The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 39

2001, New York

‘Sal? Sal? … You OK?’

Maddy noticed she was teetering on her feet unsteadily. The half-empty mug of tea dropped from her slackened fingers to the floor and shattered on the hard concrete. She took a faltering step, then steadied herself against the edge of the kitchen table. Maddy got up from her armchair and put a protective arm round her narrow shoulders.

‘Dizzy,’ she replied.

‘She OK?’ asked Adam.

Sal nodded. ‘I’m fine … but I think that was a — ’

The archway went completely dark.

‘Time wave,’ said Maddy.

‘What?’ She could hear Adam’s breath, uneasy and ragged. She felt the soft touch of air on her cheek, his hands swooping and flailing in the pitch black. ‘What is this? Is this … is this some other sort of dimension thing?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s just darkness. The genny should kick in, in a few seconds.’

But the lights flickered back on before she heard the deep coughing throb of the generator starting up.

‘Oh! That means we’ve got power still,’ she said, looking at him and smiling. ‘That’s a good sign.’

The computer monitors began to flicker back to life, one after the other.

‘That was a big wave,’ said Sal.

‘Yes, it was.’

Adam looked at them both. ‘So does that mean …?’

‘You’re in an alternate timeline? An alternate 2001?’

His head bobbed like a cork.

‘Yes.’ She made her way over to the computer desk. ‘Let’s see how alternate.’ The computer system was just finishing restoring itself, and Bob’s dialogue box flickered up on to one of the screens.

› System reset complete.

‘Bob?’

› Hello, Maddy.

‘We just had a time wave.’

› I know.

‘But we’ve got power still.’ Stupid thing to say, but she’d said it anyway.

› Affirmative, we have power. But I have had to correct the voltage and amplitude settings.

‘What?’

› The power coming in is a form of direct current.

She looked at Adam and Sal standing beside the desk. ‘Then maybe it’s a bigger change than I thought.’

› Information: we have no external data link.

‘No Internet,’ said Sal. She made a face. ‘That isn’t such a good sign.’

Maddy nodded towards the shutter door. ‘Something pretty big’s changed out there … maybe we should go see?’

They made their way across the floor. Maddy jabbed at the green button. Nothing happened. The shutter motor, linked directly to the external power line and not automatically monitored and modulated by the computer system, wasn’t working.

‘Marvellous,’ she muttered, and began cranking the handle beside it.

‘Let me,’ said Adam, taking over from her.

The shutter clattered up slowly, letting in a surprisingly bright ribbon of light for the time of day. Maddy checked her watch. It was approaching four in the afternoon. The Williamsburg Bridge normally blocked the sun from their dim little alleyway pretty much from two in the afternoon onwards.

Adam stopped cranking. The shutter was waist height. A quick look at each other, then all three of them squatted down together to look outside.

‘Shadd-yah!’ whispered Sal.

‘Uhh … all right, that’s not New York,’ said Adam.

‘Nope,’ said Maddy almost nonchalantly. ‘No it isn’t … again.’

The cobblestones of their alley ended abruptly where the energy field ended and beyond that was a bed of tidal silt that sloped down to the East River. She spotted several fishing boats of various sizes lying askew on the mud like beached seals, tethered to wooden mooring poles.

Across the East River, Manhattan island was still there, of course. But instead of the forest of skyscrapers, there was a sleepy-looking town nestling on it. She could see a carpet of gabled rooves and chimneys and somewhere in the middle the spire of a church. Along the edge of the town she could see more fishing boats and jetties, and the bustle of activity as fishermen worked their catch ashore, small cranes lifting catch-nets full of squirming sea life out of their holds and on to the dockside as clouds of seagulls buzzed, swooped and complained.

‘We’ve had worse,’ said Maddy.

Adam shook his head. ‘It’s like … like, completely changed!’

‘Duh,’ chuckled Sal. ‘Of course it is.’

‘But there’s power,’ said Maddy. She pointed towards the town where a line of lamp posts carried overhead cables along the shore front. ‘So it’s not like we’ve been thrown back into some total dark age.’

‘But no Internet,’ said Sal.

On this side of the river, where only moments ago the seldom-used dockside cranes and abandoned warehouses of Brooklyn had stood, there was nothing but silt punctuated by hummocks of coarse grass and dozens of tide-marooned fishing boats surrounded by discarded coils of rope and useless torn fishing nets. She spotted a solitary gravel lane to their right, flanked by intermittent wooden telegraph poles. It wound along their side of the river and, a couple of miles further up, she could see the small mid-river humps of Belmont and Roosevelt islands, and — just as in the normal timeline — a bridge spanned the river there. Albeit a very different-looking bridge.

Adam followed her gaze. ‘Can we go and explore?’

Maddy pinched her lip absently. They needed information. They needed some idea when and how this alternative timeline had sprung up. ‘I think we’d better.’

Maddy locked the computer system with a password and they all stepped outside, closing the shutter door behind them. She looked at their archway, nestling low down between two hummocks of grass-tufted mud; it was a jagged hemisphere, a scruffy igloo of old crumbly brickwork that went nowhere. She wondered how visible it was to anyone looking their way from the town across the river. Someone surely would eventually notice the sudden arrival of a squat round dome of rust-coloured bricks nestling amid the mud and abandoned old boats?

Maybe. All the more reason to get a wiggle on. ‘Come on,’ she said, pointing to the gravel lane nearby. They avoided the muddy silt as best they could, picked their way along crests of grass until they stepped up on to the gravel road.

‘It reminds me of — of … Calais,’ said Adam. ‘Normandy maybe,’ he added.

They walked along the coastal road towards the bridge, finally spotting a vehicle as they neared it. A small flatbed truck loaded with wire baskets of chickens. It clattered noisily on to the bridge, a motor that coughed, whined and growled as it sped away from them towards ‘Manhattan’.

‘That looks weird,’ said Adam. ‘Like we’re in the forties or fifties or something.’

Yes, it did. Old-fashioned. The truck looked a little like one of those old Model T Fords you’d see in jerky black and white movies. They crossed the bridge, walking on one side of the road. A dozen other vehicles passed them either way, all looking oddly antiquated and ever so subtly framed with decorative curls and fleurs de lys of brass trim.

On the far side of the bridge they turned left, following a road that weaved into the centre of the village where it became busier with people going about the business of a normal Monday afternoon.

An elderly lady in a black dress and scarf pushed a wheeled basket full of baguettes and looked at them curiously as they approached her. She frowned, puzzled perhaps by their clothes, but then she nodded and smiled at them as she passed by.

‘Bonjour,’ she uttered politely.

Adam looked at them. ‘Did you hear that?’

‘French?’

Adam nodded.

‘America’s gone French?’ Maddy said incredulously.

The road took them into a small town square overlooked by the church spire and tall townhouses that seemed to lean forward over the space. A fountain gurgled pleasantly in the middle, momentarily drowned out by the piercing whine of a three-wheeled scooter whizzing past them, driven by an old man with a child sitting across his knees.

‘This seems quite nice,’ said Sal. ‘I think I like it better.’

‘It’s French,’ replied Maddy defensively. ‘It’s not right.’

A class of schoolchildren suddenly filled the peaceful town square with their voices, a walking crocodile of two-by-twos carrying satchels on their backs and wearing blazers of yellow and green. The TimeRiders watched them spill out of a building and cross the square, chattering, laughing, making the same noise any class of children would make enjoying the novelty of stepping out of school.

Sal pointed at a sign above the door they’d emerged from: BIBLIOTHEQUE.

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘Not sure.’ Maddy shrugged. ‘Let’s see — maybe we can get some information there.’

The other two followed her as she crossed the square, took the steps up and inside into a cool, dimly lit interior. Wood-panelled walls and a threadbare carpet; tall avenues of dark wooden shelves thick with volumes of books.

‘I’m guessing this is a library, right?’ said Sal.

Maddy nodded. ‘Yeah … yeah, that’s right.’

But it was unlike any library Maddy had ever been in since first grade. She was used to modern, bright, glass spaces filled with busy Internet stations and orange plastic bucket chairs, and racks of DVDs and magazines … and, oh yeah, one or two books, somewhere.

‘History,’ uttered Adam. ‘We need to find a history book.’ His voice echoed around the quiet library and several pairs of eyes looked up, mildly irritated.

Maddy nodded. They spread out, each picking an aisle, and started to scan the book spines on the shelves, looking for some way to identify a category. After a few minutes, Sal softly whispered for them to come over.

They both joined her in what appeared to be a children’s section. She was holding a large book in her hands. ‘It’s a kiddie history book.’ Sal flicked through several pages, all of them with brightly coloured illustrations breaking up the text. She spotted an illustration of Roman legionaries, a diagram of a sailing ship, a timeline chart. World history, by the look of it. Good enough.

‘I don’t suppose either of you can read any French?’ asked Maddy.

Sal and Adam shook their heads.

‘Me neither,’ she replied. ‘We’ll have to borrow it.’ Maddy took it out of Sal’s hands and, after quickly glancing up and down the aisle, she shoved it under her sweatshirt.

‘It’s a kid’s history book,’ said Adam. ‘You can’t get all the information you need from that, can you?’

She shrugged. ‘No worse than Wikipedia.’

‘Wiki-what?’

‘Never mind.’ Maddy pulled another book from the shelf and flicked through several dozen pages. Finally nodding with approval. ‘This one looks good too.’ She pushed it into Adam’s hands. ‘Well? Hide it.’