by David Moody
The music stopped, but the crowd’s frenzied noise immediately filled the void. The chief justice stepped forward and signaled for quiet, and eighty-odd thousand people obeyed her order without question. Her face was bitter and scowling, and she seemed to thrive on the power she wielded. The way she sucked energy from the vast audience struck Jenny as being almost vampiric.
She turned and stared straight at Jenny. In the stadium, the chief justice’s face filled the massive screen to the left, Jenny’s the right. The judge’s voice boomed out from the speakers.
“Jennifer Allsopp, you are hereby charged with assisting an organization to engage in armed hostilities against the people of Earth.” She paused, and the faces on the video screens were replaced with a montage of what had happened in London: Thirnas’s arrival and the resulting chaos and destruction, the battle with Oldrus on Westminster Bridge, the Bleed taking hold of the city and the Thames running red. Jenny felt helpless. She felt cheated. Betrayed. The darkest and most important moments of recent human history had been re-edited into a reality TV highlights reel to paint her in the worst possible light. It was a bloody outrage. “How do you plead?” the judge asked. “Guilty or not guilty?”
Jenny couldn’t help herself. She had nothing left to lose.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
There was an audible gasp from the assembled masses, a collective intake of breath that she could actually feel because there were so many thousands of them.
“Guilty, or not guilty?” the judge asked again.
“Do you really think it’s that simple?” Jenny said, her voice amplified across the stadium. “Do you really think all of this is my fault? And even if it was—which it isn’t—do you think that vilifying me and hanging me out to dry is going to make the slightest bit of difference? You shouldn’t be hating me because of what happened, because I didn’t cause it. You should be asking me for help, because of all the people left alive on this planet, I’m pretty much your last, best hope. Without me, we’re all dead.”
The reaction of the crowd was Vaudevillian; a melodramatic wave of boos and hisses filled the air. Jenny was past caring.
“GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY?” the judge bellowed.
“NOT GUILTY!” Jenny bellowed back, and her unexpected resilience temporarily quietened the masses. “Right now, the Bleed is killing people at an unbelievable rate. I think I can stop it. I have access to the power and technology to be able to do something about it, but I can’t because you’ve got me stuck here in a fucking box! Is this the way you want the human race to end? Are you really prepared to throw everyone’s lives away just to make a point? It’s this kind of stupid, selfish attitude that let the Bleed take control in the first place. It just about sums up everything that’s wrong with us. Fuck it, maybe we’re not even worth saving.”
The chief justice theatrically walked across the stage towards Jenny, then stopped about a meter short. The stadium fell silent in anticipation of what she might be about to say next.
“Your arrogance will be the undoing of you, and your arrogance could so easily have been the undoing of all of us, were it not for our great protector. How dare you stand here in front of the brave people of the last great surviving nation of Earth, and presume that your actions might still have relevance? You dare to appear in sight of the one true God and continue to protest your innocence, despite having been seen cavorting with false gods in London?” She pointed to the sky and continued to shout, her fury now unrestrained. “He knows the truth, and He will pass His final judgement today!”
“Oh, give me a break,” Jenny sighed. Thankfully her dismissive words were drowned out by a chorus of adulation and praise that would have taken the roof off the stadium, had it had one. Was this a trial or a sacrificial mass? Truth be told, there didn’t seem much difference anymore.
The chief justice continued. “Yea, though today we are all poised to walk through the valley in the shadow of death, we do so without fear or regret, save in the knowledge that you, Lord, will protect and guide us all. Though the road ahead may be long and arduous, we have faith that you will be waiting for us all at that journey’s end.”
It began to dawn on Jenny that this was an extension of the behavior she’d seen on street corners in Surfers Paradise. These people weren’t interested in saving the world, just saving themselves. They were waiting for the Rapture, for the day all true believers would be snatched away from Earth into the air for a mystical reunion with God in Heaven.
She didn’t know if her mic was still on. Whatever, she resisted the temptation to tell the crowd she thought the idea was a crock of shit. From what she’d seen of the gods so far, they were out for themselves. The chief justice wasn’t finished yet.
“Lord, we are here today to demonstrate our love and belief in you.”
Prompted by helpful signs on the video screens, the vast crowd belted out a powerful “Amen!”.
“The evidence which has been laid in front of us today, and before the millions of people watching across our great country, is incontrovertible. It has shown that you, the accused, Jennifer Allsopp, late of London, England, did collude with forces not of this Earth to cause death and destruction on a hitherto unimaginable scale. Your guilt is clear to all of us who have survived the nightmare to this point. You are responsible for the deaths of billions upon billions of people, and the numbers continue to climb even as we stand here today. But we are not savages. We are not brutes. Our planet is dying, but we will end our time on Earth with dignity and hope.”
“You think this lynching is dignified?” Jenny asked, but her mic had been cut and her protest went unheard. The judge continued.
“Although our time here is coming to an end, in many ways this is just the beginning. We know that this woman facilitated the arrival of absolute evil into our world, and through our sacrifice to you today, Lord, we seek your appeasement. By offering her life to you, we trust that you will save us from the impending danger and lift us up to the kingdom of Heaven with you. We stand here together as one today, with utter belief and absolute faith, and await our ascension. We await the Rapture.”
At the mention of the Rapture, the stadium erupted into chaos loud enough to be heard from the edges of the Bleed. But Jenny was more focused on another word she’d just heard used: sacrifice.
Once again, the chaos was silenced to a whisper as the world awaited the chief justice’s inevitable judgement.
“Jennifer Allsopp, you are guilty of the most heinous crime ever committed. You have betrayed our entire world and caused the deaths of countless numbers of people. On behalf of the rest of the human race, I sentence you to death.”
Amongst another roar of cries and shouts and amens and hallelujahs, Jenny felt her cage again beginning to rattle and shake. The claw grab picked her up and raised her high into the air, then put her back down at the end of a raised section on the far right of the stage.
“Oh Lord, we offer you this woman as a symbol of our everlasting love for you. We pray that by ending her life today and closing the door on our enemies, you will look down on us and show mercy. We pray that you will allow the pure to ascend.”
Soundtracked by the noise of the crowd, fearsome-looking soldiers approached either side of Jenny’s cage, then made a grab for her as soon as the locks clicked open. There was a concrete wall between the cage and the stage wings, with an upright metal post positioned just in front of it. Two brutes picked her up between them, carried her over and chained her to the post. Even before she saw the line of eleven soldiers now marching across the stage towards her, she knew what was about to happen.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she said to no one but herself.
Six men and four women stood in a line a few meters back. Their commanding officer, standing to one side, started shouting orders. “Execution party ready.”
They lifted their weapons and unlocked them.
“Aim.”
Ten rifles were trained on J
enny. “Oh, shit,” she whimpered.
“FIRE!”
It happened somewhere in the impossibly short space of time between the F of “fire” shouted by the commanding officer, and the soldiers reacting and pulling the triggers of their rifles. An impenetrable orb, invisible but for a ghostly white outline glow, wrapped itself around Jenny.
The stadium was silent. The only sound came from blunted bullets bouncing off the orb and falling to the ground.
As quickly as it had appeared, it was gone again.
No orb.
No Jenny.
8
SURFERS PARADISE, AUSTRALIA
“What the fuck just happened?”
“I saved your life,” Maddie told her.
“Did you have to leave it ’til the last second like that?”
“I had to wait until I was sure everyone was watching. Pretty intense, right?”
“Screw you.”
“You could try saying thank you.”
“And you could try unchaining me from this post.”
Jenny was back in the clockwork room, safe and unharmed, but still shackled and completely fucking terrified.
“I’ll let you go when I’m ready.”
“How did you know where I was, anyway?”
“The room told me. Oh, and you were all over the TV. Every channel. If there was anyone who didn’t know who you were before today, they do now.”
“Great. Come on, get these chains off me.”
“I told you, not yet. I need some answers first. That trial just now—”
“It was bullshit. Kangaroo court.”
“—how much of what they accused you of was true? How much of all of this actually is your fault?”
“None of it.”
“Really? No smoke without fire…”
“Maddie, I swear, I’ve told you everything. I’m as innocent as you. You have to believe me.”
“Do I?”
Jenny’s legs felt like they were about to give way, and it was only the chains that were keeping her upright. She didn’t know how much more she could take. Less than five minutes ago she’d been a hair’s breadth from being executed after being paraded in front of thousands in the stadium and millions on TV. There wasn’t a single aspect of her life that seemed to make sense anymore. From the extremely pissed off look on Maddie’s face, it seemed things hadn’t gone much better for her either. She looked like she was ready to kill.
“What’s wrong?” Jenny asked.
“Um, everything. It’s time we were straight with each other.”
“I’ve only ever told you the truth.”
“I’m not so sure,” Maddie said as she walked around the console. “While you were gone I had plenty of time to get to know this machine and to find my way around it. I watched all the footage of your god friend turning up at the start of all of this, the big fancy show he put on in the middle of London, and I figured he must have been using the same kind of tech to move around as we’ve got here. Turns out I was right. I used the room to make one of those comet-like things to bring you back here. And yes, as it happens, I intentionally left it to the absolute last second before I did it.”
Maddie was clearly furious with Jenny, and the feeling was very much reciprocated. “You’re a spiteful, spineless, vindictive bitch,” Jenny screamed at her. “You bailed on me as soon as the police showed up.”
“And if I hadn’t, they’d have probably got me too. Then there would have been no one in the clockwork room to save you. So again, feel free to thank me.”
“I don’t understand…what have I done to hurt you, Maddie? This isn’t right. We shouldn’t be fighting like this.”
“Seems fighting’s in your blood.”
“Now you’ve really lost me.”
Maddie started to operate the machine. “I’ve gotten to know and understand aspects of this machine pretty well. It showed me a few home truths, helped me make a few discoveries.”
“Such as?”
“First off, this isn’t a straight-forward time machine.”
“Is there such a thing? Anyway, it has to be. You’re from the future.”
“Be quiet and listen to me, don’t interrupt. I’m a mechanic, and I know this technology is way beyond anything either of us has seen before, but the basic principles of all machines are the same. The principles are always the same. So I’ve been reverse engineering. I might not yet know how it all works, but I have a better idea what the machine does now, what it’s capable of.”
“And?”
“First off, I was thinking: how come your time’s not the same as mine? I was trying to work out how come I’m still here, if my future isn’t.”
She could see from the expression on Jenny’s face that she was already struggling to keep up.
“I’ll keep it as simple as possible, ’cause you’re clearly non-technical,” she continued. “By this date in my world, certain events should have already taken place that eventually result in the moon being colonized, but they haven’t. And because those events never happened, plenty of other things won’t have happened either. My parents won’t have met. See, my mom had a one-night stand with a militiaman in a bar at the tail-end of one of the biggest battles of the war. I think I told you already, he spent his final years in jail. My mom got pregnant, had me, and just about managed to keep her shit together for a few years before I ended up taken into care. Soon as I was old enough, I got conscripted, then got myself a trade. I worked out pretty quick it was all going to hell in a handbasket and got myself a ticket off this rock. It was pretty easy, really. They had hundreds of politicians and movie stars and CEOs trying to get to the moon, but there was a serious lack of volunteers that were actually going to be of any use. Mechs, cleaners, domestics…we were in short supply.”
“Thanks for the life story, but what does this have to do with anything?”
“Nothing I just told you would have happened if the world didn’t exist. The bar where Mom and Pop met, it’s not there anymore.”
“So you’re saying, because the Bleed has destroyed most of the planet, now your life can never happen?”
“Bingo. If this clockwork room allows people—or gods or whoever—to travel through time, then that’d likely mean time is linear, so whatever happens in the past—”
“—directly influences the future.”
“Exactly. I mean, it’s probably not as cut and dried as that, but that’s got to be the basic principle. And on the subject of time, we don’t have a lot of it left, so do me a favor and assume that what I’m saying is on the right lines.”
“Okay, so if the room doesn’t let us travel through time as such, what does it do?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t a time machine, I just think it’s more than that.”
“More than that? How can it be more than a time machine?”
“Glad you asked. You ever play video games?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t matter. What happens when you die in a game?”
“You start again. Have another go.”
“Right.”
“Are you suggesting we’re living in a computer game?”
She rolled her eyes at Jenny. “Um. No.”
“What then?”
“I was making an analogy. You die in a computer game and you start again. The computer builds everything up from scratch. Same world, same people, same scenarios, different outcomes.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It makes infinite different versions of the same place, and I think that’s what we have here. I think we’re from different versions of the universe.”
“And I’m supposed to take you seriously at this point?”
“Your planet is being eaten by a blood-based demon from another dimension, and you are the gods’ bitch. Yes. For fuck’s sake, take me seriously.”
“It makes sense,” Jenny said, “as much as anything makes sense anymore.”
“So, I think the machine lets u
s go to any place at any time, and that takes me back to my original question. How much of what’s happening here really is your fault?”
“None of it, I swear. If you watched footage of when Thirnas first arrived here, then you’d know that. I’m a half-breed, apparently, but nobody told me until the day everything went to hell. I was tricked by other gods into letting the Bleed come here. It wasn’t my fault. They manipulated me. I had no idea what was happening.”
Maddie didn’t look convinced. She held Jenny’s gaze for longer than was comfortable. “See, I have a hard time buying any of what you’re saying.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Neither did I, until I started making sense of this machine. As soon as I worked out that I’m not on the right version of Earth, things became clear. I was trying to see what was happening on the moon, but I was looking at the wrong moon.”
“Your friends?”
“Haven’t located them yet.”
“Then what have you seen?”
Maddie turned her attention back to the console and opened up a viewing window. Jenny thought she recognized the places she was being shown, but quickly realized she didn’t. She was looking at home, but it wasn’t home: Earth, but not Earth. She saw cities she thought she knew from pictures she’d seen online and in books and on TV, but everything looked different. Dirtier. More worn. Beaten-up and broken. Grubby. Polluted. Poisoned. Suffocated. Dying, or dead.
“2035 was the year it all went to shit,” Maddie explained. “Until then the world had been hanging by a thread, living a decades-long balancing act. What you’re looking at now is my Earth around that time. All the warning signs were there, like I’m sure they would have been here, too, but they were ignored because…well, you know this shit already because one thing our worlds have in common is that money matters more than people. Folks talk the talk, but when it comes to them going without, or someone getting hold of something they themselves thought they were entitled to, well that’s when things start to get really ugly. And on my Earth, they did.”