Read Online TimeRiders: City of Shadows (Book 6) by Alex Scarrow - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alex Scarrow
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‘Only skippa can adjust my user settings.’
Sal wondered how Rashim could sleep so
readily. She toyed with the idea of waking him up and asking him to turn SpongeBubba off
or mute him somehow. The robot was still staring at her, that stupid buck-toothed
smile.
‘Shadd-yah! Are you always
so … so perky and annoying?’
‘Perky?’
‘Happy.’
SpongeBubba shook his whole body, his
version of a headshake. ‘No. I have no capacity to emulate human emotions. My
model doesn’t require that! There is a similar model designed as a domestic
support unit for civilian use. That unit is installed with gesture and mood recognition
and replication code. But Dr Anwar says that’s a pointless waste of install space
since if you know a robot’s a robot why pretend it can have feelings?’
‘So you’re not really happy, then?
You’re just designed to look that way.’
SpongeBubba stared at her, an unwavering,
goofy smile. ‘Dr Anwar designed me.’
Sal couldn’t work out if the robot was
blaming his owner, or just stating a fact.
Becks pointed at something she’d seen
through the windscreen. ‘Urggh … ge fug, duf,’ she gurgled
excitedly and pointed.
Sal nodded, pulled her hand gently down and
settled her. ‘Yes … cars, that’s right. Nice shiny
cars.’
Why me?
She shook her head.
Why
do I get to babysit these two morons?
‘We’re going to have to stop
for gas again pretty soon,’ said Maddy. The gauge was showing just under the
quarter bar. ‘Maybe we should pull over for the night. Find a motel. We’re
far enough away to be safe now, aren’t we?’
Bob nodded. ‘We are probably far
enough to be safe.’
Even now, so late, ahead of them was a sea
of traffic, red brake lights winking on and off as vehicles inched forward.
‘What do you think they’ll do?
Do you think they’ll keep coming after us?’
‘I have no information on their
mission parameters.’
‘But if, say,
you
were sent
to kill us, what would you be doing?’
‘I would persist until the mission
parameters were satisfied, of course.’
‘How would you go about that, Bob? For
example … what would you be doing right now?’
Bob scowled. Thinking. ‘I would
attempt to intercept police radio communications for references to stolen vehicles in
the vicinity of the archway. I would be searching the archway foritems
of useful intelligence.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘We left in a hurry. We
cannot be certain we have not left behind some information that could lead them to
us.’
He was right. They
had
left in a
hurry, a careless scramble to grab all their essentials. God knows what they’d
left behind, what fragments of information lay scattered around in their wake.
Maddy’s head began to throb with renewed stress.
She sat in silence for a while, her fingers
caressing her temples. She looked down into the stationary cars on either side of them.
The glow of radio tuners on dashboards. She imagined every single driver in every
vehicle on this road was tuned into a news station and listening to reporters recap the
day’s terrifying events. Late-night talk radio stations venting unbridled rage at
this cowardly attack on innocent American civilians. Experts hurried into studios to try
and make sense of things. Because that’s what everyone needed to have right now,
wasn’t it? Another explanation.
Why? Why are we being attacked? What did we
do to deserve this?
Of course, Maddy had been pulled from a time
– 2010 – when a lot of thinking had been done on why 9/11 had happened. The fact that
there had been warning signs. The fact that there had been people in the FBI, the CIA
screaming warnings to President Bush back in 2000 that something like this
Was.
Going. To. Happen. Imminently
. Maddy came from a time when there was
perspective,
hindsight
, on this day; from a time when everyone understood that
a terrorist
Sal wondered how Rashim could sleep so
readily. She toyed with the idea of waking him up and asking him to turn SpongeBubba off
or mute him somehow. The robot was still staring at her, that stupid buck-toothed
smile.
‘Shadd-yah! Are you always
so … so perky and annoying?’
‘Perky?’
‘Happy.’
SpongeBubba shook his whole body, his
version of a headshake. ‘No. I have no capacity to emulate human emotions. My
model doesn’t require that! There is a similar model designed as a domestic
support unit for civilian use. That unit is installed with gesture and mood recognition
and replication code. But Dr Anwar says that’s a pointless waste of install space
since if you know a robot’s a robot why pretend it can have feelings?’
‘So you’re not really happy, then?
You’re just designed to look that way.’
SpongeBubba stared at her, an unwavering,
goofy smile. ‘Dr Anwar designed me.’
Sal couldn’t work out if the robot was
blaming his owner, or just stating a fact.
Becks pointed at something she’d seen
through the windscreen. ‘Urggh … ge fug, duf,’ she gurgled
excitedly and pointed.
Sal nodded, pulled her hand gently down and
settled her. ‘Yes … cars, that’s right. Nice shiny
cars.’
Why me?
She shook her head.
Why
do I get to babysit these two morons?
‘We’re going to have to stop
for gas again pretty soon,’ said Maddy. The gauge was showing just under the
quarter bar. ‘Maybe we should pull over for the night. Find a motel. We’re
far enough away to be safe now, aren’t we?’
Bob nodded. ‘We are probably far
enough to be safe.’
Even now, so late, ahead of them was a sea
of traffic, red brake lights winking on and off as vehicles inched forward.
‘What do you think they’ll do?
Do you think they’ll keep coming after us?’
‘I have no information on their
mission parameters.’
‘But if, say,
you
were sent
to kill us, what would you be doing?’
‘I would persist until the mission
parameters were satisfied, of course.’
‘How would you go about that, Bob? For
example … what would you be doing right now?’
Bob scowled. Thinking. ‘I would
attempt to intercept police radio communications for references to stolen vehicles in
the vicinity of the archway. I would be searching the archway foritems
of useful intelligence.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘We left in a hurry. We
cannot be certain we have not left behind some information that could lead them to
us.’
He was right. They
had
left in a
hurry, a careless scramble to grab all their essentials. God knows what they’d
left behind, what fragments of information lay scattered around in their wake.
Maddy’s head began to throb with renewed stress.
She sat in silence for a while, her fingers
caressing her temples. She looked down into the stationary cars on either side of them.
The glow of radio tuners on dashboards. She imagined every single driver in every
vehicle on this road was tuned into a news station and listening to reporters recap the
day’s terrifying events. Late-night talk radio stations venting unbridled rage at
this cowardly attack on innocent American civilians. Experts hurried into studios to try
and make sense of things. Because that’s what everyone needed to have right now,
wasn’t it? Another explanation.
Why? Why are we being attacked? What did we
do to deserve this?
Of course, Maddy had been pulled from a time
– 2010 – when a lot of thinking had been done on why 9/11 had happened. The fact that
there had been warning signs. The fact that there had been people in the FBI, the CIA
screaming warnings to President Bush back in 2000 that something like this
Was.
Going. To. Happen. Imminently
. Maddy came from a time when there was
perspective,
hindsight
, on this day; from a time when everyone understood that
a terrorist
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