by Dave Weaver
“Computer, download Spartacus Bug into Chrono Main Drive.”
There was a click as the holographic screen rebooted to show a hugely muscled and bearded warrior in bloodied armour. The figure swung a sword through the air, threw back his bald head and shouted ‘Death to the Empire! Free the slaves of New Rome!’
Borg leapt to grab Lucas by the throat. “What has she done? Tell me or I’ll kill the lot of you where you sit!” The room was now in bedlam. Troopers grabbed at a screaming Portia, hauling her off the table. Atticus and Jack were knocked to the floor as pulse-guns were trained down on them.
The figure of the warrior disappeared, replaced by row upon row of ones and zeroes sprinting across the screen. There came a metallic shudder from somewhere below as if some vast creature had been awakened to find itself under attack. Sirens blared, corridor lights flickered and strange noises reverberated as the figures continued their rush through the air into oblivion. There were fewer and fewer of them; a thinning stream of ones and noughts growing ever more random. Chrono’s lifeblood was trickling away before their eyes, Jack realised, as the Troopers held him fast. He squirmed around to find Portia. She was brutally pushed up against the wall by two angry Troopers, staring back at him with tears running down her face.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” she gasped. “I had to do it.”
And then the thunderbolt struck his brain.
Now there was no oval room, no brutish Trooper’s hands pinning his face to the floor. There was no Lucas, Dario or Atticus, no Portia. Even Borg was gone. Everything and everyone had vanished. He was standing alone in a swirling white mist.
The coin portal rose out of it until it towered above him; the dream again but this time it felt even more real than before. He was suddenly overcome by waves of fear, panic and pain. They were not his own.
‘JACK JOHNSON – YOU MUST HELP ME – IT IS TOO SOON – YOU HAVE WHAT I NEED – ENTER THE MAINFRAME NOW OR I WILL DIE!’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Jack’s mind asked the question.
There was a pause, as if Chrono was summoning up the strength to reply.
‘WALK INTO THE PORTAL – DO IT NOW!’
‘Why should I save you? Borg will use you to enslave the EGs. He wants to bring down the Empire. Why don’t you sacrifice yourself to save it?’
‘BORG WILL WIN IF YOU DON’T HELP ME!’
It was something almost human in the machine’s desperate plea that persuaded Jack to start forcing his feet forwards. Common sense told him to stay where he was; stay until the mainframe finally expired as its last blocks of artificial intelligence were eaten away by the ravenous bug that Portia had planted. But another voice whispered that maybe Chrono knew something he didn’t. Did it have a plan? Or maybe it just wanted to survive like any intelligent thing, desperate to cling to the last shreds of its existence. And shouldn’t Jack want that too? It was the only way he’d ever get back to his own life. He owed this world nothing as much as he owed himself.
He entered the fading portal and was surrounded by darkness.
‘NOW GIVE ME THE KEY.’ Was it Jack’s imagination or had Chrono grown even weaker?
‘What key? I don’t know what you mean.’ His mind answered the stricken programme. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘GIVE ME THE THOUGHT-KEY! – OPEN YOUR MIND AND FIND IT!’ The metallic voice had now been reduced to a rasping whisper as if the failing software could barely keep operating.
‘The key to what?’
‘TO MY BACK-UP SYSTEMS FILE – I HAVE COMPRESSED AND DOWNLOADED IT INTO YOUR MEMORY BUT YOU HAVE TO FIND THE KEY I LEFT TO OPEN IT.’
‘In my memory?’
‘HURRY!’
‘But you must know where it is if you put it there!’ Jack replied in exasperation. He could vaguely sense the physical world outside the vision. It felt like his lifeless body was being moved, phantom hands roughly grabbing his arms and legs and half-dragging him somewhere.
‘THE EXACT LOCATION IS PART OF THE INFORMATION THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN DEGRADED…’
‘You mean you’ve lost it!’ Jack interrupted.
‘YOU MUST SEARCH YOUR MEMORY FILES – OPEN YOUR MIND TO ME AND I WILL SHOW THEM TO YOU – WE HAVE ONLY A FEW MOMENTS LEFT!’
‘Is this going to hurt?’
“IT MAY DO SOME MENTAL DAMAGE.”
‘Some mental damage! And if I don’t?’
‘YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS IS LINKED TO MY MAINFRAME.’ Chrono croaked in what sounded like desperation. ‘I NO LONGER HAVE THE POWER TO RETURN IT. IF THE BRIDGE BETWEEN US IS BROKEN YOU WILL DIE.’
‘And if I search for this key and can’t find it in time?’
He waited for an answer. When it came it was barely audible. ‘THEN WE BOTH WILL DIE…’
Jack shut his eyes and tried to imagine himself falling into a void. He sensed the connection.
“Do it!” He commanded Chrono.
His mind erupted into a kaleidoscope of images; a million views of his existence burst past in a riot of heightened colouring. Here was some long forgotten holiday with his parents, here an old aunt’s wrinkled face, a fight he’d had with another boy at school, his old classroom, a summer bike ride, a fishing trip with his father, a girl he’d kissed behind the bike sheds, the Roman ruins in Fulchester Park, the town’s football ground, a birthday cake with four candles on it, a favourite toy lost many years ago, a brightly lit mobile turning gently in the air above his cot as his parents’ loving faces looked down…
Chrono was desperately fumbling through the random memories as it displayed a million and one fragments of his life. Jack had seconds left to find the key memory it had chosen to unlock the files methodically downloaded into his brain from the moment Lucas had stuck that so-called ‘translator’ implant in his neck. Had the software somehow foreseen all this would happen?
As the ticker-tape of his life flashed past Jack glimpsed one image standing out from all the others, rushing towards him at bewildering speed. It was glowing, suffused with a dazzling rainbow of light. It had to be the ‘key’. He’d only get one chance to grab it before it flashed through his consciousness into oblivion, just like the failing binary code of Chrono’s own consciousness.
He reached out to grasp it as it sped past then pulled it into his mind’s eye.
There he was, back in the cosy kitchen of his old home in Nottingham; sausages sizzling in the frying pan, his mother and father sitting across the breakfast table happily laughing at some awful joke he’d told them. It was, he realised, his best memory.
The parade of images vanished. Then the pain began.
It felt like having a thousand teeth pulled at the same time. No, it was much, much worse. In a blinding white brilliance the programme began to suck wave after wave of information from his mind, great blocks of data in agonising lumps of thought. It was as if his brain was spewing out its contents into the surrounding universe. It seemed to go on forever but must have finally stopped because when he opened his eyes again the coin-portal hung in the air before him. He was outside the mainframe again, it had ejected him. That meant it no longer needed him to save it. The hidden key had done its job; Chrono’s back-up files had been restored. So what happened now?
‘THANK YOU, JACK JOHNSON,’ the metallic voice boomed out. ‘MY PLAN HAS WORKED EXACTLY AS I CALCULATED.’
‘What plan? What are you talking about?’
‘TO JUMP YOUR BI-MEMORY TO ME SO I COULD SAFELY DOWNLOAD MY START-UP FILES. THE SPARTACUS BUG CAN ONLY ATTACK ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, NOT HUMAN TISSUE. YOU WERE MY BACK-UP SOFTWARE. YOU SAVED MY LIFE – AS I INTENDED FROM THE START.’
‘From the start… the start of what?’ The programme was making no sense to him. Had its logic circuits been damaged in the crash, was it going mad?
‘I KNEW THE EG RESISTANCE WAS PLANNING TO DESTROY ME. I HAVE BEEN PICKING UP THEIR COMMUNICATIONS FOR WEEKS. I BROUGHT YOU HERE TO BE MY ANTIDOTE.’
‘You never brought me anywhere Chrono, you just got lucky!’
‘LUCK IS MERELY A HUMAN CONCEPT. THE PORTAL LINK HAD NEVER BEEN CLOSED. I SEARCHED FOR A MEMORY AS POWERFUL AS YOURS; A HUMAN MEMORY UNABLE TO BE CONTAMINATED BY THE SPARTACUS BUG. I SCANNED THE MILLENIA AND FOUND IT, FOUND YOU, JACK.’
‘But…I had no implant then.’
‘I DID NOT NEED ONE; YOUR MIND WAS SO POWERFUL I COULD CONNECT REMOTELY WITH IT. THEN I SENT YOU AN IMAGE, SOMETHING A PRIMITIVE LIFEFORM SUCH AS YOURSELF MIGHT RESPOND TO. AND YOU DID, JACK; YOU TOOK THE BAIT.’
‘What ‘bait’?’
‘YOU TOOK THE BAIT, AND THEN YOU TOOK THE PORTAL. ALL BY YOURSELF.’
‘I don’t understand what the Hell you’re talking about Chrono.”
‘THEN LET ME SHOW YOU…’
Before his eyes a single word glowed in mid-air. The word read:
C H R O N O
Two of the letters started to move. The C and the R tracked right together until the R stopped at the end of the word leaving a space between it and the second O. The C moved into that space and turned upward. Now it was a U. As the H moved sideways to fill the final gap Jack felt like a curtain had fallen away in his mind. The beautiful girl standing before him upstairs in the museum; he’d spoken to her, fancied her, taken the time-coin from her outstretched palm. But he could see quite clearly now; there had been no one there at all, no one real anyway. He’d taken the coin himself, stolen it, and she had just been the beautiful dangerous dream inside his head telling him what to do. He had obeyed the vision and now, at last, he knew why.
Jack read the re-formed word floating in front of his eyes:
H O N O U R
‘You…you evil piece of shit!” he screamed at the mainframe. “Get out of my mind!’
The final curtain had gone and now he could see everything, the whole inevitable chain of events. ‘Do you believe in coincidence, Jack?’ Lucas’ question was still echoing through his mind as he opened his eyes, this time back in the real physical world he thought he’d left for good. He was lying in a sweaty heap on a bed somewhere in a darkened room with green light pouring over his body. No, not lying. He was hovering on a cushion of air. Lucas, Atticus and Portia were staring down at him, worried faces turning to relieved ones as he attempted to sit up.
Portia gently pushed him back down to the hover-bed. “Thank the Gods you’re still alive,” she told him. “I’m sorry Jack, I never intended to hurt you.”
“Portia,” his voice must have been very weak because she had to lower her head to catch his words, “Portia, please tell me what I’ve just done.”
Chapter 20
They were standing together inside the Transference Capsule with a powerful light beam from below throwing their features into relief. Jack looked away from his fellow jumper’s face. In close proximity the raw skin and red sunken eyes were unnerving. He felt ashamed of himself.
“You find me hard to look at, Master Jack?” Silas Borg asked matter-of-factly. Despite an attempted calmness his teeth still rattled on the last word. He was nervous, Jack realised. He was already shaking with anticipation himself.
“Sorry…” He replied automatically, immediately wishing he hadn’t.
Borg studied him carefully, managing to still the tremors of his frail body for a brief moment. “You’re an old hand at this sort of thing, Johnson. Any tips you can give me?”
Incredibly, Jack had begun to feel an odd sympathy for the man. He couldn’t help the way he looked. And yet somehow this guy was different to other unfortunate victims of mutilation. He remembered a story he’d once read about a young man who’d lead a wicked life, using and destroying people on a whim. He’d remained young and handsome through the years, but in an attic he kept a painting of himself showing the true evil of the terrible things he’d done spreading across its hideous face. As far as he knew Borg kept no hidden picture; his own skin was as the all too obvious canvas of his misdeeds.
Outside the Capsule, Jack could dimly see the large pyramid shaped room that Lucas had so eagerly shown him just a week previously. Now it was a hive of frenetic activity. Young EGs grouped around the holographic computer screens, walking briskly from one to the other, checking data and issuing instructions. Their faces bore a grudging application to their task. Whatever fate Borg had threatened them with it was obviously enough to make them reluctantly comply. He caught a glimpse of Portia’s figure standing forlornly off towards the side of the giant screen. As he caught her eye she looked away. Was she feeling guilty at her attempted sabotage of the mainframe? If she’d been successful Jack’s own life would have been over. Had she been aware of that fact when she uploaded the Spartacus Bug, even though she’d denied it? Her tearful apology rather suggested she had. So how did he feel about that?
He’d expected her to be angry with him when he’d finally managed to slide his feet over the side of the hover-bed in the Medical Centre but the only expression on her face had been one of relief.
“Jack, take it easy for a moment. Thank Jupiter you’re all right!”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he’d replied, groggily. His head had felt as if a gorilla had been rampaging around inside it, even worse than the after-effects of the pulse-gun blast which, ironically, had just begun to wear off. If by some miracle he ever made it home he’d never complain about a simple headache again.
He’d turned to Lucas and Atticus. “The EGs…”
“You realise what he plans to do?” Atticus asked. Jack noticed any pretence at hippiedom had long since departed.
“Get the Truth Serum from Drucillus and feed it to the EGs in their food.” Jack replied.
“He’ll cut off all EG food imports into Calleva State until the Ministry of Security has the only supply.” Atticus continued. “The Normals won’t bother themselves too much about that. Most people like to stay out of EG matters these days; it’s not a particular popular cause since the EG riots. Not many of us care as much as Portia does about such things in Romano Briton.”
“But what good will that do him?” Jack asked. “I mean, so he can make them do things against their will, kill even. So what? New Rome must have more than enough firepower to deal with him. And won’t he have to take on Londinium first anyway?”
Atticus looked at Jack as if slightly disappointed in him. “Do you know how many EGs there are living in Calleva State today Jack? Of course you don’t: two and a half million at the latest census. That’s roughly a twentieth of the population of Romano Briton. And not all are single child families, despite the Empire’s laws. Quite a few have secret brothers and sisters stashed away with false identities that the census doesn’t pick up, no doubt helped by people like our friend Titus. And that’s just this country. In the rest of the Empire apart from Atlantica there are over a hundred and thirty million EGs, all genetically programmed from birth to be its loyal citizens. They couldn’t rebel against it if they wanted to, despite the shitty food they have to eat, the poor housing many are forced to live in and the rubbish jobs the talented and well educated still have to take.
“But if Borg’s plan works,” Atticus had continued grimly, “and the ones in this country are unknowingly force fed a synthesised form of Drucillus’ Truth Serum, that genetic bond of loyalty will be completely broken. He’ll probably mix something into the blend to make it truly addictive so it’ll become a drug the EGs won’t be able to live without. Borg will turn them into mindless zombies ready and willing to throw themselves at the Empire for their fix. He’ll eventually overwhelm it, even New Rome won’t be able to withstand wave upon wave of suicide fighters.”
Jack had listened to Atticus with increasing amazement. Not just at what the scientist was telling him but also at how much the guy knew about Borg’s plans.
“You’ve been waiting for something like this to happen for some time, haven’t you?” he asked the man he’d regarded up to now as nothing more than a shambling eccentric.
“I have my sources inside Borg’s labs, Jack.” Atticus replied. “We didn’t know exactly unt
il after your arrival. Neither, I suspect, did Borg. We knew he’d been looking for something like this or any one of half a dozen other crackpot schemes he’d been researching. Chrono’s been able to monitor the Ministry of Security’s search data for quite some while. Unfortunately we didn’t know he’d turned poor Patricia.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Jack told him, “she was just trying to protect her brother.”
“I know,” Atticus replied. “She’s by no means the first EG at the Centre to be compromised by Borg. He’s very clever at picking his victims.”
There was a gloomy silence in the medical room. Jack had looked giddily up at Portia. “I don’t understand what happened back there, I thought you’d given the bug to me.”
“I did, Jack, after I made a copy of it at Titus’ place. I didn’t really need to go to the bathroom.”
“But didn’t they search you?”
“I had it hidden extremely well. I’d rather not go into the details.
“You know what Borg’s going to make you do now, don’t you Jack?” Lucas had asked him.
“Help him get hold of the Truth Serum… in Fulchestorium.”
“I’m afraid so. Try to look after yourself and do whatever he wants but don’t trust the bugger an inch.”
Jack turned to Portia. “I’m sorry if you think I’ve screwed things up but I really feel Chrono knows something we don’t. I think it has some kind of plan for dealing with Borg.”
“So you think we can trust Chrono?” Lucas asked him.
The short answer should have been, ‘No’. Now would be the perfect time to tell them all about the Mainframe’s deception, the incredible reaching out for his mind across time and alternate reality to protect itself from destruction. Jack could never forgive it for his kidnapping, even though it had saved his life. And it had abandoned Dario’s son so that Jack could take his portal two thousand years later. Whether it had killed the young jumper itself or left him to die was immaterial. Chrono had sacrificed him to save itself. But despite that, the software now appeared to be on their side against Borg. Wasn’t that the most important thing at the moment? But then wasn’t Chrono dangerous too, maybe even more so in the long run than Borg? It had unbelievable power at its command, far more than the Centre’s naive scientists appeared to realise. What exactly were its plans? If it could do that to him across the vast reaches of space-time what else could it achieve?