The Quiet at the End of the World

by Lauren James

  I realise I’m leaning back into him, and I force myself to stand up and pay attention to what’s happening in the library. I’m being ridiculous. I’m just hungry, or tired, or confused, or something. Shen and I are friends. Just friends.

  In the library, Mum plays a video on the wall. It must be the footage from the black box, because it shows the inside of a helicopter cockpit. Alexei Wyatt sits at the controls, pulling on headphones and switching on the equipment. He flies for a few minutes, and then all at once, he shudders and begins to shake, almost uncontrollably.

  Behind me, Shen gasps.

  I don’t know what we were expecting to see, but it wasn’t this. Alexei’s shoulders tremble and twist; his head is thrown back as though in pain. He tips forward again, still shaking, and his head knocks into the controls. There’s a spray of blood.

  My hand flies to my mouth.

  Alexei’s awful writhing seems to go on for ever, until he finally falls still, slumped over the helm. His head is pushing against the controls.

  A message appears on the helicopter’s screen: MANUAL CONTROL DETECTED. AUTO-CONTROL WILL BE DISABLED IN FIVE … FOUR … THREE … TWO … ONE.

  The helicopter tips downwards so suddenly that I let out a little cry, as though I’m there with him.

  The screen’s message changes, glowing red and flashing.

  DANGER! OBJECT COLLISION IS IMMINENT. PLEASE ADJUST CONTROLS OR RE-ENABLE AUTO-NAVIGATION.

  Big Ben fills the window view, getting larger and larger as the helicopter flies towards it. Alarms flash, but Alexei is still slumped over the controls, and doesn’t react.

  The footage ends in an explosion of red and white flames.

  I turn and bury my face in Shen’s shoulder. He puts an arm around me. I’m dimly aware that Dad is shouting. Something about “this morning” and then I can’t make out the rest.

  “What was that?” I whisper to Shen.

  “Some kind of fit. I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  The video loops and plays again: Alexei Wyatt starting the flight, the convulsions, the red blast of the crash.

  We stare at each other. We really shouldn’t be watching this.

  “We just need to stay calm,” I hear Mum say loudly. Her voice makes me jump. Need to stay calm about what?

  Shen is pale, biting at the knuckle of his hand. “Something is going on, Lowrie. Something they’re not telling us.”

  We don’t talk much for the rest of the evening. Our parents left the library soon after watching the footage, and we didn’t hear any more of their conversation. I want to ask them what’s going on, but Shen is reluctant.

  “They’ll know we spied on them, then. And they’re clearly busy. We’re only going to get in the way if we try and interfere.”

  I agree not to say anything, annoyed that he’s probably right, even if he’s being far too sensible.

  After Feng takes Shen home, I sit in the theatre and watch the rest of the first episode of Loch & Ness in a daze, lost in thought. I’m startled when Mum comes in and turns on the lights. “Come for a walk around the grounds with me, will you?” she asks. “The dogs need their last wee, and I feel like I haven’t seen you for days. I’ve been so busy.”

  It’s drizzling, so we put on wellies and coats – and I pull on an old green felt hat, with a pheasant feather tucked into the ribbon, that I find on a hook in the boot room – and head out into the dark gardens with torches.

  Victoria, Albert and Mitch sprint off into the bushes, the dogs yipping as they chase the scent trails of rabbits under the footings of the gazebo. I’m glad that even if Mitch can’t make friends with the household bots, the dogs seem to like him.

  The flock of alpacas near the lake are so used to the dogs that they don’t even lift their heads. We keep them for their wool for clothing. We also have two dozen hens. There are little smallholdings scattered around central London, and everyone chips in to care for them. We all help out in summer with the harvesting of crops too.

  I keep expecting Mum to bring up the footage from the black box, but after she talks about the dogs’ latest antics for the tenth time, I lose patience. “Did you find out something about Alexei?” I ask. It comes out more bluntly than I’d meant it to.

  She looks startled. “What do you mean?”

  “Have you found out how he crashed yet?”

  “It was just an accident,” she says, but she can’t quite meet my eye.

  My heart sinks. She’s not going to tell me anything. She’s going to keep it a secret. Why? Why doesn’t she trust me?

  “Mum…” I say, trailing off and rubbing my hand across the moss-covered rim of a stone urn while I think. We walk down the steps in the centre of the lawn. “Mum – how come you never told me about what happened after the sterility? The riots, and kidnappings and stuff. I read something about it online and I couldn’t believe I didn’t know what had happened.” If she won’t talk about Alexei, maybe she’ll talk about this.

  Mum is silent for a long moment before she replies. Somewhere in the bushes, Albert yips, paws scrambling at a rabbit hole.

  “When I was born, the riots were still frequent.” She pauses, looking at the moulting gutters on the summer house. Her mouth tightens. “I remember once, when I was very young, getting separated from my mum at the theatre. There was a protest happening outside – something to do with fertility research funding, I think – and the police had started using water cannons to control the crowds. A lot of people ran into the theatre to hide. In the chaos, I lost track of my mother.”

  I swing my torch, watching the beam light up moths and send the shadows of grasses and plants swelling across the damp lawn. There are bats fluttering overhead, amongst the sparkling stars. “What happened?” I ask, quietly.

  She stares across the garden, searching for the words. A marble nymph stares back at us serenely. “I hid under a sofa in the theatre foyer until it was over. Your grandmother found me eventually. But for a while I thought that I was going to die, or get kidnapped. I didn’t think I’d ever see her again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago!” She tries to smile at me. “And that was during one of the last riots held anywhere in the country. Things settled down a lot after that, for many reasons. People accepted that this was what life was like now, and started living day-to-day instead of worrying about the future. I don’t want you to think I had a terrible childhood, because I didn’t, not at all. In a lot of ways, I was happier than many other children my age.”

  She winces, and rolls her eyes at herself. “Sorry. That sounds like something one of Mrs Maxwell’s characters would say – but it’s true. And I’m only telling you this so you understand why I haven’t wanted to discuss it with you before. I prefer to just enjoy what time we have left. I don’t like to dwell on the past, or on all the people we’ve lost. But I know that your father feels differently about that. We’ve argued about it before. There are things he feels that you should know about the time before you were born and he’s wanted to tell you them for many years. But I thought it was best to wait.”

  My smile freezes. “What things? Tell me. Please. I’m ready. I’m old enough to know.”

  “I know you are. This conversation has proven that you’re mature above and beyond what we were waiting for. But it’s something we all need to discuss together – with the Zhangs too. It’s not a conversation to rush. Can you wait a little longer? Can you do that, for me?”

  There’s nothing I can do but agree.

  We’re turning back towards the manor, passing the hen house where a bot is busy collecting eggs, when there’s a large boom in the distance. There’s a dust cloud rolling across the skyline. I squint at it, trying to work out what caused it.

  “Another one’s collapsed,” Mum says wearily.

  A tower block has fallen down in the suburbs. The blocks of flats out there have been crumbling to dust every couple of years for decades. First, the concret
e slides off the sides in chunks then the building grows more and more decrepit over months until all of a sudden the whole thing crumbles to the ground in a pile of rubble.

  The clouds will be thick with dust for days. At first, it will cause a jolt when I look at the skyline, noticing the gap where the building used to be. But soon I’ll get used to it, and then it’ll be like the tower block never existed at all. Like those carefully preserved homes were never even there.

  CHAPTER 12

  That night, I lie in bed and mess around on my tablet, trying to stop myself thinking about everything that’s happening. I wish I had more of Maya’s posts to read, but as there aren’t any left, I check my emails instead, and then the newsfeed, hoping for something about Alexei (there’s nothing new, except for a nice compilation of interviews about him, which nearly makes me cry). I check my emails again, then the news, until I realise I’ve descended into an internet spiral and make myself snap out of it.

  I should at least do something useful with my time, like sort through my old sandpaper, which is what Mitch is happily doing while I freak out. Instead, I message Shen, trying to distract my brain into switching off.

  Lowrie MBW [22.55]: Question for you

  张申 [22.57]: hit me.

  Lowrie MBW [22.58]: You know how we’re super famous and amazing and everyone loves us?

  张申 [23.00]: with you so far.

  Lowrie MBW [23.00]: But it’s not because of anything we’ve actually done, right? It’s just because of our ages. Well, what if it was for something else, something we’d actually achieved? What would you want to be famous for?

  张申 [23.02] oh god

  Lowrie MBW [23.06]: I have no idea what mine would be. I know exactly what yours is, though.

  张申[23.07]: you do?

  Lowrie MBW [23.08]: Let’s both say what you’d be famous for, on five.

  张申 [23.09]: OK.

  Lowrie MBW [23.11]: Ready?

  张申 [23.12]: ready.

  Lowrie MBW [23.12]: Finding alien life.

  张申[23.12]: being the first person to meet aliens

  Lowrie MBW [23.13]: YES! I KNEW IT!

  Lowrie MBW [23.16]: Do I know you well or WHAT

  张申 [23.17]: I mean, yes, but also, that was obvious to anyone who’s spoken to me for five minutes

  Lowrie MBW [23.18]: Let me have this victory, Zhang

  张申 [23.21]: Yours would be discovering a casket of buried treasure

  Lowrie MBW [23.22]: OH, IT WOULD BE!!

  I look at what I’ve written, our light-hearted conversation, and I realise I don’t want a distraction. I want to discuss this – Maya, and Alexei, and everything Mum said in the garden.

  In the past, I’ve walked over in the quiet of the night to see Shen, when neither of us can sleep. The Zhangs live in an eighteenth-century townhouse on the other side of Hyde Park, which is only a few minutes away. Shen’s family could most accurately be described as nouveau riche, whereas mine is as old and traditional as a family can get.

  I’m too comfortable in bed to walk to Shen’s now, so instead I video call him. He answers immediately, lifting a finger to his lips – his parents must be asleep in the room next door. He’s lying in bed too, on his side with the lights dimmed. For a while we stare at each other.

  A warmth in my stomach reminds me of how good it had felt to have the long line of him leaning against me in the secret passageway. I clear my throat. I’m not thinking about it. I’m not. This is very much not the time.

  “Did your baba mention Alexei and the black box tonight?” I whisper.

  He shakes his head. “No, but he’s clearly worried. I overheard him talking to Mama on the phone – she’s staying at the hospital tonight, so she can keep an eye on Alexei.”

  “He’s that bad?”

  “It sounds like he’s getting worse.”

  I sigh. “Did you hear anything about Mrs Maxwell? Is she still in hospital?”

  “I don’t know. Baba didn’t mention her,” Shen says. “He was really vague when I asked him.”

  “Yeah, Mum was the same. I asked her about the footage from the black box and she just waved it off, and said it was an accident – which it clearly wasn’t. Alexei got sick and crashed. Why won’t they just tell us that? I don’t see what the big secret is. People get sick. It’s terrible, but it’s not…” I trail off. “I don’t get the secrecy.”

  He huffs through his nose, and then says loudly, forgetting to keep his voice down, “Me neither. It’s like the nosebleeds and kidnappings. They’re keeping something from us, for some reason. Why?”

  “I think – I think there’s more to all of this than we thought. Mum said there was something about the time before I was born that she’s going to tell me. She has to wait for your parents and my dad to agree to it first, though.”

  “What, really?” His brow furrows. “What does that mean?”

  I shrug. “Who knows? I really wish Maya had carried on posting on her account. That told me more than our parents ever have!”

  “Maybe we can find her on a different social network? Do some internet deep-diving.”

  We start with the obvious and run a search for her name plus “Loch & Ness” and a few other things mentioned in her profile.

  “It doesn’t look like she’s got any other accounts under her real name,” I say.

  “Maybe there’s one under a random username?” Shen suggests.

  I go back to her original social media profile and find the name of the boy she was always talking to, Riz. I find his social media profile with the username Rizzz straightaway. From there, we work out that out of Rizzz’s thirty mutual followers, he regularly spoke to five.

  “What was Maya’s date of birth again?” Shen asks.

  “Um, I don’t know exactly, but she was born in 2005, I think. Why?”

  “This account is called MyWaves05. And they post about Loch & Ness.”

  “I bet that’s her!”

  We scroll down to the time when she stopped posting on the other site and read from there. It’s a different kind of social media to the last one, which was centred around talking to family. This one seems to be more public. The posts are shorter and funnier. It’s weird that the style of talking is so different, just because the website changed. I still don’t understand social media. Reading Maya’s new account is like having to learn a whole new language of memes and acronyms and slang and nuanced emojis.

  MyWaves05

  All right listen up, losers! You all need to sign this petition: Make fertility tests compulsory for 16–55 year olds. Scientists need more data and there might be one person out there who has the information they need in their cells. Thank you very much for signing (and I promise to stop calling you all losers now).

  Posted on 28 Nov 2024

  MyWaves05

  At the risk of being an alarmist, apparently eggs that were frozen for fertility treatment are still fertile?! My friend Ashley just got offered twenty million (YES, POUNDS) for one of hers. Because that’s a thing that’s apparently happening now.

  (She’s not going to do it, obviously. She wants to try for a baby for herself.)

  Posted on 13 Dec 2024

  MyWaves05

  I understand logically that the government needs to make sure the supply of eggs is protected, after that clinic in Toronto got robbed, but it’s almost absurd to suggest that the donors of the ovum and sperm samples don’t have a right to access their genetic material at any time. It’s immoral – they should be able to choose for themselves when to conceive. It’s not like any of the rest of us can.

  Posted on 11 Jan 2025

  Unhako_neko on 11 Jan 2025

  Replying to @MyWaves05

  Hear, hear! Who cares if every person in the UK with frozen eggs chooses to have babies all at the same time? This whole thing will probably be fixed in a few months with a vaccine, anyway.

  MyWaves05 on 11 Jan 2025

  Replying to @Unhako_neko


  Besides, wouldn’t scientists be able to learn a lot from the growth of those embryos? What do they gain from keeping them locked up in freezers and only releasing one ovum every three months? My friend Ashley’s frozen eggs turned out not to be viable, but it was much better for her to actually know that for sure than to live for years in hope, while she waited for permission to access the sample. That’s what they’ve started doing now. It feels so silly saying all of this, because at this point it just feels like it should be obvious.

  MyWaves05

  In what is almost certainly a slightly futile attempt at help, I just called my local MP to ask her to support increasing fertility funding again. I think I probably would have been better off cleaning my toilet for an hour instead.

  Posted on 30 Sep 2025

  Rizzz on 30 Sep 2025

  Replying to @MyWaves05

  We have to keep fighting, even if it’s not the most effective or realistic method of helping. I feel so useless, otherwise.

  “I can’t believe that…” I start to say, but when I look at Shen, he’s fallen asleep.

  His long eyelashes are spread over his cheeks, and he’s breathing steadily, in a small, barely audible snore. He’s flipped over, so he’s lying with his deaf ear facing upwards; his other ear is pressed into the pillow to block out all sound. Sometimes I’m jealous of how quickly he can fall asleep when he does that. He never gets woken up by loud noises.

  It’s probably good that I’ve got no way of waking him up, because I definitely would right now if I could. Seeing Maya talk to Riz and her other friends online makes me feel suddenly lonely. I’ll never have a group of friends to chat to like that. I’m so grateful that I have Shen, at least. It’s another reason why I can never, ever do anything to risk losing him as a friend – however much the sight of his dark hair curling under his ear makes me want to reach out through the screen and touch him.