A Mind of its Own

by Martyn Ford

  ‘So … a life behind bars, hey?’ Eisenstone said. ‘Maybe, indeed, the best place for us.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Tim asked, alarmed.

  ‘All my work …’ The professor seemed lost. He kept looking at his hands. ‘My entire career … I never wanted to be responsible for such things … the potential for wrongdoing. Maybe … maybe we’re not ready for this technology.’

  ‘You can’t uninvent things,’ Tim said.

  Eisenstone narrowed his eyes. ‘What if we could? What if we could take it all back? What if I’d never invented it? What if we could live in a world without these machines?’

  ‘You once warned me that in the wrong hands it could be catastrophic,’ Tim admitted. ‘But in the right hands …’

  ‘I, I … I just fear there’s no way back for us.’

  ‘There is,’ Tim said. ‘Honestly. We just need that imagination station and I can create the perfect universe – utopia, paradise. It’ll rock.’

  ‘I want to be a movie star,’ Dee said. ‘Or an astronaut. It’s hard – is there any way I can be both?’

  ‘Course,’ Tim said. ‘Anything is possible. Everyone can get what they want.’

  ‘Tim, no, no.’ Eisenstone sighed. ‘There’s no paradise. There can’t be. Don’t you see? You may think you know what’s best for everyone, for the world, but I assure you that you don’t. One man’s heaven is another man’s hell. We must not play God.’

  Tim hadn’t really thought that much about the universe he would create – what he had planned was to put everything roughly back to how it was. Of course, there would need to be slight amendments to keep everyone he loved safe. And then, as well, there would be a few bonuses and tweaks. No harm in making the Dawn Star more successful, giving Elisa a break, and maybe then Chris wouldn’t have to work so hard. It had seemed so straightforward. Now the professor had said this, however, it seemed altogether more complicated. What about homeless people, like Rick? What about diseases and earthquakes and war and, and … the list went on.

  ‘But we still need to find the device,’ Dee said. ‘Whatever reality Tim can imagine is surely better for us than this absolute cluster-mess.’

  Tim agreed with that at least.

  ‘If only we could make Clarice tell us its location,’ Phil added.

  Nodding, Tim pointed at the monkey. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘That’s the only way.’

  ‘Somehow I don’t think she’ll just blurt it out,’ Dee said.

  ‘Plus, you cannot simply telephone the Prime Minister can you?’ Phil looked to the professor. He shook his head. ‘I fear she will have all kinds of security, like the Queen.’

  ‘The Queen?’ Dee said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tim added. ‘She’s got like hundreds of bodyguards wherever she goes.’

  Dee sniggered. ‘You have a queen in your universe?’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Have you got princes and princesses and dragons too?’

  ‘We have some of those things.’

  ‘You’re winding me up.’

  ‘Hang on, shh,’ Tim whispered. There was a noise coming from outside the window. ‘What the hell is that?’ he asked, staring at the table they had used to block the glass.

  Turning his head to listen, Tim stepped tentatively towards the sound. He arrived at the window and very gently edged the table sideways to look. A sharp light dazzled his eyes, then metallic commotion outside made him flinch. It was a drone – hovering there, its scanning search beam locked on to them now.

  ‘No,’ Tim yelled, shoving the table back. ‘How? How did they find us? We were so careful, we—’ Then he saw it, stuck on the side of the imagination box: a small black gadget. ‘A tracking device,’ he said. They must have put it on in the helicopter. ‘We led them straight here.’

  ‘That’s why the guards on the train let us go,’ Dee said quietly. ‘Not because they didn’t recognise us, but because they did.’

  There was a crunching sound: glass shattered and the window frame splintered as the drone bashed the table, trying to get inside. Before Tim could get his weight against it, the machine made it through and was right there, right in the room, looming large and loud. Its wild searchlight sent black shadows up the wall and a taser fizzled blue on the end of a stick.

  A brutal zap and a bolt of what looked like lightning hit Tim on the shoulder, sending him flat. Spinning and wobbling, the ceiling seemed to drift away, the walls too. Dazed, he rolled on to his side and heard people wrestling against the furniture in the doorway – stomping boots and angry voices. An electric shock had put Tim on the ground, but it was the weight of fear that kept him there.

  Room ninety-eight, the only safe place, had fallen.

  Chapter 16

  It took Tim a few seconds to find his balance after that drone, which was still hovering above thanks to the technological innovations of Whitelock Industries, tasered him. His shoulder was full of hot ache and he could smell burnt hair. He remembered feeling sorry for the one they’d smashed in the field – he had seen no similar sympathy from this nasty hunk of metal.

  Dee was throwing things at it. Eisenstone was jabbing it away with a tall lamp Tim had made. However Phil had taken matters into his own hands, scurrying up a stack of chairs and diving on top of the buzzing machine – he disappeared in through a small vent at the back.

  A moment later the round drone seemed to vomit sparks with a flash of yellow. Then it clattered to the ground, its searchlight spinning like a Catherine wheel. Phil emerged triumphantly on to the outer casing and spat out a tiny mouthful of circuitry.

  ‘Sharp teeth,’ the monkey said, grinning.

  ‘Nice job,’ Tim added, sitting up.

  To his right, however, the furniture blockade in the doorway was shuffling and banging as a group of armed Grey Guards continued to break their way through.

  The professor crouched by his side. ‘Tim, listen,’ he said. ‘Run. Run and find the imagination station – do whatever it takes. You know, in, in your heart.’ He touched Tim’s chest. ‘You know what needs to happen. You have to undo it. You have to undo it all.’

  ‘I … I don’t …’

  Eisenstone flipped Tim’s imagination box over, so the opening was face down on the floor. ‘Go,’ he said.

  And then the professor slammed his back against the upturned tables in the doorway, trying to hold them in place. He looked so flimsy and old, bouncing forwards when the guards pushed, but returning each time.

  ‘We can’t leave you,’ Tim said.

  ‘What’s …’ he groaned, stumbling a little, ‘what’s the alternative?’ His smart shoes were sliding now.

  ‘He’s right,’ Dee said, pointing down. ‘It’s the only option.’

  Phil agreed and scurried up into Tim’s shirt pocket. As he got to his feet, Tim straightened his reader hat, closed his eyes and imagined pure energy, heat – a concentrated beam of power. Power – it roared red in his mind. The upside-down imagination box vibrated, and then smoke bellowed out from underneath. It sunk a little into the floorboards, then fell through completely, leaving a rough, smouldering hole. Tim looked down – the room below was occupied by an understandably startled couple who had pulled the covers up over themselves and huddled near the headboard. At the foot of the bed, plaster and paint flakes and dust covered everything, including the cube of metal which had come inexplicably through their ceiling.

  Tim lowered himself down first, landing clumsily on the mattress. ‘Evening,’ he said.

  The couple were stunned, glancing up at the damage and back to him. Just as the man began to speak, Dee came falling in, bouncing off the corner of the bed and crashing head first into the wardrobe door, smashing it off its hinges.

  ‘Uh, that’s higher than it looks,’ she said, composing herself.

  ‘Sorry about all this,’ Tim added. ‘Ask for a refund. Elisa Green’s the manager – she’s actually quite a nice person really.’

  They went to the do
or but heard voices outside. ‘Let’s keep going down,’ Dee suggested.

  So he flipped the box over again and they blasted their way through a few more floors, leaving a surprisingly high tunnel above them in their wake. However, before the final attempt, Tim realised they had coincidently landed in a very special place. His room. Or, rather, the room that should be his.

  It was empty and horribly clean. He stood for a moment, remembering how it used to be. How he’d customised it – how he’d made a home, added character to what would normally be a boring and uniform environment. That was the beauty of it. That’s what made it so special. Just like room ninety-eight. This thought made Tim angry, furious with everything – particularly himself. Why had he chosen to hide here of all places? How could he have been so stupid?

  ‘Tim, come on. What are you … Tim, stop it, stop it!’ Dee yelled.

  Coming to his senses, Tim realised that the imagination box was on its side and oozing with bubbling lava. Orange flames licked around everything the glowing liquid touched. The corner of the machine was black, half-melted.

  ‘Water,’ Phil yelled from Tim’s top pocket. ‘Think of water.’

  ‘Wait, stop, shh.’ Tim could only see red. He crouched and grabbed his head, trying to calm down. ‘Water, water,’ he whispered to himself.

  It helped to be vivid, so Tim swam through his memories – all the ones which featured water. A thirsty glug on a hot summer’s day. That sudden noise the shower makes when it comes on. The ocean creeping up a still beach. Seaweed tickling your ankles. Slippery rocks. Rain. He opened his eyes. Still, all he saw was fire. Half the room was alight now, smoke collecting on the ceiling and disappearing up the makeshift chimney they’d jumped through.

  Another water memory – something specific, come on. Eisenstone explaining the remarkable nature of the physical world. Elements mixed together create incredible things. Take sodium and chlorine, for example. Both dangerous chemicals. Combine them to make sodium chloride and you’ve got common table salt. Indeed. And what about water? Well that’s made of oxygen and hydrogen. Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. ‘H2O,’ Tim yelled to himself.

  There was a bang.

  The imagination box flew straight out the window, spinning off the frame and disappearing outside. A fierce blaze around the bed now and Tim and Dee were getting back to their feet, both with blackened faces.

  ‘That was not water,’ Dee said, wiping soot from her cheek.

  ‘Hydrogen,’ Tim groaned. ‘I think I managed that part.’

  ‘Quite the explosive element,’ Phil added.

  They made it downstairs, running amid a panicked group of hotel guests. The building was evacuating and quite rightly so – the fire was well out of control. Everywhere he went, Tim thought to himself as they ran through the lobby, there was nothing but chaos.

  Outside there were police cars and a Grey Guard armoured vehicle on the street – there to arrest them. Luckily the officers were busy with crowd control. So Tim and Dee ran round into the alleyway and retrieved the imagination box. Charred and partly melted, the metalwork looked like someone had practised welding on it. There were dents from its falls, the lid was long gone and every side was covered in scratches.

  They went to the next street, then doubled back on themselves. The road outside the hotel was heaving. The fire brigade had arrived. They were unravelling a hose and pointing and running the opposite way to everyone else. Eisenstone was thankfully outside. He was however in handcuffs and being lowered into the back of a police car.

  For a few minutes Tim and Dee stood and watched the drama. And then Tim spotted Elisa. There, beneath a lamppost, she was crying. Beyond all of this, the Dawn Star Hotel stood proud. Proud, but burning.

  ‘Destroying things is too easy,’ Tim whispered to himself.

  *

  It was late, probably gone midnight, Tim guessed. He and Dee’s fleeing had brought them through Glassbridge, through the park and, again, they found themselves in the dark of the fields. No more street lights out here – just open countryside. Tim noticed that the further you went from the glare of the town, the more stars you could see above. Hundreds and hundreds of little white dots.

  Looking back down, he realised he was standing completely still.

  ‘Hurry,’ Dee said from up ahead – he couldn’t see her though.

  ‘Why?’ Tim asked. ‘Where are we even going?’

  ‘We’re running,’ she said. ‘That’s what Granddad told us to do.’

  Behind, above the hotel, there was still a thick haze of smoke glowing in the night.

  ‘I’m sick of running.’

  ‘Look, they’ve arrested him,’ Dee said. ‘You said yourself that Clarice will kill to keep her secret. If not for your own problems, help me find the imagination station to save his life.’

  Before tonight’s events, Tim was relentlessly optimistic. He had so much faith in his own abilities. Even at his lowest points, when success seemed impossible – when he was falling to his death from a crane, or diving away from helicopter blades, or dodging deadly swipes from a sabre-toothed tiger – Tim believed, deep down, that he would ultimately win. Phil had even said it – despite everything, things always worked out in the end.

  But now? Now Tim truly believed that they might not. Maybe he wasn’t capable of solving this one. Maybe winning just wasn’t an option. Maybe this nightmare was his new home.

  ‘What if I can’t do it? What if I can’t create? What if I can only destroy?’

  ‘Come on,’ Dee said. ‘You’ve made all sorts of stuff.’

  ‘You conjured me,’ Phil added. ‘Twice. Both resounding successes if I do say so myself.’

  ‘But it’s all flawed in some way,’ Tim said. ‘My imagination is at best inconsistent, at worst it’s … it’s dangerous.’

  ‘So, what are you saying?’ Dee asked.

  ‘I … I might not be able to use the imagination station. Even if we did find it. If I can’t imagine water, how can I imagine a new reality? What if we’re stuck here, Dee, what if we’re trapped here for the rest of our lives?’

  ‘Trapped here?’ Dee said, raising her voice slightly. Although she was speaking from near pitch dark, Tim could tell she had turned to face him. ‘I haven’t even seen the things you’re always talking about. Here is all I’ve ever known. This is the only reality for me. This air we’re breathing, this dirt we’re walking on.’ She kicked some dried earth towards him. ‘This is real. I can barely even comprehend the idea that there could be other universes. And this one – this life – has been absolutely ruined.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘What’s more, it’s almost entirely your fault.’ Dee sounded angry. Tim had never, ever seen her lose her temper. His heart was pumping – he felt the same anxiety you get from being told off when you’re small. ‘So if you’re hinting, even a tiny bit, that you might be thinking about giving up … well.’ She let out a deep breath. ‘Let’s just say that it’s not all right. So, I’ll try again … Let’s go and sort this out.’

  ‘Uh, yeah,’ Tim said, feeling oddly energised again. ‘OK. Sorry. Had a bit of a wobble there.’

  They found a small clearing in the woods where they positioned the imagination box (which, remarkably, still worked despite the damage) on the ground and Tim imagined gentle warmth to emerge from the top. ‘No more fires,’ he said.

  A tiny lamp lit the opening of the tent Tim made and they all sat cross-legged in a circle and ate and drank and whispered in the night.

  ‘OK,’ Dee said after a while. ‘Let’s beeline for solution boulevard. How can we get close enough to Clarice to extract the whereabouts of the imagination station?’

  ‘One would suspect it is a trifle tricky to even know her location, let alone orchestrate such endeavours,’ Phil said, pacing on the ground between them, one arm across his chest, his hand resting on his chin. ‘Perhaps we should consider attributes of her character generally – Dee, in a sense, you are more familiar with
Clarice than us. What can we say about her?’

  ‘What can we say about her?’ Tim repeated, lifting a finger as an idea sprouted in his mind. ‘Now there’s a thought. She cares about her image, right? Always doing charity stuff, trying to look good. Hours after we break into Crowfield Tower, she’s on the ten o’clock news telling everyone it’s under control?’

  ‘So, what are you suggesting?’ Dee asked.

  ‘We need to do what we do best.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Cause an enormous amount of trouble …’

  Chapter 17

  Rows and rows of small, metal drones were lined up in the woods, all waiting to be activated. The first glints of a reddish sunrise were bathing them in an almost sepia tint – a rich warmth that seemed alive in every speck of dew on every leaf and petal. Morning birds had been performing in the canopy above for hours now. Already, it was a beautiful day.

  ‘Proper what now?’ Tim said.

  Dee had been explaining her part of the idea.

  ‘Propaganda,’ she repeated. ‘They do it in wars – you fly over an area and drop a load of leaflets dissing the enemy’s leader, or praising yours. Or saying something or other.’

  ‘Saying what though?’

  ‘Anything,’ Dee said. ‘Use your imagination.’

  They had stayed up all night putting this plan together and now almost everything was in place. The army of automated flying machines was finished – all they had left to do was load them up. Tim had copied the design of the Whitelock Industries’ police drones fairly closely, but made minor tweaks. His were slightly smaller for a start and he’d also included little clips on the underside of each, which were attached to small containers about the size of shoeboxes. They looked a bit like miniature hot-air balloons made from metal.

  And, as they were arranged in a fairly neat grid – each little contraption passing its long morning shadow on to the one by its side – Tim was able to count them quickly. ‘Wow, there’s 199 here.’