Max-3 continued. “Well if we could think of good way of time-jacking, as you put it, then we would have done done. Guilty as charged. Unfortunately the time-lines all converge to here and now. If we fail there will be no future to escape to. The future is where the backward time travel takes place. So no future means no T4P travel to sort out the problem. Capishe?”
“If there is no track to the future then you can’t return to the past?” asked Conrad scratching his chin.
“You’re always on the ball, Conrad,” smiled Max-3.
“Have you tried it?” asked Karmen cautiously.
“No. The issue with the jets yesterday, for instance. Max-3 had plotted out the probabilities and unilaterally decided to plan the assistance with the French Air Force. No subjunctive crime took place,” he said condescendingly. “As for using time-travel to get out of our current mess, we’ll come to that in a moment. In the particular matter of Max and I going together,” said Max-1 pausing dramatically. “I can put your minds at rest. We’re suggesting we go into action first. We’ll do the surveillance work and report. Our chances of survival, as I said, are next to zero but we’re the best qualified. Trust me when I say I don’t want to die, but it’s the only option.”
“Then who’s next?” I asked.
Conrad perked up. “That would be Karmen and myself.”
Terri said, “But you don’t have your surrogate? You won’t have your super strength!”
“I have my other gizmos and this!” He pointed to his head.
Karmen hugged him. “I won’t let him out of my protective shield!”
They publicly kissed for the first time. A long lingering kiss.
“It looks like its me and you for team 3,” I whispered to Terri.
“Yay,” said Terri in a quiet, sarcastic voice.
Max-1 eventually coughed to bring Conrad and Karmen’s embrace to an end. He said, “The forecast for Conrad and Karmen, I’m sorry to say, is only a 50% chance of survival and only a 2% chance of complete mission success.”
“Otherwise it’s Terri and me...” I said.
Max-1 replied, “Yes, you’ve a much better survival rate. Better than 70%. But, of course, there maybe systematic error built into the model due to my desire for your success because you have to succeed. You just have to!”
“And the model says that?” asked Karmen.
Max-3 smiled a fake smile and said unconvincingly. “Yes, the model definitely wants to say that. It doesn’t... but there is definitely scope for success.”
“Scope? How much scope?”
“Within a percentage point…”
***
Tuesday, February 19, 2123, morning
We tried to sleep but it was difficult with the moral dilemma regarding the second part of the plan. Because, as Max said, “We just had to succeed”, he recommended additional insurance. The Maxes recommended that we were all be entangle-scanned in the morning. “It would be useful, er, back-up” explained Max-1. Terri invented some new swear words and stormed off.
Terri’s tantrum did not disturb the Maxes who worked through the night assembling equipment. In the morning, Gallo woke me with milky coffee and crepes. I had a stretch outside and noticed something new on the field beside the encampment. A big black sphere made from segments brought by the Quadcopters. It was built up like a huge giant chocolate orange; but hollow. It was the first time I had seen it; Max’s Entangle Scanner.
Terri was not around. But then again, it was morning, she never was.
“It was no mean feat getting all this equipment printed out. And even harder getting it assembled last night,” said Max-3, munching through his breakfast. He seemed quite jolly despite working through the night and the prospect of imminent death.
Max-1 joined in. “But we’re ready now. We’ve tested the scanner, the electronics and the connections back to the MSS supercomputer. All perfect. Now before you start worrying about me again and the inflationary pressure caused by the number of Maxes there are in circulation,” Max-1 said laughing slightly at his joke. “We only have enough data storage capacity for four bodies. So Max and I will not be copied. At least, not again.”
“Why the sudden nobility?” I asked.
“Hopefully you don’t find it all that sudden,” said Max-3.
“You’ve hopped through time to make yourself rich in pursuit of salacious quests and in the process unleashed the devil’s own spawn that threatens the existence of mankind. That doesn’t rate too high in the 2123 Nobility Awards,” I suggested.
“I haven’t been aiming at award winning nobility. Granted my minor character flaws may have precipitated this situation, but no-one has worked harder to try to rectify the problem,” blustered Max-3.
“I’m not going to be drawn into this discussion except to say that the chances of any of us being reassembled are small,” said Max-1.
“Aren’t there already copies of your atoms elsewhere anyway?” sighed Conrad.
“Indeed, there are at least two other entangle-scans of my atoms going into the future, assuming an optimistic outcome of our current problems. So I’m relatively sanguine that I, at least, have my DNA and relatively recent memories covered. I’m sure you can inform any future Max of the events that I would have missed these last few days,” said Max-1 cheerfully.
“So can we get going? Conrad? You first…” said Max-3.
Karmen pushed a reluctant Conrad towards the machine.
But then Terri appeared from around the side of the bus. She had taken her breakfast time in private but had still been listening to Max’s announcement. “Well you can have my space. I’m not going into that sphere again,” she said.
“But you could die. There will be no coming back. There’s no other back-up data for you,” said Max-3.
“That’s a chance I’ll just have to take, along with the rest of humanity. They don’t have back-up either,” Terri said sadly.
“I’ll always cherish my original misconception of you,” sighed Max-1.
I stepped forward. “I’m with Terri. I’m not getting tangled-whats-it either,” I said.
Terri turned and looked daggers at me.
There was momentary silence, as-if we were all actors in a stage play and one of the supporting characters had just forgotten some important lines.
“Is that what you want, Terri? For Aaron to sacrifice himself as well?” asked Max-3 with a mild stutter.
Terri looked down and then pointed at me indicating I should come over to her. It was as though, at that moment, she was rooted to the ground.
I came to her side and we turned away from the rest.
She said in a whisper, “Look, do this. Get copied. I want you to.”
“Why not you as well?”
“I’ve already done this. I just don’t feel that everyone is cut out for reincarnation. I’ve already done it once. And it is just too difficult for me to do it again. Or rather too awful to contemplate doing it again. But I want you to, you know, survive... Whatever. It is important. This is more important than just you and me.”
“You. You want me to… ?”
“Yes!”
“Ok,” I said, my voice catching.
We turned around.
“Aaron will go,” announced Terri.
“Then he can go first,” said Conrad, looking back at Karmen. Karmen was unimpressed.
I turned back to Terri and whispered. “I’m doing this for you.”
She raised her eyes and muttered. “Great! Another stalker!”
I felt crushed. Crushed in a manner that can only be achieved by a heart being broken by a loved one.
But then she stepped forward, lifted my head and kissed me. It was our first public kiss of 2123. My spirits soared.
***
Chapter 5 PK Re-assembled
Friday, May 22, 2123, time unknown.
What’s happening!? It felt like I had just inhaled the wrong brand of cola into my lungs. I had to cough it out before I drowned. It was bubbl
ing up my nose. Then something was in my throat sucking out fluid. And there was probes elsewhere too and injections into my skin. I wanted to fight but my arms were restrained. Bright lights. Roaring pulsating noise. Then I was released and I could writhe and cough and then breathe. Phew. I was alive and, well how about that! It felt good except for the cramps in my belly. I began to see shapes and the sonic roar quietened to a dull thud.
I was on my side naked under a rough blanket.
I could see the blur of a figure beside me.
A faceless man.
It was saying something. Something nice. But I couldn’t make out the words. It was repeating words. No, it was not making any sense. It sounded nice though. It sounded like “Bonjour? Comment allez-vous aujourd'hui. Je ai une boisson pour vous ici.” Again and again.
My stomach. My stomach hurt. My companion sat me up and stuck a straw in my mouth. I sucked and drank a great tasting drink. As I drank my stomach cramps decreased.
It wasn’t a faceless man but a faceless robot.
“Je me appelle Gallo. Votre nom est Aaron. Vous souvenez-vous de moi?”
“You’re called Aaron?” I slurred.
“Tu êtes Aaron.”
“Hi Aaron,” I smiled drunkenly.
“Je ai quelque chose pour aider.” The robot put earphones on my head. “Perhaps you can understand me now?” said the robot now in auto-translate English.
“Yeah, wow. What’s going on?”
“You have been revived again.”
“Again?”
“Mademoiselle Terri will explain,” said the robot, mopping the floor.
“Mademoiselle?”
“There is not an adequate translation. Mademoiselle.”
“Terri? Who’s Terri?”
“She’ll explain. She will be online in a moment. Wait, if you please,” and the robot continued to clear up.
I looked around. It looked like I was inside a bus. But outside of the windows was black; blacker than night, blacker than the black shell of a MS-Bell Black Hole Game Console. How come I can remember that but not my name?
The back of the bus had been damaged. The bus! I remembered the bus. And Gallo, the robot. The french robot. Gallo looked dusty and scratched. As though he had been tossed off a cliff and dragged through a hedge backwards. He no longer looked clean with brushed-aluminium but was a dull gun-metal gray. There was an amateur repair covering his upper torso and the left side of its head had been bashed inwards.
Just as I was digesting these details, there was a crackling connection sound and Terri was online. I suddenly remembered Terri! Wow. She kissed me. In public.
“Hi Aaron. Welcome back. Gallo says you’ve been revived to Stage 1,” she said from the holoscreen.
“I’m Aaron. Right,” I drawled.
“Yah. We’ve formalised the recovery process. Don’t worry, all will be explained. Get dressed and ask your G-phone for Stage One Conditioning.”
“G-phone?”
“Oh come on! You remember what a G-phone is don’t you? Gallo will show you.”
I looked at my left arm. There was some understanding within me that “G-phone” equalled something to do with my arm.
Terri seemed satisfied with my apparent understanding and continued. “And then you need to exit the bus. I’ll direct you. Gallo needs to move to a safe area.”
“And me?”
“Oh, right. Yes, er, you too, sweetie. We all have to keep safe.”
“Where are you?”
“It’s all in the audio-visual. Select. Stage. One. Conditioning. Look, sorry, I must go. I’ll catch up with you later, I hope.”
Click. End of call.
I tried rising from the bed. Gallo caught me as I fell.
As I hung around Gallo’s neck, as he half walked me, half dragged me, up and down the bus. I quickly started to learn how to use my legs and was soon staggering around unaided.
Gallo retrieved a fresh super-suit from the printer. I realised it was mine. My memories started to connect, my brain seemed to be lighting up, as if a janitor was walking down the corridor of an empty warehouse and throwing circuit breakers. Vast swathes of memory and radiant energy seemed suddenly accessible: Terri! My Terri. Where was she?
I asked the robot but Gallo apparently did not know.
I put on the suit unaided (except for the boots, helmet and gloves). I strapped my G-Phone into the tailored indent on my left gauntlet; everything was all coming together now. I remembered our enemy, the Big G; all that context had returned to me. I felt as though I was ready to go out and fight. I actually wasn’t but I felt like I was.
“Remind me again, Gallo... Terri tasked me to do some things.”
Gallo kindly walked me from the bus with his arm around my shoulder. We emerged from a cave and out onto a hillside with a misty vista. He explained that there was medication inside the candy balls he had just given me. “Keep sucking these bon-bons,” Gallo explained. “Now, if you can just stand here. On this spot… I will drive away, n’est pas, and you will watch the recording on your phone. Ca va?” (The translation system is so good it even keeps french idioms in context).
“Which one?”
Gallo clicked a button on my G-Phone. “This. I will see you soon, my friend. Keep well.”
Gallo walked back hastily to the bus and soon drove out; out of the cave, down an alpine track and disappeared round a bend. I watched in a daze. I then realised that I was alone. Somewhere in the Alps, it seemed. I felt as though I had been set up for some practical joke. The unfunny type; where people pretended to be Game Show hosts trying to catch you squeezing spots or something equally humiliating.
I tried accessing the audio-visual recording.
I clicked the button on my G-Phone and waited expectantly. After a few seconds, it gently replied, “Error 404 - that file cannot be found.”
What?
I found a rock to sit on (I was already tired), and examined the files presented on the phone. There were five “Conditioning” stages. I clicked on Stage 1 again and got the same result. So I pressed “Stage 2” and a prerecorded audio message from Terri came up. “Aaron, watch Stage One first!”
“But Stage One Four-oh-fours on me!” I whined to myself on the side hill.
All the other files had the same security lock applied.
I tried calling Terri. No reply.
I accessed news networks. OMJ. It was war! World War. From Paris to Moscow, Hong Kong to Shanghai, the west coast of North America from Ketchikan to San Quitin, Argentina and Uruguay, Egypt to Kenya, Kyrgyzstan to Kabal. What’s with all the Kays? Giant robots invading and building giant factories to build even more gigantic robots. They were being kept in check by humanities own drones and robots - but none of them matched up to Gruyère’s. Wait. Last week there was a one-on-one giant robot match in Africa; the so-called “Rumble in the Jungle”. Gruyère’s machine won with a knock out punch, knocking the head clean off the neck of humanity’s champion.
Despite several bookies being bankrupted by the outcome of the fight, the rest of world, the whole world, had been mobilised to fight this evil cheese. The only good thing to have happened had been the resurgent popularity of fondues and wine-and-cheese parties.
Hey, how long have I been out of action? Three months? Three months! And they have only just got around to reviving me? Then I had a realisation. I had probably been revived dozens of times. And died. Original Aaron was dead. Hence the videos, the staged conditioning, Terri’s off-hand attitude towards me. But then again, she behaves like that towards me all the time. It’s difficult to tell whether there was really any difference there.
I may not have died. There could be multiple me’s in existence at this point in time. Perhaps Gallo is off to build another clone? That’s why he wanted me out of the way. It is always awkward bumping into a doppelganger. Hah, as if that ever happens! Hey, I had my sense of humour back. Or at least something resembling, in my own mind, a sense of humour. I was in a good
mood considering I had had lost three months and been dumped on the side of a mountain with a broken set of instructions. I guess the endorphins from my kiss with Terri before I entered the chamber had been copied into me too.
***
Friday, May 22, 2123, morning.
I finished my second sweet. It was less “bon-bon”, more of a gob-stopper.
I heard a noise.
A jet pack.
Around the side of hill flying low was a heavily-laden jet-packer.
The person landed close to the cave entrance.
It was Terri!
I tried running towards her but in my unsteady, puppy-dog state, I stumbled and landed in a puddle.
She helped me up, it was so good to see her, that I tried to hug her. “Terri, Terri” I crooned.
“Whoa, hold off, hot stuff,” she replied and pushed me away taking a couple of steps backwards. I could see her clearly now. She looked like a muddied ninja, not her usual style. It was strange to see her in tatty street clothes with tied back hair. “Rule number one from the Conditioning!”
“Rule?”
“You’ve seen the video?” she snapped.
“No. The file 404-ed”
“Really?”
“Check it yourself,” I offered my wrist with the G-Phone.
“We uploaded a new file last night. It probably messed up. Hah. So sue me, I can’t be expected be a fantastic webmaster as well as defender of the planet.”
“So what’s rule one?” I said stepping forward.
She held out her hand. “No touching!”
“What!? Because of poison? Disease?”
“No. I just don’t like it that much!”
“Huh?”
“Oh groan. I’m going to have to step you through the conditioning,” she moaned, hands on hips looking around. She moved back to the pile of equipment she had just delivered. “Ok. Look. Help me with this stuff. We have to move it into the cave. Then I’ll go over the main points quickly.”
“I’ve lost three months, I really don’t…”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said dismissively, handing me a large bag before pulling a heavier one to the cave herself. “Ok. Let me go over the basics. Number one: Terri is safe. Well safe-ish. But she is really busy at the moment. I. am. not. her.”
We had stopped at the cave entrance. “You are not you?” I said confused.
“Don’t start with all the second person pronouns. No, I’m not Terri. I’m a replicant. Call me T-147. Or Tee-seven. The hundred and forty handle is a drag. It sounds like there are more of us around than there really are.”
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