Déjà Vu: A Technothriller

by Hocking, Ian

  The Metadillo

  David heard a twig snap. The sound came from behind him. He realised that the steady background noise of tiny animals – forest static – had ceased. He turned.

  It was three metres in length. Its eyes were multifaceted. Covering the shoulders, back and limbs were rigid metal-like panels. They glistened in a light that only David could see. A knight crawling silently on all fours. Its profile was low; its legs worked beautifully. Its feet sank far into the soft humus. The creature was heavy.

  The multifaceted eyes did not move. David wanted to run, but the creature was interesting. It had a predatory stalk, but its 360-degree eyes were better adapted for watchfulness. And they were insectile. The creature would only be able to detect motion. Or body heat.

  He needed to stop thinking.

  This was a predator emerging from the pitch-black.

  He needed to freeze the computer’s program.

  Its mouth opened. Quite silently. Inside were three rows of teeth. The second lay behind the first, the third behind the second. David had enough time to think of one word – shark – when it froze, settled, and sprang. Its snout dug into his chest and flipped him aside. He impacted a tall, hard tree and slid slowly down the trunk. In the virtual world, his back was scored by a thousand thorny fingers. In the real world, the microbots formed razor-like edges and copied the pattern faithfully. He shouted, half in pain, half in anger.

  “Computer, give me supervisor access. Password is Prometheus.”

  The opaque rectangle of the command console appeared and obscured his view. He heard a scream – his own, he realised, his own. “Computer, free- ” he began, and then saw a small arrow of metal fly through the desktop. It happened so fast that it simply became a memory before he experienced it. The arrow was in his neck. The creature had pinned him to the tree. Why? He waited for the blood to pour but it did not. The stiletto plugged its own wound.

  Unused, the opaque desktop became transparent. He saw the creature. It moved left and right like a crab. The movements became stylised and repetitive. It pounded the forest floor his front legs. He heard deep roots crack. Finally, it shuffled backward and sat on its haunches. It took a deep breath – it has lungs, he thought – and bellowed towards the sky. There was an answering call from miles away.

  David swallowed carefully. Dinner is served.

  It walked towards him.

  David did not dare move. The stiletto might snick an artery yet. But he managed the words, because he knew only they would save his life. His voice was hoarse and he could taste blood at the back of his throat. He desperately wanted to cough. “Computer, freeze program.”

  “Permission denied. Unable to match user with voice records.”

  The creature stopped directly before him. It knelt and regarded him closely. Did it realise that it looked upon its Creator? Did it relish this power?

  Slowly, its mouth opened again. David imagined the legions of microbots ready to assume the shape of those teeth. The New World computer would kill him.

  There was a sound in the undergrowth. The creature turned. A spear struck its flank and fell to the ground. The creature shifted to face the threat. David could not.

  The creature – Metadillus carcaradon, mused David – seemed to drift, not walk, across the path. There was no sound. Until Bruce Shimoda, PhD, whose body was lying near-dead in its cold tomb, burst into view. He was wearing a combination of leather and metal armour. He looked like an American football player. He shouted, “Get some, get some!” He swung a vine-lasso above his head. There was a rock on the end of it. David wondered if might lasso this creature, this metadillo, but he remembered that this world was utterly dark. Bruce had no source of illumination. The rock lasso was his antenna.

  The metadillo charged after him. David sat in silence at the base of the tree. He heard Bruce’s war cry and the clang of metal on metal.

  He fainted.

  Saskia Makes a Discovery

  Saskia awoke and wanted to be sick. The world was distorted. Light was scattered somehow. There were shapes. Forces. She was being prodded. She rubbed her eyes. It was a policeman.

  She took his baton and pulled it. The policeman pulled indignantly in the opposite direction. They danced until, with a wrench, he reclaimed it. He was breathless. “I could arrest you for that.” He added, “I thought you were dead.”

  Saskia pushed herself upright and looked around. She was outside the hat shop. Metal blinds had been pulled down over the frontage and secured with fierce locks. In marker pen, someone had written, “Closed indefinitely”.

  She considered her situation. The shop was her only lead. Perhaps she might chase the two men to the airport, but airlines did not permit access to flight manifests without a judge’s warrant. She could not search the shop without a warrant either. Breaking into it was a possibility, but how could she get the records she needed? Customer receipts were not kept on paper. They were held on a computer. Breaking into that would be far more difficult. And there was the additional risk of being caught and losing time in the process.

  She needed another lead. She needed to think. The time was 8:15 p.m. She had been unconscious for four hours. The little hat maker had covered her with a blanket.

  “Officer, I apologise.” She produced her wallet and flashed her ID. “I need a helicopter back to FIB immediately, please.”

  He scowled. She knew that most police officers did not trust private detectives, even if they were in the employ of the state. They saw the job as glamorous and overpaid. “Yes, detective.”

  “Help me up?”

  He offered the baton.

  The traffic helicopter banked sharply and landed on the roof of FIB headquarters. Saskia jumped out and crouched to avoid the whirling blades. Moments later the helicopter pulled away and Saskia took a lift down to the 53rd floor. Once in her office, she walked to the transparent window and asked the computer to play some Vivaldi.

  “Which symphony?”

  “Four seasons.”

  “Which piece?”

  “Winter.”

  The office was still hot. She had a long, cold shower. Her ear was bruised and rang like a bell recently struck. Her shoulder was grazed.

  Half an hour later, she sat down at the desk. She drummed her fingers. She wanted to go home but felt compelled to remain in the office.

  “Computer, play the tape again. Go back to 6:34 p.m.”

  The wall showed the four cameras. The secretary came into view. Once more, there was a knock at the door. The murderer had arrived. Once more, the secretary went to open it. Saskia leaned forward. The tight angle was frustrating.

  The murder occurred. She rewound the tape. The murder happened again. Each time she felt nothing. She drummed her fingers. The polished wood reflected the underside of her hand. She stopped.

  “Computer, back five seconds. Forward two seconds.”

  The images froze on the murderer as he wiped the knife on the secretary’s collar. “Close up on the knife.”

  “What is the knife?”

  Saskia thought for a moment. “The rectangular, shiny object oriented at twenty degrees from the vertical on camera one.”

  The computer zoomed in. The knife filled the frame. On its surface was a grainy, ghostly image. “Expand camera one so that it fills the screen.” Obediently, the image expanded. Saskia looked at the reflection again. She walked to the other end of the room and squinted to blur her vision. Yes. The knife blade reflected a complex, oval object. It had to be the murderer’s face.

  “Computer, can you analyse the image on the surface of the knife?”

  “What for?”

  Saskia smiled. “Because I told you.”

  There was a pause. “For what?”

  “I want to have a true representation of whatever is reflected in that surface. Factor in everything: probable surface of the knife, lighting conditions, motion blur, everything. But don’t send this away for analysis. Analyse it yourself.”

>   “If I send the image away, it will take seconds to analyse. If I process it myself, it will take hours.”

  “How many hours?”

  “Twelve hours, plus or minus one.”

  Saskia looked at her watch. It was eight o’clock. That meant the image processing would finish just before the repair man arrived and, with him, the end of her career. Perhaps her life. The death penalty was often given to murderers and rapists, though lately some murderers had had their brains wiped and sent back out into the community as street cleaners. Saskia shuddered at the thought.

  “Saskia?”

  “Yes?”

  “Should I continue?”

  “Yes.”

  It would be a long night. She still didn’t want to go back to her apartment. She took an old tennis ball from her desk draw. She hefted it. She bounced it. She threw it at the wall and caught it.

  From his frame, Simon watched. His eyes seemed to follow her. They were reproachful. In the corners of the room the computer’s speech recognition cameras remained trained on her head.

  The Rendezvous

  In David’s nightmare, a dark shape pressed a knife into his throat. He heard a question: “Isn’t he pleased?” He tried to scream but could not; tried to move but could not. Then, abruptly, he awoke to see Bruce Shimoda fiddling with the stiletto that had skewered him, through the throat, to the tree. The sun was high in the sky.

  Bruce shifted his grip and David hissed. “Watch it.”

  “I am,” Bruce replied.

  “Then watch it better.”

  Bruce waggled some more, then gave up and sat down. He coughed into his hand, looked at the contents, and wiped the palm on his thigh. This was their first conversation in twenty years. It seemed natural to fall back into their bickering routine.

  But Bruce was now in his early twenties. The coded instructions in his DNA had been followed faithfully by the computer. He had a week’s worth of beard. His hair was greasy and new. His acne scars were gone. His eyes, in particular, were bright and clear. They had none of the random, roaming stare that they had once had. Bruce Shimoda, blind in real life, could now see. Through the wetwire connection, tiny robots had carried cables barely nanometres across into his brain, uniting computer and brain in the most fundamental way.

  “Hey. Good to see you,” said David.

  Bruce smiled. Was it really Bruce? He looked more like Bruce’s younger brother. So much individuality had been lost – or gained, or both – with Bruce’s new eyes. “It’s good to see anything.”

  David bristled at his flippancy. “Is that why you came? Why’d you spend those days firing up this old computer? You’ll bloody die in here.”

  “I – we should talk about it later. The metal shark may come back.”

  “Where is it?”

  “They can’t swim. I ran over a log that’s fallen over the river, down there, about a mile. It slid off, into the water.” He chuckled in his reverie. “It was fun the first time. I didn’t know it would work.”

  “Look, talking about time. We don’t have much of it. There was a collapse in the centre. McWhirter’s dead. They’re blasting down to rescue me.” He thought of Caroline. “Us.”

  Bruce nodded. “We need to find some shelter. The shark’s call reaches for miles. Others will come.”

  He adjusted his skins and rubbed his hands together. The light was fading. Unlike David, he could not address the computer directly. He had no privileges. “Now, let’s get that dart out.”

  He took hold of the stiletto with both hands and put one fur-clad foot next to David’s head. David closed his eyes. Bruce tugged and he felt the shaft slide through his neck. When it was out, he clapped a hand to the wound. Blood trickled between his fingers, but not much.

  “Let me see,” he said.

  Bruce showed him the dart. It was nearly fifteen centimetres long and as thick as a pencil lead. The point was needle-sharp. “They immobilize their prey. They never eat alone. It’s a social thing.”

  “Is it poisonous?”

  “I don’t think so. Come on, before it gets dark.”

  They walked down the valley and crossed the river that Bruce had mentioned. Insects dotted the air over its banks. It did not look strong enough to wash away the metadillo. David repeated his attempts to access the computer. None were successful. The stiletto had somehow damaged his vocal chords. His voice was lower.

  “Computer, give me access. Password is Prometheus.”

  “Password rejected.”

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  It was murky on the valley floor. This forest now had a name. He called it Mirkwood and it was so. Its strange blue fronds; its dampness; its predators. Was the metadillo watching them? He spun in a circle as he walked. There were too many shapes and too many hiding places. Through breaks in the canopy, he saw a snow-capped mountain. The peak was still bright with daylight.

  David could feel his youthful muscles ache – aha, but these muscles did not ache. The aching muscles were in another universe, under Scotland, in the ruined research centre, in a glass coffin along with his body. He imagined the legion of microbots forming facsimiles of the terrain under each foot as he pressed down. The same microbots had assumed the shape of the metadillo’s stiletto.

  Bruce lead him to the right. The ground began to incline gently. The vegetation thinned. David forged on. His hiking boots were excellent; Bruce’s skins were not. He trudged as though his legs were too heavy. Often, he stopped to steady himself against a trunk, or cough.

  They came to a small cabin high on the hill. The trees were larger, higher and spaced at wider intervals. The cabin was built on stony ground. David had forgotten it existed. It was modelled on an Alaskan ranger station he had found in a hiking magazine. A designer had rendered it in 3D and presto, by dint of Word, the cabin had appeared. It overlooked the lower forest. The valley deepened to the south and David could almost see the mist of a waterfall fifty kilometres away.

  “Quite,” Bruce gasped, “a,” he gasped again, “view. You want some food?”

  “Leave it,” David said. “We don’t have much time. I could be rescued at any moment.”

  Bruce leaned on his knees to give his lungs some more space. He flapped a hand. “I’m starving. I’m getting some food.”

  At length, Bruce entered the cabin. He knocked against a crude wind chime and David realised that he not felt the wind since emerging from his car outside the hotel. Perhaps that was a subtlety beyond the artful microbots. He looked up at the darkening sky and saw nothing. There were no stars. He felt as though this hill was a Tower of Babel, but he was God, wasn’t he?

  Not until the computer recognised his voice.

  He approached the cabin. He crouched to examine the wood of the veranda. It was not wood. He knocked. It was very hard. It had no echo. It did not have a grain. He walked to the corner of the cabin and ran his fingers along the edge where the front met the side. He withdrew his hand quickly and looked at his palm. There was nothing at first, and then a hair-line tear seemed to open by itself. Blood slipped out. He made a fist and looked closer. The front and side of the cabin did not precisely align. The overlap was razor sharp because this universe had no atoms. In fact, it was infinitely sharp.

  The veranda ringed the cabin, so David walked around. He looked through a window and saw Bruce making fire with a bow and dry tinder. There was a brick fireplace, armchairs and other normal furnishings. Rendered by the graphic artist. Perhaps armchairs were rock-hard. He walked on.

  He daydreamed that a race of intelligent beings evolved in this universe and developed science. Physicists would discover that matter is continuous, not discrete. Astronomers would find that their planet is the only planet, their star the only star. They would correctly see themselves as the centre of the universe. Mathematicians might uncover the principles of the general computing machine. If built, it would never outrun the computer that ran their universe: and what, indeed, would they hypothe
sise the limiting factor to be? God? They could use science to uncover their God.

  It was getting too dark to see.

  Smiling to himself, he walked inside.

  “I was ten years old when I lost my sight. It was diabetes. The doctor had warned my mother about it and she had warned me but, well, I didn’t listen. It didn’t happen quickly. Oh no. I saw it coming.” He broke another leg off the meat he was eating. He tossed it to David.

  David caught it, burned his hand, and dropped it. “Maybe later.”

  Bruce’s laughter was interrupted by a cough. “How much longer do we have?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. Maybe no time at all. How long since the metadillo attacked me?”

  “Metadillo. Nice word. About two hours.”

  David leaned back and glanced at the window. It was black. As black as when he had arrived. The days on Planet Shimoda lasted less than three hours. More than ever, David wanted to access the computer and increase the brightness. That would put him on even sensory terms with the metal predator. The rain poured down. Maybe it would rust.

  “Well,” he said, “they could arrive at any minute.”

  “Who could?” Bruce asked absently. He coughed again.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Bruce smiled. There were red flecks on his teeth. “My guess is a virus. Remember that evolution is working just fine in this universe. We’ve got all sorts of predators, herbivores, omnivores, insectile thingies, bacteria, and, right at the bottom, viruses. I wasn’t born in this world. I have no history of exposure to any microscopic organisms as a child.”

  David nodded. “Your immune system hasn’t been toughed up. Vaccinated.”

  “That’s right. But there are other systems in my body that – in our world, where my body was ‘designed’ – need environmental stimulation to develop. My visual system, for example. We know that it would never develop without light. And yet mine has.”