Tesseracts Seventeen

by Colleen Anderson

  And, to tell the truth, not a single report of injury or damage from one of those things came in from anywhere. This did not stop trigger-happy duck hunters and Afghan wedding guests from trying to blast a few spheres to smithereens. You’d think a few would get shot up, but I never heard of one even being grazed.

  Jacob Merino didn’t know he was the first person to be approached by a sphere. I found that out later. He also didn’t know he’d be the first to collect a prize.

  The spheres hung around for five weeks. No one knew how many had appeared, but estimates were in the tens of millions. Experts popped up everywhere: economists, sociologists, information technologists, defence spokespersons… and politicians by the cartload climbing over each other to claim credit for the economic boom that was just around the corner.

  Religious leaders got into the act, too. Those speaking for the mainstream churches and branches of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, Baha’i and the rest cautiously spoke of the blessings of the creator and prayed for wisdom and compassion in the days ahead. American television bible thumpers were quick to proclaim that, since North Americans had been promised the biggest prizes, America was God’s country and God loved America best. Self-proclaimed prophets likened the spheres’ appearance to the Rapture, when believers rise up to heaven and the rest of us are done for. Fingers crossed.

  One feature that puzzled people — well, the whole thing was puzzling, but people tended not to think too hard about anything that cramped their anticipation — was that every ticket said the same thing except for the language differences and the prizes ranging from $20,000 to a cow. Every single ticket, one way or another, said, “You win. You will receive your prize in 60 days.” What kind of lottery doesn’t have a fixed date?

  The economists thought spreading the winnings over five weeks, with two months’ lead time, was brilliant. The economy would have time to absorb the swell of wealth that would roll across the world as wave after wave of lucky winners spent their winnings.

  Since everyone held a winning ticket, no one wanted to consider that no organization or government on Earth had the capacity to give billions of people twenty thousand dollars each or even, if it came to that, a cow. Early winners would be able to buy whatever they wanted, but what would be left for everyone else?

  You’d think the whole world had been struck blind and stupid.

  On the sixtieth day after Jacob Merino grabbed the purple sphere, the morning dawned warm and soft. August 5th was the first Tuesday in the month. His mother’s own ticket would come due on Thursday, and his dad’s on Friday. They were looking forward to a heck of a weekend. They’d already decided what they would do with their sixty thousand dollars. They’d pay off some debts and trade in their old gas guzzler for a cleaner hybrid car — the Merinos recycled religiously and tut-tutted at the excessive packaging on so much of what they bought — and they would take an eco-tourism trip to the rain forests of Costa Rica. “While there’s still some eco to tour,” his dad had joked.

  By 10:00 am, the mail had arrived. The only item for Jacob was a skateboarding magazine, which he leafed through as he waited. As the day wore on, he grew quiet.

  “They wouldn’t use regular mail, anyway.” Jacob’s mother opened a package of cookies and poured him a glass of milk. “They’ll most likely send a courier and make a fuss.”

  By four o’clock, Jacob’s moping was driving his mother crazy. “Why don’t you go to the skate park?” she said. “That’s where you got your ticket. Maybe that’s where they’ll give out your prize.”

  Jacob grabbed his skateboard and shot out the front door past me. I’d leaned my bike against the porch and was carrying in a basket of tomatoes. His mother took the basket and nodded toward the door. “Go after him, Josh— make sure he’s okay.”

  Five minutes later Jacob rolled to a stop in the park, flipped up the skateboard and tucked it under his arm. One or two other people with the same idea were drifting in, checking their watches and glancing into the sky. Jacob looked up, but the sky was empty except for low clouds briskly heading eastward. Right then, he may have had the only deep thought of his young life.

  “I bet clouds like that were flying across the sky a million years before I was born, Uncle Josh,” he said. “I bet they’ll still be flying a million years after I’m gone.”

  That thought, which lit his face with wonder, was Jacob’s last. He exhaled and keeled over, dead as mutton.

  Cradling him in my arms, I looked around, calling for help. At the far side of the park, another person fell.

  Within a few hours, news flashes were connecting the date on those first winning slips to a rash of unexplained deaths. For a while, people refused to believe it. Many saw the deaths as some unknown plague — remember SARS? — that was cutting down the young. And the young had been the nimblest at catching the spheres, eager to outdo each other in how fast they grabbed a pink slip.

  So to speak.

  Within three days, the awful truth was staring the whole human species in the face. People were hitting the ground like horse poop in January, and nobody had the faintest idea what to do. Medical experts were betting on some kind of delayed-release poison, and frantic autopsies were performed all over the world. Nothing useful showed up that could stem the rising tide of bodies.

  For the first few days, funeral homes were busy. Then city parks became bulldoze sites. Then people did the best they could at home. Hasty funerals were convened in back yards, and scruffy dirt mounds dotted green patches that had been lush and manicured two weeks earlier. The strong ones dug graves for their families and themselves and wept. In the end, people lay where they fell.

  Like the orange cat, they all just, well, melted. The smell, of course, was terrible, saturating the cities and towns. Those who could escape to the countryside did. But the speed with which all those bodies were returning to the Earth was astonishing— especially to people whose only encounters with death involved armfuls of flowers and liters of embalming fluid. If I hadn’t noticed that cat, I would have been astonished myself.

  It was lucky — in a way — that every country was affected equally. No trigger-happy, despairing politician could claim the mass deaths were an enemy plot. Even if they’d thought of nuking the country next door, what was the point?

  So here we are.

  Two hundred thousand years ago, the first homo sapiens stood scratching their butts and looking around. By a mere two hundred years ago, their descendents numbered one billion, most of whom hardly ever scratched their butts in public. Two months ago, seven billion of us were climbing all over the planet and each other, with more babies popping out every minute.

  Two days ago, well, who knows?

  Things got ugly fast. Cockeyed optimism turned to cold fear, and cold fear turned to numb despair. Religious fundamentalists — who’d grabbed as lustily as everyone else — were the only ones having any fun, in a hand-wringing, I-told-you-so kind of way. There are no atheists in foxholes, and the whole planet was one big foxhole. Except we couldn’t see who was shooting at us.

  People are never short of a theory even in the absence of facts, and facts weren’t exactly waving at us. The news media were jammed with opinions and pronouncements for days. Then they stopped: first the newspapers, then television, then radio. The Internet stayed on longest. Even it’s gone now.

  Three theories gained traction. An extremely rich and reclusive software genius had created floating robots to promote a new game, but something had gone terribly wrong. Or, God had got sick of watching us screw up and decided to switch to Plan B (humanity, presumably, being Plan A). Or — my favorite — pest-control robots from an alien planet were clearing Earth to make way for a theme park.

  I picture a bony finger on a distant planet touching a screen, calling back all those spheres. But the image in my mind is mixed up with God’s finger t
ouching Adam’s on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Mad genius or God or alien, someone had given humanity the finger.

  It was funny, really, how indignant people got when they realized the spheres had lied. They truly believed the cheque was in the mail.

  There’s no accounting.

  It was widely reported that, just before people fell off their perch, they looked sort of thoughtful and distracted, as if they’d just remembered somewhere they needed to be. You can imagine the theories that spawned.

  Yesterday I planted lettuce and kale and garlic. I always do a fall planting while the soil is still warm. And I put in fall bulbs. I dug over a big plot in the corner, digging two feet down into the soft earth, turning it over and loosening the soil. Life is pretty quiet out here by the bay. The nearest neighbors are a quarter mile away, and a car hasn’t gone by in a week. When things in town got difficult, two friends asked if they could come stay with me. I was glad of the company for a while. They’re under the tulips now. It’s important to show respect.

  A light breeze is riffling the grasses in the meadow. September light is wonderful here, slanting gold as the land beds down for winter. The breeze tells me the tide is starting its long march back to shore, moving quickly yet almost imperceptibly at the same time. We have the highest tides in the world, more than fifty feet between high and low tide some days. It goes out for miles, looks like. Sandpipers and plovers were wheeling along the shore this morning, refuelling on their journey south.

  Amazingly, the electricity is still on. Yesterday I switched off the buried-wire fence that keeps the dog from straying onto the road. He knows his boundaries by heart, and I’ve had to encourage him to test them and cross into new territory. The grey cat, too, is wandering farther away each day. She comes home to the sofa for her morning nap. I’ve propped open the side door, so they’ll be able to come in on a rainy night. The raccoons will, too, but you can’t have everything.

  Some of the neighborhood dogs have been mooching around, looking for handouts. Dog biscuits for everyone. The fit ones and smart ones will do all right if they stick together. When wolves lived in these parts, they interbred with the newcomer coyotes. The wolves are long gone, and maybe the coyotes will take up with dogs now.

  I’d like to think chimpanzees and gorillas and orangutans and our peaceful little cousins, the bonobos, will have a chance to come back from the brink. Then, who knows?

  The grass was wet with dew that morning in late July. I was pulling weeds from around the tomatoes when a fern-green sphere started following me around the garden. It waited patiently while I dumped an armload onto the compost pile. When I went to put away the rake, it blocked my path.

  “Touch me and win twenty thousand dollars,” it said.

  “Go away.” I picked up shears and heavy gloves and headed for the rugosa roses. Those thorns are lethal. The green sphere hovered briefly, then took off, disappearing over the ridge to the west. What do I need with twenty thousand dollars when I already have a million-dollar view and all the tomatoes I can eat?

  The next morning it was back. I was about to start up the lawn mower.

  “Touch me and win a million dollars.”

  I burst out laughing. “Nope.” I pulled the starter and couldn’t hear the sphere any more. When I turned to look, it was floating west again.

  The next morning it showed up as I stepped onto the deck with coffee.

  “Touch me and win a blessing from God.”

  “I’m an agnostic. Go away.”

  “Touch me and save a hundred acres of rain forest.”

  “Haven’t you got anything better to do?”

  “Touch me….” It stopped, then started closing in on me. I ducked inside and slammed the door.

  For the next two days it didn’t show.

  Then it was back. I was watering the west bed when I saw its shadow move across the ground in front of me. I kept watering. “Get lost.”

  “Touch me and win peace and solitude.”

  “What? What did you say?” I turned to face it.

  “Touch me and win peace and solitude.”

  “I don’t need to touch you for that. I just need you to go away and leave me alone.”

  “Touch me…”

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” I stood looking at this fern-green sphere, watching LOTTO LOTTO LOTTO sliding around its middle in an endless loop.

  “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying.” I went back to watering the roses.

  “A cow?”

  Did it actually sound hopeful? “No!” I flicked a finger at it and felt a faint tingle as my finger connected. Oh, crap.

  Kachunk. A pink slip popped out.

  “Please take your ticket. Thank you for playing.”

  I’ve been thinking of God lately.

  We all waited and waited for a wizard to pop out from behind the curtain and shout, “Just kidding!!!”

  If there is a God… I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Spinning my wheels. If there’s a God who’s seeing silent factories and idle oil refineries and empty roads… with billions of voices silenced and billions of hands stilled, never to strafe a village or chop down a forest or hit a dog… and never to plant a garden or tuck in a sleeping child or play the cello — or paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel — is God weeping with relief for the rest of the planet or grief for us?

  Maybe those aren’t the only two choices.

  Maybe there are places the spheres didn’t show up. Or places the people aren’t idiots. I’d like to think so.

  Across the mud flats the tide is making its steady way to shore. The sun warms my bare arms as I sit on the deck looking across to the lapping blue water. Seagulls murmur to each other, white Ws against the blue sky.

  It’s T-shirt weather— one of those unbelievable fall days when you wish you could live forever. The dog is asleep at my feet. The grey cat sprawls beside me, belly soaking up the September sun. Her ears twitch. Soon she’ll head into the meadow to hunt.

  * * * * *

  Rachel Cooper is a freelance writer and editor in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. Besides writing for various organizations, she has published articles on science, people, and nature. She tools around with different kinds of writing, including literary short stories, short plays, poetry and writing for children. Two of her plays have been produced, and once she won second prize in the Atlantic Writing Competition’s Writing for Children category, a brush with fame that made her giddy. Born in Winnipeg, she grew up in Ontario and has lived in Scotland, France and England.

  In the Bubble

  William Meikle

  I was in the bubble.

  The field boundary shrieked as I moved to peel the biote from my neck. I dropped the now dead creature into the reclaimer by my side and wiped the red streak of blood from my hand onto the fabric of my uniform. I switched the field off, wincing as the bubble imploded and the pressure differential popped in my ears. I had to sit still for a second or two until my breathing calmed and the room stopped swaying. I stepped down onto the white tiled floor and removed the respirator.

  “Well?” asked a voice to my left.

  I turned towards the Chief Officer. The concern I saw on his face wasn’t for me. He was in a bind; I was his way out, if it worked.

  “It’s too early to say. I’ll need some time for the synapses to be set up. You know how it works— at the moment all I’ve got is impressions. I can tell you one thing though… it was no accident.”

  There had been a murder — a good old fashioned locked room murder — and up until a minute ago there was no one apart from the murderer with any idea who did it. But now there was another. Me. I had sucked the biote.

  The biotes were developed back in the early twenty-first century. They remember things. They sit on t
he back of your neck, feeder slipped painlessly into the bloodstream, sensor into the medulla oblongata, and they feed… on blood and memories. Any revulsion is incidental— the important thing is that they can be tapped. All you have to do is raise the pressure around the creature. In dying, it dumps its stored memory into the host— which in this case was me.

  I hadn’t been its original though— that honour belonged to the late Captain Swaizek. The Captain had been exercising in the nil-gee room. Twenty meters up in the column and someone switched on the spin. Gravity kicked in. You can imagine the rest. When they got him out he was a mass of bruised and battered flesh, but the biote was still functioning. I got the call from the Chief Officer and the rest you know.

  I realized that the CO was talking to me. I suppose I looked blank. He snapped his fingers in front of my face.

  “Come on Rogers. Get with it.”

  I looked him in the eye.

  “That’s better,” he said as I shook my head vigorously. “And don’t go spreading gossip about this— we could have a panic in five seconds flat. If there is a murderer on board I want it kept quiet until you can come up with some proof. Between now and then, I want you to lay low, keep quiet and let the synapses work it out, OK?”

  I agreed readily enough. The dump had left me with a strange, full feeling, and all I wanted to do was get to bed, shut out the lights and sleep it off.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. My thoughts wouldn’t die down. I kept getting flashes from the dump— places I’d never been, people I’d never met, things that I knew were foreign but was assimilating as knowledge.

  I took a tranq hoping that it would send me to sleep quickly. That did the trick.

  I dreamed.

  We are making love, slowly and languidly She sits astride me, her jet-black hair hanging like a veil in front of her face, a veil which sways and parts, sways and parts in time with her movements. I can feel the pleasure, hear the passion, smell her sweat, yet I have never seen this woman in my life. The action moves along to its climax and part of my brain explodes into orgasm, while the other part just watches and wonders.