“Are they searching the area?”
“He’s got three policemen. It’s not exactly Dragnet on Corfu.”
“If you were them what would you do? They’ve got two bodies and I’m praying they’ve got a live doctor. Where do they go?”
“Italy or Albania. Corfu to Brindisi is over a hundred miles. Albania is close enough for day trips.”
“Which means a boat.”
Danny sighs. “I don’t think they’re turning up at the airport and loading the bodies onto an easyJet flight, do you?”
“Come with me. I need you.”
INT./EXT. PINEWOOD STUDIOS—COMPUTER CENTRE—NIGHT
Two men in orange maintenance jackets climb down the access ladder on the high wall of the building, check their watches, and drive off.
Sunil sits at a console in front of a bank of flatscreen monitors. Danny is across the room at the power control bay. Sunil says, “Power to level two.” Danny selects a setting on the panel. From outside the faint hum of generators rises a tone.
“At some point, are you going to tell me what you’re doing?” Danny asks.
“Level three, please. Look, there is always some entanglement with a tiny proportion of the nano. There’s a lot of noise. Usually we filter it out. I’m locking all the computers together at maximum processing rate. I may be able to do something with the remaining nano. Just maybe. Level three, please.” The generators are getting louder. Even if you’d been standing next to the shaped Semtex explosive charges on the helium lines above the roof and even if the timers had made any noise at all as they counted down to zero, you wouldn’t have heard them.
EXT. PINEWOOD STUDIOS—DAWN
Lynne always gets in very early. She turns off the ignition on her BMW and reaches for the seatbelt. The dawn light is coming up over the studios. She’s fumbling for the seatbelt release when a bright flash is followed a second later by a huge bursting cloud of white vapour. The car rocks in the blast wave and rolls over. A shallow lake of liquid helium runs across the car park. It freezes the car roof into a brittle shell and evaporates.
INT. PINEWOOD STUDIOS—DAWN
CAMERA follows Danny and Sunil as they run from the computers to the door, through it into the corridor, slamming it shut behind them in a gust of helium vapour, and down the long walkway past the studio capsules towards Security, where the first thing they see is CCTV angles on the wrecked roof of their studio and Lynne hanging upside down in a frozen BMW.
FAST FORWARD ten minutes. Lynne is wrapped in a fire blanket and sitting in the corner of Danny’s office drinking strong black coffee. Sunil is on the phone talking to Spiros.
“Spiros, do you have access to the NATO surveillance system near Avliotes?”
“No. Impossible.”
“It’s an emergency. Can you talk to the military?”
“How many months do we have?”
“I’ll call you back.”
The red light starts to flash on Danny’s encrypted telephone. Danny answers and listens. “Excellent. We’ll speak later about that. We need another favour … Yes, paid favour … I’ll put my technical chief on to you—and by the way Vladimir, he does not negotiate money … Fine.”
Sunil takes the phone. Danny puts the conversation on speakers. “This is Sunil. We have an urgent need.” Danny winces—never tell the seller it’s urgent. “On the north of Corfu—Kerkyra—there’s a NATO tracking station near Avliotes. We need wide m-band radar tracking at precisely 107.43 GHz. The painted image will be two or three small reflections phasing in and out at fifteen second intervals. The target will be on a boat heading north up the Albanian coast. We will need real-time coordinates.”
There’s a pause and a deep voice says, “Put Daniel back on line.”
Danny flips the speakers off and says, “Vladimir, can you do it?… How many million was that?… Hold on.” Danny walks over to Lynne. She’s stopped shivering. “I need a small budget increase,” he says and holds up the fingers and thumbs of both hands.
“Get me another cup of coffee and you can have as much as you need,” she says.
INT./EXT. CORFU SEA—DAY
A small fishing trawler silently rides the swell in the bay of Liapades just south of Paleokastritsa on the west coast of the island. The sun is still below the hilltops to the east and the sea is shades of kyanos—dark blues and greens.
Two black body bags are on ice in the hold. Near them Selina is propped up against the hull. Her hands are tied behind her back and she’s gagged with white surgical gauze. The hull wall behind her vibrates heavily as the engines start up. A slim dark-haired man climbs down the stairs. He comes across to her, unties the gag, and feeds her water from a bottle. “What do you want?” she asks in Greek. He shrugs. She asks again in Albanian. He laughs and rubs his fingers and thumb together to suggest money.
The boat begins to move out to sea and turns to the north.
INT./EXT. GREECE—CORFU—RADAR STATION—DAY
Theologos is twenty-two years old and nearing the end of his national military service. He’ll be relieved in two hours. Since the end of the Cold War it’s about as boring as it gets monitoring absolutely nothing of interest in the radar sweeps. Most of it is out of his control anyway. There’s so little need for him to do anything that one of his predecessors spent a few months in military prison for getting his mother to cover for him while he went to a party in nearby Sidari.
He’s thinking about breakfast when there are six loud alert sounds. A message in French and English appears on his main comms screen: Baltic terrorist alert level orange. HQ Brussels assuming control. Ensure backup systems online and secured.
The radar control settings screen shows the scanners switching to m-band frequency 107.43 GHz.
INT. PINEWOOD—SECURITY—DAY
The radar sweep images from Peroulades appear on one of the big screens. Danny points to the chair in front of it. Sunil sits down. “Your turn, fella,” he says.
Lynne is feeling better and pacing the room, angry. “They’re calling all the shots here,” she says bitterly. “We’re running after them. I don’t like being screwed around by these bastards!”
Danny leads her to the far end of the room and speaks very quietly. “This is the full picture,” he says. “Universa are way behind on production of their EMO set-top boxes. The first batch they had from a plant in China was rubbish, and there were design faults anyway. They are shitting themselves that we’ll get our stuff out first. But here’s the thing: they’ve switched production to Korea. They’re tooling up for a production run of seventeen million units. Single source. They’re depending on a custom chip-set. We may be able to help them. But you don’t need to know.”
Ice-cold blue eyes stare into his. “Do it,” she says. “And if you can kill a few of them while you’re at it I sure don’t need to know but I want to see the newspaper clippings.”
Sunil jumps up and shouts, “Got them!” On the monitor the radar is painting a bright dot that fades on several sweeps and then flares again. There’s a smaller, fainter dot next to it. The track is moving slowly up the west coast of Corfu.
Danny flips his mobile open and speed-dials Spiros.
INT./EXT. GREECE—CORFU—SEA—DAY
It’s a beautiful morning. The sunlight dances on the tiny whitecaps of the waves. The sea is ultramarine and the wake of the fishing boat is pure gleaming white foam flashing with rainbows. A dolphin flips out of the water for a moment and vanishes. Two coast guard single-prop planes come over the hills to the east and zoom loudly overhead. They bank steeply and turn back over the boat at five hundred feet.
The boat’s captain goes to full throttle and keys his radio. He talks rapidly in Albanian, and then shouts. He takes a handgun from the hatch and sticks it under the belt of his shorts as he runs for the stairs down to the lower area.
Selina says nothing as he hoists a body bag over his shoulder and goes up again. She can’t hear the splash over the engine noise. He return
s and takes the second body bag. Then he comes back down again.
He holds the gun at her head as he cuts the rope tying her to a stanchion on the hull. “Up!” he says in Greek. Selina tries to stand on cramped legs and winces with the pain. “Hurry!” he shouts, waving to the stairs with the gun. She moves slowly. He hits her across the face and her nose starts to bleed. He pushes her up the stairs and onto the deck. He gestures towards the side of the boat. She moves across the planks until her thighs are against the rail. As he lifts the gun, there’s an explosion of noise as a helicopter roars at low-level over the hills towards the boat. He looks up. When he looks down again, she’s gone.
Maybe every human has a moment of katharsis—purification, release. Selina is feeling this now. The engines stop. She is under the boat, kicking slowly with her legs to conserve oxygen, when the dolphin comes up to her and nuzzles her gently. Maybe Poseidon has sent Delphinos to bring her the good luck she badly needs.
On the deck the captain raises his handgun towards the helicopter and is instantly shredded with machine-gun fire.
INT. PINEWOOD STUDIOS—DAY
The technical centre is a wreck. The studio capsules are dead without their source. The computers are inert. There’s water everywhere from the Fire and Rescue damp-down. This is a billion-pound insurance claim.
Lynne stands there with Sunil and Jack. “How long to be up and running again?” she asks.
“It took two years last time,” Sunil says, “so let’s be optimistic and say one.”
They’ve never seen her cry before.
“We can finish the movie,” Sunil says quietly. Lynne laughs through her tears and Jack puts his hand to his head. “And just how are we going to do that?” Lynne asks.
“Go out and shoot with real actors,” Sunil answers.
“What?” She waves her arms around. “Which particular century are you in? We can borrow brains and do anything we like. We can shoot movies in three weeks that would have taken six months. You designed this stuff, for Christ’s sake! Are you really suggesting that we go back to pointing cameras at real people? You’re mad, isn’t he Jack?”
Jack walks over to a pile of cable and stirs it with the toe of his Adidas trainers. “I’d like to do it, but we don’t have anybody left in the country capable of manning an old-fashioned unit. Cameras, lighting—it’s all gone.”
“Here, maybe,” Sunil says, “but not everywhere. By the way, can I borrow the jet?”
“Why?”
“I’ve got an appointment with a doctor.”
INT. KOREA—ELECTRONICS FACTORY—DAY
Bright green motherboards move down the production line. The main processing chips have arrived from the fab unit. The chips have been made without human intervention, their millions of transistors carefully crafted from design templates on the central computer. The motherboards pause and chips are inserted by robotic units. They move on and pass through a bath of liquid solder. They arrive at the point where cables are attached and then into a bay where they are married with their shiny black set-top boxes. From here the units reach the packaging area and slide neatly into the colourful cardboard boxes with pictures of fantastic movie scenes and the word EMO coming out like a stereoscopic projection. The slogan the world’s been seeing day after day in an expensive advertising campaign runs across the boxes in a diagonal stripe: See it, Feel it, Be it!
The production lines move swiftly and efficiently, as they must, because they have seventeen million EMOs to produce, and that’s just the start.
EXT. CORFU—AGIOS STEFANOS NW—NIGHT
The little road through the village centre is blocked for traffic. Two nine-thousand watt lighting brutes are standing in the road outside The Little Prince. Thick cables run from the lights to a generator parked outside the bakery. The camera is on a jib arm and looks down on the taverna terrace from ten feet above. Jack stands next to the jib talking quietly to Elena Vafiadou, the camera operator.
Alexandros is wearing black trousers and a white shirt. Makeup assistants are gently tapping powder onto his face. He’s a waiter who falls in love with an English girl and discovers that he has the power to manipulate people. He’s going to have to make some big choices between using his powers for good or evil. Nearby, Alice Walton sits alone at one of the tables whilst a young woman from Frocks adjusts the straps on her dress.
At another table sit Spiros and Maria. Spiros wrinkles his nose and says, “I hate this makeup.”
She smiles in a feline way and says, “See what I’ve had to put up with all these years for your pleasure, Spiros!”
He sighs. “I’m still not sure Alexandros is doing the right thing.”
“I am,” she says. “If you were younger and better looking I’d have put you up for the job!”
The Assistant Director picks up a megaphone. “We’re going for a take. Starting positions, please. Is the kitchen ready?” There’s a quick burst of affirmative radio traffic from the AFM in the kitchen. The Sparks hits the big switch and the lights come on, brighter even than a Corfu noon. “Quiet, please, and stand by!”
Jack says, “Turn over.” Camera and sound operators confirm that they’re rolling. “And—action!”
The music begins and Alexandros puts down his tray and begins to dance, his arms held out wide, his feet swinging back and forward and across and check and back again. He’s light on his toes. He spins and kneels.
Michalis comes from the kitchen wreathed in steam as he carries Sizzling Steak across the terrace and puts it down on Spiros and Maria’s table. Alice lifts her beautiful sad downcast eyes and watches Alexandros dance. This is the moment. This is the precise second when she falls hopelessly in love.
“And—cut! Check the tape,” Jack calls. “Please reset and stay where you are—we’re moving on to the close-ups.”
Spiros leans back and says, “I never though it would be this boring. Same thing over and over again.”
Maria laughs. “Like chasing Albanian and Italian boat thieves? I have never had such a wonderful time!”
He reaches forward and puts his finger on her hand. “You are my real star,” he says. “You look beautiful. I don’t deserve you. Se latrevo.” Her eyes widen. It’s a very long time since Spiros told her he adored her.
INT. CORFU—SELINA’S HOUSE—EVENING
Sunil is teaching Selina how to make lamb Madras with saffron rice and an aubergine baji. She’s not gifted in the kitchen department. “The onions will burn if you leave the heat that high,” he says.
She shouts, “Malaka!” and pushes him out of the way as she goes through to the living room and flounces herself down in front of the television, which is showing a Greek news channel.
He smiles and rescues the curry.
She shouts, “Sunil! Sunil! Come! Now!”
He wipes his hands and walks through. He can’t understand the fast Greek the news presenter speaks, but he can see the words Universa and EMO on the screen, together with shots of fire trucks.
Selina interprets. “He’s saying that EMO boxes are catching fire or exploding. Several people have died. Hold on—this is several thousand incidents! Universa Studios have just issued a statement saying that they are recalling all EMOs. Wow! A media spokeswoman says it’s a major disaster for Universa.”
He goes back to the kitchen and adds the spices to the onions. Then he starts laughing and gets a bottle of Ino bubbly Greek champagne from the fridge. He’s still laughing as he walks into the sitting room, peeling the foil, and lets the bottle go very loudly pop behind her back. She jumps and shouts, “Don’t do that!” and turns to see him pouring sparkling wine over his head. He grabs her hand and pulls her towards him and bathes both of them in a shower of bubbles. “What about the curry?” she asks, licking the wine off his face. “I turned the cooker off,” Sunil says. “For now.”
EXT. MALIBU CALIFORNIA—DAY
A body floats gently in towards the shore. It’s bloated, and prawns have been nibbling the ears, eyes,
and nose. But nothing has touched the ginger hair that floats back and forth in the shallow surf.
EXT. NOVOSIBIRSK SIBERIA—DAY
Danny is wrapped up in a big warm coat as he sits in a park in Russia’s science city. There’s no snow, but the cold grass looks as though it’s been doused in grey paint. A tall man in his early thirties—dark eyebrows, aquiline nose, parka hood up—comes and sits down beside Danny. “Only one target left,” he says. “She lives in Kiev with her second husband and his two children. He doesn’t know she was KGB.”
“So now she’s FSB?”
“Danny, Danny! I’m a programmer. FSB stands for Front Side Bus. I’m predicting some nasty short-circuits in the electricity supply to their apartment.”
Danny stands up. “Don’t hurt the kids,” he says.
Vladimir laughs. “You work for movie business. Now you start having conscience! Very funny.”
Danny walks away across the park. He turns back for a moment, waves and shouts, “Good job! Spasiba!”
MONTAGE—NEWSPAPERS AND VIDEO
Alexandros and Alice are on the front covers of every tabloid, every celeb magazine, and a thousand websites. His almost-black eyes and her green eyes stare into paparazzi lenses. They are parading along carpeted catwalks. They are signing autographs. They are on chat-shows all over the world. The movie has received five Oscar nominations and seven BAFTA nominations.
Lynne Songbird has a whole-page spread in The Scotsman. “The thing is,” she’s quoted as saying, “we’ve done the most advanced technology there is. We have done things so advanced it’s like science fiction. But then we talked to the ordinary good people who watch our movies, and they said ‘We don’t care about 3D. We don’t care about being forced to feel things we don’t feel. We don’t care about super-surround and giga-pixels, whatever they are. What we want is great stories, great acting, and maybe a little love besides.’”
The Year’s Best Science Fiction Page 93
