by Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep- The Best New Science Fiction from Sweden (retail) (epub)
The place was abandoned. No cars, no trucks, no people. Nothing was working. The screens on the gas pumps were blank. He pressed the buttons, but nothing happened.
Then there was the village of the dead.
He had approached it slowly, remembering stories about how some people took their guns out to greet strangers. But here, no one had come out to greet him. No man, woman or child. No dog. No chicken. Not even a chirping little bird.
In fact, he had not heard a single bird since he came out of the box. He had not seen a single animal. There in the village of a few small houses, in the middle of a flat landscape, he had realized how strange it was that there were no animals.
He had found human bodies. Corpses, sitting on chairs or lying in beds. Skin dried to the bones. There were no flies around them, as he had seen in his story memories. Death was accompanied by flies. Death was rotten. Yet here, this was not true.
His feet had moved faster then. He had walked for days – with the sun as a guide, he was able to count the days again – to reach small towns and even cities. He ignored the abandoned cars he passed, choosing to explore the world on foot. When he found shops, he changed his shoes and socks, and when he sat down to rest in the evening, he made sure to give his sore feet plenty of air and to wash them lovingly when he had water to spare. His feet carried him for countless miles, giving him strength.
He drank all the water he could find – from lakes and streams, from rusty jugs and muddy puddles. Food was scarce, as store shelves seemed to have been emptied long ago. He found mostly freeze-dried reserves in the basements of dead people's houses. Tasteless, it still gave him the energy to continue his journey.
He didn't meet anyone anywhere. There was no life. The world was full of dead, dried-up remains of people and animals. Nothing on the planet seemed to be alive. He thought at first that the trees and the grass would also die when there were no insects to help spread pollen or seeds, but as time passed and the world stayed green, he realized that many plants would probably survive.
For a long time, he held on to the hope that what had transformed the world he remembered into this lifeless silent shell was a local phenomenon, and that as long as he continued walking, he would eventually find people who were still alive. That somehow this plague or contagion or whatever it was had only affected a limited area. But then he reached the shores of a Great Ocean, the end of the continent, and still there was only death.
Crossing the ocean seemed impossible, but maybe he could communicate with the other continents? He tried radios he found, phones, computers. Nothing worked. Electricity had died with the people. Batteries had been depleted. Carrying a heavy shortwave radio on his back for weeks, he eventually found a house with solar panels on the roof. But even with power, the radio stayed silent.
So he had taken command of a ship. Not too small, not too big. Fully prepared for a journey across the ocean, before its crew had all died. He set out across the calm waters and found the weeks on the ocean a largely pleasant experience. The air was fresh, the sun warm, and his feet could rest from the endless wandering.
He reached the shores of another continent, hoping to find people waving at him as he approached. He wanted to see their smiles, hear their voices calling him, shake their hands.
But there were no people. There was only death. Endless masses of dried-to-the-bone corpses.
This place was even worse than his own continent, its ancient cities stacked so close together that death was always present, always close. He could not stay here. He put on the best walking shoes he could find and started to walk away from the ocean, further inland, to search for life.
But hope had already left him.
He had lived for many years. Years outside the box. Years in the land of the dead.
Bushes and other undergrowth covered more and more of the remains of the dead world. Houses were covered in thickening moss. Roads were buried under decaying plants turning to soil, and concrete buildings were broken apart by unstoppable roots. The creations of man were slowly returning to nature. The world was turning green again.
For a few years, he had tried to settle down, to live off the land and make himself a home. He had found a good spot, cleared it of the all-devouring undergrowth and built himself a house. He had planted seeds and learned everything there was to know about taking care of the plants. He had felt good growing his own food instead of scavenging the remains of the world that once was. Pollinating the fruit trees with his own hands had made him feel a part of creating a new balance, a new existence.
But after a while, sitting in a comfortable chair in his own house reading books had felt too much like sitting in the box, remembering stories. He had to move, had to see things.
Had to get out of the box.
Things were all there was.
Its.
There were no yous, no hes, no shes. Only its.
And the I.
The I had wandered aimlessly, seeing every corner of the world.
From time to time, the I had wondered about the box, and about how the I was the only thing that had stayed alive in the world. What the box had done to protect the I from the death. What the I had done to deserve the box. The I seemed to remember a story about a man being punished for something he didn't do, punished for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that was only a story, like all memories.
As the I became older, it found it moved around less. Its life slowed down. It saw less of the world, cared less.
Finally it stopped.
Sat down.
Its thoughts, once filled with all the wonders it saw in the dead world, started filling with stories from the past. Those kinds of stories that are memories, or could be memories.
Stories of a life with family and friends.
Stories of laughter and tears.
Stories of love, of loved ones. Of the betrayal of a loved one.
Stories of adventures. Of a great adventure gone bad.
Stories of a world gone mad.
Stories of brutal violence and of incarceration.
Stories of hope fading.
As it curled up into a ball, the I realized it had heard those stories before.
They were the stories from the box.
"The Membranes in the Centering Horn" – KG Johansson
There is a club in London, not far from Baker Street, just a few hundred yards from Tussaud's, where time has stopped. I happened to visit this sanctuary once, in the nineties, with my friend S.; casual visitors were usually not popular, but S. had some kind of hold on the maître d' and just needed a few words with this gentleman to get us in. Darkish and dusty rooms, chandeliers, of course no ladies, towering bookshelfs with volumes in French leather binding – you know. As did I.
What I didn't know was that S. was a gambling addict. He'd urged me to join him by holding out prospects of relaxing with a nice Scotch, see his friends, maybe talk to some of the celebrities that could be glimpsed through the pipe smoke – this was back when smoking was permitted. I believed my friend but nothing worked out that way. S. placed me in a sagging old armchair, right across from a white-haired old man who seemed covered by spider webs and who to all appearances was sleeping heavily. S. provided me with the promised whisky, said he'd be right back. And disappeared.
As said, I didn't understand that he had gone to the gambling tables. No doubt with the best possible intentions: just one or two hands, at the very most a round. But things worked out as they usually do in such circumstances. I was alone.
After a while, I started looking around. Before long I bas bored and worried. This was my first visit in London, my English was hardly perfect, and I didn't know anybody at all. I turned around, over and over, trying to hide my desperate search for my companion. When I turned back to the table for the third time the white-haired man had opened his eyes and was watching me.
"New member?" he said, in a voice that was as dusty and dark as the premises.
"G
uest," I managed to stutter after a few moments. "But he, well, disappeared."
The eyes below his white hair were sharper than I would have thought. "You´re not from this country. Dutch?"
"Swedish."
"Don't worry, he'll be back." Shaggy eyebrows went up just a little.
"Hope so."
The old man seemed to wake up. He huffed and puffed and worked his way up to a reclining position.
"You can talk to me for the time being."
What could I do? Instead of saying this was the last thing I wanted, I nodded and mumbled some commonplace phrase. And S. was nowhere to be seen. I reached across the table, shook hands with the old fogey and immediately forgot his name.
"You remind me of myself," he said. "When I was your age. In a strange land. Getting ready for life."
"So," I said. Well, he could work his mouth while S. was gone. And I was slightly amused by the idea of someone calling a 35-year old "getting ready for life." I said: "And which country were you in?"
"It all began in Egypt," he said in a tone that suggested this story had been told many times before. "You know the Aswan Dam?"
I nodded again.
"This was when it was planned. During the war. I was in Luxor when I heard of an expedition – they were going to study animal and plant life at the sources of the Nile. The usual stuff, you know. Documenting nature before the dam would change it. I was young and naive, hardly forty; I didn't know much of biology but I immediately accepted coming along as an assistant."
I made some quick calculations. The old man was definitely lying, or misremembering. It wasn't just that his statements would make him more than a hundred years old. In addition to that, his facts were wrong ... In short: I braced myself to listen to a cock-and-bull story.
Still, I had no inkling.
The beginning was traditional. The old boy himself and the three scientists, along with twelve black porters, had walked from Wadi Halfa and into the Sudan. They had passed between Al-Fashir and Al-Ubayyid, refusing to be oppressed by a more and more unbearable climate.
"But then," said the oldster, seemingly more and more livened by his own story, "we could notice the darkies getting worried."
I almost raised an eyebrow at his choice of words but managed to check myself. Instead I said, "Worried?"
He straightened just a little bit more. "There was an interpreter among them, and old man, over seventy no doubt. He spoke of a place that was supposed to be nearby, the mythical city of Nuzi. For some reason this was out of bounds and now the porters thought we were heading there."
He paused. I looked around again: no S.
"Well," the old man resumed. "To cut to the chase, as they say. I was going to bed that night, crawling into my tent, when everything went black. Woke up next morning. I'd had a nasty knock, nasty enough that the darkies left me for dead. But I was lucky. Thick skull, I guess. The scientists, two tenured professors and an emeritus, had thinner skulls, or else they got banged even worse. They were dead. And all the supplies and weapons, all lost, quite lost ..." His gaze disappeared into the crevasses of time for a moment. "The only ones left were the old interpreter, Mwunga, and I. Me surviving was a mistake, and Mwunga insisted that he himself was alive because the porters didn't trust him, but refused to kill somebody of their own kind. Well, I'll believe that as much as I want – I never saw such discernment among that race. But that was what he said: 'Darkie no hit darkie, boss'."
A waiter, also gray as spider web, passed and noticed my glass, which somehow had become empty. I nodded and gestured at the old man. "Two fingers," he said thankfully, "well, you know, Edmund."
Edmund obviously knew.
"So what Mwunga and I had to do was to reach some kind of civilization. We didn't even have a compass. Mwunga mentioned villages near Al-Fashir, so we went that way. But we must have gotten lost.
We crossed a mountain range that I've never seen on a map. Found a little stream right when we really needed water. Lovely water. Best I've ever had. Well, best water anyway," he elucidated as Edmund put two glasses on the table.
Edmund gave me an ambiguous look. I smiled and nodded. Edmund raised his eyebrows and silently vanished. The oldster drank deeply.
"The next day we were in much better shape. We kept following the stream. That water made you strangely exhilarated. In fact, the darkie and I were singing songs as we went. Can you imagine!"
I was close to asking which was more strange – singing although they were lost in the wilderness, or that the racist opposite me had sung with a "darkie" who unhesitatingly called him "boss". But I held my peace.
The old man put down his glass. "It's about here that things get weird," he said. "You may have had some difficulty believing me. But I swear it happened."
I looked as neutrally friendly I could.
"We probably followed that stream for a week," he went on. "And after that week – well, I'll be darned if Mwunga didn't look a lot younger than when I got to know him! And me, I felt like I was eighteen all over again. Seventeen. Younger and younger, day by day. And the craziest of all ..."
He fell silent. I didn't urge him on. No need.
"The crazy thing," he said, "was that we suddenly realized – after a week! A week! – that we'd been following the stream the wrong way. Of course, you're more likely to find villages and towns downstream. That little stream might very well have been a headwater of the Nile, for all I know; we may have walked right back to Wadi Halfa. But no. We didn't. We followed the water upstream, right into the mountains. Why? Just don't know. And then, you may not believe this, but then the land changed. We saw flowers reaching twenty feet up, lovely orchids growing higher than trees, mushrooms big as houses, and it all was beautiful. Strange birds and butterflies ... unbelievable. Just so wonderful. And those last days –" his eyes went dreamy again – "those last days we were like kids. Younger and younger. We sang and laughed. We'd been chewing roots and berries for a week but now we found giant bananas and tamarind and all you can imagine. Life was lovely.
And then we arrived at the forbidden city of Nuzi."
By now, I must admit, I was getting interested. Although I didn't care for the old man, his story was getting to me.
"The city was a necropolis," the old man said. "Do you know the ruins in Meroe? The capital of old Kush?" I shook my head. "Not very different. Same steep pyramids. And not a single live person – but still everything seemed new, clean and sparkling, and there were parks and gardens and those beautiful birds singing. But there was no human being there. There was one living being, but I don't think she was human. Depending on how you define ..."
He interrupted himself and looked straight at me. "Do you believe me?"
I shrugged and mumbled.
"She looked like a woman. She did. Her skin was whitish, but her features were those of a black woman – broad, flat nose, full lips. And she was unspeakably old. She called us her little boys. Oh, I'm sorry," he suddenly remembered, "I should tell you that she spoke the same language as Mwunga – a variant of Lango, more or less extinct now. I didn't understand a word and had to communicate with her through Mwunga." He let out a long and trembling sigh. "Well," he went on, "to get to the point: she claimed to be four thousand years old."
This time I couldn't help raising my eyebrows.
"I know," the oldster said. He wagged his finger at me. "That was my reaction, too. The woman jabbered at Mwunga. Then she took me to a small spring nearby. I thought she wanted me to drink. But what she wanted was that I should look.
You see, I'd watched Mwunga change during an entire week. I'd gotten used to it. And many of his wrinkles still were there – it takes some time for such things to disappear. So I'd kind of accepted his change. But seeing myself ... I couldn't believe it.
All my small wrinkles were gone.
I really was twenty years younger. Believe it or not."
He looked almost aggressive. I made a gesture meaning: I'm listening. Keep talking.<
br />
He did so.
"I began listening in a quite different way. Asking questions. Trying to understand. And within a couple of days, I'd pieced her story together.
She wasn't quite a human being. Those were her own words. She was of a race that had used the Earth for one of many research projects. Not quite unrelated to our own mapping of flora and fauna by the sources of the Nile, but millions of times bigger. And her people, they didn't stop at documenting. They'd been traveling around the universe, manipulating genetic materials. She was of an ancient race, she said, and our planet had been grafted many times – for instance at the Cambrian explosion, and as late as fifty thousand years ago, when her people had helped defeating the Neanderthals ..." He raised his hands as in defence. "I'm just trying to repeat what she said, you see? I can tell you don't believe me. But if you'd been there. If you'd felt twenty years younger, and looked it, and heard all the details she told – then I think ..."
His voice shuddered; he drained the last of his whisky and sat very still for a long moment, actually long enough to make me think he'd fallen asleep again. Just when I was going to get up and look for S. he spoke again.
"Please forgive an old man. I promise not to get emotional ... Anyway, I believed her. And I still do. Is it so impossible that life on earth may be engineered? I don't think so."
He looked into his past again.
"Of course we spoke by way of Mwunga. But he and she also spoke when I wasn't there. I asked the darkie what she said to him. He just shrugged and said 'More same, boss, more same-same.' But it didn't quite feel that way to me.
By now, Mwunga looked like a thirty-year old. I also felt a lot younger, but when I asked the woman she said you didn't really get younger. The potion, or whatever it was, that she added to the water only put you in absolute mint condition. Wrinkles and whatnot disappeared, hardening of arteries too, and so on ... I'd give a lot to drink that water again.
