by J. S. Morin
Eve’s obstacle course training had taught her how even the impact from dropping a few meters could hurt. Anyone inside that cockpit would have been torn in half by the safety harness or thrown through the windshield.
Why had she wandered so far?
Weren’t there enough fireflies closer to the house?
Wasn’t the Milky Way visible from the door?
The skyroamer was on the ground by the time Eve reached Alison3’s door. She fumbled with the unfamiliar, old-fashioned handle in her haste, and as she dove inside, a dart hissed past her ear.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Charlie7 stepped in between the pilot of the skyroamer and the house. It was a Version 68.9 chassis, but no name sprang to mind. The newcomer fired a dart in Eve’s direction as soon as the canopy opened, but it missed.
“Power those engines right back up and move along,” Charlie7 called out. At worst, all he had to do was stall until Plato arrived. That EMP rifle ought to be enough to scare off this lowlife poacher.
“Well, well,” the robot replied, swinging a leg over the side of the cockpit. He was using a disguised voice or Charlie7 would have known him in an instant. “Look what I’ve got here. I’m monitoring all frequencies, and if I catch you yapping to anyone, well…”
The poacher reached into the back of his skyroamer and pulled out Plato’s EMP rifle. There was no mistaking the design. It was homegrown. There was no way Charlie7 could imagine Plato making more than one, let alone distributing them to robot vigilantes.
“Don’t know what you’re planning to do with that thing,” Charlie7 said, trying to sound casual. “But I’d recommend against it.”
The wily old robot couldn’t even access the archives to help figure out who this Version 68.9 was. The risk was too great that the poacher would carry out his implied threat of resetting Charlie7’s brain to all zeroes.
The robot hopped down to ground level, scattering the few fireflies that remained in the area after his landing.
“I know who you are,” the Version 68.9 claimed. “So don’t pull that VIP horse crap on me. You’ve stepped into the middle of a situation you don’t understand, and you’re going to get yourself in a heap of trouble. Now stand aside while I bring that little girl home.” The rifle’s business end angled toward Charlie7’s skull.
“You think a guy who’s been around as long as I have doesn’t have backup plans?” Charlie7 countered. “Someone of my stature doesn’t just go missing, and everyone forgets about him. I have friends. They’ll launch an investigation. And I’m sure their combined brains are more than enough to sniff out the likes of you. I hope you enjoy the prospect of banishment from Earth.”
The robot with the rifle stalked forward, his weapon never wavering. “I bet it’s eating you up inside that I don’t have my designation painted across my skull for everyone to see. Not everyone is as famous as the great Charlie7. Tell me, Charlie… when was the last time you did a single worthwhile thing?”
“Today.”
The robot laughed aloud. “You think this is noble? You’re as bad as those vandals who released the chimps at the National Institute of Health labs.”
“That was a thousand years ago.”
“Well, what if it was?” the robot countered. “We’re the humans, now. Humans are the chimps. No one likes it, but science gets messy at times. Can’t all be mathematics and computer code. Right, Charlie? You could never stomach the wet side of the lab.”
Charlie7 scowled. “James?” It was a guess, but he’d heard that argument from few enough robots. Most of the complaints the oldest robot got were for resting on laurels.
The robot laughed. “Oh, Charlie. You think you’re so clever. Now, out of my way, or I will end your existence. Even the finest wines turn to vinegar, and I don’t think anyone’s got much of a taste left for the likes of you.”
There was, of course, a chance he was bluffing. But a hint of madness seeped from the edges of those words. A robot could be pushed farther than a man. Hot blood, testosterone, adrenaline? A robot had none of those. But there was still a limit. Whichever James this was had come teeteringly close to the precipice of his.
Charlie7 stepped out of the way and let the anonymous James pass.
He had bought Eve a minute and forty-three seconds. Hopefully, that would be enough of a head start.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Bare feet slapped on the stone tile floor. Eve scooped up her shoes as she ran through the entry room of Alison3’s house; she didn’t have five seconds to spare to slip them on.
This must have been the same robot who had chased Plato. Now he was coming for Eve, and Plato wasn’t here to stop him. Eve could only hope that Charlie7 was as brave.
There was only one level of the house aboveground, and Eve wasn’t going to be able to hide anywhere there.
Down.
The stairs were cold on the skin of her feet, the edges hard. From above, she heard the outside door open, then slam.
She quickened her pace. No hiding the sound of her footsteps.
Eve looked left, then right. There was no good choice, so she bolted left.
It was a storage room. Crates. Cabinets. Things Charlie7 had dragged from other rooms.
Rusted. Broken. No time to pry open a place to hide.
Menacing steps pounded down the stairs. No time to wait.
Eve ran to the next room. Sparse. Just a few discarded pieces of machinery. Two exits. She chose left again.
Through two more rooms, she ran on tiptoe, the concrete floor more congenial to her attempts at silence. Down again. She slowed and took her time to make as little noise as possible on the echoing metal treads.
Footsteps overhead. Eve swung herself beneath the stairs as soon as she reached the bottom.
She was breathing quick and shallow. Her heart raced. Her short run wasn’t even a warm-up for her daily exercise. It was fear.
Covering her nose and mouth to suppress the noise of her panicked breath, Eve mentally recited a mantra.
Hydrogen… Helium… Lithium… Beryllium…
She counted out elements at a steady pace one element per second. By “iron,” she had returned to nearly her resting heart rate.
On the level above, she heard her pursuer. Ragged scrapes of steel on concrete and echoing crashes conjured images of demolition in Eve’s mind. He was tearing open those crates and cabinets, sweeping the whole level before venturing downward, lest Eve double back on him.
Her pursuer’s caution was Eve’s ally.
Wiggling her feet into her shoes, Eve crept away from the stairwell to explore the rest of the second basement level.
This appeared to be where Alison3 had done most of her work. The equipment was in better repair, and Eve recognized some of it. Was there anything she could use?
A small kit of hand tools promised endless options but would be impossible to carry quietly or use quickly.
The self-powered rolling chair might have been useful for a robot, but the hard, steel surfaces made it look more like a torture device for humans. Besides, Eve doubted it moved very fast.
A desk-embedded terminal hinted at a way to call for outside help. Toby22? Nora109? Surely someone would be willing to save Eve if Charlie and Plato couldn’t. But the power indicator at the corner of the screen was dead. Diagnostics and repair weren’t on Eve’s list of tasks for the next minute.
If Eve had that long.
She kept moving.
There was a room dedicated to rodent studies, with diagrams and models all along the walls and tucked into built-in alcoves. Another room was lined with shelf upon shelf of insects preserved in transparent resin.
A heavy door prevented entry to one chamber, and a display beside it read 289K. That seemed consistent with the ambient temperature in Alison3’s basement. Why then have a door and a temperature readout?
Power. There had been no power when they had arrived.
Charlie7 had to restart a generator; this room could
be a freezer for biological samples. Without electricity, it had warmed up. Anything inside must have been ruined. Eve knew that it was a dead end. If she managed to get inside without the robot noticing her, she’d still have no place to run, and if the freezing unit was set to automatic, it might not be long before she was a frozen biological sample herself.
A clang of footsteps was Eve’s alarm clock. Time for musing was over. That relentless robot was coming down to this level.
Why hadn’t Alison3 designed this building with multiple means of egress?
The answer was twofold and obvious. The first was that Alison3 had never needed to evade capture inside it. The layout was built for her convenience, not Eve’s. The second was that it did have a second egress.
Eve headed down once more.
The bottom level housed the track-and-tram system that Charlie7 claimed led to an agrarian complex like the one they’d first visited. The wise old robot had yet to lead her astray.
A pair of linked tram cars rested at the end of the tracks, and Eve hopped the gap to climb aboard the lead car.
Protesting groans echoed from upstairs. A metallic crash shook the floor. The door to the freezer had been torn loose and cast aside. Alison3’s workspace wasn’t as cluttered with debris and potential hiding places as the uppermost sub-level had been.
Eve pressed a finger to the controls, and a terminal lit. Teeth gritted. Fists clenched. Why was it so easy? Why had Creator made sure none of the ones in the lab worked without a stylus that she provided?
She shook loose her fists and squeezed her eyes shut just for long enough to seethe out a cleansing breath. There was no time for that now.
“Eve14! Stop!” a gravelly, unfamiliar voice shouted after her.
The last thing Eve intended was to obey.
The console was straightforward. A button labeled “Start” glowed green and stood out prominently in the center of the screen. Eve pressed a finger to it and ducked down behind the sidewall of the tram.
A dart whizzed overhead as the tram lurched forward. Eve was thrown back against the rear of the open compartment as the car accelerated along the tracks.
Behind her, she heard the pounding of footsteps along the track over the whine of the tram car’s motor as it hovered via magnetics. Was it her imagination, or were the footsteps getting louder?
Eve dared peek over the rear of the tram car. The robot’s legs were a blur; it was gaining ground. Seeing her poke her head up, he leveled the dart gun in her direction but didn’t fire.
Creator wanted her alive and well, if Charlie7’s theory proved correct. The robot with the gun couldn’t risk putting a dart in her eye, and it wasn’t going to penetrate her skull—not that putting a hole in her head would be any more desirable.
Glancing up at the console, Eve couldn’t read what anything said. Glare from the overhead lights reflected in her eyes.
Eve popped up for a better angle, then ducked down again immediately. Plus and minus buttons for speed control. Reaching blindly over the console, she pawed for the one labeled plus.
Wrong button.
Eve rocked forward as the tram slowed. She heard an impact from the car behind her.
She had to stand up enough to see. She tapped the plus button repeatedly until it faded to gray. Grabbing hold of the top edge of the console, Eve hung on as the tramcar rocketed forward.
Whirs and hisses from straining actuators drew Eve’s attention behind her. The robot had latched onto the trailer car that the tram dragged behind it, presumably for transporting goods down the tunnel along with its passenger. With the dart gun in one hand and Plato’s rifle slung over his shoulder, the robot was struggling to pull himself onto the trailer without giving up any of his weapons.
He was making headway. Eve didn’t have long.
The simplistic controls had gone from a blessing to a hindrance. Where were the advanced functions?
While she searched for hints as to where those non-standard commands might lie, Eve tapped the minus button a few times, which threw her forward and also caused the plus button to light up. She tapped that until it went away again and felt the strain in her forearm as she latched on to keep from being thrown off the back of the tram.
The robot still clung on. Eve’s effort to dislodge her tormentor had failed. Worse, he might even have gotten closer to pulling himself up during the changes in acceleration.
“Go away! I don’t want to go back!” Eve shouted.
At least until he gained his footing, the robot wouldn’t have an angle to shoot at her. Eve had until then to figure out the controls. She tapped unused portions of the screen and pressed the spot where the “Start” button had been, holding her finger down to no avail. Then, she tried pressing her full palm against the screen.
Think. Eve had to think like Alison3.
What would someone want to do to access secret commands? Not even secret, just the ones that lifted the access panels and got into the core workings of the tram. Wait… lifting?
Eve swiped a finger from the bottom of the screen toward the top—“lifting” it figuratively. A menu came up with it. There were boundless options, everything from power management to preventive maintenance scheduling. The option she was hoping for was listed under Cargo > Cargo Management > Trailers.
Her pursuer was climbing to his feet on the trailer. “I really am sorry about this,” the robot said and raised his dart gun.
Eve hit the button labeled “Disconnect.”
A dart fired, but the robot’s aim had been spoiled. It glanced off the back of the tram. Its clatter faded as the tram hurtled along.
To his credit, the robot didn’t give up.
With a leap, Eve’s pursuer launched himself toward the tramcar. As his trailer fell behind, it robbed the Eve-hunting robot of his launch point. A grasping metallic hand extended to its limit but fell centimeters short.
The hunter fell. Camouflage hunting gear shredded and gleaming steel cast sparks against the magnetic rail before the trailer struck and bulldozed him into the gravel.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Charlie7 paced the field outside Alison3’s ranch house, wearing a furrow in the soil.
There were few times in his life when the oldest of robots was truly at a loss for what to do. This wasn’t a day for making exceptions.
He needed a plan, and right then, he was sorely lacking for one. Charlie7’s first inclination was to solve the mystery of his adversary. He was a James; that much seemed certain, but beyond that, he could have been anyone.
But this James had left his skyroamer unattended. That might be a problem—for the James.
Charlie7 decided against risking any transmissions. After all. If the gun-toting James did decide to come back, with or without Eve, and decide Charlie7 hadn’t lived up to his end of the ultimatum, there wasn’t going to be much he could do for Eve without a brain.
The cockpit canopy wasn’t even closed. Charlie7 didn’t need to transmit to hack his way into a skyroamer computer.
Seating himself in the unknown James’s craft, Charlie7 pulled up the terminal. It was a custom interface and sported a password lockout. Charlie7 just smirked as he typed in an override.
While the software might have been home-coded, it used the standard building block language that all non-coder robots preferred. The building blocks were 90 percent efficient compared to stripped-down code built from scratch, and that was more than sufficient for all but the most grueling of computing.
Paranoid robots programmed all their own security protocols using the building blocks and kept one another out of sensitive private systems with admirable efficiency.
The flaw in the system was that Charlie7 had built in backdoors to any program that used the building blocks. Anyone who wanted to keep him out of a system was going to have to program it from a blank slate.
Within seconds of entering his override code, Charlie7 knew that he was dealing with James187. The name was plastered all over his person
al files and correspondence.
The computers held a dreary tale of a robot whose sole purpose for the past three decades was the cleanup of genetic and ecological messes. If there was a flock of sparrows with a mutant gene or a population of Southeast Asian snakes loose in the Amazon basin, James187 was the robot to call. Sometimes his job was to exterminate; other times, it was to capture and relocate. He was friends with a small clique of James designations who enjoyed hunting for sport and had contracted with a few genetics producers to exchange game animals for tracking and retrieval services.
The hunter’s recent contacts were of the most interest. He’d been exchanging text communications with a robot using an obviously fake ID. Lucky for Charlie7, James187 and his co-conspirator assumed their link was safe enough to use names, if not full designations. Charlie7 was dealing with an Evelyn.
So now he had a name for Creator. And thanks to his research, that name narrowed his list of suspects to two—Evelyn11 and Evelyn38.
Both lived as hermits, often going years at a time without public appearances. Both were also expert geneticists and long-time colleagues. Evelyn38 had popped up in the public eye sixteen months ago at a primate genetics conference.
Evelyn11 hadn’t been seen since an inquest nineteen years ago that had sanctioned her for unauthorized genetic research on humans. That put her as suspect number one, and Evelyn38 as number two on Charlie7’s list.
Charlie7 glanced at the doorway to Alison3’s house. No one had come out.
He already had a message queued up for Jennifer81 with all his research on Eve’s Creator if James187 came back and found him aboard his skyroamer. Neither he nor whichever Evelyn was involved was going to get away with this if Charlie7 had any say in the matter. But he still wanted to come out with a clean win.
Find Eve. Get her to safety. Expose Creator.