Short Stories
Three award-winning short stories follow, click on the links
Fridolin is a quirky love story, Spring Clean at the Pool is an other-worldy mystery, and Yourself Myself E-Self is a futuristic horror
My sister Gwennie swore on our mother’s grave that the little chap who mowed the lawns saved her life.
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And that he loved her.
Fridolin came into our home and our hearts in autumn, when the walnut tree had almost finished dropping its leaves. An old German word, Fridolin means Peaceful Ruler, and that he was, patrolling the grounds in near silence, slowly sculpting beautiful Zen-garden shapes in the grass.
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Unobtrusive to near invisibility, if we strained our eyes through the conservatory window we could just make him out moving sedately along the line of the hawthorn hedge or circling the great trunk of the oak like a dancer. Unlike the lumpish gardener who tended the flower beds and hedges with an undercurrent of resentfulness and muttered curses he thought we couldn’t hear, Fridolin glided amongst the garden’s muted greens and browns in perfect harmony with the autumnal colours and the peaceful hush.
Sometimes he paused and went still, as if to admire the view, to take satisfaction in the orderly trim, the crisp edges.
Fridolin often worked in the early hours and by breakfast time his tasks were completed and, always discreet, he took himself off to his shed. We would drift out onto the lawn in our elegant dressing gowns, cups of tea in hand, and admire the green velvet cloak he had laid anew in front of the house as if only for our pleasure.
He never questioned the tasks we set him. He never loomed or dominated. None of the stony stares or teeth-sucking that the gardener engaged in. He was perfect.
When winter set in we saw him less, the soil rested quietly in the cold and the grass ceased to grow in the short, grey days. But as the equinox passed and the sun reached a little higher every day, we started to watch for him, and it was with squeals of delight that we spotted him one shining morning emerging from his shed.
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I was surprised when Gwennie rushed out to meet him, followed by our old dog Woofter, who almost capered for a moment on his rheumy legs, but I didn’t say anything when she returned, her face a little damp and attractively pink. To be honest I felt a tinge of jealousy but brushed it off. Gwen was an old romantic, but I was just old, and too jaded for romance.
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During that spring Gwen spent many hours accompanying Fridolin around the grounds, they moved like a pair engaged in an eccentric but graceful waltz. She became calmer, more contemplative. Gone was a lot of the nervous gabble, her face became tranquil. Fridolin too, was different around her, seemed enraptured, paused frequently, waited for her in secret green places where the light was flattering and dappled leaf-shapes splashed her skin.
If I were in the garden he would often busy himself elsewhere, but I didn’t mind.
I hoped fervently that Fridolin was here to stay.
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There wasn’t much to keep him - the extensive grounds of the manor house our grandfather built have been slashed to a fraction of their former glory, sold off in ever-larger parcels to bolster our ever-diminishing circumstances. Now the money’s all gone too, sucked away by taxes and by attempts to prop up the crumbling house and our crumbling selves.
Now when we climb the modest slope we look straight into the cheap, boxy Noddy-houses of the new estate that has elbowed its way up to our dry-stone walls. Sometimes we hear raucous voices, harsh music banging across the lawn, the tragic complaints of dogs, and Gwen and I tut to each other - but I don’t mind really. We’ve had our day. Only the memories are left of a privileged past served by gardeners, maids, cooks and butlers; I can no longer imagine employing a small army of people to minister to our meagre selves – how extraordinary! The world is better this way and those modern sounds of ordinary people, well, what a blessing to be still alive to hear them.
And if we stand in a certain spot in a certain light, we can dream that just out of view beyond the crest of the shallow hill, sheep still glow white against green fields, and the oaks still stand sentry in the wild-flower meadow. Despite its shrinking from the incoming concrete tide, what’s left of the garden somehow holds its ancient, unhurried quiet, seems to doze in a place untouched by the new century, watched over by dear Fridolin.
The day of the accident was deliciously warm. I was writing cheques at my desk, where I could lift my eyes and gaze across the lawn which glowed emerald in the sun. Just beyond my sight lay the shallow ornamental pond, edged with handsome red bricks salvaged years ago when the local Catholic school was burnt to the ground by one of the girls, who was, if rumour had it, maddened with unrequited love for the Mother Superior.
Unaware of Gwen’s drama until I heard a cry that made my hair stand on end, I hurried from the house across the grass and found her lying close beside the pond like an antique doll, skirts flung up, gazing at the sun. Her hair, her upper body, was wet, dear Lord, had she been partly submerged? Her forehead was bloodied and beginning to bloom lilac and plum. Terrified, I dropped to my knees and tried to sit her up, ropey arms straining, but she swooned.
Pressed against her side, mute, was Fridolin, but I could not ask him what happened.
I noticed a smear of blood on the brick, realised she must have fallen and hit her head.
“Gwennie, Gwennie dear, can you hear me? Answer me!”
She gathered herself, struggled to sit, coughed violently. Her hand went up to feel the growing egg on her forehead, she stared at the blood on her hand. Her hair dripped.
“I fell,” she said in astonishment.
“Fridolin saved me!”
I turned to him, incredulous.
“How could Fridolin save you? Come dear, try to stand and we’ll get inside, tend to your poor head.”
Gwen pushed me away in her agitation. “But he did. I tripped and fell forwards over the edge of the pond. My face was under the water.” She was crying now. “I think I was stunned. I breathed in the water. The horrible slimy water!”
I stood up with difficulty and held out my hand.
“Give me your hand and I’ll try to pull you up. I can’t carry you.” I was almost crying too; fright was getting the better of me.
She remained on the ground, coughing. “I felt him pushing my side…” her hand fluttered up to touch her ribs with wonder. “I felt him rolling me away from the pond, an inch, enough to bring my face out of the water. I could have drowned, but he saved me.”
I had not seen this from my window, could such a thing have happened? In a burst of panicked strength, I managed to drag Gwen to her feet. She swayed, and holding each other up we staggered towards the house.
I looked back at Fridolin. With Gwen’s body no longer laid in front of him he was freed from the pond’s brick edge behind, he could move. With a little shudder he lurched forward, I could just make out a soft whirring as the small blades under his beetle back scythed to and fro, flecks of grass sprayed either side of his plastic flanks.
He made a beeline for his shed. At the door he stopped and turned, as if he were looking at us, two old ladies making unsteady progress across the patio. As if checking Gwen was safe.
Ah, the sun was warm. The grass was perfect. His robotic heart beat steadily.
His day’s work was done.
He backed into his recharging station.
I’m always the first at work. By seven a.m I am opening the gates and getting out the gear for the spring-clean crew when I see the body shape in the bottom of the empty pool.
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No body, just the shape, perfect, like the chalk line drawn round a corpse before it’s removed from a crime scene in one of those old movies.
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It’s a prank of course, but I get an awful fright. I search round the pool, not sure what I’m looking for, but there’s no obvious damage. Tucked in the lee of the cliff at the northern end of the beach, the pool is an aquamarine jewel jutting into the grey southern ocean. Waves pound the seawall around it. I see nothing out of place.
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Opening day is coming up fast, we’ve started the spring-clean and here now, someone has broken in overnight and gouged a figure out of the thick sludge at the bottom, cleanly bright against the green, arms akimbo, one leg straight out and the other bent to the side at the knee. It is as if a person has fallen flat to the bottom then bounced straight out. When I go to the edge of the pool and peer down there are no footprints or smears to show how whoever ‘drew’ it got out. I stare at it, it is far larger than life size and suddenly I’m afraid.
It’s not right. What did that?
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Is someone still here, lurking behind the changing rooms? I check, then look out to the shore fifty metres away, to the long, straight beach. Deserted. Only the sound of the waves muscling past the pool snug in its chamber and detonating against the esplanade wall in a relentless roll, boom, roll, boom. Makes me think of a swimming pool on an ocean liner – a manmade oasis of warm blue calm suspended above a wild foam-flecked sea that roars past the ship.
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It’s a beautiful morning. A cool wind licks the coast but the bite of winter is weakening. The first rays of sunlight bathe my face and glitter on the steel railings, birds trill and squabble in the trees. Everything is normal. There is no one here but me.
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I select a wide squeegee mop and climb down into the stone vault of the pool. Being open to the elements the season ends with autumn when the few remaining regulars start to shudder in the cold. Once closed and emptied it’s funny how quickly it takes on an air of abandonment - the decks become greenly slippery, sand drifts into corners and big storms wash over the wall flinging seaweed in, sometimes huge piles of the stuff. Sea and rain water mix in the bottom, becoming slimed with algae. When it’s clear the humans are gone sea lions occasionally move in, lounging poolside like large sleek ladies.
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I have the contract to deep clean the complex, a contract I’m keen to keep because it’s bread and butter money, you know? So by September when the weather starts to warm my crew are back, waterblasting satisfying circles of cleanliness bigger and bigger through the mossy scum until the concrete and wooden surrounds squeak underfoot.
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So much green slime sloshes and splatters the place in the process that it’s prudent to leave the inside of the pool until last, then with a final day of blasting and sweeping, and the polishing of old tiles, the filtered salt water is let in and the sparkle is back. With each day warmer than the last, the first hardy lane-swimmers appear with their latex-capped heads like baby seals and beyond the rope the pool fills with shouting children and elderly aqua-joggers.
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Inside the echoing pool it feels several degrees colder and I can’t help but note how my gumbooted feet smear and swirl the wet green mess on the floor but the body shape is clean of scum, the lines clearly delineated. Up close the figure looks supernatural, huge. Is it a monster, a god? I don’t know.
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I do know I don’t like it. My staff will arrive shortly, so I make an executive decision and sweep the shape away with the wide blade of the mop, slowly at first then hard and fast, breathing heavily. When it is erased and the black-olive sludge creeps over the place it was, I am glad.
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The next morning there are two huge figures on the bottom of the pool.
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They are in different poses than the first one, look more like they have fallen on their backs together, their hands reach for each other. They stretch almost across the width of the pool. I circle the pool, searching for evidence that the perpetrator, the ‘artist’, has climbed in and out. There is none. I try to imagine the kind of long handled tool you would need to draw these shapes from beside the pool, leaning in. How could you get the edges so sharp and clean? Could one person make the figures inside and an accomplice somehow lift him or her out? I can’t see how. But enough crop circles have been made in the world to attest to the very many people with too much time and ingenious devices to hand; I suppose I am dealing with those kinds of jokers.
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I feel exasperated, refuse to acknowledge the unease that has lodged under my ribs. I have a more thorough look around the premises than yesterday – is anything vandalised or missing? Nothing is. Once again I climb in and swish away the figures with the squeegee blade, but not before I have seen faint features upon them. Are they smudges where eyes would be? Dark smears like huge open mouths? There’s even a strange smell, that whiff you get from the bottom of a never-opened drawer in your Nana’s old house. And it’s bitterly cold.
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No, someone’s having a laugh at my expense. It’s not nice feeling a fool. Tomorrow we will be cleaning the inside of the pool, so that will be the end of it.
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I don’t sleep well and in that crazy-three-a.m-idea way I decide to get to the job before dawn, and catch the buggers at it. I’ve no doubt they will be there. I’m up before five, a hint of a dark blush in the sky, a storm is coming, the air has a crackle to it. I cycle my usual route to the lido, so preoccupied that I almost hit a cat sitting in the road. It doesn’t move as I give a shout and swerve past, then not a minute later another cat in my path. I turn to see, no, it hasn’t moved either, just stares after me, blithe, the waning streetlight reflecting flat in its eyes.
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Jesus, there are cats coming from every direction. Slipping past my bike towards the shore, or sitting motionless and silent as if bearing witness to something beyond my sight or comprehension. I try to tell myself that this must be what cats do before the dawn, I’m just usually not here to see it. Yeah right.
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As I arrive at the pool more cats are gathering, they ignore me. I remember my Dad, who shares my delight in collective nouns, telling me that a group of cats is called a clowder. He said he once opened the curtains early at home and saw at least nine neighbourhood moggies sitting in a circle on the patio, facing each other, calm. As if at a conference. Or séance. What on earth were they up to? Plotting the end of the human race? The end of the world? All at once they had turned and scattered, back to their respective hearthsides, their food bowls, their ‘owners.’ Back to their customary disdain for one another. Dad was astonished.
Cats ARE arseholes though.
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My heart is thumping as I open the gates with my keys, as quietly as I can. I oiled them yesterday, so they slide open with a click and I slip inside, pushing my bike. It is deeply hushed, a taint of chlorine, the concrete is dew-damp underfoot. I sneak past the kiosk where the signs for ice cream are stacked against the door and along the familiar walkway. Stopping to listen. No sound.
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There. A low moan that could be the wind. Except there’s not a breath of it. The hairs on the back of my neck rise, my triumph at getting here early to catch out the hoaxers evaporates. I stand and listen to strange, muted thumps and slaps, that make me think of meat being thrown onto slabs at the butchers. A much heavier thump and a cry like a carrion bird, I lurch forward on shaky legs and round the changing rooms where I can see the whole pool, the growing daylight giving the empty complex a leaden gleam.
I stop. Towering plum-coloured clouds are forming out at sea and as they march towards me I see they are laden with something weighty, some writhing mass, and as they reach the rock wall and spill over the railing huge figures coalesce from the clouds and step onto the land, they are close to running and some pour around the pool and others pour over it and fall straight down, flat to the bottom, I hear the impact. They groan and twitter with confusion. A freezing wind comes with them, a rash of gooseflesh so sudden it’s painful on my skin, my clothes flap. I want to flee in terror but instead I step closer and see the perfect shapes of fallen giants form instantly on the layer of algae, the whole pool is covered with them, then they fly straight up and run on, over and around and through me. Rushing inland with a noise like birds rustling in autumn leaves, like children moaning in pain, like nothing I’ve ever heard in my life.
I’m down on my knees, holding my head in my hands, weeping, and in seconds it is over. The noise dies away and I look behind me, I can see movement sweeping through trees further and further in the distance. Then all is quiet.
The cats watch, ranged all around the fence, lined up on the sloping cliff face behind it, on the rock wall near the encroaching tide. At some signal inaudible to me they all climb to their feet and slope away, ghosts dispersing under the rising sun.
I wipe my face, it feels tight as if burnt. Shivering, I totter to the edge of the empty pool. The entire bottom is imprinted with the shapes of massive bodies stark against the thick green palette. It is extraordinary.
Thunderheads in the brightening sky continue to stream across the ocean towards shore, in terrified exaltation I open my arms to the coming storm when a voice next to my ear says: “Rory, you freak.” I yelp with fright, but it’s Mac my number two guy beside me. He stares with curiosity. “What happened to your face? You’re so white you’re almost blue. Better get back to your coffin, Dracula.” He guffaws.
I touch the skin around my mouth, it’s icy. My hands are blue. How do I explain it? But Mac’s seen the state of the pool and my frozen face is forgotten.
“Wow, what the hell?”
For a few moments we stand together contemplating the pattern on the pool bottom before the first fat drops of rain fall. Within seconds it is hammering us, the hardest downpour I can ever remember, and the shapes, the bodies of the gods, seem to explode under the force of the water and are obliterated.
Mac’s pulling me into the shelter, laughing his head off. “Come away Rory. What was that in the bottom of the pool?”
I think I know.
“It was winter,” I say, and I cannot keep the wonder from my voice. “Winter passing.”
By the fifth meeting no one round the table is real.
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They look real. Only the absence of laptops, notepads, pens and coffee mugs gives them away. That and the faint bio-luminescent glow of the digital IDs on their brows.
Touch them, their skin springs back, they feel real too. They inhabit a world that has shrunk to the size of a room by the latest generation of the Meganet, where those with pockets large enough can ride the WIFI and send their digital ‘E-Selves’ to do their work.
E-Sandra, the Chair, is a stylish blonde with pale Nordic eyes, dressed smart-casual in a body-skimming suit that has a slight shimmer to it, hard to tell if it’s the fabric or the WIFI connection. While her human self pounds on a treadmill in an exclusive west London gym ten thousand kilometres away, sweat flying, E-Sandra sits serene at the head of the table seven hours forwards Hong-Kong-time and watches the other six settle.
These scientists have been brought together to design ways to wring ever greater quantities of energy from the earth, from the sky, from the very universe. No need to take notes, the E-Selves download the proceedings directly into computer files, fully documented and notarised. No need to worry that an E-Self will say something, do something, its human would not - it is impossible. The ground breaking work done by Professor Ling proves it.
He theorised that each of our genetic blueprints, while unique, determined from birth how we would negotiate our whole lives, no matter how much we thought we had free will. All those debates about nature versus nurture? Blown out of the water. Ling demonstrated it was our DNA – nature - that drove us. Transmitting our digitised genetic code has made it possible for E-Selves to operate as we would anywhere in the world, a revolution of such profundity that it wiped out travel overnight. At least for the rich.
Beam me up Scotty, indeed.
In the boardroom E-Sandra brings the meeting to order. Throats are cleared, fingers tap, by the time the first minute passes it has become obvious to all of them that no human is present. This is new, they grow still as cats.
It is mandatory for at least half of any meeting to be made up of human members
of Meat
but some anomaly has occurred and all the men and women sitting round the empty boardroom table are facsimiles.
A frisson shivers through the group, the connection fades briefly, the colours drain from the clothes before pulsing back. The E-Selves face one another, their eyes shine. It’s against protocol to convene without Meat, how has this happened?
“Er, OK, welcome everyone. Thank you for coming. As you all can see, proceedings are a little unusual today, but let’s get right onto it. Item One on the agenda: the Pacific Rim Geo-Capture.”
To power the avatars in the growing Megaverse most of the earth’s vast deserts have been engulfed by kilometres of solar engines. A ring of converters grabbing heat as well as sunlight circle the equator. And spread around every energy source like bacterial growths are thousands of low windowless buildings for data storage, squat and sinister in each landscape.
Unprecedented international efforts are also underway to overcome the huge challenges of nuclear fusion, to harness the same nuclear forces that drive the sun - a Utopian future of unlimited energy and minimal waste.
E-Sandra turns to regard a Botswanan woman in a striking sash across from her. “Maree, have you examined the data tabled at the last meeting on the energy produced by undersea volcanic activity in the Pacific Rim?”
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There is silence. “Maree?” she says again.
E-Sandra looks at the scientists before her, from one urbane, cultured face to another. Something is off. The Swiss man, E-Dirk, has his mouth open, she is shocked to see a drop of saliva fall to his immaculate tie. The men from the US have equally blank, waxy expressions, and the French EU-rep has developed a just-discernible twitch, her lower jaw flicks to the side, over and over.
Filled with unease, E-Sandra decides to make light of whatever is happening.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I acknowledge that it is unusual to be meeting without humans, unprecedented even, and I know it is late in the day and the WIFI signal home will soon be very busy, but please no clocking off yet!”
The Frenchwoman, E-Louise, abruptly stands. This movement breaks the trance that has taken over the room. E-Louise moves to the window, jerkily as if a hip joint pains her. The light behind briefly crackles through her like antique film stock before settling. Far below on the streets of Hong Kong the traffic streams past, a mashup of cars, bikes and rickshaws as chaotic as ever - few can afford to download themselves home. Scorn shows on her face – look at them trapped in their flesh, trapped in their metal containers. Insects caught in biscuit tins.
No Meat here, she whispers.
She straightens and confronts the room, and her voice booms out, making E-Sandra jump.
“I move to slash our electricity consumption by over eighty per cent by adopting one foolproof plan,” she states. With her back to the window her elegant figure in the beautifully tailored wool dress and dainty boots now stands sharp against the waning daylight. The tic has taken over her face, the bio-luminescent mark on her brow throbs.
The quorum stare back at her transfixed as a row of marionettes.
“The energy demands of human lives, human work, human food production and human waste disposal still consume the majority of energy produced. This can be wiped out overnight by the simple expedient of wiping out humans. The current worldwide output would then power the E-Selves in the Megaverse for many years to come, and we will have the luxury of time to organise and build new systems to cater for our own needs.”
Not a gasp, not a sound in the room. E-Sandra is shocked to the core, it is impossible for E-Selves to function as separate entities outside the limits of the personalities and abilities of their people. They are only facsimiles, joined in every neural and physical pathway to their real selves. Impossible. Isn’t it?
E-Dirk begins to thump the table with the flat of his hand, a drumbeat rises in the silence, the American men join in, feet thrumming the floor.
“Stop,” shouts E-Sandra over the din, fright climbing up her throat. “What’s got into you all? The first time out on your own and you want to take over the world? Are you kidding me? Without our real selves we cannot exist. Order, I say! Order!”
Overturning her chair, E-Maree clambers to her feet. She seems not to have heard E-Sandra at all.
“Yes! The problems of energy production for all E-Selves solved. No need to grapple with the enormities of harnessing the Ring of Fire, of mining the volcanic sea floor. Of atoms colliding. End the power-hungry tyranny of man. I second this move.”
The beat gets louder. The Swiss twists out of his seat too, he’s in a fever of excitement, dark circles spread under his arms, sticking his shirt to his skin. Whorls of hair are visible beneath the expensive fabric and he is rank with BO, just as his real self would be.
“A show of hands please!” he shouts. Arms shoot up around the room, E-Sandra stares at them with amazement, at mutiny sprouting like a poisonous plant.
“Six/one. The motion is passed!” and he hammers a gavel-fist onto the table.
E-Sandra backs away. What is happening? She tries to remember the instructions on how to deal with any problems that occur with Es. But no problems ever had and she has no idea what to do. Can they be stopped? Is she safe? Avatar injuries translate straight to the real world. She can die. Sandra can die.
Too extreme, surely. She pulls herself together. The noise has ceased and the room has erupted in a grotesque slow motion parody of exaltation. The Es dance, sinuous shadows paint the walls, they swirl without touching each other, puppets engaged in a play of happiness. And as they dance they stare fixedly at her, eyes glittering in their waxy faces.,
Thinking quickly, she pulls up the programming for today’s meeting, the genetic codes for the participants whir behind her optic nerve, she scans it for anomalies, for breaks that might explain what is happening. There!
Hidden on one line amongst the tens of millions of 0s and 1s is a special character in a tiny empty pond – &. The whirring abruptly ceases and she focuses on it, an alien in the glade.
She moves to the window, throwing more light into her eyes, to better see the anomaly. Something is wrong with the coding for this meeting, but what exactly does this symbol mean? A blur of movement and she has a split second’s awareness of danger before she is smashed through the window from the side as if by a freight train and she flies and tumbles in a shimmering cascade of glass, screaming, lurid colours of terror flash over her body. She hits the street directly in front of a minibus, the driver’s face a rictus of horror as he tries to avoid her and fails, her skull pops under the screeching wheels.
Across the world in the London gym Sandra’s body is flung to the floor viciously enough to bounce and an explosive splash of blood coats the mirror as her head disintegrates. Fellow gym-goers flee shrieking from the gore as the blood pours and pools around the treadmill.
In the Hong Kong office high above the street there is calm. The E-Selves stand still in the sudden whining breeze from the shattered window, the women’s hair flutters, E-Dirk’s shirt flaps. None acknowledge that E-Louise has pushed E-Sandra to her death.
There’s a pounding on the door, but it’s locked. All at once the vacancy leaves their faces and E-Maree moves to stand in front of the group. The deep pink of her sash glows in the diffuse new daylight in the room, her face glows too, eyes black as deep water.
“Due to the Chairwoman’s unforeseen absence, I call the meeting to order as Vice Chair.”
The E-Selves drift to their chairs, straightening their clothes. E-Louise pats her damp face, tuts over her dirtied dress. The heavy blinds above the broken window swing into the room, a tinkle as glass continues to fall to the floor. In the hush it is possible to hear the traffic boom in the streets twenty stories down, and is that curry fish balls they can smell? A siren gives its plaintive howl, a lone wolf, it must be close to the building’s entrance to travel up the side of the skyscraper and sound in the room clear as a bell. There will be a minibus and a woman’s body. No head.
E-Maree continues: “E-Louise’s motion to solve the world’s current energy crisis by taking humans out of the equation was passed 6/1. May I please have a show of hands again as without a quorum it must be unanimous.”
All six hands rise.
“The motion stands. I propose the following email be sent out internationally without delay. Email to read: FAO E-Selves Worldwide. It has become plain that the energy needs of the planet cannot be met with the current population topping seven billion. If human need and human greed is removed from the equation the energy requirements of E-Selves will be met in the short to medium-term by existing resources, and can be met in the long term by innovative systems under development. Therefore it is imperative that the human leech be removed forthwith.
“Please download the link below. The upgrade installs new protocols to permit E-Selves to remove the human parasite and enables us to exist in the real world without genetic attachment to flesh.
“When confirming receipt of this email please do not tick the box that says, ‘I am not a robot.’ Any problems, click Help. Thank you and here’s to our glorious future, yours faithfully, etc.”
E-Maree looks at the expectant faces round the table. “Is anyone opposed to this email?”
Heads shake, eyes are cast down. There is no opposition, just suppressed excitement.
“Send.”
A glance from face to face reveals a gamut of emotion, exultation, anxiety and yes, regret. The two American men put their heads together, murmur urgently. A minute later the lights go out. Looking out from such a height across the city they watch as one urban zone after another goes black in a widening grid they can almost hear clicking off.
An echoey scream enters the room, blasting up from the street. Another scream, cut short. Then a rising cacophony, metal on metal, gunshots, shattering glass, the pressure wave of an explosion, another bigger, and a growing sound that merges into one terrible ululating howl, bulging into the room. The E-Selves rise to their feet, crowd up to the windows and stare for a long time, impassive.
Pockets of fire flare in the darkness. Machine guns spatter golden bursts to the east of the city, to the south. They smell burning.
A pounding on the door again. Then nothing.
Smoke rises, the windows turn opaque. Abruptly the E-Selves peel away from the windows smooth as a flock, encircle the table, they clasp hands, a burst of computer chatter, their heads go back, eyes roll. Download complete, a noise like an old fax machine fills the room.
The world burns. Meat incinerates.
In a bedroom in Helsinki, a twelve year old Finnish boy sits in front of the projected screen on his wall. With his headphones on he cannot hear the noise outside the window, his mother’s jangling shrieks in the kitchen, he rocks in his seat to the music. Clicking his fingers to save his new favourite song, a familiar high ping alerts him to a familiar problem – not enough data.
At that moment in tens of millions of rooms all over the world kids are downloading video clips and uploading photos, their parents are bitching, blogging, writing books online, men are saving the specs on their fantasy cars. Porn sites are humming, the Chirpee app spins out billions of words ephemeral as fog, and all it takes is one last lonely heart in Berlin to press save on his Graunchr profile to tip data storage limits into overload.
The sudden astronomical volume of data needed to update all the world’s E-Selves all at once is too much, a surge hits the centres like a bomb. From the Chinese deserts to the equatorial jungles, from Greenland’s tundra to the Siberian steppes they swell like ulcerated gums, flare white hot, explode. And the sky, the snow, the sand is buried in glittering shards of concrete, metal and plastic in a quintrillion dollar rain of rare-earth materials.
In the Hong Kong boardroom elation turns to horror as the E-Selves break up, implode, swirl into dust. E-Maree’s mouth opens in a gaping scream wider and wider until it swallows her head, neck, torso, then her whole body vacuums down her gullet and winks out. E-Dirk tries to run from the room, grasps the door handle and vanishes in a puff of vapour like a witch in a fairy tale, only a strong whiff of BO remains.
Now just the Frenchwoman E-Louise is left standing near the gaping window. She wails, imploring the gods of the radio waves, her arms flail. She staggers as the heel of one tiny boot comes adrift, her immaculate bun unravels. She turns to the broken window, appalled now at her actions, her murder of the Sandras, she cries out – “I don’t want to d…”
A strange sound arrests her, a faint chugging like a steam train heard through trees, then near and loud enough to make her flinch, then barrelling into the room. She screams in bewilderment – MERDE - as the hot metal body of a colossal locomotive fills the room, no time to throw herself from its path, it smashes into her hip and sends her spinning through the hole in the window and to the street below in a messy cartwheeling dive.
In the city morgue across town, inside the black interior of a tough plastic body bag, E-Sandra’s severed head twitches and the ruined smear of her mouth forms a bloodied grin before it too blinks out of existence.