The Quiet at the End of the World

by Lauren James

  “Come here,” I say, holding out the cloth. When he realises what I want to do, he tries to run away, but I manage to back him into a corner, and give his head a bit of a polish. I notice for the first time that there’s a small, brown nest in his shoulder socket. The cracked shells of several pale blue eggs, each no bigger than a fingernail, are nestled in a bed of moss. It’s kind of sweet. Mitch must have been so careful not to disturb the birds until they had hatched. I leave the nest there, polishing around it.

  “You shine up quite nicely,” I say, approvingly.

  He flashes a sullen orange at me.

  Shen still hasn’t arrived, so I carry on tidying up. I wipe down my workbench, cleaning up the ever-present layer of sawdust and polishing the glass of a photo of Shen and me on the wall. It was taken on the dancefloor at last year’s New Year’s Eve Gala. We have big parties fairly regularly. Mum says it’s to keep morale up, but I think she just likes organising them. I’m wearing a black tuxedo jacket over a deep-crimson silk voile ball-gown, and Shen is in a white suit with a skinny black tie loose around his neck. We’re both smiling, eyes creased into laughs while Shen dips me backwards over one arm. I remember that seconds after the picture was taken I had spun him around and dipped him in return.

  It’s one of the last times I wore a ball-gown. A couple of months ago I started wearing suits to events instead – mainly because I hate having to shave my legs all the time. Feng was particularly excited by my decision to wear suits and got his specially created tailoring bot to fit me for dress shirts.

  Shen messages me to say that he’s just leaving, and that I should make him a bagel and meet him at the stables.

  Dad has gone outside with the dogs, so I stand alone in the empty morning room while the bagel toasts. Bored, I open up Maya’s posts and carry on reading. This time, I scan through some of the more light-hearted ones from the month before the virus, where she’s joking around with someone called Riz.

  Maya Waverley

  7 January 2024

  This ad is so dumb and funny, I love it:

  Riz Stevens Do you think one will burst through my window the next time I fall asleep in the bath? Because I would not be opposed to that.

  Maya Waverley Only if you vote for the mayor.

  I grin. I’m pretty sure they’re talking about Mitch. You wouldn’t know that the robot was once considered the height of new technology, based on the way he accidentally burst a tube of my wood glue when we were upstairs.

  “999-Bot?” I ask Mitch experimentally. He gives no visible reaction, which I decide is inconclusive.

  I scroll forward through the posts, trying to find out more about the sterility crisis. I want to get as much information as I can about the nosebleeds, so that I can tell Shen about them.

  Maya Waverley

  17 March 2024

  I had the most horrible dream last night. I dreamt I had a nosebleed. I was crying and tears were rolling down my cheeks, merging with the blood that was flowing from my nose. It dripped into my mouth, warm and salty, coating my tongue and sliding down my throat. I couldn’t swallow it, and it cooled into a thick mass, choking me. Then my alarm went off, and I woke up. When I tried to wipe away the blood, there was nothing there.

  Every morning, I can’t stop myself from checking my reflection for blood as I clean my teeth. I spit into my hand a few times a day, checking to see if the saliva is clear. I don’t know how to make myself stop expecting it to happen again.

  Maya Waverley

  7 April 2024

  Wow. This is so weird. It makes sense though. I’m still having nightmares about the virus. I definitely wouldn’t want to have a baby right now. I can see how other people might feel the same way and put off trying for a bit.

  NEWSBREAKING.COM

  DOCTORS REPORT DROP IN

  WOMEN CONCEIVING BABIES

  NHS doctors are reporting a 60% drop in the number of women making appointments with their doctors to start antenatal care.

  The NHS believes that women have stopped trying to conceive in the wake of the virus which spread throughout the world in February. This has sparked concerns that people previously hoping to conceive have started using contraception, possibly out of fears that the virus, which caused nosebleeds, might affect the baby. The virus is of unknown origin and has yet to be fully understood by virologists.

  The NHS has made a statement encouraging women to book appointments with their GPs if they think they might be pregnant, or have concerns about beginning a pregnancy while the virus is still in their system.

  Maya Waverley

  22 May 2024

  Please, please, can we all stop with the nosebleed memes? It’s really not funny. I know you’re trying to process your grief in a cacophony of blasé and humorous ways, but if I mute one more of you, there’ll be no one left on my timeline.

  Maya Waverley

  25 May 2024

  I just saw the news. Is this real?! What the HELL. How can a VIRUS do something like this? How can that even affect fertility? I thought women had just stopped trying to get pregnant! Not that the virus had made us all INFERTILE. This is a whole other level of awful. I cannot even begin to imagine anything worse. What do we do? How can this have happened?

  Maya Waverley

  26 May 2024

  I really wanted to be a mum one day. It hurts so much that I might never get that chance. And I’m one of the lucky ones – I’m young enough that, even if this crisis takes a decade to fix, I might still get a chance to have kids. But my friend Ashley has been trying to have a baby for years, and now it looks like she’s lost her last chance. My heart hurts for all of the women like her. I really hope that the doctors solve this quickly. #TogetherandUndefeated

  Riz Stevens

  26 September 2024

  Debating whether it’s more feasible to spend the rest of my life in cheerful ignorance or continuous weeping. Both seem equally reasonable responses to the news today.

  Maya Waverley Every time I watch the news my brain starts shuddering like a wet dog in a clean Porsche. Everything is going to rot and there’s nothing any of us can do to stop it.

  Riz Stevens This. This is exactly it.

  Maya Waverley

  2 October 2024

  I just signed this petition:

  PETITIONFORCHANGE.ORG

  GIVE IVF SCIENTISTS

  UNLIMITED FUNDING

  Nothing else is more important than solving the sterility crisis. I want the EU to give unlimited resources to all research groups working on fertility and IVF treatment. As many scientists as possible need to pause their current work and start researching the problem too. Please sign this petition to bring this to the attention of the EU!

  CHAPTER 6

  I meet Shen in the stables and hand him a bagel and mug of green tea. Albert parades around with a fluffy toy in his mouth, showing off, as the horses nicker at us, lifting their noses in search of oats.

  “Thanks, Shadow,” Shen mumbles, sipping at the tea. He’s wearing his riding clothes – cream jodhpurs and a pressed white shirt that makes his shoulders look especially broad. He’s drowsy-eyed and soft-faced, with pillow creases on his cheek.

  “I thought you’d be excited to see the crash site,” I say.

  “I am. I’m not awake enough yet.”

  Mitch flashes purple at Shen in welcome, who taps his knuckles on the robot’s forehead. “Shiny,” he comments.

  Mitch’s purple turns pink in delight. I’m starting to guess what his different colours mean, but I have no hope of understanding what the length and order of the flashes represents. Sometimes I think it’s like Morse code – long and short flashes, making letters – but other times it goes crazy, flashing in no order whatsoever. I’ve started treating the lights like Victoria’s wagging tail – it means he’s happy, even if I don’t know exactly what he’s trying to say.

  “Do your mum and Mrs Maxwell think there’s something odd about the helicopter crash as well?” Shen asks
. “Is that why they’ve gone there?”

  I shrug. “I think they’re doing their job properly, that’s all.”

  He squints. “I guess we’ll see.” Then he bites into the bagel and sighs, leaning back against the door. The smell of the stables, all musty hay and manure and saddle soap, makes me long for it to be summer. Every year we spend days doing nothing but messing around with the horses in the meadow in Hyde Park, in amongst the fields growing oats, potatoes, rapeseed and vegetables.

  After hours of riding practice, we always drop, exhausted, into the long grass, where we strip the husks off the stems of the crops with sharp pulls and then scatter the seeds. The horses graze as I try to catch tiny grasshoppers, feeling the vibration of their legs against my palms. Around us, white butterflies swoop and dive around golden buttercups and sprays of cow parsley. Baby rabbits creep closer and closer as they nibble on clover and dandelions. If I had to describe heaven, I imagine it’s probably something like that.

  “I read more of Maya’s social media account,” I tell Shen, while we tack up. “She said that the sterility virus caused a nosebleed. Did you know that?”

  He grimaces. “No. Really? That sounds grim.”

  “Yeah, it sounds like Maya thought she was going to die.” I pull on my tweed hacking jacket and riding hat. I’ve known about the virus my whole life, but I’ve never really given much thought to what it was actually like for people to go through it. It must have been scary and overwhelming to realise that practically everything had changed overnight.

  “I think I can see why our parents never went into specifics,” Shen says, as he gives me a leg up on to Elizabeth’s back. “I guess they thought the details would be too much for us. That maybe they would freak us out.”

  That’s possible. The idea that they kept this stuff from us has worried me more than I would have expected. I wrap the leather reins around my hands, pressing my thumbs against the lines of even stitching. The horse whinnies softly, already hopping on her front hooves in anticipation, and the sound of it calms my thoughts a bit.

  As Shen passes up my rucksack, he says, “How many tools have you got in there? It weighs a ton.”

  “A few. Just in case,” I say, defensively. I could probably have left the propane fire-starter behind, but I definitely need the hammer and chisel, and the trowel for digging on the foreshore, and the pickaxe. Those are all basic items. It’s a completely normal amount for anyone. Probably.

  “We should ask them about the nosebleeds tonight,” he says.

  I nod. “Maya also posted about a campaign to give scientists more funding to try and solve the fertility crisis. I want to know more about that too.”

  I’ve always taken it for granted that the fertility research occupies most of everyone’s time. Our lives all revolve around it now, with most people working on it in some way, whether that’s in the lab, like Jia, or by analysing spreadsheets of data and DNA code, like Mr Kowalski and Ms Bard.

  I wish I was clever enough to help with it. But the world’s top scientists, including Jia, are doing everything they can to fix the sterility without my interference. They’re working on things so complicated that I can barely understand them.

  Jia used to give lectures before her university closed down, and every year she tries again to explain her speciality to us in the hope that we’ll be ready to understand her favourite module, applied clinical embryology. You’d think that after hearing about it sixteen times, I’d at least vaguely know what it’s about, but all I know is that it involves IVF – the rest is an ill-defined mystery.

  At most, I could help the scientists with their washing-up, and I’m pretty sure there are already bots for that. As I’m not going to suddenly discover a previously unnoticed talent for biology any time soon, all I can do is wait until they fix the problem. Sometimes I feel like being the youngest person on the planet is more propaganda than anything else. I’m hardly going to save humanity at the last minute or anything.

  “Do you think I should let Mitch ride on Elizabeth with me?” I ask, staring at the robot. It’s probably not fair to leave him behind when it’s so clear he wants to stay with us.

  Before Shen can answer, the robot extends long thin metal legs out of his body, rising so tall that his head is the same height as mine, even on horseback.

  “I think he wants to run,” Shen says, grinning. When he mounts William, his jodhpurs stretch tight over his thighs as he flicks his black coattails out and settles into the seat.

  “Do you think you’re able to keep up, pal?” I ask Mitch.

  He flashes orange and looks offended by the implication.

  I send Mum a message to let her know we’re on our way.

  She replies immediately: You got Shen to wake up before noon? Miracle of miracles!

  I slip easily into a rising trot, lifting and falling from the saddle in time with Elizabeth’s movements. I’ve lost my riding muscles over the winter, and I can already feel the burn in my thighs. Elizabeth eyes Mitch suspiciously at first, but she soon relaxes and lets him run alongside her.

  We pass an abandoned old building that maintenance bots are in the process of demolishing. Slabs of softening concrete have fallen into the road, revealing the rooms inside. The old owner’s things are dusty but have remained in almost perfect condition: wardrobes filled with suits and dresses still on their hangers, and bookcases lined with books, crisp and yellowing and long forgotten.

  Most people had no living relations to leave their things to when they died, and no one else needed their possessions or houses. It got to the point where the authorities just unplugged their fridges, turned off their computers, washed their dishes and closed the houses up for good.

  Those houses are like time capsules now, full of perfectly preserved museums of lives, caught in a moment in history. We sort through them sometimes, trying to find things that are still in good condition for the second-hand jumble sales, but there are more things in the world than people to use them now. Even in a community of scavengers and salvagers and make-do-and-menders, we can’t possibly find uses for everything.

  We take as many of the photo albums, birth certificates and DVDs as we can to the British Museum, filling the basements with boxes of stuff. They wait alongside Egyptian relics and Greek statues for some future explorer to sift through in awed confusion, using them as a guide to our civilization. It’s social archaeology, of a sort.

  The world is already so different to how it used to be before the sterility. Even if the scientists do find a solution soon, it’s only going to change more. If we’re not careful, we’ll wake up one day in a place with no resemblance to the old London at all. I know that culture had its faults, but it hurts that the world I see in movies can never be replicated.

  I can never walk along Piccadilly at Christmas and see it decked out in fairy lights and bustling with shoppers. The only traffic at Fortnum and Mason these days is the flock of geese that have settled in the ruins of the building.

  I can barely even imagine what my life might have been like if I’d been born in Maya’s time. We live in the quiet at the end of the world. The slow winding-down clockwork motions before life stops completely. Time is slipping through our fingers.

  When the horses step out on to the foreshore of the Thames, their hooves sink deeply into the sand. It occurs to me that now we’re back by the river Mitch might leave again. He’s probably bored of hanging out with us now that we’re not in danger. To my surprise, I’m disappointed by the thought. For some reason, I want him to stay with us, for just a little longer.

  Mitch sticks close to Elizabeth’s side, though, running in a bow-legged hop. Ahead of us, a brook cuts across the shore. It used to be one of the dozens of underground streams below the city, running into the Thames. The pavements collapsed years ago, making it more difficult to get around the city and revealing the water to the air again. The water’s deep and crystal clear, cutting through the sand in the way it would have done before the city of L
ondon ever even existed.

  When I lead Elizabeth into the chest-deep water of the stream, she hops around in excitement. I hold on tight with my knees, half-riding, half-floating on her back as she swims to the opposite bank. She lets out little snorts of delight as she ducks her nose into the water, shaking her head and wriggling in pleasure.

  Behind us, William throws himself in headfirst with an enormous splash, sinking a few metres before he starts to swim with much less dignity than my horse. Shen nearly falls off, only just catching himself on William’s mane.

  The horses are climbing up the far bank of the brook when Mitch backs up and takes a running jump at it, leaping over without getting wet at all.

  “What the … hell?” Shen says.

  “What kind of programming do you have?” I ask Mitch, trying to think of any situation where a long-jumping robot would be necessary, apart from right here and now.

  Mitch flashes green, seeming pleased with himself. I can’t believe that just yesterday I thought he could barely manage to totter along the shore. Now it seems he is a world-class gymnast.

  “Did Maya’s account tell you anything else?” Shen asks, as we carry on.

  “I haven’t had chance to read any more of it just yet. I’m so glad I found it, though. I think I’m going to save all of the data from her accounts to a hard drive, so we won’t lose it if any more of the internet servers go offline. It won’t be lost if it’s stored on a physical device.”

  He tilts his head. “I don’t know about that. I think the only way to really guarantee it’s saved is to print it out. Digital data is actually more fragile than books and newspapers. Loads of footage has been lost from the nineteen-eighties because video tapes decayed before anyone noticed. Any data on hard drives might be erased completely only a couple of decades after we go.”