The Replacement

By SJ Griffin

Sorcha and the Vanguard are back, stranded in a city of machines, becalmed and beginning to get on each other’s nerves. They don’t need Étienne’s maths book to tell them that questions outnumber the answers and the dangers are multiplying.

Why has Raphael been waiting for them? Where are the other humans and how did they get there? Who is the mysterious Dante and why is he helping them? And how do they get home?

The Replacement is the second part of the Vanguard Trilogy.

“a genuinely original and genre-busting novel combining speculative, fantasy and science fiction writing to great effect” The Bookbag on The Vanguard

• Language: English
• Publisher: SJ Griffin
• Release date: Jun 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301797752

SJ Griffin

SJ Griffin became a woman after successfully completing many years as a girl. She used to live in the countryside but escaped to London. After stints as an actor, a petrol station attendant, a copywriter, an editor, an amateur bike mechanic, a burger flipper, a playwright and riding an old fashioned bicycle in order to sell melting ice creams it became abundantly clear that the only thing she really wanted to do was write novels. So that's what she does. As a result she is far more pleasant to be around. The Vanguard trilogy is the first stage of a long term strategy to remain pleasant to be around, for the general good of humanity. The final part of the trilogy, The Perfectionist, was published in April 2014.

Book preview

The Replacement

by SJ Griffin

Copyright 2013 SJ Griffin

Smashwords edition

License Notes

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Words of advice for new readers

The Replacement is the second part of The Vanguard Trilogy, the first part being The Vanguard. In writing this sequel I have assumed that you will have read the first part and therefore there isn’t much in the way of recapping or repetition of the previous book in the pages that follow. Do not fear. Here is a quick run-through of want you need to know. It is a little minimal but it should allow you to successfully navigate The Replacement without feeling like you are the only person at the party who thought it was fancy dress.

Sorcha Blades and her four friends, her family really, live in a flooded city that is on the brink of collapse. An environmental and economic disaster that hit the very week Sorcha was born has paralyzed the country. And yet life goes on. People are very resilient. Sorcha is a bike courier. And a hacker. And a thief. And a bootlegger, a pirateer... A survivor, let’s say.

One night, on the way back from a party, the stolen car they are driving is pursued by a sinister vehicle and forced off a very high flyover and they all die. The end.

I’m kidding. What actually happens is that, after a stay in a strange hospital, they all end up with mysterious powers. Sorcha is telekinetic, Lola is telepathic, Minos is a pryomancer, Casino has the power of invisibility and Roach can speak every language ever spoken.

This is awkward at first, of course, but then becomes even more terrible as Sorcha finds that a mysterious woman called Étienne expects the gang to save the world from some malevolent angels who have infiltrated the government. Unfortunately for Sorcha, Étienne is not actually a woman as we on earth would understand it, and even more unfortunately isn’t forthcoming on what she really is.

Thanks to the power of merchandising and media lots of other ordinary, oppressed citizens soon expect her to save the world too. Except they think she is a character in a comic strip, and a surprisingly busty action figure.

Anyway, it all ends up all right except Minos dies and then Sorcha dies and when she somehow brings them both back from the dead she has managed to move them out of their own world and into another. Like cosmic origami, apparently.

And last but by no means least, Sorcha is in love with Vermina. This is awkward because Vermina is a law and order professional in Enforce and Sorcha is, as we agreed, a survivor. At the end of The Vanguard Vermina thinks that Sorcha is dead, what with the lifeless corpse she is holding and all. Except that we know that Sorcha isn’t dead. She is alive and well and about to meet The Replacement.

Now, finally, you may read on. Nice spaceman outfit by the way.

SJ Griffin, London, 2014

Chapter One

The day I learnt to fly I was trying not to fall. I was riding my bike down the street very early one morning, while it was still quiet, when I hit some unexpected masonry that had fallen from some building. I sailed over the handlebars trying to save myself from the pain of hitting the ground, until moments had passed and I realised I was still waiting to hit the ground. It seemed that the bike was lying further behind me than momentum alone would allow. I thought at first that it was the world we’d found ourselves in, a new place with new physics, but it was me. I progressed from falling to jumping to leaping and then I threw myself off the top of the hotel. But only when I was sure I could fly.

The sky was empty at dawn, it was just after the nocturnal appliances ended their shifts and went home to reset, but before the day watch started. As it brightened the sky would fill with dark shapes collecting information or monitoring workforces. It was the same as it ever was. I always made sure I left before anyone sensed I was there, where I didn’t belong. The city stretched out beneath me like an endless circuit board. There was nothing green, no trees, no grass. There were only shades of brown or grey punctuated by black or white filling the landscape as far as I could see in any direction. At night cheerful red, white or blue neon lights woke up, festive logos brightening the black sky. The fast highways, they called them the Shareways, ran from the north to south and the east to the west, one slipping under the other in a tunnel filled with howling wind. Every street was laid out in a neat grid, numbered according to its proximity to the centre of The Impact, a broad depression in the nominal centre of the infinite city.

It was cold up in the sky so I stopped my bewildered appraisal of the city and caught a current of warmer air flowing between two dark Megablocks, Magenta Nine and Cyan Three, in the tenth district. The hoarse grating of lunar panels closing drowned out the busy sounds of appliances and units starting their days. The Megablocks covered large areas of the city, they rose in their regular formations casting miles of shadows over the shorter towers around them.

I sat on the top of Cyan Three and watched as far, far below me grey figures glided through the streets. They followed their designated paths to wherever they went to do whatever they did. I knew some were heading for the development laboratories to the north, shallow buildings with glass frontages and colourful awnings. Some were rolling or shuffling only a short distance to the warehouses that produced replacement parts for the domed medical facilities that clung to the edge of the Shareways as though thumbing a ride to a brilliant, collective future. Two futures. One Magnatech, the other Gargatron. Our new hotel was in a Gargatron district and ran Gargatron technology. We had nothing to do with Magnatech. Raphael said we couldn’t, even if we wanted to, the two systems were incompatible.

The sun was creeping higher, urging me home to safety. I leant out, far out over the side of the building, until gravity took me. I fell toward the ground and then pulled up and away, gathering speed until my eyes watered and my cheeks burned from the cold. I couldn’t fly quite as I wanted to. No matter how fearless I felt, how invincible, I was restricted by my pain barrier. My skeleton wasn’t built for how fast I thought I could fly, my lungs weren’t designed for how high I thought I could go. But I could brood about these frustrations later, back at the hotel. I could hear the nasal whine of a judicial compliance fleet. They were a way off and not quick across the sky but they would soon be followed by the day’s air traffic.

I dipped down to follow a route up to the hotel that took me between the narrow streets of the sixth district. They housed the units that were human shaped, like Raphael. Their functions were many and varied, similar to those at home, but their mimicry of real people was riddled with idiosyncrasies. It was a more complicated journey between the buildings. I had to fly from perch to perch, the corner of a building then the railing of a fire escape, so I could pick my route. Careless navigation meant that I’d already experienced a few collisions with skyscrapers and, although I bounced off every polymer facade I hit like a rubber duck on a trampoline, I was anxious to avoid another near fatal injury to my pride. I paused on a ledge and then leapt to a cornice. It was like an obstacle course, not so very different from navigating my bicycle through the cars in my city, back home.

Inside the buildings lining the slender streets where the sun never touched the ground, the blue glow of everyday life powering up filled every window. Even though the machines didn’t need windows, and there was nothing to look at but other windows, almost all the buildings had them so everything looked film set perfect. I could have reached out and touched the walls on either side as I wandered the air between them, five storeys up, glancing in every window. The rooms were empty, everything had left for the day. I could see hundreds of bare rooms with exotic sockets on the walls. I reached the edge of the district and all that remained was the short burst across the streets and low production blocks between me and the hotel. There was a ring of destruction around a few districts to the north of the Impact. I kept forgetting to ask Raphael why it appeared in such a regular formation, almost like a halo with the hotel on one side and Gargatron’s discreet headquarters on the other. Everything else was pristine but this loop was never fixed by the small appliances that trailed around the city fixing anything that looked faulty. They ignored it almost as if it wasn’t there at all.

As I flew the last few hundred metres towards the hotel sudden company arrived. It flew beneath me at an incredible speed, the sunlight reflecting off its body. Flyboys. A new line from Magnatech, stolen from Gargatron. They didn’t call them that though. They would have a functional numerical designation and then one of the set number of names shared by all the units. The appliances didn’t get names, they were the wrong shape. I watched the flyboy as it vanished into the blue sky. I would have to get in some more practice or I would be obsolete before I’d begun. That was the problem with Magnatech, according to Raphael, their insatiable desire for progress made a mockery of achievement. I flew down Avenue A where each building had a neat sign indicating what was produced or distributed inside. There was a place for units to pick up recharging capsules, it had a high resolution photograph of just such a capsule on a board hanging above the door. There was another small manufacturing plant where they made some textiles, a sample hung on their sign and they replaced it every morning, taking down the dusty one from the day before. I hovered in the air above the hotel for a few minutes as high up as I dared, looking across the busy city, efficient and effective. Everyone looked like we did from up there. That was the joy of it. Not the weightlessness, the freedom, the speed of flight. It was the joy that from a distance everything looked familiar. It had been two months, three weeks and six days since our arrival.

‘Good morning, Sorcha,’ Raphael bowed a little from the waist and moved out of the doorway to let me pass. His arms and legs made walking movements but he didn’t walk, not really. He manoeuvred himself around, smooth and silent as though he was on rollers. He could sneak around as well as an invisible Casino. ‘Lola is still in bed, even at this hour, but the others are going to have breakfast in the kitchen. Apart from Minos who is, let me see, tinkering, I believe he said.’

‘It’s fine for Lola to still be in bed, you know,’ I sometimes objected to Raphael’s judgemental tone. ‘We’re not all programmed to leap out of bed in a jolly mood.’

‘I would be surprised if Lola had a jolly mood function,’ he said. ‘If I may say.’

‘Me too,’ I said. Lola had been miserable for the last few weeks. When we first arrived she was as excited as the rest of us to find out where we were and what was going on there but once the novelty wore off and it become clear that we had not landed on our feet, her brow furrowed and her mood blackened. Worse than that though, I couldn’t help but feel that it was my fault. Because it was my fault, I had landed us all there. I wasn’t sure how, but I was sure that I had.

Raphael looked like a black and white picture of an uptight undertaker. His black hair was neat and shiny, as pristine as his black suit. His skin was almost white and flawless. Each side of his face matched the other in perfect symmetry. I was sure that if I got a ruler out and measured it all the points of his eyes, his cheekbones even the curves of his lips would match some exact cosmic ideal of what a face ought to be. His perfection was unnerving and as sterile as the city’s.

‘May I take your jacket?’ Raphael said.

‘No, I can do it,’ I said.

Raphael was our guide and our guardian. When I thought about how much we relied on him it made me nervous. No wonder we all pretended we didn’t need him, we’d be so lost without him it didn’t bear thinking about.

Casino was in the enormous kitchen, all dull steel and gadgets. He was sitting at the huge table covered with gleaming white plastic plates and cutlery set for five people, spreading a kind of jam onto a kind of bread. ‘What’s the weather like?’ he said. ‘No, don’t tell me, let me guess. Is it warm and sunny?’

‘Sure is,’ I sat down. Raphael had assembled quite a spread. All the colours were a little too bright, the textures a little too perfect, like someone had turned some of their settings up too high.

‘I love that. It’s so predictable. Don’t you love that, Raphael?’

Of course, he was right behind me. Silent, a baleful librarian. ‘The weather is not a source of my affection,’ he said.

‘Not the source of his affection,’ Casino grinned. ‘I love that too.’

Casino was almost in his element. Of the five of us he had adapted fastest. He set his visuals to none, as Raphael put it, and explored as far as he could be bothered to walk. He came back with tall tales of lucky escapes and mysterious mechanical artefacts which Minos dismantled then discarded in defeat. He let a spoonful of cereal dribble back into his bowl. ‘Raphael, what is this again?’

‘It is cereal, Casino.’

Casino indicated that Raphael should carry on by waving his empty spoon.

‘It is produced by a process which I am not conversant with, but structural analysis informs me that it is a protein-based, fibre rich nutritional supplement.’

‘He’s not conversant with,’ Casino’s capacity to be amused by Raphael was infinite.

‘It tastes like bacon,’ I said, pouring synthetic milk onto my protein-based, fibre rich nutritional supplement.

‘I’m glad they have bacon,’ Roach wandered in with the Green Book under his arm. ‘Otherwise we’d have to invent it.’

‘Invent it, Mr Roach?’ Raphael pulled out a chair for him to sit at the table. ‘You are all so talented.’

‘Why is he Mr Roach while you call me Casino and her just Sorcha?’ Casino said.

‘She is not just Sorcha, Casino, and Mr Roach is the keeper of the book.’

‘And he’s bigger than you,’ I said.

‘He is bigger than me, but that is irrelevant in the current context,’ Raphael said. ‘If I may say.’

I wasn’t sure about the food but I had to eat and there wasn’t an alternative. It was packed in silver pouches and subject to some mysterious alchemy. Raphael supervised the machines as they processed powders and gels into shapes and substances that were almost like a home cooked meal. We weren’t allowed to watch as this happened. Nothing tasted quite like I expected. The breakfast cereal did taste like bacon, which we might have eaten at breakfast, but not in a bowl with milk on it. The potatoes tasted of cheese and any food that would have been green at home was brown. I didn’t much care for that culinary colour blindness, it ruined cucumber which I had been quite fond of. It was as though someone who’d never seen any food had been described everything in great detail and asked to copy it based on what they could remember. They may, on occasion, have had a photograph to work from but they had never, ever eaten anything.

‘How is the book, Mr Roach?’ Casino said. ‘Illuminating, I hope.’

‘Not really,’ Roach said. ‘It’s hard going. It uses a numerical system alphabetically and I can’t get to grips with it.’

‘Is that not like the symbols in Old Japanese?’ I said. ‘You can read that.’ He could read everything.

Raphael made a noise like a concerned chicken. He didn’t like it when we referred to our old lives in front of him. He thought it was rude and it made him feel left out. His passive aggressive function was state of the art.

‘No, because the pictograms have a narrative quality. These are just numbers and sequences.’

‘Just numbers, Mr Roach?’ Raphael began to clear Casino’s breakfast things away. ‘I must protest. They are not just numbers.’

‘I know, I know,’ Roach said. ‘But I am just a man and it’s very hard.’

Raphael gave Roach such a benevolent, maternal look that Casino snorted half a cup of coffee out of his nose and across the table. It was amazing what Raphael could do with a facial expression, given that he was made out of metal and plastic. He had a repertoire of seven, with corresponding gestures, and they were all deployed to perfection. Tolerance with a hint of despair was my favourite.

‘I’ll be back for lunch,’ Casino faded from sight as he placed a hand on Raphael’s shoulder.

‘Casino, I must protest,’ Raphael said. ‘Do not make me invisible, I am not programmed for it.’

‘Just think about what you look like and you’ll come back,’ the door opened and then closed.

‘I cannot do that,’ Raphael said. ‘I cannot.’

‘It is a bit cruel,’ Roach said. ‘Can’t you make him stop doing it?’

‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ I said. ‘Raphael, if you aren’t programmed for invisibility how can you be invisible?’

‘Logic,’ Raphael said. ‘Of course. I was here all along, was I not?’

Roach had settled down to toast and tea, or cardboard and old bath water, while he flicked through the book. We sat in a peaceful silence for a while, until Minos issued forth some instructions and summoned me to the hub. Raphael was connected to the hotel and in the hub there was a remote unit that could be used to borrow parts of him. Minos was a little too fond of commandeering Raphael’s mouth in order to commandeer the rest of us.

‘Sorcha, are you there?’ Minos said. ‘Can you come and help me?’

Roach and I looked at each other as Raphael’s eyes spun around in their sockets in protest at my silence. Minos could also borrow Raphael’s ears, but not his eyes.

‘Sorcha? I can hear you ignoring me you know.’

‘Relax. I’m coming up anyway,’ I said. ‘Some of us have work to do.’

‘Is Lola up yet?’ Roach said as I, in a fit of generosity, assembled a cup of coffee for Minos. Raphael watched in rapt attention as the pot of almost coffee, the mug and the milk seemed to move around of their own accord.

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she’ll be up in time for our errand later though.’

‘Not another errand?’ Raphael said. ‘I must protest.’

‘But protesting doesn’t do any good,’ Roach said. ‘I’d give up if I were you.’

‘Please,’ Raphael said. ‘Can you not find another way? It is too dangerous.’

‘I doubt it. We need to eat,’ I shrugged and two mugs floated after me as I went to find Minos.

I was waiting for the lift when I saw it again. There was a narrow counter in the reception room, just to the side of the lift. It wasn’t necessary as the checking in system at the hotel worked courtesy of a small scanner on a pole in the doorway. It registered serial numbers as machines came in. Not that they ever did. Raphael said no one had stayed at the hotel since his memory of it began. When I asked what it was for he looked at me with no expression on his face. The purpose of the reception desk was to give the reception unit, this seemed to be Raphael, somewhere to stand without making the place look untidy. As for the reception unit, he was there to give the hotel the right appearance. I was busy reflecting on this when I was sure I saw a creature, about the size of a small dog, rush out a little way and then dash back again. I saw one of these shy creatures about once a day, they weren’t all the same shape or size but they were all elusive. I couldn’t catch them in my mind. Perhaps I was going mad. I didn’t think anyone would blame me.

‘I haven’t seen anything,’ Minos said, when I asked him if he thought there were small creatures living in the hotel. ‘Why don’t you ask Raphael?’

‘It’s on my list. I just wondered if you’d seen any of them that’s all,’ I said. ‘What are you doing?’

Minos was busying himself in the old restaurant which was set up as our technological nerve centre, the hub. That too was the same as it ever was, just with newer and more sophisticated equipment. It had become my favourite place in the hotel. There were thick black curtains covering the windows and walls, and tables scattered around covered in random collections of electronic and mechanical equipment. The room had a smell all of its own, like warm dust and plastic. It felt like an escape from the city, it was like being backstage at a theatre where the show and the audience were hidden behind the curtains waiting for the show to start. Minos was soldering two pieces of metal together, sealing the body of a small appliance. The white flame crept along the joint as he frowned in concentration. Once the two pieces were joined he breathed his icy breath across the hot metal. I could fly and Minos could freeze. Our repertoires were expanding.

‘It’s that bug that Casino brought home, I took it apart,’ he said.

‘Why do you want my help?’ I said as he turned the grey body over on the table.

‘I don’t. I want someone to show off in front of and you’re easily impressed.’

‘You’ve managed to put it back together,’ I said, impressed. Casino had found the bug in the street. We’d seen them scuttling around between the cracks and craters in the damaged roads but they were too fast to catch, either with the other’s hands or my mind. But Casino said this one was just lying there with its legs in the air, not moving at all, so he brought it back with him and Minos dismantled it. He’d rushed into the hub with his arms outstretched carrying the bug like it was a bomb about to go off in his face.

‘Yes, I have. It’s a triumph. I just need to turn this screw here and then when it’s warmed up we should have lift off,’ Minos gave me a broad grin as he turned a small screw in the side of the bug and put it on the floor.

The bug was about half a metre long and shaped just like a beetle. Its shell was scratched and dented and it was impossible to tell which end was which. It emitted a high-pitched whine.

‘Is that it warming up?’ I said.

‘I hope so,’ Minos sat on his work bench and tucked his legs up under him. ‘You might want to stand back just in case.’

I lay against the ceiling, hands behind my head.

‘Show off,’ he said.

The whining got louder until the door opened. ‘What is that terrible noise?’ Raphael said. ‘And why are you up there?’

He would not get an immediate answer as the bug exploded, a part of the shell lodging itself into Raphael’s torso as it was blown across the room. Minos and I escaped unscathed and Minos put the fire out as soon as it started. All that remained of the bug was a small frosty pile of parts. Raphael stood upright, his face expressionless as he ran some diagnostics.

‘I really thought I’d cracked it then,’ Minos said. ‘I really did.’

‘We’ll get you another one,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘I cannot seem to pull this out,’ Raphael said, he was back with us, his fingers slipping off the piece of bug. ‘Could you help?’

I thought-pulled beetle shrapnel from Raphael. He sparked a little and his right eye flickered on and off for a few seconds but he was all right.

‘Excuse me,’ he bowed his polite bow and backed out of the room.

‘Did you miss a part out?’ I levitated down to the floor.

‘I should have taken better notes as I took it apart,’ he screwed up two pieces of papers covered in furious diagrams and tossed the ball towards the bin.

I changed its path at the last minute, in my mind, and it fell just to the left of the bin.

Minos grinned and gave me a shove. ‘I hate it when you do that. Why are you bothering me still?’

‘I just need to alter today’s delivery,’ I said. ‘Your presence is incidental.’

‘I wonder what the bugs do,’ Minos said.

‘If you give me its drive I’ll hook it up and we can see.’

‘It didn’t have one. Isn’t that odd.’

It was odd but it would just have to go onto the ever lengthening list of oddities. I had a list of queries for Raphael that was so long it would have taken me a century to ask them all. I sat in front of two monitors at the bottom of the tower of screens that hung from the ceiling like a hornets’ nest, keyboard perched on my lap. I tapped in a few numbers as Minos and his hot again coffee rolled up next to me on a swivelling chair. We watched as a series of digits scrolled across the screen, following a flashing cursor. There passed a short time which I filled with some more typing and Minos did some supportive nodding and beverage sipping. The desired database opened on the screen and I entered the code that Raphael had given us, on pain of rebooting, for the shipment of food we were going to hijack. The delivery vehicle was manned, or machined rather, but it ran an automated route. I pulled up the map which detailed the route.

‘Right, pay attention,’ Minos said, pointing at a couple of streets on the map. ‘There’s a dead end here, just off the route.’

‘How much of a diversion is it?’ I said. ‘If it’s too long they’ll get nervous and call it in.’ We’d lost two deliveries like that already. Everything was a trial or an error.

‘This one is not even ten metres out of the way, they’ll never know what hit them.’

We could access almost any source of data we liked here too, but there was more of it. The system was vast. Sitting there, given enough time, I could have shut most of the city down. There was just one path in the maze of information and data that I couldn’t follow. It was locked down tight. It had a cipher with a ten thousand digit key to start with and what lay in wait once I’d broken through that was bound to be far worse. I got on with the more manageable task of reprogramming the delivery route so that it would stop down a cul de sac more convenient to an efficient hijacking. Then I followed the delivery route on the mapping screen with my finger all the way to its end again. It stopped in the middle of a cluster of low rise buildings that were designated light production. These facilities ran round the clock with machines that never stopped so they never came in or out, they stayed inside and they would manufacture their replacements inside too. Only the parts they made for other machines came out. I checked, much to Minos’s indifference, and found that these particular factories produced thick metal pins, two centimetres in length, that were used in the assembly of a lot of things that were vital to the continued production of most other things. I couldn’t see why they were delivering food there. The boxes were all stamped with biological entity hazard signs but when we questioned Raphael about it he said he didn’t know, that the information was not included in his system.

‘The little mouse that keeps the tiny wheel of your brain going is getting tired,’ Minos said, untidying my hair even more. ‘I can hear him complaining from here.’

‘Her,’ I said. ‘She’s a girl mouse. I’m going to ask Raphael about these biological entities again. It doesn’t make any sense. Does it?’

‘Can’t you just leave it? Let it be. Nothing makes any sense. Even if he does know, which he already said he doesn’t about a thousand times, his answer won’t make any sense either. ‘

‘I’m going to ask him anyway.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Minos said. ‘Black-coded Enforce couldn’t get information out of him.’

Never one to see a sleeping dog and think how peaceful it looked I went to find Raphael as soon as I’d transferred all the data we needed to our tablets. At least they still worked here. Raphael was in his quarters inspecting his wound with a mirror and some pliers. Raphael’s quarters were a little taller and a little broader than him, in a room just off reception. The four walls, one acting as a door, were a treasure trove of tools and technological titbits that either probed him or plugged him into something he was vague about but was called the cortex. He’d left the door open and if he’d been a real man I’d have said he’d done it to garner sympathy.

‘I saw another one,’ I said. I thought I’d start with something else, like the elusive creatures roaming the hotel and then work my way up to what I really wanted to know. It always worked on Casino.

‘Another what, Sorcha?’ he was struggling to twist the ends of two wires together.

‘You should get Minos to help you do that,’ I said.

‘I do not wish to explode,’ Raphael said.

I had to laugh.

‘I do not have the necessary dexterity application,’ he put the pliers in a drawer. He employed his downcast and disappointed expression with added hands of great upset.

‘Let me try.’

‘Your fingers are not nimbler than mine,’ he said. ‘And the lubricant is too acidic for your skin. It will burn.’

‘I wasn’t going to use my fingers.’

‘Of course. Your special ability, Sorcha,’ Raphael said, annoyed he hadn’t thought of it. ‘It is not a programme we have. The most similar one would be the magnetic functions some units had but they are obsolete now.’

‘Come and stand in the light,’ I said, pulling him out of his cupboard. His arm was hard but gave a little, very little. It was like Roach flexing his muscles and then getting you to admire them with a squeeze. Close up he could have passed for human in a dark club, but only just, and only if everyone was high.

‘The red wire and the blue wire must be connected together,’ Raphael said. ‘Then pushed back into the socket in the side. Can you see? Do not touch the metal plate, please.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because if you do I may as well have got Minos to do it,’ Raphael said. ‘If I may say.’

I followed his instruction to the letter. I couldn’t have done it with my hands but in my mind I could operate in fractions of millimetres. ‘All done. Can you fix the hole?’

‘Yes, the lubricant doubles as a sheath once it is dry.’

It was already starting to ooze out from behind the wires filling the space with a creamy foam.

‘That’s clever stuff,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

‘I must change my textile,’ he said, he didn’t know. ‘It is torn.’

‘I saw another one,’ I said again, as he pulled a small box from a neat stack in one of his many drawers. ‘In reception.’

‘Was it Casino playing a joke?’ he tugged on a ringpull and the box started to unfold in his hand. It made a sound like something inflatable deflating, which seemed like the opposite noise to that it should be making given that it was expanding in his hand. ‘He is fond of a joke, Sorcha.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. His wound was distracting. It was scabbing over, the foam hardening as I watched. The box had turned into a piece of fabric while I wasn’t watching.

‘Was there something else I could help you with?’ Raphael slipped on the shirt that had materialised in one graceful movement.

‘Where does the food go?’ I said.

Raphael’s programming didn’t have an expression that corresponded to his reaction, so his face took on a blank, neutral pose. ‘Unfortunately, I have found that information while defragmenting a memory drive.’

‘Why unfortunately? What’s the matter?’

‘I know but I do not want to tell you,’ he said. The gaps in his programmes sometimes forced a type of honesty that was, to my immense frustration, hard to manipulate.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I think you will find the ultimate answer difficult.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘If we never had to deal with difficult things we’d never get anywhere.’

‘Oh no, Sorcha. Here we upgrade, then the difficulty is no longer difficult.’

‘That’s exactly what we do. Where does the food come from?’

‘It is made in a small factory in district seven. You know that already.’

‘But why?’

‘Because there are fuel and power units programmed to make it.’

‘But why?’

‘I do not have the data to process that query,’ he said. That was the Raphael for I don’t know.

‘Is the food produced for other units?’ I tried rephrasing the question.

‘No, only for biological entities.’

‘For humans like us?’

‘You know I do not think of you as human Sorcha Blades,’ Raphael said. ‘But no.’

‘Where are the other biological entities?’ I hated it when he said I wasn’t human.

‘There are no other biological entities. Not anymore.’ His programming arranged his features into concern and empathy and tilted his head to the left a little to indicate thoughtfulness. His right eye focused and refocused and his voice dropped a note or two in tone. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m fine. I had hoped...’ What had I hoped?

‘I cannot tell you anymore,’ he said and bowed. ‘That is all I know.’

I couldn’t interrogate him further because his upgrade alarm sounded and he shut himself in his quarters to plug himself in. I wandered off to help Minos with whatever he was blowing up and we spent the rest of morning morose and monosyllabic, but in a companionable way.

Casino came back for lunch and Lola joined us in body if not in spirit. The food tasted like death to me and we sat around like corpses, a moody funk having descended. Afterwards, Casino disturbed me in my room. I was levitating with a restorative drink in my hand.

‘What’s up with you?’ Casino said. ‘And you don’t like that beer, you know you don’t.’

He was right, I didn’t. It lay on my tongue like dirt and made me feel medicated.

‘And you can’t fly under the influence, you’ll get a Minos lecture.’

I thought-put the beer aside. ‘Everyone’s grumpy, I thought I’d try it.’

‘Well, Roach is frustrated because he can’t read that book as easily as he usually can. Minos is not yet up to speed with the technology and it’s irritating him and Lola misses Stark,’ Casino said. ‘None of that is unreasonable. They’ve just been dumped in a strange world and bits of them are missing or not working.’

‘I see you’ve given it some thought. You forgot that Lola can’t read minds here,’ I said. ‘Because there aren’t any. So, that’s another thing that’s bothering her.’

Lola had spent ages trying to read Raphael’s mind but she said it sounded like the noise our television used to make when the government shut the network down. They never left it off for long though, the devil found plenty of work for idle eyes. Casino had taken Lola to stand near some other units that were shaped like Raphael, in case it was him that was broken, but the same thing happened. She could hear the appliances and the vehicles too but it was the same blank noise. And Casino was right, she did miss Stark, but I didn’t want to think about that.

‘What time did you say we had to go?’ Casino said. ‘Because it’s almost three o’clock.’

I dropped onto the floor. ‘We need to go, there’s not another delivery up here until next week. And Roach has almost eaten everything.’

‘He’s a growing boy.’

‘If he grows any more we’ll have to eat him.’

Casino smiled. ‘I think I’ll be a vegetarian on that day. Go and see if Lola wants to come, you’re braver than me. Minos and Roach are plotting over some manual they’ve found. I’ll get them and meet you downstairs.’

I got out of the lift on Lola’s floor. The hallway walls were covered in posters and flyers that someone had drawn for events that were imaginary. Raphael said they had been there for as long as he could remember them being there which was less than helpful. We’d tried to find them but Raphael was right when he’d said they didn’t exist. I ripped them all off the walls on my floor, Minos and I had a ceremonial burning, but the others left theirs. I made sure Lola was shut out of my mind as I stood outside mustering the courage to knock on her door. Not that she’d tried to use her telepathy for a few days but when she did it was like a dark cloud crossing in front of the sun. I opened my mind out and wondered whether she would like to join us on our mission to hijack the food truck. She indicated that she would be with us in a moment. When I told her we’d meet her outside she gave a mental nod and closed our connection without a farewell. Of course, no one else was ready to leave either and we had to wait outside for them. I gave up and sat on the step. The day’s dust, accumulating on every surface, puffed up tiny clouds as I sat down. ‘I wish they’d hurry up, Raphael will be out in a minute, fussing about.’

‘He won’t be able to see us,’ an invisible Casino said.

‘He’ll still fuss,’ I was invisible as well. If we were outside and on the ground we were invisible. It was a Raphael rule. Our disembodied conversation echoed down the street. ‘You know how he gets when we go out.’

’He’s worried you’re going to fall out of the sky before you save the world, I expect,’ he said. ‘I’ve decided that you don’t seem yourself, and I realise you’ve already avoided answering this question but you should realise that I’m just going to keep asking it until I get an answer. And for the record I’m not at all grumpy. What’s up?’

‘I asked Raphael where the food came from. And this time he had an answer.’

‘I see,’ he frowned. ‘I’ve decided I didn’t want to know,’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, he said he’s been waiting for us, right?’

‘Yes.’ It was almost the first thing that he’d said to us.

‘So I figured that they made food for us, so we could carry out whatever crazy plan they’ve got for us. And then I figured that if I asked where it had come from I might find out what the plan was and then the carrying it out part would be nearer and, if I am honest, I’m really enjoying not having a plan.’

‘You needn’t worry, they aren’t making the food for us.’

‘I wasn’t worried. I was just thinking.’

‘They were making it for other humans but they’re all dead now,’ I said. ‘At least that’s what it seems like. The machines are just carrying on making the food because that’s what they’re supposed to do.’

We waited in silence until Casino said, ‘Maybe there are other biological entities, not human ones but another kind. Maybe Raphael doesn’t know there’s another kind.’

‘We’ve told him about animals, he’d only heard of cats,’ I’d spent two hours trying to convince him that elephants were real but my illustrations had fallen on blind eyes.

I felt him put an arm around me. ‘Poor lonely human,’ he said. ‘Sentimental that’s your trouble. Surprisingly sentimental.’

I looked down the street. There was a brick lying in the middle of the road. It had fallen off of a building. The city was so sterile that the occasional sign of dereliction felt sinister and mysterious. But, sure even, a small appliance came hurtling down the street to sort it out. It was followed by a cleaning pod which tidied away the brick and then trundled off. The first appliance was shaped like a teardrop, it started to move up the wall of the building