A Mosaic of Stars: Short Stories From Other Worlds

by Andrew Knighton

  The technician hadn’t collapsed as Dan had thought. The man was crouched beside Jean, blood on his lips as he chewed her arm.

  In a rage, Dan grabbed the man and flung him aside. He hit the wall so hard that his head smashed open. The scent of blood was overpowering. Blood and something else.

  Was that brains? Could Dan really smell brains?

  He looked down at Jean, faintly aware that she needed help. But he was hungry, painfully hungry, a sensation he couldn’t even resist.

  And the technician’s brains smelled so very good.

  My Origami Heart

  I met her two days before the rocket was due to leave, carrying me away to a new planet, a new job, a new life. I’d spent half my worldly wealth on that ticket, and just thinking about it made me grin from ear to ear.

  “That’s why I wanted to talk with you,” she said as we lay tangled amid the sheets, watching the sun rise through the broken blinds of her apartment. “You were so lively, so happy. Just looking at you made me smile.”

  “I know the feeling.” I ran my fingers across the scars above her left breast, remnants of an accident years before. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

  “Amazing enough for a second date?” She smiled at me. We both knew I was going to say yes.

  “I’m not sure last night counts as a date,” I said. “A couple of beers and a game of pool isn’t very romantic.”

  “Then let’s have our first date now.” She leapt up and pulled on her jeans. “I’ll buy you breakfast.”

  “You’re looking pretty miserable for a guy who just got laid.” Frank tightened a strap on his harness. It was our last chance to practise emergency procedures before the flight, and like everything else we’d done since the age of twelve, we were doing it together.

  Almost everything, anyway.

  “She bought me blueberry pancakes for breakfast.” I sighed.

  “You love blueberry pancakes.” Frank looked at me with concern. “What’s the problem?”

  “I think I love her. I don’t want to leave her behind.”

  “Shit, buddy.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. “That’s tough. But you’ve only known her for one night.”

  “What if she’s the one?”

  “Then lets hope you find the two when we make planet fall. That’ll take your mind off it.”

  I shifted from one foot to the other, jittery and impatient as I stood outside the restaurant. After fifteen minutes a waiter came out.

  “Excuse me, sir, but are you waiting to meet a woman?” He described her hair and build.

  “Yes,” I said, and then a horrible thought hit me. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all.” He smiled. “She was even earlier than you. She is waiting inside.”

  I practically ran past him and over to the table where she sat, looking even more beautiful than I remembered. Then I froze, unsure how to behave around the love of my life, who I’d met twenty-four hours before.

  “Come here.” She reached up, kissed me, and then pushed me down into the seat across from hers.

  “I need to tell you something.” My heart hammered so fast I thought it might explode. There was no way I could keep the words in. “I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ve got a ticket on a transport to the colonies.”

  “Oh.” Her face fell. “I…”

  “Wait.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a plastic chit, the ticket I’d spent the remaining half of my worldly wealth on. “I know this is crazy, I know we’ve only just met, but I’ve never felt this way before. Will you come with me?”

  Mouth hanging open, she stared at the ticket.

  “Oh, god.” She blinked. “Oh, I’m so sorry…”

  “No, I’m sorry.” I could feel my soul shrivelling as I shoved the ticket back into my pocket. “You don’t know me. This was a dumb idea.”

  “You ass!” She grabbed my collar and hauled me halfway across the table before planting a kiss. “It’s the most wonderful, romantic idea. But I can’t.”

  She took my hand in hers and placed it on her chest, where scars were visible at the top of her dress.

  “It’s my heart,” she said. “The accident destroyed it. Paramedics put in an emergency replacement, one of those Japanese hearts that unfolds like origami and keeps everything in place. It’s the only reason I’m still alive, but it could never take the pressure of space travel.” She kissed my fingers, and there were tears in her eyes. “We have tonight. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.”

  I didn’t have to be at the observation platform to know she would be there, watching my ship take off on a journey from which it would never return.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” I said as I walked up behind her.

  She turned, eyes wide.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. “You’re meant to be in space.”

  “It’s my heart,” I said. “Turns out it’s made of origami too. It would have folded up and died without you.”

  The Computer Whisperer

  There were no blaring sirens or flashing lights as Liv dashed down the Eldontech corridors, but there might as well have been. Data streaming across one side of her goggles told her that she’d triggered the alarm when she took the hard drive stack. She had four and a half minutes until the police arrived.

  As she reached the security door she was already sending signals to her devices connected into the system. A crude video relay looped images of the empty corridor into the security camera feeds. The data mining box cut the stream of keyword-laden signals with which it had been scattering the building system’s attention.

  Grinning at her own ingenuity, Liv hit the unlock button. How many other thieves would have got in by manipulating the mood of a building’s computer systems? But then, how many other thieves understood the emergent emotional states of high end electronics?

  This was why she had been hired.

  The door failed to hiss open. She frowned and slapped the button again. Still nothing.

  In the corner of her vision, the clock counted down toward the cops’ arrival. Three minutes left.

  This was wrong. Scattering the system’s attention had effectively closed everything down. Removing that stimulus should have got the doors working again, along with the security systems from which she no longer needed to hide.

  Stiffening with tension, Liv opened a data stream from the probe she had monitoring the building’s software. Calling up an overview, she could see that the system wasn’t scattered any more, but no other mood had come in to replace it. It was simply idling, with no reason to accept or deny any request it might receive.

  She had left it uselessly indifferent.

  Two minutes left. The thought of jail loomed before her. Years trapped in a cell, without even a data link to set her mind free. She had to get the system’s help fast. She needed it on her side.

  At the speed of thought she reached out to the data miner and set it hunting for information about her, true or false, from anywhere in the vast web of the world. Not just her but people like her, ideas that would draw the system’s attention with greater and greater certainty onto how wonderful she was and why it should bend to her will. Fixation wasn’t the same as love, but it was the closest thing in cyber-psychology. The miner fed the links, however tentatively connected, straight into the system, along with her request to get out.

  One minute left.

  She tried the door again. This time it worked. She dashed through it and across the foyer, as the air conditioners filled the room with her favourite perfume and her most-listened musical track burst from the speakers. Liv grinned. This was escaping with style.

  The counter hit thirty seconds as she reached her car, slung the drive in the back and hit the gas. She was out of the car park and into traffic just as flashing lights rounded the corner.

  Liv sighed with relief. She’d done it. The units she’d left behind were untraceable. The cops would never find her now.

  She looked back over her
shoulder for one last gloat, and her heart almost stopped.

  Her image was projected in the sky above the building, and beneath it the words “Let Liv Go!”

  Maybe they would find her after all.

  Sunflowers in the Snow

  There was a crowd outside the cemetery gates. Tall men and women, warmly dressed against the cold snap. As Michael passed them he caught a glimpse of flattened faces beneath hoods, hats and scarves. They were Neanderthals, part of the community that had grown up in Longsight over the past decade. To social scientists it was a fascinating insight into the formation of communities. To Michael it was one more minority interest complicating his constituency.

  “This way, minister.” Cowley, his slender and obsequious assistant, led him through the gates, snow crunching beneath their feet as they strode towards the cemetery manager’s office. Despite the cold and the intimidating presence of the crowd around the gates, relatives had been in to pay their respects, and flowers lay amid the snow on several of the graves.

  “Mr Totman.” The woman who met him at the door wore a smart black suit, her hair tied back. “I’m Lydia Boyd, the manager here. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.” Michael never knew how to respond. What could you say? No words would ever bring his husband back.

  “I’m afraid the heating is broken in my office,” Boyd said. “But the seats are more comfortable in reception anyway.”

  She settled down into a padded grey chair, and Michael took the one opposite. Cowley lingered outside the door making phone calls – the business of government didn’t stop for personal tragedy.

  “You said we needed to talk,” Michael said. “About Chris’s funeral.”

  “Yes.” Boyd’s expression was sad, but her gaze didn’t waver from his. “I’m afraid that the genome tests following Christopher’s autopsy revealed a substantial proportion of Neanderthal ancestry.”

  Michael frowned.

  “That’s impossible,” he said. “Both his parents were human, and born long before the first cloned revivals.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.” Boyd handed him a sheet of paper, showing the results from the test. “Nearly all of us have some DNA from Neanderthals and other archaic humans. So while these tests are successful in keeping Neanderthals out of human cemeteries, they also very occasionally exclude others too.”

  “That’s absurd!” Michael rose to his feet. This was where Chris’s family was buried, where he’d wanted to be buried. The thought of not doing that stirred up all the pain of the past few weeks, and he found himself choking on his own words. “Can’t you change your rules?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “If I had my way I would open up the gates and let those protesters win. Everybody would be buried here, homo sapiens or Neanderthal. You know that they bring flowers to the graves? We won’t even let them bury their families here, but they still make sure that the graves are tended.”

  “Surely you can make an exception.” He felt desperate, nothing but her denial sinking in. “I have money. I can make a donation to the cemetery. Or to you, if you prefer.”

  “Minister.” She rose and placed a gentle hand on his arm. “You should be careful. That almost sounded like a bribe. And I’m afraid that the law is clear, a law that you voted for. The Prime Minister said, ‘we do not force people to be buried in the same ground as pets, can we make them accept graves alongside anything other than our own species?’”

  “Then there must be something wrong with the test. Chris was a human being!”

  “Do you think she isn’t?” Boyd pointed out through the glass doors, past Cowley, to where an aging Neanderthal in a long coat was placing sunflowers on one of the graves.

  “But the test is for being a true human.” Uncertainty and grief made Michael wobbly on his feet. He leaned against the door, forehead pressed to the cold glass.

  “The test is for Neanderthal DNA,” Boyd said. “What you’re talking about is far harder to pin down.”

  The Neanderthal woman looked directly at Michael. She didn’t wave or make that strange little frown others used to tell him how sorry they were. But her eyes communicated her understanding of his hurt more completely than anybody saying “I feel sorry for your loss.”

  “Her husband died recently too,” Boyd said. “That’s not his grave, of course.”

  A sense of conviction rose in Michael, one he hadn’t felt since his first election campaign. He stood up straight, turned and shook Boyd’s hand.

  “Thank you for taking the time to talk,” he said. “I’ll contact the undertaker about Chris.”

  He opened the door and strode out into the snow. Cowley, seeing his master spring into action, snapped his phone shut and scurried after him.

  “Is the funeral arranged?” Cowley asked. “I have the invitations ready.”

  “No.” Michael stopped in the cemetery gates, looking out at the sad, silent faces of the protesters. He felt like he might cry at any moment, like only the drive to act was holding him back. “Contact the media. We have other things to deal with.”

  He joined the crowd, making eye contact with each quiet figure in turn, falling into the moment of shared sorrow. Tears ran down his cheeks, yet he felt a lightening of his burden, a sense of release.

  “Then call the Prime Minister,” he said, turning to the shocked looking Cowley. “I don’t think he’ll want me in his government anymore.”

  He pulled out his own phone, found a picture of Chris and showed it to the Neanderthal next to him.

  “My husband,” he said.

  The Neanderthal pulled a picture out of his pocket, a smiling Neanderthal woman in a flower print dress.

  They stood together in grief.

  Broken Phones and Empty Bellies

  The bottom of the air barge opened, spewing thousands of tons of abandoned technology across the empty wasteland. Even before the broken computers and old phones had stopped falling, Mei dashed out to start rummaging through the heaps, one of hundreds of children hoping to scavenge enough metal to feed themselves for one more day.

  Mei at least had one advantage over the other zinc monkeys. Before she ran away, Lok had replaced her middle finger with a scanning pen that flashed different colours depending on the metal content of the rubbish. She still remembered the pain of the rusty sheers slicing through her finger, but she was grateful for the scanner.

  With swift, practiced movements she cast aside the useless items, dropping the more valuable ones into her sack. A circuit board here, a battery there, anything with enough precious metal to make it worth melting down. She ignored the numbness of her feet and the desperate hunger in her belly, just kept on digging.

  A tablet flashed as she pulled it from the heap. In surprise, Mei tapped the cracked screen and watched it flare into life. The battery was nearly dead, but it had enough energy to show her that it was still full of files, the former owner having forgotten to purge it. There were accounts here, and what looked like a diary.

  Hastily, Mei thrust the tablet through her belt and pulled her shirt over it. Her breath quickened in excitement. Data was worth more than all the gold and zinc she’d ever gathered. If she took it to Lok he could identify the owner through the DNA with which rich people marked their property. He might use the accounts to raid their funds, blackmail them with the diary, even get them to pay to have their own data back. And Lok was never as vengeful as he was greedy – he would pay well for this, and not beat her much.

  The sound of helicopters made her look up. Figures with guns were descending on ropes all around the heap of discarded electronics, their armoured masks creating a faceless ring surrounding the zinc monkeys.

  “This land has been re-zoned as a municipal dump site,” a metallic voice announced from speakers under the helicopters. “All refuse will be processed by the Ryu-Bok Corporation. You will be searched and escorted off the site.”

  Mei cursed. The Corporation were getting quicker. They
must have had the re-zoning writ on the mayor’s desk before the refuse had landed, again claiming all the resources under their government contract.

  Abandoning her sack, Mei raced toward the edge of the heap, the tablet still pressed against her stomach. If the guards were busy she might get through a gap. They couldn’t catch everyone, could they?

  A mercenary appeared around a heap six feet ahead of Mei. He raised his gun.

  Mei twisted on the spot and dashed back among the heaps. Pain jolted her arm as a rubber bullet clipped her, but she kept going, weaving between the piles of rubbish and the other panicking children.

  As she ran she kept glancing at her surroundings, desperately searching for anything that might help. She couldn’t outrun the guards, but how else could she keep the tablet? And without getting something from this drop, how could she feed herself?

  She scrambled up a heap of broken mainframes. Her clumsy scanning finger caught on a metal edge and she winced as its rough connectors dug into her flesh. Behind her, someone else was coming up the heap.

  At the top she stopped, looking around for the best way to run. A Ryu-Bok guard was clambering up behind her, a government inspector in a grey suit coming from the other direction. She was trapped.

  She glanced back at the guard, and then at the inspector. The inspector might arrest her if he found her carrying the tablet, while the guard would surely beat her. Which was worse? How many years’ freedom were broken bones worth?

  Pressing her hand against her belly, she felt the cold, flat surface of the tablet. Tears welled up inside her. She had come so close to something precious, only to have it snatched away. It could have been hers, just as it had belonged to whoever’s DNA it was marked with.

  She gasped as a desperate hope glimmered inside her. The guard and the inspector had almost reached her. She only had seconds.

  Closing her teeth around the scanning finger, she wrenched her hand away as hard as she could. There was a moment of agonising pain as the scanner separated from her flesh, and then blood poured from the empty finger socket. With her other hand she pulled out the tablet, then wiped the wound all across its surface, covering it in blood.