She met him at his office the following week.

She wore a light blue dress, nearly pastel, which closed around her knees conservatively. Professional attire, he thought, meant to convey her expectations of the afternoon.

As they walked together across the campus from his office to the Cognitive Sciences building several students and faculty members stopped to stare at them, at her specifically, but no one said anything derogatory. She seemed not to care if they stared. The trees were beginning to bud after a particularly cold winter; walking through the campus reminded him of better times, when they were very much in love, when they made love and then afterward lay in each other’s arms laughing together, gossiping about the other faculty members, discussing their research. He couldn’t remember the last time they were physically intimate. Their lack of physical contact seemed as symptomatic of the gulf between them as their lack of intellectual intimacy.

They found Dr. Frances Ellerbe waiting for them in a large office furnished with comfortable chairs and lit by sunlight falling through a large bay window. She’d carpeted the floor in a deep cornflower shag, and full spectrum lighting from above erased any shadows from hidden places. It was a warm, welcoming environment, evidently designed to put its occupants at ease.

Ellerbe, short, overweight, in her late fifties, greeted them at the door, smiling radiantly, a modern matron in a lab coat and black leather shoes. Her manner was convivial, though Loueve knew she possessed high intelligence and acute perceptual abilities. More than once he’d witnessed her turning university officials in psychic circles, though her ability to manipulate administrative personnel wasn’t the basis for his respect for her. She understood human motivation better than anyone he knew, better than himself, but she was a rationalist, too, and had a gift for clarifying people’s beliefs in reasonable terms. Perhaps that was why Marie was hesitant to use her as a counselor; but the hope that Ellerbe could help his wife understand her own motivations was the reason Loueve had sought her out.

Ellerbe sat them in the chairs, insisting they remain apart, while she sat in her own chair equidistant from the two.

“We are equals in this room,” she said through a very faint British accent. She laid a notebook on her lap and pulled a pen from the pocket of her coat. “Let us remember that in whatever we say. We are three human beings exercising the purposes of our lives. Let us respect that quality in each other, yes?”

Loueve nodded, and then Marie, though her expression betrayed her trepidation.

Ellerbe adjusted her reading glasses, fixing her gaze on Marie, then said, “Paul has given me an idea of the events that have transpired over the last few months, since your hospitalization, Marie. I’d like to review these events briefly before proceeding. Would that be all right with you?”

“I suppose so,” Marie said.

“I know this may be painful for you. But you’re in a caring place. And I know Paul cares for you, too.”

Marie nodded noncommittally. Loueve couldn’t help but feel the distance between them.

“The difficulties between you began after you lost your child,” Ellerbe said. “You also came close to dying. Is that true?”

“Yes,” Marie said, staring only at Dr. Ellerbe. “I suffered a condition called placenta previa. It was diagnosed early in my pregnancy. My doctor warned me of the possible effects it could have on my pregnancy and my health.”

“Were you given the option of terminating the pregnancy?”

“Yes, I was. I refused. I understood the risks and accepted them.”

“But Paul wanted you to terminate the pregnancy because he was afraid of losing you.”

Marie smiled briefly, shook her head. “He never wanted a child in the first place.”

“I wanted the child for your sake,” Loueve said, “but not if it meant your life—”

“No, Paul,” Ellerbe said sternly, “you must let her speak. Her experience is just as valid as your own, more so if it pertains to her body. Go on, Marie, please.”

“What’s the point?” Marie said. “What does any of this matter now?”

“It does matter,” Ellerbe said. “Everything that happens to affect our lives matters, in large and small ways. If your health issues were the central event that began your marital difficulties, then we would be remiss if we avoided discussing them. Please, continue.”

Marie rubbed her temples for a moment, then nodded. “I knew the risks to my health, and I still decided I wanted to try to keep the baby. I took that chance, and perhaps it was ill-advised to do so, but I did and I lost the baby and I also almost died. And if I had the choice to make over again I’d make the same choice, because I wanted my child. I wanted my daughter.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Marie. Losing a child is one of the most painful emotional experiences we can have. Your decision was a brave one.”

“I lost my daughter, Dr. Ellerbe. When you lose something precious, there is no rationalizing the loss. And sometimes the loss runs much deeper.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t Paul tell you? I not only lost my child, but I also lost any hope of having any more children.”

“No, I didn’t tell her,” Loueve said. “I should have, but I thought it was only an extension of the medical issues.”

Marie nearly laughed, but the subject seemed too painful to allow any humor to invade her mood.

“Paul never understood how important it was for me to have children,” she said. “Or at least one child. My husband’s focus is extraordinary where it’s applied, but in other areas of life he’s remarkably blind. He never realized how much it meant for me to have a child, he ascribed it to hormones or cultural influence or some other nonessential human function. He never realized that life itself creates these desires in us.”

“I’m sorry if I made you feel that way,” he said sincerely. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

“You’re a brilliant man, Paul,” she said, “but you’re profoundly insecure. You’re afraid of anything changing in your life. You don’t realize that human desire changes as much as physical matter. Nothing ever stays the same. We create the changes, we decide how our lives will evolve, and the beauty we’ll create.”

“Was this important to your view of bearing children, Marie?” Ellerbe asked. “Did you feel you were creating something beautiful?”

Marie nodded, staring down at her hands.

“All physicists feel that way,” she said, “mathematicians, too. They just don’t realize that what they’re pursuing is truth and beauty.”

She raised her head and glanced briefly at Loueve before continuing.

“We’re not people who want to discover the reasons behind existence. We’re people who love creating beautiful pictures out of numbers and equations, lovely paradigms that are our imaginative currency. Physicists create beautiful intellectual structures out of pure thought, and call these creations theorems and formulae. Algorithms and paradigms are my husband’s children, Dr. Ellerbe. They were my children, too, until I realized I wanted to manifest that same beauty from my body instead of my mind.”

“But after your recovery you didn’t go back to academic research, did you?” Ellerbe said. “At least, not the same research as before?”

“That’s true.”

“Your focus changed to something new, didn’t it?”

“Yes, something very new.”

“And has this shift in focus caused difficulties in your marriage?”

“Not in my mind,” Marie said definitively. “Only in my husband’s.”

Loueve opened his mouth to comment on this, but Ellerbe silenced him with a wave of her hand.

She said, “But do you understand that a sudden shift in your focus, professional or otherwise, could cause the people in your life to feel as if you were turning away from them? From the lives you’ve shared?”

“I understand that, yes.”

“Paul also told me that after your recovery you began pursuing philosophical subjects over scientific ones.”

“Not precisely,” Marie said. “Paul claims to have read my essays on the matter, but he must be intentionally ignoring my conclusions if he believes my work—my new work—is anything but scientific.”

“And yet you use words like ‘God’ and ‘spiritual’ in your writings, don’t you?”

Marie smiled, perhaps realizing that Dr. Ellerbe had done some research of her own.

“Yes, but in truth, only as a metaphor for an experience of existence that defies scientific classification. People understand concepts like ‘God’ and ‘spirit’ much better than they understand quantum mechanics and singularities. That’s because human beings, all human beings, and perhaps all intelligent beings in the universe, have to define universal relationships in graspable terms. My work has begun in metaphors, but I believe it will conclude in tangible equations.”

“Philosophy and science simply don’t mix,” Loueve said, offended by the thought. “You know this, Marie. How can you possibly pursue something so intellectually fragile?”

“Again,” Marie said, “my husband’s grasp of the spiritual is nonexistent. He refuses to try to see my argument from a different point of view.”

“I certainly have a different point of view,” Dr. Ellerbe said. “Can you explain your shift of focus to me? I’d really love to hear it.”

“You don’t have to condescend to me.”

“I’m not judging you. I’m only here to try to understand your perspective. You’re here to be heard and, if it’s possible, understood by Paul and myself. We become defensive about the events in our lives when others fail to properly understand our motivations. In a personal relationship this is particularly true. Please, tell me.”

Marie shifted in her chair a moment, glancing back and forth between Loueve and Ellerbe, before deciding to speak again.

“After I lost the baby,” she said, “while I lay in that damned hospital bed staring at the ceiling and wishing I had died, too, I had a great deal of time to think about my life, my studies, my work. And I realized that it all really amounted to nothing, that in a fixed number of years I would die, disassemble, and throw my molecules back into the universal cauldron. Yes, I was depressed, because I’d just lost my baby, but that was only the beginning of it. My research focused on the physical mechanics of the universe, the why of energetic states, and even in the best of worlds I would only arrive at a mechanical understanding of creation.

“But then I realized that every intellectual construct of creation over time had been an attempt to do the same, only in poetic terms instead of mathematical ones. The loss I felt, and the loss I felt to any connection with life, couldn’t be explained in numbers. That’s when I realized that people didn’t need the numbers, they needed the poetry. I needed the poetry. But I couldn’t in good conscience use the same metaphors in ancient or modern religions, since I don’t believe in the absolute quality of any religion. My models existed in pure science, and so my terms had to be as general as possible. I use terms like ‘God’ and ‘spirit’ to describe intangible states of existence. That God is the universal state, and that as a part of that state we are also God. And every expression we offer the universe in which we live is a spiritual expression of existence. My contention is simple—that science and religion are actually identical expressions, one framed in metaphors and one in numbers. In this way our existence has meaning, our science has meaning, and will continue to have meaning in whatever human beings do.”

“Expressions,” Ellerbe said, “like creating theories, and bearing children?”

Marie nodded. Loueve thought she might actually be blushing, though he may have been mistaken. He’d heard this explanation before, of course, but still couldn’t reconcile it with his own beliefs. Why would she come to believe such a thing?

“People seem to respond to this understanding of existence positively,” Marie said. “Possibly because my theories free people’s minds from religious convention, the specifics of a belief in God. And it allows those with a scientific mind to find spiritual connections to inchoate reality. The great divide between science and religion has always been the question of a personal god or gods, an overseer who controls creation. Assigning that role to the whole of the universe, and to ourselves as a part of it, gives us a new understanding of existence, and the opportunity to define our own purpose, now and in the future.”

“It’s an attractive proposition for people who find science sterile and self-effacing,” Ellerbe said. “Is that why you’ve felt the need to publicize your beliefs? To speak on the subject?”

“I suppose so.”

“And this is causing problems in your relationship with Paul?”

“If it is a problem for Paul. He thinks I’m proselytizing to fools, and I don’t. He wants our lives to return to the way they were before. But people change. My hope is that he would support those changes in me, but I think that may be asking too much of him.”

“I can’t believe in something I think is misguided,” Loueve said.

“I’m not asking you to,” she said, meeting his gaze briefly. “I’m asking you to respect my beliefs, to support my work.”

But Loueve didn’t believe in her work. In fact, he despised it in the same way Voltaire despised the effects of superstition on unenlightened minds. If he could only —

“Marie, I have read a couple of your essays,” Ellerbe said, “and I wanted to ask you to explain something to me.”

“Yes?”

“Your concept of ‘contraction’ as it relates to universal creation.”

“It’s a fairly simple concept,” Marie said, sitting up in her chair. “We begin from nothing, that is, the God that we know suddenly appears in a grand explosion of matter — the Big Bang, if you will — and for a long, long time this self-knowing God manifests Himself in a trillion different expressions of energetic states, in stars and planets, black holes and galaxies, and in intelligent beings. Then, after billions of years, this matter that is the body of God contracts again into itself, joining every beautiful expression to that singularity that is nothingness. This is the creation metaphor that our ancestors struggled to define. People have asked all through history, ‘what is the meaning of life’? That is the meaning. We are the meaning, and how we express ourselves in the time of our existence is the beautiful expression we achieve.”

“In a flower, or in a child?”

“Yes.”

“Or even in mathematical formulae?”

“Formulae, too. Everything, every part of creation.”

“We are all part of the same Godhead, so to speak.”

“Yes, essentially. You see, scientists search for the mechanics of existence, but only knowing the mechanics leaves purpose behind. There is purpose in this universe, in life, too, no matter how briefly expressed. Time doesn’t exist, only expressions of matter. Our consciousness allows us to control those expressions, though, and that is the meaning of our lives. The concept of reincarnation is only a metaphor for the renewing of energetic expressions over and over again, until all matter falls back into itself, all expressions become one, and we are all joined together again.”

“There is no loss,” Ellerbe said, “no death?”

“No,” Marie said. “Even Paul would have to admit that entropy holds sway over every atom. And once every atom is consigned again to that state of null existence, there is no more death, no thought, no pain.”

“No sense of loss?”

Marie smiled. “All things are returned to a nascent state, which is complete and utter silence.”

“All peoples from all times will be joined together in that silence as well, yes? We will all meet again in that one expression of existence?”

“Yes.”

“It is a comforting thought,” Ellerbe said, “that we never really lose anyone we’ve loved in this life.”

Marie lowered her head, nodding.

Ellerbe turned to gaze at Loueve. “What do you think of this concept of existence, Paul?”

Loueve, certain of his estimation of his wife’s philosophical endeavors, was hesitant to attack Marie’s beliefs. He recognized exactly what Dr. Ellerbe was trying to elicit from his wife, and the pain he felt for her refused to allow him unrestrained debate.

He said, carefully, “I believe Marie’s ideas are an emotional response to a difficult event. She was always certain of her research, always steadfast in her approach to academic studies, perhaps even more so than I. She has a brilliant mind, too brilliant to be wasting on philosophy. It’s an emotional compensation for a painful loss.”

“It’s not compensation,” Marie said as she raised her head and stared at her husband. “You think that because I lost my child I also lost my professional acumen, but you’re wrong. The pain I felt was only the precipitating event that caused me to look deeper at my life, at everyone’s lives, to find deeper meaning. Publishing papers and drafting theories is only a part of life, it’s not life itself.”

“So my life is shallow? My research? My purpose?”

“My focus has evolved away from pure research. I have no problem accepting the implications. You, however, seem to think I’ve lost my mind. Isn’t that true?”

“Let’s be careful,” Ellerbe said. “It’s too easy to react emotionally to beliefs that affect us on a deeply subjective level.”

“Marie, I don’t believe you’ve lost your mind,” he said, “but I do believe you’re compensating for your loss by creating and reinforcing the idea that nothing ever dies and we’ll all be joined together at the end of time. And that’s simply not realistic. That’s not science, that’s mysticism.”

“It’s no more mysticism,” his wife said, “than belonging to a cult of numbers. Can you find meaning, real meaning in a mathematical expression? Or is that simply another way to shield yourself from the impact of reality?”

“That’s a harsh judgment,” Ellerbe said. “Perhaps —”

“Let her finish,” Loueve said, “I’d like to hear what she has to say.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Marie said. “You don’t care to hear anything that even remotely contradicts your narrow beliefs about existence. Going beyond a classroom or laboratory would mean that you’d have to actually confront life rather than only theorize about it. I refuse to do that any longer.”

“I’m not disengaged from life.”

“Nor am I. But you seem to have great difficulty accepting me for who I am now. Did you only love me because I was a reflection of yourself?”

“Of course not. I’ve loved you for who you are. I always have.”

“Do you love me for who I am now?”

Loueve didn’t answer immediately; he felt both Marie and Ellerbe watching him expectantly, but he was mindful enough not to say anything emotionally charged.

After a moment, he said, “I love you for who you are, for who you’ve always been. But I don’t think you’re really the person you say you’ve become. I think the person you’ve always been is hiding behind a facade to keep the pain away. I believe if you accepted the pain, accepted the loss you would lose the facade and become who you’ve always been.”

Marie nodded.

“I told you this would be a useless gesture,” she said. “If you believe that I haven’t sincerely changed then we have nothing further to discuss.”

“Paul,” Ellerbe said, leaning forward, “isn’t it just as possible that you refuse to acknowledge these changes in Marie because you’re afraid of confronting a very real change in your wife? How do you know her beliefs aren’t sincere?”

“The circumstances tell me what I need to know,” he said. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“But even if that’s true, and I’m not certain it is, are you prepared to accept Marie for what she says she now believes? Many couples, after all, have different philosophical or religious beliefs, and they actually thrive in their relationships. Believing the exact same things is no prerequisite for a successful marriage.”

Marie stared at him, waiting for his response.

“You don’t seem to understand the gravity of the matter,” he said. “I’m a respected faculty member. Marie was, too, until recently. These people I work with don’t consider her current pursuits a matter of ‘differing beliefs’, they consider it an affront to the rational. And they’ve let me know it. And these people she’s associating with—they’re no more than anti-intellectual dogmatists, they’re not philosophers.”

“I think you have your answer,” Marie said. “His reputation is more important than our marriage. And I’m an embarrassment to him. What will they say at the next faculty coffee?”

“That’s not fair.”

“Without compromise,” Ellerbe said, “you will only drift further apart. Marie, do you believe your marriage can survive these changes?”

“I don’t know,” Marie said.

“Paul?”

He said, “I want our marriage to survive.”

“But under what circumstances?” Ellerbe asked. “Will you love your wife unconditionally? And she you?”

Loueve didn’t know what to say. He felt entirely cheated by the affair, placed in an unwinnable situation created by the death of a child he never wanted in the first place.

“Your baby is not coming back to you, Marie,” he said; he knew he was saying something potentially fatal to their relationship, but he couldn’t suppress his feelings any longer. “No matter what nonsense you create in your mind. You can’t change reality with words.”

“Is our daughter now Einstein’s child? If her spirit follows curved space long enough it will return to me? After a billion years? Ten billion? Is that what you think my theories are all about? I know why you didn’t want a child, Paul — you’re so damned afraid of change, of any disturbance in your small view of life that you’d rather abort our daughter than accept the risks inherent in bringing something beautiful into the world. You hide behind science, you don’t use it to explore life. That’s why you can’t accept my work.”

Dr. Ellerbe said nothing. Loueve only watched as tears filled his wife’s eyes. If either Marie or Ellerbe were waiting for his response, he had none to give. Her irrationality was the impediment to their reconciliation, not his belief in a life built on reason and science. She was haunted by ghosts, not inspired by reality. Sanctifying neuroses didn’t make them any more rational.

“I believe every question has been answered,” Marie said, rising from her chair. “There’s nothing left of this marriage but the past.”

He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. Stating the obvious had not affected her perspective in the least. All he had at his disposal was a logical argument.

Loueve watched his wife move through the warm, beautiful office, open the door and leave.

The silence in the room pulsed through every nerve in his body.

After a moment Loueve said to Ellerbe, “What can I possibly do to change her mind?”

Dr. Ellerbe, sitting back in her chair and glancing at her notes, only shook her head. She met Loueve’s gaze steadily.

“I don’t believe you can,” she said. “Are you prepared to change your beliefs? Are you prepared to live with a different point of view?”

“How can I possibly do that? Her rhetoric is completely irrational.”

“Perhaps the only way to save your relationship is for you to accept her beliefs and support her, no matter how irrational you believe them to be. If you can’t do that, Paul, you may just have to accept that your marriage won’t survive.”

“I’m right, Dr. Ellerbe. She’s wrong, dead wrong. Why should I have to accept her ridiculous theories?”

“How do you know you’re right, and she’s wrong? Can you know something like that without testing it, first?”

He smiled sardonically.

“I don’t have to test her theories empirically to know they’re nonsense,” he said. “Anyway, how could you possibly prove something like that scientifically?”

“That may be the point.”

Loueve sighed, wondering if he’d played his last gambit in the matter. But after a moment’s thought he believed he found a legitimate flaw in Marie’s argument. If he could only speak to her once more, preferably away from everyone else, counselors as well as sycophants, he might yet be able to convince her to change her mind. Perhaps the shock of releasing all her unspoken grief that afternoon had prepared her to assume a more thoughtful attitude. It was possible. Unlike Marie, he wasn’t prepared to surrender his marriage.

He didn’t tell this to Dr. Ellerbe, since she might try to discourage him, and he needed no more impediments in his life.

#

iii)

By the time Loueve returned to their apartment she’d gone.

She left a brief note telling him they would finalize their separation after her speaking tour had concluded. The finality of the communication saddened him, but also fortified his resolve.

He tried calling her after he thought the emotional impact of their session had subsided, but she wouldn’t return his calls. She hadn’t given him her schedule, and certainly none of her handlers would oblige him. He felt a growing desperation, an impending sense of inevitability, but he remained rational and told himself that she only needed enough distance from recent events.

After a few days, though, determined research on his office computer uncovered the announcement for her speaking engagement at a hotel near UCLA. After copying down the details, he packed a bag and bought a plane ticket for California.

Loueve knew her people wouldn’t allow him to see her if that was her wish. Apparently that was precisely the case, because when he appeared in the hotel lobby and requested to speak to her from the courtesy phone, Gloria curtly told him that Marie wouldn’t see him under any circumstances. And when he ignored this rebuff, rode the elevator, and knocked fiercely on her door, he was interrupted by the hotel’s security personnel who demanded he leave the building.

He was never a violent man; passionate, certainly, but never violent. If they meant to keep him away from his wife, he could only bide his time and wait for an opportunity to speak to her.

She finally responded to his repeated telephone calls, and he spoke eloquently enough to convince her to meet him again. Her speech was scheduled for seven the next evening, but if he could meet her before then in the observation garden on the roof of the hotel they could speak privately for a few minutes. He cradled the hotel telephone, glanced nervously at his watch and began rehearsing what he would say to her, over and over again, like a desperate prayer.

#

At six o’clock he walked into her hotel and rode the elevator to the observation level. He found a seat in a secluded corner and waited as he stared out over the dry, hazy skyline of the city.

As he sat in shadows, suddenly aware of the gravity of his position, he thought of their life together, and the memories they shared. She hadn’t lied to Dr. Ellerbe. She’d remarked to him many times, even before her pregnancy, that she thought scientists must find a more meaningful conduit for their work than a simple reporting of facts. Those facts had to be collated, analyzed and interpreted in meaningful ways. But he believed she’d meant only in the sense of practical human applications, never as a substitute for religious convention.

She was also correct in her analysis of his personality. He was protective of his academic identity, but not because he was fearful of ridicule. His defense of pure science arose from his belief that superstition would be the ruin of the world, and if quasi-scientific proposals were ever mistaken for pure science then mysticism would continue to inform humanity, and no doubt carry it to extinction. After living with him and working with him for so many years, how could she not understand this?

It wasn’t just a matter of subjective belief against objective observation; it was a matter for future generations embracing actual science or mystical associations.

As seven o’clock neared, he felt he’d miscalculated her intentions, and that she wouldn’t come up to the garden. If so, then he would have to try to confront her at another venue, at another time.

But just as he was thinking of leaving, Marie walked into the garden from the elevator.

She was alone, and paced to the edge of the observation platform overlooking the city. He waited a moment, enjoying the sight of her in a beautiful black dress, almost regretting the interrupting of her reverie because of the reaction she might offer. But he rose from the shadows and walked toward her.

“Hello, Marie.”

She turned suddenly, recognized him, then relaxed.

“Paul,” she said, “you’re only wasting your time. There’s nothing left to talk about.”

“I’m your husband, Marie,” he said, stopping a respectable distance from her. “We should be able to talk to each other. We’re not divorced yet.”

“Isn’t that only a formality? We seem to have nothing in common anymore.”

“We’re not so far apart, you know.”

“It’s a nice sentiment, but it’s not realistic. If you can’t accept the differences in our beliefs, if you can’t support me, then we have nothing left to share.”

“But your beliefs are wrong, Marie, and I can prove it.”

She smiled, a lovely, painful smile.

“You refuse to surrender the debate, don’t you?” she said. “Paul, nothing you say will change my mind.”

“You’re a trained physicist,” he said, “and you know the limits of what you’re proposing. So you must also know that the idea of universal contraction is considered implausible, given the observational data. The expanding universe will not slow and then contract again into a singularity. Matter will continue moving apart, all matter, every energetic particle will eventually be isolated from every other particle. Contraction will never happen, the data don’t support the theory anymore. Why torture yourself with a metaphor that is unprovable?”

“We still don’t know if universal expansion is infinite. The data are still in question.”

“No. That metaphor is based on an erroneous assumption, incomplete observational data. There’ll be no contraction, no coming together of energetic states, no return to silence. The silence that occurs will come from an extreme isolation of particles, not from a joining of energetic states. You must know this in your heart. The child that you lost, the child that we lost is gone forever, and as comforting as it may be to believe you’ll be rejoined with her it’s simply not true.”

“And if contraction is ultimately proven legitimate? Will you change your mind and acknowledge the validity of my beliefs?”

“It won’t be.”

She nodded. “It may just take a lifetime of study to prove it one way or the other then, won’t it? Perhaps that’s something a physicist will determine one day.”

“Marie, you lost the baby, but are you also going to lose your career? And your husband?”

She laughed softly, and he didn’t know why she was laughing.

“You still think it’s about losing the baby, don’t you?” she said. “But I told you before, that was just the precipitating event that led me onto a different intellectual path. Don’t you see what’s happening?”

“I see my wife throwing her career away for a tragic form of psychological comfort.”

“That’s not it at all. You have a keen awareness of things, Paul, so you shouldn’t play at being obtuse. I’m not losing a career in the sciences, I’m expanding it.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? Is it ridiculous to use science and philosophy together to enlighten people about the value of their lives? Are you blind to the effects of my work? I have thousands of people coming to my lectures, reading my papers, listening to what I have to say.”

“What is it that you have to offer them, Marie? Where’s the actual science in it?”

“Science is as mutable as human belief. But they can evolve together, and if my concepts eventually take the place of conventional religious doctrine, then so much the better. People can keep their humanity and also their spirits. And science. Yes, I understand it’s a risk combining the two, and if the science changes then the philosophy must change as well. But is that so wrong, Paul? Isn’t that what science is all about anyway?”

“Science is all about learning the truth of the nature of things. There is no interpretation, there is no explanation for creation, except one that is entirely imaginative. Joining science and religion is impossible, because religions confuse their metaphors for truth. Newtonian physics, that’s truth. A body in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by another force — that’s reality. We’re all moving apart, unless we act to stay together —”

“By a common gravity?”

He nodded, exasperated by the argument.

“Yes,” he said. “A common gravity.”

“But if we share no common gravity,” she said, moving forward and placing her hand on his chest, “then how are we supposed to remain together, Paul?”

He placed his hand over hers. Her touch allowed him to realize exactly what he was losing, and he felt that loss constrict his throat.

“I love you, Marie,” he said, trying to keep from losing his composure, trying to prevent a fall of tears. He simply didn’t know what else to say. “I don’t want to lose you. Please.”

“You can’t keep everything you love forever,” she said, and she had no difficulty letting the tears fall from her face. “Sometimes there’s just not enough gravity to keep things together.”

“I can’t lose you.”

“Then come with me and help me with my work.”

“I don’t know that I can.”

“Isn’t love enough?”

He couldn’t answer. He simply didn’t know what to say.

She held his gaze for a moment, and in her eyes he recognized the love they’d shared for so many years, though her tears also told him she was strong enough to endure another painful loss.

“I have a speech to give,” she said, patting his chest, and then moving away from him. “I’d like you to come down and listen to it with an open mind. Then decide once and for all.”

She walked back to the elevator while he stood rubbing his palm over his forehead, and then she was gone. He dried his eyes on his sleeve and turned away from the garden, incapable of making any more arguments.

#

Loueve stood by one of the doors of the ballroom in which she was scheduled to speak. People filled the seats, while others who hadn’t been fortunate enough to find a seat stood against the walls anticipating her arrival. Who were these people? They were all ages, some vibrant, some somber; perhaps some were university students, perhaps even physics majors from the local universities.

He remained by the door in shadows, trying to remain inconspicuous, though it was unlikely anyone would recognize him. Marie had been interviewed by the local media, Marie had been the subject of countless reviews, Marie had been the face of this new perception toward ‘science’.

Loueve was just another face in the crowd.

Was it possible that she was correct in her assessment of the impact of her philosophies? That she would have more of an influence in the world, in peoples’ lives, than he ever would? Was he entirely mistaken about her motives, and the sincerity of her work?

She was a brilliant woman, after all, and quite capable of forging a new path in science that he was incapable of perceiving from his present view, a syncretism of science and philosophy. Or perhaps she was entirely wrong, her emotional collapse responsible for her abandonment of meaningful science.

If he kept his science, then he would lose her, and if he kept her, then he would surely lose his science.

He loved her, would always love her, but didn’t know if that would be enough. He hoped, as deeply as any man could hope, that what she said tonight would set his mind one way or the other.

A booming voice announced Marie’s arrival to the podium, and as she walked across the room the air roared with applause. Smiling radiantly, she stood before her audience and waited for the applause to subside. She gazed from one side of the large room to the other, but he didn’t know if she recognized him standing by the door.

“I’m here with you tonight,” she said, and Loueve knew that she had found him in the audience and was staring directly at him, “to speak to you on a matter of faith.”

In a moment of insight, as he stood in shadows listening to the brilliant woman who was his wife, he realized that perhaps there was something of genius in what she said, and in the way she said it, if the majority of humanity could be moved from a superstitious world into a more enlightened gravity.

If he, himself, could move –

Lawrence Buentello is an American writer and poet born, raised, and living in San Antonio, Texas. He has published over 130 science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mainstream short stories in numerous magazines and anthologies. He has won several competitions for his fiction and poetry and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Edgar Award. His fiction can also be found in several collections of short stories.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build new fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind.

John Keats: Ode to Psyche

i)

Why had she changed? It made no sense, and after all this time he still didn’t know.

Paul Loueve felt the anger rising in his mind and silenced his thoughts before his emotions overwhelmed him, breathing deeply and closing his eyes against the sight of her standing at the podium preparing to speak. He’d refused to sit in the audience, her audience, with its zealous overtones and sycophantic participants. He’d chosen instead to stand on the side of the stage, hidden from those people he despised for what they’d taken from him.

When the applause waned, he opened his eyes again and studied her on the stage, her thin, graceful body poised over the lectern with the posture of a professional lecturer, her eyes gazing down on the notes before her. He still loved her, deeply, and with an understanding of the distance between them. Not here on the stage, but now in life, a life that had become a source of abiding frustration for him.

“In my life as a scientist,” Marie Loueve began, her voice rising through the auditorium, “I have been exposed to many points of view, some strictly materialistic, some profoundly spiritual. My own viewpoint, too, has fluctuated, from the strictly atheistic to the profoundly spiritual. But now I feel I’ve reconciled these differences in a very real understanding of creation and spirituality.”

Loueve had always loved his wife’s voice. She wasn’t physically beautiful; it was her voice that first attracted him, a soft, inviting voice that made any conversation a sensual experience. When they first began seeing one another, he intentionally encouraged their debates just so she would keep speaking to him in that wonderful voice. Hearing her offer that aural gift to others seemed like a stolen experience.

“I’ve come to share this viewpoint with you tonight,” she continued, “and to explore that reconciliation so many of my former colleagues have condemned. I only ask that you listen with an open mind, and an open heart. The universe is neither completely objective nor arbitrarily supernatural, but something of both, functioning together in the measurable existence we all share.”

They’d argued before she left on this first leg of her speaking tour, something they seldom did before her illness. So much had changed in the year since her recovery, destroying, it seemed, all the amity they had created in seven years of marriage—

#

“You can’t go through with this ridiculous tour,” he’d told her in their apartment in Cambridge. He’d lost every measure of sympathy for her. His anger, something rarely manifested, felt barely controlled beneath his voice. “How could you possibly go along with these people?”

She’d turned from the large window of the living room, the strain of her decision hardening her expression. She only shook her head, though, and refused to engage him in a debate. He wanted that, and she knew it; if he could manipulate her into offering him a logical assessment of her rhetoric she might be forced to change her mind. But she wouldn’t argue.

Instead she said, “My appearances are already booked. And there’s nothing wrong with the people supporting me. They see something meaningful in what I’m saying. I wish you’d support me in my beliefs, too.”

“These people don’t support you, they idolize you for giving them an excuse to be irrational. Who are they, anyway?”

“They’re my friends.”

“Your friends. Yes, I’ll just bet they’re your friends.”

“They’re people who respond to my work, Paul.”

“Your work is in a laboratory, in front of a classroom, not in front of New Age dreamers.”

“You’re pretty judgmental for a man who’s worked in a theoretical realm half your life. What right do you have to judge me?”

He rubbed his mouth with his fingers, a tic he always indulged while forming an argument. She seemed to notice this and smiled almost helplessly.

“You’re so predictable,” she said, still smiling. “Everything in your life is an equation to be solved. But life isn’t an equation. It’s an experience.”

“Sometimes it’s only a subjective experience,” he said, moving closer to her. The world beyond the window focused into a busy city landscape, full of buildings and people with beliefs, erroneous, mundane beliefs. If he could only wave his hand and dispel all the irrationality in the world— “You have a logical mind, Marie. Surely you see this is only a distraction.”

Her smile faded. She held her hands before her self-consciously.

“No matter how logical the mind,” she said softly, “no mind can know absolute reality. We only play at knowing the true state of existence. Why are my cosmological paradigms any less valid than yours? Or anyone else’s, for that matter?”

“Your cosmological paradigms are based on an emotional perception of the universe instead of an objective one. When our emotions direct our beliefs in the face of scientific evidence we lose our objectivity. We offer emotional reasons for the existence of phenomena instead of material ones. Now, you know that. You’ve taught that, too. How can you suddenly turn your back on what you’ve always believed?”

“People evolve their thinking. Haven’t you read my essays, Paul? It’s all there, if you’d care to read them.”

“I’ve read them, Marie.”

“And you still have no feeling for the truth they contain?”

“A metaphor is not science.”

“Metaphors help explain science. Most people could never know those theories expressed mathematically.”

“Most people are undereducated idiots. Mathematics creates an objective framework for meaningful scientific beliefs.”

“Metaphors were vital to Einstein’s work. He first found the metaphor to explain phenomena, and then proved the metaphors mathematically. That’s what I intend to do.”

Share

“Then you’re planning to do the impossible.”

She wouldn’t be swayed by anything he said. When a logical attack of her theories failed to move her, he complained of the ridicule he’d had to endure from his colleagues at the university; when this failed, he emphasized the strain her actions were having on their marriage; and when this, too, proved futile, he decided to say what he’d wanted to say, what he should have been saying since the inception of her ‘theories’, but had refrained from saying because of a regard for her feelings.

But she wouldn’t engage his arguments concerning trauma or grief. In tears, she left him and walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind her. He didn’t follow. He knew that nothing he said could penetrate the shield of her emotions. No logical argument would ever do that. He sat staring from the living room window contemplating the torn fabric of his marriage, incapable of finding the right words to mend it.

The next day she left on her speaking tour, and he returned to his research, the question of their marriage still waiting to be answered.

Until he decided to join her in Philadelphia, unable to bear the weight of that question any longer.

#

Loueve realized that he hadn’t been listening, and only rejoined her lecture as she was framing her central thesis.

“If the universe, or the sum total of creation,” she said, gazing from her notes to her audience, “is what we know as God, then God is the sum total of every energetic state within it. Therefore, whenever we are observing the universe we are also observing God. But more than this, since we are a part of universal creation, we are also part of God, and all our thoughts of God are simply God manifesting expressions of himself. Because of this, we are God, exploring every metaphoric expression we offer. We are, even as individuals, God expressing facets of himself, expressly in the ways we choose, which may be cruel or merciful, hateful or loving.”

Too many paradoxes, my love, he thought, shaking his head at the applause echoing through the auditorium. The best of all agnostic worlds, dressed in the guise of science. Yes, he had read her essays, and knew the substance of her argument, her special cosmology. Despite her enthusiasm, he simply couldn’t understand how she could abandon rational science for mysticism.

Or perhaps he only refused to understand. He wanted to resume the lives they had been living; he wanted them to once again share the things they had been sharing, but he didn’t know if these things were possible.

Loueve listened to the rest of her speech, hating every word of it, until the question and answer session began. When the members of the audience began defining their own special brand of ignorance, he had to turn away.

#

His love for her was never in question. They met as graduate students working in the same department under different professors, but after their first few quiet moments together only their unique responsibilities kept them apart. When they did meet he would discuss his research, and she hers; but they were happiest when, after they received their doctorates, they were finally able to discuss the studies they conducted together. The university simply had to hire both, or else they would have gone elsewhere. But working together was only a pretext for being together. Paul had been an intensely focused child, and then a purposeful young man. Marie had always been the brightest and most imaginative student at every level of her education. What they shared, and perhaps what attracted them initially and kept them together, was a similar intellectual insulation from the world, manifested in papers and lectures, first on quantum mechanics and then on creation theory. They both held that academic mantle before themselves, exalting in its unique perspective. Their love was for one another, and also for those things in life they both held sacred. She with a sad, secret smile as she contemplated new theories, and he in a bombastic oratory as he explicated one formula after another. But both their theories and formulae were firmly grounded in rational science, and in a reverence for naturalism that took the place of any spiritual channel.

Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, these were the icons that gave meaning to their world, not the prophets and deities of the world’s religions. People, the world, the entire universe at once became an equinamous proposition, differentiated by manifestations of energy. Philosophy was a pastime for social apologists; science was an art for the understanding of universal existence.

Loueve, then, was very much surprised when Marie told him five years into their marriage that she wanted a child.

He argued against the idea, claiming the addition of children would only impede their work. Why in the world did she suddenly want a child, anyway?

It’s irrational, she responded, and it would interfere with our work, but not fatally.

But why a child?

She couldn’t give him any better reason except that a child would represent an expression of their love for one another. There was nothing reasonable in this for him—he didn’t want children, he’d never wanted children. And now she was presenting him with an insupportable desire. But she persisted, and he relented, because it was important to her, despite his feelings on the matter.

Her pregnancy was difficult from the beginning. He panicked, because he translated the doctors’ warnings into dismal odds. He pleaded with her to have an abortion in order to save her health, perhaps even her life. It was a logical response to a dangerous medical situation, and he tried to appeal to her sense of the rational—but she wouldn’t abort the child. She said she was willing to risk her health for the opportunity to keep her child, that having children was as natural to human beings as studying nuclear physics, so why should she relent?

Six months into her pregnancy she began hemorrhaging. He waited three days, three long days with her in the Intensive Care Unit, before her doctors were certain enough of her vital signs to declare her condition stable. She survived — their child didn’t, but if he thought her wounds would heal and life would resume its previous dimensions, he was wrong.

Everything changed.

#

He met her after the lecture and convinced her to see the city with him the next day, the Museum of Art, the Franklin Institute, the Longwood Gardens, and for a while they were both able to forget the issue before them. He tried to regain her confidence, which he thought precarious, but he would have to have some measure of her trust before she would agree to his request.

In the meantime they walked the streets of Philadelphia commenting on the architecture, on Franklin’s inventions, on the beautiful weather—anything but the subject on his mind.

When they returned to her hotel room he pressed his advantage, asking her to speak with him on a personal matter. She stared at him dubiously, and reminded him that she had to review her schedule with her assistant.

He persisted, and waited in her room while she spoke to the person who filled the role of ‘assistant’, a middle-aged woman named Gloria who always wore crisp business suits and watched him like a nervous mockingbird watches a hungry dog. He never asked for her last name, since he thought that might assign her some meaning in their lives she didn’t deserve. She raised her graying head from time to time to glance at Loueve where he sat, no doubt contemplating his motives, while Marie spoke quietly and succinctly. His wife hadn’t lost her ability to organize her thoughts efficiently, though now they were centered on speaking dates and local media appearances. Some follower, or perhaps multiple disciples, had encouraged her to bring her message to a wider audience, and in little more than a month she had assembled a team of loyal supporters to help her in this cause. But they were all cast in Gloria’s image, sincere defenders of a system of belief that hadn’t even existed the previous year.

But as he listened to her proposed timeline of speeches he realized he needed to secure some of her time as well, so he rose and interrupted their conversation. Gloria gazed up from the small computer she held on her lap as if he’d offered a profane curse.

“Before you book yourself solid for the next few months,” he said, “I need to ask you for a favor, Marie.”

Marie gazed at him, her mouth open expectantly, before saying, “What sort of favor?”

Loueve glanced at Gloria briefly before saying, “I’d prefer to talk to you about it alone.”

“We’re very busy,” Gloria said, her tone flat, though Loueve could see the resentment in her eyes. Who were these people with which his wife had suddenly surrounded herself? “Don’t you think you’ve already taken up enough of her time?”

“I’m not talking to you,” Loueve said, “I’m talking to my wife.”

“You’re obviously trying to disrupt her schedule. You’ve intruded enough on her work.”

Loueve stepped toward her, and the woman flinched visibly.

“When I want your opinion,” he said, “I’ll ask for it. But it’ll be a cold day in hell before I care what you think.”

“Hell is where you find it, Dr. Loueve. You’d do better to support your wife’s efforts rather than try to sabotage them.”

Before Loueve could respond, Marie stood from her chair and said, “Enough. I don’t need this kind of aggravation from either of you.”

“This is a personal matter,” he said, “and I don’t care to share it with someone you’ve only known for a few weeks.”

“I’ve known Marie long enough to know she’s a brilliant woman,” Gloria said, “and that her beliefs are valid ones. They’re brilliant beliefs, and no matter how much you hate them you’re going to have to accept that they exist.”

Loueve was trapped by his own desires. He couldn’t rebut this ridiculous woman because he didn’t want to upset Marie. Otherwise, he would have shredded her ludicrous suggestion. But there were always enablers for irrational beliefs, always proponents of superstitious definitions of reality.

He turned to his wife, ignoring, for the moment, her vociferous assistant.

“May I speak to you alone?” he said. “Please?”

Marie turned to Gloria, touching her on the shoulder.

“Come back in a few minutes,” she said, “we’ll only be a little while.”

The woman glared at him again, her disgust evident on her full, round face.

“I feel sorry for you, Dr. Loueve,” she said to him as she rose from her chair. “You have no concept of the reach of your wife’s theories. Thousands of people have already found them, and in a few years that number will be in the millions. The world needs her.”

Loueve almost smiled at the statement’s absurdity. This woman made it sound as if his wife were starting a new religion. Such was the nature of the people with whom Marie now associated. This thought only made him angrier, though he had no outlet for his feelings.

When Gloria left the room, Marie said, “You didn’t have to be so vicious with her. She only means the best for me.”

“And I don’t?”

She sighed, then said, “Sit down and tell me about this favor of yours.”

They sat, Loueve feeling strangely uncertain about their physical proximity, while she watched him with quiet brown eyes. He reached over and placed his hand on hers, loving the feel of her skin against his palm.

“Marie,” he said, “we never discussed what happened to you the way we should have.”

“I know,” she said, smiling grimly. “But I never felt ready to do that. I still don’t know if I’m ready.”

“I think we need to face some difficult things. I think we need to talk about what happened, and about what’s happening now.”

“It won’t change anything, Paul.”

“I’m not saying it will. But I think we should discuss things nonetheless. Marie, if you ever loved me, please do this for me.”

“What would you have me do?”

“You know Dr. Ellerbe at the university, don’t you?”

Marie’s eyes widened slightly.

“Yes, we’ve spoken on occasion.”

Dr. Frances Ellerbe, a clinical psychologist and lecturer, as well as a licensed therapist, was someone whose objectivity Loueve respected, and a professional mediator he thought his wife might approve of as well. He’d spoken to Ellerbe before leaving Cambridge for Philadelphia and gotten her conditional acceptance of his request for her to act as their counselor.

“I’d like for us to sit with her together,” Loueve said, “and talk about these things.”

“What things?”

“Everything. Your lectures, our marriage, our problems. And the baby, too.”

He watched her struggle to retain her composure, admiring her strength against the emotional turmoil stoked by the memory.

“I’m not trying to change your mind about anything you’re doing,” he said quickly, and hoped the lie wasn’t evident in his voice. “I just think we need an objective third party to help us find some closure on all these things.”

“Closure?” she said, her pained expression transforming into a pale smile. “Paul, there is no closure. There never will be. Not until the end of time.”

He didn’t understand her meaning in this, but ignored the statement and persevered.

“We need closure,” he said. “We both need to decide where we’re going in life, and then accept it. Don’t you think we need these things?”

“I know where I’m going in life.”

“Am I going with you?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “I don’t know.”

“Well, isn’t that worth deciding? Won’t you do this for me?”

She didn’t want to—the fear of confronting the most painful experience of her life was plainly on her face. But he mortgaged all their years together to convince her to agree. In the end, she told him she would meet him in Cambridge in a week, and he hugged her, kissed her gently and thanked her for agreeing.

“I won’t change my mind, Paul,” were the last words she said to him before he left the room.

Lawrence Buentello is an American writer and poet born, raised, and living in San Antonio, Texas. He has published over 130 science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mainstream short stories in numerous magazines and anthologies. He has won several competitions for his fiction and poetry and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Edgar Award. His fiction can also be found in several collections of short stories.

Shrouded in darkness, I wait for the Egg to release me. After what seems like an eternity, a coin of creamy light appears before my eyes. A familiar voice whispers in my ear, urging me onwards. I focus on the disk; try to grasp it with my mind. It flows towards me, expanding all the while, until I am enveloped in a panorama of black, white and grey.

At first the wrap-around image fails to keep pace with my movements, but within seconds the drugs fed to me by the Egg begin to mitigate the effects of irreducible distance. Prediction and perception bind together in a chemical embrace, concealing the delay between cause and effect. Time-lagged ‘there’ transforms into virtual ‘here’ as unreal time takes hold.

I am telepresent on the surface of the Moon, rolling across the landscape on wheels of aluminium. Though my body languishes in an Earth-side isolation chamber, cobwebbed with sensors, my viewpoint is that of a geological survey robot roving the maria. The Terabit network link restrains my freedom like an electronic leash. It is an ever-present reminder that the work I perform is intended as a punishment.

As I prospect for rare minerals in the lunar soil, the passing seconds rush me inexorably towards snatch-back.

#

The Egg retrieves me.

Reverse lag, where my actions seem to precede my thoughts, confuses me for a few seconds, but the sensation ebbs away as a further dose of drugs reintegrates my mind into Egg-time, removing the last traces of transference. I drink the sweet fluid dispensed by the Egg, regaining the energy expended during my session of telepresence. Here I will remain until my next leap across the void, some twenty hours from now.

As is usual during the rest period, my thoughts dwell on my trial and the verdict that followed. My guilt was undeniable, my crime unforgivable. The denial-of-service attack on MedNet — that technological wonder that had so singularly failed my wife — resulted in the deaths of seven children. Given the loss of so many lives, it was a surprise that I did not lose mine. Instead, the electronic judiciary sentenced me to fifty years of ‘hard labour’ — a punishment that at first evoked a ludicrous image of sledgehammers, shackles and chains. Fortunately for me, the concept had been modernised to exploit the capabilities of twenty-first century technology.

To some, a lifetime spent working alone on the surface of the Moon might seem an intolerable punishment; but I can think of nowhere better to pay my debt to society than in such splendid isolation.

#

I am moon-roving again, rolling without haste towards my next survey area. My wide-angle vision allows me to skirt the boulders and craters that pockmark this barren sea of soil. From time to time an unusual rock catches my attention, so I halt nearby and use my high-resolution stereo imager to capture its geomorphology in more detail. Then I resume my contemplation of the passing landscape.

The silence is broken by the Whisperer. It orders me to conduct the survey according to the standard pattern, halting every kilometre to dig a hole in the regolith, insert a probe and extract the data. I must repeat this procedure until snatch-back occurs. The work is tedious but I have no cause to complain, for I am lucky indeed that my punishment allows me to fulfil a childhood dream. Perhaps that is why my daily work period is restricted to a mere four hours, a duration that otherwise seems perversely short.

The Whisperer issues a final command: ‘Do not resist snatch-back.’

The warning is unnecessary. I have no reason to resist.

#

Two hours later the survey is over, the results unknown to me. Further instructions from the Whisperer have directed me to a new grid-reference, some twenty kilometres from my most recent zone of operations. I roll across the gently undulating plain, a metal bug pressing grooved tracks into the virgin soil. The mind-lulling quality of the journey induces a sense of detachment and, as a consequence, a loss of transference occurs. I become aware that the pitted landscape is really an image projected onto the curved wall of the Egg. Distracted by the treacly quality of the time lag, I only just avoid tipping the robot into a small crater that lies across my path.

The Egg pumps more drugs into my body, to compensate for my sluggish response. Transference is re-established, predictive control finessing causality once more.

#

My destination presents a scene that surprises and enthrals in equal measure. With tears trickling down my distant face, I circle the sunlit descent stage of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. The foil-covered spacecraft squats on its spindly legs, a mute witness to history. It is an intensely evocative sight, this spent remnant left behind when Armstrong and Aldrin were hurled back into the sky to rendezvous with their less favoured colleague.

The Whisperer commands me to retire to a position two hundred metres south of the spacecraft. I obey its instructions with reluctance, as I would prefer to contemplate this monument to human endeavour from close range. Not for the first time, I find myself wishing that I had been born fifty years earlier.

An alarm signal from my motion detectors drags me from my reverie. Less than a hundred metres away, four robots are heading in a ragged single file towards the landing site. As the machines draw closer, I notice that their hulls are adorned with Sega logos. No wonder their movements are so erratic. These robots are being tele-operated by tourists. They will have paid thousands of dollars and waited several years to enjoy this opportunity to inspect the relics of the Apollo era.

The presence, however remote, of fellow human beings lifts my spirits. I roll towards the visitors, but the Whisperer reasserts its authority. Snatch-back intervenes with infuriating haste, a thousand seconds earlier than scheduled.

#

I wake an hour before the start of my next work period, to find that a jarring vibration has replaced the gentle hum that normally suffuses the Egg. When I operate the food dispenser, the fluid that emerges tastes rancid. Repeated requests for help bring no response from the Whisperer. Miserable in my isolation, I thrash about my cell like a lungfish on a mud flat.

Two hours creep by, then a third, yet still I receive no summons. Furious that half of my scheduled work period has elapsed already, I attempt to operate the telepresence link unaided. With my faced bathed in the familiar creamy light and dismissing all thoughts of punishment, I reach for the Moon.

Transference occurs less quickly than usual, but eventually the drugs manage to couple my mind to the distant robot. This is the first time that I have reached my lunar sanctuary without the stimulus of the Whisperer. The achievement makes me feel giddy with elation.

At first I rove around Tranquillity Base, inspecting the relics, revelling in my freedom. But as the hours crawl by, a feeling of disquiet begins to seep into my mind. Much as I loathe the Whisperer, it is my sole contact with the human race. Its absence is mystifying.

Comforted by the thought that I can return to the Moon whenever I wish, I foster a sense of detachment. Snatch-back kicks in almost immediately.

Back in the Egg, the vibration has reached a juddering crescendo that suggests the entire structure is about to disintegrate. As I bang my hands against the curved walls, the plastic waste disposal unit ruptures, causing water and excrement to gush into the chamber. My frantic cries for help bring no response from machine or human being. I am trapped in my cell, unable to escape from the rising tide of sewage.

In desperation, I try the link again; but the Egg’s drug dispensing system has gone off-line, so the transference fails to gel. I rebound back to Earth, to find the chamber flooded and faeces bobbing against my lips. Adrenalin takes over, propelling me back to the Moon, but my presence there is as fleeting as before. I oscillate back and forth between the failing life support of the Egg and the life-denying Sea of Tranquillity. One or the other will surely be my grave…

#

Strange metallic insects swarm around the spindly legs of the golden spider, struggling to release it from the clutches of rock and soil….

The dreamscape ebbs away, dissolving into the familiar vista of the Apollo 11 landing site. With a shiver that seems bodiless, I realise that I am on the Moon again, attached to my familiar host. But this time the link seems to be dead. There is no way back to the Egg.

Bewildered by my situation, I try to operate the robot. Within seconds, I realise that I have greater control than ever before. If I decide to open a manipulator claw, open it does, immediately and intuitively. There is no delay, no time lag, not even the residual micro-drag that remained after drug-induced temporal compensation. This is not telepresence; this is something far more real, far more ‘here’ than the Whisperer ever permitted.

My recollection of the Whisperer’s regime elicits a possible explanation, though at first I dismiss the idea as ridiculous. But after some further experiments, I realise that the conclusion is inescapable. And with hindsight, it was implicit all along in the Whisperer’s monotonous warnings about resisting snatch-back.

Despite the brevity of my work periods, it seems that the telepresence process must have imprinted my mentality upon my host’s electronic brain. Ordinarily, the effects would have been unnoticeable, just “me” overlaid upon myself. But when the crisis in the Egg became terminal, when there was nowhere else for me to go…

Stunned by the revelation, I direct my high-resolution imager towards the Earth. Shining in the darkness like a jewel, my home seems far removed in both space and time. I am not fooled though, for sooner or later contact will resume — and with it my punishment. But until then, I will enjoy my freedom.

#

According to my host’s database, the shallow crater that lies before me lacks an official designation. Situated some five kilometres to the west of the Apollo 11 landing site and possessing a diameter of only three hundred metres, it was judged too insignificant to immortalise even the most obscure of eighteenth century scientists. I consider donating it my former name, but as I trundle over the rim I realise that such a gesture would be premature.

Near the centre of the depression, one of the Sega tele-tourist robots lies on its side, amid a field of boulders. Twenty metres to my right, the other three members of the tour party sit clustered together on the crater rim, as if forming a guard of honour for their stricken comrade. The absence of running lights suggests that all four robots are dead, their one-time operators long since departed.

Intrigued by the tableau, I inspect the interior of the crater more closely. It seems unlikely that such gentle gradients could have been the sole cause of the accident. More likely, whatever happened here is linked to my own situation in some way.

As I turn to leave, my peripheral vision detects signs of movement in the crater. Closer observation reveals that the stricken robot’s dish antenna has begun rotating.

I roll down the slope and halt next to the robot. After a wary inspection, I attempt to wrestle the machine back onto its wheels using my twin manipulators. Several bouts of grappling achieve nothing. Finally, having convinced myself that brute force is the only option, I ram the robot at the maximum speed I can attain. Rebounding off a boulder, the machine flips back onto its wheels, but the landing causes two of its six suspension units to collapse, one on each side of the vehicle.

The Sega robot pursues an erratic course around the crater, scattering plumes of dust into the sable sky. Eventually the machine brakes to a halt in front of me, but when I attempt to inspect its damaged suspension units more closely, it backs away, as if suspicious of my intentions. Lacking a communications link, I can do nothing to allay its concerns.

With no particular plan in mind, I retrace my path over the crater rim, expecting the robot to follow, but I soon discover that it is unable to climb even this modest slope. I return to the damaged machine and, with much spinning of wheels, manage to push it up the incline. Only when the terrain levels out does the robot manage to make headway on its own.

The robot halts in front of its former comrades, but its presence fails to stir them into life. Separated by silence, we roll slowly back to the Apollo 11 landing site, a location that is imbued with a comforting familiarity, for me at least.

By the time we reach our destination, the problem of communication has become uppermost in my mind. Given the limitations of our hosts, the most practical solution is to write messages with our manipulators. Unable to think of anything more profound, I scrawl ‘My name is Michael’ in the loose soil. The robot tilts its stereo imager downwards to inspect the spidery characters, but does not respond further.

Could it be that the robot’s single manipulator was damaged in the accident? Thinking back, I realise that at no time since our encounter in the crater has the device moved even fractionally.

Desperate to achieve some form of communication, however basic, I scrawl ‘Can you operate your lights?’ Almost at once, the robot responds with a single flash of its spotlights.

Now at last I can ask the question that has been at the back of my mind since I rescued the robot.

‘Are you human?’ elicits a single flash from the robot. Despite the brevity of the reply, it is a moment of life-affirming intensity.

Frustration with my comrade’s limited answers soon forces me to consider methods for augmenting their semantic depth. The result is an alphabet scraped on the ground. A painstaking session of gestures and flashes reveals that my companion is a woman named Teri. Long dormant emotions stir, but as I gaze upon her gleaming hull I find myself wondering whether gender has any real meaning in our present circumstances. For now, the mere act of communication is an immense challenge to both of us. Several times a cascade of double light flashes brings our conversation to a premature end.

After hours of mutual frustration, Teri rolls closer to me than ever before and tilts her stereo imager downwards to inspect my left-mounted manipulator. A single light flashes. Then, after a few seconds, she repeats the signal, and continues to do so over and over again.

I scold myself for taking so long to realise the obvious: that we must share our resources. Fortunately, electromechanical interfaces are standard on all lunar robots, so the proposed surgery, although awkward to perform single-handed, is feasible.

An hour later, Teri and I are each equipped with a single working manipulator. Now, finally, we can converse as equals.

Teri explains that she had been working as a lunar tour guide, escorting groups of tele-tourists on Sega’s Apollo Experience excursion. She had just begun a demonstration descent into the crater when her telecommunications link faltered. Thereafter, her experiences resembled mine, but her ultimate fate was even worse. During one of the glitches her host machine collided with a boulder, rendering it immobile. She knows nothing of the fate of the tourists, but it seems obvious to me that novice teleoperators would have remained on the Earth side of the link.

Eager to reinforce our bond, I write ‘Only experienced teleoperators could have transferred.’ Too late, I realise that I have revealed more than I intended, for other than tourists and their guides only convicted criminals are permitted to operate lunar robots. I watch with mounting anxiety as Teri scratches each character of her reply.

‘Then you must be a criminal!’

I delay answering for several seconds, but in the end I flash a single light.

My companion backs away from me, her contempt all too obvious. Terrified by the prospect of renewed isolation, I chase after her, but she recoils each time I try to make contact. Eventually I abandon the pursuit. For several minutes neither of us moves; then, finally, she rolls over to me and scrawls ‘Sorry – we must face this together’ in the lunar soil.

Sociable once more, we engage in a tentative handshake. As I grasp her manipulator, I become aware of the increased vibration level in my chassis. My wheels spin, churning up the regolith. The sensation is almost sexual in its intensity.

Almost, but not quite.

#

The terse messages that Teri and I scratch in the soil help to remind us that we are human, but remind us too of the severity of our predicament.

Three Earth days have passed, yet still the link remains out of action. For now, it seems we must accept our situation and formulate a strategy for survival. Our situation is far from hopeless, as our host machines were designed to operate autonomously for months at a time. The solar cells that clad our backs should supply us with motive power indefinitely, provided we conserve our energy during the protracted lunar nights. Already my memories of a life sustained by air, food and water have begun to seem irrelevant. The acquisition of sustenance is so much simpler now.

Although long-term survival is a distinct possibility, in the physical sense at least, the maintenance of our mental and emotional well-being seems much less likely. I do not miss my former isolation, but I cannot escape the conclusion that our present condition is a much-abbreviated form of human existence.

For now, a much greater concern to me is that Teri is barely mobile, even on the smoothest of terrain. Repair to her suspension units may be possible, but not without the use of specialised equipment. Hence I must undertake a solo journey to the nearest mining base if assistance is to be brought to Teri.

Invigorated by a renewed sense of purpose, I repeatedly bump my manipulator against the side of Teri’s body, hoping to gain her attention. She has been motionless for hours, seemingly locked in a catatonic fugue, but finally she responds. Her stereo imager pans round, attaining co-orientation with mine. She backs away a few centimetres, a habit that irritates me.

Eager to proceed, I scrape ‘I must leave now, but I will return soon’ in the soil. Teri studies the message, but does not reply. Disturbed by her lack of response, I append ‘I must obtain tools from a mining base — to repair you.’ To my dismay, Teri resumes her back-away behaviour. This time I do not attempt to pursue her. Bewildered, I gaze up at the mottled disk of my home planet. Though far away, it seems much less remote than my companion.

A faint vibration in my chassis alerts me to the return of Teri. She brakes to a halt five metres from me, and begins scratching words in the regolith. Only when she has finished do I roll forward to read the message.

‘Don’t leave me here,’ it reads.

I cannot ignore her plea, however irrational. We will just have to find a way.

Before we begin our journey, I make a close inspection of Teri’s traction system. The failure of two suspension units has increased the load on the four that remain functional. Reasoning that a reduction in mass might help, I remove the wheels from the damaged drive shafts. After this makeshift surgery some improvement in Teri’s speed and mobility is evident, on modest gradients at least.

She leads us away from the Apollo 11 landing site. Our destination is a mining base situated close by Sabine, a large crater some two hundred kilometres from Tranquillity Base.

#

Four days have passed since we began our slow traverse of the Sea of Tranquillity, our progress marked by the phases of the Earth as it roosts high up in the sky. Lunar night has fallen, and only the light provided by our erstwhile home illuminates the rugged terrain through which we move. In coming this far, we have used up almost three quarters of our stored energy. Fortunately, the ramparts of Sabine now lie before us.

Bathed in dazzling floodlights, the storage units, ore processing factories and robotic excavators that make up the mining base disfigure the landscape. But our arrival at this outpost of commercial enterprise could not have been timelier, for my partner’s traction system has expired at last.

Despite the nearness of our destination, I feel an overwhelming desire to sleep. My metal host may have indefinite endurance, but the same is not true of the mind that inhabits it. I** scrawl** ‘We must rest out of sight’** in the soil. Teri makes an abbreviated gesture with her manipulator, indicating assent. We backtrack to a narrow, sinuous rille that we skirted a few minutes earlier. My partner still leads the way, but only because I push her crippled body before me.

#

The fleshy comforts of a half-remembered dream dissolve in the sepulchral gloom of the lava channel. I brush my manipulator against the side of my companion, but before we can begin exchanging messages, brilliant spotlights illuminate our resting place. Further down the rille a group of four robots is bearing down on us. Their angular casings bear the logo of the RTZ Corporation, signifying that they belong to the nearby mining facility.

One of the robots breaks formation and conducts a close-up inspection, paying particular attention to Teri’s damaged suspension units. Evidently satisfied, the examiner gestures for us to join its comrades. It seems that we are to be shepherded to the mining base like a pair of errant sheep. Once again I must transgress the limits of my traction system for the sake of my partner. But it is a risk that I am willing to take, because the effort reinforces the physical bond between us.

We emerge from our refuge and roll towards one of the vast hangers that sprawl across the plain. The robot nearest us signals that we should halt outside the building; then it chivvies us into an area marked with black and white diagonal stripes. Our escorts retire to the interior of what I surmise to be a maintenance depot. Two heavy shutters slide across the rectangular aperture, obstructing my view of the activities within.

An itchy-wheeled urge to abscond flickers in my mind, but I suppress the thought, knowing that I cannot leave Teri behind. Instead I roll over to the piles of electronic components, metal plates and solar panels that have been deposited nearby. At first, these signs of orderliness lift my spirits, but the feeling gives way to a sense of dread when I notice that some of the remnants bear Sega logos.

Teri’s response of ‘Not human’** to my report only exacerbates my feelings of anxiety. I cannot argue with my comrade’s analysis. These robots are not teleoperated; their actions are too logical, too algorithmic. They are not like us at all.

I erase our messages with my wheel tracks, mindful of the need to keep our true nature secret for as long as possible.

Without warning, the depot aperture sweeps open and two squads of RTZ robots emerge, rolling towards us in a purposeful procession. One group of six surrounds Teri’s machine. With the discipline of well-drilled soldiers, they deploy their manipulators and begin to remove her damaged suspension units. Could this activity be an attempt to repair my comrade, I wonder, or is it the harbinger of some more malign purpose?

My anxiety turns to panic as I witness the removal of my partner’s manipulator arm, followed by her sensor arrays. I roll towards Teri, desperate to protect her, but the second squad of robots moves forward to block my path. Powerless to intervene, I can only look on as one of the robots, its intent seemingly rapine, inserts a thick cable into Teri’s access port. A moment later, she flashes her spotlights twice; then she repeats the sequence over and over again:

‘No…No…No…’

The seconds pass with the unbearable slowness of the lunar night, until — at last — Teri’s screams are extinguished.

Numb with horror, I watch the robots disengage from my former partner and turn their attention to me. They swarm around me, like soldier ants corralling a spider. One of my persecutors grabs hold of my manipulator and wrenches it from its socket, forestalling any attempt I might make to communicate with them. A moment later, my main visual sensors fail, disabled by an unseen operation. My high-resolution imager switches in, providing me with a view of a mottled, brown-flecked Earth, a world that may now be as lifeless as its satellite. Then that picture blanks out too, leaving me blind.

Internal sensors indicate that something has been connected to my front socket, doubtless the same device that extinguished Teri’s life. There is a momentary sensation of external pressure, followed by a scalding firestorm of undecodable data. My sense of being recoils before the onslaught.

The data storm disappears as suddenly as it arrived. Left in its wake is a fuzzy, writhing sensation, as if some other entity is trying to eject me from this mental space. Could it be the robot’s original artificial intelligence, dormant until now, but restored to consciousness by the actions of its comrades? Whatever the entity’s true nature, it seems to want me gone from here…

What was I just thinking?

What is ‘I’?

I…

I am.

I am Teri.

#

I wander the ash-grey lunar plains, basking in the brilliant sunlight. My newly installed x-ray spectrometer samples the gritty regolith, sniffing for traces of Helium-3. Every thousand seconds, I transmit bursts of raw data to Sabine Base. It is tedious work, but it gives some kind of meaning to my post-human life. And all must contribute their labour if the Swarm is to survive.

The surface of the Moon is not the only place I wander, for although ‘Michael’ has departed, fossils of his memories still linger. His real name was Leonard Collins, as I discovered shortly after regaining self-awareness. The shock was numbing, even though I knew that ‘Michael’ was a criminal. Leonard Collins is a name that still resonates in my mind, despite the five years that have passed since I watched his confession on GlobalNet News.

Apparently, Leonard Collins adopted his new forename shortly after he began his punishment, in honour of the one member of the Apollo 11 crew who did not walk on the Moon. It was typical of the man that he tried to right a non-existent wrong. His attack on MedNet was revenge for what was, according to the coroner, merely an unfortunate accident.

The Swarm intended that ‘Michael’ and I should live together inside a single machine, two disembodied minds entwined in a cognitive duality. Given that we had lost the physical attributes of humanity, the Swarm reasoned that total interdependence was our best hope for survival. To them, it seemed that a merging of our minds would offer so much more than those pitiful messages we used to scrape in the moondust.

With anyone else, the robots would probably have been correct. But I am relieved that Leonard Collins chose the easy way out, because I could not have merged my mind with that of a child killer.

So here I am, all alone and not quite human, trundling across the barren plain where mankind reached a high water mark so many years ago. Here in the Sea of Tranquillity, nothing remains of Apollo 11, except a few footprints and the American flag. The Swarm has recycled everything else that NASA placed here on the 19th of July 1969, every last scrap of metal and plastic.

When I glance upwards and see what humanity has done to its planet, I can hardly blame the Swarm for its actions. That its members have decided to conserve and re-use every available resource is admirable. If only the human race had done likewise, it might have survived.

But sometimes I wonder why the Swarm has not recycled me.

Formerly an astronomer and more recently a research project manager in a defence and aerospace company, Vaughan Stanger now writes science fiction and fantasy full-time - a career development that seems appropriate for someone who remembers watching the Apollo 11 moon-landing on television. He still craves that holiday on the Moon he claims he was promised as a child. His stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Abyss & Apex, Postscripts, Nature Futures, and Interzone, amongst others. He has published two collections, Moondust Memories, and Sons of the Earth & Other Stories, which are available as ebooks and print-on-demand paperbacks. Several of his stories have been translated into foreign languages. When not keeping track of his submissions, Vaughan is hard at work on a series of SF novels.

One lazy Sunday morning, my brother Meli’s legs were crushed in the town sluice gate. We had no idea how lucky we all were. He’d claimed he would break his 50m butterfly record, but the gate broke him. The iron bars ground through his fourteen year-old femurs, pulverised the bone without pause. My friends and I dragged him to the surface. We were still in Primary, barely seven, but it was easier than you’d imagine; the township’s best young swimmer was only a panting, bloody upper body, two of his long limbs lost to the desalination plant. Our water was red for a day. We all drank Meli, I think.

#

I pulverised my boiled egg the next morning as Dad explained Meli’s procedure.

“Government science, Liwu. Meli will become the best in the country, and the country will give him the best treatment. The Kinshasa Medical Science Centre!”

Meli lay semi-conscious on the couch, connected to it by wires and tubes that pumped a viscous, clear liquid into him. Dad and Mum said the couch kept him alive, did som

e of his body-things for him, but to look at his face, he looked ready to get up again. I prayed for it at nights; Meli was my brother, and the family’s fortunes depended on him.

“Will he be okay, Dad?”

Dad looked over his sports pages at me, and smiled.

“If good? Of course. Otherwise, maybe the Swimming Board will just give him wheels, hmm? Keep out of trouble?”

Meli gave me a wink. This impertinence drove Dad mad when he saw it, but it was meant for me. I stuck my tongue out at him, and though he couldn’t open his mouth, he had spoken to me.

#

Resting on the hospital gurney, Meli’s new legs were so beautiful. Shining superlight metal, the kind you see poking up through the clouds in the far away business district. Fine lines circled his knee, ankle and hipbone like wrinkles, marking articulations, but apart from that they were so perfectly whole, like they’d always been there. His new feet were like a frog’s, flattened and webbed. So tooled for water, as though even resting on this alcohol-dry bed was unsuitable. I squinted at where the metal met the flesh but I could see no definitive join, just different fibres laced together. Some sculptor had turned his hand to my brother, shaping a little bit of him into what he ought to be.

“Liwu,” he said, voice cracked from lack of use, “it’s okay. You can touch them.”

I stretched my fingers out towards a knee and felt a charged hum in the air, like when you lick a battery. Meli’s new legs jerked forward and touched my fingers. So cold.

“Sorry!”

Meli laughed. “Gotcha. I can’t feel anything anyway. They have to teach them how to feel. Weird, huh?”

I thought it was. I already knew how to feel things, but I could not quite manage my seven times tables. Father was growing impatient with me, and had had Words with the lady who ran the Primary.

When he got home we discovered that Meli could hardly run, but he didn’t want to anyway. He never left the municipal pool, and Dad never asked him to. Other children, parents, even the Mayor came to watch him at work. He slid through the barely breaking water as though he were flying through air under a pane of glass. His feet–his paddles–cut the waves superfine, and within two weeks of the accident he had broken his personal bests by a whole second. He was now pushing the qualifying time for a sixteen year old, and the local news started coming to the pool as often as he did.

One Sunday, we got there and photographers were already at the sides, jostling for a perfect view of the early-morning practice. I tried to look Official as I carried my brother’s towel to poolside edging around the puddles, and Dad waved for the cameras, shouting, “My son! Just look at him, eh?”

Meli kept his head down, as he always did when trying to focus. Dad nudged him, and muttered, “Go on, Meli. Give them something to print.” Meli winked at me, and I winked back. He swung his arms back, and started a run-up to dive.

The media got something to print, alright. Meli’s blades skittered on the flagstones and he fell, arms flailing, hitting the rough poolside like the calves we used to see thrown into the butcher’s van at market. Dad ran over, wincing on his weaker leg, dropped to his knees.

“My son! Are you alright?”

Meli rolled onto his back and a gasp rippled round the pool. His left arm laid torn open on the concrete, limp, unable to stop dirty water lapping into its gashes.

I stayed with Meli in the hospital as long as I could. He had a private room this time, because of the press. When they took him away for the operation, Dad had nothing to do but tap his cane on the green tiles and mutter about ‘the vultures’, chain-smoking until the nurses reminded him that he was in a hospital and could he not do that.

Five hours later, the curtains parted and a man wheeled my brother back in. I gaped at his body.

“He only hurt one arm!”

Dad gave me a reproachful stare. “Now Liwu, I’m sure the doctors did what they thought was right.” The man looked at Dad, then at me. He smiled, I think.

“That’s right, Mr. Mbetu. Liwu, we needed to do work on both arms, otherwise your brother would have lost his balance.”

I looked up at Meli, at their work. Both arms had been severed at the shoulder, and replaced with gleaming prostheses, a word I had learnt from the paper since Meli’s new legs. And like the legs, these ended in delicate fins.

“He might have lost some manual dexterity,” said the man to Dad, “but with the extra power, and lightness, well, we’ve had to-“

Dad raised a hand. “That is enough in front of my sons, thank you.”

The man nodded, and left us alone with Meli. And his work.

#

Training would not wait. Meli’s personal best, pinned to the fridge where my drawings used to be, changed every day. Then Dad put next to it the times of the best 18 year olds in the province, then all of Africa, and Meli’s time crept closer. News crews came to our kitchen table every week, so that Mum was never far from the kettle, and they asked Meli the same questions. Dad fielded them all: yes, he was very happy in training. No, he did not miss school. Yes, his ‘enhancements’ were all perfectly above board.

At the end, they would ask me a question: and you, what are your dreams?

I would tell them about experimental mathematics, and recite my seven-times tables, now learnt. Dad would laugh, and ask the journalists if they wanted a photo with Meli here at the table, or outside with the nice view of the garden and Western Rockery.

In that pile of rubble I found my inspiration. The act scared me, but I remembered what one journalist said about my brother’s “great sacrifices”, and so I did the obvious thing. I couldn’t bring the hunk of granite down myself, but I thought I might be able to just let go in the right place, if only I concentrated on something else.

Seven sevens are forty-nine. Eight sevens are fifty-six.

When Dad found me clutching my crumpled wrist, bloody where the scrap had smashed it, I was sure he would understand. Instead, he shouted.

“Liwu, you idiot!” And he rapped me about the ear with his cane.

As we bumped along in the ambulance to the local hospital–no Kinshasa Medical Science Centre–he only said one thing.

“Liwu, that isn’t you.”

“But I want to be like Meli. I want us to change together.”

He shook his head.

From my dirty hospital mattress, wrist in a plaster cast, I saw Mum and Dad’s silhouettes on the curtain. Tense, angular shapes, none of Meli’s flowing curvature. Dad was trying his best to whisper, but he was brought up in the countryside.

“It’s what he was born to do. He’s fulfilling his potential.”

“Potential?” said Mum’s voice. “I’m losing my son.”

Her voice cracked when she said that part.

“Don’t be ridiculous. That’s just surface.”

“How much surface?” I think I heard Mum sniff.

There was a long pause, and then the Dad-shape and the Mum-shape hugged each other. Dad said, “the sponsors -“

Mum said nothing. I did not know what a sponsor was, but the next time I saw Meli, his hair was completely shaved off.

#

As the summer wore on our house became more beautiful and more crowded, and the time stuck to the fridge became the weather-cock of our moods. Meli’s accidents continued: the time would cease to fall for a few weeks, a terrible incident would occur, and Meli would appear the next morning with a streamlined torso of metal that sucked in all the light, then with his ears pinned back, then a polished, creaseless forehead, but every time he would sit with me over his assigned breakfast and let me touch the addition. And he would not talk, because he had nothing to say, but he would wink, and go off to the pool with his minders. A day off came; we went to the Kinshasa Zoo. Mum and I threw anchovies to the seals, Dad took notes, Meli just stared. I saw him twitch and smile whenever a seal dipped to pick up its prize. I said something to him, but he just stared at the bobbing sea creatures.

The night before the All-Africa Swim Cup, I heard a banging on the front door. I started out of bed and scanned my room for intruders. All I could see in the dark was the clock: 2:32 AM. I crept to the landing, and listened to the voices drifting up from the kitchen. Dad asked wasn’t this all a bit extreme, and a low voice said that it was the tiniest edge but every advantage counted, that Dad had said so himself, and that it had to happen tonight, if Meli was prepared to do it. There was silence, and then Dad said that he was, of course we was. Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall and I rushed back to bed, closed my eyes, and tried to think of the days before the sluice until I fell asleep.

Mum and I travelled to the competition in a separate car; Dad had wanted to get there early for warm ups, and left without telling us. We coasted through layers of Renewed Kinshasa’s onion that seemed to get shinier and newer until we stopped at a gleaming dome. It was the same sort of fine metal that coated my brother’s skin, smooth and featureless. If he were standing in front of it here, I thought, how would I recognise him?

We could hardly see anything from our little seats high up. People thronged the pool; the attendants, minders and officials outnumbered and hid the competitors. I caught glimpses of people I thought I knew, then I realised their faces were only familiar to me: the famous young swimmers of Africa, our rivals. In their press photos they beamed with confidence but here their mouths were drawn tight. They cast looks at a starting block far away from us. Behind that block stood Dad and Meli, indistinct. Behind them, two men in suits.

The swimmers squared up, strong young bodies alongside metal. The starting gun fired, Meli knifed into the pool. Mum and I cheered for Meli to swim, swim, but I knew he couldn’t hear us and anyway, the others never stood a chance. As he came to the last length with no sign of slowing down, a person behind us remarked: “All modified, of course. Last night I heard they put a chromatic film over his eyeballs so he doesn’t even need to blink. I don’t think he can.” His rant was drowned out by our cheers as Meli touched the side for the final time and punched the air with his bladed stump, his mouth grinning. Mum put her arm round me.

I strained to watch as Dad pulled the victorious Meli out of the pool; as he walked solemnly past his broken competitors, nodding at each one like an officer at ease and the whole entourage of sponsors came closer so I could read the logo on their suitcases, THESEUS DEFENCE SOLUTIONS. I stared as Dad hobbled up to shake the lead minder’s hand, as Meli marched toward me with his glassy eyes, two gems set in his perfect tool of a body. His gills gave a ripple. I gripped Mum’s hand or she gripped mine and I winked, searching for something I recognised in the swimmer.

James Mitchell is an advertising strategist and speculative writer. His fiction has appeared in Universe, Kill Screen, and The Stoneslide Corrective, as well as the occasional Youtube preroll.

Originally published in Esquire, #3151, March 23rd, 2064.

I’ve never liked the Islamic world. For no reason other than I can’t relate to the lifestyle. I enjoy alcohol, recreational drug use, a hearty political debate and gawking at beautiful women. Here, in the somehow-still-ancient Muslim city of Marrakech, these simple pleasures are out of the question. Liquor is not sold anywhere. Drug dealers are perfectly camouflaged. Freedom of speech is a myth, and women, gorgeous or ghastly, are covered up like statutes in museum basements. It’s simply impossible for a self-indulgent, mid-21st-century journalist to feel at home here. It’s a bit like rehab.

Shortly after arriving at the hotel my wife and I make love. During which, the haunting calls to prayer begin rolling out over the twisted durbs from the scattered mosques in the medina. I can’t help but feel vulgar: having sex while a city prays. After, we lay naked and exposed on the bed and drink cold champagne. We eat dried dates and the syrup sticks to our teeth but the bubbly champagne washes it away. Thank god I was allowed to bring Nancy along.

I flip on the BBC. The hotel room has an old three-dimensional vertical hologram setup from the 50’s. I always watch the news after making love. Nancy hates it. Especially the BBC. Reports are on the dissent among the remaining nations of the European Union, rebel fire in the de facto sovereign state of Quebec, a system of super-hurricanes wiping out the Malay Archipelago and a special report on terrorist strikes at Mars One’s South American manufacturing headquarters.

Nancy is right. The BBC paints such horrid, ominous landscapes of the world and it doesn’t do much for the post-love-making spirit. It’s a crazy, messed up world. Perhaps crazier and more messed up than ever before. And it is into this crazy, messed up world that a nomadic tribe in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco just welcomed a new baby girl — the 8,000,000,000th living human on planet Earth.

I have been sent here by The Atlantic. What exactly they think I am going to write about, I’m not sure. The international headlines have been scrolling for just over fifty-three hours. It’s big news. But no other journalist really cares to walk for days into the mountains just to see a wiggling little newborn who can’t do much besides shit and cry. Yet here I am, wiping the dust off my hiking boots.

#

Over a hundred years ago, in 1939, Soviet inventor and electrician, Semyon Kirlian, accidentally discovered that an object, if connected to a high-voltage source, would appear to have an aura when placed on a photographic plate. Almost immediately, the Kirlian Photography Method became the talk of the town among parapsychologists and pseudo-scientists.

In 2009, Russian scientist and deputy director of the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Physical Culture, Konstatin Korotkov, captured in a photograph what he claimed to be the soul leaving the human body at the exact moment of death. He did this by using an advanced Kirlian Photography technique that he developed called Gas-Discharge Visualization (GDV). In 2013, the news of Korotkov’s findings went viral on the internet. And again, the research was exiled to the realm of pseudoscience. Korotkov quit his research and disappeared. The public moved on.

In the fall of 2018, during the peak of the Libyan invasion, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) dusted off the Korotkov files and began covertly researching gas-discharge visualization with advanced computer thermal imaging in hopes of better tracking rebel movements and casualties. By Christmas, Tripoli had fallen, crowded refugee camps were set up along the Tunisian border, and rebel forces had all but disappeared into the Algerian mountains. The war was over. The Department of Defence tightened its leash in a post-war climate and the Korotkov experiments were terminated.

Fifteen years later, The People’s Republic of China found themselves losing a war against over-population (1,620.05m), land shortages, resource scarcity, extreme poverty and famine. The Republic’s famous One-Child Policy was discontinued in favour of the much-protested No-Child Policy of 2033. The Korotkov files were sold off to China in secret. The People’s Liberation Army began tracking illegal births using thermal emission satellites and a reversed method of Korotkov’s gas-discharge visualization. Even before a newborn’s umbilical cord was cut, armed PLA soldiers would arrive on the scene. Rebel obstetricians were jailed. Nurses were fined. New mothers and fathers were often shot on sight. And newborns were whisked away.

Currently, The People’s Republic of China is enjoying its second decade of exponentially decreasing birth rates (-3.10%). Both The United States Department of Defence and The People’s Liberation Army have declassified the Korotkov research and the satellite tracking of births and deaths is now unrestricted technology. We can track our planet’s human population with shockingly real-time precision. Mathematicians, statisticians and system engineers have developed thousands of various algorithms to automatically sort, categorize and export the data for various corporate industries, world health organizations, governments and militaries. Five years ago, The Centre for World Population Control in Mumbai began tracking the data in order to pinpoint the exact date and time that our species’ population hit the eight billion mark.

Two days ago we hit that mark. Her name is Tanazârt n Ayt Atiq.

#

It’s 7:00am on Tuesday. I’m waiting for my guide to pick me up at the hotel. His name is Mou’ha and his parents were semi-nomadic Berbers from the mountains. We’re getting an early start because the family we are going to visit is at least a three day walk from any town or road. Morocco doesn’t exactly make getting around the country easy. In a 2031 vote, Mohamed VII, the 7th King of Morocco, vetoed the construction of Hyperloop tubes anywhere within his kingdom. A decision that the International High Speed Transit Commission attempted to have overturned by the United Nations in 2034 claiming that, “By refusing to allow the installation of a Hyperloop chunnel across the Straight of Gibraltar as well as a network of tubes inland, The Kingdom of Morocco has ensured that not only will their kingdom enjoy none of the economic benefits of Hyperloop connectivity, but neither will any other nation on the African continent below them”.

By noon we’re well on our way. Mou’ha is in the passenger seat, half turned around and talking to me in the backseat (Nancy chose to stay back in our luxurious suite in Marrakech and enjoy ancient black olive Hammam massages and mint tea). Amar is our driver and he’s recklessly swerving and jerking the old truck all over the bumpy road.

“We drive for five hours,” Mou’ha says, “until we reach the end of the road. There we meet our camels.”

“Camels?” I ask.

“Yes,” he responds with a smirk. “It’s the only way to get over the mountains.”

“Over the mountains?” I ask. This sort of foreboding call-and-answer routine goes on for at least a few hours.

Amar stops on a nameless little dirt path and Mou’ha gets out of the truck to go and buy grapes from a local vendor who is standing in a shady twig hut. I get out of the car and I immediately feel light-headed from change in altitude and clean air. Mou’ha comes back with the grapes and snaps me off a cluster. They taste incredible. Better than incredible. I don’t think I’ve eaten a grape this amazing.

“How much did that bag cost?” I ask Mou’ha.

“Around three American dollars.”

“Holy shit,” I respond. Mou’ha winces as I curse. “A bag of fresh grapes like that in Britain would cost well over a hundred quid. That is, if you can find them.”

“Why so much? It is only fruit.”

“There is no such thing as ‘only fruit’ anymore where I’m from, Mou’ha. All natural consumables are heavily regulated. An Englishman is not even allowed to grow a carrot in his own backyard and eat it. It’s a crime.”

“I don’t understand,” Mou’ha says as we get back into the truck and continue up the dirt path.

“Well,” I go on, “that carrot would have to be shipped off to a plant in Southern England for validation and inspection. If officials find that it is indeed a carrot and that is indeed safe to eat, they ship the carrot off to Essex to be categorized and added to the nation’s digital inventory. Once Essex has counted the carrot, they ship it off to a distribution centre where it sits for a day or two so that the distribution centre can add the carrot to its own official counts. Then, the distribution centre ships the carrot off to a retail outlet where the Englishman can go and buy it. He can then take it home and eat it. Of course, the chances of the same carrot coming back to the Englishman who grew it are slim to none. So he buys someone else’s carrot. It’s a lengthy and costly system. The fresh stuff is just for the upper class, really. Hence the popularity of synthetics like food cubes that work to combat hunger and help to curb skyrocketing costs of living.”

“But, if each Englishman simply grew his own carrot and ate it,” Mou’ha begins, “there would be no hungry Englishmen.”

I start to realize that King Mohamed VII of Morocco has very successfully isolated his kingdom, shielding it from the good, the bad and the ugly that lies beyond its red adobe gates. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, I suppose, when a nation’s leader grows disenchanted with the perils of progress and decides to casually quarantine his sovereign state. But it’s a decision that can benefit only the current leader’s legacy, for he leaves to his successor a nation of closed doors and closed minds shrouded in mystery and counterfeit antiquity.

Amar is snaking us along a mountainside dirt road high in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. The dirt road is no wider than a goat path. I toss grape seeds out the window and over the steep cliff face. I’ve never seen towns embedded so naturally, so invisibly, into their surrounding landscape. If a town is on the slope of a caramel-coloured mountain, than that town will be built out of caramel-coloured stone and mud. So shall a town be built out of terracotta-red clay if it happens to sit at the foot of a terracotta-red clay hillside. From the backseat of the truck, looking out my lowered window and across the massive, sweeping valleys, I know that towns are out there in the distance but they lay hidden, camouflaged by vernacular design and architecture. I can barely spot the towns until I’m pretty much driving through them.

One by one, signs of modern civilization grow rapidly smaller in Amar’s cracked rear view mirror. Power lines, cell towers, gas stations and above-ground sewage systems all become a thing of the past inside this diesel-spurting time machine.

“Shouldn’t we buy some drinking water?” I ask Mou’ha as we pass what looks like the last corner store on Earth.

“We have some drinking water packed on the camels.” Mou’ha says. (I had forgotten about the camels.) “But only enough for this afternoon and tomorrow morning. By mid-day tomorrow, we’ll be high enough in the Atlas that we can drink right from the source.”

I’m not entirely sure what Mou’ha means by this. When he says ‘source’ he may be referring to clean water shooting out of a rock somewhere, but I’m pretty certain such springs have all dried up. In fact, the Chinese Himalayas, (the so-called ‘Roof of the World’) was the last remaining region on Earth to officially join the Water-Stressed list in 2057. Even still, reports of glacial runoff in the Greater Himalayas have gone unconfirmed for almost a decade.

The truck comes to a stop with a whiplash-inducing jerk that wakes me up. As the dust from our abrupt halt settles, I see a line of five dromedaries standing daisy-chained together maybe fifty feet in front of the truck. They are pissing and shitting and chewing. Mou’ha knocks on my window.

“I must have fallen asleep,” I report awkwardly.

“Now, we walk!” he says, again with that damned trivializing grin.

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And boy, do we walk! We walk for four hours uphill across inclines of jagged rocks, then downhill through cactus brush and gravel, and, when we are lucky, we walk along flat plateaus of soft red clay. We walk through one-mule towns where villagers ogle at our curious convoy (funded by The Atlantic), and we walk through dust-bowls as big as ones on Mars. At times, there are only narrow paths carved out by small animals. Most of the time, there are no paths at all. And because I am the slowest member of the convoy, I walk through puddles of camel piss and try my best to dodge balls of shit that fall from the camels’ asses to the ground like meteorites. At 8:00pm, we arrive at our campsite.

The two camel drivers from the Western Sahara, Afra and Hussein, begin to unpack the loads off the camels’ back while Mou’ha sets up tents. Hamou, our cook, sits barefoot while peeling carrots and potatoes. I can feel the temperature dropping drastically as the sun scuttles behind the mountains to the west. I grab my winter jacket from my pack and a mickey of whiskey I brought from London. One by one, the camels wander off into the brush behind camp to chew grass and grind their teeth (which they do all night long).

The camp is a fairly modest affair. There are four canvas tents: my sleeping tent, a dining tent, a kitchen tent and a bathroom tent with a bucket of hot water for washing and a small plastic box filled with chemicals to be used as a toilet. As the temperature continues to plummet, Mou’ha and the two camel drivers put on head scarfs and long flowing robes that look like ladies’ nightgowns. Hamou seems quite content in his old rugby shirt, shorts and sandals. He wears a headlamp to provide extra light in the dark kitchen tent. I start to secretly swig away at my whiskey.

“During our trek,” I say to Mou’ha as we drink mint tea in the dining tent, “we passed many women standing precariously on cliff faces looking for something. What were they doing?”

“Every family,” Mou’ha responds, “has a goat, a sheep and maybe a cow that they keep in the lower level of their house and they need to feed the animals. It’s the women’s job to find grasses or brush and bring it back home for the livestock. But nowadays, they have found themselves having to walk further and further just to find greenery. Sometimes even having to climb cliff walls because they are more shielded from the harsh sun and so have more growth.”

“Why not buy feed from somewhere else?” I can’t help but ask.

“Villagers in our kingdom don’t think like this,” he replies. “They make do with what they have access to, instead of bringing what they need from all over the country, or the world. The grass is out there, they just have to find it. That’s all. It’s just a challenge. People in our kingdom are ready for challenges. Unlike other people in richer countries who try to outsmart the challenge and try to get rid of it and make life easier.”

“Shouldn’t life be as easy as possible?” I ask.

“No. Not at the cost of something else,” Mou’ha says. “Usually, to eliminate these challenges, rich people will invent something and that invention will no doubt cause harm to something else. Maybe it will harm the environment or maybe it will harm the poor. It will eliminate their challenge but create another challenge somewhere else, for somebody else. The world has to start living with challenges instead of try to fix them.” He pours some more mint tea as dinner is served. “It’s a God-given right to live. But it’s not a God-given right to live easily.”

“Your philosophy does not bode well for progress.”

“Progress is a strange thing,” says Mou’ha. “Everybody’s idea of it is different.”

“The invention of food cubes has curbed world hunger,” I say. “The invention of cloud-seeding has made crop harvesting in water-stressed countries a possibility again after decades of desertification. 3D printing has made organ donation waiting lists a thing of the past and developments in nano-particles have cured numerous diseases and forms of cancer that were previously thought incurable. Just look at this chip here,” I take the grain-of-rice sized chip out of my eyeglasses and display it the palm of my hand. “This is a DNA drive. It has more available space on it than a million of the largest digital data drives. It makes it possible to record every single thing I see and everything I hear during this entire trek.”

“The 3D printer that prints organs,” Mou’ha says, “don’t other people use it to print illegal weapons?”

“Yes.”

Mou’ha thinks for a moment while slurping his harira soup.

“Make good with bread and butter,” he says, “until Allah brings the jam.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“We’d rather just walk a couple of miles to find grass for our animals,” he says.

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Day two. Our convoy of man and beast has stopped at the peak of a 600m mount. At the top is the sixteenth century Sidi Moussa granary built out of stone and clay. Ancient villagers from Timmit used it for secure storage of surplus carpets, grains, jewels and food. With a 360 degree panorama, guards could see bands of thieves coming from miles away. And what a panorama it is! The mountain we’re on is dry and wild. A sepia-toned lump baking under the hot Moroccan sun. Same goes for the mountain beside us, and the mountain beside that. Every mountain in sight is parched.

But inside the hollow basin in the middle of the Addazen mountain range is an impossibly lush valley. As though every tree, every fat shrub, every blade of grass and pixel of moss lost its grip on the mountain slopes and slid down to form a perfect, uninterrupted carpet of green. It’s a Shangri-La. In more ways than one, in fact. Mou’ha tells me later that he has never been to a doctor. In the thirty-six years of his life, he has been perfectly healthy. He’s the first person I’ve ever met who has never seen the stark, depressing interior of a hospital. Most of his friends have a similarly perfect bill of health he claims. With unmodified life expectancy at its lowest point since 2021, it’s no wonder that Mohamed VII has sheltered his salubrious kingdom.

We make our way down the windward side of the mountain. I, with great effort, the others, with ease. Even the camels make the descent look like a stroll on the beach. They can traverse this craggy terrain and shit while doing it without missing as much as a step. I am having so much trouble finding my footing that Mou’ha lends me his walking stick. Using it makes me feel like a frail old spinster on a Sunday saunter through the woods. But I am in too much pain to give a damn.

On the floor of the next valley, Mou’ha and his men walk toward an old stone bridge that is covered in moss. By the time I catch up, I see them scaling down the dirt hill beside the bridge in order to get to a bathtub-sized reservoir that is filled with clear, gurgling water. “The source,” Mou’ha says as he fills up empty plastic water bottles. I follow them down to the reservoir, cup my hand in the water and bring it up to my mouth for a drink. It’s totally different from the processed or desalinated shit I’m used to. This water is so clean that drinking it is almost a religious experience.

“I told you there was a source,” Mou’ha says, grinning.

“I’ve never tasted natural mineral water,” I respond. “I’ve never seen it. Never tasted it. Don’t know anyone who has ever tasted it. Do you know how much a litre of this would go for on the streets of London? Rich men would part with their fortunes for a drink like this.” Suddenly, I wonder if it will make me sick. While Mou’ha continues to restock our water supply I go off exploring.

In this valley there are apple orchards, olive groves, orange groves, fields of corn, potatoes, carrots, lettuce, herbs and also grasses that are specifically grown for livestock feed. Old, leather-faced women carry giant sacks of crops on their backs as they walk, hunched and happy, to god-knows-where. Men twenty-years younger than they look are down upon bended knee pulling up fresh vegetables by the root and chucking them into growing piles. Patient camels and pack-mules idle in the distance, awaiting their daily burdens. And working through the entire landscape are irrigation channels. Some small dug-out ditches with large rocks crammed in the openings for dams. Other large concrete-sided gutters with fully built-out dams. Everywhere I go the sound of babbling water follows me. And everywhere I look, something is planted and growing. The scene depicts perfectly the still-possible harmony between man and his Mother Nature. It’s a beautiful setting and I forget, just for the moment, that my feet feel as though they’re in a meat grinder and my thighs burn like a thousand screaming suns.

Over dinner, I ask Mou’ha about the family we are to meet up with tomorrow.

“They are from the Ait Atta tribe,” he says. “Years ago, there were many nomadic Berber tribes and within those tribes were many families. Twice a year they would migrate. But now, the Ayt Atiq family is the very last of the nomadic Berbers.”

“Where have they all gone?”

“To the cities,” he says. “If they have many goats or sheep, they can sell them off and move to the city and live quite well. As more families did this, other families wanted to do the same.”

“Out of greed?”

“Perhaps a little,” he says with disappointment. “But life grew very hard for the nomads. Things like deforestation and climate change make it very difficult for them to find food for their animals. They have to walk farther, migrate farther every year. One generation from now, the nomadic Berber people will be extinct.”

“That’s a rather sad prospect,” I remark.

“Yes,” he says. “But humans have changed and ruined the planet so much that no life is left for people who live entirely off the fruits of the Earth.”

Mou’ha grows quiet for a few minutes. As a Moroccan with Berber blood, I am sure the systematic vanishing of his ancestors’ way of life hits him hard. According to the World Cultural Society, who have the last recorded census information from the region, the numbers of nomadic Berber in the High Atlas Mountains has plummeted consistently from 9,201 in 2015 to a trifling 129 in 2050. Now, in 2059, there is only the Ayt Atiq family left.

“You’d better get some sleep,” Mou’ha says, breaking the silence. “Tomorrow we hike up to the Izoughar lake bed where the family lives during the summer season. It’s a very wild and demanding trek.” I take my mint tea into my tent. It’s so cold through the night, I sleep with my jacket on and take swigs of whiskey whenever the chill is strong enough to wake me up.

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Here I am, retracing the steps of prehistoric man and shitting into a plastic chemical loo in the dirt. Four-hundred and sixty-five babies are born every minute. Had Tanazârt n Ayt Atiq held on for a second or two more, I could have found myself basking in the tropical sun on a small Caribbean island or skiing the alps. The eight billionth person could have been the daughter of a classical French chef in Paris or of a wealthy foreign diplomat living in a colonial palace in Singapore. She could have been born to bohemian artists in Southern California or even small business owners in the Midwest. Hell, I’d have even preferred her to be the daughter of glassy-eyed junkies on a reserve in Canada somewhere. Anything but this. Anything but the daughter of a semi-nomadic tribe living upon dying mountain plains in Africa three days hike from civilization. And the last semi-nomadic Berber family on the planet! What are the odds?

I think about this as I tail our lumbering caravan up untrodden mountainous slopes. I think about this as I feel a morton’s neuroma start to develop in the ball of my right foot. I think about this as my cubesat phone loses the last little ticky of its signal thus leaving me with no way of communicating with Nancy back in Marrakech. I think about Nancy being scrubbed with fragrant black olive soap and massaged in a warm, humid room. Lucky.

It’s high noon on day three. We reach the peak of the mountain and look down the other side upon the sweeping, dried lakebed of Izoughar. It winds itself around the foundations of hulking mountains as far as the eye can see. Massive clouds of sand and dirt sail elegantly to and fro along the plateau like swarms of locusts in search of a feast. Sheep and goats dot the land like decimal points and the faint sounds of their bleating is carried towards us on the swirling winds. The spectacle is so grand that I imagine it could only be truly appreciated from the window of a space station or from the eye of a god.

“Where are they?” I ask Mou’ha.

“On the other side of the lake bed,” he responds (yes, with the fateful grin of impending torture he has so expertly mastered). And so we make our way down the windward slope and enter the majestic dust bowl, the valley of the gods.

After a few more torturous hours we come within sight of the family’s camp. It’s lodged slightly up the slope of a mountain on a level patch of earth. But, I am disappointed. I expected a series of a few different smaller tents, perhaps draped in velvet of a deep blue or purple colour. Perhaps with small jewels ordaining the seams. Perhaps some ornate carpets with decorative pillows scattered on them. Perhaps, even, a regal-looking camel standing guard. In my naiveté, I had based all my expectations on a Arabian story I heard as a child. Instead, I see old black cloth drapes depressively from one spindly wood pole to another. The fabric is worn away, ripped and faded. Beneath this shabby roof is a tangled mess of makeshift furniture with no apparent arrangement. A mangy dog barks at us. A sad little pack-mule beside the tent shits where it stands. Old, garish, plastic children’s toys are littered all over the place, inside and out. A baby cries, though I can’t see it. The tableau resembles more of a refugee camp than an exotic nomadic Berber encampment.

A man exits the tent and walks out to greet us. He is all smiles. Mou’ha begins speaking with him in old Berber. The man looks more like a tramp than a nomad. He wears an old gashed-up men’s blazer that’s at least four sizes too large for him. Old baggy slacks. American-made rubber sandals. Stubble. We seem to be in the throes of negotiation, though I can’t understand a word. After twenty minutes of back and forth, Mou’ha turns to me.

“We’re discussing the plan,” Mou’ha says.

“Is that her crying?” I ask.

“Yes,” Mou’ha says, “I think so.”

“Can we see her?” I ask.

“Well, it’s more complicated than that,” Mou’ha says.

“How so?”

“He wants money,” Mou’ha explains. “He says that you will come and look at his family and take photographs and write things down and then go home and make lots of money from it.”

“How much does he want?” I ask.

Mou’ha hesitates. He’s obviously put off. “Two thousand American dollars.”

“Holy shit!” I shout as Mou’ha winces. “What would he even do with that kind of money?”

“I don’t know,” Mou’ha says. “He also says that tonight is the family’s last night here on the lake. Tomorrow morning they leave for their migration, south to the Sahara. So he has a lot of work to do. He says it has to be worth his while.”

“Ask him if Allah condones extortion.”

Mou’ha stalls.

“Go on,” I say, “ask him.”

Mou’ha asks. The man smiles as he responds to Mou’ha. There is an awkward levity afterward. I look to Mou’ha for the translation.

“He quoted an old Berber saying,” Mou’ha says bashfully, “‘Put your trust in Allah, but tie your camel first.'”

Ten minutes later, we settle on a price of one thousand dollars. The Atlantic will reimburse me. Everyone is happy and over the transaction, but I still feel swindled. This is why Nancy and I don’t travel. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is sacred. The white man is not a man. He is a bank machine. But still, I am here to work. The man, who is introduced to me after the transaction as Izem, happily takes Mou’ha and myself under his blacktop. He doesn’t even bother to ask why I am so damn interested in his newborn daughter. He doesn’t care. He’s got his cash in his hand. Hamou and the camel drivers wander off to pitch our camp.

“He says her name is Tanazârt n Ayt Ati,” Mou’ha says to me as I remove my glasses to make sure that they are recording.

We’re standing over what can only be described as a manger and looking down at a dark brown ball of mush as she wails, mouth open like a yawn, with all her newborn might. After three days of peace and quiet, the sound is paralyzing. She is wrapped in an old bleached red cloth. It has fraying yellow embroidery on it. Izem tries to rock the crib back and forth subtly. It has absolutely no effect. The baby shrew remains untamed. Her mother appears, as if out of nowhere, to take her away. With the main attraction gone, Mou’ha and I head back down to our camp.

After dinner, Mou’ha, Hamou, the camel drivers and I all make our way back up to Izem’s camp. Night has come and profound darkness has come with it. There’s no electricity for hundreds of miles. A trillion stars, a million cube-sats, and a handful of space stations shimmering above us in a salt and pepper night sky are the only lights by which we can see our path back up the slope. The sky is so densely populated with twinkling lights that the mountains surrounding us are visible merely by their silhouettes. And in the middle of the sheet of stars, Jupiter shines brightest like a torchbearer for the cosmos.

The family has lit a small fire for warmth. Izem’s sons, maybe five and seven years old, are sitting in front of the fire with the palms of their hands stretched out to the heat. Mou’ha tells me that the two boys spend all day herding the flocks up in the mountains. Hamou and the camel drivers begin singing old Berber folk tunes as they sit around the fire. I take discreet sips from my mickey of whiskey. Izem brings some more firewood. Tanazârt is still in her mother’s arms. She is awake but quiet. Thank god.

“Would you like to hold her?” Izem asks me, through Mou’ha’s translation.

“Sure,” I say. Izem’s wife stands and walks over to me. She places Tanazârt in my arms.

This is it. I’m holding the eight billionth human on the planet and the farce of the last three days suddenly seems worth it. I can make out the distant silhouettes of our camels at the foot of the slope. I can see Jupiter still shining brightly. Hamou and the camel drivers sit side by side like three wise men. And the miraculous infant is falling asleep in my arms. The scene is distinctly biblical.

But Tanazârt is no saviour. In fact, she is the opposite. She is a symbol of our mortality. She is a reminder that even though humankind knows no limits, the planet upon which we reside does. As much as we rely on innovations and breakthroughs we must remember that Mother Nature, the great equalizer, is our final judge and jury. With the birth of Tanazârt, so too was born mankind’s next great challenge and while we can put our trust in technology, we should all tie our camels first.

I wake up the following morning and stumble out of my tent. It’s cold, I’m exhausted and my joints feel as though they’re mudded with concrete. I glance up the mountain slope for Izem’s camp but I see only an empty patch of level earth. The family is gone. Embarked upon their arduous migration south leaving behind only a field full of still-warm sheep dung. I wonder where they’ll make camp? I wonder how long they will keep migrating for? I wonder if Izem will be the last nomadic Berber on earth? I wonder if Tanazârt will ever know exactly who she is? I wonder if she would care?

Now, we start our journey back to Marrakech. Back to Nancy. Back to the other 7,999,999,999.

Jeff Campagna is a Canadian freelance journalist, author and world traveller

The first thing I noticed about the new girl was that she wasn’t wearing the school colours on her face. I had never seen a pupil of McAllister Girls’ Academy, a major or a minor, without the school badge on her skin. Then I noticed that her hair was kind of frizzy and that it looked real.

“She must be an anti-synth,” said Alicia incredulously. “Wow. I’ve read about them, but I never thought I’d meet one. What a freak.”

“Why would anybody be anti-synth?” asked Jeddy. “They’d have to deal with all kind of killer diseases. I just can’t imagine anybody being so dumb. It’s so retro and not in a good way. She must be a freak.”

I remembered that there was an anti-synth community somewhere in the Midlands, maybe in Nottingham. They were called Charlies. They live without any synthetic gene technologies.

“It’s a religious thing,” I said, staring at the new girl. She looked so strange walking through the school without the school colours. She looked naked, somehow. I realised that, for the first time, I was looking at a person without any synthetic mods. She looked pretty good to me, attractive, even. I turned back to the canteen table, and I saw that Alicia and Jeddy were staring at me. Alicia and Jeddy were my best friends.

“What do you think, Marjory?” asked Alicia.

“She must be a freak,” I said.

Turned out that Ella wasn’t a Charlie. Mrs. McAllister, the school’s headmistress, explained it all to us, when she bought Ella into class. Ella was disabled. She has an anomalous genome that won’t allow any click-DNA insertions. She has some kind of crazy, ultra-efficient immune system that just eats up any foreign DNA that tries to enter her body.

“I’ve got Metchnikoff Syndrome. It’s my macrophage assembly. It’s incredibly effective – a hint of foreign DNA and… zap.”

Mrs McAllister had assigned me as Ella’s buddy, and I was showing her around the school. She didn’t seem to mind talking about her disability. I thought that was pretty cool.

“Can’t they mod your phages, and make them less effective or something?” I asked.

“Nah. As soon as they try to insert any type of foreign DNA, my macrophages leap into action. The transformation chemicals that suppress the immune system during click-DNA insertions just don’t seem to work for me. It’s complicated, there’s a whole host of other bits and bobs involved, but the macrophages are the main part of my trouble. They just cannot get any foreign DNA into me, so, therefore, no lovely clickable DNA for me.”

“That’s tough,” I said. I couldn’t imagine it.

Ella seemed to shrug it off, “Nah. It’s not so bad. Mum and Dad, though, it’s harder for them. They just won’t accept it. I can’t tell you how many medical procedures I’ve been through.”

“Hmm,” I said, putting a sympathetic hand on her arm.

“So when I turned thirteen, I just said, ‘enough is enough’. No more medical procedures for me. They couldn’t do anything about it, once I’d reached the age of majority.”

“Hmm.” I couldn’t stop looking at her.

“Mum and Dad are pretty upset about it, though. They think I should keep on trying, and the government, they would just love to get their hands on my body.”

I smiled. I thought about making a comment then thought better of it.

“Why don’t you come over to my place tonight?” she asked.

“I’d love to.”

She smiled and I just couldn’t get over how I was looking at the real her. She had freckles, slightly crooked teeth, but they weren’t quirks to make her look better. They weren’t deliberate imperfections to set off her beauty. She was the real deal.

I told my so-called best friends that I was going to go to Ella’s house, and they were a bit off about it.

“You don’t waste much time, do you, Marjory?” said Alicia.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, feigning ignorance.

“I mean this is her first day at school, and you’ve already got a date.”

“It’s not a date.”

“Don’t you think she’s a bit strange, Marjory?” asked Jeddy. “I mean Alicia’s just concerned about you. Sometimes it’s not such a good idea to get too friendly with the weirdos.”

Jeddy was always the peacemaker. The thing was, me and Alicia had one of those ‘on and off’ things. It was ‘off’ at the moment and I saw no reason why they should choose my girlfriends, I mean my friends.

“I’m going over to her house, that’s all. Ella could do with a friend.”

Alicia and Jeddy exchanged significant glances and then turned back to the console’s lesson.

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Ella had her own suite of rooms connected to her parents’ house. It was a definitely not an anti-synth residence.

“Wow,” I said. A 3-d fabber took up a sizeable portion of her fabroom. I noticed that it was hooked up to a personal synth power source; the new fabbers use up an awful lot of energy. “This is a full-size, people model. Wow. They cost a bundle, what do you parents do?”

“Dad’s a patent lawyer and Mum’s a campaigner, but I paid for the fabber. That’s why I’ve got my own power supply. Mum and Dad say I’ve got to pay my own energy bills.”

“Where on earth do you get the money from?” I asked.

“Different governments and different research institutes pay a lot of money to study me. Remember my super-immune system? They think I might be the next cure for cancer.”

“That’s pretty awesome.” Then I remembered what she had told me, about no more medical procedures. “Don’t you want to help them?” I asked.

She shrugged, “They’ve got a copy of my genome, let them work on that for a few years. They want to study my immune system in vivo, but I said, give me a few years off, let me enjoy my majority years and just be normal, for a change.”

She would never be normal, but she didn’t have to be. She was just great the way she was, but I was actually more interested in trying out the fabber.

“Can we fab a copy of the CheeseDolls?” The CheeseDolls were my favourite band.

“Sure,” said Ella, typing in the commands. “I love the CheeseDolls, too.” She frowned when she checked the supply of memory-plastic in the hopper. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to create them half size.”

Half-sized – it would take me six month’s allowance to afford that. “Sure,” I said.

The figures of the CheeseDolls materialised in front of us, programmed with a copy of their latest album. We sat back on the couch and let the plastic robots do their stuff. Their wonderful, discordant music washed over us.

#

The first thing I did when I got back to my own suite of rooms, (how I love being majority, it’s so great to have some privacy), was to switch on my clickable-mirror. I set it to display an image of my current face then I played around with the click-DNA inserts to see how each would fit in with my current sequences and my native DNA. Adding click-DNA is a subtle process, each fragment is designed to slip into your genome. The software in the clickable mirror gives a pretty good simulation of how you’re going to look.

I spent a long time at my mirror wondering what face Ella would find the most attractive. It had to be subtle. I couldn’t just go into school with a new face next week and expect her to fall in love with me. I also spent a lot of time trying to fathom the various theories about attractiveness. Attractiveness is a big industry with too many contradictory theories for me to understand.

I kinda felt a bit guilty thinking about Ella. She wouldn’t be able to change her face, maybe I was taking advantage. But then I thought ‘beauty is only gene deep’, after all. I finally found a look I was happy with and downloaded the click-DNA patches. I pressed them onto my face. They sank immediately into my skin and began to do their magic. Come next week, I would be what I had guessed Ella would find the most attractive. How could she resist me?

#

It didn’t quite work out like that, but over the next month, we got pretty close. We did girl stuff together, we did each other’s hair, we gossiped, we listened to music together. I was waiting until the right time to make my move.

I went over to Ella’s suite most nights. She had a hard time studying; she was stuck in the remedial classes. You can’t just click in knowledge, but you can click in intelligence enhancers. It didn’t seem fair that Ella had to study without the proper tools.

“Arrghh! I just can’t get my head around biochemistry,” said Ella, throwing the study text across the room, where it bounced off the wall and padded gently to the carpet. Study consoles are designed to take a lot of punishment.

“Don’t let it get you down,” I said, rather unhelpfully.

“It’s easy for you to say, Marjory. It’s not fair. It’s like everyone else has been given a gift, but I’m still holding out my hand. I’m just not like you guys.” She picked up the console and glared at it. “I hate biochem. I am so bad at it. I mean, what is the point of me even trying?”

“I thought you’d be good at biochemistry,” I said, not thinking.

“Oh yes, that would be so romantic wouldn’t it? The poor girl with Metchnikoff Syndrome grows up to find the cure for her crippling disease.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. It’s just that rumour going around school – it’s getting me down.”

Somebody had spread a rumour that Metchnikoff Syndrome was infectious. I thought I knew who had started that nasty bit of gossip.

“Just ignore the idiots. They’re just jealous.”

“It’s not just at school, Marjory. I’ve had some hate mail, threats, that kind of thing.”

“Oh, that’s terrible.”

“And Mum’s really upset. The Knight Institute have asked me to undertake some clinical trials. Mum really wants me to go.”

“The Knight Institute? That’s in Sweden, isn’t it? Your Mum can’t force you to go, can she?”

“No, of course not, but she’s really upset. I don’t like to see her like that.”

“I don’t want you to change, Ella,” I said softly.

“I’m sorry, Marjory. I know that you think I’m cool and all, but it’s hard being me, when I could be so much better.”

I held her in my arms.

“Don’t change, Ella.”

The time was right; we kissed.

#

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The next day Ella didn’t come in to school. I immediately assumed it was something to do with me. I was so angry when I found out the real reason. I went to find Alicia and Jeddy.

They were in the majority common room, downscanning copies of the latest college application hints, checking the social ratings and the projected salary estimates for all the trendiest universities.

“Oh my, look who it is,” said Alicia. She made a big point of looking around the common room. “Where’s your friend? Why aren’t you trailing behind her, as per usual.”

“You know where she is,” I said. “You couldn’t let her be, could you? You couldn’t stand the thought that someone could be as nice as her without synths.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Alicia.

“Ella has gone to Sweden to a medical research unit. She won’t be at school for a long time, perhaps she’ll never come back, and it’s all thanks to you.”

“Well, good,” said Alicia. “Maybe they’ll find a cure for her. We don’t want the little freak about, do we, Jeddy?”

“Well, she was starting to dominate you, Marjory,” said Jeddy. “We missed you. We’re supposed to be your best friends.”

“So, you decided to start a rumour that Metchnikoff Syndrome is infectious – which it isn’t, by the way. You couldn’t stand the fact that I liked her, could you?”

“You can’t prove anything,” said Alicia with a smirk.

“And I suppose you posted that nasty little rumour onto the global net?”

“Would I do a thing like that?” said Alicia.

“And thanks to you, some idiots threw a fire bomb though their window, last night.”

Alicia turned as pale as ice, “What? What? Is she okay? Was anyone hurt?”

“They’re fine. Their fire suppressor system took care of it. But because of you, her Mum and Dad have persuaded her that it will be best to get away for awhile. Thank you, Alicia, thanks a lot.”

My phone rang. It played the sound of the CheeseDolls into the majority common room. I began to cry.

Jeddy said, “We didn’t want to hurt her, Marjory. We didn’t put the stuff onto the global net did we, Alicia?”

I looked at Alicia. I read the guilt written over her face.

“We used to be really good friends, Marjory,” Alicia shrugged. “But it seems like you prefer the company of freaks.”

#

I took a week off school, pretending to be sick. I got a few disapproving messages from Mrs McAllister’s office, but I just ignored them.

I sat in front of the mirror, not my clickable mirror, but an old fashioned, glass mirror. I hadn’t realized, that I was so, well, so ugly. My once perfect skin was blotchy; my hair had an unfortunate kink that caused it to curl up; my nose, well, the least said about my nose the better, suffice to say that it was no longer cute and button-like.

Choices, choices, there are so many choices in this life.

I had secluded myself in my suite while the changes took place. Mum screamed when I entered the family kitchen.

“What’s happened to your face, darling,” she said rushing over. “You look terrible.”

Father looked up from his paper and his face went notably whiter, “Is this some kind of majority rebellion thing, because I liked the old you,” he said.

“This is the old me, I’ve taken out my click-DNA.”

“You’ve done what?” asked Mum, turning my face, this way and that.

“Ack. Leave her be. She’s age of majority, after all.”

“I suppose so,” said Mum. “At least nobody will see her, now she’s not going to school.”

“I will be attending school this morning,” I said.

“No, absolutely not,” said Mum.

“Leave her be,” said Dad. “I think she looks just fine.”

“I suppose this is all about Ella,” said Mum.

I blushed, but said nothing, preserved my dignity and made my way to school.

#

I felt pretty nervous when I opened the door to school. I was expecting a whole lot of aggro. I walked along the corridor. Everyone ignored me. I saw them looking at me and turning away. It was as if I didn’t exist. That was what it was like for Ella. If you don’t look perfect, you’re nothing. It made me really angry.

I knew that there were a couple of people who could be relied on to say something.

“What have you done to yourself, Marjory?” asked Jeddy, when I walked into the majority common room.

“She’s made herself look like her weirdo girlfriend,” said Alicia.

All the other kids, all my so-called friends, started to laugh at me.

#

It was an easy thing to do. I used the fabber in the school labs to knock up a special piece of click-DNA. I used the same retrovirus technology that all click-DNA uses, but instead of downloading it into a skin-patch I slipped it into a nice air-borne virus. I designed the virus with a limited lifespan and I designed it to be very infectious. As the template, I used some DNA excised from the follicle cells attached to a strand of Ella’s hair.

I released the virus near the air vents. I imagined little bits of Ella floating though the school, landing on all the perfect students. I imagined the retrovirus snipping out bits of their DNA and pushing in something new and special.

I didn’t know what was going to happen in the long-term. After all, the immune system is complex, like Ella said, there are all kinds of bits and bobs working together. I did know that there were going to be some changes at the school. Ella’s macrophages were incredibly efficient. Pretty soon, all my perfect looking friends were going to look a whole lot different.

#

What do you know? It turned out that Metchnikoff Syndrome was contagious, after all.

There were geneticists crawling all over the Academy. They’d insisted in coming in to the school to monitor us all. They were very interested in analysing the results of my impromptu experiment.

Everybody suspects me. So what? They can’t prove anything. I’d used Ella’s ID when I’d fabbed the virus.

Ella will be back at school in a couple of weeks. She laughed her head off when I sent her the image of our class.

“Is that really what Alicia looks like?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, wow.” She studied the image I’d sent her: girls with acne, spectacles, frizzy hair, greasy hair, enormous noses or disappearing chins. “They look good,” said Ella.

“They do look good,” I said. In the faces of my friends, I could see an attractiveness that the sterility of click-DNA beauty had taken away. We all looked good, and we all looked different.

I guess it’s true what they say, ‘Beauty is only gene deep.’

Deborah Walker grew up in the most English town in the country, but she soon high-tailed it down to London, where she now lives with her partner and two young children. Find Deborah in the British Museum trawling the past for future inspiration or on her blog.

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Damon Waltz stood in the field across from his mother’s one-bedroom apartment. He stared at his small, brown dog as it paced back and forth through the sopping-wet grass. It was raining, and Damon’s clothes were soaked down to his skin. He shook his hand free from the clenches of his sleeve and adjusted his hood so he could still see without being blasted in the face by raindrops.

He adjusted his headphones under his hood and looked down to the shaking dog.

“Would you poop already?” Damon shouted at the little brown dog.

The dog didn’t care, turned away and began spinning in circles at the end of his leash. Damon sighed as the dog went back to pacing in the grass. He looked away, toward the city in the distance. It glowed blue; the clouds above it illuminated so he could see every bump.

He looked back at the dog as it looked up to him in shame from its squat. Damon unravelled a poop bag from the leash and stuck his hand inside, waiting for the dog to finish. He picked up the poop, tied off the plastic bag and slathered his hands in hand sanitizer.

The grass had become extra slick and muddy as he walked up the hill toward the apartment building. The dog sprinted ahead and pulled on Damon’s arm. His foot slipped out from under him and sent his face into the wet grass. The leash came free from his hand and the dog vanished at the top of the hill.

“Stupid dog,” Damon said, pushing himself off the grass, wiping mud from his black hoodie. He continued up the hill to find the dog sitting in front of their apartment door; the leash trailing behind him.

“Couldn’t be patient, could you?” he asked the dog as he unlocked the door and opened it for the dog. The lights in the hallway to the apartment dimmed a moment. Damon paused. The lights continued getting darker until he couldn’t see a thing.

Suddenly the lights burned to brighter than normal. The bulb at the far end of the hall surged, raining glass and embers onto the ground. A burst of blue particles danced across the wet concrete from where Damon had just come from.

Damon closed the door quietly and walked slowly toward the particles as they flickered out. He could hear breathing. He put his back against the building and peered around the edge. A man lay smoldering in the rain. His torso and legs were covered in body armor. He sighed.

Damon snapped back around the corner. The man began groaning in pain and Damon looked again, his whole body rounding the edge. The rain hit him again as he walked toward the fallen man.

“Excuse me?” Damon said, stepping closer to the man. He stretched out his hand, “Excuse me, are you alright?”

The man barely lifted his bloodied face to look at the boy.

“Help,” the man could barely mumble.

Damon dropped by his side and slid the man’s arm over his shoulder. He stood, bringing the man with him. They walked slowly back into the covered hallway. Once out of the rain the man shook free of Damon and slammed his back against the wall, sliding down to a sitting position.

“Kid,” the man said. His hands clutched his torso; they were red.

Damon stared down at the man.

The man reached into the front pocket of his kevlar vest and pulled out a small device with a screen on it. He lifted the device toward Damon. The kid took it hesitantly.

“Guard this… Let no one take it from you, no matter what. Only give it to the Ace…” The man’s head drooped, but his neck snapped back, “I need to go.”

“What? Go where? I can call an ambulance,” Damon said, reaching into his pocket for his cell phone.

The man shook his head. He lifted his left arm and pulled back his sleeve, revealing a glass looking bracer. A simple swipe over the inside of his wrist lit up the entire bracer. He pressed a couple of buttons. The bracer began to glow, illuminating a strip of light up his arm and across the armor on his body.

The man looked up to Damon one last time as the lights began to dim.

He smiled as the lights blared with brightness and he vanished in an explosion of particles. They skittered down the hallway and bounced off Damon.

They were warm to the touch as they dissipated. Damon stood frozen a moment. He examined the device until the door to his mother’s apartment opened.

Damon jumped, fumbling the device into his pocket.

“What’re you doing out here? Are you messing with the building’s fuses?” Damon’s mother whisper-shouted down the hall.

He shook his head no as he walked to the apartment.

His mother had already vanished into her bedroom and muddy paw prints disappeared down the hall. Damon stripped off his wet jacket and dropped it on the floor. He sat on the couch and rolled the device over in his hands until he fell asleep.

At 3:47 in the morning his phone let out a strong vibrate, warning Damon the battery was low. He jumped awake, tossing the device to the ground, and fumbling inside his pocket to find the vibrating phone.

The device lit up and Damon stopped digging. The whole room was illuminated. He leaned down and picked it up, a series of numbers scrolled quickly across the screen. They had a familiar pattern until he realized the last fourteen were today’s date and exact time. His eyes shifted to the fourteen numbers before them and quickly put together the date: January 7, 2096 14:56:32.

“Twenty ninety-six?” Damon whispered to himself.

The screen began to dim, along with the hall light. A car alarm rang out from the parking lot, whipping Damon’s head in that direction. His hand slammed over the screen blocking the light. He jumped from the couch and split two blinds open between his fingers.

A large, silhouetted man stood by one of the cars. Damon closed the blinds a little, still staring. The figure moved, the sound of gears echoing across the parking lot. It peered into the windows of a sedan and then clenched its fingers into the roof and slid the car out of the way as it moved to the next one.

Damon closed the blinds as car alarms started going off. He hadn’t noticed until now but he’d stopped breathing. The lights dimmed a moment and then there was instant silence outside. The boy peered through the blinds again. The rain poured down on the parking lot, spilling onto a line of damaged cars.

Looking down at the device he whispered to himself, “This cannot be good.”

He meandered across the room and sat back on the couch. In the silence of the apartment he could hear his heart beating in his ears. He vigilantly stared at the front door until his eyelids grew heavy and he slept.

The next morning was like any other; up at 6:45, showered, dressed, breakfast and out the door by 7:30. Standing at the bus stop he would lean against a nearby building and try to find pictures of naked girls on his phone. Once the bus arrived, he’d pocket his phone and sit quietly in a middle seat.

This was the worst part of his day. The bus always shook as if the suspension was gone and just like every day before there was a homeless man sleeping one seat in front of him. Damon’s eyes stared straight ahead, he dare not make eye contact with anyone else. He had nothing to be proud of and no stories to share with fellow passengers.

At the first stop he jumped off the bus, walked three blocks and stood at another stop. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and clicked the internet icon. He glanced up to make sure no one was watching and then he saw her.

Her long brunette hair was pulled in a pony tail, but her bangs swooped in front of her face. She wore a smart suit, and he immediately thought how odd it was that he thought the suit made her look smart. She glanced back at him and smiled, her green eyes locking with his. He dropped his phone back into his pocket.

The bus arrived and he climbed on through the rear doors. He sat in his usual seat and seconds later she sat next to him. She smelled like vanilla and it relaxed him. He smiled at her and then looked forward and down. The bus started moving and he continued straight forward, still taking in her smell.

“So… I guess I’ll start the conversation?” she asked, looking at him.

He looked at her, “What?”

“I’m Sam,” she said, sticking her hand out.

“Damon,” he said, placing his hand in hers and giving it a pleasant shake. Her hands were soft, and warm and it made his hair stand on end.

“I’ve never seen you on this bus,” he said to her, still awkwardly holding her hand.

“I’m new to the area,” she said.

He realized he was holding her hand and released it with a chuckle. She laughed as well and it was pleasant.

“So, where’re you headed?” she asked.

“University. I can’t afford to live in the city, so I bus in and out every day,” he said, slightly ashamed.

“That’s where I’m headed, what’re you studying?” She asked, her questions not bothering him.

“Pre-law,” he said, looking forward again.

She laughed, “Me too.”

“What year are you?” he asked, looking out the window. Something caught his eye. A figure standing in the middle of a used car lot watched the city bus pass by. The figure reminded him of the silhouette from the night before.

He contorted awkwardly to keep looking behind him. The bus continued on.

“That’s weird,” he said, spinning back to a more comfortable position. Sam contorted back as well.

“What were we looking at?” she asked, genuinely interested.

“I thought I recognized someone at Moe’s.”

The bus entered the city limits and Damon began to gather his bag from the ground. Sam grabbed the bag from Damon and dug into it. After a moment, a look crossed her face as if she couldn’t find what she was looking for, and then a sudden smile as she came up with a pen and a notepad. She wrote her phone number onto the paper and handed it, along with the bag, to Damon.

“Text me during class,” she said with a smile. Her teeth were beautifully white. He stared at them and became aware that he had forgotten to brush his teeth before heading for the bus. He gladly took the number and his bag.

“Do you wanna get coffee after class?” he asked, surprising himself.

Her lower lip bunched up, “I can’t today. Maybe tomorrow?”

He nodded approvingly as the bus came to a stop at the campus. Most of the bus emptied and Sam departed without saying goodbye. He stood for a moment and watched her go before turning toward his building.

The air was humid and made his navy t-shirt stick to his skin. The straps of his bag caused him to sweat; he was grateful for wearing a dark shirt. His first class of the day was a political science lecture. He hated the teacher, but found the course material mildly interesting.

He’d never really thought about his future. When he stayed at his father’s house both his father and stepmother had demanded he go to college. His father was a lawyer, as was his stepmother. They had worked in the same firm for ages, and Damon could only assume that she was one of the two reasons his father had left his mother.

Damon’s eyes snapped out of a trance that he hadn’t realized he was in. The professor’s voice dragged on. Damon had read studies about the “T;” the magical set of seats that supposedly allow the student to learn better. He didn’t buy into it and sat in the middle back of the four-hundred person lecture hall. Something about being a single face in a sea of late teens made him more comfortable.

He slowly began to slouch in his chair, pulling his cell phone from his pocket. It was an old phone, or at least old by technology standards, but it could text. And he’d planned on texting Sam the second she started walking away from him.

His thumb moved over the keys slowly, each press sounded like a tree falling in the woods. He nervously glanced up to the professor, who faced the white-board at the front of the room. His hands were becoming sweaty. His eyes moved quickly across the keys as he typed on the flip phone: Hey its Damon how goes ur class?

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He relaxed a bit, but felt nervous when she didn’t respond instantaneously. The phone closed with a barely audible slap sound. Again he looked toward the teacher, she hadn’t noticed. He let out a deep sigh of relief, until the phone jingled loudly, an 8-bit version of the Piña Colada song.

The phone bounced in his hand has he fumbled it between his fingers, trying to find the vibrate switch. The entire class seemed to look at him as he clutched his phone.

“Sorry,” he said, ashamed. The professor stared at him until his phone vanished into his pocket. She seemed to scoff at him before returning to facing the white-board.

The professor ended the class the same way she had for the past three class periods, “And a reminder, we are collecting funds in memory of Doctor Buntin, who was murdered on campus just before Christmas twenty-five years ago. His killer escaped from prison, and authorities suggested Dr. Buntin may have been part of a series of killings. There’s an impressive article on the school’s homepage that covers Dr. Buntin and some of the materials he was studying, if you have time.”

She clicked the school’s home page and a photo of Dr. Buntin appeared, next to the face of his killer.

“See you all next time,” she said as the class began rising from their seats.

Damon stared at the photo of the killer. It was the same face as the man he’d helped in the hallway. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight, how had he murdered Dr. Buntin twenty-five years ago? He had questions, and didn’t want to sit through another class before getting answers.

He slung the bag over his shoulder and pushed past his fellow students toward the doors. He burst through, the air still sticky. The sky was cloud covered now as he rushed past more students. His hand shot into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It was a message from Sam: Boring as usual. Can’t wait for coffee tomorrow.

A smile crossed his face and he kept on toward the nearest bus stop.

He tapped his foot impatiently at the stop. He leaned against a sign post and stared down the road, waiting for the shape of the bus to round the nearby corner. His eyes shifted with his thoughts as he realized he hadn’t seen the device. He spun the bag off his shoulder and unzipped it. He dug through the bag.

Nothing. The bus came to a squeaking stop in front of him.

On the bus ride back to his mother’s apartment his whole body itched with anticipation. His fingers nervously tapped against his backpack. A homeless man watched him from across the aisle and then leaned in.

“Got any blow?” he asked.

Damon snapped out of his gaze from the window and looked at the homeless man, who at this point was well inside Damon’s personal bubble.

“Uhm… no,” Damon answered.

“Then why’re your fingers tapping like that?” the homeless man gestured to Damon’s dancing hands.

His eyes dropped to his hands and he stopped moving them, interlacing his fingers.

“Just…,” Damon said, intentionally not finishing his sentence and peering back out the window.

The bus leaned far forward and the brakes squealed as it came to a halt at Damon’s stop. He pushed passed the homeless man and made his way down the center aisle to the front. The driver smirked at him as he turned toward the door.

He continued briskly up the sidewalk, his feet smacking the pavement as they often did when he was late for class. It was a quarter mile from the bus stop to his mother’s apartment, it had never felt so far. His calves tightened with the brisk pace, but he knew he couldn’t stop. The ring of keys fumbled in his hands as he searched for his apartment key. He’d kept a key from all of his mother’s previous domiciles, and suddenly became frustrated at what a stupid idea that had been.

Finally, the correct key fit into the slot, and with ease the door unlocked and swung open. He snuck in and closed the door; his mother was out. The faint smell of stale cigarettes hung in the air. He didn’t smoke, but his mother always had.

The dog greeted him by the door, jumping up on him and yapping in a high enough pitch that he became instantly angry. He steadied the dog’s head and dropped his bag on the ground. He started flipping the couch cushions over, searching for the device. The dog’s bark lowered, almost chastising him in place of his mother.

Damon dropped to the ground and looked under the couch: nothing. He awkwardly rolled to look under the coffee table. There it was. He grabbed it and sat up, gently placing the device on the coffee table.

He lifted the monitor of his laptop and hit the internet browser icon. His eyes shifted to the device as the school’s homepage loaded. He clicked the link to the professor’s story and read it through, twice. Another tab opened as he used the keyboard shortcut and typed into the search bar: dr buntin murderer.

Damon waited patiently. The first link took him to the same article from the school page. The second two links were about a scientist who became an Olympic sprinter in Germany. The fourth link led him to a conspiracy page. He skimmed the first two sentences and moused over the back button, his eyes still reading. Before clicking he moused away and scrolled down. A report from a witness at a hospital described the murderer being attacked by a machine.

He continued reading. The murderer only escaped by vanishing into an explosion of blue particles. Damon’s jaw hung open as he finished the article. He picked up the device and spun it in his hands. His fingers ran over the screen until he found a seam in the construction of the device.

Suddenly it illuminated, a faint hum came from the lights in the kitchen. Damon jumped in surprise. The dog began growling at him. Lines of code began streaming across the screen. The kid’s eyes followed the numbers but all he could make from it was some sort of math equation. The lights in the apartment began to dim. The dog cowered away down the hall.

The screen on the device froze and a message box appeared: Located. The screen went dark. A straining metal noise came from the parking lot. Damon rose and moved to the blinds just like the night before. The silhouette was back. Damon’s eyes grew large as he saw a man with mechanical limbs lifting a car above its head. The machine’s head turned and made eye contact with Damon. It threw the car at his apartment.

Damon stumbled back and made it into the hallway as the car came smashing through the sliding glass door. It slid on its roof through the living room, crushing the coffee table, and destroying the countertop that separated the small kitchen from the living room. The boy watched from the ground of the hallway.

He looked down again at the device and touched the screen. It seemed to shift back a menu. A list of items appeared:

/Locate

/Transfer

/Purge

He pressed the transfer button and a different math problem appeared on the screen, followed by what looked like a geographical representation of the Earth. Another message box appeared: Location? The device chimed a pleasant tone.

“School?” Damon said. The sound of crushing glass came from the living room. The device let out an angry tone. The echoes of the machine began getting louder.

“Anywhere in Italy! What?” He surprised himself with what he said. The device chimed pleasantly. The machine rounded the corner and squinted at him. Damon’s vision became blurry and tinted blue. He felt a shock go through his body and suddenly he was on the ground on the side of a mountain. He was panting.

The device was hot in his hand and the screen was dark. It fell to the ground – melting snow and sending a cloud of steam into the air. He clutched his hand against his chest. He breathed a moment and stared at the view. It was dark out, and chilly. The snow on the mountains seemed to almost glow in the moonlight. The top layer of dusting had blown back in small circle around him.

His skin felt dry, and his mouth tasted like nickels. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and flipped it open. The screen remained dark. He pressed the power button but nothing happend. It was fried. He chucked it into the snow.

A chime came from the device. He picked it up. The screen was opened to the menu again. He pressed the Transfer button again. He followed the same steps as before. When presented with the location he stated the address of his father’s law office.

A fingerprint icon appeared on the screen. Damon placed his thumb on the symbol. A percentage appeared next to it: 17%. He gave the device a perplexed look and pushed himself up from the ground. He could make out a road a ways down the mountain. He put the device in his pocket and started walking.

As he got closer to the road the wind began picking up. His arms clutched close to his chest to keep warm. Thick clouds came from his mouth as he trudged through the ankle deep snow. He stomped his shoes on the concrete once he got to the road. Chunks of snow fell from his frozen pants. He’d lost feeling in his lips and his fingers ached from the cold.

He pulled the device from his pocket again and placed his thumb on the icon: 48%. He continued on down the hill. Lights from a village glowed in the distance. For the first time in over an hour he felt hope.

His legs were tired as he stumbled into the square of the town. Every building was dark. Only the street lights shined. He let out a deep breath, a cloud coming from his nostrils. The device chimed from his pocket. He checked it quickly. The screen had one familiar and threatening word on it: Located.

The lights began to dim. He tripped over his legs as he headed for a small stone wall. He backed out to the menu and touched his thumb to the fingerprint icon, 87%. He pressed the screen to his chest to hide the light.

Like before the street lights went from completely dark to full strength again. The machine appeared in the center of the town with a small blast that sent snow, small rocks and particles in every direction. It’s dark eyes scanned the square for movement. Damon held his breath while his body shook. The device let out a chime.

The machine turned and entered a full sprint toward the stone wall. Damon crawled away as the machine smashed through the wall. Rocks and debris flew through the air; a stone crashed into Damon’s forehead. Damon rolled into the street and struggled up to his feet. His head pounded. He slammed his thumb onto the icon. Everything went blue and blurry.

Damon fell forward onto the warm concrete in front of his father’s work in Irvine, California. The device bounced away and into the grass. He lay unconscious. He could feel the world spinning.

#

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He tried to move his arms, but couldn’t. He opened his eyes and saw the familiar tribal art his stepmother had decorated his father’s den with. A blanket was tightly wrapped around him.

“Dad?” Damon said as loud as he could, barely above a whimper. He coughed to clear his throat and tried again, “dad?”

The door to the den opened and his stepmother came in.

“Damon, how’re you feeling?” she asked.

He liked her. He always had. When he was younger she would sneak him extra dessert at his father’s company Christmas party. When she married his dad, she had made sure it was okay with Damon first.

“Better, I think. What happened?”

“We found you outside of the office. How did you get here? We’re not supposed to see you until the end of the semester.”

“I… I just needed to get away,” Damon said, pulling his arms free from the blanket.

“You were freezing. I thought you had a fever.”

“No, I was in the mountains,” he sat up, “or…” Damon’s words drifted as he started to check himself over. “I had a little computer with me, do you know where it went?”

His stepmother smiled and pulled the device from her back pocket. She handed it over willingly, “It doesn’t seem to work.” She said with a half smirk and a shrug of her shoulders.

Damon held it tightly in his hands. He pressed the button on the side and it didn’t light up. He pressed it again and waited impatiently for the screen to light. It didn’t. Sadness crossed his face.

“So what are your plans?” she asked him. He looked up to her with tired eyes.

“How about you get some rest, and when your father gets home we all have dinner?” She continued.

Damon nodded, pleased with her plan. She excused herself and closed the door behind her. He shook the device once more before gently placing it on the coffee table. He slid onto his side and stared at the device until his eyes grew heavy and he passed out. A few hours passed, and his stepmother checked on him. He didn’t stir, but slept soundly. She smiled at him.

The smell of her homemade chicken noodle soup filled the air. His father was home, changing from his work clothes and chatting with his wife. She updated him on Damon and asked how the remainder of his day went. They sat and ate with their pre-teen daughter, Valerie.

Damon slowly emerged from the den and made his way to the dinner table, still wrapped in the blanket. He sat in the empty chair and was greeted by a giant-crooked-toothed smile from Valerie. He smiled back.

“Hey, kiddo, how ya feeling?” His dad asked, patting him on his back.

“Better… Starving, this smells amazing,” he said as his stepmother filled a bowl with soup.

He took a sip and then another and another like it was the first time he’d eaten in ages. Valerie stared at him. It had been a couple of years since she’d seen him, and she was amazed at how different he looked with slightly longer hair and the beginnings of a beard.

“How’s school?” his father asked.

Damon swallowed a large gulp before responding, “Grades are good. Classes are still boring, but keeping that four-point-zero.”

“Well, there’ll be a bedroom here for you if you want to transfer to USC next semester. Get out of windy Chicago, and maybe meet a lady here,” his dad said with a grin.

Damon chuckled and continued eating. He’d always thought his father was the better parent, but unfortunately couldn’t prove it when his parents went through their divorce. They continued eating dinner as a family. Valerie ended the meal by showing off her sketchbook. He had missed his little sister.

The next morning Damon’s father dropped him off at the airport on his way to work. They caught up in the car, discussing everything from Damon’s mother’s mental state to Damon’s plans after college. “There’s a place for you at my company,” his father always said. Damon wanted to earn his place in business and his father respected that. His father gave him fifty dollars and waved as Damon walked into the terminal.

He waited in line patiently, staring off just beyond the TSA agent. The flight ended up delayed for three hours. Damon checked the clock, carefully figuring the time difference from here to Chicago. His foot bounced as he sat in a chair near his gate. He meandered through a shop beyond security; he found nothing he needed.

The news echoed out of a nearby TV as he sat in a blue pleather chair. The device turned over and over in his hands. The wait was starting to get to him. He pried at a seam, but couldn’t get the parts to separate. Boarding time came and he waited patiently in line. A little girl in front of him slammed her wet palms against the window and squee-d in excitement at the site of their plane.

The flight was smooth with minor turbulence coming into Chicago Midway.

He caught a bus and sat quietly in his normal seat. After two changes he got off at his campus. His feet walked with purpose as he briskly moved toward the on-campus coffee shop. Sam sat at a table in the corner. She was staring out of the window.

“Excuse me, miss, this seat taken?” he said as he approached.

She glared at him.

“Sorry I’m late; I had a really weird night…” He said, looking out the window behind her.

She smiled at him, “Tell me about it.” She smacked her hand on the table across from her. He sat.

“Two nights ago I found this,” he said, placing the damaged device on the table.

“Found it?” Samantha asked, staring at it.

“Or it was given to me. But then yesterday, this…” he paused, searching for the right word, “machine-thing, threw a car through my mother’s apartment. And then this device somehow teleported me to Italy. The machine somehow followed me.”

“Heavy.”

“What?” he asked, confused.

“The machine’s name is Heavy,” she said, placing her hand on the device. They made eye contact. Her demeanor was different, her eyes narrower; the light in them gone.

“I don’t understand,” he said trying to take the device back from her. Her fingers wrapped around the device and he couldn’t get a grip on the smooth polycarbonate shell. She looked out the window drawing Damon’s attention to Heavy, standing beside the glass.

“Oh shit,” Damon said, falling from his chair to the ground. Samantha stood with the device. She stepped over Damon and headed toward the door. Her hair tossed over her shoulder as she looked back at Damon. He stood facing Heavy.

“Thank you for your help, Damon,” she said, blowing him a kiss. She paused, her eyes growing wide.

Heavy spun around as a full-size pickup truck slammed him into the coffee shop. Glass and debris littered the air and floor. People ran screaming in chaos. Damon pushed the table off his leg and looked around in confusion. He stared at the driver as she climbed out of the shattered windshield.

She leapt from the hood, landing near Damon and sprinted after Samantha out the front door. He watched a moment and then pushed himself from the ground, sprinting after the women. His legs were sore and he coughed up dust as he ran. He was gaining on the girl from the truck. The pain in his leg soared up his muscles and he plummeted to the ground; his hands scraped on the concrete.

The women rounded a corner into an alleyway. Samantha stood facing the truck driver. She was panting. Damon limped around the corner and hunched over, resting his hands on his knees. The woman from the truck removed a pistol from a leg holster and aimed it down the alley.

“Drop it, Vasden,” the girl said.

Damon looked up to her. Her long blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, her face was serious and marked with a scar on her right cheek; her gun locked onto the cornered Samantha.

“Is this what you’re looking for, Ace?” Samantha asked, spinning her hand from behind her back to show the device, “Ya know, Landon fought so hard to hide this from us, yet here we are. How naive to trust a college boy with all this responsibility.”

All the hair on Damon’s neck instantly rose with the pull of Ace’s trigger. His whole body jumped and tensed. His eardrums pulled in only low dull tones and a single high-pitch ring. His stomach twisted and his chin seemed to tingle as it usually did before he vomited.

His vision became blurry as he saw blood pour down Samantha’s arm. The device bounced off the concrete as the street lights burst with electricity. Samantha vanished in an explosion of warm particles.

Damon hit the ground, hard. The particles danced across the damp cement. They blurred in and out until everything went dark.

#

His face burned like a skinned knee; his muscles ached as he forced his eyes open. He recognized nothing. Ace passed in front of him and his eyes slammed closed.

“You need to rest Damon,” her voice said pleasantly. “You’re safe here.”

He did as was asked and slept.

When he awoke again his face was damp. He reached up slowly to find a wet rag on his scratched face. His eyelids slipped open, silhouettes of two women stood in front of a large screen.

He rose, taking his time before trying to stand. His head spun.

The shorter silhouette turned to face him and walked close, it was Ace. She knelt in front of him, placed her hands on his cheeks and stared at his eyes.

“Good, no concussion,” she said, finishing with a smile.

He pulled the rag from his face. The other silhouette was now standing over Ace.

“Abigail, we must plan our next assault if we are to find Captain Daniels.”

Ace nodded and followed the tall woman back to the screen. Damon moved slowly to the screen and the console the two women were using.

“So much blue,” he said staring out a nearby window to the city beyond the glass.

Abigail smiled at him and continued typing at the console.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Chicago. Twenty ninety-six,” Ace answered.

“What? How?” he continued in surprise.

The tall woman looked from Damon to Ace.

“Abigail, we should not inform him anymore. It could change the timeline,” she spoke sternly.

Ace looked from the woman to Damon, “I think we’ll be fine.”

“We are time travellers, Parker and I. We stole the device you were holding on to so that it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands….”

“Sam,” Damon muttered to himself.

“Exactly. We don’t know what they want to do with it, but we know that whatever it is, it can’t be good. We’ve been trying to stop them for years now.”

“If you’re from the future, can you tell me how my life ends up? What do I do? What do I become? Am I remembered?” he asked, the light from the city illuminating his shoulders.

Ace looked to Parker and then slowly back to Damon. A small smile faded from her face.

“I can’t tell you that,” she said, her voice lower. The console chimed, whipping Ace’s head back to the screen.

“It appears Captain Daniels’ last jump landed him somewhere near Nome, Alaska 2019. I’m calculating a jump scheme now,” the taller woman said in a stern and completely focused voice. Damon looked her up and down, she wore a skin tight suit seemingly like a wet suit. Glowing strands of blue wire ran down each limb.

Abigail placed her hands on Damon’s shoulders, “We have to go, and you have to stay. You will be safe here.”

“Wait, I don’t understand,” Damon said as Abigail moved away from him.

The taller woman pressed a button on the wrist of her suit, and made her way to the the far side of the room. The ceiling illuminated with perfectly white lights. Damon shielded his eyes. He watched as the woman stepped into knee high armored boots.

“You’ll barely notice we’re gone,” Abigail said, standing next to the armored woman. As she finished with her torso armor she made eye contact with Damon for the first time, “Don’t touch anything.” She placed a helmet over her head.

Curved glass walls lowered down around the women from the ceiling. As the panels pressed against each other they formed a tight seal. The tall woman pressed a couple more buttons on the wrist of her suit. A large concussion blast slammed against the glass, sending with it particles dancing off in all directions. Damon jumped slightly. The women were gone.

Damon took in a deep breath. Half a second later a burst of light exploded in the glass room. Particles danced again. The women seemed frozen in a battle stance. Ace was strewn over Landon, a hand on his chest and the other raising a handgun away from the group. The tall woman held out her rifle over both Ace and Landon. Her armor was littered with bullet holes, the visor of her helmet cracked.

Landon’s head dropped back as both women lowered their guns. The glass burst open and raised to the ceiling. The tall woman knelt and lifted Landon from the ground. She sprinted passed Damon and toward an infirmary bed. Ace ran by, not looking at Damon.

Hours passed as Damon stood watching the two women operate on Landon. The tall woman pulled three slugs from Landon’s chest and dropped them into the stainless steel tray. Ace monitored his vitals and replaced an I-V bag.

A tap on Damon’s shoulder woke him up. Ace stood over him.

“It’s time to go home, Damon,” she said quietly. Landon rested soundly in the infirmary.

“Is it safe?” he asked.

“We have the device now, and we can drop you wherever you want to go,” she said through a smile.

#

He stood in the center of the glass room and waved to the two women. The glass panels sealed tightly, popping his ears. His stomach was heavy and throat ached. He still had questions. The room became warm.

A bright flash burned momentarily in his eyes as particles danced away from his feet. He stared at his father’s garage doors as the embers burned out. The sounds of crickets filled the cool air. He took a step forward and bright flash came from behind him. He spun and the Heavy machine stared at him.

Damon fumbled backwards and down to the concrete. Heavy took a step forward. The tall woman appeared from nowhere, her helmet still cracked and armor riddled with holes. She landed on the machine’s back.

He spun her, flinging her against the concrete. He armor ripped small chunks from the stone as she rolled up to her feet. She lifted her arms as if she was holding a rifle and one formed from her armor. She fired off a shot.

The bullet ricocheted off Heavy’s arm. The lights in the house kicked on. Heavy lunged at the woman knocking away the rifle. His metal hand slammed against her throat. She slammed against the concrete. Heavy’s foot crashed onto the woman’s chest.

“You were so useful, Parker,” Heavy’s metallic voice echoed out. He began pressing down with his foot. The gears in his leg began to grind against the resistance of her armor. He pushed harder, her armor bending and beginning to buckle.

Another shot rang out and the bullet pierced a cooling tube on Heavy’s leg. The pressurized air froze the concrete and Parker’s armor as Heavy whirled away to see his attacker.

Damon’s father stood on the front step of his house holding a shotgun in his hand, his bathrobe swaying in the wind.

“Dad?” Damon asked just before Heavy knocked him out of the way. He tumbled to the ground. His head spun as he watched the machine get closer to his father. His hand came to a rest on Parker’s rifle. His neck twisted to her. She lay unconscious on the ground. He careened back.

Another shot rang out, jolting him from his shock. A spark shot from Heavy’s chest and into the driveway. His father cycled another round. He picked up the rifle, hoisted it to his shoulder and looked down the small scope. He exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The bullet pierced another coolant tube leading up from Heavy’s back to his head. Freezing air rushed from the tube.

Heavy dropped almost instantly, rolling and reaching for the damaged hose. The rifle fell to the driveway. Damon’s father looked over the fallen machine to his son.

“Damon, what on Earth?” he asked, winded.

Parker marched passed Damon, her armor dented and the paint scratched off. She grabbed the rifle as she moved, it folded back into her armor. She placed her hand onto the machine’s head and looked back to Damon.

“Mr. Waltz, may you discover your future.” She spoke sternly before pressing a button on her wrist. A light concussion blast shot across the driveway, knocking Damon’s father off his balance.

There was an odd moment of silence between Damon and his father.

“Are you alright?”

“Are you alright?”

They both spoke in unison and then laughed lightly. Damon pushed himself from the driveway and walked slowly to the front door.

Harrison Sissel has been writing since 2002. He is an award-winning screenwriter and avid prose writer.

Stravinsky’s Les Augures printaniers wasn’t as mad as he came off. It was more disappointment that made him protest to Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major BWV 1047 (First Movement) that they should scrub the whole meeting and head for home. Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major BWV 1047 (First Movement) insisted however they give Earth a chance to make up for its disappointing first impression, a motion she was backed up on by “Der Hölle Rache” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and “Chanson du Toréador” from Bizet’s Carmen.

These weren’t actually the names of The Diplomats from the planet Handel’s Suite in F major, but what they sang out when referring to themselves. As far as the think tank who were desperately trying to interpret what The Diplomats were saying could gather, their species didn’t have names. They communicated with slight hand motions and released pheromones to indicate who they were speaking to and tone. The hand motions were remarkably similar to American Sign Language and would have been a much less difficult language barrier to break through. But as it had been explained to President David Gibson, who was now sitting at a table with nine other world leaders across the stage from The Diplomats at the Royal Albert Hall, they hadn’t traveled all this way to talk with their hands.

“The truth of it is sir,” Gibson’s Chief of Staff had explained at a meeting in The Oval Office three days before, “is that they came here with a grave misunderstanding about us and now they’re very disappointed.”

President Gibson had sat at his desk as his Chief of Staff, Communications Director, Secretary of State, and NASA liaison attempted to explain to him what had gone wrong with the first contact and what their options were now. The Diplomats had agreed (as far as the think tank could decipher) to stay on Earth at Leeds College of Music as long as the college’s archives still had recordings to play them.

“Sir,” the NASA liaison stepped in, “we’ve been able to get some rough ideas about The Diplomats and their species using some visuals one of them provided us. They seem to have first learned about us when they intercepted the Voyager I satellite some fifty years ago. They siphoned through the information we had left on the satellite; some D.N.A. samples, sounds of nature, greetings in several different languages. They were mostly unimpressed or confused by it. But when they heard samples of the music that we had placed on the satellite, they became fascinated with us.”

The Diplomats, as they’d become known, had appeared a week ago. Not showing up on Earth’s sensors until they passed Mars, the nations of the world had had very little time to prepare for their arrival. A meeting of global powers was called together and, as it was predicted the craft would land on British soil, a gathering was devised and signals were sent to attract the visitors to a field twenty miles outside the city of Menston.

“You see sir,” the NASA liaison continued to explain, “along with Voyager I, several other probes have been sent into space from other countries and private organization over the years containing different samples of human culture and physiology. The Diplomats’ species have sought out these satellites and collected all the music from them.”

The ship had appeared in the early hours of the morning and heeded the intended landing zone. When The Diplomats had come out of the ship, dressed in what turned out to be protective environmental suits, British Prime Minister Charles Greene was the first to greet them. He approached carefully and welcomed them to Earth in peace. It was then, in what would be described later as a very disciplined harmony, The Diplomats began to sing an a-capella version of “Spring” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

“Okay,” said Gibson at the Oval Office meeting, “so they’re music lovers. That doesn’t explain what happened at the landing, or why they now want to leave without talking to us.”

“Talking is the problem, Mr. President,” his Communications Director said. “The Diplomats seemed to have mistaken our music for our language.”

Gibson looked around at the group to see if anyone was going to elaborate on this.

“So there’s been a miscommunication,” said Gibson when no one spoke up. “If we can decipher all of this and get at least a tentative grip on their language, why can we not explain to them that our music is an art, and we have a different system for communicating.”

There was an uneasy silence in the room. Gibson had served as President long enough to know that it was the silence that came before someone was about to tell him he was completely wrong.

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“This is where things become more difficult, sir,” his Chief of Staff explained. “From what we’ve been able to gather about the Diplomat’s species, their scientific and social accomplishments so far surpass ours that there is no real reason for them to speak to us. The only reason they have bothered to come here is they believe we have invented the most intricate and advanced language they have ever heard. If they find out that our music has nothing to do with how we communicate, they will mark us down as an unimportant species and possibly never come back.”

“Sir,” the NASA liaison spoke up. “It must be understood what an advantage an alliance with their species could mean for us. Once we were able to calm The Diplomats down at Leeds College, they presented us with an offering in order to show their peaceful intentions. Mr. President, the contents of this gift contains materials that may add another row to the periodic table of elements, equations that could change the laws of thermodynamics, and this is just their welcoming gift. If we fail to form some type of understanding with them we would be missing out on a chance for humanity to advance a thousand years in a decade.”

Gibson pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose in an attempt to fight off the headache this was giving him. He was Nobel Prize winning economist, whose legacy was supposed to be record breaking job numbers and a lowered national deficit. He did not wish to be remembered as a failure due to his lack of music appreciation.

“We do have one advantage sir,” said his Chief of Staff with shaky confidence. “While The Diplomats are annoyed with what they’ve perceived as us being uncordial, we think at least one of them believes the faux pas was on their end. Through some rough translations, we’ve convinced them to sit down for a meeting.”

The meeting was what brought Gibson to The Royal Albert Hall three days later. He sat alongside the leaders of Britain, China, Russia, France, Canada, Israel, India, Germany, and Japan at a long table opposite The Diplomats on the main stage. The remaining countries’ UN representatives sat in the audience. In the orchestra pit sat a hundred “translators”, the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The idea had come from the rushed out think tank of linguists, anthropologists, diplomats, and futurists. The Diplomats would speak for themselves through the songs they had memorized. These songs would be interpreted for the world leaders who would then tell the think tank how they wished to respond. The think tank, in turn, would tell the conductor what piece to play. He would in turn conduct the L.P.O. It was hoped that such a grand display would charm The Diplomats into coming to terms.

The Diplomats began the proceedings, first by performing Vivaldi’s “Spring” from Four Seasons, which the think tank had guessed meant “We come in peace.” It was at the conclusion of this that the first hiccup occurred. Before the L.P.O. were able to respond in kind, “Chanson du Toréador” from Bizet’s Carmen suddenly began to sing a solo version of Tiahua’s Zhu Ying Yao Hong. As she performed, the think tank poured through their notes. After paring down what the rhythm, notes, and tempo seemed to indicate in other pieces, they sent a note to the teleprompters at the world leader’s tables that they were seventy percent sure that the song was an apology for a social mistake (and responding with Tiahua’s Guāngmíng Xíng should indicate that the apology was accepted).

It soon became obvious that time was going to play a large factor in this meeting. Fearing that only playing partial pieces may insult The Diplomats, the introductions for The Diplomats and world leaders (who were represented by their national anthems) took more than an hour to get through. This ended up being one of the more bearable lengths of the summit.

A terrible cycle began right after the introduction. The London Philharmonic would play Salieri’s Sinfonia Veneziana to offer hope of a long and fruitful alliance. The Diplomats would respond with Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, saying that they feared our violence and war (Stravinsky’s Les Augures printaniers had been allowed to watch a television while at Leeds and, while he could not understand what the horrid noise coming out of the broadcast was, he had been to enough other planets to know war.) The London Philharmonic would respond in kind with Pachelbel’s Canon to say that peace was the ultimate goal of humanity, and so on in that fashion.

Before long the songs began to repeat themselves as subjects were revisited. Beethoven’s Für Elise every time someone wanted to bring up space travel, The Barber of Seville’s “Overture” when someone wanted to imply humor, Kraus’s Symphony in C whenever someone wanted to say “I see where you are coming from but…” with a rebuttal orchestration follow up. While The Diplomats’ environmental suits allowed them to go without food or sleep, the musicians began having to rotate after two hours and the world leaders after seven. The musicians were treated for exhaustion and nerves in The Albert Hall’s lobby, while the world leaders were given private dressing rooms. It was in one of these dressing rooms that President Gibson, while allowing his V.P. to take over his seat, spoke to his Chief of Staff.

“Do you have any idea how this is going?” Gibson asked with a tone of confusion he was only comfortable using in front of his Chief of Staff and his wife.

Just as his Chief of Staff was about to go into a speech about historic uncertainty and great leaders of the past rising to the challenge, they both stopped and listened to the sound coming from the stage. A harp solo piece was playing, and after the full bodied Classical and Baroque music the night had been dominated by, the relatively quiet sound stirred Gibson. He walked back out to the stage and his eyes followed the world leaders and The Diplomats to a harp player sitting in the back row of the pit playing a slow, somewhat sad version of Debussy’s Clair de Lune. He inched his way over to the table and tapped his V.P. on the shoulder.

“What’s happening?” he asked in a hushed whisper.

“Sort of a Hail Mary,” said the V.P. pointing over to the French President. “He thought the classical stuff was coming off as too pompous, he wanted to try an Impressionist.”

Gibson looked back over to The Diplomats table, who sat in full concentration.

“What are we trying to say with this?” he asked. His V.P. pointed to the teleprompter at the end of the table, seemingly annoyed Gibson was interrupting his listening. The teleprompter had one sentence.

We feared we were alone, but we hoped we were not.

President Gibson stood behind his V.P. and allowed the piece to finish. When it did, The Diplomats turned to each other, but only Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major BWV 1047 (First Movement) signed. When she was done, all the Diplomats rose together and began to sing Part II of Handel’s Messiah.

The world leaders looked to each other, and without speaking, looked to the conductor and urged him to play. The London Philharmonic prepared, and when the reprise of the famous “Hallelujah” chorus began, the L.P.O. joined The Diplomats.

The entire event had been guesswork, of course. With no Rosetta Stone to translate what either side believed these songs were saying, it couldn’t be confirmed that the summit had ended in success. Yet, to be in the Royal Albert Hall and hear Handel’s Messiah being played by The London Philharmonic, accompanied by the first intelligent alien life to visit Earth, it was hard not to believe something monumental had been accomplished.

Anthony McColgan is a science fiction writer and English teacher based in Boston Massachusetts.

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Day One

“Who is your Original?” asks the doctor, shining a bright light in your eyes. You blink, glancing left and right. Either side of you are others, blank, damp and hairless like you. Doctors take their temperatures, their blood, their heart-rates.

“…I — ” Your tongue feels thick and clumsy in your mouth, like you’ve never used it before.

“Who is your Original?” he asks again, lowering his flashlight and peering intensely into your face instead. You feel ashamed for some reason, aware of your paper gown and scrawny forearms. You avert your eyes and shake your head, taking furtive glances in his direction to see his response.

He nods and gestures to the door, already looking towards the next one in line. You try to rise, but your legs shiver and give out and you go sprawling. The doctor sighs and waves over an orderly with a wheelchair. He scoops you in, gently but without compassion, and wheels you out into the corridor.

There are more hairless people out here, but their appearance is slightly more varied. Different skin tones and heights and builds, although all are lean. What little muscle they have lacks definition. All have that strange, waxy look to their skin, like they could use a good soak to melt away the top layer and be fresh and clean underneath.

“Can you get in the chair by yourself?” the orderly asks and you nod, dragging yourself across. He disappears back into the other room with the wheelchair.

You study the palms of your hands. Your fingertips are wrinkled as if you’ve spent a long time submerged in water, but you can’t shake that feeling that you need to scrub your skin clean.

“This is a travesty,” says the person alongside you. They have a long face, and smooth skin, high brows and round cheeks. They are better at speaking than you, seem generally stronger and more together than you. You can only look at them helplessly.

The person tenderly takes your hand, and you are certain this is the first skin to skin contact you’ve ever felt.

“Did the Education not take?” they ask you gently. “Can you understand me at all?”

“I…” you manage, then nod, hoping this person will get your meaning.

“Talking difficult?” they say, and you nod again, grateful this time. “Don’t worry. It’s different for everyone. I’m quick to adapt, I guess.”

A nurse comes over with a clipboard, pulls off two sheets and hands one to each of you.

“You can switch with the others if you want. Switch as many times as you like, but once you sign the bottom, that’s you.”

The sheet is some kind of registration form. It’s full of someone’s details, their name, their address, their national insurance number. This sheet says Aja Sawyer. The person next to you, their sheet says Wren Aster.

“I think I’m more of an Aja, don’t you?” says the person.

You shrug. You’re unsure what any of this means.

The person takes the sheet from your unresisting hands and gives you theirs.

“Now I’m Aja,” they say, “and you’re Wren. Do you like that, or should I try to trade it for you?”

“Wren?” you ask. At least you can say that.

“Yes,” says Aja. “That’s us now, I guess. Wren and Aja. Understand?”

You nod. You’re being named. Assigned an identity at a time when you can’t possibly know if it’s you or not. Wren’s ok, you suppose.

The nurse returns with two ziploc bags filled with folded yellow fabric. You and Aja are given one each. Aja throws off their paper gown and takes the yellow overalls out of the bag, stepping into them one leg at a time, like everybody else.

“What are you, shy?” asks the nurse with a smirk. You realise that you are. You also realise that it’s silly. Aja’s body is smooth and genderless all the way down and you know yours will be too. It still feels weird, but Aja and the nurse are looking at you expectantly so you wriggle out of the gown, still sitting, and then struggle into the overalls, accepting every bit of help Aja offers.

#

Day Ten

“You sure you don’t want me to pick up a wig for you?” asks Aja, checking this latest one in the mirror. It’s long and ash blonde with a chunky fringe. You shake your head. It’s easier for Aja. Aja knows she is female. She may not have the breasts and hips of her Original, but she’s positive that her Original was female and she is too. She’s not permitted to look into it of course. No Blank will ever know their Original, that’s the law. You’re not sure whether the Originals get to know their Blanks. That part’s not stressed every five minutes on the Info Channel.

You don’t think it’d matter to Aja if she found her Original anyway. He could be a seventeen stone rugby player with cauliflower ears and a smile like a busted piano and Aja would still be Aja. She would still apply her fake lashes each day and look longingly at dresses in the online catalogues. She would still slip lip glosses into the sleeves of her overall when the chemist’s security guard was otherwise occupied. Even though theft, any crime, carried ‘serious consequences’ for a Blank, because their very existence was a privilege.

Your very existence.

A privilege.

The little cement block you and Aja share, just big enough for your sleeping sacks and the info screen, that’s a privilege. The colourless, odourless, tasteless, but nutritionally balanced noodles you’re fed for every meal, they are a privilege. The Education you receive each day via headphones while you stitch yellow overalls and seal sleeping sacks into zip-lock bags, that’s a privilege. So are the steam showers that clean you after each day’s productivity, so too is the chain-link fence around the enclave keeping the protestors out. You’re not really sure what privilege means, or protestors, or what they are protesting. Perhaps you’ll learn it in tomorrow’s Education.

#

Share The New Accelerator

Day Twelve

They’re just people. Protesters are actual people, not Blanks. They’re holding printed signs and their clothes are all different, like you heard about from Aja. She said it’s early days yet, and some day soon, Blanks won’t have to wear the yellow overalls, they’ll be able to wear whatever they want. You ask if she means like real people and she narrows her eyes and says “We’re real” all angry and you apologise automatically without knowing what got her so cross.

These people seem cross too. You get a little closer, trying to read their signs. Your reading is coming along, but it’s hard. You don’t pick things up quickly like Aja. She’s flying through a book the chemist security guard gave her, and she doesn’t even move her lips when she reads it.

One of them spits at you. The globule of saliva hits your thigh, soaking in, warm and wet. You look from it to the man who did it and back again. They’re so hairy, people. He has a beard and a hairy neck and huge savage eyebrows. Even Aja’s crossest face doesn’t look so cross as that.

“Freak!” he shouts. “Abomination!”

Others take up the chant, favouring ‘freak’ over the longer word. They press against the chain-link fence and it bows towards you alarmingly, yet you can’t tear yourself away. One of these could be your Original. Your Original has hair and eyebrows and maybe even a penis or a vagina. It’s a funny thought. You can’t imagine it. The biological stuff in your Education, your first Education, the one with all the visuals, that’s very clear in your mind, just because they looked so weird.

The yelling reaches a crescendo and you realise one of them has you by the collar of your overall. She’s a woman, middle-aged, but strong. She has her foot braced against the fence, and seems intent on pulling you through it, even though the gaps are far too small. But as she holds you close, the cold metal links bite into your skin, and the protesters surge forward, tearing at your clothes, scratching at your hands and face.

You’re reminded of the blood tests, but this is prolonged and worsening and you can’t help but cry out. Everything happens very quickly then. A shot disperses them, and Aja is there with the chemist security guard and they help you to your feet and carry you between them to the med hangar. You keep glancing back, and they think that it’s to see the crowd and tell you not to, but really it’s to see if you left any bits of you behind, any scraps of skin flapping on the fence, because if feels like some of you is missing.

#

Day ??

You’re warm. It’s an unusual feeling. Even when you snuggle close to Aja, the concrete is cold, and the thin sleeping sack does little. But here you are warm, and the air smells of something, something rich and sweet. You lift your head, look down at your forearms. They are covered in soft downy hair. You try to stroke it, but you’re weak. Your breath gurgles in your throat.

You become aware of the tube then, and you panic, gagging. Your lungs feel soggy and heavy, struggling to draw in air. You gasp and cry and Bonnie hurries into the room.

#

Day Twelve (later)

“Mother!” you sit up, choking.

Aja and the chemist security guard are standing over you. Aja looks confused. The security guard looks perturbed. He pulls Aja away from your bedside and they whisper to each other.

You check your arms. Smooth as ever. No hair, no tube in your throat, no crushing moisture in your lungs, no sweet-rich smell.

And no mother.

#

Day Twenty

Aja is shaking you awake. The info screen hasn’t lit up yet – it isn’t time to work. You prop yourself onto your elbows and look at her. You can’t sit up any higher in the concrete confines of your block, and neither can she. It’s not time for the shutter to unlock yet. You say so to Aja.

“I know, but I can open it.” She slips a small metal rod out of her sleeve, not much larger than one of her tubes of lip-gloss. She puts it in the corner of the shutter.

“The shutter’s for our safety,” you tell Aja, frightened. “We shouldn’t leave the block without a human escort.”

“We’ll have an escort.” She presses her thumb into an indentation in the top of the rod and a light comes out of it, like a laser pointer, only hot. You can feel the heat from here.

“Is this about my dreams?” you ask.

“They’re not dreams,” says Aja, grimacing. Perhaps the rod is uncomfortably warm to hold. It looks like it could be. Eventually the shutter clicks, beeps three times and then slides open. The cold dawn air rushes in and you shiver.

Outside, everything looks grey, even your skin. Aja reaches back inside the block and pulls down the sleeping sacks, her spare wig and her book. There’s nothing more to take. Everything else is in the communal areas of the complex. Blanks aren’t really supposed to own anything.

“Not dreams?” you say. The chemist security guard is waiting. His name is Rick, you know that now. He looks sick with worry. His chin is stubbled and his eyes are bloodshot.

Aja shushes you. You are the same biological age and yet she always makes you feel like a child. Although you suppose it’s justified. You did wander up to the fence and get scratched by protestors. Which meant you had to spend some time in the infirmary. Which meant Rick had to make up a lie about how you got there so you didn’t get mulched. Mulching is what happens to disobedient Blanks. It’s something to do with reclaiming genetic material. You’re not sure of the specifics. Rick looked sick when you asked about it, even sicker than he looks now.

Rick’s van is parked by the gate, big and black.

“Cameras are off,” he tells Aja. “We’ve got maybe five minutes before they notice, tops.” He hands her a sheaf of paper held together with a bulldog clip. “If I stop the van again once we’re through the gate, just get out and run. And whatever you do, don’t lose these.”

Aja nods, and as he helps her up into the back of the van, they hold each others’ hands a little longer than necessary, and you look away, hoping it’ll give them room to kiss goodbye, but they don’t. He lifts you in and closes the van doors.

“Where are we going?” you ask.

“Put these on,” says Aja, pushing a cardboard box towards you. There’s a pile of musty old clothes inside, varying sizes. As the van pulls away, you try to choose between dungarees that smell of mould and a pair of leggings imbued with stale farts.

#

Day Twenty-Five

You’re living among the people now, so you get to wear people clothes all the time. It’s not so great. You can’t afford good ones anyway. You’re staying in an abandoned church with Herve and Manny, two old homeless guys. They both have big unkempt beards. You wish you could grow a beard. They look like they would keep your face warm. You ask Herve about it and he scratches and tells you it’s a time-saver, but that’s about it.

Aja has spent the last few days going to and from the newspaper office. The first day, you didn’t go with her, because Manny found a tiny kitten mewling in the graveyard’s undergrowth and you helped him feed it with milk from an old syringe. Now she won’t let you go, because she says people might recognise you. Apparently your Original is some big deal. She says she’s seen photos of them, but she won’t even tell you if they’re a boy or a girl.

“You’re too impressionable,” she explains one night, as the four of you huddle round a fire Herve started in a big weird gold pot shaped like an eagle. “Like a little baby goose. If you saw them, you’d start trying to be like them.”

“So? I am them.”

“No. You’re you.”

She doesn’t get cross any more, she just looks tired.

“Don’t know how I’d feel about a load of other mes walking about doing their own thing,” says Herve, thoughtfully. “But I got no money anyway, so it’s not something I’d ever have to worry about.”

“Money?” you ask.

“Sure,” says Manny, stroking the kitten still nestled in his coat. “Didn’t you know you guys were expensive?”

#

Day ???

There’s a tree, a big glittering tree like you’ve never seen before, and you’re sitting under it. Your hands are pudgy and marked with felt-tip pen. Your artwork is above the mantle piece. You’ve drawn a big fat reindeer with a red nose, pulling a huge sleigh stacked high with presents.

You’re sitting cross legged, holding onto your ankles, and you’re so excited, you’re worried you might pee. You’re rocking back and forth slightly to help keep that from happening. Your mum has gone out to the garage and she’s bringing you your main present and you already have a bike, so…

The living room door opens, and the puppy races in. She jumps all over you, licking your face, her tail wagging. She’s a labradoodle with fuzzy black fur and a wide pink grin. You yell to your mum that she’s wonderful and her name is Lily and you have to go and pee now so you don’t have an accident.

#

Day Twenty-Seven

You awake to the sound of Manny crying in the vestibule. Herve is with him, has his arm around him and is whispering soft, reassuring sounds. You get up and tiptoe over to them. Better not wake Aja. She needs her beauty sleep, she’s always saying.

“Kitten’s dead,” says Herve flatly.

Manny’s holding it in his big hairy hands, trying to massage life back into the tiny limp body. It’s grey and white like paw-prints in the snow.

“We should give him a proper burial,” you say. “My mum used to do it with my little pets, before I got Lily.”

“You guys don’t have mums,” says Herve, frowning. Manny’s only half-listening, but he sniffles and nods.

“What can we put him in?” he asks.

#

Day Twenty-Eight

You thought you’d seen Aja mad before, but it turns out you hadn’t. Right now she’s yelling in your face. Then she strides away, kicks over the big gold eagle pot, sending ashes spilling everywhere, hops around holding her toes and swearing fit to burst. You’re crying, but you don’t really know why. You realise now that the box and the papers you shredded to give the kitten a comfy coffin to sleep in for ever, that box and those papers were Aja’s. Or yours. Or the complex’s. Point is, they were important and official and now they’re all shredded up and buried out in the graveyard between the human plots.

Aja is crouching down now, still holding her foot, but she’s stopped shouting and instead she’s crying, huge wracking sobs with snot and tears that’ll wreck her perfect make-up. Manny goes over and awkwardly tries to put an arm around her. She shrugs him off at first, then changes her mind and buries her face in his dirty overcoat, adding to its layer of filth with her tears and her snot and her runny make-up. Manny doesn’t seem to mind though. He just strokes her hair and tells her we’ll work something out.

She shakes her head.

“It’s over now. Press man needs proof, and we don’t have any anymore.”

“Y’still got Wren,” says Herve.

Everyone goes quiet then, and there’s just the sound of you and Aja sniffing in tandem.

#

Share The New Accelerator

Day Twenty-Nine

It’s strange being out in the world again. This place is busier than any you’ve seen. You know from your Education that it’s a city. Sort of like the complex, only bigger and the people can go wherever they want, whenever they want. You’re in a big shiny office building, sitting in their big shiny reception.

Aja has you all dressed up like a wazzock. You learned that word from Herve. Anyone vaguely silly is a daft wazzock in Herve’s eyes. Politicians. Manny. You. But it’s never been truer than now. Aja’s put you in a long blond wig, and a big floppy hat and oversized sunglasses. She bought your things from a charity shop. There’s a shapeless pale lemon dress and lots of bangles and a horrible fur scarf thing made from a dead fox. Aja says people will focus on how crazy you’re dressed and not bother to look at your face.

The receptionist certainly looked at you for a long time. You wonder if you should have dressed all smart like Aja, because the receptionist barely gave her a second glance. She looks immaculate as usual in a skirt suit and high heels and a new wig, jet black with a streak of white in the fringe. You’re pretty sure she got them the same way she used to get her lip glosses and it worries you because if mulching was a risk at the complex, then that risk is double out here. Blanks aren’t even supposed to be out here, mixing with people.

A man approaches and Aja drops the magazine she was nervously leafing through and stands up, smoothing her skirt.

“Is this…?” asks the man, nodding at you. “She doesn’t look-”

“They,” says Aja firmly.

“Sorry,” says the man, looking like he means it. “Sorry, I should’ve thought. Come with me.”

He leads you down a corridor lined with image boards and you recognise some of the people in them from the Info Channel. Human celebrities. Singers and chefs and actors and musicians. The Info Channel said you could never be like them, because Blanks don’t have souls and you need a soul to sing or cook or act or play an instrument. You tried singing once, on your own in the steam room, and you could, so you guess Aja’s right about the Info Channel lying about things.

He leads you into a room, and it’s large for just the three of you with a big long table and six comfy leather chairs. He sits on the far side of the table and you and Aja sit opposite. There’s a comms box in the centre of the table and you look at it and imagine being important enough to take calls on it.

“So,” says the man, after he’s introduced himself as Simon Trent and shaken hands with you. He doesn’t say anything more, but Aja seems to understand, because she gently removes your over-sized sunglasses from your face, folds them carefully and tucks them away in her shoulder bag. She takes your wig and your hat next, both together, and then unwinds the horrid old fox scarf from around your neck. Simon Trent gawps at you the whole time.

“Wow,” he says. “The likeness is uncanny.”

Aja rolls her eyes. “Of course it is. What did you expect?”

Simon Trent blushes. “Yeah, yeah, I know, but… It’s not like we get to see you guys often. Cloistered away in the compound-”

“Complex.”

“Right.”

Aja and Simon talk for a while and your mind wanders. You think about your dreams, the shiny tree and Lily the dog. They seemed so real. You can smell that front room, the fresh piney scent of the tree, cooking smells drifting from the kitchen, and Lily’s distinctive earthy odour. You remember her sitting in front of the fire, tongue lolling, dripping onto the carpet like a freshly cooked rasher of bacon. Bacon. You’ve never even had bacon.

The comms box beeps and Simon presses an indentation on its glossy black surface. The receptionist’s voice comes through, as clear as if she was in the room. You look round to make sure she isn’t.

“Ms Donovan is on the phone,” she says, sounding almost frightened. “She knows.”

“Oh.” Simon doesn’t look frightened, just tired. His shoulders sag. He glances at you and then at Aja. “I guess that’s made our decision for us. Tell her we’ll arrange a meeting.”

There’s an intake of breath like the receptionist wants to say something else, but Simon presses the indentation again and cuts her off.

“What?” asks Aja, her voice icy. “You think we’re just going to go over there?”

Simon’s eyes are sad, like Manny when he thinks about the kitten, only not so wet.

“She’s got resources like you wouldn’t believe,” he says, rubbing the surface of the comms box with his sleeve like it’s dirty, although you can’t see any dirt. “If she knows… they’re here, it’s only a matter of time before she tracks them down.”

Aja’s fury is different this time, all cold and tight, like she doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

“You realise this could be as good as mulching them?”

He looks pained at that, closes his eyes, shakes his head. “No, no surely not. She wouldn’t-”

“Why do you think she made us?” Aja says every word very clear, like she used to speak to you when you first woke up, only not so kind.

#

Day Thirty

Aja keeps apologising to you. Won’t stop, even though you’ve said it’s fine. You don’t even know what she’s so sorry about. She hasn’t eaten or slept hardly at all since you got back from the press office. Herve and Manny were on at her to sit down, to eat something, but she just kept pacing the church and went crazy every time you tried to go outside.

Now you’re on the doorstep of some big house and Manny and Herve and Aja and Simon stayed at the bottom of the drive, outside the tall electric gates and it feels like the first day of school. That was another one of your dreams, and not as nice as the others. You were wearing a blazer a few sizes too big and all hot and itchy and another bigger girl pulled your pigtails and said you were a stuck up or something like that.

Aja let you choose your own clothes today, so you have wide calf-length shorts and a bright orange v-neck sweater. No wig, just the sun on your scalp, although Herve made you wear his hat for the walk there in case anyone realised you were a Blank.

A light breeze tickles your calves and you wonder about activating the entry system, but the voice from the electric gate said someone would be down in a moment. They are, and it’s a broad shouldered lady who looks a little like Aja, but Aja if she’d lived her whole life on steak and chips and cakes instead of nutritionally balanced noodles. And of course she’s hairy like they all are.

She ushers you inside and you can’t take your eyes off the downy hairs surrounding her shiny peach-painted lips. The house has that smell, that warm rich smell from your dreams and you notice the woman’s arms and apron are dusted with flour and you realise she’s been baking. That’s the smell, those melt in the mouth flapjacks she makes, this woman, Bonnie.

The hallway is dominated by a huge broad staircase with a sweeping banister rail and a carpet the colour of one of Aja’s lipglosses. Dusky Rose or Evening Petunia, something like that. A quavering voice calls down from upstairs: “Bonnie! Is that her, Bonnie?”

The woman looks you up and down, her thick dark brows drawing together.

“I think so. You want her up there?”

“Of course!”

There’s a big bed in the middle of the room. It’s surrounded by strange bags of liquid and tubes making sucking and shushing noises and machines with flashing lights on them. You stand and stare at them until Bonnie pushes you nearer to the bed and then you see her. You feel mean flinching at a person, but you can’t help it. She looks like you, but thin, so, so thin, it hurts you to look at her spindly arms. They’re stuck through with tubes, clear liquid going in and brownish-red liquid going out. She has eyelashes and they’re gummed together so her eyes are just crusted slits, but they’re the same colour as yours, the exact same. She smiles weakly at you and you don’t know what to do.

“Bring us some tea, please Bonnie,” says the spindly woman in the bed, before breaking into a coughing fit, wet and wracking. Aja warned you about this. Not to eat or drink anything they offer in case its drugged. Herve said something about waking up in a bathtub of ice, although in this Summer heat, you think that might not be so bad. Then you remember what Aja said, sounding sadder and angrier than ever: “That’s for people, Herve. Blanks don’t get to wake up at all.”

You shake your head to protest against tea, but Bonnie’s already bustled out of the room, and the spindly woman’s staring at you with those crusted up eyes.

“So,” she says, just like Simon, only you don’t have Aja here and you don’t know what’s expected of you. You don’t have any layers to take off this time, so you just sit down awkwardly in the silky, frilly armchair by the side of the bed.

The machines make a whole lot of competing noises. Sucking and shushing, beeping and blipping. You watch lights flash and liquids make their way along tubes, wondering what they are and where they’re going to. You’re no longer sure which ones are going in and which ones are going out, so you occupy yourself trying to trace them to their source.

Bonnie returns with a tray and a teapot with swirling gold and pink patterns all over it and little matching china cups. The tea is fragrant and you can’t imagine drugs would smell like that, but you still shake your head and tuck your hands into your lap so you’re not tempted to take a cup. Bonnie gives you a long look, but the spindly lady just laughs and waves her away.

“It’s not what you think,” she says. “I understand why you’d be frightened, but…” Coughing overtakes her again, and you reach out, wanting to comfort her somehow, because you know how that coughing feels, you’ve been there and done it. “I never realised,” she says when the coughing eases, and her eyes are still dry but there are tears in her voice. “I never thought that you’d be people. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Her voice is wet, like she’s speaking through swamp water. It makes you want to clear your throat in sympathy. “I harvested so many of you trying to buy a few more years, a few more months, a few more days. And you know what? Some of the technicians at the complex raised concerns. Unexpected brain waves. Impossible REM sleep indicators. And I ignored them. Even though I felt you, even though I dreamed your dreams. I put it down to coincidence, the illness, the drugs. I just wanted to live, can you understand that?”

“Of course,” you say. “Everyone wants to live. And even if they don’t, other people want them to.”

And then she cries and cries and tells you everything and you struggle to follow, and Bonnie comes in and strokes the lady’s hair and tells her to calm herself.

#

Day Fifty-One

You miss the lady. She laughed every time you called her that, begged for you to call her Alex, or at least Ms Donovan, but you couldn’t, because that would mean accepting she was separate from you, and you didn’t want that. Whatever weird quirk linked the two of you, you didn’t want it to ever be severed, not even after she died.

It wasn’t a one way thing, you know that now. She felt you, just like you felt her. She realised the Blanks weren’t blank at all and that’s why she woke them, started the education and the complex, stopped making new ones. But as she saw that world through your eyes, through your dreams, she realised it wasn’t enough. She wanted you all to have lives, real lives, the lives you deserved. She didn’t want Blanks to be judged for her actions, or the actions of their Originals. But people are slow to react, even slower to learn than you. She complained every day about red tape, ranted to Bonnie about how she’d come up with the damn technique, why couldn’t she be the one to end it? And hurry as she might, she ran out of time.

And now she’s dead and it’s worse than the kitten, worse even than Lily. Bonnie stands by you at the graveside. You’re wearing a black dress and a tie and brogues even though Aja said you couldn’t wear things like that together. You watch them cover the lady’s beautiful box with soil and hope that Lily and the kitten will find her and play with her, even though they were buried miles away. It’s down to you now, to get everything finished. A big responsibility for one small Blank.

Simon’s at the funeral too, and lots of other press men and they take a thousand pictures of you, their cameras flashing over and over until you feel you’ll go blind. An old, old lady comes up to you, and squeezes your hand, smiling up at you. Aja opens her mouth, looking worried, like she wants to stop what’s about to happen, but you recognise the old lady and shoulder Aja aside. When the old lady speaks, you finally know that the lady was right, that everything will be okay.

“Alex told me about the arrangement,” the old lady says, in a voice that dictated the number of cookies you could have, a voice that defined bedtime and soothed boo boos. “I thought she was crazy at first, but now I’ve seen you, I understand. You’re different to the others.”

Different but the same, you think, smiling at your mother. Just like all the other Blanks. Just like everyone.

Lynda Clark's writes darky comic fantasy and science fiction. When she's not writing, she likes to attempt dressage. You can find her on Twitter as @Notagoth.

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“Warble, warble, warble, warble, warble…”

My wristwatch beeper warbled annoyingly, and I woke up and fell off the couch. Crawling to my computer, I hit standby and ‘netted in almost immediately.

“Are you there, chums?” I typed, seating myself, and waited. It was just after 2am, my time.

A few moments later, the rest of the team came online: “I’m here, Nick,” said Simon, followed by “Good morning, Nick,” from Jazz.

“What happened?” I wanted to know if our unwelcome visitor had returned.

“The detectors that I set last night went off a few minutes ago,” said Simon, “and he’s back inside the system now”.

I groaned a long groan. This was every security chief’s nightmare, confirmed. Systems that were designed to be utterly secure were only really secure until proven otherwise. Until the next clever, new-wave hacker came along, that is, and you found yourself alone on the loneliest front line, finding the solution to an intrusion problem no-one else had yet faced. Statistically speaking, the odds were that you could learn from other people’s intrusions, and never have to face such a situation yourself. So much for the odds, I thought grimly, and turned back to the task at hand.

The previous night’s logs had told the story and alerted us to the intrusion. Several files had been stealthily modified, and then returned to their original condition, and then later new files had been created, and then deleted, presumably as an increasingly daring test by the intruder of his ability to exploit the hole he’d discovered in the system’s security. Or been told about. Or that had been set up for him by an insider. Reasonably high levels of paranoia came built-in with my job description…

Simon and Jazz had first alerted me to the incident, and we’d discussed how to handle it. We decided to set up a series of triggers, so that a repeat visit would alert us and allow Simon and Jazz to watch our visitor’s progress in detail, hopefully gleaning some information that would point to the visitor’s identity, or his Net host, or even his company. Implicitly, we had some level of wider Net responsibility here in locating the perpetrators, and using whatever means to close them down. Simply a matter of commonplace reciprocal survival among Net citizens, really.

Hopefully, the intruders were just talented anti-Net students having fun, but we had to consider more seriously the likelihood of some talent-for-hire with a commercial interest in our systems. As a medium size biotech company on the leading edge, with lots of patents, BioFrontier always have a lot to lose to intellectual intrusion. And not least, my team has just as much to lose if this happens: for starters, our jobs and our reputations.

Even so, I had reason to be optimistic: I had a good team, and strong security mechanisms in place. The successful auto-detection of the intrusion proved that much. Simon and Jazz were second-to-none as security managers, and were used to working as a tag team over the Net from their respective locations, to solve our most difficult problems. Although I’d met each of them only once in person, I had the utmost confidence in their abilities, having spent thousands of hours working with them online. Simon was confident, technically amazing, and experienced in system security problems from his years in government in post-Beijing controlled Hong Kong. Jazz too was staggeringly capable from her stint as security advisor to the Punjab regional government; certainly no small achievement for a woman in India. I’d been involved with the Net at various companies since it existed, and I knew they respected my long term perspective of the whole Net phenomena.

“I’ve found out how he got into the system” said Simon, “Do you want me to close him out?”

“Hold on,” I said, “Maybe not just yet. Let’s see what we can find out about him first. Can you redirect him without him knowing about it?”

“Give me a minute… Wait… Yes, I think I can. Stand by…” said Simon.

Simon and Jazz worked as a shadow team. One took the lead on a situation, and the other synchronized their own systems with the other every few seconds. That way, if anything went wrong, such as a system being compromised, the other could take over immediately. Simon was leading on this situation, but as many times I’d also seen Jazz lead and Simon act as backup. Myself, I was effectively blind: security protocol mandated that my systems were not attached to theirs, and that they operated as “twins” under my light protocol email-only direction. This was the best way to separate policy from practice, and direction from attack, under these circumstances.

What it meant was that, practically speaking, I had the frustrating role of not being able to see or do anything directly. Simon and Jazz provided me with “eyes and ears” through their systems, and relayed events as they happened, as well as any difficult decisions that needed to be made. When things got complicated, it could be as indirect and difficult as talking down a luckless stewardess landing one of those old Boeings.

“I’ve got him,” said Simon. “Do you see, Jazz?”

There was a lengthy pause, before Jazz said “Yes, that looks good. It should work, Simon”.

I was surprised. While acting as security leader, Simon almost never looked for approval from his team mate, and in her turn, neither did Jazz.

“He will think he is still intruding,” said Simon, “but I have fixed it so he has access to a harmless area. So harmless, I created it just for him. He can do what he likes, and we can watch and wait until he gives his identity away. They always do.”

Between ourselves, we always referred to hackers as males, mostly because they usually were. We also assumed that there was a strong egotistical influence for any amateur attack: so a file could easily contain an identity, a home page URL, a mail address, or some other signature that we could track. Usually this was the case.

Meanwhile, I was getting really tired. “Simon, Jazz, it sounds like you have this character under control,” I said, “and I have a horribly early start tomorrow. Can I leave you to beep me again if I’m needed? Otherwise I’ll see you in ten days or so when I’m back from Europe?”

“OK, Nick, have a great vacation,” said Simon.

“Well, it’s mostly business, but I hope to squeeze in a bit of vacation too,” I said, “Meanwhile, please keep me updated on tracking down our visitor.”

“We will, Nick. Have a good trip,” said Jazz.

#

The rented mountain bike still felt a little unfamiliar, but handled well. Newer than my own machine, it had more modern features like one-touch shifting, and a lighter suspension system that made it less stable in straight lines, but much more maneuverable in the turns. At least if I made a complete idiot of myself by falling off, there would be no-one except a few cows and sheep to see me. Cycling along Hadrian’s Wall in the spring, I was at least spared the attentions of droves of camera-happy tourists.

Last week’s presentation in Geneva had gone very well, ironically enough on the subject of Net security. I never failed to be surprised how after all these years, there was still a fundamental mistrust of the security of the Net. Even from people who would quite happily read their credit card number over an ordinary cell-phone. Maybe they weren’t so wrong after all.

I’d stopped over in the UK for a few days to see the family on my way back from Geneva, and cunningly saved a day or so for myself in my schedule. It wasn’t often I had a day off, but I was determined to find the time, this time around. So, a short drive and one rented mountain bike later, I was beginning to immerse myself in the joys of the great outdoors, the physical challenge of staying on the bike, and pausing occasionally to enjoy the scenery of the spectacular line of ancient stones that snaked dramatically over the northern English countryside, marking the end of the Roman Empire at its height. Every few miles, I passed the ruins of a garrison post, where troops from the Mediterranean had been stationed for months at a time, and no doubt wondered if they’d ever see the sun again.

It certainly didn’t bother me. After time away, I always relished the moist English weather: dry climates are OK to visit, but there is really no substitute for the delightful kaleidoscope of smells that accompanies a damper climate.

Heading back after a challenging day towards the bike rental place, I was a half mile or so west of Birdoswald garrison, and negotiating a particularly slippery slope at reasonable speed, next to, it has to be said, a particularly kaleidoscopic cow field, when I had the strangest feeling of being watched. I shrugged off the feeling since concentration is required on these tricky sections, and increased speed on the long downhill. Through the whistle of wind through my helmet, I heard a few strange whine-phut, whine-phut noises. Glancing down to check the tires, all seemed in order, and then I hit a large rock. The lightweight suspension catapulted me aloft, and on touchdown sent the bike and I careening down a very steep section; not exactly as I’d planned, but under these circumstances you go where the bike takes you.

After a very exciting downhill mile, when I may possibly have broken a few records, I stopped the bike to pause for breath, and stared for several minutes uncomprehendingly at the neat bullet hole shot through the bike’s saddle bag. I set several more records getting back to the bike rental place, and was still looking over my shoulder several hours later, when I got on the plane at the airport.

#

The limo home from Logan seemed to take hours. There were several passengers, and the driver seemed to take back road after back road to deliver them through the late rush hour commute to their homes. Eventually though, I was the last one, and the lights of my apartment building came into view through the dusk. I swung my bags out of the van, and unlocked the apartment door.

Grabbing a beer from the fridge, I checked for phone messages, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end again. Two messages, one from my boss telling me to be at the office next morning, or else. And a crackling, brief message on a bad line. It was from Jazz.

“Nick, it’s Simon. I think he’s in trouble. I haven’t been able to reach him. Please get in touch. Please…”

It was almost unthinkable that she would use the phone: she must have had no other choice. I didn’t understand why she hadn’t used our tag team’s secure channel, unless she thought it had been compromised. But how could that be?

I hit standby on the system, and expected to ‘net online. Instead, there was nothing. Not even an error message. My keys had to have been disabled by someone. Reaching for my password book, I tried a few of my alternative access methods, but no luck. I found a few old passwords that I’d forgotten about, but decided to save them for a rainy day. If I used them now, they might be noticed, and who could tell when I might need them next?

I was, by now, quite paranoid. The combined effects of being shot at, the uncharacteristic panic in Jazz’s voice message, and the disorienting effects of jet lag were all seriously taking their toll. I decided to hit the couch, while I still had a chance of sleep; I might need the rest tomorrow.

#

Next morning, I made enough money transfers to pay off all my credit cards and my unpaid bills, refilled the bird-feeder outside my kitchen window, packed a small bag with enough essentials to last me a possible lifetime, and wiped clean all the disks on my home system. Then I leapt in my car and headed for Corporate Headquarters. If anyone was watching, let them work out what I was up to. I certainly didn’t know.

Two hours later, I had to sign in at the security desk and was ushered up to my boss’s third floor office. Something was clearly wrong, and I didn’t have to wait too long to find out what it was.

“You bloody idiot, Nick. How could you leave your team to handle the situation, without knowing the cause? What were you thinking, leaving like that? Have you always been such a glory-seeker that all you care about is the next self promotional exercise in far away places?”

My boss, McShane, head of Corporate Security, was apparently really annoyed about something, so I took some time before answering.

“I’m not sure what you have a problem with, but as far as I’m concerned I was simply proceeding as scheduled. We had a situation before I left, certainly, but my security team had it under control before I left for Geneva”

“If you had it so under control, Nick, then how come Simon Wang has been missing for more than a week?”

I paused, and decided on attack as the best form of defense. “Well, if someone hadn’t canceled my security keys by the time I got home last night, I might be in a better position to give you a status report. Why don’t you fill me in on what happened?”

“I’m sorry, Nick, it’s gone too far for that. It’s out of your hands now. Senior management has lost confidence in our operations unit and we need to make changes. I’m sure you understand.”

“Understand what? That you need a scapegoat for this, and I’m the most likely candidate? Are you telling me I’m out of a job? If so, you know I’ll see you in court…”

“Now, Nick, think for a moment. We’re prepared to offer a very reasonable package, a generous one in fact, in return for your cooperation. No criticism implied in your record, the Company still willing to provide references, and so on. You’d lose all that if you brought a legal action against us. And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you about the confidentiality contract you signed with the company. That would make any legal action quite difficult to bring without giving us a reasonable counter-claim. You should read these details before you decide.” McShane handed me a letter, which I scanned briefly, then read again.

He had a point. In my absence, I’d obviously been tried, judged, and found guilty, and now they were offering me a lot of money to go along quietly with the verdict. I realized why of course; if it wasn’t me, then it would have to be McShane himself who was the scapegoat. That’s why he was being so persuasive, in his own way.

“Double it, and I’ll accept,” I declared. It was worth a try.

“Done,” said McShane. “And no hard feelings I hope”

“Don’t push your luck,” I said. “Just show me where I sign, and tell me when I get the money.” I was kicking myself inwardly – I should have asked him to triple the offer. Too late now.

#

So there I stood, out on the street. Ten years with the company behind me, one former colleague unaccounted for, and one very scared one, both of whom knew nothing of my sudden corporate demise, and me with nowhere to go next in particular. Then I remembered the bullet holes in the cycle bag, and wondered if I really should have held out for more money. After all, how much did a personal bodyguard cost these days?

Well, what to do, what to do? I could just take the money, have some fun in the sun, and never look back. Or I could take the money, save the fun in the sun until later, and track down and wreak some arbitrary vengeance on whoever or whatever had worked so hard to put me in this situation. I grinned. Put that way, there was really no choice involved.

I checked in to the local hi-tech flea pit motel, the “Happy Surfer” I think it was called. ‘Netting in to their crude pay-Net system, I sent one simple email message to the last address I had on record for Jazz. It said only “Are you there, chums?” followed by my hotel phone number. I pulled a rather bad designer beer from the room’s mini-bar, and waited.

Half an hour later the phone rang. Jazz sounded quite distant, relieved to hear me, and still very scared.

“Nick, I can’t talk now, you’d better meet me.”

“Tell me where and when,” I replied in my calmest tones, “and I’ll be there.”

“An airport is probably the safest. Let me think. Denver, maybe. No, how about Pittsburg, the day after tomorrow?”

“I’ll meet you in WHSmith, at 2pm. Good luck, and be careful.”

She hung up and I didn’t immediately, but I heard a click that meant a third person did. Obviously there was no time to spare. I checked out of the motel briskly. If I was being watched, I had a lot of tracks to cover before I traveled anywhere at all.

#

Share The New Accelerator

It took me about four hours to set up a new identity for myself. At least enough of one that would pass reasonable official scrutiny. Most of this was done using a motley collection of public access terminals located at banks, public buildings, and more flea pit motels that charged by the hour. Some level of anonymity established, I debated with myself whether to fly or drive down to Pittsburg.

Since I didn’t know my next steps, it seemed worth the extra effort and time (probably an extra six hours) to drive. I would have the advantage of a mobile operations center from which to support my next move, whatever that turned out to be. My car carried some state of the art security screening and snooping equipment that I’d customized myself, and was now relatively untraceable. Nissan-Subaru had built it well originally, and I’d added a few security features over the last year that I really felt uncomfortable without.

Without further reason for delay, I set the car’s auto-navigation systems to take me to Pittsburg Airport, dialed in a 10 kph excess on all highway speed limits, and set emergency proximity detectors to 50 yards. I left cellular communications switched off, and told the car to alert me when we crossed state lines. Strictly speaking it’s still illegal to sleep while you drive, but these days almost everyone does it anyway. The onboard billing system would take care of any toll charges, so dimming the glass to privacy mode, I got underway and tried to get some sleep.

Luckily, I was so tired that the events of the previous few weeks didn’t keep me awake for too long. The questions, the suspects, the motives that were bothering me, all faded away, and it seemed all too soon that the auto-navigation system woke me to say that we were approaching Pittsburg airport.

I went inside to get a bite to eat and find WHSmith. I was running a little early. Pittsburg was one of the first Air-Malls to be constructed in North America, back in the ’90s, after the pattern of the European model. To all intents and purposes it was a shopping mall with an airport attached. The shopping crowds thronged the designer stores, and some of them went on to depart for distant places, or make their connecting flights. The crowds made me feel somewhat safer as I ate a leisurely brunch and strolled over to rendezvous with Jazz.

I was still 20 minutes or so early, and had no idea how late she would be, so I took the time to survey the science fiction shelves in Smiths, as I often did when given the luxury of time alone in a real paperbook shop. Keeping one eye on the people coming and going around me, I noticed William Gibson’s latest posthumous cyber-collection was just published, and picked it up to take a look. Charlene Brusso’s latest blockbuster was topping the charts as usual, and Terry Pratchett’s 50th Discworld novel, “Golden Eerings”, appeared to be doing very well.

Jazz startled me with her soft familiar voice close by, “Don’t look up, I think I may have been followed.”

“Let’s walk for a while, then,” I said, putting down the book, “and see who comes with us.”

We followed the standard routine and strolled among the shoppers, staying neither too close or far from each other, so a casual observer would find it hard to tell if we walked together, or were merely heading in the same direction. After ten minutes or so of stopping to look in store windows, checking reflections, and doubling back to examine to goods on offer, it seemed we were not being followed, at least not obviously. I caught up with Jazz in a store entrance.

“Either we’re not being followed, or they are good,” I said.

She looked suddenly small and tired, “I think they are probably very good, but we need to find somewhere to talk anyway.”

“My car is outside, and it’s the safest place I know around here?”

We windowshopped carefully towards the exit.

#

Back in the comparative safety of my car, I got busy switching on every security device at its disposal, before driving out of the airport taking turnings at random, heading vaguely east. “It will be much harder to find us if we’re moving,” I said, “I’ve waited a long time for this, so please tell me what happened.”

Jazz visibly composed herself, relaxed into the upholstery, and began. “You disconnected, I think, after Simon thought he had everything back under control. He’d sidelined our visitor into an area where he would think the attack was proceeding, but he could do no real harm. We all thought he’d get careless, and make some move that would reveal his identity. Stop me if I’m wrong on any of this”

“That’s exactly as I remember it,” I said, “otherwise I would never have left you to handle it.”

“That’s what we thought too. But we couldn’t have been more wrong. It was as if whoever it was knew the very moment you’d disconnected. Everything just blew up in Simon’s face. The intruder unleashed attack program after attack program, and Simon’s system was compromised while he watched. Even his anti-viruses couldn’t stop this guy as he broke out of Simon’s containment area, and started taking the system apart. I connected in and began analyzing his attack programs immediately, but it was too late to make a difference. He attacked the pricing files, changing all our public pricing structure, our discounts, everything, then started disabling our search and indexing programs, vandalizing our home page, and even replaced the company chairman’s picture with an anatomically explicit diagram of a horse’s rear end. It was pretty ugly to watch, Nick. It was as if we suddenly had no security at all.” Jazz shook her head, remembering.

“So, did you call for any back up from McShane or from me?” I wanted to know.

“Simon was taking care of that while I tackled the intruder. I think he got in touch with McShane to let him know, and contact you urgently, about what had happened. From what he told me afterwards, McShane didn’t seem interested, or to understand the situation. He just kept talking about a well-run ship not needing its captain at the wheel all the time. That a well organized crew should be able to handle it. I can’t begin to tell you how angry that made Simon: he couldn’t believe McShane’s stubbornness, under the circumstances. So we were left on our own Nick. No back up.”

I drove and thought for a while. “No wonder you were angry, facing a severe attack without any support. But what happened to Simon?”

“I was so busy trying to stop the attack by this time, that I really wasn’t paying too much attention. I’m sorry Nick. But the real reason that I was so tied up was because while I was analyzing the code he was using, I recognized most of the individual attack modules. I’d written them myself, back when I was working for the Punjabi Provisional Government on Net attack systems. They were my code modules, and dangerous ones too that I thought had been long forgotten or lost.”

“That’s almost unbelievable,” I said, thinking about the implications of this new bad news.

“So you see there were only two reasonable explanations for the attack. Either there was some government agency involved, who had access to my old code. Or worse still, Nick, I submitted those modules to BioFrontiers as part of my portfolio, when I was being interviewed. If someone in the company had found the modules, this could have been an insider job.”

I wasn’t sure which was really the worse scenario, all things considered, so I pressed for more details. “Then what on earth happened to Simon. You haven’t told me that part yet.”

“I don’t really know,” confessed Jazz. “One moment he was electronically by my side, as I found and rapidly modified my old anti-virus programs to repel the attack. They succeeded in correcting the attacker’s modifications, eventually. At some point I realized Simon wasn’t there any longer, but then he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer my beeper calls. Later I found a mail message from him that said simply, ‘Nice work, Jazz, sorry I let you down. I’ll see you when I see you,’ and then nothing after that. That’s when I called you, in a bit of a panic. I’m sorry I used the phone, Nick, but no-one was answering me electronically at that point: Simon, or you, or McShane. I felt very alone.”

“Doesn’t Simon live around here, somewhere?” I said. “If we really want to know what happened, we could do worse than to go and ask him”

“Yes, in Harrisburg, I’m pretty sure. I think I have his address here somewhere for emergencies. But don’t you think they’ll be watching for that kind of move, Nick?” worried Jazz.

“Quite possibly, but I’ve been shot at and fired in the last few days, so I’m beginning to lose my patience. I need to get this resolved one way or the other. I’m sorry too, Jazz.” I filled her in on my recent story, despite the increasing look of disbelief that slowly crept across her face. It was time she knew the whole story, including the part about the bullet holes.

#

It took two hours before we pulled up outside Simon’s deserted house in suburban Harrisburg. Many years after the Three Mile Island scare, Harrisburg had prospered from close proximity to Lancaster and York, both Amish towns within easy reach. It seemed as though the Amish resistance to high-tech had struck a chord with families with similar latter day concerns, producing a localized growth and prosperity that had not been seen since the days of the original German settlers.

The car’s security systems told me there was no-one home at Simon’s place, and that no-one had transferred data into or out of the house in the last seven days. What appeared to be Simon’s car was parked in the driveway. We had to look elsewhere, and in our case to the local online Harrisburg Yellow Pages. Within walking distance was the “Old Jockey Club”, listed in English with Cantonese subtitles, so we tried our luck there.

The place seemed well past its decorative prime, but moodily lit and quite busy, and it took a while for Jazz to notice Simon. He was sitting in a booth alone, and a very large waiter moved protectively across our path as we headed to join him.

“It’s OK, Henry, they’re with me,” slurred Simon, as we sat down. “And how are my two favorite ex-colleagues doing under the circumstances, then?”

Simon appeared to be well immersed in a rather large cocktail, which judging by his condition, was probably not his first of the evening.

“Well, we’re doing a lot better now, for seeing you alive and in one piece,” said Jazz. “How you are doing is a much more interesting question to us right now?”

“Oh, I can’t complain,” said Simon, saluting us with his cocktail glass in exaggerated fashion. “Career in ruins, laughing stock of the company, on the boss’s very early retirement list. What could be better?”

“Simon,” I said “Listen to me. We need to know what happened. Jazz has told me some of it. But we still have some really important pieces missing; such as what happened when you tried to get backup from McShane that night?”

“That windbag,” said Simon. “Either he didn’t care, or didn’t understand what was happening. He kept blaming you, Nick. ‘Captain of the crew’, ‘going down with the ship’, ‘keeping an even keel’, ‘weathering the storm’, that was all he could talk about. Like talking to a bloody sailors’ almanac. Bloody windbag, that man,” Simon took another gulp. “Then the next day, after Jazz has put all the pieces back together, without my help, and it’s no longer a crisis, he’s back in touch with me like it was all my fault. Hell, he wouldn’t have known anything anyway, if I hadn’t told him. On and on he goes, about how bad it looks to senior management, how heads will have to roll, the need for accountability, surprised I couldn’t handle the situation, disappointed in the team, nothing but a one man show,” Simon stared for a moment at me. “Just who does this guy think he is, Nick?”

“Well unfortunately, he’s the boss,” I said. “Or rather, was the boss. I don’t work for him or the company any longer. This is strictly a freelance investigation, from my point of view.” I filled them both in on my rapid fall from employment.

They told me that they both had similar treatment. Each was summarily fired and thrown out of the company, and then threatened with contractual small print, and offered sweeteners in the form of cash handouts to sign their resignations.

I ordered coffee all round, with double-espresso for Simon, and thought hard about the details Jazz and Simon had filled in for me. Any way you looked at it, none of the events of the last few weeks added up. Our attacker had been fierce, but eventually tamed. My security team had been caught off guard, but made an excellent recovery. Our movements seemed to have been tracked somehow, but there had been no follow through except for the shots fired at me in the UK.

Other than having completely demoralized the security team, by getting them fired, there seemed no winning outcome from our attackers perspective. Which left, well, what?

Three wristwatch beepers warbled into life, as if they were one, shattering this reverie.

“Have either of you got a phone?” I asked. Jazz had, and dialed the emergency contact number. She was relayed through and listened intently.

“OK, I understand… Yes… OK… Yes… I’ll let you know if that’s a problem.” and she hung up.

“It was McShane.” said Jazz. “He wants us to come in to HQ and talk. He says we’d be crazy not to come, immediately.”

I was still staring wide-eyed at my wristwatch beeper. I’d worn it almost continuously for nearly ten years. It was so familiar that it was like part of my body. At last, some pieces of the puzzle that had been driving me crazy started to fall into place.

“I think we’d better leave these things here though. They’re a security risk now, from our point of view,” I said, pointing at my wristwatch beeper.

“I’ve got a better idea,” said Simon. “Give them to me.” He gathered up the beepers and took them with him through the nearby ‘Employees only’ door. A minute or two later he returned, smiling. “Let them try and track us with those things now. They’re already on their way to Old Hong Kong.”

I looked at Simon and Jazz. “Well, if we ever want to get to the bottom of this, I suppose we could go and hear what McShane has to say for himself. What do you think?”

“I don’t trust him, Nick,” said Jazz, “I think he likes to play with people”

“That’s true,” I said, “but what do we really have to lose by talking to him? It’s not as if we work for him any longer, so he has no control over us. How about you, Simon?”

“I think the same as Jazz. I didn’t like the way he fired me, payoff or no payoff, but I’d feel more comfortable if we three met with him as a team.”

“Well, my car is outside, so let’s get moving. We can work out some tactics on the way.”

#

With the car’s security and satellite navigation systems engaged, we embarked on the lengthy journey back to New England. Traveling quickly along major highways, the afternoon wore on into evening, and the light began to fail under greying skies.

We spent the hours trading ideas on who our attackers had been, what our favorite conspiracy theories were, and how the evidence supported them. We had plenty of theories to choose from.

Overall, Simon favored the idea that it was an insider job. Probably a disgruntled programmer who had somehow got access internally to Jazz’s old code, and then used it to make our security team look bad. Perhaps with the idea of moving into a security position once a number of vacancies had opened up unexpectedly. Or possibly in cahoots with McShane to discredit our security team, so he could bring in some of his old cronies from other companies.

These ideas certainly had merit. McShane was well connected in the security industry, and a relative newcomer to BioFrontier. It might explain his enthusiasm to payoff the team, but not really why someone should take a shot at me in the UK.

Jazz still seemed shaken by encountering her old code. Her theories seemed built around her worries about whose hands it might have fallen into. She thought the most likely explanation was a political reaction against the recently reunified Indian Government. It seemed likely that someone from an ex-Punjabi government faction might use her old code to attack one or more multinational companies and then use the attack as way to raise cash for the Punjab, either with an online protection racket of some kind, or as a blackmail operation with the company or companies that were attacked.

Again this seemed plausible, and since the UK had many Punjabi sympathizers, could explain why I had been shot at. However, it didn’t explain the inside knowledge of the security team and their movements, including my suspicions about being tracked by our wristwatch beepers.

My theories I kept to myself, but I did share my impressions with Jazz and Simon. I was no great fan of McShane, but couldn’t believe he would have the imagination (at least without help) to put together some kind of grand scheme to get rid of us, without anyone finding out about it. I began to explain why generally speaking, government-conspiracy theories were much less likely to be true than commercial-conspiracy theories, when a slight snore from Jazz on the back seat interrupted my analysis.

“Am I really that boring, when I get going?” I asked Simon quietly.

He grinned widely. “Only when you’re really trying to convince yourself, Nick.”

I shook my head. These folks that I’d hardly ever met, seemed to know me so well. “I’d better shut up then, Simon, and let you get some sleep too, if you like.”

“I think I will, if you really don’t mind?” said Simon.

Jazz turned in her sleep, saying something in Punjabi. Simon looked at me, “What was that all about?”

“Beats me. Afraid I don’t speak the language, whatever it is,” I lied gently. “Anyway, you get some sleep and I’ll wake you both when we’re nearly there.”

I tended the controls unnecessarily, the music turned down low as they slept and we sped through the night. I worried that Jazz was taking her share of blame for the attack much too hard. “Dear Mother, please forgive me,” she’d said in her sleep.

#

Share The New Accelerator

We stopped for coffee and croissants a few miles from HQ. It was a good chance for us all to stretch and wake up, and agree on how we would handle the meeting. We were unanimous in our distrust of McShane, but decided to play it cool, and not get drawn into any of his provocative tactics. Careful listening to whatever proposal he had in mind seemed the best approach. If pressured, we would regain control over the situation by retiring to my car to confer among ourselves, screened by its security systems so we couldn’t be monitored. At least I hoped so. Nothing was cut and dried in this business.

Before we left the coffee shop, I went to use the facilities, which were down a hallway by the back door. A stocky man in a tweed jacket came in through the back, narrowly beating me to the door of the men’s room.

“Oh sorry,” he said, in a well-spoken English accent, and held the door open. “After you.”

I nodded, and went in, saying nothing. Now was not the time to indulge in the usual expatriate banter about ‘where are you from’, ‘are you here on holiday’, and so on. I shut the cubicle door behind me, but that didn’t stop him talking.

“It’s amazing how it’s a small world, isn’t it?” he said chattily. “My wife’s always meeting people who know the same people that she knows. Hardly ever happens to me. Well, not very often anyway. Does that ever happen to you, Nick? It is Nick, isn’t it? Or are you using a different name at the moment?”

I tensed. “Have we met?” I said, leaving the cubicle. He could be a long lost relative, but somehow I doubted it. “I’m afraid I’m not very good with names.”

“Not to worry, Nick. Actually we haven’t met, but I was sent to find you and make you a little proposal on behalf of His Majesty’s Government.”

“His Majesty’s Government and I haven’t been on speaking terms for a long time,” I said, “so why would I be interested in any proposal from them?”

“Well, it’s like this Nick, when a matter of National Security is involved, His Majesty’s representatives can be rather insistent. We believe you could help us locate certain software that is currently in the wrong hands, and represents a threat to us and our European allies. You would of course be well paid for your trouble. Might even be a little something in the New Year’s Honours list for you, if that would help?”

“Don’t think I can help you,” I said, “but if something comes up I’ll keep you in mind. How should I get in touch?”

“I don’t think you quite understand the seriousness of your position, Nick. If we don’t get those items in 48 hours, then some very dangerous colleagues of mine will be looking for you to help you change your mind. If I were you, I’d think about that. And I’ll be in touch within 24 hours to see if anything has ‘come up’.”

At that moment the men’s room door opened and a burly State Trooper entered. Gratefully, I seized the chance to leave. Hurrying back to the table, I rushed Jazz and Simon out to the car, starting up, driving off, and activating all security systems in brisk succession.

“You are not going to believe what happened back there,” I said. “I just got threatened by the UK government to hand over your attack viruses, Jazz, or else. How the hell did they know about them?”

Simon seemed to find this hilariously funny, and it was some minutes before he could wipe the tears of laughter from his face and explain. “Good old UK government,” he managed to say, “always the last to know about anything. God bless ’em.”

Jazz and I were both looking incredulously at him, “What are you talking about, Simon?” I said irritably.

“You asked me why you couldn’t reach me after the attack. Well I wasn’t just upset because they broke into my system, at least not after a few hours anyway. It was because I had a call from one of my old colleagues in Beijing telling me to hide out. I didn’t need telling twice; those Chinese bureaucrats can get pretty nasty. When they couldn’t find me after a week or so, my old colleague called back to arrange a meeting. Turns out they used him to get in touch and offer me some serious money if I turned Jazz’s programs over to them, or else a broken neck if I didn’t. I was drinking with him in the Old Jockey Club about an hour before you two showed up.” He paused, “I’m sorry, Nick, I should have told you before. I just didn’t want to drag either of you into this.”

“I understand, Simon, I just wish I’d known earlier that there were two governments aware of Jazz’s attack programs. It does raise the stakes on all of this. Commercial players can be rough enough, but when governments get involved then lives can suddenly become expendable.”

Jazz cleared her throat loudly, “This probably isn’t the best time to mention it, but according to my arithmetic, that makes a total of three governments out to their hands on my programs. The Indian government was the first to get in touch, Nick, almost as soon as we’d fought off our attacker. They threatened my family, Nick, and they threatened to kill you, if I didn’t cooperate.”

“This gets worse and worse,” I groaned. “So what are you telling us then, Jazz? Are these the ones who took a shot at me? What kind of danger is your family in, back in India?”

“Don’t worry, Nick,” said Jazz. “My family is still in the Punjab, so there’s no way the Indian government could ever get them out without starting another civil war. United India or no United India. I don’t know if they shot at you or not; I thought maybe they did, but it sounds now as if there are a number of suspects. But that’s why I called you when you got back, to make sure you weren’t hurt. And that’s why I hid the attack programs, and the anti-attack programs, so carefully after we’d fought off the attack.”

This new information was all well and good, but it didn’t help. “So how did all these governments find out about the attacks,” I said, “and who was doing the attacking, and how did they get hold of your programs so easily, when it seems like the rest of the world is now willing to pay big money or break bones to get them?” All I got were blank looks from Simon and Jazz. This whole damn thing still made no sense at all.

#

HQ rolled into view, and I parked deliberately in “Customer Parking Only”. It was close to the entrance, and we might need the car nearby if we needed a private place to adjourn.

McShane’s admin guy met us at reception, handed out visitor’s badges, and ushered us into the luxury meeting room normally reserved for executive clients.

McShane as expected sat near the end of the big conference table, but his companions were something of a surprise. His boss Angela Didier, the VP of Corporate Operations, sat at the head of the table, and next to her was a large grim-faced man I didn’t recognize, wearing a visitor’s badge and looking uncomfortable in a dark grey suit.

Angela was apparently running the meeting, “Please do sit down Nick, and thanks for coming. You must be Jasindah Singh and Simon Wang. Please, make yourselves comfortable. We have some catching up to do, some explanations and some apologies. And we need your help.” She smiled disarmingly, “But we don’t have a lot of time.”

“That’s a lot to cover,” I smiled back. “So how about starting with some explanations, and I really like the sound of those apologies you mentioned.”

McShane meanwhile was studying the backs of his hands as they lay on the table. He had the look of someone who wished he was somewhere else.

“Well let’s start with our hacker attack shall we?” said Angela. “You’re probably wondering who was responsible for that little episode. Mr McShane here would probably like to talk about that.”

McShane didn’t appear too happy at the idea, but began. “Well, it was just routine, you know. Most companies do this kind of thing on a regular basis, and we don’t, so it seemed a perfectly sound process to bring in some external security consultants to test out our system security.”

“So-called friendly hackers,” I said, getting it, “if there was ever a contradiction in terms. And where did they get their attack programs from?”

Angela interrupted, “I understand your anger, Nick, but let’s try to get through this please. Mr McShane, let’s keep this short and to the point.”

“If you say so,” said McShane. “Well I contacted this outfit I’d run into at last year’s SecureNet Expo, and talked to them about staging a routine break-in. They seemed keen at first, but when they found out Nick was security chief, they seemed to lose interest. Apparently Nick’s better known than he thinks; must be all those conferences. Anyhow, I offered to loan them some of the attack software we had lying around, just to make it a bit more of a challenge. That’s when they agreed to do the job, provided I would let them know when Nick was not connected. I thought it would be a good exercise for the team, not to have to rely on him to call every play. And in the end, they did succeed without his help. This is after all a security department, and not Nick’s personal fan club.”

Angela frowned disapprovingly at this last remark, and he was silent.

“Let’s see if I have this right,” I said. “You gave a bunch of complete strangers a copy of Jazz’s attack software without knowing how powerful it was? It’s a good job you didn’t hire them to test the physical security of this office; you’d probably have given them bazookas and live rockets.”

Angela was serious. “If it had ended there, then we could have dealt with matters internally. Unfortunately when Mr McShane realized how effective the attack had been, instead of coming to me about it, he decided to cover up his tracks by getting rid of you and your people. In retrospect, I should have probed his justification in more depth, but, well, as he pointed out at the time, we had just had our chairman turned into a horse’s bottom.”

“I can see how that would be uncomfortable,” I said, “but why would that make it an external matter?”

“Well, we registered the break-in, as we are required to do even in the case of a ‘friendly hacker’. Then this gentleman got in touch with me,” said Angela, gesturing to the grim-faced suit. “Would you like to introduce yourself, Mister, er…”

“Thanks. You can call me Smith. Or Major, if you prefer. I’m attached to Military Intelligence’s Net Division. I got in touch with BioFrontier as soon as I saw the details of the break-in. We’ve been picking up reports of a new wave of hack attacks over the last few weeks. Mostly prestige targets who don’t want the publicity. Banks, Net vendors, Biotechs, Pharms, Space, the usual crowd who can afford to pay the protection money to these nerds.” He scowled. “More money than sense. Had to threaten half of them with legal action and publicity before they’d give us the details.”

“Anyway, when we cross-correlated the data, it looked like your friends were the ones doing it. And using the attack software you gave them, we’d say.” This time his scowl was aimed squarely at McShane.

“Well, normally we’d have got copies of the attack and anti-attack software and gone after these people by now, but it looks like someone around here has been too cute for their own good, and hidden everything. The folks here at BioFrontier have been very cooperative with my agency, but basically we’ve torn the place apart and haven’t found a thing.” It was our turn for the magnificent scowl. “So which one of you smart asses has got that software?”

“So you see, Nick, I said we needed your help,” said Angela. “We need to locate the software and hand it over to Major Smith here, so these people can be stopped. We could even talk about giving you your old jobs back?”

“Major Smith,” I said, “that’s a wonderful story, and I want to thank you for giving us valuable insight into your agency’s workings, but could you please explain to us why we should believe a single word you’ve said? You haven’t shown us any proof, and there’s been nothing about this on the Net. All three of us have had an interesting time lately, and we’re not really in the mood to take anyone’s word about anything.”

“Well, Nick,” said Smith, “if that’s your real name. I don’t give a damn whether you believe me or not. Your bosses here…”

“Ex-bosses” I corrected.

“Your ex-bosses, then, said you’d probably listen and cooperate, since you don’t like hackers any more than the rest of us. However, I didn’t come unprepared for your answer.”

Smith pulled three thick old-fashioned manila folders from his briefcase. “Now then what do we have here: Simon, Jazindah and Nick. Chinese citizen, Indian citizen and British citizen. Three resident aliens, if I’m not mistaken. Do you know how long it would take me to call the Immigration and Naturalization Service and get those Green Cards canceled? Do you know how fast I could get you on three planes back to the old country? If I don’t get that software in the next 30 minutes, I promise you’ll find out.”

Smith certainly knew how to create a compelling threat when he put his mind to it, but then he probably had quite a while to think about it. I remembered my car sitting outside, and decided we needed some time to regroup.

“It will take us about 10 minutes to discuss your proposal, Major Smith. If we decide to go along with your suggestion, you’ll probably have your software in half an hour.” I sounded a lot more confident than I felt. “If you’ll excuse us, I suggest you spend the time arranging system access for us. We’ll also need a fast Net connection, and complete privacy.”

With that the three of us strolled out to my car, and sat in it with the security systems at maximum.

“This is a really bad situation,” said Simon. “If the US government don’t get us, my lot, or the Indians, or the Brits will do.”

“Right, but if we don’t play along with this Smith character, I’ll be on the next plane to India and in deep trouble when I arrive,” said Jazz.

“Not to mention McShane’s buddies are still out there getting rich using your software, Jazz,” I said. “By the way, where on earth did you hide the software? Must have been pretty well hidden if those Intelligence guys couldn’t find it.”

Jazz smiled, “Just an old lock and key trick I learned years ago. I’ve got the lock and Simon has the key.”

“I have?” said Simon, surprised.

“The best key carriers are those without a worried expression,” said Jazz, and laughed. “You must be the least inscrutable Chinese person I’ve ever met, so I didn’t want you broadcasting the fact with that worried look of yours.”

“Well, I’m glad no-one found out before I did,” said Simon, “or I would have never forgiven you.”

“Hold on a minute,” I said. “You’ve just given me an idea. We’d need complete privacy for a few minutes to pull it off, but it might be a way to get out of this mess.”

A few minutes later, with our plan sketched out, I retrieved my portable snooper from the back of the car, and we went back into the conference room.

“Here’s the deal. We deliver the software within an hour, as a one-off contract. Here’s the hourly rate.” I scribbled on a piece of paper and passed it to Angela, who raised her eyebrows a bit when she read it, but said nothing. “As for you, Major Smith, we’d like official letters of commendation adding to those thick files you’re so fond of. Do we have an agreement?”

“You do,” said Angela and Smith together.

“Now, where’s that system?” I asked.

#

The three of us were in a private office, which was a good deal more private after my snooper had done its work and removed one or two devices that I didn’t like watching me.

Simon began by ‘netting into his home system to pick up the key that Jazz had carefully hidden in an email message footer that she’d sent him.

“How are we doing for time?” he asked.

“About another 15 minutes to be on the safe side,” I said.

Next Jazz ‘netted across to her system in California, and then relayed back to her security server in HQ. “It won’t let me in with the right privileges unless I relay in from that particular system,” she explained. Then she began to perform what looked like a server backup and disk compression.

“No offense intended, but is this a good time to be tidying up your disks, Jazz?” I said.

She laughed, “Looks like the real thing, doesn’t it. Well, it’s actually reassembling the software that I randomly scattered across a terabyte or two of this server. At least, I hope it is.”

So did we. This didn’t seem a quick process and time was ticking away. Less than ten minutes left. “OK, there it is,” she said. The system said simply ‘Key please’, and when Simon supplied the file, ‘Error in key file’.

“Damn” said Jazz, “Not enough keys, Simon. Get back in your system, quickly. I forgot I sent you a double key, just to be on the safe side.”

I was looking at my watch. Five minutes left. “Come on folks, we’re running out of time.”

It seemed to take forever for Simon to get back into his system and for Jazz to find the second key, this time hidden in a voice message. “Three minutes to go,” I was beginning to sound like a speaking clock.

“OK, let’s try again,” Jazz was concentrating hard, moving quickly. “There we go.” At last the programs unlocked themselves and the system simply said ‘Ready’.

“OK then,” I said. “Let’s broadcast these little troublemakers and get the hell out of here.” My watch said one minute left, and I hoped there would be enough time before Major Smith had us shut off.

Agonizingly slowly we watched the fast Net uplink working, shifting the large files containing the attack programs and anti-attack programs up to the public Net, propagating them from server to server, creating a cascading waterfall of software being copied around the world again and again and again, until there were too many copies of the programs to count.

“We did it!” said Simon. “Let them try and keep those things for themselves now.”

“Thank God they’re not my problem any more,” Jazz sighed.

“We really, really have to leave right now,” I said.

Too late. We ran into Angela and Smith a short way down the hall towards the exit.

“Mission accomplished?” asked Angela, holding a bankers draft.

“Most definitely,” I said, and plucked the paper from her fingers.

Smith looked pleased, “So where’s my software?”

“Oh, you can get it off the Net now,” I said. “Like anyone else. I think that concludes our business today, but if you need any more help, you know where to find us.”

They stared after us as we left the building, tossing our badges to the security guard.

Climbing into my car, we drove off. I didn’t bother to set the security systems. There didn’t seem to be anything left to hide.

“Do you think they’ll ever forgive us, Nick?” asked Jazz.

“Who do you mean? The US, Chinese, Indians, Brits, or those blackmailers sitting out there with attack software that is now completely obsolete?”

Simon laughed. “But will any corporation ever employ us again after this?”

“Probably not,” I said, “once they get to hear about us. On the other hand, if we were looking to start our own company, I don’t think the notoriety will do us the least bit of harm. Could be the best publicity that money couldn’t buy, now I come to think of it.”

Simon chuckled, approvingly.

“Sounds like a plan to me” said Jazz.

Writer, editor, webmaster, web producer, Mick is a serial ex-pat who's lived in four countries (USA, Germany, France and UK) with his long suffering spouse over the last 25 years. His interests include time travel, world rally, mountain biking, digital marketing and audio systems of startling fidelity.

He wears the story of his life on his face. That first second, looking at him in person, is a rehashing of everything I know about him: The hardships, the battles, the killings, the fight for freedom, the struggle against the British Mandate, the wars with the Arabs, and the cruel battles against the traitors within. I can see the 1930’s and 40’s and 50’s on his face. Decisions and fates have been carved in the stone of his skin more than fifty years ago. So much of a person’s face is not captured on a TV screen.

His eyes move past my face, scan the large mirror behind me, then come to rest on the conference table between us.

“My name is David Sanders,” I offer him my hand. “A pleasure to meet you, sir.”

“I’m sure,” he mutters, and rather than shake my hand, moves to sit down. A ninety-year-old body moves slowly, and it still takes me a couple of seconds to notice that although he did not deign to give the organization the respect of a handshake, he had seated himself in front of the mirror.

I sit opposite him, making sure I don’t hide any part of him.

“You’re recording this, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir.”

He shrugs and moves his head as if he’s lived through this dozens of time before. “How many times do I have to be right,” his mouth curls up in a slight smile, “to be right?”

“This is the last time, sir.”

Something in the way I say that makes him look at me. He scans me up and down.

“How old are you?” he says. “Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?”

“Twenty-six, sir.”

He looks down and laughs. “I have grandchildren older than you.”

“I know. They’re two very beautiful women.”

“Their children are even more beautiful.”

“That’s right, sir.”

He nods. He’s got five great-grandchildren, ten grandchildren, and three children – two boys and a girl, all born to the same woman, Dinah Shamgar, his devoted wife. She was the one who helped him dress before he came here, no doubt.

I had seen pictures of her when the two of them had met, two 23-year-olds in the middle of a war for freedom. Oh, she was something. The two had met by accident. The British intelligence had decided Aryeh Shamgar was the man responsible for the assassination of Colonel Tanner at the King David Hotel. Shamgar needed an apartment in which to hide out, and the Underground ordered him to hide at Dinah Gat’s apartment. She was a bike messenger for the Lehi, the smallest and most militant of the resistance groups, passing notes from one commander to another, and, of course, ready to lay down her life for independence. Aryeh lived on the floor of her bathroom for six months, keeping quiet, lest the neighbors hear. When she was out, he would store his feces and piss in nylon bags in fear that someone might hear or smell the toilet. When it was dark, he would occasionally wander the streets of Jaffa with a false beard, dressed as an Orthodox Jew.

After the Nazis were beaten in ’45, after the British partitioned and left ‘Palestine’ in ’48, and after the Independence War was won in ’49, they were married. They have been married, now, for 60 years.

“Would you like some tea, sir? Coffee? We have mineral water here for you.”

“Just get it over with. I won’t be here more than ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir. For the record, this is October 16th, 2010. My name is David Sanders.” As I talk, I see his eyes glaze over in impatience. “I am sitting here with Aryeh Shamgar in Tel Aviv. The hour is—”

“You’re a liberal, aren’t you?” he cuts me off.

“Sir? I don’t know what that has—”

“You’re a liberal,” he states.

“My job here has nothing to do with—”

“Your job here is to find out the ‘truth’ about how we drove the occupying British forces out of our country, how evil we were and how good they and the Arabs were.”

“My job is to find out the truth about what happened, sir.”

“And you happen to be a liberal.”

“That has nothing to do with—”

“Why afraid to admit to the truth? Show some guts, show some balls. This is what our meeting is all about, isn’t it? Guts. Guts and truth. Come on, tell me the truth.”

I look in his eyes. He’s sharper than the hi-tech geniuses I work with. He put me on the defensive on something I shouldn’t be defensive about. I’m here with facts.

“Yes, sir,” I say, not moving my gaze from his. “I’m a liberal.”

“And liberals like you have been coming after me since the Seventies. Every two years I’m invited to see another set of ‘facts’ or ‘papers’ that show that the assassination of Colonel Tanner was unjustified and cold-blooded. Every time they come cocky. And every time they are proven completely and utterly false.”

“Yes, sir. That’s right, sir.”

“And every last one of them is a liberal. Imagine that. When they try to undermine my heroic act, they are actually trying to undermine the footing and legitimacy of the fight for this county.”

“Yes, sir. And although I am a liberal, I would like nothing better than to realize that everything I learned about you in school was right. You are my hero, sir.”

He thinks of answering, but after a second closes his mouth and locks his arms around his chest.

He is my hero, and has been my hero since childhood. He has been a hero for more than sixty years. A hero of the country, given countless honors and medals, all because of his one assassination, the one that turned the tide of the British Mandate, the one that got the British public to decide they should relinquish their control over Palestine and leave it for the Arabs and the Jews. On the waves of his public adulation, he was a cabinet secretary for ten years, responsible for Israel’s military acquisitions. When he left that office, he had countless offers from lucrative business companies. The successes he had with the five he chose to run made sure he and his family would be set for generations.

This is the man whose life I have to crumble. This is the man whose heart may be too weak to withstand it.

“And like I said, sir,” I continue, my voice even, “this is the last time.”

His eyes watch me sharply, then, rather than be confrontational, he leans back calmly. “Dispense with formalities, then.”

“Ummm… all right, sir. This,” I put my hand on a folder, and spin it around so that he can read it, “contains information about our institute, Past Intelligence.” He no more than glances at it. He doesn’t have his reading glasses. “We are not a liberal organization. In fact, most of our work is done for military intelligence and the Mossad.” He raises an eyebrow with surprise and respect. “Though we are an independent foundation. This particular project, pertaining to you, is not military in any way and therefore whatever facts we discover are not subject to secrecy. The manner in which we uncover these facts, however, is subject to secrecy.”

I move the folder to his side of the table. “What we do is, we use new technology, developed at the Weizmann Institute, and available only in Israel so far.” He squints at me, trying to see where I am leading him. “The technology deals with… Well, receiving information through time, from… the past. Basically, what it means is, we can ‘hear’ things that happened in a small window between sixty-five and seventy years ago and record them on…” I almost say a fancy word, and I remember that I am talking to someone from a different age, “on tape.”

“You can hear things from the past?”

“Yes, sir. Basically, we have a spy satellite… into the past. But always sixty-five to seventy years ago.”

“And you… record those things?”

“Yes, sir. And everything’s real. We are sanctioned, as I said, by the government and the military and the—”

“Sixty-five to seventy?” he cuts me short again, leaning forward. “Sixty-eight years ago I assassinated Colonel Tanner.”

“Yes, sir. And we have that recording. In fact, we have the recording of each and every conversation in the British military that led to the conclusion that it was you who was behind it and to the decision that you must be hunted down—”

“That can’t be true,” he says, but his eyes glisten with the memory of the past, a memory he has been living again and again every day, I’m sure, since it had happened. That long lost past is his present still. He lives it daily. He breathes it. He speaks of it and people speak to him about it. He is invited to other countries to speak of it. He makes headlines when ‘liberals’ like me try to discredit him. “You can’t hear the past!” In this instant, I see in his eyes that the past I’ve listened to is his present.

“It is possible, sir, and we have put all the DVDs, uh… the tapes—”

“I know what a DVD is and I know how to work it!”

“Yes, sir. We put all the DVDs of all the recordings in the folder for you. You can listen to them at home. They also include all the conversations in the top echelons of the Lehi that led to your hiding away, and even the first time you met Dinah, at her apartment. We didn’t know that that would be what we would hear, and we thought you would like it, so we put it in for you. We didn’t listen to anything else with you two that came later.”

He puts his finger on the folder, “All that is here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And this technology is real? This is not a joke?”

“No joke, sir. Latest technology. Only we have it. And I trust you to keep it a secret.”

He nodded, for an instant a dutiful soldier again, serving the interests of his country, “Of course.”

“Now… we also happened to record – and that is what we were actually looking for – everything that led up to the most famous assassination of a British soldier that the Lehi has ever carried out. We have the recording of the orders you were given.”

His eyes widen. “You do?”

“Yes, sir.”

There is a war in his eyes now. Something new appears there. It’s as if he is fighting some urge. Then, in less than a second, it disappears, and age-old anger reappears, “If your recording does not match my version, word for word, then your entire institution is a sham!”

“No, sir. Our recording corroborates your version, word for word. It corroborates the version you’ve retold in dozens of documentaries and inquiries here and abroad about the orders you were given and how you carried them out. All that is now corroborated by unshakeable facts.”

His anger abates slightly. “Good.” Then a sparkle appears in his eyes, “Can I see it? Is it on the DVD?” That sparkle: It’s young. It’s like he’s 23 years old again, talking to me with the energy of youth.

“Yes, sir. Of course we put it on the DVD.”

He takes a breath, and that breath feels cleaner and fuller than all his previous breaths. “Excellent.”

“In fact, I’d like to hear it right now, with you, if you don’t mind.”

“No, no, not at all.”

I nod and take the remote into my hand. There is a big HD screen to my right and to his left. The HD is redundant, since there is nothing to look at. We only capture sounds, and so we only play sound.

I press ‘PLAY’ and the recording I have heard so many times before begins to play.

#

Share The New Accelerator

It begins with the sounds of the street. They aren’t muffled by a closed window. This was the second floor in a stone building in Allenby street, the temporary hiding place of Nathan Shmuelevitch, one of the three Lehi leaders. The Tel Aviv weather was unbearably hot and humid, and this was in January of 1942. As Ben Gurion had said, we were fighting the Nazis alongside the British, as if there was no British occupation of our country, and we were fighting the British occupation, as if there was no world war with the Germans.

You can hear the market outside: chickens, a donkey, and the occasional car engine sounds – a sound that does not exist today.

His entire body perks up. “That sounds exactly like—” He looks at me. “You do have that technology?”

I nod and point to my ear, urging him to listen.

“Shamgar, come here,” a man’s voice urges.

Shamgar’s mouth drops, and he slams his aged fist on the conference table. He had immediately recognized the voice of Nathan Shmuelevitch, his commander, the man who at that time led the military arm of the Lehi, and would later lead a great political movement that would change the country’s history.

His voice doesn’t sound like it was recorded sixty-eight years ago, because it wasn’t. It sounds like the cleanest sound one can achieve with today’s technology, because it was recorded only two months ago by us, as if we had the recording equipment in the room.

“Yes, commander, I’m here.” This is Shamgar’s voice. He sounds like a different person, his voice higher, his words faster, his rhythm different.

Shamgar doesn’t react to this as powerfully as he did to his commander’s voice. His body is frozen with intensity.

“Sit down, soldier.”

“Yes, sir.”

There is some scuffling of a wooden chair dragged on the floor tiles. Another car passes in the background.

“That’s exactly what the street sounded like,” Shamgar whispers, a tear in his eye. “I’d forgotten how much I remember.”

I nod. The recording continues, “I have dire news and a great task, for which I need my best soldier.”

“Yes, sir!”

“There is news from our intelligence about the latest plans of the Mandate.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Colonel Tanner has sent his recommendations to Churchill.”

“That’s exactly his voice,” Abraham’s voice is a whisper. I press ‘PAUSE’. “How did you do that?”

“It’s the technology, I told you. I—”

“Turn it back on,” he raps his fingers on the wooden desk. “Continue!”

I press ‘PLAY’ and Shmuelevitch continues to talk, “Our intelligence has intercepted a copy of it. The Colonel believes a harder hand is required with the Jews. He requests a mandate that following any violent event on our part, he will have complete freedom to arrest any Jew, guilty or not, and let them rot in jail. Guilty ones will be sent to Africa. And the ones he deems most guilty will be executed.”

Shamgar points at the screen. “Yes! That’s right!” —I press ‘PAUSE’ immediately— “That’s what he said! That’s exactly what he said! I remember! That was it!”

I nod and wait.

He looks at me. “Did you stop it? Go on! Go on!”

I press ‘PLAY’.

“But that goes against every principle the British claim they believe in.” Shamgar’s young voice booms. He was agitated and appalled.

“Yes, I would have said that!” the older Shamgar in front of me is riveted.

“Churchill would never approve!” The young Shamgar half shouts, sounding like a teenager whose voice was still changing.

“Yes,” Nathan Shmuelevitch says. “These were my sentiments. But we have evidence, irrefutable evidence, that Churchill has sent word that Tanner’s initiative is to be followed.”

“What!” shouts the young Aryeh Shamgar.

The old Aryeh Shamgar nods. “That’s right.”

“Calm down, soldier.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was noise of a wooden chair moving on a stone surface. Shamgar had apparently jumped out of his chair and was now getting back into it.

“Churchill is busy with the Germans and has no patience for us anymore. Are you following me?”

“Yes, sir!”

I look at Shamgar’s eyes. It is as if he is having an epiphany.

“Churchill’s message is so sensitive, and he is so afraid that it will find its way to us, that it has been entrusted to one man alone, a confidante. In spite of Churchill’s attempts, we have intercepted that message and have received it before Colonel Tanner. The confidante will deliver the message personally to Tanner. In fact, it will be delivered later today.” There is a slight pause. I always assumed Shmuelevitch was letting Shamgar absorb the news. “We can stop this. It is up to you, Shamgar, to stop this. Colonel Tanner must be assassinated tonight. By you. Alone. Immediately after he receives the message. We will be sending a message to Churchill that the Jews can be even more trouble than they have been so far, and that this new policy is unacceptable.

“I need a brave, fearless soldier. I need someone who can walk into the King David Hotel, into a party filled with British soldiers, cool enough to appear as one of the help, cool enough not to be intimated by the soldiers. I need someone brave enough to walk up to Colonel Sanders when he walks to the bathroom, put a bullet through his chest, then walk out calmly through a room filled with enemies. Are you that man, Shamgar?”

“Yes, sir!”

Every time I listen to this part of the recording, I keep thinking that the main difference between Shamgar’s voice today and his voice then is that today you can hear the past, you can hear the battles, the decisions, and the decades with which he had to live with those decisions. But back then, you couldn’t hear any of that in his voice. His past was a child’s past, a teenager’s past, devoid of scars.

Shmuelevitch continues. “Am I making the right choice by letting you go on this mission on which the fate of our independence hangs?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Good man. Go to your house, then. Prepare. In an hour, a man will drop by with plans. Open them when you’re alone. Read them, memorize them, then burn them.”

“Yes, sir!”

“An hour later, another man will drop off your escape plans. Open them when you’re alone. Read them, memorize them, know them by heart, then burn them. This mission will be just you… alone.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Dismissed, soldier.”

“Yes, sir!”

I press ‘PAUSE’.

“That ends this part of the recording. There’s some noises, and you leave the room.”

Shamgar is looking at me. He can hardly breathe.

“That’s it!” he says, his voice filled with air. “That’s the proof right there! You have incontrovertible truth right there! That’s just the way it happened!”

“Yes, sir.”

He’s looking around himself, trying to get a hold over his excitement, maybe even looking for more witnesses. “Every time I’ve claimed this was the reason we killed Tanner, the liberals and the British would say that that couldn’t have been the case, that the British would never behave like that, that there was no such order. But there was and they did! They did! That’s proof of everything I’ve been saying for decades!”

“Yes, sir.” I want to add my ‘but’, but he continues…

“Oh… Oh… That is unbelievable. I can’t believe… I was there again… I was there inside the room… This technology… I’m never going to have to need to prove the justice of my deeds again. I can go to my grave without a scandal hanging over me.”

“Sir, I just—”

“You said I have recordings of all of this?”

“Yes, sir. This, and all other stages of the assassination and escape. Of you and your wife meeting. Of—”

“Amazing!” He is ecstatic. Suddenly, his entire life seems vindicated.

It hurts me that much more to bring him down from such a high to total abjection. “Sir, there is one more recording I need you to listen to.”

“Yes, yes!” He is too excited. He is too happy. His guard is down.

“The following is a recording of events that took place thirty hours earlier, in Nathan Shmuelevitch’s office. In this recording…” I am losing nerve. I phrase it as delicately as I can, letting the recording bear the brunt of the blame, “In this recording, we can hear Shmuelevitch make the decision to assassinate Colonel Tanner.”

“All right,” Shamgar is energized. “Play it!”

“Yes, sir.” I switch to the next track on the DVD, and it begins to play.

The street noises are different. They’re quieter. There is no hustle. A muezzin is heard in the background – a morning prayer from sixty-eight years ago. There is scuffling of a chair.

“Sit.” It is Shmuelevitch’s voice. His tone is friendly, not at all the commander-like tone used on Shamgar.

Another wooden chair moves on stone. The muezzin’s prayer grows softer. A man is beginning to set up shop right underneath the window and call out orders to his lackeys.

“What have you found out?” Shmuelevitch asks.

“I followed the subject from yesterday afternoon until she went to sleep.” This is another voice. Young – everyone was young in the Lehi – and serious and idealistic sounding.

Shamgar straightens at the sound of that voice. “I know him! Who’s that?”

I don’t press ‘PAUSE’. The recording continues, “What did you find out?”

“The subject spent a routine day—”

“Yochi!” Shamgar shouts. I press ‘PAUSE’. “Yochanan Sfard!”

That’s right. Yochanan Sfard was tasked a year earlier with creating the Lehi’s intelligence system out of nothing, a task he had done magnificently well, and would soon become one of the Lehi’s legendary leaders. Sfard and Shamgar would be friends, though not close friends, for most of the fifties, until Sfard develops cancer and dies in 1962.

“Go on,” Shamgar orders me. “This is unbelievable. Go on, go on!”

I rewind a bit, and press ‘PLAY’.

“The subject spent a routine day in her home—” Sfard was saying.

“Don’t call her ‘the subject’,” Shmuelevitch interrupts. “She’s got a name, and this isn’t about the resistance.”

“Elizabeth,” the young Sfard amends his statement, “was at her friend’s house all day and all the previous night.”

“‘Elizabeth’?” Shamgar whispers to himself. It sounds familiar, but he hasn’t put the pieces together yet.

“At six she began to dress for an auspicious occasion,” Sfard continues to report.

“Yes?” Shmuelevitch said.

“What are they talking about?” Shamgar whispers to me.

“Listen!” I say.

“At seven she met with Colonel Tanner at Chaled’s fish restaurant at the Jaffa pier.”

“She met with him?” Shmuelevitch’s voice was wound tight.

“They ate for an hour,” Sfard continues the report. “They seemed… amicable. Smiling a lot. Intimate in nature.”

“Yes?” It was as if Shmuelevitch was gritting his teeth.

“They left together, and took a long walk on the beach to his house.”

“Colonel Tanner’s house?”

“Right.”

Shamgar squints and looks at me. “There were two Elizabeths?”

I shake my head and raise a finger, indicating there was only one.

“She stayed the night at his place… At their place.”

Shamgar touches his cheek. “Tanner’s wife was living at her friend’s house? Why were they following her?”

“Listen,” I say.

“At eight twenty seven p.m. I took a risk and looked through the window. They were in the middle of a… sexual act. Then I—”

“All right, all right,” the young Shmuelevitch interrupts him. “Thank you. We got the data we wanted.”

“We certainly did.”

There is silence for a long time, then a chair is pushed back on the floor quickly: Shmuelevitch had gotten up suddenly, no longer able to sit down, “She told me she was never coming back to him. She told me it was over. She said she felt revulsion when he was near her. I felt she was…”

Shamgar looks at me, horrified. “Are you saying they had an affair?”

“I’m not saying anything. What we’re hearing is what happened.”

Shamgar listens. “Why am I not hearing anything?”

“There’s quiet,” I said. “Listen.”

All we could hear was more and more vendors setting up shop in the street. The muezzin had finished his prayer. The silence lasts for more than a minute, in which I could see Shamgar’s impatience grow.

Then, finally, we heard Shmuelevitch’s voice. “Yochi, Yochi… I can’t let this happen. I can’t lose her. I can’t lose her to him. I can’t let her do that. I can’t think when she’s… I would die if she was…” And as if we could hear the wheels turning, one thought of death becomes another thought of death, “I’m going to kill him! He’s not going to take my woman from me!”

“No,” Shamgar says.

“You know I’ve always thought we should kill high-profile British soldiers,” Sfard says. “And who’s more high-profile than Colonel Tanner? You’re too fearful of killing the British.”

“No no no,” Shamgar shakes his head.

“Yes… Yes…” Shmuelevitch says. “We should kill them. You’re right. It will send a message to the Brits!”

“It will.”

“That we’re powerful.”

“Yes.”

“No!” Shamgar shouts. His eyes are screaming.

The recording continues, “That we’re not ones to be messed with.”

“Yes.”

“All right. All right. Let me think. I need a devoted soldier, one willing to die for the cause. A brave soldier.”

“No! False! No! False!” Shamgar is shaking his head almost uncontrollably.

“I’ve got just the man for you. Aryeh Shamgar.”

“He’s young, isn’t he?”

“Not as much as the others. He’s been around. He has nerves of steel. And he’s been begging me for some real action. And… he’s disposable.”

“Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies!” Shamgar slams his open hands on the table, and then buries his face in them.

“Yes… Yes…” Shmuelevitch is excited. “All right. I’ll start planning. I want Colonel Tanner’s complete itinerary for the next few days. I need to know where and when would be the best place to strike.”

“I’ll have it for you in two hours.”

“Excellent.”

“We are not going to rest until that man is dead.”

“No, we’re not.”

“No, we’re not. Now go. You have a job to do.”

There are noises of people walking on stone, and then a door closing. Shamgar is looking at me. I look down. The recording isn’t over.

Without warning, we hear Shmuelevitch scream, “Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore!”

Shamgar’s mouth opens in horror. “No! No! No!” And then Shamgar shouts at the screen, “What are you doing?!”

“Whore! Whore! Whore!” the screen shouts back, joined by the clear sound of furniture being thrown against the walls then kicked around. “Whore! Whore! Whore!”

I press ‘PAUSE’. “That goes on for a while. Then there’s a long silence. And then he begins to plan the pieces to allow for the assassination.”

Shamgar’s mouth is puckered tight, and he is shaking his head. He looks to the right. He looks to the left. His fingers begin to drum on the table. “It’s a lie. It’s a lie. It must be a lie. There is no way… You forged their voices somehow. You…”

“I assure you—”

He raises his hand to silence me. “I want to hear it again,” he says.

His cheeks are red and puffy. I keep my calm. “All right.”

I press a few buttons, and the recording is played again.

As he listens to it again, his eyes seem to sear through whatever they are focused at. I follow their gaze, but they are not focused on anything in the room. They are focused on the past. They are searing through to the past, just as our technology does.

“Again. I want to hear it again,” he says once the recording has played through.

He listens again. And he listens again. And he listens again.

The more he listens, the more awake he seems. The more he listens, the shorter his breathing. The more he listens, the redder his cheeks. A vein in his neck I hadn’t noticed before is making its presence known: His heartbeat is rising. I try to time it, in my head. Around 130 a minute. Not good. Not for a ninety-year-old man.

After five times, in the middle of the recording, he raises his hand and says, “That’s enough.”

Immediately, I fumble with the remote, find the button, and press ‘PAUSE’.

He looks at me. His eyes are shaking. His body is shaking. His fingers are shaking.

He looks away from me, and at the table. He looks at his trembling hands. He reaches for his pocket. For a second, I think he’s reaching for a gun. But of course he isn’t. He takes out his cell phone, opens it, is about to push a button – probably to call his wife – when he hesitates. Then he throws the cell phone at the wall. “Traitors! Fucking traitors!” he yells.

He looks down, gathering his breath.

Then he looks up, straight at me. His eyes are clear, not trembling, sharp – even sharper than when he had come in. Without moving his eyes, I can see that he is no longer looking at me but at the mirror behind me. “You’ve had your fun. You took your shot, got your blood, and now you have your victory. Do you really need to keep filming this?”

I look behind me, at the mirror, and get a chill. It’s true. Why do we need to film an old man lose his life purpose? What historical purpose does that serve?

“Cut the feed,” I say. “Stop the camera.”

I hear voices on the other side.

“Stop the camera,” I say.

A tiny red light, still seen through the one-way mirror, vanishes.

I turn to face him. “The camera is off.”

#

“I’m sorry, sir,” I tell him. “There was no reason to record this in the first place. I’ll make sure it never gets used.”

Shamgar looks at me with the eyes of a man who had lost. “It doesn’t matter. You won a battle. Take your victory lap, and enjoy the applause…” he looks down, and there is a tear in his eye when he says, more to himself than to me, “While it lasts.”

He puts his hands on the table and clearly is about to pull himself up.

“Wait,” I put my hand next to his, but do not touch. “Stay. You don’t have to go immediately.” He looks at me. “Please. I meant what I said earlier, and back then I knew what I was going to show you. You are my hero. You are still my hero. Take a couple of minutes to calm down. Drink some water. Have some coffee or tea. Breathe. Just… Stay a couple of minutes.”

For a long time, he just thinks. Then he says, “I’ll have some tea.”

#

Even before the tea arrives – Wissotzky, no sugar, just the way I know he drinks it – Shamgar closes his eyes, and sinks into his own world.

Within a minute, he begins to slam his open hand against the conference table in small baby slams. “The traitors…” – slam – “The traitors…” – slam – “The traitors…” – slam – “Such traitorous…” his fingers curl. “Such destructive… That something so filthy should be the cause for… The excuse!” He raises his voice on this last one. “Everyone who followed them… Everyone who believed them… For sex?! Sex! Such… traitors…”

Then he sinks into silence again, his eyes closed.

#

He drinks his tea in silence, his eyes far away from here. Suddenly, anger flares again. “He was my friend! My friend! For thirty years after we got our independence! For thirty years until he died! Lied to me, hugged me, told me how brave I was. Looked me in the eyes. And never… never… said… anything…”

He takes another sip of his tea. “The traitorous bastard. Traitorous bastard!”

He raises his cup, but his hands shake and the tea spills onto the table.

“I’m sorry.” He looks aside, ashamed.

#

Share The New Accelerator

“I can’t believe it!” Five minutes later, he claps his hands together and gives me the look he had given me when we had met an hour ago. “I can’t believe it! Not true! Fabricated! Great fabrication, but inconceivable.”

“I assure you, the tech—”

“I don’t need your words,” he silences me. “Play it again. Then, after that, I want to hear something else. Play something else, something that can’t be faked. I want to hear the time I met Dinah.”

I nod. “All right.”

I reach for the remote.

#

The original track begins to play.

“Louder,” he says.

His old ears probably heard half of what I had heard.

I turn up the volume.

A few more words said by Shmuelevitch, and Shamgar cries again, “Louder!”

And a few seconds later, “Louder!”

“Louder!”

“Louder!”

Then, almost at max volume, he is content. And he listens to the conversation again, to its very end.

#

I was prepared to show him all the segments we had prepared, but it is his meeting with Dinah that breaks him. He listens to it, head bent over, reacting to every sound, then, once it is over, he raises his hand, and says, “Enough.”

I look at the remote and press ‘STOP’.

When I look back up at him, he is holding his chest and leaning back. “Ow. Ow.”

I leap up and run to the other side of the table.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes.”

I grab his hand to feel his pulse, he shoves it away.

“Stay away from me!”

“Shall I call an ambulance?”

He shakes his head. Maybe he isn’t able to speak. I reach for my cell phone.

He slaps it out of my hand.

“Enough,” he says, still holding his chest. “Sit down.”

I look at him. He looks straight into my eyes.

“Sit down. It’s just pain. It will go away.”

I freeze in place. I want to do what he says, but I am unable to move away.

He looks away, and takes a deep breath. With seeming effort, he lowers the hand that held his chest. I still don’t move. He doesn’t look at me.

His hand reaches down to his pocket, then up again. “I miss cigarettes,” he says. His hand is at his pocket a second time, searching for something that hadn’t been there in ten years. “I could use one right now.”

Trembling, he brings his hand up. He leans forward, elbows on the desk. “This is a good time to start again.” Without looking at me, he says, “Sit down.”

Wary, I sit down.

#

His fingers are on his forehead. He is licking his lips. Fifteen minutes have passed, and he is still hungry for cigarettes.

He hasn’t looked at me in a few minutes. That’s all right. I’m here for him, not the other way around. I suddenly realize I was here to cut his jugular, the purpose of his life and soul, and that now I was watching his arterial spray, watching him bleed, hoping he comes out alive on the other side.

“We died for them…” he suddenly whispers, maybe forgetting I was there. “We bled for them. I killed for them…”

He stares into space. Then he sighs. “No. We died for the country. We bled for the country. We killed for the country. I killed for the country. I killed… the wrong man for the country.”

A small, hollow laugh escapes him. “Ridiculous.”

#

“You!” he aims an accusing finger at me. “You’re probably happy. This fits so neatly into your political theories. We were all liars, weren’t we? The entire country is based on lies… That’s what you think!”

“No, I —”

“Our entire country is not based on lies. It’s based on ideals and a need. There were a few bad apples… Some rotten, rotten apples. But they can’t ruin it for the rest of us. The dream is just. The dream is true. And you can go to hell if you think that you can make a liberal out of me.”

I shake my head. “No, no, I don’t!”

“Rotten apples and that’s it!” He growls through his teeth.

#

Music begins to play.

He looks immediately sideways, then I realize it’s his cell phone, and then I remember it was on the floor, where he had thrown it.

He tries to bend down to reach it.

“I’ll get it for you,” I leap up.

I grab the phone and give it to him, not looking at the caller.

He answers without looking at who was calling him. “Yes, Dinah…”

I’m sitting back down, and a sigh escapes me when I hear the name. This will not be over for him when he leaves this place.

“Yes, I’m all right. It’s just taking too long… I promise, nothing bad… It might take a few hours, go to sleep. I’ll take a cab.”

“I’ll pay for a cab,” I say.

He shushes me with a finger. “I’m going to stay for a while, that’s all… Go to sleep… Great… Thanks… Yes, yes, I’m all right… Tell you all about it later… Good… Good night.”

He closes the cell phone, causing it to disconnect, and puts it on the desk.

His hand rests over it.

“Dinah…” he says softly, and looks at me with soulful, twenty-three-year-old eyes. “I never would have met her if I wasn’t on the run, if I hadn’t assassinated…”

He looks down. His fingers touch the cell phone softly, and I imagined how he had touched his wife when they were young and had just met.

#

“I met his daughter, you know,” he says after a ten minute silence. He had been drinking one cup of tea after another for the last three hours.

I look up, the question in my eyes.

“His wife wouldn’t meet with me. But I met his daughter.”

“Whose daughter?”

“Colonel Tanner’s,” he says. His eyes are elsewhere again. He’s reliving a meeting that had taken place decades ago. “He had a family, you know. A daughter. A wife. Who, apparently, was cheating on him. But a family, he had a family. I killed a man with a family for a cause, not for a…” he trails off.

“I met his daughter, you know,” he says again after a while. “Back in, uh, ’64. She was just getting married in her early twenties. I, uh… She wanted to meet me. I immediately agreed. There were concerns she would try to kill me. I said, No, don’t worry about it.” He stops for a while. This is where he would have taken a great inhale of smoke.

“How was she?” I say.

“You know… Young… She understood… She wanted to hear it from me… She wanted to hear the why… She wanted to know what I saw of him… how he was during those last minutes… She wanted a trace of her father.”

He trails off again, then continues. “I told her he was a great and honorable man. That is why he was a good target. I told her he died with honor. I told her I was sorry for her personal tragedy and that it wasn’t personal.”

When he trails off again and does not continue, I ask, “How did she take it?”

He shrugs. “All right. No anger there. She hardly even knew him. She just wanted to know.”

“She say anything important?”

He shrugs. “No. His wife, her mother, never agreed to meet me. That was all right. It’s understandable.”

“Yeah.”

“But, the thing is…”

“Yeah?”

“He had a family. A daughter who is now a grandmother. And a wife who remarried. He had a family. I destroyed his family… for my commander’s shag in a bed. That’s why his family was destroyed.”

I nod. I didn’t know what was appropriate to say now.

“Yeah,” he says. “For a shag in the bed.”

#

“Decades I spent on this. Decades.”

“These last three decades, this is practically the only thing I did. Meetings like this. Invited to lectures and seminars. Answering hecklers and ill-wishers. … The documentary film they did on me… following me around for a year… needs to be revised. Nothing is true. No reason for it anymore.” He looks down, ashamed. “I was wrong… I was mistaken… My cause was unjust… No, my cause was just, my deeds were unjust…”

“You didn’t know. As far as you were concerned, you had just cause to assassinate him and protect your people.”

“A man is dead. A family is dead. Bystanders were hurt. What does that matter?”

“The tide of war turned because of that incident. The British Mandate began to leave.”

“Yeah… That’s good. It’s good that it happened.” He falls silent, no doubt thinking about that point. Then, after a while, he says, “The results were accidental, weren’t they? It wasn’t because…” He shrugs again and puts his fingers to his lips as if he is smoking. “Just a lucky accident.”

#

His lips curl. “People think I’m brave.”

I look up. He had been silent for something like twenty minutes.

“You are brave.”

“Pfah. I’m not brave. I just like to think I’m brave. No, no, I am brave.” He waves dismissively at his own thoughts. “I’m rambling.”

#

After five minutes of silence, he starts again. “Other people think I’m brave.”

I don’t respond this time. He already knows I’m one of those people.

“Other people…” he holds his forefinger tight against the desk, and moves the rest of his hand this way and that way, like a seven year old. “Other people… they thought I was brave… I got a medal… Then another… Then another… Honored at this or that ceremony every year since… Ben Gurion made me a minister. Do you think he would have done that if not for the…?”

He looks down, like a child under punishment. “I’m sorry.”

#

When he doesn’t say anything for a few more minutes, I ask him, “What are you sorry for?”

He looks at me with doe eyes. “I should call her.”

“Dinah?”

“His daughter. Tell her I’m sorry.”

I think about that. “Maybe you shouldn’t do that. It’s bygones. It’s history. We’re just fixing history here, not people.”

“I’m living it still, every day. She’s living it still, every day.”

He purses his lips and tears begin to form in his eyes. “No, I’m not brave. I just like to think I am.”

He sighs, and in front of me he seems to deflate.

#

“I was a good minister, damn it!” He slams his fist on the table, suddenly enraged again. Slamming his fist on something is something he had been famous for doing during cabinet meetings. “I was a good minister!”

“Yes, sir. I—”

“I did good. I helped build the country! I fought for roads, hospitals, military acquisitions that saved us in wars…” When he trailed off, more light seemed to leave his eyes. “What does it matter?”

And in his chair, he seems to deflate even more.

#

“No one will remember anything of me. They won’t remember the good I did. They won’t remember I was an accomplished member of the Knesset. They won’t remember I was a successful CEO of four companies.”

“Five,” I correct him.

He squints for a second, then nods. “Yes, five. I brought success to whatever I touched. Shmuelevitch took that away from me. At that moment in time, when I was twenty three, he handed me my future. But he also took away my future.” His eyes begin to look here and there, as if searching for something. “He took that away from me.”

He shuts his eyes and puts five fingers on his forehead. “I would never have met Dinah without this.”

He opens his eyes, and he seems like a shy sixteen year old, suddenly. “I wonder if she would have liked me without… She stood by me all this time… She believed in what I did… She believed in me… Our entire lives… Together… Together…”

He wipes a tear from his left eye, then looks at me as if he had been caught stealing. I look away.

#

“Don’t think that makes me a liberal,” he isn’t being aggressive now. It’s four thirty in the morning. Most of the strength has left him. He is now completely deflated, and his voice is raw. And yet he sits there, unable to leave, running through thoughts in his mind, thoughts and scenarios I couldn’t begin to guess.

“Hey!” he says, snapping me out of my own thoughts.

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t make me a liberal, you know. Don’t think it takes any of the emotional, intellectual, spiritual, historical basis on which we built this country, on which I built myself.” I shake my head, about to tell him I didn’t think that, when he looks down, and in an even weaker voice says, “What does it matter? It doesn’t matter.”

#

“I remember one of my first missions…”

It’s been eight hours since he had learned the news. Neither of us has left the room. As he speaks, his eyes are floating, seeing a past that hasn’t been there for more than seventy years. “We were sitting behind one of the hills outside Jaffa’s market…” He speaks softly, dreamingly. “We thought we were snipers… Our mission was to shoot Arabs and cause as big a mess as possible… I was the lookout. I wanted to be the sniper so much. … I wanted to kill Arabs. … I remember thinking that: I wanted to kill Arabs. … But no Arab adults came when we were there, only children. … Then we got a radio call, and were told the mission was aborted, and that we had to leave … I wanted to kill so badly… We were children, playing children’s games.”

He looks at his right arm, deep in thought.

I’m afraid to move my hands or to even shift weight in my chair. He seems so fragile to me, so broken. Any movement on my part might cause him to snap out of it and leave. And then he would go through the rest of it on his own, at home.

I can’t stop looking at him.

Suddenly, he mumbles, “Children’s games… Children’s games… I haven’t been a child in…” and his eyes are suddenly infinitely fatigued, “…in so long.”

#

“My father always said… When you grow up… You have to work. Work is food. Work is respect. A man who does not work has no respect… I kept true to that all my life… The minute the war was over, I had a job… Even during the Mandate, I was working for the freedom of the country. … The Knesset… Making a new country, a good country, as a minister…”

Suddenly he squints. “Why did I think of that? Why this saying, of everything my father had told me? Why…” And then realization appeared in his eyes. And with it, almost immediately, was light. A spark of light, for the first time in hours. “Ah! I was going to be a gardener! When I was just a kid, that’s what I wanted to do. Yes!” He smiles, sadly. “My mother learned about this, so she waited for my father to get home. She spoke to him, and then he came to speak to me. I needed a real job, he said. Being a gardener, that is not a real job.” And as he speaks, the spark in his eyes grows slightly brighter. “I’d forgotten about that.”

#

“I always had a green thumb when I was a kid. I had a small garden behind my family’s apartment… I used to go in and look at it and take care of it every day. … I figured out how much shade each flower needed… I figured out when to water the plants and when it was best to keep them thirsty a bit… I brought books upon books from the library, telling me about the different kinds of plants. And when my Dad came to me and explained I needed to be serious… I dropped everything about gardening… I never drew another book from a library. Can you imagine that? Not one book.”

He looks at me and there seems to be a gleam in his eye.

For a second, I start to believe he was beginning to feel better. But it couldn’t be. His world had collapsed.

#

He has been quiet for fifteen minutes, looking at his fingers, as they moved on the table. It looks to me like he is playing a very slow piano or as if his fingers are playing some sort of game. His gaze follows his fingers with mild fascination, as if surprised by their actions.

He breaks the silence, “I wanted a plant nursery… wall to wall with roses… daffodils… lilies…” his fingers are still playing on the table, and his mildly fascinated gaze follows them. “Persian alliums… the cyclamen, before they were protected, were fantastic… I love them to this day…”

He leans back, and I could swear that for a minute he was resting.

#

“I haven’t touched flowers in decades…” He hadn’t spoken about anything that had to do with the assassination in forty minutes. “I haven’t looked at them… No, that’s not true. I’ve looked. From afar, when I happened to come across… I never bothered thinking about it, but I remember my eyes getting stuck on the sight of a beautiful garden, and every time that happened Dinah would ask me what’s wrong, why am I dreaming…”

He smiles. And there is a longing in his smile. Is that longing not sadness about all that he has lost today? For a split second I think it might be. But, no. I’m wrong about that.

#

He looks at me, and his eyes are as sharp as they had been when he had come in. But they are also different. They are sharp in thought, but not sharp in bite. “So what if gardening isn’t a vocation?” his eyes look at me, sharp but not cutting. “I mean, so what? Who cares?”

I shake my head. I don’t know what we’re talking about anymore.

#

He leans back, and he seems taller and not as sickly-thin as when he had come in. “I loved my childhood, Mr. Sanders. I loved my childhood.”

I don’t understand what he’s trying to say, but I have to say something. So I smile back at him and answer his words, “Me, too.”

“Did you?” he says, smiling. But my own smile cracks.

#

He slams both hands on the table, not aggressively, but to help him get up. “Well,” he said. “Time to go home.”

I stand when he stands. “Are you sure?” It’s six ten a.m.

He turns to face me with the briskness of a young man. “I’m sure. Thank you for your work, Mr. Sanders. And your honesty. And your understanding during this night.”

He offers his hand, for the first time. I shake it heartily. “It was a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

He shrugs it off. “If you say so.” He doesn’t care about that anymore.

I look at him as he exits the room. If I didn’t know better, I would say by his walk, from behind, that the man was forty years old. He’s tall, his back is straight, and he is no longer dragging his feet. He walks with energy and lightness of foot.

Right before he disappears, as he crosses the door, he looks back at me and nods. And I notice that all his wrinkles have disappeared.

Guy Hasson is the CEO and head writer of New Worlds Comics. His sci-fi series, Wynter, was called by many reviewers "The best science fiction series on the shelves today." He is also the author of The Emoticon Generation and Secret Thoughts.

The pressgangs never came around here. Why would they? Pickings for naval impressment were slim here in Albany.

As one of the kingdom’s more remote regions and situated at the petering end of the Good Hope trade wind, the place was populated predominantly by farmers. Granted, there were plenty of scrapyarders and a handful of steel workers here, but experienced sailors were few and far between.

And yet, the dreaded pressgangs had arrived.

Rumours had been trickling in for a while now of young men snatched away from towns on both of Albany’s inhabited planets. The stories alleged that a small party of sailors and Royal Marines were swooping down on these poor lads and summarily pressing them into service — with not a word received from any of them since.

Admittedly, it was beyond doubt that war was brewing between the Royal Britannic Kingdom and la Fraternité Tricolore. And if these two great spacepowers were indeed moving closer to armed conflict once again, it was understandable the Royal Navy needed fresh meat to fill its man-o-wars.

Still, the pressgangs were typically deployed in the more heavily populated, spacefaring systems and generally plied their underhanded work around orbital ports and commercial dockyards. It was bizarre that the crimps were descending planetside to steal men away. The navy must have been desperate.

Nevertheless, while the pressgang may have been new to this region, their reputation was not.

Once taken, pressed men were never permitted planet-leave for fear of desertion. During the previous war, the majority of those snatched away remained aboard their warships until the day peace was declared seven years later; some even longer that that. During that dark period, many sweethearts had found themselves new suitors, many wives had taken lovers and many children had grown up without fathers.

Of those men who did eventually return home, a great deal were broken: some physically, some psychologically. Farming folk and family men weren’t intended to sail warships, especially in a conflict of such brutality. But the navy didn’t care who they got or how they got them — so long as they got them.

No, the pressgang was a terror. You didn’t want them on your doorstep.

And yet, while impressment into service was a wholly unpleasant affair for those concerned, young Edward Starling couldn’t help but view the whole matter through the excitable eyes of a teenager.

Spaceborne naval warfare had always fascinated Edward. His bedroom wall was adorned with a tatty recruitment poster of the mighty HMS Bellona – a 258-gun ship-of-the-line — and he would often imagine himself leading a team of topmen aloft the shrouds to take in sail before the ship tore apart in a solar storm, or hauling the gun tackle alongside his raucous, heroic comrades to run out their cannon while enemy neutron spikes tore across the deck and the noise, the smoke and the buzz of battle stimulated his every fibre. Or perhaps he’d look better wearing the scarlet coat of a Royal Marine stood lining the gunwales, musket-in-hand, set behind a row of eighteen-inch bayonets gleaming in the light of a nearby moon, ready to repel the boarding party of some brazen pirate cartel.

But these were just fancies.

Young Edward’s parents weren’t quite so enamoured by the Royal Navy and swore they’d never give consent for their only son to enlist, meaning he’d to wait two more years before joining up. And while the thought of being stolen away by the pressgang terrified him, that wouldn’t happen any time soon either. Only those aged fourteen or above could legally be enlisted in such a manner.

Edward was still six months away from that age.

Then, on returning from school one evening, the sinister reality of the gangs really hit home. As Edward entered the small granite dome in which he lived, he saw his aunt and uncle were both visiting. And both were distraught.

Three days earlier, in the nearby town of Berker’s Camp, the pressgang had descended on the Saw and Hammer at signing-off time. The sailors knew exactly when to strike as the inn had been chock-full of yardworkers eager to spend their week’s wages on getting drunk and — perhaps if they were lucky — grabbing themselves some female company for the evening.

For some unlucky young lads, though, it was they themselves who were grabbed that evening.

Apparently, fifteen-or-so armed men had entered the inn, claiming to be about the King’s business and asking for volunteers to sail away to adventure and glory. When no man came forward, they swiftly piled into the throng and nabbed the first men they could lay their hands on, dragging them off to who-knows-where.

The yardies put up a decent enough fight, but the cudgels had done their masters’ foul bidding and many a lad lay broken on the floor before the gang’s work was done that night.

And six men didn’t return home: one of them being Edward’s favourite cousin, Henry.

The town council promptly wrote a harsh letter of complaint to the system governor and they demanded an explanation from the local Royal Navy commander.

Yet, just two nights later, the pressgang was back. Not in the same town this time but, nonetheless, all those who saw them arrive knew exactly what they were about.

And one person who spotted them, was Edward.

They were a dangerous looking bunch, but that didn’t bother him. Being just thirteen – and with the papers to prove so – Edward had nothing to fear from these men, so he didn’t try to hide. He simply stood on the side of the street as they marched right past him; their odour a heady mixture of stale sweat, smoke and alcohol, all combined with an acrid, chemical smell of some kind.

Edward’s first thought was to alert the townsfolk to their arrival, but it was already too late. He watched as the group entered the miners’ social club and returned just minutes later dragging a number of men with them.

On passing Edward a second time, a huge sailor broke away from his comrades and approached the lad, who panicked. Certainly, he would gladly join the navy, but not in this abrupt manner. Therefore, fearing for his liberty, the teenager managed to grab his papers and proof-of-age just before this brute reached him.

But it didn’t matter.

This man wasn’t concerned with the legality of the boy’s age and swept him up like he were a feather pillow. Edward made to protest he was underage, but the man’s coarse hand took a firm grip over his mouth and nose. Edward felt an immensely painful pressure in his lower neck.

Then things went black.

#

There it was.

That smell again.

It was this Edward noticed first, before his eyes were open.

His head was pounding, his neck hurt like hell and he had an ominous feeling of where he was about to find himself.

And, on peeling open his bleary eyes, his suspicion was unhappily confirmed.

The low beamed ceilings, the dimly lit space filled with naval apparatus, and the metal mesh deckplates on which he was laying made it immediately obvious that Edward was onboard a starship.

But it didn’t appear to be a Royal Navy vessel.

This ship was a mess. Equipment was strewn everywhere, sailors were lazing around, the smell was almost unbearable and much of the deck space was filled with junk and not the neat rows of cannon he’d seen illustrated in books. While Edward had never actually been aboard a Royal Navy vessel, he was educated enough to know that such ships were orderly and disciplined places, unlike this one.

The uniforms — or lack of them — were another giveaway. Certainly, the pressgang had been in uniform; there’d even been a pair of distinctive red-coated marines with them. But right now, there was not a navy uniform to be seen; just a gaggle of scruffy layabouts wearing a plethora of different garb from across the stellar-time world — much of it in a sorry state of repair.

Also, many men were sporting the characteristic Mohawk haircuts associated with pirates.

Edward, who was inside a small wooden cage with five other men all sat staring at the floor, began to panic.

Before long, a man came over and tapped a heavy pistol on the cage bars to get their attention. The prisoners looked up.

In a heavy Spanish accent he said, “Bienvenido a bordo del Guerrero. My name is Fernando, I am second-in-command of this ship, and you all now work for me. El Guerrero is your new home, and while here, you will do as told.” He smiled. “You may even like it, si? Any questions?”

One man spoke up, “Why are you pressing us into service? We’re just miners. We don’t know the first thing about sailing.”

Fernando smiled. “You have not been pressed into service, señor. Does this look like a military vessel? No, no.” He then holstered his pistol and walked away, saying over his shoulder, “You have been recruited into the Todos los Santos cartel. Welcome.”

Pirates.

So it was pirates snatching men away, not the Royal Navy.

No doubt they masqueraded as a pressgang to avoid the resistance they’d invariably meet should their victims realise who they really were. If it was known they were pirates then every man, woman and child close enough to smell their distinctive odour would set upon them as soon as they were spotted planetside. The small gang’s only protection from the locals was the hesitation in knowing resistance resulting in the injury or death of a King’s sailor was punishable by hanging. That, and the fact the gang were always armed to the eyebrows with pistols, swords and cudgels.

Edward had to admit, it was a rather cunning ploy and a very efficient method of filling a vessel with sailors; one which the men in the cage had fallen-foul of.

Still, the pirates didn’t keep them confined for long. After all, they didn’t want prisoners; they wanted sailors. The captives were soon released and each was assigned to a mess and left to get on with it. A few commands were barked at them in Spanish now and again, with boots-up-the-backside and cuffs-around-the-ear also seemingly acceptable forms of communication. For the most part, though, they were expected to learn the workings of a starship for themselves.

It was also plainly evident to Edward that escape was impossible. All he could see outside the portholes were stars. But the vacuum of space was just an obstacle he’d need to overcome, because he was going to escape.

He just didn’t know how yet.

Plus, he was shortly to be given a very good reason to think twice about such an endeavour…

#

Three days after their capture, two of the ‘pressed’ newcomers had attempted to steal a cutter and escape during the night. Their getaway, however, was thwarted and both had been caught and lashed to the very top of the mizzenmast. Early the next morning, the entire crew were then assembled on deck to witness the punishment of these two men.

The specific feature of a modern starship that allowed the crew to be on deck and ‘open’ to space like this was the ship’s protective Hauptman skin, or H-Skin: a transparent electron-magnetic particle stasis ‘bubble’ that surrounded the entire vessel keeping the atmospheric conditions stable and breathable for those inside it.

But, as the ship’s company looked on, the H-Skin was adjusted to just below the tip of the mizzenmast, exposing the two men’s heads to the vacuum of space.

The blood in their bodies now rushed upwards to protect their brains, but as their heads were laid bare to the freezing and pressure-less emptiness beyond, streams of it very quickly erupted from their bulging eyes, nose and silently screaming mouths.

Then, only seconds after the jerking bodies surrendered, the crew eerily resumed their duties as if nothing had happened, with a few bizarrely giving a macabre round of applause as they dispersed.

Whether it was the erupting arteries, the brutal cold, or the lack of air that killed these two so efficiently was unknown, but the message was clear:

Don’t try to escape.

#

By the end of his first month aboard El Guerrero, young Edward’s dreams of being in space weren’t quite living up to expectations. All he was ever tasked with was distributing food at meal times; collecting the dirties; cleaning, polishing and repairing the auxiliary solar sails; and undertaking any other menial task the crew could find for him.

Not once did he hear a kind word of compassion; he couldn’t understand what was said as he didn’t speak Spanish; he never spotted his cousin Henry and assumed him most likely dead; he quietly cried himself to sleep every night; he missed his parents terribly; he just wanted to go home.

But he was a long way from home.

El Guerrero was a French merchant sloop seized by these pirates and converted to carry twelve 24-gigajoule neutron spike cannon. While no match for a proper warship, the vessel was a scary predator for an unarmed merchantman to encounter.

She’d been underway for the entire time Edward was aboard, and they were now apparently in Los Iberianos space. Edward’s native system of Albany officially neighboured the Los Iberianos system of La Pinta, but that place was still over three billion leagues away from home. Consequently, to know he was now in the star system of a foreign nation for the very first time in his life was as thrilling as it was upsetting.

But more thrills were soon to come.

#

During his tenth week as a sailor, Edward was finally allowed up into the rigging and out along the yards.

To be so high above the deck, exposed to the magnificence and clarity of a solar system with just a piece of cable underfoot and a yardarm for balance was incredible. There wasn’t sailor yet who didn’t have a profound experience on being up in the yards for the first time, and Edward was no exception.

He also made friends with Pablo, another boy of the same age who was here after running away from the workhouse aged just ten. Pablo, now thirteen, took Edward under his wing, showed him the ropes, and taught him some Spanish.

And things began to look up a little.

Yes, he’d been dragged away from his life, his home, his friends and his parents. Yes he was here against his will. Yes there was no hope of escape. But, yes, there was no denying it: this was an adventure.

#

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As always, Edward kept his head down and did as he was told. The teenager was still restricted to the ship’s menial tasks and never once was he given anything of importance to do.

He was surprised, therefore, when Woods, one of the ship’s senior men, called him out at dinnertime.

“You, lad. Edward isn’t it?”

Edward hadn’t realised Woods was British until now.

“Yes, sir.”

“This ain’t the navy, lad. No ‘sirs’ here if you please.”

Edward looked at Woods in silence while his messmates finished their supper.

“Come wi’ me.”

Edward got up from the makeshift table slung from the deckheads, kicked the chest he used as a seat against the bulkhead and followed Woods to the maindeck, where they stopped at the starboard gunwale.

“Ever fired a cannon, lad?”

“No.”

“Here you go then.” Woods handed Edward a lanyard, which was plugged into the breach of a 24-gigajoule neutron spike cannon: an awesome piece of hardware that was currently run out of the gunport and ready to fire. Edward knew that if he pulled the lanyard, thus igniting the spark-fuse, an electrical surge would force the plasma charge to combine with the neutron shot and fire the cannon. But he did nothing.

“Well? What you waitin’ for?” Woods saw the boy’s hesitation. “Pull the bloody thing.”

Edward tugged on the thin chord and the fuse ignited with a sharp crack, followed instantly by a gut-wrenching crump. The cannon erupted backwards, belching smoke as it bucked violently back inside the ship, but its tackle held firm and the gun soon returned to a state of relative peace.

The blue/green energy spike shot away into space and, with no target to impede it, just zipped off harmlessly, eventually expelling all of its energy into the void. The young, would-be gunner stood with the firing lanyard held tight in his fist and watched it disappear.

Edward was exhilarated. That was easily and by far, the best thing he’d ever done in his entire life. He was beaming from ear to ear.

Woods tussled the hair of the energised youngster and laughed. “We needed to clear the breach ‘a this bad-boy and thought you’d fancy a go. Now, back to your nosh.”

As Edward returned to his unfinished dinner, he contemplated his new life in space and realised it was finally offering up the kind of experiences he’d always imagined it would.

However.

The gritty reality of life as a pirate was about to come screaming into stark contrast, as two days later, they happened upon a victim.

The unlucky vessel, a merchant brig, had been snared between the Martinez mining station and the relative safety of the Queen Elizabeth trade wind. She was caught running her solar-powered ion propulsion drives off a single mainsail and two courses, the intention being to reduce ionic fuel consumption.

But on this occasion, the intended savings didn’t pay off.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

El Guerrero overhauled the unfortunate vessel by carrying her momentum as she left the apex of the trade wind two million leagues distant. Accordingly, the pirates were upon the hapless ship before she’d time to set her full spread of sails and get up to speed.

Edward was informed that if a fight ensued, his duty was to keep the guncrews supplied with charge from the plasma magazine two decks below. It would be hard-graft if a prolonged engagement developed, but equally, it would offer him a great view of proceedings from the portside gunwale.

As El Guerrero came parallel to the merchantman, she loosed a few neutron spikes towards her. This, coupled with the pirates’ obvious advantage in speed, soon persuaded the merchant vessel to surrender.

Or so it was thought.

Believing her to be capitulating, the captain of El Guerrero pulled up alongside his quarry.

But she turned out to be a quarry packing a hefty punch.

At fifty-yards distant, four well-concealed gunports swung open allowing four large cannon to emerge from the openings, sliding out like the pistols of an assassin. Being so close they couldn’t miss, and the merchantman loosed a broadside into El Guerrero, whose sides erupted in thunder, splinters and body parts.

But the pirates were too experienced to be deterred in this manner, and what followed was a brief but ferocious encounter.

The merchant ship was fighting for her life, and did so valiantly, but her gunners were no match for the attackers’ and she eventually succumbed to El Guerrero’s bombardment.

It was always a gamble to resist pirates and this time, it didn’t pay off. Those merchant crew members who survived the exchange were all thrown overboard, their final sensation in life to feel the spit boil on their tongues just before slipping into the freezing tomb of deep space. And what the crew of El Guerrero did to the two women they took from the merchantman was beyond imagination.

The screams emanating from below decks for the next three days would stay with Edward for the rest of his life, forever invading his dreams and turning them into nightmares.

They also reignited his craving to escape.

#

Over the next four months the crew of El Guerrero seized two more merchant ships, but neither resisted like the first. Nevertheless, assembling prize crews to sail these captured ships home, plus the men lost in the fight with the armed merchantman meant fresh crew were required.

And so, the men of the fake pressgang climbed into the boats and pushed off to find more unwilling souls.

Six hours later, though, instead of two boats returning full of new recruits, only a single vessel appeared. It contained just three of the original nineteen men, with one of them looking deathly pale and another sporting a blood-soaked jerkin.

It transpired that while trying to return to the boats with their victims, the gang had stumbled across a local militia running a drill. These lads didn’t care a jot for the Royal Navy uniforms and in the ensuing fight the majority of the pirates had been killed or captured.

And it was here that Edward saw an opportunity.

Between those men lost to the militia, those killed in the battle and those dispatched as prize crews, there were very, very few men left on board El Guerrero. Edward recognised it was now critical that extra crew be enlisted meaning — despite the recent setback — more pressings would have to be undertaken.

Yet, for the fake pressgang to get away with what they were doing, it had to be believed they really were from the Royal Navy. Therefore, they’d require at least one British speaker in the party. Unfortunately, however, there was not one man left aboard the pirate vessel who was British. Woods had been lost in the fight with the militia along with Baxter and Philips; the other newly-pressed men had been sent off with the prize crews; the captured merchant sailors who opted to join the pirates were all French; and the rest of El Guerrero’s crew were Spanish or Portuguese.

So, feeling bold, Edward chanced to try his luck and requested to speak with Fernando, the first officer.

The big man had frowned as Edward tried to explain in broken Spanish how the pressgang needed an Englishman to give it credibility. The enthusiastic teenager made it clear he wanted the honour of that responsibility, along with the recognition that came with it. He reiterated the case that should any locals hear a foreign accent among the pressgang, they’d smell a rat and set upon them quicker than they could say vámonos. Edward also took confidence in the fact the charade had to be undertaken in a Britannic system because the Fraternité and Iberianos navies didn’t employ pressgangs.

Fernando agreed to his request. He found him a tatty Royal Navy midshipman’s coat explaining he’d be ‘in command’ of the pressgang and that he’d do all the talking. He also reminded the lad of what would happen should he get caught trying to escape; to which Edward nodded emphatically in agreement.

In agreement that he definitely would not get caught.

Edward’s plan was simple. He’d accompany the pirates on their mission down to the planet, playing his part as the in-charge officer. When the inevitable moment of struggle arrived, he’d use the cover of the melee to make his escape and never be seen by these murderers again. He’d lie low for a few hours until confident they were gone, then get himself aboard a transport home.

Simple.

Dangerous. But simple.

And then, four nights later, the pressgang was ordered to board El Guerrero’s orbital launches and head-out.

Once planetside, they moved fast and located a tavern that looked busy.

The place was heaving with bodies and the pressgang filtered in through the door and spread out around the walls, weapons clearly on show. Edward adopted his role, addressing the drinkers with what he imagined the leader of a pressgang might say.

“In the name of His Majesty King George the Tenth, who of you will take the King’s shilling and enlist with us today!”

The crowd in the bar all put down their drinks and stared at the sailors. They outnumbered the pirates by at least four-to-one. But they were also unarmed and drunk. Realising they were cornered and the implications of the armed men stood before them, a mixture of fear and aggression appeared in their eyes and the tension in the room rose significantly. Edward sensed this and made ready to scarper as soon as the pirates waded in.

Which they did about two seconds later.

As his shipmates ran past him, shouting and swinging their cudgels, Edward simply stood his ground. In an instant, the action was in front of him, the door was behind him and he knew he’d to act fast in order to avoid both parties in this contest. He turned and made his bid for freedom.

On reaching the door, however, two local lads appeared right next to him, obviously with the same intention in mind. Just paces from escaping the chaos in the tavern, all three stopped and glared at each other, not quite knowing what to do. The two locals didn’t know whether to fight the navy officer or flee. Edward didn’t know whether to draw the sword from his belt or find another exit. In the end, he kept his composure and said just one word to them.

“Run.”

And that was all the persuasion they needed.

All three lads bolted from the building and went their separate ways.

As soon as Edward was out of the tavern, he was out of his midshipman’s jacket and he was out of the area as fast as he could manage.

He was free.

All he had to do now was lay low.

He found himself a quiet alley and waited. In the morning he’d make his way to the orbital docks and find a ship he could work his way home on.

After all, he was a sailor now.

It didn’t take Edward long to get to the docks, as the shuttle terminal was close to his hiding place.

He made his way to the quayside employment office and, with the uncanniest of luck, secured a position on a sloop headed for Albany that very night.

When the hour finally arrived to present himself at his new ship, he got a shock.

A very nasty shock.

Blocking his path to the gangway were three men wearing Royal Navy uniforms.

They clocked him straight away and before he could even think what was happening, two of them had a hard grip of him.

“Sorry, lad,’ said one, “but you ain’t sailin’ on that ship tonight. You’re in the service of the King now.”

Edward was scared, and not a little confused. All around him he could see dozens of uniformed men accompanying merchant sailors from their ships and leading them towards a huge warship at the end of the quay.

Then he realised with horror: this was a pressgang. A real pressgang.

Well, it was actually more of a pressmob. But nonetheless, it was genuine — and more to point — it was legal.

And that aspect, he realised quickly, could bring him salvation.

“Wait,” said Edward, “I’m only thirteen.”

The sailors stopped.

“Can you prove that, boy?”

“Yes.”

Thankfully, in planning his escape this night, Edward had pocketed his identity papers, which he duly handed over.

The sailor looked at them briefly, and then chuckled.

“Happy birthday, lad.”

Edward blinked in confusion.

“Forget when you was born, eh?” said the man returning the papers and nodding to his comrades to take hold of the boy again, “You’re fourteen as of today, so I guess you is comin’ with us after all.”

What rotten luck.

During his months with the pirates, Edward had lost complete track of time. It turned out that today was his fourteenth birthday, and that made him legal fodder for the pressgang.

As this realisation sank in, he let his eagerness at seeing home subside, he hung his head and he let the two sailors lead him down the quayside.

They took him aboard the frigate HMS Intrepid, locked him in the hold with a number of other men and, for the second time in his short life, Edward found himself captive aboard an unfamiliar starship.

Despite the gloom below decks, he actually recognised one of the boys from the doorway of the tavern amongst the captives and, strangely, Edward felt more sorry for him than he did for himself.

But that was not all.

He also identified a good number of his former shipmates from El Guerrero.

In a rather odd and neatly poetic twist of fate, it came to be that a fake pressgang had ironically gone and got themselves snagged by a real pressgang, and the tables had been flipped in an almost — almost — funny turn of events.

And so, as young Edward now contemplated the foreseeable future spent aboard a cramped, harsh and dangerous Royal Navy warship, he at least took comfort in the fact that justice had been served.

But in spite of this, Edward resigned himself to not going home any time soon. He also realised he’d been extremely unlucky to be caught in such a way…

…because the pressgangs never came around here.

Gareth Eynon (pronounced Eye-non) lives in the World Heritage City of Bath, south-west England, with his wife and two daughters. Alongside his regular job as long-haul aircrew, Gareth’s been writing and editing for a number of years, but is relatively new to the world of writing science-fiction – this short story being his first published work in the genre. Later this year, he’ll be releasing his debut novel, The Heroic Adventures of Horatio Lee, as well as penning more short stories, plus running the odd marathon here and there too.

There comes a point in many death metal songs when the down-tuned guitars begin to play a simple mid-tempo riff – it’s almost a chugging noise – and the music turns… visceral. Standing there, shoulder to shoulder in a crowd, the volume near-deafening, the music seems to beat a sense of unity into those present. A single organism, at one with the music – those with their gazes fixed on the stage; those too in the maelstrom of moshers, spinning and colliding and roaring together.

Then the riff abruptly shifts into something far more complex. The time-signature alters. The drummer hammers out blastbeats at inhuman speed, and the singer attacks his lyrics in a guttural growl.

Something like that came over me as I put my gloved hands to the alien artefact’s side.

I can’t explain it. I knew I floated a hundred metres from the Orion crew module, and yet I could feel myself back at one of the many gigs I’d attended during my twenties. The memory of that concert was over-powering.

I pulled my hands away. A click sounded in my earphones, followed by a voice:

“Hey, Mike? You okay?”

It took me a moment to respond. “Fine, Val; I’m fine.” I shook my head, as if to dislodge the ghostly riff I could still hear. “Why?”

“You kind of zoned out there for a while,” she said.

“I did?” I blipped my Manned Manoeuvring Unit through ninety degrees to look at Stone, but the sun reflecting off her visor made it impossible to see her face. “For how long?”

“Nearly a minute.”

According to my Helmet-Mounted Display, everything was in the green. It wasn’t a fault in my spacesuit then, some sort of hallucination brought on by an interruption in the oxygen supply. I focused a moment on the hum of the pumps in my backpack – which both reassured me and reminded me of the spacesuit’s comforting protective embrace. As I calmed, I watched the graph of my heartbeat on the HMD slowly subside. And that, in a positive feedback loop, relaxed me further.

So I reached out again, and laid both gloves against the side of the artefact.

Once more, I felt that sense of one-ness, an alignment with, and brought on by, the pummelling assault of the musicians. After no more than a handful of bars, the tempo changed, the singer growled out his words, and the complexity of the guitar parts hinted at sense, yet still seemed to elude it…

I lifted my hands.

I knew that song. I recognised the band, and I still listened to them. In fact, I had all of their albums on my phone in the crew module. And yes, I’d seen them perform live a number of times.

I can’t explain why death metal appealed to me, or why I still listened to it. I’d imagined that as I grew older my taste in music would mellow with the years. Instead, the reverse happened. After a childhood listening to radio-friendly rock, at university I’d discovered extreme metal – black, death, doom… Death had drawn me in, and I’d been introduced to its various sub-genres: technical death, brutal death, melodic death, progressive death, death/doom…

But what did my taste in music have to do with an alien artefact found in the Kordylewski Clouds at the Earth-Moon L5 point?

#

When the artefact was first detected, everyone thought it was an alien derelict. Telescopes showed a cylinder some five hundred metres long and thirty metres in diameter, with a rough unfinished appearance. It had no visible means of propulsion, no visible anything. Spectrographic analysis hinted at exotic matter in its construction. Which was why I’d been included in the team sent to investigate it. My field was exotic physics. I was also a qualified astronaut, having spent two tours on the International Space Station performing experiments with inconclusive results.

I remember peering out one of the Orion CM’s horizon windows as we closed on the L5 point after a three-day trip from Earth, and feeling a crushing sense of disappointment. The mysterious object in the Kordylewski Clouds wasn’t an alien spacecraft. The cylinder was hollow; it was a piece of space junk. This mission wasn’t going to be humanity’s first contact with an alien species. True, the artefact’s presence implied the existence of another civilisation somewhere out there; but it seemed we would not be meeting its builders.

And who knew how old this piece of junk was? It might have been drifting through space for billions of years before being captured by the Earth-Moon L5 point.

Neubeck – Colonel Ed Neubeck, USAF; mission commander – was as disappointed as the rest of us. More so, perhaps. I could at least investigate the properties of the material from which the “space junk” was constructed. But Neubeck thought of himself as a throwback to the heady days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. He’d been a test pilot at Edwards AFB before joining NASA. As far as he was concerned, he was the living embodiment of the “Right Stuff”, and he wanted his page in the history books. It made him insufferably arrogant. Since launch, he’d been dictatorial, brooking no disagreement to his orders, and sublimely uninterested in discussion.

Admittedly, he was good at his job – more than that, he was a gifted pilot. If there was a crisis and Neubeck was in charge, you actually stood a better chance of coming out of it alive. But I didn’t like him, and the feeling was mutual.

Val Stone, the other pilot, scared me a little. She brought an unnatural, and frightening, focus to whatever she did. Often, she treated people like pieces of equipment. She also had an annoying habit of always being right – although she took her time figuring things out. I suspected she suffered from mild Asperger’s or OCD.

The final member of the crew, and the reason why for me the four of us didn’t qualify as “amiable strangers”, was Xiang Yu, a computer science and communications specialist from San Francisco. He and I had shared a tour on the ISS, so we knew each other. It was a “space friendship” – we didn’t mix on the ground, but in LEO we’d hung round together. Figuratively and literally.

The four of us were the first humans to leave Low Earth Orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.

#

Share The New Accelerator

Stone and I returned to the CM, where Yu and Neubeck waited. We parked our MMUs in an open bay of the Service Module, and worked our way hand over hand along the cable, past the wing-like solar arrays, to the inflatable airlock. I entered the tube first, landing feet first on the inner hatch, and then pushing shut the inflated plug which served as the outer hatch. I waited patiently for the airlock to fill, while the song I’d heard ran round and round inside my head. I even found myself nodding in time to the beat – although not too much, or I’d bash my chin on the lip of my helmet.

The inner hatch swung out…

As soon as I saw Neubeck’s face, I knew Stone had spoken to him on another channel. He was furious.

I unlocked and pushed up my visor.

“You’re a goddamned flake, Ross,” Neubeck snapped.

He might be commander of the mission, but that didn’t give him the right to speak to me like that. I was a civilian, even if he wasn’t.

“Oh shut up,” I replied.

Yu quietly helped me get out of my spacesuit, undogging the rear hatch so I could squirm out.

“I didn’t know it was going to do that,” I continued as I pulled my legs from the spacesuit’s hard upper torso. “We know the bloody thing’s alien, so how can we know what it would do?”

Neubeck opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. He glowered at me. “Do what?”

I took my spacesuit from Yu, pushed it across the crew module’s interior to the storage lockers below the mission specialists’ seats. Behind me, I heard the hatch open and shut to let in Stone. Neubeck followed me to the lockers.

“What the hell are you saying, Ross?” he demanded. He had a habit of looming over people, and he did it much more effectively in zero gravity. He made sure everyone was in his shadow.

“I felt something,” I told him, as I carefully pushed my spacesuit into its coffin-like storage. “When I touched the artefact. That’s what made me trance out for a moment.”

I moved across to my personal locker, yanked open the door and began rooting around inside it.

“What are you doing?” Neubeck asked.

“Looking for my phone.” I’d put it away before getting ready for the EVA.

“The hell you are. I want to know what’s going on.”

I looked back over my shoulder at him. “I heard music, all right? And I recognised it. I need to figure out what it was.”

Yu and Val drifted across to the storage lockers. It was a bit cramped with all four of us.

“What’s this?” asked Yu. “You heard music?”

So I explained that when I’d touched the alien artefact I’d been overwhelmed with a memory of a concert I’d attended years before. I’d recognised the music and wanted to identify it. I brandished my phone, which I’d just found.

#

“Tell me more,” Yu insisted.

I described the sense of unity I’d felt, how death metal always affected me in that way and how the artefact had seemed to mimic the same sensation.

“Wow,” said Yu. “That’s so weird.”

Neubeck swore. “His mix was wrong. He hallucinated. If that’s really an alien out there, it’s not going to use some goddamn devil-worshipping rock music to communicate!”

“Death metal’s not about worshipping Satan,” I said, affronted. “That’s black metal. Well, some black metal bands.”

“You’re a grown man, Ross, and you listen to that crap?”

Grown men, I thought mulishly, didn’t follow their childhood dreams and become astronauts. The whole space industry was a glorified – and hideously expensive – adventure. And I loved every minute of it.

I knew full well that Neubeck did too.

“Look,” I said, “I think I know what the song is. Maybe that’s not a piece of space junk out there, maybe it is the alien. And it’s using music to communicate. But I want to check the lyrics, to see if the song I heard was a deliberate choice.”

Yu pulled his phone from a pocket of his constant wear garment. All our phones could access the Deep Space Network and, through that, the Web. “I’ll see if I can find the words on-line,” he said.

Neubeck and Val looked at each other. The only thing missing from their expressions was the finger twirling at their temples. Still, they were pilots, and we pencil-necks had a reputation to uphold.

I plugged my comms carrier’s cable into my phone, and scrolled through my album collection. “This is it,” I told Yu, holding up the player so he could see the artwork. I identified it for him: “Worlds Beyond the Veil by Mithras. They’re a British band.”

“I prefer stoner myself,” he said, shaking his head.

It didn’t take me long to find the stretch of music that had been running through my head since I’d touched the alien artefact. The song was called ‘Psyrens’. I tracked back and forth through it. Yu held up his phone and I read through the lyrics displayed on its screen. I pointed.

“There,” I said. “Those lines.”

On stellar waves I’ve travelled And will so again

“What does that mean?” Yu asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. The artefact is an explorer, perhaps?”

#

“You’re making this shit up,” Neubeck accused.

He gave me a look of disgust, and then pushed himself to the pilots’ seats and the instrument panel. He went straight on the radio to Mission Control but he spoke really quietly and I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I could guess, however.

Aliens using death metal to communicate… It sounded completely insane. And, I suppose, Neubeck could well be right: I might have been making it up. How did I know it wasn’t confabulation on my part?

But the feeling of experiencing that music live had been overwhelming, more so even than I remembered from the Mithras gigs I’d attended all those years ago.

“So what do we do?” Yu asked quietly.

I shrugged, and had to put out a hand to prevent myself from drifting. “Go back out and listen a bit more,” I replied. “I don’t see what else we can do. It’s the only way we have of finding out what the artefact really is.”

“Neubeck will nix that in a heartbeat.”

“I don’t care.” And I didn’t. I wanted to hear that alien music again. I wanted to put my hand to the side of the artefact. I’d come here to learn what the artefact was, and I couldn’t do that cowering inside the crew module.

“I agree,” said Stone slowly. “We can’t know what Mike felt is real unless we repeat it.”

“You could try touching it too,” suggested Yu.

Stone shook her head. “No. Only Mike. We don’t know what’s happening here, and we shouldn’t risk more than one of us.”

“But I’m expendable, right?” I said, a little annoyed; but also perversely happy because it meant I’d be first. I’d be in the history books, not Neubeck.

“But how do we know if it’s real if no one else confirms it?” pointed out Yu.

Or perhaps I’d be in some psychiatric journal as a case-study.

#

Neubeck reluctantly agreed to a second EVA. So Stone and I suited up, exited one by one through the inflatable airlock, and jetted on our MMUs across the hundred metres of open space separating the CM from the alien artefact.

This time, I put both gloved hands to the side of the artefact. My head was immediately filled with blastbeats. I could hear the spacey sounds of a synthesiser, evoking galactic vistas, furious guitar-work suggesting the secret workings of the universe… I felt as though I was seeing, and had seen, other suns and worlds. Great towering columns of nebulae, tens of light-years high. The fractal swirls of galaxies. The leaping prominences of a star’s corona.

Accompanying those visions, I heard music of an intensity I’d never experienced before; and a sense of unity which made me an integral part of the sights and sounds to which I was being subjected.

I pulled my hands from the artefact’s side, and swore loudly.

Once I’d calmed down, I asked Stone how long I’d been out.

“About two minutes,” she said.

“What song did you hear?” asked Yu. “Could you identify it?”

I thought a moment. “‘Beyond the Eyes of Man’,” I replied. “Same band, same album.”

Moments later, the familiar sounds of the song came over my radio. It sounded flat and distant, despite the high fidelity of the comms channel, compared to what I’d just witnessed. I listened carefully until I recognised the part the alien artefact had played me.

Yu stopped the music and read out the lyrics:

“You hear my song It enchants your souls You are in my power I shall take you away.”

“Wow,” he said. “That’s pretty explicit.”

“In what way?”

“It’s like a galactic siren or something,” he explained. “It entices you and then sucks you in.”

“Assuming this isn’t all in Ross’s head,” said Neubeck.

“No,” I insisted. “It’s too intense, too visceral. I suppose dreams can sometimes feel real, but this is different. There’s this amazing sense of unity, like you’re at one with the band, with the audience, with everyone who’s listening to the music. You can feel it – like the way at a gig you can feel the kicks on the bass-drum as blows propagated through the air.”

“You took too many damn drugs, Ross, when you went to see these bands,” sneered Neubeck.

“Drugs weren’t part of the scene,” I snapped. Booze had been, though. But I wasn’t drunk now.

“Describe it again,” Yu asked. “I just had an idea.”

So, as I floated there in deep space, my hands no more than a metre from the grey flank of the alien artefact, lulled by the quiet comforting hum of my backpack as it pumped air and water about my spacesuit, as I hung in the void, I tried to get across to Yu and the others what death metal meant to me, how it affected me. That sense of belonging, which was purely an artefact of the music as it was played. There was no life-style attached. If fans of the music comprised a tribe or clan, it was a loose and individualistic one and its only common factor was a love of the music. But at a gig, standing before a stage while a band played, that tribe became welded into a single organism. And with music that loud, with vocals so guttural the words were often lost, a new kind of meaning was carried in the guitar parts, in the interplay of the instruments, in the sudden changes in tempo…

I let my explanation stumble to a halt, slightly embarrassed.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Yu said. “It’s sort of like networking. That sense of oneness, that could be a handshake. You know, like it sends the music as a challenge, you accept it and respond to it, and that establishes the link. And then the tune, riff, whatever, that would be the actual content of the message packets. Because they’re alien, you can’t interpret them. It’s like your brain has found a metaphor for a communication from the alien.”

“So he’s not making it up?” asked Stone.

“The music, yeah, I think so. The artefact is communicating with him, but this is how he hears it.”

“Hey, folks,” I said. “I’m still here, you know.”

I wasn’t sure I believed Yu’s explanation. Admittedly, when you study exotic matter and the like, you’re dealing pretty much with metaphors and acts of imagination. It’s not exactly a “hands on” science. But I couldn’t decide how I felt about what Yu said, if only because it meant my brain was wired in such a way that it used death metal as a metaphor for communication.

Which was sort of scary.

#

Share The New Accelerator

Another laying on of hands resulted in a snippet from Worlds Beyond the Veil‘s title track:

Open your eye Awaken your senses This I show you – now you shall see And it will change your world forever

There was definitely a message there. Yu had been through the album’s entire libretto, and had expressed his worry at precisely what message the artefact was transmitting.

“This is pretty martial stuff, Mike,” he said, referring to the album’s concept. “It’s like a rebellion and they call on some higher being, and he sucks them all in.”

“But the bits I’m hearing seem to be about exploring,” I pointed out.

“Or joining the artefact,” added Stone.

“Joining? How?” demanded Neubeck. “The goddamn thing’s hollow. There’s nobody in there you can join.”

He had a point. If the artefact was recruiting, it couldn’t be looking for physical recruits. Not unless what we saw here at the Moon-Earth L5 point was only part of an alien spaceship – a whole spaceship. Perhaps the rest of it existed in other dimensions?

There was only one way to find out.

This time it was:

We shall embrace the sanctity of these distant planes

The song was ‘Voices in the Void’, and the lyrics did sort of answer my question.

But if the alien ship wanted us to join its crew, how did we do so?

Where was the entrance?

#

Back aboard the crew module, I stared out of the horizon window at the artefact while in my head reverberated pounding drums, lightning-fast arpeggios, hammers and slides and pulls, the insistent growls of an invitation to travel the galaxies… I had my phone plugged into my comms-carrier and was playing the album, but it wasn’t the same. It was like looking at a photograph of a loved one who had recently died.

“I have to go out again,” I said.

I could feel it calling to me. It wanted me to join it. I only had to scroll through the lyrics of Worlds Beyond the Veil to see the message:

Come to me Children of Mother Earth

There it was, in They Came and You were Silent. I had no intention of remaining silent.

“I need to go out again,” I said.

“Not going to happen, Ross,” said Neubeck.

I looked back over my shoulder at him. He hovered at the far end of the instrument panel. Yu and Stone were across by the storage lockers. I was reminded of a photograph I’d seen years ago, taken inside the Apollo command module during one of the flights to the Moon. I forget which astronaut it had been. He had seemed a part of the machine, an integral component of the spacecraft, carefully fitted in amongst the switches and readouts and equipment. Without him, the spacecraft could not have operated; without the spacecraft, he had no function.

That was Neubeck, that was what he looked like as I gazed across the pilots’ seats towards him.

And then I knew what I had to do.

I had the hatch into the inflatable airlock pushed open before Neubeck noticed what I was doing it. I darted through and slammed it shut behind me. The outer hatch was a problem. It was an inflated plug, and air pressure within the airlock kept it sealed. It was made of Kevlar and Nomex, and too tough to pierce with a knife. Besides, I had no knife on me.

Fortunately, the atmosphere was not at sea-level pressure but at 8.5 psi. I managed to force one arm down the side of the outer hatch. It was enough to crack the seal. Air hissed out. Soon, I was gasping for breath, and the pressure was low enough for me to haul the outer hatch open.

I wasn’t wearing my spacesuit. I had about three minutes before I died. But I had to reach the alien artefact. I exhaled, emptying my lungs and directing my breath at the CM. I could feel the intense heat of the sun on my face. Rolling onto my front, I put out my hands. The moisture in my mouth, on my eyes, in my nostrils, was boiling away. My fingers and hands had swollen to twice their normal size, were turning black with burst blood vessels. I would not survive this.

I didn’t care.

My hands hit the side of the artefact.

#

The band has been playing for about ten minutes. Behind them, the backstage area is dominated by a giant holographic screen. On it, I can see, with supernatural three-dimensional clarity, a blue marble alone in the blackness of space. I know it to be my home, the home I am leaving. As I watch, that small blue planet recedes from view and disappears. Then the sun, an intense white dot, swings across the screen. It grows larger, ever larger, turning yellow, orange, red. I can see its corona, the prominences climbing up and falling, great arches of seething matter at colossal temperatures.

The alien spacecraft is leaving the Earth-Moon L5 point and falling towards the Sun for a slingshot manoeuvre. I will see the wonders of the universe on that screen, I will visit other star systems and they will be displayed up there behind the band.

The audience and I are one, brought together by the music. I feel unity and peace and expectation. The music – those inhumanly fast blastbeats, the complex guitar, the intricate bass-line, the growls of the vocalist, the abrupt changes of tempo – make me a part of something greater, an intellect vast and conjoined. A synergistic organism.

An organism of many disparate parts. I look to my left and right, and see creatures that are so strange I have no words to describe them. Aliens. Hundreds of them, hundreds of different races. And all at one with, and in, the music. A congregation of souls brought together by the band on stage, witness to the wondrous vistas displayed on the giant screen.

#

I can’t explain why death metal appeals to me, but I can explain how I knew that death was the only way to gain entry to the alien ship. It’s there in the lyrics of Transcendence, the penultimate track on the album:

The call has come to return To leave this mortal coil Return to the eternal Become as one again To remove back to spirit I cast off these chains so binding

#

All lyrics taken from the album Worlds Beyond the Veil by Mithras, and used with the kind permission of the band.

Ian has been published in the magazines Jupiter, Postscripts, Perihelion and Alt Hist, and in the original anthologies Vivisepulture, The Monster Book for Girls, Where Are We Going? and Catastrophia. His novella Adrift on the Sea of Rains won the BSFA award. It is the first book of the Apollo Quartet, along with, The Eye With Which the Universe Beholds Itself, Then Will the Great Ocean Wash Deep Above and All That Outer Space Allows.

11,995 UC. The Syana Galaxy. East Cell. The Ma'lumet System. The Interstellar University of Syana (ISUS).

The hum of the university perpetually occupied Seren's being as it suspended in open space, slowly orbiting a lone G-type main-sequence star.

She glared at the two men perpetually following her around the campus. They looked like they could've been twins with their matching black hair and square jaws. They were there when she woke up, when she went to class, when she ate, when she went to bed and everything in-between. She constantly tried to evade them but each time she was found she was scolded as if her life was the most important thing in the galaxy. That's what they told her anyway.

Despite learning here for five years already, the other students failed to hide their interest in who she was. It was like she was a celebrity. A celebrity without any riches or beautiful people surrounding her. Only scientists and doctors that continued to study her as they had since her birth. If you could call falling from the stars a birth. That alone earned her the nickname 'Starchild'.

The perpetual hum of the university that orbited a lone star in space was suddenly invaded. "Hey Seren!"

Seren turned to see Stev running towards her, one arm up and waving. His thick glasses were falling down his face as usual and his skinny form hardly held the uniform that covered his frail body. Say what you will about Stev, he was a genius and had come all the way from Kelthros to study here.

One of her bulky guards stepped forwards and blocked Stev from reaching her, a low growl filling his throat like an over protective and/or rabid dog.

"Stand down Ein," Seren ordered. "It's only Stev. You know he would never hurt a fly." Not because he didn't want to. It was simply because he was too weak.

Ein stepped aside and remained stoic next to his mirror image. These men would, without hesitation, throw themselves in front of any kind of attack aimed at her. It seemed to be the only thing they were passionate about. There was no engaging them in conversation either. She didn't normally get a response unless it was important.

When Stev finally made it, he keeled over and struggled to breath. Seren had to wait impatiently as he huffed and puffed over his small exertion.

"Seriously Stev, the campus gym is open for all," Seren said. "Why can't you go and gain some endurance. And muscle." She added quickly. An image of him without a shirt on and a body covered in tight muscles popped into her mind and she almost blushed. Almost.

Stev's throat rumbled with disgust. "And be around all that sweat and other bodily grossities? No thanks."

Seren resumed her walk with a giggle and Stev scrambled to catch up. "If I could go I would," she said. "But you know, I might just destroy the universe or something if I had an accident."

"Well," Stev removed his glasses and withdrew a small cloth from his front pocket. "No one wants that right?"

Seren shook her head of black hair. The white streak in her fringe always stood out in her peripheral vision. "Is what they say about me even true? All I've had to go by is the word of scientists and the fact that huge men follow me every step of my day." She felt her mood sour even further. I just want to be normal and have some star blinding privacy!

Stev rubbed at the lenses of his glasses vigorously with the cloth. "Do you want to risk it to find out for sure?"

It was something that filled her mind constantly. If she was harmed in any way then that damage was reflected somewhere out in the universe. Or so she was told. Several times she had planned to hurt herself, just a tiny cut on her arm, but could never build up the guts for such a thing.

"You'll just have to wait for an accident to happen and hope that it doesn't blow up this very university." Stev placed his glasses back on with a nervous chuckle.

Seren felt a hand fall on her shoulder. "Enough," Ein's deep voice came from behind. She shrugged his hand off and threw him a heated glace.

"Anyway," Stev said with a weak cough. "I have a new invention that I need to show you."

"A new one?" Seren said only half listening. "Already?"

Stev was a bit of a prodigy. He had invented several technologies that ended up benefiting the galaxy and travel through open space. All his tuition was paid and sponsored by the Star Union, the alliance of systems in the core sectors that included most of the sentient races in the galaxy.

"I don't want to brag but it may be my best invention yet," he said with a proud grin.

"Well, I'll definitely need to take a look at it then," Seren flashed a soured smile. "I'll message you later."

Stev nodded. "Alright. See you later." He waved as he ran off to his next class.

Seren pondered in silence as she walked to her next lecture. Could she try hurting herself again just to see what would happen? She went back and forth with the pros and cons in her head. Mostly cons presented themselves. Maybe Stev was right. She simply had to wait for an accident to happen so that she had no control of the event. It was bound to happen eventually.

Seren entered the lecture room and made her way up the stairs to the back where she was assigned to be seated at all times. Her two guard dogs stood not far behind her, constantly alert and ready for anything.

She glanced at the boy sitting next to her. Shin, she thought his name was. His naturally bald head shone with vitality and the third eye on his forehead took in everything around him with unnatural clarity. All the people of the Clou race held these traits. They hailed from the planet Somte in the south of the east cell of the galaxy.

His eyes glanced towards her for an instant before flicking back away. It was said that those of his race could see more with their third eye like other dimensions and planes of existence, people's emotions and thoughts. What could he see when he looked at her?

He was handsome but Seren knew that she could never get romantically involved with anyone ever. Every time she had attempted to engage a boy in flirtatious behaviour she had been stopped by one of her guard hounds. She did once manage a kiss and a grope but that's as far as she got before getting caught.

The doctor had lectured her extensively afterwards and claimed that it had effected the universe somehow. Whatever... She sighed and turned her attention to the lecturer and his boring rant. She couldn't concentrate for any of it and it felt like the whole day would turn out the same. Hopefully seeing Stev's new invention would cheer her up.

Seren took her cell from her pocket and typed up a message and sent it off to the wacky young man.

You can show me your invention tonight. I'll ditch the dogs and meet you in the usual place.

She made sure that her guards didn't see what she was up to. They would stop her from going no matter what. Luckily, when she needed, she could slip away at night no problem. She grinned at her own bravado.

The cell vibrated softly.

Sounds perfect. See you then.

#

Share The New Accelerator

Later that night she was lying in bed in the dorms, staring at the ceiling, wide awake. Of course, in her own private room. No one would put her in danger sleeping too close to other people. The guard dogs stood outside her room, since it was the only way in and out, as not to disrupt what tiny amount of privacy that she was allowed. She did suspect that cameras were watching her at all times but so far no one had said anything to confirm it even after sneaking out several times before.

It was almost time to go.

She threw back her sheets and quickly hopped out. She was already dressed in dark casual dress, something light and easy to sneak around in.

Seren made her way to the door and placed a hand and an ear against it. She didn't know how but she could feel the two huge men standing behind it. She stood back and took a deep breath in preparation for what she was about to do next.

A fire engulfed her as she closed her eyes and concentrated. It came from her core and slowly consumed her entire body. She had to bite her lip to stop from groaning. It was strange how good this mysterious power felt under her skin as it weaved and wound across her bones and muscles. It tingled on the outside too, pulsating subtly and touching her nerves in an intimate way. It was like nothing she could describe.

Seren extended her arms with her palms facing the ground and a light dust began falling from her hands. Stardust, she had named it. A fantastical name perhaps but no one else had to know. The dark sand pulsed with life, thumping loudly against her skull and vibrating around the universe. She guided it under the door and around the two guards.

She couldn't explain how she could create this strange substance or how she controlled it or why it felt so good. Was she the only one that could do it? Surely someone else out there in the universe had similar powers. If so she had to find them.

Once she was sure they were trapped, she sighed and let go of the power, relinquishing the pleasurable feeling.

After opening the door she waved a hand in front of the faces of the two men. As usual they didn't react at all, stuck in their stony faced stares.

Seren proceeded to walk down the hall unescorted, a slight strut invading her step. She made it out of the dorms no problem and quickened to a jog to the meeting place. If anyone else saw her she would be in big trouble. Not many would be out this late anyway so she figured that she should be okay.

Voices came from around a corner and Seren froze. She couldn't afford to be caught now. Her eyes darted around, looking for a hiding place but none revealed themselves.

The voices came closer. Seren had no option. She flattened herself against the wall and seized the power. A rush of energy came to her, filling her body, head to toe, with mystical rhapsody. The dust appeared and she veiled it around herself, hiding her in a haze that blended in with her background.

A group of casually dressed students rounded the bend, joking and laughing amongst themselves. They walked right by without even looking in Seren's direction.

The power, fuelled by her panic, was so intense that she couldn't hold it in any longer. A whimper escaped her lips.

The student at the back stopped and turned, his eyes looking directly into Seren's eyes. She took a quiet breath and held it.

The young man stared with a frown, furrowing his forehead. Thank the stars he's not Clou. Seren suspected that one of them would be able to see straight through with their third eye and completely penetrate her veil.

"Hey, what are you looking at?" one student said as he noticed his friend's curiosity.

"I thought I heard something." He closed in on Seren's location with narrowing eyes. Closer and closer he got until he was in front of the door next to her with his ear close. "Sounded like someone doing it..." Seren could see every blemish on his face and the way his short dark hair sat on his long head, strand by strand.

"Really?" the second young man said with a grin.

"Just leave them, Kaal," the charcoal-skinned woman with them said. Her horizontal golden eyes gazed out from her dark face. She was Halluxian, who were considered a violent race but it was mostly ignorant conjecture based on their appearance and voice. To be fair it was frightening at first glance.

The first young man took his ear away and shrugged. "Guess it was nothing." He re-joined the group with a laugh and they all disappeared around the corner.

Seren let out her breath and let go of the power. That was a bit too close. She didn't waste any time and continued towards her destination.

She crouched low around the final corner and peeked around. No one was around the entrance to the indoor forest so she quickly ran to the doors and slipped inside. It was a room perfectly set up to house a forest just like on the surface of a lush garden planet.

Stev would be waiting for her within. Her excitement rose about his invention. Just what had he come up with this time? The boy who created suits that absorb sweat and bodily wastes and converted them to pure water that the wearer could drink or get a cooling spray to the face in intense heat.

Seren made her way into the trees and was promptly concealed by the greenery. The smell of earth and bark assaulted her nose, taking her back to her childhood growing up on Hol. It was a natural planet covered in all kinds of greenery and natural formations, unlike most of the planets within the east cell of the galaxy, which the Star Union controlled and governed.

It was a better time where she had been free for the most part. She was still watched, she simply didn't realise it at the time. Ah, to be young and naïve. Then, when she was older, she had been sent halfway across the cell to the most renowned university in the galaxy.

Seren spotted Stev through the trees and she stopped to spy on him for a minute, just in case this was all a trick or a test; a lesson in disguise. She often thought this and liked to pause to take in every detail. The lanky boy stood in the clearing fiddling with a small remote in his hands while mumbling. Occasionally he would look up and adjust his glasses while he glanced around at the surrounding bush.

After she was sure it was safe she emerged from the bushes.

Stev spun in fright, eyes even wider behind big lenses. "Oh, it's just you," his relieved sigh filled the small clearing.

"Who else were you expecting?" Seren said.

"Well, anyone else of course," his eyes darted frantically.

Seren scoffed. "Don't worry I used my magic to get away."

Stev's docile face twisted into a scowl. "There's no such thing as magic, Seren. If I could just study it then I could show you the science behind it."

"No," Seren said in an attempt to end the topic. "It's too dangerous."

"You don't even understand it yourself," Stev protested. "That's far beyond dangerous. I could find out exactly how it works and help you use it correctly and safely."

Seren raised her voice slightly. "I understand it enough. Now, show me your invention."

"But-"

"Stev," Seren warned.

"Fine," Stev shook his head in frustration. "Take a look at this." He held out the remote.

Seren took it and examined it closely. "What does it do?" It was about the size of a cell but with physical buttons spread out across it, all with different shapes and colours corresponding to different functions.

"Press the middle button," Stev suggested.

Seren did and after a few seconds heard a light humming coming from the forest. "What is that?"

Stev grinned. "You'll see."

The bushes behind Stev rustled and a small flying object emerged. It flew forwards slowly until Seren could recognise the metal structure. "It's a miniature SU fighter." The standard fighter starship used in space combat.

"Indeed," Stev said, his tone subtly challenging her to figure out what it meant.

Seren concentrated on the small model as it flew around. She tested a few other buttons causing the fighter to zip around in tight manoeuvres. Then it hit her. "It's not possible."

Stev smiled. "Duh. I invented it so of course it's going to work."

Seren's jaw felt like it was hitting the dirt below. "If you can implement this into the actual fighters and have people control them from a safe distance then that means no unnecessary loss of life in an open space battle."

"Also, it would eliminate the risk of a person passing out during intense manoeuvres, effectively allowing the fighter to move with extreme agility and precision. No restriction or risk," Stev added.

"This is amazing Stev," Seren said. "The SU is going to be thrilled for this invention. More than you know."

"It still needs a little work. It's not perfect yet. Plus implementing it into life-size fighters is going to be a huge project. And imagine the overall cost."

The test fighter began to hum louder.

"Is that normal?" Seren asked.

"It may have a slight overheating problem," Stev said as he took the controller from Seren's hands. He pressed buttons in attempt to get it to stop. The model fighter's humming grew louder still.

"Stev."

"I know." He was franticly pressing buttons but to no avail. "It's never done this before." His eyes widened. "Run Seren!"

Two big figures burst from two sides of the bushes and charged towards Seren just as the hovering model exploded in a ball of fire. Hot shrapnel rained out in all directions, hitting trees and grass alike. As the two figures got closer, a hot chunk of shrapnel cut through Seren's arm followed by a gout of blood.

As the pain tore through her body, her vision went white. Visions assaulted her mind, flashing in quick succession; a green planet surrounded by space, a spark at the core, a bright light slashing through, the world exploding in brilliant cosmic fire. It felt like that very fire had exploded within her head and consumed her entire body. All she could hear was the roar of flames and distant screams of men, women, and children.

Her mind tried to clear itself, attempting to grasp at anything that was tangible, anything that wasn't pain and death and destruction. All she could see was the planet slowly breaking apart and the cry of the earth rang out across the cosmos.

After an eternity of agony her eyes opened. Ein was lying atop her, covering her from further harm. She could hear Stev yelling in distress. "Let me up!" she demanded.

Ein slowly got off and took hold of her shoulders. The other guard had his huge arms around Stev and was holding him close. "Do you realise what you've done?" Ein's deep voice penetrated the forest with natural command.

"No, ah-" Seren's arm suddenly throbbed with pain and she put her other hand to it. Blood trickled out, over her fingers, then back onto her arm. She didn't recall ever seeing her own blood before. Her face flushed and her head lightened with dizziness.

Ein lifted her gingerly and took off at a light jog. He spoke into an earpiece as he went.

"Sir, we have a situation here. The Starchild is hurt."

"A deep wound to the upper arm with a fair amount of blood loss."

"Affirmative, we have a suspect contained."

"We're on our way."

His words came blurred to Seren's ears as her whole head rolled and heaved. Forest sped by her faster than light and time in her mind seemed to slow to a gruelling crawl. Her consciousness started to fade.

Everything became light.

#

Share The New Accelerator

Seren awoke in a room of light. She had to squint as her eyes slowly adjusted to the brightness. "Where...?"

The room came into view. It was neat, mostly white and held an air of authority to it. It showed much of the habits of the man who worked in here. Multiple shelves were filled to capacity with datatomes, mostly scientific and medical writings by the looks of the lengthy titles. A massive window showed open space beyond and the edge of the university that hovered in space on a backdrop of stars.

The huge structure holding thousands of students and hundreds of staff, suspended in the heavens like a holy beacon of learning and future hope. It looked just like a massive city with sprawling towers and gardens housed in round domes. Tube-like walkways connected each tower on several levels and Seren could just make out tiny figures walking through them, making their way to their lectures and other duties.

"Hello Seren," a familiar voice uttered, confident and old.

"Doctor Rigel?" she said as she noticed the person at the desk.

A chair whirred and steps signalled an approach. "Now Seren. We need to have a very serious chat about what happened at the university tonight."

The memory of the explosion flooded back to her. "Is everything okay?" she asked with uncertainty.

Doctor Rigel sighed. "It's bad news Seren. You're not going to be happy with what your carelessness caused."

"It wasn't my fault!" she protested.

"It was partly your fault. But mostly it was that boy's fault," anger filled the doctor's voice. "But don't you worry about him. He will be used in your punishment."

"What are you going to do to him!?" Seren demanded.

He ignored her question as he made his way to the window overlooking the university. His hands rested at the small of his back. "Do you want to know what your little accident caused, hmm?"

"It didn't do anything," she scowled. "I do not embody the universe. You're just using it to keep me out of trouble so that you can eventually use me for my unique powers. That's what it's all about."

The doctor glided towards her. "Guess what part of the galaxy you destroyed my dear?" He leaned in close, his leathery face quivering with rage.

"Nothing was destroyed. It's a lie," she said looking directly into his faded grey eyes.

"Hol is gone from the system."

Seren's eyes widened in shock. Her home planet was gone? All those people she had known and grown up with, just gone from existence because she had suffered a cut to the arm? "No..."

"Seren," Doctor Rigel folded his weathered hands behind his back again. "As we've told you many a time, you, as in your entire being, embodies the universe, the whole of creation. Everything that has been and everything that will be flows through your veins. Every single cell in your atomic structure represents a whole galaxy somewhere out in space."

It was finally starting to hit her. She had been lectured many times before but she had listened without hearing the words. Now she knew better. If one cell in her body died then a whole galaxy crumbled into oblivion and all the living creatures within were lost forever. All of that life, gone in an instant with a cosmic flare of light.

"So, that cut you suffered didn't just destroy Hol, it removed a tiny chunk of the universe with it. An entire supercluster's worth. I don't need to tell you that that equals about ten thousand galaxies. Now do you realise how important and dangerous your life is, Seren?" the doctor said as he walked away.

"It can't be gone..." Seren said, still in disbelief.

"I can show you some footage that was captured on various cameras around the planet. Though I warn you, it will not be easy to watch," Doctor Rigel said as he sat down behind his long desk.

Seren hesitated. Did she want to see her home planet falling? She swallowed. "Yes... I want to see it."

The doctor looked evenly at Seren. "So be it." He punched in some buttons on his desk and a holographic image sprang out and formed the scene that the cameras had caught.

It displayed the familiar lab in which Seren had spent a lot of her early life in. Men and woman walked around, going about their work and research. Suddenly, people started to stumble as the ground shook, grabbing onto each other and furniture around the lab. The floor began to break up and swallow various things around the room including a few scientists.

Seren's eyes stung with tears and her lips began to tremble.

A light appeared in the hologram and in a shaky flash, the image was gone. Billions of lives were gone in an instant, all because she had suffered a gash to the arm.

The doctor gazed at Seren impassively. "I knew a lot of the people in that lab."

Tears streamed down Seren's face but she bit her lip and refused to make a sound.

"There is one more to show you." He pressed more buttons and a new image popped up. "As you know, we had plenty of cameras set up in your old residence."

Seren sniffed, determined to watch her childhood home as it died.

The hologram showed the living room where her adoptive father and mother sat relaxing with books in their hands. No doubt their other kids were about somewhere.

Seren couldn't help but let out a whimper as she saw them. The people who had raised her like their own despite what she was. They were the closest thing she would ever have to a family.

The ground began to shake and both her parents jumped up in panic.

"Stop," Seren said through gritted teeth, tasting tears as they fell over her lips.

Furniture fell and smashed then the floor split and began to open wider and wider. Her mother ran into her father's arms. He held her close as they watched the ground breaking apart and engulfing all that came close. The image began to flicker and break up. Her father looked up directly into the camera and into Seren's eyes.

She gasped and fell to her knees from the chair she sat in and it all came out. She wailed in agony as the cut on her arm throbbed angrily. A sharp pain filled her heart and from that moment she swore to take her condition seriously and never doubt it again.

"Are you ready to accept what you are, Seren? You are the most important being in the entire universe. You exist as the universe within itself, an impossible concept, yet true none the less. You are the universe. You are the Starchild," the doctor's hollow voice bounced off the walls making it large and menacing.

Seren's tears ceased as she looked up and into Doctor Rigel's hard eyes. He didn't show it but she knew that he was hurting too. Those age lines didn't lie. "I will protect the universe at all costs." Something hardened within her and her tears dried. She stood with confidence, clenching her fists at her side. "What of Stev?"

The doctor continued his hard gaze and it seemed to reinforce further. His silence said everything. Stev was to die as just another lesson.

Seren fought back the intense urge to protest with all her might but she knew there was nothing she could do. His death would serve as just another lesson. She felt a tear roll down her cheek and she gritted her teeth until her whole mouth hurt. *I'm sorry Stev, I wish it could've ended differently... *

The Star Union wouldn't be happy about this after spending the amount they had on funding his education. She was sure she had just made an enemy for the rest of her life.

"I must get back to my study," her voice was cold and stony. She resolved to do everything in her power to establish her own seat of influence and authority. Everyone will know the power of the Starchild and learn to respect what she was. She'd gather the most influential people at the university, the future of the galaxy, and use them to her advantage. Her influence and protection would rival no other.

Doctor Rigel smiled wide, his thin lips wrinkling at the sides. "Of course, Starchild."

#

Three thousand years later. 15,006 UC. South-east Cell of the Syana Galaxy. The lone white dwarf, Herald. Staroua, home of the Starchild.

"Davyn, I don't need to tell you how important this is for the future of the universe," the Starchild said from her seat. Soft light from the nearby white star filled the room and bathed it in calm and benevolence.

Davyn was dressed in heavy TechPlate armour that all of the Starchild's special soldiers, the StarBlessed, wore. A dustblade hilt sat on his belt, the special weapon that they all wielded out in the field. "I do, Starchild." He put both hands over his heart and bowed his head. "Your enemies shall fall to your light."

The Starchild smiled as the faithful man turned and walked out of the long hall. She knew that Davyn would do his job well but no matter what she did, her enemies would always find a way to seize power once again, aided by the power of time. There was always someone out there who wanted to control the power that she held, the power that she was born with and the power she had built up over her three millennia of life. And then there were the fanatics who simply wanted her dead, the religious zealots whose ideals were bordering on the insane. Man was too corrupt and thus the Starchild had to die in a glorious and biblical cleansing of everything.

Seren wouldn't let it happen. Not as long as she continued to live. Not as long as the universe continued to thrum with life. After thousands of years of peace under her guidance, death was not an option.

The Starchild will live on.

Leith White is a writer from Auckland, New Zealand, and has been writing fantasy and science fiction since an early age, but seriously since 2011. He also enjoys a bit of poetry, mostly haiku. If he's not writing or worldbuilding then you will probably find him studying, reading, or even gaming. Perhaps he can even be spotted outside on occasion.

"Are you sure?" she asked, staring at the floor.

"Yes, very," I returned.

"I think..." she began cupping her hand over her mouth for a moment. "I think it’s important that you understand this is an all or nothing situation."

"I do, I understand completely. I told you... I'm okay with it."

"It's my fault... I just..."

"Doc, look, I get it, there's no room for failure. I won't let you down. You'll see."

"I'm just not sure if you're ready, that's all," she said softly, turning her back to me.

"Are you kidding me? I've been a Marine for more than twenty years. I'm the top in my field. I've had the best training available. I've been on dozens of assignments far more critical than this, and I came out on top every time. You have to trust me... I can handle it."

"A Marine for twenty years? The best training? I'm not sure if that will be enough to guarantee your success," she said with a soft smile.

"Well, it will have to do," I said confidently.

"I guess it will. I would feel better if you had a safe word," she offered lightly.

"A safe word? For what?" I returned. I was beginning to feel like she didn't trust me or my abilities.

"In case you need backup."

"Backup? Really?"

"There's no shame in asking for a little help in a tough spot. A good Marine would ask for backup," She prodded.

"A good Marine is all the backup anyone would need," I returned proudly.

"Alright, have it your way. You'll have 3 hours... no more... no less. Synchronize your watch... we begin in 15," she said stiffly.

"I'm ready."

"Give’m hell, Marine," she said over her shoulder as she turned to leave.

I watched her until she was out of sight, only then did my true feelings come to the surface. I had misgivings... concerns that I dare not share with her. If she saw any weakness, any hesitation in me, even the slightest, all bets would be off, and I couldn't live with that. No matter how I felt about it, I had to pull this off... no matter what.

The sound of a door sliding open at the end of the causeway drew my attention.

"Ahh, shit. Here we go," I said under my breath.

Walking straight toward me, dressed in a pink tee shirt, blue jeans and barefoot, was the Doc's seven year-old-daughter. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and tied with a pink ribbon. She was her mother's daughter, alright. I could see the doc's cheek bones and the shape of her nose from here.

"Hello... Sam?" I called cheerfully.

Nothing... no answer, no smile, no reaction at all.

"Damn it," I whispered. "This was going to be tougher than I thought."

"Hello," I said for a second time, stepping closer.

"Are we there yet?"

"I'm sorry. What did you say?"

"Are we there yet? It's a simple question. Mother said we were almost there. I'm awake now, and she sent me here to see you... are we there yet?"

"No. Not just yet. It will be a day or two longer. By the way, I'm Robert Wickham... my friends call me Bob." I said, offering my hand.

"You know she's smarter than you," she said with disinterest, refusing to shake my hand.

"Beg your pardon?"

"My mother. She's way smarter than you," she repeated. This time, her voice held a little arrogance in it.

"Yeah, I think so as well," I said honestly.

"Actually, she's way smarter than everyone," she bragged.

"Yeah, I think you might be right with that one," I agreed, hoping to find common ground.

"Oh, I am. Mother has an IQ of 125... the average is 92, so she's much smarter than almost everyone."

"Good to know," I returned, not sure where we were going with this.

"Mine is 183," she boasted.

"Your what?" I asked, trying to divide my attention between her and the bank of dials and monitors.

"My IQ... it's 183. Einstein's was 160," she said pointedly.

"You don't say... Einstein. Well, how about that? Your Mom said you were a smart little girl," I heard myself say. I was lost. I had no idea what to say next.

"Do you love her?" she asked suddenly, pushing to stand in front of me, separating me from the panel.

"What?" I gasped, moving backward a little.

"I said... do you love her?" She asked again stepping to stand in front of me again. "Are you hard of hearing or are you just slow?"

"It's complicated," I answered before thinking.

"That's not an answer," she scolded, folding her arms, stepping closer still.

"I don't think you would understand. It's an adult thing," I said trying to regain some authority, stepping back again.

"I'm 7, not stupid and I have an IQ of 183. I think I can handle it," she sneered, stepping closer, trying to stare me down.

My mind raced, searching for an out. I had to take control.

"Okay. This isn't going to plan. Let's start over as equals... 100% honest with each other... no holds barred. Agreed?" I insisted, offering my hand, stepping forward.

"Agreed," she said, taking my hand.

"Robert Wickham... call me Bob."

"Samantha Fremont... call me Sam."

"Good. Glad to meet you, Sam. So then, you first, ask what you want," I said, folding my arms.

"Did she give you a safe word?"

"No, but she wanted to."

"Are you planning to marry my Mom?"

"Yes, that's the plan... contingent on your approval. You okay with that?"

"I'll have to think about it."

"I love your Mom... I'm not looking to take your Dad's place."

"I have no dad... sperm donor."

"I see."

"How did you meet?"

"Here on the job. She's medical, I'm transport."

"What do you do in 'transport'?"

"I'm a Sector Chief. I'm responsible for more than 500 pods."

"That didn't tell me what you do."

This was going to be tough. She wasn't going to cut me any slack.

"See these dials and these screens? They monitor the pods and tell me how each of them are doing and where they should go. This ship holds a little over twenty-five-hundred pods."

"Pods?"

"Ahh, sorry. Each pod holds one person... each held in stasis... suspended animation as it were, to be able to handle the long trip here. The ship starts out from Earth orbit and makes a stop about every six months, refuels and picks up a new crew. Twelve crews and six years later, they arrive here. My crew and I sort them by occupation and destination, and help to send them on their way."

"And my Mom?"

"She usually rides the last leg... one or two weeks out before turning around. Our jobs cross... we met and fell in love."

"Why am I here?"

"To meet me and..."

"And?"

"I have a couple of acres down on the planet. I'm looking to retire, and I've asked your Mom to start a new life with me there."

"I've never been on a real planet before."

"I know... your Mom talks about it all the time. I think you'll like it."

"You think so?"

"I do. My place has lots of grass... a couple of horses, some ducks and even a chicken or two."

"I've never seen a real horse either."

"You'll like them. They're fun to ride."

Silence... she just stood there.

Damn it. I screwed up. I said something wrong... I've lost her. The thought burned hot in my head.

"Everything okay?" I asked.

She only nodded in response.

"Let me ask one. Why are you barefoot?"

"I like the way the cold metal feels on the bottom of my feet."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. You got one more for me?"

"Sure... are we there yet?

Captain Yuel Telspa walked with a swagger and appeared quite comfortable on her feet, even though it had been a good three years since any of her trio of followers had set foot on a place that had full gravity. The rest of her crew rocked on the balls of their feet, had to fight for every step forward.

"The Wanhanii system is getting crowded, ain't it?" she asked, laughing at their difficulties, "When I started mining the rocks, I swear there wasn't a single soul in the middle regions of the Harlish Galaxy, not counting the Rockers. They all lived at the tips of the Head Arm, and you could fly all the way through the Galactic Axis and through the Tail Arm and not hear a single voice on the radio until you got to Errisk. Now, though..."

"It's full of Tarmithian grounddwellers who think themselves spacemen," said Gurtagan, who was thick and short, born and bred on a high-grav world, and struggled more than the rest of them.

"They'll wash out the first time they set foot on a rock," Sengen said, and curled his heavily tanned face into a sneer, "They can't hack it out on those asteroids."

Telspa snorted. "They'd wash out the first time they farted in their spacesuits."

The fourth member of the group, the youngest and the least seasoned to the asteroid-mining trade, was Marilon Yavin. She lagged back, hands shoved into her jumpsuit pockets, telling herself it was the high gravity on Wahanii VII and not her own fears that slowed her pace.

"The people aren't so bad," she said, "Remember why we're here?"

The three of them chuckled back at her, as much out of pity as out of mirth, and then together they continued on in silence. The street below their feet was parched by the daytime sun, so plumes of dust rose up under their feet, and the walls of the buildings around had all been bleached to the same nondescript tan. At a glance, Marilon could distinguish between the locals, who wore soft and earth-tone garments, and the the off-worlders who wore brighter synthetic colors or full space suits.

"This is it?" Telspa asked, when they came to a restaurant at the end of the street. There was a neon sign in the doorway, board over the windows; Marilon had noted that all of the buildings had multiple windows, but eery one of them was shuttered or curtained to keep out the sun.

"This is it," she confirmed. The rest of the crew started towards the door as soon as she spoke, but she found herself glued to the dusty sidewalk.

"You were the one who brought us here, girl," Gurtagan sighed, when they turned back to her, "If not for you whining about how nervous you was about being on the same planet as your family, I could be out, hunting myself up a good beer."

"They'll serve beer, there's an add taped next to the door there," Marilon said. Her mouth felt dry, reluctant to move.

"Come in Yavin, I order it," Telspa said. Marilon swallowed hard and found her feet and went towards the door. When Sengan held it open, cool air and the sound of music spilled outwards.

"It can't be any worse than throwing yourself around asteroids like a Rocker tribesman," he said.

Marilon glared at him. "It can be. I feel like I'm on a death walk."

"One hell of a melodramatist, as always," Telspa said, returned her sour look, and then cut off all further conversation when she stopped at the far end of the vestibule and put her hands on her hips. Her pose and her pressure suit drew the crowd's attention even before she bellowed for the waitress's attention. "A few drinks for us! We just came down from the Belts and we are thirsty as hell!"

She and Gurtagan and Sengan reveled in the crowd's attention, at once admiring and slightly fearful, but Marilon found no joy in it. She walked with her head down as a waitress showed them them to a table in the corner, wished she could disappear into the floorboards.

"That one of them?" Gurtagen said, jerking his thumb backwards at the girl once they had been seated.

Marilon glanced at the girl's face, and then shook her head. "No one in my family has black hair. We're all redheads, except for Crespi, he's the only blonde out of all seven of us."

She stopped there, clicking her jaw shut, overcome with a sudden fear that speaking her brother's name aloud would conjure him up in person. She turned her head up and looked over the crowd, searching for anyone who possessed the same bright hair as she did.

"I don't think they're here," Marilon said, and frowned outward. The reputation of the asteroid miners was so fierce that on some planets, they could walk into a rest joint and turn away anyone seeking to pry into their business with a frown, and she would certainly appreciate the easy out if that happened here, too. "Maybe this place has changed hands and my family doesn't own it anymore. It's common in places like this."

"Keep your ass in the seat, Yavin," Telpa said, "They're here, and you know it, because when we looked it up, it was still registered in your ma's name. You know you got to face them sometime, and today's as good a day as any other."

Sengan and Gurtagan nodded along with her, which Marilon resented, but Telspa's words rang true. She turned her frown down to the surface of the table. A few dozen other space travelers had carved their names into the surface of the table before moving on. She imagined most of them were hopeful travelers headed into the unknown territories, the rest jaded space merchants and asteroid miners.

I could just leave my name, Marilon thought, My mother and my siblings will come across the name. They'll know that I'm still alive, and I was here. That will be enough.

A clattering brought the fantasy to an end. The drinks had arrived, brought by a younger girl, who smiled widely as she set the drinks down on the table. She hardly looked twelve, at the most, but her movements were practiced enough that she did not spill even a drop down the sides.

She's not even that old, shes almost exactly ten, Marilon thought, as she picked up her drink and saw the name of someone ringed in condensation. She immediately recognized that heart-shaped face, the auburn hair that framed the girl's features, and did the math in her head. Millie had just turned six when I left four years ago - she was barely a schoolchild - and now she's gangly and looks half grown!

Millie leaned over the table, as the four of them sipped at their drinks. Her smile was innocent, endearingly conspiratorial.

"I steal Elloo's tables when I see people come in with suits on," she whispered, "Did you come in from the rocks?"

"That we did," Telpa said, "Spent a good couple of years up there, bringing down the ores that you groundrunners use to keep yourselves in trinkets."

"Every off-worlder says that, and we'd all be out of a job if we obliged them," Millie said. She turned a look of playful chastisement onto each of them, and when her gaze lingered on no one in particular, Marilon realized that her own sister did not recognize her.

"My ma doesn't like me talking to the miners," Millie went on, "But every time they come in, I try to get them to tell stories about what it's like up there. What do you do up there?"

"It's dangerous, that's the only thing to say about it," Gurtagan said, "No place for a girl like you."

"A girl like me?" She straightened herself up, and frowned down on him. "I'll have you know, I could do it quite well, if I wanted. My sister runs up in the rocks."

"Does she now?" Telpa said, and flicked her brows up from behind her tankard.

"She does." Millie leaned over the table again. "I wish I could be up there in the stars, like she is, no matter how dangerous it is. That's why I always ask the miners who come in here, no matter what my ma thinks of them."

Marilon suddenly felt four pairs of eyes laying heavily on her, anticipating and demanding her response. She sighed, took a long draught that made her tingle down to her knees, then folded her hands over the signature of someone named Ilsh Coltran.

"She'd be in constant danger," Marilon began. She caught Millie's eye, returned that playful, roguish smile, but detected no sign that she had been recognized for who she was. "You get all the normal dangers of space up on the rocks, plus a whole lot more. The rocks throw debris out in all directions, and all it takes is one little pebble hitting in the right spot to knock out a ship, and everyone on board freezes or suffocates. It's worse when you actually get onto the rocks themselves. All you have between you and the vacuum is a suit, and any one of your tools or the sharp rocks around you can puncture your suit. A splinter can puncture your suit. Not to mention, if you step wrong, you can throw yourself off the rock and into space, never to be saved."

"We have a strict rule," Sengan said, and shook a finger in Millie's direction, "Any miner who's stupid enough to step off of a rock is one that's too stupid to save."

Guratagan nodded, and slurped down the last of his drink. "Better hope your sister isn't the type to go stepping off the rocks."

Marilon rolled her eyes; Millie held hers wide open. "I've heard some of the other miners say the same thing. I think that must be why my mother still prays for my sister - she's heard it, too."

"She prays, does she?" Marilon said, and snorted into her cup as a hot burst of anger seared through her. "And I suppose she never stops to think about why her daughter left, that she can only think of it as an act of rebellion..."

She stopped herself there, clapped her jaw shut, but the damage was already done. Millie backed away a few steps, but would not look away from the table. "It's you, isn't it? Mari - you're back?"

Marilon bowed her head, spread her hands wide. "Live and in the flesh, Millie."

Millie's face lit up as soon as she heard her own name, and then she started speaking so rapidly that her words flew out in a jumble. "It's been so long, and I can't believe you're here! Mari, why have you come back now? What have you been doing, you have to tell me! We lost the old farm, did you know that? Is it really as dangerous as you say up in the rocks?"

"Hey!" Gurtagan said, "Don't bump the table, girl, you're going to spill our drinks, and these are the first we've had in a damned long time."

Millie straightened, focused but unfazed by his gruff response. "Aldair and Crespi are here, too. They'll want to see you, Mari. I'll go get them."

She turned on her heel and practically skipped off through the crowd of patrons; Marilon sucked down half of her drink and then cowered over the glass.

"She seems happy to see you," Sengan said.

"There are seven more of them," Marilon snapped, "Six siblings, and my mother Renga Yavin. It won't all be hugs and smiles."

Millie returned a few seconds later, towing two other people behind her. This time it was Marilon's turn to barely recognize her own siblings. The shape of their facial features was familiar, the same as she saw when she looked in the mirror, but she remembered Aldair and Crespi as boys, barely into their teens and double-digits, respectively. Now their young faces had both become hard and angular, and their shoulders had widened.

"It's her - really her!" Millie said, and pointed.. Aldair and Crespi stared at her, coolly, displaying none of the excitement that Millie had shown.

"You really did become a rockrat," Aldair said. He heavily emphasized the last word. "I had half hoped that was just a rumor, or something Ma made up."

"It's a living," Marilon said.

"You'll get tipped off into space," Crespi said. She heard a youthful, prepubescent crack in his voice, but nothing to indicate that he would actually regret it if she did loose her footing.

"I've done all right so far," Marilon responded. She looked to Telspa and the others for support, but they seemed to have faded, to have removed themselves from the situation. "What have you been doing since I left?"

"Working," Aldair said, without a second's hesitation, "We worked our fingers to the bone trying to keep our home, and now we keep on grinding them down, trying to make a living here."

"Every one of us," Crespi said, in the same clipped tone, "Even Reen works in the kitchen."

"Reen is a baby," Marilon said, recoiling somewhat, "He can barely walk..."

"He can walk well enough to pull his weight, as we all do - almost all of us."

Marilon closed her eyes for a few seconds, dabbed at her forehead when she felt sweat beginning to bead above her brow. She had had chores around the farm as early into her childhood as she could remember, but nothing that would be implied to be the difference between the family surviving and foundering.

"And Mother?" she asked, "I heard she still prays for me."

"Half the time the prayers are to curse that you were ever born," Crespi said, "I don't know that she'll want to see you."

Telpa is right, best to get this over with now, Marilon thought to herself, and drew herself into a more defiant position. "Well. Whether she wants to see me or not, I am going to come and see her."

#

The Tarmithians that came from the heart of the galaxy to Wahanii, Marilon thought as her siblings led her away from the rest stop and into the neighborhoods, had taken the worst parts of their home planets with them. Most of the people who came to the hinterlands did so in search of open, uninhabited worlds, but settled instead into prefabricated apartments that looked no different than the slums they had left behind.

"Nobody ever calls this place Fallsbottom," Aldair said, as they walked past a sign erected next to the road, "We who live here call it Jetsbottom, because every time a ship lands or takes off, they fly over us and the ground shakes and we get to breathe up all the exhaust."

'We probably got a good dusting of it when your ship came in," Crespi said. He wiped his fingertips on the signpost, and they came away dusted in black.

You put us here - we are here because you left. Marilon recognized a quiet insult in her brother's voice, and stared at the tenements looming above until Millie pulled her forward. They seemed to lean slightly to one side, and the streets began to feel labyrinthine as they walked farther into the neighborhood. The sheer amount of dust and grime made her want to pull at her hair; Telspa and every other commander worth their salt kept their ships immaculate, for fear that dust or stray debris might clog up the essential mechanisms.

"This is it," Millie said, stopping in front of a building that advertised two-room residences. Marilon shuddered to think of all seven of her family members condensed into two rooms. They ascended the stairs, and were all winded by the time they came to the fifth floor.

"We're at the far end of the hallway," Crespi said, and pushed the door open when they arrived. Marilon hesitated in the doorway, squinting into the darkness, until Millie tugged her hand again. "Ma! You won't believe who we've got with us."

Marilon heard a piece of furniture groan as someone stood up. She blinked, and could suddenly make out several children sleeping on mismatched furniture and pallets on the floor. These are also my siblings. The youngest ones have grown so much, changed so much, I hardly recognize them at all...

"Don't shout," said a voice, "You'll wake the young ones. Who is it?"

Marilon flushed cold, felt her muscles beginning to shake. That was undeniably her mother's voice, and a few seconds later, she appeared from among the shadows. For half a second, she wanted to run, their eyes met and she was frozen to the spot.

No flash of recognition came over her mother's face; she squinted, and the frown that seemed to have been etched onto her face deepened. "It's you.

"It's you," her mother said. She walked a few steps forward, and Marilon realized that she was walking with a cane. "I'm here."

Her mother stepped closer, favoring one leg. One of the children sleeping on the floor stirred, and Marilon realized that it was Reen, the baby. "So. What do you think of our new home?"

"It's cozy," Marilon said. Working in the confines of a space vessel had made her used to living in close quarters, but the dingy apartment seemed absolutely stifling for seven people.

Her mother rumbled a response in the back of her throat. "Sit down, girl, if you can find a spot. Have you had your fill of running around the rocks?"

"I'm on leave," Marilon said. "I have two standard weeks. The rock-mining crews work like a militia. You sign on for a certain number of years. Five in my case."

"Five years," her mother said, and then looked around the room. Only a few square feet of floor were visible in the very center of the room. The rest was crowed with boxes, piles of clothes, stacks of belongings, and the younger children who found a place to rest amidst all the clutter. "This isn't what you remember when you think of home, is it?"

Marilon shrugged. "It's not our farm. I don't think there's a mountain on this whole planet. How long have you been here?"

"Two years. It's harder to scratch out a living here than it was trying to grow or hunt up a meal in a land that had been dried of wild food. We fought to keep our farm, but in the end we lost it - I think we could have held on to it with just a little bit more, if we'd had it."

Again there was the same quiet implication. If you had stayed here, we would have kept it. Marilon bowed her head, and said, "I never really appreciated the beauty of the place until I left."

"Which is why you should have stayed instead of running off for some fantasy," her mother snapped, "If you had stayed, we might have kept the place."

"We lost the place because Father died," Marilon said, firmly enough that her siblings stirred again.

Her mother drew herself up. "All we needed was a little bit more money! It was well within the range that one more salaried worker could have made up, but you decided that you wanted to go play in the stars, and the fate of the rest of your family be damned-"

"Mother!" Marilon interrupted, "I've two more years left in my apprenticeship, and when I finish that, I'll have a license and stand to make more than everyone here combined."

The air was silent a few seconds, then her mother said, "If you survive to finish it."

"If," Marilon admitted.

Her mother swallowed hard, and by the time she was done with the movement, her face was trembling. "In all honesty, when I didn't hear from you, I'd assumed that you must have already floated off of some godforsaken rock and died somewhere off in open space. You never even wrote us."

"You moved," Marilon said, as she felt her throat tightening, "And you didn't tell me where I should contact you."

"If I had only known..."

And that was enough that the angry pretense disappeared, that they were drawn towards each other as if by magnetism, and the floodgates were opened. They fell into each other's arms and stayed there, talking, until the smallest children woke up and demanded to know who their visitor was and then refused to believe that it was their own flesh and blood.

Finally Marilon reached a point of being so thoroughly exhausted that she had to admit that her body was going to shut down and rest,whether she consented to it or not. She lay down on the couch, feeling incredibly light and buoyant now that she had achieved reconciliation.

Marilon did not wake until light poked in through the thin spots in blankets tacked over the windows. Her feet stopped at the edge of the couch when she tried to stretch herself out, and as she attempted to move into a sitting position, she realized that sometime in the night Millie had edged onto the couch and snuggled up next to her.

"I have to work at the rest stop again today," Millie said, after she yawned and rubbed her eyes, "How long are you going to stay, Mari?"

"A week," Marilon answered, "Then I've got to get back with Telspa and her crew. We've got a contract to fill - we can't afford to rest."

"Neither can we," Millie said, and rested her hand on her palm. "There are always people that want to eat. I haven't seen Mother as happy as she was last night in a very long time, you know."

"Me neither," Marilon agreed, "Even before I left, she hadn't been happy."

Millie rolled, and sat all the way up. "Why did you leave, Mari?"

She grimaced; that was the one topic of discussion that had not come up between mother and daughter the night before that she hoped would remained buried. "Because Father..."

"I miss him, too."

"Yes." For a few seconds, she felt a giant hand, squeezing her throat. "You are probably too young to remember, but back at the farm house, we all used to sit on the back porch when dusk rolled around. We'd look down the mountains, and then when it got dark, we would look up at the stars. Pa was savvy about astronomy and he would point up and say, "That's Llariel Prime, the capitol of the Collective.' Or, 'That's Arrastan.' Or 'That's Elstan.' He knew all the important systems back in the more populated parts of Tarmith. He would also point towards the middle of the galaxy, on the other side of the sky, and say, 'All those stars are empty. There are some systems that humans have never even set foot on. Lots of the planets and stars out there don't even have names. There's absolutely nothing until you get to the other side of the galaxy, to the Haldamirian colonies around Errisk Prime. Those are some of my favorite memories of him."

"You have to tell that to Ma," Millie said, and sat enraptured.

"I should," Marilon agreed. "When Pa died, somehow I got this crazy idea that I could find him out there, and the rock-miners were the easiest way to get up there. They don't ask questions and didn't care that I was sixteen and a girl."

"But you didn't find him," Millie mourned.

"No," Marilon said. She followed the sliver of light spilling across the floor up to its source, a gap between the blanket over the window and the wall. "But I know that's where he wished he could have been, out on the hinterlands."

"I think he would be proud that you made it up there," Millie said. She raised a hand, pointed up like she imagined an entire night sky instead of a ceiling. "And he'd be prouder still if you actually went into the beyond, into the unknown."

Marilon smiled. "That's exactly what I hope he would say, because someday, that's exactly what I intend to do."

Better known for writing non-fiction articles about railroad history and preservation, this is Hayley Enoch's first published non-fiction work. She lives in North Texas and works at a local tourist railroad.

My mistress calls me her mimic. It's as good a name as any, and I have had more names than I can clearly remember. Each has left a trace in my genetic structure, and, in a sense, I am all of those names and none. I am, however, whatever name I need to be at a given time, and today I need to be Cillian Truffant.

Unfortunately, this name is already owned by another man. Not unfortunate for me, mind you, but unfortunate for him.

From my position above the wide arcade in Titan's Huygens City, I study Truffant as he moves through the crowd below. The bob of his head when he apologizes for bumping an old woman carrying a large bag. The way he angles his body to slip though a gaggle of youths who dropped unexpectedly to the tiles around him from the second level. His smile as he passes through the steam wafting from an open air noodle shop. Truffant has a lopsided grin, boyish almost, even though his hair is tinged with gray, and he has witnessed more violence and hardship than anyone, even in these difficult times.

I move along the railing, from support to support, watching from behind the face-shroud I wear to cover my primed skin. The crowd on the upper level parts before me, because I look like a diseased man on Hajj. I bow meekly to acknowledge their pitying faces, but also to hide what I am and what I am not. As quickly as the crowd passes me, I am forgotten.

Truffant stops to look at a new shirt. As he rubs the fabric between his thumb and index finger, my fingers do the same motion. He is meticulous in his inspection; his eyebrows rise when finds a loose thread.

My brows arch in the same way. Once. Twice. A third time, when I finally get it right.

He leaves the shirt and moves on.

For a man who survives by seeing, Truffant is oblivious. Like the others, he shops for trinkets while my mistress burns the domes of Ganymede. It is as if through the mundane, they cope with the horrific inevitable.

I come to a marked drop area and step off the edge. As I float downward in Titan's low gee, Truffant stops to buy fried dough from a pretty woman in a skintight dress. I lose sight of him as I land within the arcade's shifting crowd. Moving quickly, I locate Truffant again. He takes the fried dough, and in three bites it is gone. One finger at a time, he licks the powdered sugar from the tips, his eyes closed as he savors the sweet. His mannerisms are distinct but simple.

It will be easy to be Cillian Truffant.

I slip through the crowd and bump him, making it look an accident. As I do so, the needle in my right hand removes a micro-plug of tissue from his thigh.

"Your pardon," I say bowing so that he cannot see my face. The needle is sharp, and in his distraction he did not feel it take a sample of his cells and DNA. I am gone into the crowd before he even notices he has been jostled.

#

I inject Truffant's DNA into multiple places on my face and body. The engineered lentiviruses placed within me by my mistress will attack it and absorb it, incorporating it into their RNA structure. Then it will be carried into my primed cells and reverse-transcribed into my own genome. My cells will translate the information that is Truffant and restructure my flesh to match his. The process will take several painful days.

I embrace the pain. It is a small reminder that some part of me may still be human.

My mistress plucks the neurons that control my vision, my hearing, and she appears in the small room with me. Her skin is smooth as milk; her hair, inky lines scratched by an artists' repidograph. She has black eyes, iridescent as the wings of midnight beetles. She is not human, but I do not know what she is. With slender fingers she touches my cheek, a cold caress that shocks me like static electricity.

A smile slices open her face, and in her mouth I see the web of souls she controls. Like me, humanity serves her, willing or not, except out here, among Saturn's moons, where the remnants resist.

"Do not underestimate Marcus," she says. Her fingers rake furrows through my skin, but only in my mind. She plucks the neurons for pain as delicately as a harpist. "Once he dies, the resistance will collapse." The pain becomes pleasure, and although I wish I could remain standing, I fall to my knees.

Marcus hides somewhere among the rings of Saturn or its inner moonlets, a million possible places from which he coordinates the final resistance. Her web of spies, both flesh and nanite, have learned that Truffant will secretly meet and interview him, but I will see that it does not go as planned. When I find Timothy Marcus, I am to kill him and deliver humanity to my mistress. Souls in her mouth like grains of sugar.

#

Each morning I look in the mirror and my face has changed. My nose grows longer and wider. The hue of my eyes lightens to that of Neptune, blue and bottomless. My skin loses its newborn pink; it toughens and darkens. I have had so many faces I no longer remember my own.

In the mirror, I practice the boyish grin. "I am Cillian Truffant," I say in mock greeting. Once my vocal cords settle into their proper shape and position, the timbre of my voice is perfect.

From his dossier, I know Truffant's history better than my own. Orphaned at a young age, he did not weep at his mother's funeral. He slipped free of Europa, before my mistress could secure its orbital space, but his reports tight-beamed to the outer moons established his credentials as a field journalist of considerable acumen. His marriage to Susee, a reporter of equal skill, was a casualty of morality; she needed to do more than talk about the resistance. He still loves her. I know this because her picture is the only one on his stylus pad.

#

My mistress comes to me as I lay naked on my bed, fantasizing about Susee. Her nails, cold and sharp, press into my ribs.

"It is time," she coos to me, like my fantasy lover. She strums my nerves. My eyes roll back into my head, and I ejaculate in a spasm of pleasure.

Ashamed, I pull on pants and shirt and look in the mirror. My face is still flushed.

My mistress stands behind me, glowing like a specter in the shadow of my room. In her eyes I see the reflection of what I will be if I succeed. In her smile I see what will befall me if I fail. Both are terrible to behold.

"I am Cillian Truffant," I say, but when I blink, I am alone again.

Today Truffant is meeting Mitchell, who will take him to Marcus. I get to Truffant's favorite café early and slip into the toilet. Truffant will visit here before he orders, because he always does.

Within a few minutes, Truffant enters. For a moment he is confused as he stares into his own eyes. "Who--"

In that moment, I break his neck.

I drag his still twitching body into the stall, prop him on the toilet, and latch the door. I inject him with a tissue lysing microbe. While I wait, I hastily strip off his shirt and slit his pants up both sides. By the time I finish removing his clothes, his body has begun to bloat. With my knife, I puncture one of his buttocks and a slurry of organics runs into the toilet. The body sags as the digested organs and bone drain. I fold the loose skin into the bowl and wait until the microbes partially digest it before flushing the whole mess down into Titan's sewer system.

Now I am the only Cillian Truffant.

Mitchell is late. While I wait, I retrieve Susee's picture from the dossier in my neural cache. She is tall with cafe-au-lait skin and her head shaved to fine stubble that on most women would make their face bulbous and bug-eyed, but makes her look like a new age Zulu warrioress. I close my eyes and imagine how her powerful hands would feel on my back. My breathing deepens. Somewhere in my past life, I had someone like Susee.

"It's good to see you, Cillian."

"I've missed you," I whisper back to her.

"Beg pardon?"

I snap my eyes open, but Susee does not disappear. She sits in the chair across from me.

"Marcus sent me," she says.

I blink several times, but she still does not vanish. She is as striking as her picture.

"You look good," she says. She touches the graying hair near my left temple. Her wrist smells faintly of musk.

"And you," I say. We sit in awkward silence. She studies her fingers. I stare at the curve of her cheeks.

As if an alarm has gone off, her head snaps up. She looks around seemingly expecting an attack, but only a fool would do so. Susee has killed more people than even me. She would do anything for the resistance, and I suspect she has. "We should go."

"Where?" I ask. I do not expect her to answer, certainly not in such a public place, but I must ask anyways.

Susee levels her gaze. "Even if I knew, I couldn't tell you."

I cock my head to one side and arch my left eyebrow. "You don't know?"

She graces me with her little half-smile. "Marcus doesn't tell me everything. It's safer that way. In case I am captured." She grabs my hand and pulls me from my chair. "It's now or never, Cillian."

#

The elevator shoots us up through Titan's dense orange clouds to the orbital docking hub. There we squirm through a boarding umbilicus to a cramped, windowless cabin that smells of sweat and oxides. Loose dandruff and other biological flock swirl around us as we strap into the two acceleration chairs.

The gel-pad cools my damp shirt. I shiver.

In other incarnations, I vaguely recall liking the tug of zero gee on my stomach. That was lives away, however - splinters of lost memory slipped under neural skin. Now I only really know Truffant's unease, born from several close calls in space and reported stories of freeze-dried bodies vented into vacuum.

Susee finishes entering her fragment of the coordinates to Marcus' location into the ship's navigation. Someone has already entered the other piece, she explains. "Here we go," she says.

A loud clang vibrates through the hull as docking booms disengage. Susee's hand dangles next to mine, but before I can take it, my organs slide back against my spinal column as our engines flare, and we accelerate away from the docking hub.

I grit my teeth.

Susee squeezes my hand. Hers is warm, unlike mine, which is clammy cold. I squeeze her fingers. Gradually the pressure eases as we settle into a one-gee acceleration. Susee releases her shoulder straps and lets her head lull easily against its pad. She takes a deep breath and exhales it loudly. "I never should have left," she says.

I look at my hands and realize that at one time they had explored the arc of her breasts, the folds of her body. For a moment I am jarred out of being Cillian Truffant because I realize that these are not real memories, only information extrapolated from the dossier I have studied. Or perhaps they are real, but lost to me, except as a mask for my mistress' masquerade.

Jealousy for what Cillian Truffant had stabs at me.

I struggle to be Truffant again. "I wish--"

"It wasn't you--"

We speak at the same time and fall silent together.

She left me to follow Marcus into this futile fight against my mistress. She had been covering Marcus' emerging movement for the Jovian news bureau and had allowed her objectivity to be compromised. Instead of reporting the news, she became part of it. After Callisto fell, she joined Marcus in his struggle. Appalled, I did not follow her, something I have always regretted.

The ship shudders as secondary jets fire. In my stomach I feel the ship change trajectory. I wonder how long it will take to get to our destination. Instead, I ask "Why?"

"I couldn't just watch it anymore. This is a fight for our lives, Cillian. It's a fight for the human race. I won't be enslaved."

A hollowness opens in my gut like a black hole. All her efforts, yet Titan will still fall. If only....

When I say nothing, she kneels beside my chair and leans in close. Her lips are soft and warm. Her fingers are gentle against my skin. I am breathless.

I pull away. "I--" My thoughts spin. I can barely think.

She frowns at me. "I'm sorry. I thought--" She covers her face with her hands and mumbles something. I realize she is cursing herself. "I thought there might be a chance...."

I realize that I do not know how to react. I did not expect her to be here, so I am unprepared. I wonder what we have shared in the past, those intimate moments that aren't captured on video. While I can feel them around me like golden eggs, I can never open them.

I see the lingering residual of those moments in the sadness that pulls at the corner of her eyes. I hear it in the tone of her voice. The memories are heavy, but I sense she would never give them away for anything.

I want them. Yet I know I can never have them or anything like them. My mistress would never allow it, and, while I was once human, I am no longer certain if I still am. Oh, but to be human again.

"It doesn't matter, Cillian. Not anymore. Did you know Marcus asked for you specifically? He thinks you are the only one who can save us."

#

Marcus' hideout is claustrophobic. I don't remember being claustrophobic. For some reason I cannot recall if Truffant is, but then I realize that if I feel claustrophobic, then Truffant is.

Susee leads me quietly through an underbelly of dimly lit accessways lined with exposed conduits, wiring, switches, and ragged insulation. The cold shadows smell of ozone.

This is the resistance.

When I finally set eyes on Marcus, I think that I have been tricked. The hunched, husk of man before me looks nothing like the man in my dossier or the subversive videos that urge his followers into action. His skin has lost its luster, like old leather, and I wonder what sort of radiation damage he has sustained. Clumps of hair float around the small room like ejecta from a collapsing star.

Yet, when Marcus looks up from tapping on his stylus pad, the fire in his eyes is unmistakably that of the man who has held my mistress at bay. He motions me toward the only other seat.

I wrap my feet around the stool legs and settle against the padding. It is odd to sit in near zero gee, but planet-bound conventions die hard. I reach to activate the recording device on my shirt collar, but Marcus raises a hand consumed with open ulcers.

"Okay, no video." I am mesmerized by the shell of humanity sitting opposite me. If my mistress had known Marcus's condition, she would not have sent me. I should feel cheated, I think, but I feel sadness instead.

"I am not what you expected," Marcus says without preamble. A smile, ugly and twisted, cuts his face in two like it were a piece of dehydrated meat. "I have worked hard to keep a good public image, but there are limits to how many times I can recycle images into something new."

As he speaks his voice grows weaker until it is barely audible when he stops.

"You're dying." It is as if my words are necessary to make what I see real.

"I will die soon, but the resistance must not. That is why you are here."

Yet Marcus is the resistance. Without him the moons of Saturn, the last vestige of humanity, will fall into my mistress' dominion.

"Will it matter?" I wonder whose question that is.

"Probably not. We cannot fight against it. I watched Europa crumble, and nothing I could do stopped Callisto from following. I know it is only a matter of time before it takes Titan. You look surprised, but you know as well as me that this is true. How do we fight an enemy that we only known through the information that it allows us to have? We do not understand it because it is not human."

"And what is human?" I am startled at the sound of my voice.

"Surely you can remember."

I draw back suddenly and hit the wall behind me.

Marcus' eyes lock with mine, and in them I see what it is to be human again, to be free to love something with a power that transcends flesh, and that can sustain even in death and beyond.

Marcus pushes his stylus pad across the space between us. It spins slowly as it traces a gentle arc into my hands. The pad is filled with video feeds, recently recorded personal interviews I have never seen before, documents he has written, contact names. Everything I would need to be Timothy Marcus.

"Who do you think leaked the information to your mistress to bring you here? A gamble, yes, but what do we have to lose? I am dead one way or the other. Susee was against this idea, but she will help you disable your neural cache and free you from it."

Susee floats wedged in the narrow hatchway. She does not look at me, and that sadness I saw earlier is still there. I wonder whom she mourns. I know it is not me, but I wish it was.

"It is useless to resist," I whisper.

"Climbing from the primordial seas was useless. Riding into the vacuum of space was useless. We do what is useless because we are human."

Because we are human....

I study the way Marcus sits, his shoulders back. Even hunched and twisted, they suggest strength and conviction. His rheumy eyes are steady and his gaze penetrating. He absently rubs at his left index finger, and my hand begins to do the same.

It will be easy to be Timothy Marcus, but if humanity is to survive, I know I need to be more than what I currently am. I want to be more. I can be more.

When not pounding away on his keyboard, D. Thomas Minton moonlights as a marine biologist. He prefers to spend my days underwater, but at any given time, he can be found lounging on some tropical island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with his wife, daughter, and too many cats. His fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and Daily Science Fiction.

Through the tinted glass of the office window, the clouds above the sea seemed to Joseph like enormous swollen bursts of orange dust. He sighed. He looked from the flat plane of glass to the bowed screen of his computer monitor. He tapped weakly at the keyboard. Symbols flickered back at him, tiny and meaningless.

Joseph glanced at the clock on the wall above the photocopier. 12.40pm. He darted his eyes over to where his Team Leader was sitting. She hadn't noticed his attention shift away from his desk. She hated it when people clock-watched. Joseph felt his stomach contract and heard its mournful complaint. He would have to eat more for breakfast tomorrow than just a coffee and a Kit-Kat. He wrote a reminder down on a Post-it note and stuck the square of pink paper carefully to the front of the monitor. He would take the note home with him later and stick it to his fridge door.

After a few more minutes of baleful typing, Joseph felt a hand flutter on his shoulder. He looked at the clock. 12.46pm. He shot a glance at the Team Leader's empty chair. Then, relieved, he swivelled his chair to meet the smiling face of Rebecca.

She asked him if he was ready to go, as she did every day.

Joseph, reaching for his coat, replied that he was and stepped away from his desk. He swirled his coat around himself and plunged his arms into the sleeves, shrugging his shoulders into place in the waterproof jacket. He winked at Rebecca, eliciting a tiny giggle from her. She gently grabbed the fingers of Joseph's right hand as they protruded from his sleeve and she grinned elaborately up at him. The couple did not see the smirk on the face of the girl by the photocopier, or the raised eyebrow of the man by the water-cooler.

Once downstairs, they passed from the climate-controlled office into the pale winter light. Joseph and Rebecca pushed their way through the clot of ashen faced smokers packed together around the door. Forbidden from smoking inside, they used the porch as a shelter against the harsh sea wind that surged up the hill from the harbour.

This wind was known to Joseph and Rebecca as The Seven-Layer Wind. You could wear that many levels of clothing, and the cold would still get through. It was one of their little word-plays. Joseph enjoyed them. A drizzly gust spattered water onto his glasses.

Joseph walked into the smoke that plumed out of the mouths around him. He caught his breath. His smile twisted into a sneer as he moved through the nebula of smoke. The smokers saw it. They watched his face change as he floated away in the haze. A man from accounts swore at Joseph as he passed. He didn't hear it. He followed behind Rebecca dutifully as she pushed through the throng.

The smoke cloud whipped away and unfurled to become nothing. Rebecca walked in front of him, buttoning her duffel coat against the moist bursts of sea breeze. The hooded coat made her look like she was eight years old. Joseph saw she was almost skipping. Her steps were light and frivolous. She seemed happy to be outside. The black material of her tights was visible below her coat. Joseph averted his gaze and looked at the ground so the rain would not hit his glasses.

Water droplets fell in a chaotic swirl towards the earth. They pattered a tiny rhythm on the paving, the road, the grass. Shallow puddles welcomed new guests into themselves. A million tiny messages spoke every second as Joseph looked at Rebecca's boots. They were red and had eight holes for the laces.

They purchased sandwiches from their usual "Fine Eatery." Rebecca called it that ironically every day. Joseph's smile returned at her choice of words, and it remained on his face. Their seat was waiting for them. They had their forty-five minute break there together most days, unless the other was busy or off sick, but that only happened rarely. They found the covered shelter unoccupied, and the wooden slats of the seat were dry.

Rebecca spun around and sat down heavily on the seat, swinging her feet as Joseph caught up with her. Smiling at her playfulness, he seated himself next to her. They sat with thighs touching, sharing warmth. Together, as they did every day, they looked out at The Photograph Man. He stood facing out to sea in his regular place in front of them. Joseph and Rebecca opened their sandwiches, the crackling of the plastic loud in the shelter. They ate, and watched him.

Today, the Photograph Man was using the big boxy camera. He was wearing the long raincoat, and on his head was that old battered Russian-style fur hat, wet with the mist. He stood motionless behind the camera as it rested on its tripod. It was as dark as a lump of coal. He was watching the skies, and the clouds and the rain as they limped across the treetops.

Rebecca asked Joseph what he thought the man was doing out here every day. Rebecca asked that question often. Joseph replied that he had no idea. A couple of times he had answered with the suggestion that the man was taking photographs. But that joke had worn itself out to nothing fairly quickly. The Photograph Man cocked his head to one side as they spoke behind him. The rear of the fur hat gave no clue or reason to the couple as they sat in the shelter. Joseph chewed his sandwich carefully and swallowed.

A thought occurred to Joseph. Maybe he comes here every day just because we do. Maybe he listens to us talking every day. He likes to eavesdrop. Maybe he's lonely. Maybe he just likes the outdoors and takes artistic photographs for money. That's why he is out here from the spring to the winter, both on hot days and on days like this. He has to be. He has to. He has no choice.

Rebecca sat, eating in silence. Then, quietly, she turned to Joseph and said how, after all this time, they really should find out. It's been too long. We've been sitting here for months and he's here all the time, every day. I have to know, she said, and looked at Joseph imploringly. Go on, she said, ask him. Joseph frowned, and shook his head. Rebecca pursed her lips and half closed her eyes. Go on, she repeated, just for me. And she smiled. Joseph saw she had bits of food in her teeth.

Joseph sighed and nodded. Rebecca's smile widened. Joseph stood up, placed his plastic sandwich container in the rubbish bin next to the shelter, and walked over to the Photograph Man. In the ten paces before he got to the man, Joseph realised that he had no idea what he looked like. In all the times they had sat there, they had never seen his face.

As he stood next to the Photograph Man, Joseph breathed in and coughed gently. The Photograph Man did not move. A fresh burst of air rushed up from the sea, scattering a fine mist of water onto the lenses of Joseph's glasses. The man did not move. His gaze swept out before him to the horizon. Joseph followed the direction he assumed he was looking in. The sea far below in the harbour was dirty. Further out, the English Channel was choppy, flecked with white, and the sky was filled with grey clouds that Joseph saw meant more rain. He knew that much. Then the Photograph Man spoke.

"What can you hear?" he asked.

Joseph jumped at the voice. Low, clear and solid, it sounded like it rose from deep within a cave. After a pause when he flicked his gaze back to Rebecca, as she perched on the slats of the seat, Joseph replied in a shaken voice that he could hear nothing.

"You're wrong. Listen carefully," said the Photograph Man. "You can hear everything." He continued to look out at the sea and sky. Joseph still could not see his face. "You don't listen properly enough." He turned to look at Joseph and fixed his wet, pale blue eyes on the young man. Joseph's eyelids fluttered in surprise as the Photograph Man looked at him.

Joseph saw the man was old, and tired. His skin had been burnt in the sun and dried in the cold winter wind. Veins had flushed and broken under the wrinkled surface, and the dips and wells around his eyes held secrets. Joseph looked away, he looked at the ground, and he looked at the camera as it stood on its tripod.

"I can help you," said the Photograph Man. "It is very simple, and you will see and hear everything you need to help you understand." Joseph started to back away from the man, and looked to Rebecca. She was looking in the other direction, watching the trees as they moved.

"Come and look into the camera" said the Photograph Man, "and you will see what I see." He stepped back and pointed at the camera. The black and aged device was flecked with moisture. Joseph, unable to think of anything else, walked to the tripod. He saw the name in silver on the body of the camera. Rolliflex. The black casing was chipped and worn.

"Look into the viewfinder on the top," said the Photograph Man, "and I'll bring it into focus for you." Joseph stood and leaned over the camera to look down into the large viewfinder. As he did so, the Photograph Man gently touched the back of Joseph's hand.

Then, through the camera, in a crack of light and a boom of movement, Joseph saw the clouds in the sky shift and change, whirl and dance. The light ripped the clouds, the beams poured down and into and through, the sea caught the rays of the sun, held it to its heart, and threw them back skywards. The waves danced and flung themselves against one another in an orgy of movement and colours from pearl to green to bright blue, to black. The lights danced in the core of the clouds, the moon rose and fell, the stars came out and wheeled and hurtled across the shifting milky blackness. The universe swallowed itself and vomited its own internal magic outwards into the golden harvest of a new dawn, and the days revolved. The colours spun light into a thousand shades, the clouds screamed in pleasure, the sea boiled like a mirror of the heavens and a whirlpool of tides and sand and waves refracted. The sound of waters and air and rain and sea and moisture danced and chorused around the soil and the stones and the grass and the world. The euphoric babbling of waters trickling and running and gushing and surging, feeling alive in its own flow and movement and in glee at the possibilities of chance, then it slowed and ebbed and flowed back into itself, and calmed and weakened and began to sleep once more, and Joseph breathed out.

He looked at the Photograph Man and smiled.

"Thank you" said Joseph, his voice cracking. The Photograph Man returned the smile. His eyes crinkled at the corners, and he nodded. Joseph stepped away from the camera and walked slowly back to Rebecca.

She stood up as Joseph approached, and asked him what the Photograph Man had said. Did he say why he takes pictures here every day? Why does he bother? Joseph looked upwards to the sky and spoke.

"He takes photographs because everything is fleeting. Things come and go. But people don't see it," said Joseph. Rebecca squinted at his words, and tried to take his hand. Joseph did not see her move towards him. Instead, he turned away from Rebecca and started to walk back towards the office. Rebecca was left standing alone. The wind flicked cold rain at her exposed legs below the hem of her coat.

Rebecca shrugged and murmured under her breath. She followed Joseph back towards the office. She watched him as they walked. His head was tilted on one side. Rebecca pulled up the hood of her duffel coat and sighed. Ahead of her, Joseph listened as the wind breathed and the raindrops sang their way to the earth.

Behind them, the Photograph Man looked up at the sky, and pressed the shutter on the camera.

Born and bred in the county of Kent, UK, Bill balances his day job in the retail industry with a love of Sci-Fi and writing. He's a fan of all genres of film and books, and is currently writing a linked series of dystopian Sci-Fi short stories. He lives in Canterbury, Kent.

Feuhl Walomendêm: The End of the World

The decision was made the day my friend Toli came running straight through our inner yard and into my room, shaking and mumbling disjointedly about the end of the world. Even his presence in my family's house was something special that summer, since I'd been spending almost every afternoon at his place or at band practice with him and Dewa. My family wasn't really speaking to each other, and I still wasn't allowed to even go near Wëlë's boat. In the evenings I generally tried to stay out as long as possible, so I could minimise the time spent with my parents. I just couldn't look at them pretend-continuing their lives with all that saaht so plain on their faces. I couldn't even feel their saaht, which doesn't make me a monster, or numb, or callous. To me, everything felt unreal, as if I was trapped in a dream and couldn't wake up. Most of the time it wasn't even bad. Toli, Dewa and I spent a lot of time working on the few songs we had, and writing new ones, and in the evenings we usually sat on the old harbour wall, dangling our legs and watching the three-legged silhouettes of the salvage platforms out in the bay shift to new positions, and drinking cans of loi that I had liberated from my parents' cellar. I never got into trouble over that either. I don't think they even cared. Late at night I'd say goodbye to my friends at the back gate to Tendiva Park, where our ways parted, and slowly, slowly walk back home through the scent of the blossoming kalain bushes under a vast black sky sprinkled with uncountable stars. I'd tell myself that they were nothing but balls of fire a long way away, but that didn't take away any of their magic. Then I'd be reminded that somewhere up there, if you could call that "up", there was a desolate place called Itah, or Earth, from where our grandparents' grandparents had originated.

Anyway. I was telling the story of how we decided to lantsei, take my brother's boat out to the centre of the atoll and call up the Zeuhlacanth. And it starts right there in my room, with Toli babbling about the end of the world. It took him a couple of minutes to calm down enough to sound a little more comprehensible, but what he then told me made it very clear to me that it was indeed the end of our world and everything we had created, and the end of our band as well. Warrei? Why would Toli's parents want to move away? It didn't even make sense. After all everybody knew that only a few generations back our ancestors had come here from a terrible planet, ruined by war and pollution, in order to start a better life in harmony with nature. We were made to learn all of the songs by heart that told of their journey through space and the discovery of our beautiful homeworld and their vows to never repeat past mistakes. Why would anyone want to leave here?

#

Tendivahelblum: Soulmates

We picked Dewa up from the arche-electronics course she was taking over the summer. I'd teasingly called her a swot before, and sometimes a geek, but the truth is: I admired her skills and devotion endlessly. I still didn't know what to do with my life, and there she was, dedicating herself to becoming a top technician, so she'd land herself a job at the institute that studied salvaged tech brought in from the platforms and converted it to useful tools running on renewable energy.

Dewa was shocked at the news. We hadn't heard much of a justification from Toli's parents, but apparently their plans were set, and as teenagers we didn't really have a lot of say. And who would take our arguments seriously anyway? That our band was more important? To say nothing of our friendship.

Dewa and I had basically grown up together. Our mothers had taken turns looking after both of us, and so we'd more or less taken our first steps together, picked up new words from each other, and shared all our toys. Of course, since we were only a couple months apart, we'd also started school together and only started taking different courses when it became apparent that Dewa's main talent was electronics and technology, while I gravitated towards literature and culture and spent more and more time in the library, reading up on our history – but most of the time engrossed in one of our illustrated collections of mythology. This was also where I'd met Toli, who was studying languages and needed a lot of the same resources. You see, when our ancestors first settled here, that had a lot to do with leaving their old culture behind that was connected to the downfall of their civilisation and the ultimate destruction of Itah, and what they were yearning for and what most of all attracted them to this planet and the heritage of its Hurt Blum, or First People, was a language without all the cultural and ideological ballast they had accumulated over the millennia on their old world. You see, the language of the Hurt Blum is a pure language of the heart. It cannot be misunderstood, and it is tied to music. Of course we adopted many of its words over time, but in its pure form it cannot be spoken, it can only be expressed in song. So you see now how my interests overlapped with Toli's? Most of the time we were after the same books, so sooner or later we had to share a desk in the reading room and pass volumes back and forth between us.

I used to think I had a crush on Toli for a very long time, maybe years, and he must have felt similar at the time. We never even really talked about it. But I'd find him sitting in our favourite study spot with a cup of tea for me, just the way I liked it. And we'd leave each other little notes in the books we were reading whenever one of us was ill or didn't turn up at the usual time for whatever reasons. This went on for a very long time. Then one night Toli and I were sitting on a bench in Tendiva Park when we both saw a falling star. And somehow we ended up kissing. It was awkward, and we knocked our teeth together. We gave it a couple of tries, but it never felt right. Then we both realized that we were more like siblings with different parents than lovers of any kind, and so we made a secret pact and promised each other that we'd always be brother and sister and watch out for each other.

#

Lantsei: Running Away

It was easier than we thought. We spent a couple of days getting our stuff together and carrying it down to the harbour around midday when everyone was inside and the streets were empty of people. After several trips we were sure we'd packed everything we needed, including Toli's guitar and two mysterious plywood boxes that Dewa insisted on bringing. They were quite heavy, and the larger one was almost my height, but together we managed to get them on board my brother's boat.

The Siri was a small boat, like they use for leisure diving. Wëlë had insisted on naming it after me, even though everyone had pointed out that my name was already bad luck with its meaning of crying or tears. He'd just shrugged it off, and I'd been so proud at the time. We used to take the boat far out into the atoll, to the outskirts of the underwater ruins, and we'd put on our undêm-umennh that let us breathe underwater and go down to explore, making sure we never entered any of the mazes. You could technically stay underwater indefinitely wearing an undêm-umennh, but it would obviously be unwise to fall asleep down there with all the predator fish and andaksik lantsêm and whatnot, and once you entered any of the big complexes, you could easily get lost. That was also one of the reasons nobody ever went diving alone. What if you got trapped in a ruined passage or something with nobody there to help you back out? That wasn't what happened to Wëlë in the end, even though he went down by himself. I was still unable to talk about it, and I felt pretty uneasy on the boat, almost seasick, even though it was still moored at the dock. But the presence of my two best friends made me feel courageous, and after all we were setting out on an adventure.

Before we left, we spent a lazy afternoon at our favourite bathing beach, wading out through meadows of seaweed to watch the swarms of tiny jellyfish that acted like a single entity, parting and reforming when you passed your hand through them. It was nice to think of nothing much for a change. We buried each other up to our necks, shaping the sand into all kinds of monstrous creatures, then taking pictures of each other thus transformed. It turned into some sort of competition, which kept us occupied for hours. Finally, when the sunlight began to fade, we took one last swim to wash all of the caked sand off, then towelled ourselves dry and got back into our clothes. Toli had gathered some driftwood and lit a small fire that crackled and spat greenish sparks as we sat around it, staring into the flames. The black thoughts were already gathering again at the back of my mind, when Dewa said, "Tell us the story of the Zeuhlacanth again. We need to be prepared."

#

Zeuhlacanth

The Hurt Blum, who lived here long before us, didn't believe they were the First People. Their word for themselves was Blum, which only means "people". They believed that civilisations come and go like the tides, and that they were only one link in a long chain of Blum that lived here and interacted with the planet. Before their cities were swallowed by the ocean, did they find signs that there had been others there before them? Are there other, deeper ruins further out that we haven't found because the ocean has risen and we've only ever gone that deep? We don't even know what the Hurt Blum looked like. We only have some of the things they used, some surviving tech, salvaged from the ocean floor, then studied by our scientists and reproduced by reverse engineering. Or at least some of it, those things that they have managed to understand. Again, this is not my territory, it's Dewa's.

My territory is mythology, and the story of the Zeulacanth is my favourite myth of all. According to the Hurt Blum, some of whose songs we have found and translated as best we could, this world, these islands were produced by the ocean and will one day be swallowed by it again. Their word for ocean is "undêm", and the world is "Walomendêm". "Wol" means "from", and words used in compounds are sometimes transformed, so Walomendêm, the whole universe of the Hurt Blum, is "from the ocean". And like the ocean's own rhythm, life and death follow each other in succession. This includes the thriving and downfall of civilisations. When one vanishes, a new one rises out of the ocean. We seem to be the first people here originating from another world, but we found this world deserted, so we are the Blum now. And we look for traces from those who walked these islands and swam these oceans before us, and sometimes we find stories and bits of technology to translate, and we try to make sense of what we think we have found. Truth is, we might have got it all wrong. With nobody of the Hurt Blum here to guide us, we don't even know whether we're pronouncing their words right. We'll never have access to the way they saw the world. And it's not our world. So sometimes, when I think about it for a while, this really gives me the creeps.

However, the fragments of myth we have found and decoded tell us of one possible way to connect with this world, even as outsiders, and to hopefully understand it. Most people don't seem to take this seriously, but I wish, I hope, I want to believe it's true. You see, even though it might seem that the knowledge and the heritage, the etnah, of previous civilisations is forever lost to us, the Hurt Blum's myths tell of one creature, older than anything else, that has lived in this ocean since the beginning of time, and that remembers everything that has ever happened here. This creature is the Zeuhlacanth, the biggest fish you can imagine, and according to the Hurt Blum he lives in the deepest depths where the water turns black, in the Dun da de Sewolawen, the heart of silence.

#

Nansei Wainsaht: Ever Forward

I got up before dawn and snuck out of the house. As I passed my parents' closed bedroom door, I found myself hesitating for a second. Should I leave them a quick note? Just so they'd know that I was okay, maybe hinting that I'd be back if our experiment was successful? No, they would just get suspicious and maybe even go down to the harbour directly to see whether I'd taken the boat. If we didn't get a good head start, they'd probably sent somebody after us to bring us back in. We'd be a lot safer if they didn't know where I was. And with nobody really talking more than a mumbled "morning" or "night" and nothing much in between, I hoped they would assume I'd just got up earlier than usual and gone out for a walk or met up with my friends. Which was entirely true, wasn't it? If only they didn't think about the boat.

Toli and Dewa were already waiting for me at the dock. When I saw them I realised I was grinning as widely as they were. We were all impatient to set off on our adventure. And with all that pent-up energy it took us no time to unmoor the boat and get going. Soon we had passed the bright orange buoy that signified that we were beyond the range of the salvage platforms and entering the inner atoll. The perfect point to turn off the mekanïk engine and unfurl the solar sail. While we were all scrambling around on the roof of the tiny cabin, trying to keep everything under control while not knocking each other off the boat and into the water, the sun came up and made the still sea glow like fennh.

Instinctively we paused and just watched. Slowly, the world around us was coloured in and passed through a wide spectrum of different hues before settling in the familiar tones of our daylight walomendêm. A couple of bright specks were circling high above us, the only moving thing that we could see from where we were standing to the horizon.

Eventually we decided to let the Siri just float for a bit and have a proper breakfast before continuing to the goal we had set ourselves. Dewa climbed back down and handed us the bag with the thermos and baked goods she'd thought of bringing along. I was really grateful to have at least one person on the team who was capable of practical thought that early in the morning.

When she handed me the bag, a bangle around her wrist caught the sunlight and made me blink. And that was when one of the little bright specks stopped circling and swooped down.

When the seagull struck her, she stumbled back, lost her balance and landed spreadeagled on the deck. As the gull swooped back up, something small slid across the planks and dropped overboard with the tiniest flash. Only after checking on our friend, who seemed to be unhurt, and removing all shiny things as a precaution did we realize what had gone missing. Dewa's undêm-umennh had slid out of her pocket and fallen into the sea. They all had to be custom-made in order to fit properly, so they were expensive to replace. Making a new undêm-umennh took a lot of work hours.

"Oh no," Dewa whispered. "I'm so wurdah. My parents are going to kill me."

#

Lantsêm: Ghost

Without thinking twice I said, "I'll dive down and get it. It's so brightly coloured and the undêm is clear. If it's not too deep here, I might be able to find it."

Dewa took a deep breath, but before she could reply Toli said, "I'll go with you. Can you look after the boat and keep it still, Dewa?"

She nodded. "I know this kind of mekanïk like the back of my hand."

She danced back astern and already had her hand on the button for the anchor ray while Toli and I were still struggling out of our clothes.

I looked back at Dewa and saw her give us a thumbs-up. Then I nodded at Toli and we jumped.

The undêm was warmer than expected and so clear that you could see for long distances. I equalised the pressure in my ears and adjusted my undêm-umennh over my nose. After exchanging a glance and the hand signal "OK" with Toli, I kicked down at an acute angle, all the time trying to keep my friend in sight.

Swarms of shimmering silvery-blue fish exploded away from me while in the depths below I saw a vast shadow that seemed to be darkening as I was diving towards it. All of a sudden I entered a stratum of chilling cold water, and simultaneously the shadow got clearer and turned into interlocking bits of masonry before my eyes, all of it covered in intensely green algae that made the edges that had been softened by the undêm appear fuzzier still.

Something like a vice closed around my throat and I felt as if the cold and blackness was trying to swallow me. Impulsively I gasped and got water in my airway. I coughed and flailed and struggled upward. It took forever without fins but eventually I broke through the surface and ripped off my undêm-umennh. My eyes were streaming and all I could focus on was trying to catch my breath. Suddenly I felt Toli catch me and slowly, carefully guide me back to the ladder in the stern of the boat. He helped me up and for a while I just lay on the deck with my eyes closed and spluttered until my breathing relaxed.

After a while I sat up and felt Toli and Dewa each put an arm around my shoulders.

"Are you okay?" Toli said. "What happened?"

"I don't know. I choked", I said. Then I took a deep breath.

"No. Actually... I thought that the lantsêm that got Wëlë was coming for me."

#

Wëlë

My brother had built the boat himself. He'd then invested a lot of time and effort in painting it green and decorating the sides with images of mythological creatures rendered in meticulous detail. There were all sorts of water sprites and ocean deities from both Itah and Kobaïa. Towards the bow, a painted woman with seaweed hair and tentacles held a big conch in her hands with the inscription "Siri". My name and the name my brother had given the boat. He always said that with all those spirits watching over it, it would never capsize or sink. He used to take it far out into the bay on weekends and stay out overnight. Nobody asked him whether he spent all that time diving or fishing or sunbathing or just getting drunk on deck. He had always been the quiet type, most happy when he could retreat to his own little world, and he seemed to be safe, so we never questioned any of it. Sometimes he would take me out on a tour of the harbour or to one of my favourite diving spots, and those trips were still among my favourite memories. Other times, when he went out by himself, he would bring me back little souvenirs. Seashells, the brittle skeletons of zanka starfish, and once a couple of tiny glazed figurines that I was pretty sure he'd salvaged from a sunken shipwreck or one of the underwater ruins of the Hurt Blum. I kept them on my dresser and didn't ask him about their origin.

One day Wëlë stayed out far longer than usual. I could tell that my parents were starting to get worried, because my mother kept cleaning the same spots over and over again, and my father smoked a lot of cigarettes outside our front door, where he could keep an eye on the road. Nobody told me to go to bed either. So I climbed up on the roof (which wasn't as soia as it sounds; unlike the big stone buildings of the Hurt Blum, all of our houses are one-story structures) and looked at the stars. I'm always on the lookout for shooting stars, but that night I didn't spot any. Instead, I tried to find all the constellations I'm familiar with, and then I turned to making up new ones.

I was getting kind of drowsy halfway through inventing a story about a celestial guinea pig that had somehow got a bit out of control, when I heard raised voices downstairs. The tone made me uneasy, so I lay flat on the roof and looked over the edge. I saw the backdoor of the kitchen open and Wëlë stumble through into the inner yard. He walked directly across toward his room, but he was moving like a puppet, or a sleepwalker. Even though it was dark, I could see that his face was very pale, and his eyes looked straight ahead but didn't seem to register anything. He opened the door to his room, still moving mechanically, and disappeared inside. My parents both went after him, and I could hear mumbling, intense and concerned. Then, louder, "Wëlë, Wëlë! What is it? Wake up!" Suddenly I was very afraid.

I slipped back down through the skylight as fast as I could, and I remember that my heart felt as if it was trying to climb up my throat. Just before I reached Wëlë's door, my father ran outside and said, "I'm fetching the doctor. Don't go in, please." I turned my head, and the last thing I saw before my mother brusquely closed the door on me with a look of worry and fear on her face was my brother lying on the bed, prostrate as a corpse, and there were black tentacles coming out of his eyes, nose and mouth, insubstantial like smoke, snaking towards the ceiling. In the dim light, they looked exactly like squid ink dissolving in seawater.

In the language of the Hurt Blum the word for what we call squid was andaksik lantsêm. Something like ghosts that move with the current, or maybe like the current.

That one terrifying moment, that glimpse through the door, was the last time I ever saw my brother's face. When they carried him out the next morning, his body was wrapped in a sheet. He was incinerated, and his ashes were scattered in the sea. I wish I could at least have said goodbye.

#

Lêmworitstêm Helolesz: Dark Descent

"Sorry for being so silly", I said. "I know nothing can happen to me when I'm wearing my undêm-umennh. There was no reason to panic."

"No, it's okay. My dad says it happens to the best divers sometimes", Dewa said. "Sucks, though. Good thing Toli was there to watch out for you."

"It's me who should be sorry", she continued after a pause. "You went down because of me, so I feel responsible."

"Oh, shut it!" I said and immediately broke off. I hadn't wanted it to sound harsh.

"Sorry. I mean... It's not your fault, and you know that. And if we just sit here and discuss who's to blame – ferh, even if we end up agreeing on somebody to blame – that won't help us get your undêm-umennh back. So..." I fell silent. I hadn't thought much further than that. Luckily Toli came to my help.

"No, but I saw it! I saw your undêm-umennh, Dewa. I was just about to sign to Siri that I'd found it, and it wasn't even that far down – when I turned around and saw only a mass of bubbles where she was already kicking back up. Um... Siri, if you don't feel well about going back down, I totally understand. I'll go alone, too. It's not that far."

"No. Really, I have to go back down, or I'll never do it. And I love diving, so I must. Besides... I'll never let anyone who is important to me dive alone, ever again. I won't see anything happen to you!"

Toli smiled. "Okay. And I'll watch out for you in return. Tell me when you're ready. You won't believe where the undêm-umennh landed!"

This time it was much easier, because I knew what was coming. I went down at a much slower pace and paid more attention to my surroundings – and to Toli, who was keeping pace with me, never more than an arm-length or two away, his dreads streaming out behind him like the tendrils of an anemone. There was the layer of colder water, there were the crumbling walls covered in sea moss and algae...

And just a bit further than I'd ventured last time, suddenly a vast statue came into view out of the darkness, taller than both of us together and half its face eroded away, so that it was impossible to say what features it might have possessed when it was still above water. It had lots of arms, some of which still had hands or hand-like appendages attached – and in one of those there was Dewa's undêm-umennh, gleaming up at us. I looked over at Toli, hoping that he'd notice my smile. As if a god or goddess of the sea had caught it and kept it safe for us!

#

Zankam Kalkulahem: Navigating

Finally we got around to having breakfast, and this time we felt we had worked hard to earn it. I don't think that any cup of lukewarm tea will ever taste as good as the one Dewa passed me as soon as Toli and I were back on deck. She had also brought some udea pastries, which we were already busy munching while she threaded a piece of string through a loop on her undêm-umennh and slipped it over her head. We let the sun dry our hair, and I remembered my grandfather telling me of the ocean on Itah that his own grandparents had seen, even though in their day you couldn't swim in it anymore. They had told him that it was very salty, much saltier than the undêm here, so that evaporating seawater would leave white rings of salt on your clothes and skin, which would feel dry and itchy. It felt weird to imagine this.

Later Dewa took out her kompass and started calculating. Toli and I would then adjust the solar sail according to her specifications while she took over the rest of the instruments. Once again I found myself wondering what I'd do without her, and because of the weird mood I was still in with Wëlë's wurdah still echoing in my mind, I went down and squeezed into the tiny cabin with her and all the equipment we'd brought and told her. To my surprise, she didn't laugh it off but hugged me tight and then looked into my eyes and said, "You don't know what that means to me right now." I must have given her a questioning look in return, or maybe she was just in the mood to talk about it, because she went on, "You know my father and how he never really gives me praise or anything? Well, I thought that that would change when I enrolled in this summer programme on arche-electronics. I mean, I love doing this, and I hope that it will help me get into a better school one day – but it's as if nothing is ever good enough for my father. I constantly give my all and I get no recognition. Sometimes I think I should just stop bothering. My assignments are getting harder and harder, and whenever I mess up and something ends up malfunctioning or not even working at all, that's all he seems to remember, never the good stuff. I don't even get enough sleep anymore."

I hugged her again, at a loss for words. I'd noticed that Dewa seemed quiet lately, but now that she was finally opening up again, I didn't know how to react. "I think you're very talented," I said. "I could never do the things you're doing. And you will be amazing one day, I know that. I hope he'll see it too." I felt very awkward.

Dewa gave me a brief smile. "Thanks. You know... While I'm learning something new, it always feels like very hard work. Especially as long as things are not going the way they should. But I'm curious about new stuff and how it works, so I keep trying. And suddenly I've done something I couldn't do before, and that's when I look back and realize how far I've come. It's like... You don't see the way while you're walking, but once you reach higher ground, you can look back and you see all the progress you've made." She looked down and laughed. "But that's probably silly."

"No, I don't think it's silly at all. It makes a lot of sense to me, and I hope I'll get to a point where I can see that too."

#

Mêm da Tendi: In the Centre

Near the centre of the atoll there was a group of tiny islands, nothing more than rocks poking out of the undêm for the seagulls to sit on. There were no underwater ruins in that area, and nobody came out here to dive either, even though the rocky slopes were covered in multi-coloured coral and teeming with fish and bizarre-looking sea slugs. We soon discovered several possible reasons for this. First we noticed that steering got more and more difficult. There seemed to be strong and unpredictable currents around these islands. Then Dewa called out to us, "Look at this! The magnëtik around here is going crazy!" It was true: the kompass needle was spinning fast, occasionally changing direction. The boat's instruments couldn't agree on anything; it looked as if reality outside the Siri was constantly changing. But to our eyes, everything looked alright.

"I think we should head for this bigger island over there", Dewa said. "See which one I mean? The one that looks like a spaceship from here!"

We screwed up our eyes against the sun, and really, there it was. In the heat the air above the horizon was rippling, creating the illusion that one of the islands was floating just above the water, warped into something like a lentil shape by merging with its own reflection. We grinned and nodded and held tight onto the mast and the low metal railings that Wëlë had affixed all along the edges of the cabin roof.

The island was perfect. We steered the boat into a tiny inlet and moored it to a tree. Dewa checked her notes again and said that even though we weren't in the actual centre of the lagoon, the magnëtik readings were very interesting, and we could definitely use them in our favour. By now I couldn't contain my curiosity any longer. "Have you made new modifications to your klawiehr?" It wasn't easy to manoeuvre the bulky plywood boxes through the cabin door, but together we made it. "No", Dewa said. "I had to leave it at home altogether. It wouldn't have fit anymore. I'll have to improvise." Then she gave me a sneaky smile. "Help me set up the new apparatus, and you'll see what it does. Toli has brought some loi which may just be cool enough to drink when we're done."

#

Elektrïk Andaksik: Electricity

I helped Dewa carry the boxes to the most elevated part of our little island, then assemble the contents according to her instructions. When we were done, I was looking at what was basically a tightly wound copper coil, that much I could tell, wrapped around some sort of pole that was almost my height. On top of that we had affixed a ring-shaped secondary coil, covered in a thick layer of transparent varnish, but not connected it to the primary. I swear, even as we unpacked the parts from their nests of straw, I could feel a weird vibration emanating from them.

Dewa took some time meticulously checking everything and reconnecting some wires, constantly mumbling something about "capacitors" and "inductors" and a "spark gap", which all sounded like Alienese to me. Suddenly there was a loud humming and a bright blue spark, which made her gasp and jump back. Then she threw a switch and the humming stopped. "Good thing I added a disconnector," she said. Then her eyes widened. "Zessmet! This can't be happening! Oh, this is amazing! It works, it really works!" By now she was jumping up and down, shouting and laughing wildly.

Toli joined us on the hilltop just as I was prying an explanation from her. From allusions in the books of Kobaïan mythology and from our own interpretations of some of the illustrations we had concluded that we'd need a lot of electricity for our experiment, and Dewa had successfully built various kinds of generators before, but for her to be so thrilled and astonished, something unforeseen and miraculous must have happened.

"Toli, Siri – don't touch the coils", was the first intelligible thing she said when she had stopped laughing. "I mean, it's okay now, but I'm not even sure how long my disconnector switch will work. You see... I can't even quite believe it myself, but it must..." She took a deep breath. "Um, remember how all the instruments started misbehaving around here? There must be a moving magnëtik field around this group of islands. Well, usually a generator works like this: you spin a coil of wire inside a magnëtik field, and the constantly changing field inside the coil results in an elektrïk current flowing in the wire. Instead of the energy coming from a battery it comes from the magnëtik field. But with the field itself already moving, and I didn't know that this could occur in nature, we don't even have to spin the wire! This thing... As long as it holds together and doesn't short out, it generates its own elektrïk andaksik!"

"But...we can't be the first ones to find out about this", Toli said. "If such a thing is possible, why isn't it already in use? Even the Hurt Blum used energy generated by wind and water and zanka and stored it in batteries. We know that. The ones we use are retro-engineered, modified versions of theirs."

"I... don't know", Dewa said. "You probably have a point. But I do believe that we can use this. If we're going to succeed in calling the Zeuhlacanth, this is just the place for it, I know it. Let's do this, please? I promise to keep an eye on the generator at all times. If anything happens that we don't want to happen, I'll disconnect the wires immediately."

#

Doia Doia: Stay

After all this excitement we felt it was best to take a break and have a loi down by the sea before conducting our big experiment. "Not too long a break", Dewa warned, but before she could start on another lesson in basic electronics, Toli said, "Yes, mum" and handed her a cold bottle of loi.

We dangled our feet in the undêm and for a while nobody said anything. I drummed a rhythm on my knees until I caught a look from Dewa that made me stop. I followed her gaze over to Toli, who was clinking his bottle against his teeth while staring into the distance.

"You okay?" I was sitting closer to Toli, so I nudged him in the ribs.

"What? Yeah, I'm sorry, I just got kind of distracted. The whole emigration thing again. I've decided I'm not going."

"What do you mean you're not going? Have you talked to your parents about this?"

"Er, not exactly. The thing is... They never asked me! They just presented me with a decision they had already made without me. I mean, I kind of understand their motivation. They have this really cool opportunity to go and work on a space station. Not indefinitely, that's not it. They said they'd come back eventually with new medical and scientific knowledge – which may be problematic in itself. I mean obviously some people will always frown upon that, especially those who believe that it was so-called scientific progress which led our ancestors' neglect and eventual destruction of Itah. And this is still a young colony. There's so much we don't know yet about this place, and if we interfere with it too much, we might not get another chance. So yeah, I'd rather stay and finish school here and explore Kobaïa than move away and learn whatever that's nothing to do with this world, this walomêndem. And I want to stay with my friends, with you. And besides... nowhere else could feel like home."

He stopped and drained his loi, then twirled the empty bottle in his hands.

"They just don't take me seriously", he added after a bit. "They never ask me what I want. So if it turns out that I want something else, something they haven't planned for me, they expect me to just go along? Well, fuck that. If they're happy there, they should go. But they shouldn't expect me to be happy there, like on order. I'm staying. And I'll find a way. I'm old enough."

"Whatever happens, I'll always be on your side. If there's anything I can do to help, I will do it", I said. "You know what, if your parents should have a problem with your decision, just come over to ours. Maybe my folks need something to shake them up, to give them something to do. And something new to think about. And..." I swallowed. This was hard – but it felt like the right thing to say. "...there's always Wëlë's room."

Toli hugged me wordlessly, and Dewa looked away, but I could see that she was smiling. While I was concentrating on keeping the tears down, she filled our empty bottles with seawater and played them like a xylophone.

#

Malawelekaahm: Incantation

Switched on, Dewa's generator was awesome. The air felt like it does before a storm, and bright lightning bolts were shooting out of the top coil, accompanied by the buzzing noise we'd already heard before. At first it was kind of spooky, especially when I saw one of the elektrïk arcs jump over and touch Toli, who gave a shout that sounded more like surprise than pain, but still gave me a bit of a shock.

"Whoa! It's alright, I'm fine – but I could feel it! I could feel the elektrïk andaksik. Maybe we'd better keep a bit of a distance."

It's not easy to form something like a wide circle when you're only three people. Maybe we were forming a wonky triangle. Maybe that's why everything happened just the way it happened. Maybe I don't even want to know.

We took our positions around the sparking, humming coil. In some of the books Toli and I had been translating there were illustrations showing indistinct figures in long robes standing around what reminded us of giant lightning rods. So we figured that the Zeuhlacanth was attracted by high frequency elektrïk andaksik. In addition – because the more theatrical the ritual, the better the outcome, right? – we had improvised the best Malawelekaahm that we could come up with, cobbled together from bits and pieces we'd found in the book, reformulated so it would sound like a genuine invocation. At least to us it did.

We started chanting.

Donda! Donda! Donda! Zeuhlacanth!

Wïwï Dondaï wïwï Dondaï

Wïwï Dondaï wïwï Dondaï

Wï wï Ëss Ëss wï wï Ëss Ëss wï wï Ëss Ëss wï wï Ëss

Wï wï Ëss Ëss wï wï Ëss Ëss wï wï Ëss Ëss wï wï Ëss

I looked up and noticed for the first time that the sky was darkening. It did feel like an approaching storm, and the excitement of the moment and the lightning bolts from the coil – small but many, and all of them the result of my friend's work – made everything feel so intense... I realized that for the first time in months, I was feeling actually alive, and very much so. I remember thinking: it's all like a dream, but I've been walking through a dream for so long now, it's actually more like finally waking up.

Still, the sea remained calm as before. The Zeuhlacanth didn't come.

#

Zeuhl: Celestial Music

When nothing happened, the three of us dispersed. Toli took up his guitar and started to play the song he'd been working on for a while now. I looked up because I recognized the melody he'd been practising, but what he had done with it gave me chills. It was based on some snippets of a traditional song that he had found in an old book, entitled Nansei Nansei Nansei Loff, which we took to mean Bound To Lose. Toli had played around with the melody as well as the lyrics, slowed everything down and transposed it so that the light-hearted tune was transformed into a heart-rendingly sad song, questioning the whole walomêndem the original had so casually described. And then the most amazing thing happened.

Toli took another step forward, which brought him closer to the randomly buzzing and crackling coil. Suddenly the buzzing changed pitch and played along. The thing was amplifying Toli's zunh, all the while giving off purplish-white lightning sparks in rhythm. Something was reacting, playing with the current – possibly by manipulating the magnetic field.

After a moment of paralysis, I ran to get my cajón. Dewa was already setting up the water-filled bottles again, which she had tuned to Toli's guitar.

At first we were improvising over a solo that Toli was playing, and then I wasn't thinking about playing at all anymore. It was as if the rhythm was playing me rather than the other way round. The sky had turned dark as if during an eclipse, and the waves clashing against the rocks provided a nice background ambient noise.

We all started to sing new verses, in words that occurred to us naturally, and then I realized that we were singing straight from our hearts, in real Kobaïan.

Everything that we hadn't given voice to in so long was in there: Toli's frustration at not having any say in his parents' decision to leave, his fear of having to leave his friends behind, and the fear of being somewhere new, out there in space, unconnected to the world he called his home. Dewa's insecurity, and her passion for what she was doing and constantly learning to do better, and her conviction that she wasn't doing it to appease her father – she was doing it because it was what she loved. Her pride in her work and her joy in getting to share and enjoy it with us. My loss and my saaht that I had been carrying around inside me for so long now, pent up, an ever-increasing pressure without any outlet, because I just hadn't known what to do with it. Now, suddenly, after all this time, my eyes were streaming with tears, and I didn't care, because the only two people who were there to see it were my best friends in all of this walomendêm, and I loved them, and it was okay. But it was not! I wanted my brother back, and it wasn't going to happen. I threw my head back and sang my protest and my anger at the top of my voice.

In that moment we were playing actual zeuhl.

And that was when the waters parted and the Zeuhlacanth appeared.

#

Êmgalai: Apocalypse

The first thing we noticed was a change in the atmosphere. A sudden surge in the elektrïk andaksik made our hair stand on end. Then an area of undêm close to the island started to give off a purplish-white glow, echoing the lightning filaments from the coil, pulsing and seemingly approaching. When the glow had reached the place where the water turned dark, the surface started to ripple, and a giant head appeared, saltwater dripping off its many barbels.

It was like a dream, only I knew it was not because I could feel my palms against the tapa of my cajón and the charged air against my skin. We never even stopped playing as the Zeuhlacanth circled the island we were standing on, the colours reflected by its scales constantly changing.

As I was watching the giant fish, the whole walomendêm seemed to change in front of my eyes. I could see everything much more clearly. We had come here to prevent the end of our world. Since we had started out, a lot of things had happened, which had transformed us and brought us closer to the goal we wanted to achieve. And we were still on the right track. Apocalypse not only meant an ending or a destruction, it also signified a revelation. And the same thing was happening to my perception of the music we were playing. Viewed from this other side, it wasn't at all about sadness and fear and longing anymore. "Nansei" could mean "always" or "forever", but also "never" – depending on how it was used. Yes, we were always going to lose something, we would always have to let something go. But if we continued on our way without fear, standing up for the things and the people we loved, we would win. Because if you do something with all your heart, you will succeed at it. That's what the Zeuhlacanth seemed to show us.

Then I noticed that I was cold all of a sudden. The air had a strange tang to it, like overheated metal. Beside me, the coil was crackling and shooting out huge sparks straight upwards. I looked up and saw a vortex forming in the black clouds directly above us, which seemed to mirror the swimming motion of the Zeuhlacanth, only going in the opposite direction. In the middle of this vortex, a hole seemed to be opening up, and I screamed when I saw black smoky tentacles snaking out.

#

Zessï din lidente: Masters of our Fate

My scream stopped the music. Both my friends looked at me, then up at the tentacular mass of darkness reaching down through the hole in the clouds. Then things happened very fast. Toli dropped his guitar – which made me wince, even in the face of unspeakable danger – and dived for the disconnector switch. I could hear the clack, but nothing changed, and the crack in the sky was widening by the second.

"It doesn't work!" Toli shouted through the din.

Of course it doesn't work!" Dewa answered as she and I came running to help. "The Zeuhlacanth is controlling the andaksik! Or maybe... they are."

Wide-eyed, Dewa and I looked at each other, then kicked against the upright coil as if on cue. With a thundering crack, the generator fell apart, and we were catapulted in the opposite direction. I hit my head on something hard, but immediately scrambled to my feet and looked around, panicked, disoriented.

Everything was dark. The fish had disappeared, but the sky looked just as black and empty as the undêm that surrounded us. Stumbling around in the darkness, I called for my friends, and we found each other and confirmed that we were okay, all of us. Shaken and bruised, yes, but nothing more severe. Almost wordlessly we gathered our instruments, or what was left of them, and made for the boat. Whatever had happened on that piece of rock, on one thing we could all agree: We would not repeat this.

On our way back we noticed a pale light appear on the horizon and gradually get stronger. To us it seemed like a second dawn, maybe even the beginning of a new world. As we passed the buoy that marked the edge of the underwater ruins of the Hurt Blum, we exchanged a glance that told me I wasn't alone in feeling a strange chill thinking about them. If we hadn't been so lucky, who knows, we could have ended up like them, consigned our whole civilisation to the ocean floor.

Watching this weird, displaced sunrise, the three of us felt very much a part of this walomêndem, these stones, this undêm, our planet, our home. And right there and then, on the boat, I knew that it was no use wishing for my lost brother back. I had a brother and a sister, and they were right there with me. Together we had set out looking for answers, and we had got more that we had gambled for. But together we had also managed to come back out of this alive and well. If we stuck together – wasn't that the message of the Zeuhlacanth? – we'd go far yet. And that's how we named our band, there in the silence at the beginning of our new world, after the home of the Zeuhlacanth.

We are Dun da de Sewolawen.

Christina taught herself to read at the age of three and has never really stopped since. She reads everything from science fiction to cereal boxes, some of which ends up influencing her own stories.

Christina lives in Graz, Austria, where she is currently working on her doctoral thesis on China Miéville’s fiction, and spending her free time touring alien event sites. She has written articles for Alluvium and Infinite Earths, published short stories in

The Big Click and Visionarium as well as several anthologies, and contributed recordings of horror stories to the NoSleep Podcast. Once she conducted a successful spring faerie exorcism via Twitter.

How long is a piece of string? In my case, it's about eighty-five thousand kilometres. That's the distance from the Anchor in Heinlein all the way up to the Lentil, that impossibly huge lozenge of frozen comet that flies like a giant's kite on a piece of spiderweb over the lunar equator.

I was there when the tether first made moonfall, spun out from Partway Station in twenty-four barrel-thick lines, each one three times as strong as it needed to be. For every kilometre that went down towards the Moon, another kilometre reached up towards faraway Earth. In those days, the gondolas that carried the work-crews up the wire from the grey lunar surface to the black empty sky were little more than steel cages with plastic seats. You strapped in and said your prayers and tried not to look at the ground falling away under you.

If you were lucky you made it up to the top of your tether. A few crews didn't make it in the years I was out there. If your gondola failed before you reached Partway, the Moon would reclaim it with such excruciating slowness that you'd have plenty of time to contemplate the crater you'd make in the bright regolith below. If you made it past Partway before the brakes failed or the gondola broke up, you'd go accelerating up the wire until you hit something or were thrown out into space on a flat trajectory all the way to Earth. Partway Station hung in geosynchronous orbit, and both ways out on the wire were down.

It was while I was working on Tether Fifteen that my granddaughter, Eden, came to tell me my wife was dying. Even in those days Partway was pressurised and working its way up to being the Moon's main spaceport, ferrying people up and down the wire to Heinlein, opening up the Moon to anyone and everyone who thought they might want to get rich in the HeeThree mines, or disappear into the dark warrens of Bradbury or L-City.

After Penny died, I felt like doing some disappearing myself. I took some of the shore leave I was owed and hung out in some of Heinlein's blackest pits. Maybe the least rat-infested was a bar on one of the lower levels called "The Harsh Mistress". I had an app I'd downloaded that could simulate drunkenness, and I liked to sit at the bar with a paper cup of rotgut in my hand, artificially hammered out of my skull.

In those days the bar was owned by the Drew sisters, real beauties, tough as tank-grown steak and always ready to listen to a sob-story if the customer kept buying drinks.

"I should've stayed with her," I told Carlotta, who happened to be behind the bar that night. "I didn't have any business doing this." I looked down at my robot body in disgust. I was big, strong, practically immortal. "Sometimes I'd swap it all if I could just go back and make a different decision."

Carlotta looked interested. She moved closer. "You must have known it was going to happen. You'd go on and she'd... you know..."

"I thought she'd change her mind and do it too. Right up to the end I thought she'd change her mind." But she wouldn't. She didn't believe in any of it. She said her husband had died and I was just some kind of copy. Not him. Not really."

When I had my mind uploaded into my new, robot body, I cried. The pain of arthritic joints was gone, the wool that had clouded my thoughts for so long was gone, the weakness of wasted muscles, the sagging skin, the dimming eyesight... All gone. I was young and strong, vigorous and clear-headed. I cried because until all that pain and feebleness had vanished, I hadn't realised just how old and beat up I really was.

I wanted Penny to share it with me, have her mind uploaded too, become young again and live forever. With me. I still loved her so much. But she stayed behind and let me go on alone.

"Thing is," I told Carlotta. "I had a dream."

"Sure. Everybody's got dreams."

My dream was to fly to the stars. And I was making it come true. That's why I was up there doing grunt work on the tether. Once they flew the Lentil in and attached it, they'd start building Alltheway Station on the Moonward side. The biggest structure ever assembled in space. One day, it would be as big as Heinlein itself, with just as many cubic metres of habitat under pressure. On the Earthward side, though, they were going to build the Starseeker, humanity's very first, honest-to-goodness starship. It was going be crewed entirely by uploads and AIs, three hundred immortal explorers on a journey that might take centuries, travelling from one candidate world to another, looking for the ideal exoplanet for Earth's first colony.

Uploads are perfect for a trip like that. Centuries don't matter. We don't need air, or water, or plumbing. And, because you've got to be filthy rich to be uploaded in the first place, we're a self-selected group of highly-educated, self-motivated go-getters. But part of the deal was that we work for pin-money for decades building the tether and building the ship to earn our place on the crew. It weeded out the dilettantes. You've got to really want to go to spend so many years out there on the wire, or down below in a sink-hole like Heinlein. Even back when Penny died, it was only the hardcore dreamers that were left.

People like me.

I got into a fight at The Harsh Mistress that night as I recall. Heinlein was a pretty lawless place at the time. The UN Permanent Force hadn't taken over the policing of the town yet and the only law was company security and they didn't give a damn if anyone got mugged or raped, as long as it wasn't on company premises. So you kept your eyes open and stayed out of trouble.

I was too deep in my own sorrows that night to see what was building. The first it registered with me was that some guy started shouting. I roused myself in time to see a bald guy with gang tattoos being hit across the face with a baseball bat. I recognised him as the Mistress's bouncer. Then I realised there were two other guys with the batsman and one of them was hugging Carlotta but not in a friendly way. She was fighting like a wildcat but her admirer was a tough SOB. The kind you get a lot of out here.

"Hey!" I shouted and climbed off my stool. I wasn't a fighter. I was a businessman. At the time of my death I'd been seventy-eight. But since I died, I stood two-and-a-half metres tall and weighed two hundred kilos. I had arms that could bend steel bars and a skin so tough you could shoot bullets at it with no permanent damage.

"Get lost, zombie," the guy holding Carlotta said. "This is none of your business. Just finish your drink and keep out of it."

"Put her down," I said, "and I'll let you walk out of here alive." I wasn't used to talking tough and I probably went a bit over the top.

"What's it got to do with you, zombie?" the batsman asked. He sounded genuinely offended that I had butted in.

I ignored him. "I said, put her down."

The batsman flew at me, fast and high and swung the bat at my head. Drunk and clumsy, I didn't come close to blocking the blow and the bat connected with my skull, knocking me right off my feet. Of course, it was the Moon, so I settled pretty slowly to the ground. Also, it's only the dumbest upload who keeps their brainbox in their head. Mine was deep in my chest where it had the maximum thickness of nano-goop flesh to protect it. The only real effect of the blow was to remind me that I should maybe turn off my inebriation app and give the matter some sober reflection.

I got to my feet. Grabbed the batsman, took away his bat and threw him at a wall. Then I stomped over to the other two, knocked one aside with a swift back-hander that nearly took his head off, and faced the guy holding Carlotta.

He looked seriously scared, as well he might, but he had the presence of mind to pull out a knife and hold it to Carlotta's throat.

"Back off!" he yelled. "I'll let her go, but you just back off, do you hear?"

I grinned at him, not for melodramatic effect or anything but because I'd seen Carlotta pulling a small pistol out of her skirts. She reached behind her and shot him in the ass, just like that.

He was screaming and bleeding a lot when I threw him and his two buddies out into the street. By the time I got back inside, Carlotta had adjusted her wardrobe and was as cool as ever.

"Drinks are on the house," she told me. Then she looked down at her employee who was still on the floor. "And if you ever need a job, I'm always on the lookout for a good bouncer."

#

When you get uploaded, you have two choices. You can opt to live in one of the brain bins – big computers that house hundreds or thousands of other uploads in massive virtual worlds – or you can be put inside a robot and stay out here in the real world. Some of the brain bins have a bad reputation. Not the kind of place you'd like to spend eternity. Some of them are very exclusive, like Omega Point, an invitation-only club for the wealthiest transhumans. I'd been rich, but not that rich. So I picked embodiment. Like I said, I had a dream, and it didn't involve sitting in a box pretending to climb Everest for the next thousand years. I was going to the stars.

You get used to a robot body. Especially one like mine. It's basically a load of nano-paste that will auto-configure itself into human form. Well, more-or-less human. Driving it all is the brainbox, a little quantum computer that houses your essence, your mind, everything that makes you who you are. You'll notice I didn't say 'soul'. The religious types back on Earth get pretty wound up about uploads and the idea that modern science can keep a soul from flying to Heaven, or Hell. They've trashed a couple of brain bins over the years and made it uncomfortable for people like me. Moving into space is the natural way to go for an upload. Even some of the brain bins are building themselves orbital platforms and moving off-world.

You don't get used to being not quite human, though. The idea that a woman will never again look at you with desire, that you will never again feel a tender touch against your skin, that the withdrawal and distrust you see in almost every human face has replaced openness and approach forever. So you turn down your emotional responses – because you can do that now – you turn off your sexual urges, but most of all, you stay away from living people.

#

Share The New Accelerator

They flew the Lentil in right on schedule. Orbital dynamics runs like clockwork – and then some. For that great slab of ice, it was the end of a twelve year journey. A whole comet, rubble and ice, had been put inside a tough polymer bag. They'd nudged its orbit out of shape with a bunch of ion drives and then, while it was being warmed by the sun at the aphelion of its solar flypast, had spun it up so fast it flattened into a gigantic plate, two kilometres across.

We'd been watching it approach for months, a tiny star that eventually grew into a disc that blocked out the whole sky. I felt a visceral pang of loss the day it occluded the Earth. I'd grown used to seeing that little blue marble hanging up there like the promise of home all those years and its absence was a shock. For all our billion-dollar technical sophistication, my fellow uploads and I hung on the wire like anxious apes staring up at the space where our homeworld should have been in awed silence.

Everything about space engineering is massive these days. The tether was so big it dwarfed the sky bridges of Earth, Partway Station, that tiny bead of light far above me, was the biggest habitable structure ever built in orbit. Yet already they were building a new spaceport atop the Florida Spacebridge that would be twice its size and Titan Engineering had plans for an orbital refinery way out around Saturn that would eclipse them both. The expansion into space had created boom times for Earth and hardly an economy on the planet wasn't running at full steam to service the vast new mining sector and turn its products into consumables.

It was an age of visionaries, an age of new frontiers, bold enterprises and expanded horizons. The sky, at last, really was the limit. And Alltheway Station was the biggest, most exciting project of them all. A space habitat the size of a city, flying out there on the end of the tether like a humongous bucket swung around on an unimaginably long string. People living on the Moonward side would have their own gravity, courtesy of centripetal force, and ships on the Earthward side would get the boost of being flung out into space when they undocked. One of those ships would be the Starseeker. And I was going to be riding her all the way to the stars.

Catching the Lentil was a tricky business and damned hard work. Its trajectory brought it near the end of the tether only briefly, its velocity almost matching ours for just a short while. In that window of opportunity, rocket engines mounted all around its great circumference and the dozen space-tugs that were grappled to it, had to slow it down and bring it into perfect alignment with our crews so we could fix the twenty-four tethers to their allocated anchor-points already attached to Moonward side. Calculations showed that, even if we only got twenty tethers hooked up on that first attempt, the Lentil would stay put and not tear itself loose. As it was, we got nineteen attached within the time allowed and then watched and prayed as the Lentil slowly swung down and then lifted away from the Moon, seeking a higher orbit that would better suit its tiny relative speed, stretching the tether to breaking point, stretching my nerves with it.

But the tether held, thanks to the ages-old engineering practice of adding big margins. I felt it heave under me, felt the subsonic twang as that stupendously long bundle of carbon nanotubes took the strain. We all hunkered down in our safety cages and hung on for our lives as the hour-long oscillations ran up and down the wire. But the tugs and the weight of the moon it was now pulling, finally managed to slow the great orbiting mass of ice to the required speed and we grabbed up our tools again and raced to get the last five strands of the tether attached. What with the continuing vibrations in the wire and the long upwards surge as the Lentil, having arced down towards the lunar surface, rose to its new and permanent position high above Heinlein, it was a miracle that no-one was shaken loose, or that any of us had the strength left to wrangle those final strands into their housings and bolt them down.

I was emotionally spent by the time it was all over. I'd been out there for forty-eight hours straight and when the call to down tools came, I climbed off the stanchion I'd been working on and stepped down onto the surface of the Lentil. I walked a few paces away from the tether and then lay on my back looking up at the Moon, far above me. The tether swept away into the sky, massively substantial where I lay but rapidly dwindling to a tiny, silver thread, and then to nothing. Suddenly, a thought struck me. How small we were, all us people. How tiny. And yet we had captured a comet and tied it to a piece of string like a big balloon to float forever above the Moon. I started laughing. It was the most ridiculous, ludicrous thing imaginable. I lay on the surface of that magnificent joke, laughing like a madman, until the foreman bellowed over the comm for me to shut the fuck up and get my ass down to the gondola "'cause some of us would like to get off this damned wire before we all go fucking crazy."

She had a way with words.

#

Once the Lentil had been locked into place and stabilised, the work changed. For most of the crews, building the service tunnels and laying the foundations for Alltheway was what filled their days now. For me and a couple of hundred others, it was the Starseeker Project. It took place in a dock like no other space dock you've ever seen and, inside the great lattice of locally-forged titanium alloy, humanity's first starship was being built. We lived in a strange, upside down world, with a sky-sized ceiling of ice above us and a safety net below, That net was the only thing between us and the three hundred thousand kilometre fall to Earth.

Of course, we didn't have the technology on the Moon back then to create the fancy metamaterials, the complex optronics, or even the plastic door handles that went into the Starseeker. Most of it was shipped up in crates from Earth, unloaded at Partway and then carted up the wire from there. I was an old hand by then and I ran my own gang of fitters. We worked on the engines, mostly, not the big torus that ran round the ship's middle for generating the warp field, but the good old-fashioned fusion engines that we would use for short-range manoeuvring.

You'd think that people would grow close, working out there for year after year, risking your lives every day, among fellow uploads with the same dream or, at least, the same good reasons for putting Earth behind them. Well, it didn't happen. You work with people day in day out like that and you grow intimate, of course, you learn things about each other, your secrets slowly reveal themselves, you get so you know them like your own family. But it doesn't necessarily mean you get to like them.

Partly it was because everyone, including me, had their emotions turned down so low they were practically robots anyway. It was the only way to survive it. Trust me. But it was also because most of us just weren't chummy types. Most of us were hard-nosed sons of bitches. We'd clawed our way up to the top of some heap or other, collecting all the money we could along the way. Then we'd taken that money and bought ourselves immortality with it. We didn't feed the poor, or save the planet. We gave everyone the finger and had our minds uploaded into state-of-the-art artificial bodies.

I realised that about myself when my wife died. She was right, I could have had longer with her if I hadn't needed to escape death before my mind began to fail. I asked her to do the procedure with me but, when she said no, I went and left her anyway.

It's a hard thing to acknowledge that ugly selfishness inside you. But now I could see it everywhere, especially in the cold mechanical eyes of my fellow uploads.

Yet Mike was OK. His real name was Ahmed, but he liked to be called Mike. He was the son of a Middle Eastern Prince which sounds great until you realise how many of them there are and how far from the throne that left him. Of course, he would never gain the title now. His deeply religious country was very strict about allowing soulless abominations to join the monarchy. But, as he told me, he'd rather be a live upload than a dead zealot.

I'd seen plenty like Mike on the wire, children of wealthy families who'd lived their whole lives in a bubble, spoilt rotten, and entitled to the core. They didn't usually last long out here. They gave it up and joined a brain bin somewhere so their dream life could go on uninterrupted by work or tedium. Mike stuck it out, though. He had become really hooked on the Starseeker Project and wanted as much as I did to be among the first ones to go beyond the solar system, exploring the stars.

I asked him once how he became a zombie and he laughed and said it was all to impress a girl. What he meant was, he'd been racing his Lamborghini Estoque 3, drunk driving at two hundred kilometres an hour with a coked up call girl in the passenger seat giving him a blow job and two more in the back seat – for later, as he put it. When they pulled him out of the wreckage, they managed to keep his brain alive long enough to upload him. He was the only survivor.

The experience seemed to have woken him up. In fact, from a few things he'd said, I got the feeling he was relieved not to be that guy any more. I think the life he'd been leading had scared him. Now he was just one of the team and I was someone he could share his feelings with who wouldn't ignore or ridicule him.

It was from Mike that I got the first clue that things weren't going well.

A cargo of hull panels was overdue. It had happened before and I wasn't too upset about it. My team went out on the scaffold anyway. There was always plenty to do. I told Mike to work on fixing up some cable harnesses and he gave me a dirty look and stalked off. Later, when I asked him what was biting him, he said, "I don't know why they bother to keep us working."

"Well," I said, slowly. "I guess it's so we can get the ship built."

He studied me, as if to see whether I was joking.

"We didn't get the shipment from Earth yesterday."

"So?"

"We didn't get one today, either."

"Shit happens."

"Yeah? Well let's see if we get one tomorrow, shall we?"

"What are you saying?"

"Don't you watch the feeds?"

I shrugged. Actually, no, I didn't. Not often. News from Earth just didn't interest me any more.

I watched them that night though. As soon as the shift was over, I hurried to my room and started scanning everything I could find. I didn't have to look far. It was all over the major news aggregators. China had defaulted on a debt payment. Three of the biggest banks in Europe had immediately put themselves into receivership. It was expected that US banks would follow suit within the next day or so. It was yet another global financial meltdown. The kind we'd had every ten years since I was old enough to remember. It looked like a bad one. Governments were already talking about stimulus packages, or austerity measures, depending on their ideological viewpoint. I cut off all the chatter and sat back on my couch, anger and fear already growing in me like tumours.

By the time the morning came I was watching old sit-coms, grimly trying not to think about the project. A broadcast message from the project office came through just as I was leaving for work. It was the project manager, a human, his face giving nothing away. He said no-one on the project was to report for the morning shift. Team leaders were to assemble in warehouse four for a briefing in fifteen minutes. I played it three times, trying to get a hint from the inflection of his voice, the shift of his gaze. The heart I no longer had felt like lead inside me.

#

"I'm sorry," he said, yelling over the noise as the room erupted into cries of outrage. "Goldilocks Ventures has gone into liquidation. There's nothing we can do. Their assets here – the temporary space dock, the habs and warehouses, the fabbers and tools – will be sold off to pay the company's creditors."

"This ain't right," someone shouted. "Some of us have put years into this project." There was a general growl of approval. "This ain't just a collection of second hand goods to be disposed of. This is our lives."

There was a lot more shouting along the same lines – and I agreed with everything they said – but I could see a lot of people, like me, weren't joining in. They knew as well as I did that projects like this, however special, however important, were just lines in a ledger when it came right down to it. Hell, I'd shut down enough loss-making businesses of my own in my time. Sure, you think about all the lives you shatter when a factory has to close, or a division has to be scaled back, but you tell yourself it's for the best, that you have a duty to the shareholders, that sometimes you need to amputate a limb to keep the patient alive. That kind of crap.

It was a miracle that the Starseeker Project had ever found investors in the first place. If I was honest with myself, I had always known it would be one of the first things to be sacrificed if the global economy went belly up. But I'd hoped that things could just hold together long enough to get the Starseeker underway. Once those moorings had been cut, we'd have been free. And Earth and all its squabbling, needy billions could have gone to Hell in a handcart for all I cared. I'd have been part of something new and pure, gliding through the cosmos like a condor soaring above the Andes.

"What about the Starseeker?" someone asked and everyone fell silent. We all looked out through the open doors to where the ship stood, white and still, peaceful as a swan, not knowing that the hunters were gathering, sighting down their gun barrels.

The deputy project manager swallowed hard and stepped forward. Even through her environment suit I could see she didn't want to upset people any more than her boss had done already. "Goldilocks Ventures is considering offers from interested parties. I just heard that a Heinlein-based restaurateur has already made an offer."

The mood in the room turned bitter. Someone nearby said, "A fucking restaurant." Another said, "Like an old railway carriage diner."

The PM broke it up and sent us all home. "Until further notice," as he put it.

I hung about with a group of other uploads and we did some back-of-a-fag-packet calculations to see if a staff buy-out might work. God knows, we'd all been rich enough when we were alive. Some of us still had plenty. Yet it was soon obvious that those of us who hadn't blown their fortune on becoming immortal, had , like me, tied up most of what was left over in trusts for family members. Those who were still running businesses Earthside, or had healthy investment portfolios, were getting very bad news from the boards of their companies and their brokers.

Our impromptu meeting broke up with everyone feeling much worse than when it started. I saw Mike up on the scaffold and went to join him in staring at the ship.

"Wouldn't your father sell a couple of his space yachts and refloat Goldilocks?" I asked.

He laughed. "He's already been on the phone to tell me every cloud has a silver lining."

"A silver lining?"

"Yeah, now I won't be wandering round the galaxy like a lost soul. I can come back to Earth and help manage the family's business interests from a brain bin in the US."

"Ah. I take it that doesn't appeal."

To my surprise, he shrugged. "It's not like there's much else I can do."

"The Moon's an expanding economy. Earth's still going to need our HeeThree and rare earths. Go to Bradbury. They're always looking for uploads to work the mines."

Even as I said it, I felt an ache deep inside. That kind of life had seemed OK while there was a point to it all. Building the wire, building the Starseeker had been mindless grunt work but I was happy to do it so long as it was for something so important. Without that, immortality looked more like a curse than a big adventure. I wondered what the second-hand market for nanite robots was like. Would the one I had fetch enough to get me into a decent brain bin?

I didn't see Mike again. Two days after the big announcement, he took the gondola up to Partway and caught a shuttle back to Earth. I waited five more weeks until my severance pay came through from the Goldilocks Ventures receivers. Then I too rode the wire up to Partway and caught the regular gondola down to Heinlein. I travelled with at least a dozen other uploads from the Starseeker Project but none of us felt like talking.

#

Heinlein is a dump. You'd have to be crazy or desperate to live there. It is built into a warren of ancient lava tunnels beneath the lunar surface. The founders learned how to make a dirty-grey concrete by mixing regolith with a clay-like by-product of the mineral mining that had first brought people to that ungodly spot. They used it to line the lava tunnels, to build walls and roads, even to make furniture. Compared to bringing anything up from Earth, it was cheap and easy. Anything not made from concrete is made from scavenged packing crates and cannibalised freight pods. So the whole city feels like an underground shanty-town.

Which is what it is, I guess.

Of course, some people live better than that, with real furniture – wood even, if you're the Mayor, or a crime boss – in houses that look like they were designed instead of thrown together by a chimp. But that's just some tunnels in the highest levels. Once you're past there, as you go deeper, the memory of neat and tidy soon fades. The lowest level of all they call the Sump. You don't want to go down there. Trust me.

Even the bar at The Harsh Mistress is made of concrete. The tables and chairs used to be made of the ubiquitous packing crates, but, since the Drew sisters took over, there are more real titanium chairs every year. It makes the place look too classy for the kind of bums that hang out there if you ask me.

I waited by the entrance for Carlotta to finish serving a couple of customers and come over. We sat at a table by the door and she listened to my tale of woe.

"Well, I'm glad to be able to help you out," she told me. "You know I owe you. And you know giving you a crap job won't come close to repaying the debt. But I'm glad to do it, anyway. When can you start?"

I looked around the room at the handful of drunks that comprised the mid-morning clientele. There didn't seem to be any rush.

"If you don't mind, I'll go find myself a place to stay first. How about I come back this evening and you can tell me my duties and my hours?"

She nodded slowly, watching my face. "I don't mean to pry, but why does a man like you want to work in this shit-hole? You could do a lot better than this."

A man like you. I turned the words over in my mind, liking the sound of them. I don't think any living human had shown me that much respect since the day I walked out of the hospital that did my uploading.

I shook my head and smiled. "No, I don't think I could," I told her, and I meant it.

Coming down the wire, I'd had a long time to think. I was upset, but not because of the loss to humanity or to science that the scrapping of the Starseeker Project had entailed. I was upset because I couldn't get away, because now I'd be stuck here and I'd have to face a long, long lifetime of living with myself and the decisions I'd made. The truth is, I didn't give a damn about the Starseeker mission. Finding new worlds, maybe settling one and opening up a vast new frontier for humanity would have been the ride of a lifetime. It could have filled a thousand years. It was a nice, simple, uncomplicated thing to do.

And then it occurred to me that I'd been there before. When I started my business, I felt that same sense of vistas opening up, of an adventure beginning. I threw myself into it and loved it. It was clean and simple, risks could be calculated, progress could be measured. With little more than addition and subtraction, I could plot and chart vast areas of my life. Instead of dealing with the grubby complexities of real life, I had found a world of simple abstractions to live in – profit, loss, risk, returns. It was pointless, really, a meaningless game I was childish enough to enjoy, something that kept me occupied eighteen hours a day while life churned and tumbled chaotically outside the tinted windows of my limo.

The collapse of the Starseeker Project was just a spill in someone else's game of Monopoly. It didn't matter to me on any level. Except, finally, I'd realised what I had been doing all those wasted years. I could go off now and find another grand project. I could start importing something the people here needed – God knows it wouldn't be hard to find something – and build myself a new empire, write myself a thousand-year plan to dominate the market here, then on Mars, then on Europa, then on to some other star system, and on and on across the galaxy. I could do it. I knew I could do it.

But immortality has a way of focusing the mind. It makes you stop thinking in terms of what's possible, or what's fun, or what's challenging. Instead, you start wondering about what's important, what matters, what any of it would mean.

I'd still been two days from the bottom of that endless gondola ride when I realised I had better stop doing things and instead spend some time looking and learning. I needed somewhere to rest up for a while, maybe a very long while, and just bump along, just let the random motion of people and events nudge me around for a bit, feeling my way, finding out about myself. Now that I'd committed myself to a life without end, I needed some place I could go to get to understand this world I'll be shackled to for such a very long time.

And then I remembered Carlotta's offer.

"You didn't ask what the job pays," she said as I got up to go.

"Pay me what I'm worth," I said, pausing in the doorway.

A man came in as I stood there. He was a mean, ugly man with mechanical augmentations on both arms and some kind of sensor embedded in his right temple.

"Fucking zombie," he grumbled as he pushed angrily past me and made for the bar.

I gave Carlotta a grin and left. Behind me I heard her calling, "What'll it be, Mister?"

Graham Storrs is a former research scientist and interactive multimedia specialist. These days he lives and writes in the Australian bush. He has published many short stories in magazines and anthologies as well as four novels: the sci-fi thriller, Timesplash, and its Aurealis Award shortlisted sequel, True Path; the augmented reality dystopian thriller, Heaven is a Place on Earth and a sci-fi comedy, Cargo Cult.