stretching along the entrance hall with a detached cool, their silicon minds categorizing the sights, sounds and smells of the museum as either useful or irrelevant data.
Liam, by contrast, chuckled with delight at seeing the dinosaur once again. A class of elementary schoolkids was clustered around the long plastic-boulder-covered display plinth on which the skeleton stood, all carrying their activity clipboards, faces craned upwards to look at the towering dark bones, every mouth drooping to form a little ‘o’ for ‘orrrrr-some’.
Liam nodded a greeting at the old security guard standing beside the visitor’s book. ‘Hey, Sam, how’s it going?’
‘Whuh?’ The guard scowled at him, bemused. ‘Hang on. How do you know my –?’
‘It’s all right,’ said Liam, grinning, ‘we met a long, long time ago, so.’
Maddy’s eyes rolled behind her glasses. ‘Oh, grow up, Liam,’ she whispered, jabbing him in the ribs and steering him away from the guard, who was still regarding them with an expression that was an even split between surly suspicion and genuine confusion.
‘Last I heard, we were meant to be a top-secret organization … you know?’
‘Aww, he won’t remember. I was dressed as one of ’em Nazi fellas then.’
‘And the timeline was erased,’ added Bob helpfully. ‘The guard will have no memory of the encounter because –’
Maddy raised her hands to shush them. ‘All right, yes … you’re right, Bob.’ She shook her head. ‘Let’s just generally try to be secret, OK? And, while we’re at it, Liam, try to behave like adults here?’
Liam nodded. ‘Aye, you’re right. Sorry.’
‘OK,’ she sniffed, wiping her nose. She’d picked up a cold from somewhere, quite probably the dude who’d been hacking and wheezing over the counter at PizzaLand the other night – giving them a little extra unasked-for topping on their four seasons. She felt like total crud.
‘OK … today’s about learning a bit more history,’ she said snottily. ‘And we can all do with knowing a bit more, but it’s meant to be fun too, right? We could all do with some time out of the arch.’
‘S’right,’ said Sal.
‘And you guys,’ she said to Bob and Becks. ‘Split up … I don’t want you two support units Bluetoothing binary jibber-jabber to each other all morning. You should use this morning to do some more people-watching. Look and listen … watch how people talk and move and stuff.’ She glanced up at Bob. ‘Particularly you, Bob … you still come across as a bit stiff and unnatural. You need to learn how to chillax.’
Maddy watched Bob’s seven-foot frame hunch uncertainly. His thick brow arched and his mouth opened.
Beauty and the Beast. He was seven foot tall, three hundred pounds of muscle and bone: a panzer tank in human form. Becks by contrast was half a yard shorter, athletic and slight. Yet both had started out, once upon a time, as identical-looking foetuses growing in a tube of murky gunk.
Bob was cocking his head like a dog, puzzling over the term ‘chillax’.
‘Never mind.’ Maddy shook her head. ‘Just mingle a bit, OK?’
Both support units nodded sternly.
‘Right,’ said Maddy, honking into a hankie. ‘Right then, meet in the cafe up on the first floor in, say … like, two hours?’ She tried a weary flu-ridden smile. ‘And hey … you know, have fun everyone.’
Maddy watched them disperse: Liam drawn towards the entrance of the natural-history hall and the dinosaur dioramas; Sal hovering a moment, undecided, before choosing to go to the History of Native Americans exhibit on the third floor; and Bob and Becks looking for a moment like abandoned children before picking directions at random in which to saunter away.
She watched both go with the oddest feeling of motherly instinct for the pair of them. Bob still moved around with a machine-like gait and stony-faced concentration that made him look like a Neanderthal with an anger-management problem. While Becks moved with ballerina grace; equally lethal as a killing machine in an understated way.
Weird. How different they both were: their bodies drawn from the same genetic material, their minds both running the same AI operating system, and yet their experiences, their memories, were varied enough to evolve two very different simulated intelligences. It was a bit like being a parent, Maddy supposed, watching both support units slowly ‘grow up’ and become different personalities over time.
She watched Becks as she paced thoughtfully down the hallway, pausing every now and then to study an exhibit more closely.
You really have no idea how important you are … do you, Becks?