The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles)

by Samuel Peralta

  I pinched my wrist, needing to remind myself that it was Malcolm up there and not some super-cool, soulless corporate lackey. At least, I didn’t think he was. He was the guy on the roof, a vampire with a smirk. He was a ‘person of interest’. But he wasn’t the vegan messiah.

  At least, he better not be.

  Panic rushed through me. Vampires don’t have souls. Steve Jobs didn’t have a soul. How did I miss the connection? Am I really that stupid?

  “In the caves of Tibet, hidden deep within the mountains, lay an ancient strain of bacteria. A hidden miracle from a lost time, a time of peace and harmony. A time when we lived in sync with nature.” He walked confidently around the platform, attentive to all of the audience. “We found this ten years ago, and only now have we unlocked its true potential. Feed it the right things—soy, mushrooms, roots—and it produces our holy grail: a complete vegan food. Imagine the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals, readily absorbable protein, complex flavors, and endless varieties.” He paused. “Now stop imagining, because it’s here. I present to you… Tibetan Soul.”

  I coughed and laughed at the same time, resulting in a demonic chortle. Nobody noticed. It was drowned out by the applause around me. I’m serious. They lapped this spam up like he was The One, the goddamn vegan-Neo.

  Curtains fell down around the room, revealing huge posters. They brightly proclaimed Tibetan Soul, complete with as much cultural appropriation as a room full of ‘true believers’ could stomach… which, it turns out, is a lot.

  Waiters circled the room, handing out samples. No, not just samples… full-blown meals. Steaming bowls of spicy-smelling stew, rustic sandwiches, and what I can only assume were pint glasses of ice-cold bacteria juice. People chased them down like flies, filling themselves with Tibetan Soul. Oh, how I bet those Tibetans want their souls back.

  I turned down waiter after waiter. Truth be told, I was pissed off. Count Chaos turned out to be the Jobs of corporate veganism. It hurt.

  And that’s when it started to happen.

  First it was a twitching eye. Then a lingering stare. Before I knew it, mobs of crazed vegans were descending on the waiters, knocking aside the food, clawing at their flesh instead.

  Vegan cannibals.

  I would love that sort of thing, if only I weren’t in the middle of it. But in the middle of it I was. I circled around, but there was no way out. I was next on the menu. Talk about skipping your way up the food chain. At least try chicken first.

  Chomp.

  “Son of a mother,” I screamed.

  Winter had taken a bite out of my arm. I could smell my blood in the air. I pushed her off, her blue eyes wild and hungry.

  “This fleshling is mine!” she screamed out, high and shrill. “I have claimed her with my mark.”

  The others listened to her. Some watched, others feasted on the faces of waitresses, but none attempted to attack me. Whatever the hell was going on, they somehow had a code. I was goddamn right. The vegans have a code. How noble.

  I looked down at the bite—two crescents of teeth marks bloomed bloody, ruining an unfinished tattoo. And, for whatever reason, I thought of her and Malcolm. The sickly sweet, Love you, babe. It’s bad enough to turn full cannibal, but to make it personal? That almond milk-guzzling twat.

  “I’m going to strip the flesh from your body and feast on the life within you.”

  And that closes the loop. Fast-forward ten minutes. Can you do the old VHS fast-forwarding sound? Imagine the picture distorting.

  There you go.

  So I’m surrounded by onlooking cannibals, who form a wall around me. There’re only two people in the middle—Winter and me. Her eyes brim with confidence. She knows she has me now. She is the matador and I am the bull. I brace myself.

  Winter is coming.

  Oh you had to have seen that one coming.

  Bzzzz.

  One of the cannibals falls to the floor, twitching uncontrollably. We all turn to watch, a pink foam frothing from between her lips. A pair of wires coil behind her, leading to a Taser in the hands of Detective Dimples. Here to save the day. One smile at a time.

  “Took you long enough,” I say.

  He shoots me a concerned look, then reaches for his gun—a Glock, I think. That’s a gun, right? Or an instrument?

  “All of you get down on the ground!” he shouts. “Now! Hands and stomachs on the floor.”

  Instead, they all turn towards him. There are dreadlocked hippies, wafer-thin hipsters, and muscular Reznor fanboys… all hungry for a taste of flesh. For a sweet mouthful of country-bred butter. If it was Bad Cop, I can imagine him firing shots into their chests, blood splattering across the conference room floor. I can hear gunshots and screaming, flying fists, gnashing teeth. Instead, I look into the softening eyes of my favorite police officer. And I see something strange—not fear or anger, but sympathy. He feels bad for these people. He knows it’s not their fault.

  I look into his eyes and know he can’t do it.

  “First bite claims him,” grunts a pink-haired woman.

  “Only if it breaks skin,” adds another.

  He’s toast. More than that—he’s a ham frigging sandwich.

  A calm voice cuts through the tension, “Wait.”

  Malcolm.

  Winter turns to him, clearly confused. Her eyes twitch as she attempts to shake off some of the crazy. She takes a deep breath and softens her voice. “Oh, hey, babe. Um, now’s not a good time. Can you Skype me later?”

  “You’re not going to eat her.”

  “Yeah, totally. But, you see, the thing is… like, I know you kissed her. I get that. It’s out of your system now. I’ve forgiven you.” She tilts her head, somehow sweet yet intensely frightening. “But I’ve tasted her flesh. I have to eat her. Only then can I inherit her soul. You understand, right?”

  Malcolm walks towards me slowly, unafraid of entering the circle. Dimples watches on nervously. His trigger finger twitches.

  “She’s not yours to eat.”

  Winter points to her bloody lips. “This isn’t Maybelline, babe. This is punk blood. She’s mine.”

  Malcolm runs his hand down my face, brushing back the collar of my jacket. It feels strange—pleasurable, yet entirely out of place. That is, until I feel a gentle sting. He circles his hand around a spot on my neck.

  “This one is already marked,” he says. “Her flesh and soul are mine to consume.”

  Picture the faces of a crowd of cannibals drooping to the floor. Can’t do it? Okay, imagine a five-year-old’s birthday party. A bubbly mother brings in a birthday cake, placing it on the table. Is it chocolate? one child asks. Caramel? asks another. The mother smiles warmly. Oh no, she says, it’s carrot. The children’s spirits plummet. Those are the faces I’m seeing now. Shattered dreams. They carrot bear it.

  Okay, still terrible.

  “You vampire-bit me on purpose?” I hiss.

  Malcolm shrugs, ignoring the question. “You lot will have to find dinner elsewhere. I hear cop tastes like pork.”

  A dash of life returns to their expressions. They turn to Dimples as one.

  Before I can protest, Malcolm grabs my arm. “Time to go,” he whispers.

  “There’s no way in hell we’re making it out of here.” I look around, and for once I’m telling the truth—bite or not, one of these maniacs is going to start snapping at me. The place is teeming with hungry cannibals. Teeming with teeth. Teething. Ha.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  Crap. I bite my tongue. “Optimism?” I say unconvincingly. “You know, I heard that if you force yourself to smile you can actually make yourself happier.”

  “Okay, great.” He looks around the room with a poo-eating grin. “Let’s go to the animal cruelty booth.”

  “Really?”

  Behind us, Good Cop is screaming like a banshee. I guess having the flesh stripped from your writhing limbs isn’t as fun as it sounds.

  Malcolm makes a run for it, and I have no choi
ce but to follow. We push past a middle-aged hippie eating an arm like an ear of corn. Blood coats her face. Strangely, she smells of lavender.

  We stop at a display booth. I cringe at the posters pinned up—vegan cruelty porn. Chickens with their beaks cut off, calves on a factory floor with limbs too weak to stand. The sort of graphic images they love shoving in your face. Their Jesus-on-the-cross moment.

  “Take this,” he says. It’s a metal bar with decent weight. There’s a button on the top.

  “Holy Obi, is this a lightsaber?”

  “What? No.”

  I push the button.

  Bzz.

  “It’s a cattle prod,” he says. “Now be careful.”

  Bzzzz.

  I push it into Corn Nibbler’s neck and she falls to the floor in a spasm. Bloody froth bubbles foam on her lips. This is amazing.

  “I said be careful! They can still feel pain.”

  “They can?” I look around for my next victim. “Well, why didn’t you say that?”

  I dash across the room, heading straight for the bearded hipster from the night of the chicken run. His glasses sit askew, a finger dangling from his lips like a cigar.

  “I am Thor, son of Odin!”

  I jam it into his face.

  Bzzzzzzz.

  “Mia!”

  I take a deep breath. “Okay, okay. It’s out of my system.”

  A skull spins across the floor, stopping at my feet. It’s nothing but bone and hair—a familiar blonde tuft adorning the top. My heart drops. It’s Dimples. The country butter sucked from his face.

  Malcolm stops beside me. “The crowd’s thinner out the back. We can go up the stairs, take the walkway between buildings. Come on.”

  I bite my tongue. I remember what Mum said when she kicked me out of home. The third time, that is. When I got busted selling ice. When I was on my way to juvenile prison.

  It hurts me to look at you, Mia.

  Please just go.

  Never come back.

  Go.

  Please.

  She wasn’t even mad. She’d just given up. I was the girl that could laugh at her own father’s funeral. The girl that would sell drugs, not because I took them… but to meet people. To see what the world was like. To discoverer its flaws. You know, the kind of girl that would throw a nice guy to a pack of cannibals and listen to him scream. Without hurting. I was selfish. Messed up.

  That’s me.

  “Are you okay?” Malcolm asks.

  I sigh.

  “Yes,” I say. “That the problem.”

  * * *

  We sit on a rooftop a couple of hours later, eating a bucket of cold fried chicken. I sink my teeth into a drumstick, tearing away white meat. I chew. I swallow.

  I toss a bone down to the chaos below.

  “So are you going to tell me who you actually are? Vampire, vegan, villain. Choose one.”

  He smirks, peeling off seasoned skin with his fingers. “I work for the Beef Lobby.”

  “Ugh. Seriously?”

  He shrugs. “My dad got me the job. I was good at it. Would you believe I’m good at marketing?”

  “Good at talking out of your—”

  “It was a job. At first, anyway. Then I got wind of their, shall we say, off the books projects. These people obsess about the chicken industry like you wouldn’t believe. They talk about nuggets like they’re nuclear.”

  “And that’s what this was?”

  “It’s a war, Mia.”

  I force a smile. “No seriously, I want to know.”

  “The whole vegetarian movement was eating into our profits. They were working on ideas to turn people back towards meat, no matter how extreme. Drugs, viruses, whatever it would take. Then one day they found this new bacteria…”

  I almost choke on my chicken. “That Tibetan crap was real?”

  He laughs. “Ah, sort of. Truth is, they found it in a crack house in Logan. A moldy toilet. But they fed the strain meat, and it would excrete these strange hormones. Feed it beef, slip that micro-poop into vegan food, and bam.” He clicks his fingers. “Demand for beef would skyrocket.”

  “But you knew it would go wrong.”

  He nods. “I made it go wrong. At the time, I was already deep in the factory farm exposé business. Hell, most of those groups are funded by the Beef Lobby. Or Big Pork. Screw those guys. Anyway, I was young. I had street cred. So they set me up to be the face of their new product line. Pumped money into it like you wouldn’t believe. A worldwide launch of a product wanky enough to catch on. What could go wrong?”

  “You.”

  “Yeah. I broke into the factory, slit my wrist, and let it bleed out into the bacteria vat.” He pulls back his sleeve, showing me the bandage. “And that was that.”

  I look across the city, smoldering from a thousand fires. There is a group of cannibals at the end of the street, spit-roasting a man on a scavenged rotisserie. His fat pops and crackles. They lick their lips.

  Malcolm continues, “Truth is, I’d had enough. Life is hollow. I thought I’d get mobbed by a group of famished vegans and get torn to pieces on stage. The footage would be broadcast on newscasts around the world. I know it’s messed up, but I find something comforting in that. Here I am. I don’t care. Watch me die.”

  “But why didn’t they want to eat you?”

  “I don’t know. I took a punt. When Winter looked at me, it wasn’t like I was food. It was like I was one of them. Their leader. They had the taste for flesh but respect for me. I was their seed. I honestly don’t get it. Biology is screwy.”

  “You chose me over her.” I lean into him, nudging my shoulder against his. “You’d rather be with me than be meat. You’re totally crushing on me. Admit it.”

  “Like I said.” He tips the bucket off the ledge and we watch it plummet. Chicken pieces skid and splatter. “Biology is screwy.”

  “We’re messed up, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  “This is the end of the world, isn’t it?”

  “You think?”

  “I read on the internet once that post-apocalyptic cannibalism wouldn’t work. Feasting on a person would grant the eater another sixty days of life, tops. So they’d have to find another. Six a year, more or less. There’s no way around it. The population would collapse.”

  “That’s… a very strange thing to Google.”

  I look away from the city and into his eyes, expecting to see sadness or disgust. Instead I see curiosity. I see hope. And, for the first time, I think I see the real Malcolm. He’s a lost kid with too much creativity, a little madness, a dose of depression, and a sense of humor that swings between sick and sociopathic.

  He’s like me.

  I lean in and we kiss.

  He touches my hair.

  I bite his lip and draw blood.

  “Far out, Mia. I thought that was a moment.”

  “It was.” I smile, watching the city fall to pieces. “I think this is finally our time.”

  A Word from S. Elliot Brandis

  At this point, I should probably apologise to all of vegan-kind. Probably.

  The story isn’t really about vegans though. You guys are cool. You’re saving the world. Or something.

  So what is it about, then?

  Smugness.

  You know… that guy at work that rolls his eyes when he sees you eating sugar. Or gluten. Or a non-organic, genetically modified, excessively packaged product. It might not even be food that makes him better than you. It could be his hybrid car. Or his Apple computer. His non-vaccinated kids, extensive vinyl collection, two-thousand-dollar road bike, or half-read Booker Prize-winning novel (which he’s totally going to finish one day).

  Comedy is a great way to tear down people who think too highly of themselves. So is a cattle prod to the face.

  And, c’mon. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. And if you’re vegan, you can’t even make an omelette.

  So smile, be nice to people, and never ge
t too big for your britches. That’s what makes the world a better place.

  (If you liked my story, Google me.)

  Staying Behind

  by Ken Liu

  AFTER THE SINGULARITY, most people chose to die.

  The dead pity us and call us the left behind, as if we were unfortunate souls who couldn’t get to a life raft in time. They cannot fathom the idea that we might choose to stay behind. And so, year after year, relentlessly, the dead try to steal our children.

  * * *

  I was born in Year Zero of the Singularity, when the first man Uploaded into a machine. The Pope denounced the “Digital Adam”; the digerati celebrated; and everyone else struggled to make sense of the new world.

  “We’ve always wanted to live forever,” said Adam Ever, the founder of Everlasting, Inc., and the first to go. In the form of a recording, his message was broadcast across the Internet. “Now we can.”

  While Everlasting built its massive data center in Svalbard, nations around the world scrambled to decide if what happened there was murder. For every Uploaded man, there was a lifeless body left behind, the brain a bloody pulpy mess after the destructive scanning procedure. But what really happened tohim, his essence, his — for lack of a better word — soul?

  Was he now an artificial intelligence? Or was he still somehow human, with silicon and graphene performing the functions of neurons? Was it merely a hardware upgrade for consciousness? Or has he become a mere algorithm, a clockwork imitation of free will?

  It began with the old and the terminally ill. It was very expensive. Then, as the price of admission lowered, hundreds, thousands, then millions lined up.

  “Let’s do it,” Dad said, when I was in high school. By then, the world was falling into chaos. Half the country was depopulated. Commodity prices plunged. The threat of war and actual war were everywhere: conquests, re-conquests, endless slaughter. Those who could afford it left on the next flight to Svalbard. Humanity was abandoning the world and destroying itself.