by T Hodden
I waved for him to be quiet and flashed my fingers over the screen at the side of the room. I tried to ignore the screens of data that told me how crammed full of alchemical circuits my bones in this new body were. How deep the programming seemed to stretch into me. I found a screen that showed me the CCTV screens. Mum and her entourage were close by.
“So, we are a few decades into the future, at the bottom of the Atlantic? And the first strike by the Expara was in Australia?” I rubbed my chin. “Odd isn't it? You are busy securing your invasion instead of taking a direct action against them? Why?”
“I am not listening to your commands.” I said in a low voice. “I can not rid myself of the programming, but I do not have to listen to it.” That was not true. Give me a magic circle and the right help and I could neutralise the alchemical circuits. But I did not want him to know that yet. “So command away.” I tapped some more controls. “Oh good!” I gave him a bright smile. “The clones and the robots are all safe in their tubes. I can flood the complex and they will be held safely until doomsday if need be. But hopefully I will find a way to help them before that. Free them of your control and let them be their own people.”
Pain ripped through me. I screamed and clasped my head. It felt like my brain had swollen three sizes and was pressing hard against the walls of my skull. I fell to my knees.
“Stop this!” Mum burst into the room and ran to me.
“No. You were meant to be at the hangar by now! I told Doreen.” I gasped.
“And do you think she will ever leave you here?” Mum snorted. The bears were hurrying in. So was something ethereal that smelt of sunflowers. “Besides, we outnumber you.” She helped me stand. “Gwyn?”
“Well,” the bear clicked his fingers and poked at the screen, “Fish had a good plan, that will still work if I activate the outer hatches here, but we will have to run a bit sharp like.” He stepped away as the screen turned red.
“Let us solve the problem our way Oroboros, or we do this!” Mum shouted. “Do you hear?”
“I hear.” The disembodied voice echoed around the complex. “You will not dare.” It stopped. “I... I can not seal the watertight doors. My systems do not respond.”
“Sorry.” I said, hoping he put it down to me and did not think about the Ancestor Bear. “I did some tinkering.”
“I will kill you.” Oroboros promised. His voice an electronic screech. “You will not bury me here!”
“Are you even here?” I asked. “Or are you just up in here?” I pointed at my head. “Let us go, let us stop the Expara.”
“Expara?” Mum asked, worried. “Oh dear.”
Oroboros sent another wave of pain through me. I fell to the floor as my head tried to explode. The screen was glowing red, showing that the Ancestor Bear had prepared everything to flood the entire complex by opening the inner and outer doors of the airlocks. Ginger was staring at the screen, the virtual red button, his fingers twitching.
“So pretty.” He whispered.
“Push the button.” Mum whispered to him. She watched sternly as his face spread into a broad, dreamy smile and he loomed over the button, staring into it like a fly heading into the zap-lamp. He pressed it with a squeal of delight that made his knees wobble.
In an instant the lights all turned red and sirens started to sound. Mum and Doreen helped me up and I felt butterflies in my tummy as I found myself staring into Doreen's eyes. It was just for a heartbeat before we ran to the nearest power outlet. Musket plugged in his time travel device and the screen flickered to life. He pressed the button, stared at the wall of seawater rushing through the corridor to crush us. He slapped the side of the box, jiggled the cable and tried again. At the last second before doom smashed us to a watery grave, the envelope of energy covered us and we slipped out of time.
*
“The future doesn't look all that different.” Mum said as she walked along the beach. “Can I see one little jet pack?”
“Sorry. I need to get you back to your own time.” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “And you have dinosaurs to sort out right?”
“I like the bears.” She said. “And... I hope I tell you this all the time, but you are pretty brilliant.” She looked past me to Doreen who was being hugged into submission by all the bears. Musket was among them, and Tears who was on the outside of the group she was carried along by the cheer. I smiled at Mum and tried not to let my emotions show. I reached over and gave her an awkward hug. I get hugs all the time from bears, but I don't tend to do the hugging.
“Take care of Dad for me.” I said.
She nodded. “So when do I die?” She asked softly. “Oh come on Fish, I know that look. It is the exact same one I would have if I ever saw my parents again.” She smiled. “Okay, don't tell me. I don't want to know. I better live every day like it is my last.” She kissed my cheek as I handed her the time travel device.
“It is all programmed. You will get one jump home, then the core will burn out and it is set to just die out. Bury it somewhere it wont be found.”
“I will.” She said. “And Fish, if you go after the Expara, be careful. Don't die.”
“I wont.” I promised her.
“She deserves you.” Mum nodded at Doreen. “She really deserves you.” She made that sound like a good thing. Then she was swallowed by the white fire as she travelled home.
“Don't worry.” I looked up at the sea wall. Dad was watching us. “She got home safe. You okay son?”
“We need to talk.” I said darkly.
He nodded. “Aye. The bears have been talking about Expara.”
“Yeah.” I said coldly. “We will get to that.”
I walked down the beach to the figure he had not seen among the bears. He gave a small gasp as he recognised her, a little strangled laugh. As I walked Doreen phased out from the bears and popped into the air beside me. I felt her hands on mine as she let me wrap my arms around her.
“There is a demon that is going to hate us for this.” She told me, with a nervous laugh.
I didn't know what to say to that. She leant forwards and the clinch became a kiss.
*
So this is how dad said it happened. Nine months before I was born he was chasing the last chicken sized dinosaur down the beach. He had just netted it, when there was a burst of light and heat. Mum was holding a dead time machine.
“Where have you been?” He said, smiling in a way he hoped would not make him look worried.
“The future.” She said. “I saw our son. He was nice. And the bears. And...”
“And?” He asked patiently.
“Can't say. Might change it.” She kissed him gently. “How was your day?”
“Memorable.” He said.
“Yeah, so the curse is fun.” Mum laughed.
“So I don't have a son.” Dad whispered.
“We can work on that after dinner. Aren't you going ask about the bears?”
“There are no bears in Eternity.” Dad said with authority. And thus there soon were.
*
The sea water crashed through the city hewn into the sea bed. It was a dark, relentless force of destruction that ploughed through much of the machinery, swatting aside the furniture and crushing the computers. A vast and eternal presence, that sometimes considered itself a bear, was finally able to shrug free of the influences that had trapped it. It did not retreat. It reached out to the heart of the complex. The cloning bays had not been destroyed. Now the flood was complete the clones were in their tanks, the yellow light that glowed in each tube barely penetrating the still, silent, ice cold waters that cocooned them. They were waiting.
The Great Ancest
or Bear watched the army that was waiting to be born. It did not like leaving them here, like this, with their dreams contained and their heads haunted by the malicious doctrine of another. But it had seen the future. It knew what role they had yet to play.
It knew the price of their freedom.
It withdrew from that dark and poisonous future as it felt another presence close by. A figure in armour, protected against the cold, the pressure and the dark by the plates of exotic ceramics and other materials that encased it. The face was almost completely hidden by a sheer visor, the chest plate had a window through which a blood red crystal could be seen, glowing brightly with an inner light.
Oroboros swam through the flooded complex and gazed upon his army.
“This is not the end.” He promised one of the clones. “This is not over.”
The Ancestor Bear, safe in his land of dreams, knew that to be true.
Five: The door in the darkness.
We lay on my bed, just holding each other and trying not to cry. It had been a few days. The bears had made a circle around myself and Tears to sing spells and neutralise the alchemical circuits in our cloned bodies, Tiger had stomped around complaining about how much trouble I seemed to get in if she were not there to look after me, Wendy and Musket had spent a lot of time together. They were a sweet couple, she liked to vocalise her emotions and he would be too polite to tell her he needed to rest his ears even if he could talk. We had rested, we had healed, we had pretended life was moving on. But above all else I made the most of every second I could spend with Doreen. Just knowing she was there, or telling her all the things I had never been able to before.
Much of that time was spent doing nothing more than laying together on my bed, or curled on a sofa feeling safe together. We had to cherish the moments as we knew it could not last. Because in all the moments I could not spare I was busy looking for the end of the world.
It was Tiger who found it.
There was a knock at the door. I tried to ignore it, to hold on to Doreen as long as I could, but the knock was heading to the point that the door would open and a head would poke around to see what was happening. I reluctantly untangled my fingers from the ghost and sat up.
“Yeah?” I asked.
Tiger stepped inside. “Those co-ordinates you saw at Horizon, the first place that the end of the world hit? Well... Hollow Canyon. It is a town in Australia, a few hundred kilometres from Perth.”
“Okay.” I said paying a little more attention.
“It is a town that has been totally cut off. Because of the asbestos mine there.” Tiger continued. “Totally fenced off. Sealed and shut down. A ghost town. Because, you know, everything is covered in nasty, icky, deadly asbestos.”
“And something happened?” I asked.
She nodded. “There is an expedition going in there soon. Because there have been kind of earthquakes in the mines, that nobody can quite explain.”
“Oh that does not sound good.” I said, grabbing my sweater and walking to the door in a hurry. When I swung it open there was a waddle of bears, armed with backpacks, kit bags, suitcases and passports. I froze. “And where are you planning on going?”
“Asbestos mine.” Ginger said from inside a respirator mask that made his voice rasp.
“Oh no. Way too dangerous.” I said, holding up my hands.
“Of course they are coming.” Doreen sighed. “How could we stop them?”
“We?” I asked.
She grinned and kissed my cheek.
“We.” She said firmly.
“Right then.” Mrs Saxon and her father were in the kitchen. She gave me a smile. “I suppose me and dad can take a few bears up to Shadowbrook and look for what ever it was the Big Bear In The Sky said you missed?”
“We will take Musket and Tears.” Clarumcoma said. “They have a feel for this sort of thing.”
*
Getting everybody on a plane was relatively simple. Myself and the bears had tickets and passports. Doreen had no passport, but was a ghost. We printed our own boarding passes than she faded out as we went through customs and security. She faded back in when I popped to a wash room and clutched onto her boarding pass as we waited in the lounge. The bears thundered around the duty free, I stocked up on books for the flight as well as a pad of lined paper and many pens. Doreen was delighted to find some kids history books in a shop she thought would fill her in with the century and a half she missed, so those got added to the stack.
“So we will fly to Australia?” She asked.
“Not direct. We have to stop for fuel. We get a stop over in Asia.” I said. I caught her eye and pointed at the windows. She looked out at the jet lines.
“We fly in those? They look like whales!” She giggled. “How fast do they go?”
“Fast enough.” Gwyn said stepping suddenly between us with no sense of moment. “They used to have one that went the speed of sound. But that-”
“Got withdrawn from service.” I said pointedly. “They are perfectly safe.”
“Safest way to travel.” Ted confirmed, shooing Gwyn away. “I would tell you to relax, but somebody,” he glared at me, “could only afford economy seating!”
“There are a lot of us. And it is expensive.” I said quietly. “And-”
“We get to fly?” Doreen laughed brightly. “Why would we want to worry if we are going steerage? We get to fly among the clouds, to a country on the other side of the world. What could be more fantastic?”
“Leg room and free bubbly.” Ted“We could not afford first class?” Doreen askI shook my head. She gave me a smile, trying to forget first class existed. I walked over to the bench where Wendy was watching the crowds.
“I wish Musket was here.” She said as I sat beside her.
“He and Tears have no passport. Besides, they are helping the Saxons prepare in case we fail.” I said. “He will be here when you get home. And if you wanted to stay here, nobody would think less of you.”
She shook her head. “Oh no. I am part of this. Somehow I feel I need to be here for the end.”
“By the itchy in my bum,” Tiger gently mocked her fellow bear, “you finish what you begun!”
“Oi!” Wendy tried not to laugh but failed to contain them. “Mind your tongue unless you like the taste of soap! I will wash it out.”
“Do you really like him?” Tiger asked gently.
“I think I would like to find out if I like him.” Wendy admitted. “But that is for another day.” She straightened up. “Ginger Bear! Do not pick pocket that policeman! Leave his tear gas alone or I will walk over there and boot you into next year.”
Ginger froze, smiled at the policeman he had been standing next to, tried his best to look innocent and sidled away.
“What are you doing?” Wendy asked me, looking at the pad I was scribbling in.
“Making a plan for what to do if the other clones come to make trouble for us.” I said. “As I am guessing they wont wait around for a convenient magic circle and wait for me to undo their programming. So...”
“You are sure simply freeing them will make them turn away from their master?” Doreen asked. “There were slaves who were loyal to their masters no matter what.”
“But it will give me a chance.” I said. “Somebody who might kill me, but perhaps wont kill me unthinkingly.” I stopped. “I killed some of them in the fall. I need to try and save the others. If not now then sometime soon I need to find them and save them. I owe them that much. Inside each of them is somebody like Tears or Musket, locked away and prisoners in their own heads.”
Doreen nodded. “Like I was trapped in the camera? But the camera did not seek to kill, or invade or conquer.” She gripped my hand. “It is good you will fight for them. What is your plan?”
“To use a different spell. I can't trap an army in a circle, but I can maybe cast a spell on one that will pass on to the next and the next and the next, like a virus. I free one, they free a few more, and each of those frees a
nother few...”
“Would that work?” Doreen asked.
“In theory.” Ted said. “But it is a dangerous kind of spell. Once you start the reaction it wont stop. So you need to make sure it is benign to anybody else who it happens to be passed to. But, given the effect is 'overthrow malign controls' it will probably do nothing to most people.” He tapped his nose. “Unless all those conspiracy theories are true and we are all in trouble.”
Our flight was called and we joined the queue at the gate.
The flight was long. I managed to contain my own fears and pretend for the whole time that I was not secretly planning how to survive when my luck kicked in and the plane hurtled towards the ground in a flaming mass of wreckage. Perhaps it was Doreen. She was mystified by the plane and even as the hours wore on and the bears drifted into snoozes of whistling snores she was up and awake and alive. She watched the world through the window and borrowed my tablet to learn everything she could about aircraft. Gwyn sat on her lap and gave her blustery explanations of the engines, wings, or other devices, that would raise more questions, that would require more bluster, that in turn opened him to more questions. Both were in their element.
Wendy was sat on my other side. She nudged me and grinned when ever she thought I needed some encouragement, or when ever I needed warning that Ginger had put on his life jacket or had locked himself in the overhead locker. There were only a few moments when the bears ended up where they should not have been, but the flight attendants seemed to be bemused rather than angry and sympathised with my plight as I ushered the ursine menaces back to their seats.
At some point I fell asleep. My dreams, for the first time in a while, were not haunted.
*
We hired a van for the drive. One with a lot of seats and air conditioning. There were lots of volunteers to drive, but as I was the one whose feet reached the pedals I got the honours. We listened to the radio, we talked and we drove. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, we were a few hundred kilometres north of the city. Then, out of the ochre dust and rocks, the scrub and the brush, a chain link fence emerged over the horizon. It was covered, every few hundred metres with battered metal and plastic signs warning us that to enter Hollow Canyon was both a criminal offence and bad for the health.