‘Well?’ says Paxton.
She glares at him. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘I have a prosthetic leg.’
She lifts her jeans a little to show everyone. She doesn’t show them the whole thing though, so they can’t appreciate how beautiful it is. She doesn’t show them the lights either.
‘You can’t tell at all,’ Sandra says, impressed. ‘I bet your story is really inspirational.’
Nia makes a disgusted sound. ‘I don’t want my story to be inspirational,’ she says. ‘I’m not here to make you feel better about yourself.’
She stomps back to her seat and sits down.
She didn’t mention the tattoo. Is it possible she didn’t notice it? I look over, and see she’s hunched over her prosthesis again. I guess she wanted to get back to figuring out its secrets.
Sandra slips into the bathroom, and I lean against my seat, suddenly fatigued. Hunger is making me dizzy, like I’m floating above myself, bobbing around like a balloon.
Catherine wakes up and looks around. ‘Where’s that nice girl?’ she asks. ‘The one who was going to get me a cup of tea?’
Paxton crouches down next to her. ‘She’ll be back in a moment,’ he reassures her.
Catherine squints at him. ‘Young man,’ she says imperiously. ‘Please go and remind your mother that I like my tea with milk, but no sugar.’
Paxton frowns. ‘My m—’ he begins, but the bathroom door opens and Sandra comes out.
I look from her to him, and back again. It’s the eyes, really. Sandra’s hair is raven black, streaked with grey, and Paxton’s is sandy. But their eyes are the same startling shade of blue.
‘She has a point,’ I say slowly. ‘You look quite similar. And you did say you felt like you recognised her.’
Paxton stares at Sandra, his jaw slack.
Sandra looks back at him. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Catherine thinks you’re mother and son,’ I tell her. ‘And I’m not convinced she’s wrong.’
Edwin peers at them both. ‘Of course eye colour isn’t the simple recessive trait that everyone thinks it is. Really any parent-child combination of eye colour is possible, so you both having blue eyes may just be an example of confirmation bias. In any case they aren’t really blue. There’s no blue pigment in the iris or ocular fluid, it’s all to do with wavelengths …’
He claps his hands over his mouth, cheeks flushing.
‘Little dude is a full-on nerd,’ observes Riley.
Paxton is still staring at Sandra. ‘I definitely know you,’ he says. ‘Your face – I’ve seen it before. Do – do you recognise me?’
Sandra swallows and glances away from Paxton’s gaze. ‘Um,’ she says. ‘No. I don’t recognise anyone here.’ She coughs. ‘Who’s next for the bathroom. Riley? Off you go, then.’
Riley heads into the toilet. Catherine sighs and closes her eyes again.
‘Did you find anything when you were in there?’ I ask Sandra. ‘Any clues?’
‘I—’ Sandra blushes. ‘Never mind.’
‘What is it?’ I don’t like secrets, unless they’re mine.
Sandra’s blush deepens. ‘It’s really nothing.’
‘Any information could be helpful,’ Edwin says.
Sandra coughs. ‘I’m, er … having a visit from an old friend.’
Edwin blinks, looking around for this old friend.
‘My Aunty Flo,’ Sandra says with a meaningful nod.
‘She means she has her period,’ Nia explains in a loud voice from her seat. ‘And can’t say it out loud because women have been told to feel ashamed of their bodies for thousands of years.’ She gets up from her seat and rejoins us. ‘Any clues on … what was it, a pad or a tampon?’
‘Pad. No brand, it looked like a generic one. But I don’t seem to have any more, so I hope we get off this bus soon.’
Riley emerges from the bathroom, looking triumphant. ‘We’re in the northern hemisphere,’ he says.
‘How do you know?’
‘I ran the tap, and the water went down the drain anticlockwise. That means we’re in the northern hemisphere. It goes the other way in the south.’
Edwin shakes his head. ‘You’re wrong.’
Riley’s shoulders tense. ‘I’m not wrong. It’s science.’
‘You think you’re talking about the Coriolis Effect,’ says Edwin, pushing his glasses up onto his nose. ‘You’re correct in that it can make water rotate in different directions depending on which hemisphere you’re in – except firstly, the water goes anticlockwise in the southern hemisphere, not the north, and secondly, the Coriolis force is much too weak to have an effect on something as small as a toilet. You need a significant mass, like a hurricane or a cyclone.’ He glances out of the window. ‘Which is not out of the question, given we’re clearly in the tropics.’
‘Er,’ says Paxton. ‘Buddy, let’s not hope for a hurricane. I can live without knowing which hemisphere we’re in.’
Riley narrows his eyes. You seems to remember a lot of stuff,’ he says darkly to Edwin. ‘Are you sure you don’t remember who you are?’
Edwin sighs, as if having to explain things to Riley is a tedious nuisance. ‘There are two kinds of long-term memory,’ he says. ‘The first is implicit – the things you know without thinking about, like walking or talking or riding a bike or lighting a match. The second is explicit – what you might refer to as memories. Some of those memories are semantic – your general knowledge, which is how you know remember Mickey Mouse, or Albert Einstein. Others are episodic – your autobiographical recollection of experiences and events. It’s this episodic memory that we’re all missing.’
‘Ri-ight,’ says Riley, his brow furrowed like his brain is working overtime to keep up.
‘What about the stars?’ Nia asks. ‘Surely we could tell which hemisphere we were in if we could see the stars?’
Sandra nods. ‘Great idea, Nia.’
Nia scowls at the praise.
‘Edwin, do you know about stars?’ Sandra continues. ‘Would you be able to tell where we were based on their position?’
‘I could probably ascertain which hemisphere we’re in,’ Edwin says. ‘And determine which way is north. But I frankly don’t see how that knowledge would aid us.’
‘Well,’ Riley says with a sigh. ‘I guess we’re fucked.’
I sink back down into my seat next to Paxton. Plenty of things have changed. The knotted blue thread. Nia not mentioning her tattoo. Paxton and Sandra.
The seatback displays don’t offer us any new information. We pace up and down the aisle. Check over everything a few more times. Hunger makes everyone jitter and snap at each other. Riley’s knee bounces up and down incessantly, and I want to yell at him, but I don’t, because I’m scared of his clumsy tattoos and scars. The flapping panic keeps rising in my chest, and when I look at the others, I know that they feel the same way, the same internal terror, threatening to burst free at any moment. But we keep it all on the inside. Because if one of us lets it out, then the others might follow, and who knows what we’ll do then.
Hours tick by, mockingly displayed on our useless wristbands.
‘Did we choose wrong?’ Riley asks. ‘Do you think there was a right answer, and they would have let us go? Or given us some food?’
Nobody answers.
Evening falls, and the bus’s headlights flick on, illuminating the road in front of us, transforming the rest of the world into a black abyss of nothingness. Panic settles into despair, as thick and impenetrable as the fog in our minds. No food. No answers. No escape.
I can’t give in to it. I don’t know if I’ll come back. I sit down next to Paxton, and he puts his arm around me. I snuggle into his chest. His thumb strokes my upper arm. It’s nice to be held. I sigh and close my eyes.
I’m in the wardrobe again, nutmeg and cedar.
Someone is holding my wrists with hard fingers.
A squeal of tyres on bitumen, followed by a thick, wet thud.
The Blue Fairy on a screen.
There’s so much blood.
‘Psst!’
I jerk awake.
I’m on a bus.
A stranger with a shaved head is leaning over the back of the seat in front of me. I stare at her, unblinking, my throat closing over with panic.
‘Nia,’ I say, the name rushing into my mouth a moment before the memory of her follows. Nia of the prosthetic leg. Nia of the incredible cheekbones. Nia the hacker.
I’m on a bus.
‘What time is it?’ I ask.
‘A little after midnight,’ she says. ‘Keep your voice down.’
I glance around. The others are all asleep. Paxton mumbles something unintelligible.
‘I found it,’ says Nia. ‘You were right.’
‘Of course I was right.’
She makes a disgusted noise and disappears again, so I carefully disentangle myself from Paxton and climb over the seatback to slide down next to her.
‘Right about what?’
‘Look.’
Nia’s jeans are rolled up again. She runs her finger down the gold crack and along the UNBREAKABLE letters on her ankle. The LEDs blink on, glowing gold in the darkness of the bus.
‘Cool party trick,’ I say. ‘But I’ve seen it before.’
‘Shut up and watch.’
She presses a finger over the K, then the E, followed by R-N-E-L.
‘Kernel?’ I say. ‘Like the inside bit of a nut?’
The glow intensifies, then Nia’s prosthesis splits open down the golden crack, each half springing outward to reveal a narrow fissure running the length of it. In the centre of the fissure is a little compartment, not much bigger than a walnut.
‘The kernel is also the program at the very core of a computer,’ Nia explains in a low voice. ‘It has complete control over the whole operating system.’
She reaches into the compartment and pulls out a small black plastic square with two antennae folded flat against it.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
Nia runs her finger backwards over the gold letters once more. Her prosthetic folds back into itself and the LEDs blink off. ‘It’s a bug,’ she says. ‘It’s going to get us into that locked folder.’
She unfolds the antennae, and brings the seatback display to life.
‘So what happens now?’
She ignores me, tapping away at the display as line after line of code unfolds. I watch her for a while, but my eyes grow heavy again, and before I know it I’ve slipped back into the fog.
Wet thud.
So much blood.
‘Do you still love her?’
A baby is crying.
I’m on a bus, and a bell is ringing. A pulsing electronic tone, jerking me into consciousness. I sit up and surreptitiously wipe drool from the corner of my mouth.
There are people around me, blinking and rubbing sleep from their eyes.
‘Are we there yet?’ someone says.
I’m on a bus. My name is Cecily.
It’s still dark outside, although a faint staining of the sky makes me think that dawn isn’t far off. I look down at my wrist.
05:00
My mouth feels disgusting, and I wish I could brush my teeth.
I’m so hungry.
The tone stops, and text appears on our seatbacks again.
You are in a moving vehicle. Before you the road forks. Ahead, there are three criminals. On the side road there is one innocent person. You can press a button and the bus will turn off onto the side road. The bus will not stop. Do you press the button?
YESNO
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‘Whoa,’ says Riley. ‘That’s intense.’
‘Who cares?’ Nia asks. ‘They’re not real people, it’s only a simulation, remember?’
‘What if it’s a test?’ Sandra says. ‘What if we get rewarded or punished depending on our answers?’
Paxton nods at her. ‘So what’s the right answer?’
‘We kill the criminals,’ Riley says without hesitation. ‘They broke the law. There are consequences.’
Has Riley seen his tattoos?
Paxton nods. ‘I agree,’ he says. ‘The criminals all did something bad. That was their choice. It’s not fair for a totally innocent person to die.’
‘So you’ll kill three people to save one?’ Nia says. ‘How is that fair?’
‘It goes beyond just these people,’ Sandra muses. ‘By removing three known criminals from the system, we lessen the burden on the police force, on our prisons. It saves the government – and the taxpayer – a significant expense.’
Perhaps Sandra isn’t a primary school teacher after all. Only politicians toss around the word taxpayer so casually.
Edwin shakes his head. ‘This is all merely conjecture. What if the innocent person goes on to become a criminal? What if the three criminals all reform and become productive members of society? What if one of them goes on to cure cancer?’
‘What if the innocent person goes on to cure cancer?’ Paxton argues.
‘I guess there’s better odds that the criminals might make something good of their lives,’ Riley concedes. ‘Three against one. Maybe we should be killing the innocent person.’
‘The point is, you can’t know,’ says Edwin. ‘You cannot evaluate which humans will make a better contribution to society. What if one of them has some secret locked inside their genetic code that won’t be revealed for generations? What if one goes on to be the carrier for some kind of superplague? What if the innocent person’s granddaughter becomes the next Hitler? This is the incommensurability of human life. You cannot put a value on it.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ Riley asks.
‘Nothing. I can’t participate.’
‘By not participating, you’re effectively killing the three criminals,’ Sandra points out.
‘Do we know that for sure? Maybe the experiment just won’t proceed.’
Edwin swallows, suddenly unsure. He starts to twist his fingers together, like a complex braid.
‘The road has to run out eventually,’ I say. ‘What if we just do nothing, and wait until we get there?’
‘Get where?’ Paxton argues. ‘What if there isn’t a there?’
‘What’s going on?’ asks Catherine, looking around blearily. ‘Why is everyone awake in the middle of the night?’
‘Another survey question,’ Sandra explains.
Catherine blinks at her seatback display. ‘Can you read it to me, love?’ she asks. ‘My eyes aren’t too good at night.’
Sandra reads out the text on the display, and Catherine nods. ‘Criminals,’ she says. ‘Get rid of ’em, I say.’
1/7 responses logged.
Irritation is welling up inside me, and I can’t help myself. ‘Who is forcing us to participate in this?’ I ask. ‘That’s who I want to hit with the bus. Someone kidnaps us against our will, wipes our memories and then forces us to choose between two really shitty options. That’s not free will. It’s not choice. It’s not agency.’
Sandra sighs. ‘Not this again,’ she says. ‘Cecily, can’t you simply accept that this is happening, and play along? We know it’s only a simulation. Nobody is really killing anyone.’
‘Cecily is right.’ It’s Nia. ‘Whether or not we press the button is the last thing we should be debating. We should be talking about what system created these criminals. Why did they turn to crime? Was it entrenched inequality, or an unstable upbringing, or untreated mental illness? How do we even know they’re really criminals, and not just victims of police brutality and a fundamentally broken criminal justice system?’
That wasn’t at all what I had been talking about, but whatever.
‘I’m not doing it,’ I say, folding my arms over my chest.
‘Me either,’ Nia says.
‘Nor me.’ Edwin nods in solidarity.
Sandra’s face closes up in disapproval. Catherine narrows her eyes at me, like she can see some sec
ret part of me that I don’t know about. I scowl at her.
A new message pops up onto the display in a window overlaying the text.
Full completion of this problem will be rewarded with breakfast.
Paxton lets out a whoop and high-fives Riley. ‘Man, I hope they have breakfast burritos,’ he says, tapping at his seatback.
Riley frowns. ‘I don’t remember what a burrito tastes like.’
‘Me either. But I can’t wait to find out.’
Paxton pressed NO, then turns pleading eyes on me. ‘C’mon. Do it for the burritos.’
Nia presses the button. ‘I know,’ she says, looking sheepish. ‘I’m selling out my ideals for a burrito. I hate myself.’
‘Cecily. Edwin.’ Sandra’s voice is stern. ‘I appreciate your protest, and I hear you. This is unfair. We shouldn’t be in this position. But we are, and I don’t see how resistance is going to get us anywhere. And besides,’ she lowers her voice, ‘you are both young and healthy, you can go for ages without food. But think about poor Catherine.’
Edwin considers this. ‘Catherine is a real person, and the others are merely simulations. If I don’t make a choice, and we don’t get any food, then I’ll be responsible if she suffers.’
He taps his display.
The bus swings around a corner and I see them, illuminated in the wash of white light from the bus’s headlights. Two men, one white, one black. One Asian woman. They are wearing black shirts and jeans. One is holding a gun. They look hardbitten and cruel.
The bus bears down on them. The fork in the road approaches. In the predawn dimness I can see a vague silhouette standing in the middle of the side road.
‘Cecily!’ Paxton says, his voice urgent.
I let out an exasperated noise and tap NO, then stand up and stomp to the front of the bus to see what happens, and because I don’t like being bullied.
One of the criminals turns to stare at me as the bus charges past the fork in the road. He has dark stubble on his chin, and eyes as cold and dead as stone. I stare back, and his eyebrows quirk a little, and a flicker of a smile runs over his face, before the bus hits him and he explodes into pixels of light.
The Erasure Initiative Page 5
