by Alex Scarrow
'Let him go,' said Gray.
'Huh? He just tried to-'
'I know what he was doing! Let him go!' Gray reached down, grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly off. 'He was testing Mother.'
Shelby sat up slowly, rubbing his neck with one hand and massaging his groin with the other. 'Oh…I'm going to throw up. I'm going to…'
'Mother!' shouted Gray again.
No answer. He squatted down beside him. 'You okay, mate?'
Shelby managed to nod. 'She…she would have….intervened…if…if…'
Jez was sitting on the sand, bemused. 'What the fregg is going on?' She looked at Ellie.
'Shelby was double checking Mother's not listening in on us,' answered Ellie. 'Right? I mean…I hope?'
Shelby nodded again. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he continued to nurse his aching groin. 'That…really…hurt…' He retched. 'A lot.'
Gray snorted. 'She got you a good one there, buddy.'
'Well, I thought he was going to kill you,' said Jez defensively. 'Knee to the balls is what you're supposed to do.'
'You did the uh….the right thing, Jez,' said Ellie.
'I suppose I've got to apologise to him now, huh?'
Shelby waved at her not to bother. 'Graham…' he wheezed. 'We have a big problem.'
'Don't tell me it's Mother…man, please. She runs this'
'It is, she lied to me Graham. She lied to me.'
'Are you sure? I mean, she can't do that. mate.'
He looked at Gray. ‘Mother lied to me Graham. She deliberately declared a falsehood to me.’
‘You’re certain? Absolutely certain?’
‘Oh, I’m certain.’
He puffed air out. ‘Okay, man…then…shit.’
‘That’s not good, is it?’ said Ellie.
‘No, not good.’ Gray lowered his voice. ‘That’s pretty seriously not good.’
CHAPTER 21
Mason met the man in a fast food place called StarBurgers. It made sense, this pedestrian plaza was busy and noisy. The city-wide panic over rationing had finally settled down because the Administration and the marines had delivered on their promise to keep supplies coming. Luxuries were off the menu, but the staples; protein bricks (compressed blocks of dried protein concentrate, that when rehydrated, became the basic paste), carb-powders, vitamin boosters and meds were getting through. The planet had it’s own water supply feeding down from the melt-water at the north pole.
The city was getting by, almost back to normal, living off flavoured, textured and shaped protein gunk and for this particular fast food chain it seemed it was pretty much business as usual.
‘They have arranged transport for you,’ said the man. The same man as last time. He rubbed at the dry, red patches of scraped-raw skin beneath his jaw.
‘You know, lazer depilation is far easier on the skin than a razor? And far less noticeable, by the way.’
The man’s dark brows knitted together into a frown. ‘If…I have to shave, I prefer to do it the old fashioned way. With a knife and soap.’
Mason looked around. They were sitting on stools by the window, looking down on a lower street plaza and an unlicensed bring-swap-buy marketplace.
‘So what happens now?’
‘In two days. A ship will orbit near the southern pole. It will send down a surface barge. I have the coordinates. I will take you there.’
‘How?’ The question he was asking was obvious. How were they going to get out of New Haven? The four main exits were guarded. Only surface transport pilots with the correct permission slips were being let in or out.
‘There are ways. Tunnels. Immigrants who can afford the passage price use them. I have already made the arrangements. There will be a surface shuttle waiting.’
‘What about the ship taking me offworld?’
‘What about it?’
‘Can I trust the crew?’
‘They are sympathisers…and they have been paid generously.’
‘So was the captain who should’ve taken the girl to GateWay, but that apparently didn’t help her at all.’
‘That man has been dealt with.’
Mason didn’t want to know how. He’d probably been dealt with permanently by these people. And painfully too.
‘The captain of this ship is an Awoken sympathiser. I assure you, you can trust him.’
Mason nodded. ‘And I will be meeting her alone? As I requested?’
‘It will be just you. No one else.’
‘Good.’ Mason picked up the greasy slab of synthetic food in front of him and bit into it, mostly to make sure he was blending in with all the other patrons. He was used to cultured dining, the canteens aboard the vast orbital labs over Pacifica had real, human chefs working there. He was hungry though, hungry enough to eat this crap. The protein-paste burger spurted warm, meat-flavoured grease across his tongue.
‘Tell them I appreciate the trust they are putting in me.’
The man shrugged. ‘They tell me, you, of all people are the best one to make contact with her.’
Mason smiled. The First and Last, the man he'd met just a few times many years ago seemed to have a blind trust in him.
'You are as close to a father figure to her as any person.'
'That's right.'
In a way there was far more of him in her than her biological parents. Not his own DNA, of course. He’d been sorely tempted. He’d toyed with the idea of making her his actual daughter. But it would have been a foolish act of vanity. Any DNA traces she left in her wake would link directly to him.
No, she was his…the same way an author’s soul exists in their published works. There were large sequences of code that he’d carefully written. As a writer might describe his protagonist in words, so Mason had crafted Ellie Quin with genetic code. Surely, as the creation of his mind, rather than a packet of inherited, hand-me-down DNA, made their bond that much more meaningful. She was surely far more his daughter than she had been Mr and Mrs Quin’s.
His mind drifted back again to that very first meeting with their leader, ‘The First and The Last’. After two decades of the rapid growth of his cult, even after all that time, with so many millions of followers on hundreds of worlds, his true name remained a mystery to everyone. It was rumoured that only a handful of his most trusted advisors knew the world he was born on, and nothing more than that.
Anonymity…that’s what he'd chosen…to have no name, to have no past. To remain an enigmatic phantom who the Administration would never be able to identify let alone catch.
All those years ago the man had presented Mason with a cryogenically frozen shred of material. Mason remembered wafting aside the vapours of nitrogen, looking down inside that small refrigerated box and seeing a ripped corner of a woven material, yellowed with age.
‘This contains the blood of God’s son.’
He saw the material was faintly spotted; the slightest darkening of some kind of liquid stain. It might have been blood. It could just as easily have been a coffee spill.
‘What is this?’
‘It is linen. A traditional woven Old Earth fabric.’
‘And you’re telling me that’s blood?’
The man nodded.
‘So…what? Is it a bandage of some sort?’
The man shook his head. ‘It was a burial shroud.’
Mason’s knowledge of Old Earth religious history was foggy at best. He knew this man and his cult borrowed heavily from those old mythologies and their beliefs in various prophets.
‘It contains the blood of The Jesus Christ. God’s first true prophet and his son in spirit and soul and flesh.’
Mason understood then, why the man was showing him this threadbare relic.
‘You want me to extract the DNA from this?’
He nodded. ‘This material came into my hands, and now I have brought it to you. God wills this to be.’
Mason had been confused. ‘I’m not sure I understand…’
‘It is a far different universe t
his time around. Humans have muddied the water, clouded the skies and God struggles hard to even see us, let alone reach out to us.’ The man stared down at the shred of material. ‘Technology is the wall between us. With the Administration’s foolish meddling and control of our genes there has been no way for Him to reach out to us…to send us his last prophet’
‘God? Surely…’ Mason chose his words carefully, ‘He’s God? Surely he can make what he wants to happen…happen?’
‘Only with our help now…with your help.’
Mason had stifled an urge to laugh out loud. The man was clearly quite serious.
‘You want me to grow a…grow…Jesus?’
‘Merely to facilitate the process…to help God send his son to us.’
Mason had decided to go along with him. Of course he had. By agreeing to help, he had at his disposal the resources of this man and his rapidly growing cult.
The relic…that tattered corner of shroud was entrusted to him. Mason did what was expected. Back at the laboratory complex in orbit above Pacifica, in his personal labs, he had bathed the material in a neutral carrier solution and studied the information that leaked out from it. Yes, there were traces of human DNA in there. The dark stain might well have once been blood. Or sweat, or urine, or faeces. However, the fragments of DNA swirling around came from quite a number of humans, dozens of them in fact. There was no telling how many pairs of hands had handled this corner of linen over the thousands of years it had existed.
What he had in his petri dish was utterly useless.
And even if he had managed to extract a single cohesive human genome, he’d never had any real intention of using it. All he’d be doing is replicating the genes of some long ago crucified criminal, or some random monk, or abbot, or roman soldier. Mason had clearly explained to The First And Last, that this valuable relic would be damaged beyond repair by the extraction process. The material would probably break down into a mush. There’d be nothing left to hand back to him. The man understood. He’d replied that the piece of shroud was of no importance…it was merely a delivery medium. He didn’t expect to have it returned.
So, Mason had emptied the floating swirls of ancient thread into the toilet cubicle off his study and flushed them into space. If it really had contained God’s DNA, well…he was getting it back.
‘So? Will you be ready for me tomorrow?’
Mason emerged from his thoughts back to the present and looked at the man sitting on the stool beside him now. ‘Yes.’
‘Good. Near the east entrance, the one leading to the main spaceport is a canteen used by shuttle pilots. It is called Dionysius. Meet me there at nine tomorrow morning.’ The man got up, took his StarBurger meal with him and left the restaurant. Mason watched him cross the busy plaza until he lost sight of him in the bustling crowd.
She’s my creation. Not God’s….mine.
But they didn’t need to know that. Not that it mattered one bit. Wasn’t faith all about blind belief in the implausible anyway; wish-fulfilment taken to a ridiculous extreme? If they wanted to believe Ellie came from God, that was perfectly fine with him. But the truth was…Ellie came from him.
CHAPTER 22
‘What’s the big deal?’ asked Jez. ‘So Mother got something wrong.’
‘We’re living in a fully automated environment run by an AI system that has become unreliable,’ replied Shelby.
Her eyes suddenly rounded. ‘Oh, fregg! You mean like in Death Drone 5? When that space cruiser’s robot crew turned on the passengers and butchered them all?’
Shelby frowned. ‘I’m guessing that’s some appallingly badly made holo-videe.’
Gray shook his head. ‘If she lied to you, Shelbs, that means she is corrupted software. She’s potentially dangerous to us all.’
‘She declared a falsehood. She’s certainly corrupted.’
‘But did she knowingly declare a falsehood?’ Gray raised his eyebrows. ‘What exactly did she say to you?’
‘That the data archives were purged ten years ago.’
‘Well, that’s complete bullshit,’ said Gray. 'I dip into it all the time.'
‘I have used it a few times as well.’
‘And there’s no way she’d make that mistake, Shelbs. One nano-second reference check…is all it would take to confirm the fact.’
‘Hmmm. Exactly.’
‘That means it was deliberate. Not a mistake. She lied to me.’
Jez frowned. ‘Soo-o-o?’
‘A lie…’ Shelby tugged his bottom lip absently. ‘The system here is an advanced heuristic AI. It’s designed to have soft-edge logic, to appear more human. To have the appearance of an emotional language.’
‘But not actually have emotions?’ Ellie sat forward on her deck chair. ‘Right?’
‘Precisely. But…’
‘But?’ Ellie didn’t want to hear a ‘but’.
‘She has been running a long time. I suppose it’s feasible that she’s generated a small library of routines that are analogous to emotions.’
‘It sounds scary,’ said Ellie. She looked down at the stump of hardened pink gel on the end of her wrist and had a chilling thought. ‘What if she’d decided she, you know, didn’t ‘like’ me? What if she’s, I don’t know…jealous or something?’
‘OhMyGod!’ gasped Jez. ‘This IS like Death Drone 5!’
‘Let’s not get carried away,’ said Shelby. ‘We are talking about an operating system. That’s all. Not some awful horror movie.’
‘The girls might be right, man.’ Gray stroked his chin. ‘What if Mother’s decided that Ellie…or Jez are a threat?’
‘A threat? A threat to Mother? How exactly?’
Gray shrugged. ‘Maybe she’s worried that you or me, or both of us might decide to leave with the girls when the shuttle comes?’
Shelby frowned for a moment, giving that some consideration. ‘A defensive reaction?’
‘A preventative reaction,’ said Gray. ‘WonderWorld needs us. Mother, needs us, man.’
Shelby thought about that for a moment. ‘That just sounds ridiculous.’
‘Think about it, Shelbs. What would it mean to her if you and I decided to leave?’
‘It would mean…’
‘A complete shut down. That’s what. You know the regs…and she knows them too. No human oversight on an AI-run environment system this size, means a complete power down.’ Gray stroked his chin. ‘This isn’t about jealousy…this is self-preservation. She’s worried that we’re both gonna leave.’
Shelby nodded slowly. 'Perhaps you're right.'
‘If Mother suspects we’re having second thoughts about her…?’ He looked at the girls. ‘Well, Shelbs, don't make me spell it out in front of the girls, man, she can control the behaviour of every living thing in WonderWorld.’
‘Are you absolutely certain she can’t hear us talking right now?’ asked Ellie.
‘Mother!’ barked Gray. ‘Emergency override, priority-one!’
They waited for a response. Nothing.
‘There.’
‘If Mother can lie…’ said Jez, ‘doesn’t that mean she could pretend to not have heard you?’
Neither young man wanted to answer that and they sat in silence for a while. Finally Ellie spoke again. ‘So what are we going to do?’
Gray and Shelby looked at each other. ‘Well,’ started Shelby, his voice just a little bit quieter now. ‘I suppose the only thing we can do is shut her down. Power down all the systems and do a re-boot. We have the basic system AI in crystal-disc storage the basic system AI. It’s vanilla software.’
‘Vanilla?’
‘That means it’s pretty bloody basic,’ replied Gray. ‘We’ll be okay, but all of the environment systems…all of our personalised settings will be lost. A real pain-in-the-ass…since we’ve got this place running how we like it.’
‘But we’ll be okay, right?’ Ellie looked around. ‘You know, until the shuttle comes?’
‘We will be fine,�
�� said Shelby.
‘I'm going to ask this…’ cut in Jez. ‘I'm going to ask this because I'm sure we're all thinking it, but no one's saying it.'
‘What?’
‘Are either of you actually thinking of leaving with us?’
The question seemed to catch both young men off guard. There was a long silence. Gray shook his head finally. ‘No. This place is…my home. There’s nothing out there in the black that I want to see. Nothing like here. I’m staying.’ He looked at Jez. 'Your loss, sweetlips.'
‘Then why don’t you just tell Mother that?’ said Ellie. ‘You know? Just reassure her? Maybe that’s all we need to do?’
‘I guess I could, but it-’
‘I…well, actually…I’ve given it some thought,’ said Shelby.
The others looked at him. ‘What?’
‘Leaving. Leaving with Ellie…and Jez.’
Gray’s jaw hung open. ‘Seriously, man?!’
‘I said…I’ve thought about it. That’s all.’
Gray looked shocked. ‘Why? Why would you ever want to leave this place? There’s everything here, anything you could ever want!’
Shelby looked out at the turquoise water lapping gently at the golden sand. ‘I…I…don’t remember anything but this place. I don’t remember anything before this place.’
‘Hey, Shelbs…look, you an’ me, sure we’ve been here a long time, man.’
‘I’m quite serious, Graham. I can’t. I’ve been thinking about it. I really can’t.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Tell me Graham…where did you live as a child?’
‘What?’
‘Think about it! When you were, lets say five years old…what planet were you living on at the time?'
He laughed. 'Seriously?'
'I'm serious!'
'Shit, well I was born on…..' he stopped. His mouth hung open. Then all of a sudden he laughed at himself, at his own fuzzy-headed forgetfulness. 'Damn…'
'What are your parents’ names, Graham?’
'Uh…they….were called…' he laughed again. 'Shit…I…’ he waved a hand at the question like it was an annoying bug. 'This is stupid.’
‘One thing, Graham…can you remember one thing from your childhood?’
He grinned self consciously. ‘This is stupid waste of time, man. We should be-’
