The Dark and Shadowy Places Read online

The End is the Beginning

  Here,” she said, handing him a fresh cookie from the street vendor, sealed in a small plastic case, impervious to the elements.

  He took it and glared at her through the eye pieces of his mask. “Are you trying to taunt me?” he said. His voice had that strange muffled quality that the breathers gave you. They used to call them gas masks, when they didn’t know what was really going on, when they thought people were dying because of airborne disease. But now they called them breathers, to make them more friendly-sounding, so people weren’t reminded of why they had to wear the uncomfortable contraptions every time they stepped outside. Everyone had breathers hung up at the entrances to their houses. It was the first thing you saw you went you went to visit a friend or family member after you walked through the airlock door – rows of breathers hung on pegs.

  Adam took the cookie nonetheless, seeing that his glower didn’t work on her.

  “I know we can’t eat them until we get back,” Eve said, her voice tinny. “But it’s been so long since I’ve had something like this. You know how rare sugar is.” She lifted the container to her nose and sniffed it, as if she could smell the sugar. She nodded thanks to the vendor, whose eyes were almost invisible in the tinted eye pieces of his own mask. He gave a curt nod back from behind the assortment of cookies in square plastic boxes.

  “Come on, Adam,” Eve said, marching onwards, with a rattling hiss of her breather.

  Three men walking together, talking in whispers walked past, and nodded to Eve. “Eve,” they said with a courteous nod. She followed suit. “Good day, Adam’s,” she said perfunctorily. She turned to the Adam she was with, and saw him standing talking to two Eve’s who had stopped to purchase cookies themselves.

  She could tell they were Eve’s because of their regulation length long hair, that was identical to her own, pulled back into a tight ponytail. Plus, they wore different outfits from the Adams’, so that men and women could easily differentiate each other, besides the obvious physical differences, that was. She had the vivid purple jumpsuit that women wore, and the men wore a garish orange. Eve always thought it was so that they could be easily visible to the Government if there was ever another ‘incident’.

  As if something or someone had been reading her thoughts, an alarm blared. The streets were busy, full of bright jumpsuits like life-sized flowers. Suddenly all Eve could see was blurs of purple and orange streaming past her, pushing, shoving.

  She did the opposite. She froze. She could feel Adam, her Adam, tugging on her arm. His voice sounded far away, a side effect of the breathers. “Eve, come on!” he said, urgency seeping through with a airy hiss of the respirator. “We have to get inside! You know what’s going to happen!”

  Eve had read about this. Had heard about it all her life. Everyone had. They grew up learning about it. But she never had thought it would happen again. She thought it had been contained. To a degree anyway.

  Eve knew what the piercing sound of the alarm meant. It meant The Cleanse. Which meant if she didn’t get inside somewhere in the next five minutes, even her breather wouldn’t help keep her safe.

  Adam tugged on her arm and then grabbed her mask in between his hands. “EVE!” he shouted. “We have to get inside! Can’t you see the atomisers are starting up?”

  Vaguely Eve was aware of the holes that were opening up in the large paving squares beneath their feet. She could feel the ground vibrating as large slabs of stone slid aside, and what looked like giant guns started to rise up.

  “Eve, we don’t have much longer!” Adam screamed, and instead of waiting for an answer, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her through the throngs of people who were rushing to get home, to safety. Businesses were already under lockdown, their airlock doors sealed tight against the normal dangers of the outside, but this time their inside doors were also locked shut, the screens on the side of the door that usually glowed green to indicate you could enter were now red.

  The last, and only other, time that The Cleanse was enacted was when all of this first started. When humanity had screwed up, beyond the point of no return. It was not only the environment that had turned against people, but people themselves. Things had gone too far. The only option was to start from scratch with a select few people, chosen by lottery, to begin again and rebuild human civilization.

  She could barely hear the sound of her boots pounding the ground over the noise of her breathing inside her mask, as she skirted the large gaps in the ground where the cleansing guns were calibrating.

  Adam reached the door to his home punched in the code for the airlock door and pulled them inside. The door swished closed with the comforting sound of the seals. Adam pulled off his breather and took a couple deep, cleansing breaths.

  Eve stared out the small circular window in the door. She watched as the guns fired. She couldn’t hear through the door, but she could imagine the world being filled with the hiss of the gas sprayed high into the air, up into the atmosphere, blanketing the entire planet. She watched the white mist as it rose like clouds. She watched it swirling, suffocating.

  She jumped when the first bird fell, followed quickly by another. In a few minutes the ground outside was covered with small feathered bodies.

  She wondered how many other birds, and animals would be littering the ground. How many people didn’t make it to safety?

  She turned to Adam who watched the world end in silence. “Well, here we go again.”

  The Spectre

  He was born on the stroke of midnight on December 12th. All his life people had called him blessed. It must mean something, people said. They thought it made him special. He knew it meant he was cursed. But he tried his best to ignore the dark cloud that followed him everywhere. He dated. Broke up. Got married. Had a child. Got divorced. Travelled to many countries, by boat, plane, train. He lived, shadowed by his curse. On 12/12/12 the shadow materialized. “Do you have regrets?” it said softly.

  “Only one. That you were there every step of the way.”

  Twelve Mile Limit

  Somehow, Samuel always managed to find himself on the inside of a prison cell. Some of the time it was his own fault. Others, he simply couldn’t remember the circumstances that landed him his free bed for the night. And most of the time it was because he was drunk.

  This time he wasn’t, but it was also one of the times he couldn’t remember what had got him here. Looking around he also realized he didn’t know where ‘here’ was. This was his hometown jail. He peered through the bars at the bored looking warden that he didn’t recognize who was sitting at a small wooden desk. Samuel noticed he was the only person in the cells.

  “Excuse me sir,” he said politely, for it always served you to be polite if you were in prison. “Can you tell me where I am?”

  The jailer glanced up from the book he was reading with a look of disgust. “Are you really that stupid? You’re in jail.”

  Samuel sighed with barely contained irritation. “Yes, I can see that. But a jail in what town? I don’t recognize it.”

  The jailer smirked at him, and Samuel cringed. He hated people who smirked.

  “So you’ve been in more than one, then, eh?” the man said, his smirk turning into a full smile. “I’m not surprised, seeing how you’re a bounty hunter and all. And bounty hunting is illegal here.”

  Samuel sighed again, this time with defeat. He wasn’t surprised that the man had found out that he was a bounty hunter. That part was obvious, if you happened to check his arms which were encircled with thin black rings of ink. He sighed because wherever he was bounty hunting was illegal. Not that that surprised him either. It was illegal mostly everywhere in the United American Empire. Even if he was the good kind of bounty hunter. The one that hunted down technology – mostly that most irritating of technology, the mecchas – automatons, machines under the guise of humans. Pretending to be human, but not. They were devious things. Smarter than humans, and trying to make it seem like they are ju
st there to be useful, to be used, to help the real people. But I know better, Samuel said to himself.

  “What?” the man behind the desk said. “What do you know better?”

  Samuel hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud. “Nothing, never mind. Are you going to tell me where I am, or not?” He knew he shouldn’t be snippy – he was inside a cell, after all.

  The guard shook his head, looking bemused. "If you don't know where you are, boy, you're in for more of a surprise than you're expecting."

  Samuel laughed despite the jab at his age. He was young, but not that young. And he'd seen a lot of things as a bounty hunter and wondered what it was that the officer could tell him that would shock him, and he said so.

  "Have you heard of Twelve Mile Limit?" The warden asked.

  At first Samuel thought he'd misheard. "Did you say Twelve Mile Limit?"

  The guard grinned widely. "Sure did."

  Suddenly Samuel didn't feel so confident about the fact his profession was so obviously evident, being etched into his skin with ink. usually it gave him a bargaining chip to help him get out of situations just like this. When people found out what he did, he mostly won instant respect. Most people were secretly appalled or at the least slightly uncomfortable around mechanical men and women. They moved with an unnervingly smooth gait.

  But if this was really Twelve Mile Limit that was not somewhere someone like Samuel wanted to be. He'd heard of it of course. But it was like a myth, a story told to children at bedtime. Not a real place. He’d heard the stories a million times as a child. It was one of the main reasons he became a bounty hunter. The idea of someplace like that, it was just…wrong.

  He didn't want to ask, but he didn't have much choice.

  The jailer was watching him with a look that made him feel like a rat in a trap. and what the man said next made his blood run cold. "We rarely get people like you come through town. And even fewer unlucky enough to find them in here. Especially someone like you," he said, glancing at the tattooed rings around Samuel's arm. "And I gather from the sheen of sweat I see on your brow, the type if bounty hunter you are, without even needing to look for the Emperor's mark on you to tell me you work on behalf of the Coalition to eradicate a certain... Species shall we say?"

  Samuel swallowed, his mouth dry. He didn’t want to nod, so instead asked the question he really, really didn’t want to ask. “Prove it,” he said, as he strained his ears, listening for the familiar sound, if you listened carefully enough, you could hear it. Their speech had a slight whirring sound to it. Gears and motors instead of a human voice box.

  The man stood up, gracefully as if he were unfolding himself. That movement alone gave Samuel goose bumps. He was trapped. By an automaton, a mechanical man. A meccha. The things that he had sworn, and got a seal from the Emperor of the United American Empire, to destroy.

  But how in the world had he found himself in Twelve Mile Limit of all places? He hadn’t even thought it was a real place. But as the jailer moved eerily smoothly towards where Samuel stood, causing him to back away instinctively. He could see the man, the things, copper coloured eyes, even as he backed himself into a far corner of his cell. The jailer smiled with perfect man-made teeth.

  “You want proof?” The meccha said, with a twist of lips that looked so human. “As a bounty hunter, you don’t give your…prey, any chance to plead there case, do you? You just deactivate them, no questions asked.”

  Again Samuel forced himself not to nod, but he knew the meccha knew the answer already.

  “Well, today is your lucky day,” his captor said with another smile, his smooth non-organic flesh moving as he did so. “We who live in Twelve Mile Limit are nothing if not open minded.”

  Samuel forced back a laugh. An entire city created and populated entirely by mechanical men and women. And, he assumed, children, though he had never seen a child automaton. Usually the New Alchemists, the inventors who created the mecchas for sale to businesses, or as personal help around the home, only ever created adult looking mechanical people.

  The jailer opened his cell and stepped forward, almost gliding. “Since you’ve never been to Twelve Mile Limit before, you are certainly in for a treat,” he said, taking a pair of handcuffs and not un-forcefully pulling Samuel’s arms behind his back. Samuel cringed as the metal ratcheted tightly around his wrists. “I’ve only ever had to use these handcuffs once before,” he said. “Like I said, we rarely get people coming into Twelve Mile Limit. They’re usually smart enough to realize what it is, and give us a wide berth. Which isn’t really that hard. So it’s always surprising when we do find people from outside.”

  Samuel shook his head. Twelve Mile Limit. Trust machines to come up with a name for a city as bizarre as that. But now that he’d thought about it, his curiosity was piqued. “Why do you call it Twelve Mile Limit?” he asked as he was steered through the doorway, and down a long empty hall, the heels of his boots smacking loudly against the concrete.

  “It wasn’t us,” the jailer said. “It’s…” he trailed off. “Well, you’ll see in a moment when you get the official town welcome.”

  Welcome? That rang alarm bells in Samuel’s head. But there wasn’t much he could do about it, seeing how he was handcuffed. But he always had some trick up one sleeve or another.

  A metal door in front of them opened as they approached. Samuel stopped, but was nudged forward out onto a metal walkway. He wished his hands weren’t behind his back, that he could reach out and grab the railings on each side. His feet rang with each slow step. Far below the narrow metal path on which he inched his way forward was a stadium full of people looking upwards. He could hear the noise of chatter, like insects, as thousands of faces turned to watch his progress.

  It seemed it took a lifetime to reach the end. Once they had reached the end, Samuel wished it was more than a lifetime. He stood at the edge of a platform, high above the audience. He looked down and wished he hadn’t. The only thing that met his gaze was clouds.

  He didn’t need to ask how far the drop was. He already knew the answer.

  MARS

  I looked out the window at the familiar rust-red of the land, the valleys and rocks – those places that weren’t taken over by the green patches of grass and trees and plants. I shook my head. “The moon?” I said in awe. “I can’t imagine us landing on the moon. That’s just crazy. It would be all grey. Grey and bland.”

  “And not to mention, not big enough for us to live on anyway,” Sophie replied. “I can’t believe they even considered landing on the moon. I’m just glad they changed their minds all those years ago and decided on Mars instead.” She ran her hands across the wall of glass, the hallway we walked along connecting one pod to another.

  “They? You mean us,” I said. I liked to think of myself as an earthling, even though I’d never been there. I was first generation Martian. Our parents, they were the ones who came from earth in the late 70’s. The first pioneers. I was born here, shortly after they arrived.

  “No, I mean they. They’re not like us. They are angry and bitter, the humans that are still on earth.” Sophie said as she reached Zone F and with a swooshing of doors, stepped inside. The coolness of the walkway disappeared instantly, replaced by noticeably warmer room temperature of Zone F, the shopping district of our colony. My mother says it’s what they called Malls back on Earth. I stood patiently as a bot scanned me for identification purposes. The silvery globe flashed green, and my name Kayla Edwins scrolled across it. “Welcome, to Zone F,” it said. “Enjoy your shopping experience.

  My sister, Sophie had already been scanned and was waiting for me a few steps away. The mall rose up vertically. Twelve floors stretched skyward. “I can’t imagine us landing on the moon,” I said again, ignoring Sophie’s shake of her head when I said ‘us’. “I mean, what’s the point, we can’t all fit on Mars as it is. But maybe if we had landed on the moon, maybe things would be different,” I wondered out loud.

  “Don’t be r
idiculous,” Sophie said. “You just said so yourself. The moon is smaller than here, and that would just make things worse, not better!”

  “But, it’s closer!” I almost whined, causing Sophie to roll her eyes.

  “What does that matter? You’ve never been there. I don’t see why you’d even want to anyway…”

  “Because we’re from there!” I cried.

  Sophie shook her head at me again, exasperated. “No we’re not. We’re from here. Mars. We’re not Earthlings, we’re Martian.” She smiled at that. I knew every time she said the word, she thought back to what our mother told us about what the people on earth thought about Martians seventy or eighty years ago, that there were little green creatures with antennae, that travelled in things called flying saucers. I laughed at the ridiculous image too. We didn’t have UFOs. We had space shuttles, normal looking things.

  Sophie was still talking. “Besides, there’s nothing on the moon anyway, that’s why people who lived on earth bypassed it for here – and it’s bigger too.” She glanced upward at the towering floors. “Though not as big as earth, that’s why we have everything going up, to save space.” She talked to me as if I was a child who didn’t know any of this.

  “Yes, but-” my next complaint was cut off by a high pitched whine, followed by the ground shaking. I dropped to the ground, to save it throwing me down itself. People started screaming. A woman rushed past with a baby carriage, trying to push it and cover her head from falling debris. The ground shook again and a muffled boom tried to break its way into Zone F through the thick safety glass every compound was made from – to shelter and save us from the inhabitable outside atmosphere of our beautiful red planet.

  Sophie grabbed my hand and dragged me back past the welcome bots into the hallway between Zone F and Zone E, one of the many Zones where people had their residences. Zones G and H was where the majority of schools were on this side of the planet.

  Even as Sophie took charge, dragging me to relative safety, she asked with wide, frightened eyes, “What was that?!”

  The ground shook again and Sophie fell down beside me, her eyes still wide as we watched the world outside being lit up like fireworks.

  I had thought it was all a rumour, just scare mongering to stop people travelling back to earth. We were doing much better on Mars and Earth was just becoming worse and worse. Even though one third of Earth’s population had migrated to Mars in the last fifty years, there was still too many people on our pale blue twin planet. That’s why the first generation earthlings moved here in the first place, to give Earth a chance to survive, before they killed it entirely. But things were still going wrong. They were still damaging the environment, with too many people and not enough resources, man-made climate change effecting crops and food supply, and somehow still a population increase that meant sometimes only just enough food to feed everyone that lived there.

  A large metal man filled their view, stomping heavily across the barren landscape outside the inhabited complexes.

  “I get the other thing,” I said, and now I repeated Sophie’s question, and even though I was the younger of us, added a bit more colour, “but what the hell was that?”

  The giant metal monster raised one of its arms and a blue jet of energy shot from it.

  A calming female voice filtered through the hallway. We knew it was playing throughout the complex. It was the emergency warning system that they tested every so often. Except this time it wasn’t a test. “This is an emergency. Please stay calm and follow these instructions.”

  “Do they have instructions for escaping giant metal men with energy guns?” I said as I climbed to my feet and pulled Sophie up with me. The emergency information system was advising everyone to go back to their residences and seal themselves inside their houses, locking their doors until told that the danger had passed.

  Over the emergency system a male voice piped in. “Shuttle landing in operation, please stay clear of any landing pads.”

  Shuttle landing? There weren’t any shuttles that were out right now. They usually returned from their resource gathering missions once a week, on a Sunday. It was Tuesday. So it wasn’t one of ours, which could only mean one thing.

  The Earthlings were attacking. I didn’t blame them. I’d learned about them in school, seen pictures of what it looked like, the cities, dirty and crowded, smothered in pollution. If I was living there, I’d want to get away, too.

  There were always the paranoid people ranting about an invasion from Earth, but no one believed it. Since their space program that originally got us here, and those that lived on Mars were able to make it a self-sufficient planet, we didn’t need them anymore, and their funding for space travel had dried up almost as quickly as the majority of their drinkable water. So we never thought they would be a threat. Their space craft were old, not that much changed from what they were twenty years ago. They didn’t have our same technology. We had become more advanced than them. The children had surpassed their parents.

  But now it looked like we were at war. Real war. This wasn’t a test. We had to fight back, and protect our home. There was nowhere else in our solar system that was habitable. It was just the two of us, Earth, and Mars.

  But I’m pretty sure if I was one of the unlucky people still stuck on Earth that I’d want to come here too. And I’d do whatever it took, for the sake of survival. I knew I was one of the lucky ones. They had a birth limit here, because they didn’t want Mars to become like Earth – overpopulated. So people were only allowed to have a certain number of children per year, to keep the number of people level, monitored.

  A man ran past us screaming, ranting. “The aliens have landed! We’re under attack!”

  The ground shook again as another metal monstrosity clomped towards the shuttle landing area, and the shaking continued as a large armoured vehicle followed closely behind on rapidly turning wheels that crushed the red rocks underneath it to dust.

  Even though we ran along one of the moving walkways to Zone E, moving quicker than just running somehow they had reached us quicker.

  They wore large bulky suits and helmets that hid their faces behind dark screens. My pulse raced. A real Earthling! I thought with excitement, any fear being pushed to the back of my mind. I wondered if they really looked like us, or if we looked different to them. They were our ancestors, of sorts.

  “Come on!” Sophie yelled at me, pulling my arm. But I was frozen. Curiosity rooted me to the spot. The one Earthling was joined by three others, all identical. I couldn’t tell if they were men, or women, or how old they were. They formed a marching wall. I could hear a raspy muffled sound. Their breathing apparatus, I realized. They weren’t used to our air, even inside. It had a different level of oxygen than what people on Earth were used to. I’d learned that much in History class.

  Sophie had given up, and continued on without me, to the safety of the residential Zone. I wondered vaguely if this was how people on Earth felt centuries ago when they met new civilizations.

  “Hi,” I said lamely, raising my hand in greeting. Wow, what a great ambassador I am to our planet, I thought, cringing inside.

  In answer the spacemen raised and pointed weapons at me. Me. Kayla. Just a normal girl who just happened to live somewhere that these people, these strangers, wanted to take.

  “Take us to-” the middle one began. It was a male voice, strange and breathy through his helmet.

  I laughed out loud. “Your leader?” I finished. I can’t believe they used that. Even I had watched the old movies about Martians landing on Earth.

  The gun shifted, pointing at my chest and I shut my mouth. I raised my hands in front of me, defensively. “Okay, okay.” I went to move and then stopped. I needed to explain what I was going to do, I didn’t want them to get any wrong ideas. “I’ll take you to the people in charge here,” I said slowly as clearly as I could. “Follow me.” I turned and glanced at their reflections in the glass of the hallway.

  I’
d never been to Zone A before. It was where the people that ran the planet operated out of.

  I stood in front of two large doors. On either side, sentry bots floated, patiently waiting. When I arrived, they moved in front of me. I waited while they scanned me.

  “State your purpose,” the bot on the left said in a female voice.

  “I need to speak with the President,” I said.

  “Give us more information, Kayla Edwin,” the bot on the right said, a male.

  “We have…visitors from Earth who have asked to speak to our leaders.”

  The bots fell silent, and it looked like they seemed to glance at each other. Which is impossible.

  “That is not possible,” they said simultaneously.

  I frowned. “Why not?”

  Another long pause caused a spike of panic.

  The sentinels moved back to their positions at the side of the door. “You will understand.”

  The Earthlings gestured for me to open the doors.

  I stepped forward into a room covered in dust and occupied by skeletons. No one alive had been here for years.

  There Goes The Sun

  It started off just like any other normal Thursday. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except for the fact I was carrying a folded cot with me. I don’t usually bring that with me to work, but I today was unusual, right off the bat. Not just because I had to dig through my under the stairs storage to find the old musty cot for a co-worker who had the great idea to try ‘glamping’ in the middle of the Scottish summer, where it is more rain than anything else. Which would possibly explain why my cot was a bit musty. None the less, I was being a good co-worker and bringing said cot into work. Now people who know me would laugh if they saw me walk into work with a cot strapped to my back like some kind of over-enthusiastic hiker. Me, hiking? I’d be laughed out of the office! My scrawny pale and pasty chicken legs hadn’t seen hide nor hair of sun or outdoor activity in a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an active guy, but I’m more of a gym rat…or mole, I guess you could say. I’m the guy who keeps to himself in the corner of the gym, hoping other people won’t notice I’m there. In any case, going to the gym is good, because it meant I had brought a change of clothes with me that morning on the train, in a sack, folded neatly at the bottom of the old canvas sack of a backpack I used every day. Not very professional of me, I know.

  Along with my usual items I always had with me: my SPF 15 lip balm that was permanently attached to my keychain that also handily doubled as a little mini-flashlight – helpful for those nights when you get home late, and can’t see the keyhole to open the door; a worn and well used riddle book I used to pass the time on the commute to and from work, to save me from looking out on the dreary grey upon grey landscape that flew past. I had used that morning’s Daily Herald I picked up to actually read on the train as a makeshift umbrella, as the heavens opened up. By the time I got on the train, the paper was a soggy mess, unreadable, the pages sticking together and tearing like tissue. It wasn’t the end of the world, though, even though my disposable umbrella cost me almost 2 quid for ten minutes.

  Because it was Thursday, and that meant sushi for lunch. But it wasn’t even 9am and I was already starving. My single cup of coffee wasn’t doing the trick. I took out the rectangle of pre-packaged sushi roll from my bag and grabbed the chop sticks I’d taken from where I put all spare chopsticks –next to the utensils in the drawer. Except…it wasn’t chopsticks. I peeled back the paper wrapper to find a purple straw. A straw! You can’t eat sushi with a single straw! I stabbed a piece of California roll with it, in the hopes of spearing it, but instead it just pushed all that imitation crab goodness out, and I was left with a ring of rice hanging on the straw.

  But not being able to sample my sushi lunch on my transit in was the least of my worries. In fact, it was the last normal part of my normal Thursday. After that, things began to get weird. And I mean weirder than eating sushi skewered on a straw.

  The sky had been dark and grey outside, and threatening to rain, again, which is nothing unusual in itself, of course. But then it got really dark. As in the sun has gone behind a cloud, and all the streetlights have gone out. Like everything went black. At first I thought it was the windows of the train that some curtain had been pulled down over them. But then I saw the faint outline of trees, still zooming past, dark amorphous blobs in the blackness. And that’s when the screaming started, shortly after the squealing of train wheels on metal tracks. Suddenly the train had stopped, and a dull blaring alarm sounded. The doors of the train slid open and seconds later the lights went out.

  That’s when I was thankful for my trusty key-hole finder keychain flashlight. I twisted it and a small dot of light lead me out like a will-o-wisp onto…well, not a platform. I had to jump down out of the train onto the ground, and push my way through lost, confused and shocked passengers who were milling about aimlessly. I followed my dot of light, like a firefly leading me to…well, not safety, but at least out of the claustrophobic mass of people. Did I mention I’m not a huge people person?

  I glanced up at the sky. It was as if someone had just turned off a giant light bulb, and you were left in pitch blackness. There was the stars and moon of course, but it felt different from night time. Because you knew it wasn’t. It was 8:30 on Thursday morning, according to my watch. I shouldered my way through the confused crowd, thankful for the cot strapped to my back giving me more leverage.

  Thank god for street lights. I made my way towards the comforting glow of civilization, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves. I never said I was a nice guy. My foot had just hit pavement when someone grabbed my arm. “What-?” I said instinctively, pulling away and suddenly wishing I had my chopsticks on me instead of a straw.

  And then I stopped and relaxed. It was just a young boy. I thought he was going to ask for help, because we were quite far from the centre of the city, but thankfully on the outskirts. I glanced at my watch impatiently. I was going to definitely be late for work! And then I remembered the more immediate problem that probably meant that everyone in my office wouldn’t be doing much work anyway – that’s if they even noticed anything was wrong. People who worked in the IT world like me usually didn’t give the outside world much thought. Another reason why I preferred to squirrel myself away in the gym instead of going outdoors for exercise.

  I felt another urgent tug on my arm. “What?” I said irritably now, not having had my morning coffee yet.

  “I know who you are,” the boy said.

  “What?” I repeated. It seemed like it was all I was all I could say. “I’m sorry, you’re mistaken. I’m-”. I was going to say no one, but what the boy said next froze the words in my mouth.

  “I can tell from your eyes,” he said.

  What?! This time I thought the word, instead of spoke it. “What do you mean you can tell from my eyes?” I stared at the boy. “How do you know who I am?” I looked down at the front of my shirt. Was I wearing my work pass that had my name and job on it, with a badly lit portrait of yours truly? No.

  “Well, I guess I mean, I know what you are,” the boy clarified.

  I continued to stare, mouth hanging open. “You can tell I work in IT by my eyes?” I was confused, and it must have shown on my face. No one else had ever guessed where I worked. I mean besides the unkempt clothes and super heroes from the 80’s t-shirts. I didn’t even wear glasses. “I’m sorry kid, I don’t follow.” I was suddenly very self-conscious about my eyes and then I realized it was pretty much dark as night and you could hardly see my eyes, let alone much else.

  “I know you’re a god,” the boy replied.

  I thought I could feel my mouth fall open further.

  “I’m God?” What kind of drugs is this kid on? I echoed what was in my head.

  The boy laughed. “No, not God. You’re a god.”

  “A god?” I emphasized the singular like he had. “You mean a god of war, love, like the ancient Greeks had?”
r />   The boy nodded.

  That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Even though this Thursday started off weird, but this was just insane! I thought my brain would spill those thoughts out of my mouth, but instead it surprised me when I said, “How do you know?”

  The boy smiled with a mouthful of slightly crooked teeth. “’Cuz I’m one too. That’s how I know, and I can spot others like us.”

  My desire to continue to find an alternate way to work disappeared in light of this strange bit of news.

  “You are a god?” I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. “Of what? Video games?” A slightly hysterical laugh burst from me.

  The boy smiled at me in a way that said he was humouring me “I’m the god of Pestilence. But I’m also who tracks down ones like you, who don’t know who, or what, they are, and…” he punctuated this with a shrug, “tells them. Usually before anything like this happens.” He shrugged again and had the decency to look sheepish.

  If my mouth could’ve opened any wider, it would have. I looked him up and down. He couldn’t weigh more than 90 pounds soaking wet, and he wore normal clothes that any teenage boy would – baggy jeans, and a t-shirt of what I assumed was some band I’d never heard of.

  If you’re the god of Pestilence then I’m the fucking Queen of England. Instead, I kept my manners and said, “Anything like what happens?”

  The boy pointed up.

  I followed his finger. There was nothing up-… and then it dawned on me.

  I could feel my eyes grow wide. “I’m the god of the Sun?” I realized I’d raised my voice when I saw a few shadowed figures turn in my direction. “Really?” I whispered. I looked down again at my clothes, that were similar to the kids, in fact, but just a bit bigger. I didn’t look, or feel, very god-like.

  “Yep,” the boy confirmed, rather nonchalantly. “I should’ve told you before now, obviously, but I didn’t think this,” he waved his hand lazily around, taking in the darkness that was punctuated by street lights and stars, “would happen. But,” he looked me up and down, “you look fairly old-“

  “Hey!” I bristled. “I’m only thirty-four!” Where was that straw when you needed it?

  The boy shrugged again. “That’s thirty-four years that you haven’t been doing your job. Thirty-four years the sun hasn’t had any help…”

  “Help? The sun needs help…being the sun?”

  The boy nodded. “Uh huh. Otherwise…” he trailed off and I finished his sentence for him.

  “Otherwise it goes out.”

  He pointed his finger at me. “Exactly.”

  “So this is all my fault?” I said. Suddenly my normal 9 to 5 job didn’t seem all that important.

  “Well, a bit of mine too. I should’ve tracked you down before this. But finding a single person on the whole planet is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Plus, my own job keeps me quite busy.”

  “Yeah, causing diseases all over the place.” I instinctively took a step back, as if I would catch the plague from…the causer of plagues.

  The god of Pestilence glanced at his watch. “C’mon, we better get this fixed. You can’t have a planet to infect with disease for very long if there isn’t the sun to keep everyone alive and happy.” He turned and started to walk away.

  I jogged to catch up. “So where are we going? Mount Olympus or something?”

  The boy laughed. “That’s just a myth. We’re going down.”

  “Down?”

  “Inside the earth. That’s where we live.”

  I gripped the purple straw, a better weapon that nothing. This Thursday was just getting weirder and weirder.

  UP, UP AND AWAY

  “You do realize Sherlock Holmes was not a superhero,” he said to me as I adjusted the deer stalker hat on my head, as I looked at my reflection in the full length mirror in my hallway. I glanced at him in the mirror and caught his derisive look.

  “Well, he kind of was…” I said, straightening my waistcoat. “I don’t know why people don’t wear vests anymore.” I turned around to admire the purple silk back.

  “Well, you look ridiculous in the hat,” the man behind me in the mirror said. “And he didn’t actually wear a stupid hat like that in the books, thankfully.”

  I sneered at him through the mirror, and reluctantly removed the hat and flung it on the bed. “And you don’t look ridiculous?” I said, jabbing a finger in his direction at his purple and black skin-tight outfit. “But how are people going to recognize me as a detective!” I said with an exaggerated pout. “Someone needs to solve this mystery. Why not me?”

  “Because you’re not a trained detective, for one,” said my companion. “

  “This costume is a lot more comfortable than what we usually wear,” I said, taking a deep breath inwards. “It’s not as constricting.”

  “They aren’t costumes, they’re uniforms!” My colleague said. I could almost see him bristling with indignation.

  “Well so is this,” I said, turning back to the dashing figure in the mirror. “I need to do something. Don’t you feel like you need to help?”

  “I do enough helping every day and night,” my friend said. “And so do you. That’s our jobs. That’s what we use our gifts for. To help the helpless citizens when they can’t themselves. That’s why we have these powers. As if to demonstrate, briefly I saw his purple-black outfit begin to vibrate and blur, and a high-pitched whine filled the air. Instinctively, I dove away from the mirror, taking shelter beside my bed just as the mirror shattered and exploded in a million pieces.

  “Stop!” I yelled, as I watched the window of my bedroom begin to vibrate dangerously. “You don’t need to do that here!” I jumped up from my hiding place and lifted my hands protectively. I felt the familiar sensation of heat and tingling run down my arms and out my palms. Then I saw Hedgehog fly backwards and slam into the chest of drawers on the far side of the room.

  I ran to the rescue, and felt a button on my vest pop off as I did. “Sorry Hedge,” I said, offering my hand to pull him up.

  He glared at me. “You know I hate that nickname!” he said with a grimace as he took my hand and I helped him stand.

  “Hey, it’s not my fault,” I shrugged, admiring the fresh damage to the antique wooden dresser. “I didn’t come up with the name Sonic Boom. Hedgehog is much better,” I flashed a smile but suppressed the laugh that threatened to follow it.

  Sonic gave me another dirty look. “It’s not my fault that’s my gift,” he said.

  “Powers,” I repeated. “They’re called powers,” I said distractedly as I examined where the button had fallen off my vest as it pulled across me when I ran. “I think I see why we wear what we do.”

  “Well, what is your big idea, Mr Holmes,” Sonic said “How do you plan to stop the murders?”

  That was the mystery I intended to solve. For the last week, one of us was being targeted, and killed. Well, the news was reporting all the deaths as suicides, but I knew that all of the superheroes had been framed and their deaths cleverly designed to look as if each person had killed themselves. But I knew that couldn’t be. We loved what we did. We all loved our jobs, even though we were tired. After all, being a superhero doesn’t really pay the bills. We all had day jobs too. But that’s why we did our superheroing on rotation. We each did a week of helping the poor, unfortunate, taken advantage of citizens, and took a week off work so we wouldn’t be running on empty fighting crime. Tonight was my first shift, and I was glad. Being a server at a restaurant was an exhausting job. I’d much rather be disposing of the darkness that plagued each and every city.

  Even though I wasn’t sure how my powers of a protective force field would help solve anything. And maybe disguised as Sherlock Holmes instead of wearing my usual uniform of navy blue, with tall knee-high navy boots and charcoal grey face mask, would help me find the answers. My Force outfit was simple and understated, just how I liked it, not overly flashy like a lot of us out there on the s
treets.

  I switched on the TV and flicked to the news. Sonic came to stand beside me and we watched with horror and disgust as we saw Amber Flame’s face appear on-screen. Her bright red hair was unmistakable. She was on duty last night. But she was found this morning in her bed, next to a bottle of pills. I guess her explosive ball of flame powers could only do so much…

  “Who could be doing all of this?” Sonic asked as he turned away from the TV and looked out across the city. It seemed so different in the daytime with the sun shining and birds chirping. At night it became an entirely different beast, one that I felt more comfortable in. During the day we stood out, even as our regular-joe selves, you felt people were watching you. At night, you felt safe, protected.

  Even us superheroes felt vulnerable sometimes but we had our powers to help give us courage and strength.

  “I don’t know, but I plan to find out. You with me?"

  Hedge nodded.

  I took a deep breath, grabbed the hat from the bed and tugged it on. “Let’s go.”

  The Valley of Death

  I always thought those people who stood on street corners and smelled like ripe cheese that ranted about the end of the world were, y’know, totally bonkers. When I woke this morning to a knock at my door and Death on my doorstep I started to believe maybe they weren’t so crazy after all…or that maybe I was. “Come with me,” Death said as he led me by the hand to survey all that was left of everything that I, and everyone else, had ever known: nothing.

  THE Archive

  Armistice Wells knew he was going to die today. He just had that feeling. His hand shook as he wrote the second, and final, note that he wrapped around the energy gun he always kept on him now, more for peace of mind than anything. His fingers shook as he tied the piece of string to secure the note onto his gun.

  He sighed and strapped the gun securely into his harness, making sure not to accidentally hit any of the cables that kept his wings currently folded neatly on his back. He had always wanted to be a flier, and he was lucky, because his father had been one, and that’s how it worked. It ran in your family. He didn’t know of anyone who was a flier who didn’t love it. Armistice knew he would be unhappy in any other job. Flying was the one thing that made sense when you were on the top of the world – or at least the top of your world, where you lived, the only one that mattered. From the top, on a clear day you could see for miles in all directions across the United American Empire. When he was younger, he used to love to sit within the barriers, right up against the guard rail that protected you from the sheer drop, six tall levels, with the seventh hidden underground, and watch the airships glide by in the distance like swollen cocoons. He loved to watch them dock at the piers, one on each of the four sides of the city, and watch them unload their goods, like the sailors he read about. From the top of the city, he could just see a sliver of silver on the horizon that indicated the ocean.

  But now, fifty years later, the airships had lost their appeal; they were nothing special, just an everyday occurrence. But flying never had. He loved the adrenaline rush of taking a running leap off the edge into nothingness, and letting the wings open up and out lifting you, with steam powered assistance if necessary, and then drifting downwards, to deliver your messages to the people below, in the Middle.

  Armistice had loved his life, and his job, until he was snatched away from it all, like a butterfly caught in a net. He had believed once you were a flier, you were one forever. But the Elders at the ArcHive had different ideas. They said there were too many messengers, and that keeping the ArcHive going was more important, that it was above all else.

  Armistice had seen the ArcHive buildings, of course. They dominated the middle of the topmost level of the city, where he lived. They were just like their name sake – a cluster of domes, like the hive of an insect, but inside was housed the history of the Empire. Not just the general histories – the wars, the Emperors, the Coalition, but the histories of every single living, breathing person, as they lived, their lives were recorded. Years ago it had been noted down in books by automatons, who would never tire, never cramp, never complain, and could download the information that was streamed from the tiny chips embedded in every person, the moment they were born, that recorded their lives, their experiences, as they lived. But the ArcHive quickly began to fill up with large, paper volumes. But then the Computing Machines were invented and information was transferred almost magically onto them, and whole volumes were saved onto paper thin discs that were shelved next to the ancient leather bound books.

  Armistice had just about begun his run towards the edge of the building that didn’t have a barrier, the jumping off point for winged messengers, when a hand landed on his shoulder. He turned and looked into the hooded face of a robed Elder. He recognized him as being from the ArcHive. “We need your help,” the man said sombrely, managing somehow to turn Armistice away from his running path.

  “Why me?” Armistice said, confusion creasing his features. His wings were still lowered across his back. He only had to press a single button to eject them outwards.

  “The Fate of the Empire lies in our hands, and we need help to keep it going. If we do not have a history, we do not have a nation, we do not have anything.”

  “But-” Armistice’s wings rustled in a slight breeze.

  The robed figured interrupted him. “The Master Elder has instructed me to bring you to us. You need to help us maintain the records. Maintain the scribe-bots, and keep them functioning, ensure records are filed correctly.”

  “But I’m not a New Alchemist! I don’t know how to fix anything!” He lied. He did know how to fix one thing – his wings. But he was taught how to do that by his Father, as he was by his. His wings were literally and figuratively his life. He had to make sure they were in perfect condition. To neglect them meant death.

  “We will show you how to fix the bots when they break, how to file the records in their places. We will show you everything you need to know.” The man in the white Monk’s robe said. “Look,” the Elder said, pointing to one of Armistice’s colleagues who had positioned himself at the end of the launch lane, and started pumping his legs like pistons, and at the last moment, loosed his wings which arced upwards gracefully just as his feet left the edge of the top. “You see? There are too many of you.” Beyond the man that had just become airborne, Armistice could see other winged men in white flying, floating and fluttering in the sky – and this was just on the one side of the city – there were three others.

  Shoulders slumped, and head drooping, looking everything like an Angel being ejected from Heaven, Armistice Wells was forced into serving the ArcHive.

  He shook his head, as he walked along the barrier fence, his fingers rising and falling up and down the wrought iron spikes that topped each post. He looked longingly out over the edge of his world, at his old life, as he did every morning on his way to the ArcHive. He couldn’t believe it had been five years. Five long years. Five years of trying to escape. Doing little things, controversial things, to show the Elders he was unnecessary, that he could be released from their net back into his old life. He could feel their eyes on him as he walked up and down the rows of shelves that filled the honeycomb rooms, and when he called a scribe bot over to him, to inspect it, after observing its behaviour or its work. He could hear the whispers of the Elders behind his back, and could see them shaking their hooded heads out of the corner of his eyes as they pointed at the wings he still wore every day despite not being able to fly to deliver necessities to the lower levels of the city.

  Armistice had just reached the last post before the flying gap when a hand fell heavy on his shoulder. He didn’t turn to see who it was. He already knew.

  “You disobey us,” the soft, unthreatening voice said. “In small ways, you shirk your duties; you flaunt your supposed superiority. You still do not understand the importance of what you do, of what we are all doing. Without it-“

  “Without it we are
nothing.” Armistice finished the sentence. “Yes, I know, so you keep saying.” He could see how important they thought they were, with the whitewashed honeycomb building taking up a huge piece of real-estate in the finite space that the enclosed tower city had.

  There was silence. It dragged on so long that Armistice turned to look at the Elder who had been speaking with him, a question on his lips.

  Suddenly he was flying again, but not of his own volition. The wind whipped past him, cold and biting. The surprise of this change of circumstance delayed his reaction. He hadn’t prepared himself. His hands fumbled for the button to release his wings. The rush of the wind past him as he fell brought tears to his eyes. He smiled widely. Armistice had had a feeling in his bones.