by David Moody
Considering the fact this was unquestionably the end of planet Earth, it was frustrating how many of these people allowed themselves to be held back by the restrictive rules of their dying society. Huge numbers continued to follow established laws and routes, and huge numbers more simply continued to follow everyone else. Those who thought differently were more successful. There were no more trains running, so why not walk along the tracks? The ownership of physical property and defined boundaries were no longer important, so why continue to respect them? That thought struck a woman who, needing to get around an imposing looking house and its vast fenced grounds, watched people sprinting around the edges of the massive estate trying to find a way through. Instead, she simply climbed over the back fence, walked the length of the garden, then entered through a back door and let herself out the front. It took half the time it would have done to go the full distance. Other people followed her example, and others had the same idea as they tried to get around other obstacles and monuments. The direct route was the best route.
More haste, less speed was an overused cliché, but on this day it had never been a truer maxim. Bottlenecks formed where those moving at speed to reach the coast came up against those who simply couldn’t go as quickly. And where those bottlenecks had formed, violence inevitably ensued.
Watching from the clockwork room, both Jenny and Maddie found it heartbreaking.
“We can’t do any more than we already are,” Maddie reassured her.
“Christ, though, just look at them. What don’t they understand? If they cooperate and help each other, more of them will make it.”
“I think you already know the answer to that, Jen. It’s human nature. We’re hardwired to screw each other over in the name of self-preservation.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“That’s life. And despite your half-god credentials, you’re in no position to preach. Where they’re concerned, you’re the person who is responsible for the death of millions, remember?”
“I know. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten. The guilt eats at me constantly.”
“Even the other timeline, it wasn’t you. She looked like you, talked like you, walked like you…but she wasn’t you.”
“It’s in the genes, I’m sure of it. Look at what’s happened here. Sure, I’m doing what I can to save a few million, but billions have died because of me.”
“Cut the crap and focus. How many times do we have to have this conversation? The fact the Bleed came here wasn’t your fault. If it wasn’t for you, there’d be no human race at all right now. You’re the one giving the species a fighting chance.”
“I wouldn’t have done any of it without you.”
“Yeah, and don’t you forget it. It’s time to make our move. I’ll do what I can with the orb, you get ready to get us out of here.”
Jenny assumed her position at the controls. “I’m aiming for your moon, but you do realize I’ve never piloted this thing before, don’t you?”
“I do. Anyplace is better than this. Just do what you can to get us out of here.”
“And you’re sure the room will have enough power to put a forcefield right around your moon when we get there?”
“No problem. The moon is around two and a half thousand miles in diameter. We managed around three thousand when we first launched this orb.”
Jenny returned her attention to the scenes outside. “Can we risk waiting any longer? There are plenty of people in the water now, but there’s more who haven’t made it yet.”
“We need to get moving. You gave them enough time. Besides, the Bleed’s getting restless. It knows something’s up.”
Maddie was right. It was reacting furiously to the mass movement it detected inside the orb. The room showed them an angle from the upper levels of the dying Earth’s atmosphere. The outline of the orb was in full view below, and the Bleed’s agitation was clear to see. The rest of the planet was a sea of roiling red waves, whereas the bubble centered on the Gold Coast was a hive of much furious activity. There were so many legs and limbs and pincers and claws and other indescribable appendages thrashing around the perimeter of the orb that it looked like a dozen or more spiders fighting for attention. The ceaseless, chaotic movement caused great splashes and geysers of blood to spurt many miles into the air.
“If it works out what we’re doing, things could get nasty,” Jenny said. “The second we reduce the energy around the circumference of the orb, even just a little bit, it’ll try and break through, won’t it?”
“Most likely. I don’t know how we’re going to get around that.”
Jenny thought for a second. “I do.”
“Go on.”
“We play it at its own game. Trick it the way it tricked us.”
“How?”
“Distract it. Let it think it’s getting through, so it focuses its attention elsewhere.”
“I guess it’s worth a try. You ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
They operated their respective parts of the machine in perfect, unspoken unison, Maddie balancing the power of the shields while Jenny prepared to manipulate the size and shape of the orb.
“Reduce power over to the west now,” Jenny said, and Maddie immediately weakened the forcefield inland to a fraction of its original strength.
“This won’t hold for long,” she warned.
It took the Bleed barely any time at all to realize that.
It immediately swelled on the land-based side of the orb where the forcefield’s intensity was low and began to attack. Millions of blood-soaked feelers and proboscis began exploring, trying to root out weak spots and compromise the energy shield. Its foul excitement was palpable; it was as if it could sense that the distance between it and the remains of the human race had been dramatically reduced, and the prospect of feeding again drove it into a frenzy. It began to burrow and drill, to grind its way through.
But the plan was working, because on the ocean-side of the orb, where hundreds of thousands of people were now gathered in the water, the Bleed’s presence had substantially reduced.
“How long will it hold?” Jenny asked.
“A minute, less.”
“Okay.”
“You ready?”
“I’m ready.”
“Right. I’m going to start reducing the size of the orb. You’ve only got a few seconds to get this moved into the right position. Understand?”
“Got it.”
“Three, two, one, NOW!”
Maddie began to imagine the forcefield holding its shape around a shrinking orb as Jenny sprang into action. All around the orb, the Bleed sensed that the protective dome of energy preventing it from feasting on mankind was decreasing in size and it flooded inwards.
Jenny’s fingers dashed lightly across the controls. She did everything she could to block out the enormity of the moment and focus on the task at hand, but it was almost impossible to ignore the fact that millions of lives depended on her every movement. And it wasn’t just those individual lives, either. The future of the entire human race now rested in her hands, along with everything humans had ever achieved. If she slipped, if she fucked up, if she took her eye off the ball for even a nanosecond, thousands of years of evolution, history and achievement would be lost from this universe forever.
A deluge of liquid death spilled across the last untouched region of the planet. Time seemed to slow down for Jenny, but she wished it would slow further still because she felt hopelessly under qualified. There’d been no chance for a dry run, no opportunity to gain any familiarity with these particular clockwork room controls, there was only now.
This moment.
One chance.
Live or die.
Sink or swim.
In her mind’s eye she focused on the hundreds of thousands of people waiting in the waters just off the last unspoiled section of Australia’s eastern coastline, and she imagined a line drawn all the way around them. It was a long elliptical shape whic
h she hoped would encompass everyone who’d made it into the ocean. She didn’t dare dwell on them, but she could feel the pain of those who hadn’t yet made it. She tried not to imagine what would happen to them outside the forcefield; tried not to visualize their quick deaths or the paradoxically endless pain they’d experience as they were absorbed into the Bleed. Instead, she stayed focused on those in the water, picturing them held safely in an invisible, odd-shaped bubble.
Maddie waited as long as she dared, then rebalanced the energy levels around the misshapen forcefield.
The Bleed continued to flood forward, but all it could do was wash up and over the glass-like walls. Jenny relaxed. Those people left alive were safe, now floating in their own aquarium.
“We got them,” Maddie said.
“All of them?”
“Most, I think. More than I would have thought possible, if I’m honest. Now quit talking and get us out of here.”
Jenny glanced at an image on one of the clockwork room’s projections; crowds of people in the surf on the beach at Surfers Paradise where the Australian section of her nightmare had begun. They held onto each other, terrified, some of them struggling to keep their heads above water, all of them struggling to see in the miserable low light. And in the air many miles above them, the sky was blood red.
Planet Earth was dead.
She closed her eyes, put her hands on the controls of the clockwork room, and focused on Maddie’s moon.
18
THE MOON
If this was a moon, then it was a moon like no others Jenny had seen before. She exited the clockwork room with Maddie. They were still in the hotel, but the hotel was no longer where it used to be. They went up onto the roof and looked down over what appeared to be a sun-soaked, tropical paradise. It was a vast island surrounded by clear blue sea. There were forests below them, with trees bearing familiar-looking fruit, and beyond them rolling fields ripe for planting. Elsewhere, stone-built cities that looked ready to welcome inhabitants. “I don’t know where you brought us,” Maddie said, “but it’s not the moon—not my moon, anyway.”
“Doesn’t look too bad though.”
Maddie had to agree; it all felt perfect. Too perfect. “This the doing of your friends in high places?” Maddie asked. “You called in a favor from the gods?”
“Something like that.”
“What happened to the water?”
“I have no idea.”
It appeared that all they’d brought with them from Earth was the hotel and the people. Far below, the remains of the human race began to explore and spread out across the island paradise.
“We did it,” Maddie said. “They’re safe.”
“For now.”
Maddie glared at her. “I thought you’d be happy, I’m happy, but you’ve got a face like thunder.”
“It’s not over, you know.”
“It is for now. It is for us.”
“No, not for any of us. The Bleed is still out there. There’s still work to be done.”
She walked to the edge of the roof and peered out into the distance, beyond the ragged island coastline and out across the ocean. It was a beautifully clear day. From here she could see all the way across to the next landmass and the ruins of some kind of citadel. Even from this distance she could sense the god-tech was strong over there.
“You’re in charge now,” she told Maddie.
“Like hell I am. I’m just a mechanic. Not a leader. I never wanted that kind of power.”
Jenny shook her head. “You know what you are, Maddie. You’re not just anything. You understand things. You see things clearly. You plan and you prepare, and you make a difference. These people need you. Deep down you know what you have to do, even if you’re not ready to accept it.”
“I’m not a politician, for crying out loud. I’m not some highfaluting pillar of the community.”
“I know that. But then, this isn’t a community as such, is it?”
“Well what else would you call it?”
“It’s an army. The Bleed is still out there, and at some point very soon we’re going to need to fight it again.”
“Yeah, but why are you talking about me being in charge all of a sudden? What happened to us? You’re supposed to be the leader.”
“I can’t. I’ve got something else to do.”
And Jenny turned and walked back towards the clockwork room.
“Don’t you turn your back and walk away from me,” Maddie yelled at her.
Jenny stopped. Turned back to face her. “I’m sorry. It has to be this way, Maddie.”
“Where the hell are you going?”
“To try and stop the Bleed from ever getting a foothold. I’m going back to the beginning to correct a mistake that should never have happened.”
With that, she was gone.
By the time Maddie reached the clockwork room, Jenny was nowhere.
She’d learnt so much from Maddie in the time they’d been together, and under her tutorage the secrets of the clockwork room had been unlocked. Jenny stepped out of the room and was more relieved than she’d ever thought possible. She’d done it.
While they’d been transporting a million people trapped in an energy field, the clockwork room had been clumsy and hard to control. Now that it was just her, though, she could go anywhere she wanted, could visit any part of the multiverse at any point in history. Her world was lost; she had to accept that. The temptation to go back to the source of the Bleed to try and change history was strong, but that was a battle she knew she couldn’t win on her own. For now, she needed to focus on giving the gods a head start.
Jenny stepped out into the busy streets of London and breathed in the cool, damp, fume-filled air. It was good to be home. Except this was anything but home. She was back in London, but it wasn’t her London. This was Maddie’s corner of the multiverse, and if she’d calibrated the machine properly, she’d arrived at just the right moment in time. Strange, she thought, how she felt more nervous now than at any point previously. The stakes were higher. The risks were impossible to calculate.
She got out of the lifts at the bottom of the Shard and followed the crowds out onto the street. Everything felt bizarrely familiar, yet completely different at the same time.
She was going home to put things right.
She would stop herself from triggering the war that would allow this version of the earth to succumb to the Bleed.
Jenny Allsopp was going to track down this world’s version of Jenny Allsopp and kill her.
19
THE MOON
“You have got to be kidding me.” Maddie was on the roof peering down at the thousands of people below and the strange landscape that she’d been told was the moon. It was nearly harder to believe that this was the cold, lifeless void she’d left not that long ago, than it was the existence of the relentless enemy they had just been fighting. “What the hell am I supposed to do now? I’m just a mechanic. Sure, a great one, but still, you don’t ask a fabulous pole dancer to be the Prima Ballerina at the Met. Well, I mean, you could, but I’d imagine it wouldn’t work out so well.”
A fair number of the people were looking up at the hotel, the only tall structure in the strange new landscape. Still, even more were tentatively starting to check out their new environment, most not having a clue that they were riding on Earth’s largest satellite. Besides dealing with the abhorrent bleed, Maddie knew there were going to be more pressing needs, food being the primary. Yeah, the foliage appeared lush and that generally meant wildlife, along with berries and fruits, but could they possibly hunt and gather enough to continually feed the throngs? And if there was a forest, that meant there was an atmosphere, which meant the people would need shelter. Perhaps they could all fit in the hotel, but a youth hostel during Oktoberfest in Berlin would be less crowded. It was likely it would look like an old-Earth Indian commuter train on a Monday morning. Maddie had seen pictures and wondered how many of those people had fallen to their de
aths while just trying to get to work. Would the government be prepared to keep those types of numbers?
“I can’t believe this shit. I need Sandra.” Maddie was referring to the moon base’s resident asshole and best molecular scientist. She couldn’t stand the woman, but she did have an innate ability for organization, for getting things done. Perhaps not in the most diplomatic of ways, but right now diplomacy wasn’t what was needed, a heavy-handed authoritarianism might do the trick. The individuals here needed to work as a cohesive unit if they wanted to survive. Any selfishness among them could create hardships that would be difficult to overcome. She didn’t know exactly what she was going to do, what she actually could do but standing there wondering about how many ways this could go sideways, was going to get nothing accomplished. For better or worse, she was going to try something. She was fearful that perhaps she might inadvertently expose this oasis to the Bleed, but she didn’t see any other options.
“Clockworks room, it is.” She headed to the roof access door, descended the small half flight, and had no sooner stepped into the hallway that led to where she needed to go than she saw the curled up form of a female. She didn’t appear to be a Bleed abomination, but there was something off about her, a feeling Maddie could not shake. Her long blonde hair obscured most of her face, her arms were pulled tight into her chest and her hands were clasped. Maddie was unsure if she was breathing or not and, without a weapon, was hesitant to get any closer to check.
“Arridon?” The girl, for that was what Maddie figured her for, a young woman, perhaps no older than sixteen or seventeen, spoke hardly above a whisper.
“Not here,” Maddie told her, looking around for a fire axe box and coming up short.
“Where am I?” Thistle slowly moved.
“Good question. Still in the process of figuring that out. And you are…?”