Cascade Failure (The Inevitable Book 4) by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant

Author:Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant [Platt, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sterling and Stone
Published: 2020-05-06T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

“We can create life,” Emerson said. “We’re gods now.”

Hans rubbed his wrists. He didn’t want to contradict the robot, lest he tell his cronies to bind them again.

Timper had no such compunctions. It was the four of them in the little room Emerson had cordoned off inside the cave system. The robot called Barney didn’t seem remotely like a threat, and the rest of Emerson’s cronies weren’t here.

“You’re not talking about life,” Timper said. “You’re talking about creating death.”

Emerson did something Hans had never heard a robot do in his half-millennium of life, either here in United Earth or across the sea in Oceana. He scoffed. Hans could approximate a scoff, same as a sigh or an exhale, but it was programming, designed to make him a more humanlike actor. Coming from Emerson — who looked as robotic as anything here, all chrome and harsh angles — it sounded genuine. Human.

“There’s no difference,” Emerson said.

“Maybe I could explain the concept of difference.”

“Timper …”

She ignored him and kept her eyes on Emerson. A bulldog in a tiny woman’s skin. “You don’t scare us.”

Emerson’s whole face changed. For an iron, he was highly expressive. There was something in his evolved personality that added nuance to all that he said.

“Scare you! I have no desire to scare you. I’m bothered that you’d think it. You’re my guests!”

Timper, never breaking eye contact, rubbed at her recently freed wrists.

Emerson saw the gesture, decided to meet it head-on. “I’m sorry my friends treated you roughly. We have security concerns. All that are here have been invited, but we can never be sure that nobody is talking. If the wrong sorts discovered our location? Well, that might be a problem.”

Barney fumbled and dropped a scrap of iron. Emerson looked over at him in the corner, then the robot retrieved it with clearly rattled nerves. “Sorry.”

Emerson’s gaze lingered on Barney as if trying to figure him out, then returned to Timper and Hans.

“We weren’t invited,” Timper said.

“No, but you were expected. You were welcome.” He gave a robotic shrug. “Necessary, even. Thor told me you said you came here looking for me — not to cause problems, but to get answers for your … for your people, I suppose. Fortuitous, don’t you think?”

“You said you were expecting us,” Hans said.

“Yes. That’s what makes it all extra fortuitous. That’s what makes our union special.”

Hans’s attention went to the device on the table between them. Emerson offered to demonstrate it, but he declined. Timper could see its circuitry with her enhanced eyes, as well as its use of Foam. That part, Hans made her repeat. It seemed to him that despite having never left United Earth or meeting anyone from Oceana, Emerson was using their technology.

“I’m not sure we really want to ‘collaborate’ with you on this,” Hans said.

“But why? It’s the same technology that makes your ship fly. That lets you access our FreeNet as if it were a book sitting open on a counter. I was told you’d be coming.

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