“Is he dead or is he playing a trick on us?” the guide asked.
“Dead,” X said. “He’s been under the sea for decades. No android can survive subarctic temperatures for that long.”
“True,” the guide said. “Sometimes the ice spits up stuff. No specific reason why. We’re lucky to have stumbled across this ship. Another few days and the ice probably would’ve swallowed it.”
Dr. Crenshaw clucked his tongue as he inspected the android. “Mother Nature’s cruel joke: let us get a glimpse, and then reclaim it.” He winked and snapped a photo of the android. “X, let’s take him back for research.”
The ground shook beneath them, and the ship began to shift. They slid across the ice and slammed against the wall.
X’s algorithm chip buzzed. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
They made their way to the deck of the ship as it started to lurch more violently.
“We know where the ships are, now,” X said. “The UEA should have no problem extracting this one, as long as their machines can get here.”
“Not if the sea reclaims it,” Dr. Crenshaw said.
They started to climb down from the ship, but it shifted again and Dr. Crenshaw lost hold of the rope, plummeting into the clear blue water below.
“Jesus!” the guide cried.
X dove into the water after Dr. Crenshaw. The doctor was sinking and couldn’t swim in his heavy clothes. X grabbed him, but struggled to support him. The cold water made it harder for him to perform his functions properly and his systems flashed warnings that they were going to shut down if he didn’t get warm soon. He gained hold of Dr. Crenshaw and located the hole in the ice near the ship. Below him, however, he noticed ominous shapes in the water: a silhouette of a city skyline far in the distance, blowing bubbles in the water. In the center of the skyline loomed a tall, cylindrical tower that made his algorithm chip buzz uncontrollably. The city stretched for miles, and he couldn’t tell where it ended. He imagined how awe-striking the city would have been above the ice, and then he realized that the sight of the living city was something he was glad to have not experienced.
He refocused on the surface and swam up to the hole where the party was waiting for him. They pulled him out and dragged Dr. Crenshaw to the campsite and covered him in blankets.
X’s algorithm chip wouldn’t stop buzzing. He scanned Dr. Crenshaw’s body and confirmed the worst. “He’s going into cardiac arrest.”
“Mission aborted,” the guide said, pulling out a defibrillator. A medical android ran to the doctor and began administering care.
X watched as the android stabilized Dr. Crenshaw, but his algorithm chip kept buzzing. He looked around and outlined the city of Terminus just below them.
They were standing over the heart of the city.
Jeanette and Yvette Crenshaw wept over Dr. Crenshaw’s body in a hospital in Anchorage while X stood in the corner of the room with his arms folded, watching silently. The moonlight threw light into the room, cutting the room into half-light, half-darkness. Yvette was on her knees with her head nestled in Dr. Crenshaw’s side, and Jeanette stood at the foot of the bed, bracing herself with tears in her eyes.
Dr. Crenshaw shifted, and the two women looked hopefully at his face. X’s algorithm chip chirped.
Dr. Crenshaw opened his eyes, then looked around the room with a slightly dazed expression. His eyes cleared, and he smiled sleepily at Yvette.
“Hey.”
“Don’t hey me,” Yvette said softly. “I told you that expedition was dangerous.”
“But we found it,” Dr. Crenshaw whispered. “We found the city.”
“And what good does that do?” Jeanette asked. “Why are you chasing android technology when we’ve got technology that needs improving here at home? What if something awakens in the city now that you’ve been there?”
“We can harness the best of their technology,” Dr. Crenshaw said. “And fuse it with ours.”
“Too experimental,” Fahrens said, entering the room. “That makes the Council very nervous.”
“But it’s the only way we’re going to advance humanity,” Dr. Crenshaw said.
“Roosevelt,” Fahrens said. “You know that I’ve been with you this entire time. When you proposed to revive android technology, I supported you when the public wanted to throw you in jail. I allocated funds to your lab when the tax dollars could have been spent better elsewhere. You wouldn’t have been able to create X if it weren’t for us. But this … fetishizing the singularity all of a sudden. It’s going to scare people. It’s going to make you look power hungry.”
Jeanette nodded. “You have to stop.”
Dr. Crenshaw looked at X. “What do you think, partner?”
X rubbed the back of his head. “I think you should do what’s in your best interests.”
“I was hoping for a less politically correct answer,” Dr. Crenshaw said, frowning.
“Did you really find it?” Fahrens asked.
“It was the last thing I saw before my heart stopped,” Dr. Crenshaw said. “Hell, that city was so scary it MADE my heart stop. It was underneath the surface. You ever seen the underside of an iceberg, Commander?”
Fahrens shook his head. “Only in pictures.”
“When we were traveling to the North Pole, we passed an iceberg. The guide thought it would be educational to take me to the glass observation room in the bottom of our ship. It’s freaky. We all know how ice floats in a glass of water, how the cubes jangle together when you move the glass around. But what no one notices is how only the tips of the ice poke up from the water. This iceberg was like that, on a massive scale.”
“What does that have to do with your heart attack?” Jeanette asked.
“That ship we found was the tip of Terminus. Who knows what we could find down there? What if there was a way to use Terminus technology to improve the lives of people everywhere?”
“They made the same argument about nuclear technology three centuries ago,” Fahrens said. “And it wasn’t worth the risk.”
“There are no risks if the city is dead,” Dr. Crenshaw said. “You know as well as I do that the androids are beyond dead. Even if the city is alive, we’ve come much further in our defenses. We can sink it again.”
“It’s not worth the risk!” Fahrens shouted. “I’m glad you’re okay, Roosevelt, but this mission is canceled and we’re striking it from the UEA database. If you want to continue with your research, you will not have our support and you will have to use your own capital.”
Dr. Crenshaw’s face turned sour. “Goddamnit, I’ve got a billion dollars I can burn with lighter fluid and STILL have enough to do this mission!”
“Then what do you need us for?”
“I thought we were partners,” Dr. Crenshaw said. “I thought this was about science and bettering the life of mankind with technology. I thought this was about not growing stale like the UEA has been accused of in the last few years.”
“Of course it is about all that,” Fahrens said. “But we’ve got political careers, Roosevelt. We don’t all have the luxury of being rich like you. All it takes is for one thing to go wrong, and it will dismantle the UEA. We’d be no better off than the badlanders. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spend my life scrounging for food and living without amenities. We must protect the UEA at all costs.”
Dr. Crenshaw sat on his bed, staring at the wall.
“Get better, Roosevelt,” Fahrens said, leaving.
“Honey, you should just focus on resting right now,” Yvette said. “Don’t be bothered with none of that stuff. It’s not important.”
“X,” Dr. Crenshaw said, “I’m going to follow my wife’s advice and rest, but I want you to analyze everything you saw in Terminus. When I recover, we’re going back.”
“But you said it scared you,” Jeanette said. “Why would you want to go back there?”
“Because it scares me,” Dr. Crenshaw said. “Sometimes, you have to go to
ward your fear, even if the fear of death is there as well. I’ll never forget what I saw in that water. It’ll haunt me until the end of my days. But I can’t sit here in this room and forget about it, just like you can’t ever be afraid of something and just run away either, baby. I respect it. I want to know it. I can die with a lot of things not discovered, but I don’t want to die without knowing more about Terminus. If that ruins my reputation, so be it. Some folks in the UEA apparently have never truly understood what it is I’ve been trying to accomplish.”
“You’re so stubborn,” Jeanette said.
“Well, might as well order dinner,” Yvette said. “Maybe some food will shut you up.”
Dr. Crenshaw pursed his lips and looked out the window, where snow was falling in large flakes. The mountains of Alaska were an imposing blur on the horizon, and the wind howled against the building.
X opened his mouth to speak, and then he felt flames against his body. Everything around him began to wilt. Dr. Crenshaw, Yvette, and Jeanette continued talking, but he couldn’t hear them. Dr. Crenshaw’s bed began to melt, and so did he. The ceiling dripped to the floor, the walls began to peel, and the area filled with smoke.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” X said.
But the Crenshaws kept talking as if nothing was happening.
X reached for Dr. Crenshaw, but when his hands neared him, the doctor disappeared. He tried to touch Yvette and Jeanette, but they disappeared too. He ran out the door, which disappeared at his touch, and emerged into a long hallway, where all of the people were melting. He ran through the hallway, down a long staircase and burst through a door to the outside, where the sky was in flames. A wall of fire leaped up in front of him, and he recoiled as the hospital collapsed behind him. He saw a single path through the fire, a tall airy footpath, as if the flames had been parted just for him to run through. He sprinted through the path, but it was endless, and so hot. His scanners stopped working, and his surface began to smoke. Eventually, he collapsed and tried to stand up, but it was too hot …
Then the smoke cleared, and he was looking up at Shortcut and Jazzlyn. They were both sweating, and he was lying on an asphalt street not far from the burning building.
“We barely made it out of there,” Shortcut said. “You okay, X?”
“What the hell was that?” Jazzlyn asked.
“We’ve got to go to Terminus,” X said, standing up. “Jeanette is going there.”
“Xadrian told us that,” Jazzlyn said. “But we don’t know where it is.”
“I do.”
Shortcut shook his head as he pointed at his digital screen, where Jeanette Crenshaw was delivering a speech. “We’re too late.”
Chapter 17
The winds picked up as they flew over Canada.
“We’re getting close to the end of land,” Craig said. “We’re going to have to stop, guys. The wind is getting too strong.”
X projected a map on the windshield and tapped it. “There’s a town not far from here. It’s the last major area of civilization before the Arctic Sea begins. It will be a good place to stay until the storm blows over.”
Shortcut rewatched the footage of Jeanette’s broadcast. She stood in an Arctic landscape and said that the world was going to end. As she spoke, the ground shook, and an enormous gray city rose from the sea, cracking the ice. X recognized it from his memories, and he sensed fear, hatred, and evil emanating from it. Water drained down the spires as the city hummed to life. It stretched for miles behind Jeanette and her outstretched hands. She had laughed as the city came into view, saying, “The Android Winter is upon us.”
Shortcut massaged his temples. “This whole thing is giving me a headache.”
“Migraines back?” Jazzlyn asked.
“It’s nothing,” Shortcut said. “I’ll be fine.”
Craig turned the wheel and craned his neck to look out at the darkening sky.
“How close are we, Dad?” Shortcut asked.
“Not far,” Craig said.
He flew through a cloud and the lights of a small town appeared below, orange and yellow against the falling snow. “According to the radar, there’s a storm coming. It’s gonna last a while.”
“It’s Crenshaw,” X said. “They say that the singularity androids controlled the weather to protect Terminus from invaders.”
They flew lower, and the snowfall thickened. Craig landed in a parking lot and slid for a few feet, stopping just short of a cluster of snowmobiles.
They were in front of a wooden lodge with a triangular roof covered in snow, large windows and a chimney that released smoke into the air.
“There’s a mug of hot chocolate waiting for me in there,” Craig said, grinning.
They climbed out of the van as the wind howled. Jazzlyn tipped up her parka hood and rubbed her hands together. Looking at the horizon, she sighed.
“No separating this time,” X said, starting for the lodge. “We stay together.”
Jazzlyn looked at the city skyline longingly, and then ran to catch up with X.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Shortcut said.
Jazzlyn picked up her pace and entered the lodge, letting the door swing behind her, striking Shortcut in the face.
“Ow!”
“That’s why you don’t insult women, son,” Craig said, pushing the door open.
The lodge smelled quaint, with an odor of wood and candles. A front desk attendant said, “Welcome to Last Leg Lodge.”
“We just need to stay for a few hours, sweetie,” Craig said. He activated his lens and paid the front desk.
“We have a UEA budget, Dad,” Shortcut said.
“Take that money and use it to buy yourself something nice,” Craig said.
“Heh,” Shortcut said. “It doesn’t work that way. Now I’m going to have to fill out a report.”
The attendant pointed down the hallway to the lodge. They entered and sat down at a table as the blizzard raged outside. A fireplace crackled, and a waitress brought them hot chocolate, smiling at them the whole time.
“Nice folks here,” Craig said. “Every time I’ve been here, they’ve been pretty short. We must’ve come at a good time.”
“You come here often?” X asked.
“Most of my travels take me to southern Alaska and Canada where it’s warmer, but I do sell robots to an occasional customer in these parts. Folks up here are not technically badlanders. It’s so cold up here that most robots won’t work properly. Gangs won’t come here because they can’t do much in the freezing cold. Life here is like it was a few hundred years ago. Kind of freaky, but true.”
“I guess if you can brave the snow, it’s worth it,” Shortcut said. He looked over at Jazzlyn, who was sitting by the fireplace drinking a cup of hot chocolate and talking to Smoochums.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that she talks to her cockroach all the time?” Craig asked. “Does she know how to talk to people?”
“She’s weird,” Shortcut said. “We just learn to live with her.”
“So, this is the final mission, eh?” Craig asked. “Looks like Jeanette Crenshaw isn’t messing around. If Terminus is risen, anything could happen.”
“This is the final battle,” X said. “If we win, life will continue like normal. If we lose …”
“You’re not going to lose,” Craig said.
“How do you know that?” X asked.
“You’re smart; she’s desperate. Desperation makes you do stupid things.”
“Well said,” Shortcut said. “But Dad, we can’t let you go with us.”
“I figured you would say that.”
“It’s going to be dangerous.”
“He’s right, Craig,” X said.
“That’s not going to stop me.”
“Dad, we might not come back.”
“I’m your dad. If I have to chauffeur you through danger, that’s my God-given responsibility. Your mother wouldn’t have it any other way. And with your health the way it is�
�”
“I took an oath,” Shortcut said. “I have to complete the mission no matter what. This is what I do every day.”
Craig hesitated, and then gave Shortcut the keys to the van. “Wreck it, and you’re going to owe me big time.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“You have to do what you have to do. But at least wait this storm out with me.”
“Deal,” Shortcut said, grabbing a deck of cards.
Smoochy, there’s nothing stopping us from running,” Jazzlyn said as she sat on her beanbag. “I could just run into the snow and no one would ever be able to find me. They’d never come after me in this harsh climate. I could get away, bum a ride to the badlands maybe. But I don’t know anymore. I don’t know if I want to go back.”
“Jazzlyn?”
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned around to see a man and woman in flannel smiling at her. Her heart jumped, and she almost dropped Smoochums.
“Bill? Donna?”
“Jazzlyn, this is such a surprise,” Donna said.
She ran into their arms, crying.
“I thought you were dead,” Jazzlyn said.
“We came north. We’re studying polar plant life.”
“That’s—that’s … wonderful,” Jazzlyn said. “My parents would have appreciated that. I’m glad that you were able to continue your research after—”
“What happened to you?” Bill asked. He had a wiry, white beard and a potbelly. “You been living in the badlands?”
She blushed. “I’ve had to survive. But enough—enough about me.”
“Come home with us,” Bill said. “We have an extra room. You can help us research. We’ll give you a job in the greenhouse. It’ll be just like old times, like when we worked with your mom and dad.”
Android X: The Complete Series Page 36