The Boy at the End of the World

by Greg Van Eekhout

  Hollow, his stomach rumbled. Last night’s crayfish was little more than a tasty memory. Fire. He needed to build another fire. And find something to eat. He’d need to fashion a fishhook and line, or weave a net.

  He sat up with dawning horror. It wasn’t enough to find food once. It wasn’t enough to build one fire. It wasn’t enough to survive one predator attack. If he was going to survive, he would have do these things again and again and again. Every day. Every moment of every day. Until … what?

  “How does it end?” he asked, a little breathless.

  Standing nearby, Click didn’t respond. The robot stared into the trees, motionless.

  “Click?”

  Fisher got up and circled around to face him. A piece of bright feather fluff stuck to Click’s shoulder. Fisher blew it off. “Click, I’m talking to you.”

  With a small jerk, Click came to life. “Ah. Very good, Fisher, you have survived the night.”

  “Didn’t you expect me to?”

  “It is difficult to predict. The mathematics involved is very complicated.”

  The robot had a way of saying things that Fisher didn’t quite understand but still managed to get under his skin.

  “I survived fine,” he said. “Why weren’t you answering me?”

  “I was in power-saving mode. It is akin to your sleep. My batteries have not been charged since before the Ark’s destruction, so I need to preserve as much power as I can. But I am in full awareness mode now. What did you wish to ask me?”

  Fully awake himself now, the crushing sense of panic over the struggle ahead of him—the lifelong struggle just to live—seemed harder to put into words. It seemed even less likely that Click would have a useful answer for him.

  “Never mind. I want to keep moving downstream.”

  Click clicked. “It is safer to remain here. Every time you move you expose yourself to more dangers.”

  Fisher opened his mouth to explain that he hoped to find more fish downstream, hopefully bigger, fatter, slower ones. Also, he wanted to make it to the ruins, which stood like ghostly smudges in the morning mist. He’d found his spear among ruins; maybe he could scavenge better weapons and better tools in the wrecked towers.

  But why explain all this to the robot? Click wasn’t in charge of him.

  “Yeah, I’m going,” Fisher said. He brushed damp soil and plant bits off his clothes—clothes Click had given him, he couldn’t help but remind himself—and set out.

  Click made a sound like a puff of air leaking from a hose and followed.

  The woods were a rich store of food. Hundreds of birds chattered in the boughs. Lizards darted across Fisher’s path. Small mammals scurried in the undergrowth. And Fisher had no way to take any of them. His spear was heavy and not suited to throwing, and the only thing he managed to strike when he tried were bushes. So he chewed plants to keep his hunger at bay. He kept himself only to things he saw little brown rabbitlike things chewing, and even though he was too slow with his spear to get a rabbit-thing, he could at least eat what they fed on and hope to avoid getting sick on poison plants. The little yellow flower stalks were nicely sour, and the jagged leaves had a good peppery taste. But this modest fare did little to calm his appetite. If anything, he was just getting more hungry. His legs felt heavy, his head ached, and his vision swam.

  When a wave of dizzy weakness made him stumble over a rock, Click asked if he was okay.

  “I’m fine,” Fisher said. “Why are you asking?” It was important not to appear to be a weak animal, even in front of Click.

  “You do not seem steady on your feet,” the robot said.

  “Well, actually, neither do you.”

  Click whirred. “I had not noticed. Perhaps my directional gyroscope was damaged in the Ark attack.”

  Fisher started walking again, following a gully cut by the stream. He tried to pick his path more carefully, seeking the most even ground.

  The ghostly towers remained far off, but Fisher and Click came to more humble ruins. Little more than concrete overhangs, they emerged from the slopes on either side of the gully, so weathered and crumbled and overgrown with vegetation that Fisher almost mistook them for boulders. A few stubby lengths of rusted, twisted steel poked from the rocks, like robotic fingers clawing from a grave.

  Climbing up the side of the gully, Fisher ducked into one of the overhangs. He looked for bits of wire or glass he could scavenge for fishing hooks, or fibers to use as fishing line or netting, or anything useful. But whoever had lived here, however long ago, had left nothing good behind. On his way out, he happened to glance at the low ceiling and paused. The concrete was coated with a thick, waxy layer of black. Fisher closed his eyes and imagined sitting here beside a fire, boiling fish or roasting spitted game, or just warming his hands. He imagined smoke rising, curling against the ceiling before drifting out into open air. Judging from the thickness of the smoke residue, someone had dwelled here a long time. Or maybe many someones, for shorter periods.

  A spiderweb occupied a corner of the ceiling. He didn’t relish eating spiders, but if the web’s maker had caught a cricket …

  Markings on the ceiling near the web took Fisher’s mind off his hunger. Wavy lines were scratched into the sooty concrete. And other lines that looked like water spraying into the air. And yet other markings. The concept of letters formed in Fisher’s head. Words. Writing.

  There wasn’t much there. “Wha” and some letters too weak and smudged to read, and then an “R,” some more smudges, and a “D.”

  “Wha … R … D,” Fisher whispered. He blinked. “Hey, I can read!”

  “Yes,” Click said, startling Fisher. He’d been so absorbed in the writing that he hadn’t heard the robot approach. “All Ark-preserved human personality profiles possess the ability to read. Reading is fundamental.”

  “But I can’t make enough of it out. What does it say?”

  Click’s neck creaked as he looked up at the ceiling with his good eye.

  “I cannot confirm that this is writing,” he said. “These markings could have been left by animals or be the result of random weathering.”

  “But it looks like writing,” Fisher said, realizing how badly he wanted it to be writing.

  “Your brain has evolved to see patterns,” Click began. “The ability to see patterns helped your ancestors recognize faces. It became an important part of human social interaction. The same mechanism is why you might think you see faces in a cloud, or in the bark of a tree, or writing in the random scratches on the smoke-stained ceiling of ruins.”

  “Or,” Fisher said, “maybe whoever stayed here wrote something. Maybe it’s a message.”

  “I cannot confirm that this is writing,” Click said again.

  Fisher used some of his profanity. It turned out that profanity was useful for expressing frustration. He gazed at the markings a while longer, and the falling-leaf feeling returned.

  He spent more time exploring the parts of the ruins he could climb to, but he found no more evidence of campfires, no more markings, nothing to scavenge, and nothing to eat.

  After about an hour he finally gave up and resumed his way down the gully. He tried to keep his mind on what was before him and around him, the noises that might be things he could eat or things that might eat him. But it was hard to stay focused. He thought Click was wrong. Someone had stayed beneath that overhang. Maybe just for a short time. But they had left behind something of themselves.

  As the tall ruins slowly drew closer, Fisher began to see them differently. They weren’t just things that a lost people had built. They were places where people had lived. And maybe lived still.

  He was absorbed in these thoughts when he nearly tripped over a bone. It was huge, a few feet long, and thick as the trunk of a medium-sized tree. Fisher’s brain asked three questions:

  1. What can I make with it?

  2. What kind of animal does it belong to?

  3. What killed it?

  Motioning for Cl
ick to be quiet, he padded ahead, his senses sharp now. More bones littered the forest floor. They were scattered, probably by hungry scavengers, but Fisher could tell they belonged to more than one individual animal.

  Flies fed on sticky blood. Some of the bones displayed scorch marks. Whatever had befallen them had happened recently.

  Fisher gripped his spear and crouched, scanning ahead and peering up the slopes along the stream. He saw and heard nothing capable of inflicting this kind of damage on such large beasts.

  And then, with near silence, the largest living creature he had ever seen came from the shadows behind the trees on the other side of the stream. It locked eyes with Fisher, and Fisher’s breath caught in his throat.

  CHAPTER 6

  The tops of the creature’s broad, hunched shoulders came up to Fisher’s chest. Four thick legs supported its bulk. Wrinkled, gray-brown skin showed through its patchy scrub of brown fur. And where its nose should have been hung a great hoselike thing, swaying near the ground like a relaxed arm.

  The animal resembled the dead elephants he’d seen in the Ark, but this creature wasn’t quite an elephant. Its head and lumpy shoulders were wrong, and its ears were just tiny flaps. But what else could it be? Fisher stared at its legs, and then at the sticky, scorched bones on the forest floor. It had to be related to the dead creatures.

  No, not just dead.

  Killed.

  “What are you?” Fisher whispered.

  The animal snuffled.

  “I believe it is a mammoth,” said Click, coming up beside Fisher. “A juvenile pygmy mammoth, to be specific.”

  “And the bones?”

  Click whirred a few seconds. “Adult mammoth remains, yes.”

  Fisher drew his eyes from the mammoth long enough to glance at the sky. Those scorch marks made him think that whatever had killed the mammoths was the same thing that destroyed his birthing place.

  Fisher tightened his grip on his spear. “Were the mammoths from the Ark?”

  “No,” Click said. “The species went extinct many hundreds of thousands of years ago. Even before the rise and fall of human civilization.”

  When every individual of a kind of animal was dead, the species was extinct. Extinct meant big failure.

  But this creature was so very alive. Fisher could smell its pungent animal scent from across the stream. He could hear its breath as its chest ballooned and shrank. And its warm brown eyes were extraordinary. The mammoth’s stare bore into Fisher, as if it was thinking about him and trying to figure him out as much as Fisher was trying to figure it out.

  Fisher knew he should kill the mammoth now. Big and powerful-looking, it was clearly the stronger animal. If it chose to attack, it would trample him without effort. It would impale him on its curving tusks.

  And there was a lot of meat on the mammoth. A lot of protein. Fisher could feed on it for weeks.

  Yes, kill it now, thought Fisher, before it kills me. That’s what survival meant.

  The mammoth made another loud snuffle before dipping its trunk into the stream. Transfixed, Fisher watched it shoot water into its mouth.

  Fisher would have to work quickly: a sharp spear thrust to its heart, or where he guessed its heart was. If he was wrong, he’d just wound the animal, make it angry.

  Fisher watched. The sun inched up the sky as the morning wore on. The mammoth used its tusks to feed, scraping up grasses and roots from the forest floor. It ate pretty much anything it could find a way to shovel into its endlessly chewing mouth. It wasn’t hard to figure out why it ate so much: it eliminated almost as much as it ate. Its steaming dung stank and attracted flies.

  “Let’s go,” Fisher said to Click, hoisting his spear over his shoulder. Down the valley floor, the ruins loomed, silent spires in the morning mist.

  “I had assumed you were going to kill the mammoth.”

  “You think I should?”

  “I think it would crush you if you tried.”

  The mammoth’s tail lazily batted away flies.

  Fisher had made his decision. He set off downstream, into the tall reeds. Click fell into step beside him.

  The sound of munching grass followed them. The stink of mammoth dung wafted on the breeze.

  “It’s following us,” Fisher said.

  “Yes. You are not pleased?”

  “I don’t want to be followed.”

  “Ah. Why not?”

  Fisher didn’t have a ready answer. It simply made sense that his chances of survival wouldn’t be improved by the company of a creature that ate everything in plain sight and left entire mountains of dung behind it.

  “I just don’t want anything following me,” Fisher said.

  “I advise you to reconsider,” said Click.

  Since when did the robot get a say in Fisher’s plans?

  But Click continued to talk. “Elephants possessed a detailed knowledge of their environment. They knew where to find food. They knew where to find water. They knew where dangers lay. They passed this knowledge from elder herd members to their young. All you know, Fisher, are the skills I downloaded into you. They may not be enough. The mammoth could offer you a better chance of survival.”

  The mammoth emerged from the grass. It gazed at Fisher with eyes of cool fire.

  “Fine,” Fisher said. “Come on, Protein. Let’s go.”

  The mammoth loosed an avalanche of dung and followed.

  Late afternoon sunlight filtered down through pine boughs and maple leaves, and Fisher walked. His feet hurt. Though his clothing fit well, his big toes rubbed against the side of his foot coverings, giving rise to blisters.

  The mammoth suffered no such problems. Its feet had leathery pads that absorbed its own weight and dealt well with the terrain. Maybe if Fisher killed it and ate it, he could make better shoes from the mammoth’s feet.

  He tried to imagine how he’d go about making shoes. There’d be cutting and folding involved, as well as joining things together somehow, and probably doing something to the mammoth’s skin so it stayed supple.

  “I actually have no idea how to make shoes,” Fisher admitted.

  “What’s wrong with the shoes you’re wearing?” Click asked.

  “Nothing. They’re just not as good as the mammoth’s feet.”

  “Ah. Your feet will improve over time. They will harden with calluses. They will get used to walking.”

  Fisher muttered profanity as his toes rubbed their way along the trail.

  He wasn’t sure when it happened—maybe after stopping for a sip of muddy water—but it occurred to him that the mammoth was no longer following him. He was following the mammoth, and the mammoth was good at picking out a path. It avoided dips in the ground concealed by fallen leaves and pine needles. It stepped around places where sharp rocks poked from the earth. Fisher soon learned that by following its lead, his feet took much less abuse.

  Maybe the mammoth was good for more than meat and shoes. But as hunger left a bloated bubble feeling in Fisher’s belly, he still couldn’t ignore the fact that there was a lot of meat on the mammoth.

  The brush grew thick and tall, and from all around came rustling and chittering and the snapping of stalks and twigs by unseen creatures. Fisher kept his spear ready.

  The mammoth continued moving with surprisingly little noise on its superior feet, but something about the way it kept its eyes wide open and its ear flaps out made Fisher think Protein was nervous too.

  After hours of walking, they finally reached the ruins. Broad-leafed ferns and entire trees spilled from the cavern-pocked buildings. Creepers and tendrils allowed only the barest glimpses of rusted-steel girders beneath. Maybe this would be a place to salvage supplies and tools left behind by the lost civilization. But it was also a place of warrens where stealthy predators could be lurking.

  The noises around Fisher changed. There was a hush now, as if little animals were trying to go unnoticed.

  Sweat trickled down Fisher’s neck. He had to keep wiping hi
s palms on his pants to keep a dry grip on his spear. Something was going to happen. Something …

  Best not to stop here, he decided. Just keep going, through the valley of ruins, quick as they could, and continue on to whatever lay beyond.

  A great whoosh of wind bent the reeds and sent a torrent of leaves and twigs and little plant bits scurrying across the ground. Fisher tackled Click by the legs, and they both flattened as a brilliant burst of color flashed overhead. Fisher had never seen such colors: blues and reds and greens that couldn’t possibly be real. But this was no dream.

  How to fight an attack from above? All Fisher had was his clumsy spear. His best chance, then, was not to fight but to hide.

  Protein trumpeted in pain, and Fisher lifted his head to see three bloody stripes marking the mammoth’s back.

  “There,” Click said calmly, pointing above.

  The parrot was almost as big as Protein. Its outspread wings blotted out the sun. With scaly claws extended, it came in for another attack. Protein stampeded away, crying with an upraised trunk.

  “No!” screamed Fisher. The mammoth had run into a clear space. There, away from the cover of tangled brush, it would be even more exposed.

  But wasn’t this actually a good thing? With the parrot distracted by the mammoth, Fisher might be able to get away unnoticed. His legs told him to run, now. Yet he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the mammoth. Possibly the last mammoth on Earth.

  The parrot circled to land on a tower ledge, its fist-sized eyes drilling down on the mammoth. It wasn’t alone. The high concrete perches all around were lined with the hulking birds, a whole community of them. There’d be nothing left of the mammoth. Just bones.

  “Parrots have changed a great deal since the Ark went into operation,” said Click. “They have apparently evolved the adaptation of gigantism, growing very large. Animals sometimes do this when their prey grows large. Perhaps they hunt the rats. Or perhaps they grew large to combat something even bigger that hunts them. Or perhaps they are the unintended results of human experiments in accelerated evolution.”