Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  Honestly, it seemed like a valid plan at the time.

  But we were there, and we saw him die, so I go with, “Isn’t it?” There is a grating noise from across the table. Tabitha’s knuckles are the shade of white that I imagine exists at the heart of the sun. She appears to be literally crushing the table beneath her hands.

  Even Kayla looks mildly interested now.

  Smythe doesn’t say a word.

  “This morning?” I ask, refusing to wholly believe it. “At the funeral? That was seriously Clyde?” I think about that for a moment. “No,” I say. “No. He’s dead.” I insist it at this tall, smooth little diplomat with his made-for-DVD personality. “He’s dead.”

  Smythe shrugs. “Personally, Mr. Wallace, I don’t know. You say he’s dead. The CIA claim he’s hiding out on a server farm somewhere on the North American continent, hacking federal government servers like a child picking candy out of jars.”

  “It’s not possible,” I say.

  But—

  “Yes.” Tabitha drops the word like a tombstone. “It is. If he downloaded himself in time. Before the mask broke.”

  “It’s not possible,” I say again. Because… because… No. Except, is it just I don’t want it to be true? Dealing with the fact that my best friend is three digital copies of himself is hard enough without having to deal with his super-powered, murderous evil twin. I drop my head to the table.

  No. Just… no.

  “What evidence exactly do the CIA have?” Felicity asks.

  And I love Felicity Shaw. The voice of reason in the insanity my life has become.

  “Well, I’m sure they’ll tell you.” I look up to see if Smythe has another sharkish grin, but he’s shuffling papers back into his briefcase. Putting the cap back on his little water bottle.

  “What do you mean?” And any hint of being offended by Smythe taking the alpha dog role is gone. But her excitement seems tinged with a little anxiety now.

  Smythe retrieves one final item from his briefcase before snapping it closed. A simple manila folder this time. He places it before him. “Your flight details,” he says. “To America. You’re leaving tomorrow. Heathrow. British Airways. Of course. Business class, I think you’ll find. The Americans are footing the bill.”

  It’s moving too fast. Everything is always moving too fast in this job. The Americans want us to… what? Find and kill Version 2.0 of Clyde. A version that this functionary is saying tried to kill us this morning. A version that I worked alongside. That, hell, I had a hand in creating. A version I counted as a friend.

  And yet… And yet…

  I wish that Smythe’s story didn’t make sense. That it had plausible deniability. But there is a terrifyingly implacable logic to it all.

  I look at Felicity. She does not seem to share my feelings. Instead Christmas seems to have come early for Felicity Shaw. Personally I don’t see exactly what there is to be excited about.

  “Is there anything else we need to know?” she asks.

  Smythe considers this, head cocked to one side. “You should try to move about the cabin at least once an hour. That’ll stop the blood pooling. Good for the heart. It’s a long flight.”

  He pushes back his chair, stands up, smiles perfunctorily. “I’ll see myself out.”

  And he leaves us there, sitting in the crater of yet another bombshell.

  6

  FELICITY SHAW’S APARTMENT. EVENING

  Felicity and I sit opposite each other in her living room, and try and work out what to say.

  It’s been a quiet few hours since Duncan Smythe left Conference Room B at MI37 headquarters. Felicity dismissed the others so they could pack. We worked out if we wanted pasta or curry for supper. I finally washed the fecal matter off myself and applied rubbing alcohol to my various abrasions. And then this—sitting in a chair, and trying to work out where our heads are at.

  “Do you believe it?” Felicity asks me finally.

  I stare at the magazines on the coffee table—copies of The Economist, and National Geographic, because Felicity Shaw is not a frilly or fluffy woman. And she certainly has a way of cutting to the chase.

  “I…” I say, which pretty much sums it all up. And then, eventually, “I don’t want to.”

  Felicity smiles. “That’s not exactly answering the question.”

  “Do you believe it?” I respond, which still isn’t.

  Felicity smiles again. She sees through me the same way most people see through windows.

  She puts her feet up on the couch. There’s a framed Georgia O’Keeffe print behind her looking floral and ambiguously suggestive. Some of her hair has fallen down in front of her eyes. She pushes it back.

  “I knew Clyde…” she shrugs, “for a long time. I recruited him out of Cambridge University four years ago. I promoted him to field agent. I briefed and debriefed him a hundred times.”

  “Debriefed sounds dirty,” I say.

  “You know you use humor as a defense mechanism?” she asks.

  Like a window.

  “I knew Clyde longer than you,” she says, “though never as intensely as you did, if that’s the word. Whatever died when we fought the Russians, wasn’t the man that I recruited. The man I recruited was already long dead. The Didcot incident, or whatever Smythe called it.

  “And,” she continues, “the man I recruited, that I promoted, that dead man, he could never have done any of the things we saw today. But whatever he became, whatever was left of him after he died… I don’t know. It seems like it’s on the scale of possibility. I don’t even know what the versions are capable of. They seem harmless, but even the original Clyde, your friend, my recruit, wasn’t harmless. That man knew enough magic to level a house. And if that was corrupted…” She trails off, but I think it’s just because she’d rather not follow that line of logic out loud.

  “So you do believe,” I conclude for her.

  She shifts on the sofa, sinking into a slouch. “I’m saying I don’t know. I can’t know right now. But I know that the CIA wouldn’t be shipping us across the Atlantic if they didn’t have a damn good reason.”

  The CIA. Jesus. I shake my head.

  Felicity shifts in her chair. “What?” I ask. I know her well enough now to know when she’s hesitating about saying something.

  “Just… you know, the CIA.” That, I think, effectively sums up what Hollywood has told me about that agency.

  “Is it wrong for me to be a little bit excited?” Felicity asks.

  “Excited?” I try to fit that word into the scenario facing us. The scenario where something vast and powerful that may or may not be our former colleague and friend is trying to kill us. I struggle.

  “I mean,” Felicity goes on, without waiting for me to find the right words for what I’m thinking, “the Americans. The CIA. They asked for us. For MI37. A month ago our agency was on the verge of being shut down. Now a super-power is asking for our collaboration. This is huge.”

  She bites her lower lip, not enough to show teeth, just the corner of it tucked away. She has a slightly faraway look in her eyes.

  And I guess I hadn’t really thought about anything in those terms.

  “So…” I venture, “we should have our lives threatened by our friends more often?”

  She flaps a hand at me. “No. I didn’t mean it like that.” She shakes her head slightly. “It’s just… They’re taking us seriously, Arthur. They’re taking me seriously. Do you know how long MI37 has been out in the political cold? Trying to do anything at all? This could change all of that. Proper staffing. Proper budget.”

  And I do see it, at least a little. MI37 has been her life for… Well, I’m not exactly sure how long. Around twenty years, I think, but I don’t actually know how Felicity got involved in this line of work. Still, I can understand why the sudden legitimacy of MI37 would be a big deal for her. She has a lot more invested in it than I do, and I like this job.

  But… excited?

  I close my eyes. I
should be happy for her, even if I can’t be for me.

  “That’s good,” I say. “That’ll be good.”

  With Felicity being the keen observer of human behavior that she is, and me being about as guileful as a brick, the lack of enthusiasm is noticed.

  She grimaces. “I’m sorry. Obviously there could be better circumstances. I know that. Of course I know that. And I hope it’s not Clyde. Just like you.”

  I nod to that.

  She tries to erase her frown with another smile. “You still haven’t answered my question. If you really think it’s him.”

  I knew she’d noticed that.

  I debate whether I actually want to answer. “The versions couldn’t do it,” I say. “Wouldn’t. Regardless of how they feel about me or you. They are head over heels in love with Tabitha. They would never do anything to hurt her.”

  “But Version 2.0?” Felicity presses.

  I open my mouth.

  He was my friend. Even Version 2.0. Even after the man’s meat body died. He was my friend. And, yes, he did some questionable things at the end. But he was my friend.

  He made a woman kill herself.

  I close my mouth.

  He was dealing with the serious psychological trauma of no longer being corporeal, and none of us helped him. We just went on like things were normal. And we never really acknowledged that he had died. We never even tried to come to terms with it. Just ignored it. And wouldn’t that piss even the calmest man off.

  But he never complained. Never said a word. And he was fighting alongside us right up to the end.

  I open my mouth again. I fail to progress.

  “Perhaps,” Felicity suggests, leaning forward, “before you answer that question, you should consider that you are still wearing your tinfoil-lined hat.”

  I put a hand up. And she’s right I am.

  I put my head down, massage my temples.

  “God help us,” I say. “If it’s him. God help everyone on earth.”

  7

  I wait until Felicity’s asleep before I fire up the laptop. I’m back in the living room, sitting on the couch, the little computer balanced on a stack of newspapers.

  I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do, but I want to talk to the versions. To, well… to my version, though I feel uncomfortable about using the possessive when talking about… well, whatever the hell the versions are.

  When Clyde… Version 2.0… When he died, I chatted with 2.2 a few times. But each time the distance between what was going on and genuine human interaction seemed to yawn wider. Until I couldn’t take it any longer.

  And, in the end, I’m using the wired connection. And I’ve still got my baseball cap on.

  After thirty seconds of waiting, the version’s face appears. The window on my screen puts him in the same disarrayed room as he was in earlier.

  We look at each other for a long time.

  “Sooo…” he says after a while. “That was a little bit awkward, wasn’t it?”

  Normally I’d smile. If Clyde was… was… screw it, if he was a person sitting opposite me, then I’d smile. But he’s not. And it’s as obvious as it ever was right now.

  “Did you know?” I ask. “Did you know it was him?”

  Clyde looks shocked. “Of course not!” He shakes his head vehemently. “I was…” He hesitates. “Well, there’s basically the uncomfortable fact that I was created. And that happened prior to Version 2.0 going off the proverbial deep end for a swim in insanity stew. I mean, I don’t even know how he went into your head and put in all that sword-wielding stuff.”

  And there’s a topic I’d been trying to mentally dodge. The fact that Version 2.0 has already been in my brain, has already done something irreparable.

  But he was trying to help, that’s the thing. I had a sword. A flaming sword at that. It was, after Felicity, the coolest thing this job has given me. Except I didn’t know how to use it. And knowing how to use it against time-traveling Russian sorcerers could help save the world. So Version 2.0 went directly into my brain and gave me a migraine and an encyclopedic knowledge of how to use the weapon.

  I close my eyes. “Why would he do it?” I don’t really expect an answer. But surely the versions know 2.0 better than any of us. “He always tried to do the right thing. That’s why this doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense to me either,” 2.2 says. “I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d want to kill you all. Not that I want you to think that I spend my time thinking of those sorts of scenarios. Except for today. But that was only for around ten minutes. And, well, you know, there were extenuating circumstances.”

  Again I feel the distance between a real conversation and whatever this is opening up before me.

  Abruptly, I feel very tired. Outside, beyond the plants Felicity has stacked up on the window sills, Oxford seems very quiet and distant. The world holding its breath.

  “What do we do?” I ask him. “If it’s…” I was going to say “you,” but… “If it’s him.” I shake my head. “I can’t believe he’s just gone evil. That’s not what happens to people. He must have a reason. Probably a good one.”

  Version 2.2 shrugs—a long hunching of the shoulders. “We find out his reason?” he says.

  But that’s not the end of it, of course. We don’t stop there. And even if he has a really great reason, I doubt anyone from MI37 is going to roll over and let this Version 2.0 kill them. We’re the sort of people who get obstinate about that sort of thing.

  I feel an impasse coming on. One where we try and delete someone who does not want to be deleted. And if Clyde… if Version 2.0 is behind today’s attack, then I can’t imagine this going very well for us.

  And Felicity is excited about it. I understand her point of view intellectually, but still…

  I don’t want to do this anymore. To have this conversation anymore. I thought it would help and it has not.

  “I should go to bed,” I tell Clyde.

  Clyde shrugs a few more times. “Just…” he starts then stops, looks down at his feet.

  “What?” I ask him.

  “If… Well, say it was Version 2.0, and these CIA chaps and chapesses are right. And say it isn’t that he’s got some startlingly good reason for trying to off his very best friends, and all round good people, which I feel I should stress is how we really do feel. All of us. At least me and the two others I know. But let’s say this Version 2.0 just doesn’t feel that way about you, and he is, not to put too fine a point on it, an evil bastard. But, in that scenario, well, and this sounds a little silly now I go to put it into words. Like speaking the lyrics to a song you really like out loud. I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky. I should be so lucky in love. For example. I’m pretty sure I sounded stupid there. But just to repeat that whole experience. I guess, I just wanted to check, we’d still be friends, right, Arthur?”

  I look at him. This picture of my friend, that talks and acts just like him. And can there be a digital copy of friendship?

  But I don’t ask him that, I just say, “Yes, of course.” And then I close the laptop, and go to bed.

  8

  HEATHROW

  Getting on a flight to New York does not go as well as planned.

  The first plane we board experiences “technical difficulties” which sound and smell a lot like the plane’s computers detonating. Then we’re told to meet an incoming flight at another gate, until it comes out that somehow the plane has been accidentally rerouted to Honolulu. And so, with Kayla muttering a mounting number of curses and threatening to disembowel air stewards left right and center, we head back to the ticket desk just in time to see every computer in the airport go down.

  At that point, Kayla is not the only one about to get her rage on. Beleaguered men in bright yellow jackets tell everyone that everything is fine and will be fixed in a moment. Their visible sweat belies their promises. The entire airport seems on the verge of a riot. It doesn’t help that Tabit
ha is looking darkly at the sky and muttering, “He’s watching us, the bastard.”

  I pull my baseball cap down just a little bit tighter.

  We head out of the terminal to get some fresh air, and to avoid the impending violence.

  We stand there, kicking our heels, and rubbing our hands in the late October chill, and watch as an expensively shiny limousine pulls up in front of us. The back door opens and Smythe steps out, smoothing his mustache.

  “Spot of bother with the computers, so I’m led to believe.”

  Kayla takes a step toward him. “If I find out you’re feckin’ around with us, then I swear to God, you will find yourself using your lower intestines as a feckin’ belt.”

  Charm, I have been told, is Kayla’s middle name.

  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Smythe says without even the slightest blink of an eye. The man has balls, I will give him that.

  “Is it him?” I ask. “Is it Clyde?”

  Smythe contemplates this, Kayla still invading his personal space. “I honestly couldn’t say. They don’t brief me on that kind of thing.”

  “Fucking with me,” Tabitha comments. “Sending us up against an artificial intelligence. All the computers blow. Hmmm…” She tilts her head to one side, places a finger to her chin. The middle finger, I note. “What could it be?”

  Normally we let Felicity do the talking. This must be why.

  Smythe nods in the face of Tabitha’s invective. “A definite correlation of events, I grant you. But I’m not going to determine any causative links based on that sort of evidence. Above my pay grade, as the saying goes.”

  I glance at Smythe’s car again. He has a driver. Based on my own government salary, his pay grade seems a little high to me. That said, I get the impression that people like Smythe are not always entirely forthcoming with little things like the truth.