An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(29)

Again, I took the strip in my latex-gloved hand and pressed it firmly to the back of Carl’s hand.

“I think I feel a little warmth again, no dizziness.” I pulled my hand back, but the little strip of metal was still there.

“The strip didn’t disappear like the iodine did,” I reported more to Miranda than to the camera.

“The strip is not pure americium, so there was bound to be stuff left over.”

“I should have had someone else do it so you could have felt the warmth to make sure I wasn’t imagining it,” I said.

“That would have been a slightly better experimental design, yes,” Miranda replied. “But, honestly, this entire thing has been a travesty of science. Nothing about what we did today would even be considered for peer review.”

We stood there for another few seconds while nothing continued to happen. Finally, Andy lowered his camera and said to Robin, “OK, well, maybe time for you to go get the car so we . . . Holy fuck.” Andy froze, staring at the place where I had pressed the americium for a tiny moment before frantically grabbing at the DSLR and thumbing the record button. Just in time.

Soundlessly, smoothly, Carl’s hand had begun to move. Andy got about two seconds of that movement before the hand disconnected from the body with a soft click and dropped to the ground. Stunned silence became sounds of exclamation from the crowd, from me as well. My particular sound we could not include in the final video because we wanted it to be child-friendly.

Carl’s hand—as big as a dinner plate—hit the cement, flipped itself over so its fingers touched the ground, and then it ran.



* * *



—

I say it “ran” because that’s the closest word I have to what it did, which was that it pushed itself up on the tips of all five fingers and then skittered away, clicking rapidly down the sacred marble of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, causing yelps and leaps of surprise as tourists spotted it. The line behind us rapidly devolved as people rushed to see what was happening or began running in fear.

We spent a precious few seconds staring in absolute shock, which I think is understandable, before Miranda shot after it just a millisecond before Andy and I had the same idea.

We shoved our way through Los Angeles’s only busy sidewalk like perps in a crime movie. I pretty much bounced off a Chewbacca who was posing with a lovely middle-aged couple. I caught a glimpse of the hand as it hung a right on Orange and increased my speed to match my certainty that this was a thing that was actually happening, and also thanks to the complete lack of pedestrian traffic just three feet off the Walk of Fame.

I flew around the corner and saw it, just twenty or thirty feet ahead, but now somehow galloping? Instead of individual steps, it was moving in a leaping gait. Andy stopped as he turned on Orange to film me chasing after the hand a bit before following.

Miranda and I did not stop. We flew past the parking garages and hotels and apartment complexes on Orange. I was not and have never been an athlete. Miranda, on the other hand, showed no signs of slowing down, so I did everything I could to keep up with her.

Orange dead-ends into Franklin, but Miranda and I both distinctly saw Carl’s hand head straight across Franklin and then leap up over a small orange retaining wall. I followed a few strides behind Miranda, up a steep, curving driveway, and up to a . . . a frickin’ castle?

“What,” I said as I gasped for air, “the fuck.”

Though it was dark, the building was lit by a number of dramatic sources. It had weird, surprising architectural details like turrets and faux crenellations. After the apartment buildings and shopping centers we had just run past, I had the sudden disorienting feeling that maybe Carl had created a portal and we had been transported to some kind of kitschy Narnia. I looked behind us, and Franklin Avenue was still there, bustling with traffic.

I decided that this was still the real world and marched past the valet parking sign and up to a young man in a tuxedo.

“Did you see a large robotic hand run by here just now?” I said, having caught enough of my breath to speak.

“Hmm?” he said, as if he were just realizing we were talking to him. “Ah. Yes, it just went inside.”

“What?”

“Well, it walked up and looked as if it wanted to go inside, so I let it inside. It had not strictly obeyed the dress code, but while the rules are both specific and comprehensive, I thought it made sense to allow an exception in the case of an autonomous hand.” He did not seem to think this was all that weird.

Miranda attempted a response—“Um, well, we’re . . .”—and she failed in her attempt.

“We need to get in there,” I interrupted.

The man, maybe in his late twenties, dressed in a full tuxedo and white gloves, looked us up and down before saying, “Are you members?” as if he already very much knew the answer.

“Um, no. But you just let a robotic hand into the club, why not us?”

“Well, first, you are not members. Second, and I don’t mean this as any kind of criticism, but you are not in compliance with the dress code.”

“But a robot hand is?!” I said, amazed.

“There is nothing in the rules about robot hands.”

“Look,” I said, “can we just take a quick peek around?”

“Are you members?”