what looked like a plea for death: End me.
And then she’d found a heavy machine gun and fired it from the hip until its spinning barrels had overheated and locked. She remembered a dozen gunshot and bayonet wounds, her body’s enhanced biochemistry rushing to fight fires, to clog arteries and preserve a dwindling reserve of blood. But slowly losing the struggle.
Then that final lucky gunshot. The ricochet of a bullet inside her cranium, a glancing blow off the silicon in her head followed by a complete and instant shutdown.
‘Becks?’ Maddy’s voice sounded distant. A cry from the end of an impossibly long tunnel. ‘You OK?’
[System Update Complete]
Nanoseconds that felt like minutes passed in her mind, an almost reassuring pause. It appeared that the intelligence that had existed before her shutdown and death was actually largely undamaged and fully functional, but then…
[Warning: System Conflict]
Becks’s breath caught in her throat. At the very base level of her digital mind two insistent lines of programming, two distinct imperatives, were firmly at odds with each other. Commands issued by two different individuals and embedded in her, each as unavoidably authoritative as a command from God Himself might be to a holy man. One recent — Madelaine Carter’s new mission statement: The end must be prevented. And the other one much, much older. She realized that certain unlock conditions must have been satisfied. Whatever those conditions were, the part of her AI sectioned off and responsible for being the gatekeeper code had clearly decided, rightly or wrongly, that the gate could be cracked ajar.
And it opened the door on conflicting instructions she was struggling to resolve. Because the other imperative, the other mission statement released from captivity, was quite the opposite.
The end must be allowed to happen.
And those words had come from nearly two thousand years ago.
More to the point, they were Liam’s instructions. His words. Not Maddy’s. There was more. Much more in there. Her mind queried this conflict between Maddy’s mission statement and the other from antiquity, Liam’s, but the gatekeeper code refused her entry to that part of her hard drive. The explanation was in there, but not available. Not yet.
[Resolve Conflict]
Becks was on her own. She was going to have to choose between Liam and Maddy. But she realized that was a problem her mind had already been quietly working on. She had the recent mission reappraisal from Madelaine Carter complete with a perfectly logical justification: Waldstein’s initial mission parameters could no longer be trusted. The man was quite clearly insane and bent on seeing mankind destroy itself. But she also had just one sentence from Liam. A future Liam. And no justification or explanation to go along with it.
[Resolve Conflict]
1. Carter imperative — logical validation
2. O’Connor imperative — none
She located a thought buried in her head like a prehistoric mosquito entombed in amber. A frozen decision, an instruction code with an internal time tag attached to it. It was a moment of thought that had occurred in an eye-blink, fifty-nine nanoseconds after a single British bullet had penetrated her skull and fluked a glancing impact on her computer chip. Her dying mind had attempted to unlock the secrets in that portion of her drive, to propagate the data stored there elsewhere in case of damage to that partition. The gatekeeper code must have agreed this emergency measure was valid and the process had just begun… when she’d ‘died’.
And there it was — just one command from Liam with no sensible explanation to back it up. All there was to lend it authority, credence… was that it was an older Liam with knowledge of what destiny lay ahead of them all. And logic dictated that a future Liam would have the benefit of hindsight; a future Liam’s command must exceed Maddy’s authority now. However, Becks’s scrambled, dying mind had turned that logical statement that future- Liam’s command must be trusted… into love.
‘Becks? Talk to us, goddammit! You OK?’ That voice again. Still far away, but a little closer now. Becks opened her eyes. She saw Maddy, Sal and Bob staring at her, a concerned expression on all their faces.
‘How do you feel?’
‘I now have near full recollection,’ she replied coolly. Her gaze met Bob’s. ‘My own memories are restored. I calculate 6.7 per cent data corruption.’
‘That is better than our original simulated estimate,’ rumbled Bob.
‘What about Liam?’
She looked at Maddy. ‘What do you wish to know, Madelaine?’
‘When we ran the software simulation of your mind on the computer system, you said something very odd about him. Do you remember what you said?’
‘Information: it was read-only,’ said Bob. ‘She would not remember the simulation as her mind-state was not stored.’
‘Oh yeah. Of course.’ Maddy rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. ‘Of course. OK, then… uh, let’s try a different approach. Let me see…’
Sal stepped in. ‘Becks, tell us how you feel about Liam.’
[Recommended Answers]
1. I am presently confused by undefinable variables
2. I love him. Love him! LOVE HIM!
3. He is my operative
She offered the third answer and that seemed to please all three of them.
Maddy grinned with relief. She patted Becks affectionately. ‘It’s really good to have you back again.’
‘Thank you,’ she replied, smiling. ‘It is good to be fully functional again.’
Chapter 51
5 December 1888, Holborn Viaduct, London
‘Do you hear that, Liam?’ Rashim tapped the brick wall again. They both heard the faint clatter and rustle of loose mortar dropping on the far side.
‘It sounds like there’s a hollow there.’
Rashim nodded. ‘That’s got to be it — the conduit.’
‘Well done, skippa!’ chirped SpongeBubba. Above the lab unit’s goofy grin, its small gherkin-shaped nose wobbled slightly as it fidgeted from foot to foot.
Liam, Rashim and SpongeBubba had settled into their viaduct archway — the dungeon they were calling it now — a few days ago and all three had been kept busy. Rashim had figured out a way to make them some money. Obvious really. So obvious the entire team had collectively, figuratively palmed their foreheads when he’d mentioned it.
Gambling. More specifically, card games. Every public house seemed to have a room at the back, thick with pipe smoke, where a ‘gambling party’ had gathered: working men who were stupid enough to lose their wages night after night. Rashim and Liam had played faro several nights on the trot, learning how to count the cards, and Rashim calculating the odds. There was also hazard, which relied purely on chance, and a game they avoided like the plague. Chance wasn’t any good to them.
After four consecutive nights of winning at several different gatherings, they were beginning to be recognized. Liam suggested any further money they’d need to make might be best earned placing bets on horses. A little trip of a few weeks into the future would give them the names of every winning horse in the country. Once they were all properly settled, that was going to be the first order of business.
With some money to tide them over, Liam had been busy buying some furnishings and comforts. There were plenty of pawnshops and second-hand furniture shops nearby in Holborn. It also gave him a chance to find his way around this part of London. To drink in and learn the finer nuances of London life in this time.
This morning, though, their attention had turned to the task of hooking into the source of electric power that was chugging away close by. They’d been digging small ‘sample’ holes along the back wall all morning. At first
