by David Archer
“This is Esmeralda,” he said.
Esmeralda looked up at Wally, then turned her face toward Monica. “Well, hello,” she said. “What can I do for you today?”
Monica put on a smile. “Hello, Esmeralda,” she said. “I’m Monica. Wally says you’ve got something interesting to show me?”
Esmeralda looked at Wally, and her eyebrows went up. “I do?”
Wally nodded. “Yes. Show her sequence twenty-seven.”
Esmeralda smiled at him, then pushed her chair back away from the desk and got to her feet. She came around the desk until she was standing just in front of Monica and held out her hand. Monica took it and shook with her; then her eyes dropped to the hand she was holding.
She was literally holding it. Esmeralda had pulled her arm back, leaving the hand gripped in Monica’s own. Monica stared at it for a couple of seconds and then squealed when the hand squeezed. She tried to let go and drop it, but it held on, and she raised her eyes to look at the end of the girl’s arm.
Esmeralda raised the stump so she could look closely at it, and Monica saw that it was some sort of mechanical device. There were wires and connectors inside, and she looked up in shock at Esmeralda’s face.
“Is this some kind of bionic arm?”
Esmeralda smiled. “Oh, no, it’s mine,” she said. “I’m a robot, you see. I’m not a true automaton, however. Everything I do is the result of programming designed to respond to particular words, situations, or stimuli. May I have my hand back?”
Her eyes wide, Monica nodded and held the hand out toward her. Esmeralda took it in her left hand and snapped it back onto her wrist. The artificial skin around it seemed to vibrate for a second, and then the seam was almost completely invisible. Monica looked at her other left wrist and saw that it also had a nearly invisible seam.
“But—but you seem so alive,” she said.
Esmeralda smiled, and Monica noticed the first thing that looked artificial. There appeared to be no moisture inside her mouth at all, and the teeth that showed in the smile were unnaturally dry and white.
“Oh, thank you,” Esmeralda said. “I was designed to pass as human under simple visual inspection. Of course, if someone got very close to me, they might notice a few things that didn’t quite look right.”
Monica nodded, still somewhat in shock. “Yes, your smile looks a little fake,” she said. “Your eyes seem awfully dry, too.”
“Yes, but I understand my designers are working on correcting those issues. Before long, it will be possible to tell me from human except with technological equipment.”
Monica turned to Wally. “You’ve built a robot?”
“No. Well, yes, she’s a robot, but not the way you would normally think of a robot. Esmeralda is not intelligent; there’s no AI involvement. She can’t think for herself; she can only respond in ways she’d been programmed to respond. She’s actually been designed as a weapon-delivery device.” He beamed, proud of his accomplishment.
“Weapon-delivery device?” Monica asked, her eyes wider than ever. “What kind of weapon?”
“Oh, chemical, explosive, maybe a biological weapon. Theoretically, we could even build a small nuclear device that would fit inside her. She would go to whatever destination she was told to go to and then release a chemical or germ agent, or detonate an explosive or nuke.”
Monica’s eyes were bouncing back and forth between Wally and Esmeralda. “And have you never heard what Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk say about robots? What would you do that she decided she didn’t want to cooperate?”
“Oh, she can’t. She can’t decide anything. All she can do is follow her programming, which requires her to accept spoken instructions and adapt them into that program. If I told her to go to, for instance, the Grand Canyon and jump in, she’d start walking. She’d keep going until her batteries ran down, which they never will, or she receives different instructions from someone who’s authorized to give them to her. The only other way to stop her would be to break her to the point that she could not proceed. I mean, if you ran over her with a car, that would probably do it.”
Monica looked Esmeralda up and down, then shook her head. “Esmeralda, what would happen if I told you to do something?”
Esmeralda smiled again. “If it was something simple, such as to get something for you, I would probably obey. If you told me to do something that falls under my higher-functions programming, I would simply apologize and tell you that I could not comply with your request.”
Monica turned to Wally. “Her speech and mannerisms seem almost completely human. How did you manage that without artificial intelligence?”
“We assigned over a hundred different programmers to work on code modules. One programmer would write the code that enables her to smile and tells her what situations call for it, while another handled the parts that allow her to frown. Every human mannerism and function has been programmed into her, even those that are considered rude or socially unacceptable. She has over three thousand separate programs for facial expressions alone, almost seven thousand that control body movements and body language. We actually took her to Denver and put her on a commercial flight to Los Angeles and back a couple of weeks ago, and nobody paid enough attention to realize she wasn’t human. She even had a couple of guys flirting with her, and engaged in several small-talk conversations with other passengers. From what we could tell, nobody even suspected she wasn’t exactly what she appears to be, just a pretty young woman.”
“You mean she didn’t leave anybody holding her hand?”
“Nope. She kept everything attached, just the way it’s supposed to be. Of course, we sent a couple of our people on the same flights to keep an eye on her, but it was actually unnecessary. She checked herself in, boarded the plane, chitchatted with the passenger beside her on the way to LA, took a taxi to an address we told her to visit, took another taxi back to the airport, and got on her return flight without a hitch. Once we iron out a couple of tiny little wrinkles like the dry-eyes thing, we could send her to just about anywhere in the world. The only problem we might run into is if she had to go through one of the X-ray scanners.”
“Wait a minute,” Monica said. “How does she get past the metal detectors?”
“Her skin,” Wally said. “It blocks the metal detectors from sensing any of the metals inside her. That’s something else we came up with here. Pretty cool, right?”
“Does anybody else know about this? Outside of here, I mean?”
“Nope. Esmeralda is all ours. She’ll only be deployed as a last resort, if there’s no other way to handle a mission.”
Monica shook her head again. “Wally, this is incredible. I mean, I am literally blown away. I’ve seen all the robots on YouTube, and none of them actually look as real as Esmeralda does.”
“Yes, I know,” Wally said. “I’m pretty sure she’s the best there is, although I know the Chinese and the Russians are both working on robots that can pass. I’d love to see the results of their work, if you ever run across any information on that.”
“I’ll be sure to let it be known I’m looking,” Monica said. “Frankly, this scares me to death. What possible use could there be for a robot like her?”
“Oh, the possibilities are endless. I mean, what if you had a hostage situation and there was no way to take out the bad guys? We dress Esmeralda up as a nurse, maybe, and send her in to help somebody who’s injured or sick, and then she just lets out a gas that puts everybody to sleep. Or maybe there’s a madman in control of a country, and nobody can get close to him except a pretty girl he thinks he can, you know, put the moves on. Esmeralda can smile and flirt her way right up close, then detonate the bomb inside and he’s gone, just like that. Or maybe she just gives him an extreme sepsis infection. He thinks he’s fine, but half an hour later he falls ill and is dead within ten minutes. Pretty wild, huh?”
Monica swallowed hard. “Pretty wild, yeah. What else you got to show me?”
Wally snapp
ed his fingers and motioned for her to follow him, leaving Esmeralda standing where she was. Monica looked at the robot for another second, and then she and Jefferson followed Wally out the door.
They went down the hall to another room and stepped inside. A couple of technicians were working on something on a table at the back of the room, but all Monica saw was the row of what looked like large model cars and airplanes on a table just inside the door.
“These are also robots,” Wally said with pride. “Just like Esmeralda, they can be packed with explosives, chemicals, or bioweapons and sent just about anywhere. The cars can drive, the airplanes can fly, and we’ve got some that are built like boats, too. All we have to do is input a GPS location and turn them loose, and they go where they’re supposed to go. Once they get there, they either do whatever job they were sent for, or they notify an operator that they are in place. Then the operator can decide when to set them off.”
Monica grinned. “Well, I’ve got to say these are a little easier to handle than Esmeralda,” she said. “Although, it might seem a little odd to see a toy car driving itself around, or a toy plane flying.”
“No, we’ve done some testing. Most people simply think it’s some kind of remote-controlled toy, and that some kid somewhere is behind. Nobody really pays them any attention, although we did have a couple of cases where somebody tried to grab one and run off with it. After that, we designed them to give a shock to anybody who even tries to pick them up.”
“Have you used any of these in an actual mission”? Monica asked.
“No, not yet. Only in testing. Allison wants to be absolutely certain that they’ll only go where they’re supposed to go before we turn them loose in the field.” He leaned toward her conspiratorially. “The planes can actually fly straight into a target, like a miniature guided missile. We make them out of a proprietary explosive that has almost thirty times the explosive power of an equivalent weight of TNT.”
Monica looked at him. “I’ve heard of that explosive,” she said. “That’s the stuff you can use in a 3-D printer?”
Wally nodded, his smile close to splitting his face. “Yes, yes,” he said. “That’s how we make these. The frames and bodies and everything are made right in one of our printers, and all we have to do is add our detonator chip if we wanted to be able to explode. If not, that stuff is so stable that you can toss it in a fire and it won’t explode. You can run over it, shoot it with the gun, whatever, and it still won’t explode without that detonator.”
“How do you manage that? I didn’t know you can make an explosive that was that stable.”
“It’s our proprietary compound. It has lots of power when it goes off, but it takes extreme heat to make it explode. All we’ve got to do is put that extreme heat to one tiny part of a piece made with our material, and the whole thing will go boom all at once.”
“And when you say extreme heat…”
“Well, if you were to hit one of these with an acetylene torch, that would get it hot enough to go off. The average fire can’t get that hot, though, so it’s highly unlikely anybody would ever manage to blow one up by accident.”
Monica stared at him for several seconds, then shook her head again. “Wally,” she said, “you are every bit the evil genius I’ve heard you called.” She turned to Jefferson. “Can we just get this implant done so I can leave? This place is starting to scare me just a little bit.”
Wally burst out laughing and led them to another part of the building, where the medical team was waiting. Dr. Reed, the surgeon who had removed the bomb from Noah, was waiting to implant the disk, and Slocum was there to handle anesthesia. They wasted no time in getting Monica ready and performing the procedure, though she noticed that neither of them seemed inclined to chat.
Two hours later, with her armpit still numb, Monica got to watch on a computer monitor as they activated the disk. She was absolutely amazed at how clear the images were, as echoes from the ultrasound pulses generated by the disk were recorded and interpreted. The pulses went out in every direction, allowing the computer to build a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree image of what was happening around her.
“That is absolutely incredible,” she said after a few minutes. “Donald, I can actually recognize your face. Yours, too, Wally.”
“Which means we’ll be able to identify anyone you come into contact with,” Jefferson said. “Is there anybody you want to tell us about now?”
Monica looked at him for a few long seconds, then nodded. “I think maybe we should go back and see the Dragon Lady again.”
When they arrived back at Allison’s office, Jefferson told her quickly that the operation had been a success and the disk was doing exactly what it was supposed to do. “I made a point of letting Monica observe just how well the computer can interpret the echoes, so she thinks it might be a good idea to share a few names with you.”
Allison turned to Monica, smiling. “Good girl,” she said. “Who are we talking about?”
“Well, there are a few names I need to give you,” Monica said. “However, the main one—I want to ask you not to let anything bad happen to him. Is that possible?”
“It might be. I’d say it depends on who we’re talking about and the circumstances.”
Monica bit her bottom lip for a second, then frowned. “I’ve been having an affair,” she said. “It’s gone on for many, many years, and unfortunately, it’s been the source of some of my information.”
“You’re referring to Senator Wiggins?” Allison asked.
Monica’s eyebrows rose. “You already knew?”
“One of our analysts discovered that you and the senator tend to visit the same places and stay in the same hotels, so it wasn’t that big a stretch. Is he aware of what you do?”
“No! No, I swear, he knows nothing. He’s just accidentally let a few things slip, and it was enough to get me started. Kind of told me who to focus on when I started trying to gain power over people, you know?”
Allison nodded. “Does your husband know about your clandestine activities? Any of them?”
“Oh, goodness, no,” Monica said. “Jonathan is a businessman and nothing else. I’m not going to say he doesn’t love me or the kids, but his first love is business. He helps other companies get started, and that’s his passion. And before you ask, he doesn’t know about Charles, either.”
“And you don’t want to give up your affair?”
Monica looked at Allison for several seconds, then lowered her eyes to the floor. “I love my husband, Allison,” she said, “but in the way that you love a familiar friend. I was never ‘in love’ with him, but being his wife offered me some camouflage I felt I would need. First, it was just about keeping my affair with Charles a secret, but later I realized that being Mrs. Lord afforded me a certain amount of anonymity. Sure, I own Monica’s Beauty Secrets, but that’s run by a board of directors in California, not by me. Being Jonathan’s wife keeps me out of the spotlight, and that gives me the freedom to do everything else I feel I need to do.” She sighed. “As for Charles? If I have to admit it, Charles is the one that I truly love. If he weren’t in politics, I would’ve married him a long time ago, and I might have even left Jonathan for him. Hell, I’m pretty sure the twins are his, anyway, so no, I don’t want to give him up.”
“I’ll keep your secret about Senator Wiggins,” Allison said. “Just remember that we’ll know everything the two of you talk about from now on.”
Monica raised her eyes to meet Allison’s. “Believe me,” she said. “That’s something I’ll never be able to forget.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Noah awoke at two in the afternoon, checked out of the hotel, and picked up his lunch at a drive-through. By two thirty, he was on the interstate and headed back to Sarah. Once he finished eating his sandwich, he took out his phone and called her to let her know he was on the way, then set the cruise control at eighty and watched the road ahead.
After two stops for gas and another run thr
ough a fast-food place for dinner, he finally decided to stop again at midnight. He had made it to Louisville, Kentucky, which put him about eight hours out from Berryville, so he pulled into a motel and got a room, took another quick shower, and was asleep within minutes.
He rose the next morning at seven and took off again, a couple of egg-and-sausage biscuits and a large, incredibly hot coffee for breakfast. The big engine in the Charger sang to him as he rolled along, the cruise back on eighty and the stereo cranking out his favorite country music.
I-64 took him all the way to St. Louis, where he picked up I-44, then followed it to Springfield. From there he went south on Highway 65 until he got to Highway 86, then followed the now-familiar back roads into the state of Arkansas and on to Berryville.
It was just after three when he pulled up to his house, and Sarah came running out the door to greet him. She threw her arms around him and kissed him passionately, until he finally just picked her up and carried her into the house.
Neil and Marco were on the couch, playing a video game on the big TV. When he entered, they put down the controllers and followed as he carried Sarah into the kitchen and set her in a chair. He took another one for himself and stretched out his long legs as the other men sat down.
“Okay, so give,” Neil said. “What’s the deal with Monique?”
“I talked to Allison just a little while ago, and Monique—her real name is Monica, by the way—is now firmly under E & E control. She’ll be reporting to a supervisory committee next week in DC, where she will begin her work as a clandestine agent of the government.”
“You mean she gets away with it?” Neil asked, seemingly in shock. “All the stuff she did, they’re just going to sweep it all under the table?”
“Believe it or not,” Noah said, “pretty much everything she was doing was because she loves this country. Once we identified her, I suggested that it might be better to put her to work rather than kill her or lock her up, and Allison agreed. She’s now sporting one of the embedded monitors like the one we used on Randy Mitchell, and Molly is in charge of the team that is keeping tabs on her. She slips up even once, Molly will catch it.”