Memory Clouds (The Circuit Book 1), page 30
The idea of wading through human effluent was a much happier one than it would have been an hour ago, thanks to the Moodzec tablets taking effect. Jake climbed in, but not until Dinah had beaten him to it. He dragged the sewer cover back over the hole and the light of the world was extinguished. His foot searched for the next rung of the ladder and carefully he inched his way to the bottom. The stench of wastewater permeated the atmosphere and dampness hung in the air. It was hard to breathe normally without wanting to gag.
“A good choice,” echoed Alfonso’s voice through the darkness. “Now we must hurry. Your colleagues will be here any minute.”
“But they’ll still be able to track me,” said Jake desperately.
“Moodzec is a wonderful thing,” replied Alfonso before grabbing Jake by the arm and dragging him away.
*****
A dozen uniformed figures crawled up the alley on their hands, knees and bellies. Shiny gun barrels trained on the narrow space in front of them. Several bins lay on their sides and items of litter were being chased around the ground by the wind. A ginger cat leapt from the shadows and clawed its way up the far wall. It narrowly avoided a volley of bullets that pulverised the brickwork. Dawes raised an arm from his position in front of the snipers to sanction an immediate ceasefire. He knew speccies were elusive, but he was fairly sure they weren’t felines. There was nothing here other than a dozen paranoid privates and the faded red dot that traced Jake Montana to this spot. Dawes stood up and brushed the dust from his trousers. The rest of his Corridor followed suit and waited for his next instruction.
“Where is Montana?” huffed Dawes, taking a cigar out of his pocket.
“I can no longer see him on my proximity sensor, Major, sir,” replied Needham. “But he was definitely heading in this direction.”
Several plumes of smoke surrounded Dawes as he puffed like a set of bellows to get his cigar burning.
“Sprout, come here.”
“Yes. Major, sir.”
“Why did you raise the alert?”
“I saw him running after a felon, sir.”
“Describe him.”
“About six-foot, white helmet, full uniform…”
“Not Montana, you fool, the speccy!”
“Oh. Latino complexion, slim, curly hair, muscular…”
Dawes’s eyes widened and a slow scowl ripped across his cheek muscles. Sprout’s description tapered off in reaction to it.
“Does that description sound like a speccy to you?” Dawes said angrily.
“Not really, Major, sir,” replied Sprout apologetically.
“We all know that speccies are short, generally have pointy fangs and wide foreheads.”
Everyone nodded knowingly.
“Sorry, Major, sir,” offered Sprout cowering in shame.
“But why have we lost Montana’s signal, sir?” said another voice.
“Because he’s a deserter!” shouted Dawes so the whole street could hear him.
“How can he be?” replied Needham. “We’d be able to track him, wouldn’t we?”
“I’d like to ask him that very question,” said Major Dawes who received an alert to his memory feed at the same moment. “Hold on, I’m getting instructions.”
The Corridor waited patiently as Dawes consumed a new set of intelligence.
“Right, men, new orders.”
Most privates didn’t fully understand the Archivist’s chain of command. They didn’t need to know. They had their major and that’s all they really needed. Privates did what a major told them. But who did majors take their orders from? They had five stripes on their arms and planned their strategy by arguing with people of a similar importance factor. If they couldn’t agree, who resolved the conflict? Who was more important than the vitals?
“Who are the orders from, Major, sir?” said Needham bravely.
“A Memory Hunter,” replied Dawes.
An uncomfortable energy swelled and passed between them. Even Yazidi’s pulse rate increased, and he wasn’t frightened of anything.
“I’ve never engaged with a Memory Hunter before,” said Sprout nervously.
“Nothing to worry about.”
“I’ve heard they can give you cancer,” mumbled Sprout.
“Idiot,” replied Dawes. “This one has given me something much more interesting.”
“What?” asked a few privates at once.
“Montana’s position! Stand by, men, transferring new data to your cloud’s trace. Look for a file sent by a Brother Job.”
*****
Alfonso stopped abruptly in the darkness. Other senses jumped to his aid to compensate for a lack of vision. A powerful stench of sewer grime and stale food filled Jake’s nostrils, and standing water was leaking into his cheap, plastic, company-issued boots. Not that he was complaining. It was all brilliant, although when you were on Moodzec being kicked repeatedly in the spine didn’t dampen your spirits. Alfonso’s sense of smell navigated them a few paces forward until they felt slimy metal under their outstretched fingers.
Jake felt his hands being guided towards a second ladder and a poke in the ribs encouraged him to climb. At the top, only twenty feet above the floor of the sewer, the ladder ended. He grappled with another sewer cover, finally lifting it up and letting light back into the world. Climbing fast behind, Alfonso shoved him forward in haste. Back on the street, and directly in front of him, a waist-high padlocked metal gate took up position between two crumbling red-brick walls. Behind it a cul-de-sac had been carved in the face of the endless row of buildings like a chunk chopped from a tree by a lumberjack’s axe. At the bottom of the three sides a shadowy patch of soil struggled to cultivate shabby strands of grass. On the floors to either side of him frames that once held glass panes had been bricked up and in the corners at the far ends two wrought-iron fire escapes criss-crossed up through the floors.
“Take the left one,” said Alfonso, pushing him in the centre of his back with his palm.
“This place is awesome,” hummed Jake fully under Moodzec’s clutches. “What’s up there?”
“I bet it’s Santa!” burst out Dinah excitedly.
“That’s where you’ll find the rest of us,” replied Alfonso.
“I’m certain Dr Drew is here, too,” said Jake optimistically.
“It’s possible.”
“Pessimist.”
“Dr Drew never stays in one place for too long. If we lost him to the Archivists, we’d lose any chance of influencing the Circuit in future.”
The rusty fire escape creaked with every step. The metal vibrated and the gully magnified the noise as it was channelled out into the main street. At the fifth level Alfonso pushed open the door. Inside, the whole of the fifth floor’s partition walls had been bulldozed, leaving one huge, open-plan room. Before the refurbishments it would have housed dozens of individual flats, just like the ones that Jake had been trying to search for the last few days. Now it looked like a warehouse and it was as busy as any factory floor.
Dozens of people went about their business ignorant of the new arrivals. It was a surprise to him given his formal uniform and holstered gun. In one corner six people were working a rather arcane-looking machine that pumped grey smoke into the room and roared like an ancient combustion engine. Topless men covered in sweat and grease, with only their shorts to hide their modesty, worked tirelessly at the contraption. The machine produced a continual flow of small, plastic components that dropped off a conveyor belt and onto a table where a young lady was expertly constructing them into larger objects. It didn’t take long for Jake to notice their scars.
On the other side of the room, floor-to-ceiling racks ran halfway down the room. Their shelves held every possible commodity you needed to survive if you were off-grid and unable to get to the shops. Groceries, huge bottles of water, electrical equipment, medicines, clothes, hobby materials and items that might protect you if threatened. Jake was drawn towards a crate that contained a collection of blades that Alfonso had first threatened him with a few weeks ago.
Only the dim, old-fashioned bulbs hanging from the ceilings offered the room a subtle glow. The smell of industry and hard work filled the atmosphere, sealed off from the normal world happening outside the bricked-up windows. Jake loosened his helmet and removed his goggles to get a better sense of it. They lived amongst us, so he’d been told, and now he knew where.
“This place is brilliant,” he said, rather too loudly.
Other than Dinah, who was pretending to massage the sweaty male workers, no one paid him any attention.
“Robert,” said Alfonso approaching one of the bare-chested men nearest to him. “Is he in?”
The man nodded towards the other end of the space in answer. Alfonso led the way as their surroundings changed from a manufacturing feel to one less hot and noisy. Further down the room a series of educational classes were in progress. A dozen children, sitting calmly on little wooden chairs, encircled a middle-aged woman who was writing on a damaged blackboard. It was the first time in Jake’s life he’d witnessed anyone writing anything, let alone with sticks of blue chalk. It was like being six again, the first time he’d watched someone successfully surf a wave. Inspiration stopped him in his tracks that day, and the sight of the words appearing like magic on the board was no less captivating. The lesson being taught today was how to stay safe in the alien world of the Circuit. The board featured a number of references to the Archivists, all of which were more accurate than the information he’d been taught about the Spectrum. The children’s focus on their teacher was total. Unlike Jake’s own experiences of school, none of these infants were distracting themselves with childish pranks or allowing their minds to wander off into the subversion of their cloud feed. They knew only too well that lessons like this were a matter of life and death.
At the very back of the room, an elderly gentleman slept peacefully on a rustic antique armchair. His aquamarine kaftan robe hung limply against his skinny body. A long, scraggly beard flowed down to his knees and a pair of thick-lensed glasses balanced across the bridge of his nose at a lopsided angle. A worn, leather sandal clung to his toes while the other had already given up and lay idle on the wooden floorboards. A tattoo on the man’s wrinkled leg immediately caught Jake’s attention.
Carrying twigs in their beaks, two birds in mid-flight up the man’s calf muscle disappeared under the fabric of the kaftan as they headed towards their destination. The passage of time had faded the tattoo’s vibrant colours, leaving a consistent inky green stain throughout. Jake scrolled back in his cloud for the last memory of his grandfather.
‘Where the birds fly, there will always be blue sky.’
He’d thought at the time it was code, based on the one Paddy had invented when he and his sister were younger. They used it to keep innocent secrets from their parents and its development helped forge a strong bond with their grandfather. It was their little game and it opened up a world that no one else could enter, not even the Circuit. He’d encourage them to choose alternative words for certain nouns and then he’d try to work out what they meant. Jake remembered that it had taken Paddy weeks to find out that he’d swapped ‘slippers’ for ‘crocodile’. After that he’d always confuse Deborah by asking, ‘Where are my crocodiles?’ She’d even once suggested he might need to see a doctor for his Alzheimer’s.
Jake knew immediately what his grandfather’s parting words meant. Bird was code for ‘love’, fly was used as a replacement for the word ‘live’, and blue sky meant ‘hope’. In his opinion his grandfather’s substitution for the last of these three words was particularly poignant. Every citizen of the world hoped blue skies returned permanently one day.
‘Where love lives, there will always be hope.’
The words were nothing more than a message of encouragement for his future, weren’t they? That’s what he believed then. Under the relentless positivity of Moodzec, the sight of the tattoo presented him with new meaning. Had Paddy given him direction rather than nostalgic warm words? Or was this just a coincidence? It seemed implausible that the doctor and his grandfather had any connection.
Alfonso gave the old man a gentle shake. His eyes snapped open to reveal sparkling blue irises like polished gems.
“This is Dr Theo Drew,” announced Alfonso grandly.
“Jake Montana, superfluous.”
“I know,” replied Theo.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” said Jake.
“Welcome to paradise,” croaked the man.
“Thank you and I think you’re right. This place is perfect.”
“It was,” replied Theo calmly.
“Was?”
“In a few hours everyone will need to leave. Your visit brings an equal amount of hope and danger.”
“I’m sure you’re exaggerating. Nothing bad can happen here, trust me,” replied Jake overconfidently.
“It was sensible of you to take those pills when you did, but that will not stop the Circuit. There are many ways in which they use their Memory Hunters,” said the old man. “They’ll be here soon enough, and then we must move on.”
Dinah groaned in Jake’s ear. If anyone summed up a sense of freedom, then it was her and she felt at home amongst these people as much as Jake did.
“Why have you come?” asked Theo.
“Sam Goldberg sent me to find you.”
“Ah, so he believes he has found the answer.”
“He believes I have an overactive brain, which means I carry something powerful.”
“And what do you think?”
“Yes. I do,” Jake replied without any doubt. “I have always suffered from flashbacks that I cannot place in my own life.”
“That’s because they are not yours.”
“Then whose are they?”
“We can’t be sure exactly, but they belonged to someone from the East of great importance. Until we remove the implants, we won’t know who they were or what they saw. Twenty years ago, when I first received them, I was told they contained the truth about what the Circuit had become. The technology to remove the information did not exist back then. Our only option was to place them safely in ten newborn babies and wait for a solution to present itself. But there was no way to track who those hosts were. The implants were placed in the supply chain and we stayed patient and hidden until Sam’s genius made it possible for us to receive them.”
“Sam has been captured,” said Jake rather too whimsically.
“Then your journey here has been for nothing,” said the old man, leaping from his chair with the strength of a much younger man.
“Where are you going?” asked Jake.
“To sound the alarm and move as many of these people to safety as possible. Without Sam you are no use to us.”
Theo Drew found the closest person and whispered in their ear. Within minutes the message passed down the room from person to person with the speed of a sonic blast and almost immediately everyone switched their activities. Bags were packed with haste, machines quickly deactivated, and classes dismissed. Everyone knew their role in this well-rehearsed retreat, something they shared with the Archivists that hunted them.
“What if I were to find him?” shouted Jake through the noise of activity.
Theo turned around slowly. “It’s impossible.”
“Apparently I’m impossible,” replied Jake.
“No, you’re improbable and that’s not the same thing, is it?” argued Dr Drew. “If you say that Sam has been taken, then he’s dead or in the Source. It would be easier to bring him back from the dead. There is no way in and no way out, that’s if we knew which Source he’s being held in.”
“I know he’s here,” added Jake. “In Boston.”
“Moodzec is an antidepressant not a luck potion. You can’t know that.”
“I can because Sam is connected to my Memory Cloud.”
“True, he can see yours, but it’s not possible for you to see his.”
“Then he wouldn’t be much of a genius, would he!?”
Jake scanned the past week’s feed in case he’d missed something. Perhaps an unread message, alert or link sent to him by an unknown sender, trapped in his spam folders. Sam wouldn’t make it obvious, but Jake was convinced it would be there somewhere.
He found it.
Just after he’d left the Hyperloop in Boston an advert for tea popped up in his feed. He’d always found tea repulsive and quickly waved it away. But advertisers didn’t spend their credits loosely like that. Promoting tea to him would be like advertising spectacles to the blind. He hovered over the split second it had remained in his feed before he’d dismissed it. Setting the time frame to microseconds, he rocked the image back and forward before zooming in on the product in the salesperson’s hand.
Then he saw the message.
Franklin Tea. Source of rejuvenation. Use code A401-l3K.
The brand and the strapline were enough of a clue that Sam was here. Boston was famous for its links to tea, Benjamin Franklin and more recently a rather gigantic Source. He didn’t know what to make of the code, though. Perhaps that information would help him further down the road.
“He’s here!” shouted Jake like he’d perfected alchemy. “He left me a clue.”
Jake explained to Dr Drew what he’d discovered logged secretly in his memories. Although he agreed with the conclusion, his motivations to act still lagged behind.
“I know how to get in and out of the Source,” exclaimed Jake a little surprised by his own confidence. “I just need you to perform the surgery.”
“If I did that, you’d no longer remember anything,” replied Drew. “Including the plan.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your implants are the only thing that connects you to your inner self. The memories, knowledge and emotions you’ve created through life are stored elsewhere. If I replace the implants with Sam’s version, you’ll have to start afresh. A new person with a blank canvas. You won’t remember any of your past life because it will only exist in a storage facility in some far-off server farm. The human brain is lazy. It no longer needs to record anymore…just connect.”
