High Pressure System: First Season Underground

by K. D. Kinney

I did, very slowly. Their legs were flailing even though they were unable to move. However, when I moved once they opened the door, I could feel little pokes on my arms. “The needles go all the way through and I can feel them.” I froze just inside the door.

  Brandon grabbed my arms where the bots needles were bothering me the most. I wailed out in pain and in shock. Micah shoved him away, which didn’t take much.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Micah stood between me and Brandon.

  “Take it easy.” Brandon steadied himself. “That was just enough to give them what they were after.”

  “It hurts.” I couldn’t pull the sleeve off with the thick gloves on.

  Everyone plucked the stuck bots off me.

  “Put the ones I just pressed into her arms in this.” Brandon held out a box for them. Bots were still crawling up my legs.

  “Feeling better?” Brandon asked.

  “Nope. Not really.” I fought the urge to smash Brandon in the nose as we walked down the hall to the new control room. “When did this get finished?” All the dangling wires were not dangling anymore. The monitors were running and the room was fully functional.

  “I finally recruited some help.” Brandon eased his body slowly into his chair.

  “That’s good. Is it sealed off and as safe as the one upstairs?” Jim asked.

  I took the jacket off and rubbed my irritated arms.

  “It’s getting there.” Brandon looked over at me and I turned away.

  “You could have warned me. Why did you do that anyway?” I swallowed hard to get rid of the lump in my throat.

  “Is everyone in here yet?” Brandon leaned to get a view of the door.

  “I believe so,” Aaron said.

  “Are all the bots in boxes outside?”

  “Oh, no. Sorry.” Aaron left the room to put his box on the floor. When he returned, the door was shut. Brandon turned knobs on his control panel until some of the monitors shut off.

  “We are on a really tight time frame here. Thankfully, I have a programming crew. We need all the bots we can get our hands on. The crew’s job is to reprogram them with some sleeper viruses while the rest of you help collect bots until we’re ready for the other task. Rachel, you are the bait so to say. We discovered that the new bots are here to collect DNA samples of some of the residents. Mainly they are after you. We aren’t sure what NALA is after. She might be trying to find what makes you tick, what will make you sick, or something grander. Since we don’t have that information, it is her information seeking about you that is going to be NALA’s fall. We hope that when the bots that have collected what she has been waiting for return, the viruses and other tasks we’ve hidden in the bots will be NALA’s fall. We hope they will be most effective while she is preoccupied with her plans.”

  “But that sounds so simple that it will probably fail,” Micah said.

  “What if it doesn’t work? You’ve given NALA exactly what she wanted and since you don’t know how serious that is, isn’t that risking a lot? You could be sacrificing Rachel for all we know,” Chris said. He was my new best friend.

  “We’re not sacrificing anyone. All it does is buys us time to prepare. Time is the one thing we have not had enough of.” Brandon messed up his hair and finally looked me in the eye. “I’m grasping. However, this is the best plan we’ve come up with. The bots are the only tangible thing we can send back. We can’t do it with anything else she sends to us. If we did try something of our own, it would take more time to prepare and resources we don’t have unlimited access to. All we’ve been able to do is struggle to survive through what she throws at us. Don’t you want to try and fight back?” He looked from one person to the next until he stopped at me.

  “Of course I do. That’s why I volunteered. I’m tired of being the bots target.” I leaned against the counter and examined the pricks on my arm. They were very itchy. I squeezed my skin so I wouldn’t scratch.

  “What are we to do?” Jim asked.

  “The four of you will need to be out there when the drones come in, hopefully tomorrow night. I’m trying to come up with a feasible plan to load the altered bots in the drones and send them on their way before NALA has any idea that something is amiss.”

  “Aren’t they still dropping off hundreds of bots programmed to find Rachel? Isn’t that risky to have her out there close to the drone?” Micah asked.

  I frowned at him. Sure, he would find a way to keep me from going outside.

  “Actually, I’ve been picking apart their programming. Once they’re released from the drones, their only task is to get inside. It is after they accomplish that they begin to search for residents. It is very simple but effective. That’s why we’re keeping it simple sending them back. Suitable too. Send us human viruses, we’ll send viruses back. And short circuit power cords and internal wiring. The great part is, these little guys have some great battery life. So it’s not easy for NALA to turn them off at once. So we need all the bots we can get our hands on.”

  “We killed a bunch today.”

  “I know. There will be more. Asking the residents to collect them all seems tedious when we know where they spend most of their time. We need to come up with a better method to clear the ducts since we can’t electrocute them.”

  Aaron raised his hand.

  “This isn’t school, kid.” Brandon waved for him to speak up.

  “Can I work on that? I have some ideas.”

  “Sure. While you guys are waiting around until we need you, you can help him.”

  “What about teaching? Are we back to normal yet?” I asked.

  “You are on this team while you are bot bait.” Brandon turned to his computer team. “Let’s all get to work.”

  30

  Puppy Mascots to Bot Collectors

  I wore my sauna suit while I watched Aaron, Jim, and Micah come up with a plan. Aaron kept chucking a magnet on a string into the duct. He kept complaining when it didn’t work the way he wanted. Spider bots crawled out of the vent, avoiding the guys completely and headed straight for me. All I had to do was stand still and I collected bots while I watched. It didn’t bother me much since I was wearing rubber clothes. The mindless critters did what they had done earlier, stuck their little pokers in the rubber and were stuck. The guys removed the bots when I started to feel the pokes.

  “Should we do what Brandon did?” Aaron asked.

  “Why would you ask that?” I kicked at Aaron when he acted as if he was going to squeeze my arm. He backed away and laughed.

  “It wouldn’t be so funny if you were the one asked to wear this get up because there were thousands of them after you.”

  “She’s right, Aaron,” Jim said, taking my side.

  “Sorry.” Aaron plucked a few out while he looked the suit over. “So far trying to pull a magnet through the vent is an obnoxious fail. We’ve put it on wheels, rolling them down the ducts and the bots just run. However, magnets are fantastic at disabling the little buggers. About as good as this rubber suit we made for you.” He pinched the material between his fingers and then bent my arm.

  “What are you doing?” I let him move my arm back and forth since he wasn’t trying to hurt me. However, the look on his face was full of guilt.

  “I have an idea. Before you say no, hear me out.”

  “I’m not crawling through that vent.”

  He shook his head. “No offense, but you’re too heavy. I don’t know that my idea will even work. I need to talk to Steve. Here’s what I’m thinking.” Aaron paused and looked at Jim and Micah for support.

  “Just get on with it,” Micah said, folding his arms.

  “I think there’s enough material we can make a suit for say… a dog.”

  “What? No. No, no, no.” I shook my head and was already walking out of the room.

  Aaron stopped me. “Just listen. The vents run the length of each floor. Steve could design a suit that would cover the whole dog.”

  “Why my dogs? Why not ma
ke your own robot thingy with a suit on it? Why not a chicken since we are going to eat it eventually anyway if it dies?”

  “We don’t have time for a robot and they are after living breathing things, they run from everything else. Really? A chicken? Besides, the Dachshund was bred to chase rodents in tunnels. They’d actually be doing what they were created to do in the first place.” Micah was already far too warm to the idea.

  “Now you’re ganging up on me? That was like hundreds of years ago. They’re Chiweenies and not all Dachshund. They are terrified Chihuahua too. Haven’t you seen them shake over nothing?” I pulled my arm away from Aaron’s grasp. “You can’t ask that of me, to use my dogs.”

  “Why not? You’re safe in the suit. They would be too. We could train them up pretty quick, give them some treats to run down the tunnel. Attach those chips you’ve been wearing to the suit so the bots are drawn to them instead, even record your voice and have it play while they do their job. It’s a great safe plan. I can put some magnets on them and that will pull the bots off the duct if they don’t respond to the chips the way we hope.”

  “It sounds safe to me, Rachel.” Jim stood beside Aaron.

  “We’d make sure nothing happens to them. They can just run from one end of the duct to the other. Give them treats when they’re done. Then they can be heroes and not just the building mascots,” Micah joined in.

  I shook my head and felt cornered by the three of them. I covered my face and left the room. There had to be an empty room where I could cry somewhere. When I found one, I closed the door and tried to slide to the floor but it didn’t work. I was stuck against the door. Stupid jacket. I took it off and threw it across the room. I kicked it a few times and smashed every bot that crawled in the room. I threw the gloves against the wall. They just slapped the wall and flopped on the floor. It was not very satisfying to be mad when there wasn’t something near me that I could smash to pieces. Bots didn’t count anymore. I’d smashed too many already. I kicked the wall and that just hurt my toes. Acid proof and bot preventative, but not so great at protecting toes. I plopped on the floor and hid my face. I didn’t cry. I was past that. Drawing in a few deep breaths, I finally settled down.

  A bot poked my arm. I flicked it across the room.

  They weren’t asking me to take the dogs outside and the dogs didn’t know to be scared like me. All they wanted was some tasty hotdog. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. I could probably deal with it. I wasn’t going to return to the guys so soon though. They needed to know how upset I was for asking so much of me. The only little piece of my family I had left. I needed them. I sighed and collected my jacket and gloves.

  When I opened the door, Micah was on the other side.

  “Were you there the whole time?” I looked back into the room to see if there was any remnant of my tantrum in the room. Just smashed bot parts. That wasn’t alarming. Bot debris was still everywhere in the building.

  “I’ve been here long enough. I didn’t want to interrupt and deal with the brunt of your wrath alone. You okay?”

  “Not really. I’m probably bothered by the whole idea more than my dogs will be. I realize that.” I rubbed my face. “I want to see the suits for the dogs before I give my consent though. They aren’t fans of wearing clothes either, believe me, my sister has tried plenty.”

  Micah smiled and rested his arm on my shoulders. “You can imagine how I felt when you volunteered.”

  “You can shut-up right there. How do you think I felt when you were the first? I had to volunteer after you and Jim did. If something is going to happen to you two, it better happen to me too.”

  “I see.” Micah nodded as he looked up at the ceiling. “There’s some good logic there. But I doubt anything happens while we’re out there.”

  “Remember getting stuck in that room? You didn’t think anything bad was going to happen then either. That’s nothing compared to what nearly happened to me that day. If it knows we’re there, I don’t know how we’ll get back inside.”

  “One thing at a time. We have some bots to collect first.”

  While Aaron and Steve worked on a suit for the dogs, Micah walked with me back to his apartment. It was a silent walk. I had nothing to say as I tried to stop playing the worst case scenarios through my head. Lately Micah wasn’t much of a talker. We both had no interest in collecting bots even though they were still after me. I only had about a dozen stuck on my bottom half when we finally made it to his apartment.

  The dogs barked frantically on the other side of the apartment, locked in the cave garden.

  “Go ahead and take those things off. I’ll take care of the bots so you can settle your dogs down.”

  I went all the way to the back room and closed the curtain. The dogs romped all over the bed and all over me. I played tug of war with Dobber’s favorite toy. When they settled back down, I stroked their heads and stared into their dark brown eyes. Dobbers looked like a fawn with his light brown around his large doe eyes. His long skinny legs were fawn like too. The way he bounced around when he wanted Yodel to play with him was always entertaining. Yodel was so much more Dachshund in his face and he had the shifty expressive eyebrows. He had a tendency to look sad. He was far more fearful of large groups and Dobbers had a tendency to overwhelm him when they played. Even though Yodel was built better for the task with his long body and short legs, I didn’t think he’d handle it as well as his brother.

  I curled up on my side with both dogs next to my stomach.

  “Knock, Knock,” Micah said on the other side of the curtain.

  “You can come in.” I covered Yodel with a blanket. He loved to burrow.

  “You’re taking this pretty hard, aren’t you?” He sat on the bed.

  “I guess.”

  Micah leaned on his elbow beside me. “You tell me what I could do to make it safer, less for you to worry about and I’ll do it.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine. I am a little concerned Yodel won’t handle it well. The dark metal tunnel covered in moving bots.”

  “I could set up some of the duct material in my apartment so they’d be use to it, to train them up.”

  “That would be nice.” I squinted at Micah and gave him a half-smile. “You are such a nice guy.” I shook my head, turning my face into the pillow. “I don’t know why you put up with me.”

  He tilted my chin up to look at him. “You are braver than you know, stronger than you act, you haven’t given up or sat back and accepted this is all there is. I really like those things about you. The more I learn about the way you tick, the more I like you. Even when you’re mad because you care so much about your dogs and don’t fuss the same way about me when I volunteer to risk my life.”

  I gasped. “I do care about you. I’m scared and I really wanted to protest the way Aaron’s mom did. But I’m not your mom. I actually knew you would volunteer. I just wanted to be with you.”

  “I’m teasing, Rachel. I don’t need you to fuss over me. Volunteering because you want to be there if something happens to me is even better and why I think you’re so brave. Of course you need to speak up to protect the dogs because we might not get how you’re hanging on to all you have left of your life outside. I didn’t have the forethought to bring what meant everything to me with me from the start.” He leaned a little closer. One of the dogs squirmed between us. It didn’t stop him from kissing my forehead. He stroked my cheek with his thumb as he glanced away to catch something in the corner of his eye with the hand that was holding up his head. I gently pressed my hand against his cheek and he held it there. He didn’t lean down again even though I wished he would because he missed my mouth the first time.

  Our little moment didn’t last long. Micah was always such a doer. He set up a mock duct on the walkway in the garden in no time. We sat on either side and played games with the dogs, giving them treats.

  “This is nothing for them. Are you still worried?” Micah stroked Dobbers head with his good hand.

/>   “Naturally I am. But it’s not so bad.”

  “All right, well, I believe we should go check on Aaron and Steve and see what they’ve come up with.”

  With the dogs wrapped in blankets to protect them from the bots, we went to the 3D printer room.

  “I believe we have a design. We just need to scan the dogs,” Steve said.

  Within a few hours they had rubber suits to fit each dog. They had a mesh material around the face and Steve reassured me the bots wouldn’t be able to get stuck or harm the dogs there.

  Once they were zipped up in their new protective suits, the dogs tried to shake their paws free and walked in circles, confused by their new wardrobe. Dobbers flopped on his side and tried rubbing the suit off and twisted it around his body instead. He couldn’t stand up. I fixed it, set him back on his feet only to have him flop on his side and do it again. It took some time for the two to get use to the suits. Once they were ready, we took the dogs on their first bot collecting task.

  Micah stayed with me as we set up the room.

  “If the bots stick their pokers in them, how are we going to lift them out of the vent? I’m sure it will hurt them like it hurt me and they’ll be impossible to hold on to,” I said.

  “That’s a good point.” Micah left me in the room alone. It was hard for me to even pet them while they walked stiff legged around the room. I was able to laugh at their comical antics trying to get use to their own sauna suits.

  Micah returned and had a radio on his hip. “Ready for our first run?” he asked and offered me a hand to get up off the floor.

  “I suppose.” I chewed on the side of my finger. “We need to be sure to give them water when they’re done with their run. It is hot in that stuff.”

  He strapped some magnets to Dobber’s sides and back. “These aren’t so strong that they’ll keep him from making his way down the duct. You might want to get ready for a bot party though.” He waited for me to pull on my gloves before he unscrewed the vent.

  He swept the bots in the opening into a clear box and closed the lid. After that, he grabbed my arm and searched for the tape with the chips. Sticking it on the neck of Dobber’s rubber suit, he lifted my dog and set him inside the duct. He placed a small voice recorder on his hind end and turned it on.