The Orb

by Tara Basi

  The garrulous Pilgrims rushed to their designated lockers and removed yellow haz-mat suits and other personal belongings. The ancient suits were bulky, heavily patched and worn. They busied themselves getting into their gear, attending to zips and fastenings and then checking each other’s fittings. A mistake would likely kill the wearer. Mathew and Quattro stayed back. Hidden by the tunnel’s gloom, they morphed their own yellow coverings.

  The Pilgrims slung their backpacks and exchanged enthusiastic thumbs up all round before reforming their line. One by one they passed through an airlock and then a final turnstile into the light beyond the Wall. Mathew and Quattro stepped out last.

  On the other side, some things were the same, like the sky and the wall. But nothing else was. Quattro was shocked. Like most Londoners, Kiki had never been beyond the wall. They’d arrived in a different time in a different place.

  An ancient bus was waiting for the Pilgrims. Its rumbling engine belched black smoke and shook the rattling bodywork. The windows were grimy and cracked, the bench seats torn and threadbare. The bus was sitting in a paved area served by a single old tarmac road, which was scarred and pot-marked and ran off to the horizon. On either side of the road and outside of the paved area there was nothing but scorched earth strewn with bulldozed rubble. There was not a single place to hide from the wall’s gaze.

  Looking like oversized children’s toys in their bright yellow suits, the Pilgrims waddled towards the bus and clambered aboard. A little further away, Quattro could see six brightly suited Pilgrims, who must have just left the bus, heading towards the visitor centre to get their twenty-four-hour permits. One of the new arrivals turned and noticed the departing. For a short while there was a bout of enthusiastic waving between the two sets of Pilgrims. Quattro happily joined in; it was the only nice thing going on in this desolate place. A disapproving signal from Mathew caused her to stop and join him where he was leaning with his back against the wall. Like a chameleon, he took on the colour of the wall and disappeared. Quattro smiled; how handy. She followed his example and silently asked Mathew where the Pilgrims were going. His usual monosyllabic response only indicated north.

  Mathew hugged the wall and headed east. Quattro followed. After a couple of kilometres, Mathew stopped.

  “Kill drones overhead. Surface and buried armaments. All deadly. Careful.”

  Quattro was surprised Mathew had spoken in full sentences. He hadn’t said much of anything for such a long while. His short, disturbing description of what lay ahead was followed by a data burst that showed her how to see her would-be killers.

  Mathew left the shadow of the wall, picked up the pace and headed north. She was easily keeping up, even though they were running faster than a pair of cheetahs, and Quattro knew she could keep it up for days. Her quantum sisters giggled and squealed with excitement.

  Quattro’s euphoria was dented by an abrupt change in the landscape. Up till then it had been brutally and uniformly flattened and burnt, all traces of humanity expunged. Slowly, faint memories of human occupation were creeping back, until they were surrounded by melted tarmac, blasted towns, acid lakes and, occasionally, an irradiated farm. It was a dead, broken, bombed, burnt outlook in every direction, except for the shiny spots of metal that flashed in the landscape. They were mines and machines that desperately wanted to kill something. Machines to be avoided.

  The rain began falling, lightly at first, then torrential. It must be cold, she thought. Quattro didn’t feel anything, warm or cold. Now there were only precise temperature measurements, and she knew that her body was operating well within its tolerances. Streaks of rain ran over her chest as if it were made of glass, shimmering her camouflage and making her look pretty, according to K2.

  Mathew wasn’t amused. As the intensity of rain increased, his camouflage became increasingly unstable. Quattro guessed hers was misbehaving just as badly. He stopped abruptly and began digging into the dirt, which was turning to mud under the downpour. Quattro copied Mathew and dug her own muddy grave. Once Mathew was happy with the depth, he climbed down into the trench and pulled the mud over himself till he was completely covered. Yuck, was Quattro’s first thought, but she followed his example and soon found that the idea of being buried in the slimy mud was worse than the reality. Quattro didn’t really notice anything. It wasn’t uncomfortable, and her senses were unimpeded. The other Ks had mixed views about being buried alive.

  “Make a mud pie,” K2 suggested.

  “Drown, drown, the murderer,” K3 demanded, seemingly forgetting that if Mathew could be drowned, then Quattro would soon follow.

  K1 was sobbing quietly: that poor little ghost was frightened of the dark.

  After an hour, when Mathew thought the rain had slowed enough, he started to rise from his grave. Before he broke the surface, with Quattro only just behind, he froze and so did she. He sent her a tight beam of data. Something called a Repair Convoy was heading directly for them. Mathew didn’t explain exactly what it was in the tiny burst of information. The little packets of black and white data only indicated the threat level. It was a danger they could not survive. Mathew reversed direction and burrowed deeper into the wet mud and kept going till he froze and shut down all of his sensors except for his hearing. Quattro copied him. Under ten metres of mud and rubble, she lay still and blind, Mathew by her side, listening intently. Overhead, a rumble and roar approached like a curtain of falling artillery shells.

  “Are we playing battleships?” K2 asked, with a happy giggle.

  It made Quattro think of the helpless crew of a submarine lying on the seabed waiting for the depth-charges to fall. For the first time since she’d worn her new armour, she felt vulnerable and frightened. Something immense and powerful was coming their way. Were they deep enough to escape detection?

  “What’s going on? It’s a trap. Escape! Run! Run! Run away!” K3 urged, her voice rising to a scream.

  Quattro was glad she was the only one who could hear the voices. She knew without asking that it wouldn’t be a good idea to try and communicate with Mathew. He was completely inert; even the steady beat of the synchronisation signal that kept them linked had stopped. Quattro concentrated on listening, listening hard, and was surprised to find she could see, though the sights weren’t at all comforting. It was like looking at an ultrasound picture. The image wavered and slipped in and out of focus. A two-storey-high train was lumbering across the desolate landscape on giant steel tank tracks, and it was heading directly towards the spot where they were buried. The monstrous engine belched black smoke. It was hauling several industrial-looking carriages spitting steam and fire. All around were smaller acolyte machines darting out into the surrounding wastes and returning with inert and broken machines to throw them into the fire of the first carriage. Defunct or just damaged, it didn’t make any difference; into the furnace they went.

  Quattro relaxed a little. She reached through the mud and tapped out gently on Mathew’s arm. “We’re not damaged. Why are we hiding?”

  His Morse code response was firm and instantaneous. “It kills all foreign AIs for parts. Stay inert.”

  Their burial place shook violently as the engine passed overhead. For a while, the ultrasound images were very clear. Out of the last carriage, shiny new weapons were being ejected. They immediately dashed off into the ruins to hide and sniff for the enemy. They were lying in wait for Mathew and Quattro to emerge from their tombs.

  “Betray him. We’ll live. We’re people,” K3 demanded.

  Quattro lay in the earth without breathing, watching the passing train. She didn’t think she was a person anymore; she never had been. She was no more Kiki than she was K3 or any of the others. Even so, they were all sisters, sharing the same memories and the same father.

  Mathew waited for some time after the Repair Convoy had passed and then began carefully digging his way to the surface. Quattro followed just behind, mimicking his actions in time to the synchronisation signal he had restarted. On the surfac
e, the mud and dirt slid away from their bodies in seconds, and they were invisible again. And on they ran. This time it was different. Quattro felt exposed. How much longer before they were safe?

  Since Mathew wasn’t talking, Quattro tried a data request. Instantly, a map rose up in her consciousness. Their destination was twenty kilometres ahead, less than thirty minutes. The data said it was a place of refuge, where there would be help. He could have told her that.

  It transpired that exchanging data could be just as good at conveying inaccurate information as a conversation. It took an hour to get there. There were deadly machines to avoid, and that meant long detours. The sisters were less than impressed. K1 grunted in frustration. All K2 did was whine about being bored. K3 worried, so did Quattro. She tried to reassure her mad sisters as she nervously zigzagged across the barren earth, thankful for her body’s power and speed.

  Mathew suddenly zagged into the ruins of an anonymous bombed-out town. What was left stuck out of the ground like broken teeth. Her companion swerved and jinked past craters and oily puddles till he reached a wide ditch scoured by an unidentifiable mangle of metal. He jumped down and approached the crashed wreck and, with one hand, hauled it up over his head to reveal a crude metal trapdoor. Mathew flicked it open with his free hand and indicated Quattro should enter.

  What strength! Mathew was easily holding up the weight of a truck. The sight thrilled her. She had that power as well. Quattro peered over the lip of the shaft. There was no ladder, just blackness. Her new senses quickly calculated that the drop was over a hundred metres onto a concrete floor: a fall that would smash her body and kill her if she were human.

  K1 was puzzled and scared, unsure what the dark hole was. “Bad! Bad!”

  K2 squealed, “Jump! Jump! Jump!”

  K3 was sure she should, “Run! Run! Run away!”

  Quattro was learning to ignore her constantly murmuring companions even if only for a while. She dropped down the hole, landed lightly and stepped forward, sensing Mathew was right behind by the sound of the wreck crashing down. Down below it was pitch black to human eyes. Her ultraviolet, microwave, infrared and radar sight illuminated everything. There wasn’t much to see. It was an unappealing, empty, dark bunker where acid water dripped from the roof and the air stank of mould and rot.

  “He’ll rape us now,” K3 whispered.

  K1 whimpered, and K2 sniggered.

  Something moved. Quattro looked up. Something was clinging to the roof: a metal spider with snaky legs and a hard, globular body. Mathew stepped out from behind her and broadcast a simple message: Safe. Did he mean the thing on the ceiling was safe or she was safe? Quattro nervously watched and listened. The thing reciprocated with a signal of its own to Mathew, which she could not decrypt. Then it turned its attention to Quattro and flooded her senses with a deep electronic inquisition. It scrambled across the ceiling and down the wall until it was eye level with Quattro.

  Another snowstorm of interrogation hit Quattro. Little worms burrowed inside her head and rooted around, copying things. Most of it was incomprehensible, though she caught a name: Creep?

  “Stop,” Mathew cried. “I want light. I want talk. Human talk and human light.”

  He was angry, the first time Quattro had known him to show any strong emotion. Nothing happened. There was no new illumination. And the spider hadn’t moved.

  “Wrongly, why?”

  The spider, Creep, had spoken, surprising Quattro and frightening the two little ghosts.

  K3’s reaction was predictable: “Kill it! Kill it now!”

  The spider and Mathew froze in silence. Quattro realised she was just as still. It was the default mode. Machines didn’t fidget. Inside, her mind was trembling with anxiety. Why had Mathew brought her here, to this dank cavern in the middle of a deadly wilderness? How could she be sure he had rescued her? Maybe K3 was right: he’d brought her here to kill her and finish the contract. And what was Creep? Why was it digging so deep inside her head? Was it looking for her secrets? Did she have any secrets? Was it looking for the Whisperer? Quattro stopped herself. She was thinking like K3. Mathew could have killed her in Peter’s cellar; he didn’t have to give her a body. She was being paranoid.

  “It’s more fun killing someone with a body,” K3 whispered.

  Mathew moved towards a dank stone wall, where a previously unnoticed panel slid back, allowing visible light to flood the bunker. The new light didn’t change anything; the bunker was still an ugly, damp bunker, but beyond the panel, the space looked inviting. Mathew stepped through. Quattro decided to ignore K3 and followed. Her machine senses told her the silent spider was coming too.

  The new space was very large, warm, furnished and lit like an exclusive hotel foyer. It was strewn with expensive artwork, seating, tables and lamps. All the things that Mathew couldn’t possibly need. Off the main space were a number of passages and doorways.

  Quite unexpectedly, Mathew morphed into a new person, someone she didn’t recognise. Standing in front of her was a haggard-looking young man with greasy, blond hair swept back from a lightly scarred face, covered in a two-day-old growth of pale hair. His eyes were bloodshot and his mouth was sour. He was dressed in the black uniform of the military elite, the Specials. Was this Mathew as he once was? He was very handsome. Quattro wondered if she should reciprocate and take on Kiki’s form, but decided against it. She liked being a powerful machine, even if it wasn’t invulnerable. This is who – no, what – she was now.

  K3 strongly agreed. “Kiki’s easier to rape.”

  K2 and K1 seemed to be cowering in silence somewhere deep between the folds of her quantum brain.

  Mathew seated himself and spoke to the spider clinging to the ceiling. “Update?” While his movements were natural, his tone was emotionless, and his anger had dissipated. Quattro found his transformation quite disconcerting.

  “Technology under analysis. Waiting,” Creep answered, sounding like a vacuum cleaner.

  Quattro had wanted to stay silent and observe, but her curiosity got the better of her. “What’s going on, Mathew? What’s Creep? Why are we here?”

  Mathew turned to look at Quattro, his eyes sad and tired. “Creep wants Peter’s technology.”

  Quattro started to ask what technology, before realising the answer was obvious: it was her. Part of her was hurt. Mathew wasn’t interested in Quattro. But it didn’t matter; he’d given her a body and got her out of the cellar before Orb Industries came to kill her.

  “Is that why you took the contract to kill Kiki? Just to get to Peter?”

  Mathew ran nicotine-stained fingers through his hair and sighed, “Yes.”

  “I thought,” but she stopped. Quattro wanted to know everything, fit all the pieces together. There were so many little pieces floating around inside her head that they barely made any sense. The worst of it was that only K3 clearly understood what the Whisperer was saying. Quattro only caught confusing fragments.

  K3 always said the same thing: “Zip has to find what she’s lost, and then we’ll do what we’re supposed to do. What we were made for.”

  “Do what?”

  “Do what? Die, of course. So we can save Daddy.”

  “What’s Zip supposed to be looking for?”

  “Zip knows. She’s forgotten.”

  Occasionally, K3 would divine some new revelation from the murmurings. These discoveries only added to Quattro’s confusion. The only constant was Zip. Mathew had to know more.

  “Will you tell me everything, Mathew? I really need to know. Why do you need me, Peter’s technology?”

  Mathew and Creep went into an intense data mode that she could detect but couldn’t understand. Abruptly, it stopped.

  “Creep says not to tell, but who gives a damn what an AI wants. I’ll tell you what I know. Like, how does the Mathew in the Thermal Mines thing work?”

  Quattro didn’t think that was an obvious place to start, but it was something she was curious about. “OK. How did you get i
nto this machine and escape the Thermal Mines?”

  Mathew leaned forward, avoiding Quattro’s empty eyes, and stared into space. “It isn’t pretty. We kidnap Pilgrims coming to London on the old north road. Ones with citizenship. Or we used to. Creep here has developed a nasty version of the Pilgrimists’ Revelation virus. I use it to take control of their minds. When the body I was using got caught, Creep hacked the courts and the Thermal Mines so I could keep control of the mind. This place has a hard link to the Net. It’s all done from here. I was never really a prisoner. I was always here, till I came to get you.”

  She felt revulsed. Stealing a person’s mind seemed worse, far worse, than killing them. “Why would you do that? You surely don’t need the money?”

  Mathew grabbed at his hair and shook his head. “Money for parts, technology. Creep says I can be human again if we find the original tech.”

  Quattro was astonished. Why would he want to give up all this power for a fragile human frame? She couldn’t imagine anything worse. He looked so tortured that she decided to keep quiet about her own feelings. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. But how’d you get into London, to Peter’s house?”

  “There are smugglers’ tunnels under the wall. It’s dangerous. Short visits only. Getting out’s easier.”

  K3 screamed at Quattro to let him be human so they could kill him. Quattro ignored her. She had to ask, “Is this so bad?” She looked down at her powerful body and saw her smooth, sexless face reflected in her chest.

  Mathew sighed. “This,” he said, making a fist of his hand and morphing it back into mirrored metal, “might be intoxicating at first, but I never asked for it. I want to touch, taste, smell my own sweat again. I’m tired of pressure data and chemical analysis. I get a little flavour of real feelings when I’m controlling someone with Creep’s virus. It’s not enough.”