Page 49 of Steinbeck
“The pool!”Emberly shouted.
“Make a hole!”Stein’s shout, but it was unnecessary since the onlookers had already fled.
They dropped the dog into the water, Steinbeck jumping in to hold it down.Declan too, right beside him, shoving the college project under water, the robot jerking.
Dying.
Steinbeck looked up, breathing hard.Met Emberly’s gaze.
Declan wore a look of horror.
“Well,” Austen said, standing at the edge, her hands on her hips.“I’ve never seen that at the fair before.”
SIX
The game was over.Whatever magic their day at the fair had stirred up, it had died in the cool water of the fish pond, in the horrific aftermath as Stein watched Declan and his college students root around the program of the deactivated service robots.
Stein’s arm throbbed and a bone bruise was probably forming on his shin.At least maybe his artificial knee had kept the joint from being crushed.
Unexpected graces.
He and Emberly, along with Declan and Austen, stood in the security offices inside the grandstand, in a private conference room that somehow Declan had commandeered to investigate the accident.
Declan leaned over the chair of one of his college techs, the deactivated monkey lying on the long table.
Outside, Oaken and his band had taken the stage, Stein’s brother-in-law working his country-music magic on the crowd.
Steinbeck might have enjoyed singing along, maybe catching Emberly in a dance—aw.He’d let this day get to him.Let her words find soil.“I promise, I’m not going anywhere.”
And she’d been right there beside him, taking down the rogue animal, so...
“It’s not a glitch.Someone logged into this code and changed it,” Declan said, pointing to the screen.He stood up, folded his arms.“How’d this happen?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said the tech.Early twenties, maybe, the guy was a reed, wore glasses, and with his curly mop, seemed like a modern-day version of the tech geek Zuckerberg.
The other two students—a female with blue hair and glasses and a short man with Asian-American features—seemed just as computer savvy, the way they burst into a conversation about the code.
But Stein got the gist.
“So you wrote the code, parked it in the cloud, then downloaded an update to the animals last night,” Declan said.
“Yes, sir,” said the man at the computer.
“Thank you, Elliot.”Declan glanced at the other two.“Remove the hard drive from both animals and bring them to me.You can take the robots back to the lab.”
He walked over to Steinbeck as they left, his mouth tight.“Now what?”
“We need access to Axiom,” Emberly said.She’d stood away, her arms folded, for much of the debrief, but now stepped up to him.Stein might be reading too much into her accusatory expression.“Imagine what this glitch could do in the wrong hands.We need a way to shut it down.What if that water hadn’t been there—or hadn’t worked?Any military application would include a waterproof design?—”
“Okay, calm down, Phoenix,” Declan said.“I agree.”
And that shut her down.
Steinbeck fought a grin.
“I’m not opposed to the idea of a controlled virus, the kind that could ensure that any system could be shut down.In fact, I’ve been working on something.”
“In between hijacking ships and sailing the high seas?”
