George and the Ship of Time

by Lucy Hawking

  But, at that moment, George felt the kid next to him give a little jump. Looking down, he saw what looked like a very fine needle attached to the end of a robotic hand, which whirred away immediately. If it wasn’t for the tiny mark on the back of the child’s hand, he might have thought he’d imagined it. As he looked about, he just caught sight of the same thing happening to all the other kids—a strand of their hair being pulled out and a needle puncturing their skin for the briefest of seconds. Most of them were so entranced by the show they didn’t even seem to notice.

  “We only grow our produce in the cleanest, purest places on Earth!” the commentary burbled on. “In the most natural conditions possible our wonderful Eden nutritional supplements are all derived from fresh and tasty foods, grown by us with love and care. They live on pure water and sunshine! That’s all they need to be so very delicious. Remember, kids, in the best of all possible worlds we provide worldwide food production to make sure you have good, clean, nutritious food to live on!”

  The agricultural lands faded into an icy landscape with huge, pale blue glaciers towering over dark green seas.

  “This,” the voice continued, “was the polar ice cap before it melted. As you can see, it was too cold for human habitation and the ice covering prevented exploration of the many resources trapped below, so it really was a big waste of space. But now, thanks to the great progress made by Eden following on from the Great Disruption, this whole area has been freed for exploitation.”

  George gave a horrified squeak and squeezed Boltzmann’s arm. “How could all this have happened? How long were we up there for?”

  “Don’t know,” said Boltzmann uneasily. “There was some malfunction in my time-recording facilities while we were in space and I have lost any measurements of our journey.”

  The voice carried on. “We are now able to extract valuable minerals from under the surface and create more wealth. This, and other great successes, have been made possible thanks to the positive policies of Professor Sir General Dr. Reverend Commander Trellis Dump the Second, may he live forever! His Highest Excellency, Chairperson of Eden, the best company on Earth, and President of Eden itself! Thank you all for joining us for this educational experience! Please submit your feedback forms through your channel as you leave. Don’t forget to give us a five-star review!”

  A doorway opened and the children’s robots ushered them through and out the door. Some of the kids wanted to stay in the virtual environment, but their guardian bots firmly guided them back toward the school bus. George and Boltzmann were just standing at the back, wondering what to do next.

  “Come on,” said Hero. “It’s time to go.”

  “Yes,” said George hurriedly. “We’re coming, aren’t we, Boltzmann? We’re getting on the bus to . . .” He paused.

  “The Bubble, of course,” said Hero, giving him a strange look. “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure we get you home, won’t we?” She looked over at her robot, who nodded.

  “Sorry, where did you say we were going?” asked George, who just needed to hear Hero say it once more, to be entirely sure.

  “The Bubble,” she said. “We’re going to the Bubble.”

  Chapter Four

  Boltzmann got his question in first. “This Bubble,” he inquired as they clambered back onto the driverless school bus, “did it once have another name?” He took a seat next to Hero’s robot, with Hero and George in front.

  “Oh yes!” said Hero. “A long time ago, before the Great Disruption, it was called Foxbridge. What a silly name!”

  “Foxbridge!” said George, his hair standing on end. “Foxbridge!” It was all he could do not to keep repeating the name. A vision of his hometown flashed into his brain: the cheerful cobbled streets, the higgledy-piggledy storefronts, the bakery with its trays of sticky Chelsea buns, the market square with the striped awnings of the produce stalls, the little parks where small children played, the grand old buildings that made up the university, his own narrow lane where the houses hugged each other and their backyards led down to the river. How had this become a bubble?

  “How far are we from Foxbridge—I mean, the Bubble?” inquired Boltzmann.

  “Like, about thirty Dumps away?” said Hero.

  “Thirty Dumps?” said George. “What does that mean?”

  “A Dump is a unit of time,” said Hero, looking startled. “How do you not know that? It can be distance as well. A Dumpometer takes a Dump to travel.”

  “So how long is a Dump?” said George.

  “The ideal attention span of an Eden citizen,” replied Hero knowledgeably.

  “How long is that?”

  “Well, we’ve been talking for about half a Dump already!” she said.

  “That’s a bit short, isn’t it?” said George, alarmed.

  “I know,” huffed Hero. “I’m always getting into trouble because my attention span is way too many Dumps long. I keep trying to make it shorter, but it never seems to want to go down.” She pouted. “That—and the questions! I wish I could stop asking questions, but they just pop out of my brain before I can stop them.” She pulled a sad face. “It makes my marks go down.”

  “Asking questions is a good thing!” said George. “Why would that make your marks go down?”

  But Hero just eyed him suspiciously as though this was a trap she knew better than to fall into.

  George decided, though, that he had no restriction on question asking. “Did something happen here?” he asked Hero as the bus bucketed forward. “Like in, say, the last year?” That felt too long to George for the duration of his space journey, but he thought it was best to give a high estimate and work back from there. “Like a drought?”

  “Well, yeah!” said Hero. “But we don’t call it years. That’s super old-style. We call it Dumps of the sun. Something did happen here, but not in the last Dump of the sun! It was ages ago, way before I was hatched. And I’m nearly nine Dumps of the sun! You must have heard about the Great Disruption?”

  “Disruption?” asked George uneasily. What was Hero talking about?

  “You know.” She elbowed him. “Even in Other Side, they must teach you about the Great Disruption—about how what was left of the world had to be divided into two halves; one is Eden and one is Other Side. Bubble is in Eden. And wherever you come from is in Other Side.”

  George felt stunned. What was left of the world? Hero’s robot decided to enlighten him.

  “May I intervene?” he said.

  “George, this is Empyrean, my robot,” said Hero, sounding less than thrilled. “But you can call him Empy if you like.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” replied the robot. “I prefer my full name.”

  “Don’t listen,” said Hero. “I got the bot with the attitude! Everyone, but everyone, calls him Empy. I call him Empy the unhelpful.”

  “So undignified,” sighed the robot. “Anyway, if you will allow. The Great Disruption,” he said in his smirky tones from behind them, “is a historical event that will be remembered for its Greatness and its Disruptedness for all time.”

  “Um, what actually happened?” asked George. The memory of the sound of a gigantic explosion that they had heard from a broadcast from Earth came back to him. Surely not. It couldn’t be . . .

  “Nations of the Earth, following a series of disasters caused by climate change and other environmental problems, faced each other in terrible destructive warfare,” said the robot, now sounding deadly serious, his eyes flashing. George wheeled around to catch Boltzmann’s gaze in horror. Boltzmann reached out a robot hand to clasp George’s shoulder as George started to rock gently back and forth with shock.

  “How long did this war last?” whispered George, thinking it must have gone on for decades to have caused so much damage.

  “About two and a half minutes,” replied the robot. “Millions of people died, homes were destroyed, whole habitats wiped out. Civilization was put back by millennia. The weapons unleashed devastation on the face of
this planet. Toxic gases poured into the atmosphere. The oceans boiled, the forests burned and the ice caps melted. Much of the world is now uninhabitable.”

  George felt winded. It was as though the robot had punched him in the stomach. He closed his eyes. For a moment, like a very small child, he had the thought that if he couldn’t see it, it wasn’t really happening. But, when he opened his eyes again, the world had not changed back to the way he remembered it. He was still on a bus with a girl and her robot, in this strange new world, with his own charred metal friend at his back.

  He wasn’t the only one to look shocked. Hero seemed as taken aback by what her robot had said as George.

  “That’s not right!” she said hotly. “What you just said—that’s not what we learned about the Great Disruption! We learned it was a good thing because it led to the foundation of Eden and to Dump the Second, may he live forever, who has set the people free!”

  “Absolutely,” agreed her robot without missing a beat. “The Great Disruption was the turning point that led to the glorious future of human- and robotkind that we now enjoy in the enlightened paradise of Eden. The Great Disruption meant the people of the world no longer wanted to be led by politicians and experts, so they chose two leaders from among them to run corporations that would each own half of the world. Or what was left of it. Each corporation, of course, already wielded huge power, with great profits, and had been instrumental in leading our world into conflict. Now, with the Great Disruption, the two companies agreed to this division of assets.”

  “The world is run by companies?” said George. “Just two of them?”

  “Yes, just the two,” said the robot. “Well, there is a nonaligned zone that has rejected corporate wisdom. But we don’t speak of them. They’re not very nice.”

  Not nice? thought George. What did “nice” have to do with anything?

  “How does it work?” he asked, keen to understand more about the world into which he had crash-landed.

  “Oh, it’s very wise,” said the robot. “Works perfectly. The government and the corporation are the same thing, so whatever the government, led by Trellis Dump the Second (may he live forever), who is also the head of the Eden Corp, thinks would be best for the people, then Eden Corp can provide it. That way people have the chance to buy it and add it to their consumer debt. We don’t talk about citizens anymore. We call them consumers.” The bus, which had slowed down over some rough ground, now shot forward once again in a cloud of the ever-present dust.

  “Who ran the world before Trellis Dump the Second?” asked George.

  “Trellis Dump the First, of course,” replied the robot. “Who else?”

  “But then, didn’t Trellis Dump cause the Great Disruption if he was in charge back then? So how did Trellis Dump the Second end up with Eden?”

  “Trellis Dump the Second worked closely with his father before the Great Disruption. But, when the division was agreed upon, he felt that it was the will of the people for him to take over fully from his father,” said the robot patiently. “It was Trellis Dump the Second, may he live forever, who had the vision to take us into our glorious future. To develop Eden as we know it today. Everything in Eden is now a sign of the thanks the people give for his wise, all-seeing, all-encompassing rule. That is all you need to remember about Eden.”

  George couldn’t quite digest all this at once. He turned away and stared hard out the window, trying to fit the pieces together in his mind until it made sense. There was a bit missing that would explain it all—but what was it?

  Boltzmann leaned over. “I think they might have found something.” He pointed to the patrol bots, racing back toward the Eden Corporation with a piece of shrapnel held aloft. Empyrean noticed as well. He glared out of the window at the patrol bots, which seemed to cause them to grind to a halt, drop the piece of spaceship, and very slowly walk away.

  All the kids on the bus now had headsets on—except for George and Hero.

  Something was brewing in George’s mind. Something that had bothered him for the whole span of their space journey. Time. It was all about time. They had never known what time it was—nor how fast time was passing. They had traveled through space, but they had no idea how long the voyage had taken. Was it possible they had traveled through time as well? Had the Artemis been some kind of ship of time . . . ?

  George slumped down in his seat. Next to him, Hero shook out her black ponytail and then got out a pair of bright red goggles, which she strapped onto her head. She started swaying a little from side to side. George poked her and she jumped almost off her seat.

  “What?” she said crossly, pulling off the goggles. “That’s rude!”

  “What are you doing?” asked George.

  Hero’s mouth dropped open. “You mean, you don’t know?”

  “ ’Course not,” said George.

  “I’m doing my homework!” said Hero. “I have to finish this on the journey home.”

  “But you don’t have any books or any paper!” said George. “Or even a screen to tap on.”

  “Books! Paper! Next you’ll be asking me for a pen!”

  “Hero,” said George quietly. “What year is it?”

  “What year?” said Hero in surprise. “Well, it’s Year 40.” She lifted up her goggles, ready to put them back on.

  “What does she mean, Year 40?” said George, looking over at Empyrean. “When I left . . . um, Earth”—this last said in a low whisper so that only the robot could hear him—“it was 2018. So it must still be something beginning with a two zero.”

  “No,” interjected the robot. “Time was reset following the Great Disruption, after the great Trellis Dump the Second took over from his father to lead us into a new prosperity. That was decided by our benevolent leaders, both here in Eden and in Other Side. Where you come from”—the robot stressed this last sentence very pointedly—“they decided that time itself must be made a subject of the regimes. So time was reset to mark the beginning of the glorious Second Age of Dump.”

  “Look, I’ve really got to go back to my virtualreality memory palace,” complained Hero. “It’s recording that I’ve started my session and left, so I’ll get lower marks if I don’t finish. I can’t risk that, otherwise . . .” She nibbled at her lip, looking worried.

  “Otherwise what?” said George.

  But she had already disappeared into a virtual world where he couldn’t follow her.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he just caught sight of Hero’s robot shaking his head, but, when he turned to stare more closely, Empyrean looked away studiously.

  Everyone else on the bus still had their headsets on, lost in their own private worlds, wandering their virtual-reality memory palaces while doing their homework, George assumed. He had nothing else to do but look out the window. It was a depressing sight. There was nothing to see but desert. Scrubland, blown by fierce winds, surrounded the bus, which perambulated along at a steady speed.

  “Boltz!” groaned George over his shoulder. “What are we going to do? How are we going to find my family? Annie? Eric? Where are they all? Where are we?”

  At that moment, they drove past what looked like the remains of a row of abandoned houses. The empty windows of the buildings stared bleakly back at George as they passed—with no roofs or doors, they were uninhabitable. Behind the former houses, George thought he saw one or two of the patrol bots in the distance, running across the open country with their strange sideways motion.

  “I don’t know,” said Boltzmann sadly. “I can’t connect to any form of network that would allow me to update us on the current situation.” He paused. “May I now suggest you remove your spacesuit, since I believe it to be unnecessary where we are heading. I feel it would be acceptable to leave it on this bus.”

  “Oh, right,” George said. It made sense, especially if he wanted to blend in to find out more about what was going on. He struggled out of the suit and stashed it under a seat. Underneath he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt.


  He knelt up on his seat and turned around to speak privately to his robot. It was time to tell him what was on his mind. “Boltz, I’ve been thinking—about time and how it moves more slowly when you’re traveling very fast,” he said quietly. He glanced over at Hero’s robot, which seemed to have switched itself off.

  “Ah,” said Boltzmann wisely. “Time dilation. Einstein’s great achievement in relativity, one of the most astonishing discoveries of the twentieth century.”

  “We can’t travel back to the past. Well, at least we think we can’t . . .”

  “Right,” said Boltzmann.

  “But we can jump forward into the future. When you travel really, really fast, time moves more slowly. So, if we went fast enough in the Artemis, then a short period of time for us in the spaceship could have been a very long time on Earth, couldn’t it?”

  Boltzmann sighed. “I was coming to that conclusion myself,” he said.

  “Do you think Alioth programmed the Artemis that way?” said George. “That all along he never meant to travel across the solar system to find life? Instead, he was going to ping himself into the future, taking a bunch of really bright kids with him as his army?”

  “Where my master is concerned,” said Boltzmann rather grimly, “I’m sorry to say anything is possible. Even though you thought you had vanquished him, I fear he’s ended up with the last laugh and sent us into the future instead.”

  “I was hoping,” said George, “that you’d say I was totally way out and there was no chance we could be in the future.”

  “Oh, we could,” said Boltz. “And I have to tell you, the emotions I am now experiencing are so complicated that I am considering going back to being a non-sentient being in order to avoid them.”

  Just then, the bus ground to a sudden halt, which nearly propelled George off his seat entirely. They finally seemed to have arrived somewhere and were waiting in a line outside what looked like a giant semitransparent bubble.

  Hero whipped off her goggles. “Well, I finished!” she said. “Just in time! I can’t mess up my marks, not now, on my last chance to . . .” All the other kids took off their goggles too.