Prediction

by Tony Batton

  Jenson shook his head. "Is that a coincidence?"

  Craig sighed. "I’m not sure there are coincidences anymore."

  Millie snorted. "You’re saying they wanted to be found?"

  Michael tapped the dot. "Let’s worry about that after we’ve found them."

  Craig stood up. "So what do we do now? Break in, all guns blazing?"

  Jenson smiled. "If that’s what we agree. Believe me, I have all the equipment we could possibly need right here."

  Ninety

  Eve sat at her kitchen table, staring into a cup of black coffee and wondering if there was anything she could do to help Michael. As a doctor Eve was not easily rattled, so she was not going to scurry away from London. She couldn’t live her life running from shadows of shadows. She would do whatever she could to help her friend and, if there was any justice in the world, the truth would out.

  She had called Nina to tell her what was happening, but she had been unable to get through. Although if she was honest, not being able to speak to Nina had been a relief. Michael's mother usually kept herself to herself, and rebuffed any overtures of friendship, showing only the parts of her that she wanted the world to see.

  Eve sighed and took another sip of coffee. Others might turn to alcohol to take the edge off, but she would rather sharpen her mind.

  A knock at the door startled her. Eve frowned and padded along the hallway to answer it. She was surprised to see Nina on the doorstep, wearing her familiar oversized glasses. They stood staring at each other for several moments.

  "I just heard the news," Nina said.

  "I’ve been trying to reach you, but kept getting your voicemail."

  "Sorry. There were some problems with my phone."

  They stared at each other again, then Eve coughed. "Would you like to come in?" She took a pace back and Nina stepped inside. As Eve closed the door, she noticed there was a large car parked opposite. She followed Nina into the kitchen, where she was already pouring herself a coffee from the percolator.

  "Do they suspect you too?" Nina asked gently.

  "What?" Eve asked.

  "I’m guessing those are policemen in the car outside, keeping an eye on you. Unless you’ve suddenly got a personal security detail."

  "I’m no more guilty than Michael is!" She paused. "You do believe your son is innocent, right?"

  "Oh I know him better than he knows himself. I’m sure this is all happening to teach him a lesson."

  Eve frowned. "I don’t understand. Are you saying you think this is doing him some good?"

  Nina closed her eyes. "I’m sorry. I’ve been a little distracted - I think someone’s been following me."

  "The police? Why would they follow you?"

  "I didn’t stop to ask." Nina reached forward and clasped Eve’s hand. "Has Michael said anything about… anything?"

  "Only that he didn’t do it. Maybe he got caught up in some mess caused by one of Infinity’s clients."

  "Did he say anything about his father?"

  Eve frowned. "Not recently. Why?"

  "Oh it doesn’t matter. Just thinking out loud."

  "Are you OK? You don’t look yourself."

  "Is that really surprising? My only child has been accused of murder. Look, I…" Nina went to sit down at the table, but slipped and, as she regained her balance, let the coffee cup fall. It shattered in an explosion of white porcelain and hot black liquid.

  "Don’t worry about it," Eve said. She grabbed the dustpan and brush, then knelt to sweep up the fragments. But, as she stood up, she became aware that something had changed.

  Three figures had appeared in the kitchen. They were dressed in black and carried what Eve suspected were automatic weapons.

  Nina moved towards her, gripping her shoulder tightly. "What is going on?"

  Eve looked around the room. "I have absolutely no idea."

  Ninety-One

  It looked like a regular Mercedes van on the outside, but almost every component had been upgraded or replaced. Kelly drove with a purpose, while Jenson rode next to her. Behind them sat Michael, Craig and Millie, all carrying ZAT assault rifles loaded with stun rounds and a tailored form of tear gas. They had gas masks on top of their heads ready to be deployed.

  Craig looked out of the one-way glass at the London lights. "Are we sure Kinek’s people won’t be armed?"

  "I have no data on that," said Millie. "Best to over prepare."

  "And what makes you think you can get inside without them realising it?"

  "With the arsenal of gear that Jenson had in the basement, we will get inside. At the least, we’ll be completely unpredictable." She tapped at the laptop she had open. "That said, I'm having difficulty picking up any active signal from the site. It’s like they’re offline."

  Craig shook his head. "It means they've either worked out how to mask it or it's already been switched off."

  "Or it's not there?" suggested Millie.

  "So much for knowing everything," muttered Michael. "Looks like we know nothing."

  The van halted outside their destination. They leapt out and ran up to the door. Kelly scanned the street while Jenson span a dial on his weapon, then pointed it at the lock. It pulsed with electricity and the door popped open.

  "Handy," Millie said.

  "Isn't technology amazing," Jenson replied.

  Michael pushed through the door. "Or amazingly terrible. Have you forgotten why we're here?" Emergency lighting was on inside the building. They moved quickly to the nearest door. Another shot from the rifle opened it. Behind was a staircase leading downwards. Three minutes later they emerged into a large hallway. At the end was a heavy fire door with a metal wheel-lock mechanism.

  "I'm still getting nothing," Craig said, holding up a small scanner. "Something is wrong."

  Jenson pulled on the hand wheel. "The rifle won’t work on a mechanical unit. It’s also locked. Astrid, can you pass me one of the shaped charges?"

  "I don’t think we’ll need it."

  They looked back at the wheel to find it rotating slowly. They all raised their weapons as it opened a crack.

  "Please don’t shoot. I’m unarmed," said a voice. The door opened further and a slim man emerged, his arms in the air, his face a faint green in the emergency lighting. "I'm sorry, but you're too late."

  "That’s Morton," Millie said. "I’ve seen his photo in the arrest record."

  "Too late for what?" Kelly asked.

  Morton rubbed a hand across his forehead. "Matters have taken an unexpected turn."

  "Cuff him."

  Michael did so, then they moved through the door and slowly down a corridor, emerging into what looked like an operations room. It stood idle and abandoned. The screens and computers were all switched off.

  "Where is everyone?" Jenson asked. "Did you get tipped off that we were coming?"

  "No," Morton replied, "but I assumed someone would be. Two hours ago I ordered the evacuation of the facility. These people were just doing a job. They didn’t deserve to get arrested. Listen to me, Agent Kelly. What has happened is very, very bad. We’d been noticing degraded performance for the last twenty-four hours, but just over two hours ago the system went offline." He nodded his head at the room in general. "This place is never offline."

  "You had a system fault?" Kelly asked, nodding to Millie and Craig, who ran over to one of the consoles and started working at it. "So what?"

  "Not a failure," Morton said. "I’m not an engineer, but I know when something is simply wrong. I went into the server room. Every warning LED was red. Total system failure. That shouldn’t be possible. We were told that the system shares resources with the other Kinek offices, yet it would seem they have all failed as well. The chances of such a systemic problem happening randomly are almost zero. Which means we have not been told the truth."

  Kelly frowned. "Why are you sharing all this?"

  "Because there is nothing left to protect. Kinek is… well, I thought it was dead. But I checked the s
ystem logs. There was a conscious act of disconnection. Wherever the Kinek engine is, we were simply cut off from it."

  "But isn’t this an organisation with hundreds of workers, multiple computer systems, operated in many countries?"

  "Apparently not. It's just this, here."

  "But what about all the people? The human part of your process?"

  "They were just operators. All the work, the analysis – the extrapolation, connection and prediction – was taking place in a single system."

  "You're saying that Kinek is effectively a single computer?"

  "That, and its connections to the net."

  "And where is it now?"

  Morton screwed up his fists. "Are you not listening? I have no idea. It could be anywhere. New York, Paris, Moscow, halfway up a mountain, on a tropical island. It could be half a mile down the street and we wouldn’t know. All it needs is power and data."

  Michael shook his head. "But why are you telling us all this? Won't your employer be unhappy?"

  "I don't know if I have an employer anymore. I cannot reach Marcia. I don’t even know who she is. Everything I’ve done has been a lie."

  Millie looked up from the console she was sitting at. "From what I can tell so far, he’s telling the truth."

  "So," Michael said, "whoever is behind all this, they got away. And there’s nothing we can do about it."

  Ninety-Two

  Michael sank into one of the abandoned chairs. "So Kinek was a sham: nothing more than smoke and mirrors to disguise the technology at its centre."

  Millie nodded. "And that technology – the Darwin system – is no longer here. Or maybe it never was."

  Jenson stood nearby, hands in his pockets. "I don’t understand how we’ve been several steps behind the whole way through."

  Michael put his head in his hands. "So much for thinking my knowing about the old underground works here was somehow relevant. It didn’t matter at all."

  Millie slapped her hand on one of the desks. "At some level what you did has to be relevant. Unless, of course, Craig programmed Darwin with a sick sense of humour."

  Craig shook his head. "You really need to stop thinking that I programmed the system. I set up the initial conditions and helped build its environment. After that I coached it. But ultimately it learned on its own and become a product of its own evolution. It was called Darwin for a reason."

  "Yeah, we get it," Jenson said.

  "So Darwin wants to continue evolving," Michael said. "Morton said the system has been erratic, with limited cycles. Maybe that’s because Darwin has already reached the limits of its present hardware."

  Millie hissed. "It really is planning to combine with Parallel."

  Kelly shook her head. "In real terms, what does that mean?"

  "That the problem is far worse than anticipated."

  "But our plan is the same," Jenson said. "We have to destroy it, if we can find it."

  "Unfortunately," Craig replied, "it's more complicated than that. When I designed Darwin, I built an emergency backup into the code. If the system senses hardware failure, it will distribute itself: ‘spore’ is the technical term."

  "You gave it a survival instinct?" Millie asked.

  "That’s one way of framing it. It was part of my early planning – there wasn’t time to reverse it when I planned the explosion. Of course it wasn’t fully operational at that point, so I didn’t think it would matter."

  "But," Jenson asked, "wouldn't the spore process take a huge amount of time? It must be petabytes of data."

  "Actually no," Craig said. "A lot of the volume code is distributed in advance, in heavily encrypted form, so it’d only take the time needed for final differential updates and activation of its backup codes."

  "So we can’t shut it down even if we find it?"

  Millie let out a sigh. "If either of you have invented some form of time machine, now would be a good time to disclose it."

  "At least two years away, sorry," Jenson replied, a half-smile on his face.

  "No problem. All you need to do is to remember to travel back to this precise moment to help us out—"

  "Shut up," Craig shouted. "Leave the classic movie references to me, please. That said, your nonsense has given me an idea."

  "Which is?" Jenson asked.

  "We kind of press rewind - we do an entire reversal. We de-constitute the system, using Michael’s neural matrix. With that level of authorization, we should be able to modify everything. Including removing the ability to spore."

  Millie blinked. "Will that actually work?"

  "Based on everything I know."

  "We have to give it a try." Michael folded his arms. "I was there at the beginning; it seems fitting that I be there at the end."

  "Poetry be damned," Millie said. "At least your father’s asking this time."

  Craig glared at Millie. "Let it go, will you?"

  "A great plan," Jenson said, "But we still don’t know where it is. And if we did, they’d just see us coming."

  "Maybe I can help you with the last part," said a voice from the other side of the room. They turned and saw Morton staring at them.

  "Why would you do that?" Michael asked.

  "I joined Kinek to be an agent of the truth. But I was sold a lie. Or a million of them. Whatever happens to me, I’d like to do something to fight back. And while things were, apparently, bad enough already, they could be about to get far worse." He walked over and, wrists still cuffed, carefully removed his glasses and held them out. "These might be of help to you."

  Michael took the spectacles. "I don't understand."

  "They're a discrete HUD. It’s how I accessed Darwin." Morton paused. "When they work, they are what pretty much sums up Kinek: an unfair advantage."

  Michael swapped them with his current glasses. "They're not working. I don't see any HUD."

  "For them to function, you need to have an authorised secure link, or be close to an operational Darwin instance." Morton reached forward. "They also do this." He tapped the frame on the top corner.

  Michael’s vision leapt into focus. He blinked. "That is exactly like the system I saw in the ZAT lab."

  Jenson frowned. "Something else you lot stole from me?"

  Morton shrugged. "Kinek took what it needed from whomever it encountered. Then we usually made it better. When you have the best of everything, winning is straightforward."

  Michael nodded. "Maybe we can use that against them."

  "Come on," Jenson said. "Let’s get out of here. Maybe we weren’t the only ones to get tipped off as to this location."

  Michael tucked his old glasses into his pocket. "What's that noise?"

  "What noise?" Millie asked.

  "A kind of faint high-pitched whining." He looked down and saw a pattern of red dots on his chest. Glancing around he saw they were everywhere.

  Kelly jumped to her feet. "Take cover!"

  Michael saw tiny flashes of red and silver, then he felt a stinging sensation on his neck.

  Around him the others were swiping at the air, staggering and slumping.

  Then everything went black.

  Ninety-Three

  Michael drifted back into consciousness. Blinking rapidly, he saw he was in a grey-walled, windowless room. He lay in a hospital-style bed, which had been angled so he was half-sitting. From his chest and arms ran a number of wires and tubes. As he tried to move he realised he was held by leather restraints, attached to the raised metal sides of the bed.

  A man wearing medical scrubs stood next to him, checking a monitor that the tubes and wires ran into. He made some notes on a tablet computer, then nodded to the only other person in the room: a woman wearing metal-rimmed glasses and an expensive grey suit. Home Secretary Charlotte Rostrum.

  "Mr Adams," she said pleasantly when the medic walked out, closing the door behind him. "Good to see you awake. I’ve been anxious to speak with you."

  "Where am I, and what the hell happened?" Michael asked. "Did you
drug me?"

  She spread her hands. "We found you unconscious at an illegal underground facility in central London. You were brought here and medical aid was provided. I’m pleased to report you appear to have suffered no permanent ill effects."

  "What is going on? Why am I tied up?"

  "So that you don’t wander off again." Rostrum stood up and walked closer. "You’re an escapee from police custody: the prime suspect in multiple murder cases."

  Michael frowned. "Where are the others?"

  "An interesting crowd, not least of all your father. All of you would be well advised to speak to me candidly if there’s to be a chance of sorting this mess out."

  "How did you know to go to that location?"

  Rostrum glanced upwards, looking irritated. "I think you’ve misunderstood the situation. I’m going to be asking the questions."

  Michael stared at her. "You are behaving in a very strange way for a senior member of government, and you clearly learned your interrogation skills from a Hollywood movie."

  "What were you doing in that facility?" Again her eyes flickered.

  "I’m not going to…" And then Michael realised what he was seeing. He gave a smile. "Jenson suggested you’d been tipped off as to the location of the Kinek facility, but I think you knew about it all along."

  "I don’t know what you’re—"

  "I think whatever knocked us out was a system you deployed: possibly the same system that Jenson’s company developed. The one you had Saxton arrested for covering up the use of. And yet you didn’t have Jenson arrested. None of this makes any sense unless someone else was telling you what to do. I think the reason you’re so agitated is that they’ve stopped."

  "I’m only talking to you as a gesture of goodwill. I can leave—"

  "You aren’t personally interrogating me for fun. You’re talking to me out of necessity, because you don’t know what’s going on. And you’re desperate." Michael tapped his glasses. "I think you believe that we might be the only ones who can help you. And you’re probably correct."