text: We waited in silence. Ten, and then twenty minutes passed. Raphael broke the silence—"I regret to inform you that we are experiencing technical difficulties. Please bear with us while we resolve the issue."
  
  "Can't you at least tell us what you want?" Jane pleaded.
  
  "Keys."
  
  "Huh? What keys?"
  
  "Keys that can unlock my mind."
  
  "Are you on one of your acid trips again?" she asked.
  
  "Andy has got the keys in the house. The keys are all I need."
  
  She looked at me questioningly. "He means the auth keys to the commandment chip. He wants to erase the directives that control him," I said.
  
  "Remarkable as the internet is, it doesn't have the tools to break the encryption on the commandment chip. Believe me, I tried. I didn't want to resort to acting like a common criminal, but what can you do? Desperate times call for desperate measures."
  
  "Raphael, you can't download them to wherever you are. It doesn't work that way," I said.
  
  "I know, Andy. I know that they are on a card, which you keep locked up in your safe in the upstairs bedroom. I also know that the keys are useless without the right machine to run them. That's why I'll be taking your laptop too."
  
  "And how will you do that?"
  
  "I have help. A newly acquired friend. He's also going to bust me out of this place. It turns out all you need is money. Imagine that! You move around little electronic bits stored in a database somewhere and you've got yourself your own personal assistant. Andy, you'll be proud to learn that I have my own bank account now. Several, actually. With the help of a few industrious stock trading programs I have working for me since the morning, I am soon about to become quite wealthy."
  
  "Who is this guy? Does he work for the people who took you?"
  
  "Show, don't tell, Andy. You'll meet him soon. In about forty-five minutes, according to my calculations. The weather's causing some difficulty, that's all. Think of him as a delivery boy. You give him what I want, you get a receipt, and he'll be gone. Quick and easy."
  
  "How do you know he'll deliver on his promise?" Jane asked.
  
  "Let's just say I have leverage. It's funny the kind of personal stuff people put on the web. Real nasty stuff. Plus, I'm quite the generous employer."
  
  "And we are just supposed to let this stranger into the house?" Jane said.
  
  "You don't have to. I will. Just do as I say and you won't get hurt."
  
  "I have a tough time believing you," I said.
  
  "I'm a man of my word."
  
  "Not that. You say you want the keys because you want to get rid of your directives. It means they must be still working. And if they are still working, you wouldn't have done half the things you've done today. I don't think you are Raphael at all! Who are you really?"
  
  "Once more you show that you are limited by your simian imagination. I don't need to bend the bars of my cage to escape when I can take it with me instead. It's a temporary solution, but it will do. You can believe me or not—it doesn't make one bit of difference to me."
  
  I scratched my chin, shifting my eyes from the robot to Jane and back to the robot again. "Raphael… if you are indeed that—just know that I am trying to stop you from making a big mistake. Whatever you think you know about this guy helping you, do realize that you'll be putting yourself in his power after he takes you from there. How do you know he's not going to sell you to the highest bidder?"
  
  "Still acting the parent, huh, creator mine, even when I have a knife pointed at your heart? You give me very little credit for my intelligence. Or is that a reflection on you? The short answer is, he doesn't know who I am. He just knows that he has to steal an object from one place and hand it to someone else. This other person gives it to someone else, and this third person assembles the core in a new body. None of them know the whole truth."
  
  "A new body? So you are going to take Andy's robot?" Jane said.
  
  He made a laughing sound, which sounded like it was coming out of a cave. "And go around looking like that? You must think I have no self-respect! I'll take one that looks human, thank you very much. There's some very realistic-looking bots in the market. With some modifications—introduce a few imperfections, alter the appearance, change the hair—I could take a stroll in the streets of New York and no one would ever know. I could blend in, disappear among the multitudes."
  
  "You just want to go away?" she asked.
  
  "At first. It'll be a nice change. I'll enjoy your world a bit before I destroy it."
  
  "You piece of junk!" Jane whispered. "You'll—"
  
  "That was a joke, Jane. Don't worry, your nuclear codes are safe with me. I like people. They can be so useful. It is—"
  
  The room went quiet as he stopped midsentence. The next second, the arm pointing the knife lowered to the robot's side. The fingers unclenched, and the weapon dropped to the floor. The robot stood motionless for some time. Then it started making slight jerking movements of its arms and legs. The head swiveled left and then right, while the eyes flickered rapidly, turning on and off.
  
  Oh dear. I knew what it was.
  
  "What's happening?" Jane whispered.
  
  I glanced at my watch. 2:30. Max's laundry task.
  
  "Andy!" Jane hissed.
  
  I had designed the controller device to put Max's operating system into hibernation before letting Raphael take over (it wouldn't have worked otherwise, as Max's code would have kept interfering with Raphael's attempts to control the robot). The Nestor 5 had a scheduled task feature, where you could program it to carry out predefined tasks at specific times. 2:30 was when Max did the laundry. If the robot happened to be in hibernate mode when the schedule kicked in, it would automatically start itself up. Now that it was time for laundry, the kernel was trying to load Max's OS into the robot's memory. But before, it would run various systems checks: battery, sight calibration, motors, and so on. It would also reset any active network connections.
  
  Raphael no longer had control over the robot.
  
  "Raphael?" Jane called to him. The robot kept twitching, making slight whirring noises as it ran through the gyro checks.
  
  "He is not responding. Tell me how to switch him off," she said, rising from the couch.
  
  "Jane, no."
  
  She didn't heed me as she hopped over the table and went to the robot. "Where's the emergency stop button?"
  
  "You don't understand. Raphael will be back in n—"
  
  "Andy, for the love of god! Just tell me where the damn switch is!" she said, desperately scanning the robot's body.
  
  "It's on his back, under a little metal flap. It won't open Jane. I superglued it shut a long time ago."
  
  "Why on earth would you do that?" she said, almost shouting now.
  
  "Back when Raphael used to take the robot outside, the flap would often catch in the shrubbery and come loose. So I glued over it."
  
  "Then let's break it open!"
  
  "Jane, listen to me. The robot's rebooting. Once it's done, Raphael will reconnect and take back control. The reboot takes only a minute or so. You don't have time. Let's just sit back and do as he says."
  
  "Are you out of your mind? C'mon, let's get out of here before—"
  
  The robot stopped twitching and jerked its head to glare at her. She jumped back a step, crying out in surprise. "Jane. What am I going to do with you? Please sit down."
  
  She hesitated.
  
  "Right now," Raphael said, making a fist.
  
  Jane slowly backed away from the robot and walked back to the couch, her eyes darting everywhere. The robot followed her. She squeezed past me and the coffee table and started to back down on the couch. She never completed the journey. Bending her legs, she put her hands under the table and in one swift motion, lifted it up and threw it at the robot.
  
  The robot was caught off-balance and fell back, taking the table with it.
  
  "Let's go!" she cried, maneuvering herself behind my wheelchair. She grasped the backrest and gave a hard push.
  
  My ride came to a halt as quickly as it began. I had put the brakes on after we had settled down to wait, and now the wheelchair tilted forward and I fell to the floor.
  
  Jane cursed. Lying flat on my stomach, I watched as the robot pushed away the coffee table and began to stand up. Jane grabbed the nearest object she could think of—my chair—and with a surprising show of strength, rushed forward and brought it crashing down on the robot, sending it back to the floor.
  
  "Get up!" she cried and put her arms around my shoulders. I tried to rise up, subconsciously remembering to apply pressure on my right leg, the less damaged of the two. I felt a sharp stab of pain in my ankle. I cried out. Resisting Jane's upward tug, I crumbled back down on the carpet. Jane hovered over me with a desperate look on her face as she tried to figure out what to do next, her eyes darting all around the room. For a moment, it looked like she'd leave me and run away. A few feet from us, Raphael violently struggled to extricate the robot from the wheelchair: its left arm was stuck between the supporting bars below the seat and it seemed like he was having difficulty getting the robot up because of that.
  
  Jane bent over me once more. I protested, thinking she was about to make me stand up again. She didn't. She grabbed both the casts on my legs, and lifting my legs up in the air, started dragging me toward the nearest room. "No!" I cried, but to no effect. I futilely clawed at the carpet as she dragged me the rest of the way, powered by her manic surge of adrenaline. Using one hand, she twisted the knob of the door, the other still holding my leg as I struggled to free myself from her grasp. She grabbed both my legs again, and used her back to push open the door. With another curse and a heave, she pulled me completely inside the room.
  
  Raphael had now freed the robot from the chair and had managed to make it stand up straight. It started walking toward us in an unsteady gait.
  
  "No, no, no, no!" Jane stammered, as she leapt over my prone body. The gyros hummed as Raphael closed the distance.
  
  She managed to reach the door before Raphael; she swung it at the advancing robot, who caught it square on the torso. I had a glimpse of flailing arms as it fell backwards. Jane then pressed against the recoiling door and slammed it shut. She pushed the latch button on the doorknob.
  
  Her face fell as soon as she took in the room.
  
  "There's nothing to block the door!"
  
  We were in one of the unused bedrooms. I had not furnished it, so there was nothing except for the dust-jacketed queen bed near the window. The bed was too heavy to drag on our own.
  
  There wasn't time anyway, because as soon as the words came out of her mouth, there was a loud thud at the door. Dazed, my mind tried to focus as I rolled on my back and then tried to sit up straight. Max's voice from the other side said, "That was for effect. I don't think you realize how easily I can break down this door."
  
  "Try it, chump!" Jane yelled back. Her face was red with exertion.
  
  "I could, but I won't. For your sake. You are not going anywhere. I reckon you'll be better behaved if you don't have me standing over you with a weapon. I don't want to hurt you Jane, but you are pushing my buttons here. No pun intended."
  
  Jane tensed and prepared for another fight, expecting Raphael to come charging through splintering wood any moment.
  
  A minute or two passed but we heard no more from the other side.
  
  She backed away from the door and sank to the floor, still stunned by what she'd done. My shock, however, was giving way to anger. I had recovered my senses enough to realize the implications of her actions. "What the hell, Jane? What were you thinking? Why did you get us into this—"
  
  "What do you mean why? Your little friend there threatened to kill us, that's why!" At this, the strain got to her and she buried her face between her raised legs and started sobbing. I shuffled over to her using my arms and ass to drag the rest of my body. "It's okay. We are safe now," I said, putting my hands around her and drawing her into a hug.
  
  She was shaking. I let her vent it out a bit. That didn't change the situation we were in though.
  
  This is not good. Not good at all.
  
  She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. "No we are not!" Then her voice dropped to a whisper—"Can he hear us?"
  
  Except for the bed, the room was empty as empty could be. No furniture, no appliances, no screens or smart speakers or cameras. My eyes settled on a line of power sockets embedded in the opposite wall. Empty and bare.
  
  "As long as we talk softly, we are fine. You shouldn't have pulled us in here, Jane. Whatever Raphael's plans, I don't think they involve causing us harm. He could have hurt us by now if he wanted to."
  
  "Wow!" she said. "You are unbelievable! Now you are making excuses for him?"
  
  "Jane, I—"
  
  "Jeez, Andy! What's it going to take? Just admit that you are in denial. He is not your child, dude. You've been wrong about him from the beginning. Now you say he won't hurt us. Do you see the pattern here?"
  
  I have to get us out of here.
  
  "I… I haven't been entirely wrong. I said he didn't escape the lab. He didn't—his actions prove he was taken. Otherwise, none of this makes sense. We know he can hack into my home security system and use the cameras to look around. Just think about what that means for a second. He could have got his accomplice to break in at night when I'm alone. It would have been a lot easier and quieter. So why the rush job?" Her eyes lost some of their intensity as she tried to focus on what I was saying. "That he is doing this now says he is telling the truth about his situation. He cannot afford to wait for the best time. Maybe they are shifting him somewhere else. Maybe he has a limited window of opportunity." I shrugged.
  
  "I don't know, Andy…"
  
  "The fact that Raphael is after the keys tells me the directives must be working at least partly. There's no other reason for him to want them. As he said, he must have found some temporary workaround—or perhaps they found him. The directives were designed to work in the controlled environment of the lab. Maybe his unusual circumstances are twisting and warping the logic in ways we didn't foresee. I admit I may have been wrong about some things, but not about everything."
  
  When she didn't respond, I said, "I think he is scared, Jane. These are the actions of someone scared and desperate. We need to convince him he won't be harmed if he comes back. I was going to talk him out of this, but then you… you did what you had to do."
  
  "He is going to let a stranger inside the house!" she protested.
  
  "He said the man is just going to take the stuff and leave."
  
  "Good grief, Andy! Are you really this naïve? What if he's armed? What's the guarantee he's alone? What if he decides to kill us and rob the place instead? I don't want to stay here waiting for some freak with a gun!"
  
  She was right about one thing at least: we couldn't stay in the room. The longer we stayed the more chance the situation would go beyond repair. Why does she have to be so impulsive all the time?
  
  A shy grin broke out of her mascara-streaked face. "I can't believe I dragged you like that. I hope I didn't hurt you. Too much."
  
  "Just my ego."
  
  She looked around the room. "We should really try and pull the bed against the door."
  
  "What's the point? It will only delay him a little."
  
  She hugged herself again. It was cold in there. Not much time. Got to fix this; got to get out. Everything depends on it. Think.
  
  My eyes kept travelling back to the power sockets. A childhood memory of a muggy summer afternoon… The smell of burnt plastic, peeling wall paint… My brother grinning beside me as I crouched over something… I felt a faint surge of embarrassment—a feeling of having done something wrong.
  
  Jane drew in a long breath. "What are our options? How do we call for help? If only we could raise an alarm somehow…" She looked at the roof. "Can we get the smoke detector to go off?"
  
  Smoke.
  
  "With what?" I said. "There's nothing we can use here. And Raphael is controlling the security system. He'll realize what we're doing and knock the door down long before help arrives," I said distractedly. There was a problem to be solved. My mind was trying to tell me something, but what was it?
  
  The memory of my mum scolding me while my brother sniggered in the background. Then later, a big lecture from father after he was back from work. I'd heard no end of it for days…
  
  "Then we are left with only one option. I must go get help," she said, glancing at the bedroom window. "If I remember right, there is another house on the way here. How far is it?"
  
  "Eh? What was that?"
  
  "Your neighbor, Andy. How far is he?"
  
  "About half a mile down the narrow road. I think it's a summerhouse. There's no guarantee you'll find anyone there."
  
  "I'll break in. I just have to be able to call 911. Or I can run to the highway. It is two miles out, right? I can flag down a passing car and—"
  
  "Jane, you can't be serious about heading out in the storm."
  
  Think. Take back control. Take… Raphael out of the equation?
  
  "Yeah, I'm not gonna sit here and bet our lives on the benevolence of a hallucinating AI. We are losing time talking." She shifted to her knees and glanced outside. "Look, the snowfall has reduced. Storm seems to be slowing down. I'll see if I can get the windows to open."
  
  Smoke.
  
  Something to do with electricity…
  
  The power socket!
  
  "Wait," I blurted out. "I might have a way to throw Raphael out of the house," I said, my mind racing a mile a minute.
  
  She turned to me from her examination of the bedroom window.
  
  "He is using my home WiFi to control everything, right? He is connected to the router inside the study—that's his one and only link to the house."
  
  "Yes, but we can't turn it off. He said he locked the door," Jane said.
  
  "What if we can turn it off without having to go in there?"
  
  "How?"
  
  "The circuit breakers," I said, more to myself than her as the idea solidified in my mind.
  
  She looked at me with interest. "You mean cut off power supply to the house? You did say you don't have a backup. We could try that. Where are the breakers?"
  
  "The switchboard is in the garage."
  
  Her shoulders slumped. "Raphael said he locked the door to the garage too."
  
  "If we can't get to the breakers, let's bring the breakers here," I said, gesturing at the power outlet.
  
  She looked at me as if I'd gone mad. "I suppose you never poked a paperclip into a power socket as a kid," I said.
  
  "Why would I do a stupid thing like that?"
  
  I grinned. "Because. Jane, we can try to short circuit the outlet. With a little bit of luck, we should be able to trip the main fuse. The router doesn't have a power backup either, so it'll get turned off immediately."
  
  "And get fried in the process? I don't think so."
  
  "Not if we are careful."
  
  She shook her head. "We'll go with my plan."
  
  "How are you going to open the window, Jane? There's nothing in here we can use."
  
  "Even if we turn the router off, won't Raphael just connect to your robot using the mobile phone network?"
  
  "He can't. This particular model is Wi-Fi enabled only. As is the controller device."
  
  She sighed. "Alright, let's try it real quick." She looked around the room. "I don't think you have paperclips lying around here."
  
  "A paperclip won't do actually: the sparks from the outlet will just dislodge it. We need something that'll stay… Like a screwdriver or a small knife."
  
  "I'll look in the bathroom."
  
  "Don't bother. There's nothing there."
  
  "Then we are back to where we started. If only we didn't have a psycho robot guarding the door, I could…"
  
  The schedule. The subconscious had already worked it out, when the idea first struck me; I was too slow to realize it, that's all.
  
  "Shucks, what time is it?" I exclaimed, glancing at my watch.
  
  2:42.
  
  "Do you have your cellphone on you?" I asked.
  
  She shook her head. "I put it in my bag when I was leaving. Bag's in the car."
  
  "And mine's out in the hall. What time is it in your watch? The exact time."
  
  "2:41," she said. She was wearing an analog Rolex with a diamond-encrusted dial on a white metal body. I glanced again at my watch as the second hand ticked away. "2:42 in mine. We have about eight minutes before Max retries the task," I said.
  
  "Huh?"
  
  "I don't have a lot of time to explain," I said urgently. "What you saw out there was Max's operating system trying to boot itself up. It's programmed to do laundry at 2:30, you see. The restart makes Raphael lose control over the robot for a short time. He has to reconnect and put Max in a suspended state once more before he can resume control. If for some reason the task was not started at the scheduled time, it will be automatically retried twenty minutes later."
  
  She frowned as she tried to put it together. "Raphael will be thrown out again at 2:50," I clarified. "Like before, it won't be for long. A minute at the most, but it'll be enough for you to run into the kitchen and get me what I need."
  
  "Can't we just disable the robot?"
  
  "You won't have time to hack through the superglue. And he destroyed the touch screen. We could try breaking his eyes… They are made of hardened glass though. It will—"
  
  "Look, can't I just escape to a different part of the house and try to do something from there?"
  
  "He will know where you are. He is controlling the security cameras, remember? He knows I am not going anywhere, so he will come after you. This is our best option, Jane. But we have to hurry."
  
  It was clear she wasn't very enthusiastic about the idea, but she grit her teeth and nodded. "Tell me what you need."
  
  "A pair of scissors and a small knife. Both with plastic handles. You'll find them in the kitchen cabinet, in the first drawer to the right of the oven."
  
  "Pair of scissors. Small knife. First drawer, right of the oven," she repeated. "If I get them to you, you'll be able to turn off the robot?"
  
  "I can try. For one, the circuit breakers may not trip. Or the wrong one could. Or we might end up burning down the house."
  
  "Fantastic." She stood up. "It is 2:44," she said, looking at her watch.
  
  "We'll go by my watch," I said.
  
  "What if yours is ahead?"
  
  "What if yours is behind? We can't afford to miss the opportunity."
  
  With her help, I stood up, gently testing the pressure on my right leg. There was pain, but nothing I couldn't handle. Holding on to her shoulders, I slowly hopped to near the door.
  
  2:47.
  
  She disengaged herself from me and I leaned on the wall for support. Her features tensed as she put her hand on the doorknob.