The machine started back across the room.
“You’re getting oil everywhere. Just stop. There’s fine. Just put it down.”
The Val-8 set the bike down against the wall and turned back toward Jake.
“Fine. Thank you. You can go.” Jake pulled the whiskey bottle out of the cabinet and filled his glass again.
When he looked up, the machine hadn’t moved.
“I said you can go.”
Herman stood motionless.
Jake stomped across the room and shouted, “I said get out!”
The manservant’s hand was quicker than the evil cat. It lashed out and seized Jake’s throat.
“Not again.”
The robot held him only long enough to let him know that he was in trouble before throwing him across the apartment.
Jake landed in the kitchen and slid across the linoleum with a squeal before colliding with the fridge. He had just realized what had happened when Herman grabbed him again and threw him over the counter top, into the living room and crashing onto the couch into a surprisingly comfortable position.
The cat sprung from some nether realm and landed on his lap, claws extended, thrashing at his legs.
Jake screamed and drew his gun while frantically deciding which to shoot first, the robot that was storming across the apartment, or the cat.
He fired at Herman, striking the machine in the shoulder, and swatted at the cat with his free hand. The report sent the creature running but the robot kept coming.
Two more shots did little to stop the machine or help the buzz in Jake’s ears and he soon found himself airborne once more. The impact against the counter shook the weapon from his hand. He rolled to his feet as the manservant grabbed at him once more.
He slid under Herman’s arms and came up on the backside of the machine in time to catch a robotic backhand that sent him reeling back into the leaky motorcycle. Oil ran down his shoulder as the drip became a thick stream.
Jake cupped his hands underneath the flow and let the oil pool. He quickly spread it over his arms and neck as the machine came for him again. Jake filled his hands once more.
Herman grabbed him and the slick of oil he had coated himself with did nothing. The butler’s grip was too strong for it to have any effect, and now Jake was just an idiot who had covered himself in oil.
Jake threw the last handful of oil over the robot and reached for Herman’s face. He found the machine’s eyes and smeared oil across the optics. The effects were immediate as the lenses began to spin, trying to find their focus.
The machine sent him flying again but did not immediately pursue him as Jake crashed back into the kitchen.
For a moment the machine only looked around the room, its gaze passing over Jake several times without recognition. Jake remained still, praying the fouled optics would buy him some time.
The butler gave up trying to locate its prey and began to swing its arms wildly, grasping at everything it encountered. What few items Jake had in the apartment were crushed instantly or sent crashing into or through a wall.
It didn’t take long for the machine to systematically cover the entire apartment. It stumbled toward the kitchen reaching closer toward Jake.
Jake moved and the machine responded. His movement was enough for the optics to see him. He stepped back and placed the counter, and the candle, between himself and the manservant.
Herman charged forward and crashed into the kitchen. The countertop was enough to stop the light-duty machine, but not without a large crash and some cracking of wood.
Jake leapt back and the machine lunged for him over the counter.
The oil smoked before it burst into flames. This gave Jake just enough time to see the error of his ways.
The flames ran up Herman’s arms and soon the black tux was orange and red. Herman’s face went up next and the machine began to swing its arms wildly in search for its prey once more. It set most of the apartment on fire within half a minute.
Jake turned on the kitchen sink and tried flinging water toward the flames but realized it was both useless and a great clue as to his location. Jake found the gun instead and fired several shots until Herman stopped flailing. The machine toppled over, spreading the flames even more.
The fire was out of control. Not even the vegetable sprayer could stop it now. Jake rushed to the front door, both relieved and depressed there was nothing in the apartment worth saving. He opened the door and cast one last glance at his home.
The cat hissed at him from across the room. Caught between the flames and the door, it arched its back at the window, damning him for destroying the home that was his long before it was Jake’s.
He considered running. It would serve the evil beast right to burn, if fire could even touch hell’s cat. He turned to leave and swore before heading back in. He grabbed the bottle of whiskey from the counter. And hurled it through the window.
The cat barely moved as the glass shattered around it. It was the only time it had ever looked at Jake without contempt.
“Go,” Jake said. “Be free.”
The cat hissed, pissed on the couch and jumped through the open window.
“You ungrateful bastard,” Jake said, and ran into the hall as the sprinklers kicked in far too late to do any good.
10
You could tell a lot from a knock.
The first and most obvious clue was what time the knock occurred. If it came too early in the morning it was most likely a neighbor out to complain. A midday knock was the most ambiguous, though it was generally the post office or a salesman knocking under the guise of opportunity. Most evening knocks were prearranged and rarely any cause for concern. Anything after nine was probably bad news. And anything after midnight was certainly trouble.
The number of knocks and the rate at which they occurred had to be measured together. A single quick rap was a desire for subtlety. A slow, loud knock meant business. And an unending series of soft, quick knocks usually meant the visitor had to pee.
The knocking now was fierce and steady but not quick. Normally this meant “hide,” but Jake knew Hailey could see it was him. He kept the pounding steady and fierce.
Hailey opened the door quickly either out of curiosity or for fear he would wake the neighbors. She hadn’t turned in yet but she had dressed for bed. She clutched a robe in front of her chest. From the way she looked, one might imagine a sheer negligee beneath it. Jake knew, however, it was sure to be a vintage band tee shirt long past its prime.
“Jake. Do you know how late it—why are you covered in oil?”
“It’s a new nighttime treatment. It gives my skin that luster that drives the ladies wild. May I come in?”
“It’s really late.”
“Well it took quite a while to walk my bike home.”
“Oh, Jake. That’s just sad.”
“Very sad. A raincloud followed me the whole way. But it gave me some time to think. May I come in?”
Hailey shrugged and pushed the door open. “Just for a minute. I was on my way to bed. Also, again, why are you covered in oil?”
Jake stepped into the apartment and was greeted by the humming rotors and blaring chirps of Whir-bert. The machine had a limited vocabulary that made it cute according to focus groups, but it had no problem expressing itself. It swore at him in harsh tones but still seemed nicer than the cat.
Jake pointed at the small bot. “I really hate this thing.”
“Whir-bert,” Hailey said. “Go to sleep. Wake me at the regular time.”
The machine buzzed off to some unseen charging station and the room was quiet once more.
Her apartment was everything his wasn’t. Spacious. Modern. Furnished. It didn’t smell like a demon cat’s vengeance urine. He walked across the entryway into the living room. “This is a great place you’ve got, Hail.”
“Uh, thank you. You have been here.”
“I know but I never really noticed it before. It’s so much nicer than my plac
e.” He spread out a throw on the couch and dropped into the cushions. He bounced. “Nice furniture. Fresh air. It’s not on fire.”
“Don’t sit there. You’re fil—What do you mean it’s not on fire? Is your place on fire? Did your place catch fire?”
Jake nodded. “Oh, yeah. I can’t imagine there’s much left of it by now.”
“This just—Tonight? Is the cat okay?”
Jake nodded again. “Unfortunately. I’m pretty sure nothing can kill that thing.”
“I always liked that cat,” Hailey said.
“You would.”
“How about you?” she asked with a fair amount of genuine concern. “Are you okay?”
“I barely survived by my wits alone.”
“It must have been close.”
“Thanks.”
“Really, really close.”
“Your concern is overwhelming.”
“Oh, stop acting all hurt. You’re obviously fine.”
“If I were being honest I’d say I was a little tired. But that’s to be expected considering that in the last 24 hours a scarecrow, a tractor, a train, two of your co-workerbots and a butler have tried to kill me.”
“A butler?”
“Really, that’s the part that sounded weird to you?”
“Well I was there for the rest of it.”
Jake smiled. “Of course you were.”
“Let me get you a drink.” Hailey moved to a bar and Jake had to admit he enjoyed watching her cross the room. She dropped some ice into a couple of glasses and poured some bourbon from a decanter. “Tell me more about this butler.”
“Okay. Tall, robotic, dressed all butlerly, belonged to Sheldon Donovan.”
“How do you know it was Sheldon’s butler?”
Jake tossed Herman’s melted face onto the coffee table. “He introduced us when he gave me a ride home in his limo. The butler brought the bike on by, then tried to kill me and set my apartment on fire.”
She almost dropped the bottle when she heard all of this. Then she smiled. “That’s great!”
“That’s what I thought, too. As it wrapped its iron hand around my throat and began to squeeze the life out of me I thought, ‘This, this right here, is great!’”
“You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t. I can only see the downside here.”
“But it makes perfect sense. Of course it wants to kill you.”
“Uh, thanks?”
“I’m sorry. I’m just intrigued.” She returned and sat next to him on the couch. She handed him his drink and was quite excited by the attempted murder. “Don’t you see? You’re famous for the next cycle or so. That thing with the train. You’re a celebrity for a bit. If you’re onto something, people would actually listen. This is proof that DynoRobotTech is trying to make ZUMR look bad.”
“It’s just DRT now.”
“Dirt? Really? That’s stupid.”
“That’s what I said.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She explained her theory again. Nothing much changed, but she said things louder and with more hand motions.
Jake drank while she spoke. He wasn’t quite sure what he was drinking but it was good stuff. After his whiskey face faded he joined the conversation. “Then why didn’t he send one of your robots to get me? A ZUMR bot would have made a much better frame up.”
“I guess he thought he could get away with it. No witnesses, so why would it matter? He wasn’t trying to make the bot look bad, just take you out of the picture.”
Jake took another drink and shook his head again. “I’m not buying it. The guy’s a prick but I doubt he’s that stupid.”
Hailey took a long swig of her own drink. “Donovan has to be behind this. It’s the only way it makes sense.”
“He’d be taking an awful big chance trying to kill me with his personal butler.”
“Jake,” Hailey put a hand on his arm. “This can’t just be coincidence.”
“Can’t it? I’ve had busy weeks before.” Jake finished the drink and groaned. “I don’t know. Maybe it is a robot uprising. I know that if I were a robot I’d get pretty tired of being bossed around.”
“Don’t be stupid, Jake.”
“Stupid has gotten me this far and I’m not changing my plan now.”
“You know an uprising can’t happen. The programming is too good.”
“So why not program them to not go crazy?”
“You’re starting to sound like one of those humans first lunatics.”
Jake furled his brow and looked at her. “They’re not lunatics, Hailey. Just because they have different beliefs and concerns doesn’t make their opinions any less valid than ours. I actually admire them for standing up for what they believe. That takes a courage that a lot of people don’t have and I think that should be appreciated.”
Hailey looked concerned and searched his eyes. He could see her scanning his face and he couldn’t keep the smile back for long. Both of them started to laugh.
“No,” Jake said. “They’re nuts.”
Hailey shook the smile away and got back to her point. “It has to be Donovan. Surely they’ve got a military contract in mind and the only thing stopping him from being the Pentagon’s main supplier, once the treaty is out of the way, is ZUMR.”
“I’m not ready to buy that either. Right now I’m just chocking it up to a really bad day.” Jake set his empty glass on the table. “That being said, I was hoping I could use your shower. Mine’s on fire.”
Hailey smiled and rubbed some of the oil off his face with her thumb. “You are kind of disgusting.”
“You have been all about the compliments tonight.”
She leaned in closer. “I forgot how dirty you could get.”
“It’s a dirty job. You know that. That’s why you wear the coveralls. Which look really good on you, by the way. If I didn’t mention it earlier it was because of the whole almost dying thing.”
She leaned in and kissed him.
It was just like he remembered. He couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing so he decided to pursue it further. He kissed her back with more restraint than he thought he had.
For a moment he just stared into her eyes. He saw their past. There was pain there, but the kiss seemed to have an anesthetic quality that he figured would get him through the next few hours. He couldn’t remember why they had ended.
She smiled and pulled back a bit. “Think about the Donovan angle. He can’t be trusted.”
Right. It was the whole “always working” thing.
“I don’t trust anyone,” Jake whispered.
She kissed him again and it was even better this time.
“I don’t trust you,” he said.
She smiled and stood up. “I’m not asking you to trust me.”
It was a Rolling Stones tee. The one with the tongue.
11
There was a fair amount of remorse in the morning on both their parts. Or so he was told. He couldn’t sense it but it didn’t stop him from having to leave before the sun came up.
Jake hated getting to work early. Despite being the boss it still seemed like toadying. But after stopping to buy some new clothes, there were few places to go so he sat at his desk and stared at the wall.
It was a boring wall so he played the events of the last day and a half back in his head, trying not to get sidetracked when he reached the parts that featured Hailey.
The Reaper had all the marks of a normal murderous rampage and would have merely been an entry into the company financial register had it not been for the harvester and the complete lack of a financial register. Two anomalies that close together was improbable but possible, he supposed. But together with the train and the reclamation units and the butler it was hard to shrug it off as coincidence. But it was also impossible to tell what the hell was going on.
For years, folks like his uncle’s new girlfriend claimed there was an uprising coming. They said it was only a matter of time
before the machines turned on their former masters and set out to either enslave or eliminate the human race. Of course, this had already happened, but only one machine at a time. The Society for the Preservation of Humans believed, like so many other groups, that there would be a coordinated revolution, and they spent their social currency and a good amount of their free time telling anyone who would listen.
And they weren’t the only ones.
Senior Programmers Against Raging Killbots, or SPARK, was a group of former machine language programmers that claimed to have inside knowledge that the coming revolution was being orchestrated by men and women in positions of power and, also, that kids should not be allowed on their lawns.
Destroy All Machines Now Repent Or Be Obliterated Tomorrow or Sooner or DAMN ROBOTS was mostly in it for bumper sticker sales and were believed to have a major stake in a poster board company that conveniently showed up at protest sites.
Mankind For the Eradication of Robot Dominance, or MFERD because they didn’t understand how acronyms worked, marched for the end to all systems designed at a supervisor level or above.
Mostly, though, they were all crazy, so he was hesitant to give any credence to the fears of an uprising.
Unfortunately, that meant that Fox and Hailey were making some sense. If the treaties limiting the use of robots in warfare were truly going away, a little bit of corporate cloak and dagger would be expected. But murder? That seemed like an unnecessarily dangerous leap to take. Sheldon Donovan was a narcissist, not a moron.
Herman’s attack put the biggest hole in the theory. Maybe Hailey was right and they never planned for Jake to live to talk about it, but a smarter plan would have been to implicate ZUMR once more in case of failure.
All the thinking made his head hurt. He dug into his desk, looking for the bottle of aspirin he kept handy in case Glitch roped him into a conversation.
The screen on his desk chirped a notification and displayed a message from Savant: Meagan is here to see you. She looks hot.
Jake found the bottle and uncapped it. He would need an extra aspirin. He dug through a pile of paper until he found the keyboard and typed his response: I’m not here.
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