Mike Lancaster - 0.4

There was silence while we tried to process all the things that Danny was saying.

It wasn’t easy.

No one should have to hear that life, as they know it, has ended.

No one should have to learn that they are, to all intents and purposes, irrelevant.

Yet, out of the madness one thought just kept nagging at me and I was the one who broke the silence.

‘You say that this is the result of a computer program, transmitted with the sole intention of making this planet a better place?’ I asked him.

Danny nodded. ‘Precisely.’

‘But a transmission requires a transmitter,’ I said. ‘So, transmitted by who?’

‘Ah,’ said Danny. ‘That really is the crucial question, isn’t it? Well, I’m sorry. I haven’t got a clue. I’m afraid the programmers haven’t included themselves as data. That’s not really the job of software, is it? It’s a bunch of instructions, not a biographical sketch.’

‘So we’re to believe this… your version of events, without even knowing who did this to us?’ Mr Peterson asked.

‘It really doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not,’ Danny said coldly. ‘If a person refuses to believe in gravity, it doesn’t mean that they will float up into the sky. Science isn’t like that. It doesn’t care whether you believe it.’

He studied his fingernails.

‘Anyway, that’s not why I’m here,’ he continued. ‘I am telling you this so that you have a chance at survival. So you understand the nature of what has happened to you, and you understand why this is happening to you. I am telling you this so that when the people you know and love simply stop seeing you, when the majority of people on this planet become unaware of your existence, then maybe you won’t go totally and utterly out of your minds. You have simply become… redundant. You will become invisible to us. That’s going to be pretty hard for you to take.’

Lilly made a frustrated sound.

‘Excuse me?’ Danny said. ‘Did you just interrupt me to snort?’

Lilly looked back at him with cold concentration, almost as if she was trying to outstare him.

‘It’s not true,’ she said.

‘O-kaaay,’ Danny said, as if talking to a small child. ‘What isn’t true now?’

‘Any of this,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t even make any freaking sense! You can’t upgrade humanity and we’re not just hardware that you can rewrite. We’re the way we are because of millions of years of evolution.’

She threw her arms in the air in frustration. ‘So I am going to explain everything that has happened today without bolting on aliens. Which, by the way, I hate.’

‘I’m all ears,’ Danny said.

The red glow seemed to deepen around him, throwing shadows across his face.

‘We’re still hypnotised,’ Lilly said. ‘We’re still in a trance. We’re standing on the stage on the green and everything else is just fantasy.’

She glared at Danny.

‘So bring us out of it,’ she demanded. ‘Now. Snap your fingers, or whatever it is that you do, and wake us up.’

Danny smiled the strangest of smiles.

‘I wonder…’ he said. ‘Shall I snap my fingers? Shall I put this… hypothesis of yours to the test? Will you awake, back on the stage, with the roar of laughter from the audience ringing in your ears? What do you think?’

As he spoke he lifted his hand into the air, just above his head, his thumb and first two fingers resting together, ready to snap together.

‘Here goes,’ he said.

He brought his hand down and snapped his fingers.

We awoke on the stage, blinking in the bright light of a perfect summer afternoon and everyone was laughing and really amazed by Danny’s new-found gift and Danny won the talent show and when we all went home we said it was the best day ever and we laughed about nought-point-four and alien operating systems and were amazed by the detail of the fantasy that Danny had constructed for us and – to cut a long story short – we all lived happily ever after.

Except that wasn’t what happened.

Of course it wasn’t.

That’s just silly storybook stuff.

When Danny clicked his fingers, nothing happened.

We were in the barn; Danny was still shining inside his bioluminescent aura; and Mr Peterson, Lilly, Kate and I were still very much nought-point-four.

It was in the silence following the click that things happened.

Small things.

Human things.

The only things we had left.

Lilly started to cry – huge, body-wracking sobs and fat tears – and Kate O’Donnell put a protective arm around her. I just stood, watching dust motes swirling in the air of the barn and tried to understand this new world.

Without falling apart.

Danny stood there, watching us.

Watching us all deal with it as best we could.

He took no pleasure from the sight, I’m pretty sure of that, but looked on with a cold, alien detachment that made me wonder if the 1.0 were going to be as perfect as Danny seemed to think.

Maybe he wasn’t even really listening. Perhaps the alien code was bedding down, performing last-minute tweaks.

I realised that he was losing interest in us – he was looking more and more like he needed to be somewhere else.

I had a few last questions for Danny.

Danny the boy magician, encased in his impossible halo of bone-fuelled light.

I asked Danny what he was missing out, what he wasn’t telling us.

He looked a little baffled.

Maybe a little hurt, although perhaps that’s just me, trying to see him as my friend, rather than the alien thing he had become.

‘That list of people who skipped the upgrade,’ I said. ‘You said it was contained in a ReadMe file. What is that?’

‘It seems to be installation information,’ he said. ‘Although for whom, and why, I do not know. I’m sure it will auto-delete when the update is complete.’

‘What else does it say?’ I asked him.

Danny looked surprised that it interested me, but then he shrugged and started reeling off a bunch of jargon and tech-stuff in a robotic voice before trailing off into silence.

Most of it I didn’t understand, so most of it I don’t remember.

But I do remember three things he said about halfway through his recitation.

Danny said, ‘Fixed system slowdown when individual units are put to sleep, allowing greater access to unconscious processing activity.’

And he said, ‘Tightened encrypted storage parameters to comply with new guidelines.’

And then he said, ‘Completely reworked user interface makes access of data easier and faster.’

‘What does that mean?’ I asked, when he was finished.

Danny shook his head.

‘I’m sure you’ll figure it out,’ he said. ‘You do realise that this upgrade was necessary, don’t you, Kyle? The human race had become a danger to itself, to the planet.’

‘Well, why did they leave us here?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t they just get that vestigivore thing to wipe us all out?’

Danny smiled a cryptic smile.

‘That wouldn’t be anywhere near so entertaining, would it now? Think of the future generations,’ he said.

I thought he was joking.

‘I’d say, “I’ll be seeing you,”’ Danny said. ‘Except I won’t, of course.’

Just before he turned for the door, he looked at me and said, ‘Annette says “Hi”.’

I stared back at him.

‘She says it was really sweet of you,’ he said. ‘Trying to save her, and all.’

I could sense Kate O’Donnell’s stony glare and felt my cheeks redden.

‘Now she wants to try to do the same for you,’ Danny said, that red aura fading. ‘Meet her up at the Naylor silos and you can end all of this now.’