“Coming your way!” Keir calls.
I hear the clatter of the suitcase as it slides toward me down the tunnel. It comes to a stop right at the end, with one side poking over the edge of the hole in the glass door. I stand up and grab it.
The suitcase isn’t just a foam bomb. Gene is better than that. The inside of the case is sculpted to be a perfect fit for the Analytical Engine to help us haul it out of here.
I lay the suitcase flat on the floor of the room and then my attention turns to the beautiful brass contraption of wheels and knobs and tubes on the pedestal in the center of the room. It’s going to be heavy, that’s not a surprise. But now that I’m looking at it, I’m not sure where to pick it up. It’s not like a modern computer with a metal or plastic case around the sensitive parts. Whatever I grab is going to be some key component. And everything is attached to everything else with small screws or some sort of soldering. Which means I run the risk of pulling the thing apart.
Eventually I decide there’s only one way to attempt this. I bearhug the Analytical Engine and try to lift it. They say to lift with your legs, but when there’s forty million dollars on the line, I am willing to risk my back. I clench and heave the brass instrument to my chest and tilt backward at the hips. The heavy metal tilts with me.
Wait a minute. Why am I doing this alone?
“Little help!” I call through the foam tunnel.
“I think I hear someone coming,” Keir answers back. He sounds hoarse. Afraid. (Again.) C’mon, dude.
“What?” I exclaim. He and I are encased in foam. Sure, someone could batter or blowtorch their way through—but it should take a while longer for anyone to figure that out.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I have one hundred and twenty pounds of Analytical Engine on my frame and need to put it somewhere. I swivel, and then half fall and half stoop toward the open suitcase at my feet.
Thankfully, when I set down the suitcase, I oriented it the right way, so the Analytical Engine slips almost into place. It’s close enough that once its weight is off my hips and lower back I can readjust it. It feels amazing to see it slide perfectly into the mold Gene designed for it.
I flip the lid over it and clasp the two sides together. It closes like a dream.
Now we just have to get it out of here.
At that moment, Keir comes headfirst through the door and falls onto the floor. “Someone is definitely coming,” he tells me. “I can hear a lot of scratching through the foam.”
“We’ll beat them out,” I tell him. “Home stretch.”
He nods, but I don’t think he believes me.
“You with me?”
He nods again, stronger. He stands up and pulls out a little black case from his pocket. He flips open the lid and reveals the small switch. He looks around. “It’s smaller than I realized it would be in here.”
We look up at the room’s ceiling together. Yep. I don’t want to be in here for the next part. “Back in the tunnel,” I say, and we scramble into the foam tube.
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod, and cover my ears.
He takes a deep breath and flips the switch.
Aboveground, a bomb—not a foam bomb, an honest-to-goodness real bomb this time—explodes in the nature preserve, directly above the room with the Analytical Engine. It shakes everything around me. I can feel the air whoosh past us. My legs are just inside the melted hole and I can feel them start to prick with small pieces of debris from the explosion.
Last night, Keir and I told Ainsley we were going to take a walk. We left, with Keir doing his best to ignore Ainsley’s jokes about making out under the stars. While in the preserve, we buried the homemade bomb in the exact coordinates over this room (thanks again for the help making the bomb, Gene!). We did do some making out, which I half-jokingly told Keir was for authenticity’s sake. Since that kiss, I’ve been thinking about the chance to do it again when we arrive in the same place after this escapade. But whatever I had imagined our celebratory kiss would be like is now soured. My plan failed, Keir?
I grind my teeth.
This moment, lying in the tunnel and waiting for the dust to clear, is the first chance I’ve had to think about that for more than a half second. Yep. Still mad.
But I’ll deal with that later.
The noise is gone and the rubble has fallen. I slide out of the tunnel and go to the empty pedestal.
Above me, the dust is fading away and as it clears I can see a slim passage. There’s the roof of the tunnel falling in. Then a couple feet of dirt. And beyond that—stars.
“It worked!” I call.
Keir lets out an excited yelp and scurries out of the foam. He leans forward over the pedestal and peers up next to me. He smiles that self-assured smile again, like he always knew we were going to make it.
“Think the drone is ready?” I ask.
“I’ll bring it around.” He pulls out his phone and starts checking the status of our exit.
As he does this, I hear a faint noise from the tunnel and I turn toward the narrow tunnel through the foam to try to locate it. I hold my breath and listen.
Keir’s right. There is a scratching sound in the tunnel behind us. It’s not a person bludgeoning their way through, I’m pretty sure of that. It’s almost like something is chewing the foam.
“It’s here!” Keir calls.
I turn around and find that there’s a rope that’s been dropped through the narrow passage. In the sky above our position is a heavy-duty drone. Not a home model, but something strong enough to pull us out of here.
“You or me?” Keir asks.
“If you can fit, I can fit,” I tell him. “So you go first. I’ll hook the Analytical Engine on when you’re out and then I’ll come after that.”
Keir nods, and winks. It’s all a joke again. “See you on the other side.”
He steps into a loop at the bottom of the rope and then slides a hand into another loop. He tugs the line and the drone slowly begins to pull him up.
The ride isn’t the smoothest—Keir bumps the sides of the hole several times and when he reaches the dirt portion of the passage, several clods are knocked free. I back away to protect my eyes.
But he’s out. He drops the rope back down. I go to reach for it and then I hear that noise in the tunnel again. It’s much louder than it was before.
I peer behind me, trying to see what’s coming.
And at that moment, a little robot peeks into the tunnel. Its body stops and it lingers for a half second—somehow I know it’s looking at me, even though I can’t see any eyes or cameras. But I can sense its watchfulness. Then it decides to enter the tunnel. It comes forward and I get a better look at it. It’s about the size of a cat, which wouldn’t be that worrisome except that it looks like a little robotic spider, and spiders really shouldn’t be the size of cats.
Even though it’s got six legs, the thing walks and moves like a spider. Worse, each leg looks like a curved blade that arcs down and ends in a sharp point—a sharp point that allows it to really dig into the foam, giving it that unmistakable scurry of a spider as it approaches.
Just when I think it can’t get any worse, the small tunnel gets crowded. At least six spider robots are coming my way. A wave of nausea hits me. I can only think—Gene definitely didn’t build us any tricks to handle these things.
Six six-legged robots—and their thirty-six sharp little legs—are now coming through the foam tunnel. One is on the ceiling. The rest are on the walls and floor. Together, they’re so thick that from this angle it looks like they’re filling the tunnel.
I must have unconsciously screamed because I realize that Keir is shouting at me. “Pen? What’s happening?”
“Hexapod drones!” I shout. “Robot spiders with freaking knives for legs!” I add, because that much more closely matches the level of fear in my chest.
“What?” he exclaims in surprise.
“Are these things something your mom sent?”
> “She doesn’t have anything like that!”
That’s about all we have time for because the spiders are almost in the room with me. I see the blowtorch I used to get through the glass is still in the tunnel. I grab it, turn it on them, and squeeze. There’s a wisp of a flame. I’m not sure you could even light a match with it. I shouldn’t be surprised since I already emptied both of them. But the spark is enough to slow the spiders momentarily, who must rate fire as a higher threat than a measly human.
I toss the empty blowtorch toward them—ineffectively—and start looking for other weapons or means of stopping them. All I really have is the case holding the Analytical Engine. There’s nothing else in the room.
But once I think of that, it’s clear that’s the wrong answer. I have a job to do. I still need to get the Analytical Engine out of the room. I grab the rope dangling from the hole in the ceiling and loop the bottom of it through the case’s handle. I tie it off and call up, “Take it! Then me!”
The rope pulls taut and the suitcase budges a few inches as it moves across the floor.
That’s as far as it gets before the first of the spiders enters the room.
I stumble back and try to put the central pedestal between me and them. I’ve got nothing to fend them off with. I’m wishing that I hadn’t thrown the blowtorch when I see the second one has rolled against the wall. I grab it and hold it like a club. It’s sturdy enough I think I’ll be able to knock them out when they attack.
Except.
Except. They’re not attacking me.
All six spider robots are now inside the room with me, but they are keeping to their half of the room and leaving me to mine. They are congregating around the Analytical Engine, which Keir and the drone are still tugging on from above. One edge of the suitcase is dragging across the floor and the other is a few inches off the ground—pulled by the rope. It’s sliding closer to the center of the room. It’s not fully in the air, but there’s already a spider riding it as it drags along the floor.
It lifts one of its legs—a leg so sharp its edge glints when it catches the light—and the little bastard spider robot cuts the rope. The suitcase falls to the floor and even though it’s only a few inches it lands with a thud.
In a matter of seconds, four spiders maneuver their way under it and lift it onto their backs. They start moving back toward where they came from—the melted glass hole in the door.
“Hey!” I shout when it finally dawns on me what they’re doing. “That’s mine!”
I rush forward and swing the blowtorch. I knock the spider off the top of the case quite easily—they must be lighter than I thought—and watch as it sails toward the wall, legs facing me. I’m waiting for it to slam against the wall in an explosion of sparks and parts, but this doesn’t happen. I’m dumbfounded when the spider’s legs reorient in midair. Instead of crashing on its back, its legs are now facing the other way, and it lands perfectly on the wall.
The spider with the razor-sharp legs and amazing reflexes is entirely focused on me. I am definitely a threat now.
I feel a word start to bubble up from somewhere deep inside me.
Ffffuuuuuuuu—
The hexapod leaps at my head, cutting me off midswear.
I dart back to where I’d been and the robot lands again on the far wall. Far wall? The room is barely a ten-foot circle. There is no far side. Everywhere in the room is close to this thing. And that’s just one of them. It starts crawling around the wall toward me.
I go to move around it, but the other five are there. They aren’t moving, and the pedestal is still between me and them but pretty soon I’m going to be fully trapped. My only way out is up.
I look for the rope that the spiders cut. It should be dangling through the hole in the ceiling but somehow it’s not. Does that mean the drone that was dangling it is gone too? I want to scream for Keir but there’s no time for even that. The drone circling the walls on its knife-legs is almost to me.
I’ve got nothing to stop it.
I hold up my arms. Maybe I can keep it from getting to my body or head.
It’s only a couple feet away now. I’m ready for it to leap—as ready as I’ll ever be—when from above, through the hole in the ceiling, the distinctive siren of the cops stops the spider dead in its tracks. It only takes a second to decide what to do. Suddenly it circles away and all the spiders start moving quickly. Away.
I’m forgotten now. The spiders work together so seamlessly it’s as if the six are sharing the same brain (which, to be fair, they probably are networked so tightly together they basically do share the same brain). Two scramble onto the wall, the one I knocked off the top gets into the tunnel, and the three on the ground extend their legs as far as they can. They balance on each other and in a matter of seconds they pass the suitcase up the wall and into the hole.
They…and the Analytical Engine…and my half of forty million dollars…disappear down the tunnel. In a few moments there’s just silence.
“Keir!” I call when I’ve recovered from the shock.
He doesn’t answer.
Instead a bright light shines on my face. “Hands up!” a voice calls. I can’t tell if it’s human or machine. “You’re under arrest!”
I hold my hands up high. I can’t believe it’s taken until this moment, but a thought pops into my head and I can’t let it go.
Maybe I’m just really bad at planning heists.
Sixteen
There are no prison guards anymore.
But then again—as I just learned—cat burglars have lost their jobs to automation, too, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
Sitting alone in the jail cell, it’s hard not to dwell on how badly I bungled it. I keep replaying the heist in my head, but now I’m wondering what would have happened if Keir and I had just spent the time making out in his room and waited for some robot drone to go get the Analytical Engine for us.
Pen! I want to shout. Let the machines do the heist! Why did I need to be the one in the tunnel? Did I have something to prove? Did my dad make me watch too many heist movies growing up? Was it ego?
Or was it something much worse—a failure of imagination. When I was planning the job, I knew AI and drones could help me, sure. But I don’t think it had occurred to me to just have them do the whole entire thing. As I learned working in the tech world, this is the cardinal sin. Imagination, we were told, was the defining trait that separated the good tech workers from the bad. Can you imagine a future where cars drove themselves? Where you don’t have to go to a restaurant and someone will just bring food to your door instead? Where you don’t have to do your own laundry or take out the garbage?
The spark of the idea isn’t enough, of course. Back in the day, a lot of people thought of a light bulb. A few even invented one that kinda sorta worked. But only Edison invented a light bulb and figured out how to deliver it to the masses. You have to imagine the means of delivering on the idea.
First there’s a flash of inspiration, like when someone nicks himself with an old razor while shaving. He wishes he could have a new razor delivered to him before he even needs it. That’s the core of a billion-dollar idea, but only if he can successfully imagine what it would take to build a razor subscription company around it.
For every success like that, there are a thousand failures. They might have the idea, but if they can’t imagine how to deliver it better than anyone else, eventually they fail. They don’t ship their product. Or they do and they don’t find any traction and their funding dries up. But they’re done. Out of the startup game for a lack of imagination.
In Silicon Valley, I’d been taught to look down my nose at them. But then I went and made the same mistake. At least for those tech workers, when they fail, they don’t get arrested for it.
And so here I sit. I imagined the idea, but someone else imagined a better way to go about it. So they get the forty million, and I get to sit in a jail that doesn’t need guards.
My mental fa
ilings are definitely occupying my brain as I cool my heels behind bars.
But the good news is that when I get tired of kicking myself for all my mistakes, there’s something else I can linger on instead: If I didn’t steal the Analytical Engine, then who did?
Eighteen hours after my arrest, a voice from a speaker tells me I have a visitor.
My cell door opens. I hesitantly walk into the empty corridor and the door closes behind me. A door at the end of the hall opens—it’s the only place to go. And just like that, the jail itself guides me through it. In this way, I walk for what feels like miles through rooms and passages but somehow don’t see another living soul. Finally I end up in a small closet-sized room, just big enough to open the door, step forward, and let close it behind me. The wall across from the door is floor-to-ceiling glass. And on the other side of the glass is Keir.
We stare at each other.
In the glass’s vague reflection, I can see my own face—it’s hard and searching and angry as hell. It’s intense enough that he can’t meet my eyes for more than a few seconds. He looks down at his shoes and scratches his nose.
“What happened up there?” I ask without any other preamble.
“I ran,” he says simply.
“Where?”
“Home. It wasn’t that far. Obviously.”
“The cops didn’t see you?”
He shakes his head. “I wasn’t running from them. I caught a glimpse through the hole of those six-legged things that were taking the Analytical Engine and…I freaked out, ok? I just ran. I heard the sirens maybe…thirty seconds later? Then I really kept running.”
I consider that. “What did your mom say when she came home?” I ask.
He shifts his weight. “I haven’t seen her,” he says finally. “I ran home and threw a change of clothes and my laptop in a bag and then left. I’ve been crashing with a friend.” He shoots me a look of defiance. “I don’t have anything left to my name, you know. Once I walked out, I walked out on any chance of an inheritance or anything. I don’t know what I’m going to do for money or a place to live or anything.”
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