by Martyn Ford
On the roof, he stepped to the edge, climbed up onto the castle’s battlements, and tucked his legs between the cold stone uprights, sitting comfortably with his elbow on one. Phil scurried onto his lap, then onto the granite by his side, and Dee fit nicely in the next crenel. They stared across the vista, now a valley, and no one said a word. After a few moments, Tim realized it wasn’t yet complete.
So he lifted his arm. “And there was light,” he said, clicking his fingers.
A bright orange as rich as a sunset against the Sahara flooded everything around them.
To the left, Tim noticed Fredric striding across the plain. Tim created an awesome spiral slide, which took them from the top of the castle down to the ground, where Fredric greeted them.
Turning around, gesturing at the space, he laughed. “Tim, this is incredible. This place is…it’s beautiful.”
Things were still appearing—plants were sprouting at the base of the building, hedgerows and sculptures were popping up here and there, water features and paths were meandering across the grounds—as Tim’s subconscious continued to furnish the new world.
“That was Harriet on the phone,” Fredric said after expressing his astonishment. “Somehow she’s worked out that we’re here. I think she wants you back at TRAD’s HQ—which doesn’t seem like the best idea.”
Tim sighed, remembering that outside these walls was the real world. Part of him wanted to just create a new Imagination Box in here and forget about the old one. But then he recalled a promise he’d made to Eisenstone. He would get the box back.
“Fine,” Tim said. “So what are we gonna do?”
“Something a little crazy and quite dangerous. We’ll go over the plan in a moment. But first, let me show you something. Have you considered what you’d do if you make a mistake in here?”
“What do you mean?”
Fredric pulled a small black device from his pocket; it looked like a strange sort of gun, just with an extremely short barrel.
“Create something over there. Anything. Create a soccer ball. Sorry, you call it a football.” He put on a poor English accent.
Without even looking at where he wanted it, Tim imagined a white leather ball. It fell onto the grass, bounced once, then rested still.
“Creation is only one side of the coin. Should you wanna remove something from the world, you will need this.”
Turning on his heel, Fredric pointed the black thing at the ball. A beam of light shot out in an instant and hit it. With a short, clean, hissing sound, it disappeared.
“Well, dye me yellow and call me a honeybee!” Phil exclaimed. “It is gone.”
“This is a…” Fredric read from the side of the device. “Spectral Disintegration Nano Beaming Pulse Unit. It works in much the same way as the teleporter, but doesn’t reconstruct the object.” He tilted it. “Inspired by Clarice Crowfield’s unorthodox use of Whitelock’s teleporter.”
“You should call it something simple,” Dee said.
“SDNBPU?”
“How about,” Tim said, thinking, “a zapper?”
“Retro vibe, Timothy,” Phil said. “I think I approve. Zapper. Zap-zap. It works.”
“Call it whatever you want, man.” Fredric smiled. “Just be careful—it’ll destroy whatever it’s pointed at. That includes people. If you accidentally shoot yourself in the foot, well, it’ll be game over. And I love the river, but be careful of that too. The reader won’t work if it gets wet, and it’ll need to be recalibrated in the control room. A lot of hassle.”
“Sure thing,” Tim said.
Fredric was ready to go over his plan, so Tim created a long timber dining table, in the castle garden. They sipped pineapple juice freshly squeezed into a jug of crushed ice. Dee demanded a paper umbrella for hers, and Tim was happy to oblige. The grass and pollen had filled the air with a comforting summer smell.
Fredric explained that TRAD was, at some level, “corrupt.” However, he had no idea how far it went—there was no way to be sure who at the agency was responsible for any wrongdoing. He said that with firewalls, closed networks, and some of the tightest security in the world, there was only so much to be gleaned from the outside.
“Why not get someone, I don’t know, to infiltrate the Diamond Building and investigate?” Phil suggested, pacing along the picnic table. “They could look where you cannot, gather intelligence, this sort of thing.”
There was a long pause. Fredric glanced briefly at them all.
“I see,” Tim said, nodding, realizing. “You want us to break in.”
“Surely this is more a job for, you know, adults?” Dee said.
“There is a risk, but you guys have deniability. If you get caught…” Fredric sighed. “If anyone sees you there, we won’t have burned any bridges.”
“Why do you care?” Tim asked. “What’s in it for you?”
“We can’t be neutral, we can’t ignore this—something is going on with that place,” Fredric said. “With what we know, how could we stand by and do nothing?”
Tim liked this answer. Besides being probably the coolest person he’d ever met, Fredric had a good heart.
“This does sound fun,” Dee added. “Espionage and all that. Good stuff. But it really doesn’t seem worth the risk.”
She stood up.
“Oh,” Fredric said. “Once it’s done, I’m going to be investing in making this technology work for all. How would you like your own Imagination Box?”
Dee sat back down. “So, when are we going to attempt this hugely dangerous, spectacularly illegal heist?” she asked.
Fredric pulled a blue teleportation sphere from his pocket and rolled it across the table. “Now.”
Amid the ashen light of the moon, there was no sound at TRAD’s headquarters besides the faint humming from some distant electronics. The room—all of the Diamond Building, in fact—was asleep, at peace. On the wall a clock ticked; it was 9:32 p.m. A quick hissing pop gave way to a pair of figures, aptly clad as burglars in black, who appeared behind a partition.
“Uuuughhh,” Dee whispered, shuddering from the teleport. “It’s so weird. It makes me feel a little bit sick. Queasy town.”
“Shhh.” Tim crouched, dragging her to the ground with him. He pocketed the orange teleportation sphere, which Fredric had hidden here, and then straightened his Imagination Box beanie.
“Why are we crouching?” Dee wondered.
“I dunno.” They stood up straight.
Fredric had given them a small USB device, which he told them to plug into Harriet’s personal computer.
“She’s TRAD’s director,” Fredric had said. “Her computer has the highest clearance. It has access to all of TRAD’s files. If anyone there knows about the box, about the Mind Surfer, the answers will be on her hard drive.”
He had also shown them on a map where they would arrive and explained their route in and out, highlighting where cameras and guards would be posted.
As they were on the thirty-fourth floor, they could see for miles. The night scene, with lights peppered across a black canvas, stretched all the way to the horizon. To the right, a deep storm cloud was moving in, a few specks of rain appearing on the glass already, and in the distance, silent flashes of white were glowing in the sky.
“Come on,” Dee said, heading out of the room.
This was an evening of broken rules, as, in order to be out this late, Dee had told her mother that she was staying at Tim’s. And Tim, you guessed it, had told Elisa he was staying at Dee’s. Fredric had said, “Honesty will come later. They’ll understand in the long run.”
They knew where they needed to go: up four stories, down a long corridor, into Harriet’s office, and then onto her computer. Straight in. Straight out. That was the plan. They got to the end of the first hall without incident, avoiding the CCTV camera, which slowly shook its head from side to side. They took the steps two at a time, safe in the knowledge that there were no cameras and no security in the stairwell. On the landing, they stood befo
re a flat concrete wall with the number 38 stamped on it in huge, faded white letters. This was the top floor of TRAD’s HQ, where some of the most senior members of staff worked. It was the brain of the beast.
Tim reached out and grabbed the door handle, clenching his teeth as he gently pulled it down, trying to stay silent. With the softest of clicks, the door opened onto a long corridor bordered by internal windows, and rows of offices and testing labs. Everything was still and gray, just the odd red dot from screens on standby.
“Right,” Tim said. “Phil, let’s go.”
The monkey, also dressed in black (tiny little hat, tiny little jacket—he’d even added two stripes of dark camo paint to his cheeks), leapt from Tim’s pocket, climbed up a doorframe, and clung to the long strip lights. Then he headed off down the hall above them, all the way to the corner. He could be their eyes and ears, high and small enough to avoid detection. Tim saw him freeze at the sight of something; then he came scurrying back.
“There’s a guard up there,” Phil quietly announced. He fell to the carpet between them. “Up there, around the corner. He has a gun.”
“What do you mean?” Tim whispered, lowering himself to the ground.
“I mean precisely what I said.He literally has a gun.”
“Why?” Tim gasped, fear arriving.
“To shoot intruders, I imagine.” Dee squinted as though it was a silly question.
“This is altogether disheartening,” Phil said. “I suggest a comprehensive and noble retreat.”
“No,” Dee whispered. “As long as he doesn’t see us, his gun is irrelevant. And even if he does, he won’t shoot.”
“Won’t he?” Tim said.
“Probably not.” Dee shrugged. “Come on, don’t worry about it. Let’s just be quick.”
“All right,” the monkey put in, scurrying up to Tim’s pocket. “But stealth is of paramount importance. Team Phil, we must tread lightly.”
Dee shuffled low to the ground, but Tim remained still. “Wait,” he said.
She looked over her shoulder. “What is it?” she snapped.
“We’re not called Team Phil.”
“Oh, I am sorry,” the monkey whispered. “Care to speculate what our team name is, then?”
“I don’t think we need one. But if it’s anything, it should be Team Tim,” he said. “Alliteration.”
“Hmm.” Dee shook her head. “Not so sure.”
“All of our names or none of them,” Phil suggested.
“Or our initials?”
“Team TPD,” Tim said.
“Suits me fine, sir.”
“Well, hang on,” Dee whispered. “Why is my name last? That’s—”
The guard at the end of the hall coughed.
“We can settle this later,” Tim said. “Come on.”
Running, bent at the waist, Tim and Dee made it to the corner. Phil confirmed the man was pacing. Tim, lying on the floor, took a quick look. True enough, the security guard was walking the length of the next hallway…at the end of which was Harriet Goffe’s office.
“We’ll have to time it perfectly,” Tim whispered.
They waited until he turned and wandered away, his back to them.
“Go, go, go.”
Now on all fours, they crawled along, getting inside the spacious office just as the armed man was turning at a noise he may or may not have heard. Tim pressed his back against the door and silently closed it. He held his finger to his lips, staring at Dee as they waited. A few moments later, when they knew they were in the clear, they sprang into action.
Straight to the computer. Tim sat on the swivel chair and pulled the plastic cap off the USB stick Fredric had given him. The device, he had been told, had software pre-installed that would automatically download all of Harriet’s emails and files.
Only now did Tim feel a real wave of panic. What were they doing? Spying on the boss of a secret government agency was just so illegal.
“This is pretty bad,” Tim said, almost to himself. “You sure we should do it?”
Dee rolled her eyes, pushed him aside, snatched the USB stick, and plugged it in herself.
The screen lit up. “Enter Admin Password,” it read.
“Oh,” Tim said. He was strangely relieved. They might not have to go through with the crime after all.
“I feel like we’re missing something,” Dee said, looking around the office.
“Yes. A password.”
“No, something else.” She scratched her head. “Wait a second. There’s something…something not right.” She stepped toward the door.
Without another word, she left the room, crawling down the hall. Tim, not knowing where the guard was, quickly followed. He caught up with her a little way down the corridor, where she’d reached a maintenance cupboard and opened it up. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and used the flashlight on the back to look inside. A mop was propped against the wall, there was the smell of bleach on the floor, a vacuum cleaner was curled up in the corner. The bright light made shadows wobble and sway.
“Dee,” Tim hissed through his teeth.
“Hang on.” She stepped inside, ran her hand along the underside of a shelf at the back, then looked to the floor. She pushed a plastic container away, exposing a large cardboard box.
“What are you doing?”
“Look, look at this.”
Pulling back one of the flaps, she opened it. For Tim, the moment took him back in time, to the day he’d done something similar. Hidden in the plain cardboard, at the back of the maintenance cupboard, was his very own Imagination Box.
“There you are,” Phil said. “You elusive little rascal.”
Tim fell to his knees and lifted the sleek silver contraption onto his lap. “Oh, I’ve missed you.” He stroked the reader hat on his head, feeling complete again. He couldn’t wait to tell Eisenstone that he’d kept his promise, that he’d found the gadget. This was the sweetest of victories.
Looking back up, he saw Dee was smiling.
“How on earth did you know this was here?” Tim asked.
“I just had a feeling.”
“A feeling? Of all the rooms, all the floors, the thousands of possible places it could be hidden in this building, you had a feeling it was here, in this cupboard?”
“Went with my intuition,” she said. “I mean, it felt weird, but I had a strong urge to look here. Do you never get that sort of thing—raw gut instinct? Plus, think about it. This is the closest possible hiding place to Goffe’s office.”
“I… suppose,” Tim said, still astonished.
“Now you can imagine Harriet’s password.”
“I could.” Tim said. “Would it work?”
“Remember what Fredric said—infinite info? What about all those books in the castle’s library? What about your homework?” Dee shrugged. “What about all the components for your Imagination Box? You managed to create that. Imagine it written on a scrap of paper.”
They shuffled back to Harriet’s office, timing their entry so the guard didn’t see them. Inside, Tim placed the Imagination Box on the low coffee table in the corner of the room, closed his eyes, leaned forward, and did his best to imagine what it might be like if he could conjure pure unknowns into the world.
Nodding to let Dee know he’d finished, Tim stood back. She opened the box and pulled out a fortune cookie.
“This is not what I ordered,” she whispered.
“Break it open.”
With a hollow crack, she pulled the two sweet shells apart. A few crumbs sprinkled from her hands, and a small tail of thin paper uncurled: SugarDan101.
“Who’s Dan?” Tim wondered.
“Just type it in.” Dee was eager.
Tim double-checked the spelling, and keyed the password. He hesitated. “You think this will—”
Dee leaned over and struck Enter. The screen flickered black; then the desktop appeared.
“Fiddlesticks and peppercorns!” Phil gasped. “We’re in.
This does raise some potent philosophical questions.”
“Well,” Tim said. “That is interesting.”
A window opened, and he clicked the program Fredric had installed on the USB stick. All Harriet’s emails and documents began downloading automatically. Outside, there was a rumble of thunder and a whistling wind. The storm was closing in. Tim chewed his thumbnail as the loading bar filled from left to right across the bottom of the screen.
“Don’t you want to…you know,” Dee said. “Diddly-doo, snooperoo?”
“What?”
“Have a read. Little nosey?” She clicked open Harriet’s emails. “Do a search?”
“For what?”
“Your name. See who was involved in the theft of the box. This computer has ultimate clearance. If TRAD does know anything, it’ll be here.”
Tim did as she suggested, typing his name into the email search bar.
“Does this not feel like a huge invasion of her privacy?” Phil asked.
“Yes, but the Imagination Box was hidden in the cupboard near her office,” Dee said. “This is called just cause.”
The download was at twenty-two percent when an exchange of emails in which Tim was mentioned appeared on screen.
Fri, Feb 14, at 6:02 PM, Daniel Moore
Harriet,
The job is complete—we ran into some hiccups initially, he outran Subject 43, but we were able to deliver appropriate signals to Subject 44 and she behaved accordingly. Acquisition of device went to plan—Timothy Hart gave her a run for her money, but then he ended up unconscious (lol). There might be some CCTV footage to add to the loose ends.
Awaiting further orders.
Dan x
Sat, Feb 15, at 8:15 AM, Harriet Goffe
Dan,
How far we’ve come in such a short time. There will be repercussions—George will bring Tim in. Discretion is crucial, this stays between us. Hold fire for now, I’ll provide you with instructions in due course.
Harriet
Sat, Feb 15, at 9:06 AM, Daniel Moore
