Listening to her, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing on each other’s shoulders. Servatron no longer had to wait for the Rise of the Machines – it had found a way to rise up in our time.
Retconite would trigger a factory reset for the human race.
Our original plan was toast – getting Zack and Cara to the concert wouldn’t foil Servatron’s new scheme. We had to come up with another way to stop the AI. But we couldn’t stop Servatron if we couldn’t find it.
Lara rolled out a map of the area and with a highlighter pen circled a section on the High Street near the comic shop. “This is our last confirmed sighting of Servatron. There was another possible sighting here.” She indicated a street in the town centre. “But it was a report from an unreliable rodent.”
“Ah,” said Serge knowingly. “Was it that mouse who once swore he had seen Darth Vader coming out of the dry cleaners?”
“I have operatives in the field on the lookout,” she went on. “And not just the field – the pavement and the sky too. If any of them see or hear anything, their orders are to report to me here right away.” Lara remained confident that it was only a matter of time before we located Servatron and Talbot. “And when it gets dark they’ll hand over to the night patrol.”
As Dark Flutter she could call on the assistance of a number of nocturnal creatures. Unfortunately, owls were too snooty to lend a wing, and bats were a complete waste of time, unwilling to get out of their roost for anyone less than the Dark Knight himself. But that still left a small army of creatures, including foxes, mice, cats, hedgehogs and two-toed sloths. (She’d confirmed this last one at the zoo. Of course, wild sloths were in short supply in Bromley and even if they’d been all over the place, they weren’t renowned for their energetic hunting instincts.)
“We can’t wait that long,” said Dina. “Who knows how advanced Servatron’s plans are.”
Zack studied the map. “The question is where would a domestic appliance AI from the future lie low while it plotted the downfall of the human race?”
“Somewhere without people,” said Dina.
“Mars,” suggested Serge. “It is a planet inhabited solely by robots.”
Lara shot him a look. “What?”
“Robots,” repeated Serge. “There is the Mars Opportunity Rover, and Curiosity and—”
“Servatron is not on Mars,” said Dina firmly. “And it won’t be far from here either. Even with all that superpowered electrical charge that Talbot helpfully supplied it with, it won’t waste power on unnecessary travel.”
I factored that in. “So, somewhere without humans. On Earth. Near or in Bromley.”
Lara put a line through a number of locations. “Which means shops, parks, cinemas and leisure centres are out.”
“And workplaces too,” said Zack.
“Not necessarily,” said Dina.
“She’s right,” said Lara. “Some of the modern ones are monotonous.”
At first I thought she was commenting on how boring it must be working in an office, but then I realised she meant autonomous. Wonky vocabulary aside, she had prompted me to remember something important.
“Lara, you’re a genius.” Eagerly, I scanned the map, my eye falling on a section towards the edge of town. “Rocketship.com just opened a fully autonomous warehouse in the business park. My dad told me it’s designed to operate twenty-four hours a day, processing orders, packaging them up and sending them out, all without the involvement of a single human being.” I borrowed her highlighter and circled the area with a flourish. “This is where we’ll find Servatron.”
Lara tasked Wing Command to fly a reconnaissance mission over the Rocketship.com warehouse and report back. A little over thirty minutes later a pair of pigeons flew into the tree house, perched on her shoulders and began tweeting rapidly in each ear. Lara translated.
“They’re reporting increased drone activity.”
“Could it simply be orders from the warehouse?” suggested Serge.
“Regular deliveries are continuing, but Wing Command reckon that’s to make it look like everything’s normal,” said Lara. “However, based on the flight profile of the drones, my birds believe they’re patrolling for intruders. There’s particular activity around the new building.”
I felt a sudden chill. “What new building?”
One of the birds twittered again and Lara frowned. “She’s saying, ‘Many big fire sticks ready leave nest go up up,’ but I don’t know what that means.”
I did. As she said the words the company’s distinctive logo blazed through my mind. “Mini waffle-maker,” I muttered.
“That doesn’t sound like an accurate translation,” said Lara.
Dina laid a hand on my arm. “Luke, are you OK?”
In answer I slowly shook my head. Something had occurred to me. Something terrible. I had remembered a conversation with my dad about the future of global delivery. “It’s not books, it’s Intercontinental Logistic Missiles. Rocketship.com has a new delivery system that can reach any point on the planet – in one hour. But those warheads won’t be carrying waffle-makers.” I looked round the tree house at the expectant faces of my friends. “They’ll be filled with Retconite.”
Our first reaction to this revelation was a sensible one. We decided to call a grown-up. Despite being in possession of superpowers and time-travel capability, we were after all a bunch of kids who’d just uncovered an apocalyptic plot that threatened the entire world. Calling for help was the responsible thing to do. Fortunately, there was an organisation designed for just this sort of eventuality, and we had their phone number. Star Squad was a branch of the military that had been set up to assist Star Lad, and they had done so on numerous occasions.
“It’s ringing out,” said Zack, putting his phone on speaker.
When it became clear that no one was going to answer we did a quick online search, which revealed that Star Squad had been disbanded soon after Zack hung up his cape. To give my brother credit, he looked suitably shame-faced at this information.
Next we tried the police. Zack had argued that well-funded emergency services would be more useful than a superhero. However, in this instance the constable at the local station who answered the phone had clearly not received sufficient training to deal with the particular nature of our enquiry. Which is to say, he hung up on us.
The future of the world was in our hands.
With no other option, we set about planning our assault on the warehouse. We had to sneak into Rocketship.com, sabotage the missile launch and prevent Servatron enslaving all of humanity for the rest of time. Preparation was key.
“We need to know what we’re walking into,” I said. “Otherwise our mission will be over in less time than it takes the Flash to pull on his lucky underpants.”
With the aid of Lara’s Wing Command and the Internet we were able to sketch the exterior of Rocketship.com. It consisted of several connected buildings stretching across a vast fenced-off site. Each block was a giant mirror-clad building that gleamed like a newly unboxed chrome gadget. The familiar logo hung above the entrance, and beneath it was a line that read: “The Future, Delivered.”
Finding pictures of the interior proved trickier. Rocketship.com was a huge corporation with a reputation for secrecy. Zack and Lara got to work on their phones.
While they searched I nipped into the house to collect a few items for the upcoming mission. Retrieving my trusty Deadpool backpack, into it I placed Star Lad’s sigil (for good luck) and the superhero notebooks containing my handwritten adventures. I fixed a yellow sticky note to the front cover that read: ALL OF THIS REALLY HAPPENED!!! (with three exclamation marks for added impact). In the event that the Retconite affected me I hoped I would see it and remember. But what I needed most of all were Dad’s keys to the comic shop and access to his Rocketship.com account. While he was making a sandwich and his back was turned, I quickly accessed it on his phone and then returned to the others.
By th
e time I reached the top of the rope ladder they had tracked down a number of videos that showed enough of the warehouse interior for us to piece together a rough layout. In the videos they didn’t call it a warehouse – it was a “Fulfilment Centre”. At one end was the Returns section, where unwanted items arrived to be restocked in the first of the centre’s two gargantuan storage units. Each was shelved from floor to ceiling with gadgets and appliances – everything from tiny flash drives to fridges the size of vans. Robots with what looked like tank-tracks and powerful extendable arms carried orders to a conveyor belt that led to another department where they were boxed up before being shuttled through to the final building.
The launch bay.
The video showed a forest of upright metal tubes stretching as far as the eye could see. Each tube contained a single missile, its silver fuselage adorned with the Rocketship.com logo, nose-cone painted in the red and black of the company’s colours. Many of the nose-cones were hinged open, and beneath them lay generous payload compartments. A steady stream of drones buzzed around the missiles, loading packages into the purpose-built spaces. Once a missile was loaded, the tube would be shuffled on another conveyor to the launchpad, an area in the centre of the room beneath a sliding roof. According to the narrator on the video, twenty missiles could be launched at a time. There was a short countdown and then the tubes ejected their missiles using compressed gas, shooting them clear of the building before their rocket engines kicked in, accelerating them to super-mach speeds and on to their destinations.
“Capable of launching five hundred missiles an hour,” said the video’s informative narrator. “Mother precisely plots the flight path of each and every one.”
The missile operation was controlled by a computer nicknamed “Mother”, located not in the launch bay, but in the centre of the second storage unit in a separate climate-controlled, quake-proof chamber.
With this information added to what we knew, our plan was beginning to take shape. I pointed to the layout. “First, we make our way into the Fulfilment Centre, here, then head through the first storage unit to the second one, here. Once there we access Mother, stop the launch and put paid to Servatron’s plans.”
Zack groaned and threw up his hands. “Even assuming we can get in and keep Servatron off our backs, how do we stop the launch? If I had my superpowers I could reduce the control centre and the missiles to a pile of junk, but I don’t.”
“We can shut down the launch using Mother,” I said.
“How? It’s not like we’re amazing computer hackers.”
I had thought of that. “Who’s the guy that owns Rocketship.com?” The name was on the tip of my tongue. “Wolfgang Something.”
“I think it is Danger,” added Serge.
I borrowed Lara’s phone and typed in the first name and the search engine auto-filled the rest. “Hazard.”
“Ah,” said Serge. “Danger must be his middle name.”
Thousands of results filled the page. It seemed that, unlike his company, Doctor Wolfgang Hazard enjoyed publicity.
“What are you doing?” Lara asked.
“Every gadget that my dad bought from Rocketship.com has one thing in common.”
“They all tried to kill us,” Zack muttered.
“Well, yes, but apart from that, they all use voice-control activation.” From the toaster to the bedside lamp, everything Dad had ordered from Rocketship.com could be controlled by speaking to it.
Dina was confused too. “But why would the system respond to your voice?”
“Not mine.” I clicked on a video clip of Rocketship.com’s visionary owner.
“Guten tag, my name iz Voolfgang Hazard.”
Doctor Hazard was a powerfully built man with a square head and steely grey eyes, and he spoke English with a strong German accent. As well as being a visionary entrepreneur he also appeared as a judge on a TV show where he got to fire people from their jobs.
“It stands to reason that the central computer must respond to the voice of its creator,” I said. “There are loads of clips here. It shouldn’t take long for us to piece together a few useful phrases.”
Dina and Lara were impressed by my thinking. Zack less so.
“That might work, but we still have to get close enough to use it. And that means first bypassing those drone-guards.”
“Leave that to me,” I said. “And a dodgy trouser press.”
“This is how we’re going to sneak past Servatron’s highly advanced security cordon?” Zack regarded the trouser press in disgust.
Once I had what I needed from the video clips, we had left the tree house and made our way to the empty comic shop, gathering in the dimly lit stock room where Zack and I had helped Dad hide various Rocketship. com purchases from Mum.
Serge had gone off to the toilet. It was good practice to go before a mission, as there often wasn’t time to go during. Also, despite our best efforts, the hastily sketched layout of the Fulfilment Centre contained several unknowns, and we definitely hadn’t identified where the toilets were. Perhaps most crucially of all, you never saw the Avengers taking a wee-break in the middle of battling an army of Skrull invaders.
“Maybe Iron Man has a toilet built into his suit,” I pondered.
“Excuse me?” said Zack.
Ah. I must have pondered that one aloud.
“Luke, were you listening?” he said. “How is this—”
I held up a hand. “Allow me to explain. This is indeed a trouser press. A device for getting creases out of your trousers and gently warming them before wear, and not, as I originally believed, a way of making some kind of strange trouser-flavoured juice smoothie.”
Zack clutched his head. “Why would you…?”
“Grown-ups drink all sorts of weird things,” said Dina in a commiserating tone of voice. “My mum went through a phase of making my dad drink wheatgrass. Grass?!”
“So what do we do with the trouser press?” said Lara.
“Return it,” I said. I had accessed Dad’s Rocketship.com account on his phone and printed off a bunch of return labels. I plastered one of them across the top of the big cardboard box it had arrived in.
Zack remained puzzled. “And how does that help?”
“Because the box will not be carrying a trouser press.” I paused for effect. “It will be carrying me.” We were surrounded by a sea of packaging. Dad had helpfully kept a lot of the boxes his stuff had come in. “We’re going to return ourselves right into the villain’s lair.” I moved round the room, sticking labels to a series of containers. A floor lamp that whistled “Hello Darkness My Old Friend” every time you switched it off, a travel iron that for some reason came in a box big enough to fit an upright grizzly bear wearing a top hat. And this one… I glanced at Zack. It was the box for the Diner Recliner that tried to play him like a concertina. “I’ve already initiated the one-hour return process.” I’d done that earlier when I accessed Dad’s phone. “Now all we have to do is get to the pick-up point, conceal ourselves in these boxes and wait to be whisked into the heart of Servatron’s operation.”
At that moment Serge returned from the toilet. He’d changed out of his white taekwondo uniform into what looked to me like a pair of black silk pyjamas. Slung across his chest was a black messenger pouch. His outfit wasn’t the only thing to have changed. Serge radiated a serene calm. It was as if his body stood before us in the stock room, but his mind was sitting cross-legged in a Tibetan mountain-top temple meditating on the nature of the universe. Since his successful origami-based escape from Talbot’s mansion, he seemed to have ascended to a higher level of consciousness. Like a beardless Doctor Strange with a weakness for Kit Kats.
“What’s in the pouch?” I asked him.
“Oui,” he agreed. “What is in the pouch. And so is where and why and when. For, in a sense, is not the universe a pouch and we merely questions enveloped by its infinite darkness?”
“Why are you wearing pyjamas?” asked Lara.
&n
bsp; He curled his lip in a distinctly un-serene expression of irritation.
There was a minor delay before we could proceed with the mission. As soon as Serge returned from the toilet, the others decided that they needed to go too. I took the opportunity to load up my backpack with a few more mission-critical items. After being imprisoned in Billy Dark’s mansion without the means to escape, I had sworn not to let it happen again. This time I’d be prepared. I went around the stock room, sizing up potential gadgets to include alongside Star Lad’s sigil and my superhero notebooks.
When everyone had returned, the mission could proceed as planned. We made our way outside, heaving the boxes on to the pavement. We didn’t have long to wait.
“D’you hear that?” said Lara, scanning the sky. “There!” She flung out an arm to point to a row of what looked like black dots on the horizon. They were moving quickly, skimming the clouds.
“Collection drones inbound,” I said. “Right on schedule.” Even though Servatron was in charge and the end of the world was squatting on the horizon, it seemed the AI had decided to maintain Rocketship.com’s impeccable service right up until the end.
Buzzing like fat flies the drones dropped down to roof level and made their way along the High Street.
“OK, everyone,” I said. “Are we ready?”
“What is readiness?” mused Serge.
“Just get in the box, Serge.”
He climbed inside the first one and I sealed him up with packing tape. Lara and Zack followed suit, each occupying their own box. The tape rasped again as I unrolled another length and used it to close the flaps.
“Hurry up, Luke!” Dina beckoned to me from the last and biggest box, which we would share.
Just as the drones slowed for their final approach, I ducked in alongside her, taping it up from the inside.
My Cousin is a Time Traveller Page 12