The Quiet at the End of the World

by Lauren James

  The three of us have spent hours and hours together like this. A few years ago, Feng even taught us how to build a bot from scratch during his science lessons. Shen and I decided we wanted to build one that could make candyfloss on demand. I helped Feng construct the internal components – attaching circuit boards and wiring up batteries – and Shen, who isn’t very good at the mechanical side of things, programmed the software.

  It took a long time to make, and Feng put up with many emotional breakdowns and arguments and storming-offs with amazing patience. Shen and I argue a lot when we’re doing projects together, because he always wants fancy things like dovetail joints, whereas I’m more of a hammer-and-nails sort of girl.

  We finished it in the end, but the candyfloss turned out to be more similar to sticky treacle than air-like fluff. Even so, we were incredibly proud of it. There are bots everywhere, doing everything, so it’s nice to know that we could put one together if there was an emergency.

  I focus on the bot I’m working on now. The saw has gone through the metal and the back of the bot comes off. I shine my headlight inside it, looking for the broken part. I think I’m going to have to replace a transistor.

  “Shen, can you grab some soldering wire for me?”

  He’s inspecting the bot’s code and doesn’t move.

  “Shen,” I say, annoyed, looking up at him from my stool.

  He shifts, startled. “Sorry. I thought you were talking to Baba.”

  I realise I’m sitting on his deaf side and wince. “Sorry.” I use my feet to roll the stool on its castor wheels around to the other side of him, so he can hear me.

  While I’m soldering a replacement transistor into the bot’s innards, I can’t help sneaking glances at the black box. I’m desperate to open it, even if I’m not allowed to watch the footage of Alexei’s crash – I just want to see what’s inside.

  Why would Feng not want us to open it? Usually he seizes any opportunity to teach us something new and get another pair of helping hands on a repair job. What is different about this one? Why is it so important?

  CHAPTER 10

  After we’ve fixed the bot, which trundled off happily to join the others in the garden, Shen and I go to the theatre room. It’s where we usually end up when we’re studying, because it has the comfiest chairs in the whole building: fully reclining velvet ones with padded heated seats, built-in massage units and wide arms with cup holders. There’s even a pool table to play on whenever we need a break. It’s also really warm, because it’s right on top of the pipes for the heating.

  There’s a cleaning bot polishing the floor, and Mitch wanders over to it, flashing green in greeting. It turns around, ignoring him. Mitch follows it determinedly, lighting up in a rainbow of different colours.

  “Look at Mitch,” I say to Shen, who’s reading something on his tablet.

  Mitch extends two fingers and clicks them together, trying to copy the order of the beeps the bot makes as it moves.

  The bot stops and stares at him, and for a moment, I think it is going to reply. Then it extends its vacuum and sucks up the dirt from Mitch’s feet.

  Mitch slumps, flashing a sad indigo.

  “Sorry, pal,” I say, rubbing his head. “I think you speak a different language. Your software isn’t compatible.”

  We start doing the homework Dad set us on making a time capsule. He never returned from going to see Mum, but he’s probably using it as an excuse to get out of teaching us for the rest of the afternoon.

  While we work, I dim the overhead lights and play a video on the big cinema screen. Shen and I can never agree on music choices – he likes classical music and I prefer rap – so when we’re studying together, we usually put films on, as a compromise. Today it’s the first episode of Loch & Ness, because Maya Waverley’s love for the old TV show has made me curious. I’d never even heard of it until I found the purse.

  I like Maya, even if she does seem like the kind of person who would have no idea how to work a flatbed planer. I keep wondering if she would have approved of me and the way I live my life, or if she’d think I’m wasting what little time we have left.

  Reading her account makes my stomach twist up in knots. I’m suddenly grateful for the freedom I have, even if it does come with frequent safety talks.

  I’m so glad the world isn’t like that any more. People are calmer now. I wonder what changed. I’ve never really thought about it before. I’ve just accepted things how they are.

  I remember that I haven’t told Shen about what I learnt in Maya’s latest posts. When I tell him the kidnapping story, he’s as shocked as me.

  “I never knew that. How did no one tell us?” he asks.

  “I know. Nobody ever mentions that there was such a bad reaction to the sterility.” I forgot to ask Dad about the nosebleeds earlier too.

  “I guess that people just want to live out their last few years in peace. If I’d been there during that kind of panic, I would probably want to forget about it and be happy too.”

  I nod, taking this in. It does make sense, but I still feel weird not knowing about any of this. “If things were as bad as her posts say, then we’re not just lucky – we’re completely blessed to get to live in such a safe, peaceful place.”

  “We definitely need to remember to discuss it with our parents,” Shen says, determined. “They probably don’t want us to worry about it, but it feels wrong to completely forget what it was like back then.”

  “There must be some way we can acknowledge it more,” I agree, as a bot zooms into the room and deposits a tray of food on the sideboard. Efficient, as always.

  Shen takes a toasted muffin dripping with golden butter from the tray and bites into it. I lean over and open my mouth. Courteously, he holds the muffin out so that I can take a bite.

  He types something on his tablet, looking frustrated.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, curiously.

  “I’m trying to track down the blueprints for the Snowdon vaults online, but I can’t find anything. I really wanted to see what they did there, for the time-capsule thing.” He sighs, then shakes his head. “What are you going to do for yours?”

  “I was thinking of burying mine,” I say. “The stuff we find underground is always so well preserved.”

  “I like that idea!”

  On the cinema screen, the main character is getting dressed for a party. There’s a close-up as she applies dark red lipstick to plump lips. There are freckles on the bridge of her nose.

  “She is so hot, wow,” I say, awed. Sometimes I forget how attractive people can be.

  Shen looks up to watch as the girl changes into a silk dress, pulling a thin strap over her shoulder. It clings to her skin, following a dip in her collarbone. “Her hair is gorgeous,” he says.

  She’s blonde, with tiny curls of hair escaping her French plait and framing her face. She’s so pretty that it almost hurts. There’s never going to be anyone like her ever again. There’s no one of her age left in the entire world, except me.

  “Life goals or wife goals,” I say, sighing.

  I came out to Shen when I was fourteen and desperately in love with a woman in a TV show we were marathoning. She was also blonde and pretty, with extremely sharp cheekbones. In a break between episodes, Shen and I went to eat a pre-dinner snack of everything we could find in the fridge, to the disapproval of the cooking bots. Around a mouthful of Scotch egg, I had quietly admitted that I thought she was really cool and pretty, and that I might be maybe probably definitely bisexual.

  Shen had been quiet for a few minutes. Then he had admitted that he liked her too, and he’d blushed bright red.

  I had been panicking about coming out, and his reaction was such a relief that I laughed. Of course, then he turned even redder and refused to talk to me until Jia picked him up. The next day, while we were swimming lengths in the rooftop pool, he had said, “How do you know you like girls, if you’ve never kissed one?”

  “I’ve never kisse
d a boy either. I don’t need to do that to prove I like boys,” I replied. “Why do I have to kiss a girl to know I like them?”

  He had been quiet for a while, and then resurfaced from a tumble-turn and asked, “Do you like boys or girls more?”

  I had shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I don’t fancy any boys. I don’t know any, apart from you.”

  He had nodded thoughtfully and carried on doing breaststroke.

  Shen and I watch the screen in silence for a while, captivated, as the girl in Loch & Ness delicately applies mascara, open-mouthed and intent.

  “Do you think it’s weird that we both have the same type?” I ask him.

  “Blondes?” Shen tilts his head towards me, eyes only leaving the girl on the screen at the last second. “Why would that be weird?”

  I’m blonde, I think, and my mouth goes dry. I can’t remember what I was going to say.

  “I think it’s cool,” he says. “Like having the same taste in music.”

  “Which we don’t,” I point out, trying to smile.

  The show switches to a different character, and we both lose interest. But I can’t stop thinking about the fact that I’m blonde, and so are the girls that he prefers, and that must mean that I’m Shen’s type.

  He’s never asked me what type of boys I like since that day in the swimming pool. I’m not sure what I would tell him, if he did.

  Maya Waverley

  1 November 2024

  Note to self: when the recipe says “mix by hand”, it does not mean with your actual bare hands. I may have found this out the hard way. The first person to teach me to cook will honestly win my undying loyalty to the end of time, however long that may or may not take to arrive.

  Riz Stevens I make a mean lemon drizzle cake. Just saying.

  Maya Waverley How have we been friends for so long without me trying that? Rude.

  Riz Stevens Come over this weekend

  and I’ll teach you?

  Maya Waverley I’ll bring pizza!

  Maya Waverley

  7 November 2024

  Today I was walking home from uni at lunchtime when a white van pulled up next to a woman with a pushchair. These two huge guys got out and tried to drag it away from her. Luckily there were a few of us around – me, an older couple, and a guy in his twenties from the corner shop – and we all ran over and got in their way, trying to stop them. Between us, we got the pram back, but the men got away before the police could arrive.

  I haven’t been able to stop shaking since I got home. If they’d had guns, that toddler would be theirs right now. I feel so sick, I can’t even think. How can this be what we’re reduced to now? How can humans be so cruel?

  I read in the paper that there are companies that are claiming to have kids that need adopting. They charge a lot of money to match parents up with children, and a lot of the children are turning out to have been kidnapped – which is probably what nearly happened to that toddler.

  I don’t know how we can all go on living in a place where this kind of thing is happening every day. Why is nothing being done? Why aren’t they fixing the sterility so these things stop happening?

  Maya Waverley

  10 November 2024

  My aunt just found out that they’re shutting down her son’s school out of safety concerns. Thank god. Maybe this will end this kidnapping spree. 40 children have been taken now, just in Oxfordshire.

  Maya Waverley

  19 November 2024

  Does anyone else ever feel like the time before the sterility was just a weird and incredibly boring dream? This version of reality feels normal now. That’s horrible, but it’s true. It feels bizarre that kids used to be able to walk around without an armed guard; that I used to take birth control, that there used to be whole aisles of the supermarket that just sold baby stuff.

  I can’t believe it’s been nine months of this nightmare already. It’s not even shocking any more. I’ve just started getting on with life again. For a long time I’ve been living day-to-day, while I get used to this new version of normal. But now small things, like traffic jams and broken mugs, have started annoying me again.

  No women have been able to get pregnant since February, but I’m just like: “Urgh, I’ve got loads of coursework to do. I’m out of milk.” Same old.

  Our strange and adaptive human brains can get used to anything: plague or ice age or nuclear war or the end of children.

  Riz Stevens How could you live, though, if you spent every day fully contemplating the real tragedy of it? How would it be possible to get up in the morning? The human brain has to protect itself somehow, even if it feels negligent to accept things the way they are without making even the smallest effort towards mourning it. It feels a little like we should all be wearing black crepe, wailing as we roam the halls of silent mansions, like rich Victorian widows.

  Maya Waverley Do you think when this is all fixed and over and done with, we’ll forget all about it? Will I one day tell my grandchildren about the whole thing as a horrible but exciting anecdote? Will it seem like a bizarre dream that lasted a few months, before normal broadcasting resumed? I’m not sure I’m the same person I was before this happened. I’m not sure any of us are. We’ve seen the desperate truth of how badly humans can behave when we’re forced into a corner. If life went back to normal, how could we stand it?

  CHAPTER 11

  When Shen goes off to the bathroom, I read a few more of Maya’s posts while Loch & Ness is paused. To my disappointment, she stopped using the account within a year of the virus. The long, chatty posts trail off and are replaced by a few birthday wishes from friends, interspersed with the odd link to an article. Nothing worth reading.

  I sigh and close the website. I’d enjoyed reading about her, while it lasted. I really liked her. And she was blonde.

  “I just overheard your mum and Baba talking,” Shen says, coming back with new drinks. “They’re going to watch the black-box footage in your mum’s library.”

  I shoot up from where I was lounging in my seat. “What? Right now? We have to go and listen!”

  “There’s no way they’ll let us.”

  “I didn’t say we were going to ask permission!”

  Shen grins at me. “I’m listening…”

  “The mirror?”

  “The mirror.”

  Mum’s library is the kind of room that you’d willingly kill someone to inherit. I mean that in the most serious way possible. Not only is it filled with multiple first editions, including a Dickens and a Shakespeare first folio, but the dark rosewood bookcases are fitted with a mahogany ladder on rollers, which you can push around the shelves to access the upper levels. A spiral staircase leads up to a balcony with even more bookshelves, and there’s a ceiling mural of angels and demons.

  But more importantly, there’s a secret passageway hidden behind one of the bookshelves that leads to a mirror-door in one of the third-floor corridors.

  We go upstairs to the third floor and pull the door open. The mirror creaks, swinging noisily on its hinges, and then Shen climbs through. Mitch tries to follow, but I shake my head. “Your joints are too loud and rusty. You’ll have to wait here. I mean it, Mitch.” I hold eye contact with him, and for a moment he shifts like he’s going to barge past me into the tunnel.

  “It’s OK, Mitch. We’re not trying to run away from you. This is a dead end,” Shen says, taking pity on him. “We can’t go anywhere else without you. We’ll be back out this way.”

  Mitch flashes a perturbed red light and sits on the ledge of a marble statue to wait for us, pulling a chain link out of his storage unit and threading it through his fingers. Honestly, the bot is like a magpie. Nothing shiny is safe around him.

  I pull the mirror closed behind us and turn on my torch. Even tiptoeing, our footsteps echo on the cold marble slabs of the passageway. It leads to three different bedrooms and ends at the wooden library wall.

  There’s the muffled sound of talking coming from the ot
her side of the panelling when I press my ear against it. I use a pair of pliers to remove the nails holding one of the slats in place, and twist it to the side, leaving a gap big enough to peek through. It reveals the back of a bookshelf, full of dusty leather-bound books.

  We slide a few books out, blowing away dead spiders and cobwebs, and stack them on the floor until we can both see through. Mum, Dad, and Feng are sitting by the fireplace, talking. I can hear the low murmur of voices, but I can’t make out any of the words. I watch the three of them talk for a while, trying to lip-read.

  “Shadow, we can’t even hear them,” Shen says. His “judgement” crease appears between his eyebrows, like it always does when he thinks I’m being particularly ridiculous. He shifts, accidentally kicking over the books we’ve stacked on the floor.

  I grimace and shush him.

  Mum seems to be answering questions. When Dad says something, gesturing wildly, she holds up a hand to quiet him.

  Shen shifts against me, tracing an idle pattern on the small of my back. When his hair brushes against my neck, I break out in goose bumps. There’s a feeling between us then, like lightning. It happens sometimes. We’ll be having a perfectly normal conversation, and suddenly the air will change and it’s like we’re caught in a thunderstorm. The hairs on my arms will stand on end and I’ll freeze, locked into his gaze, waiting to see what happens next.

  What usually happens is that I panic – because we can’t do this. I won’t let us. Our friendship is too important to possibly sabotage. So I’ll turn away, or pretend to have a coughing fit or swat away an imaginary bee from his hair, or answer a fake call on my tablet. Then, quickly enough that I’ll think I’ve imagined the whole thing, the tension will disappear again. We’ll go back to our cosy, relaxed ways, bumping shoulders and teasing each other like nothing ever happened. But this time – and I don’t know why – I’m filled with the urge to press my nose into the dark hollow under his ear. The desire is almost overwhelming.