by Toby Weston
There was a round of handshaking and some polite chatter, during which a third member of their Fab arrived, climbing up the internal steel staircase from below. He was a wiry, pale-skinned youth with brown hair, cargo pants and a hoody.
“Hey, awesome. You’re here!”
“Keith, this is Noah,” Claude said. “He’s been pretty psyched the last couple of weeks since we set up your visit.”
“Hey, Noah! Nice to meet you. What’s your part in all this?” Keith asked, trying to match the enthusiasm.
“Chief tech,” he said proudly. “Tanya’s the captain, of course. Claude is the Science Officer chair.” He glanced at his Kinmate, a trace of faded annoyance adding a peevish note to his voice.
“So, you guys have worked it out, have you?” Keith asked mischievously, raising his eyebrows and nodding towards the tent.
“Sure, soon as I saw what we were printing!” replied Claude. “That’s why we call it Big Bay. Get the Sci-Fi reference?”
“Err, no, sorry.”
“Right,” Noah said, clearly disappointed, then immediately brightened up again. “We couldn’t work out how she was going to fly, though… but that’s why you’re here, right? Flight test?”
“Not quite,” said Keith. “Nothing’s going anywhere today.”
“Sure, but we’re going to rev her up a bit?”
“That’s the plan,” Keith said, looking around at the bay below. “What’s your flame trench?”
“Twenty metres of wet sandbags,” Noah replied.
“Did you check that with head office?”
“Everything is checked and double-checked,” Tanya said, leaning against the concrete wall with her arms crossed. “Let’s get going.”
“I’m with you there, the sooner we get this back the better,” Keith said, lifting the bulky flashlight tube.
“Shall I?” asked Claude.
“Sure.” Keith screwed open the tube, removed the anatomical decoy padding, and handed the Torch to Claude. “Don’t even look at it funny. Just follow the instructions to the letter. The guys back home are super paranoid about this falling into the wrong hands.”
“What is it?” Tanya asked.
“Fucked if I know,” Keith replied with a shrug. “A few years ago, I asked and was told that it wasn’t a nuclear bomb. I suspect that was only partially true…”
What followed was a replay of the procedure Keith had already witnessed in Zilistan. Noah opened the inspection hatch, which hinged open revealing a white ceramic space, dotted with thousands of tiny pores. By leaning his entire torso into the strangely organic interior, he was able to reach the ignition torus—a black ceramic hoop, surrounded by dozens of slots. Into one, he pushed and twisted the knobbly end of the Hafnium Torch. It fitted snuggly, rotating into place until almost the entire cylinder was mated with the torus, with only a centimetre of its white base projecting. There then came a few barely audible clicks and whirrs as the Torch mated with the vessel’s plumbing, while an orifice at its centre irised open.
There was no retreating to a safe distance this time. However, since the Çiftlik demonstration, a new batch of unit tests had been loaded into the Stratford hull and all results had come back green. Everybody was confident things would run smoothly.
Claude and Tanya—who had dedicated their lives for the last three years building the fantastic machine—were leaning over a workbench, where a collection of tablets showed telemetry from the hull’s instrumentation. Noah hinged the panel closed and red dots began to turn green. A minute or so later, he emerged from the tent. He walked out of view, checking that the exhaust was aligned with their flame trench, and sloshed a few more buckets of water over the sandbags.
“All good!” he shouted, showing both thumbs to his colleagues on the mezzanine balcony.
When the last indicator flicked to green, Tanya hit the pulsing ‘begin test’ button on a Companion and the Hafnium Torch began releasing the energy it kept locked in the nuclei of its ten grams of Hf178m2. Even at only five per cent charged, plumbed into the hull, drawing cryogenic hydrogen for fuel and to chill its superconducting containment magnets, the Torch could maintain a fusion reaction for days. With its full complement of 128 fully charged Torches, the vessel would be able to fly to the moon and back in an afternoon.
Blue tape—the type used for marking out indoor football pitches—had been laid to create trapezoid sections on the ground floor and mezzanine. Their converging sides formed triangles meeting in a point somewhere towards the rear of the tent. On one side of the lines, observers would be within the shadow of the meta-material shields printed into the ship’s hull; on the other, neutrons, X-rays and gamma rays from the fusion Torch would quickly deliver a very nasty internal tan.
While alchemy continued—hydrogen becoming helium, missing mass becoming heat—Keith checked his messages:
Dee had written something obscure. It was either a break-up note, or an invitation to a party. He hadn’t realised they were supposed to be together, so he took it as the latter.
The Kin were still excited, chattering and pointing, but it was in fact all very mundane with very little to see. A thin whistling, almost too high-pitched to register, was the only evidence that an ember of sun was being goosed and tweaked only a few metres away.
Keith barely reacted when there was a faint knock on the slab of metal which served as their door.
Tanya and Claude exchanged a confused glance. The knock came again, but now as the hammering of a clenched fist on a dull gong.
“Fuck!” Claude said, his eyes suddenly two dilated disks of surprise and fear.
“What’s that?” Keith asked trying to remain calm.
Tanya flicked at her Companion and Keith saw a view from the corridor. Two police officers, a man and a woman; they were not Razzia, but not lollypop ladies, either. A drone hovered a few metres behind them, its blue lights flashing silently. The two cops shrugged and the man banged again on the door with the fleshy side of his fist.
The hammering came again.
“Stop the test and get the Torch out as quickly as you can,” Keith said with exaggerated calm.
“Can’t. Oh crap. Too hot,” replied Noah. “It’s going to take at least forty-five minutes.” His fingers flew over tablet screens, his throat and jaw clenching with subvocalised commands.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Keith muttered. “Not good. The thing will self-destruct.”
“I’ll go talk to them,” said Claude. “Lock the inner door after I go out and I’ll try and get rid of them.” He began straightening his grubby shirt and running his fingers through his hair.
They watched on the Companion as a cop raised his hand again, but paused, mid-knock, as he heard the sounds of the inner door rumbling open. Claude stepped through into the short corridor, while Tanya locked the inner door behind him. Keith watched through his Spex as Claude unlocked the door between him and the police and slid it open.
Another alert on Keith’s Spex told him that the Torch had powered down. However, its own monitoring of the local feeds had identified the presence of the authorities. Its alert status had jumped from amber to red. It had begun insisting on privacy or, failing that, was asking Keith to find it a clear, unobstructed view of the sky. Keith was trying to assure it, and the team in the palace on Bäna, that everything was going to be okay.
“Good evening, officers,” said Claude politely.
“Claude Grant?” asked the female cop.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What sort of establishment is this, Mr Grant?”
“Do you have a Mr Poins with you this evening?” asked the male cop.
“Auto repair shop, sir,” replied Claude. “What’s this about?”
“Please answer the question, Mr Grant.”
“Tanya had a friend over earlier, not sure of his name, or if he’s still here.”
“Tanya? Early thirties, short skirt?”
“Err, I guess that could be her.”
&nbs
p; “We know Tanya is a sex worker Mr Grant, and we have a tip-off that she might be entertaining a foreign national. Can we come in?”
“Well, we are in the middle of something right now. Could you perhaps come back tomorrow?”
“Right in the middle of something? I’m sure Tanya wouldn’t mind us interrupting,” the bloke cop said, looking to his female partner, perhaps hoping for a smirk.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Claude.
“Come on, Mr Grant,” the male cop said. “We’ve got nothing on you… unless, perhaps, you are the pimp? But frankly, they usually come a little more intimidating... maybe you are the cuck boyfriend? Do you get off letting your girlfriend get fucked, Mr Grant?”
Claude just stared blankly at the unnecessarily antagonistic cop.
“Well, I guess that’s not so bad…” said Keith, back in the main room, turning to Tanya. “They’ve bought my cover, just a bit too well. They think I’m a john and you’re a hooker. They probably want to score some points off the Caliph by turning me over.”
“I guess that’s good,” Tanya said sceptically. “We still can’t let them in.”
“Yeah, I know. Why don’t I just go out and let them arrest me?”
“Alright, I’m not going to argue,” Tanya replied.
“Look,” said Keith, “after I’m gone, as soon as you can, get the Torch outside and pointing up with a clear view of the sky. Like a firework. If it gets freaked out, then it will just fly off, no drama. Stay the fuck out the way, though—the plasma and radiation will burn you badly if you are close by. Don’t look at it as it goes up, either!”
“Okay. Hey, thanks man.”
“No worries. See what the N-Kin say, but you might need to scuttle the ship.”
Noah looked up for the first time, a look of shock and horror on his face. “No fucking way!”
“Yeah, well, cross that bridge when you come to it,” said Keith. “Once the Torch is away, it’s not so important, but N won’t want the Razzia and the Forwards to get their hands on it. Anyway, let me go and see if I can turn myself in and get rid of the cops.”
While Claude argued with the police, assuring them that they had the wrong idea, Tanya opened the inner door a crack and Keith pushed through.
“Very good evening,” Keith greeted them, smiling, using Kenneth’s accented lilt. “What seems to be the problem, officers?”
“Mr Poins?”
“Yes, of course. Kenneth Poins, Caliphate citizen, tourist and visitor to your most excellent city.”
“You’re under arrest, Mr Poins, for soliciting sexual acts.”
“Oh, dear me, no,” said Keith. “Myself and the attractive lady are now married. An Imam has pronounced it. Although, I suspect we will be divorcing later in the evening.” He winked to the male cop, who looked back blankly. “I can ask him to manifest and verify, if you would like?”
“Mr Poins, it don’t work like that here. You fucked a whore, now you’re going to prison. That’s how it works here. Get it?”
“How dare you speak of my wife in this way. I never paid for anything. I merely gifted her a little something for her college books.”
“Okay, you piece of shit!” The female cop lurched forward and grabbed Kenneth’s shirt. “Try not to fall down the stairs on the way to the station…”
“Now open the fucking door so we can pick up your whore wife too!” the male cop said, doing finger quotes with the word ‘wife’.
“She’s innocent,” said Keith. “Just leave it. You’ve got me. I’m sure that’s enough to shame my Caliph, on him are the blessings and the peace of Allah…”
“Shut the fuck up and get this door open,” the male cop said.
The drone had glided up, its jets a harsh rasping screech, its presence a clear threat.
“If you don’t open your knocking shop door now, I’m going to call our friends at the Razzia to crack open a suspected Fab!” shouted the male cop again, smacking his fists onto the metal.
The Torch was monitoring the exchange, and was flashing a silent alert. It was rapidly becoming a toddler, bored of shopping, who wanted to go home… NOW!
‘Fuck, looks like we are going to lose this. I can’t see any way to get these idiots away. They are going to insist on coming through that door, or else they are going to call for backup. Either way, the Torch is not going to accept it and will get all explosive about the situation.’ Keith subvocalised, his mouth completely still as his top-of-the-range Spex plucked latent intent from his motor cortex. ‘If you’ve got a back way, run like fuck now. I’ll keep them talking.’
‘Three-minute warning,’ the Torch informed him, building up to its inevitable temper tantrum.
Claude had slipped behind the cops and was sidling away up the corridor, heading for the stairs. There was a clunk as the inner door was locked again.
A new voice started talking urgently. ‘Get out of there if you can, Keith. The shit’s going to hit the fan fast. It’s got to take the ship with it and we’re not sure how precise it can be with the blast…’ It was his handler back at Atlantis; Keith could plainly hear the hysteria creeping into her voice.
“Hey, stop there!” the cop shouted, turning and finding Claude already halfway up the corridor behind him. Claude heard the shout and reacted instantly by sprinting for the stairs. The two police fumbled for their weapons, but he was out of sight before they could get a clean shot. When they turned back, Keith was already vaulting through a window frame—taking care to avoid the decades-old, moss-flecked, but still sharp, jagged teeth of shattered glass lining its edges.
‘Two minutes.’
Keith landed hard on an auto, cracking its plastic roof, bouncing onto his arse and sliding to the road. The male cop stuck his gun out the window, but Keith stayed out of sight, wasting precious seconds ducking behind the auto. Then the drone decided to drift out of the window, its wastepaper-basket body floating down after him, sirens now screaming. The cop seemed to decide the drone would be enough to keep Keith in sight, and dashed towards the stairs behind Claude and his partner.
The drone wasn’t in any hurry to apprehend him; it would certainly have already called for better-equipped backup. It merely followed Keith’s desperate sprint, the whole time flashing and screaming outrage.
‘One minute,’ the Torch sent.
“Fuck.” Keith was forty-three and in good shape. He could run a mile in a little over five and a half minutes. He was already maybe a hundred metres away from the suicidal device bent on self-destruction. He had no idea how big the blast—which was now a predestined certainty—would be. He hoped to get to the end of the street and turn the corner before whatever was coming happened; hopefully, there would be something solid to dive behind.
Chapter 18 – Idiot Buttons
The tale of George and Lawrence was one of the world’s great fascist love stories. Lawrence Pritchard had started out in politics as the young, ambitious Forward Minister for Entertainment. Early in his career, he had met George Baphmet, the new CEO of BHJ Holdings, who had recently pivoted the company’s advertising platform into the virgin territory of computational propaganda. Baphmet and his son had pitched BHJ’s Persuasive Technologies services to the minister, and Pritchard was sharp enough to realise the potential of a million robot journalists and an endless roster of synthetic media stars. Meshed in a symbiotic tangle of aligned incentives, their relationship had ripened and evolved. BHJ’s Persuasive Technologies division churned out computational propaganda by the terabyte, while the Sages they leased to their corporates provided consultancy cut with a deniable trace of spin.
Pritchard had leveraged the advantage, riding the wave of industrialised adulation—he became an armour-clad conquistador slashing through his naked, stick-wielding political opponents. After two decades transmuting soft influence into hard power, Pritchard was comfortably ensconced as the patriarch of the International Forward Coalition, while George wielded sock puppet armies and pierced BHJ’s media h
yphae into a billion brains.
Some estimates claimed that ten per cent of the world’s news was shaped in some way by BHJ’s Sages. Ben knew that, with their recent expansion into smaller markets, it was now more like thirty per cent. Everything was fair game—from ‘Thank You’ cards to breaking news; soap operas to sex-bots; Christmas Cracker jokes to massive multiplayer historical immersions; Sages and mAIds whispering tainted secrets to their oblivious, defenceless masters.
BHJ provided their customers with industrialised persuasion. Petabytes of info-porn, weighted to tantalise and titillate, were spewed from BHJ’s servers every second, with each and every chunk exquisitely moulded to hijack subconscious bias and resonate preselected themes.
Until BHJ had ‘Appified’ oppression, imposing doctrine had required unending droves of bright-eyed, ideologically pure young people. Right thinking had to be enforced in back rooms littered with piss-soaked mattresses, lined with stainless steel cabinets stocked with cattle prods, alligator clips and other assorted nasties, providing toothless sociopaths the tools they needed to adjust points of view and align citizens’ aspirations with their sponsor’s business models.
