Gates of Rome tr-5 Page 11

  Computer-Bob was talking about the possibility of losing a hand or foot, or a head even, of being turned into human lasagne, or worse than either of those — being lost in chaos space.

  ‘If I start pulling out circuit boards, you’ll talk me through it, right, Bob?’ Maddy looked again at the rack of circuit boards. ‘If I go in there and start… you know, if I break the thing…?’

  ›Of course, Maddy. I will supply detailed instructions. I recommend you move my camera closer to the displacement machine so that I can observe what you are doing.

  ‘Right.’ She looked at the rack of the displacement machine then curled her lips anxiously. ‘I’ve never even looked round the back of this thing, let alone pulled out boards and messed about inside it.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ said Sal.

  ›I will be right here for you, Maddy.

  She looked at her Simpsons wristwatch. Homer’s finger was pointing at a space roughly halfway between five and six. The nearest GeekMagnet store over on the Upper West Side was probably already closed by now. The stores tended to open early, but close about half-five. They could get the components tomorrow.

  Tuesday.

  They had to get what they needed early, before the first plane hit, before New York ground to a halt — rendered immobile by the horror of unfolding events.

  Maddy turned to the webcam in front of her. ‘Bob, you better print me up our shopping list, then. We’ll get what we need first thing tomorrow morning.’

  CHAPTER 26

  2001, New York

  ‘Whoa…’ said the young man behind the counter. He had a steaming cup of Starbucks coffee in a cardboard carry-cradle in one hand. ‘We, like, just opened up here.’ She noticed it wasn’t Starbucks, though; the brand name was SolvoVentus, the logo wavy lines like the sea or something similar.

  ‘Yeah… I know, but we’re in a real hurry.’ They’d watched one of the store’s employees pull up the window shutters, snap the lights on inside and had generously given him another thirty seconds to wake up before striding in. Maddy handed a sheet of paper over the counter. ‘Can you check the items on this list — see what you’ve got in stock?’

  He put down his paper coffee cup, grabbed the printout and looked it over briefly. He scratched at curly ginger hair pulled back into a hair tie. The ponytail looked like a large puffball stuck on the back of his head.

  He scanned the list of components for a full minute. ‘What the hell are you making here?’

  Maddy wafted her hand impatiently. The plastic name tag on his pale blue shirt read ‘Ned’. ‘We’re kind of in a hurry, Ned.’ She offered him a clipped smile. ‘Don’t mean to be rude or anything.’

  Ned didn’t seem offended in the slightest. ‘Looks like some kind of energy storage and delivery regulator? Some real beefy, ninja transformer? Is that what you’re making?’ He looked up from the list. ‘You pimping up a transformer? This a school project or something?’

  ‘Yeah, kind of.’

  ‘Well, lemmesee…’ He tapped at the keyboard on the counter. ‘… I’d say we got pretty much all of those items in stock.’ He looked up at Maddy admiringly. ‘I mean, not much call for those things on their own. Most people don’t even bother making stuff from scratch any more, you know? It’s easier to buy whatever they want from Walmart already.’ He looked back down at the screen, sucking on the end of a biro as he scanned the stock listings.

  Maddy looked at her watch. ‘You got those components in? Cos if not… we’ve got to hike across to your other store, which is like a real pain in — ’

  ‘Pretty sure we got these…’ he said, tapping at the keyboard as he entered the last of the items on Maddy’s list into their system. ‘Yeah, reckon that’s all cool.’ He tapped the keyboard one last time and a printer behind the counter spooled out a picking list.

  ‘Yo… Ganesh!’ he called out.

  Double doors behind Ned cracked open and a young man wearing a turban and a thick beard stuck his head out.

  Ned handed him the picking list. ‘You do this one, man?’

  ‘Dude… I’m stocktaking.’

  Ned turned his back on Maddy and Sal. There was a hurried, whispered exchange between the pair of them then finally Ganesh nodded wearily and muttered, ‘You owe me, dude.’ He smiled at the girls and gave a friendly wave. ‘Five minutes, ladies, OK?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The door swung to. Ned, all pointy elbows and bobbing Adam’s apple, grinned self-consciously at them. ‘So… nice day, isn’t it?’ He cracked slender fingers and knuckle joints one after the other, a sound that went right through Maddy. She found herself wincing with each crack. It sounded like a wishbone being parted.

  ‘Sure. Nice day,’ Sal replied.

  ‘Uh… so, either of you two girls got a, you know, a boyfriend or something?’ He shrugged and laughed skittishly. ‘I mean… why not ask. Right? Because life’s way too short to just, like, skip around the important questions.’

  Sal chuckled at that.

  ‘Cos if you’re both, like, single, me and Ganesh could take you ladies to see Shrek or something?’ He grinned, his eyes bul-ging with hope. ‘Make up sort of like a double date. Me and Ganesh’ll pay for the movie tickets, of course. Dinner, though…’ He pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘I reckon we gotta go halves on that. Unless you girls are good for a taco or something cheap? I reckon we could cover that.’

  Maddy looked at Sal, taken aback by his forthright manner. ‘Errrrr

  …’

  ‘Sound good?’ His eyebrows flickered up and down and a grin spread across his lips. His best go at a seductive smile. ‘Whadya say? Tempted? Huh?’

  Just then reality fluttered gently. A mild sensation that made Maddy feel giddy. She grasped the edge of the counter to steady herself.

  ‘Are you OK, miss?’

  Maddy’s eyes focused on Ned again. Only it wasn’t quite the same Ned. His shirt was bright red. His ginger hair was cut short, almost an army-issue buzz cut. No name badge on his chest either, she noticed, just the store’s logo, a masculine fist holding a bolt of lightning.

  ‘You OK, miss?’

  Sal was kicking her foot gently, nudging her out of the young man’s line of sight.

  ‘Uh, yeah… I’m fine. Just, uh… just a bit dizzy is all.’

  CHAPTER 27

  2001, New York

  Computer-Bob’s single-lens webcam eye regarded the archway, wholly still and silent, except for the soft hum of a dozen PC fans and the gentle, rhythmic chug of the filtration pump on the activated growth tube in the back room. A tap dripped into a basin in the toilet cubicle and overhead the brick roof rumbled softly as a commuter train, far above, trundled along the bridge’s tracks towards Manhattan.

  A useful chance to housekeep: compress files, purge data that was redundant. With nothing to have to listen to via the desk mic, or observe through the webcam, he could get on with a growing to-do list of queued tasks. Computer-Bob temporarily blocked the external data feed. It was also a good opportunity to defragment the hard drives.

  He initiated the various house-cleaning processes. It left his collective of twelve linked processors with clock time to spare. Down time. Think time. Code fetched, acted on and returned.

  Thoughts.

  Computer-Bob could certainly feel the absence of the missing part of his intelligence. The fuzzy-logic function removed from the path of his decision matrix. The organic component. That thumbnail-sized nub of brain matter. Such a difference that small nugget of flesh made.

  Computer-Bob suspected there was an emotion file for this somewhere on his G drive. This feeling of mental castration, of missing something he once had. Fuzzy logic. No. Free will.

  He tried to recognize that feeling. Much harder without the organic part of his intelligence. But still possible. Like comparing audio-wave files, every thought had its own distinct shape.

  Computer-Bob was running comparisons through his folder of stored emotions when something far mor
e important caught his attention and halted that process in its tracks.

  A single tachyon particle in the middle of the archway.

  Within a dozen thousandths of a second, the number of particles proliferated to millions.

  ›Warning: tachyon particles detected.

  The middle of the archway pulsed with arriving energy and a gust of displaced air sent papers and sweet wrappers skittering across the desk in front of computer-Bob’s webcam eye.

  A sphere of shimmering, churning ‘elsewhere’ appeared, ten feet in diameter, and hovered above the floor. The webcam captured every swirling detail through the portal: what appeared to be a dark room beyond with winking lights and holographic displays. Rows of what could be tall tubes glowing a soothing peach colour.

  Then six dark outlines. Six figures standing side by side, now calmly stepping forward into the pulsating sphere, one after the other.

  They emerged from the hovering portal and dropped down on to the concrete floor into identical postures of crouched, alert readiness; six naked, entirely hairless figures, four of them male and two female. The males, each seven feet tall, had broad frames carrying an almost implausibly muscular bulk. The two females, athletic, were a foot shorter and looked far more agile, but still rippling with lean muscle beneath milk-white skin. All of them were pale, covered in baby-smooth flesh, unmarked by the lines, creases, scars and blemishes acquired through the course of any ordinary life.

  One of the males stood erect, slowly sweeping his grey-eyed gaze round the archway. ‘Information: the field office is empty.’

  A second male nodded in agreement, his face almost, but not quite, identical, all forehead, thick brow and square jawline. They looked like perfect sculptures carved from granite.

  ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘We should assign temporary mission identifiers,’ the first one said. ‘And verbal adoptive call signs.’ He looked at the others. ‘I am Alpha-one. I will be called Abel.’

  ‘Alpha-two,’ said the second male support unit. ‘Verbal call sign — Bruno.’

  ‘Alpha-three,’ said one of the females. ‘Cassandra.’

  ‘Alpha-four. Damien.’

  ‘Alpha-five. Elijah.’

  ‘Alpha-six. Fred.’

  The others looked at Six. ‘Fred is gender-incompatible,’ said Abel. ‘You are female. Pick another name.’

  Six frowned. ‘It is short for Frederica.’

  ‘Pick another name.’

  She nodded obediently. ‘Faith.’

  ‘Acceptable,’ said Abel. He turned to look directly at computer-Bob’s webcam.

  A nearfield data handshake; two operating systems recognizing each other.

  ›Acknowledged.

  Abel’s thick brow knotted. ‘Where is your team?’ His deep voice filled the cavernous silence.

  Computer-Bob’s cursor blinked on the screen silently.

  ‘System AI,’ said Abel, ‘please state the last known location of your team members.’

  The cursor blinked and finally began to skitter forward along the command line.

  ›You are an unauthorized visitor to this field office. I am unable to provide any information. All information is confidential. System going into lockdown.

  ‘System AI, I have a higher authority level code. Abort lockdown.’

  ›Please transmit authority identification code.

  ‘Affirmative.’ Abel’s eyes blinked as he retrieved a string of data and streamed it wirelessly to computer-Bob.

  The cursor blinked silently on the screen, a full minute passing as computer-Bob appraised the alphanumeric string and finally conceded that it quite correctly was a code he couldn’t ignore.

  ›Identification code is valid.

  Abel stepped towards the row of monitors, cool eyes surveying the messy desk, the scraps of paper with handwritten memos and doodles on them, the empty pizza boxes and crushed drinks cans.

  Finally his gaze rested on the small glinting lens of the webcam perched on the top of the monitor in the middle of the desk. ‘System AI,’ his deep voice rumbled, ‘please state the last known location of your team members.’

  ›Location of team members is as follows…

  CHAPTER 28

  2001, New York

  ‘Jesus… this is beginning to get very weird,’ said Maddy. She looked around the busy street. She could see dozens of things that weren’t quite right. Billboards here and there advertising products she didn’t quite understand. Some of the cars on the street had odd profiles, much longer fronts and bonnets and no boot at the rear. Almost like drag racers. Pedestrians, many looking normal, but some had shimmered and changed and were wearing garments that looked tidier, formal even… and there was definitely a skew towards warmer colours: red, purple, burgundy.

  ‘It’s never been like this before,’ she muttered. ‘Lots and lots of little waves!’

  Sal nodded. ‘It’s weird all right.’

  ‘We need to hurry back.’ Maddy looked down at their plastic shopping bag full of electronic components. ‘Before a time ripple changes what we just bought into something else.’

  Sal giggled nervously. ‘Fruit… or something.’

  ‘Yeah, that would be odd.’

  The iPhone buzzed in Maddy’s shirt pocket. It stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Sal.

  ‘My iPhone…’ she said, fishing it out of her pocket. ‘I just got a text!’ The thing hadn’t functioned as a phone since she’d been recruited. It played her music. She carried it with her everywhere as a keepsake, a memento. A reminder of another life. But it certainly wasn’t a phone any more.

  It’s not possible. The only people who had her number were family and friends from 2010; a phone number and account not due to be activated for another

  eight years! She looked at the screen. She had a text from an unknown source. Maddy, emergency. Return to field office IMMEDIATELY.

  ‘It’s Bob,’ she said.

  ‘Bob?’ Sal frowned. ‘ Computer — Bob? He’s never texted before, has he?’

  ‘I didn’t know he could.’ She dialled the call number back. It was a Brooklyn code. It was also engaged. ‘He must have tapped into the local cell network. Figured out how to access my phone.’

  She’d left her Nokia back at the archway. After all, Liam was in Rome. No one was going to call them.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Sal. ‘What does he want?’

  Maddy tapped out a text message back to him. ‘Just gonna find out.’

  Sal looked up at the sky, shading her eyes. The World Trade Center was still there. If this timeline wasn’t already changed enough, then the first plane was due to impact with it shortly.

  ‘We need to hurry back.’

  Computer-Bob’s webcam lens observed the dim archway. It observed the dark outline of two of the support units, both moving through the shadows like ghosts; one of them, over by the shutter, was studying the hair-thin strip of daylight along the ground at the bottom, watching for the shifting shadows of movement outside. The other one was carefully picking through the clutter on the desk.

  Even without a webcam, computer-Bob would have known they were both close by; he was picking up their wireless idents: Alpha-three, Alpha-four. And the wordless exchange of unencrypted chatter between all six of them.

  Alpha-five: [… proceeding north along 8th Avenue towards West 55th Street. ETA on grid reference, three minutes, thirty-five seconds.]

  Alpha-two: [Grid reference correlates to business address: ‘Jupiter-Electro Supplies’.]

  Alpha-one: [Confirmed. Information: targets — two only. One Caucasian, female, aged 18. One Asian, female, aged 14. Access data profiles for images.]

  Alpha-three: [Information: have acquired recently taken images of younger target.]

  Bob’s webcam could see the female support unit, the one who had decided to call herself Cassandra. She held Maddy’s Nokia in her hand, the soft glow of the screen lighting up her baby-smooth, do
ll-like face as she thumbed through pages of low-resolution photographs Maddy had carelessly decided to take of herself and the others.

  Alpha-three: [Broadcasting image.]

  Her eyes blinked.

  Alpha-one: [Data received. All units update profile data of target: Saleena Vikram, with new image. Information: it is possible her appearance will have changed since deployment.]

  Computer-Bob also had a hard drive full of images of the girls, of Liam, of Becks and his fleshy counterpart, Bob. Everything his little webcam eye had seen, recorded and stored over the last few months. It was invaluable visual data he could — should — be making available to this team of support units.

  Their authority was unquestionable. His co-operation was non-negotiable. Command lines deep inside the quad-processors of all twelve linked PCs thrummed insistently along silicon pathways; lines of code barking like guard dogs yapping at a perimeter fence, compelling him to assist these support units in their quest to zero in on Maddy, Sal and Liam.

  He had already done that, though — followed his programming. Told them where they could locate the girls. There was no command line, however, telling him what he couldn’t also do.

  Warn them.

  Help them.

  CHAPTER 29

  2001, New York

  Alpha-one — Abel — stood at the intersection, scanning the street, thick with people in their smart clothes, hot and flustered on their way to work. Jackets draped over clammy arms, rolled-up shirt sleeves and rolled-up newspapers. Coffees in plastic cups, breakfast bagels sweating away in paper bags.

  Abel cocked his head, momentarily distracted from his mission’s parameters, fascinated by these curiously busy, busy people. How different they looked from people in his time. There was an ‘energy’ about them. A vibrancy. As if all the little things they did actually mattered. So unlike humans from his time. Those were slower. More economical, even lethargic, in their actions… as if movement itself had a criminal cost attached to it. There was a phrase for the way humans behaved in his time. A phrase that occurred again and again across the digi-sphere in media streams.