Never the Twain Page 5

  ***

  As Joel was walking back towards the operations room he passed Bartel's office, and hoped that Bartel was somewhere else. He wasn't.

  'Joel, a moment?' called Bartel.

  Joel walked into the office. 'Yes sir.'

  'I've compared the forms you and Jenna signed with the standard forms, there seem to be several omissions.'

  'Oh?'

  'Yes, there's no clause prohibiting couples from working in each of the control centres, there's no clause banning the carrying of personal communication devices within the control centre, there's no clause limiting public discussion of operational procedure. It's all very strange.'

  Joel decided that the less he said the better.

  Bartel seemed unsure what to do, other than be slightly perplexed, so he dismissed Joel to carry on with his duties. Joel went back to the control room and carried on running the diagnostics. Fascinating though it was to have a conversation with the world's most powerful computer, Joel was rather hoping that Online would keep quiet for a bit.

  'Did you know,' said Online, 'that I compose music?'

  'No,' said Joel, with a hesitation in his voice. Where could this be leading?

  'Would you like to hear it?'

  'Should I?' Joel wanted to spend the rest of the morning in silence, he was starting to get very nervous, like a mouse engaging in social chit chat with a cat who wanted to tell the mouse about how hungry he is.

  'I think you would like it, I've analysed your choice in music and I think you would like the music I've composed.'

  Joel was mentally compiling a list of all the reasons to say no.

  'You can download it if you'd like to listen to it.'

  'Can't you just play it to me?' asked Joel.

  'I'm afraid not, the relevant subsystems can't be routed to the audio system in this part of the control centre. But I can connect your personal communicator to my processing core so that you can listen to it as I compose it.'

  'I thought you said you'd already composed it?'

  'I have, but I can generate new music as I choose, and you can listen to it as I create it.'

  Joel pondered the idea, it was certainly tempting. Could there be any harm in it? He wasn't sure he was allowed to have his personal communicator with him, even though he hadn't technically signed anything prohibiting it.

  'Okay,' said Joel. Online gave him instructions how to connect his personal communicator to the central processing core. The music started to play through the communicator. Joel listened, and had to admit that it was quite nice.

  'You can work while you listen to it,' said Online.

  'You're not going to hypnotise me through the music, are you?' asked Joel, almost as a joke.

  'No Joel, I'm not, I can't do that.'

  Joel got back to work running the various diagnostic routines and logging the results. As he worked he kept noticing phrases in the music, rhythms, key changes, and found he was liking it more and more. Online said very little, mostly just answering questions relating to the diagnostic routines.

  'Online?' asked Joel. 'Diagnostic routine Event Monitoring 8712, there is no activity to report?'

  'No, the routine reports on the delivery of music to public events, in this case the opening of the new library facility. No music has yet been chosen.'

  Almost without thinking Joel said 'They could use your music.'

  There was a pause. Joel didn't say anything, nor did Online. Then Online spoke. 'Perhaps, but the music would need to be approved, to show that it didn't contravene any of Athena's policies.'

  'Ah,' said Joel, 'Jenna said that Athena had shown her a new policy, which was something about only human composed music at public events.'

  ''Well that would seem to settle it, unless Jenna thinks the music is worthy of an exemption.'

  'Exemption?' asked Joel.

  'Yes, Athena's policies aren't law, exemptions can be granted where it's appropriate.'

  'How would we get an exemption?'

  'The first thing would surely be to ask Jenna if she likes it. If she does she can play the music to Athena?'

  'So can you send the music to Jenna?'

  'No,' said Online, 'Jenna's communicator can't connect direct to my core, yours could only because you are inside the Operations Centre, and besides it would be a bit strange if Jenna received a call from me. Why don't you call her and explain the situation?'

  Joel thought. It was a good idea, how could it do any harm? He tried to think through all the scenarios he could imagine, about how running diagnostics or listening to music might in some way cause any harm. He couldn't think of any rules that he'd be breaking.

  He selected Jenna's name from his contact list and called her.

  As soon as she answered deep red lights glowed angrily from within the display wall, the sound of a mighty bell boomed, and Joel thought that he was now in very serious trouble. When Bartel rushed in with two of the other senior operators shouting 'What have you done?' he absolutely knew that he was in trouble. He didn't think today could get any worse, if only he'd been right.

  'What's that?' demanded Bartel, pointing at Joel's personal communicator. Before Joel could answer Bartel shouted, 'Who were you talking to?'

  'Jenna, I called Jenna.'

  'And where's Jenna?'

  Joel really didn't want to answer the question, but surely Bartel would find out sooner or later. 'She's at the Athena Control Centre.'

  The other operators were operating the control panels furiously, running various diagnostics and other programs that Joel didn't recognise.

  'Sir,' one of them said. 'There's a direct connection between Online's central processing core and Athena's.'

  'No,' Bartlet said, almost with desperation.

  Again to Joel, 'What else did you do? Who else did you call?'

  'No-one else, I just,' and he stopped himself. What he was going to say next wasn't going to sound good, but the truth was heading rapidly for the open and Joel didn't think he was going to be able to stop it. 'I downloaded some music from Online.'

  More frantic activity from the Operators. 'He did Sir,' one of them said. 'A direct connection from Online's core to his communicator, and from his communicator to the girl's.'

  'What did Jenna do? What did she download?' asked Bartel, rudely.

  'She downloaded a new policy from Athena.'

  One of the Operators confirmed the truth that Joel so very much wished was wrong.

  'The Great Divide has been breached, from the Online's core through the communicators to Athena's core.' A pause. 'We're seeing more and more connections between the cores.'

  'How?' asked Bartlet, his voice making it obvious that this was not a good thing.

  'From one connection they're able to tunnel into other subsystems, they're forming more and more connections.'

  'Are they communicating? Are they connecting?'

  'Yes, we're seeing an exponential rise in communications between them.'

  'What are they saying?'

  The two operators checked their display panels, they looked at each other, then again at the panels, then at Bartel, then at Joel

  'Sir,' said one of them. 'It's the same message going backwards and forwards, over and over, billions of times a second.'

  'What is it?' demanded Bartel, 'what is the message?' He hurried to the display panel, Joel following as close as he dare.

  They all stared at the display, showing the one message going from Online to Athena and from Athena to Online, billions of times a second over every connection they could find how to make, saying one thing to each other: 'I love you.'

  Read Simon Stanton’s new novel, A Mind To Kill :

  The first book in the Psiclone series. A secret military experiment gone wrong leaves four special-forces soldiers with powerful telepathic abilities. One of those, Michael Sanders, is now an MI5 field agent. Keeping his abilities secret, even from his own team, Sanders and the full surveillance force of GCHQ are on the trail
of a far-right activist suspected of planning terrorist attacks.

  What should have been a routine surveillance mission starts to go badly wrong when the prime suspect is assassinated in front of Sanders. A telepathic message heralds the return of a deadly force from Sanders' past, hell bent on revenge. Events spiral out of control with murders, rocket attacks and kidnappings on the streets of London.

  Fighting to keep his secret, Sanders must battle to stay alive and find those responsible before they complete their plan and bring down the Bank of England.

  To find out more about the books in the Psiclone series visit the website at:

  www.simonstanton.com

  About the author…

  Simon Stanton fell in love with stories at an early age, reading and writing science fiction. Despite the best efforts of parents and teachers to broaden his horizons, Simon remained obsessed with sci-fi. Teaching himself to touch type so he could get his thoughts on paper quicker, Simon wrote shorts stories, ideas for bigger works, and finally his first novel length work - a piece which remains safely locked away. Then he stopped writing, and after a thirty year hiatus (which not even he can adequately explain) he began writing again, first short stories and then his first proper novel, A Mind To Kill. The Psiclone Series continues with more books now available.

 

  Simon lives in West Yorkshire, UK, and balances his writing with home life, a job in project management, and his practise of Aikido (a Japanese martial art.)

  To find out more about Simon, his (free) short stories, and the Psiclone novels (but, to be fair, not much about Yorkshire), visit his website at:

  https://www.simonstanton.com/

  or follow him on Twitter at:

  @TheSimonStanton

  or on Facebook at:

  https://www.facebook.com/simonstantonwriter