Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

“You did it, then,” she said.

“I decided it was time.”

“You could make that decision yourself, of course.” She brushed her fringe aside and stared at his silvery outline. “What else have you done without talking to me?”

“I got the AI up and running again. It’s been online for three, four months now. It’s a smart kid. Your dad would be proud.”

“Oh, Sam. Is Miyamoto with you?”

“Yes. In real-space.”

“I’m going to have to order him to kill you. And he’ll do it, too.”

“I know. Gladly, I expect. Where are you?”

She moved to one side to show the park at the top of her tower. “I told you I wouldn’t leave.”

“The Outies are almost on the northern edge of Regent’s Park.”

“Yes. I can hear them,” she said. “There are too many of them for the EDF to hold back, and I suppose it won’t be long before they’re here. But I’m ready for them, Sam. I was serious when I said I was going to protect my father’s legacy.”

“Were you serious enough to arm as many of your workgangs as you could?”

When she didn’t answer him, he knew.

“I’m glad, because I want to borrow them. How many have you got?”

“No. I need them, Sam. Every last one of them. I need them for here.”

“However many you have, it won’t be enough. You’ve got what, a couple of thousand? You’re still outnumbered a hundred to one.”

“It’s enough to do what I need them to do!”

“But it’s not for what I want them for, and my need is greater.”

Her face went pale and pinched. “You can’t have them. They’re mine.”

Petrovitch shook his head. “Not anymore. You can only give them something to die for. I can give them a reason to live.”

She banged her fists on the desk in front of her in frustration. “Don’t do this to me. I swear, I’ll give Miyamoto the order to take your head.”

He remained perfectly calm. “If you still want to have hold of anything by the end of today, you have to give me everything you have now. How many nikkeijin in the Metrozone?”

“What?” She was suddenly on the back foot, unsure of how to answer in case she ended up trapping herself.

“Half a million, and I can give you their phone numbers. You’re going to contact them all, and get them back across the Thames to you. Tell them to use Waterloo Bridge—you can’t get cars across it, so the only obstructions are a govno - load of people, but we’ll clear that. I’m going to throw a defensive semicircle going from,” and he looked at the map, “Hammersmith to Blackfriars, as far up as the Westway. We can afford to lose the rest, at least temporarily. Sonja? Tell me you’re keeping up.”

“You betrayed me.” She was furious. “And now you’re trying to humiliate me?”

“It just looks like that at the moment. If I have to do this myself, then it won’t work as well, and it won’t end how it should. Call in favors, promise them the world, resort to blind nationalistic rhetoric—I don’t care. I need them, and you can get them for me.” It wasn’t working, and he wondered what would. “Do you remember? When you said we should run away together?”

“It was only the day before yesterday.”

“I just realized we don’t have to run anywhere. All we have to do is plant our flag right here in the Metrozone, and see who stands up to salute it.”

“Stop,” she shouted, and she held up her shaking hands as a physical barrier to his altered visage. “Just… stop. What are you saying? That we take control of the whole city?”

“ Yobany stos, Sonya! No: just the half the MEA have abandoned.”

“But.” She realized she had no objections left, though she felt she should try. “But what about the Outies?”

“What about them? Defeating them is the cost of still having somewhere to live when the sun goes down. Now,” he said, “yes or no?”

She gave up arguing. “We’ll never win,” she sighed.

“Three words say we will.” Petrovitch sorted the Metrozone database for Japanese refugees: a simple place-of-birth search, nothing complicated once he’d hacked his way into the system. He bundled up the information and threw it down the wire to Sonja.

She waited, for longer than he anticipated. He thought maybe he was losing his touch, but then she relented and asked:

“Which three words?”

“These ones: New, Machine, Jihad.” He grinned. “See you.”

P etrovitch opened first one eye, then the other. He stood swaying slightly for a moment, then tried to walk forward a couple of steps.

They were tentative, a questioning toe pressed against the sharp ballast before he committed his whole weight.

“Weird,” he said, and even as he said it, it felt like he was writing a line of code and sending it to his vocal cords.

Miyamoto had his sword in his hand, watching him from a safe distance, poised to strike him down.

When Petrovitch turned his head, he could feel the cable drag: an unnatural connection from skull to computer was one thing, but it was more than that. He felt full to bursting. Ripe.

He focused on the samurai, and was aware of the embedded electronics in the man’s clothing—nothing more complicated than a phone searching for a signal, but he could see it as an icon he could touch, open, alter and activate if he knew the right commands.

“This is going to take some getting used to.”

“You should not have done this,” said Miyamoto. “There are too many unknowns involved.”

Petrovitch looked over the top of his glasses. The shine off the sword blurred, then sharpened as the rat processed the raw data and fed it back. The resulting image wasn’t perfect, but it was close. “We can argue about it later. Right now, I’m looking for a bus.”

He slid one sleeve of his coat off, and threaded the rat over his shoulder, then back around to his front. He slipped the rat into his inside coat pocket, coiling up the excess cable, and put his arm back in. The connector was mostly hidden by his hair. When he turned his collar up, it was all but invisible.

His simultaneous search of the satellite images found him several buses, which he matched with a picture gallery to discard all the ones without automatic navigation. He could have used cars, of which there were many more, and closer—but a big modern coach with tall sides would offer more protection to its occupants.

There were two that fitted his requirements, both in the depot of a private hire firm up at Highgate, near the cemetery. He was going to have to free them from behind the locked gates.

“Are you ready?”

“For what?”

“Revolution. I suppose they all start like this, with one person thinking that things could be different. Then it grows. They persuade others to join in, and it gains a momentum all of its own. It either overwhelms the old order, or gets crushed.” Petrovitch pushed his glasses back up his nose, and felt his eyesight compensate again. He took the info shades off and pocketed them: he’d probably never need them again. “This is my revolution. This is where we sweep away the past and the future breaks in. This is what the New Machine Jihad should have been.”

“The Jihad killed hundreds of thousands,” said Miyamoto.

“It’s going to do it again, too. Back then, when it was stupid, ignorant, and no more than an urge, it attacked us. But now it’s got smarts. It knows everything. It’s guided. It can make amends for the wrong things it did. It’s going to take back the city for us.”

“It is a weapon, and it is in your hands alone.” Miyamoto flexed his fingers around his sword hilt. “No one man should have so much power.”