Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

‘So…’ Liam looked out of the scuffed perspex window at a Greyhound bus, its windscreen striped with the reflected glow of street lights passing overhead.

‘Do you remember all the same things as me?’

‘Up to a point.’

‘Cork? St Michael’s School for Boys?’

Foster nodded.

‘Sean McGuire and that stupid party trick of his with the three apples?’

The old man grinned. ‘He was never very good at it, was he?’

They both laughed. Liam felt odd. Memories, personal memories that he hadn’t shared with anyone, and yet this man knew them as intimately as he did. It was like talking to himself. Yet hearing a wizened, croaky version of his own voice coming back at him.

‘You remember getting the steward’s job with the White Star Line?’

‘Yes,’ Foster replied. ‘We got the job only because that other Irish lad was caught drinking on duty before the ship set sail. Remember his name? Oliver, wasn’t it?’

‘Aye.’ Liam smiled. ‘Stupid fella didn’t realize he was breathin’ his fumes all over the Chief Steward.’

The RV halted in traffic, causing everyone inside to lurch gently as Bob applied the brakes a little too keenly. A plastic bag full of unlaundered underwear slid off a seat into the cluttered aisle.

‘So you remember that night as well?’

Foster closed his eyes. ‘The night the Titanic went down? Of course I do. How does anyone ever forget something like that? I think what stays with me, Liam, what has stayed with me, was the calm before all the screaming. When everyone was certain there’d be lifeboats for all; that it wouldn’t come down to the type of ticket you’d bought.’

‘Aye.’

‘It came suddenly, so it did. The panic. You remember that?’

Liam nodded. It had. One moment there’d been order and calm across the promenade deck, even the calming sound of a string quartet playing. People talking excitedly about how this was going to be the news story of the day tomorrow; how their eyewitness accounts — from the comfort of their bobbing lifeboats — of the Unsinkable Ship slowly, gracefully surrendering to the sea would be in every newspaper around the world. No panic. Not yet.

And then word had spread among them like wildfire. Chinese whispers. Not enough lifeboats for everyone. Not nearly enough.

Then the panic. The horrible panic.

A thought occurred to Liam. ‘So, Foster… were you recruited just like me? The same way?’

He could see a glint of light reflected in Foster’s eyes. The glare of passing headlights on his drawn face. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. I was down checking on the second-class cabins.’

‘And you were young, like me?’

‘A bit younger than you are now, Liam.’

Of course. Liam knew that. Felt that now. No longer a young lad of sixteen, but subtly older in a million barely noticeable little ways. A man, prematurely.

‘And was it an older version of you… that recruited you?’

Foster hesitated. ‘Yes.’

‘But does that mean I’m in some kind of a loop that goes on and on? That I’ll get old like you, change my name to Foster, and then one day send myself back to 1912 to pick up another me? Is that it?’

‘No. Not a loop exactly.’

‘Then what?’

Foster looked at Maddy sitting up front in the passenger seat beside Bob. ‘She’s going to find out soon enough. If we keep heading this way.’

Liam turned to follow his gaze, looking at the back of her head. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Foster reached out to Liam and rested a fatherly hand on his shoulder. ‘Liam, it’s all going to come clear for you soon enough. Perhaps far too soon.’

‘Oh, come on, Foster! Will you just tell me — ’

‘She’s going to learn.’ Foster lowered his voice just for Liam to hear. ‘And so is Sal. They’re both going to learn the truth. And it’s going to be hard for them. Much harder than it will be for you.’

‘Why? What do you mean? What’s going to be hard?’

‘Liam, you’ll cope… because I know I coped. And I carried on the agency’s work. I carried on doing the work Waldstein needs us to do.’

‘Jay-zus, you’re annoying!’ Liam hissed. ‘Just tell me! What are you talking about?’

Foster shook his head. ‘Maybe it’s best for the girls if they find out this way.’ He patted Liam’s arm. ‘Trust me… I think it’s for the best. You’ll learn the truth together.’

Sal sat near the front of the RV, the female support unit sitting dull-eyed and vacant beside her. It wasn’t Becks yet, she’d decided. It wasn’t going to be Becks properly until they’d uploaded her AI. For now, this thing was just a spare female support unit. A blank-minded one at that.

‘That’s a gene-silicon hybrid,’ said SpongeBubba chirpily.

‘I know,’ said Sal.

‘We had two dozen of those units on Project Exodus!’ The lab robot’s goofy plastic grin widened. ‘They were spooky!’ Its bauble-round eyes gazed at her curiously. ‘What’s wrong with your gene-silicon hybrid unit?’

‘She’s got a name, you know,’ said Sal, suddenly feeling protective. ‘We call her Becks.’

‘Becks?’ If the squat, square-shaped lab unit had had shoulders, he’d have shrugged them. Instead, wide, rolling, expressionless eyes above a fixed frozen grin regarded her. ‘Hello, Becks! My name’s SpongeBubba!’

The support unit’s grey eyes remained unfocused, unblinking, unintelligent. Fixed and lifeless. Her young face a frozen frown of incomprehension.

‘Hello, Becks! My name’s SpongeBubba!’ the lab unit chirped again.

‘She’s not been installed properly,’ said Sal. ‘She doesn’t know her name yet.’ Sal sighed. ‘She can’t speak anyway.’

SpongeBubba stroked his pickle-shaped nose, a gesture he must have picked up from Rashim. ‘My model, Mitzumi HL-327 LabAssist V4.7, comes with language modules and laboratory protocols pre-installed!’

‘Well, aren’t you lucky.’

‘I didn’t have to have software installed in me after manufacture. I was function-ready!’ SpongeBubba sounded like a spoilt brat.

‘Well, at least Becks doesn’t look really stupid.’

‘My model comes with a polyform plastic casing and a library of programmable templates. Dr Anwar hacked the template code to make me look this special way!’ SpongeBubba stroked his nose again. ‘He says I’m different to any other Mitzumi unit because he hacked my template code! Skippa says I’m unique!’

Sal glanced at Rashim. He was stretched out on the seat opposite, fast asleep.

‘And your voice code too? Is that his work or do all you models talk like this?’ Sal wondered how Rashim managed to cope with SpongeBubba’s squeaky, high-pitched voice and permanent false cheeriness. Fun for a while perhaps, but already she was finding the thing incredibly irritating.

‘Oh no! My voice was approximated from a few audio files made from a children’s cartoon show that used to be on cable TV at the beginning of the twenty-first century! My voice is very special!’

‘Can you use that special voice of yours quietly?’

‘Oh yes! My volume output can be modulated!’

‘Well, how about you turn it down for me?’

‘Uh-uh.’ SpongeBubba wagged a finger at her. ‘Only skippa can adjust my user settings.’

Sal wondered how Rashim could sleep so readily. She toyed with the idea of waking him up and asking him to turn SpongeBubba off or mute him somehow. The robot was still staring at her, that stupid buck-toothed smile.

‘Shadd-yah! Are you always so… so perky and annoying?’

‘Perky?’

‘Happy.’

SpongeBubba shook his whole body, his version of a headshake. ‘No. I have no capacity to emulate human emotions. My model doesn’t require that! There is a similar model designed as a domestic support unit for civilian use. That unit is installed with gesture and mood recognition and replication code. But Dr Anwar says that’s a pointless waste of install space since if you know a robot’s a robot why pretend it can have feelings?’