Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep

by Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep- The Best New Science Fiction from Sweden (retail) (epub)

  Not Angesum Bard.

  He loves the quiet, just looking at the stars. The odd ship passing by, automatically validated by their transponder signals. Nothing ever happens at night. Just like Angesum Bard likes it.

  He leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head when a red light starts flashing on the console in front of him. He tilts forward, frowning. The message in front of him: "Hyperspace exit imminent."

  "What the ...?"

  No ships are supposed to arrive now. All traffic to and from Eskwan 4 is regulated. That is Central's way to take control of the pirate problem, and it has worked out pretty well so far.

  Angesum Bard looks up from the console and sees space starting to fold in front of him. Then the ship is thrown out of the rift – sideways. Its engines cold, drifting.

  A few quick clicks on the panel and all the station's sensors start prodding and prying at the ship. No transponder signal, but one sensor zooms in on the name printed on the side of the ship: "Runner Eleven", and a government seal. A government ship. Angesum Bard sits up in his chair as the sensor reports start listing in front of him. The ship is dead. No life signs on board and all systems offline. Practically a big piece of space junk. He licks his lips. He really should send a report immediately, but a government ship adrift ... It's tempting to take a look. It probably has a lot of valuable equipment on board.

  It takes him a couple of seconds to decide, and then he punches the panel, activating the tractor beam. The station starts towing the ship as he stands, brushes a few crumbs off his jacket and heads down to the hangar deck.

  There it is, right in front of him. It looks odd. Not at all as strict and well managed as he'd expect from a government ship. It seems almost like something is growing on the outside of it. Something organic. That's not right. Angesum Bard takes a step back.

  He's been around for a long time and he likes to think the reason for that is that he trusts his gut. And now his gut is telling him something. He breathes heavily and releases a whiff of asthma suppressant into the suit's air supply.

  No amount of salvage is worth being reckless. He turns around and punches a button on the control panel behind him. There is a hum in the air and a slight shiver around the ship as the stasis field is activated. He activates the comlink in his suit.

  "Surface control, this is orbit station. Priority concern. I have towed a derelict, and I need some assistance."

  "Copy that, orbit station. We'll send a team to take a look."

  Angesum Bard signs off. The ship looks so peaceful now, inside that stasis field. He shakes his head and removes the helmet. He can't believe he was almost stupid enough to go into a derelict alone. He chuckles, and turns around to hang the helmet on the wall.

  He considers for a while whether he should go back to his station or wait in the hangar for the team to arrive. It shouldn't take too long.

  The lights in the ceiling flicker for a moment and he hears a thud behind him.

  He spins around. The ship's loading ramp has opened and there is a soft glow coming from inside. The stasis field has been disabled. Angesum Bard reaches for his helmet, accidentally knocking it off its hook and it rolls away on the floor.

  Something moves inside the ship. Shadows of some kind. Not completely dead after all. But why didn't they register on the sensors?

  "Hello?"

  He hears a hissing sound from within the ship as black smoke starts trickling out on both sides of the loading ramp. Then he sees another shadow, and another.

  The lights flicker a final time and die out. A moment later Angesum Bard hears shuffling footsteps approaching in the darkness.

  "Messiah" – Anna Jakobsson Lund

  A pale sun rises as I make my way through the city. The air is thick with the smell of burning garbage. Fighting among the scavengers again, for the third night in a row.

  Some say it will spread over the wall. That the people living off scraps at last have reached the point where they can't be stopped. I don't believe them. The demi-kings of human waste will have their fight. In two or three nights smoke will fill the air when the losers burn their dead. The winners will take a bigger piece of the enormous piles. Maybe a couple of kids from the losing groups. Then relative peace will once again settle in the outskirts of the city.

  I cross the canal on the rickety bridge, careful not to step on the right side, where some of the wood is rotting away. It's a hot night and the planks feel slippery and moist. Like the bridge is covered in fungus.

  The humidity clings to my skin, makes beads of sweat trickle down the back of my dress. Three more months of the hot season. I don't care. The chilly winds during the dark times are just as bad.

  "Need a fix?"

  The girl is skinny and at least half a head shorter than me. Young.

  "What?" I give her a sharp glance. "Do I look it?"

  "Yeah, kinda."

  Her voice trembles. Not just young. New.

  I clap the pocket on the side of my dress.

  "I've got three days of sleep right here, darling. Maybe some other time."

  With a nod she disappears into the shadows. I couldn't get anything else even if I wanted to. Maybe it shows.

  Tonight I sold one of my very last dreams to the virtual pleasure joint on the shady side of the second hill. Cheap too.

  My childhood was filled with dreams. Of wasteland. This city in ruins. Other cities that I know I must've made up, because I've never seen or heard about them. Always covered in dirt and dead bodies.

  But in the dying cities there were other things. Love. Children playing. I would dream myself a man together with his lover. Or a beautiful woman sitting in the Council of leaders.

  The dreams left me with the feeling that they were real and my waking life just a faded shadow of reality. The injections don't give me dreams like that, they just take away the feeling of strangeness in the world.

  From the canal a web of narrow streets creep up the city's fourth hill. The second hill, with its bars and live-tattoo places and swingers-clubs, never sleeps. When I trek the steep slope I think that this is the part that never really wakens. It's stuck in the mad-man's deliria.

  People I meet are not dressed for a night out. Some of them are barely dressed at all. They scratch their arms with dirty fingernails and mumble. This constant, confused mumble is the breathing of the fourth hill. Ever present. Sometimes heavy and strained. Sometimes light and fast.

  A man breaks from a group of people standing around a small fire.

  "Messiah!" He reaches for me, his arms thin as branches, his fingers dry as twigs. "The Armageddon is upon us. The truth will set you free. Take your responsibility. Messiah!"

  The second coming crazies are spread around the city. I remember them from my childhood. The mumblers would sit in front of our whitewashed villa on the top of the first hill, if my mother's maid didn't get there first to shoo them off. They increased in number as I grew. Sometimes I would even meet them in the university corridors.

  But never like this. On this hill they occupy the streets, live in every building and burn-out. They attack me at night. When I leave the apartment to eat every two or three days they sit around crying and begging.

  My house is squeezed between two wide buildings, both of which were institutions when such things still existed. Orphanage to the left, asylum to the right.

  A lady in rags leans into me as I pass her in the doorway, grabs hold of my arm. She reeks of piss and dirt. Her mumbling is fast, shaky.

  "Take the rose. Do what's right. Take the rose. Do what's right."

  She gives a little scream as I push her down.

  I hate this hill.

  The stairs smell of roast potatoes and cabbage, of sweat and red dust. There's the sound of madness tossing and turning. The constant mumbling.

  Take the rose.

  The ones that don't mumble about the second coming curse the sin of the fix. Always turning to the rose as the solution.

  It's
hardly more than a myth. The mother of drugs. One injection will flush your system. If you survive you're clean.

  There are many ways the rose can kill you. If it stops your heart and leaves you for dead, you're lucky. Sometimes it just takes your sanity. Some say the mumblers are old junkies, obsessed with their failed way out of misery.

  Dangerous or not, many people, and their families, still take the risk. The dealers know this, and the drug costs a fortune. I would have to sell myself into slavery to afford it. That is if I wanted it.

  I lock the thin door behind me, head for the bathroom. My face looks more angular than last time I saw it, the eyes big and bloodshot. The gray scarring next to the brown iris has grown quite a bit. I should change the eye I'm injecting. But losing one of them seems like a better deal than damaging both.

  Eventually I'll lose them both. There's no stopping me now.

  Black hair sticks out from my skull in spikes. I shaved it when I spent a week chasing a high instead of studying for the pre-med finals. The feeling of true joy, of oblivion, escaped me and I couldn't help looking for it deeper and deeper. Eventually I crashed and slept through the test. They didn't find any substance on me but they kicked me out just the same.

  There's no stopping me now.

  I take the bottle from my dress pocket, shake out the contents. Three days of relative peace. I swallow two of the yellow pills and go lay down on the bed. Close my eyes.

  The pills are dirty.

  Instead of sleep I get the itch. It starts at the elbows and spreads. Like wriggling worms under the skin. I must get out and find the bastard that sold me these. Or at least work my way through the sellers until I find someone who will accept what I've got.

  Fatigue shackles me to the bed. I scratch my arms like a mumbler and try to fall asleep. Just fall.

  When the sound leaks through the wall I first think that I succeeded. That I'm in one of the pill-induced dreams that I used to love and now always want to escape. It's a wailing, half human half animal. Like the tree spirits that some people nowadays turn to for guidance.

  It's a cello.

  Mum used to play it, long into the nights after her shift at the War Memorial Hospital. Those hands that cut into people's hearts could make the cello cry like a child. She taught my brother. Not me. She knew by then that my restless brain could only take so many hours of memorizing.

  School was never hard, but it ate at me. The teachers wanting me to conform, to be a good girl. My mother wanting me to be something else entirely. There's no room in this world for good girls.

  The more I see of it, the more I think she was right.

  I curl into a ball, my joints hot and aching, my mouth dry and the itching like wild fire under the skin. With my head between my arms I try to keep the music away. It's not the bittersweet sound of a child crying softly. The cello is just off pitch, and there is too much hurt in the notes.

  Sleep runs in circles around me. Three nights without, I should drop like a stone into those deep, deep waters of rest.

  I need clean pills. And if I can't have that, I need silence.

  The door next to mine is cracked open. The room smells of something sweet. Incense? It's the smell of the small chapel at the far end of my childhood garden. A woman that cuts into hearts needs someone to curse. Somewhere to beg.

  I visited her after I got kicked out of med school. When she cut the allowance. This time she wouldn't budge. Stood with her arms folded and didn't even let me in to see my brother. But I know her. There was fear in her eyes. Sorrow.

  The cello player sits at the dirty window. Some of the reddish light hits her gray hair. When she hunches over the cello, with her eyes closed, she looks ancient. A hag. Then she straightens, meets my gaze. And it's a young girl. No cracks in her dark skin. Clear eyes that look black in the faint light.

  "They said this'd work," she mumbles. "I thought I'd have to work harder."

  What did I expect? A woman playing the cello in the thin house that is pressed between institutions. Of course she's a nutter.

  "Could you keep it down? My ... shift just ended. I need my sleep."

  "They said it'd be bad. But I see they lied." She shakes her head, the bow slides and makes a harsh, grating sound. "I wouldn't have come if I'd known the truth."

  "Please? Could you put it away? Just for a couple hours?"

  She lets the cello rest against the wall, stands at the window.

  "Come."

  I'm an idiot. So I take four strides across the floor and stand next to her. She nods to the low rooftops stretching beneath us, the blood red sky.

  "The world's burning."

  "The trash fire started a couple nights ago," I say. "It will pass."

  Her gaze goes from the window to me. I can't hold it.

  "No Gracie, this time it shall not pass. The world has gone too far."

  "What did you call me?"

  "I've been told you shed your name. I thought I'd try something from long ago. See if you remember."

  Granny. The crazy lady that always fed the mumblers. Our afternoons in the garden. How I never knew why she called me that name.

  "Who are you?"

  "A nobody. You, on the other hand, are not."

  My laugh is as grating as the bow missing the strings. I haven't heard it for months.

  "This hill makes you good at spotting the nobodies," I say. "I think I know one when I see one."

  "Self-pity's a bad color on you." Now it's the girl-hag who's laughing. A dry, short snort. "I wonder what went wrong this time. You've never lost it like this before."

  I back from the window. There are other worms crawling now. My stomach's full of them.

  "Why are you here?"

  "For you of course." She chuckles. "We're a whole bunch. The trip got to some. Well ... most. Sometimes they're not that clear. But you must've heard them. The second coming crazies. Isn't that what you call them?"

  "What?"

  My back's against the wall, and I feel the ground slowly swaying beneath me. The woman takes a step towards me.

  "Messiah? That's what they call you. The crazies. We just call you Grace."

  There's my laugh again. It sounds scared. What will she do to me? It took me forever to find this place, what if I have to move?

  "I think you got me mixed up with someone."

  The door is full of splinters and it hurts my palm when I search for the handle.

  She gives me a small nod, licks her lips.

  "You know what they say about Band-Aids? That's crap. Sometimes it just hurts too much to take the whole damn thing at once." Her smile's sad. "But there's no other way to do this, I'm afraid."

  "Do what?"

  "We don't know what went wrong. The dreams, are our best guess. You never got them before. You never had the faintest about what had happened to you. But dreaming about places you never been, again and again, that must've felt so strange. Maybe that made you start to lose it."

  "You know Granny."

  She is the only one I've told. And just in the beginning. It made her eyes look too worried for me to keep telling her.

  The woman laughs.

  "Sometimes I think I was Granny. It's hard to tell."

  "You're not making any sense."

  The itching is slowly replaced by an ache behind my eyes. I need to sleep. I need my pills. I need to get out of here.

  "The second coming crazies know what they're talking about," she says with a hint of a smile. "Armageddon isn't far. Mankind survives, of course. We're worse than roaches that way. But the world will never be the same. We saw all of this, and we knew we had to do something. You volunteered. Or at least, you did the first five times."

  "I did what? This is crazy. I'm leaving."

  She reaches for me as I turn. Her thumb presses into my skinny arm. I could easily break free. But there's something in that touch. Something I do remember. How the heat from her used to rush through me, make me crazy. Make me do whatever it took to be with
her.

  I let my arm sink and face her. She looks away, for the first time not seeking my gaze.

  "You ran the Continuum Center. We were ... colleagues, sort of. In theory sending people back to be reborn wasn't a problem. But there were some practical issues. And moral. It worried the board. It was banned by the Council of leaders. You didn't care about that. Couldn't sit around when the world was burning. You went back and left notes for us to go after you if we didn't see the right changes."

  "Changes?"

  My head is a mix of stupid questions.

  "You were convinced there's a chain of disaster. That if some of the first links could be broken, the world would never come to its end."

  "Didn't work out, right?"

  She shakes her head.

  "Twelve times and we've come up with nothing. Then we fetch you. Sometimes it's easy. This time it was bad. We've lost hundreds to the travel. They stop believing in the mission."

  "Fetch me?"

  "You want to be in a position to make a difference when the shit hits the fan ten years from now. You mostly get there in time. But you end up making the same stupid mistakes. Keep letting the world burn."

  "Why?"

  Her laugh is lighter now, like that of a young girl.

  "Who understands the minds of people in power?" She straightens, gives me a look. "This time you're not gonna get there. I've been told to get you home. They say they'll start over."

  "Come with you? That means dying, right?"

  "In a way you can't die. In another you can't truly be alive."

  The bow makes a scratchy noise against the floor as she picks it up. Her index finger runs the length of its hair. I can feel the soft, sticky feeling on my own skin.

  "What if I refuse?"

  She lifts her head slightly.

  "Would you? I'm offering a way out. Peace."

  Everything goes red as I close my eyes. Rest. A chance to do it over. Do it right. Gain power and make a difference. Be a good girl.

  There's no room in this world for good girls.

  "How would you even do that? Take me back?"

  "The chapel at the back of the garden. On the first hill. We'll go right away."