by Tom DeLonge
Okay …
He had seen the control layout before during Professor Beaker’s tutorials, but he hadn’t expected them to be real.
Not real. This is a simulator.
He belted himself into his seat. And put his hands instinctively on the unfamiliar controls. The consoles, which ran all the way round the cockpit in a series of lit panels, flickered to life, showing a range of digital displays that Alan knew from his classwork.
He heard the intercom system click on in his earphones, and a moment later, he heard Morat’s voice.
“Poised to engage simulated environment. Do you have a preferred venue?”
“Does it matter?”
“If in doubt, I go to Paris,” said Morat, deciding for him. “Charles de Gaul airport it is.”
Alan rolled his eyes and tapped on the touch-sensitive console, watching the displays as he engaged the simulator’s navigation systems. One of them displayed the Locust itself, another graphic he had seen during his two weeks of study but hadn’t really believed. It was a perfect triangle with a couple of fins on the trailing edge, the only way you could determine for sure which corner was the nose. To Alan, the closest known aircraft that came to mind was the B2 Stealth bomber, but this was not so much a flying wing with the B2’s characteristic jagged trailing edge as a perfectly equilateral triangle with soft, curved points. The sheer lines of the plane—if you could still call the Locust a plane—were just so unlike his awkward but trusty Harrier II that he could barely imagine himself getting inside it.
“I’ve never flown a stealth aircraft,” he said, conscious that he was already covering his ass in case the simulation didn’t go well. “Shouldn’t you use pilots with that kind of training?”
“Trust me,” said Morat over the radio, “it wouldn’t help. This is … different.”
THERE WAS A FLICKER OF LIGHT FROM ABOVE. ALAN LOOKED up, realizing, for the first time, that he had a continuous window all the way around the craft, looking out over its bizarre triangular shape. Overhead, he saw a patchy blue sky, while the horizon was cluttered with the radar towers, hangars, sheds and passenger terminals of a bustling modern airport.
He whistled. “That’s quite a simulation.”
“Thought it would be less than top of the line, Major?” said Hatcher’s voice over the intercom. “I’m offended.”
Alan said nothing. He felt under the microscope and didn’t like it.
“The Eiffel Tower is just under forty clicks to your southwest,” said Morat. “Why not take a look?”
“Okay,” said Alan.
“Oh, and you’re no longer Black Eagle,” said Hatcher. “Your code name is now Phoenix. Your controller, who you know as Mr. Morat, is Night Bird One. Base out.”
“Roger that, Base,” said Alan. “Initiating take off.”
“Welcome to the future, Phoenix,” said Morat. “I’ll talk you through this first time. As you know, the sphere on your left armrest is directional control. On the right, you’ve got acceleration and altitude adjustment. These can be overridden by entering preset coordinates into the console in the dialog box with the green rim. The temporal index controls arrival time. The computer will do the rest unless there’s interference with the flight path. These dials set your customizable menu options for cruising speed, altitude, radar countermeasures, the works. Let’s leave them as they are for now.”
Alan was determined not to ask questions unless absolutely necessary. Gradually, the controls were making sense to him as everything he’d seen in two-dimensional abstract terms in Professor Beaker’s classes became real.
Well, almost real. You are still in a simulator.
“You have to unlearn a few things about flying,” said Morat. “But don’t worry. It will make sense to your body. Let’s get in the simulated air and you’ll see what I mean.”
“Wait, I don’t understand …” Alan began, hating the way he sounded, so uncertain, so confused. It was only a damn simulator for God’s sake.
“Okay, so let’s take her up,” said Morat. “Straight up. No runway. As a Harrier pilot, you should like this. You’re used to a single engine directed by multiple movable nozzles so you can direct the thrust straight down, behind, or at an angle that changes the plane’s attitude, right?”
“Right,” said Alan, feeling a little more comfortable. This was stuff he knew.
“Yeah,” said Morat, and Alan could just hear the grin in his voice. “This is totally different.”
Alan bit his lip.
“I think I can take it from here, thanks, Night Bird One,” he said. More switches, then a push of vertical thrust. The ship gave the distinct wobble of a craft leaving the ground, but slowly, moving on a rising column of force. Through the cockpit viewers, Alan saw the simulated Parisian tarmac fall away beneath him, and then the ship hung motionless in the perfectly faked afternoon light.
It was an impossible climb, straight and quick and easy, quite unlike the bronco ride of a Harrier. Nothing flew like this. Alan’s faith in the simulator took a hit.
He forced himself to look around the inside of the single seat craft, and the display panels surrounding the unconventionally roomy interior, and he saw what Morat meant. The interface was uncommonly commonsensical, the screens overlaying the live digital diagrams of the ship’s attitude clear, requiring neither training nor complex explanation. Despite the lights and scrolling displays, it was all remarkably self-evident and intuitive, though it was hard to imagine that it mirrored the interior of the actual craft.
“When you’re happy with the altitude,” said Morat over the headset, “move towards the coordinates on your nav display.”
Alan turned the sphere under his hand and the craft rotated cleanly—too cleanly—in the air. He applied a little thrust and he was moving, the landmarks of Paris—including the Eiffel Tower—zipping past them in a blur. He pursed his lips. State of the art it might be, but it didn’t feel like flight. No aircraft could pivot on a dime like he had just done.
Then he registered the heads up display.
“That can’t be right,” he muttered. “Phoenix to Night Bird One. I’ve got some read out anomalies.”
“Go ahead, Phoenix.”
“The console says we just went from zero to four hundred knots in under a second.”
“Not in a Harrier now, Major,” said Morat.
“No,” Alan agreed. “I’m in a simulator.”
“The best in the business,” said Morat.
“If you say so,” said Alan, increasing speed. He felt the pull of G-force on his face and the pressure in his chest, but it was nothing like what he should be feeling at this speed.
“How’s that?” asked Morat.
“Fine,” said Alan, refusing to be impressed, and not only because he felt the honor of his beloved Harriers had been called into question. “But there’s a lot of things you can do in a simulator that would pull you apart if you were really in the air.”
In response, Morat’s voice came over the headset.
“Why do I feel like it’s us who are being tested?”
“Just want to see how wide of reality we really are,” said Alan.
“You need to work on your outlook, Phoenix. It’s very cynical.”
“Sorry about that, Night Bird One,” said Alan, pushing the craft faster still. They were now going well beyond Mach 1 but the simulator felt as smooth as ever, even when he jinked the directional sphere back and forth, half rolling the little digital triangle which showed the Locust’s imaginary attitude. “I just like simulators that actually, you know, simulate what the act of flying feels like. It’s an eccentricity of mine.”
“You’re going to have to trust me that it is doing exactly that.”
“Right. Okay, Night Bird One, what tricks do you want to show me?”
“Let’s try a hard left. Really hard. Like ninety degrees.”
“Ninety degrees?”
“Yeah. Point at Africa and go.”
Alan,
annoyed, did so, pushing the ball hard so that the great triangle slewed around without losing a single notch of speed.
“See?” said Morat.
“Uh huh,” said Alan, “though I’m pretty sure I could do that in an X-Wing on Play Station.”
“Can your X-Wing do a vertical climb at Mach 5, make a right angle turn and come to a dead stop?” asked Morat.
“Probably not,” said Alan, his irritation getting the better of him, “but that’s my point. Nothing can. So why am I wasting time pulling impossible stunts? Are you going to use me as an actual pilot, or are we just playing video games?”
“You hear that, Base?” said Morat. “I think we’ve been issued a challenge. Requesting an unscheduled shift to phase two.”
There was a moment of radio silence and then Hatcher’s voice came in over the intercom.
“Let me see what I can arrange, gentlemen. Ascertaining full phase two clearance. Stand by.”
“Wait,” said Alan. “What? I don’t understand.”
“Something has come up,” said Morat. “We need to accelerate your training.”
“Meaning what?”
“I think it’s time you got out of the simulator and up in the air.”
21
JENNIFER
Hampshire
“WELL?” JENNIFER ASKED.
“Details are proving difficult to locate,” said Deacon.
“That’s the understatement of the fucking year,” she answered. “Sorry,” she added, noting the shock on the older man’s face. “But it’s like they go out of their way to bury any useful information about what they are actually doing.”
They were back at the house, huddled in the glow of computer screens and a single desk light, where they had been for almost two hours as darkness fell on the gardens outside. Jennifer had changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, and had hastily disassembled the maddening French twist so that she kept having to brush her hair out of her face. She didn’t care.
“And you are absolutely sure that this is your copy of the agenda?” asked Deacon.
They had had this conversation twice since the board meeting. Deacon had thought that perhaps she’d absent-mindedly underlined the item referring to the special aerospace package herself, or had picked up someone else’s copy.
“If it’s supposed to be a message to you,” he said when she protested, “it is singularly unhelpful.”
But then again, it was all unhelpful. The Maynard Consortium had a snappy website, and brochures, and interminable files detailing its various accounts and investments, but it all seemed to end in cascades of numbers. What they were actually investing in was anybody’s guess.
The numbers were not exclusively misleading, however. Whatever that aerospace investment was, it was expensive. Billions of dollars, funneled over the last six months alone, but to fund what? Even her father’s laptop had been unable to shed light on that.
“These files make no sense,” she remarked to Deacon as she pored over them. “Most of the directories are empty, and the accounts they do show explain only about a tenth of the funding.” She sighed then whistled. “Nigeria has a space agency? And Saudi Arabia? This is weird.”
Deacon materialized at her shoulder.
“Maynard is funding the Nigerian Space Agency?” he asked.
“And the Sri Lankan Space Agency, if you can believe that. And the ones in Bangladesh, Tunisia and Pakistan. That’s a pretty strange list of bedfellows, even without the space agency bit.”
“But the funding levels are low,” Deacon mused, peering at the screen.
“So where is the rest of it going? And why can’t we see it?”
“Perhaps there’s nothing to see,” said Deacon. “Let’s be honest, Miss Jennifer. We don’t even know we’re reading the data correctly. This may just be an accounting convention, or a matter of how money is transferred through channels. If the bulk of the money goes to UK interests, it could be recorded differently, routed through companies with strong governmental ties, such as British Aerospace, whose records are confidential or classified.”
“Or maybe someone doctored the laptop to remove whatever they thought we’d find interesting,” Jennifer countered.
Deacon sat beside her and, for a moment, said nothing. When she turned to look at him, he was watching her with a troubled frown.
“What?” she said.
“Miss Jennifer …”
“Just call me Jennifer, please,” she said. “This ‘Miss’ thing makes me feel like I’m twelve years old.”
“Jennifer,” he said, laying the word out like it was a gift, wrapped and ribboned for Christmas. “Have you considered the possibility that there’s nothing to find? That you are hunting for something you want to be there, because it will give your father’s death a sense of purpose it doesn’t really have?”
She had considered that. Of course she had. But she was surprised to hear him say it.
“Someone wanted me to look into this,” she said, indicating the agenda item someone on the Maynard Consortium board had underlined.
“Perhaps,” said Deacon. “But if so, it’s more likely to be a rather mean-spirited joke at your expense than a pointer towards nefarious activities.”
She would have bristled, but this use of the word nefarious brought her up short, and she couldn’t help but grin.
“Did I say something amusing?” he asked.
She shook her head and patted his hand. It was cool, ridged with bone, liver spotted and latticed with prominent veins. Old hands.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. I just feel like …” But she didn’t know what she felt. Not really.
She pushed the rolling chair away from her father’s heavy desk and stretched out.
“Perhaps you should call it a night,” said Deacon. “Get some rest, and take a look with fresh eyes tomorrow.”
“When I’ll see that I’ve lost my mind?” Jennifer said. “And give up?”
“Not precisely what I meant,” said Deacon, conceding the half-truth. He saw the disappointment in her face and relented. “Do you mind if I just check something?” he asked, nodding at the laptop.
Jennifer shrugged, got up and perched on the edge of the desk, staring absently at the little wooden lion she’d wanted to believe was significant. He had probably stopped facing it towards him a decade ago. She wouldn’t know. She hadn’t really known him for years.
She might have lapsed further into nostalgia and sadness, but something in Deacon’s manner had changed. He was sitting very still, as his focus on the computer sharpened.
“What?” asked Jennifer.
“There’s a keystroke logger he installed,” said Deacon, not looking at her. “A month ago. He said he was growing forgetful and wanted to keep track of what he had been doing and when. You have to know exactly where to go to find it. He hid it because he said he’d hate to have someone else spot it and think he was losing mental acumen. I didn’t think much of it at the time, though it did strike me as out of character.”
“And?”
“According to this, the computer was active for two hours, the day after he died. And again, for four more, the day after that.”
“So someone took it and rifled its contents. Possibly deleting as they went.”
“But inexpertly,” Deacon mused.
“You think any deleted data might be recoverable?” Jennifer asked.
“In the right hands and with time, possibly, though that is beyond my area of expertise,” said Deacon. “Which is suggestive. A professional would surely destroy the machine and replace it. The person who did this doesn’t seem to know that deleted material doesn’t truly go away, or assumed no one would look too closely.”
“Meaning me,” said Jennifer, with bitter amusement.
“Indeed,” said Deacon. “But then someone sends you a cryptic message that guarantees you will. So either you have two different people, pulling you in different directions …”
> “Or one person, laying out breadcrumbs,” she concluded for him.
“Precisely,” said Deacon. “I’m not sure which possibility is more troubling.”
“Don’t breadcrumbs lead to the gingerbread house and the witch’s oven?”
“I believe that is the traditional outcome, yes,” Deacon agreed.
“Then let’s pull for option one,” said Jennifer. “I assume you’ve already got everything relating to Dad’s business interests out of the safe?”
“And his various safety deposit boxes, yes,” said Deacon. “If he hid pertinent information elsewhere, I’m afraid I don’t know where.”
For a moment Jennifer grew very still, and her eyes glazed.
Surely not …
“Miss Jennifer?” Deacon prompted.
“Nothing,” she said, shaking off the reverie. “I suppose I’m more exhausted than I thought. Time for me to turn in.”
He hesitated for a half-second, and there was the beginning of a question on his lips, but he thought better of it.
“Anything I can bring you before bed?” he asked, standing.
“No,” she said. “Wait. Yes. Whisky. The Lagavulin.”
Her father’s favorite.
“Certainly,” said Deacon. “I’ll bring it to your room.”
JENNIFER SHOWERED AND CHANGED INTO FLANNEL PAJAMAS and a terrycloth dressing gown. For all its opulence, the house was always cold, even in summer. The alternative was a heating system that made the place stuffy and humid. She sipped the scotch Deacon had left on her nightstand but made no move to go to bed, waiting, instead, for the noises of the house to still.
Twenty minutes later, she went barefoot along the hall, feeling the chill from the polished wood floors as she went past her father’s study, past his bedroom and past what had been her play room, to what had been, effectively, his. She took a sip of the whisky she was still cradling, savoring its complex, heady flavors, feeling strange to be here, like a kid awoken by a nightmare, looking for her father.
Once more, the memory of disturbing her father in his study that night, the one night he had shouted, came back to her, but she didn’t know what it meant. Not wanting to remember him like that, she shrugged it off. Instead, she tried the door. For the briefest anguished moment, she felt sure she would find him inside.