These Lifeless Things

by Premee Mohamed

  It will not save us. It will only save our humanity. In the end.

  There’s coal for the train. A. and I found a big bag of it this morning, and spent forever patiently packing it into paper bags so we can all carry some.

  Fireworks last night. Just as we were promised, all those weeks ago.

  IN THE HOVER, I watch the landscape pass below us, scarred and cratered, brightly submerged in fields of sunflowers, fluorescent yellow oilseeds, overgrown meadows that need a good graze. Where was that town, I wonder. I don’t know which way is west.

  No one speaks. I never got my showdown and now it’s too late. Life isn’t like that, history isn’t like that. There isn’t always the big fight that clears the air. The corrupt general doesn’t always get overthrown by his men; the evil empress isn’t always killed by her slaves; the armistice, so close, doesn’t always get signed.

  I lean my head back on my seat and think of V., who I liked, and who I thought loved Eva back, and how wrong I was, and now I’m angry at him, and he’s probably been dead for decades; and I think of K., who would have looked after her, but who she never would have trusted, just as I never trusted him. And I wanted to. And I don’t know why.

  My phone pings. I look down tiredly to see that I’ve gotten an email back from Dr. Aaron: Thank you for scans of journal. V. interesting. Already asking for funding to return in the spring, investigate tunnel/train, traces around city of successful escape. Unique in SB history. All my best.

  Even this, of course, is not a triumph; I write back asking if we can also assemble the ethics committee, for a private discussion rather than a hearing, about the events that occurred on this research trip, and hit send. And that is not a triumph either. It feels cheap and cold, and does nothing for my anger, or my frustration.

  “Why’d you do it?” I say quietly to Darian, who’s been strapped in across from me; the others are asleep, or pretending to be.

  “Do what?” he says.

  “Sabotage my research.”

  “That is a pretty serious accusation,” he says. “Pretty strong wording. I hope you have something just as strong to back that up.”

  “Just tell me why.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He pauses, and leans close, speaking rapidly, the closest he will come to an admission of guilt. “What’s the point anyway? We’ll never know what They were! We’ll never know where They came from! We can’t prevent Them from coming again! All we can do now is use what happened for the future. That’s what I’m doing. Getting data to build better buildings, stronger foundations. Bunkers for war, to protect soldiers. Even better bombs. And what are you doing? Wallowing in the past with them, and bringing nothing into the future. What’s that worth? You were a waste of money on this trip, Emerson. I’m sorry to say it, but your whole project was a waste of money, and the university should know it. Nothing of any worth came out of it. Just historical curiosities.”

  “They—” I begin, and almost choke on my tears of rage. His look of sympathy is infuriating; how dare he wish to comfort me, when he’s the reason I’m so angry. “They fought off the Invaders, they’re the reason we’re alive today, and not only alive but able to live in comfort, go to school, do research; they’re the reason the Setback ever ended. And anyway, you think there has to be an application for things we study? You think everything has to end up in some... lab somewhere, a product for people to buy? Well, I happen to think there are other questions in the world. Don’t you believe in truth? History? Isn’t that worth studying and saving? We are the descendants of these survivors, of people who survived in cities that everyone else thought were completely dead. Isn’t that worth something?”

  He shrugs; I flop back in my seat and glare at him.

  “You’re asking these questions like they’re necessary,” he says a minute later. “But they don’t need to be answered. You would have gotten enough answers just from seeing the city. Didn’t you read the last entry?”

  “No.”

  “You should. You should see how it ends.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do. And don’t talk to me,” I tell him, “till we land.”

  “All right.”

  “I mean it.”

  “All right.”

  December 1

  It is the day.

  We cannot wait any longer. Snow lightly falling. Please let it not get any deeper. Our best chance today. I must leave this book. I dare take nothing with me that has no use.

  Everything will be taken from us, but only us. They will go on without us, as the world goes on without us.

  This was deserved. This was all deserved. Somehow, we did something to deserve this.

  This morning, at long last, unneeded, uncalled-for, I remembered the last lines of the damn poem. All I can write before we leave.

  Shine out, my sudden angel,

  Break fear with breast and brow,

  I take you now and for always,

  For always is always now.

  And now read a sample of Premee Mohamed’s upcoming novel

  A BROKEN DARKNESS

  Coming

  2nd March 2021 (US)

  4th March 2021 (UK)

  978-1-78108-875-3

  IF ANYONE KNEW what I knew, they’d say, and rightly so, You knew everything. She told you everything, at the last. And you took this knowledge purchased literally with your life and you did nothing. It’s not too late though. Call the cops. Call the FBI. Call a priest. Arrest her! Do something! But you didn’t talk. And she didn’t talk.

  We didn’t talk. But we’d have to talk tonight, for as I laboured up the slope towards the entrance of the castle, everything made certain to remind me, in case I managed to forget for one second, that this was her party, it belonged to her, she’d paid for it, was the guest of honour, the hero of the hour, and the world’s first official Chambers Reactor powered the lights and music.

  A lightshow rotated on the damp stone of the castle walls: flags of Scotland and the European Union and the City of Edinburgh, and a tangle of crests, tartans, logos, brands, mascots. Spinning unicorns corkscrewed into a half-dozen Chambers Industries graphics: Chambers Labs. Chambers Energy. Chambers Biomedical. I imagined a half-dozen interns jealously duelling it out at the projector deck like rival DJs fighting at a rave, elbowing each other aside to get their particular division on the program.

  Which was hilarious, because tonight I was pretending to be an intern too: for BGI, the big tech conglomerate. I’d been assigned the internship as a cover (as well as a branded t-shirt, mug, baseball cap, cell phone, and five hundred business cards that I never handed out). Only Society members were supposed to know if you were in the Society or not.

  BGI was a good choice. Their employee base worldwide numbered in the faceless and anonymous millions, and they were recognizable enough to be ‘prestigious’ to Mom and, grudgingly, in our infrequent phone calls, Dad too. They had a vague idea what my job description meant (“Quality assurance and quality control”) and were merely proud that I had gotten such a well-paying job in the gap between high school and, she assumed, university.

  I hoped I could lie fluently about being in Edinburgh on a work conference, sent as a last-minute replacement for my boss (which was more or less true). Meanwhile, I’d told Mom and the kids I was in Orlando for a different conference (user interface design? something like that). The Society had even figured out how to get my name on the web page; I knew Carla would peek right away. She tried to resist, I knew, but was always cross-checking my movements to see if I was lying to them again. I felt terrible about her compulsion, but I could never tell her the truth; who knew what they’d do if I did.

  Really though, in my (rented) tux, I was pretending to be James Bond. Like Jude Law in the last couple movies, sleek and arrogant and able to brazen his way through anything. Hadn’t mentioned that on the phone to my boss, of course. There hadn’t even been a space to apologize for what I’d done to the watcher, nowhere to fit words
in through the Niagara-like, billion-ton waterfall of his anger. Only when he had paused to catch his breath did I mention that his daughter, whom I’d thought was studying in Spain, was now in... Edinburgh? Coincidentally, at the Chambers Reactor ribbon-cutting ceremony, to which tickets had been assigned months in advance? What a lucky young lady she was…

  Lucky, Louis had said, drawing the word out, and hung up on me.

  As I had stood in the kitchen, staring blankly at my phone and trying to think of how to communicate my last wishes to my sleeping family without actually telling them why I might be doing such a thing, he had called back.

  Louis’s assistant had been quietly calling around; both Sofia’s residence manager and her dorm-mate said she had dropped out. Sofia hadn’t been seen in weeks, despite the fact that at every call with her father, she had chatted chirpily about her classes and exams.

  And one thing had led to another, and here I was, the instigator of this tangle of boss, daughter, nemesis and myself, struggling in the middle of their web like a very confused, though dapper, fly.

  From Louis, I had understood, clearly and a little insultingly, that my commitment to the Society was not distrusted exactly, but (and I would admit this) undeniably strained: both from the conditions of their discovering me in the first place, and the incident with the watcher. Do you know what used to happen to people who did what you did? In the old days? Mm?

  Fuck you, I should have said. You’re not paying me enough to threaten me.

  But I hadn’t, and had sat there instead, frightened and fuming, absorbing the familiar refrain: Just pay your dues. Serve your time. I could be so much more than a mere Monitor. I could rise in the ranks. Other people had. I could be prestigious, respected, like the others.

  Remembering the kids beaming through their envy, demanding souvenirs from the Kennedy Space Center and Disneyworld. Mom ruffling my hair, running her thumb over my ear. I’m so proud of you, baby. That’s a good sign, when they start giving you more responsibilities.

  Liar, liar, liar, liar. And I’d come back without a tan, too. Just tell them you were listening to talks the whole time, Louis’ assistant had said. A strong implication of: Do I have to think of everything? Can you not lie on your own?A Chambers Labs subsidiary was presenting at the conference in Orlando, I had noticed: Lazuli Software Solutions.

  Johnny was everywhere, she was like mold spores in the air, nowhere was free of her. You couldn’t take one breath without drawing her in, having her grow inside you. Making you sick.

  A nasty realization had built while I writhed unsleeping on the plane, and it worsened now, as I joined the line of people waiting to get in, shivering in the cool fog. If it really had been Sofia, her dodging the camera suggested she didn’t want to be spotted there. Yet she must have known the ceremony would be filmed—not only that, but broadcast worldwide. Millions, even billions of people must have seen that footage. And she knew that, she would have known that. So why had she gone? What was she up to? And why hadn’t she told her dad?

  I hadn’t seen her in person for months, not since my last training trip to Chicago; she’d been distant, even cool, yet somehow had contrived to run into me, with or without her dad, about a dozen times a day. Afterwards, she kept messaging me on ICQ, a half-hour of cautious small talk each time. We were, I thought, in that uneasy space between strangers and friends, but since I’d never really had friends except Johnny (ow—that stab of hate again), I couldn’t tell.

  The beams of the lightshow stabbed up through the fog like knives, a guard of honour as I approached the front of the line. Like photos of royal weddings, walking under the bridge of blades. Good thing Louis’s assistant had called to get me a tux: under laughably heavy coats, many trimmed with fur or velvet, most people were in tuxedoes too, or else floor-length dresses in a dark rainbow of hues. I hoped no one would look at my boots.

  The lady taking names with her laptop stared up at me far too long. I met her eye, daring her to say something, tell me I didn’t belong there. Go on. You’ll see. The Society is full of these little tricks.

  “Nicholas Prasad,” I repeated, leaning down. After she looked at my driver’s license, she gave me a paper wristband and waved me through. I swiped my sleeve over my face, barely dislodging the clammy mix of perspiration and precipitation.

  God, why had I agreed to this bullshit? Some vague impulse fueled by who-knew-what, something I hadn’t been able to resist, giving the impression that it was not large but fast-moving, too quick to dodge, about how a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, but was this, in fact, it?

  If it was, I decided, what a man had to do was incredibly bad planning.

  All the same, what was the worst that could happen? Two girls might be mad at me, and I could call Louis back and confirm that his darling only child was fine. And then home on Monday, with Society-provided memorabilia, mouse ears and rocketships and little bits of gator-shaped tat and glitz. Job safe. Everything fine, and the boat that I had set rocking with my mistake (not to mention ratting out Sofia) would be settled again, safe again.

  I walked under a stone arch into a cross-road, thick uneven walls against a clouded sky, feather-soft and without a single star. People milled, murmured, smoked, laughed. There was a strong smell of money; you got it at Johnny’s place sometimes, and always at her mother’s house. Cigars, cryo-treatments, Botox, lip fillers, hair transplants, expensive perfumes and colognes, aromatherapy orthotics, drycleaning chemicals, real leather, jewels kept in storage. I didn’t have that. Would they sniff me out, turn on me? Rented tux, hotel soap. Smell of jetlag. My watch still on Edmonton time.

  Metal signposts pointed to PRISONS OF WAR and WAY OUT, mostly obscured now by large laminated sheets that said CHAMBERS REACTOR GALA FEBRUARY 6 2004 with a big reflective arrow.

  I liked the tall blocky towers, their windows crisscrossed with lead. The stones were all different colours, like camo-print. It wouldn’t help if you were being invaded, I thought, but maybe the visual effect would screw up the aim of folks with projectile weapons. How old was this place, anyway? Its age pressed down like the weight of a thunderstorm. I have everything you don’t, it seemed to say: mass, history, dignity, culture. And by ‘you’ I thought it meant both me and where I was from. No castles back home. Rightly so, I wanted to explain: the land was swindled or taken at gunpoint from people who neither built nor needed them.

  Need has nothing to do with it, I pictured the castle replying, I will be here for thousands of years more, needed or no.

  Conversely, I didn’t like the arches, which seemed too heavy to stay up, itching to fall on some tourist. Indoors was a relief despite the stifling heat. Unofficially, I knew, the party filled the entire grounds, and I had seen a few forlorn-looking string quartets and appetizer stations outside in the fog, but in practice, it was cold and grim enough that everyone had crowded into the Great Hall.

  The room was half-painted in deep red, half panelled with wood; the stained-glass windows had been strung with small white party lights, bringing their colours to life. Polished armour and dozens of weapons hung on the walls, baroque blades and spikes arranged like fireworks. That was good, actually, very handy. When either Sofia or Johnny started asking the hard questions, I could just run myself through. Die of blood loss before dying of embarrassment. True, the Society would lose its deposit on the tux, but...

  Before I really realized what I was looking at, my body jolted minutely, like the electrical shock of a dry winter day. The hall was lined with nooks like restaurant booths, which I figured were off-limits during tourist hours but were now open; and one of these was occupied by Johnny, lit all gold and dark like an old painting under several skinny standing lights. She was being simultaneously photographed and filmed by two people, and interviewed by three others, pivoting back and forth at their conflicting cues and the demands of the lenses.

  I parked myself behind a big guy in a white jacket who was offering trays of what Johnny called ‘tiny bits
of junk on sticks’ (her nemesis; she always ate before parties). The crowd eddied like one of those fancy aquariums in the mall, deep water of tuxedoes, bright coral of gowns, jewelry like darting fish. Hm. Save up, get a suit like that back home: silky blue or green or violet under the lights, black in the shadows. Couple of iridescent ties. Start going to clubs.

  Some people stared despite my tux, but after I snagged a glass of champagne, I abruptly achieved invisibility; their gazes hit and slid off. I held my nose over the cold skinny glass, enjoying the tickle of the popping bubbles.

  The lighting left the musicians (six of them—what was that? a hexet? a sextet?) and the high ceiling in darkness. In the center of the room, someone had poised a spotlight on something I couldn’t see through the crowd, glassy-looking, maybe an ice sculpture. Like that one Nobel-watching party we’d gone to at the university, where we had gotten kicked out after she—

  That sting again. Stop it, stop remembering her as human. It was all lies, goddammit. You know that. Stick to your job.

  I scanned the room for Sofia and gingerly let my champagne soak into the apparently parched scrubland of my tongue; it had no taste at all, only texture, as if I had drunk a mouthful of tacks. Two mouthfuls later I was thirstier than before. I glared at it.

  “Want some smoked salmon?”

  The fourth sip exited my mouth in a fine mist; Johnny dodged it absentmindedly, and held up her plate.

  “Come off it,” she said. “Like it’s so shocking to see me here, with my name all over the signs. What are you doing here? How did you get in? I didn’t put your name on the list.”

  “Don’t just sneak up on people like that!”

  “Uh-huh. Should I call security or what?”