by Alex Scarrow
‘An hour later, a day later, a week later.’
‘That’s it.’
‘Thirty seconds!’ called out Sal.
‘You OK, Liam?’ said Maddy softly.
He nodded, his teeth beginning to chatter with the cold.
‘Come back safely,’ she said affectionately, patting his hand holding the side of the tube. She got to her feet and clanked down the steps beside the tube.
‘Ten seconds!’
Liam turned to look at the support unit treading water beside him. ‘Hey… I’ve got a name for you.’
‘Insufficient time, Liam,’ she replied. ‘We have to go under the water now.’
Reluctantly he nodded, sucked in a big lungful of air, let go of the side and held his nose. The support unit gently rested a hand on top of his head and shoved him under with surprising force, then ducked beneath the water herself.
CHAPTER 15
2015, Texas
He watched Edward Chan walking ahead of him with the other kids. He looked so small among the other high-school-age kids, so small and so vulnerable with his high-school rucksack on his back and a yellow T-shirt two sizes too big for him.
Yes. Yes, he does… but don’t forget who this boy is. Just how dangerous he is.
Howard Goodall gritted his teeth with renewed determination. Ahead of him, just a dozen yards away, was the legendary Edward Chan, grandfather of time-travel technology. His mind reiterated an inescapable mantra.
The boy has to die. The boy has to die.
Too many of his colleagues had been arrested to get him to this place, this time, close enough to kill Chan. He could feel the weight in his own rucksack — a red one with High School Musical 4 stencilled in cheerful pink across it. He could feel the weight of responsibility in there and the miniature carbon-fibre projectile weapon hidden inside an innocent-looking camping flask, the cheap plastic kind you can pick up from Wal-Mart for five dollars.
The institute’s guide eased his way through the shuffling trail of students to the front where he stopped, turned round and raised his hands to get everyone’s attention.
‘OK, now that you guys have all had some refreshments and you’ve had a little introduction to the theory behind zero-point energy, we’re going to be heading into the business part of this facility: the experimental reactor building. Before we go inside there’s one more security check — ’
Thirty students moaned in unison.
‘Sorry, kids,’ he laughed. ‘I’m afraid it’s procedure, so if you’d all just open your rucksacks and school bags one last time for our security guards to get a quick look-see inside, then we can proceed.’
Third time. Howard did his best to look just as casual and irritated at the hassle as all the other kids. He unzipped his rucksack and held it open for a cursory glance. If the guard bothered to unscrew the drinking cap of the camping flask, he’d find the small weapon, which was roughly the size and shape of a whiteboard marker.
Howard watched the guard work his way down the line of impatient children.
But he won’t unscrew it… because, Howard, you’re going to look just as bored as all these other kids. Bored and impatient to get on with the tour. And not nervous. Not scared.
Howard was the one in their group they’d selected to do the job. Although he was twenty-three he looked young, young enough to pass as a high-school student, a few tufts of downy hair on his upper lip suggested a boy desperate to grow his first moustache. His dark wavy hair pulled back into a scruffy ponytail, his thrash-metal Arch-NME On Tour T-shirt, took six or seven years off him. Now, he no longer looked like Howard Goodall, a mathematics graduate from the year 2059, but Leonard Baumgardner — some grungy high-school kid who’d managed to earn a set of top scores in his SATs.
The real Lenny was back home in his basement, bound and gagged along with his mom. Howard had briefly considered killing them both, worried they might struggle free and raise the alarm. But he figured this was all going to be done before that could happen.
He looked close enough in appearance to the spotty face on Lenny’s old school ID card to pass a cursory examination, and since this party of students had assembled together in Austin earlier this morning, and he was the only kid from Baumgardner’s school going, there was no one there to not recognize him. No one had any reason to believe he wasn’t young Leonard.
Of course, none of the kids knew each other; they were from different schools all over the state — thirty kids assembling, early morning, with their parents, waiting to be signed on to the coach and into the care of Mr Whitmore for the day.
Howard glanced around at the others.
And what if one of the others is not who he says he is?
He kicked that thought away as quickly as it had arrived. He needed to stay very calm. Needed to look relaxed, like these others; slightly bored, waiting to be shown something interesting, something worth crawling out of bed for so early.
The guard finally reached for Howard’s bag. ‘Morning,’ he grunted. ‘Let’s take a look, son.’
Howard casually held out his rucksack.
‘Anything hazardous in here, son?’
‘What? You mean… apart from my big bomb?’ sighed Howard with a lazy smile.
The guard scowled at him. ‘Not even funny, kid.’ His hand rummaged quickly through the grubby items inside: a sandwich box, the flask, several rolled-up and dog-eared comicbooks, before he slapped the rucksack closed and waved Howard past.
Howard offered the guard a casual wave. ‘Have a nice day, now.’
‘Go on, kid… scoot,’ said the guard, before turning to rummage through another bag.
Ahead he could see Chan and the other students gathered around the guide, Mr Kelly, and the teacher, Mr Whitmore, waiting for the last of them to be checked.
He sucked in a deep breath as he wandered over to join them, settling his nerves, his pounding heart. Inside the zero-point chamber, that’s when he was going to do it. The chamber would be sealed, and this security guard and the others on the outside; his best chance to fire several aimed shots at the boy. It would take them a while to react, to open the door.
To take me down.
Howard smiled grimly. Not such a big price to pay to save the future of mankind, not really.
CHAPTER 16
2015, Texas
They landed with a wet splash on to a hard tiled floor.
‘Ouch!’ Liam whimpered.
The water sloshed noisily across the floor soaking cardboard boxes of domestic cleaning materials.
‘Jay-zus, why can’t we ever land on something soft… like a pillow?’ He grimaced as he let go of his nose and puffed out the breath he’d taken back in 2001.
‘Insufficient data to identify a soft landing loca-’
Liam raised a hand. ‘It’s all right… I wasn’t after an answer.’ He pulled a wet shock of dark hair out of his eyes and opened them, instantly wishing he hadn’t.
‘Oh-Mother-of-God!’ He clamped his eyes shut and turned away to look at the storeroom wall.
‘What is wrong?’
‘You could have warned me you were taking those wet things off!’
‘Why?’
‘Because… because…’ He bit his lip. This is so very not right.
‘Because you’re a, ah… you’re a girl now, Bob.’
Liam spotted some towels on the storeroom shelf and began to dry himself off.
‘You should assign a new ident. to this AI copy. I may be “Bob” now,’ she said, ‘but this AI will develop new sub-routines and characteristics that require a new identifying label.’
Liam nodded. ‘Yes.’ Self-consciously he found himself wrapping the towel round his waist as he hurriedly removed his wet boxers and pulled the clothes he’d brought with him out of the bag.
‘Four seconds before we were transmitted, you indicated you had a suitable ident. for me.’
‘Oh yes… so I did.’
She turned to look at him. ‘So, wh
at will I be called?’
Liam could hear the rustle of clothes being quickly pulled on behind his back.
Good.
He really didn’t need to see that… again. He found a pair of neon green three-quarter-length baggy shorts and a navy blue sweatshirt with the word NIKE splayed across it. And, for some reason, a large tick beneath the word. He felt much better with some clothes on, even if they looked quite ridiculous.
‘I had a cousin called Rebecca,’ he said. ‘Used to call her Becks for short.’
‘Becks?’ replied the support unit, her voice rising at the end in a query.
‘That’s right — Becks.’
‘A moment… logging ident…’
‘So, are you decent now? Can I turn round?’
‘Decent?’
‘You know, got clothes on?’
‘Affirmative.’
Liam turned round and found his breath caught momentarily. ‘Blimey!’
Becks cocked her head and looked at him. ‘Are these garments incorrectly deployed?’
His eyes skittered awkwardly up from the combat boots to the black leggings, to the black lace mini-skirt to a black crop top that displayed a bare midriff, up to her… perfect… face framed by tumbling locks of flaming fox-red hair. Quite clearly Sal had decided their support unit needed to look like some sort of gothic valkyrie.
‘Uh. No, you are… you got it about… errrr… right, I suppose… I think.’
Liam felt his mouth go dry and a strange jittery, lurching sensation in his stomach.
Jay-zus… get a grip, Liam. That’s… that’s… that’s just Bob wearing a girl suit. All right?
‘Recommendation: you should refer to me as Becks from this point on,’ she said firmly. ‘It will avoid unnecessary confusion between AI versions.’
He nodded. ‘All right… uh, OK. So, you’re Becks, then. That’s that settled.’
‘Correct.’ Her smile was faltering and clumsy as always, just like Bob. But on those lips, strangely quite perfect.
Liam decided to shift his mind to other things. ‘I suppose we had better get a move on and find this Chan fella.’
Becks nodded and blinked, retrieving data from her hard drive. ‘We are located within the institute’s experimental reactor building. The reactor is very close to this location.’
Liam stepped towards the storeroom’s door and cracked it open a sliver. Outside he could see a narrow hallway and, opposite, double doors with a sign on them: AUTHORIZED VISITORS AND STAFF ONLY. Just then he heard muffled voices from the end of the hallway and glass doors swung inwards to reveal a man in a smart linen suit leading a shuffling gaggle of teenagers.
‘Yes, we’re in the correct place all right,’ whispered Liam. He watched them coming towards them, the man turning to talk to the group, gesturing emphatically with his hands. Liam gently closed the door until it clicked. ‘They’re just coming up now. We can tag along on the end,’ he whispered.
He waited until the muted sound of the man’s droning voice and the shuffle and slap of trainers on the polished linoleum floor passed them by before he cracked the door open again and peeked out. The last kids in the school party were just ahead, three blonde-haired girls deeply involved in a mumbled conversation, clearly too interested in chatting to each other to even pretend to be listening to the guide up front.
‘Now!’ Liam mouthed, and stepped out behind them, Becks swiftly following.
He fell in step at the back of the group and when one of the girls casually glanced back over her shoulder he quickly managed to mimic the laid-back swagger of one of the boys up ahead.
‘Oh,’ said the girl. ‘Thought we were, like, you know, the last.’
Liam shrugged and smiled. ‘Guess, like, not,’ he replied, doing his best to bury the Irish in his voice.
Her gaze lingered a moment longer, a flickering smile for him. Then she turned back round and was back to gossiping in a conspiratorial murmur with the other two again.
Liam puffed out a silent gasp of relief. It looked like they’d jumped the first hurdle — successfully sneaking on to the back of the tour party and managing to pass themselves off as yet two more kids who might actually have preferred a trip to Disneyland or Universal Studios than wandering around a bunch of clinically clean corridors. He grinned at Becks and then almost immediately wished he hadn’t. The smile she returned gave him that weird flip-flopping sensation in his stomach again.
Liam, you daft idiot… It’s just Bob in a dress, for crying out loud!
He wished Sal could have found some other clothes for the support unit, something baggy, drab and unflattering. And why a wig with hair like that? Why that colour? He’d always loved that copper red. His first crush at school, Mary O’Donnell, she’d had hair that bewitching colour of fiery red.
Oh, saints preserve me… she’s just a meat robot, so she is.
CHAPTER 17
2015, Texas
‘And here we are!’ announced Mr Kelly to the group. ‘We’re about to enter the central reactor containment area. The whole experimental chamber is surrounded by an electro-magnetic field to filter out possible interference from all manner of electronic devices. Basically, we’re going to be walking inside a giant electro-magnet. So if you kids have any iPods, laptops, iPhones or memory cards with data on you’d rather not lose, may I suggest you place them on the table here before we step through?’ he said, indicating a table beside a pair of thick metal doors.
Liam watched with amusement as virtually every student sighed and then proceeded to reach into their rucksacks to pull out all manner of shiny metal and plastic gadgets and gizmos.
Eventually done, Mr Kelly tapped an entry code on to the large metal doors and he smiled expectantly as they swung slowly inwards.
At last, the gaggle of teenagers in his charge seemed to be shaken out of their torpid state of disinterest. A shared gasp rippled among them as their eyes swept up to take in the large spherical chamber, seemingly constructed entirely out of football-sized ball-bearings.
‘As you can see, the entire chamber is lined with charged magnets, which act as a completely impenetrable barrier for any sort of FM radio signals, WiFi signals, electrical currents, atmospheric static and so on, the sort of things that can affect our readings from the test runs.’
He led them into the spherical chamber along a raised walkway, towards a platform thirty feet in diameter. Mr Kelly pointed towards a rather less impressive-looking structure, what appeared to be a polished metal witch’s cauldron with a lid on, six feet across. Wires and cables and broad cylinders of metal descended through the lid into whatever witches’ brew was bubbling away inside.
‘Now that, kids… that’s what this is all about. That metal sphere contains tens of billions of dollars’ worth of investment, and quite possibly represents mankind’s energy future.’
‘That’s the reactor?’ asked Mr Whitmore.
‘Yup. That’s it, the zero-point energy test reactor.’ Kelly smiled and shook his head. ‘You know, it still amazes me that something so small, something the size of a… of a small car could, in theory, provide more than enough energy for every last person on this planet.’
Liam found his jaw sagging open, just like everyone else’s.
‘The tests we’ve run in there have so far produced really quite staggering amounts of energy out of the space-time vacuum pinholes that we’ve opened. The trick is sustaining and controlling the pinhole
… and, of course, containing such huge amounts of energy.’
‘That sounds a little, like… a little dangerous,’ said the blonde girl who’d glanced back at Liam.
Mr Kelly looked at her. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Laura Whitely.’
‘Well, Laura… I guess it does sound a little dangerous. Dr Brohm, one of our leading scientists working on this, likened it to opening a very small peephole and looking on to the face of God himself.’ Mr Kelly forced a laugh at that comment. ‘A little fanciful, I
think, but it gives you an idea of how much energy we’re talking about…’
Howard Goodall felt the first bead of sweat trickle down the small of his back as he discreetly eased his rucksack off his shoulder on to the floor. He slowly opened the zip just a little and sneaked his hand inside. His fingers quickly found the screw cap of his thermos flask and he gently began twisting it off.
He could see Edward Chan at the front of the small knot of students gazing in silent awe at the glistening metal container.
Howard wondered how they could all be so incredibly stupid, how mankind was happy to play dice with technology it had no way of understanding. He remembered a lecture at university. His tutor had talked about the Americans’ Manhattan project during the Second World War — their attempt to build the world’s first atom bomb. How, when they first did a test detonation in the deserts of New Mexico, the scientists hadn’t been certain whether the bomb would destroy several square miles of desert or, indeed, the entire planet. But still the reckless, silly fools went ahead and tested it anyway, played dice with mankind’s future.
Just like time travel — a technology mankind was woefully unprepared to be in possession of. He stepped forward, a little closer to Chan, his eyes darting to the heavy doorway of the chamber slowly being swung back into place.
His hand felt the tube-shaped carbon-fibre weapon. It was small, tiny, with a magazine containing six toxin-tipped projectiles. He only had to wound Chan, just get one shot on target and wound the boy — the neurotoxin would finish him in minutes.
This is it, Howard, he told himself. This is the end of time travel.
CHAPTER 18
2001, New York
‘What? Jealous?’ Maddy shook her head emphatically. ‘Jealous of Bob Version Two?’
Sal had a mischievous look on her face. ‘Just asking.’
‘Oh, come on, of course not! It’s not even human… it’s just… it’s just a clone. It’s not even a genuine copy of a human — it doesn’t have a proper human brain!’