wave. ‘Five minutes, ladies, OK?’
‘Thanks.’
The door swung to. Ned, all pointy elbows and bobbing Adam’s apple, grinned self-consciously at them. ‘So… nice day, isn’t it?’ He cracked slender fingers and knuckle joints one after the other, a sound that went right through Maddy. She found herself wincing with each crack. It sounded like a wishbone being parted.
‘Sure. Nice day,’ Sal replied.
‘Uh… so, either of you two girls got a, you know, a boyfriend or something?’ He shrugged and laughed skittishly. ‘I mean… why not ask. Right? Because life’s way too short to just, like, skip around the important questions.’
Sal chuckled at that.
‘Cos if you’re both, like, single, me and Ganesh could take you ladies to see Shrek or something?’ He grinned, his eyes bul-ging with hope. ‘Make up sort of like a double date. Me and Ganesh’ll pay for the movie tickets, of course. Dinner, though…’ He pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘I reckon we gotta go halves on that. Unless you girls are good for a taco or something cheap? I reckon we could cover that.’
Maddy looked at Sal, taken aback by his forthright manner. ‘Errrrr
…’
‘Sound good?’ His eyebrows flickered up and down and a grin spread across his lips. His best go at a seductive smile. ‘Whadya say? Tempted? Huh?’
Just then reality fluttered gently. A mild sensation that made Maddy feel giddy. She grasped the edge of the counter to steady herself.
‘Are you OK, miss?’
Maddy’s eyes focused on Ned again. Only it wasn’t quite the same Ned. His shirt was bright red. His ginger hair was cut short, almost an army-issue buzz cut. No name badge on his chest either, she noticed, just the store’s logo, a masculine fist holding a bolt of lightning.
‘You OK, miss?’
Sal was kicking her foot gently, nudging her out of the young man’s line of sight.
‘Uh, yeah… I’m fine. Just, uh… just a bit dizzy is all.’
CHAPTER 27
2001, New York
Computer-Bob’s single-lens webcam eye regarded the archway, wholly still and silent, except for the soft hum of a dozen PC fans and the gentle, rhythmic chug of the filtration pump on the activated growth tube in the back room. A tap dripped into a basin in the toilet cubicle and overhead the brick roof rumbled softly as a commuter train, far above, trundled along the bridge’s tracks towards Manhattan.
A useful chance to housekeep: compress files, purge data that was redundant. With nothing to have to listen to via the desk mic, or observe through the webcam, he could get on with a growing to-do list of queued tasks. Computer-Bob temporarily blocked the external data feed. It was also a good opportunity to defragment the hard drives.
He initiated the various house-cleaning processes. It left his collective of twelve linked processors with clock time to spare. Down time. Think time. Code fetched, acted on and returned.
Thoughts.
Computer-Bob could certainly feel the absence of the missing part of his intelligence. The fuzzy-logic function removed from the path of his decision matrix. The organic component. That thumbnail-sized nub of brain matter. Such a difference that small nugget of flesh made.
Computer-Bob suspected there was an emotion file for this somewhere on his G drive. This feeling of mental castration, of missing something he once had. Fuzzy logic. No. Free will.
He tried to recognize that feeling. Much harder without the organic part of his intelligence. But still possible. Like comparing audio-wave files, every thought had its own distinct shape.
Computer-Bob was running comparisons through his folder of stored emotions when something far more important caught his attention and halted that process in its tracks.
A single tachyon particle in the middle of the archway.
Within a dozen thousandths of a second, the number of particles proliferated to millions.
›Warning: tachyon particles detected.
The middle of the archway pulsed with arriving energy and a gust of displaced air sent papers and sweet wrappers skittering across the desk in front of computer-Bob’s webcam eye.
A sphere of shimmering, churning ‘elsewhere’ appeared, ten feet in diameter, and hovered above the floor. The webcam captured every swirling detail through the portal: what appeared to be a dark room beyond with winking lights and holographic displays. Rows of what could be tall tubes glowing a soothing peach colour.
Then six dark outlines. Six figures standing side by side, now calmly stepping forward into the pulsating sphere, one after the other.
They emerged from the hovering portal and dropped down on to the concrete floor into identical postures of crouched, alert readiness; six naked, entirely hairless figures, four of them male and two female. The males, each seven feet tall, had broad frames carrying an almost implausibly muscular bulk. The two females, athletic, were a foot shorter and looked far more agile, but still rippling with lean muscle beneath milk-white skin. All of them were pale, covered in baby-smooth flesh, unmarked by the lines, creases, scars and blemishes acquired through the course of any ordinary life.
One of the males stood erect, slowly sweeping his grey-eyed gaze round the archway. ‘Information: the field office is empty.’
A second male nodded in agreement, his face almost, but not quite, identical, all forehead, thick brow and square jawline. They looked like perfect sculptures carved from granite.
‘Affirmative.’
‘We should assign temporary mission identifiers,’ the first one said. ‘And verbal adoptive call signs.’ He looked at the others. ‘I am Alpha-one. I will be called Abel.’
‘Alpha-two,’ said the second male support unit. ‘Verbal call sign — Bruno.’
‘Alpha-three,’ said one of the females. ‘Cassandra.’
‘Alpha-four. Damien.’
‘Alpha-five. Elijah.’
‘Alpha-six. Fred.’
The others looked at Six. ‘Fred is gender-incompatible,’ said Abel. ‘You are female. Pick another name.’
Six frowned. ‘It is short for Frederica.’
‘Pick another name.’
She nodded obediently. ‘Faith.’
‘Acceptable,’ said Abel. He turned to look directly at computer-Bob’s webcam.
A nearfield data handshake; two operating systems recognizing each other.
›Acknowledged.
Abel’s thick brow knotted. ‘Where is your team?’ His deep voice filled the cavernous silence.
Computer-Bob’s cursor blinked on the screen silently.
‘System AI,’ said Abel, ‘please state the last known location of your team members.’
The cursor blinked and finally began to skitter forward along the command line.
›You are an unauthorized visitor to this field office. I am unable to provide any information. All information is confidential. System going into lockdown.
‘System AI, I have a higher authority level code. Abort lockdown.’
›Please transmit authority identification code.
‘Affirmative.’ Abel’s eyes blinked as he retrieved a string of data and streamed it wirelessly to computer- Bob.
The cursor blinked silently on the screen, a full minute passing as computer-Bob appraised the alphanumeric
