by Al Robertson
‘I don’t know how they stand it, Jack.’
‘No wonder they always love coming out to visit.’
The two figures became more distinct. One was only about a third the height of the other. Both were bundled up in dirty rags. It was difficult to tell their sex. Jack wondered if they were just statues posed to ward off or welcome strangers. There was nothing else visible that could have been a person – or rather, as Jack reminded himself, a fetch. Again, he imagined being trapped here perpetually. He idly wondered when his sanity would leave him. It occurred to him that this environment might not allow that much change, that even the relief of madness would be impossible.
‘We’ve got to get out of here, Fist.’
They reached the end of the bridge. As they came closer to the figures Jack saw that they had white sheets draped over their heads. They did seem to be human, or some recreation of something human, for each was pointing down with one white hand. The hands shimmered oddly, never quite settling down into a final, fixed image of themselves. ‘Posers,’ said Fist.
The wind rattled through the streets of the city, dancing between the pillars of light that speared down from the clouds. Blank windows and empty doors stared out at Jack and Fist. Flickering lights lit some of them, as if a thousand televisions had been left turned on in a thousand empty rooms.
Jack walked towards one of the figures. It didn’t move. He found himself next to it. It was the taller of the two. There was a white sheet in his hand. A shimmer of a face was looking up at him. It contained all ages; sometimes a baby, sometimes a child, sometimes a young adult, sometimes haggard and old. It shifted between versions of itself so quickly that it was difficult to read, but then some sort of stasis was achieved and there was one face looking up at him.
‘Oh,’ breathed Jack. ‘It’s you.’
‘Hello Jack,’ said his mother. She was as she’d been when he left Station for the Soft War. He reached out and took her arms in his hands, testing the reality of her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, his voice full of grief.
‘I know.’
Without any movement she was holding him, and he her. Something within Jack broke and he wept. He kept on apologising. She held him close, her soft hands pulling his cheek against her soft hair. She held him close. At last he was able to talk.
‘How did you know I was coming?’ he asked her.
‘The waves tell us of new fetches. We send the right person out to meet them. We felt you coming in from the sea, but you’re so different from us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Let me show you.’
‘What about Fist?’
‘Oh – your puppet. Where’s he gone?’
Jack looked around for Fist, surprised that he’d been so silent for so long. Someone was giggling. Jack remembered the sound from life.
‘Issie?’
She skipped into view, Fist dancing along with her. She shimmered with change too, but there was much less variety in her, for she’d lived barely a tenth as long as Jack’s mother.
‘I came down with Jack’s mummy. They said Fist would be here!’ she chirped happily.
Jack had never seen her true face, only the skull. It shimmered from child to baby and then back again, beaming with fresh, open joy.
‘I had so much fun playing with him! And now he’s here, and you’re here, and everything’s going to change! I might even get to go travelling like he does! Oh, wonderful!’
She skipped towards him. Jack readied himself for another hug. But then there was a bright, silent explosion. A sunbeam leapt out of the clouds, burning into being around Issie. Where she’d been standing there was suddenly only a transparent pillar of light.
Jack took a step back. Fist’s face mimicked shock. Jack felt his mother squeeze his hand.
‘What happened?’
‘Her mother called to her.’
‘Lestak?’
‘Yes. She had to go. Any one of us can be called, at any time. The light breaks through from the weave, and summons us into it, and we go to manifest in your world. To be your puppets.’
‘You’re not puppets.’
‘You find your favourite memories, and decide that that’s how you want us to be, and then we are forced to conform to that. What would you call it?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I never really thought about it before.’
Fist was nervously skirting the sunbeam. He didn’t hear Jack’s mother. ‘This is heavy stuff, Jack,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think we can use it to get out. We could try and climb up one, but I think it would break us.’
‘Can’t we get someone to summon us?’
‘Nobody knows we’re here.’
Jack turned to his mother. ‘Can we send a message out with you?’ he asked her. ‘There are some files we need to get out.’
‘We can’t speak of life here when we’re up there,’ she replied. ‘And we can only travel out with what we remember from life, nothing else.’
Jack thought of Andrea. His mother’s voice was made of memories too, patchworked together from all the words she’d ever spoken.
‘It’s the same for all of you?’
‘Yes. I’ll show you. Fist, come here.’
She took him and Fist by the hand. All of a sudden they were overlooking the city from the top of a high metal building. Looking down, Jack saw a ragged jumble of shacks, the spaces between them never quite coalescing into streets or alleys. The soft flickering that he’d noticed on the edge of the city pervaded them all. Sunbeams danced at random around them.
‘You can see where we were standing,’ his mother told him, pointing. ‘There – the sunbeam by the bridge.’ It was a mile or so away. The bridge was a dark shape against the darker river. ‘And you see all the beams that leap into the city, pulling our minds away from here, just as we’ve begun to coalesce? I’ll show you what they do to us.’ Now they were inside one of the shacks. A flickering figure stood before them. It was naked, but there was nothing obscene about its nudity. It never fell into a single version of itself, so it was never defined enough for its flesh to be seen and properly parsed.
‘So many memories, Jack, to try and control. Sometimes we come close. Sometimes one of us approaches coherence, a final interpretation of all the data a life has left behind, but then the fetching light comes down from the weave and we fall to pieces again, broken by the nostalgia of the living.’
Jack thought of Andrea’s music. It was a focus for her memories, giving them a shape and narrative, pulling her back to a single, self-defined version of herself. His mother had no such resource to draw on.
‘How can you speak to me so clearly? Why aren’t you like – this one?’
Jack waved towards the shimmering figure. It seemed to be aware of his presence. A thousand ages of the same head turned towards him. Compound eyes tried to focus.
‘Your father’s never rolled me back, so I’m more structured than most. And the attention of all the rest of us is on me, holding me together. We’ve never had a visitor like you. If you can escape, you can tell them about all this.’
Fist had let go of Mrs Forster’s hand, and leapt on to the windowsill. While she’d been talking, he’d been scanning the city. Now, he turned back.
‘You mean – they’re all like this one? None of them ever resolving?’ he asked.
‘None of us ever can.’
‘Motherfucker.’ He turned to Jack. ‘It’s bad enough being yourself and then getting reprogrammed. This lot don’t even get that far. I wish I could give them all a feather like Andrea’s, without getting fried by the fucking Pantheon. I wish they could all become more than just puppets. The living really are a shower of cunts.’
‘But – nobody ever knew,’ said Jack. ‘The Pantheon never show us any of this.’
‘They wouldn’t,’ Fist shot back angrily.
Suddenly they were at the lakeside. There were maybe fifty metres of black, muddy earth between the
city of the dead and the silent lake. Streams running out of the city and into the depths had carved soft lines in the mud. A richly stagnant smell hung in the air.
‘So many don’t even get to exist as fetches,’ said Jack’s mother. She gestured towards the great pile of dark blocks at the heart of the lake. They had a hard, rough texture to them, tumbled together as if by a child bored of its building blocks.
‘What is that?’ Jack asked her.
‘It’s the prison. Some come to the bridge, but are snatched away and enclosed before they can even find a word to speak.’
‘That’s where Penderville is,’ said Jack. ‘And Grey’s peace protesters.’
‘We met some of their children,’ Fist explained. ‘They’re locked away, too. Just not quite as finally as this.’
‘Each of those blocks holds a weave presence?’ continued Jack.
‘Yes,’ his mother confirmed sadly. ‘Each one’s labelled with name, date of decease – everything.’
‘So all we need to do is open them up. Fist?’
‘Fuck yes. It’s not a god, but it’ll do for now.’
‘And that’ll set alarm bells ringing. The Coffin Drive admins will run diagnostics, and they’ll need a two-way link for that. They’ll see us, and we’ll be able to talk to them. I think we’ve found our ticket out of here.’ Jack turned back to his mother. ‘Can you take us to the prison?’ he said.
Before she could reply, there was a dazzling shock. Light burned out of the sky and exploded around them, catching Jack within it. He felt that he’d been lifted out of himself. A shape that could have been a face hovered before him. It resolved and became deeply familiar. It was his father. He was crying. Jack had never seen him looking this vulnerable. He wanted to reach out to him, but there was nothing to reach with. He’d lost his body in the white light.
‘Get out!’ yelled his mother. ‘Quickly! Before it’s too late!’
Jack felt a huge strong push, and then heard Fist shout ‘Fuck!’ He stumbled backwards. A white pillar blazed in front of him. His mother’s rags lay scattered just by it, fading under the hard light. She’d been called away.
‘That was pretty fucking Oedipal,’ said Fist, picking himself up off the ground. ‘Knocked me over, too. No damage, though!’
‘I’m fine too,’ Jack replied. ‘Thanks for asking.’
‘Well, that’s all we’re going to get from her,’ Fist continued obliviously. ‘At least for the moment. And who knows what sort of state she’ll be in when she gets back!’
Joy and grief pulsed together in Jack. He’d found his mother and then lost her again so quickly. He so wanted to see her again, but to do that he had to escape the Coffin Drives and then best Kingdom. He pushed emotion to one side, forcing himself to focus on the practicalities of the situation.
‘We need to get to that island.’
‘But how do we get there now your mum can’t zap us over?’
‘We swim.’
‘For fuck’s sake Jack, I’m made of wood. I’ll swell right up!’
‘Fist, we’re in a simulation.’
‘That simulates real physics.’
‘Then you’ll float and you’ll be fine. Now, will the files be OK?’
‘More worried about them than me?’
‘Fist,’ warned Jack.
‘The rucksack’s completely waterproof. Unlike certain people I could mention.’
Fist clung to Jack as they squelched towards the black, oily lake, grumbling all the way. By the time they reached it they were covered in mud. Its cold, still waters stank of decay.
‘Can’t we find a boat?’
‘Can you see one anywhere?’
Fist sighed and wrapped his arms tightly round Jack’s neck. As Jack swam, ripples rolled away from him, the only movement on the lake’s dark surface. Fist’s head and upper body were above the water. Jack distracted him by asking about strategies for hacking into the prison cubes. ‘It’s going to take a bit of creativity,’ he said thoughtfully, then went quiet, fascinated by the problem.
Jack worked hard to keep his own head above water, but couldn’t help letting it dip below the surface. Bitter water slipped into his mouth. A confusion of memories assaulted his mind. None, he realised, were his own. He lifted his head up and spat. Other people’s lives receded. ‘This isn’t water,’ he said, his voice full of realisation. ‘It’s memory. It’s what happens to fetches when nobody comes looking for them.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Fist replied disparagingly. ‘It’s like the sea round the outside of this place – low bandwidth simulation. It’s cheap servers and lazy programmers. It’s not very nice, but that’s the Coffin Drives for you.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Bless you, Jack, you’re not used to being virtual. It’s easy to let your imagination run away with you in a place like this.’
‘Really?’ said Jack, and dived down.
For a moment Jack and Fist inhabited a thousand fragments of mind, individual life shards that had gleamed and then spun away from them with all the beauty of a shattering stained-glass window. It was impossible to pick out overall patterns, but here there was a soft kiss, there the touch of a raindrop, a sudden note of music or a glimpse of Station when it had been so much smaller. All these broken notes combined into a cacophony of consciousness that had its own dying beauty. The moment stretched out, because every individual memory was unanchored from time. And then they burst spluttering out of the water, and the riot of memory left them.
‘God’s shit!’ shrieked Fist. ‘You’re right. This lake is where fetches die.’
‘The Pantheon always said our memories were a resource too precious to lose. But if this is where they end up – so much white noise, and then I suppose they just fade away.’
‘Wow. More bullshit from the gods. Whodathunkit, eh?’
They reached the island and clambered on to the lower blocks. ‘Rucksack’s OK?’ checked Jack.
‘Files untouched. I’m rather good at luggage. Maybe I should do it professionally when all this is over.’
The blocks’ hard edges were decaying. The stone of each was soft, falling away where the water touched it. As Jack and Fist slithered over them, chunks slid off.
‘Fresh minds, melting away,’ said Jack. ‘They’re like sugar cubes in tea. I can’t believe they’d do this. They’re editing anyone who disagrees with them out of Station’s memory. Can you open the blocks?’
‘I’m building a programme that’ll crack them all. When it finds Penderville it’ll bring him straight to us.’
‘Ready to go?’
‘We need to get to the top. It’ll sink down into the pile from there.’
It was impossible to tell how long it took to clamber up the pile. The higher they went, the more individual blocks retained their integrity, until those at the peak were hard-edged and polished to a high gloss. It was hard to grip them. When Jack finally reached the highest one, he collapsed, panting. Fist scrambled up and sat down next to him.
‘All ready.’
‘Do it, Fist.’
Fist stretched his hand out, palm up. For a moment, it blurred. Jack peered at it, and thought for a second that it was covered in white dust. Then he realised that Fist had summoned hundreds of tiny versions of himself into being. He flicked his hand and the tiny horde dropped away, tumbling across the black surface of the topmost cube. As they touched it, they became so many shimmering flames. A few sank into the surface of the cube. The rest danced across it, flickering towards the others beneath.
‘How long?’ Jack asked him.
‘Here? Who knows?’
‘I wonder when they’ll notice topside.’
Lightning flared in the clouds above the city, then roared down in hard, jagged lines. Bolts ploughed into it, raising gouts of flame and clouds of smoke. There were maybe a dozen impacts.
‘They’ve realised someone’s digging up granny,’ said Fist, his voice full of glee, ‘and they r
eally don’t like it. Pretty impressive diagnostics!’
‘That’s no diagnostic programme,’ replied Jack, sounding worried. ‘It’s an attack.’
Screaming drifted across the necropolis. The flames disappeared. Torn at by the breeze, the pillars of smoke they’d thrown up quickly lost integrity, falling away into nothing.
‘No it wasn’t,’ Fist told him confidently. ‘You’re getting rusty. That was just the insertion.’
‘And that’s what they’ve dropped in.’ Jack pointed at a small, dark mass, floating towards them across distant rooftops. As it came closer, he made out a bulbous head with a tiny body dangling beneath it. There was a single pale spot at the centre of the creature’s forehead.
‘Oh shit.’ Fist sounded genuinely shocked. ‘Fucking no.’
‘What?’
Shock became outrage. ‘It’s a puppet embryo. One of the six that survived. They really do exist. Get the fuck out of here. NOW!’
Jack was already slithering down the hard cubes, half in control, half-falling. Fist followed him, leaping from cube to cube like a small, brightly painted goat.
‘How can they hurt us?’ yelled Jack, surprised and worried by Fist’s reaction.
‘They’re like me before I merged with you. Code looking for content. They eat memories. They’ll suck the identity out of whatever they touch. And we’ve got more identity than anyone here.’
Three or four other figures appeared in the distance as they slid towards the water. ‘Fucking Kingdom!’ screamed Fist. ‘It took us a month to mesh, and the fucking doctors held me back every step of the way. Those things will do it in seconds. The overload’ll kill them, but they’ll eat us first.’
‘How do we stop them?’
They plunged into the water before Fist could answer. Fist grabbed Jack as he started swimming, hard. Holding his head up only slowed him down. Then he was underwater, and memories rushed over him. He felt that he was pushing himself through a thousand different lives. Random moments leapt through him, appearing as a broken kaleidoscope of centuries of Station life. It was impossible to find any coherence in them. He let each one leap up, then drift away.
Every few moments Jack broke out of the water, took a breath of his own coherent self, and plunged back down again. The past roared in his ears. He focused on holding himself together while moving in the right direction. He wondered how Fist was experiencing the waters of the memory hole. Every few seconds the puppet cried out, or his body shook.