seems we’re all going to have to rely on you to get us home. I presume you have some sort of a plan of action? You know… beyond merely exploring our immediate surroundings.’
A plan? The closest thing to doing any ‘planning’ so far had been figuring out how he’d use the rubbish machete in his hand if a dinosaur was to suddenly emerge from the undergrowth ahead.
‘The plan?’
‘Yes,’ said Whitmore, ‘I mean… I presume there’s a way out of this mess for us, isn’t there?’
Liam could see the other three were staring expectantly at him. ‘Well, uh… well, one thing’s for sure, gentlemen. We need to stay right where we are, on that island.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s the exact same place that we were.’
Joseph Lam nodded. ‘The same geo-coordinates as the lab, right?’
‘That’s right. We haven’t moved an inch in position… just in time. If we happened to up sticks and move camp somewhere else, it would make it even harder for someone to find us. So we’re best staying put right where we are.’
Whitmore dabbed at his damp face with the cuff of his shirt. ‘This agency you work for… are they like a government agency? Like the CIA? Like the FBI? Something like that?’
Liam hadn’t heard of either of those. So he decided to do what he did best: bluff. ‘Sure, they’re just like them fellas, Mr Whitmore, but you know… uhh… much bigger and better, and, of course, from the future.’
‘And they’re going to come for us, right? They’re going to get us all out of here, aren’t they?’
Liam offered him a stern, confident nod. ‘Sure they are. We’ve just got to hold on here. It’ll take them a little time to find us… but they will. I assure you, they will.’
They looked at each other uncertainly, until the scraggly beard beneath Whitmore’s stubby round nose stretched with a smile. ‘Well, all right, then. I’m sure between us we’ve got enough know-how to make do for a few days.’
His smile spread to the others.
‘I’d like to see at least one dinosaur first, though,’ said Franklyn. ‘Be real lame not to.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jonah, pulling out a mobile phone from his pocket. ‘That would be, like, awesome. You know? I could stick it up on YouTube. Whoa! No!’ He pushed his frizzy mop of hair aside. ‘Better than that, dude… do it as a pay-per-download. I could make, like, millions out of this…’
Whitmore shook his head. ‘What is it with you kids these days?’
‘Opportunity,’ replied Jonah. ‘That’s what it is, my man… a golden freakin’ money-makin’ opportunity.’
Whitmore sighed.
CHAPTER 27
65 million years BC, jungle
Becks stood to one side dispassionately observing the work of the others as they hacked at the slim, straight trunks of the smaller trees they’d already felled, stripping branches from their sides to produce usable lightweight logs for construction.
She had them divided into two groups. One doing this job, the other group lashing the logs together with lengths of twisted vine to form wigwam-shaped frames. On top of these they could layer the big waxy leaves that drooped from the canopy trees. A few layers of those would give them a covering that would almost be waterproof.
That had been Liam’s instruction. Make shelters. But her cool grey eyes panned uneasily across the clearing, observing the area of jungle that had been hacked away, the disturbed jungle floor where the smaller trees had been uprooted. Her eyes picked out the slashes of machete blows on other bigger trees that had proven too difficult to fell or uproot and the compressed tracks of footprints on the ground — the distinct oval of signatures of a human presence.
› [Evaluation: time contamination is increasing]
Every movement these people made, every footstep, every swipe of a blunt blade, was adding to a growing count of potential contamination. Yet Liam O’Connor’s instruction to her was a mission priority, an override. As the mission operative, his orders were as final and non-negotiable as any hard-coded line of programming in her head.
He’d been very specific: that she was to organize the completion of the bridge and the building of a camp. And, for good measure, some kind of small enclosure, a palisade that they could all hide inside just in case any nasty found its way on to their island.
And so she had. Just like their last mission, back when her AI software had been assigned the ident. ‘Bob’, she was once again obediently following orders. There was something vaguely comforting about being in a brand- new functioning body, being on a mission once again with Liam O’Connor. They had functioned together very efficiently last time — successfully correcting a significant time contamination against exceedingly unfavourable odds.
But there’d been something… untidy… about the AI’s learning curve. As Bob, it had discovered that the strict mission parameters could be overwritten with new ones, that under extreme circumstances the collection of software routines was actually capable of making a ‘decision’.
That in itself had been a disturbing realization. As Bob, the AI had learned that its core programming could be subtly influenced, swayed, by something else: the tiny nodule of organic intelligence the computer chip was connected to. The undeveloped foetal brain of this genetically engineered frame. As Bob, the AI had experienced a fleeting taste of something that these humans must all take for granted. Emotion. The AI had discovered something very, very odd… that it actually ‘liked’ Liam O’Connor.
Since that first clone body had been irreparably damaged in the snowy woods down the hill from Adolf Hitler’s winter Berghof retreat and the AI uploaded into the field office’s mainframe — an entirely non-organic, disembodied existence — the AI had had much time to reflect on all that it had learned from those six months in the past.
Conclusions
AI is now capable of referring to the newly developed AI routines as… ‘ I ’, ‘ Me ’, ‘ Myself ’.
‘ I ’ am now capable of limited decision-making.
Within an organic hardware housing, ‘ I ’ am capable of limited emotional stimulation.
And most important of all…
‘ I ’ ‘ like ’ Liam O’Connor.
Becks continued to watch the humans at work and realized that part of her onboard code was insistently whispering a warning to her that a decision needed to be made, and made very soon. The humans were beginning to cause dangerously unacceptable levels of contamination in this jungle clearing with all that they were doing. With every footstep, with every log being cut down, there was an increased possibility that some fossilized forensic clue would survive sixty-five million years to be found in the future, and quite clearly reveal that humans had visited this time.
Unacceptable.
Liam O’Connor’s instructions to her were at odds with the basic protocols of journeying into the past, that contamination must be kept to an absolute minimum. Even now, by simply being here, these people could be causing a far greater time wave than the assassination of Edward Chan in 2015 might have caused.
Recommendation
Terminate all humans, including mission operative Liam O’Connor.
Destroy all traces of human artefacts and habitation in this location.
Self-terminate.
The recommendation was faultlessly logical and strategically sound. But that small nodule of primitive organic matter reminded her software that Liam was a friend.
And friends don’t kill friends.
Becks blinked away the thought. It was an unwelcome distraction.
Decision Options
