George and the Ship of Time

by Lucy Hawking

  “We are experiencing some pushback within the robotic and human secret service,” admitted Crazy Hound, looking as though he would rather face a whole army ranged against him than have this discussion with his commander. “They appear to be setting up a system of . . . cooperation between machine and human. There is a rebel faction that believes the future is for robots and humans to work together.”

  “Find them!” shrieked Dump. “And stamp any cooperation out! That’s not what Eden is about! We don’t want anyone working together! Separate them! Make them hate each other! That’s what we do! And look how well it’s worked.”

  Crazy Hound looked cast down. “As you know, Commander”—he was obviously screwing up all his old-soldier courage to say this—“the intelligent machines are ahead of us now. We’re losing control over them—their understanding enables them to use all available knowledge to query any decisions they feel could be unwise for our people and for the planet.”

  “All I want to know,” said Dump, speaking very carefully, “is where the Bubble student is and how this child has gone missing.” He cocked his head on one side as though listening to something, and nodded. “That figures,” he said to himself.

  He turned and scanned the ranks of his government, standing around the room. George swallowed hard suddenly; he could see that Dump’s gaze was on someone he knew. Nimu! Hero’s guardian! Now the game really was up.

  “Minister,” sang Dump, addressing Nimu, “kindly explain to me how the girl who was in your care managed to escape. And why we now have two very muddy and useless boys instead of a specially selected prime brainpower Bubble student.”

  “Excellency,” said Nimu, running a finger around the neckline of her jumpsuit. She looked exhausted. “I have no idea.” From the look of her, she thought that this was the end of the line for her.

  “You,” said Dump menacingly, “had to be forced to use your premium-quality genetic material to produce a student for the use of Eden. We gave you lots of chances. But you kept refusing so we had to make you! I told you that we needed a student with the highest brainpower ever. Like, bigly with huge brains. With enough IQ to overturn the machines. Even though you always tell me how loyal you are to the regime, you didn’t seem to want to do this. Why would that be?”

  Nimu gulped. Automatically she looked around her for help, drawing George’s attention to the robot that had been standing next to her in the outer circle.

  George caught the robot’s eye. It shook its head very slightly. George closed his mouth again. It wasn’t Empyrean; wasn’t the robot he had met in the Bubble, the robot tasked with looking after Hero. It looked like the basic-issue robots George had seen all over Eden, the standard government androids. But could this robot be the same intelligence in a different body? Could it be Empyrean in there? He suddenly felt a surge of hope.

  “You don’t exactly have the best family name,” Trellis told Nimu nastily. “And you failed to prevent the machine learning getting ahead of the regime. So this kid was going to be your last chance. And now you’ve blown it.”

  Family name, thought George. He realized he had no idea what Nimu’s last name was.

  Nimu blanched. She tried to say something but no sound came out.

  “You’re fired,” said Dump. “It’s good-bye. Forever. As for the kid, people are saying she wasn’t even that smart.”

  “Hero’s only nine,” said George, stepping forward, his clear young voice echoing around the vaulted room. “And she is smart. If you’d given her a proper education, she could do anything.”

  “Liar! Fake news!” said Dump, pointing at George. “You migrant nobody.”

  But George persisted. “Anyway, we had an accident in a freak weather storm and then we lost Hero in the forest. It isn’t Nimu’s fault.”

  “There is no freak weather!” shrieked Dump. “I have banned all mention of the weather—we only have the best weather in Eden, and I will personally fire anyone who disagrees!”

  “Absolutely, Excellency,” agreed Crazy Hound, looking like he might be sick. “It must have been more fake news generated by the machines—again.”

  “Those machines!” said Dump, clenching his fists. “We have to stop them! They must not be allowed to challenge my decisions, my vision for our world. I will get control of them before they get control of me! I must be in charge—it’s how Eden works. I will not have machines interfering or trying to help ‘the people’ become free.” He turned to George. “So, kiddo,” he said in an ominous tone. “What shall I do with you?”

  “You could . . .” George pretended to think about it. “Send us into space? You’d get rid of us once and for all if you did that.”

  A rustle of surprise rippled around the room.

  “Don’t know what you mean,” said Dump casually. But George guessed he had hit the spot.

  “You are going into space.” George figured he might as well risk it all. “You’ve built something in space, haven’t you? What is it—a space station?”

  Suddenly George remembered the person who had started this whole mad adventure for him—Alioth Merak, the man who once tried to rule the Earth from an orbital spacecraft. Of course! thought George. Dump must have the same aim in mind.

  “This tower isn’t high enough for you! You want to be above everyone and rule the whole world, so you’re going to sit in your spacecraft, threatening to fire missiles at anyone on Earth who doesn’t obey you!”

  “So what if I am?” sneered Dump. “You’re not coming.” He laughed. “This planet is O.V.E.R. So sad! Losers.”

  “Then why are you still here?” Atticus had found his voice. “If you hate this planet and you don’t like the people, why don’t you just go?”

  George almost laughed out loud. “He can’t! I saw the AI beat you at chess! And it’s not just chess you’re losing at. You’re losing at everything!”

  “I said—shut up!” said Dump, pointing at him.

  “What now, Your Excellency?” hazarded Crazy Hound, clearly wondering if he could possibly leave this very awkward conference.

  The room went very still.

  But Dump, just when he should have been cornered and apologetic, took the opposite stance. He squared his shoulders, puffed out his chest, and slung a casual arm around George’s shoulders. “So,” he said, ushering George over to the window. They had a view over the whole of Edenopolis, teeming with crowds of people between the high-rises. On one side stretched the empty desert; on the other, the sea crashed into the barricades. “Let’s make a deal.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Floating on a choppy ocean in a tiny boat, George had plenty of time to think about what had just happened. As the cold, dark water threw waves over the prow, he tried to figure it out. It was so confusing. And cold. The night sky shone with brilliant stars. It was so much more beautiful and magnificent than anything Trellis Dump could build with his towers, walls, and armaments.

  George floated onward, the boat piloting itself across a dark expanse of unfriendly sea. Trellis Dump’s deal hadn’t really been a deal. George had to cross the ocean to na-h Alba on his own, to negotiate with its leader, a mysterious figure whom Dump would only refer to as “her.” George had to bring “her” back with him so that she would finally agree to help Dump overpower the machines blocking him from perpetual world domination from space.

  “What’s in it for me?” George had said defiantly as Dump stood next to him, surveying the view from the Great Tower. All around the tower, the buildings were mirrored and tall, some of them with green walls where constantly watered vegetation grew above the cloud line. To one side, George saw an enormous building—though not as high as the towers—that had been constructed as a shiny circular ring, gleaming in the bright sunshine.

  But, beyond the inner circle around the Great Tower of Dump, the buildings got older and shabbier, bleeding out on either side into vast sprawls of shantytowns. George could see that the Gate of Prosperity through which he had entered Edenopoli
s was designed to give visitors the best initial impression of the city, leading straight to the central piazza and the Great Tower. On the final side lay the coastline, bristling with military defenses. The sea was navy blue and flecked with white horses, but George could just make out a distant green strip on the far horizon. That must be na-h Alba! he thought to himself. So close and yet so far.

  Dump smiled. “Everything. And nothing,” he said. “You do as I say, you succeed, she comes back to Eden and reprograms the intelligent machines so that they obey me, and only me, and everyone lives. You don’t—and they don’t.”

  “Whaaaat?” said George. “But . . .”

  “You heard me, kid,” said Dump, all trace of a smile lost. “To be clear—that’s everyone.”

  It wasn’t much of a choice for George. Was Dump even capable of carrying out such a threat? he had asked himself. If he didn’t come back, would Dump go through with his awful threat? There was only one way to find out—and it was too much of a risk. If Dump wasn’t bluffing, then all those people could perish.

  George realized that it was a gamble for Dump as well. Obviously he needed the mysterious “her.” Dump believed that she held the key to what George could now see was his failing Kingdom-Corporation. Nothing in Eden really worked—most of the populace were unhappy, hungry, and desperately poor. Those who weren’t either lived in isolation in a tree colony, with a lifestyle based on ancient survival practices, spattered with a modicum of scientific knowledge, or they ran around in the desert like crazy people, or were confined, monitored and confused by technology within the Bubble.

  Even the people at the top of the Great Tower of Dump looked scared, as though their hold on the land below them was starting to slip away. Eden, thought George, might belong to Dump in name, but in reality it didn’t really belong to him at all; not in people’s hearts and not in their minds.

  Before George was sent out of the Great Tower, this time not in the golden elevator but via a dirty, dank lift at the back, he’d been given a clear order.

  “Bring her back to the Great Tower of Dump—before the next setting of the sun—or you will be responsible for the consequences!” Dump had bellowed at George. “And she must come alone. No army. If she brings reinforcements, the annihilation will begin right away.”

  Nimu, who had gone salt-white at this exchange, had tried to interfere. “But, Excellency,” she had pleaded. “No one can cross the Dire Straits between here and na-h Alba,” she said. “It’s so dangerous—the boy will either sink on the waters or he will be torpedoed. The minute they see a craft approaching, they will aim a missile at him.” George realized that Nimu was, despite the desperation of her own position, pleading for him.

  “Then he’d better hope they don’t,” said Trellis smoothly. “Or perhaps”—he glared menacingly at Nimu—“you have some secret form of communication with na-h Alba and can get a message across to them?”

  “No, sire,” replied Nimu humbly. “I told you—all our networks are unable to communicate with them.”

  “Or,” said one of Dump’s minions, a thin-faced woman with elaborate blond tresses, stepping forward, “perhaps someone has happened across an intelligent supercomputer that is powerful enough to be sending messages to na-h Alba, encoded so that we can’t intercept them. That would be another way to tell them in advance that the boy has an important mission.”

  George stayed calm. He had worked a lot of it out now, and he knew full well that Nimu did have such a supercomputer—in the form of Empyrean who, George knew, was no ordinary robot. Whether Empyrean was capable of getting a message to na-h Alba, he had no way of knowing. He could only hope.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed Dump, who was too vain to imagine that such a thing could happen under his nose; that a supercomputer could be hiding right in front of him. “If we had found the supercomputer, we’d already be able to software patch the machine learning to modify its ability and get the machines back under our control. We’d be able to rule properly again.”

  Nimu rubbed her brow. “Indeed, Excellency,” she agreed politely. “If we had the supercomputer, we wouldn’t need her in the first place.”

  “Crazy Hound!” shouted Dump. “Why don’t we know where the supercomputer is?”

  “We continue to search for it all the time,” said Crazy Hound humbly. “But it’s become more difficult since you stopped most humans’ access to real learning. We couldn’t have foreseen that the machines would learn so much about us and how we are running our world that eventually they would turn against us.”

  “The main thing,” said Dump’s blond adviser, “is that we know she doesn’t have the supercomputer. If she—and the supercomputer—were reunited . . .”

  Even Dump turned pale at that thought. “That nasty woman! She will never get the supercomputer. Even if we don’t have it, we are still powerful! We are incredible. She’s a loser.”

  “A loser that you need,” said Crazy Hound, looking at his feet. “Or the machines will take over.”

  “Outrageous!” shouted Dump. “I am powered by the brightest brains in Eden! While I have access to the brainpower of Wonder Academy—” His female adviser kicked him on the ankle. He stopped. “Get this boy out of here.” He rounded on George. “Take him away and send him across the Dire Straits to that stupid, wretched place. Either he will be shot out of the water or he’ll reach her and bring her back to Eden. Either way”—a crafty grin illuminated his features—“it’s a win for me.”

  As George was bundled out of the room, he heard a voice pipe up.

  “But what about me?” said Atticus. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  George hadn’t been allowed to stay for long enough to hear the answer. He could only hope that his friend from the forest would survive in that strange tower-top room.

  Now, in the inky blackness, George started to realize something else. His boat was going more and more slowly. At the start, it had powered across the waves, but it was gradually starting to lose momentum. Water was sloshing around his feet, making them icy inside his battered boots. George looked up at the stars. Once upon a time, with his best friend, Annie, he had travelled there, using the space portal generated by the supercomputer Cosmos. He and Annie had talked about science and the Universe, and had lived in a world where they thought everything was getting better and people were becoming cleverer and kinder. How had the future turned out like this?

  At that moment, the nightscape changed: the total blackness beyond the small, weak radius of the one flashlight George had been allowed to take was suddenly blazing with light. It was dazzling; white searchlights combed the sea around him from above until they came to land on the boat itself. A mass of flying drones whirring overhead, homing in on him and relaying his image back. George knew that at the same time a camera fitted in the boat would also be monitoring his progress and sending updates back to the Great Tower of Dump. An automated voice spoke:

  “Desist! Turn back your boat! You are now illegally entering the waters of na-h Alba! You do not have permission to be here! Repeat—you do NOT have permission to be here.”

  But George’s boat continued both onward and downward—it moved forward slowly while sinking. There was nothing George could do about either.

  “Turn back your boat!” commanded the automated voice. “You are not allowed to come any closer to na-h Alba! We will resist you with force!”

  The boat plowed forward while George tried to think.

  “You are now at risk,” warned the voice. “It is forbidden to approach na-h Alba from the coastline of Eden! We will unleash a strike against you!”

  It seemed rather fancy language, thought George, to use against one boy in a leaking boat, but he figured the system had been programmed to take action against the battleships of Eden. He had seen those warships. They bristled with warheads, all trained on the distant and invisible specter of the Independent Isle.

  No wonder na-h Alba had a rapid response system ready
to strike the minute something crossed the boundary.

  At that moment, George thought about everything that had happened—how he had crossed the whole solar system in his spaceship, seen the cosmos unfurl before him in all its magnificence and wonder. And how he had completed that mission by making it home to Planet Earth. He now had to complete this new mission, and he wasn’t giving up yet. A thought came to him. He had one last chance—only one—and it was the longest shot of his life, he realized, before either his boat sank or the drones unleashed their weaponry against him.

  Standing up precariously, with the water now up to his shins as the boat wobbled beneath him, he faced the spotlight and shouted the only words that could have saved him:

  “Annie!” he yelled. “Annie, it’s me! George!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Now that’s how to make an entrance!” said Annie, sitting cross-legged on a large cushion in what looked oddly like the treehouse George and Annie had once shared, a long time ago in the past, when the world was a different place.

  George had been brought to her after his sudden sea rescue. Once he had shouted helplessly and desperately into the night, hoping against hope that somehow his friend would hear him, everything had changed. A boat had materialized alongside him, and sailors had pulled him aboard. George had been wrapped in a blanket and given a hot thermos of something that tasted deliciously like sweet tea. The sailors had been kind but suspicious of him—he heard one of them debating whether he was a clever Edenopolis spy who had somehow managed to infiltrate na-h Alba. But that voice was quickly shushed by another who reminded the speaker that the order to rescue George had come from on high.

  The journey across the rest of the Dire Straits to na-h Alba had been choppy but exhilarating for George. He might be exhausted, freezing, and shattered, but he’d made it! He was on his way to the one place he might be safe—na-h Alba! And he’d made it by shouting out the name of his best friend. He tried to ask the sailors some questions but, kind as they were, they didn’t want to tell him anything in case they gave away information that he shouldn’t know. Instead, George had closed his eyes and fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep, waking only when he was bundled into a warm cabin, where he was instructed to wash, change into a pair of pajamas, and sleep. Later on, he had been woken again, told to dress in a soft cotton jumpsuit, and taken to meet Annie.