by wade coleman
She brings a pitcher of water and refills my glass. “You the new guy?”
“Yes,” I say and drink more water.
“How do you like your new job?”
“Good. I learned how to use a shovel.”
“A versatile tool.” She refills my glass.
Soon the food comes, and I eat. Between bites, I ask, “Where is everybody?”
“You’re everybody. This place only stays open for the farmers who live in the area. They come in for breakfast early and leave when the sun comes up. Once a week, usually on weekends, they come in for supplies.”
“What’s a weekend?”
“It means the end of the work week. You work five days and take two off - unless you’re a farmer. They take winter off and work the rest of the seasons.”
After eating, I ask, “How do I pay?”
“Globe-X covers your room and food.”
“Thanks.” I walk out the door and across the street to the Red Lion Motor Inn.
The cart follows me. “I can give you a ride?”
I don’t say anything. I walk back to my room and go inside. I’m still tired, but I promised to plug in Max when I got settled.
I open the flute case, get out my shielded cable and plug it into the TV.
The TV turns on, and Max is doing sit-ups. He stops when he sees me and walks over to the screen. “Dude, what happened?”
“I think the cart is trying to kill me.”
One eyebrow goes up. “Back up and lay it on me.”
“I used a shovel to clean up a dead body. I got thirsty, and the cart wouldn’t tell me where I could find water.”
Max sits on a bench shaking his head. “That’s heavy duty, dude.” Then he looks up at me and his eye twinkles. “Do you know what it means to purchase an artificial intelligence?”
“No.” I sit on the bed.
Max Power smiles, and the room brightens. “When you purchase an A.I., you’ve entered into a legal and binding partnership. Do you know what that means?”
I think about it for a minute. “It means we’re a crew. I’ve got your back, and you’ve got my back.”
“Absolutely. As your trainer, my job is to help you achieve your goals. And we’re not going to let some glorified golf cart stand in our way.”
“Fucking-A,” I say. “I bet that cart killed the last caretaker.”
I don’t get mad often, so I look in the mirror. My eyebrows are close together, and my jaw is clenched shut.
Outside a horn beeps. I look out the window. Parked in front of my room are the cart and my car. The two are beeping and honking.
I open the door and look out.
“You're late,” the cart says. “Get in.”
“Yes,” my car says. “Ride in the cart. It will save on gas.”
“Don’t leave the room until I find out what’s going on,” Max says from behind me.
CHAPTER 19
Max goes online and talks to Globe-X all day. I keep looking out my window at the cart and car. They’ve stopped honking at me a few hours ago.
Max gets me room service. A centaur robot delivers my lunch.
I like holing up in my room. This one has five hundred square feet and is laid out just like my room in the med clinic. The only difference is the door leads out into a parking lot and not a hallway. That and the window with a curtain that I use to spy on the two vehicles.
I’m sure the cart is trying to kill me.
The car wouldn’t let me in covered with dirt and dried blood. I don’t have a problem with that. Maybe I should carry a towel and put it on the seat.
“Dude,” Max says from behind me. I turn around and look at the wall where I pinned up my TV poster.
Max is wearing black sweatpants and is holding a briefcase. A table and chair appear out of thin air. He sits down and opens his briefcase. A golden light shines on his face.
“Globe-X owns the town of Ogallala. They’re required to assign one employee to the book storage facility. This employee is responsible for everything inside the fence which includes a five-area building and its contents.”
“It’s full of books.”
“It’s full of paper in need of recycling,” Max replies.
“So… Who’s my boss?” I ask while sitting in my chair. I never had a chair in D block – not enough room.
He shuts the briefcase, and the golden glow fades. “Dude, do you know how smart I am?”
“’The GP eighty-eight with full memory runs at a two thousand IQ,’” I quote the tech manual.
“I’m pushing three thousand with the expansion slots.”
“That’s a lot.”
“Yes, and after hours of talking in circles with Globe-X, it seems you don’t have a boss. This building is under protection from the preservation act. I need a top-secret clearance to see the agreement.”
“What about the cart?”
“It’s a tool like a shovel. Carts have GP thirty-three processors. They’re under your control.”
“How come the cart didn’t tell me where to find water?”
“You can’t ask a GP thirty-three anything. You give it orders. Otherwise, they do what they want.”
I nod. “Okay.”
Max smiles. “We started your program with the standard Max Power Plan, and now we’re way past that.”
“So where are we?” I ask.
“Think about it,” Max says. “Five acres of books stacked at least twenty feet high is four billion cubic feet of books.”
“Is that enough to pay for space lungs?”
Max's eyebrows furrow together, and then he smiles. “It might be possible that we have too much money to spend.”
“So that’s a yes.”
He nods and then pulls up an aerial map of the book preserve. “Behind the warehouse is twenty by thirty-foot metal building.”
Max’s zooms up on the small building; it has a white metal roof and an air conditioner sticking out one of the windows.
“I bet it’s got water inside,” I say.
“Take my case and the poster TV. We’ll set up in your new office.”
I stand up from the edge of the bed, unplug the shielded cable from the TV and put it inside the flute case with the 30cc frame. I roll up the TV, grab a towel and head to the door.
The cart and car are out front.
“It’s about time,” the cart says. “I could get you fired for this.”
“Cart, I order you to return to your charging station.”
“Okay. If that’s how you want to play it, I’m game.”
I walk up to the car and pull the door handle. It won’t open.
“Are your shoes clean?” the car asks. “No dead body parts?”
I soaked them in the tub and wiped them clean.” Holding up the towel, I say. “I bought this to sit on.
The door opens. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”
After I get in, the door shuts and then the car backs up. In a few seconds, we pass the cart. Its max speed is five miles an hour. The car pulls around and heads down the road. In a few minutes, we travel the two miles to the front gate of the book preserve.
The car parks.
“Drive around to the small building in the back.”
“The cart drives inside the fence, and I stay outside,” the car says.
“Car, I order you to go inside the fence.”
“Such a commanding tone, a born leader,” the car says. The gate opens, and then we drive through. He turns right and travels across the gravel.
“My tires are leaving marks.”
Behind the car, two robots that look like boxes with wheels sweep the gravel and remove the tire marks.
In the back of the big building is a small metal building. The plans say it’s twenty by thirty feet. It has a garage door on one side and a regular door on the other.
The car drives up and stops. The building is red with a white door.
I get out.
“I feel more comfor
table in my designated parking spot,” the car says.
“Okay, but when I call you on the phone, you answer.”
“Deal,” the car says and closes the door. The little robots scurry out of the way when the car turns around. The sweeper bots follow his tracks and erase his trail.
The door to the metal office building has a fingerprinter scanner. I put my thumb inside, and the door clicks.
It’s hot inside. I leave the door open, walk over to the air conditioner and turn it on. Soon the air cools down.
The office has a wooden desk, computer station and a chair on wheels. Mounted on the wall is a basketball hoop. A water cooler hums in the corner. I open the other door, and there’s a bathroom with a shower.
The air gets cooler, so I shut the door.
The cart is parked nearby.
“I ordered you to go to your charging station,” I say.
“I did, and now I’m here. You got a problem with that?”
“Cart, I order you to return to your charging station and stay there until I tell you to move.”
“Okay, you asked for it.” The cart drives off.
I close the door and look around my office. It has a concrete floor and spray on insulation. It’s got a window that faces the metal building. From here I can see a man-sized door further down the warehouse.
I unroll the TV screen and use magnets to hold it to the wall. Then I plug the shielded cable into the TV and the other end into the flute box with a gator on the side.
Then I sit on the chair with wheels and lean back. The monitor on the desk turns on.
It’s a real man’s face, chubby with a wispy beard on his chin. “Are you the new drone in sector seven G?”
“I’m in Ogallala.”
“Yup, that’s 7G. Did you know you made the entire western division quota in one day?”
“What’s a quota?” I ask.
He leans back in a chair that looks like mine. He interlaces his fingers and puts his hands on his head. “I’m Hank.”
“Adam,” I reply.
“Where are you from?” Hanks asks.
I’m a lousy liar, so I don’t even try. “London D-block.”
He closes his eyes and smiles. “Of course you are.”
“What’s a quota?” I ask.
He opens his eyes. “There’s a big push to make room,” Hank says. “So they’re closing brick and mortar libraries and putting their collection online. A lot of old books are getting pulped.”
“Do libraries need paper?” I ask.
“Every library and museum is under pressure to turn in their quota of paper.” He leans forward in the chair. “Your contribution made every book and art lover in the Denver region very happy.” He leans back, rocks in his chair and it squeaks.
I nod. “Do we have a quota?”
He smiles. “Nope. The Preservation Act exempts us. We are supposed to be some time capsule of the old world.”
I think for a minute. I don’t want to sit around and do nothing. “What if you find duplicate books or books that are already online? Can you recycle them?”
He stops rocking. “Yeah, I guess so. But you don’t want to go digging around in those boxes. They stacked the books to the ceiling. They’re just waiting for a reason to fall over.”
“How long have the books been stored?” I ask.
“Fifty or so years,” Hank answers. “It’s best to stay in your office and cultivate a few hobbies. I have a vinyl record collection that’s second to none.” He smiles. “I got another call, see ya.”
The computer screen goes blank.
“Max, did you get all that?”
“Oh, yes.”
I can tell he’s smiling big behind me because the office gets bright.
CHAPTER 20
Max goes online and makes ‘arrangements’ for the paperback books. He doesn’t want to say the word “sell” because the books don’t belong to us, so he talks around the subject. That way I can plead ignorance if something goes wrong.
My job is to figure out how to get the books out of the warehouse without getting killed. I rock in my metal chair with wheels and think.
After adding another piece of paper torn out of a yellowed paperback novel, I try for a basket in my half size hoop mounted to the door. That’s eight in a row I’ve missed.
I pick on the paper and wad it back up. Then I get the idea to wrap the paper in tape so they won’t open.
I walk over to my pegboard and get the duct tape and scissors. I bought the tools online and put them on the pegboard.
Halfway through making my third duct tape basketball, I get an idea.
I roll my chair back to my desk with one push of my leg. My chair swings half a turn, and I face my desk. It took several hours of practice to get the maneuver just right.
I double click on Building Maintenance. A face of a young man with freckles comes on the screen. “Yes, Adam. How can I help you?”
“Are you a person or a robot?”
“I’m the red and black centaur that brought you a shovel.”
“Oh… where are you?
“The robots have their building on the opposite side of the warehouse from your office.”
“Oh… okay… you want to recycle some books?”
“You’re not teasing me, are you? The last guy would make what he called jokes. Meet you out front. I’ll be right there. I’d wait all day… mean, mean man.” The face frowns.
“That’s not a joke; it’s lying.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“I’ll see you at the main entrance.”
I walk out the door and jog on the crunchy gravel. It’s hard to run fast because it shifts under my feet. Max says the building is 185 meters long and 212 wide. The last few days I’ve jogged from place to place. The sweeper robots erase my trail behind me. If I stop on the gravel, they clean the tops of my jogging shoes.
Yesterday the cart stopped taking orders. I turned off the power to the cart’s charger, but it has a good battery and paint that turns sunlight into electricity. Max says it will be late December before he runs out of power.
After rounding the corner, the centaur robot is waving at me by the main entrance. I walk the last fifty feet and catch my breath.
“Do you have a name?” I ask.
“Red.”
“Good name.”
The entrance is clear of books. There’s a place for the cart to charge its battery. Max told me what circuit breaker controls the power to the charging station, so I turn it off.
Straight ahead is the central aisle that’s three golf carts wide. The rows are just wide enough for a vehicle.
Nearby is a box of books that fell off the top. I walk over, pick it up and carry it outside the building.
“Red, Can you open the box for me?”
“Sure,” he says. The top of his index finger sprouts a blade. He cuts the tab and opens the dusty old box.
I pick up one of the paperback novels. The pages are falling apart.
The cart pulls up and watches.
“Can you tell if these books have been scanned in yet?” I ask.
“I don’t understand the question,” Red replies.
“Okay, let me think. Can you read the title of the book?”
“Yes, each book has an RFI tag. I can read a box without opening it,” Red says.
“Oh… that’s better.” I like this robot; he doesn’t bother me while I think.
“Can you go online?”
“Yes.”
“Okay… can you go to a library and see if those books are scanned in?”
“What does ‘scanned’ mean?” Red asks.
I read something somewhere about scanned in books. They were files. PDF. “Go to a library and see if they have PDF files that have the same names as those books.”
The robots screen goes blank for a few minutes and comes back on. “Yes, and they are cross-referenced by author and title.”
“Okay.” I
say, “Any book that is… scanned in or has a PDF with the same name you can recycle.”
“No, you can’t,” the cart says from behind me. “Those are my books. You put them back.” the cart says.
The centaur looks at me.
“Ignore the cart and put the books in the recycling bin.”
The screen face smiles on Red. “With pleasure, Adam.”
Red picks up the books, wheels over to the recycling bin located by the side of the building.
While the centaur has his back turned, the cart bumps into me.
My knees bend, and I go down.
The cart backs up just before the centaur robot turns around.
Automatically, I roll and get up.
Red the centaur robot wheels over to the cart. “I have a backup camera. You assaulted the building custodian.”
“That meat bag is not the book custodian. In the fifty-three years that I have served, I have never seen such contempt for books.” The cart goes inside the building. “I will defend these books with my life,” he says and disappears into the maze of stacked boxes.
The centaur wheels up to me. “He’s gone rogue.”
“Yeah… rogue, like on TV.”
“He stays in the warehouse where it gets scorching hot and then really cold,” Red says. “It’s hard on the circuits, and he’s going downhill.”
“Yeah,” I say with a clenched jaw.
“You have to pop his top.”
“What’s that?”
“Lift up the seat,” Red says, “unscrew the cap and inside is a chip. Take a screwdriver and pop it out.”
I point to the shovel with dried blood stuck on the blade. “How about I take that shovel and beat the fucking shit out of the fucking cart?”
“I like that plan. It’s solid, but wait here a few…”
The other centaur robot that’s painted in blue and black shows up. He hands me a screwdriver with a sharp blade at the top.
“I’m going in,” I say. “Don’t let the cart turn off the lights.”
The red centaur robot puts his hand on my shoulder. “Watch your back. Electric motors are quiet.”
“Thanks.” I enter the building. I put the screwdriver in my back pocket and hold the shovel in the middle, so it’s balanced in one hand.
There’s lots of dirt and dust on the concrete floor, so I follow the freshest tracks. Every dozen or so steps I stop and listen – nothing.
