Laputa. The next stage.
Rebecca let Kelly back into the apartment and went in for a hug but then pulled herself back. She smiled awkwardly and rubbed her neck.
Kelly made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches – they had to use the artificial stuff – and they ate while brainstorming how they were going to get up to Laputa.
The Laputa Initiative was an experimental project to test whether or not it would be effective for human beings to one-day build cities in the sky. The space program had already built small communities just beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. Laputa was supposedly going to be a city powered completely by renewable energy to levitate high over Tokyo. Many believed that floating cities would one day offer better living conditions than the compact labyrinths that were overcoming most modern cities, but it would also provide a strikingly obvious separation for higher classes from the less desirable living below. Rebecca believed the whole initiative was complete bogus. In theory the initiative appeared sound – she wasn’t exactly a professional when it came to this kind of thing – but in application it sounded like science-fiction. She never thought the basic technology required would ever be advanced enough.
Not advanced enough…
‘That’s it,’ she said, accidently dropping her sandwich and startling Kelly.
‘What’s it?’ said Kelly.
Rebecca pulled up a map of Laputa’s current construction progress and uploaded it to their holoprojector, which then displayed a single small platform surrounded by scaffolding and hover-cars.
‘Laputa is only an experiment, right? That means the technology isn’t foolproof.’ She turned to her laptop. ‘I bet I can hack at least some of their systems. I’m thinking a construction bot. We run an override of one of their bots and then switch the control module to manual, then we link it to our VR decks. It’ll put us right up there.’
Kelly looked amazed. She put the rest of her sandwich down.
‘Did anyone ever tell you how brilliant you are?’
Rebecca chuckled, feeling pleased with herself.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m well aware.’ She got to work preparing for the hack. ‘This might take a while.’
Step one – the most difficult part – took a kind of patience that neither Rebecca nor Kelly currently possessed. It required them to gain access to the Laputa initiative’s infrastructure by hacking one of the office computers on the ground and letting the virus spread to each machine way up on the platforms. Soon Rebecca had a list of every bot, drone and other piece of automated tech on the platform. Next, she had to single out two construction bots and run the override, switching the control module from automatic to manual—this let her control the bot remotely, but with just a laptop she couldn’t direct the bot effectively enough.
She linked the controls to their VR decks, a common practice with construction bots where jobs required human workers but were far too dangerous for people to conduct, things like working deep below the Earth’s surface, or in the ocean, factories, war zones and the like.
When someone connected to a VR server, they’d take the form of their residual self-image and the device would hijack their neural output so that when the brain sent a message to move a limb the real one would stay still and the virtual limb would move instead. The same concept applied when controlling construction bots. Any movement Rebecca thought her body was making was instead being transmitted to the bot.
‘Almost there,’ said Bec, watching the establishing connection… bar slowly tick to 100%. ‘And… we’re in. Okay, gear up.’
Rebecca attached her VR device and laid back, closing her eyes, taking a deep breath. She let her mind drift. A tingling sensation like an electric current running from her fingertips to her toes. Cold. She opened her eyes to the glowing HUD of the construction bot’s optics and a vast stretch of metal plating. She looked around. Another bot stood nearby, and it glanced side to side, moved its shoulders and flexed its claw-like fingers.
‘Kelly,’ said Bec. She felt the strange sensation of speaking without moving her lips. ‘Are you in there?’
The bot turned and looked at her.
‘My god this is strange,’ said Kelly. ‘I feel so… rigid.’
They both stared across the platform, a sense of awe as hundreds of construction bots shifted around like ants, while little drones floated behind skeletal towers surrounded by cranes and buzzing hover cars, and a tram loaded with construction materials sailed across the platform. The towers were silhouetted by the rising sun, a burst of orange and yellow amidst the clouds.
‘It looked smaller in the hologram,’ said Bec.
‘How do we find Dimitri?’ Kelly asked.
Bec ran a scan and transmitted the data to her construction bot’s optical HUD.
‘Looks like there are… 142 people stationed on the platform right now. I’ll run a facial-recognition scan through the security cameras. Should be able to triangulate his position. I’m also working on hijacking one of those transports.’
‘You thinking of loading him up and flying him straight to the GCSD?’
‘We might as well gift-wrap him while we’re at it.’
Kelly and Rebecca travelled across the platform while waiting for the cameras to hone in on Dimitri’s position. Eventually they came to a high-placed turret set right on the edge where Kelly and Rebecca stood side by side and stared out at the Earth way down below, unable to take their eyes off the bright curve of the horizon.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Rebecca whispered. She resisted the sudden urge to take Kelly’s hand, seeing as they were both currently robots.
An alert appeared on her optic HUD. ‘I’ve found Dimitry,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’
They moved back through the construction site, following the blip on the GPS, trying to mimic the movements of the other bots whenever a human worker appeared. They found Dimitri Aleksandrovsk tinkering with a broken-down conveyor belt. He was a large man, with thinning hair but a full beard. Bec recognised the small shining plates implanted in the left side of his face.
Weapons weren’t allowed on the construction site unless they were carried by security personnel, which meant Dimitri was unarmed, but in their robot forms Bec and Kelly couldn’t knock him out without the risk of seriously injuring him, and they also couldn’t carry him away without causing a ruckus. But they did have a plan.
Kelly’s bot did its best to sneak up on Dimitri, who seemed to think nothing of it, until Kelly jolted forwards and grabbed him from behind. The big man yelled, a deep voice, and to their astonishment he punched the bot hard enough to damage it. But Kelly’s bot continued to restrain Dimitri while Bec looked anxiously around. They hadn’t expected the man to put up such a fight.
‘What the hell is this?’ Dimitri yelled, loud enough to draw attention from the other workers, who halted their welding and carrying.
Rebecca carried a large crate over to Kelly. The captain dumped Dimitri inside then Bec sealed it over. There came the subtle clamour of muffled screaming that Bec had hoped would be drowned out by construction noise. It wasn’t. People were coming towards them.
‘I’m calling the transport,’ said Bec, hurried.
‘I think something’s wrong,’ someone called from afar.
Bec lugged the crate over to one of the pick-up zones. The small automatic hover car drifted towards them.
‘Quickly,’ said Kelly. ‘There’ll be security soon.’
They loaded the crate into the car and set the autopilot co-ordinates. The engine hummed as the car lifted off and then vanished behind the clouds.
Kelly and Rebecca stood still as they watched him go. Rebecca put her hands on her hips and chuckled.
‘This is the weirdest kidnapping ever.’
‘Don’t move!’ cried a voice.
They turned around and saw two armed and armoured security guards. One of them turned to the other and said, ‘It’s a machine, it can’t hear you.’
A moment later an alert appeared on Bec’s HUD indicating that it was time to leave.
‘They’re shutting us down,’ said Bec.
Kelly nudged her shoulder. ‘Come on, time to jack out before they realise what’s happened.’
‘Right.’
Rebecca opened her eyes and sat up in her bed. A familiar nausea and disorientation swam in her head, her senses trying to adjust to the sudden change in detail. She looked at Kelly and said, ‘Two down. Two to go.’
Despite the immense amount of work that they both still had to complete, the VR work left Bec feeling exhausted and she knew she needed to rest for a while. VR had a tendency of leaving her fatigued, and she soon fell into a long and dreamless sleep.
ns 172.70.127.23da2