George and the Ship of Time

by Lucy Hawking

  George thought of the robot hand he had seen, tweaking strands of hair and taking tiny samples of blood from the kids. He nodded. He hoped none of the kids on the bus would prove to have genetic flaws or other physical issues. He dreaded to think what would happen to them if they did. He doubted they’d get to stay in the Bubble as Future Leaders of Eden.

  But the next question had already popped out of Hero’s brain. “Can you teach me how to speak Emotilang?”

  George just gaped at her.

  “Emotilang!” she repeated. “The language of Other Side! Where you don’t actually use words, you just put emojis on your thought stream! How do you not know that?”

  Just then, George’s attention was caught by something trotting by the window. He ran over to look at it more closely, but it had vanished from view. He tried to get out of the entrance hatch so he could follow the strange beast, but it seemed to be sealed.

  “What did you see out the window?” asked Hero.

  “A white horse,” said George, thinking he might have gone crazy. “But with a long, pointy horn. Like, on its nose?”

  “Oh, that’s the Bubble unicorn!” said Hero, sounding pleased.

  “But unicorns don’t exist,” said George.

  “Yes they do!” said Hero.

  “No they don’t!” said George, who had woken up very late, hadn’t had anything to eat, and was starting to feel a bit cranky. “They’re mythical beasts, like from legends. They’re not actually real. That was just a horse with a big thing on its nose—not an actual unicorn.”

  “It was a real unicorn!” exclaimed Hero. “I asked Empy about it and he told me the truth about unicorns.”

  “Which is . . . ?” said George.

  “Unicorns died out before the Great Disrup-tion,” said Hero, her eyes glittering. But her tone was suddenly unsure. It was as though she had to say it to believe it herself. “Because before then people had taken such bad care of the world that unicorns, who are really sensitive, couldn’t survive. They grew too sad looking at the state of the world and that killed them.”

  “The unicorns died of broken hearts?” said George in disbelief. What was Empyrean doing, telling Hero such total nonsense?

  “Unicorns are very delicate.” Hero sniffed. “At least that’s what I learned about them. Because of the fineness of their feelings, they couldn’t return from extinction until after the Great Disruption, when everyone knew that, thanks, um, to Trellis Dump, oh, may he live forever, Eden has become great again. . . .” She trailed off.

  “None of this is true, Hero,” burst out George. He couldn’t stay quiet anymore. “This whole Eden thing, it’s garbage. Eden isn’t the best of all possible worlds. It’s horrible. It’s the worst of all worlds. They’ve all been lying to you.” He braced himself for a storm of tears, but her reaction surprised him.

  “But why would they do that?” Hero challenged him. “What would be the point of making me believe a whole lot of lies?”

  “Um, well,” said George, thrown. He hadn’t expected this.

  “Then tell me the truth about something I don’t know,” persisted Hero. “But you must be able to prove it. Or I won’t believe you either.”

  Hero, George reflected, wasn’t that stupid after all.

  “All right,” said George. “Here’s one. I’m not from Other Side. I’m not a refugee . . .” He paused. “I’m a space traveler,” he confided. He had no idea whether telling Hero the truth would turn out to be a stroke of genius or a total disaster. But he figured it was all he had to work with.

  “A space traveler?” Hero’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief. “From . . . where, exactly?”

  “Up there.” George pointed with one finger.

  “Up there?” Hero looked confused and then horrified. “Up there? You want me to believe you have come from up in space?”

  “Yep,” said George.

  “You,” exclaimed Hero disbelievingly, “came from space? In what?”

  “In a spaceship,” said George. “That’s why I was wearing a spacesuit when you met me.”

  “You weren’t wearing a spacesuit!” said Hero. “You were wearing a jumpsuit, just like mine!”

  “No I wasn’t,” said George. “That was a proper spacesuit. It was almost like a spaceship in itself.”

  “Don’t believe you,” retorted Hero, though she was obviously gripped. “But go on anyway.”

  “I took off from Earth with my robot Boltz-mann in a spaceship and we traveled across the Universe. We didn’t mean to go so far, but we couldn’t get the ship to turn around. Finally the spaceship itself decided to come back to Earth, so now we’re back, but we seem to have jumped into—”

  “Excuse me,” interrupted Hero. She held up a hand. “But you can’t have come from space.”

  “Why not?” said George. “I know it sounds kinda weird but—”

  “No, it’s not just that it’s weird,” said Hero. “Although it is. It’s because there is no space travel!”

  No space travel? thought George.

  “Space travel,” the girl continued, “was banned! It’s illegal. No one goes into space. They did once, but it turned out to be a huge waste of resources, which should have been spent on keeping this planet beautiful, so it was completely cancelled and now no one is allowed to go or send anything into space. So, you see, there’s nothing out there—and certainly nothing man-made.”

  “Not true, Hero,” said George. “Anyway, loads of good things came from space science.”

  “That’s just what they wanted people to believe,” said Hero. “But it’s all fake news. It was invented to make people think science could actually achieve something.”

  George was so stunned he took a step backward, right onto Boltzmann’s foot.

  “Ow!” said Boltzmann automatically, even though it hadn’t hurt, as he had no pain receptors.

  “Hero,” said George, going for broke now. “I came here from space, but not just that. I came from the past. I’ve traveled through time as well. I’ll tell you all about it someday.”

  Hero was staring at him. “Time,” she said. “You said you traveled through time?”

  “My spaceship traveled so fast that time passed slowly for me but much quicker on Earth. I took off from Foxbridge when I was not much older than you are now.”

  “Aha!” said Hero. “That’s why you keep going on about Foxbridge!” Her face was the picture of concentration.

  “And my mom and dad and my sisters and all my friends were here. Now they’ve all gone and the world has changed. It’s been destroyed. Hero, I’ve got to get back to my own time because maybe I can save the future while there’s still a chance.”

  “You mean that now,” said Hero slowly, “is the future for you but actually it’s now for me. And you want to go back into the past and see if you can do something to stop it all turning out like this?”

  “That’s right!” said George encouragingly. “You’re getting it.”

  “But if you do that”—she sounded worried—“then you might do something that would mean I ended up not being hatched! So then I’d suddenly stop existing!”

  At that moment, Empyrean made his entry. “Good morning,” he said smoothly to Hero, while glaring at George. “The emotional frequencies in this habitation are too high for maximum comfort.”

  “He said—” Hero pointed at George.

  “Ah yes,” said Empyrean. “You’ve been asking too many questions again. When you promised not to. And he has been drawing on the rich ‘storytelling’ tradition of Other Side.”

  “What?” spluttered George. He turned to Boltzmann. “Tell her, Boltz! We’re not making it up! We’re telling the truth, and that robot—” He glared at Empyrean, who was turning out to be more of an enemy than a friend.

  “It’s part of the culture of Other Side.” Empy-rean smoothly overrode George. “The ability to weave the most extraordinary tales. So vivid!” He waved his robot hands around. “As though they were really
true. When, in fact, they are only as real as the virtual-reality experiences you saw yesterday.”

  “You said those were just the same as the actual reality!” said Hero hotly.

  “Did I?” said Empyrean casually. “Did I indeed?”

  “What if,” said Hero, building on what she had just learned from George, “none of this is actually true and real, but has all been invented by you and my guardian to keep me quiet? What if Eden isn’t really real?” She looked surprisingly composed for a young girl who, for the very first time, was suddenly questioning whether things were the way they seemed.

  “Extraordinary notion,” murmured Empyrean. But George knew that this time Hero had hit the nail on the head and it cheered him up no end. Eden was a fake: he could see that. What part Empyrean and Hero’s guardian had played in this, and what the outcome of the long-range plan hatched by Nimu’s father (whoever he was) would be, George had absolutely no idea. But, for the first time since he’d arrived, the spark of rebellion growing in Hero made him feel almost happy.

  “Now listen,” commanded Empyrean as though nothing had been said. “Today we are completing our pre-travel preparations for the Wonder Academy! As tomorrow is your ninth hatchday—and all your test scores to date have crossed the threshold for acceptance—we must make sure we have made all the necessary arrangements for your transition.”

  Hero was immediately distracted. “Did I get in?” she screamed.

  “Yes,” confirmed Empyrean. “Your guardian has just informed me that you have been accepted with the highest marks of any student ever to gain entry to the Academy! Well done, Hero. Your work recently has been excellent.”

  “I’m going to Wonder!” yelled Hero, running around the room, hugging everyone. “I’m going to Wonder! I’m going to earn trillions of Dumplings a day and be a Future Leader of Eden. I am going to Wonder!”

  Except, George knew, she wasn’t.

  Chapter Eight

  The rest of the day slipped past smoothly, Hero bouncing around, celebrating her move to Wonder, thought-streaming everyone she could, while George caught up with some much-needed rest and continued to try to understand a little more about this time he found himself in. As evening fell, suddenly a commotion was heard outside the inflatable home, and this time it wasn’t caused by a unicorn. Empyrean immediately looked very alert.

  “Open up!’ came a voice from outside. “This is a random inspection.”

  Empyrean, George noticed, froze, his beady eyes fixed on him. Hero looked unnerved. She scanned the house quickly.

  “Will it be okay if we just say that my guardian invited George to stay?” Clearly the small girl was starting to realize that something was very wrong by Eden standards.

  Empyrean replied simply, “No, it won’t.”

  “What shall we do?” asked Hero. She sounded panicky, and George saw that this might be the first time in her short life that she had experienced what it felt like to be scared. “What will happen if they find George here?” she asked. But, by the look on her face, George could tell she suspected it wouldn’t be anything good. Would it stop her going to Wonder?

  “Wait!” said Empyrean. “I can hide them.” He turned to George. “Stand very still,” he said. “Over there. Next to Boltzmann. Don’t move and don’t speak.” Empyrean flung a piece of incredibly fine material over the pair of them—obscuring their view.

  George stood stock-still next to Boltzmann, who didn’t really seem to have woken up from his overnight power charge yet. They heard tapping footsteps, as though a person in steel-capped boots had walked in, and the gentle thwacking noise of a baton being bounced against the gloved palm of a hand.

  “Robot!” The new arrival addressed Empyrean. “Dump in your Dreams!” It sounded like some kind of routine greeting.

  “I dream only of Dump,” Empyrean replied mildly. “May he live forever!”

  “Account for your domicile.”

  Empyrean sighed—and George heard a fizzing noise.

  “Your power settings are too high,” the inspector complained. George felt rather than saw the inspector’s gaze sweep over him and Boltzmann and notice nothing. But, when the inspector’s eyes landed on Hero, it caused a reaction.

  “Let me into the child’s thought stream.”

  “Certainly,” said Empyrean smoothly.

  Hero made absolutely no noise, as though she knew and understood the drill at these moments. Empyrean had clearly performed some maneuver as Hero’s thought stream suddenly became audible, floating through the air between the supercomputer, the police officers, and the small girl. On the one hand, George heard melodic, happy notes, which were perhaps the soundtrack to a life full of unicorns, huge butterflies, and entertaining virtual- reality games. But then a dark note sounded underneath and a minor chord swelled upward, changing the whole mood. George wondered what had shown up in Hero’s thought stream and how it was reflected in what he was hearing.

  “What’s that?” asked the police officer as Hero’s mind music became stormy and chaotic.

  George held his breath. He realized that this officer wasn’t human—despite the smooth, naturalistic tone of his voice, there was still something that didn’t chime. In fact, the way the police bot’s voice so closely resembled a human’s made it much creepier and much scarier than something like Boltzmann, who was obviously and unmistakably a robot, despite his best efforts.

  “It’s a memory from a VR about the fake news of the past, especially about the fake news fantasy of space travel,” Empyrean jumped in. “Just a memory.”

  “Dumpticious!” said the police bot. “Why do they teach them about the old times? Just spreads confusion. They should only learn about the great achievements of Eden. Get rid of it. That memory has to go. Cleanse it.”

  George heard Empyrean give a sigh, but the music stopped immediately.

  “Keep Paradise Clean,” the inspector said, turning on a booted heel. “In our minds and in our hearts. And don’t seal the hatch in the future.”

  George finally breathed out. Empyrean twitched away whatever covering he had thrown over him and Boltzmann.

  “What was that?” said George.

  Hero seemed to be in a trance. Empyrean spoke very quickly. “You are endangering Hero,” he said. “Everything shows up in her thought stream and you make her vulnerable. That was a close call. I’m sorry we have to keep streaming feeds that you know to be nonsense, but, until we get her out of Eden, we have no choice. Otherwise she is in mortal danger.”

  “I see,” said George, who felt quite shaken. “So Hero can’t know anything real? You have to keep telling her all these lies for her own safety? Poor kid!”

  He felt so sorry for the little girl. And he knew, at that moment, that if they wanted him to save her, get her out of this place, he would have to do it. He wouldn’t leave here without her. By his own choice.

  He just hoped someone had done the same for his own little sisters.

  “We were lucky that was an old-style police bot,” said Empyrean. “I’m surprised it hasn’t been updated with a thermal recognition skin. Perhaps it’s true what they say, that Eden is running out of funds for renewal.”

  “What would it have done if it had caught me?” said George.

  “Many things are banned now,” said Empyrean, speaking at double time. “Freedom of thought, for example, and free speech. Science, especially. Any talk of space travel. Look at the technology that surrounds you. People’s lives are governed by technology—even created by it—but they are not allowed to understand it or master it. You would have been taken away. We would never have seen you again. Hero could have been thrown out of the Bubble to survive on her own in the Void. Her guardian would have lost her government post. I would have been dismantled. And worst of all . . . no, I can say no more . . .”

  “All in the best of all possible worlds,” said George.

  “Exactly,” said Empyrean. “The police bot didn’t see you because I put a meta-material ove
r you and your robot. But, more importantly, he didn’t detect you because you have no thought stream. He doesn’t operate on biological markers—he operates on technological ones. So actually you don’t exist to him, but I couldn’t take the risk that he would lodge you in his vision and it would be picked up by someone else.”

  “Are those inspections normal?” asked George.

  “No,” said Empyrean. “The Kingdom-Corporation of Eden is on high alert.”

  “Me?” said George. “Are they looking for me?”

  “Looking for anyone,” said Empyrean, “who poses a threat to the regime. We must move fast.”

  “This is a lot to take on board,” said George.

  “I know,” said Empyrean. “But I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t know you could do it.”

  “But how do you know? Who are you?” said George, figuring this might be his only chance to ask.

  “I am Empyrean,” replied the robot. “The clue is in my name.”

  But George had no idea what the word Empyrean meant and had no device on which he could look it up. And he knew he didn’t have time for elaborate guessing games.

  “I heard you last night, you and some woman called Nimu,” he whispered. “I know you’ve made a plan and you want me to save Hero.”

  “You must take Hero to safety,” said Empyrean gently. “Save Hero and you will save yourself.”

  “But . . .” said George. There was so much more he needed to know.

  “Shush!” said Empyrean. George heard a buzzing sound coming from outside the dome. “The bees are listening. Say no more.”

  “The bees?” said George.

  “Bee detectives,” said Empyrean. “They are the most intelligent inhabitants of the Bubble. If anyone raises the alarm, it’s most likely to be the bees.”

  The buzzing intensified. Looking out, George could see that the home was now surrounded by a swarm of honeybees. “Are we going to be caught by a bunch of bees?” he said. Bees had been friendly insects in his time. “That’s impossible!”