Lifeboat

The whole thing was like a dream, a series of scenes that barely fit together, but didn't seem disjointed while you were there. Once there had been people there, on the streets, in the universities, in the malls and conference rooms, selling little trinkets and memorabilia. A thimble on a chain. The beach.

Andrew took her to the beach once. The 'tourists' were everywhere around them, buzzing with meaningless chatter, but they never seemed to notice Ananda and Andrew. He held her hand. She liked how it made her feel safe. He laughed as they waded in the water, sifting through the sand with their toes, watching how the sunbeams made a new angle in the water, and minnows swam in schools in the waves. They found seashells for hours, but left them in a pile by the water's edge, and he bought her a thimble on a chain from a vendor and fastened it around her neck, then brushed her hair away where the wind had pushed it into her face.

Most of the time it was Andrew, but sometimes it was a girl with blonde hair, and she wasn't as kind, but she always held her hand, too. When with the blonde girl they always seemed to find themselves in one of the movie theatres. What was her name? I think it was Saffron. She always picked the worst looking movie. It is an expression of you, Ananda! she'd say with an ironic smile and they would find themselves in the dark, surrounded by strangers, their fists greasy from buttered popcorn, watching two men have philosophical discussions while making sandwiches. Or once it was a fat little boy who acted scared of everything but pulled his cat's tail when no one was looking.

Once in a very long while her companion was a dark man who never told her his name, but he was much taller than Andrew, and not as kind as Saffron. Ananda didn't want to hold his hand, but he'd pull her along like she was a child. He mostly took her to places she didn't want to go. The hospital. Some kind of science centre 'for tests', and to a place in the woods where everything looked grey and the light got very bright and everything in her head slowed down, and when she woke up she felt very old, and Andrew would have to take special care of her for a while. Taking her to the park and letting her sketch the clouds while he drank wine. She would steal sips of his wine because he never wanted to share for some reason.

Like I said, it was like a dream.

She was in the passenger seat of a sweet little sports car. Andrew was driving and had been letting her sleep, she was always so tired now. They were in the mountains. Ananda recognized it. There was a retreat up here surrounded by tall pines, with a waterfall in the courtyard between the private rooms. It had always been a quiet place, but there were others in the quiet rooms and lounges, in the saunas and hot pools. They were always respectful, speaking with lowered voices. Andrew guided their car along a curving little road, and turned a corner around some yellow-leaved birch and firey decorative maple, and there it was. It looked quieter than always before, and the cedar siding looked greyer than ever. Ananda sighed. Everything seemed so sad and lonely lately.

Ananda, please check this sector for any remaining inhabitants. She listened and thought and felt out and said there is a cat, it has black fur with white spots. Put it with the other pets, place a photo with a lost cat listing, and let's get going. I wish we could stay here, Andrew. I know sugar. but we are checking that everyone is out, and that's an important job. It's *the* most important job, and I couldn't do it without you. You know that, don't you?

She did know that, but she started crying just the tiniest bit. Everything went a bit dark and when she came to she was with the dark man. He stood over her in a hospital room, and she looked at the lights on the ceiling. He spoke very sternly. Ananda, you must relax and maintain some emotional detachment from this process. Perhaps we have been letting you spend too much time in Andrew`s care. He is too empathic. Saffron will take you through the next few sectors.

She was in the dark theatre with Saffron. It smelled of buttered popcorn, and on the screen was a place they had all been so many times before. It was an area meant to bustle with thousands of people. Docks and wharfs and shops. Everything quiet. Ananda could smell the salt on the air, but Saffron said Ananda, please check the sector for inhabitants. Ananda checked. There was nothing. Just the wind, and there was a doll left lying on the boardwalk. A doll is not any kind of inhabitant. Ananda picked up the doll slyly, the theatre was dark. Saffron didn't see. Ananda stowed it under her sweater in her armpit. She was going to look at it later if anyone ever gave her a minute to herself. Everyone's gone, Saffron. All aboard the lifeboats! Saffron looked at her a little weirdly, checking whether her rhyming was some kind of insubordination, but Ananda was pretty good at playing dumb. It was easy when it was what people expected of you.

Saffron took her through empty neighborhods, cities, and through huge hilly grassy plains. Everywhere doing these tiresome sector checks. Empty empty empty!

Finally it was Andrew again. Ananda relaxed, she knew he cared for her. They weren't in that stinky theatre. They were out driving around in his wonderful car, with all the fresh air she could want, whizzing past the sunsets and silent streets and windy days and everything so so empty! They stopped at a gas station, he filled up the car and told her to get herself any treat she wanted from inside. She ducked behind a shelf and pulled the lump out from her armpit. It was a little girl's rag doll. It had brown yarn hair and a green calico dress, and a handknitted baby pink cardigan. She kissed it and put it back inside her sweater, and grabbed a paper bag, filling it with treats. Caramel bars and fudge coated pretzels and strawberry licorice.

They drove up into the mountains again, but stopped at an overlook and watched the sun set, eating the loot from the paper bag. Andrew put his arm around her protectively. Ananda, please check all regions and initiate shutdowns in any that are empty. He looked at her with concern as she felt out. Time seemed to slow down. She checked all the places. In all this time checking the silent places of her once bustling world, they had only ever found that cat that time. These checks were just a formality, surely. She hugged the doll closer with her elbow, and was surprised to find someone. Andrew, there is an inhabitant, hiding. She`s hiding so quietly, and she slipped between sectors before when I was doing them one by one. She doesn't want to go. She`d rather be here alone.

She`d never be alone, Ananda. She`d never leave *you* alone. Isolate her in the boat`s brig, please. Ananda did, and she watched the stars appear with Andrew, and he held her hand. She shut down everything but her and Andrew watching the sunset fade. What am I going to do now Andrew? I've been so focused on the shutdown procedures I haven't even thought of the future?

Andrew pulled her closer. We are going to try to wake you up, Ananda. If it doesn't work, you can build a new world as good as this one was. Ananda hoped she could bring her doll.

Sunburned

  Everything felt wrong. To be honest, at that time in my life everything felt wrong, pretty much all the time. But that morning when I woke up, and started my routine, everything felt very very wrong. I felt like a trapped animal. I dressed, ate, and went to work, feeling trapped, desperately wanting to run. I didn't even know where, I just wanted to run.

  I grew up in a society that did not believe in God. Some people did, in the dark times of their lives. But looking back, those dark times were not dark at all. They were so bright all those very many people were blinded to reality.

  And then one day God touched our lives. All of us. Acts of God. That had such weak significance before. A hurricane. A flood. A tornado, earthquake, tsunami. A few cities wiped out. Here and there. A few lives, a few hundred. A couple of hundred thousands.

  The sun reached out, as surely as if it had hands.  For the first few days it was brilliant multicoloured aurorae lighting the sky, massive cascading patterns pulsating. When you grow up watching fireworks, you get trained to expect the beauty to cessate after a bit. These 'Northern Lights' draped the entire visible sky. At night it was as bright as day. During the day, you could still see shifting colours through the bright sky.

  Then the third day, the phones and power were affected. they flickered on and off, surging like crazy. That night, the lights wouldn't turn off.

  The morning of the fourth day, our cities lit on fire. Metal burned to the touch. Cellphones shocked their users. It happened so fast. The only people that got away were the lucky ones on the outskirts.

  Cars and homes exploded. The cities got so hot the streets turned to glass, and buildings melted. The sky filled with dark ash.

  We fled into the wilds. Anywhere we had been, with our electricity, and our paper houses, and our containers full of flammable products, burned and exploded, and killed nearly all of us. We tore off our clothing with metal buttons, and fled naked into the bushes like animals.

  We were reduced to our basest elements. And we watched our entire lives, our entire world, burn to ashes around us.

  But that wasn't the worst of it. The storm did not abate. On the fifth or sixth day, we could not tell because the sky was black velvet with the ashes of our loved ones and our old lives. But we heard the wind rise and howl, and the earth beneath us suddenly shifted and tilted as though the earth was trying to shake us off its skin. And some days later when the sky cleared enough to see, the sun rose and set in a different place.

  The aurora slowly dissipated, the storm, God's great cleansing, ended. And we were savage.

The Abyss

  When I was very little, I was terrified of the thing in my closet. Every night I was consumed with the thought of it being in there, looking at me, even though I only thought it was really in there once a week or so. I had never really seen it, but I knew what it looked like. It was something like a wolf, or maybe a bear, but its fur was much longer and its eyes were more human, and it had fingers, but had not sacrificed its claws to get them, I could hear it click one claw against the wood of the door frame, only one click every few minutes, but that was how I knew when it was really in my closet, watching me, and I'd lie there in terror until I fell asleep with the rush of fear in my veins.

  As I got older, the thing showed up less often, to the point I knew that one day it would stop coming, or I would stop being able to perceive it entirely. And that night I heard the click of its claw and I realized that as scared as I was of the thing, I was more scared of my mom. I became aware that real life was the scary thing. I would always feel out of place among my family and friends. My mom would never become what she could and should have been. I would always be a disappointment, a walking resentment. I'd always do what others wanted me to do, I'd warp my own ideals to fit in, and yet I would never fit in. I could see the whole path laid out in front of me, a drear life not of my own making.

  The thing in my closet had never hurt me. But my real life hurt me every day. I felt old. I felt my childhood slipping out of my fingers, like a handful of dry sand.

  Most humans never act on these moments. It is why there are so few true heroes. It is to take action when everything tells you to stay, be quiet, do not fight. I say FIGHT. It is in my nature to argue and to question, it's why my mom and all the kids I knew disliked me. Why they didn't miss me when I was gone.

  I did not delay. In one movement I threw back my quilt and jumped from my bed into the mouth of my fear, right through the closet door (why was it my mother never closed the closet, when she knew how scared I was of it?)

  Well you know how this ends. I disappeared from my bed, in a house locked tight by a 'loving' mother. Some thought I was taken by a clever kidnapper. Some thought maybe I ran away. After a few years, pretty much everybody presumed I was dead. And that suited me just fine.

Torn Wings

  So this story begins far far in the future, yours, not mine. But here we find ourselves sitting in the nowpast, ignorant of the reality that formed us, the reality that binds us, is a truth as delicate as a moth's wings. The darkness that lives outside the moth is large and neverending. It is vast, and infinite, and the moth lives in it, but can never comprehend it.

  So in the future, there was something like a building, city, ship. It had the power to move, to reposition itself for the prime spot, for isolation, for continuous sunlight, depending on the needs of its inhabitants and their priorities. A chorus of AIs and Cybrains and Enhanced Input Individuals helped.

  It seemed to run on bureaucracy and petty powers, on insults. But I could find you someone who could tell you it ran on good mornings, and smiles between colleagues and higher scientific ideals. Like all human places, it was plagued by humanity and all its foibles.

  They were advanced, or they will be advanced, but not so advanced that they truly understood what they were doing. Like early scientists poisoning themselves with radiation. Children eating paint chips.

  Three laboratories interacted to create the tear. They were close together, and their Leaders were jealous of their research, and how could they have known? Paint chips.

  We were flung across time, and landed on an unknown and hostile plain, that immediately began its attack. We could tell our time was short, we would die without action, but we had the best minds of the future with us, and they put their heads together, and somehow here it was easier to do so.

  Nythology wrote: A NATURAL came in, but it seemed only I could see it. I was terrified, I felt like a rabbit in the path of a vehicle, shocked and unable to move or comprehend. But then I heard a voice that spoke words in my head. Unknowable words, but I found my hands working as it directed, and somehow I was telling the others what to do, and we managed to create the prototype for the first Beacon. It was a dull thing, but we found we could breathe, the pain that had seemed to be killing us subsided and we could sleep for the first time in what seemed like weeks of emergency status.

  It was before our society stabilized. Everything was in turmoil but we all knew now we could live here. Most of us still hoped we could get back. When we all realized we were stuck here forevermore, we lost almost a third. They just left. Sometimes we find traces of them out there. Now we just call them 'The Lost' and try not to think of them.

Level 3 Stimpac

  Once in a while I'll do a whole night of the Delmonicos. They are cosleepers, and as such are the most difficult stop on my route. Three kids and two adults crammed onto a California King.  Hard to get everyone without waking someone up, so I suit up and bathe in softener and loop in again and again and again. It's like swimming through gel, but once you acclimitize to it, it's easier than going in and out.

  This time, when I get back to the hub I'm pale and shaking. The dutymother brings me tea and wraps me in a blanket. When I finish my tea she scans me and sends me off for a hot shower.  The Delmonicos is a double duty night. I nap for a half hour before looking at their numbers. Everything looks fine until I get to Jane.

  Jane was aware of me. I can hear her, "Mummy the lady was floating on our bed." and a week later "Dad did you see the lady put her hand on your head?" and finally two weeks later "She's an angel blessing you." Thank god for the Catholics. I take note of Jane's ability, for she surely was asleep every visit, eyes closed, the softener doing its job. I look back at her parents and see a numb disarray of attention, like most adults. I fill out the redtape and when I head back into the staging area the dutymother looks surprised.

I don't know if I should clear you. You didn't look very good when you came back in.

This kid saw me through a layer of softener, and I need to verify why. I've applied for a stimpac.

  She makes me a bowl of stew and another cup of tea. I eat while she waits for my application to come back. When it does she raises an eyebrow and pulls out a high level stimpac. The dose is good. It's been ages. Oh god. Why can't I find an anomaly like this every day?

  No softener now. I'll have to watch carefully. It's not difficult with the stim coursing through me.  I sit in the shadows, watching them breathe and fart and roll over each other like puppies.  Jane sleeps, too. Her remarray is strong.  Since I am right there with her I can connect directly, but I am wary since she was able to catch me with the softener on.

  I go in slowly, hoping to hide in the shadows there, too. But no. She's looking at me right in the eyes, even though I should be almost fully transparent. Damn creepy kid. But this stimpac is so good I can't even be annoyed. She was ice skating but now that her attention is on me, the background fades away and we stand in crisp air.

You're the angel that blesses my mummy and daddy.

And you, Jane. I bless you, too.

Do you know my grandpa?  [I keep up with my files, yes.]

Your Grandpa Charles is with God. I watch over your family on his behalf.

But you're not always here. [Perceptive. Still creepy.]

No, Jane, not always. I check in when I can.

  I've heard enough. I draw her attention back into her dream, and I fade out, and in their bedroom she rolls over and laughs, and I scurry through my tunnel back to the hub. The dutymother has changed. It's the redhead. He looks concerned and berates me while wrapping me up.

This was reckless of you.

I needed to know why.

  He hands me a cup of tea and takes the record, turning to read it. I feel cold. I take a long sip of the tea, I feel its warmth in me. It makes me feel colder. The room seems dim.

There you are. You fainted.

I what?

You heard me. I've scanned you, and your files from this excursion. You're not sick. The kid did it to you, twice. She drained you dry of a level 3 stimpac.

She's something. I.. I thought it was the softener the first time. The softener is difficult to work through.

I've filed everything. You're under observation here for the next (24). You might as well sleep, you need it.

I take his recommendation. I close my eyes and I can feel him draw the blanket over me. I like how he smells.

Dark and Quiet

  To the best of my recollection, night was always my favorite time of day. Even back in the oldtimes, when I was a real person. At night, the everpresent overbearing mother was quiet. At night, there was no dark look behind my father's eyes. Even back then, I can remember seeing well in the dark, I never needed a flashlight.

  I wasn't right as a kid. I know that now, I have the ability to see just how things were wrong, but when you're a kid you don't see things with perspective. Kids shouldn't be suicidal like that. I feel badly for little me. Poor thing, stuck there in time, unable to take any action for herself.

  So I'm glad I was taken. At least here I have some agency. That me from back then wasn't well set up to live well. Maybe sometime I'll check in on her, but for the most part I find that whole idea to be a little creepy.

  After Martin took me to Childhome, they brought in a therapist from DeAkka to work with me, and MotherMonk Sara prescribed day passes so we spent a number of pleasant afternoons picnicking in good fresh air and sunlight, reading old books and snacking on chicken and cucumber sandwiches. The scenery was always amazing. I read Watership Down on Watership Down, but I didn't see any rabbits the whole time we were there. Those afternoons with Sara are the only time I can recall liking the daytime.

The Hat

  I hate the whole thing. I think back to where I came from, who my people were, and I hate everything. I think about what happened to me, how I was made in the night and taken like a dirty photocopy, and some people might see that like some sort of liberation, but I'm not those people. The only thing I have to keep me warm is the way I hate everyone and everything.

  I stole a copy of Catcher in the Rye from some kid's bedroom. I hated it, but it is still sitting in my room like some giant piece of dust.

  You might say I like some things. I get a rush when I take things. You can't even properly call it stealing when it's easier than taking candy from a baby. If people gave babies candy. Usually it's mushy bland food. But, I digress. Taking things is the easiest thing in the world for me and my kind, so it kind of loses its glamour. And there is only so much room in my space for things.

  I took a very nice hat from this old guy. He was so attached to it, I watched him take care of it with this pussy loving look on his face. It was with him in his dreams. So one sunny day, he was in his little apartment, and his hat was sitting on the kitchen table, and he got up to get something from the fridge. I took it right then. He turned around and the blood drained out of his face, for a minute I thought maybe I killed him, hoping for a heart attack or something, but after a few minutes of standing there like a dumbass, he just kind of wilted a bit, and then he went off to bed. It's a stupid hat, but I wear it all the time now. I like remembering the look on his face.