by Alex Scarrow
‘So,’ he continued, ‘that’s why I set up this little agency. That’s why you, Liam and Sal had to keep us on this track.’ He rubbed his tired, aching hands together in his lap. ‘And they’re watching us. If you hadn’t corrected all the contaminations that you had, put things back on the right course … then they’d have had no choice. They would have stepped in and wiped out this world, erased every last trace of our existence from this universe. Forever.’
‘My God.’
‘I’m so very sorry, Maddy. I created you so you could do this one job, to be agents of doom. To be the steersman … steering this ship on to the rocks.’ He extended a shaking hand towards her. ‘That’s not exactly the sort of heroic destiny you’d hoped for, is it?’
A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘I am become Death.’
He recognized the quote. ‘Robert Oppenheimer. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Do you know what else he said when he watched the mushroom cloud from that first atom bomb rolling up into the sky?’
She shook her head.
‘He said, “Now we’re all sons of bitches.”’
‘I guess that’s what I feel like.’
‘Well, don’t. You did it, Maddy. You saved the few people out there who survived this nightmare. You’ve given them a chance.’ He smiled. ‘You did a good thing.’
‘It doesn’t feel like it.’
He nodded. ‘I know. That’s not much of a heroic legacy, is it? To be responsible for seven billion deaths.’
‘No … not really.’ She took in a deep breath. ‘So, what next? What happens now? Liam’s still in the past. I need to tell him what you’ve just told me.’
Waldstein pulled himself up out of the chair with a tired-old-man grunt. ‘First you should get some rest. You look exhausted. You and your support unit can have some warm food. I have plenty of supplies here. Then you should get some sleep.’
‘And then?’ said Maddy. ‘What’s going to happen? We came here … and now we know everything … what next?’
Waldstein shrugged wearily. ‘Perhaps you’ll stay and keep an old man company for a little while?’
CHAPTER 49
1890, London
They had a few hours to kill before computer-Bob would have some worthwhile results to show them so Liam decided there was time enough for them to indulge in a culinary treat; he invited Bob to go with him to grab some food at Bentham’s Pie Shop. They found their usual table on the top floor, overlooking the narrow alleyway below. Bob slurped at the mutton broth, grimacing slightly as he swallowed.
‘How’s your throat?’
‘There is some discomfort when swallowing. I believe the arrow must have done damage to my oesophagus as well as my trachea.’
‘Your voice is sounding a bit better, though. I thought we were going to be stuck with a whispering support unit forever. That, or –’ Liam grinned at him – ‘after you healed you’d end up with a bizarre squeaky voice, or something.’
‘Most damage I sustain is fully repairable given enough time.’
Liam cracked open the flaky crust of his pie and watched a steam cloud waft out. ‘I was really, really hoping we’d find Maddy in the dungeon when we got back. We should all be going to check out the transmitter together. I don’t understand why she hasn’t been back yet.’
‘Her mission involves a lot more guesswork than yours. She did not have a precise date and location to travel to but a whole year and several locations to choose from. And we have no idea what obstacles or difficulties she will have encountered.’
‘Do you think she’s found Waldstein yet?’
‘If she finds him, then it is reasonable to assume that she would use whatever technology is available there to send a tachyon message to us to inform us of that. Becks has the location data. A precisely targeted message would be possible.’ He shrugged. ‘That is, assuming that you were not correct, and that they have not been lured into a trap and destroyed.’
‘Jay-zus, Bob … you’re such great fun to go out on a dinner date with.’
‘If that has occurred, it might also be possible that Waldstein has managed to obtain our location information. If so, then at any given moment another assault squad of support units could appear inside the dungeon.’ Bob looked at Liam. ‘This would effectively conclude matters for Waldstein.’
‘You’re a real barrel of laughs, aren’t you?’
‘I am merely considering possible scenarios.’
‘Jay-zus, I hope they’re all right.’ He gazed out of the window. ‘Maybe it was a mistake me being this stubborn. We should have stuck together.’
‘The decision to split resources was tactically valid, Liam. You have twice as much chance of acquiring information this way. Also … if Waldstein has lured them into a trap, at least two of us remain alive still.’ Bob slurped his soup again. ‘I suspect this is not cheering you up, is it?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Hmm … I will see if I can come up with something positive to say.’ Bob gazed down at his bowl for inspiration. Finally, he had something encouraging. ‘At least our intervention in the time of Jesus does not appear to have caused enough of a contamination to have triggered a time wave. If we caused some changes, it appears it was not enough to deflect the course of history.’
True. There was that for good news. Liam had noticed on the way down Farringdon Street there was still a church on the corner of Stonecutter Street. There were still copies of the King James Bible on sale outside Messrs Water & Stone’s bookshop. And the Salvation Army brass band near the bridge was playing ‘Amazing Grace’.
History has a way it wants to go.
‘Don’t you think it’s one hell of a coincidence, though, Bob?’
‘Please expand on that.’
‘Well … that one of those tachyon transmitters is right in the same place and the same time as the arrival of Jesus Christ?’
Bob looked at him. ‘Do you think Jesus is related to the tachyon transmitter?’
Liam shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ From what he’d witnessed, Jesus didn’t seem like some time traveller from the future, trying out his luck at being a prophet. Rather, he’d seemed genuine. A man with conviction and courage and charisma and armed with what sounded like a pretty decent philosophy on life to share with those who were prepared to sit down and listen.
No. If anything, perhaps the transmitter was located there for the same reason their first base of operations had been based in New York on the day those towers had been knocked down by terrorists; it was a nexus point in history, a crossroads. The transmitter had been built there in that time … simply because an important thread of human history emerged from that place and time.
Liam did have another theory, though … One that sounded too stupid to say out loud – one he’d been kicking around in his head for a while. ‘What if those tachyon things are like two sides of something like a box?’
Bob frowned.
‘OK. Not a box … say more like bookmarks, or even bookends maybe. I mean, if you were going to section off a period of history, what two events would you pick?’ He shrugged. He wasn’t waiting for Bob to come up with an answer. He was being rhetorical. ‘The end of civilization … and the beginning of Christianity. Hmm? Those are two pretty significant historical markers, wouldn’t you say?’
‘They are significant.’
‘Interesting … even?’
‘Affirmative. Also interesting.’
‘I mean, very, very interesting.’
Bob scowled impatiently. ‘Yes … very, very interesting.’ He looked at Liam. ‘I sense you are leading me towards some sort of specific assertion.’
‘Do you remember Rashim’s theory? That maybe all of that history trapped between those two markers is … some kind of exhibit. Like in a museum?’
‘That is a perfectly valid theory, Liam. May I add to this theory?’
Liam spread his hands. ‘Sure. Please do.’
‘Far more plau
sible might be a digital analogy.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That everything we have seen, heard, touched … experienced is part of a detailed simulation. That we are all software AI in a simulated reality.’
‘You mean, in a computer?’
Bob nodded. ‘A very large one.’
Liam laughed. ‘No … see now, that’s stupid.’
CHAPTER 50
2070, W.G. Systems
Denver Research Campus
‘It all makes sense … now,’ she said.
Maddy and Becks were sitting in the middle of a deserted staff canteen, a large open-plan floor filled with round black tables, gel-seat chairs and plastic plants in large terracotta pots. Spotlights in the ceiling cast muted pools of light across the beige carpet. In one corner of the canteen, holographic beams projected a soothing forest scene, while the sounds of a babbling brook, birdsong and the hiss of swaying branches and leaves filled the room.
The long wall of the canteen was floor-to-ceiling glass. It was pitch-black outside and they could only see their own reflections staring solemnly back at them.
She slurped at a spoonful of a concoction made of organo-beef granules and black-bean noodles. She looked at Becks. ‘You know what?’
‘What, Maddy?’
‘I feel … like, I dunno, I feel like a ton of weight’s been shifted off my shoulders. Like I’ve just finished running some kind of ridiculously long marathon and I can go collapse in a dark hole now.’ She absently stirred the bowl in front of her. ‘I feel so tired. Totally exhausted.’
‘After you have eaten, you should get some rest, Maddy.’ Becks studied her and realized how spent she looked. Her eyes were red-rimmed and heavy, her freckled skin pale and drawn. Even her wild, wilful, frizzy hair looked like the life had been wrung out of it and it dangled in tired and matted corkscrews.
‘You look unwell, Maddy.’
‘Actually, you know, I know I’m tired, but I feel pretty good.’ She smiled. ‘We did what was needed, right? What had to be done. We were there and we stopped …’ She paused for a moment, silently counting on her fingers. ‘Over the last two and a half years we stopped four separate attempts by other people to derail this timeline. We saved this world four times.’
To Becks’s ears that sounded like bravado. Like a heavy-handed dose of false cheer.
‘You have performed very well, Maddy.’
They ate in silence for a while, the canteen echoing with the sound of their forks scraping porcelain and the soft chirruping of woodland creatures.
Finally, Maddy spoke again. ‘So I guess that transmitter in the jungle and the other one in Jerusalem weren’t made by future humans, like we thought, but aliens … Waldstein’s Caretakers?’
‘Correct.’
‘My God!’ She laughed. ‘Aliens?’ She lowered her fork and stared at Becks. ‘It so makes sense!’ She closed her eyes briefly, trying to recall the carved hieroglyphics on the floor stones. Adam had been certain some of the figures depicted the builders, the creators of the transmitters. Adam had called them the ‘Archaeologists’. He’d said these people from the future would probably have been worshipped like gods.
You were closer than you realized, Adam.
If those carved figures had been actual extra-terrestrials … then of course the primitive Mayan people would have seen them as godlike.
‘Maddy?’
‘Huh?’
‘Do you think Roald Waldstein knows about the transmitters? He did not make any reference to them.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘No, he didn’t. I don’t know how those things fit into his story. Perhaps they’re devices that allow them to monitor time-travel activity, or the state of that “membrane” between here and chaos. Or maybe they use them to call home or something!’ She shook her head. ‘Rashim would have really got off on this, wouldn’t he? What with his theories about pocket universes and all the Drake-Equation stuff.’
‘Yes.’ Becks nodded. ‘He would have found this very interesting.’
They finished the rest of their food in a morbid silence. Just the two of them, sitting side by side like the last two sisters in an abandoned nunnery. Mentioning Rashim had once again set Maddy’s mind off thinking about absent friends.
There was an accommodation wing on the other side of the fifth floor, the one below Waldstein’s. There were a dozen bedrooms and a shared bathroom. It had been set up for members of the research staff who preferred to sleep over on the campus rather than travel the mountain road back down to the nearest town for the night. Waldstein showed them a room each and left them to get some sleep.
The next morning he came down and met the two of them in the canteen. He shuffled in, carrying a coffee cup rattling in a saucer in one shaking hand, and wearing a thick, woolly dark-green dressing-gown over baggy trousers and a jumper, his snow-white hair tufted and left messy by a restless night.
‘How do you feel now, Maddy? Better?’
‘Yeah, thanks,’ said Maddy. ‘I haven’t slept that well in quite a while, Mr Waldstein.’
‘Support unit, have you fed yourself? Are you nutritionally replenished?’
Becks looked at the half-empty tumbler of pondwater-green sludge in front of her. ‘Yes, the protein solution is adequate.’
‘Good.’ He sat down at the end of the table.
‘Can I ask you a question about Foster?’
‘About Foster?’ The old man shook his head and laughed softly. ‘No, if that’s what you’re asking, he wasn’t a clone engineered from my DNA.’
‘But he looked very much like you …’
‘As Liam will one day, I imagine. But no … It wasn’t me.’
‘Then who?’ asked Maddy. ‘And what about me? I want to know whose DNA I was engineered from.’
He sighed, leaned forward and started fumbling inside his dressing-gown for something, then pulled out an old worn leather wallet. He opened it up and leafed through various pouches full of yellowing, dog-eared corners of paper. He found what he was looking for and pulled it out very carefully.
A photograph. He handed it to her. She saw a couple and a baby. A man and a woman holding each other, smiling; clearly a couple deeply in love – happy times for them and their newborn child. The couple were in their early thirties. The man had wiry thick dark hair, prematurely greying at the temples, deep-set eyes within a lean face. The woman had curly strawberry-blonde hair, pulled back to reveal a pale freckly face.
It took Maddy a few moments to realize who she was looking at. The man in the photo … was a much younger version of Waldstein. The angled jaw, the lean face, the dark brows, the unruly dark hair. She then looked at the woman holding the baby.
OhMyGod …
‘May I see, Maddy?’ asked Becks.
She turned the photo towards her. ‘The woman? It looks … like …’
‘It looks like you, Maddy,’ said Becks.
‘An older version of me!’
‘That’s my wife, Eleanor. Me … and that’s my son, Gabriel.’
Maddy slapped her hand down against the table. ‘Oh, I get it. I get it now. You engineered me from your wife’s DNA?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Sal?’
‘Her DNA came from … our research-campus gene pool. We screened for a suitable candidate with pronounced visual acuity, high intelligence. We ended up with someone Asian, so she was given appropriate life memories.’
‘And what about Liam … Foster …?’
‘Yes. They both came from my son’s DNA.’ Waldstein looked away from her for a moment, unable to look her in the eye. ‘You will never know how hard it was for me to see your faces growing in those tubes, to see my wife behind the glass. To see the young man my son could have grown up to be behind that glass. To see how much he would have ended up looking like me if he’d lived his life.’
His weak voice began to warble with emotion. ‘And the pair of you will never know how hard it was for me to leav
e you behind in Brooklyn at the turn of the century and come back to this godforsaken time.’
‘But that didn’t stop you being able to instruct a whole batch of support units to come gunning for us,’ replied Maddy.
‘Yes … yes, I know. But maybe now you understand the stakes. Left to your own devices you might just have decided to turn today into a better, rosier, happier world. And, my God, if you had … there’d be nothing left of Earth now. Nothing!’
A solitary tear spilled down on to one of his craggy cheeks. ‘I had to order those support units to kill copies of my son and my wife. I had no choice. And I can’t imagine you will ever … ever understand how difficult that was for me.’
They sat round the table in an uncomfortable silence, listening to birdsong and Becks slurping from her tumbler of protein solution.
‘I said “welcome home” when I met you at the gate,’ Waldstein said finally. ‘In many respects, you have come home … this place is your home, Maddy.’
‘The only home Liam and I have ever had was what we managed to make for ourselves in New York. And you forced us to run from that.’
‘I completely understand how you must still feel,’ he replied. ‘I’m sorry. What I did was a mistake.’
‘You have no frikkin’ idea how I feel! To give me a memory of a life, then discover it’s just fake?! Everything I thought I was, every emotion, every preference, every choice I made … were they my choices? Or someone else’s? Were they programmed into my head … or free decisions? For God’s sake, who the hell am I?’
‘You are the person you’ve become over the last few years, Maddy. The sum of your own experiences and emotions. What you’ve lived makes you Maddy Carter, not the library of memories you had pre-installed.’
Waldstein set his coffee cup down carefully on the table, then picked up the old photograph, tucked it back in his wallet and put it away inside his dressing-gown.
‘Tell me, would you like to see where you were born?’