by Alex Scarrow
Then he thought he could hear waves breaking softly on a beach: a gentle thump of water and a long hiss as it withdrew. Other sounds faded in: the occasional call of a seagull, the soft clink-clink-clink of halyards against a mast.
The sounds informed him that he was on a beach, then finally the darkness lifted and he was: a beach that looked familiar from his youth – the Turnball Sailing Club. He could see the dinghies drawn up further down the golden sands, deckchairs and sunshades and the clubhouse further along. The Pacific Ocean was warm, turquoise and in a placid mood today.
‘Hello.’
He turned to see Grace sitting on a bright red lounger beside him.
‘This is really nice,’ she added.
‘How . . . ? This . . . this . . .’ Rex shook his head. The Turnball Sailing Club didn’t exist any more. When he was in his teens, it had gone bust, the clubhouse was demolished and the beach was built up with apartments.
‘I read your memories,’ she replied. ‘I liked this one. And it seems you like it too.’
Rex nodded. He’d been ten when his parents first joined. Those were perhaps the happiest few years of his life – coming here virtually every day.
‘Why . . . why are we sitting here?’
‘We could be anywhere, any-when. But I thought you’d like to see this again.’
Rex nodded slowly. ‘I spent so much time down here.’ He looked at her. ‘But this isn’t here. This is a . . . some sort of hallucination, isn’t it?’
‘Not really. It’s real in every sense that matters.’
‘But it isn’t real. It can’t be. The sailing club doesn’t exist any more.’
‘What we see, hear, taste, touch, smell, feel, Mr Williams, all end up as electrical signals converted to chemical messages before we’re even aware of them. Our minds interpret the chemistry, and decide what that means, where we are and how we feel.’
She leaned over and ran her fingers through the coarse sand. ‘To be honest, the only things that are real – that you can rely on being true – are those you experience inside your head. Everything outside is just . . . information.’
‘But –’ he gestured at the sea – ‘this is either here, or it’s not. It’s not a matter of opinion.’
‘You know, the real sky outside could be green, the sea could really be bright orange. But we’ve all decided to interpret the information our eyes gather in a certain way. We are told the sky is blue, so we all see the sky as blue. All that matters on the inside is what you decide is true.’
‘So, this is . . . inside? We’re inside . . . what, exactly?’
‘We call it the bioverse. It’s a good name. I don’t know who first came up with it.’
‘Is everyone who got infected . . . in this bioverse?’
Grace nodded. ‘Most of them.’
‘Where are they?’
She shrugged. ‘Nearby.’
He looked around. ‘On this beach? In the clubhouse? Beyond these trees?’
‘No. This is a private space. Just you and me. I made it from your memory so you didn’t panic when you reassembled.’
‘Reassembled?’
‘Your mind. Your consciousness.’
Rex had an unsettling image of his brain floating like a cauliflower in a jam jar.
‘You’re talking about my . . . brain?’
‘No, your awareness. That’s such a tiny part of you. I think only fifty or sixty million cells of the brain. It’s so small. The rest of that organ, the billions of cells, they’re just storage, they’re housekeeping, they control body processes.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Someone explained it to me this way: awareness is like your CPU. The rest of the brain is the hard drive, the cooling fan, circuit board, power unit . . . all that stuff. It follows you around and sometimes it all assembles together – one complete mind. Sometimes it’s just your awareness you have with you.’ She smiled. ‘That’s travelling light, I guess.’
‘So . . . how much of you is here with me?’ he asked.
‘Not all of me,’ she replied.
‘Just your awareness?’
‘Not even all of that.’ She smiled. ‘You can share yourself out. Be in two places at once, duplicate then recombine. It’s—’
‘My God . . . duplicate?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So then . . . if you can do that, which one is the real you?’
She laughed at that. ‘I am not the cells themselves, Mr Williams, I’m how they talk to each other. I know that must sound weird.’
‘You’re not kidding.’
‘Are you religious?’
He shook his head. ‘My father was Catholic. I never believed in any of that.’
‘Well, I was going to say, it’s easier to understand this if you think of yourself as a spirit.’
He spread his hands. ‘And what? That makes all of this . . . heaven?’
‘Yup.’ She shrugged. ‘Kinda. Or nirvana, whatever you want to call it.’
He was about to laugh at her reply, but then he realized she was serious, and she was right. Looking at this strangeness that way, yes, it made sense.
‘This is a . . . microbiological afterlife?’
‘That, or you can call it inner space, or the bioverse.’ She shrugged. ‘Everyone seems to have a different name for it.’
‘If I accept your religious metaphor, and you and I are spirits . . . and this is heaven? Then, does it follow that there’s a God? Someone or something in charge?’
‘Not in charge.’ She smiled. ‘Not really. But They’re certainly here to help.’
‘Who?’
‘Them.’
‘Them?’
‘It’s really hard to describe who They are.’ She pressed her lips together as she thought about it. ‘They found their way here, sort of randomly I guess, but They came with a mission.’ She turned to him. ‘Would you like to meet one of Them?’
He wondered if he was going to regret it. ‘That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? So we can meet? Negotiate?’
Grace shook her head. ‘They don’t have to negotiate with you. We could wipe out the last survivors easily. We could swarm ashore and get this over with very quickly. But then many would die in the process, and their minds lost forever. No one wants that.’
‘So what do “They” want from me?’
‘Just for you to see for yourself. Decide what’s best. Then go back home and tell everyone. That’s why you’re so important, Mr Williams. People trust their leaders. You know, the same thing is happening with other groups around the world. We’re getting other leaders to see for themselves.’
He understood. He was pretty sure she was telling the truth about swarming them too; if They could make that vast floating structure and tolerate the salty Pacific, They could probably find a way on to the two islands of New Zealand without any trouble.
‘So?’ She looked at him. ‘What do you think? How about it?’
‘Meet . . . one of Them? One of your “facilitators”?’
‘Yes. Just one.’
What the hell am I agreeing to do here? Meet ‘God’?
‘Anything I need to know first? Dos and don’ts . . . that kind of thing? Wear a tie or something?’
‘No.’ She laughed softly. ‘They’re not judging you.’
‘Right.’
He looked around once more at the bay, at the clubhouse, at the inviting turquoise waves. ‘I suppose we’d better get on and have this meeting, then.’
He was standing in a dark void. Floating, in fact.
It took him a while to realize that it wasn’t just more blackness – it appeared to be a projection of space. He began to pick out the faint steady light of distant stars, the subtle brushstrokes of Magellanic gas clouds.
‘Grace. What’s going on?’
He heard Grace’s voice even though he couldn’t see her anywhere. ‘Just a moment.’ Her voice filled the universe around him.
The luminosity of
the stars and gas clouds increased until what was once the blackness of a dead universe was awash with colour like a watercolour painting left out in rain. At university he’d studied a module of cosmology. From the little he remembered of it he realized what he was looking at was a universe much, much younger than the present one.
‘Why am I seeing this?’
She didn’t reply.
‘Grace?’
No response. He looked down at himself and saw nothing. He was simply present in this place, in what he presumed, was another bioverse simulation. He was a wandering spirit, witnessing the incredible adolescent years of the cosmos.
Presently the gas clouds began to move, to swirl and spin into what looked like weather systems, and Rex understood he was watching millions of years accelerated into seconds. The clouds swirled and compacted, glowing brighter with energy. The scene suddenly zoomed in on a random tendril of gas and Rex felt panic for a moment as he found everything rushing past him. He was pulled towards a small segment of the universe, to inspect it more closely.
He saw clouds of gas and dust that had fallen in on themselves and formed into a cluster of baby stars. Rushing forward again, descending into even greater granular detail, he found himself hurtling towards one particular star as the rest receded into the background.
The colour washes of distant gas clouds drained away and once again space was a black void peppered with faint pinpricks stars. His view zoomed in and now he was hovering above a world.
My God.
Another world. He could see beige oceans and dark land masses that began to distort and change shape. He realized, once again, time was being accelerated and he was seeing this planet’s geology finding its form, tectonic plates sailing like ships across the incomplete Earth’s crust. The land masses settled, or perhaps time was being slowed down. He saw the planet’s hue change, become cooler. He saw the beige oceans change to more of an olive colour; he saw the envelope of an atmosphere thicken, and green-tinted clouds begin to form like milk curling in a stirred coffee cup.
‘Is this . . . Their world?’ he asked, hoping Grace, or someone, would answer him. ‘Is that what I’m being shown?’
But still nothing. Silence. He remained on his own.
He watched the world below him settle now that it had an atmosphere; time was being slowed down yet again. He saw the marbling of colours changing across the land masses, ecosystems rising and falling to be replaced with new ones as global temperatures changed.
He watched a smear of white spreading down from the top and up from the bottom of the world, almost meeting at the equator and then drawing back like theatre curtains, and realized he’d just witnessed a complete ice age. It might have lasted tens or hundreds of thousands of years, but for him it had been mere seconds.
Time slowed down still further.
And that’s when he saw it.
One glint of light on the world as day and night looped the planet. One glint, followed by another and another. Artificial light, surely.
Life? Is that Them?
The pinpricks of light increased across the surface, at first random isolated dots, but as the number grew they began to link up into web-like patterns that could only suggest an intelligent structure.
They’re showing me their history.
The webs of light within the night side became hair-thin grey lines on the day side of the planet. Roads? He saw the lines converge and thicken and the blotches of greyness expand like bruising on an apple. The oceans began to show their own stains of colour. The whiteness at both ends of the planet began to recede further until they eventually vanished. The discoloured oceans began to rise, encroaching on the land masses, the grey cities quickly vanishing beneath the advancing olive seas.
Rex noticed the atmospheric envelope thickening to become foggy and he realized he was seeing this world rise in temperature, starting to cook itself within a hot and humid blanket.
Global warming. Not just us, then.
For a moment, he wondered if he was being shown a history of Their world or given a cautionary lesson with some hypothetical planet. The fog now thickened and became a featureless, solid, opaque envelope.
The world began to recede beneath him and he sensed its story was over. Suddenly he was whisked with a disconcerting blur to somewhere else. The sun here was warmer.
Is this a different system?
Another world was rushed towards him. The palette of planetary colours was more Earth-like. The seas were turquoise, the land bluey-green. Hair-thin lines raced towards web-like networks that converged on discoloured stains of construction and Rex watched as they began to break up and disappear, the dark stains of what had to have been vast cities fade to nothing. It didn’t disappear beneath a superheated blanket, which seemed a more positive thing, but its intelligent life vanished. This world’s story ended with a lush and verdant planet-scape, but no sign of civilization.
Someone was here once. They tried to reach out beyond their world, but only got as far as orbit before . . . ?
Before what? They wiped themselves out? They ran out of resources? They were erased by a virus?
Rex was jerked away again and found himself floating above a third world. Like the first two, the tell tale signs of intelligent life were there: the criss-crossing trellis of lines, the golden glowing of artificial constructs on the night side.
He wondered what fate was awaiting these poor souls. He wasn’t kept waiting long.
His eyes picked out movement, something tumbling, approaching fast.
An asteroid. It looked the size of a grain of rice to him, but if this planet was Earth’s size, then it could easily have been the size of Manhattan. It smacked into the middle of an ocean with a blinding flash of light.
As the glare faded back down he could see the atmosphere recoiling as a shockwave pushed it back revealing a growing ring of planet surface exposed directly to the vacuum of space. He saw concentric rings of ocean racing out from ground zero; tsunamis that had to be hundreds if not thousands of metres high.
A mushroom cloud rose from the point of impact, an enormous spout of ejecta that spread out and began to create a shroud that would, he suspected, end up coating the entire planet soon enough. He saw the delicate concentric rings of seawater meet the land and turn into pale white brush smears that kept on going. He saw lights on the dark side blink out. And the shroud quickly spread like spilled ink across tissue paper.
Rex Williams had just been shown a sequence of worlds, dying in different ways.
Intelligent worlds.
CHAPTER 37
In another dark void, in another place far away, a young man called Jake Sutherland understood what he’d just witnessed too. Unlike Rex Williams, he was much less self-conscious about voicing his thoughts out loud.
‘So. You’ve showed me lots of civilizations dying . . . Is that a warning or something?’
His words hung in the darkness unanswered.
‘I was told to come and see. Is this what I was meant to see? Is there more?’
The darkness remained unresponsive.
‘Hey, Camille? You there?’
There was no reply from the girl who’d brought him here. He was alone. The sun, the dying world below him, were gone now. Even the faint stars . . . all gone. A plain black canvas once more. He was beginning to wonder if that was the show. All done, and please pick up your rubbish as you exit this auditorium.
That’s it? He hovered, bodiless, and waited, wondering how long he could exist in this nothingness before his mind caved in on itself, leaving him utterly insane. A day? A year? A decade? A century?
I.
A whispered voice. Jake’s attention jerked away from his growing panic. He waited for the voice to say something more.
I . . . am . . . They.
He looked around but saw only black. It was impossible to tell where the soft sibilant voice had come from.
‘You . . . are you one of Them?’
Them.
Yes.
‘Where’s Camille? Where’s the person who brought me here?’
Not here. Just you. And Us/I.
He realized he was asking pointless, panicked questions. He’d been shown things, important things, and the next few words needed to not sound stupid, needed to be about what he’d been shown.
‘You showed me some alien civilizations? Real ones?’
What is ‘alien’?
‘Alien? It means, not from my world,’ replied Jake.
Then yes.
‘Why? Is it a warning? Is it—’
It is history-truth. What has been.
He was vaguely aware the voice had spoken a word he’d never heard before, but somehow his mind had automatically done it’s best to translate into a hybrid English: ‘history-truth’.
Many. Civilizations. They come, they go. They never last.
‘We . . . up until you came, we thought we were alone in space.’ He had the feeling somebody more qualified in astronomy or physics might have made a better volunteer. ‘We’ve been listening and looking for aliens for decades.’
Very much time, very much space. Very little life, like us. Like you.
He played that reply through his head a couple of times before he got the sense of what He-She-They-It was saying.
‘You’re saying there’s so much time and distance between us all?’
Yes. Never a chance to discover-share.
Another one of Their hybrid words. The second half of the definition subtly moved like a digital circuit in his mind between the words ‘share’ and ‘bond’.
We/I, one of these. Once. We/I would last only a short while. Like you.
‘Why? Why only a short while?’
The nature of complexity. Short-lived. It is fragile. Destroys itself. Or is destroyed.
‘But . . . you’ve just destroyed us!’
Saved you. You are preserved-stored-alive.
‘You’ve “stored” us? What do you mean by that?’
Encoded. Reduced. Compressed. Now we can discover-share. Together.
Camille had talked for a while with him before this dark void. Preparing him. They’d been sitting in a bizarre but pleasant setting of her choosing – a playground. She’d talked about what she called a ‘bioverse’. A shrinking down of all that mattered on this world into a much smaller space. But then, she’d added, ‘small’ was really just a redundant word now. Like ‘large’, ‘here’, ‘there’, ‘up’, ‘down’; language that was inevitably going to fall out of use among the billions that now lived here.