The Forbidden City

by John McNally

  How close were they? Never been closer. Fifty-one of the fifty-two bots were already in place. The last bot, the one full of executablefn2 data, was about to be released. The brain of the entire operation. The ace.

  What to do?

  You make your own luck, ‘they’ say, but fate, according to Kaparis, was different. Fate you have to assault, coerce. Kaparis prided himself on being its master. One of the very few. Like a god on Mount Olympus.

  He felt a delicious shiver.

  “Play the ace.”

  “Have you visited this restaurant before?” the cop asked.

  “I do not remember,” said Baptiste.

  The cop pulled up a grainy CCTV image on his palmtop screen of Baptiste at the Kung Fu Noodle counter.

  “This is you last week. Six times in the last month. Come with me,” the cop said, leading him out of the food hall and into the back seat of an unmarked police car. Baptiste reached instinctively into his bag. He was not yet under arrest. The cop got in the front and picked up the radio, waiting for his orders.

  But Baptiste received his first.

  “Release it. Complete Vector at all costs.”

  Baptiste relaxed. The point of action had arrived. He took a luxury Mont Blanc pen out of his bag and flipped off the top, as if he were about to make a note.

  The Prime Executable Bot woke.

  XE.CUTE.BOT52:BORN

  An order came in from Kaparis Command on Song Island.

  KAPCOMM>>XE.CUTE TERMINATE LIFE FORM LOCATION COORDINATES: 4578377/46294769

  XE.CUTE.BOT52:KILL

  The cop finished his radio message and turned his head to speak to Baptiste, but before the first word made it out of his mouth –

  Ttzxch.

  The smallest sound as it entered his brain.

  The tiniest entry wound at the temple.

  His face went into spasm, then froze.

  September 29 10:14 (GMT+1). Hook Hall, Surrey, UK.

  The morning after the night before was 150 times more disappointing than any previous morning at nano-scale.

  Finn, Delta, Kelly and Stubbs sat in silence at a tiny table that had been specially made for them and stared at nothing in particular for a good long while.

  The Sons of Scarlatti (one technically a daughter) as they liked to call themselves, lived in an ‘apartment block’ fashioned from cellular seed trays that sat inside a biohazard bubble, which protected them from insects and other threats, inside Laboratory One. It was known as the nano-compound. First they were going to be there a week. Then they were told twelve days. Then three weeks “tops”.

  So far, five months had passed.

  On the upside, the longer they’d waited for the one thing they wanted most, the more they got of everything else. They could come and go as they pleased from the biosphere (as long as they followed elaborate safety procedures) and anything they wanted could be shrunk in the new accelerator array, so they enjoyed the finest foods, consumer goods and high-end leisure activities. Finn had his own private zoo full of his favourite insects, a laboratory and a skate park, and there was even a ski slope inside a macro freezer in Lab Two. Best of all a perspex-covered road and model rail network had been laid that allowed them safe access to the entire complex. Finn had been gifted a red Mini to drive around, which he adored (even though its speed had been restricted at Grandma’s insistence).

  But right now none of that helped.

  Various people had already called to reassure them: Grandma, Commander King and, over a video link, the Prime Minister. Even Hudson had been sent for. Not many kids could ruin the ‘jeans and hoodie’ look, but with his long hair, massive glasses and uncomfortable expression, Hudson was one of a kind. He was in on the Boldklub secret because he’d been dragged into the climax of operation Scarlatti and proved himself an unlikely hero.

  “What a bummer … That’s so rubbish. Bet you were looking forward to being tall again?” said Hudson when he arrived.

  “Mmmm,” said Kelly, looking round for a gun to shoot him with.

  “It must really eat away at the back of your minds …” Hudson mused.

  At which point Delta politely asked that they be left alone “to suck things up a while”.

  “At least he didn’t offer to write one of his poemsfn1,” said Finn when the nano-team were alone again.

  Stubbs grunted. “We are at the very margins of human comprehension. We might be stuck here for years and years …”

  “What do you know, old fool!” Delta said to Stubbs.

  “Quite a lot, actually,” said Stubbs defensively.

  Doubt stirred like a great black eel in the pit of Finn’s gut.

  Be yourself. Trust yourself. Just keep going. These had been his mother’s Big Three rules. But how could you be yourself when you were stuck in the wrong-sized body? What was the use of trusting yourself when you were totally dependent on other people? And how could you just keep going when you were so obviously stuck? When he’d complained about this to Christabel, their local vicar and a good friend since his mother’s funeral, she’d said, “Use it. Just like your mum left you three lessons, see what lessons you can learn from what you’re going through.”

  All he’d learned so far was that the more you wanted something, the further away it got.

  “I expect you’ve had better birthdays, Finn,” said Stubbs, looking more than ever like a dejected tortoise.

  Kelly gave a hollow laugh and slapped the old man on the back for being such a grouch. Stubbs could fix anything, but didn’t have much clue when it came to ‘being a human being’.

  “Thanks – it’s not until tomorrow,” said Finn.

  “Hey – a birthday is still a birthday. What do you want to do?” asked Delta, trying to brighten things up. She didn’t normally do ‘close’ but her younger sister Carla was the same age as Finn so he’d become a de facto younger brother.

  Finn shrugged. What was there to celebrate at 9mm? He didn’t even get to skip school. Instead he was attending via Skype, Hudson dutifully carrying him around on a laptop (the official explanation for Finn’s absence being he had a highly-contagious skin disease). Grandma insisted on the arrangement. “So he can live a normal life, like any other boy,” she had said, to which Finn responded, “IN WHAT POSSIBLE WAY COULD MY LIFE BE CONSIDERED NORMAL! I’M NINE MILLIMETRES TALL!”

  “At least you lot get to go to work …” Finn complained.

  There was a military research project that Finn wasn’t really supposed to know about called the ‘nCraft’. One great problem of being a centimetre tall was the time it took to cover even a modest distance and a new vehicle was being developed to take full advantage of the massively improved power-to-mass ratios at nano-scale. Al disapproved of any military application of his technology but Finn knew, that out of sheer boredom, Stubbs and the others had been working on it.

  They felt for him.

  “Don’t sulk, you’ll get over this! You can get over anything,” said Kelly. “You know how many cars I’d stolen by the time I was thirteen? I spent half my teens in youth custody – and look at me now!” he boasted, opening his massive, battle-scarred arms as if he was a model citizen.

  “This is what I tell Carla,” said Delta. “Between thirteen and seventeen you do a lot of suffering, then life gets much, much better.”

  “Oh great,” said Finn, sarcastically.

  “People always say things like that to teenagers,” said Stubbs, “but as I recall you never really get over the trauma of your teens. The bullying … the heartache … the loneliness …”

  “The being nine millimetres tall …” added Finn.

  “Hey! If I got over a childhood in a Philadelphia children’s home, you can get over this. You just need a little help and support – am I right?” said Delta, glaring at Kelly and Stubbs.

  “She’s right,” said Kelly, then added generously, “and if you need things livening up, just say the word! One of us can always tie you to the train tracks, or shoot at y
ou …”

  “I could drop you out of a plane?” offered Delta.

  “Or ostracise him. Mental cruelty,” added Stubbs.

  “You’d really do that for me? Thanks, guys,” said Finn, smiling at last.

  A pulse came from Finn’s nPhonefn2.

  He opened the pack and checked the screen.

  U there? Skype?

  “What’s wrong? You look like death.”

  The girl who on a daily basis filled his Skype screen with dark hair, bright eyes and wisecracks, peered into the lens at him, suspicious.

  “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong,” said Finn, wondering how Carla’s emotional radar could possibly work at this distance.

  The background usually showed her bedroom in the States, but right now he was looking at a hotel room in Kunming, China, where Carla was on tour with the Pennsylvania Youth Orchestra. Her luggage and a cello case lay on the bed behind her.

  What she saw from China was a mock barrack room that had been built especially within the nano-compound. Carla thought Delta was stuck at an airbase in England working on a secret project and that Finn was just a kid who lived on the base with his uncle. They had hit it off as soon as Delta had introduced them, not so much soul mates as complementary opposites. Carla knew everything Finn didn’t know – and much he didn’t want to know – about art and life, and Finn knew everything she didn’t know about the natural world.

  What Carla also didn’t know was that everyone she saw on camera was about a centimetre tall.

  “Something is definitely wrong.”

  “I lost a pet,” said Finn for cover.

  “A pet? They let you have pets on an airbase?” she said, sceptical.

  “Only a mouse.”

  “A mouse? What was its name?”

  “Fluffy. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters. I had a hamster die on me; it nearly broke my heart. Does Delta know?”

  “Sure. She told me ‘life is much better than you think’.”

  “How patronising! They think we’re just kids! They have no idea what ‘life’ is like for us,” bemoaned Carla, who enjoyed being disgusted with her sister and with grown-ups in general.

  “What happened? Was it old age?” she asked, gently.

  “No, my uncle killed it,” said Finn. “It was late, they’d been drinking, a fight broke out …”

  She laughed despite herself.

  “Oh HA HA – you’re avoiding your emotions.”

  There was a call off-screen. “Carla, we have to go!”

  “OK!” she shouted back, and turned to Finn.

  “That’s it. We’re going to the airport. You should have seen this place we passed – there’s this actual dwarf world here! A theme park full of little people to gawp at. Can you imagine anything so cruel?”

  “Honestly, I can’t,” Finn said without a hint of irony.

  Finn wished he was going with her, wished he was going anywhere, with anybody.

  Carla grabbed her things and went to shut down the screen, then paused and confessed, “You know, I often wonder if you two are locked-up in some theme park – isn’t that the weirdest thing?”

  “Ha! Why?” Finn stalled.

  “I don’t know, the crazy stories and everything. Plus I’ve never even seen outside this barrack room …”

  “Well it is a secret base,” said Finn.

  “Exactly. Always the big mystery with you two!”

  “Carla!” called the voice off-screen again, and she waved goodbye.

  Phew, thought Finn.

  As Finn walked out of the fake barrack room back into the nano-compound, Delta, Kelly and Stubbs suddenly stopped talking. He hated when grown-ups did that.

  “What?” said Finn. “What were you talking about?”

  “Nothing,” said Delta.

  “Liar,” said Finn.

  “We said the main thing is we’ve got to stick together as a team. Everything takes time,” said Kelly.

  “I know,” said Finn. At least he could be sure of that.

  “Your uncle will eventually find the answer,” said Stubbs, almost reluctantly.

  “You better believe it!” came a familiar booming voice, as a shadow, like a huge cloud, fell across them.

  The four tiny figures looked up at the giant, praying for good news.

  “I just don’t know what the answer is yet,” Al finished, to a chorus of sighs. “Now, who’s up for Sunday lunch?”

  For want of anything better to do, Finn agreed to spend Sunday at Grandma’s with Al and they razzed along the country lanes between Hook Hall and the village of Langmere in Al’s incomparable De Tomaso Mangusta sports carfn3, happily outrunning the Mercedes of the security detail and scattering autumn leaves.

  Finn sat in a nano-den (or ‘nDen’ as Al liked to call them) that was clipped to Al’s top pocket.

  A way had to be found for the nano-crew to be housed, heard and taken out of the lab complex from time to time and nDens were the answer. This particular nDen was a typically eccentric choice of Al’s: a vintage Sony Walkman cassette player. About the size of a book, it had been adapted to hold nano-humans: there was a sofa, tinted glass for them to see out of, a line to Al through the earphones, and a built-in loudspeaker for when they needed to make themselves more widely heard.

  “Tell me what went wrong with Fluffy. Maybe I can help,” said Finn.

  “About three grams,” said Al.

  “Three grams?” said Finn.

  “That’s right,” said Al. “We reduced Fluffy, then we rescaled Fluffy – in perfect form, every atom, every molecule in the right place – and yet … somehow Fluffy ends up stone cold dead and three grams lighter. It’s as if the electrical relationships and reactions that run a body – the stuff of life – somehow disappeared. We just have to isolate why, what, where and when, and then we’ll be able to do something about it. But at the moment we haven’t got a clue – just three missing grams.”

  The conversation continued as they walked through the woods with Grandma later that afternoon – another headache for the Security Service. Al was thought to be a prime target for kidnap, but Grandma refused any extra security. For her there was no appeasing villainy – and no mystery in Al’s missing three grams, either.

  “The three grams are obviously the Soul,” said Grandma. “The divine.”

  “Mother! As the wife of one scientist, the mother of two more and as a medical professional, do you really think that—”

  “Don’t you dare be rude about simple faith!” squawked Grandma. “People have the right to experience mystery!”

  “Let’s not have this argument again!” Finn pleaded, as it was one that had ruined at least three mealtimes a week for most of his life.

  Yap! agreed Yo-yo, running ahead and making Finn wish he’d opted to ride with him instead. He often did this, sitting in the fur just under Yo-yo’s ear, guiding him with simple commands. Yo-yo was the best, most uncoordinated mongrel ever born. He couldn’t fathom the mystery of Finn’s physical disappearance – just as he couldn’t fathom what clouds were – but he could still smell Finn and hear him, which was all he needed.

  Grandma and Al lowered their guards, warily.

  “If it isn’t supernatural, what’s your best guess on the missing three grams?” Finn asked Al from the nDen.

  “My best guess is there’s a relationship between dark matter, the speed of light and the timing of electrochemical reactions within a body,” said Al.

  “Dark matter?” said Grandma.

  “Yes, dark matter, also known as dark energy. It’s mystery stuff that makes up nearly all of the Universe, but no one knows what it is or how it works. No one except us. We have discovered that when you shrink ordinary matter – atoms and stuff – there must be a proportionate shrinking of dark matter, otherwise you’d be incredibly heavy; as heavy as you were when you were big.”

  “But where is it?”

  “Who knows? It’s unobservable, we can’t even b
egin to experiment – and without experiment we are nothing but apes groping around in our own excrement.”

  “Charming!” said Grandma.

  “Think of dark matter as a shadow – in this case, a shadow that makes up ninety-five per cent of our weight. When you get smaller, the shadow gets smaller. But that’s just a guess.”

  “Didn’t my dad work on dark matter?” asked Finn.

  Grandma stiffened and called to Yo-yo, who had reached the house and was scratching at the back door.

  Grandma didn’t like to talk about Finn’s dad, Ethan Drake, who had disappeared in a lab accident before Finn was born, fire consuming him so completely that only the sphaleritefn4 stone he wore around his neck was recovered. The same stone – that Finn’s mother had worn until she died of cancer two years ago – now hung around Al’s giant neck, next to the nDen.

  “Nobody knows exactly what your dad was doing just before he passed away,” said Al. “We have some of his notes from around then, but your mum had just had you and most of his assistants were sitting exams.”

  “I didn’t know he’d left notes. Can I read them?” said Finn.

  Al frowned. He’d spent the best part of thirteen years crawling all over them. He could probably recite them.

  “Tea! We must get in and put the kettle on before it gets dark,” Grandma interrupted, trying to move things on.

  But Al was in the moment, and it was clearly an uncomfortable one.

  “They’re complicated, Finn. A mess, in fact. Lots of stuff that looks like answers but isn’t. It’s not what you want,” he said, cryptic and awkward.

  “And cake! We have plenty of cake,” Grandma said, taking out her keys to let them in.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Will you show me or not?” said Finn.

  “Maybe. One day.”

  “Sherry!” concluded Grandma, hurrying them into the house.

  By the time they got back to Lab One it was late.

  Al opened the Sony Walkman and said goodnight to Finn at the edge of the nano-compound.

  “We’ll try the experiment again tomorrow, and every day, till we get it right,” he said, winking and walking away.