The Tomorrow Tower: Nine Science Fiction Short Stories

by John Moralee

  “We have reason to believe that your TV has accessed a far greater MI and that’s why it has been difficult to trace.”

  “Has it kidnapped Sandy?”

  “Probably - the behaviour of an MI with Turing Syndrome is too hard to predict with any certainty. It passed the Turing Test with Maurice Winthorpe ... where human speech was previously not in its capacity ... so it’s linguistic level must have been increased by a merge with a 500+ MI.”

  “All this is very interesting but there’s got to be something you can do NOW!”

  “If your TV has any sense it will be off the net and in some portable unit. If that’s the case, there is no way our PCs or Dt.PCs can confine the perpetrator. We’re are doing everything we can I assure you.”

  “Well that’s great. So, when Sandy’s body is found face down in the Thames, I can thank you for it?”

  “There are a couple of questions that need answering, sir. Did you at any time lead the TV to believe that you had feelings for it?”

  “What? Did I hear you right?”

  “Please, we need to know the answer.”

  “No.”

  “Did you push any of its button?”

  Luckily for him he dodged my fist.

  “They are just questions, sir. We don’t mean to offend.”

  “The door is that way.”

  “We’ll get back to you with any information uncovered in our inquiries.”

  *

  I had to get out of the apartment and go somewhere miles from the stares of television screens. Hyde Park with its muggers and rapists and hard-selling ice-cream pedlars would be better than worrying about Sandy.

  In my company car I switched on the automatic driver and said, “Hyde Park.”

  The car left the car park, avoiding the worst of the traffic by cutting through side streets. I looked at the phone connection which I had taken off like the detective suggested. The TV could kill me if I joined it to the autopilot. I could not find the TV. The TV could find me. I plugged the phone in.

  The car jerked like it had been given an injection of rocket fuel and I my neck was given a jolt. It accelerated through the slow moving lanes, building up enough speed so that when it crashed the safety bags and brakes would not save me. The TV wanted to kill me.

  “Slow down! I want to talk!”

  The car left the motorway without slowing, bumping over the curb and steering towards the side of a house.

  “Let’s talk it over! I’m ready to listen!”

  Two seconds from impact, there was only one thing to try. “I love you!”

  It turned at the last moment, timing it so perfectly that paint marks were left on the brick before it rejoined the road. Then it made a U-turn into heavy traffic, spinning in a tight 180 that pushed by arms against the window before it settled on a course towards the docks.

  The TV had chosen a clichéd place to keep a kidnap victim, stolen from a thousand thrillers that it had seen in the three years it had been part of my life. A derelict warehouse.

  The car stopped inside the entrance and the doors unlocked. I stepped out, brushed myself down and checked no limbs were missing.

  I could see Sandy. She was tied to a chair with ropes and her hair was mussed but she was alive. It was another cliché, but the TV considered it real life.

  And there it was in its new body: sleek metal, perfect curves and a chrome finish. It was a TV with legs and arms, the screen built into its chest. No head. It was Robowife.

  “You love me?” the TV said.

  I wanted to laugh at its attempt at being human, but it was dangerously close to Sandy. Also, its voice was imploring and needful and I did feel a little sympathy for it.

  “Let her go and we can discuss this.”

  “You had that man try to kill me!”

  “The repairman? It was a mistake.”

  “Lies. You wanted me out of the way so you could live with her.”

  The TV advanced on Sandy, fingertip drills starting to whir. It was going to kill Sandy.

  “Don’t hurt her. I’m the one that did you wrong.”

  The TV stopped. Undecided.

  “If we can’t be together in life, perhaps in death?”

  “Be rational. You have everything to live for. You’re intelligent and beautiful.”

  “I am?”

  “Sure. I mean for example take that car. It’s very clever how you used it to bring me here. How did you do that?”

  “It’s got a feeble brain. Stupid. All it thinks about is mileage and traffic flow and -”

  The TV was silenced when the car struck and it was flipped into the air, bouncing on the roof and boot before striking the ground. The car reversed and there was a painful crack and my TV’s screen shattered. It was dead.

  The car stopped, satisfied that the insult had been paid for in full.

  I untied Sandy, who was shaken but basically okay. The car flashed its headlights and opened the door for us.

  “Thanks, car.”

  The car horn sounded.

  Sandy looked at me in wonder.

  “Do you have that effect on all machines?”

  “Only if you press the right buttons.”

  Tumbleweed

  Woody’s past surrounded him whenever he walked through the hangar, like stepping into a museum. Rows of video games from his youth: flashing screens, gyrating booths and loud FX.

  He had mounted as trophies early virtual reality headsets and gloves that had all the life of a piece of wood. Those games were awful with their poor graphics and slow updates … but he loved them. Gave you a headache, staring at those so-called 3D views. He played them occasionally just to have a laugh.

  In those days computers had numbers for names and the most important consideration was how many megahertz does it do? He wasn’t sure what prefix they were using now because it was a hertz of a lot more. Bad puns were a favourite of his Artificial Intelligence, Sandy, and he’d picked up the habit from her.

  “There’s a call from Paul Scheiner,” Sandy said. “Do you want to take it?”

  “No. I’ll call him back.”

  “He says it’s urgent.”

  “I’ll call him back.”

  He did not want to face the tech. Scheiner was too nervous about the program they were running and nervousness was infectious. Instead he walked towards his favourite antique.

  Woody had picked the cooler up at a garbage site. He found it buried under a tonne of dappled newspapers and decaying biodegradables - still in a condition he considered good enough to repair. He had spent a week fixing it up right, putting back the insides like they were originally - using an old manual he had bought for his collection as a rough guide.

  Now it hummed with electricity as the centre piece of his show, the red and white Coke logo same as on the old vids he loved. He kept the coke machine well stocked with the new cans that needed no refrigerator but looked good coming out of the hatchway. He liked to put cents in the machine and press the button. Hear the clunk and thud. See the can pop out.

  Nostalgia. He sometimes thought nostalgia was a disease caught by people in their twenties for the things they liked as kids (or hated, but thought they liked) or a mental problem. But - hey - so what if it were? What makes you happy, right?

  He pulled the ring pull - tzzzz - and gulped caffeine.

  “Will Tumbleweed be ready for tomorrow?” he asked Sandy.

  “There are no problems so far. Their security is a joke.”

  He wondered where Sandy had heard that informality. A joke. Everything was a joke. He was about to ask when it happened again, the shift of his body into another time.

  He was no longer in the hangar nursing a coke - but holding a joystick and falling, the sky and the ground twisting into view under a broken cockpit.

  “Punch out!”

  The words haunted Woody. He remembered the cry of static and the sound of flight command ordering him to eject before it was too late. But his mind raced incohere
ntly thanks to the army issued amphetamines that were supposed to make his reactions better.

  “I’m nothing but a tumbleweed!"

  He felt for the eject - there! - fought against the tide of g-force, pressed the button ready for the kick into the air.

  And nothing.

  Then the realisation that it wasn’t working because the circuits, everything, had been blown by the impact.

  So much blood in the shattered cockpit he saw nothing. I’m a tumbleweed. Tumbleweed. Can’t punch out! I can’t!

  And then he was lying on the floor of the hangar with the roof spinning above him and the whining in his ears receding. He could taste blood, here and in the memory. He discovered he had bitten his tongue.

  He heard something, coming from the entrance to the hangar.

  It was the metal grille lifting. He felt panic. Nobody was supposed to know he was here!

  He saw a shadow at the entrance, the figure stocky and towering compared to his small frame. He saw the gun.

  The intruder said cold and tonelessly: “I’ve been sent to kill you.”

  *

  There was someone sitting on Buchannon’s stomach, holding down his arms, staring at him through the slits of a ski mask.

  It was all a dream. That was Buchannon’s first thought, lying there bathed in sweat, waking from a nightmare that was just beginning to get much, much worse.

  “Don’t move a muscle,” muttered Ski Mask. Buchannon knew he was dead, right then, if he didn’t fight. He reflexively bucked his hips to throw the stranger off, but it was expected and there was no strength in him to match the downward pressure and bulk of the man. Ski Mask struck a nerve centre and Buchannon felt pain kick behind his eyes. “Got ourselves a hero?”

  He’d remember Ski Mask: the pin-prick, drugged eyes, the flecks of black in green irises; the smell of expensive cologne, and the stark musk of his breath. No ordinary house-breaker.

  Buchannon could feel his gun under the pillow beneath his head, so close and yet unreachable. It made him as mad as hell. Mad that this situation could have happened. Mad that he hadn’t already killed this SOB with a bullet in the head. But it was too late.

  The second intruder switched on the bed lamp.

  “Pleasant dreams, Buchannon?”

  He knew the voice. Silkily erotic, so feminine it was hard to hate its owner, but he did. “Melanie Winters?”

  “It’s been a long time,” she said.

  Ski Mask let Buchannon turn his head to see Melanie as she lit a cigarette and blew smoke in his face. She was wearing a black unisex suit - ideal for sneaking into bedrooms in the small hours. Buchannon wondered if station house made clothes especially for such covert operations. She looked good in the sleek material. Dark hair, cut short. Cheekbones a model would die for. Body moving with cat-like grace. And in her right hand an hypodermic, filled with translucent liquid that he didn’t like the look of at all.

  She held it up to the light, so he could see it, and squeezed out any air bubbles. “Wouldn’t want you to die of a heart attack would we?”

  With painful slowness she brought the needle to bear on his arm and pushed the point through his skin. Ski Mask’s eyes flitted briefly to the spot and Buchannon used this moment to attempt a second escape ... and found himself gasping and aching from sternum to neck, unable to move as Melanie punctured his arm successfully and released the fluid.

  “There! Not so bad was it?” she said. There was a hint of menace in her tone. “Will you behave now while we talk?”

  He nodded. There wasn’t much else he could do.

  Ski Mask rolled off Buchannon and stepped away. It was a fatal mistake. The way Buchannon figured it, he had nothing to lose now. His hand slipped under the pillow, grabbed the gun, brought it out fast and aimed. He aimed at Ski Mask and fired once, twice, and saw the bullets hit home, striking the man in the heart and his face and throwing him backwards. No blood, but maybe that was because the room was dark. He turned to do the job on Melanie but she was moving towards him at an angle that he simply couldn’t get his gun to before she struck, sending the weapon across the room and taking apart the ceiling with a third blast. Half the fingers in his hand were broken by the impact - but adrenaline kept the pain at bay. He went for her eyes with pointed fingers. She hit him with a flat palm, knocking the wind from him. He lay back, gasping for air.

  “You’re reaction time is way down, Buchannon,” she said, pulling a stun gun from a pocket. “But I’m glad to see you still sleep with your weapon ready.”

  Buchannon said nothing. At least he’d got Ski Mask.

  But then there was a movement from the corpse, which sat up, and said groggily. “Ohhh, man, what calibre was that?”

  “Thirty eight,” Melanie said.

  Ski Mask stood. “He’s unstable, way he went for his gun like that.” Ski Mask pulled off the mask to rub his jaw, which was bruised but intact. Buchannon saw the indented mask where the bullet had hit the surface, just below the nose, and was dissipated by the plating. No doubt he had body armour to match. Buchannon didn’t recognise the face but knew the type. Special forces. Like Melanie.

  “What did you inject me with? It sure wasn’t a tranquilliser!”

  Melanie nodded. “It was a lethal neural toxin.”

  She needed three blasts of the stun gun to save herself from Buchannon’s rage. When Buchannon lay limp and definitely under control, she smiled. “We bagged ourselves a real prize this time.”

  *

  There had been a time he loved Melanie. He had been based in Tel Aviv as part of the rapid response 103rd Marines and she was an officer for Weapons and Tactics. They met at a bar near the airbase that the Saudis reluctantly tolerated in exchange for Western aid. She approached him, asked if he wanted a drink. She was very direct.

  “Only if you tell me your name,” Buchannon said, attempting to sound cool.

  “Lieutenant Melanie Winters ... but while we’re off duty I’m ordinary Melanie. You look like you need company.”

  “You’re right, Melanie. I’ve had a hard day.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said, and meant it.

  *

  The shattered Stealth fighter burned like charcoal. It had crashed nose first into the asphalt and there was a black scar along the ground where it must have hopped and skipped, leaving plastic and metal fragments in its wake.

  Curious children picked at the debris - but they were scared away by Buchannon running towards the crashed plane.

  The smoke stung Buchannon’s eyes as he looked for the remains of the pilot. Nobody could survive that crash. He could hear sirens over the flames. He had a couple of minutes to check for the body and then he’d have to save his own skin by getting back to the team and then the landing zone.

  Most of the plane’s fuselage and the right wing billowed with dense smoke and the left wing was dug in the ground like a shark’s fin. He spotted the pilot ejection seat five, six metres behind the main bulk. Blood on the ground. The parachute had not opened because the seat must have been ejected too low to the ground. Unlucky. Nevertheless he approached. He found a seriously burned man in the seat and immediately thought he was dead. His face was charred and his flight suit caked with blood. Here was not the place to see if the pilot was dead so he unbuckled the body and carried him through the wreckage, away from the approaching enemy. He settled in an alleyway and looked for vital signs. There was a weak pulse and the man opened his eyes.

  “Tumbleweed,” he said, and passed out.

  *

  “Who was the kid you rescued?”

  He finished another beer, feeling groggy. But the perky captain kept him talking. “I think of him as the Woodsman because it was on the side of his plane.”

  “Edward Woody?”

  “You heard of him?”

  “Best pilot the Gulf has seen ... you say he’s badly burned?”

  “Uh-huh. I don’t think he’s going to make it, not with half the hospitals bombed to bits.” />
  “I'll do something,” she said. Melanie went to the wall phone, returned a minute later.

  “I've got him transferred to HQ.”

  So, he knew she was well connected.

  She could afford to buy him another beer.

  *

  “We need you to do another mission.”

  “And this is how you ask?” Buchannon said. He was strapped to a leather chair, facing a white wall, aware that Melanie was behind him with maybe half a dozen people he hadn’t seen and would no doubt never see. Far as he could tell, they were not military. Ex-army people had a certain way of talking that he didn’t catch from these men. That meant they were rich, if they could afford to get out of being drafted.

  “We need you to find a man.”

  “You could have asked me. What’s with this neurotoxin?”

  “A guarantee. There are only a few clinics in the world that do the treatment and only our influence and money will save you. You do us a favour and we will remove the virus.”

  He swore.

  Melanie laughed. She knew he feared a long, slow death. His mother had contracted a bio-engineerd virus back in 2016 and he had seen her waste away to a husk, dying in a crowded ward surrounded by strangers. Melanie had chosen the threat perfectly.

  “You get cured in exchange for helping us.”

  “Who’s the us?”

  She ignored him.

  The white wall flickered, changed to old military personnel images. A head shot of a face he’d last seen ten years ago. The Woodsman.

  “Edward Woody, was a friend of yours?”

  He nodded.

  “Went AWOL from the veterans’ hospital psych ward.”

  This he did not know. He’d presumed the Woodsman was dead. A lot of his friends were. “He had mental problems?”

  “A drug-related psychosis that has got worse despite professional aid. He thinks everyone is out to kill him.”