Ken MacLeod - Newton's Wake

‘Wait,’ said Calder, turning up the volume. ‘Caught something.’

The station, even at full volume, was faint, the midwestern-accented voice strained to breaking point.

‘… reports coming in … almost unbelievable … New York and Washington … Cheyenne … deep silos … my God, folks, all of you pray … not a hoax, not a … complete devastation … casualties … Los Angeles … millions … pray for …’

It faded to static. Winter brought the car into a long lay-by and to a halt. He leaned over and snapped the sound system to Off. The utter horror of what he had just understood, and what must come, made the world turn grey before him. Then something became clear in his head, and must have become clear in his eyes.

‘It can’t be,’ said Calder. ‘Come on, man. Don’t look at me like that.’

‘That isn’t why,’ said Winter.

‘What? What isn’t?’

‘I’m not looking at you like that because the war’s started,’ he said. ‘I’m looking to see if you know where we are .’

Calder looked around. ‘We’re on Rannoch,’ he said impatiently. ‘Where we died.’ He heard what he’d just said. His mouth opened. ‘Uh.’

‘Now it’s you who’s looking at me like that.’

‘It’s all coming back.’

‘Yes,’ said Winter, heavily. ‘It all comes back. What’s the last thing you remember?’

‘We’d just crossed a bridge—no, we went over without a bridge, like we were on a hovercraft or something—from that place with the castle and the cousin-fuckers.’

‘Dornie.’

‘Dornie, yeah, that’s it. Shit, yes, and there was some kind of alien thing on the moor, it was like we were in the future , except we were—no, we were going to go into it, the, the—’

‘The fastness at Tully Carn,’ said Winter. ‘That’s where we are, now.’

‘No, we’re nowhere near—’ Calder banged the heel of his hand on his forehead. ‘This is like being in a dream just before it becomes lucid.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Winter. ‘All that future stuff seems unreal, but—’

Calder lit a cigarette, hands shaking. ‘You don’t suppose,’ he said, ‘that we didn’t die, that we both had some kind of, I dunno, near-death experience back there, and we have a false memory? Of, like, another life, or—’

‘Of space and Mars and the city in Sagittarius? Lucinda? Gwyneth Voigt? Amelia Orr? And the castle on the Clyde, and travelling up here this morning through an ancient battlefield of machines beyond anything—’

‘Oh, fuck, OK.’ Calder shook his head, as if trying to make it work. ‘Why is it like this?’

‘I reckon,’ said Winter, ‘that if we are in some kind of virtual reality, and trying to get Irene and Arlene back, it has to seem real to us.’ He looked back at the overturned truck, now burning. ‘Which it does. Let’s get back on the road.’

‘Looks bloody dangerous.’

‘I don’t think we’re going to die,’ said Winter. ‘Now let’s get to Fort William before the American retaliation strike arrives.’

He drove recklessly, and they didn’t die. Past crashes, past armoured columns snaking along the road through Glencoe, and through the empty streets of Ballachulish and the half-empty, half-crazed streets of Fort William. The journey took less than an hour. They found the hotel, off the High Street, and walked into the bar. Everybody was sitting at tables, fixated on their little screens or the big wall screen, crying into phones, drinking hard liquor, smoking, or gnawing their knuckles. Two women sat together at a table, each clutching a hand of the other, looking from the screens to the door.

Irene with her long fair hair and pale blue eyes, sitting on that Afghan coat she had; and Arlene, small, no taller standing straight than Calder was stooped, and dark; eyes bright behind narrow rectangular frames with lenses in them. Glasses. People still wore them then, back in the 21st century. Winter and Calder rushed to them and they all held each other for a minute, crying and laughing.

‘Thank God you’re alive,’ said Irene, when they’d all sat down. ‘We heard you were killed in a car crash when the first EMP hit took out the GPS and the automation.’

‘We were,’ said Winter. ‘We came back for you.’

‘We know,’ said Arlene. She and Irene were the only people in the room who were smiling. ‘We’ve been waiting for you. Not for long, but—it’s not been easy. You really might not have come.’

Irene was looking out of the window, facing the sea. ‘Counterstrike’s on its way,’ she said. ‘We should leave soon.’

Calder jumped up. ‘Fuck, fuck, yes, I saw the ruins—’

Irene tugged him back down. ‘It’s all right. We have an hour. Time enough.’

Winter stared at her, ravished as ever by her eyes and cheekbones and mouth. ‘You know what’s going on,’ he said.

‘Oh yes,’ said Irene. ‘A lot more than you do.’

‘What about them?’ Winter glanced furtively at the other people in the bar, gazing at grim news. He felt like a spy, a time-traveller, a ghost.

‘Some of them have a glimmer,’ said Arlene. ‘Most of them are still deep in the necessary illusion. They’re replaying some pretty traumatic memories. Doesn’t matter. They’ll be fine. They are fine. Oh, you have no idea how fine!’

Winter shook his head, looked at the likewise baffled Calder. ‘I don’t understand,’ said Winter. ‘We’re here to get you out . To let you know you can get out. We know all this is a virtuality. You can download from it, come back from the dead. It’s 2367. There’s a whole galaxy, a whole new world out there. Wormholes and starships and endless youth and resurrection. We can bring you back. We can bring you, we can bring these people all back, out of this, this—’

‘We know,’ said Irene. ‘We know all about it.’

‘How?’ asked Winter. ‘Does this place have comms? Some connection to the outside?’

Irene shook her head. ‘No. That’s a problem. We’ll talk about it later.’ She smiled gently, suddenly; reached out and stroked his stubbled cheek, the way she did. ‘Oh, my darling. I’ve missed you so much, even if—’

‘It was that funny little man,’ Arlene was saying. ‘Well, he was a funny little man then, when we met him.’

‘Who?’ asked Winter.

‘Isaac Shlaim,’ said Irene. ‘The little—the Israeli.’ She cast him a disapproving look. ‘He was kept as a thrall by your friend Lucinda. Dreadful woman.’

‘She isn’t—’ Winter began hotly.

‘Isn’t your friend, or isn’t dreadful?’ Irene smiled at his discomfiture. ‘It’s all right. We know about everything that’s happened to you, and everything you’ve done.’

‘Can you read our minds?’ asked Calder. He sounded horrified.

‘No,’ said Irene. She closed her eyes and ran a hand across them. ‘Not exactly. Well, it depends what you mean by “we,” and what—’ She looked despairingly across at Arlene. ‘Did you remember it being like this?’ She flapped a hand. ‘The bandwidth !’

‘I think you’ve just told us something,’ Winter said. She returned him a knowing smile.

It was strange, it was the same feeling he’d had about this whole world right at the start—that this was real, was as it had been, and yet was not. This was Irene, exactly as he’d remembered her, and yet she was not. His Irene would never have used the word bandwidth like that. Not when she wasn’t negotiating a comms contract. Not conversationally, not metaphorically. But, for her, here, it would be literal.

‘Get us some more drinks,’ said Irene. ‘Tall vodka for me, G&T for Arlene, and—’ She raised her voice and eyebrows, looking at someone behind his shoulder.