by McLay, Craig
“Argh!” I yelled, falling sideways.
“Mark!” Max yelled. He jumped up and grabbed the spear gun, which he swung wildly at the C-Mech’s head. Sparks flew where he made contact.
The C-Mech lost its grip and sagged back to the floor. I cradled the sphere on my chest and scooted back on my butt.
“I think it’s done,” Max said, examining it closely. Although I was sure the C-Mech was about to jump back to its feet and grab Max by the throat, it didn’t. “Just a blip.”
Keeping one eye on the machine, I got back to my feet and walked over to the edge of the table. It was so wide that I couldn’t reach far enough to just drop the sphere into the notch in the centre, but the table curved downwards like a funnel. If I just put the sphere on there, I figured, it would roll in there by itself.
I placed the sphere on the edge of the lip. Instead of rolling straight down the way I expected it to, it just sat there.
“That’s weird,” Max said, leaning down to try to look under the table. “Maybe there’s a switch or something.”
I was just about to reach out and pick up the sphere to try to drop it directly into the hole when it started to glow. And it started to move. It wasn’t moving down, however, it was moving sideways.
Specifically, it was moving in a slow orbital arc around the centre of the table, which itself was starting to glow.
In fact, the entire ship was starting to glow.
The view over our heads changed. The lip of the crater disappeared. Then the clouds. Then the sky. A moment later, we were looking at stars. More stars than I had ever imagined existed in my life.
“Wait a minute,” Max said, holding out his arms to steady himself. “Are we…moving?”
“Fascinating,” Tristan said, then closed his eyes.
I went to sit next to Violet, who was sitting with her father’s head on her lap. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“Sorry, Violet,” I said, awkwardly putting an arm around her shoulders.
“Call me Elspeth,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Or Elly.”
“Okay. It might take me some time to get used to that, though.”
I felt something move. It took me a moment to realize that it was my cell phone, which was still stuck in the left pocket of my jeans. This took me by surprise for a couple of reasons. First, I had forgotten that it was there. Second, I was positive that I had turned it off. I dug the phone out of my pocket. A message was displayed on the screen:
PLEASE RECHARGE PHONE
IMMEDIATELY
“That’s weird,” I said. “I thought I had turned this off.”
Violet looked at the screen. “Is that your usual recharge message?”
I thought about it. I had always been super anal about never letting my phone battery drop below 50%, so I didn’t know what it did if the power got critically low. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.”
I tried to access the phone to see how much battery power I actually did have left, but for some reason, it was refusing to recognize my pass code. Instead, it just kept defaulting back to the same message. “What the hell? Now it’s not letting me in! Did somebody reset my phone on me?”
Violet – sorry, Elspeth – took the phone out of my hand and examined it for a moment. “I don’t believe it,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s not your phone,” she said. “It’s Hudson.”
“It’s what?”
She looked from the fallen C-Mech to my phone and then back again. “It must have been when he grabbed you. He realized that the C-Mech was dying and he jumped to the only other available connection.”
“My phone?”
Elspeth nodded and handed the phone back. “Looks that way.”
“You’re saying that asshole jumped out of that thing over there and now he’s in my phone?” I could just picture Hudson in there browsing through my search history, looking at my photos and reading all my emails. The thought of it made me want to barf. I tried to turn the phone off. Instead of shutting down, it presented a new message:
GH: LET’S DISCUSS THIS, MR SIMMS
“Discuss this?” I said. “Is he out of his fucking mind?”
Elspeth nodded. “Well, he did transplant his consciousness to a machine and then your phone, so, technically, that is precisely what he is.”
I typed:
MS: GO FUCK YOURSELF
A reply came momentarily:
GH: ALL MY KNOWLEDGE AND POWER CAN BE YOURS
“Do you believe this guy?” I said.
MS: KEEP IT, ASSHOLE
GH: I CAN MAKE YOU RICH AND POWERFUL
MS: SEE ABOVE
GH: RETURN TO EARTH. I HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY TO SAVE BILLIONS
“He’s lying,” Elspeth said. “Even if he did, he would never use it. As soon as we got back, he’d put himself back into the network and kill everyone still alive who knew what he’d done, including us.”
“I know that!” I said, a tad defensively. “Max! C’mere a sec, would you?”
Max had been standing at the table, almost hypnotized by the way the sphere had been going round and round the table. He snapped back to awareness and limped over.
“What’s up?”
I held out my hand. “I need to borrow the spear gun for a second.”
“Sure.” Max handed it over. I walked to the middle of the floor near the ramp and put the cell phone on the ground.
GH: PLEASE RECONSIDER
GH: I AM A REPOSITORY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE ACQUIRED BY MANKIND
GH: I BEG YOU
I reached down and typed in my last message:
MS: TTFN
Then I stood up, raised the spear gun up with both hands and brought the butt end down on the screen. It shattered with a satisfying crunch. I hit it a couple of more times before I was satisfied.
“Geez, man,” Max said. “Why not just pull the battery?”
I left the remains of the phone where it was and sat down again next to Elspeth. “Any idea where we’re going?”
“No,” she said. “None whatsoever.”
“I hope they have women there,” Max mused. “And food.”
“Good to see that your priorities haven’t changed,” I said.
“Oh hey,” Elspeth said. “What’s rule number five? You promised you would tell me.”
RULE #5
When you are allowed to give up:
ABSOLUTELY
FUCKING
NEVER
The End
About the Author
CRAIG MCLAY was born in Scotland and asked to leave shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, he does not live in Tuscany, although his Italian is terrible. He currently lives in a small forest with his wife, two sons, and a cat named after the greatest midfielder in the history of football. He can be reached at his Facebook author page.
Editorial Assistance: Jenn Harris (www.lucidpulp.com)
Cover Design: Book Creatives (www.bookcreatives.com)
Also by Craig McLay
Village Books
Deadline
The International Cinema Society (coming 2015)
The Keys Series
The Island At The End Of The World
The Shadow Of The Beast