Echo Boy (16 page)

‘Justice?’ I asked. I was confused. How could there be justice? My parents were dead.

‘Yes,’ said Candressa. ‘Sempura can’t get away with this. They have to be made to pay for what they have done. It is a danger to society if they allow such products onto the market. Lina Sempura herself should be held accountable. Do you understand?’

‘Echos? You want to stop Echos?’

Candressa’s mouth became small and tense. ‘We want to stop Sempura and their dangerous strategy of putting untested products out there . . .’

I must have looked hesitant because Uncle Alex sat down next to me and put his hand on my arm. ‘You wouldn’t have to leave the room. You could do it all from the immersion pod.’ He was trying to look calm and soothing, but there was something desperate about the way he was looking at me. ‘If you do this, you could save people’s lives.’

I thought of Dad and Mum’s blood, leaking onto the floor.

‘When?’ I said.

Candressa looked at Uncle Alex, who gave her a small nod. ‘You could do it right now,’ she said.

‘They are waiting to hear from you,’ said Uncle Alex.

‘But you didn’t say it would be so soon . . .’

Uncle Alex gave more of his soothing smile. ‘I didn’t want to cause you any extra distress.’

Something wasn’t right here, but I couldn’t decide what it was. All I knew was that my parents had been killed by an Echo they had bought from Sempura, and a world with fewer Alissas in it was a safer world.

‘You won’t have to face them,’ Uncle Alex explained. ‘We can put the pod on blind mode. All that will happen is that you’ll be asked a few questions and then you tell them what you know, and that will be that.’

Candressa looked at me. ‘It is ready now.’

‘But I’m not prepared.’

‘You just have to act sad about your parents and say how terrible you think Sempura are for letting that product onto the market. That is the only message you need to have.’

I didn’t feel up to it. I looked at Uncle, and in a moment of
weakness I said: ‘Maybe I should have a calmer mind, to get me through it . . .’ I looked over at the neuropads.

Uncle shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That wouldn’t be a good idea.’

Candressa looked at me coldly. ‘We need them to see your pain.’

So I did it right then.

It was all set up. I think they wanted it this way. They left the room, and went to watch from pods elsewhere in the house. I went into my pod. But the moment the helmet lowered, I saw a familiar bookcase.

Blind mode
, I thought. But it didn’t happen. So I said it out loud. ‘Blind mode, blind mode, blind mode . . .’

But this was not a media conference.

This was something else entirely.

I realized what I was looking at.

I was at home, staring straight into Dad’s office.

It was achingly familiar.

The bookshelves, and the view of the rain and the magrail through the window. The sealed-up pod beside the desk. Not just looking at it, either. I was as good as there. At home. And there was my dad too, at his desk, next to the vintage computer, reading a book called
Darwin’s Nightmare
. For a moment I didn’t think. I just stood there, mesmerized. There he was. Dad. As real as he had ever been, sipping tea, unshaven, scruffy-shirted, tired.

‘Dad? Can you hear me?’

Of course he couldn’t. But he heard something.

He looked over at the doorway. I did too.

It was Alissa.

She was standing there, with her blonde hair and her smiling face, one hand behind her back.

‘Hello, Alissa,’ Dad said, looking confused.

‘Hello, Master.’

‘Dad, get out of here. Get out!’ I screamed as loud as I could. But the scream couldn’t reach Yorkshire, let alone the past. No matter
how hard you screamed, you could never reach the ears of the dead.

‘Why are you here, Alissa? I didn’t ask for you to be here. Please get out of the room, I am working.’

‘I cannot process that command, Master.’

My dad’s confusion quickly became anger. The anger he often felt towards advanced technology. ‘What do you mean?’

Alissa kept smiling as she walked towards Dad’s desk. Dad stood up. ‘Alissa, stay back . . .’

‘I cannot process that command, Master.’

‘Dad,’ I cried as tears streamed down my face. ‘Get away! She’s going to kill you . . . That’s a knife behind her back . . . Get away . . .’

Dad was starting to look worried, but nowhere near as worried as he should have been.

‘What is that you are holding, Alissa?’

And then he saw it, and – Dad being Dad – his first instinct wasn’t to save himself but to save us. He called for my mum. ‘Lorna! Lorna! Audrey! Lorna . . . get Audrey . . . Both of you, get out of here . . . Alissa is malfunctioning.’

He was backed into a corner.

He tried to push past her, but she pressed the blade into his stomach.

‘Dad,’ I wept, helpless, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you . . .’

And then she cut his throat, and blood flowed out of him like a river and the colour drained from him and he went weak and I screamed.

‘Stop this! Stop showing me this! Stop playing the recording! Let me out of the pod!’

But nothing happened. I was still there, in our old house, looking at my dad as blood and life leaked out of him and he kind of stagger-collapsed towards the floor.

I left the room to see my mum running along the landing, looking frantic. Instinctively I raised my hands. ‘No, Mum, don’t go in there! You’ll die if you go in there!’

She didn’t hear me, of course. She just passed right through me.

‘Mum! Mum!’

I closed my eyes but I couldn’t close my ears. She screamed first from the sight of Dad, then from her own pain.

‘Get me out of here! Get me out! Get me out!’

But it didn’t happen.

I stayed there on that landing.

I could feel its cold floor beneath my feet. Five minutes later I heard someone else.

The ultimate stranger.

Myself.

‘Mum? Dad?’

My voice from downstairs. My old voice. The one that didn’t sound like the end of the world had just happened.

Of course. I had just finished my class in the pod.

There was no answer from my parents. I remembered what I had been thinking. That Dad would be in his pod, writing his book. But I’d wondered why Mum hadn’t answered. I counted the seconds, wondering how long it had been from the time of doubt to the time of terror.

One . . . two . . . three . . .

I had gone into the kitchen. I remembered that. And then I had stepped onto the old creaking leviboard, through the hole in the ceiling to the next floor. I watched myself in my low-tech cotton smock and jeans. I hated the sight of me. I felt like I was looking at an arrogant traitor.

‘You stupid idiot,’ I told my other self. ‘Ten minutes! Your lesson was
over ten minutes ago. Why did you stay around and chat? You should have just got out and gone to Mum like you wanted, instead of listening to Tola go on about gladiators and boyfriends.’

But of course, three days ago I hadn’t heard this voice of my future self.

‘Mum?’ I had said. Innocent. ‘Are you there?’

And then that noise that I hadn’t been able to recognize three days ago. The one I’d thought might have been a magcar flying by on the rails outside, but was actually my mum’s last dying breath.

I watched myself head towards Dad’s office.

 . . . eleven . . . twelve . . . thirteen . . .

As my recorded self reached the doorway, I noticed something I hadn’t seen three days ago. Blood was actually leaking out onto the landing. It must have been my dad’s, as he was closest to the door.

‘Dad?’

I watched the pain slowly set in my face as it looked inside the office, seeing my dad first.

‘Dad? What’s the matter? Why aren’t you—’

Then seeing everything.

Dad, Mum, Alissa, the knife, the blood that wasn’t able to be absorbed into the self-clean carpet. (The only carpeted room in the house – ‘I like softness under my feet, it’s my only indulgence.’)

My face rigid with shock as it too struggled to absorb.

And, of course, her voice.

Alissa’s, as she stood there with the bloodstained knife.

‘I was waiting for you to come. I was waiting for you to come, I was waiting for you to come . . .’

Only now it seemed less like a malfunction and more like single-minded determination. And myself, my three-day-ago self, just
standing there, until she moved. And then I moved, and as I watched, I realized how fast I’d been, far faster than I knew I could be, as I ran that short distance along the landing towards the window.

Then my voice, loud and hard and clear as I commanded that window to ‘Open!’

The window’s slow response, giving Alissa time to grab the sleeve of my cotton top. And then I witnessed my fury as my other self pulled away from her and slammed an elbow hard into her face. The window opened, I jumped out and Alissa followed, but before she did so, I noticed something else I obviously hadn’t seen before. She looked inside the office, as if wondering whether to stay with the corpses of my parents.

She spoke into the air. ‘Rosella.’ Anyway, I was pretty sure that was what she said.

‘Rosella? Who the hell is Rosella?’ I asked, screaming it. ‘Tell me! Tell me!’

But then she jumped out and I heard that splash, and I – the actual real, present me – ran across the landing to see my head burst out of the water and scream up towards the leviboard that was just outside the car.

‘Down! Down!’

The leviboard descended; I watched myself climb onto it.

‘Who is Rosella?’ I wailed.

The window closed again.

I watched the car reverse five metres, to the end of the rail. And I watched as Alissa stood dripping wet in front of the car. She knew what was going to happen.

She knew she was going to be terminated.

She didn’t care.

Why didn’t she care? Echos were programmed to preserve their own existence.

But then, Echos were also programmed never to harm their masters.

She was breaking all the rules.

The window was level with the rail, which meant that I could watch it all quite easily. The car moving forward with me inside, a blur of speed, so fast that Alissa just disappeared. She was there, and then there was the fastest flowering of blood, some drops even making it to the window. Her crumpled body fell into the water below. And the car was away; I was away, heading south fast.

I – the actual present me who knew she was still inside this footage – turned to look at my parents, and then I walked towards them. Towards these bodies that had once hugged me. And held my hand. And rocked me to sleep as a baby (they would never have let an Echo do that). And taught me to swim in a swimming pool in Paris. And to hold my breath underwater.

The way to do it is to try not to think about anything . . . The way to do it is not to try too hard. Just imagine you are nothing. Just another natural element in the pool.

My dad’s eyes were open, as if staring up at me. Eyes that were his but not really his, all at once. The way a house stops belonging to someone after they stop living there.

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop this.’

And I cried helplessly, and collapsed on top of him and my mum, and hugged them and felt their blood on me. I wailed and I wailed until their bodies dissolved from under me, along with the floor, and I screamed and found myself falling and falling through blackness, a
blackness only punctured by occasional bright objects that passed before me.

The
Darwin’s Nightmare
book.

The kitchen knife.

The ancient computer.

But then there was nothing at all except the dark and the fast sensation of descent, until eventually I landed in a chair, in a bright wooden room.

A crowd of strange beings sitting on large leather chairs were staring at me. Most looked human, but some didn’t. Some had blank avatars – just blue humanoids with those scary featureless faces, all identical. Even more surreal was the fact that a few of the avatars were the kind idiots from school use on social media. I saw a strange albino alien with three red eyes, glistening in the artificial light. I saw an old robot from the 2060s. I saw a minotaur.

‘Where am I?’ I asked, sobbing.

Someone touched my arm.

I turned and saw Uncle Alex.

‘It’s OK, Audrey. You are still in the pod. I’m in my pod in the office. This is the virtual media conference. There are journalists here who want to ask you a few questions.’

‘Journalists?’

Uncle Alex poured a sigh into the silence. ‘Yes. Don’t be fooled by their avis. They often have eccentric avatars. The media circus really
is
a circus these days. I suppose they think you’re more likely to be yourself around them. Who knows?’

‘My parents died and they are pretending to be aliens?’

‘It’s nothing personal. They’re just overgrown schoolkids.’

‘We’re not allowed fictional avatars at school. Only on social media.’

‘Well, your dad used to have one.’

‘Did he?’

Uncle Alex smiled. Maybe he was pleased that I didn’t know this about Dad.

‘Oh yeah. He sometimes used to come to conferences like this. To ask his brother some questions. But never as himself. He’d always be a gorilla.’

‘A gorilla?’

‘Yep. A big silverback gorilla.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s a long story.’ I could swear a trace of bitterness crept into his voice. ‘You might get to hear it one day. But anyway, the main thing is that you shouldn’t worry about what these journalists are trying to be. Just be you.’

I saw Candressa. She was sitting on my other side, her face white and sharp and angular, as though someone had chipped it out of limestone. But at least she was recognizably herself. Her bright red lips were telling me, in a whisper: ‘Your parents must not have died in vain. Sempura must pay. Answer the questions as honestly as you can.’

I was staring out at all the faces – actual or uber-fictional representations of the real people who were sitting in their pods around the country, or around the world.