by Heide Goody
06:25am
Kathy Kaur came groggily to herself as she was being dragged along a floor. It was not an unpleasant sensation. There was an enormous, throbbing pain in her leg and she could feel herself being dragged away from it, towards a better place. As her addled mind settled, she slipped from the grip of its nonsense and recognised what was actually happening. She was being pulled along the floor in the court of Yo-Morgantus by a royogthrap which had wrapped its mouth/stomach parts around the blue john bomb on her back and, perhaps unable to swallow her whole, was trying to haul her away to some shady lair to consume her.
Gasping against the pain, she searched for her pistol, before remembering Rod had taken it from her and thrown it away. She tried to sit up a little and look round. The hall was deserted, apart from the lifeless bodies of several Venislarn. She couldn’t see her pistol.
She angled her head back to tell the worm-like royogthrap that eating a blue john bomb was the stupidest of all possible things for a Venislarn to do, but her voice came out as a weak croak. She coughed repeatedly, trying to clear it.
Despite her fogged thoughts, her doctor’s training told her she was probably dying from her wounds. Her weakness and shallowness of breath indicated significant blood loss. She could feel little control over her limbs. The device on her wrist was monitoring her pulse. The moment it stopped, she would explode.
“I was going to kill thousands of you,” she said to the royogthrap, or at least imagined herself saying it.
Something moved above her, a handful of thudding footsteps. There was a slicing sound, a watery cry, then the creature’s grip on her was gone.
An August Handmaiden of Prein staggered into view. Her face plates trembled and tried to rotate, but she had suffered some sort of impact injury and the plates just ground against each other, oozing. There was royogthrap ichor on her claw.
“Did you murder our sister, Shala’pinz Syu?”
Kathy blinked.
“We will have our vengeance,” said the Handmaiden. “On all who offend us.”
It was doubtful the Handmaiden would make it out of the building with her wounds. Kathy tried to sit, but couldn’t. With effort, she brought one hand over to the other.
The Handmaiden stumbled for a moment and raised a threatening claw. “Did you kill our sister?”
“Fuck this,” said Kathy, and tore the pulse monitor from her wrist.
* * *
Taxi driver Hasnain had pulled over on a short bridge with views of the canal, the Cube, and the Mailbox beyond. In the canal, sea monsters thrashed about in a deadly embrace, while fish folk on the tow path cheered and chanted. Flying, fighting and falling creatures swarmed around the buildings.
“There was a lovely Thai restaurant down on the waterfront there,” said Chad thoughtfully. “A lot of statues and wall carvings of nubile ladies with the bangles and headdresses and not much else, if you catch my drift. Could be off-putting at times, but the Pad Thai was absolutely to die for. I had a Groupon voucher for a Sunday banquet. Don’t suppose I’ll get to use it now.”
There was an explosion. The ferocity and intensity took Chad by surprise, on a day where he thought he had exceeded his capacity for surprise. The top floors of the Cube puffed out in a blast of grey-blue smoke and misted fire. The sound reached him a half second later. It made the car rock and the windows creak. As Chad watched, clouds of rubble spun out, curving slowly downward. Small shapes dropped away from the building toward the canal.
“Those aren’t people, are they?” said Chad.
Hasnain didn’t offer an opinion.
Chad watched the descending fog of dust and debris. There was movement nearby and, from the towpath stairs, a tide of people suddenly appeared on the bridge. Men and women ran and scattered, some with hands held protectively over their heads, others flailing about in blind panic. Every single one of them had ginger hair and every one of them was stark balls-out naked. Chad watched their pasty white butts run off.
“Reminds me of Dorset,” he said to himself.
06:54am
Vivian Grey continued her efforts to finish the Bloody Big Book with the fountain pen Mr Seth had provided.
* * *
“I was talking to myself,” lied Morag Murray, to cover the fact she had been conversing with the unborn kaatbari inside her.
She looked at the stack of petri dishes on the side in the laboratory. Each contained a sliver of brain-muscle mass snipped from the body of Polliqan Riti, who resided in the circular tub at the centre of the room. It would be a further two days before Kathy Kaur sent him to the hell of Leng Space, a journey that would bring him back to Earth, only for him to be captured and entombed no more than two miles from this laboratory. While Polliqan Riti lolled about in the glass tank, his future self lay dormant in a container beneath the Mailbox, present and future selves co-existing in the city.
“And it occurred to me, how are these artificial souls different from actual humans’?” Morag continued.
“Not at all, I hope,” said Professor Sheikh Omar, “if we’re to get the Venislarn to accept them as an offering.”
Morag was uncertain about their plan to substitute these synthesised human souls with the real ones the Venislarn had been promised. “I mean, are we achieving anything? When we give these to the Handmaiden Shala’pinz Syu, they might be eaten – if they’re lucky – or they might be subjected to tortures without end.”
“And you are only now wondering if these off-cuts from another reality are capable of feeling pain, if they can suffer,” said the professor.
“Yes. Precisely.”
“What a lovely philosophical question.” He smiled at this as though the question was a novel surprise. It was no such thing.
“It’s not lovely,” said Morag. “It’s worrying.”
Omar turned to the laboratory equipment, ostensibly to check on Kathy Kaur’s progress in finding the next simulated person. It gave him time to consider how much of the truth – his understanding of the situation – he should share.
“If you create something so sophisticated and detailed that it becomes indistinguishable from the thing it is trying to mimic, does it become that thing?” he said eventually. “When does the map become the landscape it represents?”
“And?”
“And nothing. Like a zen Buddhist koan, the beauty is in the question, not the answer.”
“Professor, please.”
He set down the tool he was holding on the side of the tank and turned to her.
“In the Vault we have the Bloody Big Book or at least most of it. Have you ever read it?” he asked.
“Vivian told me I should,” conceded Morag.
“And right she was. It is, in essence, a description of all creation. Every atom, every person, every moment. It is all reality in paper form.”
“Is it?”
“In essence. And we must ask, is the universe contained within that book any less real or valid than the one we stand in? Are we, too, mere markings on a page, figuratively speaking?”
* * *
Vivian set the pen aside and closed the book. “It is time to leave,” she said.
There was no one in the conference room with her and no one to say it to. Vivian was not in the habit of talking to herself, but she was, in a rather particular way, doing exactly that. She had written the passage in the Bloody Big Book which covered this moment some time ago, and she remembered it well.
Her spoken words were directed at the Vivian who had written them down. Past-Vivian had written “It is time to leave” a few lines before the Library began to collapse. Past-Vivian had noted them and the events which befell those people still in the Library. Now, present-Vivian spoke the words and knew the sequence of events which destroyed the Library were about to begin. She had spoken the words so she would write them down. She had written the words down so that she would speak them. An undergraduate philosopher might question if two events could cause each other and feel very smug
about it, but Vivian had no time for amateur philosophers and their nonsense. The book and the spoken words existed, and the building was going to collapse.
She stood and tucked the best of the pens and the ink pot into her jacket pocket. She gathered the T-shirt and trousers she had asked Mrs Seth to fetch for her a short while ago. With the book and clothes under her arm, she left the room.
Mr and Mrs Seth were in the corridor with the two men from the council. Mrs Seth was pressing a slice of ginger and nutmeg spice cake into Councillor Rahman’s hands and gently reminding him he must look into the matter of her refuse bin collections when he returned to the office.
“You are still here,” said Vivian. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Vivian no longer had any need to ask questions since, with effort, all was now known to her.
“The tea is brewing,” said Mrs Seth. “Do you need another cup?”
“This building is about to be destroyed,” said Vivian. “I warned you that you should leave.”
The council CEO scoffed. “Madam. We’re deep underground. What could possibly—”
She held up a finger to silence him. He stopped. She waited. Nothing immediately occurred.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she waggled her finger for him to keep silent. Put out, he closed his mouth and frowned at her.
There was a rumble from above, as of many tons of construction material caving in. Vivian upturned her hand in a ‘see?’ gesture.
“The Cha’dhu Forrikler are here,” she said. “As their thoughts fluctuate, they are editing our existence to suit their needs.”
The CEO’s frown did not disappear. “What has that got to do with this building?”
“A brick here, a beam there. Molecules and memories are being torn from the world,” said Vivian.
An alarm began to blare. A light flickered.
“Nonsense,” said the councillor.
“Really?” said Vivian. “Tell me, where is Mrs Julie Fiddler?”
“Who?” said Mr Seth.
“Nina’s primary school teacher. She was here in this bunker earlier. No one has seen her since two o’clock.”
“I don’t recall seeing any of Nina’s old teachers here,” said Mr Seth.
“No. She’s been edited out. I am leaving this way. You will follow me.”
The council CEO laughed. “I don’t know who you are, madam, but this place is surely as safe as anywhere and you’re not going to convince us with silly nonsense.”
“You want convincing,” she said. “Fine. What’s your name?”
The CEO’s frown returned. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Everything. Tell me what your name is.”
The CEO blinked and humphed in amusement, then huffed irritably. “It doesn’t matter right now. And you’re just trying to distract us.”
“Your name,” said Vivian.
“Well, it’s—”
He looked to Councillor Rahman. Councillor Rahman looked back. “You don’t remember?”
“Do you?”
A worried look passed over the councillor’s face. “It’s been a long and stressful night,” he said.
The CEO started to quake violently. “Someone must remember! I mean, it’s me! My name! My name is—”
“Edits,” said Vivian simply. “The stairs are here. You will die if you try to take the lift.” Vivian pushed through to the stairwell and began to climb.
“No, no, I’m bringing the cake,” she heard Mrs Seth say to her husband.
“Wait!” shouted the CEO and ran to catch up with her. “Look! Here! My wallet!”
He fumbled in his panic to get the wallet from his inner pocket. He popped the clasp with a trembling thumb. The card slots inside the wallet were all empty. He opened the banknote pocket. It was empty.
He began to cry.
Vivian continued up the stairs. Mr and Mrs Seth and the two men from the council followed her, stunned. When, on a landing, they met a security guard who had had his face erased from existence by the Cha’dhu Forrikler, the CEO refused to go any further. He sat on a stair and stared at his empty wallet.
Vivian didn’t wait while the others tried to persuade him. They wouldn’t succeed and Vivian, who had not engaged in physical real-world exercise for millennia, was finding the stairs heavy going.
07:04am
Poison rained down on Yo-Morgantus as he fled.
The congealed poison of the renegade Polliqan Riti drifted in clouds from the demolished Cube building and fell as crystalline droplets. They prickled and burned his skin as he rolled and galloped across the demolished buildings, along the canal and into the city. Yo-Morgantus fled from pain, searching for safety and his own gods.
Morag observed from within, her knowledge of the city as open to him as a map. Admittedly, it was a map with big gaps in it and not many names. They fled through the Mailbox, over the ruins of a French bistro where Morag had enjoyed a lukewarm dish of slop, shared three bottles of wine with her housemate Richard, then thrown up as she got into a taxi. On the mental map Morgantus followed, the restaurant, the vomit and the taxi rank were landmarks, and the only street she could actually name was Suffolk Street where they’d caught the taxi.
Morag saw without judgement – she could judge nothing as she was held in a state of thoughtless awareness – and knew Yo-Morgantus for what he truly was. Yo-Morgantus, who could rule over a human city, was nothing more than an intention. Morgantus was the first fork pressed into a banquet meal. Morgantus was a ‘save the date’ note for an impending wedding. Morgantus was a spoken word made real. He was a circling prayer, sent out into the cosmos.
Morag felt his pain and his furious indignation.
Morgantus powered through the entrance to New Street Station (past a Japanese restaurant where Morag had drunk too much sake and tried to leave without paying). Inside, a mass of hort’ech dolls circled the messy sacrificial offerings they had made in the concourse. Human and animal blood soaked into their fragile skin.
Morgantus tried to power his way through them. When the hort’ech dolls massed together and presented their shadow-sharp sides to him, he skirted round. The most insignificant of creatures were already starting to defy him.
He rolled away, upstairs to the balcony level in the shopping centre above. He thrust himself into the largest space he could find and ballooned to fill it. He was a soft-backed hermit crab in a shell made of bricks and mortar.
Outside, reality was being unspooled. Tud-burzu were distorting the sky with trails of fire. The unholy colours of Ammi-Usub melded earth flora and fauna and weaved new, tortured life forms. Yoth-Mammon, summoned forth at last from her place of holding, gorged her way across the land, swallowing buildings and minor gods with indifference. Yoth-Thorani had planted a forest of pain in the heart of the city and pinned living things onto thorn branches, where they could squirm for eternity. Yo Khazpapalanaka unbound the linkages between moments and shook them like peas in a sieve. Em-shadt gods who had slept inside the world, unnoticed, awoke. Geography buckled and turned in on itself.
Inside a shop above the railway station, Yo-Morgantus turned round in circles, like a dog flattening its bed, and sulked.
* * *
Vivian, Nina’s parents and Councillor Rahman reached the ground floor of the Library. Mrs Seth came last, burdened by cake and fifty-odd years of bad diet and no exercise. She puffed like leaky bellows as she came through the glass door and into the lobby.
“What was…” She had to stop to catch her breath. “What was wrong with the lifts…?”
“Nothing. Unless you tried to use them.”
The building around them protested as the forces outside battered it, and the Cha’dhu Forrikler unhelpfully rearranged physical matter across the world. Mr Seth stared through the high glass frontage. There was nothing out there that any of them would recognise. The Forward Management construction site at the centre of Centenary Square had been rolled flat. The buildings across the way,
the old banks and institutions, had been demolished. Air and earth appeared to blend at the peripheries. It was impossible to tell if the swirling multicoloured vista above them was land or sky, or some towering liquid wave that would come crashing down on them.
Something fell from the high ceiling and smashed to one side.
“You two go out that way,” Vivian told the Seths, pointing to the front doors. “Quickly. Before the façade falls down.”
“You are coming too?” said Mr Seth.
Vivian tilted her head towards the rear exit past the children’s library. “I’m going out the back.”
“Why aren’t we coming with you?” said Mrs Seth.
“Because that’s how it’s written,” said Vivian.
Mrs Seth stepped forward meaningfully. She was a short woman, but she had bulk and she had a forceful nature. She clearly intended to give Vivian a piece of her mind.
Her husband put his hand on her arm. “We go,” he said. “And then what?” he asked Vivian.
Vivian said nothing.
Mr Seth tugged at his wife’s arm. She went reluctantly.
“Do not forget our bins, huh?” she called to the councillor.
“Do I not go with them?” said Councillor Rahman as the Seths left through the collapsed remnant of the revolving doors.
“I tell you not to,” said Vivian.
The whole building shook.
“Is it safer coming with you?” he said.
“It makes no difference,” she said, which was as simple and as generous an answer as she could give.
The councillor fingered the collar of his tracksuit nervously. “Yeah, no offence,” he said and hurried to the front entrance.
“Don’t go out that way,” Vivian called after.
He stepped through the doors and shouted to the Seths, who were stepping uncertainly across the rubble of Centenary Square. “Hey! Wait a minute!”
There was a pervasive groan of tearing metal. The front of the Library of Birmingham was covered in a high façade of giant overlapping metal rings made from a tungsten-magnesium alloy with a selenium core, to keep Venislarn forces at bay. There had been little opportunity to put it to the test. With the bang of final support struts giving way, thirty feet of façade slipped from its position, sliding down like a portcullis to crash into pavement. Councillor Rahman never saw what hit him. Vivian knew this for a fact. She had written it that way.