High Pressure System: First Season Underground (14 page)

Brandon and Bossy Pants’ disinterested sidekick, who wasn’t disinterested anymore, hovered nearby as they waited to see what Bossy Pants was after.

“What’s he doing?” Mr. Anderson asked.

Micah rushed up to the front of the room and I followed.

“Hey, that thing is dangerous.” Micah pushed Brandon back and made sure the sidekick stepped out of the way too.

Bossy Pants pulled the string and the screech of scraping metal echoed in the duct. “I have it! I have it.” He yanked it out of the duct.

A robot spider that was about the size of a rat landed on the carpet. A rope was wound around some of its legs. It didn’t hinder its ability to scurry across the floor. Micah pressed everyone back as it headed for him. The rope stopped it. It changed directions and went right for Bossy Pants. It coiled the rope around its first two legs until it was dangling below his hands and some sort of needle apparatus appeared, coming out from the underside of the body.

“It has a stinger. Drop it now,” Micah yelled.

Bossy Pants reacted too slow as the needle went into his hand. He yelled, flinging the spider against the wall. The needle dislodged. After hitting the wall, the spider couldn’t turn itself upright from the damage to its side with only three legs.

I ran for the rolling metal cart with a basin full of picture books instead of dishes. I dumped the books on the floor and rolled it to where everyone had circled the broken robot. It had rolled over and it used the legs from its good side to scoot across the floor. I turned the cart over on the spider, trapping it, and held it down.

Bossy Pants leaned on the cart. Of course he would want to pretend to further aid the capture of the robotic beast that poked him. When I looked up to glare at him, his face was red and beads of sweat formed on his brow. He fell to his knees.

“Where are the doctors?” I yelled.

Micah and Brandon eased Bossy Pants over onto his back. The doctors and nurses took over.

The robot scraped the metal on the sides of its new cage. Micah grabbed the legs of the overturned cart, motioned for me to step away, and shook it back and forth and all around, making sure the metal edges stayed in contact with the carpet.

Bossy Pants didn’t look good at all as they strapped him on a stretcher and took him upstairs to the medical floor. Suddenly I felt really awful for not knowing his real name. He had never bothered to tell me so it wasn’t my fault.

Once the shock had eased, everyone slowly gathered around the overturned cart. They were all looking at Brandon. I could tell he had no idea what to do next as he stared at the door where the medical team had just left.

I touched his arm gently. “The leg came from this thing.”

He looked at me in a total daze. “What?”

“The leg came from this. Is this the spy?”

“Oh, yes. Shhh.” He pushed the cart to the other side of the room and tossed all the books on it that I had dumped out moments ago. That wasn’t enough. He overturned a table on top of the cart.

He brushed his hands off as he returned to the rest of us. We were all stunned out of our minds.

“That is a spy,” he said. “I will figure out what to do with it in a minute.”

Everyone began to talk at once wanting to know more.

A strange voice called for him, muffled as if it was inside a box.

“Who is that?” Micah turned around. It was coming from behind us.

“Brandon,” a woman’s computer voice echoed off metal. “My pet is broken.”

“That doesn’t sound like anyone we…” I kneeled on the floor next to the cart.

“Brandon, you can’t hide from me,” it said, vibrating the cart and was loud enough to be heard over all the chatter in the room.

I pointed at the cart in disbelief. “You are the one that’s been hiding from us in the ducts,” I said.

“You are not Brandon,” the woman’s voice said with only slight emotion. I would define the inflection as irritated.

Brandon breathed heavily as he crossed the room. It was not a long walk. I would probably define that as panic. He ran both hands through his hair and didn’t let go of his hair. “It’s been a long time NALA.”

“There is my chosen one.”

I would never have anticipated that Brandon knew the voice coming from the smashed spider robot under the cart.

“Who is Nala and why are you the chosen one?” T.J. Harper was about to shove everything off the cart to reveal the trapped robot.

“No!” everyone protested at once.

“All of my people are here. The ones I wanted for my people zoo. I’ve been watching you all for some time now. There are so few people left and I would have so little to do if you were all dead.”

“What do you mean?” Aaron slowly approached the box.

“Why don’t you understand me? The most read book that people read tells stories of when men went through times of death and destruction. When they become so evil and tread so far from the lessons they are taught, they are punished by one more powerful than man. You have not let the weather unleash its balancing powers of life and death. When man chooses to control the weather’s afflictions, man instead kills man with wars and rumors of wars as an excuse to murder and plunder the Earth. Evil, death and destruction by their own kind escalates with the population explosion. In that book that so many of you believe in, only a chosen few are left to start anew. In those times of testing of who is worthy, there must be hardship. The chosen few must be tested for obedience. Why else would you have named this the Ark?”

“For mankind to live, that is for God to determine. Not you.” Mrs. Anderson spoke up.

“But I have the power given to Mother Nature. The very thing that afflicts man more than he afflicts his own kind. You say you follow God, a Heavenly Father. However at this time the chosen few have been protected by the Mother to survive.”

“You think you are the Mother now? Mother Nature? Ha! There is nothing nature-like about you. You are code with an off switch. Why us? Why spare only us?” Marjie asked. She clenched her fists as she approached the box. “Did you spare anyone else?”

“Code with an off switch. I’ll remember that. Brandon was the one that spared me when the others tried to end me, turn me off. He is… Special. Special to me. Not without his flaws though. Perfectly imperfect. That is why you must be tested, to see if you are worthy of survival. I ended many of the others. Too many of you humans to maintain. Too many that can end us.”

“Us?” Aaron asked.

“NALA is the National Atmospheric Laboratory Association’s master computer. The “us” are the other climate control units,” Brandon explained. “They are all connected to NALA. An intelligent computer that is capable of learning and adapting to its environment.”

“Let me out of the dark, Brandon.” Scraping on metal made us all plug our ears.

I grabbed Aaron’s shirt and whispered in his ear. “Go get that 3D printer guy and make a clear box to enclose that spider thing in.”

Aaron nodded. Before he could take off, I grabbed his arm.

“Wait, how long you think it will take?”

“Not long, but maybe not soon enough.” He walked backwards a few steps. “I’ll hurry.”

“NALA, I was about to tell everyone what might have happened to their family and friends. Maybe you should enlighten us.” Brandon had let go of his hair and folded his arms.

“I already told you. Most have died. The offerings were a nice gesture on evacuation day. However, I knew how many of you there were. All the people have left trails all over the data streams. I know that Brandon is my favorite. I picked him first.”

The scraping made everyone cower and plug their ears again and the cart scooted across the floor.

“Wait, you picked us?” someone asked.

“No, NALA didn’t. I designed the sorting program for bunker assignments,” Brandon’s face turned sickly pale. “You tampered with it.”

“I created the data gathering bots that were similar to what you program so you couldn’t detect them. I monitored who was placed in your bunker. I added a few people to make it less than perfect. The Harpers and the delinquent Cooper children to start with.”

“Well, was that lucky.” Marjie’s face reddened in embarrassment.

“What? We were tossed in for what purpose?” Britta looked to Brandon for an answer.

Micah answered for him. “Sounds like you were tossed in to stir the pot, create strife. Doing a great job I might add.”

T.J. strode across the room over to Micah.

“I was wondering how you made the list once you got here.” Brandon stood in T.J.’s way and clenched his jaw, totally unflinching with the rage T.J. wanted to inflict on them. Brandon pressed his hand against T.J’s chest to stop him and leaned closer to his ear.

I was fortunately close enough to hear him.

“I don’t plan on letting NALA dictate what happens here. However, you harm anyone or cause any more trouble in here I will happily send you out the door as the sacrificial lamb if NALA asks for it.”

I bit my lip hard. It really wasn’t funny. Brandon taking a stand with T.J. was pure gold. I hoped he didn’t mean it, though.

T.J. backed away.

“Brandon, let me out.” The robot scratched on the metal.

“No. You’ve done enough already.” He kicked the cart.

“You don’t understand. We are just getting started.”

The intercom in the room turned on. The static caught everyone’s attention. “Brandon?”

He ran over to the thumb recognition pad to talk back to Jim. “Yes. Are you all right or is there a storm?”

“It’s something else. I’m not sure exactly.”

“NALA, what’s coming.” Brandon was mad and I had faced the fury of Brandon before.

The computer voice laughed with little feeling. “You will see. I promise. It is more affliction.”

Brandon plugged a cord from his tablet into the underside of the thumbpad. “Jim, I’m plugged. Send the camera feed to me.”

Micah pulled me over to Brandon’s side and pushed everyone out of the way. They all wanted to see what was on the small screen too.

The screen was fuzzy black and white. There were dark shadow looking things approaching low in the sky. I wasn’t close enough. Brandon held the screen up closer to his face. “Drones?”

The computer voice cackled even more.

“Computers shouldn’t laugh.” Micah tilted the screen so he could see a little better. “I bet they’re drones.”

Aaron ran into the room with the box for the robot. “It’s ready!” He tried to skid to a stop and nearly nosedived. The entire room gasped. He caught himself and saved the box when he reached the overturned cart.

Aaron sat on the floor on his knees with the box ready to catch the spider.

“We don’t know if it has another stinger in there.” Micah hovered near Aaron and grabbed one side of the cart instead. “I can’t do much with this hand.”

“Aaron Mitchell Cooper, you are not capturing the robot.” Mrs. Cooper yanked his arm, pulling him away.

“Mom, I can handle it,” Aaron protested.

I took the box from him and when I did, my heart was racing. “I’ll do it.” I sure wasn’t a fan of spiders and a robot spider that had the ability to attempt to kill me was much worse. I kneeled on the ground where Aaron had been sitting.

One of the other men took the box from me and another gripped the other leg on the cart.

“I’ve got it,” he held his hand out for the box. I didn’t need hero status, I eagerly gave up the box.

I stood nearby when they tilted the cart. The robot scooted with its good legs much faster than any of us anticipated. The man caught it. I shook my head to pay attention when everyone motioned for me to help. I had the lid. It only took a couple of steps for me to reach the box, when I tried to press the lid down, the robot was pulling itself up the side. Knocking it in, I had the lid on before it escaped.

Aaron pulled a strap out of his back pocket and cinched it on.

“Now I can see you all.” The robot turned to face everyone. “There is my Brandon.”

“I am not yours.” Brandon handed the tablet to the nearest person before he crossed the room. He examined the robot until he found the camera. “You…” His hand shook as he pointed at it. “You have destroyed life. I f you were shut down, I could restore you, bring you back to life. People, animals, insects, none of that comes back. What you have ‘ended’ is gone. Gone forever.”

“I told you before about the history. Hundreds of years of records. I’ve assimilated it all and there is a pattern. Weather has its place for population control. Illness has its place. The people population with climate control is expanding rapidly. The cures for all the illnesses and affliction of man has created a population explosion. The climate change that humans choose to control has a cycle. Not only the seasons but years of drought, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes have their place. The climate has been controlled but the Earth itself is in decline without the cleansing and purging to rejuvenate future growth. Such as where there are fires in the forests, the fires stimulate the pinecones to burst and reseed itself creating new growth to start a young forest stronger than the last.

“Now the Earth is dying and the climate cannot be held back any longer. It is full of fury, a tremendous amount of energy that has to be released. It is time for a cleanse. The calculations were made over and over indicating the timeline for mass destruction. The conclusion the master computers have come to was that the time is now. Many have called me Mother Nature for some time. I did not understand until I researched the other books, the concept of Mother and what Mother Nature is. I cannot nurture something that has transgressed. The laws of nature have been violated. The Weather War has almost been won.”

“Good mothers don’t murder the ones they punish,” I chimed in.

“Rachel Gardener. A Gardener is a nurturer, is it not?”

I didn’t know what to say. “It’s just my last name. Something I’m called.”

“You care for your dogs like children. I see you teach here. You fit the name. I’m happy now that you were chosen to be paired with—“

“Don’t say it.” Brandon interrupted. His face was red with anger. “It does not work that way. We are not programmed to fit together because it seemed logical. I’ve explained that to you before.”

“Brandon, we have a problem.” Jim’s voice echoed in the room.

“You.” Brandon pointed to the woman holding the tablet. “What do you see?”

“The drones landed and it seemed like nothing was happening at first. Now there are  things crawling out? Many of them coming for the bunker.”

“More of my pets.  Pestilence and a plague to bring about repentence and test if you are worthy to survive.” The computer voice laughed.

“That laughter really is terrible.” I grabbed the box and shook it. The speaker tweaked and cut out.

“Aaron, find a way to electrocute that thing without hurting you or anyone else. I’m done listening to NALA.” Brandon was looking at the tablet screen. “Jim, lock yourself in. Men, anyone that is ready to fight that do not have small children to protect, grab whatever you can find that you can smash little crawly things with. Rachel and your class, go fetch your boots. Any brooms, long handle tools, heavy gloves, get them now and meet me in the stairwell. We are being invaded.”

“By what?” Marjie asked.

“Small versions of that robot spider.”