Alex Scarrow - The Doomsday Code

Sal pointed at a sign above the door they’d emerged from: BIBLIOTHEQUE.

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘Not sure.’ Maddy shrugged. ‘Let’s see — maybe we can get some information there.’

The other two followed her as she crossed the square, took the steps up and inside into a cool, dimly lit interior. Wood-panelled walls and a threadbare carpet; tall avenues of dark wooden shelves thick with volumes of books.

‘I’m guessing this is a library, right?’ said Sal.

Maddy nodded. ‘Yeah … yeah, that’s right.’

But it was unlike any library Maddy had ever been in since first grade. She was used to modern, bright, glass spaces filled with busy Internet stations and orange plastic bucket chairs, and racks of DVDs and magazines … and, oh yeah, one or two books, somewhere.

‘History,’ uttered Adam. ‘We need to find a history book.’ His voice echoed around the quiet library and several pairs of eyes looked up, mildly irritated.

Maddy nodded. They spread out, each picking an aisle, and started to scan the book spines on the shelves, looking for some way to identify a category. After a few minutes, Sal softly whispered for them to come over.

They both joined her in what appeared to be a children’s section. She was holding a large book in her hands. ‘It’s a kiddie history book.’ Sal flicked through several pages, all of them with brightly coloured illustrations breaking up the text. She spotted an illustration of Roman legionaries, a diagram of a sailing ship, a timeline chart. World history, by the look of it. Good enough.

‘I don’t suppose either of you can read any French?’ asked Maddy.

Sal and Adam shook their heads.

‘Me neither,’ she replied. ‘We’ll have to borrow it.’ Maddy took it out of Sal’s hands and, after quickly glancing up and down the aisle, she shoved it under her sweatshirt.

‘It’s a kid’s history book,’ said Adam. ‘You can’t get all the information you need from that, can you?’

She shrugged. ‘No worse than Wikipedia.’

‘Wiki-what?’

‘Never mind.’ Maddy pulled another book from the shelf and flicked through several dozen pages. Finally nodding with approval. ‘This one looks good too.’ She pushed it into Adam’s hands. ‘Well? Hide it.’

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.’