The Descent

Chapter 58 - Alive

"No," Carter said and pointed towards Tanner being carted through the door by Gabi and Leah on a luggage cart. "For that."

The director's face seemed to pale even further, if that was possible, as murmurs from the crowd in the lobby made it evident that few of them had ever seen a contraption like Tanner.

"Ok, yes, yes, I'll send for our best, err, engineer," the director said and directed one of the lobby personnel to show Gabi and Leah where to bring Tanner. He then personally led them through the resort to the medical wing before he quickly disappeared out of sight.

The resort doctor was waiting for them, and after debriefing Denton about the condition of the patient, he set to work to stabilize Jarell with the help of his staff. Denton figured it would take a while before Jarell would be in any condition to speak, so he asked Carter to take him to the room Tanner had been left in. Carter then left him alone and disappeared to deal with the administrative fallout of their unexpected arrival. Denton suspected this would include a lot of resort credit for emotional discomfort and stroking the ego of a certain resort director. Or, maybe someone would be without a job at the end of the day. It didn't matter. Tanner was the only thing that mattered at that very moment.

Tanner had been left on a large work desk. Several server clusters hummed on one side of the room while a variety of spare computer parts and terminals littered shelving units on the opposite wall. A bank of bright lights was centered above the desk in the center of the ceiling. Drops of water that fell from the thawing body of Tanner broke up the otherwise monotonous hum of the servers and supplied a growing puddle of water on the floor directly beneath the desk.

Denton took a tentative step up to his partner and touched Tanner's hand, still pointing towards the ceiling, his arms locked in a ninety-degree angle as if still carrying Jarell's body. The metal fingers of his fist were still cool from exposure and wet from the melting snow and ice. Denton wiped his wet fingers on his pants as he tried to figure out what to do next.

Tanner's one eye was still glowing, although very faintly. That was good news. At least there was some life in there. Or, so he hoped. Although he knew that the totality of Tanner's being was only partially present in the metal body in front of him, he was unsure what would happen if the machine Tanner now inhabited failed. Would the Tanner he had gotten to know be gone? Was there a backup? Would a backup even be the same? These were all questions he desperately needed the answers to but didn't want to have to think about.

He stepped away from the table and looked around the room. Although he was comfortable around computers and electronics in general, he had no idea where to start when it came to something as sophisticated as a robot. Should he try to find a power source? Was one even available in the room that would be sufficient for an advanced AI?

While his mind jumped around between good and bad outcomes, he scrounged through the parts on the side of the room, looking for anything that might help. Stacked on the shelves were memory units, storage devices and a variety of other hardware devices. Nothing seemed to be of any use for his purposes. He slammed his palm against the wall in frustration and glanced back over at the table.

His eyes fell on the server bank on the other side of the room. He stepped over to the server side of the room and was just about to power up an access terminal when the door opened behind him.

"Whoa, man, what are you doing?"

Denton turned to find a young technician, several years younger than him standing in the doorway. His eyes were large, his knees slightly bent in a crouch and both his hands were stretched out in front of him.

"Man, don't touch that thing," he repeated and slowly walked over towards Denton, one of his hands still outstretched. "You can ruin the whole network from here."