Robogenesis Read Online Free PDF Page B

boreholes spread out over the acreage of the compound. Each is too small to produce a heat signature detectable from the air. They are carefully hidden in the visible spectrum by natural vegetation and terrain.
    I know these things, these practical things, because it was once my job to perform maintenance on this place. Oiling the wheels of the freight elevator. Tending the foliage around the borehole exits. Checking their heat output with an IR laser thermometer. Visual inspections of plumbing lines, emergency batteries, and fire-suppression systems. I was a maintenance man—I
maintained
.
    As the glorified janitor for the Novichok project, I have kept this research facility running for four years. My finger is always on the pulse of this place, monitoring the inputs and the outputs. The end of the world came and my job did not change.
    You see, our friend who lives down below is useless if we cannot talk to him. Yet he must be kept very carefully. Our deep friend must be watched over always.
    And that is our weakness. The stacks were built to be safe from men.Not from machines. Even a vent borehole could be large enough for the avtomat. The crawling types, the ones that wriggle through flesh. They could have the potential to move through the wiring itself. Perhaps a patient one could make its own tunnel through solid rock.
    Some of them are very patient.
    If the avtomat discovered our friend in his deep place, then we have failed. I cannot even contemplate the consequences of losing him. But I know it is better to fall into action than to run around in lost circles, head bobbing like these pigeon men with their advanced degrees.
    “Open the door,” I say to Leonid. “We will go down together. See what we can find.”
    “Are you sure?” he asks.
    I do not bother to respond. I just wait.
    Leonid reluctantly removes his glove and places his shivering hand in a cavity next to the door. A flash of red as the laser scanner examines his fingerprints. And, of course, it checks to make sure there is warm blood in his veins.
    We step inside and I close the metal door behind. The wind calls to us through the hidden cracks in this structure. A faint pale light pushes geometrically through the edges of a single mesh window, painted black. The sliding steel door of the freight elevator is shut tight like an angry mouth.
    “Our friend is talking. Whispering to himself down there in the darkness. My lab mates are growing afraid for him. Afraid that he is losing his mind. If he goes, then what will we do? What hope is left for us?”
    Leonid shrugs, takes a gulp of air. His voice has taken on a high-pitched quality that I recognize as being a hairbreadth from panic.
    I put a firm hand on his bony shoulder. Push him lightly against the wall. Offer him a little grin—a skim of confidence over the dread growing in my heart.
    “Calm and steady, Leonid,” I say. “Who knows, maybe the war is really over? Maybe the Americans did it.”
    From my pocket I produce a flask. Twist off the lid and press the shining stainless steel into Leonid’s fingers. His hand knows how torespond. The flask goes to his mouth, where it trembles at his lips like a hummingbird.
    The alcohol reminds his body that he is a man.
    “Our friend …,” says Leonid, and his voice is steady now, “changed his behavior several hours ago. Much functionality is gone. He no longer offers his guidance topside. Safety predictions are going stale. Our formations are stagnant. We are losing him, Vasily. To what, I do not know. But
something
is loose in the stacks.”
    Leonid taps the flask to his heart, then hands it to me with a nod of thanks. I take a quick swallow and tuck it away. Lean over and press my fingers against the icy metal slab of the freight elevator door.
    Pausing, I let the alcohol work its way into my thought process. I scratch off a flake of green rusting paint. Watch it fall into the crack between the elevator and the floor. The flake flutters into