by Rob Grant
'Can do.' Eddie smiles and nods. The smile is to mask his intense disappointment that he is recognized, and his name is remembered. He turns and walks painfully back up the stairs towards the previous floor, trying to shut the door behind him before the gunshot, and more than that: before the terrible wet slap of warm brains against wall, but failing, failing.
5
The Project.
Say 'the Project' and nobody asks you 'What project?'
In its time it has been variously known as the Generation Project, the Pilgrim Project, Project Colony, and, in a short-lived blast of unwarranted glory grabbing, best forgotten: the Gwent Project.
But now, it's grown so big, so important, so famous, no adjective is required.
Now, it's simply the Project.
And with good reason. It has a large ambition, the Project. It aims to save the human race from extinction.
Vast resources have been lavished on it. Every nation of the world has contributed. All but the smallest and most paranoid have allocated even the monies normally set aside for national defence. There isn't a whole lot of planet left to defend. And the little that remains won't be around much longer.
The Apocalypse is indeed at hand. It's no longer the exclusive property of doomsayers and cranks. It's happening. The end of the world. Not with the prophesied sudden holocaust of an Armageddon, or the feared swift might of a meteoric conflagration: it's happening by degrees.
The Apocalypse is coming in slow motion.
Global warming has shrunk the Earth. The melting ice caps have raised the oceans, swallowing up vast tracts of land in the-low-lying regions. There are few left alive who remember a country called Holland. Fewer still who could point out on a map the area of water now covering what used to be Belgium, and none who'd want to. The United Kingdom is reduced to a series of islands and atolls, though with characteristic defiance, it refuses to change its name.
Everybody finally agrees global warming is a serious problem, now they're up to their necks in water.
And as the land masses shrink, as resources drown under the swelling waters, the world population has exploded. There are more people alive now than ever lived in the whole of human history. Billions upon billions trying to scrape a life from the receding land and its dwindling supplies. More born every day. And every day, just a little less land, just a little less food.
The only hope for the human race is to expand. To spread. There are small colonies establishing themselves on the more agreeable planets in the local system, but life there is harsh, and unlikely to get much softer in the predictable future.
Humankind has to raise its sights a little. It has to reach for the stars.
And that's what the Project is for.
It would give a false impression to say that a gigantic spaceship is under construction. It's much, much more than a spaceship: it's a city. A mobile metropolis, built for space travel. It has parks, apartment blocks, factories and schools. It has a sports stadium. It has its own transway system, and twenty-seven channels of its own entertainment broadcast network. It's designed to accommodate a complete community.
In a heavy-handed attempt at PR positivity, the ship has been named: the Willflower.
And it is large. Far, far too large to be launched from the Earth's surface. The energy required for take-off would split the planet in two. So it's being put together in orbit above the point of least spin: the South Pole.
It's tethered to the drowning Earth by the tallest structure in human history: the Hoist. The Hoist -- or, more romantically, the Stairway To Heaven -- is a giant elevator that ferries supplies and personnel to and from the ship.
In theory, at least, the crew represents the cream of humanity: individuals at the top of their professions, at the peak of their abilities. It is supposedly an honour to be numbered among the Selected. But then, it was supposedly an honour to be a kamikaze pilot.
The Selected are not prepared to dedicate merely their lives to the Project, they are prepared to dedicate the lives of their unborn children. And their unborn children's unborn children.
The Willflower is a generation ship. Even travelling at the fantastic speeds it hopes to achieve, it will take several lifetimes to reach its destination. Quite how many lifetimes is much underplayed in the news media.
Because the Project is just about the only good news the human race has to relish.
Its objective is the nearest Earth-like planet. Or, to be more precise, the nearest planet that most closely resembles the Earth before humans started dickering with it.
It's impossible to say which planet this will be -- the distances involved make such precision impossible -- but it's a long way away. Along, long way away. The crew of the Willflower, the Pilgrim Parents -- more PR spinnery -- will ready the planet for the mass exodus of the human race from its original home. By that time, it is confidently predicted, space travel will have evolved sufficiently to render the journey achievable in years, rather than decades.
At least, that's the official version.
The reality is considerably less palatable.
Even in the best-case projections, and ignoring the effects of time dilation, which the best-case projections all do, the voyage will take centuries.
But who would care to broadcast that news? And who would want to hear it?
Because the Project really is that important.
It's the last and only hope for the long-term survival of the human species.
6
The lift is not a good place for Eddie.
The strip lights are too bright, and the mirrors on the three walls reflect an infinite number of Eddie O'Hares, each one looking with thinly disguised disgust at each of the others. These are the mirrors to be avoided at all costs. These mirrors show you in the worst way possible.
They show you as other people see you.
The furious noise of the casino swills into the elevator car long before it reaches the basement and spills Eddie out into the greedy chaos.
There are bright lights, flickering, blinking, flashing. There are sequins. There is glitter. There is a wall of noise, human, mechanical and electronic. But most of all, there are people.
Eddie blinks. This is only his second visit to a casino. The first was just a few hours ago, and it lasted less than fifteen minutes. The place hadn't seemed quite so alienating then. Eddie had his money, then. A lot of money, for Eddie. True, he didn't manage to keep it for long, but it had given him a sense of comfort, a feeling that he had a right to be there, alongside other casino types. Now he has almost nothing to lose, he feels like an interloper.
He turns the fifty chip over in his hand, his last, sweaty link to any kind of future, and tries to work out where to be.
Everyone else in the place seems to know where they should be, and they're all standing there, or sitting there, or heading there with confidence and conviction. He hears a yelp of delight, and a slot machine to his right chunkles out its prize generously. Almost instantly, to his left, a loud, vicious expletive erupts and an expensively tuxedoed gambler snatches a ludicrously bejewelled watch from his wrist and crushes it under his well-heeled heel.
Eddie's father was a gambler. Yet even though he's seen the disease that close up, he still doesn't understand it. You lose and, in frustration, you stamp an expensive watch to death. Where's the sense in that? He believes that gamblers, fundamentally, are looking to lose. He can deal with that. It's not sensible, but it makes sense. What baffles him is this: what do gamblers think of money? Do they hold it in such high esteem that nothing else in life really matters? Or do they hold it in such low contempt that money, and consequently everything else in life, is utterly meaningless?
Either way, there's no time for piddling little details like taking care of your family. Or your son.
He's remembering, now. Going back to Christmas time, his eighth, he thinks. There was this toy he'd been coveting. Hardly a toy, really: an electrically powered junior hover car. An exact
working replica of a Ferrari Velocemente, quarter size. And hardly coveting it, either. Even then, he was aware it was absurdly expensive. He'd seen it in one of the few remaining department stores that still actually had things out on display. It had seemed so impossibly beautiful. So unattainable.
The last day of term, he came home to find an enormous present, gift-wrapped, under the Christmas tree. The package was precisely the size and shape of a quarter-scale Ferrari Velocemente junior hover. It felt like a Ferrari Velocemente junior hover, too. To young Eddie, it even seemed to smell like a Ferrari Velocemente junior hover. He remembers folding open the gift card attached, struggling to keep his hands from trembling long enough to actually read it. It was addressed simply: 'To Eddie, from Santa'.
Naturally he pestered his father about the contents of the parcel, and naturally, his father denied all knowledge and teased him mercilessly, offering ludicrous alternative suggestions: a dead sheepdog, a goldfish in an oversized bowl, a pair of bloated kippers. Eddie was too young, then, to work out that the old man had won some big-time gamble, and was on the high, extravagant end of his mood-swing scale. He thought all dads yo-yoed between drunken misery and outrageous, flamboyant generosity.
Eddie resisted the urge to peek, though the temptation was achingly strong. He made do with caressing the parcel when no one was watching. With creeping downstairs in the wee hours to feel its sleek curves and smell its rich leather promise.
When Christmas morning finally had the good manners to arrive, around seventeen million years later, Eddie crept downstairs one final time. But the parcel had shrunk in size. Dramatically. Where once it had dominated the room, Eddie now had to scrabble under the tree to find it. Same gift card. Same paper, though substantially less of it. And there was a model car inside it, but it was a 125th-scale model.
And it wasn't a hover.
It wasn't even a Ferrari.
Eddie didn't work it out for a long time, but his mother did. That was the last Christmas Eddie's father spent in the family home.
But this is inappropriate. Eddie shouldn't be indulging himself in these maudlin memories. Not now. He's still no closer to deciding where to chance his chip, and time's a-ticking.
It has to be a roulette table.
The accountant in Eddie knows roulette offers the longest odds that most fairly represent the laws of probability, assuming the table is straight. Which is a rather huge assumption tonight, of all nights.
A roulette table, certainly. But which one?
He scours the unwelcoming room for a feeling, a sense of destiny, a sign of some kind. And, being Eddie, he feels no disappointment when nothing comes to him. And then a magical thing happens in Eddie's totally unmagical life. He sees something. Something unmistakably portentous.
In the far corner, one of the tables has a flashing arrow pointing to it. And a message in lights reads: Eddie to Win. He strains. He must have misread it.
But no, it's flashing away there, for everyone to see. Eddie to Win.
And not even a loser like Eddie can resist a lure like that. He pushes his way over to the table, watching the sign all the while. And when he gets there, it feels right.
He looks up at the sign again. But now it's reading: Ready to Win? Can he really have misread it?
It doesn't matter. For once in this long and staccatically violent night, Eddie truly feels he's in the right place at the right time.
He fights the accountant's urge to play the short odds, the best probabilities: the red or black two-to-one shot, or the odd or even. That's too sensible for the occasion. The occasion requires him to multiply his stake by forty-six thousand, six hundred and fifty-six.
But that's not the way to think of it. Thinking like that will just freeze you up and get you all sweaty, Eddie. What you have to do, all you have to do, is pick the right number three times.
Now, that doesn't sound too hard, does it? It doesn't have to be three different numbers, even. And with just three correct guesses, he'll have the two and a quarter million he owes, with a little under eighty-three grand left over. Piece of cake, my friend. Slice of gateau.
Eddie stares at the green baize, waiting for a number to jump out for him.
Dozens of people are at the table, clunking chips all over the place. Some of them are playing the sensible low odds, some of them are making complicated wagers, combining numbers in bizarre cluster combinations that bewilder Eddie, but most are looking for the quick riches of the single number.
And what is the number for Eddie? His birthday? No. No one could call that a lucky-number day. His age? His hat size? The length of his penis in inches? What? What? What?
Then Eddie sees something. He sees the reason why whatever it was that directed him to this particular table directed him to this particular table.
A man with the same build, the same colouring; a man who looks so like Eddie that even Eddie has to look twice.
Of course, Eddie thinks this man is better looking than him, but Eddie would. In fact, the biggest difference between the two of them is that this man, the non-Eddie, is calm. His hand isn't sticky and sweaty. He doesn't seem to care whether he wins or loses. And he's putting a large pile of unstinking, sweat-free chips on a single number.
There must be a grand's worth of chips, there. With a scientist's disdain for superstition, he's putting it all on thirteen. And in a flash of certainty that goes far beyond confidence, that's where Eddie puts his stenchy, sticky lifeline of a chip.
Thirteen.
Unlucky.
Just like Eddie.
And as soon as it's down, Eddie wants to take it off. But the croupier's called, and the ball is spinning.
What was he thinking of? He should have watched a few plays first, at least. He should have tried to divine some kind of pattern, a bias, even. Some kind of kink, some deviation in the wheel. A hint of a sequence. He should have done something a whole lot more sensible. And now it's too late. He's not only cursed himself, he's cursed his unwitting partner in luck, the innocent Eddie lookalike.
And now the silver ball's slowing down. Its orbit is decaying. It's tinkling, now, against the compartments of the whirling wheel; bouncing back to the outer rim and clattering again into the wheel, and it seems to Eddie that the tiny ball is disproportionately loud for its size, that its incessant clack-clackety-clack is drowning out the massed clamour of the entire casino, this one, teensy, tiny ball thundering with metallic explosions around the roulette wheel. And there's an inexplicable thudding, tha-dump, tha-dump, tha-dump, which turns out to be the blood pulsing through Eddie's temple. And the ball has stopped, but the wheel's still spinning, so you can't quite see what number the ball is resting in, and it looks like... it looks like... No.
No.
No.
No!
Eddie's life is over.
He's a dead man. Just tag his toe and toll his bell.
Eddie will have to race upstairs and start auctioning his limbs and organs to try and raise the shuttle fare out of here. If he's lucky, he'll be left with a leg, so he can at least hop to the shuttle port.
Because with the fickle cruelty that dogs Eddie O'Hare's every move in life, the ball has landed in compartment thirteen.
Wait.
Is that thirteen?
Thirteen?
That's Eddie's number!
Eddie's number is thirteen. He's won.
Eddie involuntarily jumps and punches the air. He looks around, to share his wide-eyed joy, the sensational sensation of a one thousand eight hundred, count 'em, one eight oh oh big ones, instant profit with his fellow punters, but all eyes are on Eddie's doppelganger, who has clocked up closer to thirty-six thousand. He's shaking his head, smiling wryly. As if he truly didn't care about winning.
The croupier stretches out to push the winnings towards the thirty-six thousandaire, but he holds up his hand and nods down at the table.
He's going to let it ride.
Thirty-six thousand on the spin of a ball
.
And now the croupier is about to shunt Eddie's meagre haul towards him. But Eddie holds up his hand.
Can he really be doing this?
He nods down at the number thirteen.
Is this really sensible Eddie?
Is he really going to let it ride?
But that's so not sensible!
One thousand eight hundred big ones.
Let it riiiiiiiiiiiiide!
The little silver ball, Eddie's shiny friend, grinds around the outside of the wheel.
And he wants his money back.
He immediately wants to rescind the bet. What part of him made this insane decision, and by what authority? Where was this discussion held? Where was this meeting of the mind taken, to which Eddie's consciousness was not invited? Who voted? Not Eddie's sanity, that's for sure. He could at least have taken back his stake. He didn't have to leave it all on there, risking everything.
But it's all too late now. No amount of sensibleness can take back what he's done. The orbiting ball seems distant, this time. Like he's watching it through the wrong end of a telescope. His skin, the skin on his face, seems to be buzzing.
The wheel's slowing down, now, and the little silver ball makes one last hop, one last clack, and bobbles in the thirteen slot. Bobbling ... bobbling...
And it stays there.
Around Eddie, people are shouting silently.
Eddie thinks they're probably making a noise others could hear, but Eddie's on a different level, now. He looks up at his likeness, who may or may not be on the same level. Certainly they share a private moment together, a look, before Eddie's awareness slips back down to reality and the noise thunders back into his world.
Eddie now has nearly sixty-five thousand. Small change compared to the Eddiesque fellow on whose luck Eddie is piggybacking. Just a tickle under one point three million is due in that direction.
Eddie is getting ready to gather his chips. Take a break, drink a cola, gather his thoughts, but the croupier reaches over to shove Eddie's lookalike's winnings over, and Eddie's lookalike holds up his hand again and nods towards the thirteen square once more. The croupier looks troubled. This is a big bet, now. Way over the floor limit. She shoots a glance towards a serious-looking individual Eddie hadn't seen arrive. The serious man in his serious suit pauses a second, and nods his permission. A tiny little nothing of a nod, given the amount that's riding on this spin.
