chapter 50
TEAM 3, YEAR: 2095
Time Remaining: 1 hour, 37 minutes
The twins stood around Spencer’s coffee table dressed like high-tech criminals, surrounded by enough electronic gadgets to break into the federal gold reserve. They wore multi-pocketed black cargo pants and matching black, long-sleeved shirts. Their backpacks lay open on the couch and they filled the bags with the tools and supplies necessary for breaking and entering as well as for hacking into the NRD alarm system.
Past- and future-Spencer sat at the dining room table and ran through the plan for what seemed like the hundredth time. Future-Spencer felt nausea bubbling in the pit of his stomach, but he fought it back. They had a plan, though it was flimsy at best. It would get them in the door, but there was a good chance the night would end with a lot of awkward conversations with the police. Spencer adjusted the time travel watch on his left wrist. He pulled his sleeve over it but the lump it created was hardly less conspicuous. A knock on the door startled the group.
Past-Spencer looked inquiringly at his future counterpart. “Kalen?”
Spencer shook his head. “No, she’s at her grandparents. I think she needed some downtime after what happened Saturday.”
“Can’t say I blame her,” said future-Logan. He walked to the door and opened it. “Delaney, you look fabulous.” The collar of her white shirt peeked over the jacket of her tailored charcoal skirt suit. She kissed him on the cheek and he saw that she looked tired. Her eyes lacked their sparkle. Logan opened the door wider to let her in. She entered and, seeing the two Spencers, she stopped. Her eyes darted from the Spencers to the floor and she backed into the hallway. He followed her out of the apartment.
“Can you get Spencer, too?” She thought for a moment and clarified. “Your Spencer. The future one.” Logan could tell the day was weighing heavily on her. He motioned for Spencer to come out.
Delaney had never felt worse in her life. She felt like her world was turning inside out and all she could do was sit and watch from the sidelines. The pain of knowing that Logan would soon be gone felt nearly physical. Added to that was the dread she felt about the half-baked plan the team was about to execute. She was unsure whether they could succeed with the deck stacked against them at every point.
Spencer closed the door behind him in the hallway and Delaney handed him an envelope. “Take this. I’m sorry I can’t stay and help you further, I have to get to the office. Some of the out of town stakeholders want a tour of our lab before the big presentation.”
Spencer opened up the envelope to find a letter with a plastic swipe card affixed to the bottom. The card surprised him. The swipe card technology had been antiquated long before his parents had been born.
Dear Mr. Philip White, please find the attached swipe card as your…
Spencer stopped reading. The name sounded familiar, but he had no time to process it; he was more interested in the card’s purpose. He studied the plastic rectangle. “I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen one of these in real life.”
Seeing the card, Logan laughed. “Geez Laney, what museum did you get this from?”
Delaney smiled. “We had a last minute request for another guest this evening who required an alternative method of security authorization. The problem is that not only is he blind, but he has glass eyes.”
A smile crept across Spencer’s face. “No eyes. No retinas. He wouldn’t be able to use the retinal scanners.”
“Exactly. Security was all in a flap because they’d never had to deal with this before and had no idea what to do. They had to dig out an old policy manual from the basement to see what the protocol was. Apparently, it’s this,” she said, pointing to the card. She smiled innocently. “But, as it turns out, he couldn’t make it.”
Spencer stared at the little card. This antique piece of plastic changed everything.
Time Remaining: 1 hour, 8 minutes
Spencer’s stomach squirmed uncomfortably as the cab drove him to the NRD office. It joined the line of cars waiting to drop their passengers off at the front door. He was pleased to see a throng of people waiting to get in; it would be much easier to get lost in the masses.
When his cab finally advanced to the door, he got out and stood on the curb hunched forward. Dressed in a brown tweed suit, grey wool cap and carrying a maroon leather messenger bag, Spencer completed his outfit with black sunglasses and a white cane. A quick dusting of talcum powder gave his normally wheat-blond hair the appearance of having aged forty years in an instant. He unfolded the cane and made his way to the door slowly with short, shuffling steps.
Inside the main doors, a bank of retinal scanner stations lined the wall opposite the security desk like self-serve ticket kiosks at a movie theatre. The long lines of guests waiting to scan in filled the foyer and spilled out the front entrance, making it hard for Spencer to access the security desk.
“Mr. White,” greeted one of the guards, his voice excessively loud over the sounds of the excited congregation of people lining up to get in.
I’m blind not deaf, thought Spencer, though he appreciated the gesture. He nodded feebly.
“We’ve been expecting you. Do you have your card?”
Spencer pulled the card out of his jacket pocket and held it up.
The security guard came around the desk and gently took Spencer’s arm in his. “Okay, I’m just going to get you to swipe that at the far end of our desk here.”
The guard cleared people from Spencer’s path and led him to the far end of the marble counter top where a card scanner waited, covered in years of dust.
“That thing is unbelievably filthy. I guess you don’t get many occasions to use it, eh?” said Spencer in his best old man’s voice. As the words had left his mouth, his heart jumped into his throat. The guard looked at him perplexed. He had blown it. His mind raced, thinking about what his next move would be. Jump the security gate, run for it and hide? Leave and resort to the original plan? He froze to the spot.
The guard initially seemed thrown off by his comment, then smiled. He looked at the thick layer of dust on the surface of the scanner, then pulled his sleeve over his hand and brushed it off. He seemed impressed and in no way suspicious. “That’s very impressive, Mr. White. How did you know that?” he asked.
“Uh, I can smell it.”
“Really? I didn’t know dust had an odour.”
“Oh, yeah. For sure,” Spencer lied.
The guard held his sleeve up and he smelled it. He seemed baffled. “Hmm. I don’t smell anything. You must have a super sensitive sense of smell.” He brushed the dust off his sleeve.
For good measure, Spencer took a few visible sniffs and made a face. “Yes, now you might want to do something about those shoes,” said Spencer, smiling.
The guard seemed thoroughly impressed. He chuckled and helped Spencer swipe his card. Spencer made a production of missing the scanner multiple times. “Let me show you to your seat.”
Spencer watched the time projected into the bottom left corner of his vision by his Icomm lenses. He had only minutes to get to the east wing to let the twins in but felt it would be suspicious to deny the offers of help. If he truly were blind, help would probably be very welcome when in an unfamiliar building, being jostled by crowds and trying to find an auditorium, then a numbered row and seat. He played the part and graciously accepted the offered help.
Time Remaining: 49 minutes
“What the frig?” whispered Logan harshly when Spencer finally stuck his head out the back door. “You’re eleven minutes late!”
Spencer shushed Logan angrily. The presentation had already begun and gone were the echoing voices in the atrium. They heard the NRD public relations rep Allison Hargrave giving her opening remarks.
“You have no idea how hard it is to be an old blind man,” he whispered loudly. “I mean, I appreciate everyone’s concern but, good gravy! Every time I tried to get away, everyone assumed I needed help or I was lost. I
got redirected twice trying to come down this hallway. I had to wait in the bathroom until the presentation started.” He closed the door behind his brothers and they walked down the hall to a set of double doors that would enter a storage area inside the Burton Auditorium.
With the anxiety of getting inside the building now behind him, the void filled with a fresh wave of uneasiness for the next task. Spencer still had no clue as to how he was going to convince the stakeholders that the personality applications needed to be modified before being deployed in the robots. It sickened him to know that he had come this far and still had no strategy. In life, he always had a plan and a backup plan and a backup, backup plan. The circumstances of the last three days had completely pulled the rug out from under him.
Asher got to the storage room door before his brothers and placed his hand on the handle. Before he opened it, he looked at Spencer seriously.
“Spence, what’s your plan?” Spencer answered his question with a look of fear that Asher had not seen in his kid brother’s eyes since the tree house sleepover that had prompted the Ghost Story Ban of 2076.
Spencer shrugged. “I’ll have to somehow get to the stakeholders at the end of the meeting and explain everything.” Asher caught Logan’s eye and saw his twin shared the same level of concern. Asher pulled the door open and they silently walked in.
When they entered the room, they immediately saw the large curtain that ran from the back of the auditorium to the front, partitioning the storage area from the rest of the room. The storage area was not lit, but light from the auditorium spilled over the top and beneath the curtain. They stood among stacks of tables, chairs, desks, fake plants, filing cabinets and other miscellaneous office items that people had stashed there. When Logan suggested using this storage area as a hiding place, his brothers were surprised to learn of its existence. In answer to his brothers’ queries regarding his knowledge of the space, Logan smiled and muttered something about helping Delaney carry a desk there once or twice.
Walking carefully through a maze of neatly stacked office supplies, they walked as far as they could to the front of the room and found that only the stage and the first few rows were visible. Careful to stay in the shadows cast by the massive curtain, Spencer and the twins peered as far as they could around the edge without being seen. They were surprised to see only one of the twenty-two robots on stage with Ian.
The brothers listened quietly in the shadows as Ian explained the AEI technology and how it would bring the robots to life. He elaborated on the many ways the robots would change the world and human-robot relationships, and how the world would soon be giving credit to the pioneers in this very room, for it was only because of their vision and investment that the face of robotics around the world would be revolutionized forever. Not a sound in the auditorium could be heard as the audience eagerly took in every word.
Time Remaining: 11 minutes
“Spence!” Logan whispered. His younger brother’s pale face glowed white, and not from errant talcum powder when ditching his disguise. “What’s your plan? What can we do?”
“I don’t know!” Spencer whispered frantically. The pressure on his chest cinched tighter as each second ticked away on his watch. “How am I going to convince these people of anything when I have no working proof?”
He opened up the tacky leather messenger bag and pulled out a stack of papers. “All I have are these goddamn test results and a few modified personalities in the trunk of my fucking car. I only have summaries for the first five we were able to modify before Ian busted us.” His breathing began to feel constricted and he pulled desperately at the collar of his shirt.
Logan eyed the papers Spencer waved around. “Well, that’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”
Spencer shook his head. He narrowed his eyes in frustration. “It’s just data. People won’t understand. They need to see to believe, and that’s why this goddamn demo was so fucking important. All I’m going to be able to do is wave a bunch of papers around and hope that people listen! I’m going to get arrested before I finish my first sentence!”
The three stopped talking when they heard the audience laughing. They peered around the corner again. The presentation seemed to be going off without a hitch. Ian’s usual charisma charmed the crowd and the robot performed brilliantly. The robot grinned widely and his eyes glowed blue. Ian and the robot fed off of each other, interacting and collaborating. They even played catch with a little red bouncy ball. The robot closed the demo by showing off his agility—bouncing the ball off its arms, knees and feet like a seasoned soccer player. Ian and the robot bowed in response to the standing ovation then took questions from the audience. Ian never missed a beat and had answers to every question. The audience ate it up.