Colony by Benjamin Cross (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

and Callum braced himself for the inevitable hair-plucking that was to follow. Instead, the other arm now moved forward, arched around the side of his head and came back in to meet with its counterpart. The second pincer clunked open and closed with a pneumatic whistle. It then moved upwards, before the first pincer opened and retracted painlessly. The second lowered down in front of Callum’s face.

He examined the prongs. Unable to see anything, he shrugged.

“Look closer,” erupted from the PA.

Callum looked closer. This time he saw that caught within the pincer was roughly a third of a single grey head hair.

Peterson’s laugh filled the room. “Getting old, buddy!”

Callum couldn’t help but smile. “Where’s the rest of it?”

“The rest of it’s your problem,” Peterson replied. “I only just met you.”

3

“What’s the password?”

Silence.

“Come on, the password.”

“You don’t need the stupid password.”

“Of course I need it. How do I know it’s you I’m talking to and not a clone?”

“You can see it’s me on the webcam.”

“Could be a clone.”

“It’s not a clone, it’s me!”

Silence.

“Jamie?”

Jamie made a show of staring past his computer screen, as if reading something on the wall behind. He said nothing. His face was sullen and drawn, and his chin was perched resolutely on top of his knuckles, forcing his lips into a pout. Beyond his hunched shoulders, Callum could make out the little wooden bookcase that stood in the corner of his bedroom; in a rare moment of unity, he and Moira had assembled it together, shortly before the split. The boy’s football trophies were lined up across the top, along with a die-cast Lamborghini sports car minus a door, some kind of hideous feng shui bowl thing that his mother had no doubt forced on him, and a mini desk globe that Callum had bought him as a stocking-filler last Christmas. The picture on the high-spec monitor in front of him was so clear that he could read the spines of the comic books crammed into the upper shelves.

“Your mother let you have your Batman comics back then?”

Jamie sighed but made no reply.

“Jamie?”

“Not all of them,” he mumbled.

Softer. “Jamie?”

“I said not all of them.”

Callum took a deep breath. Just be patient. He glanced around the communications centre, a cosy, lounge-like little room, with computer bays and wall-mounted phone terminals divided by felt screens. He turned the volume up on his monitor. It wasn’t the first time that he and Jamie had spoken via video link-up. Over the last couple of years it had become a key part of their relationship. Like clockwork, every other Friday at six Callum would connect his webcam and dial through. Jamie would answer pretty much straight away, they would exchange passwords to make sure that neither of them was a clone, and then they would talk for as long as they could. It was no substitute for being together in the flesh. But, as Jamie had once put it, at least we can pull faces at each other and the other one can see.

“I’ll have a word with her,” Callum said. “About your comics.”

Jamie dropped his gaze, still determined not to look at the screen, and tapped at his keyboard.

Callum took another deep breath. “Jamie, I’m sorry.”

No response.

“I’m sorry that I had to take you home early, I really am. I’m sorry I’m not there with you now.” He watched as the boy’s gaze moved from the wall briefly and flashed across the screen. “I won’t be gone forever, you know. I’ll be back before you know it, and then we can go somewhere else, somewhere special, just you and me.”

The boy shifted in his little desk chair, and his eyes flickered back towards the screen.

“I love you, Jamie, and I never meant to make you sad. It’s just really important that I help Jonas out right now, you know?”

The boy finally looked directly at him. His usually bright hazel eyes were dull with hurt. His brow was crumpled into a frown.

“Can you forgive me?”

“Where are you, Dad?” There was a quiver to the boy’s voice that Callum never wanted to hear again.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the communications assistant shift uneasily. Of all the new things he had experienced over the last few days, this was the weirdest. It was straight out of Kafka: an armed, po-faced guard assisting him with his conversations with his son. Jamie would have loved to hear all about it, to be a part of it, but of course he couldn’t.

Callum traced his eye across the man’s narrow features. Were it not for his immaculately ironed combat smock, and the pistol holstered at his hip, he would have seemed an unlikely soldier. He was tall and slender, his face was gentle and his eyes gleamed with a rare intelligence. He stood in the corner with his back to the wall. His tattooed knuckles were clamped around the waist-height railing that ran to either side of the main entrance, and his head was tilted inquisitively. On entering, he had helpfully suggested a list of subjects that Callum might not wish to discuss. Unsurprisingly, these comprised anything at all to do with the project, including its location.

“I’m in Russia,” Callum answered at last.

“Where’s Russia?”

He thought about it. Then, with half an eye on the comms assistant, he said, “Why don’t you grab the little globe?”

With a sigh, Jamie edged around on his desk chair, scuffed across to the bookcase, grabbed the globe and slumped back down in his seat.

“Can you find Scotland?”

“Duh!”

As the comms assistant stretched his legs, coincidentally as far as Callum’s computer booth, the boy turned the globe around its axis with a slow, precise twist, scanning across the surface as he went. He stopped and jabbed his finger down somewhere between Aberdeen and Inverness.

“Okay,” Callum said, “now keep turning…”

With the little globe placed directly in front of the webcam, Jamie turned it slowly from the top until his finger was hovering somewhere east of St Petersburg.

“…aaaand stop. That’s Russia.”

Jamie picked the