Matt Reilly Stories (4 page)

‘He
drugged himself? Why?’

‘I
have no idea. But with his synaptic pulse operating as such low levels, we
can’t extract Mr. Hughes from the program, not without causing serious brain
damage. He’s essentially locked himself
inside
the program—’

Suddenly,
insistent beeps began trilling all around the room.

‘Holy
shit! Laura’s synaptics are dropping…’

‘So
are Raleigh’s…’

‘Oh
my God! Everyone’s pulse-rates are dropping! They’re all going into deep
comas!’

Humbert
Hughes’s Note

The
police would find the note in Humbert Hughes’s apartment the next day.

It
read:

Dear
World,

You
weary me. Nay, you have finally worn me
down…with your
astonishing adoration of the
mediocre.

Great
art is ignored. Great literature is overlooked.

What
is Beethoven when you have American Pie. Why
appreciate
the opera when you can have Jim Carrey
doing fart jokes. The world has
become a utopia for
cretins.

And
I have finally tired of it.

So,
today, I go to a better place, where the world is
mine, to shape as I please. I’d apologise to the President for stealing his
niece, but the President is an
ass.

Good-bye
cruel world. Wallow in your own filth.

Humbert
Hughes.

Several
empty sleeping-pill bottles lay alongside the note…and a wine-bottle-opening
device that had been used to open and then re-seal the cork on a bottle of 1932
Dom Perignon.

The
Sleeping Guests

Ellis
had the media removed from the display theatre, then he turned to his team of
programmers and scientists: ‘Okay. Why would Hughes drug the
other
 guests?’

No
one knew.

‘
What the hell
…’ another technician said from his computer console.

‘What
now?’ Ellis said.

‘Sir,
it’s Mr. Hughes. He’s, er, done a deal with the Germans.

He’s
ended the war in Europe and united all forces under him.’

‘He
what
?’

‘The
program allows it. As the commander of Operation Overlord, he just called up
his opposite number and did a deal: decided to share France with the Germans
and they agreed. But that’s not the biggest problem.’

‘What
is?’

‘He’s
just brought his combined invasion force to London, to Trafalgar Square.’

‘Trafalgar
Square, but that’s one of the—’ the chief tech froze.

‘Good
God. He knows about the portals. He’s going to take his invasion force into
another world.’

The
Portals

‘Remind
me about the portal structure,’ Ellis said.

The
chief tech explained, ‘The six virtual worlds of Time Tours are all actually
connected—rather like a six-storey car park with ladders linking each floor.

‘In
effect, the master program lays six identical “Europes” on top of each other
and connects them with these virtual ladders, which we call portals. The
portals are located in the same spots in each world: Trafalgar Square, inside
the Sphinx—’

He
pulled up a screen on a nearby computer:

 Ellis
said, ‘So they’re all in the same spot in each world?’

‘Yes.
They’re like ladders between floors—you could conceivably climb right down from
World War II to Dinosaurland if you wanted to. It was inserted into the program
as a stabilising feature.’

‘What
are we going to do?’ someone asked.

Ellis
bit his lip. ‘Get Mr. Black.’

Mr.
Black

Mr.
Black was Nathan Black, formerly a Marine, now head of

‘Rescue
and Recovery’ at Time Tours.

In
the early stages of Time Tours, the company had experienced some unexpected
problems with their virtual worlds.

The
worst was known as ‘Lock-In’ and it had first arisen when a staff member had
come to work stoned and subsequently experienced a psychotic episode while
inside
Superstar
.

He
had refused to come out.

And
due to his psychosis, they couldn’t extract him without inflicting serious
brain damage on him. It was soon discovered that the same thing happened when a
guest went into a deep-state coma: they became psychologically ‘locked’ in the
world.

So
Mr.. Black had been sent in to get the man. To reason with him, inside
 
 the
world, and get him to come out
by his own will
.

That,
in the end, was what mattered. To avoid brain damage in such a situation, exit
had to be voluntary.

In
that case, Black had successfully guided the man out via an

‘Emergency
Exit Portal’ (an EEP was located in a central place in every world, usually a
major landmark: in
Superstar
, for example, it was atop the belltower of
Westminster Abbey in London).

While
Black came, Humbert Hughes’s progress was monitored.

‘He’s
taken his entire army through the Trafalgar Square portal,’ a young tech
reported. ‘He’s bypassing
Submarine
Odyssey, Monaco
and
Egypt
…wait!
He’s stopping. His army is moving out of the portal…into
Superstar
.’

‘Oh
shit,’ Ellis said, realising. ‘He’s going after Laura.’

Superstar

Modern
London had never seen anything like it.

Hordes
of 1940s-era German and Allied troops stormed out of Trafalgar Square, guns
blazing, shooting anyone in their path. In their midst, their Supreme
Commander: Humbert Hughes.

And
since there was no armed force of any kind in this world, nothing and no-one
could stop them.

They
headed directly for the Odeon Cinema.

The
Rescue Begins

Mr.
Black arrived in Lab Two, a working lab.

He
strode casually into the lab, tall and fit, and slid into the lone dentist’s
chair. ‘All right. Who’s the target?’

He
was informed of the situation.

‘I
don’t give a shit about Humbert Hughes,’ Tad Ellis said.

‘It’s
Laura Bush I care about.’

Indeed,
it was the danger to Laura Bush that terrified them all.

For
if Humbert Hughes captured and killed
Laura
inside Time Tours, it would
cause a paradox in
her
heavily-sedated brain.

Hughes
hadn’t been trying to drug
all
the celebrity guests—just her. He just
needed her in a deep-state coma. The others were collateral damage.

At
which point, like an overloaded computer, her brain would freeze up and go into
meltdown. Brain death. She would become a vegetable, or worse, suffer a
cerebral aneurism.

And
that
was Time Tours’s worst nightmare.

Black
was set to go.

He
said, ‘Send me into
Dinosaurland
. I don’t want to go directly into
Superstar
and bump into a divison of Mr. Hughes’s Nazi troops. The EEP in
D i n o l a
n d
 is identical to
Superstar’s
—plus I can also pick up some
heavy-duty weaponry from the hunters’ armoury. I’ll sneak into
Superstar
from there.’

And
with that, the domed headset was lowered over Black’s head and within moments
his eyes closed…

Dinosaurland

…and
he found himself standing on the low hilltop overlooking
Dinosaurland
.
The River Thames lay before him snaking through the primordial forest.

On
his hilltop sat a concrete structure, with a helipad and a shed on it. In the
shed were racks of superweapons used by tourist-hunters to bring down
dinosaurs: Remington mega-shotguns, plasma-based RPGs, Steyr pulse rifles.
Black took one of each, plus boxes of ammo and a few sulfuric acid grenades.

A
noise disturbed him.

He
spun—shotgun up—to see the
D i n o s a u r l a n d
hovercopter landing
on the helipad outside.

It
was the author, Mitchell Raleigh, with his computer-generated pilot, returning
from their scenic tour of
Dinosaurland
.

Raleigh
got out of the hover-chopper, saw Black.

‘Hey
there! Geez, this is awesome—’

‘I’m
sorry, Mr. Raleigh,’ Black said quickly, ‘but a situation has come up. I need
you to come with me and exit Time Tours right now.’

‘What’s
happened?’

Black
told him as they walked.

‘He
drugged us all…’ Mitch said. ‘Is there any way I can help?’

‘The
best way you can help me is just by going home.’

‘Oh.’

Mitch,
Black and Pi made their way to the meadow that would one day house Westminster
Abbey. There they found a small steel cabin the size of a telephone booth: the
Emergency Exit Portal. Near it was another weapons shed.

Mitch
said to Black, ‘Go. Go and save Laura. She’s a friend of mine. I can get back
from here. You need to hurry.’

Black
nodded, then he stepped into the steel booth, pressed a button and—
ZAP!
—the
booth blazed with white light and he was gone.

Mitch
shrugged, turned to Pi. ‘Thank you for the tour, Pi. You were great.’

‘It
was my pleasure, Mr. Raleigh. I shall endeavour to have one of your books
downloaded into my program files, so that next time we may converse about it.’

‘Cool.’
Mitch stepped into the booth, saw a wall-panel with a button for each world
plus a large red button marked ‘EMERGENCY EXIT’.

But
then he paused.

He
was worried about Laura, and he wondered if one man, Black, was enough to save
her from Humbert Hughes’s super-army.

Surely
it couldn’t hurt to take a look…

He
pursed his lips, and made the call.

And
stepped
out
 of the booth. ‘Hey, Pi. Got any more of those big-ass
dino-guns nearby? I think we should visit
Superstar
.’

Entering
Superstar

Blinding
light. Then normal vision returned...

...and
Mitch Raleigh found himself standing in a silver booth positioned in the uppermost
chamber of the belltower of Westminster Abbey, not far from the Abbey’s
ten-foot-high bell.

He
peered out the doorway of his booth—

—just
in time to see a joint of Nazi paratroopers emerge from the stairwell and shoot
about a million bullets into Nathan Black.

Black
shuddered and convulsed under the hailstorm of bullets before he fell, dead.

Mitch
stared, horrified.

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