by Terry Persun
Dr. Steffenbraun swung around in the chair.
Smythe advanced and saw that Professors Lowan and O’Brien were sitting at the conference room table with Steffenbraun. The screen had been pulled down in front of the window, and a still image of a man was displayed. Lowan and O’Brien’s lips were moving, but they were angled so it was difficult for Smythe to read. They finished their conversation. Steffenbraun pushed a button on the controls and the screen went blank.
Smythe stopped at the doorway.
“Come in, Donovan. Have a seat.” Steffenbraun motioned for him to sit anywhere.
“That face on the screen when I came in. Who was it?”
Steffenbraun produced a sly smile and said, “You’ll never guess what’s going on.”
CHAPTER 27
NEIL HAD A BETTER UNDERSTANDING of Jesus and his horde of misfits once Mavra revealed that they were equipped with neurogrid circuitry. Universities had been researching the use of neurogrid electronics to simulate emotional responses for years, and had made some huge strides. But if this, what was before him, was the result, there needed to be more tests for sure.
Neil and Mavra stood up, following Jesus’s lead. Neil turned his head enough to see Mavra out the corner of his eye. She shied away from facing the slaughter. Gaining her attention from what had just happened, he whispered over his shoulder, “All of them have emotions?”
“Every one.” Her voice was cracked and raspy.
Gatsby continued to watch them from behind the machine, which was still kicking out robots like a dog birthing puppies. He walked around and sidled next to Jesus and whispered something to him.
Jesus cocked his head in an unnatural position and said, “Don’t hurt anyone else. That’s not why we came.”
“It is why we came,” Gatsby said. “We’ve got to show our strength now or they’ll think they can stop us.”
“But they can’t.” Jesus indicated the combat robots.
“And what will we do with them?” Gatsby said, referring to the FBI agents who stood like statues with their hands in the air and their weapons at their feet.
“General!” Jesus shouted.
One of the combat robots swung around and rolled over to him. “Jesus?”
“Gather them up and put them in the office where they’re out of our way. If anything funny happens,” he raised his voice so that Rogers could hear, “kill them all.”
“If they are all dead, there is no reason for the enemy to be cautious,” General said.
“Then save a couple of them. I don’t care. You’re in charge of that strategy.” Jesus walked over to Neil, leaving General to go about his business. “You saved me.” He looked Neil up and down. “I don’t know how you are put together, but it’s a wonderful job.”
“He’s a freak,” Gatsby said. “A human freak. So his eyes can move in different directions. That doesn’t mean he’s one of us.”
Jesus continued to look at Neil. “He’s not one of them either. You heard the agent.” He took Neil’s wrist and turned it over. “This looks like real flesh.” He raised his wrist next to Neil’s. “I’m not sure I understand it.”
“Why not just accept it?” Mavra said. “Do you have to know the science behind everything? Do you judge one another based on advancements in abilities? On functional purpose?”
“Shut up.” Gatsby shoved the pistol barrel toward her as though poking at her through the bars of a cage.
Neil recognized the pistol as a small 22-caliber model used more for target practice than for killing. This made Gatsby appear less threatening regardless of his aggressive actions. His assertions faded into the background, as Neil realized that Jesus held control.
“I say we keep only enough of them to use as hostages and get rid of the rest,” Gatsby said.
Leonardo moved for the first time in a while, walking over and to stand next to Mavra. He appeared to like her, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. “Even I know that it would do us no good to destroy everyone.”
“Are you mocking me?” Gatsby said.
Jesus held up a hand to stop the bickering. “I’ll decide. And I say we stick with my new plan. General can handle the take-over. As soon as enough of us come through the machine, he’ll spread out into the community and capture more people. We convert the automobile plant down the road into a robot manufacturing plant. Then we’re on our way.”
“You don’t really think you can take over the world with a warehouse filled with robots, do you?” Neil said. “And the auto plant will take weeks to retool.”
“I don’t need to think it. That’s General’s expertise.” Jesus glanced around for General and yelled to him. “General, will your plan to gain sequential control over the US work?”
“Yes, sir,” General said.
Children, Neil thought. Or rather, teenagers who think they know everything and are invincible. Someone needs to program in a little less confidence. Perhaps when fear for one’s life wasn’t an issue, fear of failure disappeared as well, he surmised.
Jesus shrugged. “That’s all I need to know.” He motioned for Leonardo to follow him. “Come on. I’ve got one more thing to do, and it’s a long drive. Bring them.”
Rotating to address Jesus, Gatsby said, “Why not just her? We don’t need an extra worry.”
“What do you have against me?” Neil said, addressing him directly.
Gatsby jerked around and raised the pistol.
Neil didn’t flinch.
Gatsby pulled the trigger.
The bullet blasted against Neil’s side, passing clear through his body, and clanked against the warehouse doors.
Mavra squeaked in surprise and reached for him.
Jesus slapped the gun from Gatsby’s hand. “What did you do?” he said as though Gatsby was a child who had accidently spilled his milk.
At the same time, three combat robots were deployed by General to cover Jesus. Their rubber tracks pulled them to an abrupt halt encircling Gatsby.
Neil felt the bullet go through, a sting in his side. He reached to swat at the sting and noticed blood spreading over his shirt. In a moment, the pain came and he bent into it. He exaggerated the pain by moaning. He grimaced as though he was badly hurt. Mavra pulled him close and leaned across him to look at the wound.
Gatsby said, “He’s not like us. You can see that now. We don’t need him.”
Jesus was having none of it. “It’s not your decision.” He reached over and moved Mavra out of his way and touched Neil. “You bleed.” Turning toward the other robots, Jesus yelled, “Find a first aid kit.”
Neil figured the initial charade was over. Gatsby had done his job well if it was to expose Neil as not being a robot. But there was still another role to play. He may be able to slow them down, which would give him more time to come up with a plan. “I need to sit,” Neil said, leaning more of his weight on Mavra and stumbling over his own feet.
Mavra helped him to the floor.
A robot with only one mechanical arm sticking from the top of its torso carried a first aid kit to Mavra. The robot, like many of them, was painted battleship gray.
Neil saw that the FBI had already been shoved into the office. The dead had been removed, but he couldn’t see where they had taken them. He could only assume that the men who had scrambled early on had been found and assembled with the rest of them. The office looked packed. Two combat bots waited outside the door.
The time machine continued to spit out robots of all shapes and sizes, including teddy bears and small toy dolls of some kind. Many of them carried weapons. It was a pretty freakish sight. He wondered how many robots there were in the future. Were they all coming through?
Mavra pulled his shirt up and worked on wrapping his side with gauze. She removed his Glock and handed it to Leonardo, who threw it against the wall. He gave her a questioning look but she didn’t respond.
Neil didn’t know if she was aware that he had only been grazed — there was still pain involved —
or if she thought he was truly wounded. He was more concerned that he’d stop bleeding and the gig would be up, but for now he moaned convincingly as she wrapped him.
“Let’s go before more of them show up,” Jesus said. “You’re staying here,” he said to Gatsby.
Gatsby turned on Jesus, looking as though he was about to strike out. The combat bots inched forward in warning, and Gatsby stepped back.
Neil heard a giggle come from Leonardo, but it wasn’t loud enough for anyone but him and Mavra to hear. Competition, he thought. Among robots?
“Don’t do this,” Gatsby said. “We’ve been together for so long.”
Neil was surprised to hear Gatsby’s voice crack and change, as though he was crying, but without the sign of tears. The situation transformed into something bizarre when Gatsby got onto his knees in front of Jesus. “You are the savior and will lead us to a place closer to God.”
Neil looked at Mavra and let his eyes roll in opposite directions to indicate the craziness of the display. “Closer to God?” he whispered. He had ignored the fact that Leonardo stood so close, seeing him more as an ally than an enemy.
Mavra squeezed his arm as if to say shut up, but it was too late.
Leonardo stepped forward. “Evolutionary advancement,” he said.
Jesus took his attention from Gatsby and looked at Leonardo. “What did you say?”
“Neil questioned Gatsby’s comment. I was explaining,” Leonardo said.
Jesus appeared flustered. He started to step away from Gatsby then went back to him. There were two conversations going on.
Neil couldn’t imagine, even with all the firepower already inside the warehouse, how this group of robots could imagine that they could take over the entire US. It made no sense to him. Even now, he figured the FBI or the military or both were planning a way to stop this here and now. He wanted to ask more questions, but Mavra gripped his arm to keep him still and quiet.
Jesus addressed Neil, letting Gatsby remain kneeling at his feet. “You don’t know what the missing link was in your human evolution. Ape to man appears sudden. From man to robot may appear sudden too, but it’s true. We are here now. And we are superior to your race. Simply enough: You cannot travel through time. We can. God can. You are the apes,” he said in a condescending tone. “You can live among us, but you can no longer use us or own us. Your reign is over.”
He turned around raising his arms into the air. “We are only beginning our evolution.” His voice was loud. “We are at the dawn of our race. A race that understands its physical body so well that we can live forever.” He turned back to Neil. “Humans eventually wear out and die. You’ve gotten closer to being able to replace everything, but we are already there, even at the beginning of our race. We are the chosen ones.”
Jesus lowered his head and a roar came from the robots that now occupied much of the space inside the warehouse. A cheer.
Neil shivered with the thought of what Jesus’s words implied. Even if he didn’t believe this small group of robots could take over the world, their belief in it would make things much more difficult.
As though the roar from the other robots had created a weight on his back, Gatsby dropped even lower onto the floor pressing his elbows to the concrete. His body vibrated with a whimpering shiver.
Neil had seen nothing like this before. He moved his arm enough to get Mavra’s attention, and pointed to the time machine. Several boxes overflowing with integrated circuit boards were being dragged to the side by a few robots and teddy bears. But the machine wasn’t spitting out anything more. It had stopped.
Neil’s guess was that the circuit boards were neurogrid designed, and would be used to upgrade any robots they ran into, as well as to be installed in new robots they made once they acquisitioned the auto manufacturing plant they had mentioned.
While Neil paid attention to the progression of the present predicament, his other brain kept an eye on the time machine and the dark energy balancer, which was his second reason for being there. He could see that the device was Jesus’s ride home, if he were going home to the future eventually, which is what Neil knew would happen. Jesus, in his opinion, would not want to stay in the midst of the battle. He would be among the first to go back into the future where he could reap the benefits of the changes he put into effect in the past. For as circular as the idea appeared, it was the most logical chain of events.
Jesus kneeled next to Gatsby and put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll go with us.”
“Thank you. I know I was wrong. I’m sorry.” Gatsby slowly rose from the floor.
“Just stick with me. It’ll be over soon and we’ll be on our way,” Jesus said. “Now, gather those two. We’re leaving.”
Although their expressions were not perfect renditions of human expressions, Neil thought that he saw a sly look come over Gatsby. His eyes narrowed for only a moment. Did the follower think he just pulled one over on the leader? As Gatsby and Leonardo separated Mavra and Neil so that they could lift him from the floor, Gatsby whispered to Leonardo, “And you thought you’d gotten rid of me.”
Neil feigned pain in his side and groaned. He held up a hand to speak and nodded to Jesus. “May I suggest we take the balancer?”
Jesus peered over at the time machine, sitting quietly now.
“If the military even tried to get through, it could be destroyed in a crossfire. You’d never be able to get back.” Neil waited for a response then added, “At least with us you’ll know that it’s safe.” Assuming we’re safe at all, Neil thought.
“Grab the device,” Jesus said.
Gatsby immediately looked to Leonardo, obviously the low man out of the three of them.
Leonardo retrieved the dark energy balancer after shutting the machine down. It took only a few minutes to unclip all the connections. He put it under his arm and they went outside to the car they must have driven to the warehouse.
Neil was glad to have the balancer in their possession even though he wasn’t sure how he was going to acquire it. Better with him than with Rogers, who was in a much worse position at that moment.
He and Mavra were loaded into the back seat of an SUV. “Where’d they get this?” he said quietly.
“You don’t want to know,” Mavra said.
Neil paid close attention to the dynamics of the team. These three were obviously separate from the rest of the robots that they treated like employees or slaves. Jesus was a bit of a megalomaniac. Gatsby vied for position, the younger brother of sorts. And Leonardo, what was he? Neil concluded that he was the balance between the two. Whether he had been designed to be that or had fallen into that position because of the present dynamic, who could be sure?
As expected, Gatsby took the seat next to Jesus and Leonardo sat in the back with Neil and Mavra.
Neil glanced around the area, surprised that he saw no one in position outside the warehouse. Had Rogers expected to finish the job up from the inside? With no backup? Neil shook his head. Look where that got them.
Jesus swung the car onto the highway.
The inside of the car was silent, which gave Neil time to consider the situation. He had not counted, but guessed that there were over a thousand robots in the warehouse, many of them armed to the hilt. Others among them looked to be domestic robots of some sort. The bizarre part was in the number of human-looking limbs the robots wore. He suspected that hands had replaced tools or pincers of some kind, or vacuum attachments, even measuring devices used in manufacturing processes. He recalled being exposed to robots that had been in development. He’d been to the Robotics Trends tradeshows and seen what was coming down the pike. Some of the robots from the time machine were updated versions of those he’d seen at those events. So, many of those robots would actually make it into production in the future, he thought.
Although robots were not allowed to look human, they were allowed to look like toys, but only for hospital use. Children and adults alike reacted better to toys than they did to some
of the strangely organized robots that met with approval for military, home, or warehouse use. That didn’t stop a teddy bear holding a gun from looking scary. There was something to be said about the limitations of what should be allowed. Maybe the laws should be revisited.
Neil placed a hand over his side. The blood had stopped flowing. Only a small amount had seeped through the gauze. He looked over and Mavra winked at him. She knew he had faked it. He was glad. Since he had her attention, he shrugged his shoulders and cocked his head as if to say, “Where are we going?”
Mavra responded with a shrug and shake of her head. She had no idea.
CHAPTER 28
FENNY STRUGGLED WITH one very important fact, which led to an equally important question. If he wasn’t Fenny or Fennimore, then he was someone else. But who? After reading through Dr. Klein’s notes and reviewing the 3D drawings for face reconstruction, or in this case full construction, Fenny spent a few minutes adjusting the cheekbones and chin. He wasn’t going to look like Fennimore. He couldn’t live with that.
Once the adjustments were made, Fenny ordered the face through Dartmouth Medical School. They had a production process where they provided a rapid prototyping version of the face, then integrated it with animation software. It wasn’t perfect, but it would be much better than the two flexible shafts sticking out of the torso that he had now.
Posing as Dr. Klein, he had ordered through Dartmouth on multiple occasions. Dartmouth had one of the few Fused Synthetic Modeling machines in the country, and could print the structure out in a day. At the moment, Fenny had no idea how to mount the face or how to wire it for movement, but knew that he could figure it out if he had to. Perhaps he could use a mannequin’s head as the structural base since he didn’t have a skeletal structure.
He shut down the computer and rotated one of his eyes to check on Dr. Klein’s condition. Still asleep. It was time to play with his new mind. Since the beginning, Fenny found that he could recognize the quality of thought, as he called it, between his strictly digital circuitry and his neurogrid circuitry. He tested to see if the DNA-enhanced circuitry was discernible. To do this, he wandered among the equipment and boxes in the room, touching items at random. All the while he explored, he ported information into his newly defined segment, the DNA-enhanced circuits. Once he moved from one end of the room to the other, he closed his video inputs and reversed his experience. If he had put everything into digital, it would be an easy operation to complete. In neurogrid, things became a bit more difficult because he could sense what he had done, but not replicate his exact movement.