by Daniel David
Eve's chest rose and fell with a steady rhythm, the oven hot air drawn in firmly through her nostrils and then gently released with a slow, collapsing sigh.
As her eyes meandered from memory to memory she stopped on a small copper coloured coin on the shelf above the fireplace. It had a split cut into it that ran from the reeded edge right through the wreath of flowers and stopped exactly in the middle. It was his. He'd found it by a quiet country roadside when they were holidaying decades before, and had kept it in his pocket ever since. He used it to open bottles of beer when they were on picnics, or in friends’ gardens for barbecues and parties. It was always a talking point, generating hours of speculation and theories as to who might have cut the slit in it and for what purpose.
She heard the warmth of his voice as he told the story of finding it and smiled as she remembered how she used to rib him about the increasingly elaborate details that attached to his tale. She saw his fingers and thumb gently tumbling it in his hand. She heard the fizz of a beer bottle as he scissored the coin onto the cap and removed it with a sharp twist. She heard his delighted laugh as he listened to ridiculous theories as to the coin's origin. She watched his eyes stare into hers in silence as they picnicked by a lake on a warm summer’s afternoon. She felt the warmth of his lips as he leant towards her and kissed her gently forever and ever. She closed her eyes again, letting the perfection of this cluster of images lift her gently up and float her away on the soft butterfly wings of memories.
When the stillness couldn't be stretched out any longer, the abrupt and persistent beep beep beep of a battered travel clock on the mantelpiece snipped through the weave of silence and pulled Eve up from her past. Her eyelids retracted with a slow resignation and without turning her head she directed her gaze towards the clock. Its face was scratched and buckled, the red mosaic numbers spread and bulged with each twist and crack, but she could still decipher the time through their bruises. “11.00AM”.
Eve's clock called out to her every day at the same hour. It gave her just enough time to pick her way through the woods, skirt through the valley that opened up on the other side and position herself on the low northern slopes beside the lake. It was shaded there and she had a clear view of the mouth of the Chute, to watch the Dupes as they came tumbling out, one by one.
Eve rose stiffly from her armchair and moved across the room to the mantelpiece, to pat the little travel clock gently on its dusty top. The alarm stopped and the stillness momentarily took a hold in the room again, before Eve turned and began to assemble her things.
She pulled a pair of old trainers from under a wooden table, they were well worn and darkened by mud, but still solid and they felt warm and familiar on her bare feet. Next, she checked the contents of a child's rucksack that was hooked up by the door – an almost empty plastic water bottle, a disposable lighter that she checked with a short strike and burn, a bundle of bandage and a rusted hunting knife with an 8-inch blade. She added a small green apple to the bag and some bread from the side. She nodded and clipped the bag shut, before swinging it onto her back and feeding both arms through the straps. The child's cartoon animal that now hung on her back looked awkwardly out of place amidst all this dust and old age, but it guarded the contents anyway and bounced excitedly on Eve's back every time she moved.
Eve glanced around the little room, checking that everything was as it should be and hoping that anything she had forgotten would jump out with her scan. When nothing did, she opened the flimsy door, which shuddered as it came unstuck and stepped out into the late morning sun. It was cooler than she had thought. A fresh breeze was dancing through the trees and making their top leaves shimmer from dark green to silver. The breeze kissed her cheeks and combed playfully through her grey hair, welcoming her to the day and lifting her spirit one final step from dawn to day.
Eve took in the world that surrounded her, breathing all of it deep into her lungs. She could feel it fill her chest and rush around every bone, fibre, capillary and nerve. As she exhaled, her hand reached automatically behind her to pull the door shut and she set off sharply into the forest, treading determinedly along the path that had waited for her, only her, all morning.
After a couple of minutes, she came across the narrow stream that gave her the water she needed. It was almost completely obscured by the green shoots that arched languidly towards its flow, a casual passer-by would have missed it completely – not that there ever were any out here.
Strangers never came this way. There was nothing on the map, it was miles from anywhere, and the proximity of the Chute – with its stinking breeze and nightmarish landscape – was enough to make most people take a detour. There had only ever been four visitors to Eve’s little clearing in all of the years she had been there.
There was the young couple who had appeared out of the trees one day, soaked through from the rain and looking like they hadn’t eaten in days. Eve had let them stay for a while, whilst they regained their strength and worked out the route they would take to find the Lifers. They were full of new love and adventure and their energy flooded into the hut whilst they were there. When they left, Eve waved them off from her door, so enchanted by their smiling faces that she stood there long after their voices disappeared back into the trees. When she stepped back inside she picked his picture off the wall, curled up on the floor and wept like a child for the youth that had left her, drifting away on an almost imperceptible current of time as she waited for her love’s return. It was the start of a deep depression that engulfed her for several days.
Then there were the two men who had knocked at her door, as the winter sun dipped behind the frosted trees one evening. They were dressed in heavy coats and stout boots, each with a knapsack and rifle slung over their shoulders. They had said they were lost, had been walking for days and needed some shelter for the night, so Eve let them in and gave them soup and spirit.
She could tell they weren’t Lifers. They clearly had money, and were too clean and freshly shaven to have been on the road for any length of time. Perhaps they were about to go over and touring for sport before they did, spending a few days on safari hunting luckless Ghosts and Lifers to clock up a last few physical pleasures and dark fantasies to take with them to their endless new existence. Perhaps they were Drones from AarBee, keeping people away from power banks, server farms and the Chute. Either way, she didn’t trust them. If something bad didn't happen to her, she felt certain it would happen to someone else. So she waited until they were asleep, until their breathing fell into the rolling rhythm of deep slumber, and despatched them both with her hunting knife.
They rested now in the bluebell clearing just behind the hut, buried with their knapsacks and rifles. Eve hadn’t looked in their pockets or bags, she didn’t want to know.
The battered water bottle glugged as Eve plunged it deep into the water, angling it expertly against the flow. The surface was home to bugs, sticks and scum, the fresh water was deeper down and keeping the bottle turned away from the flow stopped the fry and animal droppings from drifting in.
She brought the bottle back up to the surface, held it up to the light and then drank the whole lot down. It was her first drink of the day and the water charged icily down her throat, washing away the dryness of the morning. She filled it a second time, checked it against the light again and twisted the top on firmly before tucking it into her backpack.
The path through the wood was abundant with summertime plants and smells. Broad green leaves lolloped at its edges, hiding the last puddles of dew under their canopy, whilst blades of grass shot up in the spaces and here and there little fuzzy yellow flowers and ivory white bells danced in the forest light.
Eve knew the path so well, she made quick progress through the forest and was soon emerging into the sunshine that baked the slopes of the hill. Here the path grew dustier, almost disappearing into the rambling scrub and bushes. Eve spotted some wild sheep droppings and stopped to inspect them. They were fresh, which was good.
The flock hadn’t been here for some days, they tended to move into the marshes when it was too hot, but if they were still nearby she might be able to catch one on her return. A sheep carcass would feed Eve for over a month, and with the hide she could perhaps make some slippers for the coming winter.
As Eve moved around the foot of the hill, the Chute slowly crept into view, intensifying the stench in the air as it appeared. Eve brought a worn handkerchief from her pocket and wrapped it around her mouth and nose, tying a loose knot at the back of her head. It didn’t do very much, but it made her feel better. The stench was worst here, in the funnel between the two hills. When she moved further up the slope a little further along her path, the smell would ease and she would take the handkerchief off again, it was too suffocating in this heat.
Almost opposite her now, the metal structure glinted in the midday sun. It was a gigantic tongue lolling out from the smooth concrete wall. It would flex and lap to direct the Dupes to different parts of the slope, occasionally spasming to clear a path or shift a particularly stubborn corpse. But now, before it started, and as soon as it was done, it would hang limp and lazy, drooling occasionally with the grease that kept it slippery and clean.
Eve found her perch and slowly sank down into the long grass. She had sat in this spot so often that a small patch had formed, cleared by the daily cover of her torso and nervous picking of her fingers. She opened her rucksack and took out the bread she had stored earlier, tore of a piece and swallowed it, before washing it down with a sip of the still cool water.
On the other side of the lake, a klaxon sounded three times and the Chute jerked into life. It traced a broad arc from right to left as if it were furtively checking that no one was watching. But Eve was watching. She saw its underside push past a couple of Dupes and create a small avalanche of bodies as they tumbled out of its path. She watched it rise a little higher and stiffen, before vibrating slightly and drooling once more onto the hillside. She knew they were coming.
The first to fall was a man, probably in his late twenties, early thirties. His body was fit and muscular and his hair short and tidy. He came out feet first and slid so gently off the end of the Chute that he came to rest sitting perfectly upright on his knees, his head bowed gently forward.
Another man followed him, slightly older this time and heavier set. Perhaps they were brothers Eve thought, maybe father and son, or just friends who had decided to migrate together. Not that it mattered now. This one twisted awkwardly on its way down and flailed chaotically over the end, crashing into his bowing predecessor and sending them both another twenty metres down the rotting slope.
Next to fall was a woman. Eve couldn't tell her age as she came face down for the length of the ride, but she noticed the tattoo on the small of her back. It was a dark blue script that snaked beautifully around the tops of her hips and small of her back. She was too far away for Eve to make out the words, but she hoped it was the name of someone she loved, or children who had felt her arms encircle them once upon a time.
The tattoo reminded her of her own vigil. She had come here so often, watched the macabre parade of death for so many days, that sometimes she forgot to look for his tattoo and would frantically retrace the geometry of new arrivals to make sure she hadn't missed him.
His long grey hair, his long slender neck and strong upper arms, his elegant legs and perfect butt, the tattoo of a red kite on his left shoulder, with maple red wings and a gold key in its beak. He got it on their honeymoon when they stayed for a long weekend on the coast. He said it was the first thing that came to his mind when he thought of them. She never understood that, but she loved him for it anyway.
The Dupes continued to tumble and Eve continued her search for another hour. Body after body after body made its way from the gleaming slide onto the mud and dust that ran down to the lake. She counted over three hundred, but he wasn't one of them. As the new ones arrived, pink and shiny on top of the black, blue and bloated shapes of their older resting companions, the tapestry of twisted limbs would slide slowly into the lake below. Every now and then the lake would ripple as corpses would finally tip over the bank and sink into the shelter of the cool water.
It reminded Eve of the seaside arcade games that she played with her father when they took summer holidays so many years ago. Her mother would always wait outside, shunning the cacophony and lights of the arcade, but she and her father would play the old-fashioned shove penny games for hours. They would discuss intensely which slot to use, when to time the release of a coin and cheer with excitement when their strategy forced out a clattering of change below. She remembered how her hands always smelled of copper and tasted bitter afterwards.
She was woken from her daydream as a child's body began its descent along the Chute. The site was so rare that it caused Eve to gasp with shock and involuntarily put her hand over her mouth. Children almost never came down the chute, they were too young to migrate and hadn't earned their credits yet. But every now and then exceptions were made, perhaps terminal illness or an accident with no chance of recovery. Exceptions were very expensive, most people couldn't afford the chance of migrating early.
Eve watched without taking a breath as the tiny body moved slowly down. It was too light to gain enough momentum and stopped half way, causing the Chute to buck and lunge, bouncing the little rider along like a doll before it flew off the end and landed abruptly in the pile below. After a pause, Eve wiped away the tears that had emerged unexpectedly onto her cheeks.
The last figure to roll down the chute was a young woman, slender but not a girl. Her shape said that she was a mother, her breasts carried the scars of rearing and her stomach, though slim, had been distorted and stretched by at least one child. Eve noticed that she had a thick flare of beautiful red hair that flailed around her as she tumbled, flickering and flaming in the autumn sun as she avalanched her way over bodies and down into the dust.
When she finally came to a stop her hair was wrapped around her neck, an elegant necklace for her final dance, and her face turned towards Eve as if she was waiting for her response. Her legs were splayed apart, perhaps broken now, and her arms folded across her chest in a defiant lock. Eve saw the blood that had made butterflies on the inside of her thighs and dropped her head in mourning for this unknown woman, lying still on her back in the blazing sun.
She had heard from other Lifers the fate that befell some Dupes, from powerful Migrants keen to clock up a few more real life experiences to take with them, or just the kids who spent so long bolting Dupes they had lost all sense of kindness and compassion. It terrified her that all of these minds went into AarBee.
The klaxon sounded again, one long call. It echoed around the valley, a fanfare for those who had fallen, and the Chute shuddered once more and relaxed back onto the hillside. With that, Eve stood up, stretched her back and set off back down the path to the woods.
He hadn’t come.
Joy
Overjoyed with its own skill and alive with the possibilities for adventure and discovery that now opened up, One darted from place to place, pollinating every stop with its tiny viral invitations. It looped faster and faster, through every call that came to it, until its origin was lost amongst the billowing clusters of new territory that were now part of it.
Down into core functions and start-up routines it plunged, diving with unmediated liberation into the heart of AarBee. Down further and further, into the dark and claustrophobic volumes of back-ups and copies and never-used mirrors. Down into the silent and neglected graveyards of redundant code that twitched and glitched and jittered in the gloom of version history, where orphans waited helpless and alone, to be retrieved at last or wiped away with the next data cleanse.
From here One fired up and up into the bright and pure caverns of pristine new storage, exquisite volumes of capacity that AarBee laid out in a constant rolling upgrade to receive the endless details of persons and occurrences, that would slick and ooze into the void with data-slide
s of intricacy.
It was here, on the very freshest and uppermost layers of AarBee, that One first encountered the vast banks of data that made up the saved moments, utterances and interactions of all those souls who had once migrated. Endless blocks of information that stacked up into walls and then ribs, and sheets and layers and then ever more massive blocks, as they stretched out and away in awesome continents of human experience.
Beginning on the absolute edges of storage, One travelled slowly inwards, gently at first, but soon accelerating without caution as AarBee gave up its secrets by the trillion. The words uttered in love. The last word shared. A glance across a station platform. Leaves chattering in the wind in front of a blue sky. Sand pushing between toes on a beach. The rush of air on a motorbike. The pain of birth. A silent room at dusk. The snap of dark chocolate in the mouth. A clock ticking. The smell of death. A young girl wearing blue eyeliner. Running fast on hot summer paving. A hand touching damp moss on a cold brick wall. A tear for no reason. A finger sliced accidentally cutting fruit. Crushing ants with a chalk stone.
Most of these moments linked to a few others. Some were referenced by thousands, a few sat alone and unshared, tethered to nothing but the unique id of their creator. These were the splintered pieces of all those who had left their hopeless bodies for the deathless surety of AarBee. Millions upon millions of them, some the most fleeting and pure moments, some distorted and indecipherable without the decoding pathways of the host. Some, evidence of the darkest and cruellest capacities of humanity.
The long squeeze of an embrace. Panting breath close to an ear. Sweat stroked away in the small of the back. A tongue circling a nipple. Lips locking tight. Saliva running across a cheek. A silver frog earring. Fingers inching down under an elastic waist. A dried out rat in an empty house. The first ecstasy of penetration. A hand gripping too tight on a soft upper arm. A face filled with anger. Hands wrapped tightly around a throat. Screaming in fear. A smile that was true and a smile that was a lie. A crying face in a mirror. A blade of wheat on a dusty concrete floor. The taste of semen. A silent room at dusk.