The Computer Who Forgot Time

Part I

A Missing Child

Ten Years Ago

The night sky was full, so full of bright white specks, and dark blues, and purples that it seemed to stretch out into an infinity of colour. The air was cold, her shirt was only a few millimetre thick making her shiver as she stood here but Clara did her best to ignore it anyway. She was broke enough so that this would be her only holiday this year. Eternity lay up there away from the scent of sausages burning on a wood campfire, the sounds of crackling, the grey two-person tent that was sagging in the middle, and even the yellow Honda which looked like it would fall into pieces any moment.

She’d always wanted to escape into the vast void of space, like they did in the movies, but there weren’t any movies. There was just here. An unremarkable broke life working a 7-11 and a boyfriend who was handsome, smart, loving, and an awful lot of normal.

Samuel, her fiancé, stood besides her looking into the darkness of space.

Do you think there’s intelligent life up there? he asked.

I’m not sure, but I know there isn’t any down here, she nudged him in the side just sharply enough so that he winced just a fraction, then, just before he could protest she pointed up at something.

It was bright red. Like a shooting star. So bright that Clara almost had to look away. But it didn’t act like any shooting star she’d ever seen. It moved slowly and sedately from across the sky, drifting towards the ground. It was landing somewhere near. Maybe as little as three miles away.

What is that? Samuel asked.

Clara’s face became the hugest grin possible. Wanna find out? she asked. Samuel shook his head. The last thing he wanted was to go out into the wilderness after that... thing... whatever it was.

He’d only come here because Clara demanded. He wanted to be back at the tent to play on his computer. But he followed along gamely. He knew that once Clara had made her mind up it was stupid to argue.

Chapter 1

The Present

His shoulder hurt like a smooth case of buggery, every single nerve screeching in pain as he lifted the three foot wide cardboard box off the cold mottled marble worktop. This place had had underfloor heating when he moved in but it had broken a month from the end of the warranty. It left every hair on his body standing up at attention, every hair fluffed up to try to keep some warmth. His landlord had said it could be fixed if Jason and the other lodgers paid their share.

If Jason could have afforded to fix it he probably could have afforded not to live at this shithole.

White steam came out of his mouth so cold that I almost froze on contact with the air. Once, Jason had seen some polar explorer on the news with his beard frozen solid. He might have ended up that way himself if he had a beard.

The kitchen was described as perfectly formed by the landlord who probably regarded actual liveable space as a luxury his customers generally didn't need to afford.

He could just about scrape part the built in centre aisle to get to a stainless steel sink that was covered in white limescale stains that his mother would have tutted about and then used some kind of weird magic to get rid of.

Elbow grease, she'd have said.

Damn that.

Just off the kitchen was a utility room where an ancient washing machine danced up and down, grinding and screeching, the effort of cleaning polyester shinny shop uniform t-shirts clearly almost too much for it to bear. Jason washed his uniform every day. Kept his hair neat, tidy, and boring enough so that his boss wouldn't complain and so that no one would ever notice him very much. He'd had the job for over a year selling computers to people who didn't really need to replace their old models.

Jason knew his mother had worried about him when she was alive. She'd have said that this flat was something a twenty year old might have been proud of, a single unremarkable room with no commitment and no future that anyone could see. A lifestyle that the kid should have outgrown at some point.

People his age gardened, and had kids, and...

He did have a garden. If he looked at it through the peeling frame of a victorian bay windows he could see it all. Any of his neighbours could see just about how little gardening he ever did.

The garden was his kind of mess.

If the frayed cord had been fixed so you could open the bay window you wouldn't have smelled roses. Instead petrol, rubbish bin, and if you were very lucky the smell of piss that the black-and-white battle-scarred moggy next door liberally sprayed on the walls to mark its' territory.

Although mostly concrete there were some plants in the garden since the paving had been fractured by decades worth of frosts leaving open cracks that let weeds strive to reach towards a sun that was too often shrouded in grey clouds.

The one piece of effort he'd put into the garden was the fence. His landlord had made it part of the contract, and he'd been too cheap to get professionals in to do the job. Wooden slats that were too heavy for the concrete pillars he'd planted in a hole that had been too shallow for the weight. The entire thing slumped twenty degrees from vertical. Held up more by faith that engineering.

His Landlord hadn't thought to put any requirement to paint it into the contract, though, and so it had began to rot. There was a foot wide hole through which you could see into next door. Sometimes you could see them hanging up their knickers but apart from that the neighbours were just a typical fifty-year old couple who barely interested him at all.

Jason shared the apartment with two other people who were both a decade younger than him. They attended the university and often made the apartment smell of Chinese food, of alcohol, or a stale foul smell of something illegal. Often their music vibrated the floor, almost shaking his teeth out of his head.

He didn't mind that they had left for the christmas holidays.

He sighed to himself.

There was one thing he loved about this place. His room. Oh, it was full of the normal Ikea tables, uncomfortable chairs without enough padding which felt like a wooden plank when he sat down, a bed that he'd been interested to discover was ACTUALLY made from wooden planks, and a stale damp smell that filled the air all the time.

But it was full of the computing equipment that he loved. Motherboards, steady state drives, chips of all kinds littered the ikea desktop. He was particularly proud of an open full form factor case in one corner. They called it a tower because it looked like one on the desk. It had synchronised blue flashing lights that flickered rhythmically through the ventilation slits giving it a moving glow like nightriders car.

On the floor was a small box, just two inches wide, which contained a raspberry pi unit that he'd soldered a camera and an integrated circuit to. A strange experimental attempt to make an automated gap scanner for the shop that had never quite worked out.

That was his problem.

He loved computers but he'd never been able to find a way of making a living out of them. He'd not gone to university because his mother died. He hadn't found an entry level job in the field that would hire an oddity like him either.

Maybe that was going to change, though, maybe today.

He pulled the crinkled little piece of paper out of his pocket. It was slightly yellowed, covered in scribbled blue ink that looked like a spiders first attempt at human communication. Hard to make out exactly what it said. But, the telephone number could just about be read.

His doctor had recommended that he call it.

The washing machine had just about stopped thrashing itself to death. Even the screaming whirr of the drum had faded to a low throm-throm-throm sound. The utility room smelled strongly of washing powder which he'd spilled onto the already sticky top of the yellowing machine. Jason hadn't bothered to clean it up yet. He wasn't sure he would, at least not until his roommates were likely to come back.

Jason walked over to the washing machine. Next to it, made from plastic which had cracked and broken in three places, was a grey plastic laundry basket that his mother had leant him. One of the last things she'd given him.

He got ready to pull the sodden mass out of the drum when he heard George Ezra's Paradise blast out on his mobile phone.

Probably it was Nigerian salespeople. The ones that phone you up and tell you that your computer is full of viruses. And for a reasonable sum they'll fix it for you. Of course, the only way they'd ever know there were viruses would be if they put them there...

Or maybe double glazing salespeople.

He knew it wasn't anyone he wanted to speak to.

He hesitated, though, feeling the pressure from the phone's insistent ring. Jason didn't want to answer the phone, knew that it was just a nuisance call, and his body still wanted him to answer it.

The phone stopped ringing and he felt the tension release from his shoulders. Thank god for that. He wouldn't have to speak to someone.

And then it rang again. Insistent.

He walked over to it, picked it up, grunted Yeah?

Mr Chester, the voice on the other end of the line sounded female, young, and British. She had a voice that told you immediately that it was an important business call, Andre Yanson suggested that we called you. About a position.

His doctor had taken things into his own hand. Jason hated that. Oh? Jason said, without committing to anything at all.

Yes. He suggested you might be an ideal person for a consulting position that we might have. He said you don't have anyone who would miss you, that you could come right away.

Andre had said that companies always want consultants. One job would lead to another, and then another, and soon he wouldn't be working for a computer shop any more. But then Andre was an optimist, and Jason didn't have much room for optimism.