Cross Fire

by Michael Kogge

  “Did you design this for flight?”

  “That’s why I made it so light,” Rory said. “I was planning to buy the spinner blades from the electronics store today. Once I install those, my unit will be better than the drones you can buy off the Internet.”

  His uncle seemed more and more intrigued. “What’s the quality of the webcam?”

  “High-definition resolution that can be streamed over any wireless connection.”

  Uncle Aesop noticed the blinking LEDs. “And it communicates in Morse code.”

  Rory was pleased his uncle had noticed. “I’d like to add voice processing and recognition, but that’ll need a faster processor. I ran out of money in the cookie jar to buy one, and was considering maybe taking up a paper route—”

  “The cookie jar?” His uncle swept his gaze around the kitchen.

  “Yeah, I’ll show you.”

  Hoping his uncle would spring some cash for the processor, Rory took out the cookie jar from the lazy Susan. He opened it, showing it held no bills or cookies. But something small inside rattled. “Might not have got the last penny.”

  His uncle reached into the jar and removed not a penny, but a small key.

  “I didn’t even think of looking there,” Rory said.

  Uncle Aesop hurried upstairs. Rory followed. The key unlocked the safe in his mother’s closet, from which his uncle withdrew a tiny flash drive. He rushed over to the laptop and plugged it into a side port. After a few clicks and a search of the flash drive’s directories, he started to laugh. It wasn’t the same laugh that Rory remembered. This laugh sounded crazy.

  “You said those files would lead to my mom?” Rory asked.

  Uncle Aesop turned. His wide eyes were terrifying and made Rory step back. Yet almost immediately, the madness faded from his features and he stopped laughing. He smiled, the gentle uncle once again.

  “Go buy the spinners for your robot. By the time you return, I’ll have looked through these files and will know where we can get a working AI processor.”

  “AI? As in artificial intelligence?”

  “If we want to find your mother, we should have the best technology,” his uncle said.

  “That would be awesome!” Rory said. “If we put in an AI processor, Arr-Eee-One could operate independently, and look in places the rescue workers and Superman can’t get to.”

  His uncle’s brows knitted together. “Superman? Who’s Superman?”

  Rory almost burst out in a crazy laugh himself. Wherever Uncle Aesop had been all these years, he must never have turned on a television.

  Clark Kent pushed through the crowd of people that surrounded the entrance to the Hotel Grand Lux, one of the few downtown venues still standing after the attack. Stage and screen celebrities who lived in Metropolis, along with a few from Gotham City, walked down the hotel’s red carpet, waving and shaking the hands of their screaming fans. Although Clark could have moved past them all with super-speed, he didn’t let frustration get the better of him. Instead, he nudged and elbowed his way forward like a regular human being.

  A policewoman stopped him at the hotel door. “You need to step back, sir.”

  “I’m press.” Clark showed his credentials on his lanyard.

  “Enter over there.” She pointed to a side door, where a line of people waited. None looked like professional reporters. One had a GoPro camera on her head, another was somehow typing into a cell phone and a tablet at the same time, while a third was wearing an indie band T-shirt under a suit coat.

  “Ma’am, I’m from the Daily Planet, not a website run out of someone’s basement.”

  “Press is press,” the policewoman said.

  Clark sighed and walked over to the line, right behind the webcam man and a student from a high school newspaper. Though his superpowered hearing didn’t extend all the way to the Daily Planet Building, he could only guess Perry White was laughing in his office. This must be White’s form of initiation.

  As demoralizing as it was to be considered just another blogger, Clark couldn’t let it discourage him. A good reporter should be able to find a story wherever he was. He would prove to White that he could do it here.

  Clark listened.

  He tuned his super-hearing to the red carpet and the crowd. Most of what was said revolved around how pretty or handsome a celebrity was, or what new project he or she was doing, or how a fan promised never to wash her hands after shaking the hand of Bruce Wayne. More interesting was the conversation around him, between the bloggers in line.

  “I hope Superman comes,” the man in the T-shirt said. He was talking to the woman with the GoPro. “I’d like to give the freak a solid one-two in the chin and tell him and his ilk to fly back to Krypton, or whatever secret government lab they came from.”

  “Now that’d be a photo! Hashtag it Batman fights Superman and you’ll get thousands of clicks to your site,” the woman said, while clicking links on her phone.

  “You betcha,” the man said. “Then everyone can read about the bad things that have happened in Gotham City since Superman showed up. Like the cover-up at Arkham Asylum. You know that Doctor Aesop escaped?”

  “No. Who’s he?” the woman asked.

  Finishing his shake, the man crushed the cup in his hand. “Ex-engineer who worked in the robotics division of WayneTech. He was institutionalized for some kind of delusional behavior, like wanting to take over the world or something.”

  The woman laughed. “Who doesn’t?”

  “Well, now he’s loose, along with a bunch of the other criminals that are ransacking Gotham City. Check it out on my site.” The man dug out a business card and handed it to the woman.

  Clark stepped toward them. “Might I have one, too?”

  The man eyed Clark’s badge. “Daily Planet? When did you guys ever cover events like this?”

  “We’re … trying to reach a new audience,” Clark said.

  The hotel opened the side door and the line started to file inside. The man in the T-shirt gave Clark his card. “My advice, stop putting Superman on your front page. He gets too much free press. Investigate what’s really going on. Find out who he really is.”

  “I’ll tell my editor,” Clark said.

  The cop guarding the hotel entrance gestured for the bloggers to keep moving inside. The man in the T-shirt waved awkwardly and walked into the hotel. Clark stayed behind and typed the card’s website address into his phone. The site was slow to load, but he was lucky to be near one of the working cell towers.

  “You coming? ’Cause I’ve got to shut this,” the cop said.

  The site finally appeared on Clark’s phone—and what he read startled him.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got another story to cover,” he said.

  Clark hurried away from the hotel, and found somewhere private to change.

  Within moments, Clark Kent became Superman. Leaping upward, he soared into the sky and flew across the bay to Gotham City.

  The spinner blades and solar panel Rory bought from the electronics store worked like a charm. The blades provided RE-1 the maneuverability to dart through the rooms of the house, and gave the robot the lift to fly over the roof. And the solar panel helped the battery last much, much longer—just like Ellie had hoped.

  But even with these improvements, his uncle wouldn’t call RE-1 a robot. He called it a drone. “It won’t be a robot until we can acquire the AI processor.”

  Rory used his remote control to land RE-1 on the kitchen table where his uncle was working on the laptop. It skidded across the wood, pushing place mats off the edge. He was glad his mom couldn’t see. She would have a fit.

  He picked the place mats up and put them back. “You said you were going to find a processor?”

  “I have.” His uncle turned his mom’s laptop around so Rory could see. The screen showed an architectural diagram of a building.

  “What’s that?” Rory asked.

  “WayneTech headquarters.”

  Rory found
the diagram difficult to read, but he recognized the layout. He had been there a couple of times for holiday parties. “Mom works there when she doesn’t have to go downtown for meetings.”

  “And that’s where the AI processor is.” His uncle pointed out a rectangular room. “In this laboratory.”

  Rory was confused. “I thought you were going to look on the Internet or something for sellers. Mom’s lab is top secret. They won’t let us have any of the equipment there.”

  “Which is why we’re going to have to take it,” Uncle Aesop said calmly.

  “Take it? You mean, like steal it?”

  His uncle frowned when Rory said that word. “It’s not stealing when the person taking it is the person who invented it.”

  Rory looked at the diagram on the laptop, then at his uncle. “I didn’t know you work for WayneTech. Mom never said anything.”

  Uncle Aesop’s right leg trembled. His upper lip convulsed. “Your mom didn’t tell you everything. She was watching over my … invention when I went away for a while. Since I have returned, I have come to reacquire it.”

  Rory tugged nervously on his T-shirt. He didn’t like where this conversation was going. “Are you sure we can’t buy something like it on the Internet? Things have changed since you left, Uncle Aesop. Technology’s gotten much better. They even do same-day shipping.”

  His uncle glared at him. “Do you want to find your mother or not?”

  Now Rory was getting angry. “Yes—that’s all I want.”

  “Then we should use the best,” his uncle said. He drummed his fingers on RE-1’s case. “Our drone needs this processor.”

  Rory gripped the other side of the case. “But how are we going to take it? Do you still have your badge to get in?”

  “My badge? My badge?” Uncle Aesop erupted into laughter. “No, nephew. You’re going to go get it for me.”

  Rory swallowed. “Me?”

  A crazy smile accompanied his uncle’s crazy laugh. “Let me tell you a story about the fish and the fisherman …”

  Bruce Wayne mingled with the high rollers and celebs in the lobby of the Hotel Grand Lux. He loathed crowds, but at least with the people outside, all they wanted were friendly handshakes and autographs. Those who could afford to be in the hotel lobby sought the same, except that Bruce’s handshakes would close their business deals and his autographs would endorse their checks. Bruce declined them all, with a polite smile and a clink of his champagne glass. When the lights dimmed, Bruce gave his unfinished drink to a waiter and hurried toward the banquet hall.

  “Mister Wayne,” a female voice said behind him. “Might you have a moment?”

  Bruce glanced back. A tall woman in a dark blouse and matching glasses approached. “Sorry,” Bruce said, “they’re going to auction me onstage at any moment.”

  “Same for me—we can walk together,” called out a young man who hurried past the woman. His stringy brown hair was parted in the middle and fell to the shoulders of his oversized corduroy jacket.

  Bruce bristled at the sight of Lex Luthor.

  Despite his eccentricities and slovenly appearance, the ambitious young CEO had turned his company, LexCorp, into one of Wayne Industries’ main rivals in the technology sector.

  “How are you, Bruce? I’ve been worried,” Lex asked, his smile disingenuous.

  “As you can imagine, I’ve been better.”

  “The collapse of Wayne Tower was a tragedy. I cried when I saw it happen on television, didn’t I, Miss Graves?”

  Lex’s much better dressed assistant nodded. “You said it’d be tough for Mister Wayne to recover.”

  “Very tough,” Lex said. “To think of all the cutting-edge technology that went down with it …”

  Bruce halted, insulted. “What’s tough is that I can never recover the people I lost.”

  Lex blinked. “That’s what I was referring to. We can’t do this all alone, can we?”

  Bruce grunted and power-walked into the banquet hall.

  “If you need my help, Bruce, don’t hesitate to ask,” the young man shouted out to him.

  Not in a million years would Bruce Wayne ever do that. He’d rather strike a deal with a condo developer than beg Lex Luthor for money.

  After the ticketed crowd had been seated at the tables, the MNN anchor reviewed the rules of the telethon, saying that there would be a fifteen-minute auction for every guest. Bids could be announced in the hall or called in via telephone from viewers at home. The winner would be treated to an hour-and-a-half hotel lunch meeting with the guest they bid on. All monies would help victims and families who suffered because of the alien attack.

  Bruce was set to be bid on in the middle of the pack. Behind the stage curtains, he stood in the corner, ignoring Luthor and the others. Right before he was about to go out, his phone buzzed. He saw who was calling and picked up.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to make a bid, Alfred?”

  “Would you like me to, Master Wayne? It has been a while since the two of us had lunch together,” Alfred said over the phone.

  “When the crime in Gotham City drops, I’ll take you,” Bruce said.

  “That’s why I’m calling, Master Wayne. I regret to inform you that there’s been a break-in at WayneTech.”

  “Any idea of the culprit?”

  “None. The alarms were tripped in the ventilation shafts, where there aren’t cameras installed.”

  The news anchor dipped his head through the curtains. “Mister Wayne, they’re ready for you.”

  “Get my other suit prepped, Alfred. I’ll be there soon.” He clicked off the call and looked at the news anchor. “I apologize, but you’re going to have to do the auction without me.”

  “Without you? You’re one of the main attractions!”

  Bruce started toward an emergency exit. “Then make it a two-hour lunch. And say I’ll even listen to a business proposal, if that’ll help raise more money.” He glanced at Lex Luthor, who was holding court with some of Metropolis’s movers and shakers. “In fact, whatever Luthor is offering, double it.”

  Once outside, Bruce walked past the crowds peeking into the hotel windows. So focused were they in their celebrity spotting, they didn’t notice when Bruce ducked into the parking garage. Only at the roar of his sports car’s engine did they turn, but by that time, he was speeding off.

  There once was a fisherman who knit together the biggest, strongest net, so as to catch the biggest, strongest fish,” Uncle Aesop said to Rory as they gathered supplies in the house. “Out into the choppy seas he went. Never had he seen so many schools of fish darting around his boat. He cast his net into these waters, believing he’d become a rich man for catching so many fish.”

  “But he didn’t, did he?” Rory asked. His uncle had told him many of these kinds of stories when he was younger. They always had a moral to them.

  “Don’t interrupt me,” Uncle Aesop said.

  “Sorry.” As far as Rory remembered, his uncle had never snapped at him like that when he was younger.

  “When the fisherman pulled up his net,” Uncle Aesop continued, “he saw he had caught only a single large tuna. The other fish, being smaller, had slipped through the holes of his net. He had thought he was going to be rich, but now he was going to be poor.” He packed the laptop into a shoulder bag. “Do you know the moral of this fable?”

  Rory shook his head. He didn’t know and he didn’t care.

  “Guess,” his uncle said, repeating it louder, “guess!”

  Rory scooted toward the side door. He couldn’t wait to get on his dirt bike, away from his uncle. “One net doesn’t fit all?” he offered.

  His uncle’s brow furrowed. “How did you know that?”

  Rory shrugged. “You asked me to guess, so I did.” What he didn’t say was that he probably heard the story a long time ago, but he didn’t recall all the details.

  “Well, you’re right—one net doesn’t fit all.” His uncle grabbed Rory’s mom’s car keys fro
m the hook.

  “I don’t understand,” Rory said. “What’s the point of that story?”

  “The point is it’s why you have to go, alone.” His uncle opened the garage door. “The only way inside is through the ventilation shaft. I won’t fit in it, but you will.”

  Rory found what he was about to do highly questionable, but it was hard to say no to his uncle, especially when his mom’s rescue was on the line. He had to trust that Uncle Aesop knew what he was doing.

  While his uncle drove to an abandoned factory in Gotham City to prepare for their search, Rory rode his dirt bike to the WayneTech building. He stayed far away from the main entrance, so as not to be caught on the security cam. Instead, he sneaked along the side wall where his uncle had located a large duct on the architectural diagram. Rory parted the weeds that covered the duct, then bent the metal slits to squeeze himself through. With RE-1 strapped to his back, he crawled forward on his hands and knees. The tunnels were dusty and made him sneeze.

  A Maglite attached to the front of RE-1 provided meager illumination in what seemed like a never-ending maze of rattling aluminum. The turns were always sharp right angles, forcing Rory to contort his body. He endured cuts on his hands from slicing them on the edges. But he never let the pain slow him down. Not with what was at stake. Wherever his mom was, he would not give up on her. With the new and improved RE-1, he was sure he would find her.

  When he peered through the occasional ventilation grille, all he saw were dim hallways. Growing discouraged, he tilted his head to whisper into RE-1’s microphone. “What exactly am I looking for?”

  Uncle Aesop had incorporated a cell phone into the robot’s componentry so it could transmit visual and audio data over long distances. “The engineering laboratory. Should be white and sterile and full of sophisticated technology,” his uncle replied over the tinny speaker.

  Rory kept crawling. He wished he had a map, but his uncle said the architectural drawings didn’t show the ventilation system. All he could do was put one hand in front of the other and drag himself along.