by Sophie Deen
“We should dump the chum two hundred metres from the first SAP,” Tyler replied. “That will lure the sharks away from the cable and to the surface. Then we can see what Shelly has done to them!”
Tumble jumped onto the flat area at the very front of the boat, struggling to keep his balance. “Those sharks are going to wish they’d never learnt to swim!”
Asha reached over to grab him so he didn’t fall overboard. Tyler stood at the controls, looking preoccupied.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Asha.
Tyler sighed. “I don’t know. It’s just … I’d be really impressed if Shelly had managed to train a shark. They are pretty independent and also they shouldn’t be anywhere near Fishmouth. The sea here is really cold. Most big breeds of shark like things a little bit warmer … and I do too.” He pulled down the sleeves of his hoodie.
Asha took a moment to consider what he was saying. Why were they so certain it was a shark? “Tyler, if I remember right, there are two things that connect the cables to the sharks: the ripped cables and that diver, Kim Lau, her footage from the seabed. In the report Hedy played, she was certain she’d seen a shark. Everything else has come from Shelly.”
“What are you suggesting, Asha? That she isn’t using sharks after all?”
“I don’t know. But maybe we should be asking more questions, rather than just accepting what we’ve been told.” She shut her eyes and tried to concentrate on the data she had. What could damage the cables so deep underwater? Submarines? A giant octopus? Explosives? Could you even explode things underwater? The cables had bite marks on them, so it surely had to be a creature. Asha’s mind drifted to Amanda, Shelly’s infamous pet (half monkey, half panda) and a thought struck her; if Shelly would mess with DNA just to make a pet, what was stopping her from creating a new species of cable-munching shark altogether?!
Asha opened her eyes again. The solution still didn’t feel quite right to her.
“Whatever it is, we’ll find out soon.” Tyler glanced at the map. “We’re almost there.”
Tyler cut the motor and Asha squinted towards Shelly’s boat in the distance. They’d stopped too. It looked as though they were bent over the sides, watching a spot in the water.
It was shark time.
Tyler opened his backpack and tipped a foul-smelling mixture of fish and oil over the side.
“See ya later, buddy,” he murmured. “Or as you’d say in England – goodbye, old chum! We should be seeing some hungry sharks very soon.”
“As long as they aren’t hangry,” said Drone.
They all looked over the side of the boat, watching the chum disappear beneath the waves. They strained their eyes, waiting to see a fin.
Nothing. Not so much as a kipper.
“That’s weird,” Tyler said after a while. “That mixture of chum always works.”
“Maybe Shelly is doing something to them,” said Asha. “Drone, can you fly over to Shelly’s boat and see if you can spot any sharks?”
“But don’t sharks eat robots?” Drone sounded anxious. “How high can they jump?” Her internal fan whirred. “I don’t have access to the relevant safety protocols right now. I can’t even find the video archive from BigSharkFan400. I do not have enough information to decide on a correct course of action. ERROR!”
“Drone, don’t worry. You’ll be fine – the sharks won’t be interested in you,” said Asha, trying to appear confident. It was strange to hear Drone sound so unsure.
Drone hesitated. “As I cannot use the Internet to check the facts, I have no option but to follow your instructions, Asha.” Her propellers whirred as she took off from the side of the boat and flew out across the water.
Asha watched her go. Drone would be fine … right? She was a tiny metal robot, not a tasty tuna or a surfer. But then again, neither were the cables.
Asha’s insides were tossing and turning, just like the sea. Wave after wave rocked the boat. As Drone became a dot in the sky, Asha’s chest started to tighten. She’d been ignoring Drone’s warnings all day, but Drone had been right every time. Getting herself into trouble was one thing, but sending a 3 kilogram drone off on her own to deal with a 1,000 kilogram shark was another matter.
What if she got hurt?
“Tyler, stop!” Asha felt panic rising in her. “I want to go after Drone.”
Tyler went to move the steering wheel, shading his eyes against the sky.
“Hang on, Asha. I think she’s coming back!”
They watched as Drone hurtled towards them, barely skimming the waves.
“SELACHIMORPHA! SELACHIMORPHA!” They heard Drone’s alarm sounding. Just beneath her, a fin was slicing through the water.
“That’s the biggest dorsal fin I’ve ever seen!” said Tyler, eyes locked on it.
“Faster, Drone, faster!” Asha yelled.
The dark shape began to rise out of the water. A huge pair of open jaws with rows of razor-sharp teeth appeared above the waves, lunging for Drone.
“Shark!” cried Tumble.
Transfixed by the size of the beast, Asha’s mouth fell open. The shark had two blue lights blinking where its eyes should be.
Hedy had been wrong.
“That’s not a shark!” cried Tyler.
“No,” said Asha. “IT’S A ROBOT!”
Chapter 18
16:34
The shark’s snapping jaws caught Drone’s wing. It tore through the metal as though it was butter, and her wires spilled out. Drone wobbled in the air, trying to keep her balance.
The shark hit the water. It lay on the surface for a moment, before sinking out of sight.
“Drone!” shrieked Asha. “We’re coming! Fly as high as you can! Just don’t get wet!”
The shark exploded from the water again, lunging towards Drone with gaping jaws. Drone tried to hover out of its reach, but her damaged wing made it hard for her to stay in the air.
Tumble jumped onto the side of the boat, clutching a bright red first-aid kit that was about four times his size.
“Leave her alone!” he shouted, launching the first-aid kit into the air. The box flew through the air and landed in the shark’s open mouth. Plasters flew everywhere, but the box temporarily wedged the snapping jaws open and the shark sank out of sight.
Drone crash-landed into the boat. She was vibrating with fear and loops of cable were dangling from her side. Asha knelt down beside her, checking the extent of the damage. To her relief, her main circuits were still intact. “I should never ever have sent you off like that,” Asha said, trying to hold back tears. “I’m so sorry.”
Drone’s pixel-eyes glowed gold with warmth. Asha was about to say more, when the boat was hit by a huge wave. She grabbed hold of the side as the boat swayed beneath her.
The shark was rising out of the waves right next to their boat.
“We need to get out of here,” Tyler shouted.
Asha gave Drone to Tumble, who ran his paws over her damaged wing, a look of worry on his face and the sad emoji flashing repeatedly on his display.
“How fast can this thing go?” she yelled back at Tyler. Anger and fear surged inside her. Taking the Internet down was one thing, but hurting Drone was another thing entirely. Asha was going to stop Shelly, and she was going to stop her now.
“This fast,” responded Tyler, as the engine roared and he sent the boat skimming across the water.
The wind whipped Asha’s hair, and for a second she forgot about the fact she might be about to die in a robot-shark race. She could feel the adrenaline running through her.
But when she looked behind her, her fear returned. They were going at full throttle, but the shark was easily matching their speed. It raced through the waves, its electronic eyes devoid of any expression. Will it hurt to get eaten by a robot? Asha wondered, as the shark drew level with the back of the boat.
“Leave the squad alone,” Tumble yelled. He had managed to grab the end of an emergency oar in his tiny paws and was jabbing it
at the shark.
CHOMP!
Tumble was left holding a splinter. The chance of being shark dinner was increasing with every second. With Tyler steering, Asha did what she did best.
Concentrate, Asha told herself. Think.
Then it hit her: robots don’t think. They just follow the instructions in their programming. This shark was terrifying, but it was just a robot. It was following instructions in its code. Shelly must have invented it and then programmed it to destroy the cables.
So why was it attacking their boat and not the cable? A human must have changed the robot’s code. Someone must be reprogramming the shark right now.
Asha looked up and saw Shelly’s boat was just behind the shark. She was hunched over a tablet, while Ricardo steered the boat. Of course, Asha thought. Shelly wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of her plan.
But it looked as though Shelly needed to be close to the shark to program it. Why? Wait … if she was using a tablet, and there was no Internet, she had to be using Bluetooth, like the robot butterfly at Shelly Inc. Of course! Bluetooth signal had a maximum range of one hundred metres! And that wasn’t its only weakness…
“ICANHACKTHESHARK!” Asha yelled. She was so excited that her words rolled into one.
“You can smack the fart?” Tyler was confused.
“I CAN HACK THE SHARK,” Asha tried again.
“Now we’re talking!” Tyler grinned.
“Just keep us within one hundred metres of it,” said Asha. “We need to stay in range.”
“That won’t be a problem.” Tyler glanced over his shoulder, where the shark was still right on their tail, surging through the waves.
The boat bucked and lurched, but Asha’s hands were steady, as she pulled her tablet from her backpack and turned on Bluetooth. The tablet scanned for all the devices in range. There was only one: SHELLYJAWS. Asha connected to the shark’s Bluetooth signal, but the robot was password protected. If she couldn’t crack the password, she wouldn’t be able to access its programming. She looked down at Drone lying in the bottom of the boat. This time she wouldn’t have Drone’s help.
She thought back to the password that they’d seen on the desk in Shelly’s office. It felt like a lifetime ago, but she could still remember it: #il0vedeadlin3s. Was the shark’s password something similar? #il0vesharks. Nope, that didn’t work. #il0vewat3r. Yes! She was in! Drone was right that humans could be very stupid. Shelly was one of the best coders in the world, but she really needed to work on her passwords.
Next, Asha needed to reprogram the shark. It’s not even a real shark, Asha kept telling herself, just a robot. She could control it.
There was a loud clank as the shark snapped at the boat, missing their engine by inches. Between those savage metal jaws, it would be boat-flavoured ice cream.
“Asha?” Tyler cleared his throat. “Is there any chance you could … speed up with whatever you’re doing?”
Asha didn’t reply. She frantically typed on her tablet. The motor was roaring louder than ever and the sea was surging and slapping at the sides of the boat as they bounced through the waves.
A shadow fell across her screen.
She looked up to see that the shark had thrust itself almost completely out of the water. Its jaws were level with the back of the boat, open and ready to snap.
Tumble froze into his toy pose. Tyler closed his eyes and covered his face.
One more second, and they would be fish food.
But Asha didn’t need one more second. With beads of sweat on her upper lip and eyes locked on the screen, she closed the final line of code, and pressed the run symbol. She held her breath.
The shark twisted in mid-air, missing the boat by a matter of inches and landing in the water with a gigantic splash.
“YESSSSSSS!” said Asha triumphantly.
The shark was lying still in the water, gently waving its top fin as if it was dancing to music no one else could hear. Tyler slowed the boat down, and circled it back towards the shark. Tumble started jumping up and down, pumping his fist.
“What did you do?” asked Tyler, his eyes wide.
Asha’s cheeks were tingling. “It had a set of prearranged instructions. All I had to do was get inside and change them. It was programmed to swim after our boat. I created a loop instead.”
“A loop?” Tyler tilted his head.
“It’s when your code tells a computer to do something, and then once it’s done it, to go back to the start and do it all over again. And if it’s a forever loop, it will keep going around and around the loop forever – or until an event happens to change it. Here, have a look.”
Asha leaned forward so that Tyler could see her tablet screen. She rearranged the blocks of code with a flick of her finger.
The shark flipped over and began doing a gentle backstroke alongside the boat. Tyler laughed in amazement.
“We’re a pretty good team, Asha.” He grinned at her. “I steer the boat and you steer the sharks!”
“Asha?” Drone was still lying in the bottom of the boat. “I’m… I feel…” Her voice glitched a little and went into rhyming mode. “There once was a robot named Drone, more useful than any smartphone. Then she went in the water, a shark nearly caught her, now her circuits have somewhat been blown…”
Asha had been so distracted by the shark that she’d forgotten to check up on Drone. “Let me take a look at you,” she said, kneeling down beside the nannybot and reaching for the What-A-Bottle multitool.
But as Asha’s knees hit the bottom of the boat, a massive wave washed over the side, soaking them all.
The black speedboat was right beside them. Shelly was standing up, looking furiously at her tablet.
“You again,” she snarled, as she locked eyes with Asha.
Chapter 19
16:39
“I’m going to say this once!” shouted Shelly. “So make sure your tiny, tiny ears can hear me. GET. AWAY. FROM. MY. SHARK!”
“It’s not your shark any more!” Asha yelled back. “I’ve hacked it!”
“Yeah, and it doesn’t matter what size her ears are,” Tumble added. “It’s the size of her hearing that counts.”
Ricardo spun the speedboat round and angled it towards Asha’s boat. From the noise of Ricardo’s revving, Shelly’s engine was far more powerful than theirs. It would tear straight through their little boat. She quickly reached for her tablet and programmed the shark to swim between the two boats.
Shelly’s boat powered towards the shark. They were going to collide.
At the last moment, Ricardo steered the speedboat away from the robot. But it took a while for the big boat to change its course.
That’s our advantage, Asha thought. We may be small, but we can move fast.
An unfamiliar line of code scrolled up her tablet screen. Shelly had taken over the Bluetooth!
Panic swept over Asha as the shark changed direction, paused for two seconds, and then swam straight for their boat’s engine, its mouth wide open.
“Tyler, do something!”
Tyler swerved hard, moving the boat just beyond the shark’s jaws. They closed with a crunch of metal, just missing the engine.
“That was way too close,” Tyler gasped.
Asha took a deep breath. Shelly was the most famous coder in the world. She’d built complex machines, autonomous AI and … robot sharks. But Asha was the most stubborn person in the world. Once she set her mind on something, there was no stopping her. She was going to fight Shelly for control of the shark and she was going to win.
Probably.
Hopefully.
Asha looked back at her tablet. If she could program the shark to turn 360 degrees in a forever loop, then it’d be stuck spinning on the spot. She started tapping on her tablet.
Tumble was jumping around the deck, karate-chopping the air. “If that shark comes near us again, I’ll give it a taste of steel.”
“OK,” whispered Asha to herself, barely moving her lip
s as she sent her code to the shark’s Bluetooth receiver. “I think I’ve done it.”
The shark began to spin around on the spot.
Tumble launched himself from the side of the boat onto its back. “Jaws, meet Paws! No one treats my friend Drone like that! It’s #TimeForT!”
“Wait, Tumble, stop! What are you doing? You’re not waterproof,” said Asha. “Hold this while I grab him.” She shoved her tablet into Tyler’s hands.
Tyler’s eyes widened. “My coding isn’t—”
But Asha wasn’t listening. She was already at the side of the boat, reaching for Tumble. The shark was spinning so fast that Tumble was an orange blur on its dark back. It was a good thing robots couldn’t get dizzy. He was only just managing to cling on to the metal body. “Tyler! Can’t you get us any closer?” screamed Asha.
“On it!” Tyler shouted back, bringing the boat alongside the shark. Asha reached out, just as Tumble whizzed past her. She couldn’t quite grab him.
“I’m actually dying!” Tumble yelled.
“Asha,” said Tyler, staring at the tablet in his hand. “I think Shelly is trying to get control again.”
“Hold on!”
Asha leaned out of the boat and managed to grab Tumble with the tips of her fingers. She felt a rush of relief as she dropped Tumble in the boat, and turned back to take the tablet from Tyler.
But it was too late. Shelly’s code had already flashed up.
“Ready for my tooth torpedo?” shouted Shelly.
The boat rocked back and forth, as the shark swam beneath them.
“What’s happening, Asha?” asked Tumble.
“Asha,” pleaded Tyler. “I think the shark is underneath us. If it bites through the bottom of the boat, that’s it. You need to hurry. You’ve got this. Come on, go, go go!”
“I can’t keep up with her coding,” cried Asha. “She’s too good. Tyler, we need to pair program, like, NOW now, and code at the same time. We’ll have a better chance of not-dying if we do this together. You need to check that I’m not making any mistakes in my code.”