Dale Brown - Puppet Master

“ People! ” yelled someone. “ There are people inside the building on fire! ”

Chelsea looked at Massina and blinked. Her eyes seemed to focus. In the next moment she was on her feet, running toward the far end of the building.

It took Massina a moment to react, and several more before he realized that, rather than running away to safety, she was running toward the fire. “ Wait! Wait !” he yelled, running after her.

The Starbucks had received barely a glancing blow from the explosion; the only damage was to the windows. The two stores next to it were similarly pockmarked by flying debris and shattered glass; the masonry fronts on both were caved in but still intact. The real damage was to the older building adjacent to them. The explosion had obliterated the front half of the building, a three-story Victorian-era house that had been clad in shingles; the back wall was twisted and shriveling, though its panels had somehow managed to resist the fire. The two row houses that abutted it on the other side had been largely untouched by the explosion, but they were now on fire, as were two more beyond them.

Chelsea stopped in front of the destroyed building, gaping at the twisted wreckage. A woman in a cotton nightgown stood nearby, her face covered with soot.

“Mrs. Stevens! Mrs. Stevens!” shouted the woman.

“Who’s Mrs. Stevens?” asked Massina.

“Look!”

Massina saw a shadow in the top window. He guessed it was Mrs. Stevens.

“We have to get her out of there,” said Chelsea.

As if on cue, flames flared behind the woman, throwing her silhouette in sharp contrast. She had something in her arms — a child.

Chelsea had stopped a few feet away. She stared up at the house, then started for the front door.

Massina ran to grab her. “ No, no, no! ”

A ball of flames burst through the first-floor façade. Chelsea stopped short.

“Get the bot!” Massina shouted to Chelsea. “Get Peter.”

She stood motionless for a moment longer, then twisted around and ran back in the direction of the truck.

“She’s going to die,” said the woman in the nightgown. “Where are the firemen?”

“We’ll help her,” said Massina. He looked up at the window. The woman had disappeared.

Chelsea’s thoughts moved in four directions at once; she felt as if her brain were physically bumping against the confines of her skull. She ran in the direction of the truck, or what she thought was the direction of the truck, only to realize that she had gone out to the road; she corrected and darted back toward the rear of the pickup.

The bot’s container was in a large box at the back of the truck bed, wedged between two larger boxes that contained monitoring gear and backup controls. Chelsea grabbed the box and, despite its size and weight, hauled it on top of the truck cab; she had to pull over one of the other boxes to get high enough to reach the snap locks at the top of the case.

Come on, come on, she mumbled to herself. Get it out!

Peter looked a little like a headless horse designed by Picasso. Made primarily of carbon fiber compounds and titanium, the small robot had four legs that articulated from a slim, seven-sided irregular central box; it could stand and move on two or four of any of these legs. The six-fingered claws at the end of each could pick up and hold items as small as a dime. Despite its size — unfolded and standing on four legs, it was only.683 meters tall, or a little over two feet high — it could carry roughly five hundred pounds.

Something exploded in the distance. Chelsea froze, bile creeping into the back of her mouth.

Go, girl, go!

The words were her father’s, seemingly implanted at birth. It was his voice she inevitably heard when in trouble, whether on the uneven bars as a five-year-old or a work project now.

Go, girl, go!

His voice was as strong now as it had been in the gym at the state gymnastics championships — embarrassing then, galvanizing now.

Go, girl, go!

The heat of the fire on Massina’s face felt like a sunburn. No more than two or three minutes had passed since the explosion, yet it seemed like an eternity.

Where are those fire trucks? Where is Chelsea with the bot?

“Here we are!” Chelsea dropped to her knees, skidding on the hard concrete. She had RBT PJT 23.A in her arms.

“The control unit!” said Massina. “Go back and get it.”

“No time,” said Chelsea. “And we don’t need it.”

She reached under the robot’s body and found a small slide; pushing it back revealed a fingerprint reader. Seconds later, the bot stiffened its limbs, signaling that it was powering up.

Massina went down to one knee opposite Chelsea. The bot was between them. He reached underneath, sliding his fingers around until he found the slot where the reader was. The machine, now alive, beeped in recognition.

“Skip diagnostics,” he told the robot. “Natural language mode.”

It beeped, acknowledging the order.

“Proceed to the four-story building that is on fire. Retrieve woman and child from floor four.”

The robot didn’t move.

“Go,” Massina added. “Take the woman and child to safety one at a time.”

The bot still didn’t move.

Massina’s hasty and frankly vague instructions had to be translated and analyzed before they could be acted on; not only were they fairly generic, at least to a machine, but they also related to a task that the machine had never encountered before. Though it had climbed numerous buildings, and it did know what a woman and a child were, it had never had an exercise anywhere near as complicated as this.

“We’re going to have to get the controller,” said Massina. “We need to make sure it knows what to do.”

Chelsea grabbed him as he got up to run. “Wait. Look.”

RBT PJT 23.A beeped and started toward the building.

Massina and Chelsea followed. The heat seemed blast-furnace hot.

But what had happened to the woman? She wasn’t at the window.

The robot continued into the flames.

Turning, Massina ran to the truck. The control unit would be the only way to alter the bot’s commands at this point, and very possibly the only way to get the small machine out of the building if it got stuck.

If this had happened in six months, even three, the bot could get them out. Now, though… there is still so much to do.

Massina grabbed the case and started back to the building. It was a long box, awkward to carry, though not heavy. Firemen were arriving, pulling out hoses, directing a ladder truck. In the confusion no one questioned him; the case made him look as if he belonged.

By the time he reached Chelsea, the woman had reappeared at the window. She was holding her child in one hand and pushing at the glass pane with the other. Someone nearby yelled at her not to open the window, to wait for the firemen to arrive, but even if she could have heard them, the advice would have been difficult to follow, flying against all instinct. She finally succeeded in breaking the glass with the palm of her hand, pulling it back and knocking at the rest of the pane with her elbow. Wind whipped through the opening; the wall at the far end of the room caught fire, flashing red behind her.

“Oh God! She’d better jump,” said Chelsea, running toward the building.

Massina left the control unit in its box and followed, thinking they might at least catch the baby. But the flames at the base of the building pushed them back.

More glass shattered above, raining through the fire and smoke.

“Look!” yelled Chelsea.