The walls of the café were covered in framed photographs of old-fashioned Zeppelins from the 1930s, and the newer, much larger, modern skyliners.
Working together in the decades following their unification, and partly in response to pressure from the Americans, who were less than thrilled by the alliance, Anglo-French engineers built a new generation of lighter-than-air behemoths. Merovech glanced at the pictures as he crossed the floor. In the last decades of the twentieth century, skyliner production had kept alive the British and French shipyards, rescuing them from a post-war drop in demand. And during the economic turbulence of the seventies and eighties, when the tantrums of the OPEC nations forced the Western world to take a long, hard look at its dependence on oil, the skyliners had really come into their own, offering cheap and relatively carbon-neutral transportation. Now, with their impellers driven by nuclear-electric engines originally designed for use in orbital satellites, the big old ships still plied the world’s trade routes, unfettered by the market peaks and troughs that had so bedevilled the traditional airlines.
Julie was sat at the table farthest from the door, against the back wall. She looked up from her coffee as he approached.
“Did you get away okay?”
Julie Girard was a native Parisian and a fellow politics and philosophy student at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University. She had purple hair. She wore jeans and a sweater under her anorak. He wanted to kiss her. Instead, he slipped into the opposite chair and said, “I went out through a service entrance.”
“They will be angry.”
He gave a shrug. “What can they do? They can’t keep me locked away forever.”
Julie glanced around the café. Her shoulder bag hung from the back of her chair. As she moved her head, he caught the glint of silver music beads in her ears.
“But is it safe for you to be out like this, on your own?” She looked worried. “I did not think. I should not have asked you—”
A candle burned on the table, little more than a stub jammed into the neck of a wax-streaked wine bottle. He reached around it and took her hand.
“I’m not on my own. I have you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And what good am I going to be if someone comes at you with a gun?”
He squeezed her fingers. They were cool and dry. His were wet and cold from the rain.
“No-one’s going to come at me with a gun.”
“You don’t know that. Look at what happened to your father.”
His jaw tensed. He let go of her hand, and sat back in his chair.
“I can’t live in fear of terrorists, Julie. If I do, they’ve already won.”
She ran her index fingernail around her coffee cup’s rim.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just had to see you. It’s been nearly a week.”
So far, the majority of their relationship had taken place online using anonymous, pay-as-you-go smart phones, skipping from one fake social media profile to another in a series of snatched conversations and cryptic status updates. Physical meetings had been rare.
She brushed a purple strand of hair behind her ear, revealing a yellowing bruise at the side of her eye.
“What happened to your face?”
She put a hand up to touch it, and he saw her wince.
“Nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing.”
Julie flicked her hair forward, covering the wound in a spray of purple strands.
“It is just a bruise.”
“Was it your father? Did he hit you again? Because if he did—”
“Leave it, Merovech.”
“But, Julie, I can—”
“I said, leave it.” She sat back with a huff. Merovech took a deep breath, trying to quell his own anger. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen her sporting a bruise on her arm or face.
“You just say the word and I’ll have him taken—”
Julie glared at him.
“I do
not
want to talk about it,” she snapped. “Not tonight, not ever.”
Merovech swallowed back his irritation. “Then what do you want to do?”
She held his gaze for a few seconds, as if trying to decide something. Then she leant down and delved into her shoulder bag. When she popped back up, she held a SincPad.
SincPads were all but ubiquitous. They’d been invented at the turn of the century, as the Commonwealth government pumped investment into the silicon fens of Cambridgeshire, supporting a burgeoning IT industry buoyed up by the work of such pioneers as Alan Turing, Clive Sinclair, and Tim Berners-Lee. And now, like skyliners, they came in all shapes and sizes, from palm-sized smart phones to giant, interactive wall displays. Everybody had one, in some shape or form. They were everywhere. The one Julie held had roughly the same dimensions as a refill pad of A4 paper, and she’d decorated its casing with stickers from a dozen political and environmental causes, all of which were now frayed and peeling. She tapped the screen to bring up a video player, and then placed the pad on the table between them.
“You will not believe this,” she said.
Merovech leaned forward on his elbows. The picture showed a monkey in a leather jacket, squatting on a chair. The creature had a patch over its left eye, a silver pistol on each hip, and thick fleece-lined boots at the ends of its hairy legs. It was in discussion with a young, redheaded girl in a blue uniform. Tinkly piano played in the background.
Julie froze the playback. She pointed at the monkey.
“Do you know who this is?”
Merovech shook his head. The animal looked like something from a Manga cartoon.
Julie leaned close.
“His name is Ack-Ack Macaque. He is a character in an immersive MMORPG.”
“A what?”
“A Massive Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game.” She frowned. “You have really never heard of him?”
Merovech shrugged. He didn’t play war games. They brought back too many memories.
“Should I have done?”
“Frankly, yes. The game is owned by Céleste Technologies. Does that ring any bells?”
“My mother’s company?”
“
Mais oui
.” Julie gave a slow nod, as if talking to an idiot. “They have been running the game for about a year now. I cannot believe you have not heard of it.”
Merovech crossed his arms.
“If you remember, I spent most of last year in the Falkland Islands, doing my national service. We didn’t have much time for games.”
Julie bit her lip. “The crash. Oh, Merovech, I forgot. I am so sorry.”
He closed his eyes and, for a moment, found himself back in the blackness of the sinking chopper, scrabbling at his harness, reliving the underwater cries and struggles of his comrades, the creak of metal, and the heart-stopping cold of the seawater pouring through the open hatch. He shivered. Seven men had been dragged to a freezing death at the bottom of the South Atlantic. He’d been lucky to get out at all. He would have drowned had some unknown hands not pushed him through the hatch, against the flow of the incoming sea.
“And besides,” he said to change the subject, “the Duchess and I don’t talk as often as you might think.” In fact, he had as little personal contact as possible with his mother. They didn’t get along at all. He lived in a secure penthouse a short walk from the university, and only travelled to the Élysée Palace for official functions.
Julie reached over and brushed his fingers with her own.
“I am sorry, I did not—”
He brushed a palm across the table’s sticky surface.
“It doesn’t matter. Now, you were about to tell me about this monkey?”
She sat back and licked her lower lip.
“The game is set in a fictionalised World War Two.” Her voice was low and urgent. “Players get points by completing missions, shooting down opponents, and so on. They use the points to upgrade their planes and buy better weapons. In between missions, they hang out and socialise.” With a purple fingernail, she tapped the picture of the monkey. “This is the main guy. Players can fly with him and fight for the Allies or, if they are really good, switch sides and try to take him down. But here is the twist: in this game, you only get one life. If you get shot down and your parachute does not work, you are dead. You cannot log back in for another try.”
“That sounds a bit rough.”
“It makes the game more realistic. The players have something to lose. They have to decide how much safety they give up in return for glory.”
“And the monkey, what happens to him?”
Julie turned her palms upward.
“Nobody knows. He has never lost a fight. The game is set up that way. He is nearly impossible to kill.”
Merovech sat back in his chair and yawned.
“Is this going somewhere?” He felt uncomfortable with his back to the door. He glanced over his shoulder. The windows were orange from the streetlights. Pedestrians splashed past. The rain looked as if it might turn into sleet.
Julie tapped the screen again, to get his attention.
“I want to show you this,” she said.
He looked down at the monkey beneath her finger.
“And what
is
this?”
Julie’s fingertips circled the monkey’s face. “In my philosophy class, we have been looking at the rights of artificial intelligences, and we suspect Ack-Ack Macaque falls into that category.”
“The game?”
“The monkey. The character.”
“Are you sure?”
Julie reached over and squeezed his hand.
“The company made kind of a big deal about it. It is part of the challenge of the game, setting human players up against a sophisticated AI, with a one-shot chance of beating it.”
Merovech looked at his watch. He’d already heard Julie’s rants about the evils of enslaving sentient beings, no matter their origin, and he’d been hoping for something more romantic. He knew they didn’t have much time. He could already imagine the panic amongst the SO1 agents charged with his protection. The last time he’d done this, they’d had half the city’s police out looking for him, and his mother had been livid.
“So what?” He let his impatience show. “It’s not like it’s really alive or anything, is it?”
Julie let go of his hand. She arched her eyebrows, refusing to be drawn.
“Just watch this.”
She hit the play button. The monkey stroked its chin in a gesture that would have looked thoughtful on a human. It swilled the rum around in its glass, drained it and reached for the bottle.
“Do you ever feel like you’re the only real person here,” it asked, “and everyone else is just pretending?”
The picture jumped and he saw the same scene from another viewpoint. Then another, and another.
Julie said, “Nearly every player in the bar recorded that scene. The videos are all up on the Web. The chat rooms are going batshit.”
The film came to an end, frozen on a picture of the monkey’s face.
Julie said, “Do you see what this means?”
Merovech didn’t.
She bent forward excitedly. Her hands fluttered over the table like startled grouse.
“It means the damn thing is starting to question its own existence!”
Several heads turned in their direction. Merovech put a hand on her arm.
“Shhh.”
“But—”
“We’re trying not to attract attention, remember?”
Julie shook him off.
“Merovech, listen to me. I have some friends coming. They will be here in a few minutes.”
Merovech sat up, alarmed. His eyes automatically scanned the place for a back way out—an old habit, drummed into him by years of security briefings.
“What friends?”
“Other students from my course. They have seen this footage, and they are as concerned about it as I am.”
Merovech felt his cheeks burning.
Oh God, please don’t let any of them be paps.
“We are going to do something about the monkey,” Julie said. She reached over and placed both of her hands on top of his. “And we need your help.”
T
EN MINUTES LATER
, Merovech found himself in the back of a black Volkswagen van, heading out of the city. The streetlamps threw moving shadows through the driver’s window. Two students occupied the front seats. The back of the van was windowless and bare. Merovech sat on the floor with his back against the wall. For the first time in his life, he felt out of his depth. He didn’t know how far he could trust these people. From the little he’d gleaned from Julie, they were obviously highly politicised. What if they were republican sympathisers? What if they tried to kidnap him for ransom? He had no back-up, no security.
Julie huddled beside him, her arm hooked in his. He was only here because of her. He didn’t want her running off and getting into trouble; and he hoped he could talk her out of whatever it was she had planned.
A young man sat opposite them, with dark eyes and a stripe of beard that looked as if it had been drawn on with eyeliner.
“This is Frank,” Julie said. “He is in charge.”
Frank wore an army surplus jacket, skinny black jeans and American baseball boots. A large pendant hung from his neck. The fingers on his right hand were stained yellow. He said, “
Tu es sûr qu’on peut lui faire confiance?
”
Julie put a protective hand on Merovech’s shoulder.
“Of course we can trust him. He can get us in there. He knows the layout.”
Frank narrowed his eyes. He switched to English.
“Is this true?”
Merovech returned his stare. The enclosed gloom and metal walls of the van were making him uncomfortable.
“I haven’t agreed to anything.”
“
Merde
.” Frank bit his lip and looked away.
“What’s the matter?” Julie asked.
“What’s the
matter
?” Frank flung a hand at Merovech. “We are sitting in a stolen van, on the way to committing an illegal act, and you bring along the heir to the British
throne
! I mean,
putain de
merde
!” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a pack of cheap cigarettes. He extracted one but, as he went to light it, Merovech leaned over and put a hand on his arm.
“She didn’t bring me. I brought myself.”
Frank gave him an incredulous squint.
“And do you know what we are going to do tonight, ‘your highness’?”