2001,New York
Maddy led the five of them through the swing doors into the Museum of Natural History's main entrance hall. Foster had brought them all here once before, not long after he had recruited them: Maddy from a doomed passenger plane, moments before it was due to disintegrate mid-air, and Liam from the sinking Titanic. It had been a field trip, a reward for them, a change of scenery. A chance for them to see, to reach out and touch the history they are now responsible for preserving.
Both support units, Bob and Becks, eyed the enormous looming branchiosaurus skeleton along the entrance hall with a detached cool, their silicon minds categorizing the sights, sounds and smells of the museum as either useful or irrelevant data.
Liam, by contrast, chuckled with delight at seeing the dinosaur once again. A class of elementary school kids was clustered around the long plastic -boulder-covered display plinth on which the skeleton stood, all carrying their activity clipboards, faces cracked upwards to look at the towering dark bones , every mouth drooping to form a little 'o' for 'orrrrr-some'.
Liam nodded a greeting at the old security guard standing beside the visitor's book. "Hey Sam, how's it going?"
"Whuh?" The guard scowled at him, bemused. "Hang on. How do you know my—?"
"It's all right." Said Liam, grinning "we met a long, long time ago,so."
Maddy's eyes rolled behind her glasses. "Oh, grow up,Liam." She whispered, jabbing him in the ribs and steering him away from the guard, who was still regarding them with an expression that was an even split between surly suspicion and genuine confusion.
"Last I heard,we were meant to be a top-secret organization....you know?"
"Awww, he won't remember. I was dressed as one of 'em Nazi fellas then."
"And the timeline was erased." Added Bob helpfully."The guard will have no memory of the encounter because —"
Maddy raised her hands to shush them. "All right, yes... you're right,Bob." She shook her head. "Let's just generally try to be secret,OK? And, while we're at it, Liam, try to behave like adults here?"
Liam nodded. "Aye, you're right. Sorry."
"OK." She sniffed, wiping her nose. She'd picked up a cold from somewhere, quite probably the dude who'd been hacking and wheezing over the counter at PizzaLand the other night—giving them a little extra unasked for topping on their four seasons. She felt like total crud.
"OK... today's about learning a bit more history." She said snottily. "And we can all do with knowing a bit more, but it's meant to be fun too, right? We could all do with some time out of the arch."
"S'right" said Sal.
"And you guys" she said to Bob and Becks."Split up...I don't want you two support units Bluetoothing binary jibber—jabber to each other all morning. You should use this morning to do some more people —watching. Look and listen...watch how people talk and move and stuff." She glanced up at Bob.
"Particularly you,Bob...you still come across as a bit stiff and unnatural. You need to learn how to chillax."
Maddy watched Bob's seven-foot frame hunch uncertainly. His thick brow arches and his mouth opened.
Beauty and the Beast. He was seven-foot tall,three hundred pounds of muscle and bone:a panzer tank in human form. Becks by contrast was half a yard shorter, athletic and slight. Yet both had started out, once upon a time, as identical-looking foetuses growing in a tube of murky gunk.
Bob was cocking his head like a dog, puzzling over the term 'chillax'.
Both support units nodded sternly.
"Right." said Maddy, honking into a hankie. "Right then, meet in the cafe up on the first floor, in say....like, two hours?" She tried a weary flu-ridden smile."And hey...you know, have fun everyone."
Maddy watched them disperse: Liam drawn towards the entrance of the natural-history hall and the dinosaur dinoramas; Sal hovering a moment, undecided, before choosing to go to the History of Native Americans exhibit on the third floor; and Bob and Becks looking for a moment like abandoned children before picking directions at random in which to saunter away.
She watched both go with the oddest feeling of motherly instinct for the pair of them. Bob still moved around with machine—like giant and Stony faced concentration that made him look like a Neanderthal with an anger-management problem. While Becks moved with ballerina grace; equally lethal as a killing machine in an understated way.
Weird. How different they both were: their bodies drawn from the same genetic material, their minds both running the same AI operating system, and yet their experiences, their memories, were varied enough to evolve two different simulated intelligences. It was a bit like being a parent, Maddy supposed, watching both support units slowly 'grow up' and becomes different personalities over time.
She watched Becks as she paced thoughtfully down the hallway, pausing every now and then to study an exhibit more closely.
You really have no idea how important you are...do you, Becks?
The female support unit had data embedded in her silicon brain, a minor sector of her miniature hard drive devoted to holding a secret. Their last crisis has involved being led to a medieval document,the Holy Grail no less, containing an encoded secret that dated from somewhere around the time of Christ. Becks had been able to successfully decode the secret, which, it seemed, had also rather annoyingly included a protocol that prevented her from revealing the message she'd managed to decode. And now, whatever those Big Secret was, it was locked away in a portion of her silicon mind.
Maddy had tried asking her about what was in there, but poor Becks knew nothing; she took was locked out of that portion of her own mind. All she knew was that at some point a 'correct condition ' would arrive that would unlock the truth.
What Maddy did know was this: whatever truth was lurking in there, it wasn't good news. Not good at all. And it has something to do with a particular word.
Pandora.
Secrets and lies. She hated them. There was a never any good that came out of a secret. They were corrosive. Like another one, a secret she was having to keep from Liam and Sal...but Liam, in particular.