The Quiet at the End of the World

by Lauren James

  I gasp.

  Mitch flashes a purple light of pure happiness.

  “Have you been scanning for objects this whole time?” I ask him. “For years and years, whenever you walk along the beach?”

  The lights on Mitch’s headplate all flash green twice, in a smug fashion.

  Shen’s eyes go wide. “You mean…” He trails off.

  A laugh bubbles out of me. “We thought he was bumbling along, staring at the ground. But he was mudlarking. Just like us!” I stare at Mitch, seeing him with new eyes. How did I never realise how cool he is? “Good bot,” I tell him. “That was very impressive.”

  Mitch wriggles with glee.

  “High-five, buddy,” I say to him. “We make a good team.”

  He holds out a claw-hand appendage, and I crouch to tap it lightly with my palm.

  “That works, I guess,” Shen says, not entirely convinced.

  “You’re just jealous, Zhang,” I declare, standing back up. “We’re best friends for life now.” My socks choose that moment to disgrace me by squelching obnoxiously in my wellies, which slightly undermines my smugness.

  Shen laughs, and we carry on walking, letting the horses follow us down the shore rather than riding them. After a moment or two, I spot something white in the sand at my feet, and bend to tug it from the ground. It’s a cream pottery pipe stem: long and thin and boring. I throw it into the river, trying to make it skim across the water. Mitch dives in after it, like a dog.

  I carry on walking, noticing a dip in the sand ahead, which is sometimes a sign that there’s something underneath. I scrape away at the dirt to reveal the mud below. The silt is grey on top and shockingly black underneath, like the layers of a mushroom.

  To my surprise, there’s a footprint under the mud, clearly indented with toes and a heel mark. That’s weird. Has someone been walking here barefoot? But how come the footprint was buried? Besides, the mud here is so solid that I can’t even dent it when I press my fingernail in. It wouldn’t leave a mark at all if I walked here now.

  “Shen! Come and look at this,” I say, scanning the sand for any other marks in the bed. There’s a whole path of them all along the foreshore. “What is this?”

  Shen pokes at the footprint. “You know, I read this thing that said that prehistoric footprints have been found around here. They get revealed as the tide erodes the sand. Maybe this is a set of footprints from one of those hunter-gatherers.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  I can just imagine a hunter-gathering lady wading through an ancient version of the Thames, searching for mussels and crabs for dinner, toes sinking deep into the riverbed. She must have returned to her home to cook the harvest over a fire, but her footprints are still here, hundreds of thousands of years later – if only for a few more hours. They’ll be erased as soon as the tide comes in. It was only luck that we were here to see them, in the brief period between them being revealed and erased for good.

  All that history – all that time – wiped away in one moment. Just like us. Humans will be as easily lost as these footprints, when the last of us dies. Our lives are particles on a riverbed being lost by the waters of time. Here and then gone in a moment. Nothing, in the grand scheme of things.

  Maya Waverley

  17 October 2024

  Today I was served by a real person instead of a shop bot, and it actually took me by surprise. It felt so weird.

  Riz Stevens We chose my nan’s care home because the staff there are fully human, and it really does make such a difference to her happiness.

  Maya Waverley It’s one of the main reasons I’m studying nursing, because I really think it’s one of those jobs that people should do instead of bots. You need the human contact.

  Maya Waverley

  20 October 2024

  I just bought a FUND THE SEARCH hoodie from here. The proceeds are donated to a charity supporting fertility research, and the designs are really nice. The dresses have pockets! Definitely check them out.

  Riz Stevens When I first bought some skinny jeans from the men’s section it blew me away. Have you SEEN the size of the pockets men get? I could have been using them long before I realised I was a guy. You should get some.

  Maya Waverley Riz, omg. I’m going to the shopping centre immediately.

  Maya Waverley

  22 October 2024

  Oh my God, read this.

  NEWSBREAKING.COM

  WARNING: CHILDREN ARE

  BEING STOLEN FROM

  SCHOOL PLAYGROUNDS

  The government has issued a national warning after fourteen children were kidnapped at knifepoint from school classrooms up and down the country yesterday.

  Six schools were attacked in total, in Liverpool, Birmingham and Chelsea. One teacher at a school in Liverpool said that three men in balaclavas and armed with knives had burst into the classroom during the last lesson of the day. Six children were taken in that attack.

  “I have never been so terrified in my life,” she said. “I didn’t think things like this happened in this country. I should have done more to stop them, but I just wasn’t expecting it. I’m absolutely devastated.”

  All schools are closed until further notice while emergency measures are put in place.

  The prime minister told press that she encouraged everyone to remain calm, saying, “This is the work of a few very upset and confused individuals. We urge them to think about the parents of the children who were taken. Please let them go home safely. There is no reason to make an irreversible decision which you will regret for the rest of your life, when all signs point to the sterility being fixed within a timeframe of three to four months.”

  The latest reports from scientists working on the sterility indicate that no progress has yet been made on reversing the effects of the virus, despite the prime minister’s statement.

  If anyone has seen any of the missing children, or noticed suspicious behaviour in their neighbourhood, please call the police immediately.

  Maya Waverley My surprise at this might be exceedingly naïve but WHAT THE HELL? How can this be happening?! How are people so desperate for kids that they’ll STEAL THEM? Is that actually a thing that is happening in the world right now at this very moment? Are we suddenly living in some kind of Stephen King novel? Am I the only one who thought that the human race could survive for more than five minutes without making an abject embarrassment of ourselves?

  I’m going to make an obvious and unnecessary statement here, but I wish everything would get fixed so that life could go back to normal.

  CHAPTER 9

  When we get home, we rub down the horses and let them out in the meadow, then go upstairs to get changed out of our wet clothes. I pull on a Fair Isle wool vest and then read some more of Maya’s posts while I dry my damp hair.

  I get so caught up in her horrifying posts about kidnapped children that I realise Dad’s lesson is about to start, and I’m going to be late. I rush downstairs, taking a shortcut down the old servants’ staircase. Our manor is over four hundred years old, so there are all sorts of long forgotten structures and hidden passageways. It’s possibly the best place in the world to play hide-and-seek.

  Once I found our manor in a book called Debrett’s The Stately Homes of Britain. There was, somehow, even more gold gilding in the old photos than there is here now. One of the pictures showed a room with mirrored ceilings that I couldn’t identify, and Shen and I spent weeks searching for it, convinced it was a secret room hidden behind a wooden panel somewhere.

  Eventually I showed the book to Mum, who peered at it with her reading glasses for approximately four seconds before saying that the caption noted that it was a picture of the house on the next page. I’m still embarrassed about that one.

  I run across to the greenhouse, arriving only a few minutes late, with Mitch at my heels. Shen is already there, helping Dad plant up seedlings.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I gasp. Victoria is asleep on the floor, and she thumps her tail in wel
come. “I was … wiping the mud off Mitch?” I look dubiously at the robot, who does look suspiciously dry and free from mud, though no towels were involved. I hope he didn’t roll around on my bed to dry himself off, like the dogs do.

  In a very clear attempt to avoid my gaze, as if reading my mind, Mitch bends to inspect Victoria. The dog presses her nose to his face, sniffing curiously. She snorts and lies back down, leaving a wet spot behind on Mitch’s face. To my surprise, dog and robot settle down on the floor together in an untidy, cosy heap.

  “Well, don’t you look like you’ve had a good morning,” Dad says, taking in my dusty clothes, as Shen pulls a cobweb from the servants’ staircase out of my hair.

  “We were shadowing Mum’s work as a public official,” I say primly, and slide on to the wooden bench in front of the tomato plants.

  “I’m sure,” Dad says, voice dry. He pushes compost down around a bulb. “Lots of swimming involved in that, is there?”

  “More than you’d imagine,” Shen says.

  “Did you tell Dad what happened to Mrs Maxwell?” I ask him.

  It’s Dad who answers. “Your mother messaged me. Mrs Maxwell is fine. She’s sleeping it off. Apparently, it’s happened to her before, and it’s nothing serious.”

  “Is it epilepsy?” I ask.

  “Something like that. Now, we’ve got work to do. Let’s pick up where we left off on Monday. Can either of you tell me the optimum crop rotation pattern for legumes?” Dad asks, brushing the soil off his hands on to his jeans.

  A cleaning bot buzzes around his wellies, vacuuming up the mud. I can usually track Dad down at home by following the sound of chittering bots as they clean up the trail of compost that’s always left in his wake.

  I pull on my horn-rimmed glasses and squint at the slides Dad projects over the terracotta-tiled floor, trying to remember what he was telling us four days ago.

  Shen, unsurprisingly, immediately answers perfectly.

  I zone out. These lessons are always about the same things. I wish we could learn about something new, like cinematography or economics. But none of that’s relevant any more.

  If I wasn’t the youngest person on the planet, I wonder what I’d have done with my life. Would I still be interested in engineering? Or would I want to be an actress, or a teacher or a world traveller? There are so many options that are closed off to me – things that I’ve never had a chance to consider trying. I would probably be a completely different person if I’d been born a hundred years ago.

  “Now, storage conditions are really important here. Lowrie?” Dad says, cutting into my thoughts. “Can you remember how to store seeds long term?”

  I start, tuning back into Dad’s lesson. “Er … somewhere cold and dry?”

  He nods. “A cellar or basement is a good choice, because it stays cool naturally.”

  “But cellars flood,” Shen points out, making a vague twirly gesture as he speaks. “Just look at the Underground. It’s all collapsing. You could store seeds there for a while but not for ever.”

  There’s a curving shadow on the underside of his wrist where it rests on the arm of the bench. I realise I’m staring at him and look away quickly. I always end up staring at Shen’s forearms. However much I tell myself to stop, I never can. It’s not something I’m prepared to analyse. Shen and I are just friends. Absolutely nothing else.

  “That’s an excellent point,” Dad says. “Have you heard of the Snowdon vaults?”

  We both shake our heads.

  “In a mountain in Wales,” Dad goes on, “there’s an archival bunker built from tunnels, designed to preserve supplies – including seeds – in case of an emergency that destroys the environment. It wasn’t built that long ago, but because of climate change, the sea levels have risen so much that it’s already at risk of being flooded. Even when we try, we can’t predict what future conditions might be like.”

  “Lowrie and I were actually talking about this earlier,” Shen says. “We were wondering how we’d leave a message for a future intelligent species to find, because everything decays too quickly, especially electronics. There’s nothing that will survive long enough to last more than a few thousand years.”

  “It is a tough question,” Dad says. “Did you come up with a solution? If you were going to make a time capsule designed to last that long, how would you do it?”

  “I’d engrave a silicon wafer at the nano-level,” Shen says, immediately. He must have been thinking about it since our last conversation.

  “What would you engrave on it?” I ask him, interested now that the conversation isn’t about agriculture.

  “I’d start simple. You’d have to assume that whoever found it couldn’t understand our writing or language. So I’d put a dot with the number one under it, and then two dots with the number two under them, et cetera. That would catch their attention. Once I’d established a method of communication, I’d build up from there, with a message about what life is like now.”

  “You have really thought this through,” I say.

  “Of course I have! What do you take me for!”

  “What would you put in one, Lowrie?” Dad asks.

  I think for a moment. It would have to be something that you didn’t need language to understand. And not technology – whatever Shen thinks, no octopus is going to be able to operate a silicon chip. It would need to be old school. Maybe not a slate or tablet but something made of paper.

  “I’d put in one of those flip books,” I say. “You know, where there’s a line drawing on each page, and when you flip through it, it looks like it’s an animation?”

  “Oh, those are cool!” Shen says. “That’s clever too. You might not be able to read a video file without the right equipment, but anything can flip through pages and put together the movement.”

  “Plus,” I say, as Dad pulls up a blank screen on his projector and writes our ideas in a spider diagram, “if it was a drawing of a human running or dancing or something, it would give them an idea of what we looked like.”

  “You’re assuming that a future species could easily mentally translate two-dimensional images into a three-dimensional being,” Dad points out.

  “Well, even if they couldn’t, I think it’s more likely they’ll be able to see that it’s a message than Shen’s chip. They might throw your silicon wafer away without even realising there was anything on it.”

  “We should probably include both, then,” Shen says, as if we’re actually going to make a time capsule. I imagine we probably will.

  “So where would you store them?” Dad’s getting excited now, I can tell. “Shall we do this as an assignment? Why don’t you research the Snowdon vaults as a starting —”

  Before he can get any further, Shen’s father slides open the glass door of the greenhouse. “Sorry to interrupt,” Feng says. “Henry, can I speak to you for a moment?”

  Dad follows Feng outside, and we watch through the glass door as they have a hushed discussion. Dad’s expression gets more and more anxious.

  When they come back inside, I ask, “Is everything OK?”

  Dad and Feng look at each other over the top of our heads, and I can tell there’s some kind of silent communication going on. “Your mum needs my help with something,” Dad says after a moment. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

  I nudge Shen’s ankle with my foot, raising an eyebrow at him meaningfully.

  “Why don’t you two come with me?” Feng says, before either of us can ask any more questions. “We can spend the rest of your lesson in the workshop. I need the help, anyway,” he adds. “My angle grinder has broken.” He looks pained.

  I don’t think Feng likes things failing. The only time I’ve ever seen him lose his temper was when the car broke down when we were on holiday and he couldn’t get it started again.

  “Oh, I can fix the angle grinder,” I say, immediately distracted by the talk of tools. I open up my utility belt, checking I’ve got my screwdrivers with me.

&
nbsp; “Interesting that you just happened to have that with you,” Dad comments lightly, eyeing my tool kit. He smiles, but there’s a deep frown line on his forehead.

  “You can never have enough tools, that’s what I always say,” Shen tells him.

  “You do not,” I say, outraged. “That’s what I always say.”

  Shen and Dad smirk at each other.

  Shen might be the best at intellectual things, but fixing stuff is my speciality. Smarts versus skills, we call it. Both methods have been known to fail on occasion, which is why we’re the perfect team – we’ve got the best of both worlds.

  “I’ll find some reference material for designing this time capsule for our next lesson,” Dad says, following us out of the greenhouse. “Do some research on it for your homework. I think we’ve hit on something really interesting here.”

  We go to the workshop, where I help replace the blade on Feng’s angle grinder. The black box is sitting on the workbench. He must have been trying to get inside it when the blade broke. “Have you not been able to open it yet?” I ask, nodding at it.

  “I’ve been having some trouble,” Feng admits.

  “Do you need some help?”

  “No,” he says in a hurry. “No need. Now you’ve mended the grinder for me, we can carry on fixing the broken bot from our last session. Shen, can you take a look at the error log? I’ve pulled it up on my tablet.”

  “We’re going to have to cut off the old component,” I say, trying not to stare longingly at the black box. I clamp the bot on to the workbench, before selecting a saw.

  “Don’t forget to pull down the extractor fan, and prepare yourself for the pushback,” Feng tells me, guiding my hands into the correct position on the saw handle.

  White sparks fly into the air as the metal is sliced open with a sharp squealing sound. While I work, Shen says something to Feng quietly in Chinese, and Feng lets out a hearty laugh. I smile under my mask. It always gets me when Shen talks in Chinese. Usually it’s a sign he’s anxious, or upset, but when he does it to tease, to joke around … it’s my favourite. I really, really like it.