn’t going to feel right all day.

  He screamed and grabbed the coffee maker out of the air. He shook it a couple of times before slamming it against the wall and bashing it to several pieces.

  The bathroom attendant took advantage of the distraction and tackled Jake from behind. The machine pinned him and the air dryers revved up to high whine and blasted his back with air.

  “Jake!” Hailey moved toward him.

  “Hold on. It’s almost dry.” He was going to smell like coffee for the rest of the day, but the uncomfortable wet spot was soon gone.

  Hailey grabbed the machine around the neck and pulled it back enough for Jake to turn over.

  It shot her in the face with the hand dryers. Her cheeks puffed out enough to make Jake laugh. They kind of flapped a bit and she yelled at him for laughing.

  “It’s not funny,” is what he thought she said.

  “Get out of the way.”

  Hailey let go and Jake put a bullet into the machine’s head. It fell to the ground in a spasm of sparks and twitched as the hand dryers whirred to a stop.

  Several board members charged for them and Jake fired until the gun was empty. He watched two of them drop. The others kept coming. He reloaded with one final magazine. “This is all I’ve got left.”

  “Then shoot the damn Glenn Matthews and run!”

  The janitor was still throwing office supplies their way and it took several shots to hit it through the debris. The bullet struck the machine’s optic sensor but did not shut it down. Now blinded, the janitor’s tentacles whipped frantically searching for anything to throw or throttle.

  Jake and Hailey ran wide around the machine and reached the stairway door as it encountered the other machines. It began plucking the coffee makers from the air and throwing them at the board members. The board members lashed out at the paper shredder and party planning bot in response. The noise was overwhelming.