by Ben Lovejoy
I smiled at the original, and at the concertina doors behind it, separating the two halves of the warehouse.
One hour after that, I made the call, the transport crew returned, the scutbots were pointed to the two carriages – one labelled as a replica, one not – and soon securely loaded. The flight back to Buckingham Palace took less than ten minutes.
Sir Nigel was still wearing his frown.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Perfectly splendid,” I assured him.
“No damage?” he asked?
“Not the slightest hint of a scratch,” I promised.
The scutbots took care of the offloading, and both ‘original’ and replica were soon standing side by side in the quadrangle. I walked with Sir Nigel as he made a careful inspection of both.
“I say,” he said, finally. “That really is astonishing.”
“Isn’t it just?” I agreed.
“Completely indistinguishable in every respect,” he said.
“Quite so,” I said, with a small bow.
“Well, I must say that I do feel a little better about the arrangements,” he said. “I mean, it’s not the real thing, but the public will still be treated to the same experience, I suppose. I mean, if even I can’t tell them apart, nobody else can, what?”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” I said.
We completed the paperwork, the transport company dropped me off back at the warehouse and I was ready for phase 3.
Smelting gold is not difficult. The equipment needed is nothing hi-tech. The only challenging thing here was only the scale. The setup I’d used in the past was modest in comparison with the one I’d constructed here. Well, instructed scutbots to construct.
My blanket description of robots as stupid had been unfair, but scutbots deserved the description. Available in various designs, from small tracked vehicles used to tow things around, though to upright multi-armed ones looking like some steampunk version of a Hindu goddess, they were able to follow simple instructions, but were famously literal and were walking – or rolling – versions of the adage ‘garbage in, garbage out.’
Given careful, step-by-step instructions, however, and they would tirelessly take care of tasks my deeply-held spiritual beliefs forbade me to undertake, namely anything resembling heavy labour. The concertina doors open, the other half of the warehouse resembled a production line, which is precisely what it was.
A pulsed laser cutter started cutting off chunks of the gold state coach. I didn’t feel too guilty: if not even the King would be able to tell that he was riding around in a replica, and the public still got to ooh and aah at the glittering spectacle, who was losing out?
The cutting bot handed the first piece to a wheeled scutbot that delivered it to the crane-like scutbot operating one of the ten crucibles that had been heating up ever since the departure of the air transporter. The melting point of gold is over 1,000 degrees Celsius; it’s hot work, and I was pleased to be some distance from it.
The hunk of gold was lowered into the crucible. As soon as it was melted, the crucible tipped it into the first of the gold ingot moulds where cool-packs were used to accelerate the hardening process.
As soon as it was cooled, it moved onto the stamping press, where it was given the necessary hallmarks and serial numbers. If you ran the serial numbers today, they would come up as invalid; by tomorrow, a little more database work would transform them into government-approved, legally-purchased gold ingots with a trackable history dating back decades.
Four tonnes of gold produced four thousand kilobars of gold. It sounded a lot, but gold was dense: it would occupy a total space of less than 120x40x40cm. A trifle more compact than its original carriage-shaped form, and easily stored in the hidden cellar beneath my underground apartment. From now on, my emergency fund and I would co-habit.
It was almost morning before the gold bars were neatly packaged, the production-line dismantled and the crucibles returned to the owner – a gentleman noted for demonstrating a complete lack of curiosity as to the reason for such rentals, and a very short memory when it came to who had rented what.
I summoned my SkyCar remotely and one of the scutbots loaded it on board for me. My final task was to erase the scutbot memories so that there would be no record of the work they had performed before they, too, were returned to the rental company.
Back in my apartment, the gold bars safely stowed away, I reactivated Saira, who had also learned to express no curiosity as to the reason for the downtime. She simply knew that there were times when I required privacy, accepting my hints concerning female visitors.
“Would you like breakfast?” she asked, as if no time had passed.
“That would be perfect,” I replied. It had been some time since I had last eaten properly.
“Do we have any plans for the day?” she asked.
“I think I’ll settle down and watch the live holovision broadcast of the procession of the Gold State Coach,” I replied. “I’m told it’s quite a spectacular sight.”
About book 2
I hope you enjoyed 2184, a 13,500-word introduction to the ‘Beneath the Steel City’ series. The second book, Replicate, is 25,000 words and will be available shortly.
If you’d like to be informed when book 2 is available, please join my very occasional mailing-list at http://www.benlovejoyauthor.com.
Amazon reviews are very much appreciated:
Review 2184 on Amazon USA
Review 2184 on Amazon UK
Also by Ben Lovejoy
Technothrillers:
11/9
The Billion Dollar Heist
Rom-com:
Dated
Travel guide:
The Gentle Art of Travel
