Bedlam Read Free Page A

technology, this planet also had some very posh schools.
    ‘Perhaps even forget what you were supposed to be doing. Such as joining up with your unit and getting on with fighting off
     the invasion, what with there being a war on and all.’
    His voice remained quiet but Ross could hear the sternest of warnings in his register. There was control there too, no expectation
     of needing to ask twice. Very bizarrely, Ross was warming to him. Maybe it was the programming, same as whatever was making
     him feel this place was familiar.
    ‘Yes, sorry, absolutely … er … sir,’ he remembered to add. ‘My unit, that’s right. Have to join up. On my way now, sir.’
    ‘That’s “Lieutenant Kamnor, sir”,’ he instructed.
    ‘Yes, sir, Lieutenant Kamnor, sir,’ Ross barked, eyes scanning either way along the corridor as he weighed his options regarding
     which direction Kamnor expected him to walk in.
    He turned and made to return to the staging area. Kamnor stopped him by placing a frighteningly heavy hand on his shoulder.
    ‘Are you all right, soldier?’ he asked, sounding genuinely concerned. ‘You seem a little disoriented. Do you know where your
     unit even is?’
    Ross decided he had nothing to lose.
    ‘I have no idea where
I
even am, sir. I don’t know how I got here. I have no memory of it. I’m not a soldier. I’m a scientific researcher in Stirling.
     That’s Scotland, er, planet Earth, and this morning, that being an early twenty-first-century morning, I had a neuro-scan
     as part of my work. I was still totally biodegradable; I mean, an entirely organic being. When I stepped out of the scanning
     cell, I found myself here, looking like this.’
    Kamnor’s face altered, concern changing to something between alarm and awe, and everything that it conveyed seemedamplified by being the only recognisable piece of humanity amidst so much machine.
    ‘Blood of the fathers,’ he said, his voice falling to a gasp. ‘You’re telling me you were a different form, in another world?’
    ‘Yes sir, lieutenant, sir.’
    ‘Blood of the fathers. Then it truly is the prophecy.’
    Kamnor beheld him with an entirely new regard, readable even in his alloy-armoured body language.
    ‘The prophecy?’ Ross enquired.
    ‘That one would come from a different world: a being who once took another form, but who would be reborn here as one of us,
     to become the leader who rose in our time of need. That time is at hand,’ he added, gesturing to the astonishing scene through
     the huge window, ‘for our world is under attack, and lo, you have been delivered to us this day.’
    Ross half turned to once again take in the sky-shattering conflict in which he had just been told he was destined to play
     a legendary role. A host of confused emotions vied for primacy in dictating how he should feel. Sick proved the winner. He
     recalled hearing the line: ‘Some men are born great, others have greatness thrust upon them.’ He wondered if that also applied
     to heroism. He had no combat training, no military strategy and tended to fold badly in even just verbal confrontations.
    He was about to ask ‘Are you sure?’ but swallowed it back on the grounds that it wasn’t the most leaderly way to greet the
     hand of destiny when it was extended to him. He settled for staring blankly like a tit, something he was getting pretty adept
     at.
    Then Kamnor’s face broke from solemnity into barking, aggressive laughter.
    ‘Just messing with you. Of course there’s no bloody prophecy. You’ve been hit by the virus, that’s all. Been finding chaps
     in your condition for days.’
    ‘Virus?’ Ross asked, his relief at no longer having a planet’s fate thrust into his hands quickly diminished as he belatedly
     appreciated how preferable it was to the role of cannon fodder.
    ‘Yes, sneaky buggers these Gaians. They hit us with a very nasty piece of malware in advance of their invasion force: part
     binary code and part psychological