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  ‘I’m not closed-minded. Certainly this new information makes the experiments worth progressing, if we can get the right conditions.’

  Mike stepped forward. ‘And fight off the inevitable wave of little green men.’

  Standing back up, Louise felt normality return, as the adrenaline marginally loosened its control over her mind and body. ‘Jeff?’

  Jeff shrugged. ‘I don’t know, it seems a little implausible…’

  Mike walked over and took Bob’s scanner. ‘I choose to believe it, and this won’t help. They’ll have suitably advanced technology to fool passive scanners like this.’

  Louise turned to Bob. ‘So do you want to be on the team?’

  ‘If you’ll have me?’

  He’d given her a lifeline, but Louise was still Louise. ‘And you know if you double-cross us I’ll exact some terrible retribution.’

  ‘I won’t willingly put myself in opposition to your preferred path.’

  Louise held Bob’s gaze. ‘You won’t oppose me, willingly or unwillingly!’

  Bob remained silent.

  Louise came to her decision and held out her hand. ‘Welcome aboard, then. I’m assuming Jeff’s 2016 budget requests are going to sail through…’

  Bob smiled. ‘We’ll see about that…‌but I‘m not sure he’s earned it yet.’

  Jeff looked a little chagrined. ‘So if aliens are involved—what’s their angle? Should we be in fear of our own safety?’

  Bob shrugged. ‘Pragmatically, we should assume if the aliens wanted to harm us then we’d be dead. That said, we should try to keep future experiments secret.’

  Walking over to a whiteboard, Mike sketched a few thoughts. He wrote the words fear and aliens on the board. ‘Assuming we run more tests, we need to understand how much additional fear is needed and whether we are ready to compromise ourselves professionally to get those levels.’

  Jeff picked up a whiteboard pen and wrote up the word superpowers. ‘Maybe we need humans with super mental powers to protect us from the aliens.’

  Louise shook her head. ‘Assuming Bill Jones had these powers, and was taken, it didn’t trigger a concerted alien attack.’

  Bob interrupted. ‘It may be they do want Project Hedgehog activity which produces people like Bill Jones, who they then farm. Then once they’ve got their man, they let the project dwindle until it’s time to get another. Maybe they want us to find another Bill?’

  Then everyone started to talk at once.

  Louise tried to keep the conversation focused, as the three scientists drifted into conjecture and supposition.

  Thirty minutes later, they’d agreed they had no idea what the aliens wanted. But, usefully, they’d also agreed to have a detailed experiment-planning session later in the day.

  Louise wanted to double-check her contact records to see if she could get any other crash survivors to the new tests, scheduled for Saturday. Willis and Ashley had already made themselves available. They needed a few more. She and Jeff left the laboratory, while Mike and Bob remained.

  Once Louise and Jeff had left, Mike turned to Bob. ‘Do you believe?’

  Bob threw up his hands. ‘Almost. I certainly believe it’s our scientific duty to investigate. What do you think the best course of action is?’

  Mike grinned. ‘Wishing for the best required outcome totally depends on where you draw the boundaries of the measurement. For example, the best for me personally would be if an alien walked in through the door and offered me the job of Earth Emperor with an alien army to enforce my rule.’ Mike smiled. ‘You see…‌I would make an excellent benevolent dictator.’

  Bob laughed. ‘But…‌I suppose in a few years there would be plenty of heads on spikes for people to look at.’

  ‘Well if they had it coming…‌but you see the best outcome for your G60 friend would be for him to safely negotiate a peace treaty with the aliens. It would give G60 serious political clout within the UK Government.’ Mike paused again. ‘Whereas, the best thing for the UK Government may be for the aliens to disappear with no evidence of their arrival or their leaving; this would make their lives easier, they being the MPs and the Civil Service.’

  Bob smiled again. ‘Point taken…‌How many more are you going to do?’

  ‘Two more! Firstly, the best thing for the whole world may be a treaty in which all disease and poverty were removed by advanced alien technology; however, it would put the western world at a substantial disadvantage.’

  ‘And?’

  Extracting a packet of chewing gum from his pocket, Mike offered one to Bob and then took one for himself. ‘Cue the sinister music; the best thing for Planet Earth may be for all humans to be exterminated to stop the pollution, defoliation, hunting, and depletion of the ozone layer. And depending on exactly what the aliens want, it may be best for them as well…‌’

  ‘But I suspect you still prefer option one, Emperor Mike?’

  ‘All hail me!’

  Mike picked up Bob’s scanner again and fiddled with it. ‘Who knows how they could be monitoring us?’

  Having spent most of Thursday with the feeling he was being shadowed by Aytch, Justio managed to sneak off a couple of QET messages overnight and then clean down traces of them in the QET room. But he’d still had no time to progress his primary task, to kill Jack Bullage.

  On Friday morning, however, once Aytch went back to his cabin for a meditation session, Justio returned to his cabin and used his communications tablet to review real-time feeds from Jack’s house.

  I mustn’t procrastinate any more.

  Justio watched as Jack went through his morning routine, before climbing into his car and driving to a nearby supermarket. Once Jack was rolling, Justio scanned the nearby motorway for a large lorry or coach coming into London. He quickly found an Italian coach and, remotely hacking into the Satnav of the coach, saw that they were bound from Windsor to Central London. The coach was modern, with all aspects of its driving supported by computer-controlled hydraulics.

  Justio relayed new instructions to the coach and the driver dutifully followed the Satnav instructions, turning off the motorway and heading towards the supermarket Jack was inside. Okay, so we’ve got the mechanism to scrub the crime scene.

  Justio waited for Jack to get back into his car and then accessed the highly encrypted self-destruct instruction to the missing mini-bot currently residing in Jack’s inner ear, having negotiated its way up his nose and Eustachian tube. The explosion would kill him, and then the coach crash would mask the real cause of death.

  Justio sent the self-destruct message and waited.

  A few seconds passed.

  Justio checked the other mini-bot signals in Jack’s car. They were transmitting normally, the sounds and pictures were still real-time and indicated that Jack was now driving out of the supermarket car park.

  Justio resent the self-destruct message.

  Still nothing.

  Justio pinged the mini-bot up Jack’s nose. It reported itself to be online and functioning.

  Justio swore. His subconscious must have some limited awareness of the device.

  Justio covered his tracks, deleting the messaging logs and erasing records of the recent activity. He wasn’t worried yet; he had plenty more options.

  As the coach pulled into the supermarket, he considered overriding the coach controls and ramming Jack’s car. But it would be futile. A crash like that would not do anywhere near the damage required to kill a Triple.

  Chapter 44

  On Friday lunchtime, Mike met Bob in the university café. They studiously avoided all talk of the experiment design.

  As they walked from the café down to Bob’s office, Mike noticed that Bob was walking a little slower, a little smaller. ‘Out with it, Bob, what’s on your mind?’

  ‘Can’t talk about it now.’

  Fair enough. And Mike resumed watching the daily life of the university pass by as they made their
way deeper into the campus.

  Louise and Jeff were waiting outside Bob’s office. He unlocked the door and they went in.

  Mike took a quick look around. ‘I like what you’ve done with the place.’ The office appeared to have been hardened in the previous few hours. There were copper meshes over the windows, and a small amount of steel panelling on a few walls.

  ‘Thanks, the university estate manager owed me a favour. I told him I was doing experiments that required additional shielding in my office. But, it’s probably not enough.’

  Mike smiled. ‘I suspect he thinks you’ve flipped and you’re trying to protect yourself from cosmic rays.’

  Jeff wandered over and inspected the windows. ‘They’ve got this mesh on the windows in the Particles Building.’

  Louise coughed loudly, drawing their attention. ‘So are we safe here or not?’

  Bob shook his head. ‘No. But I thought that to be extra safe we could leave all of our electronics here; in that way, if they have infiltrated our technology we get additional protection.’

  There was quick agreement, and a few minutes later they were all back in the same laboratory they’d used the previous day; shielded.

  Mike did a stage whisper to the others. ‘Well, no-one was taken by little green men with laser guns in the night; that’s a plus.’

  Bob gave a disapproving stare. ‘It’s no laughing matter.’

  ‘I’ve got to laugh about it. The alternative is crippling from a self-esteem perspective.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, assuming Earth has been under alien observation for at least the last fifty years, if we believe about Bill Jones, don’t you feel a little insulted they haven’t even bothered to contact us?’

  Bob shook his head. ‘Rubbish! There are lots of good reasons why they wouldn’t have contacted us yet. Fifty years may be a very short time frame for them. They may be waiting for a particular trigger…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Those are perfectly good reasons.’

  ‘Gentlemen!’ Louise had her arms folded and was tapping her feet. ‘Save your wishy-washy philosophising for your own time. One question—can we run a test to generate sufficient fear?’

  Bob shrugged. ‘Honestly, I’m not convinced. Ashley and Willis know what we’re doing and so there will be a massive requirement of willing suspension of disbelief.’

  Mike chuckled. ‘I’m not having anyone staring…’

  ‘Michael!’ Louise stared angrily. ‘We must be able to do something.’

  She really needs the story. Mike waved an apology. ‘Sorry. I don’t think we can spook Ashley or Willis sufficiently. They both know too much.’

  Bob stepped forward. ‘We would have to put them in actual mortal danger. It’s beyond us. And we don’t know enough about the drugs route.’

  Louise started to pace around the laboratory

  Picking up a pen Mike wrote on the whiteboard. Brainstorm.

  A few minutes passed but no-one wrote anything else up.

  Then Louise turned to the group. ‘A lucky person, who we could frighten the living shit out of quite easily. I do know one.’

  Silence.

  ‘Jack Bullage.’

  There was a groan from Jeff, and Mike scribbled a few bullet points on the white-board: special relationship, restraining order, harassment, attempted kidnap and attempted murder. Mike pointed at Louise. ‘Most of them done by her ladyship, there.’

  Bob looked concerned. ‘Murder?’

  Louise went over to the white-board and erased Mike’s list. ‘He got some thugs to throw a brick through our front window. I went to his house and threw it back through his front window.’ She shook her head. ‘According to a reporter from one of our competitor newspapers, it was an attempted murder and they wrote a piece about the brick narrowly missing his head. The courts saw things differently, but I did get charged with harassment.’

  Mike took a moment to consider the angles. ‘Actually, I like the idea. But it’s a one-shot attempt because, once he realises Louise is involved, he’s not going to participate willingly.’

  Louise nodded. ‘I thought a little about it. Clearly, he won’t respond to me. However, if he gets an invite from the university, courtesy of Bob, to attend some sort of review of physical reactions…’

  All eyes turned towards Bob.

  Bob was silent for a few seconds, then he smiled. ‘It probably is time to put some skin in the game.’

  Chapter 45

  Information chaos reigned when Aytch arrived to take over from Justio. Every wall in the crew room was covered in facts and figures. Raw feeds pumped out various Earth statistics, aggregated feeds showed cross-references between countless activities across Earth; it was a data mess.

  Where’s Justio?

  Aytch sat down and looked around. Most surprisingly, over and above the sheer volume of open screens, was that there were over ten chapters from the Gadium intervention manual projected onto the floor by Justio’s seat. He never looked up Gadium policy; he was the authority, ten thousand years of experience. True, Justio had a grudging respect for Professor Harkin, but the rest was often described by Justio as ‘sludge’.

  Interest piqued, Aytch walked across the room. Justio’s communications tablet was sitting on the central bench, screen blank. He looked down at the projections closest to Justio’s seat; it was a Gadium manual entry on the use of mini-bots for surveillance and intervention.

  Chapter 35.2.A Destruction of Surveillance

  Overview

  All surveillance machinery must be equipped with comprehensive auto-destruct capability. As mentioned, (Chapter 3.2—Risks of Discovery), it is imperative that Gadium does not unwittingly give pre-Emergence civilisations access to ascendant technology. The destruction of mini-bots must be controlled by dual Gadium officer authorisation codes. In the event of incapacitation…

  The text went on, but Aytch was clear on all of this, as they’d recently pre-authorised many of the Earth mini-bots, both as potential weapons, and to erase evidence of alien technology.

  Aytch opened a ship management screen, which gave Justio’s position. He was in the QET room.

  He daren’t close down the screens. He didn’t know what Justio was doing. But this level of information overload obscured his ability to see anything.

  Focus on the critical items.

  Aytch opened a search filter: Jack Bullage. The feeds showing his house opened—nothing unusual. Aytch sat down, waiting for Justio to come and perform the handover. He looked at the screen; Justio was still in the QET room. What’s taking him so long?

  His comms tablet pinged. The search had found another hit. A conversation transcript from Louise Harding. Not unusual.

  She hardly stops talking about him.

  A corner of a screen was highlighted on the main wall. The screen was obscured by another data feed, but, out of curiosity, Aytch brought it up to the front. It was the full transcript of the recent Harding discussions.

  They are trying to test Jack Bullage!

  His stomach churned. Frantically, Aytch jumped up, then patched through to the ship-wide comms. ‘Justio!’

  Opening up the screens controlling the Gadium re-entry vehicle, Aytch set the system for immediate departure. They had to collect Jack tonight. Six hours…

  ‘Justio!’

  The ship overview screen showed Justio was heading back to the crew room.

  ‘What did I miss?’ Justio arrived and, following Aytch’s pointing, saw the offending items. ‘Ah! Jack Bullage has been remembered by Louise Harding…‌Interesting.’

  Aytch couldn’t believe his ears. How was Justio being so calm? ‘It’s a disaster! We have to stop it.’

  Justio remained silent.

  Aytch paced around the room, unable to conceal his discomfort. ‘I will send a message to GEC to formalise our approach.’

  ‘Slow down, Aytch. Nothing has changed from ou
r discussion yesterday. We secure Jack, then we inform the GEC. This is just normal operational activity. No need to over-react.’

  Aytch paused for a moment. He didn’t want to look overly dramatic in front of Sharnia. ‘But, if they test Jack…’

  ‘They’ll probably find nothing.’ Justio didn’t look too sure. ‘However, as long as we can stop the test without feeding rumours of aliens, then it would be best if Jack wasn’t tested.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Aytch was already regretting his outburst. The recording would not be favourable in the eventual audit. Maybe he could ask Justio to delete this one as well.

  Justio sat down on his chair, taking deliberately care of his injured leg. ‘We try to collect Jack tonight. Once we have Jack we report in.’

  ‘I’d better get ready to go.’ Aytch walked towards the door.

  ‘You’ve still got half the day. We can’t go until night-time. We’ll re-run the Hampstead snatch option. You’ll get to the heath by just after midnight. Once you’re in position, I’ll arrange for the police to arrest him from his house, and bring him to you.’

  On Vantch, the threat of attack from the Prelate’s troops was constant, but Klope, and 10 other Disciples he had escaped with, kept moving steadily northwards. They’d travelled through the heavily forested northern parts of the continent of Harfi to a seaport. From there, Klope had managed to secure passage on a ship for all of them across the straits to the southern tip of Lokis.

  Arriving in the southern city of Fairport, Klope approached a dock worker. ‘Good sir, peace and contentment in your world.’

  The dock worker looked Klope up and down, spat into the dust and mumbled the reply. ‘And in yours.’

  The remaining Disciples, their green and white robes dirty and torn, bundled up behind Klope, listening into the conversation. Klope nodded to the dock worker to acknowledge the correct form of response. ‘Do you have news of the Prophet’s whereabouts?’

  The dock worker looked at the Disciples and then around the harbour. Klope followed his gaze. There were no other people in the green and white robes. There were, however, plenty of soldiers, although none wearing the black uniform of the Prelate. The uniforms worn by the soldiers seemed to be a local militia. The dock worker spat again. ‘We don’t hear much about him nowadays, he’s not too popular in these regions. Further north maybe?’