by Alex Scarrow
Liam settled on the edge of the desk. As soon as the displacement machine was charged, they were ready to go. He found himself staring affectionately at the row of monitors sitting on the bench and at the webcam.
Maddy’s final instructions to computer-Bob had been quite right. A perfectly sensible precaution. If for some reason his expedition to biblical times went wrong, as well as Maddy’s trip to meet Waldstein, then this dark refuge tucked away at the back of the brick labyrinth was destined to remain deserted for years, decades even. But one day, for certain, somebody would force that padlock and enter. What they’d find would be covered in dust. None of it would be functional, of course, but when it was discovered would determine how much of a stir it would cause. He imagined someone discovering these inert pieces of technology during, say, the Second World War would attract the attention of the highest levels of British government. However, someone coming across the same things forty or fifty years later might think they were looking at the abandoned props for some low-budget science-fiction movie, or think it some abandoned backstreet computer workshop.
If both their missions went wrong, computer-Bob was going to have to destroy the displacement machine, completely erase the hard drives and erase himself – an act of digital suicide.
Sorry, ol’ fella.
He heard the displacement machine starting to hum as it began to accumulate a reservoir of stored energy. The first three charge-indication lights were already flickering amber.
> Caution: preparing to open Maddy’s one-hour window … in ten … nine …
Liam turned to look at the space in the centre of the dungeon where the sphere routinely opened. A part of him was hoping that a few moments from now they’d emerge from the hovering portal. Already confounded by some problem or obstruction or threat, and deciding instead to come along with him and Bob for an adventure in the past.
Space–time suddenly warped into a sphere and a gentle gust of displaced air disturbed the drapes round the hammocks, sending several pieces of paper skittering across the computer table. And there the portal hovered and flexed two feet above the ground. He could see a rippling oil-painting depiction of the future – the sky tones of sickly sepia, the ground a drab, lifeless grey. He couldn’t make out any details clearly, but from what he could see the future was not a particularly colourful or inviting-looking place.
More to the point, he saw no dark silhouettes preparing to come through. His heart sank a little as he realized they’d already set off on their quest. They were gone.
Just us, then.
The sphere hovered for another few moments, then collapsed with a soft pop.
‘OK, that’s it … now it’s our turn, Bob.’
In silence, they stripped out of their Victorian clothes, Liam carefully folding his smart trousers, morning shirt and waistcoat and placing them on his hammock. Then he pulled over his head and narrow shoulders an extra-large cotton nightshirt that hung down to just above his knees. It looked close enough to the pale-cotton jellaba that he’d researched most Judaeans wore in this time. A pair of leather slippers were as close a match as he could find to sandals.
He looked at Bob. The same-sized nightshirt that hung loosely on Liam was tight round his chest and bulging biceps. The hem hung only as far as his pelvis. Luckily he was wearing a pair of leather breeches. Hardly authentic clothing for the time, but nothing that would catch a person’s attention any more than the sheer ox-like size of him.
Liam reached for the goatskin bag he’d bought from the market. In there were a few essentials he was going to have to keep from prying eyes, the torches in particular.
‘You all ready to go, Bob?’
‘Yes, Liam.’
He turned towards the screen beside him. ‘Computer-Bob?’
> Yes, Liam?
‘Just thought I’d better say, you know … just in case … it’s been an honour and a privilege working with you.’
> Thank you, Liam. It has been an honour working with you also.
The cursor blinked silently for a few seconds before finally jittering across the screen.
> Your last statement suggests you anticipate not coming back?
He was going to say no. That it was nothing. No big deal. Just something nice to say to fill the time. But that would be disingenuous. Computer-Bob wasn’t just a bunch of looping code. He was a friend. A friend who deserved the truth.
‘I certainly intend to return. But I won’t lie … this time it feels like we’re pushing our luck.’
> Maddy’s strategy is a calculated risk. I am sure she will return safely.
‘Really? How can you even begin to predict that?’
He had no idea what they were going to learn from Waldstein, if anything at all. That is, if he didn’t have them wiped out by another group of meatbots ready and waiting to jump them as soon as they came knocking. And, if he did lay out some profound revelation before them, what was that going to do to Maddy’s already-troubled mind? Make everything all right once again? Was the truth from him – whatever it was – going to set her free … or send her over the edge?
> Just a ‘hunch’.
‘A hunch?!’ Liam laughed. ‘Jay-zus, don’t tell me even you can think like a mushy-headed human now?’
The cursor blinked for a moment.
> Negative. I have no soft-logic circuits. That was just appropriately deployed humour. Designed to make you feel better.
‘Right. Darned hilarious.’
> The humour was amusing?
‘Hmm … I suspect you’ve been whispering too much at night with Becks. Someday I’ll have to teach you and her what actually constitutes funny. It’s all about –’
> Timing.
‘Oh, ha ha …’ He slapped his hand gently against one of the monitors. ‘Everyone’s a comedian here.’
> :)
Five amber-coloured charge lights were on the board now.
> Liam, I now have enough power to activate your portal. You and Bob should take your positions, then I will initialize the one-minute countdown.
‘Thank you.’ He gestured at Bob to take his place on one of the plinths, then stood beside him on the other one. ‘So, here we go again, big man.’
‘Here we go again, Liam,’ Bob rumbled. He turned to look at him. ‘For your information, I believe your objective is the correct one to prioritize. We will soon understand the purpose of those tachyon transmitters. That is important.’
‘And what about Waldstein?’
Bob frowned. ‘I predict he may have some critical information. But not all of it.’
> Ten seconds, Liam. Remain perfectly still.
He squinted at the monitor on the bench and watched the last few seconds count down. Listened to the hum of energy reach a buzzing crescendo echoing around the dungeon, and felt the air around him become charged with static electricity, the hair on his head lifting and tickling his scalp.
Just before the portal opened and engulfed them in a soup of featureless white, he called out above the cacophony of noise, ‘Goodbye, Bob.’ Then regretted it. He was almost certain that the AI wouldn’t have heard him saying that, which was probably for the best. He had no idea whether its heuristic AI had developed enough to feel sadness, loss. Hopefully not. His musings on whether computer-Bob could shed the digital equivalent of a tear were instantly forgotten as he found himself, once again, falling through the white stuff.
Falling … falling … falling.
CHAPTER 7
2070, New York
89 days to Kosong-ni
Maddy emerged from the swirling mist, her feet setting down on a crazy-paving pattern of cracked tarmac with knee-high tufts of grass sprouting boldly through the gaps.
They were standing on the Williamsburg Bridge, on the car lane heading over the East River into Manhattan. It was empty of vehicles. Even abandoned ones. Running parallel to the tarmac was the pedestrian walkway, again deserted.
‘It looks like this bridge must have been closed down so
me time ago,’ said Rashim.
She nodded, then walked over to the side of the bridge and leaned over the safety rail. She found herself looking down on to the rooftops of what was once their part of Brooklyn: all empty warehouses, industrial units, factories and riverside apartments. Greenery seemed to sprout from every possible crevice. Running along the sides of brick walls, she noted the green-black strata of a high-tide mark and, several feet lower, the dark putrid water of low tide. On the surface was a gently undulating carpet of froth and floating debris picked up from the insides of all these buildings and carried out through long-ago broken windows to ride on the lapping water.
The sight vaguely reminded her of pictures of that Italian city Venice. Every building an artificial island, surrounded on all sides by foul-smelling canals and man-made waterways. Through the foggy-green murk of the water she could just about make out the ghostly oval outlines of submerged vehicle roofs.
Maddy looked up. New York skies – she was used to them being clear and blue and always so busy with the criss-crossed chalk lines of vapour trails of high-altitude air traffic, and, much lower, the thwup-thwup-thwup of helicopters passing to and fro across the river to Manhattan, buzzing the distant skyscrapers like over-persistent mosquitoes. Now the sky was overcast, stained an unhealthy sepia colour and dotted with hundreds of seagulls hovering on a stiff breeze above Brooklyn, keen eyes eagerly hunting for scraps of food they could swoop down and snatch.
New York’s ever-present heartbeat of trains rolling and clackety-clacking over railway tracks, the traffic rumble and honking horns and distant wailing sirens, the thumping music from a passing car-boot hi-fi … all of that was gone now. Replaced with just the rumpling breeze, the thrumming of wind playing across iron support cables like a harpist’s delicate fingers. Accompanying it, the creak and groan of the old bridge swaying sedately and the distant and shrill me-me-me cry of the seagulls.
Maddy heard footsteps approaching; Becks joined her and looked down on what remained of the Brooklyn they used to know.
‘Do you miss this location, Maddy?’ the support unit asked.
‘Yup.’ Maddy nodded slowly. ‘Didn’t realize how much I did, to be honest with you.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘It looks so sad and forgotten and miserable now.’ She leaned further forward, wanting to get a glimpse of the brick archways directly beneath them. ‘I guess our old place is well and truly underwater now. Pity, we could’ve visited.’
‘New York is not completely abandoned.’ Becks’s hard voice softened slightly. She pointed across the water to the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
Maddy followed the direction of her finger and saw some vague signs of life. On a number of those far-off rooftops, egg-whisk wind turbines spun lazily like barber’s poles. She thought she caught a glimpse of some delta-winged kite swaying from a rooftop like a bee hovering above a flower bed. Rashim had told her he knew Manhattan was still partially occupied. Maybe it was some misplaced notion of national pride, or perhaps some begrudging siege mentality, that was keeping the very tops of the skyscrapers alive with a few hardened New Yorkers, or barmy-minded eccentrics not quite ready to bid adieu to the city once and for all and let it finally become an abandoned ghost town.
Rashim wandered over and joined them, leaning against the creaking railing and taking in New York with the same forlorn expression as Maddy.
‘My God,’ he uttered miserably. ‘I have seen pictures, of course, but nothing prepares you for seeing it with your own eyes.’ He sighed. ‘They really have surrendered Manhattan to the sea.’
They stared out over the safety railing in a silent row, looking down on an archipelago that was once a place called Brooklyn. A gridded patchwork of low square islands, now home to thousands of terns and gulls nesting on windowsills and rooftops. Maddy imagined the dark interiors of these buildings now played host to a brand-new ecosystem of wildlife: feral dogs and cats feasting on pigeons, mice and rats.
She suspected that one or two dusty old apartment attics were probably still occupied by truculent old hermits refusing to leave behind their homes, unwilling to let the advancing sea steal away their ancient childhood memories of stuffy New York summers and leaky, spraying fire hydrants. Memories of porch-step gatherings and listening to the evening music spilling from a dozen open sash windows. Yappy lapdogs barking from first-storey fire escapes down at kids playing jump-rope on the kerb below.
Or maybe she’d just watched far too many of those grainy old films that idealized and sugar-coated the twentieth century and this ol’ part of town.
Becks stirred. ‘Maddy?’
‘Yes?’
‘I just detected one or two stray tachyon particles.’
‘Was that us?’ asked Rashim. ‘Decay particles from our arrival portal?’
‘No. I believe not.’ She looked at Maddy. ‘I believe it may have been part of a message.’
‘Waldstein again?’
She nodded. ‘That is possible.’
Maddy turned to Rashim and grinned. ‘He’s trying to lead us to him. He must have tried beaming a message here as well.’
‘That is encouraging.’ He made a face. ‘Or disconcerting.’
CHAPTER 8
2070, New York
The Manhattan end of the Williamsburg Bridge ramped gradually from the apex of its river-crossing height down to street level. Only, instead of the dual car lanes merging and becoming part of the downtown waffle-grid of roads and intersections, they dipped below a gentle grey-green tide.
Presently, they were standing on the cracked road and staring down at the debris and chemical-sud-covered ebb and flow of small lapping ripples. The lifeless Atlantic. Lazy waves sloshed up the bridge’s car lanes and hissed begrudgingly backwards as they drew nickel-sized nuggets of tarmac back into the sea with them.
Ahead of them, like scrawny saplings graduating up to mature oaks and giant redwoods, buildings protruded from the ordered criss-cross of submerged streets. Waterways now. Unintentional, ordered canals.
Here and there, dotted around, just breaking the surface, they could see the rusting tops and algae-clouded plexiglas sunroofs of Greyhound e-Buses and auto-trucks. Fainter, lost further down beneath the surface, the foggy ghosted outlines of other things: old mailboxes and litter bins, bollards and benches. And, sprouting from the water like marsh reeds, the rusting metal trunks of lifeless street lights.
The lowest buildings, those with only one or two storeys emerging from the sea, seemed to have been wholly abandoned. Windows cracked or gone, weather damage left untreated. Further away, where the buildings grew in stature and height, there was a suggestion that someone was still home and caring for them – or had, at some time, bothered to try keeping the elements at bay with chipboard coverings screwed into place over windows that had blown in.
To their left, the buildings began to tower, casting long shadows across the smooth water, emerging proudly from the sea where New York’s Wall Street used to be. The sulphurous brown sky was still dully reflected in their foggy windows. But dark squares dotted here and there indicated long-gone windows, like gap teeth. On some of the rooftops, Maddy could see those egg-whisk turbines, the fluttering of washed clothes pegged to a laundry line.
‘My God,’ she whispered sombrely. She wasn’t sure if it was the fact that New York looked like an abandoned shanty town that made it all seem so sad, or the fact that there were still people living here among these forlorn islands of steel and concrete, prepared to fight a futile rearguard action against the rising sea.
‘Quite a sight, isn’t it?’ said Rashim. Ill-chosen words in that moment. She wasn’t sure if he was saying this was a spectacular sight or a heartbreaking one.
Rashim shaded his eyes as sunlight momentarily broke through the tumbling clouds above and speared down at the water biblically. ‘You know, this is not an uncommon sight. Many of our great cities look like this now. They are waterlogged graveyards.’
It’s so peaceful, thought Maddy. So quiet. S
he listened to the sound of gently lapping water, the shrill cry of seagulls, the soft creaking of a hanging exit sign nearby. Peaceful, when it shouldn’t have been. She felt so very sad.
And there was something else.
She heard the faint drone of a motor. She looked at the others. ‘You hear that?’
Rashim nodded. ‘That sounds like a motorboat.’
Sure enough, as he said that, they spotted a V-like wake in the water, causing small ripples to spread out between the buildings and splash halfheartedly against their permanently wet and green-skirted bottoms. A moment later, the vessel that was causing the wake came into view: a launch – a low tugboat that looked better suited to inland waterways than the probing edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
It began to turn in a wide arc towards them.
‘I think someone’s spotted us,’ said Maddy.
A couple of minutes later, as it approached the descending off-road of the Williamsburg Bridge, the pilot cut its engine and let forward momentum carry the launch towards them until its stubby prow finally bumped gently against something below the water and it rode up over the slime-covered low tideline across the broken tarmac.
The pilot stepped out from behind his steering post. ‘You’re not Islanders! Not seen you people around here before!’ The man came forward and stood with one boot planted on the prow of his boat. Lean and unshaven, wearing a frayed and battered Yankees baseball cap and a colourful, flowery shirt, he shot Becks a quick glance. ‘Hell, reckon I’d remember a pretty thing like you!’
‘We’re not from round here,’ replied Maddy.
‘I already figured that for myself, miss. You know someone here? That it? Because, if not, you don’t have any business here. There’s no place here for any newcomers.’
Maddy looked at all the deserted buildings, a forest of tall, dead-eyed structures that receded into the distance. No place? Did he mean no room? Seriously? The place seemed pretty much deserted.
