by David Adams
But to the rest of the world it was a Tuesday. Just an average day. That thought tumbled around in his head, and despite it all this was a comforting thought. He’d caused no harm to the silo by leaving. In fact, he should have done it much sooner.
Despite sleeping on a couch with only a blanket and a few small pillows, despite his overly full belly and despite the unfamiliar tent in an impossible, poisoned landscape, Holston gently drifted into the most relaxed, pleasant sleep he’d had in years.
Chapter IV
The Missing Seconds
It seemed like just minutes ago that he had put his head down, but when he finally opened his eyes daylight was forcing its way into the tent through the seams of the canvas, and the shadow of the tent flap revealed that it was very late indeed.
Dragging himself off Liao’s couch, Holston heard voices from her office. Liao and someone else. He stared at the canvas flap that lead to that section of her tent. To get to that room whoever she was speaking with would have to walk through the main tent area, and he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of strangers walking through where he was sleeping.
Unfurling the stack of clothes Liao had left out for him and pulling the shirt over his head, Holston tried not to eavesdrop on the conversation but the thin canvas walls made it almost impossible.
“No, I don’t know what’s happening,” came Rowe’s voice. “All I know is that the computers aren’t keeping proper time. We’re losing seconds every day. I’ve checked everything, the clocks count each second perfectly, but somehow the sun is setting a few seconds later each day. So either the Earth is slowing down at a dramatic rate, or our clocks are out of whack in a big way.”
“Is it possible,” said Liao, her tone muffled through the cloth, “that this version of Earth has a different rotation to our own?”
Holston pulled on his shorts as Rowe continued to talk in the next room. “Not unless it’s randomly changing every day. I’ve tried to compensate for the time loss but that’s the thing, it’s variable. The difference changes every day.”
“That’s odd.”
“Yeah, no shit. It’s worse than that though.”
Liao’s sighed, her exasperation clear. “How could it be worse?”
“Well, the missing seconds change, but we’re losing more of them every day and at an alarming rate too. An impossible rate. It must be wrong, because… well, the planet’s tidal and geological features would be completely and utterly stuffed if this were the case. I’m talking massive geological instability. Earthquakes, tsunamis, atmospheric conditions; yet everything seems quiet as a tomb. Like nothing’s wrong.”
Holston, now fully dressed, made a point of scuffing his feet on the floor before pushing back the flap. “Good morning.”
A tired looking Liao and an agitated Rowe greeted him, but he gave each a polite nod, his eyes eventually falling on Liao. She smiled to him, visibly recovering a little of her energy when he entered.
“Good morning Holston,” Liao said, “Did you sleep well?”
“I did, thank you, and for far too long. The hunger pains are mostly gone.” He paused, glancing between the two. “Is there some kind of problem?”
“A glitch in our computer systems,” Liao answered, pushing back her chair, “And one I’m going to leave in Rowe’s capable hands. I have many talents, Holston, but finding obscure system errors in computers is not one of them.”
He smiled a wide smile. “Nor mine. I’m just a sheriff.”
All three of them walked out of the tent. Rowe went back to her duties, muttering dark comments about computer systems that were not playing nice, while Liao and Holston walked together.
“So who are you going to have me meet today?” asked Holston.
“How about our resident foreigner?”
Holston laughed. “Most of the crew is Chinese. You’re all foreigners to me.”
Melissa’s eyes had a playful sparkle in them. “She’s a little more foreign than China.” She reached down and touched the talk key on her radio. “Saara? Can you meet us near the mess hall, please?”
The answer that came back was a voice, guttural, deep and gravelly like a great cat growling, speaking a language that he’d never heard before.
“No problem,” Liao said into the radio, “See you in a moment.”
Holston’s curiosity got the better of him, but before he had a chance to articulate his question a large creature pushed its way out of the mess hall.
It stood over six feet tall and was covered in black fur, its amber eyes scanning the camp before settling on Liao and Holston. It strode over with grace that was surprising given its height, its pupils dilating as it met Holston’s gaze.
Holston stared back at her. “Definitely more foreign than China.”
Liao gestured to each of them in turn. “Holston, this is Saara. Saara, Holston.”
He took a step forward, awkwardly extending a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Saara.”
The tall creature took his hand in its own, squeezing gently, the texture of its fur surprisingly soft and warm, although he could feel sharp claws scrape his skin.
The creature said something in its grumbling tongue. Liao dutifully translated. “She says it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Holston released the hand, shuffling awkwardly, unsure of what to do. “It’s, uh, a pleasure to meet you too.”
Liao laughed. “You said that already.”
“Right, right. Well. Hi.”
Saara spoke a few more words, gave a surprisingly Human wave, then departed.
“She likes you,” Liao said, laughing reaching over and touching him on his shoulder. “You’ve met your first alien. How do you feel?”
“Confused,” he answered. “Although, to be honest, shaking hands with a ludicrously tall alien is probably the least weird thing I’ve had happen to me over the last couple of days.”
“Understandable.” Liao’s hand lingered on his shoulder. He welcomed the gesture, comforting and genuine. For a second he was tempted to hug her but thought better of it. He was unwilling to move away from her, though, and unwilling to press the issue further so there was an awkward moment where the two stood there looking at each other.
Finally, Liao coughed and removed her hand. “Anyway.”
“Yes, anyway.”
She smiled at him, the awkwardness melting away. “So, I was thinking. Picnic?”
Holston couldn’t help but laugh, shrugging his shoulders helplessly. They were living, impossibly, in a blasted and desolate landscape devoid of life, with a ruined spaceship casting a colossal shadow over the landscape, where computers couldn’t tell time and a tall cat-alien wandered around camp and nobody seemed to care.
“Sure, why not. Picnic.”
*****
Holston was sure she was joking, but true to her word later that afternoon Liao’s assistant presented a picnic basket outside her tent, complete with red and white checkered blanket. The teasing aroma of hot food wafted from inside the basket and the lingering hunger pains made a brief return. Tempting as it was to eat, though, Holston waited.
The sense of smell was a strange one. Even the most pungent, rancid smells could be eventually ignored after time as, like a long-term houseguest, the nose became accustomed to their presence. The acrid, bitter scent of the air outside the silo was all but gone to him now and the only thing that filled his nose was clear and clean, the tantalising smell of cooked chicken and spices.
He wondered how they had come by such things. The visitor’s ship had been here some time, now, and nothing lasted forever; a ship didn’t carry infinite supplies and what they did carry required reconstitution, typically presenting with the taste and consistency of cardboard. What they’d raided from the ruined silos couldn’t have been much better. The meal tucked inside the basket, however, smelt divine: the succulent smell of roasted potatoes and fresh bread, corn and spiced chicken. Were guests always treated this well?
He didn’t have to wai
t long. Liao arrived, hoisted the basket and off they went. Holston offered to carry the basket several times but Liao, with a bright smile, insisted. Together they walked to the top of one of the many rolling, brown hills and laid out the blanket, facing it west.
They sat and talked for hours, and soon the sun, once again, trundled its way home to the distant mountain range. It was not the bright, fiery yellow and white sun that lit up fields of green, it was a sickly, dead thing limping between clouds that choked it out at every opportunity. Holston considered it a wayward traveller, weary and footsore from a day’s labour, dull and lifeless and ready to crawl into bed.
Holston told her everything he knew about the silo, then Liao recounted some of her battles, times when her ship had locked horns with the Toralii Alliance, Saara’s species. Saara was from a different faction, Liao explained, called the Telvan. The Telvan, unlike the militaristic Alliance, were researchers and scientists, but the Telvan military performed reconnaissance on species who were suspected of possessing the jump drive.
Species like humans in her time. That was how she had met Saara. Liao’s ship had destroyed her vessel and Saara, a fighter pilot, had been saved from the wreckage. Initially her prisoner, they eventually become close.
Saara had lead an assault on a place called Kor-Vakkar, the Gateway of Eternal Ash, a rallying point for the Toralii. They had struck a decisive blow and prepared to retreat.
“So what happened next?” Holston asked.
Liao sat up, stretching her arms and arching her back. “We jumped the ship away. We barely escaped, but… the Tehran was not so lucky. They didn’t make it back with us. After a while I ordered the ship to follow them, but the jump point was locked down by the Toralii. The Tehran didn’t appear for hours. When they did, the entire ship was trashed. It took months in the lunar dock to repair it.”
Holston’s voice was quiet. “Is that where James died?”
“No, he survived the battle. Wounded, scarred, but alive.”
“Can I ask… how did he die?”
Liao stared at the dim fiery ball of the sun as it slipped below the mountain, splashing the roiling clouds in the sky with blood red paint. “He was on the Tehran when we were thrown to this place, so I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. Rowe tells me that this place is very, very different from our copy of Earth, obviously. I know we’re the ones with spaceships and aliens and all manner of advanced things, but in terms of chronological order, this Earth is far in the future relative to us. When the Beijing was sucked in, we were thrown forward decades… or even centuries. James, however he lived his life, whatever he did, he’s long dead by now.”
He did not like the idea that one could wake up in the future to find everyone you knew and loved to be dead.
“I’m sorry. Let’s talk about something else.”
She smiled a warm smile. “Good.”
He inhaled, clearing his mind and organising his thoughts. “There… was one thing that’s been bugging me since I got here. You have the fluid, a large stockpile of it from what you tell me, so why don’t you take it back to the silo? Free everyone?”
“We already did.” Liao hesitated. “That was the first thing we did, after Allison. Run to the door of the silo with armfuls of the stuff, but they couldn’t see us. I think they were screening us out… blocking our presence somehow. Eventually someone came out. No suit, wearing one of those blue jumpsuits. They told us to leave.”
It didn’t make sense that they would monitor the cameras, send people out to die to clean them, but ignored people who visited. “Who was it? Who came out?”
“They didn’t say. They just said that we were wasting our time, and that we had to leave. We pressured them but they were insistent. They said that…” She inhaled. “They said that the people had to live in the silo and that the AIDI fluid was a false hope. A relic of the past, something that was planned but could not be. There was no way to make more, so if they used to to leave, that would mean that people, one day, would have to return to the silos. They might not want to go. They might resist.”
Holston could see the logic, although the revelation burned at him. “But…”
“I argued as much as I could,” said Liao, “but eventually they went back inside and we left.”
“What did you do then?”
“I decided that was unacceptable. If one person had left, then more might. Allison told us you might be after her, so we waited.”
He smiled. “Thank you for waiting.”
They talked some more and the sun gave way to twilight, and Liao picked over the last of the potatoes. “The sunsets here are so beautiful,” she said, “I think I’d like to stay a little while longer, till it’s all gone.”
“Could be arranged.”
The temperature began to drop as the sky darkened. Liao drank in the view as Holston packed up the picnic basket, closing the lid. Liao laid back on the blanket, watching the faint warm glow of the remaining sunset, and Holston rested down beside her.
“This is nice,” Liao said.
“Yep.”
“It was a good day, wasn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“Mister Holston?”
“Yep?”
“Your hand is on my leg.”
And so it was. He gently drummed his fingers on her inner thigh, locking eyes with her. “Yep. Is that a problem?”
She gave a wry smirk, shuffling around on the blanket. “Not right now, no.”
“Let me guess,” murmured Holston, slowly tracing his fingers up her thigh. He was barely in control of the gesture, his subconscious at work. “This is an effect of the fluid?”
She laughed, reaching down and swatting his hand away. “Nope. This one’s all you.”
Liao sat up and Holston moved with her. He leaned forward, his turn to smirk, until his face was almost touching hers. It felt strange to be this close to her, and he felt a sudden spike of fear. Was this right? Was this what he wanted? So much had changed.
“You know, in the right light, you’re really quite beautiful.”
He had spoken before thinking. Liao burst out laughing. “In the right light? You did not just say that!”
“Well, if I said you were always beautiful, your ego could get away with you, you know. Have to tone it down just a little. Just a little.”
Giggling still, Liao balled a fist and thumped him in the shoulder. Surprisingly hard, but she was stronger than she looked.
“Ow!”
“Oh, shut up. You deserved every bit of that.”
Holston rubbed his shoulder. “Well, you’re still pretty. In this light.”
“The sun’s gone. The lighting’s changed. Whatever… freaky light condition causes the split-second of attractiveness is completely gone now, so I can’t be beautiful anymore. What will you do now?”
Together, they looked to where the sun had vanished, silent for a time in the dark.
“You’re still beautiful.”
She paused for a second then gave a tittering laugh. “I command a battleship with the capability to destroy cities from orbit with impunity. You better say I’m beautiful.”
“Your battleship is kind of, um, broken. Besides, soon enough it’ll be dawn and the light will be back.”
He leaned in again, Liao’s delicate features framed by the moonlight above. The two exchanged a long look, then, acting on a strange, wild impulse, Holston leaned forward to kiss her.
And Liao abruptly vanished. So, too, did the shadow of the Beijing, and the great hole in the ground where it had been. The lights of the settlement vanished as well, gone as though they had never been… everything except for a small silver ball, floating hundreds of metres off the ground.
Chapter V
That Floating Ball
Holston’s back twisted as he looked around wildly, then stared at where she had been, his eyes struggling to understand what had happened, begging for the world to make sense again.
It wasn’t real. The
ship wasn’t real, the picnic wasn’t real, Liao wasn’t real. This was another trick, another simulation. Another false image and a false reality and a false feeling deep within his chest that hurt and burned, stealing his breath from his lungs.
He staggered to his feet, stumbling across the dry earth, eyes locked on where Liao was sitting. The blanket and picnic basket sat in the twilight, a silent, mocking tease. Even his clothes had gone, completely vanished off his back, leaving him completely bare.
Some things are real, whispered his sanity, they must be.
Just as he was about to scream and shout and curse whatever deities or higher powers existed out there for doing this to him, Liao reappeared, her eyes closed, leaning forward to kiss lips that were no longer there. Holston’s nanoweave clothes floated in the air for a split second, as though Liao were about to kiss an invisible man.
The clothes fell to the ground. Liao leaned further forward and overbalanced, tipping forward with a shocked gasp, opening her eyes. She face-planted into the clothes, jerking her head up, staring around wide-eyed. Holston looked to the east. The Beijing was there again, a dagger in the earth, its thrusters pointing up to the sky.
“How did you get over there?” asked Liao, staring at him with a look of complete shock on her face. “And how are you naked?”
“Where did you go!”
“What?” Liao scrambled back into a sitting position, stammering in confusion. “What do you mean where did I go? Where did you go!”
Holston threw his hands into the air, helplessly gesturing at the stricken vessel. “Just now! Just now, where did you go? I was—I was about to—and then you were gone! The ship was gone! There was just this metal ball thing—”
“What metal ball? What are you talking about?”
“A… a thing! Round, perfectly round, and made of shiny metal, floating about…” he jabbed a finger towards the middle of the silent Beijing. “There!”
Blood trickled down Liao’s face from her nose. She reached up to pinch it off, clambering awkwardly to her feet. Her voice was weird and distorted with her nose closed. “That sounds like the jump drive. If the ship vanished, why would it remain?”
