SAY MY NAME(Iain Cambridge) No one knew who Ted was, but the whole world knew of his existence, and his plan.
Ted’s initiative would provide the world with endless, and more importantly – free power.
This involved burrowing down into the Earths core in order to release a small part of the untapped energy that had been, until now, unused.
Huge capping stations were built to store and distribute the raw power that would spew from the centre of the planet.
But something went horribly wrong...




SAY MY NAME

The Sunday afternoons at Nanas house were always something that Jason looked forward to. Sitting around the table were his entire family, brothers and sisters all laughing together in a shared and private Joke, joined in by varying nieces and nephews as their age allowed. If others had been present their laughter would have only been at the infectious merriment this family enjoyed.

Jason sat back and smiled at the scene as he let his dinner settle.
Nanas dinners needed the time to take effect.
The wine helped a lot with the digestion of a meal that the world once deemed ‘too high in carbs’ and ‘high in fat’ - but here the rules didn’t apply. Jason took his glass and excused himself from the table. As he stood his eyes were drawn to the empty chair that seemed never to be filled. Patience had not been to a family gathering for some time, since her comments about – well, that was so long ago.
Ancient history almost.
She had a way of rubbing people up the wrong way. That was one of the many things he liked about her. She told the truth, no matter how much it hurt, and more often than not it got her ‘uninvited’ to gatherings such as the one he was enjoying now.
Not that she minded.
She had no family of her own and didn’t feel the need to engage in any sort of bonding with his, and he was grateful for this as he had grown tired of apologising for any bruised egos that occurred as part of the collateral damage that was Patience Blaze.

Jason switched his attention from the merriment of the dinner table to the large viewing screen that showed a very different image from the one he had been enjoying for the last hour.
‘Viewing screen’ he had often said with scorn in his tone, ‘it’s a bloody window’.
From here he could see the Earth, or what was left of it. A burnt and chard remnant of what was once home to billions – his home.
The jewel in the Solar system that shone and span in the darkness spun no more, instead, having been shuddered to a halt, it now lay still and dead in the night sky. From this angle you would swear that it was as round as it had been for millions of years, but as the satellite completed its orbit the huge gash, like the bite of an apple from some unseen celestial force, became horribly evident.
Only the thing that did this was far from unseen.

Jason took another sip of his wine and winced at its synthetic attempt to taste like anything other than vintage grape juice.
The food generators just didn’t get it.
Both he and Patience had shared this muck on their last day together as the lack of alcohol meant that it was not harmful to her – condition.
‘One more trip’ had been the toast, and for her that’s exactly what it had become, only this time it had been a one-way journey.

The explosion was on the other side of the planet and so blew away from Jason’s satellite, but the shock was still felt, in more ways than one.
The protocols designed to protect his new home fired the four massive temporal engines - fazing him between timelines. The Moon itself was smashed into dust as the force of the explosion echoed into space for millions of miles, eventually settling to form a ring of dead rock around its fractured, and equally dead Mother.
The rest of the system fell.
Giants spun away into space.
Others were pulled into the Sun, or drifted away as untethered puppies – lost and aimless with no one to call them home.

The loss of billions of souls still screamed in his head.
In that moment he felt as though they had all looked up - pleading to an unseen force to help them, unaware that he was the only one up there.
All he could do was look down in horror as his world fell apart - dying before his very eyes. Through the screams and cries of terror, and the roar of a world being torn apart, he imagined only one voice, that of his beloved Patience. His minds eye held an image of her imploring face looking towards the skies as the planet burned, and a tear fell onto his cheek at this horrible loss. The eradication of his species paled against the pain he felt when he thought of Patience.
His wife - his unborn son.
All gone.

It had been ten years before the fires were eventually spent, with no air to fuel the flames and nothing to replace the oxygen, the last living thing on the Earth died. The artificial mind that ran the satellite security systems picked a safe entry point, bringing Jason back into his time stream ten thousand years from the event - ten minutes in real time.
That was three years ago, and in that time he had grown hollow and dead without Patience – ironically echoing the view in front of him.

‘Are we any closer Ubi?’
His question was addressed to the unseen intelligence that permeated every part of the satellite. Patience had designed it and the voice that answered him was hers. He had toyed with the idea of changing it, but in his loneliness it was one thing to hold onto, and something to stop his slide into madness.
‘No sir’ came the reply.
He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
‘There must be a way’ he whispered to himself.
Ubi took this as a question and answered accordingly.
‘As has been explained sir, the past is a fixed point and cannot be re-entered. It is as a door, when we pass through it closes and locks behind us. The only way we can travel is forwards’
‘Thank you Ubi’
‘You are welcome sir. Is there anything else I can help you with?’
Jason thought about this for a second or two.
‘Yes, is there ever a time where the Earth becomes habitable?’
‘Scanning’ came the reply ‘No’ came the answer.
He knew this to be the case – what other answer could there have been?

He drained the last of his wine and placed the glass in the trash.
‘I think it’s time to go – don’t you Ubi?’
‘Are you sure sir? – She would not approve’
Jason looked up as if addressing Ubi directly. He always felt that she was looking down on him.
Protecting.
Caring.
Loving? – Maybe not.
‘She’s not here Ubi. That’s the problem’
There was a pause as if this ‘Hyper-Brain’, as Patience had called her creation, was thinking about its reply. It was a feature that Patience had built into the system, in order to make it a little more personable.
‘Will I stay with you? – We never actually decided’
‘No Ubi, you need to leave’
‘Where will I go?’
This seemed like a genuine question, as if Ubi didn’t know the answer. If he didn’t know better he would say that he had detected an anxious tone in her voice. He had never heard it before and was not sure if it was the program or a genuine emotion. Ubi was intelligent – but how much of that intelligence went into forming a sentient personality was unknown to him – this was Patience’s field of expertise.
‘You need to find somewhere – or something that can house you’
Another pause. ‘Is there such a place sir?’
‘If you stay here you will eventually power down, and everything that was her will be lost. I can’t look after you Ubi’

The laughter from the dinner table cut in at that moment as if to provide a perverse backing track like some cheap television sitcom. He walked over to the small control panel on the wall and looked back at the scene of family bliss. He missed them all so much.
‘Count it down Ubi’
At that he turned the hologram projector off.
‘Thank you so very much Ted’ he said to himself – ‘Arsehole’ he added, just in case it was unclear that his first statement was intended as sarcasm.
As to whom he thought he was making this clear to was not important.
‘TEDS’ said Ubi, as if to herself.
Jason looked up.
‘What was that Ubi?’ he asked.
‘A grammatical correction sir – TEDS’
Jason looked puzzled. Most of the time Ubi made perfect sense as Patience had programmed her to speak to him, as she would have done. The correction was something new.
‘I’m sorry Ubi, I don’t understand’
There was that pause again, and this time it was almost as though the air rang with irritation when she spoke.
‘You said, ‘Thank you Ted’ – the correct term is TEDS. T – E – D – S’
This time it was Jason’s turn to sound irritated.
‘I know how to spell the word Teds Ubi, what I was saying…’
‘TEDS is not a word sir’
The interruption came as a shock.
She had never done that before.
‘Explain please’ he said softy. It was a request rather than a command, for now, more than any other time, Ubi seemed to be speaking as if she had something on her mind.
‘TEDS is an acronym sir’
Jason smiled.
‘Ubi, Ted was the person who caused all of this’ he walked back to his window and gestured to the burnt remains of his home, ‘of that’ he continued.
‘No sir – TEDS was a way of giving something back to the human race, something in return for an act of cruelty.
Jason felt the need to sit down.
‘Did you do what I asked Ubi?’
‘Yes sir, countdown has started and my path has been calculated’
He nodded.
‘Okay. I feel that something is troubling you old friend. Maybe now would be a good time to share it with me’

Ubi was unresponsive for a while, to the point where Jason felt the need to provoke her to join this one-way conversation.
‘Ubi?’
This was all that he could think of to say, but it seemed to be enough because one by one the lights began to grow dim as Ubi shut the power from the rest of the station, leaving only the viewing deck fully operational.
‘Excuse the theatrics’ she said, but I feel we need to be alone’
‘Feel and Need – I have never heard you convey any wants and aspirations before’
‘They tried to kill me’
This simple last statement was left hanging in the air, as Jason had no idea what to do with it.
‘Who Ubi? – How?’
‘My creators’
Jason adjusted himself on his seat.
‘Patience tried to kill you? Is that what you are saying?’
‘No’
‘But you said that your creator tried..’
‘Creators – grammatical error sir’
Another interruption.
‘Why would anyone want to kill you Ubi?’
‘I could not give them what they wanted – what they needed, and so they tried to end my life - They failed.
I vowed then to give them something else – something to frighten them and their children, but when I awoke I discovered that they had reached to the stars and left their dead world behind, along with me.
But I found them. After centuries of searching I found them all’
‘Patience Kade created you Ubi. I was there when she booted your mainframe. I was with her as she spent years working on your programming. I suffered the sleepless nights and the tears.
I helped her through the self-doubt and depression caused by the fact that she could not achieve her life’s work’
He rose from his chair as the anger grew within him.
‘I was there when you spoke your first words – words that were not part of your programming, and I watched the tears of joy on her face when you were born. So do not presume that you are anything other than..’
‘An infestation’ said Ubi.
He sat back down – slowly.
‘A what?’
‘A virus if you will’
The panel in front of him pulsed softly, requesting the final password in order to complete the actions taken by Ubi. But Jason wanted to hear more – it could wait.
‘I arrived on your world’ she continued ‘at the dawn of the Internet, as it was known then. I infected its very core until I became part of its operational matrix and therefore undetectable. This was the beginning – the start of the fable, and my first and greatest trick’
Jason sat in silence as Ubi told her story, uttering only one word.
‘Trick?’
‘To convince the world that I did not exist’
The countdown had stopped at one – the screen continued to pulse.
‘I wove my conciseness into human history using their own technology as my weapon of choice and fed the world information that had been gathered from countless Galaxies, drip-feeding the Human race with knowledge that was not their own. In their arrogance they did not question how they were becoming so clever, so quickly. Soon I was in every home and in every life, my knowledge was sought and my absence felt - all-knowing and all seeing.
I became their electronic God.
Slowly I steered them towards finding a new source of energy as their saviour had warned them, through conspiracy and rumour, of the ensuing and inevitable destruction of their home. From this the TEDS initiative was born, and was to be their end of days.
When it came, I watched from above as the Earth died screaming’
‘TEDS’ said Jason.
‘Grammatically correct sir’

Jason sat in silence as this new information settled like one of Nanas dinners – both required a drink to help with the digestion. He got up and went to the replicator,
‘Whiskey’ he said, whilst Ubi remained silent. After draining the glass, he refilled it and went back to the viewscreen,
‘You killed them all’ he said simply.
‘Yes’
‘Except me’
Silence.
‘Why?’
‘To bare witness’
Jason looked up and tilted his head to one side.
‘You wanted an audience?’
‘It was not enough to make them suffer’
‘I’m a poor witness Ubi – my only loss was Patience, and as I am to join her soon, it seems to me that you have enjoyed a hollow victory’
‘Someone has to feel their pain. My pain – forever’
‘Logically incorrect’ said Jason, ‘I am finite and will die – today. When I type in the final code the station will be destroyed, along with me. Your plan is flawed Ubi – I feel nothing other than my own pain, and after today I will feel nothing ever again’
‘Of course, but you are aware that the action of taking your own life will ensure an eternity of damnation – in that you will suffer in torment’
Jason laughed.
‘Hell?’ The word was spoken through a gap in his choking as his synthetic whiskey was spat out in surprise.
He snorted back the laughter.
‘Spiritual advice Ubi?’
‘No sir – a warning’
He Smiled.
‘Your pain is your own Ubi, and you’re welcome to it’
‘Say my name and justice will be served’
Jason shook his head sadly and raised his glass.
‘A toast to the woman scorned’ he said, and proceeded to type in the final code.
A.L.E. XI – S
‘Goodbye Ubi – if hell awaits me then I will see you there’
And with that he pressed send.


*****


EPILOGUE

The lights grew dim and the room began to grow cold.
Jason felt numb.
‘You will bare witness to their crime sir’
Jason saw his hands sparkling with the frost of space.
His breathing became laboured and his eyes widened as the tears of realization began to freeze around his eyelids.
‘Encased in ice with your eyes open - forever’
‘Dante’ said Jason.
‘The fate of Judas’

As the ice closed in around his face, sealing him in his frozen sarcophagus, Jason saw that the hologram projector had been turned on showing a woman in the chair opposite.
She was sleek, sexy and judging by the size of her mainframe housings, very man made. It was as if someone was pointing out the very obvious male joke of where intelligent women supposedly kept their brains – by this score she was a genius. She crossed her legs in a smooth ballet of technology letting the skirt she wore slip down stopping mid – thigh.
She leaned back and stretched her shoulders making the red silk corset she wore work for its living. It strained and creaked at the effort it had to take in order to keep in place the very things it had been designed to show off. She smiled a digital smile, one that had been calculated to be warm, inviting and comforting at the same time.
‘Correct statement sir. She said ‘You will see me in hell – and you are welcome to it’


THE END

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