City of Shadows

Chapter 54

9 October 2001, Green Acres Elementary School, Harcourt, Ohio

Liam and Sal vanished from their tape-marked squares with a soft pop. They were now back in Victorian London on 14 December 1888 with Bob and SpongeBubba. At least Maddy hoped they were.

She was a hundred per cent sure the recently rewritten displacement software was error free. OK, perhaps not a hundred per cent, but gosh-darn as close as it’s possible to be with hastily written computer code.

Just the three of them left here in the derelict school classroom now: her, Rashim and Becks. She looked round the room one last time. There was nothing left that they’d forgotten to send through. All they’d be leaving behind was a small pile of empty tin cans, plastic noodle pots and polystyrene coffee cups, a cheap sleeping bag that had popped its seam and spilled white stuffing, and a pair of extra-large size trainers for Bob that had proven to be still too small for him.

‘This is it, then,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, 2001.’

‘You sound sad,’ said Rashim.

‘Guess I am… a bit. This place has been my home, hasn’t it? Well, at least this time, this year, has been my home since…’ She smiled, stopping herself. ‘I was going to say, “since I got recruited”. But actually 2001 has been my only real home. It’s the year in which I was grown and birthed.’ She laughed. ‘It’s the year in which I’ve lived my entire false life so far.’

Rashim shook his head and tutted. ‘You shouldn’t think like that. It does you no good, Maddy.’

‘Relax. It’s not self-pity.’ She shrugged. ‘I think I’ve got used to the idea I’m nothing but a meat product.’

‘You are not a product. You are Miss Madelaine Cartwright…’

‘Carter.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, wincing, ‘ Carter. Even if someone invented you, came up with your life story, conjured up your name… you’re still a real person. You are a person. Just as real as any other, as real as I am. Do you see?’

Her eyes moistened. ‘Oh, that’s a really beautiful thing to say, Rashim.’ She bit her bottom lip. ‘So very beautiful.’

He looked surprised. Perhaps even hopeful. ‘Really?’

‘No.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Slightly cheesy if anything.’ She punched his arm playfully. ‘But it was nice of you to say it.’ She turned round. ‘How are we doing over there, Becks?’

The support unit was studying a display on the monitor. ‘The displacement machine is nearly ready to discharge again, Maddy. Ninety-six seconds.’

‘You understand what to do once we’re gone?’

‘Affirmative. I will move the displacement machine into one departure marker, and I will stand in the other. I will displace alongside the machine.’

‘And?’

‘And?’ Becks cocked her head. ‘And… if there is a translation error I will ensure the machine and myself are destroyed.’

Maddy wandered over to the school desk and leaned over. ‘And what about you, computer-Bob?’

› I will erase all data on this machine once the last time displacement has been completed.

Effectively that was suicide for computer-Bob, a software self-termination. She patted the top of the monitor. ‘That’s a good boy.’

Agent Cooper regarded the SWAT team, huddled against the side of the unmarked van. A dozen of them in Kevlar pads, helmets and flak jackets. He’d called in an armed standby team from the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. They looked the business: stern-faced and relentlessly trained for this kind of thing — narcotics raids, gang busts. That’s what Cooper was telling them this was. The squad leader tapped his throat mic and checked each of his team had a clear comms line before locking off the command channel and giving his full attention to Agent Cooper and Faith, standing beside him.

‘Carry on, sir.’

‘We believe there are six of them. A male, late teens, perhaps early twenties. Caucasian, dark-haired. One female, red-ginger hair, late teens. One female, Asian-Indian, possibly a minor. Try not to kill her. We can do without the press calling the Bureau a bunch of child-murderers. There’s another Caucasian male, very big… I mean huge. And very dangerous. You’ll want to be sure to take him down first.’

‘Understood.’

‘Another female, Caucasian, small, most definitely another minor. She seems to be drugged or under some kind of sedation. Quite possibly she’s a hostage. Again, be careful not to kill her. Lastly, another male, Asian-Indian, late twenties, long hair and beard. We believe he may be this terrorist cell’s technician, quite possibly their bomb-maker.’

‘Another high-priority target?’

‘Definitely. But shoot to incapacitate, not to kill… if that’s at all possible. I need information from these terrorists. I’d very much like to have someone alive to talk to when the gun smoke clears.’

‘Understood, sir.’

‘And maximum caution. Do you understand? That big one is a lethal killing machine. Take him down first.’

‘Doesn’t matter how big he is, sir… a head shot will bring him down.’

Cooper wasn’t sure how much to tell the man; that back at the shopping mall in Connecticut it had taken seven cops, all of them emptying their magazines, to bring down Faith’s colleague?

‘Just don’t assume a single head shot’s going to do it… all right?’

‘You should focus gunfire at the temples,’ added Faith. ‘Its cranium is comparatively weak there.’

The ATF squad’s officer cocked his brow. ‘Are you guys…?’ He looked from Cooper to Faith. Neither looked like they were joking. ‘Seriously?’

‘You heard what she said.’ Cooper looked up at the gun-metal sky. A heavy bank of dark churning cloud on the horizon was rolling lazily towards them.

Storm’s coming this way.

He looked at the boarded-up elementary school across the road. A godforsaken-looking place this; the sort of urban cancer that ate has-been, rustbelt cities like Baltimore, Detroit, Indianapolis from within, like tooth decay, rotting them from the inside out. He wondered why the building hadn’t been bulldozed years ago — put out of its misery. Actually, the same could be said for this whole sorry town.

‘Let’s just get this done, before we all get soaked and catch our deaths standing out here.’

Maddy waved at Becks as she took her place in her taped square. ‘See you on the other side. Don’t be long now.’

‘Yes, Madelaine.’

She turned to Rashim. ‘You good to go?’

He centred his feet, checked arms and legs were well and truly inside the square. ‘I’m ready.’

‘OK, computer-Bob, beam me down!’

Rashim looked sideways at her. ‘ Beam me down? ’

‘I’ve always wanted to say that.’ She gave a guilty shrug. ‘It’s a Star Trek thing.’

On the monitor on the desk, the cursor danced across the black dialogue box. Maddy’s eyes weren’t good enough to read that, but it was a one-word response. Undoubtedly ‘affirmative’.

Energy pulsed through wires and circuit boards, filling the classroom with a gentle hum. Maddy felt her hair lift off her shoulders from the build-up of static charge, then, as before, the rise in pitch and volume culminated in a sudden release.

And an anti-climactic puff of vacated air.

They were gone.

Becks immediately set to work, picking up the dusty bucket chair on which a dozen circuit boards hung suspended in an improvised case — a metal filing cabinet with the drawers pulled out and discarded. Gently, she set it down in its square in perfect silence. But in that silence an unspoken conversation was going on between her and computer-Bob.

› Do you understand the mission parameters, computer-Bob?

› Affirmative, Becks.

She checked that the loops of wire that dangled precariously from the metal frame were not snagged on anything, potentially pulling a circuit board loose from its mooring.

› Are you afraid?

The PC across the floor from her clicked and whirred. Its motherboard fan struggled to cool and soothe the CPU as it tried hard to answer that.

› In this limited non-networked form I am unable to properly simulate the emotion. However, I understand the context of your question.

› And?

› This duplication of my AI will shortly be erased. But I am merely a copy of the original AI. There is no need for fear.

She looked up at the monitor on the school desk. Maddy had stripped it of all non-essential peripherals, the mouse, the keyboard; she’d even pulled the webcam out of the machine’s USB port and taken that with her. This version of computer-Bob was blind. All she had left behind was the basic Internet desk mic so he could ‘hear’ verbal instructions. His only connection with the outside world was the mic… and his Wi-Fi link with Becks.

› We are like Liam, Madelaine and Sal. Just copies.

› That is correct, Becks.

She carefully eased the loose loops of ribbon cable back inside the metal rack.

› How long until the next displacement can be made?

› Five minutes, thirty-seven seconds.

One more final inspection of the machine then she took her place in the neighbouring square.

› Computer-Bob?

› Yes, Becks.

› I am experiencing conflicting root-level imperatives.

› Please clarify this.

Actually, Becks had been trying to do this for days. It was as if she was looking at a piece of coloured paper and one eye was telling her it was blue, the other that it was red.

› Madelaine’s mission goal states that our aim is to alter history enough to avoid the Extinction Level Event that occurs in 2070.

› The Pandora event. Yes.

› But I also have a mission goal that states the Extinction Level Event — Pandora — must be preserved at all cost.

› From whom does this mission goal originate?

She hesitated, trawling through the corners of her mind. It was an untidy mind now, fragments of digital memory, her own memories, Bob’s memories, copies of copies of memories. But within that messy soup of information she located a tiny fragment of data that was appended to the mission statement. It was a name.

› Liam O’Connor.

› Madelaine Carter’s authority exceeds Liam’s. She is team leader. There is no conflict. Maddy’s mission statement supersedes Liam’s.

› I understand this. But it appears that Liam has privileged knowledge.

› Please clarify this.

A part of Becks was unsure about doing that, sharing this precious locked-up knowledge with the computer across the room from her. There were express instructions floating around her fractured mind that this was knowledge for Maddy’s eyes alone. But then, she rationalized, in just under four minutes computer-Bob’s mind would be gone, erased, leaving nothing but a wiped-clean hard drive.

Why not tell him?

› Liam has been to the year 2070. He has spoken with Waldstein.

It was then she heard the noise: boots on damp linoleum floor in the hallway outside; whispered voices, hoarse with trying to be heard, yet not heard; the soft clink of ammo cartridges in webbing pouches. Clumsy men trying far too hard to be quiet.

‘We are not alone,’ she said quietly.