The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 2

2001, New York

Monday (time cycle 57)

I’m watching him now, floating in that tube of gloopy slimy stuff. It’s Bob, but not Bob yet if you know what I mean. It’s a boy actually. Completely hairless and curled up like a baby. You can see the face is definitely him even though it’s not finished yet; all thick bone and that heavy dumb-looking brow. The skin’s not grown on his head just yet. It’s all red-raw muscle fibre and teeth, and two eyeballs that look huge without eyelids. Sometimes they seem to shift, twitch, as if they’re staring at you. But I know he’s not. His baby mind is fast asleep right now, dreaming whatever baby brains dream.

Some first-phase skin has grown across his body, but I can still see patches where it hasn’t. There’s a bit I can see through, just beneath his left arm, where I can still see the ribs, and I think that’s an organ in there. Is it his heart or something? It’s moving. Like an animal in a cage.

Actually, this is making me feel sick. I guess I’m going back to my bunk.

Speaking of puke-making, Liam’s emptying the toilet right now. We got one of these camping toilet things a few days ago. The archway has got a little toilet closet, with a creaky wooden door and a cracked toilet bowl with no seat. It’s totally pinchudda! And it’s not connected up anyway. So that’s why we needed the camping toilet. It has to be emptied every few days cos it stinks the whole place out — when the plastic barrel thing gets pulled out, the back of the toilet comes out and all that ‘stuff’ inside is sloshing around.

Shadd-yah. My turn next time.

Anyway … so we’re going on a trip soon. Somewhere special. You want to know?

I’ll tell you.

Tomorrow we’re going to ‘Sunday’! That’s right, we’re coming out of the loop and going to the Sunday before it. It’ll be my first time travel. Well, no … I suppose when Foster grabbed me from home and took me back here, that was my first time, but I didn’t understand then what was going on. And of course every time the field resets I’m sort of travelling back forty-eight hours in time, right?

But doing this … stepping into the portal, that’s like the real thing. Really being a time traveller. I’ll be stepping through a hole in space and time, through a moment of chaos space. Liam says it’s weird, like all milky white and foggy and there’s creepy movement in there and you can’t see what it is. But he says it all happens so quickly and you’re out the other side before you know it. So not to worry.

Great. Thanks for telling me about the creepy-movey things, Liam.

So, I’m sort of nervous. But excited too cos we’re going to see this rock band called ‘EssZed’. Maddy says they disappeared after 9/11. Just vanished! They’re kind of like meant to be famous for that or something. So this, even though they don’t know it, this is their last ever gig. Maddy reckons I’ll really like them. She played some of their tracks on the computer. They’re total rip-heavy. She says Liam will probably hate them and moan about it not being real music but just noise. Not the sort of ‘ditty’ he’s used to.

LOL.

‘Education’. A ‘field trip’, that’s what she’s calling it. Useful for Becks to get a little more experience playing at being human. She needs it. She’s too serious and robotic. Whereas Bob was dumb — you could pretend he was just an idiot. But Becks is too sort-of ‘cold’. She freaks me a bit when she stares. It’s like she’s looking at you and figuring out the three fastest ways to kill you with nothing but her thumb.

I think I preferred Bob.