Déjà Vu: A Technothriller by Hocking, Ian (ebook reader that looks like a book .TXT) 📗

she was in orbit. The huge world shone beneath her. She could see clouds swirling over the continents below. From space, the clouds had a three-dimensional quality. The land was green-yellow. The seas were a sparkling blue. They darkened, still glistening, as they passed into the shadow of the sun. The terminus was directly below.

“Computer,” she said. “Locate Point One.”

A green square appeared over a quadrant of the largest continent. It was far to her left, well beyond the terminator, where it was night. “Everybody, can you see the green square? Picture it and the computer will take you there.”

“Something’s wrong,” said Brandt. “My screen is still black.”

“Can you see any text?” Jennifer asked.

“No,” Brandt replied. “Wait. Yes. It says ‘Visual cortex scan failure’.”

From nowhere, David said, “Jennifer, Saskia has some…individual characteristics that the computer may have problems with.”

Jennifer frowned. Mikey had said that the visual cortex reader had a ninety per cent success rate. “Computer, lock guest two with my position so that she is five metres to my left with my orientation.”

A moment later, Brandt whispered, “Fantastisch.”

“OK, Dad?”

“Here,” he replied.

“Picture the square. That’s how we get about in this world. Picture a place and you go there.”

Jennifer closed her eyes and thought about Point One.

She dropped.

Her stomach rose and her fingertips fluttered. There was no wind, no sound, only the sudden expansion of an object that was the size of the Earth. It was like catching the eye of God. The clouds met her and she passed through. She did not get wet. Underneath were forests of thick vegetation. On this planet the environment was pristine. Vegetables ruled the Earth. Further down she fell. In real terms, her speed would have been thousands of miles an hour. She turned to her right and saw the setting sun become obscured by the planet’s curve. It was like a time-lapse film. And now, as she came closer, her perception of up and down shifted. She felt that only this planet could be ‘down’ – not her own feet, though she would never feel the tug of this new world’s gravity.

And then she stopped.

She was in a ravine. The only light came from a bonfire, far away. There were no stars or and there was no moon. A glance to her left and right confirmed that her father and Brandt were there. They were spectral, translucent figures. The ravine ran north-south. The central stream was wide but shallow. Jennifer crouched and saw the bed of rounded stones. As always, she reached out to touch them. As always, her hand passed through the water and the pebbles effortlessly. They could touch nothing. They were visitors.

The ravine was widest at their point of landing. To their left, rock had tumbled from the face to form a scree slope. To their right was a flat plateau of shingle. It stretched out for nearly a kilometre before it met the right-hand wall of the ravine. At its face was a little hut. It was crude but sturdy. From this distance, nothing could be seen but for a bonfire set before it.

“There,” she said, pointing. “We need to go there.”

“OK,” her father said.

She closed her eyes and imagined the bonfire. Upon opening them, she had arrived. The hut was in full view now. It had been built in an easily-defendable crag. Two large rocks flanked its sides. The cliff was insurmountable. Any predator would need to cross the unprotected flat. The hut was, up close, a log cabin, and a well-crafted one at that.

As she watched, the door opened and man walked out. He seemed to move cautiously. He gripped the rail of his veranda with one hand and a long spear in the other. He crept down the steps until he was quite close. Then a grin broke on his young face. He ran towards the flames. He was wrapped from head to foot in fir fronds. They had been tied in place with a string-like material. They allowed to move his limbs quite freely. He even wore – Jennifer noted with a smile – a fir skirt.

“Welcome, one and all!”

“Oh my bloody God!” David shouted.

“David! Alright, mate?”

“Fine! You? How?”

“Could people stop shouting,” Brandt asked.

Bruce walked nearer the fire and sat. His guests remained standing. “How? This is me, with my memories, backed-up a few moments after you left, back in Scotland. A little bird told me about Project Asgard, which is where it’s happening for digital folk, so I had to drop by.”

David’s voice was incredulous. “What do you mean, a backup?”

“I’m just a code now, just digital. There’s nothing physical about me. That means I can be copied and downloaded like any other file. A pretty big file, of course.”

“Do the researchers know that you’re here?”

Jennifer answered, “No, they don’t. That’s why Bruce has tucked himself away in this ravine. I saw him the day he arrived. He fell from the sky.”

“Excuse me,” Brandt said. She sounded angry. “Are you the same Bruce Shimoda who was killed by a bomb four days ago?”

“Ah,” Bruce said. He sat back and looked sadly into the fire.

“Go easy, Saskia,” David remonstrated.

“What?” she snapped back. “Was he killed or wasn’t he?”

“I don’t remember,” Bruce said. “I remember running from the metal shark. I ran up a hill…and then I was here. I guess that was the last back-up point. I had already written the instructions to have it sent to this computer.”

David asked, “How could you do that? And how, incidentally, did you make this nice little log cabin? I don’t see a crane.”

“Jennifer was kind enough to give me access to the computer.”

“That explains it,” David said.

Saskia cleared her throat. “Again, I would like to interrupt. Jennifer, you said that you had some evidence. Is it this man? I’m afraid that merely having a back-up of someone does not allow you kill them.”

Bruce turned to her. “Saskia, that was euthanasia. I was dying. New World had a free-running evolutionary program that meant it