The Future We Left Behind (12 page)

I put the definition next to the insignia and thought about what it could mean.

That made me think of the Straker Tapes, and how Kyle believed that the human race was reprogrammed, by a software upgrade from … somewhere else.

I put the Grabowitz photographs up on the wall and studied them. Did they really show the ones left behind after the human race was upgraded? I studied the face of the young man, the one who was holding up fingers as if passing on a message. Was he photographic proof of what the Strakerites believed, or just another Link hoax?

I pulled up a LinkImage of the aftermath of Thomas Greatorex’s suicide – the cordon with a crowd of people gathered around – and fixed that to the wall too.

Then I stood back and looked at the whole montage, trying to see the connections between the photographs.

As far as I could see there was only one connection.

The Straker Tapes.

Maybe it was time to actually read them.

I accessed the global bookshop and found it instantly.

It was a top seller. Up 853% in popularity in the last week.

That was a huge spike in sales by any standards.

I looked at the page and thought about it for a while, already hearing my father’s furious voice in my head, and then I thought
Buy
and downloaded it anyway.

File:
113/47/04/cbt/Continued

Source:
LinkData\LinkDiary\Peter_Vincent\Personal

I could have read it in my head, there and then, but that didn’t feel right somehow, so I transferred it over to my LinkPad instead and sat down on the bed.

The liquid memory mattress adjusted to my form instantly.

I looked at the file for a while, sitting there amongst downloaded college textbooks, fantasy strategy guides and my secret stash of English literature, and I had the oddest of feelings. There was a small part of excitement – the odd thrill that comes from doing something that you KNOW your parents would not approve of.

I opened it up and started to read. Twenty minutes later I was done.

The story had been strange and disturbing, made all the more so by the sincerity with which Kyle Straker had related the peculiar events that happened on that single summer day.

I felt a weird chill when reading about the silos, but I couldn’t explain why it was that bit of the story that should affect me the most.

I sat there, trying to get it all straight in my head. A story from many centuries ago, that I had been raised to regard as a fairy tale, but now looked to be the secret history of the world.

Then I messaged Alpha.

/Hi Peter./
she replied.
?What’s up?

?Any sign of your father?

/No. Mum’s beside herself. He’s never done anything like this in all the time they have been married. I made up some explanations that sounded pathetic even to me, but she seems to have quietened down. For now./ ?Is that all you wanted?

/I just read it./
I said.

?It?

/The book./
I said.
/The Straker Tapes./

There was a moment’s silence.

?What did you think?

/Well … I’ve certainly never read anything like it before./

?Which version did you read?

?Version?

/There are a few different versions of the Straker Tapes, some better than others./

?Better?

/Less … interfered with./ ?Did you have author’s notes, footnotes, or just the pure text?

/No notes. Just the story./

/That’s the way I prefer it. In later versions with notes and things the book gets a little confusing …/

/It wasn’t confusing. But if it’s true then … everything we think we know is a lie. I mean, all of it. I don’t think I want it to be true./

/I know, but it’s surprising how much evidence there is to support the tapes./

?Why isn’t it common knowledge?
I asked.
?I mean, something this important, it should be all over the Link, shouldn’t it?

/Oh Peter, I don’t think the Link is the limitless fount of knowledge that people make it out to be. I think that its information is controlled./

?By who?

/I don’t know. By people who think that we’ll panic if we find out the truth. Or by people with an interest in keeping things the way they are …/

?People like my father …?

/I don’t know what he’s up to, Peter, but yes. I think your father is somehow involved in keeping secrets./

/I’ve got to sleep on all of this./
I told her.
/I’ll meet you tomorrow./ ?Same place? ?About 9:30?

/I’ll be there./

/Good night./

/Good night, Peter./

I sat there, my mind picking over the details of the book I had just read.

Kyle and Lilly and the village of Millgrove.

The end of one phase of humanity – the beginning of a brave new world.

Millgrove.

I’d never heard of it.

And that worried me.

I ran a search on Millgrove and came up with nothing.

It was like the Link didn’t have any information on the place.

That’s the way it should have been, of course, if the story was pure invention. There would be no Millgrove because it never existed in the first place; nowhere except in Kyle Straker’s imagination.

But.

But.

But.

Kyle Straker wasn’t the only person who believed in the world of the 0.4.

He recorded his story on to tapes, and those tapes were written down, and somewhere along the way between then and now the story
was
believed by others. The Strakerites.

The growing movement that was reaching what my father called ‘epidemic proportions’.

So where was the
evidence
of that
epidemic
on the Link?

I widened my search to include Kyle Straker, and got a few hits but – apart from a Linkipedia entry — they were nothing more than arguments
against
Strakerism. It was as if a blanket of obscurity had been thrown over the topic, with little to be gleaned, even for the most dedicated searcher.

I put the Linkipedia entry on to my wall, and made a few notes around it, mostly about the lack of decent information on the subject. I copied some of my favourite parts of the Straker Tapes — the bits that I thought most relevant to the things that were happening today — and added them to the rest of the evidence.

Evidence
.

Weird word to be using, I know, but it felt like the right one. This was turning into an investigation. There was something at work here that was so big I could only glimpse the tiniest parts of it. How those parts tied together, what they were for and what they meant, was beyond my ability to see.

And that annoyed the hex out of me.

A million eyes …

I suddenly remembered what Mrs. Greatorex had said about her husband, about the way he became convinced that he was being watched, and I made a note of that on the wall too.

Then I sat on my bed and stared at all the data.

I felt an urgency to sort things out, was aware that a clock I couldn’t see was counting down to …

 … 
to what?

That was the question, wasn’t it?

The young man in the photos counting down on his fingers – was he one of the 0.4? The 1.0? The 1.4.7?

I felt a cold trickle down the length of my spine.

Counting down on his fingers.

Was he counting down to another upgrade?
I thought, suddenly.
Does everything change tomorrow?

I stared at the wall, looking for something that would disprove the wild, insane, horrible theory.

But nothing there helped.

I lay down on my bed, with dark thoughts flowing through
my head. Outside my window I could hear the muted buzz of artificial bees.

What can I do?
I asked myself.
What can any of us do?

There was, of course, no answer.

File:
113/42/01/aet

Source:
LinkData\LinkDiary\Peter_Vincent\Dream

I dreamed that I was standing in the street outside New Lincoln Heights, staring up at the crystal spires
.

Except they weren’t quite the spires I’d been looking at earlier
.

The alien language from the Straker Tapes was writhing and curling like smoke across the crystal walls, and there was a high-pitched squeal – like the screams of a million people – tearing through the air
.

Over the towers hovered dull grey clouds, and there was no sun in the sky. Everything around me looked like it had been leeched of colour, pallid shadows of their former selves
.

The only thing unaffected by the fade-out was the horrible language that was spreading outwards from the towers, moving throughout the sky, until it infected the clouds with its alien message
.

The clouds grew heavy with code, bloated and stretched, and then they let go and the code rained down on the world below
.

My heart was pounding in my chest like it was trying to break free of its bone cage
.

I wanted to turn away, run as far from there as was possible, but I could not move, I could only stand and watch as the wet code from the clouds splashed around me, and everything it touched became tainted by it
.

I watched as a group of people fled towards me, their eyes wide in terror. The rain enveloped them and then they were being swallowed up by the hooks and eyes of that terrible code. It seemed to dance across their flesh before sinking into their bodies
.

Suddenly the fear in their faces was gone, replaced by a uniform blank look. They stopped moving and stood upright, their eyes blinking in unison, and behind them the crystal
towers blurred – like a graphical glitch – and then they were different: twin concrete towers, rounded at the top
.

‘You must not look at goblin men,’ a voice behind me said, and I recognised it as Alpha’s. I turned in relief and gratitude, only to see the man who’d shouted at me when I was walking back home: the goblin man himself. ‘Their fruits have roots deep underground,’ he said, eyes wide and hair tousled, ‘where you will find a worm is eating its own tail. A place where all things begin and end. Alpha. And Omega. She’ll follow you into fire, but why would you lead her there?’

‘Who are you?’ I asked, but my voice sounded like a child’s
.

The man ignored me as if he hadn’t even heard
.

‘She wants to find her father,’ he said, ‘but the key is with your mother. To find him, find her. Follow the breadcrumbs. They will lead you here.’ He pointed to the concrete towers
.

I turned to look at the towers and when I turned back the man was gone
.

There was a sound like thunder in the sky
.

I turned my face up to the heavens and the clouds were gone. The alien code was gone
.

And that was when I saw. That was when I saw THEM
.

There were things up there, on the other side of the sky, pushed up against it and making the sky itself stretch under their pressure. It was as if the sky above me was little more than a skin, and the things were pressing against it from outside our atmosphere, making it bulge inwards
.

I can’t say what the creatures looked like because I only saw unrelated details. There were flexing coils that could have been ropes or tentacles or tubules, enormous and terrible. There were the gelatinous lumps and knotted bumps that pulsed against the sky, making it shake. Then there were the horrible patches that seemed to be concealing squirming masses of things that I could have thought were maggots writhing in dead flesh if it wasn’t for their colossal, impossible scale
.

As I watched, a tear appeared in the curdled sky, and a mass of vast, grey, wet tubing lolled obscenely from the wound in our atmosphere
.

The sky is falling,
I thought as I woke up
. The sky is falling and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

File:
113/47/04/sfg

Source:
LinkData\LinkDiary\Peter_Vincent\Personal

I awoke feeling tired and drained and on the very brink of panic. The terrible imagery of the dream was still clinging to my mind like cobwebs.

It was far and away the weirdest I’ve ever had. It took me minutes to shake free of it, but eventually it lessened its grip on me, and I was able to push it to the back of my mind and concentrate on the things that needed to be done.

I chose ‘simple but sophisticated’ as my wardrobe theme for the day, shut down the data wall and went out to face the world.

My father was in the dining room, reading data from a
LinkPad. He didn’t so much as acknowledge my presence, so I left him to his work, fixed myself some breakfast, bolted it down and made to leave the room.

‘Are you going out, Peter?’ my father asked, without looking up from his Pad.

I froze, my hand on the door stud.

‘I-I …’ I started to say.

‘It’s all right, Peter,’ he said. ‘I know what you are up to. And I know that you are only playing your part in the drama of life. The question you should be asking yourself is,
who’s writing the script?’

‘What are we talking about here?’ I asked. ‘Is this about the college course?’

Still my father studied the screen of his Pad.

‘English Literature,’ he said, and made it sound like a pair of dirty words. ‘That’s about the least of it, right, Peter?’

‘If you say so,’ I said.

‘I certainly do say so.’ There was steel in his voice, but still he didn’t look up.