The Robots of Gotham

by Todd McAulty

  Once I was around the corner, out of sight of the camera, I kept walking past the stairwell and took the first left. I was back in the maze of corridors that was the hotel laundry. The hallway was choked with wheeled bins piled high with rumpled sheets and stained tablecloths from the banquet hall, and twice I heard distant voices as I passed huge steam presses and tiny offices. But most of the doors were closed, and I didn’t see anyone.

  It was harder than I expected to find the small chamber where I’d stashed the suit. Coming up the back stairway, I was approaching it from a different direction, and none of the rooms looked familiar.

  What I did manage to stumble on, with unerring accuracy, was every single goddamn camera on the floor. True, there weren’t very many. And that their overall coverage sucked, also true. But if you’re very, very diligent, and a lot more intoxicated than you’re willing to admit, you can bumble into every one of them.

  There are exactly five, in case you’re interested.

  Somewhere in the heavily encrypted video logs of the AGRT is repeated footage of me, rounding corners in the fourth-floor laundry at 2:30 a.m., looking around furtively, spotting a camera, then cursing loudly.

  Each time it happened I invented some highly implausible excuse to abruptly turn around—grabbing a towel, or a stack of sheets—and return the way I’d come. But at this point, that far into the laundry, it was a pointless exercise. I wouldn’t fool anyone bothering to pay attention. I had to hope now that no one was.

  At least I eventually memorized where all the cameras were. Which came in handy when I finally found the suit.

  It wasn’t in the laundry bin. That was empty when I stumbled on it at last, parked outside the room where I’d stripped off the suit. The room itself was empty, except for three small wheeled buckets, mops, and some other cleaning gear parked in one corner.

  I felt a moment of panic when I realized the suit was gone. I’d been more than willing to abandon it six hours ago—glad to be rid of it, in fact—but Sergei’s assertions that the suit was a smoking gun must have unnerved me more than I thought. When I realized it was missing, and a quick search of the other bins turned up nothing, I abandoned all attempts at stealth, stalking through the closest rooms and searching everywhere that looked big enough to stash a combat suit.

  I was rummaging through the second small office, dimly lit and smelling of cleaning supplies, when I heard the sounds of conversation down the corridor on my left. I headed that way hopefully, thinking I might catch a break if I talked to the guys on the night shift. Somebody had to remember finding a polymer mech suit jammed in with a bunch of hotel food service uniforms.

  As I passed a small dark room I heard a familiar beep. It was the sound the suit made when it detected the power cores—which I was still carrying in my pocket. I backed up until I was standing in the open door.

  It took a moment for my eyes to penetrate the shadows. I was standing just outside a small room containing two sewing machines and a few racks of dull fabric, decorated with a faded poster of a Mexican soccer team. And on the far wall, supported by a metal hanger hung on a nail, was the American combat suit.

  I stepped inside cautiously. The room looked empty. The suit appeared flat and lifeless, hanging on the wall like a tuxedo waiting to be pressed.

  I fumbled for the light switch, but paused before I turned on the lights. Down the hall I heard a sudden bark of laughter, and a brief burst of music. Someone close by had opened a door. No sense calling attention to myself now.

  I crossed the room in the dark, until I stood in front of the suit. There was something odd about it. Even in the shadows there was an odd sheen to the fabric, as if it were wet. Someone had pinned both gloves to the left arm with clothespins, but that wasn’t what was odd.

  There was something connecting the suit to a small blinking box on the floor. I noticed it now for the first time. Two cables, thin and wrapped together, emerged out of the suit and led to a black case about the size of a GPS nav unit or weather tracker. The box appeared to be asleep; its display, if there was one, was inactive, but a tiny red light on the left side blinked at three-second intervals.

  Someone was talking to the suit.

  My hand hovered over it while I considered the very real possibility that it was booby-trapped. Could Perez, or someone from Venezuelan Military Intelligence, have discovered it in the hours that Sergei and I had celebrated pulling the wool over their eyes?

  Very possibly. Or maybe it was just a curious tech-head in the laundry staff. Some grad student in Rational Devices moonlighting at the hotel, who’d plugged his lab unit into the suit to see if it had any good games installed.

  All plausible scenarios. And the most direct way to see if the suit was rigged to kill me was to lift it off the wall and see if it killed me.

  It took a few moments to work up the nerve to do that. In the end I figured it wasn’t military intelligence’s style to leave their killing to a booby trap. So fortified with the courage of logic, I reached out and, with fingers that trembled only slightly, lifted the suit off the rail.

  I didn’t die. The little black box made a quiet buzzing sound. I reached down and unclipped the cables, and removed the hanger. I started to roll up the suit.

  Then the box started talking to me.

  “Roberto,” it said. “Why did you disconnect?”

  I froze for a second. The box spoke again.

  “Roberto, we lost the feed. Can you reestablish?”

  I squatted over the box, careful not to touch it. Up close, it didn’t look like a rational devices analyzer. It was a portable telecom set. There was an emblem, a pair of stylized wings, in the bottom left corner, and the design was very familiar. I’d seen it in countless shaky videos taken on the front lines of the war.

  It was the emblem of the US Air Force.

  The box squawked again. “Identify yourself.” I’m not sure how, but the box knew it wasn’t talking to Roberto.

  I picked up the cables again and took a closer look at where they’d been connected to the suit. What was it Sergei had said? This close to command center, suit can passively monitor virtually all AGRT transmissions, relay prime technical intelligence to Americans.

  All this time, we’d been worried about Hayduk and Perez finding the combat suit. We’d forgotten that Hayduk was not the suit’s original owner. The moment I slipped the power cores inside, it had almost certainly sent a signal to its American creators.

  I grabbed the mask, where it was pinned to the back of the suit like the hood of a jacket. I twisted it inside out so I could see the heads-up display.

  It was live. In tiny blue script in the bottom right corner were the words

  Sensor record copied

  Transmit internal voice record YES/NO?

  The Americans had just copied everything the suit had seen and heard since I’d turned it on.

  I felt a momentary chill. The suit had perhaps the most sophisticated passive spy gear I’d ever seen. It was a sponge; it absorbed and copied everything. It had been hanging here quietly for the past few hours, passively listening to every communication in and out of the Venezuelan command center. While I’d been wearing it, the suit had also seen the inside of Venezuelan HQ. It had been inside Hayduk’s office, watched me open his safe. It had held Hayduk’s GPU card . . . and the suit had held the drive holding Hayduk’s decryption keys.

  The Americans had it all. If they moved fast, they could use Hayduk’s keys to decrypt Venezuelan Military Intelligence’s most sensitive communications. Hack into the most secure parts of the AGRT security infrastructure.

  It was probably the biggest intelligence coup of the entire war. And the Venezuelans had no idea it had happened.

  Footsteps out in the hall. I heard a voice. Someone speaking English.

  The Americans were here. I took two quick steps deeper into the shadows, out of the direct line of sight from the open door.

  The footsteps came close, then changed direction, reced
ing again. Moving down a nearby corridor.

  The box squawked again. “Please identify yourself.”

  “Who are you?” I said.

  There was no immediate reply. After a moment, the box spoke again.

  “Please identify.”

  “You first.”

  Another pause. Then I heard, “This is Lieutenant Gribbs with American Forward Ground. Who am I speaking with?”

  American Forward Ground. Sergei was right. Perez wouldn’t be happy if he found out about this. Not at all.

  I looked down at the suit, folded in my hands. It wasn’t my property; it belonged to the Americans. I should probably put it back on the hanger and walk out of here. I wanted to get rid of it; why not let the Americans do it for me?

  Except that if the Americans could have taken the suit out of the hotel, they would have already. All the exits were watched by Venezuelan drones with remote sensing gear. Anyone who tried to leave with the suit risked being spotted instantly.

  The Americans weren’t here for the suit. They were here for the data it contained. And now they had it.

  I lifted the mask again, staring at the internal display. Not all the data, I realized.

  Transmit internal voice record YES/NO?

  I’d interrupted the data transfer before the suit could share the record of what I’d said while I was wearing it. Once the Americans had that, they’d know who I was. And if the Americans found out, how much longer before the AGRT found out?

  I tightened my grip on the suit. I’d have to take it with me after all.

  “I’ve identified myself,” said the box. “Why don’t you tell me who you are?”

  They’re stalling, I thought. While they contact whoever they have in the building. Time to get out of here.

  With the cables detached, I was able to quickly finish rolling up the suit. Without any further hesitation, I stuffed it into a heavily creased shopping bag I found on the floor, making sure both gloves and the mask made it in as well. Then I stuck my head out the door. The hallway was deserted, for now.

  I started moving, at a fast walk. I passed an open door about forty feet down the hall; from inside I heard music, the echoing refrain of Ghost Yummy’s “Bang the Big Blue Box.” A male voice was singing along, badly out of key.

  As briskly as I could, I made my way to the back stairwell, taking a route that avoided all the cameras. Once there, I climbed six floors, then took the elevator the rest of the way to my floor.

  When I opened the door to my room, Croaker came leaping joyously toward me. She did an excited dance and wouldn’t stop jumping on me until I put a leash on her and took her out. I left the bag with the suit by the door.

  In our brief circuit around the block, Croaker stopped to pee six times. As we returned to the front of the hotel, I spotted two men hustling out the front door. They looked anxious. They were looking in every direction at once, as if searching for someone or something. One of them gave me the once-over, his eyes hostile and alert. I returned his gaze with mild curiosity.

  The other one was carrying a small bag. Sticking out of the bag were blue cables. The kind of cables that had connected the American combat suit to the telecom box.

  A late-model sedan pulled up to the front of the hotel. As if responding to a signal, both men abandoned their search and headed to the car. The doors swung open as they neared. The men climbed inside and the car sped off.

  Inside the lobby, the morning clerk handed me a sealed envelope. I tore it open. It was a handwritten letter from Mrs. Domeko, suggesting a time and place for our next meeting. She wanted my assistance investigating the disappearance of the Rajapakse robot colony. Well, why not? I was just as concerned as she was, and it would be good to have a determined and resourceful ally exploring the depths of that mystery. I scrawled a quick response, sealed it, and gave it to the clerk to have it delivered by courier.

  Back in my room, I laid out coffee and some fruit. Mac would be by for breakfast in a few hours, and there didn’t seem much point in trying to get to sleep before she arrived. I was very much looking forward to our long-postponed conversation. At long last, I was fully prepared to confess what I knew about her son, and how I had read her private message. Strangely, wonderfully, I felt no anxiety about my coming confession. My desire for Mac had been replaced by a desire to help her, pure and simple.

  Well, maybe not all that pure. I couldn’t get the memory of how she’d looked in the dress last night out of my head. And the way she’d whispered “Good” in my ear when I told her I wanted to talk this morning.

  I was going to ask Mac out to dinner, and I thought there was a good chance she would say yes. Just the two of us, someplace where they still expected you to dress up. I was very much looking forward to that.

  And if Anthony was alive, Black Winter and I were going to find him. I was sure of it.

  Something else I was looking forward to, strange as it sounds? Visiting Zircon Border’s porpoise pod in the Bay of Fundy next summer. I’d promised him I’d do it, and I intended to keep that promise. I had no intention of disappointing that giant hunk of metal. He’s my friend.

  As I straightened up my room, I found the suit right where I’d left it. I rolled it out on my bed, giving it a cursory inspection. I pulled the power cells out of my pocket, laying them next to the suit. It beeped appreciatively. Croaker, much calmer now that her bladder was empty, jumped up on the bed, sniffed the suit once, and then plopped down next to it, panting happily.

  Doubtless I’d startled the Americans by stealing it right under their noses. I wasn’t too surprised that they hightailed it out of here. I probably should feel a little guilty for reclaiming the suit, but I didn’t. In all likelihood, the Americans would have destroyed it once they extracted the last of the data. It’d be too risky to try and sneak it out of the hotel, and they couldn’t risk leaving it behind for the Venezuelans to find.

  And even if they found some way to recover it, the suit wasn’t much good without the power cells. I knew that from experience.

  No, the Americans had gotten what they wanted from the suit. The kind of intel that would pay dividends for months. The kind that might very well change the course of the peace negotiations in Clarksville.

  Hayduk and the Americans had both wanted the combat suit. But the Americans had shown much more patience and guile, and it had paid off. Good for them. They deserved whatever they’d extracted out of it. It would be very interesting to see how things unfolded in the next few months.

  Right now there were two thousand additional AGRT soldiers on their way to Chicago, ostensibly to search for the American in the combat suit. They might make life a lot more difficult in the next few months. But strangely, the thought didn’t really bother me. My eyes roamed over the suit. It lay on the bed, relaxed and waiting. Ready.

  I’d told Sergei and Black Winter that I never wanted to see the suit again. But I guess that wasn’t really true. Looking at it now, the thing that most came to mind was Sergei’s casual observation in the bar last night.

  A man who has the drone jammer device, and the American combat suit . . .

  That man can go anywhere, do anything.

  “What do you think, girl?” I asked Croaker as I scratched her head. “Do you think Sergei’s right?”

  Croaker barked softly.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s find out.”

  Acknowledgments

  Novel writing, at least for me, is a lot like software design, in that success demands some pretty heavy beta testing. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I have the finest beta readers in the business, and their feedback improved my book immeasurably. They are Jim Seidman, Ed O’Neill, Howard Andrew Jones, Todd Ruthman, and especially Alice “it needs more robots” Dechene.

  My editor, John Joseph Adams, has the finest storytelling sense in the industry—as well as extraordinary patience. John, you the man.

  The first draft of this novel was written in hotel rooms while
I commuted every week between Champaign, Illinois, and Chicago. I wrote one chapter per month, and on the second Thursday of every month I read those chapters to the welcoming and enthusiastic attendees of the Open Mic at Top Shelf Books in Palatine, Illinois. Do that long enough (in my case, from May 2006 to October 2012), and it turns out you end up with a novel.

  The attendees of the Top Shelf Open Mic are the reason this book exists (and they are most definitely the reason Croaker made it all the way to the end—don’t ever let authors tell you they can’t be swayed by death threats). I owe them a great deal, and I want to acknowledge them here. They are Michael Penkas, Julie Barnett, Brendan Detzner, Jeanine Marie Vaughn, Janelle McHugh, Jeffrey Westhoff, Dennis Depcik, Tina Jens, Cynthia J. Glasson, Gene Wolfe, Joe Bonadonna, David C. Smith, Dave Munger, Shawna Flavell, Reina Hardy, and Megan Swanson. And especially Sally Tibbetts, Patty Templeton, Dave Michalak, Jahn Mitchell, Karin Thogersen, and Katie Redding.

  Finally, and most significantly, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Claire Suzanne Elizabeth Cooney, who coaxed this book out of me one chapter at a time. Her joy in the fellowship of writers, and her tenacity in bringing them together, helped nurture and inspire countless Chicago authors. I was one of them. Thank you, Claire.

  About the Author

  Todd McAulty grew up in Nova Scotia. He was a manager at the start-up that created Internet Explorer and currently works at a machine learning company in Chicago. This is his first novel.

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