Alex Scarrow - Day of the Predator

‘Yeah.’ Sal flicked her hair out of her eyes. ‘You’ve just got to replace each three-number code with the letter. You understand how the code works, Bob, yeah?’

› Affirmative. Page number. Line number. Letter number.

‘That’s right.’

› Just a moment.

They watched in silence as clusters of numbers were momentarily highlighted on the document, while on another screen, pages of the book flashed back and forth in a blur. The task was completed in less than thirty seconds.

› The complete message is: Take this to Archway 9, Wythe Street, Brooklyn, New York on Monday 10 September 2001. Message: Sip, two, sehjk, three, npne, gour, zwro, aix. Key is ‘Magic’.

They stared at it in silence for a few moments, trying to make sense of it.

‘Well, that’s just gibberish, isn’t it?’ said Cartwright.

‘Are you sure you’re working from the same digital book file?’ asked Maddy.

› Affirmative.

‘The original numbers on the fossil,’ said Cartwright, ‘some of them were indistinct, or incomplete. I have access to the original piece of rock.’

‘No… it’s OK,’ said Sal. ‘If it’s just numbers it’s really easy to work out. Sip is six. Sehjk, must be seven.’ She worked quickly, writing the numbers down on a scrap of paper.

‘There.’

‘It’s not in the usual time-stamp format,’ said Maddy.

› Please show me, Sal.

Sal held the piece of paper up to the webcam.

› It is a number. 62,739,406. Suggestion: it is the AI duplicate’s best estimation of their current time location.

‘Oh my God!’ gasped Maddy. ‘It actually managed to work it out?’ She looked at the cam and smiled. ‘Well, that’s you, actually, isn’t it? A copy of you, Bob. Well done!’

‘To the exact year?’ said Cartwright. ‘To the exact year? That’s

… that’s incredible. How could anyone possibly — ’

› Negative. The best resolution guess can only be to within 1,000 years of that year.

That silenced them all.

They could be up to 500 years before or after the specified time location.

‘Oh jahulla,’ whispered Sal. ‘Then that’s no good to us.’

‘The nearest thousand years?’ Maddy’s head drooped. ‘How are we supposed to find him in that?’

Cartwright looked down at both girls. ‘So your machine can’t bring back your colleague?’

Maddy shook her head. ‘It takes time to build up enough charge to open a portal, particularly for one that long ago. I don’t even know how long it would take to accumulate enough to open one then anyway, let alone do it thousands and thousands of times over.’

› Information: approximate charge time — nine hours.

‘So we can do it,’ said Sal.

Maddy laughed drily. ‘Yes, we can… but a thousand years? If we opened one window for each year it’ll take us nine thousand hours… what’s that? Just over a year of constantly opening and closing portals.’

‘So? We’ll do that for Liam, right?’

Maddy sighed. ‘That’s opening one window per year. What are the chances of Liam standing right there in the two or three seconds of that year? Hmm? What if he was asleep at that moment? Taking a leak? Hunting for food? To stand any sort of chance we’d need to open one… like… every day!’

‘This sounds like a needle-in-a-haystack problem,’ said Cartwright unhelpfully.

‘Oh.’ Sal bit her lip. ‘But we could try, couldn’t we?’

‘Three hundred and sixty-five thousand attempts!’ replied Maddy. ‘Do you want to have a guess how many years that would take us? Hmm? Lemmesee,’ she muttered, as she gnawed on the nails of one hand. ‘Oh, there… three hundred and seventy-five years or something.’ She made a shrewish face, growing pink and mottled with frustration and anger. ‘So, what do you say we get started, then?’

‘Then I’m sorry, that’s it,’ stepped in Cartwright. ‘I’m afraid your friend is stuck where he is. This facility will need to be packed up by the end of today and shipped down to a more secure government facility.’

‘You can’t do that!’ snapped Sal. ‘This is our… this is our home!’

‘It’s now a US government asset,’ he replied calmly. ‘And so are you, my dear.’

› Suggestion.

‘You can’t do that! We’ve got… like, human rights and stuff!’

Cartwright’s smile was humourless and cold, the calm and empty gesture of someone who cared not one whit. ‘I wonder… who exactly is going to miss the pair of you? Hmm? Family? Friends?’

‘The agency,’ snapped Sal. ‘And if you mess with us, if you hurt us, they’ll come for you! They’re from the future! And they’re — ’

‘Sal!’ barked Maddy. ‘Shut up!’ She grabbed Sal’s arm. ‘Don’t say anything more about the agency! Do you understand?’

She clamped her mouth shut and nodded mutely.

Maddy looked at Cartwright. ‘I think I can guess what you have in mind for us; you’ll keep us under lock and key in some remote Area Fifty-one facility, like freaks, like lab rats. And that’s where we’ll remain until you’re sure you know everything about this technology… then I guess you’ll dispose of us, right? A drive out into the middle of the Nevada Desert and one shot in the back of the head for each of us. Is that how you lot work?’

Cartwright shook his head. ‘Nothing so brutal, Maddy. You’re worth far too much to us alive. Even when I’m sure you’ve told me all that you know, we’re still going to need guinea pigs to test your time machine on.’ He sighed. ‘Mind you, it would have been good to have your colleague too… I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with the idea of him being out there roaming around history. But I suppose if he’s sixty-two million years away, I can’t see him doing — ’

Sal cast a glance back at the monitor.

› Suggestion: rapid-sweep density probes.

She pointed at the screen. ‘Maddy! Look!’

Maddy spun in her chair to look at the monitor and quickly digested the words. ‘Oh my God, yes! Probes. Density probes… that could work!’

‘What?’ said Cartwright, shaking his head irritably at the distraction. ‘What’re you on about?’

‘Tachyon signal probes to check a return location is clear of obstructions and that someone else isn’t wandering through it before we open.’

Cartwright looked none the wiser.

‘It’s like… it’s like knocking on a door before entering. Like asking is anyone in there? It’s a lot quicker than actually opening a portal. A lot less energy needed.’ She turned back towards the mic on the desk. ‘Bob, what are you suggesting? We can’t scan every moment over a thousand years… can we?’

› Negative. We scan a fixed moment of each day, 500 years either side of the calculated year. That is a total of 365,250 density probes.

‘But that’s going to take you what? Months? Years?’ asked Cartwright.

› Negative. Small signals, no more than a few dozen particles per signal, would be enough to identify a transient mass. Movement.

‘Yes,’ said Maddy. ‘That’s it! And all the signals that came back with some movement detected could become a… become our candidate list: a shortlist of times we could try to open a portal on. Bob, how long would it take to do that many probes?’ She turned back to Cartwright. ‘It’ll take a lot less time, I promise you! Maybe just a few days, tops!’

He shook his head. ‘Unacceptable. I want this archway empty by the end of today. Empty and everything inside in boxes and en route to — ’

‘Please!’ begged Maddy. ‘We can’t leave Liam out there!’

Cartwright silently shook his head.

‘He knows the location of all the other field offices,’ cut in Sal.