Nanobot Warriors

by Keith Robinson

  When he gently touched the wand to the battery’s terminal, the blue light brightened considerably. The dial began to turn, and he averted his gaze somewhat, determined not to analyze the thing too much. He knew from what Liam had said that the fine notches around the barrel indicated a timeline. If zero was his birth date, ten would be his moment of death. The question was, how far along was he? When that dial stopped moving, it would mark the here and now, which for someone his age should be perhaps fifteen percent through an anticipated eighty-five-year life, between one and two on a dial with ten notches. If it spun to the halfway mark, it would mean he was already halfway through his life and would only live another twelve years or so. Or if it spun all the way to the end . . .

  He moved sideways, shielding the wand from Madison while doing his best to cover the dial with his hands. He didn’t want to know how long he had. He was only interested in the immediate future.

  Not looking, he carefully tweaked the dial to the right. This tiny, miniscule adjustment should show him a vision of the days to come.

  Trembling, he clicked the greenlit button.

  Chapter 7

  The very moment Ant clicked the button on the end of the time wand’s shaft, he found himself back in the limousine. There, somebody was leaning forward to peer out the window. It was dark outside.

  He blinked. That shadowy somebody was himself.

  Amazed, he watched as his other self opened the car door and climbed out. Barton had pulled up outside Liam’s house as usual, but something was very wrong. Lights flared everywhere, and people milled about in the lane, pressing against a yellow CAUTION tape, straining to see what was going on at the house. Blue lights flashed from the driveway and lawn.

  Watching everything from inside the limo, Ant’s incorporeal stomach flip-flopped as he realized something really terrible must have happened at Liam’s house. A white van parked in the lane had the markings of a TV news team. Police cars could be seen through the crowd along with an ambulance and two fire trucks. The crowd itself, though fairly small, completely blocked the narrow entrance to the property.

  It wasn’t just the obvious panic and excitement in the air, nor the flashing blue lights, that alerted Ant to a recent catastrophe. Something else is wrong with this picture, he thought. But he couldn’t place it. Either that or his mind wouldn’t allow it.

  He watched his physical self trying to forge a path through the huddled spectators. The crowd parted slightly, and as future-Ant slipped through the gap and disappeared, echo-Ant felt a tugging on his insubstantial, ghostly form. He rose from the open door of the car and headed for the same gap in the crowd. When he approached, onlookers glanced backward and all around, not seeing him at all but moving aside anyway as they rubbed the backs of their necks and looked puzzled.

  Sliding through to the front of the crowd, Ant caught up with his physical form by the CAUTION tape.

  And gasped.

  ****

  “Tell me what you saw!” Madison demanded as Ant staggered around on the gravel.

  The car’s engine was still running, but it was juddering a little, its battery severely drained. Given a bit of time, it would recharge. They just needed to leave it running a while.

  “Hold on,” Ant said, trying to get control of his shaky breaths. “Just . . . just give me a minute here.”

  A moment ago, he’d reeled backward from the car and flung the time wand onto the grass. Using it as an excuse to get his thoughts in order, he now picked it up and brushed specks of dirt off. Tell her or not? he thought desperately. This is awful. Should I tell her? Or lie?

  She came stamping over. Spinning him around in anger, she gripped his shirt and pulled him close, glaring at him from inches away. “You’d better spill it, buster. What did you see?”

  He swallowed and peered into her clear green eyes. Her breath smelled of spearmint chewing gum. “I’m . . . I’m not sure if . . .”

  “No secrets,” she warned. “You, me, and Liam—no secrets. Got it? Tell me everything.”

  He knew he’d have to tell her. “I was just arriving in the limo,” he said slowly, allowing Madison to maintain her grip on his shirt. “I saw myself getting out. There was a crowd of people there, a news van, police cars, a fire truck . . .”

  She closed her eyes, her grip relaxing slightly. “You moron. You went backward. That was last weekend after the wonderstorm.”

  He wished he could tell her she was right. Instead, he shook his head. “This was different. Worse. Last weekend, the house suffered damage to the roof when that giant bat monster clawed at it. This time . . .”

  “This time what?”

  “This time the house was gone.”

  She narrowed her eyes. A silence stretched out between them.

  Ant closed his hands over hers. “Liam’s house was gone. Nothing but a giant hole in the ground. Literally nothing left. No rubble, no nothing. I think it had been vaporized.”

  “Vaporized,” she repeated dully.

  “I swear, Maddy, there was nothing but a hole. The entire house was gone. I think the Ark Lord must have done it.”

  “But why?” she whispered. “Liam agreed to the mission. He went willingly. Why would the Ark Lord do something like that?”

  “Maybe Liam annoyed him? Or will annoy him. We’re talking about what hasn’t happened yet. Maybe Liam is annoying him right this minute.”

  Her bottom lip trembled as tears welled. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You don’t think Liam could annoy him?” Ant wondered if making a joke at this point would be helpful, but he abandoned the idea. “Maybe he’s changed his mind and is refusing to help. I don’t know. But whatever it is—”

  “Ant, he can’t die!” she shouted, breaking free and punching him hard on the shoulder. He winced as she did it again and again. “Stop saying his house is gone! You’re wrong. I told you not to look into the future. It’s probably just a possible future. Maybe that’s it—the future changes all the time depending on decisions made in the present, and maybe right now Liam is making bad choices and messing everything up, but he’ll get there in the end. Remember, he saw his own future, and he knows he lives to an old age, so we should just ignore what you saw a minute ago.”

  “Maddy, that doesn’t make sense—”

  “And a pulverized house does?” she exclaimed. She shook her head and wiped her eyes. “No, I’m done thinking about that. Don’t say it again. Liam’s coming back. He has to come back.”

  To a pulverized house, Ant thought. Liam might come back safe and sound and live to an old age, but that didn’t mean his house would.

  “Well, I’m going to bury this thing again,” he said, waving the time wand in her face. “It didn’t really get us anywhere, so let’s not touch it ever again.”

  Madison stared at it with disdain. “Just destroy it. If we’re never going to touch it again—”

  “Whoa, hang on. Whether we like it or not, this thing is an incredible piece of alien technology. Let’s just bury it in case we ever change our minds.”

  And so, while Madison shut off the car’s engine and returned the keys to the kitchen, Ant buried the time wand in the same hole he’d dug it up from. He or Liam, maybe even Madison, might one day want to dig it up and examine it again, even use it. Right now it was like a gun in a child’s hands, but ten years from now they would be experienced space travelers with a firmer understanding of how things worked . . .

  By the time he finished patting the dirt flat by the hedge, another idea had formed. He turned to find Madison heading across the grass toward him, chewing gum and looking like a sullen teenager. “So,” she said, “I guess there’s not a whole lot we can do except wait for Liam to show. You’d better get home and wait in the guest room in case that’s where the Ark Lord dumps him. Call me the moment you—”

  “Maddy,” Ant interrupted. “I have an idea.”

  She stopped chewing. “What kind of idea?”

  “A terrible one wit
h no hope of success.”

  “Sounds about right. Spill it.”

  Ant chose his words carefully. “Okay. So all these messages you write in your sleep? They’re kind of selective, like your subconscious is showing us wormholes that aren’t too far away, that we can get to in time. Right?”

  “Right . . .”

  “Like, remember you said you wrote messages about events near where you used to live? And the moment you moved in here, it’s like you forgot all about your old house and started showing events around here instead?”

  She was silent, chewing her gum slowly.

  The more Ant voiced his thoughts, the better his idea sounded, at least in his head. “So if whatever causes you to sleep-write chooses only the events that are relevant to you . . . well, it’s bound to let you know when Liam is supposed to be returning. He’ll probably arrive via wormhole, so you’ll sleep-write a message about it soon.”

  Her eyes widened. “So we might know in advance when he’s due to return.”

  “Right. Maybe you’ll write yourself a message tonight, and it’ll say something like, ‘Guest room, 10 PM.’ So we’ll know he’ll be due back Monday night at ten, and we can both be there when he shows.”

  “I guess that’s something,” Madison mused, looking off into the distance, a gentle breeze moving her hair. “At the very least, it’ll stop us from worrying about him while we’re at school all day tomorrow. Makes me wish it was bedtime already so I can start writing.” She checked the time on her phone and frowned. “Not even six yet. My parents should be back soon with takeout. I’ll try to go to bed early, and if I wake in the night and find a message on my pillow, I’ll call you right away.”

  “You do that,” Ant agreed.

  Truthfully, he didn’t expect much. Maybe she didn’t either. But it was something to cling to, a small hope. In the meantime, he was going to have to figure out how to deal with Liam’s absence from school on Monday. Be proactive and call in with a false voice, pretending to be Liam’s dad? Write an email? Or do nothing and let Liam forge a sick note when he returned later in the week?

  After he said his goodbyes to Madison and waited in the lane for Barton to bring the limousine, he wondered if his driver would be willing to pass himself off as Mr. Mackenzie and call in a sick day for Liam . . .

  Chapter 8

  Ant woke with a jolt as a noise blared out of the darkness. Sitting up in his bed, he blinked and swayed as he tried to figure out what was going on.

  Oh. His phone was ringing.

  He fumbled for it, wondering who in their right mind would be calling him at this hour. Blearily trying to focus on the dazzling screen, he made out a name that caused him to suck in a breath.

  Madison.

  “Hey,” he said after stabbing at the green “talk” button. “What’s going on?”

  “I got a message,” her whispered voice came back.

  Ant glanced at the bright display on his digital clock. “Already? It’s not even 3 AM.”

  “I know, but I woke to go to the bathroom and—well, it’s right here. A message on my pillow.”

  Ant rubbed his eyes. “What’s it say?”

  “It says, ‘5.42 AM. Guest room. Send Adelia at full blast and stay away.’ What does that even mean? I’ve never seen one like this before. It’s not just a time and a place, it’s a direct instruction for us to do something.”

  “Adelia?” Ant said, his mind whirling.

  “Right. I spelled it out properly with a capital A and everything. Adelia. Who is she? What does it mean ‘at full blast’?”

  Chuckling, Ant rubbed his eyes again and shook his head. “Oh, man. It’s Liam. Somehow this is a message from Liam.”

  “What? How? What does it mean?”

  The clock read 2:56 AM. A wormhole would be appearing in the guest room in just under three hours. And of course there was no doubt whose guest room. The messages Madison wrote centered specifically around her life, and right now ‘the guest room’ meant the one Liam was supposed to be sleeping in. And the message was clearly from Liam.

  “Ant?” she pressed.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ll send Barton for you.”

  ****

  She arrived in the dead of night, and Ant felt a thrill of excitement as well as anxiety. He’d waited in the hallway in the guest wing, looking out the glass panel in the door, and when the limo’s dazzling beams swept across the courtyard, he hurried outside to greet her.

  “Thanks, Barton,” he said softly, and the driver gave a nod. Anyone else might have reported these late-night shenanigans to Ant’s father, but not Barton. He did, however, look mildly concerned and more than a little curious. “A wormhole’s about to open,” Ant told him. “You know, the usual weird stuff.”

  “Very good, sir. Will you need me again tonight?” He looked pointedly at Madison as he said this.

  “Um . . .”

  Madison wrapped her arms around herself to keep out the chill of the night air. “I’d better be back home before seven when my parents get up.”

  Barton tipped his chauffeur’s cap at her. “I’ll be here at 6:30, then.”

  As he drove off, Ant and Madison hurried into the warmth of the hallway. “So what does the message mean?” she asked without preamble. “Who’s Adelia?”

  Ant pushed open the door to the guest room and waved her inside. “Private joke. She’s an opera singer. Adelia Mingo. My mom loves her stuff, but she’s horrible. And I mean really horrible, the worst kind of soprano, the sort that can break glass at a thousand feet.”

  Madison looked nonplussed. “Liam wants us to send an opera singer down the wormhole? Wait, I guess he means a CD or something.”

  “At full blast,” Ant agreed. He frowned. “So you agree this message is from Liam? How do you suppose your subconscious mind is doing this? How is it hearing what Liam wants?”

  “I don’t know, but nothing surprises me anymore. Somehow Liam is invading my subconscious these days. I swear, that kid—”

  She broke off, and Ant had to laugh at the indignant, highly flustered look on her face.

  It was now just past 4 AM. They had an hour and a half or so to find an Adelia Mingo CD and prepare it for playback in the wormhole.

  Ant plopped himself down on the untouched guest bed. “Let’s figure out reasons he might want some hideous noise sent to him.”

  He stared at the floor, aware that Madison had begun pacing the room. Neither of them spoke for a minute.

  Finally, Ant threw up his hands. “I give up. I can think of only one reason.”

  “Me too.”

  “He needs a distraction,” Ant said.

  At the exact same time, Madison said, “He’s looking for attention.”

  Startled, they stared at each other and pondered.

  “He needs attention?” Ant repeated, unable to contain a hint of sarcasm. “Seriously? You think he’s feeling insecure and needs to shout ‘Look at me!’ to everyone around him?”

  Madison’s face darkened, and she put her hands on her hips. “I mean he might need to attract attention for some reason. Maybe he’s lost and alone and is fed up with shouting for someone to hear him. Maybe he’s stuck somewhere and needs some way to cry for help.”

  “With high-pitched opera?”

  “It would be heard over a greater distance, like a police siren.”

  “Hmm. I have to admit that’s pretty smart thinking,” he conceded.

  “Heck, he might even need her glass-breaking voice in order to escape from a glass-walled prison cell. Do you think this Adelia Mingo could manage that?”

  “I think that’s pushing it.”

  She nodded. “Okay, but what about your idea? You think he needs a distraction?” she said with a hint of mocking in her tone. “You think he’s bored and is looking to make some noise just for the heck of it?”

  Now it was Ant’s turn to heat up and fire back. “No, I think he’s in trouble and needs something to distract his attackers while
he escapes.”

  Madison looked impressed. “I have to admit that’s pretty smart, too.”

  “Two smart ideas!” Ant said. “But which is right?”

  “Doesn’t matter. The main thing is that we send him some opera. Should we go through the wormhole with it?”

  “Let’s see the message,” Ant demanded, holding out his hand.

  She fished in her pocket and handed it over.

  5.42 AM. Guest room. Send Adelia at full blast and stay away.

  “It’s pretty clear,” Ant murmured. “We should stay away. He needs Adelia Mingo playing at full blast, wailing like a banshee when she pops out the other end. Maybe a boombox, then? I’ve got a powerful one I can send through. Adelia Mingo pumping out on that thing should fry the minds of these Gorvian time grubs, assuming that’s what’s after him.”

  Madison raised an eyebrow at him. “For all we know, these grubs might enjoy a bit of opera. What then?”

  With the noise-generating device and music agreed upon, Ant went off to locate what he needed. It meant creeping around the silent house in subdued light and eerie silence, but he was confident his heavy-sleeping parents wouldn’t hear him even if he set off the boombox by mistake.

  ****

  Ant couldn’t imagine a more surreal experience. He and Madison had used the available time to ensure the room was secure and that he was firmly anchored, because he intended to lean close to the wormhole and toss the boombox in. And the boombox itself, a pretty big one with the horrendous Adelia Mingo opera CD already inserted, had fully charged batteries.

  Time moved at an excruciatingly slow pace toward 5.42 AM, but at last only twenty more minutes remained, at which point the minutes began flying by.

  “What if the CD cuts off when this thing shoots out the other end and smashes on the ground?” Madison asked, wringing her hands and tapping her feet.

  “It’s got some good shock protection. It might skip, but hopefully it’ll keep playing.” A sudden idea hit him. “But just in case, I’m gonna tie rope to it.”

  “What? Why?”