Page 106 of Chaos Theory
‘Those speed signs are in miles, not kilometres, right? I still get mixed up.’
Lizzie wraps herself around my legs. ‘Where’s the robot?’
I look at Shane in panic.
‘That’s what we’re here to talk about,’ says Shane, extending a handshake to Matthew. ‘Good to see ye again. In spite of…’ He trails off.
‘Josh here has been telling us some very interesting things,’ says Matthew chirpily.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I wish I could have got here earlier to introduce you. And to explain.’
‘It’s fine,’ says Matthew. ‘Josh has given us a full account. And made an interesting proposition.’
‘Oh?’ I say.
‘Let me take it from here, if I may,’ says Josh, coming closer. He nods a passing greeting at Shane.
‘Maeve, can you please accompany me to the barn?’ he says, as if he’s asking me to promenade with him in a Jane Austen novel.
‘I’m coming too,’ says Shane.
‘Fine,’ says Josh.
As we walk to the barn, I notice that Josh is carrying two bags – one a small black laptop bag. ‘What’s in the bags?’
‘All will be revealed.’ He’s in much better form than he should be, given the circumstances.
The inside of the barn looks like what I imagine the insides of all barns look like. Bales of hay, farm implements. In the middle of the space is a modern-looking tractor. Josh perches one bag on top of a small stack of hay bales, unzips it and produces a compact laptop.
‘Now,’ he says. ‘If I can have your attention, please.’
‘You already have our attention,’ I say.
‘Prepare to be amazed.’ He presses a button on the laptop. Then, quieter: ‘I hope to God this works.’
He continues, ‘Maeve, remember that time when I went to Singapore for a week? It was when you guys’ – he shoots Shane a look – ‘were touring around Ireland.’
I nod. ‘Yes, I remember. Some last-minute conference thing.’
‘That’s right. It was that conference about digital twin technology.’
‘Sounds creepy,’ says Shane. He kicks a tractor tyre and winces at the lack of rebound.
Josh taps at the keyboard. ‘Well, that conference was more like a workshop. It was very hands-on, very practical. We got to experiment with the software – creating digital copies of systems. They gave us external flash drives.’
I’m beginning to get an inkling. ‘Ohmy God…’
‘What is it?’ asks Shane.
Josh smiles. ‘By George, I think she’s got it.’
My mind is spinning too fast to worry about whether this is patronising or not.
Josh dramatically spins the laptop around to show us. But he seems to have forgotten that he’s balancing it on top of a bale of hay, and the laptop immediately falls over the edge. He catches it clumsily before it hits the ground.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he says. ‘Close one.’ He rakes his fingers through his hair. He’s visibly sweating. I wonder how much sleep he’s had.But if he’s done what I think he has…
‘Behold!’ He returns to his theatrics but holds the laptop with both hands. ‘This is Kobi. Or, at least, a version of Kobi. All his core memories and TIL files – up until that trip to Singapore. Everything except the last three weeks or so. I still don’t have his neural network, of course.’
