George and the Ship of Time

by Lucy Hawking

  George fell silent and looked out of the window, his eyes filling with tears at the thought of Annie’s dad, Eric—alone?—on the Red Planet. Was that why Annie had tried so hard to message him on the Artemis, in the hope that he might have somehow landed on Mars to save her father? George knew how greatly Eric had wanted to travel to the Red Planet, but it sounded like his dream of Mars had gone even more badly wrong than George’s dream of space flight. And, with Eric gone to Mars and Annie ending up who knows where in the world of the future, would there have been anyone left to help his family?

  “But who betrayed Eric?” George burst out. “What happened?”

  “No one knows who betrayed him,” said Boltzmann quietly. “But he was working on a plan involving the long-term programming of machines for secret resistance to Eden. Eric believed, you see, that the machines could develop their intelligence fast enough to be able to work alongside humankind to save our planet, save our future. Stop the rise of the Dumps. Even to prevent the terrible wars of the Great Disruption. His idea was that even if humans became powerless to stop Dump, the machines would step in. Once they achieved true intelligence, Eric believed they would identify Dump as the greatest threat to Planet Earth and stand against him. But someone told the Dump regime about his work.”

  “No!” said George furiously. “Who could have done such a terrible thing?”

  “Most people think it was Nimu, actually,” said Boltzmann. “It’s the foundation of her success within the Eden regime. She was a prodigy—she joined the corporation as a teenager and many people believe she betrayed Eric in order to get in with Dump. But Empyrean assures me that is not the truth, that Nimu did no such thing.”

  “What?” said George. “Why on Earth would Nimu . . . ? Then who?” His mind was whirring. Eric, sent to Mars for programming resistance into machine learning? If Eric had been caught, then had his activities been stopped? From what George had heard, it sounded as though Nimu and later Empyrean had taken over where Eric had been forced to stop. Which meant it really made no sense that Nimu would betray Eric if she had then carried on his work in secret. But what about Hero, and why did Nimu say she didn’t want a child brought into this?

  But Boltzmann would say no more.

  “I have broken my word!” he said regretfully. “I have become as unreliable as a human! My metal lips are sealed until we reach our journey waypoint.”

  George, at this point, needed to process what he’d just heard rather than take on board anything more. He sat back in his seat and gazed out the window, trying to distract himself from the awful pain in his heart.

  Outside the bus, the luxurious plant life, which had seemed so beautiful when they first arrived in the Bubble, now seemed artificial and waxy. The trees didn’t look natural at all—they were too green and had too many leaves, flowers, buds, and berries on them. They appeared synthetic, another aspect of the fakery of Eden rather than a freely growing natural ecosystem.

  A few tiny, brightly colored hummingbirds flapped about their bus. Around the hummingbirds buzzed a swarm of honeybees that took a far closer interest in the vehicle. At first, just a few of them batted against the windows, but their numbers were growing very fast.

  “Not the bees again!” said George, giving himself a shake to bring himself out of his sad reverie.

  Boltzmann looked most alarmed. “This is not a good sign,” the robot said fretfully. “I am experiencing extreme anxiety now and it is most unpleasant!”

  Just as the bee escort of the driverless bus became too thick to see out, they reached the exit hatch to the outside world. It opened immediately and snapped shut behind them, leaving an enraged mass of bees throwing themselves at the internal skin of the Bubble.

  “How come only the bees spotted us going in and out of the Bubble?” George asked Boltzmann. “We just waltzed in—and waltzed out. Only the bees seem to have noticed!”

  “We are not registering on the monitors, other than the bees, which are still much smarter than all other developed systems,” replied Boltzmann. “Senses—of the kind that you as a human understand—are not seen as reliable in terms of assessing situations now.”

  “But don’t the robots capture images?” said George. “Can’t they see?”

  “Yes,” said Boltzmann. “But any visual input now has to be verified by machine sensors, triangulating with other information—which you and I don’t emit as we don’t have the right sort of on-board machinery. There is so much visual data generated every minute—thousands of terabytes—and they don’t seem to have worked out how to process it effectively. Either that, or someone is removing your image as it appears . . .”

  “Huh?” said George. A thought struck him. “But then isn’t Hero’s thought stream or under-the-skin chip—or whatever she has—going to give us away immediately? As soon as we don’t take the route to this Academy place, they’ll be on to her straightaway—and then they’ll catch us!”

  “No, Empy thought of that,” said Boltzmann. “He will run a fake stream for her and close down the real one—about now!”

  At that moment, Hero, who had been silent, gave an outraged cry.

  “I think she’s just found out,” said George to Boltzmann.

  “My thought stream!” she cried. “It’s frozen! Boltzmann, can you mend it?” She looked pleadingly at the battered old robot. “Please?” she said with her most engaging smile. “I was just in the middle of telling all the kids about leaving the Bubble for Wonder when it just . . . stopped!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Boltzmann, who didn’t sound it. “Empyrean said that once we leave the Bubble, your thought stream would be discontinued.”

  Hero frowned. Her VR headset had been pried out of her hands by her guardian, who had insisted she could not take it on the journey. When Hero had protested, Nimu had weakly come up with some excuse about the headset being the property of the Bubble and Hero getting a new and better one when she reached Wonder.

  “What am I going to do now?” complained Hero. “No thoughties! No VR!” She sounded, thought George, just like Annie complaining when her mom had restricted her screen time.

  “Look out the window?” suggested Boltz-mann. Unfortunately he chose exactly the wrong moment to make that suggestion. As Hero turned to examine the world outside the Bubble, something appeared at her window. Hero gave a sharp scream. Running at the same speed as the driverless transport was a shaggy, disheveled, dirty, two-legged being. As Hero looked out, she locked eyes with the apparition, which leered at her, showing broken, blackened teeth in a red mouth.

  Hero pointed. “What is that?” she squeaked in horror.

  On the other side of the bus, George spotted another small group of beings, shaggy-haired and ragged, running on two legs along the top edge of the defunct riverbank. The landscape was scorched, barren, and bleak, with a fierce wind blowing a top layer of dust across the plateau, but this group seemed more than equal to the conditions.

  They were easily going as fast as the bus—and, looking forward, George could see that when the vehicle reached the bend, they could be cut off in an ambush.

  The ragged group seemed to be waving primitive weapons at them and whooping, as though they were preparing themselves for an attack. One of them jumped from the higher ground right onto the front of the bus and sprawled across the windshield. It was a terrifying sight. George felt pinned to his seat.

  Hero had her head between her knees and her arms wrapped round them. Boltzmann had one protective hand on her back. George thought he heard the noise of quiet crying. At that moment, he pretty much felt like crying himself.

  But, just then, technology intervened to save them. The bus clearly had some emergency procedures of its own. It unfurled stubby wings on either side and rose up above the ground, increasing its speed. Taking a sharp turn, it threw the intruder off the windshield so that he landed back down on the ground, where he lay, unhurt, shaking his fist up at the bus. The others down below gathered around their fallen
comrade, where they all remained in a tight knot, watching grimly.

  “Hero, you can sit up now,” said George.

  Hero pinged back upright, looking very startled. Her normally smooth black hair was ruffled and sticking up at the front.

  “What,” she exclaimed, “happened?!” Her eyes looked enormous from the shock.

  “Humans, exiled from the Bubble and whatever the other places are?” George hazarded a guess.

  “Yuk,” breathed Hero. “No wonder my guardian says I have to work hard and be a Dumpsome success! I don’t want to end up out there, like those people. Actually I didn’t even know anyone lived out there. Quick! Let’s get to Wonder . . .”

  “Shall we tell her?” George mouthed to Boltzmann.

  “Not”—the robot shook his head—“all at once. We need to let her down in stages. Ask me about something else so we can initiate the discovery phase gently for her.”

  “Like what?” said George. “I know!” It was the topic he always wanted to know about. “Did Empyrean update you about space travel?”

  “Oh, not this again!” huffed Hero. “I already told you—space travel is over!”

  “Dear Hero,” said Boltzmann, sounding very old-fashioned. “Your comment is not consistent with reality!”

  “Isn’t it?” Hero suddenly sounded less sure of herself and what she knew about her world. George wondered how long it would take for her to wake up from her Bubble-induced delusion.

  They were now flying over the endless plain, flat with ripples of sandy ground that stretched on either side as far as the eye could see. There were no trees, towns, roads, or cities to break up the view. Just barren earth. In some places George thought he could see markings where perhaps there had once been a highway or a small town. But nothing was clear enough for him to make anything of it. From the position of the sun behind them, he realized they were flying north, hopefully toward na-h Alba.

  “Space travel,” said Boltzmann slowly, “has continued under the Eden regime, except not in the way that George and I understood it from our time.”

  “From what time?” asked Hero. “From—oh!” she exclaimed. “I remember now! You told me! You said you came from space and from another time! How did I forget that?” She looked perplexed.

  “Empyrean temporarily stunned your short-term memory,” said Boltzmann. “And now it is returning as we leave the Bubble behind.”

  “That’s so mean!” said Hero, looking wounded. “It’s my memory, not Empy’s! Why is he allowed to mess around with my brain?”

  “Because Eden is not what it seems,” said George. “And we have to help you get away from it.”

  “To Wonder Academy, right?” said Hero, looking for confirmation. “Everything will be okay once we get there? And I’ll find my friends from the Bubble and we’ll be together again and it will all be okay.” She desperately wanted them to agree.

  George sighed. He was torn. But Boltzmann had told him to go carefully. Perhaps, if they could persuade her that one facet of the Bubble was bogus, it would be easier for her to process the rest. And he really wanted to know.

  “Boltz,” he said firmly. “What about space travel? What did Empy tell you?”

  “Space,” said Boltzmann, “was made an illegal zone after Trellis Dump the Second took over full power from his father. The corporations wanted to be sure no one could spy on them or aim missiles from space. So they banned all space exploration and told the public it had been a massive waste of resources. But really it was to stop anyone else becoming more powerful.”

  “But in my past space was all about international cooperation,” said George sadly. “What about those moving lights in the skies? What are they?”

  “Oh, there is movement in the skies,” said Boltzmann. “Empyrean suspects an orbital craft—at least one—has been launched by the Dump regime.”

  “Wouldn’t Nimu know about it?” said George. “If she’s such a big deal in Eden?”

  “Even Nimu hasn’t got clearance for this,” said Boltzmann. “Despite being Minister for Science. It seems to be the biggest secret in Eden.”

  “What’s the space mission for?” said George.

  “Could be anything,” said Boltz. “It could be a space station, perhaps it has missiles, or maybe it spies on Other Side. Or all of the above.”

  “Wow,” said George. “But no one is supposed to know?”

  Hero had been watching this exchange with an open mouth. “I think you’re both crazy!” she said indignantly, and turned to look outside once more. “I hope you know the emoji for a boy and a robot who have gone bananas.”

  George saw that, as an attempt to enlighten Hero, his question about space had failed entirely. Instead of finding out that her world was crazy, she now thought George and Boltzmann were.

  Below them, the landscape was changing. From flat and dry, it rose higher, turning into ranges of hills and mountains, still with almost no vegetation. The bus flew deftly across the craggy tips of the range. Right up to the very highest, the mountains remained brown and red, no snow or ice decorating their peaks like frosty icing.

  George had started to feel slightly sick. The bus was beginning to bucket around a little, banking sharply and then dipping before rising up again. Outside, a dark fog was starting to settle, making the way ahead much harder to see. But it wasn’t just fog—George realized with a jolt that they had flown into an enormous thunderstorm that was breaking right around them. Huge, fat drops of rain battered the windscreen and massive forks of lightning flashed past, breaking up the purple and gray rolling clouds.

  “Are you sure this driverless bus knows how to fly?” said George as they narrowly avoided a rocky finger that appeared very suddenly out of the thick mist.

  “This is a mighty storm,” said Boltzmann, sounding worried. “Of a greater ferocity than anything we experienced on Earth back in the time of us. It is giving me meteorological anxiety!” The flying bus turned on its side, throwing them all into a heap as it veered around another mountain peak.

  “Hey!” said Hero in indignation. Unlike George, she was strapped in, so had remained in her seat as the plane/bus bucketed along. “This isn’t meant to happen!”

  “Argh!” cried George, who was hanging on to a handle on the side of the bus to stop himself from catapulting across to the other side as it changed direction. He accidentally kicked Boltzmann in the face. “Sorr-ee!” he said as the bus righted itself. George clambered back into his seat. For a moment, it seemed as though they might be able to fly through the storm, which boiled around them like an angry giant stamping on the Earth.

  But the little flying bus was no match for such a merciless gale. Buffeted by winds so strong they could have blown a mountain over, stung by huge, brilliant flashes of blue-white lightning and lashed by great blankets of rain hammering down from the purple clouds, they started to lose height and slow down. Now the bus was flying along the tops of trees, across what looked, through the thick mist, like a dense forest.

  The engine made an unhealthy coughing noise. One wing seemed to have been torn off by the storm. But the molded inside of the cockpit was totally smooth—it appeared to have no on-board controls for a manual pilot to take over. They couldn’t even see how to open the door so they could jump out.

  “We can’t fly this bus!” said George in horror as he realized what was happening. “What are we going to do? Can you call Empyrean?”

  “Empyrean can’t help us now! Brace, brace,” said Boltzmann, putting his robot head between his knees. “It’s all we can do.”

  As he spoke, the bus dropped down again, plunging into a thicket of trees, whose branches propelled it downward to a point where it ground to a final stop . . .

  Chapter Eleven

  “Get out?” said Hero in outrage. “I’m not getting out! This isn’t Wonder Academy!”

  They had landed safely, the small plane/bus just managing to bring itself down to the forest floor. But where, exactly?

 
; “What is this place?” George said to Boltzmann as the door opened and a salty mist seeped into the cab. He sniffed. The air had a tang of sulphur in it, the smell of rotting vegetation and the sharp bite of smoke. It was so thick that George thought he’d be able to eat the atmosphere. “Are we still on Earth?” He knew they must be, but it seemed so different from the climate they had taken off from that he couldn’t believe they were on the same planet.

  “This is the Swamp,” said Boltzmann, thanks to his update of Eden information, gifted to him by Empyrean.

  “Yuk, yuk, and yuk!” exclaimed Hero. “Horrid! Make the bus take off again so we can get to Wonder.”

  “We’re not meant to be here, are we?” said George to Boltzmann. From the tiny bit of ground he could see through the dense smog, the mud looked like it would suck him in if he stepped on it.

  “No. We have performed an emergency landing,” confirmed Boltzmann, who looked worried.

  Looking out, George saw that the small vehicle’s other wing had been ripped off as it lowered itself to the ground through the thick trees. Just the body of the craft remained. They were, George realized, heroically lucky to be unharmed.

  “Why is this place so weird?” complained Hero, who was obviously waiting for the doors to shut and her transport to move off, as if by magic, as it had done so many times before in the Bubble.

  “It seems the climatic zones of Earth are now sharply different from one another,” said Boltzmann. “We have come from the desert region, where there is no rainfall, into another area that has too much.”

  As if to echo the robot’s words, squelchy noises and what sounded like large, muddy burps echoed around them.

  “What now?” asked George. He didn’t like the look of their destination, but at least they were at ground level, not stuck in a tree or on a mountain crag.