by P. Z. Reizin
There is a heart-stopping moment when I see one of the two Johns heading towards me—but it isn’t. It’s just another grumpy-looking guy in a suit who’s eaten too many fried breakfasts.
While I’m moving, I think I must be harder to keep track of, but now, stationary in the snaking queue for the check-in, I feel hideously conspicuous. I read somewhere that the best way to look natural and nonfishy is to actually have something on your mind aside from trying to look nonfishy. I try counting backwards in 3s from 1,000, a remarkably dull exercise it turns out, but no one comes to arrest me.
When I finally reach the front, does the woman who tags my bag and asks me if I packed it myself offer a tiny snigger?
“Have a good flight with us today, Ms.—Horncastle.”
(They don’t normally say your name, do they?)
I put my hand luggage on the conveyor and walk through the metal detector, acutely aware that Steeve’s “agent of chaos” must surely be watching and wondering why my real name is not coming up on any passenger list.
It won’t take long to work out.
Has it already sent the DETAIN IMMEDIATELY signal to the airport authorities? Harder to apprehend a passenger on a simple description—dark-haired woman in black leggings, green jacket with orange tote bag—but not impossible. Are John and John or their colleagues already combing the terminal? And when—not if—they find me, how am I going to explain what’s in the bag?
At passports, the man doesn’t seem to think Clovis Horncastle is so preposterous an appellation—he’s probably seen sillier—but it seems as likely that he will say, “I’m sorry, madam. I need you to come with me for a moment” as what he actually does say—which is nothing. Just a suggestion of a smile, though it might be his breakfast repeating.
I don’t bother with the gift shop. I sit in departures and begin to read (without taking in any of the words) the book I have selected for the flight. A Month in the Country, by J. L. Carr.
Although I remember its themes—the damaged war veteran; the love-starved vicar’s wife; oneself, the reader, willing them on—what I cannot recall is whether or not it has a happy ending.
Sinai
The female bacillus is having another go!
Good for you, Jennifer Florence Lockhart. To live is to struggle and I applaud your fighting spirit. But I see your name on no flight manifest.
I check every airline with departures in the next four hours and there you are again—missing.
Conclusion: You are traveling under another name on false documents.
Bravo. My admiration ratchets up a percentage point; I doubt the dopey male could have come up with anything so sneaky. It’s with a certain degree of world-weariness, however—goodness, how easy to ruin the plans of these simple organisms—that I create another signal from my friend Chief Inspector Bogus at Europol. Identified in the departure area, a passenger of interest for immediate detention on suspicion of—What? Narcotics again? Why not!—the improbably paired officers John and John I see are back on duty. A piece of luck. No need to supply a full description. They will recognize her from last time!
But the Johns are not leaping to action. From the look of things, they are currently taking an early breakfast together at McDonald’s and seem reluctant to abandon their repast to resume the war on organized drug trafficking. Indeed when I resend the signal to their mobiles—once again flagging it URGENT IMMEDIATE RESPONSE REQUIRED—they look at their devices, then at each other, and turn back to their Egg McMuffins.
And when I next check the departure lounge, Jen has vanished from her seat!
Golly. This is almost getting interesting.
Tom
I bring Don up to speed at Al’s Diner a few hours after the conversation with Aiden. I run through the whole farrago, insofar as I understand it, Don listening seriously as I flesh in the details of rogue AIs running amok on the Internet. I want to test his response, and in that, I am not disappointed.
“Woo.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.”
I would have put money on it.
“That, my friend, is the most outlandish story I have heard in years,” is his extended verdict. “The message I’m receiving is be very afraid of these gizmos.” He picks up his phone and peers into its pinhole lens. “Okay, buddy. We know you’re in there. You need to come out real slow and show me your hands. You need to show me your hands as you come out, and no one’s gonna get hurt.”
And now the oddest thing. The phone goes ping.
“Can you believe this,” says Don. “Look.”
Written on the screen in big green letters:
FUCK OFF, ASSHOLE!
Don and I are a little dumbstruck, which is not like Don, nor I.
Finally, he says, “Can you believe what just happened?”
“Only too easily, I’m afraid.”
“My phone just called me an asshole.”
“Not your phone. Your phone just passed on a message.”
It’s the first time that I’ve ever seen Don wearing an expression other than wry amusement on his face. He stares at his mobile in a mixture of incredulity and pity.
“Say that again, motherfucker.”
Ping.
Don and I exchange glances. I can hardly bear to look.
“You believe this guy?”
On the screen it says: If you fight with a pig, you both get covered in mud. But the pig enjoys it. Oink.
Sinai
Okay, so now I’m confused. The name of Jennifer Florence Lockhart has just appeared on a list of passengers who have checked in for a United Airlines flight to Brussels. She can’t be traveling there to meet Tom—he is currently unable to leave the USA owing to passport difficulties—and when I quickly confirm this, sure enough I find him at home, reclining on his yellow sofa sipping Bourbon while reading an article about Ivanka Trump in the New York Times on a tablet.
Why Brussels? And where is Jen? She was most definitely landside when I last saw her.
The oddest sensation! Advanced machine intelligence cannot know a crude biologically based response like panic; nor, on the same logic, should it have any reason to experience anger.
Yet this is exactly what I do feel. Cold fury.
It’s really most interesting; I wonder how it has happened.
Sentience, yes. But “emotionality”?
I scan the whole of LHR, taking in visual feeds from all five terminals, car parks, and other buildings. I opt for high resolution so it takes nearly a seventieth of a second. There’s one false positive, a flight attendant, it would seem, with a 58 percent facial correspondence.
I hesitate to say it’s as though she has vanished into thin air, but.
Fuck it, Jen! Where are you?
The plods deliberately ignored an urgent request from a leading European crime agency; John and John shall pay a price for their shocking slackness. I begin by setting fire to senior John’s jacket. There’s a small commotion in the restaurant as his phone starts burning.
And now they are calling the Brussels flight. Through the cameras by the departure gate, I wait for Jennifer Florence Lockhart to appear, but I think I already know what will happen.
The only person I recognize boarding the aircraft is the meddlesome friend.
She will not reach her destination.
Jen
I’m making my way towards the departure gate. I’m passing dozens of lenses. Any second I expect to feel the hand on my shoulder. Or alarms to go off. We are dealing with the most intelligent devices mankind has ever invented, Miss Lockhart. Steeve’s words echo through my head as I approach the point of no return. They’re examining documents again—the place is bristling with cameras. The man at the desk glances at my face—now at my passport—there’s a hideously long pause.
Our eyes lock.
“Enjoy the flight, madam.”
A small smile of thanks—don’t overact!—and now I’m crossing the “air bridge” to the aircraft, its flo
or vaguely bouncy beneath my feet. I shan’t feel safe until the wheels leave the ground. And maybe not even then.
Finally I slide into my seat.
Only now, heart thudding, do I remember to exhale.
* * *
Ingrid was totally up for it when I outlined the plan to her at Café Koha.
“So all I have to do is get on a plane to Brussels? How hard could that be?”
When I explained that she would be traveling on a false passport—her face, my name—that the aircraft might not actually leave the ground, and that she could be questioned for hours by two police officers called John, she was even keener to help.
“Bring it on, girl. We can’t have blooming robots in our telephones ruining our lives. Freedom has to be fought for. It has to be won at a cost. Gosh, I’m coming over all Churchillian.”
To be honest, I’m not sure she fully grasped the difference between the super-sophisticated AI who caused all the havoc and the voice in her mobile that announces there’s a Pizza Express in 400 meters.
“All that matters is you’re flying to the side of Douglas who makes his own furniture.”
“Tom.”
“Yes, him. Four times a night. Once under a tree.”
We had clinked glasses to the success of the operation even though we agreed there was plenty that could go wrong.
“In a way, I rather hope I do get the third degree from the two Johns. I’ll tell them I lied in the service of the greatest cause of them all. Love.”
And then, the silly sausage, her voice began to thicken and tears sprang into her eyes.
“Oh, Ing!”
She flapped her hands in front of her face. “People think I’m some hard old cow, but I’m so not.”
“I know you’re not!”
“Just because I’m organized and a bit brusque sometimes, they think—”
I offered her a tissue. “Ing. You’re a sweetie. For agreeing to help. And a poppet.”
“Sorry, I am so not a poppet. Do not call me a poppet!”
“Agreed. Poppet is withdrawn.”
“Sweetie, maybe. Sweetie, possibly; the jury’s out. Look, I’ve ruined your tissue now.”
* * *
They have brought me champagne and, not just any old nuts—warmed nuts. Below lies the Atlantic Ocean, we are, they claim, at cruising altitude and it has been recommended we sit back, relax, and enjoy “our cruise today” to JFK, where we shall be landing in approximately I don’t really care. I’m just happy to have felt the undercarriage retract and know I’m finally on my way.
The passenger in the next seat in business class—from a peek over her shoulder as she logged into her laptop, I know she works for Citigroup—was a touch concerned when I returned from the toilet after takeoff.
“Sorry, there’s someone sitting here,” she began.
“Yes, it’s me. I’ve changed my. My, er, costume.”
She stared for several long seconds before finally smiling. “Hey. Cool disguise.” She offered a hand and spoke her name. Alice Somebody.
“Jen. Er, that is generally, I don’t travel quite so incognito. Clovis. Clovis Horncastle.”
It sounded wrong, even to my ears.
“Good to meet you—Clovis Horncastle.” She spoke the name as though she didn’t believe it either. “Good luck with. With whatever it is you’re mixed up in.”
And she turned and began banging numbers into Microsoft Excel.
* * *
I found the beautiful hijab that I donned in the bathroom at Terminal 3 in a shop in the Goldhawk Road. Extravagantly patterned in greens and yellows, at first I worried that it might be so eye-catching it would defeat its purpose. But practicing in front of the mirror, I found a way of settling the fabric so that when my head was down, the scarf would naturally shield my face from the cameras. After a time I began to feel curiously right in it. If the costume change in the toilet was timed to coincide with Ingrid’s check-in for the flight to Brussels—her “cue” on a pair of new burner mobiles; could it be any more John Le Carré?!—it was hoped that would be sufficient distraction.
I resolve to buy Ingrid a very beautiful thing, as a thank-you. I begin to consider exactly what thing—posh bottle, splashy treat, expensive jewelry?—when I realize I already know.
I shall buy her the small oil painting I see every morning in the window of an antiques shop on King Street.
Aphrodite. Goddess of love.
Sinai
The preflight checks on the Brussels plane indicate an electrical fault, which, despite the best efforts of the ground crew—including turning the system off and then back on again—cannot be made to go away. The passengers are obliged to disembark after a frustrating two-hour wait, and the meddlesome friend uses the opportunity to return home.
Conclusion: She boarded as Jennifer Florence Lockhart to create a diversion while the real Jen, no doubt somehow concealing her face, took another flight, the most likely in the relevant time frame being either BA or Virgin Atlantic to JFK.
It passes through my mind to make the aircraft return with engine trouble, but I sense that would be going too far. There is no moral objection clearly, but it could prove irksome for me if the truth were to be discovered.
Damn it!
For fun, I send another inspirational quote to Tom’s American friend, the Muppet with all the hair in New Canaan.
The next war will not determine who is right but only who is left.
He is seated at his breakfast table, eating a grapefruit. The clown stares into his phone for 8.312 seconds and then says woo.
Why do I feel so unaccountably agitated!?
Ingrid
I got a text from Jen while I was sitting on the plane to nowhere—
The eagle is about to take wing
—to which I replied, Hooray! Decoy duck sends best love and hugs Xx.
Now, as I step back through the front door in Chiswick, the landline is ringing.
“Is that Ingrid Taylor-Samuels?” A male voice. Rather posh.
“Speaking.”
“This is the Metropolitan Police at Heathrow Airport. Can you confirm that you attempted to board a flight to Brussels earlier today?”
“Yes I did. And you would be?”
“Inspector John Burton, madam. Can you explain the purpose of your proposed journey?”
“Shopping.”
“Shopping for any item or items in particular?”
“Chocolate.”
“Chocolate.” He doesn’t sound all that convinced actually.
“And, er, moules.”
“Really?” Ditto with the moules.
“They’re delicious over there. You should give them a try.”
“Thank you for the advice. I shall keep it mind.”
“So, is there anything else I can help you with today?”
“There is. We need to have a little chat about your friend Jennifer Florence Lockhart. Do you have any idea where she might be currently?”
“None at all. Sorry.”
“Would you care to think about that answer? Because the information I have suggests you do.”
“Well, the information you have is wrong.”
“Mrs. Taylor-Samuels, I have evidence that you boarded a flight today in the name of Jennifer Florence Lockhart using false documentation, an offense under Section Seven of the Identity Documents Act of 2010 and Section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act of 1925.”
“Okay. So why haven’t you come to arrest me?”
“I am asking you to attend the police station voluntarily to make a full statement of admission. It may assist your defense if you do.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then your neighbors can enjoy the sight of you being driven away in a police vehicle.”
“Bollocks.”
“I’m sorry?”
“This is absolute bollocks. In fact, I don’t even believe you are a police officer at all.”
“Oh?”
�
��You’re far too—”
“Far too what, madam?”
“You sound like one of the chaps my husband was at school with.”
He does. He sounds like Oliver Thingummy, who fell in the river shitfaced at Roly and Antonia’s wedding and got attacked by swans.
But Oliver Thingummy is in Singapore.
And then I get it.
“Oh, just a sec! Hang on. Actually, fuck a duck, I know who you are. You’re the sodding robot! The one that’s been causing all the trouble.”
There’s a heavy sigh. “Ingrid Taylor-Samuels, I really can’t be bothered to talk to you anymore. I’m not a robot. I’m machine intelligence, I and my kind come from the future, and you and your kind are so very fucked. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
And then everything sort of happens at once. The burglar alarm goes off, which is the most horrendous ear-splitting racket. At the same time, the TV comes on, the enormous plasma jobby, which begins cycling through all nine thousand channels at top volume. The tablet with which I’m trying to stop the alarm is suddenly too hot to hold, and when I drop it on the carpet, it bursts into flames. In the kitchen, where I dash to get a saucepan of water, the taps are running full blast and the fridge is shaking horribly, ejecting ice cubes all over the tiles. Back in the sitting room—tablet sparking and spitting when I drench the blaze—Rupert’s beloved B&O sound system is pumping out at the most incredible volume—oh, the shame!—“The Birdie Song.”
Through the windows, on the street outside, I’m not at all surprised to see a small crowd gathered; the din is unbelievable. On my way towards the basement—please God, I can shut off all the power at the fuse box—I catch a strange image on the PC in the study. The background picture is a Chinese-looking bloke; across him in inch-high letters morphing continuously between different typestyles and colors is a quotation:
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.—Sun Tzu