TIM, Defender of the Earth

  It was the same sort of calm that he’d experienced when he’d seen the strange light before that came from that tiny person’s arm. Something inside him was responding to what was happening – responding to it all as if he’d known it was coming. He felt peaceful, as if it was all familiar somehow; as if . . .

  As if he’d found what he was looking for.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the voice in his head, while all around him the incredible patterns in the larger creature’s skin dimmed down to a soothing and gentle display. ‘You know what this is all about, don’t you? You feel it.’

  Tim said nothing.

  ‘We’re two of a kind, Tim,’ said the voice. ‘That’s how we can talk to each other like this. In all the time I’ve lived, this has only happened once before: once, when I met my predecessor. We lead lonely lives, the likes of you and I.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tim asked. ‘What are you and I? Predecessor to what?’

  ‘Follow me,’ said the Kraken. ‘I’m going to show you.’

  ‘How do I take this off?’ asked Chris, holding his arm out.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ asked the security guard, surprised.

  Going back to the British Museum wasn’t exactly Chris’s ideal way to spend a Saturday. It had taken him a long time to find the weird lady again, and he was in no mood to mess around.

  ‘This bracelet thing you put on me,’ he said. He thought about mentioning the previous evening’s incident with the giant monster but decided to settle instead with repeating his main point: ‘How do I take it off?’

  The security guard lady gave Chris a long look. Then she stood up and closed the double doors. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Chris,’ said Chris, still holding his arm out.

  ‘I’m Eunice Plimpton.’ She took Chris’s extended hand and shook it, making him blink. ‘How do you do? Call me Eunice if you like.’

  ‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ said Chris, gritting his teeth. ‘Listen, I’m not here to make friends, you know? You’ve done something to me, and I want to know what.’

  Ms Plimpton sighed. ‘Oh, dear. This is obviously going to be even harder than I expected.’

  Chris frowned at her. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Please,’ she snapped, ‘just sit down, will you?’

  Surprised, Chris did as she’d asked.

  Ms Plimpton ran a hand through her henna-red crew-cut.

  ‘The first thing you should know,’ she said, ‘is that “I” haven’t done anything to you. My job – my sacred task – was to guard the talisman until it gave the sign it had found the right person.’ She paused. ‘Think about it: you saw it yourself. You saw the way it glowed when you sat down next to it. I didn’t choose you. The bracelet chose you. That’s the first thing.’

  Chris opened his mouth to say something to this, but—

  ‘The second thing is, now that it’s chosen you I’m afraid there’s no going back.’ Ms Plimpton smiled thinly. ‘You’ve probably tried to take it off – right? Even though it’s the single greatest gift a person could have, the highest honour our planet could bestow upon one of its inhabitants?’

  ‘Well . . . yeah, as it happens,’ said Chris. ‘But—’

  ‘Human tools won’t help you,’ said Ms Plimpton, shaking her head. ‘Nothing will. The only thing that will make the bracelet let go of you is if it’s time for another bearer. And it’ll only be time for another bearer,’ she finished, ‘when you’re dead.’

  Chris gaped at her.

  ‘Now,’ she went on, ‘believe it or not, I truly want to help you in any way I can. So I want you to listen to what I tell you next very carefully indeed. Which means,’ she added, ‘don’t ask me any damn fool questions until I’m good and ready. All right?’

  ‘But—’ Chris began again.

  ‘All right?’

  ‘I guess . . .’ Chris grumbled.

  Ms Plimpton closed her eyes for a moment, gathering her thoughts.

  ‘All life on this Earth,’ she said, ‘gives off a kind of energy. Simply by being alive, all living things give off waves of power. You and I sitting here may not be able to see it, but we’re surrounded by it, a mantle of life force, flowing all around us always. In times of great danger, when our planet is under threat, this power can be . . . harnessed.

  ‘You,’ she went on, ‘have been chosen to be the channel for that power. That bracelet now connects you to all life on this planet. Through it – through you – all living things will focus their life force so that it can be called upon when the Defender needs it. OK,’ she added graciously, ‘now you may speak.’

  ‘But . . . why me?’ Chris asked, his voice rising in a whine. ‘I mean, never mind all that crap you just said – why me? Why was I chosen?’

  Ms Plimpton gave Chris an appraising look – one that (Chris was offended to discover) clearly did not end in any great approval of the look’s object.

  ‘Frankly, Chris,’ she told him, ‘I don’t know. Right now that’s as much of a mystery to me as it is to you’ – she grimaced – ‘especially now that I’m getting to know you. But chosen you were. The bracelet reacted to something in you that makes you the right person to do this. What that quality of yours actually is . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Well, you tell me.’

  Chris opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  When he was younger, Chris had always dreamed of something like this: a staggering secret that nobody had ever suspected about him, even himself; a secret that – once discovered – would make everyone realize how powerful and important and special he was. He’d imagined magic, superpowers, being the lost heir to a hidden kingdom . . .

  But then Chris had grown up.

  Chris was nothing special. And in his view, that was a good thing.

  At school, being special just made you a target. At school, you were either normal or you were a freak. It wasn’t something Chris cared to talk about, but at one of his earlier schools he’d experienced first-hand what happened to people who got themselves labelled the wrong way. Since then Chris had made it his business never to risk doing or saying anything that might make him stick out from the pack. In short, he’d learned to keep his head down.

  Sometimes it was difficult. Sometimes he didn’t like it: being careful never to show too much enthusiasm for anything and keeping any strong feelings he had to himself. Sometimes he felt that it meant he couldn’t talk to anyone, not really. But (he told himself) better that than the alternative.

  Chris thought about what Ms Plimpton had said. He thought about the weird moment the evening before, not just the giant monster (though that had certainly been weird enough) but about the emotional connection he’d suddenly felt.

  He held out the bracelet. ‘Take this thing off me,’ he said.

  Ms Plimpton blinked. ‘Chris,’ she said, ‘I told you, I can’t. But even if I could,’ she added, puzzled, ‘can’t you see how important this is? You’ve been chosen to represent all life on Earth! And if the bracelet has activated, if the Defender’s been called, then something truly terrible must be coming.’ She shook her head. ‘It’ll all come down to you. You must unite Earth’s population behind the Defender so our power can be there for him when he needs it. You, Chris, must join the world. If you don’t, then—’

  ‘You can’t take this thing off me?’ Chris clarified. ‘That’s what you’re saying?’

  Ms Plimpton pursed her lips. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Chris. ‘I’ll find someone who can.’

  He turned his back and left the room.

  TRANSFIGURATION

  EVERYTHING WAS READY. Mallahide looked at the box where his transformation was going to take place and licked his lips.

  He had a right to be nervous, he told himself. Who wouldn’t be? When he, Mallahide, stepped into the box, humanity was going to make an evolutionary leap. He stood there, looking through the box’s open door and into its blindingly bright ceramic interior.

  Once again, he wonder
ed if he should call Anna.

  He frowned. What would he say? ‘Hi, honey. I know I promised I wouldn’t, but I’m about to have my body broken down into its component atoms while my mind is transferred into a cloud of machines: don’t wait up.’ Ridiculous. Of course not.

  But what if it went wrong? What if the box turned out to be his coffin? Didn’t he owe her some form of explanation in advance? Some reason for what he was about to do?

  No, he told himself. He was being foolish. He would not tell Anna anything, for one simple reason: it would not go wrong.

  The tests had all been successful. The squirrel had shown no signs of being affected by being broken down and then reconstructed: its body processes were completely identical. More significantly, its consciousness had been unaffected too: the entire contents of the squirrel’s brain had been temporarily stored as information by the swarm, which had then used that information to recreate it perfectly. The only outward sign the squirrel had given of the process having taken place was an understandable dissatisfaction with still being cooped up in its box without any trees to climb. There was no reason why what he was planning would not work. So why was he hesitating?

  Taking a deep breath, Mallahide walked across the lab towards the box.

  From the outside, the box looked a little like a shower cubicle. The floor of the box’s interior was a metre square, and it was a little over two metres high. Its ceiling, floor and walls were lined with the same ceramic tiles as the squirrel’s box had been, and were completely smooth except for the small grille high on one wall through which the nanobots would enter.

  Without letting himself pause to think about it too much, Professor Mallahide got into the box, turned, and closed the door.

  The six titanium-steel dead bolts slid into place. The door was now locked: it could not be opened again until detectors in the box indicated that what was about to take place was over. There was no handle on the inside. There was no going back. Mallahide pressed the button to open the connecting pipe to the hive. Concentrating, he gave the swarm their orders. Then he waited.

  The overhead light was very bright, reflecting off the tiles. The small, hot, white, antiseptic little cubicle made Mallahide uncomfortably conscious of himself physically. He felt moist, gross, sweaty – animal. Still, even anxious to be rid of his body as he was, he felt another twinge of nerves: he ran his tongue over his lips, but his mouth had gone suddenly dry. Not for the first time, he wondered what it was going to feel like.

  Would he know when it had started? Were the machines in the room with him already? There. Something flickered at the corner of his eye. He turned but of course saw nothing. Perhaps it had been a trick of the light.

  He knew in his heart that it wasn’t. It had begun.

  He looked down at his hands and saw they were glistening with sweat. Despite his best efforts to calm himself, his heart was speeding up. But he forced himself to stare at his hands, to keep staring at them – until, at last, he saw them begin to change.

  Under his instructions, his little machines began to work with their usual efficiency. Mallahide’s clothes vanished first, even his shoes: for a second the tiles were cool under his suddenly bare feet.

  Then they started to work on his skin. All over his body his flesh seemed to turn suddenly dark as the layers dissolved to reveal the glossy blood and meat beneath. In moments the muscle structures were revealed in all their glory, as neat and clean as any anatomical model. All the blood, the goo and the gore, was being broken down – held in its place by the work of the machines.

  It didn’t hurt in the least – which was exactly as Mallahide expected. This was for the simple reason that his machines were already hard at work in his brain: some of the nanobots travelled the neural pathways, neutralizing any messages of pain and shock that his dissolving body was able to send. Meanwhile, other members of the swarm were addressing more important matters.

  From the outside in, they had begun to take his mind apart. Cell by cell they worked, examining each atom, recording its every detail in the minutest possible accuracy before destroying it.

  Panic struck Mallahide in a sudden ugly rush.

  There was a hot itching behind his eyes. He could feel them, the machines, like insects inside him – a seething multitude of tiny prying mechanical fingers, pushing their way through the soft delicate tissues, opening his thoughts and exposing them to the air. At the same time he felt a tremendous drifting sensation, a head-rush like when you stand up too fast, as the machines stripped his mind back to nothing. The world was falling away from him: his mind scrabbled for a grip on the edge of annihilation but was slipping . . . slipping . . . He tried to move, but there was nothing to move with. He tried to think, but there was nothing to think with. All there was in his mind was a face – Anna’s face – and for a rushing, spinning fraction of a second Mallahide regretted his decision.

  The lights – the room – a roaring in his ears –

  Then all sensation ceased.

  THE FIRST VISIT

  ANNA MADE DINNER, then threw it in the bin. Anna did her homework – or tried to, anyway: she wrote a paragraph of her history essay then gave up on that, too, and went back to pacing around the flat. Her dad hadn’t called. She had a bad feeling. And at 11:37 p.m., as soon as she heard the voice of the person who rang her from the lab, she knew her bad feeling was right.

  ‘Some kind of accident . . .’

  ‘An experiment gone wrong . . .’

  ‘We’re sending someone over to be with you right now . . .’

  ‘We’ll help you with all the arrangements . . .’

  ‘Deepest sympathy . . .’

  The wave of words washed past her. Anna didn’t even reply because all she could think of, underneath it all, was how she was feeling. And it wasn’t how these people were expecting her to feel.

  Anna was angry. That was how she felt. Not grief-stricken, just angry: really, really angry.

  How could he do this? she asked herself. How could he get himself killed and leave her like this? What – had he forgotten that without him she was alone in the world? No, she corrected herself, that was the point: of course he hadn’t forgotten – he’d just believed he knew better, believed in his machines instead of in her, and now he had gone and done exactly the stupid, stupid thing that they’d talked over and fought over all through the preceding few years.

  She’d lost count of how often they’d argued about it. She’d lost count of how many times she’d made him promise not to take his work to its conclusion. And all this time – as if she couldn’t have guessed – he hadn’t been listening. He’d been making his own plans, he’d been intent on carrying them out, just the same as if Anna had said nothing. She might as well not have bothered.

  The doorbell rang.

  It was a lady counsellor, provided by the government – just like Anna’s home and everything in it. Anna let the lady in. Anna let the nice lady say the words she’d been paid to say, all the ‘so, so sorry’s and the ‘you’re not alone’s. She accepted them without comment, without the slightest outward sign of how angry she was. But when she went to bed, she was still fuming.

  It was simple, she realized: her father’s work had just been more important to him than she was. She’d always known that, really: she might have wanted to believe his attempts to prove he felt otherwise, but she hadn’t been fooled, not really.

  His machines were his life, not her. And now they’d been his death.

  Finally, exhausted by her own anger, she slept.

  ‘Anna,’ said a voice.

  She stirred in her bed.

  ‘Anna . . .’ the voice repeated. It was her father’s.

  ‘Piss off,’ said Anna, assuming she was dreaming. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

  ‘Anna, listen to me—’

  ‘No!’said Anna. ‘You never listened to me, so why should I—?’

  Then she sat up. She blinked.

  Her father was standing in
the room with her.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  Anna looked at him. She didn’t move. She didn’t try to turn on her bedside light. She just sat there, still unsure if she was awake or not.

  He looked exactly the same as he had the previous night, when she’d last seen him. He was wearing the same clothes. His tie was rumpled and his hair was a mess. He was smiling.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said.

  ‘OK,’ said Anna, ‘now I’m really confused.’ She took a deep breath, feeling her heart lurch in her chest.

  ‘Someone called me from your lab,’ she told him, taking it as slowly as she could. ‘They said there’d been an accident with the nanobots. They said you were dead: they sent a lady to look after me, and she’s downstairs staying over right now; in fact, I had to use a dirty sheet for the sofa bed because you didn’t do the laundry – again. What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Shh!’ said her father. ‘Shhh – quiet. She’s sleeping; you might wake her up.’ Then he went back to smiling again.

  ‘Anna . . .’ he said, taking a step towards her, ‘it worked.’

  Anna frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘The experiment. The nanobots. Even getting out of the lab! It’s worked, Anna. I’m free!’

  ‘OK, stop,’ said Anna. ‘What do you mean, you’re free? You’re . . .’ She gulped. ‘You’re not dead?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Then it was some kind of trick?’

  ‘Nope!’ he repeated, grinning. ‘Anna, it’s real.’

  ‘You released the nanobots . . .’ said Anna.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘They took you to pieces . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘And now you’re . . .’ Anna stopped.

  ‘I’m part of them, Anna,’ said Professor Mallahide. ‘And they’re part of me. I’ve joined with them, merged with them. Anna, it’s amazing!’