Ruined Cities

by James Tallett (ed)

  “Oh, that’s right. You see all the glitches and outages because of who you are, and up you trot, knowing you need to do something, not knowing what. And we have this conversation. Again. And again. Then you go back to your beach. Frankly, Wil, it’s getting boring.”

  He twisted back to examine her. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I know. You’ve said. Many times. For once, why don’t you listen to me, do it my way?”

  “Do what? What do you expect me to do?”

  “I don’t know what you can do. What abilities you gave yourself while I was working on the clever encrypted memory thing. I mean, what have you been up to all this time, lying on your little patch of beach?”

  “I haven’t been doing anything. That’s the point of lying on a beach.” Wil began to descend. But something about the act of stepping down, reaching out with his foot, stopped him. A memory came to him, related to the anxiety he’d felt on the beach, but bringing with it a fizz of excitement, too.

  “You always do that, you know,” said the woman. “You pause there like you’ve recalled something. Then you carry on down. And eventually it all repeats.”

  A half-formed thought niggled at him. “Tell me. The place I lie on the beach. Is it always the same spot?”

  “Hardly a meaningful question. It’s the Infinite Beach. You of all people should know that, given you designed it.”

  “I did?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Okay. But tell me. The place where I lie. Is it always the same?”

  “I guess so, relative to the origin. Why?” She appeared interested, like he’d broken out of his normal loop.

  “It’s just… I don’t know. Why do I always go there?”

  “You’re boring and predictable?”

  “I can just leave if you’d prefer.”

  “Okay, okay. So you think the spot is significant. That maybe we… left something there?”

  “The terminator when the outage hit. It cut right past me.”

  “Always does.”

  “So there could be a join there. A crack in reality.”

  She stared at him without speaking for a moment. “You’ve never said any of this before, you know.”

  “Perhaps there has to be a certain number of outages for my own hidden memories to trigger. Or a certain frequency. Or, I don’t know, some other loop condition has been hit.”

  “So now you believe me. Is that it?”

  Wil studied her for a moment. The thing was, he knew he had memories of her. Just couldn’t recall what they were. “Maybe,” he said. “Tell me. In the old days. When we were alive. Were we close?”

  “You really don’t remember do you?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She smiled and looked down. “Yeah. We were close.”

  “Lovers?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Children?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How many?”

  The woman looked away, out to the sea. He still didn’t even know her name.

  “Four. They’re all here now, though. Somewhere in the clouds.”

  “I think you should come with me,” Wil said.

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I feel you should. I need to know about us. But also I think we have to do something. Together.”

  “What exactly have you remembered?”

  “Nothing. It’s a feeling. Tell me, what normally happens when we do this?”

  “We talk. I reminisce about old times. You don’t believe me and storm off. I roll my eyes and sigh.”

  “This time you have to come with me”

  “I need to stay near the port where I’m safe. Where I can think and watch.”

  “Not this time. If the outages are more frequent we need to act. Maybe the machinery won’t recover from the next one. We need to do something and we need to do it now. Please.”

  She looked at him for a moment, threw her cigarette to the ground and crushed it beneath her foot.

  “Since you ask so nicely,” she said. She stepped forward towards him.

  ***

  The sun glowed hot on Wil’s face but the finely-calculated breeze washed over him, cooling him just enough. The sand was powdery and soft beneath his back. Not far away, down the beach, the waves broke and hushed onto the shore.

  Sometimes he dreamed glowing dreams of the beforelife; of people he’d known and loved. It felt like he was emerging from one now. Who had been there this time? It had been so vivid, but now he couldn’t remember.

  “You’re awake then.”

  A female voice, somewhere close by. Squinting one eye open he saw a woman he didn’t know sitting on the sand watching him, arms around her knees. The sun made her short red hair burn and sparkle.

  “Who are you?” asked Wil.

  The woman frowned. “Great. So this is your brilliant plan is it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know, do I? This was your idea, Wil. Not mine.”

  “I’m sorry. I have no idea who you are. I’ve been lying here on the beach.”

  “Yeah. You don’t say.”

  He levered himself up onto an elbow. “What do you mean, plan?”

  “You said we had to leave the lighthouse. We stepped outside and suddenly we’re here. With you asleep. Is that what always happens?”

  “What do you mean, always?”

  “Oh, forget it. Long story. Long and boring.”

  “How long have you been sitting there watching me?”

  “What sort of idiotic question is that? This is Perpetual Sunday. Infinite Beach. Time doth not pass here. Jesus Christ, have you forgotten everything?”

  She looked angry at him, for reasons he couldn’t understand. “How the hell should I know? If I’ve forgotten then I’ve forgotten I’ve forgotten.”

  The woman rolled forwards onto her knees towards him. “This is getting us nowhere. Wil, I’m going to do something now I used to do a lot.”

  “What?”

  “Just go with me on it. Okay?”

  He shrugged but his muscles tensed, like he expected a blow. The woman moved closer but, before Wil could react, touched her lips to his, hand sliding behind his head. The caress of those lips, the warm thrill of that tongue, stayed him. He knew this. He knew her. This was an old delight. Rooms in his mind opened up. Rooms kept dark for a long time. “I… I know you,” he said as they separated.

  “Yeah.”

  “We were close. In the beforelife. Your name is Sun. Sun Park. I loved you. I mean, we loved each other.”

  “Well, hallelujah, Wil. You finally remembered. Like, I only told you a million times.”

  “We designed and built this place,” he continued as the memories revealed themselves. “Cloud One. The whole cloud infrastructure. That’s right isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Like I said.”

  “You did?”

  “Jesus, you’re exasperating. You were always exasperating, you know that?”

  “I was?”

  “Trust me, you were. Now, finally, tell me what we need to do. What the failsafe mechanism is. Tell me how we save the world.”

  “What?”

  “You know, your ability, your superpower. I protected my memory so I knew about us. You did something else. What was it?”

  “I… I don’t recall. Don’t you know?”

  “Great. This is all going really well.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything.”

  “Yeah. Damn right. You were muttering about this place on the beach, said it was significant?”

  “I don’t see why. It’s the same as anywhere else.”

  He looked around. Out to sea. Up to the sky. Down at the perfect sand. An unrelated memory flashed through his thoughts. A vision of himself, stepping downwards. Descending. Had that been part of his dream? He could almost feel his foot, reaching out…

  He picked up a handful of the sand beside him and let it pour through his
fingers. He looked at her.

  “I think we have to dig,” he said.

  “You’re suggesting we tunnel our way out of the afterlife?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s what we have to do. I’m sure of it. We dig and…”

  He stopped talking. Beyond her, just yards away, half the world had flickered out of existence. A black line of nothingness cut across the beach. He had never seen anything like it.

  “What is it?” she said, seeing the alarm on his face. She whirled round. “My God. It’s vast. I’ve never seen one up close before.”

  “You’ve seen others?”

  “You could say that.”

  They watched it together, neither speaking. Wil realized after a moment they were holding hands.

  “It’s moving,” he said. “Creeping nearer. Do they always do that?”

  “No. Must be an illusion. They never move. They’re just a flaw in the tiling of reality.”

  “This one is moving, Sun. See the sand tipping over the edge as it creeps nearer?”

  She stared for a moment more before bursting into action.

  “Dig,” she said. “We have to dig now. Come on. God knows what happens if it reaches us.”

  They began to pull away scoops of the fine, white sand, burrowing downwards. It was slow going; the sand was almost a liquid, flowing into the hole nearly as quickly as they excavated it.

  “Faster,” she called. “It’s nearly here. We might lose whatever’s down there. Make the hole wider so it doesn’t fill again.”

  He switched to pushing the sand aside with wide sweeps of his arms. Perhaps they should summon Adjuncts to help? Some spades at least. But he doubted that would work just now. The machinery was clearly struggling to cope with the outage.

  “There’s nothing here,” he shouted to her. “Just more sand. I must have been lying in the wrong place.”

  “Keep going. There has to be something.”

  They worked away, throwing up plumes of sand into the air, swimming their way down inch by inch. More than once he got it in his mouth, the fine grit grinding between his teeth, a nice little detail. Still all they found was more sand, darker in color the deeper they dug. He was about to shout they should give up, get away from the outage while they still could, when his fingers brushed something hard. Metal. He scrabbled at it, abrading his fingertips.

  “There’s something here. Help me.”

  Between them they revealed a metal hatchway, highly polished as if it had been placed there moments before. Wil scrabbled around its edges, trying to find something to hook his fingers onto. “There’s a handle. Help me pull it up.”

  Between them they hauled it open. Beneath it, stone steps lead down into utter darkness. Steps he had to descend. Sand showered into the hole but disappeared just inside. The hatchway wasn’t part of the clouds and the sand couldn’t exist there.

  “You have to leave,” he said, looking up at her. “Only I can go down here.”

  “For God’s sake, Wil. We’ll go together.”

  “I mean it, Sun. I have to go alone. I don’t know why, but I do. I think you’re needed up here for something else.”

  She hesitated for a moment. Then kissed him again, quickly this time, before scrabbling up the cascading sides of the pit. In the sky the outage loomed overhead.

  Wil looked down, seeing nothing. Darkness above and darkness below. Swinging his feet over the edge he reached for the first stair. Testing each step, he descended.

  After thirty steps, a dim light flickered from below, like something was on fire. Maybe it was Hell down there. A glance upwards showed nothing. Had the outage engulfed the hole?

  “Sun? Can you hear me?” Wil whispered in the half-light. “Sun?”

  “I hear you, Wil. Where are you?” Her voice was in his head. So they’d prepared a communication system. Perhaps they had planned this and everything was under control.

  “I’m still going down. I see light up ahead.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Uh, yeah. I was planning to. How’s it looking up there?”

  “The outage is vast. I’m heading to the lighthouse. I’m running.”

  “You have to swim.”

  “Yes, Wil. I know. As soon as I’ve stopped panicking.”

  Up ahead he could see an arched doorway leading to a stone-walled chamber. Stepping inside, he found himself in the dungeon of a castle. A dank, windowless room with flaming torches set around the walls, hissing and smoking with the smell of burning wax. A barred, wooden door stood in the opposite wall. Most of the room was taken up by a stone plinth upon which was set an oblong, crystal box. No, not a box. A sarcophagus, Snow White-style. Words had been painted in gold around the edge of the plinth. He had to circle right round to read them.

  Here lies Halfa, king once, and king to be.

  What was that supposed to mean? Wil leaned in closer to the sarcophagus. There was frost on the glass. He had to smear a circular window in it to peer inside.

  “Sun?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Which of us died first?”

  “Huh?”

  “Who died first: you or me?”

  “Me. Cancer. You came not long after. A broken heart, no doubt.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, not that. I mean, I don’t think I died.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not dead.”

  “Wil, you’ve been in the afterlife for a hundred years. Being dead is kind of a given.”

  “Except that I’m looking at my body here, kept alive in some sort of cryogenic stasis.”

  She didn’t reply for a moment. Maybe their communication had been spotted. Then she spoke again.

  “But it can’t be real, can it? It’s all in your head, or how else could you see yourself?”

  “I guess. Still, it is me. I must have put myself here so I could walk the Earth again when I needed to.”

  Wil scraped away more frost, revealing his own face and shoulders. The skin was blue, covered with a patina of ice, the eyes closed. But he wasn’t dead; he knew that very clearly. And somehow he needed to repossess that body. Just couldn’t figure out how. Some sort of neural interface? But no, that wasn’t right. The solution didn’t have to be rational. This was a pocket cloud and reality was whatever he’d designed it to be.

  No princesses around to kiss him awake. It had to be something else. Then he saw it: a small brass tube protruding from the stone plinth beneath the word be. He scraped off more frost at the head of the sarcophagus. The tube emerged inside and led directly into his left ear.

  Wil bent down and put his lips to the cold tube, drawing in the deepest breath he could and then blowing hard. Breathing himself out of the afterlife. He felt himself deflating, collapsing. Still he blew, until there was nothing left of him other than a thin twist of air.

  When his breath finally petered out there was a moment of darkness, a point of balance, of neither death nor life. Then his lungs kicked in with a jolt and he gulped down air. He flicked open his eyes. A canopy of frosted glass covered him. Real glass.

  Red lights blinked in his peripheral vision. His limbs lay heavy and distant, numbed by cold, but the fizz of life was returning to them. Huge, dull aches came and went in the far reaches of his body, miles distant. Some time later his fingers twitched and, later still, his toes. Heart quickening, his sluggish thoughts began to stir and race.

  With a reluctant sigh, the canopy hinged up and away and Wil breathed in the open air. He tried to rise but the effort was too much. A glance showed his body was blue and naked, festooned with an array of tubes and wires, tethering him. None in his ear, though. He pulled off sensors and removed catheters from his veins, his penis, before sitting up and looking around. The room had plain white walls, clean and sterile. It was the same size as the dungeon, though, and there was a doorway in the far wall. Sterile metal rather than barred wood. A whole battery of artificial organs and monit
ors bleeped and breathed around him. But they weren’t needed now. He was alive again.

  A long, white tunic lay folded beside him. It was stiff with ice, but Wil worked his head and arms into it. Apparently he’d thought of everything. Strange how he’d chosen to lie up there on the beach all that time. Directly on top of his real body. Had he been basking in the hot sun because he knew he lay frozen half to death just below?

  The room lurched when he finally tried to stand. Steadying himself on the edge of the pod, he noticed a wooden stick with a curved metal handle leaning there. Excellent. He grasped it for support.

  “Sun? Can you hear me?”

  No response. Of course. How could there be? He needed to think like a living person again. This wasn’t a computer-generated world any more. Still, he tried again.

  “Sun?”

  “Wil? I hear you.”

  “You do? How?” Her voice was in his head. Not, not his head. His ear. His left ear. He reached up to feel a tiny metal stud in his lobe. That was it, what was how people communicated out here when they were far apart. The device relayed his signal into the cloud machinery so she could receive it. Simple.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Back outside. The beforelife.”

  “What can you see?”

  “Nothing yet. Just this small room where my body was. Is.”

  “Okay. Wil, the outage is still expanding here. Not much of the beach left now. People are starting to panic. It’s like the machinery isn’t recovering. Better hurry.”

  “I am hurrying. I’m 150 years old, you know.”

  “Just be careful.”

  “What’s the problem? If my brain dies my resurrection chip will upload me to the clouds and I’ll pop up right beside you.”

  “Yeah. So we can disappear hand-in-hand when the final outage hits.”

  “Fair point. Okay. Be careful. Got it.” Supporting himself with his walking-stick, he lunged for the door and missed by only a small amount. The door, helpfully, slid aside to let him through. He lurched out of the little room into the darkness outside, his limbs clumsy, like he was a zombie fresh from its grave.

  Triggered by his movement, lights flooded the great room he found himself in. A vault filled with server racks, rows of them disappearing into the distance. The air hummed with their machinations. Their lights sparkled at random. At the same time, quite a few were dark. No lights, no power. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Robots replaced any failed hardware, swapped in new machines as old ones died. The system was nearly zero-maintenance. Yet it looked like maybe a third of the machines had failed.