SIR REGINALD SHERIDAN paused, wineglass in hand, to savour his most recent fragrant forkful of Dover sole and admire the view. Yes, he thought: this was, most definitely, the life.
He was sitting in a restaurant on the thirty-fourth floor of the BT Tower – one of the most famous buildings in London. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass in front of Sir Reginald’s table, as if set out specifically to complement his meal, was a panoramic view across almost the whole of the city. Better yet, since the BT Tower was cylindrical in shape, the restaurant had been built to revolve. Sir Reginald’s view, spectacular as it was, was therefore also constantly changing: the restaurant took exactly twenty-two minutes to perform a complete revolution, so Sir Reginald never got bored. Finally – and best of all – thanks to some silly business with a terrorist leaving a bomb in the toilets back in the early 1980s, the restaurant was no longer open to the public. Sir Reginald and certain other select individuals were therefore free to dine there in utmost luxury without any danger of having to mix with . . . ordinary people at all. Sir Reginald was in his heaven and, as far as he was concerned, all was right with the world.
The BT Tower had been built in 1964 as a telecommunications hub. Constructed from over 13,000 tons of concrete, it stood a full 189 metres tall – the tallest structure in London at the time it was built. It was also incredibly strong, having been designed so that the floors and floors of broadcasting and communications equipment that made up the vast majority of the tower’s contents could remain protected and continue to function even (supposedly) in the event of a nuclear attack. And Sir Reginald was sitting on top of it.
Sometimes Sir Reginald liked to imagine the floors of humming machines and equipment, vibrating just faintly below him with the terrific speed of their secret calculations. Sometimes he liked to imagine that it was all happening just for him – those sorts of thoughts tended to make Sir Reginald very happy. But now, washing the sole down with a flinty sip of white wine, Sir Reginald touched his napkin to his lips – and frowned.
Annoyingly, the view suddenly didn’t seem to be quite as spectacular as usual.
It was this confounded haze that had started appearing lately. The skies over the whole of London seemed full of it now, casting its sludgy orange pall over everything. Still, Sir Reginald consoled himself, if the view was disappointing today, the food certainly wasn’t. The fish was sensational. Sir Reginald’s latest mouthful of Dover sole was about to follow its predecessors when he froze in mid-chew. A shadow seemed to have fallen across his table.
The sky was darkening outside the restaurant’s windows: not just the sky, Sir Reginald noticed, but everything seemed to be darkening, the light leeching away as if the sun was setting. He checked his watch. It was two in the afternoon! How could it possibly be—?
Abruptly – shockingly – the window went blank.
Still with a mouth full of fish, Sir Reginald gaped. What was going on? The outside of the windows – the outside of the whole building – seemed to have been suddenly coated in something, as if giant hands had wrapped the tower up in a blanket. It was dark orange-brown in colour, like a dust storm of some kind, only the dust was boiling, seething outside, almost as if . . .
Well, as if it was alive.
At the corner of Sir Reginald’s eye, something flickered for a moment. He turned.
Someone was standing beside him. There had been no footsteps, no signs of anyone approaching, but a tallish man with unkempt hair and a strange twinkle in his eye was standing at Sir Reginald’s elbow, looking down at him.
‘How do you do?’ asked the apparition. ‘I’m Professor Mallahide.’
Sir Reginald remembered to swallow his fish, but no suitable reply occurred to him.
‘I’m sorry to have to disturb your meal like this,’ said the man who’d just appeared out of nowhere. ‘But I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You see, I’m taking over this building. In a moment or two I’m going to use the equipment it contains to broadcast a quick address to the nation, and then the whole of this structure – and everything in it – is shortly going to vanish.’
‘Are – are you some sort of terrorist?’ stammered Sir Reginald, finding his voice at last.
‘Oh no,’ said Mallahide. He grinned. ‘No, not in the least – rather the opposite, if anything. Still,’ he added, ‘for your own sake, I’d advise you to take what I say very seriously. This place is no longer safe for you. In a few minutes, my machines’ – he gestured at the boiling orange-brown mass waiting patiently just beyond the glass – ‘are going to go to work, and everything in this building will be . . . changed. If I was you,’ Mallahide went on politely, ‘I’d make sure I was safely back at ground level before that happened.’
Sir Reginald looked up at the man and, frowning, touched his napkin to his lips. ‘What absolute balderdash,’ he replied. ‘This restaurant is private: I don’t know how you managed to get in here, but I think it’s you who should be leaving. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the men in white coats were on their way right now to take you back to whatever mental ward you’ve obviously just escaped from. Now if you’ll excuse me’ – he gestured at his plate – ‘I was eating.’
Professor Mallahide’s smile widened. ‘You think I’m mad?’ he asked.
‘As a hatter,’ said Sir Reginald.
‘You’re not the first to think that, and I’m sure you won’t be the last,’ said Professor Mallahide airily. ‘But it’s as well to be sure of one’s own sanity, I always think, before casting aspersions on someone else’s. Here’s a simple test for you.’
Sir Reginald heard a sudden sort of fizzing noise, then the professor brought his hands out from behind his back.
‘How many fingers am I holding up?’
Sir Reginald’s fork dropped from his own nerveless fingers, hitting the crockery with a crash. ‘G-good Lord,’ he stammered.
Professor Mallahide had decided to change his hands a little, just temporarily, for fun. Now the grossly misshapen palms with their fronds of digits spread in front of Sir Reginald like two giant fans or large pink sea anemones.
‘Go on,’ said Mallahide, waggling them at the old gentleman. ‘Take a guess! No? All right, I’ll tell you: I’m holding up twenty fingers. Twenty-five,’ he added gleefully, ‘if you include all the thumbs!’
Sir Reginald blinked, gulped, stood up – and ran away. He’d got up so fast that his chair had fallen over.
‘Thank you,’ said Mallahide to Sir Reginald’s retreating back. He waited until the lights on the lift panel told him that the building’s remaining occupants were safely on their way back to ground level. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Time to get started.’
All over London – all over the country – TV screens abruptly filled with static, then went blank. Then, simultaneously on all terrestrial channels, a smiling but unfamiliar face hazed into view.
Professor Mallahide was ready to address his public.
‘Good day to you,’ he said. ‘My name is Edward Mallahide. I’m sorry to interrupt your afternoon’s viewing, but I’ve got some rather exciting news to share with you.’
In homes and pubs all over Britain, fingers stabbed fruitlessly down on the buttons of remote controls. But Professor Mallahide was broadcasting on all channels. Gradually, as the news began to permeate through to broadcasting corporations everywhere, the satellite stations started to show his broadcast too. As he continued to speak, the whole country stopped what it was doing and, curious, began to listen.
‘Just two days ago now,’ Professor Mallahide announced, ‘I did something rather amazing. I stepped out of my body and became something . . . different.’
He paused, grinning delightedly.
‘Two days ago,’ he said, ‘I was a human being. Now I am something else, something I’ve come to call posthuman. I believe that, as a species, this is the next stage in our development, and I have had the very great privilege of being the first to take that step. I can now do things you won’t be able to believe. I’ll never get tired, I’ll never get old, I’ll never die – and those are among the least of my gifts. But more important, I want to share these gifts with everyone.’
He paused again.
‘Imagine a world,’ he said, ‘without physical limitations of any kind, where you can go anywhere, do anything, and feel everything. Imagine a world where man is finally able to escape the prison of his crude fleshy body and, at last, be truly free. There will be no age, no death, no disease, no hunger – only life and what you choose to make of it. My friends, that’s what I’m offering you. Join me on humanity’s greatest adventure. I promise, it will be the best decision you’ve ever made.’
‘What on Earth’s he talking about?’ The question was being asked up and down the length of Britain – in this case, though, it was being voiced by David Sinclair, the prime minister.
‘Ah,’ said Dr Belforth unhappily. ‘I was afraid of this.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mr Sinclair snapped back. ‘I thought you told me Mallahide was dead! What’s he doing on the telly, talking all this nonsense?’
‘But that’s just it, sir,’ said Dr Belforth. ‘I’m rather afraid that what he’s saying may not actually be nonsense at all.’ He took a step closer to where the prime minister was sitting. ‘You see, now we know how the nanobots escaped,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t an accident – they were being controlled! And now’ – he gestured at the screen – ‘we know who by.’
‘Wait a second,’ said the prime minister. ‘Are you seriously telling me that Professor Mallahide has . . . become a part of this cloud of machine things?’
‘That’s correct, sir.’
‘But if he can do that . . .’ Mr Sinclair tailed off.
‘If he can do that, Prime Minister,’ said Belforth grimly, ‘there’s no telling what he can do.’
There was a short silence.
‘First a giant monster,’ said Mr Sinclair with feeling, ‘and now a cloud of super-intelligent machines. Frankly, I’m starting to wish I’d never got into politics in the first place.’
‘. . . Now, some of you, I’m sure,’ Professor Mallahide was saying, ‘will be thinking that I’m some sort of crackpot. “What’s he on about?” you’ll be wondering. Well, for those of you in London to answer your question, all you really have to do is look out of your window.
‘Go on,’ said Mallahide, staring out of every TV screen in the country with a mischievous grin. ‘Go on – take a look! You see that cloud over the centre of the capital? This weird orange-brown “haze” that everyone’s been talking about? That’s me. That’s what I’ve become – or rather, that’s how I currently choose to show myself. You see, I can change my form at will. I can take anything in the world and change that, too, into whatever I choose. I have absolute power over all matter, over everything I can touch – but I’m not a dictator. On the contrary,’ he said, ‘this power is something I want to share with every single one of you. Tomorrow morning, at eleven o’clock, I will appear again in Hyde Park. If anyone wishes to speak to me, I will answer all questions then.’
Back in the school sick bay, Anna looked at her father on the screen. He had never looked happier. ‘Oh, Dad . . .’ she said.
‘We’ve had our time as human beings,’ Professor Mallahide announced – now speaking to the whole world. ‘And you know what? We deserve better. With what I can offer, we can have it: we can all, every one of us, be gods.’
He paused once more, then started smiling again.
‘Now, just so you know that what I’m saying is the truth,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a little demonstration for you.’ He winked. ‘I think you’ll like this bit.’
His eyes took on a look of concentration for a moment, and the view on the screen suddenly changed. Instantly another small portion of his cloud of machines had converted themselves into a sort of makeshift camera: this one, unlike the one Mallahide’s temporary body was speaking to, was outside the building. It swooped around the BT Tower in a vertigo-inducing tracking shot, better than anything that could have been filmed from a helicopter: even under the boiling orange-brown blanket of nanobots, the building’s famous cylindrical shape was instantly recognizable to all who saw it. Then the view changed back to Mallahide’s beaming face.
‘I’m going to count down from five,’ he said. ‘When I reach zero, this whole building is going to disappear – each and every atom of it is going to be dismantled instantly. That should show any doubters, I think. So here we go! Five . . .! Four . . .! Three . . .! Two . . .’
‘Oh my God,’ said Mr Sinclair. ‘Get a squadron of helicopters over there right away!’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Dr Belforth, ‘but I think we’re already too late.’
‘One!’ said Professor Mallahide. ‘Everybody ready? And . . . zero!’
Abruptly all the windows of the thirty-fourth floor of the BT Tower seemed to burst inward. The restaurant behind where Professor Mallahide was standing suddenly filled with a boiling, rippling, seething cloud of orange-brown dust-like stuff – the nanobots that Professor Mallahide had just permitted to dismantle the outside of the building.
Professor Mallahide executed a low and mocking bow –
– then he too burst apart as the billions of nanobots that had temporarily coalesced into the shape of his old human body were allowed to rejoin the main mass of the swarm.
At the same instant, the part of the swarm that had turned itself into a camera panned backwards and out into the open air, the better to admire the view of what was happening to the rest of the tower.
By now, all over the UK, people were gaping. Tea slopped from the edges of overfilled teacups as their owners continued heedlessly to pour; sandwiches paused halfway towards mouths; people pointed, exclaimed, and swore.
It was true. Professor Mallahide was as good as his word. The BT Tower was disappearing.
All over the building’s entire surface area, incalculable numbers of tiny machines set busily to work, taking apart every nanometre of concrete, steel, and whatever else they came across and reducing it to its constituent atoms. These they then reassembled, copying their own designs exactly, adding to the expanding swarm. It happened fast – the whole process took just less than three minutes. It also happened very quietly – a silence nearly perfect except for a faint sizzling sound. All 189 metres of the tower seemed to shrink inwards on itself, the column becoming narrower and narrower . . . until finally, shivering, it dissolved completely.
The Mallahide swarm scattered, hazing outwards again. This was so everyone watching could see what was left of the tower. And what was left? Nothing. Even the foundations were gone. All that was left of the BT Tower was a hole in the ground.
‘Did you see that?’ said Chris, unable to stop himself from grinning in what was probably a very uncool way. ‘That guy dissolved the tower! The whole thing! Zoosh!’
Anna and the three men from the government looked at him. Chris couldn’t help noticing that they weren’t laughing or even smiling, come to that – so he recovered himself.
‘I mean,’ he said, ‘sure, it was a little fake-looking, a bit too obviously computer-generated for my liking. But a nice little scene, I thought.’
No one answered.
‘What’s the name of the show?’ Chris asked blithely. ‘What channel’s it on? Maybe I’ll catch it next time it’s on. I like it when they trash famous places.’
‘It’s on all the channels,’ said one of the government men. ‘Though not the terrestrial ones, obviously. Those got fried when the tower went,’ he added pointedly.
Chris blinked. ‘Wait a second. You don’t mean . . .?’
‘He means it’s not a show, Chris,’ said Anna quietly. ‘My father did that to the tower. And that . . .’ She took a breath. ‘That cloud is what he’s become.’
Chris suddenly noticed Anna looked like she was about to cry. But—
‘You’d better come with us, miss,’ said one of the government men. ‘For your own protection.’
Anna looked up at the men.
Chris watched her shining eyes take on a concentrated look.
‘Come on, miss,’ said another of the black-clad men. ‘There’s no time to lose. He could be on his way here right now.’
‘Where will you take me?’ asked Anna.
‘Somewhere safe,’ said another of the men, reaching for Anna’s arm.
‘No,’ said Anna, taking a step back. ‘Hang on: no. At any rate, you’ll have to give me a better answer than that.’
The man pursed his lips. ‘You’ll be taken to a secure location,’ he told her. ‘Underground. One of the bunker complexes most likely: they’re the safest places we’ve got. But you’ll understand I can’t tell you exactly where you’ll be going, for security reasons.’
‘We’ll protect you, miss,’ said another of the men. ‘We’ll keep you safe until we work out what to do about . . .’ He trailed off.
‘About the, er, current situation,’ said the first.
‘But you have to come with us,’ said the third. ‘Right now.’
Anna just stood there, considering for a moment. Her tears were gone. She was thinking clearly now.
‘You know what?’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’re here to “protect” me at all. Not really.’
Chris looked at her.
‘Your bosses want me,’ Anna went on, ‘because . . . yes, that’s it: because I might be the only hold you’ve got over my father!’
‘Miss, we don’t have time for this,’ said the leader of the black-clad men. ‘You’re in danger—’
‘From my own dad?’
‘And you have to come with us right now.’ The man took hold of her arm, and the other two stepped forward to surround her.
‘Get your hands off me!’ said Anna.
‘Hey!’ said Chris weakly. ‘Wait a second! If she doesn’t want to come with you, then, you know, you can’t force her – right? I mean, you’ve got no right to—’
But suddenly it seemed no one was taking any notice.
‘Get – off me!’ said Anna, struggling to escape, but the two government men on either side of her held her in an iron grip, and now they were heading towards the door.
Chris sat up on the bed, but—
‘Stay where you are,’ said the third government man. Unfolding his tree-trunk-like arms, he took a step closer towards where Chris was lying. ‘Just keep out of this, all right? It doesn’t concern you.’
‘But,’ Chris spluttered, ‘you can’t—’
‘Yes, we can,’ said the man. ‘And don’t try and stop us.’
Chris thought about this.
‘Fine . . .’ he said.
‘Chris!’said Anna. ‘Help me!’
‘You asked for it.’ An idea had occurred to him: Chris reached up to the wall behind the bed – and he hit the fire alarm.
The noise rang out, a hideous jangling din. But bad as it was, the sound of the alarm was immediately challenged by another noise, the sudden racket of a school full of kids who’ve just realized they’re going to be let off at least a good half an hour’s worth of lessons. The passageways were instantly packed with bodies. The air was filled with the vain shouts of teachers asking everyone to ‘leave in an orderly fashion’ and the total pandemonium as nobody took the blindest bit of notice.
‘Now,’ said Chris. He crossed his arms over his chest, enjoying the moment. ‘You’ve got a bit of a problem, haven’t you? I don’t think you people are going to be able to take Miss Mallahide anywhere she doesn’t want to go – not without the whole school out there watching you lot putting your paws on her. So why don’t we all just discuss this a little bit further?’
The three men exchanged a look. Then the two who had been manhandling Anna abruptly released her.
Chris beamed. With just one slick move he’d rescued Anna from three burly government goons. Result! He felt enormously pleased with himself.
‘Miss Mallahide,’ said the first MI6 man over the continuing din from outside, ‘I really do think you’re in considerable danger here. Honestly, you’ll be much safer with us.’
‘Nope,’ said Anna, coming over to stand next to her rescuer (which made Chris feel even better). ‘Sorry. No way.’
‘Seems we’ve got a standoff,’ said Chris cheerfully. ‘So . . . what’s next? The head’ll be wanting to know who set the alarm off, so I wouldn’t take too long to decide if I was you.’
The first MI6 man gritted his teeth.
‘All right,’ he said. He looked at Anna. ‘Here’s a deal for you, Miss Mallahide. If this’ – grimacing, he indicated Chris – ‘young gentleman accompanies us, will you agree to come with us willingly, without struggling?’
‘Now that your father’s gone public, you’re going to be something of a celebrity, miss,’ another MI6 man put in. ‘If you won’t let us protect you from your father, at the very least you’ll be needing some protection from the press.’
Anna considered this.
Hang on, Chris thought, his smile faltering as he watched. This wasn’t part of the plan! He’d done his bit: now the goons were supposed to leave with their tails between their legs, not—
‘Do we have your word we won’t be mistreated?’ Anna asked.
‘You have our promise,’ said the first.
Anna turned to Chris and smiled. ‘Well, partner?’ she asked. ‘What do you say?’
There was a pause.
‘Er . . .’ Chris managed back. Then, ‘I mean . . . yeah, sure, I guess.’ He shrugged, trying to look as casual as he could. ‘Why not?’
‘Very well, then,’ said the MI6 man. ‘Get your coat, young man. You’re coming on a little adventure.’