Chapter 16

86 8 1
                                    


"We'd better get back to the apartment, sir," Tiberius said.

I walked around the trees on the edge of the clearing looking for more clues, with no luck.

"Why? What's the hurry?" I asked.

"If the Corrupt Cops did this, then an attack on the apartment is imminent."

"I don't understand. Why is that?"

"They call it sweeping. They take out a band in one swoop, usually stealing or destroying all their equipment. Then they spray paint their initials on the wall, like they did on that tree there.

"They might have already attacked the apartment. We should get back as soon as possible so we can warn them," he said.

It didn't seem likely that I would find more clues anyway, so I agreed. He bolted out of the clearing and walked briskly through the park. I had to jog to catch up.

I was surprised how concerned he was about the safety of his human masters. Only minutes before he was fuming about the injustice of humans, and now he was sprinting to save the ones who owned him.

I wanted to warn the Time Travelers about the attack but I was also eager to get back so I could start hunting down my machine as soon as possible. If another band took my machine, I would get it back from them, no matter how formidable they might be. I was determined to get back to 1949.

We were about halfway back, turning at an intersection, when the advertisements on all the skyscrapers along the street disappeared. The expanses of colored glass were suddenly empty. It looked strange even to me, and I had only been in 2099 for a few days. The people walking on the sidewalk gasped, and some of them stopped. Their surprised chatter replaced the ambient rock music of the advertisements that had saturated the street moments before.

"All the advertisements turned off," I said, more to myself than to Tiberius. Tiberius made no sign that he even noticed it. We weaved through the increasing number of people stopped to stare up at the empty skyscrapers.

We went another few blocks and I assumed that there was a malfunction or a power outage. The weather was growing worse and it looked like it might rain. The clouds in the sky were darkening to a deeper gray.

Then, on as many massive screens as could fit on the sides of all the buildings, Cold Steel appeared. The sight of his face repeated a thousand times on the buildings up and down the street was even stranger than the emptiness left by the advertisements; it gave me goosebumps.

The crowd gasped when his face appeared, with its youthful, lopsided smile. There were even a few shrieks, and I saw some men and women running through the otherwise motionless, awed crowd.

I stopped to look at the screen nearest me. Tiberius ran forward a few yards but when he noticed I was no longer alongside him he stopped too. A robot walking his master's fog stopped, and the fog walked in circles around him impatiently. A blue car braked in the middle of the street, and its driver put down the window and stuck his head out to watch.

Cold Steel's lips moved but there was no sound. Then he stopped and his smile faded, replaced by an expression of annoyance. The sound returned with a loud click and he smiled again. He waved at the crowd, the gesture repeated a thousand times on all the screens, and the dumber portion of the crowd waved back.

"My apologies for the technological difficulties," he said. "A takeover of the advertising screens of this magnitude is unprecedented." He widened his smile as if he were proud of this fact.

He cleared his throat and rested his palms on the table in front of him warmly. The street was silent as everyone waited to hear what he had to say.

Further Into The Future!Where stories live. Discover now