“Stop humoring me,” Dave snapped. “Just do it already.”
Xander, frowning, had now reached the door and reached out with one hand to pull the curtain open. It was another few seconds before he took his gaze off Dave and wrenched it towards the glass door.
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Exactly,” said Dave.
“Dave, I don’t see anything…”
“That is the point! If you have to, go outside on the balcony and take a good look… no, wait, don’t open the door! I don’t even know if there’s air…”
“I think he needs something stronger than water,” somebody muttered under their breath, but still loud enough to hear.
“I think he’s had something stronger than water,” said one of the computer volunteers, crossing his arms.
But by this stage Xander was starting to wake up to the fact that there was something not quite right with the view outside, and had taken a step closer, pushing his face against the glass, cupping his hands around his eyes to cut off the glare of the room lights reflected in it. And now he suddenly sucked in his breath sharply, and then let it out again on one long and somewhat unexpected syllable.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck…”
That got several of the people in the room leaping from their chairs and crowding around Xander at the door, peering outside.
“What?”
“What do you see?”
“What is it?”
“I can’t see anything…”
But Xander had turned away from the door, looking rather ashen, and focused back on Dave again.
“I think you had better start again — what’s going on out there?”
Dave, who had had a chance to look around the room and catch his breath, had noticed a rather important gap in the present personnel at last.
“Where’s Andie Mae?”
“She’s gone to talk to Grissom — the movie star — he called up about something — she should be…”
As if magicked up by this, Andie Mae herself stepped delicately through the door, over the cable, and sidled past Dave into the room.
“And here I am,” she said. “Nice to see you finally showed up. What the hell happened out there at the airport? That was a major mess. And now there’s a — what the hell is everyone looking at out there?”
“Dave said there’s a silver man…” Xander said.
“Yes, the one he…”
“Oh, don’t start that again,” Dave snapped. “Look, you’d better do something and fast before you get somebody wandering out of the hotel’s front door….”
Andie Mae frowned, tilting her head. “And I should prevent people from leaving the hotel, why? I mean, I don’t want anyone to leave the con, particularly, I’d like everyone to stick around, thank you very much, I worked pretty hard to make sticking around an irresistible option — but if anyone leaves, they’re not — ”
“You’d better come look,” one of the people at the window said, turning his head around marginally.
Tossing her hair with indignation, Andie Mae stalked across the room to the balcony door. “All right, then, move. Yeah, you. Shift. Let me see. What are you looking at…?”
Nobody answered her, and the room sank into an awkward silence while the con Chair peered outside into the night.
“I can see precisely nothing — have you all lost your collective mind?”
“Dave, perhaps now’s a good time to explain,” Xander said quietly.
Dave took a deep breath.
“Look,” he began, “I just got back here — I think I got the last parking spot in the place — I freely confess that I was cranky and tired and miserable and all I wanted to do was get in here and find something to eat and quite possibly to drink — and no, to whoever said that before, I heard you, I didn’t make it to the bar, thank you very much indeed — and I just stopped for a second just outside the front door, and there was this silver man…”
Andie Mae sighed. “Him again?”
“Not the damned writer,” Dave snarled. “A silver man. Literally. He looked almost human, almost, but then he took this thing that he was typing stuff into — looked like an iPad or some other mini tablet or something of the sort — and he put it back into his chest…”
“What, now?” Xander said.
“I am telling you, there is a robot — a silver man — ”
“What, the Terminator?” Andie Mae gasped, suddenly flushing a bright red. “Schwarzenegger’s here? Early? In costume? He isn’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow! Why didn’t someone call me…?”
Dave closed his eyes for a moment. “Not the…”
“A Cylon?” someone asked, gamely offering an alternative to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s unexpected manifestation.
“A Cyberman?” Libby said. “I think I saw one clomping around, earlier… Dave… the con’s theme is robots — there are bound to be — ”
“No, no and no,” Dave said. “It was more like… Data.”
“Spiner is here too?” Andie Mae squawked. “Is Al back? With both the guys? How did he get hold of them? Where is he?”
“Haven’t seen him,” Xander said, trying to keep his voice neutral. “Dave, what did you see? Really? There have to be as many smartphones and tablets here as there are people — this is a tech — savvy crowd — so you saw somebody typing into a tablet, and you…”
Dave skewered him with a withering glare. “All right. Just shut up. All of you. Just shut up and listen. I came up out of the parking lot, and I stopped right there under the portico over the front drive, just outside the front door, and there was a silver man — shut up about the writer dude! — standing there by the door, typing something into what looked like a tablet right until he stopped typing and kind of put it up against his chest and it just… just… sank in there, blended in, whatever, I know, it sounds insane. I am not drunk. Anyway. Then I felt light — lighter than I should have been, anyway, for just a moment — and then I looked out and I realized what I was seeing — I was seeing us lifting off.”
“Lifting off,” Andie Mae repeated, frowning. “What, exactly…?”
“I know what I saw!” Dave snapped. “And I wasn’t wrong, either. I looked at the silver guy and I said something like ‘Put us back!’ and you know, he didn’t say, you’re a moron, or go home you’re drunk, or anything of the sort. He said… he said…”
There was a pause, a longer than expected one, and Xander finally stirred. “What did he say, then?”
“He said, ‘I can’t do that, Dave’.” There was a ripple of laughter, somewhere in the back of the room, and Dave’s head swung around in that direction.
“I think you’ve been watching too many…”
“I know, okay? I know. I am well aware that this whole thing sounds nutso. But look outside again. And then he said — he said — ‘ I can explain.’ He actually…”
“He actually talks? This robot?”
“Of course he talks,” Dave snapped.
“Well, did he?” Andie Mae said, trying for the practical.
“Did he what?”
“Explain,” she said, patiently enough.
“I didn’t stick around to listen!” Dave said. “I just ran off into the hotel — I thought I’d better find you — somebody — make sure that everyone knew that something strange was… What are you doing?”
One of the volunteers by the sliding door had unlatched the door handle and was poised to push the slider open, and Dave had instinctively flung out an arm to stop him. The volunteer froze, his hand on the latch.