Mind Warp, page 4
The robot lurches back. ‘Perhaps I can assist in another way,’ it says in that same creepy voice.
And as it speaks, the glowing eyes change. The two discs of red light become a pair of bright yellow dots at the centre of a circle of black. Then suddenly, and without any warning, it reaches out and seizes the wrench from Pat’s hand.
‘Woah! What’s going on?’ Pat says. ‘I—’
The wrench comes down hard on the top of his head. Pat collapses in a heap.
Jackson is frozen with shock, unable to believe what he is seeing. The wrench slams down a second time, and he slumps to the floor beside his friend.
The robot turns to the next one in the line. It reaches up behind its neck and activates it. Then, standing in front of the second robot, it raises an arm and presses the chest panel. There’s a fizzing crackle between them, and the second robot’s glowing eyes change, also becoming two hard yellow dots. The robot has communicated something. Something bad. And as I stand there, transfixed, all along the line robot after robot is activated and turned into a killer.
‘Belle! Belle!’ I whisper urgently. ‘Get me out of here!’
The concentric rings of dazzling white light appear at my feet, and I step into them.
‘So we now know what model of robot first rebelled,’ Belle says when I describe what I’ve just witnessed. ‘It’s a start. The next step is to track that first bad Ralph unit back in time through the memory banks. But with more than five hundred years to search through, it’s not going to be easy . . .’
She notices I’m shaking my head. ‘What is it, York?’ she says.
‘Not Ralph,’ I say. ‘I can’t call that thing back there “Ralph”. Ralph saved my life. Ralph was good. The robot I just saw back there was evil. It killed two men—’
‘All right,’ says Belle, cutting me short. ‘So what do you want to call it?’
‘I’m not sure. I . . .’ And then I remember the name Jackson Chung gave it. ‘Mark,’ I say.
‘Mark,’ Belle repeats.
‘For Mark 1,’ I explain.
She nods. ‘Of course. From now on, I shall refer to the bad Ralph unit as Mark. I shan’t forget.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, and suddenly feel stupid for making a fuss over the name of a robot. ‘It would be like if it was called Belle,’ I tell her. ‘Do you understand?’
Belle goes silent. She’s thinking.
‘You would not like it to be called Belle because you do not like it, but you do like me,’ she says at last, each word spoken slowly and precisely. She tilts her head to one side. ‘When you heard the name, you wouldn’t know how to feel.’
And I laugh. ‘That’s exactly it,’ I tell her.
‘I understand,’ she says.
She’s learned something new. Belle is always learning, and becoming more and more like a human as she does so. But just as I’m about to point that out to her, her expression becomes serious.
‘We need to find the moment when Mark’s primary protocol was altered,’ she says. ‘And why. If it was in that storage location in Launch Year 500 . . .’
She pauses as she downloads data from the black pod where our bodies, our actual bodies, are lying, rather than these virtual bodies that she has created for my benefit here in the Core.
‘There were still a few units active as late as Launch Year 293,’ she says. ‘Prepare to step through the portal when I locate the synaptic junction . . .’
I grip the mind-ladder and wait for the white-out. It swallows me up. When the light fades I’m back in the memory banks.
I’m on a raised walkway that overlooks a vast atrium. It’s another part of the Outer Hull I’ve been to before. An admin sector with the viewing deck up at the top. There is a visiglass elevator in front of me. I step into it.
Belle has warned me to keep to the reality of the holographic scenes I enter. I could walk through walls or closed doors, or float across open spaces, she tells me. But this would create ripples, disjoints in the digital flow. And that’s exactly what the virus scanners are looking out for. There’s no sign of them for now.
Unfortunately there’s no sign of the bad Mark robot either. But I keep looking.
The elevator speeds me down to the ground floor of the vast admin block. I find myself looking at a sign etched into one of the side panels.
COMMON OAK (Quercus robur)
Seedling planted: Launch Time, Year Zero
There, on the other side of the visiglass at the centre of the atrium is the oak tree. Standing in its dome-shaped grow-trough, it is nearly three hundred years old, and in its prime. It’s good to see it again. I last saw it back in the Outer Hull seven hundred years in the future, still going strong.
The elevator glides to a halt. I step out and look around me. The atrium is full of people. Scientists. Technicians. Bio-engineers. Moving between them are robots. Hundreds of them, and all of them sleeker and more high-tech than bad Mark. There’s a determined optimism in the faces of the people as they and their robot helpers carry out their work. I’m overwhelmed with a feeling of terrible sadness that all this is doomed to go so horribly wrong.
Belle and I must find out what triggered the robot rebellion.
For now, they all seem fine. As I leave the admin block and head off into the Outer Hull, I see more robots. Loads of them. Everywhere. They’re working on their own and in groups – monitoring the ventilation pipes, energy feeds and waste sluices of the tube-forest; maintaining the radiation pylons and cooling chimneys; transporting rubbish skips to the acid lakes.
It’s a wonderful scene. Humans and robots working together for the good of the Biosphere . . .
‘Descale the cold-water inflow unit,’ a wiry-looking man in a white boiler suit is instructing a tall, streamlined robot with articulated hand units.
The two of them are standing at the base of a tall oxy-hydro converter. A jet of steam is hissing out from an upper valve – too much steam, judging by the look of concern on the man’s face, and by the orange warning light that’s flashing on the control panel.
‘At once, sir,’ the robot responds. It glides towards the converter, arms outstretched and eyes flashing red. ‘My role is to serve.’
As I watch, the robot leans forward and checks the front panel. Then, using a boltdriver, it removes the inspection cover. There’s a loud glugging noise and, high above, the pressure of the steam increases. The air fills with a piercing high-pitched whistle. The orange warning light turns red.
‘Additional robotic assistance requested, sir,’ the robot says calmly, its metal head swivelling around to the man, who taps at a holo-pad.
‘Additional robotic assistance confirmed,’ he says.
Two more robots arrive. One is carrying a large box of tools. The other has a coiled length of tubing over one shoulder. The man turns away and, communicating between themselves with bleeps and flashing lights, the three robots work together to fix the fault.
Minutes later, it’s done. The steam has stopped hissing. The light becomes a constant green.
I’m feeling uneasy.
The robots have their own language and can speak to one another. Without humans understanding what they’re saying. Which is fine back here, where they’re working for the good of mankind. But disastrous in LY500, when the Rebellion begins.
I turn away. And then I see it.
It’s another robot, and it’s heading straight towards me.
It looks busy. It’s pushing a handcart that’s filled with parts: a reflex engine and some lengths of T-cable. With its flashing eyes and fixed smile, it seems amiable enough. But hovering above its spherical head unit is a glowing green light.
It’s the lazy 8 infinity symbol.
I turn away as slowly and smoothly as I can, then calmly cross the atrium, making sure I don’t disturb the digital flow of the holographic scene around me. I walk around a table, step sideways to avoid an oncoming maintenance technician, then dip my head to pass beneath a low-hanging cable.
All the time, out of the corner of my eye, I can see the virus-scanner zoid roaming back and forth, probing the air for any disjoints.
I want to call out to Belle to get me out of here right now. But I don’t dare. Even my voice, she has told me, is enough to create a ripple that the zoid would be able to detect.
If there’s any trouble, Belle has instructed me to clear my conscious thoughts and head back to the entry point.
And that’s exactly what I’m aiming to do. The last thing I want is to end up in another mind-trap. And even as this thought occurs to me, I push it aside and concentrate on simply putting one foot in front of the other, my mind as blank as I can manage as I continue making my way back to the elevator.
Halfway there, and a bunch of individuals burst into the room and head directly towards me. It’s a relief team of workers, their shift over. Three men. Three robots. They’re laughing and chatting together, almost like they’re all friends.
I remain on my guard. One flapping holographic hand that passes through me, one jutting elbow or one misplaced foot, and the ripple in the digital flow will give me away.
I skirt round them, desperately hoping that nothing alerts the virus-scanner zoid to my presence.
Through the doorway at last, I head along the walkway as fast as I dare. I come to the elevator. It’s all going well. So far. But I’m not safe yet. Other virus scanners are out and about. Six of them. They’re circling around me like predators cruising through the ocean zone, their sensors on max alert.
The circles of dazzling light are back and I’m just about to step into them when . . .
Hot swarf! Where did he come from? I wonder, as a tech-engineer with an armful of motherboards appears out of nowhere and walks straight through me.
The air ripples. A high-pitched whine erupts.
And suddenly the virus scanners are onto me, all six of the Lazy 8 zoids homing in from all directions.
‘Belle!’ I scream.
For a horrible moment, I don’t think she’s heard me. The zoids surround me, their arms extended. Then, out of nowhere, the white-out comes, the blinding light obliterating the scene in front of me.
I’m back on the mind-ladder. And thank the Half-Lifes for that! Or rather, thank Belle . . .
‘That was a close call,’ I tell her.
‘Too close,’ Belle says darkly. ‘They’ve locked on to the portal, York. The mind-ladder’s no longer safe . . .’
I stare at her, not wanting to believe her words.
‘Quick!’ she tells me. ‘You need to get out of here. Back through the portal and into another time and place. I’ll track you. Now, York! Now!’
I’m in the havens again. Back before they were destroyed. And they look wonderful.
Back in my time, everywhere in the Outer Hull is so scuzzy. Centuries of dust and grime cling to every surface. Parasitic plants grow in the breaks in the floor plates and sprout from cracks in the pipes and tubes. And it’s dangerous. Apart from killer zoids on the prowl, there are the countless weird mutant critters that have made it their home – winged predators, hordes of savage rodents and flesh-hungry creatures with claws and fangs – and are always hungry.
Here everything’s new and clean and spotlessly maintained. And fascinating.
A woman flies overhead, riding a small bike-like hovercraft. It’s sleek and silent, whisking its rider from A to B so much faster than if she was on foot – or even on one of the moving walkways that criss-cross the deck.
Where did they go, these hover-bikes? I wonder. Certainly there are none where I come from.
Just ahead of me, I see a man in a recliner. He’s wearing a holo-visor. There are other men and women around, on the balconies, on the walkways, all of them wearing the same visiglass devices. I don’t understand how they work, but I notice how the people kind of stare into mid-air, talking . . .
Fact is, the whole place is packed with pieces of equipment that are technologically way ahead of anything we’ve got. A cyber-drone takes someone’s temperature, while an environment unit cools the air with a soft mist. Mobile food-pods and aqua-jets offer refreshments. Holo-decks and tech-banks provide soothing images of oceans and sunsets from planet Earth.
The scanner on the wrist of the person before me reads LY207.
And not for the first time I find myself envying these humans from before the Rebellion. Where I come from, survival is a daily struggle. Back here, eight hundred years earlier, everything’s been designed to ensure the well-being – physical and mental – of humans.
They had it so much easier than us, I realize. These humans back at the Launch Times.
I turn to see a bunch of people relaxing by a swimming pool. Some of them are in the water. Others are sitting in padded recliners, or lying on mats. Adults, children – and a squad of sleek silver robots that are taking care of all their needs.
‘Greetwell, Marjorie,’ one of the robots says as a middle-aged woman approaches, a towel tucked under her arm. ‘If you’ll allow me.’
‘Greetwell, Boz,’ she says.
The robot takes her towel, flaps it open and spreads it out on a reclining chair. Then, having plumped up the cushions, it helps the woman sit down.
‘I have set the sun unit to thirty degrees Celsius. I hope it will be just the right temperature to help you recuperate after your hard day’s work,’ the robot, Boz, tells her. He hands her a sun visor and sprays an even film of UV-protector lotion over her face and body. ‘And if you’ll wait for just one moment . . .’
It shuffles off, to return seconds later with a silver tray balanced on its upraised hand. Its holo-face is smiling warmly.
‘Vita-juice and energy nibbles,’ it announces as it hands the tray over. ‘I anticipated you would be ready for a little light refreshment, Marjorie.’
‘Why, thank you, Boz,’ says the woman, beaming with delight. ‘That’s most thoughtful of you.’
This robot is like a shinier, more streamlined version of the old personal helps. It’s anticipating its owner’s wishes, using its own initiative. Again, it seems harmless enough. But just like the robot communication I witnessed in the atrium, this development will prove to be deadly when the robots rebel.
All at once, the rings of dazzling light appear in front of me and I hear Belle’s voice.
‘I’ve found a data clue that might lead us to the first killer robot. To bad Mark . . .’
‘The team of Mid Deck Zone 6 is pleased to announce an imminent new arrival,’ a deck-com announces. ‘Lin Tai the panda is about to give birth. For those interested, live visuals are available in vid-studios A and C and on comtech lenses, code two-nine-six-four . . .’
I’m standing in one of the inter-level transporters, surrounded by people, about to descend from the Outer Hull to the Mid Deck – which is really weird, cos I’m in the Mid Deck already, aren’t I? At least my body is. It’s lying in a life-pod in an underground lab in Launch Year 1000. And Belle’s in the pod beside me. But my consciousness is here, now, in the memory banks.
Which means we’re in the same place at two different times . . .
Here, now, it’s Launch Year 140, and I’m trying my best to take everything in as an extraordinary scene unfolds around me.
According to Belle, there are two main transporters on board, each of them a container-pod set into a broad shaft that connects the three levels of the Biosphere.
When the Rebellion took place, bio-engineers in the Mid Deck triggered a safety protocol that sealed them both off. But in Launch Year 140 they’re working just the way they should be. They were designed to shift vast quantities of cargo from one part of the vessel to another, or when there’s a need – like now – up to two hundred passengers.
That’s why Belle opened the portal at this point. She says that, so long as I don’t cause any digital ripples, it’s harder for the virus scanners to track me in such a density of data. I hope she’s right.
Once again, I’m struck by how happy and relaxed everyone looks. And with their high-def lenses and hyper-XT magnification offering them such a close-up view, I’m also surprised that they’re so keen to witness the birth of this creature first-hand.
I suppose it’s called human curiosity.
The container-pod I’m in is huge and square and clad with gleaming white polysynth panels. Soft electronic music is playing in the background. I guess it’s meant to be soothing, but the kids all round me are so excited, nothing’s going to calm them down.
‘What are pandas?’ one small boy is asking his mother.
‘Oh, they’re wonderful animals,’ a woman in a dark blue tunic tells him. ‘Big and fluffy, with black-and-white fur.’ She smiles. ‘And they eat nothing but bamboo.’
‘Bamboo?’
‘A kind of giant grass,’ she tells him. ‘It used to grow in the mountains of a place called China.’
‘The panda was once the symbol for an Earth organization set up to prevent animal extinctions,’ someone else chips in.
Up in the air, a holo-image of a creature with a white face and black eyes appears.
‘Aaaah!’ the kids sigh.
‘Until they were all wiped out,’ the man continues. ‘First in the wild. Then in zoos . . .’
The kids’ glee turns to a groan of disappointment.
‘But there’s been a special secret programme to bring them back, here in the Biosphere,’ the mother tells her teary-eyed son. ‘Using clone-tech and accelerated evolution. And it’s working. It’s into the third phase now. Five years ago they cloned a panda. A female. She’s been in solitary confinement ever since. But now the bio-engineers have just announced that she’s about to give birth – to a real live baby panda.’
And the kids all whoop and cheer. They’re clearly overjoyed.
Me? I’m feeling a tad uneasy. Mention of accelerated evolution has brought back a whole load of bad memories. Back here in Launch Year 140, scientists had it under control. But after the robot rebellion, when everything got messed up, this advanced tech escaped from the labs in Zone 8 and turned the entire Mid Deck area into a vast nightmare filled with mutant critters and weird-looking humans.
