by J. S. Morin
“Ready,” Eve shouted back.
Gemini hesitated. Her palm hovered over the plunger-style button that would send the gantry across. What if one of the two Charlies overrode it? Eve could plummet to her death or be stranded mid-span with no way to safely exit.
Eve shouted again. “What are you waiting for?”
Footsteps.
Just the other side of the door on this level.
Gemini glanced down at the door controls. Still locked.
Hastily accessing the gantry controls, Gemini set a five-second delay, then hit the plunger.
A horn sounded, honking a steady beat, warning Gemini that she had no time to spare.
Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, Gemini ran the length of the catwalk. Seeing her haste, Eve stretched out a hand to catch Gemini as she jumped.
Except Gemini didn’t jump.
She couldn’t jump.
Half a meter was a child’s schoolyard hopscotch. Yet a missed grab was certain death. Gemini’s mind had the kindness to point that out just at the crucial moment before the gantry lurched into motion, setting the chain swinging and Eve drifting away.
“I’ll send it right back for you,” Eve promised, her voice growing quieter as she departed for the far side.
Gemini sprinted back for the controls. As soon as Eve hit the ground on the far side, she’d call the gantry back herself.
A thunderous boom shook the catwalk. Then another. And another. The drones had given up all pretense of finesse. Whoever had taken control of the doors, they were about to lose in the face of brute force applied at the point where software could no longer reach.
Thoughts raced in Gemini’s head. What could she do? The EMP rifle was dry. The door controls had become superfluous.
The door ripped free of the surrounding wall. The drone that held it wobbled back, overbalanced, and a robot strode through.
“Well, looks like we lost the coin flip. It was the other one.”
The newcomer wore a sparkling pristine Version 68.8 chassis, fresher from the factory than Gemini could ever remember seeing. He wore a simple smock, baggy pants, and slippers, the standard attire of the newly upgraded. The outfit was either pseudo-religious attire or factory packaging, meant to be discarded the minute a new robot got home, depending who you asked.
This Version 68.8 stood with hands on hips, appraising Gemini like a puppy at the shelter.
“Who are you?” Gemini demanded, raising the EMP rifle.
The Version 68.8 sneered. “Drones have been dying in pairs, then suddenly just one half of a pair goes down. Then no more since.” He reached out and stuck a finger in the end of the rifle. “You’re out of bullets, cowgirl.”
Gemini dared to take her eyes off the robot for just long enough to confirm that Eve was safely across. There was no longer any point to delaying, knowing that this Version 68.8 couldn’t strand Eve.
“Now, do you think Eve Fourteen would be more likely to come to me if you were alive or dead? She the vengeful sort, you think?”
Gemini lowered her voice to a hiss. “I’m friends with Charlie25.” She wrenched the EMP rifle away from the impertinent finger.
“Are you now?” the Version 68.8 asked with an insouciant grin. “Funny. He said you were expendable.”
Gemini froze.
But Gemini couldn’t afford to freeze. In that instant, she decided that her worst chance of survival was to do nothing.
Ducking under the catwalk railing, Gemini jumped.
Chapter Forty-Five
“Gemini!” Eve screamed.
She watched helplessly as Gemini dropped over the edge of the catwalk.
Three meters down, Gemini’s leg slammed against the handrail on the level the two women had climbed up from. Fortunately, Gemini crumpled to the grated floor rather than plummeting over the other side to her death.
In the rush of relief that followed, Eve wished she had come up with a short, pithy nickname for Gemini that was easier to scream.
Eve cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted. “Are you all right?”
Gemini used the battered EMP rifle as a crutch as she rose unsteadily to her feet. “Run, you idiot,” she shouted back.
As Gemini limped for the door on her level, Eve’s breath quickened. The robot and his drone friends were organizing a more cautious pursuit, but they looked intent on giving chase.
How could she leave Gemini?
The overhead trolley and its dangling chain were already more than halfway back across the track spanning the chasm. Even if Eve were to call it back, she’d never rejoin Gemini in time to make any difference.
What help could Eve offer against a thinking robot, anyway?
The automatons were stupid, blundering machines with only a basic program telling them to chase Eve and Gemini. Numbers were their plan, or rather, the plan of whoever programmed them. Eventually they’d close in like quicksand around the two humans. They hadn’t needed anything more detailed.
But a robot was going to think ahead, strategize, and anticipate counterplay.
A melodic ding caught Eve’s ear and drew her eye to the door console they’d seen from the far side. It blinked with a green arrow, pointing right.
The door slid open, revealing a left-right passage beyond.
“Is that you, Plato?” Eve asked the blinking panel.
The panel blinked red just once, then resumed flashing the green right arrow.
“How can I trust a strange arrow I’ve never met?” Eve asked herself aloud. “Will you help me find a way back to Gemini? I can’t just abandon her.”
The panel’s blinking arrow switched to solid green, then resumed its directional command.
Eve took a deep breath, then wagged a warning finger at the console. “If you’re tricking me, I’m going to find out where you’re programmed and delete you.”
With that, Eve ducked through the door and headed right.
The door slammed closed behind her.
Chapter Forty-Six
Get up. GET UP!
Gemini’s mind screamed as spikes of pain lanced through her leg. It wouldn’t bear weight, so she used the rifle as a crutch as she attempted to get on her feet.
“Are you all right?” Eve called from the far side of the divide.
Oh, Gemini was just peachy. It was pink ribbons and tea parties over here with Charlie25’s assassination squad.
Eve stood in horror like the spectators at a horse race when one of the animals breaks a leg. Gemini wasn’t ready to be put out of her misery just yet, but she couldn’t abide Eve hanging around for the show.
“Run, you idiot!”
Every step was agony, but Gemini moved. She had to move.
Up on the ledge above, the Version 68.8 leered down. “Not a fighter and not much of a runner either, are you?”
Gemini glared lasers at Eve. Why wasn’t she running away?
For that matter, why was Gemini so worried about Eve, apparently safe on the far side of a fifty-meter section of open air? She had more pressing problems of her own.
The door on this level opened at Gemini’s approach.
“There’s no getting away,” the Version 68.8 taunted. “Whole workforce is closing in on you. You can’t expect—”
Once Gemini was clear, the door slid closed in her wake. The sneering voice became too muffled by a barrier of steel for her organic ears to discern.
Free from observation, Gemini let herself cry out. Tears of anguish leaked down her cheeks. She panted as the fire in her right leg throbbed.
She had no time for wallowing. Time to trade pain for life. The more Gemini could endure, the longer she could continue drawing breath.
Stairwells were her friend.
Backtracking deserted corridors that had once buzzed with pursuing drones, she put from her mind questions of where those automatons had gone. For now, their absence was a blessing. How long that remained the case depended on who was unlocking doors along her path.
At every opportunity, Gemini headed lower. She could absorb the impact after sliding down the handrails of a stairway more easily than she could hobble up one. One good leg was enough.
“Call… Human Committee…” Gemini muttered aloud. Anything to keep her mind off the pain in her leg. Fractured tibia, if she had to guess based on how she’d fallen. “Better captured… than incinerated.”
Gemini held no illusions of how she’d be treated if Charlie25 had truly decided that she was of no further use. She’d watched enough bodies disappear into ash by her own hand.
Karma was coming to call.
With a shake of her head, Gemini scolded herself. “Can’t be… a daft old biddy. No such… thing as karma. Got to think…”
The Human Committee would complicate matters, but complication was preferable to oblivion. Gemini could only hope that there would be a terminal with access to a transmitter.
Also, it would have been ever so helpful if Charlie25 had neglected to lock her out of all the factory’s computer systems.
Just ahead.
A terminal.
It blinked with a green light, indicating that its accompanying door was unlocked. But this time Gemini had grander plans than continued flight.
Tapping at the console, Gemini tried to bring up a message interface. The damnable thing just kept blinking green, ignoring her inputs.
Steel footsteps approached from out of sight. Around one corner, perhaps as many as two, the forces of Charlie25 and his Version 68.8 henchman were closing in.
The panel kept blinking.
Gemini could have kept running or, at least, hobbling. But distracted by her failure to access the terminal, she put weight on her broken leg.
Gemini screamed.
Collapsing against the wall for support, she slid down into a seated position, holding the leg up as gingerly as she could.
“I can’t,” she grunted through clenched teeth.
Reaching around, she pried off a panel below the terminal. The pocketknife Charlie25 had included in her faux soldier suit finally proved itself useful in severing a low-voltage power line.
Low voltage… it was still enough to kill her if she wasn’t careful.
There was enough juice in those wires to power the EMP rifle directly from factory electricity, and that was all Gemini needed. Of course, tapping into an unregulated power supply and connecting it to a weapon was an idiot’s gambit, but her options were limited by circumstance.
Each time she touched the wire, Gemini was sure she would slip and defibrillate herself. There would be no one to revive her. Eight hundred years, and dead for failing basic electrical lab safety? Oh, that would give Charlie25 a good laugh.
The power electronics in the weapon rose in pitch until they exited Gemini’s auditory range. A sad smile crossed her lips. If she couldn’t call for help, at least she could send a few dozen drones to hell ahead of her.
Evelyn11, or whoever she was at the end of that infernal voyage, could use a few servants for her eternal damnation.
As the first of the drones rounded the corner, Gemini fired. The rifle hummed, and drone after drone fell. After a time, she had to wait for them to clamber over their inert comrades before she had a shot.
“Feeling heroic, are you?” the Version 68.8 called from safely around the corner. “How long can you keep that up? Surrender, and maybe I can talk old Charlie into finding a use for you.”
Gemini’s arms ached. It wasn’t the weight of the rifle, but the fact that the closer her steel-clad targets were when she fired, the stronger the rifle bucked in her hands. The magnetic field that wiped out electronic minds also craved the cold caress of ferrous metal.
“If you’d left well enough alone, Charles would have had his Eve, and I could have been back in my lab by now.”
The Version 68.8 chuckled. “Maybe if you’d gone straight to him, that would have played out. But you got cute and went shopping for help at Charlie13’s side of the factory.”
“You think that just because—”
A ding from the panel interrupted Gemini.
Was the timing coincidental? More than ever, Gemini was convinced that it was Charlie13 controlling the doors for her and Eve. “Why” didn’t matter.
Gemini struggled to her feet. The pain could hardly be worse in her leg.
The door opened as soon as she was upright. Yanking the power cables from the wall panel, Gemini hopped through to the passage beyond.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Eve sprinted through Kanto, constantly on the lookout for the blinking green lights that had yet to lead her astray.
This section was a warehouse of newly minted drones. They reclined upright, like the last book on a shelf. Barely animate at the best of times, these drones were still as corpses. Row upon row of them, shoulder to shoulder, flanking both sides of the aisle.
At the far end of Eve’s row, she saw the door leading out. The panel beside it flashed green.
Since there was no sign of pursuit, Eve paused to catch her breath. Even without medical equipment, she knew her heart rate was elevated. An empty tingle throughout her body warned that a rush of adrenaline was fading.
Any minute, crushing fatigue would set in.
Eve took one final deep breath and forced herself onward.
As she stalked the rows of factory-fresh drones, Eve covered her nose and mouth lest they hear her breathing. She tiptoed to avoid spooking them. Any of these automatons could be live and networked to the factory systems.
Halfway down the row, a servo motor whirred to life.
Eve froze. Her mind blocked out everything but the sound. It came from behind her.
The single motor was joined by another, then a chorus, then a whole choir of electromechanical whirring echoed all around Eve.
All up and down the row, drones activated and stumbled forward. As they balanced themselves upright, each new automaton ran through a brief calisthenics routine. It must have been a calibration.
Eve took advantage of the momentary stupidity of her newfound foes and dove into the racks from which they’d awakened.
She multi-tasked and shrieked in alarm at the same time.
Each drone rested against a ladder of steel tubing, just substantial enough to support the machine’s weight. Eve had plenty of room to crawl through.
In between Eve’s aisle and the one adjacent, the back-to-back rows of automatons leaned together. Their racks formed a triangular tunnel for Eve to scurry on hands and knees down the row.
To Eve’s right, the drones continued a coordinated exercise of each joint and servo as if rehearsing a dance number. To her left, inert drones formed a wall of legs and torsos that blocked her from exiting that side.
The end of the row was a few dozen meters away. It seemed more like kilometers.
Without knowing the length of the calibration sequence, Eve could be surrounded by an army of drones any second.
Eve shuffled on her hands with no room to stand. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed.
God, please exist. Given a worldwide human population under fifty, I hope that if you do exist, you might see fit to intervene. Temporal options are looking limited. If you don’t exist, sorry for bothering you.
Silence.
All Eve heard were the sounds she made. Hands slapping on the smooth concrete floor, the rustle of her jeans and jacket, the tap of her steel-toed boots as she crawled.
The brief swell of hope that maybe her prayer had been heard was dashed as metallic footsteps converged on her.
“John316 has a lot of explaining to do,” Eve muttered. She needed the sound of a friendly voice, even if it was just her own.
The end of the row drew closer.
Eve just needed to keep moving before the drones figured out what was going on. Up ahead, hands reached into the space between racks. Articulated steel fingers spread, forming a barricade.
Eve looked right. The drones were standing idle, forming a wall, arms outstretched
toward her.
Twisting, she saw hands blocking her path backward as well.
Eve’s breath came quick and shallow. She needed an alternate plan, and she needed it instantly.
Bracing herself against the rack on her right, Eve stood as far as she was able and heaved against the inert drone across the way.
Even at an angle of just five degrees recline, its mass daunted her. It lifted slightly from its cradle, but sank back when Eve had to pause for breath.
THINK!
Brute force was for someone like Plato, not Eve. She had to outthink her problem.
Remembering her kung fu, Eve grabbed the rack in both hands and kicked the lifeless drone at the backs of its knees. The joint—not powered, just at rest—gave way, and the drone collapsed.
Now, Eve had the leverage she needed to topple the limp form forward and slip through.
Drones back in Eve’s original aisle, suddenly no longer entrapping their prey, trudged off to widen their net.
The drones in Eve’s new aisle remained inert. However the ones already chasing her simply moved to block the end of this aisle as well.
Eve’s eyes scanned upward.
Each row was part of a vertical carousel. Line after line of drones rose ten stories up. Using the unmoving bodies as handholds, Eve climbed.
Though gloves protected most of her hands, Eve could still feel the icy steel of the drone chassis on her fingertips. Grabbing an ankle here and a hip joint there, she made her way upward, groping automaton bodies the whole way.
Shoulders sagged and necks stretched, but none of Eve’s stepladder drones failed her as a climbing surface.
Eve averted her eyes as her face passed areas that ought to have been covered in clothing if these had been robots.
Her goal became clear as she gained a higher vantage. Up on the eighth level, there was an observation deck. It was probably meant for robots to supervise the drones being loaded or unloaded from storage. Eve just wanted a way out of the warehouse.
As she reached the fourth level, the racks shook. Eve hugged a drone around the neck and hung on as an engine roared to life. Then, with a rhythmic chugging, the vertical carousel began its descent.