Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

Rad turned back to Jennifer and the robot, cylinder in one hand and cable in the other.

“You wanna start telling me a little about all this? Because if you want my help then you’re going to have to fill me in on this one. And we’re going to need to discuss my retainer.”

Jennifer stood and looked Rad in the eye. “He said you could be difficult.”

“Who did?”

“Captain Carson. Who else?”

Rad blinked. “You know Carson?”

“Sure I do. I work for him — worked, anyway. Nobody’s seen him since-”

“Since he walked over the ice and disappeared into the fog,” said Rad. “Yeah, I know. So you wanna tell me why I’m rescuing one of Carson’s agents from a robot gangster? I would have thought the Commissioners would send the big guns in, one of their own in a mess like this.”

Jennifer laughed. “Big guns? There aren’t any. Or haven’t you noticed? Not since… well, not since before , anyway. Carson had some grand plans, but now with the Fissure and the cold, the whole place is a mess and…”

Rad waved his hand. He didn’t like to be reminded of the status quo, because the status quo was bad. Carson, the new City Commissioner was gone, abandoning his post when the transdimensional tear that connected the Empire State to New York City — the so-called Fissure — vanished. And with the Fissure gone the city was slowly turning into a solid block of ice, one apt to shake itself to pieces too, if the tremors were going to keep up like they were.

Rad had heard things were bad at the Empire State Building. There was no one in charge, no one to give orders, no one with any kind of solution, because the one man who knew how any of it all worked had apparently committed suicide.

“Yeah,” said Rad. “I got it.”

Jennifer nodded. “Carson spoke highly of you. Said you were the best. Said to call you when things got difficult.”

“So things are difficult?”

“Something like that.”

“You said they’d started already.” Rad gestured around the warehouse, his eyes scanning the lock-ups. “I take it you’re on the trail of something?”

“Yes,” she said. She straightened and moved to the nearest of the roller doors, giving the padlock at the bottom an experimental kick with her boot. She pushed at the door, rattling it, but it held firm. “We need to see what they’ve got in here.”

Rad gently pushed Jennifer to one side and knelt next to the lock. He took a pair of lock picks from inside his coat pocket, holding them up for Jennifer to see. She smiled and folded her arms.

“Useful.”

“Hey,” said Rad. “Detective’s best friend.” He turned back to the padlock and got to work. The padlock was large but nothing special, and within moments Rad had it sprung. He stood, one hand on the roller door release, but then paused and looked over his shoulder at Jennifer. He had a bad feeling about this.

“Ready?”

She nodded. Rad sighed, and pulled the door up. As the roller snapped into its housing, he yelled in surprise and jumped back nearly a foot.

“What in the hell ?”

Jennifer darted forward before Rad could say anything more.

“God damn, ” she said, her breath clouding in front of her.

The lock-up was filled with robots, tall and silver and inactive. They filled the space wall to wall, five in a row. Rad stood on his toes and counted ten rows to the back of the space.

“Fifty,” he said, his eyes wide. “There’s fifty robots in there.”

Jennifer stepped closer. Each robot had glassy eyes that were dark. She stared up at the closest one, then reached up and tapped the front of its head.

“Careful!” said Rad, tugging on Jennifer’s arm. She didn’t resist as he pulled her back, but when he turned her around he was surprised to see her smiling.

“We need to get out of here,” said Rad. “I don’t like this one little bit.”

“Open another.”

Rad huffed in the cold air. “What?”

“They’re not active,” said Jennifer. “Open another lock-up.”

Rad was frozen to the spot. Behind Jennifer the ranks of inactive robots stood like life-size children’s toys.

“OK,” he said, finally, not quite believing what he was doing. He moved to the next roller door on the left and picked the padlock. The door shot up with a bang that made him jump.

Inside were more robots. Another fifty. Rad looked down the length of the warehouse, then turned and peered into the gloom over the other side of the vast space. The building was lined with the lock-ups, at least sixteen on each wall. Sixteen times fifty was…

“He’s been busy,” said Jennifer. “They have warehouses all over the city. If they’re all filled with robots…”

Rad shook his head. “Someone is hiding a robot army in the city?” He swept the hat off his head, the scale of the mystery he’d stumbled into almost too big to comprehend. He licked his lips and decided to focus down on something a little smaller. He moved to the nearby stack of crates.

“What about this stuff?” He lifted out the metal cylinder again. “Any idea what this is?”

“It’s a Geiger counter,” said Jennifer, “part of one, anyway.”

“That so?” Rad raised the cylinder to his eye and tried to look into the end that was black glass, but it was totally opaque.

“It detects radiation.”

Rad looked at her over the metal cylinder.

Jennifer blew out a breath and it steamed in the air between them. “Welcome to the age atomic, detective.”

Rad sat in his chair behind his desk. He was turned around, not facing the office door and the grandfather clock in the corner, but the large square window immediately behind his desk. The blinds were up, and it was night, the light in the office turning the window into a big mirror.

Funny how things had come full circle. It hadn’t worked out with Claudia, although they’d tried their darnedest, but the truth was their marriage was an echo of something which had never happened, not in this dimension. That was the worst part, knowing what the Empire State was and what it had done to them. It had worried at Rad and it had worried at Claudia, and eventually it had pushed them apart. But maybe that was for the best. Rad didn’t like change, although he knew that might have been the Empire State pushing him again. He liked his job and his liked his office. He had looked around for better, of course, but none had that window and the view, so Rad had stayed put and the little room next to the office was still his home.

Rad watched his reflection, and he watched the corners of the room behind him. Then he sighed and took a sip of his coffee and sighed again. The coffee was good. Real coffee, from the other side, from New York. He had Mr Jones to thank for that. Except now the Fissure was gone and the city had begun to freeze, and while the coffee was warming Rad knew he needed to keep an eye on his supply because suddenly it was a limited resource again.

Huh. Jones. Rad wondered if Nimrod’s agent from New York and Carson’s agent from the Empire State were connected, or even the same person, in a way.

Rad had secured the lock-ups and they’d hidden Cliff’s body in an empty crate in the warehouse. He’d be found eventually. Rad wasn’t sure if that meant the clock was ticking or not, but he had the feeling that time was most certainly running out. Hundreds — thousands — of robots hidden in warehouses all over the city meant something big was on the cards, something well beyond even the organized gang crime that Rad had been investigating. Something calamitous. Jennifer knew much more than she had let on, but had left without so much as a goodbye. As Rad slinked back to his office he hoped she knew what she was doing.