Echo Boy

  I could have let go. It would have been the simplest way. Just letting go. Whatever I landed on from that height would have killed me in less than a second. Easy. No more pain. No more grief. No more memories of Mum and Dad. (Memories were overrated. Memories were just future sadness stored away.)

  But life is a stubborn thing.

  ‘Help!’ I screamed. ‘Help!’

  The post was wet. It was tricky to grip, my palms kept shifting, but I kept my fingers locked. My wrists hurt so much that I thought my hands would tear off.

  It would be so easy, so easy, so easy . . .

  The wind got angrier.

  How long was this? A second? Two? Three? It might as well have been hours.

  A song came into my head. A song! On the verge of death and there came a song. The Neo Maxis, of course. The one they did with Harlo 57: Life, she said, is not a breeze / It’s seventy-seven storms at seas / But if you can keep the boat from sinking / It is always worth the pain of thinking . . .

  If you can keep the boat from sinking . . .

  ‘Help! Uncle Alex! Help!’

  The wind was a gale. I swayed in it. The wind wanted me to die. But I was not going to die.

  He was there. Uncle Alex. Standing there. Just a black rain-streaked shape. He came close, helped me.

  ‘It’s OK, Audrey. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you . . .’

  His words pulled me up almost as much as his arms.

  It was a struggle – he wasn’t quite as big or strong as my dad – but he did it. And we got into the car and drove away fast, before any more Cloudville gangsters or second-hand securidroids could bother us.

  I now knew three things. I was nowhere near coming to terms with my parents’ death. I was unable to solve that problem by killing myself. And the third thing? That I should really give Uncle Alex the benefit of any doubt.

  14

  ‘I shouldn’t have taken you there,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. I felt a deep emptiness inside me. It was hard to describe. It was almost like guilt, a guilt caused by things happening to me while my parents were dead. But for a moment, back there on the platform, amid all that horrifying adventure, I hadn’t felt depressed at all. Maybe that was the only way to handle grief: to be in a constant state of peril. Maybe the only way to return to life was to be next to death.

  I put the neuropads back on.

  Instantly, the raging swirl of my mind settled. Uncle Alex said something about how I really should try not to wear them.

  ‘I’m not a saint,’ he said as we parked high above his house. ‘But I am determined to look after you. Listen, something untoward has come up. Tomorrow I have to go somewhere on business, just to visit a warehouse, but it will only be for the day. Other than that I’ll be here. You won’t be in the house on your own.’

  I remembered what he had told me. I will be staying at home for the next week or so. I’m not leaving the house, I promise.

  I felt worried. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Paris.’

  Paris.

  I remembered my mother taking me swimming in the best pool in Europe. Saturday mornings that would never return.

  The leviboard lowered us towards the lawn. The Echos were still out gardening. Uncle Alex looked at me and said: ‘You honestly don’t have to worry about them. My vision – the Castle vision – is to make humans achieve all we can achieve, while making the world safer. I know you can’t imagine that Echos could make anything safer, but potentially they can . . . Sempura, well, they are run by mad people. Totally crazy. The bosses . . . all they care about is their vision. They want to create Echos that are more advanced than humans, basically, and in doing so they take all kinds of risks. All kinds. Lina Sempura herself, well, she’s crazy. Do you know what her first job was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Designing warbots for the Koreans. That’s her background. Killing machines. She’s hardly human herself. She was raised by Echos. Parents died when she was litt—’ He stopped himself. He realized that this might be an inappropriate thing to be saying to a young person whose parents had just died. ‘Anyway, point is, they’re a bunch of Dr Frankensteins. I bet you’ve read that book, haven’t you?’

  I nodded as we walked across the grass towards the house.

  His thin lips spread into a smile. ‘Of course you have. You’re probably better read than me. In the very last conversation I had with your dad he told me that you did your Universal Exams at fourteen, three years early. You must be ready for university.’

  ‘Oxford,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a place. Starting in June.’

  We walked through the vast hallway. There were numerous holograms there. Expensive sculptures you could walk through. A unicorn, a nude woman, a giant shell. There were some holographs on the wall too. These were less art and more like personal pictures and Castle propaganda. One of the images was of Uncle Alex with his arm round a smiling Bernadine Johnson inside the parliament building.

  Iago was sitting at a table playing chess with an Echo. That Echo. Daniel. Daniel had his back to us. I didn’t feel that scared, maybe because of the neuropads, maybe because of what had just happened in Cloudville.

  ‘Well, Oxford! Like your parents,’ Uncle was saying. At the time I didn’t notice it, but looking back, I think there was probably a slightly bitter edge to his voice. Maybe this was because he had been thrown out of school as a boy. This was the one fact I knew about him: he had once hacked into the software that ran the school he and Dad went to, and nearly destroyed the whole place. He’d got caught, and barred from every other school program in existence. It must have given him a few issues when Dad achieved some of the highest grades ever witnessed in his Universals.

  ‘Studying?’ he asked me, his thin eyebrows rising like wings.

  ‘Philosophy,’ I said quietly. Iago had noticed us, and scowled briefly, then turned back to his game with Daniel.

  ‘Ah, the oldest subject. The meaning of life. Well, you should still do it. I’ll help you. Whatever you need, Audrey.’ Uncle Alex sighed, then stopped inside the giant hologram of a seashell. He whispered, just out of his son’s hearing: ‘I find it difficult to talk to him. I can never get him out of the pod. True, he likes chess. We play together sometimes. So there is hope. And to be fair to him, I haven’t been the best dad. Well, I’ve given him everything except the thing he needs. My time.’

  We started walking again, and it was right then that Iago flipped.

  ‘What?’ he shouted. Then he stood up and threw the chessboard across the floor, sending the pieces sliding towards us. He seemed very angry with Daniel, his face red and his eyes glaring through his curly dark fringe with utter contempt. ‘You can’t do that! You can’t fucking do that! You do what I tell you and I told you to lose.’

  ‘Iago!’ Uncle Alex shouted. ‘Language!’ He was running over when Iago leaned forward and slapped Daniel across the face.

  Daniel stared up at Iago. ‘You lose,’ he said. ‘Checkmate.’

  This troubled Uncle Alex far more than Iago’s swearing. ‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute . . .’ He went over and stared right at Daniel. ‘What happened here?’

  ‘He disobeyed me,’ said Iago. ‘I told him to be good, but not better than me. And he beat me in twelve moves! Checkmate! He needs terminating.’

  Uncle Alex glanced at me, probably worried about what I was thinking. Then he turned his attention to Daniel. ‘Get to your quarters. Now. Or you will be punished. Do you understand me?’

  Punished. Could an Echo be punished?

  Daniel walked past me. He stared directly at me. His eyes stared deep into me. ‘You are not . . .’ he whispered, then hesitated and carried on walking. Or, at least, I think that’s what he whispered. I didn’t know what it meant. It was either a warning or a threat.

  Uncle Alex, back in my room: ‘Don’t worry about him. Iago got it wrong. He set the wrong command. Or he was plain lying. He
does that. For my attention, you see. Now, on to more pressing matters . . . The police might want to speak to you at some point. But it’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘About what happened in Cloudville?’

  He smiled at my innocence. ‘The police gave up on Cloudville a long time ago. No. About what happened to your parents. You remember, I mentioned it when you were on your way to my house? You might be asked to testify against Sempura, to tell the world about what happened.’

  I couldn’t really absorb this. I didn’t even want to think about it. I probably just said ‘OK’. Uncle Alex seemed to think I was a bit blank because he said, ‘The neuropads fade a little bit as you use them, but they can be a bit strong at the start. You may feel a little absent-minded.’

  ‘Yeah.’ But then I remembered what he had said about going to Paris.

  I didn’t like the idea of being left in the house on my own, with no one but Iago and the Echos. I wanted to be with Uncle Alex.

  ‘Can I come with you?’ I said. ‘To Paris?’

  Uncle Alex looked at me for a long time. He seemed very reluctant. ‘I don’t think you should,’ he said. ‘I am going to a warehouse full of Echos. They are making Madaras. I am checking up on their progress.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. That changed things. The idea had kind of lost its appeal. I closed my eyes and thought about it. ‘Yeah, it’s probably best if I stay here.’

  And Uncle Alex tried to reassure me. ‘Don’t worry, there is no way Daniel or any other Echo living under my roof can harm a human. It has never happened to a Castle prototype. I use the best designers. Winning a game of chess is not a dangerous flaw, I assure you.’

  And his words might have assured me if he hadn’t looked so worried.

  15

  Later, I heard Uncle Alex outside, in the driveway, talking to the Echos. I didn’t hear everything he said, but I heard the bit where he shouted. ‘From now on,’ he said, ‘you don’t go up to the second floor. The second floor is out of bounds. For all of you. That is a command. You understand?’

  And then he singled out Daniel and asked to have a word with him in his office.

  I went back to bed that day. Uncle Alex came in later that afternoon with a high-fat plantain shake, a protein pill, some decaffeinated chocolate, and an apple. He also gave me a parcel of new clothes that Madara had bought, along with my things from the old house, which Madara had also been responsible for collecting. He told me he’d made the shake himself, like he had made breakfast, though I didn’t know if this was true. It tasted too perfect, the way Echo-made food always tastes.

  ‘I need to talk to my grandma,’ I said.

  I was sure a flicker of worry passed across Uncle Alex’s face. His thin black eyebrows crept together.

  ‘You can.’

  ‘She lives on the moon.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, laughing gently. I wondered if he was being a bit snobby, but he quickly switched back to serious again. ‘The moon is the fastest-growing customer base for us. It’s only existed as a market since 2092, back when it was just a band of colonists. Everyone needs a powerful immersion pod up there. And there are about three million Echos in New Hope alone. They’re everywhere. The place is teeming with them. People need them more up there. I visit all the time. And I mean proper visit. Shuttles leave from Heathrow’s Terminal Eleven every night at midnight now, you know. You could go if you want.’

  I thought about it.

  Three million Echos.

  ‘I’ll just pod-visit for now.’

  ‘Well, sure, same difference. Go for it.’

  The pod – complete with that Castle logo – was the most expensive looking I had ever seen, its sky-blue exterior made not of the usual carbon fibre but aerogel and modified magnesium (as it said on the instruction label), which had been fitted seamlessly into the corner of the room.

  ‘It’s the easiest thing ever,’ Uncle Alex said as he taught me how to use it. He might have been right.

  I stepped inside and sat back in the chair – the most luxurious of all pod chairs, and with no uncomfortable head-strap necessary; it tilted back a little, and the dark aerogel mind-reader lowered like a broad helmet around my head, but didn’t actually make contact with it.

  ‘Now,’ said Uncle Alex, his voice audible through the two-way intercom even though the pod door was closed. ‘If you want to contact your grandma, all you have to think about is the territory she’s in – in this case, the moon – then her address, if you know it; if not, her name might be enough. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Ever been to the moon before?’

  ‘No, not properly. Just pod-visited Grandma there. No, Dad went once for work but he hated it. And same with Mum. Just once.’

  I heard Uncle Alex sigh. ‘Well, this isn’t a normal pod,’ he said. ‘It’s an A-range 3000. I’ll need to explain it to you, OK?’

  I nodded. ‘OK.’

  I could sense Uncle Alex’s pride as he began to talk. ‘You won’t just be sitting down. Your real body will be sitting down, of course, but you will feel like you are moving around, like in a dream. It’s not an avatar any more than the self in a dream is an avatar.’

  I stared into the blackness in front of me. I took a deep breath, and thought.

  Moon.

  Nothing.

  Moon.

  Still nothing.

  Moon, moon, moon, I want to visit the moon.

  It wasn’t happening.

  ‘I can’t get through.’

  ‘Are you still wearing the neuropads?’ Uncle Alex asked me. ‘It’s long-distance. To get through to the moon you’ll need to take them off.’

  Another deep breath. Two. Maybe three. This was going to be hard enough with a stabilized mind, let alone without one. But I needed to see Grandma. It had been twenty-four hours since the murders had happened and she didn’t watch the news. She might not know.

  So I took the pads off, and dropped them in my pocket.

  Instantly, I was gripped by claustrophobia. Every atom of me wanted to escape the pod. I suppose it was because the last time I was inside one, my parents were murdered, and I was blaming myself. I still do blame myself, but back then, I might as well have been their killer. That is the level of guilt I was feeling.

  Uncle Alex’s voice, penetrating the dark: ‘Are you OK in there?’

  I tried to get a hold of myself.

  ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘I’m OK, I’m fine.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll leave you for now. I’ll be in my office if you need anything.’

  I slowed my breathing like Mum had taught me during yoga practice. Five breaths in, five breaths out.

  Moon.

  And suddenly I was soaring through the thermosphere and out into space.

  16

  The moon was there, getting bigger and bigger. Yeah. I could see the large dark plain of the Sea of Tranquillity and, nearby, the two domed towns, practically touching each other: Lunar One and New Hope Colony, like a glowing number 8, with the larger New Hope Colony south of Lunar One.

  I knew my grandma’s address, but my mind was in such a frazzled state it took me a while to remember it in full.

  New Hope Colony . . .

  I was there, in the centre of the strangest and – for an Echophobe – most threatening city in the solar system. I was standing outside a building called the Beyond Earth Centre, on a kind of street where slow-moving buggy cars were cruising along on rough white-grey roads, breathing in an artificial version of air. There was an old-fashioned screen outside, almost like a 3-D cinema screen from the olden days, and it was flashing slogans.

  ZERO GRAVITY TOURISM – ROAM BEYOND THE DOME

  SEMPURA – A STEP FURTHER

  ONE GIANT LEAP – MOON–EARTH LONG-DISTANCE DATING

  LOVE CIRCUITS – UPLOAD NEW TRACK ‘GIRL FROM NEPTUNE’

  TO YOUR MIND – WIRE TODAY

  NHC ECHO FAIR 2115 – FIND THE ECHO FOR YOU

  CASTLE INDUSTRIES – RELAX,
IT’S CASTLE

  Above me in the sky was Earth. A large bright blue and green circle, covered with white whirls of cloud. And there, bustling along the pavements, were lots of people. Only they weren’t people. They all had Es on their hands, and perfect skin. About half of them were dressed in slate-grey tabards with the word LUNACORP on them, which must have been a construction company or something (there did seem to be a lot of building work going on). Echos everywhere. All around me. The only humans I could see were street sellers, hawking capsules that glowed yellow from little stalls.

  One of the street traders spotted me. He looked mean. He had rough aged skin, from the bad air, and wore blue overalls like prisoners wear on Earth. An ex-convict. Echos and ex-convicts. What a nightmare. ‘Hey, look, we got a ghost . . .’

  The Echos all stared at me. Many of them were identical. There were no prototypes here. Just old, outdated models. They weren’t regulated here. They could malfunction and still exist. They had rights. Not many, but some, and just the thought scared me. My heart beat like a tribal drum.

  ‘I am not here,’ I told myself. ‘I am sitting in a chair inside a pod in London. I am just trying to talk to Grandma.’

  I wondered what would happen to me if I was injured. In a standard immersion pod, nothing would have happened. But in a standard immersion pod you didn’t feel anything. You couldn’t feel the mild breeze of the moon’s giant air-con system brush against your face. You couldn’t smell that metallic tang the moon was known for (because of the amount of iron in the surface rock – or mantle – if I remember rightly from my lunar studies classes).

  Even if my physical body, on Earth, was OK, I would surely feel any pain if pain came my way.

  Desperately I tried to think as these Echos started to look at me, standing there in the middle of this strange street.

  Armstrong Tower, Apollo Street.

  And I was suddenly standing outside a six-storey building made of moon rock and metal. It must have been one of the tallest in the city.

  Apartment 15, Grandma . . . I mean, Imogen Greene.