by Mike Ashley
and I came running up shouting at them to take me along, take me with them back to wherever they bloody came from. I know they saw me. I'm sure they heard me. Two of them looked at me with I guess those were eyes. But the bug-men just went back into their big metal ball. It made a humming noise and then it glowed and then it just wasn't there anymore. It didn't go up to the sky or like that. It just went.
I waited a while for the bug-men to come back, or anyone else to show up, but finally I knew they would never
(gap)
About every ten or twelve years I'd try to kill myself again, but of course it never worked and I stopped hurting myself. That bastard who stole my death, you'd think he'd of fixed it so I could never feel pain, neither. Every time I tried to kill myself the cut would bleed and hurt like flipping hell but it always healed back.
The first few years weren't so bad cus I found a stash of 3-Vs and a viewer and some power packs, so at least I could still watch holovids and that. I watched all the discs with stories on them, over and over, till I knew them all off by heart. Then I finally got so bored I started watching the educational discs too, and I learnt some physics stuff and that. Things got worse when I couldn't find more batteries that worked and I couldn't recharge the dead ones.
It's so bloody not fair. Batteries get to die but I don't.
I was never much for reading, but when I couldn't watch any more 3-Vs, I found a library that had thousands of textdisks. I tried to read one, but the viewers wouldn't go. Then in the cellar I found hundreds of those old books and mags people had before the disks. I was off my nut with boredom so I started reading.
Then I thought I'd have a go at writing and that's how I started this diary. Not that anyone will ever read it, unless the bug-men come back. I couldn't thumbtext like how people used to write, but I found some old pens and that.
I decided if I was to write things down then I should do the job properly and learn all the right spelling and commas and apostro-things and that, and maybe learn some big words if I could find them in books. So I tried to keep a proper diary of all my
(gap)
I stopped counting the years a long time back. It was easier when there were different seasons. After I went immortal, winter never bothered me except for being harder to travel and all. After all the plants died, I could still keep track of seasons because of winter coming and going. The best part about winter is there are fewer insects.
For a long time, the mosquitos wouldn't leave off me. Nor the flies. But they all seem to be dead now. Except these beetles. Everywhere I go, millions of beetles. I wish they would die.
I wish I could die.
By now I know I'm at least three thousand years old, except I'm still only sixteen.
I still remember my father. I still remember him shouting at me, and beating me. I hate him I hate him. Besides me, the only thing that never dies is the hate.
(gap)
The sun gets bigger every day, and redder. There aren't seasons anymore, unless you count it's always summer.
Getting hotter. I sweat a lot but that means the nano-bastards inside me just work harder to replace it and my fadge melts more of whatever I sit down on to get more energy and mass and that. I forget most of what those doctors told me but I remember that part.
I remember the moon. Before all the grass went away, I used to like going to sleep in a field under the stars, looking up at the friendly moon while I drifted to sleep.
The moon went away a long time ago. I don't know where it went.
Once in a long while I try to
(gap)
Somehow the nano-things changed. A while back I noticed that I don't need to sleep any more. I've tried sleeping but it never comes. I'm tired all the time but I can't sleep.
It's just so bloody not fair. All this long time, the only thing left about me that was still normal is that I could sleep. Now the bastard who stole my death has stolen my sleep too. At least make it so I stop getting tired!
When I twigged that the nanobots had changed inside me, I started hoping I could die soon. Some hope! I'm still here.
After the seasons stopped, for a while I started counting days and nights. All the wood and most of the metal are just dust rust now: only plastic and porcelain are left from when people were alive. And stone. I found an old piece of light plastic I could make scratches on, and I added a scratch every morning when the sun came up. Little scratches, rows of ten. I took the plastic with me whenever I went somewhere else, to keep track. By now everywhere I go looks a lot the same as everywhere else.
After I made 1,347 scratches on the plastic, I ran out of room to make more. After a long time, I found another piece of plastic I could scratch. I scratched 1,347 at the top, then kept adding one scratch every day in rows of ten. I did that for a long time.
I've been alone for at least 12,000 years now.
I've decided to forgive my father.
(gap)
I'm going blind in one eye. The left one. I can't remember the last time anything excited me, but I got excited and all when I noticed it. If something's going wrong with me and now it doesn't heal, maybe those stinking nano-things are finally breaking down inside me.
My teeth wore down to stumps a long long time ago. I remember one of those lab doctors telling me this would happen and offering to yank all my teeth while I still had them. Now I wish they'd done it. I had one toothache that lasted about three centuries, but it finally stopped.
I think the years are getting shorter now, as if it's taking shorter whiles for the Earth to go around the sun. It's so bright all the time, I have trouble telling when it's night now, and all the
(gap)
I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO DIE I BLOODY DAMN WANT TO DIE
(gap)
Even though I stopped needing to breathe a long time ago, I just always kept up breathing by reflex, and that. Sometimes when I got bored enough I'd hold my breath for six or seven hours, but when I stopped it I'd always start breathing again. Without trying. I remember a very long time ago, when I could still sleep, one night I put my head in a plasti-cling and I tied it tight round my neck so there was no air. When I woke up the next day I'd stopped breathing for several hours but it didn't make a difference, so I took the thing off and my breathing started same as always.
That was long long long ago. It's been getting harder to breathe for a long time now. It's not me that's changing, it's the air. It feels thicker than it used to be, and hotter, and stickier. I think there's something poison in it too, but not poison enough to kill me. For a long time it hurt to take a breath, and I got excited again cus I hoped I was dying. But it just got harder and harder to breathe, and it hurt more and more.
One day I noticed I wasn't breathing any more. I hoped my body was shutting down at last at last at last but no apparently it just decided from now on breathing was too much work so it just slacked off.
A long time ago, every once in a while I'd find a river that was mostly nasty stuff instead of water but I'd take a quick drink just to remember water. I can't remember the last time I saw a river. Nor lakes.
The cities mostly went to dust a long time ago. I went back to the seashore, where it used to be I mean, so I could see the changes in the ocean. I'm sure all the fish died thousands of years back. For a while some of that algy-stuff was still alive in the ocean but now I don't think so.
The ocean's getting smaller. Every time I walk down the beach the sand and stones are longer and the ocean is shorter.
For a while, there were some kind of nasty wiggle-things alive I never saw before. I'm sure they weren't around until after all the people died, so there's no science-y name for them. Ugh! Just wiggle-things with too many legs and all slime. And long feely bits instead of eyes. They came up in the mud near the ocean, when there was still mud. For a while I was actually glad to see them because at least something new was alive. They're gone now.
Sometimes I scream but no one hears me.
I used to be abl
e to cry. Now the tears never come no matter how much I want them. It's just so bloody not fair. I can't eat I can't drink I can't sleep I can't breathe and now I can't even cry. I've lost everything that ever made me human except I can't die.
(gap)
ought to be some way to turn off the sun it's so bright all the time and when
(gap)
It's happening faster. Used to be if I hurt myself the cut or the hurt would heal at the normal speed for healing. Yesterday I found a jagged piece of plastic with a sharp edge, so I took it in one hand and I deliberately slit open my other arm all the way from my wrist to my shoulder. I started bleeding and I hoped the nano-things would all leak out. While I watched it the whole bloody cut healed in about nineteen seconds. I heal faster now.
It's just so bloody not fair.
(gap)
Those bug-men and their big metal round thing never came back but after a long time some green shiny people showed up. Not shaped like humans but green and shiny. I think they were all female, no men. They started building a city and planting new sorts of plants and changing the air so it got easier to breathe. Too right I came running to meet them. Their words are just a lot of squeaking noises but they tried to teach me anyway and I tried to learn but it was just too hard. The sky is so bright all the time now, I could just barely see a few stars in the little bit of night, but one of the green ladies pointed up at the sky and I think she was showing me what star they came from, I mean what star their planet is from.
For a long time I lived in their city as a kind of pet and they were mostly nice to me except when they didn't understand what I wanted. They did all kinds of things to me that I guess were medical tests but I let them do it partly because I wanted the green ladies to like me and partly because I hoped they'd find out how to cure me so I can die. After they stopped testing me they were mostly nice to me.
The beautiful shiny green ladies had all sorts of lovely art and precious things they made, not like the statues and paintings and like all back when other humans were alive. The green ladies make this beautiful art out of glowing hot gas that just hangs in the air for a while, then melts. One of the green ladies showed me this sculpture of red gas she'd made, then she pointed up at the sun overhead, and I sussed that they make their lovely sculptures from the same stuff as the sun. I know it's called plasma gas cus I learnt it off one of those holovids. After a long while, the lovely green ladies even managed to show me how to work one of their thingies so I could make words and pictures in the air out of burning hot plasma gas.
Then something happened suddenly and all the green ladies left in a hurry. I never knew why. They left behind for me their city and some machines but I couldn't suss how to make those machines work. It was nice they were here while it lasted though.
I wish the green ladies had taken me with them.
(gap)
The sun is right over me all the time now. Big red hot bloody hot.
Every once in a while I travel back to someplace where I was before and I find something I wrote a long time ago. I'm having trouble remembering what I wrote so long ago, so any time I find my own writing it's a surprise like reading summat for the first time.
My right eye is going blind like my left one did. I never sleep but I have nightmares awake thinking what it will be like for me when I can't eat drink sleep breathe and also CAN'T SEE and I will go through blind Eternity feeling my way forever. It's so bloody not fair.
It won't be long now before the Earth melts or drops into the sun. I don't much care which. What I want to know is will it finally kill me? If it does, peace at last.
What bloody scares me is the thought that I'll fall into the sun and die ... but then inside the sun I'll heal again, and die again, and so on forever. Too right it will hurt.
The sun has to die some day. I mean it won't be day anymore when it happens but you know what I mean. Just my stinking luck if Earth falls into the sun and I keep living anyway, and I have to feel the sun killing me all the time while the nano-things keep me alive for millions millions bloody billions more years till the sun finally burns out. I wonder if I can write words in burning plasma inside the sun like those green ladies from somewhere else taught me once. I wish the green ladies would come back. I hope maybe the
(gap)
Everywhere hot lava. Melting melting everything and I burn all over and it hurts it bloody hurts but as fast as I heal I get burnt again stop it stop it stop.
I can still see a bit with one eye. I'm writing this last part with a black flaky stone against a hard white stone but the stone's going soft. The sun's coming closer. After all these millions of years I suddenly remember an old happy song it goes here comes the sun it's all right, but no it's NOT all right. Everything is so hot and all melted. I'm sure it will come any
(gap)
At last at last at last billions of years falling into the sun hurry up will I die now or will it get worse now I'll know if
(gap)
oh damn its not fair
THE CHILDREN OF TIME
Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter began his career in 1987 with "The Xeelee Flower", a story that introduced his future history series, which includes the novels Raft (1991), Flux (1993) and Ring (1994). He attracted a wider readership with The Time Ships (1995), his sequel to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, and went on to establish himself as one of Britain's most innovative and entertaining science fiction writers. His more recent books include the apocalyptic Flood (2008) and its sequel Ark (2009).
* * *
I
JAAL HAD ALWAYS been fascinated by the ice on the horizon. Even now, beyond the smoke of the evening hearth, he could see that line of pure bone white, sharper than a stone blade's cut, drawn across the edge of the world.
It was the end of the day and a huge sunset was staining the sky. Alone, restless, he walked a few paces away from the rich smoky pall, away from the smell of broiling racoon meat and bubbling goat fat, the languid talk of the adults, the eager play of the children.
The ice was always there on the northern horizon, always out of reach no matter how hard you walked across the scrubby grassland. He knew why. The ice cap was retreating, dumping its pure whiteness into the meltwater streams, exposing land crushed and gouged and strewn with vast boulders. So while you walked towards it, the ice was marching away from you.
And now the gathering sunset was turning the distant ice pink. The clean geometric simplicity of the landscape drew his soul; he stared, entranced.
Jaal was eleven years old, a compact bundle of muscle. He was dressed in layers of clothing, sinew-sewn from scraped goat skin and topped by a heavy coat of rabbit fur. On his head was a hat made by his father from the skin of a whole raccoon, and on his feet he wore the skin of pigeons, turned inside-out and the feathers coated with grease. Around his neck was a string of pierced cat teeth.
Jaal looked back at his family. There were a dozen of them, parents and children, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, and one grandmother, worn down aged forty-two. Except for the very smallest children everybody moved slowly, obviously weary. They had walked a long way today.
He knew he should go back to the fire and help out, do his duty, find firewood or skin a rat. But every day was like this. Jaal had ancient, unpleasant memories from when he was very small, of huts burning, people screaming and fleeing. Jaal and his family had been walking north ever since, looking for a new home. They hadn't found it yet.
Jaal spotted Sura, good-humouredly struggling to get a filthy skin coat off the squirming body of her little sister. Sura, Jaal's second cousin, was two years older than him. She had a limpid, liquid ease of movement in everything she did.
She saw Jaal looking at her and arched an eyebrow. He blushed, hot, and turned away to the north. The ice was a much less complicated companion than Sura.
He saw something new.
As the angle of the sun continued to change, the light picked out something on the ground. It was a
straight line, glowing red in the light of the sun, like an echo of the vast edge of the ice itself. But this line was close, only a short walk from here, cutting through hummocks and scattered boulders. He had to investigate.
With a guilty glance back at his family, he ran away, off to the north, his pigeon-skin boots carrying him silently over the hard ground. The straight-edge feature was further away than it looked, and as he became frustrated he ran faster. But then he came on it. He stumbled to a halt, panting.
It was a ridge as high as his knees - a ridge of stone, but nothing like the ice-carved boulders and shattered gravel that littered the rest of the landscape. Though its top was worn and broken, its sides were flat, smoother than any stone he had touched before, and the sunlight filled its creamy surface with colour.
Gingerly he climbed on the wall to see better. The ridge of stone ran off to left and right, to east and west - and then it turned sharp corners, to run north, before turning back on itself again. There was a pattern here, he saw. This stone ridge traced a straight-edged frame on the ground.
And there were more ridges; the shadows cast by the low sun picked out the stone tracings clearly. The land to the north of here was covered by a tremendous rectangular scribble that went on as far as he could see. All this was made by people. He knew this immediately, without question.
In fact this had been a suburb of Chicago. Most of the city had been scraped clean by the advancing ice but the foundations of this suburb, fortuitously, had been flooded and frozen in before the glaciers came. These ruins were already 100,000 years old.
"Jaal. Jaal! ..." His mother's voice carried to him like the cry of a bird.
