House of the Galactic Elevator

by Gerhard Gehrke

  But he had solved the problem of guidance for the elevator’s transit, hadn’t he? The instant AI he had borrowed and applied to the control console was now active in this elevator, at least. With time and his computers back at the Galactic Commons transportation terminal, Oliop felt confident that he could get the AI to reproduce. If only the worm would cooperate and come out of hiding.

  Something thumped against the outside of the elevator. Oliop heard a skittering noise. Whatever it was now moved about on the elevator’s roof.

  “Hello?” Oliop called.

  Kwed’s segmented head peered down from above.

  “Please please please tell me we can get out of here!” Kwed said.

  “Elevator’s still broke,” Oliop said.

  “But you can fix it. You need to fix it. I want to go home.”

  “There’s a piece missing that we need to find. You could help me.”

  Kwed just stared at the technician, oblivious to Oliop’s request. Something caught Kwed’s attention. He looked off towards the camp. The millipedoid’s antennae straightened and bent repeatedly.

  “What’s wrong?” Oliop asked.

  When Kwed didn’t answer, Oliop stepped outside. He gave the air a sniff and listened. He heard a buzz that sounded like a small engine running at a very high RPM. He tried to give Kwed a reassuring pat, but Kwed was now coiled like a spring on the roof of the elevator.

  The pitch of the buzzing became higher. Whatever was making the sound was getting closer. Oliop’s ears turned independently of one another. He got the position of the sound and turned that way. Something was flying his direction from over the old airport hangars. It was small, perhaps as long as his forearm. It had four rotating blades that kept it aloft and moving forward. It came from the opposite direction of the camp. There must be more humans out there piloting the device.

  Kwed muttered something to himself, a series of clicks that Oliop had a hard time making out. “Going to get us” was his best guess.

  The drone made a pass down the opposite side of the overgrown airfield. When it reached the end, it paused, hovered, and headed for the elevator.

  Kwed redoubled his whining.

  “Just be calm,” Oliop said softly. “Oliop is here to help.”

  Oliop went into his bag and took out one of his little bots. He next removed a brand-new and never-used bot adaptation kit with the price coding still attached. The kit looked like a small cube of folded metal and plastic rods and struts. With the turn of two handles, Oliop attached the accessory to the bot. He opened a program on his wrist device.

  He selected flight mode.

  The cube sprouted wings equipped with hover nodes, miniaturized gravity-repulsing units much like the larger ones found on the more common grav sleds and other vehicles throughout the Commons. His bot now flew, too. It rose to greet the drone.

  Whoever was flying the drone didn’t move out of the way in time. Even the most basic flying software would have swerved. Oliop’s bot shot up over the drone and dropped back down atop of it, attaching to the machine’s back with a magnetic click. The drone lost some of its momentum, churning about in the air as it tried to adjust its trim.

  “Time to make new friends,” Oliop said.

  He engaged his bot’s sensory equipment. It only took a moment to detect that the human drone was indeed remotely operated via an encoded frequency that changed every few seconds. Oliop hummed softly as he had his bot insert a proboscis-like pin between the drone’s receiver and brain. The drone would relay any orders to him now, and he could take complete control if he wished.

  For now he didn’t. Oliop just watched the world through the drone’s eyes, the footage displaying on a screen floating above his wrist device. The remote commands arriving from the operator were merely directional. Oliop didn’t see anything that indicated the drone was weaponized. The drone sent back feed from a wide-angle lens camera mounted on its belly in notably low resolution.

  The drone made a tight circle above the elevator. Kwed continued to tremble as if the drone was about to begin a strafing run with fire and lightning. He began to whimper. Oliop made a gesture for the millipedoid to be calm and to be quiet.

  “I’m in control now,” Oliop said, but that didn’t reassure Kwed.

  Finally the drone flew on, heading on towards the refugee camp. In moments Oliop was watching the stream of Galactic Commons expatriates all heading his way. These wanted to go home, but Oliop would have no choice but to tell them the bad news that they would be staying here on Earth for a little while longer.

  ***

  “Oh dear,” Lord Akimbo said. He thought he might faint. He settled for a swoon, pivoting on one pelvis in a roundabout motion before correcting himself and standing upright.

  He sighed. “Waiting on others is so tiresome.”

  The empty elevator berth before him remained dormant. He made a circling gesture with a hand. The worms still wriggling at his feet responded immediately, moving away from him and forming up into a swirling pattern on the floor. There were fewer than before. Half he had sent to the front of the transportation terminal. These had held off the first handful of security sent inside. They could hold off the rest indefinitely. Now he detailed the circling worms to remain in place and await the missing Grey’s return. The plan would have to move forward without relying on the evil little creature or the gifted technician. He motioned for the worm-stricken security bots to remain as well.

  Even more worms clung to the descending ramp. These fell in behind him as he awkwardly climbed down a ladder to the floor of the elevator chamber where an open gondola waited. It stood above a dark shaft that descended back down to the vacant depths below the city. He got inside the gondola and watched as the following worms piled in. Soon the mass of bending minions covered his feet and crawled up his legs. He took pleasure in running his fingers through them. They, in turn, caressed his feet and toes and caused him to giggle as they climbed higher and up onto his head and shoulders.

  “My friends, my friends, you do know how to cheer me up.”

  With a thought, he made the elevator drop. The twin gates slammed shut above him. Lord Akimbo halted the descent after a moment, stepping off at another gate that hadn’t been opened since the early days, the glory years of the Galactic Commons, before he had ever fallen into anonymity. The gate had been written off by subsequent generations as a fused artifact that was better off left alone and built around. There were thousands of similar gates, all ignored as the city stagnated in its indifference to the past. Lord Akimbo made a gesture, and the gate screeched open. The worms poured from the gondola and spread out ahead of him.

  Before him lay an active transportation station still in use by the city. Lit tubes ran in eight different directions. Lord Akimbo took a hitching step towards a directory, where a bow-legged quadruped stood petrified with terror. She wore an atmospheric bubble helmet. Her two large eyes were wide, darting between Lord Akimbo, the worms, and the nearby ramp that led up to the surface street.

  “I say, good citizen,” Lord Akimbo said. “Which conveyance would take me to the security headquarters?”

  The quadruped swallowed hard, consulted the directory, and said, “The…the yellow line would take you almost directly.”

  “Excellent!”

  Akimbo drew close, appraising her. The worms followed along, some tapping at her feet. With each touch, she flinched, twitches running up her dense fur like ripples of water.

  “And what occupation do you find yourself in, citizen?” Lord Akimbo asked.

  “Ar-artificial environmental management,” she said with a stutter. She cleared her throat. “Sovereign houses in the fountain district mostly.”

  “Excellent! Oh, good citizen, we will have such a great need for ones like yourself!” He put a hand on her shoulder. She drew back but bumped against the subway directory. “You will have so much work to do so very soon. Rewarding work. There is room for you in my kingdom.”

  A
train appeared, making but the slightest hum as it decelerated and came to a stop. It was the yellow line. No one got off. Lord Akimbo and the worms climbed on board.

  “Prepare yourself!” Lord Akimbo said. “It will soon be time to build the city.”

  The train whooshed out of the station.

  ***

  The ride took just minutes. In that time, Lord Akimbo gave his worms their instructions. Once the train stopped, the worms deployed like a sea running up a sandy beach. This station had more riders. These fled. In moments, a security bot appeared, a red light blinking on its head. An alarm in the bot’s chest burped once, the sound echoing throughout the station. It held its two arms out, ready for action.

  The bot rolled over dozens of worms. The worms proved most resilient, some clinging to the bot’s twin treads. These began to climb the bot’s matte-grey body, their heads regularly tapping the skin and probing.

  “Halt,” the bot ordered in a flat voice. “You are causing a disturbance.”

  “Indeed,” Lord Akimbo said.

  One of the worms made it to the bot’s head and bored into the metal as if it were liquid. The bot’s blinking light went dark. Its arms relaxed. It jerked back to life almost immediately and fell in behind Lord Akimbo as he headed towards a door labeled Maintenance – Authorized Personnel Only.

  Lord Akimbo paused, considering the bot. He ran a finger along the metal surface of its face. He smiled.

  “Lord Akimbo is merciful, is he not? Now go and perform acts befitting such mercy.”

  The bot stood motionless for a moment. Its eyes illuminated. An alarm sounded throughout the station, ordering everyone and everything to evacuate. This was repeated and rephrased for the benefit of anyone without a translator. Scents both subtle and large pumped from dispensers, coded packets that carried the same urgent message to Get Out Now.

  The bot turned and headed towards an exit ramp, raising the alarm as it went.

  Lord Akimbo led the rest of his entourage into the maintenance tunnel. He let five worms drop off his hand onto a big pipe that ran straight towards the security building. The worms began to aerate the pipe, drilling small holes every two body lengths. A sharp hiss erupted. Green goo began to seep from the holes, piling down onto the conduits and floor below.

  This would neutralize the local security measures that could ensnare even him. The goo had stopped the Bunnie in their tracks, leaving them helpless as the city recovered from the invasion and collected the snared Bunnie for internment. But the Bunnie hadn’t known about the goo, and even if they had, the backwards creatures didn’t have the technical expertise to disable it.

  Here Lord Akimbo paused and waved the rest of the worms on. These inched forward with gusto, the monospikes on the tips of their heads raised high like spears. Some of the worms said, “I live, I think, I am,” as they passed.

  Lord Akimbo felt a rush of pleasure at the sight. A tear came to an eye and he wiped it away. This next part would be messy, to be certain. With the elevator still absent, he would have to improvise a bit, but the next step at least would play to his minions’ strengths.

  They would drill.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Detective Ceph, respond,” Captain Flemming said.

  He paced the hallway outside his office, a pair of the newer single-purpose police bots pivoting on their gimbals as they stood waiting. Another officer followed behind the Captain. The officer was a floating blue sphere with a small attending hover drone bobbing behind him. The drone made a constant low hum as it tagged along. Every time the officer spoke to Flemming in his crackling voice it was its drone that wore the translator and repeated anything the sphere said, so there was an echo effect that the Captain found distracting. Also, something about the officer caused an electrical snapping sound inside Flemming’s head whenever it got too close.

  Just such a snap fired off as the officer almost bumped into the Captain.

  “Still no response from the first security team,” the blue sphere said.

  “Thank you, Orbis,” Captain Flemming said. “Stay on the com. We also need to find out if we can reestablish contact with any of the security bots or the transportation terminal’s camera feed.”

  Two acknowledgments came from Officer Orbis and its drone, followed by another snap that made Flemming flinch.

  Flemming stepped away into his office. Orbis tried to follow but Flemming put out a hand.

  “Keep trying,” Flemming said. “And maybe you should work at your desk.”

  “But if I make contact I want to be able to tell you,” Orbis said.

  “Use the com.”

  And with that, Flemming closed the door, but not before another snap startled him. Flemming sighed and tried to pace about inside the office, but it was jam-packed with a second work station, where he had three new computers set up side by side. These terminals were running demos of three different software suites that might replace the current set of programs that had been compromised by the faulty AI during the Bunnie Invasion. Why the literal-minded engineers had set them all up in his office was still a mystery.

  He leaned against his old desk. He felt hot and stressed and knew that if he checked a mirror he’d see his face starting to droop, a sign that the mold colony that comprised his very being was having a bad day and was threatening to slough off of its endoskeleton.

  The first responding officer and a security bot sent to find the first officer, along with a team of security with even more bot support, had all vanished without a word inside the transportation terminal. Flemming had activated the security protocol within the station, filling every space with the incapacitating green goo, but when he sent yet another bot inside to see who they had caught, the bot could only confirm that the green goo hadn’t deployed before that bot, too, stopped responding.

  Detective Ceph and a larger force cordoned off the transportation terminal. Now Detective Ceph wasn’t answering his com. That happened sometimes. Ceph was his best detective, sometimes brilliant, sometimes distracted, but the only true veteran on the force besides himself, having served before and during the invasion with valor. If only the human Jeff Abel was half as reliable.

  An alarm began to beep in the office outside. He checked his security app. An alert that had begun as an evacuation of the nearest subway station had now been extended to the security headquarters. Was it a fire? More Bunnie? Some sort of toxic spill? Security bots on scene should be updating the app with pertinent information.

  Orbis opened the door and came into the office. A snap jangled Flemming’s nerves.

  “There’s an alarm,” Officer Orbis said. Its drone’s volume was turned up, perhaps in case the Captain had gone deaf in the past few minutes.

  “So I can hear,” Flemming said.

  Flemming checked the video feed of the security building. The footage showed both bots and personnel alike milling about in confusion. He didn’t see any smoke, nor any invaders outside. Sniffers confirmed no abnormalities in the air. He sighed.

  “We can’t take the chance that it’s a false alarm,” Flemming said. “Have the building evacuated.”

  “But how do I do that?”

  “Get on the command channel and make an announcement. Flash the message to every member of the security team and staff. And then get down to the lobby and see to it that everyone goes outside, and we’ll figure it out from there.”

  The blue orb hesitated. Its tiny drone just bobbed in the air behind it.

  “But what about you?” Orbis asked. “And I’m not sure if I’m up to this.”

  “That’s the job,” Captain Flemming said, stabbing a finger at the security officer. Instant regret. Snap. “Get on the channel. Make the announcement. See to it that everyone gets outside. You’ll do fine.”

  Orbis left the office and soon his announcement could be heard throughout the building.

  “Captain Flemming has given us an evacuation order,” Orbis said. “So let’s evacuate!”

  Flemmi
ng watched as Orbis made a beeline for the grav lift before anyone else had a chance to react.

  “Officer Orbis, get back here!” Flemming shouted into his com, but he received no reply. Flemming cleared his throat and tugged at his shirt to let in air. In as calm a voice as possible he announced, “Attention all security personnel. Evacuate the security building. This is not a drill.”

  He had the announcement repeat on a loop. He turned off the alarm sound so that only the lights flashed. He ordered all bots inside the building to facilitate all beings make an orderly exit via the grav lifts before following themselves. He then went and sat at his desk and tried again to contact Detective Ceph.

  ***

  Surveillance showed the occupants of the security building streaming through the main exits of the lobby. The bots followed along with their flashing lights. Flemming did a floor-by-floor check on his monitor to confirm what the building software already told him. Everyone but him was now outside. There were no citizens in detention to be moved. He checked the basement levels and grumbled when the feed showed only black. At first, Flemming thought the lights weren’t working, but he quickly confirmed that the feed itself was now dead.

  A groan rose from the floor. At first Flemming thought this was an echo from the announcement or that someone extra-heavy had come into the office. He got up and looked outside.