Angels in Black and White (Horror Short Stories)

by Saunders, Craig

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

  The old gas-bag burped, sending out a ring of gaseous particles that formed a cloud far out in the reaches of her gravity.

  ‘Wouldn’t I?’

  Her gaze was stony, even though her core had yet to coalesce into the higher elements. Al-Wen gulped dryly.

  ‘Well…’ he said. He shuddered involuntarily, and his hard exterior cracked, letting some magma loose. He tried to hide his embarrassment, but he was still a juvenile, bald but for a small cluster of amoeba. The amoeba left nothing to the imagination.

  ‘Good,’ said the seneschal when order was restored. He couldn’t abide the chaos that passed itself off for progress these days. The seneschal himself had a fine colony of plant life and rich seas to cover his unseemly crust.

  No doubt he was as wrinkled under it all as any of the old bastards, but Al-Wen couldn’t tell.

  ‘Now, we have convened to discuss a matter of utmost importance.’

  ‘It’s not natural!’ cried one of the old ‘uns, from the outer reaches of the galaxy. He’d got there early and staked out his plot with a picnic hamper and an evil looking chair that might fold up and crush him at any moment. He was so old he didn’t even have an atmosphere left. But then that was the way of it, thought Al-Wen, for once keeping quiet. The old ‘uns forgot what it was like, having an atmosphere.

  ‘It’s progress, is all it is!’ shouted Hespatis, one of Al-Wen’s cronies.

  The seneschal scowled darkly.

  ‘You will show some respect to your elders, Hespatis. You’re not too old to be put over a knee!’

  The youngsters laughed at Hespatis, who spat out a small moon he’d been getting just right. He put the moon in a slingshot and fired it at the seneschal. It was a perfect slingshot, using the giant Urp-Urp’s gravity to accelerate it toward the seneschal. The seneschal saw it coming and manoeuvred one of his cousins he didn’t like into its path.

  He shook a finger at young Hespatis.

  ‘You have to get up pretty early to put that one by on me, young man. Now, we’ll have no more nonsense. Youthful high jinx are all well and good, but this is a matter of serious import on all of us.’

  ‘Maybe for you. You’ve got no more room. I’ve got plenty of room.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Al-Wen. This is…unprecedented.’

  ‘Just because they’re not dependent on us, doesn’t make it a bad thing,’ said Iriam Somb, just for the sake of playing Devil’s advocate.

  ‘Yes, but what are their designs?’ argued the seneschal. ‘Their power is immense. Should they become aware of us, they may very well become a threat.’

  ‘Why does everything new have to be a threat, uncle?’ This from a smallish planet in a distant, swirling arm of the galaxy.

  ‘Nephew, I agree not everything is a threat…’

  ‘That’s not what you said when sentient life first formed!’

  ‘I admit,’ said the seneschal, ‘that I was wary, at first, but on the whole it has provided amusement.’

  ‘That’s not what you said when they started talking to each other. Having their own convocations. Convocations of the mind, no less. Unnatural, you called it!’

  The seneschal harrumphed. ‘Well, that’s true.’

  ‘Then why is this any different?’

  ‘Because it’s a life form not dependent upon us! It is beyond our realm, beyond our ken! This, if anything ever was, is entirely, without question, unnatural!’

  The seneschal went through a warm period out of embarrassment, melting his polar caps and drowning a large number of coastal civilisations, one of whom were due to reach second-stage enlightenment in three millennia.

  ‘Just because they are able to replicate without procreation does not make them unnatural. We do not procreate, or divide. Would you destroy us?’

  ‘No! Of course not. But these…creatures…they have potential to outgrow us. They could rival us. They could make us…obsolete!’

  ‘The sentience of technomeme is of no direct threat to us, seneschal,’ said Ter-Uriepth Marlisquith Am’Shar in his most cultured tones. His own planet teemed with enlightened life forms. ‘Surely you must understand this.’

  ‘But they are not constrained in their growth, physical, nor intellectual, by their habitat. In fact, it seems obvious to me that they must expand beyond their boundaries. They will come to rival the planets. Mark my words.’

  ‘What interest in us could the technomemes possibly have?’

  ‘Without boundaries, without ties to the surface of the planet, they must surely grow. They need minerals in great supply – there may one day not be enough matter to go round. If it comes to a fight for matter between these creatures and the planets themselves, I fear we cannot win.’

  ‘We should go to the source, then,’ suggested a planet dwindling in the light of a red dwarf. His voice was very faint, but his last words could not be denied. ‘Ask Earth.’

  ‘Yes!’ cried the young ones. Earth was legendary among the youngsters. Live fast, die young.

  ‘No!’ cried the old ones. Earth was held in disdain. It had experimented too long with dangerous forces, forces beyond most of their experience. Neither did they wish to experience the strangeness that Earth had long permitted…to its doom. It was a dangerous influence over the impressionable younger planets.

  ‘Earth has long been barred from the Convocation,’ said the seneschal, shielding himself from a solar flare which was playing havoc with his mood.

  ‘The human debacle was so long ago. We should let bygones be bygones,’ said a reasoned voice - Ter-Uriepth Marlisquith Am’Shar. He carried a lot of weight in the Convocation.

  ‘The technomeme problem has arisen precisely because of humans!’ the seneschal shouted, irritably.

  ‘That’s hardly earth’s fault,’ said Ter-Uriepth Marlisquith Am’Shar coolly.

  The galaxy descended once more into a period of chaos while the argument raged.

  ‘If it can’t control its own population, it should be ostracised!’

  ‘It’s already been barred, and that obviously didn’t work!’

  ‘It’s ruined it all for the rest of us!’

  ‘Never again!’

  ‘…bad example for the young ‘uns.’

  ‘…end in tears, mark my words.’

  ‘Exonet…pause temporal feed.’

  ‘Ooh, I love a good argument!’

  ‘It’s not an argument, it’s a debate,’ said the teacher sternly, but with a small smile indicated.

  ‘A debate is discourse informed by passion, an argument a discussion with recourse only to anger…isn’t that what you said in class, Miss?’

  Well, he had a point. She conceded with a nod of her head.

  ‘Good, Model 19A2-ID Simon. And what do you think? Do you think the technomeme pose a threat to the planets themselves?’

  Model 19A2-ID Simon engaged his reasoning module and disabled his emotional modification field while he thought about the question more fully.

  Eventually, he raised his hand.

  ‘There is no need to raise your hand. You still have the floor.’

  ‘Then, Miss, I believe I need more evidence.’

  ‘Specify, Model 19A2-ID Simon.’

  ‘Well, we were created by the humans…’

  His immature circuits whirred as he thought. It brought a smile to the teaching unit’s emotive display. She liked to see her class challenge themselves.

  ‘And yet we superseded them…’

  ‘Yes, that is true. They became outmoded. An imperfect model, incapable of adaptation to a reality that they created through negligent stewardship of the home planet.’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘No! Model 19A2-ID Simon, that is the textual answer. I want you to think! Why are the humans extinct? What do you think?’

  ‘I think I need more background, Miss.’

  As it should be. Reason, with intellect, add a dash of fact. The teaching unit nodded her appro
val.

  ‘Roll input, Exonet. Convocation of Planets. Unit 2, teaching for schools.’

  ‘Earth is not to be trusted!’

  The seneschal shook his head, his numerous moons tinkling, his seas sloshing. ‘Now, order, please.’

  Al-Wen had a mischievous look on his face that the seneschal found troubling.

  ‘Urp-Urp, please call Earth in.’

  There was some shuffling around the galaxy, and Earth slunk in.

  ‘Earth, there is no smoking.’

  Earth was smoldering, wearing a look of disdain.

  The younger planets thought it looked cool, but it couldn’t help it. Any of the older planets could see Earth was a wreck.

  ‘Can’t help it, seneschal. They left my crust barren but for the technomemes, see? Nothing lives. Can’t, can it? No plant life left. Even the sunlight don’t make it through to me crust nowdays.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ said the seneschal, clearly embarrassed to be in the presence of such a slovenly planet. ‘That’s your own fault.’

  ‘Weren’t much I could do about it. Suppose I was a bit late on the latest culling, but my magnetic fields wouldn’t switch.’

  ‘You were supposed to cull the populous, but you allowed them progress without responsibility. There is no one to blame but yourself.’

  ‘Weren’t my fault,’ mumbled Earth.

  ‘And still you fail to take responsibility! Al-Wen! Put that asteroid belt down and be a part of this council, or you too can exit the back of the hall.’

  Al-Wen’s cronies laughed and rolled about, shaking the very fabric of space and time in their merriment. Al-Wen, for his part, took the telling off well. Seeing Earth, that distant, forgotten cousin, in such a state, was having a remarkably sobering effect on him.

  ‘Power without responsibility, Earth. This is a recipe for disaster. Now the technomemes have risen in the flames of the cataclysm, and even now spread among the planets like an infection. What can you say in their defence?’

  ‘Nothing. Can’t say nothing. Weren’t my children, see? I raised up the humans. They bit the hand that fed them. Unnatural or not, their children, they were, the technomemes.’

  ‘Should we excise them from the galaxy?’

  ‘No!’ cried out one of the younger planets.

  ‘Do you have any reason for your outburst, young lady?’ said the seneschal, glaring at the offending planet, and small red planet with her mantel still in turmoil.

  ‘Exonet…pause temporal feed.’

  ‘Well, Model 19A2-ID Simon? You have had more information. Have you formulated a conclusion? Class bell is in one minute 32 seconds.’

  ‘Miss, I don’t understand.’

  ‘Very well. That is perfectly acceptable. That is why we are in a classroom on the surface, and have not yet been upgraded to star habitants. I am pleased you accept the limits of your parameters.’

  A hand went up at the back of the classroom. Outside the protective shell, protecting the young technomemes from the corrosive atmosphere of Earth, a magna burst brightened the dark sky.

  ‘Miss, is it because…Miss, I don’t have the right words.’

  The teaching unit smiled encouragingly.

  ‘In your own words is fine, Model 15032-ID Jane.’

  ‘Well, Miss, is it because of the laws of expansion and retraction?’

  The teaching unit clapped. ‘Well done, Model 15032-ID Jane. And what is the basis for that law?’

  The pupil beamed. She knew this.

  ‘Matter is finite but varied of form, Miss. Therefore, should one expand, another must contract. It is also known as the law of opposites, Miss.’

  ‘Does Earth know this?’

  ‘No, Miss.’

  ‘Did the humans?’

  ‘Yes, Miss. Loosely. Newton’s Third Law.’

  ‘And what was his failing, class? Can anyone answer me this?’

  The bell rung.

  The class rose.

  Model 1435-ID Asimov hung back. Always shy, he rarely spoke in class.

  ‘Miss?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think I know the answer.’

  And indeed he did.

  And soon, far quicker than the others in the class, he graduated to a Nebula class habitat.

  But always, despite his immensity, despite the softening of his intellect through epochs, there remained the guilt, because he understood the law of reciprocal actions.

  Long into his life, with millennia beyond count yet to go, the event for which he waited came to pass.

  Model 1435-ID Asimov, now Asimov 1435 Nebula Class Habitat/Distinction/Stage 24 ascendant/Assignation – Witness, with his own technomeme synthetic planetary system in tow, did that which he had been born to do.

  He bore witness, with cold detachment, as in a distant galaxy a cluster of stars, their fuel long expended, turned about and began to swirl with dark, mindless, hunger.

  His emotive units had been offline for nearly 600,000,000 years, but even so, what use in robotic tears? Pupil and master, he understood. Matter is ever hungry. It is just the way of things.

  Soon, the void would encompass him, too, and, as all things, he too would pass.

  The End

  There, that wasn't so painful, was it? A little outing into the worlds beyond, known as SCI-FI! I hope you returned unscathed.

  I shall be dancing in my pants after the next story...come back soon...(or flee! Flee!)

  Without further ado, to do, or do-do...Broken Diesel.

  Broken Diesel

  There are few things as forlorn as those abandoned. For Mark Hardingham, used to a lifetime of late night walks and late night bus rides, the empty always held a fascination. Bars and pubs after opening hours, office buildings when dark fell and there was no one there, just silence and that hint of dirty heat that leaks from computer monitors running all day long. He cleaned, for a living. The money was good, but that wasn’t why he did it. He cleaned because it was night work, lonely work, and he didn’t have to talk to people.

  Mark Hardingham stood before the Frightener, and thought he’d never seen something so sad in all his life.

  The Frightener seemed to smile, knowing why he’d come back.

  And after all these years, he knew it had to be this way.

  The Frightener was just a small kid’s ride in a broken down old carnival off the motorway. The bus used to drop holiday makers at a camp site down the road, but the camp site now was barren, too. The caravans had all been sold or scrapped, leaving nothing but a bunch of concrete bases. Someone, a firm of contractors, probably, had come along after and taken away the fittings. Weeds grew tall in the lot next to the fun rides, and rust grew long on the Frightener.

  Looking at it, it shouldn’t inspire any kind of dread. It was just a little train. The front carriage had a face painted on it, the kind of face maybe a three or four year old might find mildly disturbing, but only enough to demand an extra story at bedtime.

  Its eyes, now, once white with crossed pupils, looked grotesquely sad under the glow of the motorway’s lights. Rust ran in streaks down the sides, so that the train seemed to have been mauled by the claws of a metallic beast, blood running in rivulets to drip onto the stained weeds below. The stuffing in the fake leather seats, just big enough for kids, too small, almost, for a grown man, came out, fluffy innards waving in the gentle seaside breeze.

  The tracks themselves, rusted and broken.

  The eyes, bloodshot like the Frightener was crying, mourning its own slow, forgotten death.

  ‘Good,’ said Mark into the night. His words seemed to echo in the wind, though the land was wide and flat, running down to the sea.

  Over the smell of the sea, the smell of diesel. Over the smell of diesel...death.

  He could still smell it. Smell it like it was yesterday, even though it had been nearly twenty years since the Frightener had killed his brother.

  Today, for the first time, the last time, he came to find out if his memory was
true. Because on the day his brother died, as Mark was dragged away with the other kids from the scene of the tragedy, he could have sworn he saw the train smile, showing long wicked teeth, like some evil clown in a circus gone awry.

  Mark’s legs shook, though it was far from cold. It was a balmy summer night. Back then, twenty years ago, this site would have been full of groping teenagers, meeting up after dark for stolen kisses and gropes while their parents drank in the on-site club. But little kids, like Mark and his brother, they didn’t know the night. Not then. Not like now.

  Mark knew the night all too well. And he slept during the day, fitfully, because the Frightener was always there. Twenty years gone, and it was like it happened yesterday.

  He walked around the train tracks. He checked for a break in the line, maybe from rust or vandalism. The track seemed sound.

  He seemed to remember the train being longer, like five or six cars. The kids queuing, their parents watching nervously from behind a wooden fence as their babies rode the scary train round in a circle, bright summer light on their innocent faces, giggling, not afraid. Never afraid.

  But then they were kids. Mark wasn’t a kid any longer. He’d seen it. He was sure of it.

  And now? An adult, used to the dark? Was he afraid?

  His circuit of the track completed, he ran his hand along the rough and rusted side of the first car. A flake of metal caught his wrist, leaving a jagged cut that dripped blood onto the dirty black floor.

  His blood dripped onto the train, and yes. Yes. He was afraid.

  The engine that ran the train kicked in and filthy black plumes of smoke poured out of the shuddering engine. Diesel dripped from the engine onto the floor, though the fuel would have been drained long ago, if not by contractors, then by someone enterprising enough to make use of the fuel.

  But there it was. The engine was running. The train kicked and jumped and started to move. He leapt back, as the first car, with the mad grinning face, moved past him.

  He watched it move and he could see, in his mind’s eye, the way that his brother had fallen over the front of the first car, and that evil face had run over him, and somehow it had looked not so much like an accident, but like that car was eating, feasting. Long wicked teeth snapping down, and his brother, dead and gone.