Ack-Ack Macaque Page 6

  MEROVECH, JULIE AND Frank climbed down from the back of the van. They were parked on a service road in an industrial park north of Paris, on the edge of the Céleste Technologies campus. Squalls of rain blew across the sculptured lawns. Merovech lifted the bottom of his ski mask and filled his lungs with wet night air. He could feel the coldness of it in his chest, and it felt good after the suffocating fug of the smoke-filled van. The driver and his companion were already at work on the security fence with an oxyacetylene cutting torch. The blue flame roared. Hot metal hissed when the rain touched it.

  Merovech blinked away afterimages. He looked around.

  “Is that a camera?” He pointed to a black globe atop a metal pole a few metres along the fence.

  Frank flicked a dismissive hand.

  “C’est cassé.”

  “How do you know?”

  Frank opened his coat to reveal the butt of an airgun tucked into his belt.

  “Because we broke it.”

  The cutting torch flicked off, and a circle of security fence fell inward, onto the lawn. The two men with the torch stepped back, allowing Frank to duck through the hole.

  “Allez!”

  Bent double, pendant swinging, Frank ran across the lawn, towards an ornamental hedge. Julie ducked towards the fence, ready to follow, but Merovech caught her arm.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Behind her ski mask, her pupils were dilated.

  “We must.”

  She slipped through the fence, and was gone.

  Merovech looked back, down the empty road, in the direction of the city. He could leave now. He could walk away, use his phone to summon his bodyguards, and be back in his rooms at the University, warm and safe, within the hour.

  But what would happen to Julie?

  He knew the Céleste labs well. At his mother’s insistence, he’d endured exhaustive and uncomfortable health checks at the facility each and every month for the past ten years. He’d had gene tweaks to edit out some of his family’s less desirable traits; corneal grafts to improve his eyesight; and a whole barrage of hormones, vitamins and other supplements designed to boost his mental and physical wellbeing. As a result, he knew the layout of the building by heart, and he also knew how tight the security was. Frank and Julie didn’t have a hope. Without him, they couldn’t achieve their objective, and would both likely end up in jail, if they didn’t first attract the lethal ire of the armed and humourless security bots.

  Although he couldn’t give a toss about Frank, he didn’t want to see Julie throwing her life away over some obscure philosophical point. They might have only known each other for a few short weeks, but he liked her.

  He realised the driver and his mate were looking at him impatiently. The driver jerked a thumb at the hole.

  “Et toi?”

  Merovech bristled. He wasn’t used to be being spoken to so impolitely. He reached up and peeled off his mask.

  “Get stuffed.”

  He ducked through the hole. He smelled wet earth. The rain pricked his cheeks. The wind ruffled his hair, but it was nothing compared to the squalling gales of the Falklands.

  Okay, he thought, enough messing around. Time to step in.

  If he wanted to annoy the Duchess and keep Julie out of harm’s way, he’d have to take charge. Standing tall, he strode over to the hedge where Frank and Julie sheltered.

  “Get up,” he said.

  They looked up at him.

  Julie said, “Your mask—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He turned to Frank. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it properly. No more crawling around in the mud.”

  Frank climbed to his feet. He wiped the dirt from his hands with a lip curl of disgust.

  “What did you have in mind, Anglais?”

  The rain ran its cold fingertips down Merovech’s face.

  “I can get you inside, but you’ll have to follow me and do exactly as I say.”

  THE LABORATORY BUILDING’S main entrance was quiet. The lights were on, but that was only because they were always on. No people were around. A single security bot sat before the smoked glass doors. Shaped like a fat tyre lying on its side, its upper surfaces bristled with an array of lethal and non-lethal weaponry. A single turbofan filled the hole in the centre of its body. Direction and orientation were controlled by smaller fans spaced around its circumference. Right now, it idled a metre or so above the path’s slick flagstones; but Merovech knew it could move with astonishing speed if provoked.

  As he marched towards it—with Julie and Frank hurrying to keep up with him—the bot’s fan whispered into a higher gear. Several gun barrels swivelled in his direction, and a red laser stabbed out once, twice, and thrice. Their retinas had been scanned.

  “Welcome, Prince Merovech.” The bot’s voice was an uneven jumble of pre-recorded syllables sequenced together to make words. The machine had neither intelligence or self-awareness, its behaviour simply the result of algorithms and pre-programmed responses.

  “Good evening.” Merovech was conscious that every word and gesture he made would be recorded. “My friends here don’t have security clearance, but I am taking them into the building. Is that okay?”

  The bot’s weaponry twitched uncertainly. The fan noise increased in pitch. The machine seemed to be having difficulty.

  “Weapon detected.” The main cannon turned toward Frank. Range finders clicked. A red dot appeared on his chest.

  Frank’s coat fell open, revealing the airgun tucked into his belt. Three more red dots appeared, and he let out a whimper.

  Merovech suppressed a smile. He glanced at Julie.

  Do something, she mouthed.

  He sighed. As tempting as it would be to let the security bot shred Frank, he couldn’t let it happen. Not in front of Julie. Using a tone of voice learned on the parade ground, he barked: “Override code, alpha two niner Buckingham.”

  For a second, nothing happened. Frank looked on the verge of wetting himself. Then the bot’s motor whined away to silence and its gun barrels drooped.

  “Proceed,” it said.

  Frank let out a held breath.

  “Putain.”

  Merovech turned away. Julie was looking at him open-mouthed. The rain had plastered her hair to the sides of her face.

  “What was that?” she asked. “What did you just do?”

  Merovech ignored her. Instead of replying, he led them through the smoked glass doors into the main foyer area. They had to jog to keep up with him. During the day, the foyer would be a bustle of activity, but right now the reception desks were deserted and the corridors were silent, save for the distant hum of an automated vacuum cleaner, off somewhere cleaning an office.

  Merovech strode straight over to the elevators. Usually, for his health checks, he rode up to the private ward on the seventh floor—the same ward to which his father had been brought last year following the terrorist attack on the Champs-Elysées. Right now, though, he was going to take them to the computer labs on the fifth. If they were going to find an enslaved AI anywhere, he was sure they’d find it there. They loaded in and he thumbed the button. The walls of the elevator were mirrored. In the harsh blue light from the overhead strips, Julie and Frank’s reflections were pale, grubby and scared.

  “Okay,” Merovech said. “I’ve brought you inside. What happens next?”

  From his pocket, Frank pulled a gelware memory stick. His hands were still shaking.

  “We locate the AI and download it onto this. Then we take it somewhere where it’ll be safe from exploitation.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “A server farm.” He looked Merovech nervously up and down. “Probably best you do not know exactly where.”

  The overhead light caught his pendant. A glint of glass. Merovech frowned. He reached out and took hold of it.

  “What’s this?”

  Frank tried to pull away but a sharp tug stopped him.

  “Leave it alone.�
��

  Another jerk and the chain snapped. Merovech held the pendant in his palm, where it nestled black and smooth, like a pebble, with an inlaid pinprick lens.

  “A life-logger? You brought a life-logger on an illegal break-in?”

  Frank pulled himself up defiantly.

  “We are striking a blow for freedom. We have a duty to record—”

  “What about her?” Merovech jabbed a thumb at Julie. “Did you think about her at all?”

  Frank shrugged.

  “We had masks...”

  Merovech wanted to hit him. Instead, he looked down at the object in his hand. A life-logger recorded its wearer’s GPS coordinates, body temperature and heart rate, as well as everything it saw through its little camera and heard via its microphone.

  “Is this live now or record only?”

  Frank rubbed his lower lip with the back of his hand.

  “Live. Ten minute delay.”

  That meant the pictures from the device were being automatically uploaded to the Internet. Merovech swore under his breath.

  “How do you turn it off?”

  “You cannot. Now please be careful with it. Those things are expensive.”

  The elevator doors pinged open and they stepped out into a corridor. Merovech dropped the pendant onto the floor and ground it under the sole of his shoe. After a couple of twists, he felt the plastic casing crack and splinter.

  “Hey!” Frank’s face flushed. “You owe me for that.”

  Merovech pushed him up against the wall, and pulled the airgun from his belt. Then he stepped back and tossed it into a waste paper bin. He pointed back into the elevator.

  “I saved your life down there. Do you understand that? I saved your life. I think that makes us even, don’t you?”

  He took a deep, calming breath. Then he checked his watch.

  “Okay, we’ve got ten minutes. Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better do it fast.”

  Frank looked surprised.

  “You’re still helping us? But why?”

  Merovech shrugged.

  “My reasons are my own, and none of your business. I’ll help you get into the server room, and I’ll guide you back to the fence afterwards.” He looked at Julie. “After that, you’re on your own.”

  THEY LEFT JULIE in the first office they came to. She slipped behind the desk and began tapping at the computer keyboard.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do from here.”

  Wordlessly, Merovech and Frank continued along the corridor, past other empty offices and storerooms, until they came to a glass door decorated with the Ack-Ack Macaque game logo: a stylised art deco rendition of the monkey’s face, eye patch and all, assembled from blue geometric triangles.

  Frank said, “I guess this must be the place.”

  Merovech checked his watch. Even without the life-logger, his deactivation of the sentry bot would have been flagged somewhere. A response team was almost certainly on its way. The only question was whether he could get Julie clear of the building before the heat came down. He wasn’t worried for himself. After all, he was nineteen years old, and next in line to the throne. The worst he could expect was a bollocking from his mother.

  “Let’s make this quick.” He pushed through the door and found himself standing in a white-floored laboratory that smelled of sweat, shit and strong disinfectant.

  Frank flapped a hand in front of his nose.

  “Phew!”

  A couch stood in the centre of the room, surrounded by medical apparatus: monitors, drips, and the like. A figure lay recumbent, with its back to them.

  Frank said, “What the hell is this? It smells like a zoo in here. Where are the servers?”

  Merovech took a step forward. He looked at the arm lolling over the side of the couch: thin and long, and covered in chestnut hair. He walked around to the front. The prone figure had broad shoulders, long arms and short legs. Wires from various machines had been plugged into jacks set into the hair on top of its bulging scalp. Several drips had been set up around the figure, and tubes of clear liquid ran from bags into intravenous ports on its arms. Half a dozen electrodes and other sensor patches were stuck at various points on its shaggy torso, and a leather eye patch covered its left eye.

  Merovech looked up at Frank, who had his arms folded across his chest as if cold.

  “I think we’ve found your monkey.”

  Frank took a step closer, eyes wide and nervous. He curled his lip.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Merovech looked down at the creature where it lolled against the straps holding it in place. Its good eye was closed, and a silver line of drool hung from the corner of its mouth. He pointed to the cables protruding from jacks in the creature’s skull.

  “This thing must be wired straight into the game.”

  Frank gave him a blank look. Merovech picked a syringe from a kidney dish on a side table. He thought of his own experiences in the clinic on the seventh floor, and the stultifying ambassadorial reception he’d attended earlier that evening. He sympathised with the creature. He knew what it was to be held in place, trapped by forces you were powerless to resist, and compelled to play a part chosen for you by somebody else.

  He bent close. The animal smelled sourly of sweat, stale piss and dirty hair. The bulges beneath the skin of its skull were most likely gelware processors.

  “They’ve taken a monkey and made it intelligent by adding extra brainpower.” He looked up as Julie pushed through the door, a sheaf of computer printout in her hand. “The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

  Frank threw up his hands.

  “‘Do about it?’ We do nothing, of course! I did not come here for a monkey!”

  Merovech shot him a glare.

  “I wasn’t talking to you.” Slowly, he reached out and brushed the animal’s fur. He’d been expecting the hairs to be coarse, but they were much softer than he’d imagined.

  “You came here wanting to free a thinking being,” he said to Julie. “Well, I think I’ve you found one.”

  BREAKING NEWS

  From The New York Times, online edition:

  Beijing Sends Tough Message as Hong Kong Military Exercise Provokes Hostility

  23 NOVEMBER, 2059 – As talks to decide the future sovereignty of Hong Kong flounder, Beijing demands an end to Franco-British naval exercises in the South China Sea.

  Hong Kong has been under the control of the United Kingdom since it was ceded to the British at the end of the First Opium War in 1841. Since then, it has become one of the world’s most important centres of trade.

  Talks to return the area to Chinese control began in 1995 but were abandoned in 1997 when an agreement could not be reached.

  This latest round of talks began following the Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2045, and has been seen by most commentators as a last ditch attempt by both London and Beijing to resolve the situation without conflict.

  Now that the talks have apparently failed, tensions in the area are at breaking point.

  This morning, the Chinese government condemned an ongoing exercise by the combined Franco-British navy as “naked provocation.”

  So far, there has been no official response from London, but it is believed that the Prime Minister has cut short his visit to Berlin, and will address the House of Commons later this evening.

  As the crisis mounts, China is rumoured to be planning its own exercise in the area on Monday.

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  CHAPTER SEVEN

  STARS LIKE GLITTER

  THE HELICOPTER’S ENGINE failed on a routine ship-to-ship transfer. Strapped into a chair beside the Prince, Victoria felt her stomach lurch as the cabin seemed to surge upwards.

  She was the only journalist on the flight, and she’d fought hard to be there, to get exclusive coverage of the final days of Merovech’s year-long National Service. Now, warning lights flashed and sirens wailed. The cabin tipped sideways and down, and her stomach flipped again. Beside her, the Prince pressed his face to the window.

  “We’re still over the water.” He sounded more startled than scared.

  She grabbed his sleeve.

  “What do we do?”

  He gave her a blank look. He was only eighteen years old, and plainly as scared as she was.

  The pilot called: “Crash positions! Brace! Brace!” Then the water came up and slapped them. The impact threw Victoria against her straps so hard she bit her tongue. She heard shouts and screams, and the freight-train roar of seawater gushing into the cabin.

  They were sinking.

  Her nostrils filled with the smell of brine, and she recalled the safety briefings she’d endured, knowing that even if she managed to escape the stricken craft, she’d be unlikely to survive for more than a few minutes in the freezing waters of the South Atlantic. In a panic, she scrabbled at her harness.

  Beside her, the Prince unclipped himself and leant over to help. He pulled her out of her seat. Then other hands grabbed him and bundled him away, towards the open hatch.