Now the main building lights are on at top illumination and that pleasant voice is repeating again and again: “All occupants are pleased to evacuate the building immediately.”
But, my soul help me, I am stuck. I can’t leave Kiko behind, but she is too heavy to carry. She will have to walk on her own. But I am terrified of what will happen if she comes online. The evil that has corrupted the mind of my building could spread. I could not bear to see it cloud her dark eyes again. I will not leave her, yet I cannot stay. I need help.
Decision made, I close her eyes with my palm.
“Please come here, Yubin-kun,” I whisper to the mail-delivering robot. “We cannot allow the bad ones to speak with you, as they did Mikiko.” The intention light flickers on the blocky beige machine. “Hold very still now.”
And with a swift swing of my hammer, I smash the infrared port that is used to update the diagnostics of the machine. Now, there is no way to alter the instructions of the mailbot from afar.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” I ask the machine. Then I glance over to where Mikiko lies, eyes closed. “Yubin-kun, my new friend, I hope you are feeling strong today.”
With a grunt, I lift Mikiko off the workbench and set her on top of the mailbot. Built to carry heavy packages, the solid machine is completely unaffected by the added weight. It simply trains its single camera eye on me, following as I open the door to the hallway.
Outside, I see a shaky line of elderly residents. One by one, the door at the end of the hallway opens and another resident steps into the stairwell. My neighbors are very patient people. Very polite.
But the soul of this building has gone mad.
“Stop, stop,” I mumble to them. They ignore me, as usual. Politely avoiding eye contact, they keep stepping through the door, one after another.
With my loyal Yubin-kun following close, I reach the stairwell door just before the last woman can step through. An intention light over the doorway flashes yellow at me crossly.
“Mr. Nomura,” says the building in a gentle female voice, “please wait your turn, sir. Mrs. Kami is presently pleased to go through the door.”
“Don’t go,” I mutter to the elderly woman in her bathrobe. I cannot make eye contact. Instead, I lightly grasp her elbow.
With a glare, the shriveled old woman tears her elbow from my hand and shoves past me, stepping through the doorway. Just before the door snaps shut behind her, I wedge my foot into the opening and get a glimpse of what is inside.
It is a bad dream.
In a confusion of inky blackness and flashing strobes, dozens of my elderly neighbors crush each other in falling heaps down the concrete stairs. Showers of emergency water rain down from the sprinkler heads, turning the stairs into slick, cascading waterfalls. The fire exhaust vent is on full strength, sucking frigid air up from the bottom of the shaft to the top. Moans and cries are drowned by the shrieking turbines. The mass of writhing arms and legs seems to combine in my vision until it is a single, massively suffering creature.
I pull my foot back and the door slams shut.
We are all trapped. It is only a matter of time before the domestic humanoid robots ascend to this level. When they arrive, I will be unable to defend myself or Mikiko.
“This is a very bad, bad, bad thing, Mr. Nomura,” I whisper to myself.
Yubin-kun blinks a yellow intention light at me. My friend is wary, as he should be. He senses that things are wrong.
“Mr. Nomura,” says the voice overhead, “if you are not pleased to utilize the stairwell, we will send a helper to assist. Stay where you are. Help is on the way.”
Click. Click. Click.
As the elevator rises, the red dot begins its slow crawl up from the ground floor.
Twenty-two seconds.
I turn to Yubin-kun. Mikiko lies sprawled on top of the beige box, her black hair splayed out. I look down into her gently smiling face. She is so beautiful and pure. In her slumber, she dreams of me. She waits for me to break this evil spell and wake her. Someday, she will arise and become my queen.
If only I had more time.
The dry, menacing click of the elevator gauge breaks my reverie. I am a helpless old man and I am out of ideas. I take Mikiko’s limp hand in mine and turn to face the elevator doors.
“I am so sorry, Mikiko,” I whisper. “I tried, my darling. But now there is nowhere else—Ay!”
I hop backward and rub my foot where Yubin-kun has run it over. The machine’s intention light blinks at me frantically. On the wall, the red dot reaches my floor. My time is up.
Bing.
A burst of cool air blows from the service elevator across the hall from the main elevator bank. Its door panel slides out of the way and I see a steel box inside, just a little bigger than the mailbot. On its sticky wheels, Yubin-kun slides into the cramped space with Mikiko still lying on top.
There is just enough room for me to squeeze inside, too.
As I enter, I hear the main elevator doors open across the hall. I look up just in time to see the plastic grin of the Big Happy domestic robot standing inside the blood-coated elevator. Streaks of red liquid bead on its casing. Its head twists back and forth, scanning.
The head stops, its lifeless purple camera eyes locked onto me.
Then, the door of my service elevator slides closed. Just before the floor drops out from under me, I squeeze out a few words to my new comrade. “Thank you, Yubin-kun,” I say. “I am in your debt, my friend.”
Yubin-kun was the first of Takeo’s comrades in arms. In the harrowing months following Zero Hour, Takeo would find many more friends willing to help his cause.
6. AVTOMAT
My day is going kind of nice.
In the wake of the congressional hearing regarding the SAP incident, Paul Blanton was charged with dereliction of duty and scheduled to be court-martialed. During Zero Hour, Paul found himself locked up on a base in Afghanistan. This unusual circumstance placed the young soldier in a unique position to make an invaluable contribution to the human resistance—and to survive.
Back in Oklahoma, my dad used to tell me that if I didn’t straighten up and act like a man, I’d end up dead or in jail. Lonnie Wayne was right about that, which is why I ended up enlisted. But still. Thank god I was in lockup for Zero Hour.
I’m laying on my cell bunk, back against the cinder block wall and my combat boots propped up on the steel toilet. Got a rag over my face to keep the dust out of my nostrils. I’ve been incarcerated ever since my SAP unit lost its mind and started wasting people.
C’est la vie. That’s what my cell mate, Jason Lee, says. He’s a portly Asian kid with glasses, doing sit-ups on the cement floor. Says he does it to stay warm.
I’m not the exercising type. For me, these six months have meant a lot of magazines to read. Staying warm means growing a beard.
Boring, sure, but all the same, my day is going kind of nice. I’m perusing a four-month-old issue of some stateside celebrity rag. Learning all about how “movie stars are just like us.” They like to eat at restaurants, go shopping, take their kids to the park—shit like that.
Just like us. Yeah. By us, I don’t think they mean me.
It’s an educated guess, but I doubt that movie stars care about repairing militarized humanoid robots that are designed to subdue and pacify a murderously angry population in an occupied country. Or being thrown into a thirteen-by-seven-foot cell with one tiny window just for performing your glamorous job.