Page 53 of Chaos Theory

FIFTY

I glance at my watch, impatient for the elevator to descend to the ground floor for me.

The electronic display above the doors seems to be stuck on the number four.

I walk across the foyer and instead plunge into the nearby stairwell, gripping the thin banister and steeling myself for the long upward march to the fourth floor.

I still haven’t been assigned official working hours, so I don’t actually know if I’m early, late or on time.

I rarely see other people arrive or leave.

Everyone seems perpetually both in early and staying late.

But I allowed myself an extra few minutes in bed this morning on account of a restless night of elusive sleep.

My mind was churned up after an eventful Thursday evening.

Sam had arranged to call me at nine, so I went to Phelan’s for a spell after work.

Shane seemed pleased to see me, although we didn’t get to talk much.

We had a brief exchange about the fact that he wasn’t drinking alcohol.

‘Trying something different,’ he’d said with a grin, ‘as are you, I see,’ and he’d nodded at my sparkling water.

But before I could respond, Sandra Smith sat in between us and urgently engaged him in deep conversation about the next major event to be planned by the Social Committee: the Christmas party.

The Big One. Shane described it as a white whale.

Sandra said white was appropriate for Christmas and that snow at Christmastime was very romantic.

I still don’t know if they’re together, or will get together, or have gotten together but aren’t together any more.

I suppose I could ask Shane directly, but direct conversations have never really been our style.

I did try to find out in a roundabout way by archly asking Imelda if anyone missed me at work, but Duncan Canning ruined the moment by bellowing that he missed my client reports and that all Shane did all day was stare at my empty desk.

Which was kind of an answer, I suppose, but also open to multiple interpretations.

I left the pub to be home on time for Sam’s call, my laptop at the ready.

At exactly 9 o’clock he called with a very specific set of instructions as to how he would transfer the file to me.

He repeated several times that if anyone ever asked, he would deny all knowledge of the phone call.

If he needed to, he told me with a hollow laugh, he’d go as far as telling people that I’d stolen his phone.

I’m not sure if he was being paranoid or just joking.

Now, sweating as I ascend the final staircase to the fourth floor, I have one thing on my mind. I breeze into the robot bay and remove as many layers of clothing as decency will allow.

‘Morning, Kobi.’

‘Hello, Maeve.’ He turns to face me.

I tighten the loose bun on top of my head. ‘Hey, I need you to do me a favour. I want you to listen to something.’

‘Of course. What is it?’

‘It’s a piece of audio. It’s from a few months ago. I’m going to play it for you, and I want you to listen carefully and tell me what it says, and if it means anything to you. Do you think you can do that for me?’

‘Affirmative,’ he says. ‘Are you okay, Maeve? I am sensing something – are you in distress?’

‘No. I’m breezy! Can’t you tell? ’

‘Is this one of those rhetorical questions that does not require an answer?’

I laugh, but I can feel my nerves tingling. It’s probably nothing , I tell myself.

‘Maybe. Okay, come over here. The audio is on my phone. I’m going to connect it to a speaker here to make it nice and loud. Come over here beside the speaker.’

‘Maeve, you know that my hearing is highly advanced. I do not need to be beside the speaker.’

I sigh. ‘Indulge me, will you? I’ve listened to this thing twenty times and can’t make it out.’

Kobi rolls over nearer the speaker. He’s still on wheels, and no one at RoboTron has mentioned reinstating his legs, which I’ve taken as a tacit acknowledgement that I did the right thing when his legs were damaged.

I play the audio clip. Kobi remains motionless for the thirty seconds or so.

‘Well?’ I ask.

‘Most of it is unintelligible sounds. However, I can identify three words, in sequence.’

‘Great! What are they?’

‘Initiating – embed – protocol.’

‘Great! What does that mean?’

He does not respond immediately. After a moment he says, ‘Perhaps if you gave me some context, I could attempt an interpretation.’

I sigh, try to hold in my frustration. ‘Sure. This is a recording from PHI – from the night of the incident, in fact. You might recognise the voice as your own. The recording was made during the incident by Sam – you remember your colleague, Sam?’

‘I remember Sam. I do not think he liked me very much.’

‘Listen again.’ I play it again.

‘I am sorry, Maeve.’

I don’t want to take the next step, but I can’t see another avenue to satisfying my curiosity. I exhale, rotate my neck to stretch out the muscles.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen Josh lately.’

‘Yes. I saw him this morning.’

‘Great! Where is he now?’

‘By my calculations, approximately fifteen minutes away from Dublin Airport.’

‘Gah!’ Typical. The one time I actually want to see him.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘I’m going to call him.’

I turn away from Kobi, dial a number. I walk to the opposite end of the robot bay.

‘Hey, Maeve.’ I hear a note of optimism in Josh’s voice, followed by one of contrition. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye. I kind of thought it would be better this way.’

‘It’s fine,’ I say quickly. ‘I know you’re on your way to the airport. This won’t take long. If I tell you something now, do you promise not to share it with anyone?’

I hear traffic sounds in the background down the line.

‘Uh, yeah. Sure. What’s going on? Is everything okay?’

‘Listen, do you remember Sam, the operator we met at PHI? The one who was involved in the Kobi incident?’

‘The guy we had coffee with? The one who took your number?’

I roll my eyes at the memory. I thought Josh was jealous at the time, but maybe he was just afraid of being caught out in his web of lies.

‘Yep, that’s the one. Well, turns out he had audio from the incident. Video too, but the video is useless. Anyway. He sent me the file last night.’

‘Wow,’ says Josh. ‘Anything interesting on it?’

‘Well, that’s the thing.’ I pace back and forth between CoffeeTron and Leila’s cabinet. ‘I can’t tell. But I was hoping you might be able to. Kobi could make out the words, but neither of us knows what they mean. ’

I tell him what Kobi told me a moment ago. He doesn’t say anything in response.

‘Josh, are you still there?’

‘Hang on.’

I strain to hear his voice as he speaks away from the phone. ‘Sorry, buddy, we’re gonna need to turn this thing around. Yep, back to where you picked me up. Fast as you can, thanks.’

I expect to hear his voice louder as he returns to our call, but instead he whispers down the phone.

‘Maeve, listen to me. Do not play this for anyone else. I’m coming back. Don’t do anything until I get there. And don’t talk to anyone. Anyone .’

9:45am

‘Hello, Josh,’ says Kobi as the robot bay doors swish open. ‘I did not expect to see you so soon after we said goodbye.’

‘I know,’ says Josh. ‘Did you miss me?’

‘No,’ says Kobi.

Josh laughs, but I hear a strain in his voice. He looks a bit sweaty and I wonder if he also walked up – maybe even ran up – the flour flights of stairs to get here faster. He’s touching his hair a lot. He tries to take me to one side, but I refuse to move.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask him.

‘This is bad. I mean – this could be bad. I don’t know for sure.’

‘Well, how can we find out for sure?’

‘Let’s listen to the audio again for a start.’

He perches on the edge of a stool as I cue up the clip, pump up the volume.

It’s only thirty seconds and most of it is fragmented sounds and unidentifiable noises.

There’s some shouting and swearing. But then there’s Kobi’s voice.

Now that I know what to listen out for, it sounds clearer.

There it is on the tape – three words in a row, with a little pause between each word:

‘Initiating… embed… protocol. ’

Josh is pressing his fingers to both sides of his head. ‘Oh God,’ he says.

I turn to him.

‘Do you know what it means?’

He sighs loudly. ‘I think so.’

He stands, walks over to the wall of glass cases. With his back to us, he speaks very quietly.

‘Project Embed was just a rumour.’

I can barely hear him. ‘What did you say?’

He turns around but doesn’t look at me. He speaks slowly, like someone explaining a dream they’ve just woken up from. ‘Embedded Machines Built for Extraordinary Defence, aka EMBED.’

‘Defence?’ I repeat. My mind whirs to process what this means. ‘Defence, as in…military?’

‘I mean, I’d heard rumours about it,’ he continues, still in a dreamlike state. ‘Supposed to be a pet project of Ron’s. AI robots for the military. But I didn’t know anyone was actually working on it.’

An avalanche of implications rolls towards me like boulders down a mountainside. I look around for something, anything, to throw at Josh’s head. I grab a stress ball. It misses him by inches.

‘Josh, you were working on it!’ I slam my hand down on the workbench. ‘You thought Kobi was a manufacturing robot, but really he was military? How could you not know this? This is what I mean about asking questions!’

Kobi steps between us. ‘May I interrupt to ask what all this means?’

‘It means…’ says Josh. ‘It means we are going to Ron right now for some answers.’