Scuttling his little legs as fast as he could, it was a silent race to the shuttles. I was damn near out of breath by the time we got there. Must have touched a nerve with that last comment.
We took our seats and buckled in, waiting for the takeoff sequence to occur.
“The task is quite simple,” he stated, businesslike. “Let me handle the discussion. You will secure the heiress after the transaction is completed.”
“Unless things go sideways.”
“In the interest of all parties involved, let’s hope that does not happen.”
“Entropy seems to be the natural order of the universe,” I said as dryly and unironically as I could.
“Ironic indeed.”
“The devil loves irony. And so do I.” I got up to get a drink. I think he tried to object but it was too late.
“Or is it serendipity,” I said sitting down with two drinks.
He waived a hand to decline the drink, not that it was intended for him.
“Or just coincidence,” I pondered. “I can never keep them straight.”
A mere shrug. His face was business neutral.
“Maybe you do need a drink before you go in there. Loosen up a little. Works for me.”
“That would be ill advised. And I do not partake in such indulgences.”
“Would you fuck a robot?”
The passenger across the aisle gave me a curt look. Prudes in every species.
“Is this still relevant to the mission?”
I pursed my lips in a moment of contemplation.
“You’re the one who brought up hookerbots, okay? I’m curious now. And I’m serious. After the mission, I say we party.”
“You would think that professional such as yourself would be more… professional.”
“Turning to insults are we?” I feigned being aggrieved.
“Just an observation,” he poorly backtracked. “I am used to more reserved individuals in your line of work. And in such regard that others hold you…”
“You mean according to your dossier on me.”
Charles paused a moment.
I kept going.
“Maybe it’s a psychological ploy on my part. Make you uncomfortable. Find your limits. Shake your box.”
Like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he stared awkwardly.
“I’m just fucking with you,” I said, slapping him on the knee. “I’m a goddamn maniac. I’m sure the file says as much.”
“Eccentric and unorthodox are among the words they used if I recall correctly.”
Surprisingly he seemed to relax a little.
“Eccentric and unorthodox,” I repeated with pride. “I didn’t think I was wealthy enough to be considered eccentric.”
The little guy actually laughed at that.
“Soon enough I suppose,” he said as I was thinking it.
Takeoff lights flashed warningly in the cabin. Our seats rumbled momentarily then became still. Probably the smoothest takeoff I had ever experienced. I ordered two more drinks to celebrate.
“Tell me more about yourself,” I said after he declined the second drink that I was not offering him.
I got everything I needed from the conversation, as dry as it was. Dryer than the martinis I was suckin’ down. He was the company’s off-world facilitator, if you will. Where their on-world location was a bit, uh, sketchy. Brilliant in a way. Holding accounts here and there. Parent companies and subsidiaries, blah blah blah. Being familiar with many of the entities he mentioned I put together the MMO of Zalud. He was not only raking in money and power hand over tentacle, or whatever you call his appendages, he was being subsidized to do it. It was practically a money loss scheme that governments were dumb enough to keep bailing out. After all, if he failed, so would thousands of integrated solar systems.
He tried dumbing it down for my puny underevolved brain to comprehend. Much of what he said I was already aware of. Other bits were what I was looking for, and probably a little more than imprudent for him to divulge.
Remember kids, keep the bar low so no one expects much of you.
At least he was enjoying the conversation. Company yes-men annoy the shit out of me though.
Not that I, the patsy, had much room to talk at that moment.
It was a quiet gloomy night in whatever city of whatever planet we were on. In the darkness it would easily be mistaken for any poorly lit city in the States. Only difference was, I guess this city slept. The few other passengers that departed on the planet with us shuttled off somewhere else I guess. If I suspected there was vegetation growing anywhere near the city I’d describe a tumbleweed. That might have just been a mild hallucinatory effect though.
Maybe everyone here just works themselves to death, never leaving their offices. Maybe this was Tokyo. Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. I despise the rat race. But that wasn’t quite it. When you go in looking for someone and there’s no one around, something’s wrong. Cue shutters slamming on saloons and more tumbleweeds.
Charles was still just as quiet. I think I had to wait to the next part of the story line to trigger further access to his character’s dialogue. It’s possible he was just so nervous I hadn’t seen him blink in a while. Made my eyes dry just thinking about it.
I followed him, his little legs kicking along, damn near wearing me out as we navigated the ghost town of skyscrapers. The nostalgia only grew as we entered the sliding doors to the lobby of what looked like a typical bank. I didn’t get a look at the front of the building, was a little busy looking for sneakies. But it was an echoey marble floor and mahogany looking teller booths. Once again with no one else in sight.
The faint glow of a button on the far wall led the way to the elevator. From what I could see of the outside of the buildings, it was going to be a long way up. And I hate rollercoasters, so it was going to be a chatty ride.
“So you think I should get one?”
Charles’ eyebrows lifted.
“One what?”
“A bot.”
I think he sighed.
“I don’t see why not. For someone such as yourself, it could be ideal. Optimized for whatever you want.”
I was trying not to think about the lunging feeling in my stomach as we rocketed towards the top floor. They managed to quell the g-force in their rockets, but not their elevators. I don’t get it.
“The more I think about it,” I managed. “I don’t know. Seems so impersonal.”
“Forgive me if you do not strike me as personable.”
“Hey. I’m a social fucking butterfly, okay? Just in small doses. And usually chemically facilitated.”
“You make my point for me,” he droned.
“I don’t want a cold drone.”
“As we discussed previously, the advancements in technology are astounding. Even down to tactile sensation.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience now,” I said through a grin.
His taciturn posture returned.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked a moment later. It was a really damned tall building.
“It was the task that was assigned to me.”
“I mean this job in general.”
“It is what I was trained to do.”
This guy is one stale cookie. Like holy shit.
“When we are conceived,” he continued to my surprise. Character development within my own narration. I think he was learning some social skills from the caveman. “We are programmed, you could say, for certain tasks. Naturally, we play to our strengths. As do you. As primitive of a violent lifestyle it may be.”
We were getting close to our floor.
“Have any pets? I was thinking about getting a toad. You know? Something simple and can be easily transported. Hold that thought.”
I jabbed the button labeled STOP in time to STOP on the floor second from the top.
“What are you doing?” Charles shouted in alarm.
“I just need to check something before we go up there.”
“This is not in accordance with the plan.”
“If you haven’t noticed.” The door opened to a nearly pitch black cubical farm. “And I think I mentioned. I’m not much for plans.
“They tend to go to shit,” I muttered as I entered the floor. And I don’t like being disappointed.
I was all too glad to begin emptying the contents of my bag. They were bouncing and jabbing at my still bruised ribs the whole march there.
The elevator door hissed close. Charles made another noise before I head the doors hiss open again.
“Where are you going?” he whispered harshly.
“To, uh.” I was distracted with rummaging through the bag. “To check the perimeter. For security purposes.”
Some other flabbergasted noised came from the elevator. They trailed into silence when I reached the stairwell as the far end of the white collar purgatory.
Knowing that Charles was apt to be in full panic mode, as much as he appeared to be robotic, I hurried to confirm my suspicions. The door to the emergency stairs opened readily and quietly.
Something else that always surprises me. Stairwells always smell the same. That dank concrete and steel smell. The epitome of which being a sprinkler system room. I spent time on a planet that smelled like that once. It was terrible. Drove me nuts the entire time.
Anyway. I quietly ascended the steps two or three at a time to the sister door on the top floor. My suspicions were confirmed when I poked my nosey little vulnerable head out of the door. Couldn’t really tell you much about the layout of this floor. All I could see was the backs of a wall of rock like turtles that were undoubtedly pointing weapons at the elevator at the far end.
There was no princess in this tall tower.
I puckered my lips to my nose, hating being right, but not being disappointed. The next part would be fun I supposed, though.
Sighing as I returned to the floor below, I contemplated how long of a day I was in for, for the next… rest of my life.
One by one, I pulled the grenades out of my pack, deactivated the safeties, activated the primers and lobbed each one at the ceiling as I walked by to the wide-eyed Charles.
He was still making flabbergasted noises resembling a dried out fish flopping around on the floor. My actions may have short circuited the poor guy, so used to regiment and routine. No deviations. No exceptions. As cruel as it may sound, my breaking him may be the best this for him. Or his unstoppable doom, never to recover. I pictured poor Charles dirty and disheveled, wandering the streets babbling on about my antics, making no sense to any passerby. Having had all order broken down, he’d tried to put order to things that ought not have order. Quixotically trying to make pigeons stand in a line, only to wander off as he grabbed the next bird. I wonder to what extreme his madness would develop.
Enough of that, back to the story.
We entered the elevator. His eyes never left me. He didn’t say anything, but I knew he was calculating away, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.
I pressed the down button and a new level of instability became his reality.
Several times I had to smack at his hands to keep him from hitting buttons on the panel. Eventually I pinned him in the corner of the box, out of arm’s reach.
“There will be serious consequences for both of us if we do not carry out this transaction,” he sputtered out.
“There’s only one consequence if we do go up there.”
He lunged for the panel.
I threw him back like a small child. The thud against the elevator car seemed to calm him a little.
“We’ve been had. There is no deal, only death up there for us.”
“I don’t understand.”
I pinched my nose, held my breath and counted to the universal equivalent of three, the real three, not our known three. It’s frustrating dealing with beings that suppose themselves to be of a higher intelligence.
“As soon as those doors open on the top floor, you and I would cease to exist. Get it?”
“You didn’t think they would have their own security team?”
Hm. Seed of doubt. Probability, low. Too late. Committed. Continue with contingency.
“No one brings that many guns to a negotiation,” I reassured him.
I stood with my back to the panel so he couldn’t try anything else hinky. Rummaging through my bag required both hands and I didn’t want to blow the charges while we were still in the building.
“You’ll see in a minute. If I’m wrong, nothing happens.”
“And if you are correct?”
“I hope you are not a pressure sensitive being.”
The calculation on that one was immediate. All expression left his face, what little it had to begin with anyway. We enjoyed the rest of the ride to the lobby in still silence. It was long enough for me to finally realize that even the elevator was mostly marble. Bad choice of material for an elevator in my opinion. Pretentious to a whole new level. I wondered what the crumple rating on it was in the event it fell free and hit the ground.
Then I tried to think of anything else besides being in that elevator under the planet’s will to make it one with its high density core.
Like how fucked I was once I got off the elevator.
Assuming I was right.
I was fucked. You wouldn’t be reading this right now if I was wrong. Spoiler alert.
Charles was annoyed, but compliant. The elevator stopped, dinged. The doors opened. He stepped out and I strapped up my pack to dangle in the middle of the opening. I pressed the button for the top floor and scurried as quickly as I could through the lobby.
This time it was his turn to try to keep up. If he knew what was about to happened I suppose he would have been in more of a hurry. Whoo boy.
We made it a few blocks down when a woomp threatened to collapse the inside of my sinuses.
“What was that?” Charles asked with childlike curiosity.
“The trap I set to their trap.”
The street illuminated white for a half second followed by a shockwave. We looked back in time to see the top several floors disappear into an outward motion. The flat roof was left intact hovering for only a moment. It fell like a pancake onto what was the second floor below it. The sound was incredible. I’ve never seen or heard a freight train crash into a massive amount of tissue paper, but it was something like that. Of course the building in question was taller, by far, than the others around it, giving us a good view from such a distance.
My partner’s eyes were nearly the size of his head in the glow of the explosion.
It was a quiet journey back to the hotel world. It was sunny again. I was starting to think this place suspended in place by multiple suns, forever baking it like a toaster oven. Let’s just hope we remembered to close the curtains in the room, but we both had plenty else to think about. I can only hope he was pondering his own existence after escaping what was sure to be the end of his boring life. Now we had something in common though. We were both screwed.
Now I know what you’re thinking. But it was a trap, and you saved yourself and Zalud’s employee from said trap. Not how these types operate. Anything but the desired result is considered a failure and is typically not met with reward. And it begs the question, why was the negotiation set up to fail?
Finally back at the room, Charles took the “bag of money” and placed it on the bed closest to the windows.
“As per the agreement,” he said clerically as walked away from the bag, “you have technically fulfilled your obligation and are entitled to payment.”
Yeah. Okay.
I walked towards the bag to “check the contents.” Instead I dived on the curtains, ripping them from the rings.
The last I saw of Charles, his bionic eyes were bulging from his head. His index finger was pointed at me like a gun, the fingertip missing. It was charged and ready to terminate me my contract.
The curtain fell from the infernal window, covering me on the floor.
Charles erupted into flames at the sun poured in.
There was electronic screaming. Whirring. Buzzing. And eventually he melted to the ground.
Careful to keep the curtain around me I stood up and collected the briefcase with the other chips. The room was starting to fill with fire suppressant gasses, the firewall shutting over the windows. It was still no place to be, though. The carpet and bedding were smoldering and the gasses were just as likely to kill me as the fire.
I made it to the door, taking one last look at the defunct Charleybot 3000 before closing the door.
“Damn things get more realistic every day.”
So. That’s the beginning of our little shit show. And the second or third violation of the contract. A lot of gray areas. I’m not good with contracts. Too many words. Either it gets done or it doesn’t. People should be more grateful just to get something done thoroughly and in a timely manner. But don’t worry. There are plenty more clauses from the contract for me to violate in the time to come.