FAST FORWARD: A Science Fiction Thriller

by Darren Wearmouth

  Luke glanced across to Lucy and Helen, who both wore the same stunned, open-mouthed expressions.

  “It’s not all bad,” Maria said. “Plenty check-in with incurable diseases and leave with a clean bill of health. I’ve seen it for myself.”

  Lucy pressed her hand against the glass. “Dean might be here.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Helen said. “We need to make a start before the media arrive. The sooner we give them something, the quicker we get on with our lives and reverse Timetronic’s mistakes.”

  Maria continued along the corridor, pressed her finger against a shiny black pad, and a pair of solid doors parted. Two men, dressed in dark blue coveralls, turned in their chairs to face the entrance.

  Luke scanned the thirty overhead monitors, showing different parts of the facility, and twenty light blue holoscreens on an enormous L-shaped desk. At the far end of the room, hundreds of LCD lights glowed green on a vast display, and time-stamped status updates streamed across a screen beneath.

  “We’re taking command of the shift,” Maria said. “I need access to the master controls to carry out multiple unplugs.”

  Both remained in their chairs, acting as if she had just given the order in Swahili. Luke stepped toward them. “Meet your new boss, Helen Penshaw. We need to act fast and get things moving.”

  Helen introduced herself, encouraged the staff away from the workstations, and talked to them about Timetronic's immediate changes. Luke guessed a lot of employees would need these kind of reassurances over the next couple of days and left them to it. Corporate piffle was never his sweet-spot.

  Maria sat at the desk, rested her hands on a glass board, and typed a series of command. “I’m bringing up all patients with no public man-machine transactions attached. It’s a basic search, but it’ll include any fakes.”

  Lucy sat by her side and studied the hundreds of names cascading down the holoscreen.

  “I’ll filter for no private payment schedules or recorded visits.” Maria input more commands and the list reduced to ninety. “Anyone you recognize?”

  “Barbara Pridmore,” Lucy blurted and sprung from her chair. “That’s Dean; I know it.”

  “Why?” Luke asked.

  “That was his darknet pseudonym.”

  “Bio age twenty-seven. I’ll activate an easy unplug,” Maria said. “R-Three.”

  “R-What?” Lucy said. “Can I be there when he wakes?”

  “Recovery room three,” one of the employees said. “I’ll take you down.”

  Lucy’s face lit up, and she wasted no time heading out of the doors. Luke surveyed the overhead monitors, curious to see the process he had gone through a few days earlier.

  The platform raced to the far side of the storage area and jerked to an abrupt halt. It raised on pneumatic legs, the mechanical arm locked around a handle on the front of a transport system and slid it out of the rack.

  “It’s a conveyor belt cleaning process next,” Maria said. “We call it the car wash.”

  Helen moved to Maria’s shoulder, stared at the holoscreen, and her jaw dropped.

  “Seen a name?” Luke asked.

  “I’m not sure...”

  “No need to be sure. What’s to lose?”

  “My sanity.” She pointed to the bottom of the projection. “Bill Stanley was Dad’s chess partner, and he wrote in his diary about Lynch’s frustration over never being able to beat him.”

  “Unplug Bill then. Anyone who got the better of Lynch is good with me.”

  “You don’t understand. Bill died fifty-five years ago.”

  Luke gazed up at the screen that panned across the racks. “Sir Henry…”

  “Maybe. What’s the recorded bio age?”

  They turned to Maria. She spun back to face the glassboard and tapped her fingers against it. “Seventy-one. He entered here in 2026; vital signs are good, and no reported health problems. I’ll go for an easy unplug to R-Four.”

  “Nothing in the records to indicate a stroke?” Helen asked.

  “Whoever it is has a clean bill of health.”

  Back in the storage area, the platform’s mechanical arm pushed the transport system off its flat surface onto a wide conveyor belt, and it smoothly coasted inside the dark rectangular tunnel.

  Nobody spoke a word as they peered at the monitors. Luke had never believed the story about Sir Henry’s theft, though events during the last few days had taken priority over investigating the claim. For Helen's sake, he hoped the old man surfaced, for more reasons than avoiding a second crushing blow in the space of a day after losing Walter. She deserved something back after years of enforced hardship, and her father's appearance would also comprehensively confirm the depth of Lynch’s deceit.

  The platform reversed back while raising on its legs and stopped in front of another part of the rack. Helen took a sharp intake of breath when the next transport system slid out.

  “Would you like me to show—?” the remaining member of staff said.

  “Lead the way,” Helen replied and made her way to the door.

  They rushed into the corridor with the same haste as Lucy and her escort, leaving Luke and Maria alone. He returned his focus back to two monitors tracking the transport systems and the second one entered the tunnel. Jets of water fired from multiple angles and sprayed the graphite shell. Further along the conveyor belt, hundreds of tiny nozzles pumped out air, blowing it dry.

  “I’ll bring up the recovery room feeds,” Maria said.

  Two of the overhead screens switched. Luke recognized the features from when he first woke in 2070; the soft lighting and a table containing bottles of water and a headset. A transport system appeared through a hatch in the wall and eased onto a support platform. Lucy’s escort raised the lid, unclipped a mask from a ghostly white man with a bushy brown beard, and removed a pipe from between his legs.

  Lucy cupped her hand over her mouth and froze.

  On the other feed, Helen entered the recovery room at the same time as the transport system arrived and stared through the lid. Her escort carried out the same procedure, revealing an old man with greasy white hair bunched around his shoulders and a gray beard reaching down to his stomach.

  “Is that Sir Henry?” Maria asked.

  On screen, Helen reached down and grabbed the old man’s trembling hand.

  “He’s thinner than I remember, but yeah, that’s him all right.”

  “They’ll be okay in a couple of minutes after the stimulants kick in.”

  Lucy pulled her boyfriend to a sitting position, and they wrapped their arms around each other. Helen unfastened the side of Sir Henry’s transport system and swung his legs over the ledge. He sat for a minute, blinking and flexing his limbs, then grabbed her shoulders, dropped to his feet, and hunched in front of her.

  The rubber suit hung off the old man’s thin frame, tears streamed down his cheeks, and he collapsed into Helen’s arms.

  “Turn it off,” Luke said. “It’s bloody undignified.”

  Maria switched the monitors between several other recovery rooms. All had a Timetronic member of staff waiting inside. “Who’s next?” she said.

  “Bring up the list. Let’s figure it out.”

  For the next ten minutes, Luke and Maria studied the names, saying each one aloud while they worked their way through the list, but none jumped from the holoscreen as an obvious candidate. He came to the conclusion that the only way to know for sure was to unplug every single suspicious occupant.

  A message alert beeped on his strap. He authenticated himself with iris recognition, the screen unlocked, and he read the short text.

  “I need to go,” he said. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  Maria frowned. “What’s up?”

  “Sir Henry wants to talk. He’s waiting downstairs with Helen.”

  “Don’t make me send a search party. We’ve got plans to make…”

  Luke returned her warm smile, his cheeks flushed, and he le
ft the operations room before his embarrassment became as apparent as python in a bucket of worms. He headed along the corridor, knowing he had to grow a pair of balls in the not too distant future, and descended in the elevator to the corporate reception.

  Crews stood around four television cameras outside the main entrance, and reporters stared inside the facility. The Penshaws sat in the waiting area, staring into each other’s eyes and holding hands. They turned to face Luke as he approached.

  “I’m sorry,” Sir Henry said in a weak voice. “I’m an idiot.”

  “No need to apologize,” Luke said. “We’ve had the same treatment. I take it Lynch blackmailed you with Helen’s survival?”

  “He threatened to power down the barn if I didn’t follow his instructions.”

  “So you laced my sausage rolls. Don't worry; I get it.”

  “It wasn’t the food. Lynch injected you after entering the dining room. That’s when I realized his true danger.”

  Luke remembered the mad doctor going out of his way to brush past him after entering the dining table. Tiny needles only gave off a sensation of a light scratch, and he would have never made the connection at the time.

  “I’ve just received a fawning message from the supposed government,” Helen said. “We’re meeting the other four corporations in two hours. You’re welcome to join us.”

  “No thanks. Boardrooms aren’t my thing.”

  “Is there anything you’d personally like?”

  “I’ll think about it and send a message. Broadly speaking, if I were you, I’d dismantle the drone program and open up the borders around urban pools.”

  “I’ll explain on our way to the meeting,” Helen said to her confused-looking father. “You won’t believe the direction we’ve taken.”

  “We’ll accommodate anything within our power,” Sir Henry said. “From what Helen tells me, you deserve a knighthood… if they still exist.”

  “After finishing the unplugs here, I want a quiet life.”

  “Join us for dinner this evening. I insist.”

  “You need rest,” Luke said.

  “I’ve rested for forty-four years. I’m an old man, Luke, and I’ve no intention of wasting another minute of my life.”

  “I’ll swing by at seven with a guest. I’m not sure if Helen’s told you, but Lynch made a few changes to your estate.”

  Sir Henry’s wrinkled features twisted into a scowl.

  Helen stood and encouraged her father to his feet. “Time to meet the media. The sooner we get this over, the quicker I can orientate you.”

  Luke hung back while Sir Henry hobbled alongside Helen to the main entrance. She opened the door, reporters flocked around them and thrust microphones in their faces. On the screen in the waiting area, live footage broadcast to the nation above the headline ‘Lynch toppled as the Penshaw family take back control of Timetronic’.

  Chapter 36

  An alarm chirped from Luke’s strap, signaling half-past six in the evening. During the last eight hours, he had taken a back seat and observed Maria and four members of the Timetronic team unplug forty names on the list, comprising of politicians, corporate competitors, members of the long-disbanded security services, and several company employees.

  Thirty rooms still contained patients who had nowhere to go; their homes now destroyed or lived in by unsuspecting new residents. Helen was made aware, and she ordered a team to purchase an apartment for each of the secret prisoners, as well as assigning a liaison officer to help with their transition into the changed world.

  The ten who stormed out after Helen, Sir Henry, Lucy, and Dean, had spoken with anger to the waiting media about Gideon Lynch and the role he played in their captivity. It was an odd sight watching the Home Secretary from 2035, dressed in a rubber suit with hair down to her knees, shouting abuse into a microphone.

  Luke took a deep breath, told himself to be a man, and moved over to Maria’s chair. “Go to your apartment and pack a bag. We’re heading to Clifton Hall.”

  “We haven’t finished yet.”

  “These lot of have it covered, and Lynch is already defeated. We deserve a break.”

  “Why pack? The exec pod can bring us back.”

  “We’re not coming back. Bring enough to last a couple of weeks.”

  Maria grinned and stood in front of him. “I thought you’d never take the hint. Any clues to our next stop?”

  “It’s a surprise, but it’s somewhere better than a virtual bar.”

  Luke sensed the silence in the room, turned, and left Maria to say her goodbyes. Earlier, he had messaged Helen with his personal requests. She agreed to them under the condition he listened to an offer from Sir Henry. He also postponed the dinner date for a couple of weeks, prioritizing his life for a change.

  They headed outside and Maria jogged to her apartment block. Luke waited by the rotorcraft and relaxed against its body, letting the evening sunshine warm his face.

  A square section on the side of the cockpit lowered with an electric whine, and the pilot stuck his head out. “Where to, chief?”

  “Clifton Hall. I won’t be needing you after that.”

  “Excellent. Did you hear the government powered down the fences and opened up the perimeter gates?”

  “Can’t be a bad thing, right?”

  “It’s the best thing that’s happened in years.”

  A couple of minutes later, a red-faced Maria returned with a backpack slung over her shoulder. They boarded the craft, squeezed onto the couch between six cops who wore friendlier expression than the last time he set eyes on them, and the rotorcraft thrust into the sky.

  Luke couldn’t take his eyes off the window as they thumped over farmland toward the estate. Thousands of people had left the urban pool and dotted the landscape, heading through crop fields, walking along the side of the roads toward the fenced off historical landmarks, or sitting in small groups on patches of grass.

  “I never thought I’d live to see it,” one of the cops said.

  “I heard a rumor the government banned drones,” another said. “What do you know about it?”

  “Me?” Luke said. “No idea. I only get involved if I’m needed.”

  For the next ten minutes, everyone stared out of a window and commented on things that caught their eye. One cop spotted a motorbike shooting along a track, long thought confined to museums, but a citizen had likely kept it stashed until the day returned when he could ride again. Maria pointed out a roller-blader who rattled along a road and crashed head first into a cabbage field.

  The rotorcraft crossed over the estate’s imposing boundary wall, descended toward the front doors, and landed next to the twin gouges created last night when Frank carried out an emergency landing.

  Luke and Maria shook hands with each cop, clambered down the steps, and headed toward the stone fountain.

  Sir Henry stood in front of it with a blunderbuss tucked into shoulder of his tweed jacket. He fired, his loafers skidded back on the gravel, and stone chips blasted away from the stone carving of Gideon Lynch’s face.

  “Not a fan of his alterations?” Luke asked.

  “He’s an utter ninny. I went to see him after our meeting this afternoon. The nurses tell me he’s got about a week.”

  “You’ll forgive me for not being upset,” Maria said.

  “You must be Maria," Penshaw said. “It's nice to meet you finally.”

  “Likewise.”

  Helen walked out of the front entrance carrying a wicker basket and smiled a greeting. She dropped it on the grass, folded out a red and white checked blanket, and spread out four paper plates.

  “We found the ingredients you requested,” Sir Henry said, “but we thought you might like a picnic to send you on your way.”

  “Thanks, but I’m okay,” Luke said. “I’d rather get going and meet you in a couple of weeks once the dust settles.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “That’s the funny thing; I don’t need a p
lan. After Cairo and Richard Meakin’s decision, I thought it left me high and dry. The truth is, I never stopped to think outside the structures that defined my working life.”

  “I understand.” Sir Henry placed a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Take a break, recharge your batteries, and come back as Timetronic’s head of security. We need a reliable man to drive our change.”

  Luke shook his head. “And step in Meakin’s shoes? Sorry, I can’t commit to anything. How’d your meeting go?”

  “Tricky at first. Nobody argued about closing down the clay-servers, but they wouldn’t agree to open the perimeters, stop the drones, and hold an open election.”

  “Until we told them we’d pull Timetronic virtual access from their devices, homes, and stores,” Helen said. “Lynch integrated them to increase his power and influence. You should’ve seen his face when I told him we used the mechanisms he put in place to roll back his security measures.”

  “Rest assured the other corporations know who’s in control,” Sir Henry said. “The days of Timetronic’s corruption are finished.”

  “What about Zone Seven?” Maria asked.

  “Everyone’s equal,” Helen said. She reached inside the basket and pulled out a bottle of champagne. “At least have a toast before you leave.”

  “I’m game.”

  Helen popped the cork and filled four flutes with sparkling liquid.

  Sir Henry raised his glass. “To the end of Gideon Lynch and the beginning of a better world.”

  Luke downed his drink in a single gulp and waited for the others to finish. A heavy weight had lifted off his shoulders, and as much as he wanted to stay and chat, his primary focus was to get away and relax.

  “We stopped in to see Carl,” Helen said. “He’s already fixing up The Mega Dive and told me to say you’re welcome anytime. We’re jointly funding a statue of Walter to stand in the central square.”

  “Nice idea,” Maria said. “What about Perry and Emma?”

  “Their families will receive a million credits. It won’t bring them back, but it’s the least we can do.”