by Dan Koboldt
“I don’t know . . .”
“Look, you’ve got enough to do without me adding to the workload. I can tell you’re stressed.”
She pursed her lips. She was tempted. “You may have a point. I will see what I can do.”
“I want another shot at the flying model, too.”
She winced.
“Come on,” I said. “We both know I’m the only one who’s gotten close to specs.” This was an educated guess based on the amount of cursing O’Connell had been doing over the last week. It sounded he was right on track to create another Terrible-dactyl.
“I don’t think Robert will approve,” Evelyn said.
“It doesn’t hurt to ask, does it?” I asked.
She sighed. “I suppose not.”
Undoubtedly my constant requests were interfering with her grand ambitions with the company’s top brass, but at this point I didn’t care. She’d capitalized plenty on my design achievements. This was the least she could do.
I expected an answer from Evelyn pretty soon. Maybe even that afternoon. She had a regular Friday meeting with Build-A-Dragon’s executives over lunch. Most of them had offices on the other side of the building, where they could look out at the more scenic Scottsdale vista. This suited everyone on the lab side just fine. Designers like myself usually kept to our semi-private workstations by the God Machine, and the hatchery staffers pretty much only cared about eggs.
I could count on one hand the number of times a higher-up had set foot in our design lab. So when I looked up and saw Robert Greaves standing outside my cubicle, I didn’t really know what to say.
“Afternoon, Noah.” He wore the characteristic outfit, loose-fitting pants and a long-sleeve shirt, all black.
“Mr. Greaves!” After a second’s hesitation, I stood up. Sitting while Build-A-Dragon’s CEO stood seemed like a faux pas.
He flashed the same smile that graced most of our company’s literature. “Please, call me Robert.”
“All right.” I hadn’t seen him face-to-face since the failed demonstration of my Condor model. Best not to think about that.
“Evelyn tells me that your last several designs have been spot-on,” he said.
“Oh.” It rattled me a little to learn that Evelyn was reporting on me. Did she know he was here now? Probably not. If she had, she’d have been hovering. “I’m doing my best.”
“Good, good. We’re reinstating your print privileges.”
“Thanks.” So far, this was good news. However, I sincerely doubted the head of the company had come to tell me everything was hunky-dory.
“A talented designer like you shouldn’t be punished for a mistake,” Greaves said.
“That’s . . . nice of you to say.” It took a major effort not to bristle at my Condor being written off as a mistake.
“Still not happy about that, I’m guessing,” he said.
I opened my mouth and shut it again. There was no point in denying what he could clearly see on my face.
“Look, man, I get it.” He wandered back and stood facing me, with my chair positioned between us like a buffer. “Anyone who loves dragons wants to see the fairy tales brought to life. But it’s dangerous to create something you can’t control.”
Control. That’s what mattered to someone like Robert Greaves. As Simon Redwood had undoubtedly learned after inviting him in to run the company.
“I put a lot into that design.” I looked away from him and shook my head. “It seemed like a terrible waste for such elegant creatures.”
He waved an arm dismissively. “It’s not as bad as you think. They’ll get to live out their lives at the Farm, and you got to learn the importance of coloring inside the lines.”
The dragons went to the Farm. I’d been trying so hard to forget what happened on demonstration day, I didn’t think through what he’d meant by ordering the dragons to quarantine. “Does that mean I’ll get another shot at the flying model?”
“We want you to focus on the custom orders, at least for the time being.”
That meant no. It didn’t hurt as bad as it could have, because I’d expected as much. There was a sliver of hope and I clung to it. “I can do that. I like them.”
He gripped my shoulder. “And you’re good at them. Keep at it, all right?”
“I will,” I said dully. He was looking at me, and I could feel the weight of his gaze. I summoned a bit more enthusiasm. “Thanks. And sorry about . . . well, you know.”
“It’s water under the bridge.” He gave me a nod and strode briskly out of the lab. I took what felt like my first full breath since he’d arrived.
A shadow detached itself from the wall beside the door. Ben Fulton gave me a little nod before following Greaves. What was he doing here, anyway? Maybe they thought I was unstable. Which wasn’t the worst possible guess. Or maybe he’d come to support me. Either way, it didn’t matter. I’d passed the test.
And more importantly, my flying dragons were still alive.
CHAPTER FORTY
Denials
The Farm was Build-A-Dragon’s desert facility. I’d never been there before, nor had any of the designers. Hell, I didn’t even know where it was. It couldn’t be far, because that’s where they sent all the problematic dragons—the returns, the failed prototypes, the custom jobs that didn’t turn out. Or in one case, dragons that turned out a little too well.
I sincerely doubted I’d be granted permission to visit if I asked. Evelyn wanted me to keep my head down, and Greaves clearly felt we should put the whole matter behind us. That being said, if some of my Condor models were still alive, I had a good chance of obtaining the samples I needed to finalize my experiment. If I could get close to one of them, it just might work.
The problem was that I had no idea where to go. I wasn’t about to ask someone down in Herpetology where it was. Or Evelyn, for that matter. She’d have too many questions, and she’d pull up the dragon design to figure out what I was looking for. No, if I wanted to see my Condor models, I’d have to do it on my own. Without anyone even realizing I’d done it. Then all I had to do was take a tiny sample for a biopsy. I could almost certainly get one of my former labmates at ASU to do the biopsy and tell me whether or not the muscle fibers showed any sign of dystrophy. But first things first: I had to find The Farm.
Wong was out, so I wandered over to Korrapati’s workstation on the other side of the God Machine. She sat delicately in front of her screen, working a custom job through DragonDraft3D. As I watched, she ran her current design through my simulator. The dragon looked like a Rover model, but shorter and more rotund, with stocky legs. “What is that, a corgi?”
“Hey, Noah!” She looked past my shoulder and lowered her voice. “What did Greaves want?”
“To give me my printing privileges back.”
“Really?”
“I guess I’m off double-secret probation.”
“Well, good. That whole thing was ridiculous.”
“Yeah, it was.” Funny how she never thought to say so when I was going through it, though. “Hey, you know one of the dragon wranglers, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Her cheeks colored. “Peter.”
I hadn’t been terribly plugged into the company rumor mill, but it was fairly common knowledge that Korrapati was dating one of the wranglers. Now I had a name to go with the dungarees. “Does he ever go out to the Farm?”
“Sometimes. He doesn’t talk about it much.”
In fairness, neither did we. No one liked the idea of dragon designs going awry. “I imagine it’s far away.”
Her brow furrowed. “It can’t be too far. He’s gone there and been back before the end of the day.”
“He has?”
“At least a few times.”
“Gotta be out in the desert somewhere, I suppose,” I said, while the wheels turned in my head. “Well, anyway. You should introduce me to him the next time he stops by.” I smiled and winked at her, which only made her blush even more.
> “Okay, um . . . sure.”
“See you.” I went back to my workstation, thanking my lucky stars that Korrapati had caught a dragon wrangler’s interest. He made it to the Farm and back within a day. That meant it had to be a four-hour drive, tops. But four hours covered a lot of desert territory. I’d never find it without help from a wrangler. But I could hardly follow one of them without being noticed. The Tesla drew too much attention. Which is part of why I loved it, but that’s beside the point.
But I didn’t have to follow the handlers, if I knew where they went.
The first step was to identify the vehicles of the Herpetology staff. This was the easiest part, because the dragon wranglers’ vehicles stood out just as much as the wranglers themselves did: sturdy old pickup trucks with mud on the rims and desert dust everywhere else. I tagged each of them with a stamp-sized magnetic GPS tracker. Fourteen trucks overall.
Then I had to do something I’m not terribly proud of. I had to make a defective dragon.
The order, ironically, was for another child’s pet, a vanilla-type Labrador retriever dragon. Docile, loyal, protective—I mean, clearly the parents wanted a dog but couldn’t talk their little boy out of a dragon.
I started with the Rover model but curtailed the development time for teeth and claws. After putting in the necessary pigmentation changes, I tackled the delicate stuff: balancing endorphins and neural feedback. That’s where I effected some sabotage, an edge case that even my simulator code wouldn’t necessarily catch. I modified the dopamine transporter, which normally helped modulate the neurotransmitters for pleasure and excitement, so that it would react not just to dopamine, but to other biological amines.
Now the chemical signals underlying emotion—joy, pain, fear, hunger, guilt, or anything—would act like a hit of dopamine to the brain. The result, by my guess, would be a dragon that was overstimulated almost all the time. I didn’t dare try to model this in the simulator, but I could guess that its defect would be pretty obvious.
I hit the Print button and put in my transfer ticket. The egg was charcoal gray, with little flecks of scarlet throughout. I’d never seen a design like it before. I felt a little stab of guilt, knowing that the creature within was doomed to a life in quarantine, but I reminded myself that this was just a means to an end. This was about something more important than dragons.
At least, that’s what I told myself as the staffers wheeled it away.
I set my watch so that I wouldn’t miss the hatching. That’ll be one hell of a show.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Triangulation
On hatching day for the sabotaged dragon, I took my lunch to the glass-paneled observatory room. I figured I had half an hour to eat before the egg cracked. But I hadn’t accounted for the gung-ho attitude of a perpetually eager dragon.
I was halfway through my peanut butter and jelly when the purple snout broke through the egg’s surface. Most of our custom jobs take two or three minutes to fully escape the eggshell. This one squirmed free in less than thirty seconds. It scampered over to lick the gloved hands of the hatchery staff.
They nudged it toward the bowl of raw meat. Newborn dragons usually needed a quick infusion of protein; the instinct to eat meat was so powerful that we relied on it for the imprinting process. This one couldn’t settle down long enough to eat, though. It kept leaving the bowl to wander about the room. Jim and Allie were in there trying to clean up, and the thing just wouldn’t leave them alone. At one point, Allie tried pushing the dragon’s head away.
Big mistake. In my mind’s eye, I could see the neurotransmitters flooding synapses, and the neurons firing in a self-multiplying fireworks finale. Every emotion amplified a hundredfold.
The dragon reared back, put its two front paws on her shoulders and licked her full-on in the face. Big, wet, slimy licks. This wasn’t normal behavior; anyone could see that. Jim came up behind the dragon and gently slipped a catchpole over its neck. He eased it over to the food bowl and held it there to eat. Meanwhile, Allie went to the phone and made the call to Herpetology.
I went back to my desk as if things were normal. Half an hour later, I got the summons to Evelyn’s office. I’d kind of developed a reputation for not being the most prompt communicator, mostly because I lost track of time when I got deep into DragonDraft3D. So I gave it ten more minutes before I moseyed over.
“You needed me?” I asked.
Evelyn glanced up. “Yes, come in.”
I stepped inside, and she sealed the door. So that’s how it was going to be.
“There’s a problem with one of your custom dragons,” she said.
I feigned surprise. “Which one?”
“The purple birthday job.”
I knew I didn’t have much of a poker face, so I thought it best to fall back on a role I knew well: touchy, defensive artist. “What kind of problem?” I demanded.
“Behavioral. It wouldn’t leave the hatchery staff alone.”
“It’s supposed to be a child’s pet. You don’t want it friendly?”
She pursed her lips and hit a few keys on her keyboard. “Here’s the vidfeed.”
A new opaque rectangle appeared in the air, showing security footage from the hatching I’d just witnessed. I winced at the close-up view of the purple dragon’s wet tongue sliding up Allie’s face. Yech.
“I guess I see what you mean,” I said.
“Did you use a stock design for this one?”
“No. The simulator said it would be fine, but I didn’t run a comprehensive battery.” Because I’d known it might show up.
“Will you check the design again?” she asked.
“Sure. I’ll do it right now.” I made to leave, then turned back. “What’s going to happen to that one?”
“Probably just a quarantine. It’s not that the dragon is dangerous. But something didn’t quite work,” she said.
I sighed, maybe a touch too theatrically. “Yet another dragon wasted. I’ll take a look at the design.” Then I left, not trusting myself to keep a straight face. I went back into my design and readjusted the transporter gene so that it would function normally. We still had to fill the order, after all.
Sure enough, the simulator code predicted the desired result: a dragon that was friendly but not over-the-top. Then again, that’s what it had said about the first one. This time, however, the guy who wrote the simulator wasn’t trying to fool it. I sent the new design to Evelyn with a note:
Think I found the problem. One of the serotonin transporters. I fixed it and put this one through the works. Sorry about that.
It took twenty minutes for the egg printer to turn on, which told me she’d probably run my new design through the simulator herself. I wasn’t worried, though. It would be exactly what the customer wanted.
With luck, the defective one was already headed for The Farm.
I stayed at work bit later than usual, not because I was busy but because I didn’t like driving the Tesla in heavy traffic. It had collision-avoidance systems and real-time maps and such, but that didn’t stop some moron on a cell phone from sideswiping me on the freeway. My baby was pristine, and I wanted her to stay that way. Only Wong was still there by the time I left,
“Tai t’yen, Wong Xiansheng,” I told him.
“Yes, see you later,” he said.
“Don’t work too late.” Sometimes I wondered if he ever stopped working at all.
Traffic had relented a little by the time I got onto the freeway. I got home just before dusk and found the condo dark. Usually, that meant Octavius had settled somewhere for a nap.
“Octavius?”
A soft noise came from the kitchen, the unmistakable sound of dragon claws on stone tile. I walked in, thinking I’d find him on the floor amid a destroyed box of cereal. But the floor was clean and empty. Octavius dropped down from the ceiling like a ninja assassin. He put his wings over my face, too, effectively blinding me. I cursed and swatted at him until he flew off to perch on top of th
e micro-refrigerator.
“Missed you, too, buddy.” I rubbed the dry patch of scales on the back of your head. “You’re going to help me clean this up. Then we’ve got work to do.”
I wolfed down some Asian-Mexican fusion leftovers—that food truck had really gotten a hold on me—and then parked myself in front of the computer to get started. The GPS tags were linked to a tracking app that Octavius and I used to log our geocaches. My watch synchronized with it, as did the tracking tags I’d placed on the handlers’ trucks. I pulled up the paths and overlaid them with a map of Phoenix, centered on the company headquarters.
Over the last several hours, the tags had rolled out of the parking garage and headed in a dozen directions. I traced most of them to residential complexes on the outskirts of Phoenix. Interesting that none of the handlers lived downtown, even though it was closer to work. They seemed to prefer the fringe of the desert.
Tag number six was the only one that went far beyond the city limits. In the early afternoon, that vehicle had made a straight shot northeast of Phoenix into the desert wilderness near Gila National Forest. I tried to zoom in on the satellite imagery, but it became blurry when I did so. I zoomed out and moved around to be sure. Sometimes that happened in areas with poor satellite coverage, but I doubted that was the case here. Not this close to a major city, and neatly ensconced between national forests that the federal government liked to keep eyes on. No, this had the stink of paid exclusion to it.
For an exorbitant fee, imaging and mapping companies removed the high-quality satellite coverage of certain sensitive areas. Corporations and wealthy individuals who valued their privacy were all too happy to pay.
Say what you want about the Freedom of Information stuff, but it came in handy from time to time. Especially to those of us who were computer-savvy enough to pay attention. First, I went to the property maps website for Phoenix County. Working back-and-forth between that and my mapping program, I found the property record for the parcel of land where the truck had gone. A few more clicks and I was looking at the details on the property’s registered owner.