Payback

Chapter 6

I race up the hall, tearing doors open, elbowing statues, bumping paintings, teeth inching out of my mouth, eyes watering, hit the front doors, escape Chan’s mansion, sprint across the mushy gravel of the forecourt, burst into Mumshine’s vehicle, tug on Hopey’s seatbelt to check she’s secure, and tap Mum’s chair like Go, go, GO!

‘She–she came at me, mum, she…’

How do I tell her what went on inside? Me, I have no idea what the hell just happened.

Mumshine’s eyes are waiting for mine, though, and when our pupils connect, she says, ‘The world isn’t safe anymore. Trust no one. Be strong.’

‘Mama stwong?’ Hopey is reaching for me. I lace my fingers between hers and squeeze. Mama knows she’s strong. Mama just sometimes forgets, is all.

We drive towards… somewhere. Away from the Prach family Jonestown m******e. There are rows of windbreaker trees out here, and silos, and oceans of corn and soy. Greens and yellows and dirt roads against our windows. Power lines marching into the future. On the maglev track, we cut through the land at two hundred miles an hour, though it’s hard to tell with the silence of the engine, one whisper above nothing. Silence is part of how we got into this whole mech-mess. Humankind moving too fast. Grabbing the future too greedily. Unhappy with inefficient devices and waste and wait-times, wanting perfection at any cost, desperate for some mastermind to answer our prayers.

Our car senses something bushy on the road up ahead, like a plastic bag stuffed with green leaves. When we hit it, a swarm of notes spreads across the windscreen, buzzing, flickering, flying away. Worthless plastic money. Some homeless person’s kindling to start their bonfire, presumably.

‘Something bad happened back there,’ Mumshine says at last, staring out her window. Her hands are on the steering wheel, though it’s pointless. When we beg machines to do things for us, we give up all control. ‘I’m guessing you got invited to the Cloud. And, I spose, you saw what happens to people when they put themselves to sleep.’

‘How long’s it all been going on?’

‘Not long after you went under, people started Clouding up.’ Went under is Mumshine’s phrase for the year in Moneyland, as if I was buried, killed, submerged. ‘First the Cloud was just for the privileged. The researchers, the inventors, the wealthy. Then it got real fashionable real quick. Everybody influential started doing it. First you have the earbuds, then you have the augmented reality glasses. People started having big holidays inside the Metaverse, Ede. Months at a time. Who’d wanna come down from the clouds?’

Went under‘I’d want to see my baby.’

‘See, that’s the thing. Falling birth rate. Economy ruined with hyperinflation. People started selling all their stuff, swamping the Cloudports. Thousands of people a day uploading. Tune in, chill out, upload. Pretty soon the world went quiet. People stopped making families.’ She smiles at Hopey. ‘Cept you.’

‘It’s wrong, though. It’s like crack or something, right? Addictive. Losing yourself into the cloud – it’s, like, it’s throwing people away. Pouring your consciousness down a toilet.’

‘You got a plan to stand up against it, do you?’ There’s a tiny smirk on Mumshine’s face. ‘Still got some warrior in you?’

Hopey says ‘Mum–mum?’ and reaches towards my tilted head. She pulls the earbud out of my ear and starts sucking it.

‘I think my baby wants me to.’

‘To what?’

‘Be a warrior.’

We force the Tesla to go down a country lane, detaching from the maglev track. Mumshine orders the cameras off. We park the car and get out and I close my eyes, bracing for the whistling of birds, the hum of dragonflies.

Nothing. Just a tickle of wind in my ear.

On the bonnet of the car, Mumshine unfolds and spreads a map. I recognise the grid of the city centre, the bulge of the ring road around the middle of town, the riverside expressway. She’s put little labels on, saying DESTROY and 3/8–unguarded and FIRE.

DESTROY3/8–unguardedFIREI look at her from head to toe. Holy s**t. Mum’s a ninja. Either she’s changed while I’ve been in jail, or I’ve never really known what she has in her.

There is something in the city centre with the numbers 2112. She’s scribbled a cross and two circles. It’s a target.

‘You’ve got something planned, Ma.’

‘Soon as we didn’t hear from you in the dome we started planning.’

I shift Hopey to another arm, then I’m forced to put her on the ground. She’s a ten kilo sack of potatoes these days. She won’t let go of my knees, so I crouch and point my finger at a roadside cabinet of fresh farm produce for sale. ‘See that cabinet, baby girl? Go fetch mama some snipe eggs. Go!’

Snipes were a made-up bird from my childhood, just an excuse to go on a play-mission.

Mumshine isn’t play-anything. Standing over the car bonnet, she taps the map, labels our position.

‘Cloudport 2112 is the one your father… last… I don’t know how to say it.’

‘He’s dead, Mum. You don’t have to mollycoddle me.’

She screws up her face, amused, disgusted, suspicious, then snorts laughter. ‘I haven’t heard people say mollycoddle since The Before.’

The Before was the golden age people imagined before the Singularity. Everyone pretended it was a perfect era. Thing is, there were civil wars going on in South Africa and North Korea, ninety-nine per cent of the world’s money was controlled by a couple of corporates, people were addicted to Oxy and Insta and binge-watching shows they didn’t even need.

Not so golden.

‘GIRL.’ Mumshine is clicking her fingers in my face. ‘We don’t have long. Focus.’ She puts her index finger on the map so hard it goes through the paper and she’s poking metal.

Cloudport 2112 is located in the capital. Big drive, huge drive, all-day drive, hours and hours along the freeway.

‘Ground zero?’

She shakes her head. ‘The Mechastructure’s completely decentralised. They don’t do Ground Zero, well, not in the way we think of it. Those terrorists, Al Turing’s people? The ones we call The Father’s Force? They tried blowing up nodes, server buildings, cutting cables. No one can keep up with the Mechs. It’s borderline pointless. The Father’s Force take out the knights, the bishops, maybe even an occasional queen, but never the king. Never the Sage.’

We stare down at the blackened city from our grassy ridge. I have a bad feeling we’re going to go down there and get dirty.

‘You’re wondering where the Sage is, Edie-Pie, I’ll bet.’ She takes a serious breath, as if she’s dumping something huge on me. ‘The Sage-brain controlling all the world’s mechs is located at Stanford University. Walled-away, fortified. So that’s not doable – and trust me, many have died trying to unplug that fucker.’

‘I don’t care about the Sage. I just want to unplug Dad’s body from the Cloud.’

She nods, asks to borrow my org and I tap my belly button and my hologram appears with two thousand unread messages that I dismiss. We spread glowing lights over the paper map. She shows me there’s almost equal distance between Cloudports across the country. The Cloudports where people upload aren’t in every similar-sized city. A couple are out in the forest. One seems to be on an island in the middle of the lake. There’s also a Cloudport on an island where there should only be a lighthouse. If we drew lines between all the Cloudports in the country, we’d be looking at a spiderweb.

‘So, with every Cloudport, what, you can beam your brain straight into the metaverse?’

‘Live forever in sweet delirium,’ Mumshine says.

‘So, Dad’s alive?

‘I believe his mind’s alive.’

‘f**k kind of an answer if that? We have to go see h–

‘IDENTIFY YOURSELVES.’

A drone is in front of Mumshine’s face, hovering like a blowfly, sleek, polished, and awful, shiny as a scalpel. I rush over to Hopey, who’s whacking a sunflower with a twig as it bobs and ducks and lunges back to her. I pick her up, search the grass for a weapon. I select a stone, drop it, grab a hubcap instead.

Mech-Police, bring it the f**k on.

‘REPEAT: IDENTIFY YOURSELVES.’

Mumshine expands her arms, trying to keep the drone’s camera off me and my baby girl. A second drone has slipped down the sky. It moans in the air behind the first. They’re the size of kites, these things, with whirring wings and an evil red orb like a fly eye with a thousand tiny eyelets in it.

‘You identify YOURself. Mech or Flesh?’

‘Metropolitan police.’

No name. That means we’re dealing with a simulation. A software-cop with drones for arms.

‘You already know who we are. On what pretence do you stop us?’

‘Conspiracy to commit terrorism contrary to section 248(b) of the Criminal Justice Code. Remain where you are. Units are on their way.’

Our hearts are throbbing. I’m slipping like a snake further back against the woods. A privet bush is tickling my shoulder blades. Do it now, Edie. Disappear. Go Rambo. Omar would want you to do it. Don’t let them lock you up again.

Do it now, Edie. Disappear. Go Rambo. Omar would want you to do it. Don’t let them lock you up again‘Switch to frequency 2398947–23483, Carol.’

Switch to frequency 2398947–23483, Carol‘Wha–who’s–who’s talking?’

‘JUST DO IT.’

JUST DO ITMumshine pokes me in the belly and instantly fetches my org window out of the air, opening a dial, turning it, switching off a pop-up which warns her not to change frequency.

The second drone begins to circle the first, its orbit far wider, coming round behind us again and again. You don’t grab these things. They’ll slice anyone into ribbons.

‘Carol,’ says the drone in a softer voice, little confidence, only just enough confidence to tell me–to tell me to put my clothes away? To ensure I eat breakfast before going to school?

to tell me to put my clothes away? To ensure I eat breakfast before going to school?It’s my dad. Holy f*****g God. He’s- he’s hacked a drone, infected it, taken over. And he’s talking to us.

‘It’s me, Carol. I’ve blocked the police–but not for long.’

‘How the– ’

‘I’ve wormed in, girls–just. I don’t have long. They’re coming.’

That voice, hovering in the air, tweeting out of a tiny speaker in the drone’s carapace while the other drone buzzes, trying to figure out how it’s been hacked. That’s a voice I trust. A voice I thought I’d never hear again.

That’s the voice of my father.