In 2070, sixty-two years after its return from Mars, a young graduate student at Reno University erected a steel frame around the Zeus and attached a set of high-intensity magnetic probes to its hull. The computerized imaging equipment – later confiscated by the US Government – revealed the silent and eerie interior of the spacecraft, its empty flight decks and corridors.
An aged couple, Commander John Merritt and Dr Valentina Tsarev, now in their late eighties, sat in their small cabins, hands folded on their laps. There were no books or ornaments beside their simple beds. Despite their extreme age they were clearly alert, tidy and reasonably well nourished. Most mysteriously, across their eyes moved the continuous play of a keen and amused intelligence.
1992
REPORT FROM AN OBSCURE PLANET
After an immense journey we have at last landed on this remote planet, ready to carry out our rescue mission. The emergency signals transmitted to us were frantic in their intensity, but everything seems to be in order here. Our first surveys confirm that no natural catastrophe is imminent. The climatic cover and atmospheric circulation are stable, despite a recent rise in the levels of background radiation. There is evidence of the long-term erosion of the ecological base, but this is still more than adequate to support life.
Aerial reconnaissance of the hundreds of cities that occupy the major continents suggests that the population of the planet numbers many billions, though none of the inhabitants has emerged to greet us. Presumably they are still seeking refuge from the disaster that threatened to overwhelm them. We have entered many of the cities and have found them deserted, but there is no sign of the vast underground shelters needed to harbour this huge population. The possibility remains that the inhabitants fled from their planet in despair, fearing that their call for help had not been heard. Yet the restricted capacities of their aerospace technology rule out this escape route, and we assume that they are still in hiding.
In an attempt to reassure them, we are making use of the local television and radio facilities, and have broadcast a signal of greeting and friendship. Surprisingly, this has activated the planet’s extensive computer networks, which have reacted with a sudden show of alarm, as if well used to mistrusting these declarations of good intent.
We have found that the computer system is fully operational. Large sections of the system, in particular its predictive and cognitive functions, have been self-generated within the recent past, when the computer networks seem to have independently mobilised themselves to face the imminent disaster.
Our investigations confirm that this threat was closely tied to an important date in the planetary calendar, represented by the notation ‘24.00 hours, December 31, 1999’. Evidently this marked the end of two epochs of great significance, and the beginning of both a new century and a new millennium. It now appears certain that our own arrival coincided almost exactly with, though may fractionally have overrun, this auspicious moment, which was perceived by the computer networks as a final and desperate deadline.
The planet’s entire computer system is still at an ultra-high state of arousal, registering a recent all-out response to extreme peril. Only a small volume of signal traffic moves between the satellite links, but there are gigantic memory stores with a capacity far in excess of the system’s needs. These memory banks are now full, guarded by complex codes that we have been unable to break, and are perhaps the treasure house and terminal repository of the planet’s ancestral knowledge.
So impressive are the defences of the system that we are now convinced that it was these computers that authorised the transmission of the emergency signal summoning us to their world’s rescue.
However, there is still no sign of the inhabitants, and no response to our broadcast greetings. The cities and their suburbs, the airports and highways remain silent. Meanwhile we are carrying out a survey of these people, and of their values and civic virtues, and have come across a number of striking paradoxes. It is clear that their technological and scientific skills are of an advanced order, allowing them to construct the vast cities that dominate the planet’s surface. An immense infrastructure of roads, bridges and tunnels has been laid down in the recent past, augmented by an aviation system that reaches the remotest outposts of their world.
The planet’s mineral, energy and agricultural resources have been efficiently, and even ruthlessly, exploited. A simple but evidently attractive system of barter, based on the concept of money, facilitates the transfer of manufactured goods and services, and the surplus wealth generated has funded an ever-expanding science and technology. Space-flight, except in its most primitive forms, still lies beyond the abilities of these people, but they have harnessed the energy of the atom, deciphered the molecular codes that oversee their own reproduction, and seem well on the way to banishing disease and solving the mysteries of life and immortality.
At the same time, our researches have shown that despite these achievements the peoples of this planet have in other respects scarcely raised themselves above the lowest levels of barbarism. The enjoyment of pain and violence is as natural to them as the air they breathe. War above all is their most popular sport, in which rival populations, and frequently entire continents, attack each other with the most vicious and destructive weapons, regardless of the death and suffering that follow. These conflicts may last for years or decades. Nations nominally at peace devote a large proportion of their collective income to constructing arsenals of lethal weapons, and satisfy the appetites of their populations with a display of brutal entertainments in which violence, humiliation and murder are almost the sole ingredients.
Not surprisingly, our latest research confirms that the imminent threat to which their computers alerted us was in fact represented by the existence of these people. They constituted the danger that was about to overwhelm their planet, and it was to save themselves that the computer networks summoned us from the far side of the universe.
The deadline set by the computers, the crucial hour when one millennium gave way to another, perhaps explains the reason for their alarm. Given these people’s hunger for violence, it may be that they saw the birth of a new millennium as a licence for an even greater carnival of destruction. They waited at the threshold of space, a barbaric horde with the secret of immortality within their grasp, eager to play with their own psychopathology as the ultimate game.
The prospect of this virulent plague spreading across the universe must have prompted the planet’s computers to call a halt. But the ultimate mystery remains of where the inhabitants have disappeared. If they have been physically annihilated in an act of planetary hygiene there is no trace of the billions of corpses or of the vast necropolis needed to inter them.
A possible explanation occurs to us as we prepare to return to our home star. Driven by the need for a more lifelike replica of the scenes of carnage that most entertained them, the people of this unhappy world had invented an advanced and apparently interiorised version of their television screens, a virtual replica of reality in which they could act out their most deviant fantasies. These three-dimensional simulations were generated by their computers, and had reached a stage of development in the last years of the millennium in which the imitation of reality was more convincing than the original. It may even have become the new reality to the extent that their cities and highways, their fellow citizens and, ultimately, themselves seemed mere illusions by comparison with the electronically generated amusement park where they preferred to play. Here they could assume any identity, create and fulfil any desire, and explore the most deviant dreams.
But at some point in the new millennium they might well have decided to return to the world and test it against those dreams, ready to destroy it like a child bored with an unresponsive toy. Is it possible that the computers of this planet, having welcomed the population into this cave of illusion, then made a desperate decision and entombed them magnetically, translating them by some as yet undiscovered science into a memorised version of t
heir physical selves? Once inside the cave, the door of virtual death was sealed and encrypted behind them, leaving the computers alone and safe at last.
If so, we arrived some moments too late. As we leave, the computers have calmed themselves, and are singing quietly in unison. Perhaps they miss their former companions, however brutish. Our concluding survey indicates that they have invented God, perhaps an idealised image of the race they entombed. As we set out into space we can hear them praying.
1992
New Stories for the American Edition
THE SECRET AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF J.G.B.
On waking one morning, B was surprised to see that Shepperton was deserted. He entered the kitchen at 9 o’clock, annoyed to find that neither his post nor the daily newspapers had been delivered, and that a power failure prevented him from preparing his breakfast. He spent an hour staring at the melting ice that dripped from his refrigerator, and then went next door to complain to his neighbour.
Surprisingly, his neighbour’s house was empty. His car stood in the drive, but the entire family – husband, wife, children and dog – had disappeared. Even more odd, the street was filled by an unbroken silence. No traffic moved along the nearby motorway, and not a single aircraft flew overhead towards London Airport. B crossed the road and knocked on several doors. Through the windows he could see the empty interiors. Nothing in this peaceful suburb was out of place, except for its missing tenants.
Thinking that perhaps some terrible calamity was imminent – a nuclear catastrophe, or a sudden epidemic after a research laboratory accident – and that by some unfortunate mishap he alone had not been warned, B returned home and switched on his transistor radio. The apparatus worked, but all the stations were silent, the continental transmitters as well as those of the United Kingdom. Disconcerted, B returned to the street and gazed at the empty sky. It was a calm, sun-filled day, crossed by peaceful clouds that gave no hint of any natural disaster.
B took his car and drove to the centre of Shepperton. The town was deserted, and none of the shops was open. A train stood in the station, empty and without any of the passengers who regularly travelled to London. Leaving Shepperton, B crossed the Thames to the nearby town of Walton. There again he found the streets completely silent. He stopped in front of the house owned by his friend P, whose car was parked in her drive. Using the spare key that he carried, he unlocked the front door and entered the house. But even as he called her name he could see that there was no trace of the young woman. She had not slept in her bed. In the kitchen the melting ice of the refrigerator had formed a large pool on the floor. There was no electric power, and the telephone was dead.
Resuming his journey, B systematically explored the neighbouring towns, circling them all as he approached central London. He was no longer surprised to find the huge metropolis totally deserted. He drove down an empty Piccadilly, crossed Trafalgar Square in silence and parked outside the unguarded Buckingham Palace. As dusk fell he decided to return to Shepperton. He had almost run out of fuel and was forced to break into a filling station. However, no policemen were out on patrol or in their stations. He left behind him an immense city plunged into darkness, where the only lights were the reflections of his headlamps.
B passed a disturbed night, with the radio mute beside his bed. But when he woke to another luminous morning his confidence returned. After an initial doubt, he was relieved to see that Shepperton was still deserted. The food within his refrigerator had begun to rot; he needed fresh provisions and a means of cooking for himself. He drove into Shepperton, broke a window of the supermarket and collected several cartons of canned meat and vegetables, rice and sugar. In the hardware store he found a paraffin stove, and look it home with a tin of fuel. Water no longer flowed in the mains, but he estimated that the contents of the roof cistern would last him a week or more. Further forays to the local stores furnished him with a supply of candles, torches and batteries.
In the following week B made several expeditions to London. He returned to the houses and flats of his friends, but found them empty. He broke into Scotland Yard and the newspaper offices in Fleet Street, in the hope of finding some explanation for the disappearance of an entire population. Lastly, he entered the Houses of Parliament, and stood in the silent debating chamber of the Commons, breathing the stale air. However, there was not the least explanation anywhere of what had taken place. In the streets of the city he saw not a single cat or dog. It was only when he visited London Zoo that he found that the birds still remained within their cages. They seemed delighted to see B, but flew off with famished cries when he unlocked the bars.
So at least he had a kind of companionship. During the next month, and throughout the summer, B continued his preparations for survival. He drove as far north as Birmingham without seeing a soul, then drove down to the south coast and followed the road from Brighton to Dover. Standing on the cliffs, he gazed at the distant shoreline of France. In the marina he chose a motor-boat with a full tank of fuel, and set out across the calm sea, now free of the customary pleasure-craft, petroleum tankers and cross-Channel ferries. At Calais he wandered for an hour through the deserted streets, and in the silent shops listened in vain to telephones that never replied. Then he retraced his steps to the port and returned to England.
When the summer was followed by a mild autumn, B had established a pleasant and comfortable existence for himself. He had abundant stocks of tinned food, fuel and water with which to survive the winter. The river was nearby, clear and free of all pollution, and petrol was easy to obtain, in unlimited quantities, from the filling stations and parked cars. At the local police station he assembled a small armoury of pistols and carbines, to deal with any unexpected menace that might appear.
But his only visitors were the birds, and he scattered handfuls of rice and seeds on the lawn of his garden and on those of his former neighbours. Already he had begun to forget them, and Shepperton soon became an extraordinary aviary, filled with birds of every species.
Thus the year ended peacefully, and B was ready to begin his true work.
THE DYING FALL
Three years have passed since the collapse of the Tower of Pisa, but only now can I accept the crucial role that I played in the destruction of this unique landmark. Over twenty tourists died as the thousands of tons of marble lost their grasp on the air and collapsed to the ground. Among them was my wife Elaine, who had climbed to the topmost tier and was looking down at me when the first visible crack appeared in the tower’s base. Never were tragedy and triumph so intimately joined, as if Elaine’s pride in braving the worn and slippery stairs had been punished by the unseen forces that had sustained this unbalanced mass of masonry for so many centuries.
I realise now that another element – farce – was present on that day. By chance a passing tourist on the steps of the cathedral had taken a photograph of the tower as the crack reached the third floor and a tell-tale section of cornice began its fall to earth. The photograph, endlessly published throughout the world, clearly shows the four startled tourists on the uppermost deck. Three of them are leaning back on their heels, hands raised to grip the sky, aware that the ancient campanile has moved under their feet.
Elaine, alone, has already seized the rail, and is staring at the grass waiting for her nearly two hundred feet below. Using a magnifying glass, one can see that, true to her quirky and mocking character, she shows almost no alarm. Her eyes have noticed the falling cornice, and I like to think that she is already planning to sue the municipality of Pisa for neglecting the safety of its tourists, and is collecting evidence that in due course she will present to her lawyers.
The dozen or so tourists visible on the lower floors are still making their way around its canted decks, groping past the narrow columns as they climb the 300 steps to the roof. A father and his young daughter wave to the tourists below them, two Italian sailors in uniform play the fool for their girl-friends, feigning an attack of giddiness, and an elderly couple pause to r
est after climbing to the first floor, determined to complete the ascent. None of them sees the falling cornice and the fine cascade of powdered mortar.
The only figure on the ground who is aware of the imminent catastrophe is a man in a white jacket and panama hat who stands at the foot of the tower, both hands raised to the marble flank. His face is hidden, but his arms are braced against the shifting stone, his back arched above his straining legs. We can see that in his desperate way he is trying to hold upright the collapsing tower that is about to obliterate him.
Or so everyone assumes. The newspaper caption writers, the commentators on TV documentaries, all commend the bravery of this solitary figure. Surprisingly, he has never been identified, and neither his hat nor his white jacket were found in the mountain of rubble that was later removed, stone by stone, from the unhappy site.
But was he trying to support the tower or, rather, helping it on its way? I, of course, can answer the question, since I am the man in the panama hat, the husband at whom Elaine, in the last moments of her life, so triumphantly stares.
Needless to say, I fled to safety, running through the dust and the shrieking tourists as the ground trembled and a cataract of masonry fell from the air. A vast cloud of pulverised marble enveloped the square, and I remember stumbling past the horror-stricken waiters and taxi-drivers who gazed at this field of devastation – not only had the tower vanished, but it had taken their livelihoods with it. Had they known that I was responsible they would have lynched me on the spot, and to this day I have kept silent, still gripped by my guilt over so many deaths, all but one of them entirely innocent.
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard Page 173