by Gini Koch
He jammed the pen into her ear. Nothing happened.
“What are you doing?” she shouted. “That hurts!” She managed to pull the pen out.
Chuckie looked confused. “I know I hit the right spot.”
“Dude, I have nothing for you other than that the Kitty-Bot is still fighting me and I’m going to have to rip her head off unless you come up with something else.”
“I have a message for the President,” she shouted. “Stop trying to stop me! I’m the wife of the Vice President and I need to get inside.”
As she said this she managed to get out of my necklock and bucked, tossing me into Chuckie. He didn’t go down and steadied both of us, but the Kitty-Bot was heading for the others.
Mom stepped out in front and my stomach clenched. “Who am I?” she asked the Kitty-Bot.
“An enemy of the state.” The Kitty-Bot pointed her left arm at Mom, like it was a gun.
At that, my Secret Service detail converged on the Kitty-Bot as one. She went down under a dogpile of sturdy, serviceable suits. There were six of them, four of them men, and she’d had trouble with just me.
Sure enough, they subdued the Kitty-Bot. “Go team.” Tried to go over to the others but Chuckie kept a firm hold on me. He also gently pulled my earbuds out, right in the middle of Social Distortion’s “Don’t Drag Me Down.”
“Love how you told Serene to keep everyone politically important inside and yet you charged the android.”
“She’s impersonating me. Did we ever tell you about her?”
“No, you didn’t.” Chuckie didn’t sound happy about this.
Filled him in fast on the whats and wherefores, as few of them as we had. “So, I think she’s here to kill Mom.”
“I think she’s here to kill the President. She wasn’t trying to kill you. But if she’s really an older model, that might explain why the off switch isn’t in the same place on her as it is on the other androids.”
“If she is an android. She seems far less . . . realistic then they all were and are.”
The Secret Service had the Kitty-Bot standing up and her hands were cuffed behind her. She looked roughed up, which wasn’t surprising. But she didn’t look upset. Realized she’d kept the same expression on her face the entire time—determined concern.
“Robots and androids are pretty close, Kitty.”
“But they’re not the same. And the Kitty-Bot seems much more like a robot.”
Reader came over to us. Chuckie didn’t release his hold on me, and Reader didn’t seem to disapprove. “Yates was into robotics, but most of those connections were into Titan. Though not all.”
“I need to speak to the President,” the Kitty-Bot said. “I have an urgent message for him.”
“You’re going to tell it to me,” Mom said, voice radiating authority.
“You are an enemy of the state. All enemies of the state must be destroyed. I can only share my information with the President.”
“That’s it.” I wrenched out of Chuckie’s hold and slipped past Reader. “It’s head ripping time.” Got in front of Mom. “Who the hell am I?”
The Kitty-Bot didn’t blink. “An enemy of the state.”
My brain nudged. She’d said something when I was fighting her and talking to Chuckie. And if she was a robot, versus an android, that meant her programming was far less sophisticated. “Who is the President?”
“The President of the United States.”
“Right, we’re outside his house, we’re clear on which President you want. What’s his name? We can’t let you through to see the President unless you can properly identify him.”
The Kitty-Bot blinked. Clearly I’d said something that registered. “I’m the wife of the Vice President and I have an urgent message for President Vincent Armstrong.”
CHAPTER 12
EVERYONE GAPED AT HER, other than Chuckie and Reader, who’d joined us. “We’ll discuss your throwing yourself in front of danger later,” Chuckie said, in a tone that indicated he was talking to everyone else more than he was talking to me. “Kitty, your thoughts?”
Waited. The Kitty-Bot didn’t speak. “I think that Antony Marling did far better work, that’s what I think.”
“If this is the same thing we saw six years ago with Ronald Yates at the Pueblo Caliente courthouse, then she’s not only older, but she was created for one reason only, and that was to blow up,” Reader pointed out.
“But to blow up a specific person. And apparently that person is no longer my mother.”
Mom stepped up next to me. “Thanks for the protective shield, kitten.” She studied the Kitty-Bot. “It’s good enough to fool for a few seconds, and that’s all a recognition bomb needs.”
“Recognition as in it’s triggered by seeing the person targeted?”
“Yes.” Mom’s eyes narrowed. “So I’m clearly not the target. It’s had plenty of time to register me, you, all of us here. We’re all close enough that we’d be killed by almost any conventional bomb. So none of us is the target.”
“No, Vince is.” Thought about that. “So,” I said to the Kitty-Bot, “is your message also for the Vice President, your husband?”
She cocked her head at me. “The Vice President should be in the room with the President when I share my urgent message.”
“Gotcha. Anyone else?” I asked nicely, while I ignored the many WTF looks I was getting from everyone other than, interestingly enough, Tito.
“No,” the Kitty-Bot said. “My message is for the two of them only.”
“Who am I?” Tito asked nicely.
The Kitty-Bot swiveled her head toward him in a very non-human and also non-android way. She stared at him. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m your friend,” Tito said. “I’m here to help you achieve your mission. So are many of these others.”
She looked at all of us. “Those two are enemies of the state,” she said, looking at me and Mom.
“We have them contained, so they can’t stop you. Where’s your off switch?” Tito asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The President and Vice President aren’t here,” Tito said, still keeping his tone pleasant and friendly. “We’re here to assist you. And we’re thinking you might need to rest, while we find them. So, you might want to power down. But if you do, we want to be able to turn you back on, wake you up, at the right time.”
“Oh.” The Kitty-Bot blinked slowly. “When will they be back?”
“We don’t know,” Tito said. “And you look like you’ve come a long way to deliver your message.”
At this both Reader and Chuckie looked at the Kitty-Bot more closely. “Take a sniff,” I said to them. “Tito’s right, I think.”
“I have,” the Kitty-Bot said to Tito. “The President was not where he was supposed to be. I had to locate him.”
“You walked the whole way?” Tito asked.
“Yes, sixty-nine-point-five miles.”
Chuckie jerked. “She smells like pine. And that’s exactly how far it is to Camp David from the White House via conventional means.”
“You mean via highways and such.”
Tito nodded. “You stayed on the roads?” he asked the Kitty-Bot.
“Near them. I . . . don’t know the area very well.”
“Meaning she wasn’t programmed for this, necessarily,” Reader said. “She’s just clear enough on her goal that she’s adapted and gone to the next most obvious place.”
“Serene, we need to contain the Kitty-Bot in some way, and you’re going to have to be the one in charge of that.” The Kitty-Bot’s head swiveled back toward me. “Serene can help you rest correctly.”
“I’m not supposed to rest until I deliver my urgent message to the President.”
“Yeah, but he’s not here. We don’t know where he is.
No one does. So, you should plan to wait a while.”
“Can you tell us how to help you power down?” Tito asked. “That way you won’t be worn out when it’s time to deliver your message.”
“That . . . makes sense.” The Kitty-Bot seemed to reach a decision. “If you are really here to help me, tell me what my message is.”
We were all quiet. Thought about what the actual message would be. It would be short, because Jeff was an A-C and therefore no one who knew that would program any robot for a lengthy monologue. Doubted anyone else had a better guess, other than maybe Tim. This was, after all, my area of expertise.
“Your message is: Goodbye.”
The Kitty-Bot blinked. “That is correct.” Her head swiveled back to Tito. “My system controls are in my lower back. All items should be clearly labeled.”
“Can you turn yourself on and off?” Tito asked, sounding concerned.
“No,” she said slowly. “I don’t think so.”
He nodded. “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure you’re woken up when it’s time to deliver your message.”
She nodded and Tito went to her back. He fiddled around, Chuckie and Reader watching him. “Huh, it’s very clearly marked. Goodnight,” he said to the Kitty-Bot, still nicely. Then he flipped whatever switch and she went still and “dead.” She looked like C-3PO did when he powered down. There but not there.
“Well, this is going to give me all the nightmares I’ll ever need. Let’s get her somewhere safe.”
Serene was on her phone, and I saw a floater gate shimmer into existence nearby. Four Field teams arrived, along with six Dazzlers and a stretcher. “This one needs to go into a strong containment chamber,” Serene said. “We have no idea how it’s armed or what will trigger it, but it’s turned off right now.”
The Kitty-Bot was removed. The icky feeling didn’t leave me when she did. Always the way and totally par for my personal course.
“How did the two of you know what to do and say?” Tim asked. “I seriously had no real guesses. And I’m kind of shocked that Chuck didn’t get there first.”
“Chuckie was dealing with keeping me from getting killed, and you weren’t on the team when we first saw the Kitty-Bot.”
“Neither was Tito, and he was hired on a lot later,” Tim pointed out.
Tito shrugged. “It’s clearly not an advanced android. The sentience level wasn’t there, let alone the facial expressions, and, in fact, she wasn’t even able to identify that she was a copy of Kitty. That indicates relatively simple programming.”
“Meaning that if we found the right trigger phrases . . .” I shrugged. “We’re just good at guessing, go us.”
“How did you know the message?” Mom asked.
“Because whoever found and set up the Kitty-Bot knows that the ‘Vice President’ is an A-C, meaning he can move fast enough to escape the blast. So two syllables would be it, max.”
“That seems less . . . baroque . . . than Cliff would have managed,” Chuckie said.
“Which is part of the reason why I’m kind of sure it’s not Cliff or any of his immediate cronies behind this. I don’t think Drax is behind it, either, or anyone from our favorite Corporations of Evil.”
Got the crowd’s attention, go me. “Who do you think is behind it?” Mom asked.
“Someone too dead to make alterations.”
CHAPTER 13
EVERYONE STARED AT ME. “Excuse me?” Chuckie asked finally.
Heaved a sigh. “Look, we’re forgetting something really key.” More blank stares. “Why are we no longer interested in whatever Monica Strauss had going on?”
“Because she’s dead,” Reader said as if this was obvious, which, in that sense, it was.
“Right. But Other Me didn’t trust her at all, and Elaine Armstrong didn’t, either, from what she said.”
“But Monica Strauss is dead,” Serene said.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean that she’s not the one who put the Kitty-Bot into action.”
There was silence. “I think I speak for everyone,” Tim said finally, “when I say that I have no idea what you’re getting at.”
Always the way. “I’ll just pretend you’re all still in shock about there being another me around. Again. Okay, so, let’s pretend that all that happened this past week didn’t. The Mastermind didn’t roll his Doomsday Plan, no one died, and it’s business as usual. In fact, let’s pretend that it is a week ago. We don’t know that Stephanie’s trying out for a recurring role on a CW series based on DC Comics characters. We don’t know that Drax exists. NASA Base isn’t in jeopardy. It’s Washington Business As Usual.”
“Okay,” Serene said slowly. “And?”
“And . . . Strauss was a political animal. She wanted to be the President. She was our first suspect when Operation Epidemic started going beyond weird. Maybe she also wanted to be or was an Apprentice.”
“So?” Chuckie asked, sounding as if the wheels were turning but definitely needed more oil to run smoothly.
“So, what plan did Straus have in play a week or so ago? Or, more importantly, what meeting was Armstrong supposed to be having at Camp David in the past few days?”
Mom jerked. “Peace accords. There are issues in the Middle East, you know, as there always are. The Israeli Prime Minister and the President of Iraq were supposed to be here to try to work things out. That was canceled the moment the President’s train was attacked and is supposed to be rescheduled, now, once Jeff feels confident he can preside.”
“Was Jeff supposed to be there, too, for these talks?” Because if so he hadn’t mentioned it to me.
“Yes, but he’d insisted that he wasn’t going to bring his family and would be spending each night at home. As the Vice President and the father of two small children, that was approved, and the gates make it safe and easy to achieve. Mostly we didn’t want Charlie to create . . . issues, and no one was naïve enough to think that if Jeff was going to be sleeping there that you and the children would just stay home and behave.”
“I’ll be insulted for our family later, Mom.”
“Not an insult, kitten. We just all know you.”
“Blah, blah, blah. So, anyway, was Strauss supposed to be there?”
“No,” Mom said. “She was supposed to be in D.C. to keep things running. I’d have been there, though.”
“And we have a perfect little plan. ‘I’ show up with an urgent message. There is no way in the world Jeff wouldn’t insist on my being let in, and you’d support it, too, Mom. Then the wife of the Vice President, aka an alien, and the daughter of the Head of the P.T.C.U. blows up the President, VP, and the visiting dignitaries. Strauss takes over and gets rid of the A-Cs, or has them so on the run that they have to do whatever she wants in order to keep from being deported or put into concentration camps.”
“But you would be alive to prove that it wasn’t you who did it,” Tim pointed out.
“Yes, presuming she didn’t have assassins in play to kill me or similar.”
“And we should never assume that,” Chuckie said. “Even with the protections you’ve . . . had.”
“Yeah.” Did my best not to think about what had happened to those protections. “But I’d be so busy scrambling while my husband and mother had just been murdered that, let’s face it, I’d be out of control and so would the rest of us.”
Reader nodded. “I can easily see you saying something that would have gotten us all in trouble, and I’m not trying to be mean.”
“No, I agree with you. Plus, whenever this plan was put into effect, Cliff was still running things. But I don’t think he had a real hand in this.”
“Why not?” Tim asked.
“Because it’s counter to what he wanted,” Chuckie replied. “I think it’s safe to go with the idea that Strauss was vying to become the Mastermind.”
“I agree, Secret Agent Man. I think she might have been in the Apprentice Tryouts, but this says ‘I’m done listening to you.’”
“So, now what?” Evalyne asked. “Do we assume it’s all over? Or do we assume there are more attacks put in motion by a dead woman?”
“Never assume it’s over, that’s my motto.” Heaved a sigh. “But this part of it is over for now and, before you all get in line to bawl me out, save it for later. I know I need to change clothes and probably shower. But first I need to race to the Embassy and be sure my children aren’t being kidnapped by a robot that looks like me.”
“Stay here,” Mom said. “I contacted the Embassy while you were having your little rumble. Everyone’s fine, the Embassy and the children are secure, and everyone’s on high alert. Missy is monitoring for ‘you’ coming into the Embassy any way other than via gate or a presidential cavalcade. The Embassy is in lockdown other than for gate traffic. She’ll alert every authority known to God if ‘you’re’ seen coming in from the streets. And that goes for everyone else who might be a duplicate. Right now, we’re only to access the Embassy via gates or advise Missy otherwise.”
“Okay and thanks for being a good grandma, Mom. Clothing change time it is.”
Serene was looking at her phone. “I’ll go with you, Kitty, to help you change.”
“So will we,” Evalyne said.
“No. Look, I’ll be inside the freaking White House and, unless there’s another Kitty-Bot in there, I just want to change and pretend we’re normal people. Serene is the Head of Imageering—I’ll be fine.”
“Fine,” Mom said with a sigh. “This ended far better than I’d thought it would. Let’s get back inside and get back on track, since we have Drax and Kendrick both to deal with.”
“Yeah, please reassure Jeff that I’m fine and just want to change and all that.”
Chuckie nodded. “We’ll try, but I doubt he’ll take our words for it.”
“Oh, distract him by filling him in on all the new fun.”
Grabbed my discarded shoes and purse, then we all trotted inside and Serene and I went off for the room Jeff and I had been sleeping in.