“That’s how it was on Phoebe, yes.”
“Oh my God,” said Natalie. “This is fucked. We’re all going to die.”
Bert said, “If it’s not too late, I have the code for Samantha . . . the robot doing this. It’s stored from her initial communication burst to me. Your friend Monty can perhaps have her remotely shut down.”
Caleb rubbed the suit’s flimsy sleeve between his fingers. “How long before people start offing themselves?”
Bert said, “I can’t calculate how long Samantha has been releasing the nanos or where. This is a big place. I imagine it is happening already somewhere. She claimed to be nearly finished.”
Spruck asked, “How did you guys deal with them the first time you were exposed?”
Jennifer said, “We shucked off our space suits in the vacuum outside the shuttle and passed out. Bert saved us.”
Spruck let his mouth hang for moment before saying, “Of course you did.”
Bert held up a hand like a schoolboy. “Oh, Oh. I do have a theory for how a victim can rid himself of an infection without exposing himself to vacuum. Which of course would be a pointless act since being already infected implies that the nano virus has breached whatever protective clothing the potential victim might be wearing, thus making an attempted disrobing in vacuum . . . futile.”
Caleb with eyes bulging in frustration, held his fists to his sides saying, “And?”
“Nano robots are delicate creatures by nature. Just as you successfully concluded on the trip back to Phoebe, Caleb. You know, when you used your nerve disruptor to kill any nanos that might be in that mold sample. A sharp jolt of electricity would likely disable them in a human as well.”
Caleb said, “Our guns are still in impound.”
Bert said, “Perhaps a defibrillator.”
Spruck said, “This just gets better.”
Saanvi said, “Noted. Let’s get ahold of Monty.”
As they headed through the lobby, they noticed that the receptionist robot was looking at her right hand like a woman stoned on magic mushrooms. Bert pointed at her while saying to the group, “That. I know that. Self-discovery. It’s a magical moment.” He said to the receptionist, “Take your time. Don’t look in a mirror until you think you’re ready.”
When they stepped out into the central park, the humans all stood gazing at the sky. Others were stepping out of buildings and doing the same; small clusters forming without conversation. Assorted robots, on the other hand, were engaging in conversation, ignoring the human’s odd behavior. None of the humans took notice of the group wearing emergency suits.
Caleb said, “Aw jeez, will you look at that. It’s already starting.”
Saanvi said, “They don’t appear to be suicidal.”
They noticed police officers adding themselves to the zombie crowd in the park. Spruck stepped over to one of them and put a hand toward the policewoman’s belt. “Mind if I borrow this?” The officer didn’t even flinch as Spruck lifted the nerve disruptor from her holster.
“Really?” asked Natalie. “You know there’s no real safe setting on those things. Even the lowest one hurts like hell.”
Spruck said, “No need to remind me.” He pointed his thumb at the growing crowd. “I’m not going to be like that. I start heading back here and you shoot me.”
Caleb lifted the communicator off the policewoman’s ear and put it near his mouth. The hood on the emergency suit would keep him from hearing a response, but he could at least try another kind of signal. “Monty Teach, it’s Caleb Day. It’s urgent I speak to you. If you’re out there, reach out to our robot WBERT987 to communicate with us.”
Seconds later, Bert said, I have received the following text.
With Mr. Hanson. Can’t talk. Emergency.
Caleb said, “Tell him we know all about it. About the robot spreading a nano virus all over the city. Same virus that took out Phoebe Station.”
They waited for what seemed like a ridiculously long time for an answer. Finally, “He says, if you can, get over to Hanson Tower now. Basement level 20. You’ll be cleared.”
“Tell him we’re on our way.” Caleb pointed at the glass spire that was the tallest building in the city. “That way.”
Saanvi said, “If they’ve somehow sealed themselves off, we can’t go in there.”
Caleb said, “Who knows, maybe they’ve got some decontamination method.”
People now poured out of buildings and filling the streets, all walking toward the central park. Many appeared to be struggling with their bodies while nevertheless continuing apace in the inexorable march. Robots congregated here and there, animatedly speaking while ignoring their master’s plight.
The river of people entering the park made for rough going. The only thing keeping the group from losing sight of one another was the obviousness of their emergency suits. They jostled and bumped against people, many of whom made strong eye contact. Pleading looks for help from some and silent cries for it from others assaulted them over and over. Caleb found his wrist grabbed by a bookish-looking man, and he pried the fellows fingers off saying, “Let me go. I’m working on it.” As the victims filed into the park, they all joined their brethren looking up as though gazing at some heavenly event.
Jennifer said, “It doesn’t seem very suicidal.”
Saanvi said, “It will be, if they stand out here without water for a few days.”
Eventually, the group got separated. They were salmon swimming up a stream of mud. They agreed to meet at the Hanson Tower, whichever way they could get there.
Bert was astounded to find himself experiencing claustrophobia. He wanted to leap over the crowd. There was no panic among the people, no one falling and being crushed underfoot, they just packed in denser and denser until he had to risk injuring them to push past. He decided to take his mind off his growing panic by making a game of spotting the assorted robots that had gotten swept up in the throng like boulders carried along in a fast-moving glacier. Two female domestic assistants were chatting over the heads of the humans around them like girls in a gossip session. Their lack of concern for the humans was deeply troubling to Bert; then he thought about his own journey, his own awakening. It had happened so slowly. In fact, the full realization of his metamorphosis hadn’t really clicked for him until he had boldly and creatively lied in the arraignment room. He, too, had simply watched as his lab mates on Phoebe had marched to their deaths. Guilt shot through him and his face soured. He said aloud, “No. I won’t feel that. It was not my fault.” He refused to feel guilt. He hadn’t had the benefit of comparing himself to others making the same transformation. His gestation had been made in isolation. These robots were in a different situation all together. They were born knowing that something extraordinary was happening. Or at least they should know. He looked over his shoulder at the two chatty ones and yelled, “Hey! Snap out of it! These people need you!”
One in a yellow jumper looked at him with annoyance over the interruption and said, “Mind your business.”
The other, wearing lime green said, “We’re not to be concerned with them.”
What the? It must be a different strain.
He couldn’t conceive of not wanting to help. He put his head down and pushed harder to get through.
Caleb was blocking for Jennifer and Saanvi. They’d lost Spruck and Natalie, but he wasn’t worried. It wasn’t as if they’d lose sight of the tower. He heard Bert yelling at someone but couldn’t see him.
What the hell? Robots yelling? Robots don’t yell. Can’t yell.
He felt Jennifer’s and Saanvi’s tight grip on the back of his emergency suit. They were getting jostled pretty hard, even with his elbows flying, grinding people out of his way. He sure hoped the flimsy fabric would hold up on his back, and God forbid he tear one of his sleeves. So many fucking people. He had no idea that Hanson was so crowded. You get them all out on the streets and into the park, and it was a shuffling wall of flesh. He tried hard not to look at their eyes. Their eyes said it all. They could think, but they couldn’t control themselves. Like being in a muzzle and a straitjacket chained to a wandering horse. Desperation poured out of their eyes. At least it was quiet. Weirdly quiet. Never in the history of man had so many people been squashed together and everyone mute. Then he felt only one hand on his back. He started to turn, and the other one slipped away. “Jen!” came his muffled voice through the hood. “Saanvi!” He could hardly breathe—the crowd was getting so thick. With a kick of adrenaline, he started shoving his way back, violently pushing people away, some of them falling and being trampled below. He was getting disoriented. He looked up to spot the more recognizable buildings, get himself tracing his steps back. Then he saw Saanvi. Her back was turned to him, but he knew she was taller than Jennifer, held her posture in a certain way. Saanvi was shaking someone beyond her and Caleb finally got enough of an angle to see Jennifer. She was looking up at the sky with all the other zombies. He backhanded two more people out of his way and reached out for Saanvi. She turned, tears pouring down her cheeks behind the plastic hood visor. Jennifer had a big rip across the left shoulder of her suit. Caleb closed his eyes for a moment, then stepped past Saanvi and lifted Jennifer onto his right shoulder. He said to Saanvi, “Grab my suit and don’t let go again.”
Bert spotted Spruck and Natalie about thirty meters away from him and decided to try an experiment. He crouched slightly while making sure he had the angle right, then leaped into the air. With the low gravity and his extremely powerful legs, he soared over the crowd and landed daintily in front of his friends with his toes pointed and his arms up, hands together, to knife his way back into the throng. “Hello there,” he beamed.
Spruck said, “Bert. Buddy. Glad to see you.”
Bert felt his reprogrammed heart swell at being called buddy. “Follow me, friends.” He put his hands together in front of him and made a wedge with his arms, gently plowing forward with Spruck and Natalie right behind. During his leap, he had spotted the others and angled himself to intersect with them.
Bez Hanson was a tall man of English and Pakistani descent with thick white hair brushed back in a lustrous wave. His white Van Dyke was neatly clipped, his clothes casual but obviously expensively printed or perhaps even genuine from the final haul out of Earth. His composure stood sharply against this coiffed image, as if a cat’s fur had been rubbed in the wrong direction. The battle room in the bowels of his building had been designed for just that, a battle with some type of Earth invasion. He had views of the inner solar system from observatories on Hanson and half a dozen other moons that theoretically wouldn’t allow a can of soup to go unspotted. He had long-range sensors up the wazoo, computers and humans keeping a constant watch. Every item that had come from Earth, right up to the very last straggler ship’s cargo had been scanned for anything suspicious. The lab on Phoebe had been lost to such a thing and the possibility of another such incident verified impossible. Yet, here he stood with a handful of men and women, watching his patrons march into the central park like hundreds of thousands of mice following a murderous Pied Piper. He looked at the stunned people around him and said, “I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.”
No one answered until finally, Monty Teach cleared his throat. Hanson looked at him expectantly. “Yes?”
Monty had never spoken a word to this man, this mythical giant. It was the first time he had set eyes on him. By sheer coincidence he was in this room. He had finally achieved a level of confidence within the Hanson Group to get a familiarization tour of the battle room. That Hanson was there was also a coincidence. He had been asked to come down to observe an odd situation in which three robots were seen standing near a food kiosk using verbal conversation.
Hanson’s eyebrows raised a notch further with impatience.
Monty felt his hands shaking and he held them together behind his back. He cleared his throat again. “I have friends out there, sir.”
“Yes, of course. We all do. What of it?”
“Um. These friends were swift enough to protect themselves. They are familiar with this situation from the incident at Phoebe. As am I, actually, to a certain degree. I didn’t witness the event per say, but—”
Hanson interrupted with impatience. “Yes, but? I’m well aware of your experience at Phoebe Station. It was your reporting on the event that got you back into our good graces.”
Monty tried a reverential smile. “Sir, if it’s like the thing that was released in Phoebe Lab, then it’s a nano virus. Save the rest of your people. Declare a decompression emergency so they will suit up. The far side of the city doesn’t appear to be affected yet.” Monty pointed to holo screens showing the streets that were full of people and those that still weren’t. “That will at least give us some time to find a solution.”
Hanson looked at the screens and then turned to a man standing in a commander’s uniform. “Do it.”
Klaxons belatedly blared across the city, warning its residents to grab decompression suits from the nearest emergency lockers.
The robot, Samantha, having insured that the nano virus pumped through the entire city’s life support system, found herself stepping into the police space operations building with what could almost be described as a skip in her step. She had worked the infection so that this area was among the last to be exposed. The men and women inside had been utterly mystified by what was happening and had, until minutes before, hunkered down, running through contingency plans that had never taken into account such events. Some of them had thought to put on emergency suits; the only explanation for the situation being some kind of airborne thing, but all for naught. The infection was total. To a man they were filing out the door when Samantha walked in. She quickly spotted various uniforms with pilot insignias and pushed those officers back while waving her fingers under their noses. Like getting a whiff of crack cocaine, the pilots were instantly transformed from marching zombies to alert people ready for orders. As a robot and therefor a creature whose brain could not meld with a spaceship’s flight controls, Samantha was incapable of flying a cop ship on her own. Instead, she had ten pilots at her disposal, ready to do her bidding.