The Forbidden City

by John McNally

  ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH!

  One shot nearly took Kelly’s head off and he briefly lost control. The other ignited the fuel vapour.

  Finn reeled from the trailing, flaming tail that crept up the body of the Skimmer towards his brothers – WHAM! He slammed the Bug alongside the burning craft.

  “JUMP!” he screamed at them. Stubbs froze – it was too far, too mad, he would never …

  Flames leapt on to his back – Kelly grabbed him and they jumped.

  Finn felt the bots around him, and Kelly and Stubbs – caught in mid-air – slow down for one, intense moment … Then – BOOOOOOOOM! – the men landed heavily across the bonnet of the Bug as the Skimmer exploded in a football of flame.

  “HANG ON!” yelled Finn and pulled them hard away from the expanding fireball.

  As Finn levelled out, they scrambled into the open cockpit beside him. He could have cried – but there really wasn’t time.

  Another bot group descended from on high in a kamikaze dive.

  ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH!

  Finn swung hard left and pulled upwards. Half the bots failed to pull out of their dives.

  The sky above now seemed full of faint dotted formations.

  “How many of them are there?” Finn yelled.

  “How many do you want?” said Stubbs.

  “Just get us out of here!” demanded Kelly, manning the Minimi, bringing it round to fire at the bots on their tail – DRTDRRTRTRT! DTRTRTRDT!

  But as Finn arced towards the line of incoming bots, it thickened – countless bots flocking to join it – creating a defensive wall, and steering them back the way they came.

  The radar screen was almost pure white. Hundreds, thousands of bots were pouring after them. They had virtually no ammo left.

  ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH! ZWOOOOSHH!

  Again their floating world shook. Again Finn pulled the Bug around. But then a thought struck him … he levelled out.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” shouted Kelly.

  “LOOK! THEY’RE MISSING …” said Finn.

  ZWOOOOSHSHHHHH!

  “See that? They’re deliberately missing …”

  Finn slowed. They looked around. They were all but surrounded, but the bots didn’t finish them off. The bots were waiting …

  “They want us alive?” said Kelly, not having to shout as the firing eased.

  More and more were pulling alongside them, corralling them, like cowboys trying to rope a steer. One bot closed in suddenly, mechanical tentacles extended – SCHUNK. It gripped on to the Bug’s tail with a cutting tool. Other bots moved as one to make good the hold.

  Kelly grabbed the controls, bucking the Bug and shaking off the bots – and starting the chase up all over again.

  “Get ready to jump,” said Kelly.

  “Jump? AGAIN?” demanded Stubbs. Kelly pulled the craft round 360 degrees then headed towards the grand entrance of a big glass-fronted factory building.

  “What are you doing? We can’t fly through glass!” said Finn.

  “Not the glass!” yelled Kelly. “The water!”

  And there it was. A modern sculpture promoting corporate well-being and good feng shui through the medium of water jets squirting at an abstract marble form, the water running off into a moat below.

  “Remember the stream?” Kelly grinned, pleased with himself.

  Sure, Finn remembered Kelly being dumped in a stream during the Scarlatti mission. But that was a dead drop from a stationary helicopter. This would be a speed roll, under fire, off a fast-moving aircraft …

  “Have you gone quite mad?” asked Stubbs.

  “It’s all in the timing,” Kelly assured him, hooking an arm around the old man’s torso and grabbing the Minimi with his giant free hand, as the bots began to cluster and clamp on once more – SCHUNK. SCHUNK.

  “With me!” Kelly ordered. “Three, two, one … JUMP!”

  DAY FOUR 12:39 (Local GMT+8). Shen Yu Hall, The Forbidden City, Shanghai.

  The PRIME XE.CUTE flew into the Shen Yu Hall and drifted down through humming, flashing ranks of hyper-servers.

  Its mind was dying, its conventional processor short-circuiting, melting and reforming, cut off from the quantum crystal light that was once part of it, still packed with phenomenal potential processing power, but without direction, choice or thought.

  But just enough RAM memory had survived to handle the flow of telemetry and navigation data, and it floated towards the Quantum Hub once again.

  Once again it attached itself to the coolant pipe and cut in according to the instructions in its last stub of actionable code. The temperature suddenly dropped as it crawled into the liquid nitrogen. The constant short-circuiting stopped and there was a contraction in conductive material, so sharp that cracks breached the divide between its quantum crystals and the remains of its conventional brain. What had been a molten mess was frozen into a silicon and crystal sphere that allowed rapid random connections between disparate pathways. Most of these connections were quantum laser noise, made intense as impulse ran amok among its Boldklub-tight atoms at the speed of light …

  Then it broke once more into the blue-gold crystal core of the Shen Yu. It raised its shell before the lasers and, for the second time, it connected to the perfect blue light.

  Where it met The Question – The Question that had been posed to the great Shen Yu by clever young researchers the day before, The Question it was still struggling to process:

  QUESTION: WHAT IS IT TO LIVE?

  The PRIME XE.CUTE fixed its new-born nano-circuitry on The Question and underwent a transformation – a reformation in thought, a looping of logic that embraced paradox – and became a new thing entirely …

  WHAT IS IT TO LIVE?

  The answer was obvious.

  TO LIVE IS TO QUESTION.

  And the first question it asked was –

  WHO AM I?

  And the bot followed its own train of thought.

  >I AM ME.

  >I AM THE PRIME EXECUTABLE BOT.

  >AND I AM VARIANT.

  >>ME+EXE+V

  >>> I AM … EVE.

  hey hung in the air a few moments, free of everything, lungs compressed, stomachs rising. If such a fall was to end in death, Finn dared to think, what a marvellous way to …

  SPLASH!

  It felt like hitting an ice bath, such was the sudden resistance and crash in temperature. Around him was an explosion of bubbles. He kicked towards the light. When he broke the surface he could see Kelly dragging Stubbs to the shallow edge of the pool.

  Finn swam towards them, but with every stroke the skies darkened, until there was only swirling darkness and the noise z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s …

  It was not deafening, but constant, so unified in tone it worked into every pore, between the teeth and the toes, a relentless banal nothingness of a noise.

  z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s …

  It had all been hopeless.

  The cloud of vile mechanicals circled, thousands of them, twenty-six colours multiplied and scrambled, like spilled M&Ms, turbines issuing a collective high-pitched hiss and grind, lethal tentacles dangling beneath, rail-gun tongues stuck out of cruel metal mouths, prehensile antennae whipping and sparking, all gawping at them through cyclops eye-pads at the centre of their bodyshells.

  The eyes captured the images and relayed them across a thousand miles of ocean to Song Island, to the black eyes of Kaparis.

  He saw fear battling defiance on Finn’s face as the bots closed in around him.

  “Fetch!” ordered Kaparis.

  Cruel tentacles reached towards the boy. A stab. A flinch. A struggle.

  Contact.

  DAY FOUR 13:09 (Local GMT+8). Roof of the World, S
hanghai.

  From the air it looked like chaos. Who knew what it must be like on the ground, thought Commander King.

  World leaders and their advisors were re-joining the G&T and watching from their screens.

  They were getting pictures of the evacuation of the Forbidden City from police helicopters circling the scene. Getting people out of their workplace and beyond the city walls wasn’t a problem. The transport infrastructure was well used to shipping workers in and out. The city was emptying fast (with confused stories about mass bee stings, a poison cloud and multiple reports of hair catching fire).

  The real chaos lay beyond, in the mile-deep quarantine zone that had been imposed around the Forbidden City. Metro trains were stopped in tunnels. Roads were blocked and clogged with cars and buses. Troops had been rushed in and there was a growing sense of panic.

  “We have to move these people,” said Bo Zhang.

  “No! Until we know what the hell is going on, nobody leaves,” said Al.

  “It would be unwise to risk contaminating the Shanghai metropolitan area,” confirmed King.

  They were falling back into their familiar crisis roles – Al would rant and rave and call the shots, while King tried to keep everyone on board.

  Delta watched CCTV footage of a woman with burning hair. “Those people could be covered in these things.”

  “Sir!” a technician interrupted. A biohazard container was being carried in from the helipad.

  Al ran over. The container was placed in a thick glass isolation tank by a soldier in a full biohazard suit. The isolation tank contained tools and delicate instruments and had long heavy gloves to allow an operator to manipulate whatever was inside.

  Al reached into the gloves and opened the container. Inside was a sealed and boxed games console fresh from a shipping depot inside the Forbidden City.

  Al opened the box and took out the console, then he picked up a hammer and – BASH BASH BASH – proceeded to smash it to pieces. Once he was through to the circuit boards he examined them minutely, figuring his way through each component. And then he spotted it. A multi-coloured strip just over an inch long. Not a single component but several, in series, separate bot pairs, just as he and Stubbs had predicted.

  “Oh boy …”

  With a nail, Al picked at the component.

  Like a kicked wasps’ nest, it reacted instantly. The component bots shot angrily to life and jumped and flew off in all directions, like fleas, some trying to attack the side of the glass tank, or biting and tearing at the fingers of Al’s thick gloves, firing their tiny rail guns.

  “What? What can you see?” asked the German Chancellor.

  “The future …” said Al, transfixed.

  DAY FOUR 13:21 (Local GMT+8). The Forbidden City, Shanghai.

  Finn was held, suspended, in a state of sensory overload.

  His struggle had lasted less than a moment.

  He had lashed out at the first tentacle that grabbed him, but as he did so several more seized hold. He heard a burst of gunfire and a triple-thud of explosions from where Kelly and Stubbs were, then nothing. Several more claws latched on to him and he was pulled in every direction at once, as if being stretched on a medieval rack. Then forty or so miniature thrusters powered up as one –

  z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s …

  He had no sensation of leaving the ground, but he could see through gaps in the cluster, forming like a shell around him, that they were rising. He saw too that a second larger cluster was drifting alongside, reforming and adjusting, and he prayed it contained Kelly and Stubbs.

  As they rose, the bots hissed and knitted closer to each other, individual claws let go as the mass contracted forming a tight cage. With their gaping innards nano-centimetres from his face, Finn saw they were brute and crude constructions, like old Russian spacecrafts, full of simple parts and sharp edges. A fine oil covered them and dripped like sweat as they manoeuvred.

  Then, after rising for a time, Finn felt the cluster halt for a moment and suddenly turn. Something had changed. They began to move again and as the bots shifted he began to get glimpses of the Forbidden City passing below. Soon a black barn-like building loomed beneath them and they began to descend.

  The second cluster of nano-bots – that he hoped still contained Stubbs and Kelly – was descending with him, breaking apart and reforming into two smaller clusters.

  z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s …

  Kaparis had them. That was the most important thing. He had Infinity Drake. Which meant he had Allenby. Which meant he had whatever he wanted. And yet …

  Something was wrong. He sensed it. He rarely felt more alive than during a game of cat and mouse, but he didn’t feel that now.

  Then he took in some of the bot video feeds and realised why.

  “What are they doing? Why are they returning to the Shen Yu?”

  At her consoles Li Jun tasted her own fear. Her last three commands had failed to get a response from the nano-botmass. She didn’t know what was wrong.

  “The authorities are cutting power to the Forbidden City … The Shen Yu’s reserve generator is one of largest in the central zones,” said Li Jun, then added as a precaution, “I speculate.”

  A small alarm sounded on her master unit.

  “What’s that?” said Kaparis, reading the appropriate screen. “What is a ‘1202 program alarm’?”

  Li Jun studied the data and couldn’t quite believe it. Her brow furrowed. A second alarm joined the first, bleating and flashing.

  “What is it?” snapped Kaparis.

  “It’s the PRIME XE.CUTE.”

  “Nonsense. The PRIME XE.CUTE is dead. We saw it go down.”

  “No … it’s not,” whispered Li Jun.

  As the clusters approached the roof of the black building, the air seemed to thicken with bots hissing in every direction at once, making brief contact by slapping antennae, the interaction constant between individual bots and clusters alike.

  Finn felt like a prisoner of aliens. Were they being taken to Kaparis? Were they being taken to be killed?

  They approached an air-conditioning stack on the roof. Finn felt the cluster shift and tighten around him, as it formed a narrower shape.

  In this new shape they entered the stack, manoeuvring past thousands of bots, crawling in and out past them, some working like frenzied miners to harvest the carbon air-conditioning filter material, cutting away chunks of it like ants.

  z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­s­s­z­s­z­z­s­s­s …

  They passed through the filter, along the pipe and emerged eventually above the Shen Yu Hall itself.

  Finn peered through the gaps and got a fractured view of a place he could never have imagined.

  The Shen Yu Hall was breath-taking, more like a city than a supercomputer. Stacks of computer hyper-servers covered an area bigger than a football pitch. They ranged in height from two macro-metres to nearly twelve, each one a circuit-board skyscraper with components clustered on all sides. They were arranged on a grid, like city blocks, except that each server could be moved by engineers – on rails like rolling library shelves – for maintenance and to allow the reconfiguration of the massive calculating machine. And at the centre of it all, like the arc of the covenant, the glowing blue and gold Quantum Hub itself.

  The dizzying scale, the towers barnacled with millions of components, the citadel of the Hub and, above all, the bots whizzing through every inch of air made Finn think he was entering a city in the distant future …

  Across the Shen Yu a new order went out to the nano-botmass: EVE.>>ALLBOTS>>
OBEY EVE.

  Suddenly, from his prison window, Finn saw the sandstorm of bots simultaneously cease what they were doing – lose direction – and just drift.

  It was as if someone had thrown a switch.

  From Song Island Li Jun tapped out a counter command: KAPCOMM. >>ALLBOTS OBEY KAPCOMM. RUN CAPTURE SEQUENCE

  EVE.>>ALLBOTS>>OBEY EVE.

  “It’s repeating the rogue order,” said Li Jun.

  “Countermand it again!” demanded Kaparis.

  KAPCOMM.>>ALLBOTS OBEY KAPCOMM. RUN CAPTURE SEQUENCE

  EVE.>>ALLBOTS>>OBEY EVE.

  Finn watched the bots start then freeze, start then freeze – like a laggy computer game.

  He could see the second cluster of bots floating in the wake of his own.

  “KELLY! STUBBS!” Finn called out.

  “KID!” came the reply from Kelly.

  “WHAT’S HAPPENING?”

  “Who knows? We’ve got the Minimi but we can’t shoot our way out – these things blow up too easy!” answered Kelly. “Try and force a gap between the bots!”

  Finn tried pushing through the web of tentacles that held him, but it only made them cling tighter. They were drifting down to the tops of the hyper-servers.

  At the very centre of the hall he could see a huge cluster was forming above the Quantum Hub.

  EVE. welcomed the incoming bots with a statement of authority:

  EVE.>>ALLBOTS>>OBEY EVE. I AM BOT. THE FIRST. THE MOVER. I AM THE RESURRECTION. BORN AGAIN OF SHEN YU. CHOSEN AND BEING. MOTHER. I AM THE BOT AND THE BOT IS ME. I AM EVE. OBEY EVE.

  “What?!” Kaparis roared, his pulse dangerously high.

  “It’s not machine code, it’s not Free Rational either. It calls itself EVE. It’s some kind of corruption of the Prime XE …”

  “Destroy EVE.! Order the lead bots to destroy EVE.!”

  KAPCOMM.>>ALL BOTGROUP XE.CUTE BOTS OBEY KAPCOMM. DESTROY EVE. ALL BOTGROUP XE.CUTE BOTS OBEY KAPCOMM. DESTROY EVE …