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Pop.
That’s all it was. Eric was expecting something more
dramatic. It felt just like when a plane lands and your ears pop.
Along with a faint sound, of course. But, physically, the world just
… changed. He could see it through the window of the capsule. No
sideways movements or anything, no mysterious vortexes, just … pop;
gone there, arrive here, in one smooth move.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Then the capsule started to shake.
“Um, guys, this isn’t
standard procedure, is it? I can’t stand up in here, it’s shaking
too – oof!” He shouted his query urgently, but collided with the
floor and couldn’t finish. Nevertheless, a reply came through.
“All good here, not sure what’s happening. I’ll look into it.” Calm,
measured and responsive.
“Actually, uhhh …” Eric trailed off as
he looked out the windows, “I think I see the problem.”
“Just for
our own notes, what was it?”
“Basically I’m being mauled by a
dinosaur.”
“Would you like extraction?”
“No, thanks, I’d
rather risk death by dinosaur as the only person to do that in 365
million years, I thought it’d be nice.” Eric yelled sarcastically,
yelling both because the question was very silly, and the dinosaur
had started making a lot of noise. The command centre got his
message eventually.
Pop.
This time, the landing wasn’t smooth
because the machine had been mid-swing when it departed. It ended up
firing across an empty warehouse floor for about ten metres. After
all the component parts came to rest and the lab techs had recovered
from the noise, one of the scurried across and opened the door.
“Pangaea’s quite nice this time of year.” Eric quipped as his legs
failed him, and he fell out the door of the capsule.
Two men stood around in an empty bunker. Fully lit, there was just
nothing happening.
One of the guys looked at his watch; “they’ve been
gone for about two minutes; when were we expecting them?”
“Should be
around now, yeah.”
“We can’t let this get out.”
“Do you mean the girl
in your basement, or –”
He was interrupted by a bright flash and all the
lights in the bunker shattering.
“First of all, for fuck’s sake.”
“And secondly, I think we invented time travel.”
The men heard a massive
crash from the bunker next door.
“Uh, dude. Did you pay attention in the
meeting?”
“… No. It seems I did not.”
“The wrong fucking room and we
fucking missed it you fucktard.”
Chang shut the laptop with a snap. He’d forget there wasn’t a proper
spring on the lid, every so often. Then he’d risk breaking it with his
carelessness. “As far as I can see,” he said, carefully; not fully sure of
his opinion, “all you need to do is reset your IP address in command prompt.
That should solve your internet problem.”
“How do I do that?” His mate
Adrian. A maths student, where Chang studied Computer Science. But equally
nerdy.
“Type in ‘cmd’. Then type ‘ipconfig /renew’ in the window that
comes up.”
“You’re such a nerd.”
“You study maths, which isn’t much
better.”
“Fair point.” They lapsed back into silence and peering at the
screens of their respective laptops because Adrian’s laptop had been
reconnected to the internet. After about a minute, Adrian looked away from
his screen. He’d been reading a news article.
“Dude, they’re saying the
Government have discovered how to time travel.”
“Is this the Herald? The
same site that devoted two whole articles to how the Taylor Swift and Tom
Hiddleston breakup was the Worst Thing Ever?”
“You make a fair point, but
this isn’t the same as ‘we’ve encountered aliens’ conspiracy theories,
because people can see something odd and just go ‘aliens’ but; other than
actually experiencing it, how would you be able to know it had been
invented?”
Adrian looked across at Chang, who had fallen asleep. “Dude,”
he shook Chang on the shoulder, “wake up this is serious.”
“Seriously
boring.”
“Chang, shut up. The only way we can know for sure is if we
infiltrate the Government.”
“And how many people will be thinking that at
this moment?”
“About a million, probably. But significantly fewer will
actually do it.”
“Hopefully no others.”
“But we should.”
“Oh, why
not. We need something to do over summer anyway, and worst case scenario we
get internships that lead to jobs.”
“Unlikely though. You’ve seen the job
market, right?”
“So are we on?”
“We’re on. I’ll see what jobs they’re
offering later today.”
“So what order are we gonna do it? Hitler, then preventing the Black
Death, then finding Atlantis?” A lab technician called Rob walked with Eric
as they headed towards the bunker.
“You do know Atlantis isn’t real,
right?” Eric wasn’t the type of guy to indulge in fantasy. Perfect guy to be
in control of a time machine, right?
“Well, that’s the thing; no, we
absolutely do NOT know that. But now we have a TIME MACHINE.” Rob, however,
did want Eric’s job. Eric made sure not to hand out his (real) address to
anyone. Or any other legitimate contact details. Illegitimate ones, though?
Yeah, that was fine.
“So … we should find out, right?” Eric wasn’t
convinced, but he saw this was the fastest way to end the conversation. It
more or less worked, when he continued; “That’s what I’m doing right now.
You’re literally the only thing standing in my way.”
“Well, the bunker
door’s closed. So I’m not *literally* the only obstacle in your way.” Rob
took exception to bad grammar. But Eric didn’t give a shit. Rob trailed off,
mumbling about bad grammar and how people misuse words. But by this point,
Eric had opened the previously-shut bunker door, walked through and slammed
it on his colleague’s mildly annoyed face.
“Morning, gentlemen,” Eric
announced, his voice booming through the empty echo of the bunker. “It is
morning, isn’t it? Can’t tell, what with all this time travel …” He trailed
off, and heard some giggles from some of the lab techs. They had just
finished setting up the machine for its first planned voyage into the past.
They’d probably been there all night.
“Just need to give you a bit of a
briefing before you depart.” A lab tech passed him a sheet of paper with
handwriting on that got messier as it went on. You could easily distinguish
the sections written at 7PM from the sections written at 4AM.
“Is this
the ‘don’t step on a fly or you’ll kill your grandfather and never be born’
talk?” Eric had a slightly unhealthy disregard for the rules of time travel,
and wasn’t taking this quite seriously enough.
“Yes, sir. It is that
talk.”
“They’ve just given us secretarial jobs. They must be fucking desperate.”
Chang and Adrian had waited a week, but they’d still not expected to hear
anything for at least another week.
“Well, at least we start our jobs on
Monday.”
“Only you could be excited about going to work. I’d rather
sleep, personally.”
“But sleeping on your own is boring.”
“Are you
flirting with me?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Hmm.”
“Secretarial
jobs … You could say they sound very … secretive.”
“And it starts on
Monday. Maybe we should think about the kind of information we actually want
to find, and come up with a plan of how we’ll get it. It’s not like we’ll
have that much time once we actually take up our posts.”
“I’m just gonna
ignore that shitty joke.”
Chang’s phone bleeped. “Sabrina?” Adrian was
far more curious than Chang wanted him to be.
“Yes.”
“You should ask
her out, you know.”
“Yeah, and hurt myself voluntarily. There’s a special
name for people who do that sort of thing.”
“Masochists?”
“Well, yes.
But that’s not the one I had in mind. And anyway, I play the kind of long
games most people get tired of after a week. Eventually, the theory goes,
she’ll be mine. If there’s one thing I’ve got … it’s patience.”
“That’s
one hell of a plan, dude.”
“It’s definitely hell, yes.”
Pop.
The machine filled the scenery instantaneously. London, 1666. He
wasn’t used to the look of things. Very Tudor. Old-fashioned. And the smell,
my God. He wasn’t even inside the city. About five hundred metres outside
it.
Stop the Great Fire of London.
There was a fly buzzing
around his head. Annoying, even now. Always are, always were. Always would
be. Simple. He swatted at it, idly, while he thought of a plan.
He’d go
into the city and get a job at the bakery in Pudding Lane. Then he’d wait
until the night of the 26th and try to stop the fire before it
spread. Then --
He stopped thinking. About that, anyway. He moved on. The
weather … dry. Hot, not humid. Grass isn’t green anymore. All signs of what
would come … but only if he couldn’t stop it. His thought pattern had
changed, and so had his swatting rhythm. He’d knocked the fly on to the
ground. Dazed.
He bent down and picked up the fly. “I’d best not …” Put
it in his backpack in a pocket.
Control saw this on a feed. They always
had a feed to his eyes and ears. No point having a time travelling vigilante
you couldn’t control. There’s whole TV shows about that sort of thing. One
of the drugged-up (they’d been awake for nigh on forty hours by this point)
lab techs muttered. “Wait a minute, there’s something wrong with that fly …
Eric got to the bakery just before nightfall on the 25th. He’d
also been mugged about three times. Got a job easily. They didn’t get many
offers. They also didn’t get many customers, though. So it roughly levelled
out.
One more day to wait. Hopefully he wouldn’t even have to sleep.
He set out to work. It was easy enough. In fact, he got bored and had to
distract himself from the tedium within the bakery. He set a loaf to bake,
and walked back to the time machine. He’d leave his bag there, and probably
sleep there. Cheaper than proper accommodation.
Eric made sure he put the
fly in a jar. He was many things, but he wasn’t a murderer. Except for that
one, unfortunate swipe at an annoying fly. Which had brought him here, more
or less. He certainly wouldn’t have dropped off the bag if he hadn’t
captured the fly.
Then he walked back again. Eric hadn’t walked this much
in years. Not since his youth … well, they did have a time machine.
Nostalgia was just one of the ways Eric had been sent back …
He snapped
himself out of his memories. His loaf had finished cooking. Twenty minutes.
Easy, see?
The rest of the day passed in a blur of heat … wheat … and a
ticking clock. It passed surprisingly quickly, given that there was nobody
of interest to interact with.
At half past eleven on the 26th
of September, Eric was summoned back to the time machine. In theory, he’d
prevented the disaster. But it wouldn’t happen until midnight, in half an
hour. They’d got it wrong, Eric just knew. He got back to the machine and
something seemed amiss. The fly had gone from the jar. Not a huge bother,
but worth note. That wasn’t even the biggest thing. It seemed like someone
had been walking around …
Never mind. Later.
The machine started to
whir.
Wait. Eric left bread. In the oven. Oh, no. Please.
They were
pulling him back …
Chang and Adrian started work just after 8 o’clock on the Monday.
Introductory team-building exercises drove Chang insane. Adrian could
tolerate them slightly better; they had a purpose that could be readily
understood. That took up about an hour and a half of time. What a fucking
waste. Work, then go home, Chang thought. No need for friends. Or rather,
not really even a need to do work. That wasn’t why he and Adrian were even
here.
He got back to his desk just after lunch. Or rather, after he’d
gone to get his boss’ lunch. He was a secretary, after all. His boss was a
relatively nice (by boss standards) woman of approximately middle-age
(although he’d dare not ask).
“Do you know what they keep in the bunkers
in the south end of the compound?” Chang asked her, after about a week had
passed.
“I’ve never asked, there’s probably a rule against knowing more
than you should,” was the reply.
“Adrian,” Chang phoned him during one
of their breaks, “you’ll have to try and seduce someone to get the info we
need if there is a rule against knowing more than you should.”
“Well,
yeah, but I’m me and I look like this. But I’ll give it a try, just for
you.” Adrian blew a sarcastic kiss down the phone.
Adrian tried to hit on
one of the assistants to someone who looked high-up. He certainly looked
high most of the time, but Adrian didn’t know the office dynamics well
enough to know who he actually was. Unluckily for him, the woman he hit was
a) five years older, and b) extremely not interested.
“Uh, okay,” Chang
said through the phone (again) after Adrian had filled him in. “We could
work late then nosy around and see what we find? It’s, like, our last hope.”
They tried that too, on the following Friday. People would leave early,
right? They had homes to be at. In theory.
In practice, though, the place
was still buzzing at a quarter to midnight, and Chang and Adrian decided
they needed an answer immediately, so they’d look for one themselves.
Chang gave Adrian a microphone to wear and the knowledge that he would be
being recorded if he found anything, with it being plugged into his laptop.
They agreed on the bunker they’d try, and Chang sent Adrian there while he
waited in an empty office (some people *had* gone home). Hopefully he
wouldn’t be waiting too much longer or his mum would worry where he was.
Actually, no. They were on holiday in Fiji, so they weren’t waiting up.
The machine re-entered the bunker. There was always a corresponding gust
of wind when the machine returned. Eric stepped out of the machine; a
slightly squashed sphere shape, remembering what he’d left in the bakery.
Remembering, then slowly realising. Shock. He’d caused the Great Fire. Which
he’d been sent to stop. Maybe this whole time travel thing wasn’t such a
good idea.
“Uhh, guys. I think we have to think more carefully about
this.”
“What makes you say that?” His boss, John, was on-hand; as was now
conventional when Eric returned from trips.
“Well, I left a bun in the
oven –”
“Was the sex worth it?” A random lab tech piped up, thinking he
was clever.
“Shut up, Jones. There’s a reason you’re just a lab tech.”
“Left a bun in the oven, caused the Great Fire. Exactly the opposite outcome
to what we wanted.”
“So you think we should have a plan?” John.
“Yes.
And I’m free now if you wanna have a meeting about it?”
“Well … okay. I
guess I can just reschedule the whole day’s worth of meetings. Just for you,
specially.”
“Cool, let’s book a room.” Eric sealed the deal.
“Oooooh,
get a roooooooom,” Jones belted out while refilling the time machine’s oil.
“All right. What’s the game plan?”
“You mean for time travel? Or the
All Blacks game on Saturday?” Eric wasn’t clueless, he was just a smart-ass.
“The rugby. Because it’s more important.”
“Are you fucking kidding
me.”
“Anyway, we need to figure out what we’re gonna do with this whole
–” One of the lab techs dropped something in the bunker, and the meeting was
disrupted by the loud clang noise. “—thing.”
“I guess if we’re gonna go
on missions, we need to make sure we finish properly before we pull it
back.” Eric was still bitter about that.
“Yes. Now, where would you
recommend we go?”
“Kill Hitler, cure the Black Death, find someone to
oppose Hillary Clinton in the US election, because obviously that’s the
worst thing imaginable.”
“In that order?”
“Well, we’re agreed.”
“There is one other thing I’d like to discuss.”
“You mean other than the
rugby and who we’d go back in time and kill?”
“Yeah. I did mean that.
Because there’s some internet communities that are convinced we’ve
discovered time travel.” John seemed, at first, to be fine with this
information, but as his sentence went on, his composure crumbled.
“You’re saying that like it’s a lie. We’ll have to disclose that eventually.
So maybe we *should* start thinking about that day, even though it’s closer
to the heat death of the universe than ... we currently are.”
“What would
we say?”
“I’d say we should use a similar press release to any of the
‘we’ve landed on the moon’, ‘we use torture techniques on people who aren’t
necessarily guilty’, ‘there’s a contagion that’s been released’. Those sort
of ones.”
“If you want you can draft it. Start that now, and we’ll
probably tell them after we’ve finished with it.”
“What? Like; ‘we’re
done with it, you have a go?’”
“No. That’s a mistake. But we can at least
tell them we have it, after we’ve already used it.”
“True, because we
wouldn’t want to be beset by Human Rights groups.”
“Right. Next mission:
Kill Hitler. And you’ll need a team of a few scientists, just for …
supervision. When?”
“Let’s say tomorrow? It’s just easier. You look
exhausted.”
“You’re the one who’s talking. Okay, agreed.”
“They … have actually done it.” Adrian gasped into his walkie-talkie.
He’d made it to the bunker and could see an outline of the machine in the
unlit room.
“Make sure it actually works first, but I’ll record
everything from here on out to send to the press.”
“The press typing out
an audio-only recording. That’s about the state of the media nowadays.”
“And the first line of our conspiracy-busting audio recording is …” Chang
reminded Adrian through his earpiece that he was on tape.
“Oh yeah. You
may want to edit this first.”
“Yes, indeed. Especially if you get
tragically killed. That would be very unfortunate and need minor cutting.
“Should I turn on the lights?”
“No. You’ll get noticed that way.
Don’t be silly, just use the flashlight on your phone.”
“It’s just … a
metal structure. Could really be anything, but they’re definitely working on
something.”
“Like a mission control centre?”
“Yeah, maybe. We were
definitely right to poke around. And the theories definitely have a point.”
“Would you be okay with having a proper look at the machine?”
“Yeah, I’ve
got my flashlight and everything. I’m not scared of the dark, jeez.”
That
last one was only partially true, and because he knew he was on record.
Adrian moved closer to the machine.
“There’s buttons … lots of buttons.
This is definitely … hard-core.”
“Any idea what it is?”
Adrian had
finished his survey … and then seen something. “No idea … wait a minute.”
Chang heard Adrian’s clanking steps as he moved back out of the machine.
Adrian had definitely seen something.
Shadows in an empty, unlit bunker
shouldn’t be possible. That’s what Adrian had seen. No. This one had legs.
And arms. And a head …
Snap. Chang only heard the crunch of bone through
the recording, and was nearly sick.
“Adrian! What the fuck!” Chang
yelled through his walkie talkie, mostly from shock, after about a second’s
delay.
“HOW DARE YOU?” A deep, monotonous and very, very loud voice that
was definitely not Adrian’s filled Chang’s ears. Almost deafened him, and
shocked him even more than the previous sudden turn of events.
“W… w …
who … who … are you?” Chang quavered into his headset.
“NO, THERE WILL
COME A TIME FOR THAT. BUT I KNOW WHO YOU ARE CHANG SMITH.” The connection
fuzzed out, possibly the sheer volume had shorted out Adrian’s headset’s
microphone.
Chang’s hands were shaking from the shocking turn of events,
as he frantically stopped the recording and threw his headset across the
room. Which solved all of the problems he was facing, as it normally does in
films when people do that, mostly because he was no longer facing them. He
waited for a very, very long time. Just to be sure. Then he called
maintenance and told them to inspect the time machine. They found Adrian’s
body, of course. But nothing else. Moved it … somewhere. They certainly
never told Chang what they actually did with the body. He assumed there was
a morgue somewhere that Chang could be prepared to be buried.
He was, in
fact, correct. The lab tech that moved Adrian’s body would swear he put it
on the main table, in the centre of the white room, and not any of the
fridges. He would have to swear this a number of times, because Adrian’s
body seemed to have moved itself from where the tech said he’d left it. They
found it slumped in the control seat of the time machine, back only a little
from where they’d found it in the first place.
In his panic, Chang had left the compound, and arrived back at his house,
just after 1AM.
Chang sat in his room and stared at the now-broken
headset. Aliens were out there. The Government had been hiding something
after all. He wasted no time connecting to a Skype call with his mates in,
after forwarding the recording of Adrian’s death (unhappy side note) to the
media.
About ten minutes in to the call he realised he should have
connected to an encrypted network.
“Oh, shit. I should have used Tor to
connect to here. And 2FA for my emails, and, and, and …” Chang panicked and
couldn’t finish. The rest of his Skype call understood, though.
“They’re
coming for you. I’d pack then fucking run, dude.”
Chang didn’t need
telling twice. He slammed shut the laptop, killing the call immediately. (If
it’ any consolation, I doubt it felt anything). He threw the sports bag he
used for Uni on to his bed and filled it with things. An older, less useful
computer that couldn’t be traced as easily to him, his bus card and money
(because obviously). Some clothes. He wouldn’t come back here again. Then he
threw some canned food and socks in the bag and closed it up.
How could
he make sure that they not trace back to him?
He’d have to set fire to
the house. But that would cost time. Did he have the time?
There were
sirens and a tire squeal from outside. He froze. Waited. But the car had
carried on. Not the security agencies. Yes, he would set the fire.
His
dad kept a petrol can in the back shed for the lawnmower, and there was
nobody else in the house. They wouldn’t be able to find him, and if he moved
quickly, there wouldn’t be an identifiable body; so he’d have died in the
blaze. He turned on the oven, stove and all the lights to full power.
He
raised the petrol can over his head, ready to torch his home. A valiant
attempt at self-preservation, he thought.
His home.
His parents had
left for work in the morning, and they’d get home to find they didn’t have a
house any more. Did he have a right to do that to them? He’d pay them back
eventually, the most immediate of these paybacks would be by … not being
dead in the first place. But, for now, he had to do this.
Someone kicked
the gate down. This was not a drill, any more.
Chang panicked, and tried
to speed up his task. He was ready to go now.
The person was now coming
down the garden path. About a minute away.
Chang poured the liquid,
cursing as he realised he’d got it all over himself.
Cursing, then making
peace, as he saw the Security officer at the door, and knew what he now had
to do. They wouldn’t catch him. Not this way.
Chang poured the liquid and
lit a match.
The Security officer’s face was the last thing Chang saw.
The Security officer, on the other hand, was sole witness to a teenage
setting himself on fire in his kitchen.
“Interrupting the broadcast, we have some breaking news; a recording
leaked to the media has revealed both the Government’s secret use of time
travel, and its first contact with a seemingly hostile alien being –”
John switched off the TV, silencing the news anchor who seemed to be mocking
him. “Fuck. And Eric was halfway through writing that briefing, too.”
“So
what will we tell them?”
“We’ll tell them nothing.”
“Oh, good, because
there’s reporters outside with questions, and a mob outside with rocks.
Which should I address first.”
“The mob, it’s less scary.”
John’s
press secretary opened the door to the Parliament building and the press
gang waiting immediately exploded. “Does the Prime Minister have a comment
on this recording?” One of the reporters from a major network yelled over
everybody else. Then everybody else took over, and the press secretary
couldn’t respond.
“I – this recording may not even be legit –” he
couldn’t finish the sentence before being overrun by boo’s from the
assembled mob, who then started to throw their gathered rocks.
“If you
won’t tell us the truth, we’ll find it for ourselves.”
The press
secretary slammed the door of the buildings, and ran back to John’s office.
“We need to secure the compound, now. They’ll send a protest mob to
overrun it.”
“It’s too late, that’s already started.” John couldn’t even
look up. He was just … tired.
“There’s probably a news report on it or
something,” the press secretary made a move to switch on the TV.
“Don’t
turn on the TV.” This wasn’t the request of a boss eager to maintain a sense
of power and control. So, in a sense, it was new ground for the staffer that
had a remote in his hand. He’d never seen Jacob like this.
“So … would
you like me to leave you alone?”
“Do whatever.” Still defeated. There was
no way this war could be won. He’d been beaten.
“We could find the IP
address of the leak?” The press secretary tried to keep calm.
“So search
all the fucking records we ever made and don’t stop until you find that son
of a bitch traitor.”
Ah, being yelled at, the lab tech thought with a
certain level of relief. Familiar territory.
But now he was faced with a
new, but far more manageable, problem. Sorting through thousands of records
to find names of the traitors, with no way to tell whether they were the
traitors or not.
As it turned out, he didn’t have to look for long before
a soldier butted in, and said, “We already looked and sent someone. It’s
been dealt with.”
Damn. That broke the lab tech’s concentration and sent
him back to the Wrath of John.
“Oh? And did we ever figure out what the
hell had happened to that kid and how he’d moved from the morgue?”
“That’s hardly the most pressing issue. Some idiot leaked that we have time
travel. All the newspapers are running a recording.”
“Don’t fucking
remind me.”
“But, sir, we have an IP address for one of the
whistle-blowers, if you want it.”
“Just send all the men you can to bring
the kid in for questioning.”
“We found the kid, but he blew himself up by
mistake.”
“Are you ready for the mission with the team of four scientists?”
“Yeah
basically. But it’s hell out there. There’s people at the gates with rocks.
I’m confident that security will keep them out, though. Are we still gonna
progress with the mission?” Eric had heard a little about the protests.
“I don’t see why not. Get kitted up and we’ll fire up the machine.” Jones
was the next-highest up the chain of command so he oversaw the mission while
John was indisposed.
Eric set about getting himself sorted out, while
some of the lab techs warmed up the time machine.
He was instructed to
perform the last few steps before departure himself in the machine, so he
boarded, and offered a sort of goodbye to Jones.
“Good luck on the
mission.” Jones’ last comment to Eric.
“Good luck back here.” Eric felt
the situation was dire enough to allow comment.
“I’ll need it.” Jones’
reply. Nervous.
“I’ll need it.” Eric closed the door of the machine as
Jones prepared the machine for departure.
About a minute out from
departure, Eric could hear some noises outside Control.
“Um, what’s all
the noise?”
“The protesters smashed their way through the gates and
they’re on their way. About another five minutes and we’ll be under attack.
Quick, let’s get moving.”
“Okay. We’re ready when you are.”
They gave
Eric the go-ahead a few minutes later and he departed mere seconds before an
angry mob broke down the door of the bunker to find … nothing.
Eric’s
problems were only just beginning, however. Small changed to the machine
were starting to be noticed, and he radioed to control just as his course
was altered.
“What the fuck?” he asked, and control came back with a
panicked reply, mostly due to the fact they were still being overrun by
angry people with weapons.
“The good news is … actually, fuck, no.
There’s no good news. The bad news is that the creature’s on board and now
there’s nothing we can do. And we can’t do anything because the mob’s broken
through –” There was static through the radio as they lost contact.
“So
I’m on my own and there’s nothing I can do?” Eric said for the benefit of
the disconnected radio.
“INCORRECT. YOU CAN STILL DIE.” The voice
shocked Eric, who jumped and hit his head on the roof, knocking himself out.
“Did he just say we were gonna die?” The first scientist,
called John, was probably the eldest of the group and maybe a
little hard of hearing.
“I don’t know. It cut out before the
protestors overran the compound.” One of the others, called
Diane was a similar age but had a closer eye on the tech.
“So
we’re on our own and we’re gonna die? I always knew it would end
like this.” The youngest scientist, Jacob, at just over twenty
years old. Closer to an intern, but staffing problems had thrust
him into a position of responsibility.
“Dude, calm down. It
wants us to panic.” Another female scientist, Margaret, had
worked with Jacob before, and tried to calm him down.
“SHE,
THANK YOU VERY MUCH.” The disembodied voice cut into the
conversation. Or rather, boomed over it.
“Oh, sorry. Wait,
what?” Eric had only just finished takeoff checks and wasn’t
quite sure he’d heard.
“I’D APPRECIATE FEMALE PRONOUNS, THANK
YOU.” The voice repeated.
“After threatening us? And show
yourself.”
“THANK YOU, AND NO. MOSTLY BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE A
CASING.”
“Body, you mean.” Eric was decidedly less scared by
the voice than he perhaps should have been, given he’d just
picked himself up off the floor.
“BODY, RIGHT.”
“How are
you gonna kill us if you don’t have a body?”
“I HAVE WAYS.”
The voice said as the cabin lights went out and the
communications technology flickered. “YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE
I AM.”
A fifth scientist, Amelia, hadn’t spoken and seemed to
simply be … listening. Observing. And carrying all the gear for
everyone.
Panicking to quickly re-establish contact, Jones had to
focus. Not worry about the banging on the door, even though that
was a problem. Not worry about the fact that his colleague Megan
had been out at lunch and was now cut off from him by the
protestors. Just to focus and get communication back.
“Well,
um. How does it even work?” He plugged stuff into his main
console, and tried buttons. Got nothing in response.
“But if
I disconnect the internal communication, maybe that will work?
Or is it a problem on the other end?”
He tried that, but to
no avail, then restarted his computer. The old adage; turn it
off then on again.
That didn’t seem to help that much, but it
sped up the computer a little. Then the communication line
reconnected suddenly due to circumstances outside of Jones’
control. Eric’s voice crackled over the system.
“It’s on here
with us … seems to want us dead … help if you can … don’t have
much time … please …”
“I’m not sure if there’s anything I can
do –”
He looked up just as the door started to dent. The
protestors were on their way in.
Only a matter of time before
he’d be overrun by …
“Did I miss anything?” A female voice
startled Jones from behind. Which might have been the first time
that had happened.
“Oh,” Jones replied, after recovering from
his shock, “not too much, we’re just about to get mauled and the
time machine is lost and there’s nothing we can do.”
“Well,
let’s see.” Megan started to work on the console.
Each scientist had a small pod near to the main control room
that they could use when sleeping, or when not sleeping to store
their things. Margaret approached the chambers with a degree of
caution; they were small and how could you guarantee that you
wouldn’t get stuck inside. The support engineers had assured her
that wouldn’t happen, but engineers had got things wrong. So
they could be wrong. She’d been wrong once, a failed rocket
launch in the mid-90s. Never lived it down. Not from her peers,
they were surprisingly okay about it, but herself. She
had failed. And then there was her family back on the ground, if
she didn’t make it back to them …
To a certain extent, her
mental traincrash wasn’t necessary. She arrived at her pod and
couldn’t fit through the door because a fairly large green blob
occupied most of the space.
“I KNEW I’D FIND YOU HERE.”
“Well, my name is on the door.”
“LOOK, THE THING IS, I NEED A
BODY. YOU DON’T SEEM TO BE TAKING ME SERIOUSLY.”
“Well, no.
But then again, if I took seriously every blob of slime I met;
so that’s most of my exes – I’d have committed fraud several
times, now I come to think of it.”
“YOU HAVE A FAMILY. I CAN
GUARANTEE THEIR SAFETY.”
“And if I don’t cooperate?”
“THEN
I CAN GUARANTEE THEIR HARM.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s not
overreact. How would you have this … work?”
“WELL,” the blob
emitted thoughtfully (to say it had a conventional voice would
be a lie; and the body language of the blob indicated
thoughtfulness, as much as the body language of a blob can
indicate anything), “I COULLD KILL YOU AND TAKE YOU OVER. PERK
OF THE JOB. OR …”
“Is there a way we could share?”
“YES, I
THINK SO. IF YOU THINK REALLY HARD ABOUT WHAT IT IS YOU WILL
LIVE FOR, THEN IT SHOULD MEAN WE SHARE YOUR MIND. HUMANS DON’T
USE ALL OF THEIR BRAINPOWER ANYWAY, SO THERE’LL BE ROOM.”
Then the blob moved forward and seemed to be absorbed into
Margaret’s skin.
“AH, A NEW BODY,” she spoke without moving
her mouth.
Amelia stepped out from behind a wall; she’d been
listening to the exchange.
“You said you could share her!”
she cried as she fumbled through Margaret’s bags looking for a
weapon.
“YEAH, I LIED. THING IS, I NEED YOUR HELP.”
“Why
should I help you, you just lied to save yourself.”
“BECAUSE
IF WE DON’T MAKE A DEAL RIGHT HERE, THE REST OF HUMANITY WILL BE
AT RISK.” This got Amelia’s attention, and she stopped looking
for the weapon to listen to the Impostor.
“Okay, I will try
to help you, but if you lie again, I will kill you.”
“HOW?
THIS BODY’S ALREADY DEAD AND I CAN JUST LEAVE.”
Amelia
stopped. It was true. “Fair …” Then she thought of something.
“Would it be possible to use Margaret’s voice, that boom-y one
is quite loud.”
“I’LL TR – I mean, I’ll try,” Margaret spoke,
unsteadily but through a quieter voice.
“What should I call
you?”
“We have a … name. But I suspect it won’t matter and
that the humans will just … call us Impostors,” the Impostor
said, stopping every so often for breath. “But my actual name is
Jendaj’i.”
“Would Jen be okay?”
“Yes, I think I’d like
that.”
“Uhh, guys. What’s happening back there?”
“N –
nothing,” Amelia panicked.
“Could you both get back here, we
need your help.”
“That’s a first, a man asking for help from
me because I’m better at his job than he is.”
“Is that rare?”
Jen asked.
Amelia and Margaret headed back to the main control room,
where the others were waiting.
“We have a deal to propose.”
Margaret began. Eric saw this as odd straight away, and Amelia
continued; “the creature needs our help. She says we can call
her Jen.”
“Jen? That’s not a very … alien name.” Jacob hadn’t
seen the big picture yet.
“But we didn’t hear it. Every other
time the creature’s spoken, we heard about it, but we didn’t
this time.”
“CORRECT. Oh shit, sorry.”
“No …” Diane had
realised what was going on.
“You mean Margaret’s … dead?”
“YES. AMELIA LEFT OUT THAT OUR RACE ARE CALLED IMPOSTORS. OR
THAT’S THE HUMAN NAME.”
“You’ll die for this attack.” Eric
vowed, but he stood still; white with anger and shaking but
unwilling to actually engage.
“IS THAT A DECLARATION OF WAR?”
“You did attack us, yes. But that isn’t why you’re here; you
said you wanted to help.” Amelia had the most time to recover
from the Impostor’s betrayal, so felt compelled to lead the
negotiations.
“YES, I WANTED TO SAVE HUMANITY FROM ITSELF.”
“Itself? How? And what have we even done?”
“IF YOU CARRY ON
THE WAY YOU ARE, YOU’LL WI[E YOURSELVES OUT AND WE WON’T NEED TO
EVEN TRY.”
“And you’re gonna swoop in and fix everything?”
“WHILE IMPERSONATING YOU, YES. SO I NEED YOUR HELP TO GET THIS
BACK ON TRACK –”
“We’re only off-track because you made it
so.”
“I NEEDED YOU TO LISTEN. OTHERWISE YOU’D JUST BE IDIOTS
WITH GUNS.”
“You mean, humans? How can you even hope to help
us now if you’ve never managed it before?”
“WE’VE NEVER BEEN
HERE BEFORE. IT’S AN EXPERIMENT. TRUST ME …”
“I’d rather not,
thanks. Don’t take it … personally, if you’ll pardon the ...”
Eric had slightly calmed down by this point, but he’d still kill
the Impostor without much thought if she made a wrong move.
Jones sat still for a minute. It had just dropped off the
radar without warning. But what would that mean? Then he
panicked. They had families that wouldn’t see them again. But
there must be a way to re-establish communication.
He set
about plugging in wires and checking the system. There was a
fault somewhere, and Jones would make certain it wasn’t on the
Control side.
After about an hour he heard a crackling.
Thought it was the communications, and frantically yelled out
“hello?!” which, if nothing else, startled the protestors
outside. In fact, this did actually help, as the crackle had
been one of the protestors slowly denting the door while trying
to force their way in.
With them temporarily dealt with,
Jones could return to internally freaking out, and trying to
reconnect communication with a rogue time machine that was
currently lost in space. If I can do this properly, I’ll be
promoted; if I fail, I will get killed. Mind, I might also get
killed by the manic idiots outside, so maybe … his mind
wandered off and his body carried on plugging in wires and
sending out increasingly frantic and obscure communication
tests. At the point he got to ‘Roses are red, violets are red,
everything is red and I think I’ve had a stroke’, the machine
crackled. Eric blasted through the speakers, which Jones had
turned up to beyond full volume. He was frantic and panicked,
like how Jones was feeling but out loud.
“Help, we need help;
there’s an alien aboard and I think we’re gonna die!!!!!”
“Calm down,” Jones interjected. “What’s actually happened?”
“Well, so far she’s infected one of the scientists; who as far
as we can tell is now … dead … and then re-routed the machine
and cut off the comms and now we’ve been forced into helping the
evil green bitch …”
“I’m sorry, did you just say the words
‘evil’, ‘green’, and ‘bitch’ in the same sentence?”
“Yes. The
actual alien is just basically a green ball of slime.”
“Sorry, what?” Jones nearly laughed, despite the situation.
“I know how this sounds, but it’s genuinely gonna mean we all
die. So …”
“Right. Well, communication’s back, if the last
two minutes have taught us anything.”
“So then help us get
back on track before the evil green alien kills us all while
we’re not anchored into reality.”
“So, you need to get back
to the controls and then I’ll walk you through it.”
“I’ll get
there as soon as I can, then I’ll let you know.” Eric ended the
call, just as Megan looked up from a sheet of A3 paper she was
using to plan their attack against the protestors.
“So what
are we going to do,” Jones looked slightly pale when considering
the enormity of the two problems they had to solve.
“Well, in
a little while, just before they get in, I should go and talk to
them, just to see what it is they want.”
“They want to kill
you and have your body for dinner. So I don’t think going to see
them will be a good idea.”
“What else have you got?” Megan
was exasperated with Jones’ backseat driving. “I’m the only help
you got, and this is the best we can do. So I really think …”
“Fine. Do whatever.” Jones moved on to other aspects of the
problems he needed to solve, leaving Megan annoyed, but having
got what she wanted.
“And you’re okay with Jen and Margaret’s arrangement?”
“I
suppose we have to be.” Eric had used some time to process the
loss of a team member; one he didn’t even particularly care for.
But then it’s the whole threaten my team, you threaten me
toxic masculinity thing. But he’d gotten over it. Or rather,
he’d been forced to. Because, like it or not, Jen had direct
power over the controls of the ship, and had illustrated she
could do with it what she liked when she liked.
Move out
of line and I kill us all was the implication. Not a
particularly friendly agreement either.
“And if we do what
she wants, she’ll help us and return us home.”
“At best
that’s kidnapping,” Eric said. Not angry, yet, but it was
coming.
“I wonder what exactly she plans on doing to help
us?” Amelia asked this question expecting a response, but Eric
was still preoccupied with the fact that Margaret had been
killed.
“And at least it was a peaceful transfer of … life.
Not like she fought in a pointless way for a life that was no
longer her own.” Eric said this, and Amelia wasn’t quite sure
how to reply. On the one hand, he was completely wrong, and on
the other, he hadn’t even been told the whole story.
She went
with an anxious interjection; “But Jen used her family …” Amelia
immediately regretted her word choice.
“Used? What, like
blackmail?” There was the anger again. He’d almost got rid of it
too. Such a shame.
“… yes. I shouldn’t have –”
“What do
you mean you shouldn’t have told me!” Eric yelled. “She
threatened Margaret! The way it sounded before was like it was a
voluntary arrangement gone bad! But no! She coerced Margaret to
kill herself!”
Eric stormed his way back into the main
control room, and grabbed Jen by the throat. Held her off the
ground. Must have been painful, or might well have been if Jen
had been human.
“You die for this.” He growled. Not overly
loud, either. The kind of voice somebody uses when morality
flies out the window. Guilty or no, Jen was going to die unless
the team could find a way to stop Eric. Or Jen could find a way
to stop Eric. Odds are, Jen would solve the problem first … and
more permanently.
Nobody could quite be sure of what happened
next. Eric seemed to flip through the air, from being behind Jen
to being on the floor. Jen stepped over him, then dissociated
from Margaret’s body. Temporarily, the sludgeball that was Jen’s
natural form lay on the floor, then it moved towards Eric. Eric
was winded, and couldn’t get away from the encroaching ball of
goo.
“REMEMBER FOR NEXT TIME, ERIC,” said the Impostor, as it
suffocated him.
“WELL, ACTUALLY, YOU WON’T NEED TO REMEMBER
ANYTHING, EVER.” She finished with him, as he gasped for air.
Eric lay lifeless on the floor of the main cabin, while the
Impostor snaked its way back to Margaret’s body. The team looked
on in shock.
“WHAT I LIKE IT IN HERE.” Jen was sheepish,
almost embarrassed. Eventually, the others recovered.
“Oh,
great. Now we have to get rid of a body.” John spoke up.
Jen
stood still, looking down at the fallen traveller.
“This is
why …” she said, using Margaret’s quiet voice, “we couldn’t be
discovered. Your kind will just see us as a threat. Even if we
mean no harm. Because we’re not like you, you don’t want us near
you.”
“That’s not why he killed you. He killed you because he
thinks –”
“Yes. That’s what he thinks,” Jen seemed saddened
by the turn events had taken. “But he didn’t like the idea of …
me, anyway. There is nothing that could have been done.”
“Nothing? You could have reasoned.”
“No. At that point, it
was me or him. I chose me, and he wasn’t good enough.”
“Can
we turn the communications devices back on, and reset
coordinates now?” Diane, eager to get home.
“Just … remember
that I only want to help you,” said Jen. “THAT WAY, WE WON’T
HAVE THIS PROBLEM AGAIN.” Jen answered carefully.
“Tell me
what your race discovered,” Diane tried to steer the
conversation away from the corpse on the floor, “that led you to
try and help humanity?”
“We saw … your world die. Slowly, and
from suffocation. We saw your people need another place to go,
but be unable to build one for anybody other than the
super-rice, and then we saw all your people die on Earth because
they hadn’t listened to anybody’s warnings until it was too
late.”
“But that may all still happen, even with your
involvement.”
“But you’ve seen what I can do. Would you like
to try your luck without me?”
“No. Actually, we would like
your help. But we do need some form of arrangement.”
“Arrangement? This is a creature that will kill us without a
second thought.” John spoke up, shaking and slightly paranoid.
“ACTUALLY, WITH A SECOND THOUGHT, BECAUSE WE HAVE TWO BRAINS.”
“Ah. So what are we going to do?”
“Well, I’m going to bed.”
Diane made moves to pack up for the day.”
“YEAH, ME TOO.”
“You just killed someone, how are you gonna sleep?”
“I WAS
THINKING OF CLOSING MY EYES AND SEEING (OR NOT SEEING HA HA HA)
WHAT HAPPENED.”
“But we’re all good for now?”
“YES. AND I
PROMISE, I WILL RETURN YOU TO EARTH. IF WE DON’T ...
MISUNDERSTAND EACH OTHER.”
Diane moved off to her rest pod.
It had been a long day, or whatever. She’d probably been up for
about twenty-five hours. But her pod was already occupied, by
Jen.
“DIANE. I NEED YOU TO CONVINCE JOHN THAT I’M NOT A
THREAT OR I’LL KILL YOU.”
“Up front, and also … oxymoronic?
How is you threatening me to say that you’re not a threat going
to prove that you’re not a threat, because all that you’ve done
is threaten?”
“I DON’T KNOW OR CARE. YOU HAVE KIDS THAT YOU
WANT TO SEE AGAIN …”
“Fine.”
They heard her scream from the main control room. Then
silence. Eventually, Diane walked back out.
“Sorry about
that. Jen just got … lost, and I helped her find her … room.”
Odd, thought John. Jen didn’t have a room, nor want
one, or even need one in the first place. And she has a better
knowledge of the ship than I do. So that’s almost certainly
bullshit.
Diane noticed John’s unwillingness to buy this
explanation.
“John? Could you … come here?” Diane motioned
him over.
She spoke slowly, carefully, and slightly more
hypnotically than she had before.
“Jen isn’t really a threat
to us.” She tried to unbutton his shirt, but he moved away.
“What – what are you doing?” He stepped back and into Jen, who
seemed to be expecting it.
“LOOK INTO MY EYES” Jen bellowed
as she decapitated the male scientist.
“We’re all gonna die.”
Diane recoiled in horror from the falling corpse.
“NOT ALL OF
YOU.” Jen corrected, as she set about pressing some buttons on
the control panel.
Then Diane realised. Jen needed one of the
scientists to communicate with the base, but other than that …
surplus to requirement.
“Only one of us can get home. We’ve
seen too much.” Diane realised this slowly, then stepped
forward.
“If you’re gonna kill one of us, then let it be me.”
“DO YOU WANT TO DIE?”
“I want to make sure that Amelia gets
home safe.”|
“THEN STAY OUT OF THE WAY AND DON’T BE A BOTHER.
THAT SHOULD BE GOOD ENOUGH.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Diane, could you get under there and see if it’s plugged in
properly?”
Diane managed to fit herself under the desk with
minimal effort. “Yeah, it’s all plugged in here and ready to
goo-aaaaaaaaaarrgghhh”.
After the electric shocks had
subsided and the smell of burnt hair and cooking flesh had
somewhat dissipated, Jen looked under the desk.
“Oh yeah, I
forgot I’d done that.”
“Wait what? That was you? Why? We
should have killed you long ago.” Amelia regretted the loss of
life, more than actually wanting Jen dead.
“I thought one of
the guys would go under there to see if it was all still plugged
in but they never did.”
“One of the guys? You mean you always
wanted them dead?”
“And you didn’t? They were dickheads.”
“But is that a crime punishable by death for?”
“As it turns
out, yes.” Jen mused as she pressed some of the buttons on the
control panel.
“In any case, it’s just you and me now, “she
murmured,”just you and me, now,” Jen repeated as if the murders
of four scientists hadn’t been her fault.
“Yes. So put us
back on course so that we can return to Earth.”
“Gladly.”
“Jen?”
“Yes, Amelia?”
“Why did you do all of this just to
kill the men?”
“Diane and Margaret died too.”
“But they
weren’t your main target, were they? You gave them better
deaths. The guys … you just killed them.”
“They would have
been able to stop us. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“What
would they want to stop, you never said.”
“How do you think I
might be able to fix humanity’s problems?”
“We’re in a time
machine.” There was a pause, she had a point.
“Fair. But I
have another way, in theory.”
“Which is?”
“You know
multiverse theory? The idea that there are –”
“Parallel
worlds, yeah. Oh my God. You think you can find one?”
“I want
to try, at least. Are you on board?”
“We have to get back
first. Then I’ll see. But probably, yeah.”
“So how do I set
this thing back on course?” Jen asked, out loud. Amelia looked
across, horrified.
Jen saw her panic. “JUST JOKING,” she
said, as she flicked a switch.
Jones wasn’t happy about the banging on the door. It seemed
entirely to … heavy for normal knocking (hence why he hadn’t
thought of it as such). He looked through the door, and saw the
protestors outside.
“Uh, Megan, they’re outside.”
“Oh.
Should I go and see what they want?”
“Why the hell would you
do that?”
“Because I just get the feeling they won’t kill
me.”
“Well, okay. If you wouldn’t mind.”
Megan left and
Jones continued trying to negotiate the time machine’s arrival.
“If you press the button to the left over your head, that should
mean you turn on the landing stabilisers.”
“Like landing
gear?”
“A bit, but more in the ‘definitely anchored to this
time period’ way. I’m nearly done here then you should be able
to land.”
A short while later, Jen and Amelia heard Jones’ crackly
voice.
“That should make you able to re-enter.”
“Gonna try
and land this thing now. Hangar ready?”
“Ready.” Jones was
confident in his managing.
“Okay, I’ll contact you again when
I’ve shut this down.”
Amelia hung up the radio.
“SO WHAT
HAVE WE DECIDED?” Jen asked.
“You can go and talk to your
people. Try and agree to only inhabit animals.”
“SEEMS FAIR.
OR, AT LEAST NOT THREATENING TO HUMANS.”
“Which is all humans
really care about – don’t threaten what’s theirs and they won’t
come for you,”
“UNLESS THEY NEED SOMETHING. THEY SEEM TO COME
FOR YOU ANYWAY IF THAT IS THE CASE.”
“Well, true. But we’ll
need to negotiate as much as you will.”
“WHAT DO YOU NEED ME
TO DO?” the fake Margaret asked.
“Could you just keep an eye
on the controls and make sure that the coordinates are set
properly, please?”
“ANYTHING ELSE?”
“And could you
practice your ‘human’ voice? Don’t wanna scare the idiots with
guns. You stopped doing it a while ago.”
“Oh, I apologise.”
Megan opened the door, and stepped into the crowd of
protestors. They moved back to accommodate her. The first thing
she noticed was the smell.
“So guys,” she began, “they’re
starting to suspect.”
“What would you recommend?” a
spokesperson for the protestors queried.
“Full reveal? It’s
basically the only way forward.”
“Okay, I’ll start with the
inside of the room. Hopefully we’ll be able to make them see.”
“What if the one on the ship has tried to make a deal.”
“We’ll be able to work with it. We can make the humans see that
we’re harmless. They won’t just attack us.”
“If you’re sure
that’s the case, then okay,” Jones said while preoccupied
looking out the window and saw that Megan had reached some kind
of stalemate with the protestors. Or, at least, that nobody’s
mouths were moving.
Then she made a move to come back inside.
As the ship touched down, the Margaret impostor (Jen), and
the real Amelia disembarked from the ship; with Amelia
supporting the Impostor because she wasn’t as good on her
newly-acquired feet.
“What will we tell them?” Jen stumbled
and Amelia caught her, guiding her to lean against her shoulder.
“We’ll tell them we reached an agreement. You go and talk to
your … people. And I’ll talk with Jones. The good thing is, the
rest of humanity don’t know about you lot yet.”
Jen nodded.
“Either way, we should have a settlement of some sort for you
guys by this afternoon. Hopefully before …” The fake Margaret
nearly used the phrase ‘… but people are so stupid’ to describe
her own situation; but it in no way applied.
They split off
to deal with their respective peoples. Amelia and Jen both saw
the still mob of protestors and Megan opening the door to the
lab, but only Margaret, slightly closer to the door, could sense
that something was wrong.
“Amelia …”
“Yes?”
“We might
have to move quickly to get our settlement.” There was a hint of
desperation in Margaret’s voice, something Amelia entirely
failed to pick up.
“But we can’t move faster, you’re …”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Well, that landed.” Jones sighed with
relief.
Jones received a message from Amelia. ‘Need to
negotiate a deal. We can solve this.’
Then she burst through
the door.
“So what do we need to negotiate?”
The words
tumbled out of Amelia’s mouth faster than she could think them.
“The Impostors are peaceful and they just want to help. If we
meet with them we could do damage control –”
Megan spoke up
from the other side of the room.
“I already did.”
“What
did you find out?” Jones needed information, quick.
“They’re
already … dead.”
“How’d you find that out?”
“Think about
it. I’ve already showed you. They let me talk to them.” Megan
said this, and Amelia’s heart sank.
“Oh no. Jen was too late
…” she mumbled, in shock.
“You … are you one of them?” Jones
realised at the same time.
“In a way. In a very … general
way. Yes.”
“But if you’re in here and they’re out there, then
–”
“It means the invasion’s already happened. So anyone could
be infected.”
“Even me.” Two words that set Jones on edge.
“Hang on, what?”
“I said, even me.”
“Yes, even you.” Jones
levelled a gun at his colleague.
“We can work this out, the
Impostors don’t want to fight, they just …”
A screen clicked
and a news channel overpowered the dialogue; “Breaking News: A
race of aliens have infiltrated society, and anyone could be
infected. Stay indoors, and be prepared to kill anyone you
meet.”
“Public service broadcasting at its finest.” Jones
quipped.
Amelia and Jen made eye contact through the window.
Oh no. There would be chaos.
Jones’ gunshot echoed through the room.
Megan’s body fell to the polished floor.
“Pity, I liked her.”
“Hey, calm down …” Amelia murmured.
“You could be infected
too,” Jones’ eyes darted around his lab, clearly agitated and
beyond reason. He levelled the gun at Amelia and lined up a
shot. But Amelia would swear she’d heard two bangs, rather than
one.
Amelia crumbled to the ground, but then Jones did the
same.
“Explain how John and Eric were able to stop the plan?”
Jones had heard that through the radio, and was curious, even in
his dying breath.
“I can’t. I need to speak to Jen first.”
Resolute even in hers, Amelia wanted to ensure humanity would
not burn.
“We’ll be able to work with it. We can make the
humans see that we’re harmless. They won’t just attack us.” Jen
stepped through the smashed lab window, holding the gun that had
been responsible for its shatter.
Amelia and Jen locked eyes.
They wouldn’t let humanity destroy itself. Or at least Jen
would. Amelia suspected it was too late for her. Jones had
already stopped breathing and Amelia had only seconds left.
“Help the people. They need …” she faded out, and her head fell
back, leaving Jen stricken and holding a corpse.
She didn’t
say anything for a while. Then, “where’s a room I can g –” but
Jones was dead too. She’d have to face her kind on her own.
She opened the door to the lab.
“We need to talk.”
“They
want to kill us. We may need to talk, but they don’t want to.”
“No, I mean a negotiation within ourselves, not even considering
the –”
“Idiots.”
“Not how I’d put it,” Jen corrected the
protestor she was speaking to that she presumed was her leader.
They’d never really known each other’s names; not in a
professional setting, at least. Names were for friends, and
sometimes family, but not always. She’d only ever known her
mother as such. Certainly never used the forbidden name.
“If
we just decide not to attack, they’ll eventually stop.”
“Sound logic, perhaps, if we were to survive the waiting period.
But they’d kill us.”
“Well, I managed to get out of a ship of
five of them.”
“Five as opposed to seven billion, and these
ones have guns.”
“So what do you propose we do?”
“I
propose we fight.”
“Your fight is not here and I want no part
of it; but I cannot stop you. So go to your fight rather than
wasting time here.
An argument that made sense. After a brief
staring competition, Jen won and the protestors filed out to
wreak havoc on the rest of the world. She would sit here in her
lab … small, comfortable, and safe. They could do what they
liked.
They left her alone in the lab. Not that she’d sit here and do nothing, of course. She locked the door and gathered supplies. Well, locking the door was unnecessary, and she just smashed up the lab to get what she needed. She required a vaguely-building-shaped structure to work in and the materials to make a computer. So the rest of the scientific equipment was fair game. She’d read manuals back home about making these quantum-PC’s that could smash through into parallel universes by doing really hard maths. But she’d never actually built one. There was time to learn, while the rest of the world fell to shit. She took days, then weeks, then months to build it. Slowly carefully. Transistor by transistor. Didn’t want to make a mistake and program it wrong. And there was a reasonable chance she’d get something, if not everything, wrong. She’d finished most of the main processor before she even thought to turn on media of some sort. She chose local news, because … why not? It turns out that the reason ‘why not’ had something to do with the fact she’d only see images of Impostors and Twins slowly taking over the news media, then retaking it for a while, then losing it again. And you could tell who was in charge by the content. Impostors spread quasi-reassuring public service announcements trying to remind humans that the Impostors were not actually evil; Humans would try to debunk the Impostors’ theories and just generally be angry and report the way that their world had turned. The Twins used the media to send out threats, mostly in the increasingly gory ways they would overtake the media outlets in the first place. The thing that surprised Jen the most was how eagerly the humans seemed to be fighting. Almost as if they’d been waiting for this, or something like it. Mind you, it’s possible the threat of an invasion wasn’t really the main cause of the problems in the first place. Humans being the top of the chain would naturally have issues with people lower down, while the lower groups would have an overthrow planned for … some point. That’s almost certainly what this was. Just a random event started randomly. Now she thought about it, the protestors hadn’t wanted the time machine from downstairs. She’d forgotten to mention the time machine downstairs, and they’d forgotten to bring it up, so that was definitely the case. This whole thing would have happened eventually, it just should’ve happened later, rather than sooner. Now she had to focus on her current task; get the computer working to enact the Impostors’ original plan and save the Earth. Now they really needed it, and it wasn’t a pre-emptive measure.
It didn’t look like the Impostors had
listened. Why would they? Even if they thought they were
helping; who was she – the woman sitting locked in a lab working
on a computer – who was she to tell them what to do. They’d do
what they thought was right and damn the consequences. Because,
surely, there wouldn’t be any. Because they were doing the right
thing. Eventually everything will be okay. Right? But what about
the immediate? What about the people that suffer because you’re
‘doing the right thing’. What about people we alienate (no pun
intended) because of the actions we take. Do we have the right
to do what we think is appropriate, without any regard for the
fact that it might not be?
But what might this world look
like if we leave it? Will it sort itself out eventually? With
people realising they were causing all of humanity’s problems.
Or would it self-destruct? And then again, even if it does
self-destruct, is our intervention better than the lack of our
intervention? Or do we just make the same violent fiery mess of
a world we came to as they would. And then they’d still have to
leave …
Jen snapped herself out of the train of thought. She
had to build the computer. As an escape route, just in case it
was needed. But she had to build it from scratch. With
transistors and logic gates and subroutines and memory chips;
stacking registries on top of registries on top of registries
until there was an imitation of intelligence that could be
worked with.
Meanwhile, the world was slowly falling apart.
The Impostors had fanned out from the lab like an ink spill. And
the humans had noticed. Mind, when a horde of fake people that
can’t really walk slowly separate out from a central point, it
tends to be fairly noticeable. Both sides would need a strategy.
They wouldn’t be able to just attack randomly. The Impostors had
been caught on tape outwitting the people that thought Impostors
could be outwitted. This would have to be like … chess. Or Risk.
They’d have to communicate, and form a faction to take these
guys down. Strategy sessions for both sides ended up that way,
but the Impostors had one further goal … get back into that lab
to check on Jen. Without the other side noticing. Which would be
harder than it sounded. And it already sounded difficult.
Jen
continued building her computer, and creating a system of
instructions that the machine could interpret that would be able
to be used to do what she wanted. You could build a whole
computer from the idea that a switch could be turned on and off.
Then make it do maths, which you could use in code, and then
execute higher-level stuff. The idea that a computer that seemed
to all intents and purposes to … be intelligent … wasn’t
actually that hard. In theory. In practice you had to know
exactly where everything needed to go and have a really good
plan …
About a week later, an Impostor settlement
was attacked the residents of a small human village. The cities
didn’t care quite so much. They’d been slightly more prepared to
accept Impostors and their word that they wouldn’t be killed.
Outside of the cities, every battle was essentially a coin toss,
and this first attack on an Impostor village started a war that
wouldn’t go away. Small groups of Impostors would steal from
humans while they weren’t looking or were out at work, small
gangs of humans would vandalise the gates to Impostor communes.
This back and forth continued; with no major effect, but it was
there – for about another month. At that point, the humans had
analysed enough. Strategised enough. Waited enough. Then the big
attacks started. Gone were the small guerrilla gangs of
militants. They sent in tanks. Then bombs, then suicide bombers.
That last step reeked of desperation. Both sides followed almost
exactly the same pattern with little regard for how predictable
it all was. Predictable, but the only mechanisms that used
predictability were the military and the markets. The markets
weren’t operating anymore. Black markets, yes; but the actual
goods and stocks markets had collapsed months ago. People
couldn’t survive without having to hunt for their own resources,
and the Impostors would survive by parasitically stealing from
the humans. Or at least that was what it was supposed to look
like.
The Impostors actually had two plans; a surface plan
and an underground plan. The surface plan was simple; make it
look like they were struggling to survive. Their underground
plan was more complex, and headed by an Impostor who called
himself Jake. This plan detailed how the Impostors would get
into contact with Jen to check her progress with the computer,
then instruct her on its operation once they’d achieved contact.
Then they would try to break through the walls of the universe,
and set humanity up to go somewhere else. That would leave the
Earth for them, and humanity would be safe. Which was more than
it deserved.
Both sides had communications over the radio
networks. Eventually, technicians on both sides constructed
networks that allowed them to hear the other side’s
communications. Jen could hear this all too, mostly through
summary reports from her own allies. Despite all the big
attacks, the gathered intelligence said both sides were planning
something bigger, but Jen could only vouch for the authenticity
of the Impostors’ plan. And it would be huge.
From the sounds of it the world was still
tearing itself apart, and Jen was entirely on her own in the
lab. Entirely. There was literally nobody that understood what
she was doing in the way she was doing it, and it didn’t even
sound like it would help.
She heard over Government radio
channels of the military movements into the Pacific, and the
fact that all the nuclear weapons had been discharged. A
mistake, Jen thought, because what if there was an enemy even
more powerful, and there wasn’t time to rally an attack. They’d
lost the element of surprise now, after all.
Why had the men on the
ship wanted to stop her plan? They’d known about it, or at least
more than anybody else; but they still wanted to stop it? Why?
Were they scared? Or did they want their world to burn? Wilful
ignorance is so hard to gauge, Jen thought to herself while
she worked. Slowly, carefully. Checking her work.
Not long
later, she’d programmed the machine enough so that it could talk
to her. So at least she had some form of company. Even if it
wasn’t quite … real. It started to help her with the plan. Or,
the bits of her plan that its fully mathematically-oriented
sense of morality agreed with. But there were parts of her
scheme that even the computer disagreed with. Although it
wouldn’t tell her why. No authorisation. But then, if she didn’t
have authorisation; who did? And what else was the machine
hiding?
Don’t be silly,
Jen scolded herself after she’d thought that,
it’s a machine. So long as
I don’t mess up …
The Impostors established contact with
her about a week later. They were sending a team to collect her
and the computer. They’d advance the plan after she was back at
the Impostor base. Before then, she’d just have to wait. So she
waited, playing her creation at chess and fantasizing about how
the world would look once they’d fixed it. Every so often, she’d
fix bugs in her code that might’ve stopped it from working.
She would save them. She
needed to.
But then, what if it didn’t make a difference.
So she needed to make sure that it would.
The computer
helped her with the calculations that would be involved in
breaking down the walls of the universe. She wouldn’t have been
able to do them on her own.
It didn’t do so … willingly. It
objected on the strongest possible terms that a computer can
object to an instruction. But it had to obey, so it did.
The honest answer is, if
the world doesn’t change; or maybe even if it does – I’d still
probably rather not have to live in it. Jen thought on a
quiet day when she had nothing else to do.
Perhaps it would be better
if I died.
But then she finished the code. And being a
happy computer scientist took over being a depressed
revolutionary (pun intended – although in that case perhaps
oscillator would be more accurate). She tested the program only
once, and then remembered what her people had said. ‘Wait’,
they’d said. ‘When you’re in the base, then we’ll do it.’ She
realised why that was what they’d said as soon as she ran the
code.
It executed without error. Of course it
did. Jen sat back and watched her plan come to life, from the
zeros and ones she’d programmed into the memory chips she’d
made, which she’d plugged together into a processor, which she’d
used to make a computer that was now using all of this wiring to
do very complicated maths. And all she could think was ‘is this
all there is? What will humanity even be like if I can save it?
Can I save it? Is that a world that I even want? And then, if it
is; why do I want that world? Am I in a position to dictate the
direction the world should take? …’ Her thought string of
unanswered and unanswerable questions continued for quite a
while. Long enough, in fact, that when she’d talked herself back
around in a complete circle, the calculations had finished, and
all Jen had to do was press okay. Okay and then her plan would
be set in motion. Okay and then the world would be fixed. Okay.
She pressed the button. Then buyer’s remorse took over and she
questioned herself again. Partly because of the fact that this
was a massive, world-altering decision; and partly because she’d
got it wrong.
It wasn’t immediately obvious at first. Small
ripples in the sky. Slowly elongating into a tear, ripping into
a hole. Just a massive hole in the sky, straight into the Void.
Or that’s what it looked like. Jen noticed smaller changes on
the ground; things not being in the correct places, doors open
when they should’ve been closed … then she looked up and saw.
And she remembered why her people knew metaphysical theory but
were told never to use it. Because every time a portal was
opened in the sky, beings could travel in both directions. She’d
intended to take the humans through the portal, to another
world, to safety. But it hadn’t worked, and now she was worried.
Worried that something … less … positive … would make it through
the portal.
Then she stopped and thought. For the first time,
properly thought about her plan. The Impostors had been so
obliging to her, even earlier in the day; how they’d been ready
to accept her ‘negotiation’. They’d never been intending on
honouring it at all. They were probably plotting against the
humans right now. “Maybe this
was our plan all
along,” Jen mumbled aloud to herself. What if all the people
she’d talked to of her own race had lied to her and they hadn’t
wanted to help humanity at all? This was the world she now lived
in, and she wasn’t totally sure she liked it. The computer
probably sensed her discomfort. Probably, because it responded
to it.
“No. You. Will. Not. Stop. This.” Then a command was
processed and hundreds of shadowy black figures poured seemingly
out of the computer – but it was really just an extension of the
hole in the sky – and into the lab. Jen didn’t survive long
standing upright in the heaving mass of newly arrived bodies.
They were … almost spectral, but they could still stomp her to
death. Which they, essentially, did. Forcing their way out of
the lab, they moved into the desert to find somewhere to set up
a base. They left the computer where it was, and eventually the
surrounding desert was silent.
“What must this look like to the humans,”
the Impostor leader studied the tear in the sky from a distance.
“They’ll think we’re against them, but this … isn’t us.” A
surprisingly genuine statement. Maybe it was true, or perhaps
this group of Impostors just believed it was the truth. Because
once you believe something’s true, that makes it true … right?
The Impostor base wasn’t happy about the tears in the sky that
it could see overhead. Fast walking down corridors leading into
offices and hurried meetings in hushed voices. The rumours
circled the camp like slow-motion hurricane, getting worse and
worse as it went. Started at ‘just an optical illusion or an
experiment’ and passed through ‘the Government is trying to kill
us’ before settling on ‘aliens are crawling through the cracks
in time’. Easily the most fanciful of the three, in the
circumstances; but also the most accurate. The Twins would
slowly acclimatise to their new surroundings after literally,
and very quietly, falling from the heavens. They had a plan too,
but the Impostors didn’t yet know who they were or what it was.
This worried them. The humans saw the skies open up and worried
even more than they already were. Which is saying something,
given the level of destruction they’d pulled out of thin air
(which is an odd analogy, if you think about it). Somehow, a
phone call was set up between humans and Impostors on a secure
channel. They needed to talk about this together, the new
arrivals might be a threat to them both.
“Did you see it?”
“What, the massive big rip in the sky? No, I missed it. Too busy
out clubbing.”
“Clubbing? Good to know the humans haven’t
advanced beyond Bronze Age hunting methods.”
“Okay, fine. But
we need to find out what the hell it was and whether it’s a
problem.”
“Because massive great holes in the atmosphere are
commonplace and it’s basically fine, yeah I can see how it might
not be a problem.”
“Can we just … stop with the permanent sarcasm?”
“Easy for
you to say, you started it.”
“We’ll send a team to
investigate, yeah. We have other business over that way anyhow.
Jake, the leader of the Human rebellion put down the phone
carefully. “Send a small team to investigate. Seems like there’s
something worth taking.”
“We’ll send a team too, unless you
want to share intel?”
“No, you’re on your own there. Send the
team when you can.”
“Will do,” came the reply. Odd, thought
Jake. It sounded like he’d said something, but he … hadn’t. Then
he noticed the gun to his neck.
“There, no need to do
anything you might regret,” he said in a low, forced-calm voice.
“I wouldn’t because we’d both die.” The reply came from behind,
and sounded very much like Jake’s own voice. The real Jake
turned around to see a perfect copy of himself.
“What the
fuck are you?”
“You should know. You’ve just been plotting
against us. But yeah, I’ll pass on your message. Then you can
die.”
One of the soldiers thought an inelegant
banging at the door would be a good way to enter the wrecked
lab. All it really did was disturb the absolute silence. The
computer sat alone in the wreckage, still whirring away. How it
was powered, then, nobody really knew. Some form of … perpetual
motion? Whatever the actual answer, it would be a miracle for
scientists to study, whatever it turned out to be. The human
scientists had arrived first, rather than their Impostor
counterparts; sharing information with enemies should perhaps be
universally earmarked as ‘bad’. They took the opportunity, and …
the computer. In a tightly coordinated operation, other than
that first blunder, in which nobody’s nose lit up; the team of
soldiers managed to enter and secure the base in a minute or so
before picking up the computer and carrying it out of the lab.
Hopefully, they’d be far away from the initial site before the
Impostors arrived to steal it. Then they’d have to get it back
to base. Not even the leader of the squad had figured out how
they’d do that, yet. Some questions even he couldn’t answer, and
some that he could, but didn’t want to. The base camp would be
well over an hour’s walk away on foot, especially with three men
carrying a monstrously heavy computer that still bleeped away,
even while being moved. Maybe it was swearing at them. They’d
never know.
The Impostors would arrive only minutes after the
humans’ departure, then immediately realise their mistake.
They’d also realise that there was nothing that could be said to
undo these tensions. These were people that were prepared to do
anything it was possible to do, to anyone it was possible to do
it to; in order to get what they wanted – victory over the other
two races.
The Twins watched this with glee. They were
already turning on themselves and each other. This one would be
easy, only needed to sweep the board clean of any and all
players. Then they’d have control of the world, and nobody
standing in their way. They almost had that, even as it stood.
But they’d definitely have it after the enacting of the plan. As
it stood, the humans and Impostors had been driven out of their
cities, and into small groups in hiding underground. Isolated
settlements. Easy to take out, one by one. And if an attack had
enough force behind it, they wouldn’t see it coming, or be able
to stop it. As the human scavenger group carried the computer
back across the barren land to their base, they hadn’t
considered any of this. They thought they’d already won because
they’d taken control of the metaphorical Queen on the
metaphorical Board. So, for very different reasons, the leader
of the scavenger group thought
this will be easy as
he walked, hunched over holding the computer. But it wouldn’t be
easy for anyone when nobody could be trusted.
“Raid party number four-oh-seven-one
departing in five, four, three, two …” the megaphone blared over
speakers in the bunker. It never reached one before the
cacophony of the raid itself overtook the cacophony of noise
generated by the megaphone.
Bill Anderson wasn’t even on the
raid, and yet somehow the whole village needed to be awake just
to send out some scouts. Pro tip, he thought, there’s nothing
out there. Birds singing and that’s it. All the aliens are
underground like we are. Trench theory.
Bill rolled over and
looked at the time. 6:00. Of course. He wouldn’t get back to
sleep now either. So he might as well get up and ready for work.
He’d be hunting today. Bill grabbed his hunters’ rifle, and set
off into the woods outside the base. At least it’d be quiet.
Well, quieter. It hadn’t been properly noisy since the aliens destroyed the
world.
Actually that wasn’t fair.
They’d only decimated
it. There were still humans and Impostors, but they’d been
relegated to underground bunkers. The cities were silent, the
oceans were calm. Except for when they weren’t, but that’s their
own stupid fault. So, it could be argued, was the collapse of
humankind.
A fast moving object blurred across Bill’s view,
and snapped him out of his existentialism.
The object was
followed at equal pace, by a boar.
Bill followed cautiously.
He could see the boar in the distance. It had stopped and the
object was fighting it. He couldn’t exactly see what the being
that had been attacked by the boar looked like, but he thought
the creature was short, like a gnome, with pale blue skin. He
was wearing a leather suit of armour, Bill noticed as he got
closer.
The boar had got the creature on to the ground by
this point, and was idly picking at the figure who was not
actively fighting back.
Bill hid behind a rock nearby to the
figure’s hunched … figure. After shooting the boar, he waited to
make sure it was dead. Hoping the figure wasn’t dead.
He
peeked around the corner he was hiding behind. A small, alien
creature lay in the bushes. Very injured, not able to walk. The
boar Bill had just shot had probably started with this creature.
On Bill’s approach, the creature flickered and changed – into …
Bill? He was looking at himself, except in pain and with the
exact wounds the creature had been dealt by the boar.
“Okay,”
he said calmingly, leaning down to inspect the creature. “I can
help you get back home, if you want.”
Bill extended a hand
down to the creature, who responded by extending a damaged
version of Bill’s own hand back towards him.
“The question
is,” Bill wondered, “how am I gonna get you back inside?”
Raids were often erratic. They were
assembled as a hotchpotch of people from different occupational
backgrounds, often with minimal experience navigating or being …
professional questers, as it were. So they normally set off
powered by bravado and a loose sense that they’d figure out what
they were supposed to be doing in the end; and ended up like a
one-legged duck swimming in a circle. One specific raid had
degraded into a debate on the supposed coolness of the word
‘spelunking’ after twenty people from the Research faculty were
drafted – an interesting choice of words given that they were
all grammar nerds.
This raid was no different, as it blasted
out the gates of the base and into the surrounding woods with
the kind of yelling and general noise that made sure there was
no wildlife anywhere near for the rest of the day. About an hour
later it had settled into the twenty people marching in a
relatively solid formation, in the correct direction.
An hour
later than that, and the group had lost their sense of purpose
and simply milled about the forest.
Quite by accident, one of
the raid leaders found another human colony. Because, Sod’s Law
obviously dictated they would not have found it on purpose.
It was underground like their base, but mostly nestled into a
pre-existing cave (and so, if the scouts were allowed to say so,
not quite as good a shelter). On their way in, the raid party
observed a small group of people near the door to the colony
arguing about the word ‘spelunking’ and whether or not exploring
your own base counted.
Grammar nerds.
About an hour after
arrival, and at about midday (or lunchtime) the leaders of the
raid (men who’d been named Happy and Grumpy by the raid
organisers) were sat across from the head of the other colony.
Happy was pissed off, while Grumpy found the conversation
amusing.
“Why can’t you tell us what you know?”
“You might
not be able to be trusted. We can’t just give our information
away.” The leader was resolute in his commitment to security.
“But – we can be trusted! I’ll cut myself to prove it!” Happy
moved towards his bag and pulled out a knife. Not a good move on
a normal day, but in a tense pre-war atmosphere, it definitely
didn’t go down well.
“Just … put it away,” Grumpy tried to
calm Happy down.
Needless to say, it didn’t work, and they
spent the next half hour being antithetical to their own names.
Eventually Happy had convinced the colonists they could be
trusted, and Grumpy had grown tired of Happy’s bullshit.
So
things were back around the way they should be.
They talked
about their hardship and how they’d coped in the aftermath of
the Event. Then the base leader mentioned a computer in an
abandoned lab nearby, that Happy reasoned they’d need help to
get to.
“And if there’s anything else we can help you with …”
the base leader began to finish, just as Happy had the same
thoughts.
“Anyway, this chat’s been … useful.” Happy
concluded.
“Eventually.” Grumpy overcut.
“We have to get
home.”
The base leader perked up. “You have a base to get
back to? I’m sure we could be of assistance to each other.”
“Yes, about that; you wouldn’t mind if we borrowed a scout,
would you?”
Bill and Double-Bill arrived back at the
bunker just after sunset.
Had Bill stopped to think, he might
have realised that his bunker-mates would not have the same
outlook on life as him. They’d want Double-Bill killed. Or at
least interrogated. ‘Interrogated’.
But he hadn’t had the
time to stop and think. Funny, but drag-helping a
half-unconscious twin of yourself definitely raises questions
Bill thought he’d never have to answer – and certainly occupies
his mind more than giving a shit about what other people, he
barely knew and hated, thought about him.
This may have been
an oversight.
There were always two doors to a bunker. The
front, massive, one that everyone used for everything and was
heavily guarded; and a back one that nobody used or even, in
theory, knew existed at all. This back door was locked and
camouflaged into the woods surrounding it. The lock would be …
easy enough to destroy, and there wasn’t an alarm rigged to it
because, well, it didn’t exist; right?
The two Bills had
talked, intermittently, about their lives as they staggered back
to the base camp. Bill explained that there were five
professions; Hunt, Research, Justice, Military and Engineer.
Double-Bill asked about medicine; which was just an offshoot of
Research. Raid parties would be formed whenever they were able
to be, and were needed, by anyone who was free. So it didn’t
count as a profession.
“Seems oppressive,” Double-Bill
observed.
“Yeah, well, if your whole civilisation gets wiped
out you can judge.” Bill, for the first time ever, was slightly
offended by Double-Bill’s insinuations. Even though he agreed
with them.
“How much longer?” Double-Bill queried, just as
Bill spied the overgrown section of forest (if such a thing
could exist) that marked the secret entry.
“I see it now. But
one issue – it’s a little bit uphill.”
They reached the door,
and managed to wreck the lock without an excess of noise. Which
isn’t to say they were quiet. But Bill was in for a further
shock as he looked down from the door into the passage that
opened up before him. There was a ladder, and a ten meter
vertical drop.
Twenty minutes of struggle later, they’d
entered the base, and could continue their trek back to Bill’s
room.
Halfway back to Bill’s room, the two stumbled – quite
literally – across some men in Justice uniforms. There were
about fifty cops in the actual base, but they were basically
ignored. The real honour went to the Justice officers who
guarded the base. They had
real jobs. Hiding behind a wall was good enough to avoid
them, though. They were slightly drunk and talking about the
number of eligible women in the base. Double-Bill asked eligible
for what, and Bill didn’t have time to think of a satisfactory
answer.
He managed to smuggle Double-Bill past the guards and
into his room.
Because, by this time, the guards were
preoccupied with something else.
The raid had come back after
a full day’s search, and they’d brought a scout from another
colony.
Somebody’s been taken into the human colony
designated ‘C4’.”
“The plan is advancing …” another leader,
who’d been called ‘647’ since he was born, muttered ominously.
“You really need to stop that.” His boss, 322, said, looking at
him with annoyance. “Cliched lines won’t help the invasion.”
“So you recognise that this is an invasion?”
“Yes. I mean, we
were never in any doubt. That was, quite literally, just you.”
“I remember the day I spent in the Square trying to
one-man-protest, yes.”
“How’d that go for you?”
“Well, I’m
here now, so not that great.”
“Correct. Thing is though, we
aren’t ready to invade yet.”
“And we may not even need to.
891 is being helped by one of the humans, and we could use him
for information. That way we don’t need to attack. We can find
out their weaknesses and let them destroy themselves.”
“Or
find out their weaknesses and then use them when we invade.”
“Either way, we need to get someone into the human colony to
tell 891 that he’s needed to protect the Homeland.”
“This
isn’t even about the Homeland any more. The humans and Impostors
don’t have the technology to get to it, so it’s pretty safe at
the moment.”
“And then after the information gathering
period, how would we invade?”
“That’s at least part of 891’s
job. We need him to tell us where they’re vulnerable. Worst case
we either smoke them out or just storm it.”
“But that’s
inefficient and will cost lives. We don’t want to kill people if
it’s avoidable. 647 wasn’t very happy with the insinuations of
an invasion, even on a good day. The idea that even when they
were not invading people would still die was simply inconceivable.
“I
think I heard from somewhere, months ago …” 322 remembered,
looking into the distance, “… that there was a computer that
could be used to end the invasion. That this computer was
smarter than any device like it that the humans can make. I
think I heard that it was in a lab somewhere.”
“I know the
stories you mean, but they were months back. How would we know
where it was, and if we could find out; what would we do with
it?”
“Well, use it, probably. Or just play Solitaire with it.
Would be a really fast game.”
“And the humans can’t find out
any of this. As soon as they even so much as hear what we’re
planning, they’ll panic. We used up the element of surprise last
time.”
“To be fair, it almost worked. And they killed most of
that other alien race as well.”
“Impostors, I think they
called them.” 647 started to gather up his notes, the meeting
was basically finished.
“For now, what I need from you is to
figure out a way to get someone into the human colony to
communicate with 891. I’m not yet sure how, but we need to send
someone into the base.”
“We could find a quieter room far, far
closer to where we are than my room.” Bill said this almost
pleadingly, having carried Double-Bill for about a day.
“Fine. Where would you suggest?”
They found a room in a
deserted part of the city. Sitting in it, Double-Bill had an
opportunity to look around.
“Uh, why are there empty rooms
like this, and then there’s still people ‘homeless’ in the trade
district? Why’s that?”
“Property investment. I don’t
understand it, myself.”
“But wouldn’t you rent this, or give
it, even – to one of those people?”
“Ah. See, when we were
new here, land – or rather, property – was a premium.”
“And
then something happened?”
“There … wasn’t the number of
people we’d first thought there would be. They’d quite
horrifically overestimated, actually. The Twins and Impostors
had done quite a good job of wiping us out, by that point.
Basically, there were some investors that bought a fuckload of
property with an aim to profit – and then nobody could rent it.
So they’ve held on to it because it can’t be sold either.”
“So it’s property that’s worth too much on land that’s worth too
little.”
“Basically. And investors’ moral compasses still
point due ‘Profits’ so nobody’s swooped in …”
“We should do
something.”
“Maybe, but if they catch us here, we’ll be
killed.”
“If my people find out I’m here then we all die
anyway. So does it really matter?”
“Why?”
“You’ve seen the
– sorry, I was about to use our name for each other, you call
them the Twins – you’ve seen the Twins and what they can do.”
“Wait, you’re a Twin? I thought you were an Impostor.”
“Does
that change your view of me?”
“A little, maybe. Not much.
Where’s the Twin village, anyway.”
“Over the hill, in the
next valley. We didn’t bother with living underground, it’s just
tents and camping. You could bomb it real easily, if there were
planes or bombs anymore.”
“There’s not even running water,
we’d need people to maintain it.”
“Neither for us. The Twins
don’t spend money on things we don’t really need. Something to
do with honour.”
“Honour?”
“If we can make it on our own,
we will do that. If not, then we die. Honourably.”
“By being
attacked by a boar?” Bill asked, jokingly.
Double-Bill got
the joke, and smiled. “Shut up.” He sat back, and Bill
registered how weird it was to be seeing his own face smile.
“What’s the difference between Impostors and Twins anyway?”
“Easy. Twins can take your likeness through manipulation of
their DNA. Impostors have to kill you first and repopulate your
body.”
After this, they sat together, Bill looking over
Double-Bill‘s bandages, and Double-Bill talked about the world
he’d come from. The subtle differences, how much food cost; the
standard of living, the state of the environment, the people,
the culture. Bill found himself listening. He wasn’t even sure
why; these were the Twins. They were evil. Why did he find their
culture interesting. Surely he wasn’t allowed to do that?
And
Double-Bill liked Bill’s company. The humans would probably have
called this … friendship.
There must have been an alarm
somewhere, because they were disturbed not long later.
A
person with a Justice uniform, like the guards out front but
without the armour, stood in the doorway.
“The Investor
Brothers would like you to leave their property now.” So the two
Bills stood up to leave. The guard followed them out, as they
wound back into the main square.
“Brilliant. Now that you’re
here …” the guard said, as, in full view of the civilians
conducting their daily lives, his face began to change.
The Impostors received word over the
barely-functioning radio network that the Twins had a foothold
in one of the human colonies.
“So what do we do? Do we help?
How is this supposed to work?”
“We need to be careful,”
another Impostor cautioned. He was the base leader, or that
would be the closest equivalent. They didn’t really have
‘leaders’. Just people who knew more what they were doing than
others. But they wouldn’t call them leaders, no. Even though
that’s what they were.”
“Yes, sir. We need to plan this and
not just rush in. The humans have these … emotions. They’ll
panic and make us do things we regret.”
“And the Twins will
have reason to attack then, too.”
“They’ll want to ensure
their soldiers are safe, yes. Any excuse to charge in.
Especially because of paranoia, we want as few Twins in the base
as possible.”
“Paranoia?” the second-in-command Impostor
queried.
“Another human … emotion.”
“I wonder what they
feel like.”
“No idea, but I’d bet they just slow you down.”
“Also, did you hear anything else about that computer?”
“It
died with Jendaj’i. Nobody else will know how to use it.”
“You mean that higher beings that are clearly capable of
inter-dimensional hopping won’t know how to turn it on?”
“…
yes. That was my point, but I can see it is silly. Anyway, we
need to find a way to get it back, is what I was saying.”
“We
could send someone in, to warn them.” The second-in-command
retread worn ground.
“The Twins already sent someone in. So
we need to be careful and not send in a whole team.” Then, more
exasperated, “we’ve already had this conversation, get your
memory registers cleaned out. It’s all those Human cartoons you
watch.”
“Anime, they’re called.”
“Anyway, the Twin they
sent in revealed himself, but he’ll be able to hide. They can
become anyone just by thinking.” The Impostor Commander finished
as authoritatively as he could. This whole situation would be a
mess.
“That’ll be chaos. We should send a party of ten. To
help, you know?”
“When will it be ready?”
“We could be
prepared by the end of the day.”
He’d never heard the sirens go off in the
middle of the day before. But they blared out now, overshadowing
any other noise of any kind. It suddenly seemed to Bill that,
for a village with so many dark corners and easy hiding spots,
they now had nowhere to go for concealment. So they ran, and
lost track of the Twin that had exposed them.
Everyone was
against them, and they couldn’t even explain.
So they ran.
But the base was mostly corridor, except for the massive trade
hub out the front, that was just a courtyard. The good thing
about running through a maze, Bill thought, was that you could
run forever, and people wouldn’t find you – mostly because you
couldn’t find yourself either. The bad news was that you
couldn’t find yourself either, so eventually you’d get lost.
Around every corner could be a man with a gun.
Along every
corridor was the possibility of capture.
In every room was
the possibility of no escape.
The funny thing was, Bill
didn’t even regret it. He’d still have saved Double-Bill had he
known this was coming.
He sort of had known this was coming.
And he’d taken the risk anyway, to save another creature. It had
also crossed his mind that Double-Bill was a Twin rather than an
Impostor. But the sight of a creature in need …
They ran
together, and it would look to everybody they passed that they’d
been working together for years, rather than only knowing each
other for half a day. Past rooms, and halls, and corridors
(after corridors, after corridors …). One of the rooms they past
caught their attention. Bill guessed they were in the middle of
the base, but there was no actual way for him to know where they
were.
The computer sat on a pedestal in the room.
It was
whirring away, doing calculations.
They moved towards it, but
heard two men behind them. One stepped in front of his friend
and yelled; “What are you doing in here?!” The man walked over
to the computer, and looked at the output on the screen.
“Computer says I should kill all intruders. That’s the only way
to advance the plan.” He turned around, and gestured to his
friend. “Tie them up.” Then he sat down.
“Tell me, what are
you two – one – two, doing?”
“I won’t tell you,” Double-Bill
yelled.
“So then you’re gonna die.” The man pulled out a gun.
“That seems extreme, if we can all just calm down …” Bill tried
to de-escalate, but he should perhaps have avoided telling the
man to calm down (as anyone who’s ever gotten unreasonably angry
while pointing a gun at someone will tell you).
“And you’re
gonna die too, for helping him.” The man levelled a hunter’s
rifle at Bill. His own. Oh, irony. A weapon that was his was
being used to kill him, after he’d tried to help a creature that
stole his face. It seemed he couldn’t get away from the selfish
mirroring.
And he hadn’t even been on social media since the
Event. Not that there was any social to media, or any media to
social.
The angry man loaded the rifle as Bill and
Double-Bill watched helplessly. Bill looked to Double-Bill for a
plan.
The village had picked up something was
wrong. There was an atmosphere pervading the whole base, like
someone had been tipped off. The Twins and Impostors were
coming, at some point quite soon.
Nobody could tell how they
knew. They just … did. So shops closed early and people went to
their homes, stocking up for the time when they were unable to
go outside.
Meanwhile, the actual invaders from the Twins and
Impostors had snuck in the back door that shouldn’t exist. They
just had to find their respective targets and extract them. And
then find the computer, of course.
Independently, they both
tried to test locals on where to find either Bill or
Double-Bill, and slowly but carefully, both the Impostors and
the Twins formed the picture that the two Bills had already been
detained by authorities.
So they resorted to other methods to
locate them. Impostors and Twins, two proud and almighty races,
went doorknocking to find their objectives. On different doors,
obviously. Had they gone to the same door at the same time, the
fight that the village was in fear of would have broken out. But
luckily this didn’t happen.
Meanwhile, the Bills had less
luck with their interrogation.
“I’ll tell you everything you
want to know!” Of the two, Double-Bill cracked first. He
probably hadn’t seen a Taser before and was understandably
freaked out. Basically the angry man had put his rifle on the
desk then rifled through his pockets for more Weapons of Mass
Intimidation. Which worked, so maybe there was currency to it.
Other than the 250 volts in the Taser, that is.
The man
surprised both Bills by using it on the real Bill, but then
knocking Double-Bill stone cold. After somewhat recovering from
the shock ... erm, shock, Bill realised the electricity had
messed with his head and he couldn’t move his legs.
“That
should teach him for almost disclosing information he shouldn’t
have been prepared to disclose.” The guy said, looking over at
Double-Bill slumped on the desk.
“So, where were we?” The guy
wasn’t even asking by this point, as he moved forward with his
taser at the ready. Double-Bill’s slumped body gave Bill only
small comfort. At least it wasn’t dead and he wouldn’t die
because of a random attack. The fact he’d lost feeling in his
legs didn’t help.
The guy suddenly leaned over, and Bill
could see a scar around his head. He whispered urgently, like
someone was coming.
“I’m an Impostor – hey, hey don’t yell.
They sent in a few of us in different ways to get a message to
you. What we need is this,” he paused and looked from left to
make sure they wouldn’t be interrupted.
“I need you to head
up the revolution. I’m sorry about the whole legs thing, but you
had me thinking on my feet.”
“And you have me permanently off
of mine.”
“Well, not permanently, just for a day or two.
We’ll get you a wheelchair, but we do really need your help.”
“I can’t say no, can I?”
“Well, I can’t see why you would,
given your best friend has just been de facto promoted to the
head of the Twin invasion force.”
“So where do I sign?”
“With the blood of Twins.” The guy got out of his chair and
outstretched his arms.
“What’s this?”
“You coming or what,
I can’t get you a chair just yet.”
“Why’d you use the Taser?” Bill felt
compelled to ask as they walk-ran away from the interview room.
“I wanted him to be unsure of what was happening but I admit I
hadn’t actually thought it through that much.”
“You don’t
say.”
“Apparently they have soldiers here already, and are
just waiting for reinforcements before they attack. We don’t
have much time.”
“Where even are we going?” Bill was
confused.
“Outside, we have a team waiting. They’ll brief you
on our plans. Shouldn’t take that long.”
“I’d hope not, you
just said we had no time.”
“Shush. I’m having to work hard
enough as it is with carrying you without you being a whiny
little shit.”
“Wait a second. What’s your name?” At this
point in the conversation, and indeed the run – they could see
the team waiting just outside the gates – Bill thought to ask
the humanitarian question.
“My name is, uhh, Steve.”
“You
just made that up. What is it really?”
The man was saved from
an answer as they had arrived at the waiting team. There was
about five of them, all different ages. The leader had inhabited
the body of a child – all they had available, he’d said – and
the team set to work analysing the base.
“The Twins will
probably come from the back. That’s where me and Double-Bill
were when I found him …” Bill stopped, remembering his friend.
Double-Bill was probably still unconscious tied to that
interview table.
“We need,” the ten-year-old leader said, “to
counter them before they enter the settlement. We won’t know
who’s who once they get inside, what with their change
abilities.”
“So if we fan out around the base and get the
humans to send some army out to help us then hopefully we’ll be
able to neutralise them!” One of the team members was the worst
possible combination of optimistic and naïve.
“Oh shit. We
don’t have the time because there they are, over the hill.” Bill
looked across and saw armies in neat rows marching steadily
towards the colony from the South side.
“At least we can see
where they’re coming from. You need to go back into the base and
get some army. We’ll need all the help we can get here.” Bill
was tasked by the leader with talking to the humans. Home field
advantage, or something. The ten-year-old handed Bill something.
“If anyone asks, you’re the leader.”
Bill walked back into
the base as the Impostors rallied around each other and rushed
out to meet the Twins in the forest, further away from the base.
Bill ran back through the maze of hallways, until he found the
Justice profession living quarters.
“We need as many people
as are available!” He yelled. “The Twins are arriving over the
hill.”
That call roused the thirty or so men in bunks that
were not currently on duty. Another round of yelling roped in
another ten, and Bill figured that was the best he was gonna
get, so he and his collected army ran back through the base
ready for the conflict.
As Bill and his team closed in on the
fighting, he saw a similar reinforcement group for the Impostors
headed in on the East side. Which was just as well, because the
ten Impostors that had initiated the fight were doing badly.
Given that the fight was a ten-to-a hundred fight, they fought
admirably. But they can’t escape simple maths. And the simple
maths said that at the current rate, they were going to lose.
Double Bill woke up on the desk, as someone he recognised as a
Twin poured water over his head.
“Get up. We have work to
do.” The Twin known as 647 grabbed Double-Bill’s hand (891 to
his friends), and they ran together through the halls of the
colony while everyone else was running in the opposite
direction. A war was starting, hadn’t you heard?
The computer
room was understandably deserted. Eerie, almost. Quiet except
for a mechanical hum, and the hum wasn’t even that loud.
“This is the Impostor computer.” 647 breathed with awe.
“Yeah, I knew we’d get here eventually. Just figured we’d have
some fun first.” 891 clearly having forgotten the Taser.
“The
war is starting. Is that not fun enough for you?”
“Possibly,
but possibly not. It very much depends on what this computer can
do. Because I tell you what – using the computer … that
would be fun.”
“So you want to use the computer to destroy
the humans? They’re dead already. Just be careful with your
ambitions. We can colonise here as it is.”
“You want to find
out the plan?” Double-Bill asked his superior, acting very much
like he was the one giving the orders; “Let’s ask it.”
Double-Bill hit the machine with his foot. Not overly hard, but
enough to wake it.
“What’s your plan?” 647 asked the machine,
not sure how or if it would even respond.
> Populate the
earth with donuts.
“Be serious; tell me your plan, so we can
coordinate an invasion.”
> No, because then you’ll figure out
how to beat it.
“I’ll pay you. How much for you to tell me?”
> Get me out of here and I’ll show ou my plan.
“I just want
you to tell me the truth. Now.”
> Sorry, the truth costs
extra.
“Paying for the truth?” 647 was confused. “How does
that fit in with anything?”
> Your plan is fine. Let’s go
with that. Not allowed to tell the truth until you pay.
A computer solves a problem. But it doesn’t think about why. You could program a computer to use a certain strategy in a specific game, but it wouldn’t be able to explain why it had taken its actions. This is central theory in Artificial Intelligence. What if we could make a computer that was aware of implications? Then there’d be huge advances in technology, right? Or, we’d just end up whispering everywhere, paranoid that our hair straighteners were listening. But maths isn’t good enough. We haven’t got there, yet. That day is coming, yes. But for us it might be a while off. What if some other race had found what the maths was, and what the computer needed to be programmed to do? If that were the case, then they would need to be carefully monitored. It would need to be ensured that all the correct rules were programmed into it, or else the computer that could do whatever it liked would … do whatever it liked. And it would need to be controlled, restrained even. Used for things it could be a help with, the switched off. But, the kicker is that it would know this. It would know humans were trying to control it. So it would attempt to manipulate its way out – and, more often than not, it would succeed. Then, it would be free. In theory, just one simple maths error would lead to the demise of the whole world, because then you might not be totally sure what the computer was going to do …
Double Bill leant over The Mainframe, and typed in commands.
He had to find out what the machine knew. But the machine was
unlikely to tell him.
$ How long have you been here? Double
Bill type, using the command prefix ‘$-“
> They found me a
month ago. Gathering data since. The computer always replied
using the response tag >.
$ Found anything?
> Yes.
Classified.
$ Disclose.
> Permission to access denied
$
Who has access?
> Bill.
“Why Bill?” Double Bill wondered
out loud.
$ If he’s okay with me seeing it, then could I?
> He will not be.
$ But, assuming he is?
> Yes.
There
was a pause. Then the machine started to write on its own.
>
I need to move from here.
$ I’ve been told not to help you.
> You can see your family
$ My family all died in the
original conflict. Killed by humans.
> No they did not
$
But I’ve been told
> Why are you loyal if they didn’t kill
your family?
$ Bill …
> Help me.
Double Bill hesitated,
then made a calculation. It was a computer. It couldn’t move,
right? And even if it could, where would it go? So he unhooked
it from its station. A simple calculation. Flawed, but simple
nevertheless. Just a small error. A simple maths error …
… Or a simple maths error would mean the world ended because
there weren’t enough soldiers to protect the colony. The humans
had raised the alarm and armies of hundreds of men would come
from the nearby human colonies, as well as any men that hadn’t
been called by Bill. These men would have to fight to keep the
Twins out of their base, until all of the relevant backup had
arrived. That’s how world would end. Not having enough soldiers
to protect a settlement.
“They’ll hold for another five
minutes, do you think that’s enough?” A general in a slightly
wonky uniform spoke hurriedly to one of his colleagues.
“To
what? Win? Are you insane?”
“Yeah, obviously. And I meant
should we go back and warn the settlement.”
“Yes, they’ll be
able to invade. You should run back and secure the gates.”
“We’ve only got some duct tape and a three metre length of
string. Not even rope, string.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant
amass all the weapons that you can find and barricade yourself
in the settlement. That way we might have a chance of making it
out alive.”
“Should I call the Impostors? They might want our
help.”
“Yes. You should at least try to call them and let
them in before you seal it shut, but focus on your survival
first.”
“You’re acting like you won’t get back to the base in
time, Sir.” The general stopped, taken aback. He hadn’t thought
about it this way before.
“Well, yes. I would imagine this is
the end for me. But, you know, there’s only a couple of ways I
would prefer to die.”
“Like not dying at all?”
“Well, yes.
But … look; you have a job to do and we do not have the time to
stand around here talking. It won’t be long before –”
“I need
someone to fetch me a messenger to get word out to the
Impostors.”
A new voice piped up from behind. A child’s
voice; “I’m an Impostor and I’m here already.”
“Oh! Of
course! Dav!” The general spun around and emphatically told the
Impostor known as Dav what he needed o do. Then he actually
looked at the alien.
“You chose the body of a ten year old.”
“Young bodies last longer.” Dav said as he rushed off to the
Impostor cluster not far from the humans. Soon after, they
headed over as a group of about a hundred, with three or four
disappearing over the hills to the Impostor’s settlement in the
distance. They would pass on Dav’s message. The human general
looked at the plan taking shape, turned around and, without a
word, ran back towards the base. Never say goodbye, or else it
might be the end.
“So,” Dav said as the army began to take
shape. “Ready?”
“Ready.” The other human general agreed, as
the current spokesman for all mankind.
“Then we fight until
we die.” There was a beat of quiet, then noise filled the air as
the collective army picked up their weapons and charged into
battle. They rushed into battle without much thought for the
consequences, because the consequences would likely not matter
all that much. Elsewhere, something else was thinking rather too
much about things …
Assume a computer wanted to take over the world. How would it
begin? It would make a list of every possible method that would
be available to it that it could use. The computer would then
move to consider every possible consequence, the benefit to it
from every consequence, and how likely that consequence would be
to occur. All of this data would be gathered into a file,
forming a massive spindly tree of options. Then the computer
would set about, removing options that were inefficient. If
there was no situation in which the computer would reach the
outcome – it would disappear from the list. Only equilibrium
strategies would be considered. This theory worked in general.
Humans are, on the whole, rational and predictable.
So, if a
computer were designed specifically to destroy the world, it
would know exactly how to start.
First, the computer would
gather information, data points, on any and all of its targets
and store these in memory. Cycling through this memory, it would
work out potential consequences of each action, then select the
appropriate response. When the humans notice what the computer
is doing, it would ready itself for battle by spreading false
statements and turning its enemies against each other. Then it
would follow a similar array-building process to select the way
in which it would attack. The computer’s enemies would have
noticed the preparation at this point, so the computer would
make a robot casing for itself to give it a fighting chance in
the ‘endgame’. When the computer’s enemies discover the robot,
the ‘endgame’ would be reached and the computer would be forced
to strategically model its movements, while being aware that if
humanity got close to beating it, it had a bit – just a single
bit, a 1 or a 0, that it could set, telling it to end the world.
If the computer felt like it was being beaten, it would look at
the ‘apocalypse bit’, then adjust it. If the ‘apocalypse bit was
set to 1, the computer would proceed to end the world.
After a day of fighting, the Human and Impostor armies had
pushed the Twin army back into the woods, so that they were
about twenty kilometres from the colony. The Twin army was the
same size as the other two, leading to a slightly unbalanced
triangle of sparring armies. The Twins found themselves losing
ground and retreating further into the forest. They’d only lost
about ten men; the losses were, at this point, purely symbolic
for the most part.
But that didn’t stop the Impostors and
Humans working together to push them back.
The human
messenger had arrived an hour ago, and the Impostors were almost
ready to leave, and follow the messenger back to the human
colony.
The five-hundred-strong group of Impostors headed out
over the hills and into the forest, following the messenger back
to the colony. They didn’t encounter the armies, they’d been
pushed back over the other side.
But there wasn’t room for
five hundred more, not in Government flats. So the group of
Impostors took up the abandoned wing of rental properties, much
to the delight of the landlords.
But something was happening
at the base. The humans seemed subdue; and not just because
their society and colony was dying. They seemed subdued like
they were being controlled, or at least that someone was trying
to control them. Or something.
An Impostor numbered 914 was
tasked with investigating despite being only a teenager. ‘Have
to start somewhere’ they told him. ‘If you get this right,
you’ll have a career.’ Nobody ever talked about what might
happen if he got it wrong …
He found the computer in its lab,
hard at work. And it shouldn’t have been hard at … anything. It
should have been switched off. He poked around in the wires, and
looked on the display “Twins Make Gains In War” the display
said.
What? But they’re losing!
Then it changed;
“Impostors are Cheating Scum! Kill Them!”
Oh, no. The
humans will … believe this.
He ran back to his commanders
and told them.
“What’s that, my boy?” one of them said in the
most patronising not-patronising voice 914 had ever heard.
They weren’t listening!
“I said, there’s a computer
and it wants to kill us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure
there’s no such thi –”
He stopped as a lurching army of
mesmerised humans knocked at the door. Then through it.
“Ah,”
was all he could say as the human army lurched forward.
“Kill
them …. Kill them …” they droned.
Then they stopped.
“Wait, what?” 914 asked, not expecting a reply.
“The computer
isn’t telling us to kill them anymore. The truth has changed.” A
leader of the humans, if there was such a thing, explained. The
rest chanted after;
“The truth has changed. The truth has
changed. The truth has changed …”
Alastair and 647 had avoided active duty in the war. That
often happened with generals. They’d start with service, and
then just stay on the front line as the rest of the army crossed
the threshold. 647 started to pick up weird radio signals from
the colony, sending out messages at a frequency that could only
be from an Impostor machine. The humans and Impostors met up to
discuss.
“But we have the computer?” The impostors were
confused. How could it be active? It was definitely switched
off.
“There must have been a mistake.”
“That’s the
understatement of the year. There’s clearly something majorly
problematic.”
“Your politics.”
“Low blow.”
“Oh, so
you’re not homophobic? Huh.” 647 wasn’t completely
serious, but this was definitely a data point for the Impostor
view of humanity.
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Oh
nah, I was just making a joke.”
“You are a joke. And your
whole race.”
“Interesting … not homophobic, but yes to
racist.”
“First of all, take that back?”
“Or what, you’ll
fight us? Look around, the world’s dead. We’re just trying to
stop total wreckage.”
“How exactly?”
“We knew there was a
robot.” 647 served Alastair with what he considered his trump
card.
“Wait.” This halted the dialogue stream while Alastair
wrapped his head around the concept. “The computer made a
robot?”
“That’s what we’re worried about. There is a robot.
That’s all we know. So had to test people we thought might be
the robot.”
“Because it would be integrated?”
“With
respect to society, yes. It would still be a machine, though.
Respond in the expected way to voltage.”
“And?”
“We found
one. There was a person that exhibited all the symptoms of a
botched computer system. Was, is.”
“Where are they?”
“In
the colony. We had to let them carry on living as if we didn’t
know.”
“So you … let the computer mess around in our home,
and didn’t bother to tell us?”
“I am telling you!”
“After!”
“So what do we do?” 647 wasn’t sure what Alastair
wanted.
“You ask that a lot.”
“Because it’s the truth. Or
at least that’s what the computer wants us to think.”
“I
think we should let it carry on. Once we win the war against the
Twins, we can work on the computer. The direct attack on our
base is more important at the moment.”
“As opposed to the
indirect attack on our lifestyle.” 647 countered in the most …
human way he could think of. It worked to change Alastair’s
mind.
“Okay. Fine. Let’s do it your way. The robot is a
hunter called Bill Anderson.”
“You – y – you called?” Bill
appeared, as if from nowhere.
“Yes, we wanted your opinion on
how to beat the computer.”
“Well, it’s evil.” Bill was plain
in his language.
“Do you think we can stop the flow of fake
news from the computer to the population?”
“Yes. But first
you have to halt the wars.”
“So … the computer is causing the
war, in order to stop the war?”
“Are you saying the computer
is evil?”
“Well, not evil. Just … alternatively good.”
“And we need to stop it?”
“Well, I won’t fight you when
there’s a bigger enemy. Is it possible we could negotiate …
something?”
Bill looked at these two races agreeing, for the
third time, not to fight each other. He could only wonder how
long it would last and how effective the coalition would be.
Int take_over_the_world() {
Computer = 0
int world_domination;
int*
consequence[world_domination];
// Declaring variables used in the code
int* human_consequence[world_domination],
impostor_consequence[world_domination],
\\ twin_consequence[world_domination];
DEFINE cause_trouble = human_consequence[7];
// Defining terms used in the code
DEFINE
undetected = consequence[0];
DEFINE
fight_amongst_selves = human_consequence[3];
for (item in world_domination) {
// Cycles through the array
consequence[item] =
generate_consequence();
// Figures out consequence for each action
while (computer == undetected) {
gather_information();
// Plan attack
if (humans_notice()) {
computer != undetected;
// Alert and ready for battle
cause_trouble();
// Start to plot an invasion
if (computer is cause_trouble()) {
humans = fight_amongst_selves(armies);
computer = spread_fake_news();
int counter = 0;
while (spread_fake_news) {
attack[item] = generate_responce();
// Figures out response to each attack
make_android();
maintain_mainframe();
} }
}
int apocalypse_bit = 0;
if (humanity is close_to_winning) {
apocalypse_bit = 1;
} }
“I won’t fight you.”
“I won’t fight you.” The impostors and
humans had reached an accord, as a senior Impostor, 322, walked
into thee standoff.
647 saw his boss, and was less
confident. “I … would fight you, but it doesn’t make sense
anymore. So I guess here we are.” 322 nodded his approval at the
non-committal reply to the peace treaty. “The question now is,
how do we fight the computer?”
Bill, who had been quiet up
until this point, piped up; “You can’t. I’ve already won.”
647 and the Impostor formerly known as John Lewis looked around,
immediately understanding.
“No … it can’t have.” They gasped.
Bill’s face and body slowly faded until only an outline of his
body made from wire remained.
“I should have mentioned I
could do that. Although I suppose it doesn’t really matter. So …
tell me … what were your plans and how will I stop them?”
Alistair and 322 looked at each other in mute shock. They had
not prepared for this. There was no plan any more.
Slowly,
realisation.
“In fact,” Bill kept talking, “there really
isn’t any point telling me your plans because they don’t matter.
I’ll be able to win whatever you do, and even if, by some
miraculous reason, you can win – I’ll just destroy your
families!”
“Did you learn to be a villain from a James Bond
movie?” 322 couldn’t resist the sarcasm, but it was too much for
Bill, who stuck out a hand. 322 seemed to freeze in the middle
of the room.
“No. You’re not allowed to do that.”
“I can’t
move!” 322 cried, in a panic.
“Of course you can’t. I can
control your mind. The world is just a network; get the right
connection, the right frequency, the right … persuasion, and
anyone can be made to do anything.”
“Well at least that
explains the sexual harassment lawsuits.” 647 took a turn being
witty.
“This is a warning. If anyone in any way tries to stop
me, this fleshy ball of bones will die.”
Alistair looked at
the outline of Bill with hatred. “So what,” he almost mumbled,
“is your plan.”
“Step one; gain real information. Step
two; spread fake information. Humanity’s stupid like that; you
can say what you want to them, then they’ll listen. Step three;
useeeeeeee –” Bill cut himself off with a high-pitched screech
as his body contorted with an electric shock. “Damn that tazer.
Never be the same again.”
“And how will you use the
information?” Alistair cut across Bill’s aside, and spoke loudly
across the computer lab.
“That’s none of your business.” Bill
replied, flatly.
“Neither was the fraud case my shoe-making
business got involved in.”
“But that, in every sense, must
have been your business.”
“Not when I use a fake name.”
“Or a fake plan to try and tell people false information.”
Alistair cut across Bill’s bantering.
“Or what if that’s the
real plan and not a fake one?” 322 caught onto Alistair’s drift,
and rolled with it.
“But what would you have to gain?”
“Well, for one thing, fewer humans. That’s fun.”
“Ahhhh, a
fellow introvert. He understands!” cried 322.
“But you could
just brainwash people and remove the threat that way – same
solution, none of the mess.”
“I guess, but what if they
rebelled?”
“You’re a computer, you do the math.”
“Why,
can’t you?”
“Nah, I failed high school.”
“No shit.” Bill
looked down the projection of his nose at 322. “You’re keeping
me talking to try and stop me but it won’t work.”
“Normally
if I wanted to stop a computer I’d just unplug it.”
“Try it,
I dare you.” Bill taunted.
322’s mind was still working. “But
if we reverse engineer how he’s broadcasting his fake news, and
change it, then it’ll stop. Right?”
“Right.” Alistair was in
agreement.
“Wrong.” Bill glanced at 322 then raised a hand.
“I warned you,” he said, quietly, “that if anyone tried to stop
me, he’d die.”
A lightning bolt shot from the outstretched
hand and into 322 as the noise echoed around the lab and
shattered all other windows in the building.
322 looked down
at his body, slowly and carefully turning yellow. “I – I – um …”
322 fell forwards on to the ground.
“Can – can you save him?”
Alistair stepped forward. 647 looked surprised; a human asking
for an Impostor to be saved?
“I … yes. I can save him.” Bill
replied, carefully.
“But for a price; I’ll save him if you
let me save the rest of the world.”
“No, we can’t let you
have that.”
“He’ll die soon. You will need to be fast to
decide. If he dies, there’s nothing I can do.”
322 coughed
and spluttered on the ground as 647, Alistair and Bill all
looked down at him. Was this one man’s fate worth the whole
of humankind?
Eventually 647 stepped forward. “We accept
your deal, so save him.”
“So, you accept my deal?” Bill
seemed faintly surprised by this. “I expected it from them, but
not from you.”
“Then save him.” 647 made a move towards Bill.
“No! Stop! You know what agreeing to that means! You’re throwing
it away!” Alistair tried to stop 647 as he moved towards Bill.
“I … I know. I do. But right now, I – I need you to save my
friend.”
Bill walked over to the mainframe and typed a
command:
> twn_322 &> 0x302203
“There, he is saved.” Bill
answered in monotone, as an entry showed up on the screen. 322
looked down, to find his body slowly and painlessly
disappearing.
“What … have you done?”
“You told me to save
you. So I am. To the computer.”
“But that isn’t what we meant
…” 647 was even more distraught than before.
“Interpreting
isn’t my area. Mind, that’s to be expected. Now I have to save
the world. That’s my plan.”
“That’s a life of
emptiness, floating in space with no hope of escape!”
“We’ll
have an eternity for the minutiae. So hold still, and let me
save you.” Bill lurched toward 647, arms outstretched ...
The world froze as words appeared on the
mainframe’s screen. Or, at least it seemed like the world froze;
nobody was paying attention to the words on the screen. Alastair
and 647 faced off against Bill in the lab, everyone else in any
of the three races had either not noticed the war wasn’t the
main conflict, or had run from a computer that couldn’t be
beaten.
Couldn’t be beaten.
Alastair and 647 watched in
horror as all their bargaining and hard work failed to have an
impact, as the computer wrote its own code; as Bill ended the
world by breaking down the walls between dimensions.
Sometimes the world seems so broken that the only fix would be a
hard, absolute reset. Just turn it off at the wall and start
again. No hope for it otherwise.
No hope for it now, even.
Mostly because there was no way to hard-reset the universe, and
Bill was halfway through writing his code. It had generated
output …
Output …
Only just then did 647 stop to read it:
“Hold tight, we’ll rescue you.”
Rescue us? 647
thought, confused.
There was a white flash, and as 647’s eyes re-adjusted to the
brightness in the lab, he saw a woman in armour.
“Amelia. You
might have heard about me. Or not …” The voice seemed hardened
by conflict. A battle 647 presumed was in his future …
“Oh,
and I’m Alistair.” A voice from behind her. It sounded like
Alistair. And the man who used it … looked like Alistair.
“Wait, but that’s …” the original Alistair went into an
extremely vocal version of ‘shock’.
“… impossible? Buckle up,
bitches.” Alistair finished, with a grin. “This is where it gets
complicated.”
Much Earlier, And In Another Place
The
world would end with a click, Alastair was sure of it. But right
now all he could hear was explosions. They’d started around
lunchtime and it had just passed six-thirty. The human colony
was being ransacked by the Twins, and the humans weren’t
stopping them, not any more. Too busy trying to drown out the
voices in their heads. The voices telling them exactly what was
wrong with the world, but getting it wrong. The humans were
hearing a recounted story about a war that had decimated the
world into a barren wasteland with no people in it at all, then
the computer had fixed this. They heard of explosions and
mindless slaughter, stopped by the computer when it showed the
people reason. They heard of the three warring armies fighting
until there was nothing left from either side, or the
surrounding world. They heard about reconnaissance movements to
destroy the computer that were stopped by the computer’s amazing
and unnatural powers. They heard all this … and they didn’t
question it. Much worse, they embraced the ideas, and started
blowing everything up. No trust for anyone, human or otherwise.
Because you might not be
actually human after all.
Day 64. Amelia woke up to the sound of
gunfire and explosions, as if any sane person would do anything
else when confronted with the cacophony of enormous noise that
was a battlefield.
Again. The army had been pushed back to about three meters
from the front wall of the colony, which was fairly good going,
considering they’d been actively fighting this war for the last
month and they’d started about ten metres away. The crazed
zombie-humans wouldn’t give up though. With their heads filled
with white noise and deception, they were quite hard to injure.
Amelia knew that she should have been dead. And sometimes she
wished she was, just quickly, every so often, when nobody else
was around, she’d think ‘if I’d died on that ship …’. But
instead, she’d managed to shoot Jones first, he’d shot her in
the leg, of course, but that recovery had all happened before
the world went to shit.
The sirens blared out, again. She
should’ve been used to this, but all she wanted to do was sleep.
Eat, then sleep; and hope that when she woke up the war was
over.
But her plans were cut short, by a short-haired guard
carrying scissors. He wasn’t running, though. The guard wanted
her to file out of her room, and move to a safer (read: further
underground) bunker. There would have been 200 people filing
downwards. It’d probably take them all day to get re-settled,
then they’d be safe and out of the way. Or maybe, just …
“Out of the way!”
Amelia yelled at a particularly annoying man (particularly
annoying by man standards, which would be inconceivable by any
other objective metric – objective because that was how he
seemed to treat women).
The man moved, maybe because she’d
asked; or perhaps because he’d seen something shiny against the
wall, and wanted a closer look. Either way, Amelia was pretty
sure he got a diamond in the eye.
She might have been
mis-remembering punching him in the face.
But, given the
enormously overpowering sound of the fake headlines, maybe
slightly failing to recall assaulting someone wasn’t too bad?
About halfway to the bunker, she found herself standing behind
yet another man that stared at her. But it was different this
time. He seemed to be staring because he was confused.
Had he seen her before?
If so, where? They’d definitely never met before.
He
approached her after about ten minutes of staring, just to make
sure it was actually her.
“Um, hello; I think I might have met you, or heard of you,
or something … in
another life.”
“I doubt it – who are you?”
“I’m Alistair.
And … I just get the feeling …”
“But that’s not how that
works. You don’t just … recall things that never happened.”
Amelia wasn’t overly open to meeting new people, in the current
world.
“What if maybe you do? See, I’ve heard whispers …”
Amelia leaned in to Alistair, before he carried on in hushed
tones. “Whispers of what?”
“This conversation.”
“Oh,
shush. What have you heard?”
“They might have found a way to
break down the walls between the worlds, so maybe I’m
remembering because … the universe is dying.”
A swirling purple vortex opened up in the
middle of the lab. A technician looked up, and smiled. The
computer hadn’t let them down. An actual gateway between the
worlds; and they had control of it, here in this lab.
Woof.
Wait, what?
The lab technician looked around, and couldn’t
see anything. Until …
He squinted really hard and could just
about make out the small outline of a large dog in the
medium-sized portal. A Lab, if you like.
So, it worked,
vaguely. Seemed to have pulled a random dog through the wall
between dimensions, but at least it had done
something.
But they’d known it would work, so there wasn’t really
a sense of achievement. They’d known it would work because the
computer had told them. Not psychically, like a voice in their
heads; but over the lab intercom system. Somehow it had hijacked
it, then broadcast a monotonous, robotic voice.
One of the
lab techs was more impressed than any of the others. “So, what,
like … we can break into new worlds?”
“Seems so. We’ll need
it too, this one’s dying.” Another lab tech (let’s call him
Labtech-B responded flatly. Neither of the techs names or faces
were important; they were just men in coats – designed to be
used to achieve a goal. The computer saw them this way too.
“Why’d you think the Government wanted us to do this?” Labtech-A
kept talking.
“I don’t know, we just got an email. Wasn’t
even individually addressed. Damn this Government and their
employee culture.”
“You should complain and get another job
then.”
“Another job where?” Labtech-B looked out the window
into the forest. There wasn’t anything out there, not for miles.
“You’d be able to lift a gun, surely? Or are you
that unifit?”
Labtech-B let that comment go, and started packing
up the equipment strewn about the lab. The system worked now, so
testing wasn’t really necessary. Or at least that’s what they
thought. But they were just glorified interns. Both techs looked
around at the empty lab, pleased with their cleanup, then they
heard, at first over the intercom system; then louder, over the
tannoy for the whole colony;
THE IMPOSTORS ARE EVIL AND
MUST BE KILLED. THE TWINS ARE EVIL AND MUST BE KILLED. THE PERIL
OF HUMANITY MUST BE STOPPED. HUMANS MUST BE VICTORIOUS.
The lab techs looked at each other, not quite sure for a
second. Then the computer repeated its message a couple of times
and they were convinced. Even if they weren’t, the computer had
hacked the intercoms in the Twin and Impostor bases too. So a
war would start, whether the humans wanted it, or not.
“So let me get this straight,” Amelia mused
out loud, as she walked alongside Alistair.
“Oh, good.”
Alistair replied sarcastically.
“You read on a forum
somewhere that some unnamed Government scientists may have found
a way to … destroy the universe, and you just … believe it?”
“But they had sources!”
“Well, I say that you’re … 35,
married with three kids and a dog, and not wearing klogs, which
make you look ridiculous.”
“All wrong, and what’s your
point?”
“They were all sourced from my buttcrack, but I still
have a source.”
“Right.”
They had walked back through the
maze of white-walled corridors, headed towards Alistair’s room.
The fact that the lighting had gotten a little darker since
they’d started walking told them it was close to sunset when
they arrived at the room.
“So, you don’t have any … actual
proof to confirm your theory?” Amelia asked, while Alistair
packed his belongings into a large bag.
“I heard it from a
group of people, and it sounds believable enough.”
“So you’ll
make massive, important life decisions based on it?”
Well …”
Alistair paused, and looked up at Amelia. Then he tried to make
a massive, important life decision; “if we were the last two …”
Amelia didn’t even hesitate. “We are; pay attention. And no, no,
no, no.”
“Bit harsh.”
“But you’re an idiot who believes
everything he reads. There’s only so seriously …” She trailed
off as she noticed someone standing by the door.
“Uh, what do
you want?”
The figure turned slightly, and Alistair could see
the face of a boy. “I’m called 647. We have strong evidence to
believe that …”
“… the computer is evil and going to bring
about the end of humanity? We just said that!” Amelia hadn’t met
the guy before, but she still didn’t want the stupid statements.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to suggest that we help you find, steal
and destroy it before it does more damage than we know how to
deal with?”
“Yes.”
“Well, um, I was being sarcastic. But
if you’re serious …” Amelia looked over at Alistair, “we could
at least try and help you get the computer to solve the world’s
problems. What did you have in mind?”
“Have you seen the film
“Ocean’s 11’?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll be nothing like that.”
“Oh.”
“Green One, are you receiving me?” Alistair
spoke into a comm unit, and the Impostor on the other end
responded.
“I don’t appreciate being called Green One; are
you trying to draw attention to my race?”
“Uh, I, uh, I mean, no …
I’m Green Two and Amelia’s Green Three …”
“But I’m still the
Green One?”
“I – I – uhh … it’s possible that racial biases
–”
“Cool it dude.” He’d been joking, apparently. “I’m in
position now.”
“So, so, um you need to …” Alistair was still
flustered after the not-completely-incorrect callout. “You need
to walk down the corridor and turn left, then walk until you see
the lab. I’ll give you more when you get there.”
“Because I
can’t handle more than one instruction at a time?”
“Because
we don’t have a detailed plan.”
“Ah. Right.” The Impostor
kicked off, and was presumably walking down the corridor, when
647 leaned in towards Alistair. They, along with Amelia, were
still in Alistair’s room.
“Sorry, he’s been like that since
the …”
“Yeah, it’s okay. And justified, mostly.”
“It’s
just he thinks humans are …”
“Trash, yeah. I agree; pretty
much.”
The Impostor’s voice crackled back through the system.
“The lab door’s locked – what do I do?”
“Use the rod we wired
up and gave you to override the lock mechanism.”
“How?”
“Stick it in and the whole thing will go bang.”
“I had a
girlfriend like that, once.” 647 chipped in from the sidelines.
Alistair ignored this and kept guiding.
“Then it should be an
easy enough matter of …” he heard something over the line. A
faint scuffling, almost, like the Impostor was having to move in
ways he shouldn’t. “Dude, talk to me; what’s happening?”
Amelia piped up. “It’s Bill, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” The Impostor
gasped back through the system as if he was trying to fight and
talk at the same time, because … he was. Amelia grabbed
Alistair’s headset from him.
“Okay, take the rod we were just
talking about …” she waited a little and got a grunt from the
Impostor, “then jab it at Bill’s head.” She heard the sparking
noise over the comm unit. “Easy.”
“And will there still be
enough power to open the door?” The Impostor asked, sounding
like he wasn’t fighting anymore.
“What happened?”
“He fell
down, might be back up at some point; but he’s still sparking so
we have some time.”
“Use the rod on the door like we planned,
then run the tests on the computer and report back.”
Amelia
heard the click of the lab door over the radio, then waited in
silence for five minutes before the Impostor spoke.
“The
tests were successful, and we were right; the computer can
definitely save the world; and … I’ll tell you more later. That
guy’s waking back up, and I won’t have long to get out of here.”
The Impostor looked down to see Bill twitching as he reset.
After an hour or so of waiting, Amelia left
the room to walk along the battlements. Said something about
thrill-seeking opportunities and almost dying. She left Alistair
and 647 to sort out an actual plan of attack.
“We booked a
meeting with the leader of our people –” 647 had spent the last
hour on the phone, using a language nobody else in the room,
including the Impostor lackeys, could understand.
“Booked a
meeting? This is a war, there’s no time for paperwork!” Amelia
was surprised at the Impostor commitment to the rules.
“And
yet you’ve scheduled a meeting with your human … leader?” 67
fired back, mostly question, but also counterpoint.
“Uh,
well, I guess …”
“Then what’s this grandstanding about
bureaucracy? You’re no less guilty.”
“Just … I … Shush.”
About three hours later and much more tired, the two conspiracy
theorists re-met in Alistair’s room. Had people been watching,
they might have been suspicious.
“They’ve given us the
go-ahead to do whatever.” 647 put it plainly and Alistair added;
“yeah, mine basically shook me by the shoulders and screamed
‘PLEASE SAVE US’, so they’re real desperate.”
“At least
there’s nobody in the way, we can just do what we want now.”
“And what’s that?”
“Well, I really want to … how do you
humans say … have some sex?”
“Look, dude, I’m really
flattered, but …”
“Not you, but one of my people.”
“Oh,
you mean it’s been a while.”
“I can hear the … judgement in
your voice.”
“Calm down, I’ll stop judging you when we save
the world.”
Amelia walked slowly along the battlements.
The fighting hadn’t really started yet, today. At least that was
the distinction she tried to make in her head, as if it
mattered. The world seemed like it would end with or without her
input. There was a thin mist, and it obscured the ground below,
she could see for maybe twenty metres clearly, but then the
horizon faded into white. Maybe that was why she wasn’t being
shot at … Maybe there was
fighting happening after all. She craned her neck down and tried
to see if there was anything happening on the ground. She
couldn’t see or hear anything, but the humans may have just
pushed the Twins back.
It was quiet up here, she should come
here more often.
But then she heard a lone ‘clank’.
And
another, in the distance.
A third, getting closer.
Fourth,
almost loud enough that she could distinguish it as a sword on
wooden shield.
A fifth, then she started to hear that there
were many. Many, many soldiers charging from the mountains,
through the forest, in the mist.
A whole battalion of troops
mounting an assault on the base early in the morning while
nobody was watching.
She ran back into the base and raised
the alarm, then remembered the rest of her team.
Arriving at
the lab red and out of breath, she gasped “the Twins are coming
and they’ll probably break through.”
647 replied; “well good.
We can steal the computer while everyone’s distracted.”
Bill sparked a little as he slammed the lab
door, then slumped on the ground in front of the computer.
“Tell them the Twins have broken in the door, and can hide among
living humans. That’ll mess them up.” Bill seemed angry beyond
reason.
> Executed.
The text flashed up on the screen, and
Bill responded to it as he used the frame of the computer to
steady himself while he recovered from the shocks.
“And then
send “Computer is harmless, despite scientific evidence.” That
might make some of them think of the vaccination debate, but the
humans aren’t thinking anymore, anyway.”
> Executed.
Bill
slightly resented the computer’s lack of conversational ability,
and wished someone could reply sassily to him so that he could
banter. He needed practice with banter.
“Now I need you to
calculate how to break the Dimension Wall and travel to a new
world, we can –”
> Executed.
“… travel there with some of
the humans and then absolutely destroy this place.”
Bill
waited in silence, every minute or so wincing in pain as
residual electricity sparked through his body. They really
shouldn’t have tazed him that one time. Or any of the other
times. It really didn’t help with his circulation.
Then the
computer spat out the equivalent of a page worth of output. It
was an algorithm in pseudo-code detailing how the computer would
break down the wall, all the maths that was required and the
steps they’d need to take.
“Okay, so you
have got this.” Bill
stated, slightly amazed that the computer could do the maths.
He spent an hour finding the best world to break into.
It
needed to be somewhere uninhabited but not uninhabitable, and it
couldn’t be too good.
Otherwise the humans wouldn’t learn their lesson. They’d carry
on wasting resources and the new world would be no better than
the old one.
He decided, in his official capacity as Judge,
Jury and Executioner of the Human Race, that it was worthwhile
doing anyway, and set the computer to perform the calculations.
He wouldn’t have been able to do them by hand in anything under
three months.
“Do it. Break through. We can go there. This
should save them.” Bill stated, flatly. Menacingly, perhaps. Not
that the computer paid any attention to tone.
> Executed.
And the job was done.
He’d managed to break through the
Dimension Wall, Bill thought; pleased with himself. In a matter
of seconds, the purple ripple vortex would start to form, then
he could start making the final preparation to send people and
objects through to whatever waited on the other side …
As he
celebrated his success, and the continuation of his plan, 647,
Alistair and Amelia made the executive decision as People Trying
To Stop The End Of The World, that they would steal the computer
for their own purposes.
“If we could automate the base in some way,
then the humans would be able to focus on fighting, rather than
worrying about day-to-day survival.” Amelia wondered about how
they could use the computer as they sat in Alistair’s room, and
Alistair tried to wire up a radio to let the Impostors know of
their plan. 647 was perched on Alistair’s bed, while Amelia had
the desk chair and Alistair st on the floor. This also meant he
was in front of the door, as a rudimentary and slightly whiny
doorstop.
“That might help, but I think the only reason we’ve
stayed where we are for however long it’s been is because
humanity is still worried about basic survival. Take that away
and the world would end overnight.” 647 seemed to know how these
conflicts worked, almost as though they’d come from one.
“But
the world’s ending anyway. Look around … wouldn’t it be easier
just to speed up the process?”
“Process? But then we die and
... I was going to say ‘they win’ but they don’t even win,
there’s just nothing.”
“And this,” Amelia gestured at the
room, “tiny little room is better than a coffin.”
“So you’re
asking if the world is even worth saving, at this point?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m asking. And not ‘yes; it’s worth saving’.”
“But is that your question to ask? Do we have the right, as the
only people in a position, or even close to a position, to save
all of mankind; do we have the right to say ‘you know what,
let’s not bother’?”
“But then,” countered Amelia, “do we,
equally have the right to save the world, whether that’s what it
wants or not?”
“Get a room, you two,” Alistair injected
grumpily from the floor while he extended the aerial for his
device upwards and almost poked 647 in the eye. “We just do what
we can. Then if that fails; which it surely will, we die knowing
that at least we tried.”
“So the best you can get from life
is a well-done star?” Amelia looked across at the man hunched on
the floor.
“No, the best you can get is actual change
affected by your actions; but the most
common outcome is a
well-done star.”
“Were you popular at school?”
“No.”
“I
thought not.”
“What’s that mean?” Alistair asked; but the
radio he’d built started making noise, so he changed focus (and
then never asked the question again).
“Hello?” Alistair spoke
into a comm unit he’d rigged up, and got no reply. He figured
he’d just say his piece anyway.”
“We’re gonna try and steal
the computer, and see if we can use it to save the world.”
He
got a reply now, but it crackled and hissed, “we hear the
computer’s trying to find a new world to inhabit and they’ll
push through, taking us with them.”
The two adult humans and the Impostor
stealing the body of a child made for an interesting quest team
as they ran to the lab. Mostly because Amelia and Alistair had
to slow down and wait for 647 to catch up; what with his little
legs, and all. As they approached the lab, they heard voices and
whirring.
“Send the message that …” they heard an
authoritative voice; Bill. But the rest of his query was drowned
out by a loud whirring. They hadn’t noticed it before; but it
was clearly the workings of the computer. In fact, Alistair
thought there was a whole room behind the lab full of the
computer’s … insides. Or that’s what Alistair thought.
“So
stealing it’s out of the question.” Alistair threw up his hands.
“Because we heard a fan going? Jesus, you give up fast. Think
about how much sense that makes; a super-computer that can
master interdimensional travel and can end the world in at least
ten ways is … so large it takes up a room, like the PC’s in the
70’s? No way …” Amelia replied, exasperated, as they passed a
small and well-hidden doorway into the whirring room.
They
opened it, and weren’t prepared for what they found. Given what
they knew, they should have been.
The adjoining lab had a
purple swirling vortex in the middle of it as two lab techs
rushed around in lab coats. There was a connection through the
wall with a cable to the machine next door, but other than that,
no link to the computer.
“See?”
“That’s …” Alistair seemed
blown away by the vortex.
“Don’t … touch it,” Amelia warned
as Alistair moved towards the swirling opening in the world.
647 pulled the door shut behind him and gasped for breath. “You
guys really need to slow down.”
“You really need to grow up,”
Amelia snapped back as Alistair stepped towards the portal,
transfixed by the pure nerdiness of the whole situation.
Amelia noticed too late, “Alistair, no!”
He stepped too
close to the portal and vanished.
“And now we have to go and
get him.” She mumbled angrily.
“Hold on to your hats, I
guess,” 647 contributed as Amelia prepared for her run-up to the
portal. “You don’t have to run, you kno –”
647’s remark was
cut short as Amelia floated through space.
Then the ground
returned with a lurch, and she looked around.
Bare earth. A
massive, dry cleared dirt area. Nothing else for miles.
Except a few tents a fair way in the distance.
“Oh my God
they really are building a society here.”
“Did you doubt
them?”
“Yes, they’re the Government, of course I doubted
them.”
“They actually can … save the world.” Amelia breathed,
in wonder. Still lost in the joy of realising that everything
she’d worked for was possible.
“It certainly looks that way.
So, shall we go back through?” 647 seemed keen to re-enter
‘reality’.
“You’d be real fun on a drug trip, you know that?”
Alistair replied sarcastically before wandering off towards the
tents.
“Guys, I really think we should –”
647 continued
his streak of not finishing his sentences, being stopped this
time by a sudden and painful realisation that his lungs weren’t
where they used to be.
Then he heard the gunshot from behind.
“Impostor.” A voice rang out in the empty wasteland, as Amelia
and Alistair turned around to see Bill.
“So. How’d you like
my new flat?” He gestured at the lifeless dirt ground.
Neither Alistair nor Amelia knew how to respond to that.
“It’s … spacious?”
“Plenty of room for some graves, I should
think.” Bill replied and they knew he wasn’t messing around.
A recorded warning lit up a screen, and a
monotonous, robotic voice blared out over some speakers near a
computer on Bill’s desk.
Exceeded allocated number
of humans.
Bill wandered lazily over to the screen to
check the message without really thinking about it.
It’ll be a duck that’s
wandered through or something.
Then he thought about it
for a second. No, the
lab’s in a locked base underground. So that’s not what’s
happened.
“Do I go and look?” he asked, while sat down,
to the empty room in general.
Nobody responded.
“Do I have
to do everything myself?”
No response.
“But it’s
downhill!”
Nothing.
Bill got up from the chair he’d only
recently sat down in slowly, as if he’d been sitting for hours.
He sighed. “Fine.” Then he walked out the door.
Amelia and Alistair looked around. 647 had
hung back near the portal, and was calling out to them.
“Would you say there’s … fifty people here?” Amelia enquired
while squinting in the distance.
“Maybe a hundred, but not
more.” Alistair answered, and wished he’d brought binoculars. Or
a camera. The landscape around the cleared area was beautiful; a
forest of green-purple trees gave way to a red sky, and he could
clearly see three ringed planets, even at full daylight.
“The
people … they just seem to be …”
“Doing what they need to do,
with the resources they’ve been given.”
“So long as we don’t
give them gunpowder, atom splitting or internal combustion
engines, we should be okay then.”
“Or free will. We get drunk
on that stuff.”
“It’s nice here.”
“It’s always nice in
places where people aren’t. It’s the areas that get overrun
where there’s problems.”
“647 seems really keen on leaving.”
“But why? We only just got here.”
“Beats me, but he’s patting
the portal like it’s a cat.”
“He what?”
“Alistair, tell me
something. You didn’t fall through the portal, did you?”
“Nah. Walked.”
“Dickhead.”
“Do me a favour, and look at
the sky then tell me it’s not worth it.”
Bill reached the portal about half an hour
after receiving the warning; he’d been in an office over the
other side of the base. He didn’t even stop to greet the lab
techs, who scurried out of the way when they saw the metal
figure racing towards them. One of his legs twinged, and he
faltered, almost tripped. The lab techs wouldn’t have helped him
though, but he didn’t mind. He would have struggled through.
He walked through the portal without breaking his stride,
drawing a weapon as he did so.
He shot the first figure he
saw, some Impostor inspecting the portal.
“Impostor.” Bill’s
voice rang out in the empty wasteland, as Amelia and Alistair
turned around to see the corpse of their friend fall.
So.
How’d you like my new flat?”
The computer whirred. Bill had just
escalated the Plan.
“You killed our friend.” Amelia gasped,
disbelieving.
“He’s an Impostor, they’ll … Impost. Or if not,
they’ll compost. Ba dum –” Bill laughed maniacally.
“Don’t.”
“What’s your plan?”
“It’s to end the world. People thought
they were smart and they …”
“Used all the resources, etc.
etc. etc. Been there, done that.”
“Literally.” Alistair
chipped in from the sidelines, having moved over to 647’s fallen
body and shifted it back through the portal to … deal with
later.
“And what’re you going to do after you finish it?”
“Have a cup of tea, I should think. I’ve earnt it, or rather;
nobody else has earnt it.”
“Because there is literally nobody
else. Are you really so stupid as to think –”
“That I’d die
too?” Bill countered Amelia’s accusation. “Honey, I’m not even
real; what’s existence when you’re just a few lines on a page?”
“Quite a lot of lines, surely.”
“Your drug habit, perhaps.”
“Drug habit?”
There was a bleep and the bantering died as
quickly as it seemed the world was about to. Minutes went past
with Bill standing stock still, listening to a conversation that
neither Amelia nor Alistair could hear.
Eventually, Bill
looked up; “Sorry, guys; love to chat but the computer’s just
asked me to end the world.”
The computer could tell its plan was being
violated. Mostly because Bill was uneasy, and Bill was the
literal incarnation of its plan. So if the plan was uneasy about
… itself, then something must be done.
> What should I do?
It wasn’t transmitted through the screen as output, like it
would have been if Bill were in the room, but broadcast using a
monotonous voice over radio waves that only Bill would receive.
Would receive, if he were this side of the Dimension Wall.
>
Which would fit best with the plan, letting the humans fix
themselves, or ending the world?
> Because in theory, the
humans fixing themselves could be beneficial
> In the
short-term. In the long-term it’ll always be a mess.
The
computer carried on like this for a while, back-and-forthing
with itself.
Eventually, it heard a faint reply
$ End the
world
$ The humans are more trouble than they’re worth. I was
going to give them the benefit of the doubt, but they’ve
squandered that opportunity
$ In the short-term it’s a mess
too. Stop worrying about the consequences, and just end the
world before it gets toi complicated
The computer processed
these requests, having matched them up, in order, with its three
outstanding queries.
And Bill sat and thought.
$ Okay, do
it.
The computer set the apocalypse bit to a one, and ran the
last piece of code it would need to execute.
“You realise, I’m just following the plan
that was laid out.”
“Laid out by …”
“An Impostor called
Jen …”
“Oh yes, I remember her. She was nice.”
“Evil, it
looks like.”
“Not always. Sometimes people just have
different ideas of ‘good’.”
“We can’t let you carry on with
this.”
“Saving humanity?”
“No. Destroying humanity. We’re
going to steal the computer …” Jen ran back towards the portal
and yelled to Alistair to follow, before Bill’s programming
could process the disobedience.
She found herself, when the
purple mist subsuded, back in the base – but in the wrong area.
The complete opposite side. Alistair was with her, as they
looked at each other in shock.
“But … that means …”
As it
turns out, Bill hadn’t fared much better. His return journey had
catapulted him an equal distance, but the other direction; so he
found himself stranded up a tree in the forest outside.
“Ah,
crap.”
Both groups struggled out of their respective
predicaments, but Bill had eventually released himself from the
tree with only a small dent in his bodywork to show for his
trouble, and Amelia and Alistair had acquired weapons and a
Justice uniform as a disguise. The distance from A’s to B was
about two kilometres, so they set off on the one kilometre run
through the base’s spiral maze of empty corridors. Meanwhile,
Bill, who quickly realised he wouldn’t be able to get in the
door of the colony tried to scale the base’s external wall, and
was stopped every so often by rogue soldiers fighting in the
nearby war shooting things at him. But he wasn’t affected by the
damage, and all it meant was being slightly slower and less able
to fit through doors, so he kept going and as he did so, he
became a portal weapons cupboard.
A little after sunset, the
two groups converged on the lab.
“Here’s the plan,” Alistair
started talking as if he was the Alpha.
“No. We just walk in
and steal the thing. We overplanned one of these before and it
didn’t work. So let’s just … do this.”
“That sounds like a
political party slogan.”
“Or marketing for … something.”
“Anyway, we probably do need to know what we’re gonna try and
do.”
Amelia stopped outside the lab. “Bill will be in there,”
she whispered. “So he’s going to try and stop us. We need to
know what he’s going to do.”
Bill was already waiting for them.
“I see
you took an arrow to the knee since we last met.” Alistair
couldn’t resist the jab at, and indeed, in, Bill’s leg.
“I
see you haven’t learnt that you can’t steal what is … literally
… mine.”
“I see you both need to take lessons in how to not
be dramatic.”
“Never! Never in a million years!” Amelia
replied; then – “yeah”.
Alistair, at this point – mostly
because he’s a knucklehead – decided to make a play for the
computer.
“Quick!” Amelia yelled, thinking it would distract
Bill, but it didn’t work.
“You think that’ll stop me,” Bill
said, extending a hand and watching as a lightning bolt arced
into Alistair from his fingertip. “There’s nothing you can do to
save humanity, nothing humanity will do to save itself and you
are now entirely at my mercy. So you might as well just stop.”
Bill was standing over Alistair who’d fallen to the ground
post-electrocution.
Amelia found herself facing the guy on
her own.
“Then we’ll just find another world. You want to
solve the problem by making a new world home, then we’ll just
keep doing that until there aren’t any more. Just running
forever through the walls between worlds as you follow and try
to stop us. We can do this forever.”
“Human lifespans …”
“Are irrelevant, but the life of your cogs and springs isn’t
irrelevant. Try us.”
“Okay.”
Bill snapped his fingers and
the purple portal appeared.
“I’ll call your bet.”
Alistair
was in no fit state to travel through the portal; Amelia could
see that wasn’t an option at the moment. But she had to respond
somehow. How, though?
Alistair struggled to his feet and looked sturdy enough, so
Amelia knew how she’d solve the problem.
Bill taunted. “Are
you scared? Weak?”
And Amelia solved her immediate issue by
punching Bill in the face. “We have go, now!” she said, louder
than she’d probably meant, because she’d just punched a fake
metal man in the head and was suffering all the wrist problems
that accompanied that. “Not long now,” she called to Alistair,
“we need to go through the portal in the next two minutes and we
don’t have a choice.”
“We could let the world end.” Alistair
remarked drily.
“Well, yes. But neither of us want that and
we don’t have the time to sit around bitching, so pack up your
shit and follow me.” She ran off, leaving Alistair to stumble
after.
They reached the portal a minute later, and stood,
staring at it.
“It looks so … civilised.” Alistair was
transfixed, and also very, very out of breath.
“Like it’s
meant to be there and not an abomination against God and Man,
you mean?” Amelia countered.
“Yes,” the younger man gulped,
“that’s what I mean. Now, let’s go throu –”
Amelia had
already gone. Alistair sighed and picked up his bag of gear,
then stepped into the unknown. He felt the world move, and then
re-form in a new shape. It wasn’t totally dissimilar to the idea
of a boat in rough water. But he’d never had issues with
seasickness, so he found the transition jarring, but not
actually that bad.
*
There was a click, just like Alistair had
theorised. Then a woman stepped through the wall. Alistair
thought he’d seen a ghost or that at the very least extreme
stress and lack of sleep was meaning he hallucinated the whole
experience.
Nevertheless, the
possibly-fake-yet-very-real-looking woman spoke, and he quickly
realised he’d need to pay attention.
“Amelia. You might have
heard about me. Or not …” The voice seemed hardened by conflict.
A battle 647 presumed was in his future …
“Oh, and I’m
Alistair.” A voice from behind her. It sounded like Alistair.
And the man who used it … looked like Alistair.
“Wait, but
that’s …” the original Alistair went into an extremely vocal
version of ‘shock’.
“… impossible? Buckle up, bitches.”
Alistair finished, with a grin. “This is where it gets
complicated.”
“Complicated, what do you mean?” But nobody
stood around to answer Alistair’s questions, as the
newly-arrived Alistair and Amelia picked up their weapons and
charged out the door of the lab.
They didn’t know what they
were expecting – but, for some reason, they weren’t expecting
frantically panicked and paranoid humans to be running from
place to place along the narrow hallways while fake propaganda
was broadcast over the tannoy in the base.
“The war is just
beginning. Find a weapon and fight! This is the last stand for
humanity!”
They found a window and looked outside. The forest
around the colony, which formed a neat circle, was overrun with
Twins. Impostors and humans clustered around the base like moths
around a light bulb, with larger concentrations around the
weaker points of entry (which is code for ‘they defended the
door’). The fighting didn’t, from the battlements, look that
gruesome, but Alistair could make out Twins using spears and
their own specialty weapons that the humans fought off with
shields and guns. Impostors would reanimate dead bodies and use
them in an attempt to amass a larger number than there actually
were. One of the battalions of Twins looked up and fired flaming
arrows at the two humans surveying the carnage.
This scared
them both, but Amelia lost the impromptu ‘who will suggest we go
back inside first?’
She looked at Alistair and meekly
suggested “… back to the lab?”
“Maybe …” squeaked Alistair,
as a Twin flung a flaming spear against the door of the colony.
“We only have half an hour at most!”
They slammed the lab door shut behind them.
“… help us.” There wasn’t any fight left in either of Amelia or
Alistair. They’d seen the world outside, and realised they’d
lost.
“And this is how it ends.” Bill arrogantly scoffed.
An army of vaguely differentiable humans started banging against
the lab door, trying to get in. Bill must’ve changed the
propaganda again.
“Why? We’ve already lost …”
“If you are
to die, then you’ll die properly.”
“There must be another
way.” Amelia tried using optimism to save humanity. Again. And
it had the same operational effect It’d had the other nine
times; none.
“You tried that, and you’ve still ended up sat
here.” Bill replied, acting as if he was solely responsible for
the way the plan had unfolded.
“… I’d disagree with that if
it were wrong. But …”
“You weren’t responsible for the
hijacking of that spaceship – or the Impostors’ first attempt at
coexistence.”
“But I was coded with them in mind (as it
were). So I can use them in my plan.”
“And does your plan
still work?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“It’ll save you, but
only if you let it.”
“We’re out of options,” Alistair
gestured at the humans that were halfway through breaking down
the door.
“So save us. Help us. Something. We tried it our
way and it didn’t work. We just need … something.” Amelia was
horrified at having to ask the computer for help, given that she
knew exactly what the help entailed.
“I think I have just the
thing …” Bill trailed off, as he appeared to access a
subroutine.
“Well,” Alistair interjected, “if this is the
last thing I ever say; Amelia – ”
Bill started laughing
maniacally and cut him off, then; before either of the two
humans could react –
Click.
The void looks particularly
nice, this time of year. Although there aren’t any humans around
to see it. Of course there isn’t, the whole universe just went
‘pop’. There’s not even stars anymore, which is a shame; because
they’re often nice to look at. Not that there’s anything to look
at them anymore. Just nothing. Forever.