Alex Scarrow - The Doomsday Code

There was quiet between them. On the screen the document’s page number was still increasing as Bob continued to add collated data.

‘It does seem a much more peaceful world,’ said Sal eventually. She turned to Adam. ‘I have to say, this is the nicest time wave we’ve had so far.’ She shrugged. ‘Sort of almost feels like a shame to …’

Maddy looked at her. ‘Sal. Don’t even go there!’

‘What?’

‘You know what.’

‘Just saying,’ Sal pouted. ‘That’s all.’

‘Well don’t! We can’t keep this world just because it seems nice . It’s changed history. Majorly changed history!’

‘But …’

‘But what?’

Sal hesitated, uncertain how to finish. ‘But what if we didn’t fix it?’

Maddy stared at her in silence, aghast.

‘Seriously. What if we didn’t ? What if we just brought Liam and the others back home … and we left it like this?’

Maddy shook her head. ‘Sal … now is not the time for this kind of conversation.’ She glanced at Adam watching their exchange. ‘And certainly not in front of someone else , you understand?’

For the first time she noticed there were tears in Sal’s eyes. ‘All you know is 2010, Maddy. You haven’t seen my time. You haven’t seen New York in 2026 or anywhere else in 2026!’

‘No … I haven’t, but that’s — ’

‘It’s all so shadd-yah. It’s falling apart! And we know it gets worse!’

‘Sal!’ warned Maddy. ‘We’re not doing this now! We’re not doing this in front of Adam!’

‘But it does! You know that! I know it! It all gets worse and worse. The pollution! The whole global warming. The Oil Wars! And we don’t know how it all ends up. But this … look at it! This is better !’

Adam looked taken aback. ‘Oil wars?’

Maddy waved him silent. ‘Sal … listen, we made a promise to Foster. To keep history on track. To keep it the same for better or for worse . You remember the things he said? We can’t change history to what we want. We just can’t! Because — because …’

‘Because what? He never told us why? He never explained that!’

He never did … not in detail, anyway.

‘He said history has to go a certain way. Because if it doesn’t, things break down. Things go wrong!’

‘What things?’

‘Space-time … or something. The fabric of space-time. That’s what he said, the stuff that holds those things back from our world.’

Sal knew exactly what she meant. They’d seen one of them — just the once: a seeker .

They stared at each other in silence. A mutual challenge to say that word aloud.

‘What things?’ asked Adam eventually.

Maddy ignored him. ‘Sal, I know we’ve been pulled into this without much help. I know we got thrown into the deep end. And there isn’t a day I don’t wish to God that Foster was back here telling us what to do. In fact there isn’t a day I don’t wish I could walk out the door and let the bubble reset without me. But we’re here for a reason. If we hadn’t done what we’ve already managed to do … the world could’ve remained a radioactive wasteland — or just a big lizardman-filled jungle! All I know is that what we’ve done so far has worked! Has been for the best! You know? I just — ’

‘You don’t knoweverything , Maddy,’ said Sal quietly.

That stopped her dead. That hit home. ‘No, OK … you’re right; I don’t. In fact all I know is how little I know. And that really scares me! And I don’t know what that warning means either … I don’t — ’ Maddy stopped herself. She realized that to continue was to take her towards openly discussing the Pandora message in front of Adam.

‘Adam? How about you just go take a look-see outside. Make sure no French fishermen are gathering to marvel at our … brick … whatever.’

He looked at them both. ‘OK.’ He got to his feet and wandered over towards the shutter door and began cranking it up.

‘Sal,’ she began quietly, ‘all you and I and Liam have is what Foster told us. We have to trust that because that’s all we’ve got right now.’

Sal eyed her silently.

‘But we’re going to learn more, I promise you. We’ll learn more from this Voynich Manuscript … we’ll find out what Pandora is, what it means. We’ll find out what the warning is. And when we know more than we do …’ She smiled. ‘I dunno, maybe one day we can make a choice of our own, you know?’

Sal nodded her head ever so slightly.

‘Until then — ’ she fiddled with her glasses — ‘until then … all we know is what’s meant to be, and what isn’t . And this sure as hell isn’t .’

Sal tipped her head at the monitor behind Maddy. ‘I think Bob agrees with you.’

Maddy turned to see the blinking cursor at the end of a message.

› Recommendation: mission priority has changed. History contamination needs correcting.

‘Yup, Bob, you’re right. I think we need to get a message back to Liam.’

1194, Oxford Castle, Oxford

‘If we successfully complete the mission, Liam O’Connor, and we return to the field office, do you intend to retire me?’

‘Retire? What do you mean?’

‘Terminate this body and replace it with a male support unit? I heard Sal Vikram refer to this organic frame as a “mistake”.’

Becks played the memory back in her head; a conversation between her and Liam as they walked along a prehistoric beach and watched distant brachiosauri grazing on an open plain. She knew the only reason she existed as a separate entity in her own right was because Sal had carelessly activated a female embryo from stasis instead of a male one.

She was an error.

‘Why would we want to go and do that, Becks?’

‘The male support frame is eighty-seven per cent more effective than the female frame as a combat unit.’

‘Well now, I really don’t see why we can’t have one of each of you, you know? A Bob and a Becks. There’re no agency rules, are there, you know, against us having two support units in a team?’

‘Negative. I am not aware of any agency rules on that.’

‘So, well, there you are … why not? We’ll have two of you instead of one.’

The ‘memory’ now nothing more than a compressed low-resolution media clip to allow for more efficient data storage on her hard drive. The image pixellated, the audio flat and tinny. But there was another data file that had been created in that moment: a file that recorded the neuron response in the one small part of her mind that was organic. A file she had no meaningful name for yet — just a useful categorization ident: EmoteResponse-57739929.

‘Have I functioned as efficiently as the Bob unit?’

‘Yes, of course. I don’t know what we’d have done without you so far, Becks .’

The file was a recording of how her mind had reacted in that moment, several thousand synapses in her simple animal mind firing off minute electrical impulses. Perhaps the closest she’d ever come to a genuine emotional response.

As she stared out in perfect stillness and silence at Oxford below — a medieval town in slumber, lit only by the faint and occasional stab of moonlight — she analysed the file, unpacked the data and pored through it, wondering what human emotion the data file EmoteResponse-57739929 most closely approximated.

[Gratitude?]

No, not that. It seemed more than that. Not just a response to a sentence of praise … there was something else. Another factor involved. She ran the figures in her head, played the data on a digital simulation of her organic mind to try and replay that fleeting moment of ‘emotion’.