“Or they were met by an accomplice?”
“An accomplice?” I repeated in disbelief.
“We are dealing with something intelligent here. There must be a connection. Remember there are no coincidences.”
“The cheese could have been in the fridge, perhaps,” I said stating what I thought was the obvious.
“Was there cheese in the fridge?” asked Conrad emphasising the word “in”.
“Yes. Terri loves cheese. Real cheese, not the artificial, mass produced stuff. It has to come from a deli? Gruyère’s her favorite.”
“So there was cheese in the fridge?”
“I just said that.”
“But these traces we’ve found, were outside the fridge.”
“The fridge fell seven stories. It probably had bit of a bad day.”
“And yet we’ve found no traces of the fridge but a trail of cheese leading to the recycling area. Maybe they were picked up with the garbage. Unlikely though. I probably need to give you some more background information but we've arrived at our destination. Or rather the entrance of our destination.”
“Arrived?” I said. I looked around, the boat was halfway to New Jersey and slowing down, pointing into the flow of the Hudson. There was nothing to be seen except for a few seagulls and the always-impressive New York skyline despite the fuzzy clouds fading out the tops of the skyscrapers.
Then there was a metal scraping sound and the boat juddered, rattled and came to a complete stop. We had hit something. Something big and something underwater. There was nothing visible above the river surface. One the robots entered the lower viewing deck and opened up the floor panels. We followed and saw that under the panels, was a circular hatch with a circular screw handle. The robot spun the handle and opened the hatch. There was a pool of still water under the hatch door and the robot then fetched a hose and started to pump water from the hatchway.
“The internal pump is damaged,” explained Conrad. “This is a make-shift method. We have to do it the old-fashioned, robot-style for the time being.”
I leaned over to view the diminishing pool below and saw another hatch and handle in the murky water. When drained the robot reached down to open the second hatch, grabbing what looked like a steel handle before extending a tubular ladder into the boat.
The metal matelot invited me to go down the ladder.
I looked at Conrad, “This is part of the plan?”
He smiled and nodded.
“Ah well, Plan the dive. Dive the plan,” I said quoting the scuba diver motto.
I climbed down the ladder into a dimly-lit steel chamber that was quietly humming from the rush of water around it. Conrad followed me down, closing the hatch above him. The chamber could have fitted about six people. But it felt crowded with two. On the walls were two small doors and two industrial looking buttons and lights.
I heard metal scraping sounds above as-if there was a boat slowly twisting over an echo-y steel tube. It sounded like that because it was what was happening; the boat was undocking from the chamber. My eyes must have been as wide as saucers since Conrad said quite paternally, “Don't worry, everything is fine.”
He pressed a button and waited. Eventually a red light went green and he pressed another button and I felt the chamber shudder. It was descending. As it went deeper the sound of rushing water in the chamber, diminished.
“So this chamber rises and lowers in the Hudson?” I said with a stammer.
“This is the secret entrance to our Super Hero Union chapter house,” said Conrad proudly. “And yes, it has to sink otherwise it might be hit by passing ships.”
“And the only entrance is by boat.”
“Actually, no. This is the secret entrance. To stop anyone, or any drone, seeing or recording you entering the building.”
“So it’s a hidden entrance?”
“Exactly. There are others. We don’t have to use this route every time.”
The chamber shuddered to a halt and another light turned green.
“So which door?”
“The one marked Entrance. The other is the Emergency Exit. It’s quite a cold wet route out through that door. That's why you need the life vest, by the way.”
Conrad chuckled at my expression; presumably, one of horror.
The other door opened into a clean white painted circular tunnel lit by a continuous strip of Christmas-tree-style lights hanging from the ceiling. After closing the chamber door, Conrad led the way down the silent, empty tunnel. The route appeared to be heading back to the city. A few minutes later we were confronted with another water tight door which Conrad opened and sealed behind us. Inside the new white painted chamber was a brushed-metal elevator door. Conrad pressed the call button and the door slid open immediately.
We stepped inside and Conrad pressed the up button. (The only other choice was down).
“No musak?” I commented.
Conrad smiled but said nothing.
The elevator sped rapidly upwards many floors if measured by g-force and time, with the arrival met with an understated ting.
“We're here?” I asked.
“Not yet,” said Conrad. “We've arrived at the neighbouring building.”
“So what's next?” I said trying to hide my exasperation.
“We've got some great stuff to show you today. But first, the zipline!” smiled Conrad.
“Zip-line?”
“Don't worry, it's perfectly safe.”
We unbuckled the life vest and put on a zip-line harness. Conrad led me out to an observation deck with a platform and a zip-line leading to an adjoining skyscraper. The platform provided unimpeded views out over the Manhattan cityscape. We were dozens of floors above the ground. I leant over and could see flocks of drones, flying vehicles, busy walkways, roadways filled with A2s rushing below. The NYC hustle-and-bustle. Or hassle-and-battle, as I like to call it.
“What about hot-rodding jet packers? Suppose they come this way?”
“It's registered as a power-line in the collision management database. Nothing has hit it so far.”
“Can't we be seen from below?”
“There's holoscreen coverage. It's invisible.”
I looked skeptical.
“You're not scared of heights are you?” teased Conrad.
I gave Conrad what I hoped looked like a confident smile, clipped the trolly over the zip-line, attached the safety line carabiner through its hook and leapt off the platform.
***
Saturday, June 4, 2120.
What Conrad did not know was that the reason for my poor grades at college was my addiction to adrenaline-filled sports: snowboarding in the Alps, mountain climbing, scuba-diving, wind-surfing, parachute jumping including base jumping. Ok, minor exaggeration there, I have done two base jumps; that is parachute jumping from skyscrapers, both in New York, the home of the skyscraper. The second being important because I broke my ankle and met Terri.
Jason, my base-jump-buddy had smuggled us into Trumped-Up-Charges Hotel which overlooked Central Park. He was a failing Counter-Punk-Heavy-Water rock musician but had found access to the roof in breaks between band practise being held in the basement. With the arrogance of youth, he also claimed to have researched the path to the ground. It turns out that jumping from skyscrapers in New York and trying to survive is more difficult than you would think due to the number of cables, horizontal barriers and sharp vertical items sticking up from the ground. Everything would have been perfect except for the miscalculation with some innocuous looking concrete lumps. Captured on 3D video, and live broadcast on Jason's BragBook, was two minutes of his band's Heavy Water rock music to pump us up, two seconds of freefall, twenty seconds of chute assisted flight, and a microsecond contact on a concrete bollard. Not captured on video was my two weeks in hospital and six months with a walking stick; Rock-N-Roll.
Anyway I'm glad I did not cheese-out since the jump was how I met Terri. After crashing into the bollard and the ground, I
rolled down a slope and crashed into her picnic.
“Uh. Sorry. That didn't go quite as planned,” I gasped looking up at her.
“Does that hurt?” She said pointing to my leg which, when I glanced down, was not looking quite leg-shaped.
“I think it will. Best I don't move,” I said, starting to hyperventilate.
“Are you British?” she said.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Your accent. I love your accent.”
I woke up several days later, and don’t remember much more of the conversation as I passed out almost immediately. I dreamed about it though, how we chatted for hours and talked about tea, cucumber sandwiches and spaceships speeding to the stars. But they were all dreams. Probably even the conversation about her liking my accent was a dream. All I know is that when I woke up in Mount Sinai hospital three days later, Terri was there, reading a book. I mean, a real book, with wood-pulp pages, a book cover and everything. How cool is that?
After various chats that I don't quite remember, I asked her about the book.
“I had it for my first year course. I didn't read it then, I’m just getting to it now,” she explained. She was in her final weeks at University and decided to join the Central Perk Pulp Fiction Appreciation Reading Club picnic.
“But it's a real book. Real paper?” I said.
“Sure. Here, feel,” she offered the book to me.
I flicked the pages and rubbed the yellowing wood-pulp-derived pages; fibrous, not completely smooth. “Wow. I've only seen books in books. Where did you get it? Oh no, you're going to say a library, right?”
“The university has a storage room. They loan them out. I guess it's kind of a library, if you want to get technical,” she explained. “I actually quite like the format but if you have more than two they get quite heavy. So I've read this one a couple of times. I might not get the chance to read a real book again, you know... the fabricated variety, after I leave the University.”
“What is the title?”
“The Autobiography of Yogi Bear.”
“Any good?”
“I think I should have selected Hacker in the Rye or Brave New World Order.”
“Brave New World Order?”
“Have you heard of 1984?”
“I have a box from that year?”
“A box?”
“A cardboard box. I collect boxes.”
“Ok. I was talking about the book.”
“Right. So this is like a sequel?”
“I guess. It's just like 1984 but has more jokes.”
“Awesome,” I said, inwardly cringing at my own bozo-ness.
I was not my usual confident self around Terri. I could hardly take my eyes off her. She was so beautiful, perfect complexion, cool and cultured. And she couldn't keep her eyes off me for entirely different reasons. After calling the paramedics, she'd stumped up the money for my hospital treatment, despite being on a tight budget herself. She had also bailed me out with the police and so, not unnaturally, she wanted her money back. And that's how our relationship started; with misunderstanding; mine being a romantic, pain-killer-induced dreamer and hers, as a financial claimant.
She didn’t want to scare me away, despite her directness about wanting to be repaid, but she also seemed to be encouraging my goo-goo-eyed, honey-soaked sentiments. It was a couple of weeks of being around me before she realised I had changed my BragBook page to “in a relationship” and that it meant I was in a relationship with her.
“How can you be?” she said distressed. We were in the Star Hit cafe when the information came out. We had bumped into Jennifer and her face-rec app had spilled the beans. Jenny had returned to her table with her frothy de-Latte to join her clique of robo-dog-loving friends, but Terri retained the fixed smile that she had exhibited to her old University friend, still in shock at the emergency change she had made in her own relationship status to match mine.
“We've been going together for weeks,” I said faking surprise.
“We haven't even gone to Level 1,” she said.
“American Levels and British Levels are different. The British start at Level 1 once we hold hands.”
“But we don't hold hands!” Terri protested.
“Well that's so teenagery. We're past that teenager bit,” I said and grasped her hand resting on the table. Terri glanced down the cafe, Jennifer was still in eye-shot, so she did not pull away.
“We haven't done anything Level 1 as far as I'm concerned,” she said through her fixed grin.
“I assumed that's because of my cast,” I said, referring to my broken ankle still being mended by teams of nanobots. While I had life rules about technology not entering my body I had no qualms about it when it came to rebuilding my leg, especially when the decision was taken when I was unconscious.
“That's my investment. I keep telling you that!” she said, dropping the smile.
“I assumed that was a joke. We always laugh when you say it.”
“You laugh. I laugh at you,” she said firmly and pulled her hand away.
“So why did you confirm, with Jennifer, that we are an item?” I asked but I knew why. Or at least I thought I did.
“Because she's categorised me as a loser. I'm not going to give her the satisfaction of thinking that I don't have a relationship.”
“Many people don’t have a relationship.”
“She’s into them. She thinks they matter.”
“So you’ve not been in a relationship?”
“Not since, uh, the first year at Uni…”
“So just robo-sexual?”
“This is none of your bees-wax. In any case, I don't like robots!”
“Me neither.”
“I’ve already seen your stats,” she mocked.
“She’s looking this away again,” I said trying to hide my blushes.
“Jenny? She knows too much and yet not enough.”
“You don’t like her?”
“It’s not like that. I just hate her looking down at me,” she said with real venom.
“And this is important because?”
“She dorm-ed in the next room to me.”
“I get it. A frienemy! So, you've changed your relationship status, just to look good. For her?” I said.
“Don't worry, I'll be changing it back shortly.”
“But then she'll know that you've failed with me too. And why? What have I done wrong? Nothing except fall for you? We both hate robots… You don't do implants, I don't do implants. How else could we establish a relationship contract without the right network? We’d have to try the old fashion way?”
“By assumption?”
“I may have assumed too much. I was thinking by dialogue. By a chance encounter and dialogue.”
“You're suffering from erotomania. You're delusional. You were passed out for the best three days we had together.”
I laughed. “Delusional?”
“Look it up.”
I did. Paused. My G-phone was running the Inspirational Connections app that made a connection with some previous research I had sneaked from the Legacy Net. That gave me the idea to start singing...
“Searching for a destiny that's mine,” I crooned softly. “There's another taste, another crime. Holding hands with you along the way. Hoping that I'll never have to say. It's just a delusion...”
Terri’s eyes widen. “Ok. Ok. You can be cute too.”
“I can sing in tune...”
“But you're still out of my league,” she said, cutting off my attempt at an immodest bluster.
“And your league is what, exactly?”
“The league of frienemies.”
“Who’s delusional now?”
She ignored me and asked instead, “Where did you hear that song?”
“When you said you were studying twentieth century media studies, I did some rummaging and read up on it.”
“Where,” she said slowly and deliberately, with a smile, “did you
hear that song?”
I smiled back. “I told you, I'm a freelance researcher. I have my sources.”
“That song has been copyright-banned for over fifty years. You can't find that on the holo-web. So where did you find it?” she said, touching my hands.
“Well, I will tell you, if you provide me some insight into these um... American Levels,” I teased.
“I can show you some of them, if you like,” she smiled.
Jenny looked back at Terri from the far end of the “*Hit” logo-ed cafe, to check Terri really was enjoying herself. In retrospect, I assume that Jennifer was thinking that finally Terri had secured an adequate rebound boyfriend after that bastard previous one. What was his name again? She could have been thinking, Oh, yes, Max! It is amazing what you can read into a facial expression.
***
Thursday, January 24, 2123
Conrad followed me down the zipline onto the platform. We unzipped our harnesses and entered another lift down a few floors. When it opened Conrad prompted me to walk into a darken room alone. In the middle of the room was an illuminated man-sized object, a sculpture? No, it was a costume on a stand. Cloaked, metal chested, platform boots and a black helmet that covered the eyes. And the eyes were covered with extended spikes. Really cool! It looked like it was a cross between a medieval black knight and a bee.
“Whoa,” I exclaimed.
“What do you think?” asked Conrad smugly.
“It's pretty incredible. Is it fabricated?” I said circling the exhibit.
“Touch it,” he suggested.
The cloak was thin and silky smooth, the breastplate steely cold, the mask dark and intricate, the spikes over the eyes looked like a mass of prickly sensors. On the breast plate was the indentation of two letters, “PK”. “You have some cool developers,” I said.
“Yes, the very height of Stevieness. And this is our proposed costume... for you,” said Conrad.
“For me?”
“Do you want me to explain the special features we propose?”
“Go on.”
“Telepathic abilities, hypnotic abilities, omnilingualism, invisibility, super hearing, super sight, bullet-proof... and the cloak doubles as a parachute. There's also the usual rappelling and grappling lines, spring boots, utility belt.”
“Super strength?”
“Well, no. The super strength power is tricky with exoskeletons and motors. Takes a lot of practise to use and to disguise the mechanics.”
“And being telepathic requires no practise?”
“There's an audio feed from the super computer giving you the most probable next event.”