An End

by Paul Hughes

  [welcome to your new home, Fleur. we’ll be spending lots of quality time together.]

  GIRL, YOU CRAZY.

  Mother frowned. [gary, be quiet.] She walked over in the restored gravity and threw herself down on a beanbag.

  Fleur stood, taking it all in, then remembered her own passengers. She released her clenched first and threw the three silver projectors into the air, where they sparked to life, emitting Hank, Whistler, and Nine in perfect emulation.

  MOMMA, WHAT THE FUCK—

  [gary! i’d like you to meet whistler. whistler, gary. gary, hank. hank, gary. nine, gary. gary, nine.]

  AND A PARTRIDGE IN THE MOTHERFUCKING PEAR TREE?

  Whistler flattened the front of his robe. “Mother, what is this?”

  [this, whistler darling, is gary. he’s our new home.]

  Nine walked to Fleur’s side, his cold projected hand engulfing hers, fingers looping through fingers. She smiled, but not before catching the icy gaze of the five-year-old in the beanbag chair.

  “Gary is a vessel. Where are we going?”

  [somewhere marvelous! i know that you’ll enjoy it.]

  Hank took in his surroundings with his trademark scowl, reached into his pocket and was pleased to find that Mother had been kind enough to emulate a pack of smokes for him. He pulled one out and found in that dreamlike sense of hazy possibility that was the new life of the recently-uploaded that the cigarette was already burning. All he had to do was place it to his lips and inhale.

  NO SMOKING ON THIS WARSHIP!

  A bubble of nonspace erupted around Hank’s hand and the cigarette was gone, along with a large portion of the hand itself. Hank frowned silently, retrieved his projector from his pocket with his remaining hand, shook it a few times. A new hand faded into place with a little burst of static.

  “This is gonna be a long flight without no smokes, Mother. Where we goin’?”

  Nine and Fleur sat on the loveseat beside Mother, and Hank and Whistler plopped unceremoniously down on beanbags of their own. The television flickered to life, displaying a field of stars.

  [the extinction isn’t over yet, my children.] she sat forward as she spoke, eyes glimmering with an interior silver. [you could say that the jihad was just a test run.]

  GIRL, YOU SO COLD-HEARTED.

  Mother glared up at the voice from nowhere. [there are people who hurt me, long ago. they sent me here to get rid of me, and now it’s time to go back.]

  “She’s the Exile.” Fleur looked down at Mother with sad eyes. “They hurt her. And now she’s going to use us to hurt them. Not just a war or a jihad. Not just an extinction.”

  [little flower—]

  “She’s going to use us to destroy Heaven.”

  The pleasure displayed on the child’s face was unmistakeable.

  [that would be a fitting end to this charade, wouldn’t it? what divine irony if i were to destroy her by the end of this... yes. i’ve made up my mind. time to go.]

  Whistler cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t we wait until Gary is *ahem* built?”

  FUCK YOU SAY?

  [gary is finished enough. right, gary?]

  DAMN STRAIGHT.

  Mother rolled her eyes. [right. so can we leave?]

  HELL YEAH.

  [good. take as many machines from the center as you need, and let’s go home.]

  With Gary distracted with the takeoff procedures, Hank lit a cigarette. Whistler fanned the smoke away, pulled his collar up around his neck and cheeks, his eyes darting toward the child. Fleur huddled closer to Nine, her dark curls tickling his neck and chin and cheek as he bent, kissed the top of her head, inhaled her scent, dreamed those dreams that he could never live for his lack of body and soul and future.

  Mother was practically bursting with excitement. Her face radiated joy at the impending departure, her smile wide, dimples marking flushed cheeks, her entire body rocking back and forth in the ridiculous beanbag chair, ridiculous for its blatant anachronism in a universe now devoid of romper rooms and hepcats.

  [we’ll bring it to them. an end of sorts, but more... so much more.]

  Gary began to resonate with the shiver of a million phase drives. Fleur closed her eyes, sick to her soul with the realization of what they were about to do.

  [Heaven awaits.]

  They left.

  THE STILLNESS BETWEEN

  She knew very little, but she knew beyond a doubt that she loved chocolate milk.

  She drank as much chocolate milk as she could, which really wasn’t that much, but she knew that chocolate milk brought her almost as much if not more happiness as anything in the sterile world that had been her home for her entire life. The angels disapproved of her mass-consumption of that silken chocolaty goodness, but they really couldn’t do anything to stop her. Nan would voice her disapproval in that tugging, lecturing way, but she would just smile sweetly and ask for more. Always more chocolate milk. In her little world, there was an unending supply of anything that she desired. The angels had to do exactly as she ordered, a fact that she was just now beginning to take advantage of on a regular basis. Some would call her spoiled. She preferred to think of herself as a child of privilege. Chocolate milk? We’ve got oceans.

  “Lily, dear?”

  She looked up from the tabletop where her gaze had been transfixed on the colloidal action of millions of brown chocolate flecks interspersed throughout her glass of white near-milk. The silver spoon with which she had thoughtfully stirred the chocolate powder into her beloved drink stopped its revolution, came to rest.

  “I don’t want to.”

  Nan pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. She tousled Lily’s dark curls, pushed one wayward spiral back behind the little girl’s ear. “I know, dear. But you have to go outside. Just for a while, okay? Then you can come back in.”

  “Can I have some more?” She indicated the half-empty (half-full?) glass before her, even though she knew the answer already. She could always have more. She could not, however, persuade Nan to let her stay inside today. Or any day.

  “Of course, dear. Let’s go.” Nan’s face was as warm and kind as a first-generation projection could muster. If Lily squinted her eyes just enough, she could see the flicker. If she reached out far enough with her mind, she could feel the cool surface of the silver projector sphere at the center of Nan’s being. Sometimes, she resented being ordered outside for this daily ritual by a loose collection of photons revolving around that marble-sized machine.

  Lily slid down out of her chair, walked toward the door, her hand on the doorknob before she felt Nan’s motherly touch, draping her coat around her shoulders. She turned the knob and went outside for her daily ration of reality, all-too-aware that her every move was being recorded by a veritable universe of machines.

  A typical summer day, cold wind blowing over dead tree limbs, weak sunlight falling on her face, not warming but simply illuminating. That clatter of sound from above always chilled her to the bone even more so than the wind or the air or the growing realization of her isolation. She walked the avenue alone... Well, not entirely alone. Nan walked behind her, watching. She was always being watched. Even the suffocating trees above seemed to watch her with their interwoven cemetery embrace.

  Lily sat down on the bench at the end of the lane, as she always did. Nan stopped several hundred paces behind her, as she always did. The bench was at the center of what had once been a beautifully-landscaped courtyard, before the Troubles, before the Discovery, before the Birth. Now, it was a haphazard collection of brown and dead shrubbery, leaves blowing in the wind, collecting at the foot of the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the courtyard and faced the street.

  She sat, a confused and moody child with her chin resting contemplatively on her fists, elbows resting on upper thighs. The wind seemed to be the only presence interested in playing with her today, fluttering her hair into a tangled mess that Nan would painfully brush out tonight before bedtime.

  They walked
by on the street outside the gate as they always did, the people of the city, the last city, walking and watching and simply surviving in the winter days that summer had become in the last decades. They resented her, and she could feel it in their gazes, especially the empty gazes of the mothers, holding the small hands of their toddler sons as they passed. Sometimes the little boys would smile and wave at her. Some of the mothers yanked their children along then, past the little girl on the other side of the fence, past that deceptive metal barrier and the deadly, invisible energy shield that accompanied it. She noted the looks of confusion on the faces of the little boys, and was sad to see them go.

  A rumble from the west and a transport lifted off above the horizon with fiery liquid speed, propelled out of the atmosphere from the trebuchet built into the other side of the planet. Lily knew that all across the city, people were looking at that dark sliver, wondering when it would be their turn to join the jihad. Most would die before it was time. Most were simply raising their sons to be good warriors. Most would look at the little girl on the other side of the iron fence with hatred, for being the cause of all of this. For being the last little girl ever born to the human race.

  She turned away from the transport, or the contrail thereof, for that was all that was left of it now. Two tiny tears slid down her cheeks. She hated being outdoors almost as much as she loved chocolate milk.

  They walked by then, the first Mommy and Son of the day, the mother’s face turned down to the sidewalk. She was holding a shopping bag with one hand, filled with that day’s allotment of nutrition, and with the other, she held the hand of a little boy, maybe five or six, wearing a knit cap that covered his ears against the biting cold of summertime. The woman walked faster as she felt Lily’s gaze, and the little boy tried hard to keep pace. Unlike most of the mothers, who would stare in at Lily with a sharp look of resentment and fury, this woman just looked down with a mixture of grief and defeat.

  Lily stood then, uncertain in her movements, outstretched her right hand in a wave. The little boy smiled widely and waved back with his free arm. They were already almost out of the limited line of sight into the city that the break in the shrub periphery of the fence would permit. She ran to the fence, grasping the bars, just out of reach of the energy field that would instantly kill any other human. He was far away now and getting farther away, but the little boy still looked back, still smiled. He waved one last time before his dragging mother led him around the corner and out of Lily’s life.

  Her face pressed between two of the cool metal bars, her hands each grasping the fence, Lily closed her eyes, let the wind dry the tear-tracks from her face. She inhaled deeply, the inhalation barely masking the sob that snuck out of nowhere as they so often do in the upset child. She spoke, because she knew that Nan was there. She knew that Nan would be there until it was time for Lily to leave this planet.

  “Can we go inside now, Nan?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Can I have some more chocolate milk?”

  “Of course, dear. You may always have more chocolate milk.”

  Lily released the bars from her grasp, turned to find Nan standing at her side, hand already outstretched. She reached up, tried to find comfort in that grasp, which felt enough like her own flesh, but still maintained an alien coolness. It had been explained to Lily, how the angels were not exactly like her, or even the people who walked by the compound and stared at her through the break in the shrubbery. The angels were special because they were made of light, not blood and bones and other nasty naughty things. The angels would always be there to look after Lily, long after all of the others had died.

  She squeezed Nan’s hand, and Nan looked down at the little girl with a quiet smile. Lily knew that no matter how hard she squeezed that artificial hand, she would never be able to break it, burst it, invade it in the way that she would have been able to destroy a true hand made of flesh. The trillions of tiny machines that now swam through the air were much stronger than Lily could ever hope to be, and no matter how hard she squeezed, they would maintain the shape that the little silver ball told them to hold.

  Nan could sense the question on the tip of Lily’s tongue, and she slowed her pace, eventually stopping completely and bending down on one knee in front of the child. Lily studied the ground intently, and Nan levered her head into an upright position by placing one finger under her chin. The girl’s cold eyes were tear-wet. Nan wiped one of the escapees from Lily’s cheek.

  “What is it, little flower?”

  She exhaled, breath stippled with those involuntary sobs. “They all hate me.”

  The projection before her performed a very good rendition of sorrow, not that Lily would have recognized the difference. Nan leaned forward and embraced her. “No, little one. They don’t hate you.”

  “They do. I killed their babies.”

  Nan released Lily from her embrace then, her face suddenly sober and bereft of an attempt at empathy. Lily could almost see the communication between the angel and whatever controlled her, the faint flicker of thought between the light sculpture and the entity at the center of the planet. The wind seemed to pick up then, swirls of dead leaves skittering about the paved avenue that led to the main complex, skeletons scratching across brick and mortar.

  “Who told you that, Lily?” Nan asked, knowing full well that the child had not been out of her field of senses since she had been delivered.

  Lily was evasive, tried to find solace in the intricate brickwork upon which they stood.

  “Lily, who?”

  “A little girl.”

  Nan frowned. “Lily,” she struggled with the words, “you know that that’s not possible.”

  The wind was most definitely picking up, the same dead leaves that had been blowing around the force-shielded compound for years creating a visual cacophony between the child and the angel. Lily’s hair whipped around her head, snarling and tangling, a medusa halo in this gray expanse.

  “She’s not here. Not with us. Not with them, either.” Lily’s arm reached up, hand and pointed finger indicating the break in the shrubbery.

  If there had been blood beneath Nan’s skin, it would have run cold.

  “Where is she, Lily?”

  “She’s in my head. In my dreams.”

  “Lily, I—”

  “She lives down there.” Her finger pointed down at the brick pathway. “In the ground, far away, but she talks to me when I sleep.”

  Nan looked away from that confused, innocent gaze. “And what does she say to you, little flower?”

  Lily almost recoiled from that appellation. Nan made a mental note that was immediately integrated into the collective angel consciousness.

  “I’m the last little girl. Because of me, the rest died.”

  Nan exhaled slowly. The angels had not predicted this development. The catalyst was becoming aware at a phenomenal rate, already communicating with the Exile. It was almost time to begin her ascent.

  “Come, Lily.” Nan stood again, the child’s hand still held in her own. “It’s getting cold out. Let’s go have some hot chocolate.”

  “Hot chocolate milk?”

  Nan smiled to herself, noting the profound concern in the child’s voice. What else but hot chocolate milk?

  “Yes, dear.”

  They returned to the compound. They sky was bruising, the first hint of a rain that would never actually fall. Another transport thrust into the late afternoon, cleaving the frigid air with fire and silver.

  She never understood the human fascination with inhaling smoke.

  It was a dirty habit, or so they told her, but she did enjoy it. She enjoyed the way it set their minds at ease, the way it made her feel sophisticated. She unceremoniously crushed the last of her cigarette into the ashtray on the obsidian desk before her, its soul spilling up from the wreckage and floating off to cigarette heaven on the final wisp of smoke.

  A newspaper was folded near her left hand, a saucer and cup of tea chatt
ing neighborly with the dead soldiers strewn about the ashtray at her right hand. She fidgeted. She did not know why; she certainly had nothing to fear from this meeting. First the left hand smoothed the crease in the newspaper, then the right hand smoothed back her hair as severely as it could, given the innate behavior problems of the curly dark coiffure she had chosen to present to these animals. An unruly curl popped out of confinement and tickled her nose. She sighed and pushed it back into place.

  She was a beautiful woman, without a doubt. They still feared her, without a doubt. This was helpful in the initial phase of this project, but now it was becoming an annoyance. She could barely communicate with these people, so insistent were they on submission. They were making the job entirely too easy.

  There had been resistance at first. There had always been resistance. Through the centuries, she had watched them, lived and laughed and loved among them, but she had never truly been one of them. She never could be one of them. When she finally sensed that the time was right to begin her project, she had in truth been bored of the species, just as she had been bored prior to the exile.

  She stirred her tea half-heartedly, swished the teabag around once or twice, took a sip. Awful stuff. Worse than smoking. And this was supposed to make you look sophisticated? At least smoking had the addictive properties of nicotine. Tea had nothing.

  There was a quiet knock at the door. “Yes?”