The Hunting (24 page)

‘Cary? Denis? Jules? Can you talk?’

Cary stood up. Genie realized that he looked painfully thin.

‘What—’ she began.

‘Genie, they just took us off life-support. All of us. Randall is dead. For sure.’

Genie abruptly realized she wasn’t going to save them. The whole trip had been for nothing. She felt sick to the heart.

‘Does that mean … ? Does that mean you’re all going to die?’

Cary nodded. Genie noticed that Julia was having trouble holding her image steady and Denis was struggling as well.

‘What will they do with the bodies?’ Genie asked, and then bit her lip. It was a harsh thing to ask.

Cary didn’t want to say. ‘Do I have to give details?’

‘I’m cold,’ Julia complained. ‘You took so long to get here.’

Genie almost smiled; it was comforting to hear that Julia still knew how to moan.

‘Marshall’s got some ideas,’ she told them.

‘Better than being dead?’ Denis whispered.

Marshall walked over for a moment, curious to meet them.

‘Not entirely. Which one is Cary?’

‘Me,’ Cary replied.

Marshall nodded. ‘You were here before, with Genie, right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Show me how you got past Dr Milan’s security. I can only get the system up, but I’m access denied.’

Cary moved slowly towards him. ‘Sorry, we’re being maintained on only half the servers they normally use. There’s been a major server crash in Synchro after a storm.’

Marshall understood. ‘Take your time. We’re here to help you and that’s our sole mission.’

Cary looked at him with a puzzled expression. ‘We’re going to die. I don’t think we can be helped.’

Marshall shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s not what you expect. You might reject my plan, but it may be worth a try. ’Fraid you’ll have to trust me. Radspan is technically redundant, but it follows the same principles. I think we can access it. What I need is a direct line to the Fortress and Sychro servers. I need you to tell me the moment they are back online.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Cary reached the control workstation and immediately set about opening it up.

Genie went to check on Renée whilst Rian and Moucher joined Julia and Denis.

‘You think he can help?’ Denis asked.

Rian could see that he wasn’t his normal self. He seemed listless. Rian felt sorry for them all. The chances of saving them were very remote now.

‘It’s a long shot. Genie nearly got cornered by Reverend Schneider last night. He’s here in Whistler, can you believe it?’

Denis could, but barely registered any emotion. ‘Got no strength. Sorry.’

Rian put a hand out to him and Denis tried to put his hand up as well, the juice was only slight, but Rian could at least feel something.

Marshall called out from the other end of the chamber.

‘We’re in. Kids, listen up very carefully. We are talking very primitive capacity here, compared to what you guys are stored on. We’ve got liquid-cooled T3e machines here, which were fast for their day, but: one, they haven’t been upgraded, nor can they be. Two, they haven’t been serviced. OK, the good news is they haven’t been in use either, but kept on a minimum maintenance cycle for all these years and clearly not blown up, but, just like the elevator, you don’t know that a rat hasn’t got into the system and eaten all the cables. Also, I think your average Apple iMac has probably got more power and memory than one of these today, so keep that in mind. We are talking ancient history in computer terms.’

‘What’s the good news?’ Rian asked.

Marshall was studying the data. ‘Thanks to Cary here, I am hooked through to Synchro. I can confirm that they have thirty-two per cent server capacity, but are aiming to be up and running by two p.m. – the latest. There’s a huge storm over my farm at the moment.’

‘You ever think that the Fortress attracts them?’ Genie asked.

Marshall was about to dismiss that, but suddenly it made sense. He’d never really thought about it. ‘I’d have to compare the weather charts going back to ten years before they built it to give you an answer. Another day perhaps.’

‘Yeah, maybe we can save these guys first?’ she replied with an encouraging smile.

Marshall took a deep breath.

‘Cary, Denis and Julia are here because they are stored on the servers, we know that. Your souls, for want of a better word, live on because no one has dumped the data yet. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but that will happen
real
soon; you’re taking up memory real estate and that is expensive over there.’

Genie looked at Cary; he was watching Marshall keenly, trying to keep himself together.

‘We are talking thousands of megawatts keeping you visible right now. Someone will notice the spike and try to fix the “problem”. But essentially, you are light, that is exactly what you are.’

‘Light with memories,’ Cary added.

‘And that’s what I’m worried about,’ Marshall told him.

‘What?’ Cary asked.

‘I’ll come to that, but I can see from the data here that they really did four thousand five hundred test transmissions from here. That’s one hell of a lot of tests.’

Cary hung his head. ‘I know. They all failed.’

‘You want us to use this system to escape the Fortress?’ Denis asked, his voice rasping with the effort.

‘Yes and no,’ Genie told them.

Julia looked at Denis and they both seemed confused now.

Marshall held up his hand. ‘This system doesn’t have enough memory to transmit a toenail. But with some modifications, we can use it as a booster to an original transmission from the Fortress.’

Cary wasn’t sure now either. ‘What are you—’

Genie intervened. ‘We want you to resend yourselves. But instead of arriving in the forest like before, you are going to redirect yourselves here.’

Marshall pointed to the transmission platform. ‘We’re going to put those receptors in a semi-circle right on the platform here and there’s a direct link to the Fortress via Radspan. It will be safer.’

He walked over to the wall map and pointed out the Whistler station. ‘We’re here. There’s a huge magnetic leyline running through Whistler and there’s a confluence of energy right here. Dr Milan knew what he was doing. Leylines are probably the key to this. Birds and animals use them as direction finders; even whales and honeybees can navigate using the earth’s magnetic field. It’s linked to magnetite, which enables them to sense magnetic changes. I read up on this after you guys materialized. There had to be a logical explanation. Think of Radspan as a man-made leyline, and I have no idea why I didn’t think of this earlier, but the first tunnel runs right under my farm. See here? This dot is my farm. I didn’t put this dot here, by the by.’

Cary looked at the map and understood. It made sense. They were just using Radspan as an escape tunnel, but transmitting to a different location. They wouldn’t be using the Radspan computers, couldn’t even if they wanted to.

‘But we’re almost gone,’ Julia wailed. ‘My body is dying. I can’t move it. I can’t find my way from a locked room to the transmission platform and …’ She started to cry.

‘And this is the hard part,’ Marshall explained returning to the control panel.

‘You’re going to die, Julia. You too, Denis; you also, Cary. I can’t lie about this. No one can save you. But you can save yourselves.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Denis said. ‘If we resend our DNA here, there would be two of us.’

‘Not for long,’ Marshall told him. ‘Not for long.’

Denis suddenly got it. ‘Oh.’

Cary walked over to Julia’s side to comfort her.

‘We’re just going to die?’ Julia wailed.

‘And yet, not,’ Rian told her. ‘You’d be a new Julia, right here, with us, made of flesh and blood again.’

‘But, my memories? Would I remember you? Anything?’

Cary looked over at Marshall, who frowned.

‘You might not remember anything prior to being recaptured. It may not be such a bad thing. I really can’t say,’ he told them.

‘Coffee,’ Renée announced, walking out from the small kitchen with a tray of steaming cups in her hand. ‘No milk; powder stuff is like totally disgusting.’

Genie took a cup from her. It smelled good, even if it was black.

‘Jules, it would be like it just happened,’ Genie reassured her.

‘And us?’ She was thinking of the real Julia, dying back in the Fortress.

‘There’s no us,’ Cary told her.

‘And if it doesn’t work?’ Julia asked her lips trembling.

There was a distinct silence for a moment.

‘There’s no reason why it wouldn’t work. We just have to figure out how to resend the data, that’s all, and reroute it here.’

‘Can we think about it?’ Denis asked.

‘You
have
to think about it,’ Marshall told him. ‘You’re in a bad situation. I have to get you out of there before they turn you guys off – and here’s the truth of the matter. You can’t go home. The Fortress would just seize you again. So think on that too.’

Denis was angry now. ‘Don’t we have rights? What happened to our rights? Why didn’t the police protect us, Marshall? Why didn’t the newspapers care about us?’

‘Because no one believes it,’ Rian told him. ‘Because you were all dead the moment you met Reverend Schneider. Because you’re all copies already, because of many things. If you do this, Denis, you can’t go home as long as the Fortress is in control of Spurlake.’

‘I’m a copy too,’ Genie pointed out, though she had never accepted it.

‘If you want a biology lesson,’ Marshall told them, ‘the human genome is entirely about making copies. That’s what babies are, copies of both adults, complete with their flaws and genetic histories. It’s really no different.’

Renée pulled a face. She hadn’t realized that things had gotten so tense. She took a coffee to Marshall, who accepted it and drank it quickly to get back to work. Renée wanted to say something herself, after all she too was a copy.

‘Well, better a copy than dead. Better to breathe and eat real food. I love being alive. I never knew how much till I met Genie and my brother, Rian. It doesn’t matter what we are, as long as we are. Right?’

Cary was looking at the map again. ‘And if it really doesn’t work?’

Genie put a hand out to him, wishing she could give him a hug.

‘You’ll go out with a big bang. A very big bang.’

Cary looked at her, then Denis, and then suddenly laughed. It was infectious. It was hysteria, but at least they weren’t screaming.

Cary turned to Marshall. ‘OK. How do we do this?’

Marshall was busy looking at the screen. ‘Some of the servers just came back online. You feel any different?’

Cary was about to say no when Julia let out a shout. ‘My hair. It just changed colour.’

They all looked at her bright auburn hair. It practically glowed. It suited her. All the more ironic considering the real Julia was lying on a slab in a Fortress lab completely bald.

Marshall’s eyebrows were working full time as he tried not to be caught by surprise.

‘Good demonstration and it gives me some hope,’ he muttered. He suddenly smiled. ‘Julia, come here.’

She came over, moving much more fluidly now.

Marshall pointed at the screen and smiled at her. ‘Be brave. What can you see here?’

Julia looked at the screen and saw only a pile of numbers shimmering on the screen.

‘Numbers.’

‘That’s a tiny infinitesimal piece of you.’

‘It is?’

‘It is. So let me explain this just once. I am not going to ask you to transmit, not like last time, OK? This isn’t about you guys standing on a platform and hoping you’re not going to be smeared on a back wall in Synchro. We’ve moved on from that. You, Cary and Denis there have already been digitized. You’re right here, or rather on thousands of Fortress and Synchro servers. What I’m proposing is that we find the on switch and send you guys here. That means we have to find your initiating sequence trigger.’

Julia looked at him and drew a blank. She heard the word ‘trigger’ but that was it.

Cary turned her around. ‘Don’t panic. That’s what I’m here for.’

‘And you, Cary, need to travel back down the line to the Fortress and get the Radspan tracking coordinates from Station One. This is going to be like searching for a needle in a haystack, but at least you know what the haystack looks like and, with luck, the needle.’

Genie frowned. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘I want you to go with him. Watch his back; get him out of trouble if anyone catches him there. It’s your job to send Cary here after he’s sent the others.’

Genie stared at him like he was a crazy man.

‘I don’t think they study quantum physics in Grade Ten, Marshall. Please tell me – how do I go back down the line?’

‘You know all those little episodes you have when you go missing?’

She nodded.

‘It’s time to focus. Instead of letting it happen to you at random times, you have to control it, use it. You understand me?

‘Cary, look here. This is the start sequence protocol for teleportation. I knew where to look ’cause I wrote some of this code. You have to memorize it. It has to be done right. Can you do that?’

Cary smiled. ‘I can just store it on memory. Sometimes it’s a lot easier existing like this than being real.’ He looked at the pages on the computer for just a microsecond. ‘Done.’

Marshall nodded. ‘Yeah, impressive. But check for any last-minute updates. They are refining this process all the time, after each transmission.’ He was looking at the computer data. ‘Poor Dr Milan, working with thirty-two-bit processors. They’re on five hundred and eighty now and we still need double that.’

Marshall watched the screen as Cary manipulated it. He realized that he was doing it with his mind.

‘Are you using telekinesis?’

‘Yeah. Sorry, you forget I’m a machine. All it needs is the right questions.’

‘Rian, help me with the receptors. We have to hook them up around the platform in the right sequence. I’m hoping they will act as a focal point like before, up on the farm. Renée, I want you to search for something to wrap these kids in when they arrive. They will be practically naked and very cold.’

Renée nodded.