Amanda Pearce
Gender: Female
Age range: 61-65
Orientation: Straight
Relationship status:
Dead/Unavailable
Date of death: Wednesday 8
April 2020
Joanna blink-clicks on Amanda’s employment history and finds... nothing. It’s empty. No records of anywhere she worked when she was alive. That’s odd. Has everything been redacted?
But then Greg displays more information, lifted from business websites, newsfeed articles and press releases. Amy’s mother did indeed run the project team at Macroverse that first developed the Auto-Mate™. It looks like she managed to build a lucrative career as an auto consultant on the back of it years later.
Joanna can’t believe it! What a bizarre coincidence! This ground-breaking piece of software development was organised by Amanda Pearce. Not that she handled any of the actual development herself, but she was responsible for bringing together and managing a team of geniuses at Macroverse. Including...
Greg: “Michael Walker! Christ, there’s a blast from the past. Can you believe that? Amanda Pearce worked with him!”
Michael Walker – the man who invented the auto.
Joanna doesn’t need Greg to measure her heart rate, she can feel it easily. Everyone remembers the name Michael Walker. He wasn’t the sole developer of the Auto-Mate™, but later on, when the trouble started, that’s how the media often referred to him. ‘The man who invented the auto.’
It’s been five years now, but Joanna still recalls his shouting face on the news. The debates. The riots. The arrests. And the threats that, briefly, caused the eyes of the entire world to focus on him in absolute terror.
Michael Walker – the man who tried to kill the internet.
A year before the International Internet Regulations were due to become law around the world, the debates and protests raged. The same thing had happened when the UK brought in the Communications Data Bill in 2015, but the IIR demanded even more transparency. Internet access would now only be available via each individual’s auto – which meant their identity would be known at all times. Most governments signed up to it, in the interests of being seen to put a stop to all the crime syndicates, narco-gangs, terrorist cells, paedophile rings and other modern bogeymen.
As ‘the man who invented the auto’, Michael Walker’s voice made the news. He became the spokesman for all the pressure groups resisting it. He called for everyone to fight against such draconian legislation, and demanded online privacy for all.
At first he merely raised awareness of what the IIR would mean. Then he argued with politicians. Then he punched one in the face on live TV. Then he led protest marches through the streets. Then he encouraged riots.
And then he threatened to do something which made him public enemy number one and triggered the greatest manhunt Britain had ever seen.
Greg: “From the looks of things, she tried not to get involved in all of that. She retired from being a consultant in August 2017, when all the riots were kicking off. Avoided all the bad publicity. Never worked again. Died of heart disease in 2020. But that’s amazing, that she actually knew Walker when he was just a software engineer! I wonder if she had any idea how dangerous he was at the time? D’you think he might ever have said something about...”
Joanna coughs sharply again as Amy walks back in the room, carrying an old laptop. Greg gets the hint, shutting up just as she says “It’s on here, do you want me to fire it up? Takes a while though.”
“Um, I don’t suppose... are you still using that laptop? Bit cheeky I know, but I’d love to run a few tests on the program, if you don’t mind?”
“No, that’s fine, I haven’t used this for years. But don’t I still need it, to keep my auto running?”
“Oh no, your auto’s on a server somewhere. The original app can’t affect it any more.”
“What, so... if I’d uninstalled it, it wouldn’t have deleted my auto or anything?”
“No, there’s been far too many upgrades for that. All autos live in the cloud now.”
“Oh.” Amy looks disappointed. Or maybe embarrassed.
Joanna takes the laptop from her, surprised at how awkward and heavy it is, and that’s before she’s also taken the massive power cable with the brick-sized transformer in the middle. But she’s excited too. The original Macroverse prototype of the Auto-Mate™! She should be able to learn a thing or two from that. And if nothing else, it’s a genuine piece of history.
“That’s a pretty impressive achievement to have in the family,” says Joanna gently. “You must have been proud of your mother.”
Amy rolls her eyes. “Fat lot of good she was, when my auto started going wrong. She didn’t have a clue!”
Ah-ha. “You mean her auto didn’t remember? That she worked at Macroverse?”
“Exactly, like she didn’t know anything about it. The one time I could have done with actually hearing some of the technical crap she used to come out with when she worked there, and all my Mum wanted to do was witter on about me being,” finger-quotes, “’married’! She was paying for my honeymoon, for Christ’s sake. Her auto went as senile as she did.”
Greg: “That’s weird. Autos don’t get Alzheimer’s, do they? How come Amanda Pearce’s timeline doesn’t include something so important?”
Good question, thinks Joanna. She’s tingling a little all over. Like she’s standing next to an electric fence, keeping her away from something... that risk of being shocked. Why is the employment record of Amanda Pearce empty? Yes, very good question.
She almost drops the laptop when the kitchen door suddenly flies open. Juan-Miguel emerges, face slightly flushed, wiping his hands on a tea towel. Faint clouds of steam follow him out, and the room fills with the rich scents of something mouth-watering.
He looks towards Amy and... there’s the smile, from his profile pictures. Joanna sees the way she melts. No translation required.
Juan-Miguel then looks at Joanna and murmurs something in Spanish into his autophone. She hears it say “You are joining us for dinner, no?”
“Um, no, thank you,” she replies. “It smells fantastic, but I’d better get going. My boyfriend’s cooking me a meal tonight too.”
Greg: “What? I am?”
As Juan-Miguel goes back into the kitchen, Amy sees Joanna to the front door. “Can I just ask, does that really make things better, what you’ve done with your translation settings? I can understand why you’ve done it – anything to keep the peace, right? – but I’d have thought after a while...”
“We haven’t done anything.”
Joanna blinks. “You haven’t?”
“It just comes out like that,” shrugs Amy. “We both know it’s not accurate, but we can’t seem to change it. You’re right, we always know what we’re really saying, it’s hard to miss. So,” she adds with a nervous look, “should I be worried, about what happened? I mean, with our autos? Is there anything I should do?”
Joanna thinks for a moment. She wants to say don’t worry, it’s fine, I know why your auto behaved oddly and it won’t happen ever again. But...
But.
It’s the translations that are bothering her, she realises. Why are their autos mistranslating each other’s words? Making them sound friendlier, more romantic, than they actually are? Are Amy and Juan-Miguel’s autos still over-functioning?
Are they trying to keep them together?
“If anything else happens that you think is unusual, then get in touch, any time. Otherwise...” Joanna glances at the front door, thinking of the invisible tags hovering on the other side. “You might want to think about going away somewhere, the two of you. Somewhere a bit less urban, maybe. See how things work out in a place that’s foreign to you both.”
“That’s... not a bad idea, actually,” admits Amy.
Greg: “And start learning Spanish!”
“Yes, and start learning Spanish,” Joanna adds. “It’ll be
good if you don’t have to rely on your autos for absolutely everything.”
Amy lets out a small laugh. “Bit late for that, isn’t it?”
Joanna can’t think of anything to say, because she’s right. It is. Far too late.
She says her goodbyes and walks outside, following her auto’s directional arrows towards the Tube station.
*
A week passes before Joanna gets a chance to see someone else on her list. Most of them still aren’t replying to her requests to meet, but one did get back to her, and now she has an appointment on Wednesday evening.
So as soon as she escapes from yet another of the departmental meetings that Global Investigations seems to love, Joanna tells her auto to hail a taxi to take her to Muswell Hill, where her next interviewee lives.
The black cab is sitting outside the main entrance waiting for her, and Joanna’s relieved to see there’s nobody in it. Nobody at all. Good. She’s not in the mood for chit-chat. She opens the rear door, slides in, swings it shut with a hefty clunk. Pulls the seat-belt around her before the recorded announcement reminds her to. On the inside of the front windscreen, her own name, destination details and an estimated cost scroll past. The ‘meter’s running’, as they say.
She sits back and relaxes as the car pulls away by itself, joining the traffic on Farringdon Road. She tells herself it’s a pain to get to Muswell Hill otherwise, which doesn’t have a Tube station. And that it’s been a long day, and she’s too tired to do any walking. But, well, the truth is – oh all right – Joanna has discovered she loves taxis. Especially ones like this, the iconic black taxicabs that London is famous for. Over the last few years, she’s got used to getting around the city in them. Especially now that she can chalk it up on her expense account.
God, she thinks, I’ve turned into such a snob! Back home I’d just hop on a bus or a tram, now look at me!
They’ve moved with the times though, the old black cabs. She’s in one of the new TX6 models. It has the same sleek, rounded silhouette as always, but is now purely run by electric cells and – best of all – is self-driving. Many modern cars have this function, but the black cabs are totally automatic, responding to instructions from their passengers’ autos. No more having to spend your journey listening to the opinions of the bored bloke behind the wheel!
Although... Joanna wrinkles her nose as she looks around the inside of her cab. How can something so new already seem so grubby? There’s that flat, stale smell of other people too. She imagines all the passengers who’ve sat here... all the things they might do on the back seat without a driver watching. Urgh. She really is becoming a London snob.
Or maybe she just misses being in Greg’s car. She’s got used to him taking her places over the last few months. In fact she’s thinking about buying him one of those peaked chauffeur’s caps, and insisting he wears it whenever he’s driving. He’ll love that! She has even – she admits to herself now with a shake of the head – got used to all the silly spaceship noises he’s programmed his car with. This taxi feels ordinary and boring, without all the zaps and hums and whooshes, the photon torpedoes and sensor sweeps and warp engines...
Right on cue, Joanna hears her Vades™ chiming inside her handbag. “There you are!” She slides them onto her face. Sees Greg’s profile, hears his voice.
Greg: “Sorry sorry sorry, I know I’m late, I’ve just walked in the door! Hang on, I’m setting myself up in your room now. Stand by! You okay?”
She smiles, imagining him pulling his suit jacket off, unloosening his tie, switching on the smartscreens, getting the headset tangled in his floppy hair. “Yeah, I’m good. But I’ll need you backing me up in about...” She peers at the ETA display on the taxi’s windscreen. “Fourteen minutes.”
Greg: “Okay, no problem, I’m here. So who are you going to see tonight?”
“Janine Kinglake.”
Greg: “Is that the one who said her auto won the lottery? Even though she never bought a ticket?”
“No, this is the one whose father’s auto was behaving oddly. Something about it adopting kids who had already died. We only have a few private messages between her and a friend to go on, so it’s probably going to be nothing. But she’s the only one who came back to me, so...”
Greg: “Oh well. All good practice, I suppose.”
“You need the practice,” Joanna tells him with a smirk. “Some of us are professionals.”
Greg: “Listen, if it wasn’t for me – OW!”
“What’s wrong? You all right? Greg!”
Greg: “Sorry, yeah. Fell off the chair.”
Joanna can’t help but laugh. “Ye great gobshite, stop actin’ the maggot.”
Greg: “Oh sweet baby Jaysus, there she goes, Oirish to the last. If bullshit was music she’d be a brass band, so she would!”
For a short while, Joanna forgets about everything as her and Greg take the piss out of each other, with increasingly exaggerated Dublin slang. They’ve spoken every night this week but she hasn’t actually seen him since the weekend, and... she misses him. Her face flushes when she realises this, grateful there isn’t anyone else in the cab to notice, or hear her giggle like a kid. She sounds like Siobhan when she does that, it’s embarrassing!
She’s just informing her boyfriend that he’s as ignorant as a bag of arses when she hears a rapid double-beep from inside the cab. Something flashes on the front windscreen. It takes her a few seconds to pick out the square message box amongst all the other displays.
Hello, Joanna! Got time for
a quick chinwag?
She whips the Vades™ off her face. Stares at the car’s smartwindow with naked eyes.
The text sits there in the upper right corner, glowing over her view of the road ahead. Just those words. Simple, innocent, friendly.
But she’s instantly tense. Because there’s no name attached. No sender, no ID tag and no profile picture. Only a short, meaningless code at the bottom of the message box.
Who is talking to her?
And who knows where she is? She disabled automatic check-in before leaving the office, so nobody should be able to detect her current location. It’s not a PM, that would have come via her auto on her Vades™. It’s just a simple message that says –
Are you receiving me,
Joanna?
“Oh!”
She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like the idea of somebody knowing her name. Who is this?
In a moment, she realises how these messages are getting to her. All cars with built-in 5G are connected to a platform called Roadnet, which helps coordinate traffic and lets drivers share information. Including, if they wish, direct car-to-car messaging. She’s seen Greg use it occasionally. The short code inside the message boxes is – oh, of course – for vehicle registration. It’s a number plate.
This is from the driver of a nearby car. Someone who can see her!
Joanna starts to turn round, wanting to stare out of the taxi’s windows in all directions, but holds herself in check. Don’t give anything away yet, she tells herself. Her black cab is rolling along Holloway Road, a long stretch with two lanes of traffic in both directions, so there’s no shortage of other vehicles around. The message could be coming from anywhere.
She forces herself to sit back on the seat. Puts her Vades™ on.
Greg: “...so in the name o’ the wee man, it’s time for yez to shite or get off the pot – ”
“Greg, shut up! Bring up Roadnet and track the location of this registration number. L for Lima, J for Juliet, two, one, D for Delta, S for Sierra, N for November.”
Greg: “Eh? Who for what? Did I miss something?”
“Just do it!”
Greg: “Stand by!”
Joanna sits upright and rigid, as her taxi cruises along the busy road. Maybe she’s over-reacting. Maybe this is someone she knows, who spotted her through the taxi’s windows. Damn, she knew she should have switched the privacy tint on. Yes, maybe she’s making something out
of nothing. She’s been on edge these past couple of weeks, although that’s no surprise, considering –
Listen, Joanna, I don’t think
there’s any need to bother
Janine this evening. Frank’s
home early for once and
They could probably do with
some time together.
She stares at the new message and goes stone cold.
They don’t just know who Joanna is – they know who she’s going to see!
Greg: “Okay. LJ21 DSN, that’s registered to the London Taxi Company. It’s a black cab. According to Roadnet, it’s currently on Holloway Road, heading towards Archway.”
She feels her own cab slowing to a stop. Red traffic lights up ahead. The car in front is a bright silver Mini. She tilts her head to the other lane on the right, seeing different makes of cars and vans, all different colours... until she’s looking over her shoulder through the rear window.
There’s another black cab sitting directly behind hers, fenders almost touching.
And it’s empty.
Joann narrows her eyes, causing her Vades™ to zoom in slightly on what she’s seeing. The taxi is also an automated TX6, so there’s nobody in the driving seat. But there’s nobody in the back, either. And the lozenge-shaped TAXI sign on the roof isn’t lit up, which it would be if it was free and could be hailed by someone on the street.
Quietly, she asks “Greg... has that cab been hired?”
She turns back round in her seat to find a new message blinking up on the smartwindow.
They’re trying for a baby,
you know, Janine and
Frank. Imagine, being a
granddad at my age! So best
leave them to it, don’t you
think?
“Oh my God. ”
Joanna fights back the sudden urge to fling open the cab’s door and run, just jump out onto the pavement and keep running.
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