Echo Boy (17 page)

‘What happened then?’ I asked Uncle Alex. ‘Why was I back in Yorkshire? Why did I—’

And then the questions started. They came from different people within the room. It felt like the room itself was asking questions as it closed in around me. I went on crying, in the real world and the fake one. Candressa pointed at someone. The minotaur. A man’s body (in a smart twentieth-century suit) with a bull’s head. ‘You. Your question.’

‘Hello,’ said the Minotaur, its bullish mouth doing the talking. It was so surreal that I wanted to laugh and scream with terror at the same time. ‘Yes. I’m Tao Hu, from
Echoworld Holozine
. I just wondered, how long had your parents owned Alissa?’

‘I don’t . . . I don’t know. Four . . . five weeks.’

Then another journalist, another question. This time the avatar was of an actual human. A woman with dark hair sitting at the front, who kept flickering because of a bad line. ‘Tina Mories, assistant editor,
Robotics Week
. I was just wondering, why did they decide to buy her? Why did they not get a robot, if your father was so anti Echo technology?’

‘I . . . well . . . my dad was in a car accident, and that slowed him down, and Mum thought it would be better for my education if I was taught not just by virtual teachers but also by Echos . . . She’d seen lots of research . . . and . . . and it was my fault. Dad asked me if we should get an Echo and I said that I thought we should.’

Candressa was very eagerly pointing to someone else, someone whose question she obviously wanted to be heard. A bald man with an animated T-shirt featuring a cartoon rabbit being hit by a wooden mallet. He was sitting next to a man who looked exactly like Albert Einstein (Steve Jobs was also in the room). ‘Yes, yes, Joseph, your question. Your question please.’

‘Joseph Kildare, h-logger for
New Horizons
. Do you blame Sempura for what happened?’

New Horizons
. I remembered an old grumble from my dad:
They’re bloody liars! They might as well just be a bloody press release for Castle.

‘I . . . I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

Another hand. Bright white and webbed. The albino alien. ‘Bruno Bergmann,
Android Connoisseur Quarterly
. Why did they choose a Sempura product? I mean, why didn’t they use the family firm?’

‘Castle isn’t the family firm. It is my uncle’s firm.’

The next person to speak was a large man with a bright red beard.

‘Idris McCarthy,’ said the man. ‘Echo Correspondent with
Info-lens Bulletin
 . . . OK, so it wasn’t your family’s firm, but still, your dad would surely have been inclined to use your uncle’s products?’

Uncle Alex interrupted at this point. ‘What kind of relevance does that have? He was under no obligation to buy products from me. I got on very well with my brother. We may have had different views about technology, as you probably know, but we could separate the personal stuff from the business stuff.’

This jarred with me.

Uncle Alex might have been able to separate the personal and the business side of things, but Dad couldn’t. His work was his life.

Idris McCarthy wasn’t giving up. ‘If Audrey could answer this, please . . . Your dad campaigned for more restraints on technological development. But Sempura is a technology firm too. So why the grudge against Castle?’

I tried to compose myself. ‘It . . . it wasn’t a grudge,’ I said, wondering if I was telling a lie. ‘Dad had his principles.’

‘And those principles led him to buy Sempura products?’

I felt dizzy. But it was a weird kind of dizziness, because the room wasn’t spinning. It was classic pod-sickness. That weird gap between
the body in the pod and the mind in the simulation. But it was also panic. I saw Mum’s face in my mind. I saw her eyes and I saw her smile. ‘My parents were killed by a Sempura product. Those products should be banned.’

Then someone else. Someone who didn’t introduce himself. The avatar that was Albert Einstein. ‘What are you saying – Echos should be banned? Or just Sempura ones? Sempura’s track record is cleaner, ethically, than Castle’s.’

‘You must introduce yourself,’ Candressa said, sounding sharp and tense. ‘What is your name and who do you work for? And please don’t tell me you are Albert Einstein.’

There was a pause. Einstein said nothing for a moment or two. Then, quite defiantly, he said, ‘OK, my name is Leonie Jenson. I am from
Castle Watch
.’

Leonie Jenson. Castle Watch.

Then something happened. She must have used a mind-command to switch her avi from Albert Einstein to her natural self, because suddenly – with the shortest of flickers – she morphed into the woman I had seen staring out of that electronic paper in Paris.

The same deeply inquisitive face and short pink hair.

‘Leonie Jenson,’ said Candressa scornfully. ‘We’ve got to stop this.’

The whole room went still. My uncle or Candressa had freeze-framed it. They were the only people still moving. Well, apart from me.

‘Listen,’ said Uncle Alex. ‘That journalist is from
Castle Watch
. A propaganda rag. They are setting a trap. She – her – she’ll be setting a trap.’

‘I know who she is . . . How can the truth trap me? I was at my house. I saw them murdered. Why did you put me inside that footage?’

‘Audrey?’

‘I was there. I saw Dad and Mum. Why did you do it? Did you want me like this? I mean, you told me to show my pain. So is that what you were doing? Making me feel more pain? To have me trembling and shaking and crying?’

Then Candressa kind of growled, ‘Oh, listen, little girl, don’t be so melodramatic. It must have been a glitch.’

But Uncle Alex was already sighing. ‘All right, Audrey. All right. Candressa didn’t know about it, but I decided to put you inside that footage beforehand, so you would know exactly what happened and be able to tell the truth. Big claims require big evidence. I wanted the world to see what Sempura had done to you. I wanted people to see the pain they caused.’

I couldn’t believe it. I looked at the unmoving crowd of avatars, and then turned back to Uncle Alex, who at that moment seemed more fake than any minotaur could. ‘But you didn’t ask me.’

‘I showed you it to help you. I want justice for you, and for Leo. He was a misguided fool with sibling rivalry issues, but he was my brother, and when our parents died he looked after me for two years. I loved him. That is all I want. Justice.’

Before I had time to reply to this, or even absorb it, Candressa said: ‘Don’t tell them you hate all Echos. If you do that, they’ll write you off as some weird crank kid and you won’t get anywhere except with those tin-pot hover-shed freaks over at
Castle Watch
. If you say you hate Sempura products, then you have a chance of something happening. Think about it.’

But there was no time to think about it. The room came into motion again. And the journalists were waiting for a response.

Idris McCarthy, once again, stroking his red beard: ‘Are you an Echophobe?’

‘No,’ I said, realizing a lie might be the best way of getting something done. ‘I don’t hate all Echos. It’s 2115. I’m not an Echophobe. I hate Alissa, even though she’s gone. And I hate Sempura for producing her. Alissa was an assembly-line product, which means there must be hundreds like her. They are an irresponsible company. They should be punished.’

Idris continued. ‘Do you know that only this morning Sempura have issued a statement saying that though they have recalled all Alissa models, they have not been able to recover the actual model that killed your parents. They are hinting at some kind of conspiracy involving Castle Industries and the British police force.’

‘Well, of course they would say that!’ boomed Uncle Alex. ‘Lina Sempura would blame anyone rather than herself! They are trying to cover up and cloud the facts. They have no evidence of any conspiracy, or they would have provided it. She knows her company pushed things too far.’

Idris suddenly started to change shape. Within a second he had transformed into a short, smart-looking, naturally aged seventy-year-old woman with the same red hair as Idris and a smart white suit. She had a wide, thin-lipped mouth and an upturned nose.

I recognized her instantly. The whole room did.

It was Lina Sempura. She stared at Uncle Alex, who was temporarily too surprised to speak.

‘Surprise!’ said Lina, with her strange accent (she had an Argentinian mother and a Japanese father, and been raised by Echos in Moscow).

Uncle Alex knew he couldn’t switch off the conference now. It would have been very bad PR.

‘Lina, I see you are up to your old tricks. Deceiving people comes naturally to you, doesn’t it?’

‘I am here, in person, to tell this room that I – me in person – supervised the development of the Alissa prototype. And the models based on that prototype were – and remain – the safest that Sempura have ever created. We are determined to get to the bottom of this, and have nothing to hide.’

Uncle Alex laughed nervously. ‘You came as a man called Idris and you have nothing to hide!’

I felt scared as Lina – or the simulation of Lina – stood up and walked towards me. She looked at me directly. Her simulation was more lifelike than life. I had never seen anyone who looked more real. I could see fine hairs on her upper lip. ‘I lost my parents,’ she said, ‘when I was a bit younger than you. They died on a cheap shuttle flight to the moon. I know as well as anyone the dangers of badly made technology.’

‘Ha!’ said Uncle Alex. ‘Faulty warbots that kill allied troops? Info-lenses that blind people? Malfunctioning securidroids? Please! You only know the dangers of badly designed technology because you make it.’

Lina Sempura ignored this, and carried on talking to me. ‘Don’t be a foolish girl. Don’t be his little PR monkey. Don’t belittle your parents’ memory by doing this sort of stuff . . . Especially when your father was so against everything your uncle stands for.’

This made me angry. ‘And what you stand for!’ I said.

‘But he chose a product from our company, didn’t he? What does that tell you, Anna?’

‘Her name is
Audrey
,’ said Uncle Alex.

‘Well, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Candressa, ‘I’m sorry about this
disturbance. We would have loved to answer more of your questions, but as this event has been undermined by this intrusion from our chief competitor, I’m afraid we must end it here, unless Lina Sempura volunteers to leave.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Lina as everyone else in the room kept on soaking up the drama. ‘I’m out of here.’ But before she dissolved away into nothing she said to me: ‘Open your eyes, girl. Open your eyes.’ And then she was gone.

‘OK,’ said Candressa. ‘Let’s get this back on track.’

Uncle Alex looked at me. ‘Audrey, are you OK?’

‘Jelani Oburumo,’ said a man sitting on the front row. ‘
House and Droid
. Forgive the direct nature of this question, but did you see Alissa kill your parents?’

It took a real effort to speak now. ‘I was in the pod when it happened, but I have seen the footage. I have seen everything.’

‘Why do you think this happened?’ the man went on. ‘Why do you think Alissa malfunctioned?’

‘I . . . I don’t know . . .’ And then I remembered what I had heard her say, and I blurted it out. I blurted it out loud. ‘She said a name. She said
Rosella
.’

‘
Rosella?
’ about five people asked at once.

‘After she killed them she said, “Rosella.” I don’t know who Rosella—’

Another freeze-frame.

Then my uncle staring at me with anxious eyes. ‘I think this is too much for you. I’m sorry. You are clearly finding this distressing. I think we should call it a day. I think it’s time for you to leave the conference . . . Candressa and I can take it from here.’

‘But—’

And suddenly I was speaking to no one. I was in the dark of the pod, with the mind-reader on. And with the knowledge that whoever or whatever this ‘Rosella’ was, it was something my uncle knew about. And something he wanted to hide.

I left the pod and stayed in my room. I was shaking and crying. I sat listening to the distant chants of another protest, coming again from near the Resurrection Zone. I stared out of the window at the revolving sphere and the logo of the blue three-turreted castle.

Downstairs there was a weapons room. I could have taken a positron and turned it on myself and turned into nothing.

A bleak thought. I tried to shake it away.

I tried to read some philosophy. Philosophy had always helped me in the past, but today it didn’t. Maybe it was because I was reading Sophocles. One of the ancient philosophers I’d been planning to study at Oxford.
There is a point where even justice does injury
.

Was I at that point?

Was there any reason at all to bother trying to get justice for my parents’ deaths when they were dead and could never be brought back to life? And also, what was justice? The only thing I really wanted was to live in a world with no Echos. I would never feel comfortable living like I was living at Uncle Alex’s, knowing that I was always only a short distance away from those machines. Machines that could kill.

I went to the window. Looked out at the rain funnel. It looked perfectly fine. The night I had seen him climbing up to my room he had been trying to reach me. I very much doubted there was any work that had needed doing.

I went out of the room.

I stood on the landing for a moment, listening for Echos.

I noticed there was another painting.

This one I recognized instantly.

It was a painting of an old-fashioned street at night, complete with the kind of streetlamp that existed two hundred years ago. But instead of darkness above it, there was a sunny blue sky and white candyfloss clouds. In other words, it was a painting of day and night all at once. This wasn’t a Matisse or a Picasso. This was by someone called René Magritte. It was my mum’s favourite painting. I wondered if Uncle Alex knew that. Maybe he did. Maybe it gave him some sick pleasure buying things my parents – or, indeed, almost anyone – couldn’t afford.