Singularity's Children Box Set

by Toby Weston

  “Even if the attack does turn out to be terrorism, it would be the first time a country running our Outreach software has suffered such an attack...” Shaun said.

  Ben finally caught up. The Waladlis were getting cold feet. The attack had either shaken their faith in BHJ’s mind control suite, or they were cynically exploiting the situation to renegotiate.

  “Guys, guys…” said Ben. “You are going to be very happy with Outreach. Don’t get buyer’s remorse now! Give it a year—fees don’t start to ramp up until then, anyway… right? Remember? I certainly won’t forget how you rascals negotiated my white boy’s ass raw!” He grinned at the others, turning the full force of his mischievous imp loose.

  Shaun looked away in disgust.

  Sachi shook his head sadly and sighed. “Too good for true. I say this. Others believe. Now we see, really is too good for be true! No security in Forward cities! Why Waladli take Outreach?”

  “Well, it’s not too good for half the world,” Shaun said, his petulant side showing through his professional demeanour. “You are joining a mature, stable, international association focused on peace and security.”

  “Perhaps we join Atlantis Thalassocracy instead?” replied Sachi. “No nuclear explosion on Atlantis. But perhaps is too late for our island to change mind now?” He looked over to Pirro and Masclem, raising his eyebrows.

  “In my opinion, sir, it is done. We need Outreach,” Pirro said. “This will be our first step toward joining the Forward Coalition. Without it, we have no chance to compete with our neighbours.”

  “Policing is dirty,” Masclem shrugged. “Bend fingers or bend minds.”

  Shaun flicked his eyes nervously between Sachi, Masclem and Pirro. Ben sensed his own contribution would be unwelcome.

  “Too late to back out, Mr Twefford,” Sachi said eventually. Then he turned to Ben. “Stop to worry. Bonus is safe.”

  “Thank you, Minister,” Shaun said with clumsy relief. “I can assure you that you will not be disappointed. We have a tight grip on the situation.”

  “Remember not to grip too tight, Mr Twefford,” Masclem offered. “Or it might squeeze out between your fingers...”

  “WOO-HAY!” Ben said, looking up from a mouthful of baked beans on toast.

  The others looked at him, genuinely puzzled by his mumbled outburst—except for Shaun, who knew Ben well enough to understand he was making some sort of vague, crude innuendo; but even he was not sure why Ben did this. His Sages were equally perplexed; one would claim that Ben was expertly and maliciously undermining Shaun’s authority with childish outbursts, while another maintained that Ben was mentally ill, quite possibly suffering from undiagnosed Tourette syndrome.

  Shaun excused himself, as did the others a few minutes later. Ben felt tired and a little headachy. He finished his coffee and then plopped down in a comfortable chair by the vast, curving window. Clouds were edging by below. He would be in the Azores in two days. BHJ had paid for first class Xepplin accommodation as part of a vast itinerary of perks recently awarded to Waladli senior government officials as a corporate ‘thank you’ for licensing the Outreach product. Pritchard, the long-serving head of the international Forward Coalition, had suggested BHJ host the event on the islands of the Azores to demonstrate that Niato didn’t have a monopoly on island paradises.

  Ben closed his eyes for a few seconds. He knew he was not BHJ’s most strategic thinker. He could allow that it was possible he was not their best salesman. But he was relatively confident that he was the world’s best after sales loyalty manager. A keen appreciation of luxury, and many years dedicated to honing his partying skills, had made him a perfect host and hand greaser. Normally, he would be looking forward to the upcoming corporate piss-up, but his hangover and the niggling guilt-dread, which spread across his chest every time Deb’s face and Ling’s lithe body intruded into his stream of consciousness, were taking the edge off his enthusiasm.

  Governments from a dozen small island nations would be joining them at St Michael for a week of conferences, dinners, dancing and a rally day sponsored by some of the world’s most elite auto makers. Local children, who might have been surprised to learn that they lived in paradise, stood pressed against chain-link fences as insane insectoid autos and old-fashioned manual ‘cars’ were rolled up from the port to be washed, polished and draped in luxurious expanses of scantily clad human flesh—after all, many people were about to get very, very rich, and would need somewhere to squander their ill-gotten gains. BHJ would use the event to show off their happy new Outreach customers and flirt with the heads of state of other, barely stable, island nations and small sovereigns.

  Down below, the sea was a pale turquoise; a few white darts left triangular wakes as they inched across its mottled membrane. Ben tried again to squeeze out some enthusiasm—reminding himself that St Michael would be well stocked with booze, women and toys—but nothing came.

  Keith had pulled a hoody from the body of a woman. The fabric was pink, which disguised for a few seconds the fact that it was covered in blood. The woman had died from having a large, jagged piece of glass slice her head nearly off. He also wore a green knitted hat from a youth he found slumped next to a wall. The boy’s head was squashy, a shattered skull inside a retaining bag of flesh. Another body had generously bequeathed him a loose pair of black jogging bottoms with a white stripe up the side. The only original items from Kenneth Poins’ wardrobe were his uncomfortable leather shoes.

  Keith had tissue paper stuffed up his gums and into nostrils. Together with a broken nose, severe facial bruising and an oversized pair of thick glasses, he hoped he might not trigger the Forward’s ubiquitous facial recognition. He kept the hoody up, anyway.

  The roads were deserted. He had been walking all night. It would be dawn soon. Sirens and flashing lights had become a constant background texture. Razzia and police autos passed by overhead, or raced along deserted tarmac. He didn’t have his Spex or Companion, or even any money. Aside from his clothes, the only items he carried were a flashlight, a few sips remaining in a litre bottle of water, and some pies that he had stuffed in the hoody’s kangaroo pocket. He had looted the supplies from the devastation in Stratford, helping himself to food and water from a partially destroyed kiosk burning at the periphery of the blast.

  He was about to check his Companion, but remembered he didn’t have one. A church in the distance had a clock on its spire. As he approached, he read the time from golden hands reflecting the glowing sky: 4.40 pm. The daily Xepplin from Paris would be passing over Bexley Heath in another half hour.

  Keith was knackered; he had been walking on a sprained ankle for over four hours. His ears were bleeding and, unsurprisingly, he had a monster of a headache. It took him most of the remaining time to locate the low ruin locally known as the ‘windmill’. The heath was mostly bare scrub—a scuffed, bramble-knotted expanse of rusty cars, dumped mattresses and dog shit.

  He picked his way between hazards and squatted on an area of mossy grass within ancient hexagonal foundations. The morning was cloudy, but the cloud base was hopefully higher than a descending Xepplin. He took out his torch and fiddled with it—on, low and off. He waited. Somewhere far away a bell announced 5 am. A couple of hundred years ago, the windmill had occupied the highest point on the convex bowl that was the heath. Keith’s view East was unobscured and the horizon a soft curve. A slow-moving point separated itself from the light pollution. Keith checked the flashlight again and waited. Over the next quarter of an hour, the point resolved, becoming a Sky Whale. It swam through clouds lit by the glow of the approaching dawn. Colossal tail flukes stirred the air. The beam of its bow light highlighted lacy wisps of cloud as they were torn aside by its blunt ram of a nose.

  Keith had become hypnotised while following its sedate progress. However, before it was too late, he snapped out of his trance, pointed his flashlight at the Sky Whale’s belly and signalled. The message was an eight-digit binary number comprising his designation and the
contingency plan he had chosen to follow. He repeated the pattern twice more and then tried to find somewhere not smeared in dog faeces to huddle for a few hours.

  “I can’t get anything useful on my Spex. What’s going on?”

  “Let’s talk when we get to St Michael. Not good now, okay?”

  “That’s another two days! What’s going on, Shaun!?”

  “Ben!”

  “Fucking hell, you are such a fucking dick, Shaun!” Ben said in utter exasperation, removing his foot from the door of Shaun’s cabin and letting it close.

  Ben had dozed in the bar most of the day, regaining energy as his hangover slowly evaporated. He had asked his Sage and queried his Companion, but there was very little on the blast. The Forward streams had initially reported it, but now only referred to a possible explosion.

  “Rum and coke,” he said to the barman once he struggled up onto his stool. “You know what’s going on in London?”

  The Atlantean citizen looked at Ben—the Forward stooge—sceptically. “Big explosion, thousands dead. Tragedy.”

  “I got that, but whose bomb was it?”

  “Your guys were saying it was our guys,” the barman replied. “But that’s quietened down now. Forwards are quiet as a mouse—you’ve got your sock-puppet army on lockdown. The Mesh is hot, though, lots of chatter.”

  “Can I borrow your Spex?”

  “What? No, that’s disgusting.”

  “Come on, these Forward pieces of shit only give me internet access, and that’s dry as a nun’s pussy.” Ben waved his chunky black-rimmed glasses.

  “Ha! You said it! Yeah, alright, take my Companion for a few secs—but don’t do anything dodgy!”

  Ben took the unfamiliar device—a flat, dark pebble the size of his palm, etched with slowly shifting, clear white script. It complained at the pairing attempt, not recognising Ben. Its guest mode limited local data and would hold back certain categories of information—but Ben was not looking for porn just now.

  It took him a few minutes to get it to accept his Forward model Spex. He ignored a succession of dire warnings; the Atlantis Companion was unable to verify end-to-end security and was concerned that the old, buggy protocols would allow spoofing and data loss. However, Ben forced back the complaints and rammed his Spex into the reluctant Companion’s data space. Finally, a response to his query displayed.

  It was another world. In place of the passive-aggressive silence of the Forward internet—Sages and bimBoids looking elsewhere, while their masters worked out how best to spin the horror—the Mesh was hysterical with grief, with thousands of theories and conspiracies bickering and merging across a million streams and flicks.

  Thousands of people were injured. Eleven hundred were confirmed dead, but that figure was rising hourly as burnt and crushed bodies were pulled from collapsed buildings and flame-gutted ruins. The growing mushroom cloud, captured from dozens of perspectives, looped and multiplied as signatures and banners.

  Ben entered a reconstruction. He walked night-time streets. The area of London was vaguely familiar, but was too rundown and scummy for him to have ever spent any significant time there. A few autos cruised by. One or two pedestrians and the odd huddle of drug users clustering around benches and doorways. Privacy constraints on the consensus would not let Ben enter any of the buildings. A fraction of a second before the detonation, time slowed. Autos and people froze.

  Even though the image had slowed a thousand times, the fireball leapt into existence in a single frame—the simulation was not at a high enough resolution to slow any further. The frozen frame showed a sphere, twenty metres in radius, a pearl of iridescent white, mottled with the shadows of the vaporised building it was expanding through. It was visible above the roofs of the low, industrial buildings that surrounded it. Ben allowed the simulation to continue. The shockwave raced towards him in slow motion, pulverising architecture and incinerating people and autos in the immediate vicinity. Further away from the epicentre, the shockwave blew out windows, filling the air with a crystalline shrapnel of broken glass and flinging autos around like party balloons. On the edge of the destruction, a kiosk was knocked over, its bottles and snacks scattering across the pavement.

  Ben walked into the fire several times to experience the atrocity. He couldn’t help thinking of Deb. She would have been ten miles away, but he wondered if her windows had rattled, while sharp shadows were thrown against her walls—

  The commentary was confused. There was very little radiation, feeding conspiracy theories that it was a Forward false flag attack using conventional explosives to justify yet more Razzia mayhem.

  After a quarter of an hour of flitting the Mesh for information, Ben disconnected and pushed the pebble back across the polished bar.

  “Jesus. Another drink, please!” he said. “That’s genuinely fucking awful. I hope it wasn’t us.”

  “Yes, likewise,” said the barman. “Disgusting, isn’t it? I hope Atlantis hasn’t started a war. It’s not our style, but things are getting pretty stretched out…”

  Ben nodded, images of raw skin and buried limbs still haunting his vision. He was glad now his breakfast had been censored of meat. “Join me for one?” he asked, waving to his drink.

  “Why not,” the barman answered, grabbing a second glass and pouring himself a good measure.

  Me poked his head out and sniffed the morning air. He was content, with a full belly from a night’s successful foraging; there had been plenty of fatty protein in the paper piles. He checked mate and cubs, who were still sleeping. A reward smell seemed to drift in through the den entrance; he recognised it as a phantom, but they never lied or deceived. Me nipped mate’s neck. She stirred and opened one eye. Me turned in the cramped space of the den, slunk along the tunnel and pushed his head out to smell the morning again. A path marker, sweetened by a thousand calories, was hovering outside the den. A phantom of a thing floated next to the virtual path. He yawned and looked left and right. The grass was wet with dew, and mist was rising in wraiths from the stream in its ditch at the edge of the field.

  Me glanced back, listening to the breathing of cubs and mate, then turned, his eyes following the direction in which the scent trail was leading. He shook his body vigorously, stretched, and then trotted off along the trail of the reward smell. Me kept to the hedges, crossing into the open as infrequently as possible. After half an hour, he arrived at a human den. Me paused, then slipped through the gate. Me sniffed, following his nose to the thing shape he recognised from the phantom outside his den. The reward smell was strongest here. His nose touched the thing and one hundred calories jumped over, becoming a blob in his peripheral sensorium. A destination updated, a new reward trail descended. Blinking, pausing to nip a barbed seed from his flank, he glanced towards the human den, then gripped the thing in his jaw and trotted off towards the destination marker to collect the remainder of his wages.

  ***

  Keith was stiff and cold. He felt like a desiccated corpse that had been buried in an avalanche for ten thousand years. His clothes were inadequate, and soaked with dew. He was hungry and thirsty. Yesterday, he had walked forty kilometres from Bexleyheath, keeping to quiet back lanes devoid of autos. Guildford was a little more than ten kilometres away. His foot creaked ominously as he tried to stretch some life back into his abused body.

  A fox was watching him intently. Its ears twitching. It flinched to its haunches, ready to scatter, when Keith turned his head and muttered in surprise. It was holding a pink children’s plastic picnic hamper in its mouth. It stepped forward and placed the basket on the grass. Then bolted.

  Keith struggled to his hands and knees and crawled forward. He had been considering licking the dewdrops from the brambles overhanging the damp, frigid nest of leaves and plastic bags where he had spent the night; but breakfast turned out to be better than anticipated: two rounds of cheese and chutney sandwiches and two small bottles of water.

  ***

  Me raced back to his de
n, excited and reassured by the thousand calories comfortably waiting in his peripheral sensorium. This night he would lead mate to another human den, where he would exchange calorie tokens for a plate of meat and nuts.

  ***

  The next two days were a surreal dream of painful trudging and esoteric animal visitations: dogs clutching bottles of water, crows dropping plums and, once, a badger biting on a rain jacket rolled into a plastic bag. This last had significantly improved Keith’s third night in a hedge.

  The signal to the Xepplin must have found its way back to Bäna. He presumed that his colleagues in the National Statistics Office were mobilising local Kin and BugNet resources to provision him on his forced march of pain across southern England.