The Age Atomic

NINETEEN

The laboratory was empty when Laura arrived for work. That wasn’t unusual, although she did worry for Doctor X’s health. He didn’t get enough — any — natural sunlight living underground, which would play havoc with anyone’s circadian rhythms. She only hoped he was given vitamin D tablets with his food. He’d taken to working at night too, when she wasn’t there, appearing late in the afternoon. It was almost like he didn’t want to work with her, which was a shame. She knew she was the only person Doctor X ever really saw, apart from a few auxiliary staff and the silent, black-hatted agents that accompanied them. And the Director of course, but she didn’t count as a person, not really.

Laura shrugged off her jacket and slipped on her white lab coat, glancing around as she did so. He’d been busy during the night. Very busy. Laura allowed herself a little smile; at least his scientific curiosity hadn’t left him.

“Good morning, Laura.”

Laura jumped, her hand clutching her chest. She spun around, recognizing the voice.

“What-” Her hand found her mouth.

The Project stood next to the cage, its left arm replaced with the new limb she’d built just a few days ago. Its eyes glowed brightly, as did the circular window in its chest. Laura found her gaze drawn to the red light pulsing and spinning like a radar screen.

The fusor… the Project had a fusor installed: an operational, functioning portable fusion reactor. She blinked, her surprise fading as her professional interest took over. She took a step forward, wanting to see the work, and then she screamed.

The Project was standing next to the cage, but the frame within was not empty. Wired to the cradle around it, cables and wires dangling, connected to banks of dead equipment, was Doctor X. His eyes and mouth were open. His head lolled to one side.

His lab coat was a brilliant pinkish red. It took Laura a moment to realize that the heavy fabric had acted as a sponge, absorbing the blood from the cavernous chest wound. There was a smell too, the smell of meat at a butcher’s counter. Laura felt the bile rise in her throat — hot, sticky, making her choke.

The doctor’s chest had been opened down the middle, the two front halves of the ribcage removed entirely. Laura glanced down, and saw on a small trolley near the cage a mound of black and red material, oily and wet. Doctor X’s eviscerated insides.

The hollowed-out torso was filled with wires, all connected to the apparatus inside the cage like they had been when it had been the Project occupying the frame.

Laura doubled over and closed her eyes. She spat her breakfast onto the floor, and sucked in a breath, determined to stay conscious as the world spun around her.

It was fine, it was fine. She just needed to call for help and the workshop would be filled with agents. And the Director… she could see what was going on, right? All Laura had to do was to call out, get her attention, and everything would be fine. Maybe the Director could even put Doctor X back together again.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a pretty girl?”

Laura jumped. The Project was nearer now, moving with remarkable silence. The circular swirl of red light from its chest was almost hypnotic.

“Things didn’t go so well with me and the Prof, see,” said the machine. “But I think I got it fixed. Know where I went wrong. I’m good now.”

Laura backed away, feeling around the bench behind her. The workshop was large and there was plenty of room to run. She just had to judge her moment. There were agents near, there always were. She just needed to get to the door and-

“He was a great guy, you know.”

Laura froze. She didn’t want to die, not today. Not like Doctor X.

The Project stepped forward.

“Your boss, I mean. The Prof. What a guy. Fixed me up too, real swell.” It raised its new arm and flexed it like a circus weightlifter before tapping the index finger against the glass window in its chest. The sound was loud but dull. “All systems go. Course, I told him what to do, but nobody’s perfect.”

Laura spun on her heel, but came face to face with a computer cabinet, not the exit she had expected. She cried out in surprise and turned back around. The Project was closer, within touching distance. She looked around, looking for an escape, for a clear route out.

“It’s a shame about the Prof. But, y’know, sometimes you just make an honest mistake. I mean, c’mon, what can you do, huh?”

“What can you do?” Laura repeated. It sounded like someone else speaking, like her ears were stuffed with cotton wool.

The robot continued to creep forward. “But never mind. Let’s talk about you and me, Laura. We’re gonna do great things, you and I. Oh boy, you’d better believe it.”

Laura nodded. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see it: one of the claw-like clamps that were used to install the fusor reactor in the robot. Install… and remove. If she could get to the clamp, all she would need to do was jam it into the robot’s chest and turn, just once, to unlock the fusor. The power would be disconnected instantly, and without the external power supply provided by the cage, the Project would drop where it stood.

It sounded easy. The Project was up and moving and unrestrained, but it seemed slow, like a drunk person concentrating very hard on not being drunk. Even so, the machine would pull her to pieces like tissue paper if she tried to get the clamp in place… unless she was quick, quicker than it was. And all it would take was a twist. A single twist.

Laura sidled to the right. The robot didn’t move, just followed her with its eyes. The clamp was on the bench, just there, almost in touching distance, next to the back-up prototype fusor. The reactor looked different somehow.

Eyes fixed on the Project, Laura moved again, one step, then another, then another. The robot didn’t move. She glanced to her right, to make sure the clamp was really there, then looked back at the robot.

She reached out, not looking. Her fingers found the clamp. The metal was cold.

“Not so fast, honey pie.” The Project jerked to life. Laura jumped back to her left, clamp in her grasp. She pulled it off the bench and it fell downward, yanking her shoulder painfully. The clamp was much heavier than she remembered.

She backed away, knowing that she was out of room and out of time. She raised the clamp in front of her. It had a handle like a gun, complete with a trigger to lock and unlock the three articulated fingers.

The robot ignored her, turning its attention to the other fusor reactor on the bench. It lifted it with one hand like it weighed nothing at all, and turned to the doctor.

“Ta-da,” it said. “Neat, right? We got them fixed. Portable nuclear fusion. Virtually unlimited power.” The robot shook its head; Laura almost imagined it was in quiet appreciation of the technology. The Project was right. Each reactor could power a city. Laura had hoped they would be used for good, of course. They would change the world. Unlimited power, so cheap as to be virtually free, inexhaustible, safe. First every city would have a fusor, one single cylinder replacing a dozen conventional power stations. And who knew what was possible with such power? That was the whole point, the whole thing about science. It wasn’t what you could imagine now; it was what you could imagine five, ten, twenty years from now. What possibilities would the power offered by the fusor reactor unlock in the future? Every city would have one — how about every home? What if every single human being in the United States of America had one each? Their own personal spark of creation, a flame captured from the embers of the Big Bang itself. Contained, nurtured, tamed.

It made the mind reel.

But it was too much. She knew that. Atoms for Peace were going to put one into each of a thousand machine soldiers. That was too much power, a recipe for disaster. If anything went wrong…

Laura watched the fusor reactor swing in the robot’s hand. A portable power source. A portable Little Boy or Fat Man, or worse. A whole army equipped with fusors would have enough power to knock the Earth off its axis.

“Now,” said the Project. “I’m gonna try a different approach.”

Laura squeezed the clamp’s trigger, making the three fingers flex, making a clicking noise that was as loud as an atom bomb. The robot took a step forward, and she took a step back and hit something tall and hard. She was up against the computer cabinet with nowhere to go.

“Me and the doctor,” said the robot as it walked slowly forward, “we had this thing going on. Quite a plan, see. But, you know, things the way they is, it’s down to you and me now. I mean, I wouldn’t say no, right? Right. So here I am thinking, hell, we got a whole bundle of these babies, so why not, right?”

The robot raised the fusor in front of it, pointing the flat end of the cylinder directly at Laura. It took another step forward.

“Sure, why not,” said Laura, her voice barely a mumble.

Didn’t the Director see everything that was happening in the city? Was she watching now, from the Cloud Club, as her precious Project ran amok in the laboratory?

Of course she was. Laura felt her heart kick. This was part of it. A test of the fusor reactor. An experiment to be observed.

Laura shook her head. The robot took another step towards her.

“Screw you, bitch,” said Laura under her breath, and she powered forward, using the cabinet behind her as a springboard. Squeezing the trigger, she pushed the clamp forward as she moved, hoping that after dozens of installations she could estimate automatically the mating point of the clamp and the reactor in the robot’s chest. All it would take is one turn, just one turn to the left, not even a five-degree rotation, and the reactor would disconnect and she would save herself and maybe she would save the whole damn world.

The Project threw its arms up and leaned back — as though surprised — as she flew at it, and Laura wondered what the noise was, the sound that reverberated around the workshop. She looked up into the eyes of the robot, their red lights rocking back and forth in the sockets like a child’s broken toy, and she realized the sound was her, screaming in anger. She was up against the robot, its metal casing cold and hard, her fingernails trailing silently across the chest. She screamed and screamed again, raising her arm up, her yanked shoulder protesting at the weight of the clamp. Why was it so damn heavy?

The clamp slipped, and Laura tried again, this time tearing her eyes away from the robot’s pretend face to look and align the clamp. There wasn’t much time; any second now she’d be tossed like a sack of wheat clean across the laboratory.

A twist of the wrist, and the clamp still wouldn’t lock. The metal fingers slid across the glass port of the reactor, failing to find any slots at all. She twisted the other way, yelling in frustration.

Her cry died in her throat and she almost coughed. The fusor reactor, it was different. There were no slots in the rim for the clamp, nothing to grip on around the edge, no way of removing it, not by her. The clamp was redundant.

“Lady, please,” said the robot. “Have a little patience.”

Laura pushed away and let the clamp drop to the floor. She turned, desperate to make a getaway. There was no other option.

“It’s OK, I understand.” The robot grabbed Laura by the collar of her lab coat, lifting her until her feet left the floor. “Don’t worry about a thing. I got this honey. Power, I get it, I understand. And trust me, you wouldn’t believe what this thing can do.”

“What are you doing?” Laura struggled, but the robot’s grip was firm, her lab coat cutting into her armpits.

“You need an upgrade, that’s for sure. I tried it on old Philo but it didn’t take. But it’s OK — I know what I did wrong now.”

Laura shook her head, her eyes wide. Couldn’t the robot distinguish between living creatures and machines like itself?

“I can’t use the fusor,” she said, “I don’t need it!”

The robot almost tutted. Then it lowered her to the floor and pushed her hard against the computer cabinet with the end of the fusor reactor, squeezing the air out of her lungs. With the other hand it tore open the front of her coat, then her blouse underneath, then snapped the front of her bra off, exposing the pale skin over Laura’s sternum. The robot tilted its head, and moved the reactor, lining up the flat end between her breasts. Laura gulped in air, each breath pushing her skin against the end of the cylinder. The metal was cold.

Laura cried out again — not a scream of fear, but of anger, screaming at the goddamn robot that was going to kill everyone, including her, as the robot pushed, breaking bone, breaking flesh, as it tried to upgrade her.