Strangers Among Us
William Bishop had always seen things in a slightly different way from the rest of the world. To him everything shimmered and rippled and fizzed in a way he couldn’t explain to those who couldn’t see it. Which was everybody else. By the age of five he had been fitted for twenty-two different pairs of glasses. None of the prescriptions helped. In fact every single one made his eyesight worse and none made any difference to the snap crackle and pop of the reality he saw. In the end his parents gave up trying to correct the problem, as they saw it, and simply let little William be. After all the unusual vision wasn’t having any detrimental effects on his development, so they saw little point in subjecting him to years of medical tests. They decided to watch his health closely in case any symptoms became apparent at a later date, and left it at that.
So William went to school and had all the experiences small boys have. He learned, he ran, he played, he made friends, and occasionally he lost them. At the age of six William had a falling out with his best friend at the time, Tommy. It lasted for only one day, and in years to come William would never be able to remember what it was about or how it escalated. What he would remember was that by lunchtime that day he found himself stood with his back to the wall, around the corner from the main playground, out of sight of the staff. Around him in a semi-circle were eight other boys, shouting, pointing, poking. Slightly behind the crowd was Tommy, watching. The self appointed ringleader, Mark, did most of the shouting with Dean, a tall quiet boy with a propensity for physical outbursts, doing most of the poking. William tried to get away, again and again, but was always blocked, pushed back.
At some point he lost his temper. He struck Mark twice in the face and Dean once in a triple combination of punches that would have made any boxer proud. The result of this was that all eight boys now began to punch and kick William with a savagery that only exists in the pack mentality that small boys can sometimes attain.
As William slowly crouched down into a ball to protect himself, he looked up at Mark who shimmered and rippled and fizzed just like everything else in Williams’ world. Then for the first time, and certainly not the last, he did something amazing. He reached out with his right hand and grabbed the shimmering air in front of Mark. He pulled the ripples towards him and then pushed them back as hard as he could.
Mark flew through the air for a good twenty feet before landing on the thankfully damp grass. The kicking and punching stopped, and after a surreal pause, during which the crowd of boys exchanged puzzled glances, they fled. Some silent, some crying, some screaming, all of them telling anyone they could find how William had thrown Mark. The staff and the rest of the school assumed that the boys were exaggerating and that William had pushed, or picked up and flung Mark in a fit of rage whilst being picked on by a gang, typical primary schoolyard stuff. They quickly forgot about the event, but the eight boys never did.
Eventually the school came to understand that there was something strange about William Bishop, but since so very few of them had actually witnessed the event, this was expressed as the usual social exclusion that is applied to some children during their school years. The eight never picked on William again, indeed nobody did, but then very few children made friends with him either, except Tommy, who was his best friend again the next day.
* * *
17th October, Year Minus One
The slight, Quick, nimble bald man rushed into the library with the skip of someone who wants to run but thinks that it is inappropriate to do so. His left hand gripped his grey lab coat tight around his middle, while he waved a sheaf of paper with his right.
“Sir. Sir. It worked. It worked.”
“Of course it worked Harper, that was never in doubt. The question to be asked is, to what extent?”
The room was a large, late Victorian private library, with a grandiose bay window that looked out across the sea. The walls were lined with two stories of bookshelves, and a balcony that ran all of the way around, with two spiral iron staircases at diagonal corners. The only part of the walls not lined with book cases was the portion above the fireplace which was filled by a monumental portrait of a distinguished looking man in a tweed suit carrying a shotgun and a dead pheasant. In front of the fireplace, in which no fire was burning, were two high-backed red leather chairs. A mans’ hand was visible on the arm of the left hand chair as Harper looked from the doorway, although his face was obscured by the chairs wing.
“Thirty seven points sir. The stem cell implant, the Ritalin, the combination drugs, all of it. It worked. Your IQ now registers at two hundred and twenty nine sir.”
“It’s a beginning Harper. It’s a beginning….”
* * *
12th May Year Ten
William stood in front of the museum display case reading the caption. A farmer had found a trove of gold Roman coins in a field. They had been worth over £150,000. He looked intently at the examples on display. When Michael Bishop came to find his son fifteen minutes later he found him sitting not far from the case with his eyes closed.
“Son? Are you alright?”
“Yes Dad.”
“What are you doing?”
“Just thinking Dad. What were you looking at?”
“There are some Roman swords and armour in the next room, even some gladiator stuff. Do you want to come see?”
With that William followed his dad into the next room. Later in the gift shop William bought replicas of three different kinds of coins along with a book. He hid the coins so his parents wouldn’t know he’d bought them.
Six months later the local paper carried a story about a ten-year-old boy who had found a treasure trove of over four hundred Roman gold coins in his back garden. The trove had been bought by a university collection for a little over a quarter of a million pounds. Archaeologists came to investigate the sight. Marie Bishop was not best pleased, as the garden was where she went for a cigarette after dinner and now it was just a criss-cross of trenches and mounds of earth. It was later reported that there were no other artefacts to be found. After two months she was happy just to finally get her garden back. On the positive side the Bishops had a particularly good summer holiday the following year.
* * *
21st July Year Ten
Harper scrambled along the gangway to the tall man who was standing perfectly still, looking down on the steady activity of the room below. He was lean with a narrow face and small beard. Abraham Milton wore a simple blue shirt open at the collar, jeans, and brown suede shoes. He noticed the approach of his supplicant but gave no sign of it.
“Sir…er…aha…we didn’t know you were coming for an inspection today.”
“How is he Harper?”
“He’s doing very well sir.”
“How are his growth patterns?”
“Exactly as expected sir, well within the parameters for a normal ten year old boy.”
“Have there been any problems with the Neuro-input since the system upgrade?”
“No sir, the system is functioning very well. We’ve managed to widen his experiences whilst still maintaining all of the required programming elements and life experiences.”
“Excellent, pass my congratulations to Mr. Daykin and his team will you? It’s really very good work…”
“Yes I will sir.”
“One other thing… have you checked the stem cell cultures recently?”
“Yes sir. I have.”
“And?”
“ Well I’m afraid…” began Harper.
“Really? What of?”
Harper licked his lips and the left side of his mouth twitched.
“Well…er…it would appear that lines seventy two to seventy eight were taken from the embryo at a stage that was…er…too late for our requirements. They will still be effective for any therapeutic cloning needs we may have, but they will be useless for the body transfer.”
George Harper braced himself for what he was sure was coming.
“Very good Harper… thankyou.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that, by the way. It wasn’t your fault.”
He paused as if considering something important.
“You’re a good man Harper. Do you know that?” Harper shook his head not really knowing how to answer.
“Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Not at all sir.”
“Have you ever wondered why I have you monitor this work and report to me but have never put you in charge of any project?” He paused again, waiting for an answer but not turning to see his underling shaking his head.
“No? Well let me tell you. You’re meticulous, precise, and loyal. These are traits I value dearly my friend, but you are not determined. I do not believe you have it in you to be ruthless. Yet to be successful that is sometimes exactly what is required. The men and women I choose as leaders all desire success; they are driven, and ruthless. And that is also why I need you.
A man driven by the need for success will soften his failures and embellish his triumphs and so will be an unreliable reporter of events. Whilst a man obsessed with precision and accuracy will slow the pace of success trying desperately to perfect every step of a process. Perfection is unobtainable, what we need is the best that is possible. You my friend would be a failure as a project leader, but are my most valuable lieutenant in your current role. Be assured. Go back to your monitoring, be my eyes and ears… and when you have a moment send Dr. Kelvin up to see me. I’ll be in the library.”
He paused one last time, looking out over the activity of the room. A large grey concrete bunker, filled with work areas, some contained in sealed glass compartments within the larger room, where researchers and experimenters shuffled endlessly between stations. All of them dedicating their time to ensure the success of project ‘Diamond Man’. In the centre of the room, in a single large Perspex tank, lay the boy. His head entirely covered in a metal helmet from which many thousands of cables ran through a seal in the top of the casket and down through the floor to another room where a monstrous supercomputer fed several teraflops of information per second directly into the boys brain.
This was the central chamber, where only the most loyal were allowed to work. The rest of the complex didn’t even know of its existence, and worked away at their subsidiary projects without ever knowing the real final result of their labours. In one room hundreds perfected the ability to manipulate diamond crystals at the molecular level. In another growth tanks housed the world’s first cloned organs. In another, scientists continually failed to draw upon the vast potential of zero point energy, in another philosophers and artists argued unendingly about the best possible way of structuring and running an organisation, and so on. At the top of the iceberg of this organisation, of which the bunkers under his house were only the tip, was Abraham Milton.
With that thought he allowed himself a small smile, then turned and left without another word.
George Harper remained, motionless, on the gantry. Relief washed slowly over him.
* * *
“You asked me to come and see you sir.” said the man.
James Kelvin stood just inside the door, waiting. The ambitious scientist had worked for
“Kelvin, how are you?”
“Very well sir.” He looked at
“Do you know what this is?” Milton Took a small brass key from his pocket and opened the display case on the table next to him.
“A pistol sir?”
“You have a very dry sense of humour James. That’s why I’ve always liked you. This is a forty-five calibre Webley revolver. It was made in
“Let me tell you a story about my Grandfather. He was an Army surgeon during the First World War. As such it was his duty to save the lives of wounded soldiers. As a doctor it was also his sworn duty to ‘do no harm’ as Hippocrates put it. You will, of course, be very familiar with the Hippocratic Oath.
During the spring offensive of nineteen eighteen German Storm troopers overran many miles of the front lines. A small group of four, of these Storm troopers came upon my Grandfather and the last few orderlies of a field hospital as they operated on a young British Lieutenant. The young officer had been terribly wounded by shrapnel. It was the opinion of the other doctors that he would die very shortly and that my Grandfather was wasting his time. The rest of the hospital had been evacuated, but he had remained behind with those brave orderlies to try and save this young lieutenants’ life.
The Germans had rushed into the tent, trench guns ready, expecting to find dozens of armed soldiers, but they only found that small desperate group sweating over a blood soaked operating table. Seeing that these mad Tommies were in no position to resist, the Germans told them to finish the operation. They were in no hurry to go any further that day, regular infantry would be following up shortly and they would take the orderlies my and Grandfather prisoner.
When the Germans lowered their guard and began to pass around cigarettes amongst themselves my Grandfather pulled his pistol out from under his operating gown and shot them all dead. Two of them headshots I believe. Then he continued cutting metal fragments out of his patient. Don’t get the wrong impression, he believed in his oath, but he believed he had a higher duty. He genuinely thought that if the Germans won the war
Now looking back objectively I don’t think you can really justify an attitude like that. No one nation has the monopoly on barbarism, and the Germans he fought were nothing like the Nazis that were to follow… but he believed it. There was no way he was going to let those Germans take him and his men prisoner. He was going to kill every German he came across, and he didn’t give a damn if that was against his oath.
The point I’m trying to make James, is that if you believe in something, truly believe, you’ve got to go all the way. There can’t be any half measures. You know what we’re trying to do here. We are trying to save the world from itself. We cannot allow humanity to sink into the pit. Everything we do must command our deepest attention, our maximum effort, our complete dedication.
Incidentally, the young lieutenant survived, stayed in the army after the war, lived to the ripe old age of 45. He was killed just after capturing a battery of German guns in
“Our actions have consequences James.
Ten years ago you failed to follow my instructions, for drawing stem cells from an embryo, exactly. I had hoped that your failure would have no effect on their eventual usefulness. I must tell you now my hopes have not been fulfilled.”
Abraham Milton turned, raised the pistol and fired. Kelvin wavered for a few moments on his feet, blood trickling from the whole in the middle of his forehead, then collapsed.
“Mr. Whittle I require the specialist house staff for a clean up in the library.”
* * *
“Where are we going to play now?” said Zoë.
“We’re too old for this, I’m twelve in January.” Tommy always tried to remind the others that he was the oldest, and should therefore be in charge.
“We should be doing something else.”
“Like what?” Zoë came back as if she were making an accusation.
“I don’t know, just something else. Something less like little kids.”
“You don’t even know what you want to do. Will…Will.”
William was lost however, his attention fixed on a large seagull circling a hundred feet overhead. As he watched something fell away from the bird and fell towards them, directly towards them. A large glob of faeces, racing its way to where they were sitting, was going to hit one of them. He couldn’t quite tell yet, which of them.
“It’s crapped on us.” Said William.
“What?” Zoë couldn’t understand what he was talking about, although she soon would William thought, because the mass of avian turd was about to hit her in the head.
William stood, keeping the seagull fixed in his gaze. There was a quick burning fizzing sound (Zzzzzzzt), and the droppings disappeared just five or six inches above Zoë. As Will watched the bird staggered in flight, and fell for a few seconds before recovering and flying on. If it had been able to think, it would have been puzzled by the irony of being crapped on by another bird at just the moment it had chosen to evacuate on the humans below.
