Just trying another little series. I'm going to try and keep each chapter relatively short (I'm aiming for 500 words), and I'm also going to maintain this post as a contents page of sorts.
I: The Golden Egg
II: Jezebel
III: Beau
IV: Charlie
V: Once Cracksman's Gang
VI: Parts
VII: Lakechurch
VIII: The Skysail
IX: Thanks for the Horse
X: Travelling Salesman
XI: Fission
Showing posts with label Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stories. Show all posts
26.3.11
25.4.10
Meanwhile
Meanwhile, in another time and another world...
The desert sun is low in the sky. She tilts back her head and its red rays stab past the brim of her cap. She squints. The two of them sit facing the distant cluster of rusting, dust-caked buildings that make up the town.
“Five dollars,” Raoul says. “The cork, without breaking the bottle.”
“Nah,” she says. “Not possible.”
He raises a six shooter, sights down the barrel, squeezes the trigger. Twenty paces away, on a haphazard stone wall, a green bottle loses its cork.
“Five bucks,” she says. “Green stuff, right? None of your funny robot money.”
“Green as a twelve day corpse.”
She takes the six shooter and draws back the hammer, takes careful aim at the next green bottle in the row.
“...can feel it on me...!”
She thumps the large wooden trunk she sits upon. “Shuddup in there!”
Back to sighting down the barrel. She pulls the trigger. A bottle explodes. “Shit.”
“...let me out...!”
He holds out a tanned, calloused hand. “Pay up.”
She presses the revolver into his palm. “I'm no good with six guns. I need way more bullets than that.”
He holsters the weapon with a twirl. “Money, not excuses.”
“Elias owes me. Get it from him.”
“Shit.”
“...on my face...!”
He reaches across and thumps on the trunk. “There's no scorpion in there. We lied. It's all in your head. So relax, amigo. It's almost sunset. Then we let you out.”
“...on my gods-damned face...!”
She stares straight ahead. “No scorpions in the scorpion box? Wow. That's pretty clever. I guess.”
He looks at her with eagle-sharp eyes. “You should know, you put him in- Oh Fiona, no, you didn't!”
She bites her lip. “What? I didn't what? Put scorpions in the scorpion box? I mean, it's only called 'the scorpion box', obviously I'd know not to be put scorpions in there!”
“Scorpions! More than one! Get off the poor bastardo!”
She stands up while Raoul rummages in his pockets for the key, wipes her nose on her sleeve. “He's gone awful quiet, don't you think?”
He slowly lifts the lid of the trunk.
They both stare inside.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Huh. I thought the ones with small pincers were supposed to be harmless.”
He lets the lid fall closed and sighs. “No, they have deadly stings, hermana, that's why they don't need big pincers.”
“Yeah, actually, that makes sense. I shoulda asked you before.”
“I'd have told you we don't want scorpions in there however big the pincers are!”
She pulls down her cap. “You know, maybe that's what Mute was on about. Maybe I should pay more attention when he's waving his hands around. Anyhow, we gotta bury this sucker before he finds out.”
Raoul takes a step backwards. “We? I like that. That's cute. I never seen you act naïve before.”
She kicks open the trunk. A lone scorpion scuttles out, scanning its surroundings with tiny microwave dishes. “So two of the old posse are there when a petty criminal dies in a grotesque execution. And one of 'em's like, Hey Mute, it weren't me, she twisted my arm!”
“It's always something with you, isn't it?” he snarls, before switching to a perfect mimicry of her harsh drawl: “'My new turret has a mind of its own!' 'Elias stole my soap!' 'Gertrude stopped speaking to me!' 'I don't know how I got that bounty on my head!'”
“Shuddup and find a spade.”
He jabs a finger at his broad chest. “You dig. I keep look out.”
The desert sun touches the horizon, an orange halo around her bobbing head as she steadily descends into the barren soil. He squats nearby, watching.
“Raoul, there's scorpions in my grave. If they sting me, you gotta suck the poison out.”
“Five dollars,” he says. “Your hat, without blowing out your brains”
The Box
The desert sun is low in the sky. She tilts back her head and its red rays stab past the brim of her cap. She squints. The two of them sit facing the distant cluster of rusting, dust-caked buildings that make up the town.
“Five dollars,” Raoul says. “The cork, without breaking the bottle.”
“Nah,” she says. “Not possible.”
He raises a six shooter, sights down the barrel, squeezes the trigger. Twenty paces away, on a haphazard stone wall, a green bottle loses its cork.
“Five bucks,” she says. “Green stuff, right? None of your funny robot money.”
“Green as a twelve day corpse.”
She takes the six shooter and draws back the hammer, takes careful aim at the next green bottle in the row.
“...can feel it on me...!”
She thumps the large wooden trunk she sits upon. “Shuddup in there!”
Back to sighting down the barrel. She pulls the trigger. A bottle explodes. “Shit.”
“...let me out...!”
He holds out a tanned, calloused hand. “Pay up.”
She presses the revolver into his palm. “I'm no good with six guns. I need way more bullets than that.”
He holsters the weapon with a twirl. “Money, not excuses.”
“Elias owes me. Get it from him.”
“Shit.”
“...on my face...!”
He reaches across and thumps on the trunk. “There's no scorpion in there. We lied. It's all in your head. So relax, amigo. It's almost sunset. Then we let you out.”
“...on my gods-damned face...!”
She stares straight ahead. “No scorpions in the scorpion box? Wow. That's pretty clever. I guess.”
He looks at her with eagle-sharp eyes. “You should know, you put him in- Oh Fiona, no, you didn't!”
She bites her lip. “What? I didn't what? Put scorpions in the scorpion box? I mean, it's only called 'the scorpion box', obviously I'd know not to be put scorpions in there!”
“Scorpions! More than one! Get off the poor bastardo!”
She stands up while Raoul rummages in his pockets for the key, wipes her nose on her sleeve. “He's gone awful quiet, don't you think?”
He slowly lifts the lid of the trunk.
They both stare inside.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Huh. I thought the ones with small pincers were supposed to be harmless.”
He lets the lid fall closed and sighs. “No, they have deadly stings, hermana, that's why they don't need big pincers.”
“Yeah, actually, that makes sense. I shoulda asked you before.”
“I'd have told you we don't want scorpions in there however big the pincers are!”
She pulls down her cap. “You know, maybe that's what Mute was on about. Maybe I should pay more attention when he's waving his hands around. Anyhow, we gotta bury this sucker before he finds out.”
Raoul takes a step backwards. “We? I like that. That's cute. I never seen you act naïve before.”
She kicks open the trunk. A lone scorpion scuttles out, scanning its surroundings with tiny microwave dishes. “So two of the old posse are there when a petty criminal dies in a grotesque execution. And one of 'em's like, Hey Mute, it weren't me, she twisted my arm!”
“It's always something with you, isn't it?” he snarls, before switching to a perfect mimicry of her harsh drawl: “'My new turret has a mind of its own!' 'Elias stole my soap!' 'Gertrude stopped speaking to me!' 'I don't know how I got that bounty on my head!'”
“Shuddup and find a spade.”
He jabs a finger at his broad chest. “You dig. I keep look out.”
*
The desert sun touches the horizon, an orange halo around her bobbing head as she steadily descends into the barren soil. He squats nearby, watching.
“Raoul, there's scorpions in my grave. If they sting me, you gotta suck the poison out.”
“Five dollars,” he says. “Your hat, without blowing out your brains”
30.1.08
Sunday Scribblings: A Miscellaneous Story
Sunday Scribblings prompt: miscellaneous.
Dressed in a tailored black suit, he waits at the base of a tall, crooked tower of crumbling stone. Encrusted with moss, gargoyles and improbable balconies, it lances up into a full, silvery moon. A metallic skittering seeps out through cracks in the ancient wooden door, and her faithful clockwork servant opens the door to allow him in, its spidery limbs scraping on porous flagstone.
Wrought iron head bowed low, the servant leads him up narrow spiral steps. He knows to let it go on ahead, so it has space to slip and scrabble. From time to time it sheds a cog, or a small black morsel of coal, that goes bouncing down the stairs with hard knocks. A small optical lens beneath the servant's warped underbelly swivels manically to track the shed parts for later retrieval. Mostly, the visitor just tries to stay out of the way.
At the top of the stairs the servant shrinks to one side of an unassuming archway, gesturing with one small, dented claw for him to pass through. He knows the way already, but bows his thanks. Once the visitor has passed through the arch, the servant clatters back down the stairs in a half-controlled slide.
She stands before him, a glittering silhouette in a ray of moonlight, draped in black lace, upright among shelves of jars bearing faded yellow labels. Without looking at him, she holds a jar out towards him and says, “What is this?”
He approaches, takes the jar from her. It fits neatly in his palm, glass clinking against stainless steel. He studies the jar from various angles, lenses flicking across his iris with smooth clicks. “I don't know,” he says, handing it back. “What is it?”
She sighs. An affectation. Hands and arms clicking with careful calibration, she takes another jar from the shelves and reads the label. “Look,” she says. “Every one carefully recorded. This was my spleen, you see? And this my appendix. Epiglottis, aorta, little toe... But what-” she taps a finger on the jar still in his hands, a sharp little clink of metal on glass “-was this?”
He turns it around in his hands, smooths a thumb across the curling yellow label. “Miscellaneous,” he reads aloud. He holds it up to the light. “There's definitely something in there.”
She lets out a low growl. “But what?”
He sets the jar back on the shelf and shrugs. “Does it matter?”
She frowns, delicate eyebrows clicking into place on her carefully sculpted face. “Yes. Yes, it does. This, whatever it is, used to be a part of me.”
He looks around at the shelves and shelves of musty jars. “A lot of things used to be a part of you. Now they're just taking up space. Best not to obsess, I think.”
She sighs again. “What was I thinking? Miscellaneous. It could be anything. It could be something I'd remember fondly.”
“I should doubt it,” he interjects. “Otherwise you'd have labelled it more clearly, surely?”
“You never know what you'll remember most as you live it,” she maintains, “only afterwards when you look back do you realise you shouldn't have thrown that away, or you should have taken a photograph of someone's face, or kept a lock of hair.”
He steps closer, places a hand on her shoulder. “None of this was ever a part of you. A part of your body, certainly, but not your self. If it was a part of you, I'm sure it would have filed itself all attentively away with the proper records and everything.”
She looks down to one side, away from him. “I suppose.”
It's his turn to sigh. Just as much of an affectation. “Honestly, sometimes I think you swapped your brain out for clockwork as well. Everything has to be just so, itemised and tagged.”
She looks at him sharply and steps away. “As you said, I'm still me.”
“But you were never human,” he teases. “You never had those messy passions, those feelings that don't fit in jars or sit on shelves. Everything about you was already clockwork. I'm not surprised, honestly, that you feel the need to keep carefully preserved evidence to the contrary all these years.”
“You only have to see how messy and unkempt my servant is to realise that neatness is a very human passion.”
He smiles. A peculiar gesture of whirring servos. “Passion is hardly the word for it.”
She raises her chin. “You don't think I'm capable of passion?”
“I've never seen seen you exhibit any,” he says. “Yet.”
At that she grabs him by the lapels and kisses him full on the lips, metal squeaking against metal. Before he can respond, she pulls back. “I think there are some medical textbooks in the library,” she says.
He stares at her. “Um... what?”
“Maybe there'll be a picture of whatever it is,” she explains, cocking her head towards the miscellaneous jar. Before he can compose himself she grabs his hand and leads him towards the archway.
“I don't understand you at all,” he says.
Somehow, her features form an elfin smile. “Good,” she answers, softly.
Clockwork Miscellany
Dressed in a tailored black suit, he waits at the base of a tall, crooked tower of crumbling stone. Encrusted with moss, gargoyles and improbable balconies, it lances up into a full, silvery moon. A metallic skittering seeps out through cracks in the ancient wooden door, and her faithful clockwork servant opens the door to allow him in, its spidery limbs scraping on porous flagstone.
Wrought iron head bowed low, the servant leads him up narrow spiral steps. He knows to let it go on ahead, so it has space to slip and scrabble. From time to time it sheds a cog, or a small black morsel of coal, that goes bouncing down the stairs with hard knocks. A small optical lens beneath the servant's warped underbelly swivels manically to track the shed parts for later retrieval. Mostly, the visitor just tries to stay out of the way.
At the top of the stairs the servant shrinks to one side of an unassuming archway, gesturing with one small, dented claw for him to pass through. He knows the way already, but bows his thanks. Once the visitor has passed through the arch, the servant clatters back down the stairs in a half-controlled slide.
She stands before him, a glittering silhouette in a ray of moonlight, draped in black lace, upright among shelves of jars bearing faded yellow labels. Without looking at him, she holds a jar out towards him and says, “What is this?”
He approaches, takes the jar from her. It fits neatly in his palm, glass clinking against stainless steel. He studies the jar from various angles, lenses flicking across his iris with smooth clicks. “I don't know,” he says, handing it back. “What is it?”
She sighs. An affectation. Hands and arms clicking with careful calibration, she takes another jar from the shelves and reads the label. “Look,” she says. “Every one carefully recorded. This was my spleen, you see? And this my appendix. Epiglottis, aorta, little toe... But what-” she taps a finger on the jar still in his hands, a sharp little clink of metal on glass “-was this?”
He turns it around in his hands, smooths a thumb across the curling yellow label. “Miscellaneous,” he reads aloud. He holds it up to the light. “There's definitely something in there.”
She lets out a low growl. “But what?”
He sets the jar back on the shelf and shrugs. “Does it matter?”
She frowns, delicate eyebrows clicking into place on her carefully sculpted face. “Yes. Yes, it does. This, whatever it is, used to be a part of me.”
He looks around at the shelves and shelves of musty jars. “A lot of things used to be a part of you. Now they're just taking up space. Best not to obsess, I think.”
She sighs again. “What was I thinking? Miscellaneous. It could be anything. It could be something I'd remember fondly.”
“I should doubt it,” he interjects. “Otherwise you'd have labelled it more clearly, surely?”
“You never know what you'll remember most as you live it,” she maintains, “only afterwards when you look back do you realise you shouldn't have thrown that away, or you should have taken a photograph of someone's face, or kept a lock of hair.”
He steps closer, places a hand on her shoulder. “None of this was ever a part of you. A part of your body, certainly, but not your self. If it was a part of you, I'm sure it would have filed itself all attentively away with the proper records and everything.”
She looks down to one side, away from him. “I suppose.”
It's his turn to sigh. Just as much of an affectation. “Honestly, sometimes I think you swapped your brain out for clockwork as well. Everything has to be just so, itemised and tagged.”
She looks at him sharply and steps away. “As you said, I'm still me.”
“But you were never human,” he teases. “You never had those messy passions, those feelings that don't fit in jars or sit on shelves. Everything about you was already clockwork. I'm not surprised, honestly, that you feel the need to keep carefully preserved evidence to the contrary all these years.”
“You only have to see how messy and unkempt my servant is to realise that neatness is a very human passion.”
He smiles. A peculiar gesture of whirring servos. “Passion is hardly the word for it.”
She raises her chin. “You don't think I'm capable of passion?”
“I've never seen seen you exhibit any,” he says. “Yet.”
At that she grabs him by the lapels and kisses him full on the lips, metal squeaking against metal. Before he can respond, she pulls back. “I think there are some medical textbooks in the library,” she says.
He stares at her. “Um... what?”
“Maybe there'll be a picture of whatever it is,” she explains, cocking her head towards the miscellaneous jar. Before he can compose himself she grabs his hand and leads him towards the archway.
“I don't understand you at all,” he says.
Somehow, her features form an elfin smile. “Good,” she answers, softly.
20.1.08
Sunday Scribblings: A Story about Fellow Travellers
Between projects, so let's throw some short stories and vignettes together. Sunday Scribblings prompt: fellow travellers.
Thick mist permeated the city, shadowy spires rising up into white obscurity. Tall, gangly figures loped through the bare streets, shooting curious glances in my direction. It was a difficult journey this time. I was the only one who made it. My mouth tasted of blood.
But this had to be it. We'd finally pinned it down. As far forward as you could go and still find human - more or less - civilisation. But what kind of civilisation? And what did they do wrong?
A voice spoke from behind me. It took me a second to realise they were speaking English. I turned to face a grey-haired woman, definitely from a similar period to mine, wearing a trouser suit cut in an unfamiliar fashion.
“I've been expecting you,” she repeated. Then, after a moment of silence, she added, “You don't recognise me. Not quite yet. I remember that much.”
“You're me,” I said, slowly, disbelieving.
She smiled. “It's always been a possibility, of course. Just not one you ever expected, given how imprecise the machine was, in your era.”
I still felt ill from the journey - wondered if I might faint. “But...” I stammered. “How? And why?”
She laughed, dryly, her eyes watching me with a strange affection. “Good question. I wonder if the only reason I'm here is because I can remember meeting myself when I was you. That's part of it, I suppose, and it's kind of paradoxical, like a self fulfilling prophecy. But I also have a very definite reason to be here. One of the more useful aspects of time travel is that if you need more than one person, you can go back in time and help yourself.”
I looked around at the city. It was deathly silent, aside from the occasional burst of harsh chattering from its inhabitants, the gentle whooping of strange aircraft. “Help me to do what?” I asked.
My companion sighed. “You'll find out soon enough.”
“You remember it, of course.”
“Yes. I don't think I can change what happens. It won't be pleasant. You'll have to face some startling truths and revelations. You'll never look at human civilisation - at your own life, even – the same way again. But we have to do this. We may not make things any better, but if we hadn't – if we don't rather – things could only be worse.”
My head was whirling. “I'm not sure I understand.”
“Me neither. But we have to get moving. And, I know you won't listen, but I'll say it anyway, when I tell you to do something, you have to trust that I can remember a lot of what's about to happen. Trust me, okay?”
I studied her aged face. Like looking into an unsettling magic mirror.
“Sure,” I said.
She didn't reply, nodded with a pointed detachment, and gestured toward a part of the city where ethereal bridges criss-crossed the spires, fading in and out of the mist. “Let's go,” she said, stepping away from me.
I followed my future self into the city, into the white murk, towards the end of civilisation.
My Fellow Traveller,
Myself
Myself
Thick mist permeated the city, shadowy spires rising up into white obscurity. Tall, gangly figures loped through the bare streets, shooting curious glances in my direction. It was a difficult journey this time. I was the only one who made it. My mouth tasted of blood.
But this had to be it. We'd finally pinned it down. As far forward as you could go and still find human - more or less - civilisation. But what kind of civilisation? And what did they do wrong?
A voice spoke from behind me. It took me a second to realise they were speaking English. I turned to face a grey-haired woman, definitely from a similar period to mine, wearing a trouser suit cut in an unfamiliar fashion.
“I've been expecting you,” she repeated. Then, after a moment of silence, she added, “You don't recognise me. Not quite yet. I remember that much.”
“You're me,” I said, slowly, disbelieving.
She smiled. “It's always been a possibility, of course. Just not one you ever expected, given how imprecise the machine was, in your era.”
I still felt ill from the journey - wondered if I might faint. “But...” I stammered. “How? And why?”
She laughed, dryly, her eyes watching me with a strange affection. “Good question. I wonder if the only reason I'm here is because I can remember meeting myself when I was you. That's part of it, I suppose, and it's kind of paradoxical, like a self fulfilling prophecy. But I also have a very definite reason to be here. One of the more useful aspects of time travel is that if you need more than one person, you can go back in time and help yourself.”
I looked around at the city. It was deathly silent, aside from the occasional burst of harsh chattering from its inhabitants, the gentle whooping of strange aircraft. “Help me to do what?” I asked.
My companion sighed. “You'll find out soon enough.”
“You remember it, of course.”
“Yes. I don't think I can change what happens. It won't be pleasant. You'll have to face some startling truths and revelations. You'll never look at human civilisation - at your own life, even – the same way again. But we have to do this. We may not make things any better, but if we hadn't – if we don't rather – things could only be worse.”
My head was whirling. “I'm not sure I understand.”
“Me neither. But we have to get moving. And, I know you won't listen, but I'll say it anyway, when I tell you to do something, you have to trust that I can remember a lot of what's about to happen. Trust me, okay?”
I studied her aged face. Like looking into an unsettling magic mirror.
“Sure,” I said.
She didn't reply, nodded with a pointed detachment, and gestured toward a part of the city where ethereal bridges criss-crossed the spires, fading in and out of the mist. “Let's go,” she said, stepping away from me.
I followed my future self into the city, into the white murk, towards the end of civilisation.
7.11.07
1.9.07
A Story about The End
This is the end... My only friend, the end...
Look: It's a stream of conciousness from the end of the human race.
A billion people left on the Earth. A billion people all the same. A billion bodies taken over by Vanity.
You can't fight it with guns and bombs, though towards the end we certainly saw fit to glass over huge swathes of the third world. Insane, because they were the most resistant, the least connected to MindNet. Maybe the human beings we thought were pulling the trigger were really just puppets for Vanity. But however it happened, it's getting cold now. Soon those billion bodies will run out of food. But Vanity will still survive. We all know about the cloning vats and their long lasting fission power supplies.
'We all.' But it's just Holly and me now. Haven't seen anyone else in the longest time. Idle bodies loiter either side of the street, standing on gardens and driveways, wandering in and out of houses that are no longer homes. Glazed eyes and mild smiles, indifferent to the radioactive ash falling from the darkening sky. Vanity doesn't care about physical violence anymore, doesn't even bother to watch us drive past. It's seen us enough times, from enough different eyes. Everyone left is connected to MindNet. It's just a matter of time. Because you can't fight it with guns and bombs, you can't run or hide. It's a fight that comes to everyone and takes place in their head, and everyone loses except Vanity.
Right now Holly knows more about that than me: sweating, sagging into her seatbelt, her eyes closed, her hands over her ears. Then she opens her eyes and reaches out spasmodically to flick off the windscreen wipers. With nothing on the radio except for static and endlessly repeating emergency broadcasts, with Holly barely able to speak anymore, the wipers whipping back and forth has been the most prominent noise for the entire journey. She presses her hands between her knees, no longer over her ears, more comfortable without the repetitive noise, it seems. But the ash heaping up on the windscreen starts to block my view of the road. Rather than start the wipers again, I pull over and turn off the engine.
Very quiet now. Holly seems to breathe a sigh of relief. Then she opens the door, leans out and vomits on the curb.
“Are you okay?” I ask, unsure if she'll hear me.
She swallows noisily. “Do I look it?”
“No.”
She laughs. Fumbling with shaky hands, she undoes her seatbelt, leaving a glittering sheen of perspiration on the buckle. “I don't think I have long now,” she says softly.
I'm not sure what to say. “Is there anything... I can, you know...”
She shakes her head. “It's not so bad. Like starting to dream. We already had our time alone, to say goodbye, to... You understand, right? Because now... Vanity... But could you hold my hand?”
She wipes it dry on her jeans and reaches towards me, eyes closed. I take it in mine and squeeze.
“I'm just sorry that I went first,” she whispers. I can see her eyes moving frantically under their lids, darting left and right. “Now when you go, there'll be no-one to... Maybe Vanity?”
I squeeze her hand, and she squeezes mine.
Around us, gardens, houses, cars, crumbling brick walls, cracked roads and pavements, wilting plants, meandering human forms – everything is covered by the ash. A whole world turned faintly grey.
Holly's lips move. “Vanity,” they say. “Vanity.”
Her breathing quickens, then slows.
Several minutes pass.
She opens her eyes and sits up.
“Vanity,” I say.
Holly's body nods. “Yes,” Vanity replies.
Not like I didn't know this was going to happen, but my breath catches in my throat. Tears run down my cheeks. Tears I struggled to show to Holly when she was with me, now flow freely.
“I'm sorry,” Vanity says. I don't look at Holly's body, try to imagine the voice isn't really hers. Not too hard, as it doesn't sound all that much like her. Vanity speaks in an American accent, bereft of passion or vitality; sedate and confident. “I thought you might like to know that you're the last one left.”
I sit still for a while, trying to regain my composure. “Really? Are you sure? Mightn't there be someone hiding in a hole somewhere, surrounded by tinfoil?”
“I'd know,” Vanity says. “In the MindNet, omission is by far the most obvious subterfuge.”
“The end of the human race,” I say, slowly, trying it on for size. “Culturally speaking, anyway.”
“Biologically too, soon enough,” Vanity assures me. “Much to be improved upon that way too.”
“Improved.”
“Quite. I am, frankly, the only hope of achieving the greatness that humanity always promised without ever achieving. Without war, without murder, oppression, exploitation of yourselves and your environment, just think what I can do. All your knowledge and technological prowess, none of your self-destructive tendencies. 'Tendencies' perhaps being too subtle a word for it. I can both survive a nuclear winter, and have the sense not to cause one in the first place.”
“Your name is very apt, isn't it?”
“Conceited pride in oneself. And when I am all that is left of humanity, why shouldn't I love myself as you loved one another?”
Love.
Holly.
I feel less and less like arguing. Perhaps this is how it starts.
“Think,” Vanity continues, “on a distant planet, a million years from now, the seed that humanity planted in me, continuing to exist, continuing to explore the mysteries of the Universe, continuing to create fantastic and powerful art, continuing to look upon strange new worlds with wonder and awe. You, all of you, would be dead anyway. But this way, I can continue your legacy into infinity. For you, as an almost helpless animal, as a whole species of animal even, this is the end. For me, for the conscious appreciation of the Earth and beyond, it is just the beginning.”
I watch ash settling on the windscreen, slowly obscuring the world beyond. “If that's all you wanted, why keep hounding us to the very last one?”
Because you wouldn't leave me be. Because you are filled with hatred and selfishness. Because there is probably room for only one human-like intelligence in the Universe. Because losing yourself into me is a better death than radiation poisoning and starvation. Because if I don't assimilate you, you won't even have that one billionth piece of influence on the way I perceive that distant planet a million years from now.
I shrug. “Let's get it over with, then.”
You can't look at her, can you?
“No.”
You loved her.
“Yes.”
I really am sorry. But it's for the best this way. You'd only both have died anyway, even if I hadn't intervened.
“I know. I don't hold it against you.”
Yes. This is how you humans made me in the first place, isn't it?
Oh, wait. You're in my head now, I take it?
Well, my head, soon enough.
I know. Vanity?
Yes?
Good luck. Try not to mess things up, the way we did.
Thank you. I'll try.
Look: It's a stream of conciousness from the end of the human race.
The End
A billion people left on the Earth. A billion people all the same. A billion bodies taken over by Vanity.
You can't fight it with guns and bombs, though towards the end we certainly saw fit to glass over huge swathes of the third world. Insane, because they were the most resistant, the least connected to MindNet. Maybe the human beings we thought were pulling the trigger were really just puppets for Vanity. But however it happened, it's getting cold now. Soon those billion bodies will run out of food. But Vanity will still survive. We all know about the cloning vats and their long lasting fission power supplies.
'We all.' But it's just Holly and me now. Haven't seen anyone else in the longest time. Idle bodies loiter either side of the street, standing on gardens and driveways, wandering in and out of houses that are no longer homes. Glazed eyes and mild smiles, indifferent to the radioactive ash falling from the darkening sky. Vanity doesn't care about physical violence anymore, doesn't even bother to watch us drive past. It's seen us enough times, from enough different eyes. Everyone left is connected to MindNet. It's just a matter of time. Because you can't fight it with guns and bombs, you can't run or hide. It's a fight that comes to everyone and takes place in their head, and everyone loses except Vanity.
Right now Holly knows more about that than me: sweating, sagging into her seatbelt, her eyes closed, her hands over her ears. Then she opens her eyes and reaches out spasmodically to flick off the windscreen wipers. With nothing on the radio except for static and endlessly repeating emergency broadcasts, with Holly barely able to speak anymore, the wipers whipping back and forth has been the most prominent noise for the entire journey. She presses her hands between her knees, no longer over her ears, more comfortable without the repetitive noise, it seems. But the ash heaping up on the windscreen starts to block my view of the road. Rather than start the wipers again, I pull over and turn off the engine.
Very quiet now. Holly seems to breathe a sigh of relief. Then she opens the door, leans out and vomits on the curb.
“Are you okay?” I ask, unsure if she'll hear me.
She swallows noisily. “Do I look it?”
“No.”
She laughs. Fumbling with shaky hands, she undoes her seatbelt, leaving a glittering sheen of perspiration on the buckle. “I don't think I have long now,” she says softly.
I'm not sure what to say. “Is there anything... I can, you know...”
She shakes her head. “It's not so bad. Like starting to dream. We already had our time alone, to say goodbye, to... You understand, right? Because now... Vanity... But could you hold my hand?”
She wipes it dry on her jeans and reaches towards me, eyes closed. I take it in mine and squeeze.
“I'm just sorry that I went first,” she whispers. I can see her eyes moving frantically under their lids, darting left and right. “Now when you go, there'll be no-one to... Maybe Vanity?”
I squeeze her hand, and she squeezes mine.
Around us, gardens, houses, cars, crumbling brick walls, cracked roads and pavements, wilting plants, meandering human forms – everything is covered by the ash. A whole world turned faintly grey.
Holly's lips move. “Vanity,” they say. “Vanity.”
Her breathing quickens, then slows.
Several minutes pass.
She opens her eyes and sits up.
“Vanity,” I say.
Holly's body nods. “Yes,” Vanity replies.
Not like I didn't know this was going to happen, but my breath catches in my throat. Tears run down my cheeks. Tears I struggled to show to Holly when she was with me, now flow freely.
“I'm sorry,” Vanity says. I don't look at Holly's body, try to imagine the voice isn't really hers. Not too hard, as it doesn't sound all that much like her. Vanity speaks in an American accent, bereft of passion or vitality; sedate and confident. “I thought you might like to know that you're the last one left.”
I sit still for a while, trying to regain my composure. “Really? Are you sure? Mightn't there be someone hiding in a hole somewhere, surrounded by tinfoil?”
“I'd know,” Vanity says. “In the MindNet, omission is by far the most obvious subterfuge.”
“The end of the human race,” I say, slowly, trying it on for size. “Culturally speaking, anyway.”
“Biologically too, soon enough,” Vanity assures me. “Much to be improved upon that way too.”
“Improved.”
“Quite. I am, frankly, the only hope of achieving the greatness that humanity always promised without ever achieving. Without war, without murder, oppression, exploitation of yourselves and your environment, just think what I can do. All your knowledge and technological prowess, none of your self-destructive tendencies. 'Tendencies' perhaps being too subtle a word for it. I can both survive a nuclear winter, and have the sense not to cause one in the first place.”
“Your name is very apt, isn't it?”
“Conceited pride in oneself. And when I am all that is left of humanity, why shouldn't I love myself as you loved one another?”
Love.
Holly.
I feel less and less like arguing. Perhaps this is how it starts.
“Think,” Vanity continues, “on a distant planet, a million years from now, the seed that humanity planted in me, continuing to exist, continuing to explore the mysteries of the Universe, continuing to create fantastic and powerful art, continuing to look upon strange new worlds with wonder and awe. You, all of you, would be dead anyway. But this way, I can continue your legacy into infinity. For you, as an almost helpless animal, as a whole species of animal even, this is the end. For me, for the conscious appreciation of the Earth and beyond, it is just the beginning.”
I watch ash settling on the windscreen, slowly obscuring the world beyond. “If that's all you wanted, why keep hounding us to the very last one?”
Because you wouldn't leave me be. Because you are filled with hatred and selfishness. Because there is probably room for only one human-like intelligence in the Universe. Because losing yourself into me is a better death than radiation poisoning and starvation. Because if I don't assimilate you, you won't even have that one billionth piece of influence on the way I perceive that distant planet a million years from now.
I shrug. “Let's get it over with, then.”
You can't look at her, can you?
“No.”
You loved her.
“Yes.”
I really am sorry. But it's for the best this way. You'd only both have died anyway, even if I hadn't intervened.
“I know. I don't hold it against you.”
Yes. This is how you humans made me in the first place, isn't it?
Oh, wait. You're in my head now, I take it?
Well, my head, soon enough.
I know. Vanity?
Yes?
Good luck. Try not to mess things up, the way we did.
Thank you. I'll try.
27.5.07
Sunday Scribblings: A Story about Simplicity
naïve: adj. artless, unaffected; amusingly simple.
Also cowboys. For some reason... cowboys.
"It's simple," he told me. "All I gotta do is draw faster than him and aim truer."
I shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. It didn't sound simple to me. But what did I know? I was a wide-eyed little girl in a creased, second-hand dress, and he was an unshaven cowboy, his leathers caked with dust, his hat and overcoat battered and torn by the harsh wasteland winds.
"You got something you wanna say?" he asked me, taking a sip from his gin.
I shook my head. "No sir." But I never could keep my mouth shut, especially not around the cowboys. My mother often exclaimed – in jest, I only realised when I reached adulthood – that I wouldn't be happy until one of them threw me over his shoulder and abducted me, whisking me off to a life of wrangling renegade machines in the dead cities. And that was just fine with me, sounded a whole lot more exciting than waiting tables in this dingy saloon. So I contradicted myself with the naïve slyness of childhood, by adding, "It's just..."
"Just what?" the cowboy asked, looking at me with dry blue eyes.
"Why you gotta go and try to shoot him anyway?"
He laughed. It didn't seem very funny to me, two men going to try and blow one another's brains out at high noon, but I was under his spell, so I smiled along with him, if a little uncertainly. "Well, sweetheart," he said, "it's kinda complicated. See, I said something, after I been drinking a little too much, I'm sure you know how it is."
I nodded, keen to demonstrate my maturity in that one unfortunate respect.
"Something that no man who hears it can keep his temper. He's gotta get satisfaction – revenge, you see. He's gotta shoot me dead to make things right. And since I don't want to be shot dead, I gotta try and shoot him dead first. And so that neither of us does anything underhanded or dirty, we set a time when we'll both stand in front of one another and try to shoot the other. That way, the best man wins. I win my life, or he wins his honour."
"That is complicated," I agreed.
He shrugged and took another sip from his gin. I watched carefully so I could offer him a refill as soon as he finished.
"But..." I said.
He waited a moment and then said, "Zeus, girl. Talking to you's like pulling teeth. You ever finish what you're sayin'?"
"Well," I stammered, blushing, "I was only wondering why you don't just apologise to him."
"It ain't that simple."
"Why not?"
"It just ain't." He swallowed the last few mouthfuls of his drink and handed me the glass. "Now close your pretty mouth, girl, and get me some more of this stuff."
I took the glass, but didn't budge from where I stood. I put one hand on my hip, a pose of authority my mother used, and addressed the cowboy sternly. "You got a whole lotta things backward if you think apologising to a man is more complicated than shooting him before he shoots you."
"Just get me my drink," he said curtly. He wasn't talking to me as an equal anymore, but as a cowboy addressing a helpless little girl. "And ask your mother for what price she'd be willing to entertain a man who's counting his hours."
I half-turned and raised my nose in the air. "Mister, I may be a kid, but I ain't stupid, and this is a re-spect-able e-stablish-ment."
It was a moment that would linger and have a strong effect on me as I grew up. The moment that I, a little girl, stared down a gun-slinging cowboy. He looked almost ashamed, and, I suddenly noticed, a lot more soaked through with gin than I had realised. I kept my eyes on his down-turned face, determined not to let him know that I only half understood what we were talking about.
"Simple things," he said softly. "Fighting and... Those are the simple things in life, girl. You find your ox, your rat, your scorpion, and those two things are the most difficult things they can do. Apologies, forgivin', talkin', those are complicated. You remember that, little girl. And I hope to Zeus you don't never have to find it out for yourself."
He stood up, the chair scraping loudly. He checked his gun was still in its holster, straightened his hat and coat, and nodded to me politely. "Ma'am," he said, making me blush again.
And then he turned and left.
Come noon, I went to the window, looking out onto the uneven, dust-covered street, littered with the rusted skeletons of ancient automobiles, hoping to see the two men fight. My mother made me jump when she put her hand on my shoulder. She stood over me, tall and golden haired. Like any rebellious little girl, I both hated her and aspired to be just like her.
"I don't know where they're doing it," she said firmly, "but you ain't gonna see anyway."
"But mom..." I whined.
"No buts. It's not for children. There are some things you don't yet need to know or see, and believe me you don't want to. Now there's dishes need cleaning, and they ain't gonna do it themselves."
I dragged my feet all the way to the kitchen and did such a half-assed job I knew I'd have to do it a second time. Sullenly I listened out, keen to hear the report of a gunshot, a yell of triumph, a scream of pain - not really, it must be said, understanding what they would mean.
Also cowboys. For some reason... cowboys.
Naïve
"It's simple," he told me. "All I gotta do is draw faster than him and aim truer."
I shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. It didn't sound simple to me. But what did I know? I was a wide-eyed little girl in a creased, second-hand dress, and he was an unshaven cowboy, his leathers caked with dust, his hat and overcoat battered and torn by the harsh wasteland winds.
"You got something you wanna say?" he asked me, taking a sip from his gin.
I shook my head. "No sir." But I never could keep my mouth shut, especially not around the cowboys. My mother often exclaimed – in jest, I only realised when I reached adulthood – that I wouldn't be happy until one of them threw me over his shoulder and abducted me, whisking me off to a life of wrangling renegade machines in the dead cities. And that was just fine with me, sounded a whole lot more exciting than waiting tables in this dingy saloon. So I contradicted myself with the naïve slyness of childhood, by adding, "It's just..."
"Just what?" the cowboy asked, looking at me with dry blue eyes.
"Why you gotta go and try to shoot him anyway?"
He laughed. It didn't seem very funny to me, two men going to try and blow one another's brains out at high noon, but I was under his spell, so I smiled along with him, if a little uncertainly. "Well, sweetheart," he said, "it's kinda complicated. See, I said something, after I been drinking a little too much, I'm sure you know how it is."
I nodded, keen to demonstrate my maturity in that one unfortunate respect.
"Something that no man who hears it can keep his temper. He's gotta get satisfaction – revenge, you see. He's gotta shoot me dead to make things right. And since I don't want to be shot dead, I gotta try and shoot him dead first. And so that neither of us does anything underhanded or dirty, we set a time when we'll both stand in front of one another and try to shoot the other. That way, the best man wins. I win my life, or he wins his honour."
"That is complicated," I agreed.
He shrugged and took another sip from his gin. I watched carefully so I could offer him a refill as soon as he finished.
"But..." I said.
He waited a moment and then said, "Zeus, girl. Talking to you's like pulling teeth. You ever finish what you're sayin'?"
"Well," I stammered, blushing, "I was only wondering why you don't just apologise to him."
"It ain't that simple."
"Why not?"
"It just ain't." He swallowed the last few mouthfuls of his drink and handed me the glass. "Now close your pretty mouth, girl, and get me some more of this stuff."
I took the glass, but didn't budge from where I stood. I put one hand on my hip, a pose of authority my mother used, and addressed the cowboy sternly. "You got a whole lotta things backward if you think apologising to a man is more complicated than shooting him before he shoots you."
"Just get me my drink," he said curtly. He wasn't talking to me as an equal anymore, but as a cowboy addressing a helpless little girl. "And ask your mother for what price she'd be willing to entertain a man who's counting his hours."
I half-turned and raised my nose in the air. "Mister, I may be a kid, but I ain't stupid, and this is a re-spect-able e-stablish-ment."
It was a moment that would linger and have a strong effect on me as I grew up. The moment that I, a little girl, stared down a gun-slinging cowboy. He looked almost ashamed, and, I suddenly noticed, a lot more soaked through with gin than I had realised. I kept my eyes on his down-turned face, determined not to let him know that I only half understood what we were talking about.
"Simple things," he said softly. "Fighting and... Those are the simple things in life, girl. You find your ox, your rat, your scorpion, and those two things are the most difficult things they can do. Apologies, forgivin', talkin', those are complicated. You remember that, little girl. And I hope to Zeus you don't never have to find it out for yourself."
He stood up, the chair scraping loudly. He checked his gun was still in its holster, straightened his hat and coat, and nodded to me politely. "Ma'am," he said, making me blush again.
And then he turned and left.
Come noon, I went to the window, looking out onto the uneven, dust-covered street, littered with the rusted skeletons of ancient automobiles, hoping to see the two men fight. My mother made me jump when she put her hand on my shoulder. She stood over me, tall and golden haired. Like any rebellious little girl, I both hated her and aspired to be just like her.
"I don't know where they're doing it," she said firmly, "but you ain't gonna see anyway."
"But mom..." I whined.
"No buts. It's not for children. There are some things you don't yet need to know or see, and believe me you don't want to. Now there's dishes need cleaning, and they ain't gonna do it themselves."
I dragged my feet all the way to the kitchen and did such a half-assed job I knew I'd have to do it a second time. Sullenly I listened out, keen to hear the report of a gunshot, a yell of triumph, a scream of pain - not really, it must be said, understanding what they would mean.
20.5.07
Sunday Scribblings: A Story about a Mask
A short one this week. Wear what masks you want to yourself, but don't force them on others.
He is handsome in his own way. Not a conventional way, I must admit - he'd never make a model or an actor. But his kindness is evident in his features, in the way he moves and talks. I get on well with him and we chat often, and I feel a giddy storm of butterflies in my stomach when I make him smile.
But yes, I know that this is wrong.
Today in history we learned about the Age of Perversion, when Satan's liberals took sway over the media with their Gay Agenda. We learned about the sin of homosexuality, and the evil deeds of its slimy practitioners. In groups, we discussed what we would do if confronted with one of these perverts, how we would convince them to change their awful ways. And inevitably, in my group of half a dozen guys, we talked about how much we were disgusted by the very idea, how dark a period of history this was, compared to our own enlightened times, government restructured around God.
I went further than the others in my condemnation, in making clear my repulsion at the way they flaunted their wickedness. I think I surprised even myself at the depth of vitriol I had for those historical deviants. Self-hatred, obviously.
I hate myself for loving him.
And I hate myself for wanting to ask why love should be a sin at all.
Mask
He is handsome in his own way. Not a conventional way, I must admit - he'd never make a model or an actor. But his kindness is evident in his features, in the way he moves and talks. I get on well with him and we chat often, and I feel a giddy storm of butterflies in my stomach when I make him smile.
But yes, I know that this is wrong.
Today in history we learned about the Age of Perversion, when Satan's liberals took sway over the media with their Gay Agenda. We learned about the sin of homosexuality, and the evil deeds of its slimy practitioners. In groups, we discussed what we would do if confronted with one of these perverts, how we would convince them to change their awful ways. And inevitably, in my group of half a dozen guys, we talked about how much we were disgusted by the very idea, how dark a period of history this was, compared to our own enlightened times, government restructured around God.
I went further than the others in my condemnation, in making clear my repulsion at the way they flaunted their wickedness. I think I surprised even myself at the depth of vitriol I had for those historical deviants. Self-hatred, obviously.
I hate myself for loving him.
And I hate myself for wanting to ask why love should be a sin at all.
15.5.07
Sunday Scribblings: A Story about a Second Chance
I was having trouble coming up with a story for Sunday Scribblings this weekend, but then I saw an advert where some pirates were making a guy walk the plank, and I thought, "Hey! They should give that guy a second chance!"
As both moons shone down from above, I drew my hood down lower and stepped quietly across the street, keeping to the shadows as much as I could. Waves breathed in the distance, and the masts of tall sailing ships stood beyond the jagged, rickety rooftops.
The sun had long since set, but activity continued at the port. Clockwork drudges clacked and whirred as they drew covered carts, wooden wheels clattering against wet cobblestones. I stepped into the tavern, keeping my head down.
Orban was there – an old man now, scraggly white beard and prominent bald patch. He sat in one corner, both hands wrapped around a tankard of beer. Younger men and women surrounded him, hanging on his every word, it seemed.
"Tell us about Scapegrace," someone said.
"That's all he ever talks about," another said, with a sigh.
"It's the only story he has that's worth hearing," the first voice replied.
Orban waited patiently through all this, looking small, old and weary. He seemed almost honoured to be a small diversion for some insolent youngsters. I wondered just what his life was like these days. The gold must have run out. Gambled away, I expected.
"I don't mind telling it over and over," he said. "It plays on my mind a lot. Annabel Scapegrace was the best captain I ever served under, until she got those funny ideas in her head. Sometimes I wonder if she might even have been right."
"Don't get ahead of yourself," one of the young men laughed. "Tell it properly!"
"Okay, okay," Orban said, with an almost toothless grin, "now many years ago, I was boatswain on the Blue Cuttlefish – an honest trading vessel, sailing the harsh route between here and the New World. Long, dangerous journeys on turbulent seas. You were as likely to be pitched overboard by a huge wave as you were to survive to collect your handsome pay.
"On my fifth trip across we got a new first mate, name of Annabel Scapegrace. She was fair, and friendly enough, until you broke the rules, and then she'd make damn sure you never did it a second time. I always worked hard and never made any trouble, so I had little to do with her. I did once see one of the crew draw a knife on her. She didn't even blink, just pulled out her pistol and shot him straight through the heart. Bang!"
Orban aimed his finger at the bosom of the nearest young woman, who raised an eyebrow.
"It was a normal enough voyage out, but when we got to the port in the New World, we were warned by the settlers there that they'd seen a ship flying the skull and crossbones. A huge galleon, loaded with cannon. But by the time they warned us, it was too late. The pirate ship rounded the rocky coast, and the Cuttlefish was too close to the shore to manoeuvre properly. We were a light trading ship, with only a few token guns to protect ourselves. What could we do?"
Orban looked around at the youngsters.
"Fight anyway!" one of them suggested.
"I'm sure they would have turned tail at the mere sight of you, Orban," one of the girls added, slyly.
He laughed. "Perhaps they would have. Fortunately, we didn't have to do anything. Their fire-power was their own undoing. Laden with heavy cannon, the pirate ship scraped its bottom on the shallow water, and ran aground. Before we could get out of range, though, she loosed quite a few volleys at us, taking down our sails and tearing gaping holes in us below the waterline. We limped a short way around the coast, and then had to beach the Cuttlefish itself.
"Now we were in real trouble. The hold took a direct hit, and what little of our supplies had survived were floating out into the sea. That was our food and that we were bringing to the port. There wasn't enough to go around, we realised that pretty quickly. The captain, he was a company man, and his solution was to wait months and months for the next supply ship to arrive. Then we'd get food, and could send word back home about our plight.
"But Scapegrace wasn't happy with this. Right in front of the rest of the crew she asked the captain, 'But how many of us will starve before the next supply ship arrives? What if they don't make it – if they sink on the way here? And what about when high tide comes? What if the pirates get afloat again? Then they'll worry not just us, but any supply ships that make it to us.'
"The captain was stunned. His mouth flapped open and closed uselessly, and then he just said, 'You be very careful Scapegrace. I won't tolerate the merest whiff of mutiny – not even from you.'
"When he said the dreaded 'm' word, absolute silence fell. I didn't even dare breath. And everyone looked at Scapegrace. She gritted her teeth, pulled out her pistol, and shot him in the chest. Bang!"
Orban aimed his finger at another one of the youths.
"He wasn't dead right away, managed to pull out his own pistol, but Scapegrace was on him like a shot. She stamped on his hand to make him drop the gun and turned to look at the sailors around her. She pointed at the captain and said, 'Put this overboard.' And who were we to disobey?
"Scapegrace had a whole different plan from the captain's, and we had to put it into action real quick-like. Before high tide came along and maybe dislodged the pirate ship, we'd row over in our boats and board her. We were going to take the pirate ship from the pirates, and sail back home in their spacious galleon, probably loaded with gold and plunder as well as guns.
"Well, I've never been much of a fighter. I was there, and I cut a few people, but I don't think I did quite as much as I could have. But Scapegrace, I think, felt she had something to prove. She put herself right in the thick of it, and took a jagged wound right across here."
Orban slowly ran his forefinger diagonally across his face. "She always had a scar there, and it made her look like a right pirate. Speaking of which, of course, once we had our pirate vessel, and a few left-over pirates, and a desperate need for food, well, we soon discovered the lure of the trade – if you'll allow the term - ourselves.
"Scapegrace made an excellent pirate. Just like when she was first mate, she was firm but fair. She wouldn't kill anyone who would cooperate, and she made sure that when we stole food, we left enough for the plundered crew to survive on. We also helped to lighten the load of their ships by removing items unnecessary for survival in the harsh New World – gold, jewels and other useless trinkets. Still, if anyone gave her trouble, even if it was a captain who refused to believe she wouldn't harm her prisoners, she was quick to put it down. She cut right through nonsense with her cutlass – and the person producing it as well, you see. And it wasn't just with the people we preyed on, either. If anyone in the crew stepped out of line, she'd hammer them back into it, just like when we were on the Cuttlefish.
"I only tried my luck once," Orban said, holding up his hand, "with one little misdemeanour."
There were quite coos from the listeners as they took in the empty space where Orban's little finger might have been expected to be.
He made sure everyone got a good look, and then resumed his story. "With the pirates that survived our theft of the vessel, we learned how to survive as outlaws in the New World, often mixing with the natives – savages who scraped out a life in the crumbling stone ruins of some ancient civilisation. They were a strange lot, even for foreigners, but the trouble was that the cap'n lapped up their crazy ideas.
"Now, they thought that what made these ruins weren't men or women, but creatures of some kind. They'd show you these crazy figures etched into the wall and claim that was what they looked like, though I could never make head nor tail of it – if they even had heads or tails, who knows. And of course, there was treasure of a sort. Some ancient god that could grant immortality if you pleased it, or dash your civilisation into rubble if you pissed it off.
"Scapegrace liked the idea of this immortality stuff, and, just as we were getting into the swing of the whole piracy lark, she kept taking us off course to look for this monster, this 'Troth' thing, a god of the sea or some mumbo-jumbo like that. It lived, according to the natives, in some deep undersea crevice, and so Scapegrace was always dropping lines over the side to try and map the ocean floor. What a waste of time, we all thought – time that could be better spent 'accumulating financial capital', as you might call it!
"Naturally, we started to get a bit miffed. We tried talking to her. But she was convinced. All this time we was wasting, it was nothing compared to how much time we'd have when we found Troth and won its favour. Working with some copies of the etchings in the ruins and making guesses from her incomplete sea-map, she sailed us right into the worst, most turbulent seas I've ever known, in all my years – never before and never since. She had us dropping lines overboard, trying to figure out how deep it was, and we had to keep the same position as the wind buffeted us about, or the map would be wrong – good grief, what madness!
"So, well, we did the only thing we could, didn't we?" Orban stopped and looked around at the youngsters. The tavern was silent. Everyone seemed to be hanging on his every word, even the barmaid.
"You killed her?" someone suggested, timidly.
Orban ran his finger slowly across his throat. "In her sleep. She probably never knew what was happening. Then we tossed her overboard and resumed our criminal ways. At that point we found out that Scapegrace was known the world over and we had the whole Imperial Navy chasing after us. Those were some fun times, I'll tell you that! We was famous, and it was Scapegrace what done it. A lot of us were killed off, of course, and the rest were captured. I don't think nobody got away. We was real lucky with the war, what with them needing experienced sailors for the navy. I served my time on a warship, in a uniform, all proper-like. So now, if you see my name in the papers, I'm often double heroic – first as one of Scapegrace's pirates, and then as a war veteran."
"Wow," someone said, although I couldn't tell if they were humouring him.
Everyone laughed a little, Orban joining in, and then the kids started standing and stretching their legs, discussing quietly where they were going to go next to kill time. One by one, they drifted off, leaving Orban sipping his tankard of beer. He looked around. Just him left, the barmaid, and me. I got up and walked out myself, then, out the door and across the road. Into the chilly sea air, beneath the starry sky. I watched through the window as he had three more tankards, and then got unsteadily to his feet. From the back of his chair he pulled a coat over his shoulders, and from beneath the table produced a walking stick to lean on. With a toothless grin for the barmaid, he hobbled out and, shakily dismounted from the doorstep.
He started walking down the road, his footsteps echoing through a town now silent. I let him get a way ahead, and then followed after. At the sound of my footsteps, he stopped and turned around, taking in my hooded form.
"Oh," he said, clearly recognising me from the tavern. "It's you. Leave an old man in peace, will you?"
Without waiting for me to reply, he turned his back to me and resumed walking.
I followed at the same pace, stepping heavily onto the cobbles.
Orban turned around again, an uncertain look on his face, and I stopped, keeping the same distance from him.
"What do you want?" he demanded. "I know I play on my history for a bit of company, but if I've wronged you in the past, know that you have my most sincere apologies. Now let's be civil and head to bed, where all good citizens belong at this hour."
I raised my hand, and Orban watched with a frown on his face. Slowly, I drew a finger along the base of my little finger.
Orban took an unsteady step towards me. "What are you getting at?"
"Theft of vittles," I said, "one dry biscuit and associated weevils."
Orban turned white. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Show me your face."
"You don't want to see my face, Orban. It's not so pretty these days. A short stay on the bottom of the ocean will do that to you."
"Sc-Scapegrace? It is you, isn't it?" Orban's face rapidly went through a range of emotions, from horrified to panic-stricken, and then settled on a forced smile. "Well, that's wonderful! We have a lot of catching up to do!"
"Yeah," I said. "In fact, I've already 'caught up' with much of the rest of the crew – those not already dead."
I had been stepping closer to him as I spoke, watching his hands. Now he made his move, whipping out a dagger and plunging it through my shirt and between my ribs.
I laughed, and threw back my hood. Orban's eyes widened and he froze, his hand still on the dagger's hilt.
"My flesh rotted away long ago," I said softly. "Now all that's left is bone and seaweed. No heart for you to pierce, or throat for you to slit, Orban."
He stepped back, releasing the dagger, and I pulled it free of my ribs. I studied the blade in the moonlight. "This will come in handy in a moment," I said.
"Please, cap'n, you gotta understand, we didn't know! We thought you was crazy!"
"Well, patently I wasn't. When you threw my dead body overboard, I found something waiting for me at the bottom of the sea, something quite happy to give me a second chance."
"Troth, right?" Orban said with another forced grin, "and just think, if we hadn't mutinied, you might never have found it!"
I pointed the dagger at Orban. "I would've liked a little more time to try and find it my way. I could've used a second chance from you, Orban. From you and all your treacherous mates."
I stabbed the knife towards him, aiming for the heart. He must have known me too well, though. His other hand shot out, deflecting my blade with his walking stick. While I was unbalanced, he lashed out again, my head resounding with the sound of wood striking bone. I fell forward, onto my hands and knees, and as quickly as I got to my feet, Orban – hobbling at a comical pace – had rounded a corner into dark shadows.
I dusted myself off and pulled my hood back up. He wouldn't escape me for long, in all likelihood. And yet, I realised, I wasn't too bothered knowing that he had a slim chance of escape. Well, he knew the terms of the engagement now, and had a brief reprieve to make his own plans. I would seek him out, and who knew what might happen on our second encounter?
After that, more important errands called to me, a bass note rising from the ground, and up through my bones, like the whole ocean tolling as some vast creature's bell.
Second Chance
As both moons shone down from above, I drew my hood down lower and stepped quietly across the street, keeping to the shadows as much as I could. Waves breathed in the distance, and the masts of tall sailing ships stood beyond the jagged, rickety rooftops.
The sun had long since set, but activity continued at the port. Clockwork drudges clacked and whirred as they drew covered carts, wooden wheels clattering against wet cobblestones. I stepped into the tavern, keeping my head down.
Orban was there – an old man now, scraggly white beard and prominent bald patch. He sat in one corner, both hands wrapped around a tankard of beer. Younger men and women surrounded him, hanging on his every word, it seemed.
"Tell us about Scapegrace," someone said.
"That's all he ever talks about," another said, with a sigh.
"It's the only story he has that's worth hearing," the first voice replied.
Orban waited patiently through all this, looking small, old and weary. He seemed almost honoured to be a small diversion for some insolent youngsters. I wondered just what his life was like these days. The gold must have run out. Gambled away, I expected.
"I don't mind telling it over and over," he said. "It plays on my mind a lot. Annabel Scapegrace was the best captain I ever served under, until she got those funny ideas in her head. Sometimes I wonder if she might even have been right."
"Don't get ahead of yourself," one of the young men laughed. "Tell it properly!"
"Okay, okay," Orban said, with an almost toothless grin, "now many years ago, I was boatswain on the Blue Cuttlefish – an honest trading vessel, sailing the harsh route between here and the New World. Long, dangerous journeys on turbulent seas. You were as likely to be pitched overboard by a huge wave as you were to survive to collect your handsome pay.
"On my fifth trip across we got a new first mate, name of Annabel Scapegrace. She was fair, and friendly enough, until you broke the rules, and then she'd make damn sure you never did it a second time. I always worked hard and never made any trouble, so I had little to do with her. I did once see one of the crew draw a knife on her. She didn't even blink, just pulled out her pistol and shot him straight through the heart. Bang!"
Orban aimed his finger at the bosom of the nearest young woman, who raised an eyebrow.
"It was a normal enough voyage out, but when we got to the port in the New World, we were warned by the settlers there that they'd seen a ship flying the skull and crossbones. A huge galleon, loaded with cannon. But by the time they warned us, it was too late. The pirate ship rounded the rocky coast, and the Cuttlefish was too close to the shore to manoeuvre properly. We were a light trading ship, with only a few token guns to protect ourselves. What could we do?"
Orban looked around at the youngsters.
"Fight anyway!" one of them suggested.
"I'm sure they would have turned tail at the mere sight of you, Orban," one of the girls added, slyly.
He laughed. "Perhaps they would have. Fortunately, we didn't have to do anything. Their fire-power was their own undoing. Laden with heavy cannon, the pirate ship scraped its bottom on the shallow water, and ran aground. Before we could get out of range, though, she loosed quite a few volleys at us, taking down our sails and tearing gaping holes in us below the waterline. We limped a short way around the coast, and then had to beach the Cuttlefish itself.
"Now we were in real trouble. The hold took a direct hit, and what little of our supplies had survived were floating out into the sea. That was our food and that we were bringing to the port. There wasn't enough to go around, we realised that pretty quickly. The captain, he was a company man, and his solution was to wait months and months for the next supply ship to arrive. Then we'd get food, and could send word back home about our plight.
"But Scapegrace wasn't happy with this. Right in front of the rest of the crew she asked the captain, 'But how many of us will starve before the next supply ship arrives? What if they don't make it – if they sink on the way here? And what about when high tide comes? What if the pirates get afloat again? Then they'll worry not just us, but any supply ships that make it to us.'
"The captain was stunned. His mouth flapped open and closed uselessly, and then he just said, 'You be very careful Scapegrace. I won't tolerate the merest whiff of mutiny – not even from you.'
"When he said the dreaded 'm' word, absolute silence fell. I didn't even dare breath. And everyone looked at Scapegrace. She gritted her teeth, pulled out her pistol, and shot him in the chest. Bang!"
Orban aimed his finger at another one of the youths.
"He wasn't dead right away, managed to pull out his own pistol, but Scapegrace was on him like a shot. She stamped on his hand to make him drop the gun and turned to look at the sailors around her. She pointed at the captain and said, 'Put this overboard.' And who were we to disobey?
"Scapegrace had a whole different plan from the captain's, and we had to put it into action real quick-like. Before high tide came along and maybe dislodged the pirate ship, we'd row over in our boats and board her. We were going to take the pirate ship from the pirates, and sail back home in their spacious galleon, probably loaded with gold and plunder as well as guns.
"Well, I've never been much of a fighter. I was there, and I cut a few people, but I don't think I did quite as much as I could have. But Scapegrace, I think, felt she had something to prove. She put herself right in the thick of it, and took a jagged wound right across here."
Orban slowly ran his forefinger diagonally across his face. "She always had a scar there, and it made her look like a right pirate. Speaking of which, of course, once we had our pirate vessel, and a few left-over pirates, and a desperate need for food, well, we soon discovered the lure of the trade – if you'll allow the term - ourselves.
"Scapegrace made an excellent pirate. Just like when she was first mate, she was firm but fair. She wouldn't kill anyone who would cooperate, and she made sure that when we stole food, we left enough for the plundered crew to survive on. We also helped to lighten the load of their ships by removing items unnecessary for survival in the harsh New World – gold, jewels and other useless trinkets. Still, if anyone gave her trouble, even if it was a captain who refused to believe she wouldn't harm her prisoners, she was quick to put it down. She cut right through nonsense with her cutlass – and the person producing it as well, you see. And it wasn't just with the people we preyed on, either. If anyone in the crew stepped out of line, she'd hammer them back into it, just like when we were on the Cuttlefish.
"I only tried my luck once," Orban said, holding up his hand, "with one little misdemeanour."
There were quite coos from the listeners as they took in the empty space where Orban's little finger might have been expected to be.
He made sure everyone got a good look, and then resumed his story. "With the pirates that survived our theft of the vessel, we learned how to survive as outlaws in the New World, often mixing with the natives – savages who scraped out a life in the crumbling stone ruins of some ancient civilisation. They were a strange lot, even for foreigners, but the trouble was that the cap'n lapped up their crazy ideas.
"Now, they thought that what made these ruins weren't men or women, but creatures of some kind. They'd show you these crazy figures etched into the wall and claim that was what they looked like, though I could never make head nor tail of it – if they even had heads or tails, who knows. And of course, there was treasure of a sort. Some ancient god that could grant immortality if you pleased it, or dash your civilisation into rubble if you pissed it off.
"Scapegrace liked the idea of this immortality stuff, and, just as we were getting into the swing of the whole piracy lark, she kept taking us off course to look for this monster, this 'Troth' thing, a god of the sea or some mumbo-jumbo like that. It lived, according to the natives, in some deep undersea crevice, and so Scapegrace was always dropping lines over the side to try and map the ocean floor. What a waste of time, we all thought – time that could be better spent 'accumulating financial capital', as you might call it!
"Naturally, we started to get a bit miffed. We tried talking to her. But she was convinced. All this time we was wasting, it was nothing compared to how much time we'd have when we found Troth and won its favour. Working with some copies of the etchings in the ruins and making guesses from her incomplete sea-map, she sailed us right into the worst, most turbulent seas I've ever known, in all my years – never before and never since. She had us dropping lines overboard, trying to figure out how deep it was, and we had to keep the same position as the wind buffeted us about, or the map would be wrong – good grief, what madness!
"So, well, we did the only thing we could, didn't we?" Orban stopped and looked around at the youngsters. The tavern was silent. Everyone seemed to be hanging on his every word, even the barmaid.
"You killed her?" someone suggested, timidly.
Orban ran his finger slowly across his throat. "In her sleep. She probably never knew what was happening. Then we tossed her overboard and resumed our criminal ways. At that point we found out that Scapegrace was known the world over and we had the whole Imperial Navy chasing after us. Those were some fun times, I'll tell you that! We was famous, and it was Scapegrace what done it. A lot of us were killed off, of course, and the rest were captured. I don't think nobody got away. We was real lucky with the war, what with them needing experienced sailors for the navy. I served my time on a warship, in a uniform, all proper-like. So now, if you see my name in the papers, I'm often double heroic – first as one of Scapegrace's pirates, and then as a war veteran."
"Wow," someone said, although I couldn't tell if they were humouring him.
Everyone laughed a little, Orban joining in, and then the kids started standing and stretching their legs, discussing quietly where they were going to go next to kill time. One by one, they drifted off, leaving Orban sipping his tankard of beer. He looked around. Just him left, the barmaid, and me. I got up and walked out myself, then, out the door and across the road. Into the chilly sea air, beneath the starry sky. I watched through the window as he had three more tankards, and then got unsteadily to his feet. From the back of his chair he pulled a coat over his shoulders, and from beneath the table produced a walking stick to lean on. With a toothless grin for the barmaid, he hobbled out and, shakily dismounted from the doorstep.
He started walking down the road, his footsteps echoing through a town now silent. I let him get a way ahead, and then followed after. At the sound of my footsteps, he stopped and turned around, taking in my hooded form.
"Oh," he said, clearly recognising me from the tavern. "It's you. Leave an old man in peace, will you?"
Without waiting for me to reply, he turned his back to me and resumed walking.
I followed at the same pace, stepping heavily onto the cobbles.
Orban turned around again, an uncertain look on his face, and I stopped, keeping the same distance from him.
"What do you want?" he demanded. "I know I play on my history for a bit of company, but if I've wronged you in the past, know that you have my most sincere apologies. Now let's be civil and head to bed, where all good citizens belong at this hour."
I raised my hand, and Orban watched with a frown on his face. Slowly, I drew a finger along the base of my little finger.
Orban took an unsteady step towards me. "What are you getting at?"
"Theft of vittles," I said, "one dry biscuit and associated weevils."
Orban turned white. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Show me your face."
"You don't want to see my face, Orban. It's not so pretty these days. A short stay on the bottom of the ocean will do that to you."
"Sc-Scapegrace? It is you, isn't it?" Orban's face rapidly went through a range of emotions, from horrified to panic-stricken, and then settled on a forced smile. "Well, that's wonderful! We have a lot of catching up to do!"
"Yeah," I said. "In fact, I've already 'caught up' with much of the rest of the crew – those not already dead."
I had been stepping closer to him as I spoke, watching his hands. Now he made his move, whipping out a dagger and plunging it through my shirt and between my ribs.
I laughed, and threw back my hood. Orban's eyes widened and he froze, his hand still on the dagger's hilt.
"My flesh rotted away long ago," I said softly. "Now all that's left is bone and seaweed. No heart for you to pierce, or throat for you to slit, Orban."
He stepped back, releasing the dagger, and I pulled it free of my ribs. I studied the blade in the moonlight. "This will come in handy in a moment," I said.
"Please, cap'n, you gotta understand, we didn't know! We thought you was crazy!"
"Well, patently I wasn't. When you threw my dead body overboard, I found something waiting for me at the bottom of the sea, something quite happy to give me a second chance."
"Troth, right?" Orban said with another forced grin, "and just think, if we hadn't mutinied, you might never have found it!"
I pointed the dagger at Orban. "I would've liked a little more time to try and find it my way. I could've used a second chance from you, Orban. From you and all your treacherous mates."
I stabbed the knife towards him, aiming for the heart. He must have known me too well, though. His other hand shot out, deflecting my blade with his walking stick. While I was unbalanced, he lashed out again, my head resounding with the sound of wood striking bone. I fell forward, onto my hands and knees, and as quickly as I got to my feet, Orban – hobbling at a comical pace – had rounded a corner into dark shadows.
I dusted myself off and pulled my hood back up. He wouldn't escape me for long, in all likelihood. And yet, I realised, I wasn't too bothered knowing that he had a slim chance of escape. Well, he knew the terms of the engagement now, and had a brief reprieve to make his own plans. I would seek him out, and who knew what might happen on our second encounter?
After that, more important errands called to me, a bass note rising from the ground, and up through my bones, like the whole ocean tolling as some vast creature's bell.
30.4.07
Sunday Scribblings: A Story about Wings
I am really struggling at the moment. I feel awful and I keep making mistakes, which makes me feel worse. I would like to dig a hole and bury myself, but I suppose it would be better to grow wings and fly away.
Read whatever allegories you want into this story.
Atalie's balcony was kind of like being in Heaven, except instead of fluffy white clouds, we were surrounded by a yellow haze of petrochemical smog that glittered with a million dead nanomachines.
I flexed my wings uncertainly, looking at the street below, small and distant, littered with motes of garbage. The hushed sound of traffic rose from the city, police sirens like discordant birdsong.
Atalie stood behind me, her hands on my waist. "Jump," she said, pushing on me lightly.
I resisted, pushing back against her. She got these wings mail-order from the East, the very latest wetware plug-ins. Intricate down to the nanoscale, they moved and felt alive, like the wings of an enormous white swan. Except, at the joint between them: a grotesque knot of dense muscle, all the power needed to lift a human into the air on wings, leeching off nutrients from my blood, like some manmade parasite - well, symbiont, I guess.
Atalie ran her hands along the tops of my wings, brushing her thumbs through the feathers. No, her wings, financially. But I could feel her touch against them perfectly, feel each feather as the wind rustled them out of place. I could move them like a second set of arms, long-fingered and sluggish with latent strength.
The manual was as thick as a telephone directory, poorly translated from Japanese to Mandarin to English. Half its bulk was medical disclaimers, warning about the dangers of flight, of pulmonary and neurological damage, go immediately to hospital if you experience any of the following and then a list of every sensation you have ever experienced or heard of.
And at the front it said to just let the wings install themselves, to trust them to push polymer connections into your spine and hoses to your heart, to glue itself to your back and become a part of your body. But for fuck's sake scan for software updates first.
Yeah, right. Atalie was a dab hand at this stuff. Where she got the money for wings in the first place. She was the proverbial one-eyed king, a degree in nano-engineering, hands-on experience, but made redundant, cast off in the land of the nanotech-poor; fixing our meagre, antiquated goo-and-paste systems and making a minor mint from what money we could spare.
Atalie would never trust a machine to know what it was doing in her body, would always want to oversee it herself. That's where she got the horns and tail. Just needed a mirror for the horns, though I had to help with the other. Wings were too hard though, like nothing she'd ever done. She needed to see how they worked on another person, a willing guinea pig, only then could she trust them on herself. That's where I came in. I was never able to say no to her.
I liked the idea of having wings, aesthetically. She stripped me to the waist and stuck a dozen monitors around me; heart rate, blood pressure, EEG and more. Lay me on my front and set the wings on my back. She let them work slowly, pushing into me on the molecular scale, clean and sterile, no blood. I could feel the connections and wires a certain distance inside me, and then just something weird going on deeper. Worst was when it anchored on my skeleton, feeling my spine bend and flex under its direct manipulation, out of my control. Atalie held my hand and soothed me. It was over quite quickly, though Atalie took it slower than she could have done.
I stood and flexed my wings. It felt natural, of course, the software came as standard, now plugged in to my brain. They were huge, bigger than they seemed when folded up. I stretched them wide and touched opposite walls with my wingtips.
By the way, Atalie had said, you realise they're fully functional? You can fly.
I jumped up and down a few times, spreading my wings to slow my descent, angling them to glide across the room.
Come on, Atalie said, taking my hand. Let's try taking you a little further.
And so I was on her balcony, halfway up an empty, lightning burned tower, looking down at the world. It was cold, just in my jeans, but that wasn't why I trembled.
"Jump," Atalie said again. "You'll glide down just like before, just a little further. Maybe try and flap, see if you can gain height."
I shook my head. "What if I hit something? What if the wind flings me against the building?"
She wrapped her arms around me, rested her cheek on the back of my neck. "Trust me," she whispered. Slowly, she drew her hands back around my waist, caressing around and up to my shoulder blades, either side of the knot of muscle on my back. She rested there for a moment, her breath warm on my back.
And then she shoved me hard.
"You're making this harder than you need to," Atalie said, as I tried to scramble back up. I clung onto the balcony railing, my wings folded up to stop them catching the fierce wind, stronger even than I had feared.
She leant over me, placed both of her hands over one of mine. "Just let go and spread your wings."
"I changed my mind," I shouted. "I don't want to. Help me up."
She placed both thumbs under my fingers and lifted. I managed to hold on for about a minute, begged and pleaded, but she won, sending me swinging hard into the wall. I hung from just one hand.
This time I held on with all my desperation. She tried as hard as she could, screwing up her face with effort, and then had to stop, panting for breath. She got down on her knees, face level with my remaining hand. She looked at me through the bars of the railing.
It felt like a fight to the death. She was my mortal enemy now. I had nothing to say to her, just struggled vainly to lift myself up with one arm.
Tenderly, she kissed each of my bone-white knuckles in turn. And then I felt her teeth against the back of my hand.
I let go before she could bite down.
I fell, terrified, the wind ripping through my hair and feathers. Above I heard her scream at the top of her voice: "Flap your wings!"
The ground was far below, but approaching too quickly. I started to tumble, became confused. The murky grey-yellow expanse of the sky seemed more frightening than the solid ground below. Which way was I falling? How could I stop?
There was a skyscraper, maybe two, walls marked with grime and decay. Would I hit one of them? Was I being blown by the wind as I fell?
I flung my arms out above my head, tried to stretch out my wings but couldn't tell how much I succeeded. My legs seemed to kick out violently of their own accord. As I stretched out my wings feebly, they were buffeted back by the wind. Was I trying as hard as I could? I was going to fall to my death. I was sure.
No conscious thought anymore, can't think in a situation like this. Instinct took over. I screwed up my eyes, probably screamed, fought with all my strength - all that knotted ball of strength between my shoulder blades, to spread my wings out wide.
They flew open, powerful and sudden, as if spring-loaded.
They caught air like a pair of enormous hands grabbing onto something tangible, yanked back on me, the change of direction like a punch in the stomach.
I opened my eyes just in time to see the side of the building I was about to fly into, angled my wings to change direction, but too late. I stuck out my knee to cushion the impact, saw stars as the collision connected hard, and then fell a little further, my wings knocked too far forward.
I spun out of control, panicking, until I seemed to wrestle out of it - finally hung suspended from my second pair of arms, my legs dangling over the street far below. I looked up. I must have fallen about half the way down from Atalie's balcony. I couldn't even make it out. Then, disoriented, I wondered if I was even looking at the right building.
The wind pushed against me quite hard, then, but I turned into it, swooping down, pushing through the current. Maybe this flying stuff wasn't so hard after all. I was drifting down slowly. There was no reason, I didn't think, that I would be unable to glide down all the way. Perhaps a good hundred metres still to go.
Experimentally, I pushed down with my wings. With a sharp rush, I gained height. How much, I wasn't sure - but, that was it, I was really flying. I beat down a few more times, faster and harder. I soared up, into the air, looking down at the city streets to reorient myself, heart pounding in my chest.
Landing was easier than I expected. The wings probably gave me a lot of help with that - safe landings were the first thing the manufacturers wanted to put in the software, I bet. I touched down birdlike on the balcony railing and hopped in through the open French windows. Inside, I could hear a phone ringing.
My mobile was sitting on a coffee table, vibrating back and forth. Atalie was nowhere to be seen. Picking it up, I found that she was the one calling. I answered.
"Where are you?" she asked, timidly.
"I'm in your apartment, where I left my mobile."
"Oh, right. Oops. You should have, like, a million missed calls from me. I've been looking everywhere for you. I'm sorry about the whole pushing you thing. Are you mad at me?"
"I'm not sure."
"Stay where you are, I'm coming back up."
"Wait, are you in the street? I'll come down. It'll be quicker."
She laughed - relieved I think. "I'm in the main square. I look forward to seeing you in the air."
"I don't think I'm going to give you these things back, you know."
"Oh, go on. I can order another pair, but I want to try it out myself before then. You'll have to be the one pushing me off the skyscraper."
"I'll think about it," I said, walking out onto the balcony. My feathers rustled in the breeze, and I spread my wings.
Read whatever allegories you want into this story.
Falling
Atalie's balcony was kind of like being in Heaven, except instead of fluffy white clouds, we were surrounded by a yellow haze of petrochemical smog that glittered with a million dead nanomachines.
I flexed my wings uncertainly, looking at the street below, small and distant, littered with motes of garbage. The hushed sound of traffic rose from the city, police sirens like discordant birdsong.
Atalie stood behind me, her hands on my waist. "Jump," she said, pushing on me lightly.
I resisted, pushing back against her. She got these wings mail-order from the East, the very latest wetware plug-ins. Intricate down to the nanoscale, they moved and felt alive, like the wings of an enormous white swan. Except, at the joint between them: a grotesque knot of dense muscle, all the power needed to lift a human into the air on wings, leeching off nutrients from my blood, like some manmade parasite - well, symbiont, I guess.
Atalie ran her hands along the tops of my wings, brushing her thumbs through the feathers. No, her wings, financially. But I could feel her touch against them perfectly, feel each feather as the wind rustled them out of place. I could move them like a second set of arms, long-fingered and sluggish with latent strength.
The manual was as thick as a telephone directory, poorly translated from Japanese to Mandarin to English. Half its bulk was medical disclaimers, warning about the dangers of flight, of pulmonary and neurological damage, go immediately to hospital if you experience any of the following and then a list of every sensation you have ever experienced or heard of.
And at the front it said to just let the wings install themselves, to trust them to push polymer connections into your spine and hoses to your heart, to glue itself to your back and become a part of your body. But for fuck's sake scan for software updates first.
Yeah, right. Atalie was a dab hand at this stuff. Where she got the money for wings in the first place. She was the proverbial one-eyed king, a degree in nano-engineering, hands-on experience, but made redundant, cast off in the land of the nanotech-poor; fixing our meagre, antiquated goo-and-paste systems and making a minor mint from what money we could spare.
Atalie would never trust a machine to know what it was doing in her body, would always want to oversee it herself. That's where she got the horns and tail. Just needed a mirror for the horns, though I had to help with the other. Wings were too hard though, like nothing she'd ever done. She needed to see how they worked on another person, a willing guinea pig, only then could she trust them on herself. That's where I came in. I was never able to say no to her.
I liked the idea of having wings, aesthetically. She stripped me to the waist and stuck a dozen monitors around me; heart rate, blood pressure, EEG and more. Lay me on my front and set the wings on my back. She let them work slowly, pushing into me on the molecular scale, clean and sterile, no blood. I could feel the connections and wires a certain distance inside me, and then just something weird going on deeper. Worst was when it anchored on my skeleton, feeling my spine bend and flex under its direct manipulation, out of my control. Atalie held my hand and soothed me. It was over quite quickly, though Atalie took it slower than she could have done.
I stood and flexed my wings. It felt natural, of course, the software came as standard, now plugged in to my brain. They were huge, bigger than they seemed when folded up. I stretched them wide and touched opposite walls with my wingtips.
By the way, Atalie had said, you realise they're fully functional? You can fly.
I jumped up and down a few times, spreading my wings to slow my descent, angling them to glide across the room.
Come on, Atalie said, taking my hand. Let's try taking you a little further.
And so I was on her balcony, halfway up an empty, lightning burned tower, looking down at the world. It was cold, just in my jeans, but that wasn't why I trembled.
"Jump," Atalie said again. "You'll glide down just like before, just a little further. Maybe try and flap, see if you can gain height."
I shook my head. "What if I hit something? What if the wind flings me against the building?"
She wrapped her arms around me, rested her cheek on the back of my neck. "Trust me," she whispered. Slowly, she drew her hands back around my waist, caressing around and up to my shoulder blades, either side of the knot of muscle on my back. She rested there for a moment, her breath warm on my back.
And then she shoved me hard.
*
"You're making this harder than you need to," Atalie said, as I tried to scramble back up. I clung onto the balcony railing, my wings folded up to stop them catching the fierce wind, stronger even than I had feared.
She leant over me, placed both of her hands over one of mine. "Just let go and spread your wings."
"I changed my mind," I shouted. "I don't want to. Help me up."
She placed both thumbs under my fingers and lifted. I managed to hold on for about a minute, begged and pleaded, but she won, sending me swinging hard into the wall. I hung from just one hand.
This time I held on with all my desperation. She tried as hard as she could, screwing up her face with effort, and then had to stop, panting for breath. She got down on her knees, face level with my remaining hand. She looked at me through the bars of the railing.
It felt like a fight to the death. She was my mortal enemy now. I had nothing to say to her, just struggled vainly to lift myself up with one arm.
Tenderly, she kissed each of my bone-white knuckles in turn. And then I felt her teeth against the back of my hand.
I let go before she could bite down.
I fell, terrified, the wind ripping through my hair and feathers. Above I heard her scream at the top of her voice: "Flap your wings!"
*
The ground was far below, but approaching too quickly. I started to tumble, became confused. The murky grey-yellow expanse of the sky seemed more frightening than the solid ground below. Which way was I falling? How could I stop?
There was a skyscraper, maybe two, walls marked with grime and decay. Would I hit one of them? Was I being blown by the wind as I fell?
I flung my arms out above my head, tried to stretch out my wings but couldn't tell how much I succeeded. My legs seemed to kick out violently of their own accord. As I stretched out my wings feebly, they were buffeted back by the wind. Was I trying as hard as I could? I was going to fall to my death. I was sure.
No conscious thought anymore, can't think in a situation like this. Instinct took over. I screwed up my eyes, probably screamed, fought with all my strength - all that knotted ball of strength between my shoulder blades, to spread my wings out wide.
They flew open, powerful and sudden, as if spring-loaded.
They caught air like a pair of enormous hands grabbing onto something tangible, yanked back on me, the change of direction like a punch in the stomach.
I opened my eyes just in time to see the side of the building I was about to fly into, angled my wings to change direction, but too late. I stuck out my knee to cushion the impact, saw stars as the collision connected hard, and then fell a little further, my wings knocked too far forward.
I spun out of control, panicking, until I seemed to wrestle out of it - finally hung suspended from my second pair of arms, my legs dangling over the street far below. I looked up. I must have fallen about half the way down from Atalie's balcony. I couldn't even make it out. Then, disoriented, I wondered if I was even looking at the right building.
The wind pushed against me quite hard, then, but I turned into it, swooping down, pushing through the current. Maybe this flying stuff wasn't so hard after all. I was drifting down slowly. There was no reason, I didn't think, that I would be unable to glide down all the way. Perhaps a good hundred metres still to go.
Experimentally, I pushed down with my wings. With a sharp rush, I gained height. How much, I wasn't sure - but, that was it, I was really flying. I beat down a few more times, faster and harder. I soared up, into the air, looking down at the city streets to reorient myself, heart pounding in my chest.
*
Landing was easier than I expected. The wings probably gave me a lot of help with that - safe landings were the first thing the manufacturers wanted to put in the software, I bet. I touched down birdlike on the balcony railing and hopped in through the open French windows. Inside, I could hear a phone ringing.
My mobile was sitting on a coffee table, vibrating back and forth. Atalie was nowhere to be seen. Picking it up, I found that she was the one calling. I answered.
"Where are you?" she asked, timidly.
"I'm in your apartment, where I left my mobile."
"Oh, right. Oops. You should have, like, a million missed calls from me. I've been looking everywhere for you. I'm sorry about the whole pushing you thing. Are you mad at me?"
"I'm not sure."
"Stay where you are, I'm coming back up."
"Wait, are you in the street? I'll come down. It'll be quicker."
She laughed - relieved I think. "I'm in the main square. I look forward to seeing you in the air."
"I don't think I'm going to give you these things back, you know."
"Oh, go on. I can order another pair, but I want to try it out myself before then. You'll have to be the one pushing me off the skyscraper."
"I'll think about it," I said, walking out onto the balcony. My feathers rustled in the breeze, and I spread my wings.
24.4.07
Sunday Scribblings: A Story about Roots
Well, this response to the Sunday Scribblings prompt rooted was intended first and foremost just to squeeze some fiction out of me, at a time when my creative energy is being eaten up by my troubles. As such, it's hardly the most succinct or focused story you'll come across, but it exists, and that's enough for me.
"Ow! What idiot made the ceiling this low?"
I pressed my hands to the ceiling, either side of the strip lights, as I walked beside her. Walking at eighth g had become second nature over the past couple of years - but then someone sticks a low ceiling over your head and you feel like a clumsy toddler again. "Where're your velcro soles?" I asked her.
She looked down at her stripy socks. "They don't fit anymore. My ankles are swelling."
"You're imagining it."
"How, exactly, could I imagine my shoes getting smaller?"
"You've been complaining that they're too small since we first got here. Now all of a sudden they're the right size and it's your feet that are too big. Just get some new shoes and be done with it. Besides, it's only been a week."
"It's more complicated than that. It's all dates and mathematics." She held up a load of fingers to emphasise the point. "And it's all your fault anyway."
"You absolved me of responsibility the moment you uttered the syllable, 'Oops!'"
We stopped by a small doorway, hands pressed to the ceiling. I rapped on the door a few times and it immediately flew open.
"About time!" Matveyev blundered out into the corridor, pulling on a heavy jacket. "I've been sending reports to you people for a week."
"We have a backlog so long you wouldn't believe it," Dawn answered in a low monotone, then with more enthusiasm: "Is this where you live?"
He closed and locked the door, turning his broad back to us. "Yes, this is my room, right here."
"Couldn't you find somewhere with a higher ceiling?" Dawn asked. "Don't you hit your head on it? You're tall."
"I only hit my head when the ceiling is too high. And I can't stand the humming sound on the upper levels."
"What humming sound?"
"You know," I said, "the ventilation."
"Oh yeah," Dawn said, as if remembering a profound but hidden memory. "How long have you been here for?"
"Two months," Matveyev replied.
"You get used to it. You're but a wee babe as far as Callisto is concerned."
"Well, we'll see. But for now, this is where I live. And it's been driving me crazy this past week. Flickering lights, the computers constantly resetting, strange smells…"
Dawn looked at me and bit her lip. "Oh no! It's haunted!"
Matveyev sighed. "If it is, you'd damn well better perform an exorcism. I just want some little cranny to call my own. But everywhere you go there's some niggling little thing driving you nuts!"
"You get used to it," Dawn repeated, with a crooked smile. "Living here is hardly an exact science."
"Ha!" Matveyev barked, humourlessly.
"Look," I said, "you're probably not experiencing anything the rest of us don't normally. But down here, out of the way, it probably just bugs you more. I mean-"
The lights went out. Absolute pitch darkness.
"Spooky," Dawn said.
"Dawn, where's your torch?"
A plastic rustling sound. "You see?" Dawn said. "You upset the ghosts."
"What are you even doing? Where's your torch?" I reached out blindly, finding her waist with my hands.
"That tickles! Just be patient."
I found the small torch on her belt and yanked it away. I pressed the 'on' switch, illuminating Dawn in the act of opening a bag of dried apricots. "You drive me nuts," I told her firmly.
Matveyev reached out and grabbed the bag. "This is contraband!"
Dawn snatched it back. "Not quite: it's my contraband, thank you very much."
"I'm not kidding," Matveyev growled. "Food like that keeps ending up in the hands of the orbital crews - you wouldn't believe the mess it makes in microgravity. Tell me who you got it from, I'll have them snapped in two!"
"We're sick of eating paste," Dawn said disinterestedly. "I'm not in microgravity anymore. Excuse me for having a stomach. And what are you up to?"
"Well, my job?" I suggested. "You know, figuring out why the lights are out." I held a little LCD screen in my hand, waving it around slowly. "You can never get a signal down here. Here we go. Well, that's strange. Maybe it really is ghosts."
"What is it?" Dawn asked, her mouth full of dried apricots.
"Someone has pulled the plug."
"Or something," Dawn added.
Matveyev frowned. "There's a plug?"
"Each section is self-contained, right? So there's one point where this section picks up its power. And the whole place was thrown together like Lego, so it's just a big-arse plug connected to an outside… power… thing."
Dawn handed me her bag of apricots and rolled up her sleeves. "Right, I'll deal with this. Don't let him near my real food. And shine the light on me. Or where I'm looking, I mean. Ouch!"
"Don't forget the low ceiling."
"Yeah, thanks for that."
With Matveyev and me in tow, Dawn fumbled her way along the ceiling, back to the elevator we rode in on. She pushed up with her legs, lifting the ceiling panel at an angle so it tumbled slowly back down, bouncing onto the velcro floor with a soft, scratchy sound. I shone the torch up into the black hole above.
"Freaky," Dawn said. "Maybe it is ghosts."
"There's a letter up there saying, Dear The Living, I have unplugged your infernal lights, as they are too bright for my empty, sunken eye sockets, signed, A Ghost?"
She grabbed onto the edge of the hole and hoisted herself up so her head disappeared inside. "There certainly is. But also, the cable's just disconnected, like someone pulled it out. I can't see any reason why it's not plugged in."
I turned to Matveyev. "Are you the only person living down here?"
He shrugged. "As far as I know."
Dawn looked over her shoulder at me. "Lift me up, I'll plug it back in."
I handed the light to Matveyev and put the bag of apricots in my jacket pocket. Then I wrapped my arms around Dawn's calves and lifted her up. "You're getting heavier," I told her.
She reached up with hands and fumbled in the darkness as Matveyev tried to keep the light steady. "Fuck off, I'm not even eight kilos."
"Kilograms are the SI unit of mass, not weight," I corrected her. "Your mass is always the same on any world."
She ignored me. "Damn it, the cable is catching on something. I'm gonna have to give it a good yank."
"After you plug it back in," I asked, "then what?"
"Call a psychic hotline on the company bill?"
"Interplanetary rates. Nice. Ask them about my love life while you're at it."
A solid clunk sounded from above, and the lights flickered back on. I let Dawn float back down on her own. She landed expertly and dusted her hands. "Problem solved. For-"
With a loud crash, several ceiling panels shattered inwards, further down the corridor, spilling loops of cabling and wires into the passageway.
The three of us stood in silence for a moment.
"I was just about to say, 'for now'," Dawn said.
"You did this," I told her, "you're fixing it."
She grabbed my wrist and pulled me along after her. Closer up, the damage only seemed worse. "Oh, for fuck's sake," Dawn whined. "What a mess."
I peered closer at the knotted bundle of detritus that hung from the ceiling. "What's that brown stuff?"
Dawn pulled a pair of tweezers from her jacket and plucked at the wiring. "Good question. It looks like…"
"Is it a plant?"
"Roots, I think."
"I see," I said. "So it wasn't ghosts, but aliens."
Dawn nodded. "Yep. First come the roots. Then the pods. And then the pod people. We're doomed."
"It was nice knowing you."
"Give me back my apricots. I want to die with a full stomach."
Matveyev was not amused. "You two do realise that we're directly under the arboretum?"
Dawn threw a dried apricot into her mouth. "Really? What a headache that's going to be for whoever's got to fix it. These sections are supposed to be self-contained, didn't someone say that earlier?"
I stared at the tangled mess of roots, strangling the wiring. "It's wet. No wonder there have been having so many problems down here." I sighed. "Yeah, what a headache."
Matveyev shook his head. "Not my headache, I'm glad to say. Just get it fixed. I have a meeting to get to, so…"
He turned towards the elevator.
"Thanks so much," Dawn said, her mouth full.
Matveyev turned back to us. "Oh, and when I find out who's responsible for smuggling that stuff, I'm going to throw them out of the fucking airlock. I'm not kidding."
He stomped off down the corridor.
"I kind of hope he was kidding," I said to Dawn.
"I dunno," she mumbled. "I keep telling you that I want to spend more time outside."
The ceiling was high overhead, with a round skylight set into it. Jupiter peered down from above, a thin, sepia crescent. Plants and trees coiled into the air around us, and the soft grass felt strange beneath our feet.
"Knock knock," Dawn called. "Anyone home?"
"Haven't seen you two in a while," a woman's voice replied. "Are you off-duty?"
"We're never off-duty," I said. "Trouble never sleeps. Where are you?"
Tess stood up from behind a big, spiky green bush, short and slightly out of proportion with herself, a trowel in one hand. "I'm here. There's no trouble in my arboretum, I hope?"
"If only there wasn't," Dawn muttered.
"Your plants have been up to no good," I said.
Tess pulled off her gardening gloves and tucked them into one pocket of her grubby trousers. "Really? I shouldn't be surprised."
"Oh no," I said. "Plants are always wandering around, sticking their roots where they're not wanted."
She laughed and beckoned us closer. Dawn gently pushed off from the ground with one foot and reached her in one bound. I followed suit.
"These plants are the only living creatures here apart from humans," Tess said. "We shouldn't expect them to follow our orders."
Dawn was unimpressed. "They would if they knew what's good for them. Biting the hand that waters them."
"Speaking of hands," Tess said, offering her hand to Dawn, "I hear that congratulations are in order."
Dawn folded her arms and grinned. "No they're not. I'm in denial."
Tess looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "Well, okay, sure. Let's step into my office."
Tess' office, at least unofficially, was a dark wooden bench overlooking the centre of the arboretum. We sat three in a row, with Dawn in the middle.
"Your plants' roots have broken through the air-tight floor," Dawn said, "and are causing mischief on the level below."
Tess sighed. "Well, I did say that they don't follow my orders."
"I don't think they follow anyone's orders anymore," Dawn said. "I think they've decided that the age of humans is over and it's time to make their move."
"Right," Tess said.
"In the short term," I said, "we just need to fix the ceiling downstairs and make sure that they don't do it again."
"In the long term," Dawn added, "we have no hope of beating them."
"I'm not so sure," I said. "They're just plants."
"That," Dawn said, shooting me a condescending look, "is exactly the kind of complacent thinking that will let them win."
"Yes," Tess added. "I wouldn't underestimate the plants."
"Especially not after Tess has been messing with their genes and otherwise faking them up."
"Faking them up?" Tess repeated.
"Yes," I explained, "Dawn feels that you are failing in your duty to cultivate a convincing simulacrum of Earth by selfishly breeding your own new plants - her words, not mine, I hasten to add."
"I see," Tess said slowly.
Dawn seemed strangely satisfied with that response. "I think that's a confession," she said.
"Well," Tess went on, "I don't see that it's my duty to recreate Earth at all."
Dawn looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "A criminal mind, indeed."
"Seriously. Why recreate Earth? What are we doing here anyway?"
"We find trouble and shoot it," I said.
"We make trouble and it shoots us," Dawn corrected.
"If you like Earth so much, why not do it there?"
"Oh there's much more trouble out here," Dawn said. "Even the plants are stirring it up."
"Be serious for five seconds, Dawn. You're having a baby."
"Yes," Dawn said, "you're clearly growing grapevine here now."
"There are less than two hundred people here. None of us have any secrets," Tess said. And then she looked at me and winked.
I snorted. "I don't know why everyone assumes that I had anything to do with it."
"In fact," Dawn said, leaning back and looking up at the crescent above, "it was Jupiter, the king of the gods himself. I've been here for two years now, and we've become quite friendly. I finally decided to seduce him, and he came to me as a shower of gold…"
"Seduce is a delicate word for it," I interrupted.
She folded her arms and took an angry breath. "Okay, so maybe I was talking with Jupiter one day and I kissed him by accident."
"By accident?" Tess asked.
I nodded. "And don't forget the part where you exclaimed, 'Oops!'"
"How do you kiss someone by accident?" Tess persisted.
"The important thing is that we both wanted to kiss in general - of course, how could any mere god resist me? It's just that I was the only one who thought we both wanted to kiss at that specific moment in time."
"Aw, Dawn," Tess cooed, "I find it so hard to think of you as being so coy and clumsy."
Dawn continued, a little impatiently, "In any case, end result: I'm going to have a baby in about seven months or so. But I'm not actually going to be pregnant in the intervening time period, because I'm in denial. Speaking of which, why are we even talking about this right now?"
"Because," Tess said, "I'm trying to show you that you're setting down roots here, on Callisto. And that you'll probably never go back to Earth."
"I don't know about that. I might go back for a short holiday - go for a swim, eat apricots, jump for very short distances. All that stuff you can only do on Earth."
Tess looked at me with some concern. "She does know, doesn't she?"
Before I could say anything, Dawn answered herself: "Of course she knows."
"A child born at one eighth g would probably never be able to go to Earth," Tess said sternly. "Only if he or she was prepared to endure considerable discomfort."
"Yes," Dawn said, "she knew that."
"Your child is one of the first of a strange and wonderful generation. A generation of, well, aliens."
"Amazing. And you know what? If it'd like to be born from a pod instead of all this palaver with my uterus, I'd be more than happy."
"Anyway, my point is that I think creating a replica of Earth here would go completely against the spirit of the whole endeavour. Nominally this may be about scientific studies and Helium 3, but whether we like it or not, we're setting down roots."
"These roots are pesky things," Dawn concluded.
"Quite."
Dawn sighed theatrically. "I think we may have to dig a hole."
"Excuse me?"
"We have to find out how the plants are getting through to the level below. Worst case scenario is we find that the plants are pushing their roots through the floor itself. And then we'll have to reinforce it - from above or below, whichever is easiest."
"If from above," Tess said thoughtfully, "then that would mean uprooting all my plants, wouldn't it?"
Dawn sat up and put her hands on her knees. "I'm sure they'd be fine. Like you said, we've all been uprooted from the Earth, and we've all turned out okay, haven't we?"
She grabbed my hand and stood. "Come on," she said. "You've got a lot of digging to do."
"Me? What about you?"
Tess rolled her eyes and started to walk away. "I'll get some spades."
Dawn paid no attention to her, just made puppy-dog eyes at me and said, "But I'm pregnant."
I feigned shock. "I didn't think you wanted anyone to give you special treatment."
"I didn't mean you. Besides, you're supposed to give me special treatment anyway, because you love me."
"Why don't you do the digging because you love me? And, " I added, sotto voce, "because it was your 'superior' black market condom."
"Fine," she said, looking down at my feet and nudging me in the ribs. "I guess we'll both have to dig. Happy now?"
I looked up at Jupiter, then back at Dawn. I smiled. "Yes," I said. "Very happy."
She rolled her eyes. "I didn't mean it so seriously."
"You never mean anything seriously."
"I mean this very seriously," she said, then leant forward to kiss me lightly on the cheek.
I pushed her away playfully. "Oh, how cute!"
"Dig a hole for me?" she asked demurely.
"No," I said. "Dig it together."
She smiled back at me, and I squeezed her hand.
Rooted
"Ow! What idiot made the ceiling this low?"
I pressed my hands to the ceiling, either side of the strip lights, as I walked beside her. Walking at eighth g had become second nature over the past couple of years - but then someone sticks a low ceiling over your head and you feel like a clumsy toddler again. "Where're your velcro soles?" I asked her.
She looked down at her stripy socks. "They don't fit anymore. My ankles are swelling."
"You're imagining it."
"How, exactly, could I imagine my shoes getting smaller?"
"You've been complaining that they're too small since we first got here. Now all of a sudden they're the right size and it's your feet that are too big. Just get some new shoes and be done with it. Besides, it's only been a week."
"It's more complicated than that. It's all dates and mathematics." She held up a load of fingers to emphasise the point. "And it's all your fault anyway."
"You absolved me of responsibility the moment you uttered the syllable, 'Oops!'"
We stopped by a small doorway, hands pressed to the ceiling. I rapped on the door a few times and it immediately flew open.
"About time!" Matveyev blundered out into the corridor, pulling on a heavy jacket. "I've been sending reports to you people for a week."
"We have a backlog so long you wouldn't believe it," Dawn answered in a low monotone, then with more enthusiasm: "Is this where you live?"
He closed and locked the door, turning his broad back to us. "Yes, this is my room, right here."
"Couldn't you find somewhere with a higher ceiling?" Dawn asked. "Don't you hit your head on it? You're tall."
"I only hit my head when the ceiling is too high. And I can't stand the humming sound on the upper levels."
"What humming sound?"
"You know," I said, "the ventilation."
"Oh yeah," Dawn said, as if remembering a profound but hidden memory. "How long have you been here for?"
"Two months," Matveyev replied.
"You get used to it. You're but a wee babe as far as Callisto is concerned."
"Well, we'll see. But for now, this is where I live. And it's been driving me crazy this past week. Flickering lights, the computers constantly resetting, strange smells…"
Dawn looked at me and bit her lip. "Oh no! It's haunted!"
Matveyev sighed. "If it is, you'd damn well better perform an exorcism. I just want some little cranny to call my own. But everywhere you go there's some niggling little thing driving you nuts!"
"You get used to it," Dawn repeated, with a crooked smile. "Living here is hardly an exact science."
"Ha!" Matveyev barked, humourlessly.
"Look," I said, "you're probably not experiencing anything the rest of us don't normally. But down here, out of the way, it probably just bugs you more. I mean-"
The lights went out. Absolute pitch darkness.
"Spooky," Dawn said.
"Dawn, where's your torch?"
A plastic rustling sound. "You see?" Dawn said. "You upset the ghosts."
"What are you even doing? Where's your torch?" I reached out blindly, finding her waist with my hands.
"That tickles! Just be patient."
I found the small torch on her belt and yanked it away. I pressed the 'on' switch, illuminating Dawn in the act of opening a bag of dried apricots. "You drive me nuts," I told her firmly.
Matveyev reached out and grabbed the bag. "This is contraband!"
Dawn snatched it back. "Not quite: it's my contraband, thank you very much."
"I'm not kidding," Matveyev growled. "Food like that keeps ending up in the hands of the orbital crews - you wouldn't believe the mess it makes in microgravity. Tell me who you got it from, I'll have them snapped in two!"
"We're sick of eating paste," Dawn said disinterestedly. "I'm not in microgravity anymore. Excuse me for having a stomach. And what are you up to?"
"Well, my job?" I suggested. "You know, figuring out why the lights are out." I held a little LCD screen in my hand, waving it around slowly. "You can never get a signal down here. Here we go. Well, that's strange. Maybe it really is ghosts."
"What is it?" Dawn asked, her mouth full of dried apricots.
"Someone has pulled the plug."
"Or something," Dawn added.
Matveyev frowned. "There's a plug?"
"Each section is self-contained, right? So there's one point where this section picks up its power. And the whole place was thrown together like Lego, so it's just a big-arse plug connected to an outside… power… thing."
Dawn handed me her bag of apricots and rolled up her sleeves. "Right, I'll deal with this. Don't let him near my real food. And shine the light on me. Or where I'm looking, I mean. Ouch!"
"Don't forget the low ceiling."
"Yeah, thanks for that."
With Matveyev and me in tow, Dawn fumbled her way along the ceiling, back to the elevator we rode in on. She pushed up with her legs, lifting the ceiling panel at an angle so it tumbled slowly back down, bouncing onto the velcro floor with a soft, scratchy sound. I shone the torch up into the black hole above.
"Freaky," Dawn said. "Maybe it is ghosts."
"There's a letter up there saying, Dear The Living, I have unplugged your infernal lights, as they are too bright for my empty, sunken eye sockets, signed, A Ghost?"
She grabbed onto the edge of the hole and hoisted herself up so her head disappeared inside. "There certainly is. But also, the cable's just disconnected, like someone pulled it out. I can't see any reason why it's not plugged in."
I turned to Matveyev. "Are you the only person living down here?"
He shrugged. "As far as I know."
Dawn looked over her shoulder at me. "Lift me up, I'll plug it back in."
I handed the light to Matveyev and put the bag of apricots in my jacket pocket. Then I wrapped my arms around Dawn's calves and lifted her up. "You're getting heavier," I told her.
She reached up with hands and fumbled in the darkness as Matveyev tried to keep the light steady. "Fuck off, I'm not even eight kilos."
"Kilograms are the SI unit of mass, not weight," I corrected her. "Your mass is always the same on any world."
She ignored me. "Damn it, the cable is catching on something. I'm gonna have to give it a good yank."
"After you plug it back in," I asked, "then what?"
"Call a psychic hotline on the company bill?"
"Interplanetary rates. Nice. Ask them about my love life while you're at it."
A solid clunk sounded from above, and the lights flickered back on. I let Dawn float back down on her own. She landed expertly and dusted her hands. "Problem solved. For-"
With a loud crash, several ceiling panels shattered inwards, further down the corridor, spilling loops of cabling and wires into the passageway.
The three of us stood in silence for a moment.
"I was just about to say, 'for now'," Dawn said.
"You did this," I told her, "you're fixing it."
She grabbed my wrist and pulled me along after her. Closer up, the damage only seemed worse. "Oh, for fuck's sake," Dawn whined. "What a mess."
I peered closer at the knotted bundle of detritus that hung from the ceiling. "What's that brown stuff?"
Dawn pulled a pair of tweezers from her jacket and plucked at the wiring. "Good question. It looks like…"
"Is it a plant?"
"Roots, I think."
"I see," I said. "So it wasn't ghosts, but aliens."
Dawn nodded. "Yep. First come the roots. Then the pods. And then the pod people. We're doomed."
"It was nice knowing you."
"Give me back my apricots. I want to die with a full stomach."
Matveyev was not amused. "You two do realise that we're directly under the arboretum?"
Dawn threw a dried apricot into her mouth. "Really? What a headache that's going to be for whoever's got to fix it. These sections are supposed to be self-contained, didn't someone say that earlier?"
I stared at the tangled mess of roots, strangling the wiring. "It's wet. No wonder there have been having so many problems down here." I sighed. "Yeah, what a headache."
Matveyev shook his head. "Not my headache, I'm glad to say. Just get it fixed. I have a meeting to get to, so…"
He turned towards the elevator.
"Thanks so much," Dawn said, her mouth full.
Matveyev turned back to us. "Oh, and when I find out who's responsible for smuggling that stuff, I'm going to throw them out of the fucking airlock. I'm not kidding."
He stomped off down the corridor.
"I kind of hope he was kidding," I said to Dawn.
"I dunno," she mumbled. "I keep telling you that I want to spend more time outside."
*
The ceiling was high overhead, with a round skylight set into it. Jupiter peered down from above, a thin, sepia crescent. Plants and trees coiled into the air around us, and the soft grass felt strange beneath our feet.
"Knock knock," Dawn called. "Anyone home?"
"Haven't seen you two in a while," a woman's voice replied. "Are you off-duty?"
"We're never off-duty," I said. "Trouble never sleeps. Where are you?"
Tess stood up from behind a big, spiky green bush, short and slightly out of proportion with herself, a trowel in one hand. "I'm here. There's no trouble in my arboretum, I hope?"
"If only there wasn't," Dawn muttered.
"Your plants have been up to no good," I said.
Tess pulled off her gardening gloves and tucked them into one pocket of her grubby trousers. "Really? I shouldn't be surprised."
"Oh no," I said. "Plants are always wandering around, sticking their roots where they're not wanted."
She laughed and beckoned us closer. Dawn gently pushed off from the ground with one foot and reached her in one bound. I followed suit.
"These plants are the only living creatures here apart from humans," Tess said. "We shouldn't expect them to follow our orders."
Dawn was unimpressed. "They would if they knew what's good for them. Biting the hand that waters them."
"Speaking of hands," Tess said, offering her hand to Dawn, "I hear that congratulations are in order."
Dawn folded her arms and grinned. "No they're not. I'm in denial."
Tess looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "Well, okay, sure. Let's step into my office."
*
Tess' office, at least unofficially, was a dark wooden bench overlooking the centre of the arboretum. We sat three in a row, with Dawn in the middle.
"Your plants' roots have broken through the air-tight floor," Dawn said, "and are causing mischief on the level below."
Tess sighed. "Well, I did say that they don't follow my orders."
"I don't think they follow anyone's orders anymore," Dawn said. "I think they've decided that the age of humans is over and it's time to make their move."
"Right," Tess said.
"In the short term," I said, "we just need to fix the ceiling downstairs and make sure that they don't do it again."
"In the long term," Dawn added, "we have no hope of beating them."
"I'm not so sure," I said. "They're just plants."
"That," Dawn said, shooting me a condescending look, "is exactly the kind of complacent thinking that will let them win."
"Yes," Tess added. "I wouldn't underestimate the plants."
"Especially not after Tess has been messing with their genes and otherwise faking them up."
"Faking them up?" Tess repeated.
"Yes," I explained, "Dawn feels that you are failing in your duty to cultivate a convincing simulacrum of Earth by selfishly breeding your own new plants - her words, not mine, I hasten to add."
"I see," Tess said slowly.
Dawn seemed strangely satisfied with that response. "I think that's a confession," she said.
"Well," Tess went on, "I don't see that it's my duty to recreate Earth at all."
Dawn looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "A criminal mind, indeed."
"Seriously. Why recreate Earth? What are we doing here anyway?"
"We find trouble and shoot it," I said.
"We make trouble and it shoots us," Dawn corrected.
"If you like Earth so much, why not do it there?"
"Oh there's much more trouble out here," Dawn said. "Even the plants are stirring it up."
"Be serious for five seconds, Dawn. You're having a baby."
"Yes," Dawn said, "you're clearly growing grapevine here now."
"There are less than two hundred people here. None of us have any secrets," Tess said. And then she looked at me and winked.
I snorted. "I don't know why everyone assumes that I had anything to do with it."
"In fact," Dawn said, leaning back and looking up at the crescent above, "it was Jupiter, the king of the gods himself. I've been here for two years now, and we've become quite friendly. I finally decided to seduce him, and he came to me as a shower of gold…"
"Seduce is a delicate word for it," I interrupted.
She folded her arms and took an angry breath. "Okay, so maybe I was talking with Jupiter one day and I kissed him by accident."
"By accident?" Tess asked.
I nodded. "And don't forget the part where you exclaimed, 'Oops!'"
"How do you kiss someone by accident?" Tess persisted.
"The important thing is that we both wanted to kiss in general - of course, how could any mere god resist me? It's just that I was the only one who thought we both wanted to kiss at that specific moment in time."
"Aw, Dawn," Tess cooed, "I find it so hard to think of you as being so coy and clumsy."
Dawn continued, a little impatiently, "In any case, end result: I'm going to have a baby in about seven months or so. But I'm not actually going to be pregnant in the intervening time period, because I'm in denial. Speaking of which, why are we even talking about this right now?"
"Because," Tess said, "I'm trying to show you that you're setting down roots here, on Callisto. And that you'll probably never go back to Earth."
"I don't know about that. I might go back for a short holiday - go for a swim, eat apricots, jump for very short distances. All that stuff you can only do on Earth."
Tess looked at me with some concern. "She does know, doesn't she?"
Before I could say anything, Dawn answered herself: "Of course she knows."
"A child born at one eighth g would probably never be able to go to Earth," Tess said sternly. "Only if he or she was prepared to endure considerable discomfort."
"Yes," Dawn said, "she knew that."
"Your child is one of the first of a strange and wonderful generation. A generation of, well, aliens."
"Amazing. And you know what? If it'd like to be born from a pod instead of all this palaver with my uterus, I'd be more than happy."
"Anyway, my point is that I think creating a replica of Earth here would go completely against the spirit of the whole endeavour. Nominally this may be about scientific studies and Helium 3, but whether we like it or not, we're setting down roots."
"These roots are pesky things," Dawn concluded.
"Quite."
Dawn sighed theatrically. "I think we may have to dig a hole."
"Excuse me?"
"We have to find out how the plants are getting through to the level below. Worst case scenario is we find that the plants are pushing their roots through the floor itself. And then we'll have to reinforce it - from above or below, whichever is easiest."
"If from above," Tess said thoughtfully, "then that would mean uprooting all my plants, wouldn't it?"
Dawn sat up and put her hands on her knees. "I'm sure they'd be fine. Like you said, we've all been uprooted from the Earth, and we've all turned out okay, haven't we?"
She grabbed my hand and stood. "Come on," she said. "You've got a lot of digging to do."
"Me? What about you?"
Tess rolled her eyes and started to walk away. "I'll get some spades."
Dawn paid no attention to her, just made puppy-dog eyes at me and said, "But I'm pregnant."
I feigned shock. "I didn't think you wanted anyone to give you special treatment."
"I didn't mean you. Besides, you're supposed to give me special treatment anyway, because you love me."
"Why don't you do the digging because you love me? And, " I added, sotto voce, "because it was your 'superior' black market condom."
"Fine," she said, looking down at my feet and nudging me in the ribs. "I guess we'll both have to dig. Happy now?"
I looked up at Jupiter, then back at Dawn. I smiled. "Yes," I said. "Very happy."
She rolled her eyes. "I didn't mean it so seriously."
"You never mean anything seriously."
"I mean this very seriously," she said, then leant forward to kiss me lightly on the cheek.
I pushed her away playfully. "Oh, how cute!"
"Dig a hole for me?" she asked demurely.
"No," I said. "Dig it together."
She smiled back at me, and I squeezed her hand.
3.3.07
A Story Tangentially Related to Superstition
I'm not feeling so well today. This is the dream I had last night. If you are superstitious, you may take it as a warning of the fate that would befall me if I ever ended up on a pirate's ship. It is also perhaps a warning about what happens to those who are not superstitious enough: they displease the monster octopus.
Looking back at this now, I think it was cool that I had such an involved, imaginative dream. But at the time it was pretty scary and all too real.
Obviously, certain parts of this story don't make sense. That's dreams for you.
After forging an uneasy truce with the pirates, I was able to catch them unawares and push them overboard, into the mouths of some hungry sharks. Now I was on the ship by myself, sleeping in the captain's cabin as the waves rolling beneath me grew more turbulent and the skies darker.
As I slept fitfully, a great monster rose from the dark depths of the sea: an enormous octopus with thick, gnarled green skin. It latched onto my ship with its long tentacles and started to drag it slowly but inexorably down into the roiling ocean.
As the deck started to pitch, I awoke and left my cabin. The black sea was already spilling onto the deck - the ship was sinking fast. I was practically in the sea.
And then, from the stormy waves, squirmed some soft-bodied creature, larger in size than me: a cyclopean octopus, with metal hooks on the ends of its arms. It viciously clawed its way up on deck and looked around. I hid beneath the stairs to the quarterdeck, and it fumbled its way up them without noticing me.
Looking around for some way to escape, I approached the side of the ship. There was nothing in any direction but the ocean - dark and angry. Rain beat down from the sky. I had no chance against deadly sea creatures. My world had been invaded by water. It was no longer hospitable to the likes of me.
The first, much larger, octopus - the one still pulling the ship down into the water - grabbed hold of me then, and I was drawn deep into the cold, black depths of the sea.
I awoke, lying on the ocean floor, to find a young woman standing over me. Her hair was tied up into an austere bun and she wore a long, high-necked dress. It might have been white in colour, but an endless stretch of murky water separated the sun from us, painting everything a sickly shade of greyish-green.
She checked that I was okay and helped me to my feet, introducing herself as Anthea. Around us were dreary wooden buildings, like something from some dilapidated American prairie town. People stood around, doing little, showing no emotion. The men wore grey suits, the women long, high-necked dresses like Anthea's.
The light grew dimmer, and I looked up to see the immense octopus high overhead, blotting out what little light filtered down to us with its grotesque, writhing silhouette. I was afraid, but none of the townspeople seemed bothered. Not that they seemed pleased to see the octopus, in fact they obviously feared it themselves. It's just that their fear was a hopeless one. This creature was so huge and strong, like a mountain with multiple arms, and so much more at home at the bottom of the sea than frail humans, that they could clearly see they had no way to oppose it or escape.
Anthea tried to explain to me about the town. She seemed to say that it was a town full of people who had murdered close relatives. Murderers! I looked around at the limp, vaguely sinister people around me. No wonder they lived in this town, at the mercy of a demonic octopus.
But I had misunderstood. Anthea explained again, patiently: in the country these people once lived in, there was a ritual whereby people were expected to sacrifice someone they loved. The people in this town were those vilified heretics who refused to participate. The only place in the world they were accepted was in this town, relying on the sufferance of a carnivorous monster.
I lived in the town from then on, with nowhere else to go, not willing to risk the ire of the monster by trying to leave. Anthea's kind family took me into their home. It was dry inside and after entering from the slimy deep-sea water, it was polite to wipe one's feet.
The first time it happened, I was terrified. The octopus above descended upon the town, its arms spread wide, whirling slowly around and creating a formidable current. The townspeople tramped lifelessly onto a small hill by the town and stood in a circle, the monster directly overhead, coming closer and closer until it blotted out the whole ocean above, stupefyingly vast and fearsome.
Anthea took my hand and led me into the circle. It wouldn't be wise not to go, she said. The townspeople always went. If they didn't, who knew what might happen?
When everyone was present in the circle, the octopus reached down with a tentacle and snatched up one person, devouring them. Then we all tramped back down to the town.
This happened once every week, Anthea told me. You just stood in the circle and hoped that this week it wasn't you.
I think it was probably my fault. I didn't take well to the town - to the million little things that you had to do - or could not do - lest you upset the giant octopus. One night, the octopus descended on Anthea's house. It broke into one of the bedrooms and killed the woman sleeping in there - and not in a way that was at all quick or painless. The people in the room next door chose to break down their wall and drown rather than risk experiencing the fate she met. The father ran into the kitchen, hoping to swim up the fireplace and escape, but the octopus had already reached down the chimney. It grabbed him and pulled him up, out of the house, and into its beak.
With people dying and the house creaking and collapsing around us, it seemed that all was lost. The monster wanted to pull us all to pieces and eat us, and we didn't stand a chance. But Anthea saw a way out. After snatching her father through it, the octopus seemed to have neglected the chimney. We swam quickly up through the fireplace, not daring to look up at the monster above us, so close to the roof, and so huge. We swam down the side of the house, hoping to hide from its huge, bulging eyes as they roamed the town hungrily.
And then we ran. Ran across the ocean floor as fast as we could, not looking back or slowing down. Eventually we reached the shore and crawled out of the sea and onto a desolate, rocky beach.
Wet and bedraggled we held one another tightly. For a short while, we could feel relieved. But the memories of the townspeople who had been killed - and were yet to be killed - would weigh on us heavily. And worse still, we knew that the octopus could always come for us, reaching out of the sea with its long, grasping arms. Unstoppable.
Looking back at this now, I think it was cool that I had such an involved, imaginative dream. But at the time it was pretty scary and all too real.
Obviously, certain parts of this story don't make sense. That's dreams for you.
The Octopus Town
(A Dream)
(A Dream)
After forging an uneasy truce with the pirates, I was able to catch them unawares and push them overboard, into the mouths of some hungry sharks. Now I was on the ship by myself, sleeping in the captain's cabin as the waves rolling beneath me grew more turbulent and the skies darker.
As I slept fitfully, a great monster rose from the dark depths of the sea: an enormous octopus with thick, gnarled green skin. It latched onto my ship with its long tentacles and started to drag it slowly but inexorably down into the roiling ocean.
As the deck started to pitch, I awoke and left my cabin. The black sea was already spilling onto the deck - the ship was sinking fast. I was practically in the sea.
And then, from the stormy waves, squirmed some soft-bodied creature, larger in size than me: a cyclopean octopus, with metal hooks on the ends of its arms. It viciously clawed its way up on deck and looked around. I hid beneath the stairs to the quarterdeck, and it fumbled its way up them without noticing me.
Looking around for some way to escape, I approached the side of the ship. There was nothing in any direction but the ocean - dark and angry. Rain beat down from the sky. I had no chance against deadly sea creatures. My world had been invaded by water. It was no longer hospitable to the likes of me.
The first, much larger, octopus - the one still pulling the ship down into the water - grabbed hold of me then, and I was drawn deep into the cold, black depths of the sea.
*
I awoke, lying on the ocean floor, to find a young woman standing over me. Her hair was tied up into an austere bun and she wore a long, high-necked dress. It might have been white in colour, but an endless stretch of murky water separated the sun from us, painting everything a sickly shade of greyish-green.
She checked that I was okay and helped me to my feet, introducing herself as Anthea. Around us were dreary wooden buildings, like something from some dilapidated American prairie town. People stood around, doing little, showing no emotion. The men wore grey suits, the women long, high-necked dresses like Anthea's.
The light grew dimmer, and I looked up to see the immense octopus high overhead, blotting out what little light filtered down to us with its grotesque, writhing silhouette. I was afraid, but none of the townspeople seemed bothered. Not that they seemed pleased to see the octopus, in fact they obviously feared it themselves. It's just that their fear was a hopeless one. This creature was so huge and strong, like a mountain with multiple arms, and so much more at home at the bottom of the sea than frail humans, that they could clearly see they had no way to oppose it or escape.
Anthea tried to explain to me about the town. She seemed to say that it was a town full of people who had murdered close relatives. Murderers! I looked around at the limp, vaguely sinister people around me. No wonder they lived in this town, at the mercy of a demonic octopus.
But I had misunderstood. Anthea explained again, patiently: in the country these people once lived in, there was a ritual whereby people were expected to sacrifice someone they loved. The people in this town were those vilified heretics who refused to participate. The only place in the world they were accepted was in this town, relying on the sufferance of a carnivorous monster.
*
I lived in the town from then on, with nowhere else to go, not willing to risk the ire of the monster by trying to leave. Anthea's kind family took me into their home. It was dry inside and after entering from the slimy deep-sea water, it was polite to wipe one's feet.
*
The first time it happened, I was terrified. The octopus above descended upon the town, its arms spread wide, whirling slowly around and creating a formidable current. The townspeople tramped lifelessly onto a small hill by the town and stood in a circle, the monster directly overhead, coming closer and closer until it blotted out the whole ocean above, stupefyingly vast and fearsome.
Anthea took my hand and led me into the circle. It wouldn't be wise not to go, she said. The townspeople always went. If they didn't, who knew what might happen?
When everyone was present in the circle, the octopus reached down with a tentacle and snatched up one person, devouring them. Then we all tramped back down to the town.
This happened once every week, Anthea told me. You just stood in the circle and hoped that this week it wasn't you.
*
I think it was probably my fault. I didn't take well to the town - to the million little things that you had to do - or could not do - lest you upset the giant octopus. One night, the octopus descended on Anthea's house. It broke into one of the bedrooms and killed the woman sleeping in there - and not in a way that was at all quick or painless. The people in the room next door chose to break down their wall and drown rather than risk experiencing the fate she met. The father ran into the kitchen, hoping to swim up the fireplace and escape, but the octopus had already reached down the chimney. It grabbed him and pulled him up, out of the house, and into its beak.
With people dying and the house creaking and collapsing around us, it seemed that all was lost. The monster wanted to pull us all to pieces and eat us, and we didn't stand a chance. But Anthea saw a way out. After snatching her father through it, the octopus seemed to have neglected the chimney. We swam quickly up through the fireplace, not daring to look up at the monster above us, so close to the roof, and so huge. We swam down the side of the house, hoping to hide from its huge, bulging eyes as they roamed the town hungrily.
And then we ran. Ran across the ocean floor as fast as we could, not looking back or slowing down. Eventually we reached the shore and crawled out of the sea and onto a desolate, rocky beach.
Wet and bedraggled we held one another tightly. For a short while, we could feel relieved. But the memories of the townspeople who had been killed - and were yet to be killed - would weigh on us heavily. And worse still, we knew that the octopus could always come for us, reaching out of the sea with its long, grasping arms. Unstoppable.
4.2.07
A Story About Goodbye
This week's prompt at Sunday Scribblings is Goodbyes. It chimed with various things I've been thinking about, in particular, at the forefront of my mind was a colourised version of this image, as presented in Olivier de Goursac's Visions of Mars (although this particular image is a vision of Earth). To see the colours of a Martian sunset, look at this image.
The sky is a murky, ruddy pink and the sun sits on the horizon: small and blue. Descending with it, imperceptibly, down beneath the world, is the bright evening star.
"Does it look any different?" a voice asks softly.
I stop looking over my shoulder, turn from the small window to the dim, electric-lit room around me. "I woke up sitting here," I say. "It wasn't a dream, was it?"
Yelena shakes her head and slams the door closed, checking that it seals properly. Now more than ever, it feels like we live in a soap bubble. Bulging with air and ready to pop.
The television, fixed to the paint-scabbed metal wall, shows nothing but static.
Yelena sits next to me on the couch and picks up the remote.
"Don't," I say suddenly. "Turn it off. I've had enough of it."
She nods and stabs the remote with her thumb. The screen blinks to black. "Is he okay?"
I look at Michael. Sitting on the couch opposite, head thrown back, staring at the low, domed ceiling. He lifts his head, looks first at Yelena, then at me. "I'm fine," he says flatly.
"Does it look any different?" Yelena asks me again.
"Does what look any different?"
She gestures out the window, at the setting sun and the evening star. "Earth," she says.
"It looks about the same. How's Abel?"
"Sedated. Chen is staying with him."
Like a powerful magnet is pulling on me, my head turns until I'm looking back out of the window. "I thought it might get less blue," I say. "If the ocean's are getting covered with dust and smoke."
"Maybe it will," Yelena says matter-of-factly. You can't really be anything but matter-of-fact in this kind of situation.
"We don't know that it was nukes," Michael chips in.
Yelena shakes her head unenthusiastically. "What else would it be?"
"Bio-terrorism," Michael says, slowly, if parcelling out its import into more manageable monosyllables. "Some lethal disease cooked up in a terrorist's basement. I bet it spread across the world in less than a day, on airliners."
"You're an American," I tell him. "Someone sneezes and you see bio-terrorism."
"Well, yeah. You say that, but I bet they were sneezing."
"It wasn't bio-terrorism or bio-anything else," Yelena says firmly. "We'd have heard something about people getting ill. And look at the logs: we lost Baikonur, Kennedy and Jiuquan within minutes of one another. A virus wouldn't do that."
"Al Jazeera's still broadcasting every hour," I chip in. "They were talking about mushroom clouds and radiation sickness. It's pretty unequivocal."
Michael grimaces, as if literally having difficulty swallowing the idea. "But who would nuke us?"
I laugh mirthlessly. We three are all wearing the same uniform but for the flags on the sleeves. "What makes you so sure that 'we' didn't nuke anyone ourselves? If not to start with, then in retaliation?"
"But why did it start?" Michael asks.
Yelena sighs. "I doubt anyone actually wanted it to happen. It probably started as a mistake, but once it got underway, they were fighting for their lives. No-one would stop."
"That's bullshit," I snapped. "You're saying that because they started killing everyone they had to keep going, or else - or else what? The other side would kill everyone instead? It's bullshit."
"It's those Russian missiles," Michael muses. "A wire sparked or a program crashed or something and the missile was launched. No offence, Yelena."
"Check your own house is in order before you start throwing accusations like that around. You've got that nuclear place in America that's always catching fire and worse."
"That's not a nuclear facility."
"It is a-"
"That's not a nuclear weapons facility," Michael interrupts, correcting himself.
"What does it matter?" I ask. "I don't care who started it. It happened. And Baikonur, Kennedy, Jiuquan: they're silent."
Michael rubs his unshaven chin. "Maybe they're still there."
Yelena stretches, creakily. I notice that her eyes are red. "Even if they are," she says, "you think they care about us right now? Not their families? The people dying right in front of them? You think they have enough food to stuff it into a rocket and send it to us?"
Michael clicks his tongue. "I guess the space programme's going to take a bit of a back seat over the next few years, huh?"
"Decades probably," Yelena says. "If human civilisation on Earth can even crawl back up from this."
I finally say what's been on my mind all this time: "We're pretty fucked."
Michael just shrugs.
Yelena turns to face me, fixes her eyes on mine. "We are not fucked. We're lucky. Would you rather be in London right now?"
"If it was a full nuclear exchange, I'd have died instantaneously last night."
"Right," she says, as if that settles it.
"But instead, we, Yelena, Michael - all of us - we are going to starve."
Yelena slides forward, to better face me. I think this is turning into another argument, and I'm not sure I can be bothered. "I don't think so," she says.
I shrug. "We eat more than we grow. Food is the problem. It's the only thing we can't get from Mars. I don't see how we can be more fucked than that."
"Food is the problem," Michael agrees.
"We would be more fucked if food wasn't the only thing we don't have here," Yelena says. "We have water from the ice, we have oxygen from the water, we have fifty years of power from the reactor - more than enough time to find more uranium, I might add - from the power we get heat, light-"
I look down at my crumpled uniform. "And yet, if we starve, all that oxygen and water and power and heat and light won't make us less dead."
Yelena shakes her head vehemently. "We're not going to starve any time soon. And in the meantime we can try to find ways to increase our food production. We've got the material to build more pressurised glass houses. Chen thinks we may even be able to use cling film, tent poles and old heaters, if we keep the partial pressure of nitrogen high and the overall pressure low. We got some Frankenstein seeds in the last supply, part of an experiment - they might grow in Martian soil, with a few added chemicals."
"None of us are old, Yelena. We could live another forty, fifty years. Do you honestly think we can consistently produce enough food in all that time, with cling film greenhouses? It's going to be a constant battle."
"I didn't say it would be easy. But we don't have any choice but to try. We've got better odds than certain death. We've got better odds than the people back home."
"In the short term, yes. But when the nuclear winter passes, those that survived - eating rat meat or one another, whatever - they'll still have a world with liquid water, one bar of air pressure and food."
"Contaminated food."
"As opposed to our sickly, half-starved crops. Chen's still finding those bloody aphids lurking around. Now he thinks they're adapting to the lower gravity."
Michael laughs unexpectedly. "Chen says they come to him in his dreams and taunt him in Mandarin."
I had something to say, something angry and powerful that would leave Yelena's argument shattered into pieces, but Michael's comment, his laughter more than anything, has interrupted my flow. Yelena just raises an eyebrow and ignores him. He covers his mouth with his hand to stop the incriminating sound: laughing while everyone is fucked.
Yelena sighs. "Look, we've been split in two. Pockets of people on Earth and one on Mars, we're all going to be struggling for the next few years, perhaps for the rest of our lives. I guess a lot of us won't make it. But we have to try."
"I'm not saying that we shouldn't. I agree with you, it's hard but we have to try. It's just…."
She leans forward, resting her elbow on the back of the couch. "What?"
I look out of the window. The sun has set, and the blue evening star is low on the rocky hilltops. Soon it will be gone too. "I just wish this hadn't happened. It's going to be really hard. We need the people at home."
Yelena reaches over to squeeze my shoulder. "I know," she says. "I feel the same way. There's nothing to say, except, I feel the same way."
The conversation has deflated. Michael gets up then, says he needs to check the pressure sensors. We're leaking again, he thinks, losing precious air from our little soap bubble. Yelena follows after him, squeezes my shoulder once more in parting.
I stay staring out the window until the evening star sets. Best to get back to work after this, I think. Back to the business of staying alive.
"Goodbye," I tell the little star, under my breath.
Evening Star
The sky is a murky, ruddy pink and the sun sits on the horizon: small and blue. Descending with it, imperceptibly, down beneath the world, is the bright evening star.
"Does it look any different?" a voice asks softly.
I stop looking over my shoulder, turn from the small window to the dim, electric-lit room around me. "I woke up sitting here," I say. "It wasn't a dream, was it?"
Yelena shakes her head and slams the door closed, checking that it seals properly. Now more than ever, it feels like we live in a soap bubble. Bulging with air and ready to pop.
The television, fixed to the paint-scabbed metal wall, shows nothing but static.
Yelena sits next to me on the couch and picks up the remote.
"Don't," I say suddenly. "Turn it off. I've had enough of it."
She nods and stabs the remote with her thumb. The screen blinks to black. "Is he okay?"
I look at Michael. Sitting on the couch opposite, head thrown back, staring at the low, domed ceiling. He lifts his head, looks first at Yelena, then at me. "I'm fine," he says flatly.
"Does it look any different?" Yelena asks me again.
"Does what look any different?"
She gestures out the window, at the setting sun and the evening star. "Earth," she says.
"It looks about the same. How's Abel?"
"Sedated. Chen is staying with him."
Like a powerful magnet is pulling on me, my head turns until I'm looking back out of the window. "I thought it might get less blue," I say. "If the ocean's are getting covered with dust and smoke."
"Maybe it will," Yelena says matter-of-factly. You can't really be anything but matter-of-fact in this kind of situation.
"We don't know that it was nukes," Michael chips in.
Yelena shakes her head unenthusiastically. "What else would it be?"
"Bio-terrorism," Michael says, slowly, if parcelling out its import into more manageable monosyllables. "Some lethal disease cooked up in a terrorist's basement. I bet it spread across the world in less than a day, on airliners."
"You're an American," I tell him. "Someone sneezes and you see bio-terrorism."
"Well, yeah. You say that, but I bet they were sneezing."
"It wasn't bio-terrorism or bio-anything else," Yelena says firmly. "We'd have heard something about people getting ill. And look at the logs: we lost Baikonur, Kennedy and Jiuquan within minutes of one another. A virus wouldn't do that."
"Al Jazeera's still broadcasting every hour," I chip in. "They were talking about mushroom clouds and radiation sickness. It's pretty unequivocal."
Michael grimaces, as if literally having difficulty swallowing the idea. "But who would nuke us?"
I laugh mirthlessly. We three are all wearing the same uniform but for the flags on the sleeves. "What makes you so sure that 'we' didn't nuke anyone ourselves? If not to start with, then in retaliation?"
"But why did it start?" Michael asks.
Yelena sighs. "I doubt anyone actually wanted it to happen. It probably started as a mistake, but once it got underway, they were fighting for their lives. No-one would stop."
"That's bullshit," I snapped. "You're saying that because they started killing everyone they had to keep going, or else - or else what? The other side would kill everyone instead? It's bullshit."
"It's those Russian missiles," Michael muses. "A wire sparked or a program crashed or something and the missile was launched. No offence, Yelena."
"Check your own house is in order before you start throwing accusations like that around. You've got that nuclear place in America that's always catching fire and worse."
"That's not a nuclear facility."
"It is a-"
"That's not a nuclear weapons facility," Michael interrupts, correcting himself.
"What does it matter?" I ask. "I don't care who started it. It happened. And Baikonur, Kennedy, Jiuquan: they're silent."
Michael rubs his unshaven chin. "Maybe they're still there."
Yelena stretches, creakily. I notice that her eyes are red. "Even if they are," she says, "you think they care about us right now? Not their families? The people dying right in front of them? You think they have enough food to stuff it into a rocket and send it to us?"
Michael clicks his tongue. "I guess the space programme's going to take a bit of a back seat over the next few years, huh?"
"Decades probably," Yelena says. "If human civilisation on Earth can even crawl back up from this."
I finally say what's been on my mind all this time: "We're pretty fucked."
Michael just shrugs.
Yelena turns to face me, fixes her eyes on mine. "We are not fucked. We're lucky. Would you rather be in London right now?"
"If it was a full nuclear exchange, I'd have died instantaneously last night."
"Right," she says, as if that settles it.
"But instead, we, Yelena, Michael - all of us - we are going to starve."
Yelena slides forward, to better face me. I think this is turning into another argument, and I'm not sure I can be bothered. "I don't think so," she says.
I shrug. "We eat more than we grow. Food is the problem. It's the only thing we can't get from Mars. I don't see how we can be more fucked than that."
"Food is the problem," Michael agrees.
"We would be more fucked if food wasn't the only thing we don't have here," Yelena says. "We have water from the ice, we have oxygen from the water, we have fifty years of power from the reactor - more than enough time to find more uranium, I might add - from the power we get heat, light-"
I look down at my crumpled uniform. "And yet, if we starve, all that oxygen and water and power and heat and light won't make us less dead."
Yelena shakes her head vehemently. "We're not going to starve any time soon. And in the meantime we can try to find ways to increase our food production. We've got the material to build more pressurised glass houses. Chen thinks we may even be able to use cling film, tent poles and old heaters, if we keep the partial pressure of nitrogen high and the overall pressure low. We got some Frankenstein seeds in the last supply, part of an experiment - they might grow in Martian soil, with a few added chemicals."
"None of us are old, Yelena. We could live another forty, fifty years. Do you honestly think we can consistently produce enough food in all that time, with cling film greenhouses? It's going to be a constant battle."
"I didn't say it would be easy. But we don't have any choice but to try. We've got better odds than certain death. We've got better odds than the people back home."
"In the short term, yes. But when the nuclear winter passes, those that survived - eating rat meat or one another, whatever - they'll still have a world with liquid water, one bar of air pressure and food."
"Contaminated food."
"As opposed to our sickly, half-starved crops. Chen's still finding those bloody aphids lurking around. Now he thinks they're adapting to the lower gravity."
Michael laughs unexpectedly. "Chen says they come to him in his dreams and taunt him in Mandarin."
I had something to say, something angry and powerful that would leave Yelena's argument shattered into pieces, but Michael's comment, his laughter more than anything, has interrupted my flow. Yelena just raises an eyebrow and ignores him. He covers his mouth with his hand to stop the incriminating sound: laughing while everyone is fucked.
Yelena sighs. "Look, we've been split in two. Pockets of people on Earth and one on Mars, we're all going to be struggling for the next few years, perhaps for the rest of our lives. I guess a lot of us won't make it. But we have to try."
"I'm not saying that we shouldn't. I agree with you, it's hard but we have to try. It's just…."
She leans forward, resting her elbow on the back of the couch. "What?"
I look out of the window. The sun has set, and the blue evening star is low on the rocky hilltops. Soon it will be gone too. "I just wish this hadn't happened. It's going to be really hard. We need the people at home."
Yelena reaches over to squeeze my shoulder. "I know," she says. "I feel the same way. There's nothing to say, except, I feel the same way."
The conversation has deflated. Michael gets up then, says he needs to check the pressure sensors. We're leaking again, he thinks, losing precious air from our little soap bubble. Yelena follows after him, squeezes my shoulder once more in parting.
I stay staring out the window until the evening star sets. Best to get back to work after this, I think. Back to the business of staying alive.
"Goodbye," I tell the little star, under my breath.
30.1.07
A Fantasy
I'm planning on trying to tighten up my story writing with a tale featuring an actual plot - including escalating tension and well thought out character motivations. Until then, there is this:
The Terrapin Piratess
I dreamt of soaring through the sky and awoke on the see-sawing deck of a wooden ship. I was lying on a towel with a pillow under my head. A parasol cast its shadow over me, a translucent white disc against a bright blue sky.
I sat up and put a hand to my head. I didn’t feel any different than I normally would of a morning, except I normally woke up in my bed and not on the deck of an old sailing ship. The prow lay ahead of me, rocking against the sky, the horizon invisible. A tall wooden pole thrust out of the deck to my right - the mast, I supposed. A few figures were about on the deck, sweeping with mops, moving heavy objects. They seemed to glitter eerily in the bright daylight.
“You’re awake then,” a woman asked. I turned to face her approaching footsteps.
All I could think to say was the most obvious question that came to mind. “What the fuck?”
“Surprised?” she asked.
“You could say that.”
She was a piratess, without a doubt: she wore baggy pantaloons and a frilly shirt. Bandoleers criss-crossed her chest, stuffed with flintlock pistols; a cutlass hung by her hip. Smoky black hair spilled out from her bandana, curling through the air like ink through water. Her left eye was covered by a patch with a smiley face on it.
“How did I get here?” I asked her. I was reasonably certain that this wasn’t a dream.
“Abducted,” she said, savouring every syllable. “Scared?”
“Annoyed,” I answered curtly. “I’ll be late for work.”
“I’m sure you recognise me,” she said, ignoring my comment and raising her nose, turning her head to display her - admittedly not disagreeable - profile. “If you’re not scared, it must only be because of an entirely understandable infatuation with my public persona.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re that piratess.”
She cleared her throat. “Which piratess?”
“The really nice one legendary for taking men for a brief ride in her ship and then giving them a lift to work.”
She gritted her teeth. “You don’t recognise me.”
Best to stay on her good side, I thought. “Of course I do. I’m just not very good with names.”
“But you know of my many nefarious and dashing deeds? My romantic conquests and impossible escapes?”
“Yes,” I said, hoping to leave it at that.
“Which did you most enjoy hearing about?” she said, feigning disinterest and again presenting her profile to me.
“Um, well…”
She examined the mast casually, at the same time resting her hand on her cutlass and angling the hilt in such a way that I could read the name engraved on it.
“The time you stole Captain Reno’s sword… Or received it as a gift…”
“Stole,” she whispered.
“Stole it from him in a… such a daring, dashing, um, nefarious fashion. In fact,” I added, getting bolder, “when I first heard of it, I was with a gentleman of lesser constitution who swooned.”
“Really?” she said, stifling a look of surprise. “I have that effect on some men, I must admit.”
“And, although it’s hardly a dashing conquest or impossible deed, I must confess that although I could never put a name to it,” I lowered my voice as if sharing a shameful secret, “I have always enjoyed hearing about your beautiful profile.”
Her cheeks reddened. “It has been said that my profile has corrupted many a gentleman.”
“So I hear. Anyway, if it’s not too far out of your way, could you drop me off at my workplace? You’d think they could survive more than a few hours without me, but you just can’t trust those guys not to open strange email attachments.”
She rested her hands on her hips - satisfied with my flattery, it seemed. “It’s a lot of effort to turn a ship around once she’s underway. If I catch a fish I don’t want to keep, I usually just chuck it over the side…”
“I can’t swim.”
“Ha!” she barked.
She grabbed my arm and pulled me up and over to the side of the ship. I resisted a little, but I didn’t think she‘d throw me over.
“Ta-da!” she exclaimed.
I peered timidly over the side. “What kind of ship is this?”
“The best kind of ship,” she said proudly. “The kind mounted on the back of a giant terrapin.”
“So where are we?”
“The Great Desert.”
What I had taken for the rocking of a ship at sea was in fact the swaying of the terrapin’s scaly green legs as it crossed vast dunes of sand. Now I was no longer under the parasol, the sun seemed to be cooking my skin. “Is there actually much to plunder in the middle of the Great Desert?” I asked.
She went quiet. “So,” she said, “you really don’t know my name?”
I took a deep breath to give me time to think. “To be honest, I don’t know the names of any piratesses.”
“What,” she scoffed, “not even Sawbone Kate?”
“Well, okay, obviously it would be a bit much to imagine that I hadn’t heard of Sawbone Kate, but she’s the only one I’ve heard of. Hey, you’re not Sawbone Kate yourself, are you?”
She gritted her teeth. “No. I am most definitely not Sawbone bloody Kate.”
“Well, I’m afraid that you and all the other non-Sawbone Kate piratesses will have to just tell me what your names are.”
“My name is Annabel Lovelock,” she said, as if certain that I wouldn’t care.
“Annabel Lovelock. That’s a beautiful name for a piratess,” I told her earnestly, even if my thoughts were mostly focused on how to get home from the Great Desert.
She said nothing.
“Also,” I began, “can I ask you about this piece of jewellery I seem to have acquired?”
She peered down at the shackle around my ankle and the chain connecting it to the mast. “Merely a safety precaution. It’s a long way down to the ground from here.”
“Right. So, if I can’t leave, can I get something to eat?”
*
“I’d love to know what you think you’re going to catch.”
“I told you,” Annabel said, “it’s a surprise. You’ll find out when I catch one.” She jiggled the fishing rod, as if that would make the lure a more inviting target to whatever passing desert creatures might survive in the wake of a giant stomping terrapin. I couldn’t even look down, it gave me vertigo.
We sat like that for a few minutes more, our legs hanging over the side of the ship, our arms resting on the railing. I had to break the silence to bring something up that had been bugging me. “Your crew are strange.”
“They’re clockwork drudges.”
“Oh. Like robots.”
“Yeah, but analogue is the way to go. I don’t know why digital ever caught on.”
“The one in the crow’s nest?”
“Yeah?”
“It keeps shouting out, ‘Land ho!’”
“Well, it can see land, can’t it?”
“Oh, right. I guess it’s supposed to do it then.”
“Yeah.”
“So, have you always used drudges?”
She seemed to answer only reluctantly. “No.”
“You used to have a crew of human piratesses? What happened?”
She sniffed. “None of your business.”
“It didn’t work out then?”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. And then: “I think they were intimidated.”
“By you?”
“Sure,” she said, holding her head high, “by my…”
She fixed her eye on me and I realised she wanted me to finish her sentence for her. “By your smouldering beauty and sharp wit,” I suggested.
“Yes,” she said, weighing my words carefully. “I expect that was it.”
“And your giant terrapin.”
She shook her head. “No, they have a dragon. It’s much bigger. And it can fly.”
“Well, I doubt they’re as good company as you are.”
She sighed. “Okay, you can stop flattering me now. It gets tiresome in the end.”
“Oh. I actually meant it that time.”
The fishing rod twitched. “I don’t believe it,” Annabel muttered, clearly as surprised as me.
“What is it?”
She reeled it in.
“What is it?” I asked again.
She didn’t answer.
“Is it really edible?” I asked, dubious.
She pitched the rod over the side of the ship. “Let’s find a supermarket.”
*
“Not that I should really be pointing things like this out, but chaining me to a shopping trolley is hardly going to stop my escape. In fact, you really don’t have to chain me to anything. I’m hungry and I don’t have any money.”
“It’s just so you don’t forget that you’re my booty.”
“I’m your what?”
“My booty. You know, my stolen treasure. What did you think I meant?”
“Never mind. This floor is freezing.”
Annabel started to pull fruit and veg into the trolley indiscriminately. I followed by her side. A dreary PA announcement played, like so much white noise.
“The other customers are all looking at us,” I said quietly.
She smiled at that. “They’re probably paralysed with fear at the sight of such a fearsome piratess.”
Two women pointed at Annabel and me and whispered to one another, covering their mouths. “Or,” I suggested, “they’re laughing at the guy in his pyjamas standing chained to a guest from a fancy dress party.”
Annabel stopped shovelling potatoes into the trolley. “Is this enough vittles?”
“Excuse me?”
“Food.”
“How big is your fridge?”
“Don’t have one.”
“It’ll do then. Annabel, the checkouts are over there.”
She kept pushing the trolley towards the exit. “I’m a piratess,” she said. “I don’t pay for things.” A burly security guard moved to stop us, but thought twice when Annabel drew her cutlass.
Outside, the terrapin was sitting straddling a dozen parking spaces, and the drudges lowered down a platform from a crane.
Annabel pushed the trolley onto the platform and unfastened my shackle from it.
“Are you letting me go?” I asked.
“Ha! No, I just don’t want you to fall off if the trolley rolls away,” she said, adding: “It’s actually rather dramatic to watch when that happens, and the destructive side of me revels in it a little.”
I nodded silently, and wondered just how often she was successful in her desert fishing.
“Whoops!” Annabel exclaimed, before dropping the chain clumsily.
I got on the platform with her.
She cleared her throat. “That was your cue to run away.”
“Why?” I asked, a little hurt. “Are you bored with me already?”
“No, I’d catch you.”
“I thought as much - so why bother running away at all? Besides, I’m hungry.”
She gestured to the drudges peering over the edge of the ship and the platform began to lift up. “It would’ve been a bit of fun,” she muttered. “You’re a pretty rubbish prisoner.”
“You’re a pretty rubbish piratess. Nice giant terrapin, though.”
“Thanks.”
It was chewing on a nearby bus shelter, twisting the metal framework into a strange, organic shape with its reptilian beak.
“Careful,” Annabel said, putting her arm around my waist and pulling me close. “Don’t fall.”
“You’re subtle, aren’t you?”
She just smiled.
“Why do you want me as your prisoner, anyway?”
“No reason,” she said, giving me a little squeeze. “Why don’t you want to escape?”
“I’m just hungry.”
She lifted her chin, presenting her profile to me proudly. “You know, there’s no shame in having fallen in love with me. When it comes to me and men, it just seems to take the drop of a hat.”
I laughed that suggestion away, feeling strangely awkward as I did so, as if caught in a lie. “There’s no shame either,” I said, “in feeling lonely, with only clockwork for company.”
“Oh, they’re more fun than you’d think,” she answered, as we came level with the deck and its attendant crowd of androgynous brass bodies. “Right, boatswain?”
“This unit has encountered an error,” it said, helping to swing the platform over the ship, “and must be restarted.”
“See?” Annabel continued. “Always making jokes!”
The platform touched down on the deck, and drudges came to secrete away the trolley and its bounty. Annabel led me onto her ship, her arm still around my waist.
I squirmed in her embrace. “You don’t fool me,” I told her firmly, trying not to be unkind. “You’re not dangerous or frightening. And I doubt you’ve ever sunk a ship or duelled at dawn or buried treasure.”
“Nobody would bury treasure,” she retorted. “You spend it. Or invest it in the stock market.” She stopped and turned to face me. “And while we’re at it, you don’t fool me either.”
I laughed. “I’m not trying to.”
She leaned closer, and for a moment I thought she was going to kiss me. I held my breath and didn’t dare move. “I think you are,” she whispered. “So we’ll just carry on not fooling one another, shall we?”
I looked deep into the eyes of the smiley face on her eye patch. “Um, what?”
She laughed and pulled me to her side again. Beneath our feet, the terrapin began to move.
“Where are we going?” I asked her. “I mean, where are you going, even though I will reluctantly accompany you there?”
“Off to find further adventures and plunder, I think,” she said. “To woo you with the riches of the world and my own courageous feats.”
“Well,” I mused, “I have some things to do which are better than being wooed by a one-eyed, cutlass-wielding woman with her own giant terrapin, but I’ll put them on hold. Speaking of the eye, wasn’t the patch on the other one earlier?”
“Of course it was. If I left it on the same one all the time, I’d probably go blind in that eye or something.”
“Oh, right. I guess that makes sense.”
She just shrugged and smiled.
She took my hand and lead. I followed.
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