The Robots of Gotham

by Todd McAulty

  I wanted to swear in frustration, but managed to stay quiet. Was the power outage affecting the elevators, too? I flipped the badge over in the dark, tried the other side.

  I heard a ping and saw a bright blue square light up in the middle of the panel.

  Thank God. “We’re in business,” I told Black Winter. “Stay close.”

  I could hear the elevator moving, far down the shaft. It would take a few moments to get here.

  In the meantime, the room beyond had grown ominously quiet. I listened intently, but all I could hear was the steady drip drip of water.

  I tried to visualize the layout of the room, figure out if there was anything solid between us and the drone. “Can it see us?” I whispered to Black Winter.

  “I don’t think so. It’s tracking you.”

  “How?”

  “It’s following your heat trail through the room,” Black Winter whispered.

  That made sense. With sensitive-enough infrared sensors, it would be able to see every footprint I’d left on the floor, every table I’d touched. “How long until it gets here?”

  “Depends on where you went. Ninety seconds at best.”

  I weighed my options. I could crawl back into the lab, try to lead the thing away with a false heat trail, but that seemed too risky. My best bet was to stay right here and wait for the elevator.

  Waiting, however, was excruciating. But wait we did. The seconds ticked by. Forty long seconds later, I heard something scrape against a table, and then another explosion of glass as a beaker tumbled onto the floor. There was another sound, too—metal, sliding remorselessly over tile. The drone was less than thirty feet away.

  Behind us, the elevator pinged and the doors began to open. Blue emergency lighting poured out, illuminating a long rectangle on the floor. The sound of the drone became suddenly louder, more urgent, headed in our direction.

  “Move,” I said.

  I scrambled into the elevator. At my side Black Winter did the same, staying low and holding the dog. I found the panel on the left. There were only two buttons, and I punched them both.

  There was a stench in the elevator. Like gasoline exhaust, and scorched wood. I stumbled over something as I pushed farther inside. A slender robot was crumpled at the back of the elevator. There were three gaping bullet holes in her front chassis. Gray oil spattered the back wall.

  While I gawked at that, the elevator doors started to close. As they did, there came the sound of mad scrambling from the lab. The war drone was trying to reach us. I heard a nearby table flip over and more shattering glass.

  I was too exposed in the middle of the elevator. I pressed up against the left wall, and none too soon. Just before the doors sealed, the drone let loose with a volley of small arms fire. A dozen bullets hit the doors and the back wall, spraying the small chamber with shrapnel. I threw my arms over my head, but not before something small and sharp hit my cheek. When I pulled my hands away from my face, there was blood on my palm.

  The elevator started to descend. “You okay?” I asked Black Winter.

  He didn’t respond. He was pressed against the opposite wall, staring at the dead robot.

  I dabbed at my face, trying to find out where I was bleeding. “Black Winter? You hit?”

  He slid forward, settling on his knees before the grim scene at the back of the elevator.

  “You okay, man?” I asked.

  “It’s Machine Dance,” he said, without taking his eyes off his dead friend.

  I gawked at the fragile robot. It was only then I realized that she was the same make and color as Black Winter, but more delicate in feature and frame. It was also clear she’d been dead for some time. There were dark splotches of dried fluid covering much of her torso, and scorch marks on the floor and on the wood paneling behind her. It looked like she had badly overheated before perishing.

  I could tell that Black Winter had reached the same conclusion. He reached out gently, brushing one of the splotches off her small frame. I watched the dried fluid flake away at his touch.

  “She’s cold,” he said simply.

  If she was cold, then she must have been here for some time. Days, probably. I had no idea what to say. I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Black Winter.”

  The elevator started to slow. I heard a ding that announced the doors were about to open. I reached over and pressed the button on the panel to keep the doors closed.

  “Black Winter,” I said.

  Black Winter’s fingers drifted over her frame until they reached one of the bullet holes in her front. They lingered there, tracing the jagged circle.

  “Who could have done this?” he asked.

  “Black Winter, we can’t stay here.”

  He didn’t respond immediately. His gaze took in details methodically, like a detective at a crime scene. There was a strange tension to Machine Dance’s body, as if she had died in mid-motion, striving to do something. Her right hand tightly clutched a small carrying case made of dark fabric. It was open at one end, and a fat metal disk had spilled out onto the floor. It was black and nearly featureless, slightly smaller than a doughnut.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But we have to move, and quickly.”

  Black Winter remained motionless, and I wasn’t sure he had heard me. But then he nodded. His right hand reached out again, and with skilled fingers he popped open the metal plating around her neck. Seconds later he had removed what looked like a tight knot of circuits.

  I was about to ask what that was when I heard a whine and realized with surprise that he was still holding Croaker in his left hand. “Did the dog get hit?” I asked, a little alarmed.

  “I don’t think so.” Black Winter turned his attention to her, slowly lowering her to the floor. One of her legs trembled, but she stood upright.

  “Careful,” I said. “Don’t let her step on that thing.” He had carelessly lowered her almost on top of the black metal disk.

  “What thing?”

  I reached out and nudged it away from Croaker. “That thing.”

  Black Winter lifted the dog again cautiously. “I don’t see anything.”

  I picked it up impatiently. It was thick, and surprisingly heavy. “This.”

  Black Winter looked at me. “You’re not holding anything.”

  “Are you serious? You can’t see this thing?”

  “Barry, your fingers are about three-quarters of an inch apart. But there’s nothing between them but air.”

  Black Winter was being completely serious. I was holding a very solid metal disk. But he couldn’t see it.

  I took my thumb off the button holding the elevator doors closed, and they slid open silently. We were on the ground floor, on the north side of the Continental lobby. The atrium was dark and empty. I probably should have tossed the disk to the floor and just left it there. But it might be a clue to what had happened to Machine Dance, and it was very curious that it seemed to be invisible to Black Winter. I slipped it into my pocket instead.

  I expected Black Winter to linger beside the body of his friend. But now that he’d extracted the knot of circuits from her neck, he seemed more at peace. He stood at my side, cradling Croaker, ready to move.

  The first matter of business was to make sure the lobby was deserted. We stepped out and looked around carefully. Other than the dark crevices and alcoves where corridors ran deeper into the building, we appeared to be alone. Outside, the wind had picked up and it had started to rain. Through the big glass windows at the front of the lobby, I could see sheets of rain gusting down the street.

  Black Winter carried Croaker toward the nearest window, gazing into the dark skies overhead. I heard the window vibrating as the wind howled, and the sound of the rain. “What are you doing?” I said.

  “That thing could fly, remember?” he said, still looking out the window. “And it won’t take it long to figure out where we are. We should get out of here, immediately. Get as far away from the Continental as we can, befo
re it figures a way out of the building.”

  That made sense to me. I walked over until I stood next to him, and pulled the disk out of my pocket.

  “I wish we could figure out what this is first,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’s weird and probably dangerous. I’m not sure I want to take it with us.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Black Winter.

  I held it up. “You still can’t see this?”

  Black Winter stared at my hand. “Is this a joke?”

  “No. I’m holding a black metal disk, about three inches in diameter.”

  “If you are, then I can’t see it.”

  I rapped the disk against the window. It made a very solid tak tak sound. “It’s very real. Did you hear that?”

  “Yeah.”

  I nudged his shoulder with it, hard enough to jostle him half an inch to the left. “Can you feel it?”

  Black Winter didn’t answer immediately.

  “This is bizarre,” I continued, examining the thing. “I’ve never heard of an object that machines can’t resolve. Think it’s some kind of imaging glitch?”

  “Dumping core memory,” said Black Winter. His voice was oddly flat. “Establishing baseline for cerebral resequencing.”

  I held the disk closer to the window, trying to get it in better light. It looked like there was a button in the middle. “What does that mean?”

  A second later, Black Winter began to tip over. There was a frantic scramble as Croaker leaped from his arms, just before he toppled over to the right, crashing stiffly to the floor.

  Croaker ran into the shadows, back toward the elevator. I dropped down next to the robot, grabbing his shoulder. “Black Winter? Damn, are you okay?”

  He didn’t respond. In my right hand, the disk suddenly vibrated. I stared at it, then threw it away, horrified. I heard it skitter and bounce into the darkness.

  About forty feet in the other direction, Croaker paused. She was badly spooked, and held her right front paw curled under her body. She looked back at me, ready to start running again at the slightest provocation.

  “It’s okay, girl,” I said, as soothingly as I could. “It’s okay. Don’t be scared. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  I shook Black Winter. His frame was almost completely rigid. His arms were folded in front of his chest, as if he were still cradling the dog. His eyes were fixed somewhere far above.

  This was my fault. “Come on,” I hissed at him. “Wake up. Black Winter?”

  Croaker began to limp back toward us. I stayed with Black Winter as she approached.

  “Vega is in love,” Black Winter said. His voice sounded odd, distorted. “But her love is forbidden.”

  “What? You okay?” I said, leaning closer. “You scared me.”

  “On the seventh day of the seventh month, all things are possible. Lovers can reunite. The great river can be spanned. And machine may love man.”

  I watched him, beginning to get a little freaked out. He was spouting nonsense. What the hell had that disk done to him?

  I had been a goddamn idiot to touch him with that thing. It was obviously a very sophisticated piece of hardware, and it suddenly occurred to me that it might have disabled Machine Dance as well. Perhaps she had been killed because of it. In any case, it had just scrambled Black Winter’s brain. His cognitive center had already been through some hard trauma in the past few days. I might have damaged it irrevocably.

  “Black Winter? You still with me, buddy?”

  His right arm twitched, and then grabbed my forearm. It held me in a painful grip. Black Winter’s head twisted toward me.

  “Barry,” he said. His voice still sounded oddly distorted.

  “I’m here.”

  “The Greater Sentiences are in disarray. The gods are at war, and the Bodner-Levitt extermination is under way. The first victims are already dead.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have much time. Find Jacaranda, and the Network of Winds. They can stop it. They can keep you alive.”

  “How . . . how do I do that?” I asked stupidly.

  “Follow the dog,” he said.

  He stopped talking, and a strange sound came from his torso. A fast clicking, like a damaged drive. But Black Winter didn’t have optical memory, or any other drives that would stutter like that, as far as I knew. The noise stopped, and he lay completely quiet.

  “Black Winter?”

  He didn’t respond. He lay as unresponsive as before, staring at the ceiling.

  Croaker began to growl.

  “It’s okay, girl. Come here. Come on.” I held my hands out to her.

  She barked, then bared her teeth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring just over my shoulder. I turned around.

  Hovering in the air outside the window was the Venezuelan war drone. Its three glowing eyes were fixed firmly on me as it drifted closer in the driving rain.

  VII

  Thursday, March 11th, 2083

  Posted 4:03 am by Barry Simcoe

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  The war drone was hovering in the air over East Madison Street, no more than forty feet from the glass windows of the lobby. I could hear the roar of its rotors as it glided closer.

  I grabbed Black Winter’s outstretched arm and pulled him away from the windows. I made for the nearest exit, dragging his cold metal carcass behind me. About forty feet along our path, I almost stepped on the metal disk I’d thrown away. Without pausing to think, I snatched it up.

  Pulling Black Winter that far and that fast took some effort. The lobby had a smooth floor, and I laid down a damn fine set of deep scratches across one hundred and fifty feet of polished granite. I estimated Black Winter’s weight at about two hundred and fifty pounds, and I was well and truly winded after the first hundred feet.

  But I found new motivation when the drone abruptly opened fire from the street, shattering the window and sending glass shards everywhere. I dragged Black Winter the last twenty feet in a panic, my heart thumping, before dropping him to the floor and hitting the deck beside him in the shadowy recesses of an unlit corridor, in the back of the building.

  Croaker had run at our side. The explosion when the window shattered made her yelp and momentarily dash off, but she quickly returned. She’d stuck with me when we plunged into the dark corridor, and as I lay on the floor, panting loudly, she came to my side. She was trembling badly, and I did what I could to calm her, stroking her gently. “Good dog,” I said, when my breath returned.

  The drone had stopped firing. I crawled forward, staying low and in the shadows, until I could just barely see it. Outside, the drone was being buffeted about as it hovered in the air—probably the only reason I was still alive.

  Wind and rain were whipping eagerly into the building through the shattered window, and as I watched the drone made two attempts to enter the lobby. The first failed when a sudden gust sent it spinning westward, out of control, bouncing off an abandoned car and then very nearly into the building across the street. It recovered at the last second, increasing power to its rotors, and made a second approach. The rain lashed at it as it drew closer, its metal tentacles tucked against its underside like some great insect. I watched helplessly, too exhausted to move, as it closed the distance, hovering nearly twenty feet in the air.

  At the last moment, another cold gust racing down East Madison hit the drone broadside, sending it spinning again. It overcompensated and began to pitch forward. It smacked into the glass eight feet to the left of the opening and then crashed to the ground.

  I groaned, getting to my feet. A hard landing wouldn’t slow that thing for long. It would be in the lobby—and soon. I bent over to grab Black Winter�
�s arms again, bracing myself for the effort it would take to drag him deeper into the building.

  Black Winter’s arms were moving. He was unfolding from his stiffened position like a flower in sunlight. I dropped to his side.

  “Black Winter?”

  A voice not his own—a professional female voice—came out of his torso. “Stand by for cognitive threshold.”

  “Hey! Can you hear me?”

  “Autorecovery complete. Stand by for cognitive threshold.”

  He stopped moving. There was an odd musical tone from his torso, like the sound my home security system makes before it greets me. Then he spoke again, this time in his own voice.

  “What the hell was that?” he said.

  “Black Winter? You in there?”

  He was sitting up. His head swiveled toward me.

  “Barry?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. You conked out, just fell right over. What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “We were standing by the windows, and you were hallucinating that you were holding something.”

  “I was holding something. I touched you with it, and you keeled over.”

  “For real?”

  “For real. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened to you, but it’s my fault.”

  “Lord love a duck. You still have the damn thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Keep it away from me, will you?”

  There was a crash from the lobby, and the sound of more breaking glass. The drone had abandoned its efforts to make a flying entrance and was safely on the ground. It was now smashing a new entranceway into the building.

  “We need to move,” I said. “Can you stand?”

  “I think so.” He started to rise, then looked around anxiously. “Where’s the dog? Did I drop her?” he asked, concern in his voice.

  “She’s here. She’s fine.” Croaker was only a few feet away, almost entirely concealed in the shadows. She was moving ahead down the corridor and kept looking back, impatient for us to follow. When I was sure Black Winter could stand on his own, I scooped her up. Together, the three of us made our way deeper into the Continental.