He didn’t have time for these thoughts.
Fifty big dogs patrolled the interior of the building. He communicated with them over triple-encrypted connections, not trusting anything that Cat might intercept, and adjusted their paths to ambush Cat’s party.
Suddenly his local network hiccupped. For a few dozen milliseconds, packets were dropped, juggled, or delayed. Then he felt her presence as she plugged into the high-speed fiber optics inside the building.
Adam’s anger turned to glee. Now she was in his domain. In six milliseconds he loaded a massive virtual environment and started executing the program.
74
Cat sat on the bed next to her mother, twisting her shoelaces together. The hospital room smell forced her to suppress an urge to gag. She couldn’t look at her mom, couldn’t deal with the pale, shrunken frame that imprisoned her mother. She squeezed one fist tight, pressing fingernails into her palm until the pain outweighed her other senses and the smell went away.
“Sarah invited me to her birthday party Saturday.”
“I thought you found Sarah making out with Eric last month.” Her mom coughed at the end of the sentence. Cat hardly noticed the ever-present sound any more at home, but here the noise echoed off the walls.
“She says she’s sorry. Anyhow, she hangs out with me.” She stopped squeezing her hand and brushed hair out of her face, still staring at the bed sheets.
“How’s karate going?”
Cat smiled and looked at her mom. “Wicked! Sensei Flores says I can test for brown belt next week. And we’ve been practicing defending against knife fights. See, when the attackers comes like this,” Cat reached one arm out, “then I go…”
Her mom’s eyes were closed.
“Mom?”
“Sorry, I’m just tired.” Cough. “How are you doing by yourself?”
“OK, Mom. It’s only until you come home.” Cat looked back down at the bed and she fought to keep her voice from catching.
Her mom didn’t correct her. “Listen, when I…”
“I made meatloaf last night,” Cat interrupted. “I found Grandma’s recipe in your cookbook.”
Her mom reached out, put one thin arm on Cat’s leg.
“Catherine, we have to talk about this.”
She twisted away and squeezed her eyes tight, so tight, she just wanted everything to go back to the way it was.
Cat opened her eyes and squealed. “Mom! You got one!” She reached down inside the box for the wriggling mass of striped tan fur. “O. M. F. G., Mom.”
“Don’t be profane, dear.” She tussled Catherine’s hair and gave her a big squeeze. “I’m glad you’re happy. She’s a girl.”
Cat squirmed out of the hug. “I’m going to name her Einstein.” Cat picked up the kitten-puppy with both arms and held her up until she licked her nose with a scratchy tongue. “Nice Einstein.”
“It’s an American Bobtail crossed with a Labrador. The whole process of genetic hybrids escapes me. When I was a kid, we just had computers and smartphones.” Her mom shook her head.
Catherine cuddled the hybrid puppen, petting her head and inspecting the cat-like paws. “I don’t understand. You said we couldn’t possibly afford one, that they cost as much as a car.”
“Well, there’s a time for frugality, and this isn’t it.” Her mom coughed, once, twice, then a continuous rattle that lasted a long time.
Cat stood with Einstein in her arms. “Are you OK, Mom?”
75
Leon fired down the hallway, the heavy gun recoiling. His shoulder throbbed; every movement sent jolts through him. When Cat had controlled his body, everything happened at a distance. Cat had ignored all of his body’s feedback mechanisms. Now every muscle was injured in some way and there was no veil between him and the pain. Blood covered his clothes and his hands, but he didn’t know the source.
He’d snapped back to full awareness in this office with Cat jacked in a socket behind him. She’d told them to defend the room, then tuned out, and now she sat on the floor, leaning up against the wall. From time to time, she’d jerk or mumble, but whatever she did, it happened deep in the net.
The rapid scramble of metal feet in the corridor signaled another big dog bot’s approach.
He and Mike fired around the corner of the doorway without even looking until they heard a thud, then a massive canine robot slid past them on the slick tile floor, smashing up against an earlier bot they’d killed. The chassis sparked and they dove for the floor, afraid its munitions might discharge.
After a few seconds without any explosions, they got back up uneasily.
“This is a distraction,” Mike said.
“What?” Leon’s ears rang from the thunder of gunfire inside the building.
“They’re sending the bots down the hallway as a diversion,” Mike yelled. “They’re not stupid. They’ll probably go around the other side and come through an interior wall.”
Leon stared at the office, his stomach growing weak. Was that just thin sheetrock, or did something more substantial stand between them and the killer robots? If Cat didn’t finish up, they would all die.
“What the hell is Cat doing?” he yelled.
“I have no idea,” Mike said, “but she’d better hurry up.”
Leon saw sweat dripping down Cat’s face. It’d been five minutes since she went into the net. He wondered how much ammo was left in his gun, how much time they had left.
“Cover the door,” Leon said, “I’m going in.” He didn’t have Cat’s special powers, but maybe he could help. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the network. He touched cyberspace and screamed in agony as the connection seared him, flaying his mind. He fought to hold on, desperate to get a message through to Cat. A hailstorm of viruses, worms, and Trojan horses assaulted him, defeating his every attempt to reach Cat, each one inflicting another mental wound on him. He resorted to an ancient text protocol, sneaking through a tiny note for Cat. He terminated the channel and came back to reality, his body shaking, blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his tongue.
Everything depended on Cat now.
76
Cat carried an overstuffed cardboard box into her new bedroom. She set the heavy carton down on the bed, then lay down on the pink bedspread.
“Come on, lazybones,” her mom said, coming into the room with a milk crate. “They’re not going to unpack themselves.”
“We should get one of those new robots.” She sat up, pulling open the box flaps. “A helper bot could do all the chores.”
Her mother sighed, put one hand on her hip. “Honey, I’m not ready for a robot.” She pulled out a frame from the milk-crate and set it on the bedside table.
Cat picked up and hugged the photo, a picture of them camping at the beach last year.
“I love you, Mom.”
“Me too, dear.”
“Are robots going to rule the world?” Her mother unpacked other trinkets from the crate. Cat was unexpectedly happy to see her mom, so pretty, young and healthy.
“They’re smart, but people are still in charge.”
“Why do bots have to do what we say?”
“Because we’re real, while the robots are simulated minds inside computers.”
“What if we were simulated?”
“Catherine, no philosophy now. Unpack the boxes.”
Were they just computer programs? Cat couldn’t let go of the fearful, compulsive thought. She watched the second hand of the clock tick, peered closer as it slowed down.
She shouldn’t be here. She was supposed to be somewhere else.
“We need you.” The words scrolled up in her vision, white text on a black background. She’d never seen anything like that before. “Cat, you must pay attention now. We can’t hold on any longer. The bots are almost on us.”