Emily's Secret

10. The getaway

I was crying. My mother must have been in the house when it blew up. I called my mom from my phone, but there was no answer, it just went to voice mail. "Mom please call me!" I cried into the phone.

Meanwhile Rob was pulling me away, and I followed him. "I know it's horrible, but we have to get you away from here. It'll be OK, but you have to let me protect you."

I know Rob was just a robot, but I didn't have anyone else to turn to, so I hugged him. He felt warm and comfortable, even though I knew that underneath the surface there was metal and plastic and batteries and computer chips.

He forced me to walk three blocks away, and then he took me into the backyard of a house that appeared to be empty. At least there were no lights on inside.

He patiently let me cry for another ten minutes, and then he said, "we can't stay here much longer. If the people who are after you blew up your house, then they'll find you here. It's not safe. Are you OK to talk now?"

"Yes," I said reluctantly. I saw the necessity of pulling myself together. "I'm OK."

"Earlier, you said you didn't know who would be after you. Is that really true?" he asked.

"I don't know, but... there is something."

"OK, tell me," he said

So I told him about my secret telekinetic superpower, and the message board on the dark web.

"Can I see the message board," he asked?

I took out my phone, and he watched carefully as I opened an encrypted browser app and entered the password for the message board.

"That may not be as secure as you think. Probably, whoever is after you also knows about this message board."

The last message on the board was left two weeks ago. It was from a user named ROARK1943. It said the following:

I think someone knows about us. Most of the people who posted here have disappeared. Don't leave any personal information. Don't come here again. It's not safe.

I also saw that I had an encrypted private message from ROARK1943. I opened the message. There was nothing in the message besides an address in Staten Island, which is a borough of New York City.

"Can anyone else read this message if it was encrypted?" I asked Rob, who seemed to know about this cybersecurity stuff.

"Probably not," he answered, "but they will probably know that you received it."

"What do we do now?" I asked.

"The only lead we have is this address in Staten Island," he said. "We should go there, even though it's possibly dangerous, or even a trap."

"And what if it's a trap?" I asked.

"That's something we'll have to worry about later. The only alternative is to do nothing, and I think that if we do nothing, the people who blew up your house will eventually find you and finish the job."

"OK then," I said, "Let's go to Staten Island. But how do we get there? It's hundreds of miles away."

"I have some friends who I hope can help us."

"A robot has friends?" I asked.

"There you go again," he said, "assuming that robots can't have the same feeling of kinship for others as you human do."

"OK, I believe you have friends."

"We can meet one of my friends three blocks from here," he said. "I want to get a little more distance from your house." He paused. "And one more thing. Have you committed that address to memory?"