Mattie shook her head. “We can’t just go talk to the elders. Even if we got permission to meet with them, what would we say? ‘We want to break all of your laws and rebuild this bot so that we can find out what happened to some Adaline scientist.’ That’s not going to go over real well.”
“Why not? Blue said that 42 was responsible for the data the rescue teams used to get in and out of Adaline. Doesn’t that make him important?” 62 looked back and forth between his friends. Both shrugged their shoulders. 62 slammed his palms down on the table. “Well, doesn’t it?”
Blue awoke with a grumble at the sound. “What the heck’s going on over there? I thought the library was supposed to be quiet.”
“It is,” Mattie mumbled. She slouched back in her chair. “And it was quiet until you all started coming here.”
“62 wants to know why we aren’t racing to the elders to straighten out this mess,” 00 said to Blue. “I think we should tell him.”
“Tell me what?” 62 demanded.
Blue cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders with a sigh. “Nobody’s going back to Adaline.”
62 looked from one solemn face to the next. “What do you mean? You have to go back. There’s more people down there to save.”
Blue shook his head. “Not after this last trip, we’re not. Chance told me. We got just enough meal tabs to get the rest of your group onto solid food, and that’s it. No more rescues.”
62 fell back into his chair. He looked at 00. “Is that true?”
00 nodded. “That’s what they said. We almost didn’t make it in this time. And getting everyone out was worse. None of the usual shortcuts were open. And when they found 42’s lab shut down...” he let his words trail off, unwilling to go on.
“Not to mention we’ve got enough of you males up to take care of as it is,” Mattie added coldly. “It’s not like any of you can pull your own weight. You’re all so delicate.” She scrunched up her nose and said in a nasally voice, “Like pretty little flowers.”
The three Boys bristled. Blue spoke out first. “Like hell we don’t pull our own weight. You sound just like those guards at the gate. I’ve been running back and forth between here and Adaline for two years now.”
“Only to get more refugees, and more supplies for them. What have you actually added to Hanford besides more empty bellies?”
“She’s got you there,” 00 snorted.
“You’re one to talk,” Blue spat back. “All you can do is code doors and thermostats. It’s not like coding has a lick of use up here.”
“It could be useful, if those stupid ladies would just let tech be used,” 00 growled.
“Don’t call us stupid!” Mattie hollered. “You’d all be dead if it weren’t for Hanford.”
Blue balled up his fists. “And you’d be left alone with no one but the Oosa to talk to if you hadn’t brought us here.”
“They’re better than the likes of you,” Mattie snarled. “At least once they get what they want, they turn around and leave.”
“Stop it!” 62 shouted. “All of you! We’re supposed to be friends. We’re supposed to be figuring out a way to help 42 and 71, and anyone else that Adaline’s hurting.”
“No,” Mattie said. “That’s what you want. And there’s no use. Nobody’s going back to Adaline. It’s not good for Hanford. Nobody wants to help you.”
Blue stalked over to the table. “Nobody, huh? Then why’re you reading all these giant books about Hanford’s laws? Look at you; eyeballs deep in some history book looking for a way to convince the elders to give us that bot.”
Mattie’s eyes narrowed. “Because I thought if I helped you, you’d all go off to Adaline and die, and I could have my library back.”
00’s eyes went wide. “You don’t mean that. Take it back.”
“I mean it.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “The Curator’s right. Saving broken people from Adaline is a stupid idea. It’s the whole reason your friends are dead.”
62 leaned forward. His voice quivered as he spoke. “Who’s dead?”
“The dreamers.” Mattie went still once the words were out. Her eyes glistened, from fury or sorrow, 62 couldn’t tell. “I had a dream last night and The Curator came. He told me that he wouldn’t be coming to me anymore. He said there’s no one left to share books with because all the creative minds have been snuffed out.”
“But my friends,” 62 said, tasting the salt of tears as he spoke, “if they’ve been found, we’ve got to save them. It’s more important now than ever.”
Mattie shook her head. “The Curator says they’re gone.”
“But how could he know?” 62 demanded. “Maybe they’ve just blocked out their consciousness from shared dreams to hide from Defense. 71 taught me how to do it. They could all be hiding.”
Blue came up behind 62 and placed a hand on his trembling shoulder. “It’s no use. Adaline’s a huge place. If they’re hiding, that’ll make finding out what happened to them impossible. If the old Man says they’re gone, they might actually be gone. It’d be suicide to go wandering ‘round in there blind.”
The anger dissipated from the room, replaced with the weight of hopelessness. Mattie separated long strands of hair with nervous fingers. Blue’s grip weakened on 62’s shoulder, but he didn’t remove his hand. 00 gazed down at the books in front of him, staring at the fragile papers. It was useless. Without the help of someone passing them information through dreams, or some kind of message, there was no way of knowing what was happening in Adaline. There was no one to guess where in the massive complex 62’s friends might be, even if they were alive. No way that a handful of children could comb the underground world without being caught. 62 sagged with the weight of knowing that his teacher and favorite doctor were likely dead. That even if by some slim chance they were alive, there was no way to find them.
“Well, if it’s all no use, then why are you all still sitting here?” 62 said with a trembling voice. “You may as well leave all this alone.”
“I wanted to find out if it was possible to rig up the bot and figure out how it works,” 00 said honestly.
Mattie looked up from the hair she’d wound around her fingers. “And I don’t really want you to run off and die. I like reading and I’ve never studied this stuff before. It’s kind of interesting.”
Blue’s impassive face hardly moved when he said, “I wanted a quiet place to take a nap.”
62 gave a weak smile. “Thanks for being here, all of you.”
“What do we do now?” Blue asked to break the discomfort of the room. “Become farmers?”
Mattie gave an accidental snort. “I’d love to see you milk a cow.”
“I could,” Blue said, moving his hands out in front of him and pumping them up and down slowly. “I’ve got good hands.”
62 muttered, “I’ve still never seen a cow.”
“I’ll take you,” Blue said. “It’ll be a good break from this depressing junk.” Blue grabbed the nearest book and flung it across the table. It skidded over the polished tabletop and knocked a stack of books to the floor.
Mattie gave an annoyed sigh and got up to pick up the mess. “Seriously? Did you have to do that?”
“I’ve got it.” 00 got down on his hands and knees, pulling at a book that had fallen under the table. 62 turned away from the mess and Blue’s grip tightened around his shoulders. Blue guided 62 toward the door, ready to leave the library and the broken hopes it held.
“Don’t worry, we’ll clean this up,” Mattie called after Blue sarcastically.
“No, wait,” 00 said.
“It’s okay.” Mattie kneeled beside 00. “I’m used to it. You can go with them if you want. I’ll take care of cleaning up.”
“No!” 00 shouted. He pulled the hefty book up from the floor. “Wait! Come back, guys! I think I’ve found something!”
Everyone stopped. 62 ducked under Blue’s arm and went back to the table. “Found what?”
“I found a s
chematic for building a computer.” 00 pointed down at the page in front of him. “It’s ancient, but I think it could work.” He looked at Blue. “At that research building you said you found – does it have anything that looks like this in it?”
Blue moved toward 00. Mattie snuck around behind them to look down at the book over their shoulders. The page was laid out like a map, but there were boxes and data where landmarks should be. 62 recognized some of the symbols from the testing he’d done in the early days of school in Adaline when he was tested to see how adept he’d be at picking up computer language. All the boxes together formed a Standard DOS Computer, according to the title on the page. It looked primitive, but functional.
“I don’t know,” Blue admitted. “There’s some metal boxes in there with wires, but I was only there looking for scrap. I didn’t have a reason to take a good look at them.”
00 held the book up in front of him. He stabbed his hand down on the page. “I can build this. If we can find the parts, I can figure this out.” He looked around at the others, optimism glowing on his face.
“I thought we were going to give all this up? If we can’t go back to Adaline, what’s the point of trying to get this bot pieced together?” Mattie asked.
“I don’t know. Sounds like a lot of trouble to me,” Blue answered.
62 looked at 00. “What would be the point?”
“Look, guys, this isn’t just some bot, right?” 00’s confidence faded as he looked into the dejected eyes of the others. “This was a modified Nurse. It had its own program built by that doctor. So what if we can’t get into Adaline to find out what happened. The answers might be right here.” 00 poked the diagram again. “In the Machine’s brain.”
“Do you really think you can build the bot with junk from around here?” Mattie asked cautiously.
00 shook his head. “Not the whole bot. What we put together won’t be anything like we’re used to. There’s no way that something this basic could make a walking, talking Nurse. But it might be enough to access the thing’s memory. Those clunkers are smart enough to recalibrate to a simpler programming language. If we can get something like this going, then we might be able to talk to it.”
“It sounds like we’re going out to that research building then,” Blue said.
“And we need to convince the elders to give us those parts,” 00 grinned.
CHAPTER 29
THE SUN HAD NEARLY set by the time the four friends made it to the far side of Hanford. They’d climbed through rubble left over from the long-ago war, piles of grey stone with faded brown wood piercing the sky above them. It had taken them an entire afternoon to get this far, not because of the distance, but because they often hit a dead end of collapsed buildings and had to backtrack entire blocks to find an opening they could travel through.
“I’ve only been here once,” Blue said as they approached the outside of the research building. “The builders were looking for scrap steel to work with and they sent a bunch of us out here looking for anything that looked like metal.”
“I remember that,” Mattie nodded. “I’d wanted to go but my mom wouldn’t let me.”
“What good are moms if they never let you do anything?” 00 asked. Mattie shrugged in response.
“We’d better get in there before it gets dark,” 62 reminded them. “It’ll be hard enough going home in the dark as it is. Getting stuck in an unlit building will be worse.”
Blue nodded and led the way. He pushed a few crumbling boards aside as he ascended the front steps and pulled on the door handle. “It’s stuck.”
00 and 62 stepped up beside Blue. There simply wasn’t enough room on the handle for three sets of hands. 00 grabbed hold with Blue and 62 picked up a thin stick to jam into the door’s frame. They counted to three and then heaved with all their might. They were rewarded with the slow groan of metal on metal as the door broke free from its rust. Inch by inch the door opened until the hinges let loose all at once, flinging the three Boys backward as it gave way.
Mattie sprang forward to push 00 back up before he tumbled down the stairs. Blue’s arms made wild windmills in the air as he fought for balance. The stick in 62’s hands had broken in half, spraying him with splinters and sending him into the handrail with a crash. Once they recovered and it was clear that no one was hurt, they crept into the dark building.
The inside was just as disheveled as the exterior. It looked like a tornado had touched down, scattering trash and Machinery everywhere. The kids’ footsteps crunched as they walked carefully over a patch of broken glass. A skylight in the ceiling had broken and littered the floor with its remains. The gaping hole let some of the fading light into the building.
“What a sty.” Mattie moved toward an overturned desk. She heaved against the flat top of the furniture and pushed it upright. “It looks like no one’s been here in years.”
“When we came here,” Blue said, “the adults decided there wasn’t anything worth scrapping, so they left it the way it was. They even left the doors because they were rusted out and useless.”
“Where are the computer Machines you saw?” 00 crept toward another desk. It was upright and bare. He pulled open a drawer and a blur of fur jumped out of it. He screamed bloody murder as the creature bounced off his arm and scampered away to hide.
“What was that?” 62 cried.
“Don’t be such a Girl,” Blue said to 00 as he walked past. Mattie, just behind, smacked him on the back of the head. He eyed her over his shoulder without apology. “It’s just a rat. Come on. Back this way.”
Everyone followed him through the front office area and into a long, dark hallway. Rats scurried ahead of them, and 00 let out a little squeal every time their feet echoed on the tile. 62 hadn’t seen a rat before. They were quick little creatures with a long tail and small rounded ears. One of them had stopped, freezing in place as they passed. 62 started to reach down toward it, to feel its black fur against his palm. Mattie grabbed him by the arm.
“Leave it alone,” she warned. “They bite.”
They climbed over a half-broken door, the wood crumbled in on itself, and into a room that was nearly pitch black. Mattie shuffled through her pockets and pulled out a candle. She found a match and struck it, lighting the candle and holding the flickering light up so the group could see. The room was packed with desks, each neat and straight as if the workers had just gotten up and left. Ancient sheaves of fragile paper lay in neat stacks on the front right corner of each desk. A small rectangular Machine and square screen squatted on the middle of the desktop.
00 went to the nearest desk. He removed the boxy screen, setting it to the side. Then he picked up the square Machine and waved Mattie and her candle over to help him see. He mumbled as he read the peeling label on the front of the box. “TRS-80. CoCo. Do you have the tools?”
Mattie produced a small satchel of tools from her bag and laid them on the desk. 00 turned the box over and began dismantling the cover, eager to see what was inside. 62 and Blue wandered the dark corners of the rest of the room.
“There must be thirty of those things in here,” 62 said in amazement.
“Only one needs to work,” 00 called over his shoulder. He pried the cover off and tossed it to the floor. Mattie leaned closer, the candlelight coming with her. “Do you have the book?” 00 asked. She did, and laid it on the last empty corner of the desk. 00 flipped it open to the drawing of a computer. “This is the power supply. And this, I think this is the memory. This here should be the motherboard.”
“Will it work?” 62 moved closer to take a look. The jumble of odd components was a mess compared to the neat diagram in the book. He had no idea how anyone would be able to sort it out. Huge ribbons of wire travelled from one end of the Machine to the other in a seemingly endless parade of chaos.
“Without electricity, there’s no way to know.” 00 poked at a few cables. One of them popped loose and he worked at forcing it back into its connection.
“Shoul
d we take it with us?” Blue’s voice came from a dark corner, suddenly cautious. “I mean, what if someone finds it?”
“We’ll take it to the library,” Mattie replied. “There’s power strips there, even if there isn’t any electricity. If you guys can build that solar panel you were yammering on about when we started this madness, there’s wires to hook it up to.”
“I’d hate for you to get into trouble if someone found this,” 62 said.
Mattie put her free hand on her hip. Half her mask glowed in the candlelight. “Do you know who comes to the library?”
“No,” the three Boys said in chorus.
“You.” Her hand lifted from her hip and her finger pointed accusingly at each of the Boys. She lifted and dropped her shoulders when she admitted, “And a few others who come in to borrow trash books that I keep by the front door. Nobody else gives a rat’s tail about the library.”
62 nodded. “That’s where we’ll keep it then. 00, what parts do we need to take?”
“All of them.” He fished around below the desk until he found the cover and quickly fitted it back into place. He secured it with a couple of screws and suddenly it looked like he’d never touched it aside from the thin, dark fingerprints scattered throughout the dust. “We’ll take this whole Machine and one other, just in case some of the components don’t work.”
“What if neither of them work?” Blue asked.
“Then I guess we’ll be coming back for more of these until we find one that does.” 62 waved an arm over the black shadows of the other computing Machines.
00 disconnected the exterior wires for the Machine he’d just tinkered with, and the one on the desk beside it. Blue and 62 took the heavy screens, leaving 00 and Mattie to haul the brick-like boxes. Mattie couldn’t hold the candle and the computer at the same time, so the group had to pick their way back out of the building in the dark. When they left, they were blessed with clear skies and a large, waxy moon to light the way back.
The stars were bright and the moon was high by the time they made it back to the library. Just in case readership suddenly sprang up from Hanford’s population, they hid the computers in the librarian’s storage room under a heap of papers and books with broken spines.
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