AN: Alright so I'm officially back at uni for my next term now, but I've got this whole storyline planned and I'm not gonna abandon it halfway through, and it's looking like I might have more free time this term so I really don't know if I'm going to stop writing this and do what I usually do and swap to writing Jenny Who? and Spook Watch or just carry on, but I'll definitely keep going until this Adwin is wrapped up. Also, despite obnoxious overuse of the word "cyber", there's no Cybermen or anything to do with Cybermen here.
Cyber Space
Adam
"Why would you have the headquarters of your big, fancy tech company in Cambridge, then?" Oswin inquired as they drove towards the HQ building in his Porsche. He didn't want to take the TARDIS down too close because of the potential security breach, and because of some very specific members of the company's staff. But also because he didn't want people on the TARDIS nosing around the place; after all, Oswin was his girlfriend, and it had still taken him three-and-a-half months to show her around. If he had his way, she wouldn't have been shown it for years, as long as possible – he was still trying to put her off her desire to meet his parents, which he felt she was getting increasingly annoyed about. "Isn't everything in California?"
"Everything?"
"Yeah, like, everything."
"You think everything is in California?" he glanced at her as he drove, approaching a security gate. She had brought Sprite with them and he was cowering in the foot well in front of her.
"Well that's where everyone always goes. They go to California or they go to New York."
"What about in Calamity Jane? She goes to Chicago in that."
"Oh, yeah…" she mused, like she was trying to develop a theory. A theory about where 'everything' was. But he had thrown a real spanner in the works and now she was trying to concoct a work around. He slowed down at the gate and stopped as the security guard peered at the car. Adam rolled down the window and fumbled in his pocket to try and find his ID card.
"Uh…" he patted his jeans down, checked his hoody, but found no ID. "I think I've forgotten my ID, sorry."
"That's fine, Mr Mitchell," the security guard was almost laughing, "Everyone knows who you are, sir."
"Don't call me sir, please, if that's okay," he said awkwardly. He felt Oswin watching him.
"You're free to go right in," said the guard, pushing a button to raise the barrier.
"What about her?" he indicated Oswin.
"If she's with you, isn't it alright?" he frowned.
"I haven't got any ID, what are you doing?" Oswin hissed at him.
"Yeah, she's fine, actually," he told the guard. What was he doing? "So I can just drive in then, yeah?"
"…Yes," the guard nodded.
"Cool, thanks," Adam smiled. Then he stalled the car when he tried to drive off and had to start it again. For some reason, he apologised to the security guard for this.
"You okay there, Mr Billionaire Tech Mogul?" Oswin asked him once he had got the car going again and had rolled the window back up.
"It's just… y'know. It's nothing, it's nothing. What were you asking me? Why did I build my company HQ in Cambridge? Tons of tech companies do. They call it the Cambridge Cluster. Or Silicon Fen. You know, it's like Silicon Valley, but in the UK."
"That's what I meant about everything being in California."
"Oh," he realised, "This is the building, by the way. It's just one building."
"Holy shit. That's a fuck-off building, babe," Oswin said, leaning forwards to look properly at CyTech HQ. It was practically shimmering underneath the sunlight, no clouds in the sky whatsoever. The day was blue and clear but very cold, frost covering the grass all around. The building was enormous and from the outside looked like it was entirely made of glass, one enormous mirror in the middle of the countryside. Across the closest face the CyTech logo glared back at them; he had always found it very intimidating. Probably because he had stolen the whole software. That logo was a pair of gigantic boots he had no chance of ever filling.
"Yeah, I mean, it's not super impressive. There's this big statue of the Android logo outside of Google headquarters, but we haven't got a mascot to build a statue of," he said, "I wanted to get a statue of Cyborg, though. You know, from the Justice League. But I wasn't allowed. Not without buying the rights to the character. And I would have, you know, but apparently that's a 'bad investment.'" He swung the Porsche around into the carpark and located the spot closest to the door, which was his personal CEO spot.
"It's definitely impressive!" she exclaimed, "I'm impressed, I'm way-impressed."
"How does that work? You come from space."
"Yeah, from a space station. And do you know what one person built up that space station from scratch using their blood, sweat, tears, and exploiting their eidetic memory to steal thousands of lines of unique security code?" she asked him, and he shrugged, "Nobody. It was a tax-funded Alliance venture. With allocated spaces and weird contraception laws to do with population control. Harsh class divides and insulated pockets of wealth, minimal living prospects and zero upwards social mobility. But I think your fancy headquarters is very cool. And you, I think you're cool, too. Come on, then, are you going to show me around inside?" she opened the door.
"Wait – do you have to bring Sprite?" he asked as the robot crawled up her leg and onto her shoulder again. He had a nasty tendency for hiding on her back, so that sometimes when she turned around Adam would be face-to-face with a gigantic insect-looking thing.
"Yes," she said, "I need him." He wasn't going to argue with that, and sighed, getting out of the car himself. He was quite uncomfortable about the whole situation, and had Oswin not been there when the 'data breach' had occurred, he may not have even mentioned it, all to try and avoid her seeing CyTech. "It's cold."
"It's December," he reminded her, getting out of the car, "December 5th. 2013. That's the real date, you know. To me, at least."
"It's May to me, I think," she said, waiting for him to lock the doors, "December 5th, though? My birthday in nine days. I'm going to be twenty-seven on my next one."
"So am I, how spooky," he joked.
"Maybe we're related."
"Don't say that."
"We could be related," she said, "A lot can happen to a family tree in three-thousand years. I think it would be way too distant to make a difference, though."
"I don't want to think about it," he mumbled.
"Don't walk so fast," she said, "Let me take your arm."
"…Okay," he said reluctantly, which perplexed her. He still let her, though, so she didn't question him too much as the large doors of CyTech opened to them automatically. And inside CyTech it was very blue. Blue, grey, white, black, with some bits of silver. Everything had that colour scheme – the funny-shaped, novelty chairs and sofas, the enormous reception desk, the phones were bright blue, the floor was white and so highly-polished it was like a mirror; the company logo was fixed in metal high up on the wall. He hadn't been there for months. At the sight of him, the receptionist dropped her cup of tea on the desk and it spilled everywhere, all over her keyboard.
"Oh my god! Adam! I mean, Mr Mitchell!" He really hated being called 'Mr Mitchell' and often asked them to call him by his first name instead. "Nobody said you would be coming back from Japan today! I'm sorry about the spill, I'll pay for a new keyboard."
"No, you don't have to," he said, "I think that keyboard's worth about two-hundred quid. It'll probably be fine anyway, if you just wipe it – what was that about Japan, though, Angela?" He remembered more or less everybody's names who worked at CyTech, and especially the girl who greeted him every morning. He'd actually gotten into the habit of buying her a coffee on his way in every day, because Angela was quite pretty, but strangely he didn't feel so nervous around her anymore as he used to. Oswin held onto his arm, taking in their surroundings.
"Ms Goddard, she said you were in Japan, working on a confidential research project with Toshiba."
"Right. Toshiba. Confidential. Yeah." He definitely hadn't had any contact with Toshiba or anyone who worked for them. "Is Goddard here today, by any chance?"
"Of course she is."
"Great, can you tell her to meet me in my office in about fifteen minutes?"
"Shouldn't Lucy do that?"
"…Is Lucy here?"
"She called in sick. Ms Goddard stopped getting a temp in to cover for her in September, since you've been gone for so long," Angela said.
"Well then, you can fill in for Lucy and call Goddard, and we'll call it quits for the keyboard, yeah?" he said. She smiled.
"I'll do that right away."
"Awesome." He turned to steer himself and Oswin towards the executive lift which went to the CEO and CFO offices, a lift which required biometrics to use.
"I like your new glasses, by the way," Angela called after him, and he tripped on thin air, making Oswin let go of his arm so that she could regain her balance on her own. "I didn't know you need glasses."
"Yeah, I… kind of," he said. Oswin watched all this, and he thought it must be some sort of record for her in terms of how long she had gone without opening her mouth and making an inappropriate comment. He finally made it to the lift and jammed his thumb over the scanner, where it grew very confused and wouldn't accept him. "Did someone change how the locks work?"
"No," Angela said. The rest of the reception was empty. Normally there were a few people around, there for interviews and business meetings, but it was oddly quiet. He was definitely going to have a lot to discuss with Goddard.
"It's because you're too cold," Oswin whispered, "Biometrics won't work if they think you're dead. Probably thinks you're your own severed hand. Here." She held her cane towards it and the end lit up green for a moment, a little like a sonic screwdriver, and then the lift doors opened. She winked at him. He managed to smile at Angela again, this time without falling over, just as the doors closed. Oswin couldn't bite her tongue any longer. "Why did you never mention that your receptionist is in love with you?"
"There's quite a lot of receptionists here, there's usually three or four on the front desk."
"Not the important part of the question."
"She's not in love with me."
"She literally has the most obvious crush on you – why aren't you going out with her? She's sweet and cute," Oswin said, judging him.
"I'm going out with you. You're sweet and cute. Sometimes. And I don't think she has a crush on me. She's probably just being nice because I'm her boss."
"Babe, come on. She's into you."
"I'll dump you and go ask her out then, shall I?"
"Maybe you'd be better off with a normal girl. One who's not dead and insane."
"But I love your deadness and insanity," he said, right as the lift doors opened. It had been a very smooth ride, he'd barely noticed the thing moving. It had some very unnecessary hydraulics technology to make it feel like that. It opened onto a hallway with light pouring in from the outside through the window at one end. On the right was Lucy's empty desk and the door into the CEO office, on the left was an occupied desk with a secretary he had never seen before – Goddard really liked to fire her secretaries – and the CFO office. They turned right, and he opened the door to reveal the room he hadn't seen for months.
"That's a fancy chair," Oswin pointed out, making a beeline for it as fast as her useless legs would carry her. It was enormous and blue, like all the soft furnishings, and ergonomic. Incredibly padded and incredibly comfortable, he remembered, and now Oswin had claimed it for herself, while Sprite went crawling around the rest of the room, exploring. "What's your thing about windows?"
"Excuse me?"
"Your house is all windows, so is this building. Surely that makes it extra-cold in winter and extra-warm in summer?"
"We've got air conditioning and central heating. And actually, CyTech's offices run one-hundred percent using renewable energy sources," he said, "The company is carbon neutral. Well, it's carbon-negative, because we do fund research into renewable energy and carry out ocean clean-up operations."
"Ocean clean-up? That's a lost cause. Squidzilla's going to show up whether you like it or not," she said, reminding him of the Oxyves system from her century, the enormous, floating greenhouses there to generate oxygen because the planet's agriculture was so dead. "You and Flek would be perfect together if she wasn't a giant lesbian."
"I think you and I are perfect together."
"Aww, babe," she beamed, "Don't let Angela the receptionist hear you say that. So, who are we meeting with, and why?" She leant back in the chair and put her hands together, her fingers touching at their tips. Oswin looked like a better CEO than he ever had.
"My CFO, I've told you about her before. She's… right outside," he realised when he looked at the door and saw the fuming face of Diana Goddard about to force her way in. She was furious, and he regretted not having biometric locks on his office doors, too – but he'd never liked the idea of locking himself in his office. Goddard marched in and crossed her arms. He gave a tiny wave, "Hi there."
"Hi there!?" she demanded, "You up and leave your own company in the middle of the day without a word or any explanation, without assigning anyone to fill in for you, without telling me, and vanish without a trace for almost six months? Abandon all your assets and business deals, threaten all our tentative contracts because the face of the company isn't around to meet with them, force me to fire nearly a dozen secretaries because of the stress of having to act as your replacement, make me field calls from your parents asking why you haven't been in contact with them? Leave me to liaise with these green tech companies about pointless charitable ventures, oversee construction of that ridiculous wind farm, make me find somebody to draw up blueprints for that revolutionary new tidal energy facility you keep promising in press conferences, have meetings with the CIA, MI5, Mossad, and this country's pathetic little administrative cabinet? And worst of all, think of new ways to continually update Cyborg even though I have no programming expertise, and host the interviews for your internship positions? You do all that, forget about every responsibility you have, and then you come back here and waltz right into your office, call for a meeting and then say 'hi there'?"
"God, you've been naughty, haven't you? Maybe you really are a bad boy, after all," Oswin quipped, leaning on the desk.
"The thing is…" Adam began to explain to Goddard, "I met a girl."
"A girl!?" Oswin exclaimed, "Tell me all about her."
"What? That girl?" Goddard pointed at Oswin, "You left your life for half a year because you met a girl?" He had done exactly that.
"You remember the TARDIS? And the Doctor? And the Dalek?"
"No, I've forgotten all about the time everyone I knew was murdered because of a falling out between two aliens which led to me taking over the biggest tech company in the world."
"I thought CyTech is the biggest tech company in the world?" Oswin interjected with what might actually be, miraculously enough, a legitimate question.
"It's complicated," said Adam, "Cyborg is the most widespread software in the world, but because we don't charge most of the people who use it, in terms of revenue we're still being beaten by Microsoft and Apple and Alphabet. And quite a lot of other companies, really. Anyway – I've been on the TARDIS."
"I thought you left?"
"He got kicked off," Oswin said, "But wait – she said she's in charge of the biggest tech company in the world?"
"CyTech bought GeoComTex and merged with it," Adam explained, "So technically all of their intellectual property became my property."
"Like the codes you stole from van Statten originally," Goddard reminded him.
"Yeah, well, after almost all the company's personnel died the share value went so low that they wouldn't have beaten me in court if they wanted to, after I founded CyTech," Adam said to Oswin, "And I very kindly kept on all the remaining staff and Goddard's been my CFO ever since."
"And who is the girl?" Goddard frowned at Oswin.
"I'm Oswin," she said, "I have an IQ of three-fifty-two and I'm his girlfriend."
"Three-fifty-two? That's impossible. That would make you the most intelligent human who's ever lived."
In the chair, Oswin did a kind of miniature bow, "At your service, milady. I'm from the future, and I'm also the Doctor's sister-in-law." At this point, Sprite scuttled across the floor to return to Oswin, done with his adventures around the room, a sight which made Diana Goddard shriek in terror as the robot returned to his usual perch on Oswin's shoulder.
"What is that thing!?"
"It's a robot," said Adam quickly, "Remote controlled. You know, like… Robosapien. Or Roboraptor. But… Robocentipede."
"Cyberpede," said Oswin, "Actually, no, 'cyberpede' sounds like someone who asks underage girls to take their clothes off on webcams."
"Why do you pick today to show up? Today of all days?" Goddard questioned, "The night after we have a break-in?"
"Because we got hacked into. The TARDIS got hacked into, through my personal accounts. Anything I had running Cyborg encryptions is compromised."
"What if they break into your iCloud and publish your nudes?" Oswin asked him.
"I've never taken a nude."
"What if they hack your internet history and find all that weird porn you watch?"
"I don't really watch… uh…"
"Well, what if they hack your internet history and find all that weird porn I watch on your computer? They'll think you're a real sicko if they see any of that stuff. That's some a-grade filth." He had absolutely no idea if she was being serious. "Anyway, look, we really have to go to the server farm, yeah? Enough of this showing me around your fancy-schmancy office – I've got a major hard-on to see what kind of servers the biggest security software developer this side of the galaxy are working with."
"You seem different to his usual type," Goddard said, "Although, he usually doesn't manage to get girlfriends."
"I'm very different – the secret is being clinically insane," she tapped the side of her nose when she said this. "For me to seem 'usual' I'd have to be on so much medication I was practically a vegetable. And not the sexy kind of vegetable, either. The mushy kind."
"That's how you categorise vegetables?" Adam questioned her, "Sexy vegetables and mushy vegetables?"
"Potential dildos and not potential dildos, yes," she nodded. "Anyway. Servers?"
The executive elevator also went down to the server farm, one of two elevators which did, both of which needed very high security clearance to access. But, despite all her talk about being desperate to see the server farm, Oswin was wholly unimpressed. Unimpressed by rows upon rows of incredibly high-tech servers, stacked on top of each other with thin walkways and staircases, the room freezing cold in order to counteract the heat the equipment gave off to keep them working.
"It's kind of small," she remarked as the lift descended down and down and down. It was at least ten storeys of solid electronics. He used to come down there to clear his head for as long as he could cope with the cold, but now the cold didn't bother him, he could probably get lost down there in the mazes of data for hours. "I'll take you to see a server farm in my century. They build them in space stations, these huge space stations, and eventually they moved to building them on the moon. Honestly, in three-thousand years Earth's moon is just one big data hub." Adam had managed to get rid of Diana Goddard before they descended into the server farm to look for the data breach.
"You know, that would actually be really cool."
"Yeah? It's a date, then. You've shown me yours, I'll show you mine." She took her phone out of her coat pocket and connected to the Helix app, which was a million times more convenient than carrying the big handset around since that thing didn't even fit in anyone's pocket. Oswin's phone wasn't using Cyborg to encrypt it, either, so it was the most secure option. "Helix – any more information on the data breach and the source of the signal? In amidst these ancient ruins?"
"The source of the rogue transmission is nearby, Miss Oswald. I am detecting a physical transponder somewhere in the vicinity."
"Brilliant – talk to Sprite, Sprite go fetch," she said as the lift touched down at the bottom of the farm and the doors slid open. There was some indiscernible beeping, and then Sprite jumped down onto the ground and scurried away, looking exactly like a monstrous insect only found in the darkest recesses of the rainforest. Just shinier.
"Do you think you rely too much on AIs?" Adam asked her, putting his hands in his pockets and stepping out of the lift as well.
"I've never thought about it. Do you think I rely too much on AIs?"
"I mean, we probably could have gone and found this transponder, or whatever, ourselves."
"No, what if it's high up somewhere? All those walkways? My legs and your ankle? Sprite needs to go out more, develop himself, grow as an entity. You can't force a personality onto something, you have to watch them grow. That's the best way to learn about AI."
"You do rely on Nios as well, though," he pointed out.
"Well, Nios is… amazing. Don't tell her I called her this, but she's really the most remarkable machine I've ever seen. So remarkable you forget that she is a machine. It's like, you know she's a synthetic, but when you stop to think about what that means, that she's all code and batteries and wires and robotics? And now there's Dr Cohen in the equation? It's fascinating. Not that I'm using her as a guinea pig, or I'm stalking her, or refusing to accept her status as a conscious and independent being, but she is amazing. You've heard that Jenny's teaching her to cook? Where does that come from? She can't even eat, she's never tasted food, but she wants to cook. It's borderline insanity. You should talk to her more."
"I talk to her. Sometimes. She scares me."
"Everyone scares you. Angela who spilled tea everywhere probably scares you."
"She does scare me. And the thought of having to totally revamp Cyborg to deal with this breach really scares me."
"You might not need to, look," she nodded, and there was Sprite crawling back to them along the wall carrying something in his claws. Adam didn't know what it was, some sort of device – the transponder, he assumed. It didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before. Oswin took it from Sprite and Sprite jumped back onto her arm. Then she gave it to Adam so that she could use her phone again. "Helix, what is this thing?"
"See?" Adam said, "Reliant." She hit him in the leg with her cane.
"A transponder, Miss Oswald."
"From where? Or – when?"
"My best estimates place this transponder as being from the Fiftieth Century. It appears to be of Chula origin, and was used to hijack CyTech and send a message to the TARDIS."
"How weird," she said, "Right, then. Is there anywhere we can go so that I can analyse this thing? And so you can get something to eat – it's lunch time, you must be starving." He was starving.
"I know just the place."