The Time Bubble Box Set 2
an online store over here that specialises inBritish food, I snapped up a couple of dozen packets. I got some Marmite, too,while I was at it.”“Don’t I know it?” said Vanessa. “I think it’s vile stuff.He left some on a knife I used to butter my toast the other morning and itnearly made me heave.”
“Well, they do say people love it or hate it,” said Josh.
“How very apt,” said Vanessa, with a pointed glance at Henryas she was saying it.
“Enough of these pleasantries,” said Henry, attempting tomake light of his wife’s barbed comments. “Let’s get on and show you what you camehere to see. I expect you’re wondering why there is a body on the couch overthere?”
“It had crossed my mind,” replied Josh.
“Well, without further ado,” said Henry, and with a grandflourish, accentuated by his pineapple-clad attire, gestured that they shouldfollow him to the other side of the room.
As they approached the body on the couch, Alice could seethat, as she had first suspected, it wasn’t a human body at all. It was that ofan android which was clearly supposed to be a facsimile of Henry. It wasn’t thebody shape that gave it away so much as its attire, clad as it was in whatcould only be one of his shirts. This one contained a selection of palm treesover a lurid red and orange background depicting the Hawaiian sunset.
The android’s skin tone was as realistic as Dani’s but itwasn’t properly finished off, being only a very basic default face such as youmight find as the factory setting on an off-the-shelf robot.
“Good, isn’t he? I designed him in my own image,” repliedHenry. “I still have to graft on the face, but we’ve been concentrating more onthe neural side of things rather than the cosmetics.”
“Other than the face you can hardly tell the difference,”said Alice.
“Except if you look closely you can see he’s not as fat asthe original,” interjected Vanessa.
“Well, I had to find a use for my old shirts,” said Henry,ignoring her jibe. “This one’s an XL and I can’t get into it anymore. It’s themiddle-aged spread, you know. I blame the steaks at Madison’s, they are simplyout of this world. But don’t take my word for it – come and join us for dinnerthis evening.”
“Will you be going for the 16oz this time, dear, or do youfancy tackling the 24oz again?” asked Vanessa.
“I’m up for tackling the 24oz if you are,” replied Josh. “Ilove steak. We don’t have it often back home because of the methane tax.”
“Quite right, too,” said Alice. “I’m practically vegan thesedays.”
“I don’t see any harm in having red meat as an occasionaltreat,” said Henry.
“Occasional treat?” questioned Vanessa. “You’re an absolutecarnivore, my dear. You should see him at Christmas. He has a whole turkey tohimself.”
Each time Vanessa used the word “dear” the amount ofsarcastic loathing with which it was uttered seemed to increase.
Alice tactfully attempted to steer the conversation backtowards the matter at hand.
“What are you planning to do with this replica?” she asked.
“It’s pretty straightforward really. Vanessa and I, despiteour little bits of banter which I’m sure you’ve noticed, make a good team whenwe’re working together.”
“I did sort of pick up on something,” said Alice.
“It’s just our way of getting through the day,” said Henry.“Anyway, we’ve recently made an incredible breakthrough that we’ve kept topsecret. No one knows anything about it – until now. That’s why we invited youhere – to show you.”
“You should feel very privileged,” added Vanessa.
“We do,” said Josh. “I’m intrigued, though. Why have yousingled out us for special treatment?”
“Because I believe you may be able to greatly assist us withthe next phase of what we are aiming to achieve here,” said Henry.
“How, exactly?” asked Josh, suspecting that it must havesomething to do with time travel.
“Let’s leave that part until we’re on the steaks and redwine tonight,” said Henry. “For the time being, why don’t I enlighten youfurther by way of a little demonstration of what we’ve done so far? Vanessa,will you do the honours?”
Henry moved to the second, empty couch and laid down.
“This android body is at present an empty shell,” remarkedVanessa. “It has a state-of-the-art artificial braincapable of learning and independent thought, and a hard drive ready to bewritten to with a capacity of one exabyte.”
“Wait – did you say an exabyte, as in one millionterabytes?” asked Alice. “Contained in this one android? That’s unbelievable!”
“Is it?” asked Vanessa. “It isn’t really when you think howfast data capacity and transfer speeds increase over time. Take the 8G mobilenetwork, for example. It’s millions of times faster than the old 4G networks wehad when we were growing up. This android body alone possesses more memorycapacity than the whole of Australia had at the start of the century.”
“What we’re going to do now is show you how to put thatcapacity to good use,” added Henry, who was looking extremely laid back, as helounged in his Hawaiian shirt on the other couch. All he needed was a TequilaSunrise to make him look like he was lying by the pool on holiday, rather thantaking his place in a groundbreaking scientific experiment.
“As Henry told you before you came here, we’ve dedicated alarge chunk of the last few years to mapping the human brain with a view toeventually uploading it in a digital capacity,” said Vanessa.
“Which I believe you have already demonstrated, to someextent,” said Josh, recalling Henry’s recent contribution to a documentaryholographic podcast on the subject.
“Oh, a few conjuring tricks with mice for the masses – yes,”replied Henry, dismissively. “But the truth is we’ve gone a lot further thananything we’ve shown the public. As I demonstrated in the documentary, we havebeen able to make a rudimentary copy of a mouse’s memory for some time –something that could be archived to a hard drive, rather like the storing ofold documents.”
“But that was merely a snapshot of memories put into a basicrobotic mouse designed to run around a maze. It wasn’t something that couldcommunicate with a consciousness. Since then we’ve got so much further thanthat,” said Vanessa.
“The first step was