THE ASSISTANT
by Ian Whates
As usual by the time we arrived, the underground car park was a desert of asphalt, faded white lines and inadequate lighting. Our vans were the only vehicles in sight, their headlights chasing serried stripes of short-lived shadow between the ranks of concrete pillars.
The corporate big-wigs had long since abandoned the place in favour of their homes, their fancy restaurants, clubs and bars, for the company of their wives and husbands, their boyfriends and their mistresses, leaving much-coveted parking spaces free for the likes of us: the Sanitation and Cleansing Technicians. Cleaners, if you prefer.
I always pull up in the same bay – the one with the wall plaque that reads ‘Reserved’, and then ‘Managing Director’. As ever, that plaque was the last thing I glanced at before killing the lights.
We piled out of the vans; a human sea of grey-blue overalls, all converging on the service entrance to the building proper.
Here everyone hung back, as if unsure of themselves. In fact they were waiting for me. The name badge on my chest might say ‘Assistant’, but they all know who’s boss. Except when Gus is around, of course – then I really am just the Assistant.
I waved at the camera; or rather, waved at the front-desk security via the camera.
“Hi, Joe,” said the built-in speaker above the door.
“Hi,” I replied with another wave and a grin. The system’s scratchy acoustics rendered the voice anonymous and I had no idea who was on the desk that night, so chose not to risk offence by venturing a name.
The doors hissed open and we went through, with me standing to one side, clocking everyone in as they entered – the best part of a hundred bodies in all.
‘Hi, Joe’ or simply ‘Joe’ echoed in a myriad of different accents, pitches and timbres as the crew funnelled through the bottleneck of the entrance. The register in my hand recorded each and every one as they passed, identifying them via the chip built into their name-badges. Within minutes the flood had become a trickle and then ceased flowing altogether. I checked the register. All those who were supposed to be here were – Kelly and Trev having both called in sick, whilst Muskrat and Yvonne were on vacation. The only other absentee was Wes, and we all knew about Wes. Out of danger now, thank God.
That was the first duty of the night taken care of. The next priority was to look in on the 22nd floor – at the time our one major concern. I shared the elevator with Mac, Josh and a timid blonde girl whose name I can never remember. I checked her badge at the time, of course, but goodness knows what it said.
Mac was in a chatty mood, whilst Josh seemed more intent on trying to catch the blonde’s eye. Since said eye gazed unwaveringly at the floor, this was proving more difficult than he undoubtedly anticipated.
“Bet you’re hoping for a quieter one than last night,” Mac ventured.
“That’s for sure.”
The previous night we’d been invaded by a swarm of mini-bots, each no bigger than your little finger. Horrible things they were, looking like a cross between a woodlouse and a centipede – all jointed segments and scurrying legs. Pink had spotted them coming in through the ventilation system. We call him Pink because that’s the colour of the stripe that runs front-to-back through his bleached and cropped hair. He claims to be a Post-Modern Neo-Punk. Personally I reckon he made that up, because I’ve never heard of any such group, clan or movement, but he swears otherwise.
Anyway, these bots had come in through the ventilation system. We’ve got the whole thing rigged with a mess of sensors that are supposed to be capable of picking up absolutely anything, but they managed to get around most of those, though not quite all, thankfully.
Pink monitors the ducts and shafts – that’s his bag – and thanks to him we saw them coming. I closed off all the vents in the building, intending to channel them towards a single meeting room on the eleventh floor. Something went wrong and instead of just the one room staying open, half the vents on the floor failed to seal. Before we knew it, they were everywhere. Fortunately there’s nothing too sensitive on the 11th – just the canteen and a bunch of interview rooms – but we had a devil of a job hunting the little buggers down. Their carapaces were made of some fancy new non-metallic polymer. The only metal anywhere on them was what we presumed to be shielding around their power source, which Pink insisted should not be referred to as a battery for some reason. As a result they were hard to pick up on the monitors, until someone discovered that their power sources – whatever those might be – leaked a very faint energy signal. Once we pinned that down the job became much easier, but they were still tough little so-and-sos and no mistake. See one scuttling along a wall and hit it with something and it would just drop to the floor and keep on scuttling. You had to stamp on them damn hard to do any real damage. Apparently this was all due to the ‘extraordinary elasticity of their polymer carapaces.’ That’s a direct quote from Mikey, one of the tech-heads on the team, after he’d had a chance to examine the remains of one.
The jury’s still out on precisely what these bug-bots were supposed to achieve. Mikey and a few others took away some remnants and partial-bots to look at in their own time in an effort to find out, but best guess is they were intended to insert something into the computer system – spy-tech, a sophisticated Trojan or maybe just a virus to wreak havoc. With their agility, resilience and the aid of whatever shielded them from most of our security systems, they very nearly made it as well. Thank God for Pink!
“Any word on Wes?” Mac asked.
Wes was the one who discovered that the bug-bots were equipped with a defence mechanism. Somehow, they were able to deliver a powerful jolt of electricity through their carapaces – metal or no metal.
We avoided touching them with our bare hands after Wes went down.
I was proud of my guys’ reactions. The crash team were there in a flash and got his heart going again in next to no time. Even so, it had been a horrific moment, especially when someone first turned around and told me, “He’s dead.”
Thankfully that pronouncement proved premature, and Wes was soon in hospital. I’d made a point of checking shortly before coming on shift and had been assured that he was well on the road to recovery, with no apparent sign of any brain damage.
“He’s doing fine,” was all I actually said.
“Glad to hear it. Wish I’d seen those little critters,” Mac continued. “Heard about them, of course, but it would’ve been nice to have had a chance to stomp on a couple.”
“You didn’t miss much,” I assured him.
The blonde’s eyes flicked up at me as I spoke, then quickly down, without once looking in Josh’s direction. I struggled not to grin at his obvious disappointment.
I was the first off, exchanging cheery farewells with the two men and even getting a brief smile from Miss Anonymous Mouse, which must have really bugged Josh.
At the 22nd the elevator opens straight into a vast open-plan office. Hilary was already there, distributing cloths, fresh bin-liners, and aerosols of polish and disinfectant to her team, while off to one side Sissy was setting up, preparing to make the routine sweep for any extraneous electronic devices.
“Off to the loo already, Joe?” Hilary called out as I passed.
“Yeah, you know me: can’t keep away from the place.”
She was right about my destination, of course. To be more specific, I was headed for the Ladies. A few nights previously, a greeny black mildew-like growth had been spotted in the corner behind the system of the end cubicle. Except that it wasn’t mildew. It was an artificial construct composed of near-microscopic units that were busily self-replicating and building at an alarming rate. Once discovered, the ‘infection’ was easily removed and the whole area scoured and disinfected.
The next night it was back; same thing, same place. Again it was disposed of and this time we used some really heavy-duty disinfectants and cleansers, sealing off the cubicle for ‘maintenance purposes’ to protect the office-workers from any toxin traces the next day. None of which prevented the damned stuff from sprouting up again.
This was the fourth night and I wanted to make sure we finally had the problem licked before getting on with my regular duties.
“Any luck?” I asked Steve, the disposal team’s foreman.
The look on his face was all the answer I needed.
“So what do we try now?”
He sighed. “Same cocktail of toxins we used last night, more or less – plus a few variations. The samples I took of the stuff didn’t handle either electrical pulsing or a strong magnetic field too well. So we’re going to be hitting it with a three pronged attack: chemical, magnetic, and electrical.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“I suppose nukes are out of the question?”
“Be serious.”
“Well… Do you remember the chompers I cooked up last summer?”
No, for a second I didn’t, but then memory kicked in to earn its keep.
“You mean those black beetle things that took care of the electric ants on 5th and 6th?”
“Yeah, they’re the ones. I thought I might adapt them to develop an appetite for this muck.” He nodded towards the offending cubicle.
I grinned and nodded approval. “Good move. Yes, I like the sound of that.”
Steve was still looking towards the cubicle. “What do you reckon this mould is supposed to achieve, in any case?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
Infiltration of some sort, obviously, but to what purpose? In all honesty, we never even worked out how the stuff was introduced into the building. The sewers, ventilation system, human carrier, all were possibilities. Not that it was any of our concern, really – outside our remit. After all, we aren’t detectives, we’re just the cleaners.
No point in my hanging around, so I left Steve and his team to wage their war against the techno-mould, making a mental note to get an update later. My next stop was the 6th floor; time to check in with Jet. I knew she would have called me if anything unusual had come up, but I always like to show my face.
Speaking of faces, I never tire of looking at Jet’s. Not because she’s spectacularly beautiful or anything – although she might be, it’s hard to tell under all the make-up. Jet is a Goth through-and-through, a fact that’s obvious even when she’s wearing regulation overalls. You see, Jet does not so much wear her colours on her sleeve as on her face. The make-up is spectacular, from the pale-powdered cheeks and thickened lashes to the graded eye-shadow and the layered lipstick, which shifts from deep pink outline to white at the very tip of the lips. The result is amazing and must take her an age to apply. I said as much to her one time, not long after she first joined us.
She looked at me in genuine surprise. “This? This is nothing – work-casual, a total compromise. You should see me when I make an effort.” She meant it too.
Jet was at her usual terminal, eyes glued to the screen, not even looking up as I came in. She knew who it was.
“Anything?”
“Nope, all quiet so far. Ah…” Her eyes lit up.
“What is it?”
“Nothing for you to worry about; just the Ghost back to take another crack at us.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard.
The Ghost was the latest in a long line of hackers who keep trying to break into the company’s systems. The fact that Jet labelled him ‘the Ghost’ is a testament to his skill. Previous opponents included Rammer, Thick-as-Shit, the Nerd, Dopey, and Dumb-Wit – actually the ‘dumb’ part was my amendment, Jet had used a far less complimentary term.
Jet’s hands were motionless for long seconds as she studied the screen, then she started to smile.
“I see what you’re up to. Clever, very clever… But not clever enough.” Again her fingers danced and the air reverberated with the rat-a-tat machine-gun fire of hammered keys.
“I’ll leave you to it,” I told her.
“Okay.”
“Have fun.”
“I will.” Still no glance in my direction, but in fairness she was busy. The Ghost seemed destined for another frustrating night. I knew how good our girl was.
I continued with my rounds and it must have been an hour or so later when Pink called. Any of my supervisors can get in touch anytime they want. In theory I could spend each and every night sipping coffee with my feet up, nattering to Security at the front desk in the knowledge that I’d be contacted if anything noteworthy happened. But that’s not my style. I’m more your hands-on kind of guy and would only end up fretting about what might be happening on my watch if I tried something like that. So instead, like some restless mother hen, I prowl around the building keeping an eye on things, co-ordinating resources, and providing help wherever it’s needed.
“Joe,” said Pink’s voice in my ear, “I think you’d better get over here.”
“What’s up?”
“Not sure, but I don’t suppose it’s anything good.”
Pink was on 5th, the floor below Jet. When Jet first joined us I’d put her in with Pink and his boys, but she and he had taken an instant, mutual dislike. The sniping and bitching between them became so bad that it was distracting the rest of the team and work suffered – they nearly missed an incursion that could have been disastrous – so I shifted Jet out to her current one-woman station on 6th. She seems to like it that way.
When I arrived, Pink and Simon were crowded around Del, who was busy at his work station. All three were staring at Del’s screen, which was completely hidden from me courtesy of their huddle.
“What is it?”
Pink stood back and ushered me forward. “Take a look for yourself.”
On the screen was a 3D simulation of… “The kitchen?”
“Yeah. Del’s been picking up a strange energy signature – very faint, almost certainly leakage rather than a deliberate signal.”
This inevitably triggered memories of the previous night. Naturally the kitchen was next to the canteen, on the 11th floor. “We must have missed one of the bug-bots in yesterday’s clean-up.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
He shrugged. “Well…” After being tapped on the shoulder, Del slipped out from his chair, allowing Pink to replace him in front of the screen. “The signature’s not the same. Similar, but not identical.”
“Perhaps the battery – I mean power source – is damaged.”
Pink made no comment. At his deft coaxing the perspective of the image started to change. We zoomed in on a work surface, squeezing between storage jars. A nebulous shape behind the jars seemed to move.
“There!” Pink exclaimed.
The image provided no detail, not even a distinct outline, just the impression of something.
“It’s not a very clear picture,” I grumbled.
“It’s not a very clear signal.”
“Has to be a bug-bot; too much of a coincidence otherwise.” I sighed. “Okay, I’ll go and take a look.”
“Do you want some help?”
“No; if it is just a damaged bot there’s no point in pulling half the shift away from what they should be doing as we did last night… and if it’s anything else, I’ll let you know.” I paused at the door. “I take it you can guide me to whatever it is and keep tabs on the thing if it moves around?”
“Of course.”
I went to leave.
“Joe, let me come with you.”
I turned around, amazed. “What’s up, Pink, need some exercise?”
“No…” I’d never seen him look so uncomfortable. “But I’ve got a bad feeling about all of this. The bug-bots, what happened to Wes and now this, whatever it is… Something’s not right, I can feel it.”
I laughed and then shook my head, wondering if perhaps I’d been working him too hard. “I’ll be fine. Just let me know where the damned thing is, okay?”
“Okay,” but he clearly wasn’t happy.
The 11th was deserted, the crew evidently having finished here and moved on. In passing I noted with approval the swept floors and glanced in at one or two of the meeting rooms – just a random sample – confirming that the bins had been emptied and the desks cleaned. Everything seemed in order.
It’s funny, but the canteen, or restaurant as we’re supposed to call it, is the only bit in the entire building that gives me the creeps. I must have been through every room on every floor of this place a thousand times, finding each one deserted as often as not. Abandoned work-stations, empty rooms that reverberate with stark knocking from the pipes and silent corridors in which every individual footstep echoes sharply – no problem. But the canteen always strikes me as spooky. This vast area, filled with row after row of empty tables and chairs… and complete stillness.
I suppose it’s simply the absence of noise and bustle, of conversation and activity and the clatter of cutlery that’s so much a part of canteens everywhere, but I always imagine that I can sense things here; sounds and movement – people – just beyond the reach of perception.
So I didn’t linger. I looked straight ahead and walked through quickly, fixing my eyes on the swing-door that leads to the kitchen.
Even so, Pink’s misgivings echoed through my mind, to be summarily dismissed. I was convinced this was nothing more than a damaged bug-bot and the previous night had taught me how to deal with the likes of them.
“Pink, you reading me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Has it moved?”
“Some, but it’s still in the same general area. Don’t worry; we’ll lead you straight to it.”
Once I’d switched on the lights, the first thing I noticed was a pail of dirty water and a mop resting against a counter. Both were in line-of-sight of the door and had obviously been overlooked by my lot when tidying up. Sloppy; I’d take care of them later and would have a word with the supervisor.
“Okay, Pink, talk to me.”
“It’s on that shelf to your left, the one at about head-height.”
I saw the shelf he meant. “That’s not where the thing was when you showed it to me, is it? Wasn’t it on the work surface below?”
“Yes.”
“So whatever this is, it climbs walls like a bug-bot.”
“But a fair bit slower.”
Which would make sense, if this were a damaged bot as suspected.
I started to walk down the aisle between ovens and work-surfaces, eyeing the shelf in question.
“You’re almost there,” Pink said after a dozen or so steps.
There was still no sign of anything unusual on the shelf. I reached up and moved a large, stainless steel mixing bowl, which was the most obvious obstruction. Had I caught the suggestion of movement? Nothing that could be seen directly, but in the corner of my eye a shadow appeared to shift a fraction. I took down a second bowl… and found myself staring at the bug-bots’ bigger brother. It was three or four times the size and by no means identical to the previous night’s pests, but clearly came from the same lineage.
I would love to put what happened next down to my lightning-quick reflexes or a nebulous sixth sense, but in truth it was more a case of surprise and alarm mixed in equal measure. The thing was pointing its snub-nose straight towards me, and it looked for all the world like the business end of a gun. Instinctively I flinched and ducked away, just as a lance of energy stabbed out from the bot, bisecting the space my head had occupied a split-second earlier.
I swear I felt the heat of the beam’s passage, although others have suggested since that this is nothing more than an elaboration of my own imagining. Hard to say; at the time I was too busy scampering away on all fours and hauling my arse around the corner of the ovens to give the matter proper consideration.
“Joe! Are you all right? What happened?”
“The frigging thing shot at me! Some sort of energy weapon. Where is it now?”
“No idea.” Pink sounded as frantic as I felt. “We’ve lost everything: visual, virtual – all whited-out. Ah… coming back on now. Five point two seconds. Remember that. If it fires at you again, I’m going to be blind for a little over five seconds.”
“Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind.”
“I’m sending you some back-up.”
“No!” I thought of what had happened to Wes and had sudden visions of people charging in and getting themselves shot. Not something I intended having to explain to Gus, let alone their families. My deepest sympathies for the loss of your son – killed in the line of duty… Yes, I know he was only a cleaner. It’s a dangerous business. “Leave it to me.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Joe. What are you going to do, talk it to death? That thing’s armed. You’re not!”
“Nor is anyone else. Sending others in here will just give it a few more targets to shoot at.”
“Point taken. But what are you going to do?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“Well think quickly, because it’s moving along the shelf towards you. The bloody thing will have you in sight again any second now.”
No sooner had Pink spoken than I saw that distinctive snub nose poke over the edge of the shelf. I scrabbled away and in doing so, again managed to avoid being singed by a hair’s-breadth, as it fired for the second time, scorching the base of the wall. A detached corner of my mind registered the resultant burn-mark and recognised what a pain it would be to shift before the morning.
Five seconds was where most of my mind was focused. Pink was silent. This time even the comms seemed to have gone down. For the next five seconds I was cut off, completely on my own. Just me and the big bad Bug-bot. Did it need time to recharge between shots? I needed a weapon, desperately. My eyes focused on the mop, across the other side of the aisle. Pausing only to pray that the thing wasn’t yet ready to take another potshot at me, I flung myself over, clasped the mop and clambered to my feet.
Looking back, I think I may have shouted or roared – though goodness knows why – as I swept the makeshift weapon across the shelf, sending pans and utensils flying in all directions, clearing everything in its path. Including my automated adversary.
The five seconds must have been up around then, because suddenly Pink was yelling franticly in my ear.
“Joe, what’s happen…” Which is when the bug-bot landed in the pail of water. I’m not sure whether it tried to fire again or simply shorted-out. Either way, there followed a violent flash and Pink was cut-off in mid-sentence, vanishing for another five seconds.
Breathing hard, I simply stood there – eyes fixed on the bucket. I resolved not to be so hard on the relevant supervisor after all. In fact, I might even make it a requirement to leave forgotten pails of dirty water lying around until the end of the shift.
I found that my hands were shaking. They still clasped the mop, unable to let go. I approached the bucket gingerly, half-expecting to see an ugly, snub nose peer over the rim, but it didn’t. That flash had been the bot’s final act. Reaction set in and I slumped into a sitting position, my back pressed against the units with the mop resting across my lap.
“Joe, Joe?”
I started to laugh – I couldn’t help it. “Welcome back, Pink.”
Some people have suggested since that the previous night’s invasion of mini-bots was merely a feint, a diversion to allow their larger and nastier cousin to slip in unnoticed. I’m not so sure. Personally, I reckon this was probably an attack on two levels. The smaller bug-bots were tricky enough and numerous enough to succeed in their own right, but, in case they didn’t, their larger relative sneaked in under cover of the incursion, found somewhere to hide, and powered down for twenty-four hours. Thanks to the vigilance of Pink and his crew, neither tactic succeeded.
I waited around until the cavalry arrived, made sure that the clean-up was well in hand and that the entire 11th floor was being turned upside down and searched with a fine-toothed comb, just in case there were any more nasty surprises lying in wait, then headed off for a well-earned mug of coffee. Halfway to the elevator I had a better idea and gave Mac a call.
“Mac, do you still keep a bottle of single malt tucked away in that store cupboard of yours?”
“Yes,” he admitted reluctantly, “for special occasions.”
“I’m on my way. Believe me, this is a special occasion.”
“Why, what’s happened?”
“I’ll fill you in over a wee dram or two.”
“Deal.”
***
I had to report what had happened, of course, which caused the Boss to come by a little earlier than usual. This is just one of three buildings that Gus has to look after. He spends most of his time over at Trans-Global. I think he fancies the Assistant there, Jocelyn: quite cute but a bit broad about the beam for my taste.
Gus is a big man and his waistline has expanded a fair bit since he got himself promoted to Senior Sanitation and Cleansing Technician a while back. Of course, that was how I came to be promoted as well because, before then, Gus had my job. He keeps kidding me by saying things like “one day you’ll have this job, Joe.” No thanks. It wouldn’t suit me, all that flitting from place to place. I’m much happier having my own patch and just being the Assistant.
Gus dropping in a little ahead of schedule wasn’t all that unusual. The pair of suits who came with him were.
Suits meant something important was afoot. They whisked in, collected the carcase of the Big Bad Bot and disappeared so rapidly that I was left wondering whether they had been there at all.
“Gus, what’s going on?” I asked once we were alone.
He smiled in that chummy, jovial way of his. “Joe, Joe, not our concern. You know how it is.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I know. We’re just the cleaners.”
He was right, of course; except that this was different. That thing had nearly killed me, and this time it was personal.
I mulled everything over long after Gus had gone. In the past few years we’d seen plenty of strange things, cunning devices and ingenious mechanisms, but nothing that had warranted the intervention of suits. Until now.
The shift was nearing its end; my people were busy packing away and getting ready to withdraw, leaving the building as ever scant minutes before the first of the office workers arrived – the eager ones, keen to impress and desperate to score points with the management.
I decided to pay Pink another visit.
There wasn’t much time. Within the hour this place would be bustling. The desks would be occupied, the phone lines buzzing and the computer screens burning bright, as the 9-to-5ers went about their business, never stopping to wonder how the bins got emptied or the floor swept clean, never having an inkling as to what went on behind locked doors when they weren’t about. Which is how it should be and how it’s always been; so we had to be gone soon. But equally, I had to know.
Simon and Del looked up guiltily as I came in, reminding me of kids caught with their hands in the sweet jar. Mikey, the tech-head who had taken some of the smashed mini-botS away the previous morning, sat perched on the end of Pink’s desk.
Maybe it was pure coincidence that the two members of my team who were likely to know most about these damned bots were to be found huddled together at that particular moment, but somehow I doubted it.
I told Del and Simon to knock off a few minutes early. They powered down their stations and scarpered, gratefully. Then I returned my attention to Pink and Mikey.
“Okay, you two; spill.”
They exchanged a nervous glance before Pink replied. “We’re not really certain of anything.”
“So tell me what you’re uncertain of.”
“Well,” Pink began, “you know I was unhappy about the energy signature we spotted coming off of the bots?”
I nodded.
“The readings were all wrong for any type of power source I know of. It was almost as if the bots were pulling energy in rather than leaking it out.”
“What?”
“That fits with what I’ve found out from the fragments I took away with me,” Mikey said, taking over. “There’s nothing in any of them to indicate a power source, but plenty that’s suggestive of power reception.”
“From where?”
There was an uncomfortable pause before Mikey took a deep breath and continued. “Okay. We all generate energy simply by moving around – friction with the components of the atmosphere we move through and with whatever surface we’re travelling across…”
“Oh, come on”, I cut in; “you’re not suggesting that’s how the bots are powered, are you? The energy produced must be minimal, much less than the amount that’s eaten up by the movement that creates it.” I remembered that much from school.
“True.”
Pink chuckled and leant back in his chair, arms clasped behind his head. “This is where it gets really interesting.”
“You’ve heard of quantum computers?” Mikey asked.
“Sure.” This wasn’t a lie. I had heard the term.
“Good. Then you’ll know that the Chinese have built a computer containing more qubits than a lot of experts thought would ever be possible.”
I nodded. That was the lie. I might have heard of ‘quantum computers’ but I had no idea what one actually was, let alone a ‘qubit’.
“They’ve done it by combining quantum memory with cluster states. Still early days, but what they’ve come up with looks to be capable of outstripping even the fastest super-computer built along conventional lines.”
“Cluster states…? Remind me.”
Mikey raised an eyebrow, but answered anyway. “It’s a kind of storage architecture, to prevent fragile entanglements from collapsing during calculations.”
“Oh, right.” I was left none the wiser but had no intention of admitting my ignorance a second time.
“Problem is, of course, that the known universe doesn’t contain the resources to support a quantum computer operating at anything like this capacity, yet one has been built and it does seem to work.”
I stared at him dumbly. Mikey was really fired up by this point, enjoying himself no end, so didn’t notice my bemused expression.
“The only way that’s possible is if the computer is reaching into parallel universes and drawing on resources there to supplement what it can’t find in this one. Quantum computers aren’t simply a new generation of computing, they’re a whole new species, an evolutionary leap.
“I reckon our bots are working on quantum principles – reaching across and absorbing the infinitesimal amounts of energy produced by the friction of their own movement from an infinite number of realities. Insignificant in themselves, the sum of all those tiny fractions – that’s what gives them the power to move, to produce the sort of shock that floored Wes and even to fire the energy cannon that nearly nailed you.”
This may all have been way beyond me, but the implications weren’t. “It would certainly explain why the two suits turned up as soon as I reported in,” I agreed.
“Wouldn’t it, though? We all got so carried away yesterday that we smashed the bug-bots into fragments, but that bigger bot you faced today is whole; unbattered and unstomped.” Mikey grinned at me. “You may just have handed those suits the secret to a whole new form of energy.”
It was now well past time for us to go, so we said our goodbyes and headed home, leaving me to wonder whether or not Mikey was right. The thing is, if I had handed over the key to a brand new sort of energy, then clearly somebody else already has it. And if they were willing to risk revealing the fact so casually, what else have they got?
I keep thinking of what Mikey said about the Chinese having developed this quantum computer.
Over the next few months I’m going to be watching the headlines with interest and won’t be at all surprised to see some announcement or other about a revolutionary break-through in energy production.
The interesting thing will be to see who makes it. Not that it’s any concern of mine who does, of course – unless, that is, they harbour further designs on this building and its installations.
After all, I’m just the cleaner; and, as it says on the badge, an assistant one at that.
Originally published in The Solaris Book of Science Fiction Volume 3 and reprinted here with kind permission.