by Terry Persun
He picked the stool up and slid it under the bench. Using Mavra’s email account, he emailed the dispatcher at the local police station requesting information concerning break-ins or thefts.
He rummaged through the electronics strewn over the bench: small hand-build circuits, makeshift boxes with wires extending from them, handheld meters. He pulled his cell phone out and whacked it on the side with a small hammer to snap it open. Using a combination radio frequency time domain reflectometer and — he moved farther down the bench and threw several small chassis to the side — a decoder for cellular locations, and he’d be able to get close to Mavra’s position whenever she answered her phone. The FBI could find her using a similar technique, but it was more likely that they’d simply follow leads. Neither would get any closer than the other at this juncture.
Neil wired his cell phone into the equipment. In a few minutes he fashioned a CAD drawing for an enclosure for the odd pieces of circuitry and downloaded it into his Z-Corp, 3D printer. That accomplished, Neil raced into the kitchen and packed several days worth of food. He had no idea where they were headed with Mavra, but he wasn’t about to stop for dinner. If they really were robots as she said and unlike what Steffenbraun believed, then they wouldn’t need to stop to eat. He grabbed a spare cell phone that he kept in the house and performed a data file transfer using the kitchen computer.
By the time he got back into his shop, the enclosure was finished, and an email was waiting for him to read. While reading through the list of crimes in the email, he also used self-starting screws to mount all his components into the enclosure. He added a standard digital readout and wrote a quick little program to translate the TDR information into GPS coordinates as well as could be done. In less than two hours, Neil snapped the case closed and headed for the garage.
Backing out of the garage and pulling onto the road, Neil called Rogers.
“Agent Rogers.”
“You said you’d keep me informed,” Neil said.
“Nothing to report,” Rogers said.
“Stolen car,” Neil said. “They were driving when I talked with Mavra. I could hear the wind in the background.”
“Yes, well, we weren’t sure which report to follow?” Rogers said.
“Bullshit.”
“You can’t go with us. I’d have to retain you. Please don’t show up. I’m asking nicely,” Rogers said.
“I promise I’ll keep my distance. But if you find her, I want to be close enough to be there in a few minutes. You can allow me that courtesy, can’t you?” Neil tried to be as logical and direct as possible. In the mean time, he pushed several buttons on the locator device he had made. He turned a small dial and an image appeared on the tiny screen. Tapping into Rogers’ phone had worked perfectly.
“We’re headed West on 7,” Rogers said.
“Thank you.” Comparing the man’s words with the locator, Neil felt confident that Rogers was giving it to him straight. That was a good sign. Rogers could be trusted, at least when asked directly. Neil had no false understanding about Rogers avoiding telling him anything. Yet, testing his sources gave Neil a better grasp of what to expect and who he could trust.
In a few minutes, Neil pulled onto Route 7 and joined the rest of the traffic, what there was of it. Route 7 wound through the hills interrupted every ten or twenty miles by a small town. If the perpetrators stopped anywhere, for gas at least, it would be a perfect time for Rogers to move in, once he caught up with them. Neil just hoped Rogers wouldn’t go in too quickly. The robots — Neil accepted Mavra’s first-hand take on what they were — would not hesitate to kill if they were preprogrammed for it. They weren’t human, after all. His heart raced and he took a deep breath. He still hadn’t decided what he would do once he got close enough to act. At the moment, he was more worried about Rogers’ plans.
No sooner had he turned onto Route 7 when Steffenbraun called. “Are you on their trail?”
Neil engaged the locator just for fun. Steffenbraun must have been at home, because Neil didn’t recognize the location. “The best I can be. I’m following the FBI at the moment.”
“You’ve got to get that equipment before they do. I don’t care what happens with the project right now, it’s that balancer I need.”
“Can’t you just make another one, for god’s sake?” Neil said. “That way I can get Mavra out of there and let the FBI handle the things.” He wouldn’t say robots to Steffenbraun. Not yet.
“Regardless of the circuitry, they all operate slightly different. This one’s…” Steffenbraun paused, “special.” When he spoke again he stuttered for a moment. “It, it, has its own, um, programming, in a way.” He formulated his words way too carefully while saying them, which indicated that they were contrived, not flowing freely.
“You’re hiding something,” Neil said. “If you don’t lay it on the line, I’m out of here. I’m going in after my wife and your fucking balancer can be blown to bits for all I care. Do you hear me? I don’t have time for games.”
A deep breath came from Steffenbraun. “It’s my genius that created the changes. You can’t talk to me that way. I did this and I’m going to go down in history for it. You, you…”
“Shit,” Neil said. “You made changes and you didn’t document them. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I made adjustments, and, well, repeatedly. I lost track of the exact changes. I’m not an engineer, but I know enough…”
“To get you into trouble,” Neil finished the sentence his way. There was no reason to listen to Steffenbraun brag for another second.
“I need that particular balancer. If you can’t do the job then I’ll get someone else,” he said.
“I hear you.” Neil hung up before he said something he would regret. Like call the man an asshole. Steffenbraun was a loose cannon. If he was behind the robbery, it had gotten way out of hand. Whatever those things were that had the balancer, those robots, they knew what it was worth and weren’t going to give it back willingly.
Neil hit the gas but the car didn’t leap forward as he expected. He was already speeding. Frustration rose inside him. With one eye on the road, Neil leaned over and opened a compartment under the glove box. He slid a laptop out and angled its mounting platform so that he could browse the web using his right hand.
He read and drove at the same time. The internet had been purged of all data sensitive to the military. But even at that the number of war robots available was massive. Even if he could locate all the different types, there was no time to read up on them all. He flipped through as much information as he could, then searched for photos. Matching the monsters he saw on the video to completely alien-looking robots wasn’t working either. He had to imagine the war bots with clothes on.
This was why humanoid robots were illegal.
The intruders appeared human, but didn’t quite move like humans. Lowan and O’Brien recognized the body parts. Hell, even Neil had seen prostheses before. So, someone made robots with body parts. Steffenbraun wouldn’t have done that, would he? That was a federal offense. Who in their right mind… and under the nose of the military and at their facility? Maybe that was it, whoever did this wasn’t in their right mind.
Neil had to swerve to miss a raccoon waddling across the road. The lid to the laptop snapped back as he righted the car. He reached up and angled it back into place. Where was he? Photos.
Even after an hour Neil wasn’t getting anywhere with his research. The situation was downright confusing, frustrating, complicated. If Mavra were here, she’d tell him to stop thinking and start feeling. Let the information percolate and find its own answers. She’d also tell him to get out of his own way. Stop resisting what was in front of his face.
He closed one eye and let that side of his brain free-associate, his form of meditation. Before long his mind was asleep while his other mind paid attention to the road. Rest was good sometimes. He could stay up as long as any robot could, and much longer than any FBI agent, merely by
allowing one side of his brain to sleep while the other side stayed alert.
He plowed through the evening and into the night, darkness coming on like a thick hood over the hills. Outside the city, with no streetlights, the stars were the only light besides his headlights and an occasional pair of oncoming ones. Neil lowered his window and let in the cold mountain air. His mind’s catnap ended and he opened his right eye and locked it into place with the left one. He felt refreshed. The laptop had gone into sleep mode.
Another half hour and Neil rang Rogers. “Still following them?”
“Just passed Clarkston Station. They’re a ways ahead of us. But we’re getting closer. A few hours ago they ditched the car they were driving. We spotted it off to the side of the road. Been checking for stolen vehicles and got a call a few minutes ago. Lucky the guy’s on the night shift or he probably wouldn’t have found his car missing until morning.” Rogers’ voice was muffled for a second. “Idiots are still on Route 7 from what we can tell.”
Neil double-checked Rogers’ position and searched through his GPS for a faster route through the mountains. Route 7 wound in a north-westerly manner. If he skipped to the highway, he may be able to get ahead of them through shear speed. They could only go so fast through the hills. His only concern was if he overshot where they were headed. Where were they headed? Neil shook his head and looked up the location of other government facilities. There were a few. His only guess was to head toward one of them, the one closest to Route 7.
He could beat them there. He’d be waiting.
CHAPTER 16
JESUS EXCLAIMED that he was bored with driving through the hills and pulled over.
“Are we going to walk?” Leonardo said.
“That would be stupid,” Gatsby said.
“But we stopped.” Leonardo said.
“Stop it. I’m just getting tired of the repetition. Plus, the car is running low on fuel.” Mavra heard Jesus open the door and get out. “Gatsby, you drive,” he said. “I’m going to get another car. Find a place where you can dump this one and wait for me.” Then he said to Mavra, “And you aren’t fooling anyone.”
Leonardo put a hand gently on Mavra’s shoulder, a protective gesture. “She’s asleep,” he said.
“No she isn’t,” Jesus said. “You two wouldn’t know a sleeping human if you saw one. Her breathing isn’t deep enough for that. She’s faking it.” There was some additional shuffling as it sounded like Gatsby and Jesus changing places.
Mavra listened but continued to feign sleep. Once it appeared as though Jesus was gone and the doors closed again, Gatsby pulled onto the road and continued to drive. He drove slower. It wasn’t long before he pulled completely off the road. The car bounced over a small ditch and jostled along another thirty feet before it stopped.
Mavra pretended to perk up as they hauled her from the car to wait just inside a wooded area. Now would be a perfect time for someone to rescue her, she thought, but nothing of the sort happened. She kneeled near the ground, making herself small and trying to stay as invisible as possible.
“You don’t have to call me stupid,” Leonardo said after standing there for a few minutes.
“I didn’t. I called what you said stupid,” Gatsby said.
“If I understand it correctly, that implies that I’m stupid.”
Gatsby wandered off a few yards. He didn’t even answer Leonardo.
Mavra waited with them in silence. They were definitely robots. She could hear the occasional hissing of motors and gears, the clicks of switches. She could see the stiffness of their bodies, and noticed that they weren’t shaped exactly like a human body. Yet, they operated independently. They communicated like siblings. And now, she sensed that Leonardo was agitated. She sensed it as though he were human. Their conversation was so much more advanced than any robot she had ever come into contact with. What was happing in the future to produce these things? Were humans already a minority race?
Jesus rolled up a half hour later in a mud-streaked SUV. The windows had been washed by the rain, but only along the wipers’ paths. That had been a few hours ago when the downpour passed through. At the moment, stars were out overhead. The rain would be winding through the mountains just as they were driving the twisting road.
Jesus led them away from the car. Mavra’s shoes and pant legs became damp from the short walk from the car to the woods.
The robots didn’t talk much, so she still had no idea where they were headed. Leonardo exhibited the gentlest nature of the three, a simpler mind, a more curious one. He was used to being put down by Gatsby, who continually wanted to show off his intelligence to impress their leader. Jesus, for god’s sake, what a name. Where had that come from? She stood near Leonardo whenever she appeared to have a choice, which meant that it was Leonardo who put her into the car. When he grabbed her arm, his touch was firm, but gentle. He didn’t shove her or swing her around, but guided her into the SUV.
“Are we going home?” Gatsby said.
Jesus trained one eye on Gatsby’s misaligned face. “What makes you think that?”
“We lived near here once. It was long ago, well not long ago in reference to my time stamp. It was actually far into the future that we came here. I’m sure you remember, Jesus, it was where we hid sometimes.”
So they were familiar with the area, she thought. They lived here. She didn’t recall any research facilities this far into the country, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t one. But one that created humanoid robots? How and why was that possible?
“This is a special trip back. I have only one thing to take care of. I have to stop something from happening, but we can’t do that yet. We have to wait for a package to arrive. In the mean time, we get reinforcements. We need a small army in order to assert ourselves earlier in history, human history,” Jesus said.
“I know what you’re going to do,” Gatsby said, “when we get home.”
Leonardo sat as though he was asleep, but Mavra knew better. Her guess was that Leonardo couldn’t keep up with the conversation, which wrapped around itself through the reference of time, and decided to shut down for a while. From their earlier conversation, she assumed that time had slipped into a space where it was an open loop instead of a closed loop for Leonardo. Jesus and Gatsby had both learned how to close the loop when they had to and open it as changes occurred. It had to do with the time stamping she heard them talking about.
Leonardo perked up next to Mavra. “So why aren’t we going to the warehouse now? Or the assembly plant? Why do we have to go home?”
Jesus shook his head. “Time stamp!” he said. “There’s nothing in the warehouse that we need right now.”
They stopped talking again and Mavra felt it was a good time to slow them down. “Could we stop for something to eat?” she said.
Jesus, back in the driver’s seat, said, “No. You won’t starve to death in a day or two.”
“I’m hypoglycemic. If you don’t get food into me, I won’t be worth anything to you,” she said.
“Hypoglycemic,” Gatsby repeated.
Jesus didn’t answer for a long time, as though he was looking it up, perhaps in memory. She wondered if he had an encyclopedia in his head, or wherever his brain-like circuits were located.
“We’ll stop and get some food for you. I know where we can go.” Jesus took a side road that brought them to a crossroads where a small store and gas station sat. The place was closed down for the evening, but there were vending machines outside. “Get her some food.”
“I’ll go,” Gatsby said.
For the first time, Mavra stared at her abductor. Gatsby’s head appeared to move more naturally than Leonardo’s or Jesus’s. His body, though, was barrel shaped just like his buddy on her left. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head even though no one appeared to be around. As he slid across the seat, she reached out and poked his side with her hand, to get his attention, but his side was hard and he didn’t respond. He couldn’t feel
her touch, she thought. Poking Leonardo in the side with her elbow, she got no response either.
She glanced down at the floor where the device they were carrying lay at Leonardo’s feet. She wondered what it was. Also on the floor she saw the heavy dark form of Gatsby’s gun. She didn’t recognize what kind it was, but he had left it behind. Her first thought was to grab it and threaten to shoot one of them, but that felt so wrong that she didn’t even move toward it. After all, where would she aim?
Gatsby came back with chips and candy bars and a small pack of chocolate-covered donuts. He dumped it all into Mavra’s lap. “That should do the trick.”
She leaned over as he got back into the car and saw that the vending machine Plexiglas had been broken. “Thank you,” she said.
“Back to the main road,” Gatsby said in a tone that indicated annoyance at taking the detour.
“There’s a hunting cabin up here,” Jesus said. “We’ll stay there for the night. I’m sure Neil will be following us. That’s what husbands do. But we’ll leave the car and go on foot. Unless he’s a tracker, that should slow him down. If we have to, we’ll steal another car before we go back.”
“Go back?” Mavra couldn’t help herself. “Why’d we come all the way out here, just to go back?”
“Killing time,” Leonardo said. Then the strangest sound came from his mouth as he began to laugh.
The tone of his voice was so unnatural that it disturbed her.
Mavra edged away from him, but then bumped into Gatsby. She had never heard a robot laugh, and got the sense that it didn’t mean the same thing to them as it did to her. There was definitely something different about these things.
“I’m glad to see you have begun to understand humor, but this is a serious situation we’re in,” Jesus said. “We only need to hold up for a day. Even if they have a lot of people looking for us, it’ll be difficult to pinpoint us in the hills. They’ll have to track us, and as I said, I doubt they can.”