By mid-afternoon, the ballroom was a disaster area. They had dragged in tables from all over the house, and across them was strewn a colorful scatter of random objects, some of which were recognizable (Zoey had personally seen the caterpillar machine disgorge a clock, a spatula, and what looked like a sex toy) and some of which were tangled, oddly shaped tools and/or weapons that looked like they came out of a flying saucer or a Dr. Seuss cartoon. Many of the items had been labeled with masking tape and marker, bearing the team’s best guess as to what the gadget did (there was a black, vaguely trumpet-shaped device that had been labeled simply “DEATH HORN” that she had decided not to ask about). All of this clutter was sprawling out under the mass of hanging candy canes and mistletoe, fighting for floor space with whimsical edible floor displays. Zoey had started calling it Santa’s Workshop.
The problem was that a lot of the gadgets on the coin drive turned out to be pure junk—seemingly random objects that, as far as they could tell, were just placeholders Singh had scanned in to calibrate his fabricator. Since the file system on the drive was unreadable, they were having to just frantically stamp out everything on the list, and pray they stumbled across something useful. The door to the courtyard opened and Andre and Will walked in. Andre tossed aside a device that looked like a handheld spotlight.
Zoey said, “Well?”
“No, it’s not a fart ray, Zoey. The next one won’t be, either. There’s no such thing.”
“Damn.”
Echo, who was busy poking at the caterpillar’s menus, said, “We’re no closer than when we started. Fifteen hours until Molech’s deadline, and that’s assuming he keeps to it.”
Zoey said, “No closer to what? If we’re not just looking for a bigger, badder gun to obliterate Molech’s army with, what exactly are we looking for?”
Will said, “I guess I’m looking for … the One Ring.”
Zoey said, “The what ring?”
“The One Ring. Like in Lord of the Rings.”
“I think I saw part of that on cable. It’s about a little British kid in glasses who can do magic?”
“Are you seriously telling me you haven’t heard of—. Okay, it’s about an evil wizard who makes twenty magic rings and gives them to all of the leaders of the various tribes in the world. But it’s all a scam, a power grab. The wizard kept one ring for himself, and it controlled all of the rest.”
Zoey said, “And Arthur is the dark wizard in this scenario?”
“He had to know what he was doing would end up this way. He did know, as you pointed out. But he had no safeguard built in? This stuff just falls into the hands of the bad guys and then his plan was, what, exactly?”
“But Arthur didn’t give this stuff away. It was stolen from him. Maybe he just didn’t anticipate that part.”
“Arthur anticipated everything.”
“So again I ask, in the absence of this machine literally generating a magical object, what’s our plan?”
Candi blinked into the room and said, “A guest is at the front gate, and it looks like boob dong boob tittytittytitty—audio not found please contact your system administrator.”
A voice said, “Yo, it’s Tre. Open the gate, I don’t want nobody seein’ me here. You got weird enemies, ’Dre.”