33
April 11, 2027
“I’m pretty sure I should be driving you to the police station. You’re obviously a good actress and a con artist,” Shelly said in a quiet voice as her little sedan drove down the mountain.
Snow was piled up on either side of the road, dirty, murky snow. Grass and rocks poked out of the thin layer, creating a splotchy, yellowing landscape.
“No offense, but I couldn’t care less what you believe as long as you get me there. If you think I’ll go calmly to the police station, then you’re insane,” Alainn said as she rubbed her aching forehead.
In the lodge, Shelly had declared that if Alainn was telling the truth, she’d have to go to Lorccan’s tower and prove it. She whispered the declaration anyway.
After Alainn’s revelation, she was more than willing to comply. Hell, when Shelly hesitated to let her into the sedan, Alainn considered stealing it. It looked like there was a possibility she would still have to.
Shelly might not believe Alainn, but all the way down the mountain, she dealt out punishment by murmuring the details about how Lorccan was doing. He’d lost weight. There were deep hollows under his eyes. And, perhaps the most telling of all, Alainn’s peace lily was now in his office, on his desk.
Rosette was exceptionally compliant and barely said a word to Lorccan. She’d quietly eat with him, play games with him. He’d even tried to show her movies—none of which had brought Jade back. He’d spent hours and hours teaching her about what she liked, reciting jokes Alainn had told him, explaining the moments they had together, but of course it hadn’t done anything.
When Shelly visited Lorccan in his tower, he’d looked haunted, she said. She’d analyzed the hardware in the robotics chips that had been sent to Lorccan at an exorbitant price, allegedly from Alainn’s father. Everything had been what her father had claimed it to be, and Shelly could not find a reason why it wasn’t working for Rosette.
When Shelly left in one of Lorccan’s self-driving cars, Blue had popped out of hiding in the back seat when Shelly was halfway home.
Blue had written out a message to Shelly: Find Alainn Murphy.
“How did you know who I really was?” Alainn interrupted Shelly to ask Blue at that part of the story.
She wrote her response from the backseat, and then handed the dry-erase board to Alainn. We were listening.
That wasn’t creepy at all . . .
Shelly finished her story by telling Alainn that she’d talked to Lorccan once since then, and he’d been hopeful, saying that he was making headway. She hadn’t been able to get through since then, though, including when she’d tried to call from the lobby of the ski resort. They’d missed three of their scheduled phone calls.
The fact that Lorccan thought he might be getting Alainn back from Rosette scared her more than anything else Shelly said.
“Rose isn’t going to let me in,” Alainn said before looking over to Shelly. “She probably won’t let you in, either. If she’s not letting the phone calls go through, she’s probably pretending to be you to him or something like that. She can do that.”
If only Lorccan had funded that pulse button that would kill all robotics.
But, looking into the backseat where Blue was sitting over her dry-erase board in her little blue dress, Alainn rethought the robotics killing pulse. She needed a pulse that killed just specific forms of robotics, more of a gun than a bomb.
“Shit,” she whispered. “Even if we get inside, Rose 76GF will be controlling the whole tower. She could lock us up in a hallway and let us starve and die there, and Lorccan would never even know that we were there.”
Shelly glanced over, eyelids so wide they looked like they could almost push out her eyes, but she didn’t say anything.
There was a screech from the backseat and Alainn turned to see Blue holding up the board. The message read, Fix Rosebud 03AF.
Alainn shrugged and grimaced at Blue. “We can’t even get into the tower.”
She erased the board and started writing.
“What does she want us to do?” Shelly asked, her wide eyes on the rearview mirror.
“She wants us to reboot Rosebud 03AF—the original AI system that controlled the house.”
When Alainn looked into the backseat again, Blue held up a sign: I can get you into the garage.
“Okay. But how do we reboot her?”
Blue erased and wrote another message: Shelly could do it.
Alainn turned to Shelly. “She says she’ll get us in, and you can reboot Rosebud.”
“What? No, I doubt that.” She shook her head.
“You said you were examining chips that were supposed to reboot me, right?” Alainn asked.
“Yeah, but Lor has those chips in his office, and you said we can’t get up there.”
Alainn sat up straight. “Except that Rose had to have designed those chips. The only computers that I know of that she has access to would be in my dad’s workshop. All the circuit supplies were probably from there, too. If we found her designs on my father’s computer, we could print new chips in the workshop.” She looked away. “Except Rose would be there. She never leaves my house, which means she’d probably try to stop us.”
Shelly turned the wheel hard and pulled off the road, into a black sludgy pullout. They hit ice and slid a couple feet before stopping suddenly.
Too late, Alainn grabbed the “oh, shit,” handle and yelled, “What the hell?”
Shelly’s whole body shook as she clutched the steering wheel. “You really think I’ll believe that there’s a killer robot? And you think I’ll take programs that originated from your house and family to hack into Lorccan’s house? Do you think I’m stupid or something?” Her voice was both quiet and shrill.
“No, I don’t think you’re stupid. And I didn’t say Rose was a killer. But from the fact that she gave me poison, she might have no problem becoming one.”
“It just all sounds very farfetched, and you obviously already have no problem lying. Now you want me to hack into Lor’s security system to give you access to his home?” She laid her mouth forward against her steering wheel, but her eyes turned upward like she was praying to something or someone.
“People always have such a hard time believing that robots can do bad things.”
She pulled back to whisper, “Because they’re machines, like toasters. I work on them for a living. They can malfunction, but they’re not going to hatch up some elaborate extortion plot. That’s what humans do.”
“Uh-huh. Well, my best friend was killed by an automaton, an automatic functioning machine, a robot that does whatever they’re ‘trained’ to do.”
She jumped a little. “What?”
Shelly didn’t deserve to know Alainn’s story, but, hell, she was going to tell her anyway if it would get this car to Lorccan. Alainn closed her eyes and revealed something she hadn’t told anyone in years, “We were at a gas station at night, and I got out of the car. I was being dumb; I was seventeen. The automaton looked normal. He wore the gas station attendant uniform. He hit me over the head and shoved me into my own trunk before driving out to a house. Some men were there—”
Alainn opened her eyes as Blue’s little fingers patted her shoulder. When she turned to look, Blue climbed over the center divider and into Alainn’s lap.
Her furry body quivered as Alainn held her. Meeting Shelly’s gaze, she continued, “I was delivered to the men. Those men told that automaton to take my car up into the hills and drive off a cliff with Cara inside. He left immediately to do it.”
Not all of that was the truth, but Shelly didn’t really need all the details to get the point of her story.
“How did you get away?” Shelly whispered, her voice barely audible. Brows pressed down over a hard-to-read expression. Concern, maybe.
Alainn blew out a breath. “My dad owed them a lot of money. When they realized that he couldn’t pay it back, they kept me for a couple days. The police found me before I was dead.”
When Alainn met her gaze, tears leaked from Shelly’s eyes. Her face paled.
Alainn waved a hand. “Stop. Don’t cry for me. It was a long time ago. What I’m just trying to say . . . what I’m trying to say is . . .” She had no clue what she was trying to say.
“That robots kill people?” Shelly didn’t sound at all disbelieving this time.
“No, but they can. I guess I’m trying to say that they’re not what people think they are. You think they’re toasters, and maybe they are. But my father gave those tools the ability to form their own personalities and to think for themselves. If you give a toaster a choice, it might choose to be a torture device. People just assume that we can control robots and they’re safe, but they’re not even safe when we can control them.” She shook her head. “Shit, I don’t know. But Rose? She’s conniving. She’s obviously overwritten her ethical systems and—”
“Lorccan’s AI robots all turned out fine.” Shelly looked pointedly at Blue.
“Well, maybe some are good and some are bad, like humans.”
Shelly glared into Alainn’s eyes but quickly turned away to face forward again. Her voice was still a murmur when she said, “Or maybe it’s how they’re raised. Maybe if they’re raised by someone who hates robots, they’ll turn out evil.”
Shelly Dover was seriously starting to get on Alainn’s last nerve. She threw up her hands. “Fine! Whatever! But now she’s killing Lorccan or extorting money off him or whatever she’s doing—it’s evil. You can help me or not, but I’m going to try to get in there and reboot Rosebud 03AF. Then I’m getting to Lorccan.”
Shelly looked away, but after a minute she pulled back onto the road. “I’m having a really hard time figuring out what he saw in you.”
She spoke so low, Alainn wasn’t sure she was even talking to her. She answered anyway, “Well, if you figure it out, be sure to tell me.” Looking out the window, she said, “But he did. And I did. And I was almost willing to give him up when I thought he wanted me to. But not now that I know he doesn’t.”
She didn’t look over, just kept her gaze forward. “If you’re conning me and I’m helping you hurt him again, I’ll make sure they arrest you and I’ll pay for the prosecutor myself.”
Alainn looked out the window at the dead grass that lined the road and whispered, “It’s a deal.”
Once they hit the highway, Shelly accelerated to just above the speed limit. Now that they had reentered the invisible cell phone reception bubble, Shelly kept dialing and redialing Lorccan on her cell phone. Her finger kept pressing the screen, which she hid in her lap.
Obviously, she was not quite on board the Alainn-is-innocent ship.
As the curvy mountain passes widened into five-lane freeways, Shelly’s hands shook on her steering wheel. She’d stayed quiet the last hour, blinking rapidly at the road. It was only four o’clock, but she looked like she needed a nap or something.
“You want me to drive?” Alainn asked as Shelly swerved way too far while avoiding a merging car.
“I’m fine.” She tucked her hair behind her ear with shaking fingers. “So, what are we doing at your house exactly?”
“I have sort of an idea—but feel free to give me some input. We have to find my brother, Colby. He may not help, but I think there’s a really good chance that he will. I’ll find a way to get Rose into the main part of the house with me and my father and distract them. You and Colby can sneak into the garage and find the files. Colby uses the computers as much as anyone, so he’ll know what shouldn’t be there. You guys find the files, print the chips, and cover your tracks as best you can before getting as far away as you can. I’ll bike to meet you. We go to Lorccan’s tower. Blue breaks us in—”
“Wouldn’t it just be easier if I tell your brother what to look for?”
Alainn gave Shelly a skeptical look. “Probably not—”
“If he’s caught, it won’t seem suspicious.” Her gaze was fixed on the road, but Alainn could see that a tear was dripping down the side of Shelly’s nose.
Alainn finally recognized the expression on her face—way later than she should have. In Outreach, once in a while a very sadistic parent would convince their kid to hide a phobia of heights or bugs or something they dealt with all the time while backpacking. It came from that “face your fears, or if not, shame the fear out of them” attitude. Sometimes it worked; other times it resulted in a sixteen-year-old freezing halfway up a mountain and messing their pants.
It was just plain wrong.
Shelly looked like Alainn had just tied her to a rappelling rope and told her to jump off a cliff. Complete and total terror was revealed in the shaking of her hands, the paleness of her face, and the stiffness of her posture. It made Alainn rethink why Shelly had cried during the kidnapping recounting.
Alainn nodded slowly. “Sure, Shelly, that’s possible. But what about in the tower? Someone needs to insert the chip and reboot Rosebud 03AF.”
Shelly swerved again, and this time Alainn did grab the “oh shit” handle while Blue dug her little fingers into Alainn’s arm. Shelly again straightened back into their lane while Blue let loose with a god-awful screech.
“I’m sorry!” she yelled, her face scrunching up.
Holding her hands out, Alainn lowered her voice. “It’s okay. If you tell me how, I’ll get the chip into Rosebud 03AF.”
Sweat covered Shelly’s face with a glossy sheen. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Let’s go get you a coffee or something to eat on the way, okay?”
“No. We should go directly there,” she sniffed and shook her head.
“I think I need it. I’m feeling a little freaked out by all of this, and I need to bring up my energy. Also, I need to call Colby,” Alainn told her.
At first Shelly did nothing, and then, for the first time since Alainn met her, she offered a little mirthless smile. “Okay, but then we should go.”