Countdown to Extinction

by Louise Moss

“No good to me. I was frozen in 1961. It was my parents’ idea. They kept on at me about it. I didn’t want that. I wanted to die in peace but they said I was too young to make my own decisions. They’d taken my baby away and they wouldn’t let me see Rob again and I just wanted to die, but they wouldn’t let me. Just look where it got me.”

  Gerald’s blood ran cold. She was frozen in 1960, he in 1999. She had been here at least thirty-eight years. How long had he been here?

  “Have you any idea what year it is?” he asked.

  Emma shook her head.

  “That’s the first thing I want to know. I shall ask Hagan when I see him.”

  “You won’t see him again. The only people you’ll meet are those Bluecoats, and they hate us. They won’t tell you anything. Even supposing they know themselves.”

  “Have you tried to leave?”

  “You can’t get through those doors.”

  “The doors at the end of the corridor? But we walked straight through them.”

  “Yes, but if you try to go the other way, you’ll find you won’t be able to get out.”

  The room was quite dark now. “Here, you’ll have to wear this,” Emma said, handing him a green tunic and trousers that smelt vaguely of the sea.

  He took it from her and put his belongings back in the box.

  “Do you know how long we’re to stay here?”

  “This is where we live. There’ll be a communal washroom somewhere on this floor, and a place where we all eat together, but this is where we stay.”

  Gerald shuddered. If this were true, he was a long, long way from anything familiar.

  “I’ve been put with two other people before you in other rooms on other floors. But they’re all the same.”

  “Why would they keep us here?”

  “We’re here to breed.” He thought she was being over-dramatic, but her voice had a resigned air, as if she really believed it.

  He could not prevent his lips from curling up at the corners. This girl had obviously got it wrong.

  She saw his smile and said, “You’ll find out soon enough. They think of us like cattle. And if you’re not good breeding stock, you’re no good to them.” She looked at him steadily. “I can see you don’t believe me, but you’re my last chance. After all this time, I’m still not up the duff. They’ve prodded me and poked me and injected me with something, but still…nothing. They won’t want to waste food on me, so soon it will be the end of me.” She drew her hand across her throat.

  She looked so serious, Gerald began to wonder what had gone on here. He felt like the girl’s grandfather as he said, “Now how do you know that?”

  “Oh, I know.”

  Gerald did not take much notice of her. He would make his own observations over the next few days. It was quite possible she had completely misunderstood. But then, what about those misshapen Bluecoats and their rough handling? But if she were right…. He couldn’t bear to think of the implications.

  “I’ll sleep on the floor while we’re both here,” he said. “Or on a chair.”

  She looked afraid. “Don’t forget what I told you. If I don’t get pregnant this time, I’ve had it.”

  It was dark outside but a gentle light suffused the room. Gerald lay down on the floor, covering himself as best he could with his jacket. It wasn’t cold, but the familiar smell comforted him. He could not possibly sleep with the girl, let alone father a child with her. What would happen when he met his family again? He could hardly introduce her as his new wife! He would cooperate as much as he could with them, but he couldn’t do that.

  He had never wanted another woman after Margaret. Perhaps that was a silly, old fashioned idea, but that was the way he was. Surely Emma was being melodramatic when she said he would be condemning her to death. There was much to think about, but not now. Tomorrow he would find out something useful. He would not rest until he had discovered what year it was, who these people were, and why he had been brought back to life.

  A draught blew across his face, carrying with a slightly sweet aroma. His eyes began to close.

  Suddenly, he was wide awake. It was still dark. He had heard something, though whether it belonged to his dream or not, he could not say. The only sound now came from Emma on the bed, her steady breathing telling him that she was still asleep.

  Perhaps it had been the dream after all. Margaret had appeared to him, fresh and young, as he remembered her. She had beckoned and called, but as he went towards her, her image retreated, growing further away the faster he walked. In despair, he stopped, watched her turn and with the laugh of a demon, she twirled around, spinning, revolving. a tornado, sweeping towards him with that inhuman laughter. Now a mile high, she bore down on him and with an icy blast, hit him full in the chest.

  Perhaps it was just the dream that had woken him, but…. the metal box was not on the table where he had left it, nor was it on the floor below. He searched as best he could, stumbling around in the dark, but it was nowhere. Sinking onto his makeshift bed, Emma’s imaginary voice mocking him. He had not listened to her; she had said that they would take everything.

  He lay tense, hands clenched, jaw clamped. How had he ever thought it would be a good idea to have his body frozen? What had he expected? How foolish he had been to think life would just go on the same when he was brought back to life.

  Something hard was pressing into him. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he brought out the object there. The ring. They had not taken it.

  He must find a way to hide the ring. They could be back any moment.

  He ripped the pocket from his jacket and unpicked a length of cotton from the hem with his fingernails. Tearing it off with his teeth, he tied it around the top of the pocket to make a pouch. A second piece of cotton to secure the pouch around his neck, where he could keep it hidden beneath his tunic. They could have the jacket if they really wanted it, but they would not take the ring away from him, not without a fight.

  He inhaled the sweet smelling air. As his eyes began to close, it came to him that they had drugged him. He was powerless, they would control his every move.

  He knew nothing more until he woke to Emma leaning over him. “You must go and wash now before it gets crowded. I’ll show you where to go.”

  The corridor was full of people, all hurrying along, their faces set, looking straight ahead or down at the ground. At his greetings, his neighbours turned their faces away, quickening their pace to avoid him.

  An eerie silence filled the washroom, broken only by occasional slow shuffling and the sound of running water. The place looked like a film set: ten or twelve marble washstands were arranged along gold coloured walls, interspersed with statues in alcoves. Now where had he seen something like it before? As he tried to clean his teeth with no toothpaste or brush, it came to him bit by bit, like a slowly developing picture, beginning with the snake tattoo climbing up the leg. Virginia Courtauld. What was her Art Deco bathroom doing here?

  He walked back slowly along the corridor, deep in thought. A film set. That must be it. He was in a film set and soon, the film would end and everything would return to normal.

  Back in the room, he found his jacket was gone.

  “No one ever believes what it’s like when they come here,” Emma said. They think it can’t possibly be like that, but then they find out it is. You can always tell a new person. They want to make friends, find out things.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “I’ll show you where we eat.”

  The Long Room, as he later came to know it, was a strange contrast to the washrooms. It was large and windowless, with plain panelled wooden walls and long tables and benches, like a medieval hall but without the stuffed animal heads, carvings or stone floor. Gerald did a rough count. About one hundred and fifty people were, most of them pale and hunched over the table, all looking slightly dishevelled, as if they no longer cared about themselves.

  He sat down next to Emma at the centre table. A dark-skinned man w
ith square jaw and mottled skin came up to him, gesturing in an unfriendly manner. He understood the message: this was ‘his’ chair.

  When everyone had settled, he took his place on the end of a bench near the door, nodding to a man and a woman opposite. They glanced at him from beneath downcast eyes then continued to stare intently at the table.

  Gerald was restless. This wasn’t a place he was likely to be happy, and he hoped fervently he could soon on – or would it be worse?

  The couple tensed. A quick scan of the room revealed nothing different, and yet everyone was sinking into their seats

  “What is it?” Gerald asked, but nobody answered. Then he heard it. A snuffling sound like pigs rooting for acorns. Into the room came six Bluecoats, pulsating hatred from every pore.

  They slammed bowls of food the tables, snarling like rabid dogs.

  It looked like porridge, except for the luminous green tint. There was nothing to eat it with and he was forced to eat like an animal, picking up the bowl and pouring its contents down his through. It had the consistency of glue. He washed it down with a mug of pale brown liquid that tasted of the sea.

  The room was beginning to thin. He followed the silent couple along the corridor back to the room.

  He had formed a list of questions for Emma over breakfast, but she was not there. A brightly lit green square on the wall resembled a computer monitor.

  Jan had suggested that he buy a computer when she moved to Australia so that they could email each other and exchange pictures. Perhaps this was the way to contact his family.

  He moved to the square. As he searched for a switch, a disembodied voice sounded in his ear. “Hello, my name is Conn. I have a number of games for your entertainment.” A talking computer? That was an interesting development.

  In a falsely jolly voice, Conn started to list the games. Most of the names meant nothing to him. For all he knew about it, they might have been played by teenagers back in his day: Abalone, Gipf, Kamisad, Patolli, Senet, Keht, Twilight Imperium. He did not speak, but a board began to form in front of him with a set of familiar pieces. A computer that could read his mind? He had not had time to react when the list reached ‘chess’ and yet, Conn had detected some slight change in his demeanour. It was the only explanation he had.

  He had not heard Emma come in. Now she was leaning over him, her firm breasts touching his back.

  Gerald got up and moved away. In the days after Margaret had died, he had been desperate for a woman. To his shame, he had turned to prostitutes, but after a while, his urges had diminished, along with his ability to become aroused.

  Familiar chess pieces had formed in front of him on a blue and white squared board, floating, a 3D image.

  Emma said, picked up a piece and turned it around in her hands. “It’s King Henry VIII, isn’t it? I saw a film about him once. You can’t mistake that fat bloke, can you? Have fun then, I’m off to see Jenny in number ten.”

  He was no match for the machine. After three defeats, faced with a difficult problem, he sat back and stretched. He needed a walk. A memory came into his head of dew-heavy roses, and lavender which released its scent as he brushed past it. Protective branches of a silver birch rustled in the breeze while house martins swooping through the sky.

  There must be a way out of this place.

  Leaving the room, he turned towards the two doors at the end of the corridor that led to the elevators. He expected them to open on his approach, but they remained resolutely shut. What would trigger them to open? He ran his fingers up and down the door, search for the sensors which must be there. Nothing.

  He turned down a different corridor, identical, apart from being a dull mustard yellow colour, with strange pictures on the wall. A man and woman, wrapped in a golden cloak, a naked stick man getting out of a pool. No sound came from behind the closed doors. Where was everyone?

  In the next corridor, a glass door led out onto a balcony which overlooked a courtyard filled with a mass of yellow sunflowers stretching towards the light. Surely it was a sign that these people, whoever they were, had a feeling for beauty and a love of nature? They could not be all bad.

  Buildings which surrounded the courtyard, and up near the roof, the sun struggled to get through. The air was fresh and humid. It was like standing in the palm house at Kew Gardens.

  The building continued above his head, fifteen storeys high in total. Down on the lower floors, shrunken, stooped figures wearing blue jackets moved around.

  Returning to the room, he thought he had stepped inside the computer. Images of skittles stood on the floor. In her hand, Emma held a ball of light and directed them at the skittles.

  “It took me a long time to get the hang of these strange games,” she said. “Nothing’s solid.”

  “What’s happened to my game of chess?”

  “I thought you’d finished.”

  “No, I hadn’t.”

  He crossed the room towards her, skirting around a chair, causing Emma’s face to break into a weak smile.

  “It’s not real,” she said.

  “What’s not real?”

  “The chair. It’s not real.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I say, it isn’t real. Touch it, you’ll see.”

  His hand passed right through.

  “I don’t know how they do it, but none of this is real.” She gestured around the room.

  “The table’s real enough. My box was on it.”

  “There might be a sort of table there, but it’s not wooden with a glass top and a magazine rack underneath. That I do know.”

  “But why? Why would they do that?”

  She shrugged. “

  She looked tense and vulnerable. She reminded ding him of the last time he had seen his daughter Jan and her husband. They had sat, watching the sun set and the stars come out all the way down the valley and he had told them of his plan to have his body frozen. She had looked at him like Emma was now and asked, “Is this really what you want to do, Dad?”

  A sense of dread overwhelmed him. He must have been catapulted into a world far ahead of his own time if they were able to make him see furniture that wasn’t really there. What was it disguising?

  The game had disappeared and Emma was walking around the room, stepping through all the things that weren’t real, keeping up a constant chatter.

  “When I first tried to walk through the furniture, I used to get dizzy but now look at me. It’s odd. I walk into it, it disappears but then I turn round and I can see it again.

  It’s going to be difficult getting used to living in one room with someone young enough to be my granddaughter, he thought. It was going to take a lot of adjusting, and he wasn’t sure how much time he had.

  “Hey, can you see me?”

  Her voice was coming from the bookshelves, but there was no sign of her anywhere. “Where are you?”

  “Here, over here.”

  “No, I can’t see you, but…wait a moment. There’s a shadow. Is that you?” His hand went straight through the books and touched something solid.

  “Ouch. That’s my arm.”

  She was like a child at a birthday party, smiling, innocent. It filled him with a sudden and terrible longing for a world that no longer existed, the all-embracing love of a family. For a moment, he longed to hold her, to hold the one real thing in a world of illusions.

  She seemed to sense a change in him. “Gerald,” she whispered in a husky voice, reaching out to him.

  No, he must not give in to his baser instincts.

  He went out and headed for the double doors again. There must be a way to open them.

  Hearing the noise of the lift, he retreated a little way and stood watching as a Bluecoat came through the doors and disappeared around the corner. Gerald approached the doors and felt for switch. Hearing a snuffling sound, he realised his mistake. Bluecoat had returned. There was nowhere to hide.

  The Bluecoat raised his arm and brought it down with force
, landing a blow on the Gerald’s stomach, bringing him crashing to the floor, gasping for breath before aiming a kick at his prostrate body.

  The doors along the corridor remained shut. The Bluecoat went on his way, but still nobody came Gerald’s aid.

  He raised himself to a kneeling position. As he put his arms out to support himself on the wall, blood flowed from a cut on his hands and a warm trickle flowed from a gash on his forehead. Supporting himself by the wall, he pulled himself upright and limped back slowly to his room.

  Emma leaned over him, cleaning to clean the blood from his face and hands with a wet rag. Her tunic had fallen open to reveal her bare breasts, distracting him from the raging fire in his stomach. His hands twitched. That smooth, unblemished skin surely had the power to heal.

  She stood up, adjusting her tunic. “Why do they hate us? What have we done?” he asked

  “I tried to tell you. You can’t escape. There’s no point in trying. There’s some entertainment later, after lunch. You’ll feel better after it.”

  Gerald doubted very much that an afternoon’s entertainment was going to make him feel better, but he went along when it was time, for lack of anything else to do. The tunic and trousers disguised the purple bruises that had appeared on his legs and arms, but there was no disguising the black eye and the red gash on his forehead, a symbol of his foolishness.

  The tables in the Long Room had been removed and the benches placed in straight lines facing a blank wall. He squeezed into a space on to the end of a row and listened to the whispered conversations around him.

  Everyone fell silent as a dot of light appeared in the middle of the wall in front, which grew and rotated, expanding into the room and gradually forming itself into a forest. The walls vanished and, as if from a helicopter, he sat suspended above the trees, alone in a vast forest that extended for many miles in all directions.

  He had been there before, on the special train over the Rockies with its vast lakes and thick forests of pine, spruce and fir. The train had taken them to Calgary in time for the Stampede, and he had spent an afternoon watching cowboys riding the angry animals, as skilful as top class athletes.