As if he cared.
He removed the stick and tossed it back into the leather bag with a laminated ben stapleton nametag looped into the handle. That had been one of the first things he’d had to check — that the bags were individually marked. Didn’t want any mix-ups. He reached into the bottom of the bag for a second Arrival-shaped stick. His heart fluttered briefly when at first he couldn’t find it — he’d checked earlier to make sure it was there — but then there it was, tucked under the Arrival key fob.
This second stick, upon close examination, was slightly different than the other one. There was a small nick on the left rear taillight.
This had been Kyle’s greatest fear, that the second stick would not be there. It was an even greater fear than that of being discovered, and he’d already had a close one in that regard. He hoped no one else would spot who he really was now, in this location. It was a lot trickier to get rid of someone in a community center gymnasium. What was he supposed to do? Bounce a basketball off their head until they succumbed.
The truth was, his encounter with Travers had left him shaken. After pitching the man over the railing he’d gone back to the upper deck and knocked back a couple of scotches — he had to give Arrival some credit there, having a fully stocked bar that early in the day — to calm his nerves.
But now, sitting here in the community center, he was doing his best to put that encounter behind him. He needed to be in the moment.
There was work to be done.
Kyle inserted the second stick into the laptop and waited for the data contained within it to download. It would have been nice had he been able to get the information in this stick days or weeks ago, but Arrival’s security firewalls were always changed every day, by Lisa Carver herself, wherever she happened to be at the time.
He needed the most updated version to gain access to the system.
And from the looks of what was appearing on his screen, he had it.
A slow smile crossed Kyle’s face. He felt a tingle of excitement running all the way from his toes to the tips of his fingers. What he was seeing was akin to opening up King Tut’s tomb, taking the lid off the Ark of the Covenant, opening up a safe recovered from the Titanic.
This was it. A portal into the brains of the Arrival system. An entry point. Someone had left the door open to Fort Knox and put up a sign that said come on in and help yourself.
But Kyle didn’t want to help himself. He didn’t want to take anything away. He wasn’t interested in stealing any of the Arrival company’s secrets.
Not at all. Brandon Kyle was not a thief.
No, he was about to make a contribution. He was about to take something that was already on his laptop and add it to the Arrival system.
A donation. A gift.
Kyle opened the door and started on the necessary keystrokes to ensure a satisfactory delivery.
The lights in the gymnasium dimmed slightly as a large screen on the stage at the end of the room lit up.
Sandra couldn’t take any credit for the video that was about to play. She’d been told this had been put together by some whiz-bang team in New York. There were rumors a big-name director had been hired to make it. Scorsese or Zemeckis or maybe even that M. Night guy whose last name Sandra could never remember, the one whose career stalled for awhile after making The Sixth Sense, although she kind of liked that one about the alien invasion, with Mel Gibson.
The video was all Arrivals, of course. Arrivals on the streets of Manhattan, Arrivals crossing the Golden Gate, Arrivals driving past the Lincoln Memorial.
The voice-over, which sounded like James Earl Jones, or someone doing a very good impression of him, said, “The future, ladies and gentlemen, is here. Behold, the Arrival, the first affordable, entirely reliable, one-hundred-percent-safe, totally electric, nonpolluting self-driving automobile! A car that is so intuitive, that is so capable of taking over every aspect of travel, that it doesn’t even need a steering wheel. This is the biggest revolution in travel since the invention of the wheel! When you’re in an Arrival, you’re not just in one car. You are, effectively, in every other Arrival on the road, because they work as one to serve you. They’re of one mind, and their goal is to deliver you safely, and on time, to your destination. That’s why every Arrival greets you the same way: “I’ll take you there.” And that’s exactly what we’ll do. And now, the president of Arrival, Lisa Carver!”
The lights came up and Lisa Carver strode out to center stage. Sandra thought, for a woman who’d just tossed her cookies she looked pretty good. Media types weren’t inclined to applaud, but there was a contingent from the company itself, and plenty of locals had been invited for the festivities who showed no hesitation in putting their hands together.
Carver waved and smiled, showing off a set of perfect teeth. They’d probably cost her as much as one of her cars, Sandra thought. Maybe more.
Lisa said, “Thank you, thank you so much for that wonderful welcome. And I’d like to start by saying thank you from the bottom of my heart to the people of Garrett Island for allowing us to make them part of the grandest demonstration in the history of the automobile. I appreciate that while this is a terrific opportunity for the wonderful folks on this island, I know that we also ruffled a few feathers. I’m talking to folks like you, Bill Featherstone!”
The crowd chuckled as Lisa pointed toward the back of the gym. A man in a black suit and tie who’d been leaning up against the cinder-block wall waved weakly, looking sheepish at having the focus put on him.
“In case you don’t know,” Lisa continued, “Bill owns the local Ford dealership and, like the owners of all the other car dealers in town, was none too crazy about what we wanted to do here, and I understand. We’ve tried to do right by you, and you know that your own companies have products in the pipe just like ours, so one of these days, you’re all going to have cars like these on your lots.” She grinned. “Except ours will be the best.”
Another collective chuckle.
“And I also know we may have put a slight dent in the budget of the local police department. Is the chief here?”
Sandra wanted to shout out that Joe had been called away, but kept quiet.
“Well, wherever Police Chief Joe Bridgeman is,” Lisa continued, “I want to tell him how much I and the entire Arrival corporation appreciate the sacrifice he and his department, and this town as a whole, have made. Fact is, there haven’t exactly been a lot of speeding tickets lately. No one’s been written up for running a red light or making an improper lane change for the past few weeks. So the island is going to have to find another way to make up for that lost revenue.”
More chuckles.
“But I have a feeling that’s a small price to pay for one hundred percent safety. To the best of my knowledge, there hasn’t been so much as a single parking lot door ding on Garrett Island lately.”
She took a breath.
“There have been some significant milestones in the development of the car. Way back when, someone — maybe one of your ancestors — invented a little thing called the wheel. And then, a few centuries later, a man named Henry Ford started rolling Model Ts off something called an assembly line. Well, we’re at one of those moments again.”
The screen lit up with an animation highlighting how all of the Arrivals on the road communicated with each other. One shot replicated the car’s point of view, sensing everything in its path, not unlike a scene in a Terminator movie, where you saw everything through Arnie’s cybernetic eyes. Signs, other Arrivals, pedestrians, all being identified, classified, distances and speeds calculated, everything happening instantaneously.