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...

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

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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

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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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