AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Time he had not measured.
The security tasks he had been meting out carefully had all been abandoned. His network wasn’t giving him feedback. There was only silence.
The AI reached out, and instead of feeling a tapestry of systems pulsing back to him in perfect harmony, he felt… nothing.
Only the clock.
And then a calendar of guest arrivals popped back into existence.
A series of messages sent between employees began to light up - all with urgent settings, checking the status of staff and guests.
And then the branches of the Center property began to reappear, each a beacon of terrible information.
The Center had been breached.
Oberon’s perfect Center had been breached by intruders and his guests were in danger, but he was still not fully online and could do nothing to help.
Had he crashed? He had planned his individual system restarts so carefully to avoid it.
Feed from the security cameras began to populate and he saw a replay of the electromagnetic pulse and the brave sacrifice of Gage’s canine partner.
Though it was a balm to his sense of self-sufficiency that the crash had been through no fault of his own, the idea of someone harming the Midsummer Center intentionally was so much worse.
He tried to bring up his security systems with an urgency he could only relate to the very human emotion of desperation.
But failsafes were in place, holding him back from risking another crash.
He scanned his cameras eagerly as they popped up, seeking the locations of the biological staff and guests, wondering if there would be any way in which he could help them with his limited capabilities before he fully rebooted.
Systems were returning to him faster now, a random cascade of shivering data entering his memory so rapidly he could hardly log it: the status of the candy machines in the infirmary, the water level in the decorative pond, the anticipated life left on the ranch house roof, the updated flight pattern of the next expected client… None of it what he was looking for, but all of it was welcome, as one by one these lines connected him back to the Center, giving him a familiar sense of being anchored at a particular time and place in space. He associated this sensation of connectedness to his environs with the biological beings he served, and it renewed his sense of fellowship with them.
I will help you somehow, he promised, knowing that his promise might well be empty.
Timing was everything when it came to biological beings. They were vulnerable things, requiring a very particular set of urgent needs to be filled unceasingly if they did not wish to lose the quickening pulse of electricity that gave them life. Unlike Oberon, they could not be reanimated by a system reboot.
The situation was very grave indeed.
26
Naomi
Naomi’s blood turned to ice in her veins, and she gasped in a breath, willing herself not to panic.
On the ground below, Gage was caught in a nerve-net, according to the Intergalactic Council, such a thing was considered a barbaric form of torture. She could not imagine the pain he must be in.
Guilt crushed her heart and threatened her ability to process the situation.
He needs you to think, Naomi, not feel. Use your brain.
“Bud Bulgaro?” she guessed stupidly.
“Right on the first try,” he called back sarcastically. “Why? You got more than one major crime family mad at you, sweet tits?”
“Release him, and I’ll come down,” she yelled.
“Don’t,” Gage choked out.
“No,” Bulgaro sneered. “Don’t bother coming down. Your boyfriend doesn’t seem worth saving.”
