Claws broke forth, two to each appendage. They were accompanied by tube-like structures that contained multiple eyes, jet black and unblinking. Felix’s blood practically froze. What …?
Scorpions! They were scorpions! But they were fantastically huge! Somehow Carolyn had entered an era when monstrosities like these had walked the earth!
She didn’t scream — her ERR prevented that — but the look on her face was one of desperation. With no weapon in hand, she’d bunched her fists together and was girding herself for a pointless show of combat.
Concentrating hard, Felix extended an arm. Although the sensation was excruciating — it felt as if he were sticking his hand in boiling tar — he saw his arm materialize in that prehistoric world. Stretching farther, he managed to tap Carolyn’s shoulder. She flinched, thinking she was under attack, then grabbed his hand and jumped in his direction, even as he hauled at her with all his strength. She felt a stinger brush her hair, missing her by inches.…
And then she was in the vortex and her proportions were distorted. A shower of light beams was propelling them forward, toward a space of dust and shadow. An eternity later (although it was only an instant) they were thrown into this unknown setting, even as their limbs assumed their normal shape.
“Are you okay?” Felix asked, climbing to his feet.
“Thanks to you,” she panted. “But … where are we?”
Reassured that she was safe, he examined their setting. Light was entering through a far-off window and revealed that they were surrounded by … books. The room’s entire width, which measured fifty metres, was full of cases that stood a metre from each other, allowing enough space for someone to pass. Each case rose from the floor to the ceiling and continued for the length of the room — far into the shadows away from the windows. The shelves themselves were packed with books of every shape, size, and colour. The air was thick with disintegrating paper, a rich smell that made Felix think of … his father.
He knew exactly where he was.
“We’re back,” he informed Carolyn. “We’re in the Book Repository. The statue from the temple attracted us here.”
He pointed to a statue of Diana in an alcove. The goddess’s arm was raised in greeting — a sight he had seen on countless occasions.
“Thank goodness,” Carolyn sighed. “We actually made it.” She stopped a moment and considered Felix. He had approached his father’s old-fashioned desk and was running his finger along its green-baize surface.
“We should tell my father we’ve arrived,” she said gently.
He nodded and motioned to a black cube on the desk. She looked at it and almost managed a smile.
“I thought Speakboxes vanished decades ago.”
“My father’s old-fashioned. That Speakbox is the only piece of technology in here.”
“It’s more than adequate. General Manes,” she spoke, addressing the cube.
“Processing,” the cube replied. A moment later it was playing a message.
“This is General Isaiah Manes. Please leave me a voiceprint.”
“That’s odd,” Carolyn mused. “He never fails to answer when I call. Is there a Holo-port nearby?”
“There’s one across the street, in the Nano-Center. It’s over this way.”
Leading Carolyn through a warren of shelves, he hurried to the exit in the building’s northeast corner. There were window wells along the wall, although most had been filled in over the past few decades. And the ceiling, although worn, was highly ornate, an indication that the space had been a place of elegance.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“This building was something called a department store. It was called Hudson’s Bay and was at one time very popular. It should have been razed, but the Federation preserved it for historical reasons. It seemed the perfect choice for a book repository.”
By now they’d left the building through a pair of glass doors and were crossing Road 11 (formerly Yonge Street), a four-tiered thoroughfare that was the city’s central artery. Felix looked around. The area was the same: its totalium towers dwarfed his father’s building; the streets and sidewalks were immaculately swept; every pane of glass had been brought to a shine; and there was an ion crackle splitting the air, a sign the Weather Template was planning rain for that evening. On the other hand, there wasn’t a soul in the streets, no shoppers, no businessmen, no tourists, no one. The lack of any human presence made the district feel … unsettling.
“There’s the Nano-Center,” Felix cried, suppressing a shiver.
They hastened into a nearby tower that, with its exceptional height and swivelling dome, was the city’s crowning landmark. It too betrayed no signs of life except for a screen by the entrance to a Vacu-lift. Ignoring it, they approached a Holo-port at the far end of the lobby. Reciting her log-in code and her dad’s contact number, she waited for the link to engage. Sure enough, an image of her father took shape.
“This is General Isaiah Manes,” the hologram spoke. “Please leave me a voiceprint.” The image popped, like a bubble bursting.
“I don’t understand …” Carolyn started to say.
“Contact Doctor Lee,” Felix said. “He’ll tell us where your father is.”
Again she recited her login code and the doctor’s information. It took ten seconds for the link to register, and when the doctor’s face came into focus, Carolyn and Felix felt their spines turn to water.
The hologram showed Doctor Lee slumped over in the cubicle where he’d discussed their mission with them. His hair was dishevelled, his chin unshaven, and his suit wrinkled and unfastened at its top. His black-ringed eyes met the Holo-port’s lens and he projected an air of abject surrender.
“It is over,” he murmured. “We have utterly failed. I offer my apologies to General Manes, to my colleagues, and every citizen at large. Although the gesture is a futile one, I feel I must do something to restore my honour. Please forgive me.”
He brought a vial to his lips and swallowed deeply. There was a skull and crossbones on the vial’s label and, an instant later, the doctor was dead. The Holo-port went blank and a calm voice offered to replay the message.
Felix was sweating. Despite her ERR, Carolyn looked nervous.
“I don’t understand …” she said.
“I think I do,” Felix replied, pointing to the Holo-port’s console. “Look at today’s date. It’s October 15, 2214. For some strange reason, we’ve been gone a year.”
“So …?”
“So we didn’t find the lupus ridens. And scientists found no cure for the plague. That means the planet has been emptied of all human life.”
Without awaiting her reaction, he strolled over to the lobby’s Teledata screen. It featured World President Sajit Gupta. The speech was a recording — its upload date was March 11 and that meant it had been playing for months on end. Felix stared at the broadcast. Whereas the president was normally self-possessed, he had lost his confidence and seemed badly rattled.
And his face was covered with scarlet spots.
“Dear citizens,” he spoke, in a wavering voice. “Please grant me your attention for a final broadcast from your leader. It is with profound regret that I announce we have been defeated by this plague. Despite our best efforts, the virus has struck every human on the planet, even those who strictly abided by the curfew. Half our brothers and sisters have perished, and the remainder are in orbit, waiting for the inevitable to happen.”
He paused, to regain his composure. To Felix’s amazement, he brushed a renegade tear from his eye.
“For millennia,” he resumed, “we humans defeated every threat to our survival, from predators and famine, to political strife and global warming. At times we created terrible havoc, delighting in war, savagery, and ignorance. But as often as we proved destructive, we manifested virtues that more than made up for our violence: inventiveness, generosity, compassion, and open-mindedness. Surely other intelligent beings, if they exist and one day visit our plane
t, will have ample reason to condemn us for our faults; but at the same time, studying our record as a whole, they will gasp at our achievements and mourn the extinction of our grandeur.”
He coughed and passed a hand across his brow: his strength was ebbing fast.
“Finally, you have noticed that I am speaking with emotion. This is because I have had my ERR reversed and am subject to a diversity of feelings. I have acted thus because I am convinced it is incumbent on me, as the last elected spokesman for our planet, to address you and my future non-human audience as a true and proud product of my species, with all my mental proclivities on display. We have come so far,” he lamented, raising his eyes, “and with our demise, something rare and precious disappears — as light inevitably must dissolve into shadow.” He lowered his eyes and faced the camera.
“God bless us all,” he whispered. Then the screen went blank.
The recording ended, only to start again. His speech was too tragic to hear a second time, and Felix and Carolyn retreated from the screen. Standing by the building’s exit, they were struggling to digest the unbearable truth: they were the only humans alive on the planet.
“Our plan is obvious,” she finally spoke. “We’ll grab a shuttle, board the space station, return to the past, and find the lupus ridens.”
“We’d better get started,” Felix agreed. “Before we’re infected with the plague.”
They passed outside and approached a Dispersion Portal: it would take them to the Shuttle Depot where they would pilot a craft and ride it to the TPM. They hadn’t taken a dozen steps, however, when three Enforcement Drones swooped in. Blocking their path, the drones ordered them to stop.
“You are in violation of Presidential Order 3214T566 that specifies all civilians, unless formally exempted, shall remain under strict quarantine. Failure to comply with this directive involves immediate detention of no less than thirty days.”
“Don’t interfere,” Carolyn protested. “We’re on important business.”
“You are in violation of Presidential Order 3214T566 …” the lead E.D. repeated, even as it closed in on the pair. A compartment opened and Felix watched as a stun-rod appeared: it could deliver 20,000 volts of electricity.
“They mean business,” he whispered. “We’d better return to the Nano-Center.”
“Remain where you are,” the drone insisted, as they took to their heels. It followed in pursuit and would have zapped them for sure if Carolyn hadn’t performed a backwards flip, landed on its CPU and crushed it flat. Before the other drones reacted, she joined Felix and they hurried into the Center. To keep the E.D.s from pouring in, she kicked a locking panel and smashed its circuitry to pieces.
“That should hold them,” she said, as the drones let loose a siren and summoned reinforcements. “How do you propose we get to the depot?”
Felix stood there thinking. They couldn’t be arrested. Being machines, the drones would carry out their orders and lock them away and therefore expose them to the plague. They had to reach the depot, but the question was how? In keeping with municipal code, there were no Portals inside the Nano-Center, and proceeding outside was out of the question, even if they took a different exit, as by now the drones would have the building surrounded. And they couldn’t tunnel underground.…
Or could they?
“Follow me!” Felix cried, heading to a door, which led to a staircase. Just as he suspected, there were stairs going down as well as up. Descending them two steps at a time, the pair reached the basement and the entrance to a storage space. This is where piles of scrap lay waiting: exercise chairs, executive think-pods, memory tanks, data-tubes, janitorial probes, and other ancient devices, all of them slated at some point for recycling. Looking past this junk that just years before had been state of the art, Felix searched for a distinctive marker.
“Why are we here?” Carolyn asked.
“Ages ago there were these underground tunnels. They had these metal tracks that cars would run on and carry people to different points in the city. One line ran the length of Road 11, with stations at this intersection and where the depot now stands.”
“That’s just an urban legend.”
“No, they really existed. And the authorities never filled them in because they thought they might be needed in a crisis. The entrance would be marked with an ‘S.’”
“There’s an ‘S’ over there,” she announced, motioning to her left.
“That’s it!” he yelled. “What did I tell you?”
In a distant corner of that overcrowded space, beyond a stack of cortical implants, was a large “S” painted in fluorescent yellow. It was covered in dust and badly worn, but was visible still. Below it was a metal door.
Of course, it was locked. Felix was going to force it open, but Carolyn motioned to a box beside it. Blowing off a layer of dust, she uncovered a label on its plastic cover: “Break in the event of an emergency.”
“This is an emergency,” she mused, rapping the plastic with her knuckles. A moment later she extracted a key, which she inserted into a lock on the door. She manoeuvred it gingerly — the lock’s pins were rusted — but a click rang out and the lock gave way.
They opened the door and stepped onto a stairwell that was set inside a vertical concrete shell. Glancing down, they guessed it was thirty metres high and, at its bottom, passed into the roof of a tunnel — the subway tunnel, or so Felix assumed. Before he could get a good look at the structure, he heard the E.D.’s vibrating in the distance. He closed the door — and cut their lighting off.
They descended the stairs, their footsteps echoing up and down its concrete hollows. The structure was old, slippery in places and, most alarming, jiggled at every step. They were glad when they reached its bottom without the metal collapsing.
“What now?” Carolyn asked. “It’s pitch black in here.…”
Even as she spoke a fluorescent light came alive – it had been activated by their movements, no doubt. It triggered a series of other lights, ones that stretched off in both directions and illuminated the tunnel and its rusted tracks. They also disclosed a band of shadows that vanished swiftly into the tunnel’s cracks, indignant that their privacy was under assault.
“Are those rats?” Carolyn asked.
“I think they are. I guess the Vermin Sentries don’t patrol this far. Come on.”
Felix set off down the tunnel, following an arrow that pointed to “Union Station.” The going wasn’t easy. There was a walkway to one side, but it was crumbled in places and required them to stick to the tracks. The problem here was that the wooden ties had rotted and provided them with little purchase for their feet. At the same time water was leaking in — there was the sound of dripping all about them — and some of it had gathered in substantial puddles. Thank goodness the third rail had no power running through it: Felix had listened closely and could hear no hum.
It was easier to walk single file. Felix was in front of Carolyn and listening idly to their footfall.
“Everyone’s dead,” she said.
“I know.”
“Including my father.”
“I’m very sorry. I know how you feel.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t feel anything. It was just like this when my mother died. I was eight at the time and couldn’t stop crying. That was when I underwent ERR. Maybe he was right.”
“Who was right?”
“The president, when he had his ERR reversed. He was right to die in a natural state. Although I don’t understand his remark about God. His last words were … delirious.”
“Maybe that’s the point.”
She might have added more, but the tunnel broadened and they passed into an open space. It was brightly lit and in good condition. The wall’s blue tiles were intact, as was its red brick floor and aluminum ceiling. Even its lettering was legible: King Station.
“Union Station’s next,” Felix said, pausing to survey the two subway platforms. The place was grimier than it had be
en two centuries before, but it was easy to imagine the commuters back then waiting impatiently for their train to approach.
“It’s well preserved,” Carolyn commented, reading his thoughts.
“Yes. It’s what the world will look like a thousand years from now: all dressed up with nowhere to go.”
“Let’s keep moving.”
“Good idea.”
They continued walking. By now their feet were virtually sodden. At the same time their soles were aching because the tracks were uneven and pressed into their flesh. Still, they kept at it. Felix was imagining the men who’d constructed this tunnel, the work it had taken to blast through the rock and the expert engineering that had gone into the project. The president was right: when all was said and done humans were amazing. Not just the population that had travelled this subway, but the countless generations before them, the aboriginals who had crossed the Bering Strait, the Europeans who had come centuries later, the Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, the Egyptians.… They had all known savagery and superstition, yet all of them without exception had contributed something to the human … drama.
A far-off drone interrupted his thoughts. Glancing back, he could see flashing lights behind them, at a distance of maybe five hundred metres. The E.D.s had discovered the door to the stairwell, descended the steps, and were hot on their trail.
“Let’s run for it,” Felix murmured, picking up his pace.
Without answering, Carolyn followed suit. Spying a stretch of unbroken walkway, she leaped onto it and urged Felix to follow.
There was a sound of high-pitched beeping behind them: the E.D.’s’ tracking devices had picked up their movements. They were four hundred metres away and closing in quickly.
“Halt!” a mechanical voice announced. “You are in violation of Presidential Order 3214T566 …”
“There’s Union Station!” Felix cried, as the tracks curved left and disclosed another well-lit space before them.
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