Boston
The police were professional.
That was the best and the worst Massina could say. They went through the building with him, checking for any overt sign of his captors; naturally there was none. They didn’t bother checking for fingerprints, let alone DNA.
“That’s CSI stuff,” said the lieutenant in charge. “It looks great on TV, and everyone thinks it’s a miracle drug, like aspirin, fixes everything, solves every crime. But look at this place.”
He swept his hand around the empty room. It was the top floor of a five-story office building that had not been occupied in more than a year. Its previous owners had leased it to a video game company that had gone bankrupt; since that time, it had been vacant, used mostly by vagrants and homeless drifters, except for a two-week stint a month before, when a film company rented out the floor.
“We wouldn’t know where to begin with DNA,” said the lieutenant apologetically. “There’s so much potential for things being around, for contamination—”
“Can’t you tell what’s fresh?” asked Massina.
The lieutenant’s sigh was the sort an exasperated parent might make when explaining to a three-year-old that the world was round for the five hundredth time.
Just because, kid. Don’t you get it?
They weren’t completely without leads: Massina’s Cadillac could be swept, though even there the police thought they’d find little. And they would look for video surveillance cameras at the club and on the route to the building. They had Massina sit with an artist, who tried to get a composite sketch of the man who’d spoken to him. But since he hadn’t seen the man’s actual face, they ended up with only the most generic description: roughly six foot, average build, foreign accent.
“I narrowed it down to maybe a tenth of Boston’s population,” said Massina sardonically when they were done.
“It’s a start,” said the artist.
I oughta nominate you for optimist of the year, Massina thought as he left.
Bozzone, Smart Metal’s head of security, was more sympathetic than the police, but he, too, offered little hope when he picked Massina up at the police station.
“The theory is, they made a mistake. They found out who you were and backed off,” said Bozzone after ushering his boss into one of the company cars, a GMC Jimmy. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Who were they looking for?” asked Massina.
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. There are plenty of possibilities. There are a bunch of people who have cars like yours.”
“Could this be related to the ATM scam?”
“They’re looking into that,” said Bozzone. “You might mention it to Jenkins. But from what they said to you, it doesn’t quite match. And Chelsea said that was a kid, right?”
“True.”
Bozzone walked through Massina’s house with him, carefully checking for signs of an intrusion even though the security system indicated there had been none.
“Put a hold on all your credit cards,” suggested Beefy after they were done. “And get new ones.”
“What a pain.” Massina walked to the kitchen.
“Better safe than sorry.”
“Would you like some coffee?”
“I’d like to get back to sleep, if it’s all right.”
“Go on.”
The security director hesitated.
“What?” asked Massina.
“About that business with the ATMs.”
“You think it’s connected?”
“No. But I think you went over the line.”
Massina opened the cupboard and retrieved a box of green tea. He wasn’t particularly concerned about caffeine content; it was only a few hours to dawn, and he’d already decided he wasn’t going to get any meaningful sleep.
“I’m not trying to lecture you,” added Bozzone. “But once you start going down this road, you open yourself up to all sorts of things.”
“Noted. Are you sure you don’t want something to drink?”
“I’m good.”
“Why don’t you go home, then?” Massina suggested. “I’m sure Tricia’s wondering what’s keeping you.”
“She could sleep through a hurricane,” said Beefy. “Thanks. I’ll see you Monday.”
Two hours later, having showered and done some yoga to loosen up, Massina headed in to his office. He loved coming to work, and Saturdays were his favorite days to be there; while the place was far from empty, his calendar was generally free, allowing him to roam at will. He liked to plant himself at the back of a lab and watch what was going on; he loved listening to conversations among engineers and scientists as they puzzled over problems. True, his presence often made such exchanges stilted, or cut them off prematurely, but he relished even the snippets of true creative endeavor and the conflict it sometimes brought. The words fail forward were more than a slogan to him. Wandering around his building kept him close to the hidden energy of the place.
Smart Metal’s vast array of projects was both an asset and a detriment from a business point of view—an asset because it continually presented fresh areas of commercialization, and a detriment because it divided the attention not just of Massina but his staff as well. If the company had been publically traded, it would have had to stop and focus on one area or another—probably robotics, as that was not only its most profitable area but also the one with the best growth potential. But that was one of the reasons Massina kept the business private: he wanted Smart Metal to do what he wanted it to do, which was varied and full of possibilities.
Massina went down to what they called “Underground Arena One,” a very large workspace under the back of the building. It had been excavated during World War II for some reason no longer remembered, then covered by a two-story addition to the building. During his renovation, Massina had had the floors above the basement gutted so that the space was just under fifty feet high, and completely open; some municipal convention centers were smaller.
Peter—RBT PJT 23.A to Massina—was undergoing new tests this morning on “his” intuition system, the AI component that was supposed to let the robot spontaneously make decisions. The tests were open ended, as the engineers did not know exactly what the machine would do—more or less the point, after all, of the whole spontaneity concept. Massina came in when the robot was surveying a row of cages occupied by puppies. The dogs, curious about the roving mechanical creature, barked wildly as it approached. Massina went over and stood by Chelsea, who was in charge of the AI section and had designed the test.
“What’s going to happen?” Massina asked as the robot paused in front of a rather rambunctious Dalmatian.
“I’m not sure.”
“What are you going to do if it decides to kill them because they’re so loud?”
Chelsea held up the unit’s remote. There was only one command showing on the touch screen: stop.
Massina smirked.
Peter peered in the cage, taking a series of measurements. Then it moved on to the next. Massina went to one of the monitoring units and saw that the bot was primarily interested in the dogs’ heartbeats and body temperatures. It worked its way down the row, then came back to the Dalmatian.
The bot reached one of its arms toward the cage. The Dalmatian, which had been barking loudly, quieted, then moved back. Haunches up, it prepared to spring. Massina heard a distinct warning growl above the yip and yap of the other dogs.
Peter withdrew its hand, snapped the lock on the cage, and pulled the door open. Then it backed out.
The bot had decided to free the dogs.
Confused, the Dalmatian hesitated before bolting from its pen. The robot, meanwhile, freed the shepherd mix next to it.
“You better turn it off,” Massina told Chelsea, suppressing a laugh. “We’ll never round them all up.”
Peter managed to free two more dogs before Chelsea pressed the Stop button. The animals took a victory lap around the caged area, then went over and sniffed their savior, perhaps wondering if there was a way they could return the favor. The support team went to work trying to corral them, moving in with treats and leashes.
“I’ll bet it thought they were in distress,” said Chelsea.
“A good theory,” said Massina. “I want to talk to you about something. Maybe upstairs, where things are a little quieter.”
“Tell me where we are with the ATM project,” said Massina as he pulled out his desk chair to sit.
“I have to pull together a proposal,” said Chelsea. “I didn’t get to it—I needed to make sure Peter was ready for the test so we stay on track.”
“You have a reasonable idea of what happened with the ATMs, though?”
“Reasonable, yes.”
“And it involved the girl?”
“Yes.”
“I was wrong.” Massina put his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “I should have told you not to look at the accounts.”
“I didn’t go into the accounts or the banking system,” said Chelsea. “I looked at the video.”
“You didn’t hack into the systems?”
“No, Lou. Not at all.”
“Good. Good on you.” He sat back in the chair. “I got carried away about working with the FBI. I should have been more thoughtful.”
“OK.”
There was a faraway look in his eyes, as if he’d already started thinking about something else.
“The girl,” said Chelsea.
“What about her?”
“She’s worth saving.”
“I’m sure the FBI—”
“They’ll throw her in jail,” interrupted Chelsea.
“That’s not where she belongs?”
“Hell no. And I’m not completely sure it was her,” added Chelsea. “Without hacking into the account—”
“Which you’re not going to do.”
“Check. So I don’t know with one hundred percent certainty that it was her.”
“But you strongly suspect her.”
“Yes.”
“Then we have to tell Jenkins that.”
“I agree. But I’d like to do it my way. And yes, I think she can be saved. She’s not evil. She’s just . . . a girl.”