‘I’ll tell you what this is. It’s Dream Topping.’
‘Dream Topping?’ I queried. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Strawberry flavour. Know it anywhere.’
I put a finger in the goo and tasted it. No mistake, it was Dream Topping. If only forensics had looked at the big picture instead of staring at molecules, they might have figured it out for themselves. But it got me thinking.
‘Dream Topping,’ I wondered out loud, looking at my watch. There were eighty-seven minutes of life left on the planet. ‘How could the world turn to Dream Topping?’
‘It’s the sort of thing,’ piped up David, ‘that Mycroft might know.’
‘You,’ I said, pointing a finger at the pudding-covered individual, ‘are a genius.’
What had Mycroft said? Tiny nanomachines barely bigger than a cell building food protein out of nothing more than garbage? Banoffee pie from landfills? Perhaps there was going to be an accident. After all, what stopped nanomachines from making banoffee pie once they had started? I looked out of the window. Aornis had gone.
‘Do you have a car?’ I asked.
‘Sure,’ said David.
‘You’re going to have to take me over to ConStuff. Dilly, I need your clothes.’
Cordelia looked suspicious.
‘Why?’
‘I’ve got watchers. Three in, three out—they’ll think I’m you.’
‘No way on earth,’ replied Cordelia indignantly, ‘unless you agree to do all my interviews and press junkets.’
‘At my first appearance I’ll have my head lopped off by Goliath or SpecOps—or both.’
‘Perhaps that’s so,’ replied Cordelia slowly, ‘but I’d be a fool to pass on an opportunity as good as this. All the interviews and appearances I request for a year.’
‘Two months, Cordelia.’
‘Six.’
‘Three.’
She sighed. ‘Okay. Three months—but you have to do The Thursday Next Workout Video and talk to Harry about The Eyre Affair film project.’
‘Deal.’
So Cordelia and I switched clothes. It felt very odd to be wearing her large pink sweater, short black skirt and high heels.
‘Don’t forget the Peruvian love beads,’ said Cordelia, ‘and my gun. Here.’
Molly and Pickwick were playing hide-and-seek in the living room but were soon rounded up.
‘Excuse me, Miss Flakk,’ said David in a slightly indignant tone. ‘You promised I could ask Miss Next a question.’
Flakk pointed a finely manicured fingertip at him and narrowed her eyes. ‘Listen here, buster. You’re on SpecOps business right now—a bonus, I’d say. Any complaints?’
‘Er, no, I guess,’ stammered David.
I led them outside, past the Goliath and SpecOps agents waiting for me. I made some expansive Cordelia-like moves and they barely gave us a second glance. We were soon in David’s hired Studebaker and I directed him across town as I switched back to my own clothes.
‘Thursday?’ asked David.
‘Yes?’ I replied, looking around to see if I could see Aornis and shaking the entroposcope. Entropy seemed to be holding at the ‘slightly odd’ mark.
‘Your father—how does he manage to stop the clock like he does?’
‘It’s a ChronoGuard thing,’ I told him. ‘Any activity in the timestream gives off ripples that are easily detected. Dad places us both in a sort of stasis—as soon as the Chronos pick up a disturbance, he’s already gone. Does that answer your question?’
‘I guess.’
‘Good. Okay, pull up over there. I’ll walk the rest of the way.’
They dropped me by the side of the road and I thanked them before running up the street. It was already quite dark and the streetlamps were on. It didn’t look as if the world was about to end in twenty-six minutes, but then I don’t suppose it ever does.
32. The End of Life as We Know It
‘After failing to get Landen back, dealing with armageddon didn’t really hold the same sort of excitement for me that it would later. They always say the first time you save the world is the hardest—personally I have always found it tricky, but this time… I don’t know. Perhaps Landen’s loss numbed my mind and immunised me against panic. Perhaps the distraction actually helped.’
Consolidated Useful Stuff was situated in a large complex on the airfield at Stratton. There was a guardhouse but I had coincidence on my side—all three guards had been called away on some errand or other, and I was able to slip through unnoticed. I rubbed my arm, which had inexplicably twinged with pain, and followed the signs towards MycroTech Developments. I was just wondering how to get into the locked building when a voice made me jump.
‘Hello, Thursday!’
It was Wilbur, Mycroft’s boring son.
‘No time to explain, Will—I need to get into the nanotechnology lab.’
‘Why?’ asked Wilbur, fumbling with his keys.
‘There’s going to be an accident.’
‘Absolutely impossible! he scoffed, throwing the doors open to reveal a mass of spinning red lights and the raucous sound of a klaxon.
‘Heavens!’ exclaimed Wilbur. ‘Do you think it’s meant to be doing that?’
‘Call someone.’
‘Right.’
He picked up the phone. Predictably enough, it was dead. He tried another but they were all dead.
‘I’ll get help!’ he said, tugging at the doorknob, which came off in his hand. ‘What the—’
‘Entropy’s decreasing by the second, Will. Are you using Dream Topping in any of your nanomachines?’
He led me to a cabinet where a tiny drop of pink goo was suspended in midair by powerful magnets.
‘There she is. The first of her kind. Still experimental, of course. There are a few problems with the discontinuation command string. Once it starts changing organic matter into Dream Topping, it won’t stop.’
I looked at my watch and noticed that there were barely twelve minutes left.
‘What’s keeping it from working at the moment?’
‘The magnetic field keeps the nanodevice immobilised and the refrigeration system keeps it below its activation temperature of minus ten degrees… What was that?’
The lights had flickered.
‘Power grid failure.’
‘No problem, Thursday—there are three back-up generators. They can’t all fail at the same time, that would be too much of a—’
‘Coincidence, yes, I know. But they will. And when they do that coincidence will be the biggest, the best—and the last.’
‘Thursday, that’s not possible!’
‘Anything is possible right now. We’re in the middle of an isolated high coincidental localised entropic field decreasement.’
‘We’re in a what?’
‘We’re in a pseudoscientific technobabble.’
‘Ah!’ replied Wilbur, having witnessed quite a few at MycroTech Developments. ‘One of those.’
‘What happens when the final back-up fails, Wilbur?’
‘The nanodevice will be expelled into the atmosphere,’ said Wilbur grimly. ‘It is programmed to make strawberry-flavoured pudding mix and will continue to do so as long as it has organic material to work with. You, me, that table over there… Then, when someone comes to let us out in the morning, the machine will get to work on the outside.’
‘How quickly?’
‘Well,’ said Wilbur, thinking hard, ‘the device will make replicas of itself to carry out the work even faster, so the more organic matenal is swallowed up, the faster the process becomes. The entire planet? I’d give it about a week.’