Meteoric - Chapter Five
Monday, 18 November 2024 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keaaluTitle (chapter): Meteoric (5)
Series: Terrahawks
Notes: In which the Terrahawks realise they might unfortunately now be racing Zelda to get to their missing zeroid first, Polly doesn't enjoy everyone's pick of television very much (but Doctor Who is fine) but DOES enjoy being invited to stay with his new 'family' if it all goes balls-up and he can't work out where he actually comes from, and Tark makes contact with someone who might know something.
-----------
Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack.
After being mildly irritated by Ninestein doing it, Hiro was frustrated to now find himself also pacing quietly up and down the flight deck. (He kept making a conscious effort to stop, and felt like that was probably more annoying than just pacing. At least there was no-one around to mind, right now.)
He felt rather at a loose end. 17 and 43 were dutifully reporting to him every time someone found something, but they’d have already analysed it and compiled it into their datasets by that point and all he could usually do was say “thank you, good job, please carry on.”
(“Good job” was rather like catnip to the little robots; they absolutely could not think of anything better and excitedly went straight back to work, leaving Hiro still with no-one to talk to.)
While 17 and 43 were leading, all the other zeroids on board were helping. They’d pooled their intelligences together into something of a gestalt, multiplying up their computing power, constantly talking to each other as they scoured the web, reading through literally everything and anything that seemed to have even the loosest connection to the search – astronomy and robotics forums, social media discussions of meteorites and unusual technology, police reports of suspected criminal activity, council reports of property damage, whatever CCTV they’d persuaded the authorities to give them, cross-referencing it all together. And they were definitely tightening their focus! They’d narrowed their target area down to a few dozen square kilometres – but that was still thousands of streets and buildings, and even zeroid optical software needed time to visually appraise their satellite imagery.
The signal to noise ratio in this search was absurd. Hiro had no idea how the zeroids were finding anything, let alone all the data they’d found so far. One of the advantages of not needing to sleep, he imagined? That, and being able to read hundreds of sources simultaneously. Without computer brains able to read through data, analyse and compile it in seconds, he doubted they’d have got this far in three years, let alone three days.
Hiro had – he hoped not foolishly – begun to think that perhaps they were making some progress, and that maybe they would have actually found 101 soon. He’d discovered that he did rather miss the little robot, sarcasm and all.
Although he’d tried hard to get some rest, while his other crewmates were still aboard, Hiro’s sleep had been punctuated by bad dreams, and he didn’t feel like he’d genuinely rested for more than a few minutes at a time. (It was hard to get some of the images out of his head – imagining his small friend critically damaged in the fall, broken open like a dropped melon, stolen by an unprincipled billionaire, crudely replicated a thousandfold and sold off to the highest bidders… all while the real 101 died quietly and alone in a hundred pieces in a laboratory somewhere-… Hiro pushed up his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, determined not to get lost in those nightmares again.)
“…Lieutenant Hiro? Sir? Lieutenant!”
Belatedly, he realised 43 had been chirping urgently to get his attention. He straightened his glasses and looked over. “Yes, Forty Three. What is it?”
“We found this,” the zeroid said, bluntly, throwing his discovery up onto a screen, and waited for the human to read it.
Hiro felt cold fingers draw up the back of his neck.
It was an advert. Requesting help to locate a valuable asset. Offering a reward of at least a quarter of a million dollars to whoever helped successfully “reunite” the poster with “their” property. And the description of the missing technology, while slightly abstract? Was clearly of a zeroid. The string of responses carried on for over fifty pages already.
Hiro didn’t have time to read through fifty pages – but fortunately knew someone who did. “Has anyone responded positively? To say they have anything?”
“Ten-zero, sir. Not convincingly, at least,” 43 confirmed. “Lots of interest, though. People asking a lot of questions about sensitive data, and not all the responses from the originator are completely incorrect.”
What could that mean? Hiro mulled it over. He doubted it could have been posted by anyone employed by any of the small number of organisations they worked alongside, because even they knew very little about Terrahawks technology (and certainly didn’t know they’d lost any of it). While he was confident that some of the posts the zeroids had found had been from 101 himself, this new one definitely didn’t contain any of his mannerisms.
“Should we take the post down, sir?” 43 prompted, in the silence. “The forum software looks basic enough.”
“No. No, we may be able to use this to our own advantage. Monitor it, and flag to me any time you see something that contains actual data.”
“Ten-ten, sir.”
“Can you identify who posted it?”
“No. 17 has been trying but it looks like it was routed through hundreds of individual nodes and we lose definition the further back it goes.”
“Hmm.”
Hiro had been working on the assumption that the only people that knew 101 was missing were the Terrahawks, and presumably whoever the zeroid had ended up with, but a more worrying new idea was beginning to percolate.
If 101 had ended up with some… malicious Earthly entity that wanted to use him for some nefarious purposes? They wouldn’t have needed to put out a reward for his retrieval, because they’d already have him. (And a ransom note felt slightly more likely.) And no Terrahawks affiliates would be chancing their luck because very few people knew enough about the organisation to know that zeroids even existed, let alone that they’d accidentally dropped one somewhere. Hiro couldn’t think of anyone who might have been talking about it.
But he and his colleagues had spoken to each other about it. And the timing of this post was exceptionally convenient.
Hiro read it again. “I wonder.”
“…sir?”
“I think.” He pressed his fingers to his lips. “That the poster of this…? Is Martian.”
“Zelda-!” 43 rocked backwards. “Oh no! How could she even know?”
“We know her family watch us all the time. They think they will eventually catch us revealing something that will allow them to defeat us.” Hiro sighed. “They must have broken our encryption. We were, ah. Possibly not being as careful as we could have been? They must have overheard.” He flicked a control on the console and sent a voice message to Hawknest. “Not that I want to add to our pressure, doctor, but it looks like we might be racing Zelda to our missing zeroid as well, now...”
oOoOoOo
Saturday morning came along very heavily for most of the flatmates. The previous evening, Laine had retired to her room long before anyone else had come home (and not exclusively to avoid Tark – she was genuinely exhausted), and zonked out very quickly. Sunlight now streamed around the edges of her window blind.
Polly was on the floor next to her bed, busily working away again. She watched sleepily as pages loaded and scrolled in flickers of movement too fast for her to ever follow. And… were those the faintest threads of music, coming up from the laptop?
Yeah – definitely music. Silly sparkly bubbly pop music, at that. Not her thing at all so he must have actively gone looking for it. She couldn’t help the sleepy grin.
“Mornin’,” she drawled, at last.
“Oh, hello! Good, er… morning? Just.”
“Wha’time is it anyway?”
Polly swivelled around to look at her. “It’s almost noon.”
“Oh, fucking hell. I’m sorry. Wasted half the day already-”
“Don’t.” He nudged her fingers. “You were quite drunk. I thought you needed to sleep. None of your flatmates are awake yet either. I heard them get in and it was very late.”
You were quite drunk. A flavour of that same embarrassment made her cheeks get warm. “Yeah I’m sorry about last night. I think I might have been a bit inappropriate.”
His smile looked genuine enough – consistent and bright. “You asked some drunken questions that I was happy to answer. I’d have soon told you if I thought they were too intrusive.” After a beat, he added; “you weren’t the one low-key molesting me, either.”
“…I’ll ask her to apologise.”
Laine lay and watched him, for a little while, until she was finally awake enough to recognise that in her tiddly frame of mind, she’d left the laptop on the floor, not to mention forgotten to plug it in. The chaos of cables and scattered books and pieces of paper suggested Polly had struggled to connect it to power, but hadn’t tried to wake her for help. Obviously he’d succeeded because it was still happily lit up and working for him, but she couldn’t help the sudden pulse of guilt at how long it must have taken him to do so.
“Aw, man. You shoulda woke me up to plug that in.” She extended a hand and brushed her fingers against his top curve.
“Maybe? I think I wanted to prove I could do it myself. I don’t want to annoy you by making you do everything for me.”
“We don’t mind.”
“…at the moment, sure. But I feel like I’m taking you for granted. I should be able to do this stuff!”
“You don’t have hands.”
“Exactly! So how did I do anything before I came here?”
Laine let it lay. He might have had a point. “How’s your search going?” She changed the subject.
“It’s… eenh. Going. I have a couple leads, now. Something about birds, and someone gave me some names. A Doctor Steifel? Stein? I haven’t found out anything else about them, though.”
Laine arched an eyebrow and propped her head on one hand. “You’re a veterinary nurse?”
“Oh I hardly think that.” Beat. “I could be a medicine ball, I guess.”
Laine snickered and gave him a little shove. “What about Tark?”
Polly remained silent for long enough that Laine knew he was trying to be diplomatic, but eventually, he spoke. “I think he’d have come in if you hadn’t locked the door. We spoke briefly through it. We might have discussed more but I didn’t want to wake you – although you were pretty deeply asleep so I doubt I’d have disturbed you.”
Laine swallowed her first thought, to demand to know what Tark had told him – because of her, Polly already didn’t trust the man, and she found that she didn’t actually feel all that satisfied in the knowledge that she’d put them at odds. Instead, she rephrased it; “Did he tell you anything useful?”
“I haven’t decided yet. Maybe? You remember he said there was someone who he thought knew about me? Apparently he’s based in the USA. Tark thinks I should video call him directly.”
“Do you want to?”
“I think I should, but I haven’t decided for definite. Gotta figure out how, without revealing I’m not human? I’ve added it to my database and am trying to interpret it alongside the other limited information I know for definite. Which is. Eh.” A little descending note. “Not a lot.”
“Hey, you’re making progress! That’s not bad for three days!” Laine swung her feet out of bed and crammed them into her slippers. “D’you fancy some company or would you rather work in here where you won’t get disturbed so much?”
“I’m good at multitasking. I’d prefer to have the company, I think.”
Laine left him and the laptop comfortable on the couch before retiring to the kitchen to make something to eat. A bleary-eyed Carrie joined her not long later, drawn out by the smell of bacon, followed eventually by Mina.
Jaxon (somewhat conveniently) appeared when the cooking was almost finished; he shambled across the room, yawning, looking a little the worse for wear. “Hey folks. S’goin on? What’s with the music?”
Laine shushed him and dragged him into the kitchen.
Apparently tiring of searching in silence, and bolstered by not immediately being told to be quiet, Polly was now singing quietly along with Big Big Love in a slightly alarming but pitch-perfect falsetto. (Yesterday evening had apparently had a marked effect on the little machine’s confidence.)
“Is that Polly?” Jaxon immediately fished his phone out of his pocket and opened the camera.
“Hey, no!” Mina put her hand out and pushed the phone down. “Don’t film him.”
“We have the queerest robot in the world in our lounge, belting out Belinda Carlisle at the top of his lungs, and you won’t let me film him. Figures it’d be you spoiling everyone’s fun.” Jaxon rolled his eyes but stuffed his mobile back into his pocket. “If we put that on the internet, we’d know where he belonged in seconds.”
“And we’d have given him a literal planet’s worth of attention when he doesn’t even like us talking about him outside of our little group. He’d never trust anyone again if you went and uploaded video of him singing.” Mina gave him a swat.
Laine took her sandwich into the lounge and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Polly’s spot on the couch. “Jaxon suggested-”
“I heard. No.”
“You don’t think it’s an opportunity we should be grabbing?” She took a huge bite of her lunch, and sighed deeply in satisfaction. “Mmh.”
“If I can’t find where I belong, I could make it as an international social media star instead, you mean? No thank you.” He made a sort of electronic snort noise. “Yes, you might figure out who I belong to. Might. You’d also attract every chancer in a thousand mile radius, not to mention journalists who want a scoop, and a million people who are just nosey. How would I ever work out who’s telling me the truth? I can’t even ask them for something only I’d know because oopsie! No memory.”
“I guess I prolly shoulda thought it through,” Jaxon agreed, plopping down on a beanbag. “Just used to oversharing online, I guess?” At the expressions directed his way, he hastily put his hands up, placatory. “Which I haven’t! Not about Polly!”
After Sanjay returned from his errands and said it all felt a little like walking in on one of the weirder episodes of Doctor Who, and Polly had responded so predictably – Doctor WHO? – it was like he’d been coached, they collectively decided a lesson was in order. The little robot happily allowed himself to be absorbed into the middle of the gathering, at the centre of the couch – albeit surrounded with cushions so his temporary flatmates could sprawl more comfortably around him.
Even Tark eventually joined the huddle – well, after a fashion, one of the beanbags, out of reach. He endured two episodes before losing patience. “I’m not watching any more kids TV. Hand over the remote.” Then he leaned across and took it anyway.
A little chorus of protests went up.
Polly glanced around them. “Guys? Why are we arguing now?”
“Because Twerpface over there will want to watch some conspiracy bullshit. Like usual,” Carrie sniped.
“Actually I had no intention of watching anything educational today, no matter how much you lot could all do with it.” Brandishing the remote like a futuristic weapon, Tark pointed it at the television and jabbed a button.
The title card flashed up on the big screen: The Iron Giant.
Carrie made a little noise akin to outrage and stabbed a finger at him. “Didn’t I just hear someone say something about not wanting to watch ‘kid’s TV’?! You flaming hypocrite-!”
“Ex-cuse me, it’s a stylish animated film, about a robot who falls to earth and loses his memory, and needs people to help him figure out who he is. It’s not just for kids. I thought it was topical. And, it’s a classic. Do you know how many awards it won? Not some… leftie luvvie pandering garbage. Just ’cause you’re all philistines with no appreciation of actual art-”
“Since when the hell did you ever have-”
“I’ve seen it. It’s a decent flick,” Sanjay interrupted, before the foes could get too entrenched. “What d’you think, Polly? Wanna watch it?”
Polly cast a gaze around the room, shutters tightening uneasily. Everyone was looking at him. “If everyone else is happy, then… I guess? I don’t know what it is. Please don’t blame me if it sucks…”
oOoOoOo
After the movie credits rolled, Laine noticed that Polly was looking a little subdued, in a way he hadn’t after Doctor Who. She stayed with him while her flatmates went off to make a start on dinner. “All a’right?” she wondered, patting the flat of her palm against his cowling.
“I feel a little conflicted,” he admitted, quietly. “It was a good movie, but. I guess I see too much of me in the robot, so I probably didn’t enjoy it as much as you all did. He was lost and scared, like me. He was trying to be good. Then they did… that. It’s left me with a bunch of things to work through.”
“I’m sorry. I guess Tark wasn’t thinking about that-”
“Oh he knew what he was doing.” A little poison slipped into Polly’s voice. “Why do you think he wanted to watch that movie specifically? It wasn’t because he has any grasp of art.” He made a little sad tutting noise. “He’s making a point.”
“…I’m not seeing it…?”
“He thinks it’s what I am. Perhaps not an alien, but a weapon.”
Laine remembered Tark’s words from when he’d first seen Polly; who else has the funds to drop a few million developing something like that? Artificial intelligence, strong enough to punch through concrete? That’s military.
“He’s saying, I know what you are, even if you don’t. Or don’t want to.” Polly’s words softened. “I agree with the giant. It’d suck to be just a gun with a face.”
Laine’s face fell and she let her hand press a little more firmly against him. “Hey. Don’t. Please. That’s not you. You’re too nice for that to be everything about you. And don’t forget; at the end, the giant proves he’s good, by being the hero that saves everyone.”
She was rewarded with a full-body eyeroll. She suspected he was probably thinking the exact same thing that she was, which had crossed her mind the instant she’d finished speaking – yeah, he saves everyone by sacrificing himself, after he himself is the one that puts them in direct danger in the first place.
“The giant was pretty nice, too, until they shot at him,” Polly challenged. “You just think I am. That might just be the bang on the head, shaking some circuits loose. You already know I’m a bossy little tart. I might be some… shrieking bootcamp harridan, normally.”
“Aw, let’s not go over that again. You don’t get to be super-complex and friendly and just plain nice and have it all caused by shaking a circuit loose. Come on, man. You’re a sweetheart. I don’t believe being mean is in your settings – and I absolutely refuse to believe you’re a gun with a face, for crying out loud.”
“Maybe Minnie’s right and that’s what I’m running away from,” he observed, morosely.
They sat quietly together for a little while, until Laine caught a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye.
“Listen.” She lowered her voice. “I’m pretty sure Tark wants to come talk to you, and I know he won’t if I’m in earshot. So, I’m gonna go help out in the kitchen. I know you don’t need a babysitter but yell if you need a bit of moral support. All right?”
Polly bumped her fingers. “Sure. Thanks.”
Tark dithered for a minute or two, until he was sure Laine wasn’t coming back, before finally approaching. He crouched next to Polly’s spot on the couch – made a nice change, usually he just leaned down over him, towering over the small robot in a way that was intentionally more than a little threatening. “So I have a little bit of news. That guy I mentioned last night? I’ve been talking some more with him and I’m fairly sure he knows where you came from,” he said, quietly.
Polly gave him a very guarded look. “I’m listening?”
“He had a picture. Not great, but you could definitely see it was you. You were sitting on this like… I guess a column of some sort? In somewhere that looked a bit like a lab, or a control centre, or something. There were some people in uniform there, too, although I didn’t recognise them and he wouldn’t tell me what organisation it was. Sorry.” Tark sighed and shrugged. “He was pretty familiar with you, though. He knew what your serial number is – 101. He knows what you look like, how you behave. The light-up mouth, sliding eyelids. That… sporty red headband with the sergeant’s stripes on either end.”
Polly straightened, subtly. That was new.
“He says you control a group of other little robots like you. That is, not physically, but you’re their commander. And, uh. Yeah.” The man glanced away. “You can be dangerous. If you choose to be.”
Polly digested the words for a few seconds. “…did he say how?”
“No. Sorry.” Tark shook his head. “Just that he knew people who’d had, ah. Dealings. With other little robot balls like you.”
Polly studied the couch cushions, quietly.
“But he’s confirmed that people are looking for you,” Tark was quick to reassure. “They’re worried about you. And I mean about you, not… worried what you might do. You might not be the only one of your type of robot but I got the feeling you’re pretty one-of-a-kind too, you know? ”
“You think so?”
“Oh he seemed pretty sure.”
“So where do I come from?” Polly leaned subtly forwards, focusing intently.
Tark knelt with his mouth open for several seconds before clearing his throat. “My contact says he’ll only tell you directly. That’s why I wanted you to talk to him.”
“…oh. Right. That’s… huh. Not that big a surprise.” Another disappointment; Polly quietly voiced one of those glum little descending notes. “I’m sorry. Thank you for trying to help, but… I can’t help feeling like there’s something you’re not telling me, here.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Tark bobbed his head, apologetically. “Full disclosure: there’s a reward for finding you. I know, I know.” He put his hands up. “I know you probably won’t believe me but that’s not why I’m telling you about my contact. You’re friends with the guys I live with. We might not get on, and I’m sorry for that. I don’t want to be the source of everyone arguing, all the time. I screwed up, and yeah. I don’t blame you for being wary. I’d like to make it up to you by reuniting you with your friends.” He leaned his elbows onto the couch cushions. “Listen. You represent something I’ve wanted and anticipated my entire life. Intelligent machines. Self-aware machines! Ever since I can remember, I’ve been excited about the prospect of sentient robotics – and here you are, right in my goddamn lounge! And it kills me to think I’ve finally met someone like you, and… I’ve ruined my chances to be friends with you without even trying. So I’d really like to make amends for being such an ass. If you’d let me.”
There was no ambiguity about the way Polly had definitely softened. The tension in his expression had faded, and his shutters were no longer pulled tight in a suspicious squint. “Well. Thank you.” He leaned forwards, just a tiny bit, and nudged the man’s fingers. “For trying.”
Tark offered a faint smile and returned the gesture; a little gentle stroke of Polly’s cheek. “I promise I’ll do better.” His wrist buzzed and he looked down at his watch. “Ugh. Look, I have to go out for a bit. But I’ll update you as soon as I get back. Is that all right?”
“That’s fine. Thank you.”
Polly watched Tark disappear into the hallway – then caught the eyes of the friends pretending they weren’t watching from the kitchen. Laine in particular gave him a very loaded glance.
Polly glared subtly back. “Oh, don’t.”
Laine put her hands up and turned away, but her tightly pursed lips betrayed the smile trying hard to escape.
The second the hall door clonked shut, Carrie leaned out from behind the kitchen wall, wooden spoon in hand. “You don’t actually believe him, do you? None of that is stuff we didn’t already know.”
“Well, there was a little bit of new information….” Polly shifted uneasily on the spot. “Can I afford not to believe him? This might be the first new lead I have.”
“And isn’t it convenient that Tark was the one who found it.”
“To be fair he is the only one with any expertise. Or contacts. Or-… anyway. That bit about sergeant’s stripes-”
“Tark can bullshit for England. The whole ‘military’ concept has come up a gazillion times when we’ve been talking. It’s not a difficult guess.”
“But what if he’s right?” Polly directed his gaze upwards, as though trying to look at his own forehead. “Doesn’t it seem to fit?”
“If you belonged to the army, they’d have come and got you by now.”
“He didn’t say it was the army. He said he didn’t recognise them?” He fidgeted. “…he said I might be dangerous! That can’t be good. I don’t want to put you at risk.”
“Oh, psssh. Dangerous? If you accidentally trip someone up, maybe. And you’re pretty heavy, so maybe if you roll over their toes. What else can you do?”
“Yeah.” Polly hummed quietly and deflated back into the couch. “What can I do.”
Mina perched on the edge of the couch next to him with an unopened pouch of microwave rice. “Anyone would think you can’t wait to leave us. Did we upset you?”
“No? No, I like you all! I like being here. I’d like to think we’re friends.” Polly tried to smile but it was flickery and looked a little forced. “But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding in your apartment. I want to know who I am! I’ve gotta have a purpose of some kind. And-…” He dropped his gaze. “I do really want to go home.”
“What if this person knows that?” Carrie contested. “What if they’re lying, because they know how desperate you are to know?”
“What if,” Mina added, quietly, “they want to steal you.”
Polly glanced at her.
“I like to think people are – on the whole – pretty good,” she went on. “But there’s some absolute shitheads out there as well, their whole lives driven by a quick buck. What if Tark sniffing around has made them think you’re worth trying to get their hands on?”
“I don’t think anyone would be able to just steal me. I’m heavy and I think I can be pretty stubborn.”
“Not physically maybe, but they could trick you into going with them. Like, by pretending they know where you belong, maybe? Tark likes to think he’s the cunning king of crypto but he’s gullible as shit also. All he’s focused on is the money he thinks he’s going to get as a reward, not whether they’re lying to both of you.”
Polly gave the laptop a long resentful look, and sighed. “…guess I’ll get back to work, then.”
He sat and listened to the students chattering, finishing the preparation of their afternoon meal –frozen ready meals, by the sound and speed of it – but was soon back in the depths of the dark web, checking out the limited new information Tark had given him. There had to be something, right? It wouldn’t all be garbage. Right?
He’d just made contact with someone who claimed to be an astronaut (although he felt there was a distinct possibility they were actually a bot) when Laine cleared her throat and said ahem loudly enough to catch his attention.
“Hey, Polly. Come on. Join us?”
He looked over to find they’d pulled up a seat near the table, and stacked some books and a cushion up on it, so he wouldn’t be down below the level of the tabletop. Carrie patted it, meaningfully.
“I don’t need to eat?” Polly reminded, hastily messaging the ‘astronaut’ with what he wanted to know.
“No, you don’t have to, but we’d like you to come and sit with us,” Laine said. “We’re not going to exclude you just because you’re not hungry. You’re staying with us for a little while, we like you, we’d like to include you in house matters. That’s all. Is that all right?”
He looked at her for a heartbeat or two before unclicking from the laptop connection and joining them. The book pile teetered for an instant but eventually he got himself stable. “This is nice!”
“So we’d been thinking.” Laine leaned forwards on her elbows. “You’re not having much luck finding out where you’re meant to be, and we thought, if you still couldn’t figure it out and no-one came looking for you, and maybe if you wanted to stay here a bit longer term? That’d be fine with all of us.”
Polly sat very quietly for several seconds. “Do you mean you’d… like… me to stay?”
A little chorus of responses, everyone talking over each other.
“Sure! We’d love you to stay.”
“But only if you want to!”
“As housemates go you’re pretty decent. You don’t use up all the milk, or leave mouldy food in the fridge-”
“-or your skaggy underwear all over the bathroom-”
“-or the heating on when we all go home for Christmas break.”
“Hey, I did that once!”
“We’d have you over Tark in a heartbeat, man.”
“Oh, way to make the guy feel good about himself – compare him to Tarkers.”
Polly smiled – grateful but tired. “I also use your resources and can’t contribute to your bills. I looked it up – electricity isn’t cheap.”
Jaxon shrugged. “We could figure something out.”
“I have no income. Even if I wasn’t a secret, I can’t exactly help Laine fill shelves.”
“Oh come on, there’s a literal million things you could do that don’t require physical labour. We could figure some way around the whole… no-national-insurance-number thing?” He wafted the hand holding the fork, scattering rice across the tabletop. “But that’s beside the point. We’re not asking you to contribute to the bills right now. Just let us look after you, until you find your people. That’s what friends do.”
Polly considered it, quietly. A home. Friends. They’d absorbed him into their loose little adopted tribe like he was himself just a very small person, and he couldn’t quite help feeling enormously flattered at their confidence.
“Listen, thank you. You’ve all been very kind and I appreciate your thoughtfulness more than you can ever possibly know. But I am still broken,” he said, softly. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll remain as functional as I am right now. It could be indefinitely? It could be that something else breaks tomorrow, or next week, or... Plus, as we’ve established, none of you would be able to fix me. I don’t want to put you in the position that you feel you somehow have to.” He hesitated. “But I will get your roof fixed. I won’t be having you financially penalised because of me.”
“Oh yeah?” Mina challenged, playfully. “How?”
“I have literally zero idea.” A ripple of amusement met his words. “But I will. Even if I have to drag a bunch of builders here myself. Somehow.”
“You just want some cute workmen to look at.”
“Haha! Okay, fine, guilty as charged, I guess. Side benefit…”
oOoOoOo
It was already starting to get dark by the time Tark’s contact finally showed his face. He’d insisted on them meeting near a quiet old shopping complex in the suburbs; Tark wasn’t going to complain, it was right by an underground station and one of his favourite fast food joints still operated there. But he’d finished his supper half an hour ago and was still pacing out his annoyance on the car park. Much longer and some paranoid idiot would no doubt complain to security-
At last Tark spotted his contact approaching, from the direction of the rough ground around the back of the complex. The old guy was clean but insanely scruffy, and far from fashionable, wearing shabby, over-laundered thick clothing that looked like it was from at least the previous decade, if not century. Not only that, but he looked like he was about two hundred years old himself. Small suspicious eyes peered out from a face furrowed by wrinkles deep enough to get lost in, and two big brown teeth stuck up from behind his bottom lip even when he had his mouth closed. Ragged ears ruined by too many years of sun exposure poked out from the chaos of grey hair.
It made a weird juxtaposition. Tark knew he was filthy rich, having flown in from somewhere abroad in his private plane, but evidently couldn’t be bothered with either fashion or much more than perfunctory personal care; perhaps he was just too old to care, any more?
If he hadn’t seen the man’s technology already, and had passed him in the street, Tark would have happily dismissed him as the sort of technologically-incompetent grandparent who couldn’t even work a smartphone, let alone some… tech genius. He didn’t sound particularly intelligent, but knew all about Polly – and had promised Tark a cool half a million dollars as a finder’s fee.
So long as he could actually hand Polly over. And right now that dream was receding fast towards the horizon, as the old guy was getting impatient and threatening to cut his promised reward. Tark was hoping a mix of bargaining and threat would buy him an extra day or so.
Following along at the old man’s heels was a little… robot, maybe? Small and self-mobile, it looked a little like a cubed version of Polly – albeit with more faces, none of which looked particularly friendly.
“Hi?” Tark tried.
The cube just hissed at him, so he put his hands up and backed off.
“So. Taaarquin.” The man had a weird gurgling voice, as though he was an alien from some ocean planet somewhere. “We are tired of wasting time. What do you have for us? Have you convinced the sphere to meet with me?”
“I’m… working on it.” Tark opened his phone and hastily flicked through to the photographs. “My flatmates are being obstacles. I think I’m charming it around, though.”
“Your… flat… mates? Why are they flat?”
“No, no. I mean the morons I live with.” Tark held out his phone. “They’re more interested in treating it like a pet,” he said, relinquishing the device into the other man’s hand. On the screen, a piece of his secret filming was playing – Polly in the middle of the couch-pile, being educated on the intricacies of what a TARDIS was.
The old man didn’t seem remotely excited or even surprised by the weird intelligence the little robot was demonstrating. Instead he tapped a finger against the human sitting on its right, leaning into the cushions heaped up against it. “Who is the female?”
“That’s Laine. Wouldn’t know the front end of a cybertruck from its ass.” Tark curled his lip. “I don’t know if she adopted the ball or it adopted her, but they look very happy together, if you know what I mean.”
The old man stared through him, for a second. “No, I don’t know what you mean.”
Tark sighed his annoyance at having wasted the crude joke on him. “She’s the reason I’m struggling to get close to it. She suspects my motives and until today wouldn’t leave it alone for me to talk to.” He folded his arms. “I never imagined a robot would be so goddamn needy. What does it actually do?”
“It contains the firing controls for the orbital platform it’s supposed to be based on.” The old man held the phone back out to him.
“Firing controls?” Tark straightened, almost dropping his mobile. “Like… you mean like weapons firing?”
“Yes. We accidentally shot it down. Without it, the platform is crippled. We want it to remain that way-… no longer.”
“So it is military?”
“What did you think it was for?” the man sneered. “A teacher, for nurturing small human offspring? Human resources?”
“The way it speaks? I wouldn’t have been surprised it you said it was a florist.” Tark folded his arms. “Why did you program it to talk like that?”
“We didn’t. That was our enemies, the accursed-” Whatever the man had been about to say, something made him think better of it and he swallowed it. “How long before you can bring it to us?”
“I’m working on it. Unless you come to my flat, I might have to hire a van. That’ll cost me money. And you still haven’t paid me for what I have done, old guy,” Tark reminded, stepping closer. He was naturally tall, and stood easily a head taller than the man and could loom pretty effectively when he chose. “I’m not helping you out of the goodness of my heart.”
The cube hissed from somewhere very very close to his feet. The sound drew icy fingers up the back of his neck and Tark thought better of it.
“You will be paid,” the old man gurgled, smirking. “As soon as we have it.” Pause. “Back. As soon as we have it back.” He pointed an aggressive finger, armed with an ugly thick yellow nail more like a dog’s claw. “I am not offering you money to make excuses, hyoo-… Tarquin. You have already had plenty of time. I am quite sure there will be others who are just as happy to assist us.”
“But I’ve proved to you that I already have it!” Tark threw his hands up. “What more do you want from me?!”
“We want the zeroid!”
The snap made Tark jump and step back in alarm.
“Not your pathetic excuses! There is no point in you having it if it is in your house, not ours!”
For several seconds they just stared at each other.
“But… you do have it. And we are not exclusively cruel. So perhaps we can grant you a little more time. I need to talk to my-… colleagues,” the man said, and turned away.
Tark leaned a fraction closer, but the man’s soft gurgling voice was impossible to make out. And it felt like the cube was watching him. The little square version of Polly creeped him out in a way he couldn’t quite pin down.
The man eventually turned back, with a cold smile. “My… manager… has agreed you can have one more chance, Tarquin. Bring it to me, here, in no more than two days, and you will be paid.”
Series: Terrahawks
Notes: In which the Terrahawks realise they might unfortunately now be racing Zelda to get to their missing zeroid first, Polly doesn't enjoy everyone's pick of television very much (but Doctor Who is fine) but DOES enjoy being invited to stay with his new 'family' if it all goes balls-up and he can't work out where he actually comes from, and Tark makes contact with someone who might know something.
-----------
Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack.
After being mildly irritated by Ninestein doing it, Hiro was frustrated to now find himself also pacing quietly up and down the flight deck. (He kept making a conscious effort to stop, and felt like that was probably more annoying than just pacing. At least there was no-one around to mind, right now.)
He felt rather at a loose end. 17 and 43 were dutifully reporting to him every time someone found something, but they’d have already analysed it and compiled it into their datasets by that point and all he could usually do was say “thank you, good job, please carry on.”
(“Good job” was rather like catnip to the little robots; they absolutely could not think of anything better and excitedly went straight back to work, leaving Hiro still with no-one to talk to.)
While 17 and 43 were leading, all the other zeroids on board were helping. They’d pooled their intelligences together into something of a gestalt, multiplying up their computing power, constantly talking to each other as they scoured the web, reading through literally everything and anything that seemed to have even the loosest connection to the search – astronomy and robotics forums, social media discussions of meteorites and unusual technology, police reports of suspected criminal activity, council reports of property damage, whatever CCTV they’d persuaded the authorities to give them, cross-referencing it all together. And they were definitely tightening their focus! They’d narrowed their target area down to a few dozen square kilometres – but that was still thousands of streets and buildings, and even zeroid optical software needed time to visually appraise their satellite imagery.
The signal to noise ratio in this search was absurd. Hiro had no idea how the zeroids were finding anything, let alone all the data they’d found so far. One of the advantages of not needing to sleep, he imagined? That, and being able to read hundreds of sources simultaneously. Without computer brains able to read through data, analyse and compile it in seconds, he doubted they’d have got this far in three years, let alone three days.
Hiro had – he hoped not foolishly – begun to think that perhaps they were making some progress, and that maybe they would have actually found 101 soon. He’d discovered that he did rather miss the little robot, sarcasm and all.
Although he’d tried hard to get some rest, while his other crewmates were still aboard, Hiro’s sleep had been punctuated by bad dreams, and he didn’t feel like he’d genuinely rested for more than a few minutes at a time. (It was hard to get some of the images out of his head – imagining his small friend critically damaged in the fall, broken open like a dropped melon, stolen by an unprincipled billionaire, crudely replicated a thousandfold and sold off to the highest bidders… all while the real 101 died quietly and alone in a hundred pieces in a laboratory somewhere-… Hiro pushed up his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, determined not to get lost in those nightmares again.)
“…Lieutenant Hiro? Sir? Lieutenant!”
Belatedly, he realised 43 had been chirping urgently to get his attention. He straightened his glasses and looked over. “Yes, Forty Three. What is it?”
“We found this,” the zeroid said, bluntly, throwing his discovery up onto a screen, and waited for the human to read it.
Hiro felt cold fingers draw up the back of his neck.
It was an advert. Requesting help to locate a valuable asset. Offering a reward of at least a quarter of a million dollars to whoever helped successfully “reunite” the poster with “their” property. And the description of the missing technology, while slightly abstract? Was clearly of a zeroid. The string of responses carried on for over fifty pages already.
Hiro didn’t have time to read through fifty pages – but fortunately knew someone who did. “Has anyone responded positively? To say they have anything?”
“Ten-zero, sir. Not convincingly, at least,” 43 confirmed. “Lots of interest, though. People asking a lot of questions about sensitive data, and not all the responses from the originator are completely incorrect.”
What could that mean? Hiro mulled it over. He doubted it could have been posted by anyone employed by any of the small number of organisations they worked alongside, because even they knew very little about Terrahawks technology (and certainly didn’t know they’d lost any of it). While he was confident that some of the posts the zeroids had found had been from 101 himself, this new one definitely didn’t contain any of his mannerisms.
“Should we take the post down, sir?” 43 prompted, in the silence. “The forum software looks basic enough.”
“No. No, we may be able to use this to our own advantage. Monitor it, and flag to me any time you see something that contains actual data.”
“Ten-ten, sir.”
“Can you identify who posted it?”
“No. 17 has been trying but it looks like it was routed through hundreds of individual nodes and we lose definition the further back it goes.”
“Hmm.”
Hiro had been working on the assumption that the only people that knew 101 was missing were the Terrahawks, and presumably whoever the zeroid had ended up with, but a more worrying new idea was beginning to percolate.
If 101 had ended up with some… malicious Earthly entity that wanted to use him for some nefarious purposes? They wouldn’t have needed to put out a reward for his retrieval, because they’d already have him. (And a ransom note felt slightly more likely.) And no Terrahawks affiliates would be chancing their luck because very few people knew enough about the organisation to know that zeroids even existed, let alone that they’d accidentally dropped one somewhere. Hiro couldn’t think of anyone who might have been talking about it.
But he and his colleagues had spoken to each other about it. And the timing of this post was exceptionally convenient.
Hiro read it again. “I wonder.”
“…sir?”
“I think.” He pressed his fingers to his lips. “That the poster of this…? Is Martian.”
“Zelda-!” 43 rocked backwards. “Oh no! How could she even know?”
“We know her family watch us all the time. They think they will eventually catch us revealing something that will allow them to defeat us.” Hiro sighed. “They must have broken our encryption. We were, ah. Possibly not being as careful as we could have been? They must have overheard.” He flicked a control on the console and sent a voice message to Hawknest. “Not that I want to add to our pressure, doctor, but it looks like we might be racing Zelda to our missing zeroid as well, now...”
Saturday morning came along very heavily for most of the flatmates. The previous evening, Laine had retired to her room long before anyone else had come home (and not exclusively to avoid Tark – she was genuinely exhausted), and zonked out very quickly. Sunlight now streamed around the edges of her window blind.
Polly was on the floor next to her bed, busily working away again. She watched sleepily as pages loaded and scrolled in flickers of movement too fast for her to ever follow. And… were those the faintest threads of music, coming up from the laptop?
Yeah – definitely music. Silly sparkly bubbly pop music, at that. Not her thing at all so he must have actively gone looking for it. She couldn’t help the sleepy grin.
“Mornin’,” she drawled, at last.
“Oh, hello! Good, er… morning? Just.”
“Wha’time is it anyway?”
Polly swivelled around to look at her. “It’s almost noon.”
“Oh, fucking hell. I’m sorry. Wasted half the day already-”
“Don’t.” He nudged her fingers. “You were quite drunk. I thought you needed to sleep. None of your flatmates are awake yet either. I heard them get in and it was very late.”
You were quite drunk. A flavour of that same embarrassment made her cheeks get warm. “Yeah I’m sorry about last night. I think I might have been a bit inappropriate.”
His smile looked genuine enough – consistent and bright. “You asked some drunken questions that I was happy to answer. I’d have soon told you if I thought they were too intrusive.” After a beat, he added; “you weren’t the one low-key molesting me, either.”
“…I’ll ask her to apologise.”
Laine lay and watched him, for a little while, until she was finally awake enough to recognise that in her tiddly frame of mind, she’d left the laptop on the floor, not to mention forgotten to plug it in. The chaos of cables and scattered books and pieces of paper suggested Polly had struggled to connect it to power, but hadn’t tried to wake her for help. Obviously he’d succeeded because it was still happily lit up and working for him, but she couldn’t help the sudden pulse of guilt at how long it must have taken him to do so.
“Aw, man. You shoulda woke me up to plug that in.” She extended a hand and brushed her fingers against his top curve.
“Maybe? I think I wanted to prove I could do it myself. I don’t want to annoy you by making you do everything for me.”
“We don’t mind.”
“…at the moment, sure. But I feel like I’m taking you for granted. I should be able to do this stuff!”
“You don’t have hands.”
“Exactly! So how did I do anything before I came here?”
Laine let it lay. He might have had a point. “How’s your search going?” She changed the subject.
“It’s… eenh. Going. I have a couple leads, now. Something about birds, and someone gave me some names. A Doctor Steifel? Stein? I haven’t found out anything else about them, though.”
Laine arched an eyebrow and propped her head on one hand. “You’re a veterinary nurse?”
“Oh I hardly think that.” Beat. “I could be a medicine ball, I guess.”
Laine snickered and gave him a little shove. “What about Tark?”
Polly remained silent for long enough that Laine knew he was trying to be diplomatic, but eventually, he spoke. “I think he’d have come in if you hadn’t locked the door. We spoke briefly through it. We might have discussed more but I didn’t want to wake you – although you were pretty deeply asleep so I doubt I’d have disturbed you.”
Laine swallowed her first thought, to demand to know what Tark had told him – because of her, Polly already didn’t trust the man, and she found that she didn’t actually feel all that satisfied in the knowledge that she’d put them at odds. Instead, she rephrased it; “Did he tell you anything useful?”
“I haven’t decided yet. Maybe? You remember he said there was someone who he thought knew about me? Apparently he’s based in the USA. Tark thinks I should video call him directly.”
“Do you want to?”
“I think I should, but I haven’t decided for definite. Gotta figure out how, without revealing I’m not human? I’ve added it to my database and am trying to interpret it alongside the other limited information I know for definite. Which is. Eh.” A little descending note. “Not a lot.”
“Hey, you’re making progress! That’s not bad for three days!” Laine swung her feet out of bed and crammed them into her slippers. “D’you fancy some company or would you rather work in here where you won’t get disturbed so much?”
“I’m good at multitasking. I’d prefer to have the company, I think.”
Laine left him and the laptop comfortable on the couch before retiring to the kitchen to make something to eat. A bleary-eyed Carrie joined her not long later, drawn out by the smell of bacon, followed eventually by Mina.
Jaxon (somewhat conveniently) appeared when the cooking was almost finished; he shambled across the room, yawning, looking a little the worse for wear. “Hey folks. S’goin on? What’s with the music?”
Laine shushed him and dragged him into the kitchen.
Apparently tiring of searching in silence, and bolstered by not immediately being told to be quiet, Polly was now singing quietly along with Big Big Love in a slightly alarming but pitch-perfect falsetto. (Yesterday evening had apparently had a marked effect on the little machine’s confidence.)
“Is that Polly?” Jaxon immediately fished his phone out of his pocket and opened the camera.
“Hey, no!” Mina put her hand out and pushed the phone down. “Don’t film him.”
“We have the queerest robot in the world in our lounge, belting out Belinda Carlisle at the top of his lungs, and you won’t let me film him. Figures it’d be you spoiling everyone’s fun.” Jaxon rolled his eyes but stuffed his mobile back into his pocket. “If we put that on the internet, we’d know where he belonged in seconds.”
“And we’d have given him a literal planet’s worth of attention when he doesn’t even like us talking about him outside of our little group. He’d never trust anyone again if you went and uploaded video of him singing.” Mina gave him a swat.
Laine took her sandwich into the lounge and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Polly’s spot on the couch. “Jaxon suggested-”
“I heard. No.”
“You don’t think it’s an opportunity we should be grabbing?” She took a huge bite of her lunch, and sighed deeply in satisfaction. “Mmh.”
“If I can’t find where I belong, I could make it as an international social media star instead, you mean? No thank you.” He made a sort of electronic snort noise. “Yes, you might figure out who I belong to. Might. You’d also attract every chancer in a thousand mile radius, not to mention journalists who want a scoop, and a million people who are just nosey. How would I ever work out who’s telling me the truth? I can’t even ask them for something only I’d know because oopsie! No memory.”
“I guess I prolly shoulda thought it through,” Jaxon agreed, plopping down on a beanbag. “Just used to oversharing online, I guess?” At the expressions directed his way, he hastily put his hands up, placatory. “Which I haven’t! Not about Polly!”
After Sanjay returned from his errands and said it all felt a little like walking in on one of the weirder episodes of Doctor Who, and Polly had responded so predictably – Doctor WHO? – it was like he’d been coached, they collectively decided a lesson was in order. The little robot happily allowed himself to be absorbed into the middle of the gathering, at the centre of the couch – albeit surrounded with cushions so his temporary flatmates could sprawl more comfortably around him.
Even Tark eventually joined the huddle – well, after a fashion, one of the beanbags, out of reach. He endured two episodes before losing patience. “I’m not watching any more kids TV. Hand over the remote.” Then he leaned across and took it anyway.
A little chorus of protests went up.
Polly glanced around them. “Guys? Why are we arguing now?”
“Because Twerpface over there will want to watch some conspiracy bullshit. Like usual,” Carrie sniped.
“Actually I had no intention of watching anything educational today, no matter how much you lot could all do with it.” Brandishing the remote like a futuristic weapon, Tark pointed it at the television and jabbed a button.
The title card flashed up on the big screen: The Iron Giant.
Carrie made a little noise akin to outrage and stabbed a finger at him. “Didn’t I just hear someone say something about not wanting to watch ‘kid’s TV’?! You flaming hypocrite-!”
“Ex-cuse me, it’s a stylish animated film, about a robot who falls to earth and loses his memory, and needs people to help him figure out who he is. It’s not just for kids. I thought it was topical. And, it’s a classic. Do you know how many awards it won? Not some… leftie luvvie pandering garbage. Just ’cause you’re all philistines with no appreciation of actual art-”
“Since when the hell did you ever have-”
“I’ve seen it. It’s a decent flick,” Sanjay interrupted, before the foes could get too entrenched. “What d’you think, Polly? Wanna watch it?”
Polly cast a gaze around the room, shutters tightening uneasily. Everyone was looking at him. “If everyone else is happy, then… I guess? I don’t know what it is. Please don’t blame me if it sucks…”
After the movie credits rolled, Laine noticed that Polly was looking a little subdued, in a way he hadn’t after Doctor Who. She stayed with him while her flatmates went off to make a start on dinner. “All a’right?” she wondered, patting the flat of her palm against his cowling.
“I feel a little conflicted,” he admitted, quietly. “It was a good movie, but. I guess I see too much of me in the robot, so I probably didn’t enjoy it as much as you all did. He was lost and scared, like me. He was trying to be good. Then they did… that. It’s left me with a bunch of things to work through.”
“I’m sorry. I guess Tark wasn’t thinking about that-”
“Oh he knew what he was doing.” A little poison slipped into Polly’s voice. “Why do you think he wanted to watch that movie specifically? It wasn’t because he has any grasp of art.” He made a little sad tutting noise. “He’s making a point.”
“…I’m not seeing it…?”
“He thinks it’s what I am. Perhaps not an alien, but a weapon.”
Laine remembered Tark’s words from when he’d first seen Polly; who else has the funds to drop a few million developing something like that? Artificial intelligence, strong enough to punch through concrete? That’s military.
“He’s saying, I know what you are, even if you don’t. Or don’t want to.” Polly’s words softened. “I agree with the giant. It’d suck to be just a gun with a face.”
Laine’s face fell and she let her hand press a little more firmly against him. “Hey. Don’t. Please. That’s not you. You’re too nice for that to be everything about you. And don’t forget; at the end, the giant proves he’s good, by being the hero that saves everyone.”
She was rewarded with a full-body eyeroll. She suspected he was probably thinking the exact same thing that she was, which had crossed her mind the instant she’d finished speaking – yeah, he saves everyone by sacrificing himself, after he himself is the one that puts them in direct danger in the first place.
“The giant was pretty nice, too, until they shot at him,” Polly challenged. “You just think I am. That might just be the bang on the head, shaking some circuits loose. You already know I’m a bossy little tart. I might be some… shrieking bootcamp harridan, normally.”
“Aw, let’s not go over that again. You don’t get to be super-complex and friendly and just plain nice and have it all caused by shaking a circuit loose. Come on, man. You’re a sweetheart. I don’t believe being mean is in your settings – and I absolutely refuse to believe you’re a gun with a face, for crying out loud.”
“Maybe Minnie’s right and that’s what I’m running away from,” he observed, morosely.
They sat quietly together for a little while, until Laine caught a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye.
“Listen.” She lowered her voice. “I’m pretty sure Tark wants to come talk to you, and I know he won’t if I’m in earshot. So, I’m gonna go help out in the kitchen. I know you don’t need a babysitter but yell if you need a bit of moral support. All right?”
Polly bumped her fingers. “Sure. Thanks.”
Tark dithered for a minute or two, until he was sure Laine wasn’t coming back, before finally approaching. He crouched next to Polly’s spot on the couch – made a nice change, usually he just leaned down over him, towering over the small robot in a way that was intentionally more than a little threatening. “So I have a little bit of news. That guy I mentioned last night? I’ve been talking some more with him and I’m fairly sure he knows where you came from,” he said, quietly.
Polly gave him a very guarded look. “I’m listening?”
“He had a picture. Not great, but you could definitely see it was you. You were sitting on this like… I guess a column of some sort? In somewhere that looked a bit like a lab, or a control centre, or something. There were some people in uniform there, too, although I didn’t recognise them and he wouldn’t tell me what organisation it was. Sorry.” Tark sighed and shrugged. “He was pretty familiar with you, though. He knew what your serial number is – 101. He knows what you look like, how you behave. The light-up mouth, sliding eyelids. That… sporty red headband with the sergeant’s stripes on either end.”
Polly straightened, subtly. That was new.
“He says you control a group of other little robots like you. That is, not physically, but you’re their commander. And, uh. Yeah.” The man glanced away. “You can be dangerous. If you choose to be.”
Polly digested the words for a few seconds. “…did he say how?”
“No. Sorry.” Tark shook his head. “Just that he knew people who’d had, ah. Dealings. With other little robot balls like you.”
Polly studied the couch cushions, quietly.
“But he’s confirmed that people are looking for you,” Tark was quick to reassure. “They’re worried about you. And I mean about you, not… worried what you might do. You might not be the only one of your type of robot but I got the feeling you’re pretty one-of-a-kind too, you know? ”
“You think so?”
“Oh he seemed pretty sure.”
“So where do I come from?” Polly leaned subtly forwards, focusing intently.
Tark knelt with his mouth open for several seconds before clearing his throat. “My contact says he’ll only tell you directly. That’s why I wanted you to talk to him.”
“…oh. Right. That’s… huh. Not that big a surprise.” Another disappointment; Polly quietly voiced one of those glum little descending notes. “I’m sorry. Thank you for trying to help, but… I can’t help feeling like there’s something you’re not telling me, here.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Tark bobbed his head, apologetically. “Full disclosure: there’s a reward for finding you. I know, I know.” He put his hands up. “I know you probably won’t believe me but that’s not why I’m telling you about my contact. You’re friends with the guys I live with. We might not get on, and I’m sorry for that. I don’t want to be the source of everyone arguing, all the time. I screwed up, and yeah. I don’t blame you for being wary. I’d like to make it up to you by reuniting you with your friends.” He leaned his elbows onto the couch cushions. “Listen. You represent something I’ve wanted and anticipated my entire life. Intelligent machines. Self-aware machines! Ever since I can remember, I’ve been excited about the prospect of sentient robotics – and here you are, right in my goddamn lounge! And it kills me to think I’ve finally met someone like you, and… I’ve ruined my chances to be friends with you without even trying. So I’d really like to make amends for being such an ass. If you’d let me.”
There was no ambiguity about the way Polly had definitely softened. The tension in his expression had faded, and his shutters were no longer pulled tight in a suspicious squint. “Well. Thank you.” He leaned forwards, just a tiny bit, and nudged the man’s fingers. “For trying.”
Tark offered a faint smile and returned the gesture; a little gentle stroke of Polly’s cheek. “I promise I’ll do better.” His wrist buzzed and he looked down at his watch. “Ugh. Look, I have to go out for a bit. But I’ll update you as soon as I get back. Is that all right?”
“That’s fine. Thank you.”
Polly watched Tark disappear into the hallway – then caught the eyes of the friends pretending they weren’t watching from the kitchen. Laine in particular gave him a very loaded glance.
Polly glared subtly back. “Oh, don’t.”
Laine put her hands up and turned away, but her tightly pursed lips betrayed the smile trying hard to escape.
The second the hall door clonked shut, Carrie leaned out from behind the kitchen wall, wooden spoon in hand. “You don’t actually believe him, do you? None of that is stuff we didn’t already know.”
“Well, there was a little bit of new information….” Polly shifted uneasily on the spot. “Can I afford not to believe him? This might be the first new lead I have.”
“And isn’t it convenient that Tark was the one who found it.”
“To be fair he is the only one with any expertise. Or contacts. Or-… anyway. That bit about sergeant’s stripes-”
“Tark can bullshit for England. The whole ‘military’ concept has come up a gazillion times when we’ve been talking. It’s not a difficult guess.”
“But what if he’s right?” Polly directed his gaze upwards, as though trying to look at his own forehead. “Doesn’t it seem to fit?”
“If you belonged to the army, they’d have come and got you by now.”
“He didn’t say it was the army. He said he didn’t recognise them?” He fidgeted. “…he said I might be dangerous! That can’t be good. I don’t want to put you at risk.”
“Oh, psssh. Dangerous? If you accidentally trip someone up, maybe. And you’re pretty heavy, so maybe if you roll over their toes. What else can you do?”
“Yeah.” Polly hummed quietly and deflated back into the couch. “What can I do.”
Mina perched on the edge of the couch next to him with an unopened pouch of microwave rice. “Anyone would think you can’t wait to leave us. Did we upset you?”
“No? No, I like you all! I like being here. I’d like to think we’re friends.” Polly tried to smile but it was flickery and looked a little forced. “But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding in your apartment. I want to know who I am! I’ve gotta have a purpose of some kind. And-…” He dropped his gaze. “I do really want to go home.”
“What if this person knows that?” Carrie contested. “What if they’re lying, because they know how desperate you are to know?”
“What if,” Mina added, quietly, “they want to steal you.”
Polly glanced at her.
“I like to think people are – on the whole – pretty good,” she went on. “But there’s some absolute shitheads out there as well, their whole lives driven by a quick buck. What if Tark sniffing around has made them think you’re worth trying to get their hands on?”
“I don’t think anyone would be able to just steal me. I’m heavy and I think I can be pretty stubborn.”
“Not physically maybe, but they could trick you into going with them. Like, by pretending they know where you belong, maybe? Tark likes to think he’s the cunning king of crypto but he’s gullible as shit also. All he’s focused on is the money he thinks he’s going to get as a reward, not whether they’re lying to both of you.”
Polly gave the laptop a long resentful look, and sighed. “…guess I’ll get back to work, then.”
He sat and listened to the students chattering, finishing the preparation of their afternoon meal –frozen ready meals, by the sound and speed of it – but was soon back in the depths of the dark web, checking out the limited new information Tark had given him. There had to be something, right? It wouldn’t all be garbage. Right?
He’d just made contact with someone who claimed to be an astronaut (although he felt there was a distinct possibility they were actually a bot) when Laine cleared her throat and said ahem loudly enough to catch his attention.
“Hey, Polly. Come on. Join us?”
He looked over to find they’d pulled up a seat near the table, and stacked some books and a cushion up on it, so he wouldn’t be down below the level of the tabletop. Carrie patted it, meaningfully.
“I don’t need to eat?” Polly reminded, hastily messaging the ‘astronaut’ with what he wanted to know.
“No, you don’t have to, but we’d like you to come and sit with us,” Laine said. “We’re not going to exclude you just because you’re not hungry. You’re staying with us for a little while, we like you, we’d like to include you in house matters. That’s all. Is that all right?”
He looked at her for a heartbeat or two before unclicking from the laptop connection and joining them. The book pile teetered for an instant but eventually he got himself stable. “This is nice!”
“So we’d been thinking.” Laine leaned forwards on her elbows. “You’re not having much luck finding out where you’re meant to be, and we thought, if you still couldn’t figure it out and no-one came looking for you, and maybe if you wanted to stay here a bit longer term? That’d be fine with all of us.”
Polly sat very quietly for several seconds. “Do you mean you’d… like… me to stay?”
A little chorus of responses, everyone talking over each other.
“Sure! We’d love you to stay.”
“But only if you want to!”
“As housemates go you’re pretty decent. You don’t use up all the milk, or leave mouldy food in the fridge-”
“-or your skaggy underwear all over the bathroom-”
“-or the heating on when we all go home for Christmas break.”
“Hey, I did that once!”
“We’d have you over Tark in a heartbeat, man.”
“Oh, way to make the guy feel good about himself – compare him to Tarkers.”
Polly smiled – grateful but tired. “I also use your resources and can’t contribute to your bills. I looked it up – electricity isn’t cheap.”
Jaxon shrugged. “We could figure something out.”
“I have no income. Even if I wasn’t a secret, I can’t exactly help Laine fill shelves.”
“Oh come on, there’s a literal million things you could do that don’t require physical labour. We could figure some way around the whole… no-national-insurance-number thing?” He wafted the hand holding the fork, scattering rice across the tabletop. “But that’s beside the point. We’re not asking you to contribute to the bills right now. Just let us look after you, until you find your people. That’s what friends do.”
Polly considered it, quietly. A home. Friends. They’d absorbed him into their loose little adopted tribe like he was himself just a very small person, and he couldn’t quite help feeling enormously flattered at their confidence.
“Listen, thank you. You’ve all been very kind and I appreciate your thoughtfulness more than you can ever possibly know. But I am still broken,” he said, softly. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll remain as functional as I am right now. It could be indefinitely? It could be that something else breaks tomorrow, or next week, or... Plus, as we’ve established, none of you would be able to fix me. I don’t want to put you in the position that you feel you somehow have to.” He hesitated. “But I will get your roof fixed. I won’t be having you financially penalised because of me.”
“Oh yeah?” Mina challenged, playfully. “How?”
“I have literally zero idea.” A ripple of amusement met his words. “But I will. Even if I have to drag a bunch of builders here myself. Somehow.”
“You just want some cute workmen to look at.”
“Haha! Okay, fine, guilty as charged, I guess. Side benefit…”
It was already starting to get dark by the time Tark’s contact finally showed his face. He’d insisted on them meeting near a quiet old shopping complex in the suburbs; Tark wasn’t going to complain, it was right by an underground station and one of his favourite fast food joints still operated there. But he’d finished his supper half an hour ago and was still pacing out his annoyance on the car park. Much longer and some paranoid idiot would no doubt complain to security-
At last Tark spotted his contact approaching, from the direction of the rough ground around the back of the complex. The old guy was clean but insanely scruffy, and far from fashionable, wearing shabby, over-laundered thick clothing that looked like it was from at least the previous decade, if not century. Not only that, but he looked like he was about two hundred years old himself. Small suspicious eyes peered out from a face furrowed by wrinkles deep enough to get lost in, and two big brown teeth stuck up from behind his bottom lip even when he had his mouth closed. Ragged ears ruined by too many years of sun exposure poked out from the chaos of grey hair.
It made a weird juxtaposition. Tark knew he was filthy rich, having flown in from somewhere abroad in his private plane, but evidently couldn’t be bothered with either fashion or much more than perfunctory personal care; perhaps he was just too old to care, any more?
If he hadn’t seen the man’s technology already, and had passed him in the street, Tark would have happily dismissed him as the sort of technologically-incompetent grandparent who couldn’t even work a smartphone, let alone some… tech genius. He didn’t sound particularly intelligent, but knew all about Polly – and had promised Tark a cool half a million dollars as a finder’s fee.
So long as he could actually hand Polly over. And right now that dream was receding fast towards the horizon, as the old guy was getting impatient and threatening to cut his promised reward. Tark was hoping a mix of bargaining and threat would buy him an extra day or so.
Following along at the old man’s heels was a little… robot, maybe? Small and self-mobile, it looked a little like a cubed version of Polly – albeit with more faces, none of which looked particularly friendly.
“Hi?” Tark tried.
The cube just hissed at him, so he put his hands up and backed off.
“So. Taaarquin.” The man had a weird gurgling voice, as though he was an alien from some ocean planet somewhere. “We are tired of wasting time. What do you have for us? Have you convinced the sphere to meet with me?”
“I’m… working on it.” Tark opened his phone and hastily flicked through to the photographs. “My flatmates are being obstacles. I think I’m charming it around, though.”
“Your… flat… mates? Why are they flat?”
“No, no. I mean the morons I live with.” Tark held out his phone. “They’re more interested in treating it like a pet,” he said, relinquishing the device into the other man’s hand. On the screen, a piece of his secret filming was playing – Polly in the middle of the couch-pile, being educated on the intricacies of what a TARDIS was.
The old man didn’t seem remotely excited or even surprised by the weird intelligence the little robot was demonstrating. Instead he tapped a finger against the human sitting on its right, leaning into the cushions heaped up against it. “Who is the female?”
“That’s Laine. Wouldn’t know the front end of a cybertruck from its ass.” Tark curled his lip. “I don’t know if she adopted the ball or it adopted her, but they look very happy together, if you know what I mean.”
The old man stared through him, for a second. “No, I don’t know what you mean.”
Tark sighed his annoyance at having wasted the crude joke on him. “She’s the reason I’m struggling to get close to it. She suspects my motives and until today wouldn’t leave it alone for me to talk to.” He folded his arms. “I never imagined a robot would be so goddamn needy. What does it actually do?”
“It contains the firing controls for the orbital platform it’s supposed to be based on.” The old man held the phone back out to him.
“Firing controls?” Tark straightened, almost dropping his mobile. “Like… you mean like weapons firing?”
“Yes. We accidentally shot it down. Without it, the platform is crippled. We want it to remain that way-… no longer.”
“So it is military?”
“What did you think it was for?” the man sneered. “A teacher, for nurturing small human offspring? Human resources?”
“The way it speaks? I wouldn’t have been surprised it you said it was a florist.” Tark folded his arms. “Why did you program it to talk like that?”
“We didn’t. That was our enemies, the accursed-” Whatever the man had been about to say, something made him think better of it and he swallowed it. “How long before you can bring it to us?”
“I’m working on it. Unless you come to my flat, I might have to hire a van. That’ll cost me money. And you still haven’t paid me for what I have done, old guy,” Tark reminded, stepping closer. He was naturally tall, and stood easily a head taller than the man and could loom pretty effectively when he chose. “I’m not helping you out of the goodness of my heart.”
The cube hissed from somewhere very very close to his feet. The sound drew icy fingers up the back of his neck and Tark thought better of it.
“You will be paid,” the old man gurgled, smirking. “As soon as we have it.” Pause. “Back. As soon as we have it back.” He pointed an aggressive finger, armed with an ugly thick yellow nail more like a dog’s claw. “I am not offering you money to make excuses, hyoo-… Tarquin. You have already had plenty of time. I am quite sure there will be others who are just as happy to assist us.”
“But I’ve proved to you that I already have it!” Tark threw his hands up. “What more do you want from me?!”
“We want the zeroid!”
The snap made Tark jump and step back in alarm.
“Not your pathetic excuses! There is no point in you having it if it is in your house, not ours!”
For several seconds they just stared at each other.
“But… you do have it. And we are not exclusively cruel. So perhaps we can grant you a little more time. I need to talk to my-… colleagues,” the man said, and turned away.
Tark leaned a fraction closer, but the man’s soft gurgling voice was impossible to make out. And it felt like the cube was watching him. The little square version of Polly creeped him out in a way he couldn’t quite pin down.
The man eventually turned back, with a cold smile. “My… manager… has agreed you can have one more chance, Tarquin. Bring it to me, here, in no more than two days, and you will be paid.”