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“Hey, boss lady. Mind explaining why this tourist trap has a mandatory tour through a defense contractor?”

The crew was nearing the end of the trek.

“Oh? Odd choice to have families walking through here, I admit,” Diaz said. “But the clientele who uses, well, used the private airport weren’t exactly your average joes.”

Germaine motioned to their surroundings. “All this is to show off to richie-rich types?”

“Pretty much. It was part of the original plans for the compound. Kept around as it happened to appeal to shareholders.”

They arrived at another set of doors – this one thick and metal, like a bank vault.

“This is a new type of scanner,” Dan said. “Some kind of biometrics.”

A roundish panel sat in place of the usual mechanical keypads that served as building security.

“So, we need to go find someone’s finger?” Germaine asked. “Gimme a knife and half an hour.”

Dan shook his head. “Not a finger scanner. Something more unique.”

“More unique than a fingerprint.” Germaine scratched at his unshaven chin stubble. “So, we steal a janitor’s eyeball…”

“Please don’t,” Miss Diaz said, and shook her head. “Besides, we haven’t seen anyone since we landed.”

“Motion detectors and silent alarms haven’t been a problem,” Germaine said. “Let’s blow the door.”

“It’s a genetic materials scanner,” Dan said.

“What?”

“It’s looking for a genetic match. It’s got a genetic code for everyone who is allowed access to this room. Issue is, it’s not too accurate. Any third cousin would have roughly fifty-fifty odds of spoofing the sensor.”

“You want us to lick it?” Germaine asked.

Dan shook his head. “No! Not unless you’re a secret nephew of someone who worked in this office, specifically.”

Miss Diaz let out a fatigued sigh. “Let us see it.”

“We’ve come prepared,” Vic said. “Give us five minutes.”

“As you wish.” Germaine’s impatience was sated, but only so much. He eyed a door across the hall. “I’ll go do the rounds, try to find a drink machine, maybe look for a spittoon that’s been used recently. I dunno.”

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Soto doubled back to check the reception area. Dan loitered around at the door. Germaine beelined to the door just down the hall. While he had no lockpicks, he did have the butt end of a revolver.

The lock gave after four quick bludgeonings. Germaine helped himself inside. Nobody seemed to care. Fine! More loot for him.

The office was dark, the light switches unresponsive. A flashlight cut an industrial-strength swathe deep into the surroundings. Assembly-line equipment sat, dormant.

Salvage operations lived and died on copper wiring. Demand was consistently high, supply forever low. Disused factory settings such as this were the ideal place for retrieving copper from outdated equipment.

As Germaine surveyed the assembly line, it dawned upon him that they didn’t have any way of transporting their haul. Salvage was heavy, be it rare metals or intellectual property design docs. If they could get stuff to the train, they could transport it to the airport. But how would they get to the plane? They’d have to discuss logistics before bugging out.

There were no desks or even chairs in the room. Whatever was being assembled was done entirely by other machines. Equipment was centered not around a central conveyor belt, as in most assembly lines, but around divots in the wall.

It’s more of a maintenance bay, Germaine realized. But for what?

The answer revealed itself as Germaine’s flashlight reached the final bay. A bipedal figure stood motionless in the corner.

“Jesus.” Germaine fumbled the flashlight, recovering just before it hit the floor.

On closer inspection, it was a man-sized suit of that moose mascot from the train terminal. The eyes were reflective, bulbous, and overlarge.

“Now I know I’ve never been to this place before,” Germaine growled. “This thing’d still be giving me nightmares.”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

Must’ve been a case of spotty childhood memory. Maybe his family had gone to Dollywood instead? Regardless of reason, Germaine ignored the unsettling feeling in his gut as he stripped the room of any copper wiring he could find. while always keeping an eye on the animatronic. Those big-old eyes always seemed to be watching him…

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If Soto and Dan noticed that Germaine had a spool of copper wire around his shoulder, they did not mention it.

“What’s taking so long in there?” Soto asked.

The door to the offices awaited, ajar.

“What’d I miss?” Germaine asked.

“Come in,” Vic said from deep within a forest of cubicles.

Dan mouthed something to Germaine. While his lip reading was rusty, it looked like “She opened the door by herself.” Alas, they were within earshot of their employers, so no further elaboration could be had.

Beyond the door was another beige cubicle farm.

“All the crazy wings in this funhouse, and you choose the blandest office?” Germaine said, poking his head into one of the desks.

The cubicles were barren, aside from a handful of forgotten posters.

Idea Theft is Against Contract! Read one poster. Share all your bright ideas with a supervisor at once.

“Huh.”

Germaine leaned in closer. The poster had some fine print that would be impossible to read unless you were right there in the cubicle.

“Mister Dewey Devereaux, Visionary of the Future, didn’t found his own studio just so greedy team actors and/or actresses could develop their own ideas off the clock. All patents, ideas, animations, and animatronics developed on Devereaux World’s Industry of Tomorrow Office Park grounds, or in Devereaux World Company Housing, or by all team actors in the employ of the Deveraux Corporation, are the property of Devereaux’s World Showcase, Inc.”

“Hey, guys? Place has been picked clean already. Also, you can apparently copyright an employee’s thoughts.” Germaine left the cubicle, suddenly glad that he was an independent contractor.

Their employers were in the corner office, which had a painted wall of a scenic subtropical vista where a window should be.

“Tell me it’s still there,” Miss Diaz said.

Vic was pushing a hefty oaken desk into the corner. Beneath it was a carpet. On Diaz’s orders, Vic cut it away with a knife. Beneath that was a floor safe.

Rather than enlist Dan’s safecracking services, Miss Diaz gave the safe a try herself.

“Remind me what we’re here for again?” Germaine asked. “No guards, so you don’t need the muscle. You apparently know the combination to all the safes, so you don’t need a safe cracker.”

“There are several miles between here and the heart of this complex.” Miss Diaz thumbed through some papers. “You’ll earn your pay.”

Miss Diaz handed most of them off to Soto.

“These are mostly design documents. I was hoping for stock buyouts, blackmail material. Still, you should be able to find a buyer. Consider this an advance.”

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It was hard to determine the worth of intellectual property salvage in the field. And it wasn’t the kind of thing you could have appraised at a pawn shop. They’d have to find contacts with industry knowledge.

The path to the north-bound monorail was blocked only by another hardware store bike lock. Once through, a short incline led to a terminal identical to the one they’d left.

“Imma double back to the horse we ran in on. Anyone want me to drop anything off?” Germaine looked about, expectant.

“Are we headed back this way?” Dan asked. “We may want to leave in a hurry.”

“Airport’s the only way out that doesn’t involve getting crucified for blasphemy.” Germaine shrugged. “Loading the train up with plunder seems to be the only way to get it anywhere. Unless we’re going to try and hold the whole compound.”

Germaine took off down the long connecting hall. A third cut padlock and he was right back in the south-bound terminal. Their train waiting where it was parked.

The ugly cardboard sign that greeted them on the ride in was nowhere to be found.

Must’ve been eaten by a sweeper bot, Germaine thought, chuckling to himself.

Germaine deposited his copper wiring in the pilot’s seat; all the better so they don’t forget it on the way out. It wasn’t until after he started back that something seemed amiss.

A lone statue of a long-forgotten black and white cartoon was waiting for Germaine as he exited the tram. It stood there, silently, right where the old cut-out once stood.

Germaine instinctively reached for his revolver, as one does when a linebacker-sized figure manages to sneak up behind you. The animatronic seemed idle, dead even.

“Creepy.” Germaine grimaced. “Did you come from the maintenance bay? Must’ve left the door ajar.”

No response.

Bulbous eyes were devoid of life. That wasn’t surprising, but there was also a lack of any whirring gears, hum of motors, or any expected signs of “life” from this mechanical imitation. Germaine gave the machine a wide berth on his way back to the north-bound terminal.

Indistinct murmurs wafted down the connecting hall.

“Hey, stay back!” Dan’s voice rose above the din.

Germaine started jogging a little faster.

Ahead, Dan was backed into a divot in the wall. Two animatronics – a duck and an oblong mammal creature – pinned him in.

“The industrial park exhibit is closed due to budget cuts,” said the duck.

“You’ll h-h-h-have to turn back,” said the mammal-thing.

“Germaine? You there? Help me out here.”

Germaine walked up to the nearest animatronic. “They’re not going to hurt you.”

Try as he might, this duck wouldn’t budge.

“Jeez. Must weigh half a ton.”

Instead, Germaine grabbed Dan by the sleeve and pulled him through a gap at the duck’s right flank. They got stuck only once, trying to get Dan’s overlarge supply pack out of the barricade. The animatronics gave no reaction.

The pair continued towards the tram.

“Don’t look now,” Dan said.

Germaine looked. The animatronics were facing them, now, and advancing at a brisk walk. It was surprisingly stealthy; the figure’s padded paws and webbed feet made no noise as they walked. There was only the muffled whirl of gears deep within.

“Park is closed!”

“You’ll have to leave!”

A mechanical whine accompanied the low-quality audio recordings as these animatronics advanced, their eyes seemingly following Germaine as he retreated.

Dan and Germaine took off at a steady jog, outpacing the animatronics. The tram door was open, with Soto waiting about expectantly.

“What took you so long? Diaz was going to cast off in two minutes.”

“Damn robots – and I’m not talking about the sweepers.” Germaine pointed behind them.

“What the hell?” Soto’s eyes went wide.

Even at a steady walk, it would still take the twin animatronics about a minute to reach the tram. The doors closed as the group prepared to depart.

As the train took off, the twin animatronics began an automated protocol, waving at the departing train as the station receded into the distance.

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