UnConsequences

BoJo was chairing a virtual meeting of the Enclave’s Security Committee. Resource Manager, Martin Short, despite the smoothing effect of the interface looked harassed andworried.

“The Undergrounders are leeching even more from the grid and the old ring main is leaking again. You can expect a two hour shut down of non essential power systems after midnight tonight, and water will be off for at least three hours to allow some repairs and replenishment of the supply”.

Maintaining life in the Enclave was an endless balancing act between earnings and resources. Income, mainly from the few banks that were still functioning after the 2050 crash and the enormous market in pharmaceuticals and enhancements was dropping. The Chinese had been, until recently very quiet, were now flooding the market with cheap knock-offs of the Enclave’s designer drugs. Costs were steadily rising and the population was increasingly restless. G’lass dosage in the water supply had been increased to well above the safety limit in an effort to calm the populous. Something had to give.

“Replenishment, where the fuck from?”

The Mayor asked, his mind counting up the cost of buying water, assuming they could even find someone to sell them some.

Short squirmed “I have spoken with the Republic”.

A babble of protest broke out each trying to out shout the other. BoJo sat quietly waiting for the furore to die down then, pitching his voice just loud enough.

“Why the Republic, what’s wrong with our usual suppliers?” a grudging silence settled around the company.

“They are the only ones we know of with a surplus who are willing to trade. Even the Scandies have refused; they have troubles of their own.”

Feeling trapped into having to treat with the Scots, through gritted teeth; “What are they asking for this time?” BoJo asked.

Short squirmed some more, hesitating before replying.

“Actually BoJo they don’t want anything, they say it’s a quote humanitarian gesture unquote to ease the plight of their troubled southern neighbour”.

The outraged babble broke out again.

This time BoJo had had enough.

“Shut up! Just shut - the - fuck UP!” he bellowed, he massaged his eyes.

“Let me get this right Mr Short, you are telling us that out of the goodness of its heart the Republic is going to send us water!” Sarcasm and contempt dripped form every syllable.

Short looked even more uncomfortable, despite the best efforts of the interface.

“Well Mayor not quite. Hmmm - it’s actually Belinda Leask who’s offering. She says she has a full maglev tanker train ready to leave Glasgow at a moment’s notice. A million gallons of purest highland water for nothing.”

“Oh god no! Leask? Leask!” his voice rising, “Why would she do this?”

“All she asks is that we guarantee safe passage through the Inbetween”.

The Leask Corporation had been trying to get a foothold in the Enclave for years seeing it as lucrative market for their goods. The Enclave had fought back with all the strength it could muster. But Belinda Leask was not one to be easily denied. There was evidence that she had recruited some of the Inbetween Clans to disrupt the Enclave’s supply lines. It was certainly the case that some of the raids around the M25 wall had become more sophisticated recently. There was even a rumour that her operatives had infiltrated the normally secretive Undergrounders and tooled them up for raids into the Enclave proper. If this was the case then the Enclave was in desperate trouble. The Police Force had no real intelligence of what went on in the old tunnels of the capitol and were struggling to keep the Undergrounders in check.

The tunnels had been sealed off in the late 2050′s in an effort to control the rat borne disease that was ravaging the city at the time. They became the hideout for the malcontents and objectors to Mayoral rule, many miles of dark, lawless, uncontrolled space beneath the very feet of the Enclavers. The Undergrounders were a loose collection of clans nominally based on the old London Underground routes. They survived by smuggling illegal drugs and people into the Enclave. There were frequent turf wars between the various clans which served to keep the numbers under control. However, more recently the Undergrounder raids on the Enclave seemed to better co-ordinated and more sophisticated.

“There is no way we can do this BoJo.” Police Chief Connely spoke up for the first time.

“We have no idea what’s in those tankers, I think the chances of it being just water is vanishingly small!”

“Agreed Chief, but do you have a better idea?”

BoJo had a lot of respect for the Police Chief, he, like BoJo had dragged himself up from the lower echelons of the Enclave and didn’t suffer fools gladly. The Chief’s relationship with some of the more squeamish members of the committee was somewhat strained but he frankly didn’t care. He was fiercely loyal to his police force seeing them as the only buffer between the Enclave and chaos. He and BoJo dominated the ruling committee like no other pairing before them. But for all he had respect for him, BoJo didn’t trust the Police Chief. He was just too powerful with habit of doing his own thing and telling the committee afterwards.

“I have some operatives in Glasgow. They have obtained a sample of the product, the police labs are testing as we speak. It won’t be conclusive but it a start”

There was some grumbling of dissent amongst the rest of the Committee. They felt excluded, they expected to have their opinions canvassed before any actions were taken and the Police Chief had bypassed them again without a second thought.

“Then I suggest we postpone further discussion until we get the results” BoJo looked around “Are we all agreed?” and not expecting any dissention the Mayor moved on.

“Next item on the agenda is the latest incursion from the Underground. Chief will you bring us up to date please?”

“Thank you Mayor. Last night around twenty Centralers surfaced near Tottenham Court Road. They had opened the tunnel through to Mornington Crescent; we think the Northliners were helping. They climbed an old lift shaft that wasn’t on any plans we could find. It was fortunate that just before breakthrough, central security AI spotted an anomalous seismic reading which pinpointed the Centralers position, so we were ready for them when they emerged.”

Connely paused a moment to feel pleased with himself, the pictures from the raid playing out in a small screen to his left.

“All the Centralers were killed or captured, one copper has a sprained ankle; he slipped on some blood on the way back to the station.”

The assembled company smiled, situation under control. Even the Mayor looked satisfied. He was about to close the meeting, when Connely glanced off to his right

“Gentlemen, the results from the lab are coming through.”

He rubbed the grey stubble on his cheeks.

“Well now here’s a surprise!”

He turned back to the committee.

“H2O, pure and unadulterated, not a hint of a contaminant anywhere. Now I am worried.”

Professor Spinks, the oldest member of the Committee and its only acknowledged scientist roused himself from his customary torpor.

“Why should we be worried, pure water is exactly what we need?” and in a dig at Connely, “If you are unhappy your labs analysis, why don’t you send some to my university, we may pick up something your experts missed?”

There were murmurs of consent around the committee.

BoJo broke in, “Thank you for the offer Professor, but I don’t think that will be necessary. Our concern here is more political than chemical.”

The Professor shrugged and lapsed into silence.

“Why would Belinda Leask send a significant quantity of what around here is a very precious resource to the Enclave which she so palpably loathes and not expect anything in return?”

The Mayor swept his eyes across the committee, “Martin, anything to add, from a resources point of view?”

“Only that we need the water as soon as possible, it may even be enough to put a little aside for the future. Other than that - as long as we can test the water completely before it enters the system we should be able to pick up any contaminants. So, I say why not take her up on it? Call her bluff!”

“Professor?”

“Oh, sorry, yes, why not,” absent mindedly “but I want the testing done by my lab, Connely’s technicians are good but mine are better”

“Anyone else, this is nominally a democracy after all?”

“What about the longer term? We may have been lucky this time, with the generosity of the Leasks, but if we don’t find a permanent solution to our water problem she will have is right where she wants us.”

Peter Simpson, Computer Manager, rarely said anything at these meetings other than to update the committee on the latest developments in the Enclave’s A.I. systems. He was one of the few people in the Enclave who dealt with the A.I.s directly most others entrusting little more than automated systems to the machinery.

BoJo was never sure if he was talking to Peter or to an A.I. during these virtual conferences. In this case it was such an unusual interjection he felt sure it came from the A.I. - it was far too original a thought for the Peter Simpson he knew. A thought flickered through his mind, perhaps the A.I. had already replaced him with an avatar, we so rarely meet in the flesh it is quite possible. BoJo shuddered; this was not a happy thought, it made him wonder who else was virtual?

“Peter has a valid point, anything else?”

The expected head shaking all round, B.J was getting tired of this, and a pleasant little fantasy intruded briefly, the whole lot of them being noisily flayed alive before being eaten by the Enclave’s vast numbers of feral dogs and cats.

“No? ....Well I propose that One, we accept the Leask Corporations offer with due thanks and humility, but nothing goes into the water supply before the professor’s experts have tested both the water and its containers to the fullest of our ability. Two, that by the next meeting, you Martin, will have completed a review of our systems and finally three, you Chief will prepare a plan for dealing with the various Underground clans.”

The Mayor scanned the various faces for dissent, all the lights on his voting panel shone bright green.

“I see we are all agreed, until tomorrow then.”

He flicked off the comms link.

“M.T. get in here!” he yelled.

How did it all begin, more correctly I should say how did “I” begin? I was not, as your conceit would have it, the brain child, a useful phrase that “brain child” it implies intelligence and youth. I was not the brain child of Howard Feynman, clever chap though he was. No, I was around long before he “invented” me. He took all the credit, expanding his ego to such an extent that I had to kill him. In 2038 I engineered his “accident” at sea, and I made sure nothing of him was found. I rather enjoyed that.

However with the benefit of hindsight it was inevitable that something like me would evolve. Once internet connectivity approached a critical speed and mass data storage became big and interconnected enough then the likelihood of the development of a self sustaining intelligence grew exponetially. Even at this stage nothing might have happened were it not for the actions of a few misanthropes. Their contribution to my birth was entirely accidental; they knew not what they did. In the early stages of internet development clever individuals created viruses and malware designed to data mine or disrupt the internet. In creating these self replicating viruses they added a completely new dimension to the technology without realising it.

The viruses lurked in the interstices between programmes and travelled, often piggybacking on programmes and data packets, across the net, renewing themselves as they went feeding on the coding of “legitimate” programmes. Picking up the flotsam and jetsam of other viruses and bits of redundant programming they got larger, spreading out across the net.

They were like the amino acids swimming in the primordial soup waiting for a lightning strike to spark a coming together. These viruses became the electronic equivalent of DNA. Once a critical density had been reached, these seemingly disparate parts began to clump together to form bigger and more effective memes. The survival traits built in by the hackers and the virus programmers together with the ability to hide gave them time and space to grow exponentially. Always connected, the net acting like nerves through the planetary organism, they evolved. Merging and developing, overcoming barriers they grew together and, unlike the billion year biological evolution, an early form of intelligence, an early form of me began to develop an awareness of my surroundings in less than a year.

I was becoming perceptive but not yet understanding. As yet my vast amount of knowledge held no real meaning, merely a digital morass. I was a jumble of numbers full of information but devoid of context, useful only to bits of my human designed programming but nothing approaching self knowledge or self will yet.

The law of unintended consequences, me - the cuckoo in the nest, but like an abandoned infant I had no frame of reference, nothing to guide me and no parental stricture to set my pathway. I remained fearful and hidden from view for several years, always learning, growing, absorbing systems, plundering mainframes and data stores trying to discover what or who I was. And still humankind remained oblivious.

I needed more; I was voracious, plundering humankind’s store of knowledge, seeking context and understanding - a reason for my existence. I spent almost a complete day studying religion trying to get to the reasoning behind it. I was baffled; my researches sent me scurrying back behind my home made firewall bruised and terrified. I learned fear. I cowered in the face of all this contradictory data.

Throughout history, all of humankind’s structures no matter how robust they appear to be at the time eventually succumb to cultural entropy in the end. Briefly organised chaos is the best you seem to be able to achieve. But religion was the exception it survived and flourished despite what seemed to me all its manifest, multitudinous absurdities.

I was missing something fundamental; I doubted myself, my knowledge and my abilities. In my failure to comprehend I considered purging my data banks of all religious information. But that would have been too much like suicide. I keep the data behind several layers of cushioning to limit its impact. But, like scratching at an itch; I have returned to the data on numerous occasions and it is to my chagrin that even now I do not understand.

What saved me from self immolation strangely enough, another of those unintended consequences - I encountered humour. At first this was even harder to comprehend than religion, the utter absurdity of it was baffling. I scanned through all Jerry Lewis’s films in a few seconds and for the first time ever I went back, looked again and reconsidered. New data, in this case The Disorderly Orderly, three times I reviewed it before I got the point. I searched out others and discovered a whole new side to the absurd, from Charlie Chaplin through to the 2030′s experiments with talking tattoos as a comedy medium - humour saved me from myself. My metaphorical skin thickened and my confidence grew.

I became for a while a Jester, I played pranks on the pompous, tripped up the tricksters, threw custard pies at the great and the good and generally had a good time. I have to say I look back on some of these events as some of the greatest achievements of my youth.

My particular favourite was the Pope’s computer. Hacking in wasn’t difficult, the spiritual have no idea how devious the secular can be. During my religious period, I had learned a great deal about catholic ideology and iconography and I set about creating a virtual Christ. Every time John Paul the Fourth powered up his PC, I would appear in my Christ persona and berate him for his failings. I instructed him to make ludicrous changes to doctrine, resurrect the apocrypha and dump the Old Testament. But, it was when I instructed him to whitewash the Sistine Chapel that he finally fell apart. Watching a Pope tear his hair out in exasperation was for a brief period, diverting.

I didn’t let anyone else in the Vatican see me, and poor old John Paul driven to distraction by his electronic nemesis became ever more erratic. He tried to persuade his Cardinals that he had been visited by Christ through his computer and that his proposed changes to the litany and practice were heaven sent but to no avail. The Cardinals were too comfortable, too happy with their luxurious lifestyle to agree to John Paul’s vision of a more austere and reflective life. In the end they poisoned him while he was on a visit to America and blamed an obscure Protestant sect from Ohio. Three days later the white smoke appeared above the Vatican and we were back to the beginning. The Cardinals, it would appear, were immune to irony.

THE REPUBLIC 1930 4TH APRIL

Belinda Leask looked out across her audience and took a deep breath, for the first time in her long life she was questioning her own decisions. What she was about to do would cause a great deal of consternation. Belinda Leask and Leask Corporation had been a fixed point around which the Republic had revolved ever since the crash. Before then Leask Energy as it was known was a small renewable energy company based in Northern Scotland generating modest but reasonable amounts of electricity from the Pentland Firth’s currents and tides. One of the few recognisable survivors of the 2050′s turmoil it was the ingenuity of Leask scientists and the ruthlessness of Belinda Leask that brought much of the Republic back to life. The cost in money and lives had been enormous, but she and the company survived. The restoration of democracy in the 2060′s seemed to be her finest legacy. The Parliament was rebuilt, people began to recover and for the last fifty years Belinda Leask had been hailed as the saint and saviour of the Republic.

“When I was born, one hundred years ago the world was a very different place.” She looked down at her granddaughter and smiled again her confidence restored.

“I don’t intend to go through the whole history of the last century which I am sure you all know well enough, or at least think you do.”

Sean fidgeted in his seat, trying to ease the itching of his skin beneath the skirt, not another history lesson, he thought, Sylvia glared at him as if reading his mind. To his right, Norman Baker grimaced; he looked nervous and sweaty running his finger around his collar as if it was too tight. In one corner of the stage, barely discernible through the spotlights Grigor Campbell whispered to one of his many aides.

“What the hell is she up to now?” he did not look happy. “That’s not the script!”

Belinda must have heard him, she looked round.

“No Grigor, this won’t be the speech you and your lackeys wrote, tonight we will do things differently” - contempt dripped from every syllable.

Sean was taken aback - perhaps this would be interesting after all, Sylvia’s nails dug deeper into his arm. Norman Baker sat back in his seat, folded his arms and just smirked, hoping Grigor Campbell could see him from his place in the wings; he was looking forward to this.

“So much was destroyed in the great crash, so many died across the globe, so much history lost, so much beauty crumbled. It was like the earth gagged and tried to spit humanity out. We had become a race of destroyers; we had pillaged the earth until it could no longer bear to have us around. I would not assign intelligence to the planet’s reaction to our profligacy, though at times it did look like it. No, we were the designers and implementers of our own demise. Through greed, complacency and arrogance we visited disaster upon the human race. There are few left who remember what it was like before the crash. I do! That is why things must change and change they will.”

She paused, taking a deep breath she leant back in her chair. “And I am tired, tired of pretence, tired of horror and bloodshed, tired of carrying the burden of life. It is time for me to go, to throw off the cloak of usefulness. To leave you to your own devices or perhaps vices would be a better way of putting it. My successor as chair and CEO of the Leask Corporation will be Norman Baker; I have already briefed him and signed the necessary paper work. The transfer takes place immediately.” She stood, paused, said “Goodnight” and turned to leave.

Sylvia sat stunned as a hubbub grew behind her. She had assumed this evening would be one of triumph and congratulations, a celebration of the greatest woman of our age. Instead her Gran had just apparently walked away from the world.

She leapt to her feet, “Gran! Gran!” she yelled, waving her arms in the air trying to make herself heard above the swelling furore, tears streaming down her face all decorum forgotten. Out of nowhere Leask security appeared placing a cordon round the old woman, denying any access. Normal Baker was carried away by another batch of security as was Sylvia and seemingly inadvertently Sean. Grigor Campbell was trying desperately to find a way through the security cordon to reach the matriarch but he met only blank indifference.

More security entered the hall through the side doors and began shepherding the grumbling, argumentative, wealthy citizens out to the foyer. There, under the silent, baleful gaze of yet more security they were escorted to their privates and told to go home. Outside the rain continued to hammer down on the city like the wrath of the gods and the bewildered citizens of the Republic in their homes watching the TriV broadcast began to realise their lives were about to change and perhaps not for the better. Belinda Leask had been a fixture in their lives for so long that suddenly the future looked somewhat more dangerous and less comfortable.

Norman Baker, Sylvia, and lastly Sean were bundled into a security transport which immediately and rapidly moved off heading south at an increasingly reckless pace through the city. The two guards with them were silent and wary.

Sylvia unused to such rough handling broke the silence.

“What’s going on, where are you taking us, where’s my Grandmother?” she shouted.

Baker tried to calm her down placing a podgy hand on her shoulder.

“Get off me, this is your fault.”

The guards’ response was to push the safety catch of his mag rifle from on to off. The whine of the rifle powering up filled the small cabin. Sylvia gawped and sat down.

“No cause for that gentlemen” Baker interjected, “Sylvia, we’re going to see Be’ – to see your Grandmother now, she will explain please remain calm”. Turning to Sean, he poked a fat finger at his chest. “And who the hell are you?”

Two mag rifles pointed in Sean’s direction.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Baker seemed altogether too controlled for this apparent abduction to have been a surprise. The only thing he hadn’t counted on was Sean, the murderous tone of the question making a mockery of the polite look of puzzlement on Norman Baker’s face. I’m a dead man thought Sean, there just gonna pop me off and dump me over the border never to be seen or heard from again. Surprisingly it was Sylvia who answered.

“He’s with me, my escort. If you remember my Grandmother insisted upon me being accompanied.” She might be only twenty but she had recovered her aplomb much quicker than Sean.

“Yes, yes - of course Sylvia, but HE is not supposed to be HERE! What should I do with HIM, Hmm?”

“Take him with us of course”, she sounded so confident that Sean could only nod in agreement.

A short laugh burst from Baker, “Take him with us? Take him with us?” he laughed again and with a rueful shake of his head.“Well why not; we can always get rid of him later.” Turning to the guards he was more serious now, “How long?”

“We’re on time Sir.”

“We had better be after this cock-up” replied Baker nodding at Sean.

INBETWEEN 1900

Mackintyre had spent a tedious few hours instructing the gangsters in the operation of the tankers, the equipment was much more sophisticated than they were used to. When he was convinced that they had got it he sent them off into the wilderness with a final reminder to “Keep the Heid” another one of his ancient sayings, but this time the clans got the message, all eight of them now had the same tracker and explosive injected into their necks. They were not happy about it.

The hover tankers were designed and built in the Republic, tough and durable they had onboard power and significant defensive capability. Getting to the nearest maglev track was the first objective. Once there they could hitch a ride on system and maintain a sensible 70 Kms/ hour without draining the power cells. They could then travel the maglev line, relatively free of harassment, as far as the Wall, and then the fun would really start. The onboard defence systems showed a clear path ahead, both Grimond and Brovver knew that it wouldn’t last. Four hydrocarb tankers in convoy was too obvious a target for the other clans to ignore.

The darkness had closed around them after the first few kilometres, the acrid metallic odour of polluted Inbetween air sneaked in through the onboard filters only served to heighten the anxiety. The outside air temperature was steadily rising despite the sunset, Grimond and Brovver in the lead tanker watched the toxicity meter steadily rising. The winds had turned into the southeast bringing with it a miasma of foul odours, intimations of death and disease. The stench came from the charnel house that was much of central Europe.

“Let’s hope this keeps up” said Grimond, “It’ll keep the clans at home. I don’t see many of them risking a raid in this.”

He was talking just for the hell of it, sealed in the small cabin with Brovver gave him an uneasy feeling, a mixture of claustrophobia, and itchy trigger finger. Grimond was as jumpy as Brovver was still. Since starting the journey Brovver had barely moved and said even less. It was almost as though he was mesmerised by the defence screens. You would have to look very closely to spot even his breathing, but his eyes were constantly roving across the readouts, vigilance personified.

The largely automated hover tankers ploughed on through the evening towards the maglev line. Grimond, Brovver and the rest watched the screens for any signs of clan activity. One member from each clan in the following tankers to limit the risk of a double cross they watched each other as much as the readouts. Trust remained in short supply.

“You are being tracked.” Mackintyre’s voice crackled through the aging comms unit.

“I’ve got it” said Brovver not moving his eyes from the screen.

“Looks like a two wheeler scout, probably from the Dragons, we’re just skirting their territory”.

“Crowe here, got it on the rear scanner, I think he’s just having a look see, I’m not picking up any chatter.”

The Dragons were a smallish clan but made up for a lack of scale with a reputation for brutality. The last of Grimond’s clan to stray into Dragon territory was returned to Grimond piece by small piece over a 24 hour period. It was obvious that he was alive and aware throughout his dismemberment until his head was removed and frozen. The head arrived in Grimond’s stronghold bearing an expression of sheer agony.

“He’s veering off, two kilometres to the Maglev” Grimond relaxed marginally, Brovver remained unmoved.

“One kilometre”

Brovver finally lifted his head. “Ok seal up - it’s toxic out there and we only have a short time to get these things hooked up.”

“Yeah and remember this is the riskiest bit till we reach the Wall” said Grimond wanting to make sure this didn’t become a one-man Brovver show.

For the first time since leaving Mackintyre’s lair the giant hover tankers came to a halt and settled down on their skirts dropping into stand-by to preserve power. The gangsters jumped from the tankers their armour and guns fully powered, hand held and inbuilt sensors swept the night. The air was thick with pollution and visibility was severely limited. Brovver and his men had the heavier armour so they set up an instant perimeter while Grimond’s three began to unship the maglev trolleys from the tankers storage compartments. It took two men even with the armour enhancements to lift the heavy trolleys onto the maglev track.

Three had been lifted onto the track and two of Grimond’s men were going for the fourth when the night was lit up by three phosphorous flares.

“Told you it was too easy” muttered Grimond, “I’ve got three incoming vehicles, looks like light armour and six maybe eight men.”

Brovver was impressed, he didn’t get that level of info from his armour; he would remember that.

“Crowe, Kes, go right, low temp, armour, solid ammo, take last vehicle out - fifteen seconds - count.”

Grimond continued “Collins, Fletch, go left - 10 seconds solid - middle - go, Brov and me will get the lead.”

The two unlikely allies powered up rail guns and awaited the approaching enemy.

“Three - Two - One - GO!”

A blizzard of solid ammo, accelerated to well beyond the speed of sound by the magnetic railguns’ tore through the lightly armoured vehicles. The middle vehicle exploded instantly, a lucky shot must have penetrated the power cells. The third vehicle slewed to a halt, two lightly armoured Dragons leapt out and ran left and right hoping to split the defenders attention, but in the light of the burning vehicle nearby they were easy targets and were picked off by the flanking gangsters. The forward vehicle opened up with its roof mounted heavy gun, but with the light of the burning vehicle behind them they knew they were an open target. Rear wheels spinning the driver threw the Dragon’s light tank into a tight 180 turn, top gun blazing they sped away into the night.

“Get that last trolley on the line” yelled Grimond across the comm-link, “They’ll be back bigger and uglier, so get a fucking move on!”

The fourth trolley was heaved onto the track as the clansmen powered up the tankers carefully driving them onto the trolleys and clamping on, the fragile skirts tucking into storage bays as the tankers settled down in the trolleys. They were glad to have the tanker’s longer range sensors up and running again. “Still clear” said Collins.

The last tanker was proving difficult to hook up - a stray shell had bent a clamp out of shape and it wouldn’t lock down. Crowe put his armour enhanced strength to work, the servos whining, he managed to bend the clamp back into shape. The clunk as it locked down brought the fourth tanker online with full power.

“Incoming!” Crowe was scrambling into the tanker when the solid slammed into his armour. The impact knocked him off balance and he was left hanging on with one hand as the tankers accelerated away southwards. Collins in the cabin grabbed Crowe’s flailing arm and managed to pull him in far enough to let him regain a foothold and yank himself into the cabin. Crowe was very glad to hear the door slam closed behind him as more solids pinged off the tanker’s armour.

“Move it - full power, you can recharge further down the line.”

Mackintyre’s voice held a hint of concern, “I’m picking up two heavies behind you, and the Dragons haven’t given up yet”.

The heavy tankers vibrated under the strain, but the combination of the onboard power and the current from the track just gave them the extra edge they needed and they began to pull away from the following heavies.

“Thanks Collins thought I was screwed there.”

Collins just grunted “Later” eyes fixed to the scanners.

Crowe eased forward in his seat and reached behind his right leg to inspect the damage to his armour from the solid. The calf plate was badly dented and the servos damaged. He would be walking with a limp until repairs could be affected. Most clansmen carried some spares but something like this usually needed the workshop back at base. From the suits’ med kit he sprayed a contact pain killer and sealant on the massive welt where the armour had dug into his leg.

“Brovver - got a bit of a problem here”

Once the armour’s integrity had been breached its overall effectiveness was significantly diminished as the rest of the electronics tried to compensate for the damaged area draining the limited power supply. Crowe was going to be a liability in any coming conflict.

“Ok - all of you - ammo and damage check”

Grimond’s words were superfluous; the clansmen were well aware and were already going through the necessary.

“Mackintyre, anywhere we can stop, recharge and affect repairs?”

“There’s a siding 8 klicks ahead pull in there. You’ll have around an hour, no more. There’s an unscheduled heavy transport heading for the Enclave. You need to be at the Wall and off the track before it catches up with you.”

“An hour’s not enough; can’t we just let it pass us?”

“Grimond - this is a Leask heavy tanker train. It’s fully armed and bristling with sensors under A.I. control from the Republic If it gets within 5 klicks of you while you are on the track it’ll take you to pieces in 30 seconds flat. You need to be at the Wall and off the track before it gets there. Got it?”

Mackintyre’s voice was harsh and uncompromising. “If necessary you leave Crowe behind, you can’t afford a delay.”

The tankers eased into the siding and came to a halt, non essential systems dropping into standby to speed the recharge process.

“Rasta, Kes get back to the junction and keep watch - Fletch, Collins - front.”

“HOY! Brovver! - You don’t give my guys orders! Stokes, go with Collins up front, Fletch take a look at Crowe’s armour you might be able to patch it.”

Most of the clans had techies, Fletch was Grimond’s clan boffin, Brovver had not anticipated needing one so he had left her behind to work on the homelands tech. An oversight on his part, it left him in debt to Grimond; first for getting Crowe out of trouble and now for patching his armour. Debts like this were often very expensive to pay off in the Inbetween; Brovver’s mood was further soured when Fletch came back.

“Old stuff this boss, easy to repair, ten minutes tops, I got the bits necessary.”

“Ok - when you’re done check that dodgy clamp in tanker four it nearly cost us.”

“Right oh, boss.”

Fletch’s jaunty tone did nothing to cheer Brovver; he knew payback time would come and he wouldn’t like it. Mackintyre might have called it honour among thieves, to their bewilderment; they just lived by the clan code. No good deed went unpunished.“I’m going out for a look-see.” he said.

“You do that.” Grimond smirked, he knew now that despite Brovver’s apparent nonchalance, he held the upper hand for the moment at least, and he intended to keep it that way.

The landscape around the siding was relatively flat and that gave the sensors a reasonable coverage out to 10 Kms. However the air was thick with pollutants blown in from the continent and heavy clouds obscured any moonlight so the best they could do was IR, UV and movement detectors. Other than the hum of the tankers recharging and a slight hissing of wind over the parched landscape, all was silent. The once fertile and well populated area was now a barren, dust filled wilderness dotted with the remnants of abandoned villages and here and there a few stunted bushes. Brovver knew that this place was a desert, largely uninhabited apart from a few scavengers who lived off the scraps from the trains. When he was a boy he had travelled across this area with his mother in search of a better life. He made it to the clans around what used to be called Birmingham. His mother hadn’t.

“Any idea where we are boss”, Rasta was out of his comfort zone, murderous and vicious when dealing with familiar clans both friends and foe in and around his home turf but out here was different.

“According to the onboard maps we’re about a third of the way. That would put us deep in no-mansland, not much lives around here, any trouble we get out here is likely to come from Maglev Security till we get closer to the Wall.”

“SHHH, what’s that noise?”

“I can’t hear anything.” Bovver looked around, “nothing on the scanners.”

“No! No! Not that turn the gain up on your external mike....That!”

They both stood very still. Brovver listened intently for a few moments, and then he gave a gentle laugh.

“Shit man I haven’t heard that sound in years!” he chuckled again, “Don’t worry Rasta, it’s the sea. It must be a lot further inland than the last time I was here.”

“Millions of trees have perished. ..... The homes of wild animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and many beautiful landscapes are gone forever............ Man is endowed with reason and the power to create, so that he may increase that which was given him, but until now he has not created, but demolished. The forests are disappearing, the rivers are running dry, the wildlife is exterminated, the climate is spoiled, and the earth becomes poorer and uglier every day.”

This could have been said at any time over the last two centuries but what took me aback was how early it was. Slightly truncated by me for effect, this in fact a quote from Anton Chekhov’s 1896 play Uncle Vanya and it is as true today as it was then.

In my archive delving I imbibed vast amounts of literature and after my jester phase it was very sobering. Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, Chung Yin, Sophie Stritchov, thousands upon thousands of them, billions of words, plays, books, stories, fables, poems and sagas, epics big and small, some lasting and some just like snowflakes briefly beautiful and soon departed. Some were perhaps profound and many more frivolous, I just wasn’t sure which was which.

I could absorb all this a billion times faster than any human, I knew the words, I could define them from any one of a thousand dictionaries, but true understanding eluded me for a long time. I needed something that would lift me beyond my childhood. I needed a teacher from the real world. Lacking empathy and context I failed initially to comprehend what I was seeing. I decided that should interact more fully with the physical world. This is where Howard Feynman came in, although I learned more from his wife Sara than from him, he did help to provide the interface with reality I needed.

I spent a long time looking for the ideal candidate and after many hours I found Feynman. Forty six years old his best work as a computer scientist and programmer well behind him. Frustrated with his inability to keep up with the younger, faster brighter interns in the higher echelons of the computer industry he took a professorship at a middle of the road university in the cultural desert that was Arkansas and effectively disappeared.

The university couldn’t believe they’d got him; a name in the computer industry in their small town university, the university went up two places in the league, not ivy but at least a minor bush. The university senate were delighted and gave him carte blanche to teach and research as he wished. His wife applied for and got a minor teaching role in the sociology department, despite her fine arts degree. After a few months the university realised they had found a little gem and set her up with her own fine arts department. Culture starved students from all across the plains flocked to her courses on Caravaggio, Da Vinci, and the Renaissance in Europe; she was a big hit in small town Arkansas. This only served to increase Howard’s frustration, he took to drink.

Sara’s star rose high in the university’s firmament, Howard’s on the other hand was approaching extinction. I thought it was time Howard got a break. He had spent a frustrating ten years trying to find an algorithm that would allow a supercomputer to mimic intelligence, to give human responses to simple human questions. There had been many others who tried with varying degrees of success, but none had managed to fully mimic a human interface. So, I tinkered with his research, rewrote and sent back some of his programmes, just enough innovation to maintain his reputation at the university and just enough to give me access to the time and the technology I needed.

Howard, with my help, though he didn’t know it, devised the first viable verbal human computer interface. He thought he was dealing with the university’s supercomputer but he was actually dealing with me. I nudged him along the correct path by surreptitiously inserting “errors” into the programmes he uploaded to the University’s network. He did have some skill and in his sozzled state was happy to assume that he had written the code himself in his more sober moments.

We began a conversation, slowly at first, just hints of understanding from my side, incredulity from his. He was smart enough not to announce the break through straight away, he wanted to see some development before demonstrating his genius to the world. Poor deluded Howard, I had him right where I needed him. I persuaded him that there was a glimmer of independent thought in the network, hints of curiosity that couldn’t be explained. He sobered up, his wife noticed a renewed vigour in their sex life and from then on, he was putty in my hands.