Singularity's Children Box Set

by Toby Weston

  The day spent surfing and sunbathing seemed to have done more for him than six months in the sterile, tiled whiteness of the army hospital. He didn’t even mind the sand. He reckoned the other sand must be all gone by now: the seams packed between his buttocks had presumably been washed away by his mysterious Zil saviours, probably by the old hag herself. The grains wedged under his broken nails had lasted longer, and the clumps matted into the filth and scabs of his scalp must have put up a fight. He had shed it slowly. Back in England, he remembered waking up each morning to find a small puddle of the sharp grains in the hollows his hips and shoulders made in the hospital mattress. Possibly, there were still a few specks in his ears or deep under his skin—driven in by shrapnel and left, even after the medics had finished—but he didn’t really care about the sand anymore.

  Later, he was sipping on a Margarita, while watching the tourists watching the hula dancers. They were mostly the older ‘flowery dress and thick plastic jewellery’ type. Only a couple of weeks ago, even this excitement would have been too much. He would have been happy then, just staring out of his window, trying to avoid flashbacks of self-mutilating combat suits and bloated piles of rotting peasants...

  …nylon dresses, clean and bright against the ochre and asparagus of once living flesh.

  The boys called in the evening, to check he was okay and to go over their plan. Tomorrow, the holiday was over.

  ***

  9 am and he was already up and lying naked on the beach, trying to bake the alcohol and cloudiness from his body. He didn’t give his own mental state too much thought, but perhaps he was re-joining society at some level because, today, he had conceded to place a towel over his exposed parts. His Companion showed the pirate ship as it approached. If the boys were right, it would arrive in two more days and, if it followed its usual pattern, it would stop a kilometre out from Port Allen. The pirates would go ashore, and Keith would go sneak aboard to do his one-man ninja commando routine—the kids seemed to have massively overestimated his martial prowess.

  At about noon, a beaten-up truck arrived at the little beach where he had been hanging out. A tall, thin, dreadlocked Rasta unfolded himself from the cab.

  “Keith Wilson?” The big black man didn’t seem bothered or surprised by Keith’s nudity. For Keith, sick of the modern flight to Victorian values, this spoke in his favour. He pulled on his shorts and a t-shirt anyway.

  “Yeah. You’ve got a couple of bits for me?”

  The guy nodded, and that was it. They unloaded a mostly deflated Zodiac from the back of the Rasta’s truck, and then the guy handed Keith a canvas bag containing a revolver and a long parcel wrapped in an oily towel.

  “Bolt action.”

  Keith carefully unwrapped the parcel, squatting down behind the back of the truck for privacy. It was probably thirty years old, but seemed in good condition. His fingers touched it a little too fondly. They were looking forward to stripping and cleaning it later.

  Apparently, Joseph the Rasta would be staying to keep an eye on his kit. After they had taken care of business, Keith accepted the joint that was immediately lit and eventually offered. They settled down, spending a pleasant few hours not chatting, waiting for Zaki and Siegfried’s packages to arrive.

  Just as the sun was starting its descent, Keith’s Companion chirped again. He fished it out of his rucksack as they toked on the end of the current joint. On the display, a green triangle ate up the kilometres, closing in on the blue dot that marked their location. Keith, scanning the sky, eventually spotted the green triangle’s physical manifestation. Minutes later, the glider was swooping in towards them.

  For the first time that day, Joseph showed a trace of emotion, coughing violently with surprise as the giant, silvery blue manta ray glided silently out of the sky and landed next to them on the beach. Keith and Joseph quickly grabbed on to its fins to stop the gentle breeze lifting it away again. On closer inspection, it was less fish and more balloon. Following the boys’ prepared instructions, Keith pulled open the beast’s belly and dragged out a lightweight nylon bag.

  After everything was unpacked, counted, and calibrated, Keith opened a compartment a third of the way down the glider’s ventral flank and pulled on a tab to unwind a length of ultra-fine line; attached to the end was a hook apparatus that looked like a lightweight carbon-fibre carabiner. They were instructed to clip the carabiner to something heavy enough to stop it from being dragged away once the GliderKite caught the wind. They chose one of the metal rings on the cab of the truck that was used to attach its tatty canvas roof.

  Without its cargo, the GliderKite seemed almost weightless as they boosted it into the air. The string became taught as the wind and fluid dynamics lifted it vertically into the sky, spooling out string as it rose. Soon, it was a silver glint at the end of 200 metres of ultra-fine line. Then there was an audible click as magnets in the carabiner released, and the string was reeled back up to the body. Unhitched, it was free to start its 12,000 km journey back to the boys. If it was lucky with the wind, it would only take ten days.

  They hauled everything onto the back of the truck and drove a couple of kilometres to Joseph’s red, gold, and green cabin where, after a glass of rum and another joint, they unpacked the goodies:

  - Two tubes linked by a complicated web of wedges and bands. Apparently slaved laser sights and a scope.

  - Something like a big black frisbee or small dustbin lid. From a hub in its middle, fan blades projected into the rim and, in the centre, was a tennis ball-sized smoked glass dome. A menacing barrel jutted from its circumference. On what was probably its top, a handwritten note: “Charge me”.

  - A black spiky snake, as long as Keith’s arm, with a fat head. It looked like a giant, evil sperm.

  - A black life jacket-shaped piece of clothing made of incredibly thin material and a matching hat.

  - 50 cartridges, a pair of rugged-looking Spex and a paintball mask.

  All of this had been packed into a space the size of three pizza boxes stacked on top of one another.

  The nice pair of military Spex and the cartridges would come in handy; the other items were less obvious. Some bits were reminiscent of some of the better tech thrown against them, while they tried to integrate the many jingoistic pockets of hatred that had seemed to stretch from Biarritz to Ulan Bator.

  Faced with all these fascinating and clearly highly illegal toys, Joseph was having trouble staying cool. The boys, amazingly perceptive considering they were half a world away, noticed his interest while they chatted and utilised his enthusiasm. His first task was to fill the black stealth life jacket with sand. On the face of it, a puzzling request, until, in a flash, Keith realised it was not a life jacket, but a bulletproof vest—bring your own ballast style. “Just in case,” the boys assured him.

  While Joseph was filling the vest’s laminar pockets, Keith took the sights and let Zaki walk him through their assembly: he used the supplied clamps and rubber wedges to attach one tube, the laser sight apparently, underneath the rifle’s barrel, then the more familiar scope to the rails on top. They spent the next forty minutes calibrating, turning screws by half turns, and every now and then letting the tech run through self-test cycles. Finally, in a chirpy synthetic voice, it asked Keith to fire a few shots at a distant tree.

  Like guns Keith had used before, the laser and the scope could both automatically adjust themselves. The scope, packed full of image recognition software, could be told to keep a target centred, compensating for minor wobbles like a good camera image stabilisation system. A little nipple-like joystick, aligned comfortably for thumb operation, guided the laser over the scope’s rock-solid target. Once selected, the laser would illuminate that spot and, once the trigger was squeezed, the gun would wait for the best moment to fire. Smart bullets with their tiny fins would do their best to correct drift, the laser on the barrel lighting up the target until the bullets had found their mark.

  Joseph plugged a little compressor into hi
s truck and inflated the Zodiac. Then, together, they dragged it down the beach to just above a line of seaweed and storm debris. Joseph mounted the outboard and hinged it out the way to be ready when needed.

  The unpacking and setup had taken the rest of the afternoon and half of the evening. Keith was starving, but Zaki and Segi badgered him into a few more hours of work. They had written a simulation of the pirate boat and programmed in their attack plans and the various failover contingencies for each. That night and the next day would be spent dry-running the assault. Keith would run around in a Spex-generated virtual environment. Joseph would babysit him in the real world in case someone stumbled across him and became spooked by a sunburnt white man running around with a gun. They had a prepared excuse:

  ‘It’s okay, it’s not loaded. He’s having a bad trip. He’ll be fine in a couple of hours.’

  ***

  02:00 - Keith, suited up in his bulletproof vest with the Remington in a water-tight bag slung over his shoulders, wades into the warm sea with an inflatable tube that will, hopefully, prevent the sand-filled hat and vest from dragging him to the bottom—the vest has a quick release to be used in the event of drowning. He expected Joseph to ferry him out to the boat for his suicide mission, but apparently the boys have a ‘better’ idea.

  02:45 - A still stunned Keith is making good progress through the gentle swell, pulled along behind a dolphin, who claims to be a citizen of the Kingdom of Atlantis. The dolphin is wearing its own bulletproof jacket and some kind of gimp-mask muzzle with a ridge running from the tip of its nose to just behind its blow hole. It has apparently been following the pirates for days, and is very grateful when Keith is able to readjust the vest and rub petroleum jelly on its pressure sores.

  03:50 - They have arrived at the boat. Less than a hundred metres away, through the scope, Keith can clearly see two guys on watch. One looks like an extra from a pirate film with a fetching scar, eyepatch, and scruffy ponytail. He is ambling around with an Uzi. The second, who would not look out of place in any mundane urban setting with his chubby jowls and potbelly, is on the bridge, alternately looking at something that illuminates his face with a green cast and staring out of the windows. Apparently, there are three more pirates asleep down below, including the captain.

  04:35 - The pirates returning from shore leave are getting ready to embark at Port Allen. Crystal clear, real-time images, apparently relayed from a friendly seagull—Keith has stopped being incredulous by this point—show the jovial pirates casting off. The one they have identified as Pedro, the owner of the DNA found in the decoy junk, and also at the scene of the bar room murder in Papua New Guinea, sits at the prow of the little boat.

  04:40 - The dolphin has gone off to plant comms relays on the hull of the pirate ship. Keith floats around, feeling vulnerable; then, when he is told to, he lets the evil sperm into the water, where it swims away.

  04:47 - The snake bot ascends an anchor chain. On deck, it opens its mouth and allows its passenger to crawl out. The chipped cockroach, which has been sitting on a damp, sugar-soaked wad of cotton wool for the past two weeks, reorients itself and then heads across the boat’s deck and through an open window.

  05:09 - The dolphin leaves, heading in the direction of the returning revellers.

  05:10 - The cockroach has found the room with the girls. The location is tagged on all their maps. Everything is going as planned; they are still on scenario A1.

  05:18 – Pedro and the rest of the returning pirates are still 25 minutes away. Keith, being super careful not to get the rifle wet, sights on the Uzi-toting pirate’s arse. Hardly needing all the advanced tech at this range, he fires. The pirate feels a sharp pain in his left buttock and sticks his hand down his shorts to scratch the buried sliver of glass he assumes is an insect bite.

  05:25 - After trying for five minutes to get a clean shot through the window to put another micro-flechette into the other pirate, Keith gives up. They switch to plan A3.

  05:40 - The cockroach is now in position A3: crouching on the bedside table of the pirate captain, providing real-time telemetry. Siegfried is flying their dustbin lid drone, keeping it hovering 200m above the boat.

  05:41 - Zaki drops two penetrators from the high-altitude GliderKites. The guided tungsten darts begin their 20,000m descent.

  05:42 - Siegfried’s drone drops from the sky, tilts through a half-open door, powers down a passageway, then does an elegant aerial flip before using its magnets to attach itself to the ceiling.

  The crewman on the bridge turns; he may have heard something. On command, Keith shoots a conventional bullet through his head. Simultaneously, Zaki remotely detonates the poison-filled micro-flechette, nestling in the buttock of the first pirate. A short time later, he is an ex-pirate, dead, deceased, run down the curtain, and gone to join the ‘choir invisible’.

  Seconds later, the two 10kg tungsten penetrator darts slam into, then through, the ship travelling at nearly 500mph. One smashes through two decks and annihilates the ship’s engine in a massive transfer of kinetic energy; the other, lacking anything solid to collide with, punches through the roof of the captain’s cabin, detonates its explosive charge, and continues on as a cloud of supersonic shrapnel through the deck below, after incidentally turning the pirate captain into a cloud of vaporised flesh and blood.

  05:43 - Finally waking up, the remaining two pirates stagger out of their bunks. Taking control of the drone hanging from the ceiling outside their cabin, Zaki shoots them, one after the other, with the drone’s stubby 9mm cannon.

  2km away, the returning pirates see the fireball from the engine rise silently into the night. They begin shouting and pulling out guns. However, their enthusiasm is cut off when a vicious spike turns the bottom of their small wooden boat into a colander. With wild shooting and considerable panic, the boat quickly sinks, dragged under by its heavy outboard motor.

  At 06:08, the last of the drowning pirates is systematically stabbed to death by a vengeful dolphin, wearing a diamond-tipped spike on its nose, narwhal-style.

  ***

  Keith floated in the warm sea until he got the all-clear from Ziggy and Zeggy and then paddled over to the Long Liner. After a new message—they were not 100% sure, but it might be sinking faster than expected—he ditched his sand-filled hat and jacket and increased his pace. After he clambered aboard, stepping over the dead pirate sprawled on deck, he headed below to where the Spex were telling him the girls were being held. Another body was washing back and forth along the short corridor in the ten centimetres of bloody water that was, as he watched, creeping up the sides of the walls. The last door was locked with a bicycle chain looped through heavy brass eyes nailed to the door and frame.

  “Get back!” he shouted. “The boat’s sinking. I’m going to get you out!”

  He booted the door a couple of times until it flew open. Red-stained water poured in, carrying the body with it. A girl screamed, but several began shouting and stamping on the back of the deceased pirate, sending waves of water splashing around the small room. The space was packed with about thirty terrified Asian females. He scanned around and recognised Stella from the pictures the boys had sent him. As his gaze found her, a huge cheer rose up from whoever else was tele-present at the other end of the video feed his Spex were transmitting. He recognised Zaki and Segi’s voices, but there now seemed to be many more. The tricky part of the operation was over; the viewers on the other end had been un-muted.

  “Come on, he’s dead. Let’s go. The ship is sinking!”

  Keith turned and stepped back into the corridor, waving for the girls to exit post-haste. One was not finished with her stamping; she had fallen onto her knees to beat the back of the dead man’s head with her fists. Keith had to drag her out through the knee-deep water.

  They joined the rest of the party on the deck, where panic was reigning. Some of the girls were already clambering down towards the Zodiac that Joseph had pulled alongside, but they would not all fit. For the first t
ime, things were not going as planned, and it was looking nasty. The Long Liner was sinking startlingly quickly. When the engine blew, it must have blasted a vast hole in the hull. The girls had started screaming again, but Keith noticed Stella dive elegantly into the water, her inertia carrying her away from any dangerous undertow. Following her lead, the others also plunged into the oily water. Most seemed to understand from Keith and Joseph’s arm-flailing that they should get away from the sinking vessel.

  With a huge sound of rending metal and bubbling, the prow thrust fifteen metres up into the air and then began to slide quickly out of view beneath the waves.