Million Eyes

by C. R. Berry

  Miss Salazar sighed heavily. “I’ll consider talking to her, but I’m not promising anything.”

  Cox gave a polite smile. “That’s all I ask. Thank you, Miss Salazar.”

  Miss Salazar nodded and Cox turned and left, closing the door behind her and returning to her desk.

  Ten minutes later, James Rawling exited Miss Morgan’s office. As he closed the door, Cox caught a glimpse of her face, which – alarmingly – wasn’t displaying the usual confidence and poise that had always seemed an unwavering trait of hers. In fact, she looked anxious, even panicked. Two emotions Cox had never seen or expected from her.

  Miss Morgan was in charge – but was she in control?

  Miss Morgan had briefed Rawling as succinctly as she could on what had happened with Robert Skinner. In terms of his mission, there wasn’t really much she could give him: Go to August 1888. Find Mary Ann Nichols, the woman who gives the book to Queen Victoria in September. Get the book back. Prevent Million Eyes’ downfall. Save the future.

  Simple.

  She’d looked up Mary Ann Nichols on the internet of the new timeline. Nichols had an Omnipedia page, a brief one. It just said that she was once a prostitute, stumbled upon evidence of a plot by secret society Million Eyes against the monarchy, managed to get the evidence delivered personally to the Queen thanks to one of her regular clients’ connections, and was given money and a house in the country by the Crown, so she could live out the rest of her days free from squalor.

  Shortly after Rawling left her office to get ready to go back to 1888, Juanita Salazar was at her door. “Yes, Juanita, what is it?”

  “I’m sorry to intrude, Miss Morgan, but I wonder if I might get an update on what’s happening regarding the incursion?”

  Not you as well. “When I have something concrete, I will let you know.”

  Juanita persisted, “Yes, but if you told us what’s going on, we might be able to help.”

  “I have everything under control, thank you, Juanita.”

  “What happened to Robert Skinner?”

  “Juanita, did you hear what I said?”

  “Miss Morgan, forgive me, but I really think –”

  “That’s enough. I said I will let you know when I have something concrete.”

  “But I –”

  “Juanita! The last thing I want to do is send my CTO to the Room, but I will if you force me to.”

  The interfering old crow relented at last. “I – I’m sorry.”

  “Okay. Now please let me get on.”

  Juanita left. Miss Morgan was starting to get tired of being questioned. They should all have known their place.

  She refocused, continued researching the new timeline’s internet, looking for anything that might help her and Rawling stop the trail of that damned book.

  Half an hour later, Rawling called to say that he’d arrived in 1888. Exactly fifteen minutes after that, which Miss Morgan was sure of because she’d been staring unblinkingly at her wall clock, Rawling phoned in with an update.

  “Yes, Mr Rawling?”

  “I’ve found the book, ma’am,” he replied.

  “You have it?”

  “Not yet. A man called John Snider has it. I’m pursuing him as we speak.”

  “Do you know how he got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do. He took it from… from Edward V and Richard, Duke of York.”

  Miss Morgan knew those names. The Princes in the Tower. The ones who went missing in 1483. She now knew why.

  “So they had Skinner’s chronozine. Edward IV must’ve given it to them. And the book.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Where are the princes now?”

  “Gone. They used the chronozine to travel in time again.”

  “To when?”

  “Out of temporal radius.”

  “For fuck’s sake.” She paused, took a breath. No point losing her cool over it, not when time was gaining on her. She sighed, “One problem at a time. Just get that book back, Mr Rawling. We have less than two hours till the Shield fails.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Understood.”

  She hung up.

  She kept checking the Million Eyes Omnipedia page while she waited for Rawling to call back.

  Nothing had changed – yet. An unknown number of Million Eyes-affiliated members of Parliament were still tried and imprisoned thanks to Mary Ann Nichols passing the book to Queen Victoria.

  One hour, forty-seven minutes left of Shield power.

  Fifteen minutes later, Rawling phoned again. “I have the book.”

  Though Miss Morgan felt like punching the air, her composure held firm. It was way too early to celebrate. “Good. Destroy it. Destroy it now.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Then what?”

  “Wait for my call.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She hung up, stood and approached the window, waiting for Big Ben, the London Eye, her regular Starbucks, and the horrible statue of Arthur Pell at the foot of the building to return.

  Woah. Her vision blurred as she watched. Everything – all the buildings below her – went fuzzy and were… moving. A kaleidoscope of hazy shapes and lights roving about indiscriminately. She felt woozy, unsteady, and her latest cigarette dangled loosely from her fingers, eventually slipping through them and landing on the carpet tiles, still lit.

  She looked down. The carpet tiles, the cigarette, her black, leather, buckle-up ankle boots weren’t fuzzy at all.

  She returned her look to the illuminated cityscape. It wasn’t her eyes. It was the city itself that was blurry, like she was looking at it through a lens that wouldn’t focus.

  It made her dizzy. Spasms of pain bit at her temples. She had to look away and rub her eyes.

  A moment later, she opened her eyes and looked through the window. Everything was in focus again.

  In focus – and different.

  Most of the cityscape looked as she remembered it. The London Eye was back. The streets below were in the right place. Her eyes searched for Starbucks.

  Wasn’t there. But it wasn’t a topiary garden anymore. Now it was a strip club, judging by the large neon-lit contour of a scantily clad woman in the window.

  Still no Arthur Pell statue.

  Still no Big Ben.

  She looked at the clock. Less than an hour and a half left of Shield power.

  Looking down, she saw that the smouldering ash at the tip of the cigarette was singeing the carpet tile it had landed on. No time to worry about that. She stubbed it out with her boot and hurried over to her desk.

  The Omnipedia page for Million Eyes was gone. She navigated to Spoggle, ended up at Google. Running a search for Million Eyes, she found that Wikipedia was back too, and there was a page for Million Eyes. But there was no active Million Eyes website and most of the results were either pages on computing history sites or articles with titles like The Million Eyes Scandal and Million Eyes: The Greatest Corporate Conspiracy in History.

  Feeling her whole body tighten, Miss Morgan clicked the Wikipedia page…

  Million Eyes was a British computer company headquartered in London, England. In 1997, it was at the centre of one of the biggest corporate scandals of the 20th century, which ultimately led to its collapse.

  So things had moved on quite a bit. Rawling had basically restored the timeline up to 1997. She read on.

  Million Eyes produced software, personal computers and consumer electronics that were particularly popular in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s. On August 30th 1997, evidence brought to Diana, Princess of Wales, implicated the company in an elaborate plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II. Diana personally presented the Queen with this evidence on August 31st. Subsequently, all of Million Eyes’ senior management team were investigated, prosecuted and convicted of treason and conspiracy. Sales plummeted after the scandal and the company was finally dissolved in 1999. It was during this time that rumours spread that Million Eyes was controlling the government and that its computer business
was just a smokescreen hiding its political endeavours, although these claims have never been substantiated.

  The page went on to talk about the trials. Alongside the text were mug shots of all the Million Eyes executives who were prosecuted.

  “Oh my God,” Miss Morgan murmured aloud when she saw her own. She was twenty-four years younger and actually looked worse than she did now. Pale, gaunt, tired, no makeup, her normally stunning black hair dishevelled and matted with grease.

  Her name, under the mug shot, had a link. She went to click it. Don’t, Erica. Why torture yourself? She stopped and clicked away from the page. Time was ticking away. The details of her alternate self’s downfall were not important. Stopping it was.

  Diana, Princess of Wales, was the next – the final – obstacle to be removed. Since 1997, Miss Morgan had known that at some point in the future, Million Eyes would travel in time and assassinate Diana, but she didn’t know when or why. Now she knew why, and when was now.

  She phoned Rawling. “Mr Rawling, are you still in 1888?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied quietly. “Shall I return to the future?”

  “No.”

  “Is the timeline still…?”

  “Fucked? Yes.”

  “What do you ne – ?”

  “Where’s the book?”

  He hesitated.

  “Rawling, I know you failed to destroy it. So where is it?”

  “I was attacked by the man who stole it, and it… it fell into a drain.”

  She rolled her eyes. Time itself had dictated that her employees act like cretins. “It fell into a drain.”

  “Yes, ma’am. So it’s as good as destroyed.”

  “No, Rawling, it isn’t. Someone has it. Fortunately for you I know who.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Diana, Princess of Wales. Now is when we take her out and this is why. Based on what you’ve just told me, someone is going to recover the book from London’s drainage system between 1888 and 1997. On August 30th 1997, that someone is going to hand the book to Diana in Paris, who will deliver it to the Queen the next day – unless we stop her.”

  “Should I not try and retrieve the book from the drainage system in 1888? Surely that would be a much easier undertaking.”

  “Possibly, yes. But Diana’s death is part of the timeline we’re trying to restore. We’re supposed to assassinate her.”

  “Er – I see.”

  “I don’t understand it either. I just know this is how it has to be.”

  “What are your instructions?”

  “Go to the start of July 1997. That’ll give us two months. Go to Paris and coordinate the operation from there. Get operatives from Million Eyes’ Paris branch to assist.”

  “I understand.”

  “Call me when you arrive and I’ll give you more details on what needs to happen. And we need to readjust the temporal alignment on our phones so that, from my perspective, we’re speaking every five minutes.”

  “Five minutes? Isn’t that somewhat r…”

  “Risky? Yes. But it’s a risk we have to take. We have very little time left.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She hung up, and the clock ticked past 4.19am.

  One hour, seventeen minutes left of Shield power.

  Melanie Cox was watching the clock. Had been since Juanita Salazar’s failed attempt to get some information out of Miss Morgan. One hour, eight minutes remained until the Shield failed and still they knew nothing. Yes, London looked almost the same as it did before, but there were a few major differences, which meant they were still stuck in an alternate timeline.

  The knot of dread in Cox’s stomach was growing. She and Ian were supposed to get married next summer. Would she ever see him again?

  Yes. Yes, she bloody would. She wasn’t going to let Miss Morgan screw her out of her happily ever after.

  Patience expired, Cox got up and walked over to Miss Salazar’s office. This time she didn’t even knock. She just burst in.

  Miss Salazar, staring out of her window, faced her with a stunned glare. “Miss Cox, wha – ?”

  “We have to do something,” said Cox. “We have to do something now.”

  Miss Salazar didn’t even argue. “What do you have in mind?”

  “You need to get Miss Morgan to tell us what’s happening. Insist on it. If she refuses, relieve her of duty and order her to tell you.”

  Miss Salazar’s eyes widened. “Relieve her? She’s our CEO.”

  Cox felt her voice rise. “I don’t care. We have an hour and six minutes until the Shield fails and I’m not confident she knows what she’s doing.”

  “What’s going on?” Anthony Graves came into Miss Salazar’s office. “Are you talking about Miss Morgan?”

  “Yes,” said Cox. “Miss Salazar’s going to relieve her of duty and order her to tell us what’s happening, so we can help.”

  “I am, am I?” said Miss Salazar.

  At this point, Cox didn’t care about professional etiquette or that Miss Salazar was the CTO. “Unless you’re happy to have your existence completely rewritten or even erased when the Shield goes down – yes.”

  “I’ll support you,” said Graves to Miss Salazar. “There’s still time to send a bunch of us back in time to fix this, rather than relying on James Rawling, who’s shadier than a weeping willow.”

  Reluctantly, Miss Salazar nodded.

  “Good,” said Cox. “I’ll talk to the others.”

  Everything was in place. Miss Morgan had been liaising with Rawling, but there wasn’t time to micromanage the operation, so she just gave him the salient points of what he needed to do to orchestrate Diana’s death, and left the detail up to him.

  Every five minutes, Rawling called with updates. With an hour left of Shield power, the latest was that Henri Paul had been recruited to drive the rigged Mercedes, Rawling had secured a white Fiat Uno to collide with the Mercedes in the Alma tunnel, and arrangements had been made to disable all CCTV along the route and cook the forensics.

  A lot now rested on Rawling’s shoulders. Did she have absolute faith that he’d pull it off? Not completely, no. Not after he’d let the transcriber fall into London’s drainage system. But if Rawling failed, she wouldn’t have long to regret it.

  There was a knock at the door to her office.

  “Not now,” she called.

  The knocker was impudent enough to open the door anyway.

  Looking up, “I said, not now!”

  Juanita Salazar was at the door, Melanie Cox next to her, Anthony Graves, Eve Tambara and Norman Higgins standing nervously behind them. Everyone except Lara Driscoll.

  “What the bloody hell is this?” said Miss Morgan.

  “You need to tell us what’s happening,” said Salazar. “Right now.”

  “You don’t give me orders. All of you, get back to work.”

  “No,” said Cox.

  Miss Morgan was incensed. “No?”

  Salazar took a breath and said, “We’re not convinced you’re going to fix the timeline before the Shield fails. You need to tell us what you’re doing so that we can help. All five of us are willing to travel back in time and do what needs to be done.”

  “That would do more harm than good.”

  “Explain that to us,” said Cox, unbelievably brazen.

  “I’m not explaining anything.” She felt her anger rise from a simmer to a boil. “How dare you come in here and challenge my authority? Get the fuck out of my office – now!”

  Cox and Salazar exchanged some kind of knowing look, like they’d planned for this.

  “Then I’m sorry, Miss Morgan,” said Salazar, “but I hereby relieve you of your duties.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Graves, Tambara, restrain her.”

  Graves and Tambara charged into her office. Miss Morgan launched to her feet. She knew she was going to have to give them something.

  “Wait – stop. If you do this, the operation I am c
oordinating will fail, the timeline will remain as it is, and we’ll all get absorbed into it as soon as the Shield goes down.”

  “Obviously we don’t want that to happen,” said Salazar. “So tell us what this operation is.”

  “We don’t have time!”

  “Just give us the fucking headlines!” yelled Cox.

  You little cunt. I should’ve hauled your arse to the Room when I had the chance. They weren’t giving her much choice. If Rawling’s operation failed because of this, it’d be on their heads. And there’d be no chance for hindsight.

  “Alright. Rawling is –”

  Her phone rang.

  “Is that Rawling?” said Graves.

  “Yes!”

  “Answer it, and put him on loudspeaker,” said Salazar.

  Miss Morgan picked up the phone and tapped loudspeaker. “Is it done? Is Princess Diana dead?” She gave Salazar a piercing look as she said it. The five mutineers exchanged stunned glances.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Rawling. “It’s done.”

  “And the book?”

  “The book is destroyed.” More confused glances from the mutineers.

  “Actually destroyed this time?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It can no longer harm us.”

  “Good. Finish up there and wait for my instructions. There’s one thing left I need to do. If I don’t call, assume it didn’t work and headquarters has been absorbed into the altered timeline.”

  “I’ll wait for your call.”

  She hung up. She looked at the clock – forty-nine minutes left – then at the mutineers. “If you traitors are satisfied I’ve got this, I need to make a phone call.”

  All five of them looked humbled, defeated, pathetic. They meekly left her office.

  Lighting a new cigarette, Miss Morgan tapped a familiar number, one she’d not seen or heard for a while, but remembered well.

  “Hello, Erica,” she said to her younger self, who’d just interrupted her very important dinner with Arthur Pell in 1997 to answer the phone. “It’s me… Erica.”