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A popular Internet video made the rounds of a robot designed in a lab at MIT. The device resembled a dog and behaved in rudimentary doggy fashion, obeying simple commands. The researcher had even programmed the third- or fourth-generation model to play fetch. The Internet lost its collective mind when a scientist, seeking to demonstrate the folly of anthropomorphism, kicked Fido robot over. The robot struggled to right itself and the researcher kept knocking it down. Iteration six saw the robot become sleeker, faster, less clumsy. Model Six righted itself immediately and exhibited defensive postures and behaviors. Model Six varied its locomotion from stealthy crawling to sudden bursts of speed. Model Six successfully manipulated handles and doorknobs. Viewer sympathy melted into distinct unease. Cute, inept robots engender sympathy; the uncanny valley isn’t a trip people are willing to take.

I dwelled on that video while escaping the Jeffers Project underground.

Lionel didn’t comment when I dragged myself into the daylight, covered in blood and grime, clothes tattered. I had bruises, contusions, and a shallow laceration across my shoulders. He rang Bellow and told him that we were fine and headed home. I’d slumped in the back, indulging in a bit of self-pity. Continuing my resentful thoughts about the MIT robot program, I recalled several of the corporations involved with the Jeffers Project were defense contractors. I contemplated that and the plethora of occult graffiti. I contemplated generators chugging in the depths of the earth even though public documents asserted the joint was shuttered until further notice. The supercollider blueprints might not even be fully updated. Access tunnels stitched the underground, possibly to a heart or central hub, hidden below and clandestinely powering sectors of the structure. Who? Why? Those girls at the Black Powder Tavern weren’t lying when they said it was common knowledge that strange things were done by night at ye old Jeffers Project.

“So.” Lionel stared at the road. “What did we learn about listening to Uncle Lionel?”

“Nothing that’ll stick. I feel poorly.” My teeth chattered as I struggled into dry clothing.

“But it was totally worth it. Right?”

“Totally,” I said, stifling a moan. The moan was less in response to my considerable physical discomfort and more in regard to how much the physical discomfort was going to cost me. More than I assumed, was how much.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I jolted from a doze. Instead of Whiro or Dad or flaming wildlife as was usually the case, Meg alighted from a golden cloud and drifted toward me upon voluminous wings of white and black. She was gloriously, radiantly naked except for strategic strands of hair and artful shadows. We embraced. Her sweet lips were warm upon mine—

The SUV frame shifted again. Gravity pressed me into my seat as the vehicle skated around a curve in excess of posted advisories.

“That streak of returning pristine cars to the rental agency?” Lionel glanced back. He wore his shooting glasses.

Dregs of light bled into the black bulk of woodland. Another vehicle trailed ours. Tough to discern the make or model at this twilit distance, only that it had to be moving fast because so were we. It hung there, a glimmering smear of headlights haunting the opposite end of a straight stretch, then gone as we swung behind a hill and climbed around a battered station wagon that seemed to be sitting still in comparison.