The Chaos Code (16 page)

‘You expected her to check up on you, didn't you?' Matt realised. ‘Crikey, you're devious.'

‘Crikey, I'm right,' she told him. ‘Why don't you see what that says about this place?' She pointed to the map that Matt had brought up on the screen.

‘She's just concerned that you're OK. Probably,' Matt said. Not thinking, he clicked the left button on the marker for the Waterfall Pyramid, not the right one. And instead of a pop-up menu, the screen changed completely. He cursed, and moved the mouse, wondering how to get back.

‘No, leave it,' Robin said. ‘What is that?'

It was a three-dimensional model. A wire-frame
representation of a building – all lines and corners with none of the walls or floors or detail filled in.

‘It isn't the pyramid,' Matt realised. ‘It's the wrong shape.'

‘It's all curves … Can you get it to paint the rest of it so we can see the thing properly? What do you call it when the computer paints it all in – rendering?'

There were some controls and buttons on a panel at the bottom of the screen. Some of them, Matt knew, would tilt the picture or move the screen's point of view through the model so it would look as though you were walking through the real place. He experimented with a few of the controls, and after a while managed to get a picture of the whole structure. It was still just a framework, but it was more obvious now that it was a building.

‘Looks like Roman architecture or something,' Matt said. ‘Circular, like the Coliseum.'

‘Older than that,' Robin said quietly. ‘I wonder why it's on here?'

‘Some ancient site. Just got linked to the wrong point on the map, that's all.'

‘Could be,' she agreed.

‘There's a link button here, with an arrow on it. Probably takes us back to the map.' Matt clicked on it.

The screen changed again, to show another wireframe model. But this was not a building.

‘Looks like a person,' Robin said. ‘Why's that linked in?'

‘To give an idea of scale?' Matt suggested. ‘Or maybe they're building a recreation of the place when it was in use, centuries ago or whatever. They can populate it with models of people. Like the figures in those simulation games. They're called avatars,' he tried to explain. ‘Those are …'

‘They're computer simulations of people or creatures that have some behaviour and habits that the computer generates. So you can simulate an environment. Like those games you get recreating cities or battles or whatever.'

‘Yeah, that's right,' Matt said, a bit disappointed that she knew.

Robin nudged his shoulder. ‘So stick him in the model and see what he does.'

‘We can try.'

It took Matt a few minutes playing around with the mouse and the keyboard before he was able to do it. In the process he discovered how to make the building a solid, real-looking structure with stone walls and floors. They could see now that it was in a poor condition – walls were broken and the floors were scattered with sand and rubble.

‘Right, I think I've got the hang of it now,' he said. ‘Let's put our little man in this area here, beside the wall.'

Matt positioned the mouse pointer on a section of sandy floor beside a stone wall. The detail in the wall
was impressive now it was fully rendered – a thick creeper was hanging down, large, veined leaves gripping the crumbling stonework as the creeper looped in a lazy S shape towards the sandy floor.

In response to Matt's click, a figure shimmered into existence beside the wall. It had the shape of a man, but it did not look like a man.

Away from watching eyes, wreathed in shadows, the sand had lain on the stone floor for centuries. It stirred, as if worried by a breeze. But no breeze disturbed the large, veined leaves of the creeper hanging down the wall and gripping the crumbling stonework.

On the ground, the sand shimmered and shifted, slowly at first, but gradually it rippled and moved. Grains rolled together, coalescing into a shape. A flat image on the floor, like a relief carving …

Then the figure filled out, rose up, gathered more and more of the sand into itself as it rose. It didn't climb to its feet, but flowed upwards – sand forcing its way like water bubbling from a spring.

Into a crude approximation of a man.

‘I think there's a problem with the program,' Robin said.

‘Looks like he's picking up the same texture map as the floor, or something,' Matt agreed.

The man's shape was filled in with a rough, pale
brown texture. His face was a crude approximation and his whole form seemed lumpy and misshapen – as if he were made of sand. The sand man took a step forward as Matt moved the mouse again. Flecks and particles dripped and rubbed from him as he walked, leaving a faint trail across the screen behind him.

‘Make him walk through that door.' Robin pointed to an open archway on the screen. Let's see where it goes.

The man followed the pointer through the arch. Into blackness.

The figure made of sand lurched forward, towards the archway. As it moved, feet dragging slightly, grains of sand rubbed off, fell away, eroded from its body and dripped to the ground. Leaving a faint trail of sand and dirt across the ground behind it.

‘Must be the edge of the model,' Matt said. ‘They haven't built any more of it. Unless there's another model linked in to this one, to extend the world. You might be able to plug them together like a jigsaw. Let's see.'

He clicked away for a few moments, and sure enough, another environment sprang into existence replacing the blackness. More stone walls and sandy floors. And a studded, metal door.

‘That can't be right,' Robin said. ‘Pull back a bit, let's see what it is.'

The figure was walking again, still heading in the direction that Matt had sent him – through the door and up a set of stairs beyond. The picture pulled back, and the man and the staircase became smaller as the image zoomed out.

The figure was walking out of the building, and up into another structure that seemed to be built above it. Or was it upper floors of the same building, perhaps? Further back, and the figure was a moving dot on a winding staircase. The circular building filled the bottom half of the screen. The top half was the other building.

The trail of sand dusted the steps that wound up out of the ruined building. The figure moved slowly and deliberately on its journey, towards its appointed destination.

‘That can't be right,' Matt said.

The building above, joined to the circular structure by the winding staircase, was a stepped pyramid.

‘That's here, that's us,' Robin said. ‘The circular building or whatever it is must be buried below this pyramid.'

‘It's only a computer model,' Matt told her. ‘It's not real.'

Robin was still staring at the screen. ‘I suppose not. Bring him up here,' she said.

‘What?'

‘The man – make him walk up to the sixth floor, to this room. Let's see if the computer suite is part of the model, or if it's just an old empty pyramid.'

On the ground floor of the Waterfall Pyramid, a heavy steel door was hidden behind a heavy tapestry that showed a medieval map of the world. The countries were angular and misshapen, barely recognisable for what they were supposed to represent.

The tapestry moved as the door opened and a figure stepped through into the pyramid.

A figure that was misshapen and clumsy – barely recognisable as the shape of a man …

Matt clicked the mouse a few times, then sat back to watch the progress of the tiny figure as it made its way to the top of the winding staircase and into the pyramid.

‘We'll give him a minute, then set the computer to show us his point of view, so we see him come into the pyramid.'

The shadows in the corridor outside deepened as a large figure appeared at the top of the stairs. It paused for a moment at the end of the corridor, then started slowly towards the computer suite. The flickering firebrand light threw distorted shadows against the walls and across the floor, making the figure seem misshapen, like a crude approximation of a human being. It moved
slowly but deliberately towards the door at the end of the corridor.

The door opened. The figure stepped into the room and headed towards the boy and the girl sitting at the computer screen.

Atticus Harper was seething. ‘How dare you?!'

Matt leaped out of the chair, such was the force of the man's anger. Harper was striding across the room towards Matt and Robin.

‘Sorry,' Matt stammered.

‘We were just looking,' Robin said coolly. She had not flinched at Harper's anger. ‘We're not doing any harm.'

Harper leaned across and grabbed the mouse. ‘No harm?! You abuse my hospitality and break into my computer system …' He moved the mouse pointer quickly across the screen.

‘Sorry,' Matt said again. ‘Look, the screen was already on.' That much was true. ‘We didn't know we were doing anything wrong. Just looking, like Robin said. It's such a neat kit.'

On the screen, the tiny figure of the avatar walking stiffly up the stairs faded, as if dissolving. The model
of the pyramid and the building below it disappeared and the screen returned to the main database.

A thin trail of sand led up the stairs, barely more than a scattering of grains. As if someone had carried a bag with a small hole in it slowly up the staircase.

The small lights set into the wall at each third step threw a misshapen, clumsily drawn shadow of a man onto the stone wall. Then, abruptly, the shadow was gone. Disintegrated. Turned to flecks and specks that fell to the floor.

Anyone coming down the stairs would have found no one there. Just a pile of sand and dirt strewn across several of the steps and fading into a thin trail that continued downwards …

‘Are you saying that this screen was logged into the system?' Harper demanded.

Matt glanced at Robin. He didn't want to tell an outright lie, but it was a way out of trouble. ‘Katherine was showing me round, and she got a message from you and had to leave. I stayed here and the screen was on. I was just playing.'

Harper's eyes narrowed. ‘And you?' he asked Robin.

‘Me too,' she said. She was smiling at him – all sweetness and innocence. But Matt could see a determination in her eyes.

‘I understood you were asleep in bed,' Harper said.

‘Then you obviously understood wrong.'

‘Obviously …' Harper logged off the system and the monitor once more showed the stylised H like the other screens. ‘As you say, there's no harm done.' He straightened up, and regarded Robin and Matt with something approaching appreciation. ‘You did well to navigate through the data. And I do know that you're something of an expert with computers, young man,' he told Matt.

‘Oh?'

‘Yes. But in future, please ask before you tinker. I am happy for you to look through the data, of course, and to see how we operate. But with permission, and within certain limits. The screen in your room is connected to the system and will give you access to the files and folders you need. But some of the other information on the systems is rather sensitive, confidential business data and so on.'

‘I understand,' Matt said, relieved that they seemed to be getting off so lightly.

‘And what about that model we were looking at?' Robin said. Matt nudged her to shut up, but she ignored him. ‘Was it supposed to be this pyramid? What was the structure underneath? Like cellars or something? And why the models of people – people made from the elements, from the earth?'

Harper's expression seemed to have frozen on his face. ‘So many questions,' he said quietly. ‘What an inquiring mind you have.'

‘Do I get any answers?' Robin demanded.

Matt felt he wanted to curl up and die. ‘Come on,' he said quietly. ‘We ought to be going. Like Mr Harper says, we shouldn't really be here at all.'

‘People made from the elements,' Harper echoed, ignoring Matt. ‘Yes, I suppose it might seem like that. Just an artefact of the computer program.'

‘That's what I said,' Matt told him. ‘A problem with the texture mapping.'

But still Harper ignored him. He was staring intently at Robin, who met his gaze without seeming at all intimidated. ‘Golems, perhaps?' Harper said. ‘They were supposed to be made from the very earth itself, animated by the will of another. Do you believe the ancients really had the power to manipulate the elements, then?'

‘Do you?' she countered. ‘They moved blocks of stone to make the pyramids with such precision no one really knows how it was done. All across the ancient world you find religions based on the theory that the elements are entities – gods – in their own right. Earth, air, fire and water.'

‘Which hardly sits well with atomic theory, does it?' Harper said. He seemed amused now. ‘Atoms and molecules, that's all the air and the earth and the water are. Fire is simply a reaction, albeit one that gives off heat. There is no sentience involved – no thought or feeling or guiding intelligence.'

‘You're made of atoms and molecules, and I
assume
your body has some guiding intelligence.'

‘Be careful, young woman!' he snapped.

But Robin smiled. ‘You're giving off heat too,' she said. She stood up at last, turning to Matt. ‘You're right, we should go.'

‘Yes,' Harper said. He was apparently calm, but Matt could see his hands were clenched tight and he looked pale with anger. ‘You need your sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day as we assess Mr Venture's progress and decide how best to proceed.'

‘I'm sorry,' Matt said quickly. ‘We'll see you in the morning. I really do want to find my Dad.'

Harper seemed to relax slightly at this. ‘I know,' he said. ‘We all want that.'