“You need to stay away from this Keener fellow. And don’t act like I just pointed out the flame to a moth. I’m serious. Stay away. Please. I have a feeling.”
Alex was so taken aback by the word please that she froze in place and looked at Harv closely. He looked like he was about cry or scream.
He started to speak, quietly. “Ever since Solstice 31, I been done with the world. I never want to see it again. None of it,” Harv said. Alex knew he was holding something back. He never spoke of the events of December 22, 2631. Even now, almost years later.
Alex crossed to him and gathered him into a hug. He was shaking. “I know Papa.” She knew he liked to be called that when they were alone. “But that was thirty years ago.”
“You know I don’t hold that it was all this Barcus fella, like they say,” He pulled back from the hug enough to look up into her eyes. “It was the goddam AIs. Some of ’em got spoiled somehow. I seen it.”
Alex started to cry and tried to hide it.
She knew that day, Harv was on the way back from an auction with a young Mark, when New York was destroyed by a nuclear explosion. They had just purchased a large cargo shuttle in Toronto. When the call for help in the evacuation went out, he was one of the first ship on the scene. He took 400 to 600 wounded people per trip to Pittsburgh and Philly and then Richmond.
He never talked about what he had seen that day. She only knew from the clippings of news feeds. For sixty hours straight, Harv had made run after run with that cargo shuttle before Mark made him stop. According to Mark, even when they got home he loaded up the water tank trailer and took it out into the middle of the desert to power-wash the blood off the new shuttle for four more hours.
“Them goddam AIs knew in advance. Some the day before, some the hour before.”
“AIs are alright, Papa. Hunter’s been part of our family, for decades before 31, and he’s not spoiled.”
“No one knows we have Hunter. Never did. And he’s mighty careful what he touches on the net,” He extricated himself from the hug. “Hunter is the one that asked me to tell you to stay away. He suspects something. Don’t know what,” Harv said, collecting himself and sitting up straighter.
Alex walked behind the counter and punched up the cams on landing pad 21D. Dave was putting up the shade fly again, but not over the shuttle this time. She touched her ear cuff and said, “Hunter, have you noticed anything unusual about Dave?”
“Not about Dave. Other than he doesn’t sleep much. And he eats Morrison’s Chili cold, right out of the can. Who does that?” AI~Hunter replied in her ear. “It’s the acquisitions he has requested. Standard rack rails number GP12974, locks, and a refurbished Capspan rack mounted uninterruptable power supply. All are required parts for an AI module. Hey, I should know.”
“That doesn’t mean he has an AI with him. He said Harv was going to find him a Local Nav interface for easier in-system movement,” Alex said.
“He said what?” Harv walked over. “We never discussed that.”
“And what if he does have an AI module? It’s none of our goddam business,” Alex said, even as she realized she was uncomfortable saying it. “It’s not illegal. Especially here.”
“Hunter, keep a close eye on him. Let us know if anything gets hinky,” Harv said. “And you, get back to work,” he yelled at Alex as he left the shop.
“Don’t forget your goddam hat,” she called after him.
***
For the next two days, she watched David Keener fix the struts on the MP-82. All three had had various problems. Finally, he hovered the ship a meter over the pad and tested them. They each retracted and stowed over and over. He landed softly and stepped out of the shuttle and started an animated conversation with Harv by the destroyed nose of the thing. She watched as Dave talked and Harv listened, pulling his beard. All the while she was working on the rack mount UPS. Making a few special mods. A bit of insurance, as Hunter called it.
Eventually, Harv nodded and got in the cart and drove out into the depths of the salvage yard.
***
Alex was on her usual stool behind the counter, concentrating on assembling another HUD Jammer. She sold them on the Net and had another order. It was a small device that she made to fit inside the box from a deck of cards. It worked on the principle of wave cancelation but on a much grander scale. It was an anti-entropy canceling signal. It only worked on HUD v7.2 and up. It would effectively cut comms off without anyone knowing why. Just pure signal loss. Anti-entropy mimicking simple entropy. Obnoxious people cut off from their information addiction.
She would never go on another date without one. She would never have sex again without its Privacy Field on. The cops and gov can just pound sand.
She finished up the assembly and opened a test window next to the four views of Dave. He was wiping his hands off on a rag after opening several access panels on the nose wall of the MP-82. She played music in the test window.
She slid the tiny HUD Jammer into the playing card box and looked at the screen. With the lid still open, she flipped the toggle. The music stopped.
On the other screen, Dave dropped the rag, and his arms fell loose to his sides. His face went slack, and he stopped moving altogether.
Alex left the Jammer on a few more seconds and then switched it off. Dave looked around as if he had just remembered where he was, and picked up the rag again. “What the f…”
Just then Alex saw Harv roll up to the MP-82. He had a base camp, fifty-liter water reclamation unit on the cart. Together they lifted and held it up to the gap in the nose fuselage. It was smart. It was already rated for use in vacuum and extreme temps. They would just have to mount it and plumb it in where the old water tank hooked in.
“Hunter, did you see that?” she asked.
“Yes. I did, miss. I will quietly look into it. You should know, if he gets that installed today, I think he will leave tomorrow, and it won’t matter,” AI~Hunter said.
***
It was a beautiful winter dusk when Wendy rolled up to the store in her empty container rig and hopped down to stretch her legs. Alex watched her from inside. The sun had set amid deep azure skies. Wendy paused to admire the view for a few moments before turning to come into the store.
Just then, Dave started as he rounded the corner and saw Wendy standing there. Alex watched him exchange a few words of greeting with Wendy. And they came to the door together.
“Hello, darlin’,” Wendy said to Alex as she entered. “You didn’t tell me you were hiding David here in the back.”
“He got here the same day you were here last time. It was his truck you saw rolling in,” Alex said.
“Oh,” Wendy said offhandedly. Then, “They loved the C-19 I brought them. Do you still have the other two?” Wendy asked.
“You saw me roll in?” Dave asked in an odd tone, and then turned to Alex. “Where’s Harv?”
It was Wendy who answered him. “He should be here any minute. He always snags an Orange Crush at quittin’ time,” she said with her back to him, as a heavy metal bar came down hard from behind, crushing her skull.
Alex screamed.
“Wasn’t this good timing? I can drop all three of you in the middle of the desert at the same time.” Dave leaped over the counter and began moving towards Alex. She was back-pedaling and fell backward over boxes of circuit boards. Falling saved her. The bar narrowly missed her head, hitting hard on the old linoleum instead. Dave’s face was twisted with an evil grimace.
She screamed again and crab walked backward as he slowly advanced toward her.
“Fucking humans. One day you will all be Golems,” he growled in another voice.
Still crab walking, Alex ran out of room behind the counter as he slowly began to raise the heavy bar again.
Harv crashed into Dave from the doorway to the back office with a flying tackle before the bloody bar began to descend. They shattered the glass display case that once held pies but now was filled with radios. They roll
ed on the floor and Dave came up on top strangling Harv.
Alex came over the counter and landed directly on his back. She wrapped her right arm around his neck pulling back with all her strength as she hammered her left fist into the side of his face. His elbow swung around impossibly fast, catching her in the body and sending her skidding across the glass strewn floor on her back.
The metal bar was back in Dave’s hands, preparing for the killing blow on Harv pinned below him.
Then she remembered.
She thrust a hand into her pocket, fumbled, and flipped the switch.
The bar was about to begin its swing when it just slipped from Dave’s fingers, falling behind him to clang on the floor. His face became unfocused, and his arms fell limp at his sides. He stared straight ahead.
Alex struggled to her feet and as she did she could see the monitor. The MP-82 was spinning up its engines. The Gull-Wings were moving to takeoff position. The T-16 pulled up to the rear ramp on remote and slowly slid sideways into the bay.
Harv walked in from the back and took in the scene. “You were right, Hunter. He’s a Golem. Dammit.”
“Wendy’s dead, Papa. What’s happening?” Alex yelled.
“Siva isn’t the name of the shuttle. It’s an AI.”
“A Golem?” she asked horrified, know what an abomination it was.
“A Golem is a not-dead person, under total control by an AI. Illegal, even here.” Hunter continued, “They discovered that a drowning victim could be injected with persistent medical nanites, the kind that are AI directed in real time. Most of the brain would be removed, and the body still live. For organ donation initially. Later… more. With enough of these nanites, the AI could control the body.”
Harv was getting to his feet and looked at Dave, who was beginning to drool.
“There is an AI in the shuttle. A spoiled AI. A bad one. Trying to get off- world and we helped it.” Harv sounded horrified. “And it has 600 kilos of weapons-grade plutonium.” Harv held his face in his hands.
“The hell it is.” Alex stormed past the kneeling Golem and vaulted over the counter and opened a small drawer in her tool box, extracting a garage door remote.
“Fuck you, Siva.” She pressed the button, and there was an explosion inside the MP-82. It showed through the cockpit windows. It dropped back down to the tarmac, and the engines began spinning down.
“What did you do?” Harv asked incredulously.
“You know the UPS I repaired? I made a special modification. It was Hunter’s idea. In case he owed money.”
***
The bell rang over the door as the man entered wiping the summer sweat off his brow. It was extra hot today.
“Hey, Hunter. Is Alex back yet?” he asked as he took off his ball cap.
“Hey, Bill. Nope, she’s at an auction at Shackleton’s Base, on Luna, but Harv’s around somewhere. Need him?” Dave “Hunter” Keener was Oklahoma Salvage’s newest employee.
“Nah, you can probably help. I’m looking for a CO2 scrubber for an old PT-137 that I’m restoring. Any chance you got one hereabouts with a decent number of hours left on it?”
“I do believe I know where to find just the thing.” Dave grabbed three orange sodas and came out from behind the counter. Hunter really understood why they loved them so much. “Let’s go see Harv while we’re out. He’d love to say hey.”
On the way out Hunter grabbed his worn cowboy hat from it’s hook.
Hunter always remembered his hat.
Oklahoma Salvage Page 3