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  “Why don't you study psychology, then?” she said. “Or psychiatry—although that involves learning medicine first, and the things you don't want. Or sociology? But…” She paused and looked at me over the rim of her cup. “How does that solve the why?”

  “Because there everyone has the why,” I said. “Not just me.”

  And that was another of the beginnings, which combined with the last factor to assure my place in what was to come.

  The three of us—Jane, Roy, and I—stuck together doggedly all the way until university, when Jane made her break for freedom.

  At the time I believed she'd burnt out and run, the official line. Now I see it was a neat move. Its real neatness I never suspected in a million years, until very recently, but it was only a week or two after the fact when I realized she had successfully dumped Roy on me. She had used to be necessary as his protector. Now I could do the job. He rarely got into fights by then, but most of the trouble was far less controllable. He got into anarchism, green politics, machine liberation—and she got out. I was almost grateful when she went. I had never felt her equal, and now I had my friend all to myself. Until I met Augustine, whom Roy brought home one wet and windy night in the first term. Then, he and I shared the burden of keeping Roy safe. And when Roy was dying alone and unsuspected in his room far above the earth, we should have been freed. But it wasn't to work out that way. At all.

  It was therefore mistakenly with the sense of an era at its end that I found Roy Croft dead five years, four months, and twelve days after we graduated.

  I was in my office at work, on the orbital station Netplatform. I call it an office. It was one room out of several I could have chosen or roamed through. There was no desk or paper or anything like that, only myself and the comfortable furnishings of the Core Suite. I'd had a direct interface implant connected to my optic and auditory nerve in my final college year, which would ensure I could make any calls, view any documents, connect to cameras or a vast array of devices and tools via a host server. When the emergency call came, I was lounging in a recliner in the very light gravity, watching the activities of my host AI, 901, as it made ready to induce a cable-sink on the Yorkshire coast. I was supposed to monitor closely and note the AI's behaviour for later study and analysis. In matters of importance, people were reluctant to trust it.

  A relay fed me the views from an aerial camera in situ, and an array of coloured icons raised in a head-up display allowed me to pick from a range of other options by staring for a moment at whichever pretty picture. The yellow digger gave me a view from the stationary robot which 901 had instructed to excavate a deep trench at the entrance to an exhausted potash mine. From its vantage point I could see the tankers arrive and tip their loads of pale substrate into this hole. Only half my attention was on this white liquid. The other half of me watched the rest of the camera's range—beyond the site to the grey, metal surfaces of the sea. I imagined the cool, cleansing feel of the wind in my hair, the rippling snap of the coat I would wear if I were there. The platform was no place for me, with its long-distance reality. Computers may enjoy the freedom from gravity and heat, but space is no place for people.

  901 showed a brief map image to let me see the progress of the Company's other tankers at Fylingdales, Snilesworth, Westerdale, Helmsley, Arden, Wheeldale, and Langdale. Each was riding smoothly towards its deep-dug drop-off point. The driverless vehicles moved silently along the lanes, listening for the faint cricket's rasp of 901’s broadcast from on high. I yawned. There was nothing wrong with 901’s behaviour that I could tell. There hadn't been for as long as I had worked there. It was difficult not to be complacent. Not one slip was made so far, and it looked set to stay that way. The yawn made me aware of the last cup of tea I had drunk. Made with station water, filtered and refiltered, they say you can't taste the age of it or the number of bodies it's been through, but it isn't fit for drinking. My mouth was fuzzy and sour. I was bored, but my shift was due to end shortly, and I should pay attention because the committee would ask a lot of questions. I made a cross effort to concentrate and not fall asleep, pleasantly aware of my body relaxed and comfortable on its couch.

  On the Staithes site the loading was finished. The tankers rolled away along the narrow service road, dripping white splashes, harmless as water, but a real waste of production effort. I made a note about the valve system and sent it to the tanker company by lazily saying the words and letting 901 take care of the particulars. In the cut foundation the liquid had already settled into a smooth, even gloss—too thick for the onshore breeze to ripple. A few tiny heather flowers studded its surface and a leaf from some distant tree drifted down and stuck as I watched. 901 pulsed me a burst of reassurance into my nervous system. I knew that the material was OK.

  A burly woman in blue overalls bearing the Company logo—OptiNet—stitched in yellow on her breast pocket stepped forwards and unscrewed the top of a security-sealed container. Blue solution poured out of it into the purity of the white base and vanished into the depths. A few faint whorls marked the surface when it was done. The woman returned the container to her car, and the car told 901, who told me, that the delivery was successful. 901 transmitted the keycode to the blue solution.

  Nanotechnology was in its infancy, but OptiNet wanted to lead the marketplace. This cable link for the transmission of power from the geothermal plant in the North Sea into the Northern Grid would prove its laboratories to be the first to successfully transform the raw materials of rock into a power-bearing landline. It was molecular engineering, executed by machines. If it worked, then raw machine technology would stand to rival the best the biological engineers had to offer. And, of course, there would be even fewer jobs for anyone still left in the construction industry. I watched the next few moments with a mixture of anxiety and misgiving.

  Already the biomechanoid constructions, which were displayed as artwork in civil building enterprises, were met with fear and loathing. They were vandalized with murderous rage in my hometown last time I was there. Now there was this blue solution, full of computers, and this white solution, full of construction machines, to contend with as well. I wondered what the breakers would do when they found out, and if my father would be with them again this time. I imagined him dancing his rage in a sky-blue puddle, unable to see or to crush a single one of his tormentors.

  The program activated and dispersed. The surface of the suspension became matte, a painted slash of colour against the grey rock, as microfine tremors shot through it. It flexed itself in a muscular way and strange flow patterns began to course through it. 901 reported that so far the machines were organizing themselves as anticipated to prepare for cutting through the layers of stone, creating cable from whatever they encountered until they were linked with the energy plant's undersea lines to the east, and had spread themselves in mould-like streams through the dales to the new grid lines at Thirsk in the west. I caught a glimpse of dark skies from one of the tanker cameras as 901 and I switched locations. Over Rievaulx Abbey and the River Rye the clouds were sunk low and heavy in preparation for a long afternoon of smothering rain. As I imagined the smell of the earth under such pressure, my vision flashed red.

  901’s vocal interface—a low female tone—spoke urgently into my ear.

  “Quick! To Roy's room! I've lost him.”

  Without waiting for me to acknowledge the call, 901 broke the links with Earth and turned up my room's gentle lighting into a photon blast which almost blinded me. I could hear the seal-like bark of a medical alert klaxon in the corridor outside. 901’s voice rang in my ears as I reached the door, still shocked and stumbling. The first thing I knew was that it was not referring to one of Roy's frequent hacking misdemeanours, in which he became so engrossed in his diving that he forgot to breathe—it did not sound exasperated. My vision sparkled as blood rushed around trying to do too much at once. My heart was pounding and sweat broke out on my face. Overrushed on adrenalin, I pushed myself out of the room and across the h
allway to where Roy's door stood open.

  I wondered where everyone was, but didn't loiter to find out.

  Inside it was nearly dark. There were no windows, and the lights were at their dimmest. The white striplights in the hall made the tiny lenses of his holoroom glitter and dazzle my eyes. I thought of a nightclub singer I once saw in Halifax, his dapper jacket sewn with billions of diamond-bright sequins. At the same time I smelt the stuffiness of the air, and saw Roy lying on his long-line reclining couch, face up and flat out. His stillness made my insides contract with apprehension, and I hung onto the doorframe to keep myself steady. I had never seen a dead person. 901 said nothing.

  His arm, nearest to me, was hanging in a limp-wristed, languid pose and there was a smile on his face. Only his half-closed eyes, rolled and dull, looked overtly abnormal. But on Roy this was hardly cause for alarm. He had looked much worse than that when I'd seen him wired into the deepest parts of the network, beyond the reach of English or any ordinary human language, his brain and the AI allied in a cocoon of mathematics. I squeamishly glanced to see if he had wet himself—that, too, was not unknown—but there was no evidence of it.

  I hesitated, hoping for someone to appear, and the last traces of the earthlink fell away from my mind. Breathing very lightly and on tiptoe I moved closer. Slowly. There was as yet no other sound from the corridor except for the woeful bark of the klaxon. For some reason the others on my shift had not been alerted to the situation…I hesitated, experiencing a strong suspicion that this was a setup of some kind: one of Roy's practical jokes. The air conditioner in the ceiling clanged as warm and cold air clashed inside its paper-thin walls, and I jumped and swore. But Roy did not move.

  “Roy?” I said quietly, vexed.

  “Body temperature is falling. Higher brain is inactive. Lower brain is inactive. Heart has ceased to function,” 901 said directly into my own brain. This time it was not panicked. It spoke with wonder and calmness, something like resignation as of one who has suddenly seen themselves outmanoeuvred from a great distance.

  “What do you mean?” I said, stupid with shock. “What's happening? Can't you stimulate his brain? Do something!”

  901 paused and I sensed a distinct unease about its silence. “I…” it said. “His brain just quit. The rest followed. He's dead. I lost contact.” It was puzzled at the failure of the interface. “I tried to initiate an adrenal reaction, but it was too late.”

  A very strange feeling came over me, so strong that I thought my legs would not support me any longer, even in the light gravity. All my guts seemed to be sinking down towards my knees. A slow pain began in my chest and I was gasping for breath. Roy could not just be dead. I had seen him only an hour ago, perfectly normal, eating lemonade crystals and drinking water, jiving up and down the alley of the kitchenette to inaudible music, as if he had Tourette's. Only he didn't have anything. Nothing wrong with him at all.

  I concentrated on the couch. Roy's blond crewcut scalp looked comfortable in its dished hollow. His whole body held a lax and happy attitude, arranged as if he were about to take a short nap. Only the paling of his skin, the faint greyish cast of it and the strange whites of his eyes, waning, gave him away. Nevertheless he looked so much like himself I couldn't believe it. I bent over him, hand stretching out in dread to confirm the truth and wishing to find him warm, wishing him to leap up and yell at the top of his lungs and give me the fright of my life. I touched his wrist. It was cool, but not unnaturally so. It was still. No breath came from his nostrils. As if to confirm it, another look at his face, always laughing at me in the past, revealed that it had lost its aggravating quality. It was not put on to deceive me or make fun. It was simply there, without malice or goodwill.

  A plunging sensation as if my heart was in freefall.

  “Why didn't you run the emergency medical protocol?” I asked.

  “He asked me not to,” said 901. “Well, he code-blocked me, actually.”

  “And the others?”

  “He only wanted you to find him—at first,” came the reply.

  So Roy was playing a game, I thought, happier; then felt bad again as I realized it wasn't a funny one. His expression indicated that whatever I did now in an attempt to revive him would be futile. I should've known—that was the moment he always got me, when I started to play without realizing what I was doing.

  I glanced around the office, looking for anything to clue me in. The walls sparkled. The couch and the body were all there was in the room. Not even a snack pack on the floor. No smell of gas. The air was recirculated; if there had been an airborne plague of some kind, then I would be dead as well by now.

  “What was he doing?”

  901 listed a likely flow of transactions, pieces of programming, calculations, mostly work on the active nanotech project.

  “Did he leave any notes or messages? What did he say?”

  A soft, muted noise at my back made me jump and turn around. The door, critically weighted, had closed itself. “Oh God,” I was saying in the letdown after the rush, and at the same moment the holofacility came on.

  The walls rippled with light.

  “Nine!” I said, warning it of something dire, asking it what was going on. But we were already immersed in the past.

  A hologram of Roy somewhere among the last minutes of his life moved like a ghost through and over the solidity of his inert body. The recorded image was so close to me, and so vividly Roy, that I took a step backwards in case he collided with me. As he moved he was festooned with his usual nervous, twitching movements. He sat on the couch and rubbed his sock-clad feet against one another. He played clicking knuckle games with his long fingers. His head rocked arrhythmically from side to side, eyes glazed with the idiot stare of deep immersion. Beneath this the stillness of his corpse was artificial, but peaceful, waiting for him.

  In the upper right of my vision the standard clock icon appeared, showing me the time of the recording, counting me forwards. There was nobody in the room with us. Roy broke off whatever job he was doing and rubbed his hands across the fur of hair on his head. He stretched, blinked, and turned, slightly transparent like a cartoon soul. He looked straight at me. Eye contact.

  Little shooting sparks of fear snapped through my legs.

  “O'Connell,” he said, “I'm leaving you a message with Janey, about something important…” He turned away, just like that, gave some instructions to delete this recording and so on, said a wry farewell to 901, and then lay down and died on the dot of 10:51 in the morning, GMT, nine minutes before his shift was due to end.

  The clock vanished. The ice cave returned. The ghost was gone.

  I stood there for about thirty seconds, all told. I don't think I breathed. I didn't blink.

  Finally the silence got too much. “Open that door!” I snapped at 901.

  The seal hissed gently and the door swung wide. The sudden brightness of the corridor made me wince. I stood outside and took some deep breaths. I told 901 to call security, medical, someone—and leant on the wall, listening to the seal cough its worthless warning into the empty passages. It sounded like a kind of laughter.

  I knew that the first call I should make ought to be to Maria, the team manager, but the idea of experiencing her anxious and endless reinterpretations of the incident was nauseating. She'd find out soon enough. For the time being, the minutes of solitude it took the med team to arrive were full of Roy Croft. I saw Roy at school; at university, lying drunk on his bed, wide-eyed and laughing. At me, I thought. Maybe not. Roy at work: a dishevelled mess, screaming at people in high-level meetings because he considered them stupid and incompetent, that most heinous of crimes—people who did not have his vision. Then, as now, it was hard to decide if he were mad or brilliant. Which view you chose depended on what you wanted to see at the time. The Company chose brilliant. So brilliant it was, when we talked about Roy. But it was true to say that nobody understood how Roy worked with the complex programming systems, nor how he calculate
d the final solutions to the nanotechnology problems which our labs could not solve. He was as tortuous and convoluted as a monkey-puzzle tree. I wondered what message he had left, and why he had left it with Jane, and why for me.

  Jane Croft's stringy long hair sprang to mind. How I had wished all through our house-sharing days that she would at least wash it or tidy it up. Instead she seemed to like the way it hung down over her face. I felt guilt about Jane that I had not befriended her when she so clearly needed someone to take an interest, but always her contempt and my own pride had proved too strong. Thinking about her now, I did not care that we were not friends. I felt sorry for her, a little bit, but she could have helped him and she didn't. This, combined with the fact that she had bolted from a career even more gold-starred than Roy's to join a hippy commune, made it easy and convenient to concur with popular opinion that she had gone mad due to burnout. She was a tragic case, pitied and not missed.

  Voices, high with excitement, broke my reverie. Hard objects clattered as a trolley was carelessly bashed on the narrow walls. I felt the vibration of it in my hands and looked up. Four medics negotiated a stretcher from the service elevator and into the corridor with a great deal of inexpertise. They were all wearing full body cover with lensed headguards, gasmasks, the lot. They slowed down as they saw me and seemed to regroup like worried animals. From behind them another suited figure moved quickly towards me. I watched it come rushing up, thinking that at last someone was here to commiserate and assist, but at the last moment I saw the glint of a patch needle in its hand as whoever it was gave me what in other circumstances might have been a heartening thump on the shoulder.

  The quick-acting anaesthetic took hold immediately, too fast for me even to speak. I was lowered to the floor, zipped into an environment bag, and hauled away. The last thing I saw was the light fading through the cream and green film of plastic above me as my leg slid off the trolley and was heaved back on again by someone swearing in Hungarian. I thought, dizzily: the European mafia have killed me! Surely it must be a mistake and they think I'm Jane…and then there was nothing.