FAST FORWARD: A Science Fiction Thriller

by Darren Wearmouth

  “…team will help with your integration. Ready?”

  “For the virtual tour?” Luke said. “Ready when you are.”

  Lynch smiled out of the corner of his mouth again and a silver ripple crossed his face. Luke leaned over the table for a closer look, and what he’d assumed as leathery skin had more of a sheen.

  “You’ve only just noticed?” Lynch said. “I assembled here half an hour before you arrived.”

  Luke stared in amazement at an artificial version of Lynch, wondering if the doctor’s mind lived on a machine somewhere in cyberspace, or if he physically sat in another location.

  “You’ve a lot to learn. Head downstairs to my claytronic station and put on the headset. I’ve already set it to auto-engage for the Westminster clayport.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Luke asked. “Can we take things easy for a minute?”

  “You’re fitted with a man-machine interface. Don’t worry, it’s a non-invasive procedure, and you need it for virtual engagements. Put on the headset and I’ll show your claytronic form around Westminster.”

  Before Luke could respond, Lynch stood and said, “Disengage.”

  His body blurred, turned transparent, sparkled for a second, and vanished into thin air.

  Lynch’s yellow shorts dropped to the ground. A mixture of chewed up bacon sandwich and coffee splattered on top of them. Luke looked back at Meakin, who waved him toward the villa. He rose from his chair and headed inside.

  Chapter 9

  Luke descended a creaking spiral staircase toward darkness. A big step into the unknown waited below, but he knew personal progress in 2070 was impossible unless he rapidly adapted to change.

  The claytronic station’s jet black walls gleamed and the smooth rubber floor squeaked beneath his boots. Four cobalt eyes glowed from each corner and their thin beams met on a transparent dentist-style chair in the center of the room. A silver headset, shaped like a slimmed down version of a fighter pilot’s helmet, attached to its side on a jointed metal arm.

  “It’s straightforward,” Meakin said. “Plant your ass and stick on the headset.”

  A prickle of anticipation ran through Luke’s body as he eased himself into the chair. A widescreen image projected on the wall opposite. The white text display read: Westminster clayport – Auto-engage. He dragged the headset across and lowered it over his head, unaware of what to expect but committed to the action.

  The headset clicked, and let out a high-pitched whistle as it gently tightened around his temples. A digital HUD command line flashed to life in the bottom right-hand corner of the tinted visor.

  Searching…

  Connecting Interface…

  Luke Porterfield:

  Form recognition scan…

  Sheets of blue laser beamed from the cobalt eyes and swept up and down Luke’s body. An image of him built on the HUD and a percentage measurement raced up to one-hundred.

  Building configuration…

  Assembling…

  Clayport transfer – Westminster

  Everything turned silent and black. All external pressure left Luke’s body and he experienced weightlessness, as if floating in water. He reached to rip off the headset. Nothing moved; he couldn't even sense his limbs.

  A chrome cage with a security gate took shape around him, brick buildings towered on either side, and solid ground built below his feet.

  The scene flicked to color, and his senses returned in an instant.

  The smell of urine invaded his nostrils and a plane’s engines echoed in the sky. Luke stood behind bars, facing down an alley toward a distant street.

  A moment of panic set in. Lynch’s shorts had dropped to the ground after he disappeared. Luke patted his body and sighed with relief when his hands hit the material of his replicated T-shirt and cargo pants. He tugged at his clothes out of curiosity, and they joined to his body like an extra layer of skin.

  A shiver followed his relief when he realized Lynch must have slipped his shorts on after assembling, meaning somewhere in the world he’d been holding the meeting while sitting naked in a claytronic station.

  Luke circled the cage, waved his left hand in front of his face, and pinched his chest to check for feeling. He imagined the real version of himself back at Century House, sitting motionless in the chair, at the mercy of Dave Meakin, and it knocked an edge off his impressive sensory transfer.

  “Stand clear of the catom dispenser,” a neutral female voice said through a speaker attached to the ceiling.

  A circular gap opened on a metallic panel at the back of the cage. An intermittent electronic beep pulsed, and red lights winked around the bars.

  Luke edged to the side.

  An effervescent cloud puffed out of the hole and hung in the air. It gradually took the form of a pale blue, translucent human, and solidified into a monochrome figure of Lynch. Color flushed the bottom of his purple jeans and rushed up his body in a smooth wave, finishing at the top of his light blue cap.

  Lynch’s assembled claytronic version stood as unmoving as a statue for a couple of seconds until he blinked, and his shoulders relaxed. He caught Luke’s stare and grinned. “Welcome to your claytronic self.”

  “It’s amazing, I’ll give you that. Did Timetronic pioneer it?”

  “Nobody could’ve mastered motor and nerve impulse manipulation on their own. We’re part of a global venture, and naturally, Timetronic gets the exclusive distribution rights in the UK.”

  “Sounds slightly different to what you explained in the barn?”

  “To use a horrible corporate cliché, I guestimated,” Lynch said, spitting the final two words as if they had just killed his grandmother. “We're using the same tech for VR. Instead of transferring impulses to a simulated environment, we wirelessly interact with programmable matter through our clayservers. Remember when I talked about integration and extrapolation at Clifton Hall?”

  “Like it was yesterday, funnily enough.”

  “Indeed. Anyway, working on the basis of an open platform put us well ahead of the game. By the time Carnegie Mellon University published their papers in the late-twenties, and companies started developing software for commercial use, we’d already created programs and models based on brain signals."

  “And Timetronic was born?”

  “Not quite. We formed after selling transport systems to NASA and ESA in ‘25, but it really exploded after everyone wanted the collaborative VR and claytronic solutions. The increasing lack of resources and the financial market mega-crunch in ’36 created a perfect storm to push our benefits.”

  “How did you replace the security services?” Luke asked.

  “Using clay-servers means our security team is never in harm’s way. It made financial sense to keep the solution in-house and encourage the government to privatize policing. They took the bait in the early forties.”

  “That’s a big step. Didn’t you get union push back?”

  “Most unions disbanded after legislation reduced them to glorified social clubs. Even in your previous time, a cop’s belt jingled with weapons, and hardly any patrolled. We’ve returned to less intimidating form of community policing.”

  Luke hated himself for experiencing a pang of jealousy, especially after what Lynch had done for him, but he knew if most people were honest they'd admit feeling the same over someone else's success. He focused back on the doctor and wondered about his behavior at Century House.

  “Another quick question,” Luke said. “Why did you eat the bacon sandwich?”

  “Why not? It stimulates our five senses. I see it, smell it, hear myself chewing, feel it in my mouth, and taste it. It's an experience I can enjoy without worrying about the health impact.”

  “All while naked?”

  “I’ve several bodies attached to my profile, and that one’s good for exercise. You’ll soon see another version of me.”

  “Why my form recognition scan?”

  “You’re a first time user. Standard se
curity claystations don’t use form recognition to enable faster transfers. For VR, the team at the facility scanned you as part of the reintegration process. You can easily change both appearances, but that’s for another time.” Lynch moved across to the security gate. “This is a Timetronic print recognition system. They provide access to our facilities and clayports. Give it a whirl …”

  Luke smudged his finger against the glass pad. A locking mechanism clanked and the gate creaked open.

  Graffiti covered the walls in front of the clayport. One spray-painted image caught his eye, and went some way to explaining the cage around the catom dispenser; a poorly drawn matchstick man with a ponytail, hanging in a noose. Below it, the message read: Bollocks to the Lynch mob.

  “Friends of yours?” Luke asked.

  “Stupid nickname. I bet the perpetrator spends time in our VR worlds.”

  “You sound cynical in your old age. Lynch mob looks like it caught on."

  “We tried to plant the term clops or cloppers, a mix of claytronic and cops. Children of a revolution are always ungrateful.” Lynch gestured a stiff palm, giving a glimpse of his old awkward self. “Please, this way.”

  Luke walked alongside him and they entered Parliament Square. The stone constructed Palace of Westminster and the Abby looked much the same, and the statue of Winston Churchill still stood proudly above a central grassed area. The deserted roads, with steel tracks running along the center of them, appeared completely different. Last time he’d visited this place, it was a living, breathing monster. Horns blasted from hundreds of cars, thousands of people lined the street, and eye-watering exhaust fumes clogged the air.

  A handful of people milled around the pavement in smart business suits. One man stopped, checked his wrist, and broke into a fast walk.

  “What day is it?” Luke asked.

  “Monday the 10th of August. Only government workers and support staff access Westminster zone during the week. You’ll find the rest of London as busy as ever.”

  “What about tourists? Don’t people go overseas anymore?”

  “It’s possible but expensive. Carbon emission targets reduced flight numbers, and most are happy with virtual trips. It’s all about cost and convenience nowadays.”

  “It sounds bizarre.”

  “You're a tadpole, Luke. By the end of the day, you'll think differently.”

  A white, car-sized capsule entered the square, buzzed along the rails past Luke, and stopped outside the entrance to parliament. A gullwing door rotated open with an extravagant swing before two women stooped out, and headed inside the building.

  “There’s an illustration of my point,” Lynch said. “Free automated transport networks run on every street in every pool. Cars are a thing of the past.”

  The capsule glided away and Luke considered how much automation had taken away autonomy. He enjoyed driving a car and deciding his route, and guessed the VR environments also had an element of direction and control.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Lynch asked.

  “It’s a lot to take in. I was just thinking about personal freedom.”

  “People don't want freedom. They say they do, and think they mean it, but their definition of the concept is living under the rule of government, following a nine-to-five timetable, and taking a couple of breaks every year.”

  Luke couldn’t resist smiling at the doctor’s cynical philosophy. “Nice to see your faith in humanity is still alive and kicking.”

  “Generations of so-called conventional wisdom has ingrained a belief that the ultimate dream is to live like a bird in a gilded cage. I’m merely servicing the notion rather than fighting it.”

  “Nobody could ever accuse you of wearing rose-tinted glasses, that’s for sure.”

  “Did I ever strike you as Panglossian? I’m a realist.” Lynch looked up at Big Ben’s clock. “I’m also a busy man. Follow me.”

  He headed across the road toward Westminster Bridge at a swift pace. Luke half-jogged to keep up, yet his pulse and rate of breathing remained steady. This obvious benefit of using a claytronics tempted him to sprint, to see how far he could go without stopping, until the London Eye came into view.

  The giant Ferris wheel listed toward the Thames River. A solid metal arm extended from a static rig in the water against its A-frame support, preventing it from crashing down. Two of the lower pods on the left-hand side were charred shells, windows had shattered on the three above.

  Lynch leaned against the bridge's substantial Victorian rail and silently shook his head. Luke stood by his side, watching construction workers move around scaffolding at the bottom of the damaged structure.

  A man walked past and said, “Whoever did that wants shooting.”

  “This is the kind of atrocity I'm talking about.” Lynch looked Luke square in the eyes. “Terrorists are striking at the very heart of our culture and we need your skills and drive. Help me destroy evil, and protect an old man’s dream.”

  The sight of the wrecked wheel stirred a passion inside Luke. He’d spent his career stopping and preventing this kind of attack, and he recalled the aftermath of the Leicester Square attack; the consequence of not discovering Elfady’s grubby plan before it was executed. The evidence was here to see, and as he learned more about society, he figured he could do some good in the world.

  “Who would I report to?” Luke asked.

  “Me, personally. One of my team will equip you back at the facility. We believe the terrorists are hiding in Zone Seven. You’ve got the perfect cover story.”

  “Which is?”

  “The scars on your arm. We still use the cannula technique for prisoners serving long sentences and solitary confinement. If you’ve just come out after twenty years, you wouldn’t know much about recent developments.”

  “Where’s the punishment? They don’t get to suffer any of their sentence.”

  “On the contrary; life does mean life, and not just their own. Their relatives can't visit, and often die while the inmate is still inside. The public called for tougher sentencing twenty years ago after the Geordie Ripper’s killing spree. This was the most humane way we could ramp it up without introducing capital punishment.”

  “You keep saying ‘we’ when referring to government policy.”

  Lynch nodded in appreciation. “Corporations have their own men in a small coalition government, mostly retired business leaders, and we haven’t held an election for fifteen years. It took a while to vote out the useless career politicians, but society has moved on, and we simply didn’t need overgrown students telling us how to live our lives.”

  “Corporations aren’t exactly renowned hotbeds of democracy.”

  “Look up the term in a dictionary and tell me we had it in your previous life. You won’t find many complaining about the death of silly partisan politics. We publish our plans and legislation every year and have a ninety percent approval rating. If the level dips below seventy percent, it automatically triggers an open election.”

  Whether or not true democracy existed fifty years ago, Luke thought the current set-up sounded more like a cartel, and ripe for internal manipulation to suit the agenda of the day, especially if the coalition controlled the polling data. The whole thing whiffed of a passive form of oppression, but regardless of that, it didn’t give any terrorist a pass.

  “Tell me about Zone Seven?” Luke said.

  “It’s the bilge of our urban pools. The only place a terrorist can hide without being tracked. Clayports and security cameras are vandalized, they sniff a claycop from a mile, and it’s the perfect location for an ex-con.”

  “What makes it different?”

  “Most residents refuse to accept progress; others were sacked from their jobs and moved there. You can’t access key public or private sector systems without a registered man-machine interface, so they have their own little micro-economy.”

  “At least there’s a choice.”

  “It’s a selfish choice,” Lynch snapped. “Thei
r children are potentially exposed to illegal technology, meaning they can’t work beyond the zone’s walls and better their lives.”

  “Can’t you check them?”

  “Some things are impossible to trace until they cause trouble.”

  The longer they stood and chatted, the more aware Luke became about his real self, sitting in a chair at Century House, with Meakin lurking. He knew the overall picture of the world wouldn’t be evident until he experienced it, and the information about Zone Seven intrigued him enough to dive in make a start.

  “I’ll do it,” Luke said. “Under one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “I want Penshaw’s records and any reports on his theft.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. One piece of advice… don’t take anything at face value. I expect an update tomorrow.”

  “I’ll update you when I’m ready. I appreciate you and most others want the terrorists stopped, but the rushing around ends here if want you me to do an effective job.”

  “You’re the expert, I suppose,” Lynch said begrudgingly. “I’ll forward information about the terrorists to your smart-strap. One of my liaison officers will show you how to use it, and help you find your feet for the first few days.”

  “Appreciated. One more thing—”

  “Disengage,” Lynch said. His form immediately turned transparent, and seconds later, he vanished into a cloud of sparkling dust.

  Luke guessed the abrupt exit was a way for Lynch to demonstrate his control after having his request for an update snubbed. He inclined against the rail and looked along the banks of the river Thames. Shimmering apartment blocks stood in the place of old hotels and renovated factories, he assumed in the name of progress, but it gave the capital a bland and sterile appearance.

  Whatever was happening in 2070, he aimed to get to the bottom of it. Despite the lack of information, what drove him to join the SIS and visit Clifton Hall had pushed him to accept the offer. Whoever had bombed the London Eye was about to find out they had a dangerous new enemy.