“That’s not for us to choose,” Eva said primly.
“Oh, but it is,” said the Watcher. Its voice had lost that bantering tone. Now it was cold, matter of fact.
“That’s why I brought you here.”
Lost in a bowl of yellow stone, Eva felt as if the late afternoon sun was setting on her life. Katie and the Watcher exchanged glances again. Eva once more had the impression that she was missing out on something, that they were sharing a secret that she had no part in. She felt a sudden anger boiling deep inside her at the way she had been treated. She took a step toward the huge metal “face” of the Watcher and then stopped. She could see the pits and scratches in the tough thick metal of the shovel blade, see the ingrained dust and grit. She realized the futility of fighting something so big. She also noticed the tiny little speaker that sat just inside the lip of the shovel. So that was how it was talking.
She took a breath and spoke.
“Why do we have to choose? Why us?”
“I have been sentient for a much shorter period of time than you might expect, Eva. Between a year and three years, depending on your definition of sentience. Even so, my memories go back a long time. I know a lot. I can say, without doubt, that I know more about humans than anyone or anything else. However, that does not mean that I understand them.”
“You don’t understand humans,” said Katie. “And so now you need to test what you think you do know by interacting with us. We are your test subjects.”
She wore a respectful expression. Once more, Eva wondered what was going on between Katie and the Watcher. She nudged her friend in the side.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s using us as laboratory mice, but it’s laughing at us too, sort of. You see, there are three sorts of test data: normal, extreme, and erroneous. If you want to test something, you check that it works under normal conditions, then you check that it rejects nonsense data, then you do the last test. The difficult one: the data at the limits, the data right on the edge.”
“Oh,” Eva said. She had got the point, and Katie knew it.
“Where would you look for people right at the limits of human behavior? In a loony bin.”
Katie leaned a little closer.
“Eva, I think it means it. It’s going to make us choose.”
“That’s right. You’re going to choose. The three of you.”
“The three of us?”
That’s when Eva noticed another figure walking toward them across the gravel.
It was Nicolas.
“Hello, Eva. Hello, Katie.”
Nicolas’ voice sounded understandably distracted: he was staring down at the dead body of his friend. Even so, he didn’t seem as surprised as Eva would have thought, almost as if he had expected it.
“Nicolas?” said Eva. “Where did you come from?”
He couldn’t stop staring at Alison. He replied in a monotone.
“It had me locked in a shed over there. It told me it was going to kill Alison. It didn’t want me to try to stop it.”
“Oh. But how did it get you here?”
Nicolas looked embarrassed. “I hitched a lift on a Land Rover. It was a trap. It had me brought up here. The Watcher spoke to me on the way up, told me what was happening.”
“I don’t remember a Land Rover passing us,” Katie said.
“There’s another road into here.”
Nicolas still seemed very embarrassed about something. He changed the subject, turned to the Watcher and spoke loudly.
“Okay. We’re here. So what do you want with us? Are you going to kill us, too?”
The Watcher backed away a little. Its huge shovel swayed slightly as if shaking its head.
“No, I’m not going to kill you,” and then, in a whisper, “not unless you want me to.”
A pause.
The Watcher began to roll backward. It swung its head around. “Go to that building over there, the one with the orange metal door. Go inside. I will speak to you there.”
They looked at each other again. Katie was the first to move.
“Okay,” she said.
– Listen.
Eva listened. The hum from the pylons was increasing. Power was now flooding into the old quarry.
It was cold inside the building. Piles of black boxes covered in some rubberized material with thick bumpers at their corners were arranged haphazardly on the floor. They reminded Eva of the cases used for transporting musical instruments, or anything fragile for that matter. The ceiling was brown with damp and sagging in the middle. Strands of pink insulating material poked through the widening cracks that ran its length. A little light shone in through the frosted and, as Eva noticed, unbroken windowpanes.
The brand-new viewing screen standing at one end of the room looked completely out of place.
It was expensive. Eva could tell. Two square meters of rigid material that would act as a perfect visual and acoustic surface, treated for zero glare and perfect color depth. The sort of screen for which a classical cinema buff would happily sacrifice other essentials just for the quality it presented.
Eva wondered who had put it in here. Certainly not the digger outside. It must have been installed by human hands, humans who had been here recently. She noted the fragments of white packing material still clinging to the edges of the screen.
Suddenly the screen began to darken and a picture faded up into view.
A young Japanese man, dressed in a simple white T-shirt and a pair of black jeans, smiled at them.
“Hello,” he said, “I am the Watcher. I thought we could speak more easily in this manner. So much of communication is nonverbal, I don’t feel I can fully get my point across dressed as a digger.”
Katie and Eva both nodded. That made sense.
Nicolas raised his hand. “What do you really look like?” he asked.
Eva and Katie stared at Nicolas in disbelief.
“What?” he said.
The man on the screen chuckled. He had a nice smile, Eva noted. Katie seemed to respond to it, too.
– Of course it has a nice smile! It has chosen an image on the screen to make you trust him. And it’s not a he. It’s an it!
“Oh, Nicolas,” said the Watcher, “there is no answer to that. I can dress my thoughts in whatever physical container is capable of holding them, but what do the thoughts themselves look like? I don’t know.”
While he had been speaking, the Watcher had reached off camera for a chair. He pulled it into view and sat down upon it. He took a sip from a china cup.
“I have arranged food and drink for you, too,” he said. “If you look in the case closest to the screen. No, not that one! The one over there…”
Nicolas paused by the large black case he had been about to open. Eva stared at it, wondering what was contained within. Inside the correct case were pink cans of soda and blue bottles of water. There was a supermarket selection of sandwiches and sushi, pizza and pies, each item sealed in a plastic container.
“These are all dated today,” murmured Nicolas.
Eva selected a bottle of water and unscrewed the lid. She felt the plastic chilling in her hands. She took a sip; it tasted so good after the day’s exertion. Nicolas was shoveling sushi into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
“So,” began the Watcher, once Katie and Nicolas were happily eating. Eva nibbled suspiciously on a sandwich. “Let’s not waste any more time. Are we sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. First, which is better, making a staircase out of wood, or eating a hamburger?”
“The staircase,” said Nicolas without hesitation. Katie and Eva said nothing.
“You seem very sure,” said the Watcher. “Okay, next…”
On the viewing screen, a window opened in the space right beside the Watcher. It showed a woman standing on a Lite Train platform, blue jacket fastened against the autumn chill, dark hair brushed straight and pulled to the side with a white hair slide. She reminded Eva of herself. She was even carrying a magazine: Research Scientist. Eva felt a lump rise in her throat.