The Jamie Drake Equation Page 7

  Without me touching it, the photo suddenly zooms until Dad’s face fills the screen. I can see every detail of his smile, his sunny features unlined with worry. He looks so happy – just like the rest of us. I search his eyes for any trace of doubt – looking for a sign that could explain what’s gone wrong, but I can’t see a thing.

  “Where is your dad?” Buzz asks.

  Outside my bedroom window, the sky is ink-black with a blanket of stars scattered across it. I hold the phone up to the open window.

  “He’s up there,” I say sadly, scanning the sky for any sign of the International Space Station.

  For a second, the low hum of the phone’s vibration seems to quieten as if Buzz is looking out from the camera lens. Then I hear the soft tone of its voice again.

  “That is where we come from too.”

  As I hold the phone up, I see a new picture appear on the screen, pale pinpricks of light studding the sky above Beacon Hill. I recognise the shapes of the different constellations Dad showed me when we stargazed together on nights like this: Pisces and Pegasus, Cygnus the swan and Aquila the eagle with the bright star of Altair shining from its head. When Dad first taught me how to look at the stars, I could never quite see the shapes of the animals and people that gave the constellations their names. We’d spend hours tracing their shapes in the sky, while Dad told me crazy stories about Greek myths and gods. But now as I look at the Archer with his bow drawn low over the horizon, these shapes Dad showed me are all I can see.

  “From the stars…”

  As I stare at my mobile, the shapes of these constellations suddenly shatter into pieces. I watch, amazed, as the stars begin racing towards the screen, pinpricks of pure white light erupting into brilliant blue flares and then fading to a red glow at the edge of the screen, again and again and again. It’s like some out-of-control spaceship is taking me on a tour of the galaxy, travelling at the speed of light. I see clouds of dust and gas scattering into spirals and swirls as the emptiness of space surrounds me.

  “We’ve travelled so very far.”

  In the centre of the screen, I see a single pinprick of light grow larger before splitting into twin stars, these bright white sparks transformed into fiery spheres. In the shadow of the larger star, I see the shape of a planet in orbit, a blue-green world that almost looks like Earth.

  “Is this where you come from?” I murmur, watching hypnotised as the blue-green planet fills the screen. As the camera swoops, I can’t tear my gaze away from the bizarre alien landscape that’s unfolding in front of me, so strange yet strangely familiar too.

  Twin suns shine in a bright purple sky above a vast forest filled with giant plants and ferns. Black flowers bloom in every direction and rising above these I can see huge golden spirals, shimmering like trapped sunlight. These unearthly skyscrapers are exactly the same as the ones I drew in class today, but instead of pastel colours they now glisten in high definition. This impossible picture – these imaginary alien cities spiralling into the sky – it’s all real.

  “Home.”

  The soft vibration of Buzz’s voice echoes inside my head. As the camera twists, the screen seems to blur as it circles round this enormous alien structure. It looks as if it’s made of liquid metal, its golden surface pulsing as a swarm of creatures rise up into the sky. The sound of their beating wings buzzes from the phone as behind them on the screen I watch the sun being pulled apart by an invisible hand.

  The picture slowly fades to blackness as the phone stops vibrating. I jab my finger against the screen – not wanting this weird science-fiction film to end. It’s like my mobile phone has suddenly got a billion-dollar special effects budget and I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

  But the only thing that appears is the golden spiral on my home screen, the icon now spinning soundlessly.

  “Was that you?” I ask, the blurry image of those alien creatures frozen in my mind. I should feel scared, but somehow I know that Buzz doesn’t mean me any harm.

  “We are the Hi’ive.”

  The golden spiral pulses in time with the sound of Buzz’s voice. The robotic tone that I heard when Buzz first started speaking has completely disappeared now. I can’t tell whether I’m speaking to a man or a woman, but does that even mean anything when you’re talking to an alien?

  “If you’re an alien,” I ask, trying to make sense of the impossible, “how do you even understand English?”

  The phone begins to vibrate in my hand, jumping like a flea with every buzz. I see countless texts scrolling across the screen, almost too fast to read. It looks like every text I’ve ever sent or received all scrolling by in the blink of an eye. A babble of voicemail messages erupt from the speaker, the sound of these all blurring into a single buzzing whine.

  “We are the Hi’ive,” Buzz replies. “We learn.”

  I stare at the phone, my head ready to explode. But before I can ask another question, my bedroom door starts to open and I quickly shove my buzzing mobile under my pillow.

  “What are you looking at?” Charlie asks as she peers round the door. “Is it rude?”

  “No,” I say, my face flushing red all the same. I switch on my bedside lamp, Charlie taking this as a green light to shuffle into my room. “What are you doing out of bed anyway? You were supposed to be asleep ages ago.”

  Charlie’s wearing her Peppa Pig pyjamas and, as she climbs on to my bed next to me, I can tell that she’s been crying.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask, putting my arm around Charlie’s shoulder as she hugs her favourite teddy close to her chest. Dad gave this to Charlie just before he took off for the International Space Station. The cuddly bear is dressed in a bright silver spacesuit and Dad named it Teddy Gagarin, but Charlie just calls it Teddy Gaga now. “Are you OK?”

  “I had a bad dream,” Charlie replies with a snuffle, wiping her nose with the bear’s furry paw. “I dreamt that aliens stole Daddy’s spaceship and he couldn’t find his way home.”

  She looks up at me, her cheeks still blotchy and red.

  “I want Daddy,” she sobs, breaking into tears again. “I want him home now.”

  From upstairs I can hear the sound of Mum moving things round in her attic studio. Usually this would be my cue to shout upstairs and let Mum come and deal with Charlie. But after our argument, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I need to try something else to distract her.

  “Hey,” I say, lifting Teddy Gagarin’s paw to wipe Charlie’s tears away. “Do you think Teddy Gaga would let any aliens steal Dad’s spaceship?”

  “No,” Charlie sniffs.

  “No,” I agree. “And you know what he’d do if they tried? He’d duff them up – just like this.” Waggling his arms, I show how Teddy Gagarin would throw some furry kung fu moves to fight off the aliens. “Douf! Douf! Douf!”

  Charlie giggles.

  “So you don’t need to worry about Dad getting lost in space. He’ll be back home next week to tell you and Teddy all about his adventures.”

  I get up from the bed, reaching my hands out to Charlie before lifting her down.

  “Come on,” I say. “Let’s get you back to bed before Teddy Gaga goes kung fu crazy.”

  Charlie holds my hand as I lead her across the landing back to her bedroom. Through a crack in the curtains, the moon throws soft shadows over her Winnie the Pooh wallpaper. As she climbs into bed, I can see the fat yellow bear floating through the sky above her head. A bit like Dad really, although the ISS has solar panels instead of a blue balloon like Winnie the Pooh.

  Deep inside, I feel the same surge of emotion that fuelled Charlie’s tears. I wish Dad was home too, but if he and Mum are really splitting up, I don’t know how long he’ll stay for…

  With her head on her pillow, Charlie looks up at me with her big brown eyes.

  “Aliens aren’t real, are they, Jamie?” she says, her nightmare now fading in the glow from her Peppa Pig nightlight.

  “No,” I lie as I tuck her in under the
covers. “You don’t need to worry about aliens.”

  16

  “So Dan, in just over twenty-four hours’ time you will be stepping out of the International Space Station to spacewalk to the Lux Aeterna launch platform. There, you will launch the Light Swarm probes, sending those tiny spaceships on a hundred-trillion-kilometre trip to the stars in search of alien life. How are you feeling?”

  The camera cuts from the glossy-haired presenter on the breakfast TV sofa to my dad on board the International Space Station. He’s floating in exactly the same place as where I spoke to him yesterday, holding one finger to his ear as he waits to hear the question.

  “Daddy!” Charlie throws her arms up in excitement at the sight of Dad on the TV screen. Her left hand catches the edge of her bowl of porridge, flipping it up into the air before gravity drops its contents all over Granddad.

  “Oh, Charlie,” Mum says, grabbing a cloth from the kitchen sink as the porridge bowl clatters to a halt at her feet. Granddad looks down at his Death Panda T-shirt – Charlie’s porridge splats giving the cartoon panda on the front a messy makeover. Shocked by the launch of her UFP – Unexpected Flying Porridge – Charlie bursts into tears and I have to strain my ears to catch Dad’s reply.

  “I feel very proud,” he says, a slight buzzing echo on his words as they bounce around the world. “Everyone has worked so hard to make this mission a success. From the scientists and engineers back at home who developed and built the Light Swarm technology, to all the astronauts who constructed the orbital launch platform. I’m just a small cog in a much larger machine, but I feel hugely honoured that when I press that button at the launch platform tomorrow, I will be helping the human race to take our first step to the stars.”

  “And how do you think your family will be feeling now?” the presenter asks as the time delay kicks in again.

  I should be feeling proud too, but instead I just feel so resentful. It seems like Dad’s more bothered about being a famous astronaut now than he is about being a dad. I look around the kitchen table. Mum’s giving Charlie a hug, my little sister still sobbing as Granddad tries to de-porridge his T-shirt with the wet cloth. Maybe family life just isn’t exciting enough for him.

  “I think they might be a little nervous,” Dad finally replies. “But hopefully they’re all feeling proud of me.”

  “We all are, Dan,” the TV presenter says with a smile. “There’s only ten seconds left on the satellite so we’ve got to let you go now, but everyone here wishes you the very best of luck with your mission tomorrow.” With a final wave, the picture of my dad disappears from the screen to be replaced by a weather map. “And to find out whether it will be bright and sunny for Dan’s spacewalk, let’s hear the forecast from Clare.”

  Reaching for the remote, Mum switches off the TV, prompting a fresh howl from Charlie.

  “Come on, silly,” Mum says, giving Charlie a cuddle as she lifts her out of her chair. “Your dad will be home soon.” She looks across at me as I push my own chair back from the table. “Do you want a lift to school, Jamie, after I’ve dropped Charlie off at nursery?”

  Feeling the faint buzz of my mobile phone in the depths of my pocket, I quickly shake my head. If Mum gets me in the car on my own, she’ll just start talking about the divorce and that’s the last thing I want to think about now.

  “No thanks. I’d rather walk today.”

  * * *

  I’ve not had the chance to look at my phone properly since it went all intergalactic on me last night. When I got back to my room after putting Charlie to bed, Buzz seemed to have shut down. Now as I near the school gates with my mobile in my hand, my thumb hovers over the spiral icon, just waiting for it to start spinning again.

  To be honest, I didn’t sleep much last night. In science-fiction films there are usually two types of aliens. There are the cute, cuddly ones like E.T. who just want to get back home to their own planet, and then there’re the bug-eyed aliens who blow up the White House and take over the world. Now, I’m really hoping that Buzz is the first type, but the thing is there are tons more movies made about evil alien invaders and, technically, Buzz has hijacked my phone…

  “BZZZ.”

  Flinching in surprise, I glance down at the screen. The golden spiral is spinning again, its unfurling loop growing wider with every turn. As Buzz’s voice hums from the speaker, I feel an answering buzz in my brain.

  “Synchronising. BZZZ.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, feeling slightly panicked as the tip of my finger flickers brightly beneath the sunlight. “What’s happening to me?”

  “We are connected.” Buzz’s voice echoes inside my head. “It is time for you to learn about the Hi’ive.”

  For a second, I stare at my phone dumbfounded. The golden spiral is still spinning, but my eyes can’t seem to focus on this. It feels as though I’m looking at the screen through a piece of wire gauze – just like the ones we use in Science – but this one’s tinted gold. I blink, trying to clear my vision, but when I open them again, my heart skips a beat.

  On the screen, I can see a huge golden spiral reaching up into a purple sky, but then the picture shifts and suddenly I’m plunging into its heart.

  I can almost feel the pressure of the onrushing air, the picture spiralling dizzily as it swoops through a thick golden haze. My ears pop, the sound of the humming inside my head suddenly louder. Beneath my fingers, my phone feels sticky to the touch as I watch the screen seem to expand and my vision fills with the most unbelievable sight.

  I’m hanging suspended in a cathedral of light, this vast space filled with endless rows of hexagonal cells, spiralling in every direction. Each cell gleams with an unearthly glow, their golden lights flickering to the hum of a billion buzzing voices lifted up in what sounds like a prayer.

  Inside my head, I feel Buzz’s presence flickering inside my mind.

  “We are old – so much older than you. And we know so much.”

  I’m not just seeing this any more – it’s like I’m inside a liquid gold hive or maybe it’s inside of me. For a second, I almost forget to breathe and feel like I’m drowning in an ocean of light, every particle humming with information. I catch glimpses of the impossible reflected in the light, ideas so far beyond my understanding I can’t even begin to put them into words.

  That’s when I realise. This is the Hi’ive. Everything they’ve ever said. Everything they’ve ever done. Everything they’ve ever known. Their art, their science, their stories, their songs – all trapped inside this shimmering light.

  “We are many and we are one. The living and the dead and the yet to come. We are the Hi’ive.”

  The humming sound surrounds me now, so beautiful and strange. It’s like the air itself is an invisible library, the books filled with sunlight.

  That’s when I see them, a swarm of strange alien creatures dancing towards the light. Just like before, I can’t quite make out their features, only their silvery wings beating against the shimmering air. I watch as they whirl in spiralling circles, their every movement pulsing through the vast structure until it vibrates with an unstoppable energy.

  “This is what we were.” Buzz’s voice hums inside my head. “Frail creatures of muscle and brain, so vulnerable to harm. We had learned so much, harnessing the energy of the stars, but then the darkness came.”

  I don’t know which way is up or down any more – my head is spinning as Buzz’s voice fills my brain. But at the summit of this spiralling hive of light, there’s an open circle of sky. Through this I can see a giant sun, its golden sphere slowly being shredded into blazing jets of gas. It’s as if it’s being devoured by some invisible predator, flailing in its death throes as the sky turns black.

  “The Hi’ive had to choose. Our bodies or our minds. There was no choice.”

  At the centre of the vast structure, I see a golden beam stretching up to the stars. The alien creatures spiral in perfect circles as they ascend into the heart of the shimmering beacon, th
eir bodies surrendering to its brilliance until they can no longer be seen.

  “We went into the light,” Buzz sings.

  My mind reels as this golden light surrounds me too.

  “And then we swarmed.”

  Suddenly I feel myself catapulted across space. It’s like the intergalactic tour that Buzz gave me last night is now running backwards, flares of light endlessly erupting and being extinguished in the blink of an eye. I see planets, asteroids, comets and satellites whizzing past, before I catch a glimpse of the Hubble Space Telescope, its solar panels angled towards the Sun as the giant eye of its lens fills the screen. I wince, waiting for an impact that never comes as the golden light spins through a whirling hall of mirrors before finally tumbling into darkness.

  Blinking in surprise, I open my eyes to find that I’m standing outside the school gates. The phone is still in my hand, the golden spiral slowly turning as Buzz speaks again.

  “We are the Hi’ive. We survived.”

  “It wasn’t real,” I murmur, unable to shift the image of the aliens dancing to their deaths as the light swallowed them whole. That same light racing across the universe until it hit the Hubble Space Telescope.

  “We are as real as you are,” Buzz replies, the words softly buzzing from my phone. “We have just moved beyond the limits of the physical world. Inside every atom in the universe is a fireball of light, a constant flow of photons that keeps every particle intact. This is where we live now – where our minds still thrive. We are creatures of the light. We are the Hi’ive.”

  My head is spinning with everything that I’ve seen and heard, but it all makes a crazy kind of sense now. Professor Forster was wrong. When that light hit the Hubble Space Telescope, it wasn’t a signal or some kind of message from the stars – it was the Hi’ive. Their entire civilisation beamed across trillions of kilometres of space until it finally struck Hubble’s mirror. And as the sensors at the heart of the telescope transmitted this signal to the Laser Optical Ground Station that was hooked up to Professor Forster’s laptop – that was the moment I plugged my phone in.