CHAPTER NINE — THE SECOND MACHINE
Just after midnight, Ethan heard the garage door opening.
He had stayed awake because Oliver had not come down for dinner and because several of the equipment crates remained in the workshop.
Ethan crossed the kitchen and looked through the side window.
Oliver stood at the garage entrance with a wheeled cart.
He had stacked two black cases on it and was guiding the load toward his car.
Ethan opened the back door.
“Leaving without saying goodbye?”
Oliver spun around.
“I don’t owe you an explanation for moving my property.”
“I won’t stop you taking anything you can identify as yours.”
“That’s generous.”
“But we need an independent inventory of the shared equipment first.”
Oliver pointed at the garage.
“My company purchased most of this.
”
“Then show me the receipts.”
“I will send them from my office.”
“Before you leave, not after.”
Oliver stepped away from the cart.
For several seconds, he looked as though he might push past Ethan.
Then he laughed bitterly.
“You have no idea how expensive this has become.”
“Tell me.”
“I promised investors a working autonomous robot.”
“Did it work?”
“Sometimes.”
“What happened Thursday?”
Oliver looked toward the dark pool.
“It drifted.”
“Why?”
“The navigation system misread the depth markers.”
“Then why did you tell Nell to stay silent?”
“Because one poor test can destroy confidence.”
“And why would you make her responsible for it?”
Oliver’s mouth tightened.
“I shouldn’t have.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Fine. It was wrong.”
He gestured at the cart.
“Will you let me go now?”
A light appeared upstairs in the house next door.
Carol had been watching.
She stepped outside in her slippers and called through the fence.
“Tell him about the second machine.”
Oliver froze.
Ethan turned.
“What second machine?”
Carol opened the gate and approached with Nell behind her.
“Nell found another controller at my house,” Carol said.
“It isn’t hers.”
Nell held up a small black transmitter with an orange switch.
“Oliver left it in my grandmother’s shed yesterday.”
Oliver’s expression turned hard.
“That belongs to me.”
“Then why was it in Carol’s shed?” Ethan asked.
Oliver looked at Carol.
“You invited me there.”
“I invited you to talk about Nell,” Carol replied.
“I did not invite you to hide equipment.”
Ethan held out his hand for the controller.
Nell gave it to him reluctantly.
There was a printed label on the back showing the same serial number as the orange prototype on Oliver’s demonstration sheet.
But the switch was marked REMOTE OVERRIDE.
“Is this what changed the machine’s course Thursday?” Ethan asked.
Oliver said nothing.
“You could operate it even when Nell thought she was in control?”
“It’s a standard engineering safety feature.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
“She wasn’t authorized to test the machine.”
Nell spoke from behind Carol.
“Then why did you watch it move toward the drain without stopping it?”
Oliver turned his head sharply.
“What?”
“I looked up when it started moving by itself,” Nell said.
“I saw you at the upstairs window.”
Ethan remembered Carol’s glance toward that same window when she dumped the waste.
The memory made his stomach tighten.
“Were you testing the override?” he asked.
Oliver looked away.
“We were testing the response system.”
“With a teenager standing beside the pool?”
“The robot is small.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
Oliver raised his voice.
“I was demonstrating an emergency intervention!”
“To whom?”
Silence followed.
“To the investors?” Ethan asked.
Oliver rubbed his face.
“I needed a convincing proof that the system could correct a human operator’s mistake.”
Nell stared at him.
“You made it look as if I lost control.”
Oliver said nothing.
“You made me think I was the problem,” Nell continued.
“I practiced until midnight because I thought I had built the controller wrong.”
Carol put a hand on her shoulder.
“That’s enough,” Ethan said to Oliver.
“You’re staying away from the children.”
“You can’t order me around.”
“I can ask you to leave my property.”
Oliver looked at the controller in Ethan’s hand, then at the cases on the cart.
“Keep it,” he said.
“I don’t care anymore.”
He loaded the cases into his trunk and drove off.
Ethan watched the taillights vanish beyond the intersection.
Nell exhaled slowly.
“What happens now?”
“Now we find out what all these machines actually do,” Ethan said.
“But this time, we do it with everyone watching and nobody pretending it’s a secret.”
