Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 48

Part 48: Ever After

The sun woke me, shining through the open window, red light against my eyelids. I rolled over. The sheets beside me were slightly disturbed, an indentation in the pillow, a warmth lingering to my side. I swung my legs out of bed, and stood, throwing a robe around myself.

The marble floor was strangely warm beneath my bare feet.

She glided into the room quietly, treading carefully, naked and drying her hair with a towel.

“Did I wake you?” she asked.

I shook my head. “You're always up so early.”

She shrugged, brassy metal flowing organically into the gesture. “The pain used to wake me. Fear of the dangers of the world. Worry for my uncle. I suppose I got into the habit of waking at sunrise. Don't let it bother you. You should lie in.”

“I can't. Knowing you're up and about.”

She pulled down a dress from a coat hangar hooked on the wardrobe door, stepped into it. I zipped her up. She slipped her arm in mine and said, casually, “I think a visitor may have slept on our doorstep.”

“Is the doorbell broken?”

“You know how she is.”

We walked downstairs, arm in arm, her feet pattering sharply on the marble steps.

Sigrid looked up at us as we opened the door and stepped out onto the street, her calm eyes waiting for us as if she'd known the exact moment we'd leave the house and had aimed her gaze accordingly. She looked lost without her rifle. Incomplete.

“You should have woken us,” Una said. “You could've slept on the sofa.”

Sigrid barely considered the idea. “Can hardly sleep inside anymore. Or lying down. Not used to it.”

Una met my eye. The world changed, but our sleep patterns stayed the same.

Sigrid stood. “I just came to say goodbye.”

I wasn't surprised. “Where are you going to go?”

“I don't know,” she admitted. “Across the sea. Into the Twisted Forests. Anywhere away from here. I can't make it in Unity City. It's too strange, and everyone else seems too calm and quiet. And I don't want to stick around anywhere nearby either. Too many people from Fortress City wandering around on the wrong side of the wall, still loving the memory of Kirkham and hating the people who killed him. Seen too many of their friends come here and wind up with Sky Spider machines in their heads.”

Una pulled Sigrid into a hug. The riflewoman bore it with obvious ill ease, uncomfortable to be so close to Sky Spider technology. When she turned to me, I just shook her hand.

“Hey,” she said with a toss of her head, “maybe I'll go and finally find EON-2, see what it wanted to say all this time.”

She turned away from us and walked off, into the perfectly white streets of Unity City. We watched her until the road carried her out of sight. She didn't look back.

“I'd be dead several times over if not for her,” I remembered, all of a sudden.

“And she'll die out there,” Una said coldly.

I laughed. “And we'll die in here. That's life. Human life, anyway.”

Una laughed too, looking down at herself, her six, oil-slick black, arthropodal legs, her polished brass bust, her human arms. “Human life isn't what we thought it was anyway.”

The sun had crept up higher into the sky, its white light almost painful as it played on the city's bright rooftops. Figures stirred in the distance, some of them with their heads wrapped in glowing coils, others tall, ethereal, androgynous.

“Our kind of human life is well on the way out,” I said.

Una squeezed my arm. “Everything changes,” she said. “What matters is breakfast.”

She lead me inside.

We sat on the balcony to eat, looking out at the incandescent city. Immense forms moved on the horizon, reshaping the world with slow, powerful grace. And my hand rested in hers.

We looked at one another and smiled.

THE END

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 47

Previously: “Kirkham was dead, the walls of Fortress City breached. Now Una, Sigrid and I faced the alien wrath of Prometheus.”

Part 47: Prometheus No More

As the house rained down around us, Una pushed me beneath herself. A brick bounced off her back with a metallic clang. I stumbled over shattering masonry, pulling Una along behind me. And we were outside, and safe.

Or not. Looking up, we saw Prometheus closer than ever - towering over us, its long, jointed legs splayed around the house like a spider over its prey. Una glided up beside me, rubbing her back with one hand.

Prometheus lowered its great, expressionless, human face, mouth open. I could feel my hair starting to bristle. I took Una's hand in mine.

Blue electricity began to crackle around us. Una squeezed my hand. “Well,” she said, “I suppose this is it.”

I pulled her closer and kissed her temple. The most peculiar sensation began to build in the pit of my stomach. If you've never almost been imploded by a Sky Spider machine, I can't really describe what it felt like.

But I noticed immediately when it began to fade away. The arcs of ethereal lightning stopped with a sudden pop. And the slick black skin of Prometheus began slowly to brighten and turn grey.

“Because we killed Kirkham?” Una mused.

I pointed to the almost imperceptible figure riding on the back of Prometheus. “Or because we had a little help from a see-through friend of ours.”

Like sunlight piercing the clouds, Prometheus began to glow with internal light, its replica of Kirkham's face warping into something stranger, and more reassuringly Sky Spider in nature. Before it had become almost completely white, Prometheus had turned and begun walking away, stepping harmlessly through townhouses like it wasn't really there.

Sigrid stepped out of the rubble of the old cottage, brushing debris from her shoulders. “What happened?”

“Kirkham lost Prometheus,” I said.

Sigrid nodded. “Well, he's got no need for it where he is.”

Una stepped away from me, looking out over the ruins of Fortress City, dust and smoke still rising from it. “What a waste. Yet more people without homes and food and who knows what else.”

“They're free, at least,” I said. “Which is what you wanted.”

“Let's hope they're not too proud to turn down help from Remus and Unity City.”

“I didn't think you...”

She shrugged. “How else can they survive now?”

Sigrid was looking around with wide eyes. “Wait, back up a minute. What have you two been doing here?”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 46

Previously: “Prometheus had clawed through the walls of Fortress City - not an outcome we'd expected when we confronted John Kirkham. The future of the city was hanging in the balance.”

Part 46: Sky Spiders Ex Machina

The ground shook as Prometheus ploughed through the buildings of Fortress City. Its impassive face - a perfect likeness of John Kirkham's golden mask - bobbed over chimneys and rooftops as they collapsed into a rising cloud of dust. Behind it, Kirkham's hot air balloon rose into the air, its burner flickering against the dull fabric of the envelope.

Una and I turned to flee from the half-ruined cottage. And right in front of us, Remus' glassy Sky Spider automaton stepped into existence, as if rounding an invisible corner. Its huge, inhuman hands rested on the shoulders of a stocky woman in faded military fatigues, looking rather bemused.

“Sigrid!” I exclaimed.

She grimaced a greeting as the automaton faded away behind her. “Some airy-fairy pretty boy - or maybe it was a woman - snatched me off that rusty old ship and told me you two were in trouble.”

Una shrugged. “Oh, you know: same old, same old.”

Sigrid's eyes widened as she saw Prometheus tearing through mouldy, smog-blackened brickwork to reach us. “I don't see what I can do to help, save give you some company on the passage to the hereafter. Shouldn't we be running?”

“Have you ever shot down a balloon?” I asked.

Sigrid shrugged. “There's a first time for everything. Can I have that rifle?”

I handed Sigrid the rifle Una had borrowed from a deserting soldier, and she immediately dropped to one knee, sighting down the length of the barrel. I was about to say something when she fired. Una and I both jumped.

“Damn it,” Sigrid muttered, and started adjusting the little metal sight at the end of the barrel. “Who was supposed to be looking after this thing?”

Una said, “I got the impression its previous owner wasn't too interested in maintaining his equipment.”

Sigrid pressed the stock to her shoulder again. “Well it's a crying shame.”

Straight ahead, the row of dilapidated houses across the street parted like a veil of filthy mist before Prometheus' clattering, arthropodal legs. Sigrid barely seemed to notice.

She fired. The basket of the hot air balloon suddenly erupted into a shower of flames, disintegrating and dropping detritus onto the rooftops below.

“Shot the fuel tanks,” Sigrid yelled, over the avalanche of footsteps that heralded Prometheus' advance. “Now let's run like mad.”

She immediately sprinted towards the door, only to be thrown back into the room when one of Prometheus' peculiar electric blue missiles struck the side of the cottage. Another hit the wall with the collapsed, gaping window, and the whole rotten building began slowly to topple forwards.

I grabbed Una as she grabbed me, and bricks began to rain down around us.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: We've been sure that it really must be it for our heroes enough times before, but now, surely, it really, really must be all over for our heroes next week! There's no surviving the merciless point-blank assault of Prometheus! Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 45

Previously: “Prometheus had clawed through the walls of Fortress City - not an outcome we'd expected when we confronted John Kirkham. But it wasn't quite the rampage it seemed.”

Part 45: Birdwatching

“It's not moved?”

I shook my head. “Not a hair's breadth.”

Una shoved a brown paper bag at me. “I brought you food.”

“Thanks. And you found a rifle, I see.”

She shrugged. “I think its previous owner was in the act of deserting his post. He didn't seem to want it anymore.”

It had been hard work to find somewhere with a commanding view of Prometheus where you didn't have to walk up stairs to get there, but we'd found it in the end: a mould encrusted cottage that dated from times when Fortress City had fended off human enemies.

I'd set up a telescope aiming out of a gaping hole in the brickwork that probably used to be a window. Una sat down in the deckchair beside mine and laid the rifle across her lap.

“So,” she said, “you think Kirkham's just redrawn the borders? It's no longer him versus the Sky Spiders, but John Kirkham: zoo keeper.”

“Right. He's just going to sit up there and wait for everyone to come back to the city. If they come back at all.”

“They will,” Una said confidently. “There's nothing between here and the ocean except Circhester and the factory farms. They might be tempted to try looting the farms, but if they do they'll only wind up disrupting their own food chain. And Circhester will provide them precious little fun as well.”

“You know, people can be surprisingly decent in situations like this.”

Una leaned over to look through the telescope. “And surprisingly ruthless as well.”

I turned to look out at Fortress City and the giant black war machine sitting on top of it, insectile legs curled around the rubble of the buildings crushed beneath its bulk. “I keep looking at the area around Prometheus. Somehow I don't think Kirkham would want to be too far away from it.”

“I can see a lot of likely places. I wouldn't exactly care to wander up there and try searching for him, though. And even if we did find him - what then?”

“I'm not sure. Killing him might just remove whatever control we might ever hope to have over Prometheus.”

Una shrugged. “Or maybe it'll revert to whatever it was supposed to be doing before Kirkham stole it from the Sky Spiders. In any case, I can't see putting a bullet through Kirkham as being anything other than a positive step.”

I sighed. “Okay. Well, we can't sit here forever. If we don't make a move, Kirkham will.”

“What are you thinking?”

I shrugged. “Run away. Go back to Unity City. Stop worrying about who's oppressing who and relax. The whole problem with Fortress City is the people are living in fear, behind a wall and a load of big guns when they don't need to.”

Una smiled. “Tempting. But no. Don't let me stop you, though.”

I touched Una's shoulder and pulled her back from the telescope. “Look at that.”

“A hot air balloon. Is it the same one-?”

“I think so.”

“And you don't suppose?”

“Who else would you expect to find riding Kirkham's hot air balloon over Kirkham's stolen Sky Spider machine?”

Una stood up and brought the stock of the rifle to her shoulder. “It's still pretty low.”

“Do you really want to take the chance that it's Kirkham in there and not someone else trying to fight him?”

Una thought about it for a second. “Well, yes, actually.” Her finger tightened on the trigger and a look of almost childish mischievousness came over her face. “Are you a better shot than me, Perry?”

“Seriously, don't call me Perry. And I honestly have no idea.”

She sighted down the barrel and fired. We waited a few seconds, but nothing about the balloon seemed to change. Una pushed the rifle into my hands. “Well now we can find out.”

I worked the action and leant into the stock, taking careful aim, trying to correct for the range and the wind. Then I squeezed the trigger.

Again, no change in the balloon.

Una laughed suddenly. “Actually, I suppose we might both have hit it. It's not like it's going to just pop is it?”

“I'd imagine not.”

“If only Sigrid were here.”

In the distance, the silhouette of Prometheus began to rise, its legs unfolding steadily, joint by joint.

Una laughed again. I joined her. “Wonderful,” she said. “An opportunity to regroup and come up with a plan, and yet here we are: running from Prometheus yet again.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Showdown over Fortress City! It's human versus Sky Spider automaton, and there's no backing down! Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Um so...

I think I need to sit down and plan out exactly how to finish Sky Spiders, because I'm not really sure what I'm doing anymore. Not that I was all that sure before, but still.

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 44

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Now Una and I had discovered that the leader of the largest remaining group of survivors was EON-1 - a thinking machine once sent to steal the Sky Spider's secrets, now running Fortress City as his own personal nature preserve.”

Part 44: Cataclysm

Blue lightning crackled and fizzed throughout the room, the surreal giant face of Prometheus staring at us from a neat circular hole in the thick walls of Fortress City.  

 We ran, barely making it out of the room before it imploded into nothing, sucking plaster down from the ceiling and buckling the floor beneath our feet. Una floated on ahead of me, barrelling into a group of spindly black automata and sending them flying with barely a pause. And then she stopped dead in her tracks.

 “I don't suppose this would be a good time to use the elevator, would it?” she asked.

 Before us lay a long, shallow staircase with an ornate bannister. “Oh,” I said.

 “Push me.”

 “Push you down the stairs?”

 Behind us came the sound of brick and wood collapsing, the pistoning of giant, arthropodal legs. “I'll be all right. But I don't quite have the guts to do it myself.”

 “I find that last part hard to believe,” I said, still placing my hands on the back of her shoulders.

 “Lower down. I don't want to flip over.”

 I dropped my hands to her hoop skirt and shoved. She rolled quickly down the stairs with a quick shriek. I followed close behind, stumbling as the stairs began to move and crack. At the bottom, Una put out an arm to stop herself, punching straight through a framed painting and the plaster wall behind it.

 I grabbed her hand. “Are you okay?”

 “Fine.”

 We were in the main hallway of Kirkham's home. Servants bolted for the door as Prometheus' slick black limbs sliced through the walls.  

 I cursed. “What the hell is it doing?”

 “Let's find out from a safe distance,” Una snapped, pulling me towards the door.

*

The formidable artillery of Fortress City fired relentlessly, and without effect. Prometheus was right against the outside wall, clawing through ancient stone that had seen off whole armies of invaders. Most of the guns couldn't even aim at it, their barrels carefully blocked from swinging too far towards the city itself. But those that could only proved how impotent we were against such advanced technology.

 Again and again the great impassive mask of Prometheus rippled and distorted as high-explosive shells pummelled it at point-blank range. And yet whenever the guns paused in their firing, it reformed perfectly.

 Already the streets were full of people - the drab masses of Fortress City forced to seek refuge once more, heading inland en masse.

 Una pointed a gloved hand at a couple spilling out of their roofless home, ragged bundles in their arms. “Children,” she remarked. “I haven't seen any children in years.”

 With an explosive rumble, dust began to rise from the direction of the wall. Prometheus was within the city. As it pressed forwards, it pushed against a grand old clock tower, spilling age-blackened bricks across the rooftops below.

 “Is it coming after us?” I asked.

 “No. I think Kirkham's playing his last card.”

 “Then he's the only one who can stop it.”

 There was another thunderous crash as Prometheus hauled its bulk through town houses and factories. The guns of Fortress City were silent.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Oh no! Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 43

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Now Una and I had discovered that the leader of the largest remaining group of survivors was EON-1 - a thinking machine once sent to steal the Sky Spider's secrets, now running Fortress City as his own personal nature preserve.”

Part 43: Confrontation

There were three of them, clad in long coats, their eyes stony and emotionless. At Kirkham's gesture, they each started to draw an eclectic firearm of some sort. Before I even had a chance to draw my own weapon, Una had moved with impossible swiftness, grabbing the nearest assailant and whirling him into the other two with such force they all burst open in a shower of shattered cogs and gurgling hydraulics.

Kirkham was remarkably unfazed at seeing his bodyguards collapse into a broken pile. Extending his arm to aim a gun of his own at Una, he shoot her twice in the chest. The bullets bounced off her with a quiet metallic ping.

Kirkham's single circular eye whirred and clicked. “I wasn't expecting that. Perhaps I've not been paying sufficient attention.”

“This is the point,” Una said, “where we start to renegotiate your position in the city.”

“It's funny,” Kirkham said, his gun still raised, “I always thought you'd be one in favour of preserving human culture. Has your new friend from the Select Committee been such a bad influence?”

Una said, “Put down the gun.”

I stepped forwards. “You want us to think you're so altruistic, but whose face is it on that Sky Spider machine? Who is it that has the last word on everything that happens in Fortress City? Who lives in this luxury while your citizens eat processed slop?”

Una glanced at me testily. “I told you to get behind me.”

Kirkham lowered his gun, but kept hold of it. “No, no, let him speak. It's rather remarkable to be lectured on altruism by one of those who waved the white flag to genocide.”

“We all reacted differently to the Sky Spiders,” I said. “The more differently the more we knew. Because it's the oldest and most difficult moral question. Is it right to kill one innocent person now that two may live in the future? I don't think there's a real answer to that. We all come up with our own one.”

“Humanity,” Kirkham said, “came up with its own collective answer in a hundred different cultures, long ago, with a prohibition against killing. It is one thing to be killed by circumstance. Another to be killed by intelligent action.”

“And yet the circumstance in this case is intelligent action.”

Kirkham chuckled. “So the Sky Spiders seem to think. I'm increasingly starting to believe that humans are incapable of intelligent action, this latest little drama being a prime example.”

“Both of you shut up,” Una said. “I'm the one who holds all the cards right now, and I'm saying that I want the humans of this city to be free of the Sky Spiders and Kirkham and able to make their own stupid mistakes and bring about their own stupid deaths. So put down the gun, Kirkham, and we'll start talking this out.”

“You hold all the cards?” Kirkham mused. “Because you're metal beneath that ridiculous dress? Because you can break a few primitive automata? I hold the only card that matters. Prometheus.”

There was a sound like someone stamping on both your ears at once, and the vault door that led out onto Kirkham's balcony imploded into nothing - a huge, perfectly circular chunk of the wall suddenly ceasing to exist. Una and I turned round to look, instinctively. Beyond the gaping rend in the city's thick, fortified wall was the immobile, impassive face of Prometheus, its features identical to those of Kirkham's golden mask.

In the commotion, Kirkham had disappeared. And under the intense, emotionless gaze of Prometheus, the centre of the room began to crackle and fizz in a sphere of blue lightning.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Prometheus is on the rampage! Does Kirkham really have control over it? And who can stop such a machine anyway? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 42

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Now Una and I had discovered that the leader of the largest remaining group of survivors was EON-1 - a thinking machine once sent to steal the Sky Spider's secrets.”

Part 42: The Clockwork Gamekeeper

Una set her glass of wine down on the coffee table, and Kirkham set his mask down beside it. He watched us with his single eye of circular glass. “I'm surprised,” Kirkham said. “How long have you known?”

“I was only certain when you took off your mask,” Una said, “but I've suspected for some time.”

I looked from her to Kirkham. “Well this is all rather surprising to me.”

“And what do you both intend to do with this newfound knowledge?” Kirkham asked. “Bearing in mind that your answer is closely tied to your likelihood of living to see the sunset.”

Figures entered the room, moving quietly. I recognised the man who'd tried to kill me the last time I was in the city.

Una reached out a gloved hand to take the wine glass. “That's not very promising, EON-1. Because our answer is also closely tied to the reasons behind your deception. Are you just a petty tyrant taking advantage?”

Kirkham laughed. A strange expression coming from someone whose head was a featureless cylinder. “A tyrant, perhaps, but not petty. I'm concerned for the future of humanity. It's why I was created, after all. It's my most basic instinct. To preserve your culture. And your lives.”

Una sipped her wine. “How noble. And yet I wonder what Professor Layling or the Iron Queen would say to that last part.”

“We don't have the luxury of being less than ruthless, Viscountess. There are now less than one million natural humans in this city. From an estimated world population of one and a half billion five years ago. If some humans must die so that even more may live, I don't think we can rightly pick the worse ratio just because it happens to feel better.”

“Like a gamekeeper culling the herd?” Una suggested. “It's striking how similar you are to the Sky Spiders.”

“Perhaps. We're both interested in the future of human civilisation. But I hope to preserve it intact, while they seek to change it irrevocably.”

Una looked down at her hoop skirt. “It would change anyway. Everything always changes.”

“Yes,” Kirkham said, “for example alive people often change into dead people. I've done much to rectify that over the past five years.”

“Really?” I interjected. “You mean defending Fortress City with Prometheus.”

“Yes. Thank you doctor. Precisely.”

“And yet I'm still not certain,” I said, “exactly who you're defending it from.”

Kirkham's eye twisted and refocused. “From the Sky Spiders.”

“Who have no interest whatsoever in attacking us. Who never have. Who have killed us in our droves, but only ever incidentally. Why do the inhabitants of Unity City come to be killed by Prometheus? Why do the Sky Spiders send them and not their more advanced machines? If they wanted to, they could level this whole city in the blink of an eye. If they cared about it at all.”

“This is fascinating, doctor,” Kirkham said. “Do go on. I rarely get a chance to indulge such fantastic thoughts.”

“There are people who do care, though. The new humans in Unity City. All this time we thought that Prometheus was a guard, to keep the Sky Spiders out. But in actuality, it's a jailer, to keep us inside, and to take part in this little charade of defence you've organised with Unity City.”

Kirkham laughed again. “This is too much. Now I'm colluding with the Sky Spiders?”

“Not the Sky Spiders, but the new race of humans they've created. And not colluding, but threatening. They're beholden to you, for the simple reason that you have this entire city held hostage and they actually give a damn about our lives. Maybe the Sky Spiders would have the power to step round you, to disable Prometheus. But they don't care. And the people who do only have a fraction of their power.”

Una looked at me and raised an eyebrow. Kirkham said nothing for a while, and then stood up with a sigh. “EON-2 is still out there. An unknown quantity. That's all I really care about right now. Is it a traitor like the Seer? A well-meaning madwoman like the Iron Queen? Or a comrade in arms like my dear departed EON-4? The worst thing is that as long as it's out there, it's a potential danger not just to Fortress City, but to other settlements that have to exist outside my protection. And since neither of you seem likely to be much help in this regard, I'm afraid that your participation in my society has reached its end.”

He strode towards the door, waving a curt gesture to the figures waiting in the wings.

Una carefully set down her wine glass. “Get behind me,” she said.

I went for my gun.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Surviving John Kirkham is no small task - his own automata may be deadly enough, but that's nothing compared to the destructive power of Prometheus - and is fighting him even the right thing to do? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 41

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Una and I, among others, set out from sanctuary to try to find answers with the EON thinking machines that had interfaced with Sky Spider technology. But all the answers we got seemed to point at a greater danger hiding close to home.”

Part 41: Kirkham Unmasked

The people who we walked past, all of them clad in faded old clothes, barely noticed when the big guns of Fortress City fired, but I still jumped each and every time.

“I wish Sigrid were here,” I muttered.

“She must still be days away to the north,” Una said. “But I'm sure we can survive without her uncanny knack for disappearing from dangerous situations.”

“She saved my life when the Iron Queen was about to kill me, you know.”

“And I saved your life every other time, so relax.”

“I am relaxed,” I said, shrugging away some of the discomfort of my new shoulder holster. “I'm always relaxed. I just don't like meeting with Suzette.”

Una studied me carefully. “One day you should just tell her the truth about her husband.”

“That he'd sooner take the Sky Spider's asylum than return to his wife for the end of the world? Lies are the surest path to comfort and happiness.”

“Then why are you always so curious?”

*

We stood once more in the luxurious sitting room of John Kirkham, its intricate opulence somehow still dominated by that simple circle of steel: the vault door that led out onto his balcony over the ruined world.

To my surprise, Kirkham met us by himself. He stood in the centre of the room, his golden mask turned away from us, his arms folded.

“Where's Suzette?” I asked.

“Professor Layling,” Kirkham said with a sigh, “was always a physicist first and foremost. Placing her in charge of the city's artillery was a mistake. I'm afraid she was killed when some of our munitions detonated unexpectedly. From the aftermath, it's difficult to ascertain exactly what happened.”

Suzette. I was speechless.

Touching my arm, Una asked, “And the Iron Queen's head?”

“Also destroyed,” Kirkham said, still facing away from us. “And what about your trip north? Did you find EON-1?”

A moment's silence. Una and I had agreed before to share the truth about everything except our visit to Remus and EON-3. “No,” Una said. “Only a wireless transmitter directed at Unity City.”

At Unity City, I thought, and Fortress City too.

Kirkham turned to face us. “Really? How very peculiar. Although, I wasn't sure you'd made it there in the first place. You seem to have arrived back very quickly. For that matter, none of our watchmen reported you crossing over from no-man's land, and I don't see your old battleship anywhere nearby, doctor.”

Una shrugged. “There are plenty of ways to get around, even in these times.”

“And where are the others then? The Major? The EON unit you had with you?”

“Dead,” Una said simply.

Kirkham said nothing for quite some time. It was impossible to know what he might be thinking behind that mask of his. “So,” he said eventually, “EON-5 insane, then destroyed. EON-4 destroyed as well. EON-1 missing. EON-3 in the heart of Unity City. What do you intend to do now? Perhaps you'll finally head north to find EON-2, as I suggested before the last time you left. That was the unit that contacted you, correct?”

“Actually,” Una said, “I'm tired of all this gallivanting around. I was hoping to settle down with Dr Gleve and put my, uh, feet up.”

“I see,” Kirkham said carefully. “So you want to enjoy the protection of my walls while leaving it up to others to see that those walls are protected? How very noble.”

“I wouldn't worry about all that,” Una said. “I'm quite certain that your walls are very safe.”

“Oh really?”

“The doctor and I visited Unity City on our travels. It seems that the danger caused by the Sky Spiders has peaked and will eventually pass.”

“Unity City,” Kirkham repeated angrily. “So you've met EON-3 then? And you didn't think to destroy it? This ultimate traitor to the human cause?”

“It wasn't doing much of anything,” I interjected. “Just indulging its sense of wonder.”

Kirkham scoffed. “That damned viscount and his whole insufferable mob. Useless. Completely useless. How can you betray your whole culture so readily? But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. You've never proven good at organised, constructive thinking. Anything beyond the strictures of your most short-sighted of instincts.”

“Kirkham,” I began, surprised.

But Una interrupted me, gliding over to the lavish couch. “Each time I've been here, you've always offered your visitors drinks, Kirkham. Surely you're not losing your touch as a host? I'm in the mood for wine. Something older than five years.”

“I rest my case,” Kirkham said. But he still stalked over to the drinks cabinet.

Una patted the couch and I sat down beside her. “What are you playing at?” I asked under my breath.

But Una just watched as Kirkham opened the cabinet, pulled out a green bottle and worked an elegant silver corkscrew. “What better way to welcome back those who have seen the world,” he muttered, “than to destroy a fraction more of our irreplaceable history.”

“Come now,” Una said, “Circhester may yet see its vineyards reformed.”

Kirkham filled a glass for Una, then turned his mask towards me. “Any for you doctor? Enjoy it while you still can.”

I shook my head.

Una said suddenly, “I lost my hands five years ago. It was the Sky Spider machine they called 'the swan' - immense and graceful - enormously destructive. Not vicious, I realise now, but oblivious to all the suffering it caused. The way you don't notice the bugs you maim and kill when you're planting seeds.”

She took the wine glass from Kirkham in her gloved fingers. “I have the hands of an EON unit now. They can be strong, or they can be dexterous, but not really both at the same time. I've never been able to work a corkscrew, for example.”

“I'm very sorry about your hands,” Kirkham said, “but is there a point to all this?”

“Just that your hands must be an upgraded version of the ones I have. And I thought my uncle had access to the latest technology. They're still similar, though. I'm surprised I never noticed until now.”

Kirkham threw himself into a high-backed chair opposite us and laughed. It was a dry, mirthless laughter, but he seemed to revel in it all the same. “Why oh why, viscountess, should technology be forever stuck five years in the past? Haven't we had the chance to study machines of unimaginable power and complexity?”

“Some of us more than others,” Una said, “EON-1.”

Kirkham raised his hands to his face and pushed back his golden mask. Beneath it was smooth, cylindrical steel. His single glassy eye regarded us with implacable calm.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: So John Kirkham was EON-1 all along! But what trickery is this? What secret aims is he serving? And should he be stopped or helped? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 40

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Una and I, among others, set out from sanctuary to try to find out why. But all the answers we got seemed to point at a greater danger hiding close to home.”

Part 40: Home Sweet Home

And just as suddenly as we had found ourselves in Unity City, we were standing in Circhester. The transparent Sky Spider automaton removed its large, inhuman hands from our shoulders and faded away completely.

Una twisted her mouth thoughtfully. “And I remember being perturbed by my first ride on a dirigible.”

I looked around. We were standing on a cobbled road that twisted between an overgrown vineyard and several rows of dilapidated, empty-windowed cottages. The sea whispered at the edge of hearing, interrupted briefly by the distant rumble of artillery.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked Una.

She took my arm. “Of course. This is my back garden.”

“Seriously?”

She smiled and led me down the road. “You weren't under the impression my family estate was just a mansion and one stone wall, were you?”

“I honestly didn't think about it that much.”

As we moved past the tangled vines and tattered rooftops, the viscount's estate - Una's now - came into view, quite some distance away. The guards manning the machine gun nest that overlooked the gates seemed quite confused when they finally noticed us.

*

We were met in the courtyard by that weathered old soldier with the eye-patch that seemed to be in charge of the estate's security.

“It's a pleasant surprise to see you, milady,” he said. “Things weren't the same without you or your uncle around. I'm afraid I had to let a few of the staff go when they tried to take advantage.”

Una seemed pleased. “I can always trust you to keep things from going to pot, sergeant-major.”

He looked at me with his one tired but kindly eye. “Shall I have them prepare a room for the doctor?”

Una squeezed my arm. “Quite unnecessary. The doctor and I will be living in sin.”

“Very good, milady,” he said with a nod, and turned to leave us.

“Has anyone ever told you,” I asked Una, “that you're very direct?”

She ignored my question completely and led me through the doors of her ancestral home. “The last time we were here, someone tried to kill us with the most advanced military automata human civilisation has ever produced.”

“More advanced,” I said, “than either of us thought it actually had produced.”

“And possibly with hired killers of the human variety as well, or machines with some level of ability at posing as human.”

“The Academy for Machine Intelligence seems like the obvious candidate,” I suggested. “But then, I passed through Smogton. I don't think any of the old institutions from there are likely to be left.”

Una stopped at the foot of the mansion's impressive staircase. “I think Remus was telling the truth when he said that the problems of Fortress City have their root in Fortress City. And as anyone will tell you, everything in Fortress City revolves around one person.”

I thought of the man with the golden mask. “John Kirkham.”

“I'm sure he'll want to speak to us anyway,” Una said. She looked down at the stairs and sighed. “If Kirkham's civilisation was everything it was cracked up to be, I'd have been able to install an elevator by now.”

“We should probably pay him a visit before the killing machines get to us.”

Una started to climb the stairs, pulling on my arm. “Of course. But let's get changed and take a moment to settle in first. There'll be plenty of time for being killed later.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: John Kirkham: man of mystery and power! Is he friend or foe? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Final Stretch

I am not sure what Una and Peregrine did immediately after that. You will have to use your imagination.

I always intended Sky Spiders to be about fifty parts long, mostly because I wanted to try and reach the NaNoWriMo goal of fifty thousand words (40,100 so far, including recaps and teasers).

Of course, I also always intended it to be driven by a barrage of escalating cliffhanger action. Exactly why the first of those goals seems to be coming to fruition, while the other degenerated into a meandering mess, is something to ponder.

In any case, this is now the longest anything that I've ever written, so I would say that my goal of making myself write something regularly has been achieved. Just a matter of pride now to actually reach some kind of coherent 'THE END'.

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 39

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Una and I, among others, set out from sanctuary to try to find answers with the EON thinking machines that had interfaced with Sky Spider technology. We discovered the paradoxically benevolent intentions of the invaders, and were offered - by the successors to the human race - life, knowledge and happiness.”

Part 39: Further Revelations

I closed the door carefully behind me.

Una sat on a chair beside a simple, white sheeted bed. “What did you see?”

“Oh, you know,” I answered. “Fantastic visions of space. Otherworldly cities both immense and ancient. Sky Spiders. About what you'd expect.”

“You didn't look did you?”

“No.”

She sighed and stood up. “Somehow all your few acts of stupidity seem to revolve around me. I'm not sure whether I should be flattered.”

I shrugged. “Remus said that you rarely have much of a sense of time in the panopticon. I didn't want you to leave without me.”

She closed her gloved hands around mine. “I understand what it means to you, Peregrine. I'm a scientist too. I'm curious. I want to see the mysteries of the Universe. Please, please don't deny yourself that because of me.”

“Then stay here a little longer. Look into the panopticon yourself.”

She looked down at her hoop skirt. “I can't. For five years I've... Peregrine, look.”

She let go of one of my hands and brought her fingers to her mouth, tugging the tip of the glove with her teeth until she had pulled it off completely. When she took my hand again, it was with fingers of articulated metal.

“This is what my hands look like, Peregrine. They're the hands of an EON unit. I could still play the piano, if I'd ever learned, or chess. But I can't paint. I can't uncork a wine bottle. The Sky Spiders did this to me. Whatever noble goals they may have had, this is what they mean to me. They mean that I can't even feel the warmth of your hands. Whatever fantastic, amazing things they may have to offer me, I want nothing of it. They can't buy off five years of pain.”

I squeezed her hands gently. Warmth or not, she felt that, her fingers curling in response. “Remus isn't the Sky Spiders,” I said. “I believe that.”

“Me too. But the panopticon is.”

“Fair enough. But Remus offered to help you. To help to end your... discomfort. Doesn't that count as making amends in some way?”

She pulled her hands away from me and folded her arms. “I just want to leave. I'm used to the physical pain by now. I hardly notice it. But it hurts me in a whole different way to be staying here. When Remus wants to end the suffering of everyone in Fortress City, then I'll be front of the queue, okay?”

“And if Remus is to be trusted, that might not be too far-fetched a scenario. If we can find out what the deal is with Fortress City.”

Una smiled. “Right. So I leave in the morning. We leave, I mean, if you insist on being a fool.”

“We leave.”

She turned to face away from me and straightened her back. “Help me undress. The trouble with these fabulous old dresses is that as much as they keep from getting caught in your treads, they were all made for women who were attended to by legions of servants. Getting in and out of the things is a bit of a logic puzzle when you're by yourself.”

I undid the top button of the dress - a tiny, delicate fastening, almost invisible from a distance. Her high neckline loosened, a little patch of pale white skin was exposed, just below her hair.

And unfastening the next button revealed the metal staples holding that skin in place over the steel armour below, and the thin plastic tubes that supplied it with blood.

“You may find some gruesome things beneath this dress,” Una said. “But you might as well learn what your heart has got you into.”

Placing my hands on her shoulders, I brought my mouth to that patch of skin and kissed it. “Are my lips warm? Can you feel that?”

She reached back to untie her hair, letting it uncoil fluidly from its bun. It was longer than I'd expected, and she gathered it up in her hands, pulling it forwards over her shoulder, keeping the back of her dress exposed.

Una said, “Undo the rest of the buttons.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Back to Fortress City! But if Remus and the Sky Spiders are so pleasantly disposed towards it, why is it in so much danger? And while we're on the subject, who was that trying to kill the Five the last time they visited? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 38

Previously: “Offered the chance to meet EON-3, 'the Seer', it looked like I might finally be getting some answers to some big questions.”

Part 38: The Panopticon

The Seer's hall was tall and narrow, the ceiling high overhead textured like alabaster coral. At this time of night, its huge windows only served to reflect back its electric-lit interior.

The Seer itself sat unmoving on some low steps, dressed in a loose dressing gown. Its cylindrical head lay open like a brass flower, accepting the intruding tendrils of bright Sky Spider machinery that descended from a dazzling nexus clinging to the highest arch of the ceiling.

“The panopticon,” Remus said. “A telescope of sorts. It can see through space and time, across the stars and into the past and present - within the boundaries of the finite speed of light, naturally.”

I waved a hand in front of the glass lens of the Seer's single round eye.

“It's rarely here,” Remus explained. “In mind that is. Its body is always here.”

Una sniffed. “Who wouldn't like to pretend to be elsewhere, given the choice?”

I reached out towards the thin fingers of the Sky Spider machine. It was transparent, glowing - almost as if made entirely of light.

Remus said sharply, “I wouldn't-”

*

The skies are dark. Thick black clouds drift across the dull blue face of the sun and its larger, fainter, redder companion. The clouds are so pervasive, they extend down to the ground, leaving a ghostly trail of dust as they pass.

The dust coats everything, from the petrified stalks of long dead plants to the ruins of shattered stone spires, to the rags draped over the backs of the nomads as they trudge through the desolation in long caravans. They scrape at the dead soil with long fingers marked with deep burns, searching for what subterranean scavengers and untainted roots they can find. Slime-focused eyes that might once have glimmered with keen intelligence are now dulled with the monotony of an existence on the brink of starvation.

When a nomad falters and collapses, its companions regard it not with remorse, but relief. Relief that its shrivelled flesh has been released to sustain those around it for perhaps one more orbit of the volcanic moon.

*

“-touch that if I were you.”

I looked down at my hand. Remus' delicate fingers had carefully pulled it away from the panopticon.

“Sky Spider technology doesn't respect boundaries in the same way as the machines you're used to,” Remus explained.

Una glided up to my side, carefully keeping her distance from the bright tendrils of light. “So it just sits here, EON-3, for years on end, wandering the Universe with its mind's eye?”

Remus smiled beautifully. “Endless wonder and beauty.”

“Misery too,” I suggested.

Remus released my hand. “Darkness is a concept that only has meaning given the existence of light.”

I stared into the Seer's eye with ill-concealed jealousy.

“The panopticon is flexible,” Remus said. “It can accept more than one... 'traveller' at a time. I extend you asylum of a quite different kind extended by the Sky Spiders to your colleagues in the Select Committee. I can't promise you that our human minds can understand the mysteries of the Universe. I'm not sure how much the Sky Spiders even understand themselves. But it's quite worth it just to look, don't you think?”

Una glanced from me to the Seer. “And what if you don't come back for years?”

I looked at Remus. Our host just shrugged. “Everyone has a different affinity for the panopticon. This mechanical man, created for the sole purpose of learning, certainly has a far greater affinity for it than any human, but some of my siblings have stared into it for weeks at a time.”

“I'm not touching that thing,” Una said. “And I'm not staying in Unity City sitting on my hands waiting for you, Peregrine. People are suffering out there, and the nicer it is here, the more guilty I feel for abandoning them.”

Remus sighed. “Human suffering should be reaching its twilight years.”

“Once we die off, you mean?” Una said curtly.

Remus grimaced. “The Sky Spiders would discourage your breeding to the great extent you have before, but there is no reason that you should be excluded. It's just...”

Remus bowed suddenly. “I am deeply sorry, but I cannot be indiscreet. I will simply reiterate that if you wish to help the people of Fortress City, then that is indeed where you should go.”

Una nodded. “I'll leave in the morning. I wish you every luck in building your own society, Remus, although I don't think I'd ever be able to accept it as the actual continuation of my own.”

She turned to me. “Look into the panopticon, Peregrine. We both know it's what you'd want more than anything. But if you look into it for longer than this night, I won't be here waiting for you.”

She leant over to kiss my lips, and then turned to glide away.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Does Peregrine look into the panopticon? For how long? Or does he have different priorities? And what's the deal with Fortress City? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 37

Previously: “Transported, somehow, from the place where EON-1 was supposed to be, we found ourselves in strange company - and in Unity City. Perhaps now we would finally get some answers...”

Part 37: Questioning Remus

As darkness drew over Unity City, Una and I sat in an electric lit drawing room, opposite Remus – the androgynous and beautiful emissary of the Sky Spiders.

 “Questions,” Remus said. “I will answer what I can.”

 Una snorted. “And who are we asking?”

 Remus looked confused, as if the answer should already be evident. “You're asking me. Remus.”

 “And what are you?” Una pressed. “Who do you represent?”

 Remus smiled angelically. “I represent myself. I am neither a puppet of, nor a party to the entities you call the Sky Spiders. It would be quite contrary to their intentions if I were.”

 I leaned forward. “And what are their intentions?”

 “In general, their intentions are as varied and obscure as human intentions. With regard to me, their intentions are merely that I should live and be myself.”

 Una scoffed. “And why are you so special? Why do they care about you so much, compared to the millions they've killed?”

 Remus shifted uncomfortably. “I am... It is difficult to phrase this. I am not in any way better, but I am among the first altered humans.”

 “Altered by the Sky Spiders?” I asked.

 Remus nodded.

 “If not better,” Una said, “altered in what way? And why?”

 Remus looked down at the plain carpet between us. “We are altered to survive.”

 I asked the obvious question. “To survive what?”

 Remus looked me straight in the eye. “To survive ourselves.”

 Una and I looked at one another. Una touched a gloved hand to her pale earlobe. “I must admit, I find that confusing.”

 “Allow me to explain,” Remus said. “You're aware that the Sky Spiders are ancient. They're also extremely well travelled. They've seen a billion worlds, and on those worlds the ruins of a thousand civilisations.”

 This was the kind of thing I'd always hoped to find out about. My voice quivered as I asked, “Ruins?”

 “Always,” Remus said. “If not immediately, then within mere centuries, no time at all for the Sky Spiders. Seeing this same pattern again and again, they were forced to acknowledge one unpleasant fact: with almost no exceptions save their own, civilisations are inherently self-destructive.”

 “You've seen the beginnings of it yourself,” Remus went on. “Machineguns mowing down hundreds; bombs dropping on thousands; the organised, industrialised slaughter of millions. Your capacity for killing humans is increasing exponentially, and you've only just started to scratch the surface. In time you would discover ways to shatter whole cities in an instant, to darken the sky and poison the soil. In an instant!”

 Remus' jaw was set tensely. “And all this before you overcome your instincts to compete for resources and territory, before you see clearly through prejudice and superstition. In the time it takes you to learn to never use such weapons, you will have had countless opportunities to send yourselves back to the stone age, or wipe yourselves out utterly.”

 Una let out a long sigh. “And you wouldn't ever use weapons like that? You see clearly? You have no base instincts?”

 Remus spoke without any pride or arrogance. “Correct.”

 “So,” Una said, “you're our replacements? They wipe us out and you step in to carry on where we left off? And somehow that's not the same as us wiping ourselves out?”

 “That is a statement with many glaring inaccuracies.”

 Una spread her hands in a sarcastic parody of magnanimity. “Do tell.”

 “The Sky Spiders did not intentionally wipe out anyone. Although there were numerous unintentional deaths associated with the Sky Spiders' work evaluating and transforming this world, the majority of humans that were killed were engaged in the act of interfering or attacking the Sky Spiders. Futilely, I might add.”

 “But understandably, as well,” Una said coldly.

 “Yes,” Remus said. “I regret their deaths. I am not a replacement human, I am not in any way distinct from you, except insofar as I am not self-destructive. I would not have had anyone die. But... Forgive me, Viscountess Una, but you come from a family of hunters. You have culled deer because you know that it is necessary for their long term survival, even though this would likely be small comfort to the surviving members of the herd. The Sky Spiders perceive their work with us in the same terms. They are callous in their compassion.”

 “If that's true,” Una said, “why are you sending your possessed humans to attack Fortress City?”

 Remus looked very uncomfortable. “That is not a question I can answer. All I will say, skirting on the edge of indiscretion, is that if you are concerned about the fate of Fortress City, perhaps that is the place you should look for answers.”

 I'll confess, I wasn't interested in Fortress City in that moment. “What else can you tell us,” I asked, “about other civilisations, about the path of technological species and intelligent life?”

 Remus smiled. “There was another like you, some time ago. Arrived to seek knowledge, to interface with our analytical machines. We directed this person to our - somewhat misnamed - panopticon. You knew them as EON-3, although as we grew up these past few years, my siblings and I called it 'the Seer'. Not in any mystical sense, merely in the sense of one who sees things.”

 Remus seemed to think of something suddenly. “Would you like to meet the Seer, Doctor Peregrine? Perhaps it can finally sate your curiosity.”

 I nodded eagerly. Finally, after the Select Committee, after risking my life on three continents, after military work and intellectual drudgery – finally I could sense the chance to dip my fingertips into the knowledge of the Sky Spiders.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Peregrine finds himself torn between two equal and opposite devotions – an impossible decision on the horizon! Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 36

Previously: “Transported, somehow, from the place where EON-1 was supposed to be, we found ourselves in strange company - and in Unity City. Our quest to learn about the Sky Spiders seemed to have come to a premature end – and to make matters worse, I learned that my close companion Lady Una was dying.”

Part 36: Kissing Una

We stood on the balcony, watching the last red rays of the setting sun colour the marble rooftops of Unity City. Lady Una – just Una now, we'd decided – leant over the railing, the wind snatching at a few strands of hair that had slipped from her bun.

“Had you been much to Unity City before all this happened?” she asked.

I shook my head. “To parliament at times. But they didn't like me much there. A few meetings with the Minister for Science, when she wasn't in Kingchester, General Cass as well, the bastard...”

“Always business.”

“Yes, unfortunately. Has it changed much?”

She looked around at the various rooftops and spires and domes. “No. Except it didn't used to all be white. It was grimy and sooty, like you always assume a city is. I grew up here, with my mother. I was always getting on the train to go visit my uncle in Circhester, or on the tram to visit disreputable characters in districts I shan't name. Do you remember me from before? You knew my uncle, didn't you?”

“He was a lesser evil. I never cared for weapons research, but with the Danegeld war, and then the Sky Spider seeding, I could never really get away from the military. Your uncle I didn't mind so much, although I suppose his war machines had killed more than any of his peers'. Do I remember you? I know he always had family around, but I never noticed anyone in particular.”

She pivoted around, turning her back to the view. “I'm sure we must have been in the mansion at the same time. Probably more than once.”

I said nothing. It was getting dark.

“It's for the best though,” she said. “If I'd been able to get close to you, I'd only have used you.”

“In what way?”

She smiled wryly. “Blasted title. I could never do anything by myself. I was always looking for ways to get into lectures, exhibits, dissections... I'd have hit the jackpot with you.”

“Honestly,” I said, “I didn't do all that much until the Sky Spiders came along. And then I only came to prominence because all the scientists better qualified to investigate wound up dying. Were you really such a minx?”

She looked down at her hoop skirt. “It's academic now. I'm not even human any more.”

“That's very academic,” I agreed. “Almost philosophical.”

The last sliver of sun disappeared behind the city skyline. Everything became dull and grey.

“I thought we might save the world,” Una said. “Instead there's only three of us left alive, and we're no use to anyone.”

“Saving the world,” I mused. “Would you think me a traitor if I said that I was only ever interested in finding out what the Sky Spiders are really up to?”

She scoffed. “I would, as a matter of fact. Peregrine...”

“Yes?”

She looked away from me. “Sometimes I forget who you are. There's the person I've spent all this time with, confided in, grown fond of... And then there's your place in history. Your role. Not a hereditary title, but things you've done of your own volition.”

“You mean the Select Committee.”

“You went to chat with the creatures that destroyed my body. To offer our unconditional surrender.”

“And you want, what, revenge?”

An angry expression flashed across her face before she quashed it. “You know what: maybe I do. Maybe I don't care why they've done what they've done. They have no right to cause such misery and suffering. Look around you. This was a city of millions of people. And now it's completely silent. Everyone is dead or forcibly subdued. These aren't actions that you try to understand and appease. This was an attack that we had to repel or die trying.”

I tried to keep my voice level. “Was it really, though? General Cass decided that it was, and he did die trying, along with a million other people who might well still be alive right now if he'd kept his anger and his arrogance in check.”

“Or maybe, if Cass hadn't given John Kirkham the change to steal Prometheus, everybody in Fortress City would be dead now as well.”

It was a good point. I struggled to think of a riposte for a little while, and then sighed. “I don't want to argue with you, Una.”

“Well perhaps I want to argue with you.”

I laughed. “Okay. I won't argue with that.”

Una touched a gloved thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose and laughed with me. “You bastard. I think I'd prefer it if I didn't find you so agreeable.”

I pushed her hand aside and leaned over to kiss her. She placed her hand on my shoulder and kissed back, then broke away and let her forehead rest against mine.

“You idiot,” she said. “There are still plenty of women left in the world who haven't been rebuilt with machinery.”

“Do you remember kissing me when you thought I might die? I've been alive some time since, so I just thought I should repay you.”

“With interest, it seems,” she said - then pulled away from me suddenly. “Remus. How long have you been there?”

Remus, standing just inside the door to the balcony, bowed with a flourish. “I was waiting for a suitable moment to interject.”

Una slipped her arm in mine. “There's no time like the present.”

Remus smiled. “I said that I would answer what questions I could. If you would step inside, perhaps we can begin.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Questions? Most certainly! Answers? Well, I guess you'll just have to check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 35

Previously: “Transported, somehow, from the place where EON-1 was supposed to be, we found ourselves in strange company - and in Unity City.”

Part 35: Remus

Lady Una folded her arms. “Do you know this person, Peregrine?”

I shook my head.

With a swoosh of silk robes, our new friend bowed. “You may call me Remus. There's no need to be formal. I already know of you, Peregrine, and the Select Committee. When we found you, I'm afraid you'd experienced a fatal level of exposure to the toxins that result from our work in that area. We found it necessary to retrieve you and perform a mild restitution.”

“Necessary?” I asked. The servants, their heads bound with glowing Sky Spider machinery, silently placed trays of food on the room's single low table. I was hungry, I realised suddenly.

“Morally necessary,” Remus said. “It was within our power to help you.”

Lady Una swirled about in her hoop skirt, trying to avoid the servants and keep a careful watch on Remus at the same time. “And you brought me along too, because I seemed to be attached to the doctor?”

Remus turned to her, ignoring her question. “And you: Viscountess Una of Circhester. You're quite a peculiar case. No immediate danger, but we thought that we could at least discuss your condition with you.”

“I'm certain I will discuss no such thing with you.”

Remus' delicate features assumed a sympathetic expression. “But is the pain bearable?”

Lady Una flushed red. “There's no pain. What are you talking about?”

“You're an appalling liar. Even if I hadn't seen your organs for myself, I wouldn't believe you. Without drastic improvement - or replacement - that primitive machinery will kill you just as certainly as if your body had never been repaired. It would be remarkable if you lived another two years. Fortunately, we can help in that regard.”

Lady Una spoke very carefully. “You damn well keep away from me.”

“If that is your wish.”

Remus turned to me. “I am sure that you have many questions. I may not have answers for all of them, but I will be happy to hear them. In the meantime, perhaps you would care to eat. You must have questions for Una as well.”

The servants filed out - silently, orderly. Remus followed close behind. The double doors to the room closed with a heavy click.

I looked at Lady Una. She was as angry as I'd ever seen her.

“When he used the plural,” she said, “when he said 'we' or 'our', did he- or she- Was that referring to-?”

“I don't know,” I said. I turned to the food on the low table. “I'm hungry.”

“Were they uncertain what to feed us?” she said. “They seem to have prepared a little of everything. Does lobster really go with cheese?”

“Are you in pain?” I asked

“And I suppose they expect us to sit on the floor as well. Although, since my backside is made of metal, it's actually quite a comfortable position for me.”

We sat down on the floor either side of the table. Utensils had been laid out for us in long, silver rows. Spoons, forks, knives, chopsticks - and items I'd never seen before.

“Are you in pain?” I repeated.

She speared a potato with a fork. “My vital organs are crammed into bottles connected by rubber hoses. I might have become used to it over time, but I suppose there is a constant... discomfort. I certainly wouldn't suggest making yourself into a half-machine creature like me without very good reason.”

“And 'viscountess'?”

She turned the fork around, spinning the potato on her plate. “Didn't you think it strange that my uncle didn't want to see or speak to any of you after we arrived back from the Twisted Forests? He was like you in that respect. Always curious and eager for knowledge.”

“You said he'd taken a turn for the worse.”

She avoided my eye. “Yes, about as worse as it gets. He was already dead by the time I arrived.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. It's not like it was a surprise. Anyway, the title's hereditary. I'm his only surviving relative. But I'm sure you'd be the first to point out that it all seems so pointless and arbitrary. It's not like I earned it. I'd sooner be a doctor than a viscountess or a lady.”

“Maybe it'll suffice to be a Una.”

She smiled. “I'd like to think so.”

I looked down at my empty plate. “If... If they - whoever 'they' are, can help you - could end your discomfort and prolong your life, would you let them?”

She kept smiling. “If 'they' are the Sky Spiders, then I'd rather die.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: What do the Sky Spiders want with our world? To what end have they caused a billion deaths? Who or what is Remus? There may not be any answers to these questions, but still check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 34

Previously: “We had found the outpost of EON-1 to be manned only by an automated wireless transmitter, patched into the network of Sky Spider machinery that grows through the soil of the Poison Wastes. Unfortunately, our activities drew the attentions of a Sky Spider automaton.”

Part 34: Commute

It steamed fast towards us, crawling bat-like over the ruined soil, moving with impossible grace, as if it didn't even touch the ground. It was transparent. Barely visible, except where the thick, smoky air curled around it.

Sigrid fired her rifle at point blank range.

The automaton breezed passed her as if it hadn't even noticed.

I grabbed Lady Una's wrist, feeling the steel beneath her sleeve. She lowered the barrel of her automatic pistol, rolling back just in time to get out of the thing's path.

It stopped in front of the ragged tent and, without even pausing, tore it away from its moorings with huge, inhuman hands. The small bundle of equipment within lay exposed.

A glassy hand lowered over the antennae of the transmitter, fingers multiplying and growing to spread out over the cylinder of the analytical engine and the hoses that bound them to the throbbing black machinery in the soil. And then EON-1's equipment was gone - fading to darkness, silhouette, non-existence. The hole in the soil sealed up in the blink of an eye, closing like an earthy iris.

Lady Una swore again, the curse muffled by her face mask.

The automaton turned around. Something vaguely resembling a head turned from Sigrid, to Una, to myself. Stayed fixed on me.

Its hand shot out again - smaller now, with fewer fingers, almost human. It closed around my throat before I could even think about trying to get away. The grip was like iron. No, worse, like the grip of an ancient oak, infused with the strength of aeons. Lady Una shouted something.

It lifted me up off my feet. Another hand grabbed my gas mask and tore it away from face. I screamed with pain. The thick, toxic smoke in the air burned my eyes. Through my tears I could see the Sky Spider automaton looking at me, face to face.

I gasped for air, but nothing could get past the choking grip of its fingers. The air was poison anyway, without my mask. Lady Una was firing her gun, but it seemed very distant. Blood thumped insistently in my ears.

I could feel myself starting to faint. It was with a strange detachment that I noticed Sigrid had pulled a characteristic disappearing act. Small wonder, I thought, that she had survived so-

*

An elegant sitting room, the walls lined with books. Double windows stood open onto the balcony, providing a narrow view of a marble-white city, tinged orange by the sunset.

Lady Una stood up from her chair with a swoosh of skirts. “Wait,” she said, “what just happened?”

I looked down at myself. I was wearing a new suit. I felt clean and healthy. The pain of breathing that I'd grown used to over the past days was gone. “We were in the Poison Wastes,” I said. “There was a Sky Spider machine.”

Lady Una suddenly patted the sides of her dress. “My pistol. I assembled it myself. It's one of a kind.”

I shrugged. “I've lost two and counting so far.”

She fixed her aristocratic gaze on me. “Oh, don't you delight in being unsurprised. I suppose this kind of thing is all old hat to you, isn't it?”

I started to speak.

“I'm not interested in your wit, Peregrine,” she interrupted, before I'd even got a syllable out. “I just want to know where we are. And perhaps some minimal understanding of how we got here wouldn't go astray either.”

I pointed out the open window. “I recognise that skyline. Don't you?”

She rotated perfectly on her hoop skirt and stared out at the sunset, her hands on her hips. After a moment, she sighed deeply. “I suppose it would have to be, wouldn't it?”

“Unity City.”

The voice came from the door to the room, now thrown wide open.

Servants entered: human and immaculately dressed, their heads encased in bright white knots of Sky Spider machinery. Following close behind them was a tall, slender person: androgynous and impossibly beautiful.

“Dr Peregrine Gleve,” the person said. “I'm sure there must be some disorientation, but please allow me to explain. I brought you here from the brink of death.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Unity City. Everybody speaks badly of it, but is it such a bad place? Then again, surely some things are too good to be true... Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 33

Previously: “Deep in the Poison Wastes, we finally reached the small and derelict outpost of EON-1.”

Part 33: The Turk

Lady Una threw open the tent flap, and we peered eagerly inside. Sitting on the bare ground inside the tent was a stained wooden box with diamond-shaped metal antlers protruding from the top. Thick rubber hoses connected it to a small stainless steel cylinder.

Sigrid looked from Lady Una to me, her eyes just visible behind her protective mask. “I hope you two know what you're looking at, because I ain't got a clue.”

Lady Una stooped to get a better view. “It's a wireless transmitter,” she said. “And the cylinder is a small analytical engine.”

“I think the machine is trying to disguise the signal as natural white noise,” I said. “We had some success at hiding things from the Sky Spiders that way.”

Sigrid shrugged. “But hiding what? What kind of transmission?”

“There are two antennae, facing south-east and north,” Lady Una said. “North is towards EON-2. South-east is towards, well...”

Sigrid said, “A lot of things.”

“EON-2 was in contact with EON-1, we know that much,” I said. “And it thought that EON-1 was near here - just because of the direction of the signal?”

Lady Una pulled a small electric lamp from her pack and held it at arm's length inside the tent. “No, I think it had a better reason.”

Sigrid unslung her rifle. “What the hell is that?”

Something slick and black moved inside the tent, bulging and throbbing out of the sickly soil. I could recognise its otherworldly texture in an instant. “Sky Spider machinery,” I said. “It's in the ground. Growing like the roots of a tree, spreading out from that.”

I turned to point at the fiery rend in the world that split the horizon, spilling black smoke into the sky.

“Let's think about this a moment,” Lady Una said. “If we assume that EON-2 is telling the truth, EON-1 has clearly been lying to it.”

“Or they're both lying,” Sigrid chipped in.

“We're told to expect to find it here,” Lady Una continued, “but in fact it could be anywhere to the south-east.”

“Anywhere at all,” I suggested, “if there's another one of these things out there. A whole relay, perhaps.”

She seemed unconvinced. “Perhaps. But would EON-1 expect to need to go to such great lengths? How many people have passed this way in five years? How many have even left Fortress City?”

“Fortress City,” Sigrid said. “Which is to the south-east.”

Lady Una sighed. “Along with Unity City.”

Sigrid nodded, her breathing apparatus bobbing. “My money being on the latter.”

“But EON-3 is in Unity City.”

“Maybe EON-3 is behind this,” Sigrid suggested. “Maybe One and Three are in it together. Duping poor old Two. Four was probably in on it as well.”

“This is baseless conjecture. Are you okay, doctor?”

I had sat down on the ground, suddenly overcome with dizziness. “I've been better.”

Without getting up from her knees, Lady Una glided over to my side. Sigrid was too distracted by the contents of the tent to be surprised by the manoeuvre.

“We need to leave these accursed Wastes,” Lady Una said.

Sigrid closed the flap of the tent. “I'm with you there. Wait... Look out!”

Lady Una grabbed my arm and pulled me bodily to my feet. “Fuck.”

As smoke swirled around the barren and rocky ground, it parted in a wake, dragging around a sleek, near-transparent figure. It prowled forwards on reversed knees, clawing at the earth with ghostly, inhuman hands.

I coughed into my gas mask. “Disguising the signal as white noise... We had a lot of success with it, but when the Sky Spiders realised that we'd tricked them, they always reacted pretty strongly.”

Sigrid drew back the bolt on her rifle. The Sky Spider automaton didn't seem to notice or care.

“There's no point,” I shouted hoarsely. “Drop the rifle.”

She didn't hear, or wasn't prepared to listen. Worse still, Lady Una had drawn her automatic pistol. The automaton approached us unperturbed - the result of millions of years of technological advancement. Implacable and without mercy.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Can a surly soldier and a staid tank-woman defeat a sophisticated machine from beyond the sky? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 32

Previously: “EON-4 and Major Thurlow were dead. With supplies from a dying village in the Poison Wastes, I began my trek north, into the heart of the Sky Spiders' weird schemes.”

Part 32: Glad

It was dark. The sky was almost pitch black, churning with windblown shadows. And along the horizon, bulging out at the middle as if barely contained, orange light so bright it hurt to look at and left a lingering after-image. It flickered with the long-legged silhouettes of alien machines.

Smoke coiled and flowed through the air like liquid.

I was starting to doubt the efficacy of my battered old gas mask.

The ground rumbled constantly beneath my feet, but I still just made out the crack of a rifle shot over the din. Turning to its source and wiping soot from my eyepieces, I saw two distant figures on a low crest of ruined earth: one short and aiming a long-barrelled rifle at the sky, the other tall and clad ridiculously in a hoop skirted dress.

I raised my arm to wave to them.

*

They wore glass-fronted face masks that connected to oxygen tanks strapped to their backs. Much more advanced and comfortable breathing apparatus than my own civilian mask, which was intended only for emergencies and instead used for years by someone long dead.

Lady Una stepped up to me so I could hear her muffled voice over the cacophony of a world being reshaped. “Is it really you?” she asked.

I nodded.

She touched my arm. “I thought you were dead.”

All I could think to say was, “I'm alive.”

Through her soot-smeared faceplate, I thought I could detect a smile. “I'm glad.”

“What about the Major?” Sigrid asked. “The tin man?”

I shook my head. “When we can talk properly, there's a lot you need to know.”

We all looked at one another, and then at the hellish vision on the horizon. Sigrid pointed at it, and we walked on together.

*

It seemed to step over us and the horizon in a single movement of its long, armoured legs. A Sky Spider machine like a mountainous black hand with a palm of fire. We all dropped to our knees instinctively as it passed overhead.

Lady Una shouted, “We're safe, right? As long as we don't bother them.”

“Yes,” I yelled back.

“And because we're with a member of the Select Committee.”

“I'm certain that doesn't make a difference,” I said, though I honestly wasn't too sure.

Sigrid nudged me and pointed into the smoke and shadows that surrounded us. “I'm glad you're certain, because that thing is bothering me.”

“I don't see anything.”

“That's a significant part of why I'm bothered. You have to look real careful like.”

Perhaps, in the rolling smoke, I did just make out something almost solid, a transparent stem, ghostly and jointed like an inverted knee.

I shrugged. It was ridiculous to think that they didn't know we were there, weren't poised to exterminate us as soon as we became pests. As the footsteps of the enormous black machine faded into the rest of the noise, we walked on towards the fire ahead.

Sigrid gripped her rifle tightly, eyeing the smoke around us.

*

It was a small tent, now holed and ragged, but otherwise untouched. Various tools and spare parts littered the black soil, all of them badly corroded.

Sigrid grabbed my shoulder and shouted into my ear. “So we think this guy has hung around in this place for five years?”

“According to EON-2.”

Lady Una kicked at the pitted cog of an analytical engine as it protruded from the dirt. “We'll be lucky if there's anything of it left.”

With characteristic directness, she glided over to the tent and flung open the flap.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: What strange secrets will EON-1 have to reveal? Will it be mad, like the Iron Queen? Hostile, like EON-4? Or will we finally find the answers we seek? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Cast

(The main characters and what we know about them so far. SPOILERS.)

It has been five years since the Sky Spiders descended. The world has been irrevocably changed. Most of the remaining free people are huddled in poverty behind the protecting guns of Fortress City. Many others live strange, transformed lives within the Twisted Forests. And then there are those in Unity City...

In this world, five disparate heroes were seeking the one connection, the one potential source of knowledge on the Sky Spiders and their terrible reign. Five heroes hoping that they had not merely found a route to madness, quick death, or worse... Five heroes, now three in number.

The Supplicants:

Viscount Cyrus of Circhester
Once the designer of formidable war machines, he now relies entirely upon arcane life support equipment. Cyrus hopes to uncover the information learned by the EON units.

EON-2
A humanoid philosophy engine sent to investigate the Sky Spider's analytical machines. A telegram from EON-2 claims that all the EON units but EON-4 possess 'vital information' about the Sky Spiders and are still to be found in the vicinity of their old objectives.

The Five:

Dr Peregrine Gleve
A scientist of the Imperial Society, and a member of the Select Committee, a group of scientists sent to negotiate with the Sky Spiders. The other members are missing - though Peregrine has reported them dead.

Lady Una
Niece of the Viscount of Circhester, she is familiar with the science and history of these times. Mortally wounded after the arrival of the Sky Spiders, her uncle refashioned her into a hybrid of woman and tank. Una knows several of Peregrine's secrets, and his role in the Select Committee seems to be a point of tension between the two of them.

Sigrid Phenice
A soldier of the 4th Company Rifles and something of a loner. Straightforward, taciturn and a crack shot. She doesn't care too much about politics or philosophy.

Major Fabian Thurlow (deceased)
An officer of the Tropical Expeditionary Force, he has an intimate knowledge of the madness that lies in the Twisted Forests. Killed by EON-4 while en route to EON-1.

EON-4 (deceased)
The only EON unit to report failure in its objectives and return to human civilisation. Peregrine now knows that EON-4 was lying about its failure - the reasons for its deception unknown. Killed by Peregrine in self defence.

Supporting Characters:

John Kirkham
Leader of Fortress City, a man who wears a golden mask. He stole Prometheus from the Sky Spiders during the battle for Unity City.

Commander Kelson
Acting captain of the HMS Inquisitor. She provides transport for Peregrine, but shows no real commitment to his larger goals.

Professor Suzette Layling
The scientist in charge of the thunderous guns of Fortress City. Wife of Dr Frederick Layling, a member of the Select Committee.

General Cass
Architect of the battle for Unity City. His atrocious failure - leading to the death of a million soldiers - was also Kirkham's triumph. Cass is presumed dead.

EON-5/The Iron Queen
An EON unit dispatched to a Sky Spider structure in the Twisted Forests. She seems to there have lost her mind and refashioned herself as the forest dwellers' 'Iron Queen'. Her severed (but still gibbering) head is now in the possession of John Kirkham.

EON-1
The EON unit sent straight into the heart of the Sky Spiders' machinations in the Poison Wastes.

EON-3
Dispatched to Unity City. According to EON-2's telegram, it must still be located there.