was one brief moment, lasting less than a fifth of a second, where the father’s eyes moved from the boy’s face to look at the arm he would then hit. The room was quite dark and, in slow motion, there were only three frames of the man’s vision that were looking at the arm. However, in those frames, it was absolutely clear that a large house spider was crawling on the son. Jack called up the boy’s feeds from the minutes before what the computer had supplied. Playing this through showed the youngster looking at his own forearm and seeing the creature there. It was clear that he then froze in fear, but called out the one word ‘spider’ loudly and repeatedly before breaking into the screams of terror. Aluen had initially only been supplied with the feeds from the moment the boy started screaming.
‘I remember something my mentor told me,’ Jack said. ‘We are the arbiters of history in this world. Others could also find out the truth, but nobody ever bothers to look. Right or wrong, our submissions to Kangaroo have become the origination upon which everybody’s worldview is formulated.’ He ran the fingers of both hands through his wiry black hair and looked at Aluen.
She turned her head and stared at him. ‘What?’
‘Do you really believe we have the right to spy on people all the time?’
Aluen scrunched her eyebrows. ‘It’s our job.’ Her tone became sardonic as she mimicked his language: ‘If “we are the arbiters of history in this world”, then we need to see everything, in order to make sure we tell the true story.’
Jack realised he had said too much. He took a half step backwards. Had he given himself away? Would she report him?
But Aluen had already turned back to her work. ‘Thanks for helping.’ She clicked on the button on the screen’s toolbar marked ‘Nothing to report’. Both screens changed image to show two new suggested issues with scrolling text explaining the algorithm’s thinking in each case.
Jack moved to go back to his workspace. As he looked out of the window on the staircase, he mouthed silently, ‘Soon, I’ll put a stop to all this.’ He thought about the homemade bombs hidden in the cellar of his house, waiting to be used, and felt a small surge of satisfaction. Soon.
Chapter Two
Marmaran Truva held the small, white coffee cup to his nose and sniffed briefly. Vicky Truva thought the coffee smelt good, which would be a surprise to her father. He had had to teach the cafe staff in Kangaroo Hall how to make coffee properly, and even then the outcome was seldom palatable to him.
The coffee that now struggled to grow in English greenhouses was a poor substitute for the tropical varieties historically used to make Turkish coffee. Although neither Vicky nor her father had ever actually been to the country of their forefathers, there had been a family line of coffee perfectionists dating back to her great-great-grandfather from the city of Truva, in the old Turkey.
Marmaran sipped at the black liquid and winced. ‘Why don’t the sifters ever send in the feeds of these people making coffee?’ he muttered, ostensibly to himself.
Vicky watched the big, ginger-haired man next to her father laugh and slap the shorter man on his broad back. ‘You and your coffee, Marma. You know you’ll never get it the way you want it; you need to accept this.’ Marmaran cushioned his cup from the physicality of the man’s blow, looked up at him and nodded, pushing his closed lips outward.
Vicky smiled and thought of her mother making coffee for him years before. She knew that she had her mother’s long, English face, but her darker skin had been handed down from her father and his ancestors. She also had her mother’s height and was nose-to-nose as tall as Marmaran. Her mother had been able to produce a cup of coffee that he adored. He would smack his lips in delight at the flavour. Vicky had never been able to emulate the feat, and since his wife’s death, Marmaran himself had been the only person who could make coffee he approved of.
Both men looked up to the dais as Lloyd Lloyd, the Spokesperson for Highnam, began the proceedings. His voice projected naturally, ‘Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Kangaroo for this day, Sunday 3 September 2089. Firstly, let me tell you that the death of Old Man Jones has been punished, as we decreed last week, with the imprisonment of his son at the Bristol Jail. The Bristol Brigade members came on Tuesday to escort him away. Poor young Derek was ill — there was no way we could have foreseen what he would do. You all saw him here last Sunday. It is so sad, but mental illness happens. Indeed, I think we should be thankful that it is only sick people who cause such tragedy; genuinely profound criminal behaviours never get past the planning stages, as they are caught by the sifters.’
There was a light round of applause from the assembled villagers and one shout of ‘Hear, hear.’
‘Fortunately, such things are rare. This week’s Kangaroo should be relatively brief as we have only a few matters to discuss, and these are all pretty straightforward.’
Truva senior’s ginger colleague called out, ‘Old Marma here wants to add an agenda item.’ The assembled crowd looked round at the pair.
Vicky’s father gaped up at the man, almost spilling the coffee himself this time. ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed. Vicky stared at Marma and wondered what was happening. Her right forefinger traced pensive circles looping the mousy hair at her temple.
The bigger man beamed back a gigantic smile from his round, ruddy face. ‘He says the coffee in here is a crime!’ The hall filled with laughter. Some people looked towards the small hatch where two ladies made refreshments, but most returned their gaze to Lloyd Lloyd and his floppy, blond fringe.
Vicky watched her father continue to stare at his neighbour. Marma narrowed his eyes to tiny slits. He muttered again out loud, but at an even quieter volume, ‘And I’ll be able to make my own coffee there too.’
She guessed he had inwardly decided that in future he would attend Kangaroo remotely via his armulet, from the comfort of the sofa in the front room of their farmhouse. Vicky had been only eight years old when her mother succumbed to the snow, but she was certain that her father had become more insular in the years since.
Highnam’s Spokesperson, Lloyd Lloyd, was in his thirties, broad and strong, and looked every bit the country boy. He had an assured air, and on the stage, when he moved and spoke to the assembly, this was amplified to a veritable swagger. Above his head, a huge projection of Highnam’s marketplace on a summer’s day was a placeholder for the programme they would soon scrutinise. ‘Before we watch the KangaReview from this week, we have one item of community business. The chimney on the mayor’s house was damaged by those winds on Wednesday night, so we need to arrange to fix it up. As you know, the house is nearly two centuries old, so it’s not surprising that it needs so much maintenance.’ It went unsaid that the ‘mayor’s house’ was the one that Lloyd Lloyd and his family lived in.
A woman close to the front of the assembled crowd offered, ‘The old Canelkin house across the A40 is empty. Should we take the bricks from its chimney?’
The old road running along the southern side of Highnam village, known to all by its historical designation, the ‘A40’, had not seen fuelled vehicles in nearly fifty years. It was still the major transport link for the village, though, to Gloucester in particular. Decades of seasonal flooding had undermined it in places, giving carts and electric quad bikes some trouble, but for horses, cycles and pedestrians, the surface was manageable, if not good.
Lloyd Lloyd pointed at the woman and replied, ‘From what I’ve seen, we only need a handful of replacement bricks. Well, you know what I
