“I really don’t know, sorry.”
“But what do you think?” asked Justin.
“I think that only humans go to the afterlife. That’s just what I was told. Nobody knows anything for sure. Nobody can prove any of it.”
“But what about dead babies and children? Those that can’t remember. Those with diseases, the brainless. The afterlife could just be full of brainless infants abandoned at birth. That doesn’t sound like a nice place to me. Not what I was taught. And, who decided all of this anyway? The earlier members of our species, the primitive ones, those that hadn’t developed the ability to think? I wonder if they too were judged, if they made it to the afterlife. It makes me wonder about a lot of things that I never thought about when I was alive, but now I am the way I am, I really do worry about all that.”
“Look, I would love to stay and talk to you about death all day, but I have a few questions to ask you,” said Jamie.
“Sure, it won’t make much difference to me.”
“Right, I saw ships leaving Utopia. What were they? Where did they go?”
“I don’t know about the ships. I have no recollection of that moment.”
“Okay, how about those birds that are everywhere, where did they come from?”
“I built them in my laboratory.”
“Your laboratory?”
“Yes. I made the birds to eat the crops.”
“Why?”
“To show the people in Utopia that they couldn’t control us anymore. It was our time to fight back. I wanted to leave my mark on the planet, my footprint for all to see. I didn’t want to be a slave, living in false hope that some good would come from whatever broken promises Utopia fed to us. Living is all a lie. I had to shatter that lie and prove everyone wrong.”
“But now there is no food. Everyone will die.”
“That’s the point. There’s nothing anyone can do. The birds will take care of the planet when I’m gone. There’s no point worrying about it.”
“You mean no point worrying about death?” Jamie laughed. “You’re the same, you worry more than I do. It’s no different. You’re footprint gave nothing but proof of how pointless your inventions were.”
“I’ve had enough of speaking to you,” said Justin.
“Great, well I’ve had enough of speaking to you too,” replied Jamie. “I’m going back to my house to find some food.”
“You won’t need food,” said Justin.
With that, Justin closed his eyes and stopped moving. He became completely still. Completely motionless. Jamie stared at him, confused. He wondered whether his battery had ran dry or he had simply perished. Then, a moment later, shadows appeared on the ground all around him. They were inside the fence, not outside. Shaped like birds. Jamie had no reason to look up, he knew what they were and they filled him with genuine terror.
As the birds swooped down and picked apart Jamie’s flesh, a shrill scream echoed about the barren meadows, and further, as far as the capital.
50
Grace climbed out from the tunnel and into the darkness of night. The metallic passageway rose up from beneath the city walls, and as she exited the slope, her footing was loose on the surface below.
She felt the ground under her feet; soft soil and grass. She knelt down and touched the earth. She felt a blade of crushed grass with her fingers, moved them along its surface, before breaking it away with a light snap. She lifted the grass to her face and smelt it. It was the first time she had touched and smelt fresh grass. A strange sensation passed through her, one of happiness, which filled her with the utmost of joy.
She rose to her feet and looked around to assess her surroundings. There was no light at all in any direction but above her. There was no sound but the soft cry of the wind. She looked up to see a sky filled with dazzling lights. She had seen stars before, but never in such number. Glowing white on a thick blanket of dark blue, spreading in every direction, some bigger than others, some brighter than others. It was a breathtaking sight. She felt more alive than ever before, but in a strange way, she felt so much more insignificant. Like a small speck of life compared to the endless stretch of a thousand suns floating on the tapestry of sky.
She gazed for perhaps five minutes, looking at nothing in particular, taking in the cold clean air, and wallowing in the glow of the stars.
Eventually she began to form shapes in the darkness. Her ability to see at night was beginning to increase, and she could start to make out her surroundings in detail.
Behind her, a wall so high obstructed the view of the night sky. A solid block of reflective darkness where the only stars that shone were an echoed reflection of those above.
In front of her, she made out the shape of what looked like large plants and trees. She could see them gently shaking in the wind, a black and white image of life moving softly from side to side. She could hear the leaves as they brushed together, perceive the subtle sound of their movement.
She briefly remembered what Samuel had told her. That in the morning, when the light came, food would be delivered to the tunnel. She knew it might not be safe to wait around until morning, her gut feeling told her that would be a mistake.
She began to wander away from the wall of the city, pushing her way through huge plants taller than herself, a forest of foliage. She walked carefully and slowly, all the while making sure that she continually assessed her surroundings.
Grace walked for about twenty minutes; there was no clue as to where the forest of plants would end. She was exhausted and needed to find somewhere to rest, somewhere completely out of sight.
She felt around as she walked further away from the city, until she discovered the trunk of a tree. It was thick in diameter, she could sleep beside it and be almost hidden from view. Beneath her feet were flattened stalks of long grass. She knelt down and careful moved the foliage in a way so that it would cover her legs as she slept. She lied on the floor, once again using her bags as pillows.
The ground was slightly uncomfortable, and Grace took a few minutes to find a suitable position where the hard cold mud did not cause her too much pain. Eventually, she found herself at ease, and the last thing she saw as she collapsed into her sleep, were the stars.
51
Yudar was standing on the Command Deck. There was one man in the room with him, Commander Parkins. They were staring through the glass expanse that was their window into space.
The faces of the officers travelling aboard the other ships were displayed on multiple screens. Nobody looked panicked though, it was a relatively calm situation, despite the mass of birds floating in space.
“What are they?” asked Parkins.
“Assumed to be artificially intelligent pigeons designed on Terra to destroy the plants with the initial purpose of maintaining a controllable food supply in order to bring down human civilisation,” said Yudar.
“We know all that,” barked Commander Ragin from his ship, the Enigma. “But what are they doing at the anomaly?”
“Probably looking for food,” said First Technician Williams.
A few people laughed, before quickly maintaining serious gazes.
“What is a first technician doing on channel?” asked Ragin, clearly frustrated.
“Doing my job, sir,” replied Williams.
“And what exactly is your job but feeble mockery of this rather alarming situation?”
“Feeble mockery it is, sir.”
“What!” yelled Ragin.
“I’m here to organise repairs when one of those birds or other bits of debris out there smashes into the Enigma, sir. Or would you like me to leave your ship alone once the time comes?”
“Enough of this,” said Ragin. “Yudar, the anomaly. Please give us a briefing.”
“Well,” said Yudar, “the energy source that we have observed up to now is still present; it appears to come from one specific locus, a small point in the middle of this sea of birds. Some other strange debris is floating around the
energy source. We still cannot see what the energy source is, but by processing the data, it is the single most powerful amount of energy we have ever detected.”
“Could it be the start?” asked Parkins.
“Where the universe first began? Unlikely,” said Yudar. “But we have not yet ruled it out as a possibility.”
“Where is the energy leaking from?” asked Ragin.
“It is not leaking, there is a physical shape to the energy,” said Yudar. “There is some form of object out there that contains the energy. We simply cannot see it yet.”
Kin-Commander Sykes was next to speak, “Do you think it is renewable? We can use it as an energy source?”
“Maybe,” said Yudar, “but I cannot confirm anything as of yet.”
“So we might have found it? The perfect energy source?” added Sykes.
“Again, we cannot confirm anything as of yet. We simply do not know.”
“Look, Yudar, I have a question. How did all these robot birds get this far from the Milky Way Galaxy?”
“We do not know that either. We have a team of scientists here on the Archytas that will analyse the birds, find out their origin. It is still an assumption that they are the same birds that we witnessed on Terra. But it is a strange coincidence that we have observed such machines before.”
“Parkins, Yudar, something approaching,” said Cartographer Marx.
Yudar and Parkins turned their gaze again to the glass surface that separated them from space. They saw an object spinning slowly toward them. A larger object, not a bird.
“What is it?” asked Yudar.
“Initial readings indicate that it might be a body,” said Marx. “The impact should be minimal. First Technician Williams on standby please.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s definitely a body,” confirmed Parkins.
“Black clothing, male, maybe one of ours.”
“How did he get outside the ship?” asked Ragin.
“No idea, but I think we should sound the alarm, get everyone off the observation decks and into their rooms,” said Yudar.
“Done,” concluded Ragin.
The faint crackle of alarms resonated through the communication channels of each ship, just as a huge crash echoed from the Archytas. Yudar stared at the face of his friend as he hung in front of the window of his ship.
“Any damage?” asked Ms Williams.
“No damage,” said Parkins.
“Carter,” said Yudar.
“What’s that?” asked Ragin.
“Carter,” said Sykes, “I knew he was trouble.”
“Carter. One of ours,” said Yudar. First Maxwell, now Carter, he thought, as a wave of strange feeling passed through him.
“He was having dreams about birds,” said Sykes, “I questioned him about it before. Him and Maxwell. Maxwell lost to time, but they were both on the same unit and having the same dreams.”
“How did he get outside the ship?” asked Ragin, for the second time.
“There’s another one!” yelled Cartographer Marx. “And another!”
Everyone’s gaze shifted to outside his or her respective ships. Bodies, so many bodies floating in space amongst birds and debris. Black outlines on black space. Cogwheels floating amongst broken seashells. Carter’s body floating silently, his face looked blank, soulless, and at that moment, so too did Yudar’s.
52
Carter looked on at the birds floating in the space around him. It cannot have been a coincidence, he thought, Yudar said something about the relevance of birds being revealed, but he still knew nothing, and could not understand why they were there in space.
He wondered if this had been the target destination all along, no new planet, just a detour to check on some floating debris. If his species had risked everything on a little exploration into the unknown, then there could be serious food and energy supply complications if all of it was for nothing.
But Yudar, he thought, something about him suggested he too had a deep fascination with the birds. Yudar undoubtedly guided the ships to the point of the anomaly, or at least, he must have had a big influence at that. Even so, Carter believed he could completely trust Yudar; he was the only one who thought about things differently.
The other people on the Observation Deck were chattering to each other. Carter heard brief fragments of their conversations, but most of them were simply unanswered questions. An answer would come eventually, it always did, and Carter did not want to trouble himself with any more false logic or overthinking.
An alarm sounded that filled the deck all around him. People scurried back into the ship, and so too did Carter. The alarm told everyone to leave the Observation Deck, the leisure lounges, and all other non-necessary recreational areas aboard the ship, and to return to their rooms. Simple procedures necessary to maintain the safety of everyone, or so the alarm had stated.
Carter returned to his room, poured himself a glass of water and stared out of his small window at the vacuum of space. He could not see anything from his window, there was no light from his side of the ship, and the outlines of birds were not apparent.
Carter wondered once again what was going on, but did what he had learnt to do so often and pushed his thoughts away.
He drank his water and decided to sleep in the safety of his room. He instantly began to drift away, safe in the knowledge that he would discover, at least at some point, the answers he was waiting for.
53
Grace woke to the sound of sudden movement. As she turned on her back, a sharp pain crept through her legs. She looked around, taking in her surroundings. She had slept, as she had decided the previous night, against a large tree trunk enshrouded by long grass.
It was a cool morning, the air fresher than she was used to breathing. She moved her legs around until the feeling began to return, before turning her head in the direction of sound.
Above her, a faint outline of what looked like a net stretched in the direction of forever across the endless sky, but it was so high up, she could not be sure what it was, or what purpose it served.
Toward the city, Grace could see hundreds of people tending to a lush field of crops. Beyond that, she saw the tall metallic walls of the city she had left. The silver exterior encompassing the city reached out in both directions and vanished off into the distant horizon. It did not appear to end, and if whispers were to be believed, it would certainly have kept the people safe during whatever incident had occurred on the outside.
As Grace watched the men harvesting the crops, she suddenly got a feeling that something was not quite right. It was as though her sight had processed what she saw long before her mind could come to a logical explanation. Eventually, she realised what she was seeing, that they were not men, but boys. They each wore the same uniform of red checked shirts, blue trousers, and brown shoes. Each of the boys had not only identical brown hair, but also brandished the same hairstyle.
Grace strained her eyes. It became apparent to her that each boy had the same face, as if the same boy. She wondered how it was possible for them all to be alike. She had seen two people with the same face before, but never more than two, and they were sisters. She wondered if these hundred boys could all be brothers, but quickly dismissed this thought based on her own understanding and logic.
Grace checked through the trees behind her, but there was no movement. She reached for her bags and got quickly but quietly to her feet, before beginning to creep silently away from the city, and away from the boys.
54
Chief Engineer Yudar was standing with Commander Parkins on the Observation Deck. The rest of the area was empty, and the only objects in sight were the bodies and birds floating around outside the ship.
They could clearly see the pigeons now; space had become dimly illuminated by light from the Sol-ship, which had become temporarily active again following Yudar’s request.
“Do you think it’s there?” asked Parkins.
“It wi
ll be. This is not a coincidence, it cannot be.”
“And it will power everything, forever?”
“That is the theory,” replied Yudar.
“And you still think this is the point where the universe began?”
“I believe so. And this power is whatever was left behind.”
“What about the birds?” asked Parkins.
“I am not sure how they come into it, but we have collected some, we are running tests now. I believe it has something to do with the point of observation. The very point that we have witnessed became the point where the birds appeared. Before we got close enough, there were no other objects around the energy source, but as we got here, they appeared, as if from nowhere.”
“Interesting, and the bodies?”
“The same, I believe. As soon as we get the test results, we will know a lot more. We are still a day away from reaching the source, so perhaps we take a day off ourselves. We’re going to have a lot of work to do soon.”
“Finally something to do,” laughed Parkins.
“Very true,” agreed Yudar.
They parted ways inside the Archytas. Yudar waited until Parkins was completely out of sight, before taking a detour to Room 2774. When he reached the entrance to Carter’s room, he removed a small foldable metal box from his jacket. He typed an override code into the keypad beside the locked door, and it slid open to the side.
Yudar glanced into the room and saw Carter asleep on his bed. The sight of Carter clearly made Yudar relieved, and he showed it with a deep but thankful sigh.
He placed the box on the floor inside the room, before returning to the keypad, and locking the door as he left.
55
Carter woke up and poured himself a glass of water. He did not notice the box as it idled by his door, not for a good while.
The Archytas Page 10