Atcode

by David Wake

This next room had wood panelling and its polished floor acted as a soundboard. The atmosphere begged for reverence and silence. The floor–to–ceiling shelves groaned with books, an eclectic mix of sizes, types and colours. There were… but Braddon couldn’t noodle. Paperbacks, hardbacks, Kindles and Nooks, he guessed as he’d heard of those and there were probably many of each type and many other sorts too on these shelves.

  “She’s not here,” Dunbar said.

  Braddon needed to sit down, the hat made him hot and the paraphernalia on his head made him tired, and traipsing behind this oaf all over the place seemed stupid.

  “Go and find her,” Braddon said. He took the shotgun and leant it against the chair nearest him, close enough to reach easily, but far enough to suggest that Braddon wasn’t an immediate threat.

  He checked his pockets, felt the weight of the York .38 and the vaping tube.

  Dunbar nodded: “Aye.”

  When the man’s back was turned, Braddon brought out the vaping tube and half bent down.

  “Did you drop this?”

  Dunbar turned back to see Braddon straightening up.

  “Here,” said Braddon, handing it over.

  “Oh, aye… I wondered where that had got to.”

  “Yours?”

  Dunbar pointed to the etching. “Aye, initials. See.”

  Braddon nodded.

  “Thanks, I wondered where I’d dropped it,” Brice Dunbar said, pocketing the vaping tube before he left.

  Once Braddon had heard the heavy man’s footsteps recede and die away, he grabbed the cards, he’d already read: ‘Braddon, this is Braddon’, and so on in his handwriting, and then ‘You were reprogrammed by Steiger. She’s not MI5. She’s a corporate assassin. Don’t trust her. Trust yourself. Trust these cards. You’ve a brow attached to your own to stop Steiger’s commands taking control of you again. She’s modified your brow to force you to kill me, so don’t take the other one off. Don’t take it off. Don’t pick at it. Get a hat to hide it.’, ‘Don’t read ahead.’ and the last one, ‘Find Steiger.’

  He wanted to look at the next card.

  There was one, or maybe two, left.

  He was near, but he’d not actually found Steiger yet.

  Maybe it didn’t matter hidden here in this off–grid valley.

  Maybe it did.

  This plan had more holes in it that the front of a brow owner’s skull.

  He put the seen cards back in his pocket.

  Books, that was all there was here.

  Braddon picked one and went to an armchair. There were three seats, perhaps meant to be arranged around the table, but someone had shifted them to make the most of the light streaming through the window.

  He opened at a random page, began reading and then skimmed.

  Each page was a rectangle, full of symbols. They might have been square, though, he always imagined them as square, perhaps because the only books he’d read had been children’s, square and full of pictures. The words were like instructions to understand this, turn the page and go to the next. He was the machine reading it, decoding the mass of letters and punctuation to extract meaning, but the command was always to go on, one step at a time, and not to alter the writing before him.

  His reading came to a halt, although he hadn’t reached the end, and he fluttered the middle pages before closing the volume.

  He was being observed.

  It was a cat, ginger, standing in the middle of the hallway, while it contemplated this intruder. Braddon couldn’t read its thoughts, as if animals had any internal monologues to transmit. Perhaps the unbrows, unable to receive all the thoughts about cats on the Thinkersphere, felt the need to keep real ones as pets.

  Braddon went back to the shelves, found the gap he’d left and slipped the book back in its place.

  He had no idea what he’d been looking at. He’d created no thought trail to parse and nothing to pass to noodle for interpretation. It was as if he’d never taken it down.

  Books were old school.

  The cat still watched him.

  There was an electrical cable snaking across the room, the sort that plugged into an iBrow charging band. It led to the small table. There was a grey box, a Recognition–and–Repeater. Braddon slid the switch across.

  After a circling wait, he remembered that they’d done research on animals when testing the first iBrows. There were some disturbing results from tests on dolphins, which he skipped when they came up.

  Noodle.

  The connection felt like finding an oasis in the desert.

  And the cable must plug into… he remembered computers: desktop, laptop, phone, tablet… that must be it, some pre–thought keyboard and screen that could be connected to access all human knowledge, if you had the patience to actually type on all those keys.

  It was thinking of a sort.

  The cat meowed.

  Why?

  He remembered that they could sense electrical current, so perhaps it was aware of all the information flooding along wiring to jump across recognition and into Braddon’s brain.

  Was it aware of anything else?

  Did animals think like humans?

  None of them had iBrows connected to the network, so the answer was firmly ‘no’.

  Animals did not think: fridges thought, cars thought, doors thought, lifts thought and humans thought.

  Except Steiger did not think, nor Entwhistle and the other Special Services engineers. Unbrows weren’t bound by the same constraints and ethics. With no–one reading their thoughts over their shoulder, they were unrestrained. They could do anything they wanted.

  When Taylor died, falling from the bridge, had his life still passed before his eyes without an iBrow to dump its memory to backup?

  Steiger didn’t think, not in the modern usage of the word. What was her Intelligence Index? Active over passive thoughts… zero divided by zero; thoughts per second, zero, and she clearly couldn’t follow any Thinkerfeeds and noodling was impossible. She couldn’t even remember other people’s cats.

  The cat wandered off, nonchalantly, uncaringly and unthinkingly. It paused to nuzzle against a pair of legs wearing high heels.

  “Mister Larson, Brice told me we had a guest,” she said. “I see you’re admiring my library.”

  “Yes.”

  “Gorgeous aren’t they,” she said, stepping into the room. “Real books– Braddon!!!”

  “Ms Steiger.”

  “You’re…”

  There was a young girl, ten or eleven, standing beside her.

  “Miss, Miss?” the girl said. “Who’s this?”

  “This… never you mind,” Steiger said. “Run along now, Katherine, run along.”

  “But Miss.”

  “We’ll finish our lesson later.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  “Go and tidy the classroom with the others.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  The girl, Katherine, ran off, her footsteps thumping along the hallway. Braddon heard voices, excited children chattering quickly – it was a strange and unfamiliar sound for children that old. They were well within recognition range of each other.

  He heard a door slam.

  Visible through the window, Katherine and two other youngsters ran and skipped across the field going deeper into the valley. They zig–zagged, weaving in and out of each other’s way, wild and unconstrained by any squares chalked on any pavement.

  “They are part of our community,” Steiger said.

  The path took the children out of sight.

  Braddon turned back to face Steiger. They were each a mystery to the other: Steiger’s smooth forehead gave nothing away, the creases around her eyes and her drawn expression meant sweet FA to Braddon. She was an unbrow: nothing out, but also nothing in.

  He’d found Steiger, now what?

  His hand twitched: the next card was in his upper pocket, but how could he read it with Steiger in the room?

  “You can take your hat off indoors,�
�� Steiger said.

  Reflexively, Braddon reached up to remove it, but decided against it.

  He looked a mess, he knew, and the hat was strange, but did she know about the piggybacked brow? She must suspect something, had to… for goodness sake, he was her guided missile to kill Mantle, if he believed the first card he’d read, ‘she’s modified your brow to force you to kill’, and it couldn’t have been fire–and–forget.

  Her plan had gone wrong: she’d realise that, but she wouldn’t know how wrong.

  What should I do, Larson thought and Braddon added aloud, “You were saying about books?”

  “Was I?”

  “Yes, real books.”

  “Real books, yes,” she said, regaining some composure. “You can smell them, feel their weight.”

  Braddon had read one, flicked through it at least, but he hadn’t smelt it or felt its weight.

  She touched one shelf lightly with her fingertips and moved along them.

  “Molière,” she said. Braddon noodled via the Recognition–and–Repeater, and remembered he was a French philosopher, 1622–1673.

  “Shakespeare,” she continued. He remembered the Bard, 1564–1616. “Keats… Shelley… Philip K. Dick… Conway…”

  Braddon remembered them all: the Bard, 1564–1616; poet, 1795–1821; Shelley, poet, 1792–1822, or novelist, 1797–1851; novelist, 1928–1982; novelist and screenwriter, 1965–

  “Do you know who they are?”

  Braddon scanned down his incoming thoughts: “Philosopher, Bard, poet, novelists.” They’re all dead writers.

  “I’ve read them all, many times,” she said.

  The idea of reading and re–reading seemed absurd to Braddon: all these writers’ words were available from Noodle if he needed them, which he didn’t, so what was the point? You didn’t need to read the whole book to… – Braddon noodled – …be or not to be?

  “They… make you think,” she said.

  Nonsense, you think with a brow. “I see.”

  “My father bequeathed these to me. They were worth a fortune, but now only collectors want them for storage in sealed chambers. Mantle has three original first folios.”

  Braddon remembered Mantle’s 18.3 trillion. “He’s very rich.”

  “I suspect he hasn’t read them.”

  “Well, probably not.” ’Cos he has a brow.

  “He hasn’t understood the… ‘flavour’ of the words.”

  According to Noodle, words had a spelling, meaning, origin, font, point size and style: flavour was not an attribute. Unless, of course, without thought, her other senses became sharper, so she could sniff the ink, lick the page and taste some metaphor.

  “You don’t understand what I’m saying,” she said.

  Of course I do. “Of course I do.”

  Steiger glanced at the empty desk. “What happened?”

  It took Braddon by surprise. He didn’t know what to do and he still itched to look at the next card hidden in his top pocket. It was so like needing a cigarette.

  She didn’t know what he’d been doing either, because once he was in the Cage, his thoughts must have disappeared… ah, that’s why she looked at the desk. She wants to check the situation on her old–fashioned computer.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “For you to come here.”

  Neither of us has a strong hand. “You mentioned this place.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. That night. The peace and quiet. The hawks circling.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How else would I know?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not. You can check my Thinkerfeed.” She’s raised, I’ll bluff. “Oh, sorry, you can’t.”

  Steiger glanced at the desk again, blinking much like the light on the Recognition–and–Repeater box.

  “A human will always be able to lie to a cyborg,” she said.

  “We’re not cyborgs.”

  She tapped her forehead and grinned, “People used to be able to tell when someone was lying by their body language and their expression.”

  “Really?”

  “Humans are the only animal with a white area around their pupil.”

  “The sclera of the eye,” Braddon said, passing on the information from Noodle.

  “It’s so other humans can see where they are looking. It’s so important to know what people are thinking–”

  “Thinking? Cavemen couldn’t think. They didn’t have brows.”

  “The archaic use of the word ‘think’ involves the brain’s mental faculties,” she said. “It’s doves and hawks. Showing where we are looking, and facial signals when they were lying, gave early humans the chance to trust one another. They were doves. They worked together and so survived together.”

  “You’ve got this the wrong way round,” Braddon said. “Cyborgs… those of us with brows are the ones who can’t lie. We know each other’s thoughts, so we’re the ultimate doves.”

  “Doesn’t that make you vulnerable to hawks?”

  “The hawk in the valley of the doves is King, you mean?”

  “If you like.”

  She was right, she had such an edge, everyone would believe her. They had no choice, because there was no way to check. Brows were believed because you could know for sure, so no–one lied anymore. Indeed, the habit of being suspicious had all but disappeared in a world with no secrets.

  But Braddon had a gap in his thought stream, a gap widening the longer he used Larson’s brow, and anyone wanting privacy had something to hide. He was the one who wouldn’t be believed.

  That wasn’t right. Unbrows were instinctively distrusted, shunned, unable to do anything in society and watched whenever they came out of their ghettos. Except this Steiger was a different breed of unbrow, someone who had turned the natural order upside down: somehow ‘a one–eyed man in the valley of the sighted’.

  Secrets and lies.

  “And the girl… Katherine?”

  “She, and the others, are the future.”

  “She doesn’t have a brow.”

  “We teach them everything.”

  Braddon lolled, a reaction that the Recognition–and–Repeater passed on to the Thinkersphere, but attributed to Larson. “Everything?”

  “Everything they need to know for the resistance.”

  “Like what?”

  “History, science, cyber–psychology, martial arts, memetics… we’re training them to be hawks.”

  “They’ll be so disadvantaged,” Braddon said.

  “You think so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, I left this on,” Steiger said. She flicked a switch on the grey box and the signal disappeared. Braddon felt cold, shivered as if the fading green LED had been heating the room.

  “I was using that,” Braddon said.

  “Oh… sorry.” She didn’t lean down to switch it back on again. “Never mind. Without it, we can be alone.”

  Braddon felt alone: there was only Larson and himself, and both their thoughts were the same.

  “It’s a great leveller,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  Braddon had felt that she held all the cards, so now they had been dealt the same hand, what had he gained? His iBrow, and Larson’s, pinged trying to re–establish the connection.

  The interrogation continued: “How did you get here?”

  “I drove.”

  “Ah, the red Tiger Fire by my parking spot.”

  “I guess.”

  She turned to look at a shelf, a nonchalant motion, her head tilted downwards so that she was looking at Braddon through her eyelashes.

  She’s going to raise: it buffered.

  “How did your meeting with Mantle go?”

  No, she’s called – buffered – “Oh… you know.”

  It was a game: poker, and each raising of the stakes meant that Braddon thought ahead, thoughts that buffered and therefore distracted. He had his hand, she had hers and both play
ers kept their cards to their chest. His were in his breast pocket.

  Her expression changed. “No. I don’t.”

  He had to play a card, but the next card was unreachable without giving away his whole hand. He moved over to the window as if to stare out at the grassy bank, but instead surreptitiously reached into his top pocket for the next card – maybe two or three more left! – and glanced down.

  She grabbed his wrist. “What’s that?”

  “Just a note.”

  “Why would someone with an iBrow device need a note?”

  “Oh…” Braddon tried to make light of it, twist his arm away, but she plucked the card away with her other hand.

  “This isn’t very nice,” Steiger said, reading.

  Braddon needed the card – it would tell him what to do. Without it, he felt lost and useless. He craved its instruction like nicotine.

  She’d read it. What wasn’t very nice?

  The curiosity was painful.

  He snatched for it, but Steiger flipped it away again like a mother playing with a child.

  “Ah, ah…”

  “Please.”

  “I think not,” she said. “This is one of Mantle’s, isn’t it? Braddon?”

  Don’t check ahead indeed, Larson thought, and now she knows what Braddon needs to do and we don’t. The thought buffered, of course.

  Larson thought?

  What was happening to me? Buffered.

  Braddon had to get out of the valley, had to get a signal, had to think!

  But leave the valley on what excuse?

  Why hadn’t Mantle written down the instructions properly? It was stupid. Mantle could not possibly have predicted all eventualities. Indeed, he’d led Braddon into a blind spot.

  Wait! The Recognition–and–Repeater!

  The thought buffered as he turned around to look at the grey box, the one she’d already switched off.

  Was Steiger a step ahead?

  She was holding the shotgun.

  Two steps.

  “What happened to Mantle?” she said. “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Answer me.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Don’t give me that.”

  Braddon shrugged. “It’s true. Larson…” Braddon started again after parsing the thoughts in the correct outbox. “I went into the Cage… or rather I remember coming out of the Cage. The only way to get inside is to take… er… drugs… if you turned that box back on I could noodle it.”