Future Friend

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

Published in this ebook edition in 2020

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © David Baddiel 2020

Cover and interior illustrations copyright © Steven Lenton 2020

Cover design © HarperCollins Children’s Books

David Baddiel and Steven Lenton assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work respectively.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008334208

Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780008334239

Version: 2020-10-03

To the other member of my family, Stasia K

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Hello readers

Part One

Chapter 1: The Stadium Above the Clouds

Chapter 2: HouseUnit 72

Chapter 3: A kind of toy

Chapter 4: Any questions?

Chapter 5: Basic regulation

Chapter 6: TRANSPORTER

Chapter 7: Whatever You’re Looking For, We’ve Got it … Somewhere

Chapter 8: Inflatable dartboard

Chapter 9: Retro day at the stadium

Chapter 10: THE CHICKENS HAVE SURRENDERED!

Chapter 11: Pretty Polly! Pretty Polly!

Chapter 12: Just a real blink

Chapter 13: THE All-Weather Brella

Chapter 14: So silver

Part Two

Chapter 15: Keep ’em peeled

Chapter 16: Bobbins

Chapter 17: Pippa von Vandersteiner

Chapter 18: Don’t groan!

Chapter 19: WIE GEHT ES DIR HEUTE?

Chapter 20: Forty different types of screwdriver fittings

Chapter 21: Tweet, tweet tweet tweet tweet

Chapter 22: Meow

Chapter 23: MindLink

Chapter 24: A cup of Hot Fudge Vita-Tea

Chapter 25: IS THAT THE BELL?

Chapter 26: And not just pig colds

Chapter 27: Much activity in the fear regions

Chapter 28: VERY DEADPAN

Chapter 29: I’m calling a meeting

Chapter 30: A weird thing to make up!

Chapter 31: Fwam!

Chapter 32: The EMSTS ZXC/999

Chapter 33: Lederwhatty?

Chapter 34: Oops

Chapter 35: One-star rating

Chapter 36: Last one

Part Three

Chapter 37: Don’t be ridiculous

Chapter 38: An inventor, not a planner

Chapter 39: Pip vs Pip

Chapter 40: SUCK IT UP

Chapter 41: Free

Chapter 42: Sill-ee

Chapter 43: It’s complicated

Chapter 44: MUMMY AND DADDY

Chapter 45: The ‘Oh!’

Chapter 46: SOMEWHERE VERY DIFFERENT

Chapter 47: Flackle-alikes

Chapter 48: Surely no one was going to believe this?

Chapter 49: Say something!

Chapter 50: A tiny bit more time

Chapter 51: My friend

Chapter 52: Like rockets

Chapter 53: A memento

Chapter 54: What if it explodes?

Chapter 55: It’s a lovely day

Chapter 56: The boy from Block 5

Chapter 57: The magical fairy-story part

Coda: (IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE ENDING)

Keep Reading …

Books by David Baddiel

About the Publisher

Hello readers,

Thank you for buying this book (or, at least, for picking it up in the bookshop and reading this bit). I just wanted to let you know something, which is: this story mainly takes place in 2019. Originally, when I started writing it, in January 2020, it mainly took place in 2020. But then things happened in the world – the real world, I mean – which made me think: Hmm. Might be better to set this story just before all that.

Actually, some parts of this book take place in 3020. And, as you’ll see, the way I wrote the world as it might be in 3020 is kind of a bit like things actually got in 2020 for a while (and I suppose, although hopefully not, might get again). It was almost like I knew what was going to happen. I’d like to go ‘weeoooweeoooweeoooweeooo’ now (that’s the actual word for the music they have in films when a magic thing happens, of course) as if I did magically know that, but I didn’t.

Anyway. Now this book mainly takes place in 2019, before everything that happened in 2020 happened … but what the world is like in 3020 is what the world might be like unless we … Well, maybe you need to start the book and see.

Enjoy,

David

As ever, it was hard for Pip@256X#YY.3_7’s mum to get her out of bed. This was because Pip@256X#YY.3_7 was eleven and eleven-year-olds often are hard to get out of bed. But it was also because Pip@256X#YY.3_7 slept in a pod that had a built-in DreamSet, and last night she had programmed it for a Scoring the Winning Goal in the World League Final dream.

At the point at which her mum started knocking on the window of her BedPod, Pip@256X#YY.3_7 had, in fact, scored that goal, and celebrated by whooshing round the ground in her GravityLess Boots. But there was still the Great Slide down from the Stadium Above the Clouds to do, and she wasn’t going to miss that: it always looked like such fun when the winning team zoomed down the giant slide, holding up the trophy. So she just let the DreamSet reframe her mum’s Knock! Knock! Knock! so that it became the crowd chanting, ‘Pip! Pip! Pip!’

The Great Slide down from the Stadium Above the Clouds was great. The tallest in the solar system, the slide was made from Graphite42, a metal that was completely friction-free, and Pip whooshed down it at what felt like over a thousand kilostrands a minute! And the view, as she approached the City from above, was fantastic! She was nearly at the bottom when …

BUMP!

Her progress was halted by the GravityLess Boots of someone hovering in the way.

‘HEY!’ shouted Pip, rubbing her face. ‘You can’t be here!’

‘I can,’ said the person hovering in the way. ‘I’m your mum.’

‘I know!’ said Pip. ‘But this is my dream!

‘Yes,’ said Nina@256X#YY.3_7, ‘but I’m your mum!’

‘You just said that!’

‘Yes, but you seem to be forgetting it. And also that I have one of these!’

Nina took from the pocket of her ImageSuit a small crystal inscribed with the words: DreamSet: Override Control.

‘Oh no …’ said Pip. ‘Mum …’

Nina rotated the crystal. Instantly, everything – the Great Slide, the view up to the Stadium Above the Clouds, the view down to the City – dissolved like tears in rain. And was replaced by Pip in her BedPod, looking up at her mum standing outside the window of her pod. Nina’s ImageSuit was now set to StandardMum. She had her arms crossed.

‘Now what’s going on?’ said Pip. ‘I thought your Dream Override could only change my dream – not actually wake me up?’

‘You’re not awake,’ said her mum. ‘I just changed your dream to this.’

‘What … I’m now dreaming that I’m at home in my pod?’

‘Yes.’

‘What a rubbish dream!’

‘Yes. Which is why you might as well wake up.’

Pip sighed. She blinked three times, and woke up. She stretched, yawned, and pressed the button by the side of her AirMattress. The window of her pod opened with a smooth hiss. She frowned.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘have I woken up? Because this looks exactly the same as my dream.’

‘Yes,’ said her mum. ‘Good morning – time for school!’

Luckily for Pip, who felt quite tired after all the dream confusion, school in 3020 was not somewhere you went. She did still have to get dressed, and eat breakfast, but it helped that these things didn’t involve a lot of effort.

Pip, like everyone in 3020, had a small wireless chip implanted in her brain called a MindLink. The MindLink synced up to some of the items in her HouseUnit. So, when she wanted to get dressed, all she had to do was picture herself wearing her ImageSuit, and immediately it flew out of the cupboard and – once she stuck her arms out – fitted itself round her.

The same with her boots: she lay down on the floor, stuck her legs up, wiggled her feet, then thought about them with boots on, and they – the boots – hovered from the side of the pod (where she’d left them yesterday) and slid themselves on to those very same feet.

Pip’s breakfast didn’t take much in the way of effort either. Not because the pots and pans and food flew on to the CookStation when she went into the FoodSpace and thought about them via MindLink – although she could have done that – but because it was made by someone else. Not her mum or dad: they were already busy working in the LabSpace. No, Pip’s breakfast was made by Pip 2.

You’ll meet it – no, let’s be nice and call it her – in a minute.

This morning’s breakfast was Pip’s favourite: boiled egg and soldiers. (Not a boiled-egg-and-soldiers pill, but real boiled egg and soldiers; just because this is the future doesn’t mean everything’s going to be like you expect it to be from films. Although obviously the egg had been made from chicken cells, not laid by an actual chicken. Actual chickens lived in Zone X, where they had formed a very anti-human army, and refused to lay eggs any more.)

Once Pip had dressed and eaten breakfast, it was indeed time for school. Or, as you would call it if you lived in 3020, the Learning Matrix. TLM was, as you might have guessed, an online school.

I know you might think that you do a lot of things online. But, in 3020, everything happens online. This is partly because in the future computers are more advanced, but also because almost no one goes outside in 3020. It’s too hot or, in some places, too flooded, and also there are some very nasty bugs floating about, some of which come from the mutant animals that have taken over a lot of the Earth, and some of which were produced by humans as weapons, in the various wars between now and then.

This is why Pip’s family name was @256X#YY.3_7. With nearly all communication outside the HouseUnit happening by computer, normal surnames had been replaced, a long time before, with an online address. Obviously, with twenty-four billion people in the world – and a whole section of the animal kingdom, particularly the chimps, now online as well – this meant that everyone had to have a long, complicated address.

To start today’s lesson, Pip sat in her HouseUnit’s MainSpace, and reached for her G-Glasses. Before she put them on though, she looked over to Block 5. Pip and her family – which was just her and her mum and dad, as the Population Police only allowed one child per family – lived in HouseUnit 72. This was about halfway up Block 4, one of twenty enormous skyscrapers in Zone J, one of the poorer zones of the City.

Pip saw that the sky was very red, like it was most of the time, and she could hear – as you could most of the time – the distant sound of thunder. But, across the way, Pip could see the boy in the window of his HouseUnit. He was just about to put on his G-Glasses as well. As he sometimes did, the boy looked up – they both knew what time they were meant to start school – smiled and waved. Pip smiled and waved back. He turned away and put his G-Glasses on.

Pip frowned. She wished she knew him better, but though she could see him clearly – and liked his nice face and friendly smile – he was too far away for her to ImageSearch for his name.

Pip sighed and put on her G-Glasses. At first, these just looked like ordinary glasses, but, after a second, the lenses went dark. They bleeped, and a series of lights went on around the edges of the lenses. In Pip’s vision, a schoolroom appeared, although she was the only pupil.

Miss Lucy was waiting for her.

‘Hello, Pip,’ she said.

‘Hello, Miss Lucy,’ said Pip.

‘I’ll be your teacher today.’

‘You’re my teacher every day,’ said Pip.

Miss Lucy frowned, and the edges of her body froze for a second, then unfroze.

‘I have processed that statement, and found it to be a little bit rude,’ she said. ‘Part of your learning is politeness.’

‘Sorry, Miss Lucy.’

‘Just because I don’t exist is no reason to make fun of me.’

‘You do exist,’ said Pip.

‘Not in the real world,’ said Miss Lucy, looking a bit sad. Her body froze and unfroze again. ‘Sorry, that was a Human Emotion glitch. Anyway,’ she said, ‘today we’re going to be doing history.’

‘Oh good,’ said Pip. ‘Which period?’

‘Your favourite. The twenty-first century.’

‘Hey,’ said a voice to Pip’s left, ‘no one’s fed me my Kitty Chunks.’

‘Hold on, Miss L,’ said Pip.

‘Is that Squeezy-Paws@256X#YY.3_7?’ she replied.

‘Yes,’ said Pip, taking the G-Glasses off and looking down at a large – really, an absolute unit, a total chonk of a – cat. ‘Are you telling the truth?’

‘How dare you!’ said the cat in a slow, rather posh drawl. ‘I always tell the truth.’

‘No, she doesn’t,’ said a high-pitched – a better word would be squawky – voice.

Pip looked over at the BirdCube. Dag – the family’s green parrot, who lived in a see-through cube, which hovered below the middle of the ceiling – was staring in a bored way at Squeezy-Paws.

‘Shut up, parrot.’

‘You shut up, cat.’

‘No, you shut up. Fat idiot.’

‘Oh, I know you are. But what am I?’

‘Guys,’ said Pip, ‘stop arguing. What’s the point of animals evolving speech if that’s all you’re going to do?’

‘I’ve told you before, Pip,’ said Dag, ‘saying that is offensive to parrots. We could speak centuries ago! And then, after years of lagging behind, the other animals caught up. But now people forget how we parrots led the way!’

‘Well, the truth is, Dag,’ said Miss Lucy, appearing as a full-size hologram in the middle of the room, ‘that all that parrots used to say, in the olden days, was Pretty Polly! Pretty Polly! over and over again.’

‘That’s all you thought we were saying,’ muttered Dag darkly.

‘This is all fascinating,’ said Squeezy-Paws, ‘but meanwhile who’s going to feed me?’

‘Not me,’ said Dag. ‘I can’t leave this cube, can I? It’s a prison, I tell you, for a bird. I should be allowed to fly! That’s what birds do!’

‘Dag,’ said Pip with a sigh, ‘you know it wouldn’t be safe. The air filters would suck you in and you’d be—’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Dag.

‘Um, still hungry here,’ said Squeezy-Paws.

‘I’ll do it!’ said Pip 2. ‘I’ll feed you!’

‘Oh, okay, thanks, 2.’

‘No problem,’ said Pip 2, scooping up the enormous cat and taking her out of the room.

‘Ouch! Be careful with those RoboClone hands. They’re pokey!’ said Squeezy-Paws.

‘Sorry!’ said Pip 2 as they left the MainSpace.

‘The cat’s right – someone needs to download some new software for that thing,’ said Dag after they’d gone. ‘It spilled my seed tray yesterday.’

‘Shh,’ said Pip, ‘she’ll hear you.’

The parrot stared at her. ‘You know it’s a robot, right? It’s not a real person.’

‘It’s a clone,’ said Pip defensively. ‘Of me.’

‘It looks and sounds like you, yes. They’ve done a great job on the outer skin shell. But inside it’s all moving parts. And some of them are rusty.’ Dag ruffled his feathers. ‘I heard your mum and dad talking about … a proper upgrade yesterday. A real upgrade.’

Pip looked round sharply towards the FoodSpace. Pip 2 was feeding Squeezy-Paws, but she was also looking through at them. Had she heard? Pip moved closer to Dag, out of the RoboClone’s view.

‘Getting a new Pip 2, you mean?’

‘Yep. Pip 3!’ said Dag.

Pip didn’t know how to feel about this. Three years ago, her parents had bought her Pip 2 to keep her company. The RoboClone came with a growth cell installed, which meant that as Pip grew so did Pip 2, continuing to look and sound the same as her.

Which sounds like Pip 2 was a kind of toy, but really it was much more than that: Pip 2 used to be Pip’s closest friend. They’d done everything together. They’d read together, and fed the pets together, and played all the games together they could within the HouseUnit. They’d even slept in the same bed together – the last thing Pip would say at night was, ‘Goodnight, Pip 2!,’ and Pip 2 would say, ‘Goodnight, Pip!’

But now that Pip was bigger (as, because of the growth cell, was Pip 2), there wasn’t room for the RoboClone inside her BedPod. And, as time had gone by, and Pip’s parents began working all day in the LabSpace, Pip 2 had ended up spending less time with Pip and more time helping out round the house, cooking and cleaning and fixing things. Which was what Pip’s parents needed Pip 2 to do.

So Pip and Pip 2’s relationship had changed. It was still a bit like having a friend, but, to be honest, Pip thought – and she didn’t like thinking it, but she knew it was true – it was a bit more like having a twin who was more of a HouseUnitKeeper than a sister.

Plus, Pip’s mum and dad didn’t have much in their CryptoCoin account any more, and so some of the updates and fixes needed to keep Pip 2 from glitching had recently not been done.

‘Ahem,’ said Miss Lucy. ‘Any chance of starting this lesson? I mean, I know I’m only a hologram, which means – yes – I don’t have a home to go to or anything, but still I think we should get cracking.’

‘Sorry,’ said Pip, putting her G-Glasses back on.

‘Thank you,’ said Miss Lucy, disappearing from the real room, and reappearing in the virtual schoolroom. ‘So. The twenty-first century …’

She lifted her hand, and a HoverScreen appeared. It started playing a film, with images of people walking about on old streets and squares. A deep, reassuring voice said:

‘At the start of the twenty-first century, life for humans was still mainly driven by what used to be called face-to-face contact.’

The screen cut to show some men and women in a café, talking and laughing. Then an image of some other men and women, dressed more smartly, in an office, talking seriously.

‘Yes, back then people actually thought that the best way to get things done was to meet, in person, and talk. But it was at this point that …’

The film changed to show a man in a room typing on what Pip knew, from other films she’d seen, to be a computer, even though computers in 3020 didn’t look anything like that any more. They didn’t have keyboards and screens in 3020. If, for example, Pip wanted to search for something on the Grid (what you know as the internet, although a hundred thousand times faster), she would just do it through her G-Glasses, or even directly from her MindLink.

The screen split into two, showing a woman on a computer. Then it split into four, with a teenager and a child tapping on keyboards. And it carried on splitting and splitting until there were hundreds of people in rooms, all typing on those old computers.

‘… everyone realised it was much better and quicker to communicate using screens. And, even though it was a very long time ago, this can be said to be the start of our own modern times.’

Miss Lucy raised her hand and the film stopped playing.

‘Any questions?’

Yes, thought Pip. Why does everyone look so lonely?

But she just shook her head, and Miss Lucy let the film carry on.

Pip’s mum and dad were scientists. They had once worked for the City Government, trying to create inventions to help with the heat and the flooding and the viruses.

But, in the last few years, the City Government had given up on that. Now they spent the bulk of their money just redesigning buildings so that people could live their entire life indoors. The buildings had become taller and taller, and everything the people who lived in them needed was delivered by drones, which buzzed constantly round the high windows, dropping their packages off into chutes that tunnelled straight into every HouseUnit.