Paradigm City - Fan Fiction - Beneath The Surface

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Beneath The Surface

Part 9

Dastun arrived when they were halfway through dinner. Norman ushered him in, filling his plate as soon as he was seated. "Norman, get yourself a plate or some coffee or something," Roger said. "You need to be a part of this discussion."

"I’ll get it, Norman." Dorothy rose from the table, taking her plate with her. She returned almost immediately with the coffee service and served all three men.

"You, too, Dorothy. Sit down. You may have some insight into this," Roger told her. She poured a small amount in a cup for herself and returned to her chair.

"Roger, what’s wrong?" Dastun was concerned. "What did you find? I figured it had to be something pretty big if you wanted to keep it quiet at the dig."

"Big enough," Roger told him. "Do you ever dream of the end of the world?"

"Nightmares? Sure, I get my share of those from time to time, especially when I see a bunch of innocents being zipped into body bags," the officer answered. "As far as the end of the world...no, I can’t say I have, at least not that I can recall."

"Well, I think I got a glimpse of what almost destroyed Paradigm City," Roger told him. He described the cavern he had discovered.

"Hundreds of megadeuses? All shattered?" Dastun was horrified. "What could possibly have the force to destroy a whole army of Bigs?"

"I don’t know if we want to find out," the negotiator answered. "So I’m bringing it to the three of you. Do we want to do a bit of digging and see what we find, or do we lay some explosives and bury the whole thing forever?"

"I don’t like the idea of Rosewater getting his hands on any more parts," Norman offered. "Although it sounds like there isn’t much there of value other than metal scrap, the thought of someone finding enough pieces to cobble together a megadeus or two of his own is worrisome."

"My thoughts exactly," Roger nodded. "What I saw looked pretty useless, but I don’t know how deep that cavern is. There may be relatively intact parts below the top layer."

"There’s nothing intact." The three men turned to Dorothy in surprise. "I don’t know how I know, but I am sure there is nothing left that is useable. That is what was left after salvage."

"Well, I’d like to get a look at it myself," Dastun said. "Not that I don’t believe you, Dorothy. It just seems so incredible."

"I suppose there’s no reason we can’t go over there for a quick look," Roger decided. "We can take the Griffon." Dorothy gave him a significant stare and he laughed despite his worry. "Just give me a minute to change."

**************************************************

They parked several streets away and walked to the dig, carefully climbing down into the pit and making as little noise as possible. Roger tied the coil of rope to a nearby earthmover and all four of them climbed into the tunnel.

"Amazing," Dastun kept his voice low as he looked around at the tunnel. "I wonder what this was used for originally?"

"I’m not sure," Roger said. "People who spend too much time underground trying to find out that kind of information seem to have a nasty tendency to disappear."

"I assume the cavern is this way, Master Roger?" Norman led the way down the tunnel.

The pile of wreckage was even more impressive with four lights playing over it. "I think you’re right, Dorothy," Dastun said after a good long look. "This looks like scrap, as though it was already picked over pretty thoroughly."

"So now what?" Roger asked. "Do we announce it and try to salvage the metal?"

"That’s not a good idea, Master Roger," Norman said. "The pieces, while useless, are too recognizable for comfort."

Dorothy stood still, listening intently. "What is it? Do you hear something?" Dastun was the first to notice.

"There is something nearby," she replied. "Can you hear it?"

All three humans stood completely still, listening. "No, I don’t hear anything," Roger told her. "What does it sound like?"

"Something burrowing," Dorothy told him. "A machine of some kind."

"Could someone be doing some work nearby and that’s what caused the collapse in the first place?" Dastun wondered aloud.

"Norman. Roger. Colonel Dastun. We must leave now." Dorothy suddenly turned and began walking rapidly away.

Although he still didn’t hear anything, Roger knew better than to ignore the warning. "Let’s go. We’ll be safer poking around in the daylight," he urged the others. They wasted no time following Dorothy to the entrance.

Dastun gave Norman a boost up the rope, and accepted one from Roger. Whatever it was that was down there had become audible to human hearing and it sounded like it was coming closer. "You next, Dorothy."

"Go, Roger Smith," she insisted. "It will not harm me."

"Dorothy, this is no time to argue..." suddenly there was a crunching noise and part of the pile blocking the right hand tunnel exploded outward.

"Roger, now!" He grabbed the rope and started climbing as fast as he could. He heard the strange sounds of what he had come to think of as machine language. Dastun and Norman gripped his hands and pulled him all the way out.

"What’s happening?" Dastun demanded.

"It was some kind of robot," Roger answered. "It may be the reason the area collapsed in the first place." He peered into the hole anxiously. He could still see light, which was a promising sign, but there was no sign of Dorothy. If he strained his ears, he could swear that he still heard the machine language, but he didn’t know what it meant.

Suddenly the android appeared at the bottom and began climbing up the rope calmly. "Miss Dorothy!" Norman hurried to help her.

"What was it?" Roger asked.

"That was a digger. It doesn’t belong to anyone," she answered. "I told it that the cavern and tunnels had caused a collapse and that we came to investigate it. It does not like humans."

"If it doesn’t belong to anyone, how is it still operating?" Dastun wondered.

"Its power supply is good for almost 500 years," Norman answered. "At least, it is if it's a digger of the type I have worked on." At Dastun and Roger's questioning look, he explained, "It's a machine made for tunneling. It has four sets of drills, at front, back, and a set on each side. Each set has about a 180-degree range of motion so it can tunnel from almost any position at any angle." He warmed to the subject, "The drills are diamond-tipped so they go through just about anything, and they have a set of eight retractable claws for stabilization under any circumstances. It's covered in heavy armor, so a collapse does it no harm, it just digs itself back out again. Quite a useful robot, it's been used in several rescues. The tunnel it makes isn't huge by any means, there are other machines used for widening and smoothing, but it's big enough for even the largest human to crawl through."

"Yes, thank you Norman," Roger hastily interrupted him before he could say any more. "Did it tell you anything else?"

"Yes." Dorothy turned and started to walk back to the car.

"Dorothy, wait!" When she ignored him, Roger shrugged and followed.

Once they were safely underway in the Griffon, Dorothy explained, "The digger is a voice command model but I was uncertain of the extent of its vocabulary and I didn’t want to take the chance that it would hear us talking about it. There is something very wrong with it, and I don’t know how to shut it down. It should probably be destroyed. The problem is, as Norman explained, that a digger’s metal shell is designed to withstand a great deal of pressure, so an explosion of sufficient power to demolish it would take all of the street and a great many of the buildings down with it. I offered to collapse the tunnel to close off the access instead."

"Under the circumstances, that seems to be the most sensible thing," Dastun nodded.

"There is something wrong, though," Dorothy insisted. "It seemed to think it would be an acceptable solution, but..." her voice trailed off.

"What is troubling you, Miss Dorothy?" Norman asked gently, making a cut-off sign out of her field of view to an impatient Roger.

"It’s a very strange thing, Norman," she told him. "If that machine was a human, I would have said that it was hiding something."

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