Submitted for the November 2024 prompt: Aspirational Utopias

Brent Dormer suddenly realized the word he’d been absentmindedly scribbling — over and over again across the back of a Chinese take-out menu — was prison. He hurriedly crumpled the pamphlet and threw it into the waste basket beside his desk. Then he immediately picked it back out and jammed it into his pants pocket instead.

 

“Calm down!” he hissed to himself.

 

Taking a quick scan around the lab, Brent was relieved to see he’d failed to draw the attention of his coworkers. No surprise. After sharing the workspace for two years, they were well accustomed to his neurotic weirdness.

 

Pretending to study a sheet of test results, Brent performed a final mental walk-through of his plan. Satisfied with the thoroughness of his preparation, he then forced himself to consider — one last time — the consequences of failure: for him, a future in prison, and for Maggie, no future at all.

 

The antigravity generators he and his colleagues had developed would change the world forever. In the short term, they would give the United States military — their sponsor — a massive new advantage over their adversaries. Beyond that, when the technology inevitably spread, it would revolutionize transportation, both of people and goods, and massively reduce fossil fuel consumption planetwide. They would usher in a new era of space exploration and quite possibly a new utopic age for humanity.

 

It would be the greatest scientific advancement since the harnessing of electricity, and no government on Earth would hesitate to kill to possess it first.

 

There were only four prototypes in existence.

 

And Brent was about to steal one.

 

Or, just as likely, fail trying to steal one and end up spending the remainder of his days in a dark hole at Guantanamo Bay. Despite the cleverness of his plan, he knew there were numerous factors beyond his control, any of which could bring the whole thing crashing down. Yet he was going to try anyway — because of Maggie. Her life hung in the balance. He had no choice.

 

* * *

 

Always being the last one to leave worked in Brent’s favor. No change in his routine would be required to accommodate the plan.

 

As soon as he had the lab to himself, he retrieved one of the prototype generators from where they rested atop the room’s central table. He carried the toaster-sized device to his desk, pretended to examine it for a moment, and then promptly returned it — but not exactly to its original position. The far end of the table, Brent had discovered, was just out of view of the lab’s security camera.

 

Thank goodness.

 

He made sure the camera caught him walking to the table with the generator, and then walking back without it. Then he gathered up his things and headed for the door.

 

Having practiced the procedure a hundred times at home, it took him less than a minute to connect his burner phone to the camera, which was mounted above the lab’s entrance. He gave the camera thirty seconds to record the view of the room just as it was, and then activated the program that would feed a loop of that view through the CCTV system.

 

He retrieved the generator, draped his jacket over it just in case one of the guards was wandering the hallways, and unhooked the phone on his way out the door, restoring the camera’s feed.

 

A quick right turn kept his back to the hallway camera and headed him right into the nearest men’s room, which had, of course, no cameras at all. It did, however, have a frosted glass window. For obvious reasons, the translucent pane had not been equipped with an alarm like the ones several floors down on the ground level.

 

The window proved as easy to remove as when he’d tested it the previous day. After double-checking the settings on the generator, he held it out the window, let it go, and watched it drift gently down to the ground four stories below. It settled less than ten feet from his car, which he’d left in the cover of the lot’s darkest corner.

 

Perfect.

 

He said goodnight to the lobby guard on his way out, tucked the generator into the trunk of his car before hopping in behind the wheel, and then headed to the bar for a drink and an alibi.

 

He was halfway through his pint when the virus he’d planted in the building’s security network came to life. It crashed the whole system and kept it dark for twenty minutes.

 

Later, it would be exceedingly difficult for investigators to imagine the prototype did not go missing during that window.

 

* * *

 

“They don’t have any leads?” Brent spoke into the phone. It had been three days since the robbery, and the FBI still had the lab on lockdown. “I thought the security system was supposed to be bulletproof.”

 

“Obviously not,” answered the voice on the other end. “So, what are you doing with your extra days off?”

 

“I’ve got a fresh pot of coffee, a good book, and Maggie for company — my own little utopia.”

 

“Sounds nice. Alright, man, I’ll keep you in the loop if I hear anything else. Have a good day.”

 

“Yeah, you too. See ya.”

 

As he hung up, Maggie glided into the room, kicking herself along like a fuzzy, flop-eared skateboarder. Her golden tail whisked the air behind her. She’d already mastered her new backpack, which only looked cumbersome. Instead of weighing her down, it lifted her up, just enough so she could scoot herself along with her one good leg.

 

The vet had been reluctant to leave her in such a state following the accident. He’d urged Brent to reconsider, trying his best to persuade him that no dog should live like that.

 

If only he could see her now!

 

“There’s my good girl.”