Yesterday's Hero (47 page)

Except I never took that out of my pocket. That’s still in my jeans lying crumpled at the foot of Felicity’s bed.

So who else? Who…

Oh shit.

Hands shaking, I turn the computer on, jam the stick into the USB port. The laptop chugs and chimes through a million seemingly pointless start-up processes. My hands don’t stop their shaking. A little icon whirs on the bottom of the screen. Then a box pops up.

“This is an executable file. Are you sure you want to run Clyde.exe?”

Oh shit.

I hesitate. This laptop is a magic lamp and I am standing here with a cloth and a jar of polish. Should I be careful what I wish for?

But I only hesitate for a moment. How can I not? I click. More icons whir. The fan on the little laptop starts to whine. A progress bar slowly fills. Then the computer pings. “Installation complete.” I search the screen for an icon. “Come on. Come on.” Nothing. I open the Start Menu. Still nothing. Trust bloody Clyde to program himself into something that no one can access.

I’m about to throw the machine across the room when a window suddenly appears. A small black rectangle. I stare at it. The screen flickers. A room appears. Something grainy and out of focus. Another flicker.

Clyde’s head appears.

Really Clyde. Not a man in a mask. Not a blond giant. But a scruffy-looking chap with a tweed jacket and a straggly beard. Sitting in a gray featureless room. He blinks at me.

“Holy shit,” I say.

“Well,” says Clyde’s head, “not the name I usually go by, but I suppose I’ve been called worse.”

Oh my God. “It’s you,” I say. “It’s really you.”

“Well,” Clyde shrugs. “I’m Clyde 2.2, actually. I thought a numbering system might be clearest. Probably a terrible idea. Cause all sorts of release confusion. But, well, the thinking, if you’re generous enough to call it that, was that good old 1.0 was the one who died. So you get 2.0 in the mask. Then Tabby has 2.1, you’ve got 2.2, Felicity has 2.3, and so on and so forth. You know, independent paths of progress. Nature over nurture from this moment on. All that. Does that make sense, or am I making you go cross-eyed? I can never tell.”

“You can see me?” Not a direct answer, I admit.

“Webcam.” Clyde nods. “But the sense thing, I’m making it, right?”

I nod. It’s Clyde. It’s really Clyde. Words tangled and confused and hopeless. My friend.

Except, it’s a copy of Clyde. And not the only one. He hasn’t died. He’s bloody multiplied.

But it’s Clyde. Clyde is alive. Or close as he can get.

My friend is alive.

Clyde grins at me. “And did we save the world today?”

I hesitate. I look at the face of my friend, on my computer. An electronic man. Someone who can never be killed. Only deleted.

I remember Jasmine, burned and blackened on the edge of the Thames.

I remember Nikolai, eaten by a mutant catfish in Russia.

I remember London. Mobs on the streets, fires burning.

But then I glance back at the bed, to Felicity, lying there, peaceful, maybe a little aglow after the make-up sex.

And I smile, because maybe this isn’t quite normal, and maybe we haven’t quite put the world back the way we found it, but I think I might like it this way all the same.

“Close enough,” I say to Clyde. “We were close enough.”

Launching a book into the world is an exhilarating and unnerving act much like kicking a young bird out of a nest to see if it can fly. These are the people who helped me put the boot in.

Thanks to my agent, Howard Morhaim, who can shoot holes in my writing like a sniper, and then knows exactly how I should make the repairs.

Thanks too to Paul Jessup, Mark Teppo, and Natania Barron, my writing partners in crime. They are wonderful, inspiring people full of wonderful and inspiring words. They put many of them to paper, and I highly recommend seeking those words out. Plus they’re total nerds, which makes me feel better about being one.

Most of all, thank you to my wife, Tami. Without her unending support, quiet cajoling, and extensive knowledge of grammar this book would never have come to be. She is the lynchpin upon which everything depends. If you enjoyed this book, you should thank her too. If you didn’t, well that’s my fault…

And finally, thanks too to you for reading this far. Hope you’re enjoying the ride. I know I am.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jonathan Wood is an Englishman in New York.
Yesterday’s Hero
is his second novel. He can be found online at www.cogsandneurons.com or on twitter where he masquerades as @thexmedic.