by Dan Koboldt
The God Machine began purring a minute later. Jackpot.
The egg came out almost perfectly round, and the shell pattern was my favorite to date: whorls of green and blue with just a hint of orange. I paused a moment before calling the hatchers. I put my palms against the smooth surface. It was warm, almost hot to the touch.
I’d gone outside the guidelines. Maybe more than I should have. But I knew one thing: the results would be spectacular.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Big Mesa Star
Everyone who tackled the Big Mesa geocache started at the same place: a rock-strewn parking lot that served as the trailhead for half a dozen hiking paths. Unlike most caches whose instructions and routes were fixed, this one had an interactive start. You “rolled the dice” from your phone in the parking lot and took whichever numbered trail you were told to. That way you couldn’t easily solve it by trial-and-error alone. This, and a dozen other little tricks like it, explained why only a handful of cachers had beat Big Mesa in the past five years.
Terrain was another factor: the steep ridges and deep canyons were not only hard to cover, but also wreaked havoc on the GPS tracking. There were five interim caches, and you had to find them all to have a shot at the final one. The few people who’d actually logged the cache were quiet about it. They didn’t drop hints or anything, which is unusual among geocachers. Most of us are braggers. Then again, we’re also pretty competitive, and the more people who solved Big Mesa, the less prestigious it would be.
We let the Tesla take us there on autopilot so that I could review the cache clues, the comments of those who’d tried, and the notes from my own failed attempts. Octavius flitted around the car; he could sense my nervous excitement. On one hand, this was the hardest geocache we’d ever attempted. On the other, if we logged the find, we’d really stick it to Summer and her mangy first officer pig. Talk about a win-win.
“Thirty seconds to destination,” the car told me.
I’d already decided that if I saw Ben Fulton’s big truck in the lot, I’d abort this mission. He hadn’t spoken to me since our run-in at the desert. It seemed wise to follow his lead. He was pretty high up in the company. Part of Robert Greaves’ inner circle. He could probably do whatever he wanted. In contrast, I was a junior designer who fully intended to use the company’s resources for personal gains. The less he knew about me, the better.
“Arriving at your destination,” announced the car.
There was no big black truck in the parking lot. Good. I really wanted to tackle Big Mesa. The only other vehicle was a dusty Jeep Wrangler 4x4 with the doors removed. I caught a flash of blonde hair, and there she was. SumNumberOne.
“Aw, come on!” I said.
She wore a white tank top and sage green shorts, bright and clean colors that left me feeling drab by comparison.
I parked and walked around to the hatch to change into my hiking boots. “You just had to ruin this, didn’t you?”
“I’m pretty sure we were here first,” she said. She did some kind of yoga stretch on the bumper of her Jeep. Her hiking boots bore multiple layers of red dust and wind-blown sand. She was really flexible, too.
Somehow my boots ended up tied together. I muttered a curse and started over. “Only because I told you what I was doing.”
“It’s a free country.” She gave the Tesla a little double-take. “Nice car.”
“Thanks.” I didn’t know if she was being sarcastic or not, but it was a nice car.
Octavius climbed out onto the raised hatch-lid and stretched out. Riker ran over and started grunting at him. Octavius preened and pretended not to notice.
“What kind of pig is that, anyway?” I asked.
“No idea,” she said. “He’s a rescue.”
“You didn’t get a genetic test?” They were all the rage among livestock-as-pet owners, for establishing breed purity in the show circuits.
She shrugged. “What would be the point?”
“To see what he is.” That’s the first thing I’d have done. But let’s be honest, I wouldn’t have adopted a stray animal of unknown genetic provenance in the first place.
“He’s a pig who needed an owner. That’s all that mattered.”
There was no sense in arguing with her. I’d learned that years ago, and I didn’t need another lesson.
She had her phone out, then. It was like I wasn’t even there anymore. “Trail four,” she said. “Come on, Riker!”
They took off at a good pace, without so much as a goodbye. I watched her go longer than I should have.
Now they had a lead on us. We could make up time once we got started, though. I sure as hell wasn’t going to lose to her again today.
I got my phone out and rolled the dice to set my own geocache attempt in motion. I had to be careful not to screw with it: you could only roll once per day, and then you were committed.
Which is why, of course, it had to be four pips staring back at me on the screen.
“Well, crap,” I said.
Competitive geocaching has a sort of honor code. You don’t tamper with the waypoints, remove the caches, or make them impossible to find. There’s nothing worse than spending half a day on a geocache that some jerk decided to mess up.
Summer had to know we were following her. Well, not following, but on the same trail. We saw her and Riker a few times, so I’m sure they saw us.
The first waypoint marker was a metal plate inside a hollowed-out log. I knew that much from the comments I’d seen online. I got right to the coordinates and found the log, but there wasn’t anything metal in view. Which was odd, because Summer had clearly found it and moved on.
I got down on all fours so I could see deeper into the cavity. There it was, right at the very back. I had to reach all the way up to my shoulder to get it. The desert-eaten wood of the log scratched me up pretty good. Maybe that’s just how she’d found it, and she was only putting it back where it was.
Maybe.
The second waypoint was a single number chiseled into a chunk of limestone. According to the instructions, it should have been “visible from the trail.” We lost ten minutes checking rocks farther and farther from the waypoint, finding no such marker. Ten minutes under the unforgiving sun, which grew hotter by the minute. The desert was quiet. A rustle from the ridge to my left made me turn, thinking it was Summer coming back to gloat. I didn’t see her but caught a glimpse of . . . something. Some kind of animal. For a second, I nearly thought it a dragon. That told me I was spending too much time in the sun. At last, I went back to the waypoint and looked at the nearest rock. The side facing up was dirty and grit-covered. I shoved it over and sure enough, there were the numbers.
By the time we found the third waypoint marker—which someone had “accidentally” dropped right into the middle of a spiny cactus—I knew these weren’t coincidences. Someone was screwing with us. It didn’t take a genetic engineer to figure out who that would be.
Until then, I’d been keeping a respectful distance. Telling myself it wouldn’t be fair to watch her find each waypoint and put it back. Well, forget that. If she was trying to sabotage us, I’d be happy to pass her up and return the favor.
“Come on, buddy, let’s hustle!” I told Octavius. I picked it up to a fast jog. Not the safest thing to do on a desert trail, but I didn’t care.
We finally caught up to them in the basin, a wide sort of valley with towers of red rocks all around. She and the pig were searching the ground beside the trail. They were so focused, they didn’t even notice us coming up.
They hadn’t found it yet.
“Having trouble?” I called.
She glanced up, saw us, and mumbled, “Damn it.”
My watch beeped to tell me that we’d reached the right coordinates. Summer and Riker were about twenty yards farther down the trail. The terrain of the basin was flatter and more barren than what we’d seen so far. Not a single log or boulder in view. Time to break out the secret weapon.
&nbs
p; Octavius was perched on my shoulder, taking a break. I tapped his claw and whispered, “All right, buddy. Find the marker!”
He took off and started an aerial grid search. He swept over the rocks up and down the trail, did a little loop-the-loop over Riker’s head just for kicks, and eventually settled on the arm of a big saguaro. It was fifteen feet tall and two-armed, so an old one. Seventy-five years, minimum. Something had drilled a hole in it at shoulder level. I leaned close but couldn’t see anything, and I hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight. Damn.
Summer was watching me, too. She must have spotted the hole, and her frown said she’d not noticed it before. Good.
Now, I’m not the kind of person to go reaching into strange holes in cacti in the middle of the desert. But there’s another unwritten rule when you’re in a competition like ours.
Be brave to the point of stupid.
“One way to find out,” I said. I took a breath shoved my hand in there blind.
Summer gasped.
Of course, that’s when the woodpecker decided to come back.
The Gila woodpecker is small but scrappy, with a red spot on the top of its head, zebra-pattern wings and a brown body. This one must have had a nest in the saguaro, because it started dive-bombing my head and cawing at me.
“Son of a bitch!” I shouted. My arm was at a funny angle in the cactus. I couldn’t get loose.
But I could hear Summer laughing just fine. My face grew hot; I’m sure it was bright red. Goddamn woodpecker. I tried batting the thing away with my other arm. “Octavius!”
Octavius swooped down from where he’d been circling and tried to catch it, but the woodpecker was too quick. It ducked into one hole in the cactus and popped out another.
Hell, I might as well just go for it. I reached down into the cavity inside the cactus. Way down, until my shoulder was right against the spines. My fingers closed around something hard and rectangular. It felt like a pack of gum, which would be an odd choice for a cache. I eased it out of the hole and retreated about ten yards from the cactus. Octavius returned to my shoulder without being told. The woodpecker gave us a final chewing-out and disappeared.
“Check it out.” It was a polished piece of antler, with coordinates carved scrimshaw-style into one side. I plugged them into my watch.
Summer made a disgusted sound and started walking toward us.
I guess I could have been a gentleman and handed it to her. But there was the honor code to think about.
So I let Octavius take the carving and plunk it back in the woodpecker hole, before she could say anything.
“Thanks a lot,” she said.
I smirked at her. “Say hey to the woodpecker for me.”
We finished two points on Big Mesa Star before it got too hot. I really wanted to keep our lead on Summer, but I also didn’t want to collapse of heat exhaustion. Big Mesa was going to take me a while. But if it put us above SumNumberOne, all the trouble would totally be worth it.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Disputed Dreams
Even though I had to keep Octavius on the down-low, there were limits to that secrecy. They ended squarely with Connor, who’d never forgive me if I had access to a dragon and didn’t show it to him. Pronto.
Granted, there was a danger this might give him the wrong idea: that I was in this for the dragons. That’s why he would want to do it. Hell, that’s probably why most of my fellow designers did it. But I had an ulterior motive and the dragons were just means to an end.
Most of Connor’s mechanical engineering classes were online. It took him about twice as long as it should have, but at least he didn’t have to get to a physical classroom to earn a passing grade. That was yet another crappy part of dealing with a chronic degenerative condition: so much of the modern world expects a young man in his twenties to be healthy.
Sunday seemed like a good occasion to pop in on Connor and mom. I called ahead to give him the heads-up, and he answered on the second ring.
“N-zymatic.”
“Hey, C-section.”
He laughed. “I hate that one.”
“I know. What are you up to?”
“Killing Nazis. What about you?”
“I’m on my way over. Got something to show you.”
“Is it subpar video gaming skills? Because I’ve seen those.”
I snorted. “You wish.”
“Die, you Hitler-loving scum.”
“I hope you’re talking to the game,” I said.
“Uh, sure. Let’s say that.”
“Are you going to tell mom I’m coming over?” I quietly hoped it would win me some kind of a hot cooked lunch. Octavius had cleaned out all my deli meat, so I was down to PB&J at my place.
“She’s not here, bro.”
“Where is she?”
“Some kind of a wine bus tour. It runs all day.”
Well, that explained the full-volume Nazi slaughter. I told myself it was a good thing, because Mom probably needed a break. “It might be for the best. I don’t want to freak her out.”
The background noise of machine-gun fire halted suddenly. “Why, what are you bringing?” Connor asked.
“It’s a surprise.” And furthermore, I didn’t want to say it over the phone.
“Come on, give me a hint.”
When were kids, I used to catch all kinds of creatures outside and bring them in to keep as unauthorized pets. More than once, I’d lost track (or control) of a reptile in the house, only to have it reappear weeks later. Usually when Mom was just waking up. It occurred to me that, by bringing Octavius over, I might be daring history to repeat itself. “Let’s just say it’s a riff on one of my classic misbehaviors.”
He snickered. “Like that narrows it down.”
I got there about ten minutes later and had to ring the doorbell two times before the door’s deadbolt snicked open. Connor was nowhere to be seen within; he must have unlocked it with his phone. Over my protests, Mom had let him have access to the home controls after I moved out.
I noticed the tracks right away, a veritable spiderweb of narrow wheelmarks in the carpet that ran parallel to one another. It served as a kind of advance warning, so that I could steel myself not to look surprised when I found him sitting in his wheelchair in his room. It was the same one, of course, but now it seemed almost like an extension of him. He’d even wrapped the right-side handle with camouflage duct tape, an old gamer’s trick we developed as kids to steady the wrists of our desk chairs. He was making good use of it, too, judging by the score in the top right of his massive projection screen.
“I thought this game didn’t come out until next month.”
“It doesn’t. I got into the beta program.”
“How?”
“By being awesome.”
“Seriously.”
“A buddy from the engineering program hooked me up,” he said.
I watched as he equipped some kind of machine gun and used it to mow down a line of charging Nazis. “It looks awesome.”
“Yeah, it is. I’d let you play, but you’d just be a liability.”
“Right. You have all the cool stuff, and I don’t.” I was going to enjoy this. I cleared my throat. “Octavius?”
My little dragon winged in through the doorway, circled once, and landed on the handle to his chair. Connor shouted and almost fell out of it. “Jesus! What is that?”
“That, little bro, is my dragon.”
“No fricking way!”
“He goes by Octavius.”
On hearing his name, Octavius leaped into the air again, flapping his little wings like a crazed bat. Connor followed his every move, as if hypnotized.
“All right, you little show-off.” I grinned and patted my shoulder.
Octavius folded his wings and crash-landed onto the approximate area I’d indicated. His claws dug into my skin as he fought to keep his balance. I gritted my teeth against the pain, because I didn’t want to ruin this moment.
“Octavius,
this is my brother Connor.”
Connor gaped and struggled to find words. “W-where did you get him?”
“Where do you think?”
“I thought people couldn’t buy them yet.” He jabbed an accusing finger at me. “You said we couldn’t get them.”
“Well, some of us get access to video games, and some of us get access to dragons.”
“He looks too small to be a Rover.”
That caught me off-guard. “You know about the Rover?”
“Of course. Did you not think I’d keep tabs on the coolest company in Phoenix?”
“He’s not one of our production models. He’s kind of an accident, actually.” I told him the story of the too-small dragon egg, how Evelyn canceled the design, and the haphazard dragon hatching I conducted in my condo.
“Dude, you should have called me.”
“I was terrified to say anything to anyone. If they found out at work, I’d be in deep shit.”
“Why? He seems like the best accident ever.”
“They’re kind of strict about stuff that comes out of the hatchery.”
“Greaves is worried about the public image, huh?”
Jeez, he was keeping tabs. “Don’t even get me started. He also has this feature points system that keeps getting in the way of my designs. That’s why I came up with Octavius’s design in the first place. To send a message.”
“That tiny dragons are awesome? Message received.”
He was so wowed, I almost wanted to hand Octavius over right then. But I’d done the imprinting and keeping him close to me was the only way I could be certain the company would never find out.
Whether or not I was getting attached to the little guy was completely beside the point.
“That reminds me, you can’t tell anyone about this. My record’s squeaky clean at the company and I need it to stay that way, for phase two.”
“What’s phase two?”