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Landing at the resort’s airfield was scarcely different than landing at any municipal airport. The receiving terminal itself differed from Miami or Orlando’s own only in that it was built in a wide, buttress-heavy style that was once a vision of space-aged futurism. The process once they taxi’d up to the “hangars” – a series of domed half-circles like bizzarro, bulbous variants of a traditional aircraft terminal – was what truly stood out.
An automated system, its mechanisms yet unseen, told Vic to follow an invisible path based on the plane’s make, model, and purpose. There was no control tower in the traditional sense, though somehow the radio knew exactly where to direct the craft past row after row of bulbous private hangars onto a larger superstructure, the facility’s sole terminal.
With the hold stuffed with mechanical bits and bobs, automated stewards herded the crew into an extra-large hangar at the far north-eastern edge of the runway. More of a warehouse, really, longer than a sports stadium and with the same curved roof of the smaller hangars. They could fit dozens of turbo-prop planes into the main building. Or they could if there were any doors large enough to fit a plane through.
“Gotta be smoke and mirrors. A series of cameras scanning something on the plane.” Germaine grumbled, half-convinced it was magic himself.
Being a smaller terminal servicing a tiny plane, there were no gangways brought out to let them disembark. Instead, they scrambled out the back hatch, leaving the supplies to languish in the plane.
“Hmm.” Germaine glanced around. “No welcome party.”
“Nobody at all,” Soto said.
At this close distance the group could see dozens of doggie-doors built into the warehouse. Immediately upon the engine shutting down, a storm of miniature vacuum-looking cylinders poured out.
These skittering cylinder-mobiles moved about under their own power. A trio carried a thick hose, nestled in a groove on their flat tops, and attached it to the plane’s fuselage. Other cylinders produced long “arms” that gave the plane an impromptu wash.
A third set of knee high, lawnmower-looking forklift ‘bots ran up the back ramp and began to unload the cargo.
One last phone booth-sized bot on tank treads approached the group. Built into this phone booth was a modest-sized vacuum tube, and on this was a static, goofy smiley face.
“Congratulations on the successful completion of the day’s first transit, valuable actor and/or actress. Follow me to the break room for a requisite thirty-minute uncompensated lunch period before your next flight.”
Without further explanation, the bot’s tank treads ran in reverse, and it took off towards a distant stucco building. The crew had to jog just to keep pace with the machine.
“What is this?” Dan asked, hauling by far the largest pack of the group.
“Probably on a track that runs under the asphalt,” Germaine said. “Smoke and mirrors, man.”
The phone booth on tank treads stopped at a simple double-door with an electronic lock on it. It rammed itself into the door, backed up a half-foot, then ran full force into the door again. Progress was stymied, and the ‘bot gave no indication that this was not expected behavior.
“You’re up.” Germaine nudged Dan in the shoulder.
Dan fumbled about in his pack for lock-picking equipment. As it was an electronic lock, he settled on an electronic pick. Fancy looking doohickey like an overlarge calculator, relic of the late-eighties corporate wars. There was a horrible but muffled grinding noise as the digital interface translated into analogue lockpicking.
The smiley-faced vending machine monstrosity gazed upon them, unblinking. Was security here also mechanical? Swarms of those smaller vacuum-sized critters could descend upon them at any moment. Germaine just wasn’t sure if they had the ability to detain a grown adult, and the alternatives to detention proved disconcerting. Stick a buzzsaw on enough of these auto-vacuums and watch ‘em deter trespassers.
Thirty seconds and they were in, though suspense (and a bit of impatience on Germaine’s part) stretched this out to feel like an eternity.
Inside, an unassuming break room awaited. Empty but with appliances far more modern than the building itself. Someone may not have been in the room today, but everything had been restocked within the last month.
And where do they get food if it’s not being piped in by plane…
“We could pass for a maintenance crew, I suppose,” Germaine said. “Falls apart the second we’re asked for ID.”
“I can get us through any locked doors,” Dan said. “Assuming this place is abandoned.”
“Wouldn’t count on that.” Germaine leaned on the closest fridge. “Did you see those private jets on the way in?”
For his part, Germaine had counted three or four, all in their own private hangars.
“This place still maintains a handful of luxury resort features. Or it did. Anyone with any means ought to have fled well in advance of that militia at the gates,” said their benefactor.
Miss Diaz began digging through pantry shelves and closets. It was clear that she wasn’t looking for a snack.
“Where could they be?” Diaz’s search moved down a hall into a utility closet. “Here it is!”
An overlarge, laminated map was handed to Vic. The map displayed only the airport. It was, however, up to date and showed everything in far greater detail than their pamphlets.
“Visitor center. We want to go there.” Miss Diaz pointed at a building just across from their current hideout. “It’ll be easier to pass ourselves off as tourists rather than actors.”
“Actors? We ain’t a traveling Shakespeare troupe,” Germaine said.
“It’s the company euphemism for employee. Just run with it.” Miss Diaz had already brushed past Germaine.
Well, she writes the checks.
The path from the backdoor to this visitor’s center took them past the richie-rich hangars. Germaine would quite like to take another gander at the private jets. Might make for a stylish getaway vehicle.
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“Ever feel like you’re being watched?”
A symmetrical semicircular lobby awaited within the passenger terminal. A straightforward path from one end to the other, food court in the middle. It wasn’t meant to quite match the capacity of a major international airport. But it was meant to provide a ritzy interior for the kind of clientele that arrived at their vacation destination by private jet.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Murals covered the walls in a technicolor mélange of kitschy concept art. There was a painting directly over the entrance highlighting the Futureplex under construction, with bulldozers and dirt-movers dredging up a tract of swamp, like a surgical scar running vertically through Central Florida.
One painting blended into the next in a long, continuous half-circle above the airport’s modest terminal and over to an identical exit way on the far side of the room.
The only movement came from more vacuum-bots, dutifully hoovering away. There was no security detail to note. Even so, Germaine had that tell-tale feeling where his hair was standing on end.
Above, the mural morphed into a scene of opening day, with a crowd all grouped up in a blob of thousands of individual paint-splots. The third scene, right in the middle of the room, showed a park in operation, with smiling late-60s-era families gazing right out into the terminal. All eyes focused on the entrance.
Germaine walked into the middle of the room. When he looked up again, the eyes now focused upon him. The room’s curvature created a panopticon effect; no corner, not even directly below the terminal windows, was out of its gaze.
A dull thunk of metal on leather. One of the sweeper-bots caught itself on Germaine’s boot. The sweeper backed up, then tried again. He didn’t feel anything as the bot struck his boot, backed up, and rammed right into it a third time.
“Militia knocking on the front gate ought to discourage curious tourists,” Soto said. “Can’t rule out adventure tourism, though. We may not be alone.”
“Adventure tourists? What, like us?” Dan let out a bitter chuckle. “Got a bad feeling about this.”
“You have a bad feeling about everything,” Germaine said.
“Everyone have your wristbands?” Miss Diaz motioned to her own wrist.
Before they pulled off the airport job, their employer had given them a package with a rolled-up courier tube filled with documents. Stashed within the cylinder were schematics of various portions of the facility along with a series of three colored wristbands.
A lime-green wristband, heavier and clunkier than any watch, sat on Germaine’s right wrist. He’d tried it on the left, but the extra weight didn’t sit well on his gun hand.
Soto’s wristband was a dull blue. Dan’s was bright red. Vic had a utilitarian grey one, while Miss Diaz wore a smaller black version. They glowed in the dark, or at least under blacklight, which would not help once stealth was needed.
A food court sat along the curved back wall. By swiping them in front of an infrared scanner, Dan and Soto could coax automated drink and vending machines into dispensing all manner of foodstuffs.
“On-site procurement. Alright!” Germaine cracked his knuckles. This job was getting easier by the minute.
The cleaner thwarted Germaine’s progress, hungrily devouring his shoelaces.
“From this point on, we’re passing as tourists,” Miss Diaz said. “Your bumbling, glutinous behavior is a good cover. I’m impressed.”
Germaine gave the sweeper a kick. It fell over, holding onto the laces until it could chew no longer. The bot rolled around on the floor for a time before self-righting with the grinding of gears. Twin protruding arms poked out of the side, propping the bot back on its wheels.
The crew would loiter in the terminal for less than five minutes. Unseen signals opened the door, and a rush of wind signaled that transport had arrived.
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The map indicated there was a train running both north and south along the compound. But it was not any kind of train the group had ever seen. There was a single elevated track running into a second-story station with a stucco roof. Below, an ornate lawn had overgrown, returned to the swamp from which it came.
A tram car with a sleek red paint job and angular, midcentury design awaited. Would’ve been glamorous once; the paintjob was now dulled with age, as rust from the high-humidity environment had worn it down.
Aesthetically, this pilot’s car was so angular it looked like it could achieve liftoff under ideal weather conditions. Didn’t seem to be a train engine so much as a pilot’s seat on a fighter jet.
“It’s called a monorail,” Miss Diaz explained.
More a tram than a train, really. The outer shell was sleek and angular. A swipe of Vic’s armband opened the doors.
“Is that an employee version of these meal tickets?” Germaine motioned at Vic’s armband.
“Allows us to get into restricted areas,” Vic said. “This monorail is ours now.”
The itinerary called for them to visit each stop in order. Germaine’s childhood memories proved useless in trying to get their bearings. His twelve-year old self had paid no heed to the industrial park portion of the tour.
This mono-tram zoomed off on the same track it came in on, accelerating to a surprising clip and maintaining a constant speed for the mile-long journey.
A walled compound loomed in the distance. Only once they reached the outermost wall did the tram decelerate. This was less out of practical concern so much as it was to provide a clear view of passing exhibits.
Empty laboratories passed by behind unlit observation windows. Only one display had any power. There was a lone, long-dormant assembly line, constructing a continuous conga-line of those sweeper-bots.
“Most of these are for show,” Vic explained. “Demonstration wing. Part of the tour. More practical offices are in the back.”
The monorail slowed to a stop at a cul-de-sac embedded deep in this glass-and-concrete superstructure. Murals covered the walls here, too. Most were industrial in nature with a futuristic tinge, or at least a halcyon-coated vision of the future as of twenty years ago.
A flat cardboard cutout of a cartoon mascot met them at the terminal. It was black and white and wore suspenders, shoes, and nothing else.
“Anthropomorphic beaver,” Vic said. “We had bootlegs of this. Eventually made a proletarian alternative, Laika the Leninist Dog. Popular with children.”
Germaine nodded along, pretending to know what “anthropomorphic” meant.
“W-w-welcome to the,” a grating artificial whine came from a speaker embedded in the cut-out’s mouth. “F-f-fffffuture of industry!”
A mechanical laugh echoed through the lobby, stinging everyone’s ears. It looped back in on itself until the speaker shorted out. The cut-out died with one last “W-w-elcommmmme.”
Vic’s ears were spared, as he’d ducked back into the tram. He exited just as the cut-out finished its death rattle.
“Sabotaged the controls,” he said. “Won’t be followed.”
“Fair enough,” Soto said. “But wasn’t this tram supposed to take us the length of the compound?”
Pamphlets showed a long, continuous north-south trackway. A handy map within the terminal showed the industrial park’s monorail was in fact split in two. A short hall connected symmetrical loops in an hourglass configuration, one heading towards the airport, one pointing towards the northern complexes.
“They needed to force a stop here; people kept skipping the industrial tour.” Miss Diaz explained.
A simple grating blocked the walkway heading north into the compound. Another cut out of a pigeon-creature stood in their way.
“Path is closed!” the cut-out said with an exaggerated, folksy drawl. “Pardon our mess.”
Germaine reached around to his pack and produced a hefty bolt cutter. Perfect for slicing through the meager padlock keeping them out of the walkway.
“Not yet.” Miss Diaz cautioned. “We have business here.”
“Goanna steal everything that’s not nailed down?” Germaine asked. “An industrial park seems the perfect place for it.”
“We can’t take it all with us,” Dan said.
Realistically, they could only haul off whatever they could carry back to the airfield.
Their employers pondered over the terminal map.
“What we’re looking for is in the ‘Science of the Future’ complex,” Miss Diaz explained. “Guided tour ends there if you have four hours to burn.”
The group oriented themselves by the compass directions. Stairs on the west wall led down into another museum exhibit, this one boarded up with its displays unlit and covered in thick tarps. There were no windows in the interior terminal.
“Closed for the off-season.” Soto read, dryly, off an aged placard that had been placed there some years ago. Then a second time, with added zest.
“Soto, don’t… don’t try the silly cartoon accent again. Please.” Germaine begged, then sighed.
A path leading south and then east would take them along the old tour route. A movable flooring that Germaine had never seen before lined the hall. These floors – like horizontal escalators – came to life as the crew approached.
There’s still power coming from somewhere, Germaine thought as they began to move without trying.
“You see most of the sets on the ride in,” Miss Diaz said. “It’s all safe. For show.”
“Good stuff’s further in. Under heavier security.” Vic added.
Instead, the crew left the exhibit and headed down the opposite pathway. A security door stopped them for a moment or two. Resident locksmith Dan helped reprogram the door to accept Vic’s maintenance wristband.
Past this point there was no bright, family-friendly aesthetic furniture. No warm primary coloring. Windows made of thick safety glass looked out over an unkempt lot of palms and rampant crabgrass. The walkway gradually rose over this scene on an incline and continued in a straight line one hundred meters to the north-west campus building. Once past a second door with no security chokepoints whatsoever, the environs came to look like any old office complex.
“This wing ought to contain R&D,” Miss Diaz said. “Items for the parks they don’t necessarily want to show to the public yet. But not quite classified – hence only the one security door. Real important stuff isn’t at a public site.”
“So, this is where the magic gets made?” Germaine asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“Is any of this ringing a bell?” Dan asked.
“Not a thing.”
Germaine glanced down the halls. He sniffed at formaldehyde-laden air. Nothing jogged his memory.
“Must have skipped this part of the tour,” Germaine concluded.
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