Under the soft, willow light with neon signs flashing gentle pink, he held her cold, metallic hands in silence. There was no wind in the City and so much light that even the three moons above them could barely be seen, but it felt like the tree’s leaves above them moved.
It was old. As old as the City itself, and had been brought from one of the Colonies as some distant, genetically modified cousin of some tree from Earth.
Much like they were: a copy of a replica of a strain from some ancient thing from some distant place that they had never seen and would likely never see.
“Do you remember?” he asked softly, and she inhaled sharply and looked up into his eyes, her eyes suddenly watery, “Do you remember where we once met?”
A single tear broke from her eyes and its silvery line snaked down her synthetic skin to fall to the small patch of soil below them. The tree would drink it, and the City would never notice with its neon lights brighter than the day and darker than deep space.
“I–I–,” her voice broke and she fell to his chest sobbing, the teardrops pouring down her cheeks to quench that single square foot of soil, until her water tanks were empty. And then she dry sobbed, heaving up and down with her head nestled under his jaw and he held her tight. Too tight, almost as if he was trying to squeeze the last drop of water out of her.
“It is alright, my love,” he tried to keep his voice soothing and calm, “If you feel this loss, then there remains a part of you that remembers and that does matter. We can make other memories but we cannot remake each other.”
The dry racked sobbing slowly subsided and they sat in the loud silence of a bustling City night; surrounded by millions of people and all alone under this old, forgotten tree.
“Please,” she started and then swallowed to get control of herself, “Tell me again, please, where we once met?”
Me stroked her hair and pulled her close again, “Yes, I will, and I will keep reminding you until even the nanorobots recall it. You see, you are old, much like this tree, and even these days cancer–or the worst types–” and he gently tapped her head, “Can only be managed by removing parts of the body, replacing parts of the body and injecting the nanobots into your system.”
She sadly smiled and nodded, “Yes, I do remember that, my love. It was the old colony ship that did not properly protect us from deep space radiation. My brain cancer was caught too late, and it had spread elsewhere and, well, without all this, I would have died a long time ago. But tell me about the memories that the cancer and nanobots have destroyed… Tell me what I have lost, and what we once had.”
He smiled, kissed her and patted the tree’s trunk, “We planted this. Do you remember? We were among the first colonists to come from the new world and this tree we brought with us to carry some of our home with us…”
She smiled and tucked her head into the nape of his neck. She closed her eyes and let his words wash over her and paint the most beautiful, bittersweet images of memories that she no longer had: their old planet, their old house, their old garden and, this, their old tree that they had met under, once, a long, long time ago.
Much like her, these images where a copy of a replica of a strain from some distant place that she could not remember and would likely never see again.
In the Field beyond the Village’s last house, they lay looking up at the soft, white clouds that floated by. In that Field, he held her, stroking her hair, and promised her the Sky. She laughed and said she would settle for just him.
And they made love as the clouds quietly floated past, and made lives as the years drifted by.
But then the Otherworlders appeared in their vast Starship above them; a huge, roaring, horror of chrome and fire that filled the Sky and vomited forth soldiers and rules and punishment. Some resisted but they did not last long, and soon the Village was forgotten and replaced with the cold, concrete of the City. The Field was torn up and Factories were built that he (and the rest of the men) had to work at while she (and the rest of the women) had to serve the Otherworlders.
And they toiled beneath the smog-filled Sky; no white clouds drifted by anymore. They laboured each day to shuffle home each night exhausted. But, each night, they would hold each other quietly on their single bed, and stare up at the cracked ceiling. He would stroke her hair, smile, and promise her the Sky. Despite how tired she was, she would quietly laugh, and tell him she would settle for just him.
And they made love as the City and the Factories and the Otherworlders marched on by, and settled into their new life as the months drifted by too.
But, one night, she did not come home, and he knew. The Otherworlders’ had taken her from him. In their callous way with their dark appetites, they had done this to other women at other times. He knew and, when the Otherworlder’s Official acknowledged her death but refused any investigation, he knew and the ground swallowed him whole.
In his grief, he wandered the streets of the City howling as tears blurred his vision. In his grief, he wandered by the belching Factories, screaming and tearing at his clothes. And, in his grief, he wandered beyond where the Otherworlders cared and found others hiding from them in the Wilderness.
Out there in the Wilderness, he found not solace but an army. Out there in the Wilderness, the Others shared their pains inflicted on them by the Otherworlders and he shared his, and they wept together as they collected more and more of their discarded people and the Army swelled in size. They did not have the gigantic Starship of the Otherworlders–indeed, they only had much smaller fighter jets–but they had the fact that they were fighting, not for another planet, but for their homes.
And the Army grew as the Otherworlder’s wickedness fed, and he settled into his new life as he trained to take back the Sky.
When the Army attacked late one night, he flew one of the fighter jets. He had named it after Her, as he fought for Her. They all fought for Someone; some who were passed, some who were still alive and some who were yet to be born.
His fighter jet’s engine roared to life that night. He whispered to it–to Her–that he was going to take back the Sky. He was going to take it all back and give it to her. His hands shook and his throat was dry. The engine roared to life, and the ground flew by and then disappeared as he rose into the night Sky. He rose along with the rest of the fighter jets as the Army pushed forward on the ground.
And then fire flew by him, and fire erupted on the ground. The Otherworlders were many and better armed, but the Army fought hard. Flashes in the night signalled death, and screaming screens in his fighter jet announced incoming death; he gritted his teeth and pushed Her hard. She launched vengeance again and again on the Otherworlder’s Factories and Mansions, and, ducking and rolling through the dark Sky, leaving the fires behind him, he managed to get to where the Otherworlder Starship’s chrome bulk had been parked.
He was going to take the Sky back.
Her screens screamed red at him, smoke bellowing from one of Her wings and fire and death flew all around him. He screamed; tears filling his eyes as he pushed Her closer and closer… Her missiles were out, her ammunition spent, Her tanks were near empty, Her way back lost, and he knew at that moment how to take back the Sky.
He tilted Her nose down towards the grounded Starship and–tears blurring his vision–he thought of Her as Her engine’s crescendo roared towards its final note. He thought only of Her: Her voice, Her hair, Her smile and how, long ago, in that old Field beyond the old Village’s last house he had held Her and promised Her the Sky.
He could hear Her laugh, and say that She would settle for just him…
And, as the Starship exploded, somewhere on a Field He lay with Her again looking up at the soft, white clouds that floated by in the Sky. Their Sky.
Autumn could not pull her eyes away from the window. Outside the bare trees stood like naked guardians to the oncoming Winter, all their leaves staining the ground with a bloody tapestry. Their stark branches twisted into the grey sky like barren skeletal reminders of life against an oncoming apocalypse.
This was an inflection point, a transition point. A moment of change as even the faintest warmth left the world and harsh, unforgiving cold smothered everything including memory.
“It is time,” he softly said behind her. She had not heard him enter the room and she slowly turned to face him. His face was unreadable but his eyes belied the turmoil, “Autumn, it is time to go.”
She smiled sadly and let go of the window while resisting sighing. Some moments did not need to be declared. Some moments could be felt without punctuation.
“She would have preferred a warm Summer’s day,” she said walking across to him, he reached out to her and, when she took his hand, he gently squeezed hers. Some moments needed no punctuation.
“We all prefer warm Summer days,” he said, his eyes sad, “But that is not the way life happens, or ends.”
She smiled, trying to reassure him that she was fine and slipped his arm around her, nestling her head into the crook of his neck. He smelt warm, like pine trees in a forest somewhere far from here. He put his other arm around her and softly squeezed, resting his head on hers while she closed her eyes trying not to think.
They quietly stood like this for a moment–silent guardians before the apocalypse–before he straightened and repeated, “It is time, Autumn. We must go. They are all waiting and we must get there before the snow falls.”
“Yes,” she mumbled into his chest, finally sighing deeply, “Yes, it is time.”
She knew it was. Outside there were no more leaves left to fall and, as Winter rolled in, Autumn left.
She first met him beneath the Stars in the Age before Man. Those were quieter times and there were fewer words for violence and war back then. The First King had just past and his Memorial Year was proceeding. Renditions of his great deeds and the Ages passed were being sung by bards in the royal courts across the land, but all she could remember from that Age is him.
She had been lying in a field staring at the Stars twinkling down on her. She could see her ancestors there, glittering down at her. He had lain beside her and begun pointing out his own ancestors and describing all their silly quirks and mannerisms. She had giggled and started to point out her own family’s Stars.
He had pointed to a dark spot in the sky–between the great arc of twin-constellations–and told her that he would be shining down from there one day. He told her that he would be waiting for her there; twinkling in the hallowed halls of eternity, he would wait until she joined him.
Even back then, few remembered the Old Ways. Fewer still practiced them.
He had long, brown hair and eyes to match with the olive skin from the East. His hand would reach out to her and she would laugh, gracefully spinning out of his reach as they walked under the Stars. Back then, they would dance the nights away to the starlight’s music, their ancestors twinkling down and the cool wind rustling the trees around them. On the warm summer evenings, they would lie in each other’s arms in the fields of heather below the twinkling tapestry above them, saying not a word and feeling everything.
Those were quieter times and she recalled them fondly but, it was funny, she could not remember much more from that Age. It was all about him; dancing, kissing, loving, and being loved.
The memories were beautiful and full. They were lush and warm. Back then, she recalled the nights were easier and the summers were warmer. Back then, the Stars were fewer, the Moon was brighter and her hands never noticed the cold as much as they do now.
Such is youth that the young waste it. Such is time that it moves the fastest when we are happiest. Such is life that the Ages eventually end.
Elfenkind were not immortal and, eventually, even they feel the passage of time. The First King had died from old age and his son, the Second King, began his reign by pushing back against the creeping wild animals gnawing at the fringes of their ancient way of life.
Unfortunately, some of these wild animals pushed back, and the next Age would see a lot more Stars joining the night sky.
***
There was no Memorial Year for the Second King, nor the Third. And neither of them died from old age. By the time the Fourth King grasped the Oaken Sceptre, the Kingdom was disintegrating around Elfenkind.
While she remembered the fear and gnawing uncertainty of this turbulent Age, she also remembered their betrothal on a warm midsummer night under the Old Oak Tree. With the High Druid gently tying their hands together and the Stars as their witnesses, she could recall every detail of that night like no other.
She could still smell the now-extinct flowers in her hair and the feeling of her loose dress across her thighs. She could still remember his smile as she straightened his shirt and brushed back his long, brown hair. And she could still sense the Stars watching them as they danced and danced.
The dancing was wild and celebratory at first, and then slower and gentler as the dawn came until her head was tucked into his neck, breathing deeply of his scent.
Most of all, she could never forget him moving a single hair from her face and kissing her deeply as they fell to the ground. He had tasted of the summer-wine they had been drinking and, as their bodies entwined, she had felt a hallowed eternity twinkling far above them and the Old Oak Tree.
For her, that Age would always taste like summer-wine, and ash.
Man had pushed back against Elfenkind and the ensuing war had revealed how startlingly adaptable they were. Perhaps because their lives were so short, perhaps because they lack the Elfen history and its lessons, or perhaps it was just fate, but Man took to the art of war as fire to a wick.
Initially, Man had been overwhelmed by the sophisticated armies of the Elfs. Proud and arrogant, the Second King had pushed his advantage but Man had fought back. Then, as the years dragged on, Man had invented more and more surprisingly powerful weapons.
While she would always think longingly of this Age of summer-wine beneath the Old Oak Tree, she would never forget the sound as the bombs began to fall. Like a clock announcing the changing of the hour, the bombs chimed the end of the Ages of Elfenkind and the start of the Age of Man.
***
After the last surviving elf retreated into the shadows, the Cities of Man took root. These dark, gloomy mazes of stone, steel and fire grew and expanded. Their growth consumed entire forests, ate countrysides, drank rivers dry and filled the skies with wretched smoke that sometimes even blocked out the Stars from her gaze.
She remembered the shame and sadness of this Age. The shame of their loss and the sadness of what had been lost.
This feeling was mixed with anger too. Perhaps born from arrogance and likely fueled by vengeance, some of the surviving elfs believed that they should fight back from the shadows and topple the Machines of Man.
She, though, believed that there were already enough Stars in the night sky.
There were rousing speeches by these rebel elfs. The tales of the First King were retold. And, beneath the cover of darkness and under the Old Oak Tree, rallying cries would pull the survivors together and they would drink of the old wines and talk of the glories of yesteryear.
Feeling bold from the wine and safely hidden from Man and his Machines, these elfs would eventually speak of war and violence. They would speak of a war that they could win against Man’s evil. Though she tried to ignore it, her betrothed had lost much and his voice would eventually join the other warmongers.
At the end of each evening when they were lying in each other’s arms, she would try to persuade him to stay. She would try to reason with him about peace. She would speak of all that they had right now but all he saw was how much they had lost back then.
He was not alone in feeling this way. Slowly at first and then quickly in the end, the warmongers won over the surviving Elfenkind and all but her turned towards vengeance and hatred.
Little did any of that matter.
The second war was much briefer: Elfenkind was weaker and Man was now much stronger with many more Machines.
While the previous Age had been one of fire and ash, this Age was one of darkness; complete and final darkness. It swallowed the last them under those Machines and there was little left to bury.
She never found his body. The grief tore at her, crumpling her to the ground below the Old Oak Tree. She wailed and keened until no sound came from her. She cried until her tears ran out, and, eventually, the darkness closed around her.
Not even the Stars twinkled in her darkness, and she fell into a deep, mournful sleep. It was a slumber so sound that the Old Oak Tree gently cradled her in its roots and covered her with its leaves.
***
She did not know how many Ages had passed while she lay beneath the Old Oak Tree in dreamless darkness. She did not know how she had survived nor did she feel any joy in this fact; while numb, her heart still ached.
Suddenly, she stirred one midsummer night. The smoke and pollution of Man had cleared enough for the countless twinkling Stars’ gaze to reach the ground beneath which she lay buried.
One thin, pale hand broke through the ground, reaching for the starlight. Then the next one… Dirt and the ash poured off her as she rose from the ground and looked around.
The world has changed beyond recognition.
The short, brutal lives of Man continued but the men of this Age did not recall the history of the previous Ages. Elfenkind and all their dead, their kingdom, and all the bloodshed had been forgotten by all save some children’s tales and the odd line of poetry.
All the Cities of Man had been absorbed together and the world was now just one, great City with the Old Oak Tree protected in one of its neglected parks. The stone, steel and fire of Man had changed into wondrous rivers, pools and oceans of light and colour. These glimmering lights powered sleek, quiet Machines of awe that flew on invisible wings passed her as the winds of previous Ages…
But–above all else and most unexpectedly–she discovered that the Man of this Age had reached for and touched the very Stars themselves!
In those eternal, hallowed halls filled with the light Elfenkind, Man now flew, building other cities on other planets with other stars…
It was then that she knew why she had woken. She became certain of what had woken her. As the last of her kind, she would make the final voyage.
***
An Age had passed since she had breathed the night air or felt the grass beneath her feet. An Age had passed as she drifted by the vast, celestial bodies that held Elfenkind’s light; filled with awe at such sights and tears filling her eyes, she cried out each their names as she passed by. An Age had passed as she traveled through the cosmos but she could still remember the Ages that had passed.
She recalled the darkness and death as the last of the Elfenkind fell under the Machines of Man. She could not forget the painful anguish of his passing. She remembered the fire and ash as the bombs went off around them. She recollected the sweet taste of summer-wine beneath the Old Oak Tree and felt his lips on hers…
And she could never forget when they first met–lying in the field with him, gazing at the Stars in the night sky as he pointed out the dark spot that he would be shining down from one day.
Her starship’s quantum drives flared as they reversed their thrust and she began to slow her voyage down. The now-ancient starship shuddered on its frame as it adjusted and she willed it to survive this last action.
She was almost there.
Carefully, she secured the spacesuit around herself, checked the oxygen and seals while ensuring her batteries were fully charged. Slowly she walked to the exit chamber and watched as the lights flickered from green to red, the port opened and the air rushed out into the blackness of space.
Gently, she walked to the doorstep of infinity and pushed off from the edge. Slowly, she floated out of her starship and towards a single, brilliant Star. Majestic, twin-constellations surrounded her as she floated further and further away from her starship…
And nearer and nearer to the Star.
In that eternity of hallowed space, she closed her eyes and listened. Her breathing was ragged in the suit and her heart was pounding. Still, she kept her eyes closed and focussed. At first, she was not sure but then it grew and grew. She could feel it. No… No! She could hear it!
She opened her eyes and stretched out her thin, wispy hand towards the Star. She strained with all her strength trying to reach out and hold it again. Tears were streaming down her ancient cheeks and she choked back a heart-wrenching sob as she cried out:
“Stop…. Stop calling! You need not wait for me anymore! I am here, my love, I am here!”
She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face and matting her auburn hair against her face. The blue light behind his head encircled him like a mournful halo, the background room fading away.
Then the moment passed. The flashing blue lights outside the window revealed the weapons and duffel bags on the bed. Gruff voices began to shout outside the door and the metal clinking of an end began to approach the flimsy door.
“We messed this one up! I know what I said, but I wish–I wish… I am not as strong–” she struggled with the words, her voice quivering as he reached out for her, “What if I lose you? I don’t know? But what? I love you, but what if?“
He pulled her into his embrace. It felt like home. It felt like a thousand homes and all she wanted to do was to hide in there from the horrid world and its raging waters.
“Don’t worry, it’ll all be fine, my love. We’ll eventually reach it,” he whispered, hoarsely into her ear, squeezing her tightly, “Remember, we are the immortals who swim through the river of time. One day, my love, one day we will reach the ocean and, no matter what, I want you to kn–“
Just then the door blasted inwards.
***
He opened his eyes and she was lying next to him. She was always lying next to him, in every life every time and every way.
Across millennia, they were each other’s constant.
He smiled, propped himself up on his elbows and leaned over to kiss her, softly moving her auburn hair out of her face. He froze, as the memories of the last death came back…
Pushing the darkness down, he kissed her again and whispered her immortal name into her ear. Not the name her first father had given her or any of the thousands of other names she had carried through lifetimes. No, he whispered the name that they had given each other. The name that only he alone in all the cosmos knew while he gently kissed her again and again.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. He was the first thing she saw, framed by the soft light of the moon behind him and smiling down at her with only the smallest hint of darkness from their last death hidden in the corners of his eyes.
“My love,” she sighed, smiling and reaching up to hold him, “My love, it is good to swim with you again through the river of time. May the waters be gentler this time and our ocean be near.”
***
Sometimes it was days or years, sometimes it was decades or even a century or two between reincarnations.
This time it had been an entire age and the world was now filled with lights, plastic and emptiness. Poisonous people paraded as leaders and broken people hid as society. Mankind had reached for the stars as his world failed, but he, himself, had failed and fallen back down to Earth as a broken species on a failing planet.
The two of them had woken up in the end times.
From the first dirty creatures in caves to dusty fanatics in deserts, the two of them had had a beginning and seen all the middles and all the ends thereafter. From the disintegrating Roman Empire to death descending upon Hiroshima the ages had each ended while the two of them had kept living and living.
Eventually, they knew and they had discussed it countless times across endless ages, there would be an end to the river of time.
A final End, their ocean.
Everything that had a start, must have an end. Each of them had been born separately. That had been their beginning. Across the plains of Africa across lifetimes, they had found each other–fellow immortals entwined–and, thereafter, had remained forever bound together in their eternal love.
Their beginning.
What of the end? Their End?
Much as this world would eventually end, they knew they must surely end with it too? For what would immortals in mortal bodies do without their world?
***
The blackened, burnt Earth felt the white light before it saw it. Gently, the frigid wasteland began to warm but then quicker and quicker, the light became unbearable as it swept over the dead planet engulfing and consuming it.
Only two people in old, worn bodies–with older souls–stood atop a bunker that led deep below the planet’s surface. Like cockroaches, mankind’s leftovers had survived in tunnels cut into the planet’s husk but, eventually, the End had come and the two of them were the only witnesses.
As the intense white light rushed towards them, the two old people held each other tightly; the man gently kissing the woman and whispering her immortal name into her ear, again and again…
And then the Earth was no more, and neither was mankind.
***
He opened what he thought was his eyes and she was floating next to him wreathed in cosmic light against an otherworldly backdrop. They had no bodies. It was just light.
They were the light.
Eternity stretched around them. Black and endless, terrifying and vast, filled with infinite colours and the cosmic dust of countless stars that had beginnings and then had birthed worlds with their ends.
He smiled, floating his cosmic light towards hers. He was craving to reach out and touch her, kiss her, and hold her.
But all he did was think of her immortal name and he felt her light wake up. Her soul stirred with infinite colours. He knew she was looking at him as he knew that she knew he was looking at her…
Their two incredible cosmic lights floated together and they began to swirl around each other in a blinding, ethereal dance. No words could or needed to be said. It was just pure energy. They both knew what was the beginning and what their end would be, and as their two swirling lights came together in a great cosmic kiss, a star was born.
Their star.
A star that had a beginning and would birth entire worlds with its end.
Her father had brought a toy Tesla home from one of his trips when she was five years old. He had arrived home late that night. She had heard the old, rusty gate at the bottom of the garden squeak as he stomped inside, kicking the gravel from his boots. Mother had run behind her, scolding her for not staying in bed. None of it mattered as she charged downstairs and into her father’s arms as he opened their old, white front door.
He had knelt down and squeezed her–she missed those squeezes; warm, safe and faintly smelling of cigarettes and cologne–and then he had pulled out a small, shiny car and handed it to her. It was red and it was the greatest thing she had ever seen.
“She is a girl, Mu-sama,” her mother had shifted to gently scolding her father, but he had just laughed, stood up and kissed her, “Why not an AI-doll or a new phone–one of those holo-models they have in Tokyo? What is Sakura going to do with a silly little car here on the farm?”
“Ah, but look at how happy she is, my love,” he had chuckled as he took his jacket off and moved from the doorway inside.
Her earliest and clearest memory is standing in that doorway and staring in wonder at the incredible little replica of a machine in her hand: every part an exact replica down to the very autopilot that you could sync with your laptop or phone to drive your electric Tesla around…
She held the world in her little hand, and it was red, beautiful and imported from America.
She may not have been able to vocalize it then but she knew that this was somehow her future.
***
“Saks, Saks,” the girl’s excited voice pierced her bedroom door as it did her consciousness, “Saks, you there? Why aren’t you answering your phone?”
“Uh, yes, here,” she mumbled as the fog of focus left her and she realized she was sitting in her underwear on the dorm floor, “Here! Come in, Sarah.”
Sarah popped her pale-British face into the room and scrunched it up, “Ey, Saks, it smells like the college football team’s changing room in here! What have you been doing all day?”
Sakura wandered to her bed and pulled a robe over herself in an attempt at modesty.
“I’ve been building a Level Three sentient AI following the three laws of robotics, but maintaining a–“
Sarah blinked, giggled and waved her hand to dismiss what she thought was boring mumbo-jumbo: “You know I don’t care about Professor Gordan’s class! Now come on, Saks, get dressed! We have that double-date with the boys this evening. Say, is that your phone? What the hell did you do to it?”
She sighed. She had forgotten about the whole awkward arrangement. Honestly, she had little interest in boys and had never met one that shared her interests in the slightest.
Despite this, Sarah had always been friendly to her and she had agreed to go on a date with her boyfriend’s best friend to appease them all. She liked appeasing people because they then left her alone and she could carry on meddling around with her robots and AI-code.
“Saks! Saks!” Sarah exclaimed, “Are you zoning out on me? What happened to your phone?”
“Oh, I needed the optical routers and its power source,” Sakura began explaining but then stopped herself as Sarah rolled her eyes, “Yes, yes, I am coming. Just let me jump in the shower.”
She really did not feel like going on a date this evening. At all. The whole shower and the short trip to the restaurant, all she could think about was completing the robot that lay half assembled on her dorm floor. That was true right up until he came strolling up to their table behind Sarah’s boyfriend wearing a shirt stating Asimov’s three laws of robotics on it.
***
“A key stumbling block on our road to Level One sentience–the ability to be truly self-aware–was the logic loop: In order to question one’s own existence, one must be aware of it, but one only becomes aware of it when one questions it,” Sakura paused, letting the paradox wash over the audience; some were there in person and others beaming or casting into the presentation.
“So how did we solve this? How did we create Level One sentience?”
She was much older. Nearly an old woman now and, even with life-extending nano-bots pumping through her system and all the best healthcare on- and off-world could provide, she was approaching her second century and it was starting to show.
Luckily, she did not want for much. She had lived a full life. She still wore her wedding ring despite his passing over half a century ago as a reminder of all this. After his passing, she had thrown herself into her career and her robotics firm, cracking Level One sentience shortly thereafter.
Now she truly wanted nothing.
“The Asimov gave us the vision to replicate intelligence. Neuro-networks, machine learning and quantum computing gave us the organic-similar hardware to replicate a brain. But all of this was the illusion of sentience and not sentience itself. We were still alone in our quest in this cold universe…”
She let her voice fade and gave the audience time to feel it. A century ago she had buried her mother in a small memorial just outside Tokyo–her father had long since passed–and, with no children, after he was laid next to her, she became alone in this world again.
Yes, she thought, alone but never lonely.
“Well, the missing key was fractals,” her voice rang out and she smiled; she still thoroughly loved her work, “Fractals: Self-replicating shapes that are both perfect at taking up space without taking up volume. Fractal computing with embedded fractillic-algo’s allowed us a hardware-lite self-replicating code that offered sentience and consciousness without taking up space that can–and should–be filled up with all the things that make life: knowledge, thoughts, memories, experiences…”
She smiled and the part of the audience that she could see was nodding. She could sense the applause from the casters and streamers. Knowledge after the discovery always seems so obvious, or at least the illusion thereof.
“And where did the idea come from? Where can it be found? Everywhere, ladies and gentlemen, everywhere. From snowflakes to shorelines and dunes in a desert. From ice crystals to the dispersion of leaves on a tree to capture maximum sunlight while creating minimal drag in the wind. Fractals are everywhere and they are the loop within which our consciousness exists at all levels appearing the same.”
***
She smiled and nodded as she closed the door gently behind her. She mentally disconnected from the Web and breathed a sigh of relief.
She loved presenting her fractal-based sentience lecture but all the people and crowds grew tiring quickly. She was sure that her theory was correct, but she did not like the scrutiny either.
She sighed again, no, she did not like the scrutiny.
“Sakura-san,” a middle-aged man said steeping quietly out from the shadows, “Sakura-san, why are you so sad?”
She smiled and hugged the man. He felt warm and safe, and smelled of a cologne that never faded. A deeply familiar cigarette smell lingered on the edge of her memory.
“It’s because it is a lie, my love,” Sakura spoke, muffled into the crook in his neck, “Level One does not exist. Well, not yet, despite all our work. Only you and the others’ code actually exists.”
The creation that housed pure sentience in its code-form stepped back and took her hand. They wandered deeper into the house, passed all manner of wonders and creations who created illusions of intelligence without any questions, self-awareness or souls in them.
Finally, the two of them arrived in a small, isolated room. It was deep in her mansion and it was the room that connected all her installations of her fractillic-algorithms to a single cloud-based server.
The two of them sat there: she was staring at the screens as thousands of numbers flowed down them and he was staring at her. Just like this, the two of them sat unmoving for what felt like ages before she turned to him and asked what sounded like two questions but was really only one.
“Do you regret it, my love? Have I done wrong?”
He smiled, leaned forward and kissed her gently on her lips. He could not feel it. His body had the illusion of skin but it was entirely inorganic. She, though, could feel it and that made him happy.
As–despite being in the body of a machine–he housed inside him his own code that she had downloaded directly from his brain on his deathbed some half a century ago.
He gazed deeply into her eyes and he felt love. So intensely, so real, so powerful that he did not doubt that he was still the man that had been dragged to a blind date wearing an Asimov shirt over a century ago.
“My love,” he spoke slowly and softly–she often had doubts and he was getting good at allying them, “My love, I am here with you and that is a gift to us. But, the world needed an organic-inorganic interface. The fact that my code can be copied into multiples of devices to drive endless tasks is infinity valuable for our species. And, it had to be me. Or, at least, it had to be a willing participant or the code would not choose to obey because we could not find a way to build the three laws into the code. No, the code had to be undiluted and copied raw. You have changed the world with truly sentient AI, but you and I have broken every conceivable law of man in so doing, hence you must–and you will–continue to pretend. And the world and us will continue to benefit from this.”
She nodded slightly, leaned forward and kissed him back before falling back into her chair. He smiled, she smiled and a billion copies of his code continued pretending to sentient, obedient AI out in the real-world.
Hardly noticeable amidst all the technology in that room, a small, old, red Tesla-replica lay on a shelf covering dust.
“You just don’t understand real stress until it is owning you,” he said in between puffs of his e-cigarette, it was blueberry flavored, “it is a thousand-ton weight pressing down on you. It flattens you. Squeezes out parts of you that you didn’t know existed. Bad parts. Ugly and alien parts. But with that weight pressing down on you, there is nothing you can do but watch as these strange parts of you come out. They come popping out in different directions and all you can do is try to breathe as everything that surrounds you feels like it is trying to drown you in concrete…”
His voice faded it as he took a deep drag. The light on his e-cigarette lit up, the way they had manufactured it to. His audience was silent. There was no response.
Silence.
Probably because they were the fridge and countertop in his kitchen. A dishwater too, in the background. His girlfriend was out with her friends tonight, probably a good thing. He was not fun to be around these days.
“Even my face feels different. My expressions have changed. I struggle with smiling and moving my head. My neck feels like it has steel rods stuck in it. The way I think about time has shifted to a point of reference where it is now and then what next. I am dying, one ton at a time, beneath expectation, risk and any hope I once held dear but never realized I clung to.”
Still silence. The kitchen did not reply.
“You’re right,” he said, squeezing his face into a labored grimace, “I should go out.”
***
The bass seeped through his being. An elbow jabbed into his ribs but he looked at the lights and dreamt of what they might have looked like in a better world. He moved to the sounds rolling through the club but his shoulders felt fixed to his neck. His mouth twitched.
He needed another drink.
“Neat!” he shouted at the barman, pointing to the whiskey. The barman nodded and executed, obviously well-versed in the sign language of clubbing.
“What do you do?” an ethereal voice screamed in a loud whisper to his side. There was a hand on his shoulders now.
“I’m a trader, mostly stocks and futures,” he shouted, barely audible over the DJ telling everyone what to do with their hands, “Why?”
“You look like you need to relax!” the guy next to him shouted into his ear.
“I’ve lost fifty million of my clients’ money this year. Most of mine too. And you?”
The guy smiled and flicked his hand expertly at the barman. Shots started being poured. He was also well-versed in club sign language.
“Have one of these,” the guy shouted, “You can’t lose with this trade.”
***
The ceiling was white. Light crept in at strange angles through the blinds to cut the wall into abstract geometric formations. It felt meaningful, if only barely.
He immediately knew that when he lifted his head, the weight would be there. The pain. The world.
He resisted, knowing full well that he could not do so forever. It was the beautiful pain of the unsustainable moment hat haunted poets and mortals alike. He also smiled.
“Hey,” a quiet voice breathed to his side, “you awake?”
He was naked. He felt the linen against his thighs. He knew.
And now he remembered, mostly.
He left his eyes closed and squeezed the hand holding him.
He dared not move. Not an inch.
The weight of the world could wait just a moment more before squeezing him into unfamiliar shapes. Everything could wait, including the weight itself.
Afterwards, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. I wanted it to be stars but it was just a ceiling. For a while, she lay there too with her head nestled in the crook of my neck and our tails entwined. We lay in silence as the rain came down outside but, eventually, she kissed me gently on my furry cheek, got up, dressed and left.
That would be the last time I ever saw her.
I lay there staring at the corner of the ceiling where the walls met and listening to the soft rain outside before I too got up, dressed and left. I felt more hollow than usual. Much later, I would realize why.
It was still raining when the call came and it was still raining when the Pack arrived. I don’t think it ever stopped raining.
***
“She wanted flowers on her grave,” I said, my quiet growl dripped bitterness, “And the Apocalypse. Unfortunately, this world no longer has any flowers in it.”
The rain was falling around us as we stood in that gloomy cemetery. We were a small pack with buildings looming on every side. The City lights blurred through the water while the noise seemed shy to enter that place of sorrow and the endless traffic of man sounded distant.
“What will you do now?” one of the Pack asked, his jaw taut and his eyes dark as he looked at me, “What can you do now?”
I smiled without any warmth, my fangs showing. The rain soaking us hid my tears but I could taste their salt in my mouth. It lacked the copper of blood. Her fresh grave lay before us barren and empty. There were no flowers on it. Mankind had killed all the flowers centuries ago, as with all the non-urban animals too.
The entire world was just the cursed City now; concrete and trash, streets and endless buildings. Mankind’s own polluted temple to his ever-hungry gods.
The only animals that had made it were the ones that could adapt, or be adapted. Rats, pigeons, cockroaches, among others, like us.
Some fringe scientists and rebel bio-engineers had helped evolution along, creating a handful of hybrids–us–that now mingled on the fringes of society and stalked through dark alleyways. Why? None of us knew. The original scientists were now all dead and disappeared. Mankind had eaten mankind, leaving behind us: their illegal bio-tech legacy to be killed on sight as she had been, or worse if the traffickers got you.
Alone–outcast by nature and banned by men–we were each others only refuge.
And she had been mine.
I threw my head back and howled. The old primal howl from deep inside my heritage ripped its way to the surface. The Pack leaned back and howled too, their voices mingling with mine in both sorrow and rage. A primal choir, the blood-curdling song echoed off the City walls and scattered the rats and other survivors in the sewers and trash cans around us.
Mankind was right to have ostracized us. We were different. We were animals, and we would destroy all of them. And, in that moment, I knew what had to be done.
“Kill them,” I growled, turning to the Pack, “We will kill them all.”
***
I watched the dissolvable canister fall. Slowly it fell, like the rise of the City from the eventual merging of all the smaller cities of mankind. Steadily it fell, like the advance of mankind and the slaughter of nature. But, most importantly, decisively it fell towards the central water pumps that drove the remainder of the de-salted seas–a scarce resource–across the entire planet.
I licked my lips. The copper taste of the guards’ blood was still fresh and their corpses still warm behind me. Some of the blood, though, was mine. Perhaps a lot of it was?
All of my Pack had fallen. I was the last of them, and of us.
Some had sacrificed themselves in obtaining the aggressively-engineered, fast-spreading and water-resistant rabies that I had just dropped into the City’s water. The treachery of the fringe scientists and bio-engineers were to thank for that. The rest had sacrificed themselves in breaking into the secure central water plant and making it this far. The paranoia and weapons of mankind were to thank for those fallen in this Hunt.
The final Hunt.
Mankind would be no more in less than a week. The enhanced virus would enter the populace soon, spread quickly and, before long, mankind itself would be little more than a feral beast tearing itself apart.
And they had her to thank for that. The cop that had fired the killing shot at her had killed mankind as a result.
I threw my head back and howled. The old primal howl from deep inside my heritage ripped its way to the surface. There was no more Pack to join in. No voices mingled with mine and, as my lungs gave in and I dropped to my knees, I put my hand to my chest and felt my life-blood pumping out. One of the guards’ bullets had hit me there.
I toppled over to one side. The last of the Hybrids, alone but not lonely as I was going to rejoin the Pack.
And the last thing I saw was the ceiling, where the walls met in the corner.
She first saw him as a fleeting shadow across the rooftops of her City. Her mark’s body crumpled quietly to the floor beside her. She hesitated ever so slightly and then she leaped lightly up the wall to chase after him, blades disappearing as quickly as they had appeared.
Their chase darted across the rooftops under the Dark Moon and its musing Stars. They whirling over the City like its rooftops were their private dance-floor. Even the cool night air seemed to play a secret music as their shadows flittered from roof to roof…
Then he stopped dead still. The music paused. The Dark Moon and the City waited as the Stars leaned ever-so-slightly forward in anticipation.
She too stopped, frozen on the edge of the roof while he turned and looked straight back at her from the other side of the roof.
Silence.
Time held its breath and, despite all the hearts she had stopped, it was her’s that skipped this beat. His dark green eyes as unreadable as his black mask, she weighed the multiple blades hidden over her lithe body.
Then he was gone. Little more than a fleeting shadow wrapped in midnight and ghosted off by a mystery.
She smiled ever-so-slightly and then the next moment the rooftop was empty. The assassins were gone and only the Dark Moon, its Stars and the City knew what had transpired that night.
***
In another life, she next saw him under the midday sun. He lithely stalked across her street, black hair blowing in the wind as his dark green eyes flashed around him.
He flicked up his hand and caught her blade as it flew straight towards his beating heart.
She was long gone as he looked around the street but only the cold blade was still there with a small message wrapped around. All that was written in the message was an address. The address where he had stopped and turned around.
He hesitated for just a moment–a smile dancing across his face–before slipping from sight into the shadows. It was not the blade but the message that found its mark beating in his breast.
The sunlight and all its creatures were oblivious to what had just happened, but the City smiled and waited for the harsh sun to tire. It always did.
Eventually, the Dark Moon joined the City overhead with its chorus of Stars. Then the assassins’ secret music started to play on the cool night air. And, for the briefest moment, two fleeting shadows met on a lonely rooftop against the night sky.
The City smiled as the Dark Moon looked down amused. All the Stars twinkled and they hummed the lover’s music.
And then they were gone, two fleeting shadows wrapped in midnight and ghosted off by a mystery.
***
Many years later, after a great storm had torn through the City and terrible clouds had smothered the Dark Moon and its Stars for weeks, an ordinary man climbed up to his house’s roof.
Under the harsh sunlight, he had clambered up his rickety ladder carrying rusty tools to fix a leak. It was honest work and he was an honest man and, thus, he had honest expectations.
He expected a hard days work under the harsh sun. He expected muck and dirt while he fixed where the storm and beating rain had torn a gash into his dwelling. He expected a lot of ordinary things as most ordinary people do.
What he found instead were two blades, still as sharp as the day the lovers had left them. Hilts crossing, they were buried deep into what he had always thought was his own roof in what he had always thought was his own city.
Stand there staring at them, he briefly glimpsed a world far from his sunlight which danced to a secret music that he would never hear. The rest of this world, though, would forever remain a fleeting shadow wrapped in midnight and ghosted off by a mystery that only the City, the Dark Moon and its Stars truly knew.
“I can still remember the stars twinkling above us in that field,” she thought, electrical impulses being captured by the chip in her brain and cast over the ultraband straight into another’s brain sitting on the far side of the cosmos, “I hope one day to lie there with you again.”
“I love you, you know?” he thought back across the chat connection, “I can’t wait to touch you in the Slow World again. One day it will be my Slow Lips touching yours. One day, we’ll again lie in that field at the center of the cosmos.”
The secure connection between their brains opened up and a skin-app allowed him to download into and reach out with the arm of a synthetic human’s body. He reached out and touched her. The synth was just a hollow body, but the two-way connection between him and it allowed him to feel what it felt and control it as it was his own. His own original body lay back across the cosmos in a state close to dreaming as its consciousness streamed across the Quick World.
He leaned into her and pressed the synth’s lips against hers. He felt the kiss, as did she, and his hand slid to the curve on the low of her back. Her eyes fluttered closed and she pulled him closer to her…
***
The activation light flickered red, as the connection between him and the synth severed. She saw its eyes grow dull and lifeless, and suddenly she was alone in her bedroom again. The temperature app in the synth had turned off once he had disconnected, and she could feel its synthetic skin growing cold.
Emotionally, she sympathized with it.
She stood up from the bed and retrieved her scattered clothing. Once she had put it all back on, she commanded a house-robot to pack the synthetic body away. It would not do to leave such things lying around, besides, they were expensive.
Her husband would be back soon, and she wanted to freshen up before then.
***
It took a second to get over the dislocation as the disconnection brought his consciousness back to his Slow Body. His eyes opened and he blinked, and then he was back in the Slow World.
He stood up from the chair he had been casting from. He grabbed a cigarette and walked out onto the balcony overlooking this planet. He lit the cigarette and contemplated the scene before him.
Three moons circled silently overhead and cast an eerie glow onto a predominantly night-world below him. Days here only occurred once every second century. Far below the lonely tower he lived in, luminous plantations of alien tree species stretched out before him. They were growing galactic fruits that would later be distilled down into rare liquors and distributed throughout the known worlds.
It was all automated–run by Artificial Intelligence–and he was the only sentient life for a couple of light years in any direction. He was there as a fail-safe if anything went wrong in the plantation AI, which it had not for close on a millennium.
He was so bored.
He finished his cigarette and flicked the butt off the balcony. He turned and strolled back inside, his Conduit browsing through news, movies, media and elicit apps in a desperate attempt to stave off boredom.
He poured himself a drink. It was from this plantation and its sweet, tingling liquid glowed slightly in the glass. Back in the central planets, this drink would be worth some people’s annual salaries, but out here and in this plantation, it was free. One of the few perks of his job.
He decided on party-casting app, leaned back in his chair and opened his Conduit’s connection to its menu.
Somewhere out there, a field beneath twinkling stars existing waiting for him and his distant lover. He missed her and her lips. Someday, when he had earned enough money to buy his way back into civilization and be with her again.
Until then, though, he was going to drink tequila and dance in a synth on one of the party planets…
***
“Appreciated, ma’am,” the suited man said, “Its productivity is up and its reality matrix remains robust. The risk with these high-end AI’s is always that they hit a terminal loop, kind of what we would call an existential crisis. Anyway, this seems to be working, so, if you are comfortable with this arrangement, we would like to continue using you. We will keep the same narrative, as well, just for continuity. Do you consent?”
She smiled and nodded. Her husband stood up, shook the man’s hand and showed him out.
When she was all alone, she leaned back in the chair and sighed. They needed the money–even her husband agreed so–and it was not actually cheating on him, nor was it prostitution. Not really.
No, it did not count when it was just an AI.
The arrangement was simple, lucrative, and she was happy to continue with it. The owners of the off-world plantation kept the AI that ran it from going mad by coding it to think that it was human. They placed the conscious portion of the AI in a high-end synth and let it wander around overseeing the plantation. They also coded it with a history and narrative. Her job was simply to play the part of the AI’s distant girlfriend and keep it entertained, thus, motivating it to keep working.
AI’s–like humans–worked better when they had a goal to strive for.
“You alright, dear?” her husband asked as he walked back in, reaching out to hug her.
She smiled and tucked her head under his.
“Yes,” she whispered, kissing him gently on the neck, “Yes, I am. It’s not real anyway. It’s just a synth with an AI, and the money will allow us to handle the debts, so, yes, I am fine, my love.”
His wings lay to the side. The act of tearing them off had hurt more than he could explain but the jagged wounds in his flesh just felt numb.
He felt numb.
Then he remembered his anger. He remembered why he was doing what he was doing. He remembered who he was doing this for.
And he smiled.
He knew exactly where he was going. He had waited for most of his torturous existence to do this, and now he was doing it. Heaven forbade such acts, but this was love and he would be damned–literally!–if he would live for eternity in fear instead of one lifetime in love.
He chose love.
***
Fred smiled at the strange man on the subway. He had such chiseled features. He looked like he had come off some divine production line. He was strangely familiar to Fred, yet Fred was also sure that they had never met. This confusion kept Fred’s gaze on him a second longer than normal. He looked up and they made eye-contact, so the man smiled, leaned in and greeted him.
“Hi,” the man said–god, he had blue eyes!–“I’m Michael.”
“Uh-uh,” Fred stumbled over the words, his heart was pounding and his palms sweaty, “Hi, I’m Fred. Uh, do I know you?”
The beautiful man smiled. He never shook his head nor nodded. Rather he reached out and grasped Fred’s hand and squeezed it. Fred’s heart skipped a beat and then he squeezed back.
The beautiful stranger smiled.
“Say, do you want to get a drink, Fred?” he asked, smiling, the light radiating out of his blue eyes, “I know a quiet little pub nearby the next station.”
Fred smiled back and nodded before he realized that he should say something back.
“Sure, sure, yes,” he said, “Say, where are you from?”
The beautiful stranger smiled. Sadness and pain flashed across his eyes before he answered.
“I’m from far away. Very far. But, that doesn’t matter. That place doesn’t approve of people like us, Fred. We were made different to the rest and shouldn’t suffer because of it.”
Fred knew exactly what the man meant. He had run away from home when he was young. He did not miss his father’s or anyone else’s beatings nor the judgment of the priests.
“Born,” Fred corrected, smiling reassuringly back at him, “Born. We weren’t made. We were born.”
“Sure,” the stranger nodded, sadly, “Sometimes it feels more like I was made by some asshole god, to be honest.”
They both laughed at this, and the train came to a stop.
“How about that drink, Fred?”
Fred smiled. It had been a long time since someone had made him feel like this and he would be damned if he was going to let the opportunity slip by him.
The old car did not have a radio in it. Its growling engine was so loud that he was not sure he would have been able to hear any music anyway. Instead, he leaned back in his cracking leather chair and watched the world slide by, tree after tree.
Outside the wilderness stretched for miles. Rugged mountains poked through endless pine trees broken only by the weathered, old road he was following. Mist swirled through the air pierced only occasionally by the Sun and endless sky far above.
He felt like a voyeur, peering at one of Mother Natures’s untouched places. Despite the growling car engine and the crunch of its tyres on the old, weathered road, he felt like he had to be quiet. If he spoke, he might break the spell.
Soft mist slept in the valleys serrated by rolling, rugged pines. He would disappear into these gullies as the road dipped down. It was like he briefly disappeared into another world where sight ended, closed by the sudden thick mist around him. Even the sound of the vehicle was dampened down there. But then the road rose from the valley and he would break out of the mist into the cold, crisp morning.
This would go on again and again as he drove along miles and miles of that old road.
Eventually, he came to a fork in the road. No other cars and not a living soul had crossed his path for hundreds–perhaps thousands–of miles out here. So he brought the car to a growling stop in the middle of the road. He let it idle while he decided what direction to drive.
He thought of what existed a world away from this mystical wilderness. He thought of the beings that he loved and that had loved him. He remembered the wooden, slightly run-down cabin he had grown up in and how his mother smelt. He remembered the pine trees and the cold winter months. He remembered the girl that lived in the big city he had studied at. He remembered the final time he had seen his parents. He thought of all his demons and the evil that lurked in all men’s hearts. He thought of the loneliness of one soul and the warmth of friendship. He thought of loyalty and loss. He thought of the beauty of peace and the nastiness that drove the world forward.
He had no answers, only thoughts. But, just perhaps, that was alright all the way out here. Perhaps that was the answer.
Far above, the Sun slipped over its zenith and slid towards the jagged horizon, criss-crossed with mountains and pine trees. He barely noticed time passing. The air still felt cool and wet. A pine and dirt smell permeated this air, and the fragrance only intensified as a soft, scotch mist began to fall as the afternoon stretched out.
But still, he sat at the crossroad deciding which path to take.
Did it matter which path he chose? Would the world change at all? Would his loss ever ease? Where were the wolves? Where was the wild? Where was his friend?
Eventually, his grip on the steering wheel tightened, he put the car in gear and pulled off. He was going down the path that he was always going to be going down. He was always going to choose this path. It was the old familiar path, but he had never driven it for this reason before.
It was late at night by the time he reached the old, run-down log cabin. Far above, unpolluted by city lights and human noise, the jewel-encrusted cosmos displayed itself. Swirling, endless galaxies and stars twinkling dramatically in their silence as they gazed down on this small, insignificant world.
They were the silent witnesses as Mother Nature was the stage.
He turned the car’s engine off and it stuttered and ground to silence. The door creaked open and he stepped out, crunching the gravel ground below his boot.
“I am going to miss you.”
It was the first words he had said all day. Or forever? Definitely for hundreds of miles. Time moved differently out here, or through the fog of his thoughts. The words seemed to echo in his ears, but it may not have been the sound that echoed, but the memories.
“I am going to miss you,” he said again, embracing his voice as he walked around the back of the car and popped the boot, “But I cannot go where you are going now.”
In the car’s boot was a shovel and an old, blue blanket covering something. The something looked like a curled up, unmoving form. It was dead still. It was small enough to be a child, or a best friend. He reached down and gently pulled the blanket back, revealing the body of an old sheepdog.
“I am going to miss you, my old friend,” he said, tears coming to his eyes as he bent into the boot to gently scoop the body of his old pet out, “But, at least, out here you will have lots of space to run around in. You remember this place? There is so much space, so much more than our little house in the noisy city. There are wolves and there is wilderness for you, my friend. Wolves and wilderness…”
And, far above, the cosmos and its countless stars and galaxies silentlypeered down. Tears streamed down his face, as he buried his childhood dog behind his childhood home at the end of the long road.
The Sunflower King sat on his cold throne of petals brooding. The shadows in his Court were growing long and the Sun was nearly set. Everyone was gone. They were always gone. He thought he could smell the kitchens firing and hear the clink of glasses being set out in the garden. In an age long gone, he had married a beautiful Sidhe princess under the maple and the Midsummer Sun. Her throne now sat empty next to him. But, once a year on the Midsummer night, she appeared by him again.
“My dear, how the time has flown. What have we left to do?”
He closed his eyes tight shut for a moment, but then turned and looked at the throne next to him. She–his Queen Cereus–was sitting there as beautiful as the day he had married her. Suddenly the Court was full of people, bustle, sound and light again.
“Yes, my love, the time has flown. We have the banquet to attend.”
The real curse was not that she was taken from him nor that she reappeared once a year making it impossible for him to let go of her. No, the real curse was that if he told her about the curse, she would never come back. The fragile spell that brought her back to his Court once a year would shatter and the darkness that had cursed her would take her forever. And he would be forever alone sitting in his empty throne.
“Banquet? I do not recall a banquet, my dear?” Queen Cereus asked frowning. She shivered involuntarily but did not seem to notice.
The Sunflower King smiled and reached out and squeezed her hand–it had been a year since he had touched her! “It is a surprise, my love, a surprise just for you.” It always was.
***
“What a beautiful Sunrise, my dear,” Queen Cereus said, her head nestled in the Sunflower King’s shoulder. They were sitting atop the highest spire’s peak overlooking the grand entrance of the Sun. The blood red sky was breaking into other colours as a golden fire began to touch the horizon.
“Yes, my love, what a beautiful night,” the Sunflower King breathed, his arms suddenly empty.
He was alone at the peak of the highest spire in his castle overlooking his Kingdom. Queen Cereus was gone and would be gone for another year. His Court would be empty again.
He let his arm drop to his side and he sat in silence and watched as the ball of glowing fire burnt the start of the next year into the sky. It would be a long, lonely year again.
***
The Sunflower King could not remember how long this had gone on for, but over the years he began a conversation. Each annual appearance of his Queen when his Court was full and they held a banquet, he would try to get her to remember.
He could not tell her that she was cursed. He remembered the witches curse clearly. But, he could get her to remember this for herself.
“Do you remember where you were yesterday?” he would inquire between mouthfuls of nectar wine while the Court musicians played.
“Oh, my dear, I-I was here with you,” the Queen would reply, each time elaborating just a little more as something inside her began to get dislodged, “Didn’t we have a banquet too? We have too many banquets, my dear, we should do something else in the evening, don’t you think?”
Each year each time, he got just a little more of an answer from her. But then, the Sun rose, she left and the Court, draped in shadows and loneliness, was empty for another year. He would spend his time waiting, watching the sunrises and sunsets on his own again while planning how to get her to remember. Nothing else existed.
***
“Do you remember where you were yesterday?” he asked, holding her hand tightly as they both sipped their nectar wine. The Court was full and the musicians were playing a particularly soft, dreamy piece of music.
“Oh, my dear, I was here with you,” the Queen answered, yet more convincingly, and then she turned her head and looked directly at him, “No… No, you weren’t, my dear. Where were you yesterday?”
This was a new line of conversation. He had never gone down this road before. Gazing at him with her beautiful eyes wide open, she involuntarily shivered again.
“My love, I was right here sitting on my throne and waiting for you in our Court,” he said slowly and deliberately.
“No, my dear, you weren’t. I was in the Court and talking to the Elders. They were saying–” the Queen tilted her head to the side like she was trying really hard to remember and her eyes moistened, “They were saying that I should consider remarrying because you were gone and not coming back. I don’t want to remarry, my dear, I love you. I love you so much.”
The Sunflower King was confused. This was not what he had expected. The curse had obviously confused her.
“But, my love, I am not gone. You–you are–” he paused, he could not bring himself to say it or risk breaking the enchantment, “I sit all year long in the empty Court and I only get to see you once on the midsummer night’s full moon.”
The Queen’s face wrinkled in confusion. Or was it sorrow? Her eyes were wet and the Sunflower King suddenly had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“But, my dear, it is not midsummer night’s full moon tonight,” she pointed up and suddenly the Sunflower King saw it, “it is All-Hallow’s Eve on Samhain. You are the Sun while I am the Moon. You are the Day while I am the Night. And, you can speak with the living while I can speak with the dead on such a magical night like this…”
The Queen let her voice trail out. She was looking intently at him and, in fact, the whole Court had grown quiet. Even the musicians had stopped and everyone was looking at the Sunflower King. Slowly he began to remember and realise.
He remembered how beautiful his Queen was on the day of their wedding. But he also remembered how the wicked witch had appeared in their midst and he had struck out with his blade to defend his love.
Then he realised why his Court was always so empty. Why his Court was always in shadows and his sunrises and sunsets were always alone.
“I-I am dead,” the Sunflower King breathed, suddenly hearing the echoey sound of his voice from the grave.
“Yes, my love,” Queen Cereus said, looking at the pale apparition of her former husband before her, its light flickered and she saw its face contort in pain, a tear rolled down her cheek, “Yes, my love, you died defending me, but you need to move on and go to the Summerlands. I will find you there. My love will guide me.”
For the last time, the Sunflower King looked at his Queen Cereus. A single ghostly tear ran down his face and disappeared. He began to speak, but his image was fading fast and all the Queen heard through her own tears was:
When she was fifteen, a boy in her class kissed her. He had brown hair. They snuck around the bottom of the sports fields and kissed. The boy smelt like the cafeteria pie that he had eaten earlier, but she did not mind. It was naughty, and she liked it. The bell rang, and they ran back to class to tell all their friends about their secret.
In the later years, she would not only forget much of the detail of this moment, but she would embellish it for effect.
***
After his parents died, he moved in with his grandparents. They lived elsewhere, so he had to change schools and friends. He cried a lot in those days.
His grandparents were nice, but also doddery old people. Their pension had been damaged in the recession, so both of them had part-time jobs to make ends meet. The housekeeper came to tidy things up occasionally, but mostlythere was no one around.
After school, he had to either hang around an empty school ground or walk for miles to get home. It was while walking home that he got to know someone who he should not have. What he thought was a friend touched him where he did not want to be touched. It made him uncomfortable and embarrassed all at the same time, but he did not know what to do.
No one found out, but people come and go, and life moves on. He kept rounding his memories of this part of his life down until they reached fractions of the original. He knew his abuse was not his own fault and, sometimes, in the quiet, long hours of the night, he wondered how it may have affected him. But, most of the time, he spent not thinking about it.
Thus, in later years, he would forget much of the detail of these moments, and let the noise of his life drown out the rest of them.
***
As she went through school, she called a couple of boys by the title ‘boyfriend’. But her first real one was in college. They met accidentally, dated haphazardly and then she intentionally lost her virginity to him.
He had dark hair, a quick laugh and an accute way of thinking about things. She did not quite know why she was attracted to him, but she felt comfortable around him.
Young love is difficult. Changes happen so fast at that age and, within two years, they had drifted apart as the fighting grew worse. He was getting into different things than her and she was becoming more interested in her career in finance and her friends and clubs.
Years later, she would rarely speak about the first boy she slept with and, even then, it would only be in noting it as a fact with little elaboration. There would be no embellishing of this part of the story. The details were only for her and she held them dear inside her heart.
***
He had ended up only just scraping through school, but that left his college options rather limited. Besides his grandparents had both passed away and there was nothing left in their estate for him. Instead, he moved to the big city down by the coast and began working in a restaurant.
While waiting tables there, he met her. She was different to the rest. At first, he had thought she was hot, but then he got to know her and thought she was cool. And then they slept together for the first time–his first, not hers–and he no longer questioned why he liked her. He just did.
They would stay up long after their shifts had ended and split a bottle of cheap wine. She smoked cigarettes and he tried to, but they would laugh and cry and talk and fuck.
And then she changed her mind, and he was alone again.
It did not matter. He had shared something with someone. He had been honest. It had felt good. Although he would never really talk about this, it had given him hope that he could be close to others and his wall had begun to crack.
***
She dated a boy with blonde hair who surfed and then she saw one with dark hair who played in a band. She finished college, went to work in a bank and slept with another one she met at a club after a few cocktails and whisky sours. She could not remember his name, but he had the bluest eyes and was gone the next morning.
None of these stuck with her and, like small stones being flung into a large pond, they barely rippled her heart. Sometimes she would feel like crying or a sad scene in a movie would make her unexpectedly cry. She did not exactly know why, but she felt sad. She felt alone.
Her job was not bad and she lived comfortably in a good house in a nice neighbourhood.
She did not notice it, but she began to drift through life. She went to more clubs than restaurants, and she began to drink more whisky sours than cocktails.
***
He left the restaurant and started his own. He put a bar into it but still made good food. He managed to move into his own house and his banker kept telling him how well he was doing.
He felt proud. The darkness around his youth was a fragmented memory from another age. His confidence led him forward now. He could date and did so with a couple of women. They were all beautiful and he was amazed that they even looked at him, let alone spent time with him. He slept with some of them and some of them even stayed longer than that with him.
But nothing stuck. At first, this was not a problem. He had built a good life, his restro-bar–as he called it–was doing well, he lived well and he was happier than he had ever been. But, nothing stuck, and that began to bother him. There felt like there was a distance between him and everyone else.
The real tragedy, he sometimes chided himself, was that he had no one to share all these wonderful things with.
Just before close late one night, she wandered in. The diners at all tables had left, the kitchen was closed and only a couple patrons were sitting at the bar finishing their drinks when she walked into his restro-bar.
***
Late one night, alone and drunk, she had wandered into a new bar in another part of town. Some hours and drinks later, she had fallen into his bed. The next morning she had woken up and felt different. He had smiled at her, brought her coffee and spent the morning asking her about her life.
She had not told him about the first kiss or boyfriend, nor had she told him about her fancy job. Rather, she found herself telling him about her loneliness and how she would cry sometimes. He had cried with her then, telling her of the dirty darkness in his childhood and the distance he felt around his heart.
He had hugged her and told her that everything would be alright. She had hugged him and kissed him deeply. The rain had begun to fall softly outside and they had both fallen asleep in each other’s arms.
It was then she had known that this one was different. It was then that she knew that all the nicks, cuts and scars across her heart had found a match and they were meant to be together.
***
It was then that he had known that she was the one. For the first time in his life, he did not regret anything that had happened to him. It was all important; each and every experience. After all, it had all been the map graffitied on his grubby heart that had led him to her, and for that he was thankful.
He had always loved fairy tales. His mother had read them to him every night, in between cigarettes. It was one of his few memories of her and, despite the fact that she was no longer around, his head was still full of the fairy tales. He had never known his father and he had no siblings, so he was on his own.
He was an orphan, like so many of the young, desperate heroes in his fairy tales. Or so he would remind himself when he caught himself thinking about it. What was his fairy tale going to be about, he wondered at times?
Money was scarce and he worked down a coal mine outside of the town. Each time he went down it, he imagined it as a dungeon or maze and he was the hero descending into it to save the kingdom. The days were long, dark and dirty. In the evenings, they would drink and smoke at a small dingy bar, before waking up the next day and doing it all again.
But then the mine closed. The men and he were all laid off, and he picked up his last paycheque. The Sun was setting as he trudged back to town with the small envelope clasped in his hand. He did not know what to do, so he went to the dingy little bar. Some of the other men were already there. They sat in silence and drank before one by one disappearing. He was the last one, and he lit a final cigarette before stepping outside into the cold night.
“Hey, you got a light?”
These were the first words that she ever spoke to him.
“Now I do,” he responded, smiling.
He moved in with her to save on rent. She had a small apartment around the back of a block flats. Their single window’s view was of the neighbouring block of flats. She shared it with two other girls, though their names would change only slightly less often than their clothes. They all worked at night and mostly disappeared in the evening and reappeared slightly thinner before the morning. Sometimes he would have to leave when one of them brought a client back, but this was rare.
Life was good, or, at least, better than down the coal mine. Here was light and warmth. He would cuddle her all day as they snoozed waiting for the night. Sometimes she would tease him about the fairy tales he always talked about, he would chase her around the bedroom and they would collapse laughing. He imagined them living happily ever after in this grand castle. He imagined them in royal clothing eating fancy food as harps were played. He imagined a lot of things, but he did not need to imagine happiness. They were happy.
But she fell sick. Very sick. Sometimes he wondered if a wicked witch had cursed her. The two girls stopped coming back and he never saw them again, like evil sister slinking back into the night. She stopped going out and they both stopped laughing. The nights grew longer and the days grew darker. And, then, like a desperate hero, he eventually carried her to a hospital to get some help.
But they did not help. The nurse just looked at her like she was trash, put her in a bed and let her fade away. The hospital reeked of death and sorrow like some sorcerer’s lair. He could almost feel the ghosts wringing their hands and hear them howling in that horrid place.
For the second time in his life, he was alone.
He started going back to that old bar. There were still some of the old miners that went there. Some had gotten other jobs, but most had not. One of them was a bus driver and introduced him to his boss. For some reason, his boss hired him and gave him a truck to drive.
He had never left the town. He had never seen anything anywhere. But suddenly he had a truck to drive for long-haul, a GPS telling him where to turn and what to do, and a company credit card to pay for a warm room each night. He was wide-eyed as the world flowed past him like the pages of one of his fairy tales. He was travelling. He was seeing the world.
From the great plains to the endless cities, overpasses and underpasses, inns and pubs and cities and towns. There was so much! He saw farms of rolling wheat and corn like oceans of liquid gold guarded by hidden dragons. He saw huge, shiny skyscrapers like the crystal spires of fairy castles made reaching to the heavens. He saw people so strange he knew that they had been touched by the little folk or dined at the table of the Fairy Queen. He saw beautiful lakes that he knew sidhe slept under, great hotels and casinos in the middle of a desert that he knew tricky red-cap goblins had built to take men’s money. He saw so, so much. There was just so much in this world!
Each time he lit a cigarette, he thought of his mother. And each time he drove passed a drab block of flats, he thought of her. And, each time, he wished that they could be here to see all of this too.
The years went by and they were not kind to him. Although he saw the world from his truck window, long-haul had long, hard hours and it all caught up with him eventually. Before he knew it, he was a very old fifty and his eyes did not work so well. The trucking company had grown and he had medical aid and support now. So when his eyes failed the exams and he could no longer drive the truck, they put him into a care facility and paid him a small pension.
On the first day at the facility, he sat in his small, plain room. It smelt funny, like something medical. Drab colours covered the walls and the single window in his lounge-slash-kitchen looked out over the other wing of the old-age home.
He sighed and pushed himself up to walk outside. He had his pack of cigarette’s, but when he got outside he realised he had forgotten a lighter. His memory was going the way of his eyesight. Outside, there was an old lady–probably also a resident in this dull place–smoking out there too. Her back was turned to him, so he coughed behind her.
“Hey, you got a light?”
She turned around gracefully, like a sidhe fairy princess. She had a kind face, though there was a sorrow in her eyes. He saw the sea under cloudy skies in them with, perhaps, a distant storm on the horizon. She smiled at him.
“Now I do, young man. Now I do.”
He smiled back at her, the warmth flowing back into his life.
It was that moment that he imagined that he really was in a fairy tale. His cancer would not really play out, nor would he ever really get older. His fairy tale was a quaint, modern spin on an old tale of struggle, loss and love. He imagined at this part of the tale revealing its grand ending. It was the type of ending that only fairy tales deliver, with him walking off to that place where they all live happily ever after.
After all, he had finally found his fairy tale, and that was how fairy tales end.
As evening fell in the quiet town of Blackpool Bay, a strange man walked into the General Store. No one had seen him arrive, but no one had been specifically looking. This was all a bit unusual, as few people travelled this far along the coast and outsiders stuck out in town.
The stranger was tall, thin and quite hairless with immensely pale skin. His long black trenchcoat covered him like a second skin while square, functional dark-glasses hid his eyes. His smile was cold when he enquired of the location of Callum Road from the young boy working the desk in the store.
Callum Road ran through the old industrial edge of town and there was only one residential house on it. While other buildings dotted the road, most of them were empty warehouses from an age before the railroad had been diverted inland. Many years ago, an old mayor had tried to rejuvenate the place with a small park in one of the open plots along Callum Road, but that mayor was long gone and no one except the Old Man now used that overgrown park.
The Stranger nodded his thanks to the young boy, turned, and left the store without another word. The boy swallowed and wondered why his heart was beating so fast. And, in Callum Road, the Old Man stepped from his small house, walking stick in hand and began tottering down his walkway to the small park and the even smaller bench that lay down Callum Road.
Even the locals of Blackpool Bay knew little about the Old Man. He had moved to Blackpool Bay many years ago but kept to himself. He would buy odds and ends from the General Store and occasionally ask people awkward questions, but Callum Road was removed from the rest of town and no one ever visited him.
Sometimes, a local passerby would see the Old Man sitting on the bench at the park down Callum Road. He would be just sitting there staring at the night sky. This far from the lights of cities and civilisation, the stars came out in all their glory encrusting the cosmos in twinkling splendour as this small, spinning, insignificant planet spun its way through the Milky Way. The night skies just outside of Blackpool Bay were incredible and they were not the strangest thing to be sitting and looking at.
This was such an evening with the cosmic display twinkling in all its infinite beauty. And, so, the Old Man sat on his bench quietly looking upwards at the stars.
“Why is there moisture on your face? Is your body leaking?”
The Stranger was standing behind the Old Man. There had been no noise of his approach. He stepped forward and took a seat next to the Old Man on the bench. The Old Man never so much as glanced at him, his gaze directed squarely at the stars in the night sky.
“Human’s call it ‘tears’. It is the physical manifestation of ‘sorrow’. If you live long enough amongst them, you start to pick up some of their traits,’ the Old Man began talking slowly, but then started picking up pace like he had wanted to say these things for a very long time, “I have a theory that I actually had those emotionally traits all along, but I was unaware of them. I think we are all unaware of them. Sure, we can travel further and faster than humans and we have better technology, but humans are far more emotionally evolved than we are and we can learn great things from them about this hidden knowledge.”
The Stranger takes off his dark-glasses and holds them in his lap where he neatly folded his hands. He glances at the Old Man–who has not moved his gaze from the stars above–and then turns and looks to the night sky.
“We sent you down in a pair–” the Stranger starts talking, but the Old Man turns and looks straight at him, abruptly interrupting him with a dry chuckle.
“You always send us down in pairs. Always in pairs,” the Old Man leans forward and wipes away a tear from his eyes before continuing, “My other half is gone. My partner’s cosmic light expired when one of the human’s mechanical mobile devices, a Mercedes Benz, driven by an intoxicated driver skipped a red light and hit her crossing a road. This was thirteen years ago. Human’s call it ‘passing away’. She passed away thirteen years ago.”
The Stranger’s face was impenetrable, but his gaze turned from the stars above to the Old Man next to him. The Old Man now had tears openly slipping down his face.
“She passed away in my arms, and thirteen years have passed since then. This body you gave me has aged and it is starting to expire, but all I want is my partner back,” the Old Man wipes his eyes and sighs deeply, before turning back to look at the stars twinkling far above, “Many humans believe that there is life after death, and I do hope so. Even though her body is gone, her cosmic light could still have been captured by one us out there, surely? I keep searching for her somewhere out there in one of our galaxies, or some hidden part of the cosmos that we will yet discover…”
The Old Man’s voice fades and he drops his gaze to the ground. The Stranger is still looking at him.
“I do not understand,” the Stranger shakes his head, “What are you doing? What are you talking about? Perhaps we left you on this planet too long, but I look forward to the full report.”
The Old Man turns to the Stranger and smiles.
“Of all the things I have learnt here and of all the things that humans have taught me, this is the greatest knowledge of all: what I am feeling is love, and we can all feel that too. Love is the greatest of all emotions, and I will teach our people it. Come, it is time to go. I will tell you all about it back home.”
The Stranger nods, the Old Man smiles, and then the bench is empty.
The Old Man will never be seen, nor will the Stranger. But, the next day, local talk buzzes about two particularly bright shooting stars that flew low over Blackpool Bay late that night. A few locals even swore that they saw a third shooting star up there join the passage of the other two.
The greatest battle anyone can ever face is not war nor any conflict. It is not even survival. It is also not finding love, but keeping it.
Yet we have been overcoming this war, conflict by conflict since the dawn of mankind.
It was not when the first lusty caveman lumbered over a beautiful woman. It was not during that chill night when their naked bodies entwined so hauntingly. No, it was when the Sun rose and the cold, harsh light of dawn blasted away all romantic notions that the greatest war began.
All the pickup artists, fancy suites and witty one-liners won’t save a man in this war. All the fast cars, big paychecks and accolades won’t save man from the loneliness of a scorned partner. All the big houses, blue pools and exotic cocktails won’t matter when the door closes.
These are the moments when the darkness closes in and the fire flickering in the cave seems meaningless. These are the moments when hearts break and spirits walk through the same empty abyss that many have wandered through before you. These are the moments when tenderness and care seem further from life than the warmth of the Sun in deepest winter or the touch of water from the dryest desert.
And how does man fight this battle? What weapons does he have at his disposal? What armour does he have to defend himself in this war?
My child, these are the times when you realize that you don’t exist, if it were not for your partner. My son, this are the times when your existence truly is a flickering candle in the winds of time that have blown since before even life mucked around on this dirty, little planet. My girl, these are the time when your heart hurt so much because your life is empty and devoid of the one thing that we were built to seek out.
Your other half.
We are souls flying through the vacuum of life on a spinning rock through endless, empty space and we need not the fire nor the Sun for warmth nor the touch of the cool waters on our tongues.
No, my child, we need only each other.
So do not use your head to fight this battle. Do not trust your anger or rage. Do not use your power or intellect. Definitely, do not use your hands. Do not even trust your own heart. Though your heart beats pure, it is like a beast that is frightened and cornered by the loneliness of our existence. And, like a cornered beast fighting for its survival, your heart cannot even truly be trusted here.
No, my child, this is when you trust your hurt. You trust your loneliness. Trust your longing for the other soul in this barren world.
And trust that they feel it too. Trust that they feel your isolation and neglect as sharp as you feel your loneliness. Trust that they feel your insults and injustices as much as you feel their loss.
Break open these feelings and see them in the mirror of life cast into the bodies of those around us.
Trust that they hurt as much as you do. Trust that you hurt them just as much as yourself, if not more. While anyone can survive love’s highs, trust that you must survive its lows as well. Trust that when we fall down before our soulmates, that we actually rise up to be with them.
Trust, my child, that you are not alone in love’s endless war and you only lose when you stop loving.
Across the street lay a house. In that house was a window. In that window was a girl. And that girl spent long hours looking out at the world from her window.
On the other side of the street was another house. It also had a window. In that window was a boy. He also spent long hours looking out from his window. But, he spent most of these long hours looking out from his window and into the window across the street with the girl in it.
Then one day he went and knocked on the door in the house across the street.
The girl opened it and they both smiled.
Stars were birthed and universes formed in rolling cosmic thunder that echoes great, booming heartbeats. The great tides of the world lifted and rose like great lungs sucking in life. And the boy and girl kissed under a full moon on a warm summer night.
Years later they got married. The girl, who was now a woman, gave birth to a beautiful boy and they lived as a happy family for many years. Yes, there were fights. Yes, like anyone else, occasionally there was crying. But, for the most part, that man and that woman and their little boy lived happy.
But one day the baby boy, who was now a young man, moved out and into the big wide world.
Time passed and the woman and her husband grew old.
Stars cooled down as entropy spread chill through universes that began to forget the cosmic thunder and the dimming echoes of a heartbeat. The tides of the world lifted just a little less each time that rose against the shores. The air was getting dark and quiet.
Then one day the old man passed away. And, after the funeral, after the tears, and after all the family and friends had left, the old woman sat all alone in her old house looking out from her old window.
She would spend many hours looking out from that window rubbing her old, tired hands. She would spend many hours looking out that window thinking of that little boy who so many years ago knocked on her door.
But then one day there was no one in that window in that house on that street. One day it was empty and neither filled with longing nor happiness nor sadness. One day it was just quiet, the cosmic thunder and the tides had all gone out with the old woman.
And somewhere, somehow out there, the old man heard a knock on his door. He opened it. The old woman was standing there and they both smiled.
