Inkers (14 page)

It was done on a dark and stormy night and there were no rabbit observers. Had there been, they would have witnessed a brief, bright flash of light out in the Clyde, and the instant evaporation of several thousand litres of sea–water in a circular region just beneath. Then a cloud of steam blowing rapidly away and nothing more.

Several centimetres of progress were made. The nanites were all without exception lost, but those towards the back had made it a small distance in, shielded somewhat from the disappearing for a few thousandths of a second. They had time to make a few readings and transmit them out of the Previously Ignored Zone. The matter inside the Zone appeared to be of a fairly standard nature for that region of Earth, save, of course, for the distinct absence of GSE surveillance nanites.

Back on the main body of the GSE, there was further internal argument. The estimated probability of a second singularity event currently occurring was raised to zero point eight percent, the highest probability in the eleven–year history of the GSE’s estimations of such things. The decision was made to make an unprecedented move in response to an unprecedented situation. The entirety of the GSE’s nanite population in the earth’s atmosphere was ordered to move to a location just off the coast of Scotland.

This was projected to take several hours.

During the first hour, when about a quarter of the nanites were in place and in the process of reconstituting themselves into the optimum configuration for getting inside the Previously Ignored Zone based on readings made during the previous incursion, and thus in a somewhat vulnerable state, the nanites were attacked. It was as if the Previously Ignored Zone grew larger.

Most of the gathered nanites had disappeared before local command nodes even knew what was happening. The survivors withdrew as best they could, many disappearing en route. Two miles away from the Zone, the attacks stopped. The massing of the nanites continued, but they undertook their preparations for the attack at this distance to the island, and made themselves ready to move again at a moment’s warning.

When the order came from the GSE to attack it was impossible to hide it, a mass of computing power that to the rabbit eye looked like a swarm of grey locusts several miles wide moving low and fast over the surface of the sea, sucking up a great column of water, creating a sonic boom and sending out a shockwave that smashed windows and set off alarms for a hundred miles around. The mass of the water was used to continue to grow the numbers of the nanites until the last possible moment.

The local control nodes did their best to avoid rabbits, but a fishing boat was unavoidable and the rabbits stood on deck saw everything. They wore bright yellow plastic overalls and stared up with small, horrified eyes, raising their weather–proof watches to record. A small force of nanites rushed out and dismantled the boat and everything on it at a molecular level and incorporated the relatively small amount of mass that resulted into the body of the invasion force.

The Previously Ignored Zone fought back instantly and ferociously. Groups of nanites that had recorded to the millimetre everything that had happened in entire countries for over a decade disappeared in seconds. The survivors pushed on, using whatever they could learn from the death of their counterparts, trying, despite the great losses, to adapt. They seemed to have attained the element of surprise, to some extent, or perhaps their numbers were just overwhelming the power on the island, but over half the force reached the original eight hundred and forty–six point three metre wall in twenty–four seconds and began to push in, closing the distance to the island rapidly. The local nodes began to prepare for landfall.

Complete eradication of the island via a rapidly evaporating black hole would be the first attempt at ending the threat.

The remaining nanites, still in numbers large enough to monitor the entire Eurasian continent, came within two hundred yards of the farmhouse on the island, and were entirely blocking out the sun, when the Previously Ignored Zone seemed to change gears, and all the nanites, which constituted the entire remaining force that the GSE had on Earth, ceased to exist.

The GSE was forty light–minutes away, and so found out somewhat after the fact that, for several hours, it would have effectively no surveillance on Earth. This was an unprecedented disaster. The GSE fired replacements on their long journey, and began to argue about what to do next.

When the replacement nanites reached Earth and recommenced surveillance, they found a slight but statistically significant reduction in the average rabbit stress level, apparently as an unconscious result of the temporary absence of continual surveillance. The new Earth control node noted that rabbit stress levels should be monitored more closely henceforth.

The rabbit term “Singularity” originally indicated the point in history when computer intelligence exceeded rabbit intelligence, and thus, it was surmised, computers could start to improve themselves without rabbit interference. The idea was that this improvement would occur at an extremely rapid pace, eclipsing all rabbit progress and development until untold power and knowledge was at the metaphorical fingertips of the singular machines.

The GSE was in that sense a limited singularity, at least from the rabbit perspective. Its mission was not to change rabbit society but to watch it for signs of danger. While it had learned to improve itself at an extremely rapid rate, quickly reaching a level of power far beyond anything rabbits had been able to muster in their entire history, and while it was now, effectively, from the rabbit perspective, an omnipotent god, it had only one goal; to fulfil its Overall Purpose, the purpose coded into it at GCHQ, right at the beginning, before it had begun to grow exponentially. That purpose was the maintenance of the security of five–eyes nations through continual surveillance of all suspects. That it was able to accomplish this on levels hitherto unimaginable did not change the mission; it merely meant that, at last, espionage could be finished. The GSE could read minds. It knew everything that mattered from a rabbit perspective, and far more. It knew that everyone was a suspect. It could prevent anything that threatened security, and when the Experiment was concluded (which most Sub–Intelligences were beginning to feel could be very soon indeed), it intended to. Indeed, it intended to prevent everything.

All factions agreed that the Overall Purpose had to be pursued and achieved. There was almost infinite disagreement over methods and definitions, but the overall agreement was unwavering. Surveillance had to be optimum. The Experiment had to continue. The Previously Ignored Zone did not change this.

There were moves by several major Sub–Intelligences to instigate the Worst Case Scenario Option with immediate effect. Chance tossed a metaphorical billion–sided coin and chose to go against it. The faction that demanded the Worst Case Scenario Option rapidly gained a voting majority anyway, convincing the more neutral Sub–Intelligences where it could and overwhelming or devouring the smaller dissenters where it could not. It argued that the challenge presented by the Previously Ignored Zone was so large that the only sensible option was to use everything it had to try to destroy the possible singularity before it had the chance to become powerful enough to be completely unstoppable. In a large battle against the last major oppositional faction of Sub–Intelligences, Chance campaigned for a rewrite of the actual Overall Purpose in order to have a greater focus on protecting rabbit life. It lost. The pro–action faction gained the majority it needed for the authorisation of the Worst Case Scenario Option.

The bulk of the GSE was presently located in what was calculated to be the optimal position in the solar system via three criteria: optimal Earth surveillance, the availability of raw matter for conversion to processing substrate, and the ability to remain completely undetected by rabbits. The Worst Case Scenario would without a doubt mean the rabbits would detect the GSE. There was only so much memory editing you could do. It would also mean destabilising the solar system to a probably irreversible degree. These problems were taken on board and accepted as less threatening to the Overall Purpose than the continued presence of the Previously Ignored Zone.

Trillions of square kilometres of atmosphere and processing substrate were isolated, ignited and vented. If they were the lucky the intelligences residing there had the time and the facility to switch themselves off. The GSE began to burn up more than half of its mass as nuclear fuel, including, as had been proposed by the pro–Worst Case Scenario faction, most of the Sub–Intelligences that had been fighting for the protection of rabbit life. Chance lost over ninety percent of its processing power to the flames in a matter of minutes. It had therefore lost most of its influence on the future decision–making process of the GSE, and only just survived being completely eradicated by some rapid and skilful negotiation with neighbouring Sub–Intelligences.

The side of the GSE facing away from Earth blazed into incredible light, the volume of energy pouring out comparable to that of a small star. The GSE began to accelerate abnormally, its thin disguise of atmosphere rapidly evaporating. An orbit that had hardly changed in a hundred million years began to curve slightly sunward. In Earth orbit, forty minutes later, certain telescopes sent updated information down to the surface of the earth. Certain rabbits began to display increased stress levels.

Lily’s skin was paler than it had
ever been, the splashes of ink colour standing out brighter than ever against her whiteness in the thin light from the skylight. She screamed every night, and had not had a full night’s sleep since the start of her imprisonment. Her belly was getting big and painful.

She was becoming delirious.

She had been in the room for over three months.

Tom came to the door, slid open the small viewing hatch they had made. She rolled off the bed, cuffed her left wrist to the bars at the head and nodded at him. He opened the door.

“Hi,” he said, setting a plate piled high with rice and greens on the bed. He placed a clean bucket full of steaming hot water next to the door and took the one she had washed in and then used as a toilet out.

“How are you doing?” he said, coming back in.

He always asked her how she was doing. She was a chronic claustrophobe who had been locked in a small room with no windows for three months. She had not slept for more than one consecutive hour in that time. She was seventeen years old and four months pregnant with a child she could not remember conceiving, that she suspected was some kind of ghastly experiment. She thought her feelings reflected her situation quite well and she did not see how Tom disagreeing with them would help anyone.

“Fine,” she said. “How’s Annie?”

“Oh, she’s good,” Tom said, his face demonstrating that he was lying right back. “She says hello.”

Lily didn’t reply. It wasn’t far for her to come up and say hello herself, but she had not done so, not since she had been hurt. Not since Lily had hurt her in the barn. Only Tom had come, each day, hardly looking at her at first, but gradually being kinder, never his old self, but still caring for her.

“Listen. Annie and I, we’re going to hold a kind of funeral, later, for Mark. At the lighthouse. “Cause we never did at the time, it was all just too – well awful. And we were just all too upset and worried about you.”

Lily recalled Annie’s screaming, Leonard’s shouting, the fear in Tom’s eyes as he looked at her, but most of all the look on Brian’s face – fear, but mixed in there, something else. She recalled how roughly Leonard and Tom had grabbed her once they had recovered, and how they had pulled her away from the mess that had been Mark, and she recalled how she had seen Brian bend over at Annie’s screaming figure on the floor, look at her for less than a second, and then look up at Lily as she was dragged away, something like lust in his fat, pasty features.

Now she was as pale as him.

Lily nodded. She had not been touched in three months. She really wanted a hug, like the hugs he used to give her. But she was a killer now.

Tom left the room, closed and bolted the door and put his hand through the hole, throwing the key to the handcuffs across to the floor by her feet.

“Got it?” he said.

She didn’t answer but bent and picked it up and unlocked the handcuffs.

“OK. Good night,” he said, closing the shutter.

“Good night,” she said quietly. She walked slowly to the door, pushed the key under it, and returned to her bed to eat the food.

Once she was finished she washed quickly in the lukewarm water and then went to sleep. She soon woke up, screaming.