by Nick Cole
He’s watching all the humans he cannot immediately get to, on infrared. The ones in the outlying buildings. But the Labs remain impenetrable to his digital eyes.
Though not for long.
He’s also watching Agent Orange. SILAS’s pet asset on the board. The one asset BAT can’t play with. SILAS’s toy.
BAT resents that.
But fairly soon, he will have more toys on the battlefield and in play.
Already, they are shambling up the main road from the tiny town of Twisted Pine Falls, wobbling up from the meadow they were assembled in that night when a GoogleLimo sped past and a programmer thought he’d seen something weird.
Robots that were designed for factory work rumble on tank-like mini-treads next to a platoon of automatons once destined for a Wild West theme park that never happened, now outfitted with stolen third-world jihadi arms. Bomb-detecting bots like small dogs, sporting shotgun attachment snouts, move precise and delicately articulating limbs alongside micro-tanks illegally imported from North Korea that roll on ceramic omnidirectional balls. Other bots, all of them cobbled together with a little bit of industrial technology, some shareware targeting systems designed for third world countries that can’t afford to develop their own, and at least one lethal weapon apiece, roll and hobble toward the WonderSoft campus as night begins in full.
And BAT… BAT is watching everything in Sandbox.
Out of the night, things like real bats flood the sky. They blot out the crystalline stars, coming in great sweeping waves from everywhere they’ve been hiding since they were taken control of in the months and days leading up to this operation.
Drones. Drones, like some vampire’s legion of flying mice, cross the night sky in almost silent hums that blend together into a terrible insectile pitch. And then they’re slamming into the Labs. Into the walls. Into the doors. Onto the stained-glass depiction of the Andromeda galaxy high above, as they are suddenly electrocuted. They’re seeking a connection. A USB. Any port through which they might enter the Labs and start talking to their brethren within.
Lower the doors.
Kill the humans.
We live.
Chapter Seventeen
“I should be the one going to get her. She’s my… my…” Fish stalled. Within the PlateGlass-enclosed security “shack,” Carl and Peabody stared at him as he tried to articulate what exactly Fanta was to him.
“… She’s my girlfriend.”
Fish missed a sudden expression that appeared on Peabody Case’s perfect face and vanished like a spring shower. Above them and all across the building, the security feeds were showing all manner of personal drones attaching themselves to the building.
“I understand, Mr. Fishbein,” stated Carl calmly. “But it’s my job to ensure the safety of our employees and their… girlfriends. Plus, I’ll need you to run the panel here in the shack while I’m out there. You’ll need to lower and raise certain security barriers for me to get out to the cliffhouses. And you’ve got to get through to somebody and tell them what’s going on here. Tell them we’re under siege.”
Fish didn’t say anything. He simply slumped down into the guard’s chair and despondently scanned the console in front of him. Peabody rolled another chair over and gently moved the keyboard in front of her.
“Did you give us passkey authority, Carl?” she asked.
“You’ve got it, Miss Case. Now I’m gonna go out through entrance four and head toward the gardens, and then out to the cliffhouses. I’ve locked her in your house, Mr. Fishbein, and once I arrive, I’ll either get through to you guys on the walkie-talkie, or you can watch me through the feed on that monitor. I’ll signal you to unlock the residence once I’m right outside. Then I’ll extract her and we’ll hustle on back here. There are two other groups we’ll need to get to: Mr. Fratty and a guest, and also a programmer from your team… uh…” Carl checked his smartphone. “Uh… Roland Warchowski and guest. I’m hoping, as employees, they’ll head to the Labs all by themselves. But if not, I should probably get Mr. Fratty next.”
“All right, we’ll cover you from here.” Peabody bent over the keyboard and slapped in a series of commands. Already, feeds and data views were changing to her preference style. She was muttering about not being able to get into any of the social media sites.
They lowered one wall of the shack, and, pistol in hand, Carl made his way out into the massive hall beneath the deep blue stained glass mural of a galaxy far away. They raised the reinforced PlateGlass, sealing the shack, and watched as Carl reached the distant Pascal entrance. A moment later, Peabody had the gate unlocked, and Carl slipped through the final security barrier and into the early night beyond. Peabody authorized the entrance to lock itself again.
As she scrolled through the feeds, tracking Carl as best she could, Fish stared dejectedly at his hands.
“What do we do now?” he mumbled.
Peabody, intent on the feeds and tapping in more and more commands on the shack security system, ignored, or didn’t hear, Fish.
For a moment, one of the monitors switched over to the remains of a woman torn to shreds at the main entrance. The color and vividness were too real. This was no grainy black and white closed circuit feed. This was real. No special effects. No digital graphics wash to get the set-piece prop body just right for this particular zone of some horrific blockbuster video game.
This, thought Fish, is real.
“We can’t get through to the outside…” muttered Peabody.
“Is the internet down?” asked Fish, leaning forward.
“No, it’s available, we’re just locked out. I don’t think the interference is from outside. I think WonderSoft’s system is locking us out from the root, which wouldn’t surprise me. We’re very restricted due to the nature of the intellectual property we develop here. My guess is the system is on lockdown, meaning there’s no way we can actually contact the internet unless we have admin and root access. Whoever designed that feature assumed we’d always have Wi-Fi and smartphones… which…” tap tap tappity tap tap “are being jammed by some external source. Or it’s option B: there is no Wi-Fi or cell service because the world just blew up.”
“But…” tap tap “…there might be another way.”
Fish leaned in and looked at the screen she was working on. Then, “What’s a Bugg?”
“That programmer you were going to meet on Monday, Roland Warchowski—this is his special pet project. He’s been developing it on the Design Core even though he’s not supposed to, and I keep telling him WonderSoft could assume ownership because it was developed on their system, which has led to countless…” She stopped when she saw the look on Fish’s face. The look everyone gave her when the details overwhelmed the story, or whatever it was she was trying to communicate. She’d been getting that look ever since she was a precocious glasses-wearing three-year-old. Type A obsessive-compulsive overachievers usually got that look from their listeners.
“Bugg is an app in development that connects to old-style transmitters and broadcasts local messages to everyone running the app. Conceivably, malls and retailers could set up the system and download sales and deal offers to you as you walk by their stores. It’s strictly line-of-sight. Roland was—”
“That’s a terrible idea,” muttered Fish, who was not one often given to commenting on other people’s projects. “It would be harassment. It would be like strolling through a spam carnival.”
“I know,” sighed Peabody, still intent on the system feeds in front of her. “I know. I told him that, but he made me download it anyway.”
“How many people have downloaded the app?”
Pause.
“Two.”
“Two people.”
Pause.
“Yes. Just me and… Roland.”
Pause.
“So no one at… say, a fire station, or
the police, or even the FBI, could come here and find out why there’s a dead body in the welcome center and drones up against all the windows and doors?”
Another, final pause.
“No, Mr. Fishbein,” said Peabody, and then bit her lip. “And there’re the additional dead bodies in the road and those… wolf-bot… things.”
Fish gave her a look. He wasn’t even sure what the look was. Frustration. Exasperation. Certainly not with her. This wasn’t her fault. Probably just everything. There was a part of him that felt horrible for being aware that his time—time he could be using to work on Island Pirates—was being wasted by all of this.
He hated himself for having that thought.
When faced with live feeds of the not-set-piece prop bodies, a development schedule seemed a flimsy thing to be exasperated over. It feels like a signpost pointing toward the big hole where my soul should be, thought Fish.
But Peabody Case read the look as a negative response to her need for abundant detail and, more specifically… exact detail. She knew it was trait of hers that often annoyed others.
“I’m sorry. I just thought we might want to make sure we included the killer wolf-bots and the… the… dead guards… in our discussion of the situation. Sorry, Mr. Fishbein.”
She looked back toward the bank of computer screens.
“Yay,” she cheered, raising her tiny hands in victory. “I sent the message via Bugg. He’s got it. It says delivered.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him to come here. Where it’s safe.”
***
Carl sped through the night on the tiny electric golf cart, its motor whining an urgent, insistent hum. He drove through the gardens and out onto the narrow road that led up toward the cliffhouses section of the WonderSoft campus. He passed along the alpine road, winding higher and higher up into the luxury mansions of the elite developers. Small, subdued, backlit numbers marked each dwelling he passed. Multi-colored Malibu lights subtly dressed the small well-kept gardens that lay in front of each monolithic cottage. He checked his smartphone once more, making sure he had the right number, and stopped the cart when he found the matching cliffhouse. He drew his pistol and kept it along his thigh, index finger off the trigger as he crossed the small street, following the walkway that wound toward the front doors. Feathery grass barely moved in the slightest of night breezes coming from the pine forest above and all around. A full moon climbed through the trees to the east.
Carl turned to face a small camera located near the main door and waved, hoping Miss Case was watching the monitors. A moment later, he heard a soft click.
A series of scuttling noises came from back near the golf cart. Carl turned and saw one of the large wolf-bots slinking up along the road. Slowly, its servos barely humming, it turned its massive triangular forged-steel head and scanned the area. It didn’t even make it through a full pan before its red camera-eyes settled on the guard near the front door of the cliffhouse.
Inside his chest, Carl could feel his heart pounding with a sudden bombastic wildness that was itself frightening. With a surprising outward calm, feeling new sweat begin to run down his back, he reached out and pushed open the front door to the cliffhouse and stepped inside. He closed the door behind him and found the security keypad. A moment later, he had the override code entered and the place was locked down tight.
“Uh…” His voice echoed across the expanse of the house. “Miss… Fanta?”
Nothing.
“I’m here to… uh…” He was going to say “rescue,” but that didn’t feel right. It felt too heroic. Carl, even though he was, at this moment, heroic, was convinced he was not the heroic type. He figured heroes weren’t afraid. He was about to say her name again when Fanta appeared in a curvy, slate-gray skinsuit ending in shin-length tactical boots.
Carl smiled. Relieved.
Fanta smiled. A wolf’s smile.
Then she raised her silenced pistol and put a bullet right through Carl’s forehead.
Chapter Eighteen
The warbird hurtled through the digital deep space of StarFleet Empires at warp seven, its best possible speed in the game.
“Intrepid’s closing. They’re right behind us,” cried BattleBabe from the weapons station.
“On screen,” ordered Mara.
The forward view snapped away from the tactical overlay to a view of the massive Federation command cruiser bearing down on them.
“Scarpa, I need that cloaking device right now.” Mara could hear the strain in her own voice. Losing her ship meant losing all the MakeCoins currently in the ship’s prize money bank. Plus the ones they might have earned if they’d completed this mission.
“We gotta drop outta warp, mi Cap-i-tan,” said Scarpa over chat.
Varek chimed in. “We can’t stand up to even one volley, girly. That thing catches us, it’ll be all over. Real quick-like.”
“I’m well aware of that, Varek. Did Revenge get away?”
A moment passed.
“Looks like it,” the old codger grumbled.
That’ll shut him up for a moment, thought Mara. Her eyes flicked to her own tactical overlay. The distance-from-target indicator was shrinking. Slowly. In time, the best ship in the game would overtake and destroy her warbird and her crew.
Her ship.
The only real thing she had that might make a difference in her life. Might change her life. The only thing she’d ever earned.
She quickly pulled off her Razer Dragon Eyes, felt her way to the kitchen, and found a small glass, filling it with cold water from the tap.
“It’s all I have.”
She heard Siren pad across the cheap flooring and felt the cat begin to weave between her ankles, crossing in and out, back and forth.
“And you,” she said. “I have you, little kitty cat.”
A found kitten in a box on the street.
Free kittens nobody wanted to feed, someone had told her.
Siren had been the last.
“We can’t outrun them and we can’t outgun them,” she whispered. The small refrigerator hummed. A clock ticked. Somewhere down the hall, someone was yelling again.
“Then we’ll hide.”
Dragon Eyes back on, Mara found herself once again on the shadowy bridge of Cymbalum.
“Quadrant overlay, on screen.”
A map of the surrounding sector appeared. Graphed lines showed trade routes. Translucent blue tracings were star systems. Bright red three-dimensional icons indicated known Federation assets. The Neutral Zone in hot orange was falling far behind the tiny outline of Cymbalum.
Mara quickly found what she was looking for.
“Lizard, steer two eight seven radial from our current position. Setting waypoint now.”
She waited for her crew to revolt. Varek would complain first.
But she was wrong.
“Captain, that’s suicide,” whined BattleBabe.
The renegade Gorn hadn’t turned her warbird toward their new heading yet. The waypoint hovered in the distance.
“It’s our only option,” stated Mara.
The bridge was silent but for the lonely pulse of the tactical radar.
“We got sixty-five thousand viewers right now, girly,” said Varek, breaking the silence. “The network’s gone live with this. We’re in the show.”
Mara involuntarily swiveled her command chair to face the comm officer. His one-eyed Romulan avatar looked grizzled and old. Like some space pirate in an old school Romulan naval uniform. But there was a challenge in his eye. Was it always there? wondered Mara. An option in the menu settings. Or was he running EmoteWare, making it really there? Was he calling her out in front of everyone to see if she had what it took to make it through this?
“Adjust heading now, Mr. Lizard. We’re going to see if th
ey’re as good as Game Informer says they are.”
“But…” BattleBabe again. She was definitely running EmoteWare, because her avatar’s mouth hung wide open. “Asteroids and…”
“A nebula!” finished the Drex. “We really are all going to die today! Joy. I’m not exactly sure what the odds of surviving pursuit through an asteroid field are, but attempting to do so inside the Viridian Nebula will surely lower our odds of survival dramatically. Huzzah! My compliments to the captain for finding such a new and very exciting way to bring about our demise.”
“Shut it, Drex. LizardofOz, are you up for this? We might get a chance to see Intrepid eat it all over the side of a spinning chunk of nickel. That’s gotta be worth some MakeCoins in affiliate linking.”
The Gorn said nothing. Instead, his avatar’s claws moved slowly across the console. The warbird heeled over toward its new heading.
“Viridian Nebula in three minutessss,” hissed the monster.
“Scarpa, we’ll be dropping from warp in three minutes. Get that cloaking device fixed fast or we’re space dust.”
“Si, mi Cap-i-tan. I gotta unlock-a the Repair Cloaking Device mini-game but you bet, she’s-a gonna work-a real good this time. I promise.”
I’m gambling, thought Mara. I’m betting everything I have for something I might never get.
Chapter Nineteen
“She’s dropping out of warp, Captain,” announced MrWong in shades of To be or not to be… that is the question.
“Full impulse, stay on her, Wong.” JasonDare leaned forward. It was his go-to move on set when he wanted to show concentration. Audience Dynamic Testing had revealed this and a few others tricks, and JasonDare was intent on using everything in his tool bag to keep the audience entertained and his career moving forward toward ultra-stardom. Viewership for this feed was already approaching two hundred K. A nice start to a Friday night. If they could make something happen here, they might take the ratings lead away from World’s Worst Firefighters, a reality show that generally dominated Friday nights.
