Even as he parked the truck as close to the site as he could get and ran past the red stone markers, he could hear an approaching helicopter. He glanced at the pickup alongside the stones. Maybe not an alien. But who could have simultaneously sabotaged three bits of tech, one military grade?
“Goddammit,” he said, turning on the camera. It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the dark, but, when they did, he saw a man lying on the desert floor, curled up in a fetal position. He kept the camera focussed on the body as he moved forward. No, he wasn’t dead, he was breathing. When Darwin got a few paces away, the figure rolled onto his knees, put his hands in front of him and slowly got to his feet, his back turned. He took a few long breaths in and out, then turned round. He was just some guy, nothing special. Then Darwin noticed his eyes. Even in the gloom, they seemed to pierce him. It was like looking onto the eyes of someone who’d seen civilizations rise and fall, watched planets form in the cold emptiness of space. He let the camera fall to his side. The man blinked and the moment passed.
“Who are you?” said Darwin. Then the noise of the helicopter made both of them look to the west where, only visible because of the way it was blotting out their view of the stars as it flew, it was coming in to land. Before it even touched the sand, eight figures dropped out of it, dressed in black, sprinting toward them. Two of them came straight at them, weapons drawn.
Darwin raised his hands, the camera dangling from his wrist.
“Nothing to do with me,” he said, “you wanna talk to this guy.” He nodded in the direction of the man he had found. When the two armed men didn’t even glance away from him, he took a look himself. There was no one there. And no cover for fifteen miles in any direction. He’d just disappeared.
“Shit,” said Darwin.
Two incongruous figures were the last to exit the chopper. One was very tall and obviously in charge. The other barely came up to the waist of his companion. They ignored Darwin and walked to the center of the crash site.
“Well?” said the tall one. The dwarf—must remember to call him a small person, don’t want to offend him when I’ve got guns pointing at me—stood very still for a moment, his eyes closed.
“It’s gone,” he said simply, and started back for the helicopter.
“All of it?” said the tall one, frowning.
“All of it.”
“The power’s gone?” said Darwin, blurting out the words before thinking. He had never been able to sense the stuff his father had claimed was buried there, had always assumed it was just another delusion.
The tall man walked up to him.
“What did you see?” he asked.
Darwin considered his options. He had always been good at negotiations, but none of them had taken place at the wrong end of a gun. He swallowed.
“Er, some guy was here,” he said. The tall man took a photograph from his pocket and shone a flashlight on it.
“That’s him,” said Darwin.
“And where is he now?” said the tall man.
“I don’t know,” said Darwin. “His truck’s still back there. He was just…here.”
The tall man sighed and put the photo away. He spoke to the soldiers guarding Darwin.
“Make it look like he tripped and hit his head on a rock,” he said. “And bring me the camera.”
Darwin ran. It was human nature. He knew he wouldn’t get far. He was out of condition and these guys were obviously trained killers. His last conscious thought was a silent apology to his dad, who wasn’t quite as full of shit as Darwin had always believed.
39
Woodbine Cafe, Earlham Street, London
By 6:57am, Marco had already been awake for two hours, dragging himself reluctantly out of a warm bed into a tepid shower, then downstairs to the cafe he had run for eighteen years with his wife, Constanza. 6:00-8:30am, the Woodbine was always busy with the same mix of transport workers, office and shop employees and a handful of bankers and hedge-fund managers who like to slum it a couple mornings every week, knowing they’d get the best bacon and eggs in town. Marco was a good cook, he stuck to the simple stuff, the food his father had told him Londoners wanted. He hadn’t changed the menu in over a decade. Long before it had become fashionable, he had been brewing roasted Italian coffee and serving freshly-squeezed orange juice.
But Marco’s real talent, the reason his cafe was busy even in the quiet summer months, was his memory for names. He had never been particularly gifted academically, but in his teens, he’d read a great book claiming the most successful people in business always remembered names and faces. He applied himself to the task and listened hard when someone introduced themselves, studying their face and repeating the name to himself in his head over and over. He seemed to have a natural gift for it - so much so, that people might go and work in another country for a few years, then walk back into the Woodbine only to be greeted by name, and offered their “usual”. Word spread, and the cafe thrived.
So when a disheveled man in a suit materialized at the counter just as Marco was flipping a fried egg onto a piece of toast for Anna, the girl who worked at the stationer’s opposite, his initial shock was followed, almost immediately, by the kicking in of his habitual memory stunt.
“Seb!” he said. “Great to see you. Such a long time. No Meera today, mm? So, the usual? Fried egg and mushroom bap, brown sauce? Black coffee, no sugar. Sit down, sit down, I’ll bring it to you. What a lovely surprise.”
Seb stumbled to the nearest table and sat down heavily. The conversations around him picked up again. The sudden inexplicable materialization of an American at the counter of the cafe had produced a stunned pause, but this was England, after all, and the general consensus seemed to be to pretend it hadn’t happened, as it would be rude to stare. Mrs. Barclay, perched on her customary stool at the end of the counter as she sipped her weak tea, saw Seb’s magical appearance occur about three feet from her nose. She glared at him for a moment as he sat down, then sniffed and returned her attention to the Times crossword.
The egg and mushroom bap was as delicious as Seb remembered. This had been one of Mee’s regular haunts, although it had been weeks before she brought him in, shyly introducing him to the ebullient Marco.
“Why is it that brown sauce has never been big in the States?” said Seb2, while Seb chewed.
“Maybe it’s the name,” said Seb. “It hardly sounds like a delicacy.”
“Says what it is,” said Seb2. “It’s a sauce. It’s brown. What’s the problem? Folks back home don’t know what they’re missing.”
“True,” said Seb. He finished up and left a ten pound note on the table, unsurprised to find the bills in his wallet were now UK currency.
“Ciao, Seb, see you soon,” called Marco as Seb opened the door. Seb raised a hand. As the door shut behind him, there was a collective feeling of relief. No one likes a show off.
“Word of advice,” said Seb2. “Next time you Walk, go for a less public place. Maybe an alleyway, or behind a tree. Think Clark Kent, no need to draw attention.”
“Fair point,” said Seb. He found a bench outside a Polish food store, its windows plastered with posters advertising various international calling cards. “So, what’s changed? Please use words I can understand.”
“Ok. Primarily, you can now go where you like, when you like. The Roswell Manna was the latest nano-technology from Billy Jo’s people. No one else could get it, because they were trying to run a brand new app on a 2000-year old Operating System. Imagine Windows Vista, but even clunkier.”
“Wow,” said Seb. “So what else can I do?”
“Hmm. You know that old expression? Show - don’t tell?”
“Fine,” said Seb, “show me.”
He spent the morning wandering the streets, remembering those intense months with Mee before his visa had run out. He had been in London to write songs for a boy band that was supposed to be about to break through. When two of the singers had been arrested for possession, the albu
m had been mothballed and Seb had found himself out of a job. By then, he’d met Meera and everything had changed.
Meera was a revelation. After an amazing few months of mutual discovery and unexpected happiness, she’d come back to America with him. Within a week, she had formed a band - first Crushed Asians, then Clockwatchers. Things had started happening for her. It was only a matter of time before a major label showed some interest. But Seb hadn’t really been interested in the musical direction the band pursued - Mee was more interested in the lyrics and saw the music as primarily the delivery system for whatever message she wanted to get across. She loved Seb’s musicality, but it didn’t fit with the sound she wanted. They parted ways professionally and, soon afterwards, personally. It had hurt, but Seb had always been confident they would end up together. He had believed that right up to the point he’d been diagnosed with a terminal condition. Then he’d decided not to tell her about it, despite knowing she would be furious.
“You think she’s going to come back to you now you’re half-alien?” said Seb2.
“Yeah, actually, I do,” said Seb. “Now, come on, I want to buy her a falafel kebab before we go back.”
40
Taking Seb2’s advice, Seb decided to choose a less conspicuous spot to Walk to this time. He didn’t close his eyes, just decided to Walk and his options opened up like someone riffling through a deck of playing cards, each card representing a different geographical location. As he looked for somewhere on the Las Vegas city limits where he was unlikely to be seen arriving, Seb became aware of other possibilities opening up. He paused the process, his options slowly revolving in front of him like tabs on an internet browser.
“What are these?” said Seb, his attention turning to a group of tabs showing potential arrival points containing inexplicable images. Some showed buildings that weren’t there in others. Many had no buildings at all. A whole trench of possibilities looked like the surface of the moon, bearing no signs of life at all. Some just showed the star-filled vacuum of deep space.
“Each of these is a doorway,” said Seb2. “They all lead to the same place.”
“No, they don’t,” said Seb. “Look at them.”
“The same place, but not the same universe,” said Seb2.
“What?” said Seb. “You mean those Scientific America articles I read were-,”
“- onto something? Yeah. Parallel universes, different dimensions, the role of consciousness in holding together the fabric of reality. Just don’t get too caught up in it. Humans currently have as much chance of understanding this as a newborn being asked to read, absorb, then write a thesis on the Theory Of Relativity, but yeah, this stuff is true.”
“Humans? Last time I looked, that was me, too.”
“Yeah, whatever,” said Seb2. “Thing is, you could spend the rest of your life trying to understand the theory behind what’s happening, but you’d get absolutely nowhere. Remember when music recording software used to drive you crazy?”
Seb thought back to the wasted hours spent installing and trying to use studio software on what was—at the time—the fastest computer he could afford. After weeks of frustration, he had eventually given up and wrenched the plug out of the wall, pushing the whole setup into a corner and throwing a sheet over it. That’s how it stayed for five years, by which time the value of his entire rig was about half that of the average cell phone.
“I remember,” he said.
“And remember the first time you tried a piece of software that worked?”
That had been a beautiful day. Processing power had moved on to the point when someone not particularly tech-savvy could put a laptop next to their music keyboard, plug in a mic and a guitar and make music easily, the software helping the process rather than obstructing it. In a weirdly masochistic way, Seb was glad he’d lived through the period of history when software evolved from expensive self-torture devices to affordable solutions that enabled, rather than hindered, creativity.
“Of course. Don’t think I left the apartment for seven days.”
“It was ten days. But you don’t have a clue how that software works, right? You don’t know what’s going on under the hood.”
“I don’t want to know,” said Seb.
“Same deal here,” said Seb2. “I can use this software but I can’t understand it. And let’s be accurate, it’s not software, it’s wetware. Your body is alive with nanotechnology. Every human process is now automated and optimized. As your cells die, they are replaced with better, more effective, stronger cells with capabilities genetically impossible for the rest of our species. Part of your brain now allows me to do my thing alongside the usual human level of consciousness. But I, we, can never expect to understand how we can do what we do. At the moment, I feel like a trained monkey with a game console. I can play, I can learn. I can make some guesses about what’s going on. But, ultimately…”
“You’re a monkey.”
“Yes. The split in your consciousness is the only way a human could use this software. Humanity has the potential—every few thousand years or so—of throwing up a genetic wildcard that can cope with it.”
“At last, I truly know myself. I’m a genetic wildcard. Thank you.”
“Again with the sarcasm.”
“Allow me my coping mechanism.”
“Of course, said Seb2. “It’s either that or insanity. In fact, without Seb3, it would be insanity, followed closely by death.”
Seb shuddered. He didn’t like to think about the part of himself in constant agony. He didn’t understand it, but he wondered what price would eventually have to be paid for fencing off part of himself. He was able to live a day-to-day existence without collapsing, solely because something prevented the pain at his core from touching any other aspect of his consciousness. Sounded like a Faustian deal - and that had hardly worked out well for Faust.
“So the doorways I can see,” said Seb, “some of them lead to universes where Vegas never got built?”
“And some where Earth never developed human life” said Seb2. “Others where Neanderthals became the dominant strain of humanity. Others where the Earth never formed at all. Infinite universes.”
“Infinite?” repeated Seb. “Truly infinite?”
“Truly,” said Seb2. “Every time you make a decision, the universe splits into two and continues. Skip brushing your teeth this morning? New universe. Stay for one more beer? New universe. Assassinate Kennedy? New universe. Multiplied by every being in the universe capable of making a decision. Infinite.”
“Ow,” said Seb, finally. “My brain hurts.”
“Like I said, don’t get hung up on the software. We’re a monkey with a game console. Let’s play.”
“Can I bring this kebab?” said Seb, holding the wrapped package from Mee’s favorite Moroccan takeaway.
“You can bring the kebab.”
Seb picked a Doorway showing a skatepark that had been half-built, then abandoned. As fast as he thought it, he Walked.
41
Las Vegas
As he rounded the corner on the dirt track a few miles from where he arrived, Seb detected a faint smell of burning. More accurately, it smelled like the charred remains of a big barbecue after a party. He increased his pace, desperate to see Mee again, but slightly nervous about what they would have to say to each other. It was going to take a while to even start to explain what had happened since that night on the rooftop in LA.
The source of the smell was a small trailer park - it must have comprised half a dozen or so dwellings arranged in a semicircle in front of a hill. The only evidence they’d ever existed—other than the slight smell—were rectangles of dark scorched earth showing the location of each trailer. Inside the semicircle was evidence of more fire amid small shoots of greenery, a flower or two, surely not indigenous. Seb stopped and looked, knowing he was in the right place, but not able to take in the implications of what he was seeing. His throat was suddenly dry.
“Seb?”
Seb’s head snapped around to identify the owner of the voice. Sitting on a large rock beneath a stunted tree that provided the only shade in sight, was Walter Ford, wearing a white linen suit, panama hat and sunglasses. The huge Lincoln was parked about ten feet behind him. He had a cool-box at the foot of the rock and was drinking from a brown glass bottle. “Come and join me,” he said. “A cold beer’s sometimes the only thing that hits the spot.”
Seb felt his hands curl into fists. The falafel kebab, having survived an instantaneous journey of thousands of miles without mishap, was now torn in half and dropped to the floor.
“Where’s Mee?!” shouted Seb. “What have you done to her?!” He could feel the anger building fast. Years of daily contemplation practice had brought the benefit of being able to identify inappropriate anger and stop it poisoning his experience, but this anger felt completely appropriate as it swelled righteously within him.
Walt slid from his perch as the ground started to shake. Rocks, stones, tiny shards of gravel began jumping from the ground, hammering a tattoo of ever-increasing intensity. It was as if the biggest storm in history was breaking around him in the arid wilderness, the thunder provided by drumming rocks. It built into a physically painful sensation and Walt looked fearfully at the hill behind Seb as the ground seemed to roil and shift like an angry animal spotting its prey. He shouted as loud as he could over the racket.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 30
