Howard was the one in their group they’d selected to do the job. Although he was twenty-three he looked young, young enough to pass as a high-school student, a few tufts of downy hair on his upper lip suggested a boy desperate to grow his first moustache. His dark wavy hair pulled back into a scruffy ponytail, his thrash-metal Arch-NME On Tour T-shirt, took six or seven years off him. Now, he no longer looked like Howard Goodall, a mathematics graduate from the year 2059, but Leonard Baumgardner — some grungy high-school kid who’d managed to earn a set of top scores in his SATs.
The real Lenny was back home in his basement, bound and gagged along with his mom. Howard had briefly considered killing them both, worried they might struggle free and raise the alarm. But he figured this was all going to be done before that could happen.
He looked close enough in appearance to the spotty face on Lenny’s old school ID card to pass a cursory examination, and since this party of students had assembled together in Austin earlier this morning, and he was the only kid from Baumgardner’s school going, there was no one there to not recognize him. No one had any reason to believe he wasn’t young Leonard.
Of course, none of the kids knew each other; they were from different schools all over the state — thirty kids assembling, early morning, with their parents, waiting to be signed on to the coach and into the care of Mr Whitmore for the day.
Howard glanced around at the others.
And what if one of the others is not who he says he is?
He kicked that thought away as quickly as it had arrived. He needed to stay very calm. Needed to look relaxed, like these others; slightly bored, waiting to be shown something interesting, something worth crawling out of bed for so early.
The guard finally reached for Howard’s bag. ‘Morning,’ he grunted. ‘Let’s take a look, son.’
Howard casually held out his rucksack.
‘Anything hazardous in here, son?’
‘What? You mean… apart from my big bomb?’ sighed Howard with a lazy smile.
The guard scowled at him. ‘Not even funny, kid.’ His hand rummaged quickly through the grubby items inside: a sandwich box, the flask, several rolled-up and dog-eared comicbooks, before he slapped the rucksack closed and waved Howard past.
Howard offered the guard a casual wave. ‘Have a nice day, now.’
‘Go on, kid… scoot,’ said the guard, before turning to rummage through another bag.
Ahead he could see Chan and the other students gathered around the guide, Mr Kelly, and the teacher, Mr Whitmore, waiting for the last of them to be checked.
He sucked in a deep breath as he wandered over to join them, settling his nerves, his pounding heart. Inside the zero-point chamber, that’s when he was going to do it. The chamber would be sealed, and this security guard and the others on the outside; his best chance to fire several aimed shots at the boy. It would take them a while to react, to open the door.
To take me down.
Howard smiled grimly. Not such a big price to pay to save the future of mankind, not really.
CHAPTER 16
2015, Texas
They landed with a wet splash on to a hard tiled floor.
‘Ouch!’ Liam whimpered.
The water sloshed noisily across the floor soaking cardboard boxes of domestic cleaning materials.
‘Jay-zus, why can’t we ever land on something soft… like a pillow?’ He grimaced as he let go of his nose and puffed out the breath he’d taken back in 2001.
‘Insufficient data to identify a soft landing loca-’
Liam raised a hand. ‘It’s all right… I wasn’t after an answer.’ He pulled a wet shock of dark hair out of his eyes and opened them, instantly wishing he hadn’t.
‘Oh-Mother-of-God!’ He clamped his eyes shut and turned away to look at the storeroom wall.
‘What is wrong?’
‘You could have warned me you were taking those wet things off!’
‘Why?’
‘Because… because…’ He bit his lip. This is so very not right.
‘Because you’re a, ah… you’re a girl now, Bob.’
Liam spotted some towels on the storeroom shelf and began to dry himself off.
‘You should assign a new ident. to this AI copy. I may be “Bob” now,’ she said, ‘but this AI will develop new sub-routines and characteristics that require a new identifying label.’
Liam nodded. ‘Yes.’ Self-consciously he found himself wrapping the towel round his waist as he hurriedly removed his wet boxers and pulled the clothes he’d brought with him out of the bag.
‘Four seconds before we were transmitted, you indicated you had a suitable ident. for me.’
‘Oh yes… so I did.’
She turned to look at him. ‘So, what will I be called?’
Liam could hear the rustle of clothes being quickly pulled on behind his back.
Good.
He really didn’t need to see that… again. He found a pair of neon green three-quarter-length baggy shorts and a navy blue sweatshirt with the word NIKE splayed across it. And, for some reason, a large tick beneath the word. He felt much better with some clothes on, even if they looked quite ridiculous.
‘I had a cousin called Rebecca,’ he said. ‘Used to call her Becks for short.’
‘Becks?’ replied the support unit, her voice rising at the end in a query.
‘That’s right — Becks.’
‘A moment… logging ident…’
‘So, are you decent now? Can I turn round?’
‘Decent?’
‘You know, got clothes on?’
‘Affirmative.’
Liam turned round and found his breath caught momentarily. ‘Blimey!’
Becks cocked her head and looked at him. ‘Are these garments incorrectly deployed?’
His eyes skittered awkwardly up from the combat boots to the black leggings, to the black lace mini-skirt to a black crop top that displayed a bare midriff, up to her… perfect… face framed by tumbling locks of flaming fox-red hair. Quite clearly Sal had decided their support unit needed to look like some sort of gothic valkyrie.
‘Uh. No, you are… you got it about… errrr… right, I suppose… I think.’
Liam felt his mouth go dry and a strange jittery, lurching sensation in his stomach.
Jay-zus… get a grip, Liam. That’s… that’s… that’s just Bob wearing a girl suit. All right?
‘Recommendation: you should refer to me as Becks from this point on,’ she said firmly. ‘It will avoid unnecessary confusion between AI versions.’
He nodded. ‘All right… uh, OK. So, you’re Becks, then. That’s that settled.’
‘Correct.’ Her smile was faltering and clumsy as always, just like Bob. But on those lips, strangely quite perfect.
Liam decided to shift his mind to other things. ‘I suppose we had better get a move on and find this Chan fella.’
Becks nodded and blinked, retrieving data from her hard drive. ‘We are located within the institute’s experimental reactor building. The reactor is very close to this location.’
Liam stepped towards the storeroom’s door and cracked it open a sliver. Outside he could see a narrow hallway and, opposite, double doors with a sign on them: AUTHORIZED VISITORS AND STAFF ONLY. Just then he heard muffled voices from the end of the hallway and glass doors swung inwards to reveal a man in a smart linen
