Gates of Rome tr-5 Page 3

  CHAPTER 5

  2070, Project Exodus, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs

  ‘Good morning, Dr Anwar.’

  Rashim nodded quickly at the assistant technician, one of his small team. The air around his hand glowed with the stand-by display of a wrist-mounted holographic infopad.

  ‘Anything come in overnight?’

  ‘We had some more personnel changes come in, Dr Anwar. And their attached metrics.’

  ‘Oh, marvellous,’ Rashim muttered unenthusiastically. ‘Buzz them over to my unit and I’ll look at them later.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The technician flipped his wrist and a holographic display blinked into existence, hovering in the air in front of him. His finger swiped across the display and a dozen messages were highlighted then floated out of their ‘in-box’ and into the air like pollen.

  ‘Received,’ said SpongeBubba. The lab unit squatted beside Rashim’s desk like a docile pet. A moment later, he offered Rashim a toothy grin. ‘Collating metrics, skippa!’

  Rashim glanced across the cavernous interior of the underground hangar, an interior blasted out of the mountain over a hundred years ago to make space for the political elite of the time — generals, congressmen, senators and their families — in the event of a thermonuclear war with the Russians.

  He shook his head. Nothing changes. The politicians are always the first in line.

  The hangar, perhaps a shade larger than a football pitch, was illuminated from the sides by floodlights erected on tripods. Pools of retina-achingly bright light stretched across a cold concrete floor, scuffed and grooved here and there decades ago when this installation was stripped bare of equipment and mothballed.

  An empty floor… right now.

  Rashim sat down among the cluster of cubicles and desks deployed in this corner of the hangar. First in again this morning, as always. He activated his terminal with a waft of his hand. His iris flickered momentarily as the terminal scanned and confirmed it was Dr Rashim Anwar issuing the command.

  Project Exodus: Mass Translation Simulator — the words glowed crisply in the air in front of Rashim.

  ‘Activate the floor mark-up.’

  The hangar’s concrete floor suddenly became a glowing chequerboard, criss-crossed with an intricate mesh of pulsing neon blue lines cast from a series of holographic projectors suspended from the cavernous ceiling. Grid-markers: squares varying in size from several inches across to several yards.

  ‘Overlay marker details.’

  Above each square floated holographic displays of columns of numbers: vital statistics for what was one day going to occupy each square.

  ‘And give me the content icons.’

  Above most of the various-sized grid squares, hundreds of them, glowing blue silhouettes suddenly appeared. Some of them the outlines of boxes and crates, several large icons depicting the profiles of vehicles, but the rest displaying the shimmering but clearly discernible outlines of human figures.

  ‘Bubba, can you show me who’s decided to be a nuisance this morning and drop out?’

  ‘Aye aye, skippa!’ SpongeBubba saluted playfully.

  Eleven of the human icons glowed red.

  Rashim got up from behind his desk and wandered across the hangar floor, the beams of light from above projecting down across his head, shoulders and back. He squatted down in front of the first human icon that had turned red. Rashim read the display of information floating in the air beside it. Candidate 165: Name — Professor Jennifer Carmel Age — 28 Assignment — Biochemist Mass Index — 54.4959

  Beneath the display an envelope icon flashed, one of the notifications that came in during the night. Rashim touched the envelope and a message opened in the air beside his finger. Candidate 165 Carmel, J., deceased. Food riots in Puerto Rico, yesterday. One hundred and fifty-six fatalities. Cause of death — head trauma, gunshot wound. No information on whether she was part of the riot or accidentally caught up. Next of kin informed.

  ‘Sorry, Jennifer Carmel,’ he said, sighing, ‘I guess you won’t be coming along with us after all.’ His finger hovered over a delete icon and her outline disappeared along with her vital statistics. The grid square was empty now.

  Rashim cursed softly. Not that he knew or cared who Jennifer Carmel had been. His frustration was more to do with the fact that unless they could find a replacement candidate with a close enough build and mass index, he was going to have to work through a lot of tedious number crunching and recalibration for this one square.

  He looked up at the other ten human silhouettes dotted randomly across the hangar floor, outlines glowing red, candidates who for one reason or another were no longer going to be able to join Exodus in six months’ time.

  Six months to go. Six months until T-Day. Transmission Day.

  So much could happen in six months.

  The world seemed to be utterly determined to destroy itself in the meantime. The Pacific War between Japan and North Korea seemed to be flaring up to a new level of intensity. While neither of them had any nuclear weapons left to use, there were far worse things they could unleash on each other.

  The rest of the world seemed no less bent on its own demise. Rashim’s own country, Iran, had led the charge there and destroyed itself thirty years ago in a war that started as a dispute with the Arabian Coalition. A war over fresh water no less. Not even oil.

  Water. Drinking water.

  Iran, Iraq, Israel… were now three countries that were too irradiated for anyone to live in even thirty years after the exchange of tactical nuclear missiles. Even if they weren’t irradiated, the few mountainous areas that hadn’t been flooded by the rising waters of the Mediterranean and Red Seas and the Persian Gulf would be far too arid to support life. The millions that died in that one-day exchange of tit-for-tat warheads perhaps were the lucky ones, weren’t they? Death in the blink of an eye instead of this long, slow, global death.

  ‘Skippa?’

  He looked up. SpongeBubba had waddled across the large grid-crossed floor to join him.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Dr Yatsushita has sent a message. He’s on his way into the facility and wants to run a transmission simulation this morning.’

  ‘Well, he’ll have to wait until I rework the figures without these candidates!’ Rashim snapped irritably.

  ‘Shall I send that message to Dr Yatsushita, skippa?’

  He stood up. ‘No, I’d better talk to him when he gets in.’

  ‘Aye aye,’ his unit replied and waddled back across the hangar floor.

  He sighed. There was so little margin for error. A miscalculation on the total mass index even by the tiniest percentage could send them out of the receiver station’s snap range. Not for the first time he was amazed at the foolhardy courage of that incredible man Waldstein.

  The reluctant father of time travel.

  Twenty-six years ago now, wasn’t it? The very first successful demonstration of time displacement. There and back again. Of course the man had never spoken about where or when he went. But he’d done it. More importantly he’d survived it. He’d come back in one piece and not turned inside out like burger meat.

  Their own initial experiments here in the Cheyenne Mountain facility had turned a succession of animals small and large, genetically engineered human prototypes, even several real human volunteers into the equivalent of living pate.

  Living… for a few ghastly moments… actually alive.

  Rashim marvelled at Waldstein’s incredible genius. Dr Yatsushita was a brilliant man, but even with billions of dollars of funding and almost limitless resources at his disposal, Project Exodus still felt horribly like a large scary exercise in trial and error. Guesswork.

  Waldstein, though… Waldstein had built his machine on his own. In his own garage, for Chrissake!

  Or so the legend supposedly went.

  Rashim often wondered what happened to that man. He’d been such a prominent figure for so many years. Meeting
with world leaders, the very last guest speaker at the United Nations before it was finally dissolved in 2049. Then he seemed to disappear. Became something of a recluse. Rashim wasn’t even sure if Waldstein was alive still. There were rumours.

  Rashim pushed a lock of hair behind his ear and turned to head towards the nearest glowing red ‘human’ icon a dozen yards away. Another candidate to delete.

  What did you see, Roald Waldstein? Hmmmm? What did you see with those mad eyes of yours? What did you see beyond these three spatial dimensions we can comprehend? It was perhaps the most frequently asked question during the ’40s and ’50s when Waldstein’s face seemed to be on almost every media news-stream…

  What did you see, Mr Waldstein? More to the point: Why did it frighten you so much?

  CHAPTER 6

  2001, New York

  Liam watched the data slowly spooling down the screen — packets of hexadecimal data that made no sense to him whatsoever. Every so often the spooling stopped and lines and chunks of the meaningless alphanumeric text were fleetingly highlighted. Sometimes the highlighted text switched from white to green. Sometimes from white to red.

  Liam pointed at a chunk that had just turned red. ‘So that’s not good, is it?’

  ‘That is corrupted data,’ said Bob.

  The entire contents of Becks’s silicon mind had been downloaded on to the computer system over thirty-six hours ago, a mountain of data stored up by her during her brief life. And now computer-Bob was working through it, testing the data for corrupted packets. Liam looked at the progress log on another screen: a map of her hard drive, her mind, divided into a grid of blocks of data. White for the data yet to be tested, green for verified and red for lost data. The last few chunks of white were being cross-examined. The rest of the grid was a patchwork of green and red blocks. The red seemed to grow malevolently, like cancer tumours. Far too many of them.

  ‘We’ve lost her, haven’t we?’

  Bob’s face twitched with the ghost of a response. Involuntary? Possibly. Perhaps a sign that he was once again much more than the basic code he was born with. Learning to turn incoming information into an understanding, into context… an emotion. To almost be human.

  ‘Significant portions of her stored data are damaged.’ He offered Liam a wan smile. ‘But I am hopeful.’

  Computer-Bob was listening, despite being busy sifting through the data.

  ›We will not know whether we have a stable AI construct until I have compiled the data and run the emulator.

  Liam looked at Bob. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘The computer system will run the AI code on a software-simulated version of the chipset. It will then enter packets of the verified data block by block into the simulation to check the stability and reliability of Becks’s AI.’

  ‘To see whether she’s gone stupid?’

  Bob’s thick brow rumpled. Liam reached out and grabbed the bulging knuckles of one of Bob’s hands. ‘Jay-zus, you really care about her, don’t you?’

  His chest rumbled with a deep hur-umph. ‘She was an effective support unit. Her AI was able to develop more than mine.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s the ladies for you. Better at expressing their feelings than us fellas, huh?’

  ‘Gender is not a factor.’ Bob turned his grey eyes on him. ‘Did you care for her, Liam?’

  He laughed uncomfortably. ‘Well… I…’

  ‘The discoloration of your cheeks and body language suggest you have a strong emotional attachment to her. Am I correct, Liam?’

  He gazed at the screen.

  Blocks of colour. She’s just blocks of colour on a computer screen now. That’s it. And yet in her flesh form, in human form, she’d almost seemed like another person. Perhaps a somewhat cool person, detached, aloof even. But she could make a joke, couldn’t she? And smile.

  He realized her smile — even though it was nothing more than a data file played out across facial muscles — could make something inside him flutter and ache. A beautiful smile actually. Quite stunningly beautiful, truth be told.

  ‘I’d miss her,’ he said finally. ‘If she really is lost… yes, I’ll miss her.’

  ›Information.

  Liam nodded at the webcam. ‘What is it, computer-Bob?’

  ›I am ready to start the simulation. Do you wish to proceed?

  He wondered whether he should wait for Maddy to get back. Sal too. They were both just as concerned whether there was anything left of Becks to salvage as he was.

  ‘Will it… I don’t know… is it safe? It won’t damage her mind or anything, will it?’

  ›Negative. The data we have retrieved is now stored safely. This simulation is a read-only environment.

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘It means that once the simulation stops running,’ said Bob, ‘any data that is generated is deleted.’

  ‘She won’t remember anything?’

  ›That is correct. It is merely a test environment.

  Liam let himself down into the chair. ‘All right, then.’ He puffed out an anxious breath. ‘Let’s see if she’s in there.’

  ›Affirmative. Launching AI emulator.

  On a screen to his right another black dialogue box popped up. An empty box with a gently blinking cursor. That’s all. Liam looked up at Bob nervously. The support unit nodded silently for him to go ahead and communicate with her.

  ‘Uh… you in there, Becks?’

  The dialogue cursor continued to blink, a steady on-off-on-off like a heartbeat. A pulse. A sign of life and nothing more.

  ›………

  ‘It’s Liam here… can you hear me?’

  The cursor continued to blink silently.

  ‘The cognitive and language code may not be functioning correctly,’ said Bob quietly.

  ‘Becks, this is Liam. If you can hear me, just do something. Say something.’

  ›………

  He watched the cursor with a gradually sinking heart. We’ve lost her.

  Of course they could activate and grow another female foetus and she would emerge from the growth tube looking every bit like Becks. Her identical twin. But he wondered how different she would be. She’d have a face with the very same features and muscles and skin, but the mind behind it would probably learn to use the face in a wholly different way. Smile differently, no longer cock a sceptical eyebrow in quite the same way. A thousand little tics and habits that made Becks who she was — all of them gone, forever.

  ‘Becks?’ he tried again. ‘You there?’

  ›………

  ‘It appears there is not enough retrieved data to form a viable AI construct,’ said Bob. Liam thought he heard something in his deep rumble, the slightest quaver in his voice, a thread of grief.

  ‘Becks?’ he tried one last time. He could hear emotion in his own voice now.

  She’s gone. We lost her. He felt something warm roll down his cheek and quickly swiped it away, for some reason not wanting either Bob or computer-Bob to make a note of that and intrude on the moment with a query.

  Goodbye, Becks.

  ›………

  ›…….

  ›……

  ›……

  ›….

  ›I love you, Liam O’Connor.

  CHAPTER 7

  2001, New York

  They watched the foetus floating in the protein soup, flexing and twitching tiny fingers and toes in unconscious readiness. A feed pipe was connected to its belly button and rose up to the top of the tube where it met the filtration pump.

  The perspex growth tube was lit from the bottom. It glowed softly, filling their back room with a warm, womb-like, muted crimson light.

  ‘Do you think they think about things when they’re growing in there?’ asked Liam.

  ‘Probably not,’ said Maddy.

  Sal turned to Bob, standing like a freshly built brick wall beside her. ‘Did you, Bob? Do you have any memories of being in a tube?’

  He frowned, dee
p in concentration for a moment. ‘No. My AI software was not loaded at this stage.’

  ‘But your organic brain?’ cut in Maddy. ‘That must store some memories?’

  Bob’s shoulders flexed a casual shrug. ‘If so, it is not data I can retrieve.’

  The little foetus kicked a leg out, then tucked it back in.

  Maddy chuckled. ‘It’s got some of her attitude already.’

  ‘Do you think we can upload Becks’s AI?’ asked Sal.

  Maddy tapped her teeth with her fingernails. ‘I dunno yet, Sal. That simulation we ran… she seemed pretty flaky.’ On Maddy and Sal’s return, computer-Bob had run the simulation again with exactly the same results.

  She turned to look at Liam. ‘I mean… I love you… that can’t be right for a support unit, can it?’

  Bob nodded. ‘It did appear that the simulated AI was behaving erratically.’

  ‘So, maybe these clone fellas can feel something?’ said Liam.

  The others looked at him.

  ‘Well, I’m not so unlovable, am I?’

  Sal giggled. ‘I’m sure your mother must’ve loved you.’

  ‘Point is — ’ Maddy placed a hand on the warm growth tube — ‘I’m pretty sure support units shouldn’t go round professing love for their operative.’

  Liam looked uncertain. ‘She definitely was learning to… to feel something, so she was. That’s not so bad, is it?’

  Maddy found herself nodding in the gloom. Hadn’t she too thought she’d seen that in Becks? ‘Helps them appear more human, I suppose.’

  ‘Back in the dinosaur time, she…’ Liam looked at the others sheepishly.

  ‘She what?’

  ‘Well, she sort of went to kiss me, so she did.’

  Sal made a face. Maddy’s eyes rounded behind her lenses. ‘ Kiss you?’

  ‘Tried to give me just a little peck, so. On me cheek, that’s all.’

  Sal made a face. ‘That’s just weird.’

  ‘Just a peck… nothing else happened,’ he added defensively. ‘Honest!’

  Maddy waved him silent. ‘Doesn’t matter. The fact is maybe that means she did already have… feelings before this damage. Maybe the “I love you” comment was not corrupted data or some sort of malfunction.’ She looked up at Bob. ‘She inherited your code, Bob. Have you ever experienced — you know — feelings for Liam?’