by Seth Rain
Scott shook his head. ‘No.’
‘You think you’re choosing? That you have a say in this?’
‘Whatever I think, you should let him go.’
The Watcher pointed the revolver at the boy’s head. ‘Do you think there won’t be more like me? That no one will come for you on your date? You and your wife?’
Scott took a step closer, the gun aimed at Dearil’s head.
‘Rebecca,’ Dearil said.
Scott’s jaw tightened.
The boy whimpered, his eyes raw with tears, fixed on Scott, pleading.
‘Please,’ Scott heard himself say. ‘Let him go. It doesn’t have to be now.’
‘But it does!’ Dearil panted, spittle falling from his mouth. ‘It does. We don’t have a choice – you, me, this boy. Any of us.’
‘But we do. You do. Let him go. You can choose.’
Dearil shook his head. ‘You don’t understand what’s happening, do you?’
‘I know you’re not a Watcher.’
Dearil smiled again. ‘Is that what he said?’
Something in his smile made Scott unsure.
‘He wanted you here,’ Dearil said. ‘The Watcher wanted you here too. You’re as much a part of all this as I am. Don’t you see?’
Scott shook his head.
‘You don’t, do you? You don’t see it?’ Dearil tilted his head. ‘He’s using you.’
Scott recalled what the Watcher had told him.
Dearil pushed the boy to his knees and held the revolver to the back of his head.
The boy sobbed.
‘You believe the Watchers are innocent?’ Dearil said. ‘That all they do is watch?’
Scott listened, glancing at the boy.
‘They do more than watch,’ Dearil said. ‘What did he tell you about me?’
‘That you’re not a Watcher. That you’re a religious zealot.’
Dearil looked surprised, almost hurt. ‘Did he?’
‘He told me you’d come after the boy, then me.’
‘And I guess he told you about the boy? He told you to stop me before I got to you?’
Scott stared.
‘Don’t you see?’ Dearil’s expression softened. ‘He’s using you.’
Dearil swapped the revolver from one hand to the other.
‘Don’t,’ Scott said. ‘Please.’
‘I’ve killed two people only minutes ago, and I have another in front of me, and you still can’t do it, can you? It’s not an easy thing, taking someone’s life, if you don’t believe you are sending them to be by His side. You’re wondering what happens, aren’t you? How it feels.’
Dearil knocked the revolver against the back of the boy’s head. ‘I have the same date as the boy. And you’re here to do it for the Watchers. You’re here to do their dirty work. But that’s okay.’
Scott shook his head. ‘It’s not real. Your date.’
‘Oh, it’s real,’ Dearil said. ‘It’s very real!’ His face changed and he took a deep breath. ‘And I’m ready to be by His side.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Scott said.
Dearil closed his eyes. ‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Do what you’re here to do. We’re ready to be by His side. What are you waiting for? Do you still think we have a choice? You and me? Him?’ Dearil glanced at the boy. ‘Do you believe we have a choice, Scott?’
Scott couldn’t speak. His hand trembled as he lowered his revolver. ‘Yes.’
Dearil’s eyes were sad. ‘I feel sorry for you.’
‘If any of this means anything,’ Scott said, ‘what we do has to be a choice.’
‘And you choose to let this boy die?’
‘That’s not my choice. Don’t do this.’
The boy stared straight at Scott.
‘It’s me or the boy,’ Dearil said.
‘Please, no,’ Scott said.
‘It should be a consolation to know that none of this is a choice. What you’re about to do was always going to happen.’
Scott shook his head. ‘That’s not true.’
Dearil’s face darkened. ‘Me. Or the boy!’
The recoil was a shock, a fierce jolt shooting through Scott’s arm and into his chest, the sound physical. Dearil leapt backwards, away from the boy, and collapsed to the ground. Crying, the boy ran down the stairs.
Scott stood over Dearil’s dead body and stooped to examine the tattoo on his hand. It was real. He was one of the Chosen. A wave of nausea swept through him. Everything was different now. The blood covering Dearil’s chest spread out and spilled onto the floor, collecting in two pools either side of his torso. Scott had done this to another person. He stood and peered out of the window. It felt like choosing. From the beginning – from the moment he’d opened Craig’s door and seen he wasn’t there – it’d felt like choosing. But there lay the Watcher, dead, on his date, and Scott was the one who’d killed him. It had all happened the way the Watcher had wanted it to happen. He recalled the Watcher with the cross tattoo pushing the address into his hand. Scott had been told where and when to find Dearil so he could kill him on his given date.
Eleven
Scott opened the bag and pushed the clothes inside. This was a choice he was making; he would leave. He couldn’t get the sight of the boy’s mother and father out of his mind, their bodies on the floor, and the boy, sobbing, a revolver held against his head. The crime would be covered up, the boy cared for, and Dearil’s body, because he was Chosen, taken away as though nothing had happened. Scott grabbed another handful of clothing and punched it into the bag. The bed was unmade, Rebecca’s side of the duvet pulled back, the sheet beneath wrinkled. He stopped, imagined her lying on her side, the way she always slept. His decision would hurt her, but it was for the best. Making her live with his date was cruel. And she shouldn’t have to. With him gone, she wouldn’t be in danger when another deranged maniac came after him, and she wouldn’t have to live with counting down to his date each year. She’d live a normal life – find a man without a date. She’d told him repeatedly that she loved him, that none of this mattered, but it would be impossible to know what she really thought. She was a good person — better than he was. But still, he could remove any doubt by taking matters into his own hands.
He slid the letter beneath her pillow, snatched the bag, and took one last look at the bedroom.
Downstairs, the front door rattled.
He glanced at the clock. She was early.
‘Hello?’ Rebecca called.
For a moment he thought about hiding. ‘Up here,’ he said, opening the wardrobe and pushing the bag inside.
He listened to her climb the stairs.
‘What are you doing up here?’ she asked, scanning the room.
He took his reading glasses from the table beside his bed and showed them to her.
She walked to him and held him tight.
‘What are you doing back so early?’ he said into her hair.
She leaned backwards and looked up at him.
‘You’re acting strange,’ she said, frowning. ‘What’s wrong?’
She always knew.
He smiled weakly and kissed her. ‘Nothing.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘We need to talk.’
She walked around the bed, arranged the duvet, flattened it and sat down before patting the bed beside her. ‘Come over here.’
Scott glanced at the pillow, hoping she wouldn’t find the letter before he left. He sat beside her.
‘Do you love me?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ he said, again glancing at the pillow.
‘I need to tell you something,’ she said, her eyes glassy.
Her worried expression was at odds with her gentle voice.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘I can only imagine what it’s like for you.’
Scott sighed. He thought about telling her he was leaving. Then it would be done right.
Rebecca bit her bottom lip.
‘What is it?’ he asked
.
She closed her eyes.
‘Rebecca?’
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said, opening her eyes again.
He stared at her. She was beautiful. ‘Pregnant?’
She nodded. ‘We have to stop thinking about your date, Scott. You could live until you’re a hundred years old. And we could look back on our life and regret waiting for it to happen.’
She kissed him. He glanced at her stomach. There was no sign of the baby, but he imagined the faint swelling, the tightness all the same.
‘I love you,’ she said. ‘Please, Scott. Tell me we can do this.’
Scott covered his mouth. His date was less than two months away. But now there was a future to consider. For a long time he’d lived from one year to the next. Things had changed, and the reworking was immediate — he’d been thrown into the future and he saw himself living in it.
‘I love you too,’ he said.
‘Tell me we’ll stop waiting. That we’ll start living again.’
Scott reached out and laid a hand on her stomach. He nodded.
She sat on his lap and pulled his head to her chest. He listened to her heart. Her skin was soft and warm.
‘I want us to live there,’ she said. ‘The Lakes.’
‘We will.’
She held his face in her hands. ‘Tell me you want the baby.’
‘I want the baby,’ he said without hesitating.
And he did. Already, it all felt different. His date wasn’t as vital any more. There was something more important – something more fundamental. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. When they made love, it was different: more about the future than the past.
When Scott woke, he faced the open window and listened to the rain. Rebecca was asleep. Carefully, he slid his hand beneath her pillow, pulled out the letter and hid it in a drawer. He folded back the duvet, got out of bed and slipped on his shorts. A breeze blew the curtains into the room, making him recall Craig’s apartment and the moment he’d realised Craig wasn’t there.
He was about to close the window when he saw someone on the street below. A Watcher – the Watcher who’d told him about Dearil. Scott stared at him; he stared back. In his manner was an understanding but no apology. Scott continued to stare. As if in explanation, the Watcher rolled his shoulders and pushed his hands into his coat pockets, looked both ways along the street and walked away.
Scott watched Rebecca sleep. He couldn’t leave her, not now.
On the table next to her were the train tickets. He picked them up. The date and time were there in black ink: 02.02.2038 – 10:14 Manchester to Oxenholme, Lake District. The tickets were a prediction of the future, like the date tattooed on his hand. He and Rebecca would be where the tickets said they’d be: Manchester, Piccadilly Station, on that day and time.
He walked back to the window. The rain fell with even more vehemence.
In her sleep, Rebecca turned over and pulled the duvet up around her shoulders.
Scott felt the desire to close the window and rested his hand on the window frame. But something stopped him from closing it. If he closed it, it would be following a plan, like falling in line with what should happen. He let go of the window frame. But then, maybe his letting go and not closing the window had also been foreseen.
He reached down to the floor next to his bed and took the pack of cards from his trouser pocket. He opened the box, slid out the cards and read the first three cards: seven of diamonds, jack of hearts, two of diamonds. He’d always known how to shuffle cards, and doing so felt comforting. There was no way he could imagine how the AI had done it – how it had seen the future in the way the Department of Artificial Intelligence claimed it had. Holding the shuffled deck, he imagined turning over the first three cards and seeing the same three he’d seen before shuffling. It would never happen. But what if, one by one, he flipped them over to discover he’d shuffled the deck back into the same order? He didn’t look, only pushed the deck into the box.
Getting into bed, he lay behind Rebecca and held her. She muttered something about him being cold. He cupped her stomach and she placed a hand on top of his and squeezed.
His date was two months away. He made a deal with whoever was listening to his thoughts: if they allowed him one more year, the Watcher could come for him the year after.
He closed his eyes and listened to the rain fall. Rebecca’s hair smelled of coconut and her breathing was in time with his. He thought how impossible it was, that the AI knew this would happen. But it was possible. More than that; it was inevitable.
At that moment he witnessed what the AI had: one event leading to another, leading to another, leading to another. Beside him, inside Rebecca, was a new life, connected to his own. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, a warmth in his chest, stomach and legs. He was alive. An unimaginable chain of events that stretched back in time, as old as the universe, had resulted in him being alive. He felt dizzy, peering down at himself from high above. Free will was an illusion; thinking otherwise was impossible.
So he didn’t.
He chose not to.
* * *
The End.
The Warm Machine
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Chapter One
The date tattooed on Scott’s left palm was the day he would die. That was definite. It was the same as the date on his watch.
Scott stared out of the window, down at the Watcher illuminated by a streetlamp. The Watcher stared back at him, rain dripping from his hair onto the shoulders of his long grey coat.
Fourteen minutes to midnight.
A dog barked, making the Watcher squint along the street. Another dog barked in answer. The Watcher checked the tracker on his wrist.
Scott looked again at his hand. The ink of his tattoo contained the information the Watcher was tracking. He poured a large whisky then took the framed photograph of Rebecca from the table. In it, her hair blew across her face, her fingers reaching to push it back.
He downed the whisky then took a wallet from his trouser pocket, opened it and took out two train tickets: Piccadilly Station in Manchester to Oxenholme Station in the Lake District. The edges were damaged, the ink on each one faded, the dates from two years before.
Outside, the Watcher was gone. Scott’s throat closed and his chest tightened. A self-driver shushed through the puddles on Sackville Street. He faced the door at the other end of the apartment, rolled his shoulders, grimaced and cracked his knuckles.
Twelve minutes to midnight.
Maybe this year. No use avoiding it. He never had. To run and hide was pointless. Instead, he stayed home, his light on, informing whoever – or whatever – where he could be found. Not that it mattered. Every centimetre of Manchester was mapped by CCTV and satellite imaging.
The light in the hall, edging beneath the door, was momentarily broken by the shadow of someone … or something.
Outside, the high-speed train arrived, as always with a whisper to begin with, then its vibrations building until they disturbed the heavy velvet curtains. A spoon rattled inside a bowl next to the sink, the lampshade quivered and Scott’s keys trembled on the table beside him.
The smell of fried food from down the hall still lingered; the woman in thirty-three lived on her own time. Muffled shouts and angry exchanges often came from her apartment.
He checked again for the Watcher but the street was empty. Above the rooftops, in the distance, the lights from two drones blinked in a regular pattern.
Eight minutes to midnight.
Another self-driver splashed through the puddles on the street. Then a second, coming the opposite way.
More shouting from thirty-three, followed by two loud thuds. Scott watched the light beneath the door.
The rain had been relentless for two months. It returned with force against the window, like handfuls of scree dashed aga
inst the glass. His skin was clammy, his T-shirt clinging to his shoulders and back, the collar scratching his neck. He pulled at the fabric. As he did so, he heard the sound of a door creaking open … then closed.
Again, the light beneath the door was broken. Then, banging against the door. He checked his watch. There was still time. More banging. Someone crying. He watched the seconds pass on his watch as the bangs grew louder and louder. Six minutes.
‘Please!’ A woman’s voice.
More banging.
‘I need your help. He’s gone up to the roof. I can’t stop him.’
The train outside had arrived, thundering across the bridge behind the houses and apartment blocks where Sackville Street met Altrincham Street. The woman’s voice was drowned out by the train but he could still hear her fists thudding against the door.
So this was how it was going to happen.
He edged closer, then swiped across the two bolts and pulled the door open.
The woman from thirty-three took Scott’s arm and pulled him into the hallway. ‘Help!’ she pleaded. She pointed to his left hand and his date. He had no idea she knew. ‘Please help. He’s on the roof.’
The woman yanked Scott into the stairwell before running ahead, up the stairs and out onto the roof, calling him to follow.
He looked back into the room and paused … then headed for the stairs.
At the far end of the roof stood a young man, right at the edge. To his left was the Watcher. The Watcher nodded to him. Each year this happened, and each year, for some of the Chosen, it came with the same relief. He had at least one more year.
The woman pushed Scott towards the young man on the roof.
Scott recognised the long, lank hair and the skinny frame. He was tall and thin, a young man. He’d seen him many times on the stairs or coming out of his apartment, but they had never spoken.
‘He’s Chosen?’ Scott asked the woman. ‘Is it today?’
