Project 17 (14 page)

“To be fair,” Lillian said, “I thought you were harmless, too.”

Paul placed his cup on the coffee table, which was really just a coffee table. It didn’t turn into a blue screen, or show the latest newscasts.

“That’s true,” he said. “Can your friends transport the robot to Makati?”

*

The brothers checked in with Lillian in a small budget hotel a short cab ride away from Ayala Avenue. The hotel had hideous orange trim and a lobby that smelled like wet dog, but the room they
got was clean. Jamie and Max drove from Hagonoy to meet with them, Jamie screaming at Lillian through his no-hands almost the entire way. They had powered down Al in the backseat and placed Felisa
in the roomiest piece of luggage they could find. They threw clothes over her and kept her in the trunk of the car.

“I hardly breathed during the checkpoints,” Max said when they arrived. “And there are more checkpoints than usual.”

“This is an ugly-ass hotel,” Jamie said. “Perfect for getting murdered in.”

“You remember Max and Jamie,” Lillian told the brothers.

Caleb turned to Al. “I’m sorry, you are?”

“Nice to meet you all,” Al said with a ready smile. “My name is—”

“It’s Lester’s robot,” Jamie said.

“No one can own a robot unless it’s a—” Caleb glanced at the D on Al’s hand. “Oh.”

“It’s a long story,” Lillian said.

Al laid Felisa down on Caleb’s bed, and propped her up with pillows. Max handed them the tools they requested: a low-power soldering iron, tweezers, screws, and other gear Lillian was not
familiar with.

“Some of them were borrowed from the neighbors,” Max said. “Some we bought, but in different stores, and not with the same card.”

Caleb switched on the robot. “Hello, Felisa,” he said.

Felisa said: “Main link to Central missing. Mechanic needed.”

“That’s all she says now,” Max said.

“I wrote in a command center for Project 17,” he said. “Like the Sentries, they can do individual tasks, but they are all connected. They can be controlled as a single
entity.”

“Like an army,” said Lillian.

“Yes. And like an army, they have one command station. Central.”

“Where is Central?”

Paul sat on the other bed. “Where else?”

Northpoint-Pascual.
Lillian finally understood why Paul seemed so bent on finding lodging near Ayala Avenue.

“They’re opening the auditorium to the public tonight for Margaret’s tribute,” Max said.

Lillian looked affronted. “How come I didn’t know that?”

“They just broke the news, Lils. When was the last time you checked your phone?”

“Now or never,” Caleb whispered under his breath.

“But how will we get past security without getting caught?” Max said.

“Leave that to us,” Caleb said. “Right now, we have to work on this robot. By the way, it’s no longer connected to Central.”

“You can go home now,” Paul said. He said it in a gentle voice, like a worried father.

Lillian sat on Paul’s bed. Max and Jamie followed suit.

“Just understand that you can go home anytime,” Paul said, and went to work.

*

The brothers worked on the robot for four straight hours. Lillian, Jamie, and Max spent most of the time in the hotel’s only restaurant, which, to Max’s relief, served surprisingly
good coffee and
kakanin
. The waiters, serving only a handful of diners, crowded around the television, which was showing coverage of Margaret Morales’s upcoming tribute. Lillian
could hear nothing but “strict security” and “more Sentries deployed”.

“How in the world will we get in there?” she said.

“Kill an employee for their ID?” Max said. “Chop off their hands for the print scans?”

“Christ.”

Near the end of the fourth hour, Lillian looked up from her plate of
suman
and said, “I have an idea.”

*

“I have an idea!” she said again when she banged into the room, Max and Jamie rushing behind her. They found Paul sitting beside Al, adding finishing touches to the robot’s
mended arm. Felisa now sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded on her lap. Caleb sat on a chair facing her, taking his pills from a plastic pill organizer. Lillian watched him as he took his meds.
It felt surreal.

“Oh, she could sit now,” Max said. “You’ve fixed her.”

“What about your idea?” Paul said.

“I think I know how we can get in,” Lillian replied.

The group sat in silence as she talked.

“I don’t know,” Max said.

“Hey, you’re the one who said we should chop off an employee’s hand. My plan has more finesse.”

“Let’s talk about it later,” said Caleb. “Right now we have to reboot Felisa the old-fashioned way.”

“Which is?”

“Imprinting,” Caleb said.

“So if I suddenly stepped in front of Felisa’s line of vision, I’d be her master.”

“We’ll just start over,” Paul said. “She’s designed to imprint visually and follow oral directives, not programmed code. Rebooting could wipe those directives
clean.”

Caleb pressed on the robot’s wrist, and they saw the robot tilt her head up.

“Felisa, I am the Mechanic,” Caleb said. “My name is Caleb. Respond.”

Five seconds of held breath as Felisa focused on Caleb’s face and voice.

“Hello, Mechanic,” the robot said, and Lillian nearly applauded. “My name is Felisa.”

“Nice to meet you, Felisa,” Caleb said. He held her hands. “Here are your directives.”

*

They arrived at Pascual Tower in semi-formal attire, no-hands planted firmly inside their ears. “Well,” Jamie said, looking them over, “we look legit.” Max and Lillian
were in floral dresses and jackets. They dressed Felisa in a tight black dress, nude pumps, and white gloves. The men, including Al, were in suits. The brothers and the robots wore dark sunglasses.
Max braided Felisa’s hair, and wrapped a dark-blue headscarf around her forehead.

Max walked up to the scanners with her arm hooked around Al’s. Al showed the D on his hand. Paul followed with Felisa, who took off her glove to show her own Dancer insignia, inscribed by
Caleb back at the hotel.

The Sentries waved them in.

“Okay,” Lillian said, and walked through the scanners with Jamie and Caleb.

The auditorium doors were open, with people spilling out onto the lobby. The venue was blazing with light and activity. They walked past the circular granite desk and the mini-garden and
approached the room. They could hear a female emcee’s somber voice through the speakers.

“You all right?” Lillian heard Paul ask, and Caleb gave him a small nod.

They entered the auditorium. Most of the people were seated near the stage, but a number of visitors were getting food from the refreshments bar and eating at the cocktail tables behind the rows
of chairs. The stage was aglow with a montage of Margaret Morales’s life in photos: delivering lectures as a professor, studying a Sentry prototype inside Legacy, cutting a ribbon for some
facility’s inauguration, making a toast, posing at the beach during a company outing, posing with Nikolas, all played on loop. A photo of her was displayed on an easel on one side of the
stage. The easel legs were buried in flowers. A smaller screen on the far wall showed a series of Tweets with the hashtag #ripMargaret. One Tweet in screaming block letters rolled up the
screen—
MARGARET ASSASSINATED BY NORTHPOINT. JUSTICE FOR MARGARET. #ripMargaret—
and the screen promptly died.

“And now,” said the emcee, “let’s welcome one of Margaret Morales’s fellow professors from back in her days in university—”

Nikolas Morales was standing in a dark corner, drinking a glass of champagne. Paul, his hands around Felisa’s waist, veered away from the group to stand at the back of the room.

“Why are we doing this, Jamie?” Max asked.

“Because we’re insane, Max,” Jamie said.

Lillian sidled up to them. “Is she here?”

She was. She was standing just four feet away, wearing black bangles for the occasion, focused on the screen of her phone. They surrounded her.

“Hello, Laura,” Jamie said.

Laura looked up. “Oh, hello.” Al was standing behind her. She looked at them warily before turning back to Jamie. “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

“There is a robot standing behind you,” Jamie said, and Al placed a hand, light as spider webs, on her shoulder. “He can break your neck in an instant. Please don’t
scream and hand me your phone.”

Lillian snatched it away before Laura could press a button.

“What do you want from me?” Laura said.

“Central,” Caleb said.

Laura was too terrified to pretend to look confused, but she recovered.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“You know where it is,” Caleb said.

“I had a feeling you were more than a secretary,” Jamie said.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Caleb said. “Just lead us there.”

“I’m sorry,” Laura said. “But you’re mistaken.”

Lillian dialed a number on Laura’s cell phone, changed the setting as Jamie instructed her. Dexter picked up on the first ring. “Ready?” Lillian said to him, and held up the
phone to Laura’s ear.

Dexter’s voice, garbled by a program, filled their ears through their no-hands.

“Laura Isobel Dizon,” Dexter said, “born September 3, 2000. Currently renting a one-bedroom in King’s Way, Chino Roces, Makati. Originally from Iba, Zambales. Email
password isobel436, Titanium Card PIN 9436—”

He went on and on. Sweat broke on Laura’s forehead and upper lip, but she wasn’t breaking—not yet.

“You can bleed my account,” Laura said. “I don’t care. I don’t know what you want from me.”

Dexter sighed. “Who cares about your money, Laura?” he said. “You know what I care about? Diana Angeli Dizon, age 79, Angels Walk Home for the Aged—”

Laura started to cry. They tried hard not to look away.

“An Elders’ Home does not have a sophisticated online security system. Definitely not Angels Walk. What is wrong with you Laura? You’re earning so much money but you
can’t even bring your mother to a high-end establishment?”

“I was planning to—”

“I don’t care about your plan,” Dexter said in a near-growl. Lillian was both impressed and disturbed. “I can alter her records, you know. Have her discharged to one
Brian Anthony Dizon, whom I can just as easily remove from the blacklist. You hate your brother so much, as I can see in your emails. Is it because you believe he tried to kill your mother for the
insurance money she’s going to leave behind? She’s taking her own sweet time, isn’t she? Brian must be furious.”

“Stop,” Laura said. “Stop. Okay. I’ll do it. Just stop.”

“Good choice, Laura,” Dexter said. Lillian hung up and put the phone in her jacket pocket.

Laura wiped her tears as they walked out of the auditorium, Al’s hand still on her shoulder. “Who the fuck,” she said, “are you?”

“I used to work here,” Caleb said.

*

They took the stairs and emerged on the fifth floor, a dark maze of glass, monitors, and equipment. SPECIAL PROJECTS, said the silver words stenciled on one of the walls.
Meaning,
Experimental Stuff,
Lillian thought.
Meaning, Illegal Shit.
There were only two colors: white and gray. No paintings on the walls, no framed photographs on the tables, no flowers in
pots. The first two doors required only Laura’s ID (Jamie took it from her), but subsequent doors asked for the ID, her handprint, and a scan of her iris.

The final door required all three, plus voice recognition. “Laura Dizon,” she said into the speaker, and the door opened with a beep.

The lights turned on. It was the size of the Dean’s office at Lillian’s college, big enough to communicate authority, but not immense enough to drown you. There were two doors on the
right wall. Washroom and a pantry?

In the middle of the room was a desk carrying a bank of eight monitors. One computer with a 32-inch screen in the middle, surrounded by 14-inch screens—three on top, two on either side. On
the spot where the power button should have been was a fingerprint scanner. “Go on,” Caleb said, and Laura placed her right thumb on the scanner.

The machine booted up. The main monitor showed several screens of letters and numbers, but the smaller monitors remained blank. Caleb moved closer to study the screen.

“This is it,” he said.

Lillian couldn’t tell why Laura did what she did. Maybe she never believed Al was indeed a robot, or if he were, he was just a Dancer who didn’t know squat about defending its
owner.

Laura jumped on Caleb and pulled him back from the machine. They fell to the floor, with Caleb on top and caught in a headlock.

“Caleb?” Paul said, his voice suddenly filling their heads. “What’s going on up there?”

There was momentary confusion as Max screamed in surprise and Caleb pulled at Laura’s arms. Then Al stepped forward, calm as ever, and fractured Laura’s right forearm.

Her scream grated against Lillian’s eardrums. Caleb covered his ears as Laura rolled away, cradling her right arm. Her face had turned gray and there were tears rolling down her face, but
she kept screaming.

“Oh my God,” Caleb said. Al helped him up. Laura was still on the floor, on her back, sweat blossoming all over her face. She had stopped screaming, but she was crying loudly, like
an injured little child.

“What happened?” Paul asked.

“It’s okay,
Kuya,
don’t worry,” Caleb replied.

Jamie was freaking out. “Oh my God! Oh my God, you stupid – we told you he’s a robot!
Are you out of your mind? What were you thinking?
”