The Quiet at the End of the World

by Lauren James

  “I promise.” It would be so bittersweet, that life. I can see how happy I would be, doing those things with Shen. We would see so many incredible, unimaginable sights, but, if our parents never wake up, we would be alone for all of them. I will one day have to watch him die, or him me. And I don’t want that. I want family, and safety, and the comfort of knowing I have people to rely on when I’m weak and in need of support. We would never have that out there in the deserted world. Humans weren’t built to live alone. We need community.

  “What next?” Shen asks, interrupting my thoughts. “After our tour. What do you want to do, Lowrie?”

  “I just want to be with you,” I say. “And our parents.”

  “Oh,” he says, winded. “No matter what, you’ve got me. All right?”

  “Good. That’s sorted, then,” I say, grinning widely.

  “Nothing else? Really?”

  “I suppose a global scavenger hunt sounds pretty great,” I say, trying to lighten the mood a bit.

  “A global scavenger hunt?”

  “Yeah, going around the world finding all the last messages that people have left. We could copy them all and put them in our time capsule. It would be something – something worth doing with our lives, don’t you think?” The thought of the time capsule reminds me of Dad’s last homework assignment, and I swallow hard. I had no idea back then what was coming. I wish I could return to that oblivious happiness: sitting in the greenhouse with no more worries than having to pay attention to the lesson. Even if we fix this, that naïve Lowrie is gone for ever.

  “Whatever makes you happy, we’ll do,” Shen says. “Whether it’s worthwhile or not.”

  Tears well up in my eyes because Mum said something similar to me, about the importance of happiness and being with the people you love. Life is the people around you, the ones you love. You just need to be happy. That’s all that matters. I didn’t realise then that it would be the last piece of advice she’d ever give me.

  “It’s a plan,” I choke out, and Shen pulls me into a tight, long hug. I feel weak and tired, and more prepared, all at once. It’s like something inside me has looked directly at the future, faced the worst that could happen to us and accepted it. It’s made this all seem so much more feasible.

  I can do this. I can save my family. And if I can’t, I will make the most of it and carry on being happy anyway.

  Finally, we pass through a cloud and enter a curtain of grey rain, and the mountain appears before us: a jagged burst of brown rock and green trees, rising into the sky. The dips of the valleys and peaks of the mountain range stretch out into the distance. It’s a sparse alien terrain, draped in mist.

  I scan the incline for any sign of a man-made building that might be the vaults. I spot a glimpse of something shining, but it’s just a pool of water, reflecting the white clouds.

  We fly the helicopter in low circles around the mountain range until finally, deep in a shadow where the cliff face folds in on itself and blocks out the sun, I catch sight of a carved rectangle etched into the rock. “There!” I say, pointing. “That’s a door, right?”

  Mitch lands on a perfectly flat valley near by – one-handed whilst making a paper crane, which nearly gives me a heart attack.

  We hike up the incline with our rucksacks and kit. Even with the light of my headlamp, I still trip up in the dark. Steps have been carved into the rock, with metal rails on either side that must have been used to crank crates up.

  “Do you think that valley used to be a helicopter pad?” Shen asks, pointing back at where we landed.

  “Would it be that overgrown? Surely it’s only been a few decades since it was built.”

  He shrugs, looking like he wants to say something but doesn’t know how to start. I’m too out of breath to try and get it out of him. I packed our scuba gear as well as a fair selection of my tools, and it’s making climbing really hard work.

  Finally, we reach the doorway to the vaults. It’s big enough for a car to pass through and made of heavy concrete painted in camo paint to blend into the rock. There are security cameras on either side of it. I squint up at them. “Is it just me, or does this look ominous?”

  “It’s not just you. There’s a solid chance we may never come back out.”

  “We’re still going in, though, right?”

  He grins. “Oh, totally.”

  As we approach, a hologram flickers into life, making me jump. A fuzzy figure waves at us. His legs are missing, and half his head is in black-and-white. He gestures towards the doorway, stepping closer at the same time. Then the hologram breaks up completely and disappears into a cloud of random light beams.

  “Not the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen,” Shen says. He leans back, rolling on to his heels to look up at the projector. “Looks like a tree branch smashed it up. I’m impressed it worked at all.”

  “Do you think that was going to tell us how to open the door?” I ask, heart sinking.

  “We can work it out without the instructions. Probably. You can break into any door in the world, right?”

  “Challenge accepted, Zhang.”

  This is exactly the kind of problem I love. I tie up my hair and then, after a moment’s thought, pull on gloves, a face mask and breathing visor. Dad would kill me if I didn’t put safety first, even in an emergency. “Put your kit on too,” I tell Shen. “This is about to get messy.”

  The door has been sealed with cement that has been pushed into the gap between it and the frame. Using a chisel and hammer, I chip away enough of it to see where the cement ends and the door begins. This is the first time I’ve done anything like this without an adult supervising. I think I know what I’m doing – I’ve done it hundreds of times before – but it’s weird, not having someone there to warn me if I forget a step.

  I decide to power up my portable angle grinder. It’ll be quicker to open up the door using the rotating circular blade than tapping away at it by hand with a chisel. Shen holds his torch up so I can see what I’m doing in the dark.

  Dust shoots downwards when I press the blade against the cement seal. It slices through the stone easily, and I work my way around the edge, moving upwards. I’m turning the blade at the top right-hand corner of the door, standing on tiptoes to reach, when I stumble on a loose pebble.

  The angle grinder slips in my grasp and the blade skates across the surface of rock in a sparking arc of white light. I fight to catch it, but it’s too heavy. It jerks my shoulder, twisting my arm back, and before I can process what’s happening, the grinder is tipping back and falling.

  I leap out of the way. The grinder narrowly misses Shen, hitting the ground with a crack, sharp blade still spinning.

  I breathe heavily through my mouth, unable to believe what just happened. The blade came so close to shearing into Shen’s side.

  “Shadow —” Shen starts, but I shake my head.

  Trembling, I crouch and press the off switch on the saw. The whirring blade comes to a stop. “I can’t do this.”

  I walk down the path, kicking at mulch and leaves, furious with myself and terrified of what might have happened. This is the only thing, the one single thing, that I can do well, and I’m messing it all up. What is wrong with me? Why am I so useless?

  I keep walking until I’m out of sight of Shen, then I twist into an outcropping of rock in the side of the cliff face. I press my hands to my eyes to wipe away hot tears.

  I should have found something to stand on, rather than holding a heavy tool over my head. Why am I forgetting basic safety guidelines? I’ve had them drilled into me since I could speak. None of this is difficult.

  What are we doing here? Why are we risking our lives for this? We should be following the emergency procedures that Mum and Dad taught us, not racing off across the country on a wild-goose chase.

  “Lowrie,” Shen says. I feel a hand on the flat of my back.

  “I nearly killed you,” I sob.

  “I’m fine, look at me,” he whispers.
“I’m totally fine. You just need to take a breath. Think this through. You can handle this. You do this kind of stuff all the time.”

  “Yeah, but not on my own,” I snap. “Usually someone is here to stop me when I mess up. I could kill us both! I’m not good enough at any of this to be trusted, Shen. Not without supervision. I make stupid mistakes all the time, and I’m not letting you die because of me.”

  “I trust you.”

  “Well – I don’t!”

  Maybe I only ever thought I was good at this stuff because I was practising in an environment designed specifically to make it easy for me. What if I only thought I could do things like scuba diving because everyone made it easy for me?

  Everything about my life has made me think I’m special: the youngest girl in the world with parents and friends that love me. It has made me overconfident and tricked me into thinking I can handle anything. But nothing I can do is actually useful, not really. I’m just a pampered brat, totally unprepared for the real world.

  “Just tell me what to do,” Shen says. “I can help. We can do this together.”

  “No!” I say immediately. Somehow, needing his help would be worse than admitting I can’t do this at all. This is my thing, not Shen’s, who can do anything he puts his mind to. This is the only thing I have that I’m good at and he isn’t. If he takes over and does this without me, then I have nothing at all.

  “Leave me alone,” I say. “I just – I need you to not be here to distract me. I can do this if you just go away.”

  Shen jerks back, looking hurt. He opens his mouth to speak but bites off a reply. “Fine. I’ll walk around the cliff face with Mitch – see if I can find another entrance. Message me if you – if you change your mind, I guess.”

  I scowl at his back, not wanting him to leave but not willing to call him back either. Let him go. I can do this on my own. I don’t need him.

  I aim a kick at the trunk of a tree and tug a leaf off one of the low-hanging branches, tearing it in half, then in half again. I keep tearing it along the veins until it’s too small to grasp, then I use a fingernail to separate the tiny section left into two. When I bring it up to my eye, I can see more veins, on and on and on, smaller than my eye can discern. It calms me down enough that I can think again.

  I can’t waste time like this. The clock is ticking: we need to get moving if we’re going to wake everyone up before their memories are wiped.

  I walk back to the door, which is battered and ravaged from my futile attempts to get inside, and I think carefully about my next step. Maybe Jia and the others couldn’t get through the door either. Maybe they tried, and that was why they weren’t able to get the parts.

  I direct a torch into the gap I’ve created between the door and the cement. Metal locks at the top and bottom of the door shine in the light. If I cut through the locks with bolt croppers, then I might be able to get the door open without using the angle grinder again. My stomach twists just at the thought of turning it back on.

  I wish I’d never sent Shen away. I turn around, determined to find him and apologize, when I see him standing on the path. I rush to hug him, squeezing tightly. “I’m sorry. I do need you. I’m sorry. Don’t be mad at me, please.”

  He laughs. “Come on. Let’s try again.”

  We walk back to the door. “I think we need to try cutting through the locks next.” It’s starting to snow now, and small, white flakes drift past in the wind. Despite this, I’m boiling hot. I peel off my gloves and wipe sweat away from my forehead, leaning against the door as I catch my breath. To my surprise, the door lets out a quiet beep.

  I spin around, looking at it and then at Shen in surprise. “Did I imagine that?”

  He frowns. “No. I heard it too.” He looks at my bare hand and takes off his own glove, before pressing his skin to the door.

  It beeps again.

  “Oh my God…”

  “Is that —?”

  We both laugh, and press our hands to the door at the same time and hold them in place. The door rings out in a series of high-pitched tones. There’s a green flash, and the lock clicks open.

  “It recognized our touch,” Shen says, awed. “It knew we were here and opened for us.”

  “It must – do you think it’s made that way? To let humans in?”

  “That might make sense,” he agrees, tilting his head. “A DNA lock maybe? If this place was designed to be found by humans living thousands of years in the future, then they might not understand written or spoken language. The door would need to be able to open on its own – to show them that there was something inside even worth looking at. Otherwise they’d have no idea there was anything here.”

  “So the lock opens when it recognizes human DNA but not when an animal touches it or a tree falls against it.” I say, impressed. I should never have put my gloves on. My safety precautions worked against us.

  “This is why Mama couldn’t get any spare parts,” Shen says suddenly. “They had no way of getting into the vaults! If only people with human DNA can unlock it, then even if they had known it was here, the door would never have let the Babygrows inside.”

  I blow out a breath. “Do you think – does that mean that for years the Babygrows have been shutting down – dying – because they couldn’t get at the spare parts?”

  I think of the older people in the community who’ve died over the last few years: Martha, in our choir; Etta, who kept chickens. Could they have been saved, if only we’d come here earlier?

  “Why didn’t they bring us here?” I ask. “Didn’t they trust us enough to tell us the truth? Did they think we wouldn’t love them any more if we knew they were robots?”

  “No!” Shen says. “Surely not. No. They must not have known that a human would have been able to get in,” he adds, but he doesn’t sound that convinced.

  Despair creeps up inside me. Why didn’t they just tell us? Why didn’t they let us help?

  I sigh. “I don’t understand why the Babygrows weren’t also given access. They were their children, right? Surely their parents would have wanted them to be able to fix themselves.”

  I think of Maya, who had been desperate to make sure that her daughter had equal rights with biological humans. Did that never happen? Were Babygrows always considered second-class citizens? The thought makes me angry and incredibly sad. I am going to have so many questions for Mum and Dad when they wake up.

  “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go inside.” I push against the door, but it doesn’t budge. “It’s stuck. I think we could lever it open with a crowbar,” I add, running a finger along the gap between the door and its frame. ”It’s worth a try.”

  This time, I make Shen stand ten metres away. “Stay there,” I say, glaring at him. “You’re not getting hurt this time. Mitch, watch him.”

  Mitch moves to stand in front of Shen, arms folded over his chest, tapping one finger on his arm. Shen raises his eyebrows but doesn’t move when I pick up my tools. Satisfied that he’s safe, I start working.

  The metal squeals and grinds as I lever the crowbar, but finally the door opens to reveal a long, wide tunnel carved out of the rock and stretching into the dark of the mountain.

  “Thank God,” Shen says, sagging against Mitch’s back. “I thought we’d have to stand out here in the snow for ever.”

  I roll my eyes at him. “A thank you would be nice.”

  “I did all the emotional labour, and that’s the hardest part,” he says, as we strap on our equipment: kneepads, gloves, helmets and rappelling harnesses.

  Despite the awful reason we’re here, this is the coolest place we’ve ever explored, without a doubt. I pack my tools back up, wincing at the sight of the angle grinder. I’m going to feel a wave of shame and guilt whenever I see one of those for the rest of my life, I just know it.

  I loop the end of my longest rope through the metal delivery rails set into the sides of the steps in the mountainside, before tying the other end to my harness with a bowline kno
t. If we get lost, this will help to guide us back to the entrance.

  “Ready?” I ask Shen. “We need to hurry. It’s nearly nine p.m. – your baba has already been turned off for ten hours.”

  “Let’s do this,” he says, determined. He adjusts his helmet and rolls up the sleeves of his khaki shirt.

  “You look like Indiana Jones,” I say, grinning.

  “In a good way?”

  “In an excellent way.”

  Shen preens. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

  I realise I’m leaning into him, one hand on his arm. I shake myself, straightening up. “Let’s go over the plan one more time before we go in.”

  “We find the storeroom, track down the processors,” Shen says, marking items off on his fingers. “Get the hell out of there. Then fly home, wake up our parents and demand they tell us the truth about what’s going on with them not being human, and stuff.”

  “We’ve got this! We’ve been practising for this all our lives!” I hold out my hand, and Shen takes it.

  Beside us, Mitch twists in a circle and flashes yellow.

  We take one last look at the landscape around us. It’s hard to believe that only today we found our parents unconscious. It seems so long ago.

  Together, we step into the flooded tunnel.

  CHAPTER 28

  The light from the waterproof torches on our helmets lends an eerie glow to everything, casting shadows over the smooth, machine-carved walls. Motion-activated lights set into the walls turn a pale blue as we walk past, but one by one they flicker and die.

  The only sound is the swish of water around our ankles and the rope spooling out behind us. It occurs to me that this is the first time we’ve ever gone underground without my dad. I’d been desperate for permission to go into the Tube lines without him, but now that we’re finally independent, I just miss him terribly.

  At first the tunnel roof is covered with layers of white cobwebs, but they disappear after we’ve been walking for a few minutes.