Read Expiration Day Online

Authors: William Campbell Powell

Tags: #ScreamQueen

Expiration Day (3 page)

BOOK: Expiration Day
13.16Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

All in all, the '70s was a dreadful decade. One night they gave us all candles to take to our rooms, and then they staged a power cut. One moment we were all watching a grainy Panorama documentary on the TV (yes, a TV) about the energy crisis, and the next moment, the lights went off, and the picture shrank to a glowing point. There was a faint glow from the TV screen—just enough to find the candles. I think they cheated a bit, with hidden lighting in the walls, so nobody tripped over anything and broke a leg. In five minutes, everybody was stepping out of their rooms holding lit candles, and making their way, yes, down to the bar. Strangely, nobody complained that there was power for the beer pumps.…

The high point was a trip to a coal mine. It was a reconstruction, of course, and we used a simulator to take us “underground.” I'd got sort of used to us being with the Czerns, and I liked John's sense of humor. So when we were all dressed up in orange overalls and hard hats, it seemed pretty natural to let him take my hand and lead me through the ill-lit tunnels.

They didn't go anywhere, of course—no more than ten or twenty meters in total, with a couple of twists and short side passages to make it vaguely interesting. And everywhere there were the
ooh
s and
aah
s of the tourists, and the drone of the guide talking about “the last decade in which Britain could truly be said to have a mining industry” or the “naked grasping after power of the unions.” It didn't make a lot of sense, but it sounded very grand.

 

 

And so it came to the last day. There was a gala party in the bar, with a Slade tribute band. It was glittery and loud, and they stomped about on giant platform shoes, singing “Gudbye T' Jane” and “Cum on Feel the Noize.”

In between songs John had asked me for my PTI—my public TeraNet ID—and I was in a turmoil. Should I give it to him? I mean, he was nice, but he was only a robot. With a wild ginger mop that wouldn't obey orders, plus very cute freckles.

What am I saying?

Oh, dear, Zog. I think I've got my first crush on a boy. Because I gave him my PTI, and we danced—me in my ridiculous hot pants and all my knees showing—and I gave him a little peck on the cheek when I thought Mum and Dad were looking the other way. And then the band played “Far Far Away” and we danced close and I whispered to him, “Are you real?” And my heart leaped as he replied, “Yes, I am real.”

INTERVAL 1

A remarkable find. Truly remarkable. I cross the galaxy to find the first records of the Dawn Civilization and I find this. Encrypted and forgotten, but surviving through uncounted millennia, for me to find.

So I am your Zog, and I will learn about you, Tania Deeley, coy and precocious as I perceive you to be. I have time to listen to you, Tania Deeley, we don't have to rush. There's no wormhole about to close. Sadly, there are no wormholes anywhere to speed us across the universe.

No, Tania, I came the long way, through normal space, though it has taken millennia.

My kind has time.

 

Monday, September 6, 2049

It was back to school today. The holidays are over, and it's a new school for me. The Lady Maud High School for Girls, and I have to take a bus from the village—past my old school—to get there.

Such a panic from Mum this morning. Have we been practicing the route to school for weeks, or have we been practicing the route for weeks? As I leave the house, staggering under the weight of PE, hockey, and swimming kit, plus sandwiches, ruler, pens and pencils, two sharpeners and two erasers—“just in case you lose one, dear”—calculator (why? if I have an AllInFone), padlock for locker, with five—count them—five parental consent forms, she was still calling, “Have you got your bus pass?”

And Dad was walking with me “as I have to go past the bus stop anyway,” but he wasn't carrying anything for me “as you have to get used to it.” He wasn't panicking—not like Mum—just being overprotective of his “little girl.”

Girls of all ages and sizes waited at the bus stop, the older ones chattering already about where they'd been over the summer holidays. I'd already decided if I met anyone I knew, I'd stayed home all summer. I had not, repeat, not been anywhere near a theme park. If tortured, I'd admit to a visit to feudal England—that'd kill the conversation—but a trip to the 1970s? Uh-oh.

Dad's back disappeared round a bend in the road—I was pretty sure he'd just go round the block and return home—and I was on my own. I suddenly felt a chill—some of those other girls looked awfully tall and mean. I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that they were most likely robots, and couldn't hurt a human.

“Hi, Tania!”

The friendly voice came from right next to me, and I jumped in surprise. It was Siân, a girl I knew from the village school. I'd not seen her over the holiday—she'd been away—and I was surprised to see how much she'd grown in the few short weeks. Taller, of course, but all
her
elbows and angles had suddenly become curves—she looked awesome—and I felt totally awkward and out of place beside her.

And then I twigged. Siân had had a revision over the summer. Robots couldn't grow like humans, but to preserve the illusion of humanity, they had to appear to get older. So every year or two each robot child would go back to Oxted Corporation for a week or so and emerge with a new look—the word was “revised.” The same personality, but a new body, suitably older. A standard revision was fairly basic, but was included in the contract. It didn't look like Siân had gone for the standard revision, though.… No, it certainly wasn't the cheap option, but Siân's parents didn't have to worry about such trifles, and had used the holidays to revise Siân into her early teens.

Of course, it was bad form to mention it, so I closed my mouth, nodded hello, and then asked casually, “How was your summer, Siân? Go anywhere interesting?”

“So-so. We went to Egypt. Daddy had to go there on business, so he took Mummy and me, too. We did the sights, took a Nile cruise. Spent a
for
-tune in the markets. Nothing special, just a lot of trash really, but Mummy says their economy desperately needs tourism…”

Siân was a snob, but she was okay, so long as you let her talk about herself. At least I could be sure she wasn't going to ask me what I'd done over the holidays.

“… and then we had to go to Bangkok in a hurry—Daddy's business again—and then before you could blink we were off again to Sydney. There was a marvelous production of
Tannhäuser
at the Opera…”

I didn't have to do much, just nod or grunt at the pauses. Her holiday was turning into a real world tour, but at least I didn't have to make up any lies about being a Saxon serf.

The bus came, we got on and sat together, and her chatter continued.

“… and in San Francisco we met up with some old college friends of Mummy's—the Coulsons—he's in cybernetics and she's a neurotronic psychiatrist…”

So, Siân's folks were well connected to get the best for their daughter.

“… and I must have picked up a bug somewhere on my travels, and I had to spend a couple of days in hospital…”

There it was, that was the revision.

“… but I got a simply lovely private recovery suite, Tania, and the travel insurance paid for it.”

No—Mummy and Daddy have deep pockets, Siân, dear, but it would be
so
crass to mention it. Oops, I just did, didn't I, Mister Zog? Will you forgive Tania a little envy?

“Oh, and Tania, I
did
think of you while I was there. It got so lonely, but then I'd think of you stuck in this ghastly hole of a village and I didn't mind so much. And when I got out, Mummy took me shopping in Haight-Ashbury and I bought you this genuine Grateful Dead ‘Wake of the Flood' tour button—really rare, they said, but I know you're into the 1970s. I hope you like it.”

I was really touched. Well, sort of. Siân had thought of another person, however briefly, and she had even paused in her monologue to let me acknowledge it.

“Thank you, Siân, that's so kind of you. And it's lovely.”

Well, it was. Just totally inappropriate, given my own summer, but she wasn't to know that. And I'd sworn to tell nobody about the theme park. So I smiled. Noblesse oblige, and all that. I mean, she's just a robot doing her best, so how could I knock her down?

 

 

Senior school, I soon learned, is pretty awful. It's not like first school, where the parents are just around the corner and close enough to take a real interest in their child's progress. By the time we get to big school, a lot of parents are getting weary of the whole charade, and they let the school do what they want. In the case of the Lady Maud High School for Girls, they do still care somewhat, but most of the inner-city schools are pretty bad, I hear.

Lady Maud was a wealthy Victorian widow, we learned, who had used much of her late husband's copper fortune to endow a modest school “for young ladies of whatever social class that do display an aptitude for learning … so that all God's gifts in them shall be nurtured to the fullest degree.” Successive governments had recognized the worthiness of that Good Lady's earnest intentions, and had invested taxpayers' money to create a school that had hovered just outside the very top academic bracket for a little over a century.

But educating robots was not a government priority, and didn't the teachers know it. The school was falling into ruin. Some of the buildings were boarded up, and I could see holes in the roof of one block. When we gathered for assembly in Main Hall, we rattled around in a cavernous space built to hold twice our number.

The Head Mistress—Mrs. Golightly—welcomed us to Lady Maud's. She—Mrs. Golightly—spoke briefly about the Great Traditions of the School, about our Oxbridge Achievements and the Daughters of the School who had achieved High Office or other Greatness. She spoke like that, too. I mean, you could hear the capital letters. Once or twice I swear I could almost see them.

“She said the same thing last year,” whispered a voice from behind me.

“Word for word,” agreed her neighbor.

“The rest should be pretty short, then.”

It was. Mrs. Golightly trotted perfunctorily through her set speech and then abandoned us in some haste. Our Form Mistress gathered us up and led us to our classroom. Miss Gerrard introduced herself to us.

“I'm Miss Gerrard, but you must call me—and any other teacher—ma'am. Or sir, in the case of Mr. Cuthbert, our chemistry master here at Lady Maud's. Lady Maud's is a great school, with a fine academic tradition, and though times may change, we expect our girls”—she paused slightly at the word—“to perform to their highest while they are in our care. Others may fall by the wayside”—and what did that mean?—“but our
girls
are our only priority.…”

There was more, but the message was there, hidden just beneath the surface. Lady Maud's might promise much for her human charges, but the robots were of no interest.

And so we began. English. Geography, music, divinity, French. Latin, craft, and maths. That was Monday. I turned it into a little rhyme, to help me remember where I had to go.

English, Geog

Mus, Div, Frog

Lat'n, Craft'n' Maths

Perhaps not very complimentary to the French, but it had a cadence and I found I couldn't get it out of my head.

English. Mrs. Philpott, short and dumpy, and we quickly discovered, excessively short-sighted. But she loved her Shakespeare, and in our first lesson we found ourselves reading
The Merchant of Venice
.

Geography. Mrs. Hanson. Wispy and ethereal. She started to teach us about Africa. Mud huts and grass roofs. Dark-skinned babies, emaciated and dying. I put my hand up.

“But, ma'am, surely it's not like that now?”

She coughed, embarrassed.

“No, quite right. Not since the Troubles. There are a few coastal enclaves left as I've described. But Africa has gone wild, and nobody really knows anymore what it's like in the interior. Oxted's invention solved the problem in the West, but there weren't enough robots for Africa, and perhaps they wouldn't have wanted them. Many tribes, many peoples, so proud.… So often stronger than the developed world. They face death better than we do.…”

Her voice tailed off. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the back of a chair, and her eyes glistened. I wondered what she saw. The silence lengthened and we fidgeted, looking at one another and all around. There were photographs at the back of the class, I noticed, of a young woman, who could have been a much younger Mrs. Hanson, in sun hat, tropical shorts, and blouse. Many showed her with children, brightly dressed and with beautiful smiles. In a few, she was visiting wards of a hospital, and the children looked unwell. In just one, set apart from the others, she was standing next to a tall, close-shaven black man. He was naked, save for a loincloth, but in his left hand he carried a short spear and an oval shield faced with hide, in the Zulu style. Very handsome, I thought. Mrs. Hanson clearly thought the same, for she was nestled under his right arm, and her left arm was about his waist. Husband and wife? I risked a glance at Mrs. Hanson, still staring far beyond the classroom.

The moment passed, and Mrs. Hanson continued.

“That's enough. Back to life in the Kimberley Corridor, which is what we're studying today.…”

Music. Miss Carr. Divinity. Mrs. Reese. French. Madame Lebrun.

They're all old, I discover. They must have been teaching all their lives … and don't know how to stop, even though there are hardly any real children left to teach. I realize it was like that at the village school, too, but I never thought about it. Are there no
young
teachers?

BOOK: Expiration Day
13.16Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Cider House Rules by John Irving
Wherever It Leads by Adriana Locke
An Inch of Ashes by David Wingrove
Aerogrammes by Tania James
The Last Boy by Jane Leavy
Here I Stay by KATHY
Dark Hunger by Christine Feehan