Doomware

  This assertion wasn’t exactly true: he’d toyed with the idea of disclosing the information when they had first discussed the boy’s immunity in any detail, back when they’d not long met, but something had caused him to hold his tongue. Maybe he hadn’t learned enough trust in Tarot at that point, or maybe it had simply been easier to pretend that the boy hadn’t noticed anything beyond the disappearance of everyday systems such as the Cybernet and television. Whatever the reason for his reticence, it was true that the subject hadn’t occurred to him in the months following that first conversation.

  Tarot’s eyes were glassy and unfocused. “I don’t believe it!”

  “Believe what? This number means something to you?”

  “I don’t believe..!”

  Starting to anger, David said, “What is it? Do I have to beat it out of you or what?”

  Tarot’s eyes started darting to and fro, losing some of their glassiness; his mind was obviously racing. It took more prodding from David before it stopped racing enough for him to say, “I’ve seen this number before. It’s a sort of code.”

  “For what?”

  “What’s the sum of nine, three and seven?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “One and nine. What are the first and ninth letters of the alphabet?”

  “A and…” – he counted through them in his head – “I. AI. Artificial intelligence?”

  “No, the Acybernetic Initiative.”

  Tarot said the words as if they alone provided the answer to a great mystery, but this only served to confuse David even more. He shook his head, trying to shake loose any recognition of the name, but there was none. “The Acybernetic Initiative? I’ve never heard of it.”

  When Tarot spoke next, and for the first time that David could remember, his voice had completely lost its customary slow, steady rhythm. “It was started a long time ago by a group of acy’s out to show that we were just as good as everyone else, that we were just as valid, that we weren’t lacking as human beings because we didn’t have technology inside our bodies. The basic goal of the Initiative was to provide acy’s with a united voice to lobby for equality.” As he said this, Tarot paced to and fro and shook a clenched fist like a politician delivering an address. “Then about two and a half centuries ago a man named Gaetan Lorch joined the AI. Even from the start, his views were way out there: extremist, fundamentalist, combined with a mania that stemmed from the worst kind of perverted religion. He was the most single-minded man I’d ever met. He talked about martyrs and supremacy and how the natural order of things had been usurped by cyberneticism. He gave speeches telling members that they weren’t only equal to cybernetics, but better than them. More human. More … genuine. He called them true people, or real people, or Homo verus – he had a whole plethora of names. And people who’d been persecuted and maligned for so long were ready to believe him.

  “I wanted to expel Lorch, but I was outvoted. The Initiative was unwilling to disregard the views of any acy’, no matter how extreme those views were. It was inclusion of the excluded at any cost. They thought they could control Lorch’s influence, but they were wrong. He turned the AI from a respected political force – a democracy – into a militant dictatorship. Its positions and demands became so outrageous there was no alternative but for it to be excluded – effectively if not officially – from all legitimate debate.

  “It was a disaster for ordinary people like you and me, but I never thought that Lorch – even him, by God! – would be crazy enough... I mean, he talked up a storm. He was a brilliant speaker. He mixed truth and rhetoric and lies to the point where you started to doubt yourself, to doubt your own opinions. But God! He would’ve needed a whole roll-call of supporters just as crazy as himself to pull off all this.”

  While he paced, Tarot swept an arm as if to encompass the great breadth of catastrophe surrounding them. Thunder rolled as if on cue. David had been listening with a mounting sense of unease; Tarot was clearly suggesting that fellow acybernetics had been responsible for the massacre of mankind.

  “How do you know all this?” David asked. “How do you know so much about the Initiative?”

  Tarot kept pacing and wringing his hands, two things made all the more unsettling because David had never seen him do them before. “I was one of its founding members,” he said, his voice raw with barely contained emotion. “I left by the time Lorch had decimated everything it had stood for. I walked away, gave up … I should never have done that.”

  “There’s no way you could’ve known,” David said, but Tarot wasn’t listening.

  “Do you know what this means? Do you know? It means I played a part in all this. If it hadn’t been for me and my stupid ideals this might never have happened.” Tarot was becoming increasingly agitated. “Oh God! My wife … my boy … I betrayed them!”

  Tarot’s voiced cracked; his breathing was rapid and he was on the verge of tears. David laid down the pad and interrupted Tarot mid-pace, unceremoniously guiding him to a sofa and sitting him down. Tarot immediately buried his ashen face into his hands, prompting David to kneel in front of him and pull his hands away.

  “I’m not having this,” David snapped. “First of all, we don’t know for sure that this Initiative had anything to do with it. The only hard fact we know is that Shawn saw the number nine three seven.”

  “Which was used by the Initiative.”

  “So you said.”

  “On the day of the virus.”

  “I admit it’s hard to understand.”

  “It’s no coincidence. Lorch himself came up with that damn number. He used to use the Greek letter tau as well.”

  “But we don’t know anything for sure, do we? It’s still one helluva leap we’re making. Anything beyond a hard fact is just supposition. Besides, even if the Initiative was behind it, it doesn’t mean your intentions weren’t good.”

  “Good intentions!” Tarot exclaimed bitterly. “Look what hell they paved the road to.”

  “Listen to me,” David said, gripping Tarot’s hands tightly in his lap. “What I mean is you’re a good person. I know you are. You saved my life, for God’s sake, and probably Shawn’s in the process. If somebody took something good you’d started and turned it into something bad, then the fault lies with them. You’re not to blame for the actions of a madman. You didn’t betray anyone. You wouldn’t have it in you to betray me, or Shawn, let alone your own family.”

  Hands still linked, David stared at his friend. There was a profusion of emotions reflected in Tarot’s eyes: fear, shame, self-doubt, a childlike yearning for absolution. David couldn’t bear to see him like this. He was always so calm and so unflappably strong; they were qualities he’d come to admire and count upon. But he saw that the possibility of being related, however tangentially, to mass murder was enough to induce a breakdown in anyone, even the stoical Tarot. It was probably the one thing in the world that could provoke this kind of reaction in him, the one thing that was capable of rendering him this shaken and vulnerable.

  “I don’t wanna hear any more talk about betrayal,” David went on. “‘Cause I ain’t buying it, you hear me?”

  Tarot nodded, his hunted and tearful gaze straying in every direction except David’s. Thunder crashed, much louder than before; the storm was bearing down on them.

  “Now, we’re gonna find a decent boat,” David said, “sail it to this damn island, and raise the kid together. Okay? Just us. Just you and me and Shawn. Nothing else matters now.”

  Out the corner of Tarot’s eye spilled a tear, which he snatched at as if ashamed of it. It was more than David could bear. He pulled him into the crook of his neck and kissed him on the temple.

  “You’re okay,” David whispered to him. “You’ll be okay. I promise you. I know you ain’t exactly into promises, but I don’t really care right now.”

  Maybe it was the storm’s static electricity in the air, or the feeling that something terrible was just around the corner, or David’s eagerness to c
onsole his friend, but the next moment their mouths were pressed together.

  Thunder crashed outside, drowning out the noise they made. If only for the following few minutes, all thoughts of the number 937 and the Acybernetic Initiative and a man named Gaetan Lorch were utterly forgotten, expunged entirely from their minds.

  Afterwards David couldn’t help thinking that this was the way human beings had always made love before the advent of brainware – the synergy born of biology rather than technology; the communication unspoken, as invisible as any data stream, yet no less real; the pleasure somehow augmented by a measure of pain – and he passed through a brief, rare period of complete and utter peace.

  CHAPTER 43

  D + 521

  When David started to wake he could still feel the acidic water burning his skin where the mush of zombies’ bodies encased him. This time he had the feeling that Tarot and the boy were in the water too, zombified along with all the rest of them, although he couldn’t actually recall seeing them in the distorted, liquefied mess of the flood.

  He could tell it was morning by the daylight percolating through his closed eyelids. For a long time he lay there listening to rain falling on the balcony outside, the storm having died away completely during the night. Tarot’s arm was wrapped around him. He’d been clinging to him all night, sleeping restlessly in fits and starts, no doubt thinking, both wide awake and dreaming, about the part he may have inadvertently played in the destruction of mankind.

  They had talked at length last night about the Acybernetic Initiative and Lorch and the virus, and nothing Tarot had told him had changed his basic stance: that the hard facts in their possession were few, and that, even if the Initiative had been responsible for the virus, the founding members’ culpability in the scheme of it was virtually non-existent. Tarot had stated repeatedly that he’d been “supposed” to stop Lorch, and had therefore failed himself and his family and, indeed, the entire human race. David couldn’t understand this at all. The way he saw it, fate was the belief that whatever happened was predestined to happen; Tarot’s assertions that he’d acted in contradiction to fate didn’t make any sense, and the more he’d expounded on the notion the more confused David had become.

  Whatever Tarot’s views on his possible role in the calamity, David didn’t like the idea that fellow non-elective acybernetics were involved at all, let alone that they might be directly responsible. He didn’t want to believe it. He saw acybernetics as being victimised and downtrodden, but not to the point of homicidal retaliation. Being a misfit, a black sheep, a poor relation whose existence mortified the rest of the family, didn’t automatically turn you into a murderer. Acybernetics were shy and lacking in confidence, like himself, or cerebral and brave, like Tarot. It was too much to think of fellow acy’s as being cold-blooded plotters of global genocide. Besides, he remained unshakeable in his belief that the appearance of the number 937 didn’t prove anything on its own. It wasn’t proof that the Acybernetic Initiative had massacred mankind. Although Lorch had espoused tactics that had verged on militancy, there was no hard evidence the Initiative had crossed over the line to terrorism. Tarot had severed ties with the Initiative more than 200 years ago, meaning his knowledge of its activities since then were limited, but surely they would have known about it if the AI had become a terrorist organisation. The AI certainly hadn’t made any highly publicised waves during David’s lifetime. Was it possible Lorch had acted alone? Or with the aid of only a few like-minded acybernetics? He thought it unlikely: it would have been too great a task to pull off.

  He yawned and stretched. When he opened his eyes he was surprised to find the boy was in the room. Dressed in pyjamas and clutching Jerry, his plastic dinosaur, he was standing near the doorway on the other side of the room, not coming close, as if worried about disturbing them. There was an oddly blank expression on his face.

  “What’s up, little man?” David croaked, sluggish with sleep.

  The boy didn’t reply; he just kept staring in a trance-like manner, unblinking. Tarot stirred. David extricated himself from him and padded across the room in his underwear. He ushered the boy out and into the living room, where he knelt before him and said, “What’s the matter? Is something the matter?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Whatever it is, you can tell me,” David said, placing his hands on the boy’s hips and shaking him gently. “What’s wrong? Why the funny face?”

  “I got a message.”

  “A message?”

  Another nod.

  “From who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What kind of a message?”

  The boy wouldn’t answer.

  “Is it a voice message?”

  He shook his head.

  “A video?”

  Another shake.

  “Just text?”

  A nod.

  “What’s it say?”

  The boy looked away, chewing nervously on the top of Jerry’s head. A glint of fear had appeared in his eyes, and it looked as if he might be about to cry.

  “It’s okay,” David said. “You can tell me. We tell each other everything, don’t we? I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I don’t wanna say it,” the boy said, his voice quivering, on the verge of cracking.

  “Come on, little man. You can tell me. You have to tell me now.”

  Shawn shook his head vigorously.

  David took a moment to think. He hoped this was just a glitch in the boy’s brainware and not the precursor to something worse, but something told him it wasn’t a glitch. He needed to know the contents of the message, but he couldn’t force it out of the child. What could he do?

  Then he had a brainwave: he scooped up the boy’s sketch pad, lying where it had been discarded the night before, and flicked to a blank page. “Here: write it down; then you don’t have to say it.”

  The boy took the pad wordlessly. David wanted to read the message as it was being written, but the boy stymied that idea. He walked off, shielding the pad, clearly not wanting him looking over his shoulder.

  With a sigh, David got to his feet and drew back the curtains. The sky was overcast and dismal-looking. He slid the patio doors open and breathed in the storm-scrubbed air. The rain was little more than a drizzle, and it, together with the fresh air, felt refreshing after the humid stuffiness of the apartment. He stepped onto the balcony, ignoring the wetness of the floor against his bare feet, and quickly scanned the town and shoreline for storm damage. Then he caught sight of them. Due to his height above ground level and their closeness to the building, he’d very nearly missed them. He advanced on tiptoes, treading as one might attempt to tread past a sleeping lion, revealing them in stages as he peered over the edge of the balcony.

  Zombies. Lots of zombies. More than he’d ever seen in one go. Zombies as still and as silent as statues in their varied states of dress and undress. Standing ten deep, row on row, forming an unbroken line that stretched for as far as he could see around Shanti Court. He couldn’t take it in at first. The sight was too implausible, too spooky, for his mind to process. But, as soon as it registered that what he was seeing was real, his blood ran cold with terror. He backed away again, utterly shocked and speechless.

  Shawn tapped him on the arm with the pad. He took it in a daze, barely able to focus on the words scrawled upon its screen.

  Give us the boy or die.

  CHAPTER 44

  D + 521

  He was aware of the look of incredulity fixed on his face. His muscles and mind seemed to have frozen, rendering him incapable of reacting to anything: not the wall of zombies, not the message, not the boy’s questioning stare.

  “There’s a timer counting down as well,” said Shawn.

  For a moment David looked at the child as if he’d just uttered some inane gibberish. “Have you seen what’s outside?” he asked numbly.

  The boy nodded. “You’re not… you’re not going to… are you?”

>   The hesitant, abortive nature of the question, backed as it was by the kind of sincerity only a child could display, caused something within David to melt. He knelt before the boy again and grabbed his arms, only now realising how terrified he must be.

  “Of course I’m not, little man,” he said. “Never in a million years. Never. Hold on! What timer? What’s it say?”

  Once more, the boy became reticent.

  “You must tell me, Shawn,” David said authoritatively. “You must.”

  “It says seventeen minutes and thirty-four seconds.”

  “What did it start at?”

  The boy’s expression turned overtly hangdog when he was asked this.

  “Come on,” David said, shaking him a little. “It’s okay.”

  “Forty-five minutes.”

  David swallowed hard, resisting the urge to question the boy over why he’d taken so long to disclose the message. The poor kid was scared out of his skin. Besides, none of this was his fault. If he and Tarot had been keeping better watch they would have known there were zombies congregating outside. They would have been aware that much sooner of what was going on, the gist of which was relatively clear in his mind despite his shocked state.

  Somebody was controlling those zombies.

  He didn’t know how on earth it was possible, but it was the only explanation. Normal zombie behaviour – insomuch as such a term could be applied to them – didn’t include surrounding a building and just standing there. They didn’t act in concert with each other, nor restrain themselves in each other’s presence. They were dead and deranged and beyond all that. Not to mention the fact that they were standing in the rain. Somebody else had to be pulling their strings, and whoever it was had sent the message too. The only suspects that sprang to mind were the offliners; they were probably the only ones deviously ingenious enough to pull something like this off anyway. They hadn’t missed the apartment after all. And somehow they knew about Shawn.