Simulation: A Pop Travel Novel Page 9

  As six guard droids took up positions at the perimeter of the living room, Crews grabbed his sleek silver electrogun from Echo and shuffled into his control room behind the fireplace. When the car pulled into the garage, he didn’t want to be the sitting duck target of Wells’ outrage. He would watch what happened via the guard droids’ eye cams while racking his brain for something that might appease the raging bull. Crews had to avert the boy from a disastrous conclusion and bring him back to sanity.

  The sounds of the garage door opening followed by the car door slamming made Crews flinch. He double-checked the locks on the door.

  The huge man bounded into the house.

  Javon followed him and fell into ranks with the other guard droids in the living room.

  McFarland paused and slowly scanned his surroundings, squinting at the organized ambush. After realizing his prey wasn’t there, he bellowed up at the two-story ceiling.

  “Crews!”

  Not waiting for an answer, McFarland darted from room to room, searching the rest of the main floor. He leapt up the steps into the kitchen, then through the swinging door to the dining room, and back down the steps, dashing across the living room, down a short hall to Crews’ master suite. Pounding on the door, he easily could’ve broken it down if he wanted to.

  Crews shivered and stroked his chin, thankful he’d never shared the hidden-away control room with McFarland. What was he going to do? He couldn’t call the police; the publicity would be a nightmare, sending his career into a nosedive. But when the giant man pounded again, jolting Crews with the vibrations, he seriously considered dialing 9-1-1.

  “Crews! Colonel!” McFarland backed away from the bedroom door and glared at the droids around the room, one by one. He stomped up to them, got in their faces, and shouted at them. Crews could almost feel McFarland’s hot breath as it steamed up the lenses in the close-ups on the imagers.

  “I’m done! Do you hear me, old man? Come on out here, boy! You’re the little coward! You wanted to see some backbone. Well, here it is!”

  McFarland ripped off his jacket and threw it on the floor. Hunching forward, he brought his fists together, flexing his back muscles with a growl. A true raging beast.

  Crews gripped his gun tighter and cowered in the control room. What the hell had he gotten himself into?

  McFarland was exploding into Mr. Hyde. The crazed Congressman continued ranting and raving, staring through the floor as he paced.

  “I’d rather go back to the Unknown City than put up with any more of this! I’m no slave!” He snatched a vase from the mantle and threw it across the room.

  A guard droid flung out his hand and caught it, then gently set it on a table.

  McFarland’s jaw dropped. He paused his lunatic behavior for a moment to shake his head. He must’ve realized the droids were in the Colonel’s command and could attack him at any time. McFarland was big and strong, but the droids could easily break him in two. When he spoke again, his tone softened and tears slipped down his cheeks.

  “What do I have to do to end this? I can’t live this way. I thought I could but I can’t. I just can’t. It’s too hard pretending to be something I’m not. I’m just a big, dumb animal. I wish I never came here.” He faced Javon and pled his case to the Colonel, “Lucy understands me. She listens to me. She loves me. She’s made it all bearable. I can’t go on without her.”

  As he finished, McFarland pounded his chest with his fist, sank to his knees, and sobbed.

  Curse that slut. Because of her, Crews had lost control of his sure thing. She’d turned his prize stallion into a spineless jellyfish.

  Then again, now McFarland had shown what he was capable of. This hulk of a man had deep emotions inside. A volatile volcano that could erupt any time the wrong sensors were triggered. If he could detonate like this, so quickly and unpredictably, he had the potential to uncork in public someday. Once the press found out Congressman Wells had a boiling point, they’d heat him up just to see him blow. How could Crews have misjudged him so?

  “Echo, subdue him and lock him in the guest bedroom downstairs.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wiping his eyes, McFarland rose to his feet and muttered to himself, unaware of his surroundings. He stomped his feet to emphasize his points, waving his arms, coming completely unglued. He didn’t even notice as the droids slowly converged on him.

  When he snapped out of his hazy, crazy fog, he jerked back, putting his hands out defensively. But the droids had him on all sides.

  Don’t resist, boy. You’ll only get hurt.

  McFarland yelled at the droids, “Too scared to face me yourself, old man?”

  “Volume Zero.”

  Watching the droids take down the monstrous wolverine that had emerged from the harmless kitten Crews had come to know, he finally realized McFarland had been nothing more than a disturbed teenage boy, mentally. Dangerous in that overgrown, herculean body. He probably committed a violent crime during his time in the army, forcing him to run away and seek refuge in the Unknown City. Crews’ rash decision to experiment with a supposedly clean slate had come back to bite him.

  Every plan had its flaw. He should’ve known better. Nothing was a sure thing. Too bad. So much wasted time. And what a messy situation to deal with. Crews held his head and frowned at the thought of it.

  Lifting his eyes to the imagers, he watched the droids drop the unconscious McFarland on the guest bed in the basement and lock him in. As they left, one stayed behind to stand guard.

  What was Crews going to do with him? He couldn’t keep pressuring the man. Thinking back to the beginning, Crews had known in his gut McFarland was never going to be a great politician. But he was such an anomaly. Crews tried to make it work, relying on his expertise and powers of persuasion. The thought McFarland wouldn’t want to become famous never crossed his mind. Who didn’t want fame and fortune?

  With the dangerous beast safely locked up downstairs, Crews tentatively peeked out of the control room and crept into the living room.

  What a disaster. During the scuffle to restrain McFarland, a table had tipped over, breaking a lamp. The vase the boy had thrown was also knocked off the table, smashed to pieces anyway. At least his faithful chair, Gloria, was unharmed. He sat down in his comfortable throne to contemplate what he could do.

  “Imager, display guest room.” The imager above the fireplace flickered to life and showed the sleeping giant. So peaceful and still. Crews wished he could keep him. He despised the thought of easing McFarland out of office. It would label the Colonel a failure. He’d be washed up. No matter how many successes he had, a huge scandal like this would dub him as an incompetent for infamy. Crews shook his head, dreading all the damage control he had ahead of him.

  And after he dealt with the McFarland situation, then what? Crews wasn’t getting any younger, but he refused to retire as a dismal failure. The press would eat it up, saying, He should’ve quit while he was ahead. The alternative was to recruit again, and Crews had no earthly desire to find another flawed, unpredictable young man. And inevitably disrespectful. None of them appreciated what he did for them.

  Echo brought Crews a glass of water.

  Crews smiled and almost said thank you, but caught himself. He vowed not to treat his droids as human or he would get too attached to them. That was weakness.

  When he took a sip, indicating to his dependable android he was fine, Echo began picking up the pieces of the lamp. Crews immediately relaxed. He always felt safe with Echo, his vigilant protector, close by.

  Watching the android restore things to normal, Crews’ eyes widened. A brilliant idea struck him.

  McFarland’s little slut was right. I need to build my own puppet.

  “Echo.”

  “Yes, sir.” He paused his tidying up to focus on Crews.

  “Congressman Wells is under the weather. Clear our schedule for tomorrow and the coming week. Nothing serious, but he will be out of commission on a sabbatical to recov
er.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And call Rajul. Tell him I need a special order, ASAP.”

  Atlanta, GA

  Monday, June 15, 2082

  his was what hell must be like: a raunchy, sweat-saturated vestibule in the middle of summer with broken A/C where people waited forever.

  After being cleared through security, Cooper passed the squatters hoping for their turn to plead their innocence with someone inside the police station. When he approached the window, a skinny officer with tight, white-blond curls and dark skin ignored him. But Cooper was used to being ignored. He addressed the clerk with respect anyway.

  “Hello, sir. My name is J.L. Cooper and I have a 9:00 a.m. appointment with Stu Rothstein.”

  The officer never looked at him. He kept working on his compucenter imager. Finally he pulled up a new frame and looked at the schedule.

  “Fine.” The door buzzed.

  Cooper grinned sheepishly over his shoulder to the crowd behind him. He felt privileged to waltz right in. Later, losers.

  On his way to the back, he spotted the stunning woman detective from the murder scene on Friday. With her back to him, he was able to get a better look. Her wheat-blonde hair was wound into several tight knots around her head and she wore a short, shiny copper jacket exposing her well-toned gluts, emphasized by her matching coppery leggings. She was straight out of a fashion show.

  Staring a little too long, Cooper stumbled into a chair, causing an angry suspect to stand and growl at him.

  “Watch it.”

  Every eye jumped on Cooper, including the beautiful detective. Perfect.

  He waved and apologized to the room, then tried to casually walk the rest of the way to the elevators.

  “Detective Cooper.”

  Darn. She remembered him. Cooper stopped and slowly turned around to face her.

  “Yes?”

  She smirked at him and stood with her hip cocked and her arms crossed. Full of attitude. “How’s our little friend?”

  Cooper hadn’t noticed how deep her hazel eyes were before. “I’m sure he’s fine. I can’t forcibly return him to his foster family until I get the DNA report, but I’m keeping an eye on him.”

  “I see. You should probably invest in a DNA reader.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Cooper’s suspicion radar perked up. She didn’t have to talk to him. Why was she?

  Stu started babbling as soon as he stepped off the elevator, “Coop, I thought you got—” When he saw the beautiful detective, he choked.

  She raised an eyebrow at Stu, then finished with Cooper, “Well, I won’t keep you. Here’s my number. Just in case you need a Spanish lesson.”

  Stu’s eyes bugged as she zapped her info to Cooper’s QV from hers.

  Cooper received it. “Uh, thanks.”

  “Carry on, Rothstein.” She waved at him and sauntered away.

  “Hey, buddy. Snap out of it.” Cooper had to shake Stu out of the trance he’d fallen into from the detective’s hypnotic rear end.

  “Right. C’mon down to my lair.”

  As soon as they were safely inside the elevator, Stu attacked Cooper, “How do you know Cher?”

  “Oh, is that her name?”

  “You dog! You didn’t even know her name?”

  Cooper wasn’t about to go into the details of their encounter with Stu. He let his friend live in the dream.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “And you just broke up with Geri! And now you’re back in the saddle, you stallion!” He punched Cooper in the shoulder.

  Cooper raised an eyebrow at him. “Sure. So do you have my data?”

  When they exited the elevator, he noticed Stu wincing with every other step on his way to his office.

  “Uh, is something wrong with your back?”

  Stu waved it off as he slowly eased into his chair. “No, no. I’m fine. You know, an old ski injury acting up.”

  Cooper stifled a smirk as he pictured Stu flailing around on skis. He more likely got the injury in the pro shop trying them on.

  “Hmm. Well, thanks again for fitting me into your workload. How’s business?”

  Trying to be pleasant, Stu still wore a frown of discomfort as he moved things around on his compucenter imager. “Fine, good. You know I love working with my favorite genre, lots of blood and guts.” Stu was pure geek.

  “Sounds good. Were you able to ID the sample I dropped off?”

  “Of course. Let me copy it onto a stick drive for you.” With so many mail-jackers, it was illegal to zap the sensitive DNA identification files to a QV or send it over the public Qnet.

  While Stu searched his drawers for a spare stick drive, Cooper looked at the name on the file in the front frame of the imager.

  “That’s not my guy.”

  Stu looked up and accidentally shut his hand in the drawer. “Ow! It isn’t?”

  He shook his wrist and took a closer look at the name. “You’re right. That’s a different guy.” He poked around on the 3D imager and found the right chart. “This is your guy. At least, this is whose DNA you gave me.”

  It was Slug. “Yeah, that’s him.”

  Stu nodded and inserted the stick drive to make the copy.

  “Stu, you seem a little distracted. What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, nothing. Probably my own fault. Nothing a beer can’t fix, right?”

  “Must be a woman.”

  Stu’s eyes widened and his brows shot up. Cooper knew he nailed the problem, even though Stu quickly turned the focus to his imager and denied everything.

  “Nah, nah. Hey, I have to tell you about that other file you saw. What a curio case. A body came in Friday—”

  Cooper cut him off. “That is curio.”

  “No, my friend, you’re curio.” His friend grinned. Now the old Stu was coming back. “Anyway, this body’s DNA matched the ID of a questionable finger that came in last week.”

  “Which finger?” Cooper couldn’t resist.

  Stu took the bait and flipped him off. “This one. Now shut up and let me finish.”

  Cooper was glad to see his friend in a better mood. He raised his hands. “Touchy, touchy. Go ahead.”

  “The finger had multiple match ups in the system. Its DNA had been messed with, so we had to resort to taking a print for the exact identification.”

  “Good thing it was a finger.”

  Tilting his head, Stu thought about that. “Hey, that’s right. But listen, the body had all ten fingers intact.”

  “Curio.” Cooper was too old to use the slang, but had fun teasing his buddy with it.

  Stu nodded, unaware of the slant. “When we sent the finger to the feds, they said it wasn’t from the same guy. But I’m 99.999 percent sure it was.”

  Though Cooper was happy his friend had perked up, he couldn’t stay and chat. The sooner he produced the DNA evidence, the sooner he could get that kid off the street and home to his foster family. Or he might suffer the same fate as his brother.

  “Too bad you can’t prove it.” Cooper clapped him on the back. “You always have a good case story to tell me, Stu.”

  He held up his hand. “Wait. It gets curi-er. The—” he paused and air-quoted. “Next-of-kin, was a scrawny, suspicious-looking guy who smiled way too much for someone identifying a relative’s remains. He seemed unusually happy about it. And he had a crack name too. Rage.” Stu rolled his eyes.

  “Maybe he’s the heir to a fortune.”

  Stu rubbed his chin, considering the idea. “I guess I’d be pretty happy about that.”

  Cooper smiled. “Well, Stu, I gotta—” he almost said blur, caught up in the youthful slang, but caught himself. “—get going.” On his QV, he pulled up tickets to the latest nudie circus show in town. Cooper remembered when the only naked performers at the circus were the animals. “Here you go, as promised.” He zapped the tickets to Stu’s QV.

  Stu opened them and checked out the seats. “Lucid! Always a pleasure, Coop.”

&nbs
p; As Cooper headed to the door, Stu called out to him. “Hey. Now that you’re single, we need to go out for a beer and pick up some femmes.”

  Cooper nodded. “Sure thing, Stu. Thanks again.”

  On his way home, Cooper considered Stu’s proposal. His buddy always complained about not being able to find the right girl, but went about looking for one in all the wrong places. Stu had no idea he was really better off without one anyway.

  Atlanta, GA

  Monday, June 15, 2082

  Geri watched the dazed human flies buzz past the coffee shop. They were all entranced, concentrating on their QV images while they walked. With her chin resting on the palm of her fist, Geri eagerly anticipated a crash. But each time she thought two preoccupied pedestrians would knock heads, they swerved, with their collision gadgets alerting them. A perfectly timed choreography.

  When Aimee sat down, she presented Geri with her usual, a vanilla-caramel, double shot latte. Aimee chose to sip on decaf Chai tea. Geri had no idea how Aimee functioned without caffeine.

  “Here you go, Geri. I guess we played phone tag this weekend.”

  Geri shrugged. She’d taken her time responding to Aimee’s messages. The dead ends she kept running into were annoying enough without being shown up by Aimee’s genius discoveries.

  “Yes, we did. I tried to talk to Dr. Moore in the lab, but he and I played phone tag too. Have you met him yet?”

  Aimee shook her head. “No.”

  Even the soothing aroma of her scrumptious java couldn’t ease the tension of her frustrating weekend. This case kept her from enjoying her favorite time of the day: coffee time. Unless Aimee had something solid, it was time to hang it up. She took a sip and frowned, getting down to business.

  “Well, we’re going to corner him in his little lair today. When I finally got a call back from him after leaving several threatening messages, he blew me off again. He told me he was going to some stupid geek conference for the weekend. He also happened to mention he pawned off our finger to some underling in the lab. Now it’s lost in cold storage with the file buried at the bottom of a mile-high stack. No wonder he was afraid to return my calls.”