Gates of Rome

CHAPTER 85

2001, New York

The archway was empty. A single webcam iris on top of a computer monitor in the middle of a messy desk studied the still darkness. There was no sign of movement. No sign of anyone: none of the team and none of the unauthorized intruders. They were dealt with. For now.

Computer-Bob was on his own and was going to have to wait.

Through the iris of the webcam, computer-Bob noted that the shutter door was smashed open, bent slats of corrugated aluminium hanging from one side down to the ground on the other, and outside pale daylight, filtered green by a canopy of foliage, seeped into this gloomy brickwork cave.

Computer-Bob calculated the generator could keep the one running PC going for another seventy-seven hours. A lot more if he shut down the growth tubes in the back room, effectively killing Becks and the other foetuses held in suspended animation.

But he couldn’t do that. Or didn’t want to. Not yet at least.

No external feeds of data to examine and explore. Just this still archway. Just this one view across a messy desk, a half-empty can of Dr Pepper, sweet wrappers.

If the monitor hadn’t been in sleep mode, one would have seen a cursor dance across a dialogue box.

›Information: Maddy is messy.

Like he didn’t already know that.

His idling AI moved on to consider more important matters. Who were those intruders? Who sent them?

›Information: the intruders had W.G. Systems idents and AI software.

›Information: the intruders had mission logs authorized by user: R.G. Waldstein.

Two things occurred just then at almost the same moment in time.

Firstly computer-Bob picked up a clear and distinct tachyon signal. The time-stamp location was precise and the message was perfectly straightforward, for once. ‘Open a portal at this time-stamp immediately.’ Computer-Bob at once began directing power to the displacement machine. It would require approximately two minutes of recharging, enough to flip one of the LEDs on the display back from amber to green. Enough of a safety margin to ensure a stable portal force field.

The second thing was the arrival of a fresh breeze stirring the woodland outside, teasing the branches of a cedar tree directly beyond the entrance, right in the middle of what was normally a rubbish-strewn alleyway.

The hum of the displacement machine competed with the hiss of whispering leaves shifting excitedly as the breeze picked up and became a somewhat blustering gust of wind.

Computer-Bob recognized the wind for what it was. A bank of air pushed by the sudden shifting of reality, the emergence of possibilities wrestling with each other deep within an enormous wall of approaching change.

The gust stirred rubbish inside the archway, paper cups and burger wrappers chasing each other in a game of tag on the breakfast table. The curtain that hung beside the bunk beds from an improvised rail fidgeted impatiently like a bored child swinging from a parent’s hand. The hum, meanwhile, rose in pitch as it sucked in power from the generator; the hum was like a cockerel announcing dawn, desperately wanting to tell the empty archway that it was nearly good to go.

Once again the cursor blinked across its black dialogue box.

›Ready to transmit displacement field.

›Activating field-office bubble.

Computer-Bob didn’t have emotions. Not really. He had files. They were useful back when he used to live inside a W.G. Systems wafer-processor, inside an engineered human body when those files could be used to stimulate muscle movements… a smile, for example. He missed that. Missed the ability to use those files in a meaningful way. Oh, but actually he decided he could. It wasn’t quite the same thing, but it was good enough. The tachyon signal appeared to be good news. It seemed that his team, or at least some of them, were alive still. Cause for some sort of a celebration.

The cursor scuttled along, albeit briefly, to form three ASCII characters.

› 8-)