Supervirus

by Andrew W. Mitchell

  “This is like a computer virus, that is breaking half the computers on the Internet, plus military computers.”

  “Ok, that's what I was afraid of.”

  “How do we proceed?”

  He looked into her eyes and opened his mouth, like he was about to say something.

  He looked at the table. He could tell her the truth: that he was an ordinary loser, not one of the President's men. But this didn't seem the right time.

  She was waiting for him to make an order.

  “What's our objective?” he asked.

  “Make contact with Nemo,” she said, “and get him off the network.”

  Off the network, he thought. Off the grid. Like me. This thought amused him. Maybe he was not such a bad guy for the job. He was an expert in going off the grid. He pictured himself in his backyard, drinking at the fire pit and firing a stray shot at a trivial target. I'll bring the kid back to Vermont, he joked to himself. Adopt him as a son. He'll sit in the backyard with me and shoot stuff. He almost smiled.

  He looked up. Sam was trying to decipher his expression. “Whatever we do,” he grumbled, “we're not going to do it the way they tried it.” They waltzed in there and got eaten by a bunch of robotic flies. He was not about to repeat that mistake.

  “What did you have in mind?” she asked, anxious.

  Make contact?, he thought. No. Take him off the network. “Making contact” was like negotiating with a terrorist. Get him off the grid. And the flies. The kid and the flies.

  But how could they even think about getting all the flies off the grid?

  “What controls the flies?” he asked.

  Sam sucked in some air and thought. “The kid controls them through the computer network?” she ventured.

  “What computer network?” he asked, feeling like an idiot, picking at fingers roughed up from loading and unloading firewood.

  “There's a building full of computers,” she said. “They work like a big brain for the flybots.”

  “Let's cut the power to that building,” he decided. “Cut off his network first.” It wasn't complicated. “Then we'll 'make contact' with him.”

  She nodded. “He's not going to let us in. He'll lock the doors. He'll protect it with the flybots.”

  That was true, he wagered. He stood up. “I brought some stuff,” he said. He unzipped the massive dufflebag on the conference table.

  “C4?” she murmured. She looked up at him, shocked. “You've had that the whole time? How did you know?”

  “I didn't,” he said, unable to think of any lie better than the truth.

  She was speechless, stunned both by his lack of protocol and his psychic abilities.

  After a moment he said, “I can set these off. Would you be able to find the right spot to put them... To take it down?”

  “I think so,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said, zipping up the bag, suddenly authoritative again. “Let's do it.”

  Sam explained that there were Jeeps behind the Welcome Center. They paused at the door. Going outside meant that they would be visible to the security cameras in the hallway. Visible to the kid, if he was looking on the cameras.

  They discussed whether to try sneaking to the Laboratory Complex. As an alternative to the main exit through the lobby, there had to be an exit out back near the Jeeps for staff members. But the research buildings were a long way off, and there were cameras throughout the island. (Could they — should they — tamper with the cameras? No: every camera they knocked out was a marker of where they had been.) Sneaking around would take extra time and it might not even work.

  “Do you think he'll send the flybots out here for us?” Sam suddenly asked.

  Willard had no answer, but the thought of flybots on the way renewed their sense of urgency. They walked out to the lobby and to the man at the reception desk.

  “We need keys to a Jeep,” Willard said.

  Remembering Willard's papers, the man produced some keys.

  It was still hot and sunny, but he took a sudden breath as they walked out, as if he were jumping in a pool of cold water, or leaving the dock of a spaceship to float in zero gravity. They looked around in the blinding equator sunshine. There were no signs of flybots, so far as they could tell.

  They walked around the side of the building back to a row of several identical shiny, bright red Jeeps.

  Willard walked to the one on the end and found that the trunk had been custom-built so as not to open. Remarking that this was a brilliant design feature, he opened the driver door and shoved the massive dufflebag of explosives over the seat to the space in the back. Sam got in on the other side and they drove around to the front of the Welcome Center. Despite the valiant efforts of the air conditioning system, the air was blistering inside.

  Willard paused the vehicle in the circular driveway.

  “There's only one path?” he asked.

  “That is correct.”

  “Is there maybe some other way we can go?”

  She shook her head. “There's nothing but jungle on either side of the path. Gorillas on the north, gorillas on the south.”

  “Gorillas? What is this, a zoo?”

  “They test the flybots on the gorillas.”

  Willard cleared his throat with some cynical response that he could not formulate. He put the Jeep in gear and pulled out of the driveway.

  A large touchscreen on the Jeep's console showed their position on the screen and their progress toward the Laboratory Complex. This GPS-style readout seemed like overkill, given that there was only one road on the island and it took less than half an hour to traverse it. The screen also refreshed itself with a variety of statistics about the temperature outside, the humidity of the air, and some other statistics about the air quality that were gibberish to the two of them.

  They put some distance between them and the Welcome Center back to the east. As they progressed, the land on either side of the road rose into generous hills. The foliage on the hills became quite thick. The beachside road suddenly was a fairly narrow passageway cut into a thick rainforest.

  “You can see the walls on either side,” Sam said, pointing. “There must be something on the top of each hill, to keep the animals where they belong.” After a bit of study, they decided that they could in fact see barbed wire, or something like it, on the hilltops on either side of the road.

  But gorillas were not their concern. They were looking for flybots.

  “What do you know about these things?” he asked.

  “They showed us a video of them,” Sam explained. “They are really, really fast. They're made of metal, but they have legs and wings like mosquitoes. But they land on you, and they can inject a tranquilizer or a poison into you, like a mosquito.”

  “Sounds great,” he said over the wheel. “And the kid attacked the others with these robots?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I was thinking. I'm pretty sure there is a gate up ahead. I don't know exactly what kind of security is there. But Flannigan said all the staff is taken out. We may have to get out and climb over the wall or break a turnstile or something.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “If that's true, we'll be vulnerable to the flybots when we get out.”

  They pondered that for a moment.

  Suddenly, there was a bright flash in front of the car. Willard turned the steering wheel and the Jeep swerved.

  “Did you see that?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Was that flybots?”

  “I don't know.”

  The Jeep started lurching. Willard looked down, testing the steering wheel and the pedals. Something was wrong with the transmission. The road was bumpy enough, but the vehicle was lurching forward and backwards violently. Willard felt the engine dying. The vehicle slowed down and eventually crawled to a stop on the road. Willard could gas it, but it wouldn't go anywhere.

  He pulled up on the pedal and, in that moment of silence, they noticed the touchscreen
was flashing red.

  WARNING: FLYBOTS DETECTED IN VICINITY. SEAL VEHICLE AND REPORT ANOMALY IMMEDIATELY.

  “Seal vehicle?” Willard shouted. “Aren't we sealed?”

  Sam reached out and pushed a button on the touchscreen. There were some noises. The doors clicked. There was a loud hissing sound. Machine parts moved. The windows hummed and they noticed that a white substance, like foam or caulk, appeared around the edges of the windows.

  The touchscreen read:

  Sealing vehicle...

  Doors locked

  Windows sealed

  Vents closed

  VEHICLE SEALED. REPORT ANOMALY IMMEDIATELY.

  “We have an anomaly,” Willard reported to the tightly sealed air inside the vehicle.

  Sam pushed a button marked “Exit” on the touchscreen. It took them back to the GPS map of the island road and the Jeep's location. This time, the map flashed red with the alert, “FLYBOTS IN VICINITY.” A flashing red light indicated the location of the flybots. It was blinking right on top of the small green arrow that represented the Jeep.

  “They are right here,” Sam said.

  They paused, eyes averted, listening intently for flybot noises. They couldn't hear anything.

  “Are they trying to get in?” Willard suggested.

  “Through the engine?” Sam replied, not sure if this was feasible.

  They looked at each other in silence. They knew little about what the flybots were capable of, and what the kid might try to do with them.

  Sam clicked on a button on the screen and the map vanished, bringing up a text menu:

  EMERGENCY RESPONSE MENU

  Your vehicle has been sealed.

  1. Report Anomaly

  2. Instructions (Report Anomaly First)

  3. Access Response Kits

  4. Unseal vehicle

  Exit menu

  Sam clicked on “Instructions.” Some text appeared, read by an accompanying voice which sounded like Raymond's.

  In the case of an anomaly, seal your vehicle immediately. Report the anomaly before taking any further action. Do not leave or move your vehicle unless instructed to do so. Do not use the Response Kits. Report anomaly and await further instructions. If you cannot obtain a response from island security staff, food can be found in the Response Kits. Do not unseal and/or attempt to leave the vehicle with flybots in the vicinity.

  Sam clicked “Back” and they were back on the four-option EMERGENCY RESPONSE MENU.

  Willard clicked “Access Response Kits.”

  There was another hissing sound: this time it came from behind their seats. They turned around and each found a box behind the chair. They took the boxes onto their laps and were about to open them when a video appeared on the touchscreen. It was Raymond.

  “Your Response Kits are now available behind your seats,” Raymond's face said on the touchscreen. “They are ONLY to be used if you are unable to make contact with Fort Tortuga's facilities staff or a substitute response team. The effectiveness of these kits has NOT been tested.

  “Inside your Response Kit you will find the following items. First, food and water rations. HAZMAT suits. And sealant bags.

  “The HAZMAT suits have not been tested with flybots. They are equipped with a small processing unit that is designed to detect and identify foreign substances and report it on a small screen on the inside of your helmet. This screen should detect the presence of flybots in your vicinity. In our estimation, the suits are thick enough to prevent puncture by a flybot's proboscis. But this function has not been tested. The sealant bags in your Response Kits are made of a similar material, for your equipment and food. Do NOT leave the vehicle unless support remains unavailable and your life is in immediate danger.”

  “We should put these on,” Willard said, holding up an helmet like an astronaut's. “If the flybots are trying to get into the vehicle, they may be in soon.”

  They started to put on the HAZMAT suits. It was an awkward process, with little room to maneuver in the Jeep. Once they had the suits on, they were considerably taller, due to the bulk of the suit and the size of the helmets. They were immediately uncomfortable in the Jeep.

  Sam clicked back on the touchscreen to the map view. The map still indicated that the flybots were around, under, on top of, or inside the Jeep.

  “We don't have time for this,” Willard spat. He looked at Sam. Then he realized Sam hadn't heard him. His voice was trapped inside the bubble of his helmet.

  He tapped her on the shoulder, met eyes with her, and spoke. She realized that they couldn't hear each other. They started fumbling with their helmets. Willard noticed a small screen in the upper left portion of his helmet. It read:

  Booting....

  Several lines of technical information appeared underneath. He studied the output with disgust. The scrolling terminated with the following status:

  STATUS: OK

  Particulate count: normal

  Radioactive count: normal

  Temperature: 92F

  Humidity: 81%

  plus some additional information that he didn't understand. It also said,

  Intercom: On

  “Can you hear me now?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. It came through in little speakers inside his helmet, as a tinny little voice.

  “We don't have time for this,” he said. “Let's get out of here.”

  In the narrow space, he struggled to get his massive dufflebag of explosives into one of the sealant bags, which were in fact quite large. Sam asked why they should leave the vehicle. He explained that they had to get moving to get Nemo off the network. Plus, he said, the flybots might be entering the vehicle anyway, or they could be stuck in the engine. Sam helped him finish sealing the explosives. The sealant bag consisted of a bright thick material, much like a HAZMAT suit. Once filled, it was sealed by pinching the open mouth shut, and then rolling the mouth of the bag over itself several times and fastening it with a large clamp.

  They looked at each other. Willard clicked on the screen to bring up the EMERGENCY RESPONSE MENU:

  EMERGENCY RESPONSE MENU

  Your vehicle has been sealed.

  1. Report Anomaly

  2. Instructions (Report Anomaly First)

  3. Access Response Kits

  4. Unseal vehicle

  Exit menu

  They looked at each other. Willard clicked “Unseal vehicle.”

  ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO UNSEAL? (YES/NO)

  He tapped “Yes.” They heard the sound of rushing air. It sounded like they were leaving a plane, or a spacecraft. The hissing stopped.

  Willard tried to open the door, failed, realized it was locked, unlocked it, and popped it open. He stumbled out of the Jeep, like an astronaut setting foot on Mars. Sam did the same on her side.

  He looked over at Sam. After a moment he noticed something wrong with her suit: the orange was blotched with silver around her neck and on the helmet. Then he noticed the silver was moving. Those were flybots.

  Sam was pointing back at him. He looked down, but he couldn't see his neck or shoulders from within the massive bubble of his helmet. But he did get his first up-close look at a flybot: it was crawling near the bottom of his glass faceplate. He couldn't see it well, but it resembled a metallic mosquito.

  He slapped his thickly gloved hands up to his neck. He could feel them. Some of them were buzzing their wings; others were crawling; some were taking off, probably looking for a better place to land somewhere else. There were a lot of them, covering the area.

  He tried to brush them away and found it difficult. They were stuck to the fabric. They were digging into the suit.

  Sam was at his side, slapping and brushing roughly around his neck. He returned the favor to her neck. He found that if he brushed considerably harder than he'd thought necessary, he was able to dislodge the flybots. Some of them flew into the air and landed on her neck. But he felt others crunch as he crushed their wings, legs, or long puncturing mout
hs. But he wasn't sure who was winning. Maybe some of the flybots were starting to eat through the fabric, taking up where their metal brothers had left off.