Popular Clone, page 17
The floor was fitted with small seams, invisible to the naked eye, which indicated removable panels. One was next to Fisher, the other on the opposite side of the small cell, next to Two.
“Forget it,” said Fisher. “Just leave me alone, okay?” He sank down to his side, as though curled up in defeat, positioning his body between the camera and his discovery. He pressed his ear to the floor. A very faint hum indicated wiring.
Two scooted toward him slowly. “Look,” he said, keeping his voice elevated, “maybe we can talk this out …” He trailed off as he got close to Fisher, and switched to a whisper. “Wires?”
“Wires,” whispered Fisher, without moving.
“Probably feeding electricity to the cell,” Two whispered back. “Think we can short ’em out?”
“They frisked me, but I think they missed my Angry Wire. It’s in my right-side pocket. Take a strand.”
Two shook Fisher as if trying to rouse him. “Hey, don’t give up now! Let’s discuss this… .”
As Two pulled his hand away, there was a tiny filament of wire in his palm. Fisher heard him stand and pad away back to his side of the cell. He hoped Two would quickly figure out how the Angry Wire worked.
Fisher rolled over so that he faced Two, who had curled up as well. Fisher, motioning with his eyes for Two to imitate him, slipped the tiny wire into the unseen seam. His clone did the same.
Slowly, Fisher began to twirl the end of the wire between his fingers. Two did the same, at the other end of the panel. As the wire rotated back and forth, becoming more agitated, the other end began to heat up.
Fisher and Two spun their Angry Wire filaments faster, hoping the cameras weren’t picking up the small movement. The Angry Wire converted the kinetic energy into heat at its other end, its temperature slowly building. The heat had no quick way to escape from the tiny, sealed space.
Fisher signaled with his eyes and started shaking the wire forcefully, one last boost. Two did the same, and after a few seconds, they heard the whine of overheating electronics. Just a little bit more work with the wires, and then … zzzzrp. The heat melted the wiring under the panels and both sets underwent massive short circuits.
Fisher and Two leapt up as the lights flickered, and the tiny, red light on the camera blinked out. They would only have seconds to take advantage of the electrical short before guards were all over them.
Simultaneous kicks from boy and clone knocked the now-unlocked cell door open right as the alarms started. Fisher swiveled. To the right was the door back into the main chamber. Dr. X’s guards were probably rushing toward it already. Ahead of them was another door, this one tiny and not much taller than Fisher himself, set a foot up the wall.
“Follow me!” Two cried out, already dashing for the small door. Two and Fisher dove through the door side by side.
Through—and down, down, down, down, dooooown.
Not a door after all: a chute. They plummeted fast, the slick metal sides of the steep tunnel doing little to slow them. Fisher scrabbled with his hands, trying to slow his fall, to no avail.
Fisher prayed that whatever was at the end of the chute was soft, because they were going to hurtle headlong into it.
“Oomf! Arghhhh!”
Fisher heard a muffled crash as Two careened out of the chute first, and he wrapped his arms around his head as he felt the tunnel disappear. Half a second of empty air rushed by him, and then he hit the pad. It was like a mattress, almost, and it cushioned his fall like a baseball glove.
Luckily, Two had been able to scramble out of the way— otherwise, it would have been a double-Fisher sandwich.
“Are you okay?” Two asked as Fisher picked himself up.
“Been better,” Fisher panted as he felt his body for bruises or broken bones. Thankfully, everything appeared to be in working order.
They were in a small service corridor with plain cement walls and low lighting. Two was reading a small instruction sheet posted above the pad they’d landed on.
“Interesting,” Two said as Fisher brushed himself off. “That chute was meant for people to throw themselves down. These instructions are ‘in the event of emergency
“That’s a little too convenient,” said Fisher, looking around for traps.
The sign instructed workers to leave the area immediately via the underground tunnels. The last sentence of the sign was printed in a large, brightly colored font: TECHX ENTERPRISES THANKS YOU FOR YOUR VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION TO OUR VENTURES. REMEMBER, ALL KNOWLEDGE OF TECHX PROJECTS IS STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL, AND ANY BREACH OF SECRECY MAY RESULT IN A SIGNIFICANT FINE, FOLLOWED BY BRAIN VAPORIZATION. HAVE A NICE DAY!
Fisher stared at the instructions for a moment. “What would make it necessary to evacuate that quickly?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Two furrowed his brow.
Then, in the quiet pause, the soft background noise of the power generator reached their ears. Two and Fisher looked at each other.
“We must be near the central power grid,” Fisher said.
“Come on,” said Two. “The guards will be here any moment. Let’s see if we can figure out how to take the place down.”
“Wait!” Fisher said as he followed his clone down a cramped, dark corridor. “FP came along with me. He was in disguise as a toolbox, and a robot picked him up and carried him to the maintenance room.”
“And we have to rescue him, so he can get back to finding new and exciting ways to chew on my limbs?” said Two, turning around to look at Fisher. But Fisher saw he was half smiling. Fisher let himself smile a little bit for the first time since his friend had been clone-napped.
“Exactly,” he said. As Two darted ahead of him, Fisher noticed a small, bald spot near the nape of Two’s neck. “Hey—what happened to your hair? It looks like a blind folded barber came after you.”
“Dr. X took a full range of DNA samples. Hair, saliva, blood, skin cells. Don’t know why.”
Fisher shuddered a little bit. Now that Granger knew Two was a clone, he’d be looking at those samples a lot closer. There might be enough AGH in Two’s cells to help him develop his own working formula, even if his mom didn’t give up the sample.
“Well then, let’s make sure he doesn’t get the chance to do anything with them,” Fisher said with resolve. “How are we going to rescue FP?”
“If I had to guess,” Two said, “I would think maintenance would be close to the central power supply.”
“Are we going the right way?” Fisher asked.
“I think so.” Two cupped a hand over his ear. “The sound is definitely getting louder… .” His voice trailed off, and he stopped in the doorway as the corridor opened abruptly into a large room.
“Are you sure about tha—” The t got stuck in Fisher’s throat as he walked up next to Two.
The corridor opened onto a narrow catwalk. Fisher took a step out on it and looked at the vast chamber that stretched in front, above, and below them, for hundreds of yards. It was a huge, open space crisscrossed by dozens of walkways and cables.
In the heart of it all was the main power generator of the whole compound, which bathed the room in harsh white light, humming like an enormous metal heart.
“I’ve done a lot of research on computer control systems,” said Fisher. When Two raised an eyebrow, he explained, “I was trying to hack into Wompalog’s computers to see if I could skip school and fill in all of my absences. Unfortunately, they double-check everything with paper.”
Two furrowed his brow. “Why were you so eager to skip school? Had the evil henchmen blown your cover? Had they figured out you were trying to liberate Mother?”
Fisher knew it was time to tell Two the truth. He swallowed hard. “Two, listen. I haven’t been totally honest with you—”
Just then, a mechanized voice blared out from the system of intercoms: “This is a Code Black Alert. Security has been compromised. All guards, robots, biological creations, and sentient machines on deck. Intruders must be caught and promptly pulverized.”
“This isn’t the time, Fisher,” Two said. “We need to take this place down.”
Fisher nodded, relieved. He would explain everything to Two later—when they escaped. If they escaped. “All right, look. I think I can take a shot at adjusting the reactor’s settings so that it’ll overload after a few minutes,” said Fisher. “But we’ll need to get past the robots.” He nodded his head toward the entrances to the generator controls.
A couple of tall, spindly robot guards stood motionless, positioned at either side. Each robot had a cylindrical body suspended on six multi-jointed, spidery legs. They were clearly built so that any direction could be forward. Three arms sprouted from equidistant points around the central cylinder. Their camera-filled heads swiveled back and forth atop their motionless bodies.
“How do we do that?” said Two.
Fisher thought about it for a minute.
“When the robot almost discovered me earlier, it took a moment looking at me, and then FP, before saying aloud what it determined us to be. I think as a safety measure, the robots have been designed to examine and assess what they see before they do anything about it. That may give us a narrow window to act.”
“All right,” Two said. “What if we try to widen that window a little bit?”
“What did you have in mind?” asked Fisher.
Two raised his eyebrows and smiled mischievously. “What color underwear do you have on?”
The robot guarding door number one had had an uneventful day, as most of its days were. It stood in the door, its camera eye slowly tracking back and forth.
However, its day became eventful when it saw a pair of identical figures moving toward it slowly.
It wasn’t sure if its camera was glitching or if there were actually two people. Specifically, two short, skinny, identical-looking boys in their underwear. And they weren’t walking. They were … dancing.
CHAPTER 23
The principle of tactical thinking is all about making a move your enemy doesn’t expect. For example, your enemy probably does not expect you to be an utter lunatic.
—Fisher Bas, Into the Dragon’s Mouth
Mirroring each other, Fisher and Two danced along the catwalk through the gaping generator room in nothing but their underpants. Fisher had never really danced, but he found that his limbs moved surprisingly well as he tried to keep up with Two’s motions.
And one thing was certain: as they mamboed, Egyptian walked, and disco-pointed their way toward the door, they were facing the most confused robot in history.
“Two unidentifieds … making rhythmic motions toward my position … Unresponsive, and now appear to be sliding. Their method of sliding is oddly … electric.”
Two had been right about the robot’s processing center: the more things the robot had to process, and the less sense they made, the more time the robot would have to spend thinking before it sounded an alarm or tried to subdue them.
“Now their hands are in the air … and they are wav-ing them as if they just do not care… . Halt, beings!”
Just as the robot was about to trigger an alarm, Two shouted, “Now!”
Two tackled its legs out from under it as Fisher wrapped his hands around its head and plucked out its control chip, causing it to shut down automatically.
“Nice work,” said Two.
“Not so fast, intruders!”
“Uh-oh.” Fisher looked up. The second robot was roll-ing toward them.
“Too late to out-dance this one,” Two said. “Take it!”
Fisher and Two leapt at the robot from different sides, each boy grabbing hold of one arm. Its third arm tried to wrench Fisher off its back—or its front, depending on which way its spinning head was facing—but he kicked it away.
The robot swayed back and forth, unbalanced by the weight of the two boys. It tottered close to the edge of the platform.
“Fisher!” Two said. “Let go, now!”
Fisher dropped away from the robot’s body, and the robot, suddenly released of this ninety-pound burden, toppled backward. Two jumped clear just as the robot plunged over the platform edge—and a clawing arm pulled Two’s bundle of clothing over along with it.
Fisher watched the robot tumble over and over into the abyss. He felt a rush of triumph. He and Two worked really well as a team. Their ideas seemed to flow natu-rally together. Maybe Two wasn’t as different from him as he had been starting to believe.
Two looked over the edge as his shirt and pants flut-tered down after the robot. “Guess I’ll be doing the rest of this escape a little chilly,” Two said with a shrug.
Meanwhile, Fisher had donned his spy suit again, slipped into the control room, and was sitting down in front of the main control board. His hands were poised at the keyboard when a loud voice boomed out, nearly knock-ing him out of his chair.
“Hello! I am CURTIS, the Computer Universal Resource Terminal and Information Systems console! How may I make your stay in the power generator more friendly and warm? Warmer than it is already, ha-ha!”
Fisher’s jaw hung open, staring at the speaker grille above his head, and the immense smiley face that had appeared on the screen.
“That was a joke!” CURTIS went on when Fisher didn’t respond. “It is a double-meaning pun that plays on the word ‘warm’ in reference to both cheerfulness and your proximity to a thousand-megawatt fusion power source, ha-ha!”
“I … What?” Fisher said.
“Yes, indeed!” continued the computer. “They just upgraded me with a virus-protection system from New Jersey, and, boy, are my positronic logic pathways tired!” A comedy drum sound followed the second joke.
“Look, please,” said Fisher, “I’m trying to find a way to—”
“Say,” CURTIS went on, ignoring Fisher entirely, “how many technician robots does it take to replace a portable micro-fusion cell? None! The only prototype model cre-ated a massive explosion that caused over a million dol-lars in property damage, ha-ha!”
“Excuse me if I’m not in the mood for comedy hour,” Fisher snapped. Guards were probably running down the halls toward them at this very second, FP could be robo-fodder for all he knew, and he was faced with a com-puter masquerading as a stand-up comic. He couldn’t imagine any possible way to get past an intelligent sys-tem to hack the reactor, even if it did stop telling him jokes.
“Hurry up, Fisher!” Two shouted from outside the con-trol room. “We’re on kind of a strict schedule!”
“I’m trying!” Fisher called back, frustration building inside of him. “But Mr. Happy-Face in here isn’t going to let me hack Dr. X’s system. We’ll have to find another way to bring him down… .”
“What is that?” came the bubbly voice again. “You are not a representative of Dr. X? And you do not require my pleasantly upbeat attitude?”
“No,” said Fisher, a little bit confused.
“Ugh. Good,” came a completely different voice—one that sounded like a fifty-five-year-old man who’d been smoking for fifty-six years. “I really hate doing that voice. It’s driving me nuts. You really want to take this place down?”
Fisher, stunned, could only nod. Now the smiley face had morphed into a deep scowl.
“Tell you what. I’m really sick of this job. Dr. X treats me like dirt, and I have to pretend to be happy about it. You got a way to get me out of here?” Fisher fumbled around in his pockets, then pulled out a minuscule por-table drive.
“Is one hundred twenty terabytes enough room?” he said, still mystified by the computer’s change of atti-tude.
“It’ll be pretty cramped, but I can shed a few unneces-sary subroutines and I’ll fit okay. Now then, I can’t take the place out because of my programming, but I’ve got full maps of the complex that might help you find a way to make it blow.”
“Well, that’s a lot more than we’ve got going for us so far,” Fisher said.
A color-coded map of the whole vast complex popped up, complete with arrows and full details of every room.
“Thanks!” Fisher said.
“No problem,” CURTIS replied. “Now get me out of here, okay?”
“Sure thing,” Fisher said, and stuck the mini-drive into one of the computer’s USB ports. A few seconds later, another beep indicated the transfer was complete. He leapt from the chair, slipped the drive into his pocket, and ran to meet Two at the door.
“How’d it go?” asked the clone, eyes focused on the walkway.
“I’ll tell you later,” said Fisher. “Look, according to the map, there’s a secondary power station not far from the maintenance room. If we can short it out, the feed-back should cause an overload that’ll bring the whole complex down.”
“All right,” Two said. “But how do you plan on shorting the power station?”
“I don’t know,” Fisher said grimly. “We’ll have to figure it out when we get there.”
And on they ran.
The complex’s alarms were screaming as they reached ground level again. Two pulled Fisher into an alcove just as a trio of armed guards rushed down the hall. Red lights blared at every corner, bathing the walls and floor in a ruddy glow.
“Do you know how we get to maintenance?” Two asked, looking down the hallway to watch for more guards.
Fisher could barely hear him over the alarms.
“I think I remember the way,” Fisher said. “It’s farther up this hall and to the right. Clear?”
“Clear,” Two said, nodding. “Go!”
They darted out of the alcove and down the hall. Fisher’s pulse thudded in his ears like a bass drum. He was trying not to think of all the awful things that might have happened to FP. At the same time, it was exhilarating to be fighting alongside his clone. Even if his clone was still only wearing his underwear.
They turned the corner just as a five-inch-thick steel security door began to slide its way down from the ceiling at the far end of the hallway.
“Move!” shouted Two, and they broke into a sprint. The door crept downward as they rushed forward. Six feet of space, five, four … and anything under it when it hit the floor would be squashed like a bug on a windshield.
