00:45:01.
00:45:00.
00:44:59.
The truck downshifted gears as it slowed its approach to the guard post.
The outline of GCHQ loomed on the horizon, sleek and futuristic, like a mothership from another galaxy had landed in the middle of the tiny Cotswold town.
A one-armed guard came out to meet the vehicle, one empty sleeve folded across his chest and carefully pinned to the opposing breast pocket. Another guard walked out behind him, straining against the weight of an Alsatian that lurched forwards.
The driver lowered the electric window and held out his identification, which the one-armed guard took, checking the name and photo, and then pocketing the driver’s licence and pulling out an iPad wedged under his arm. Having one hand made the process awkward, but he handled it dexterously, reading the electronic itinerary.
He walked to the front of the vehicle and tapped the licence plate gently with his foot and then walked to the side of the vehicle and took a close look at the name of the haulage firm painted on the side.
Finally, he walked back to the driver’s side door and took a final look at the licence before handing it back.
Jeremy Johns’ father was a civilian policeman, and Jeremy grew up listening to his dinnertime stories of foiled bank robberies and frantic street chases. As exciting as these seemed to the young boy, growing up in the turbulent 1970s stimulated a yearning for adventure, and the military police seemed the perfect fusion of foreign travel and the protection profession.
His first station was Beirut. It was there one sunny morning in June that a Tata Mercedes lorry pulled to a stop in front of the fortified British Embassy compound. The rear was crammed with fruit crates, the vehicle bound for the kitchens.
The smiling driver handed his papers to Jeremy, who did a walk around the vehicle. It was an old truck, its engine rattling away like a lawnmower. The protocols for checking vehicles seeking entry were threefold: match the vehicle to the roster, then match the driver, and then … use your best judgement. Licence plates could be screwed on, and a simple paint job could replicate the name of approved suppliers. Which meant, to Jeremy, that judgement was what saved lives.
He walked back along the side of the lorry towards the driver’s side. And that’s when he saw it. The driver’s face in the side mirror. He wasn’t smiling any more.
Alert, Jeremy walked to the driver’s door and handed back the papers, keeping his eyes on the driver’s face. He had always been able to read people. Few people could disguise what was on their mind. Even at peace, the face betrayed inner thought, like the swish of a fish’s tail sends ripples to the surface of a pond.
The driver looked back at Jeremy, the smile reappearing as if it was switched on. And that’s when Jeremy turned and began running, his torso dipping, inclining down to the ground, a sprinter coming out of the gate, leaping the last few feet to slam his fist on the button to raise the bomb gates.
The truck was packed with enough explosives that it destroyed the outside wall. Staff found one of the wheels on the roof of the Embassy. Jeremy survived that day, although it cost him an arm.
Since then, he had turned down numerous promotions. That sunny day in Lebanon had taught him something invaluable: his vocation in life, the best place he could be of service.
He knew where he was needed now.
He was placed on this earth to stand sentry, to keep those inside from harm.
Jeremy looked at the truck driver’s face, looking for any sign, any ripples to indicate what was going on below the surface.
Satisfied, he nodded to the K-9 handler to raise the barrier and stood back to allow the vehicle to pass.
The driver put the truck into gear and drove through the gate.
The side entrance of GCHQ led to the underground access road, for deliveries of heavy equipment.
As the vehicle approached the tunnel opening, the driver tossed the ID in his hand into the rear of the cabin, where it landed on the man who had been driving the truck this morning, his hands and legs tightly bound, tape strapped to his mouth.
The tunnel blanketed the truck in darkness and a second later the headlights flicked on. A few hundred yards inside, a controller in a reflective jacket motioned the truck into a parking bay the size of a playing field.
Orpheus parked and dropped down out of the truck’s cabin, landing lightly on the asphalt road. He walked to the back of the truck and lowered the tailgate, hopping on and pulling thick tarpaulins off the containers stacked high within. He lifted the top off each of the lead pigs, revealing the rods held in place by semicircular cradles.
When they were all exposed, Orpheus knelt down and opened a briefcase containing an electronic timer. The timer countdown was perfectly in sync with the website timer.
00:39:23.
00:39:22.
00:39:21.
‘Driver, are you there?’
The voice came from outside.
He could hear steps approach the front of the vehicle and a clanging sound as a body stepped up to the driver-side door and peered into the cabin.
‘Driver? You can’t stay with the vehicle.’
The truck shifted back as the man dropped back down to the ground. Footsteps walked down the length of the vehicle, approaching the rear of the truck.
A radio crackled with indeterminate voices.
Orpheus didn’t move, even though the guard would see him in less than a few seconds. As soon as he turned the corner, Orpheus would be in plain view, kneeling in a vehicle filled with an enormous device rigged to a timer.
Orpheus’ heartbeat remained slow and steady, as he calmly looked out through the back of the gate.
He knew there was no cause for alarm. All he had to do was wait. In two steps, the guard’s radio would squawk an order telling him to return to the main tunnel to regulate traffic flow. The guard would stop and hesitate, considering whether to continue his investigation. He would then turn around and march away, his footsteps dying out after a few seconds, leaving Orpheus in silence.
This was Orpheus’ world. A perpetual data stream from the future. There were never surprises. His field of vision was four-dimensional. People were no longer agents in their own right, capable of free will. Instead, they were disassembled into actions, their existences just a series of events flowing through his data stream. Pre-programmed players moving through time, labouring under the illusion of choice but, in reality, playing out a plan that he had already seen, had already studied. He lived in a deterministic universe.
Over the years, what had initially given him a sense of power now gave him nausea. Without agency, people were cardboard cutouts, automatons shuttling back and forth, mechanized toys on tracks. It disconnected him from them, enforcing his isolation.
After the man had left, Orpheus hopped down off the tailgate and closed it behind him, arranging the end of the tarpaulin so it covered the contents. In a few hours, the device would wreak its reaction. He knew this would happen because it had already happened in his mind, the event was simply in escrow, waiting for the buffer of time to catch up with it.