Countdown to Extinction

by Louise Moss

  In front of him, a male and female Primitive approached each other, placing their lips together. Breaking away, they began to remove their clothes. The smooth skin was attractive, but as flesh touched flesh, he began to feel fear. The image faded. He tried again. When the Primitives were brought out of the vault, he might have to endure such scenes without the aid of a filter. He managed to watch the scene to its conclusion. Staggering back to his room, the images still burning inside his mind, he collapsed onto his bed.

  He did not know it then, but he would never see his home again. A fifteen storey building had been built not far from the vault that would be home to Workers and Controllers as well as the Primitives. A smaller building was the accommodation block for the Superiors. Hagan and Zorina had rooms inside the vault, as well as a laboratory and an underground passageway provided a link to the dome.

  The rooms were a copy of the ones back in the Institute, but larger; smooth, sleek, and white, with separate rooms for the couple, and a third room where they could sit together. The only difference here was that there was no garden to look out on.

  2

  Gerald lay with his eyes shut, a great primeval beast washed up on the shores of time. His heart beat slowly and steadily, like a drum calling men to war. The deadly enemy was no mortal but his own body being summoned to come to life again. He was icy cold with a chill that was almost beyond endurance. A silent scream echoed round his aching head, piercing the skin of his forehead with sharp barbs.

  Distant noises came to him through a thick wall of foam, noises that he could not decipher. The sheet was rough against his skin and the air was cool. He needed to concentrate, but his mind kept shutting down, to be awakened by some unknown force that washed in waves throughout his body. In a moment of brief clarity, he saw fingers fluttering, floating in front of his eyes, although he could not tell whether they belonged to him or not. His hands were like thick pieces of dead meat, and he could not, by the force of his own will, lift them from the bed. If not his, though, who did these fingers belong to?

  The numbness inside his head began to fade at the edges. His lids fluttered a little, letting in light that stung eyes that had lain in darkness for so long. His lids shut slowly, like a stiff Roman blind descending. Where had he seen that? It was too difficult to think, and he gave himself up once more to the numbness that was creeping over him again.

  A strange thought wandered the lonely corridors of his mind. Was he still made of flesh and blood, or had he turned into one of those ethereal spirits that adorned the walls of…of what? Words kept slipping in and out of his mind, and he could not hold on to them.

  A face hovered just above his head - long nose, dark hair brushed back a little severely, accusing eyes were. suspended in mid-air while the room revolved around her, spinning wildly. When it came to a halt, he was in another place. The furniture stood out at odd angles, strangely distorted, the far corner receding into the distance slightly out of focus.

  The suspended head slowly descended and fixed itself onto a body. She leaned towards him, sharp arrows of accusation in her eyes as she whispered to him. Such a selfish decision. Other faces crowded around, prodding, accusing. A fire began within him: a burning passion, a sense of destiny that could not be avoided; something pushing him onwards with a deep sense that this was what he had to do.

  He lay, like a beached whale, on an unknown shore, as the images ducked away and he was left alone again.

  In another wave, more images appeared: a delicate lace tablecloth flew around the room, wrapping itself around his face before disappearing. A bronze sculpture of a man lunged forward, eyes boring into Gerald’s soul, before flying off at an angle and disappearing through the ceiling. The man screaming in Munch’s painting bore down on him. Gerald grasped him by the neck and held on tight. The woman was back, her eyes burning into him, forcing him to remember. I am Geraldine, she said. Remember me.

  Images shot out of his subconscious and remained with him, burnt into his conscious mind like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle: green and yellow carpet, bookshelves, computer screen, crackle of burning logs, cloying smell of lilies.

  The woman was back, shouting into his ear, “Euthanasia. You can’t mean it.”

  He thrashed wildly on the bed. Could he really be dead? Noises, loud clamouring at the doorway of his mind. A man and a woman, suitcases making bright splashes in a hallway. “Is this really what you want to do?”

  He did not hear the slow, uneven steps approaching the bed, but the adrenalin flowing through his body alerted him to the fact that he was in danger and the foul animal smell warned him he was in the presence of a ferocious creature. His body prepared him to run, his legs jerking involuntarily, but he was unable to move. In the dimness, he made out a large, misshapen head and rough hands covered with warts. Guttural sound came from the open mouth. He no longer knew whether he was awake or dreaming.

  Now he was moving. Images danced before him: a motorway, big, ugly factories belching out smoke, tall chimneys stretching rows of pylons stretching in perfect symmetry into the distance, the two lines converging like the sides of a triangle, converging but never meeting.

  As the car climbed steeply upwards, the dulled rays of the sun burst through a gap in the clouds, streams of light dispersing and spreading like paint spilled on wet paper. A large grey stone building appeared, tall iron gates, a drive skirted by silver birch trees above a mass of celandines and wood anemones and beyond, a lawn with grass made luminescent by the spattering rain. In the distance, deer stared, ready to turn for the safety of the woods.

  Where was he? He struggled to sit up. An arm shot out, pushing him roughly back. Cooler, fresher air drifted across his face like the gentle touch of summer.

  The backdrop of buildings, the drive, the birches and the celandines started to disappear, sucked up into a tube. In its place, was the most ordinary of scenes: a hospital room with locker, a screen and curtains with a bold zig zag pattern in bright orange, blue and pink. It was a moment of hope. If the voice had told him the truth, something had gone wrong with the euthanasia. Time had moved on a few hours, but he would soon to be reunited with his family.

  He forced his mind to release its memories. The room was the same, its colourful curtains moving gently in the breeze from the open window. Beyond was an ornamental fountain and pool surrounded by lawns and a flower bed full of primroses and bluebells. A young man with thick blond hair and a healthy tan entered the room. As he leaned forward, he noticed the blueness of his eyes, the pores of the skin, the hairs on his chin, as if seen through a magnifying glass.

  The vision was gone. Who were those strange, misshapen figures he had seen? Where did they fit into the picture? He shooed the images away like flies at a picnic. He must have been dreaming.

  He pushed himself upright and eased his legs over the side of the bed. As his feet touched the floor, his legs felt on fire, as the muscles strained to send blood upstream. After a few moments of vigorous rubbing, he got himself upright, using the bedside table as a lever. Slowly, he lifted one foot from the ground and managed to move it a few inches towards the window, which had retreated further away.

  He drew himself up straight and launched himself across the empty space as he had once launched himself from the top of a hill, dangling below a large, fabric wing of a hang glider. It felt just as dangerous. Stumbling, tripping over his feet, grabbing on to the bed for support, he finally he reached the safety of the sill. A sudden realisation: the journey had been pain free. Holding on to the windowsill, bending and straightening, there was with no hint of a creak or a twinge. His arthritis was gone.

  The garden lay outside. It would tell him how much time had passed. He lifted a corner of the curtain, screwing up his eyes against the light. Ahead was the square courtyard with same fountain and ornamental pond but the flower bed now contained sunflowers raising their yellow heads to the sun. It was summer, three or four months further on. What had he been doing in those intervening months?


  He turned. He hadn’t heard anyone enter, but there in front of him was a man about six feet tall, his skin smooth, his hair blond, his eyes blue. The doctor.

  “Welcome to our clinic. My name is Hagan. I hope you have been treated well.”

  Gerald ordered his lungs, his throat, his mouth, to form the words. “This is the Greystones Clinic, isn’t it?”

  As the man opened his mouth to speak, a page of Gerald’s notebook turned. Written there was “Body frozen March 28, 1999.”

  “Yes, that is correct. It was your wish to be frozen until you could be cured of your illnesses. That time has come. You will have many questions, and they will be answered in time.”

  New memories came in thick and fast: a toddler wobbling towards him, his mother, his oldest daughter scared. Jan, his youngest, swollen with pregnancy. The news had almost changed his mind.

  “Not euthanasia, cryonics,” he had told his daughters. “One day there will be a cure for old age, then they will bring me back to life. It will be a new beginning, a new body, a new life. A rebirth…a second coming, if you like!”

  He had had such a sense of destiny back then, a burning passion to return to his family at some future time, in full health, ready to enjoy all the pleasures that life could bring.

  “You must rest for a few days; I have prepared a room for you.”

  “Will my family be here soon?”

  Hagan cared nothing for the comfort of the Primitives. For the plan to work, they had to be kept calm. The first ones out of the vault had reacted badly, backing away, a strange look in their eyes that he had only seen on the faces of Workers during his training to be a Superior. When restrained by force, they had refused to eat.

  He had been instructed to form a bond with them that would ensure their cooperation. It sickened him to the stomach. Not even a Worker deserved such treatment. But he must not fail. The payment for failing to carry out the Leaders’ instructions was worse than death; a lifetime sentence as a worker.

  The Leaders had banned the use of Mind Control on the Primitives. Any interference with the Alpha waves could cause untold damage to their inferior brains.

  They always asked about their families. “You will see them soon,” he told the man. He had fallen back on the bed and lay there spread out, like the images on the tiles he had seen in the vault, looking up at the ceiling. From his position in the laboratory, he prepared to take back his image.

  Gerald lay on the bed staring at the ceiling the doctor’s words dribbling through the fog that surrounded him. It had been his dream to defy death and be restored to good health. But there was something odd about the doctor’s speech. He had spoken like a foreigner or someone reciting a learned text, which made him wonder whether this was the same man after all. But if not, who was he and why did he look so much like the other doctor? He held on to those final words. He would see his family soon.

  He must get ready for them. Rolling onto his side, he opened the bedside locker. Inside was a familiar sight - the jacket he’d been wearing when he came into Greystones. He breathed in the familiar, evocative smell. Wood smoke? No, tobacco, that was it. How he had loved to sit by the log fire, smoking his pipe. Such precious memories!

  He pulled the jacket on, savouring the forgotten sensation of wool against skin. He expected, if anything, that he might have lost weight, but strangely, the arms were a little tight and it wasn’t as long as he remembered. He shook himself. He was being foolish. What else could it be but the jacket he had been wearing when he came into the clinic?

  His mood changed as he thought of his wife. She had died too soon, before the technology existed to freeze bodies. He had sunk into a terrible depression when she had gone, the pain and loneliness unbearable. He had wanted to die himself. There was no escaping it now. It would follow him wherever he went. Why did I want to be brought back to life? What on earth made me want to endure that terrible loneliness over again? He sat back heavily on the bed. It would have been better to have remained dead.

  How foolish, how vain, to want to live forever, to think he could go back in time to when he was young. How arrogant to think he could beat the Creator at his own game and do all the things he’d enjoyed as a young man. Anyway, what was the point if Margaret was not with him?

  The door crashed open, bringing him back to the present. A short, humped figure limped in. The blueness of his jacket contrasted with his dull skin, tinged with green. Reaching out with misshapen hands he grabbed hold of Gerald by the arm, yanking his arm, dragging him off the bed, muttering something incomprehensible under his breath, his thick lips curled into a snarl.

  Gerald stumbled, felt, tried to get up but the man was strong. Pulling him along the corridor, he dumped him at the door of a lift. He muttered something incomprehensible, but the message was clear. Gerald pulled himself up and entered the lift, nodding to the man in a wheelchair. The Bluecoat’s pent-up aggression throbbed in the confined space.

  The lift moved upwards, stopping a few floors up. A girl, a teenager perhaps, her long, straight hair halfway down her back was shoved roughly inside. The loose-fitting tunic she wore was pulled tight across her breasts. She would have been stunning if it weren’t for the heavy scowl that crossed her face. The bluecoat reached up to touch her skin, a leer on his face. She tensed but did not move. Gerald pulled himself up to full height, towering above the Bluecoat and reached out to pull the man away. A vicious punch on the arm sent him stumbling back against the wheelchair.

  At the tenth floor Gerald and the girl were shoved out into a stark lobby. Another Bluecoat was waiting for them by the opaque doors ahead. Passing through the doors into a corridor, it was suddenly different, colourful: a green carpet on the floor and soft peach walls on which hung pictures by Monet, Rubens, Matisse, Van Gogh….

  There was no time to take in the scene before they were pushed through one of the identical doors that ranged along the corridor. A pale light shone patchily through a Venetian blind, alighting in stripes on the floor. It was either late evening or early morning. The room’s bookshelves and ornate mantelpiece reminded him of his study, but he would never have put the large glass topped table and plastic chair in with them. The few ornaments and vases around the room were familiar pieces from his time; surely that was a Moorcroft bowl, and a Poole pottery plate….

  Against one wall stood a solid wooden desk with a red Anglepoise lamp and a Mickey Mouse telephone, of all things. The whole room looked absurd, a hotchpotch of different styles; but anyway, something was wrong. The perspective wasn’t right, as if the objects were viewed in a dream, or under water. Gerald stood at the door, trying to work why that was, but the girl said casually, “It’s a bit better than my last room. All bean bags to sit on, brilliant white walls with diagonal green stripes, and a four-poster bed! I’m Emma, by the way.”

  Gerald cleared his throat and introduced himself in a voice gruff from lack of use. “How long have you been here?”

  Emma shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s no way of telling what the time is, or whether it’s summer or winter. But it’s long enough. I started keeping a record once, but I gave up after a few months. What’s the point? It seems like a lifetime anyway.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “I hate this place.”

  With an effort, Gerald forced his voice to sound confident. “I spoke to a doctor, Hagan. He seemed quite reasonable.”

  “Seemed? Oh yes, it seems all sorts of things here.”

  Gerald’s glance took in the metal box on the table marked with his name. His belongings. He pounced on it like a long lost friend, hardly daring to open it but there, preserved for all time, were the things most dear to him. Whatever Emma thought, these things were real, objects he had chosen carefully. There was something strange about the photograph of Margaret standing on the Golden Gate bridge, her face was slightly distorted, as if taken from a strange angle, and her eyes were dull, looking not at the camera as he remembered, but at something off to the side.

  It
was, for a moment, as if he were looking at her for the first time.

  3

  Gerald picked up his Rolex watch, a retirement present from his workplace. It was light, weightless almost, like a cheap imitation. The ring was last. The single ruby glistened darkly, but the diamonds – surrounding it – there was something wrong. Instead of the glittering jewels reflecting light, they were a dull black

  Emma peered at the photo of his family. Three-year-old James scowled and squirmed to get down from his mother’s arms. That was not how he remembered it.

  Emma’s face softened. “I had a baby. I was fourteen when I had him. He was only four pounds when he was born, but he was perfect. His tiny fingers, his little finger nails. They wouldn’t let me keep him.” Her lips trembled. “They said I was too young and took him away.”

  She reached around her neck and opened a silver locket. On one side was the photo of a young man with a round, fresh face, dark hair swept back, and a large grin on his face. His eyes shone out, full of life and laughter. On the other side was a tiny baby in a hospital cot. She remained quietly looking at it, before suddenly snapping it shut. “They took the rest.”

  “They? What rest?”

  “Those bluecoats. They hate us. If you don’t keep your things close to you, they’ll have them too.”

  Gerald decided she was too immature, too uneducated, too emotional to know what was really going on but, in order to humour her, he slipped the ring into his jacket pocket.

  “He loved me, you know, the father.”

  Embarrassed by her confessions, he took up his notebook and pencil and started to write: Day One.

  “They discovered I had leukaemia. They said I had six months to live at the most. A cure was around the corner, they said. It was a question of a year, maybe two.”

  “When was that? We weren’t far from a cure when I…. That was 1999.”