West of Nothing

48. Corny Pops

Later that night he and Corny found themselves working alone. It was half past two in the morning. The rest of the team had drifted off to their rooms or rooftop or wherever. Gabby, who seemed to go everywhere Corny did, was reclined back in her chair, her head propped up by a cervical headrest. Dark VR goggles covered her eyes. Every so often her wrist boards would whir briefly to life. Perhaps she was checking up on her blog feed or dream-typing, he couldn't be sure.

Mason was stuck in an Internet browsing loop, a rotation of YouTube, Twitter and news sites. Since the first X-Bot pictures had broken that morning, the Internet had come alive. He was in hoover mode, sucking up all he could and leaving it up to his sub-conscious to sort it out.

The ominous sense of uncertainty had his nerves all wound up. It was like that time his family had taken a vacation to Disney World while a hurricane—Matthew, was it?—was bearing down on Florida. His parents had bought a non-refundable package and wouldn't think of canceling. Mason spent most of the trip in the hotel room glued to the weather coverage, feeling like he was in one of those catastrophe movies. This could be the big one, the line went. You could see it spiraling toward you, the eye of God in the satellite imagery. How big? How bad? He conjured up scenes of a post-apocalyptic Disney World inhabited by Mad Max characters. In the end, the hurricane curled east and barely cast a shadow over the Magic Kingdom. He had that same sense of creeping inevitability now. Would it all end in doom or was it just another false alarm?

"This isn't what I pictured Area 51 would look like," Corny said, appearing beside his station.

Mason was slow on the uptake. "Area 51?"

"You know, the secret facility where they hide the UFOs and torture alien spacemen into revealing advanced technology."

"When you put it like that, we sound like the bad guys."

"Aren't we?"

Of course not, Mason almost said, but there was a heaviness to the question. "I guess I never really thought about there being good and bad sides to this."

"I shouldn't be surprised. You don't get to be called Peeper because of your high ethical standards."

"That's a bit harsh."

"You're right. I'm sorry."

Mason couldn't bring himself to be sore about it. "What makes you think what we're doing is so wrong?"

"Let's say we were able to reverse engineer the X-Bot and build one of our own, maybe even mass produce them. Did you ever stop and think what the government would do with its own army of X-Bots?"

No, of course he hadn't. That would involve thinking far ahead about the downstream consequences of his actions.

"Well, I have," Corny said. "I bet the others have too. Especially HotDamn. He's a lot more savvy than he lets on. I could sense it when we were playing that scare-game of his. He was keeping the questions inside the rails, focusing on the danger the X-Bots pose to humanity, never on the danger we pose to ourselves. Remember how this whole thing got started? The government was scared shitless of what its enemies would do if they got their hands on this technology. Why? Because it knew all too well what it would do if it got it first."

"You think the government is evil?"

"For a pretty smart guy, you can sure ask some dumb questions." But there was a note of fondness to the rebuke. "The government isn't all bad, and ours is a lot better than most I suppose. But it's in the nature of governments to be paranoid. It's going to try and nip any threats in the bud. It doesn't trust anyone, not even its own people. So it's got to keep an eye on everyone all the time. And how better to do that than with super-smart autonomous micro-robots?"

"Didn't you work on some government contract?"

Corny grimaced. "Most of my professional career. And unless you come into a big inheritance, you probably will too. The government is one of the few sponsors writing checks for that type of work. But sometimes I wonder if I'm doing the right thing. You've heard of Wehrner von Braun, right?"

"Wasn't he some kind of war hero?"

"You really should brush up on your history. Von Braun is pretty much the genius behind modern rocketry. He wanted to build rockets to send people to Mars. So here he is, a young man with big dreams and the ink still drying on his doctorate, and along come the Nazis and give him a blank check. The catch: he has to build rockets to carry explosive payloads, super weapons. Of course he accepts. He goes on to build the Vengeance 2 missile they fire at London from across the channel. Not what he wanted, but it's that or the end of his career, maybe even a firing squad. After the war, the Americans scoop him up and clean up his war record. He makes Disney educational videos and goes on to design the Saturn V rocket that carries astronauts to the moon. The world enters the Space Age. Was it worth it?"

Mason was still mulling over his answer when Gabby's finger-boards whirred to life, intruding on their sense of privacy. When they went still again, Corny was staring at the illuminated glass bell on its stage.

"For my last grant," she said in a lowered voice. "I designed a robo-wasp for gathering intel. The idea was it could buzz around corners to see if any terrorists were lurking around. Recon stuff mostly. But add a cyanide stinger and give it enough smarts to ID a face and you've got yourself a real killer. If you can ever get it to work that is, which we never did, not really. We made a lot of shitty prototypes, ones that blew away in a high wind or had their wings snap off if they beat too fast. Used too much battery, stabilization problems, couldn't land or grip walls, too short a range, too easily jammed, too obviously a drone. Besides, there were easier and cheaper ways to find out what a terrorist was up to, like getting them to download trojan software onto their smartphone while watching porn. You know how many of my grants actually saw the light of day? Big fat zero. That's right, with your little raid on a sorority house, you have a better success rate than I do. You actually got a microbot to do something it was designed for."

"But each attempt got better, right?"

"Oh, sure," she huffed. "Like Edison and his thousand ways not to make a lightbulb. It looks good on a wall poster. The only reason the government is still in the micro-drone business is because it doesn't want the Chinese getting the jump on us. Meanwhile, the Chinese are going at it for the same reason."

She paused, as if considering whether to go on. "You know what the real funny part is? When I finally came to accept the X-Bot was this alien thing, I felt this huge sense of relief, like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. If the Chinese had made it, that would mean I had failed and let myself and my country down. If our guys had made it without me that would be even worse. But if it's the work of aliens, then I'm off the hook and none of this is my fault. But then I feel ashamed because what sort of person wishes for an alien invasion just to cover up their own failures?"

Corny's eyes were puffy and a tongue of clear fluid extended from one nostril halfway to her lip. "Anyway, thanks for listening. I should really get some sleep."

"Anytime," Mason said. "By the way, you've got some stuff there, uh, on your face."

"Guess I picked up a cold." She turned her head away and made a snorting sound. When she turned back around, the skin above her lip was clear.

"Did you just suck snot back up your nose?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."