Dale Brown - Puppet Master

As Chelsea described the problem and its solution in great detail — in layman’s terms, or as close to it as possible, it had to do with what was essentially a trick in utilizing memory more efficiently than the logic chip’s cache was designed to do — Massina’s thoughts drifted, scattering among some of the other projects his company was working on. While applications for industrial robots were Smart Metal’s major moneymakers, the company had projects in a vast array of areas; not all involved AI and robotics. One of his engineers had designed a golf club whose head corrected for imbalances in its user’s swing, practically guaranteeing long and accurate drives off the tee.

At least according to its inventor. Massina had never tried it himself. He didn’t particularly like golf, and while he had taken a few swings with the club, he could not personally say that it did anything an ordinary driver couldn’t. He did, however, like the idea that the pros they’d hired to test it raved about it.

“Want anything?” Chelsea asked, pulling into the lot of a strip mall dominated by Starbucks.

“I don’t have any cash,” said Massina, suddenly remembering that he hadn’t managed to get to the ATM.

“I’ll spot you,” laughed Chelsea. “Black, no sugar. Tall?”

“Medium. Or small.”

“That’s tall,” said Chelsea, slipping out of the truck. “Twelve shot latte for me.”

“Hmmph,” he said, mentally calculating the effects of that much caffeine on her small frame.

Chelsea Goodman shivered involuntarily as she stepped from the truck. Despite the fact that she had lived in the Northeast for some six years now — four while studying at MIT, and two with Smart Metal — the San Diego native still had not adjusted to the climate. Winter itself didn’t bother her as much as the long wait for spring that characterized the end of March and beginning of April. Mentally done with ice and snow, she wanted flowers and much longer days, or at least days where she could comfortably bike to work without a parka.

Though it was barely past five, the line at the counter snaked around the ground coffee display to the mocha pots at the store entrance. This Starbucks was one of the few in the area that opened before six, which made it an oasis for caffeine-starved early risers.

Chelsea took a step back and did a high lunge, a basic yoga move that stretched her lower body. The man in front of her glanced around, clearly concerned that she might do something more dangerous.

“Just staying warm.” She smiled at him, twisting left and right. He rolled his eyes and turned back toward the counter.

Chelsea was excited about the morning test; now that they had solved the memory problem, she felt the bot would easily pass its functional tests. The robot was an offshoot of an earlier design used by the military to retrieve mines and IEDs without exposing soldiers to their dangers. Where the original was operated by remote control, this one was completely autonomous; it could be told to locate ordinance, safe it, and then place it in a robot vehicle for transportation or disposal. While these tasks were relatively straightforward — Smart Metal had a “mech,” or programmed robot, that could do all of those things already — the bot’s size and production costs were the real innovations. RBT PJT 23.A — more commonly known to the developers as “Peter”—folded itself into a tool-bag-sized case. The AI computing unit and sensors were all off-the-shelf, the former actually centered around a processing unit used for the latest version of the Apple iMac. Pushing an architecture designed to run a home computer into areas ordinarily reserved for the human brain had been, and continued to be, an exhilarating challenge.

Exactly the reason she was here.

A strange scent tickled Chelsea’s nose as she moved up in the line. It was an off note, a double-flat in the olfactory symphony of coffee blends and roasts.

Rotten eggs?

It reminded her of the ancient gymnastics studio where she’d spent much of her elementary school afternoons.

Mold?

Natural gas?

The Starbucks building was in a small strip mall directly across from a row of much older residential buildings; in a few hours the close-in suburb would be clogged with work traffic, but at the moment the streets were nearly deserted. Massina gazed at the row of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century row houses surrounding the plaza. Varying between three and five stories tall, each building housed several apartments, some two or three on each floor.

The inventor had spent much of his childhood in a succession of similar houses. There was nothing to be particularly nostalgic about; his childhood had been far from gilded. And yet he remembered bits and pieces fondly, and knew he had learned a great deal, whether in the hardscrabble streets or the strict Jesuit grammar school where his abilities were first recognized.

Massina had started working at ten, sweeping the floor of a butcher shop several blocks away from here. His boss, a cousin of his mother, had been difficult; work had nonetheless been an oasis compared to his home, where his mother’s erratic, alcohol-fueled behavior had filled the small rooms with danger as well as…

… The building he was looking at suddenly flashed yellow, then red, as fire surged from a dozen points at once. The air filled with glass, wood, and brick. A shock of air yanked the front of Massina’s truck upward and back; it slammed down so hard that the air bags exploded.

Dazed, Massina grabbed for the door handle and grappled with the seat belt. He fell out to the pavement, the car alarm blaring. Flames seemed to be everywhere, sucking air so quickly it whistled.

Get Chelsea, Massina told himself, struggling to his feet. Get Chelsea to safety, damn you, old man!

His mouth and throat filled with a mist of fine powder from the air bag. Massina began to cough. The air blackened as a furl of soot descended over the buildings; it gave way slowly to a red and yellow glow, the fire pushing away the smoke as it rose. The street looked as if a tornado had cut through a war zone: debris, big and small, littered the road and parking lot.

Legs shaking, Massina steadied himself against his truck, then started toward Starbucks.

He found Chelsea lying on the sidewalk just in front of the building. She had just stepped out when the explosion occurred; knocked backward, she lay on the ground, stunned and surrounded by glass.

Massina bent to her, not sure whether she was dead or alive. He caught a glimpse of people inside the store trying to help each other, moving as if in slow motion.

Chelsea moved her head.

“Up!” Massina barked at her. “We got to get away from the building.”

Chelsea’s face and clothes were speckled with blood where small bits of stone-shrapnel had peppered her skin. She was in shock.

“Chelsea!” Massina barked. “Get up!”

She blinked, then slowly got to her feet. “My coffee!”

“Come on.”

Massina helped her to the side of the Starbucks building, struggling to get his own bearings. The blast had muffled his hearing, and he felt as if he had a helmet over his head.

“Are you bleeding?” he asked.

She waved her hand; she didn’t seem to be hearing well either. But she seemed OK, just dazed.

Massina reached his right hand — the artificial one — into his pocket and took out his phone. “Nine-one-one,” he told the custom dialing app. “Report fire at this location. And an explosion.”

There was already a siren in the distance. People from the buildings across the street came out to see what was going on.