by Oli Smith
‘For the right price. Only a few citizens have a level high enough to do such complex work. They must pay to have their designs created by the Guild of Architects.’
‘That’s it!’ the Doctor declared triumphantly. He pointed at the snarling face of the nearest Defrag with both hands. ‘That’s what these are, and that’s what the blackness is!’
‘What?’ Blondie’s arm was shaking now. Sweat glistened on her face, and the white stream of energy pouring through her was beginning to grey.
‘It’s a system wipe. Something is trying to erase all the data on the network.’
‘But that’s our world!’
‘Of course it is. But this thing doesn’t know that, it thinks Parallife is empty, that nothing happened once the humans left. But things did happen, you created new things; new people and places and the system can’t tell that. It’s only erasing the programs created by humanity, not yours.’
Blondie’s eyes widened. ‘Which means that –’
‘The Defrags are what’s left of people like you! They’re what’s left when the human designs of your bodies are erased, only your new clothes and faces and stuff are left. They’re upgrades held together by shadow.’
‘But what’s left is still affected by new programmes like mine?’
‘Exactly.’
Blondie’s sleeve was beginning to blacken now as the shield began to stutter. Around them the Defrags were beginning to sense the weakening in the water shield, and their screams of frustration transformed into gloating howls.
‘Now we can go!’ the Doctor grinned, running over to sit behind her on the tiger’s back.
‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ Blondie grinned. ‘You can’t just reveal that there’s a way to fight these things and then expect me to run.’
The Doctor’s face fell. ‘They’re not your enemy, Blondie, fighting them isn’t going to help!’
‘They’re monsters, Doctor, they’ve haunted my city, my home and my life. I’m tired of being scared.’ She clicked her fingers and the water shield evaporated into a cloud of steam. Then she drew her sword.
The blade flashed in the shadows, reflecting rainbows off the cloud as the water settled into a thick mist. It flowed between the decaying trees, covering the forest floor. The Defrags remained hidden in the steam, but the hiss of static made ripples in the mist.
Blondie’s silver eyes narrowed as she encouraged the tiger into motion. She swept the blade from side to side through the steam, smiling as it crackled on contact with the water droplets. The Doctor, clinging tightly to her waist, eyed her carefully. There was obviously no reasoning with her like this.
‘This sword is one of the most complex programmes the Chief Architect has ever created. A one hit kill. Now I have an enemy that deserves such a weapon.’
The mist stirred around them, and exploded into life.
The Defrags leapt high into the air, water streaming through the shadows of their bodies. Blondie smiled and began to spin the blade in her hand faster and faster, whipping up the air around them as she prepared to strike the monsters.
It was only then that she realised they were leaping in the opposite direction, away from her. A few moments later the forest was silent once more, and the Defrags had fled.
Blondie let out a yell of anger, and slashed at the ground with her sword. ‘How dare you?’ she called out at the empty trees. ‘How dare you run from me?’
The Doctor put a comforting hand on Blondie’s shoulder. ‘They’re scared.’
‘They’ve no right to be scared!’
The Doctor said nothing. Instead he spurred the tiger into motion, and together they rode on towards the edge of the forest.
CHAPTER 9
The Other Side
Eventually the trees opened out onto the edge of a huge cliff, and the tiger refused to go any further. The Doctor and Blondie dismounted and looked out at a haze of sky.
‘It feels like the edge of the world,’ he said.
Blondie looked at him. ‘We can’t run forever.’
‘I know. But those Defrags, Blondie, they’re not the monsters. Inside each shattered body is the mind of a citizen. They’re trapped. Of all the things that have been added to this world since the players left, their minds – your mind – are the only things that are completely new. They are the only things that cannot be harmed by the system wipe. One of your friends could be inside one of those creatures – unable to speak. How would you feel if your touch could infect the foundations of Parallife?’
Blondie looked away. ‘You’re right, of course, but what will become of them? Of us? Will we end up trapped inside a world of nothing?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘The Games Master would know.’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow.
‘The Games Master is our creator. He used to monitor Parallife when the humans were still players. It was his job to create new quests, missions and battles to be fought. When the players left, he gave each of their characters a mind of their own. We only exist because of him,’ Blondie explained.
‘And where is he now?’
‘Gone.’
‘Where?’
‘Who knows?’
She reached up to her sleeve and fingered the burnt material from where she had cast her spell. ‘Maybe he thought we weren’t good enough and created the darkness –’
‘The system wipe.’
‘Whatever – to correct his mistake.’ Blondie tore off her tattered sleeve and held it out over the cliff. She watched the wind tug at it for a moment then let go. The cloth fluttered for a moment then seemed to fall towards the cliff-face, sticking to the side.
The Doctor looked down.
‘Wow,’ he said finally.
The cliff face stretched away below them, as far as the eye could see, and on it a spiralling twisting architecture soared into the sky. Cities and homes and villages, some on a level, some at right angles, some whose internal pathways seemed to fold and loop impossibly around each other.
And it glowed, all of it, a blossoming firework frozen in time.
‘We’re not on the edge of the world at all, are we?’ the Doctor said eventually. ‘We’re on the side of it.’
Blondie laughed. ‘Your mind is too practical, Doctor. What’s up and down are not constant here; the Architects change them as they like.’
‘The Architects!’ The Doctor slapped his forehead. ‘That’s where we need to go. Take me there.’
‘I was going to,’ Blondie said.
She took his hand, and together they stepped onto the top of the world.
CHAPTER 10
Safety
Vast sand dunes swept by beneath Daryl’s feet. Miles and miles of rippling desert that seemed to stretch across the entire world, and probably did for all Amy and Rory knew.
They clung on tightly to his curved metal shoulder blades. Each time the robot landed they were thrown high into the air with the force of the impact, before he launched himself away again. And each time he reached the peak of his impossible leap they experienced a feeling of weightlessness. They hung in the air as if gravity was still struggling to catch up with them, before plummeting down to Earth with a turn of their stomachs.
Amy’s legs and arms now ached so much that she could barely feel them, and her hair had been blown into a tangled mess by the speed of Daryl’s travel. She looked over to Rory, but his eyes were fixed firmly on his sweaty palms, as if willing them to keep holding on. Once he looked over Daryl’s shoulder and saw the ground hurtling away beneath them. He almost fainted.
‘You weren’t scared when we went on that death mountain ride at Alton Towers,’ Amy shouted over the wind.
‘That had a height restriction and a safety bar!’
Daryl’s body hit the ground once more, sending up a spray of sand. Amy screwed shut her eyes, coughing and spitting the sand from her mouth. When she opened them again, Rory had gone, and beneath her Daryl was standing motionless at the top of
a dune.
With a long groan of pain, Amy prised her fingers away from their handhold and slid slowly down Daryl’s back onto the hot sand. She lay there for a moment, willing her muscles to unlock, then wobbled to her feet, legs slipping everywhere.
‘This is gonna hurt in the morning,’ she said, attempting to shake some life into her limbs.
Finally confident that she could walk, she turned to look down the side of the dune behind her. She followed the long trail of upturned sand that zigzagged away from her. Then her eyes rested upon the dazed figure of Rory, lying face down in the valley of the dune.
She slipped and slid her way down the loose sand, accidentally spraying him as she dropped to her knees by his side.
‘Blegh,’ said Rory, his face muffled by the sand.
‘You okay?’
‘Blegh.’
Amy sighed. ‘I’ll take that as a “yes.”’
Rory tried to roll over and groaned. ‘My arms and legs have stopped working.’
‘They just ache, get up!’ She grabbed his arm and hauled Rory to his feet, ignoring his half-hearted protests.
‘I don’t like the future any more. Can we go to the past next time?’
‘If you’re good.’
She dusted him down and together they turned to see Daryl still waiting for them at the top of the dune. Then they began the long climb up to meet him.
‘It’s shady on the other side, we’ll stop for a rest,’ Amy promised.
‘There’s no need for that,’ Daryl said, as they hauled themselves onto the ridge. ‘We’re here.’
An arrow flashed up on his face and Amy and Rory looked across the other side of the dune.
The sun was hanging lower in the sky now, and the once flawless white sea of sand was now patterned with lengthening shadows that turned the landscape a stark black and white. At the base of the dune was a bunker, its metal outline shining where it caught the sun above the shadow.
Two huge double doors faced them, and the ribbed girders that lined the building’s roof were rusted a sunburnt orange. Surrounded by the wildness of the landscape, its solid angles looked strangely out of place. It looked like a stranded ship, or a skyscraper on its side.
‘What is it?’ asked Amy.
Daryl shifted; sand pouring from the cracks in his metal skeleton as he prepared to move again.
‘Safety,’ he said.
CHAPTER 11
The Bunker
The interior of the bunker was vast and still, bathed in a shadow that hadn’t been disturbed for over a century. Until now.
The giant steel gears that arced around the twenty-storey high double doors began to shake and creak. They rotated agonisingly slowly with a howl of metal grinding on metal. Gradually the doors began to part, and a tiny sliver of light slashed across the floor of the bunker. The column of light grew wider as the grinding squeal increased. Soon, the dark outline of Daryl’s silhouette was framed in the crack between the doors. His metal body was dwarfed by the size of the machinery around the doors, but his strength was many times his size. Eventually the double doors were prised open wide enough to allow Amy, Rory and Daryl to step through comfortably.
Amy walked slowly along the path created by the column of light, her footsteps echoing loudly in the gloom. Her eyes widened in the darkness as her sight adjusted to the sudden change, and her mouth opened in awe.
All around her, hanging from the arches of the distant roof, were robots. Each one was the size of a small bus, and their rounded metal joints and steaming hydraulics gave them the appearance of a herd of sleeping dragons. They swung lazily back and forth on their chains, while a network of walkways and control panels threaded between each one. Amy suddenly felt very small.
‘It’s like a cathedral.’ Even Rory’s whisper echoed as he walked slowly across to join Amy. ‘A cathedral for worshipping giant robots,’ he added, looking around.
‘Looks like you’re the runt of the litter, Daryl,’ Amy called over her shoulder.
‘We aren’t related.’ Daryl strode over to them with a great deal of noise, his footsteps ringing on the metal floor.
Rory shivered; it was cold inside the bunker. A welcome relief from the sweltering sun outside. ‘I thought you were taking us to safety?’ he asked. ‘I presumed that would mean as far away from an army of robots as possible.’
‘This is the safest place on the planet.’ The smiling face returned to Daryl’s screen.
‘How?’
‘The rebuilding of Earth is a two-stage process. Demolition followed by reconstruction. Outside, the planet is being flattened and processed, prepared for the second stage.’
‘And these are the reconstruction robots?’ Amy stepped cautiously across the room to stand beneath one of the giants. A huge, blank plasma screen stared back, surrounded by a cluster of cylinders.
‘Correct. There are five hundred of these factories positioned across the globe, each one containing an army of similar size. These bunkers are the only places Legacy has been programmed not to demolish.’
‘Well, duh,’ said Rory. ‘Would be a pretty stupid plan otherwise.’
‘Legacy?’ Amy held a finger to Rory’s mouth and encouraged Daryl to continue.
‘Legacy is the Central Intelligence, it controls all artificial life on the planet – coordinating the restoration of Earth.’
‘Including you?’
‘I am . . .’ Daryl paused. ‘Unique.’
‘Is that a no?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, that’s a no or yes, Legacy controls you?’
‘Legacy doesn’t control me.’
Rory put his head in his hands. The sun had given him a headache. ‘Hang on a minute.’ He screwed his face up, trying to think. ‘Why?’ he finished.
‘Why what?’ Daryl flashed a question mark.
‘Why the whole “restoration” thing? There isn’t anybody left to appreciate this whole . . .’ he flapped his hand around, ‘whatever it is.’
Daryl raised his screen upwards, running a blue bead across the surfaces of the suspended robots. It flashed across their chrome surfaces, disappearing into the darkness above each one before reappearing on the next. As he did so, each robot jerked into life for an instant. The cylinders around their screen-faces slid open to reveal an array of mechanical arms, each especially constructed for a different purpose. The motors in their bodies flexed and twitched with a series of loud hisses before the blue dot continued on and left its target swinging slowly from its chains, dormant once more.
‘There’s you,’ he said finally.
Amy and Rory stared at each other.
‘Us?’
Daryl shrugged, a gesture that seemed strange and unnatural when performed by an artificial body.
Rory stepped forward. ‘You’re trying to say that all of this, this . . . Legacy stuff is to give us somewhere to live? You’re trying to rebuild a planet for two human beings?’
‘I had expected a greater number of survivors.’ Daryl’s smiley face flipped into a frown.
‘Maybe they’re all in other bunkers,’ Amy suggested.
Daryl shook his head. ‘The bunkers are empty except for the robots.’
Rory laughed. ‘Yeah and you went round the entire planet to check did you?’
Daryl was silent.
‘Oh my God. You did!’
‘I had one hundred years.’
In that moment Amy felt a pang of sympathy for Daryl. She reached out a hand and gently touched it against Daryl’s forearm.
‘I’d nearly given up,’ he continued, ‘and then the demolition army was activated. But I found you in the end.’
‘You must have been lonely.’
‘I had a book.’
Rory whistled through his teeth. ‘Well, I hope we were worth the effort.’
Daryl’s yellow face winked at them. ‘To be honest I thought you’d be taller. Or stronger; more like me. I was surprised to find that you humans are so . . . fragile
.’
‘He’s never seen a human before!’ Rory hissed.
‘So?’
‘Shhh!’ He looked nervously around. It had been nearly half an hour since their conversation with Daryl. With nothing left to do but wait, the robot had produced his book from a hidden compartment in his stomach and settled himself in the middle of the bunker to read. Rory had taken this opportunity to guide Amy away, up the network of stairways and gantries into the highest, furthest corner they could reach.
They huddled behind the bulk of one of the reconstruction robots, unable to see each other in the gloom that surrounded them. But Rory was still scared.
‘Don’t you see what that means?’ he whispered once more.
He felt, rather than saw, Amy shake her head.
‘It means we can’t trust him. Haven’t you been listening to anything Daryl’s said? He’s got no idea what’s going on with the Legacy thing, he obviously wasn’t built by a human, and he’s rather keen to keep his actions on the down-low.’
‘The down-low?’ Amy giggled.
‘Having one lone robot jumping around the planet, looking for the last surviving humans just doesn’t fit with a plan to rebuild Earth. If the human race had the intelligence to put Legacy in motion, then it should have had the intelligence to keep itself alive during the end of the world or whatever.’
‘So where do you think he came from?’ Amy asked.
Rory shrugged. ‘I dunno. He’s obviously more alive than the others.’
Amy said nothing.
Rory continued, ‘So what’re we gonna do? Make a run for it?’
‘He saved our lives!’ Amy said. ‘If we leave now we’ll be shredded by the demolition robots.’
‘But . . . why did he save our lives?’
‘I don’t know!’ Amy was becoming more and more frustrated. ‘Why don’t we just ask him?’
Rory inched over to the railings at the edge of the gantry and looked down at where Daryl was sitting, a dizzying distance below.
Something was wrong.
The robot’s book was lying on the floor a short distance from where he was sitting. Although Rory couldn’t see his face, the pulsing red glow that illuminated Daryl’s arms and legs could only be coming from one place.