The Robots by John Eider

Author:John Eider
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, robot, technology, scientist, escape, chase

The first face Eris saw back at the office was that of Forrest, waiting for her at the front door. He was asking,

‘So how did it go with the PM?’

To which she answered, ‘I liked him before I met him.’

‘Oh?’

‘But he’s living in an intellectual cloud cuckoo land, where everything can be explained and rationalised.’

Forrest harrumphed, as they swiped their security passes, ‘Well, that sounds better than the usual blowhard rubbish we get.’

Though this didn’t settle her. She went on, ‘But for all his philosophising, up there in his glass tower, he can’t realise that what he has actually done is built a vision of the world around him where the only person he’s allowed to criticise for all the wrong things in it is himself. It’s a form of mental self-harm. And I’ll tell you, Forrest, when he turns, he turns. No, I’m afraid to say that Britain has a very damaged man at its centre. I tell you, I could run this country better than him.’

‘But could you trust yourself to be nice?’ he asked.

‘Well, that’s what I’d pay you for. Anyway,’ Eris was very keen on asking, ‘so what on earth are these robots up to?’

‘Okay.’ Forrest rifled through a sheaf of papers as they passed through clean white rooms toward her office. ‘Going through the bulletins all in sequence:

‘Right, the as-you-weres first. There have been no new alarms or sightings.’

‘Danny?’

‘Still on the run.’

‘The mineshaft?’

‘Endless forensics, though nothing much to help us. Oh, apart from fragments of carbon fibre found amid the debris – it’s the only material they can’t account for.’

‘But that’s Danny, that’s his bones! Get it over here right away. And that means he’s visibly injured, not just internally. Get a new all-points message out.’

Forrest reassured her, ‘It’s okay, boss. The fragments are coming here by courier; and the all-points bulletin already specifies an injured man.’

‘Okay. So what about that bloody mess in the West Country?’

The night before’s sighting, then loss, of one of the female artifs had been a source of consternation for Eris in the hours since. And Forrest had no good news,

‘Local security cameras show a dozen red hatchbacks in the area just before and after the sighting. One of these cars had the flag in the window that the security guard remembered, but the image on camera wasn’t clear enough to make out the registration.’

‘Hell.’

‘And we still don’t know who the male driver was. And as for how the target had been living, neighbours say the girl didn’t talk much beyond the usual pleasantries, and none of them remember her with friends or a boyfriend... You really think she was an artif, ma’am?’

‘Certain.’

Forrest shook his head for comic effect as he reread the papers, ‘I don’t even know why I’m asking – they found her garage full of car batteries and no car. But it sounds a lonely life, doesn’t it?’

Eris smiled flatly, ‘Then let us hope we can bring them all together again, and then they’ll be less lonely.’ Though even she wasn’t convinced.

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