Unpopular Science

Chapter 18

The blue phone did not ring this time. Instead, a blue phone icon popped up on the crystal-clear screen below Dr. Smith’s desk, telling him he had an incoming transmission from the field. Namely from Mark Howard, who was chaperoning Remo on board the chartered jet, just to make sure the Reigning Master didn’t go wandering off somewhere.

Mark Howard gave him a succinct report as they were driving back to the airport, giving Smith time to perform some research before they called in from the chartered aircraft for an in-depth report.

“They claim they’re fine,” Mark said. “But they don’t look fine.”

“We cleaned up real nice,” Remo insisted. “What were those things we went up against there? Smitty, you have any idea?”

“Offense/defensive robotics,” Smith replied, his fingers snapping over the keyboard. “None of the designs you mention are surprising.”

“Oh, yeah? I was surprised,” Remo said. “What about that Mr. U.? What’s the deal with him?”

“Mobile Intrusion, Termination and Reconnaissance Unit,” Smith said. “Nothing more than an autonomous weapons system. The prototype was stolen from a DOE-funded lab in Oregon in 2003. He was said to have been fitted with a metal skull to house the electronics and the DOE was considering using the head in the actual models for its psychological impact. The design was proven substandard in battlefield mobility trials and the project was shelved before the theft even occurred.”

“I got news for you—it worked well enough,” Remo said. “Running on a smooth surface, anyway. What about the dog and the big spider?”

“Both designs that have been tested within the United States. You’ve seen mechanical spiders yourself. It is the insects that interest me most,” Smith said. “They exhibited sophisticated insect flight replication technology, down to replicating the structure of the wing muscles. One pair of wings is powered by a contracting capillary group replicating the top-to-bottom thoracic muscle set, another by an end-to-end muscle group, also on the thorax. It’s better than what the U.S. had developed thus far.”

“But do they have the little Gee-DAMS inside?” Remo asked.

“They don’t,” Howard said. “I’ve dissected three of them. These are remote-controlled devices with no Gee-DAM chips. I’ll bet there was a heat-sensitive control device in the vicinity. Once it locked on to its targets, Remo and Chiun, it simply relayed flight patterns to the swarm. Inefficient, but there were so many of them they nearly succeeded in killing them.”

“So we did not get the Gee-DAMS,” Smith intoned unhappily.

“Listen, Smitty, there’s something more important we need to talk about. What the hell was it that Cote was using to power up all this stuff? That’s what worries me the most.”

“And I” added Chiun.

“I agree. We’ll be looking into that aspect of it. It’s as mysterious to me as to you,” Smith admitted. “Especially because it seems to have been a side effect. Remo, you’re convinced Cote did not even know what he was doing?”

“He was clueless. As soon as the figurines unplugged themselves from the wall sockets, the bad feeling went away. If he knew he was doing it, he would never have let me chat him up while I regained my strength. Can you send in some pocket-protector types to dismantle the place and figure it out?”

Smith pursed his lips. “That’s impossible. The villa ceased to exist within minutes of your last report. The fire department says the entire structure burned to the ground, even the stone. The place must have been rigged with thermite charges.”

There was a moment of silence. “Nope,” Remo said. “Otherwise it would have happened a lot sooner than that. I’ll bet one of those animatronics was programmed or remote controlled to set those charges. Whatever, it’s just what Cote would have wanted—a big blast of an ending.”

“Who ran the remote controls?” Smith demanded.

“Whoever is really behind this thing,” Remo said. “It wasn’t Cote the cartoon supervillain. Somebody who was tied into the security system at the Cote house and spoke like a German.”

“Any indication who it was, though?”

“Some super-duper-villain, I guess,” Remo said.

In the privacy of his office, Smith closed his eyes, imaging he felt true physical pain. What he wouldn’t give to have a truly professional-acting enforcement arm.

“Somebody who likes robots,” Remo added helpfully. “He likes them so much he dredged up one of them that was a hundred years old.”

Smith almost allowed that one to pass by, like much of what Remo said, but somewhere a light glowed in his head. “What are you talking about?”

“You know. Ironhand.”

“That news report from El Paso was in one of the data feeds you sent over,” Mark Howard explained. “I was asking Chiun if he remembered reading the books.”

“Because I am so very old, you see,” Chiun announced loudly.

“Ironhand was fiction, Remo,” Smith explained. “Not according to the letter. The old man said his father saw the real Ironhand at a World’s Fair.”

“A century ago,” Mark Howard said. “So?”

“There were a number of Victorian-era fakes like Ironhand,” Smith said. “They were sort of a rage for a while. Some were electromechanical, some were steam powered. Remember Metropolis?”

“I’m sure Superman fought robots,” Remo said, “and that was later than Victorian era, wasn’t it?”

“The silent-era film, Metropolis in 1919,” Smith said. “Regardless, there were many fake robots before anyone created anything like a true automaton,” Smith insisted. “Ironhand was turned into pulp fiction.”

“Worth checking out, though,” Remo said.

“Do not heed his ramblings. Emperor,” Chiun called. Smith could picture him sitting far away from Mark and Remo, his eyes locked on the wing out the window. “He is as delusional as the poor hermit who died alone in the deserts of Newer Mexico.”

“What’s the harm in looking?” Remo asked.

“Remo, think about it,” Smith said. “Ironhand was supposed to be more than seven feet tall and made out of steel. Not a likely configuration if you want to get into a highly secure military base, is it?”

“Why not? One of them was good enough to work for Cote. Chiun, cough up the iron robot head.”

“It is of no consequence,” Chiun answered dismissively.

“Chiun! Give me the effing head!”

There was a muttering, then Smith heard the sound of something hard hitting something else hard.

“What was that?” Smith asked.

“It’s a robot head, Smitty,” Remo said. “It was made of iron, by a blacksmith, and I bet that makes it pretty damn old.”

“Mark?” Smith asked.

“Mark?” Remo added.

“It is an iron skull. Dr. Smith,” Mark Howard reported. “It looks like a doll’s head.”

“It tried to kill us.”

‘We’ll look into it,” Smith said dismissively. “Mark, send me some photos and specifications.”

Remo sulked. Nobody cared, but that was okay because he was sulking for his own benefit, not theirs.

Mark Howard didn’t seem to notice that Remo was no longer a part of the conversation until he cut the connection with Dr. Smith.

“Well, we’re going back to Folcroft while we figure out the iron head. What’s the matter with you?”

“Only that I am so old as to be on death’s door,” bemoaned Chiun, who was also sulking, but without a good reason. He was miffed Remo made him give up his iron robot head.

“He was talking to me,” Remo said.

“Yes, it is just as well that I should be ignored.”

“Okay, fine.”

“If I see any icebergs below us, I shall ask the pilot to descend so that you may drop me off.”

“Sounds good,” Remo said. “Junior, look something up for me, will you?”

“In the dictionary?”

“The internet. Wherever it is you’re always going to look things up.”

“I’m always going everywhere to look things up, and the last time I looked something up for you I got my behind in a sling with Dr. Smith,” Mark said. “What in particular are you interested in knowing about?”

“Ironhand.”

There was a loud snort.

“I thought we agreed you were going to stay quiet,” Remo accused.

“That was my death rattle,” Chiun retorted.

“Keep it to yourself. Go, Junior.”

Junior glared at him. “You know, Remo, most eight-year-olds can look up stuff on the internet these days.”

“There are no eight-year-olds on this flight, so it’s up to you.”

“I could show you some computer basics,” Mark insisted.

“Honestly, do you want me touching your computer?”

Mark couldn’t help but agree that he did not. His fingers flew and he rotated his computer to show Remo what happened.

“What’s a Google?” Remo asked.

“Search engine. See this. It knows of 346 pages on the World Wide Web that make mention of the word ‘Ironhand.’ Some of them look like they’re rock band websites. This one’s porn. This is porn. Porn, porn, porn. But here’s some that look like they’re about the robot from the 1904 World’s Fair and the pulp fiction books—maybe a third of them.”

“That many?”

“Sure. This one looks promising.”

Mark clicked, and his computer screen filled with a new window displaying a busty nude woman in an extraordinarily lewd posture who mewled, “I want to feel that iron hand of yours.”

“She’s from 1904?” Remo asked.

“Sorry,” Mark said, clicking the window closed in a hurry. “I guess that one was porn, too.” He tried another link and said, “Okay, here we go.”

Remo saw a small line drawing of a crude metal head, alongside a list of book titles. Ironhand Defeats the Savages, Ironhand and the City of Gold, Ironhand’s Polar Quest.

“The books’s copyrights are expired, so they have them online now for anybody to read,” Mark explained.

“Criminy, there’s almost a hundred and forty of them.”

“Trash,” Chiun interjected.

“All written between 1902 and 1931. They must have been mass producing these suckers,” Mark noted.

“Penny-a-word hacks can be prolific.”

‘This is not what I want,” Remo interrupted. “Show me about the real Ironhand.”

Mark moved to a small table of contents and brought up a page of the same website, this one dedicated to the Ironhand exposition at the 1904 World’s Fair. There was a photograph of the robot standing under a banner proclaiming him to be The Amazing Electro-Mechanical Man. A somber man stood next to him in a suit and vest, smoking a pipe. The caption read, “Ironhand wowed visitors to the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, MO, where his inventor, Archibald Slate, offered a hundred-dollar reward to any man who could prove Ironhand was a fake. The hundred-dollar prize was never claimed.”

Under the caption was an extended description of the fair and the Ironhand bag of tricks, which included walking, talking and shooting a rifle. Remo read all the way down to the bottom and noticed a link called “The Ironhand Rumor Mill.”

Mark Howard was on a trip to the washroom, so Remo carefully moved his finger across the flat place on the computer that moved the little blinking doohickey on the screen, then tapped the clicking thingamajig.

The computer, to his surprise, did not disintegrate, detonate or go black. It showed him, of all things, a page called “The Ironhand Rumor Mill.”

“I’m on to something,” he told Mark, who looked alarmed when he saw Remo had touched the computer. “Don’t worry, it’s fine. Look. Ironhand’s participation in a U.S. geological survey of Alaska and the Arctic. Ironhand’s career in the U.S. Army. Ironhand fights in Mexico and in World War One. These are reprints from newspaper articles from the nineteen-zeros and the nineteen-teens.”

“They sound like they’re taken right from the books,” Mark noted.

“Look at how many,” Remo said. “This guy who collects them says Ironhand sightings were a phenomenon, like UFO sightings.”

“And just as believable,” Mark insisted.

“Well, for years the common folks saw the B-l bomber and called it a UFO. Finally we fessed up and said yeah okay we’ve got this really-bizarre looking jet bomber.”

“The UFO sightings didn’t stop,” Mark pointed out.

“But those who saw it were right all along, weren’t they?” Remo insisted.

“They said they saw an unidentified flying object. They said they saw something amazing and new in the sky. They were right. Maybe the Ironhand sightings were like that.”

Mark considered it then shook his head. “I do not seriously believe there was any sort of a mechanical man walking around a hundred years ago that could do more than walk and wave his hand,” he insisted.

“Why?”

“We can barely do that with today’s robotics.”

“Every generation assumes it possesses the epitome of mankind’s learning, huh. Little Father?”

Chiun turned his head away from the wing, smiling broadly. “That is so, Remo. You have been listening!”

“Yeah, kinda. Repetition is everything. I still know the words to ‘You Light Up My Life,’ too, even though I don’t want to. Chiun, what’s the name of the stone dog-faced boy in the attic of the Master’s House. Is it the Oracle of Anubis?”

Chiun’s smile was enormous. “Yes! I have not even thought of it in years and yet you have found the perfect example. I am proud of you, Remo!”

“You’re gonna hurt your face if you keep doing that, Little Father,” Remo warned. “So the Oracle of Anubis is really old. It’s a statue of a guy, life-size, made of rock, and he has a face like a greyhound or some other skinny dog. The oracle was made for the public library in Alexandria, Virginia.”

“Alexandria, Egypt. The library of Alexander the Great,” Chiun corrected.

“Yeah. Anyway, it’s old.”

Mark Howard was speechless.

“And when the library was torn down or fell down or whatever, the oracle was removed.”

“And it survives to this day?” Mark asked. “You’ve seen it?”

Remo blinked. “Well, yeah. Actually, I own it. It’s in a box in the attic, in Sinanju. But what is important is this. Junior—it’s an effing robot. What’s more, it’s an effing vending machine! You put in a coin and it answers your question by pointing its finger at the answers on the stone tablet in front of it. I know it’s a cheap carnival trick by today’s standards, but think what it must have been like hundreds of years ago.”

“Thousands,” Chiun corrected.

“Thousands of years go,” Remo continued, on a roll. “And I don’t mean what it was like to use it, I mean what it was like to invent it. He had to be some kind of a genius to think of that stuff considering he never saw anything like it before.”

Mark nodded. “No frame of reference. I see your point.”

“So why couldn’t somebody one hundred years ago have come up with a robot that could do genuinely amazing things? If he was brilliant enough?”

Remo tapped the screen, on the picture from the World’s Fair, on the face of Archibald Slate, creator of Ironhand.

“Why not this guy?” Remo asked.