Pandora's Brain

by Calum Chace

  The Hawk bellowed his rage. ‘Stand and fight me you coward! Stop dancing about like a girl!’ Mat-B’alam looked at him levelly and said nothing, but slowly raised his shield again.

  The Hawk stomped forwards, swinging his club powerfully but wildly, hoping somehow to connect and deliver a crushing blow. Mat-B’alam retreated, allowing the weapon to come close, but never to connect with himself or his shield. As the Hawk tired, losing more blood than he knew, his swings became more erratic and his recoveries slower. Mat-B’alam kept retreating, waiting for the Hawk to leave some part of himself undefended for more than half a second. When it finally happened he dropped his club and with a single smooth movement he took a short stabbing blade from his belt and thrust it into the man’s waist.

  The Hawk drew himself up and looked down at his side, amazed and furious that he had been wounded by the smaller man. Mat-B’alam bent down to drop his shield and retrieve his club, keeping his eyes on the warrior all the time. He crouched, a dagger in his other hand. He circled the Hawk, speaking to him for the first time, taunting him, flicking his dagger at him contemptuously.

  ‘Come on then, you disgusting fat pig. Come and dance with my blade.’

  Fear and fury wrestled briefly for control of the Hawk’s face. Fury won out as he lowered his head and rushed headlong towards Mat-B’alam, his macuahuitl club swinging wildly. This time Mat-B’alam stepped to one side, raised himself up to his full height and brought his own club down hard, aiming to connect with the back of the man’s skull as he hurtled past.

  The club missed its mark and Mat-B’alam lost his balance. Looking down at his feet he steadied himself, then he looked up and in the direction the Hawk had lunged. The alarm that struck him like a bite from an electric eel when he saw the Hawk was not there was followed immediately by a searing pain in his side as the Hawk’s club slammed into his ribs. The force of the blow lifted Mat-B’alam right off the ground, knocked the wind out of him and left him temporarily blinded. His sight returned before his breath, but he barely had time to raise his arm in futile self-defence before the next crippling blow descended.

  TWO

  ‘Shit! I didn’t see that coming. That guy is fast, even when he’s wounded.’ Carl said.

  ‘Yeah, I was sure I had him beaten,’ Matt replied thoughtfully. ‘Have to be more careful next time.’

  Matt leaned back in his imitation Aeron chair and glanced around his bedroom. The deep familiarity of the room and its contents gave him a bittersweet comfort. His desk was mostly clear, apart from a framed photo and the monitor he was using to play video games and Skype with Carl, but every other surface was covered by the clutter of a young man with an enquiring mind and no taste for tidyness.

  Books stood in unsorted ranks on shelves along one wall, and also idled in collapsed piles on the floor and furniture. Novels, magazines, schoolbooks, illustrated non-fiction books mingled in defiant disorder. A guitar, a skateboard and a unicycle languished in corners, testimonies to hobbies which were once obsessions, but now belonged to ancient history. Glancing across a wall covered with posters advertising favourite films and TV series, his attention lingered for a moment on half a dozen masks of Mayan princes and warriors. The floor between the sofa, the two small armchairs, the desk and the bed was hidden underneath a wardrobe’s-worth of discarded clothing.

  In other words, it was the typical personal space of a bright, male, 21 year-old.

  The photo on the desk showed Matt on his last day at school. The dark brown hair and brown eyes were unchanged today, and he still wore the mid-range brands of plain T-shirt and hoodie. The subtly penetrating smile made fewer appearances now, but otherwise most observers would immediately recognise the boy in the picture as the young man at the desk. To Matt, however, the recent upheaval in his life meant that the picture showed someone he felt limited connection with – a naïve younger sibling perhaps. He envied that younger self.

  Matt looked back at his friend’s face on the screen. ‘So you wanna try again? I’d really like to get to the battle for the city.’

  Carl shook his head. ‘I need to crack on with some reading. And anyway I’ve never understood your fascination with the Maya. They seem to me to have been a bunch of bloodthirsty savages who met a well-deserved end.’

  Matt grinned. ‘That’s a seriously impressive culture you are writing off. Just because they lived and died with no contact from the rest of the world until the Spaniards came along, people assume they weren’t up to much. But that is incredibly short-sighted. The Maya were part of a culture that started around about the same time as Greek culture did – 1,500 years before Christ – and it lasted for 3,000 years. They did very sophisticated maths and made incredibly accurate astronomical observations. They even invented the zero before anyone else did – probably around a thousand years BC.’

  Carl leaned towards the camera on his laptop. ‘So if they were such an impressive bunch, how come a few hundred Spanish Conquistadores managed to wipe them out in just a couple of years?’

  ‘You’re thinking of the Aztecs. The Maya were much earlier, and most of their civilisation collapsed several centuries before the Spaniards arrived. There are dozens – perhaps hundreds – of enormous abandoned Maya sites like Tikal, Palenque, Coba and Edzna. The jungle reclaimed a lot of them, and many of them are still waiting to be cleared. They look so impressive! I really want to spend some time over there exploring them.’

  Carl grinned. ‘Well, I hope that one day you do.’

  Carl’s resolve to get back to work was unconvincing, so Matt launched another topic of conversation.

  ‘So what’s the homework?’

  ‘I’ve got to write a paper for the start of next term about personal identity and the theory of mind. I have to decide whether I think that personal identity is maintained over time and whether there really is any such thing as a ‘self’. A lot of philosophers use thought experiments to help draw out their intuitions, and I get rather distracted by discussions of artificial intelligence and brains in vats. The trouble with philosophy is that a lot of it’s science fiction without the fancy dress.’

  ‘That sounds like fun!’ Matt laughed.

  ‘Yeah, it is,’ Carl conceded, ‘but you can find yourself reading about some pretty nutty stuff.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, for instance there’s a group of people who believe the arrival of conscious, super-intelligent machines is imminent, and they want to prepare the world for something called the technological Singularity.’

  ‘What on earth’s a technological Singularity? I mean, I know what a mathematical Singularity is, but I’m guessing that’s not what they’re talking about.’

  Carl nodded. ‘From what I’ve read it’s what happens when somebody creates the first conscious machine intelligence. There’s an intelligence explosion, and the future beyond that point is hard or impossible to predict or even imagine, except that we join forces with the machine intelligence and it takes us to the next level. Some of these people call themselves transhumanists.’

  ‘Sounds like the kind of thing Simon Jones would be interested in. I’m seeing him tomorrow: I’ll ask him if he’s heard of it.’

  ‘Jonesy?’ Carl said, surprised. ‘I didn’t know you were in touch with him?’

  ‘I’m not really, but he was incredibly helpful with my preparation for the Cambridge entrance exam, so when he asked me to go back and speak to this year’s sixth-formers who are applying, I couldn’t really say no.’

  ‘Mr Charitable!’ Carl teased. ‘You’re such a sucker for that sort of thing.’

  Matt shrugged, ill-at-ease with praise, even if it was ironic. ‘I don’t mind.’ He paused, looking away from the screen as he divulged another motive. ‘And he knew my dad.’

  Carl and Matt had known each other for too long, and were too comfortable in each other’s company, for this mention of Matt’s father to embarrass them. But it created a hiatus, which Carl waited for Matt to finish. Very brigh
t, and a committed contrarian, Carl occasionally succumbed to the temptation to show off with a clever remark that would have been better left unsaid. But he was also acutely perceptive, and on this occasion he knew instinctively that the right thing to do was to let his friend resume the conversation in his own time.

  ‘So . . . er, any plans for the weekend?’ Matt asked eventually.

  ‘Have to see the Blade Runner remake! Thought I might go along on Saturday afternoon. Interested?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess,’ Matt agreed, unconvinced. ‘Seems a pointless thing to have done, but I guess we have to go.’

  ‘It’ll make a lot of money,’ Carl replied, ‘if only because of reactions like that. The trailer looks good, and the original hasn’t aged all that well. When was the last time you watched it?’

  ‘Not for a few years, it’s true. OK, you’re on. How about Saturday afternoon, if we can get back by six? I’m going to a party with Alice on Saturday evening, and she’s staying the night, so I have to be positively vetted by her parents again over dinner first.’

  ‘There’s a showing at two, so you could easily get to Alice’s in time for dinner. In fact, she could come along – especially if she wants to bring a friend.’

  Carl’s sly grin was unconvincing, even via Skype. Matt always thought it odd that someone as smart as Carl was so lacking in confidence around girls. He and Carl reversed the usual stereotypes: Carl, the philosophy, politics and economics student, became mute and flustered in the company of women, even though his black hair, green eyes and dark complexion made an attractive combination. Meanwhile Matt, a mathematician, was going out with one of the hottest girls from their school.

  Matt and Carl had met a decade ago, in the early days of secondary school. Their friendship had lasted for almost half their young lives, and was unchanged when they went to different universities – Carl to Oxford, and Matt to Cambridge. Drawn together by the understanding that they were among the brightest kids in the school, they were saved from competitive friction by the fact that Carl leaned to the humanities while Matt gravitated towards maths and the sciences. It was a common interest in computers and computer games that sealed their friendship – together with a shared passion for exploring big, unanswerable questions. Down the years they had invested countless hours in the hallowed ritual of slaughtering virtual enemies, alternating between that and discussing half-understood profundities about life and the universe.

  Although they were indigenous citizens of the world-wide web, their introduction to the world of computing came just before the arrival of broadband, so they witnessed the incredible flowering of digital possibility in the early years of the new millennium. They were fully aware of the rapid march of technology – after all they were avid pioneers of each new generation of computing software and hardware. But to them it was simply the natural order of things, neither fearsome nor magical. They knew on a theoretical level that progress had not always been this fast, but to the extent that they ever thought about it, they considered the bad old days a barbaric historical hinterland – an unfortunate phase which humanity had been obliged to endure until personal computers came along to usher in the information age.

  Despite this, they were of course subject to the same drives and imperatives that have inspired and plagued young males for countless millions of years.

  ‘Not Alice’s kind of thing, as I’m sure you can imagine,’ Matt said. ‘She’d rather spend the afternoon watching a rugby match.’

  ‘True. I can’t quite see what pulls you two together: you have totally different interests.’

  ‘Are you kidding?,’ Matt spluttered, even though Carl was reprising a well-worn conversation. ‘She’s gorgeous! And somehow I feel natural around her. I can’t explain it: I guess it’s what they call chemistry.’

  ‘Biology, more like. And yes, I do get that part, but to be blunt, you’re a nerd and she likes jocks. I’ve always thought that Jemma would be a better match for you. And I can think of several guys who would be a better match for Alice.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence! Yeah, Jemma’s a great girl, but Alice is . . . well, Alice is special. And I’ll have you know I am not a nerd: I’m a geek.’

  Carl snorted. ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Nerds have no social skills whatsoever. Geeks are normal people who just happen to have a strong interest in science and science fiction. A geek is someone who wonders what sex is like in zero gravity. A nerd is someone who wonders what sex is like.’

  Carl laughed. ‘I like that. Fair enough: you’re a geek. OK, I really have to do some work now. See you on Saturday.’

  THREE

  The two men on the floor cowered, half-seated, half-lying. They had kicked themselves backwards until they were pressed against the wall and could go no further. Two other men stood over them. One was smartly dressed and in his mid to late-thirties. He looked very fit, with blond hair and clear blue eyes. The other was a huge man, wearing nondescript clothing but with a physical presence that commanded attention – and fear. He looked every inch the retired special forces soldier which in fact he was. With a very short haircut, broken nose and cauliflower ears, he was carrying a few pounds because his fitness regime was more relaxed than it had been. But he was a powerful man, and very focused.

  ‘Trying to blackmail me was very stupid.’ the blond-haired man said calmly to the men on the floor. ‘And annoying too, because it forces me to do something that I didn’t want to.’

  ‘We’re sorry!’ stuttered one of the men on the floor, kicking his legs out again, trying to push himself back through the wall and to somewhere else. Anywhere else. ‘It’s just a misunderstanding, really. We just wanted to make a sort of a deal.’

  The blond-haired man’s eyes narrowed and his mouth hardened into an expression of contempt. ‘Now you’re insulting my intelligence.’

  He looked across at the soldier and nodded.

  The prone man looked up at the soldier in terror. He raised his arm, but he had neither the time nor the strength to deflect the huge fist that came crashing down into the side of his face. His head smacked hard against the wall, and jerked downwards into his shoulder at an unnatural angle. Blood and several other fluids exploded from his cratered face. Dazed, his head lifted slightly, in time to meet another sickening blow. This time the head stayed hanging at a crazy angle, and there was no more movement from him. With his left hand, the soldier grabbed the man by the neck and lifted him bodily into the air. He turned the body round to face the room, drew back his right arm, and delivered a sledgehammer blow that propelled the body a full ten feet before it fell to the floor, lifeless and with its face mangled beyond recognition.

  The other man on the floor stared in horror. As the soldier turned to face him, his legs kicked back wildly as he pleaded. ‘No! Please, no! I’ll do anything . . . ! Please . . . !’

  The blond-haired man looked on impassively as the soldier reached down, grabbed both sides of the man’s head and yanked it savagely, turning it a full 180 degrees. The man’s outstretched arms fell limp to his sides as he died a swift and relatively painless death.

  The blond-haired man nodded briefly, appreciatively. ‘Good. Clean yourself up, then put these two in plastic bags with some weights, and throw them overboard. Do it from the submarine loading bay so that no-one sees you.’

  The soldier looked at him blankly, sensing that there were further instructions coming. The blond-haired man smiled.

  ‘You’re right, I do have another job for you. Our guest is still refusing to co-operate, so I need to generate some more options. I want you to do some reconnaissance work. Have the chopper pilot fly you to Brighton and check into our hotel there. Hire a car – something nondescript that won’t attract attention, like a silver Japanese hatchback. It will have to have darkened windows, though. I want you to spend a few days monitoring the movements of someone that I may soon want to talk to. He lives in a small town, so you’ll have to be discreet.’


  He paused, smiling again. ‘But you’re good at that, aren’t you.’

  The soldier made no reply.

  FOUR

  Matt looked up from his coffee and glanced at his old high school teacher again. He looks older, and slightly shorter, Matt thought. Obviously he isn’t – it’s me that has changed, not him. But it doesn’t feel that way. Perhaps his greying red hair is a little thinner. But his penetrating blue eyes have lost none of their darting sharpness.

  It was a couple of years since he had seen Simon, and a great deal had changed in Matt’s life since then. He had spent the first half of his gap year working for a well-respected games development company in Brighton. When they received some software from him, written on a speculative basis, they were impressed enough to invite him to join the team creating their latest blockbuster, and to pay him a proper grown-up salary. He had only been hoping to secure a role as an unpaid intern so this was a tremendous boost to his self-esteem, and he thoroughly enjoyed the experience of collaborating on a huge creative project with talented people, dealing with the pressure of demanding deadlines and exacting quality standards.

  He made friends with another intern, a young New Yorker named Sam. Sam invited Matt to come and stay with his family in Manhattan when he returned home. Matt didn’t need to think twice: visiting New York was a long-standing ambition. New York City made an immense impression on the 19 year-old English boy: its scale, its energy and its swagger suffused him, and made him feel that his life before had been comfortable, parochial and . . . well, small. He spent a magical month just walking up and down the avenues during the days, visiting museums and galleries, sitting in Central Park; and in the evenings hanging out with Sam and his friends in lively bars and clubs. When he got home, his parents, although enormously proud of their son’s initiative and delighted by his newly expanded horizons, spent a couple of weeks tactfully bringing him back down to earth.