I am coming back to my city.

Family settled here when it was founded, over a hundred years ago. Abandoned now, another casualty of the war between us and the machines. But the war‘is over and I’m on government business, looking for something valuable.

As the driverless car takes me through the wastes of the Home Counties, I lean back, close my eyes and try to relax.

#

The vehicle manoeuvres neatly between white lines into a space in the weed-strewn car park. I spot the bright orange flag of a delivery robot trundling slowly along a Redway. As I approach, the squat six-wheeler halts.

I open its lid. Empty.

‘I want The Point,’ I say, indulging myself before getting to work.

I follow as the robot makes its way along the side of the main shopping building, doors and windows boarded up.

‘We’re here,’ the robot says, slowing before a mirrored, steel pyramid structure. Badly rusted, red paint flaking. Behind it, the burnt-out husk of an apartment building.

The UK’s first America-style multiplex cinema. I remember grandad reminiscing about seeing The Goonies here and playing Bingo.

I check my computer-brain interface. The Point scores ‘No significance: Entertainment meaningless.’

#

I hop onto an autonomous shuttle bus idling by the curb, indulging my nostalgia again. The bus lurches forward.

After ten minutes, we exit a grid road for a long tree-lined approach, signed Walton Drive. It leads to a cream-coloured 17th century manor house, surrounded by modern steel, glass and aluminum office buildings.

‘Hey, you’re on private property,’ a security guard shouts, as I step off the bus. ‘You can’t be here, mate. This is one of the biggest data centres in the country.’

The Open University. Dad worked here for thirty years, writing courses that helped millions to learn and think for themselves.

‘No significance: Education redundant.’

#

I beg for a sandwich but the guard turns out to be an android.

Tummy rumbling, I resume my quest, zigzagging across the city.

A medieval chapel: all that remains of twelfth-century Bradwell Priory. Mum brought me here, igniting a sense of mystery and wonder. I look up at the wall painting of St Anne teaching the Virgin to read, then check the score: ‘No significance: Religion is delusion.’

Six cows and calves made of fibreglass and crumbling concrete in a field of waist-high grass in Bancroft… I close my eyes, remembering a warm summer’s day, a girlfriend and a first kiss. I fight back tears of loss and rage. This time, I know just what the score will be.

#

I draw near a ramshackle collection of buildings in a place called Bletchley Park.

I enter a single-storey edifice labelled Hut H, where I’m confronted by a vast machine with bank upon bank of switches and valves, its surface thick with dust.

A working replica of Colossus: the world’s first programmable, electronic, digital computer. ‘High significance: Priceless object.’

Our machine overlords will be incredibly pleased.