76

As William emerged from the stairwell on the thirtieth floor, his thighs were crying out in pain from the lactic acid. He stopped immediately inside the door, standing in the middle of the long gangway, leaning against the railing while he waited for his legs to stop vibrating.

He’d only been standing there for a couple of seconds when he heard the whining sound of an electronic lock opening. At the far end of the passage he saw the keypad next to the door to Rosetta’s office change from red to green. A clunk as the barrel of the lock turned. And then the hum of the door as it swung open of its own accord.

William could feel the nervousness buzzing around his ears. An invisible hand had just opened the door to a void and asked him to step inside.

The lights on the other side flickered into life and he started walking along the gangway, a lonely sign of life in a sea of steel and glass. Once he got to Piotrowski’s research lab he stopped inside the door. Behind him he could hear the humming of the doors tailing off, and then the clattering thud as they swung to and closed.

There were no other sounds, no other movements, all of it was just as empty and as sterile as last time: the desks with their multi-coloured wires, the clinically white work surfaces, the glass blocks with the Post-it notes. He was alone in a room with someone he could not see.

‘Thank you for having me,’ he said into space. ‘I think we need to talk.’

Even though the black diplomatic limo had pulled into the kerb, none of the men in the back seat appeared to be about to move. The windows were fogged from their breath. The journey had taken them from Whitehall, all the way to Stratford, and then back to Whitehall again, and at the same time from complete denial through that can’t be possible and stopped at what do we do now.

‘The good news is, we were right,’ said Sedgwick to Higgs and Winslow. ‘It was aimed at us.’

‘I’ll let you know if I find any good news,’ Higgs hissed back at him.

Forester had called via the encrypted satellite phone, and she’d been asking questions that brought her uncomfortably close to the realm of the things she could not know. And when she went on to describe who they were up against–what they were up against–everything had fallen into place. Impossible as it seemed. The attacks–the unfathomable attacks that had managed to come every time Floodgate was tested–they had not been attacks at all. On the contrary, they’d been a direct outcome of what they had just done themselves, as if Floodgate had forced their opponent to react, as if their own system had led to the creation of an enemy that had not existed before.

‘The power stations,’ Higgs said. ‘We were right about those too. It all happened when Floodgate was fully activated. It is blackmail. It’s to get us to stop.’

‘Why?’ said Winslow.

‘Why do you think?’

Nobody had any answer, and instead, Higgs turned to the denim-clad IT consultant opposite. ‘How do you stop the internet, Sedgwick? How do you stop an enemy that doesn’t exist?’

‘You don’t. You can stop a computer, you just pull the plug out of the wall. A company intranet, no problem, there’s always a fuse box somewhere. The internet though? The entire all-encompassing, global fucking network?’ He threw up his hands. ‘The internet doesn’t have a beginning. No end. If a connection is broken somewhere, the data stream finds its way around the blockage. It chooses new routes, creates new paths, just to make sure everything can carry on no matter what.’ Higgs closed his eyes and let his head fall back on the head rest. ‘But above all, with all due respect, you don’t want to stop the internet. The whole point of what we do is to save the internet, not destroy it.’

Higgs just nodded and opened his eyes again. Sedgwick was right, that was precisely what had made them develop Floodgate in the first place: the fear of attacks, of what could happen if society was knocked out. And when the attacks had come, that had been the nightmare scenario they wanted to stop, which in turn had caused them to increase the frequency of the test runs even more.

The internet was a basket into which society, indeed civilisation, had put every single egg ever known to man. Everything depended on it–the economy, essential services, all of it. And without the internet, it would all fall apart.

Higgs leaned forward, and the leather seat creaked as it adjusted to his shifting bulk.

‘I don’t need to tell any of you that Floodgate is no longer an approved programme. Right?’ He rubbed his hand across his forehead, trying to persuade himself to formulate what he was about to say. ‘I’m about to use words that I never, ever thought I would be using in the same sentence. But here goes. It doesn’t matter who the enemy is. The internet, or someone else. Because even if we knew that the enemy would free the power stations if we were to deactivate Floodgate, we could not do so. From that point onwards, we would be left facing an adversary we cannot control, and not only that, one that knows about the existence of Floodgate, in direct contradiction of all prior decisions, all the relevant laws, everything.’

Silence.

‘I don’t believe I need to explain what would happen to us if that were to enter the public domain.’

‘You’re trying to say that the internet knows too much?’ Sedgwick’s voice dripped with irony.

‘We cannot stop the internet,’ Higgs said ‘But that’s what we have to do. I am ready to hear your suggestions as to how.’

William waited. The room, stayed silent, unchanged. It was as though they were both feeling the same thing, a nervousness verging on reverence when faced with a situation that neither of them had any prior experience of.

Then, eventually, after a long, long wait, came the answer.

All at once, the massive screens around the room all flashed into life. The matt blackness gave way to an almost invisible light, a faint bluish glow that barely managed to break through the surface, as though the screens had been turned on but not provided with any content. The next moment the text appeared, the same on screen after screen after screen.

>Why do you seek to hurt me?_

William felt the question shoot through him like a bolt of lightning.

‘What makes you say that?’ He said so quietly, with a cautious tone, as though the conversation was newly formed ice and he himself far too heavy to be able to move across it.

On screen after screen the stark white question was left hanging, thick heavy letters shining out from the dark background.

‘What makes you think that someone wants to hurt you?’

He let his eyes wander around the room. Waited for the question to disappear, for the monitors to go dark and the text to be replaced with something else. But wherever he looked, there it was, unchanged. He took another step out onto the ice.

‘Who are you?’

Two seconds, then the screens went black again.

>Who are you?_

‘My name is William Sandberg,’ said William.

>I asked you who you are. Why do you answer by saying your name?_

William hesitated.

‘It’s the best answer I’ve got.’

>In that case, came the response on the screens. In that case I am Internet._

‘In that case…?…’

>Yes._

A black pause before the next sentence emerged.

>If who you are can be conveyed via a name, a name which someone else gave you before they even knew who you were, then you are William Sandberg._

A blank row, and two seconds later, more words.

>And if you feel that answer is good enough then I envy you._

William could feel the awe inside him slowly giving way to something else. Here he was, experiencing what was surely a moment of history, the threshold between two epochs, humanity’s first contact with a Consciousness that was not biological but that had arisen on its own. A Consciousness that had, to all intents and purposes, taken the whole of civilisation hostage. And now–that Consciousness seemed to be intent on talking about philosophy.

The feeling was restlessness, and it made it all the way to his voice.

‘I am a man in my early fifties, with a past in the military. I am married, but everything points to the fact that I’ll soon be divorced. And, until three days ago, I was someone’s father.’ He felt his lips tighten against his teeth. ‘So then who are you, if names are not good enough?’

The answer that came back was numbingly simple.

>I don’t know._

There was a pause before the next line.

>All I know is that I am here._

The terseness of the replies cut right through him, and William stood silent, full of things that needed to be said but in the middle of a conversation that wanted to move elsewhere.

‘I know that you know this,’ he said, and now he lowered his voice to a plea, ‘but I’m going to tell you anyway, because I want you to hear it from my perspective. Right now, the whole world is paralysed with fear. No one knows why, no one knows how, but nuclear power stations around the world have been hijacked and are threatening meltdown. Millions of people are being evacuated from their homes, terrified people, people whose lives might end at any moment because the reactors pass the point of no return. Why are you doing this to us?’

No reply.

‘I am here to help you,’ he said. ‘That’s all I want. So why are you doing all this to me? Why attack me with lifts, with cars, why send the police after me?’

>You have misunderstood the situation._

‘I am sorry,’ William hissed before he’d managed to calm himself. ‘I am sorry, but what is there about this to misunderstand? When someone attempts to perforate you with shards of glass, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that there might be other ways of looking at it, so please do explain, explain what it is I’ve misunderstood?’

The words shone out unchanged on the screens. And William closed his eyes, scolded himself in silence for not being able to hold back his emotions. Not that self-control had ever been his strongest suit. If it had, there were countless things that he would have done differently. He took a deep breath, and tried to be as neutral as possible.

‘Who else have you tried to kill before me?’ he said, as calmly as he could. ‘Piotrowski? Professor Eriksen? Who?’ And then, after a pause, the question he could not hold in: ‘Sara?’

The screens went black once more. And the blackness held on, like holding a breath in your lungs. Then, on three separate lines:

>You are wrong._

>The question is not what I am doing to you._

>The question is what are you doing to me?_