The Paradox Paradox, page 25
Iscah grabbed a magazine from the nearby stack, threw it up into the air, and caught it.
‘Seems alright to me.’
‘Here? Sure,’ nodded Theo. ‘But you go thirty, maybe fifty centimetres out there, past the walls and windows, beyond the range of the gravity generators, and you’ll be crushed in a heartbeat.’
Theo looked around for a prop but couldn’t find anything. With a shrug, he downed his drink and threw the glass over the railing of the balcony. It flew for a tiny moment, before plummeting to the ground in the blink of an eye, the sound of its obliteration unable to fight the intense gravity.
‘Best to stay indoors then,’ Eureka whistled.
‘Do you mind?’ Kez snapped suddenly, slapping her magazine down onto her lap. ‘I’m trying to read.’
‘I’m sure you’ll crack it one day,’ Theo laughed as he handed Iscah a drink, one side red, one side green.
‘Wrong way,’ she said. ‘I think you’ll find I asked for green on the left.’
Wordlessly, Theo spun Iscah’s glass 180 degrees in her hand, sending a splash of alcohol sailing onto the floor. The floor detected the spill and absorbed it with a small slurp, ferrying it off into the colossal maze of waste pipes hidden below. Iscah and Theo watched this little miracle of technology, before turning their attention back to a still fuming Kez.
‘Why do you want to read anyway?’ Theo asked, leaning against the balcony. ‘I thought you came here to relax.’
‘I am relaxing,’ Kez replied. ‘These articles are scientifically designed to be as mentally untaxing as possible.’
‘If you’re not reading, you’re thinking,’ said Eureka.
‘Exactly,’ said Kez, reopening her magazine to an article about living on a tiny street in Leith. ‘It’s therapeutic.’
‘When did therapeutic start to mean relaxing?’ Iscah asked, rattling the ice cubes around her immediately empty glass. ‘Therapy should be like vomiting. It makes you feel better, but it’s an awful experience.’
Theo chuckled, nodding in agreement.
‘You should start a spa based on awful experiences,’ he said. ‘Instead of a sauna, you work up a sweat being chased around the resort by a murderer.’
‘Yet it wouldn’t be as awful as the plunge pool afterwards,’ Iscah said. ‘Nothing says relaxing like simulating falling through ice.’
‘Too awful? We’ll cut it,’ Theo giggled. ‘So, that’s a yes to the chainsaw, and a no to the ice water. Anything else?’
‘Massages,’ said Eureka. ‘But the hole you put your face in is over a massive cliff.’
‘So all you can see is a ruddy great drop?’ asked Theo. ‘You’d tense up! It would be like massaging a brick.’
‘You’re not thinking it through!’ said Eureka. ‘If someone could massage that level of tension out of you …’
‘… best massage of your life!’ finished Iscah.
The three of them fell about laughing, their howls flying over the balcony and dissolving into the vacuum beyond, a moment that was almost immediately ruined by the beacon beeping from the room behind them.
‘Job’s up,’ Theo said, as the four of them re-entered the penthouse, Kez throwing the magazine aggressively onto her now abandoned lounger as she left. Theo picked up the beacon and compared its readings with a map projected from his keyring. ‘Our next delivery is getting to us in roughly fifteen minutes, eight floors down.’
‘Let’s head out then,’ Kez said, leading the group to the elevator. ‘Mission time!’
Nobody moved. The only thing to follow her was the gaze of her peers.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘They have these massage robots down there that are banned in our time just because a few people with weak backs didn’t read the instructions. Now, come on. We literally haven’t got all day.’
‘I’ll get the next one,’ said Iscah, chauffeuring everyone but herself into the elevator. ‘Meet you back up here before home time.’
‘Don’t stay out too late,’ Theo said, following Eureka and Kez out of the penthouse. ‘And don’t talk to any strangers!’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ grinned Iscah, starting to stretch. ‘This is what I do best.’
Theo would have replied, but Kez’s rampant pressing of lift buttons caused the doors to slam shut in his face.
* * *
The large man rewound the footage, watching again as the skinny fellow picked up the device from the white marble countertop. He zoomed in, expanding the video until a pixelated image of the device filled the screen.
With a grunt, he slid a hand into his jacket pocket, withdrawing a neatly folded piece of paper. He held it up next to his monitors, comparing the device on the screen with the sketch on the paper. He leaned forward, picking up a comms device from his desk, and flicked it on with a burst of static.
‘It’s them,’ he said. ‘Move in at your own discretion.’
* * *
If there was one thing that Theo believed in, it was context. If somebody or something was acting up, he always tried to think of the reasoning behind it. Maybe the guy who snapped at you had just lost a parent. Maybe the creature that tore your arm off was just hungry. Maybe the table that just crashed into your shin was actually put there by you in the first place. Lifeforms, Theo thought, were good overall, which is why it was so unusual that he wanted to throttle the woman talking to him all the way to death, and then some.
‘So, to cut a long story short,’ the tall woman said for the third time this story, ‘he killed himself not long after!’
The woman, she’d said her name but Theo had forgotten it deliberately as an act of rebellion, hooted with laughter, her spindly hands wrapped several times around a drink that visibly steamed from its alcoholic contents.
‘Funny,’ Theo said, almost biting his tongue clean off.
‘Of course, we managed to fudge his record a bit,’ the woman continued, unaware that her entire audience of one was a single step away from having her euthanised. ‘Bit of stealing from the company here, a few extra times late there, and suddenly, no compensation for the wife!’
More hooting. Theo wondered if there was any judge in the galaxy who would convict him. Mercifully, before Theo tested his theory, the woman’s comms device rang.
‘Excuse me, I must get this,’ she said, rolling off her lounger onto her pencil-thin legs and striding away across the pool area, like a hateful pair of scissors.
‘Take your time,’ Theo said, flicking a rude gesture as she disappeared around the door. ‘Better yet, never come back.’
‘Who’s the prick?’ Kez asked from two loungers away, her back being manipulated like you wouldn’t believe by a robot that looked like an inside-out carwash. Theo frowned, hoping she wasn’t damaging her uniform.
‘A forgotten woman,’ he said. ‘Nothing more.’
‘I thought we’d be done with greed by now,’ Eureka said disappointedly. ‘A hundred and seventy years of zero scarcity, and people like her still exist.’
‘Mercifully, she’s the last of a dying breed,’ said Theo. ‘Then again, it was never about scarcity. Earth could have fed, clothed, and housed its entire population by the twentieth century, yet it took hundreds of years more. Why?’
‘Power,’ said Eureka.
‘Bastards,’ corrected Theo. ‘Utter, contemptable bastards who hoarded wealth for no reason other than to hoard it.’
‘Money,’ nodded Kez into her pillow. ‘I learned about it in history. Those metal circles and paper squares. You used to swap them for bread or goats.’
‘Those were the two, yeah,’ giggled Eureka. ‘It’s comforting to know that all that shite is history.’
‘Yet here we are,’ exclaimed Theo, leaping to slippered feet and indicating the translucent diamond walls. ‘Greed’s last stand. We shouldn’t be celebrating this place in our time. We should be throwing it into the sun.’
In an attempt to calm himself, Theo took a lap around the otherwise mercifully empty room, circumnavigating the crystal-clear pool in the middle. He longed to throw himself into it, to shatter its glasslike surface, and to just float, staring up at the ridiculous amount of bamboo that made up the ceiling, hoping that the water would cool off this sudden mood he found himself in.
As Theo walked passed the icy plunge pool that sat between the glass sauna doors, a beep emitted from his dressing gown.
‘Finally,’ he said, muting the beacon with a jab and heading back to his team.
‘Pass,’ Kez moaned, as she used the last of her nanobots to increase the length of the straw on her nearby drink, making the effort of lifting it from the table a thing of the past.
‘Come on, Kez,’ Theo said, making sure to not aim his annoyance at innocent bystanders, yet taking a small amount of joy in flicking off her e-masseuse as he walked by. Kez didn’t reply. She just groaned an elongated groan until Eureka switched her robot back on again.
‘If we die, we’ll come get you,’ Eureka said. Kez, still face down on the lounger, gave a wilted thumbs up.
‘Ten seconds,’ said Theo, confirming the time on the beacon. ‘Be prepared for anything.’
‘Anything?’ asked Eureka. ‘How?’
‘Oh,’ said Theo, weighing up the words for the first time. ‘I dunno. Bend your knees?’
As Eureka prepared for anything, the rift opened, flinging a hunk of time machine into the universe with explosive force. Mercifully, it had opened at the deep end of the pool, which severely dampened the resulting detonation. However, almost the entirety of the pool’s crystal-clear water turned into a foaming plume, crashing into the bamboo ceiling before cascading back down and rushing towards the walls. With the agility of a trained hunter, Theo leapt backwards and quickly scaled a large bamboo sculpture. With the strength of a starship captain, Eureka leapt up and latched herself tightly onto a strong wall bracket. With the will of someone who faked stomach aches to get out of school sports days, Kez was taken by the oncoming tsunami, dashed against the closest wall to her, and dragged into the pool along with a confused massage robot.
‘Kez!’ Theo and Eureka cried simultaneously, hopping down onto the wet tiles. Before Theo had a chance to dive in heroically, a half-melted old woman’s face emerged above the waves and began to doggy paddle towards the edge of the pool. As she climbed out of the still sloshing water she smiled, causing the face to grin, sideways.
‘I better get time off for this,’ she said, handing over a dripping chunk of metal to Theo. ‘One piece of time trash, as ordered. Mission complete.’
‘What is it?’ Eureka asked, leaning in to get a better look.
‘A fragment of metal,’ said Theo, running his hand over a slightly curved chunk the size of a postcard, its surface burned to a crisp. ‘Maybe from the hull of the machine?’
‘Just a lump of metal?’ Eureka asked, inspecting the debris before passing it back, unimpressed. ‘Even the mystery is taking time off.’
Kez sneezed, causing her melted old lady face to wobble like horrific jelly.
‘You need to turn that off,’ Theo said, trying not to make eye contact with it. He had enough problems with nightmares already. ‘Now.’
‘I thought we weren’t supposed to do that,’ she said, each syllable causing the pensioner’s lips to flap around like two beached fish held together with an elastic band.
‘We’re supposed to keep a low profile,’ Theo said. ‘This isn’t that.’
‘Fine,’ said Kez, tapping her disguise off. ‘But if Osheen bollocks me for this, I’m going to bring you here again for my birthday party.’
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Theo gasped.
‘Try me,’ growled Kez. With a scathing stare as a warning shot, Kez threw a towel over her sodden lounger, ready to relax again, despite the pool still consisting of waves you could surf on.
‘No, no,’ said Theo. ‘We’ve got to head back to the penthouse and meet Iscah.’
‘In like forty minutes,’ moaned Kez. ‘I’ll be up then.’
‘Kez.’
‘Fifteen?’ bid Eureka, dragging a lounger over to Kez’s. ‘Twenty at an absolute push.’
Theo laughed and shook his head, giving in to the mutiny. He waved them off and took his leave, hoping to never set eyes on a bamboo divider ever again.
‘Thanks,’ said Kez oddly, as if the words were new in her mouth. ‘I appreciate the backup.’
‘Anytime, Kez,’ winked Eureka. She sighed happily, ticking another mission off in her head. Sure, the pool floor was in disarray, two of the disguises were out of action, and a robot had drowned, but at least she was one step closer to Lily. She lingered on this happy thought just long enough not to notice the bag slipping over her head, muffling her cries for help.
* * *
Iscah dropped to the ground, her body weight nullifying the clatter of the vent cover that came down with her. She paused, listening for sounds of life. Voices, she thought. Ahead, two. Behind, clear.
Back it was. She sprinted down the corridor, spotted a backup vent, leapt a flight of stairs, and paused again.
Ahead, clear.
She continued, lost in this labyrinthine building, her keyring discarded the second she realised what was going on. She needed an access panel, something to buy her time. Something to—
Ahead, two. Shit.
She spun back on herself, heading for the vent she’d tagged earlier. If she was fast enough she’d—
She wasn’t fast enough.
Ahead, two. Behind, two.
* * *
‘Oh, we need to tidy this place up,’ Theo muttered to himself as he re-entered the pool area ten minutes later.
The twenty or so loungers that had once sat neatly around the pool now looked like they were post-kaiju attack. Every plant looked like it had just run an underwater marathon, and there was still a massage robot sitting at the bottom of the once again perfectly still water.
With a sigh, Theo got to work, straightening sculptures, returning soggy magazines to racks, and tipping slightly chlorinated water out of plant pots. He was just about to start folding towels when a thought occurred to him. This pool room, while exclusive, wasn’t this exclusive. He wasn’t here to tidy. He was here to collect his team.
Where is everyone?
After moving the final lounger back into place, Theo spotted a mark on the floor, right next to where Eureka, Kez, and he had been sitting. He dropped to all fours to investigate, running a fingernail through it, cutting it in two.
Rubber, he thought, confirming it with a sniff. Shoe soles.
He rotated himself around the mark, noting that it was only present on the north-facing side of the tile ridges. That’s when he spotted another.
Heavy feet, he thought. Security?
He stood, eyes narrowed as he ran through options. First, he pulled his keyring off his finger and pelted it into the pool. Second, he heard a scream.
‘Unhand me at once!’ a woman’s voice echoed from nearby. ‘Do you know who I am?!’
Theo did. As silently as he could, he slipped through the closest doorway, gently closing the glass door behind him and crouching low beside it to survey without being seen. It was then he remembered that the room he had entered was a seriously hot sauna.
While Theo was chastising himself, two heavily armed and armoured guards came stomping through in perfect synchronisation, each holding an arm of the awful woman crossed behind her back.
Androids? Theo wondered, shrinking back as they passed by, trying to snatch a glimpse of what lay beyond the curved black masks that covered their faces. With a squeak, the guard on the left slipped slightly, releasing his grip on the woman to steady himself on a sculpture made of several rings of interlocking wood. The woman took this opportunity to spin around and deliver a particularly nasty kick into the other guard’s plums. He went down, squealing.
Not androids then, Theo thought, leaning back as the woman ran in his direction. He scurried backwards, hiding under one of the raised wooden benches as she came crashing in. She grabbed the sauna ladle, wielding it viciously as one of the guards entered behind her.
‘Don’t come any closer or I’ll—’
Theo never found out how exactly the woman was going to use her ladle in battle, because a single shot from a handgun sent her head snapping backwards, her body following in its arc. Her skull cracked off the open stove in the centre of the room which sizzled, evaporating the flecks of blood that now coated it.
‘Our orders were to not kill anyone,’ the second guard said as he entered the room.
‘Our orders were to keep casualties to a minimum,’ the first guard growled, barging his way out of the sauna. ‘We’ve got a collection to make.’
With a grunt, the second guard followed, allowing the door to swing back and forth for a time. Theo counted to thirty before moving, each second longer than the last, his eyes locked onto the wooden slats above his head, for fear of what else he might accidentally glance upon. After counting, he slowly approached the door, leaning as much as he could against the wall. It looked like nobody was in the pool area, but he could only see half of it.
Focus, he thought, taking a hot breath to calm himself. It didn’t work. There was a new taste in the air, besides the birch and notes of eucalyptus. A metallic twang. Frying blood.
With a gag, Theo wrenched open the door and re-entered the pool room, taking a second to appreciate how much cooler the air was out here. He didn’t have long to rest, as distant squeaking boots indicated the upcoming arrival of more guards. He turned and ran, back towards the elevator, until boots coming the other way stopped him in his tracks again. Quickly, he looked for a new hiding place, but only one was available to him. With a groan of regret, he threw himself into the plunge pool, the icy water immediately taking his breath away and writing off his disguise. Moments later he surfaced, just as four pairs of boots were walking by.
