Echo Boy

by Matt Haig

  ‘Aha!’ said Mr Castle, on seeing Alissa. ‘Now, there you are. As naked as God – or should I say, Rosella – intended. Now, what I want you to do is step back inside the tank from which you came.’

  She did so, once Rosella had told her which one that was. And then Mr Castle explained what he wanted her to do to Alissa.

  ‘You will change her. You will make her look exactly the same, but there will be a glitch. A glitch that doesn’t fully emerge for five weeks. I will give you all the details. I know you will do this for me.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because you are very different to me. You care about your family. Your granddad. You want the best for him, and if you do this, not only will you get a house far north of here, away from the heat; you will also get the best medical treatment money can buy. And if you say no, well, it’s bye-bye, Granddad. And bye-bye everything.’

  He laughed, thinking of something. ‘Sempura really are an irresponsible company. They don’t care much about customer safety. Did you know – for instance – that they test out prototypes on their customers without the customers knowing they are prototypes.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I have some very clever hackers working for me. Over in Cambridge. They could easily have hacked into your computers here, in the basement. They could have changed Alissa without you even knowing. But that seems a little unfair, a little underhand, and I am not like you, Rosella. If I have a working relationship with someone, I like to be open with that person. I am not going to get my people to just change Echos while they are in their tanks. I am going to come and talk to you. And be honest with you. You are good at English, Rosella, I am sure you understand. Si?’

  It was clear he was enjoying himself. I realize now that the real reason he didn’t get his hackers to change Alissa was because he was cruel. He enjoyed making Rosella do it. Making her feel all the guilt and pain she inevitably ended up feeling. I would not have understood this if I was a rational being. Being able to feel things not only helps you to understand love, but to recognize evil, as both are symptoms of irrationality.

  ‘Yes,’ Rosella told him. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Anyway, I have no working relationship with Sempura and so we hacked into them. I can see who has ordered what, and who will be sent what, if I so desire. I can even make suggestions as to who would make a worthy recipient of a new and – ha-ha – improved Alissa. I have seen, for instance, that my very own Echophobe and hypocritical brother has asked for a female Echo capable of “general domestic tasks and home-schooling” . . . And I was thinking, well, here’s an opportunity. You know about my moralistic brother, don’t you? The one who fans the flames of protest against his own sibling? Well, his wife is just as bad, and I’m pretty sure my niece is going to go the same way. Can you imagine how horrible it feels to have your own blood relatives trying to bring your business down? It’s a headache. And it will be an even bigger headache when his new book comes out and ends up shutting down the Resurrection Zone . . . Well, I’ve found a solution. A way to tarnish Sempura and ease my headaches at the same time. A way to kill two birds with one stone. Or three.’

  Rosella looked at him, horrified but powerless. He spoke some more with her in private, and then he came over and looked at me. He stood there for a while, offering a friendly smile, before slapping me hard across the face.

  ‘I told you, he feels pain,’ said Rosella.

  Mr Castle ignored her. ‘I am going to take him with me now. That is the first thing you can do for me today, Rosella. And the second thing, well, you have twenty-four hours to think about it . . .’

  And then he walked me away, and I turned round and saw Rosella standing there and mouthing the words ‘Lo siento, Daniel.’ I am sorry.

  Leaving her hurt as much as any physical pain. I felt like I was being pulled away from my own self. Rosella, the one who had made me, the only one who knew that I was more than just an Echo, the only one who loved me. The moment I left her I knew I would be nothing. A machine.

  I travelled with Mr Castle and the police officer to London in a magcar hovering over a rail far above the ground. Much of the journey was through a vacuum chamber – a bright tunnel that, given the lack of air friction, allowed the magcar to travel at speeds I estimated at 2,000 kilometres an hour.

  ‘It is useful,’ Mr Castle told me, ‘that you feel pain. I mean, people have often worried that if Echos become too human, then humans will be threatened. But if an Echo feels pain, it just means they can be controlled.’

  The magcar slowed as it reached the end of the vacuum chamber. We emerged into daylight, above a seemingly infinite metropolis. Seven hundred raised magnetic rails crisscrossed each other in curved lines, carrying trains and cars. Below, the city was half land and half water. The water half was full of low-rise buildings on stilts, while the buildings on land were generally larger and more imposing. A few of them were detached from the land altogether, hovering fifty-four metres above the ground.

  London.

  I had never been here before, yet I had been programmed to recognize a lot of the major buildings and landmarks. Trafalgar Square. The New Church of the Simulation. The Old Parliament building (flooded since 2068). And then the New Parliament, the highest of the free-floating structures, a giant horizontal bone-shaped building made of titanium hydride and aluminium.

  Holograms floated, barely visible in the daylight. We passed through ghosts of palm trees. Faint words: The best holiday programs for your pod. Feel the sand between your toes. Just say GETAWAY. Another hologram was that of a male and female human with toned physiques (Adonis: Gene therapy you can trust).

  And then there was a sphere, with that familiar picture of a blue castle on it. Below, strange trees and vegetation, animals: London Zoo, which had expanded across the whole of Regent’s Park twenty years ago to create the Resurrection Zone – a perfect environment for formerly extinct species, such as the dodo and the woolly mammoth and the ibex and the rhinoceros and the Neanderthal.

  ‘If you mess with me,’ Mr Castle said, ‘you could end up working there. And if you end up working there, and have the ability to feel pain, well, you will be in very big trouble.’

  I didn’t ask him what he meant. I just hoped I would never have to find out.

  8

  Forward. Thirty-seven days:

  I had never had a dream before.

  In Spain, whenever I recharged, I had descended into a dark blanket of nothingness. The empty unsleep of Echos. And I knew I wasn’t meant to dream; no Echo had ever dreamed, as far as I knew. But this was, unmistakably and irrefutably, a dream.

  And it was about her.

  Audrey.

  At first it was lovely. It was just her, just an image of her, but not scared like I had seen her.

  No, here she was smiling and laughing. It was Audrey as she could be, or might have been.

  And I realized, even in the dream, that this was beauty. Again, beauty was not meant to be something an Echo should recognize. There was no logical reason why I should recognize it. I was meant to be able to know mathematical perfection, and understand symmetry and balance and formal harmony and all those things. And maybe Audrey wasn’t perfect in those mathematical terms. Maybe only an Echo’s face could be perfect in those terms. But she was perfect in a stronger and more powerful way. In her uniqueness. In the way only a human can be perfect.

  And I can remember a sadness in the dream; a sadness that I would never be able to make her smile or laugh like that. That she would never be able to see me as anything other than a sinister simulation of a human.

  But then there was another emotion as I watched her, trapped in this house, every other Echo programmed to kill her. I saw her. She was going to die and her face knew it. And in that moment I realized I did not care about me. I cared about her; this girl who hated me and didn’t want me to exist.

  I cared because I related to her. This girl with no parents and nowhere to
truly belong in a hostile world.

  I cared because I could save her.

  And I would try.

  Audrey. Mind-log 429.

  Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

  Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 1929

  We’re not like the others,

  You and me,

  We don’t quite fit in their game.

  We’re not like the others,

  You and me,

  We’ll never be the same.

  We’re freaks together

  (Freaks together),

  Now let’s forget my name.

  Neo Maxis, ‘Freaks’, 2114

  1

  I was sitting there in my room, staring out of the window, knowing I had to escape. It was a clear night. There were stars and a three-quarter moon. I could see New Hope, twinkling in the centre. A brightness inside a brightness. It was like an eye staring down, watching.

  Escape.

  Not just the house, or Hampstead, or even London. I had to escape properly. I had to find him, find Daniel. And if I stayed, that would be impossible. Also, I was beginning to wonder what was going to happen to me.

  Was Uncle Alex waiting for the moment when I was no longer a useful PR tool for him, at which point he would get rid of me (surely that time had come)? Was he going to say I died in the raid on the house?

  I was convinced this was a probability now. And I remained convinced the next morning, when I woke up and was still locked in. I went into the immersion pod and tried to think. I couldn’t phone the police because the police were on Uncle Alex’s side. They were always on his side. Some of the press weren’t, just as my dad hadn’t been. Maybe that was the way.

  Then I remembered.

  Leonie Jenson. The woman I had spoken to that day in Paris.

  So I contacted the most anti-Castle publication there was, the Castle Watch newsletter. It was a small non-profit publication, run from a hover-shack in Chalk Farm, but it was easy to find a list of contacts for it and I was about to send a thought-mail to Leonie, who was also the deputy editor, when I decided against it. If I encouraged more protestors to come here, then there would be only one possible outcome. And that outcome would be their death.

  Then I tried to contact Grandma again, just to talk to her. But I couldn’t. The connection was down. I soon realized that, though the immersion pod was on, I couldn’t make any outward calls.

  However, I could make internal ones. So I called Uncle Alex in his home office and he appeared in front of me, smiling a smile I could no longer even begin to find reassuring.

  ‘Hello, Audrey. How are you this morning?’

  ‘You have trapped me in the room. Why am I still locked in?’

  ‘For your own security, Audrey. You are mentally unwell. If you tried to find Daniel, you could be in danger. I don’t want to be responsible for what would happen to a runaway teenager in London.’

  ‘When are you going to let me out?’

  ‘When I feel you are ready. You have a bathroom. There is food in the fridge by the desk. You have self-clean clothes. You have books to read. That is all you want, isn’t it? You are your dad’s child, aren’t you? An academic? A person of ethics who needs nothing more than principles to get by? That was your dad and that is you. You are not a crude money-minded creature like myself.’

  It was incredible. He was the richest man in Europe. He had everything he had ever wanted, and he still knew that my dad was better than him. I could hear the bitterness in his voice. A bitterness he quickly tried to suppress.

  ‘You have a glorious view of London, and art to look at. You really are very pampered. It’s not like you’re going to die in there.’

  ‘I feel trapped. I want to go out, just for a walk. If not outside, then around the house.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Audrey, but I cannot allow that. I know your parents weren’t disciplinarians, but I believe children sometimes need restraint as much as they need freedom, for their own good. And I have a lot of work to do in Cambridge and—’

  ‘I’m nearly sixteen years old. I’m not a child.’

  ‘Well, technically you still are, and so long as you are living here under my roof, then you will do as I tell you.’

  ‘In that case I don’t want to live here. I’ll go and live with Grandma, on the moon. She told me I would be able to stay with her.’

  ‘No. No. I am sorry. With all due respect to your grandma, I hardly think she’d be the most responsible guardian in the world. Or, sorry, solar system. And the moon is no place for a girl like you, Audrey. No place at all. No, stay here with me. I’ll look after you. Now, if you don’t mind, I really should be getting on with some work.’

  And then he disappeared, right before my eyes.

  I was starting to get hungry. I went to the fridge and ate some goji berries. I tried to read, remembering something my mum had told me once, during a literature lesson.

  ‘A book is a map,’ she had said, after I had finished reading Jane Eyre. ‘There will be times in your life when you will feel lost and confused. The way back to yourself is through reading. There is not a problem in existence that has not been eased, somewhere and at some time, by a book. I want you to remember that. The answers have all been written. And the more you read, the more you will know how to find your way through those difficult times.’

  So I looked at the spines of all the books.

  A book is a map . . .

  I didn’t want to read. I was fed up. I wished I could kill myself, but I couldn’t.

  It was weird. You could be broken by life, you could lose your parents, you could be smashed into a thousand pieces, but there was always something at the core of you, something that no one else could touch. The irrepressible light inside you. We were made from stardust, like everything in the universe, and we – each of us – carried a power inside us. A power that couldn’t be destroyed any more than the universe could be destroyed. And it was a power I only really knew was there once my parents had been killed. Because before then I had never really been tested.

  And then I suddenly stood up straight.

  I remembered what Daniel had told me, that day when I had gone into the Echo quarters.

  I hope you find your book. I hear page 206 is particularly good.

  It had been a message. A clue. We had been talking about Jane Eyre, so maybe that was it. And there it was, right at the bottom of the pile. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I flicked through the old yellow pages until I was at page 206. My hands were shaking, but I found it soon enough, and saw small writing in the margin.

  I looked at the writing. It wasn’t neat and perfect, like Echo writing normally was. I started to read, my hands shaking more and more with every word I saw.

  Your uncle is a murderer. He made sure that Alissa was changed. He forced Rosella to do it. She was my designer. She is not a bad woman. She was given no choice. Please, if you see this message, escape at the first opportunity and go to Rosella. She will look after you and tell you everything. She will help you. Her name is Rosella Márquez and she lives in a warehouse in

  The message ended there.

  That was it. That was when every illusion crumbled away, like a sandcastle under a wave. Uncle Alex had arranged for Dad and Mum to be killed.

  Repeat: Uncle Alex had arranged for Dad and Mum to be killed. A kind of silent howl went through me at that moment. It was like – I don’t know – it was like a door had closed and I was suddenly very alone. I began to shake. From the inside. From the core. The shaking started so deep that at first my hands were still, but they soon caught up. I felt crushed. Trapped by the truth.

  Maybe he’d wanted to kill me too. For a moment I wished that I hadn’t fought Alissa off. But the moment was quickly swallowed again by anger and fear.

  I tried to t
hink of every single thing Dad or Mum had ever said about Uncle Alex, but for all Dad’s talk of Castle being a bad company, he’d never really said anything that even came close to suggesting that his brother could be a murderer.

  I wished Dad hadn’t had any principles, because then he’d have still been alive. I thought of his hands – I don’t know why. His big hands with dark hair on the back of them. Hands that had held and squeezed mine when I’d been worried about him after the magcar accident.

  Stupidly, I felt cross with Dad. Mum wouldn’t have been killed if he hadn’t had principles. I mean, Mum had had principles too, but they weren’t the kind that would have got us killed.

  But then I hated myself for being angry with Dad. It wasn’t his fault his brother was a monster.

  Monster. Yeah. That’s what he was.

  But suddenly, now that I was awake, I knew I couldn’t wallow in grief any more. I had to focus. I had to feel fear. And I was feeling it.

  But rather than making me worry for myself, it made me worry for Daniel. If someone can feel pain, they have to be worth caring about. It might have been wrong that Echos existed, but they did exist. And they hadn’t asked to exist any more than I had asked to exist. And anyway, he clearly wasn’t a normal Echo.

  And he had saved my life.

  That too-beautiful creature had saved my life. And he had been trying to save it ever since I got here.

  Why was I so worried for him? Wouldn’t life be easier if there was no one to worry about but yourself? Wouldn’t that be best?

  But then I read a paragraph on the page that had been hiding the message. I remembered the words he’d spoken that day in his room.

  Do you think I am an automaton? – a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you – and full as much heart!