The Future We Left Behind Read online

  2. Darkness Eternal

  Not my usual kind of fare, but Darkness Eternal is a remarkably gripping and complex thriller that psychologically profiles you as you play, bending the game to fit that profile. It draws its imagery from your own mind, and uses the player’s own thoughts against their game character as weapons.

  And the coolest thing? If your mood is different, the game is different.

  1. Last Quest XXII

  As a Warrior of Light, you are tasked with saving the world from falling into chaos at the hands of the cruel tyrant Malevola.

  Sounds simplistic?

  It isn’t.

  Last Quest is always at the bleeding edge of game development, and XXII pushes the envelope wide open. Intuitive control systems and filament feedback make this the biggest and best yet.

  And the plot – wow, almost totally impenetrable.

  You are Cantone, the last in a long line of Warriors of Light and your quest begins as peace reigns, for the first time ever, over the world of Evaline. The Great Machine – a device that cancels out magical energy, has finally removed magic from the planet. It means that, for the first time in its history, Evaline is free of the influences of gods and wizards. Humankind is finally free to make its own destiny.

  Only one source of magical power remains – the MotherStone.

  Your last task as a Warrior of Light, before retirement to the Hall of Heroes, is to transport the MotherStone from Nimbus, the cloud city, to Eurazia, the site of the great machine, where it can be processed and made safe.

  But dark forces led by Malevola, the deathless mage, are determined that your quest should fail. If the MotherStone falls into Malevola’s hands before it is made safe then it will become a weapon of unimaginable power – the last magic in a world now defenceless against magic.

  -12-

  File: 113/45/03/ait

  Source: LinkDataLinkDiaryPeter_VincentPersonal

 

  Perry flashed me when I got back to my room.

  ?What the hex was all that about? He wanted to know.

  /You were there./ I told him. /You know as much as I do./

  ?Yeah, but brains in jars that we’re going to start using as computers? Perry said. ?I mean, isn’t that all a little too weird, even for your dad?

  It’s what I’d been thinking myself, but hearing Perry saying it just made me feel cross and defensive.

  /It’s hardly brains in jars./ I snapped. ?You were listening, weren’t you?

  /I was sitting next to you./ ?Remember?

  /I also remember my father saying that the neural forest was an artificially created substance, not a stupid brain in a jar. And your father is working on this thing too./ ?If you’re that outraged, why don’t you speak to him?

  /Not outraged. Just confused./

  /It wasn’t the most predictable end to a lecture for families …/ I said.

  ?Have you seen a write-up for the Keynote on the Link yet? Perry asked.

  /No./ I said.

  /Me either./ Perry said. /I was expecting to find reports and outraged threads, but there’s nothing./

  /That’s weird …/

  /I know, but no one is talking about it. Negative on the chatter front. If I was a paranoid type I might be thinking ‘cover up’./

  I didn’t mention that Perry was one of the most paranoid people I knew.

  /Anyway./ he said, /I’ve got to go, I’m low on calcium. Catch you tomorrow./

  /Tomorrow, mate./ I said, and signed off.

  Perry’s call had left me feeling a weird mixture of things, none of them pleasant. I tried to remember exactly what my father had said in the Science Council chamber, but it was fading in my memory already, as if it had only glanced against the surface of my mind.

  I consulted the LinkDiary entries I’d been making live, but some of the data was corrupted and I couldn’t access the file.

  All the other files before and after it were fine.

  My recollections of the Keynote ended with my father saying that his neural forest technology required food. Then there were blocks of scrambled data. When my memory resumed I was already in the car on the way home.

  Which was really, really strange.

  And, I have to say, kind of worrying.

  Timestamps on both memories said there was a thirty-three minute gap between them.

  Had I blacked out?

  For half an hour?

  I wondered if everyone in the room had experienced the missing time.

  I flashed Perry back but he wasn’t answering so I checked the Link for other people’s recollections, but it was just as Perry had said: there wasn’t a single mention of the talk anywhere on the whole worldwide network.

  It simply made no sense. I mean, a kitten can’t wake up without forty different angles of the event turning up on the Link within a minute, so an announcement like my father’s, which had shocked even me, how could that not be there?

  I was going to investigate further when I felt a tingle on the Link.

  From a recent bookmark.

  Amalfi.

  I think I took two seconds to compose myself before I accepted the feed.

  /Hi, Soy Twin./ Alpha’s thoughts travelled into mine.

  /Hey!/ I thought back. /Good to hear from you./

  /That’s what happens when you hand out your addy to just about anyone. They call./

  /I’m glad you did./

  /I’d put that ‘glad’ on hold until you hear why I’m calling./ /Don’t care./ I said. /Glad still applies./

  ?So, what are you up to? Even though it was just Alpha’s thoughts over the Link I could tell that she was nervous.

  /Don’t ask./ I thought.

  ?That bad, huh? Alpha replied.

  /Bad enough./ ?Need some help with college work?

  There was a long pause and I thought the Link had glitched out.

  Then Alpha came back with: /I – I’m in trouble. I need your help, Peter./

  /Of course. Anything./ ?What can I do?

  /I couldn’t think of anyone else I could turn to. I need you to …/ Alpha broke off, and again there was a pause. ?Can you come and meet me?

  ?When?

  /Well, I was kind of hoping you could come now./

  I smiled.

  /Tell me where./ I said. /I’ll be right there./

  -13-

  File: 113/45/03/ait/Continued

  Source: LinkDataLinkDiaryPeter_VincentPersonal

 

  We arranged to meet up in town in half an hour. It was almost eight-thirty already, and the curfew for my age range was eleven-thirty. I needed to get into town, help Alpha with her problem and get back home in a little over three hours.

  Tricky enough; and I still had to get out of the house.

  I thought about doing something crazy like climbing out my bedroom window, but in the end I decided I’d do it in a more conventional fashion.

  I made my way to the front door.

  Of course it’s not the first time I have gone out at night – Perry and I sometimes meet up, just to hang out – but this felt very different to those occasions.

  With every step I expected to hear my father’s voice asking me where I thought I was going at this time of night, but I didn’t see or hear him even as I was opening the front door.

  The night was sticky and warm as I closed the door behind me. I felt a crazy thrill of excitement as I made my way to the security fence.

  Amalfi was in trouble.

  She asked for my help.

  No one has ever asked me for help before.

  The fence let me through without any biometric testing. It’s really not necessary to screen people coming out. If they got in, they are authorised to leave too.

  I started towards the slider station, my mind a chaotic blur.

  At night the city changes.

  The buildings, after storing solar energy all day, release light from every surface and glow in a multitude of differen
t colours, although just which colours they are is determined by the person looking at them.

  Colour is, after all, an illusion: more to do with how light is decoded after it is received into the eye than an actual, existing property. By switching the way we decode light, we are able – these days – to alter the colour scheme of the world around us. It takes just a thought, and suddenly the city is coordinated to our mood, or personal taste.

  I went for ‘NeonGlow’ and the world lit up in the strong, vibrant colours that are used in Last Quest; a custom filter that I bought just so that I could feel like I was a warrior in an urban fantasy game.

  Tragic, isn’t it?

  But maybe, just maybe, I wanted to be the hero in my own life story for once.

  It took me five minutes to get to the slider station and, according to the station’s display, it was going to be another fifteen before a slider showed up.

  A couple of small groups of people were waiting too. I’m not paranoid like Perry, but I was sure they were staring at me. Which was ridiculous, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. I took myself away a little from them on the platform, listening to music and trying not to meet their eyes.

  Something interrupted the music, something nagging me on the Link. I checked it, just to distract myself, I guess.

  It was Perry’s ghosts-of-the-Link thing from earlier, re-announcing itself.

  I thought: what the hex, and opened up the Link.

  I expected to be underwhelmed.

  I was wrong.

  -14-

  File: 113/45/11/qct

  Source: LinkDatagallerysharedMolly_GrabowitzImages

 

  Image_4e7f9backup.jpg

  A woman is standing in front of the Trevi fountain in Rome. The sponsors’ logos have been carefully integrated into the fountain’s design.

  Tall and blonde-haired, the woman seems tiny in front of the complex sculpture of rock, marble and cement that has stood since the 18th century.

  Other tourists throng around her, with some of them throwing credit chips into the waters as per tradition. The photo is a fraction overexposed.

  Image_4e7f9backup.jpg

  The photo is the same as the original with one striking addition.

  A young girl is washing her hair in the waters of the fountain behind the woman. She is only half visible, and zooming in on the image only serves to make her less visible. She is partly transparent and you can see the background through her body.

  Transparency aside, there is something odd about her, but it’s hard to say just what it is. She looks old somehow, but not age-wise. It’s almost as if she is from another time period.

  Image_14a03f9backup.jpg

  A spectacular view over New London’s skyline. Geotagging identifies it as taken from the main observation deck of the TeleLink Tower.

  The city spreads out, with the plasteel dome of Parliament House visible in the background.

  The sky is threaded through with the reddish-orange of a summer twilight.

  Image_14a03f9backup.jpg

  In the foreground, two figures – again transparent – can be plainly seen. A young couple are looking out over the city, and again it is possible to see the photo’s background through their bodies.

  Their clothing is odd, old-fashioned.

  Image_20a13pvbackup.jpg

  A wedding photo of a bride and groom grinning at the camera. The bride is in an exquisite dress, in the traditional bridal colour: light blue.

  The pair are standing outside a building, and their expressions are a mixture of happiness and pride.

  They are the only people in the photo.

  Image_20a13pvbackup.jpg

  The couple are not alone in the photograph. A young man can clearly be seen off to the right of the groom. The young man is staring directly into the camera, and it looks like he was in the middle of saying something when the camera caught him. Like the other ghost images, it looks like he is from another period of human history. He is holding his hand up and is showing four fingers.

  -15-

  File: 113/45/03/ait/Continued

  Source: LinkDataLinkDiaryPeter_VincentPersonal

 

  I don’t believe in ghosts.

  Just like I don’t believe in tribal god figures. Or fairies.

  If you want an answer to a question about how something in the universe works then you need to answer it with science. In the entire history of the world the answer to a question about the way things work has never been ‘magic’, ‘the supernatural’ or ‘pixies’.

  Examples:

  1) An apple falls. Was it pulled down by hands of angels? No, I think you’ll find the answer to that one is ‘gravity’.

  2) Bright fire fizzes across the night sky. Are the Gods fighting? No, that one is an electrical discharge, and we have called it ‘lightning’.

  3) The sun is devoured by blackness in the sky. Surely the Gods are angry with us? Uh, no, the moon has just moved in front of the sun. We call that ‘an eclipse’.

  We learned in pre-prep to look beyond superstition when trying to explain things around us, and to fall back on to the certainties of science.

  But looking at those photographs gave me a chill.

  Now, I am thoroughly aware that photographs can be manipulated. I have seen pictures of my friends standing on the surface of the moon, and I have seen photographic evidence of the existence of dragons.

  I’m friends with Perry, so I’ve seen more than my fair share of Link hoaxes.

  But these photographs were different.

  They felt like a sudden window into another, parallel path of existence. They made me think that somewhere, close to us but hidden by some trick of our senses, there was another world, where different people carried on living different lives as we bustled by, unaware of their presence.

  Ghosts in the machine, I thought. I wonder: can they see us?

  The young man in the wedding photo certainly seemed aware that a picture was being taken, looking directly into the camera and holding up those four fingers as … as what?

  I checked the datestamp on the wedding photo.

  It was taken three days ago.

  The slider arrived and I flashed cash to the ticket machine, taking a seat at the back.

  Three days ago, I kept thinking. Four fingers.

  I used Face-Recognition to scan through the rest of Ms. Grabowski’s ghosted photographs, using the young man’s face as my comparison.

  I guess it was a long shot, but sometimes they work out.

  I found one more image with the young man in it.

  Two women walking down a neon-lit street. The young man in the foreground, looking as out of place and out of time as before.

  He was holding up three fingers.

  The photo was dated two days ago.

  It made me think: He’s counting down! First four days, then three.

  Three days to go: two days ago.

  Is he telling us that something is going to happen … tomorrow?

  -16-

  File: 113/47/04/cbt

  Source: LinkDataLinkDiaryPeter_VincentPersonal

 

  I got into town, only to find that Alpha was already there, waiting for me.

  The cube-shaped retail units of downtown were on browse mode. You could still shop if you wanted to, but the service was automated and you couldn’t physically see or touch the things for sale until you had paid for them.

  Although that was the way most people shopped these days.

  You found things on the Link, you paid for them on the Link, and they arrived soon afterwards. I buy clothes on the Link and download their templates, and if I don’t like the garment then I don’t return it, I just delete it from my virtual wardrobe.

  Sometimes the shops seemed like a determined effort to hang on to a past way of living that w
as almost wholly redundant now.

  I guess the past holds a power over us that none of us can quite understand.

  Alpha was just where she said she would be. I could tell, even from a distance, that something was troubling her. She was pacing back and forth, her face turned down to the slidewalk, and her shoulders were slumped.

  Charles Darwin, captured forever in a liquid granite sculpture, looked down from on high, offering her no advice.

  I sped up and called out. Her face brightened when she looked up and saw me approaching.

  ‘Peter,’ she said, almost breathless with relief. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘I can’t resist a damsel in distress,’ I said. I think I’ve already mentioned I didn’t talk to many girls, haven’t I?

  We both pretended I hadn’t said the ‘damsel in distress’ thing, found a bench and sat down.

  ‘Nice threads,’ she said, and I realised that I was still wearing the Bartlett suit.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, I should have dressed up,’ I joked lamely.

  Alpha’s face was tense and pale, even in the light of the glowing buildings. It made me remove the stupid filter and see her in the natural glow of stored sunlight.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  Alpha shook her head.

  I didn’t know whether that meant she didn’t know, or she wasn’t ready to say just yet, so we sat there in silence and looked across at the lights of the city.

  I’ve seen pictures of Cambridge as it was hundreds of years ago – there are thousands of them in the library at the college – and it’s always hard to match up that city of the past with the present one. New Cambridge was now little more than a clone of every other city on the planet, with the same kind of buildings and the same branded retail units.

  ‘I looked you up,’ Alpha said finally. ‘I mean, a profile and all that. I didn’t find out much about you, but I thought I could trust you.’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t trust people all that easily.’ Alpha’s face was half in shadow, half brightly lit and it reminded me of my father’s face, sometime recently, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where or when.