‘How ridiculous,’ thought Beck, for the Professor had to sleep too – and was he considered a junior partner?
And Beck didn’t really resent Victor; not as much as he resented sleep. Which he resisted, but also relished, with its warmth lapping at his psyche; and was swept clean away...
The next morning Beck became awake in an instant, while still stock-still, his eyes gummed closed. He heard two artifs speaking at the end of his bed, so held his position, and was thrilled to hear the speakers continue without noticing he’d joined them in the realm of the conscious – so maybe it wasn’t only Chris who had a gift for spying? Beck listened as they spoke quietly, Ellie cautioning,
‘He won’t like it that we didn’t ask him.’
Chris answering, ‘But to have waited would have lost us the night... Doctor, good to have you back with us.’
Beck made an exaggerated yawn, and stretched his arms out with clenched fists.
‘I hope our speaking didn’t wake you?’ offered Chris, slightly too joyfully.
Beck smiled, ‘I think I was ready to wake.’
‘And ready for breakfast too, no doubt?’ asked Chris.
‘Another Cornish pasty?’ asked Beck. ‘There can be too much of a good thing.’
‘No, no, rather I’m taking you out to a café.’
‘Oh?’
‘We came up with a plan.’
Beck ate heartily. They were sitting in the window seat of ‘Benny’s – The Town’s Finest Fry-Up’. Meanwhile, his singular colleague kept a keen eye out from behind his untouched cup of coffee.
‘You can drink this when you’ve finished yours,’ Chris offered to Beck, who answered playfully,
‘No need – it’s all you can drink, buddy. I’ll have my caffeine fix for the week.’ He asked then, ‘Anything?’
‘No,’ answered Chris, is studious mood, ‘Not an extra police car or agent with earpiece. We’re clean.’
Beck observed, ‘You do have a proactive approach to these “fact-gathering exercises”,’ for such was Chris’s phrase. Who then only repeated his line about soldiers learning nothing while hiding in their foxholes.
‘So there’s a plan?’ asked Beck. It seemed almost an afterthought to the joy of breakfast.
‘It was Victor’s doing – I wonder if Ellie knew she’d picked a savant?’
The phrase took Beck aback – was Chris already distancing himself from humanity to the degree that he saw any flesh creation with insight as a genius?
Chris continued,
‘Victor sparked the conversation yesterday evening: of us artifs not wanting to be the same, but rather being something quite... individual. You might compare our conversations before and after last night with the difference in philosophies of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X; from Passive Resistance to...’
‘“...By any means necessary”?’
‘No, not violent protest, perhaps simply the right to assert ourselves. There is a point in every transformation where the moderate flinches.’
Beck wasn’t quite sure that the artifs were up to equating themselves with the Civil Rights movement just yet, but he accepted that the young had the right to identify with heroes. And the five had had a wretched few years. But Chris must have spotted Beck’s discomfort, and became the pacifist,
‘Don’t worry. There’s really no trouble going to come. Quite the opposite; in fact, we hope to rid your Prime Minister of the problem. Now, please, Doctor. These next few hours could be important. Let’s not spend them fighting.’
It was only after returning to The Universalist that Beck realised Chris had given no details away about their plan.
Chapter 98 – The Betrayal of Beck
Beck and Chris returned to The Universalist by a different route. When they got there, the rest of the group were sitting at the large table again. It felt to Beck as if it were the middle of the day already and lunch was about to be served. Chris slid into his place alongside his sisters – all dressed, brushed and wide awake, of which latter state the artifs could be no other.
Schmidt and Victor were there also – where had they breakfasted? Beck was none the wiser. Each looked no brighter-eyed or bushier-tailed than Beck felt; though there was no doubt in his mind that he had been the last one to be woken and consulted.
‘What’s this about?’ he asked, like an idiot.
‘You’ve heard of Silicon Sands?’ asked Schmidt.
‘Hasn’t everyone?’ Beck ran through its other names, ‘Tech Island, Silicon Valley on Sea, the first tech start-up to realise that in the Internet Age a firm can be based anywhere.’
‘Even on their own island,’ added Victor, now finishing sentences with the best of them.
‘And to have the money to buy one,’ added Christopher. ‘Technically in Spanish waters, but now a little slice of California off the European coast.’
‘It’s a lovely place... from the pictures,’ said Ellie, momentarily smiling, to daggers from Chris. Though generally the women wouldn’t have the heart for the conversation that ensued.
Chris seemed to feel the need to take charge then, saying,
‘Last night we got in touch with them.’
‘Well, at last you’ve come out with it,’ said Beck. ‘How did you do it?’
‘A burner-phone saved for a special occasion, and then a petrol station forecourt with free Wi-Fi, spotted while out dumping last night’s car.’
Beck had noticed they had travelled that morning in a new vehicle, but so routine was that occurrence now that the fact had warranted no discussion. He asked Chris,
‘And so what was our breakfast all about?’
The artif answered, ‘Because the Island told us they would get back to us by nine, our time.’
Beck looked at his watch – half past nine. He summarised,
‘And you wanted to know for certain that the Island were interested in helping you, before you told me?’ Beck’s eyes flashed across those ranged around the table. Though they softened for Anna who looked so sad. It was for her only that he didn’t explode sooner over those next few minutes.
Here Schmidt took over, he having taken the call from Silicon Sands, being the most famous among them,
‘They want in, just as we hoped. They’ll offer asylum, and will include artificial intelligences alongside humans in their one-page constitution. It really could be that simple.’
‘Travel?’ asked Beck.
Chris answered, ‘Over that distance, we could make it by a hired boat. But for first contact, they’ve nominated a partner currently working in Britain.’
‘Then when do we go?’
Here Schmidt answered,
‘When do I go.’
‘You? Just you?’
‘Yes.’
‘They haven’t asked to see an artif?’
‘We’re hoping my re-emergence will be enough to start with...’
(Beck had already forgotten that the Professor had been missing, presumed dead for nearly a decade – giving up that anonymity would surely seem enough of a gesture.)
‘...and if that goes well, then we risk them meeting one of our marvellous creations... my instinct says Ellie.’
‘And their London contact,’ asked Beck. ‘Anyone we know?’ (Silence.) ‘Oh, I get it, no one I’m allowed to know?’
He didn’t even have the fight to argue. Thoughts were flashing through his head; confused, fragmentary, conflicting; and then a big simple one coalesced right behind his eyes. He shouted,
‘But that means you let me sleep right through last night, all the while sending out our details to people who we didn’t know we could trust; still don’t know. I mean, you’re taking all these precautions just to make contact.’
‘There was never any risk.’ This was Victor answering, apparently an expert now. And who then revealed himself an avid reader of the tabloids. ‘Have you not read the state Tech Island is in? They’re being indicted for over forty Spanish or European Union infringements: toxic s
pills, hacker breaches, medical malpractice...’
‘And that’s a good thing?’ asked Beck.
‘It means that there’s no love lost between them and any nearby government. Meanwhile, the fact that they’re surviving these infringements without consequences means that they’re most likely paying Spain or Europe off; and those countries aren’t going to want to end that arrangement, given the state of their economies since the last financial crash.’
Beck rolled his eyes, ‘You make them sound like a band of technological pirates.’
Here Schmidt smiled, ‘Reminds me of another similar band, formed thirteen years ago.’
And Beck had to smile back, even as he knew his world was sinking. He just knew it.
The faces all around him were silent again, and remained so, as if waiting for him to have to ask some obvious question. Beck didn’t want to speak, but had to. He asked,
‘But all these calls you’ve been making, the fresh outdoor activity, and us all being here for a whole day now... what of Eris? If she catches the slightest sign of your meeting with the Island, then she’ll throw a spanner in the works like she did at Marsham.’
And here all managed to be even more silent than before, till Chris answered,
‘That’s where you come in, Doctor. We thought the best option was to offer her a distraction. And we were rather hoping that it might be you.’
Chapter 99 – Artif Society
Beck breathed, he got it right away,
‘You want me to turn myself in?’
Chris spoke quickly, ‘Get in touch with her. You decide the method; you decide the story. Suggest a time and place, just her alone, somewhere far from her headquarters, far from the big cities. Keep her occupied in conversation, give the Professor time to make his meeting, and for the rest of us to get far away from The Universalist, in case they trace you back here.’
‘It’s rather more than that though, isn’t it?’ said Beck.
When Schmidt answered it was as if he was already summing up for the table,
‘Thank you, Gawain. Thank you for all you have done, eight years ago and every day since. You truly are the one who held us all together, and we will never forget you.’
‘You’re letting me go... again.’
Beck had had too much to think about to consider Victor’s part in what was going on; but Ellie’s new friend then surprised Beck by calling out,
‘They’ve moved past you, Doctor.’
‘Why, you...’ Neither Beck’s anger or his physical form got further than Chris’s, which rose to meet him. Victor continued to explain,
‘They’ve moved past the Professor too. And way, way past me. I’m not even one percent along the road that you and the Professor started on all those years ago. But I need to be there for Ellie, you see? And the Professor for Anna. And even he is taking a risk being the one to make first contact with a group we know barely anything of. He could be walking right into a trap. Why, Eris could be sat there in the room when he walks in.’
‘Very Empire...’
Throughout this exchange the three artifs were silent. Beck wasn’t sure if this was through shame or sadness; or perhaps simple acknowledgement of the difficult scene they had to live through to have this matter dealt with. Beck said,
‘And there I’ve been all along, like the world’s dumbest cheerleader, telling anyone who’d listen how you are just as kind as us, just as caring, just as... human.’
‘Doctor, please,’ started Chris, but didn’t finish. Instead Ellie blurted,
‘You’re released. You have a family; you can be with them.’
‘I could be with them with you.’
All looked at Beck – he had given himself away. He had shown he felt excluded. He had admitted that his dearest wish was to remain a part of the gang. Yet not one of them thought it best he stayed. He stared at Ellie, while following the logical process that his mind had already embarked upon. He said to her,
‘It means arrest.’
‘Eris will forgive you, I sense it.’
‘And what of when they find that I’m a decoy?’
‘You can spin it: say you didn’t know our plan, say you had to leave to find your family.’ Ellie added, ‘They won’t harm you, they love you.’
Beck stammered, ‘But they’re going to rough me up. Eris will be stinging, and that Forrest was given the jump by me.’
‘You’re a big boy,’ said Chris. ‘You’ll survive.’
Then Ellie said quietly,
‘They won’t hurt you – they’ll want you to build more.’
Which made Beck groan inside all over again, enquiring,
‘So what do I do when they ask me?’
This had evidently been discussed by the group earlier also, so Beck’s question bought no quizzical or questioning looks. Instead, Schmidt laid out the policy decision,
‘You can tell them quite honestly that you can build them bodies all day long, but that you don’t have my Program – you don’t have their mind.’
Beck spluttered, ‘But... that’s nightmarish. What if some hack has a go at making his own mind, and we end up with a string of tormented souls? After all that we learnt about initiation...’ and Beck looked to Anna, lovely Anna, whom he would never see again.
Schmidt only shook his head,
‘That won’t have a chance to happen. We only need a few days from you, hours even. Our plan is to go public from Day One. We’ll issue statements from Silicon Sands, explaining what the British Government want to do, and encouraging a public petition requesting that they stop any new artif project. We’ll declare that the Government don’t possess all the data, and that they can only cause their creations harm. We will also bid with international bodies for the new species to be recognised, and for artif development to be named the sole-preserve of Tech Island...’
Beck was hearing them talking, sounding for all the world like a political pressure group: fleeing for asylum, bidding for public opinion, laying out a manifesto, and wrong-footing national governments to gain advantage.
Beck sensed there-and-then that things had moved far beyond him. This had nothing to do with the bright spark of creation he had warmed to in his youth, and which he’d seen rekindled those mad recent days.
Before him were his dearest friends. He looked to each of them, and silently said goodbye.
Chapter 100 – Fifty Miles On
The few moments outside the Foreman’s cottage were the most nervous. What if the man burst forth, desperate to continue the conversation, suddenly with a thousand things to ask?
However, the spell had held. And Danny only needed a moment to be gone. With his good hand he pressed the button on the vehicle’s key fob, which unlocked the doors even before he reached them. He then flipped the door handle, lobbed his bag over onto the passenger side, and jumped up onto the raised seat.
That last move had been the toughest – who would ever think of the difficulties of getting into a high vehicle with one fit arm, until you had to try? Danny was learning a lot about himself.
That had been the night before. Now it was morning as he roused himself from stillness after charging. Things had started well: the truck was smooth and fast, plush inside. He’d imagined, if he were susceptible to such things, that the warm seats and the low rumble of the road beneath the wide tyres might have lulled him off to sleep. But he was an artif, and had kept his gaze ahead.
His first act after getting a safe distance from the Foreman’s cottage had been to pull over momentarily to attach one of his chargers to the car’s battery. An hour later and he’d stopped again to attach that still-warm charger to himself. This had been in the deserted carpark of a lumberyard shut up for the night. It was there that he had spent the night recuperating, and where he now planned the day ahead.
He had been lying on the car’s backseat. Due to the height of the vehicle on its large tyres, it would have taken a purposeful look through the windows to see him ‘sleeping’ ther
e, and Danny didn’t think the sight of such a vehicle parked up outside a trade store like this would arouse enough suspicion for anyone to do so. And even if they had, he could have feigned tiredness on a long drive, and thanked them for the use of their empty yard to park up for a rest.
Yet there was little to plan. Soon he had attached another charger to the engine, and was on his way. It was a bright grey morning, and his journey began by driving through the small town as it filled with life. He realised it must be Saturday, and at one point the road he planned to take was closed for a market being set up.
All around him were people in thick jumpers or waxed jackets, carrying boxes or baskets. It reminded him of the towns Mrs Winters took them to all those years ago...
‘Parking’s on the left,’ called a man through Danny’s closed windscreen. At which point he realised the ridiculous risk he was taking in remaining there too long– what if the car broke down? What if he had to get out, with his arm...
He gave a nod, and quickly went off in the direction instructed; though drove past the turn-off for parking, and instead found a new route to the road he planned to take.
Yet how he longed to have stayed, to have been among these people. But really, what could he have achieved with it? What could they have shared? He focussed on his journey.
However, after maybe an hour’s driving, at increasing speed as the roads broadened and straightened, Danny began to feel a new sensation.
Now, there wasn’t very much about his body that hadn’t made itself aware to him over those past few days – he must have suffered every malfunction and alarm he had available...
‘Short of death.’
He caught himself saying it out loud, and then remembered a TV drama, something one of the quarrymen was watching somewhere; somewhere where they were staying, a hostel, or where they were eating after a day’s work...
Of course Danny did remember, exactly, both in year and in location, but he tried to make his memories looser, in the manner that his human friends described theirs.
Friends like Tim, ‘A pink blur,’ he recalled aloud. And Charlie, ‘A wet, dead thing.’ And the Foreman, the theft of whose car would be Danny’s final act on Earth.