Rashim nodded. ‘Yes. Enormous. And large-scale introduces a whole new bunch of problems. But even so…’ He shook his head again, marvelling at the economy of the circuitry. ‘This is so ingeniously configured.’ A grin stretched across his thin lips.
Roald Waldstein, you were fifty years ahead of anybody else.
‘We should take this whole rack,’ he said. ‘I know a lot of these component wafers can probably be replaced — duplicated with present-day electronics — but I need to take some time to be sure I know how he’s put it all together.’
‘Affirmative. We will take the complete rack.’
‘What about the controlling software?’ Rashim looked at the row of computer cases beneath the desk. Each one with an ON light glowing, and the flickering LED of a busy hard drive. ‘I need the software shell as well. It’s as much a part of this device as the circuits.’
‘Correct.’
Rashim shook his head. ‘Those computers look primeval. How the hell can they run Waldstein’s machine’s software?’
‘Networked together these computers are suitably powerful,’ replied Bob. ‘They do not use the original operating software.’
Rashim recalled the charming old names of computing’s early twenty-first-century history: Microsoft. Windows. Linux. Primitive times when code was written in a digital form of pidgin English. Not like the elegant streams of data from his time: code written by code.
‘We won’t need to take these clunky old computers with us, will we?’
‘Negative. We can extract the machines’ hard drives.’
Hard drives? Then Rashim remembered. Data in this time used to be stored magnetically on metal disks inside sturdy carousels. Again, so primitive. So wasteful. Nothing like the efficiency of data suspended in water molecules.
‘Right… yes. Do you know how to do that, uh… Bob?’
‘I have a theoretical understanding of the system architecture of these Dell computers. Also the system AI — known as computer-Bob — can provide detailed instructions on how to dismantle the architecture. However, only Maddy has practical experience of this process.’
‘Right. OK.’ Rashim pinched the narrow bridge of his nose. ‘We’d best wait for her to come back before we start dismantling things, then.’
‘Affirmative.’
He got to his feet. Across the archway, he watched the Indian girl, Sal, talking quietly with another girl, pale as a ghost and completely bald.
‘Who is that?’ asked Bubba cheerfully.
‘It is a support unit,’ said Bob. ‘It was set on a growth pattern before we had to deal with your Exodus contamination.’
‘A genetically engineered AI hybrid, SpongeBubba,’ added Rashim. ‘The US military were working with those back in the fifties and sixties. Perfect soldiers. We had a platoon of gen-bots come along with us on Exodus.’ He looked at Bob. ‘Leaner, more advanced models than you, I’m afraid.’
Bob’s brow furrowed sulkily. ‘I know.’ Then, with something approximating a smirk, ‘I did in fact manage to disable one of them.’
‘Yes, you did.’ Rashim nodded respectfully and then offered him an awkward high five. ‘Good for you, big man.’
Bob cocked his head and gazed curiously at Rashim’s palm left hovering in mid-air.
‘Uh… never mind,’ he said, tucking his hand away.
Chapter 5
10 September 2001, New York
Maddy returned from Central Park with Foster just after half past one in the afternoon. Following brief introductions of Rashim and his novelty robot, they set to work. During the rest of the day Sal was largely sidelined with the drooling child support unit in her tender care while Maddy, Rashim, Foster, computer-Bob and SpongeBubba collectively pooled their technical knowledge and carefully dismantled the equipment in the archway.
It was an exercise in identifying and extracting only the technology components that could not easily be replaced elsewhere. Bob and Liam meanwhile had been sent out to steal a vehicle big enough for them all and the equipment they were likely to take along.
By the time lights started to flicker on, on the far side of the East River, turning Manhattan, skyscraper by skyscraper, into an enormous, inverted chandelier and the railway overhead started rumbling with trains taking city commuters home from the Big Apple to the suburbs of Brooklyn and Queens, they’d done most of what needed to be done.
A battered Winnebago SuperChief motorhome was parked up in the alleyway, a snug, hand-in-glove squeeze between the row of archways and the graffiti’d brick wall opposite. The rack carrying the displacement machine had been carefully lifted in and secured tightly in the RV’s toilet cubicle. The PCs had been stripped of their internal hard drives and the filing cabinet beside Maddy’s desk had been emptied. Its drawers were full of a messy miscellany of discarded wires and circuit boards and gadgets: a taser, something that looked like a Geiger counter, the babel-buds, a non-functioning wrist-mounted computer of some sort with ‘H-data WristBuddee-57’ stamped on one side. Gadgets and parts of gadgets, most of them clearly not from the year 2001. Nothing like that could stay behind.
The improvised growth tubes were too large to take along, but the pumps and computer interface were removed and carefully stored in the RV. The protein solution and the dead foetuses were gone now, poured away into the East River.
Like any normal family moving house, it was a revelation to Maddy, Liam and Sal discovering how much clutter they’d already managed to acquire. Magazines and books, a Nintendo and a TV, a kettle and sandwich toaster, a chemical toilet, a wardrobe full of clothes, a shelf in their bunk archway filled with half-used toiletries. And rubbish. A small pyramid of empty drinks cans, a teetering Jenga tower of pizza boxes and takeaway cartons.
As they left the archway, tired after a busy day, the last of Monday’s fading sunset left the sky a deep blue and there existed that momentary gasp of air, that fleeting pause between the last of Manhattan’s office dwellers vacating the city and the emergence of the first eager beavers of New York’s nightlife.
Times Square was still busy, but mostly with ambling tourists coming home to their 5th Avenue hotels after a day’s sightseeing. Bob, SpongeBubba and the freshly birthed girl clone — yet to be called ‘Becks’: they were still debating whether to consider her a new personality entirely, that was still up for discussion — were left to watch over the SuperChief and the archway. The rest of them headed across to Manhattan, one last time in Times Square. They found a Mexican-themed place that looked out across the winking lights and animated billboards, the news ticker around the Hershey store, the stop-start intersections and sluggish convoys of yellow cabs, gaggles of goggle-eyed tourists, and the last city suit walking home with a gym bag slung over one shoulder.
It was quiet in the restaurant. They ordered from the waitress quickly and then were left alone to the privacy of their faux dark wood and red-velvet-cushioned booth to talk.
‘So…’ Maddy clasped her hands like a host desperate to get her party started. ‘Here we are, then.’
‘Aye,’ said Liam, ‘the first proper chance I’ve had to sit down, rest and eat in ages.’
Maddy nodded. It seemed an eternity ago that they’d been cornered by guards in Caligula’s palace. Since then they’d been running, hiding, scavenging. She realized she hadn’t eaten properly in days, the best part of a week in fact. That went some way towards explaining her ordering the triple bean and beef mega-burrito.
‘You’re running,’ said Foster. ‘I can understand that… but have any of you thought where to?’
‘No.’ Maddy tucked hair behind her ear. ‘Not yet.’
‘Well now, to be sure, we want to know who sent those support units after us.’ Liam looked at Sal for support. She nodded. Clearly the most pressing question hovering between them all.
Maddy shook her head. ‘Somebody from the future. Obviously. I don’t know.’