“It’s the Mesh,” Leon said, looking up. “The Mesh is all implemented in hardware. Even if the backbones go down, the Mesh won’t. The MeshBoxes can’t be infected because the algorithms are all implemented as hardware circuits. And the aggregate bandwidth is more than can be saturated by the endpoints. So even if all the phones are sending and receiving at their maximum speed, there will still be more bandwidth available.”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m asking what’s serving up the map data?”
“Oh,” Leon said simply.
“That’s an Avogadro web app, so if you’re using it, that means that Avogadro servers are still up, right? Why are the servers still up? They aren’t owned by a kid. The virus should infect them, right?”
Just as Leon was pondering the question, he felt a sharp lurch and tumbled against the wall of packages. When he got back upright, something was wrong. The drone of the electric props was gone, and the floor seemed to be at a fifteen degree tilt. “Uh, what just happened?”
Vito was pecking furiously at his keyboard. “I can’t reach the drone,” he said, then pecked some more at the keyboard. “I think it’s offline. Infected.”
“Oh, great,” James said. He scooted over to the small window and looked out. “We’re over some woods. I don’t think it’s gonna be good for us if this thing goes down in the trees.”
Leon was thinking furiously. “Move to the back. As far to the back as possible.”
“That’s not going to help us when we crash into the ground at a hundred miles an hour,” James said.
“No, our weight can shift the drone’s flight.”
All three moved rapidly to the back. Leon felt the angle of the drone change slightly, but it was still clearly pointed toward the ground.
“Stay here, Vito, and keep working on the drone’s computer,” Leon said in the eerie silence of their unpowered glide. “James, help me move these boxes.”
James got the idea. He unstrapped the stacked boxes and slid them towards the back of the plane. For ten minutes they worked together pushing stack after stack of boxes, and started to work up a sweat. It seemed to be helping, but the tilt of the floor showed the drone was clearly still heading for the ground. Leon noticed that Vito had a cable from the wall plugged into his phone.
Vito caught his glance and smiled at him. “For once, having an old phone is valuable. I’m plugging directly into the flight controls.”
Leon went back to moving boxes, and suddenly felt another huge lurch. A box tumbled on top of him and he fell backwards. Then suddenly the plane shifted again, tilting into a steep dive. With dismay, Leon watched all the loose boxes they had just moved to the back of the plane slide all the way to the front of the cargo bay.
“I got control,” Vito called out shrilly, tilting and panning his phone, using the motion sensing ability of the phone as a remote control for the plane. “It’s just like playing a flight simulator.”
Leon could feel the plane swerving and lurching, his stomach threatening to jump into his throat. “I’m gonna be sick unless you level this thing out!”
“But I can’t adjust for the weight. The boxes are loading down the front of the plane. You were supposed to move the boxes to the back.”
“We frakking did,” James yelled out.
Leon looked towards the front of the plane, where all boxes lay in a jumble. He and James redoubled their efforts and moved all the boxes to the back of the plane for a second time. When the drone finally leveled out a few minutes later, Leon slumped to the floor, arms and back burning from unaccustomed effort. James sat on a box, sweat pouring off his face. The drone was eerily quiet, nothing but the muted sound of wind whistling by.
“Are we OK?” Leon called to Vito.
“Not really, we…”
Whatever Vito was about to say was lost as the drone hit something and the cargo — and Leon — flew forward landing against the forward bulkhead. Leon looked up to see what appeared to be James in midair, and then Leon hit his head.
Minutes later Leon tried to stand up. He felt so shaky he dropped back to all fours, and settled for crawling over the boxes.
“Mother fucking shit damn hell,” James called out from under a pile of boxes. “What the fuck was that?”
“The ground,” Vito called out. “We lost too much altitude. I couldn’t pull us up. I had control over the flight surfaces, but I couldn’t figure out how to start the props. We had no power to pull up.”
Leon looked over to where Vito was seated calmly, strapped in with a five point harness.
Vito saw the puzzled look from Leon. Pointing at the seat, Vito said, “Jump seat. They’re built into the wall in case any employees have to ride along with the flight. I saw it when I brought up the electronics schematics.”
Vito calmly unbuckled and stood up, without even a hint of guilt, and pressed a key on his phone to open the cargo bay door.
Leon slowly climbed to his feet, and limped to the door. James followed him, angrily throwing boxes out of the way.
The three looked out. It was early dusk. The plane was in a small open field, surrounded by trees. Trees and a large stone house.
“Where are we?” James called.
“Just outside of Milford, Pennsylvania,” Vito answered, looking at his phone. “Looks like a tiny town.” He looked up, and gestured at the stone building. “I think that building over there is called Grey Towers.”
Leon limped over to Vito’s side, and glanced back at the wreckage of the package drone. “How far are we from Niagara Falls?”
“About three hundred miles,” Vito answered.
“Shit, now what?” Leon asked.
“Well,” James started, clasping him on the shoulder, “we’re not going to Niagara Falls tonight. Time to explore…”
CHAPTER FIVE
Tribes
James shoved his backpack on his shoulder and walked over to the big stone house. Leon couldn’t decide whether to call it a house or a castle.
Leon and Vito hesitantly followed James. When they got closer to the main entrance, they found a bronze plaque mounted on a pedestal outside. “Grey Towers,” James read out loud. “Ancestral home of the Pinchot family. Gifford Pinchot founded the Forest Service and was the twenty-eighth governor of Pennsylvania.” James glanced down below where a modern sign hung below the plaque. “Closed temporarily for maintenance.”
“I don’t think anyone is around,” Leon said. The late afternoon sun glowed golden over the massive stone walls of the building. In the distance he saw an empty parking lot.
The three walked around the castle to find elaborate gardens, pools, and more stone buildings. As the sun set the mountain air became even colder and they found themselves shivering. They stopped to put on their extra jackets.
After checking his phone, James spoke up. “I say we stay here. We’re a mile from the nearest town, and it’s a little one at that. With no cars running, there’s no chance anyone will find us. And it’s getting cold.”
“What, break in? Are you crazy?” Vito said. “I’m not breaking into that place. It’s a museum.”
“You just stole and destroyed a million dollar package drone,” James said, pointing at its crumpled remains at the edge of the field. “New York City is burning down. All the computers in the world have crashed. Do you really think breaking into an old, abandoned house is going to matter?”
Vito went white at the mention of the drone. “Oh, my parents are going to kill me.”
“Look, we’re not going to make it to Niagara Falls,” Leon said to Vito. “We’re hundreds of miles away. We need someplace to stay, at least for tonight. I think this is it.”