by Alex Scarrow
So, Maddy was alone right now and had a chance to put her thoughts on-screen.
She deleted her last sentence: And I miss him.
Missing people? Falling in love? Having feelings? That was for real people with moms and dads, right? Not vat-grown meat products. Real people with real hearts and souls. She turned her attention back to the screen.
‘Enough with all that dewy-eyed girl crud.’
We’ve been here in London for two months or so. Not bubble-days now, but actual, real one-after-another ones. I like that better. I like the fact that each morning I step out of our side door on to Farringdon Street and I watch the coaches and hansom cabs go past, and the traders setting up their stalls, that each day is a brand-new one with a possibility all of its own.
And that makes up for some of what I know now. So, I’m a ‘product’. Liam and Sal too. And everything we thought of as our lives before we ‘died’ is a complete sham. But, like Liam says, ‘We’re here now. We’ve got each other.’ He’s right. The past may have been ‘borrowed’ from someone else. But screw all that: the future’s ours.
She smiled. Wasn’t it just? All theirs.
We have our new goal. We’re not agents of preservation any more. Our role isn’t to faithfully maintain a doomed timeline – to make sure the Titanic hits the iceberg, to make sure American Airlines flight 11 hits the north tower.
To make sure mankind destroys itself.
No.
We’re going to watch. And wait. And perhaps, if the opportunity presents itself, steer this doomed world to a happier time in the twenty-first century. If that chance comes along, then we’ll take it and to hell with ‘history was only ever supposed to go one way’. Because, the way I see it, who knows what the ‘right’ timeline is? Maybe the virus that Rashim told us about – the Pandora Event, the complete annihilation of human civilization in the year 2070 – maybe that’s a faulty timeline. Something that wasn’t meant to happen. Maybe Waldstein is wrong to believe that’s the destiny that must be preserved. And if that isn’t enough to do my frikkin’ head in … how about this?
Maybe Waldstein was never meant to have been born – never meant to invent a time-displacement device in the first place.
How’s that for a complete head trip?
She closed the document. Enough head-scratching for one morning. She eased out of the rocking chair, not wanting to wake up SpongeBubba. She checked. His standby light was still on; his long-lashed plastic eyes gazed sightless out into the gloom.
Right now their dungeon still smelled of freshly pan-roasted coffee beans. Liam and Rashim’s treat this morning before setting off: coffee and freshly baked bread with a thick slice of salted pork.
Maddy grabbed a shawl and stepped over to their low doorway. She lit the candle beside it, pulled aside a privacy curtain they’d rigged across the small archway then eased the door’s bolt back, and the oak door creaked open. She checked that there was no sign of Delbert, their nosy landlord, or his string-bean assistant, Bertie, hovering in the space beyond. They used it occasionally to store some of their dubious wares and, of course, took every opportunity while they were fussing around in there to try to sneak a peek past their door and the curtain.
No sign of them this morning.
She stooped through the doorway, candle in hand, and stood up. The candle picked out the arching brick roof above her and the wooden packing crates of spices and luxury goods, shipped from all corners of the British Empire, that had all somehow managed to ‘fall off the back’ of various delivery carts. To her right a thin sliver of daylight smeared a dull glow across the scuffed and grime-covered paving-slab floor.
Maddy pulled a long iron key from the pocket of her dress and tugged the woollen shawl tightly round her shoulders. It was cold that morning. She approached the door – their own side door on to Farringdon Street – turned the key and, with a deep clack, the heavy door swung inwards, suddenly bathing the dim interior with daylight. She emerged, stood on the step up from the pavement and blinked at the bright morning.
Blue, a brilliant blue – postcard blue – sky above her. She narrowed her eyes against the glare of thick snow on the ground and on the rooftops and chimney pots where home hearths had yet to be lit. Farringdon Street was going about its business: ruddy-faced workers blowing clouds of condensation; a team of horses pulling a brewer’s cart, steam rising from their flanks. A lovely, invigorating February morning, like something out of Dickens; like a scene from that Scrooge story. Maddy was almost tempted to summon some street urchin to her doorstep, toss him a farthing and ask him to go fetch her the large goose hanging in the butcher’s window down the street.
She chuckled at that notion, blowing steam from her nostrils.
A man striding past in a dark morning coat and top hat touched the brim politely at her as he passed by. ‘Lovely day, my dear, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said, grinning at him. ‘That it is.’
She watched the gentleman cross the busy street, weaving between delivery carts and hansom cabs, then filled her lungs with air that was crisp and cool and scented with the pleasing, ever-present – but never tiresome – tang of woodsmoke.
Oh God, I so love it here.
Chapter 2
1889, London
‘Place your bets, gentlemen,’ said the dealer. He glanced warily at the stack of chips that Rashim pushed forward across the faro table. The other players round the table stared wide-eyed at the size of his stack as Rashim studied the card deck intently.
‘Good God, sir, that’s a twenty-pound bet you’re intending to place!’ said the gentleman to his right.
Rashim shrugged distractedly, his mind on numbers.
The gentleman shook his head incredulously and looked up at Liam standing behind them. ‘Is your friend normally so reckless with his money?’
‘Oh aye. A real liability, so he is.’ Liam patted Rashim’s shoulder. ‘But somehow the chap always seems to come good in the end.’
The five other players around the faro table, all of them smartly dressed gentlemen, held back from placing their bets, curious to see which number the stack of chips was going to be pushed on to. In the dimly lit room, smoke curled round the oil lamp above the table. Through tall, dark wood-panel doors came the muted hubbub of the clientele in the Long Bar: the well-to-do enjoying an expensive lunch before taking in an expensive matinee performance in the Criterion Theatre next door.
‘And has he more money than common sense?’
Liam laughed. ‘Well now … I suppose we’ll see soon enough.’
‘Gentlemen, will there be any other bets?’ asked the dealer.
Ruddy faces around the oval table studied the stack, waiting to see which way Rashim was finally going to nudge it. Further back from the faro table, Bob’s looming form blocked most of the pale light from the back room’s solitary small and grimy window. Liam cast a furtive glance back at him and noted how many fingers he had extended on his thick thighs.
Liam patted Rashim’s shoulder again gently, affectionately, as he spoke. ‘Of course, I insist on coming along with him. He’d gamble away his family’s entire fortune if I wasn’t here watching out for him.’
Pat, pat, pat on Rashim’s shoulder as he spoke. Three of them. Almost imperceptibly, Rashim nodded.
Three. He’d silently come to the same conclusion as Bob. A three: statistically the most likely card left in what remained of the dealer’s deck.
‘Mind you,’ continued Liam, lifting his hand off Rashim’s shoulder, ‘I do wonder if someone up there is looking out for him. Luck of the devil himself, my friend here.’
Rashim gently pushed his stack on to the table’s marked layout: the three.
The gentleman to his right looked up at Liam. ‘Luck of the devil, you say?’ He placed several of his chips beside Rashim’s stack. ‘Well, I’ll have a little of that, then.’ The other old men around the table chuckled among themselves and then followed suit.
The deale
r cocked an eyebrow. ‘All on the three, is it?’
Ruddy faces nodded.
He shrugged and then reached for the top card on the upturned deck. A ten of hearts. He slowly pulled it to one side to reveal a nine of diamonds.
‘The banker’s card is a nine, gentlemen,’ he announced. Bets placed on a nine would have lost and been gathered by the dealer. He placed his thumb on the card, ready to slide it to one side to reveal the Carte Anglaise – the ‘player’s card’.
‘And now we shall see, gentlemen,’ he said, a hint of anxiety in his voice as he glanced at Rashim, ‘whether the devil’s luck is paying out today. Your card is … ’
Outside the Criterion, Liam buttoned up his coat and exhaled a plume of breath into the cold air. He looked across Piccadilly Circus for a waiting hansom to flag down.
‘Well now, I fancy that’s another place we’ll probably have to avoid visiting for a while. They’ll not let us back in there for a bit.’
Rashim nodded as he folded the wad of notes away into a clasp and tucked it into the inside pocket of his waistcoat. All counted, the chips they’d won from the banker that morning amounted to just over seventy pounds, the annual wage of a clerk with change to spare.
Rashim buttoned his coat. ‘I suspect we may have to start wearing disguises.’
Liam nodded as he waved his top hat to attract the attention of a cabbie dropping off a fare. ‘Mind you –’ he slapped Bob’s back – ‘how do we disguise this ol’ meat mountain?’
Bob looked down at him. ‘I could wear different clothes.’
‘I think we’d need a bit more disguise than that, Bob. I can’t think there’re that many men in London of your height and build. Especially not with your charming good looks.’
Bob was, of course, essential. Not just as back-up for Rashim’s card-counting, which on occasion had proved to be mistaken, but also as a guarantee that their winnings were paid promptly. One deep growl from him was usually enough to ensure they got what was their due.
‘Perhaps we’ll need to take Becks next time,’ suggested Liam.
‘I thought women weren’t allowed in gambling dens,’ said Rashim.
‘Aye, well, we’ll stick a fake moustache on her and put her in a suit. She’s scary enough that no one’ll want to look at her too closely.’
The hansom circled round, crossed the busy thoroughfare and presently the driver reined in the horses beside them. ‘Where to, sirs?’
Liam pulled open the carriage door and let Bob and Rashim climb in. The hansom lurched over to one side under Bob’s weight with the creak of suspension springs complaining. ‘Take us to Holborn, my good man,’ replied Liam. ‘And don’t spare the horses!’
He clambered in, closed the door behind him and the carriage pulled away into the bustle of traffic heading up Shaftesbury Avenue.
Rashim looked at him quizzically. ‘Don’t spare the horses?’
Liam shrugged. ‘Is that not what posh gents of this time are supposed to say?’
Bob frowned as he ran a check on that. ‘It is a cliché used in period films of the mid-twentieth –’
‘Aw, come now, Bob … don’t ruin the moment.’
Chapter 3
1889, London
‘Information: this river used to freeze over every winter,’ said Becks, pointing out across the Thames. ‘The ice was thick enough for an entire marketplace to open up on it. It did this a number of times during the sixteenth century. Meteorologists called it “the Little Ice Age”.’
Sal leaned against the wrought-iron rail of Blackfriars Bridge, thankful for her woollen mittens. Despite the warmth of the sun, there was a bitter chill in the breeze that gusted up from the choppy Thames.
‘I see Maddy’s downloaded some local history into you.’
‘Correct. I have been updated with a detailed information package: London history 1500 to 1900.’
Becks sounded like Bob. In fact, more like Bob than Bob. Her AI was still young and unseasoned, unflavoured with all those small linguistic tics and nuances that the original Becks had managed to learn and mimic to make her sound almost human. But then … she wasn’t really Becks, was she? She was another AI altogether, albeit one that looked identical to her. And one they’d decided to call the same name. Sal wondered if that was such a good idea. The support unit resting on the rail beside her was someone else. Perhaps her AI would eventually evolve the same way, and she’d end up very much like the support unit they’d once had.
‘It’s strange. I have to keep reminding myself that you don’t remember anything that happened to us before we set up here in London.’
Becks nodded. ‘Correct. Madelaine has discussed this with me. My predecessor’s AI became unstable and unreliable.’
‘She said she was all lovey over Liam.’ Sal hooted softly. ‘Go figure. Even a walking computer can fall in love.’
‘Information: the expression of love was most likely a heuristically generated empathy feedback loop. A misfiring of a code function.’ Becks looked at Sal with the same piercing grey eyes that had once been able to – almost – communicate something akin to warmth. ‘My AI will be allowed to develop independently. This error should not be duplicated.’
Perhaps that was for the best. Another swooning support unit with the aching beauty of a fallen angel was probably the kind of distraction Liam could well do without. Sal watched a barge laden with sacks of coal approach the bridge.
‘I sometimes wish I could “reboot”,’ said Sal. ‘Empty my head and start over.’
‘Why?’
The barge chugged beneath the bridge, its smokestack puffing a thick cloud of steam up at them. It wafted around them, a momentary fug of warmth tinged with the odour of burning coke. Sal flapped her hand as it cleared.
‘Why, Sal?’ repeated Becks. ‘It is illogical to wish for data loss.’
‘I wish I didn’t know what I am. Not human.’
‘Incorrect. You are human. Your brain is –’
‘I’m a made-to-order human. A clone.’
Becks cocked her head. ‘That is correct.’
‘I guess I’m still finding it hard that I need to throw away half of everything I can remember. My parents. My childhood. Everything up until the day I was recruited. And even that’s fake.’
‘I believe I understand,’ said Becks. ‘It is like having a folder full of questionable data.’
‘Exactly. Except it’s not so neatly organized. Even though my childhood is all false, it’s part of what makes me who I am now. You know? It’s why I talk the way I do … the accent.’ Her Anglo-Indian intonation: it was still there despite her best attempts at trying to lose it all; to speak with an entirely neutral, unaccented voice.
‘If all I knew was my life with Liam, Maddy and Bob … I think it would be much easier to cope. It’s a bit like waking up from a dream. That bit when you’ve not quite woken up and what you were dreaming about still feels real?’ Exactly that – a freshly woken mind sorting through a mixed-up bag of sensations and memories and then filtering out those that clearly couldn’t possibly be true. Throwing away the nonsense of a dream – flying pigs, talking frogs, mushroom armies with machine guns – was far easier, though. Her fake life as an Indian girl in the year 2026 felt so completely real. The smells of downtown Mumbai: spices and sewage, the chemical tang of disinfectant and bleach from laundries. The acrid burn of exhaust fumes and plastics-recyc’ plants breaking down plastic garbage for essential extractable oil. The sounds: the sputtering of go-ped engines, the shrill wail of police sirens, the clamour of hundreds of street pedlars, the hum of air-conditioners blasting warm air out on to already humid, muggy streets.
So hard to let go of that. It all seemed so real.
The barge tooted its steam whistle on the far side of the bridge, sounding a warning to another barge coming upriver.
It could be worse, Sal. Isn’t this better? London 1889?
Both Maddy and Liam seemed to be revelling in it, savouring every e
xperience like tourists on holiday. And Rashim? He was just as bad; he seemed to be treating the experience like some extremely realistic Victorian London virtual-reality simulator. She envied all three of them. They were having fun.
Me on the other hand? I feel lost.
Lost. Like a ghost. Like some mournful spirit that hasn’t quite realized it’s dead and that it’s time to move on.
A ghost.
‘Sal?’
Becks had been saying something to her. ‘Sorry, what?’
The support unit gestured to the hand baskets nestling in the snow at their feet. ‘We should return. You are scheduled to make dinner.’
Sal nodded. It was her turn to cook tonight and she’d promised to make a rabbit stew. Several skinned rabbits – all muscle-purple bodies with fur booty feet – rested on top of a basket of potatoes, onions and turnips.
‘Yes, all right.’ Becks stooped down and picked up both baskets and Sal led the way back over Blackfriars Bridge, heading up towards Farringdon Street.
Chapter 4
1889, London
‘I’m sorry.’ Liam put his tankard down. It sloshed ale on to their table. ‘Did you just say –?’
‘The Fire of London, yes.’ Maddy spooned some more stew into her mouth. ‘Good this, Sal,’ she said, her mouth crammed full. ‘It’s really good.’