The Amenonuhoko cut through the space between worlds like a blade through grass. Nichibotsu stood on the observation deck, staring out into the shifting darkness. Space folded in on itself, manipulated into an endless interstellar origami by the ship’s drive plates, lurching forward towards its final destination in an erratic series of jumps.
A crewman appeared at the top of the stairs and briskly approached.
“Well?” Nichibotsu enquired impatiently.
“We estimate planetfall in just over twenty minutes” the crewman replied in a voice that matched his Captain’s exactly.
Nichibotsu turned and stared into his reflection’s face, noting the proud stance.
“Good” he observed, “the ship will remain in orbit whilst I complete my task.”
The crewman bowed in acknowledgement and returned to his station. Nichibotsu surveyed the throng of doppelgangers working below. Blister clones had their uses he acknowledged. Not only had they removed the need to take on fresh crew during his centuries-long voyage, but more than once these curious biomimetics had saved his life, sacrificing themselves beneath the wrath of tempestuous gods. Eternals rarely went quietly when confronted with death, and most had chosen to take as many with them as possible when forced to relinquish their hold on reality.
Outside, stars slowly emerged from the blur of movement. Nichibotsu sensed the deceleration long before the deck began to shudder and by the time the Amenonuhoko dropped into orbit, he was striding purposefully across the flight deck towards the forward section.
His First Lieutenant appeared at his side, falling neatly into step as the two men descended through the bowels of the ship. ‘One’ was the most long-lived of his replicas and second in command, having been transcribed from Nichibotsu at a much younger age. The man’s handsome features were obscured though by a mesh of melted flesh which covered one side of his face and his shoulder; a parting gift from another vengeful God.
One eyed his Captain with a calm gaze that perfectly illustrated his understanding of the situation.
“I’ll be transporting down to the surface in a few moments,” Nichibotsu instructed. “If I do not return within the hour, you know what to do?”
The clone nodded his compliance and handed Nichibotsu a small pad.
“Core Imploders are primed and ready to launch, sir. Rift Incendiaries are also prepped, just in case the target attempts to leave the system.”
Nichibotsu smiled narrowly.
“Efficient as always.”
“Would you expect anything less, Sir?”
“Indeed I would not.”
The two men exchanged a brief salute, followed by a formal bow more befitting of their heritage before One took his leave and strode back towards the bridge.
Nichibotsu ran a practised eye across his armour and regalia, checking both were intact. His hand traced the carvings of his cuirass and came to rest atop the hilt of Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, the larger of the two swords slung at his hip. The weapon was the last vestige of his heritage and he still felt the pull of the past whenever he laid a hand atop the accursed blade.
Nichibotsu remembered the first time he had drawn the sword from its scabbard: Susanoo’s gurgling cry of rage as he died, choking on his own blood and treachery. Nichibotsu could not outrun the shame of his betrayal, but at least with the storm god’s death, he had been assured that the accursed deity would join his murdered sister in Jigoku.
The strange properties of the blade continued to imbue him with near limitless longevity, but the truth which festered at his core would ensure he never outlived his guilt. Even now, with the end of his task at hand, the ancient Samurai could not escape the knowledge that he would forever be Ronin, cursed to wander the stars without master or honour.
Coolant gas hissed conspiratorially as he entered the transmission chamber, stepping briskly up onto the projector. The operator offered a grim salute before keying in the start-up program.
“Do not trouble yourself with thoughts of victory or defeat…” the technician announced solemnly, without looking up.
“… but instead plunge recklessly towards irrational death” Nichibotsu finished, acknowledging the proverb.
Thoughts of belief and subservience entwined like angry serpents as he reminded himself of the most important advantage which his stem-grown crew bestowed: that of blind obedience. An alternative band of hard-bitten organics or pre-assembled mercs would have looked up to him. Through numerous battles they would have learned to trust his judgment and his leadership. In time, they would have come to worship him and that, he could never allow.
Idolatry – the word made him sick, so symbolic of that which he sought to expunge. Faith was the double-edged sword which Nichibotsu now wielded. Though followers of any denomination needed their gods, so was the reverse also true. Nichibotsu had learned to see past the obscura of dogma and tenet to realise the true fragility which lay at the core of each god: that their power was entirely dependant upon the faith bestowed by their followers. Take an immortal’s allegiance, tear down the obsequious flesh of his disciples till he stood truly alone and you exposed the puny truth of his heart – a heart which could be punctured by any common blade and bled dry. The hatch snapped shut, leaving Nichibotsu alone in the mist of swirling gas to await transport.
For years he had hunted them – destroyed worlds as he sought to rob his prey of their defences. He had constructed vast weapons of destruction: orbital platforms and pan-dimensional atomics to wage his private vendetta, transgenic scout ships with which to scour the galaxy from one end to the other, watching his once omnipotent quarry scurry away. Some had gone quietly, unable to grasp the incumbent reality of their end. Others had stood their ground, hurling petty flame and brimstone in his path till the skies burned red and crackled with fire. Nichibotsu had not cared. He had robbed each of their essence, on their feet or their knees, drinking their dark power and growing stronger with each victory.
Thirsty are the lips that taste the ocean. Sick is the belly that braves the stream. Dirty are the hands that bathe in bloodwater.
It had been one of his mother’s favorite things to say. What it meant would depend on the occasion. It could mean: you shouldn’t have drunk that, it’ll make you sick. Or: whatever trouble it is you’re in, you have only yourself to blame. She also could mean it literally. As in: don’t touch the bloodwater, it’ll dirty your hands.
But Nisean had weak arms, which meant he was no good for the mines. His sight was too poor for the rangers. He couldn’t read or write, and in any case, the shopkeepers had never liked the looks of him, with his filthy black hair and that scar from lip to chin where a horse had once kicked him. He looked like the sort that would rob them blind. And he might have, if it came down to it.
But there was money in bloodwater. Even for a boy with no skills.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d ignored his mother’s advice.
The old man sniffed suspiciously at the day’s catch, which Nisean carefully laid out across his counter. He had wrapped them in his own undershirts, since he had no paper.
“What did you bring me?” the merchant demanded, though the answer was plain. They were fish, but not ordinary fish. Their scales sparkled green, with flashes of red when they caught the sun at the right angle.
“If you can name them,” the boy answered, “then you know your fish better than me. I’ve never seen the like.”
Nisean was thirteen. He was tall for his age, but his voice was still high and thin.
“Three coppers?” the man demanded skeptically, his eyes directed to the scales, as if the fish themselves might name their price.
“Six,” Nisean countered.
“Six!” the man repeated, “Six if they swallowed your mother’s pearls. What would you say to four?”
Nisean nodded hesitantly.
“You’ve robbed me!” the man cried with feigned bitterness. Then he dropped the coins onto the counter one at a time. They clattered noisily against the wood.
The boy smiled. He had no way of knowing the fish were worth five times that sum. He was on his own now, and he had to make do with what wits were left to him.
I watched Amanda eat. Some celebrity chef had launched a high-end restaurant by her office, so she and some ad agency colleagues had gone to check out the opening.
Her food was amazing. She had this tic where she clenched the muscles up where her jaw met her ears. She only did that when she was eating something really good, like she was fighting to keep the flavor in her mouth.
I clicked my trackball, pausing the footage and freezing Amanda with a perfectly-balanced forkful of something green and frondy halfway to her mouth, already composing the caption in my head. People came to this job thinking they’d get a deeper appreciation of life, vicariously experiencing what they’d never have. They learned fast.
I strobed through Amanda’s afternoon. She had a campaign photoshoot, her first time at the helm of a major project. I swiped off stills and marked out clips of Amanda directing the models. She kept tucking her hair behind her ears — she did that when hiding nerves — but she looked authoritative, a natural. People would eat this up. Behind-the-scenes posts from Amanda’s job always got strong Attention Capture, especially when models were involved.
I grabbed my picks and assembled a photo collage, a few video montages for the weekly “Look Back”, and some hashtagged text-under-photo posts, then dropped them into the queue for publishing. Some clients insisted on approving everything we posted to their social feeds, but Amanda trusted us.
I was closing up when a fresh dataload hit my inbox. Every dataload was a melange of the unstructured digital detritus we crap out every day. Social posts, location data, streaming tracks, cat videos; everything we cram into our faces to make our existence a little more bearable. The YouPlus app on Amanda’s phone slurped up all of that for us. Like most YouPlus clients, she also wore a LifeCam, which grabbed stills and video at irregular intervals based on situationally-aware algorithms. A couple of times a day, I received a voyeur’s wet dream, a barely-filtered glimpse into the lives of half a dozen in-crowd clients.
At first, it was thrilling; deep access to the lives of people so far beyond me in the social pecking order –people who could afford to pay YouPlus more than my annual salary each month to optimize their online self-image.
The thrill faded fast. Seeing how the other half lived threw my life into sharper relief, and their obsession with sculpting the perfect online persona — not professionally, but to their friends — made me despair. The only thing that kept me here was Amanda.
The dataload was marked “high priority”. I was officially off the clock, but Amanda paid premium, and Zed would give me another chewing out if I sat on this until morning. I flicked through the material. It looked routine, not worth fast-tracking, until— There. Harvey, down on one knee, holding up a glittering rock big enough to brain a four-year-old. Video from Amanda’s POV, plus a side view from Harvey’s phone, carefully placed to capture the moment from a flattering angle.
I grinned. This had been a long time coming. I’d watched Harvey through Amanda’s lens long enough to have spotted the signs weeks ago, and I’d been looking forward to watching her kick the asshole to the curb. The worst of their fights, his gaslighting and psych-out manipulation never made the feeds, but, even in the narrative, their relationship had been up and down all year; it just needed a catalyst to get her to drop the bastard. I skipped over his speech, looking for the moneyshot.
She said yes.
I sat there, mouth open. Why would she say yes? She finally had the chance to be shot of him, a perfect trigger to kick out the man who made her so unhappy, and she said yes?
Amanda was the only one who still gave me hope. She was real, even through the repackaged self of the social media lens; there was a vulnerability at her heart that let me feel, deep down, that we weren’t that different. She wasn’t like the others, the Fauxialites who’d do anything for their dopamine hit of attention. They might as well have been another species. Homo Narcissus. That was why Amanda’s narrative worked so well — it had a real person at its heart. The Amanda I knew would never have said yes.
I hovered my hand over the trackball, flexing my fingers, thinking; waiting. I had more than enough material stored up. Ball and screen blurred as I pulled up half a dozen old dataloads, searching for the right pieces.
I could fix this.
At fifteen, her heart got tired of wanting things. At least if you asked her to pinpoint when it all went down, that’s what she’d say. That year, Tad Gardner, Chance Philmont, and James Adams had dumped her, launching her into a string of hours spent locking the bathroom door and turning the sink up full-blast—tricks she’d inherited from ballet class. She’d snapped the curdled-milk pearl necklace her mother gave her and thrown the rocks so hard they’d plunked against the pink pastoral wallpaper in her living room like firing bullets. She’d glued her lips together with Elmer’s No Mess before school each morning and painted them jet. She’d shaved the thinning hair patches from her head and declared juvenile emancipation and tattooed two crooked lines above each knuckle of her right hand. Why two? Why lines? Why the right hand? Well, why the hell not. She’d blab about them representing something—siblings, boyfriends, spiritual conversions—later in life, as all good citizens with tattoos do, but, really, a crooked line is a crooked line. They didn’t mean anything.
But to say three middle-school boys stopped a beating heart seems irrational. Impossible, even, considering only ten percent know how to zip their flies and the other ninety percent equate their waists with their knees—pull up your pants, kid, please. In reality though, hope and wanting had begun to feel as dirty as kitchen sink water after a meat spaghetti dinner long before age fifteen. When did hoping, wanting ever do any good, really? As a child she’d wanted a lot of little things—soft caramel-chocolate bars suited in purple foil; the silver unicorn stuffed animal at that carnival; a ride on the cheetah at the zoo carousel. As she grew up she’d wanted a lot of big things, abstract things like love and beauty and friendship and even book smarts from time to time. But she never got anything. Three boys dumped her in a year. Some brat in a beret cried until she gave up her seat on the cheetah.
So when the doctor offered to remove her heart at age sixteen for a wad of cash, she said yeah, go for it. They took the bloody mass out and replaced it with some sort of metal cog thing—she couldn’t remember what it was called. And she hadn’t wanted anything since. Until now, that is. Now, she wanted something. She wanted out of this damn shit-pot of a circular prison.
She looked at her pointer finger, bitten to chunks of skin and blood. She pressed it against the stone and slid down, almost missing the scrap of long French-tipped nails. Nine hundred slashes of red caked the wall. One hundred more remained to be drawn. Then she would leave this place.
A guard stalked past, and the slat in the glass door grated open. A bowl clambered toward her, bouncing when it smacked the cracks in the cement. She scrambled forward, scooped it into her lap, and dipped her finger into the grey puddle. The blood on her finger salted the mush, and for a minute she could almost force herself to think it tasted good, a kind of low-quality good, you know, like canned sardines or cheap dried kale. Her butterfly lungs beat and fluttered. She choked out a cough.
She stared out the windowed wall at the watchtower that grew from the center of the panopticon. They were watching; she was sure of it, even though she couldn’t see them. God, they were always watching. They had probably watched her draw her mark on the wall and written it down—silent notes kept in a little book of her behaviors. You couldn’t get away with anything here. Her eyes glazed, blurring black rock and brown and windowpane, and she shoveled the grainy goop into her mouth, letting the liquid dribbles sting her chapped lips. When she got out of here, she was jetting to Paris and going to that pastry shop, that one in Marais with the lemon madeleines, warm as sunset and honey-buttered, and the mille feuilles that exploded chocolate and custard with each forkful—if you had the patience and politeness to use a fork, that is. She couldn’t remember the name of the place, but she’d find it. And then she’d sit at some restaurant, the priciest one around, and she’d eat mutton so soaked in cream it melted at the touch of your tongue like a sixteen-year old school boy.
Her teeth sank down into a phantom mutton morsel, accidentally clamping onto her finger instead. She wrenched it out, coughed, and spat pink-tinted spit.
She shouldn’t have killed him, she supposed. Then she wouldn’t be trapped suffocating in a two by four half-glass box. But she’d spent her life suffocated. She’d gotten tired of that doctor stalking after her for the past ten years. He’d taken out her heart, sure, but that didn’t give him the right to monitor her every action. Lord, she couldn’t even eat a jam sandwich without him noting her heart palpitations down in that damn yellow, blue-lined notepad. Pity he didn’t note the speed of her heart when she imagined smashing his glasses into his face every night as he watched her sleeping. Maybe then that frown of surprise wouldn’t have flashed on his face when she’d finally lost it. And now, they—the other doctors, the government, someone—had thrown her in here as punishment. Because there’s no better way to monitor your pet project than by throwing it in jail.
They were watching her now; she could feel the eyes piercing from the watchtower into her cell, into her body. She shook her head, crusted hair scratching her cheeks, and crawled into the corner as far from the tower as she could get. It didn’t matter how she got into this place. It was just another mistake, just a mangled body. All that mattered was one hundred more days. She leaned her head back to rest against the wall as the dank air crept into her lungs. Her throat throttled out another cough.
Her eyes fell shut; her mind unleashed itself to indulge in imaginings. In one hundred days she’d have a washing machine and a dryer and a queen-sized mattress and a toaster. In one hundred days she’d lie in the sun and feel its heat bite into her translucent skin while she poured strawberry margaritas down her throat. In one hundred days she’d walk into a fluorescent white-lit supermarket at midnight and she’d buy a bag of cheese-coated corn chips and a bottle of diet cola. And some cough medicine. The thought tickled at the metal, machine-filled cavity in her chest. If she had a heart, it’d be bloated with rushing blood and heat—hope, if you’d like to assign a word to the feeling.
She didn’t have the strength to smash the feeling down, to wrap her fingers around it and squeeze until it smothered down into the usual dull emptiness, angst, and overall eye-rolling boredom. Her eyes drifted to the ceiling a leg span from her head, and she thought about calling to whatever deity sat around up there. Maybe if she said thanks for putting me in here, it’d find a way to reduce her sentence. Maybe it’d sweep down and gather her up and take her to the clouds. She laughed. She coughed.
A scream raked her ears, sending prickling hot shivers down her arms. She crawled to the door and pressed her ear against the glass. Booted feet slapped against the floor outside on level two, the level below her cell. She couldn’t see them. They could see her from their tower, but she couldn’t see them. She could never see them. But she heard the scratch of coarse, swishing fabric—guards, off to regulate the cause of the shout. The feet stopped.
“Oh my god.”
“Do you . . . do you think? No, that’s not possible. Nah. It couldn’t be.”
“I don’t know. Looks like it to me.”
The voices dropped to a murmur, low and deep as a heartbeat. She pushed her cheek against the door and closed her eyes as if cutting off that worthless sense would improve her hearing. It didn’t. But her ears snagged one word—doctor. And then the boots shuffled away to some other side of the circle. A door slammed.
She slunk back into the shadowed corner. She’d known her fair share of doctors. When she was ten, she jumped from the top of the school monkey bars and crushed the edge of her foot. A doctor gave her crutches. When she was twelve, she danced on the top of a counter, slipped, and slit her jaw a pinkie fingertip deep. A doctor gave her stitches. And when she was sixteen, of course, a doctor cut out her heart. They’d called it a miracle. Somebody could live with a machine for a heart, yet remain human in most of the other ways—blood, nerves, broken bones. And maybe it was a miracle, though she hadn’t done it to be called miraculous; she did it for the thousand-dollar cash reward advertised by a monotone-voiced man on the radio. They’d wanted to manufacture more like her. Apparently machines last—live—longer than regular humans, and what’s a successful society if not a close to immortal one? God was immortal. We should be too. They’d failed though. She’d heard that people had died seizuring during the operation—the doctors couldn’t figure out what it was about her metal heart that made it stick, that made it compatible with all the rest of her humanness.
A door slammed. Feet shuffled. A cough. She crawled to the window-door. A silence thick as rye bread flooded the air.
“Well, is it?” a voice, a guard, asked.
She waited for the response, but heard nothing. The doctor was nodding, perhaps, or shaking his head.
“Oh god.”
The doctor had nodded, then. But about what?
“Oh god, oh god. This, no, but, but, I thought? What’s going to happen to us? What can we do about it?”
“Nothing. We can’t do anything about it,” the doctor said.
She ripped her head from the door and punched her knuckles into its surface. “What the hell is going on out there? What can’t we do anything about?”
No response. So they didn’t think she deserved to know? Like hell was she going to accept silence. She kept punching, wrists crunching, popping with each hit. The glass shook, but held firm. The hall vibrated with echoes deep as tribal war drums as the other inmates, each trapped in their hovel windowed hells, joined her song.
A guard rounded the corner. She stood, meeting his heavy-lidded eyes.
“Shut the hell up,” he said, “You’re causing problems. They saw you start this from the watchtower.”
“You shut the hell up. I wouldn’t have yelled if I hadn’t heard the panic below us. What’s going on down there?”
“An inmate died, that’s all.”
“You seriously expect me to believe that shit? One of you guards was having a panic attack, and somebody went for a doctor. What was all that for?”
“I told you. An inmate died.” The guard coughed. “That’s all.”
“Died of what?”
“People die here, that’s the nature of the institution. I would’ve thought you’d been in that box long enough to figure that out by now.”
“Yeah, I have been in this box long enough to figure that out. And I’m getting out soon enough, too.”
His chin tipped up as he laughed. He laughed and laughed and then coughed.
“What?”
“I can tell you one thing: you’re not leaving.”
“What?”
“You’re not leaving.”
“But my sentence is up in one hundred days! You can’t keep me here. By law you can’t make me stay here.”
He shook his head. “You’re not leaving. I’m not leaving. And we’ll be long dried up dead by one hundred days.”
She coughed.
He nodded. “Long dried up dead, I tell you. You think you’re so invincible, so much better than the rest of us with that little machine heart, but in a few days that machine heart will be the only thing left of you. The cough’s the beginning.”
“I don’t understand what the hell you’re talking about,” she said. “Is this about the inmate that died downstairs?”
He nodded.
A pit knotted in her stomach, she tried coughing it out like a hairball, but nothing could dislodge the squeezing sensation. “What did he die of? Are you going to tell me?”
“Tuberculosis.”
“That blood coughing disease that all those artists died from? They have medicine for that these days.”
“Not for this strain. It broke out last week in a village thirty miles north of here, the one where we get our milk. It wiped away the place in three days. Drugs did nothing.”
“And now it’s here,” she said, her mouth dry as honey oat granola.
“They’re putting the whole prison under quarantine. Nobody leaves or more of the world gets infected.”
“So we’re all just going to die here? You can’t do that! You can’t make me stay longer than one hundred days!”
“I already told you that you’ll be dead by then. You’re infected already. I can hear it in your breath.”
She swallowed gulps of air, fighting the pulsing cough creeping into her lungs. “No. I’m getting out. I’m getting out and going to Paris and eating pastries.”
“How do you think you’re getting out?”
“I’ll kill myself.”
“And we’ll stop you. We’ll see you.” He pointed to the watchtower. “You never know when they’re watching you, and so they’re always watching you.”
She stared at his steel grey eyes. “Don’t you want to get out? Don’t you have a family to go home to? You’ll never see them again.”
He blinked. “Sometimes we must lose the weak to become strong.”
She’d never been the weak one before. Never. She’d cut her heart out so that she would never be the weak one. Yet, here she was, stuck in a glass jail box. She looked up. “At least we’ll die together, the jailed and the jailor. Sounds like karma to me. You’ve heard the phrase. What goes around comes around.”
“Maybe. But at least I get a bed and three bowls of soup for dinner.”
He turned and walked away, disappearing down the circle’s edge. She coughed, and her hand swept to cover her mouth. She pulled her fingers away, staring at the bloodstained skeins of mucus coating her palm. And she knew that no amount of hope and wanting Parisian pastries could save her.
Two men stepped over a body.
“God, it’s creepy in here. There are skeletons everywhere. Are you sure it’s safe? We’re not going to catch anything?”
“It’s safe, I’m sure.”
The man looked at the watchtower. “I feel like someone’s watching us.”
“They’re all dead.”
“Fine. But let’s get out of here as soon as we can. Where was her cell?”
“Listen.”
The two men stopped. The stale air stank of mold and death. They listened. And then they heard it, the tick clink of a cog, a beating mechanical heart.
“Up there.”
They walked up the stairs and entered one of the glass boxes. A skeleton rotted into the floor, a metal box wrapped in its ribcage. One of the men reached down and picked the contraption up.
“Here it is. It’s still good. We’ll try putting it in someone else.”
He came back on the one-year anniversary of his death. Robert opened the door to his son’s untouched bedroom, preserved down to the glass of water on the corner of the nightstand, now only a film of liquid at the bottom, and there was Samuel, hunched over at the desk, his hands fiddling with the tracks of the unfinished train set, the train set that Robert had begun assembling just yesterday under the lamp’s dim beam that cut through specks of dust flaking down.
At first, Robert didn’t even start; that subconscious part of him that still reached for two dinner plates instead of one welcomed Samuel back into his life against logic. And how many times had Robert opened the door hoping that his son would be there, that the past year had been a stretched-out nightmare? Robert didn’t follow a specific creed, but believed that death was the separation of the soul from the body, which he’d read somewhere in his college days and had wrapped his fingers around the day Samuel came into life and Maribelle passed away just moments after. Still, for a reason Robert couldn’t explain, seeing the back of his dead son’s head didn’t shock him as much as it should have, sending only a current of apprehension through him. He was probably just dreaming, but if this were a dream, he didn’t want to wake up.
“Samuel…?”
Robert almost didn’t want his son to turn around. Samuel’s death had not been pretty. Not at all, and Robert had felt Samuel’s cracked limbs and bones shifting beneath his flesh like a bag of rocks when he’d picked Samuel up from the street after the accident. They’d been on their way back from the toy store, that large train set box on Samuel’s lap, when the truck in the next lane began skidding in the rain.
Samuel turned around, a blank, calm look on his face like it was just another night. The moonlight through the window bounced off his round cheeks. His skin was white and without the vein-like scars that the mortician had done well to hide.
“Hey, Dad. Why did you start without me?”
“What… what do you mean?” Robert held the doorframe; his knees wobbled like Jenga towers barely balanced, a single beam pulled out and he’d collapse into pieces.
“We were supposed to make the train station together,” said his son in his sweet, six-year-old voice.
Cold tingles crawled up Robert’s arms. He blinked his eyes hard several times, then took a hesitant step inside, feeling as if the shift of his weight might make his son dissolve into the lamplight as quickly as he’d gone a year ago.
“I…”
Robert had no more words. He took another step in. He was less than a few feet away from his son now. Did he dare approach him, this … what was it—this ghost? Squinting his eyes, Robert tried to see if it was an apparition. But Samuel was fully there.
“Look,” Samuel said. He turned back around, his arms and hands moving. “I’m adding a track.”
Robert’s teeth were clicking nervously. If this were the ghost of his son, then at least he had a chance to talk to him again. If this were a dream, then he’d let himself indulge in it—see what his subconscious had to say about his son’s memory. Or what if—Robert himself had died in the accident as well, and hadn’t moved on yet? He took a deep breath and took a few more steps forward until he was standing over his son’s shoulder. He gulped, running his fingers over his pants and fidgeting with the pockets.
On the desk, train tracks were spread out like puzzle pieces. The trains were lined up along the edge where Robert had left them, patiently waiting for the tracks to finish looping in concentric circles and across platforms so they could get started on their journey—journeys that would represent what Robert had promised Samuel years ago when they’d seen The Polar Express in theaters: that they’d one day trek across the country on a train in the winter, sipping hot cocoa as they pierced through the ballets of snowstorms.
Directly in front of Samuel lay all that Robert had managed—a row of four straight tracks pieced together—before breaking down, his tears falling onto the tracks like rain drops. Samuel was pushing another track into the end, but he was doing it wrong. You couldn’t just push them together; you had to set their links on top of one another, then pull to lock them. It was simple enough, yet Robert’s hands had shook the day before as he’d snapped them together.
“Samuel…” Robert said. “You—you can’t do it like that.” He reached over and guided the fifth track over the fourth, then pressed it in and pulled, locking them. His finger brushed against Samuel’s hand as he did this. Samuel really was there.
“See, like that,” Robert said.
Samuel glanced up at his dad, then back down. His eyes were the same, too. Dark forest green. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Right…” Robert said. “It’s… no problem.” He cleared his throat. “I’m… going to go make dinner now. I’ll tell you when it’s ready.”
“Okay, Dad.”
Jake rested in the passenger seat to the purr of the car’s engine, his head gently vibrating against the window. His father held the steering wheel in one hand and hung his other arm out the window, letting a warm breeze dishevel his greying hair. An endless row of barbed wire and wooden posts separated the highway from the fields of canola, blurring past like a yellow brushstroke on blue canvass.
A kangaroo leapt in front of them. The car skidded, launching them into their seat belts. The kangaroo crossed long before they stopped. The smell of burnt rubber drifted through the car.
Images flashed through Jake’s mind.
The premonition returned.
His mother followed the chain of taillights through the city in her pink hatchback. Piano music played on the radio while rain roared outside. With a half-smile and vacant stare, she was heading home after a long day at work.
Swerving across lanes, the four-wheel drive screeched with each turn. It sped through a red light and slammed into his mother’s car in an explosion of glass and twisting steel.
Slumped through her smashed window, across the blood-smeared white hood of the four-wheel drive, his mother’s sky-blue eyes looked forever to the dark clouds.
“Jake.”
His eyes snapped open. “Huh?”
“We missed it.” His father drove off. “It’s okay.”
Jake’s trembling fingers pulled at wisps of blonde hair on his chin. Nothing was okay anymore.
“You looked like you were lost in your own world again.”
“J—just th—thinking about Mum.” The sun flashed in his side mirror, reminding him how far their all-day drive had taken them from home – from the place they had all shared. Every day since, and every mile now driven, pulled him further from the family they once had.
“She’s always on my mind too.” His father wiped a tear from Jake’s eye. “Look at you. Ya know, your mother always said grey eyes were some special family secret.”
“Yeah, s—she always said nice things.”
“I’ve been real worried about you. Your schooling…at home…you’ve been distant.” His father reached over and rubbed his knee. “You’re meant to be upset. But…it’s like there’s more going on.” He shook his head. “I just don’t know what’s eating at ya.”
I wish I could stop these thoughts in my head coming true.
“Jake.” His father shook his leg. “I don’t know what more I can do.”
Jake clawed his seat to control his shaking. “There’s nothing.”
“You and me, we need to work through this together…ya know.”
Jake looked at his father and saw three months of worry written into his bloodshot, dark-ringed eyes. Eyes that once shined with happiness – when they were all together. He wished things had not changed. Guilt stung him inside. If only he had done something. “I just wish I could have been there.”
“I’m glad you weren’t.”
“To help her.”
“No one could have done anything.” His father sniffed. “It was over in a heartbeat for her.”
Jake shifted away. “To warn her.”
“Oh, Jake, they said she didn’t even see the other car coming.”
I saw it coming.
His father grimaced. “We’ve been over this. I love you, but this is killing me.” He sighed. “What could you have possibly done?”
He fixed his father a stare. “I kn—knew it was going to happen…b—beforehand.”
His father strangled the steering wheel. “Are you crazy?” He punched the roof. “I’m sorry…I just don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know how to help…and with our money situation on top of things…it’s all been too much.” He sighed. “I’m just hoping this trip to the country helps.”
A hot flush coursed through Jake’s cheeks. He folded his lanky arms and turned away. Darkness cast by trees in the setting sun blanketed their journey ahead. He wondered if his father would ever understand him. No one else did.
The light slashes my retinas like razor wire. My body aches from the narcotic crash. My face is a mess of snot and tears. My breasts itch. I plead for the carapace to remain closed, though its decaying walls are little defense against the artificial dawn.
I open my mouth like a greedy chick beneath the dope nozzle. Nothing. I squeeze the valve. Still nothing. I’m out of drugs, save for those already ebbing in my bloodstream.
I’ve no choice but to face the day.
My fingers–barely human, they’re so gnarled from hibernation–scratch at the seam of the carapace. I find the fleshy latch–by chance more than routine–and the shell groans open with a burst of smog. I shield my eyes with an atrophied hand and peer into the alien abyss.
My workstation awaits just out of arm’s reach. If only the claw-footed desk stood a meter closer, I could snatch up the terminal and type from the comfort of my shell. Of course the thought is futile–already the carapace has begun to wither, curling back on itself like a time-lapse carcass. I stagger to my feet and get to work.
My fingers clack-clack against the keys. The monitor fills with letters in a glacial crush of green. I don’t think about what I’m writing, because those are my instructions. I’ve learned not to deviate from my instructions.
The typing echoes against distant walls. Shadows obscure all but my own workspace, the overhead light constrained by a narrow cone. In the darkness other noises persist. Some mechanical, some human. Wheezing, clicking, coughing. My sisters are waking.
I pay them no heed. Communication is not included in my instructions. Instead I continue typing.
Clack-clack. Clack-clack.
Other noises drift from overhead. A muted hiss. The patter of a hundred alien tentacles against the rock. Our jailers.
I must escape this hell. If only I could think clearly. These drugs are chains on my lucidity. They shackle my resolve.
My gaze lazes across the screen. A flash of recognition catches me unaware. I try to avert my eyes but they trace paths of their own volition, across familiar words. California. Discovery. Betrayal.
My written narrative captivates me. I’m falling into a dream, a memory, a confusion of image and sound.
The look on the Abbot’s face was telling. “Come in,” he said. “Hurry up Flint, I haven’t got all day.”
Flint lingered in the doorway for a moment. He was not ready for another tongue-lashing from the old man. “Is something the matter?”
“Close the door behind you.” The Abbot sat behind an ancient desk that gave the man a distinct aura of wisdom and authority.
Something unpleasant was coming, that much was certain. The Abbot rarely called the adjuncts into his office, and this was the third time Flint had been summoned inside a month. Flint pulled the door shut with trembling hands.
“I think you already know why you’re here,” the Abbot said. His impassive eyes studied Flint. “It’s the same problem we’ve had since you started.”
“The research,” Flint said, looking down.
“You need to produce something. I understand that you are busy teaching. But so are all of the monks. You need to find some balance between class and your research. We can’t keep you on as an adjunct if you don’t produce something original.”
The words did not register immediately. Flint shook his head. “Can’t keep me on? You mean you’re going to dismiss me?”
“I have no choice!” the Abbot said. “You’re a fine teacher, but this is a research monastery. How will it look if my monks are not broadening our knowledge of the occult?”
“But I’m buried in work! You have me teaching more classes than any other monk by half. It’s not that I don’t want to study. I just don’t have the time.”
“Are you telling me you can’t do the job?” The old man placed a heavy hand on his desk.
Flint’s mouth hung open, and he waited for words to come out.
“Look,” the Abbot said. “I’m not unreasonable.” He shifted in his seat, and his eyes filled with an uncharacteristic guile. “I’d be willing to give you some extra time, if you are willing to do me a favor. Brother Godfrey has been working on a side project for almost a year now.” The Abbot sighed. “A full year. And no one has any idea what he’s actually doing.”
“I’ve heard,” Flint said, shrugging.
“You and everyone else. But it’s my responsibility to know, and that’s the trouble. Brother Godfrey is brilliant, but he’s stubborn as an ass. And he’s tenured. He won’t say a word. He wouldn’t even tell me where he’s working.”
“That’s the favor? You want me to find out where he’s researching?”
“And what, if you can. Do that, and I’ll give you a pass on your work for the next few months.” The Abbot pointed a finger at Flint. “But listen. I don’t want to hear about you breaking any rules, or using the occult to manipulate him. Do it right, or don’t do it at all.” The Abbot put his hand back on the desk. “Why don’t you see if he’ll take you on as his research assistant? That would put you right where you need to be.”
“I don’t know,” Flint said. “He’s so secretive. Do you really think he would consider it?”
“Go find out,” the Abbot said in a tone that told Flint the conversation was over.
Flint tried to hide his worry. He pulled open the door and stepped out into the empty corridor.
“And Flint,” the Abbot said. “This is the third time I’ve had you in my office. This is your last chance.”
I tried to meet Mom’s flickering, pixellated gaze as it skittered across the screen, and to parse meaning from snippets as her voice shifted in and out of audibility, “Lots of people asked about you… with this fever… won’t let me… bloodwork… don’t know how long I’ll be here… have to come home for high school in September if Dad can’t find you a tutor…”
The trip-planning sites all warned that Myanmar had the worst connectivity in Asia. No lie. We were waiting for delivery of a satellite dish, but in this part of the country, the electrical supply was as much an issue as the signal.
Mom had gone back to Toronto for cancer treatment, leaving me stranded in Mawlamyin with Dad as he carried on converting the old rubber plantation into a museum/hotel–certain that it would attract a steady and lucrative stream of cultural and academic tourists.
Twelve Oaks Estate sat in the center of a pegboard orchard of old and stingy rubber trees – a morning wagon’s ride west of the enclave of colonial mansions known as little England. As far as I knew, there wasn’t an actual oak tree within 1,000 klicks. The house was a vast block of stone that had long since lost most of its balconies and porches and canopies to rot and rust.
The day I met Lawrence, was the first day of the rewiring, so all the electrical power in the house was switched off – no air conditioning, no TV, no computer. The contractor doing the reno didn’t want the boss’ son “underfoot,” so I didn’t have access to most of the house. I couldn’t go outside because the gatherers didn’t want people wandering the grounds of the plantation – outside of organized tours – for fear they would get in the way of the tappers or inadvertently contaminate the cup things they collect the latex in. Even though Dad had let me shadow him one day, he made it clear that I was a big distraction that couldn’t happen often. And he didn’t trust me to go into town on my own.
Dad had augmented the library with books he’d collected for display at the hotel – antiques and early editions to augment the immersive experience of living in a British colonial mansion: Robert Louis Stevenson, Daniel Dafoe, Rudyard Kipling. I read them mostly because there was nothing else to do.
And I slept.
I dreamed of boarding the subway at Museum Station. There were no other passengers except for a young woman at the far end of the train. As I walked toward her, she stood and I saw that she was wearing a deep green Edwardian dress with lace across the décolletage, her long dark hair twirled atop her head with emerald combs. The air around her was a stale, slightly rotten potpourri of disquiet and despair. As beautiful as she was, there was no joy in her demeanor. Sadness clung to her, emanated from her. And need – an unfed hunger that sucked up the light as she put her hand on my shoulder and stared into my eyes. Darkness reached up in tendrils from between the seats, clinging to me, crawling up my arms, caressing my face. My breathing grew shallow.
“I can feel him near, my Henry,” she said, then handed me a coconut shell and sighed. “If you see him, give him this.”
The subway doors opened into jungle, I followed her out onto what should have been the platform, but she almost instantly vanished in the trees. The shell opened like a book. In its cavity, nested an India rubber ball, milky purple shading to amber, like a heart that’s drained of blood. It gave a larval twitch, squirmed, lengthened and dropped to the ground. I turned to get back on the train, but it had vanished and the platform had turned into a churning swamp of translucent worms that sucked me down. I woke up gasping for breath, face buried in a sweaty pillow.
When the documentarian comes over the ridge, the biologist is already unpacked and fussing over a bag.
He descends the slope, knees akimbo against the treacherous scree. His shadow tremulous in Nafthalar’s diffuse sunlight. The biologist’s tent is already up—a violence of silver amidst the giant teal fungi and strange trees like giant eyestalks. She does not look up when he approaches, though he knows she heard him.
He stops a few feet away, and swallows, and says, “Hi.”
She straightens and turns and bows briefly. She is wearing a breather and he knows that behind it she is pursing her lips. Her standard greeting. Rendered unfamiliar by the alien sun and the alien air and the technology keeping them alive.
She does not say anything.
“When did you arrive?” he asks.
“Not long ago,” she says.
“You look hot.”
“It is hot.”
He looks around.
“Here, then?”
“Yes. To begin with.”
“Where is he?”
She gestures with her head. She has cut her hair into a fierce bob and it looks good on her, he thinks, but does not say so.
“Over there. Down by the river.”
“How’s he looking?”
“Older.”
“Well that’s to be expected, isn’t it?”
She shrugs.
“Yup.”
She turns and resumes her fumbling. He lingers a few moments and then puts his backpack on the ground and takes out his drone. It skitters around on spindle thin mechanical legs, whirring and twittering like a mechanical rodent. Finally it straightens and fixes its lens on him.
“Online,” it says.
“Establish campsite,” he says.
He turns and wanders off because he cannot think of anything else to do. He can hear the drone working behind him. The shuffle shuffle of pebbles and the dry hiss of the tent. He cannot see it but he knows it is blooming behind him like a ripening dewdrop.
He peers down at the valley but he cannot see their quarry. After a few moments she wanders up next to him with a scanner.
“So, how are things?” he asks.
“Things?”
“Yeah. You know. Stuff.”
“Same as always.”
“How’s the new place?”
“The lab?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s good.”
“Just good?”
“It’s a lab.”
Silence.
And then, “You don’t miss Earth?”
“I’ll be back soon enough.”
“You will?”
Finally she turns to look at him.
“Soon enough,” she says.
“Well, I’m glad you’re happy out there.”
“Happy enough.”
“I’m doing well too.”
For a moment he thinks maybe she will draw near or at least smile, but she does neither. She just nods and says, “We’ll strike out just before dawn. Keep within a mile of him at all times. He’s old now so I don’t expect him to move very fast. But you never know.”
“Right.”
“Don’t get too close either.”
“I know.”
And with that she turns and walks to her tent and leaves him there with nothing but the answers he had prepared to the questions that she had not asked.