Boys, eh?

Maddy says we need to grow a new support unit. A new Bob. Just in case another time shift comes along that we need to deal with. Only, the new Bob won’t be entirely new. The body will, yes, but she says we can upload Bob’s AI back into it and he’ll be exactly like he was… and not the retarded idiot that plopped out of the growth tube last time. Which is a relief. Bob was so-o-o-o stupid when he was first born.

We fixed the growth tubes. Some got damaged by those creature things that broke in, but they’re all functioning now, and we’ve got them filled up with that stinking protein solution the foetuses float in. We had to steal a load of that gloop from a hospital blood bank. It’s the fake blood they use, the plasma stuff, but with a witches’ brew of added vitamins and proteins.

Honestly, it’s like runny snot. But worse than that, because it smells like vomit.

What we don’t have yet, though, are the foetuses. Apparently we can’t go and grab any old one — they’re specially genetically engineered sometime in the future…

Maddy looked at Liam. ‘You ready?’

‘Aye,’ he replied, shivering as he stood behind her in nothing more than a pair of striped boxer shorts, and holding a watertight bag full of clothes.

She looked down at her own shivering body, trembling beneath her T-shirt. ‘Maybe one day we could get around to rigging up something to heat the water before we jump in.’

‘That’s for sure.’

She climbed the steps beside the perspex cylinder, looking down into the cold water, freshly run from the water mains. She settled down on the top step beside the lip of the cylinder and dipped her toes in.

A wet departure — that was the protocol. To ensure that nothing but them and the water they were floating in was sent back in time… and not any chunks of floor, or carpet or concrete or cabling that had no possible reason to exist in the past.