by Alex Scarrow
Sal nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes… he looks like a Bob.’
Maddy stared at them. ‘You don’t want to call him Arnie?’
They shook their heads.
‘Sounds like a daft name, so it does,’ said Liam.
Maddy’s shoulders sagged. ‘All right, then, Bob it is. Nice and simple. At least it should be easy enough for dumb-nuts overthere to say.’
Liam looked across at Foster and the large clone. The clone was dressed now in a crumpledblue boiler suit and Foster led him across by the hand, like a child, to join the otherssitting around the table.
‘Here we are.’ Foster sat him down beside Liam. The armchair’s tiredsprings creaked under his immense weight. ‘The basic speech software should have fullyinstalled by now. Give it a go and talk to him.’
Liam looked up at the large, hulking clone sitting beside him.
‘Uh, hello again.’
The thing nodded and replied slowly in a deep voice that rumbled through the archway almostas loudly as one of the trains that routinely rattled over the bridge above them.‘Hell-o, Liam.’
Foster leaned forward and spoke slowly. ‘His full name is Liam O’Connor. Let meintroduce these other two. This is Madelaine Carter, and this is Saleena Vikram. But sheprefers the name Sal.’
‘Hell-o, Madelaine. Hell-o, Sal.’
‘And you,’ said Liam, pointing a finger towards him, ‘we are going to callyou Bob.’
His emotionless face considered that in silence for a moment. Then finally, with a sincerenod, he announced solemnly to them all, ‘I am… Bob.’
Foster smiled encouragingly. ‘Excellent! The name’s registered in his memory;that’s all the introductions done.’
‘So, what happens next, Mr Foster?’
‘You all get a good night’s rest. It’s been a long day for all of you.Tomorrow we’re going to be very busy.’
‘Doing what?’ asked Sal.
‘Training, of course.’
CHAPTER 22
2001, New York
Monday 2 (I think)
I found this exercise book in the archway. The front pages are all pulled out, soI guess someone from the previous team was using it before me. I’m going to use it asa diary. Maybe that’s what they were using it for too, who knows?
So, it’s weird. Like a dream. Like a strange movie. No school to go to. No busystreets thick with rickshaws and Mumbai smog. No having to wear an anti-choke airmask when Istep out.
No Mum and Dad.
Jahulla. It’s so weird.
The other two seem to be coping with this freakiness better. Maddy and Liam. I think I likethem both. Maddy is eighteen. She’s really uber-smarts with technical things. Shetold me that she was a computer programmer back in 2010; she worked on computer games for ajob. For a hobby she says she liked ‘hacking’ things. It’s kind ofstrange, though. She’s sort of from the same time as my parents… She even likessome of the same old-fashioned music as them. And yet she’s just a few years olderthan me.
That’s just so weird.
And Liam? How total-weird. Sixteen years old… or a hundred and five years old whenyou realize he was born in 1896. That makes him a really, really old man!But he’s still cute. I like that he’s from an oldy-fashioned time, when peopledressed all smart in clothes with lots of buttons and said, ‘How do you do?’
I feel so odd. I miss my parents. I miss our high apartment. I miss the tops of skyscraperspoking out of the street smog. I even miss watching the elektra-Bollywood show with Mum(even though the song and dance routines are totally jahully embarrassing).
But I’m sort of excited too. I’m here in New York! In the times before thingsturned bad. Before the global warm-up, the overcrowded cities, the food rationing, theterror bombs in the north, the oil shortages and all that nasty stuff.
And it’s, like, so strange to think that in India right now my dad is about the sameage as me, a fourteen-year-old boy living in Mumbai, and Mum’s twelve and lives up inDelhi… and they won’t even meet each other for another ten years!
I miss them, though. Sometimes, when the others aren’t around I cry. But Idon’t let them see that. So far, I’ve kept cool.
Foster is taking me out of the field office this morning to begin my training as theteam’s ‘observer’. I really don’t understand yet what an‘observer’ does, but I’m sure I will do very soon.
‘OK, Sal,’ said Foster, ‘this is Monday morning, Monday thetenth of September, the day before disaster strikes.’ He looked around at Times Square,the very centre of New York, the bustling heart of the city. It was just after 10 a.m., and5th Avenue was teeming with life.
‘Think of today as “normal” New York. This is how it should look. You understand?’
Sal nodded.
‘You’re the team’s observer, Sal. The observer is like the nose of a dog- there to detect the very first scent of a reality shift in the timeline.’
‘Because someone went and changed something in the past?’
‘That’s right.’
She gestured around at Times Square, busy and noisy with early-morning traffic. ‘Buthow am I going to know when something is different here?’
He nodded, then thoughtfully stroked his chin. ‘Perhaps I should explain why you inparticular were recruited. What’s so special about you. That might help to explainthings.’
She shrugged. Perhaps it might. There was nothing she considered particularly special about herself. She preferred black clothes instead of thebright neon poly-silks all the other bolly-boppers liked to wear. She preferred dark-head rockmusic instead of boomtastic street hop. She preferred her own company and a good puzzle-ebookrather than hanging around some grimy street corner with a load of stupid ditto-heads chokingbehind their masks on street poison.
‘Our archived records of 2026 zeroed in on you as an ideal candidate for recruitmentfor two reasons, Sal. Firstly, we knew exactly when and where youwere going to die, which made it possible to locate and extract you.’
Sal nodded silently. She understood that now.
‘But secondly you were a Mumbai regional under-12s champion for Pikodu.’
Pikodu was a picture-based puzzle game. It involved spotting repeated patterns in large,cleverly designed grids of random images.
Sal nodded. She was a champion, sort of… until she got bored of it. It was a fad, acraze that came in from Japan. For a few years it seemed everyone was intoplaying Pikodu Training on their Nintendo FlexiBoy, on the train,in the bath… on the toilet.
‘The point is, Sal, it means we knew you’d make a perfect observer. Your abilityto spot tiny details quickly — to notice things that others would easily miss, to seepatterns in chaos — that makes you the perfect candidate.’
His hand swept out across the busy square.
‘You’ll witness this morning scene over and over. It’ll always be the sameand you’ll become familiar with it. You’ll learn that — ’ Fosterglanced at his watch, then pointed across the square at a young mother who’d stoppedpushing her buggy to pick up a soft toy tossed out by her child — ‘at exactly tenfourteen a.m. the woman wearing red jeans over there will have to stop on a pedestriancrossing to retrieve a teddy bear for her baby.’
Foster looked around.
‘That those two old men wearing smart suits will stop outside the McDonald’s andlight up cigarettes.’
Sal made a face. ‘Ewww. Is that legal?’
‘To smoke?’
She nodded, staring with wide-eyed amazement at both men as they casually sucked in then blewout clouds of blue smoke.
Foster laughed gently. ‘Yes, Sal. It is still.’ He pointed to a giant billboardhigh up the front of a building. ‘You’ll know that on this particular day themovie Shrek is showing.’ He pointed to another billboard.‘That the movie The Planet of the Apes is openingsoon.’ And another. ‘That Tommy Hilfiger shirts are the height offashion.’
Sal curled her lips in disgust and realized that they really loved their na
ff clothes back in2001.
He turned back to look down at her. ‘Your eyes will register all these tiny details,your mind will remember them,’ he said quietly, his eyes lockedintently on hers, ‘and then, one day soon, you’ll know instantly whensomething’s different.’
‘A shift?’
His face creased with an approving smile. ‘That’s right, Sal, a shift — thevery first sign that something has been changed in the past.’
She looked around and realized that, in a way, it was a bit like a very large game ofPikodu.
‘You’ll see this before either of the others will because, well…that’s your special talent, Sal.’
‘Because I once was a finalist in a jahully old puzzle competition?’
‘Yes,’ he laughed, ‘because you once were a finalist in a jahully old competition. And because every Monday you will come out ofthe archway and take a walk across the Williamsburg Bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan in thisglorious sunshine and you’ll get to know this day like no other person in theworld.’
‘Did the team before us have an observer?’
Foster hesitated a moment before answering. ‘Yes, they did. Every team does.’
‘Tell me about him… or was it a her?’
The smile slowly faded from his face. ‘She… she didn’t really have muchtime to learn her job before — ’ he sighed — ‘before we accidentallytrapped that seeker.’
She looked at him sombrely. ‘Will there be other seekers?’
He shook his head. ‘No… because we’ll always be more careful in future.It’s not a mistake I plan to repeat.’
‘Where did it come from?’
He hesitated a moment before answering. ‘Another dimension.’ He turned to her.‘It’s the dimension you travel through when you ridetime.’
‘That sounds… well, it doesn’t sound safe.’
‘It’s chaos-space. We’re merely travelling throughit… instantaneously. You wouldn’t really want to hangaround there.’ She sensed there was a lot more he could tell her about it, but for nowhe seemed keen to change the subject.
‘Come on.’ His face brightened. ‘Let’s see some more of the city. Didyou visit Central Park when your dad took you to New York?’
She thought about that for a moment. She remembered a large open area in the middle ofManhattan in which rusting vehicles were stacked one on top of the other: a giant automobilejunkyard.
‘Is it the place where all the old cars were dumped when the oil ran out?’
Foster nodded sadly. ‘Yes. But back in 2001 — now — it’s still abeautiful park, with grass and trees and a lovely lake. Would you like to go seeit?’
She smiled and nodded. ‘I’d like that.’
CHAPTER 23
2001, New York
‘You’re kidding me, right? My job is an… an… analyst?’
Foster nodded.
She looked at him, her eyebrows arched with disbelief. ‘You’re telling meI’ve been plucked from a falling aeroplane and sent back in time to join a teamof… of time cops, and my job ends up being exactly what Iused to do?’
Foster shrugged. ‘It’s not exactly thesame.’
She looked at the row of computer monitors on the bench in front of her.‘Great.’
‘This computer is a cell-based tetra-gig mainframe, carefully transported back from thefuture and painstakingly assembled by our first team. Which means, Maddy, right now in NewYork 2001, you’re looking at the most powerful computer system in the whole world. Andguess what?’ He grinned. ‘It’s all yours to playwith.’
Maddy reached one hand out and stroked the slim casing of the computer on the bench.‘Mine, huh?’
‘Yours.’
‘OK… I guess that isn’t so bad, then.’
‘We know from our files,’ Foster continued, ‘that you worked for acomputer-games company. You worked as a programmer on a hugely successful online role-playinggame called Second World.’
Maddy clucked modestly. ‘I guess it was quite popular.’
‘You were listed in the credits as the database de-bugger.’
‘Among other things,’ she replied irritably. ‘I also wrote the code for abunch of decent AI combat stuff and coded some of the coolest parts of the user interface, butdid I get credited? Pffft. Did I heck.’
Foster nodded. ‘But it’s the database work, the de-bugging, that makes you soincredibly valuable.’
‘Because?’
‘Because, Maddy, it’s detective work, isn’t it? Finding that tiny piece ofcomputer code that’s causing a computer game to crash or behave in an unpredictableway?’
‘I suppose.’
Foster nodded towards Sal. ‘You’ll be working closely with Sal.’
Maddy turned to see her sitting on the far side of the arch at the wooden table with Liam andBob. They both seemed to be teaching the lumbering oaf how to hold a knife and fork.
‘As the observer, she’ll be the first line of defence.’
Foster had explained Sal’s role as observer. It seemed a tall order to her that a younggirl’s eyes would be better than a computer at identifying a shift.
‘When she observes something that has altered, it’ll be your lateral thinking,your programmer’s mind, combined with the power of this system, linked into the web andcountless historical databases around the world, to zero in on where and when history has actually beenchanged.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘How am I freakin’ well going to figure out stuff likethat? I was crud at history in high school. I’m not sure I’m the right person to-’
‘You’ll do just fine,’ he cut in. ‘You don’t need to know a lotof history; you just need a logical mind and a little common sense. I havefaith in you, Maddy. You’ll be this team’s leader, the team’s strategist.’
‘Leader? You’re the leader, aren’tyou?’
Foster’s voice lowered ever so slightly, as if he was sharing with her something hedidn’t want the others to know. ‘I’m not going to be here forever.Eventually, the three of you, and Bob, will be operating on your own.’
‘What? Where are you going?’
‘I… that’s not important. The point is I’m here to get you ready as ateam. To be able to function on your own.’ He looked at her. ‘And your team willbe looking to you for leadership.’
She glanced across at the others, both giggling as Bob’s large hands fumbled awkwardlywith the knife and fork.
Me, a leader?
Up until now she’d considered herself more of a loner, happy to work in isolation withlines of code as her only company. Having those two — and that big ape — rely onher was bad enough, but having the history of mankind in herhands as well…
She shook her head. ‘You’ve got the wrong person, Foster,’ she replied.‘I can’t do this.’
The old man reached for the keyboard and mouse on the bench, ignoring her. ‘Let me showyou just how powerful this computer system is. Did you know it’s linked into every database in the world? From this keyboard you can, if you wantto, hack into any other connected computer. Through any firewallor encrypted security system.’
‘Uh… yeah, right.’
‘You want to see what’s in the President of America’s email in-box rightnow?’
Maddy’s jaw dropped. ‘You can…?’
Foster chuckled. ‘Shall we go and take a look at the words of wisdom George Bush hasbeen tapping out this morning? Hmm?’
CHAPTER 24
1941, Bavarian woods, Germany
Falling… falling… falling.
Dr Paul Kramer opened his eyes and immediately winced in the brightness. He screwed his eyesshut.
‘It’s OK,’ a voice spoke softly.
Kramer tried again, easing them open carefully. The first thing he registered was snow, adeep blanket of it, mostly smooth, with one or two tracks of footprints, and grooves whereheavy things had been dragged.
Squatting beside him was a familiar face.
‘Karl…’
; ‘Just take a moment, sir. There’s a minute of disorientation, dizziness.It’ll pass.’
Kramer took a deep breath and puffed out a thick cloud in front of himself. There were toomany questions he needed answered for him to wait. ‘Tell me we have arrived at the righttime?’
‘It appears to be. Snow for April would seem right.’
‘The right location?’
Karl nodded. ‘The woods outside Obersalzberg.’
‘The equipment?’
‘Is right here. It was a little scattered, but the men have located everything thatcame through and hidden it in the woods.’
‘The men all came through?’
Karl’s hesitation was enough. Kramer looked up at him, hooding hiseyes against the last faint glow of the dusk sky. ‘Karl?’
‘Tomas and Ethan… didn’t make it.’
Kramer struggled up on to his legs and looked around at the men. All were kitted out in theirArctic-camouflage jackets, backpacks and webbing strapped on. Each held ready astate-of-the-art M29 pulse rifle; on their heads they wore Kevlar helmets complete withfold-down nightscope and heat-sensor eye-HUDs. An impressive sight that stirred in him a warmsense of pride.
But so few of them.
He counted just seventeen.
‘What happened to Tomas and Ethan?’
Karl was reluctant to reply.
‘Karl! Please…’
His second-in-command nodded reluctantly. ‘I will show you.’
He stepped through his men across knee-deep snow that crunched beneath each step. Kramerfollowed him, pulling out his Arctic jacket, putting it on and zipping it up.
Karl led him into a thick copse of pine trees, branches drooping, heavily laden withsnow.
‘It appears something malfunctioned during their trip,’ said Karl as they pushedthrough some branches, dislodging a small cascade of powder snow. ‘Mercifully, neitherof them lived for very long,’ he continued, stepping to one side to reveal their bodies.‘They lasted no more than a couple of minutes,’ he added sombrely.
Kramer stared at the twisted tangle of limbs and organs. It was unrecognizable ashuman… or, more to the point, two humans. Instead, it looked like some grotesquecreature an insane God might construct from the parts left over from Creation — a pathetically corrupted thing with too many arms and legs and internal organsemerging into the open through distorted and bubbled skin that looked like melted plastic. Onehead, melded to the end of what looked like an impossibly long arm, Kramer recognized asEthan. He spotted the face of Tomas emerging from a mass of flesh that could only be describedas this thing’s pelvis.
