Alex Scarrow - The Eternal War

[DATA]

The stream of hexadecimal data had found another way through the myriad circuits to get her attention.

[Assessment: end-of-run condition = TRUE]

End-of-run Protocol

Extract hard drives from system computers. Destroy

Retrieve tachyon phase accelerator and displacement attenuation boards from displacement machine. Destroy

Self-terminate

The protocol left no vital technology behind; all the rest, the computers, the growth tubes in the back, the generator, even the rest of the displacement machine, used circuitry that could be assembled from components bought from any electronics store. The question was … was this really an end-of-run condition?

She looked around at the dark corners of the archway. Her memory spooled a million different moments from the last few months of stored data:

The first time she’d made a hot drink for Maddy and added coffee granules, tea leaves and chocolate powder, not realizing the hot drink was meant to be just one of those, not all of them.

The time Liam had got her and Bob to play Mario Kart on the Nintendo and they’d spent seven hours straight playing on the machine, beating Liam to last place every race.

The first time she felt something that was more than the code of her operating system or her AI plug-in. In the prehistoric past, a moment of … affection? When Liam had told her that she wasn’t a mistaken addition to the team. That she’d done well. That the team should have two support units in it. A Bob and a Becks.

Sal teaching her swearwords in Hindi, and Mumbai street slang. She had a whole database of curses and insults she could hurl, could sound as convincing as any other put-put rickshaw driver in the downtown smog.

She even had her ‘borrowed’ memories as Bob; they felt almost as real as her own: duplicated video and sound files of Bob observing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy from the Dallas book depository; Bob making the choice to search every internment camp in the Washington area to find and save Liam.

Hadn’t Bob changed a mission priority then? Actually decided his own mission priority? Rewritten code?

She stopped sweeping. Stood statue-still in the dark, the broom still held tightly in her hands. Her internal clock passed the better part of an hour with her frozen like that before, finally, a string of characters broke the deadlock.

[Assessment: end-of-run condition = FALSE]

She stirred, looked up from the floor.

Mission Priority

Damage assessment, recovery analysis

Locate and retrieve Strategist Madelaine Carter

2001, somewhere in Virginia

‘I’m going to read you what I found,’ said Liam. He shuffled closer to the fire in the middle of the room.

After exploring the deserted hamlet, they decided to settle in the kitchen of a farmhouse. Aside from the chapel, it was the largest building around. They found a pantry full of old dust-covered tins of food. Everything else in there had long ago perished or been scavenged by rats or wild animals.

Now, as the afternoon sun waned and a cool wind began to whip up over a decade’s worth of dead leaves, they had a fire going in a rusting brazier as Sal, Lincoln and Liam hungrily spooned at mouthfuls of a tepid, tasteless stew.

Liam put down his bowl and picked up the old dog-eared child’s school exercise book he’d found in what had clearly once been a young boy’s bedroom. The brittle pages were covered with the untidy pencil scribbles of Liam’s handwriting.

In the farmhouse they’d come across a study lined with shelves full of books and magazines and a stack of old newspapers tied up with twine.

He looked up at Sal and Lincoln, both eager to hear what notes he’d made. Bob, meanwhile, stood in the corner of the kitchen, the shotgun nestling in his thick arms, looking out through a grimy window across a backyard full of weeds.

‘Now, we know in correct history the American Civil War was meant to end in 1865.’ At least Liam did — he’d been reading up on that period of history a few weeks ago. He’d surprised himself with how much of that information was still in his head. Better memory than he thought he had. ‘The deciding battle of the war was the Battle of Gettysburg. In correct history the Confederates lost that battle badly and the army of southern Virginia under General Lee never really recovered. Well …’ He looked down at his notes, flipped through a couple of pages. ‘Well, in this timeline, it seems they managed to win. The Union army retreated back to Washington in disarray. And — ’ he looked up at Lincoln — ‘President John Bell ’s government made a hasty retreat north to New York to make that city the new seat of government.’

‘You are implying that President Bell, that man … should have been me?’

‘Yup.’

Liam returned to his notes. ‘So, after the Union defeat at Gettysburg, Great Britain finally comes out in open support of the Confederate South.’

‘So they were already on the South’s side?’ asked Sal.

Liam shrugged. ‘Kind of. Not openly, though, just helping a little, discreetly.’

‘Why secretly?’

‘Slavery. The British public were appalled by it. They’d demanded its abolition at home years earlier. And because the South still used slaves Britain couldn’t bring themselves to fully support them. But, on the other hand, the British felt threatened by the growing industrial power and influence of the North, the Union.’

‘All that changed when, after Gettysburg, the British made an offer to Jefferson Davis …’

‘And who’s this Jefferson Davis?’ asked Lincoln.

‘The Confederate’s president. The offer was a clever one …’ Liam fumbled through the pages of notes he’d made this afternoon and finally found the paragraph he was looking for.

‘To … announce the first measures of “a post-slavery economic reformation”.’

Lincoln’s eyes widened. ‘Good God! An end to slavery in the south?’

‘The beginning of the end. It was enough of a gesture,’ said Liam, ‘for the British public to allow their government to openly ally with the South.’

‘And this Confederate President Davis went on to put an end to slavery?’

Liam nodded. ‘So it seems. There was an uproar among all the slave owners in the south, of course. But then when convoys of British ships stuffed with money and food and weapons started arriving, I suppose the poor common people of the South figured out maybe supporting the arguments of the rich slaveholders wasn’t doing them any favours!’

‘1865,’ Liam said, looking down at his notes. ‘Davis announces the Freedom Act. It made it a crime for one man to be owned by another. There were still many who claimed by doing this the southern states’ economy would completely crash. That freed slaves would kill their former masters … run riot in the streets.’

Lincoln raised a shaggy eyebrow. ‘And did they?’

‘No.’ Liam shook his head. ‘It all seems to have worked out well. By then, though, British money and troops and supplies were flooding in. The Confederacy held together and the freeing of slaves was not the end of the world for them … as they’d feared.’

Sal leaned forward. ‘So go on.’

‘The year after, in the north, President Bell made a similar announcement, the Proclamation of Liberty. Which looks like it was almost, word for word, a copy of the South’s one. But it was enough of a gesture to encourage the French and several other European nations to put their support behind the North.’ Liam looked up from his exercise book. ‘And from that point onwards the war wasn’t about slavery any more, because both sides of the struggle had turned their back on it.’