Nerida forgot to look at her father for the last time. Her mother hadn’t come. Before she could turn around, the heavy stone door was pushed closed, extinguishing the sunlight and all sound except for the clinking of trowels outside the door, cementing it shut. She tried to remember what her final, unceremonious glimpse of her father had been, but she couldn’t find the memory.

The scene laid out before her was a paradox: more riches than her family would see in a hundred lifetimes were spread across the room in piles of golden coins, exotic trinkets, priceless sculptures, paintings, and bloated, cushioned furniture. Even the cat perched atop a chair would have fetched a higher price at market than she could even imagine, some foreign breed she couldn’t pronounce from a conquered land she’d never see. And of course, the sarcophagus – the most spectacular, glitteringly bejeweled thing she’d ever seen. Its effect was nearly blinding. Inside, the king rotted.

The paradox lay in the room itself – not so much a room as the mouth of a cave, fashioned into an ornate tomb. Brutal stone walls radiated a deathly chill, a ghost of a breeze blew through a hole in a far corner and candles cast shadows on the walls, but soon they would burn out and there wouldn’t be any light ever again. The cat purred and began wandering around. Nerida wondered how long it would take her to die in here.

The king had been buried with a cache of bread, wine, and whatever else was stuffed in the numerous crates in the room with her. They were his feast to bring with him into the afterlife, and Nerida was to be the dancer on the threshold. She practiced the sacred dance, the one she’d spent her entire life learning, as all girls did in case they were chosen to convey a spirit into the beyond. There was no food among the king’s bounty she was allowed to eat, no drink, and perhaps not enough air, but that wasn’t the point. She only had to live long enough for the gods of death to arrive and see her dance.

She flitted between piles of riches, going through the motions she’d learned. She thought she’d feel worse, but when the stone door was shut behind her, it was as if the world outside had never been there at all – her father, her mother, the three-legged dog that had followed her home all those years ago, the glover’s boy who’d been giving her looks. A brief lifetime of connections and acquaintances were blown away and forgotten as easily as a spider’s web.

She spun, bowed, and waited.

*      *      *

There was no way of knowing what time of day it was. She’d been entombed in the morning with dew still on the grass and a damp mist clinging to the ground. Her body was telling her that the sun must be setting by now. The meal she’d eaten was digested long ago and now her stomach clawed and moaned at her. The candles, though expensive and long-lasting, were burning out one by one, gradually plunging the cave into darkness, from which there would be no returning. A couple of hours ago the cat had found a rat somewhere among the food stores and after a moment of yowling and screeching, eaten it.

Nerida reclined across a chair, her feet dangling over one arm and her head resting on the other. After the men outside had finished cementing the door, the whistling of air coming through the hole in the wall, rising from somewhere deep in the caves, seemed to grow – she noticed every dip, every gust. Then, she heard a voice.

It was subtle, nothing more than a rumbling undercurrent, but words, discrete words, intonation, expression – this much she could discern. She ran across the room to where the hole was, and stood upon a barrel to peer into it. It was about as big around as her face, and the air that fell from it like a sigh was cold as winter.

The voice was a low burble, as if she were hearing it from underwater. It grew louder, somewhat clearer. Higher frequencies presented themselves and the sound began to take shape – shape enough that she was able to hear a second, higher voice, responding to the first. The breeze howled, became a wind, whistling around subterranean corners and pouring into the cave, drowning out any sign of the voices and knocking Nerida to the ground.

From her view from the stone floor, the ceiling was becoming occluded by a series of wisps, as if the very wind had color and form. The wisps came together like the sinewy strands that compose the meat and muscle of animals, gliding on the air and pooling several meters away from her. She watched breathlessly as two forms emerged from the strands.

The first to take recognizable shape seemed to be a tall, thin man. The process by which he became a physical entity was imperceptible by her – it seemed to take place between the ticks of the clock in her mind, so that she was never sure that this was anything other than the way the figure had always been – but there he was, a man, or something to which a man was her closest point of comparison. His hands were scaly and taloned, like chicken feet, a beak took the place of his nose and mouth, and extravagant plumage jutted from his spine, feathers ruffling against each other as he surveyed the room.

Beside the man, wisps were working to create what seemed to be a dog-sized lizard. Nerida felt the blood seem to stop in her veins in the presence of the gods of death.

She tried in spite of her trembling to stand, and found her knees unable to support her. She pressed her palm on the surface of a table to hold her upright and cursed herself for failing now. As the green and red pattern on the scales of the giant lizard surfaced before her eyes, she began her dance.

She closed her eyes, raised a leg, raised her arms, spun, twisting her wrists and slicing her arms through the air as she’d been taught, bent low, threw her arms as if into the sky and let her body follow, tipping her hips in either direction as she shocked her arms into frozen contortions, dragging the tops of her outstretched fingers along the white flesh of her neck —

Needles seemed to puncture her ear drums. The sound of a thousand fortunes in gold coins clattering onto stone rang through the cavern. Nerida opened her eyes, nearly falling, her dance cut short. The gods were gone, or so it seemed until a blot on the opposite wall shifted and she saw the lizard now darting along it toward the source of the metallic crash. “Have your fill.” It was the low voice from beyond the wall, the voice of the man. She couldn’t see him past the stacks and aisles of treasure. She walked gingerly through it all toward the voice. A laugh rippled through the space.

She came out from the mass of treasure and arrived at the scene, near the sealed door of the cave. A large, ornate chest had been smashed and its contents, thousands of coins, were scattered on the floor. The lizard roved over it all, mouth hanging open, its tongue shooting at, sticking to, and reeling dozens of coins into its mouth at a time.

“Look, Ruk, our dancer finished her performance. Was it not magnificent?” the man said and turned away from them, wandering behind further mounds of valuables.

“Didn’t see it,” the lizard Ruk said between bites of gold. This was the higher voice she had heard.

“A shame. I didn’t either. Could we get an encore?” Something crashed from where the man had gone and the lizard disappeared in that direction, leaving hundreds of coins behind. Its body was rounder now and its movements somewhat slower. “Don’t break it!” it complained, unseen.

Nerida then stood alone in the coins, listening to the rummaging and laughter, both high and low. She looked at the royal sarcophagus. Only a few gems remained in a field of empty sockets. She no longer trembled, but instead was utterly numb. Using legs she no longer trusted the reality of, she followed the creatures.

Around a corner, the lizard’s mouth was distended wider than Nerida would have thought possible, rendering it more mouth than lizard. Its lips were wrapped around a sculpture that had been tipped to the ground, the marble man’s upper torso disappearing impossibly into the thing’s throat. The chicken man laughed. “Ruk is a fiend for sculpture.” His arms were crossed at his chest and he clicked a talon against his beak pensively, his eyes inscrutable on his alien face.

The lizard drooled on the sculpture as it sank deeper into its belly and streaks of the sliva ran down it onto the floor. Nerida’s eyes burned. She turned away from the creatures, turned the corner of a shelf of trinkets and leaned against it out of sight, and tried to cry as quietly as she could. She felt it was her neck, not the marble, that the lizard was slobbering on.

She felt the air beside her stir and opened her clouded eyes. The chicken man stood there. He rested his rough hand on her bare shoulder, the points of his talons sitting delicately on her flesh like needles standing upright on the surface of still water.

“Oh, we’ve been cruel. We have – positively monstrous.” He plucked a diadem from the shelf. His jewels flashed wildly in the dimming light for a moment before he perched it on her head. “To have a girl weeping amongst a kingdom’s splendor…”

The other creature appeared at her other side and began pulling objects off the lower shelves with its tongue and into its mouth – fine plates, golden figurines, exotic gadgets of unknown function. The statue had swollen its body past the point of belief – it was now little more than a sphere of seemingly infinite volume.

The chicken man tossed a ring crowned with an oversized sapphire into Ruk’s maw then wrapped an arm behind Nerida, pulling her toward him, his talons resting not painfully on her side. He took her hand in his other claw and waltzed with her to the tune of Ruk’s feast. His claws were gentle on her skin as they shifted among the debris of the painstakingly-arranged crypt, brushing priceless items aside with their feet. The chicken man hummed a tune familiar to her from beyond the giant stone door. Nerida pulled herself closer to the cold warmth of the chicken man, burying a hand in his soft feathers, and closed her eyes as he slowly danced her down the rows of emptied shelves. For a while it seemed as though it had all ceased to exist.

She became aware that the sound of Ruk’s consumption had slowed to a stop. The dance ended, she saw, reluctantly opening her eyes as if for the first time today, near the small hole from which the man and the creature had emerged. Ruk rolled out of a blot of shadow that was now becoming the entire room. The hulking sphere that had been the lizard was lit by only a few flickering candles.

Running a set of talons through Nerida’s hair, the chicken man asked Ruk if he’d gotten all he wanted. A dull groan seeped out of some hidden orifice on the thing’s surface. He held Nerida’s head in a set of talons and she saw tendrils of air rising from behind his face, Ruk’s shadowed form diminishing and disappearing back into the hole. She felt the claws fall from her face as the man dissolved before her.

The wind from the hole quieted. Somewhere among the ruins of the king’s crypt, the cat wailed.

 

 

Image: male96 via pixabay

 

 

The Abbey stood on a steep hill of jagged rocks and thorn bushes. On the western side, next to the refectory, was the novices’ dormitory, a candle-lit room filled with twenty boys sleeping in neat rows of beds. Near the door, where the room was coldest, a thin-limbed boy huddled under his coarse blanket and began to shake with a fear so strong that the legs of his bed rattled against the floor-boards.

Over and over again, he remembered the twisted bodies of the villagers lying amidst the smoke-blackened timbers of their cottages. As he did every night, he forced himself to picture his mother; the scar at the end of her chin; the fine lines where her eyes narrowed; the red hair that curled around her neck; and on the cottage wall behind her, the white buds of the rose bush she had planted on his first name day.

When the fear passed, he began to cry, softly so no one would hear him. He knew he would never see her again. That part of his life was gone. He felt as if he had been hollowed out and all that remained beneath his skin and bones were his fear and his memories.

A pale light began to seep through the dormitory’s shuttered windows. In the distance, the bells in the Minster, the Abbey’s church, rang the summons for prayers. The door banged open. The burly figure of the Novice Master stood framed against the light. “Get up,” he shouted. “The day’s wasting away.” He woke the novices every morning with the same words.

The boy wiped his eyes and stepped gingerly onto the cold floor. He pulled on the ragged tunic that was too big and the sandals that were too small and joined the end of the line of yawning, fidgeting novices. After the Novice Master, had inspected them, they followed him out of the dormitory, past the refectory and into the Abbey’s courtyard.

The great stone bulk of the Minster loomed ahead of them. As they drew closer, starlings flew up from the iron cross at the top of its tower. The Novice Master lifted the bolt from the doors and ushered them inside. The church was dark and gloomy despite the spears of light that shone through its narrow windows. The boy stood at his usual position near the door with his back pressed against a wooden beam.

When the rest of the monks had arrived, the boy watched as the Abbot, a tall man dressed in a white robe, walked down the nave with two black-cowled priests trailing after him. At the far end of the Minster, the Abbot genuflected before the wooden statue of the man bound to a cross, lifted the silver chalice from the white, marble altar, and began the service.

The boy knelt with the other monks. The stone floor bruised his knees and the acrid haze of incense smoke stung his eyes. He did his best to join in with the service but he didn’t understand Latin and the words were cold and harsh to his ears. While the others prayed, he scratched a small cross in the waxed surface of the beam behind him. He had made a mark for each of the mornings since the monks had offered him their sanctuary.

At the end of the service, the boy followed the novices to the classroom on the other side of the Minster. The daily lesson, when the boys practiced their reading and writing, was the worst part of his day. The Brother Teacher, a gaunt and humourless man, sat on a stool at the front of the room and tapped his walking stick on the floor as he watched the novices work.

The boy crouched behind his desk at the back and stared glumly at his manuscript. No one had ever bothered to teach him to read. He wondered what it would be like to know what the words meant. He imagined he would understand them in a single moment of clarity, as if he looked into a pool of water, one moment muddy, the next clear, and suddenly saw the small fish swimming back and forth between the reeds.

There was a sharp crack on his desk. Startled, he looked up. Brother Teacher stood over him, stick raised to strike again. “I’ll not have you day dreaming during my class. Let’s see what you’ve learned.” The Brother pointed at the manuscript. “Tell me what it says.”

The boy stared at the words until a nervous sweat formed on his brow. But no matter how hard he tried the letters were no more than crabbed marks. For all he knew, it was a recipe for venison pie. He stared at the floor, hoping the monk would leave him alone.

Brother Teacher rapped his stick on the ground. “You ignorant boy. You’ve never bothered to learn. All you’re good for is work in the garden. Now go and bother us no more.”

The room resounded with the novices’ jeers. The boy wanted to shout at them all to shut up; tell them how unfair it was; beg the Brother to be allowed to stay at the back where no one need notice him. But instead, he ran from the classroom.

He trudged back through the courtyard with the boys’ laughter echoing in his ears. Every morning on his way to the Minster, he walked past the garden. It was next to the refectory and surrounded by walls made of unevenly-sized stones piled one on top of another. The entrance was an iron gate about the height of a tall man. Moss grew between the cracks where the hinges on each side were bolted into the stone.

He pushed at the gate. It opened with a rusty creak and a dove flew up from the branches of a magnolia tree just inside. Ahead of him were a series of raised soil beds bordered by apple and pear trees. Three monks worked on their hands and knees in the nearest bed. One of them, a man with an unkempt grey beard, put down his trowel and walked over.

“What do you want me to do?” the boy muttered.

The monk pointed at his mouth and shook his head. He handed the boy a trowel and a small cloth bag. Do what you will, he seemed to say and went back to his work.

The bag was filled with pale, yellow mustard seeds. Shivering in the wind, the boy looked back at the gate, and thought of the warm classroom. But he couldn’t go back there. Shoulders slumped, he went to the soil bed furthest from the other monks. The wet earth dampened his knees as he knelt. He dug a small hole with his trowel and planted the first seed.

Through sun and wind, sleet and rain, from morning mist to dusk’s long shadows, the boy worked in the garden. His back stiffened until he walked with a stoop like the other garden monks. The lines on his palms darkened from the soil ground into them and the callouses on his fingers hardened into thick burrs.

As he toiled, the garden bloomed around him. Buds appeared on the tree branches and grew into twigs and leaves. Carrot tops and beetroot stalks emerged from the soil. Clay pots overflowed with sage and rosemary, tarragon and parsley. When the yellow petals of the mustard plants opened, he slept through the night without waking. As his fear left him, his memories of home began to fade away.

Spring passed into summer. One baking hot afternoon, a storm blew in from the east and torrents of rain lashed the garden. The boy dashed back and forth with the other monks, staking the younger trees against the howling wind and wrapping sackcloth around the vines. A bolt of lighting crashed down in front of him. Stunned, he fell to the ground.

In an instant, the storm’s roar ceased. He was no longer in the garden. Instead, he stood in front of the Minster. For a moment, all was quiet, and then the earth shook with a low rumble. Cracks appeared in the ground around the church and widened into jagged fissures with the ear-shattering sound of stone splitting. Where the chasms met, the ground collapsed into gaping voids. Leafy fronds rose up from the depths. Creepers swelled to snake through the Minster’s windows and wrap around its tower. Tangled knots of twigs and gnarled branches flourished and trunks thickened, until the church was hidden by a forest of oak trees.

He woke to find himself lying in the garden with his cheek pressed against the wet soil. The storm had passed and the sun shone. Starlings swirled overhead. A hound bayed in the distance. I have work to do, he thought, and his heart filled with purpose.

The following morning, he tended to the mustard plants and the lilies that grew beneath the magnolia tree. While the other garden monks were busy at their work, he plucked the yellow and white petals from the flowers and put them in his pouch. The next day, at the end of morning prayers, he let a few of the petals slip between his fingers and fall onto the Minster’s stone floor. When he returned the next morning, only a few of the petals remained, swept away into the corners, so he left more.

The magnolia tree blossomed with pink flowers. He clipped the ends of the longest branches and hid them under his tunic. In the middle of the night, he crept bare-foot from the dormitory. When he arrived at the Minster, he lit a candle, and walked to the altar. In the flickering light, he placed the branches against the sides of the chalice until the blossoms covered the silver and then he filled the bowl with yellow petals.

On the south wall of the garden, jasmine creepers had grown across the stone. Where the white flowers were thickest, he cut several lengths and tied them into bundles with twine. That night, he went back to the Minster and walked past the altar to the statue of the man bound to the wooden cross. He wrapped the creepers around the ropes that tied the man’s wrists and ankles. He wound the longest around the circle of thorns on the man’s head so the white flowers covered the sharp points. Before he left, he pressed the rest of the petals into the hole in the man’s side.

At prayers the next day, the Abbot railed at the monks. “Some wicked man,” he shouted, his voice shaking with anger, “has dared to desecrate the church. There is a snake in our midst and he must be punished.”

The Novice Master barged into the dormitory in the middle of the night. He overturned the novices’ beds and rummaged through their belongings. When he found the boy’s pouch hidden under a blanket, he turned it upside down. Petals, dried flowers, and lengths of vine fell to the floor. The Brother cuffed the boy so hard that his eyebrow split and blood ran down his face. As the novices looked on in shocked silence, the Brother knocked the boy to the ground and dragged him through the door.

A crowd of monks waited outside. The boy lay on the ground surrounded by their angry faces. He tried to crawl away but the Novice Master took a stick from his belt and struck him in the ribs. He yelped and curled into a ball. A boot kicked the base of his spine and he cried out. A fist hammered into the back of his head. Someone spat on him.

He thought they would kill him but instead the Novice Master took him to the refectory and led him down the stairs to a windowless cell. It was cold and dank and half again as long as his body. There was no light so he couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Occasionally, the door opened and a hand shoved inside a cup of water and a piece of stale bread.

In the pitch-black, the boy’s fear returned. As his body shook, he tried to remember his mother but his memories had faded. He couldn’t recall the shape of the scar on her chin or even the colour of her eyes. Now I have nothing left, he thought, and so he resolved to die. He stopped drinking the water. The bread piled uneaten by the door. When he no longer had the strength to sit, he lay curled up on the floor.

He lost touch with the passage of time. All he knew was the murmur of his breath and the weak fluttering of his heart. As he began to drift away, images poured into his mind: the yellow of the mustard petals; the green leaves on the trees; the garden monks working in the soil. And finally, he saw the great forest that would surround the Minster. I have work to do, he thought, and he crawled to the door and ate the bread and drank the water.

He spent so long in the cell that his nails grew into long spirals and his skin hung loose from his bones. One day or night, he couldn’t tell which, he woke to find the Novice Master standing over him. At first he thought he was still asleep and turned back to his dream of the forest but the Brother pulled him to his feet and led him from the cell and out of the refectory.

The sun dazzled the boy’s eyes. His legs were so weak he could barely stand. The Novice Master propped him up against a wall. “You’re not to do it again,” the Brother said. “Or we’ll cast you out.”

The monk let him go and left without a backward glance. The boy sat in the sun until his strength returned and then he limped to the garden. When he stumbled through the gate, the garden monks rushed to greet him. The bearded monk poured him a cup of water. The next gave him his trowel. The third handed him a bag of seeds.

The bearded monk put his lips close to the boy’s ear. At first, only a hoarse and croaking sound came from his mouth. Then his neck muscles clenched and he whispered, “John.”

The boy would have fallen if the monk hadn’t held him up. He didn’t think that anyone remembered his name. Even he had almost forgotten it. The monk pointed at a barren patch of soil in the west corner of the garden. You’ve work to do, he seemed to say.

John walked past the soil beds filled with vegetables ready to harvest, and beneath the trees branches heavy with apples and late-ripening pears. When he arrived at the corner, he ran his hands through the dry and stoney earth. The walls on either side were bare of moss and crisscrossed with silvery snail tracks. He tipped the seeds into his hand and examined them carefully. One of them, bigger than the others, had a small, green shoot. He planted the seeds in the soil, taking care to bury the largest close to the shelter of the wall.

When he had finished, he sat for a few moments, thinking of his mother. She had always made an offering after she planted so he poured a little water on the earth. Then he sang one of her old songs and the words sounded like drops of rain falling on the sea and the wind rustling between the trees.

That evening, John returned to the dormitory and it was as if nothing had happened. The other novices ignored him as usual. He slept in his pallet by the door. The next morning, the Novice Master woke them with the same words he always used. John went with the other boys to the Minster and stood at the back. The church was as dark and gloomy as ever.

At the end of the service, he walked to the garden. The bearded monk was standing just outside the gate. When the man saw him, he put his finger to his lips, looked left and right, and waited for two other monks to walk by. When they were out of sight, he gestured at John to follow him. The monk led him across the garden to the barren corner where John had planted the seeds. The other garden monks were waiting for them. One prayed with his trembling hands clasped together. The other’s tear-filled eyes looked up at the sky.

The bearded monk pointed at the wall. Look at what you’ve done, he seemed to say. A green branch had risen up from the earth to curl back and forth across the stones. At its tip, swaying gently in the breeze, was a perfect, white rose. And everywhere, the scent of flowers.

 

DAVID HAYWARD is an aspiring first time novelist who lives in Paris.

 

Image: SofieLayla Thal via pixabay

 

1

I pick the wild blackberries that grow among the untended late-summer overgrowth. Continuing down the path beside the canal, stopping only to collect more berries, I come to an opening. There I sit in the long, straggly grass, eating what’s left of the foraged fruit. The stagnant murky waters smell like a duck pond. A dull evening, shades of purple in the sky. A raggedy dog sniffs me. I think it’s a stray until its owner calls.

I take my journal from my bag and make an entry: I always knew it would come to this. Just not so soon. Purple twilight. Soft purple mournful sadness. Dog sniffs my sour clothes. I am the weeds sprouting from the cracks in the concrete path under this dimly glowing purple sky, slowly fading purple grey, a glowing purple grey, long-lasting twilight. These long, extended days don’t let night come this time of year. The sun can’t sink. Not completely. Not yet. I left everything I knew in New Zealand to be here, doing this. Spent everything I had. But I’ve achieved nothing, and I have nothing left.

2

The next day I walk into town along the canal. It’s a gentle day. This is the only canal here. It was built almost two hundred years ago to connect Edinburgh and Glasgow. Initially a commercial success, it lost its worth when rail became the more viable option. It once ran all the way down to the port; now truncated, it stops at the entrance to the city centre.

That’s where I am.

I find the Job Seekers’ office. I’m scrolling through the job opportunities. There. Immediate start. Bricklayer’s labourer. Weekly pay. I take the reference number to the counter.

“Do you have steel-cap boots?”

“No.”

“Well you need them for this job. You can get a pair for ₤20 from Industrial Supplies – just around the corner.”

That ₤20 is meant for my food.

I turn up on site. It’s loud and dusty. Burly men at work. I’m given a hard hat, a high-vis vest, a pair of leather gloves.

“See these bricks?”

Big heavy-looking grey things. “Yeah.”

“See that wall?”

“Uh huh.”

“You take the bricks from here to there. Stack ‘em so them bricklayers can easily get ‘em.”

I take the first brick. Hold out my left arm and let it rest there while I get another and stack it on top. I walk it over and place them behind the bricklayers. I do this again and again.

My novel. It’s unfinished, but worse, it’s no good. All this time. Nothing to show.

“Come on, son, you can work faster than that!”

It’s the foreman.

I don’t answer and I try to work faster. Uncomfortable scratches appear where the bricks rub the underside of my forearm. The foreman climbs the stairs back into the temporary office. I see him watching me from his window. His watchtower.

Do I abandon it? I’ve worked so hard. But who will read it?

The foreman opens the window and calls out: “That whole pallet of bricks needs to be moved by tomorrow – new ones delivered Monday.”

I look at how many bricks I’ve moved – I’ve hardly made a dent. The pile of ominous bricks. Sitting there. Looking at me. He’s looking at me, too. It feels like I’m in the Panopticon.

3

I take the stairs to my third-floor flat. I live in a housing estate. It’s grey and bleak. There are many buildings in this area just as grey, just as bleak. I have a bed, a desk, a laptop, a kitchen, a toilet, a shower. I flick the light switch. Nothing. I try a different switch and check the prepaid power meter in the cupboard: negative ₤10.

I lie down. I’m so tired I drift off to sleep without eating.

4

After getting a taste for lifting bricks, most people from Job Seekers don’t come back. I return and start on the bricks for the second day.

The bricks seem heavier. My sleeves have started to fray and tatter. The sharp corners scratch my skin. An early advantage is marked. Blood has been spilt.

I wonder how long I can keep up this battle. I could leave, sure. But instead I continue to move bricks.

5

It’s the weekend. My body aches as I walk across the field to the canal. There’s a wind from the north. The water ripples and gently laps against the concrete.

I pass an old bridge that opens up into a park with bench seats and trees overhanging the water. On the opposite side, a boathouse where canal boats moor. One of them has been converted into a restaurant. Beyond that, a line of pretty brick cottages.

A girl with long dark hair is sitting on one of the benches. She’s writing. Not once does she lift her head. There’s something unusual about her. She is so focused. So lost in her world. When I write, I’m frantic. I flutter like a sparrow, looking around the room for words as if they’re crumbs. What I’d give to have her composure.

I detour from the canal to the supermarket, where I buy a loaf of bread, an apple and banana. I have 38p left until I get paid on Tuesday.

I walk back. The girl is gone.

6

Back in my flat I eat some bread, have a glass of water and turn on my laptop. Its battery is running low. I open my work and read.

A woman came down the ramp of the boat. She and many anonymous figures, silhouettes in the Croatian dusk. Looking around the industrial port, she smelled the fish and oil and the salty Adriatic Sea. She took her camera from her handbag, taking a few shots of the setting. She had promised to document her travels.

As I read I want to scrunch up the pages. Since I can’t, I think about throwing the laptop through my bedroom window. It would smash the glass and fall the three storeys and break on the concrete below.

7

I’m back to moving bricks. I can’t get the image of the girl writing on the bench out of my head. I went back to the same spot on Sunday, but she wasn’t there.

On Tuesday morning I go to the cash machine to check my account. I’ve been paid! It’s the first money I’ve had in months. I take out ₤20 and buy a recharge card for electricity at my flat and some food to celebrate before returning to the bricks.

The work is exhausting. My arms and legs are sore. The bricks seem heavier. The day is a struggle.

8

I come home from work and open my laptop. I’m so tired I can hardly concentrate enough to read. My body aches, but I feel indifferent to my physical sufferings.

A tourist town in the off-season. All the colours seemed so desolate and sad in this abandonment. An empty swing sways in the sea breeze. She thought she should write an email to someone – that’s what people do on their travels. Yet something inside of her felt dreary. What she would write would not be full of admiration, inspiration, excitement. It would only be about herself. For that’s all she could see.

I don’t read any further. I right click on the file and scroll down to “Delete”.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” the computer asks.

I ponder before clicking “No” and shutting it down.

9

I walk the canal every weekend to the same spot, and she’s never there. I’ve almost given up hope. But this Sunday afternoon I go again. There she is. She has her book and she’s writing. Without thinking, I approach her.

“Hey.”

She looks up. It’s the first time I’ve seen her eyes lift from the page.

“Do I know you?” she asks in a Slavic accent.

“No.” She just looks at me blankly, so I start to speak again. “I’ve seen you here before. I wondered what you were writing.”

She looks as though she doesn’t want to answer. “Sometimes I come here to write letters. Today I’m writing poetry.”

“Letters? Do people still write letters?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh … nothing.”

I look at her book. I’ve never seen a book like it before: its cover is stitched and sewn. Sun faded blue with green borders. The pages are dog-eared and coffee stained. On the open page are foreign characters: Es and As with tails. Cs and Ss with hats. All these Zs. Swivels and loops. Her handwriting is beautiful.

“Why do you come here? Do you like this canal?”

“I don’t think I like it. But it has a certain sadness that I like. It has the beauty of a neglected child. It has a history. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think I do.”

“I talk to the canal. I sometimes want to scream at it! It’s like God – it just absorbs everything.”

I don’t know how she can compare this dirty canal to God. But she sure seems interesting. I hesitate to ask. “Could you read me one of your poems?”

“They’re in Polish. You don’t understand.”

“Can you translate?”

“You can’t translate poetry.”

“Can you try?”

She pauses before she starts. “I’m looking at her / Who is she?”

Pointing at the line she’s on and translating in her head before she says it out loud. “I want to guess / I will ask / What she believes in / Who she believes in today.”

She takes a longer pause between lines. “So strange … I don’t know if strange is the right word? The Polish word ob-tsy means foreign or strange.”

I look at her paper and the word is spelt o-b-c-y and I notice that it’s not coffee stains but pressed brown leaves. I can’t tell if they’re real or printed.

“I think strange is better.”

She continues, “How do you say it when you used to know someone – you were close to someone, but now you’re not? You used to know them, now you don’t?”

“Do you mean distant, or unfamiliar, maybe?”

“Yes. Unfamiliar. So unfamiliar / With her own helplessness / She becomes friends / She cries / And you would like to cry over her / But she is so unfamiliar / I’m looking at her since a long time.”

“For a long time,” I interrupt.

“No. Since a long time. I’m looking at her since a long time / And it is a long time / That I stand next to myself.” She pauses and looks at the page. “It doesn’t sound good in English. You have to read it in Polish. You have to learn Polish.” She laughs.

“What’s it called?”

“It’s got no title … I can give it a title … what should I call it?” She doesn’t give me time to respond. “Call it ‘Ona’. ‘She’. No. Not she. Call it ‘Her’.”

“Thanks for sharing.”

“I never let people read my poems. Maybe because if I say it in English it means less to me.” There’s silence before she closes her book and ties it shut with a piece of string. “I have go now. My shift starts.”

“OK. Where do you work?”

“I look after a disabled man. He can’t talk.”

“Oh … Do you like your job?”

“No. Not really. It’s very lonely. But I can write.” She holds up her book.

“See you round?”

“Yes. Maybe.”

10

The days grow colder. Mornings are especially frosty. Streams of early sun cause steam to rise from the pile of bricks. My fingers are so cold it feels as if they are going to snap off. I rub my hands vigorously – it takes some time for them to thaw out. Once I’m warmed up, I get back to moving bricks. It’s much easier now: my body is used to the physical labour.

I’ve actually started admiring the bricks. I see they are a team, a community, and they just get on with life. Nothing to complicate it. They are laid on mortar – one brick to the next, side by side, one on top of the other; they are cemented, and clearly contented, in their place. When a brick needs to be cut to finish off a line, they accept that too – an individual sacrifice for the greater good.

I’m up to date on my rent and no longer hungry. I’ve even bought myself proper, heavy-duty clothes for the job. I’m starting to feel fit and healthy. I no longer think about my novel, my writing. I’ve given up and I’m better for it.

But I still think about that girl. I walk down the canal every weekend hoping to see her again – I never do. I didn’t even ask her name but I asked her to read me a poem. How absurd. It feels like she’s a figment of my imagination.

I turn to pick up another armful of bricks when I hear a terrific thud – then rumbling. I spin around. The wall the bricklayers are working on has collapsed. It’s fallen away onto empty ground. Bricks and mortar are scattered. Everywhere.

“What the hell! How did this happen? You imbeciles! Quick. Clean it up. Quick.” The foreman yells before addressing me. “Stop what you’re doing and tidy this mess up before someone sees it. Quick!”

11

After clearing the mess, the site is abnormally quiet. It’s like someone died.

I come home on the bus unsettled. I get off, but instead of going to my flat, I walk across the field to the canal. I take off my steel-capped boots and look around to check no one’s watching before hurling them into the water.

Plunge.

I watch them sink. They fade until they’re out of sight. The canal is only about a metre and a half deep, yet I can’t see the bottom. I can’t see my boots. Only a few bubbles surface as if to say goodbye.

Epilogue

Years have passed. I’m back in my home country. I sit at my desk and think of the canal. The water that doesn’t move. I picture the reeds. The path. The weeds sprouting from the cracks. The straggly grass. The green overgrowth.

I imagine what’s inside. A rusting tricycle. An engagement ring. A supermarket trolley. I picture my boots. My steel-capped boots on the canal floor. I instinctively know, as if it’s a fact, that they’re still there.

I remember the bricks with an unusual fondness.

I think of that girl. The nameless writing girl. Writing her letters, her sad poems. Sitting on the bench beside her canal, comforted by its obscure, forlorn beauty – like that of a neglected child. Her canal, absorbing all of her woes. Absorbing everything that gets thrown at it. Going nowhere, simply absorbing.

 

Nick Fairclough lives in Masterton, New Zealand. He has had work published in Flash Frontier, Blue Fifth Review, Rangitawa Collection and Takahe. One of his stories has been nominated for a 2018 Pushcart Prize and another for the 2018 Best Small Fictions. Learn more at https://nickfairclough.wordpress.com/

 

Image: pixel2013 via pixabay

 

Kis pulls the shiniest bauble from the Christmas tree and cups it in her hands. It looks like a see-through planet plucked from her porthole, and, valued at 1000 e-bits, it’s the most expensive decoration on the fake fir. Even before Kis had it priced, she knew this instinctively – this crystal sphere is the only thing she’s ever seen that is filled with clear water.

Kis switches her gaze from the bauble to the pale honey-colored liquid that she’s been sipping. The glass on her desk is simultaneously half-full and half-empty, even in artificial gravity. She tries to imagine again what Earth water would taste like, how rain would feel on her skin. But Earth is millions of miles away, smaller in her telescope than the decorations on the tree. So small that, if Kis could pick the Earth out of the sky, it would make a perfect necklace bead.

When she was younger and healthier, Kis’ great-great-great-grandma used to joke that, from this distance, her home planet was the size of an Earth cherry. Then Granchy would describe this cherry in luscious detail – sweeter than Saturn honey, redder than Mars, the color of pure, fully oxygenated blood, the last rare forbidden fruit. Kis’ mouth waters at the thought of this wonderful thing that she’ll never get to taste. Only one such tree left in the solar system, its precise location lost.

Still, at least Kis has this aluminum tinsel tree. If Granchy could see her now, she’d joke that Kis was eyeing up the decorations as Earth women used to drool over displays in jewelers’ windows, picking out the rings with the biggest sparkling rocks.

Kis finds it hard to imagine getting excited about hard stone. Metal and mineral are everywhere. Her fascinations are different. Yes, almost everything about the baubles is artificial, but not quite. She’s had them tested. Her oldest pieces carry traces of Earth elements, of land dust, even water and once-living matter. Their light and shine too is crafted by hand and imagination in memory of the old ways, in honor of life.

Kis’ favorite decorations are the transparent spheres dating from just before the exodus, with scenes depicted inside like mythic hanging snow globes or old-fashioned crystal balls into the future. Granchy used to stare at them for hours before finally pronouncing her predictions.

Granchy’s last insight though had been little more than a babbling of random words: “Honey-river-stone-hail-red-petals-glaze-falling.”

“Falling.” Granchy had repeated the word again before falling back against her pillow in the spaceship sick bay.

Every time Kis visited, she’d look round the small dorm with sinking despair. It was full of patients like Granchy – after centuries of anemic life, their hearts petal-thin and their minds finally running out of space for more memories.

No point dwelling on this, Kis drags her thoughts back to the fir. She can feel Granchy with her, like the Ghost of Christmas Past, plucking another glass ball from the green branches, then telling Kis to look inside if she wants to divine the future.

But the sphere in Kis’ hands is black as a starless night. There are beautiful chiming bells inside but they only sound when shaken. Kis pushes the swinging bauble harder and harder until…the black ribbon snaps and it falls from the tree.

Perhaps Granchy isn’t with her after all. Granchy would never choose such a dark future. Kis’ hand hovers above a globe with a frozen lake. Brightly scarved skaters dance across the surface to a swirl of beautiful soft yet joyful choral music, its song composed entirely from snatches of different people’s laughter. She longs to cradle it in her hands, but she fears this choice. It’s as if the Ghost of Other People’s Promises is beguiling her with sham dreams.

She touches the next sphere gently – it’s entirely filled with flurries of plastic snow – a gift of Christmas Present. The white flakes will not settle long enough for there to be anything but blizzard. Like the cosmic debris constantly pelting the spaceship.

Kis picks up the original bauble again. Granchy called this ‘The Rain Globe’, saying it reminded her of her last days on Earth. As Kis’ other plans seem to have failed, she wonders if she should get Granchy’s poem about it framed for Christmas. She flicks through Granchy’s e-note until she finds the words.

 

The Rain Globe

Imagine the Earth sealed in curved glass,
our world as a rain dome. The wet

more frightening than drops of light
glistening towards dice houses.

Hold this sphere in your palm,
turn it upside down and it’s the sky

that drowns. Foundations cling
to the thin land above.

Imagine we’re tiny people,
speaking through bubbles,

all of us now divers
thrown in water flight,

lives tilted
towards spillage.

 

But suppose this Christmas is Granchy’s last? It isn’t the most cheerful gift to give her, even if Granchy’s mind has gone too far to understand the sadness.

Ting! Kis’ electroscreen flashes with a new message.

“Your merchandise has been located. Your order is in g-flight!”

Kis senses her heart pumping redder and faster as she reads. She’d not really expected her search to work. But now this message from Galaxis. What if this is it? Finally.

Of course, Kis tries to slow her breathing, it could be a fake – black-world sellers are notoriously unreliable. But as past-dealers go, Galaxis’ reputation is legendary on the contraband scene. If it really is a cherry from that last tree? If the rumors are correct, one sniff may be all it takes to save Granchy.

And the price? Kis wills herself not to think about that, as she packages up The Rain Globe in stellarwrap. So long as this works, it will be worth it. It’s not the first heirloom they’ve had to sacrifice, and she still has Granchy’s poems.

Kis hears her own nails tapping the desk in time with her heartbeat, as she waits for her exchange to process. The noise reminds her of Granchy’s recordings of an old analogue clock ticking, only faster, more arrhythmic, hollower.

To occupy her fingers and thoughts, Kis turns to one of the brighter entries from Granchy’s journal and forces herself to concentrate on the lines.

Underwater: Surviving

In our new place / the fish
              that pour from the common tap
                          rise a little faster \ bubble bigger

                          Away from town streets / the water
              tastes clearer / easier to swallow
unthickened by twists of pipe

through terraces submerged
              in the flood \ of their own debris
At sea in this new world

              we are strangers to ourselves
                          Oceans teach us to dive deeper
              to find strength we never knew

If…when dry land returns
              we will welcome free-walking
but guard tails and fins in case

              We made this house of gills
                          layered with synthetic scales
              now \ we swim with it

Although, it’s the hundredth time Kis has read the poem, this still seems worlds away from her own life. No water, no individual homes on the Interstar, only an infinity of space outside and the increasingly more cramped crampedness of near-communal living inside. But the title and Granchy’s determination…survival Kis gets. Survival is the one essential that they’ve all been fed and watered on. Survival and hope.

Ting! “Your g-pod has landed!” The electromassage flashes a brighter blue neon than the lights on the Christmas tree, its chime louder than any bells Kis would ever wish for her frozen-lake skaters.

Although Kis is trying to stay realistic, she can’t help feeling expectation rise inside her as the small pod arrives in her cubicle-chute.

She prizes the pod apart and takes out a tiny box.

It looks the right size. She imagines the weight is right. But she’s scared now to open it. She’s never seen a real cherry, so how can she even tell if it’s genuine? There’s only one person Kis knows who will know for sure. The same person that Kis needs it for.

Shoving the box in her pocket, Kis grabs the next zip-express and hurries though the shafts towards the sick bay.

It’s hard to distinguish Granchy’s dark curls from the shadows on her pillow. Except the shadows are dancing and Granchy’s hair and head are still. Granchy’s breathing is slower and shallower even since Kis’ last visit.

“Granchy,” Kis whispers. “It’s me.”

Kis sees Granchy’s eyelids flutter and bends over to kiss her great-great-great-grandma’s moon-pale cheek.

“Look, I’ve brought you something.”

Opening the box, Kis lifts out the waxy fruit by its stalk. This thin wiriness bends with the weight of the shiny soft bead that she’s been promised is real cherry. It looks real, feels it too. She wishes Granchy’s eyes would open, and stay open long enough to look, check and reassure Kis.

Steadying the fruit with her gloved palm, Kis uses a scalpel to nick its surface, then slides a tiny sliver of reddish flesh into her specimen dish. If this is what it should be – and if it does what it should do – there’s enough cells for her to sample and re-synthesize.

Then, clasping the rest of the small bead gently between two fingers, Kis holds what she believes is the last red cherry to Granchy’s lips…and hopes.

S.A. LEAVESLEY is an award-winning journalist, fiction writer and poet. Author of two novellas, her short fiction publications include Jellyfish Review, The Nottingham Review, Ellipsis Zine, Oxford Today and Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine. Nominated for Best Small Fictions, she also runs V. Press poetry and flash imprint.

Image: Gerd Altmann via Pixabay

 

 

Sergey Vasiliev stares out the window, eyes wide. No matter how many times he sees it, it makes his spirit soar.

“Really Sergey? It’s not like you haven’t seen a sunrise before. In fact, you see it every ninety-two minutes. That’s like a bajillion since you’ve been on this mission.”

Sergey smiles and shrugs his shoulders. He looks back at Kiyoko Watanabe as she pulls the daily calendar page, wads it into a ball, and releases it, watching it float away.

“Seven days and a wake-up,” she says, a smile spreading across her face. “Going to make it home for Aimi’s fifth birthday!” She moves her hand to her lips, then to the picture above the daily calendar. “Goodbye International Space Station—hello baby girl!”

A glint of light pulls him back to the window and he watches the sun become visible above the curvature of the earth. Glorious. A new day, and all the hope and promise that comes with it.

“Good morning ISS crew.”

“Mornin’ Houston,” Mission Commander Jules Rousseau says in his best Texas drawl.

‘There you go, Commander,” the mission controller cheers him.

Sergey can hear the laughter in the background. With the sun fully visible, he abandons his window on the world and starts for the breakfast area.

“Who’s picking the music this morning, Commander?”

“My turn, Jules!” Kiyoko says in a sing-song voice.

“Please let it be, ‘Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” Jules mock pleads.

“In your dreams, my French Cowboy. This morning I want a little ‘Pepper’ with my breakfast,” Kiyoko declares.

“Nooo,” Jules wailes. “Sergey requested them yesterday, remember? ‘Back in the USSR?’

“Jeez, Jules. Not the Beatles ‘Sergeant Pepper,’ Just ‘Pepper.’ You know… the Butthole Surfers.”

“Butthole Surfers? Why would anyone request music by a band called the Butthole Surfers?”

“In honor of you,” Kiyoko informs him, “You know…because you’re an asshole.”

Sergey laughs hard at the unexpected retort.

“Is that Sergey laughing?” the mission controller asks, his voice incredulous.

“Don’t know, Control. Never heard him laugh. Not sure I’ve even heard him speak,” Jules teases.

*      *       *

Breakfast was always Sergey’s favorite meal. He recalls his childhood, sitting with his parents at the breakfast table enjoying butterbrots and kasha, his parents chirping about his mother’s writing or papa’s work in the lab at the university, then shifting their attention to him, enraptured by his accounts of school. The optimism of his parents at the start of each day sustained him, regardless of what the day might later bring.

On the ISS, the crew typically gathered for meals, and over the mission, Sergey had grown quite fond of his crewmates, especially Jules and Kiyoko. Though each was involved in serious work weighted by immense responsibility, their macaronic banter was eurhythmic, always bringing a joy to the table that attenuated the pressure of their mission. It was reminiscent of his childhood, the optimism sustaining him through the loneliness of months in space. He adored listening to Kiyoko’s stories of Aimi—how her face lit up when she spoke of her daughter, who at the age of four, was already using computers as well as children twice her age. “She’ll be twice the computer scientist that I am,” Kiyoko predicted.

Jules’ stories often involved his family’s vineyard and how much he loved giving tours, especially to schoolchildren. “They’re our future, Sergey,” he would insist, and Sergey was thrilled when Jules had asked him to assist him in presenting a biology lesson that would be transmitted to the schoolchildren in his hometown in a few short hours.

The time in space had given Sergey time to think about his own future. His status as ISS astronaut elevated his already impressive engineering resume, and he was certain that when this mission was over he would have a choice of opportunities that would assure him of a comfortable, if not lucrative lifestyle. Maybe then, Larissa would take his marriage proposal seriously. He imagined their marriage, followed by a honeymoon in Hawaii, and then a life together with three, maybe four children—

The alarm startles them, temporarily gorgonizing each before spurring them to action. Sergey allows the others to depart the compartment first, before propelling himself to his assigned station at the controls of the robotic arm.

“Commander, do you have a visual?”

“Where am I looking?” Jules asks.

“Port, eleven o’clock,” mission control tells him.

Sergey looks out the window. In the distance he can see it and he readies himself at the controls of the robotic arm. With an estimated half-million objects in space and less than forty-three thousand tracked, close approaches occasionally occur and a collision course is a constant concern.

“See, it,” Jules says.

“Can you calculate its trajectory?” Mission control asks.

“On it,” Kiyoto tells them.

Sergey can feel the tension through the silence. “What are we tracking?” he asks.

“Mobile Satellite,” the mission controller says, brusquely.

“J2000 projects it to be on course for intersect with 2015-158A. ETI three minutes. Approximate distance from ISS, one kilometer.”

“What satellite is mobile?” Sergey asks.

“2016-0027,” comes the terse reply from mission control.

“Malfunction?” Jules asks.

“Unknown.”

Sergey looks out the window, but can no longer see the satellite. “Are we a safe distance?”

“We’re safe,” Jules assures him. “Resume normal activities.”

“Negative on resuming normal activities, ISS. Prepare for maneuver,” Mission Control instructs.

“What’s going on?” Sergey asks, but his question goes unanswered.

On the closed channel, Jules tells them, “Meet me in Unity Node.”

Sergey is the first to arrive, his distance from the robotic arm only a few meters from Unity Node.

Kiyoko is next, and they hear Jules moving toward them. Sergey doesn’t like the way she is frowning and avoiding his eyes.

“What’s going on, Jules?” Sergey demands.

“This could be bad. A maneuver is precautionary, in case we are targeted.”

“Targeted? Who would be targeting us? Why?”

“You know the scenarios, Sergey.”

“Guys, I don’t think it’s us. The target, I mean.” Kiyoko looks at each of the men. “2016-0027, that’s the North Korean satellite, and it’s either malfunctioned or is deliberately being maneuvered on an intercept course with U.S. early warning.”

“What does this mean?” Sergey asks, looking from Jules to Kiyoko.

“We’re not sure, Sergey. Maybe nothing. Maybe the children are playing games, you know, trying to frighten each other again,” Kiyoko says with a shrug, though her tone makes the reassurance feel disingenuous.

“Well they need to stop with the games,” Sergey says, “it’s dangerous and irresponsible.”

Jules puts a hand on his shoulder. “Look, Sergey, we don’t know what it means, so there is no point getting worked up about it. We just need to focus on our training and hope for the best.”

“ISS, maneuver commencement in one minute. Recommend crew move to Quest,” mission control announces.

Kiyoko puts her hand on Sergey’s back and gives a gentle pat before following Jules to the conjoined Quest airlock. Sergey follows and within seconds, they are in.

“Mission control, we are prepared for maneuver,” Jules announces.

“Copy, initiating thrusters.”

During past maneuvers, the movement of the ISS to maintain altitude or avoid debris had been so slight that Sergey could offset the effect by placing a pinkie finger against a fixed object. This time, Sergey feels his body shift as the station moves.

“Do you feel that?” Kiyoko asks.

Jules gives a slow nod.

“They’re trying to move us in a hurry, Sergey says as he checks his watch. For the next three minutes, no one speaks.

“Mission control to ISS Crew, we request one of you go to the cupola for visual confirmation.”

“Roger, control. Confirmation of what?” Jules asks.

“US Space Command has lost data from 2015-158A.”

“Shit,” Kiyko moans.

“Exactly,” mission control answers.

“I’ll go,” Jules volunteers.

“Me too,” Sergey says, giving an apologetic shrug to Kiyoko.

They move through Unity to Tranquility and then to the Cupola, the entire trip taking less than two minutes. Sergey follows Jules in, head first, their legs protruding into the Tranquility node.

“Kiyoko, can you give us those coordinates again?” Jules requests.

Sergey cranes his neck, turning to see anything that appears out of the ordinary, when in his periphery, he catches an intense flash.

“What was that?” Sergey yells.

“Mission control to ISS, US Space Command is reporting launch of ICBM.”

“Sacre bleu,” Jules exclaims, covering his face with his hands.

“No, no, this can’t be—,” Kiyoko says, her voice breaking.

Sergey looks through the cupola glass at the earth and sees intense flashes up and down the Korean peninsula and in nearby Japan and China.

“Stop, please stop,” Sergey moans.

“What, Sergey? What’s going on?” Kiyoko asks, alarm rising in her voice.

Sergey feels a hand on his forearm. Jules is shaking his head.

“Kiyoto, what is our current altitude?” Jules asks.

His question goes unanswered as they continue their eastwardly orbit over the Pacific. They watch in horror as a missile streaks past them in its downward trajectory. From the waters off the Hawaiian Islands, sagittate projectiles rise on an intercept course.

“Yes,” Sergey says, for the first time feeling something akin to hope.

“Wha—?” Jules yelps as his body jerks downward.

“Move,” Kiyoko says as she projects herself past him into the cupola.

She twists, and Sergey knows she is trying to locate Japan, but he can’t take his eyes off the missiles shooting towards each other. Suddenly, where there had been one downward missile, there are many.

“Where is it?” Kiyoko cries. “Where is Japan?”

“It’s out of visual range,” Jules calls up.

“Mission control, MIRV’s deployed over Hawaii,” Sergey reports.

“What the fuck is a MIRV?” Kiyoko says, still searching for Japan.

“Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle,” Jules says, his voice deflating.

Kiyoko glances down at him before twisting her head side to side while Sergey continues looking toward Hawaii. Her sharp intake of breath causes him to turn. “What?”

He can see they are just off the California coastline and Kiyoko stares, mouth open in horror, at the streaks emanating from the ground.

Sergey follows her gaze, sees the myriad of lines streaking into the sky in long arcs from California and the Washington coastline. The intense flash from the west causes them both to cry out and cover their eyes.

Sergey feels Kiyoko brush against him as she departs the cupola.

“Let me see,” Jules says, and Sergey imagines him pulling Kiyoto’s hands from her face so he can inspect her eyes.

Sergey hears her crying, but the sound is interrupted by audio warnings. He rubs his burning eyes, trying to restore his vision while simultaneously attempting to discern how many warnings and what they mean. For certain, the close proximity warning is alarming as well as an equipment failure warning. Is it the solar panels? He blinks a few times to clear his eyes. Is that a fire alarm?

“What’s happening Jules?”

“She’s okay,” Jules answers, elevating his voice above the alarms. “And you?”

“Okay. What about the alarms? What’s happening to the station?”

“Mission control, what’s the status of ISS?” Jules asks on the open channel.

For a few seconds there is silence, and then static.

“Mission control, come in.” Jules repeats.

More static, followed by a popping noise.

“Mission control, what’s happening?” Sergey yells.

“Mission control, come in now,” Kiyoko demands.

“Sergey,” Jules says looking into the cupola and pointing.

Sergey looks through the glass and gasps. To the west, a mushroom cloud rising far higher than the ISS, appears over Hawaii. “EMP,” he mumbles, knowing that no amount of yelling or insistence would restore communication with mission con

“We have to check the status of the station,” Jules insists.

“I…”

“Stay,” Kiyoko sniffles, “I’ll go with Jules.”

Jules and Kiyoko disappear into Tranquility node and Sergey returns his attention to the cupola, where the view is disorienting. Satellites appear outside their normal orbits, and nothing seems to be in its normal place. He watches a weather satellite lose altitude, falling into the path of orbiting space junk where it is pummeled by debris, before breaking apart and assimilating into the mass. He witnesses several near misses and one spectacular collision which, thankfully, is far enough away to not impact ISS.

They are over Texas when he sees the first streaks rising above the north pole. The counter-launches from Kansas and Missouri are immediate, as is his nausea. Sergey leaves the cupola, struggling with dizziness and what feels like the start of a massive headache. He propels himself toward Quest, his heart racing as he pulls forward. Inside, he searches for the transdermal dimenhydrinate patch he hopes will bring him physical relief. Sergey finds it in the space suit and applies it to his arm. He closes his eyes and tries to will his heart to slow, his stomach to settle and his heart to stop breaking. He counts backwards from one hundred, reaching twenty-seven when the fire alarm goes silent. The other alarms have also abated and now, the only sounds are the proximity alarms.

He wants to believe this is good news, that Jules and Kiyoko are putting the station back in order. When his count reaches fifteen, he is interrupted.

“Sergey, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Jules, I hear you. Is everything back to normal?”

There is a slight hesitation and then, “Please meet us at Rassvet.”

Sergey bristles. Rassvet is the port where the Soyuz craft is docked. Were they considering leaving ISS?

“On my way, Jules.”

When Sergey reaches Rassvet, Jules is outside the Soyuz capsule, his face pale and grave. Looking past him, Sergey sees Kiyoko sitting inside, clutching the photo of Aimi to her chest.

Jules steps forward, taking Sergey’s forearm and directing him back towards Zarya module. “She’s insisting we return,” Jules says.

“Why, is life support failing?”

Jules shakes his head.

“Structural issues?”

Jules shrugs. “The station’s still functional, though the navigational system is fried. We may be losing altitude, but that’s not what concerns her. She’s insisting we return so she can find her daughter. She said she’s leaving with or without us.”

Sergey looks from Jules to Kiyoko and back. “What do you think, Jules?”

Jules sighs. “For us, there are no good options.” He looks back at Kiyoko. “If I had a daughter, I would go back.”

*      *      *

From the Cupola, Sergey watches Kiyoko and Jules depart the ISS. He lifts his hand, though he doubts they can see him and immediately feels the intensity of loneliness. The pull starts in his stomach and radiates outward until he feels as if he’s been sucked into a blackhole. He’s over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge when he loses sight of them.

In his fantasy, Kiyoko and Jules splash safely off the coast of Japan, are picked up by a science vessel and taken to Tokyo where government leaders assist in reuniting her with Aimi. “It’s okay, mama,” Aimi will assure her, “the missiles didn’t work. Can we go to the festival and get Choco Bananas?”

The fantasy provides some relief and his spirit is bolstered again when Africa comes into view, the twilight revealing a continent unscathed. Perhaps the concatenation isn’t as catastrophic as he feared. He rubs his burning eyes. The emotion of the past hour has been exhausting. With eyes closed, he thinks of Larissa, wonders what she is doing, whether she is afraid and who is with her to provide comfort. He vows he will never leave her again…and his mind slips into unconsciousness.

*      *      *

His eyes pop open at the sound of the alarm. Through the cupola the earth is dark. How long has he been asleep? He checks his watch. He should be seeing the sunrise, but instead… He puts his hand to the glass and feels tiny vibrations. His head spins with the realization that he is in the midst of a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. Soon the entire station is vibrating, alarms blaring.

He recognizes the alarm for abandon station, and realizes that the ISS is in catastrophic danger. His eyes brimming with tears, he tries to imagine Kiyoko and Jules safely in Japan, reunited with Aimi. From his window on the world he begins humming a song, then singing, “Here comes the sun. Here comes the sun. And I say, it’s alright…”

 

 

Image: Free-Photos via Pixabay

 

 

Dear reader, I fear my sanity is escaping.

The following account is written with intentions of importance, none of which include the provision of entertainment. I urge you, the reader, to heed the foolish actions detailed in these pages, for it seems increasingly likely that you too may one day find yourself in a situation as sinister as mine.

It began with an interruption. The day thus far had been spent mostly in frustration as I had attempted to untangle several theories of human cognition; I was at the precipice of a breakthrough when the door to my office swung open without the customary preceding knock and my thread of thought was snapped. Professor Hadleigh strolled into the room with a level of joviality that suggested a complete disregard for his mid-afternoon trespass.

“…as you can see, it’s quite spacious. It’s just Doctor Pendleton in here presently, but I’m sure he would be happy to- oh, Pendleton! Dear fellow, my apologies, I didn’t expect you’d be here!”

“Well it is my office, professor. Who else would you expect to find?”

“Don’t you usually have an undergraduate seminar around this time?”

“I cancelled it. The children never listen to a word I say, they can teach themselves for all I care!”

“You cancelled… why on earth would you- no, not today.” Hadleigh made a big show of biting his tongue. He’s quite insufferable as a head of department. He subscribes to a hierarchy determined by job title rather than intelligence or academic brilliance, because this is the only hierarchy of which he can be certain he sits atop. I despise him.

“I’ve just been giving a little tour of the university to Doctor tuh-woah-mist-oh, who’s on loan to us from karr-killer university in Finland,” Hadleigh spoke the foreign words with an irritating slowness and still managed to horrendously mispronounce them. “His work on cognitive empiricism has caused quite a furore in academic circles in Finland, and he’s chosen our humble institution as the location for a year-long sabbatical. I expect you’ll be eager to pick his brain, given your shared field of study.”

I noticed for the first time the figure standing beside him, a stocky young fellow with a rather vacant facial expression. The heavy little man’s bored demeanour persisted as he complimented Hadleigh’s pronunciation, who grinned proudly like a dog who’d received a treat.

“I was not aware that Karkkila had a university,” I said as I shook his cold hand. His grip was strong, which I supposed was unsurprising given his Viking heritage. In the moment before he made his reply I could hear a faint whirring sound, similar to that of a gramophone record spinning on the centre spindle before being touched by the needle. At the time I dismissed the sound as of no significance.

“Karkkila Yliopisto was founded in 1847 and is one of the finest academic institutions in Finland,” he stated, and the whirring stopped. The cadence of his speech was eerie. Listening to the words, one got the impression that they were merely sounds which had to be made in a specific order rather than words with meanings attached. I reasoned that I was simply unaccustomed to the lilt of the Finnish accent.

I informed Hadleigh that I really did have quite a lot of work to be getting on with, and I turned back to my desk.

“I’ve decided to put Doctor Tuomisto in with you, Pendleton.”

“Put him in with me?”

“Well, this office is intended for two. I know you’ve had it to yourself since Doctor Clemens left last year-”

“Doctor Clemens’ leaving was nothing to with me, as I have told you before! His work was abysmal, and if it were not me it would have been one of my colleagues!”

“Enough, Pendleton! Everyone in this department is required to share an office, including you. Your thoughts on the matter are irrelevant!”

So, it was done. The empty desk which sat opposite my own was dusted off and half my office was surrendered to a man hailed as an expert on human cognition, but who had clearly yet to master human interaction. The Finn’s saving grace was that he did not say much. All the things he did decide to verbalise, however, were decidedly odd.

“Pendleton, tell me the details of your current thesis.”

“Pendleton, delineate, if you can, the unifying themes of your numerous research papers on the subject of empiricism versus nativism within the study of cognition.”

“Pendleton, share with me your thoughts on Descartes’ mind-body dualism and your reasons for these thoughts.”

I did not take to the Finn at all. His skin had an unnatural, metallic hue and his dull eyes were unshakable. His joints moved slowly, and his centre of gravity appeared to shift with each footstep, as if his body was fighting against its poor design. If Finland is filled with people like him, it must be a very queer place indeed. I decided that I should very much hate to visit a place like that.

For a couple of weeks, I hated him quietly. Each time his joints wheezed as he moved about my office in his strange, stiff way, I tutted loudly. Whenever I looked up from my work to find him staring at me as though his eyes were recording my every move, I made a rude gesture (which appeared to perplex him). Each time he probed me about my research, I suggested he return to Finland, where he was clearly much better liked.

The event which tipped my annoyance into fear transpired on a Tuesday afternoon, when I was enjoying a rare moment of solitude in my office. I glanced out of the window at the gaggle of students who were sitting in the grass, enjoying the unexpected April sunshine, and then I spotted the Finn awkwardly traversing the path leading from the library to the Micklethwaite building. I groaned inwardly at yet another intrusion by the irritating foreigner into a quiet moment, when I saw him stop quite abruptly as his right eye popped out of its socket and rolled about on the path like a large marble.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! None of the students lounging on the grass and loitering outside the campus buildings even noticed – they were much too immersed in their own idiotic conversations to notice that mere feet away from them a suspicious foreigner had spontaneously expelled one of their body parts!

The Finn looked around himself quite slowly, eased himself into a kneeling position, retrieved his runaway eyeball and carefully slotted it back into its socket. He carried on towards the Micklethwaite building in a manner suggesting nothing strange had happened at all.

That evening I returned home to find Hirsch, with whom I shared a small house at the time, sprawled on the chesterfield in the drawing room with his eyes half closed and a glass of red wine dangling in his limp grip, dripping onto the pages of the book lying open in his lap. I snatched the glass and he awoke with a start.

“Wha..? Pendy, what the…?” he sat upright and ran his fingers through his dark curly hair, as he often did upon awakening. I knocked back the remains of the wine and poured myself another from the bottle he’d left on the coffee table.

“The filthy European is a damned machine!”

“I feel this is a story which could have waited until I woke up more comfortably,” Hirsch groaned. He set the sodden book on the coffee table and lit a cigarette. “I’m getting a little tired of hearing about this chap, you know.”

“He’s not a chap! He’s a thing, he’s an it!” I told Hirsch of what I had witnessed and when I had finished he seemed irritatingly amused.

“So, what you’re telling me is that Doctor Tuomisto is an incredibly sophisticated automaton posing as a human, hellbent on stealing your research and thus ruining your career?” he chuckled.

“Yes! Why else would he appear in my life, watching my every move, asking all these questions about my work?”

“Ah yes, because your work is of great significance.”

“Oh, be quiet. I should’ve known you’d be like this, you always are after this muck!” I slammed the glass of wine back on the coffee table and stormed upstairs to the spare bedroom. Just before the door slammed behind me, I heard his taunting words chase me up the stairs.

“…yes, of course you’re right, Pendy, you always are! He’s a machine which has travelled across the North Sea specially to steal your fascinating research, because nobody else in all of Europe is half as smart or as brilliant as you are…”

Bastard.

I was certain of the Finn’s true nature, but as a loyal subscriber to the scientific method, I decided to gather more data before making any irreversible decisions.

The next day, the Finn wandered into the office and made a low hissing sound as it slowly lowered itself to a seated position at its desk. I had come to believe it to be some sort of mechanical necessity – clearly the spies at Karkkila University had not invested as much money has they should have into their pet automaton.

“Doctor Tuomisto! Just the man I had hoped to see, could you weigh in on something, please?” I was sickeningly cheerful. The Finn turned its head ninety degrees to meet my gaze.

“Yes, Doctor Pendleton. I am always happy to help.”

“Excellent. So, tell me – what are your thoughts on alumantheses?”

Its dark eyes bored into mine as it attempted to compute the nonsense word. “Alu… man… theses.” It tested the syllables.

“Yes, alumantheses. Thoughts?”

The Finn repeated the word once more. “I believe the subject of alumantheses to be of considerable intrigue and the area as a whole is deserving of further scrutiny. Don’t you agree, Doctor Pendleton?”

“Interesting, Doctor Tuomisto, very interesting indeed. Whilst we’re on the subject, what are your thoughts on diptherescence?”

Again, the Finn made a show of repeating the word slowly and pausing in mock consideration.

“I believe the subject of diptherescence to be of considerable intrigue and the area as a whole is deserving of further scrutiny. What are your thoughts on the matter, Doctor Pendleton?”

It had been programmed with a sentence template for use in response to unfamiliar terms. There was no doubt – it was a machine!

For several hours I seethed, infuriated at the insolence and utter weasly nature of the dirty worms at Karkkila University for being so threatened by my research that they would attempt to steal it, and at Hirsch’s disbelief that my research would be worth stealing.

I was sick of science being wielded as a weapon. I had devoted my life to the study of the human mind, and where had it gotten me? Out of ideas and barely middle-aged, sharing an office with a dirty foreigner for weeks before finally stumbling upon the discovery that it wasn’t even a real man.

Reader, it was this moment of utter mortification at my lacking intellect that drove me towards my downfall. I was sick of looking at the Finn. I decided to bash its stupid metal face in.

*      *      *

“So, Doctor Tuomisto, how are you enjoying our humble university?”

The Finn’s neck wheezed as it turned its head ninety degrees to look at me. “I am adjusting to your institution most pleasantly, thank you for asking.”

“Is it much different to your university in Karkkila? It is Karkkila, isn’t it?”

“Yes. My home university is Karkkila Yliopisto, with a student population of 8152, home of the Karkkila Bears, who have won a total of three pesäpallo games against competing universities. Pesäpallo is a Finnish sport in which…”

There was, as always, an abundance of words but a dearth of intelligent information. A further twenty-five minutes passed without incident or conversation. I pretended to write fervent notes for much of this time, all the while carefully listening to the sounds of my colleagues locking their offices for the evening and saying goodbye to one another.

By half past seven, there were no sounds at all from the corridor outside.

“Doctor Pendleton, you have been working for several hours. I am interested in your work. Describe it in detail, please.”

“Perhaps later,” I paused, as if a thought had just occurred to me. “Damn. I think I left some of my notes in the library. I’ll be back in a few minutes, Doctor Tuomisto.”

The Finn stood up so abruptly that its chair clattered to the floor. “I will retrieve your notes. I will return promptly.” The stupid machine clomped down the corridor, determined to complete the wild goose chase.

As its heavy footsteps died with distance, I darted out of the office and strode quickly up and down the corridor, peering into each office window. All of them were empty, with the lights switched off. There entire building was most likely deserted.

I darted back into my office and rifled through my desk drawer, my hand finding the paperweight, one of two objects I had ensured were inside earlier that day. The glass cube felt heavy and important in my hand, and I found myself trembling.

Behind the open door was the best place to hide, and I stood with the paperweight raised over my head, my left foot positioned slightly forward. I was ready to pounce. Several minutes passed and I wondered where the infernal thing had gotten to. Just as my arm was beginning to ache I heard a noise outside and my whole body jerked, flinging the paperweight into the door, where it bounced back and hit me square in the jaw.

Pain erupted in my face and I whimpered involuntarily. I set the paperweight down on my desk, retrieved the second object from my desk drawer and took a quick swig. The liquid pleasantly burnt my lips and eased the pain in my jaw. I had hoped it would steady my nerves, but it did not.

“Hello, Doctor Pendleton. I was unable to retrieve your notes from the library.”

I whipped around, then froze. The Finn was in closer proximity than I had anticipated and we almost collided. This was the first time I had been close enough to examine its dark, inscrutable eyes, and I wondered if perhaps the whole damned thing had been a product of my imagination. Were those eyes truly as lifeless as I had assumed?

Suddenly, the metal man looked quite human.

“Perhaps you would like to recite your notes, I would be happy to-”

The paperweight cracked heavily against the surprisingly thin metal which had been painted to resemble skin, and it was only when my hand drew back that mind caught up to body. The Finn staggered backwards. There was a large dent in its left temple and the whirring noise was louder than it had ever been previously.

There was no scenario in which I could leave this miserable job half done and escape unimplicated. I approached the spasming machine, raised the paperweight above my head and, god help me, I did not stop until the whole ghastly thing was finished.

Towards the end, it became difficult. Sparks flew from the Finn’s joints; its eyes were pinwheels and its entire body seized and shook. Suddenly the limbs flew away from the torso, shot past me and smashed against the four walls of my office, leaving the abandoned torso to clatter against the floorboards.

I was a murderer.

No. It was just a machine. Machines can’t be killed.

It was an interesting conundrum. What makes a killer? Does the victim require a certain level of sentience, or is the sensation of killing sufficient to change a person irrevocably from man to murderer?

As I knelt by the remains of the Finn and peered down at the mess, the torso swung upon on a hinge and I was sprayed with a thick black liquid. It stung terribly as it appeared to bond to my skin; I gagged on the smell and began to hyperventilate. I would later scrub my skin red raw in the shower, and it would be futile.

The black liquid has long since faded, after staining my skin for several days. The infection, however, has yet to fade. With each passing day I find it increasingly difficult to write as the muscles in my hands continue to inexplicably atrophy and my eyes lose their ability to focus. I have thrown blankets over every mirror in the house so that I do not have to risk catching sight of myself – once a man, then a murderer, now a spectre.

My body cries for rest but rarely finds it. My nights are fitful spats of broken sleep, wherein I am taunted by nightmares in which Finnish academics have tracked me down and threaten my life for destroying their spying machine. I am tired. Hirsch has left.

As far as I know, the remains of the Finn are still where I left them: locked in my office’s equipment cupboard, the only key to which is in my possession. In the days following the killing my telephone was ringing a lot, presumably Hadleigh wondering where on Earth I’d gotten to. It rings less frequently now.

I wonder each day about the true purpose of the Finn. Was it ever really trying to steal my work, or was it simply pushing me into a scenario in which it could douse me with poison? And if so, why? More importantly, who would build such a machine and send it to my door?

Such questions hardly seem relevant now.

I fear the Finns will come for me.

 

 

J.L. CORBETT is the editor of Idle Ink, an online publisher of curious fiction. Her short stories have been featured in Storgy Magazine and Preoccupied With The History Department. She owns more books than she can ever possibly read, and she doesn’t get out much.

 

Image: Gerd Altmann via Pixabay

 

 

There are no photos anymore. It’s seems strange to think that once we even photographed our food, our shoes, our selves. Tiny made up records of our lives. Carefully curated memories. Shared with strangers the world over. Made videos that lived and died on a server, a snapshot of your views, your days, your arse. Liked and loved and corresponded without words at all just symbols.

It was fine too, recording everything as this place turned slowly into perilous paradise, while trying to avoid the other images on your feed. Brazil burning to the ground. Sahara spreading and surrounding African cities that succumbed rapidly to desertification. Ignoring Paris drowning slowly, the Louvre submerged and history destroyed piece by piece. It was comical initially, watching swimming in the seine but when the waters didn’t subside, when temperatures didn’t drop, everything changed. Then everything stopped. Ireland ourselves alone. It seemed like a bad joke. I try to stay out of the sun.

I still carry my old phone, battery long dead, storing thousands of moments that I stole or forced from life. Sometimes I long to sit idly flicking through 20 variations of the one picture to find that perfect look. Editing life to make it covetable. Colours brighter, everything vibrant and eye catching. Heighten that idyllic sunset. Crop the blemished bystander in the bad coat from the profile of your life. Deleting anything that didn’t fit the performance. Life as a portrait.

A familiar feeling washes over me I’d thought I’d forgotten and I take out a battered iPhone, screen cracked and just hold it. Most people keep devices like relics. I know I should stop carrying it around with me. A useless piece of ancient technology.

I never kept photos in my wallet. That was a thing old people did. Not that we need wallets anymore but still I’d like a photograph. I see people sometimes in the camps linger over treasured pictures, they are always alone, sometimes it seems that they only exist on paper, that they aren’t really here at all.

On a board outside the village, there are thousands of pictures of missing people, pinned with tacks, and mouldy bits of tape, the oldest images battered by the elements, bleached out by the sun, smiling happy faces lost all over again. Often I find myself standing there staring up at all these unknown, giving them pretend lives, loves, deaths, because no one has ever taken a person from that board. No one has ever been found. I was going to be a photographer. I think about the images I would take more often than I should. I let my mind wander more frequently than is safe. I check my phone again. Stomach pains flare. Hunger cuts me open. There are no photos anymore.

 

 

OLIVIA FITZSIMONS is a northerner living in Greystones, County Wicklow. Takes her feral children to the woods often, swims in the sea and loves to get lost.
Shortlisted Sunday Business Post Penguin Short Story Prize 2017
Shortlisted Retreat West Flash Fiction Competition 2017
John Hewitt Summer School Bursary Winner 2017

 

Image: via Pxhere

 

 

The last Galen fighting ship corkscrewed away, its lateral engine trailing a spiral of purple smoke. Small elements became separated from the curve of its hull. When their reflective parts caught the sun they glared momentarily before fading into the massive shadow cast by an adjacent moon. The rate of separation looked modest, the movements of each particle graceful, but the forces were immense and the suited human soldiers being hurled through the smoking rents blacked out long before their air supplies ran down.

General Fent Spaith, 35 years old, watched from the bridge of his command cruiser. A square head and prematurely greying temples exaggerated the impression of natural authority. The battle was won. It marked the close of a decade long war, the last in a series of eight wars that had spanned seventy-five years. The mutually agreed periods of respite between wars had allowed each of the three sides to re-group and re-arm; Galens, Antonians and Korzyra.

General Spaith, leader of the Antonian military, had joined forces with the Galens as the eighth war commenced. Together they had vanquished the Korzyra. Then, without warning, the Antonian force had abandoned the treaty of alliance and turned on the weakened Galen fleet.

Others had counted the total number of lives lost. Others had measured the obscene percentages of metals and organic materials that had been vaporised during the Long Fight. But these data did not interest Spaith. He had proved the doubters wrong. The doubters were dead. He had killed them all in the prelude to the eighth conflict. In doubting him, they had undermined the war effort. History would absolve the dictatorship he had established.

“Congratulations Sir,” said his Aide de Camp from across the pentagonal bridge. Smoke, resulting from surges in some of the instruments, had been supressed into a dense carpet by xenon purges. The Aide de Camp was called Bolan, and he was an artificial. Spaith’s entire staff were artificial. He preferred them that way.

“Thank-you Bolan.” Spaith’s words were slightly muffled by the air-supply he wore over nose and mouth. “And what of that Galen coloniser? It escaped the peripheral net during the firefight.”

“I took the liberty of issuing orders to set up an even wider net… I didn’t want to trouble you during the closing manoeuvres. The coloniser is heading towards a string of linked Mercs as we speak. They have laid ripple chains across its path.”

Lungless Bolan breathed easily in the xenon.

Spaith nodded. “Good. Make sure they wrap around. I don’t want it disabled, I want it destroyed. And let me know when it’s done. How large, by the way?”

“The coloniser? Small. There are 900,000 souls on board.”

“I was surprised how easily they fell for it, the Galens.”

“You had been cultivating them as potential allies for many years sir, since the sixth war. Did you always intend the double-cross?”

“Yes Bolan. The long game. It requires patience.”

“I see sir. Their trust in you was… naïve.”

Spaith gave Bolan a quizzical look.

Bolan moved forward. His shins swished through the smoke and left eddies above the floor. He wore the uniform of Spaith’s army: dark blue textile, silver piping on the trouser legs and the arms of his tunic. Silver insignia – five semi-circles – on his right shoulder, indicating the high-rank that justified his presence here. Spaith looked back from featureless viewing screen. The smoking carcasses of every defeated ship had either fallen out of view, or been vaporised in the clean-up.

Bolan was coming too close. Spaith wasn’t used to proximity like this.

“Bolan?”

“Please, Sir, this is an historic moment. Let me be the first to shake your hand.”

“Err…of course. Pleased to.” He extended a hand to the artificial. Bolan took it, and held Spaith’s wrist with his other hand in a comradely gesture. Then he tore Spaith’s hand off in one swift, sure motion.

“BOLAN!” Spaith sank to the ground on his knees. “What are you…?” The General held the stump with his good hand, and watched the blood well up from the raw surface in horror. He clasped it to his chest like a child would a precious bird.

But he had already retaliated.

A combination of eye movements that one could only accomplish by using each extra-ocular muscle in a pre-determined sequence had activated a personal distress call through neural sensor implanted very early on in his military career. The small legion of personal (artificial) guards who resided in the walls of the ship sprang to life, burst through the thin metal panels that had hidden them during the entire campaign, and stormed the bridge, encircling Spaith in less than thirty seconds.

None touched Bolan, who stepped back.

“Watch him boys,” Bolan instructed them, calmly.

“KILL HIM!” ordered Spaith, gesturing at Bolan.

“General, your personal guard are loyal only to me. They will look after you. Medic, treat him.”

One of the guards pulled the stump from Spaith’s chest, irradiated it gently, picked off two arterial spurters with a cauterising beam, and dressed it in a traditional crepe bandage.

Spaith’s bewilderment grew and grew. “Bolan, what is this? We have won. I have led you to victory. Who is behind this mutiny? Whose orders are you following?”

“General Crall.”

“Matthew Crall?”

“They are his orders.”

“He’s still alive?”

“Very.”

“I… I heard he’d been irradiated by a solar flare in the Dallant system?”

“He recovered. He is close. I am permitted to speak for him. Here. This will allow you to focus.”

Bolan reached for an object in his pelvic cavity, through an intelligent seal just below the place a human umbilicus would lie. He held out a chipped enamel cup, standard military issue to new cadets.

Spaith’s expression changed.

“You remember it. Good. General Crall thought you would.”

For General Spaith, things began to fall into place.

*     *     *

The cup used to sit in Matthews Crall’s locker. On the second day of the first term at the training academy he had showed it off to the other boarders, rotating it lovingly in his hands, pointing out the seamless lines. Matthew told them that his parents had bought it from the only shop in the quadrant that stocked equipment with the academy’s official design – a scatter of points in the shape of the nearby Anvil Nebula.

Fent Spaith, eleven-years old, said nothing as this precious object was lauded.

Through the following weeks he noted how it was brought out every evening when the boys were allowed to make hot chocolate. Matthew washed it and dried it carefully, then placed it back in the locker – a misnomer, for nothing was locked in the academy. Trust in one’s fellow cadets was absolute.

The boys, one hundred of them, were tested throughout the year. The results of these tests were displayed on public boards. Fent did well, and was reliably in the top five. The top three, based on cumulative scores, were taken off-world at the end of the first year to an advanced training facility.

The year’s final test was a full war game, in which each cadet piloted their own craft in a sphere of space with a diameter of 300 kilometres. Its boundaries were lined with field-nets. The craft were designed to absorb laser energy without exploding; instead, their brittle alloy hulls disintegrated, leaving the pilots suspended in protective rescue fields, where they hung until the game was completed.

The transparent and barely perceptible naso-oral specs worn whenever they visited an extra-atmospheric training theatre channelled an inexhaustible supply of air. But while they languished, the cadets were vulnerable to further indignity. If a fellow cadet aimed a laser at their chest badge – a larger version of the Anvil – their cumulative score would be reduced by ninety points. This was enough to pull them way down the ranking.

The primary aim of the game? To destroy a cube of hard mineral that hovered on the far side of the sphere. None of the training cadets had enough firepower at their thumb-tip to achieve this alone; a minimum of eight craft had to fire into the same spot to break down the crystal structure. Once that had been achieved, the cadet who reaped the greatest weight of mineral rubble in the scoop slung under their hull won the game.

It was called The Reaping.

Fent formulated a plan. He worked on it from the middle of the second term. Such scheming was not unknown, as academy lore told that to win The Reaping required more than flying and shooting skills; it demanded political aptitude.

So Fent identified and recruited a team of twenty fellow cadets. They agreed to watch each other’s backs, play interference, engage other groups and, when the density of craft had been sufficiently reduced, align for the final assault. Then they would concentrate their fire, smash the cube, and clean up. The twist, the hook… points garnered from the spoils would be shared across the twenty, even if some of them were disintegrated in the process. Points awarded would be proportionate to the number of ‘kills’, that is, disintegrations and badge shots. Each of the twenty recruits liked the idea. It was novel. Their supervisor liked it, and she recorded in her training file that Fent had shown promising ingenuity.

Several days before the game Fent looked carefully over the latest rankings. He lay third. Good. But he wanted to be first. Matthew Crall was second, lying twelve points ahead of Fent. If they both had a good game and were not shot, their relative positions would remain unchanged. Crall was in the group of twenty. He was an ally. On the night before the game, Fent went to sleep in a troubled state of mind. Troubled, but certain of what needed to be done.

*     *     *

“Matthew, you got those purple scum covered?”

“They’re toast.”

Fent Spaith smiled. Matthew was doing a good job, leading a sub-unit of five craft on a mission to corner the major threat to the Twenties strategy. Fifteen cadets had come together in opposition to Fent’s initiative, and with the permission of the supervisor had splashed the noses of their craft with purple paint. Their leader, Yamina Vaye, had taken down three Twenties already. The pilots were still spinning in their rescue nets, trying to slow themselves down by dragging their fingers through the invisible fields.

Matthew was angry. He spotted an opportunity during a long roll, adjusted his yaw, waited a moment longer as Yamina’s aft section slid into his crosshairs, and watched her craft crumble in the glow of his laser. She screamed as the structure collapsed around her, but she was in no physical danger. Matthew swooped down to face her, made eye contact, smiled, and blasted her chest. The field protected her, but the badge on her chest registered the hit. The ranking computer adjusted itself. Yamina fell from eighth to twenty-third place.

“Well done Matthew. Time to regroup, bring your five back, we’re clear for the cube.”

Fent was dominating the theatre. He had personally destroyed six craft. Altogether, the Twenties had destroyed a quarter of the field. Lone rangers, twosomes and triads were too nervous to approach the cube. The twenty (actually fifteen by now) were ranging across the cube’s six faces in well organised formations. They owned it.

“Line up Twenties,” ordered Fent, “Last six to arrive, I want you to cover us. Martha, you’re furthest from us, I want you to hang back and signal any surprise attacks. There may be a late forming group who haven’t shown their cards yet. It’s what I would have done.”

And indeed, as the nine Twenties lined up and prepared to blast the cube, a chevron a craft stormed into the space beneath them firing incessantly. Three Twenties collapsed into flailing limbs. The firing line was now down to six, too few to damage the cube.

“Martha, Tommy, Vera… join the line, now, NOW!”

Fent span off the line in a parabola, spraying fire with fearsome accuracy. The chevron of attacking craft split, two were destroyed, the remaining three lost heart. Their pilots did not fancy being scooped up at the end of the game, perhaps ninety points the poorer.

When the three laggers had joined the line Matthew Crall took charge.

“Lower right corner, on three – one-two-three FIRE!”

Nine beams converged on the cube. It resisted for a minute. The cadets watched their power reserves drain. But at last the mineral cracked. A defect enlarged from the heated corner towards the centre, then zagged back, reaching the top side and causing the heavy mass to split.

“Right fragment!” shouted Fent.

The beams stopped, then leaped forward again, quickly crumbling the larger half of the broken cube. The surviving Twenties systematically reduced the fragments into ever smaller parts. Pilots in nearby craft watched jealously. Cadets out in the sphere who were caught in rescue fields put magnifiers to their eyes and watched.

The mop up took half an hour. Matthew Crall filled his scoop and turned for the base. Fent’s craft slid into his path.

“Hey, Fent, your scoop’s only half full! There’s nothing left.”

“It’s OK Matthew. I know where to find some.” A line of light connected Fent’s gun to Matthew’s flank. Matthew’s craft fell briskly apart. He fell into the instant field, reflexively covering his head with his arms as components swirled around him. When he brought his arms down and looked out into the almost empty sphere (a few rocks floating, a handful of cadets watching in fascination), his badge was glowing with the attenuated heat of Fent’s laser.

*     *     *

Twenty-four years later General Spaith sat in the commander’s chair, bound by sticky fields. His amputated arm throbbed, but was no longer bleeding. A sub-window in the corner of the large viewing screen showed the arrival of a shuttle. The markings indicated that the occupant was a general.

Twenty minutes later Matthew Crall entered the bridge. His frame was spare, his face narrow, but he wore his black hair long, and he had an air of authority about him that he had lacked at the academy. The artificial crew turned towards him in as one. Spaith turned the chair with a movement of his remaining, free hand.

“Crall. What is this game? You have no authority in this theatre.”

“My authority is broader than you can imagine Fent. You’ll forgive me if I use first names. We know each other so well, after all.”

“But you… you barely made it out of the academy. Your career… it was pure nepotism. Your mother…”

“She helped, I will admit that. But my contribution to Antonian society was never going to be marshal. No. Moral rather. That was always my strength.”

Spaith’s gaze was empty. He had no idea where his old classmate was going with this. But he sensed that there were forces in this room about which he had no comprehension.

Matthew Crall approached the commander’s chair. He moved his head, and an artificial deactivated the sticky fields. Spaith sprang to his feet. The same artificial held him back with a rigid shoulder grip.

“Hold your temper Fent,” Matthew’s lips brushed Fent’s ear as he whispered. “These artificials are on trigger settings. They’ll pull you apart if they conclude I am in danger.”

“Then explain to me. Why am I being treated like this.”

Matthew stepped away. “Because your morality is no longer required. It has served its purpose. Your abilities – to persuade, cajole, dissimulate and double-cross – were exactly what we needed to win the final war, but we cannot allow those values to infect our great society.”

“What is this naïve rubbish?”

Crall trembled at the word naïve. His gaze hardened.

“You accused me of naivety once before Fent. Do you remember?”

“No.”

“Then watch. Bolan.”

Bolan extended an arm, spread a palm and projected a recording onto the viewing screen. Fent saw himself as an eleven-year old, from the point of view of another cadet. He stood in the corridor with the food lockers, barring the way to anyone who might pass. The wearer of the cam, Matthew Crall, spoke. Moving shadows and indistinct murmurings gave the impression that other cadets lined the walls, anticipating a confrontation. The view swivelled to a locker door. Matthew’s hand reached for the enamel cup. Then Matthew tried to proceed along the corridor. Fent blocked him.

“I only want to get a drink Fent.”

“No. You can’t. Why have you appealed to the supervisor?”

“Because I was on your side, and you shot me.”

“Show me the rule that says I shouldn’t have.”

“There are no rules Fent, you know that, but it’s wrong.”

“And nothing to do with falling to thirty-three in the ranking? You really think they’ll rescind the strike? Never. The game is for grown-ups! I won. You lost. That’s how war works! Or didn’t your Mummy tell you the facts of life!”

Fent reached forward. His hand loomed in the cam’s field of view. When it was withdrawn its fingers were curled round the enamel cup.

“It’s time to learn some of those facts Matthew. The ranking stands. GET IT?”

Fent held the cup in the angle between the locker’s door and its hinge, then slammed the door shut. The force dented the mug. Splinters of white enamel exploded off its surface, revealing a dark blue undercoat. The cup fell to the floor and rocked on its side until it came to rest. Matthew knelt down, the floor rose up on the viewing panel, and a pale hand extended to retrieve the ruined object. The audience of artificials and two humans, Spaith and Crall, heard a low howl – the young Matthew’s anguish. A child’s distress. A symbol of home, comfort, destroyed.

The film stopped, the screen turned grey, then reverted to an external view of space. The adjacent moon threw off reflected light, blood-orange, deriving from the system’s old star.

Fent faced his accuser boldly. “So this is revenge, for a childish argument.”

“It is more than that Fent. In this display of petulance and ambition you sealed your fate. I had only just returned from the game. My cam was still activated. The supervisor saw this footage. She contacted my parents. My mother intervened. She was on the ethics council, you knew that didn’t you?”

“She carved your career out for you. We all knew that Matthew.”

“More than that. She nurtured your career too, in a way. Manoeuvred your postings, dangled you in harm’s way but ensured you were not killed… made you the little Napoleon you are. But without his reforming zeal.”

Spaith was looking around the bridge. “Are we being filmed?”

“Everything is recorded, all the time.”

“So superior. Yet you let me win this war at great sacrifice. As we speak, nearly a million Galen’s are drifting into a ripple-net. Your precious ethics allow that, so long as it secures the Antonian hegemony. Damned hypocrite.”

“Don’t worry Fent. The coloniser is not a problem. The 900,000 souls are all artificials. The Galen’s saw you coming.”

“You tipped them off. And yet they still permitted the destruction of their fighting force?”

“They recognised that your strategy was fundamentally sound. The pincer movement on the Korzyran fleet was necessary. But the Galens were careful to put no more resources into the theatre than absolutely necessary. The coloniser was a distraction. It worked. The last Korzyran order was to chase it down, and that brought them into your sights. We have signed a treaty of long term co-existence with the Galens.”

Fent had nothing more to say. He had been out-thought.

“Enough,” said Matthew, “It’s time to go.” He drew a blaster, threw the enamel cup into a mobile field so that it spun on its vertical axis in the xenon-heavy air, and shot it. The force tore the cup from the field and into the viewing window. It bounced off, a black and charred echo of its once gleaming form, and fell to the floor… again.

“Fent. Bolan will escort you to the academy. Your injury, sustained in action, precludes you from military rank. Your place in our society will be as a tutor – tactics, formations, artillery. That is your fate. Goodbye. I am taking this ship.”

When Spaith’s personal shuttle, piloted by Bolan, was ten kilometres from the command cruiser, the general’s face began to twitch. He winked three times, looked up, then down, then left, then left again. It was a very unnatural sequence of movements.

“What are you doing?” asked Bolan, turning away from the controls. His blank face betrayed no concern, but his tone did.

“It’s done.”

“What have you…?”

Behind them, silent in space, the hull of the command cruiser began to undulate.

“I just triggered a five second mass auto-destruct of every single crew member.”

Pale smoke began to leak from the bridge, which was situated on a sloped tower. In the engine room, where artificials worked in a radiation soaked environment without danger of sickness, mutation or malignancy, two hundred medium-level explosions immediately shut down the ship’s power and caused a chain reaction. The lower part of the ship blew out, releasing a shower of humanoid forms into the void. They were not scared. They did not need oxygen. They would remain sentient until the freezing temperature arrested the flow of positrons in their distributed cortices.

“The thing I have always loved about Antonian artificials, Bolan, is their absolute dependability, at the end of the day. If, that is, you happen to have gone to the academy with the chief programmer and persuaded him to embed the right sequences destruct before setting out to war. Poor Matthew, for all his finer instincts, he never did understand human nature.”

Bolan had turned back to piloting the shuttle. He readied himself for the expanding force wave that would soon catch up with them. Then he glanced at the shrivelled enamel mug that an inexplicable impulse had led him to collect from the floor before entering the shuttle. He took in its warped shape, its ulcerated surface, its rough lip from which no one would ever sip… and pondered a dilemma in his customary, algorithmic manner – how long, really, can the Antonians reign?

 

 

PHILIP BERRY recently published a collection of SF short stories called Bonewhite Light. Explore his work at www.philberrycreative.wordpress.com or @philaberry  

 

Image: prettysleepy via Pixabay