Mind Warp, page 5
A chaos zone . . .
The container-pod comes to a smooth halt. The doors glide open and, along with everyone else, I step out into the Mid Deck.
And my jaw drops.
Even with the improvements that the bird-woman, Dextra, and her fellow scientists have started to make, the bio-zones of Launch Year 1000 are nothing like the amazing place spread out in front of me now. Buildings that were rusted and derelict stand tall and shiny; the broken walkways are up and running. Someone in front of us pauses at an info-post and checks the directions on the holo-image glowing above it.
‘Zone 6 is this way,’ he announces, and, stepping onto one of the moving walkways, is whisked away.
Along with hundreds of others, I head the same way.
As we glide by the crew’s living quarters and on through the Mid Deck, I stare in amazement at the bio-zones we pass. Every zone is kept separate from the one next to it. Each one is a magnificent reconstruction of a landscape I recognize from vid-screenings of life on Earth. They’ve got lookout towers, water troughs and feed-dispensers, and climate units that are suspended overhead on a network of cables. Every zone is enclosed by tall silver fences, with some of them electrified to keep the more dangerous species safely contained.
There are temperate woodlands that smell of sweet blossom and rotting vegetation. Sandy wastelands, the air oven-hot; then snowdrift plains, as cold as a deep freeze. Lush rainforest, dense jungle, swaying grassland and bubbling swamp. And the noise of the critters that live there! It’s deafening! Whooping and roaring and howling and chittering and squawking and screeching . . .
‘Look! Look!’ the children shout, pointing out to one another the animals and birds they spot in the savannah zone.
My gaze comes to rest on animal after animal. And I’m amazed. These are not the mutations that I saw when I was last here. No, these are animals that evolved over millions of years on Earth, looking the way I know they should. Elephants, ostriches and zebras gathered round watering holes. Giraffes nibbling at acacia leaves. Families of warthogs. Prides of lions . . .
‘A piece of Earth,’ I mutter and, not for the first time, I’m impressed by just how clever the people back at the Launch Times were.
We arrive at Zone 6 and people start to step down from the walkway. They make their way to the front gates, where several uniformed men and women, along with a group of robots, are waiting.
‘This way, this way,’ they’re saying as they lead the people into the zone.
And I go with them.
Walking in single file, we’re led up a rocky mountain path that winds its way through a dense forest of spiky bamboo. We come to a circular visiglass enclosure. The walls are tinted so that we can see in, but the creature inside can’t see out. One by one, all of the visitors take their seats on rows of urilium benches that surround the enclosure.
I stand at one end of a front-row bench. It would be so easy to walk through the visiglass wall into the enclosure, but that would create a telltale ripple in the data-stream and alert the virus scanners. So I remain outside.
A female panda is down on her haunches on a bed of chopped bamboo. She’s rocking backwards and forwards, and emitting this soft grunting noise.
The children are oohing and aahing.
‘It’s so cute,’ someone says.
Crouched down some way to the right of the panda is a man. He’s wearing a white lab coat. And on the far side of him is a robot, which, apart from the glow of its eyes, is inactive.
I’m disappointed. Despite the data clue that Belle detected, this is not bad Mark. It’s a similar model, but the head shape is different and the articulation of the arm units more sophisticated. Then I notice something else about it: something I don’t like the look of.
Sluice it! The robot’s armed.
It’s the first one I’ve seen carrying weapons back here in the past. I can hardly believe it. After all, their protocol clearly states that their role is to serve. But this one has the potential to injure, or even kill.
This, I realize, changes everything.
‘Come on, Lin Tai,’ the man is urging the panda gently. ‘You can do it.’
And I hear the low murmur of encouraging voices all around me.
The panda continues to rock, growling softly as she does so. And as I look more closely, I see, nestling in her thick fur, a small, pink creature with closed eyes and stubby arms and legs. With a low grunt, the panda leans forward to lick it clean – but as she does so, she rolls onto the tiny infant.
And everything seems to happen at once . . .
The baby panda lets out a high-pitched squeal.
The keeper cries out and springs to his feet.
And the mother panda – startled and frightened and desperate to protect her newborn infant – goes for him, claws slashing and teeth bared.
The robot suddenly activates. It pivots round, raises an arm and fires its laser at the panda. A bolt of energy zaps her in the chest, and the creature drops to the ground like a stone.
A howl of misery erupts outside the enclosure. The children wail and burst into tears.
‘It’s all right,’ the keeper is saying. He is crouching over the panda. ‘She’s just stunned. She’ll be all right. And . . .’ He checks the infant. ‘And the baby’s going to be just fine.’
He turns to the robot. ‘You,’ he says, angrily, ‘leave the enclosure.’
‘I believed you were in danger, sir,’ it says, its voice calm and level. ‘My role is to serve and protect you. That is my robotic protocol. I may not injure a human being –’ its voice grows slightly louder and clearer – ‘or through inaction cause a human being to come to harm. I had no option but to fire—’
‘Now!’
The robot turns obediently away. But I’m left shocked.
At some time in the past, someone must have decided to give the robots weapons. And what I have just seen in the panda enclosure proves that the robots were prepared to use them.
True, by protecting the human keeper from the animal attack, the robot was still keeping to the first law of its robotic protocol. But it has been given the potential to kill. And I know just how important – and deadly – that’s going to be when the robots rebel.
My past is their future. If only there was something I could do to warn them. But of course, there isn’t. And as the robot shuffles from the enclosure, the portal appears and I slip silently through it.
‘That wasn’t the robot we were looking for, Belle,’ I tell her back on the mind-ladder. ‘If we do find it—’
‘When we find it,’ Belle corrects me.
‘When we find it,’ I repeat, ‘what then?’
‘Then we track the record of it back through the memory banks until we find the exact moment when its primary protocol was altered.’
‘The exact moment?’ I ask.
‘Yes, York,’ she says. ‘Only by seeing the exact moment the protocol was altered and the robot turned bad will we be able to identify the glitch. You see, York, it could be a billion different things – a malfunction in the manufacturing process, a speck of dust, a slight variation of temperature, a careless slip . . . A tiny glitch. Who knows what might have caused it? All I know is that something small caused a huge change.’
‘You mean like that old story I heard from Earth that the flap of a butterfly’s wing can cause a hurricane on the other side of the planet?’ I ask.
She nods. ‘Chaos theory,’ she says. ‘Exactly that, York. But if we can spot what caused the glitch, we can take that information back to LY1000.’
‘And save mankind?’ I say.
Belle doesn’t answer my question. Her face is taut with concentration.
‘The virus scanners are still monitoring the portal to the mind-ladder,’ she says. ‘I’ve located a digital signature that might be evidence of a personal-help unit in Launch Year 38 that looks promising.’
‘You mean Mark?’ I say.
‘Maybe,’ says Belle. ‘Prepare to let go, York.’
At first I have no idea where I am. Some kind of great hall. But then, as I make sense of the tall, curved objects that stand in a line on raised plinths along both side walls, my heart gives a leap.
These are mind-tombs.
There are hundreds of them. For the moment, they’re empty and in blackness. But one day, I know, they will all bear the radiant faces of the Half-Lifes.
I hear the sound of voices singing a slow, sombre chant. It’s coming from a corridor to my left.
Little by little, the chanting grows louder. It echoes round the vaulted ceiling, far above my head. Then, at the entrance, a figure appears. Dressed in a long black cape, the hood raised, he’s at the head of a procession of men and women who are filing slowly and solemnly into the dimly lit hall.
I retreat into the shadows to watch.
I’ve never experienced anything like it before. The black robes that trail along the floor. The mournful singing. The slow steady thump-thump of heavy boots as, one after the other, the figures move across the hall. Hovering in the air between the tenth and the eleventh in line is a remote-control stretcher with two monitors – one glowing, one black – attached to its side. There’s a motionless body lying on the stretcher.
I swallow uneasily. This is some kind of death ceremony. No sign of bad Mark though.
By the time the last person in the procession enters the hall, there are about fifty men and women gathered there. They move into position. One of the mind-tombs, I now see, has been removed from the line and is standing on its own at the centre of the gleaming floor. The hovering stretcher comes to a halt before it, with the dead man’s head close to the curved casing at the front. The black-robed mourners form a circle around them.
Suddenly the chanting stops. The figure at the front of the procession steps forward and lowers his hood. He’s a tall, thin man. And he looks distraught.
‘We are gathered here for David Atherton,’ the man says, his reedy voice cutting through the silence. ‘He was a dependable colleague and a wonderful friend.’
Atherton? I know who that is! I met him as a Half-Life on the viewing deck of the Outer Hull.
I must be in Year 38. Thirty-eight years after the Biosphere was launched from Earth. That’s the year he told me he’d died.
‘People credit me, Samuel Marston, mission commander,’ the man continues, ‘with the creation of this great space mission of ours. The Father of the Biosphere, they call me. And it is true – it was my dream to leave the dying Earth with our precious cargo, examples of all that was good about our planet, and journey to a new world for humankind to colonize.’
He pauses and I see his eyes mist over.
A dream . . . And that is what it would have remained, had it not been for David Atherton.’
The circle of figures mutter their agreement, and I see their heads nod up and down.
‘For it was David Atherton who made it all possible,’ Marston goes on. ‘He coordinated the building of our vessel. He organized the launch. And since the Biosphere departed the Earth, it was he, with responsibility for two thousand crew and twenty thousand robots, who made our mission a success. So far. Now we must learn to cope without him. Except . . .’
Marston raises a hand and gestures towards the mind-tomb. It begins to glow, and loops of red light flow up and down the curved outer casing. At the same time, bands of green light encircle the hovering stretcher and ripple along the motionless body upon it.
‘Sadly David Atherton’s body is on the point of giving out. But his mind,’ he goes on, his outstretched fingers flicking from the first monitor to the second, where a series of jagged lines are moving across the screen, ‘is as sharp as it ever was. And it is his mind – his wisdom, his knowledge, his memories – that will live on in this, the first mind-tomb to be activated, so that in death David Atherton might guide us the way he did when he was alive. Forever.’
Once again, a murmur of approval ripples round the hall.
As I continue to watch, something happens. The coloured lines begin to fuse. The red of the mind-tomb and the green of the body come together to form a great swirling dome that encloses them both and glows an intense golden yellow. Brighter and brighter it shines, and as it does so, the air fills with a piercing whine – before abruptly cutting out.
The afterglow fades, and I see that the mind-tomb now has a face glowing from within it. The jowly, smiley face of an old man with short greying hair and clear blue eyes.
Atherton’s face.
The face nods at Marston, then at the gathering of people around him. ‘Greetwell,’ it – he – says softly.
And, as one, everyone in the hall responds. ‘Greetwell.’
With the ceremony over, the crowd of people starts to file out. Soon the hall is empty. Only Marston remains.
The man is grieving, the expression on his face grim. He stoops down over the hovering stretcher and pulls the shroud back to reveal his dead friend. He wipes away a tear, then looks up at the Half-Life.
‘I will come and talk with you often, David, old friend,’ he says.
And Atherton smiles, his holographic face glowing from within the mind-tomb. ‘I hope that it will be a long time before you join me here,’ he says. ‘But when you do, it will be a price worth paying in order to continue our work. Guiding the crew, advising them, counselling them . . .’
Marston gives a small nod. ‘It will,’ he agrees.
But as he turns away I see a look pass across the mission commander’s face – a look of barely concealed horror.
He strides across the hall to the entrance. And there, standing in the doorway, is a personal-help unit. I gasp. Has Belle done it?
Is this Mark, the robot that went bad? It certainly looks like him. The same model. And though it’s difficult to see clearly in the dim light, I think I can see a scratch down the left side of its head.
‘Follow me,’ Marston tells the dumpy robot as he leaves, and the two of them head together down a long shadowy corridor.
I’m about to follow them, when the floor gives a sudden lurch and everything goes black . . .
With a violent jolt, I gulp at the air and sit up. I open my eyes.
Belle’s looking down at me. She’s holding me tightly by the arm. I’m lying in the pod in the Mid Deck. Behind her is the chief scientist of the Mid Deck bio-zones, Dextra. I’ve got to know her well during my time here. She is a genetically modified human with feathered wings, which I see quivering at her shoulders as she looks back at me.
‘Oh, York,’ she says, as she reaches forward and wipes the sweat from my brow. ‘We lost all power to the life-pods for a moment. And we thought we’d lost you too.’
My head’s swimming and my legs tingle with pins and needles.
As Dextra carefully disconnects the brain monitors and sustenance feeds, I feel the suckers tugging at the skin on my forehead and temples, then hear a soft, squelchy hiss as air gets in and, one after the other, they come free. There’s a sharp pain in my arms as the tubes are pulled from my veins.
‘Are you all right, York?’ the bird-woman asks.
Her voice seems louder than usual. More . . . I don’t know. I can hear every sound she’s making so clearly. The shifting vowel sounds as her mouth changes shape.
And the way she looks!
It’s like I’m staring at her through a magnifying glass. I can see every pore on her skin, every hair on her head, every feather in her wings. I’ve never seen everything so clearly before.
I look round me. The lab seems to be throbbing with dazzling colour. And the computer banks. And the people working at them. The tables, the tools, the cabinets, the racks, the overhead lamps: gaudy and crystal clear, the whole lot. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s like I’m seeing everything in three dimensions for the very first time.
‘Are you all right?’ Dextra says again. She sounds concerned.
‘I’m fine,’ I tell her, and, as if to prove it, I climb out of the pod.
But too quickly. I feel dizzy and my legs go weak. I reach out and grip the side of the pod to steady myself, and close my eyes, waiting for the spinning to stop.
‘How long were we down there?’ I hear Belle asking Dextra, and to me her voice echoes strangely.
‘Eight days,’ comes the reply.
Eight days! I can hardly believe it.
Belle turns to me. ‘The transportation’s taken a lot out of you,’ she says gently. ‘I created the mind-ladder to help you navigate safely. But you’re human. And the human brain is fragile.’ Her voice drops to a low whisper. ‘I hope no damage has been caused—’
‘We’ll run some tests,’ Dextra breaks in, and she takes my arm.
And hot swarf! The feel of that! It’s incredible, like every nerve ending on my skin is raw.
I open my eyes again. Dextra and Belle are both looking at me. My head’s still swimming, but my legs are feeling a bit more sturdy now.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask.
‘It’s what happens when you’ve spent any time in the pod,’ says Dextra. ‘While you were inside it, everything you experienced was in your mind. All holographic images from the memory banks. Now it’s for real – and all the more vivid for that.’
‘It’s like my senses are on overload,’ I tell her.
‘Which means that this should taste extra delicious,’ comes a voice, and I turn to see my friend Cronos, another scientist with modified wings, walking towards me. He has a tray of food and drink in his hands. He frowns. ‘You are hungry, I take it?’
‘So hungry!’ I say.
He smiles. ‘Then follow me.’
We head through the door into the next room. It’s small, with a low ceiling and shuttered windows. Cronos sets the plates and mugs down on a table, and I pull up a seat opposite him. Then, stomach rumbling and mouth watering, I tuck in.
