Xenotech Rising: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Next Book

  Copyright Info

  About the Author

  Prologue

  “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” ― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

  First contact was not made when a spaceship landed on the White House lawn, but when a three-alien delegation teleported into the office of the most powerful man in the world. The visitors had timed it well, arriving at the beginning of a half-hour block the great man had reserved for a restorative mid-day power nap.

  “What can JPMorgan Chase do to help you gentlebeings?” said the chairman.

  “We come in peace,” said the tallest of the visitors, a lean, tiger-striped seven foot humanoid.

  “Live long and prosper,” said the shortest alien, a three-foot pyramid with an eye at the apex of each side.

  “Klaatu barado…” began the third alien, a round, red-skinned being with a beard made of long, white manipulative tentacles who looked like a caricature of Santa Claus.

  “Cut the crap,” said the chairman.

  “Right,” said the tallest alien. “We’re from the Galactic Free Trade Association and we want to cut you in.”

  * * * * *

  Fifteen years later…

  Chapter 1

  “Disruptive technologies are advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy.” ― McKinsey Global Institute

  “You printed how many copies?”

  “A hundred thousand,” said Mike, the fab operator. Over the phone he sounded like a man dangling from a fraying rope above a pit full of cobras and coral snakes.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You had the exponent-lock key down?”

  “Uh huh,” said Mike. “By accident. And hitting the cancel key doesn’t do anything. I even pulled the plug but it’s still going.”

  “What were you fabbing?”

  “Rabbots,” Mike nearly sobbed. “More of them every second.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I grabbed my backpack tool bag and headed for the door.

  “Hang on, Mike! The cavalry’s coming—but for dog’s sake, don’t turn them on!”

  * * * * *

  Mid-morning Atlanta traffic was light. It took me less than ten minutes to get to the small office building that was home to my client, Widget Technology and Fabrication, one of the hundreds of Georgia dotstar companies exploiting new technology sold to Earth by the member species of the Galactic Free Trade Association. WT&F had bought an obsolete Dauushan Model-43 universal fabricator last year. They were using it to 3D print products for customers looking for low prices more than high quality. WT&F’s management liked cutting corners. They were lucky they’d cut me a check for a support contract on the Model-43. Exponent-lock key errors can be dangerous.

  I’m Jack Buckston, president, CEO, and, for the present, sole employee of Xenotech Support Corporation. I help install alien technology, maintain it, and fix it when it breaks. Troubleshooting is my specialty. One of my selling points is fast service and I hoped I’d arrived fast enough. I parked my van in a visitor’s spot and sprinted for the front entrance of WT&F’s headquarters, but couldn’t enter.

  The entire lobby was filled waist-high with rabbots—bright fuchsia-furred rabbit-sized robots with lots of broad, sharp teeth. They were semi-autonomous lawn mowers, designed to trim grass in yards, parks and golf courses. WT&F’s main entrance was blocked by thousands of them hopping on top of each other and milling about in waves of pink as high as the reception desk. The rabbots aren’t supposed to activate right after they’re printed. They’re supposed to stay dormant to facilitate shipping. Something was definitely wrong.

  The lobby’s glass was tinted but I could dimly see the receptionist—a tall, young, light-haired woman—standing on said desk and kicking frantically at the rising pink tide of robo-bunnies gleefully gnawing on the wall-to-wall carpeting. I could even hear the snik snik snik of their fluoroceramic teeth chomping away through the glass. The rabbots had already done a number on the now ragged hem of the woman’s formerly calf-length dress. That was strange, too. They’re only supposed to eat grass, not carpets and fabric.

  I signaled the receptionist that I would get help as fast as I could. She gave me a thumb’s up and a do-what-you-need-to-do smile. Then I ran to the back of the building to find the loading dock. If my mental model of WT&F’s floor plan was correct, the dock had direct access to the 3D printer and the production floor. There weren’t any rabbots outside on the dock so for now the problem was contained to the building. Thank goodness WT&F was the only tenant. Unfortunately, when I looked through the loading dock door’s narrow window all I saw was pink fur. I didn’t want to risk opening it and releasing rabbots into the office park so I had to find another way in.

  The building was a typical two-story glass and steel-framed structure. It didn’t have any windows that opened—can’t let employees stress the HVAC system—so I had to get to the roof. I grabbed a pair of gecko gloves and matching kneepads from my backpack tool bag and pulled myself up the side of the building like I was going up the climbing wall at my gym. It pays to stay in shape if you’re doing xenotech support. I made it to the roof in ninety seconds then double-timed it to the small, square elevator maintenance structure in the center. Its door was locked but I opened it on the first try with my Orishen-made mutakey. I made a mental note to sell WT&F on upgraded building security and started down the steel access stairs to the second floor.

  When I got to the bottom I put my ear to the door. I didn’t hear screaming from the other side so I opened it and stepped through. I was in a corridor with only five or six rabbots vigorously munching away, stripping the carpet and underpadding down to the concrete. They were ignoring me. A few steps down the hall on the right was an archway. I looked in and saw a large warren of cubicles with seventy or eighty more rabbots franticly going at anything they could reach. The fabric on the sides of cubicles was already gone, with only a few tatters remaining.

  The wall-to-wall carpeting was being devoured here as well. Several employees were standing on their desks to stay out of the way of the ravenous rabbots. I could see through the naked cubicle walls that most of them had already lost their shoes and socks and pant-cuffs. A few were shooting photos and videos of the rabbots on their cell phones.

  “Is everybody okay?” I shouted over the pink-white noise of the rabbots’ mastication.

  “Yes,” said an older man with frayed suit pants wearing a tie. “Almost everyone is trapped in the lunch room. It h
as linoleum. They don’t like linoleum.”

  “Got it,” I said. “I’m heading downstairs to shut off the fab.”

  “Thank you!” Several of his colleagues cheered. I’d never faced anything like this before, but I’d do my best. I’m a big believer in proactive customer service.

  The stairway to the first floor was ten yards farther along the original corridor. Someone had wisely closed the fire door. I could see through its wired-glass panel that there were twenty or thirty rabbots on the stairs. Unfortunately, these weren’t typical bare concrete fire stairs with nothing for rabbots to eat. They’d been carpeted to encourage employees to “Save Energy. Improve Your Health. Take the Stairs” according to a colorful sign painted diagonally along the wall.

  The rabbots had already consumed everything edible on the upper landing so it was rabbot-free. I opened the stairway door, slipped through, and closed it quickly. Then I used my gecko gloves and kneepads again to make my way down along the wall, a few feet above the rabbots on the stairs, until I got to the bottom. The lower half of the glass panel on the fire door to the first floor was covered with writhing pink robo-bunnies so I climbed a few feet higher and quickly opened the door, shifted to the other side and pulled the door closed again. A few rabbots got into the stairwell and two latched on to the bottom of my khakis, but I was able to push them off with only a few holes in the lower half of my “corporate uniform.” I shouldn’t be far from the production floor now.

  “Mike,” I shouted, hanging five feet up. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m over here!” said Mike. His voice was at least half an octave higher than normal.

  “On my way,” I said. “Cavalry’s here.”

  The rabbot stew below me was churning as more and more of them boiled into the corridor.

  I crab-walked along the corridor wall, heading upstream. I stayed above the flood of rabbots and headed toward Mike’s voice. The double-doors leading to the production floor were wide open and were held that way by hundreds of pink bunny bodies. I continued and saw Mike perched on top of one of the fabricator feedstock towers, hunched over like a gargoyle so that his head didn’t hit the dropped ceiling three feet above.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  “Only my dignity.”

  Mike didn’t have much dignity left. His jeans had so many rips and holes they looked like they’d sell for several hundred dollars at a Rodeo Drive boutique. His formerly long-sleeved denim work shirt now had very short, ragged sleeves and even his underwear—white boxers with bright yellow ducks—was in tatters. The feedstock tower was the size of refrigerator. With its six-inch casters, it was nearly seven feet high. The tower was connected to the far end of the fabricator. The Model-43 is a workhorse 3D printer from Dauush, a planet that really understands high volume production. Dauush is pronounced DOW-oosh, by the way, like the first part of Dow Jones and the second part of whoosh. The Model-43 is the office machine equivalent of an aircraft carrier. This one took up as much space as five large copiers lined up end to end. Pink rabbots were still pouring out of the near end of the fabricator. They were almost up to the level of the unit’s chest-high control panel.

  “Stay where you are,” I said.

  “You couldn’t pay me to go anywhere,” said Mike.

  I started to slide around of the room, relying on the sticking power of the gecko gloves and kneepads to get me closer to Mike and keep me above the fuchsia flood.

  “What turned them on?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mike. “They just popped out of the end of the fabber and started eating the carpet.”

  Very odd, I thought. Rabbots didn’t do that. The floor was almost completely concrete now. Only a few patches of heavy-duty industrial broadloom remained.

  “Can you separate the feedstock tower from the Model-43?”

  “No,” said Mike, “I can’t reach the detachment button without risking my fingers.”

  “They’ve started eating flesh?”

  “Not intentionally,” said Mike, “but they can be a bit overzealous when they go for the hair on my legs, hands and forearms.”

  I looked more closely and noticed that Mike’s forearms looked patchy. Several small cuts on his arms and lower legs were still bleeding from overzealous rabbots’ teeth.

  “Be careful,” I said. “I’ll push the button. See if you can separate the feedstock tower from the fabber and roll it back a few feet.”

  “I can try to pull along the dropped ceiling,” said Mike, “but they’re just acoustic tiles set in a frame.”

  “Lift a few tiles up. You should find some ductwork to hold on to so you can pull yourself and the tower away from the Model-43.”

  Mike started lifting tiles while I crab-walked closer to the feedstock tower and the bright pink plastic Frisbee-sized disengagement button. The control panel on the fabber had been revised to fit Terran inputs but the physical linkage between the Model-43 and the feedstock tower was still built to Dauushan standards. Dauushans are a lot larger and stronger than we are. Adult Dauushans’ fingers are the size of a couple of 12-ounce soft drink cans stacked on top of each other—which reminded me that I could really use a can of Starbuzz right now. That stuff hits like a supernova. If I wanted to survive long enough to enjoy a can, I had to solve my current problem first.

  I needed something both aerodynamic enough to throw at the feedstock tower disengagement button and massive enough to depress it. There were several tools in my bag that had the necessary mass. Unfortunately, I had no confidence in my ability to throw something like a socket wrench handle with any accuracy. The tide of rabbots was also rising as the fabber kept churning out copy after copy of the master design. Some of them were getting close to the soles of my boots.

  “Having any luck?” I asked Mike.

  “There’s an air duct I think I can reach. You hit the button and I’ll pull the tower away.” His voice was muffled since he was now standing instead of crouching. His upper half was above the dropped ceiling.

  “Will do.”

  What could I use as a missile?

  Then a particularly energetic rabbot smacked into the bottom of my left boot and latched on. I thanked the universe that I could get the point when it only bit me on the foot, not the ass, and pulled the not-so-cute pink bunny away from my sole. My gecko kneepads and one glove held me securely to the wall. I used my other hand to grab the overachieving bunny, find the override switch at the base of its neck, and turn it off. That feature is listed in the rabbot maintenance manual but it’s hard to tell clients to R.T.F.M., as in Read the Manual, when so few humans can read Dauushan. The rabbot promptly curled up into the cybernetic equivalent of a fetal position, providing me with three-quarters of a kilogram of relatively spherical, relatively aerodynamic missile.

  I pulled my arm back, took careful aim, and threw the dormant rabbot ball at the button.

  Nothing happened.

  Then I realized that I was still wearing the gecko glove. The rabbot remained in my hand, stuck like Velcro. I bit into the rabbot’s not very tasty pseudo-fur and ripped it away from my glove. Then I smacked the wall with the glove and pulled my bare hand out, leaving it stuck there like an odd-looking five-legged spider. It was time to try again.

  I pulled the rabbot from my mouth with my naked hand, cocked my arm, took careful aim and threw the balled-up beast. I sent it flying with all the energy and accuracy I’d used to drop a clown into a tank of cold water at a circus carnival when I was a coulrophobic teenager. This time the rabbot hit the button with a satisfying thunk and I could hear the feedstock tower’s connection mechanism disengage.

  “Mike, move it back!” I shouted.

  “Got it!”

  I heard grunts and groans as Mike struggled to pull the tower away from the Model-43. I cheered him on as he slid the tower back, first a few inches, then a few feet. His upper torso popped into and out of sight as he worked his way from square to square in the grid of dislodged tiles in t
he dropped ceiling.

  “That should do it.” I said.

  “Right.” said Mike.

  He’d squatted back down so I could see all of him. Mike’s face, hands and upper body were covered in dust, dirt, spider webs and bits of insulation from the pipes and ducts above the acoustic tiles. He was a mess, but was smiling the sort of smile you get when you accomplish something you never thought you could. Note to self—I’d be looking for employees soon and would have to keep Mike in mind.

  “How long until it stops making rabbots?” said Mike.

  “The internal feedstock hopper isn’t that big.”

  Mike groaned.

  “Is everything okay?” I said.

  “Sorry—rabbots, hopper. It just hit me. Don’t mind me—I must still be in shock.”

  “Hang in there,” I said, wondering if an appreciation for bad puns that I hadn’t even been trying to make made Mike more, or less desirable as a potential employee. “There shouldn’t be capacity for more than another hundred or so rabbots with the internal feedstock.”

  “Great. What’s next?”

  “We need to lower the rabbot level on the production floor so that I can get to the fabber’s controls without losing all my clothes and body hair.” I was also getting tired of hanging on the wall.

  “Do you think there’s any way you could open the doors to the auditorium?” said Mike, pointing to a pair of industrial steel doors on the far side of the room. “We use them to wheel in big fabbed projects for employee and investor demonstrations.”

  Mike’s potential employee stock went up. I reclaimed the gecko glove stuck on the wall and crabbed around the edge of the production room, just above the level of the snik snik snikking robo-bunnies. When I got to the auditorium doors I pushed down with my foot twice to disengage the deadbolts going into the top of the frame. Then I was frustrated to find that the main door handles were below the level of the ravening rabbots and the heavy metal doors opened into the production floor, not out. The weight of the all the rabbots on this side would block them from opening.

  Mike had been following my progress, or lack thereof, and understood the problem.