The House Next Door Trilogy (Books 1-3)

by Jule Owen

  “Why did this happen? What did your parents do?”

  Her smile is twisted. “My dad was a Garden Party activist. In his day job he teaches politics, but in his spare time he wrote for this online journal. He was investigating claims that the Popular Party was imprisoning opposition members without trial and disappearing some of them.

  “At first when the strange things started to happen, my parents were defiant, but it wore them down. So my dad stopped doing his investigation, he stopped writing for the journal. They even cancelled their memberships to the Garden Party. Things did get better, but last month we came home and the back bedroom window was open. You know as well as I do, no one opens windows anymore. We certainly didn’t open it. So you might understand why, when I’m told someone is watching me, I might be a bit jumpy.”

  Mathew doesn’t know what to say. After a long pause he says, “Clara, I’m sorry.”

  “Please don’t be. I’m the one who should be sorry. But you do understand a little bit now, don’t you?”

  “Yes, yes. Of course I do.”

  “Unfortunately, these days I think everyone is watching us. I’m totally paranoid.”

  “No. No, you’re not. You’re absolutely right.”

  “I should be going,” she says.

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks for letting me explain. And sorry once again for being so rude.”

  He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

  They walk downstairs. “I’m going to find out about him,” he says. “I’m going to find out about Lestrange.”

  She frowns. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she says, opening the door and walking into the heat. “Remember what happened to my parents.”

  12 The Beebot

  After Clara has gone, Mathew sits for a while on the bottom step of the stairs with O’Malley butting against his knees and climbing on and off his lap as if to protest against this unusual arrangement.

  A message comes to him, floating above his face. It says:

  Special offer! Free technical support. Say ‘Yes’ to connect.

  “Ignore,” Mathew says brusquely. He and his mother are unlisted for advertising.

  This is an offer you shouldn’t ignore! Please say ‘Yes’ to connect.

  The words float above him like a swarm of gnats, and he knocks them away with his hand. They disperse and regroup, undeterred.

  “Oh, for . . .” Mathew is exasperated. “System. Please check privacy settings.”

  A menu appears before him, and the settings are as they should be. The system should only receive messages from their allow list or flag a warning before any unsolicited messages get through.

  Mathew says out loud, “Okay. Whoever you are, how are you screwing with our privacy settings?”

  This offer was forwarded by a family member. Please say ‘Yes’ to connect.

  Then the penny drops. It is the help he’s asked his grandmother for. “Yes,” he says.

  A Charybdis Blackweb session opens.

  “Hi, I’m Wooden Soldier. A mutual friend said you wanted to connect?”

  “Yes! Thanks. I’m Mathew. I didn’t get it.”

  “No problem, but no real names here, please. We like to keep the environment clean and secure. I’ll assign you a handle for the duration of the call. You will be Tin Drum.”

  “Okay. I’ve never actually spoken to anyone on the Blackweb before.”

  “It’s best if you don’t use that word.”

  “Oh. Yes. I thought we were safe here.”

  “It’s not like using the Nexus. You’re not listened to all the time, but as you never know who or what is listening, you should behave as if you are. What do you need help with?”

  “Are you any good at searching?”

  “For?”

  “For people with no presence on the Nexus.”

  “It’s an interesting request. Who is it you want to search for?”

  “My neighbour.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “I think he may be a government spy.”

  “Whoa! Why do you think that?”

  “Because no one knows him, he never leaves the house, and every day of the curfew I’ve caught him spying on Clara.”

  “No names. Let’s call her Goshawk. Who is she?”

  “She comes for piano lessons next door.”

  “Is there some reason the government would be interested in her?”

  “No. I don’t think so, anyway.”

  “Then why do you think he’s spying on her?”

  “Because I see him watching Cl – I mean Goshawk – each afternoon. He’s got an intense stare.”

  “Maybe he’s just a perv.”

  “Maybe. Isn’t that as bad? Also, her parents were Garden Party members.”

  “Whoa! Man, you really need to watch your language. Seriously. How long has your watchful friend lived there?”

  “I don’t know. All my life. I guess sixteen years. Maybe more.”

  “How long has Goshawk been coming for piano lessons?”

  “I’ve no idea. Maybe a couple of years, at most.”

  “If he’s really a spy, it’s unlikely it’s Goshawk he’s spying on, if he’s spying at all. It’s more likely someone living in your road. Or you. Have you thought of that?”

  “No. I hadn’t.”

  “From what I know about our mutual friend, I’d say it’s a possibility.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You must know.”

  “No, I don’t. Enlighten me.”

  “Best not talk about it here. Have a think about it. So why do you say he has no presence on the Nexus?”

  “There’s no record of him on the Nexus. I checked.”

  “That is strange. But a spy would normally have a record – a squeaky clean false identity provided by the government. Perhaps he’s anti-tech. There’s a movement, you know. Our mutual friend is part of it. Respect to them.”

  “If he was anti-tech, he’d probably be a radical, wouldn’t he?”

  “Ouch. Language, man. I’m not joking, Tin Drum. He could be anyone. But given your family background it’s probably worth investigating. I told our mutual friend I would help. I’ll boost encryption for this next bit. Hang on. One, two, three. Okay. We have sixty seconds. What’s his real name?”

  “August Lestrange.”

  “Let’s call him Ithaca. I’ll try. Next time you get an advert . . .”

  “I’ll read it. Thanks, Wooden Soldier.”

  “No problem, Tin Drum.”

  After Wooden Soldier logs off, Mathew sits for a while thinking about Mr Lestrange. Then he remembers the beebot. It’s waiting ready on his Paper. Using the 3D printer in his mother’s office, he can print a more flexible range of materials at finer resolution than on the one in his bedroom. While it’s printing, he sits in the kitchen watching the news and eats a meal prepared by Leibniz.

  The newsreader is reporting a deadlock at the talks in Munich, when she suddenly looks surprised. A faint smile passes across her face before she recovers her composure.

  She says, “News just in: The US has successfully completed a daring counterattack. We have footage, yes, released from Washington, actual footage of some of the action. I have, via satellite link from Washington, Commander Brian Kips. Commander, I understand you will talk us through what happened.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Yesterday, when our bases were attacked, we were able to trace where the attacks were launched from. Many of the aircraft on the ground at our bases were destroyed, but we did get some away. Fortunately, we also have a number of mobile bases for hypersonic aircraft and missiles. We needed a little time to coordinate, but this morning we managed to deploy significant resources against our enemies and destroy not only those bases we know were responsible for the attacks on our servicemen and women, but many other key military targets as well, including intelligence command centres. We believe this action was necessary to disable any further attempts at aggression ag
ainst us and our allies.”

  The film footage was taken from the hypersonic planes and has been slowed considerably. It shows one explosion after another.

  “Commander Kips, please stay with us. We have more breaking news. We have reports that the Chinese moon base, space station, and several military satellites have been destroyed. Are you able to comment, Commander?”

  “I believe that is true information.”

  “Will you confirm the US received support from Japan in this operation?”

  “I am not able to confirm at this time, although, as you know, Japan is one of the nations under attack by China and Russia. They have the right to defend themselves.”

  The printer in his mother’s office beeps. The beebot is ready.

  It is the length and width of a little fingernail, scaled slightly from the blueprint of the agricultural version. It’s beautiful in its miniature perfection, complete with compound eyes, antennae, thorax, and proboscis but no sting.

  He carries it on his fingertip to the kitchen.

  To control the beebot he uses an off-the-shelf plug-in for the hologame environment. Sitting in the Darkroom, he can drive the beebot using controls designed for a flight simulator game, and he’s inside the beebot. His perspective is beebot scale, and through its eyes the world is huge.

  He takes off and flies around Leibniz in the kitchen. Through the tiny cameras on the front of the machine, Leibniz is the size of a skyscraper.

  He flies his spying machine along the kitchen counter, above the kitchen table. Landing on top of the Canvas, he grasps onto the wafer-thin membrane with the tiny claspers at the end of the beebot’s feet, and then he takes off again.

  As he circles the kitchen, the dragons go after him, swatting at the robot insect. If they were able to make contact, they’d send it plummeting from the air, but their efforts are futile. Looping around in insect-like randomness, he makes the dragons hurtle off and crash. When they recover and come back, he tries to engage in a genuine dogfight with them, improving his mastery of the controls.

  He flies into the hallway, takes a tour around the living room, back again into the hall, and then directly up the stairwell, dragons in tow. Bringing the beebot to rest on the landing carpet, he walks under his mother’s bedroom door, does a circuit around her bedroom, and then hovers by the keyhole, managing to land next to it and walk through to the other side.

  After a few hours of flying the beebot around the house, he’s ready for its real mission.

  Later, he sits with his mother, watching the news.

  Saul Justice, the prime minister, is being interviewed, announcing new security measures to be rushed through Parliament that day.

  “Today, Parliament declared a state of emergency and passed legislation to help the emergency government make provisions for public safety and the preservation of our country, now we are at war. It will allow us to maintain public order and to manage the control of food, energy, water, and other things essential for us to carry on as normally as possible as a community in these exceptional times. Britain has a long and proud democracy, and it is always regrettable when we as citizens have to relinquish some power, but I can assure you my greatest priority is your safety, and I will do everything necessary to protect this country and its people.”

  “What does that mean?” Mathew asks his mother.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I expect we’ll find out soon enough.”

  13 Books that Write Themselves

  DAY FIVE: Friday, 26 November 2055, London

  After his mother leaves for work and Mathew has had breakfast and checked into school, the beebot gets one more test flight around the house. Then he takes it to the front door, places it gently on the tiles in the porch, and goes to the Darkroom and logs in. A beebot-eye holographic view of the front garden materialises in front of him.

  Flying the little machine upwards, he avoids the olive tree and moves above the rooftops of the houses on Pickervance Road.

  It hasn’t occurred to him that anything would be different. As his mother requested, he’s stayed in the house. But things are different now.

  Through the eyes of his tiny robot, he sees military helicopters swarming across London. Soldiers are standing by anti-aircraft guns on the top of a block of flats nearby. At the end of the street, there’s a roadblock and yet more soldiers. It crosses his mind that they are likely to have surveillance equipment capable of recognising his beebot.

  Flying towards number twenty-one, he hovers around the front door, searching for a keyhole. Many people nostalgically keep legacy keyholes, even though keys are obsolete. A few years ago there was a fashion for having keyholes fitted on doors that didn’t have them.

  Number 21 doesn’t have a keyhole. There’s no quaint, old-fashioned letterbox to be wedged open, either. The door is flush in its frame. Manoeuvring the beebot around the walls of the house, he surveys the lower floor. The back is sealed by the conservatory; there’s no way in there.

  He flies to the roof. Some of these old houses have gaps around the eaves, as he knows well, because a few years ago there was a wasp’s nest in their own loft. He spends several minutes searching for a way in before it strikes him the house has a chimney. There’s no way of knowing whether the chimney is blocked off or not, unless he goes down. For a few minutes he circles the red clay top of the chimney, peering into the darkness.

  The beebot isn’t fitted with lights or infrared vision. As he starts to descend, he’s blind, but he’s able to use the intelligent software bundled with the package he’s downloaded to auto-drive the beebot by bouncing radar off the brickwork. If he’d tried to drive himself, he would have become disorientated and likely crashed the little robot into the side of the chimney.

  As it happens, Mr Lestrange hasn’t blocked off his chimney, and the beebot comes into the light, flying into a room. He loops around the light fitting and lowers the beebot onto the uncarpeted floor, then turns it slowly on its feet to get a 360° view of the room.

  It’s a bedroom. There’s a double bed with tree-trunk-sized wooden legs, a wardrobe, and a sideboard the height of the Shard in relation to the beebot. It’s a normal bedroom, except it’s meticulously clean and tidy, as though no one uses it.

  Flying the beebot around the room, he notices that the wardrobe door is slightly ajar, and he squeezes into it. It’s full of clothes, neatly hung, unworn, and like new. Carefully, he edges free again, flies to the door, and walks under it.

  The floorboards on the landing shine, cleaner than those in Mathew’s own house and surgically spotless. Perhaps Mr Lestrange has a newer model HomeAngel.

  He scutters along the hallway with tiny, quick bee feet and under the door of the bedroom at the front of the house, the one with the bay window, where Lestrange watches Clara.

  This is much like the back bedroom, all the normal bedroom furniture, and immaculate and unlived in. There are no personal possessions lying around, no worn clothes lying across chairs, no hairbrushes, Papers, ePinz, or spare Lenzes.

  But these must be spare rooms. Mr Lestrange lives alone, and this is a big house for a single person. He walks back under the door and takes a quick tour of the bathroom, buzzing through the open door, noting the absence of cleaning robots and the pristine state of the sink, the toilet, and the shower.

  There’s another bedroom, the third and last. This room is empty but for an upholstered armchair and a telescope on a stand pointing towards an unadorned up-and-down sash fenestration, the size of a cathedral window from the perspective of the beebot. It has a view across the back garden.

  The house is a mirror image of his own, with the kitchen at the back, a front room, and a dining room. The kitchen extends into a conservatory containing some plants, orange and lemon trees, and a number of orchids on a small, low table. The kitchen is modern, containing the usual SuperChef Replicator food maker, sink, waste disposal unit, cupboards for storage, dining table and chairs, and fridge.

  Winging to w
here the old dining room is in his house, he crawls under the door into blackness. It’s a Darkroom, like his, with a couple of chairs. There are small boxes in the top corners of the room and at various points around the sides, containing cameras; standard equipment.

  There’s only one room left. He crawls under the door to the front room.

  In its dimensions, it’s exactly like the room in Gen Lacey’s house and the mirror image of his own front room, with large, light bay windows at the front. But this room doesn’t have a sofa, armchairs, or a Canvas like most lounges.

  It’s a library. The walls are fitted from floor to ceiling with bookshelves filled to bursting with old paper books of the type people rarely keep in their houses anymore, unless they are special presents, like the Chinese books Ju Chen bought Mathew for his last birthday. It’s a lot like his grandmother’s library in Elgol.

  The beebot flies alongside the shelves, its eyes combing decorative book spines, some colourful, some with elaborate bindings and gold-leaf lettering. From their titles, they are history books, ordered by chronology from the farthest bottom right corner of the room, climbing through the centuries along each shelf section. He flies past strange words: Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Mesopotamia, Harappan, Egypt, Kingdom of Kush, Indus Valley, Vedic, Xia, Shang, Sassanid, Delian League, Maurya, Gupta, Dravidian, Aksumite. The letters are huge compared to the beebot.

  Then there are more familiar words, like Greece, Rome, Byzantium, Ottoman, Mayan, and Aztecs. From things his grandmother has told him, he recognises the Qin and the Han. The book’s subjects become more familiar: the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the French and Russian Revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, Information Age, Globalisation, the World Council. It’s like he is flying along human history itself. Then he notices something that stops him in his tracks.