The Thunder of Engines

by Laurence Dahners

  Ron shrugged, “Of mine, just my laptop and my speaker system. Don’t know if they got anything else of yours.”

  Kaem wasn’t wild about his roommate, but he knew the guy was enamored of his speakers. He said, “Sorry about your sounds, man.”

  Ron nodded but didn’t otherwise respond.

  The cop in the room said, “You’re the roommate?”

  Kaem nodded.

  “Have a look around. Let us know what they got of yours.”

  As Kaem walked across the room to his desk he asked, “They break into any other rooms?”

  The cop said, “Apparently not. Metz here thinks they were after his sound system but I’m not sure it was worth more than that fancy monitor of yours that they left behind. How much did that monster cost?”

  Kaem shrugged, “About nine hundred dollars.”

  The cop clicked his tongue. “You kids nowadays. You made of money or something?”

  Kaem shook his head irritatedly, “No, or I wouldn’t be living in the dorm. It was part of my scholarship package.”

  “Wow, some scholarship,” the policeman said, rolling his eyes.

  Kaem checked the spot where his computer’d been sitting. Nothing there but the ends of cords. He knelt in front of the desk’s footwell and peered up into the back of it. To his surprise, the external backup hard drive he’d screwed into the upper back corner was still there. He didn’t mention it. Apparently, the CPU case was the only thing missing from his computer setup. He moved on, checking the rest of the room. When he pulled out his under-bed drawer he saw—without surprise—that all the electronic components of his version one stazer were gone. His initial reaction was that he shouldn’t tell the cops about their loss, but then he decided he should. He wouldn’t want whoever had done this—Martin Aerospace, he thought—to think he hadn’t noticed or didn’t care about the gear they’d gone to such lengths to get. He turned to the policeman and said, “I had a bunch of electronic gear from one of my projects in this drawer. It’s all gone.”

  “Valuable?”

  “About fifteen hundred dollars.”

  “You got model and serial numbers?”

  Kaem sighed, “I might be able to get model numbers from the websites where I ordered them. But not until I can get on a computer. I’ll have to see.”

  The cop spoke to his phone’s AI. “I just sent you my contact info. Send me all the info you can about your gear. Sometimes we do better catching crooks who’re trying to pawn weird gear than common stuff like computers.” He gave a little shrug, “Though, to tell the truth, our success rate getting people’s stuff back ain’t great. Any chance you had insurance?”

  Kaem shook his head glumly. He thought, And there’s no chance you’re gonna find my stuff in a pawn shop. He said, “You downloaded the hallway security cameras, right? You want Ron and me to see if we recognize the people who did this?”

  Unhappily, the cop shook his head, “Somebody stuck gum over the lenses.”

  Though Kaem wasn’t surprised, he lifted his eyebrows as if he were. “This is sounding more and more like a professional job?”

  The policeman shook his head, “Professional thieves don’t hit dorm rooms. You guys known to have something more valuable in here than your computers or the electronics you mentioned?”

  Kaem slowly shook his head. Then he went through the motions of checking his closet, though he was sure nothing else would be missing.

  Nothing was.

  Kaem asked, “Doesn’t one camera cover the other, since they’re at opposite ends of the hall? Shouldn’t you be able to see the person who put the gum on the first camera in the vid from the second camera?”

  “Yeah. He backed out of the stairwell last night, wrapped in a sheet and wearing gloves and a stocking cap. Rose up on his tiptoes and stuck the gum on the lens. You never get to see his face or clothes or anything.”

  “Maybe we’d recognize him from his mannerisms or something.”

  Ron said, “I already looked. Doesn’t look like anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  The cop said, “You want to look too?”

  Kaem nodded. The cop brought over his phone and showed him the video. Kaem hadn’t thought about how tiny the image of the person would be with him at the far end of the hall. “You’re right,” he said, “I’ve got no clue.”

  The police piddled around in a desultory fashion for a while longer. This mostly consisted of taking statements and pictures and interviewing other students to see if they saw anything. They did swab for DNA in a few places but said—since the perp could be seen to be wearing gloves in the hallway video—it likely wouldn’t pay off.

  Kaem said, “So this person came up in the middle of the night last night and blocked the cameras. Then returned in the middle of the day today when Ron and I were gone to carry the stuff away? But didn’t take stuff from anyone else on the hallway? That seems like a lot of planning for your typical drug-addled, non-professional dorm criminal.”

  The cop nodded slowly. He said, “Sometimes there’s no accounting for what crooks do. Most of them aren’t exactly criminal masterminds.”

  “How’d he get into the room?”

  “The door thinks it was open all morning. We think when Metz left this morning, the guy caught the door before it closed completely.”

  “No shit?” Kaem turned to Ron. “If he was close enough to catch the door when you left, you must’ve seen the guy. Any recollection of what he looked like?”

  Ron shook his head. “I was late. Took off out of here at a run. Sorry.”

  Kaem needed another computer, but he didn’t want to leave until the cops were gone. He sat on the bed, put his phone on silent, and pulled up the video record from his desktop computer’s camera. He left it on all the time with the video storing in his cloud account. It started recording over the file after seventy-two hours but a record of the theft should be there. With all the planning that had gone into this Kaem wasn’t hopeful. Surely whoever robbed them had disabled the camera somehow.

  I’ll be damned! Kaem thought when he brought up the video from that morning and the camera showed it’d been recording. They probably covered the camera after they came in, but I might get some images of them before they occluded it. After some thought, he realized people wouldn’t expect him to be recording from the camera 24/7. It was only because of his paranoia. The same paranoia that had him using his own encryption system for his data. The paranoia that, in addition to the encryption, had him creating diagrams and descriptions of the staze process with multiple errors so if someone did hack his computer and break his encryption, they still wouldn’t be able to build a stazer. The paranoia that kept him from writing his theory down.

  As the video fast-forwarded past Kaem getting up and leaving, he pondered the fact that recording it was an invasion of Ron’s privacy. If I turn this over to the cops, Ron’s going to rake me over the coals for recording without his permission.

  On the fast-forward vid, Metz reached out from under his covers, picked up his phone and made a call. He got out of bed, whirled into the bathroom, then shot across the room to put on clothes. Grabbing his backpack, he put in his laptop, then knelt by Kaem’s bed and loaded the backpack with most of the electronics out of Kaem’s under bed drawer.

  As Kaem thought, Son of a bitch! Metz whirled out of the room on video, stopping to stuff a wad of paper through the strike plate and into the deadbolt’s box in the doorframe. Kaem realized that was why the door thought it’d been unlocked all morning. The bolt’s auto mechanism couldn’t throw itself.

  Stunned, Kaem forced himself not to make any audible exclamations. Nor to look up at Metz. Nor to call the cop over to watch.

  But his mind worked furiously.

  Meanwhile, on the video, Metz sped back into the room.

  Kaem thought, He wasn’t gone very long. That phone call was probably to someone who met him in the stairwell or downstairs. I’ll have to re-watch this and get times off of it.

 
Metz got the last of the electronics out of Kaem’s under bed drawer, then put his own subwoofer in on top of them. He sped back out of the room.

  Metz reappeared on the video and put his small surround speakers in the backpack. He crossed the room to Kaem’s desk, bent over it, and a moment later the video recording crashed, presumably when Metz unplugged Kaem’s computer.

  Metz had already put everything that’d been “stolen” in the backpack, so Kaem didn’t expect Metz would’ve reappeared on the video even if it’d still been running. The cops were still in the room, so Kaem didn’t have anything better to do. He restarted the video and started noting times.

  The cop in the room cleared his throat. “Okay. We’ve got everything we can get. We’ll let you guys know if we find anything, but don’t hold your breath.”

  Kaem frowned, “You’ll let us know either way, right?”

  “No. Only if we find anything.”

  “Surely you’ll tell us what the DNA shows?”

  The guy shrugged, “If he wore gloves to do the camera, he almost certainly wore them in here. DNA isn’t going to show anything. We’re just being thorough.”

  “I meant the DNA from the gum on the camera,” Kaem said, noticing Ron’s flinch out of the corner of his eye.

  “Um, yeah. I’ll let you know if it matches any of our databases.”

  “And you’ll go through the video for a day or so before the gum went on the camera?”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “Well, it occurs to me that if it was someone from our floor of the dorm, someone who knew about Ron’s sound system, that the camera would’ve recorded them on their way off the floor some hours before they returned to stick the gum on the cameras. Likely would’ve had a backpack stuffed full of sheets.”

  The cop rolled his eyes. “You think I’ve got nothing better to do than sit around watching video?”

  “Um, no. But I did think it was your job to catch bad guys.”

  “Right…” the cop said glumly. “I’ll do it, but it isn’t going to pay off. Whoever did this didn’t rob his own dorm. He’d have to be crazy to do that.”

  “You haven’t heard how good Ron’s music system sounded,” Kaem said drily.

  ***

  Kaem called Arya as soon as the campus police walked out the door. He wanted to meet at one of the eateries on the meal plan. She told him to wait for her in the lounge on the first floor of his dorm so she could act as his bodyguard again.

  When he left, he wasn’t surprised to see one of the policemen standing on a chair at the end of the hall, distastefully pulling the gum off the security camera.

  When Arya showed up, she had a bundle under her arm. She held it out. “Here’s your coat.”

  Irritated, he said, “I’ve already got a coat on.”

  “Take that one back upstairs. You need to wear this one.”

  Kaem sighed and turned back to the elevator. While he waited, he gently probed the coat he held, feeling the lumps from the vest of stade plates she’d inserted into it. When he got up to his room, he hung up his other coat and put on the stade coat. While waiting for the elevator back downstairs he patted around to figure out where the plates were located. There aren’t any up near the top of my shoulders, he observed, realizing they wouldn’t fit the curves there. There weren’t any over his arms either. They’re only on the relatively flat parts of me, because we only have flat stades. If we put them over the rounded places, they’d make the coat lumpy. He pondered inserting them elsewhere no matter how they looked, but realized that’d draw a lot of attention. Attention they didn’t need right now. We’ve gotta do better than this though, he thought. We should at least make some curved plates.

  They walked to an eatery they didn’t usually go to—worried that their usual haunts might be monitored. On the way, Kaem told Arya what’d happened.

  “Your roommate did it?!” she exclaimed. “That’s almost a relief. I mean, I’m sorry you lost your computer but you’d stoked my apprehensions to the point I was thinking it was some evil people from Martin Aerospace did it.”

  Kaem studied her a moment, “Arya, the evil people from Martin Aero paid Metz to do it.”

  “Oh, come on Kaem. That’s just… your paranoia again.”

  “Oh, come on Arya,” he parroted back at her. “Surely you don’t think Metz would steal his own laptop and sound system just so he could steal my computer and some electronics he has no use for? Where’s the benefit to him? He’d have to be insane.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh…”

  Kaem nodded, “‘Oh’ is right. Besides, each time he left the room, he was only gone long enough to reach the stairwell. He must’ve been handing the goods off to someone he’d called.”

  Arya sighed, “Crap. What’d the police say when you showed them the video?”

  Shaking his head, Kaem said, “I didn’t show it to them.”

  “What? Why not?!”

  They were in line to buy food. Kaem rolled his eyes and whispered, “I don’t think the Campus Police are up to dealing with this kind of thing.”

  “You’re going to call the city cops?” Arya whispered in return.

  “No. First of all, they’d turn up their noses. They’d tell me dorm robbery falls under the campus cops’ jurisdiction. Second, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t know what to do with this kind of crime either. Third, I don’t want Martin Aero to realize we know it’s them. They might do something even more drastic.”

  They got their food and went to an empty area to sit. Arya asked, “What are we going to do then?”

  Kaem shrugged, “Got any ideas?”

  “No! This kind of stuff isn’t covered in business classes!’

  “Not covered in physics either,” Kaem said unhappily.

  They ate, mostly in silence, then started back to Kaem’s dorm. Arya said, “Maybe you should sleep over at my apartment. Someplace they won’t know to look for you.”

  Kaem’s heart leaped, then settled. “I think they know we’re associated by now. It’d probably just put you at risk.” After a moment he said, “Though I’d love to… stay with you.”

  She punched his shoulder. “I meant on the couch, idiot.”

  “I… know. Sorry.”

  She didn’t respond, but as they walked, she slipped her arm around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder.

  Goosebumps running down his spine, Kaem lifted his arm and started to settle it around her shoulders, then stopped uncertainly with it hovering in the air.

  His arm had started to ache from being held up when she said, “It’s okay. You can put it around me.”

  Trying not to sigh with relief, he settled his arm companionably around her shoulders.

  She looked up at him and dashed his hopes. “Just this once. And please, don’t say something stupid this time, okay?”

  Kaem said nothing. As they arrived at his dorm she deftly let go and slipped out from under his arm. She opened the door and walked with him to the elevator, riding up and walking him to his room. When he opened the door, she leaned in, looked around, then stepped back and said, “See you in the morning.”

  Kaem paused in the doorway to sneak a glance at her walking away. Worried she might turn and catch him at it, he stepped inside and let the door close. Nodding at Metz, he tried not to let his feelings show, “Cops tell you anything?”

  Metz said, “No. But I’m sorely missing my tunes.”

  Kaem threw himself on the bed, Methinks thou doth protest too much.

  ***

  Kaem woke when he heard his phone vibrate. Rubbing bleary eyes, he looked at the screen. Bana’s calling at five-thirty in the morning? He wondered what could’ve gotten his sister up so early.

  Oh! Something bad.

  Kaem got up and padded into the bathroom. Metz would raise hell if Kaem woke him by taking a call. “Hello, Bana. What’s happened?”

  “Dad’s sick,” she said, sounding exhausted. “We’ve been in the ER all night.
”

  “Oh, no,” Kaem said, heart sinking. His family was already financially destitute and didn’t have health insurance. ER bills would make it far worse. “It’ll take me at least half a day to get home. Maybe a lot longer, depending on when the next bus leaves. Do we know what’s wrong yet?”

  “No…,” she said, a catch in her voice. “But I don’t think it’s good.”

  Kaem waited for her to tell him more, but all he heard was an odd rhythmic noise. She’s crying, he understood suddenly. Bana normally played it so tough it was hard for Kaem to come to grasp with the thought of his sister in tears. “Um,” he cleared his throat to try to get rid of a sudden frog. “What’s been wrong with him?”

  Bana cleared her throat as well. “He’s been really tired and Mama hasn’t been able to get him to eat. Yesterday she took his temperature and he had a fever. Trying to understand what was going on, she took off his shirt and got a good look at him. When she did, she realized that even though his belly’s been getting bigger, he’s actually very skinny. Oh, and he has these bad sweats. He out and out drips.”

  Could it be AIDS? Kaem wondered. He didn’t think his dad had any of the risk factors for getting HIV, but Kaem knew people usually hid such risk factors, especially from the people they loved. And he thought AIDS victims were tired and lost weight. He didn’t know about the other symptoms of the disease. “Let me check the bus schedule. I’ll call to tell you when I’m going to get there.”

  “No,” Bana said. She gave a sad yet amused snort, “No matter how bad the crisis is here, Mom and Dad don’t want their golden boy to leave his studies. Mom just asked me to let you know… you know,” her voice broke and she developed a fit of coughing—Kaem thought trying to hide how upset she was. When she resumed talking her voice was strained. “Excuse me. They wanted you to know, um, in case it gets worse. I’ll call you back when we know more.” I’d better go now.”

  “What?” Kaem asked, trying to make a joke to lighten their bleak mood. “No begging to switch phones with me?”

  Bana didn’t laugh. “I’ll call you. Bye.”