‘Wow!’ Sam said, looking around at the unexpected sight.
The boathouse of the Academy’s London campus looked ordinary on the outside, a squat timber structure by the river filled with old boats covered in a good layer of dust and cobwebs. It was what he found down the steep stone stairs, after following the tracks in the dust, which astonished him.
The old wooden shed was merely a shell for a very hi-tech basement. Several leather lounge chairs were grouped around a glass-topped coffee table, while music pumped through from the shiny stereo perched on the shelf on the far wall. The rest of the space was taken over by computer tables already covered in screens and equipment, some set up, some in the process of being unpacked from large steel cases.
‘Yo, Sam!’ Jedi exclaimed at once. He was shorter than Sam, twenty-something, with a patchy beard and scruffy hair to match. ‘Good to see you, my man.’
‘Hey, Jedi, you too,’ Sam said, gazing around the room. There were hundreds of boxes of game consoles being unpacked and sorted by a class of senior students. ‘Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you.’
‘Yep,’ Jedi replied, pointing and directing where the consoles were to be lined up and connected. ‘I heard you got into a bit of a jam on that last trip.’
‘Yeah, few times,’ Sam said. ‘Still, nothing like what you had goin’ on.’
‘Too true,’ Jedi sighed. ‘But tell me, how was the jump from the Eiffel Tower?’ His eyes went wide with anticipation.
‘Pretty horrifying,’ Sam began, his voice deadpan before breaking into a grin and adding, ‘but then totally awesome!’
‘I knew it!’ Jedi clapped Sam on the back. ‘Good work, man. Now …’ He plugged in more power boards and sparks leapt out, the lights overhead flickering. He looked at Sam and followed his gaze. The set-up here seemed far less sophisticated than Jedi’s lab in the Swiss mountains.
‘I miss Old Betsy,’ Jedi said, sitting down to lean back in his chair. ‘She was my first. Supercomputer that is. Can’t believe she’s gone …’ Jedi trailed off and Sam didn’t quite know what to say.
If this is where Jedi and the Academy are going to take the digital fight to Matrix, then we might be in trouble.
‘Well,’ Jedi said, ‘as soon as I get this system up and running, I am going to war. I’ll start with some denial-of-service attacks. Get Matrix offline and try my hardest to keep him offline.’
‘Nice,’ Sam said, watching students unpack console after console.
‘How’s that new phone of yours?’ Jedi asked, typing commands into a nearby keyboard.
‘Oh, um …’ Sam stalled, before sheepishly confessing that he no longer had it. ‘It wasn’t my fault this time—Hans’ guys took it.’
‘Hmm, right,’ Jedi said, then went to a steel locker and rummaged noisily in the shelves. ‘I know I have something in here … somewhere …’
‘I can get a new one at the airport,’ Sam replied, not wanting to add to Jedi’s long list of things to do.
‘Aha!’ Jedi emerged from the locker and held out the largest, most ridiculous-looking mobile phone Sam had ever seen. It had a large black box connected to a phone via a spiral cord.
‘That’s …’
‘Awesome, I know,’ Jedi said, plugging it in and switching it on. ‘Developed it as one of my first projects, when I was still a student at the Academy.’
‘What, in the 1900s?’ Sam said, laughing.
‘Very funny. I’m not that old.’
‘Seriously though, this is the size and weight of a phone book. In fact, I’ve seen phone booths smaller than this.’
‘I know—it’s cool, right? It’s totally retro hipster awesome. Everyone will be jealous of you with this baby held to your ear!’ His eyes gleamed with genuine enthusiasm. ‘These were used for about five years by all Academy staff, but then discontinued because they were considered too dangerous.’
‘Dangerous, huh?’ Sam said, looking closer at it. ‘What, its internal combustion engine was giving people headaches? Or microwaving their brains? Nuking their neural pathways?’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ Jedi said, defensively. ‘It’s the Swiss Army knife of phones, before smartphones. Here, put your thumb on the screen.’
Sam did so and a light scanner flickered underneath it. The screen came up with chunky green text on a black screen.
Welcome, Sam, to a new world of communications.
‘So the greeting is a little lame,’ Jedi said, fiddling with the controls.
‘How does it know who I am?’
‘It’s tapped into the wireless network here.’
‘Nice. But I still don’t see what’s so dangerous about it.’
‘Only you can use it now,’ Jedi said, handing it gingerly to him. ‘I can handle it, because I’m the creator, but it still bites me sometimes.’
‘Bites?’
‘Just a playful nip, nothing like what it’d give someone who you perceived as a threat.’
‘It—it can tell if an enemy picks it up?’
‘Oh yeah, and a whole lot more …’ Jedi ran through its functions, very similar to Sam’s last ultra-modern phone. It was, indeed, an impressive handset, despite only just squeezing into Sam’s backpack.
‘So, you’re heading out straightaway?’ Jedi asked.
‘To Brazil, first thing in the morning.’
‘Ah, Brazil …’ Jedi’s attention turned to his computer screen and he tapped in some commands. ‘Perfect timing! Can you hang around? I’ve got another surprise for you.’