Jeremy Robinson - SecondWorld

In the silence that followed the cacophonous gunshot, Miller heard the rev of a tiny engine. The man had triggered another of the killer Roombas. But then the engine sounded different. Louder. When the small robotic Bouncing Betty rounded the corner from the far end of the cylinder field, Miller knew why.

The man hadn’t activated one Betty.

He’d activated hundreds.

The robotic army’s whirring engines grew louder as they closed the distance. Miller rushed to the computer. The screen was covered with text, flashing and moving as the system worked. The text scrolled faster than he could read. He moved the mouse, but nothing happened. Whatever kind of operating system this was, it made little sense to him.

Adler sidled up next to him. “It’s Linux based,” she said. She typed in a command faster than Vesely could quick draw, but nothing happened. She tried several different keystroke combinations and nothing happened. “The program is locked,” she said.

“Please hurry, or start running,” Vesely said. “Roomba army approaches.”

Miller glanced up and saw an endless sea of red LED lights. They were going to have to run in a second, but he doubted they could hide for long. And lying down probably wouldn’t work. One of the Bettys would eventually fire at an angle, assuming that’s how they all functioned. Some might just be bombs.

Adler pointed back toward the entrance. “Cowboy, run that way.”

“Happily,” Vesely said, and then ran toward the exit.

A burst of text flowed onto the screen in response to Vesely’s movements.

“There!” Adler said. “The robots’ movements are being controlled, or at least coordinated by the system. There must be sensors throughout this whole place. Maybe cameras. Motion sensors. But they are being controlled by the network. If the computers go down—”

Miller took aim at the computer.

“No!” Adler shouted. “The entire networked system. Shooting one computer will not stop it.”

“Then what will!”

“Fork bomb,” Adler said.

Miller had no idea what a fork bomb was, but said, “Do it!”

He watched as Adler struck three keys and opened a new window. It was a basic text system, like old DOS. She quickly typed in a seemingly random grouping of symbols.

$ :(){:

“A fork bomb is a bash function,” Adler said. “It is called recursively and runs in the background. Once it is started, it cannot be stopped. It opens itself again and again. It starts slow, but each function continues to operate. It is exponential so once it begins, it can happen quickly depending on the power of the networked computers.”

She finished the sequence—

$ :(){:|:&};:

—and hit Enter. “There!”

A single robot Betty rolled around the console. Too late! As the disk at the center of the mobile mine spun up, Miller tackled Adler to the ground. As they fell he realized he would be on top of Adler and quite possibly in the thing’s kill zone, even if it didn’t tilt.

They hit the floor together, each letting out an “oof!” But the puff of air and clack of metal balls never sounded. The disk hit the floor next to Miller, but this time it didn’t spin. It fell flat to the floor, heavy with unfired rounds. Miller leapt up, afraid the thing might fire in his face. He pulled Adler up, too, and then turned to face the rest of the robotic horde. Not a single red light glowed. He looked at the computer screen. Black and dead.

Adler had done it. Before he could thank her, Vesely shouted, “Safe to come out now?”

“ Ja, ” Adler said.

Vesely slid into view from behind one of the cylinders. He looked down and then stopped. He crouched, scrunched his nose, and then said, “Survivor. Come see this.”

“What is it?” Adler asked.

“Come and see!” Vesely said. “Is labeled with man’s name. Rolf Bergmann.”

Miller stood next to Vesely and looked at the name etched into the base of the strange device. Several gauges and valves lined the base next to the name. Three metal tubes on the far side exited the base and stretched out toward an identical device.

Miller guessed there were at least one hundred of the things. But what really bothered him was that beyond cylinders left behind were several hundred more empty bases. Had they never been filled or were these things part of what had been transported out?

He couldn’t imagine what they were, but they looked like futuristic giant-sized vertical coffins. He knocked his fist against it twice. It rang hollow.

“Here,” Vesely said. “Is handle.” He took hold of a handle on the side and pulled. It stuck for a moment, held closed by a small amount of suction, and then opened. Cool air seeped out, steaming as it rolled around them. The inside of the device was cushioned with red rubber. Several tubes dangled from the side. But it was otherwise empty.

The shape of the cushioning—perfectly fitted for a six-foot-tall man—held Miller’s interest. “I think these held people,” he said.

“Cryogenics,” Vesely said.

“That’s not possible,” Adler said. She moved a hand to play with her hair, but her blond locks had been cut. She squeezed a fist instead.

Vesely turned to Adler. “The Nazis did many experiments on humans. Jews and Russians at Auschwitz were stripped naked. Placed in freezing water with temperature probe in rectum. Is documented. Test subjects were kept in water until death, or near death. Then, they would attempt to resuscitate the victims. Heat lamps. Internal irrigation—scalding water in throat, stomach, and intestines. And bath in near boiling water. To my knowledge, all victims died. But it seems process was perfected.”

“Mein Gott,” Adler said. She walked along the line of cryogenic tombs, reading the names to herself. “There are so many. But where are the others?”

“That’s what we need to find out,” Miller said. He turned toward the command center and saw Brodeur sitting at a computer, its screen glowing brightly. He’d apparently recovered from the attack, booted the system back up, and got back on task. His fingers clacked over the keyboard.

“Where were you?” Miller asked.

Brodeur glanced up for just a moment and gave an awkward smile. “Got lost. By the time I came back the army of killer gizmos was on the loose. When they shut down, I got to work.”

Miller headed toward him. “Why did you scream?”

Brodeur’s smile turned sheepish. “I tripped.”

Before Miller could tease the man, Brodeur finished his flurry of keystrokes. “To quote Spaceballs, I ain’t found shit. Can’t make heads nor tails of this operating system, never mind that everything is in German.”

Miller looked at the screen. Like the mobile computer, Miller couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing either. It looked something closer to the Windows operating system, but the learning curve would be steep with everything written in German. But Adler seemed to know her way around a computer.

Vesely entered the command area and whistled. They were surrounded by computers, servers, and bundles of cables that descended from the grid of metal beams above them. As his eyes followed the cables up, Vesely went white and fell back. He landed in one of the floor-bolted swiveling chairs and would have spilled out if Miller hadn’t caught him.

“You okay, Cowboy?” Miller asked.

“No. I am not.” Vesely looked beyond Miller’s face, toward the ceiling. “Am terrified.”

Miller looked up and saw what had Vesely so frightened.

The Bell.

It hung from the stone ceiling, fifty feet above their heads.

“Is that what I think it is?” Miller asked.

“I do not think it is prototype, but it resembles Bell, yes. I do not think this is meant for flight, though.”