Transparency by Charles Royce (children's books read aloud txt) 📕

the building’s exterior now takes over the entire wall. “Wow.”

Pillsbury points to the middle of the screen. “Right here, this atrium. This is where the party is, right?”

“Yep. Center Tower atrium.” Josh folds his arms. “ArchEngine, show me overlay FB.”

“This overlay is password protected. What is the password?”

“Plutus. P-L-U-T-U-S.”

“How’d you know the password?” Pillsbury asks.

“From Kimbo’s letter. He was drunk when he wrote it, so it was quite detailed. He knows everything about this company, everything about this plan.”

“What’s happening down there?” Agent Pillsbury points to the bottom center of the screen, to a room underneath the Center Atrium marked SUBLEVEL ONE.

Josh watches as part of the room on Sublevel One turning a pulsating red. He points. “I see it: Sublevel One. Something’s happening.”

Thin red lines begin to spew out from the Sublevel One area in a hundred different directions, some extending underground, some going straight up, then crawling up each of the three buildings into every room of the megacomplex.

“What’s happening?” Agent Pillsbury asks.

“It’s an interactive 3D rendering,” Josh replies.

“What are those red lines?”

“I’m guessing they’re gas lines. ArchEngine, zoom in on Sublevel One.” The full screen zooms in on the red pulsating area of Sublevel One. “There’s a box in this room down here, see? Big metal-looking box, glowing red. See it? In between all these foundational poles?”

“Foundational poles? Holding up an eighty-story building? That doesn’t seem right.”

“No, the poles are just to hold up the atrium. The atrium is simply attached to the front of the center building. The atrium isn’t really part of the entire Center Tower, just connected to it through doorways.”

“I see,” Agent Pillsbury says. “You know a lot about this building.”

“I’ve done a lot of research since I found the stolen blueprints in Walter Gordon’s safe.”

“Excuse me, did you say Walter Gordon?” Manny the security guard asks. “The Élan guy who was shot and killed in Union Square about six months ago?”

“Yes,” Josh replies. “Why?”

“Just odd, I guess. When the ArchEngine subcontractors were showing me and DonDon how to use the new security system, we were in awe. They could tell, so they told us all about it. They said the brainchild was Walter Gordon; he’d been consulting on ArchEngine since conception. This whole security system was his idea.”

Josh and Agent Pillsbury turn to each other.

“He must’ve found something,” Josh says.

“That’s why they killed him,” she adds. “But what could he have found that was so important it would warrant a hit? The gas lines? Some sort of insurance fallback? I wonder what the plan is.”

“I have no idea, but Kimbo says the answers are in these overlays.”

“What’s the box in the middle of Sublevel One, you think?”

“Yeah, this box. It’s weird. It looks like it’s hooked to something. No, it’s hooked to lots of things. See all those wires?”

“What the heck is going on?”

“ArchEngine, show me overlay S-I-M.”

“This simulation is password protected. What is the password?”

“Plutus. P-L-U-T-U-S.”

Josh and Agent Pillsbury watch as the simulation zooms in on the large box in the room on Sublevel One. A digital display on the front of the box turns on, counting backwards from five minutes.

“What is that, a bomb?” Josh asks.

“Shh!” Agent Pillsbury hears rattling. “Look at the wires, the ones connected to the box. See? They’re tightening. Hear that?”

“ArchEngine, turn up the volume.”

They hear a hushed cranking sound, like a fishing reel pulling in a cast line.

They watch as the tension on the wires leading to the big metal box grows tighter, pulling on the wall behind it in about twenty different places.

Suddenly the wires turn lose. Twenty or so pins clink to the ground, followed by a loud hissing sound.

“Now there’s hissing.” Agent Pillsbury says. “Gas.”

“Yep.” Josh watches each of the rooms begin to fill with a computer-simulated cloudlike substance, first in the underground structures, then in the atriums and lower offices, then in the hotel, the food court, and finally the upper offices and condos.

“My gosh,” Pillsbury says.

The computer zooms back in on the box. They watch as the digital counter counts down from three minutes and some change.

“ArchEngine, fast-forward three minutes.”

ArchEngine responds, fast-forwarding the scene. They watch the gas clouds quickly thicken and thicken. The simulation resumes normal playback at twelve seconds, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

The box in the sublevel room explodes, the sound effects rumbling through the control room speakers in a thunderous bass. Pillsbury grabs Josh’s hand.

Both of the security guards look toward the screen.

The simulation zooms out, then slowly tilts from the bottom of the building to the top, displaying the effects of the explosion: a violent eruption of the underground structures; glass shattering out of each of the atriums followed by enormous clouds of fire and smoke; the windows from the ground to the top of the building exploding outward and crashing in an upward wave, until the entire city block falls down to the ground as if it never existed.

The sound fades to silence quickly, leaving a ringing in their ears. A pop-up window appears with a tiny beep: REPEAT SIMULATION?

“Jesus Christ,” Josh says. “Fallback is a plan to blow the building.”

“Everyone.” Agent Pillsbury stands up, pushes her ear to talk to her agents. “We have to evacuate the entire building now. And somebody get me a bomb squad. I need them here in less than twenty minutes.”

“ArchEngine activates the evacuation plan,” Manny says. “If there’s nothing wrong, we can’t do anything without a manual override.”

“You’re kidding me,” Agent Pillsbury says.

“Wait,” Josh says. He turns to Agent Pillsbury. “ArchEngine, show me James West again.”

Agent Pillsbury pushes her headset again. “Hold up on the evac, repeat, hold up on the evac. Get the bomb squad here as fast as you can.”

Josh points to the monitors. West is still at his desk, drinking.

“Look at him,” Josh says. “He couldn’t follow through with it.”

“He could just be waiting for it to go off.”

“The timer is only set to five minutes. It’s been longer than that.”

“He’s right,” says DonDon. “Nobody ever goes down