Domesticating Dragons

by Dan Koboldt

  Wong rolled out in his chair. “Noah Parker. Ni zěnmeyàng?” How are you?

  “Mama huhu,” I answered. Just so-so.

  “Yes,” Wong said. “Very sad day yesterday.”

  “Did you come in?”

  “Of course.”

  I shrugged. “I just couldn’t.”

  “It was hard. But I take no chance with visa.”

  “How was it around here?”

  “Quiet. Like a ghost town.”

  I sighed. “Guess I should get to work.”

  “Same.” Wong gave me a crooked smile and rolled back into his workstation.

  I plugged away at design work. It was slow going. I tried to do right by the designs that came in, and I delayed as long as I could before printing new eggs. The week seemed to pass in slow motion. I trudged through it like a ghost. Finally, around lunchtime, my phone buzzed with an incoming phone call. It brought an instinctive feeling of dread. Few people called. Lately it seemed to be all bad news.

  Then I looked at the display, and saw it was Summer. That perked me up a bit. I hustled out to the stairway, because we weren’t supposed to use phones near the God Machine. “Hello?”

  “It’s Summer,” she said.

  Her voice made me smile. “Hi, how are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  The feeling of dread returned. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to make sure you’re still alive or whatever.”

  “That’s nice of you,” I said, though her tone absolutely had a chill to it. “I’m okay.”

  “All right. Well, I gotta go.”

  Damn, she’s pissed. I couldn’t imagine what for. “Summer, wait!”

  “What?”

  “What’s going on?”

  Silence.

  “Did I say something to upset you?”

  She sighed. “I admired him too, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Simon Redwood.”

  “Oh.” A slow breath escaped me. “I didn’t know.”

  “You’re not the only one having a shitty week, is all I’m saying.”

  Oh, hell. “I’m sorry. I just got caught up at work.”

  “So you’re still working there.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Is it? You work for a company that kills dragons. Whose founder just died in a mysterious fire.”

  I wanted to tell her what I was really doing here. What I could do for my brother, if I could only get my hands on the right dragon. But the steady LED of the staircase surveillance cam stared at me like a baleful eye. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I could practically feel Fulton watching me on his monitors. “I can’t talk about it.”

  “I guess we don’t have anything to talk about, then.”

  “Summer—” I started.

  The line went dead.

  I tried to get back to work, but the Summer thing gnawed at me. I tried calling her a few times that afternoon but got no answer. She was pissed, and it was my fault. I hadn’t realized that she might be upset about Redwood, or about my coming back to work. I’d only been thinking about myself. From her point of view, we’d been getting close and then I suddenly ghosted her. The realization brought a tightness to my chest. I suppose I could have given her time to cool off and then try again, but every minute I spent knowing that she was pissed at me made my stomach hurt more. I could practically sense the gulf forming between us.

  That was the emotional straw that broke the camel’s back. Everything started to spiral. I’d failed my Condor, failed my brother, and now I’d failed Summer. The one bright spot in my recent existence—Simon Redwood—had been ripped away from me, too. No, not just me. From the world.

  All those failures had one thing in common: Build-A-Dragon’s desert facility. If Greaves had secrets, that’s where they were. The more I thought about it, the more I obsessed over it, the more I convinced myself that I had to go back there.

  But the place was huge. I’d never be able to cover it by myself, at least within a short enough time period to avoid any security patrols. Octavius would help, of course. It still might not be enough. I needed four or five of him.

  Four or five of him.

  That gave me a crazy idea. A small act of rebellion that would lay the groundwork for a much larger one. It was time for me to start printing dragons.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Shell Game

  My plan for building a small army required going to work every day like everything was normal. It was harder than I imagined. At the best of times—in the middle of the domestication challenge, or just before my Condor’s field trials—I looked forward to work. Some days I even jogged from my car to Build-A-Dragon’s shining front door. Now, a heavy non-specific dread replaced the excitement when I passed through the lobby on my way to the elevators. Virginia took a leave of absence, and they replaced her with a matronly woman who glared at me like I was a trespasser every time I walked by. She glared at everyone that way but losing Virginia’s warm smile rubbed salt in my emotional wounds.

  Build-A-Dragon’s design floor got busier than ever. We had some new ad campaign running, and the orders were rolling in. Hatchery staff bopped in and out constantly, moving eggs from the printer to the hatchery. Evelyn scurried across the design floor no less than a dozen times a day. There was an uptick in tours as well, and the tour guides loved our floor. Every time I turned around, there were twenty faces pressed to the glass, staring at me. Pint-sized kindergarteners, gangly high school students, even stooped elderly folks from the nearby senior centers. I felt like a museum exhibit. So did my fellow designers. We hid behind our workstations as much as we could.

  The good news was that I had my printing privileges back. Evelyn was probably monitoring my activities, but she was far too swamped to pay close attention. The bad news was that we’d gotten a new accounting system to manage the workload. Every egg that came off the printer had to be linked to an order. One dragon requested, one delivered. I could have gotten into the systems code and spoofed some false orders, but that was risky. The company had various auditing systems and double-checks in place to prevent fraud. I couldn’t circumvent all of them, and any changes would leave an electronic trail pointing right back to me.

  The Design group did have a company account that we used to print new prototypes. I could create an order with that, no problem. But the moment an egg rolled out and hit the scale, its weight would be compared to the expected value from DragonDraft3D. If they matched, the account would be charged, and Evelyn would get an invoice. That would raise a red flag no matter how busy she was. Everything in that system was pretty much locked down to me, except for one part: the scale that verified eggs as they came out of the God Machine. It had failed before—that’s how I ended up with Octavius.

  Whenever no one was around, I started tampering with it.

  O’Connell still had the new flying model assignment—which sounded to be shaping up like a Terribledactyl 2.0—so custom orders and support requests dominated my daily work. It amazed me how many customers wanted dragons that resembled very specific dog breeds. If I had to guess, they were filling a void that their departed dogs had left behind. In the space of three hours, I designed somewhat obvious reptilian versions of a golden retriever, a dachshund, and a labradoodle. All of those were too big for my needs. Even so, by the time I’d printed the eggs, my scale was off by half a kilogram. Then I came across a custom order for a light green Laptop model that was “extra clever.” Couldn’t have asked for a better subterfuge. Rather than starting with a Rover model, I imported the specs of the design used for Octavius. I balanced the traits a little more—moving some intelligence points to claws, teeth and agility—but kept the diminutive size. DragonDraft3D estimated the egg would weigh 0.48 kilograms. Bingo.

  I checked over the design one last time, and then ran it through the simulator. The predicted dragon could have been Octavius’s older brother. Slightly stockier, perhaps, and
a shade less clever. Probably how Connor considered me. I chuckled, though it sounded nervous to my ears. Now came the riskiest part: a shell game with my now-inaccurate egg scale. I went back to DragonDraft3D and hit the print button.

  The God Machine’s hydraulics kicked in. The metallic printer-arm danced around for a couple of minutes, and then the thing beeped. I rolled my desk chair to put myself right between the output tray and the surveillance camera. I couldn’t keep it from hitting the scale entirely—that’s why I’d been tampering with it—and I had to make sure the egg didn’t show up on camera, either.

  The God Machine fell silent. The egg rolled out. I didn’t make a grabbing motion or anything, just sort of let it tumble up into my palm. It was only a shade bigger than Octavius’s egg had been. I leaned forward to cover the motion of slipping it into the pocket I’d sewn into the inside of my lab coat. If anyone was watching the feed, I wanted to look confused. I peered up into the God Machine, like I was still waiting for the egg to come out.

  Then I shrugged and went back to my workstation. I even glanced back over my shoulder a couple of times, like I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. DragonDraft3D had gotten the error message from the printer by that time and prompted me on whether I wanted to try re-printing the egg. I looked pointedly up at the clock and chose “No.” Then I started typing up a support ticket to the robotics group, the geeks that kept all our machinery running. I didn’t send the ticket but kept it up on my screen in case I had to explain it later.

  I stood, stretched, and walked to the break room. Build-A-Dragon stocked a full refrigerator with drinks and had plenty of snacks. Another little perk of working here. I’d stashed my insulated lunch box behind the refrigerator, right where the hot air coming off the coils would hit it. I tested the temperature with my palm. Still toasty warm. Perfect.

  I slipped the egg inside it, carried it back to my desk, and set it down by my backpack. My workstation beeped with a message: a new order had come in.

  I decided to roll with it, and act like the new order suddenly became my top priority. I minimized the window with the robotics ticket, switched to DragonDraft3D, and got to work. The customer wanted a courier dragon, a fleet little flying model that could see in the dark. Oh, and it had to spout flame, too. Most customers could never resist checking that little box on the form. I worked on the design for a couple of hours, while the design floor cleared out and Build-A-Dragon’s windows darkened. I’d print the egg first thing Monday morning. I loaded my lunch bag into my backpack as if everything was normal.

  Out of sheer paranoia, I took the stairs instead of the elevator. You never knew who might pop on, and I couldn’t count on a good poker face when I was smuggling a dragon egg out of the building. When I entered the stairwell, the odor of fresh paint hit me like a wall. Uh-oh.

  I only got two floors down before I ran into the paint crew. They had a scaffold up so they could paint the ceiling. Seriously, who paints the ceiling? I couldn’t get around it without squishing my bag, so I had to cut over through the main part of the second floor.

  This took me through the customer service department, a sea of grey-walled cubicles that buzzed with the sound of a dozen telephone conversations. It was after seven, Arizona time, but a lot of our customers in East Asia were just waking up. And they demanded perfection from their dragons. It must have been a cultural thing. I caught snippets of conversation as I passed.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your trouble.”

  “And how many hamsters do you think he ate?”

  “ . . . made it clear that custom-made dragons can’t be modified once they’ve hatched.”

  Yet another unwanted dragon in the world. Perfect.

  Octavius knew I was up to something the moment I walked into the condo. He’d been waiting for me just inside the door, which he did sometimes when he didn’t feel like playing hide-and-seek. Maybe he noticed the unusual weight of my lunch bag, or just read the expression on my face. He hopped over and started nuzzling around my legs. His version of a body search.

  “What’s got you so excited?” I asked.

  He took to the air and began zooming around me, bumping my backpack with his nose.

  “Hey, stop that!” I swatted at him but missed. Damn, he’s getting quick. “All right, settle down and I’ll show it to you.”

  I drew the curtains first and made sure the door was locked. Put my phone and laptop in another room, just in case. I sat down at the table and eased the egg out of my lunch bag. It was the color of limestone and dappled with gray and ochre.

  I eased it to the center of the table and held it there so that Octavius could have a look. His claws clicked on the wood as he approached it, hunched low, pink tongue flicking out every few seconds. He circled it a few times, then settled down on his belly. He looped his tail almost all the way around it and made a new sound: a soft, undulating buzz from deep in his throat.

  “Are you purring?” I didn’t know dragons could even do that. Yet another quirk of biology that our simulations didn’t predict.

  I carried over the old-school desk lamp and set it up. Octavius slapped it almost lazily with the end of his tail to turn it on. He stretched out then, enjoying the heat. You couldn’t ask for a better egg-sitter.

  Just like that, I had the first of my little dragon army. Over the next four days, I smuggled out four more the exact same way. They incubated in the warmth of my old lamp while I tried not to think about my next utility bill. In the meantime, I surveyed the target using every terrain and satellite map I could find. The current satellite images might be restricted, but I was able to pull up older imagery from the archive. Taking the direct road into the facility wouldn’t work. I’d gotten away with it once, thanks to Summer’s quick thinking—just remembering it brought tandem flashes of excitement and dismay—but now Greaves would probably have his security people on high alert. The archived maps revealed an old highway that wandered in from the northwest, maybe a mile and a half from the field itself. It might be close enough. Of course, a mile and a half of raw desert country might take hours to cross. I didn’t like the idea of trying it alone. I had a couple of weeks before my reptilian strike team would be ready. That might be enough time for me to win back the best geocacher in Phoenix.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Reparations

  Summer had effectively ignored my efforts to reach her so far. Ghosting me was only fair, I suppose, but each passing day made it more likely that she wouldn’t stop. I needed to do something bigger. A grand gesture.

  I considered going to her house, but that seemed overly aggressive and creepy. Especially since I didn’t know where she lived. Yes, in the modern information age, I probably could have figured it out. Few things remained hidden anymore. But I hadn’t looked. I wanted to come by it honest. All that being said, her work was fair game. She’d told me about it already. Her architectural firm had a small but elegant building on the edge of Scottsdale. Summer wasn’t a send-me-flowers-at-work kind of girl. I might not know her through and through, but I knew that much. Instead, I resolved the send her the most persuasive messenger I knew.

  The Courier, Build-A-Dragon’s smallest mainline prototype, offered a reasonable cover story. It was a cute thing—a Wong design, as a matter of fact—but sales had been slow for the first few months. Then some talk show host had sent one to her friend on national television or something, and suddenly orders blew up. Now it wasn’t unusual to encounter little Couriers with their recognizable message tubes flapping overhead on city streets, or even swooping down an office hallway.

  I put in a request with Sales, under the guise that I was doing product support and needed an example message tube. Then I went down to Chinatown, to find one of those little hand-carved puzzle boxes that would fit inside the tube. Cost me a small fortune, because the damn things were apparently harder to make small. But I figured out how to open it and put a little handwritten message inside. Mostly numbers: time, date, GPS coordinate
s.

  She worked at the main branch, on the third floor. I saddled up Octavius with his courier tube, explained what he had to do, and smuggled him into the building in a backpack. I let him out on the third floor and hustled out of there; it would blow all the drama and mystery if she spotted me.

  I told myself that Octavius should be fine in there. Most people gave Courier dragons a lot of leeway. The little reptiles were easy to recognize with their trademark message tubes.

  I kept running this through my mind while I waited for Octavius. In truth, I was worried he might be found out. He was an unlicensed, unregistered dragon. I’d already learned what Greaves did to those.

  I loitered outside the building. Getting more nervous by the second. Wondering if maybe I’d made a big mistake. Grand gestures were fine and good, but my little dragon meant the world to me.

  What was I thinking? I shouldn’t have risked him on this. What if he got hurt, or someone reported him? I’d be up to my eyeballs in crap at Build-A-Dragon. Even worse than that, they’d take him away. And probably send him to the desert facility, to die out in the unforgiving desert sun.

  Damn it!

  A shadow crossed the sidewalk. There he was, gliding languidly down from the building’s upper level.

  “Octavius!” I snapped.

  He saw me and banked over, taking his time about it, before landing on my shoulder.

  “Took your time, didn’t you?” I couldn’t keep all of the hurt out of my voice.

  He crooned noncommittally, as if he’d done his job and didn’t want to hear any complaints.

  “At least tell me that you got the message to her.”

  He trilled an affirmative.

  My stomach did a backflip—one half excited, and the other half sick with nerves. Either I’d just earned a shot at winning Summer back, or I’d screwed things up for good.

  Saturday morning, I waited in the Tesla at the coordinates I’d sent to Summer and hoped to God she would show. Things weren’t looking good, though. I’d said nine o’clock, and it was already ten after.