Kris Schnee - Everyone's Island

“No. The reason is: I’m being blown out to sea.”

Valerie’s silence drew Garrett’s attention. He asked her, “What aren’t you telling me?”

She said, “It’s politics and business stuff. Leave all that to me. You want to focus on the engineering, right? Here’s a good, smart worker to help you with that.”

On his way out the door, Garrett cast a backwards glance at “Zephyr.” The robot had walked to the apartment’s deck and was looking down at Constellation , examining her with no clue to what he thought.

Her dad had listened to Tess griping about not getting to go, then ruffled her hair and said, “You should focus on getting ready for college anyway, not running off to sea.”

“But Garrett needs me! What if having me there is the difference between him winning and losing?”

“Don’t worry,” Dad said. “He’ll do fine even without you.”

The world suddenly felt blank, just a mass of shapes and colors with no meaning. If what she did made no difference, why do anything?

Online, one of her friends said, “Maybe he is wanting tech demo?” Tess stared at the screen, startled that someone had given her a good idea instead of just sympathizing.

God help her, she’d even asked Henweigh for advice in winning Martin over. Nobody would give her a fair chance! The counselor was all smiles, no help. But a yellow sticky note on the woman’s desk had shown Tess a password for the school’s network… Tess thought about “owning” the system, to show what she could do. She had a little knowledge about hacking. Martin wanted proof that she could control a computer system? Fine!

She’d been using the Teslatronic Beast, a dinosaur computer that she’d rebuilt herself. Garrett’s dad had given her a clunker to fix up. It was pathetic — misshapen narrow screen, dinky memory, old software — but it was hers . She kept things there that she’d never let anyone else see. And somehow, she didn’t feel the need to shove it in anyone else’s face that she’d built it. She’d been basking in its glow when she thought up something better than taking over the school’s network. She could buy some crackerjack-junk hardware and build her own.

Tess stared up at the construction yard’s doors one night, knowing that what she needed was behind them. With her was a heavy satchel. She’d told her parents she was checking up on Garrett, which was true enough.

Sodium-yellow lights gave her multiple shadows. Tess crept through the doorway to the cavernous space beyond. If Garrett caught her, they’d just argue, and she couldn’t — she wouldn’t — plead her way through that, like she could with Henweigh.

The building had a huge steel room for putting other buildings inside. The Castor platform made her stare: a two-legged box that reached halfway to the yard’s vast ceiling. Some of those concrete tubes beside it were big enough to hold her car! Wire spools, piles of pipes — so much stuff. Just dead hardware, too. It all smelled like sweat.

Way up on a catwalk stood three people. Tess kept to the shadows. She fished a Net node out of her bag and hefted it. If you gadgets don’t work I’m gonna break you all with a hammer. She put gecko tape on the node, then slapped the device onto a pipe. Its green light winked. Good.

She unfolded a computer from her pocket and made sure the node was transmitting. On to the next one. Quietly she made for the platform itself. Above her, the three people were talking. Looked like Garrett was there, and one of the others might be Martin. The third was smaller, probably a kid. Oh, hell, had Martin booted Tess from the project so he could take his own brat along instead? Tess clenched the second Net node in one fist. She’d show them all!

She froze. The people had stopped and were looking around. Had she made too much noise? She put one hand over her thumping heart until the three went on with their tour. The node’s light pulsed when she left it on a wall of the construction yard.

The third node went onto an outside wall of the seastead building. Tess climbed a cold ladder to a ledge, then entered a doorway. She was inside the platform now. Only a few lights were strung up, revealing a rectangular cave of bare concrete. Voices echoed ahead of her from upstairs. Tess dug out a few more nodes and set them up in good spots. Just as she finished, she heard people coming down. She ducked behind a crate; the network wasn’t ready to show off yet. Garrett and the others were so wrapped up in themselves, they headed past her without seeing. Fine! It wasn’t like anyone saw her half the time anyway.

She tiptoed upstairs to another bare room. Girders jutted out. She tagged one with a node, checked it, and climbed to the roof. Here, lights dazzled her from above. She ducked back to the shadows, pulled out her computer, and muttered another threat to her gadgets before hitting a button.

The dead, bare building started to sing. The sound quality stank, but she could hear every node in the building accept the sound file she transmitted: some old song called “Jupiter.” Notes echoed from everywhere, bounding off distant walls. The symphony brought a smile to her face. Mine! she thought, leering down from the Castor platform like a bird calling out territory. I did this!

A startled Garrett climbed the steps and found her. The second guy wasn’t Martin, just some construction worker. She was about to boast of what she’d done, but then she saw that the “kid” with them wasn’t human.

“Who are you?” the robot said.

She was too surprised to answer, so Garrett spoke. “She’s a friend. Tess. What are you doing?”

She stared up at him. “Building your computer network.”

“You can’t just—”

“I did! A demo, anyway.” See? she thought. I’m worth bringing! But then, he already had a robot a hundred times fancier than her little project. Maybe he still wasn’t impressed, and he’d leave her to rot in school. “Come on, please! I really want to work for you. That’s what matters, right?” Garrett stood with his shoulders slumped, his hands in his pockets. Tess tried to stand up straighter. “And… I won’t let you down.”

Garrett said, “I still don’t have a good computer person. Are you willing to get your hands dirty with other work too?” Tess nodded before she could think about slimy seaweed too much, and she said, “Okay.”

The construction worker was watching them talk. “You’re bringing her? The ocean’s no place for kids.”

“I’m not a little kid!” Tess said, glaring at the guy.

The fat old foreman rested his hands on dirty overalls and talked to Garrett. “Seems to me, your little crew is either gonna work your asses off, or die.”

Garrett said, “Of course we’ll try hard.”

“No, mister. I said ‘work your asses off,’ not ‘give it the old college try.’” He pointed down from the Castor platform to the construction yard’s floor. “It’s gonna be water down there, and lots of it between you and anything. My guys are making sure you’ll have a sturdy little island to work with, but your people need more than that, and it’s gotta come from you .”

Garrett leaned back on his heels, flustered. “I’ll take care of the place. I’m an engineer.”

“Nope,” said the foreman. He patted Garrett on the shoulder and made for the stairs. “You’re a leader. Hope you figure that out in time.”

Once the jerk was gone, Tess stomped the concrete roof. “Who does he think he is? He’s got half your IQ.” The phantom orchestra still played, sounding like an old cartoon. She shook off her annoyance, grinned, and played conductor. She had a job now! “What next?”