by Bobbie Peers
“There’s a transmitter in the hologram mask Benjamin gave you, but I had to be sure,” the argu-bot replied. “And I suggest that you remain silent now. We can’t be discovered. I need to get you up to the storeroom.”
“The storeroom?” William replied.
“Shh!” the argu-bot hissed, still moving toward the Institute building. William felt his body tingling with adrenaline.
They stopped in front of a back door leading into the main building. The argu-bot entered a code into a control panel.
The door emitted a brief beep and slid open. There was an elevator inside. The walls were dirty, and the floor was covered with dry branches and leaves. There was a gash running up one wall. The argu-bot rolled in and waved at William to follow.
According to the panel inside the elevator, the Institute had many more floors than William had realized. He wondered if he would ever get to see them all. The argu-bot had to stretch to press a button high up.
“Going up,” a muted female voice announced.
“This elevator is mostly used by the gardener bots,” the argu-bot explained.
“Where are we going?” William asked.
“To the Storeroom for Useless Robots,” the argu-bot said.
“Useless robots?” William asked.
“That’s where Goffman has stowed all the retired robots. It’s awful up there. Intolerable conditions.”
The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open. The argu-bot rolled out. “Come on,” it said. “We don’t have much time. We need to take another elevator up to—” The robot didn’t have a chance to say anything else before a ray of blue light hit it hard in the chest, causing sparks to fly out in every direction.
The argu-bot wobbled for a few seconds before tipping forward and hitting the floor with a loud clank.
15
The argu-bot lay motionless on the floor, just outside the open door. William quickly surveyed the inside of the elevator car. There was a hatch in the ceiling. He’d seen this in movies plenty of times, but could he do it?
The hum of electrical motors was getting closer. He had to try.
Climbing up, William balanced himself with one foot on each of the railings on either side of the car. He braced himself, then put one hand on the emergency hatch and pushed. It opened.
William stretched, grabbing the edge of the opening with both hands, and pulled himself up. It was hard, but with an enormous amount of effort he was able to get his torso over the edge. Then he pulled his legs up and flipped the hatch shut again just as the hum of the electric motors got even closer.
It was cold and dark on top of the elevator, and William’s heart lurched when he noticed that he hadn’t managed to close the hatch fully. Through the crack he could see part of the elevator and the argu-bot, which was still lying motionless in the hallway. And if William could see them . . . the guard bots would be able to see him.
He reached his hand out to close the hatch but instinctively pulled it back again when two guard bots stopped in the hallway just outside the elevator below him. One of them entered the elevator and looked around.
William pulled farther back into the darkness and held his breath.
“There’s no one else here,” the guard bot announced.
“So it was alone?” the other one said, gesturing at the passivized argu-bot.
“Who?” the first one said.
“That,” the other said, poking at the disabled argu-bot with its passivator.
“An older model. Belongs in the storeroom. Probably trying to escape.”
“But we heard voices.”
The guard bot surveyed the inside of the elevator. “Maybe it was arguing with itself?”
“Robots don’t talk to themselves,” the other one said. “Everyone knows that.”
“I would beg to differ,” the argu-bot said.
“It’s alive,” one of the guard bots said, and pointed its passivator at the argu-bot. “Should I shoot it again?”
“Shoot it if it moves,” the other guard bot said as a beam of red light shot out of the head of the guard bot standing right below William. The beam began to scan the elevator, starting at the bottom of the wall and moving systematically up the walls.
William froze. He was only seconds away from being discovered now.
“Happy birthday to you,” the argu-bot suddenly began. “Happy birthday, dear . . . bananas . . . cannons . . . cocoa powder . . .”
The red beam disappeared as the guard bot stopped scanning. It turned and studied the old argu-bot.
“Baa baa black sheep . . . yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags . . . baking powder . . . CAKE POWDER!”
“That robot has obviously lost its marbles,” the guard bot inside the elevator said. “We’ll take it with us. It has to go back to the storeroom anyway before it says something inappropriate.”
“Your mother was a tin can!” the argu-bot shouted.
“Okay, that’s it,” one of the guard bots said, and grabbed hold of one of the argu-bot’s arms. “Don’t say anything about my mother.”
“You don’t have a mother,” the argu-bot argued. “Because you’re a stupid robot.”
“You’re stupid!” the other guard bot said, and grabbed hold of the other arm. “Now shut up and stay still!”
“And your mother was an iPod,” the argu-bot said flatly.
The guard bot pointed its passivator at the argu-bot. There was a quick zap, and the argu-bot fell silent.
William sat in the darkness and watched as the two guard bots dragged the argu-bot away.
“No one talks about our mothers like that,” one of the guard bots said. “Even if we don’t have any.”
William waited until the hum was completely gone before he dared to breathe. His heart was pounding so hard it sounded like a bass drum in his head.
He glanced up at the darkness above him. The elevator shaft continued upward. The small amount of light from the hatch below was just enough to get a vague sense of his surroundings. The cable holding the elevator up was next to him. He grabbed it and stood. He had to make his way upward. The argu-bot had said something about another elevator, but that wasn’t an option anymore. If he climbed back down into the elevator, he risked being passivized by guard bots. He put one foot on the wall and, using the cable to pull himself up, started climbing. At school, he had always been good at rope climbing. Something that paid off now.
• • •
A few minutes later he reached the top of the shaft. He had passed three floors. His body ached, and he was drenched in sweat. He held on to the thick wire with trembling hands and looked down into the dark depths of the elevator shaft below.
There was a double elevator door in front of him. And on the wall next to the door, a mechanical lever marked FOR EMERGENCY ONLY!
Carefully William let go of the cable with one hand and reached for the lever. He grabbed hold of it and, with his remaining strength, pulled it down.
There was a low click from the elevator doors as they slid open to reveal what was on the other side.
A long hallway.
Soon William found himself standing in the same hallway. His legs were shaking, and his palms were burning. He had been so full of adrenaline as he climbed up the cable that he hadn’t noticed how much it was taking out of him. Now he just wanted to lie down, but he knew he had to keep going.
He walked rapidly down the hallway. This was obviously a little-used part of the Institute. The floor was covered with a layer of gray dust that swirled up with every step he took. Every once in a while he spotted a footprint in the dust. Some were old, others newer.
He came to the end of the hall and stopped. It was a dead end. He was surrounded by white walls. There was a red X painted on the floor.
William stepped over to one wall and ran his hand over the smooth surface. He knocked on a few spots with his knuckles, but the wall sounded solid.
He closed his eyes. If there was a code here, he was very sure the v
ibrations would turn up.
When nothing happened, he opened his eyes again, walked over to the red X, and stood right on the middle of it.
A deep voice boomed out of the ceiling above him, causing him to jump. “Password?”
In the ceiling there was a white hatch the size of a manhole cover. It was almost completely impossible to spot.
“Do you have the password?” the voice asked.
“Uh,” William said.
“Uh?” the voice repeated. “That is not the password.”
“I’m looking for the Storeroom for Useless Robots,” William said. “Is that nearby?”
Silence from the ceiling. William stood there, waiting.
“Hello?” he said.
“William?” the voice asked. “Is that you?”
He recognized that voice.
“Door?” he said.
“William!” the door said.
William lit up. It was his old door.
“What are you doing up here? I thought you’d been retired.”
“In a way I have been,” the door said. “There’s not much action up here.”
“I have to get into the storeroom. Benjamin is waiting for me.”
“Excellent! That means something is going on.”
“What’s going on?” William asked.
“Dunno,” the door said hesitantly. “A revolution maybe?”
“A revolution?”
“You’ll have to ask Benjamin. He’s the boss up here.”
The hatch in the ceiling opened, and a large glass tube descended and stopped just above William.
“Are you sure you want to go in this way?” the door asked.
“If it leads to the Storeroom for Useless Robots,” William replied.
“As you wish.”
The tube came down, surrounding William, and stopped when it reached the floor.
“Good luck!” the door said.
And with a flop, the tube sucked William up.
16
William landed with a splash in a pool of purple liquid. He sank to the bottom and waved his arms in a desperate attempt to reach the surface. It was frothing and bubbling around him, which made it impossible to tell up from down. The bitter-tasting liquid got in his mouth, and his lungs burned from lack of oxygen. Panic started to take over. He flailed more and more, but to no avail.
Suddenly he felt something grab him and yank him up. He inhaled all the way down into his belly, filling his lungs with fresh air. He rubbed the stuff out of his eyes and blinked a few times before he was able to see where he was.
He was hanging over a pool in a large, white room.
“Decontamination complete,” a deep voice announced from a speaker in the ceiling.
William looked over his shoulder and spotted a robotic arm hanging from the ceiling. It had a firm grip on him.
The arm swung him away from the pool and set him on the floor. Then it vanished into a hatch in the ceiling and came back with something that looked like a large hair dryer.
“Initiating drying,” the voice from the speaker announced.
The warm air coming out of the hair dryer was blowing so vigorously that William had trouble remaining on his feet.
“Stand still,” the dryer instructed, following him. “Let me do my job.”
The strength of the air pushed William until he was up against the wall. His clothes flapped so forcefully that he thought they would blow right off.
“Drying complete,” the voice announced, and the robotic arm vanished back into the ceiling.
“Ready for storage,” the voice said.
William heard a deep rumble behind him. He turned around and saw the wall separate in the middle. The entire wall was an enormous door. The robotic arm plunged down from the ceiling and grabbed hold of William again. It picked him up and moved him through the door. It set him down on the far side and then disappeared back into the first room, and the doors closed with a resounding boom.
William stared at the gigantic room he found himself in now. It looked like a large attic packed to the rafters with tall metal shelves that were crammed full of dust-covered robot parts: arms, legs, hands, and feet. Even heads.
“William?” a familiar voice said.
Benjamin was standing with a group of robots. An old vacuum bot, one he recognized from the dining hall, and two older model guard bots. Relief washed over William. He had made it into the Storeroom for Useless Robots.
“Why did you come in that way?” Benjamin asked. “Through the disinfectant.”
“What do you mean?” William asked.
“You could have used the main entrance right there,” Benjamin said, pointing to a regular door not far from him. “And where’s Max?”
“Max?” William repeated.
“Max was supposed to bring you here.”
Now William knew what he was talking about, the argu-bot.
“Um, Max was passivized by some guard bots,” William said. “I had to find a different way here on my own.”
“Ugh,” Benjamin said, clasping his hands together. “That means we don’t have much time. They’ll be here any minute. Come on.”
Benjamin turned and hurried among the shelves, the gang of robots right behind him. A group of the older generation guard bots positioned themselves in front of the door and prepared for an attack.
When William caught up, Benjamin was standing by a large metal table in an open area in the middle of all the shelves. He was surrounded by robots, and they were all looking at William.
“Hi,” a voice said.
William spotted Iscia.
“You’re here too?” William cried. He was so relieved to see her.
She nodded. “Benjamin got me after what happened down in the lobby. He figured this would be the safest place now. And I got a hologram mask too,” she said, holding up a headband.
“Enough chitchat,” Benjamin said. “We have important things to deal with.”
He waved William over.
There was something sitting on the table that looked like an old architectural blueprint.
“This is the original floorplan for the Institute,” Benjamin said. “Here’s the main building. This is the park. And these are the ruins of the old castle that once stood here.”
Benjamin placed his index finger on the spot where it said RUINS in black ink. Next to the ruins it said PASSWORD: LOREM IPSUM.
“What’s the password for?” William asked, pointing.
“I’ll explain later,” Benjamin replied.
William looked over at Iscia. He wondered how much she actually knew about what went on up here in the storeroom.
“This is where it is right now,” Benjamin said, tapping his finger on the ruins in the blueprint.
“What is?” William asked.
“The crypto-annihilator,” Benjamin said, and looked at William as if he should have already figured out what this was all about.
“And what is that?” Iscia asked.
“It’s an advanced code destroyer,” Benjamin said. “It’s designed to re-scramble difficult codes and destroy them so that they can never be solved. I was tasked with developing it not too long ago. I thought it was supposed to be an experiment, and never imagined that Goffman would actually use it to destroy something as valuable as the code pyramid. I’m afraid my invention may cause quite a lot of damage. Right now I feel like Oppenheimer must have felt after he invented the bomb. Stupid!”
Benjamin shook his head.
“When the alarm went off at Big Ben and the Orbulator Agent resurfaced with the code pyramid, Goffman took the annihilator away from me. I knew I had to get it back, which is why I went into hiding. He’s planning to use the crypto-annihilator to destroy the code pyramid.”
Benjamin stood there for a moment staring at William.
“I don’t have proof, but I fear the worst. There are forces here at the Institute that will do anything to stop you from solving the code and accessing what’s
inside the code pyramid.”
“And what’s inside?” Iscia asked.
“The only thing that can stop Abraham Talley when he returns to earth,” Benjamin said.
“What is it?” Iscia asked again. It was easy to see that she was getting impatient.
Benjamin shot a quick glance over at William. Like he didn’t want to tell them.
“What’s inside?” William demanded.
“Antiluridium,” Benjamin said finally. “I don’t have time to go into detail right now. It will have to wait until later.”
Antiluridium. William didn’t like the sound of that.
“And these forces within the Institute, that want to stop us from getting at the antiluridium . . . ,” William said with a frown. “Are you talking about Goffman?”
“Goffman hasn’t been the same since he came back from the Crypto Portal,” Benjamin continued. “And a number of people at the Institute have supported him. The alarm at Big Ben and the Orbulator Agent suddenly entering the scene don’t help matters.”
The robots around them muttered anxiously.
William’s thoughts were racing.
Could he trust Benjamin? With his shaggy hair and nervous tics, Benjamin seemed almost crazier than Goffman.
“So the crypto-annihilator is here.” Benjamin put his finger on the blueprint again. “In a secret chamber deep beneath the ruins. And soon someone is going to use my invention to try to annihilate the code pyramid that Goffman took from you.”
“And—if they manage to annihilate it—then we’ll never get to the antiluridium . . . ?” William said haltingly. “And we have nothing to fight Abraham?”
Benjamin nodded.
“The Orbulator Agent gave the pyramid to me,” William said. “If only I’d solved it right away, none of this would have happened.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Benjamin mumbled. “It was actually good that you waited to solve it.”
“Why?” William asked.
“In the Orbulator Parchment it says . . . ,” Benjamin began, then paused to clear his throat. He swallowed, apparently reluctant to finish. “That anyone who attempts to solve the code but fails will . . . die.”