The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 40

2001, New York

Computer-Bob’s cursor blinked silently on the screen for a few seconds.

› I have completed French-to-English language translation from the scanned images. I will be another few moments collating the data.

‘Right,’ said Maddy, tapping the desk impatiently with her fingers. ‘Quick as you can, please.’

› Affirmative.

She wondered how long it would be before some curious gendarme came knocking on their shutter door. Their odd-looking round brick bunker was visible from the gravel road and although it didn’t seem to be that busy a road, she was sure someone driving past would eventually register the fact that their archway ought not to be there.

She looked down at the library books they’d spent the last half an hour scanning. Not every page, just the pages that dealt with the twelfth century onwards.

Children’s history books. She shook her head. The illustrations were cartoony with bright colours and smiley, rosy-cheeked depictions of knights and maidens, soldiers and peasants. The text was printed large and friendly — little detail there, she imagined.

History for elementary-school kids.

Great research there.

The cursor skittered across Bob’s dialogue box.

› Process complete. I will summarize the data components for you in a chronological sequence.

On another screen a word-processor opened, text suddenly blinking on to the page in sentences and paragraphs, quickly building up, filling the page as Bob rapidly cut and pasted relevant sections of text from the database he’d just constructed.

Adam craned his neck forward, eager to read what was coming up on the screen. Just text. Computer-Bob had not wasted time processing the many illustrations, most of which seemed little more than decorative rather than informative, there merely to break up the paragraphs for younger minds to digest.

‘My God,’ uttered Adam, starting to read the page. ‘1194 … the great peasant rebellion of the north.’ He looked at the other two, wide eyed.

‘That’s a new thing,’ said Maddy, ‘isn’t it?’

He nodded, speed-reading ahead down the page. ‘Great peasant rebellion … the fall of the Plantagenet kings … peasant army led by some character known as the Iron Duke. King Richard retreats to Aquitaine … unrest and war in England … nobles united against the Iron Duke … Iron Duke’s peasant army finally beaten at the Battle of Hawley Cross, 1199. Ensuing civil war between nobles …’ He reached out and hit page down on the keyboard.

‘The Three Generations War … England broken into warring factions … warring factions become independent states.’ He paged down again. ‘1415, King Charles VI invades the United Federation of Anglo Duchies.’ He looked away from the screen. ‘England … there’s no England any more!’

‘That explains why they were speaking French out there, then,’ said Maddy. ‘Doesn’t it?’

Adam read on. ‘1521, first French colony in the Americas … 1563, first Spanish colonies … 1601, The Colonial War, French versus Spanish colonies … King Phillip III of Spain signs peace accord with King Charles XVI, France wins when Dutch Republics come on their side. North Americas divided into French, Dutch, Spanish regions …’

‘My God!’ uttered Maddy. ‘Then there’s no America either!’

‘There is,’ said Sal, ‘but it isn’t English, that’s all.’

Maddy shook her head. ‘Hey! It’s not the same, Sal. It’s not America if it isn’t, you know, if it isn’t English!’

Sal shrugged at that. ‘I would still be Indian, English empire or not. You are the soil you are born on, not a flag or a language. Well, that’s what my old ba used to say.’

‘Well,’ Maddy continued, muttering under her breath still. ‘I wouldn’t call this place America without the Stars and Stripes. Just isn’t right.’

Adam was reading on in silence. ‘It’s now called Le Union d’Amerique actually. French is the international language. The language of law …’ He scanned the text. ‘The language of science …’

‘Science!’ spat Maddy. ‘That’s rich. There’s no Internet! And those cars and trucks! They looked like they were from before the war!’

‘But it seems medicine is more advanced,’ said Adam. He pointed to a paragraph at the bottom of the page. The page numbers kept shifting. Bob was still adding chunks of text to the document. ‘The cure for cancer, 1963 … cure for something, can’t read that … cure for something else.’

‘Look,’ said Sal. ‘World population reaches 3 billion.’

‘That’s half the number of people on the planet than in our time!’ said Adam.

‘This is the same time.’

‘I know that,’ he replied, ‘I meant in our version of this time.’

Sal’s eyes narrowed as she skimmed the paragraphs of potted history for the twentieth century. ‘I can’t see any World War Two either.’

Adam nodded, stroking his chin. ‘There’s some wars in Africa. A couple in South America. But it seems far less war in the twentieth century than in our — ’

‘What? Because America isn’t there?’ said Maddy snippily. ‘Is that the point you’re thinking of making?’

He shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. Maybe because there are a lot less people? Maybe that means less fighting for finite resources. I don’t know. I’m no social historian.’

There was quiet between them. On the screen the document’s page number was still increasing as Bob continued to add collated data.

‘It does seem a much more peaceful world,’ said Sal eventually. She turned to Adam. ‘I have to say, this is the nicest time wave we’ve had so far.’ She shrugged. ‘Sort of almost feels like a shame to …’

Maddy looked at her. ‘Sal. Don’t even go there!’

‘What?’

‘You know what.’

‘Just saying,’ Sal pouted. ‘That’s all.’

‘Well don’t! We can’t keep this world just because it seems nice. It’s changed history. Majorly changed history!’

‘But …’

‘But what?’

Sal hesitated, uncertain how to finish. ‘But what if we didn’t fix it?’

Maddy stared at her in silence, aghast.

‘Seriously. What if we didn’t? What if we just brought Liam and the others back home … and we left it like this?’

Maddy shook her head. ‘Sal … now is not the time for this kind of conversation.’ She glanced at Adam watching their exchange. ‘And certainly not in front of someone else, you understand?’

For the first time she noticed there were tears in Sal’s eyes. ‘All you know is 2010, Maddy. You haven’t seen my time. You haven’t seen New York in 2026 or anywhere else in 2026!’

‘No … I haven’t, but that’s — ’

‘It’s all so shadd-yah. It’s falling apart! And we know it gets worse!’

‘Sal!’ warned Maddy. ‘We’re not doing this now! We’re not doing this in front of Adam!’

‘But it does! You know that! I know it! It all gets worse and worse. The pollution! The whole global warming. The Oil Wars! And we don’t know how it all ends up. But this … look at it! This is better!’

Adam looked taken aback. ‘Oil wars?’

Maddy waved him silent. ‘Sal … listen, we made a promise to Foster. To keep history on track. To keep it the same for better or for worse. You remember the things he said? We can’t change history to what we want. We just can’t! Because — because …’

‘Because what? He never told us why? He never explained that!’

He never did … not in detail, anyway.

‘He said history has to go a certain way. Because if it doesn’t, things break down. Things go wrong!’

‘What things?’

‘Space-time … or something. The fabric of space-time. That’s what he said, the stuff that holds those things back from our world.’

Sal knew exactly what she meant. They’d seen one of them — just the once: a seeker.

They stared at each other in silence. A mutual challenge to say that word aloud.

‘What things?’ asked Adam eventually.

Maddy ignored him. ‘Sal, I know we’ve been pulled into this without much help. I know we got thrown into the deep end. And there isn’t a day I don’t wish to God that Foster was back here telling us what to do. In fact there isn’t a day I don’t wish I could walk out the door and let the bubble reset without me. But we’re here for a reason. If we hadn’t done what we’ve already managed to do … the world could’ve remained a radioactive wasteland — or just a big lizardman-filled jungle! All I know is that what we’ve done so far has worked! Has been for the best! You know? I just — ’

‘You don’t knoweverything, Maddy,’ said Sal quietly.

That stopped her dead. That hit home. ‘No, OK … you’re right; I don’t. In fact all I know is how little I know. And that really scares me! And I don’t know what that warning means either … I don’t — ’ Maddy stopped herself. She realized that to continue was to take her towards openly discussing the Pandora message in front of Adam.

‘Adam? How about you just go take a look-see outside. Make sure no French fishermen are gathering to marvel at our … brick … whatever.’

He looked at them both. ‘OK.’ He got to his feet and wandered over towards the shutter door and began cranking it up.

‘Sal,’ she began quietly, ‘all you and I and Liam have is what Foster told us. We have to trust that because that’s all we’ve got right now.’

Sal eyed her silently.

‘But we’re going to learn more, I promise you. We’ll learn more from this Voynich Manuscript … we’ll find out what Pandora is, what it means. We’ll find out what the warning is. And when we know more than we do …’ She smiled. ‘I dunno, maybe one day we can make a choice of our own, you know?’

Sal nodded her head ever so slightly.

‘Until then — ’ she fiddled with her glasses — ‘until then … all we know is what’s meant to be, and what isn’t. And this sure as hell isn’t.’

Sal tipped her head at the monitor behind Maddy. ‘I think Bob agrees with you.’

Maddy turned to see the blinking cursor at the end of a message.

› Recommendation: mission priority has changed. History contamination needs correcting.

‘Yup, Bob, you’re right. I think we need to get a message back to Liam.’