John McNally - The Forbidden City

“Hold on,” said Finn. “Grandma, where exactly is this flower show?”

“Chelsea.”

He was going to do it …

Because he had learned a lesson after all today – you have to take your chances …

Kaparis received intelligence reports of helicopters heading north from Hook Hall towards Heathrow and the holding of a China Airlines flight.

Tedious , he thought and felt a tingle of irritation.

They must have spotted Baptiste was one of his and decided to act. They would be too late, of course.

Should he bring bot distribution forward? He had the time. He would soon have the numbers.

Or maybe he just needed to create a little distraction?

To muddy the waters and give Allenby a shock he would never forget?

“Prepare a Viper squad,” he ordered Li Jun.

Two and a half hours later, Dr Allenby, Commander King and the thirty-three other members of the Hook Hall detachment were cruising at 35,000 feet in a Boeing 747 bound for Shanghai. The evening meal had been served and the cabin lights had been dimmed.

The flight would take eleven hours and they would move seven hours forward in time. Al was reading The Art of War by the ancient Chinese warrior, Sun Tzu, to get into the right mood. “The General who wins makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought,” he informed anyone who’d listen.

Out of the window the endless night passed, deep with secrets.

SEE VECTOR RUN …

Sparks flew as carbon was fed into spark gaps at one end of the production suite. It was consumed, worked and transformed as it was drawn along an assembly line.

*25766 …

An instruction from an XE.CUTE bot at the head of each suite determined which of the fifty-two types of bot would be replicated.

*25767 …

There were now forty-three production suites fixed like leeches to the electronic innards of the cash till, each a miniature factory, each running at full capacity. Eleven more were partially constructed across cash tills #2 and #3.

*25768 …

Bots crawled and flew through the three cash tills and constantly swapped data and power through long whip-like antennae, bots of every kind and colour, waiting to slot into place to form a new production suite on the crammed motherboards.

*25769 …

Desperate to replicate.

The PRIME XE.CUTE sat at the head of suite #1. Like every other XE.CUTE in the botmass it passed on the photonic light of life as each new bot emerged. With a quantum kiss.

It was endless.

*25770 …

*25771 …

*25772 …

*25773 …

*25774 …

The late afternoon sun threw itself off the glass cliff face of a hundred skyscrapers and a twenty-first century metropolis spread out before them like a cloth of gold.

Shanghai. The Pearl of the Orient. The largest city on earth.

Gold, King noted, because sunlight was filtering through a haze of airborne pollutants, through a haze of energy and effort. A city of a thousand cranes, of a million cars, millions more bicycles and countless busy people – yeast in the global economic dough.

The Hook Hall team were transferring from Pudong International Airport into the city aboard twin Z-15 PLA helicopters. From parks and green spaces, tethered dragons curved up towards them, extraordinary stacks of multi-coloured box kites, part of an annual festival. Looking south the team saw the Forbidden City industrial complex laid out before them, a crazy dartboard of radial roads and white-walled factories.

Bo Zhang, who had welcomed them with a faultless snap of a salute, explained that at the centre of the Forbidden City, where security was tightest, were the government and military research institutes and cutting-edge companies such as Qin Research.

“We will establish ourselves at our headquarters and then go to the city,” Bo Zhang explained, and the helicopters banked to fly into the heart of Shanghai.

“Wow …” said Al.

It was clear the Chinese were going to look after them.

The spanking new Siam Towers Hotel was a bejewelled stalagmite: ninety-nine stories of luxury (including a helipad). The top three floors of the hotel had been turned over to the G&T, including the five-star Roof of the World restaurant, which had been transformed into an operational centre that was already up and running. Feeds to world leaders connected on one screen array. On another live CCTV and intelligence feeds from across the city were at their disposal. A huge central table had been set up for the most important players.

There was more to come as they were shown their rooms.

Commander King hated hotel rooms, thought them vulgar, and relied on handmade silk pyjamas for a sense of quality and comfort whenever he was travelling, but even they seemed cheap in the suite he’d been assigned.

Al loved hotel rooms. The minibar, gadgets and gizmos, the complimentary snacks and toiletries. His suite on the ninety-eighth floor did not disappoint. It was fitted out for the super-rich, with three dazzling rooms that boasted an interconnecting tropical fish tank – who could live without one? – and a bed the size of a tax haven from which he could look down on the Shanghai Bund riverfront. The cityscape that bloomed beyond looked like something out of a comic book. It looked like the future.

He must tell Finn. He took a picture, adding:

View from the top – Shanghai. Wish you were here, kiddo.

Then he focused on a little food van parked on a street corner, below. There was a queue. What was it selling? Dim sum? Ice cream?

Whatever it was, Al thought, I’m going to get me some.

A minute later, seized by the moment, he was travelling down the rapid elevator.

Activity increased on Song Island, and not just among the birds battling for nesting space on its craggy outcrops.

“Move fast,” snapped Kaparis.

“Vipers One, Two and Three in position,” reported Li Jun from her bank of screens.