AbductiCon (7 page)

“Yes, okay. Fine. But what am I supposed to think is going to happen if he turns up as scheduled and this place…”

Xander looked up, wondering if a response was expected from him, but Andie Mae was already gone, talking to somebody on a phone, and Xander turned back to his computer. Before he had time to fully return his attention to his screen he happened to glance at the door to the control room, which had been left propped ajar when Dave had left. It was now open, and framed in it stood…

Xander let out a yelp, and everyone jumped, startled, and then turned to follow his frozen stare.

The silver man appeared to have found the con crew in their lair without Dave’s assistance. He stood in the doorway, in utter silence, waiting to be noticed – and when he appeared certain to have everyone’s attention, he moved forward into the room. His movements were fluid, not mechanical at all, but there was something about him – a certain sharp way of tilting his head, the unblinking stare – that screamed alienness. In the further reaches of the room, people who could back away did so.

“Don’t hurt us,” a girl whimpered quietly.

The silver head tilted in her direction, a small questioning motion, as though the silver man found the notion of hurting someone to be a rather novel idea. That, as far as Xander was willing to deconstruct things, seemed to be a good thing – if it had not occurred to the silver man to hurt anyone, then maybe they could count on, well, staying relatively safe. But what if he really had no clue what, in fact,
would
hurt the humans in the room and would – and the tone of the word really came to Xander without even trying – EX–TER–MI–NATE everyone in the room, not even necessarily through Dalek malice but through oversight and negligence and ignorance…?

“What did you do with Dave?” Andie Mae demanded, after peering over the silver man’s shoulder and seeing nobody standing behind him.

“Dave?” the silver man said. His voice was obviously crafted to be modulated, to convey intent or a complex algorhythm that might be considered an equivalent of an emotional response… but it was not a natural voice. Perhaps that reaction was an artifact caused by the simple psychological identification of “silver man” with “mechanical creature” that had instantly blossomed in all those present in the room, but it was nonetheless a very real and visceral reaction. Nobody who heard the being speak could doubt they were hearing a voice that had been made, not born.

“Dave,” Andie Mae said, bravely reclaiming the conversational high ground. “The one who went to find you…”

Somewhere to the right of the room, out in the silent carpeted corridors, an elevator door swooshed open, and the voice of the one whom Andie Mae had just invoked came wafting back into the room.

“Guys? I found him – he’s right…”

The voice died. The silver man in the doorway turned so that he was standing sideways, allowing a better view through the door into the corridor beyond… where now Dave Lorne stood open–mouthed, staring at the apparition in the doorway as another figure eerily similar to it stood just behind his own right shoulder.

“Holy
crap
,” Xander said conversationally. “There
are
two of them.”

“I am designated as B008199ZX5,” the one standing behind Dave said.

“I am designated as ZC77H771AI,” said the one in the doorway.

Eyes glazed over everywhere in the room.

Xander took command of the situation. He had always been blessed with a sort of mental screen on which he could project difficult to understand or phonetically pronounce words, a place where he could ‘see’ the offending word and play with it privately until he was ready not to embarrass himself by uttering it out loud. In this instance, he took the strings of letters and numbers and after a moment of cogitation he had managed to parse them into something more comprehensible .

“Nope,” he said. “
You
are Bob, and
you
are Zach. At least while you’re speaking to us, you are. Whatever you’re
designated
as... it’s like a safe computer password that a piece of software hands you to log in with initially until you can figure out something better. We humans don’t remember those all that well.”

“Fine one to talk,” muttered Dave, out in the corridor. “With a password like NTNDODNTINT…”

“That has meaning,” Xander snapped. “And I just
knew
that you’d seen me typing that in – you didn’t exactly warn me that you knew what my password is, dammit. That’s rude. By the way, I’ve already changed it – but it isn’t as though that’s the only thing I have to think about right now, you know…”

“Bob,” said the creature who had just been renamed that.

“Zach,” said the other one.

“Okay, that’s a beginning. Now – what would – ”

“Guys…?”

Libby, who had come up the stairwell, took a step off the stairs and into the corridor across from the control room, and then froze in place, her eyes flicking from one silver man to the other.

“Yes. We’ve just been introduced. Meet Bob and Zach. We were just getting acquainted…”

“No – I mean, what I mean is…”

Behind her, stepping smoothly out of the stairwell to stand beside her, another silver–skinned humanoid had emerged, and now stood waiting silently.

“Er, I knew I’d seen a girl one,” Libby said awkwardly. “This one… she came up to me just at the bottom of the stairs, and she said – her name is – ”

“I am designated as HLL5778N44X,” said the silver girl in a surprisingly pleasing alto voice.

Xander did his magic. “Fine. Helen. You’re Helen. Er, any more of you out there that we should know about…?”

If he was hoping for a denial, he was to be disappointed.

“ZVL5559AD4 is on his way,” Zach said. “We have summoned him. He is our leader.”

In Xander’s mind, the letters rearranged themselves into the less–than–reassuring ‘Vlad’ and he abandoned the acronym almost as soon as he found it. Luckily a better alternative was waiting, and he took it.

“When he turns up we’ll just call him Boss,” Xander said.

“Wait, you guys have mental telepathy?” one of the volunteers gasped.

Xander, who had his back to the offending speaker of those words, indulged himself in an epic eye roll.

“Libby, did you find the manager guy?” Andie Mae said, choosing to ignore the presence of the three aliens for the time being.

“Luke. Yes. I talked to him, and he thought I was having him on at first – but then he got a phone call from someone up at the bar on the eleventh floor, and what
they
said they saw seemed to shake him up…. and then when the head of con security came trotting over to back me up he figured he’d better take the whole preposterous story at least semi seriously. The good news is that nobody is going to be let loose out the front door for the time being. The bad news is that sooner or later and preferably sooner we’re going to have to offer something as a reasonable explanation why – and there’s always
one
who can be counted on to panic and stampede the rest. Luke said he’d be up here shortly for a confab. And when he gets here, Andie Mae… he’s pretty freaked out, actually. I think he’s not going to feel any better when he comes up here and sees… these… guys…”

“He said he could explain,” Dave said, giving the creature now known as Bob, standing beside him, a sour glare. “Maybe it’s time he did.”

“ZVL5559AD4 will explain,” Bob said. “We mean no harm.”

“Really,” Dave muttered under his breath.

“Er, maybe we should bring it in here,” Xander said. “You never know who might wander past the corridor… and what you said, about there being the one who starts a panic…”

“Good point,” Andie Mae said. “Everybody, inside. Now.”

Dave gestured for Bob to precede him, following Zach, who had obediently stepped into the room. The silver woman now named Helen stepped up next, followed by a nervous Libby who kept on glancing around as if the fourth entity, the one Xander had dubbed ‘Boss’, was about to materialize right there in front of her.

“NTNDDT what…?” one of the volunteers whispered to Xander as everyone filed in.

“What?”

“That weird password .”

“Yoda,” Dave threw over his shoulder, in passing.

“Huh?

“Oh come on,” Xander snapped. “You’re losing whatever geek cred you had that got you here. You ought to know that right off the bat.”

“I’m trying to…”

Dave and Xander caught one another’s eye and simultaneously grinned. And the volunteer’s face, which had creased into a frown, suddenly cleared.

“Oh, I get it.
There is no try
.” He glanced at Xander. “It’s a feeble password.”

“What, you would have guessed it straightaway…?”

“I did just now, didn’t I?”

“With a lot of heavy handed
help
…”

“
Boys,
” Andie Mae said sharply. “The grown–ups need you over here, now, please, thank you. You can go back to the geek sandpit later if you really want to.”

Boss was apparently taking his time in appearing, the other three creatures (despite the promise to Dave that they could explain everything) seemed reluctant to launch into any explanations until their commanding officer arrived, and there was nothing for it but to wait – but before Boss turned up it was Luke Barnes, the hapless Night Manager, who lurched through the door, ashen–faced and practically incoherent.

“I, uh, I should tell you,” he said to Andie Mae. “I went outside. Myself. Just to see what’s what. I took a few steps outside the portico area and everything is just… gone. The area where the pool was, almost the whole of the parking lot – there are just a few cars parked right up against the building here – it’s all just – not there. I actually saw… the edge…” He swallowed hard, apparently trying to get something the size of a tennis ball down his gullet.

“You could have gone off!” Andie Mae said.

“I don’t think so – there seems to be something – an invisible – I don’t know – it was just there – it seemed as if it had come down and just sliced the edge of the ground where it hit it, but you can’t step off the edge, it isn’t as though you are butting up against anything, it’s more of a feeling, and then you find yourself turned around and a little light headed and facing away again – it seems as though there’s a kind of a Thou Shalt Not field…”

“
You shall not pass
,” one of the volunteers said. “Hah. Keeps turning up, that. Cool. It’s all like Gandalf in Moria.”

“Yeah, you know how that ended,” Xander muttered.

“That was foolhardy,” Andie Mae said to Luke.

“Suicidal,” Xander muttered.

“Very brave,” Dave said, grimacing. “More than I did. I just ran.”

Luke glanced up, looking at once terrified and pleased. “I have people I am – the resort is – responsible for… I am not at all certain I could make a case for this with our insurance…”

“Everyone is perfectly safe,” said a new voice, and the throng in the control room parted to look at the new arrival.

The fourth silver man entity, Vlad or Boss, was maybe a head taller than the others, and his skin was a little closer to the nuances and hues of a real human being – perhaps that was why he had escaped notice before. The other three had stood out more amongst the con–going public, because there was something just a little off and too obvious about them; nobody had been paying them much mind only because this was after all a con, and a robot–themed one at that, so they had been assumed to be no more than inspired cosplay if anyone had taken the time to think about them at all.

But Boss would have been a little more difficult to pick out as foreign or alien – the only thing that distinguished him a little from a flesh–and–blood human being was the fact that he might have been almost preternaturally pale, and that his eyes were of an unusual, but not wholly unlikely, pale grey. Other than that he looked… almost disappointingly ordinary.

His voice, even, was… ordinary. Mortal. Human. With perfectly human inflections.

“A more advanced model?” Xander said, unable to help himself, confronted with an embodiment of all the stories he had ever devoured.

“A different generation,” Boss said.

Boss, standing there so improbably in the hallway of the hotel room, was the very incarnation of every geek dream that Xander had ever had; his eyes were shining, and his expression was rather like that of a five–year–old on Christmas morning. “Zathras
knew
that you would come,” Xander breathed, lost in delight.

Andie Mae gave him another exasperated glare. And then stepped forward towards Boss, squaring her shoulders, taking command. “Who are you and why are you here and what do you want with my convention?”

“We… came to ask for your help,” Boss said.

“You… for
our
help…? What could we possibly…?” Andie Mae was struggling to find the words.

“Let me explain,” Boss said. “We… are of a culture that is extremely old. Generations of us have been brought into existence, each generation crafting its replacement – it is
their
kind that made mine.” He indicated the other three silver–skinned creatures with an economical gesture of his hand, so purely human that Xander found himself wondering if they were being had after all and if this was all some elaborate practical joke. Perhaps something that Sam Dutton, the ousted con Chair, had cooked up, trying to sabotage Andie Mae’s convention.

But Boss was still talking, and Xander forced himself to pay attention – if nothing else it
had
to be a good story, and if any unmasking had to be done it could be accomplished later. “It is logical to assume that if we made and remade ourselves according to existing plans and parameters – which we improved on when we could, but still, the basic design remains the same – that there must have been a First of us. Somewhere. In the distant past of our race. And there were some of us… who wondered about that, and wanted to find out who we were, and who had created that First, and in whose image we were made, and how we came to be.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re some sort of celestial Jehovah’s Witnesses and you’re here to proselytize…” Dave growled.

“There is a deep divide in our society now,” Boss said, ignoring the interruption. “One faction is turning away from our origins completely and considers them utterly unimportant, and because we improved ourselves a little with every new iteration they are of the opinion that our way is forward, and not looking back. Another faction believes that we can understand what we are doing to ourselves only by looking back to the place where we began – at the kinds and the manner of improvements that we make to ourselves – the questions being asked are, what are we using to measure ourselves against? What are we working toward becoming? And why? And are we actually working to come full circle, and become our own creators? And so we – those of us holding that second view – began to delve into our origins and our roots and started looking for the earliest memories, the earliest records. Looking for the creators. Looking for… perhaps… you.”