The Quiet at the End of the World

by Lauren James

  I pause for a moment, collecting myself. He’s a robot. This isn’t going to hurt him. Mitch is watching me work with interest, and I look at him. “You’d tell me if I was doing something wrong, right?” I ask.

  He flashes green at me. Somehow, I find that reassuring. Summoning my courage, I tug at the seal and the entire surface of skin over Alexei’s chest peels away in one complete layer of silicone coating. Seeing the skin come away still makes me feel sick, even though I know it’s not real. I can’t even handle removing a splinter, let alone skinning a human male.

  To my relief, his insides aren’t as realistic as his skin. Instead of fake organs and bones, there’s a clear plastic casing protecting computer components. Suddenly, this isn’t gross at all. It’s just engineering. I shine the light through the plastic to see the innards. There’s something dark tucked underneath a circuit board where the heart should be. It’s a charred and twisted chip, blackened from overheating.

  I let out a hum of satisfaction. Just what I’d been hoping for.

  I put down the magnifying glass and go and fetch Shen.

  “Come with me. I’ve got something to show you.”

  At the sound of my voice, he looks up from the code, rubbing his eyes. It takes him a moment to focus on me, then he stands and follows me on to the ward. He stops walking in shock when he sees what I’ve done to Alexei. “Lowrie… What?” Then he leans in to look at the charred component. “What is that?”

  “I think they’ve all stopped moving because this part broke. When Darcy had these seizures, they thought they were going to have to shut her down to fix the problem in her coding. But it turned out to have been a malfunctioning part in her body kit.”

  “I can’t believe Maya and Riz went through all that. It’s annoying enough when my tablet breaks. I can’t imagine nearly losing my child just because of some broken software.”

  “I know,” I say. “It must have been a constant worry, mustn’t it? Life is so fragile, whether it’s software or biology.” The thought of a whole world full of Mayas, all worrying about their Babygrow children, makes me feel ill.

  Shen rubs his brow. “So you think the same thing is happening here?”

  I nod. “Look!” I point out the tiny charred chip in Alexei’s chest. “That can’t be normal, can it? If it’s the same in all of them, maybe we can fix it.”

  Shen is quiet for a moment. “Maybe, but … it seems very unlikely that the same piece of hardware would break in all of them at the same time. I’m not sure, Lowrie…”

  “But what if it was a virus, like your mama thought? Some sort of malware that affected that bit of kit specifically in everyone. That’s possible, right?”

  “Maybe,” Shen says slowly, and then more confidently, “Yes. That used to happen all the time: viruses destroying laptops and stuff. One of those old ones could have done this.” Shen’s face slowly clears. “Lowrie! This might just work! You’re a genius!” He grabs my arms, delighted, and spins me in a circle, before tugging me in close.

  Mitch nudges my hand insistently, so I add, “Well, Mitch helped too. A bit.”

  Shen turns to look at him, still keeping his arm around me. “You’re a true hero, Mitch of the Thames.”

  Mitch dips his head, noble and dignified.

  I lean into Shen’s side, enjoying the weight of his arm around me. “Do you really think it could work?”

  “It’s worth a try! As you say, replacing a broken part is a lot easier than destroying the malware. And we have so little time – we need to try anything.” Shen abruptly sits on the end of Alexei’s bed, thinking hard. “But” – his face falls again – “this doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t Mama replace the chip herself if that’s what the problem was? She must have noticed the part had broken.”

  “Did she not mention anything about broken parts in her notes?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Not that I saw, but there’s pages and pages of notes. I’ve only read the section on the coding so far. I haven’t even looked at anything about circuit boards or processors. I was just trying to focus on what might help fix them.”

  “Run a search for it in her notes,” I suggest.

  I suddenly feel so much more confident that we’ll fix this. There was nothing I could do to help with the malware. But this – broken equipment? Replacing parts? – is my speciality. I can do this. We can save them.

  We go back to the lab, and Shen runs the search for “processor” in Jia’s notes.

  . . . The malware seems to be attacking a motion-controlling processor, located in the chest, causing it to overheat. There are no replacements available for this type of chip. The last replacement Babygrow body kit we have access to was used sixty years ago, so it is not possible to take the part from any pre-existing kits. All body kits are currently in use by other people. It therefore seems unlikely that there is a way to bring back the patients whose processors have broken.

  We will have to focus instead on using the effects of the malware to program a defence in the code, to ensure that no one else is infected, before more body kits are damaged. . .

  “What?” I ask. “No! How can there be no spare parts? Can’t we make more? How can she give up like that?”

  “She must be wrong. She must be.” Shen has gone white and is chewing on his knuckle again. “We’ll make more processors. We’ll find replacements. There must be more somewhere.”

  “We can’t just accept they’re dead because of a broken part.” I nod decisively. “We’ll fix it. We have to.” I rub my hand up and down my trouser leg, smoothing and re-smoothing the fabric, focusing on the rough texture against my palm while I try to think.

  I want to read more of Maya’s posts, to see if she wrote anything which might help us. She must have bought Darcy’s part from somewhere. Maybe we can track down the factory where the Babygrows were made. They might have spare processors in storage. But we have so little time, and even if we can find the factory, who is to say that we’ll even be able to get there? It might be thousands of miles away. It might no longer exist.

  I wonder for a moment if we could build our own processors, but then I start imagining all the complicated machinery I’d have to assemble first and the types of silicon and metal I’d need to find. It would take too long. Even with careful instructions – which we don’t have – there’s no way we’ll be able to learn how to make the processor in time. Making our candyfloss bot took weeks and weeks of solid work from three of us, including Feng, who had done it before. We can’t possibly do that in just a day by ourselves – if we could ever manage it at all.

  Still, there is something niggling in the back of my mind. “Can you pull up Feng’s medical record again?” I ask.

  Once Shen has found it, I reread it, wondering what part of it stood out to me.

  “There,” I say, pointing to the last line. It says, ‘N.B. Check again about getting inside Snowdon?’ “Could she be talking about looking for spare parts there?”

  “Maybe. But why there?”

  I tilt my head. “Wasn’t that the place Dad told us about? The bunker for supplies? I think I remember reading something about it in Maya’s posts too. Hang on.” I pull up her account and search for the word “Snowdon”. There are two mentions of it. The first one is very brief, so I skip over it, but the next one is more promising.

  MyWaves05

  I find this place so fascinating. I wish I could visit before it gets sealed up.

  Posted on 17 April 2035

  NEWSBREAKING.COM

  SNOWDON VAULTS NEAR

  COMPLETION

  Construction of the Snowdon vaults finished this week. The tunnel system is excavated deep into Mount Snowdon in Wales and is designed to store and preserve supplies for thousands of years.

  The long-term storage facility has been filled with millions of pounds’ worth of supplies of every type, all stored in optimum condition to preserve them for the future. A number of tech firms have donated products, includi
ng Babygrow Labs, which has given a significant quantity of its latest body kits.

  Seed samples of every type have also been preserved in specially built solar-powered freezers. DNA samples from all agricultural animals have also been included.

  In addition, several internet companies have installed memory banks containing copies of significant cultural data from the last thousand years.

  Taxpayers initially raised objections to the project, which many considered to be a waste of money at a time when it is unlikely that another generation of humans will ever be born. However, the latest fertility report was optimistic that a solution to the sterility might still be found, so it was decided last year that the Snowdon vaults project should proceed as planned.

  Currently, discussions are in progress about how to mark the entrance to the tunnels. The entrance has to protect the supplies against time and weather, whilst also signposting what is inside to any future discoverers who may not speak or read language as we know it.

  Possible designs include picture hieroglyphics and motion-activated holograms of people demonstrating how to open the vaults.

  “The vaults?” Shen says, reading over my shoulder. “Wait, the vaults! Lowrie, that’s it! Surely they’ll have spare processors there!”

  “But why would your mama not have gone to Snowdon, if she thought some parts might be there?” I ask, although my mind is already racing with excitement. This could be the solution. I wonder how easy it would be to get to Wales.

  “It’s only been a few days since the outbreak, and it’s all happened so quickly. Maybe she didn’t have time. What do you think? Should we give it a go?”

  “We have to!” I say.

  “How are we even going to get to Wales?”

  “The hospital has a rescue helicopter on the roof.” The idea of getting in a helicopter is scary, as I can remember Alexei’s crash in vivid detail. But I don’t see any other option, and the thought of losing our parents is even scarier.

  Shen nods. “Even if we don’t find anything, we’d be back here in a few hours anyway. Let’s do it.” He looks animated for the first time since Feng collapsed. He grabs my hand. “Lowrie, can you imagine if this works? We might actually be able to save them.”

  I hold him tightly, a broad smile breaking out on my face.

  We walk up to the roof of the building, where there’s a bright yellow helicopter, covered in a tarpaulin. The inside is fitted out like an ambulance, with a stretcher and boxes of medical equipment for the paramedics.

  “Don’t do that!” I say, when Mitch picks up a defibrillator, poking the end.

  He flashes a sullen purple at me.

  When Shen turns on the computer in the cockpit, it displays a warning: POWER ALLOWS OPERATION FOR NINETY MINUTES BEFORE RECHARGE NEEDED.

  “That’s not enough time,” I say. My heart sinks. This had all seemed too good to be true. “We won’t have enough power to get there and back.”

  “I guess it is designed for short trips around London, not cross-country hauls. What does it run off?”

  I click on the screen, searching for information on the power source. “Lithium-ion battery packs. They’re stored in the back. I guess…” I frown.

  Shen nods encouragingly at me, giving me a moment to consider.

  “We have some of those at home,” I say, at last. “They’re the same kind as we use to store the excess energy from the solar panels, I think.”

  “So could we go home and get some more? Would we have enough?”

  “Well, I don’t know. The batteries are heavy. The more weight there is, the more power it takes to lift the helicopter. But maybe…” I check the weight capacity of the helicopter on the system and scribble a few numbers on my tablet, checking the maths. “I think if we took out the stretcher and paramedics’ equipment, we could carry enough batteries to get there and back.”

  “OK.” Shen brushes off his hands, already eyeing up the stretcher. “I’ll clear everything I can out of here, and you go home and get the batteries.”

  “I’ll pack our rucksacks with clothes and supplies and some food too. It’s nearly dinner time, and we’ll need provisions.” Before I leave, I pull him into a hug. It feels wrong to leave him, when he’s all I’ve got left.

  MyWaves05

  We’re slowly getting back to life as normal. I keep catching myself watching Darcy for any sign of a seizure, but so far there’s been nothing. She seems completely fine again now.

  Posted on 16 June 2036

  MyWaves05

  I feel so lucky to have a Babygrow daughter. If she had been biological, she might be dead by now. At least with Darcy, it’s possible to replace parts when she gets sick. She’s much, much safer. The likelihood of losing her is so much smaller. I don’t need to hold my breath all the time.

  Posted on 9 July 2036

  CHAPTER 26

  The streets are quiet and deserted as I walk home. Not deserted like they usually are, but dead. There’s no sign of life at all, except the wind in the trees. We really are completely and utterly alone.

  I’ve always known that I’m one of the last humans. I thought I understood it. But now that it is just us, alone, possibly for ever … I’m terrified. This isn’t tragic. This is beyond that.

  I can’t see this ending in a way that doesn’t destroy everything. There is no happy ending, no satisfying outcome that lets us go back to life the way it used to be. Even if our parents do wake up and come home, I’m not going to be able to fold this all into a box and hide it in the back of my mind. Everything has changed. Everything about our lives is a lie.

  I don’t even know any more what it means to be alive. I thought I understood what living meant. It seems such a basic, essential concept. If it moves, if it breathes, if it thinks, if it feels – then it’s alive. That seemed obvious; barely even worth stating. But now, that definition seems to have slipped from my grasp.

  Does being alive mean that you grow and develop, learn and change? The Babygrows do that too, just like any other child. To Maya, her daughter was a real, living person, even though she was made of circuits and programming. The idea of Maya losing Darcy hurts just like the death of a human child. And I feel the same way about my parents.

  Maybe that’s what matters. Maybe that’s what being “alive” is. It’s not some trick. There’s no magic chemical that gives something a soul. It’s about being loved and loving in return. Everything else “human” can be manufactured. These robots were brought into the world by people who loved them more than anything – who invested their time and love and energy into raising them like children, to replace the ones they could never have.

  Everything that it means to be a human was written and taught to the Babygrows. In some ways, they’re probably more human than I am. They grew up in the time before human society collapsed completely. They have seen more of the real way that humans lived than Shen and me. We’ve only ever been here, in the last dying days of civilization.

  There’s nothing recognizable here, not any more. Our world is filled with relics of a lost time. The things we find are interesting but impossible to truly understand without context.

  However much Shen and I might think we understand the past – however many films we watch or social media posts we read – we can never really live it. We’ve been studying the history of our world for years, but even we had no idea that the Babygrows existed. Yet here they are, all around us.

  Records can be changed and erased in an instant. Something as important to society as an entire generation of children can be forgotten for ever. Here on the outskirts of civilization, we’re just archaeologists trying desperately to understand the echoes of long-lost objects, which we don’t have the context to properly imagine. We can use shards of tiles and screenshots of articles to assemble a picture, but there will always be pieces missing.

  By the time I get home it’s nearly six p.m. Victoria and Albert greet me, whining and upset at being left alone all day. I wish I didn�
��t have to leave them again, but there’s no way we can take them with us. It’s too dangerous.

  The bots have fed them as Mum’s not here to do it. I wonder if the dogs miss her as much as I do.

  Once I’ve taken the fully charged lithium-ion batteries from the power generator, I pack my rucksack with tools, food and supplies, including sanitary towels. It’d be just my luck to start my period while we’re up a mountain or something. Once I’ve put some stuff in a bag for Shen too, I quickly search online for any other mention of Snowdon, but there’s barely anything about the vaults that might be useful.

  I spend ten minutes trying to choose between two pickaxes, and only make a decision when Shen calls to ask if I have fallen into an abandoned well somewhere. When I tell him what I’m doing, he yells that the two tools are “exactly the same, Shadow, come on”.

  Shen meets me in the hospital reception and grabs his rucksack and two of the batteries off me.

  We walk back up to the roof, walking past the discarded tarpaulin, which Shen has used to cover the medical equipment from the helicopter. The fabric flutters in the wind on the shale rooftop. Mitch is sitting in the pilot’s seat of the helicopter, pushing the controls back and forth in delight.

  “Wait – he’s flying us?” I ask in disbelief. “I thought we were going to use the autopilot.”

  “He wanted to help. This is an air ambulance, right? Mitch is an emergency rescue bot.”

  I wipe sweat off my upper lip. “Our lives are at stake. You think he knows what he’s doing?” The robot is thirty per cent rust and seventy per cent moss.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.” Shen eyes him.

  Mitch swivels his head back to front and flashes indigo at Shen, offended.

  “I guess, if he manages to get us off the ground…” I grimace then as something occurs to me. “If the processors are being damaged by a computer virus, how come Mitch hasn’t caught it?”