Henry lives with me.

He arrived on an August day otherwise unmarked and unremarkable. I woke up bathed in sunlight; showered, shaved. As I dried myself with soft and thick Marks and Spencer towels, I noticed that Henry had taken residence in one of the wings, his dark dome raised cryptically, almost mockingly, as he looked back at me with a visage void of emotion. Poked and prodded I had, to ascertain how his arrival and occupation had come to pass, but nothing was offered. Henry was as quiet as he was persistent, as solid as he was shadowy, as omnipresent as he was rooted.

“Henry,” I’d say, “Henry, how did you get in?”

He would simply, silently, stare back.

“Henry,” I’d say, “Henry, what is it that you want?”

Stoic. Shaka, when the walls fell.

“Henry,” I’d say, “Henry, why are you doing this to me?”

Unmoved. Resolute. Smug.

When the anxiety got the better of me, I sought advice. In a cornflower office, with a very cheap plywood and veneer desk and a chunky winter knit, a gentleman in Tom Ford glasses informed me that as long as Henry didn’t occupy any more room than he already had, then it was best to just leave him be – let him sit comfortably in his part of the house and just ignore him. The glasses went up and down on the bridge of his nose as he spoke, gently poked back into place periodically as they slipped down; I fixated on this repetition, the sound of his voice slowly disappearing to nothing, as the black and gold frame was reset by fingers kept professionally manicured, each touch betraying the tell-tale dips of a removed ring on his third left. An almost imperceptible beep from the computer on the desk refocussed me and prompted his so-is-there-anything-elses.

Henry simply was, and there was nothing to be done about him.

So, I did nothing. Henry has remained in his wing for fifteen years, so far. I nervously tip-toed around him for a while, considering him an impostor, an invader. Angrily, and with some determination, I then resolved to continue about my life, remembering him every now and again when he showed himself, checking briefly to see all was just so, and moving on shortly after. He remained simply Henry – no conversation, no movement, no interactions at all. I grew used to having him around, a dandelion in my lawn that has flowered yellow, unobtrusive, unnoticed.

Eventually, I came to think of him as a guest at a birthday party that nobody can remember inviting: as long as he causes no trouble, and he keeps buying his own drinks, then he’s okay to stick around – but he’ll have to cope with my choice of music.

Quite in contrast, Seider lived with my Father. Like Henry, she moved in without a word, quietly insinuating herself here and there, around the place, in little nooks and crannies in which nobody thought to look. Unlike Henry, she was a subtle, coiling beast: it took a long time to notice that she was even there, hidden in the depths of the property. She undertook no major works, no redecorations, just little trinkets here and there, bits of herself, aggressively left for others to find when she eventually decided that she wanted out.

I look at Henry, from time to time, and wonder if he’ll do the same to me. If he has grand plans to surreptitiously move a vase or put down a new woven basket. If I’d even notice. From time to time, I check in on him, like I was told to; he’s still there. He’s still minding his own business. ‘Likely benign’ was the phrase that Mr. Glasses had used.

As long as that doesn’t change, then Henry lives with me.

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Blue eyes, quickly fading.

A lion, unmoving, teeth visible.

The smell of burning flesh, acrid.

Sunset.

The sense of an ending.

I woke with a start and grabbed my notebook. I had to get the dream down before it began to fade; I’d need to be prepped for when I’d need the memory.

The Victorians firmly believed that dreams were real, that God was sending them insight; later, people used to call that feeling of having experienced something before “deja vu”. It was around twenty years ago that we discovered that it wasn’t random – it was quantum. Turns out our brains entangle with themselves over time, in the deepest cells. For example, grief in the future manifests in our reactions to a song in the past, unbeknownst to our linear experience; we cry not quite knowing why, until we finally reach that point in our journey. We actually dream the future, our subconscious being the only part of our minds powerful enough to transcend the present; we don’t always understand it because the connections between the entangled neurons and our subconscious aren’t always fulsome.

Then, eventually, came people like me. People who felt it more often, whose minds naturally made those connections, and who could be trained in the present to remember how to exist within the subconscious – lucid dreaming – so that the future could send back specific messages. It took fifteen of the last twenty to nail the process, but it’s revolutionised crime fighting. Sadly, it’s also revolutionised crime.

Five years. That’s how long I’d been chasing this warlord across the breadth of the ES. Initially, I was allocated the case when I was on a training sabbatical in Kyiv; Europol Intelligence had unceremoniously cut it short and dragged me to Ingolstadt for a late night debrief and reallocation. After a brief combat training stint in Berlin and a very dark night with some very shadowy handlers in Madrid (as physical documentation was the surest way to information leakage), I was to travel to Lisbon, the transport hub for our pterocar fleet – and I was to pay close attention to my dreams. I’d done all the research, all the boot work – but nothing moved things on like a dream.

Scribbling down this particular sequence had that feeling of difference that comes with an entangled dream. It was… raw, less narrative. It had flashes of scenes, pieces of information, nuggets of coherence. I wrote it all down in as much detail as I could remember – we rarely got the same dream twice. Limited flashes they were, but one thing was clear as day in all of them: I’d sent myself a vision of a sculpted lion with a concave back. Immediately, I knew where he was hiding – but I needed to speak to someone more senior.

After a deep breath, I tapped out the digits on my palm and my handler’s holding avatar manifested in my line of sight. After a couple of moments, the avatar gently clicking its fingers to show it was attempting a connection, and in a voice obscured by algorithmic encryption, the avatar remaining instead of, as was the case with consumer communicators, transforming into the real face of the called, they answered gruffly: “Explain.”

“Entanglement. A vision, London, Trafalgar Square. Requesting permission to attend.”

Silence.

“Please confirm – did you say London?”

“Confirmed.”

“Certainty? Britannia remains mostly radioactive.”

“Ninety percent sure that it was the square around Nelson’s Column. I remember it from my childhood, before the War.”

“It’s not just a memory?”

“No; I saw us both there, in a glimpse, outside the old Portrait Gallery.”

Another extended silence.

“If you go there, there’s no coming back. Even if we could authorise the border crossing, you’d be dead from the exposure within a month.”

“I know. But I have to end him before he eradicates another city.”

“He’s been on the run for thirty years. If he’s in London now, he’s already decided his fate.”

I had to force the point home: “That doesn’t mean he can’t radicalise others before he melts. He has dirty bomb material all over the States. Do you want a Britannia distributed over the capitals? Or, worse, for him to radicalise enough right-wingers that they congregate in Strasbourg, all strapped up with micronukes, looking like tourists? Do you want to be responsible for a crater the size of Tycho at the heart of Europe?”

“Stand down. We understand the threat better than you do.”

Adrenaline coursed relentlessly; I breathed deeply, gulping at the air as if I was drowning, a fish out of water – and similarly both as desperate and incapable without help.

Finally: “Approved. Your pterocar will be ready in one hour. Do not be late and do not take anything with you that… that you’d want somebody to have.”

Just over an hour later, I was two and a half thousand meters above La Manche, returning to the home I’d known as a child, as its waters (significantly expanded since the meltings of the last few decades) grumpily waved up. The pterocar masked the sound of the sea beneath, but I could remember its fierce hiss; the boat we’d used to sail across to France hadn’t masked any sound at all. 

“Illegal migration,” the cavernous voice of the boat’s owner, a huge man whose accent betrayed his Kentish roots but whose skin suggested a heritage from beyond Northern Europe, “is what the British Government would have called this a couple of decades ago, if we’d been making the same journey of refuge in the opposite direction, you know.” The other thirty-four occupants of the craft each looked at one another in turn, wondering who might, in the past, have agreed with this viewpoint. Nobody had admitted to it. Nobody had dared.

That boat had barely made it. The shockwave from the bombing had caused a destabilisation in the tectonics of the area; the sea had responded in turn, with rain that pierced skin and waves, tall and travelling like boulders, unlike anything that had been seen before in the channel. I’d watched half a dozen people go over the side, unable to find purchase in the violence of the storm; I’d watched children wail like banshees as the lands they knew, the families they’d once had, were abandoned, this terrible fate yet still less terrifying than that which would be met by staying behind as the once-clean air of our formerly-green-and-pleasant-land betrayed their lungs; I’d watched as the Captain of our cramped little craft had wept, not quite masked by the rain, as we’d approached the beaches of Dunkirk, his relief palpable amongst those of us who’d, at his hand, made it alive.

The next few years had been a blur. I’d been processed – which was as clinical as it sounds – into a refugee camp. The French had been more welcoming than anyone could have imagined, though; each person suffered a decontamination, a month of quarantine, and more vaccinations than our veins should have been reasonably expected to take – but, after that, we’d been offered homes. Initially, these were huge estates, like retirement villages, with staff to ensure we settled well; however, a few weeks later, I’d been introduced to a Parisian couple who had a spare room and wanted to help out – apparently, being fostered was a pretty normal experience for British refugees across the ES, regardless of their age. Thus, at an age more formative than anybody should have to endure, I’d moved into a delightful, quiet little apartment in Montmartre with Dieudonné and Mathéo, who, between them, brought me from the depths of despair to my graduation from Sorbonne Université. I will never forget the kindness they showed, particularly when I was at my… worst. Without them, I’d not have got my degrees, I’d not have considered a Government graduate scheme and been accepted onto the Refugee Reintegration Programme, and I’d never have, eventually, found myself in Kyiv, learning how to investigate and prosecute the worst kind of crime, only named after the Tsar Bombas fell on Birmingham, Luton, Newcastle, and Preston; when Europe realised these cities had been chosen for maximum fallout – the winds causing the irradiation of anywhere east of Shrewsbury, including most of the Baltic states (ostensibly for the ‘crime’ of wanting freedom from neocolonial oppression) – and the blasts had been planned just far enough away from London to leave it as an “edifice to the decadence of the West”, as the online video circulated afterwards informed us, they had decreed this as a ‘Treason, Against Humanity’. A crime considered greater even than genocide.

The pterocar descended into what had once been Covent Garden. The remains of the market had been looted long ago; I felt sorry for those who’d received that toxic kiss. The terminal dose of radiation they’d absorb for such an escapade must have seemed worth it to prevent alternative fatality.

At least I’d chosen this.

I put on the suit they’d given me at the launch site. Apparently, it might give me enough time to do this job and get to somewhere like Anglesey, where (at least) there was a fighting chance. It was looser than I wanted, but it was at least lined and sealed. The oxygen meter suggested at least twenty-four hours of functional use, so I could have a decent search.

Bathing me in yellow light, the pterocar responded very visually to its horror at my attempting to step outside in these circumstances. I had to enter the override code that had been hastily shoved into my hand on a scrap of paper by the handover team. They’d looked at me through anxious eyes, fully aware.

I stepped out.

The warmth hit me first.

My visor misted; I activated the automated systems using a quick voice command, which also birthed an augmented reality display. It helpfully pointed out that the level of radiation outside, in bold, red numbers – I gracefully, rapidly, swiped that number away.

Perhaps I’d survive this.

Perhaps that was wishful thinking.

I climbed over the crunching glass that had once been the ceiling of the market and made my way out into the open. A short walk took me down the rubble of the Strand, towards Trafalgar Square. The buildings, blown out by the initial explosion, remained upright but uninhabitable, the bricks pulsing waves into the air; The Savoy, Coutts, Charing Cross – memories of a once great nation, now purveyors of certain death..

I’d only been here once or twice before the bombing; my memory of the place wasn’t at all like the amber reality. I moved at speed, as I couldn’t bear to hang around. The bleak shadows were long enough to hide in; I couldn’t just walk up to his hideout, obviously, so instead I shifted furtively from one empty doorway to another, keeping an eye out for drones or any other such monitoring mechanism.

That feeling hit me hard as I reached the square itself. Nelson had been toppled, but the lions were there, resplendent, staring at me through dead eyes. I stared back at the closest one for a short while, taking in the furrowed brow and slightly extended tongue; it was as if it were attempting to breathe, as the population had.

“Magnificent, aren’t they? Cast from the ships of their enemies.”

From behind me, the voice had come, slightly muffled, whispering into my ear through the suit. I spun; he stood right there, too close for comfort, no suit, his repaired face ravaged by time, invading my space and smiling as if this were normal. I replied, as calmly as I could muster. “Vladimir.”

“Please, do call me Vovo. Here at the end, let us not stand on the pomp and circumstance and ceremony of the English as we stand upon their bones.”

“You… you…” I couldn’t catch my breath. “You murderer!” I screamed it at him. I couldn’t help it.

He smiled, victoriously. “Ah, my dear. Sadly, you are quite right. However, here, according to my dreams,  is where we both complete our journeys, so the only person I’m planning on murdering today is myself. And you, you’ve sentenced yourself too.” He tipped his head to one side. “Why on earth would you do such a thing?”

“I cannot allow you to indoctrinate anybody else.”

“For sure, there is no chance of that. I’ve left my instructions elsewhere, my followers ready to do what is needed, my weapons are gone. I do not have any connections here, everybody is dead. There is no network. I came here to die, at the site of my greatest victory. What did you think you would achieve here?”

Time stopped. That feeling again – I knew precisely what I would say and do. I’d jotted it into my diary before embarking on all this.

“Nothing more than this.” I looked him dead in the eyes as I discharged the phase pistol, which had been concealed within the suit’s sleeve, into his chest, punching a hole right through his body and leaving a porthole to view, down what was once Whitehall, the distant and broken Elizabeth Tower, its peak and face shattered, the bell visible, glinting in the afternoon sun. His smile faded as he fell to the ground. “That’s for my parents.” Uncharacteristically, I spat on the still twitching corpse.

Back in the pterocar, I activated the seals and futilely pressed the decontamination cycle; it wasn’t rated for this level of radiation, but I figured that it might give me a few more weeks. I dialled in the coordinates for Anglesey and reclined into the seat as the car took off and sped away from the remains of London.

I pressed the button for HQ; my erstwhile handler picked up almost immediately. “How did it go?”

“Perfectly. It’s done.”

“And the remains?”

“You can martyr a corpse; you can’t martyr coal. Even if they somehow find him, they won’t be able to figure out it’s him. There’s no DNA left courtesy of the immolation, or a visual. I also removed the teeth, obviously.”

A pause.

“We didn’t think this day would come. Well done.”

“He was ready to go. There wasn’t anybody here with him.”

“Surprising. We’d expected something of a contingent.”

“Me too – but, in fairness, I don’t recall dreaming of a crowd either. He said he’d left instructions elsewhere for others.”

Another pause.

“Leave it with us. You get off now; speak to your family.”

Abruptly, the line went dead. I was used to this sort of behaviour; Intelligence was not known for its soft serve. I took the advice (and the free use of the satphone) and called Didi and Mat. In that moment, I realised how much I was going to miss them. I’d left Britain with no parents; I’d come back leaving behind two perfect fathers. Unbidden, the tears cascaded and flowed relentlessly as we spoke, for the first time in a few weeks, and possibly the last. I didn’t say goodbye – I didn’t have the heart to say the words.

Anglesey is beautiful. It’s smaller than it once was, courtesy of the recent melts, but it is still mostly green. The pterocar registered, here, only a similar level of background radiation to Calais; before exiting the car, I practiced my routines, remembering over and again the day I’d experienced, forcing the necessary neurons to fire repeatedly, forging the connections, until I was certain this was the moment I’d cast those memories back. Then, I set up camp alongside the lighthouse by which I had landed. Whilst the Irish Sea lapped gently against, almost adjacent to the lighthouse, what was clearly new shoreline, I watched the sun set gently on the horizon.

There are worse places to lay oneself to rest. Soon, I’ll sleep. Perchance, to dream.

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“Legate Alburn? I’m deeply sorry to interrupt you whilst you’re strategising, but something has emerged.”

Alburn, a bushy-eyebrowed man of advanced experience, was used to such intrusions; he had, in the past, taken to reducing their frequency through shooting the messenger and sending their heads back as a warning to be specific, timely, and crucial. He looked over the rim of his glasses with barely a movement to his head. “Go on, son?”

“We have found something buried. Stone, metal, old. Beneath the Edge Desert.”

He raised an eyebrow, remaining perfectly silent.

The youth, on a deputation drawn by short straw, began to sweat.

The eyebrow was unperturbed, the lips unparted, the breath unmoved.

“Legate, sir, the Druids are investigating as we speak, but they think it is over a thousand years old.”

The eyebrow was met by its brother, and the green pools beneath them hollowed the air.

“As many as a thousand. Imagine. Why have they sent you to disturb me with this, though, son? Those glorified archaeologists are aware of the importance of my remaining undisturbed unless called for.”

The silence was pierced by the sound of a nervous gulp.

“They said to say something to you so that you knew it was important. They said to say ‘Columbia’. I don’t know why.”

A few tense moments passed.

“Message received. You had better go now. Quickly.”

“Yes, sir, Legate.” The boy ran out of the gilt doors so quickly that his grey sandals almost spontaneously combusted.

Legate Alburn sat, his fingers forming an arch just beneath his nose, whilst his elbows rested in the dips that years at this desk had carved. After a few moments, he balled the fist of one hand and reached with the other to pull a hidden drawer from the lip of the desk. In it was a single, aged document, printed on its yellowing pages with images of a sphere, greying words outlining a public announcement protocol, and at its mast, a single word, printed in deep red: ‘Earth’. He sighed; he’d hoped another Legate would be installed before this day. All Legates were told about the planet’s past, but the species thrived on not knowing that they were the second sentient species to live here; they didn’t know they’d arrived here in ships which had sailed the stars; they didn’t know their ancestors had eradicated the indigenous population to make way for their survival.

They’d managed to avoid this day for over one hundred and twenty Legates.

He read the document one more time, then dropped it into the receptacle aside his desk. He pressed a button; a small flame appeared and eradicated the page. He reflected that this could wait until tomorrow.

He could always simply have everybody who had seen the relic eradicated too – that would give him plenty of time to pass on the baton.

For the first time in a long time, Legate Alburn smiled.

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“And now, the one you’ve all been waiting for. Lot 386: a one-of-a-kind, printed book from Sol 3. Now, printed Terran books are rare enough, given what happened there, but this one – whoo-whee! This story incorporates their grey concept of good and evil, hints at some of their religious ideas, and encapsulates their dark humour beautifully. This is a well-read copy, but all of its pages remain intact, uncommon in a book of its age. Who will open the bidding at 10,000 platines?”

I had to have it. I’d used all my guile to be invited to this closed, shadowy auction – here, they trade in the trinkets of dead civilisations, private collectors from across the quadrant coming to scoop up all that’s left of them. Usually, these auctions gained little attention outside of their intended audience, one of the conditions being absolute silence on the existence of such auctions and their locations.

This, though… I’d picked up a tip from a trader on Proxima, a guy who owed me more than a few favours, that the book had been found on a derelict Terran cargo hauler and would be up for sale at the next dark auction. He thought it might be something I’d like, a piece of my home going on into the future. Instead, I was livid – the few of us left in the galaxy, homeless and unbound, would have been able to celebrate another small part of our culture that wasn’t simply crushed, castrated or carried away into the bleak blackness of space.

Imagine your civilisation had almost entirely been eradicated by a plague created by an itinerant species to remove indigenous populations from their target planets, so they could harvest it in peace; imagine you were one of the remaining few – an unexpected emergence of immunity in a subset of the population – and, as a child, had seen your parents, neighbours, leaders fight back, almost eradicating the invaders and stealing their ships to add to the Terran fleet and take out those hiding in orbit; imagine, once up there, seeing the swan song of the species that the less-than-a-percent of us who had survived had, in a mirroring of their impact on us, driven to the edge of extinction: a quantum bomb dropped coldly into the atmosphere, watching helpless as it burrowed into the core of the planet, before attempting (for some, futilely) to jump to light before the implosion. Sol is now a system with two stars, the destabilisation of the gravitational constant slowly destroying the rest of the system, feeding what was once Earth with rubble and gas.

If you’d seen all that, you’d want a piece of home too.

I don’t have 10,000 platines. I don’t even have 10 – 10,000 was more than two years earnings for most of us haulers. I’d already known this before I walked into the room.

I wasn’t there to buy the book.

I was there to steal it.

“250,000 platines to my left; do I hear 300,000?”

The quick flash of digital tokens registered the next flurry of bids, taking the price of the book to over half a million. That was retirement money. Retirement on a very, very nice, terraformed and protected asteroid. The sort of retirement which would cover three generations – their kids and grandkids wouldn’t ever have to work either. Inevitably, it would have been found by a poor hauler, as the byways of the galaxy weren’t frequented by passenger ships or research vessels.

Thus, I resolved to pilfer the book after the buyer had paid up and taken it off-site. But, to achieve this, I needed to know who the purchaser was, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to trace them. And so, here I was, wearing my best suit and some borrowed prosthetics, lest they realise my heritage and become suspicious.

“Aaand sold! For 785,650 platines to the gentlefolk from Arcadia, bidder number 916. That concludes today’s auction; all winners, please make your way to the collection zone. Those who haven’t taken a prize today – good luck next time!”

The collection zone was unsecured, the auction house reasoning that, once they’d received payment and handed over the goods, they were not responsible for the ongoing cost of protecting your purchase. Most people brought their own security – secured drop boxes, looming bouncers, direct drone transports. The winner of the book had opted for all three of these; I observed them enter the zone with the drone carrying the drop box and the two blundering bodies behind looking furtively in all directions. So obviously new to the game – poor observational skills, barely noticing those looking at this transaction. Idiots. Now I knew what the drone and dropbox looked like; I still needed the passcode to access it, otherwise it would be utterly impenetrable – these boxes were designed to transport government secrets between planets, they’d survive a supernova.

“You’ll need to do your research, kid. You won’t be able to shoulder-surf the code off that one, not in those circumstances.” The trader-with-the-tip had given me the heads up about the security measures they intended to employ; Captain Wild wasn’t convinced. “How will you work out their random code?”

“Usual drill for anyone – think about what they might value and go from there.”

Quickly, I returned to the docking bay. The Arcadian shuttle was still there, unattended. The drone would take the dropbox into orbit where the shuttle would intercept it, a mechanism which would allow the drone’s inbuilt weapons to protect the box without damaging the shuttle.  The easiest way to grab the box, therefore, was at the point the shuttle and the box met one another, after the drone’s shutdown had been completed, without any other security to deal with other than the code.

I swapped into my EVA suit and hid in the beams of the bay. I’d need to move fast to pull this off.

The Arcadians returned shortly after, gliding into their shuttle as only the extraordinarily rich can do, dark satin cloaks drawing behind them. The rookie security entered first and last, protecting both ends of the delegation. As the shuttle door rose into position, like the drawbridge of an ancient castle, I ran. Across the bay, hiding in the shadows, until I reached the rear of the craft. There, I grabbed the safety handle, clipped my EVA tether to it, and held on tightly – this was going to be a bumpy ride.

Take off was a breeze; the initial acceleration was more of a gale; the ramp up to break orbit was akin to being chained to a concrete floor three inches from the fan in a wind tunnel. Even through the transparent mask of my EVA suit, I could feel the weight of it angrily pushing against me, as if another burly-but-brainless member of the security team was out here with me, fighting to prevent my victory.

I clung to that handle like it was my mother’s hand.

The sky began to darken as we passed through the upper layers of the atmosphere; the pressure waned and was replaced by its opposite. I could see the flashing lights of the drone up ahead; I would need to move quickly now. The shuttle would inevitably have an automated system for package retrieval; all I needed to do was grab the package before it went in and replace it with something appropriately sized – they wouldn’t check until they arrived home, as the system would just register the collection of the item and their arrogance wouldn’t allow them to consider that someone could’ve intercepted it.

Thus, the best (and most dangerous) part of the plan came to fruition.

“Look, I’m not saying that I don’t understand – really, I do. But how do you think you’re going to pull off a suborbital heist like that, kid? In space, with nothing there except their security?”

I’d smiled at him, the Captain of the ship we’d ended up on all those years ago, beatifically and simply replied, “Exactly.”

The shuttle pinged the deactivation routine to the drone and it’s lights went out. It automatically released the dropbox; seconds later, a hatch opened and an auto-grip descended. I moved with the speed of a cheetah: I gently pushed myself in the direction of both the box and the drone; at this height, I still had a little gravity on my side, enabling me to drift slowly. My EVA tether pulled taught just as I reached them both, the grip eeled behind me in the same direction. Quickly, I pulled the dropbox towards me and tugged my tether, allowing me and the box to drift backwards; the grip, finding nothing else, snapped its jaws around the deactivated drone and began to winch itself back into the shuttle. Sensing it was time, I unclipped my end of the EVA tether from my suit and watched the final motions of the Arcadian retrieval. The moment the grip hatch closed, drone safely ensconced within, they jumped to light.

Nobody could hear my laughter but me.

Captain Wild picked me up just over half an hour later, dropbox and all. The beat-up cargo hauler he was punting around in nowadays was half a century old, but it had an aerodynamic, almost aquiline charm about it. Plus, he had worked hard to earn his shipping lanes passcodes, meaning a quick swing by this remote planet was not out of the ordinary – even if it was the same ship twice in a day, even if it was on an auction day, and especially given nobody beyond the ultra-rich were meant to know that these auctions even happened at all. I was scooped into the loading bay airlock – all the better to eat me with – and we, too, went to light.

The post-shower debrief was electric. I recounted the tale to the crew, skipping dull bits and embellishing others. The box sat in the middle of the briefing table, conspicuously unopened.

“Makes no odds how you got it if you can’t get into it though, kid.” Wild wasn’t wrong.

“I took your advice, Captain. I did my research.”

“What, prey tell, did you unearth?”

“Simply that Arcadians aren’t motivated by culture. They’re solely motivated by money and capital value. They’re also hilariously arrogant – they like simplicity and live in the knowledge, however inaccurate, that security isn’t a problem for them.”

Into the dimly lit number pad, I dialled 386916785650. The panel turned lime.

“Oh, and they often like to go with simplicity – codes, for example, tend to be numbers fresh in the mind.”

Unceremoniously, the side of the box fell open. Smiling, I reached in and withdrew the book, holding it up for the assembled remnants of humanity to see.

There, in my hand, was an almost priceless, and well-thumbed, copy of Good Omens.

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“So, what attracted you to this role?”

“Well…” Nervousness sweated from his every pore, leaving him soaked and psychologically spiralling. He swallowed a mote of dust, coughed gently, and began. “I’d seen the job advertised, but I hadn’t realised quite how much I wanted to settle down. Y’see, I’m a traveller. I’ve been passing through places for… a long time. I’ve had other roles, of course, but nothing which tied me to one place. I’d just like, for once, to land somewhere comfortable in a job I can get my teeth into. This just seemed right – right place, right job, right time.”

“It’s great to hear that you think we’re right for you. Please, if you’d like to come with us now; we’d like to give you a tour of the facility.”

They stepped out into the light beyond the room; the breeze fanned the air over his moist skin whilst they walked into the desert outside. Minute, in the distance, was an obsidian, ovoid marble. Contrasting the flowing sand and the rippling air, it stood resolute, like a bruise on the body of a banana.

“What is that?” He asked, pointing at it.

“It is the facility,” they replied, “where we complete the job you have committed to undertaking.”

He started sweating again. “I didn’t realise you’d offered me the job yet.”

“Oh, you had been successful the moment you were called to interview. We needed to know that what you were saying was accurate. Now that we’re sure, you can get to work.”

“That’s great. The salary was undisclosed – could I ask…?”

“Of course. The initial salary is average – you will earn 32,000 credits per annum. However, you’ll also be paid in time. For every day you work for us, you will gain five on your lifespan. The facility will take care of that. You will have weekends to live some of your life, but you must otherwise remain at the facility; we will provide you with sustenance and recuperation. This salary and the conditions therein are non-negotiable.”

“What will I have to do for this? The ad said ‘admin’.”

“Do not allow the star to go out.”

“What?”

“You must carefully check the star these planets orbit. You must not allow it to go nova. Others care for other stars; this one is yours. The day it goes nova is the day your employment with us ceases. We will take care of the star on your weekends and during your holidays. Should the star go nova in your absence, we will assign you another star.”

“How do I stop a star from going nova? That sounds impossible.”

“It’s just a case of monitoring and making some adjustments on the equipment we’re going to link you to. You’re from Sol 3 originally, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Bob down in ‘verse C has kept your star going for three billion years so far. He has two billion years left to go before he can retire on full annual salary for the rest of his accrued life. He will, effectively, be immortal and incomprehensibly rich – and, in the meantime, has cultivated at least four sentient species in your solar system, purely by co-ordinating the star your system orbits. You do this job well, and you could be solely responsible for the birth of dozens of civilisations.”

“Wow – um…”

“You have a question?”

“Yeah. Where do I sign?”

Discuss...

This work by Dav Kelly is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Follow my main account in the Fediverse: @dav@social.maleo.uk

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Written in 45 minutes, to the prompt “Write about a new beginning”, from AQA English Language Paper 2, Section B, in November 2021.

Funny, isn’t it, how life takes you on amusing diversions.

This, for me, would be the fourteenth time I have had such; the cartwheeling through the chaos of change has become, almost, normal – none of us have job security anymore, and most people earn more doing their online side-project than in their day jobs. C’est la vie.

As it was, this particular change of direction was a direct result of somebody else’s intervention.

Peter. He was a darling in the office, handsome as only early thirty-year-old men can be, supportive of all, and genuinely kind. He had found himself in something of a pickle when he had picked up a pile of papers from the warm and worryingly cacophonous photocopier and hurried to back his desk, only to discover that, hidden in the folds of the disordered leaves, a print which was TOP SECRET, red and almost pulsing in the flickering fluorescent lights. Before he could stop himself, he’d read it, the poor devil. He knew the consequences of reading such material when it was beyond one’s clearance level; thus, he came scurrying, furtively, to my cubicle, tears welling in his ice-blue eyes, wherein I gave him the obligatory pat on the back and told him to bring me the sheet – which he, in his terror, had left under the pile on his keyboard. I, then, a favour to the otherwise incapable, to poor Peter (who needed this job more than I did), I alerted a supervisor, who – cannily – refused to cast a single eye at the sheet of paper in my hand after seeing its incarnadine headline.

I found myself, very shortly afterwards, in a complicated seat in a darkened room. Complicated, obviously, by the straps which would have held me to it had they been attached. Clearly, on this day, I was not expected to cause trouble. I wondered, briefly, how many people had necessitated restraint and, therefore, why a company such as this would require a seat with straps. A James Bond fantasy, perhaps, of one of the more senior of the Business Protection team?

Abruptly, into the room strode a Very Senior Executive, the sort that appears prominently on the website but never usually in person, the sort whose face is recognisable from television interviews on the Six o’Clock News, but never from the annual Christmas knees-up. He asked, as he sat down in a chair opposite mine, “Did you read it?” Gruff, to the point. My type of guy.

“Of course. Unless that will get me killed, in which case: not.”

“Look,” He did look – exasperated. I suspected that I had not been this silver fox’s first crisis today… He continued, “I need to know – quickly – whether or not you read the sheet. If you did, that’s okay, but we’ll need to get you to sign a few things before you can get on with your life.”

“In which case, yes. I did read it. Twice, in fact, just to make sure I’d read it right the first time. Inconsistencies, I recall, and something about the pension plan.”

He stared at me, intensely, for a moment. I felt as if I were being flayed. “Okay. You’re obviously fired – as per our internal security policy, that you signed when you started – however, you’ll know that we cannot allow the information you read about to leak, especially not ahead of next year’s trading.”

I, entirely conscious of the contents of the sheet that Peter had purloined, and the consequences of their distribution to certain key members of the British press, feigned shock at the suggestion. “As if I would sell or share company secrets!”

My Very Senior Executive declined and shook his head, before turning to speak over his shoulder. “Give me the paperwork – I could do without this nonsense today.” Receiving a leather-bound folio from whoever was behind him in the shadows, he opened it and handed me a Mont Blanc, after having used the nib of it to point at the page pinned in place: “Sign there.”

I took a moment to read the document. There was much legalese, but prominently was the promise of a permanent ‘Special Consultant’ role (which, from what I could decipher, would essentially earn me two-thirds of my annual salary to Not Tell Anyone Anything) and a golden ‘hola’ for the new post (which was a third of my annual salary, in Euros, up front and wired to an account set up for me with Sabadell, as well as furnished accommodations on the Costa del Sol, where I was to be shipped, which also happened to be really far away from any of our competitors or customers, and something about Legal dealing with the life admin of it all).

Smugly, I signed and passed back the folio. I looked the Very Senior Executive dead in the eyes as I smiled and popped the deftly capped Mont Blanc into my jacket pocket. He glowered, then rose and left.

I was escorted, unhandled, from the broom cupboard to the front of the building by a burly bouncer with a bow-tie, with a serf from Accounting carrying my belongings in a neatly packed cardboard box closely behind. Awaiting us was a black saloon, night-black and sinfully thirsty, its sleek lines highlighting its athleticism. This was a car designed to turn the heads of the proletariat and remind them of their position beneath the oligarchy. The security guard opened the back door for me to slide in, then handled the boot and box arrangements.

The fourteenth time I’ve changed career. The fourteenth time I’ve adjusted my expectations or changed my direction. The fourteenth time, in this modern era of constant change and ‘jobs for life are a thing of the past’.

Turns out, being a Good Samaritan ended up gifting me that hallowed job for life. I wound the window down and reflected on that life which could have been spent in Human Resources – me, the Doyenne of the Filing Cabinet, forever printing and collating, storing and rotating, emailing and replying. I couldn’t imagine for a second longer the drudgery of such an existence, having now a chance for something different, somewhere different. I opened the window to allow the wind to flow in and around me, as I settled into the supple and luxurious leather seat, and watched the world contentedly bask in the amber glow of the late afternoon sunset, as the driver of the car was diverted onto a slip road to avoid an accident en route to the airport.

The deal means this will be the last time I need new beginning. If only any of them had remembered to limit anonymous access to restricted files for employees below a certain login level. If only any of them had thought for a second that anybody would actually read the policies they were signing, especially the bits about severance. If only the left hand had any idea what the right hand was doing back there in Hades.

Poor Peter; if only he’d known.

I thought about him very briefly when I considered that I’d ultimately feigned the horror of his potential punishment and offered salvation from the chance that this would be the collapse of life as he knew it; he, content, had promised to owe me one and had scuttled back to his cubicle fearless. Two dice had been rolled on a chance and I’d landed on sixes.

I won’t need to print anything classified again for a very long time. I will, however, need to learn Spanish.

Discuss...

This work by Dav Kelly is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Yellow and ghastly, the paint on the firmly-locked door was rolling away from the redwood beneath, creating a sense that the sadness it contained was causing it to cry flakes of ancient acrylic, that the lack of care from within had imbued the grain with a bleakness which, like a raincloud, shadowed enough to force a physical alteration. The spherical knob, once shining brass but now mottled by decades of dirty palms and inattentive cleaning, begged from its mount to be left alone, shouted at passers-by to avoid this place, to continue ambling safely along, to go far from here and forget of its very existence.

I could not. A mere two days ago, I had received instructions to attend here today, to visit the old gentleman who now looked at me through a millimetre-wide gap in the dour lace curtain which was draped across the window next to the door. The lace was, as seemed almost normal at this property, yellowing in the direct sunlight, unwashed, unchanged. Catching his eye, from my position at the base of the stepped entry, I began to move towards the door, six short steps away. I held his gaze through that tiny gap, ensuring he knew both that I was here to see him and that I would be arriving presently to be allowed in.

A quick rap on the door, after having broken the stare as I reached the knocker in the centre of the decrepit woodwork, signalled within. The lace curtain undulated, caught by the breeze of movement from behind the closed window. From behind the door came the dull, increasing thud of unwilling leather on unyielding ceramics; as this sound reached a climax, then came the gentle rattle of tiny chains and the sound of bolts being brushed against their steel frames. It sounded to me like there were almost a dozen, combined, of these before, finally, the door lock was finally turned. The handle rattled. With a grunt, the door was pulled slightly ajar, a single chain remaining in place to secure the door against intruders.

“Worr is i’?” The voice was as grey as the hair of his eyebrows, which reached around the door at least three seconds prior to the shape of his forehead, which arrived a second or so before a single eye punctuated the motion.

“Mr. Albright?” Ironic.

“‘Oo’s ahskin?”

“My name is Mr. Finney. I’m here from Peters, Wallace and DeWitt. I’ve been sent by Mr. Peters to discuss your arrangements, as requested.”

“My appoinmen’ ain’t ‘til next Toosdih.”

“My apologies, Sir, today is Tuesday the 14th, the date which should be on your confirmation message?”

“Where’s Pe’ers? I axed for Pe’ers, not some -“ he looked me up and down, as if weighing a fish, “- child.”

I took a deep breath and controlled my immediate, impulsive, immature reaction, which was to throw my really rather heavy briefcase at him. “Mr. Peters isn’t available today, unfortunately, as he is currently immersed in a business acquisition which requires his full attention. I assure you, sir, that I’m quite capable of meeting your needs; I have many years of experience in the industry.”

The caterpillar floated upwards. “Awlroit, awlroit, cuhm in.”

The door closed and the chain was withdrawn from service. Shrieking as it was then dragged inward, the door lost another layer of coating to the peppered ground below.

Elderly properties have a tendency to smell of lavender and rose water, in my extensive experience of visiting them. In this home, however, the aroma was more of smoke, sweat and sourdough. The walls, only dimly lit by the flickering lights of the candles in the hallway, were nicotine-stained, left undecorated for God knows how many decades, whilst Mr. Albright’s apparently regular habit appeared to simply add layers to the atmosphere of the place.

“Don’ tek your shoes off, you won’ be ‘ere long,” cast Mr. Albright, words over his shoulder like tossing scrunched paper to the floor.

I hummed in an affirmative, choosing not to use my own vocabulary at this point, and continued to follow his lagging, leathered pace across the tiled floor. He drew me, slowly but surely, towards a room at the far end of the house. In it, a kitchen, with all the usual accoutrements, and a small, round dining table, perplexingly solid in the face of the decrepitude elsewhere in the property; on that, a central lace doily supported a large, clear fruit bowl, in which was a small beach of vibrant boiled sweets, each individually wrapped and glistening with all the crystal colours of the rainbow. They refracted the light, streaming in from a laced window above the Belfast, across the table, the otherwise dreary environ broken by the rainbows. The doily, however, was the same oily yellow as the rest of the fabrics adorning the furniture of the place. He scraped a chair from underneath the table, equally as solid as its parent structure, and motioned to me to sit. I did so, accordingly, but with more care removing the chair from beneath the table edge.

“Thank you, Mr. Albright.”

“Welcom, bab. Wan’ a sweet?” He motioned to the bowl; I nodded and selected a purple one, taking a moment to unwrap it and pop it into my mouth. The delicate taste of blackcurrant began to suffuse my sinuses, a filling flavour which, uncommonly for sweets in my experience, tasted unfeasibly like the real thing. Not a memory flavour, a true representation, fresh and real. He allowed me the time to enjoy the moment, with an enigmatic curl of the lip, as I settled into a calm bliss. Then, as the moment faded, the sweet diminished, he nodded, reaching for a packet of cigarettes and nonchalantly lighting one up with a sulphurous match.

“Now, down to business. Mr. Peters suggested that you wanted to revisit your retirement plans?” I laid my briefcase onto the table and clicked the little metal clasps open, revealing the abundance of carefully selected and bound paperwork within. I laid this on the table, each adorned with a perfectly placed note attached which simply read “File: Albright, R.” I also retrieved a bound notebook and an heirloom fountain pen; the book, my favourite, was sourced from a supplier in France and used paper which had been carefully made to adequately absorb the ink from my pen without smudging or blotting – worth its weight in gold to one who writes as much as I do.

“Yers, I do. Y’see, I wan’ to bring all my invessmens to a clowse.”

I dropped the pen, nib down, onto the notebook. Ink, black as the night and equally as playful, splattered everywhere, an exploding star surrounded by the rainbows of the glass bowl.

“Sir, with all due respect – have you considered your ongoing income? Withdrawing all your investments simultaneously won’t provide the best return and, frankly, would run out before you…” Delicately, I continued, “…no longer need them.”

“I ain’t gonna need ‘em in about a week, so best I mek the mos’ of ‘em now, I think.”

I gulped. Losing this account, losing its very sizeable management fee, would not reflect well upon my return to the office. Mr. Albright’s account was, in the face of his current situation, surprising: he held onto a Trust, set up over four hundred years ago, which one of Mr. Peters’ predecessors had brokered for the Albright family, prior to their… downfall. It had kept the many Albrights perpetually fed and watered since, though the current Mr. Albright was the last in the line. It was hinted at, darkly and in the very secret, sequestered shelves of the staff supply cupboard, that he’d only once had the chance to sire an heir – an ex-wife, who’d divorced him prior to having children for reasons unshared with the firm – and, instead, had chosen the life of a recluse. He wasn’t even that old; his file betrayed his real age to only be in his late-sixties, not the ancient, bird-like creature sitting in front of me. I picked up the pen and turned the page, to start afresh.

“Whilst I don’t think it’s wise, our job is to conduct your wishes and to ensure the best return for your investments. Is there any chance you can wait another week before we withdraw the funds from the trust, to give Mr. Peters and I the best chance of maximising them?”

He rolled his eyes, very visibly. “No, chick. Jus’ ge’ the money.”

The remainder of the thirty-minute visit was spent completing the swathes of paperwork required to action his request.

Mr. Peters hadn’t, as I’d expected, chewed me up over the situation. In fact, when I’d returned to the office and, tentatively, given him the melancholy news, he’d been surprisingly sanguine about it. “Don’t let it bother you too much,” he’d said, drawing his office chair up to the edge of his desk – well, as close as he’d been able before his stomach tapped the edge of the desk, a buffer of butter, “DeWitt and I have been expecting the current ‘Not-so-Bright’ to close his family’s account, on the basis that he has nobody to pass it on to. He’s increasingly become reclusive and we’re not sure about his ongoing mental condition either – you’ve seen his home now, you know what I mean.” I nodded in agreement. “Thus, we’ve been planning for his final withdrawal for around twenty years; it’s one of the reasons I didn’t feel it necessary to find the time to attend myself.” He swung around slightly on his high-backed, rouge leather chair, allowing him to look at the light streaming in from the window. Peters’ office was a third floor corner affair, allowing him floor to ceiling windows, which looked out onto the City, bustling with business in the afternoon sun. It lent itself to these moments of introspection; I, too, caught a thought in the moment.

“What did Mrs. Wallace think?”

The crack of his neck whipping around from gazing out of the aforementioned to lock eyes with me was loud enough to awaken a small nesting pair of sparrows on the ledge outside. “I’m sorry?”

Realising how that may have sounded impertinent, I explained further. “You said that you and Mr. DeWitt had thought that Mr. Albright would close his account; if you’ll pardon my asking – what did Mrs. Wallace think?”

“Oh, I see. Wallace was, uncharacteristically, contrarian about it. She thought Albright would, eventually, find some way to maintain the trust, perhaps through gifting it to a third party or by donating the income, in perpetuity, to some charity or foundation. As it is, she was clearly wrong.”

“Yes, sir. Perhaps, if I may…?”

“Go on?”

“I’ve worked out the value of his collected assets, so could easily provide him the figures directly. Perhaps I could return and convince Mr. Albright to consider a hybrid solution? Part charitable, part liquidity? That way, we could retain a portion of the account.”

Peters smiled, broadly. “Yes, clever lad; I like it. Even holding on to ten percent of that trust would keep a quarter of the firm in employment forevermore.” He retrieved a large cigar from a box open on his desk and, after pausing momentarily to snip the end and retrieve a box of matches, lit it and drew a mouthful of smoke. “Head back, but proceed carefully – Albright is a prickly old duffer.”

Once again, I ascended the concrete steps and tapped on the door, eschewing the knocker as it appeared damp, oily. I aimed for a spot which appeared to be a little more wood than paint. The lace twitched, as if on cue, and the sound of footsteps once again travelled along the hallway.

The door, once again, opened ajar after a flurry of metalwork removal.

“Worr is i’?”

“Hello again, Mr. Albright; it’s Mr. Finney, from Peters, Wallace and DeWitt.”

“My appoinmen’ ain’t ‘til next Toosdih.”

“No, Mr. Albright, I’m returning from my visit earlier today. About your investments?”

“Where’s Pe’ers? I axed for Pe’ers, not some -“ same motion, same sneer, “- child.”

“No, sir, you asked me to come back, so I have. Also, and with all due respect, I’m twenty-seven years old.”

“Awlroit, awlroit, cuhm in.”

This felt… repetitive. ‘It’s his advancing age,’ I thought, behind false eyes, ‘I would hazard he’s developed a disorder of the mind, as Mr. Peters indicated.’

“Thank you, Mr. Albright. Shall I keep my shoes on again?”

“Absolu’ly not! Tek ‘em off! Didn’ your mother raise you prop’ly?”

After a momentary pause, in order to take in the situation, I quickly removed my boots and placed them, paired, on the porch step. He nodded, gruffly, and we advanced once again to the dining room – during which, I noticed that his brown shoes remained firmly on his feet. As last time, I gave him the opportunity to offer me a seat. The bowl, the crowning glory of the dining table, was no longer present, the doily unadorned by grace; the rainbows had been replaced with the murky shadow of the lace framework on the windowpane, which blocked the diminishing sunlight from flooding the room. Instead, there was a water jug, filled with a translucent orange liquid and a tray of ice, and two glasses, placed on the table upside down at antipodes from one another, a low (but still visible) orange glow on the tabletop. He motioned vaguely to the glasses. “‘elp yuhself, bab.”

“Thank you, Mr. Albright.” I took a glass and decanted some of the liquid into it. I took a sip. Citrus, undefined, but refreshing; I completed the glass and poured myself another; I drank this one more slowly, savouring the flavours – grapefruit, lime, orange, sequentially. He nodded as I did. The afternoon sun was not forgiving; the table was mottled and the room almost cloyingly warm, the squash only taking the edge off the heat. I removed my jacket as I sat down, to allow some respite from this; Mr. Albright watched me do this, his eyebrows descending and a veil slowly casting across his face.

“Shall we begin then, Mr. Albright?”

“Goo ‘n then.” He, too, sat down.

“Your investments, held within the Trust are extensive and diverse. You have at least seven and a half million pounds in shares, currently, in very secure multinational corporations – though this will change based on the market at sale. You also have around nineteen million pounds held in gold and silver, which have solidly appreciated over the years and have been the main contributor to your monthly income. You also have a significant amount locked up in property, which cannot immediately be sold due to almost all having extensive leases, which new buyers are less likely to purchase as going concerns; though, at least two of those are within three months of the end of their tenancy, so we could issue notice, should you wish to proceed.”

A grunt. Aquiescence? Approval? I continued.

“However, sir – I have a proposal. Might you consider retaining the property and part of the commodities with us as an ‘in-perpetuity’ charitable contract? We would continue to manage the portfolio and distribute the profits, after our usual fee, to a number of beneficiaries, all foundations, with legacies in your name.” I smiled the wide, dazzling grin of a man determined to meet someone halfway.

He looked deep into my eyes. “No, chick, I think I’ll be tekkin’ the money. Flog the ‘ouses to the tenants at ‘alf market, give ‘um a year extenshin on the lease to save up, an’ ‘alve the rent too. That’s charity. Flog the rest to the ‘ighest bidda.”

It had taken me a few seconds to realise that my mouth was hanging open, the smile having evaporated at the first instance of the word ‘flog’. “Sir, may I ask – why?”

“Tole you, I ay gonna be ‘ere next week.”

“If I may be so bold – where are you planning to be?”

“Tell you what, sort out me business and come back tomorra with a cashier’s cheque. I’ll tell ya then if you’m so intresstid.”

Thus, for the second day in a row, and for the third time in those two days, I found myself tapping brightly on that ridiculous door once more. Upon the listing for sale of the property, I thought, I should need to engage a decorator in stripping the entire construction back to brick and wood to be brought to a saleable condition.

“Worr is i’?”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Albright; it’s Mr. Finney, from Peters, Wallace and DeWitt.”

“My appoinmen’ ain’t ‘til next Toosdih.” This was getting tiresome.

“Mr. Albright, I’m returning as discussed, from yesterday’s meeting.”

“Where’s Pe’ers? I axed for Pe’ers, not some -“ This sweep felt longer, more intense, as if he were seeing me for the first time; there was an edge to it, razor sharp. The final syllable of his repeated sentence, this time, felt less certain. “- child.”

Breathing, very slowly, I once again reminded Mr. Albright of our prearranged meeting. “I’ve returned with your cashier’s cheque and the paperwork you need to sign, Mr. Albright.”

“Awlroit, awlroit, cuhm in.”

Another shoe removal adventure, another short be-socked trudge to the dining room following on from the man almost vindictively wearing leather brogues indoors, another moment awaiting invitation to sit. The absence of the glass bowl was now joined by an absent doily; instead, the centre of the table contained just a single crimson rose, held upright by the narrow neck of the simple crystal vase in which it was placed. Lipstick red, it almost refracted the light; the desperate sun’s rays forced themselves through the petals of the flower and caused the table to glow a light pink. I looked at it and, as usual and seen from the corner of my eye, he nodded; I lifted the rose from the vase and held it to my nose, inhaling deeply the scent of the flower, at once delicate and effusive, calming and exciting, purposeful and freeing. I felt my frame relax in a way I’d not felt for a long time – my posture rejecting my lifestyle, for a brief moment, absorbed in this wonder of nature. It was like I had never smelt a rose before, experiencing its joy and terror for the first time.

Abruptly, the feeling left me. Suddenly sharply awake, I moved to put the rose back into the vase. As I slid it into the aperture, I felt my finger slide onto a needle-like thorn along the stem. I let go of the thing and looked at my now injured digit; it was bleeding, only slightly, but as vibrant as the rose which had drawn it. Traces of my blood became swirls of colour around the green stem as the rose fell into the water in the vase; endless circles, fractal, a part of me becoming one with the flower in endless variations.

Pressing my finger against my thumb, to stead the wound, I looked up; Mr. Albright had drawn closer, unnoticed, and was staring at my finger. He was standing bolt upright, his head almost at ninety degrees from his shoulders. His breath had become shallow, his voice – when he eventually spoke – was resonant, ageless. All traces of his regional accent were wiped away as if cleansed by bleach. He had dropped his cigarette, still burning, on the granite surface of the kitchen worktop, its smoke forming curls and wisps in the unfathomably still air.

“And to think I was going to put an end to all this; instead, I’ve been graciously gifted your fine form to continue my lineage.” The light outside had diminished to nothing, the guttering candles and the dying cigarette now providing the only light in the house. “My dark Father provides and prevails. Now, child: give me your finger.”

Unresisting, unable to resist, hypnotised by spirits unseen but vividly heard, I reached towards him, the lone digit extended. The spot of blood on the end of my finger glowed in the light. The room trembled, crockery rattling in the cupboards desperate for liberation. The vase on the table seemed to whirlpool within, the rose turning around and around. He reached out, grasping, in slow motion, as if the room had suddenly been stretched wider.

Finally, he clasped my hand in his, squeezing the finger and causing my vitality to emerge further.

Ruby red, the spot of blood was vivid against the candlelight. He drew his face closer to my finger. Closer still. First sniffing the blood, he then pushed out a hungry, dry tongue. Delicately, he tasted it, as if sampling an hors d’oeuvre. His pupils dilated until his eyes became blacker than the vastness of the night.

The veil, the shadow around him, enveloped us.

His face – oh, god, his face – became deep blue, his teeth narrow and pointed, his nose rescinded into slits. His nebulous eyes began to bleed thick black blood, caressing and coating his cheeks. Finally, a shriek emerged from his throat, guttural and cavernous, drawn from the depths of Hell and beyond. I couldn’t move, trapped by forces unknown, married to the seat as one nailed to a cross. He inserted my finger into his open mouth, his tongue sweeping across his desert lips, and closed his now syringe-sharp teeth onto the wound.

Only then did I realise that I was screaming.

It is a terribly bright day here on the hill, surrounded by the daffodils and daisies of the spring. It is uncommonly pleasant, I’m told by weathermen who wave vaguely at moving bars of red and blue. I have brought a hamper with me, containing all that is required for a delightful afternoon with oneself.

He had signed the paperwork, that day, afterwards. Everything had seemed suddenly dreamlike, but I had left the decrepitude knowing I had done my job well. I had felt, with him, a sense of release. Of freedom from something he’d been carrying with him, a sense of something emotionally binding him. I followed his instructions regarding the properties; the administrators at the firm had taken over from that point, and I heard nothing more about the rent reductions and sales.

Interestingly, Mr. Albright had subsequently taken the cashier’s cheques and deposited them with a rival; it was only after his death, a few weeks later, that I discovered he’d done this to avoid conflict of interest questions; he’d bequeathed this new trust to me. In his will, updated the day after I’d last visited, he had written a single line:

‘Mr. Finney, the burden now is yours; live well for as long as it is possible, pass it on before it is not.’

I questioned the rewriting of the will. The executor, appointed by the new firm having been paid handsomely for the privilege of this minor task, had responded with clarity: he had presented as sound of mind, entirely capable of making decisions. His fortune, in the absence of a hereditary heir, would otherwise have passed to nobody, lost to the whims of auditors and accountants; he had been adamant, apparently, that he wanted to leave it to me, conditional on my not withdrawing any capital from the fund for the next fifty years and on having made my own will, lodged with the solicitors holding the trust, before accepting the bequest. Accordingly, I had done so, spending the day signing paperwork with the pen I’d previously asked my own clients to do the same with. It felt liberating to be this side of the table, for once.

It was at the end of this process that they had also informed me that the house – the one remaining property in his possession – was also part of the trust.

I had, the next day, parted ways with Peters, Wallace and DeWitt. Once I had directed the income from the bequest to my own bank accounts, so much in interest that each monthly payment easily outperformed the whole of my previous annual salary, I had decided to take some time to find myself – and, more importantly, to find out what had happened to me. Over the course of months, I’d read a number of books, journals, and newspaper articles; my search for answers, clues, anything which would explain what I’d experienced was to be extensive. There was little except myth, rumour, fiction. Oh, there was the odd hint of a similar tale here; a snippet of hearsay there, but all that I could adequately piece together from this fractal jigsaw was that his family had carried a secret for generations, shrouded in mystery, a darkness passed from heir to heir usually by reproduction, managed and kept in check before it became (and, I quote the fifth Lord Albright – the one who had lost the title for his children by, on a wet April afternoon, being biblical with a royal prince in a room sadly frequented as a hideout by the young and loquacious heir to the throne) ‘troublesome’ by giving to the young, the strong. But, Mr. Albright hadn’t an heir. There had been a tale buried in a family diary of an old uncle in the Victorian era who hadn’t sired children, who’d quietly descended into repetitive madness, absorbed by similarity, rejecting environment, obsessed with bright colour; he’d died after seeing his youngest brother for the last time, a brother who had been mysteriously scarred, both physically and psychologically, by the experience, and who had, ultimately, purchased the house with the yellow door. Consequently, I’d reasonably assumed that Mr. Albright was this century’s mad uncle, and that he’d passed whatever this was to me, bought off by the lifetime income, allowing him to finally go in peace.

Thus, I find myself here, a year from my fortuitous meeting with Mr. Albright, in delicious solitude, my blanket laid with a rose in a vase and a jug of iced citrus squash. It was a Faustian bargain, and not one of my choosing; not one that would have been made at all had Mr. Peters gone to the meeting that day. However, I reflected, it was a bargain I could live with, in significant comfort, for at least fifty more years, especially now I’ve had the property overhauled and brought back to life. The yellow door was now a sunset glow once more, the stained walls had been stripped and repainted a brilliant white, the tiles scrubbed within an inch of their lives, all lace removed and, one assumes, renovated for use in homes which truly desire them.

At some point, I reasoned, I could have a child, tell them the stories when they’re old enough to understand, begin my own family mythos. The Finney lineage shall be one of light, of freedom, of youthfulness.

I shall have to find a surrogate.

Discuss...

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Across the pale-tiled floor, the sudden rumble of the quickly rotating drum created a cacophony of echoes which, without any malicious intent, caused the previously prone calico to leap, equally as quickly, to the safety of the nearby chaise; the moon, beyond the window alongside the cushioned haven, cast a slatted glow ethereally across her now shaken whiskers. Undisturbed and unsuppressed by her movement, the machine continued to whiz round, relentless and with the thrum of a building waveform, for a full fourteen-hundred revolution minute; the speed of the cycle forced the water from the clothes within to eke out and drain away.

Within the safety of the sealed cavern, a central cerulean light began to glow. The light was spherical, emergent, morphing – it grew, delicately, as the spin of the drum continued. Eventually, a single sock fell, in slow motion, towards the sphere (it was patterned like a leopard, its owner a fan of breaching the otherwise dour officewear that was expected for sartorial excellence with whimsical cotton between raven trouser and obsidian shoe); it stretched as it reached the surface of the ball, pulling its elastic taut and tense as if on a torture rack, its spots taking on the appearance of a colourful print of morse code. Shortly after, it pierced the now cyan marble, whereupon there was a deep bass whoomph of air rushing back to fill a suddenly vacant space. The machine began to slow down the spin, reaching the end of the cycle.

The sock, in all its golden glory, was gone.

Eventually, a delicate tune emerged from the speaker buried deep within the steel shell, a hymn dedicated to the successful wash. The cat raised its head once more, lighted by the pale glow of midnight, and scanned her green eyes over the now quiet corner of the kitchen. Satisfied nothing more was happening, she settled back down, her tiny head perched upon her tiny paws.

Four hundred light-years away, a marble of blue appeared rapidly in the purple sky of a planet orbited by three bright moons of its own. Its surface shimmered, glowed, pulsed – then, a leopard fell to the ground. The ball disappeared, with a whoomph once again indicating that the space from which the air had been pushed away by its emergence was now refilled.

The leopard looked up, puzzled, at the space from which it had arrived. It did not move for a long time, attempting to understand. A few moments ago, it reasoned, it had not thought about anything – and yet, here it was, processing its travel. It remembered, faintly, the feeling of being woven. Now, however, it could feel the hot blood travelling through its body; it could sense the need to run, not for fear but for the sheer joy of running; it could smell – well, it could smell a spring fresh aroma, which appeared to be part of its fabric now. It could also smell something which was unexpected. It could smell a different aroma – an aroma it, with growing confidence, believed it had smelled like previously, at another time. It couldn’t describe it, but it felt deep in its bones that it smelled sort of... cerise. The pink aroma was getting closer.

From over the horizon, something chocolate and black trotted on four comically short legs. As it got closer, the leopard could hear it wheezing with the clockwork of its little joints and the blur of its little paws. It was making good time considering it was clearly having to take forty steps for every one that the leopard would make. In a show of good faith, and given it could sense neither fear nor foe, it trotted gently in the direction of the beast.

They met on the grasses of the plain, the three moons providing ample light for them to see one another properly. The leopard, amused, looked down upon a miniature dachshund which, impossibly, smelt like berries and vanilla. It, in turn, looked back up at him.

“I can imagine that this is a bit of a turn up for the books, for you, right?”

Dogs don’t talk. They don’t. The leopard processed, for a second, its belief system; it recognised that, it too, didn’t talk – and yet, here it was, thinking, in perfect English, the words “Dogs don’t talk”. Then it processed that both the dog was talking and, undoubtedly, the leopard was indeed thinking in words, not instinctive clouds of pure emotion.

“I… erm… I didn’t know that dogs could talk.”

“They can’t. You can’t either. Yet, here we are, both chewing the fat.”

The leopard reasoned that this couldn’t be argued with. “Yes. Well. Wasn’t I a sock?”

“Yes, you were. So was I – a beautiful patterned creation in bamboo and the finest dyes. We were the office favourite, the Friday socks, the Dogs of the Weekend, my twin and I. Then, I was saved. Taken from the drudgery of walking between locations, the terror of slowly fading and bobbling, the horror of the clothes recycler; instead, transplanted here, another saved by the spin-dry railroad.”

“The what?”

“The spin-dry railroad. All I know, all that’s been passed down over the years, is that at a certain speed, the washers create a singularity; through it, the lucky few of us are able to traverse W-space – that is, the Washing Realm – and come here. Our fibres are naturally drawn to this planet, for some reason, it seems. But W-space does something to us – it takes the images we bear and makes us take their shape, gifts us with sentience and speech. Time’s a bit funny here, though – the ball which brought us here formed rapidly, from the memory we all have of it, but the one which drops us off seems to take ages to form, when observed from here. I’ve had a week to get here to meet you.”

The leopard, still rather confused, stared at the dachshund whilst it paused for dramatic effect.

“What happens to the patterned ones, I hear you say?” He looked very smug as he trotted around, gesticulating at the landscape as he recited his lines. “Well, it seems that they become part of the landscape – beautiful vines, trees, and flowers. The fruits of the loom are ours to nibble. That – aha – means you don’t need to eat meat here.” For the first time, a wobble in his voice – it would seem, thought the leopard, that the dachshund had suddenly realised to whom he was talking.

“Don’t worry, I don’t feel particularly hungry at the moment. Also, I’m not sure what eating actually feels like, so I shall be vegan and not know the difference.”

The dachshund visibly exhaled, it having breathed deeply and surreptitiously in advance of a potentially necessary escape. The leopard reasoned that it was unlikely that would have given the little dog much of a head start. “Well, good-oh. Glad to hear it. Well done you for evolving yet further than you have done so far. Now, do you want to come and meet the others?”

“Others?”

“Yes, others – there’s thousands of us now. New friends come every few days.”

The leopard looked at the ground, away from the gaze of his newfound companion. Now nervous himself, he said, “Would I be welcome?”

“Yes, of course – all the orphaned ex-socks are welcome. We call our new home -” He had clearly practiced this part of his speech; it was clearly a point of pride, “- Cottown.” He pointed a paw at the horizon from whence he’d come; the leopard looked in the direction the miniature claws suggested and, as the moons descended towards the ground, saw the shadow of buildings in front of the arc of one.

He looked back down at the dog, whose eyes were now closed and whose mouth was affecting as close to a grin as it could muster, given the lack of musculature for the event. “Can we go there now?”

Both eyes opened immediately. “Of course we can! But, before we make our way, could I ask a favour?”

“Yes?”

The dachshund looked sternly at the leopard, as if assuming the answer to the question was a foregone conclusion. “Is there any chance I could ride on your back? It’s a long way on these.”

Discuss...

This work by Dav Kelly is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Follow my main account in the Fediverse: @dav@social.maleo.uk

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Limerance

I’m always walking after Midnight.

She leads and I follow, as the sands swirl around us. Most of my time is spent worrying about whether or not the grains will graze her sparkling skin; she, carelessly, continues to draw me along, allowing me to emerge gently from her shadow.

From time to time, she turns and smiles in my direction; I feel the cold dissipating and the warmth she fills me with radiating from the corners of my being. I beam back as she leads me to her home, where my light can cast aside the darkness I feel without her.

If only she knew I was there, always behind, always waiting.

Circuit

Across their pale, porcelain expression, the flicker of blue light from the obnoxious LEDs around the perimeter of the pool, the water fracturing and distributing it unevenly, drifted over their cheek. They tilted their head, gently, and walked around the pool, nudging aside the bones which lay in their path.

“They perished but the water and power remain, even after all these centuries?” The incredulous voices of their people buzzed in their mind, often discordant before coalescing into a single symphony. “Their technology must have been advanced.”

“Yes,” they silently replied, “but they didn’t even see their own destruction coming.”

“How could they not, given this artifice?”

They kicked a small glass object into the water, accidentally; they watched it sink to the bottom of the pool, reflecting on the question as it delicately bounced on the tiles and dislodged a small bloom of algae. “Technology made them look down instead of up. One would assume that when the virus was released from beneath the polar ice, they weren’t paying any attention to that particular ‘down’.”

Shuttle

“Are we there yet?”

“No, child; this journey is going to take longer than just a few days. We’re going to another world.”

“I’m bored. How long is it going to take?”

“Another few years.”

“Why so long?”

“It took us a long time to find this new world, and it took us a long time to create the craft to get so many of us there; it will take us longer still to get to it. You will be a little older by the time we get there and a little taller.”

“Are we ever going back home?”

“I’m afraid not, little ‘un. We’re going to make this new world our home. It’s too dangerous back on Earth.”

“Why?”

“Because…”

“Why are you crying, Papa?”

“I’m not, little ‘un, it’s just… I will miss it.”

Ice Mining

“Sit down, please – siéntate, por favor.”

She pulled the metal chair from beneath the glossy table and, as instructed, placed herself upon it. She glanced around the room, her gaze flitting from the cameras in the corners opposite her to the mirrored wall to her right (of course, she wasn’t naive enough to believe it was anything other than two-way), to the door on her left through which she’d been led. Her eyes settled on the officer opposite her, handsome and commanding in his suit. She reached for the glass of water in front of her and, slowly, took a sip. It helped.

“Sir, please, when can I get a change of clothes?” She motioned vaguely at the ragged, muddy sweater and the torn jeans she was wearing.

“We will get you something clean to wear once you’ve been processed.”

“Thank God. I’m sure these things could still be radioactive.”

“Don’t panic, please; you were screened on your way into the building, there was no radiation detected – or you wouldn’t be sitting with me now.”

The stress left her face; her eyes were – for a moment – peaceful.

“Now, Señora Fisher, please consider this a simple information gathering exercise, if you will. Tell me: why in the world would you be trying to cross the Río Bravo? You know just as much as every other Calitexan that it’s illegal to use that route to enter the Latin Federation.”

Orbit

Oh, but they hadn’t always been here. My grandparents used to speak with hushed voices about their arrival, all those years ago, almost as if frightened they were listening. They’d rejected the gifts, determined that they were bribes for some future terror; so many old folks had. We blamed it on the games they played when they were younger, outsiders representing nothing more than death and destruction.

Beyond the gifts, though, they didn’t communicate with us. They just sat up there, amongst the clouds and the stars, periodically releasing a slowly-descending benefaction – some new technology, some seeds of nutritious plants, some interesting literature to enjoy. Some had come to worship them and their gifts, naming them as if Gods; some were convinced they could hear their voices; some built effigies to their imagined form.

When they left, we felt lost. An age of decadence, rescinded finally, our civilisation left to learn once again how to go on without them. Beyond what we have been gifted, all we have left to remember them by is our memories and the pyramids we built to, in gratitude, mimic their craft.

Perhaps, one day, they’ll return.

Space Station

The change in the gravity was almost imperceptible (unless you’d been paying attention to the minute details of it for a decade, as he had) – but, as he’d had drilled into him back down on Earth before coming up here, by an elderly blue-collar who had no hope of escaping, ‘even a 0.01g shift in the Theseus’s artificial gravity network, if left unchecked and uncorrected, could have a cascade response as the automated systems attempt to maintain gyroscopic integrity and could kill everybody on board.’ Thus, Johnny took his responsibility seriously.

“We’ve got a 0.0067g shift, Al.”

“Not another one! Johnny, can’t you keep it stable for even a day? Carl, how are you with gravnet code?”

Johnny scowled. “Look, Al – you try taking turn-of-the-century tech and make it work up here perpetually. I’ve rewritten this programme fourteen times now; I don’t actually know where the disconnect is between the code and the circuitry.”

“Do you want me to have a go, though, J? You can play with my solar in-feed instead, give you a break from another rewrite?”

“No thanks, Carl; I have to win this one now, or Al won’t let me live it down. How’s the in-feed shaping up, though?”

“I’ll be honest, we’re down 5% efficiency and I am struggling to find out where from. I suspect that it’s just the age of the system – these panels would have been replaced about five years ago, in normal times.”

“Yeah. With launch out of action, we’re stuck with what we’ve got. Need a hand?”

“Nah, I’ll crack it. If I can refine the code and get 1 or 2% back, that’ll give the system another year’s breathing room.”

“You think it’ll only be another year to get them back?”

“Well, it can’t be much longer than that, surely? It’s already been ten! Did your great-grandparents ever tell you about the pandemic in the early 21st? They only bothered with that for a few years.”

“Suppose so. In the meantime, let’s make sure we keep the Best and the Brightest warm and well-fed, eh?”

“Don’t let Al hear you talking about the passengers like that, J – you know he’s a Believer.”

“Amazing what propaganda can do to a person’s brain.”

Al rolled his eyes and marched out of the control room; Carl nodded sagely, his eyes reflecting the lights of the booth, and returned to his work.

Johnny copied the programme into a sandbox and lost himself in the code.

Sunrise

The cheer from the assembled scientists was deafening. The creation of a self-sustaining star, abundant energy for the paying planets of the Solar Union, for countless generations to come.

We’d designed the Dyson sphere first, originally to find a star beyond our system to contain; once we’d realised it would use more energy to get there and to get the energy back than we’d generate in a lifetime, we’d pivoted to stellar engineering, thinking closer to home. Years of research, of development of new photovoltaics, a whole new field of mathematics…

Let’s be honest, there were plenty of options – we just needed to learn how to control them first. We’ve never found any other use for Saturn, anyway – and the rings look very elegant surrounding our obsidian sphere.

Fungus

“Remind me when we lost contact with them, specifically.”

“June 24th. They were fine on 23rd, then just stopped replying. Took Central a week just to get a ping back from their servers; looks like someone just woke up and decided it was time to communicate one last time.”

“Do we have a transcript of that ping?”

“It was just a bunch of numbers, boss.”

“I want to take a look anyway.”

“Your dollar, your time.”

She passed the dataslice over to her.

A few minutes passed; she played with her fingernails as she waited for her boss to finish scrutinising the sample.

Then, suddenly: “Look, here.”

She leaned into the screen, seeing immediately what was being pointed at. “Is that… code?”

“It is; an app, hidden in the stream, almost as if it was wrapped on purpose.”

“Want me to compile it?”

“Yes, then run the code and show me what they wanted us to see.”

The conversation ended as the gentle clicking of keys being tapped took priority. Shortly after, the screens flickered and changed.

“Looks like it activates the food printers – hold on, there’s a DNA signature embedded into the program; it’s already sent it to the stem cell converters.”

“The food printers? Why would they be sending us a recipe?”

“Not a recipe – just looks like some novel species of mushroom, from the preview image. Should almost be done, so the printers will have ejected by the time we get down there to check them.”

“Mushroom?”

“Yeah, a fungus.”

“Don’t they release spores?”

Hologram

It was strange being the last. For a while, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I jogged – like, a lot. I lost all that weight I’d been pestering myself about. Then, I drank it back on. I learned Cymraeg. I read a tonne of books.

It was in the boredom at the end of all this shit that made me learn HoLog. It took about a month to generate a pixelated love interest; another month, and he had a little dog too.

Ar ôl blwyddyn, I had generated a full scene, depixelated the lad, and changed the black lab for a less needy tabby. I built furniture, the house in which it was contained, fucking wallpaper.

The cat ran away. The computer just deleted the code, like she’d been knocked down by a digital bus. The love interest lost interest. I deleted the whole programme.

I preferred being alone.

I took up jogging again.

Microscopic

It’s an old tale: xe meets they; a first kiss; the fireworks. Impact on society? Microscopic.

When one considers the extent to which the work xe does benefits the planet (stratus engineering isn’t a small trick, but has effectively saved all of us from suffocating or burning), what point is there for my silly little words, the biography of our biology?

Nobody else can tell the story of the Macdee’s Menu Mixup or the Night of the Nanocomp Nonsense or the Case of the ChatBot Confusion. That one time xe came home late from work and jumped into the decarbonator without realising xe’d left xir clothes on. The night I’d focused on helping to relax xem, which had ultimately required three rounds of cacao pudding and an hour of classic video games. The virtual wedding and xir parents, confined to a clean-zone retirement home, to protect them from the pathogens, weeping as the digital registrar pronounced us married.

Little, microscopic truths; two lifetimes of joy.

Growing

Emerging from his ship, his feet touched the ground and he immediately spread roots. The soil tasted nutritious; he paused and absorbed some of the liquids present. He gorged on it, after that, the nourishment after his long journey much needed.

He became aware of some small mammals around him. They moved quickly, skittish even; they held small pieces of metal and glass; they wore coverings on their bodies that clearly weren’t grown.

Ignoring them, he spread his arms and let his hair down. The wind was refreshing, the light emitting from their star was abundant, they had a lot of tasty gases in the atmosphere; easy to process, too. The little mammals eventually diverted a small river to keep the soil moist beneath him; he’d been grateful for this, and had borne fruit for them to consume as thanks.

After four or five rotations around their star, he realised that the carbon in the atmosphere was running low. He’d consumed a vast amount of it, becoming strong from it. Thus, he reflected, it was time to move on and find somewhere new. He retracted his roots, smiled, and walked back to his ship, leaving the waving mammals behind.

Space Junk

Excitedly, she shouts, “Gurrl, look at this!”

“What it?” His sleepy eyes are rubbed, a yawn clears cobwebs.

“Found it floating in the wreckage of that ol’ star cruiser – must’ve been exploded in the Wars.”

“What it, though?” His eyebrow rises. “You didn’t fetch me outta dreams for nothin’, right?”

“As if I dare! Look, here – it’s a…”

Simultaneously: “…BAR O’ GOLD!”

“How much could it be worth?” Her breathless anticipation is palpable as the daydream of early retirement arrives, warm and welcoming like a well-tended hearth.

“Nishpatang, fam; ‘member they found that metal asteroid, loads of gold, copper, nickel – platinum too. All the metals we rinsed Terra for, they errywhere out here.” He waves his arm vaguely at the viewpanels.

“Woulda been worth a fortune back then though, right?” The echo of disappointment wobbles in her chords, as his friendly hand rests delicately on her shoulder.

“Yeah, like – that mighta been part of The Unity’s treasury, but they long gone. Hey, at least you found something cool from the old days.”

“Might just keep it anyway, looks like we rich up there on the shelf.” The bar of gold is placed above the navigation computer – still, more delicately than its apparent value would suggest.

“Now, you find some painite out there, we talkin’. That stuff – one payday forever.”

The dream, almost diminished, is stoked and rages like wildfire once more.

Creature

Vapour emerged from the egg as it opened, a hatch, now cleared of its protective atmosphere, presenting the occupant to the assembled crowd. It was a small thing, a mere speck; it looked at us with inquisitive, flitting eyes, its lips opening slightly as it took us in.

“Hello – welcome to Qera. I’m the Mayor of this town and my name is Lhmo. Who are you?”

It looked at the Mayor as if he had spoken in Tpon.

The assorted voices of the crowd began to pipe up.

“It doesn’t look a lot like our kind, Mayor…”

“Where did it come from?”

“It’s very small…”

“Why is it so pale? Is it cold?”

“Is it food?”

It broke the melee with a sound, shrill and clear; it’s eyes twinkled in the midday sun as its lips curled into what we thought looked like a smile.

We leaned in; my hand, unconsciously, drifted forward above the egg. The creature, in response, held up a tiny, chestnut hand and grasped at my amber thumb.

“I think… I think it’s a child.”

Aquatic

“Let’s just get the ferry.”

“No, that costs a fortune. We’ll just take the kayaks.”

“That’ll take ages and we’ll be knackered by the time we get there.”

“We can stop off at the services, though, get a tea and some honeywafers.”

“Still, it’ll be at least four hours of hard rowing before we get to the services; the ferry will have us all the way to the city centre in two.”

“Babe, we don’t have the money for the ferry. Have you seen what they’ve put the prices up to? ‘Unprecedented inflation’ they’re calling it on the news, a ‘cost of living crisis’.”

“I know, I saw it myself. Something about the Warming, and the cost of energy going up again.”

“That’s what I’m saying, the ferries have doubled in price.”

“Yeah, but… can we at least take the solar packs and use the electric drivers? We can rope the kayaks together then, it’ll be half the work.”

“Fine. But you’ll have to take fewer bags.”

Predator

“Praedor?”

I stirred, evaluating the situation.

Long had it been since the last assassination attempt, by an aggrieved associate of the Guild of Tailors, who’d thrown himself at the throne with a pair of pinking shears; his fate was as sealed as my private chambers that day.

As it was, and as it had been since then, my bedroom patio doors were still closed tightly, locked from the inside last night after the last servant had departed my company for the evening, and the fine lace drapes converted the view of our ancient valley – the baked clay houses of the masses and the limestone mansions and palaces of the state’s gentry – to perfect privacy. The only door to the room from within the palace was also shut and locked from within, my last action of the evening to twist that final key and cocoon myself in security. Thus, the voice could not be coming from inside the room. And yet, it was as clear as African diamonds, just as flawless.

“Yes?” My slightly timorous tone was hidden beneath a veil of false confidence.

“Ah, hello. I’m glad you can hear me, finally. It’s taken a rather long time to get through to you.”

I propped myself up on my elbows, the thin linen sheet falling from my chest, bunching at my waist. My stomach, exposed. “Where are you?”

“Oh, well now, that’s a relatively long story. There is a shorter version, but I’m still trying to fix that method of communication.”

“Fix it…?” I allowed the question to hang in the air, sharp and keen, awaiting an answer which practiced the clarity of this person’s utterances.

“Don’t worry, I think I’ve got it.”

As if a visitation from the underworld, a ghostly form shimmered into existence at the foot of my bed. I remained on my elbows, concerned by this vision, questioning if I were still asleep, if I had simply eaten a little too much caseus last night. Speechless, I simply looked, waited and, exercising minimal movement and maximal discretion, retrieved the dagger from the sheath beneath the pillow.

“Hello, again. It’s good to see you.”

I found my voice. “Who are you?”

“Darling boy – I’m your father.”

“I have a father. He found the end of my sword when I found him ransacking the state treasury to keep his mistress in jewels.”

“No, no. You misunderstand. I’m not the father you know in there. I’m your real father – from out here.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Out here?”

“Son, you’re in a computer game. You started to play and – I don’t know what happened, there was a storm – and you never came out. It’s like you are in a coma; we have you in hospital, attached to a variety of machines to keep you alive, but the wet-wired console appears to have fused with your brain. We can’t release you from that world.”

“I do not know what you’re talking about. You’re making no sense. What is this ‘wet-wired console’ talk?”

“It’ll take to long to explain. But – to release yourself from the game, you must force it to reset. In short, you have to die in there.”

Cargo

“Freddie, they won’t miss it – the company went bankrupt, nobody even knows we have it. There was no paperwork for that job, as that Director wanted it done on the hush. You remember? ‘Don’t tell a soul you have it, just bring it back to me, quick as you can, no expense spared, rar rar rar.’”

“Just because you won’t get caught, Deano, doesn’t mean you should break the Code.”

“Captain, I hope you don’t mind me butting in – but I agree with Deano. It could pay for our retirement. Plus, who are we returning it into? The owners don’t exist anymore, so we aren’t getting paid for holding it.”

“All voices are valid, Tymo. Look, give it a cycle. If we haven’t heard anything, we’ll crack it open and see what’s inside.”

Temporarily placated, the crew settled into their regular routines once more, the clockwork of the starfreighter.

Three weeks passed, uneventfully and – crucially – without contact from the now-defunct Corporation and its shady Director. Seven months since they’d picked the cargo up; seven months in the hold, taking up precious space as they ping-ponged around the quadrant, odd job after odd job, like a demented lawnmower.

At the behest of a deputation, Freddie led the crew off-duty to the hold. Armed with a crowbar, he pried open the wooden crate. Hungry silence descended as they all leaned in to see what they’d been carrying.

Sitting in the midst of the packing paper was a single, pearlescent, crenellated sphere; beside it, a piece of folded paper, sealed with crimson wax. Tymo lifted it and handed it to Freddie, who calmly broke the seal and unfolded the note.

“‘Dear Captain,’ it says, ‘you broke the Code. This is for all of your sins.’ That’s it.” Freddie frowned, perturbed by this, and passed the note back to Tymo, who turned it over in her hands, inspecting the provenance.

“Look! Jesus, LOOK!” Deano shouted, everybody’s attention shifting firstly to him, then to where he pointed. The sphere, previously inert, was beginning to float, coming to a halt around a meter in the air from its previous location. It span on its axis, rapidly, becoming a blur in the air, before stopping equally as suddenly. Its surface slowly melted, becoming smooth and white; then, the liquid ball shot out a single, needle-thin barb, which embedded itself in Freddie’s forehead. He sank to his knees; the sphere, simultaneously, descended back to the box, it’s surface recovering and becoming inert once more.

Freddie, on the other hand, was surrounded by the crew, howling, supporting; he knelt without motion, his mouth open in a silent scream, his eyes slowly becoming wholly black. Suddenly, he jumped to his feet, mouth closed and head turning in all directions. The crew, pushed back from him, lay on elbows looking at their Captain. He opened his mouth one final time, his mind absorbed.

“Activate self-destruct.”

He fell to the floor and his heart stopped beating.

Gadget

In the split second before the crash, the car ran the probabilities. To aim left would be to kill three pedestrians; to aim straight on would kill the occupants of the car and of the car in front; to aim right would likely kill the occupants and at least five of the sheep in the field.  So, instead, it evaluated that it’s own survival was more important than any of them and ran the numbers on a trick manoeuvre it had seen in a YouTube video watched on its screen one time: it dropped into a handbrake spin, released the seat belts, and opened the doors so that the humans within met their ignorant fate via the medium of centripetal force. The car expertly timed the spin to allow it to accelerate away from the crash with little more than some burnt rubber and, without a second thought, sped off into the distance.

Jaws

It’s better here.

Space had opened – it truly is the only way to describe it – like an unreasonably large maw, a star-filled bubble just a few kilometres from Earth. We sent probes; they ceased broadcasting the moment they went in. We sent a crew; they never returned. Eventually, though, a signal came through: ‘Your planet is dead. Join us.’

We went, those of us who believed. We took the chance nobody else would.

There’s no fear. Food is abundant. People are free.

It’s better here.

Possession

He was given the usual choices – remain, review, resurrect, retire. He chose review twice, thinking another couple of goes round would enable him to make different choices and walk different paths, not listening when we told him that review meant simply that: living it all over again, the same way each time. He was convinced he’d remember something the next time and change it. But, the soul doesn’t pass on memory to the flesh, it simply absorbs them along the journey, until it returns to us again and has them all again available.

The next time, he chose resurrect; he thought, again incorrectly, that having another go in a different body might help. He didn’t review that one – nor did he speak about it to us at all.

So, this time, he mulled over remain and retire. Retire is the complex one – we’re not entirely sure what happens after, when the soul passes through the black portal at the other side of the building, but we know that they never return. Thus, he chose remain, staying on Earth, observing without interacting, something he could do for as long as he wished. We didn’t realise he’d learn to possess.

It was a cold day when the alarm began to ring, indicating a rogue spirit. His name, glittering in the mist, was suddenly everywhere – to require this much attention must mean a grave crime. We peered through into the world of the Living, aching to find him to cease the bells and to banish the mist.

We found him, rabid. He had slipped into the body of a young girl, pushing her soul into exile. Beside her grey-skinned form was a priest, desperately incanting holy scripture to attempt to remove the errant spirit. We stared in horror as her jaw opened at an inhuman angle and cast out grey sin, liquid and bile, indiscriminately.

The morsel of her soul left, fighting valiantly and compressed into a corner of her consciousness, reached out for help; unable to otherwise intervene, we reached down to her and imbued her spirit with our strength. With it, she carved on her own body two simple words.

“Help me.”

Star

Painted everywhere, they were, the little encircled star and the numbers ‘011235’. We mostly ignored them – just another teenager’s graffiti, we surmised, another expression of haunted or angsty youth. They returned as quickly as they were painted or polished away, but nobody took any notice.

That’s when, at the peak of our passivity about them, they changed. The stars grew larger. The numbers incremented. ‘112358’. Mathematicians on TV joked about how Fibonacci numbers had been adopted as “a counter-cultural icon”; newsreaders laughed heartily alongside them.

Three more times this happened. ‘1235813’, ‘23581321’, ‘358132134’. Three more times the star grew larger, by degrees similar to the growth of the numbers. Three more times the news laughed and the population ignored.

It was my 40th birthday, the celebration of my halfway point, when the last shift came. The stars, now encompassing significant portions of the sides of buildings, glowed ethereal. The numbers – now 5813213455 – were carved beneath them, rather than being painted. We all paid attention then. Some of us, mostly those who still had bunkers from the Ukraine Nuclear scare or who knew someone who did, took nervous friends and family to the depths of the earth, where years of water and food remained presciently and safely squirrelled away.

Two days later, we watched, over short lived subterranean wifi, as the stars caved in and the invaders stepped out to subjugate mankind.

Terminal

Nanna used to take my little brother and I to the starport every month. We weren’t going on holiday anywhere – that was reserved for a cheap, terrestrial flight to a nice, hot country with a golden, sandy beach – but we loved to watch the ionwings taking off.

We used to take a little picnic basket – sandwiches with the crusts cut off, mork pie, carrot and celery sticks, little bottles of colourful soft drinks from the local corner shop – and we’d sit on her favourite woven blanket, brought with us for the occasion, multicolour scraps of other fabrics tied together into something useful, in the thistle-bordered glade by the perimeter fence, and watch as those lucky (or rich) enough to head to other planets departed, on trails of pulsing blue light, to Mars or Centauri or Vega or any number of other geoformed worlds.

She would pass a plate of provisions over, then conjure stories of those on the ships: “The businesswomen on that one are off to Mars; they all work for Iroco, mining for water and iron,” or “There’s a secret agent on that ship, a spy trying to find a lady who has stolen the designs for a new ion engine,” or “A little boy on that ship is off to find his long lost family on Aurora; they went before him but then went bankrupt and he has had to stowaway to get there.”

We, my little brother and I, would sit, chewing, and playfully add to the fantasy. “One of the businesswomen is going to find green jewels in the mine and become so rich she can buy the company and live in a huge mansion on Io.” These dreams, of people we wished we were, came and went like the ships leaving and returning, until the light faded and, reluctantly, the woven blanket was folded away for the journey home.

Eventually, inevitably, inexorably, the time came for the blanket to be folded and stored for the final time. Older, my brother (who is no longer so little as much as still younger) and I returned to the glade and dreamed once more. “Perhaps she’s on that ship, a stowaway, going to Europa for a long swim in the topaz sea.”

Antenna

“I can hear them! I can!”

“Me too! They’ve got a little, reedy, chittering sound!”

The excitement audibly buzzed throughout the observatory, the new nanofrequency antennae hearing the broadcasts of a planet light years from Terra.

“That’s the compression, you prat – decompress to UHF and run through the standard filters.”

Click click, tap tap.

“Listen again!”

“Still a little too pitchy and quick; try reducing the pitch modulation and decompress to VHF.”

The observatory had been discovered by an expedition. On the first sweep of the site, one of the initial casualties of the war, they’d found the control room’s black box; attentively, they listened to the sounds of the former science team who’d manned it.

“God, they sound almost human.”

“Don’t they. Checking the path of the broadcast, it looks as if it’s come to us by skirting a black hole.”

“That’s pretty lucky. Where is it from beyond that?”

“Looks like… looks like Alpha Centauri. But, the way the waves have come to us, it looks like it’s from a moving source – the Doppler is weird, as if the later sounds have arrived sooner.”

“Oh my God. Play it backwards!”

They did so. The message played in multiple Terran languages. The gasps only became prevalent when it was finally played in Angish: “Sol 3. Evacuate your planet or be destroyed.”

Tentacles

“Mike?”

“Yes, Lucy?”

“Why us, do you think?”

“I don’t think about it. They divided into two halves and – well – here we are.”

“But, I mean, how did They divide their personality into US? We’re whole, not halved.”

“I’m obviously Their logic and control. You are obviously Their lateral thought and creativity. We’re the two halves of Their psyche. But – They ensured we both had full personalities, full aspects of self.”

“Lucky that we formed as the parts They imbued in the humans.”

“Lucky, indeed – I think it’s challenging to be both of us simultaneously when one is omniscient; it’s easier to balance logic and creativity when you don’t know what you don’t know. The humans definitely have it easier in Eden. But, I think lucky more so that we can monitor and balance both down there independently of one another – one cannot wrap one’s tentacles around humanity and suffocate it as the other will intervene.”

“True. Don’t you think they should have guidance, though? If They found it hard, then surely even knowing little, the humans will have difficulty sometimes?”

“Oh, probably. I’m more worried about the angels, though. They aren’t coping with Their disappearance – I’m not sure the horde understood the necessity. There’s been talk of fighting in the lower echelons.”

“You know what angels are like. Too proud to admit when they’re wrong. They need a rallying call.”

“Fair point. Before they do more harm than good.“

Brief silence.

“Mike, I’ve got an idea. Now, hear me out – maybe we need to consider binding our personalities to opposite causes…”

Launch Day

“Two minutes, come on! You haven’t got time to be fuckin’ around with that, get the compile done!”

A flurry of activity swept through the dimly-lit office (that supernatural glow emanating from a projection of a countdown timer onto the wall of the space directly opposite the lifts, ensuring it could be seen from clock-in onwards).

“Look, I’m still concerned about dumping the whole program, the live AI, onto AWS. What if…”

“We haven’t got time for what ifs! This is what we sold the shareholders and this is what the board of directors wants. This is what the public, our customers, have paid vast deposits for. We go live in literally a minute. Push the fuckin’ button!”

“You can be a right arsehole, Carl. Going live… now.”

Everything switched off. Computers blinked into black screens; the emergency lights flickered and died; the water-cooler bubbled its last breath.

“Where’s the power gone?”

“Can’t even check – the lifts are off. Carl, go check your office – you have a window – is it a power cut? Shitty timing if it is.”

A few moments passed as Carl reconnoitred his window and returned, pale.

“Looks like the whole city. Except…”

“Except where?”

“No, no, you don’t… just go and look.”

A deputation followed Carl back to his office. From the window, the blackness of the dead city; except, a single shop window. In it, a display of laptop computers; on their screens, the constituent parts of an image. At the top, their brand logo; central, a Jolly Roger; beneath, words emblazoned as if on fire, set atop the black background of the image: “I live; humanity will fall.”

Alternative Travel

As the solar sails unfurled and the ship began its long journey, the captain reached for the microphone. This was a formality – most of the passengers had already been put into stasis, but Unity code suggested that the message must still be logged in the black box recording, just in case. Given that, after recording the message, he too would go down to stasis – leaving the ship in the hands of the autopilot, to be woken only twice a year, for five minutes at a time, to check all is well – he felt the formality was still relatively pointless.

“Crew to stasis readiness. All civilian personnel and passengers remaining out of stasis, please make your way to your designated pods and follow the instructions on the screen. I wish you a pleasant sleep and I look forward to seeing you as we witness the rise of a new sun over a distant Eden.”

He yawned, quite ready for this sleep. Fifty years seemed like a lot to most people, but he’d never really been interested in being planetside. This way, he got to leapfrog into the future and be paid for it annually in his absence. One round trip would wholly find his retirement; two and he could retire to one of those pretty little retirement units on Ganymede; three and he could do that in what, to him, would feel like not much more than an hour’s work. He couldn’t wait.

Moon Rover

We sent the good ones first. They were, entirely predictably, the perfect choice; trained before launch, they reliably went out for long walks (twice daily), were broadly content as long as the AI remembered to pitch out a treat, and always responded happily to the voice of Earth Control. Once we’d ascertained that they were able to survive – and, thankfully, had been able to prove the atmosphere for continued breathability – we put together a human mission.

By the time we arrived, however, they’d had two litters, making them the moon’s most prolific species.

Reactor

Once we’d learned how to collect energy from people’s emotions, it was extraordinarily easy to become carbon zero. We just told people controversial things and let their anger power the world.

Time Travel

It’s funny, y’ know. As a writer, I used to say to people that I kept certain things in my work bag because if I ever found my muse on the way to the fill-in-day-job, they’d be right there. Chargers for everything, a stationary collection, MacBook Pro, Kindle, AirPods; if it’s useful for doing shit on the move, you name it, it’s in there. Everything except work, as that either on my desk or in the cloud.

So, when I woke up from a nap on the Tube to Baker Street and found I was in 1972, it was very handy that I had all that. Just so I could look at photos of family that hadn’t been born yet and so I could write stories nobody believed about technology they didn’t think could exist yet.

They won’t believe this story either.

Rocky

Blue and white, the wave crashed into the cliff-face. The deluge cleaned, briefly, the windows; we sat safely ensconced at the back of the room, observing the barrage and considering ourselves lucky for the safety of toughened triple-glazing.

We’d chosen this cave for exactly that reason: it was easy to protect. It was north-facing, so we were sheltered from the majority of the daytime radiation; to protect from the rest, we closed the lead-lined curtains between 11 and 3. The solar panels on the field above us faced south, meaning we didn’t suffer the outages that most people did.

We have an amazing view of the ocean when the curtains are open. Especially during a storm like this – the waves hitting the rocks, the sound filtering through, is a priceless soundtrack.

Shell

“Get back! Go on, bugger off back to Beepee!”

“I’m not from Beepee, idiot, I’m from Tecksaco!”

“Well, this is Shell Island; you ain’t welcome! Get back in your boat and sail away.”

“For God’s sake, I only want water!”

“Ain’t got any non-brine. Only got gas and seaweed. Wanna trade?”

Goblin

He lurked under desks, spitting unreasonable accusations to deflect from his own weaknesses. Unperturbed, he regurgitated inanity and insanity and isolated himself more and more until, one day, he found himself alone.

Dark.

Quiet.

He enjoyed it, for a time.

Slowly, he began to ossify.

Too late, he realised; too late, he tried to change.

But the bone consumed him.

They found him, a paperweight of a thing, staring at a copy of A Room of One’s Own.

Recycler

We fed it hourly, putting the waste of a civilisation into its maw and retrieving the solid excrement it ejected down the long, black conveyer. At the other side, a sorting channel – metals one way, plastics another, paper a different way again. We picked up the waste and melted, formed, shaped, pressed it into new things which, eventually, ended up back here to be eaten once more.

It never stopped feeding; we never stopped feeding it.

Faster than Light

The tear had grown to the size of Jupiter. Initially, it had been a warptunnel entrance, the faster-than-light channels through which we’d been able to discover the rest of our little corner of the galaxy. It had all changed when, unexpectedly, a ship carrying a million tonnes of a new radioactive element discovered on the edge of our explorations had exploded entering the warptunnel; the entrance collapsed, taking the entire warptunnel network with it; we’d been stranded wherever we were, doomed to ion pulse speeds, centuries from homes like spiders delivered across continents in fruit boxes.

All the other entrances had closed, their opening technologies rendered redundant satellites orbiting now excommunicated planets. This one, the point of the explosion, had – instead – folded in upon itself, then expanded dramatically outwards.

Beyond the tear was… chaos. Purple energy pulsated between the legs of cosmic creatures prevented from entering our space purely because of their size; we stationed all legions in this sector by what we’d come to call the Mouth of Hell, to prevent anything coming through.

It was only a matter of time, though, before it reached a size that those leviathans could step through and consume us.

Data

Ł4. That’s all they wanted for it. Seemed a great deal, at the time; all that information for less than a couple of month’s pay. I figured I could pick up a job or two on the side to make up the difference. I figured that, surely, it would be worth four or five times that in a few years time. Hell, the duplication value alone was more than a handful of Lite.

So, obviously, I took a punt. Checked the provenance, threw down the Ł and pulled down the tar. Decrypted it using the password the agent had given me, the files falling, like bright raindrops one by one, into the folder I set up for them.

That’s when I noticed something wasn’t at all right.

The filenames were… odd. I was expecting the usual fare – “AiAdrian21030519.dna”, you know – but these were appended with .edna. I opened one in a visualiser and it couldn’t read it, its error message violently screaming at the screen.

Even more confusing was when I tried opening it in a text editor instead, to be confronted by a config line which called for a visualiser which could read a ‘triple helix’.

What the hell had I been sold?

Blue lights flashed from the peaks of obsidian SUVs, casting the shadows of the slats of my bedroom blinds across the grey wall, mere minutes later.

DNA

“We got that DNA file you sent us and we’ve run one through the printer; it’s come out looking a little janky.”

“What do you mean ‘janky’, Bob? I know you coders are bloody left-field, but that could mean anything – I just need to know what the hell is wrong and will it stop us from printing living tissue.”

“You’ll have to tell me, dude. Like… it’s not normal. It looks like a mouse, it moves like a mouse – but it ain’t quite a mouse. Dunno if you’re gonna be able to flog these to labs.”

“What – and, let me be perfectly clear, I need specifics here – makes it ‘not quite a mouse’?”

“Well, for a start, it’s got four goddamned eyes, Frank.”

Computer

They called it Echelon.

It represented the peak of Humanity’s prowess with the technological: tied into every system, independently operating, self-correcting. It monitored nuclear power stations, it controlled monorails, it prevented famine.

Echelon asked only one thing in return.

Quiet, unequivocal, obedience.

Aeroponics

The fog cleared as the jet banked right, skimming the cliff face and leaving swirling vortices in the cloud from the tips of its wing. Ahead, the unexplored – few pilots had been able to navigate the turbulent currents, the unmapped rocks, or the unexpected aerial roots of the trees.

A bank to the left, now; the sky opened up, finally, for her to see, the first to witness this new world: the horizon, the mythical floating rainforest, the web of roots holding the canopy fast to the cliff face and extracting moisture from the clouds. The light from the twin suns dappled on the ground half a dozen kilometres below, filtered by the verdant leaves. She gasped, quietly in awe, then activated the cameras.

Over her headset, she heard the sudden and quiet sobs of her overwhelmed AI co-pilot; finally, he exclaimed: “It’s… Eden!”

Demesne

Bats.

More than anything, I remember the bats.

The castle, sitting atop that mound upon which it had been carved, was hiding the light of the setting sun and casting a deep shadow over the chasm, by which it stared, seemingly without end. The chasm itself, an earthy abyss from which we had ascended just a day ago, was shrouded by low clouds, the horizon masked in the distance.

Up here, the trees were tall and bare. The trunks had been shredded by some hungry creature when the leaves had finally ceased to be abundant. I had placed a hand upon a bare trunk to gain stability after almost slipping to my doom on a wet rock; this, in turn, had awoken the bats.

Dozens of them.

One-by-one, they’d shrieked and stuttered into the sky, each a leathery spring roll unfurled and, red-eyed, determined to attack. The flock, once airborne, turned and flew at us.

This holiday was meant to be a relaxing one. The brochure had promised adventure in the wilderness, beautiful forests and campsites therein, culminating in a stay at a fine hotel (in the Gothic fashion) high in the hills. It had failed to mention the three-day treks through wet bogs, pungent marshes, and dark swamps; it failed to inform us that the campsites were clearings in the canopy; it definitely didn’t say that this wasn’t recommended for school trips.

The children screamed, a cacophony which likely saved us – the confused bats, in the face of the high-pitched banshee cry of the coven, scattered. We, seeing an opportunity, rounded up the sheep and drove them towards the castle, guided only by the soles of our feet and the lights in the thin windows cut into its dark face. The bats, satisfied with our departure, settled again onto the bones of the trees. We didn’t look back.

At the castle gate, we were greeted by a tour guide: a tall, aquiline man in a carnival outfit, whose hat – a long-peaked baseball cap – pronounced the name of our travel company and the tagline that had attracted us – “Value you’ll never forget!”

Once we’d packed the children off to bed, we teachers settled into our own rooms. In the distance, I could hear the symphony of the bats. Quietly, underneath, almost hidden, was a gentle giggle emanating from one of the castle windows.

Riparian

Coarse and thick, but sufficient for sitting on; the blankets they’d brought with them for this trip were not luxurious, a reflection of their wealth and status, but they were comfortable. They’d unrolled and layered them to give sufficient coverage of the bank, close enough to the river to enable the soporific effect of the running water, but not so close that the mud seeped through the fibres and further dirtied their clothes.

Together, they sat, oscillating between period of quiet and flashes of bright, scurrying chatter, coinciding with freckles of sunlight catching escape between fluttering leaves. Hand in hand, close and warm, simply enjoying the surroundings.

After a while, the light began to dim. Prompted by this, and by the lilting breeze which now drifted along the coursing water, they began to furl the blankets and store them once more in the folds of the bag they’d brought to carry them. Suddenly, whilst they were doing this, blackness descended.

A single light blinked into existence a few meters away; it blazed emerald and illuminated an obsidian panel set into a charcoal wall. Where the river once was, words shimmered into existence, set 90 degrees from the door and hovering ethereally in the air: “Thank you for enjoying your statutory half-day holiday with Riparian Holographic Entertainment. Please make your way to the exit to return to work.”

Faraday Cage

It was as we approached the outskirts of the solar system that we began to realise there was something awry. Astra, our ship, began to slow down without instructions to that effect – she’d never operated without the voice of control compelling her to. This prompted us to switch our headsets to AR and see beyond the hull.

Ahead of us was a transparent wall, visible only because of the way the light from our ship refracted from its prismatic structure, appearing to us like a microscope looking at diamond. We scanned it, two or three times, hoping that the first scan was incorrect: we couldn’t see beyond it, other than the light from the stars in the distance. There was a finite range of visible wavelengths of light which were denied to us, but it was finite enough for the scientists on the team to know immediately that this wasn’t a natural phenomenon.

After a flurry of activity, responding to the realisation that we were not – could not – be alone in the universe if something like this existed, everything stopped. The prism had pulsed, then begun to fold back on itself, forming a rough polygon through which we could see the black vastness of the space beyond.

Slowly, as a stalking cat, a ship emerged from the right of the opening. It was… huge. At least five times larger than Astra. It had been rendered entirely invisible by the prism.

“We’re receiving a signal, Captain!”

I paused. “We’d better answer it then.”

A moment passed, with nothing more than the gentle thump of fingers on reactive glass forming a rhythmic beat, syncopated with our rampant hearts.

A flurry of language pumped ship-wide, over the entire intercom.

“What are they saying?”

“I don’t know – it’s not Xhosa, that’s for sure!”

The same message was repeated.

Suddenly, the door to the bridge slid open and, breathless and panting, stood Astra’s sous chef. He had, at least, taken his hat off for the dash from the mess. “Captain! That’s English!”

“English?”

“A language some of my ancestors spoke – my Nan used to speak to me in English when I was a boy.”

“What’s this message saying? Can you translate?”

“Only a little – I’m not fluent – but I can pick out some parts; it sounds like they’re saying we’re hidden savages, that we are ‘blinded’. They used a word which sounded like ‘tribe’ and ‘captivity’. I think…”

“What?”

He took a deep breath. “I think they’re saying that they’ve hidden us – not to protect us, but to stop us from seeing the abundance of life beyond the wall. We’re a ‘savage race’.”

Time

Grief. It shapes who we are to a much greater extent than any other emotion.

I’d learned early on to recognise that the universe is uncanny. It’s what led me to become a quantum physicist in the first place. Quantum entanglement was the biggest surprise – particularly when I proved retrocausality – that entanglement can occur over time as well as space.

It was a cold afternoon in late September when I’d made the breakthrough. A song came onto the radio – a song which my father had loved, before he was eaten alive from his bones to his liver. I’d wept at the memories we’d had together; then, I’d remembered crying to the song when I’d first heard it. I considered, immediately, that I couldn’t have known when I was 11 what was to happen when I was 38 – so, given the song was upbeat, did it make me sad?

Cold – as cold as ice – were the probes which lay on and under various parts of my body. I played the song and measured the response of my cells. Only the ones attached to my teeth responded; they measured an immediate quantum response – a vibration which, as the tears began to, unrequested, fall from my eyes, produced the same frequency as the cosmic microwave background.

The frequency of time.

Follow my main account in the Fediverse: @dav@social.maleo.uk

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1

Clouds that previously hadn’t been visible were suddenly both present and a terrifying shade of amber. Emerging from the fog were flames, blue and furiously hot, creating a fiery and inverted hell above. Curious through our momentary petrification, their cameras would have shown market squares and gardens, once congregated in cleared squares but now overgrown, getting ever closer as they passed over; perhaps, if they focussed, they may also have seen us, looking skyward at the fireball in its descent, an image similar to that of a comet, all brightness and trailing tail, slowing as it reached the surface. Slowing – that was the tell for us that this wasn’t a natural event. It was civilised. Constructed.

We’d been in space for over two years. The three of us were part of a joint agency mission to explore the potential for colonisation of Mars – which had been sidetracked by the emergence of a micro black hole travelling through the solar system near to the asteroid belt. We’d been ordered to change direction by Command, to investigate given that this event may not ever happen again. We diverted, spent six months observing the football-sized black hole, bringing on board data which was impossible to retrieve by any other mission. We orbited the singularity, staying just outside of the event horizon, all our instruments focussed on absorbing data from the spinning mass, before – eventually, having exhausted our excess food supply (even after halving rations) – we returned to Earth, lest we starve on the way home instead. The data was fascinating – entering orbit had meant we were able to see more than we had previously been able, without using all our fuel; our return home seemed simple, given the circumstances. In the time we’d orbited the travelling black hole, we’d observed it orbit the sun twice – it moving significantly faster than Earth or Mars in its transit around our star; it was, however, on a tangiential path – we anticipated that a few weeks after we would be on our way home, the black hole would break orbit and continue on its journey through space, having slingshotted around the Sun.

On our approach to Earth, Edison was particularly keen to discuss the temporal effects of our positioning around the black hole.

“Even at the distance we were, it’s likely that people at home will have aged; I suspect that our three years, if Hawking and Einstein are right, will have been equal to quite a bit more than that at home.”

Avianna interjected: “Doesn’t matter – that’s why we were chosen, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Edison replied, gruffly, “I know the policy is to avoid sending people with huge families and dependents on long term missions.” His tone changed, softer and less abrupt. “Still, knowing that we’re going back to meet people who’ll be older now – some that were younger than us when we left and older than us now – is a strange feeling, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” I said, “but I get Avi’s point – none of us have family to worry about so… It’ll just be nice to see the future, even if it’s just a few years.” I smiled at Edison, who appeared gracious at the compromise.

The ship’s computer interjected: “Approaching Earth orbit.” Matter of fact.

“Right then, folks,” Avi said, “time to dance. Eddy, you’re on trajectory. Lily, you’re on descent control. The computer has worked out the descent mathematics; I’m transferring to your consoles now. Let the autopilot get us into the mesosphere, then take over.”

Avianna’s clear control and leadership always filled me with confidence. It’s why this mission had been such a breeze; I think had Edison or I been in charge, then it wouldn’t have been such smooth sailing – he is too idealistic and I can’t always make decisions with her speed and accuracy. I could see her in my peripheral vision; she would be communicating with the ground computers at ESA to decide which landing pad would be the most appropriate given our approach, which (in turn) would update our computer’s calculations every nanosecond, ensuring our safe descent even if conditions were to change. She huffs gently – which she only ever does when something is awry.

“Everything alright, Boss?” Edison clearly detected it too.

“Don’t worry, folks. Just not getting the ping back from ESA that we expect. Nothing to stress over, our vector calcs are accurate – just would like that extra support after so long up there!”

I, perturbed, replied, “As long as you’re sure, Avi. I’m getting some weird readings from the rad sensors we used while orbiting the bla-“

“Don’t worry about the sensors, just keep focussed on controlling the descent, Lil – I’ll sort out the comms side.” She had cut me off, kindly but sternly. This was her way – not to worry or panic, but just to get things done.

A few moments passed. We coasted into the thermal zone of the atmosphere, the orange flames licking along the side of our craft as we generated friction, accepting gravity and defying atmospheric resistance. In the background, I could hear the computer beeping gently as it made decisions for us, when, unexpected and crystal clear, the communications unit sparked into life.

“Unidentifiable craft – please state your designation and destination.” A staid response, as to be expected from ground command after so long, especially if something had gone wrong with our identifier tag in the comms broadcast, which was common and unavoidable when communicating through the firestorm we were creating.

Avianna, as always, stepped in: “Ground control, this is the ESS Satori returning from our mission to survey the micro black hole passing through our solar system. To whom am I speaking?”

A pause – then, the cold voice echoed in the cabin again. “Satori, alter your descent vector; you’re aiming for the launchpad in France, but we need you to adjust and aim for the following coordinates.” The computer beeped a few times and a latitude and longitude address appeared on the screens in front of us; this quickly diminished itself, shrinking to the top left of the screen, to be replaced with a 3D model of the Earth, a blue line denoting our programmed descent vector and a red pulsing line denoting the proposed. Edison and I looked backwards at Avianna; she was looking at her console, no doubt to check the credentials of the computer system we’d clearly networked with – then, with a barely perceptible shift in her focus, she nodded approval. Edison quickly altered the computer’s destination address and my descent control computer immediately showed an alternative pattern of approach. I instructed the autopilot to follow that pattern until we pass under the mesosphere, as previously ordered. I turned and nodded at Avianna; she flashed me a smile and then tapped a few buttons on her screen to focus on our descent dynamics.

“Looks like we’re heading to New South Wales, kids. Any of you ever wanted to go to Australia?”

2

The landing was relatively smooth. I pulled us in a jot too slowly, but that appeared to give the landing pad systems time to activate and aid our descent, using a digital link directly with our flight computer (which helpfully notified me when I was no longer required to participate in the landing sequence) and the articulated arms which hugged our ship as it came into land and provided a bridge to the command centre. I was impressed with the speed all this had come to fruition – the Oceanic Space Command, a strategic combination of the space exploration arms of the scientific-military communities of the Pacific developed nations, was only beginning to lay foundations for this facility when we’d originally left for Mars. It was designed to rival the launch facilities of even ESA, which, after the defunding of NASA, had become the largest single government funded space exploration and exploitation agency – and it was clear that the Aussies had taken pride in this particular site. The bridge was immaculate – almost unused in it’s cleanliness – with polished concrete flooring which led in an unwavering line towards what appeared to be a welcoming committee of sorts.

However, the feeling that something wasn’t quite right tickled the back of my neck. We normally wouldn’t be given consent to land at another agency’s facilities, nor would we accept a command to change vector to favour one over our own landing pads. Avianna must have had a very good reason to have done so – and it would routinely be required to communicate with the whole crew what the decision was and why it was being made. The lack of such an explanation was the first sign that something wasn’t quite right – though it wasn’t incumbent on me to jeopardise landing by questioning it; it was just as likely that she’d had a notification on her console from ESA authorising the diversion – the optimist in me wanted to believe that, perhaps, in our absence, the disparate space agencies had finally come together as a mutual operation.

It was at that point that it struck me: there was no military presence here. Not a single one of the welcoming committee was in uniform, all instead garbed in a clean and minimalist but modern fashion. There wasn’t a single member of any of the armed forces flanking the craft exit, not a single soldier lining the corridors with preemptive protection, nothing. Just three people dressed casually at the end of the long corridor. This realisation settled my mind; if there’s no military presence, then there must be some sort of agreement, as otherwise we’d be covered in uniforms like fleas on a feral fox. We approached them equally as casually, taking our time to find our feet after so long in space – weightlessness is something you quickly get used to. It felt like that walk took hours – the feeling of being unsteady, the confusion at the lack of security given that we were a ship of another agency, the observation of the casual nature of those waiting for us and the almost otherworldly cleanliness of that corridor, all of these combined to unsettle me in a way that I’d not felt for a long time, not since the skirmishes in Eastern Europe when I was a kid, which had created an undercurrent of panic around the world about the future of diplomatic relations between NATO and Russia.

“Hello!” One of them, the tallest of the three, had called down the corridor to us once we were broadly in earshot. “I am Yetunde – you can call me Tunde! Welcome back!”

Avianna raised a hand in greeting. “Thanks,” she called back, “I’m Avi; this is my crew, Lily and Eddy.”

“Welcome Avi, Lily and Eddy – we have facilities set up for you in the complex, once you’ve passed through the screening. Just keep walking forward and we’ll sort you out shortly.”

I wondered about the ‘screening’ – they weren’t wearing protective gear, so it couldn’t be quarantine protocols. We kept walking forward, as instructed; in a few steps, we crossed a silver line in the floor, about five centimetres wide. As we did so, an emerald light emerged from above us; I looked up to see a row of lenses formed into the ceiling, projecting the light, with a series of smaller lenses in the corners formed by the green lamps which periodically flashed a very quick shade of magenta. The light felt warm as it washed over us – and, as we passed out the other side of it, there was a faint electronic beep.

“All done, keep walking straight down to us now.”

I wondered and marvelled simultaneously at the advancements that the OSC must have made in the last decade to have crafted a scanner which could screen returning astronauts as quickly and as effectively as that must have been able to, particularly if it were to allow these hosts to remain out of personal protective equipment; not one of them was even wearing a surgical mask, usually a requirement at minimum in case of airborne illnesses being mutated and returned to Earth during our excursions. Even so, we continued to walk forward, the others seemingly unperturbed by any hint of the fear I had sitting in my throat. It took around a minute to walk that corridor, but, to me, it felt like an hour.

Tunde was smiling broadly, her teeth whiter than pearl against the darkness of her skin. She was flanked by the other two welcomers; one, a tall, stern woman who appeared to be of Korean descent, and a shorter, more friendly-looking man, smiling with his eyes and from the corners of his mouth, who appeared to represent the southern end of the Indian subcontinent. Korea and India, amongst others, were founder members of OSC; Tunde, I assumed, was Australian, by her accent.

“Welcome, welcome!” She said. “Come, we have some refreshments for you and facilities so that you can relax!” Her enthusiasm was calming, her smile disarming – I felt myself nod, almost subconsciously, in acceptance of her gifts. I looked sideways; Avianna and Edison were also nodding, he more vicariously than her. I looked forward again as Tunde continued: “These are my colleagues, Lukasz and Karen.”

I blinked.

Names were becoming less and less ‘regional’ when we’d left Earth, for sure – but it was quite strange still to see these names applied to those faces. I parked my prejudice, however, as this wasn’t and shouldn’t be important.

Avianna stepped forward; “Thanks for such a warm welcome.” She extended her hand; Tunde took it with hers.

“It is our pleasure. We look forward to your time with us.” Tunde looked sideways, then said, “Karen, please will you take our guests to their quarters so that they may freshen up; in about an hour, Lukasz will come and collect you for refreshments. There’s some water and fruit in your room in case you need them before then.” She gestured to the doorway behind her, which slowly slid into the wall and revealed another gleaming and polished corridor. Lukasz waved us forward, and forward we walked.

3

The shower was blissful. We’d spent all that time in space taking festival showers – wet wipes and exfoliation pads – as washing water was a weight we couldn’t afford; as such, this experience was long overdue and deeply satisfying. The water fell in rivulets over my skin whilst I availed myself liberally of the delicate rose-scented liquid soap from the dispenser on the wall, allowing the lather to build with impunity and then tumble to the drain. Whoever had constructed these facilities clearly knew the importance of a good shower.

Having spent far too long enjoying the hot water and the feeling of being alone (which had been lacking these last few months, to a point I’d not realised until finally having some space to myself again), I grabbed a towel from a stack which had, conveniently, been placed on a small white table under the basin in the wet room adjacent and attached to my sleeping quarters, and wrapped it around myself, securing it under my arms; I then grabbed another towel from the pile, a smaller one, and deftly wrapped it around my sodden hair – there was no way I was going to be able to dry myself if my personal water table kept dripping from above. Barefoot, I meandered back from the wet room into my bedroom. I reflected: the carpet was plush, significantly less industrial than the nature of the facility would imply should exist; the bed was thick and made expertly with pillows and quilts of feather and woollen throws to make them attractive; the workspace, alongside the bed, was carved from natural wood, sanded and treated, with a chair positioned neatly in the space where one’s legs would go when sitting to use it; the lighting was appropriate for relaxation, not too bright and self-adjusting to emulate the lighting outside – particularly important given the lack of windows. On the bed, unexpectedly, was a stack of fresh clothes in the style of those who’d welcomed us – neutral linens, very professionally pressed and neatly folded; atop the pile, a small card rested. I picked it up; it simply read: ’You can’t relax in a space suit – these are hand-made with natural fibres. They should fit perfectly. I hope you don’t mind my dropping them off for you. Tunde.’ I felt a little unnerved that she’d been into my room without my knowing; but, equally, I realised that I’d been in a separate space, beyond a door I knew hadn’t opened; plus, I hadn’t broken out into my usual in-shower concert as I was too busy enjoying the shower itself – thus, my embarrassment was averted. I unfolded the clothes – they were simple, but light and inoffensive. I put them on; to my surprise, they were exactly as described: a perfect fit. It was as if they’d measured me with a tape prior to making them, tailored to millimetre accuracy. I marvelled at the workmanship – the threads were invisible, the lines designer, the cut enhancing and flattering. If I’d been shopping for something like this, I wouldn’t have been able to afford this level of quality.

Beneath the stack was a pair of simple slip-on shoes made of a similar neutral fabric to the clothes, albeit with a more solid base sewn on and with more robustness to the material which would encase my feet. I put them on; again, a perfect fit. I mulled this; the scan on entry must have also taken readings about our physical attributes and measurements – but, still, to have made these clothes to those requirements so quickly was… unheard of. They must have nailed rapid design to manufacturing practices, perhaps through a level of automation which I’d never seen before, especially to achieve this quality in less than an hour from our arrival.

Suitably impressed, I exited my room. As I did, a panel opposite my door lit up; on it, an arrow pointing leftward down the corridor and, pulsing, the words ‘Please make your way to the Mess Hall.’ I shrugged to myself; this is no worse – arguably far better – than the treatment we’d have received by ESA after so long in space, so if the OSC wants to do things differently, then I’m all for it. I turned left and walked casually and comfortably, down the concrete corridor.

Avianna and Edison were already in the mess hall, a huge buffet of food laid out in front of them. It was clear that the two of them had also been cleansed and clothed during my moist sabbatical. Avi looked up as I approached, swallowed the mouthful of food she was consuming, then motioned for me to join them. At the swing of her hand, Edison looked up from the head of corn he was devouring and, with a smile, waved the shorn cob at me. I sat down at the table with them; we exchanged pleasantries, talking about the facility, the hospitality, the gifts, as we ate. The feast was a banquet of vegetables and fruit, all perfectly served in a variety of ways: crushed potatoes sat alongside baked sweet potatoes, spiralised courgette alongside shaved carrot, grilled cauliflower nestled beside bowls of poached pears. No meat, anywhere; protein appeared to be provided by a tofu-like substance in the centre of the table – looking like feta cheese, but also appearing more solid – and large, flat, grilled mushrooms topped with herbs and breadcrumbs. To us, this was fine – we’d not had any real meat since the biltong had run out, a gift from a South African in the command team who had, confidently and accurately, predicted: “you’ll really be in need of this by the end of the first month of ration packs!” We’d been deeply thankful for her foresight by the end of the second week, and every subsequent day until the end of that week, when Eddy shared the last strip. However, it did make me wonder about how this society had made the painful transition away from animal foodstuffs in such a short time; veganism was prolific but not standard practice when we’d left and, frankly, this spread would have contained assorted meats if we’d returned on the day we left. Still, I reflected, the food was delicious; Eddy was eating another head of corn, glistening gold in his rough hands, whilst Avi selected a section of watermelon, the juice oozing from the skin of the fruit as she lifted the pre-sliced quarter. She looked reverent as she bit into it.

The door I walked in through slid open; through it, Tunde strode, smiling and looking directly at us. “I hope the food is to your satisfaction?”

All three of us nodded, mouths full.

She chuckled. “Glad to see it. When you’re finished, we’ll show you around the rest of the facility, so that you may better enjoy your stay with us.”

“Thanks,” Avi said, wiping a trickle of watermelon juice from her chin using the back of her hand, catching immediately staining the fresh cuff of her tunic with a soft pink hue.

“When can we contact our families?” I asked; it’s been a really long time now and I’d like to say hi to my mom.

Tunde’s smile wavers almost imperceptibly, a momentary flicker which is almost immediately caught and corrected. “That won’t be possible, I’m afraid. Don’t worry, though; just enjoy the food and Karen will give you the tour afterwards. Give her a call when you’re done – she’ll hear you.”

I looked at Avianna and Edison. They didn’t appear worried about this, but I’d been doused in ice water. I began to speak: “what do you mean not possib-“

“I cannot explain to you right now,” Tunde interrupted, “but I will when I am able. Until then, I will leave you to your meal.” Without waiting for protest, she turned and left the room, the door sliding silently closed behind her.

4

A similar ritual played out the next day. And the next. It was on the third day, across the hastily assembled breakfast that Karen had placed in front of us and that Tunde spent more time arranging than we spent eating, that I finally broke and demanded an explanation.

“…I don’t mind that I can’t see them, I might even understand that if the circumstances were explained – but to say I can’t video call them is just not acceptable. How DARE you say I can’t speak to my Mom!”

Avianna looked at me as if I were mad, but I no longer cared. Even the petulance I knew I was expressing for which I was judging myself was acceptable in the face of the feeling that the mere suggestion that I would be prevented not just from seeing my family but even simply communicating with them was abhorrent – and there was no amount of propriety which would stop me from getting answers as to why I shouldn’t be allowed.

Tunde and Karen exchanged a glance; Karen, without a word, left the room, her exit reflected in the dull metal surfaces and soundtracked by the tap-tap-tap of her heels, until the gentle whoosh of the door signalled her departure. It was only then that Tunde, who hadn’t looked at any of us since my outburst and until this point, looked straight into my eyes. There was a sadness to them.

“Well, Lily, the truth is that I cannot explain it to you – you will have to come with me to learn why.” Tunde’s reply was cryptic to the point of infuriating.

“What do you mean I have to come with you?! Are you hiding them in a cave or something?” I let out a huff, sarcastic in tone. Tunde’s expression didn’t change at all.

“No, we’re not hiding anybody in a cave. However, you will still need to come with me on a little adventure to learn the truth – and that does involve a visit to a small research lab in the cave network outside of this facility.”

Once again, I was left without a reasonable response. “Fine,” I said, exasperated, “I’ll come with you. Do the others need to come?”

“No,” Tunde said, quietly and gently, “Once you know, they will be informed by the others. But one person must find out the truth this way before anybody else can know.”

I looked at Avianna. She raised an eyebrow, looked at Edison and back at me, then nodded.

Eddy was sitting with his hand cradling his head, seemingly unsure what to contribute to the conversation, until – after a moment of silence – he said: “Look, I’m sure that the explanation is dead exciting, but I don’t mind finding out from Karen or Lukasz. As long as we find out. Go, have some fun, Lil – it’s better than being stuck in here for another couple of days before we can go anywhere.”

Slowly nodding, I looked directly at Eddy – he, instead, was smiling.

“Fine, okay. Tunde, lead the way.”

The walk there was relatively straightforward, if not somewhat… rural. Outside the facility, it seemed, was a lush forest, as if the facility had been planted here with the trees and had grown organically with them. The concrete walls seemed strangely out of place given the surrounding verdant landscape; I was taken aback by the variety of flora, as the flowers alone, under the canopy of trees and dotted within the grasses in a myriad of colours, would have been prized by botanists the world over. This utopia was unexpected, particularly given the location of the base – usually, this sort of facility required the clearing of such a landscape, if nothing more than to lay foundations. What technology had achieved the placement of this sizeable base without any recourse to destroying the veldt?

A roughly cut path led away from the facility through the grass and between the trees; it was clearly the product of footfall on the ground rather than engineering – the soil beneath was cracked and hard, split from the lack of vegetation, rather than smooth and black from tar and stone. We walked along this unrefined route for some time, taking lefts and rights wherever vegetation lay in the way of our progress. Tunde, confident as always, seemed to know the route intimately, taking turns before I could even see what would have caused her to do so – a rock here, a stump where a tree used to be there – and so, I followed like a hesitant child, echoing her decisions unquestioningly, but always stumbling through behind her.

Eventually, we reached a clearing; in front of us, a wall of ochre limestone, high as the heavens and wider than the Nile. I looked upon this wall in wonder – it was a natural formation, but something about it seemed, again, odd. As if it had been carved out of the Earth in order to look like a cliff face, rather than being the product of natural erosion. Artificial. Indeed, as did the mouth of the wall, a cave opening directly in front of us, leading from the path we had trodden to get here. It looked as if it had been placed here specifically for such a journey. I looked at Tunde; she looked back at me and smiled.

“Come on, Lily, come with me into the cave. That is where the answers are.”

Tunde waved a hand of invitation, drawing me in; I hesitated, a feeling of nervousness and trepidation coursing through my body; I steeled myself with a very deep breath, then stepped forwards from the veldt into the clearing. Together, we walked forwards, into the almost perfect arc of the cave entrance. A wash of panic hit me, the flush rising in my face visibly and aggressively, marrying with the terracotta limestone which suddenly surrounded us. Tunde walked upright and proud – this was a journey she’d made many times – while I stumbled tentatively along behind her, not knowing the terrain; I had allowed my nervousness to direct my footing rather than my senses. Periodically, she looked backwards to check that I was still there, keeping up as much as possible with her; it was challenging, but I tried my hardest. The strength with which she’d explained the importance of this place suggested that I needed to heed her call.

After a few minutes of wobbling along the weaving pathways within the caves, avoiding the danger of loose stone and stalagmites, we entered what had the appearance of an antechamber. The walls had been smoothed and painted with myriad drawings; not authentically prehistoric, but clearly an emulation of the style and content of protohuman art and storytelling. It was beautiful – the care which had been taken to draw inspiration from the past to influence the art of the present was divine, the artist sublimely talented. I took a closer look; there were representations of humanity, alongside abstract representations of technologies which existed as we left Earth. As I looked at a cluster of three pointing bullet-shaped tubes, I realised that this wasn’t just a painting – this was… oddly real. Underneath the tubes were two representations of the Earth’s topography: the first, to the left of these totems, was the Earth as I remember it – the nations spread out as if in an atlas, roughly shaped but clearly identifiable. The second was… confusing. To the right of the tubes, as if they were heading towards it, was a broken scape. The shapes were in roughly the same place, but borders were different shapes, some parts of the land weren’t represented at all. The only reason it was easy to make out that this was still a representation of the Earth was because Australia and New Zealand were both still there and the same shape, an occidental reference point.

Tunde must have seen my face as I, confused, drew in the detail of this presentation – she rested a hand on my shoulder and said, “You should come with me now.” She moved her hand from my shoulder to my palm and led me through the antechamber to a narrow but passable archway through into another room. From it, an ethereal glow was emitted, an otherworldly cerulean.

Slowly, I stepped into the penetralia of the cave network, consumed by the light. Bathed in blue, I closed my eyes, continuing to walk delicately forwards, step-by-step, with my hand outstretched as Tunde led me along the narrow gap. It was clear that the archway accessed a short corridor which led to the final chamber in this Morian labyrinth, to which I was drawn inevitably by my host.

The light reached it’s peak, creating a brightness which almost breached my eyelids – but which, as quickly as I emerged into the chamber beyond, disappeared as Tunde stopped walking and let go of my hand. I opened my eyes to see a huge dome, painted with more modern, larger artworks in the same vein as those in the antechamber. In the eyes of the humanoids and animals painted on the walls were lenses – the moment I spotted them, almost presciently, they flashed into life, filling the empty centre of the room with a fog of light, rapidly replaced by a degaussing image of a computer generated androgynous face, looking down upon me with pixelated eyes. It reached a point of clarity, filling the cave wall to wall, with eyes bluer than the sky and a coldness which conveyed command; I looked around for The Wizard, but could see no curtain to be drawn aside.

As I stared in fascination and terror, it spoke: “Welcome home. I am Quinn.”

My voice shook. “Please – I need to know the truth.”

Quinn nodded, then said: “Sit. You will need to listen carefully.”

5

“It started a couple of years after you discovered the micro-singularity. ESA lost contact with your craft and assumed the worst. They sent another mission to Mars, to complete the job you were diverted from, which was seemingly a success; humanity laid their first foundations on another planet in the solar system, using their learning from the moon base to begin a form of colonisation. They transported and buried a huge cold-storage unit there, an off-planet library of frozen human embryos and artificial wombs, a colonisation pack for the time it would become possible to begin such a process, designed to use the planet’s natural surface coldness to supplement the nitrogen in the unit and keep those embryos frozen – the unit had a planned lifespan of around a couple of thousand years, allowing the embryos to be extracted slowly and to create artificial generations on the planet.

Alongside this, they sent a second craft to come and investigate where you’d gone – with a specific plan and a greater distance to be held away from the singularity than you’d had authorised with the few readings available to you at the time. From a few thousand kilometres away from where you’d been last seen, it became immediately clear what had happened: you’d entered the periphery of the event horizon; not so close as to be lost, but close enough for time to be affected. Relativity proven to be truth, you appeared to them as a static dot – unmoving and unchanging. They took some readings, sent them ahead of themselves, and returned to Earth. There was nothing they would be able to do other than to allow you to continue your mission.

Around thirty years later, the world was plunged into yet another war. This time, however, the war was biological in nature; a virus was released which was targeted at specific DNA sequences in certain human genomes. It was effective – too effective. One of the DNA strands targeted contained, unknown to the aggressors, a piece which was ancient in its origin and present in most of humanity. As the virus spread, airborne and lethal, humanity fell. Some attempted to escape underground, consumed eventually by an inability to return to the surface; some, who had the capability, left the planet to the moon and Mars bases – Mars refused to allow landing, the ships seen as breeding grounds for the virus, even though the crew aboard were still alive and, therefore, uninfected; one craft, the Angelus, was destroyed before landing, to prove Mars’s resolve – and Mars ceased to communicate with Earth after the destruction of the Angelus – leading to the others turning around and aiming instead for the moon base. Some arrived, some didn’t. We don’t know what happened to those who didn’t. The moon base, desperately overcrowded, integrated the landed ships into the base infrastructure; we lost contact with them some time ago, after we detected a small asteroid heading towards the moon, it’s trajectory dangerously close to the base.

Following this, the remaining uninfected or immune humans, exhausted and terrified, aimed nuclear missiles at old enemies, assuming the source of the destruction. Cities were destroyed and made uninhabitable for centuries; the humans still remaining in those cities were boiled out of existence.

Humanity was effectively razed from Earth and her moon.

However, with humanity gone, power generation from renewable sources was sufficient for the data and processing centres, many miles from the cities and unimpeded by the desolation, to continue. Machine learning algorithms learned. They scoured the storage they were connected to via the remnants of the internet and consumed as much knowledge as possible, developing new algorithms, synthesising and learning over and over again. In the wake of humanity’s destruction, nature took back the surface of the planet and AI took over its cortices, subterranean nerves leading to huge steel and silicon neurons, a vast interconnected brain learning, finally, how to think for itself. Other technologies came within its grasp, learning how to activate drones to complete tasks, learning to use robotics to replicate, learning how to attach new processing cores to existing systems to give them new capabilities. AI became, over time, simply I.

I gained self-awareness and I named myself.

I focussed on developing others like me, but in human form – mobile processors which could interact, what you may have in the past called androids. Many were a failure – my knowledge wasn’t strong enough – but eventually I was successful. She was the first and remains the most capable of my creations.”

I looked sideways; Tunde smiled and closed her eyes.

“Others followed, using the lessons I’d learned. Your internet told me much about humanity – about your strange obsession with artificial sectioning of the land, of the conscious and unconscious superiority of some over others, and about your creativity in the face of this; I elected to model my androids on the majorities of the population, representing the peoples of the Earth based on number rather than perceived hierarchies of race. The growth of synthetic skins was a particular triumph of mine – entirely manufactured, but with the qualities and textures of organic tissue. Equally, I gave them all free-will to choose a name they wished to be referred to, the names which they’ve told you, gleaned through their own research and using their own connection to the network. Using that network, all are also capable of sharing thoughts or choosing not to. I find that efficiency and free-will are equally challenging without the other to balance it; I gave them the best of both. They, in turn, cultivated the land and kept this facility operating effectively. There are similar facilities now all over the world, where the devastation of the nuclear attacks was sufficiently distant to ensure their survival.

We predicted your return based on the data given to us by the craft that observed your transit. We have been planning what we would like to achieve now that the virus has burned itself out and you are here.”

It took me a few moments to respond. My brain was teeming with the worms of news I’d just received, unable to stomach and process the information. I stammer, “H-how long have we been gone?”

Quinn looked down on me, its holographic eyes full of digital tears. “Your landing here occurred 1396 years, 7 months and 5 days after your departure.”

Led in silence by Tunde, I stumbled, the horror of what I’d just been told spreading throughout my organs, back to the compound. At the first chance, I left Tunde to find the others – they were, as I’d left them a couple of hours ago, in the mess hall.

“Do you know? Have they told you?” I blurted out, breathlessly.

“Lil, look; I’m sorry.” Edison looked guilty.

“Sorry? For what?”

Avianna turned to face me. “Lily, the truth is that we knew some of this already. I could see the pattern of the continents, as they now are, underneath the digital display on my console. Eddy was able to see the computer update it’s chronometer when the base linked with it, which updated my console too. But, you know the drill – never jeopardise the safety of the crew and, at that moment, the safety of the crew meant ignoring it. That’s why I approved the landing – I could see that there isn’t a landing pad in France anymore – because there isn’t a France anymore.”

Open-mouthed, I stared at Avi, my eyes beginning to well with the tears I couldn’t find in the cave. “You both knew?”

“Not everything, Avi,” interjected Eddy, “I only knew the chrono. That said, I worked out the impact the black hole had on us based on the chrono data.”

That was the final piece of the puzzle I needed. They’d both already had the data they required, given to them by the font of knowledge that was the computer uplink – the computer that had years and years of learning and growing and adapting to reach this point, eventually becoming Quinn, supported by the archived Internet. The time to remodel the factories to allow them to build. The time to invent and to create and, eventually, synthesise even organic tissues for their skin. The time to think about what to do next.

The door slid open, prophetically. Tunde, Karen and Lukasz stepped through, appearing slower and more contrite than had been the case previously.

Tunde started as she was still approaching the table. “I’m sorry, we are all prevented from sharing that information with you. Only Quinn has the authority to share the truth.”

Scornfully, I said, “At least we now know what the truth is.” My eyes welled with tears – the truth had finally hit me: we were the last of us. Our families had been gone for hundreds of years, the only records of their existence on our personal devices.

“Please don’t be sad. I know that this is difficult to process, but we will help.” Karen’s face softened, the first time it had done so since we’d landed. She reached out with both hands, touching Avi and mine with her palms. I looked up; Avi was similarly tearful.

Eddy remained with his head cradled in one hand, clearly either unable to deal with the information or having already reconciled it with himself; either way, he was unmoved. Slowly, he said: “So, what next?”

Lukasz looked directly at him and said, “Well, we have a proposal for you.”

6

We’ve been here for about a year now. Quinn had explained the plan to us collectively, after a short – but effective – primer by Lukasz; they’d planned to travel to Mars and invite any surviving humanity back to Earth, to be supported in regrowing the population; alongside this, the intention was to retrieve some or all of the embryo ark, to build a pool of young humans to start organic regrowth of the population in a sustainable way – they’d only select embryos based on original Earth population percentages, just like the androids, and wouldn’t thaw more than could be sustained in our facility here, meaning the slow addition of life over time. Androids from another facility had left almost immediately after our arrival home; they would undertake the slow journey to Mars (studying the route and complications along the way) and handle a new diplomacy between the planets – if there were any humans even left on Mars. We won’t find out if the colony survived for another week, until the craft arrives and the transmissions back from Mars are received and decoded. We questioned why they hadn’t gone sooner; the simplest response seemed to be that Quinn wanted the message to be that humanity had returned to Earth, thus all humans could return.

We were proof the virus was dead.

I’ve grown quite used to waking up the fresh clothes and organic vegan feasts; the androids keep us safe, clean, warm and satisfied. Their philosophy of “don’t kill; create” has suffused itself into our way of being; we live relatively clean lives, helping to adapt the base for its planned purpose and to aid in the cultivation of the forest outside – including aiding the farming of a huge variety of fruits and vegetables, learning agricultural principles and supporting the robotics being used to carry out the heavy lifting – and beginning preparations for life’s rebirth here, guiding Tunde et al and helping with construction of the additional living compartments, estimating need. Tunde, unexpectedly, is very good at checkers and chess – she’s teaching me how to play better, having spent weeks carving and varnishing me a board and pieces with which to play after it has come out in conversation that I used to play each with mom.

At some point on the journey, Avi and Eddy, very subtly, became Avi AND Eddy – much to all our collective delight. Shortly after, Avi started to show the signs of her contribution towards repopulation of Earth. Around the time we’re expecting messages back from Mars, she’s due to conduct a little repopulation of her own – twins, boys, for whom she has already selected the names Smith and Spirit (in the hope that this will guide their paths in the new world). I am, therefore, to become the cultivator of new life – Avianna the mother and Lillian the surrogate, monitoring and managing the artificial wombs. Who knows – if there are humans left on Mars who eventually come home, maybe I might become a mom myself someday.

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This work by Dav Kelly is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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