CHAPTER 2

2001, New York

Sal sat upright in her bunk – gasping for breath, feeling her cheeks wet with tears.

The nightmare again.

It was quiet and stil in the archway. She could hear Maddy snoring on the bunk below, and Liam whimpering nonsensical words in his soft Irish accent as he stirred restlessly on the bunk opposite.

A muted lamp glowed softly from across the archway, lighting their wooden dinner table and the odd assortment of old armchairs around it. LEDs blinked among the bank of computer equipment across the way, hard drives whirring. One of the monitors remained on; she could see the computer system was doing a routine defrag and datale tidying. It never slept. Not it … not any more – the computer wasn’t IT any more. It was Bob.

Unable to go back to sleep, she clambered o the top bunk. Maddy twitched in her sleep, and Liam also seemed to be unset led. Maybe they too were reliving their last moments: Liam’s sinking Titanic, Maddy’s doomed airliner. The nightmares came al too often.

She tiptoed across the archway, barefoot on the cold She tiptoed across the archway, barefoot on the cold concrete oor, and sat down in one of the swivel chairs, tucking her feet under her and sit ing on them for warmth. She grabbed the mouse and opened a dialogue box. Her ngernails clacked softly on the keyboard.

> hey, bob.

> Is this Maddy?

> no, it’s sal.

> It is 2.37 a.m. You cannot sleep, Sal?

>nightmares.

> Are you recal ing your recruitment?

Recruitment, that’s what the old man, Foster, had cal ed it. Like she’d had any real choice in the mat er. Life or death. Take my hand or be mashed to pulp amid a crumbling skyscraper. She shuddered. Great fragging choice.

>yeah, my recruitment.

> You have my sympathy, Sal.

‘Thanks.’ She spoke softly into the desk mic – too lazy to tap out any more. Anyway, the clickety-click of the keyboard echoing through the archway was far more likely to disturb the others than her speaking quietly.

‘I miss them so much, Bob.’

> You miss your family?

‘Mum and Dad.’ She sighed. ‘It seems like years ago.’

> You have been in the team 44 time cycles. 88 days precisely, Sal.

Time cycles – the two-day time bubble that played out and reset for them, constantly keeping them and their eld and reset for them, constantly keeping them and their eld o ce in 10 and 11 September 2001, while the world outside moved on as normal.

Outside … outside was New York – Brooklyn, to be more precise. Streets she was now get ing to know so wel . Even the people she had conversations with, people who were never going to remember her: the Chinese laundromat lady, the Iranian man running the grocery store on the corner. Every time they spoke, it was, for them, the rst time – a new face, a new customer to greet cheerily. But she already knew them, knew what they were about to say, how proud the Chinese lady was of her son, how angry the Iranian man was with the terrorists for bombing his city.

This morning was the Tuesday, 11 September, the second day of the ever-reset ing time cycle. In just under six hours the rst airliner was going to crash into the Twin Towers, and New York and al her inhabitants were going to change forever.

‘So what’re you doing, Bob?’

> Data col ation. Hard-drive maintenance. And reading a book.

‘Oh? Cool. What’re you reading?’

A page of text appeared on the screen. She could see individual words momentarily highlight one after the other in rapid blinking succession as Bob ‘read’ while they talked.

> Harry Pot er.

Sal remembered seeing the old lms from the rst Sal remembered seeing the old lms from the rst decade of the century. They didn’t do much for her, but her parents had liked them as children.

‘Are you enjoying it?’

Bob didn’t answer immediately. She noticed the ickering of highlighted words on the open page of text on the screen grind to a sudden halt, and the soft whirring sound of hard drives being spun momentarily ceased. Forming an opinion … that was something Bob struggled with. It required the computer system’s entire capacity for him to actual y formulate, or rather simulate, something as simple as a human emotion … a preference. A like or dislike.

Final y, after a few seconds, she heard the hard drives whirring gently once again.

> I like the magic very much.

Sal smiled as she acknowledged how many terabytes of computing power had gone into that simple statement. If she had a mean streak in her, she could have asked him what colour he thought went best with violet, or what was tastier – chocolate or vanil a? It would probably lock the system for hours as Bob laboured through in nite decision loops to nal y come up with the answer that he was unable to compute a valid response.

Bless him. Great at data retrieval, cross-referencing and processing. But don’t ask him to pick dessert o a menu.