A Town Called Discovery

by R. R. Haywood

  ‘My apologies,’ Robert says sincerely, holding his hands up. ‘Let me explain. There are two AI’s. They both want the same thing, but they have very different views on how that is achieved. Both reside in constructs provided by our AI’s. Yours is called Discovery. Ours is called Freedom…your AI is called the Old Lady. We have…well, let’s just say we have someone else. Is that clear so far?’

  ‘Surprisingly, yes,’ Zara says. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ he says, giving her a warm smile. ‘We do things differently in Freedom, for instance, we tell our newbies exactly what’s happening as soon as they arrive.’

  ‘Oh my god, they need to do that in Discovery,’ Zara says. ‘Seriously, it was all like cryptic comments and go here, go there, here is your house, don’t go out, this is a tearoom, this is a café in Paris…’

  ‘Pete and Jacob,’ Robert says with a nod. ‘Same training script, god, that’s old now. Do they still have those awful children tied to the bombs?’

  ‘Yes!’ Zara exclaims, leaning forward. ‘That was horrible.’

  ‘Freedom is…different,’ Robert says, choosing his words carefully. ‘Which is why I am here…to extend an invitation to join us. I’m told you three have done remarkably well, so I am shamelessly poaching. You’ll have better housing, better facilities, better training, better everything…think of it like this…Discovery is the British Army. They try hard, they work hard and they’re good at what they do but are largely ineffective whereas Freedom is the US army. The biggest there ever will be and the best equipped. We have more, we do more…we work hard but we also play hard. Discovery is a greasy little café. Freedom is a five-star luxury resort…and one that doesn’t serve poisonous lobster…I’m er…running out of analogies,’ he says with a self-effacing grin. ‘You only arrived yesterday and no doubt you went through the circuit and to the diner to see Allie, then the doctor? Who by the way is unfit to practise medicine in my opinion…’

  ‘Thank you,’ Zara states, waving a hand at Robert. ‘She was bloody awful.’

  ‘We have proper doctors,’ Roberts says. ‘We have proper everything…’

  ‘Er, hang on a sec,’ Zara says. ‘How did you know we were here?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t tell you our secrets…unless you join us, then I can tell you our secrets. Now listen, Martha will have her bods finding a back door any minute. So, how about it?’

  ‘What?’ Zara asks.

  ‘Joining us,’ Robert says, turning in his chair. ‘Todd?’ he calls out over the restaurant to another table filled with people in dark clothing. ‘You were in Disco…which do you prefer?’

  ‘Is this a trick question?’ Todd calls back, making nearly every dark clothes wearing person in the restaurant laugh. ‘I prefer Disco…joke! Seriously, choose Freedom, there’s no comparison.’

  ‘Hey, buddy,’ the big guy with Martin Alldis’s group calls out. ‘Go over and talk huh? We’re trying to eat a meal here…’

  ‘Apologies,’ Robert says, turning back on his chair. ‘Todd was in Discovery until we rescued him. Anyway, there it is…and I do hate to rush you, but I must press for a decision.’

  ‘Got the state,’ Sally shouts, tapping furiously at her keyboard. ‘Still too far out… going for the city…okay I can…I can get into the city…closest is Queens…’

  ‘Too far,’ Martha says. ‘Queens is what? Thirty minutes by car? Get closer.’

  ‘I’m trying…’ Sally mutters.

  ‘It’s a strong signal,’ Terry says, shaking his head. ‘Strongest we’ve seen…’

  ‘Martha?’ Jennifer calls out. ‘I’m logged in…how many do you want on recall?’

  ‘Everyone,’ Martha says. ‘Get everyone.’

  ‘An hour from now you could be relaxing in a hot bath with decent food before you sleep in comfortable beds in a town you are free to roam in at your leisure with a professional training package designed by the very best…’

  ‘Okay, slow down,’ Zara says, holding her hands out in a way Bear and Thomas now recognise as the precursor to a whole bunch of questions. ‘How are you different? What do you do that’s different? How can two AI’s both be trying to change time, won’t you be constantly undermining each other? It doesn’t make sense…’

  Robert sighs, flicking his wrist out to pull his sleeve so he can check the shiny gold watch on his watch. ‘Good questions. You’re smart, I like that, but we don’t have time now? So, how about it?’

  ‘How do we contact you?’ Zara asks in a tired voice while rubbing her face. ‘This is a bit much, to be honest…’

  ‘You don’t, is the simple answer,’ Robert says bluntly but with an apologetic wince. ‘It’s now or never.’ He leans forward, lowering his voice, ‘but trust me when I say this…not joining us is the biggest mistake you will ever make…’

  ‘I’ve got a back door in a deli on Eleventh Avenue! Go for room one…’ Sally cries out as Pete and Jacob run for the deployment corridor and hold position outside the first door.

  ‘LIVE,’ Sally shouts the word that is taken and echoed by everyone else as the green lightbulb above the door pings on. The two men rush in, crossing the room to the door on the other side and through into the shockingly ice-cold air of a walk-in freezer in the back of a deli on Third Avenue as Jennifer types the message on her screen and hits send.

  A brothel.

  Mid-west America

  1892.

  She stares up at him. Tall and lean with a thick greying beard tobacco stained around the mouth and chin. Leathery skin and deep lines from years spent driving cattle across the plains. He stinks too. A pungent disgusting aroma of beer, whiskey, tobacco, cow-shit and body odour. That he’s drunk is obvious. That’s he’s very horny is also obvious, judging by the bulge of his pants and the disgusting way he’s rubbing himself over his clothes.

  ‘I’ma gonna fuck you,’ he drawls, reaching out to grope a breast but finding his hand swatted away.

  ‘Stop being a grabby twat…’

  ‘Playing hard to get makes me hornier than a dung beetle eating shit…’

  ‘I’m playing impossible to get actually…besides, I’m still a bit sore from last night with Bear so you’ve lucked out. Not that you’d get any even if it wasn’t sore. Just so we’re clear on that…Jesus mate, you’re not even listening…’ she waves a hand in front of his face, but his eyes stay locked on her cleavage bulging from the dress. The whore dress as she calls it.

  ‘I’ma gonna titty fuck you…’

  ‘Ew, that’s so gross,’ Roshi says, pulling her head back in distaste. ‘We’ve just got to wait here for a minute.’

  ‘I’ma gonna give you the best damned minute of your life…’

  ‘Wow, you’re not even joking, are you? Get off! Stop pawing at me. Listen grabby Magoo, Carlos is going to get caught cheating at the poker table in a minute. Jackson will call him out and Carlos will have a big hissy fit to try and hide the cards up his sleeve…they all start shooting and you’re meant to get slotted through the head so just be quiet and let me save your life...’

  ‘I’ma gonna…’

  ‘Pack it in before I break a finger…’ Roshi says, glancing at the clock on the wall of the filthy bedroom in the filthy brothel that she suddenly started working at a few hours ago. ‘Here we go…three…two…’

  A shout. More shouts. A crash as a table is turned over downstairs. Angry voices. She listens intently, pushing his hands away as they cycle through the air trying to touch her boobs. Even the gunshot doesn’t stop him trying. Or the rest of the shots that let rip in a thunderous roar.

  ‘I just saved your life,’ she tells him.

  ‘I’ma gonna…’

  A bleep and she arches her eyebrows at the vibration between her legs. ‘Excuse me,’ she hoists her skirts up, delves a hand into the darkness and pulls a bleeper from the Velcro strap on the top of her thigh. Squinting at the message scrolling across the screen.

  TOTAL RECALL. THREE NEWBIES DOWN. RLI
NY 7th AVE TOTAL RECALL ALL UNITS TOTAL RECALL.

  ‘Come here,’ the man growls with lust in his eyes at seeing her hitching her skirts. She grabs his thumb, snaps the joint and slams the flat of her palm into his nose, sending him reeling back as she yanks at the buckle of his thick leather belt, pulling the strand free from the prong to whip it from his waist as he topples back

  She carries the motion on, swinging the heavy belt round her hips, looping the strap and cinching it tight before whipping the heavy six-shooter from the holster while hoping to hell the grabby twat has kept it clean and oiled as she goes out the door and down the landing next to the balcony overlooking the people standing in shock over the bodies killed in the shoot-out.

  ‘DAMN WHORE ROBBED ME,’ the man roars, blundering from the room behind her with spurting blood from his nose as she starts down the wooden stairs.

  ‘Oh, bugger…not now…’ she runs on, going as fast as she can in the thick skirts.

  ‘THERE…THE WHORE ROBBED ME,’ he screams out, leaning over the balcony to point at her.

  ‘You stand right still there, missy,’ a man looms at the bottom of the stairs, a rifle held in his hands and a gleaming tin star pinned to his shirt.

  ‘Sure thing,’ she says, holding her hands up. ‘It was just a joke…’ she reaches down slowly for the gun on her hip with her left hand, showing she intends to disarm.

  ‘Damn, bitch broke my nose…’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Roshi whispers before she flips the gun round and fires into the sheriff’s chest. He flies back across the room as she drops to a crouch and palms the hammer back with her left to fire with her right at the men drawing guns on her. A world of noise and smoke. A world of screams and five more men fall dead but she’s gone, snatching the Winchester rifle from the ground and the sheriff’s pistol before running out into the night.

  ‘Shit…shit…’ Pete gasps, running behind Jacob. ‘I’m too old for this…’

  ‘Not the only one,’ Jacob wheezes, powering on down the street. ‘POLICE…MOVE…’ he bellows with years of authority that make people believe his words and they wilt back, clearing the path ahead while across the world, across times and eras bleepers vibrate and buzz with operatives pulling out and away from whatever they’re doing to run for their exit points. A total recall has been ordered. Three newbies down in an RLI New York.

  The door to room two bursts open as a blond haired, blue eyed World War Two German Officer runs out. ‘Who? Where?’ he demands.

  ‘Helmut! Thank god. Restaurant…Carpe Diem, Seventh Avenue…got a back door open on Eleventh…room one…go, go, go…’ Martha shoves the semi-automatic pistol at him as he runs for room one, going through the same second as the door to room eight flies open.

  ‘What’s going on?’ the new operative demands, his chef whites stained with food while the ladle in his hand drips onion soup on the floor.

  Martha briefs, swapping the ladle for a pistol before sending him running for room one and still they come. Men and women, postal workers, air stewards, beggars, priests and everything in between lurching through numbered doors to be armed and sent back out because they all know what a total recall means and it could be them out there, it could be them waiting for the cavalry.

  ‘Robert,’ a woman calls over from the other side of the restaurant, making a show of tapping her watch. Robert checks his own, sighing heavily. ‘We need to go,’ the woman says.

  ‘Yes, Beatrice,’ Robert replies, emulating an expression of being nagged.

  ‘Goddam,’ the big man in Martin Alldis’s group booms. ‘Quit the shouting, will ya…’

  ‘Correction,’ Robert says to Thomas. ‘Not all Americans have good manners…vile piece of shit,’ he mutters darkly, casting a look at the Alldis table. ‘Now I really do need an answer but let me just say this…you don’t all have to come,’ he adds, looking only at Zara.

  ‘We stay together,’ Zara says firmly. The sharpness in her eyes now back as her senses kick in, reacting to his sneer, his arrogance and the unhidden predation within his eyes. ‘Thank you for your offer but we respectfully decline.’

  It’s like she slapped him. Like she reached over and struck his face, and that rakish charm evaporates with his cold eyes hardening in a suddenly charged atmosphere as the whole place falls suddenly silent with tension ramping higher by the second.

  ‘Bear, ask this man to leave, please,’ Zara says, her voice carrying clearly across the room. Her unflinching gaze resting on Robert.

  ‘You should go now,’ Bear says, his voice flat and all the more threatening for the lack of tone.

  Robert blinks once, blinks twice and double-takes before turning on his chair to look round the restaurant holding his hands up and mouthing what the fuck with an expression that makes his group burst out laughing, and that split second reminds Bear of standing naked in the masquerade room, and he doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that one bit.

  ‘Robert, we really need to move,’ Beatrice calls out with a chuckle, rising from the chair. ‘What are we doing with them?’ she asks, nodding at the Alldis group.

  Robert pushes up from the table, shaking his head in disappointment. ‘Such a shame,’ he says to Zara. ‘Kill them,’ he calls out.

  A hundred different things seem to happen in a hundred places at the same time in a stunning blur of motion as the world around Zara and Thomas explodes in surge of violence that everyone else seemed prepared for.

  Bear drives up, grabbing the plate of lobster that he sends spinning across the room at Beatrice as she pulls the gun from the holster in the small of her back. As that plate spins away, sending the lobster and fries sailing through the air so Bear goes in, reaching out to grab Robert’s wrist holding the gun he pulled from under his suit jacket, rotating round to snap the joint but Robert goes with him, denying the break, the two locked as they turn at speed while Robert plucks the trigger, sending shots past Bear’s legs.

  Beatrice goes down from the plate smashing her front teeth out and in the panic and pain of that same second, she pulls the trigger on her gun, sending a shot across the room into the surly waiter who staggers back into a table full of dark clothed operatives who burst up to their feet drawing weapons.

  Thomas launches from his chair a split second after Bear, throwing himself over the table at Zara, intending to take her down with a heroic act of using himself as a human shield but he misses, sailing by an inch from her side as she looks at the lobster and Beatrice’s teeth seemingly floating in the air and the waiter flying back while the booming shots come from Robert’s gun as he tries to shoot Bear while they dance on the spot.

  ‘What the…’ Zara flinches, looking down at Thomas groaning on the floor next to her as the lobster, teeth and shot waiter all let gravity take over.

  ‘DOWN,’ Bear screams out.

  Zara dives on Thomas, heroically using herself as a human shield while Bear simply pushes Robert away and spins round on one foot to kick the pistol from his hand, following through to shift balance and weight and sending his other foot up to kick into Robert’s mid-section, smashing him back into the table that crashes down on top of Zara and Thomas.

  A flash to his right and Bear steps back, leaning away from the blade slashing at his face. A grip, a twist and he plucks the knife free before sticking it in the attacker’s throat, ripping it across to sever the artery that spurts an arc of blood across the restaurant as the man spins away and Bear spots the woman coming from his left, leaving himself open for a kick to the chest, absorbing the blow but catching the leg and twisting hard while kicking into the side of the knee on the supporting leg. The woman drops in abject shock. A second later and her head wrenches over from Bear gripping her skull with a vicious show of power to the rest coming at him who falter in step at his absolute lack of fear.

  ‘Shoot him you pricks,’ Robert shouts, floundering to get up from the broken remnants of the table.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Bear mutters as over a dozen black-clothed o
peratives stop to draw guns. He starts to move, diving for a pillar a few feet off to the side as the guns let rip with rounds slamming the walls, the floor and splintering tables, chairs, works of art and lampshades.

  As the black-clothed operatives form a horse-shoe line to fire so the huge plate windows behind them shatter into thousands of glittering chunks of glass that rain down from the bullets coming from Pete and Jacob as they sprint towards the restaurant.

  A head blows out and a chest puckers with a red crimson bloom as the black-clothed operatives spin round to return fire.

  Robert shouts out, vaulting to his feet as Bear does the same, running back at him as the man snatches a pistol from the ground to aim at Pete. Bear goes into him with hard kicks to his midsection, but Robert turns on the move, deflecting the blows and sending a vicious back-handed swipe that snaps Bear’s head over.

  ‘GET MORE,’ Robert roars out.

  Beatrice spits teeth and blood while huddled on the floor across the restaurant as waiters and customers scream in panic. She pulls a tablet from a pocket, smearing blood over the screen that makes her curse and rub it down her arm to clear it away.

  ‘GET OUT,’ Jacob booms, coming to a stop behind a car that slewed into a wall in panic at seeing two armed men shooting guns in the street. ‘ZARA…TOM…GET OUT, GET OUT…’

  ‘COVER ME…’ Pete goes forward with his pistol gripped double-handed as he vaults the ledge through the busted window to land squarely within Carpe Diem restaurant. He starts firing into black-clad bodies, while Jacob sends rounds in from outside, suppressing to buy the Frenchman time.

  Beatrice hits send on the tablet and drops it to snatch her pistol up, aiming to send a shot at Pete, hitting him in the shoulder. He goes down with a roar, twisting to fire back as she sends more rounds in his direction.

  In the street outside, the already panicked pedestrians and drivers freeze at the sight of a World War Two German Officer sprinting down the middle of the road holding a gun. ‘JACOB…PETE…’ Helmut roars out.