Singularity's Children Box Set

by Toby Weston

  Anosh had never been a great fan of violence. He used to play shooters as a kid; and, once in a while, back when he had a job, an office colleague might initiate a birthday party paintball outing. This was poor preparation for prolonged apocalypse survival; but, having recognised this, for the last three weeks, he had been taking a shotgun on trips to the woods where he would line up and shoot down cans.

  Lying awake on several consecutive nights, he debated with internal voices. There was a difference between cans and people; but he decided, if he ever needed to choose between his family and a violent mob, he would not hesitate to pull the trigger.

  The top stories of Maslow's pyramid-of-needs eroded away terrifyingly quickly. Humans were passably civilised when resources were plentiful, but the amygdala switched on primal and unsavoury programming when things got tight.

  ***

  Their little boat, a small sailing dinghy that Anosh and Vikram had repaired, hugged the bank on the inside of a long meander. Its progress was slow against the current. The banks of the great river were scattered with fishermen and sunbathers, enjoying what might prove to be the last of the year’s clement weather. Ayşe lay with her back to the stern, propped up on a pile of cushions, finally finding the chance to finish the book that had absorbed her for the past week.

  A cold, salty wind was blowing down from Denmark, but the sky was clear and the sun hot. They set off early, with Anosh herding the kids out of the house before the perfect sailing weather blew itself out. If the wind held until lunchtime, they would make the seven kilometres upriver to the little wood, where they hoped to fill their baskets with autumn mushrooms. On the way back, they could furl the sails and let the current carry them home. The boys would take turns at the tiller and keep the boat pointed towards the slower water, near the banks. Anosh would work the sails and call directions. Zaki was reading their progress off a battered old Companion that Anosh had patched up for him. There were millions of obsolete phones and tablets in circulation. After a little tinkering and the installation of one of the open source OSs, most could be coaxed back into service. He had given the battered old thing to Zaki for his thirteenth birthday.

  “When are we there?” asked Siegfried.

  “Not long,” muttered Ayşe, looking up from her book. “Anosh, you have to read this after me.”

  “Is it really written by a fish, Mami?”

  “He’s a dolphin, darling, and dolphins are not fish.”

  “Siegfried, I've told you that before,” Anosh interrupted, slightly exasperated. He felt hostile to anything too popular. “It’s probably just a ghost-written gimmick, anyway.”

  “I don't think so,” said Ayşe, “and if it is, the author deserves a prize!”

  “Careful, Segi! Don't steer us out into the current!”

  The younger boy, only eleven and, to his annoyance, still treated like a baby by his parents, tugged on the tiller and guided the boat back towards the bank. A big barge was coming towards them, and he had become distracted looking at the bandoliered security crew leaning over the railings at the front.

  “Nearly there!” Zaki shouted, twenty minutes later. Anosh took the Companion and checked they really were at their destination. He dropped the sails and ran the little dinghy gently into the bank, where Zaki jumped off with the line and fastened it to a small tree.

  “Good boy! That’s a nice bowline.”

  Siegfried hopped to shore next, and then held out his hand to help his mum. Anosh and Ayşe exchanged an indulgent smile as they watched this display of chivalry.

  They all spent the next few hours in the woods, hunting for mushrooms. The boys dug under bushes and pushed through dense undergrowth to outdo each other with size and number. They used a cached Meshpedia article on the Companion to check that their booty was not poisonous, and Ayşe double-checked before letting anything into her basket. She had collected mushrooms with her grandmother as a young girl, but she still needed to look up many of the unfamiliar European specimens. They gathered a good-sized haul, enough for a week of omelettes.

  The wood was relatively remote, and they had arrived early on the first sunny day for a week. For two hours they didn't meet another soul. Once they had exhausted the fungal resources in the immediate area, Anosh set up some bottles and fir cones on a spongy stump and backed off twenty metres. He made the boys stay behind him with their mother. He insisted they plug their ears. He was never excessive with ammunition, because it was so difficult to get hold of shells, but he needed the confidence to load, aim, and fire and wanted to feel familiar with these skills if he ever needed to rely on reflexes in a tight situation.

  Zaki was allowed to fire both barrels and was thrilled to hit his dirty green wine bottle target. Anosh wanted to offer the loaded weapon to Segi, but Ayşe glared at him. After a few more shots and more shredded foliage, they packed up and headed back to the boat. They took a different loop in the path, hoping to find blackberries or opportunistic ‘bush tucker’, but the forest animals were either keeping a low profile or already eaten.

  They were rounding a bend in the path, when they heard voices approaching. Anosh signalled to Ayşe. She knew the drill and quickly hid most of their loot in her rucksack, leaving just a few poor specimens in the bottom of a conspicuously empty basket.

  After a few minutes listening to the approaching commotion, they saw a large group of scruffy Camp Kids tramping between the trees. They all carried stout sticks, and a couple had nasty-looking catapults. The oldest was probably about eighteen and the youngest looked to be about six, but he could just as well be an undernourished ten. They stopped when they saw the family. Anosh continued walking, trying to look friendly and unthreatening. The oldest boy hesitated a few seconds and then spat, aggressively, in his path. The large, snotty ball of phlegm was taken as a signal by his chums, and they spread out to block the way.

  Zaki looked to his dad; Siegfried froze, clutching onto his mother’s hand. Ayşe put her hand to the scarf at her waist, where she kept the little 3D-printed, single-use, four-shooter that Anosh made her carry whenever they went into the ‘wilderness’.

  Neither party made a move. When the stand-off began to feel uncomfortable, Anosh casually undid a button on the shotgun’s sling, causing it to swing from beside his rucksack into a horizontal position. He didn't make eye contact with any of the older boys; he didn't want this to be about honour or pride where things could get quickly out of hand. He just looked about the forest and let his hand rest on top of his gun’s barrel. As the group eyed the sleek, minimalist, matte black device, a little afternoon menacing was beginning to look less appealing.

  Even without a signal from their leader, the kids spontaneously drifted off into the trees. Sensing he had lost the initiative, the big kid turned and followed his gang without a noise.

  The tension was broken. Siegfried burst into tears.

  Anosh tussled his son’s hair and told him not to worry. “The silly boys are gone again.”

  “I wasn't scared!” boasted Zaki.

  “There is nothing wrong with being a bit scared; it stops you from being silly!” Anosh told him.

  When they got back to where they had moored up, they found that, where frontal assault had failed, the gang had resorted to asymmetric tactics. The boat was gone, its cut line still fastened to the tree. They could see it floating away with the current, a few hundred metres downriver. Anosh cursed. He was tempted to hunt down the little shits.

  The journey back took the rest of the day, and it was getting dark before they got home. The next few weeks were wet and windy, and then winter started, with early snows and weeks of freezing rain.

  ***

  When it had become clear to everyone that the wheels had finally come off the world, Anosh’s first reaction had been relief. Finally, the charade was over, and he felt vindicated after years of telling anybody who would listen that there was no endgame plan for a society with such massive debt and inequality. For a while, bolstered by righteous
ness, he had felt that optimism might be warranted. Perhaps, now that everybody accepted there was a problem, things could be sorted out; healing could begin. It was obviously not fair for the top one per cent to get everything, and now people would finally work together to build a better world.

  Early on, it looked like optimism might prevail. Enthusiastic clubs of like-minded people had sprung up. They built windmills and set up rooftop solar farms; people planted tomatoes and cabbages in window boxes. Unfortunately, for every productive new age tinker hippie, there were a hundred confused, desperate, hungry citizens. They queued for handouts or clustered after hours for warmth in schools and sports centres. The blackouts and food shortages, with unemployment peaking at sixty per cent, pushed great blocks of people over the edge, forcing them into dependence on a state that could barely keep the rubbish out of the streets or pay for heating in the hospitals.

  Way Forward parties spread across Europe, shamelessly exploiting the fear and ignorance at the bottom to justify crackdowns and policies—which, disappointingly, to Anosh at least, seemed designed to benefit only those at the top.

  In the affluent suburbs, spikes were added to walls, and gated neighbourhoods of MacMansions were patrolled by security drones. Within these homes, people’s lives carried on mostly unchanged. Executives tele-commuted via corporate satellite uplink or crunched along the pitted tarmac with their ‘eco-hybrid SUVs’. The poor had to fend for themselves, while the privileged continued to be paid via loophole tunnelling shell companies.

  The government did its bit. Judicious troop deployments kept a semblance of law and order and, at first, holes in the road were small enough to be an inconvenience, rather than a danger.

  Slowly, though, as the shelves had run out of food and the heating had failed, the abdication of personal responsibility escalated. An unwieldly mass of people had grown up expecting an unending supply of chicken nuggets. They had been reassured by ad saturated broadcasting that this was not only okay, but it was their right. Now their world view was being annihilated and they had no chance to adjust. Life got increasingly bitter, and even the optimists eventually learnt that when the going gets tough…

  …people turn into monsters.

  Anosh killed his first human being in December of 2027.

  For weeks, the situation had been gaining in intensity. Racial pretexts, fanned by Forward rhetoric, were used to justify an escalating campaign of attacks and robberies. Despite all the hate shouted from street corners or parks, deep down it was about food and power, not skin colour or religion. The Sikhs downstairs were a visible minority. For the proto-tribes forming on the streets, their brown skin, turbans, and possession of food made them a target. During the ‘shortages’ the exotic smells escaping the Sikhs' kitchen were taken as an incitement to riot. The mob got it into their heads they must have some secret stash. Anosh and Ayşe had once joked about the same thing in awe of this ability to synthesise a gourmet experience from the simplest ingredients. In the house, the families often shared what little they could scrabble together. Segi would take down a bag of potatoes or a bunch of onions and, later, when a kid had thundered up the stairs to deliver a bowl of aromatic magic, they would all wonder at the transformation.

  Anosh was up on the roof, manually aligning the solar panels. Below on the street, a bunch of youths and opportunistic troublemakers rollicked and capered. They were rolling a burning tire ahead of them and casually flinging stones at any unbroken panes of glass they spotted. The heavy, angry rioting of the early years had taken place mainly in the city centres. Few street-level windows survived, and the cars left parked or abandoned were universally rolled or burnt out. The destruction in the surrounding zones had been less complete, but that just meant there was still fuel to attract the frustrated, confused packs, whose daily routine consisted of undirected destruction.

  People kept back from windows or watched from the roofs as the gang passed. As they entered the great cloud of garlic and spice-flavoured steam spilling from the Sikhs’ kitchen window, they paused like hounds catching a scent. As he watched from the roof, Anosh saw their casual recreational vandalism had become focused. A premonition sent him dashing to the stairs.

  There was no logic; a survival programme, ‘out group aggression’, had been initiated and, without conscious communication, the gang had an enemy.

  They were hungry and the Pakis were clearly taking the piss, a good brick through the window and a bit of looting would sort out the smug bastards.

  Anosh had learnt a lot about his Sikh housemates over the past couple of years. They were complex and proud, a people with a history littered with massacres, expulsions, and war. To Anosh, it was clear that the women ran the show. The kids were happy and respectful. The men wore turbans and carried Kirpans, which were at least as serviceable as they were ceremonial.

  At first, the two families living on the bottom floors had kept to themselves. They chatted and were polite, but Anosh and his family were not part of their clan. Over the years, though, as things had become increasingly tough, that was changing. 43 Henkelkai had become their castle, and all the families had adopted the shared goal of not allowing their members to be harmed or their food and possessions stolen.

  A raucous chanting broke out. Dustbin lids were beaten, stones flung, and a chunk of concrete the size of a grapefruit left the centre of the skirmishers. It arced through the frigid air before crashing through the papered-over glass panel in the kitchen door. There was a moment of silence and then a jeer went up from the street.

  The raucous chanting had barely gotten going, when a mass of screaming men in turbans sprinted from the house. The steel of weapons flashed. To the thugs, it was as if they had appeared from another century. The mob hadn’t done their research when they attacked a heavily armed group of warrior saints.

  A quick, but vicious, skirmish ended with some nasty bleeding wounds and a few severed fingers that lay amongst the confusion of bloody footprints. The energy of the initial clash ebbed and the two sides drew apart, facing off and screaming abuse, while assessing the damage. Vikram, the doctor and head of the family, raised his sabre again and cried something foreign and threatening, then his sons took up the cry. They lifted their arms and pointed weapons towards a spotless white sky. The rioters, unused to organised retaliation, and shocked by the effectiveness of the long, curving swords and daggers, spontaneously broke and dashed, or limped, back the way they had come. One of the fleeing wounded only made it two steps, before collapsing in the snow, horrible sucking whistling sounds coming from beneath his jacket. The Sikhs watched the pack scatter up the road and vanish into side streets.

  Vikram handed his sword to his oldest son and squatted next to the terrified kid, who, without the mask of rage twisting his face, looked to be about seventeen. The youth looked back, his face ashen, his eyes desperate and pleading.

  “He's got a punctured lung, let’s get him inside!”

  “What?! This Arschloch tried to kill us!” screamed one of the older boys. A stare from his father was enough; together, they heaved the dying boy inside and out of the cold.

  Anosh had raced down the stairs from the roof to warn Ayşe of the trouble. They had watched the commotion from an upstairs window. When Ayşe saw the kid being carried inside, she went down to help, while Anosh stayed for a few minutes keeping watch to make sure no reinforcements were on their way.

  The boy was laid on a kitchen table and his clothes ripped open. A whistling sound and a nasty frothing bubbling came from a five-centimetre gash on his side. By now, his lungs were filling with blood. His lips were becoming blue, his face ashen. Air filling the space beneath his ribs was collapsing his lungs and slowly suffocating him.

  At Vikram’s instruction, Ayşe pressed a damp cloth to the gash.

  “That should stop more air getting in,” Vikram said, while he fiddled with a pen.

  Anosh watched as the doctor dismantled it, emptied and discarded the inside, leaving only the tube. This h
e quickly passed to his wife.

  “Sterilise this as best you can, please.”

  While she was washing the pen, Vikram cut one finger from a surgical glove and removed its fingertip to make a floppy latex tube open at both ends. The patient was getting noticeably bluer. Vikram took the gutted pen and threaded it through the hole in the glove's severed finger. It flopped about on the end of the pen like some kid's cute novelty eraser. Vikram fastened it tightly in place with an elastic band, turned to the youth and placed a hand on his forehead.

  “This will hurt, but don't worry; it's going to save your life.”

  Ayşe removed her bloody cloth and Anosh was horrified to see the doctor gently slide the pen into the wound. The kid writhed in pain. Anosh and one of Vikram’s sons rushed forward to restrain him. Vikram explored the wound with the tip of the pen. This was excruciating, but mercifully the kid didn't have enough air to scream, and his struggles quickly ran out of energy. He twitched for a while and finally passed out as the pain and shock overcame him.