Squonk

Kilroy jumped up from his stool and ran to the chalkboard, nearly knocking over Dr. Sone in his hurry. Furiously, he wrote the end of a complicated equation with the last nub of chalk clutched tightly in his hand. As he stepped back from his work, the two other colleagues crowded him, staring at the white writing. Dr. Sone ignored them all and continued to mold a metallic polymer, kneading it with her hands and staring into space. A small smile crept over her delicate features as she heard the breathing of the students behind her grow hushed and ragged.

“See! There! There!” exclaimed Kilroy, too excited to say more than one word at a time. The young man to his left started dancing.

“Kilroy, my boy, you’ve solved it! You’ve completed the last calculation!” he shouted, as he hugged the grinning Kilroy.

The splendor of it all lay in the meaning behind the strange markings on the green board. It was the last step in the mathematical and physical planning behind the creation of robotic body armor. The idea was still in the works, but the three graduate students and their advisor, Dr. Sone, were making significant progress in the physics behind the outer shell of such technology.

The year was 2123, but life was not so different than it had been for the last century. Technology had continued to boom and the number of corporations all over the world grew, though some were specific in maintaining a monopoly. Modren Technologies was just one of at least fifty international organizations that had gained funding from large corporations in order to conduct research and eventually produce new types of technological advancements. To save money, the organizations hired graduate students as interns, and used them in all departments. Kilroy was one of three students from the prestigious MIT University, all of whom were chosen by their mathematic brilliance and intuitive foresight, who worked in Quad 19 sector 5 designing the exterior of what Modren Technologies hoped would be the world’s greatest robotic advancement since the invention of the first computer nearly two hundred years ago.

Kilroy was overwhelmed with the social encounters his friends exposed him to later that afternoon. They had all gone to an O₂ & N₂O bar, where Kilroy had slipped away after the first hour. He returned home, somehow feeling upset, despite his success with the crucial equation. The smell of the three-room apartment was still remiscent of new-base type Clorox the cleaning-assistant liked to use. He could never remember the name. Sitting down in his favorite chair, his nose twitched at the heavy fragrance of citric acid. He was reminded of the physical and chemical properties of the substance, which helpfully blocked out the hollow feeling in his chest.

The room was cold, and the dome-like window that extended out into the street was covered with frost. Kilroy sighed, realizing that he could hear himself breathing in the dead silence of the apartment. He fingered the metallic model in the pocket of his windbreaker. He took it out to examine its features. Dr. Sone was a genius at sculpture, though it was a talent that she could never allow her colleagues to know about. Besides, her models of robotic creations were not considered particularly artistic, though Kilroy thought the expression on this tiny robot’s face was fantastic. She was used for her mathematical talent at Modren Technologies.

Kilroy sighed. Just the way he and his fellow grad students were used because they did not have to be paid. The government covered student expenses because of the aggressive Stotti campaign that placed enormous emphasis on learning. Kilroy supposed that this was a great benefit to him, but it also left him out in the cold when he decided finally to get his degree. Holding his head in his hands, he turned his thoughts to the calculations he and his colleagues had been working on.

They were standing in a circle around the head manager for this particular phase of construction. Kilroy had been there since 0600, when the call for the meeting had first gone out. It was 0636 now, and it looked like everyone had arrived. The middle-aged woman, Rosine, in the center of the circle of engineers, technicians, mechanics, and mathematics began to speak. The speech was dull; merely a status report that she was required to give everyone once the organization proceeded to another step in the creation process.

A small man beside Kilroy murmured the catch phrase of Modren Technologies simultaneous with the head manager; “That’s what we’re here for; advancing technologies since 2002.”

The team dispersed to their separate wings of the building to await their next assignments. The minds behind Modren Technology didn’t like everyone to know exactly what their new project was, so all they ever knew was what their individual job was. Except the mechanics. It was their task to assemble the final product, and he identified them by the soft excitement that covered their face. They wore superior smiles as they lingered together when the rest of the team left the conference room. Kilroy hung back as well, pretending to want to ask the manager a question, but he overestimated her attention to mere mathematicians. She ignored him and led the four mechanics into a side room that had escaped Kilroy’s notice. He ducked behind a cart of scrap metal, hoping to hide, but a sub-manager called Ganix was watching him.

“Kilroy?” the older man asked curiously, as if he couldn’t quite believe who was crouching behind the cart. Kilroy sighed.

“Yes, sir?” he answered respectfully, already planning how to bluff his way out. Unfortunately, his mind was preoccupied on the line of technicians leaving the room through double doors at the far end of the conference room. He barely heard Ganix’s next words, “...we’ll need it.”

Kilroy snapped back to reality and hastily agreed to whatever the man had said. He hoped it was something better than going to the superiors.

“You’re a lad. Now, just take this cart through those doors and down that hall. There’s no one to follow anymore, but just turn left at the Bunt corner, and then walk past the yellow force field until you reach the third security checkpoint. Tell Teddy the password and he’ll lead you to a hidden door three levels down. Now, hurry, because Rosine will need those materials soon.” Ganix patted Kilroy on the back, who had found the instructions slightly confusing.

“The security in here is batty,” he muttered to himself as he pushed the cart of metal—parts, he guessed they were—through the double doors. Just as he was wondering which way to turn—for he was now facing the other wall of a long corridor—the blank wall before him began to move. A door opened. Rosine yelled at Kilroy to get inside with the cart.

Happy to escape the spatial directions, Kilroy retreated to a corner of the laboratory room. In the center was medical type equipment, an operating table, and three very serious looking mechanics. It appeared they were waiting anxiously for someone to enter the room through a side door, one that led outside the building. Kilroy looked around the room, growing more and more amazed at the primitive technological machines that lay covered in dust along the edges of the huge room.

Real sunlight diffused through the room as the side door opened and three men entered. Kilroy realized what the room was—a storage building. He wondered if perhaps this was what the original Modren Technologies building had been built off of. The sudden light disappeared, and Kilroy could make out the faces of the men who had entered. Two were large and forboding, apparently security guards, and the other stood between them, small and pathetic. It was a homeless man. In fact, Kilroy was familiar with the man, from passing his makeshift home in the park nearly a dozen times every week. Everyone was supposed to be provided for under the government nowadays, but either people slipped through the cracks or the administration wasn’t as effective as it made itself out to be.

The mechanics began to talk amongst themselves as the guards led the slow-moving man to a fancy machine. Kilroy watched in fascination as the man was hooked up to the medical equipment and apparently tested. Footsteps approached him, and Kilroy jumped, only to see Ganix again. He was staring at the procedure when he said, “Do you know what this is, boy?”

Kilroy shook his head and answered, “No,” with a sort of breathless and wondering air. They kept their eye on the homeless man as the other technicians started moving around again, preparing equipment and moving the operating table. The poor victim looked inhuman, entirely dirty and with an expression of resignation on his face. Kilroy was struck by the scene before him, and a code of ethics so little followed in that technological world.

“Are...are they going to use him in an experiment?” he asked the older man, trying to keep his voice level and quiet. Ganix shook his head.

“Not any experiment. The experiment, Kilroy. That man there is going to be incorporated into Modren’s newest advance, a technology that we are only able to create thanks to your formula!” His voice still hushed, the man was extremely excited, and Kilroy began to feel sick. The technicians took the arms of the homeless man and led him over to the operating table. The man’s eyes were hollow and as he turned his face to the shadows, where Kilroy stood, the young man was racked with a horrid feeling of responsibility.

“No!” he yelled before he could think. Everyone in the room froze, and Ganix’s grin faded. He backed further into the shadows and left Kilroy alone to be the focus of attention when every eye in the room turned to look at him. The head manager stood aside, her mouth screwed up angrily. Kilroy turned to her to plead his case.

“You can’t do this; it’s wrong,” his voice echoed in the empty rafters that extended far into shadow above.

“He volunteered,” answered Rosine tightly, clearly lying. Kilroy felt desperate, so he groped for an alternative.

“Do you really want someone inexperienced in the field of robotics to take on such an important assignment?” He had begun to beg, and surprised himself at his sympathy towards the homeless man he didn’t even know personally.

Rosine twisted her frown into a grimace, “And what would you, a veteran technician, suggest we do?” Her silky voice dripped with icy sarcasm. Kilroy’s knees nearly gave out, as he realized what she was suggesting. But another glance at the homeless man convinced him to dare.

“I’ll do it.” A collective gasp covered the silence that followed his statement. Though Kilroy had to force the words from his throat, they flowed off his tongue easily. Behind him, Ganix gaped in surprise at the foolish boy. He gasped, “Do you know what you’re agreeing to, Kilroy?” This saved the technicians from having to ask his name, and nearly caused Kilroy to fall down. No, he had no idea to what he had just agreed, but it was all the more reason to save the homeless man from that fate. His heart beating through his Modren uniform, he thought how easy it would be to just run away, run back through that door and give up playing the hero. But he said nothing.