The Tomorrow Code

by Brian Falkner

  He walked on to where he knew there was a new nest of young fantails. The mother was busy feeding them worms and didn’t notice him.

  Where the heck was Fatboy?

  TRUST

  Fatboy rang when Tane was getting ready for school, bleary-eyed and headachy. He’d been unable to sleep the night before.

  His mum answered the phone, and from the tone of her voice, he knew instantly who it was.

  His schoolbag dropped, spilling his pencil case and English study notes across the kitchen floor. He barely noticed.

  “Harley wants to speak to you,” his mum said, holding up the phone.

  Tane had to restrain himself to avoid snatching the phone away from her. “Where are you?”

  Fatboy’s voice sounded cheerily in his ear. “We’re millionaires, little bro. All three of us. We need to get together.”

  “We have school today.” Tane tried to sound cool, as if he had never even remotely considered the idea that Fatboy might have absconded with the money.

  “Can’t you take the day off?” Tane could hear the excitement beneath the words. Fatboy, too, was trying hard to maintain the ice-cool rock-star persona, but the excitement was seeping out into his inflection like a little kid with a new toy.

  “No way. Exams start next Monday,” Tane said steadily.

  “Lunchtime, then. I’ll meet you both at McDonald’s.”

  Fatboy rang off, and Tane realized that he had forgotten to ask why he’d had his mobile phone turned off.

  He speed-dialed Rebecca’s number.

  Lunchtime was at twelve-thirty, but by twelve thirty-seven, Fatboy still hadn’t showed. Tane could barely restrain his excitement, and a Quarter Pounder and fries didn’t help.

  Rebecca, by contrast, was oddly silent and ate nothing.

  “What’s troubling you?” Tane eventually asked. “Is it the SOS?”

  “No, no. Yes, I’m excited. It’s just…” A small tear squeezed itself out of her left eye, and she wiped it away quickly. “I know you should never say ‘What if.’ What if this had happened, what if that had happened. But I just can’t help thinking, what if we had thought of the whole thing a year earlier? Fourteen months earlier.”

  Tane reached across the small Formica-topped table and put his hand on her arm. He knew where she was heading.

  Rebecca said, her voice choked, “They could have warned us. We could have told Dad to stay at home that day. Everything would be different.” Rebecca struggled to contain the sobs. “Mum…” She couldn’t continue.

  “You’re right,” Tane said. “You should never say ‘what if.’”

  He wanted to say more, something to ease Rebecca’s pain, but he couldn’t find quite the right words, and then it was too late because Fatboy pulled up, right outside their window in a brand-new, metallic green, soft-top Jeep Wrangler. There was a nervous-looking man sitting beside him in the passenger seat.

  Rebecca grabbed Tane’s napkin and patted at her eyes. By the time Fatboy and the stranger sat down, her smile was forced but believable. Just.

  Fatboy slid across the bench seat with a flourish and put his arm around Rebecca’s shoulders. He grabbed Tane’s Coke. “Kia Ora, kids.”

  “Hey!” Tane protested.

  “Buy yourself another,” Fatboy laughed. “Hell, buy yourself the whole goddamn factory if you want to.”

  The stranger sat timidly on the end of the bench seat. He was tall and balding in a flat line across the top of his head. He had a black mustache. He said a little unsteadily, “Actually, the Coca-Cola Amatil factory would be worth considerably more than the six million you have available to invest.”

  “Don’t you just love lawyers!” Fatboy and his moko grinned at them. “They’re so literal.”

  “Nice wheels,” Rebecca said cautiously.

  “Yeah. Goes like stink too,” Fatboy agreed. “I almost got it up on two wheels coming around Seymour Road.”

  Tane thought that might go some ways to explaining the rather nervous-looking lawyer.

  “And we need a lawyer, do we?” he asked pointedly.

  Fatboy reached inside his jacket and pulled out a thick, folded orange-colored booklet. He tossed it in front of Tane, who picked it up and examined it. Realize Your Dreams. Winner’s Information from the NZ Lotteries Commission.

  “Page twelve,” said Fatboy. “Seek professional advice. Tane, Rebecca, this is Anson Strange; Anson, my brother Tane and my um…Rebecca.”

  They both shook the man’s hand.

  Fatboy continued, “I didn’t have a spare helmet for the Harley with me. But it was no problem. I just ran next door to the Chrysler yard and picked up the Wrangler.”

  “I hope you got a discount,” Tane muttered. “Why couldn’t we get hold of you?”

  Fatboy looked aggrieved. “I was on my way to Wellington to claim our winnings. You can’t just run into the nearest Lotto shop and ask them to cash out a six-million-dollar ticket!”

  “We tried your mobile phone.”

  “Can’t use them on a plane.”

  Rebecca asked, “Are you sure we need a lawyer? I thought you said that was all unnecessary.”

  Fatboy answered, “Things are different now. With six million dollars to play with, we’ve got to do things properly. Otherwise we might go and do something stupid like spend it all on a flight to the moon or something.”

  “Or a submarine,” said Tane under his breath.

  Rebecca said, “Does anyone else know about our win? Like your mum and dad?”

  “Or the press?” Tane added.

  Fatboy shook his head. “Nobody. I requested that our details remain anonymous.” He turned to the lawyer. “Anson, would you give us a few minutes?”

  Anson rose dutifully and went to stand in a queue behind the counter.

  “What are you guys into?” Fatboy asked as soon as Anson was out of earshot.

  “What do you mean?” Rebecca asked innocently.

  “You knew those numbers were going to come up. I’m not entirely stupid. Something’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on,” said Tane quickly.

  “Can you do it again? Pick the numbers?” Fatboy stared directly at Tane.

  “No.”

  “Maybe.”

  Tane and Rebecca said it simultaneously. Tane was louder.

  Tane could just about see the dollars ticking over behind Fatboy’s eyes.

  “I want in,” Fatboy said. “I want a part of it.”

  You want a part of everything, Tane thought, and said sullenly, “You don’t even know what it is.”

  “That’s true.” Fatboy grinned. “But I want in anyway. How’s that? Is it illegal?”

  Tane didn’t think it would worry Fatboy if it was. “No.”

  “There are some big up-front expenses,” Rebecca said cautiously.

  “Bigger than six million dollars?”

  Rebecca nodded slowly. “Maybe.”

  Fatboy whistled. “But you could do it again, right? The Lotto thing?”

  “Maybe,” Rebecca repeated, but it was clear that Fatboy interpreted that as a definite yes.

  “So if I understand what you’re saying…We all pool our money together now, and we all get an equal third of anything later.”

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into,” Tane insisted. “Stay out of it.”

  The more Tane insisted, the more interested Fatboy seemed to get.

  Fatboy said slowly, “Okay, I’m in. My two million for a one-third share.”

  “We need to talk about this,” Tane said.

  “I’ll give you a minute,” Fatboy said, and went to chat with his nervous-looking lawyer.

  “No way.” Tane was adamant, although he kept his voice low.

  “We don’t know what we’re getting into,” Rebecca reasoned. “He might be a good person to have around.”

  “I’d rather sell my soul to the—”

  “Look, he came through all right with the Lotto ticket, didn’t he?�
��

  “I still don’t trust him. And anyway, he thinks this is all some kind of moneymaking scheme.”

  “Well, trust him or not, and whatever he thinks, we need his share of the money.”

  “No, I figure we’ll just scrape through without him.”

  Rebecca dropped her eyes and there was a sudden catch in her voice. “Sure. And where are Mum and I going to live? On the submarine?”

  Tane’s next sentence froze on his tongue.

  “Come on, Tane.”

  “I think we’ll regret it.”

  Rebecca reached over and kissed him on the forehead.

  Tane realized that he already regretted it.

  They told Fatboy everything. Tane hadn’t intended to tell him any more than they had to, but once you showed a tiny corner of the picture, it just kind of led to more questions and they led to more questions, and before long, Fatboy knew as much as they did. He didn’t quite believe them at first, but the Lotto ticket was a quite convincing argument.

  Tane thought Fatboy would change his mind when he found out that it wasn’t just about picking the Lotto and was quite surprised when he didn’t.

  After that, Fatboy waved over their patiently waiting lawyer, who recommended a trust to cope with the financial arrangements.

  After school, Fatboy picked them both up in the new Jeep, and they went to the bank to sign some documents and pick up cash-cards for their new bank account, which had almost as many zeroes in it as the messages from the future. Then Fatboy took them around to Tane’s house to check their e-mail.

  There had been no response from Subeo, but Fatboy, ever practical, suggested a phone call to the UK. He felt they could probably afford the cost of the call.

  It turned out that the Subeo sales representative was in Sydney on a visit to the Australian Navy, and Fatboy didn’t have to tell him too many lies to persuade him to add Auckland to his itinerary.

  It was Rebecca who finally asked the question that Tane had been dreading. “What are we going to do about Professor Green?” she asked.

  That brought reality crashing back into the excitement of the money and the trust and the submarine purchase. There was a reason for all this, they suddenly remembered. Some time in the future, they were going to be in big trouble.

  Tane said, “If we believe the instructions in the message and understand them correctly, then we are supposed to somehow stop the Chimera Project.”

  “But what is the Chimera Project?” Rebecca wondered.

  “Look it up on Google?” Fatboy suggested.

  “I did,” Rebecca said. “Nothing. So I looked up Professor Green and the research facility. There’s a lot of stuff about their research into rhinoviruses—”

  “Rhino viruses?” Fatboy looked up incredulously.

  Rebecca smiled. “Nothing to do with rhinos. It’s the virus that causes the common cold.”

  “Oh.” Fatboy looked quite disappointed.

  Rebecca continued, “But researching the common cold isn’t going to cause a worldwide disaster, so that can’t be the reason for the SOS. But then again, Prof Green is a geneticist, and playing with genes can be playing with fire. Maybe there’s something else going on at the lab that they don’t want the rest of the world to know about.”

  “The Chimera Project,” breathed Tane.

  “And we’re supposed to stop it,” Fatboy said.

  “I think we should go and see the professor,” Rebecca said, “ask her about the project, and perhaps ask her to stop it.”

  “And if she says no?” Tane asked.

  “We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

  “Why don’t we just tell the police?” Fatboy asked. “Or the government? Or someone official. I mean, what are the three of us supposed to do?”

  Tane looked at Rebecca, who shook her head. “Not yet. I doubt they’d believe us, but more importantly, the message told us not to tell anyone. Until we know the reason why, we should follow the instructions.”

  Tane looked at her closely. That made sense, but he couldn’t help wondering if there was a bit more to it than that. Was she afraid that someone else would whisk this discovery away from them and claim credit for their ideas and hard work?

  The next day, school or no school, exams or no exams, SOS or no SOS, Tane and Rebecca took their new cash-cards and went shopping. It wasn’t every day that you became a millionaire, after all. They didn’t go wild, though. Nothing extravagant.

  Rebecca bought a new pair of jeans that she’d been admiring for a while, then a couple of pairs of shoes to go with them. Tane bought a new leather jacket that he thought looked really cool.

  Then Rebecca bought a few CDs—music she couldn’t afford to buy before, just twenty or so of her favorite groups—and Tane bought a new joystick for his computer and a couple of new computer games. There were a few other odds and ends, too.

  At lunchtime, Tane said he was going to take Rebecca to the best restaurant in the whole of Auckland, and according to the driver of the limousine they hired, the best restaurant in town was Number Five, which had just reopened up in City Road, near the Sheraton Hotel.

  It was very nice. So nice, in fact, that it wouldn’t let them in. Not in the clothes they were wearing. But half an hour in Smith & Caughey’s fixed that, and Tane toasted Rebecca across a very fine cut of eye-fillet steak wearing the first suit he had ever owned and the second he had ever worn. The first being at Rebecca’s father’s funeral.

  By the end of the day, the score was fifty-seven CDs, eleven DVDs, one top-end laptop computer for Rebecca, twenty-two articles of clothing, one computer joystick, four computer games, seven pairs of shoes, two books, four items of jewelry (of which Tane’s new necklace was by far the most expensive), a bicycle, two pairs of sunglasses, a life-sized stuffed toy baboon that sat in a spare seat in the limo and laughed at them the rest of the day, three mobile phones, and a two-storied cliff-top house for Rebecca and her mother to live in that happened to have a boatshed, looking out over the water at West Harbor.

  Nothing extravagant.

  THE MAN FROM SUBEO

  The man from Subeo was Arthur Fong, which sounded Chinese, although he wasn’t. He said he’d be there on Thursday evening, November 26, at seven-thirty on the dot and rang the doorbell as the clock in the hallway just ticked over.

  Tane, Rebecca, and Fatboy had gathered at Rebecca’s new house for the meeting. Fatboy had picked up Tane after school, and they had had a quick dinner of fish and chips while waiting for Arthur Fong to arrive.

  It was Tane who answered the door. He’d jumped up like a shot and practically sprinted for the door while the others were still registering the sound of the bell. Then, not wanting to appear too eager, he had sedately strolled down the polished wooden floors of the hallway to the front door.

  The door was solid kauri inlaid with panels of stained glass. It was a nice door. It was a nice home. It wasn’t new; in fact, it must have been fifty years old, but it was elegant, and a lot of money had been spent restoring it. None of which had really mattered to Tane, Rebecca, and Fatboy when they had found the place. What had sold them were two things. Firstly, it was vacant and available for immediate possession. Secondly, the back lawn led straight down to the edge of a high cliff above a secluded inlet of the upper harbor. At the bottom of the cliff, down a series of wooden staircases, there was a large, brown, slightly ramshackle boatshed.

  From an upstairs room, the sound of a television washed faintly through the floorboards. Rebecca insisted that her mum was only grieving, that her mind was all right, but she had not questioned her daughter when she told her that they had bought a new house. Had not asked where the money had come from. Had just moved in, quietly accepted the room that Rebecca pointed out to her, and turned on the television.

  As sad as it was, it was also convenient. It was good that she didn’t ask too many questions.

  Arthur Fong was tall. Thin of face but wide of bottom, he was rather like a pyramid in sha
pe and when he realized that his appointment was with three teenagers, suddenly found several pressing reasons to leave.

  “Sit down,” Fatboy said, and added, “please,” for good measure.

  Mr. Fong sat down. People had a habit of doing things when Fatboy told them to.

  “Listen,” Mr. Fong said, “I admire your initiative. If this is for a school project, then I’d be happy to send over some brochures, even some of our technical drawings, which we don’t normally release. But I am on a very tight schedule.”

  Tane said, “Mr. Fong—” But Fong held up his hand to interrupt him. “I have spent time—and money—flying over here because I thought I was going to be meeting with a company who was genuinely interested in purchasing one of our products.” He rubbed vigorously at his face with both hands, a gesture of tiredness and frustration.

  “Can I get you a cup of tea?” Rebecca said demurely, and Tane glanced at her. That was not really like her.

  That seemed to soften his attitude slightly, although he declined.

  “Not had a good week?” Rebecca asked.

  Mr. Fong smiled tightly. “You could say that. I’ve had flights delayed, lost luggage, canceled orders, and now a wasted trip to New Zealand, so excuse me if I seem a little brusque. You do realize, don’t you, that the price of the Nautilus is over a million pounds. It is not a toy!”

  “Canceled orders?” Rebecca asked casually.

  Fong said nothing.

  “In Australia?” she coaxed.

  Fong sighed. “Yes. Six months of negotiations all down the drain. And now this.” He made moves to get up again.

  “Why did they cancel?” Rebecca asked quickly but still with a casual tone. “Is there something wrong with the submarine?”

  “Of course not,” Fong said indignantly.

  “Because if there are problems with it, then—”

  “The sub passed every test they gave it with flying colors. The cancellation was all to do with bureaucracy and politics in upper management. The sub is fine. It’s brilliant, in fact.”