Alex Scarrow - Gates of Rome

‘SpongeBubba… it’s hard to explain.’

‘Please explain to me, skippa! Please!’

‘Well, I suppose it’s a design fault in our programming.’

‘ Programming? But humans don’t have artificial intelligence routines!’ SpongeBubba squawked.

Rashim lifted his glasses and pushed a coil of dark hair from his face. They stopped at a closed doorway and he presented his left eye for a retina ID scan. ‘It’s just a figure of speech, SpongeBubba. The point is we have our faults, just like bad lines of code. The difference between you and me, though, is that it’s not so easy to edit our behaviour. We are who we are.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said the unit. Frown grooves ran along its yellow plastic skin. ‘Why do humans want to destroy their own world?’

The doorway in front of them cranked open. Hinges carrying a three-ton blast-proof door creaked and echoed across a dark and dusty control room, its walls lined with the glass of large strategic display monitors. Over a hundred years ago, this installation had been built as a command and control centre in preparation for what had seemed like an inevitable nuclear war with Russia. Now it was little more than a museum piece.

Rashim hesitated before the open door and the dark passage way beyond. ‘I suppose it’s in our nature. We don’t like bad news… so we just ignore it.’

‘Well, duh-huh, that’s just plain stoopid!’

He smiled. The unit’s speech patterns were a result of his hacking as well.

‘It is stupid, Bubba. There was a time when we could have turned things around. Saved the earth from overheating, but I suppose it seemed like too much hard work at the time. So we didn’t bother.’

‘Well, duh,’ squawked SpongeBubba again.

Rashim smiled. Exactly… duh.

He led the way down the passageway. The blast door clanked as it closed behind them and motion-sensitive lights in the passageway flickered on. A fading sign on the concrete wall informed him that they were now entering a security level three zone. Lining the wall either side of the sign were old framed photographs of past US presidents: Bush, Obama, Palin, Schwarzenegger, Vasquez, Esquerra.

This installation, carved deep into the side of Cheyenne Mountain, had once upon a time been known as NORAD. It had been kept in a state of ‘warm standby’ until the mid-2040s then finally closed down after the first Oil War. America’s old rival, Russia, was having as much trouble as America with its own internal problems to no longer be a global nuclear threat.

Now it was simply referred to as ‘Facility 29H-Colorado’.

‘I suppose my grandfather’s generation… my parents’ generation even, were too busy wanting all the nice things: the big shiny holo-TV, real meat three times a week, the latest digi-fashions. Too busy with all that to notice the sea slowly rising, taking coastlines and cities with it.’

‘Did the big floodings happen after the Oil Wars, Rashim?’

‘That’s right.’ He shrugged. ‘It might have been better for us if we’d run out of oil and all the other fossil fuels a lot sooner than we did. Maybe we’d still have polar ice caps.’

Rashim’s childhood, like everyone else his age, had been one lived in a world shifting with constant migration. Millions — billions — of people on the move, retreating from land that itself was retreating before rising tides of polluted water.

‘Mind you… the real problem, Bubba, was that there were just too many of us.’

‘Too many humans?’

‘Nearly ten billion. Totally unsustainable.’ He looked down at the waddling unit beside him. ‘We were so very stupid, Bubba.’

It nodded, its plastic, pickle-shaped nose wobbling slightly. ‘Duh. Stoopid.’

Ten billion mouths to feed. How did we ever allow ourselves to get that crowded?

It reminded him of something a teacher once told him — Petri Dish Syndrome. Put a bacterium in a dish with something to feed on. Leave it long enough and it’ll fill the dish, then, oh boy, then… it’ll turn on itself, cannibalize its own protein to survive.

‘You reap what you sow,’ said SpongeBubba. He looked up at Rashim with wide, hopeful eyes. ‘Is that the correct saying to use?’

Rashim nodded. ‘It is. Well done, Bubba.’

‘Hey, thanks!’

They turned a corner into a passageway already lit with a steady glow from muted ceiling lights. At the end a pair of soldiers stood guard either side of the door to a lift.

Rashim flicked his hand casually at them as he and his unit approached. ‘Morning, guys.’

‘Morning, sir,’ said the older of the two guards. Almost old enough to be his dad. Rashim felt awkward; he seemed to be the youngest member by far on the technology team. Twenty-seven and he was in charge of the ‘receiver team’, a group of eight technicians all at least ten years older than him.

‘You’re up early again, Dr Anwar.’

Rashim shrugged. ‘We have calibrations to cross-check on the translation markers.’

SpongeBubba raised a gloved cartoon hand in a mock salute at the guards. ‘S’right! Rashim’s the most important man in the whole world!’

Rashim winced at his assistant’s sing-song exuberance.

The older guard cocked an eyebrow. ‘You do know that outside of the facility you should have your AI unit on verbal-mute, sir, don’t you? That’s a security breach.’

‘Yes, yes, of course… I’m sorry.’ He let go of Bubba’s gloved hand. ‘SpongeBubba, be quiet.’

‘You got it!’ Its plastic lips snapped shut then pouted guiltily.

‘Really sorry about that.’

‘You know I’ll have to log that security infringement, sir,’ said the soldier.

Rashim nodded. He’d get a slapped wrist for that from the project leader, Dr Yatsushita, later on today no doubt. ‘I promise I’ll remember to mute him in future outside the lab.’

The soldier smiled, offered Rashim a sly wink. ‘In that case, maybe we can let it go this time.’ He pressed a button and the lift doors slid open. ‘Have a nice day, sir.’

Rashim nodded. ‘Thank you.’ He led his lab unit into the lift by the hand and the doors closed on them.

As the lift hummed, taking them down to level three, he cleared his mind of unnecessary things. SpongeBubba’s childlike curiosity about the world outside could wait. There were figures to process and check; yesterday’s intra-mail about a change of mass tolerance meant several days’ worth of recalibrating. And the deadline was now just over six months away.

‘Bubba, any other messages land in my in-box this morning?’

SpongeBubba looked up at him, desperately wanting to speak, his eyes rolling, plastic lips quivering with frustration.

‘Unmute.’

‘Yes!’ he blurted eagerly. ‘Yes, skippa! Three from Dr Yatsushita. Seven from — ’

‘I’ll deal with them this afternoon. Remind me.’

‘Yes, skippa! Storing.’

The hum inside the small lift dropped in tone, and then the elevator shuddered gently as it came to rest. The doors slid open to reveal chipboard panels, erected in front of the lift to block any view of the area beyond. On one of them was tacked a sign.

Now Entering Level Three Security Zone

A last warning to turn back for anyone who shouldn’t be down here. Beneath it, handwritten with a magic marker, was a little more information.

Welcome to Project Exodus

2001, New York

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Liam.

‘Believe it.’ Maddy tapped her front teeth with a biro absently. ‘I never…’ She looked queasy. ‘I never ever want to do something like that again.’

Liam nodded slowly. ‘It isn’t an easy thing.’ He recalled having to retrieve Bob’s hard drive. Reminding himself over and over that it wasn’t some kind of horrendous mutilation he was performing on the support unit… it was merely getting a friend back.