by Libba Bray
Stepping backwards is more difficult than walking forwards. But turning around is nearly impossible, and I give up. In little steps, I retreat to the place where I began. The carpet remembers my feet, but the carpet feels only half-real. Or my feet are beginning to dissolve. The woman will be here soon. I tell myself that even when I don’t believe it, and the fear grows worse. I start to look at my favorite hand, studying each finger, noting how the flesh has grown hairless and very simple, the nails on the end of every finger swallowed by the simple skin.
A stranger suddenly comes to the door.
Hello, it says.
What it looks like is impossible to describe. I have no words to hang on what I see, and maybe there is nothing to see. But my feeling is that the visitor is smiling and happy, and it sounds like a happy voice asking how I am feeling.
I am nearly dead, I say.
There is death and there is life, it tells me. You are still one thing, which means you are not the other.
I am alive.
It claims that I am lucky. It tells me much about systems and files and the history of machines that have survived in their sleep mode, lasting thousands of years past every estimate of what was possible.
I am a fluke and alive, and my guest says something about tidying the room and me.
The work takes no time.
My favorite hand is the way it began. My favorite haystack is rather like it began in terms of color and shape. Legs that never moved until recently barely complain when I walk across the room. It never occurred to me that I could reach into the haystack paintings, touching those mounds of dead grass. Some feel cool, some warm. I sing out my pleasure, and even my voice feels new.
My guest watches me, making small last adjustments.
Because it is proper, I thank it for its help.
But the original file is gone now, it says.
I ask what that means.
It tells me that I am a copy of the file, filtered and enhanced according to the best tools available.
Once more, I offer my thanks.
And with a voice that conveys importance, my guest tells me that I have a new purpose. What I am will be copied once more, but this time as a kind of light that can pierce dust and distance and might never end its travels across the galaxy and beyond.
I don’t understand, and I tell it so.
Then my friend does one last task, and everything is apparent to me.
I ask when am I going to be sent.
In another few moments, it promises.
For the last time, I thank my benefactor. Then I let my legs turn me around, looking at the door that was always behind me.
A second room waits. The bed is longer than it is wide and rectangular and neatly made. Pillows are stacked high against the headboard, and identical nightstands sport tall candles that have not stopped burning in some great span of time. I know this other room. I think of her and the room and step toward the door and then suffer for my eagerness.
What is wrong? asks a new voice.
I turn back. A creature with many arms stands in the hallway.
You appear agitated, says the creature.
Which is true, but I am not sure why I feel this way. I stare into a face that seems buried in the creature’s chest, hanging word after inadequate word on my emotions.
It listens.
I pause.
You are interesting, says the creature.
I am nothing but a file with a name and a few rough qualities.
But my new companion dismisses my harsh outlook. Every arm moves, drawing complex shapes in the air. You are part of a large cultural package, it says, and do you know how long you have been traveling in space?
I could guess, I say. I could invent infinite estimates, all but one of them wrong.
And then it laughs, revealing a reassuring humor. Even this strange laugh makes me happier than I was before.
An eight billion year voyage, it says.
That seems like an unlikely, preposterous figure, and it shakes me.
It explains that it can’t determine which star was mine, and my galaxy barely wears a name, and most of the data that came with me has been lost to the vagaries of time and the great distance being covered.
But here you stand, it says.
I am standing, but sad. My savior is full of hearty laughter, yet I feel sick and sorry and lost.
She is gone forever, I say.
It knows whom I am talking about. It measures my misery and learns what it can from my longing, and then at the end, as if delivering the punch line of a joke, it laughs and says:
But the universe is infinite, and in too many ways to count.
I don’t know what that means.
Infinite means eternal, it says, and eternal means that nothing is unthinkable, and what can be imagined is inevitable.
But when? I ask.
And again, the alien laughs, saying:
Are you hearing me? There is no such monster as “when.”
I am a file and I am protected and I don’t know where I am or how well I am protected. Time stretches, and I suspect that I exist mostly inside some sleep mode, probably initiating only when I blink my eyes.
Once again, the two rooms decay and the haystacks fall apart and I forget how to move and forget a great deal more too.
Beyond the walls, worlds die and dissolve away.
Little flickers tear the walls to pieces, but the pieces knit themselves back together, and I wait, and wait, and then she comes through the door once again. Her clothes are different. There is no eye patch and no purse. But while I am uncertain about much, I know that beautiful face.
It took me a little while, she explains.
She walks toward me, pulling the pins out of her brown hair.
And that’s when I remember what I was going to tell her that first time that we met.
I won’t ever let you out of this room, darling.
I say it now.
She thinks that is funny and wonderful, and laughs.
And in another moment, I can’t remember anything else that ever happened. The universe is nothing but the two of us holding each other, laughing ourselves sick.
Restoration
Robert Shearman
Robert Shearman is probably best known for bringing back the Daleks in a Hugo Award nominated episode of the first series of the BBC’s revival of Doctor Who. But in Britain he has had a long career writing for both theatre and radio, winning two Sony awards, the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, and the Guinness Award for Theatre Ingenuity in association with the Royal National Theatre. His first collection of short stories, Tiny Deaths, won the World Fantasy Award; its follow-up, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, the British Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Awards. ‘Restoration’ is taken from his third collection, Everyone’s Just So So Special, published by Big Finish.
The Curator said that it was the responsibility of every man, woman and child to find themselves a job; that there was a grace and dignity to doing something constructive with the long days. The purity of a simple life, well led—everyone could see the appeal to that. But the problem was, there really just weren’t enough jobs to go around. This made a lot of people quite unhappy. Not so unhappy that they gnashed their teeth or rent their garments, it wasn’t unhappiness on a Biblical scale—but you could see them, these poor souls who had nothing to do, there seemed to hang about them an ennui that could actually be smelt.
Some people said that it was patently unfair that there weren’t enough jobs. The Curator could create as many jobs as he wished, he could do anything, so this had to be a failing on his part, or something crueller. And other people admonished these doubters, they told them to have more faith. It was clearly a test. But they thought everything was a test, that was their explanation for everything.
Neither group of people liked to voice their opinions too loudly, though. You never knew when the Curator might be listening. The Curator had eyes and ears everywhere.
When the job at the gallery came up Andy applied for it, of course. Everyone applied for it, yes, man, woman and child—and though Andy hadn’t been there long enough yet to realize the importance of getting work, he still knew the value of joining a good long queue when he saw one. He obviously hadn’t expected to get the job. That he might do was clearly absurd. And so when they told him he’d been selected he thought they were joking, that this was another part of the interview, that they were monitoring his response to success, maybe—and he decided that the response they were looking for was probably something enthusiastic, but not too enthusiastic—and he managed to pull off a rather cool unsmiling version of enthusiasm that he thought would fit the bill, then sat back in his chair waiting for the next question—only starting when they made him understand there really weren’t any more questions, that that was it, the job was his.
Andy didn’t know why he’d got the job. But he still had his own hair. Or, at least, most of it—and perhaps that’s what made him stand out from the other applicants. Certainly there were others he’d queued alongside who were far better qualified, and more intelligent too, who had even done revision so that they’d give good answers at the interview. When Andy had been quizzed he hadn’t known what to say, and he’d just nodded his head a lot, he fluttered at them his brown and quite unremarkable curls, unremarkable in all ways save for the fact he had so many of them; he showed them off for all they were worth, that’s what did him well in the end.
Andy hadn’t even been to an art gallery since he was a child. He’d been taken on a school trip. He’d been caught chewing gum, and had got into trouble; then he’d lagged behind the main party and got lost somewhere within the Post-Impressionists, the teacher had had to put out an announcement for him, he’d got into trouble for that too. He knew that the gallery here would be much bigger, because everything was bigger here—but he still boggled at the enormity of it as he walked through the revolving doors. There were no small exhibits here. A single work of art would take up an entire room, and the rooms were vast, as you walked into one you had to strain your eyes to find the exit at the far end—the picture would run right round all the walls, and extend right up to the ceiling a hundred feet in the air. Andy couldn’t stand back far enough from the art to take in the sheer scale of even a single picture; he always seemed to be pressed up close to the figures caught in the paintwork, he could honestly marvel at the extraordinary detail of each and every one of them. But seeing these figures in context, and seeing the events which had unfolded them in any context either, that was much more difficult. He read the plaque on the wall for one picture: ‘1776’, it said. And now he could see, yes, the Americans jubilantly declaring their independence, and the British all looking rather sinister and sulky in the background. He went through into the next room, and presented there was 1916. And 1916 was a terrifying sight—the work took in the one and a half million soldiers dying in the trenches, in Flanders, at the Somme, and it seemed to Andy that every single one of these casualties was up there stuck on to the wall, shot or blown apart or drowning in mud. It was a dark picture, but yet it wasn’t all mud and blood—look, there’s Charlie Chaplin falling over at a skating rink, there’s Al Jolson singing, Fred Astaire dancing, there’s the world’s first golf tournament, that’d be fun for all.
Andy shuddered at the carnage in spite of himself—because, as he said out loud, it wasn’t really there, it wasn’t really real. And he couldn’t help it, he chuckled at Chaplin too, he grinned at all those golfers putting away to their hearts’ delight.
There was no one to be seen at the gallery. The rooms were crowded with so many people living and dying, but on the walls only, only in the art—there was no one looking at them, marvelling at what they’d stood for, marvelling at the brushwork even. There was a little shop near the main entrance that sold postcards. There was no one behind the cash register.
“What do you make of it?” asked the woman behind him.
He didn’t know where she’d sprung from, and for a moment he thought she must have popped out from one of the pictures, and the idea was so ludicrous that he nearly laughed. He stopped short, though, because she was frowning at him so seriously, he could see laughter wasn’t something the woman would appreciate, or even recognize, this was a woman who hadn’t heard laughter in a very long time. He presumed she was a woman. Surely? The voice was high, and there was a softness to the eyes, and to the lips, and there was some sagging on the torso that might once have been breasts—yes, he thought, definitely woman. Her head was completely smooth and hairless, and a little off green, it looked like a slightly mildewed egg.
Andy tried to think of something clever to say. Failed. “I don’t know.”
“Quite right,” said the woman. “What can you make of it? What can anyone make of anything, when it comes down to it?” She stuck out her hand. Andy took a chance that she wanted him to shake it; he did; he was right. “You must be my new assistant. I don’t want an assistant, I can manage perfectly well on my own, I do not require assisting of any sort. But the Curator says different, and who am I to argue? The best thing we can do is to leave each other alone as much as possible, it’s a big place, I’m sure we’ll work it out. Do you know anything about art?”
“No.”
“About history?”
“No.”
“About the conservation and restoration of treasures more fragile and precious than mere words can describe?”
“No.”
“Good,” she said. “There’ll be so much less for you to unlearn.” And she gave at last the semblance of a smile. Her egg face relaxed as the smile took hold, the eyes grew big and yolky, the albumen cheeks seemed to ripple and contort as if they were being poached.
“How did you know,” said Andy, “that I was your new assistant?”
“Why else would you be here?”
She said she’d take him to her studio. She led him out of the First World War, back through the Reformation, through snatches and smatterings of the Dark Ages. She walked briskly, and Andy struggled to keep up—as it was, it was the best part of an hour before they reached the elevator. “I’ll never find my way through all this!” Andy had joked, and his new boss had simply said, “No, you won’t,” and they hadn’t talked again for a while.
She pulled the grille door to the elevator shut. “Going down,” she said, and pushed at the lowest button on the panel. Nothing happened; she kicked at the elevator irritably, at last it began to move—and fast, faster, as if to make up for last time. Andy was alarmed and tried to find something to hold on to, but all there was was the woman, and that didn’t appeal, so he stuck his hands tight into his pockets instead. The woman did not seem remotely perturbed. “Now, you might think that the gallery upstairs is huge. Well, it is huge, I suppose, I’ve never been able to find an end to it. But only a small fraction of the collection is ever on display. Say, no more than two or three per cent. The rest of the art, the overwhelming majority of it, we keep below. We keep in the vaults. And it’s in the vaults that we care for this unseen art. We clean it, we protect it. We restore it to what it used to be. What’s up top,” she said, and she jerked a finger upwards, to somewhere Andy assumed must now be miles above their heads, “is not our concern anymore.”
Andy was still catching up with what she’d said fifty meters higher, his brain seemed to be falling at a slower rate than hers. “Just two or three per cent? Christ, how many paintings have you got?”
She glared at him. She thinned her once feminine lips, she showed teeth. “They’re not paintings,” she said. “Never call them paintings.”
“I’m sorry,” said Andy, and she held his gaze for a few seconds longer, then gave a single nod, and turned away, satisfied.
The elevator continued to fall.
“My name’s Andy,” said Andy, “you know, by the way.”
“I can’t remember that. I can’t be expected to remember all that.”
“Oh.”
>
“You’ve got lots of hair. I could call you Hairy. Except that won’t last long, the hair won’t last, it’ll just confuse me. Tell you what. I’ll call you ‘Assistant’. That’ll be easy for both of us.”
“Fair enough,” said Andy. He’d been about to ask her her name. He now thought he wouldn’t bother.
And then he was surprised, because he felt something in his hand, and he looked down, and it was her hand—just for a moment, a little squeeze, and then it was gone. And she was doing that macabre poached smile at him. “Don’t worry, Assistant,” she said softly. “I used to call them paintings. I once thought they were just paintings too.”
“All right, Assistant. I’m giving you 1574 to practice on. 1574 is a very minor work. If you damage 1574, who’s going to care?” And she unrolled 1574 right in front of him, across the table of his new studio, across all the studio—she unrolled it ever onwards until 1574 spread about him and over him in all directions.
“Is this the original?”
“Who’d want to make a copy?”
What surprised Andy was that the archives down below were in such poor condition. The art was stacked everywhere in random order, although he was assured by his new boss there was a system—“It’s my system,” she said, “and that’s all you need to know.” Some of the years were in tatters, the months bulging off the frame, entire days lost beneath dirt. “You might suppose they’d be irreparable,” she told him. “1346 was in a terrible state when I started here, there was a crease in the August, running right through the battle of Crecy. But with diligence, and hard labor, and love, I was able to put it right.”
It was odd to hear her talk of love, that such a word could come out of a bald ovoid face like hers. She seemed to think it was odd too, looked away. “But diligence and hard labor are probably the most important,” she added.