Auto

by David Wailing

  Damn it, he can’t let it end like this! That bitch has beaten him! That stupid lump of metal sitting in the dark has kicked his arse and sent him packing! This is a crap ending, he needs to change it, like you can with her fancy new ieBooks, just change the ending to suit your tastes… but his lungs are on fire and his vision is blurring and Joanna’s bellowing in his ear and his head’s pounding and he has to get out.

  He lets go of the clawhammer, which thumps over the edge of the boxing ring and hits the floor. He lifts the ropes to climb through…

  Crown: “It’s a little hard to believe you’re getting out of the game just as you launch a brand new book, Ms Foster… is there some other reason we should know about?”

  AB Foster: “Let’s just say I think I’ve had my time, John.”

  Derek lets the ropes fall, stepping back inside the boxing ring.

  No, it’s not a new ending at all, is it? It’s the same old shit… the same ending as before.

  Joanna: “What are you doing, keep going, run!”

  The idea appears in his head in its entirety, abrupt and obvious, rather than something he’s painstakingly deduced, like Box Clever does with his mighty IQ.

  What does the auto of AB Foster do? It copies. Like Joanna said, it can’t do anything really original, it can only reproduce and rearrange whatever it’s learnt to adopt. It copied the way he used to talk when he pretended to be her, it copied the writing style he used when he wrote the Box Clever books, and…

  “It’s copying her death,” he says, before being racked with coughing once more.

  Still following a pattern. AB Foster’s pattern. Six novels and then mysteriously vanishing. Well, vanishing as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

  Derek closes his eyes and remembers...

  ...standing alone in the field, beneath the night sky...

  ...the skin on his face drawn tight, his eyes hurting...

  ...waves of heat washing over him from the blazing cottage.

  Joanna: “Oh God, look I’m on my way, just get out of the building!”

  It knows.

  The auto knows what he did.

  So it knows the pattern it has to follow. It knows he has to be the one to destroy it. Why else has it set itself up here, in a boxing gym? Just like the final confrontation between Box Clever and Black Glove at the end of ‘Shadow’s Challenge’. It’s mimicking that, too. Because it knew that would bring him here. It’s been waiting for him to find it all this time. Waiting for him to kill AB Foster all over again.

  He bends over to cough violently, letting the rucksack slip off his shoulders. He fumbles to open it, hands delving inside.

  Joanna: “Mr Thorpe...”

  Stands up with the bottle of vodka in one hand, and the miniature blowtorch in the other.

  Joanna: “...oh sweet Jesus.”

  “Thank... thank you for your help, Ms O’Donnell,” he manages to say. “You can consider this case closed.”

  Joanna: “Derek, listen to me, there’s no need for this, please just get out!”

  He tries to bring up his auto inside the Vades™, but his eyes are watering too much to use the optical controls, so he says “Send outstanding fee to Global Investigations.”

  CloudBank financial transfer in

  progress...

  Account holder: Mr D.L.

  Thorpe

  Account number: 017519744458

  Amount: £3,500.00

  Recipient: Global Investigations

  (UK) Ltd

  Account number: 000GI6638

  Transfer complete.

  Ref no: 91655ASD245410

  Joanna: “No... no, look, you’ll be fine, I’m on my way right now, okay?”

  “No need for that,” he chokes out. “And... and no need to... publish our webcast either. AB Fo... Foster won’t be writing any more books. It’s very tra... tragic. She perished in a fire, you know.”

  Crown: “Ms Foster, I don’t quite know what to say. There’ll be a lot of people very sad to hear you’re calling it a day.”

  AB Foster: “Thank you, John. And thank you to all my fans, those around the world and those who are very close to me.”

  “Just like last time,” Derek says, his throat burning now. “Bit un... unoriginal, I know, but that’s what happens to good ideas. They get co... copied.”

  Joanna: “Derek, please!”

  AB Foster: “Goodbye, all.”

  “Goodbye J...”

  But Derek can no longer force words out. He pulls the Vades™ off his face and throws them across the gym, the spotlights spiralling madly, leaving him in near-darkness.

  The air is thick with gas now, forcing its way down his nostrils and mouth, chest in agony as if his lungs have become filled with lead. He wipes the tears from his eyes with his forearm. Focuses on the blowtorch enough to turn it on. A short blue flame bursts from its muzzle, hissing sharply. He unscrews the bottle of vodka with his teeth, up-ending it so the liquid glugs out onto the canvas and spills in all directions.

  He can’t make out much at all any more. The server is a vague blocky shape a couple of metres in front of him. All he can see are shadows. Like the dark figure Box Clever found waiting for him in the gym at the end of his first adventure, an adventure that was then copied and might have been copied again and again. The shape that exactly mirrored his own, that Box had to defeat, once, twice, as many times as it took...

  No, twice is enough. This is the ending he chooses.

  As the amount of gas in the gym increases, Derek steps across the boxing ring through the puddles of alcohol with the blowtorch raised, as if ready to swing a knockout punch.

  Ding ding. Final round.

  Share

  11.11pm Friday 16

  September 2022

  Joanna O’Donnell is at

  Global Investigations (UK)

  Ltd Head Office

  As she walks through the sliding doors and into the open air, Joanna feels empty.

  There are no office workers leaving the building with her. Nobody else is working there at this time of night. No security staff to let her out – the building knows who she is, and brings the steel shutters rattling down behind her as she leaves. No other pedestrians on the street. It’s raining hard, but water streams off the Duckback coat, which is flapping around her bare legs in an almost cinematic manner. She came prepared for the weather tonight. Joanna’s always prepared.

  But she wasn’t prepared for what she’s just seen.

  Not for her latest client to end up...

  For Derek Thorpe to be...

  Can’t think the word.

  She starts walking through the rain, as the wind blows her long black hair into a tangled mess. Her legs grow numb, making it harder and harder to move, and before long Joanna is standing still on the street. She starts shivering. Inside her Vades™, her auto updates her location.

  11.12pm Friday 16

  September 2022

  Joanna O’Donnell is on

  Farringdon Road, London

  EC1M 3JB

  Except it feels like she’s really standing outside the industrial estate in East London, watching bright flames dance behind the windows, huge black clouds swell up and merge with the night sky. Feeling the heat pummel her skin. Smelling the bitter stench of burning. Burning wood. Burning plastic. Burning metal. Burning skin.

  Her auto knows that’s not where she is at all, even though she bloody should be! She should have rushed there as fast as possible, been there to see it, feel it, smell it! But...

  But she hadn’t. Couldn’t.

  What she had done, at least, was alert the emergency services. The fire engines had arrived in minutes. When she finally got to speak to the Crew Commander on the scene, he told her that the entire warehouse was ablaze, and they had no choice but to section it off and let it burn. Joanna had half-screamed at him that there was a man in there, they had to get him out! Calmly, the Crew Commander told her nobody inside would be able to sur
vive. There must have been accelerants of some kind in the building, perhaps old chemicals, as the fire was unusually intense and had spread quickly. There was structural damage too, the whole place was rotten, so he wasn’t risking any of his fire-fighters going in. Sorry, he had said, but by now, anyone still inside will definitely be...

  She can’t think that word. It’s not real if she doesn’t think it.

  It’s still happening, right now, across London. The industrial estate is still burning. And Joanna is standing by herself on a deserted pavement awash with rain and streetlights and traffic, miles away from the scene. Distant.

  “Goodbye J...”

  Disconnected.

  11.16pm Friday 16

  September 2022

  Greg Randall is 28 metres

  away on Farringdon Road,

  London EC1M 3JB

  The alert appears before her eyes, moments before she hears Greg’s car. Not that it sounds like a car. Hybrids and full-electrics make little noise even at high speed, so to avoid accidents, they usually broadcast the sound of a classic combustion engine to alert people to their approach. Unless, like Greg, you pay extra to have the sound effect of your choice installed instead. So it’s the whining throb of a starship’s warp engines that she hears as his white Ford Focus Electric approaches, like a miniature USS Enterprise cruising through space. Usually Joanna can’t stop herself smiling and shaking her head mockingly whenever they’re in his silly car. This time she can barely move.

  It slows down nearby, headlights at full beam. There’s the sampled noise of a futuristic sliding door whooshing open, as Greg scrambles out from the driver’s seat. He’s calling her name, asking if she’s all right, but she still can’t move.

  Greg sticks his head back in the car and shouts “Park in nearest available space, then standby.” As he slams the door shut – shhhiiiwuh – its headlights blink from white to blue. Autodrive mode. Slowly, with the rising hum of a warp drive being engaged, his Ford Focus Electric curves away and drives off by itself.

  He comes running up to her, under-dressed in black t-shirt, blue jeans and trainers with no socks, instantly soaked to the skin by the rain. He isn’t wearing his glasses and his thick brown hair is as messy as hers. The look of someone who bolted out of the house the second he got her call.

  He’s calling “Jo!” as if she’s far away. Because she is. She doesn’t feel his hands on her shoulders, only the heat from the blazing warehouse. She doesn’t see his worried face up close, only the fire and the smoke. She doesn’t hear his voice, only Derek Thorpe saying “Bit un... unoriginal, I know, but that’s what happens to good ideas. They get co... copied.”

  “Jo, are you okay?”

  “Goodbye J...”

  “Joanna!”

  She stares up at him, blinking. Her Vades™ respond to the movement and start to display his profile, but she pulls them off. Raindrops hit her bare eyes.

  “What happened?” he asks. “Did you find anything? Jo, talk to me!”

  She shakes her head. Can’t think it. Can’t say it.

  Gently, his hands move through her damp hair, easing it back from where it’s plastered to her face. “Come on. It’s me. Share your toys.” He often says this, knowing that’s what Joanna’s Mum used to shout at her whenever she fought with Catriona and Siobhan, back when they were kids. She’s told him so much about herself now.

  Joanna looks at the worry lines creasing his face and hears herself say “Gone.”

  “What? Who’s gone? Wait, not... is he all right?”

  “They’re both gone,” says Joanna, suddenly choked. “Duh-Derek and...”

  Greg’s arms wrap around her, pressing her face against his rain-soaked chest. It’s only then that the tears come. Joanna sobs her heart out for a man she hadn’t liked very much.

  A man she helped to die.

  *

  It’s a couple of days before Joanna feels like herself again.

  She doesn’t set foot outside her flat in Turnpike Lane for the whole weekend. Greg stays with her, holds her when she needs holding, lets her cry when it hits her again, stays quiet when she needs to think, pulls the duvet over her as she finally falls asleep with the rising sun.

  And he listens, as she explains what happened. God, the poor guy does nothing but listen. Joanna never thinks of herself as a chatterbox (not like Siobhan, who her Dad once christened ‘the jaws of Dublin’), but whenever Greg is around, she seems to do nothing but talk. With her previous boyfriends, she was always careful only to tell them the bare minimum. Working for a private investigation agency, that goes with the territory. It’s like being on Jury Duty: never discussing your court cases, for fear of contaminating your own deductions with other people’s opinions. That’s difficult, sometimes – she’s an O’Donnell, after all – but Joanna has learned the art of keeping her mouth shut. A vital skill in London, where everyone keeps to themselves.

  Greg, though... Greg makes her feel like she’s back home, on a night out down Temple Bar with her closest mates. Talk talk talk! She’s so comfortable around him that it should feel weird. Instead it feels weird if she doesn’t tell him what’s on her mind. All the time. Sometimes he makes chipping-away gestures when he wants to get a word in edgeways, and she laughs and kisses her apologies all over him.

  90% compatible, their autos said. Maybe that’s why he’s got under her skin so fast. No, it doesn’t feel weird at all. He’s... well. He’s her man.

  Yeah. That’s how simple it feels. He’s the one. Jesus, not that she’ll ever say that out loud, the smartarse will be quoting it back to her till Judgement Day!

  Shame she can’t tell anyone about him.

  It takes a lot of work these days, to hide your other half from everyone you know.

  This really goes against the grain for Joanna, who has shared ‘boy-stuff’ with both her sisters ever since their schooldays. Plus there are friends she would love to show Greg off to: Take a look at what I’ve got, girls! She knows he will charm the lot of them, to the point where her bitchier mates will remark that he’s far too good for her. (Is he? Stop it.) Mum will adore him too, and Dad will adore his annual salary.

  But both Joanna and Greg’s relationship statuses still say Single/Available. They’re not in each other’s public Circles. In fact there’s no obvious link between the two at all. Annoyingly, their autos keep trying to announce the place and time whenever they meet. They’ve been redacting things for months, erasing all digital traces. Joanna has considerable skill in this, otherwise it might have been impossible. Even now, plenty of their friends suspect something’s up. Sophie even asked outright if she was having a secret affair with some married fella, the cheeky cow. But there’s little proof of anything. Officially, ‘Joanna and Greg’ don’t exist.

  It’s worth it, they always remind themselves. Because Raymond McKenzie, the man who murdered Greg’s previous girlfriend, is behind bars where he belongs.

  They hatched the plan back in April, shortly after they met. The best way for Joanna to help Greg was for him to become a client of Global Investigations (UK) Ltd. That way it was all legal and above board. He requested a meeting at their Farringdon offices like a normal punter, explained the situation, requested help, agreed to pay the fee. And as one of Global Investigations’s top investigative analysts, who had serendipitously cleared her backlog of work the day before, Joanna volunteered to take the case. If the organisation knew she was dating him by that point, they would never have allowed it, but by then they had managed to extract each other from their timelines.

  So that was their roles: client and professional.

  God, neither of them expected it to be such a turn-on.

  “Mr Randall? My name’s Joanna O’Donnell, I’ve been assigned to your case,” Joanna had said with a handshake, feeling like she wanted to pin him to the meeting room floor and have him right there.

  “Pleased to meet you, Ms O’Donnell,” Greg had replied, struggling not to smirk, and spent the
whole briefing looking at her bare crisscrossed legs.

  They ended up on the floor after all, the minute they got back to Greg’s place.

  And so he became her new case. Joanna played it by the book. Which meant she used every trick in it, to target Raymond McKenzie. The scumbag who had tried to mug Roxanna Alden last year, but botched it so badly that she ended up dead outside her own home.

  It took a couple of months. Running deep-search programs. Analysing CCTV footage. Monitoring his movements to form a pattern. Deploying behavioural analysis algorithms. But eventually, she found it: a trace of the illegal blackware he had used. A location falsifier, to make it seem like he was somewhere else on the night of Roxanna’s death.

  As per Global Investigations’s guidelines for criminal investigations, she had kept the police informed every step of the way. So it gave her immense pleasure when she gave them the green light to make an arrest. Within three weeks, McKenzie had been successfully convicted using her evidence. Five years for constructive manslaughter, three years for possession of blackware, and five years for breach of the International Internet Regulations… sentencing that makes it clear how seriously the Government takes such crimes.

  Gordon, Joanna’s boss, had congratulated her on another job well done. But she had felt frustrated. McKenzie offered no leads as to where he got the blackware from in the first place – his dealer was already in custody for other crimes by then. And that’s what Joanna really wanted: the source. Where was this illegal, beyond-cutting-edge software coming from?

  The Central Digital Crime Unit assured her they would follow it up, but they’d been after the same thing themselves for years, so Joanna wasn’t confident. She knew the CDCU well. Smallest department in the Metropolitan Police. She’d been to their office in Scotland Yard’s basement and it wasn’t much bigger than her flat, with the musty iron tang of a room once filled with filing cabinets. They only had a dozen officers, usually outsourcing their work to trusted professionals like Global Investigations. Not much chance they’d have a breakthrough by themselves.