Echo Boy

by Matt Haig

  I closed the book, sat on my bed. Just sat there, feeling the most intense and burning desire to see him again.

  2

  I only ever had one real boyfriend, if you are just counting those whose skin I actually touched. It was only for a short while and it didn’t really work out. I loved him as a friend, but as a boyfriend he was quite bossy. He was called Ben. We met the way everyone meets – virtually. In this case, in a simulation of Venice before it sank, and without any people in it. He’d known a lot about art and this had impressed me.

  He lived in Canada, in Montreal, and some evenings I used to go over on the cross-Atlantic magrail, the one that went straight over the ocean-based hospital where I was born. He was good-looking, but when he was in argument mode he would look quite rodent-like, his nose screwing up and his mouth going small.

  We used to argue about lots of things. At first I thought this made our relationship interesting, the way chilli makes a meal interesting, but I realize now that arguments are sometimes just boredom at a higher volume.

  Religion was the main thing we rowed about. Ben and his parents were born-again Simulationists. They were members of the Church of the Simulation and went to pod-based services every evening.

  But for me, the very idea of Simulationism was depressing.

  It still is.

  ‘If we are all just people who are simulated inside a vast software program, what is the point of everything?’ I asked Ben once.

  He had looked at me with disdain. It was that look – a symptom of his bossiness – that probably defined our relationship. ‘Just because you want life to have a point doesn’t mean it has to have one.’

  ‘And just because you believe that the whole universe was created by an alien’s computer doesn’t mean that it was.’

  He got angry. I was challenging his beliefs. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Look at what humans can create. They can replicate anywhere in the world. And any point in history. If we wanted to – right now – we could walk into a pub in Elizabethan England and talk to Shakespeare.’

  ‘No we couldn’t. It would be a VR-simulation of a pub. And it wouldn’t be Shakespeare. It would be a computer program speaking Shakespearean quotations.’

  ‘The most advanced simulators now have self-thinking virtual beings – fake humans – inside them. And pretty soon we’ll be able to create beings that evolve by themselves . . . And what about Echos? Some of them already can think by themselves. OK, they may not feel emotions, or dream, but one day . . . one day . . .’

  ‘That is my dad’s absolute nightmare,’ I had told him. ‘I think it might be mine too.’ I meant it. I wasn’t quite the Echophobe my dad was – obviously, as it had been my casting vote that allowed an Echo into our home – but some of his views had got into my head. I suppose that’s what parents are: a collection of views, some of which you reject and some of which you inherit, like a book that you go on editing for ever.

  I remembered lying on Ben’s sofa, stroking one of his pets. Ben had loads of pets. Some of them were even real. The one who was asleep on my stomach was real. It was a cat called Belinsky, after the man who engineered the dome on the moon and made the first non-Earth settlement possible. He was a lovely cat. Tortoiseshell, with a purr that could power a city.

  I remember Ben shouting to the kitchen – to Alfred, his Echo at that time. I can hear his voice. ‘Alfred, you lazy robot, give us some fava-bean dip!’ For someone who was pro-AI he sure spoke down to Echos.

  But I never cared then, because Echos weren’t worth worrying about. And the next day, I remember I went with Ben and both his fathers – whose business had just collapsed and who were going to become property barons on the moon – to the spaceport. And that final kiss. The feel of his fingers on my face. And then watching that same hand wave goodbye.

  It had felt bad. But it wasn’t the same kind of pain as I had felt watching that man come for Daniel, and then take him away.

  3

  Could a human love an Echo? Could an Echo love a human? The first question was always asked a lot on bad holovision shows. There were always stories of some sad man falling in love with an Echo they had bought simply on the basis of looks. They kissed and had sex and everything. Of course, the Echos were never actually feeling aroused, but for some humans that didn’t matter, so long as they performed the task as commanded.

  I had always thought it was a bit sick. Maybe it still was a bit sick. But the sickness had always been because Echos were different. Not because of their bodies, which were basically like human bodies – but better – and could function in the same ways if required. They had blood – OK, so it was blood without many white blood cells, but it was blood. Blood that pumped around with the aid of a never-dying heart.

  No. It had seemed sick because Echos were different. Emotion-free. Computerized. But what if they were becoming less different? I mean, yes, they were made in a different way. Uncle Alex was right about that. And their brains contained a chip in them to ensure they behaved exactly as an Echo should. But then, there were humans who now had all sorts of computerized implants inside them.

  In a way, everyone was a kind of cyborg these days.

  It was a weird one. But no weirder than love itself. And as my anxieties grew about what had happened to Daniel, I started to realize that he was far more than an Echo to me. He was, right then, far more alive to me than anyone.

  I had no info-lenses. They had been there beside my bed, as they always were, but when I woke up they were gone. I panicked. This meant that the ID I had recorded – Rosella Márquez’s ID – had been lost.

  So I went to the pod. I knew her ID wouldn’t be online, or not in any way I could access, but there would surely be some information on her somewhere. The first thing I did, after the mind-reader descended, was to think of that name. Rosella Márquez.

  Instantly, information appeared.

  There were Rosella Márquezes everywhere. There were more than 3,000 of them in Mexico City. A few hundred in New New York. A lot in Buenos Aires, Lima, Santiago, Madrid, Olabo, Barcelona 2, Medellin, and hundreds of other cities. There were a good few on the moon. There was even a Rosella Márquez among the 450 people in the Mars space colony.

  So I thought of something else.

  Rosella Márquez, Echo designer. And to narrow it down further, I pictured in my mind a blue castle with three turrets.

  Nothing came up.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, pleading with my brain to work. ‘Think, think, think . . .’

  Rosella Márquez.

  No. Something else.

  Lina Sempura.

  Contact.

  The details came up. It was the age of instant communication, after all. I thought-mailed her.

  I spoke to you at the media conference. I am Alex Castle’s niece. My uncle is a murderer. He killed my parents and he wants to kill me. If you give me the address of an Echo designer, I will be able to help you. Please, you’ll have to answer quickly, because if this message is intercepted I will be in trouble. I need the address for Echo designer Rosella Márquez. Can you give it to me? And please, for my own safety, only give me that info.

  And within a minute – yeah, within a minute – the address was there.

  It turned out that Rosella worked in a warehouse next to the CV-371 magrail, Valencia stop 48, at the southern edge of town and near the dried-up river, the Río Turia.

  Hello Audrey. This is Lina Sempura. I hope you have the details you require. Anyway, I would like to meet you, so please could—

  I deleted the thought-mail. Grateful as I was for the address, I couldn’t believe that Lina Sempura herself was mailing me. I was in trouble enough, but if Uncle Alex had intercepted that, well, there’d have been no hope.

  I blocked Lina Sempura. It was the only thing I could do.

  Then I tried to holo-call Rosella’s warehouse – or almacén – but of course it was futile. There was still no outward connection. And then I got worried. Maybe Uncle Alex or s
omeone working for him – some of his hackers miles away in Cambridge – were already monitoring me. Uncle Alex wasn’t in the house now. I had heard him leave for the office about an hour ago, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t watching me.

  I sat for a moment with the mind-reader on. It was always dangerous to sit there thinking when it was on because whatever I thought about prompted related information to flash up before me.

  So I saw Echos, I saw the barren deserts of southern Spain, I saw my dad, but when I thought of Daniel, nothing came up. Why would it have? He was just an Echo prototype no one really knew about who had now been rejected. He was a nothing in the eyes of the world.

  I needed to see Rosella. I needed to see her for three reasons. One: because of Alissa. Two: because of Daniel. And three: because I had to escape and I would need to go somewhere.

  I had thought of going to Grandma’s – properly going there, not just pod-visiting again. I mean, my Echophobia was nowhere near as strong as my uncle-phobia now. But it felt wrong to leave this planet without Daniel, after he had saved my life and suffered for it. Also, it was impossible. Any human travelling to the moon had full ID checks: if I escaped, the first thing Uncle Alex would do is make sure I couldn’t get a flight off the planet.

  It was at that moment that I heard something outside the pod. Nothing loud, but it wouldn’t have been anyway. It caused me enough concern to send the thought-command External view.

  Terror.

  Instantly I saw Madara in the room. The Echo with red hair. She was standing outside the pod, waiting for me to step out. She had a kitchen knife in her hand; the same knife Alissa had used to kill my parents.

  4

  Madara was standing perfectly still, the way only an Echo can.

  It was Alissa all over again. For a moment I couldn’t think. Fear had washed away all thoughts.

  It was a clever idea. Ordering her to use the same weapon. Uncle Alex knew that I would be doubly terrified if I was not simply fearing for my life but also remembering how my parents had been killed. An echo of an echo. There was an arrogance to it. Let’s not use a positron, let’s use a knife.

  So, it was all confirmed.

  He had seen that I wasn’t going to serve his cause – after going off-script at the press conference – so now he was going to kill me, and get away with it too. He was probably going to set it up and say it was a protestor who did it. Maybe he wouldn’t even have to set it up, what with practically owning the police.

  But then it came to me.

  Protestor.

  So long as I was in the pod I was safe, so I stayed in there and tried to communicate with the pod in Iago’s room, knowing that he would be there. But all I got was an automated voice saying, ‘Game mode,’ and then asking, ‘Do you want to join the game?’

  I had no choice but to mind-respond Yes.

  5

  I was on a battlefield in 1917. Passchendaele, Belgium. Part of the Western Front.

  The wind was harsh and cold and there was mud everywhere, along with the continuous and deafening noise of gunfire. I had a gun in my hand; it had a sharp blade attached to the end. A bayonet.

  My avatar was a nineteen-year-old man called Siegfried. I had chosen him hastily seconds after entering the game.

  As I stood there, in the black mud, feeling the tight weight of my boots, I saw the man next to me get shot in the throat. Blood spilled through his hands as he held onto his neck.

  A moment later, two medics appeared; they lifted the man onto a stretcher and jogged away with him.

  ‘This is not real,’ I reminded myself. ‘None of this is real. The only thing that is real is that Madara is outside the pod waiting to kill me.’

  I looked around at all the simulations of German and English soldiers killing each other in the mist. Somewhere among them was my cousin.

  ‘Iago,’ I shouted at the top of my voice. ‘Iago! Where are you?’

  If he had heard me above the gunfire, he didn’t show it. I was left with no choice.

  ‘Player two meta-command,’ I said (this didn’t need to be shouted – the software understood). ‘Pause the game. Repeat, pause the game.’

  Suddenly everything stopped. Running soldiers froze mid-stride, bullets stood static in the air, the artillery fire fell silent.

  Then a voice somewhere behind me: ‘No! What’s going on? Game continue, game continue . . .’

  I turned and saw a suave, bearded army officer in knee-high boots and a murky green uniform walking around shouting up at the sky and shaking his rifle. I could not imagine anyone less like my ten-year-old cousin, except for his behaviour.

  ‘What’s going on? Game continue.’

  A voice came from the clouds. ‘Player two has paused the game.’

  ‘Player two? Player two? There is no player two.’

  And then he stopped looking at the sky and started looking at me.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It’s me, Audrey.’

  ‘Why are you here? Get out of here. I don’t want you here. You’re putting me off. The Germans have slaughtered half my men. I don’t need any distractions.’

  He threw his rifle down on the muddy ground, pulled an ancient-looking pistol out of his holster and pointed it at me as he walked closer, stepping over freeze-framed dying or dead soldiers.

  ‘Because I can kill you. I can take you out.’

  He was up close now. He pressed the pistol against my forehead. I felt the sensation of cold steel. He had chosen a taller player than me. One with the most realistic of beards and a pistol that looked as solid and physical as anything in the real world.

  He couldn’t kill me, of course, not on this imaginary battlefield, but if he pulled the trigger, I’d be out of the game and I couldn’t afford for that to happen.

  Iago was a psychopath, I realized. A ten-year-old psychopath. But that suited me right now. ‘Iago, listen to me. Listen. There is someone in my room. A . . . a’ – this was where the lie was needed – ‘a protestor. She got into the house. You must get a gun from downstairs – a positron, to be on the safe side – and then come into the room and kill her. She’s here now. She’s tall, with red hair.’ I was going to say, She looks a bit like Madara, but he might have got suspicious. ‘But you can’t hesitate. Not for a second. If you hesitate, she’ll kill you. So . . . you’ve got to be fast. Just kill her. Kill her without looking.’

  Iago’s avatar scratched his beard. He took the pistol away from my forehead.

  ‘I’ll have a look at her now,’ he said. ‘On “House View” in the pod.’

  ‘No,’ I said, panicking. ‘No, don’t do that. There’s no time. You’ve got less than a minute. Now remember. It needs someone tough, someone good with a positron. You’re the only person for the job. Remember. Tall red-haired woman . . . and she’s holding a kitchen knife.’

  A look of menacing delight slowly spread across the officer’s features, which for a second made him look entirely like my cousin.

  He looked up at the thick grey clouds of that imaginary sky. ‘Game over.’

  6

  Iago wasn’t in major danger.

  I knew that Uncle Alex would have ordered Madara to kill me and me only. But I was still worried something could go wrong. Ten-year-olds weren’t meant to use antimatter pistols like the positron, even if he had proven more than capable of using one. There were other worries too. That he wouldn’t actually do it. That he’d see it was Madara before he fired. This was quite likely. I just had to hope that, in this case, Madara would be distracted for long enough. It was doubtful. Madara was Uncle Alex’s favourite Echo, and one reason for this is that she did exactly as she was told, and did it well. And fast.

  One other concern was that Uncle Alex might find out what was going on. He might check up on the house while at work and come home. He could be here in less than a minute, if that was the case.

  So I stayed in the pod, observing the room outside. Madara, statue-still, waiting. I tried to
slow my breathing, but my body was alive with fear. And then it happened – almost too quick and easy. The bedroom door opened, Madara turned, and before Iago had time to be aware of who he was aiming at, she was gone. He’d killed her. It was only a second later that he understood. And once he had done it he looked devastated.

  After all, he had destroyed Uncle Alex’s most treasured Echo.

  And he was standing there. A little ten-year-old with his dark fringe looking down at the gun. The same gun he had used against the protestors. But he seemed far more upset about killing Madara than he had about killing humans.

  I stepped out of the pod. The bedroom door was still open. This was my chance to escape, finally. But Iago was now pointing the gun at me, with tears streaming down his blotchy cheeks.

  ‘You tricked me.’

  ‘She was going to kill me.’

  ‘No she wasn’t.’

  ‘She had a knife. Your dad wants me dead.’

  He looked at the knife that had fallen onto the carpet. ‘No he doesn’t. He hates you, that’s all.’

  ‘He killed my parents.’

  ‘No. No he didn’t.’ He held his arm out straighter. More determined to shoot.

  ‘I’m not lying. Your dad wants to kill me because I know too much. He has broken the law.’

  ‘My dad doesn’t care about laws. He has money. Money beats laws.’

  ‘Listen – you could hurt yourself, Iago. It is a very dangerous weapon you are holding. I wouldn’t have asked you to bring it here unless I needed you to. I was going to be killed.’

  ‘Hurt myself? Hurt you. Not that you’d be hurt. You’d just disappear. “Oh, where did Audrey go?” Ha!’

  Something changed inside me. A very clear thought came to me, in the intensity of the moment.