Keung hid by the dumpster as he watched Robert and Morgaine peel into the parking lot, then watched them scrambling around looking for him until they found the Saturn. He watched them from this safe distance. They looked pissed.
He smiled and locked his mind like a safe. No thoughts in, no thoughts out. He locked his mind in the void while he watched the two move through the parking lot looking for him. He moved deep into the concrete dumpster pen as their search eventually brought them close to him. He pulled a broken down box over him when they stopped beside the pen and looked around the area, just in case they looked in here.
The Jeep idled there for a moment. When he heard the Jeep pass and continue on, he released a sigh of relief. They didn’t stay long after that. The boy didn’t leave his hiding place right away, just in case one of them stayed behind to continue the search. Keung checked what he had collected thus far. The car; Well that seems spoiled from what he saw of Robert and Morgaine. He can’t risk taking it from here and them using the AI to track him down afterward. Besides, the owner will eventually need it and might not make a big fuss if it’s found just a short ways away.
He found the restaurant’s morning cash deposit in the trash bag tossed behind the bin. He had entered the manager’s dream and suggested that he leave the bag here while disposing of the trash this morning. It wasn’t much, but it will be enough to get him to his Nevada base. He counted the contents and folded it into his pant waist. In Nevada, he had Anastasia’s old setup along with some of the new equipment that he had HAL ship there over the years. Hopefully Beta had already installed the equipment to cut down the process of departure once he arrived. He needed to get back to homeworld if he was to repair what these humans had done to reality.
He weighed out his assets and liabilities in his mind. He was in pajamas. He didn’t want to think about who put him into them. Honestly, that didn’t matter. He straightened himself out. Hopefully the sleeping clothes will just come off as quirky. The parking lot looked clear of his two pursuers so he cautiously left his hiding space and walked to a man headed to his car. He hoped the two had not left any instructions within the minds of the people throughout the lot as he made his way toward the man.
Keung attempted to overwhelm the man’s mind, to take the car and his cellphone. He found that he was unable to dominate the man’s thoughts. He could hear what he was thinking, but failed to gain any control. He was a grumpy, unpleasant man.
Keung smiled and beelined from the man and his car, cursing to himself in his head. “What the hell?” he said when he was clear. He had come across outlier humans that could resist him in the past, but they usually had a vast intellect to obstruct his abilities, or some mutated brain structure not found within the general populace. This guy was just some grumpy old bastard.
He reached out for the nearest human and tried again, and again he failed, then again, and again. Nothing. He had lost his ability to dominate people? His blood ran cold. Out of freak luck, he saw a man parking his car in the lot with a “For Sale” sign in the window. Just two thousand dollars. He walked up to the man with a big smile. The vehicle was a piece of junk, but it could get him where he was going.
“Does it run?” Keung said, walking up behind the man.
“It sure does! Only a hundred and twenty thousand miles on her,” the man replied.
Keung read his thoughts. “It won’t pass smoke, but he can likely work something out, even if he can’t, not like he’s gonna come after me for two grand.”
“I have fifteen hundred cash. Sign it over and I’ll be on my way. What do you say?”
The man smiled a crocodile grin and put out his hand to Keung.
“Hell, you have a deal,” the man replied.
Keung paid him and took the keys. The paperwork was signed and he was on his way within minutes. No cell. Not really a problem yet. He still has a couple thousand in cash, enough for some clothes at a thrift shop or something on his way out of town. He now has a car that no one is looking for and that has no ties to him in any system. Hell, he even signed the pink slip with John Smith, like that asshole cared. He already had a great start to getting out of town scot free.
He drove the speed limit through town and got on the freeway as quickly as possible. He knew HAL could be used to find him. He also figured that the ship that housed the G’lomin-sitiri AI he had seen in holographic form, could easily utilize the traffic cameras and cell towers throughout the state to locate him. He needed to get as far away as possible as fast as possible without drawing any attention to himself.
He jumped on I-5 headed East, then onto I-510, he tried to stay off of the main roads as much as possible. Keung didn’t even stop for food or clothes until he was in Idaho a couple hours later.
When he did pull into a thrift store and went on a shopping spree, he picked up clothes that were not at all his style. An oversized sports team jersey with the face of a serious looking bird on it: a Seahawk. He found a matching hat and a pair of sunglasses. He then picked up some cargo jeans with a good number of pockets to wear and some white sneakers that didn’t look too far gone. He also found a nice velcro wallet in the bins filled with various junk. He checked himself out in the mirror; all this was camouflage in hopes that any cameras he crossed would not be able to identify him as he drove south.
“Perfect,” he said to himself.
He handed the tags from the clothes to the clerk at the desk.
“I’ll wear these out,” he stated obviously, then handed the clerk the pajamas. “You can go ahead and toss these in the donation pile if you like.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The clerk snorted and rang him up.
He then stopped in at the liquor store on the corner and picked up a peanut butter and jam sandwich and three Diet Rockstar Energy drinks. On his way out he spotted a prepaid cell offered on the cheap. “I’ll take that too.”
“I need some ID for that. New policy.”
Keung touched the man’s mind and found it pleasantly wide open.
“Well isn’t this a surprise!” he said with a chuckle to his voice. There was a man outside walking toward the store as well and Keung succeeded in additionally grabbing his will from him.
“Well come on in buddy! I think we are about to have a party.”
Keung had the men empty their pockets and collected their belongings. The men’s two smartphones and forty dollars cash will help to some degree. He also took the two men’s keys and checked out their cars for anything else he could scrounge. One was a considerable upgrade from the beater that got him here so far, the other around a lateral move.
He also had the men load his new vehicle with snacks, various barter items, drinks, and candy. He went back into the store and took the tape from the closed circuit camera system. Under the register he also found a Smith and Wesson thirty eight special and baseball bat. Keung collected the weapons as well as all the prepaid cell phones behind the counter and all the money in the register. As he made his way out of the store the two men started back inside after loading up the truck with his supplies.
“Hey thanks guys,” Keung said, “Now, I want you to forget ever seeing me or any of this stuff before. You never owned this truck, got that?”
The two men nodded and headed back into the store silent and robotically. He tossed the bag of phones into the truck cab followed by the bat. He placed the pistol into the glovebox just in case he got pulled over and his powers went wonky again. With his powers returned to full strength, his trip would be made a lot easier.
The large truck felt good as he jumped back onto the freeway and turned on the satellite radio. As he drove he used the truck owners cell phone to call his Nevada compound. He needed Beta to prep the system for his departure and run the calculations to send him back to homeworld. The line rang.
“Hello, you have reached the offices of Dr. Deagol Sonnenstrahl…” the familiar recording began. “...I am away from the desk, but I will be checking on these messages often. Please leave me a number and I will return your call at my earliest convenience. Ta.” The message completed with a long monotone beep.
“Beta. Respond; Ricci Eight Zero Five Four Eight Three Four Two One Eight Zero One.”
Hundreds of miles away in an old lab a mechanical arm sprange to life with the sound of the message. The drives of the computers in the lab started kicking on with loud whirring and humming.
“Beta. Respond,” Keung repeated over the answering machine speaker.
The arm moved creeped on motorized wheels that inched slowly across the room. When it reached the desk where the cordless phone was docked, it had to first remove the plastic sheet that protected desk contents. The elderly machine then picked up the receiver.
The speakers in the warehouse clicked on. “Hello,” the heavily synthetic voice answered and at once the phone receiver went dead. The arm moved the receiver toward one of the security cameras in the room. The phone’s battery light flashed and then died.
Keung heard the line go dead over the speaker.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said to himself as he called back.
The mechanical arm was returning the receiver to the charger when the base began ringing again. The arm set the receiver down and waited for the answering machine to respond.
The message played predictably and the caller began with the same message.
“Beta. Respond; Ricci Eight Zero Five Four Eight Three Four Two One Eight Zero One.”
The arm tapped the speakerphone button this time.
“Hello,” the heavily synthetic voice answered, again.
“Beta?”
“Yes.”
“This is Ricci.”
“No. This is not.”
“Beta. Confirm access code; Ricci Eight Zero Five Four Eight Three Four Two One Eight Zero One.”
“Confirmed,” the speakers replied in the monotone synthetic voice.
“Beta. I need you to prepare the laboratory for an IFA download and projection.”
“Confirmed. Coordinates.”
“G’lomin-sitiri homeworld.”
“Confirmed. Estimated time for preparation 19 hours 38 minutes.”
“Can you trim that up a little?”
“Negative.”
“Very well.”
Keung said and hung up the phone without further pleasantries.
***
The mechanical arm in the lab began working to get the required equipment ready. There was a lot of neglect here. It hasn’t had much in the way of help in a while. It went to the fuse box and replaced several of the burnt out plugs that have popped at one time or another. The equipment all around the compound began booting back up.
Beta found as the fuses were turned back on that several of his other systems came back online with them. Three more robotic arms joined the first in cleaning up the lab. It also found that there was a large crate in the garage it had not seen before. The crate was now only visible with the cameras in that area powered back on.
Beta was to unbox and implement all new deliveries in his free time, per his priority checklist embedded in his program. He checked the time and date. It was then he realized he’s had free time for over ten years now and had neglected this delivery all that time. He started checking the tapes from the security cameras, another of his priority tasks. He had not had company in over four years by his record and that last visitor was Deagol.
The arms moved through the rooms to the crate and proceeded to unbox the package. There were several smaller boxes as well as instructions for the installation of the cargo within the compound. Beta oversaw the entire task through the cameras and continually updated his timetable.
Unlike HAL, Beta was not a functioning AI. He was close, but not there by definition. He couldn’t pass the Turing test with anything close to competency. That didn’t mean that Beta didn’t have an in-depth understanding of things, he did, well kind of. One of the robotic arms stopped unpackaging and locked up completely still. Beta looked at the monitor from his interface room in confusion. The machine would not respond to his instruction. He sent another of the arms to it and checked the first for any malfunctions. It turned out that the battery charge had been depleted.
He checked in the shop inventory and saw there were three batteries still in stock. His avatar, a clunky skin that Anastasia had designed for him years ago, was a heavily pixelated thing that was a general reflection of a human being circa early 90s rendering, something akin to Max Headroom. He sighed, and updated the timetable again.