by Hocking, Ian
He checked his watch. When rescue came, they would have been underground for two hours. He was suddenly not so sad that McWhirter had died. An army man to the last. “It is recommended,” continued Ego, “that you log these data with an independent server for pollution liability.”
“The air,” Caroline said. “Is it still radioactive?”
David put Ego away. “Yes. We haven’t got long,” he said. “Come with me.”
“What is it?” she asked. She played her torch over the sand. The light made rainbows in the glass.
“Technology that is twenty years old, but still far in advance of anything commercially available. We called it an immersion chamber. There are two more. It’s linked to the computer.” He crouched and wiped some dirt from the glass. “You seem very interested in the technology.”
“I’m naturally curious,” she replied. Her gun was leaning against the liquid storage device in the other room, forgotten.
“You see the stuff at the bottom of the chamber? It looks like sand, but take one of those grains and look at it under a microscope and you’ll see a little robot. They look like metal bumblebees. There are billions of them. When the chamber is active, they engulf the user in a cloud. They work in unison. If the user steps forward, they will form a hard surface under each foot and allow him to move as though walking. By becoming immovable, or charging into the user, they can mimic any surface in the same way, and mimic any consistency – liquid, gas, solid – and, through vibration, temperature.”
There was a pause. In the distance, some concrete settled. “What about a knife blade?”
David shook his head. “You don’t even try to get away from that military stereotype, do you?”
“I suppose I’m a fatalist. How are you going to breathe in there?”
“There’s a mask. It’ll cover my face.” He looked at his watch. “There’s an hour and fifty minutes left.”
He took off his hat, coat and one of his jumpers. When he undid his trousers, Caroline stepped back.
“Relax,” he said. “The user goes naked. That’s what the microbots – those little robots – are configured for. When I appear in the computer, I’ll be given clothes automatically. Virtual clothes.”
David kicked off his boots and removed his coat. He removed his shirt and jeans. Disconcertingly, Caroline did not look away. “Look,” he said, “Something may go wrong. The emergency release for the chamber is that big red handle over there.” He pointed across the room. Carole shone her torch obligingly. “If you see me make two claps above my head like this –” he demonstrated – “then pull the handle. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
David smiled crookedly and entered the immersion chamber. It was the size of a coffin. When the door closed and the rest of the dark laboratory became an indistinct blur, he said, “Go,” and the dust storm began. A mask descended and he attached it to his face. The seal was airtight. By now the tiny particles were flying about him in a rage, and on the interior of the mask, a picture began to form.
The Maker of Hats
Saskia felt the sweat run down her back. It itched. Her foray into the building’s security records had come to nothing. The records were blank. Somebody had erased them. From her desk, the picture of Simon stared. Saskia was not in the photograph. She scowled and rubbed her back against the chair.
“Computer,” she said. “I...” Her voice trailed away. She looked into the corners of the ceiling. Tiny cameras followed her movements.
“I beg your pardon, Saskia?”
“Computer, you use those cameras to help disambiguate spoken commands. Do you record the footage?”
“Yes. The footage is kept for one week, to use as a statistical aid for difficult utterances.”
Saskia tapped her blotter. It became reflective then changed to display a graphical user interface. “Show me on my desktop.”
“Certainly. It will take a moment.”
Another icon appeared on the blotter. She tapped it and turned around to face the window. “Play it on the window.”
The window darkened as the liquid crystal elements arranged themselves into a display with four equal sections. Each showed the view from one of the four cameras in the main office. They held Saskia’s face in extreme close-up. The computer had no cameras in the bathroom or kitchen.
“Go back to Friday.”
“Done. This is 12:07 p.m.”
Saskia watched. All four cameras were trained on her secretary, Mary. From the limited background, Saskia guessed she was seated at her small desk near the door. She looked at the woman. Mary. She still had no feelings for her.
“Jump to 7 p.m.”
The computer did so. Each camera showed an empty room.
“Back to 6:30. Show the time on-screen.”
It showed the secretary again, seated at her desk. Saskia waited and then, as the timer clicked over to 6:34, there was a knocking sound. The secretary stood. She walked to the door and opened it. The cameras moved jerkily, tight on Mary’s head, so she could see Mary in great detail, but little else. Mary was expectant, then puzzled, then afraid. Pan out, Saskia willed.
The computer did.
As the murderer entered the room, two of the four cameras zoomed out, targeted his head, and zoomed in. He wore a broad-brimmed fedora. Because each camera was high on the wall, the hat masked everything but his hairless chin. Saskia thumped her desk.
It was difficult to see precisely what happened next. In little more than two seconds, the murderer grabbed Mary and stabbed her behind the ear. Saskia listened for clues and admired the murderer’s skill. She saw the secretary’s surprise and then her sleepiness. Both figures sank to the floor. The murderer laid her almost tenderly.
The murderer wiped his blade on Mary’s collar. Without ceremony, he began the process of hauling her towards the kitchen. Mary was a big girl and he struggled.
“Computer, stop it there. Go back to the full-length shot of the bloke who walked in.”
“I do not understand. Speak more slowly, please.”
“Back five seconds. Back five seconds. Forward two seconds. Back three frames. OK, print that on paper.”
A hot piece of paper slid from the desk. Saskia flapped it. It had some motion blur, but showed the murderer mid-stride. His height was average. He wore a long raincoat. He wore gloves. He didn’t have a beard. He had narrow shoulders. That was it. She fed the paper into her shredder, but the feeder jammed and spat the paper back out.
“Computer, can you clean up that image? Sharpen it?”
“Yes.”
Nothing happened.
“Do it.”
The image sharpened. “Print that again.”
Once more, a hot piece of paper slid into her hand. The man’s clothing was unremarkable. Perhaps an expert could tell her something, but they looked perfectly ordinary. Next, she scrutinized the hat. The image processing had revealed a band of blue and gold around the rim. And, yes, a little badge. A golden eagle.
Bingo, as Simon would say.
Saskia pressed her ID against the glass and pointed at the door. An assistant, exquisitely dressed, smiled under his pencil-thin moustache. He was hanging a feather boa in the shop window. He unlocked the door. Saskia shook the rain from her umbrella and asked for the manager. The assistant asked, “Have I seen you somewhere before?”
“Sorry?”
“Excuse me. I’ll get Jean-François.”
The assistant vanished.
The sign above the door claimed that the shop had been established in the nineteenth century. Saskia looked around suspiciously. It was the kind of place that did not need to display its wares. Customers knew what they came for: the satisfaction of exclusivity and price.
A little man emerged from the backroom. He wore dungarees and delicate, expensive shoes. His hands hung limply from his wrists. A pair of pince-nez sat on the bridge of his nose, so far down that they seemed quite useless for anything but the appreciation of his beau
tiful shoes. His head was hairless but for large pork-chop sideburns. He held out his hand and she took it. Saskia looked down. He was holding a handkerchief.
“I apologise, miss,” he said, in French. “I suffer from a delicate constitution.”
“I need your help,” Saskia said.
The man spread his hands in supplication, as though she had offered him something so expensive he could not possibly accept. “Everybody needs my help, madam.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Has someone else asked for your help?”
He smiled. “You are a detective, yes?”
“Yes.” Saskia retrieved her wallet and held it up. She squeezed the sides and it became transparent, revealing her ID. The man did not seem to glance at it.
“Ms Saskia Brandt. Welcome. I am Jean-François Champollion. I am descended from the Champollion who successfully deciphered the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt.”
Saskia smiled politely. Her French was not quite proficient enough to understand what he had said. She smiled anyway. “I understand you make hats.”
Jean-Francois shrugged. He seemed to agree but with reluctance. “I ‘make hats’, yes.”
Saskia removed the computer printout from her pocket. It had been folded and unfolded many times. The edges were corrugated with finger marks. She offered it, but he made no move to take the paper.
“Do you sell this hat, Jean-Francois?”
“Hmm?” He craned forward. He devoted equal time to the paper and her chest. She shook the paper to get his attention.
“The hat.”
“The hat, yes.”
Saskia sagged. She had been to ten hat shops in the last three hours. All of them had fingered the picture. None recognised the hat. Jean-Francois, however, clapped a hand to his forehead and exclaimed.
“You recognise it?”
“It is the eagle.”
“The what?”
He said, “Der Adler, you might say in German. Not only did I sell this hat, young lady, but I made it. Let me show you.”
They walked to the back of the shop. It was surprisingly small and dark. They shuffled past the exquisitely dressed attendant, who was standing near an alley window smoking a cigar. He stared at her. His tongue slowly emerged, snake-like, and tickled the end of the cigar. She remembered his earlier question. Have I seen you somewhere before?
They climbed down the narrowest stairwell Saskia had ever seen, slid through a tiny door and entered a room that was filled with hat boxes. It was lit by a single swinging bulb. Somewhere, high in the shadows, was the ceiling. Water dripped. She heard rats. Jean-François Champollion shouted, “Level ten, number three.”
There was squirt of compressed air and a box came sailing down through the void and landed in the little man’s arms. His hands were tiny. He gave her the box and removed the lid. Inside was a navy-blue fedora with an eagle on the band. “This is a design exclusive to my establishment.”
“Excellent,” she said. “Does it sell well?”
“Madame, I make them to order. This particular one is for an Italian duke.”
“How many have you made in the past six months?”
He paused and twiddled a sideburn in his fingers. “...Three.”
“I need to know who you sold them to.”
The man smiled. “Of course, madame. Please wait here.” He left and closed the door behind him.
Saskia waited for a while. She began to feel uneasy. Why did he take her to this room? What did she possibly need to see in a room full of hats? The light bulb swung. Shadows stretched and contracted.
She tried the door handle.
It didn’t move. She barged against it. Nothing.
There was a puff of compressed air and a hat box dropped out of the air. She stepped aside but it clipped her shoulder and she stumbled into workbench. Tools clattered to the floor.
She ran against the door once more. She hissed in pain. Wood splintered. Her shoulder would be like pulp in the morning. Her chest would be worse.
Another box hit the floor. And another.
She reached down and grabbed one of the fallen tools. It was some kind of awl. She forced it into the gap between the door and its frame. The wood split easily. There was a hiss of compressed air from above. She took one last run against the door and it fell like a drawbridge. She ran up the steps. At the top was the backroom. It was empty. She crashed into the shop proper.
The hat maker and the attendant were standing by the door. The attendant was helping the old man into his coat. He was still smoking the cigar. They turned as Saskia approached.
The attendant first: she slapped the smouldering cigar into his mouth and, as he gagged, she pulled his buttoned jacket down to his elbows. To keep the old hat maker busy, she chopped the side of his throat. The attendant cowered. She grabbed his balls. He bit the cigar in two.
“OK, what are you going to tell me?” she asked.
“Huh-huh-have we met somewhere before?”
Saskia shook her head. She certainly did not want to hear that. She swivelled her wrist. “Hhmmph,” he said, and dropped.
She turned on the old hat maker and pressed the awl into his midriff. He backed away until he reached the coat rack.
“Tell me all about it.”
“We were only trying to protect ourselves.”
“From who?”
“I’m not allowed to say.”
“You have five seconds.”
“Don’t kill me!”
“Four seconds.”
“Very well. I will tell you. Please take your fingers away. Let me breathe.”
Saskia did so.
The hat maker looked relieved. He pulled out a gun.
She swore.
Someone grabbed her shoulders. It was the assistant. He pushed her against the door. She could see the street outside through its marbled glass. A small boy saw her. He tried to attract his mother’s attention but she pulled him along. The butt of the gun hit Saskia near her ear and she slid to the floor, switched off.
A Walk in the Woods
The world was distorted. Light was scattered somehow. There were shapes. Forces. Temperature. He writhed. He wanted to rub his eyes but the mask prevented him. Then he realised that the shapes were clouds. He was in the upper atmosphere of Shimoda, the virtual planet. He could see little.
He shivered. His virtual arms were covered by a shirt and, as he checked himself, he realised with some relief that the computer was working correctly. So far. It was accessing the liquid storage device, supplying sound through the earpieces, vision through the mask, and feel through the microbots.
“Supervisor,” said David. The computer heard the keyword and checked his voice against a database. His voice had not changed in the twenty years since he had last spoken.
It asked, “Password?”
David said, “Prometheus.”
A white square appeared before him. It was perfectly two-dimensional. The square displayed a standard graphical user interface: a file system with various options like open, move, copy and shut down. One icon would summon The Word, the programming language that controlled this universe. He moved his hand over this panel and an answering blue dot appeared beneath his index finger. A touch of the panel would select the option. He hesitated over ‘shut down’. It would stop the program. It would send him back into the real world forthwith, game over. He could not guess where it would send Bruce.
He touched another icon. It was a picture of his younger self. The computer represented all organisms with a long genome. For visitors like David, the computer used his DNA. Many years before, he had contributed a blood sample. It had been read, decoded, and used to construct his virtual body: his body as it would appear to the eyes of those creatures on Shimoda. He was young, fit, scarless and pale.
He smiled and dropped to the surface.
In another universe, David’s glass booth swung about its horizontal axis. His naked body floated, supported on its cushion of microbo
ts, oblivious to the real silence around him. The room was dark. Caroline was not there. She was in the main laboratory.
She bit her lip. Slowly, carefully, she drew a knife across her little finger. A red drop, shiny and bright by torchlight, fell upon a microscope slide. She sucked the wound. She placed a sliver of clear plastic on top of the blood and pressed. It bloomed into transparency.
David flew over lakes and trees, up valley walls he had not seen in years, past waterfalls barely changed, into grasslands and desert, over ice floes and black volcanic islands. Night fell in seconds. He touched down in a small glade near the equator. Nearby, he heard the bubbling of a hot spring. Shimoda had many. It was a truly alien planet. Alien too were the plants and trees around him. Their leaves were blue, not green, and typically angular. Blossoms came in all colours. It was difficult to remember they were essentially digital.
In the darkness, he could make out a path. Shimoda had no moon but he could adjust the brightness using the command console. He walked on. Under his virtual, perfectly fitting hiking boots he felt the forest floor. It was a spongy carpet of wet leaves and twigs. He would never smell it. Low branches and leaves touched him. He imagined they thought of him as God. Did they want to cure their ills? But they were beautiful trees.
Their weirdness washed away the anaesthetic of familiarity and made him think. He stopped, took a breath, took stock. Experience told him not to imagine his real body coexisting with its virtual counterpart. That would lead to nausea. He made a mental effort to place himself here, now, walking in the woods. The beautiful woods.
He sang a hiking song and disappeared from the view of the large creature that stalked him. It stepped onto the path. Sniffed the air. Though it move twice as fast as David, it followed him slowly and silently.
Caroline trod carefully. She did not want to cut her feet on debris. She glanced at the emergency release handle, then back at David, then at her watch. She approached the second of the three glass coffins. With the touch of a finger, the booth opened and she stepped inside. She was already naked. She was prepared. She fitted the mask over her face and felt the sting of the microbots as the fans stirred them into a storm.