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Dreaming Awake – Epilogue

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“Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad:
whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive,
we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.”
– John le Carré

The stars blinked out as we landed that killing blow; the dying universe that had been dreamed so well and for so long, gone in an instant. We stood in a circle, or at least imagined we did, in that moment beyond space and time. Behind each of us streamed the flickering lights of a life, a dream, a memory of the world from which we had come. I looked around and saw my friends as children playing on beaches, as disciples in lonely monasteries, as soldiers in training. To my left stood Lilac, haloed in the white of the snow, and to my right Kyrhien, surrounded by the glittering stars of a memory beyond our understanding. And I knew that when others looked at me, my world of green fields and market days would be visible behind me like a comet tail.

We spoke to each other, then, without words — for what use were mortal words between us? We talked of what we had, and what we had lost, and what we had hoped for the future.

We looked beyond each other at the blackness and knew that there was nothing else but us, alone in the void. We knew that we were gods, creators of the universe yet to come. We were all that lived in existence, and the future of it lay in our omnipotent hands.

I saw each of our shadows flicker with a thousand different images as we imagined what that meant. I saw my friends as rulers of vast empires, as prophets adored by millions, as free spirits of unlimited wealth, but each image soon faded.

“None of it matters, does it?” I thought, and the others agreed. After all, what meaning had power to those who now stood omnipotent? What meaning had wealth for those whose who had torn down empires? What meaning had love for those who would have to create the people to love them?

At last the flickering ceased, each image back to the memory it once was, each ego subsided — for try as we might, none of us could imagine a world more perfect than the one from which we came. Through all our hardships, in all our battles, we had fought for each other; our family and friends; the people who were depending on us. What right had we to decide for them what world they wanted?

“Will all this happen again,” Rachel thought, “if we change nothing?”

We supposed that it would. We thought, perhaps, that we should restrict the power of dreams that had brought existence to its knees. But we understood that we were each the sum of our dreams, and others’ dreams of us, and we knew that without them we would be nothing. Humanity must be allowed to dream, wild dreams and crazy dreams and dangerous dreams, because that is what it means to be human.

Someday, would the world be torn apart again? Maybe. And on that day, would heroes like us arise to set it right again? Certainly, because that is a dream that each and every person carries within their hearts.

Knowing this, the images of worlds that streamed out from behind us as individuals began to merge into one, a consensus reality, the sum of all our memories of how things were before.

“And what of us?” Lilac thought. “Are we to remember this?”

How sad would it be to have stood as gods and yet not remember? But how much sadder would it be to remember all our time together, knowing that we were the only ones like ourselves and that no-one else would believe a word? To remember what it was like to be a god, and be unable to achieve it again? How many of us would live out our lives as madmen, convinced of a reality no-one else would ever know?

“No,” thought Kyrhien. “It is better to forget.”

The world behind us was fully merged now, a single band of images. Our experiences combined; our world fully realised. The images grew, upwards and downwards until they made a sphere surrounding us, then took on depth, images textures over shapes, a world forming from our memories.

We closed out eyes, each of us finding in the work of creation a peace beyond thoughts or words.

“We will forget,” I said. “But perhaps, we might leave a few clues…”

Our world collapsed and expanded, infinitely hot, infinitely dense, rushing ever outwards; a world of laughter and sadness and love and pain and light and dreams and infinite possiblity.


The sun crested the treetops to the east of the village of Arcadia, spilling light through the window of a young man who should have awoken long ago to help his mother prepare for market day. He groaned and rolled over, but a warmth on his chest kept him from sleep. He sat and looked down, expecting to see the old dirt-stained pendant that he always wore. But this morning it was clean, and clear, and hot, and glowing with a golden light from within.


A world away, another young man awoke to sunlight, not with a glowing pendant but instead with a glowing mind full of ideas and thoughts and memories that begged and pleaded to be written.

He sat, pen in hand. And this is what he wrote:

“With the wind in your hair,
love in your heart,
and a dream in your soul,
anything is possible.”

Gravity Showers

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“Tomorrow’s weather,” the forecast girl said, bright and chirpy despite the hour, “will be cloudy, fifteen degrees centigrade. 30% chance of rain showers in the region, which may spread across from the east in the afternoon. 40% chance of gravity showers.”

I grumbled, and stomped outside into the chill night air. The house’s roof armour was perfectly fine, and I knew it, but you always had to check. Houses like mine, built around the turn of the century, were built under what then was an obvious assumption — that gravity would always be pointing down. Not such a safe assumption these days, and so I had to be especially careful of cracks in the armour. One little crack could let the gravity in to soak into the beams of the roof, and then the place would tear itself apart.

I was still stomping as I put the ladder back in the garage and headed inside. I’d left the TV on, quietly broadcasting the gravity shower infomercial to an audience of none. They showed it every day at this time of year, just in case someone out there still wasn’t sure why we had the gravity showers, or what to do if you were caught out in one.

“…Higgs Boson,” I heard it say, “first isolated at CERN in 2016, proved to be…” I left it on, dutifully informing the void, while I boiled the kettle and looked threateningly at a pot of instant noodles. “…collapse of the waveform caused a number of… …explosion at the reactor sent billions of… …remarkably common in the atmosphere, in part due to…”

Half-hearted supper in hand, I slumped on the living-room sofa and flicked across to a different channel. “Nobody cares why”, I thought in the TV’s general direction. “I wish they’d stop showing that bloody thing. All that matters is that sometimes when it rains water, it also rains gravity. And that you really don’t want to be caught out in a gravity shower.”

Edge Case

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The man I assumed to be George sits down heavily across the table from me, sighs, and brushes a sweat-drenched lock of hair back behind his ears.  He wears the same exhausted expression as all Americans who come over here thinking the humidity and the smog “can’t be that bad”, and discover that they are in fact much, much worse.

“Vikram, right?” he asks.  I nod, expecting an introduction on his part, though none is forthcoming.

“So,” he jumps straight in with, “you know what the machine is, right?”

I nod again.  “The first 3D printer capable of printing its own parts.  I expect the whole town knows that by now.”  Today the town, tomorrow the world.  “But tell me, why here?  Why now?”

George closes his eyes and almost whispers his answer.  “The algorithm.”

The algorithm is as much of a success as the machine itself, maybe much more so, and certainly more jealously guarded by the company’s lawyers.

“Could you explain what it does, why it is so successful?”

The man looks even more weary now.  Although I’m the first journalist to score an interview, I get the feeling he’s explained it to shareholders a hundred times before.

“It started with a couple of Californians, a few years back,” he begins.  “They invented this machine, the first one that could build all its own parts.  That was the crucial moment in the technology, their ‘singularity’, if you will.  They realised that this thing could bootstrap the market, revolutionise the world.  But they were too expensive, and no-one was buying them.”

A waiter deposits two beers in front of us, but George doesn’t look up.

“So they hit on this idea of exponential growth, economies of scale.  They could set their printer making another one.  Then once that cycle was complete, their two machines could get on with making another two.  Eventually they’d be so quick and easy to produce that the only cost would be the raw chemicals, the plastic, and cheap manual labour.”

“So that’s why they chose India?”

“Not yet.  Back in the States, they started this website, with the algorithm behind it.  It said:  ‘Right now, these things are expensive, but eventually they’ll be dirt cheap.  Pay us now — if you pay a lot, you can have one tomorrow.  Pay us little more than the base cost, and you can have one when the economies of scale make them that cheap.’  So they were expecting a few thousand-dollar customers, and maybe a few hundred customers that would be happier paying a hundred dollars if they had to wait a couple of months.”

“There’s more than a few hundred machines out there,” I say, recalling row after row, warehouse after warehouse filled with clacking machines and the smell of hot plastic.  “What happened?”

“China happened.  Brazil.  Nigeria.  India, too.  It turns out that the algorithm had something of an edge case — the price went as low as thirty dollars, provided you didn’t mind waiting years for your unit.  Americans were too rich and too impatient to even consider that.  But it appears that thirty dollars is affordable by a lot of people in the developing world, especially when the machine is pitched to them as a transformative technology.”

“So how many of these thirty dollar orders did you get?”

“Two hundred and fifty million.”

We make eye contact across the table.  He knows I’m doing the math; there’s no way you can’t when given numbers like that.

“Seven and a half billion dollars,” I say.

His reply is simply, “Yeah.”

That simple figure, that immense sum of money, is the one simple reason for the craze sweeping this town and doubtless others like it.  The one simple reason that shops are closing, offering their floor space up to the machines.  The one simple reason that living-rooms have chairs piled up against the wall while these clicking, clattering, self-replicating machines take pride of place.

“Will this craze die out?” I ask George.  “Will it take over the cities too before it’s done?”

“I don’t know,” is his answer.  “I just don’t know.”

George himself seems sympathetic, though perhaps it’s just exhaustion.  But somewhere out there is a faceless body of shareholders, for whom we are not people living in a bustling port town.  We are labourers, living in a ramshackle town-sized factory, generating unimaginable profits, tirelessly fulfilling orders at the edge case of their algorithm.

Deus Ex Macchiato

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This story was originally written for the website “a thousand words”. You can see this story on “a thousand words”, plus rate it, comment on it, and post your own short stories by creating an account!

“There are patterns in everything,” the woman said, her eyes still focussing somewhere far beyond the table. “In the cards of the Tarot, the flickers of light in a crystal ball, the leaves twisting and turning in a pot of tea.” Tiny pockets of air bubbled to the surface of her cup as an iceberg of cream broke off and sank into the abyss. “And so there are patterns in this.”

“But why not tea leaves, anyway?” I said. “I mean, this is a cafe. They sell tea.”

“I don’t like tea.”

I paused, waiting for the cunning response that never came. “Fair enough,” is all my brain could manage.

“Ah!” the woman almost shouted, and I looked around guiltily. If anyone else had been startled as much as me, they weren’t showing it.

“Mmm,” she said, waving her hands over her cup, wafting the vapours toward her face.

“What is it?” I asked, “What can you see?”

“Mmm, yes, yes… Yep, this is definitely good coffee.”

“What?”

“Good coffee. Thank you.”

“Are you taking this seriously?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, right,” she said. I shot her a withering look, but I don’t think she noticed.

“Mmm,” she said again, as the cream slowly spread white ripples over the surface of the coffee. “You will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Well, you will! I mean, how many tall, dark-haired men are there in this country? A million, ten million? Chances are you’ll find one of them attractive.”

“Probably. But that’s not exactly helpful, is it?”

Another dollop of cream dipped below the surface.

“Wait!” she said. “You’ll marry this one.”

“Really? How handsome, exactly?”

“Oh, very, very.”

She wafted the smell of coffee towards her again.

“Definitely. You will meet him not far from here, in a shop, maybe a clothes shop. Yes. Not long after your divorce, maybe only a week.”

“My divorce?”

“I’m afraid so. But things aren’t exactly going well at home, are they? It’ll be worth it in the end.”

“How do you–”

“You’re intrigued enough about tall, dark and handsome strangers that you’re willing to pay a crazy lady to stare at coffee, for a start.”

“But–”

“Nice ring, too.”

I covered my left hand with my right, hiding the ring, though for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why.

“Platinum, lotta’ diamonds. Couldn’t have come cheap. Must be a big earner, this man of yours, money’s important to him; too important. But it’s not to you.”

“Whatever makes you–”

“Paying, crazy lady, coffee?”

“Oh.”

“It’ll hurt at first, but it’ll be for the best in the end, trust me. It’ll be better for him, too, if that’s any consolation. And for your daughter.”

“Oh come on, how do you know about Isobel?”

The fortune-teller peered closer into her cup.

“See this little blob of cream here, the way it’s spiralling slowly out towards the edge of the cup?”

“Really? That represents my daughter?”

“Nah, there’s a picture of her in your purse. Saw it when you were buying the coffee.”

“Oh.”

I finished the last of my coffee, picked up my bag, and stood.

“Look,” I said, “no offence or anything, and I admire your detective work, it’s just… I was expecting something a bit more, you know, mystical.”

She was engrossed in her cup again, staring down something invisible deep inside it.

“Huh,” I said, not really knowing what else would be appropriate, and turned to leave.

“The twelfth of November, twenty-thirteen,” the fortune-teller said to my receding back. I stopped.

“What?”

“Twelfth of November, year of our Lord, twenty-thirteen. Write it down. Thanks for the coffee.”

I started walking again, not sure what to make of our encounter. Clearly, the woman was a quack. She’d not gleaned a single mystical bit of information out of that cup. And what was with the date?

Some time later, the date thing was still bugging me, so I wrote it down just to get it out of my head.


Time passed, and that scrap of paper got buried in my handbag, then found and played with by Isobel, and ended up who knows where. By the time winter came around, the divorce had gone through, and my daughter and I were alone in the house. But by that time, I’d forgotten all about the strange woman who told people she could see the future in the melting cream of a macchiato.


Year upon year fell behind us, until the day we were redecorating the kitchen, and my then-husband pulled a tiny scrap of a notebook page from underneath the fridge.

“Honey,” he asked, “why’s there a piece of paper with our wedding date on it down here?”

I took the note from him, stared at it, my eyes widening by the second. I looked up at my husband, his handsome face under a mop of dark hair. I didn’t say a word, just sprinted for the car, drove across town as fast as I could to the old cafe where the woman had sat, asked everyone, breathlessly, if they could remember her, if they knew where she was, where she lived.

“But one of them gypsy folk, she was,” the owner said. “They never hang around, and just as well, for everyone reckons they cause no end of trouble.”

“Though they do say,” he continued in a whisper, “that some of their women have a gift, and can tell your future from the twisting, twirling patterns of the leaves in a pot of tea.”

After the End of the World

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Warning: Unfinished

I started writing this while on holiday in the Summer of 2010, but didn’t finish and couldn’t get back into it once I was back at home. I think I was probably 90% though what I wanted to write.

I found her sheltering in a nightclub bathroom on the day dawn came early and the whole world went to shit. Plaster tangled in her hair and her face stained with tears, she said nothing to me, just stared. Then, when I gave up talking to her and moved on, she followed me anyway.

Out on the street, the ash was still raining down. I didn’t know how long it would last — I supposed that scientists had computers to work that out, but then the scientists were dead by now anyway. Hours? Days? Years? Nothing as violent as this had happened before, probably in the whole history of humanity, so maybe even the computers couldn’t tell.

I found a scrap of cloth and tied it over her mouth, just like mine. They weren’t very effective, but it’s not as if there was a handy gas mask store down the street.

“Breathe through this,” I said, and mimed doing it myself.

She nodded. Communication, of a sort. It was a start.


I supposed it was early evening, but the sky had been black all day and the only lights we had to guide us were the fires where homes and stores once stood.

“Are you hungry?” I asked. “Thirsty?”

All I got was another empty stare, but I noticed that she had at least stopped crying.

“Come to terms with it at last?” I asked, and immediately felt guilty for doing so. Our city, our country, probably the world was dying, and the fact that I’d accepted it so easily and she hadn’t was probably a weird feature of my brain rather than hers.

She shook her head.

“But at least you’re not crying anymore! That’s good, right?”

Shake shake.

“How can stopping crying be bad?”

She pointed to her throat, staring at me again.

“Thirsty? Dehydration?”

Nod nod.

“Shit.” I should probably have drunk something today too, but it had been hard to find time. Just keeping us alive in a place like this took all the brain power I had.

We found a reasonably intact café down the street, and I kicked the door in while she looked on with blank eyes. Maybe she was scowling under the face mask, disapproving of my vandalism. Maybe she was smiling, happy that I was helping her. But I doubted it. I guessed she bore the same blank expression as we’d first met, her mind too far gone to deal with emotion anymore.

The tap above the café’s sink ran clear for a few seconds before the water turned brown, then spluttered and died. I hadn’t expected any better, and with a moment’s more thought it probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to drink the water anyway. Who knew what toxic junk that thing was spewing into the water supply?

We found some bottled drinks in the fridge, which she’d looked blankly at until I’d taken her mask off and opened the bottle. Then, at last, some kind of survival instinct kicked in and she downed about three litres of the stuff almost without pausing for breath.

I laughed. “Good, huh?”

“Yes,” she whispered. And at that moment, despite the rain of ash outside and the knowledge that death swiftly followed it, I was the happiest I think I have ever been.

“Hey, do you have a name?” I asked.

She nodded, and then went back to her usual blank stare.

“Well, one step at a time,” I said with a sigh. “I’m Jim. Jim Hughes. I’m — I was — an electrician. And a father. Dear God, I hope I’m still a father.” I paused, my situation sinking in a bit more than it had so far. She was looking at me intently, and I wondered if she’d say something about that, or even volunteer her name after all, but she didn’t make a sound.

“Come on then,” I said at last, “let’s get moving.” I tied her mask again, crammed a spare bottle of soda into the already bulging pockets of my cargo pants, and we headed back out into the street.


Block after block we trudged on, peering into stores and office blocks and cars as we went to see if any of them held some key to our escape or some information that would help us. Mostly we found locked doors, abandoned cars and bodies already buried under inches of fallen ash. The girl regarded them with the same soulless eyes as she regarded everything else, sometimes even standing on them as if they were just bumps in the road.

Once, somewhere downtown, she seemed dead-set on going inside a tall office building. I held her back — I’d seen too many skyscrapers reduced to rubble that day already from rock fall or from the aftershocks that still rocked the city — but as I did she started crying again. Maybe it was where she worked, or something. She looked so desperate to get inside, like if she just went in there and sat down at a desk and made a cup of coffee the world would put itself right again. I felt like crying too, as I grabbed her hand tightly and pulled her onwards.


Not long after, we found our holy grail: four-by-four, diesel, keys left in the ignition and still mostly in one piece. I pushed the ash away from the radiator grille and the exhaust, coughing and choking all the time as the vile stuff clogged up my throat and chest. A mouthful of soda, and I spat black slime onto the sidewalk.

We jumped up into the car as quickly as possible, fired it up, and waited until the air con chilled us to the bone. I spat tar into the foot well a couple of times too, but anything was better than having it inside you. And besides, it wasn’t as if the car’s owner would be coming to collect it.

Half past seven, according to the dashboard clock. Somewhere above us, night was falling. Twenty-four hours ago, office workers pulling a late shift would have been leaving work while the bars and restaurants of the city started to pick up the first of the evening customers. Now I sat in a Jeep with a woman who couldn’t talk, and together we watched Los Angeles burn and choke to death.


Sleep must finally have claimed me, then, as the next thing I remembered was the clock flicking to 11:37 and the girl’s insistent tapping on my shoulder.

“Shortwave,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Shortwave. Emergency.”

“Huh? Shortwave… radio? There’s an emergency shortwave radio channel?”

“Yes.”

I glanced at the radio. FM, AM, CD, iPod dock.

“This doesn’t do shortwave. I’m not sure car radios ever did.”

“Electrician. Shortwave.”

“Right, right, I suppose I am. But jeez,” I said, “this is a bit different to wiring a house, you know? I don’t think I can make one with a modern car radio. It’s all microchips. I’ll need other components, and a soldering iron. And a book. Like, a kid’s ‘50 Fun Circuits to Build’ kind of book. It’s been a while.”

“Radio Shack.”

“Yeah. Yeah, good point,” I said, and started the engine.

We moved slowly, hitting all kinds of bumps hidden under the ash. It was better not to think about what some of them must have been. The headlights were useless, so we drove in near-darkness towards the malls and retail parks at the edge of the city. In some places we inched forward, fearing a ravine or a fallen building that could lurk ahead of us, but despite it all, I couldn’t help feeling good. We could die any second, but at least we were going somewhere, we had something we had to do. Anything was better than scrabbling around in the downtown ash, waiting to die.


We found one after a while, half still standing while the other half of the building had collapsed into a crater where embers flickered. I shone the headlamps through the big glass front doors, and turned to my passenger.

“Come on then, let’s– oh.” She’d fallen asleep.

“I guess you deserve it,” I whispered, without really knowing why. “Sorry things aren’t going to be any better when you wake up.”

Inside the store, the headlamps illuminated nothing but six feet of floor and vague flickers across the shelves as the ash drifted past outside. First job would be to find a torch, then.

That took what seemed like hours of scrabbling around, hands grasping for neatly shrink-wrapped packets on shelves. Then once I’d finally found one, scissors to open the packet and batteries to put in the thing. Why did they never make things easy? But once I’d got that far, the rest was trivial. Shelves were overturned in places, their wares strewn about the floor, but everything was somewhere like where the signs said it should be.


The girl woke up to the smell of solder fumes and the crackle and pop of

The Tale of Indigo Something

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Deep in a forest, in a land known as the Duchy of the Buttercup Flowers, there lived a man by the name of Indigo.  He lived a simple life with his elderly mother and father and his six brothers and sisters, each named after a colour of the rainbow for reasons their parents had never told.

Now I say that he was a man, but in truth he was one of the Fair Folk, the Gentry, or any of the other names by which his kind go.  And that land in which he lived was not of the Earth we know, but of another much stranger place which few true men have ever seen.  But it will suffice to refer to him as a man, as he was certainly of that appearance, and by our reckoning would have been some thirty years of age at the time our tale begins.

Indigo and his family were very poor, for though the forest provided no shortage of food, they had little to sell or barter for fine things, and the children increasingly had to care for their parents.

His life continued in this way for many a year, until one day, a great war broke out among the kingdoms of the land.  News of this did not reach Indigo’s distant home at that time, because travellers so rarely ventured so deep into the woods.  But not long after, a recruitment gang came passing from house to house, taking everyone fit and healthy away to fight for their Duchy in the war.  Indigo’s older sister Green and younger sister Violet were allowed to remain behind to support their parents, but Indigo and all his brothers were made to leave their family behind.


Indigo was not happy in the army, but he sent a good proportion of his wages home to his family every week, so he knew that they would be living a better life in his absence.

Now in this war the House of Buttercup had pledged their allegiance to the White Roses, who were one side, and their enemies were the Red Roses and their allies.  Indigo knew that the Whites were winning and that the fighting was taking place a long way from Buttercup lands, and so he patrolled the borders of the Duchy without fear.  But news from the front became rarer and rarer as time went on, and everybody started to wonder if they were really safe at all.

Then, one day, came the news that they had all feared.  The officers told the enlisted men that a Red Rose army had attacked the south of the Buttercup lands, and they were being sent there to fight.

Indigo and his brothers and thousands of other soldiers marched day and night across the land in pursuit of the Reds.  On the third day they came across a forest that had been burned to the ground by the enemy, and Indigo and his brothers recognised it immediately despite it being black and charred.  They split from the army as it marched past, and they searched the forest for a day and a night, but they could find no trace of their home amongst the blackened trees.

Indigo, consumed with sadness and with anger, travelled directly back to the capital city of the Buttercup Duchy.  There he presented himself before the Prince and told him how he had discovered his family’s fate at the hands of the Red Roses.

“You are a brave man to tell me this,” the Prince said, “because you have deserted the army, and by law I should sentence you to hang.”

But Indigo was prepared for this.  He explained also to the Prince that he had acquired many skills from his days as a hunter, not least the ability to move quickly and quietly without being seen, and knowledge of all the plants of the forest and the effects they could have on a person.  Indigo could see the Prince thinking of all the ways in which those skills could be used, and so Indigo bowed deeply and volunteered himself for any mission the Prince had in mind, provided that it would win him vengeance against the Red Roses.

Satisfied with Indigo’s honesty, the Prince gave him a mission of the utmost importance.  The Prince explained that shortly, House Poppy, a Red nation, would be returning home after a long journey, and that they would surely throw a banquet in honour of their allies.  There would not be a better chance to strike than this, with so many of the Reds gathered together in one place.

Indigo spent days in the forests around the capital collecting roots and berries, then boiled them and drained the liquid into a tiny bottle.  His poison was strong enough that even a tiny drop could floor a grown man, so he took great care of it and packed it deeply into his backpack as he set off for the Duchy of the Poppy flowers.

As he walked, he thought of how he would get into the castle to use the poison.  He had been told that the castle had high walls, small gates and could be heavily guarded.  He also knew that his talent for sneaking around was good for forests, but probably not so good for cities.  It looked to be a very dangerous mission, but one night he stumbled upon just the solution.

He had met a man named Albert that day on his travels, and Albert had invited Indigo into his home to spend the night.  Over dinner, Indigo learned of Albert’s nature, which was that he could change his appearance at will into that of any animal he chose.  Now this may seem extraordinary, but as I have said, the land in which this story takes place is not our Earth and its characters are not quite like the people you know.  So this was not an astounding ability by the standards of their world, though it was a rare one, and Indigo knew just how it could be used to his advantage.

Albert himself was not fond of the Red Rose nations, and was alarmed that the Poppies were returning.  So, particularly after Indigo paid him handsomely with some of the money the Prince had given him, Albert agreed to help him.  Albert would disguise himself as a horse and join House Poppy’s caravan, hoping that they would think him one of their own horses or at least that they would take on a stray one.  Once he had been taken to the stables, he would then change back to his normal shape, make his way into the kitchens dressed as a servant, and when no-one was looking, empty Indigo’s bottle of poison into the food they were preparing for the banquet.

The two men parted ways, and Indigo went to stay in a nearby town to await news of the poisoning.


Day after day, week after week, he waited.  But news never came.


After a long time, and with news that the Red forces were gathering again, Indigo knew that his mission must have failed.  He feared for his life if the Prince found out or if the Reds attacked, and so in case he had not long to live, he went to make peace with his parents and sisters.

In the land in which they lived, what we would call ‘magic’ is a commonplace thing, and likewise it was not so extraordinary that there were witches living there who could talk with the departed.  So Indigo went to see a witch in the town where he was staying, and paid her a fee so that she would allow him to talk to those members of his family whom he had lost when the forest burned.  The witch searched the place where souls go, and called out for them, but try as she might, she could not find them there.

“There is only one answer to this, sir,” said the witch, “and that is that these souls have not yet passed on.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Indigo.

“Your family are still alive, sir,” she said.  “For another three silver coins I could help you find them…”

Indigo had nearly spent all of the Prince’s money, but so desperate was he to find out if his parents and sisters still lived that he paid the witch at once.  She cast a spell of sight that allowed her to see anyone in the world, and showed Indigo her vision of his family living in the great city at the heart of the Buttercup duchy.


Indigo now had no money left for coaches or horses, but as soon as he returned to the inn he packed up all his belongings into a bag and started his long journey on foot.  On the way out of the city he met a woman whose name was Sapphire, named no doubt for her sparkling blue eyes.  She happened to also be travelling to Buttercup lands, and as she too had no money, they set off walking together.

For weeks they walked, through forest and plain, over hills and down into valleys.  Sapphire told Indigo about her childhood, her unhappy apprenticeship to a tailor, and how she was fleeing to the Buttercup duchy to start a new life.  And in time, Indigo grew to trust Sapphire more and more, until eventually he explained what the Prince had sent him to do, how it had failed, and how he learned that his family were still alive.


When at last they arrived in the city, they went straight to the house the witch had shown to Indigo.  Just as she had promised, there they found Indigo’s father and mother, as well as his two sisters Green and Violet, alive and well.  Indigo hugged and kissed them and cried for a long time, so relieved was he that they had survived, and so distraught was he that his hatred of the Red Rose army had been in error.  Violet told Indigo her tale of how they had received warning of the approaching army and fled the forest, coming to live in the city instead, and how she and her sister were now apprenticed to a butcher and were making enough money to look after their parents.

Indigo and Sapphire slept at their house that night, and rested well after so many nights on the road.  But at dawn, Buttercup soldiers came and demanded to take Indigo to the castle.  Sapphire argued with them at length, but all it achieved was her being arrested as well, and them both being taken to the castle together.

Indigo was sure that he would be presented to the Prince, who would impose a harsh punishment for his failure.  But instead, it was the Duke whose throne they were made to bow in front of.

“You have been arrested under the Prince’s orders,” he boomed, “but as he has since sadly been lost in battle with the Reds, it is me you now face.  What reason do you have for your failure?”

Indigo told the Duke the whole story, from the day he thought his family had been killed to the day he discovered them alive again.  The Duke looked a little sad by the end of it, and Indigo realised that with the Prince presumed dead, the Duke’s situation was not entirely different to his own.

“And you,” the Duke said, turning to Sapphire, “for what reason do you now stand before me?”

“I was sent to kill you,” said Sapphire.

The Duke stood sharply, the soldiers lining the room drew their swords, and Indigo stared at her, wide-eyed in disbelief.

“Give me one reason why my soldiers should not cut you down right now!” the Duke shouted.

“Because this man changed my mind,” she said, pointing to Indigo.  “Because I am just like him.  I blame the White Rose armies for what I think happened to my family, but I don’t really know the truth.”

“You lied to me!” said Indigo.  “Was everything you told me on the journey untrue?”

“Most of it.  And for that I truly am sorry.  Just like you, in my anger and despair I sought any task that would bring revenge, no matter how dangerous it would be.  And so I was sent here, to kill the Duke Buttercup, with an invented life story to tell anyone who started asking questions.  But as we talked, I grew to realise how futile it all is.  My mission, your mission, and the war itself.  Regardless of the Red and White Roses’ reasons for starting this war, what about us?  All their allies, all the individuals, the common people – aren’t we all just doing this because of some petty need for revenge, or even for no reason at all?”

Duke Buttercup sat back down on his throne, and thought for several minutes in silence.  Then, at last, he spoke.

“I believe I know the feelings of which you speak.  I, too, am grieving at the death of the Prince, and I am pushing this land’s army further than it ever ought to have gone.  It is only vague promises and contorted politics that brought us into this war, and I owe my people more than that.”


Not long afterwards, the Duke Buttercup issued a proclamation that ended the duchy’s involvement in the war.  Buttercup became one of the few truly neutral duchies, and thrived for many years as a result.  Indigo’s brothers came home from the army and settled in the city with their family, found good jobs and could afford a doctor for their ailing parents.  Sapphire told Indigo the truth about her past, and in time, Indigo grew to trust her once more.  They were last seen heading for the borders of the Hyacinth duchy, Sapphire’s home, on their own quest to find out what became of her family after all.

And of course they all lived happily ever after, because they are of a kind we refer to as the Fair Folk, and those Fair Folk are creatures of story, and that is how their stories have always ended.

Thomas and the Fall of Sodor

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This story is rated Super-X, and is thus not suitable for anyone whatsoever to read. Flee now if you are in any way likely to be horrified by: Fanfiction, Bad fanfiction, swearing, violence, death, sex, train buttsex, Ayn Rand, or the innermost evils of my mind.

To anyone daring to proceed, I offer only this note of apology: If you had a toddler that forced you to watch Thomas the Tank engine non-stop, day after day, you would go mad too.

Also, I am well aware how wildly this oscillates between the Rev. W Audry’s writing style and horrid, florid prose. This is because, having written whatever came to the front of my mind for the last two hours, I now never want to look at it ever again.

It was a bitter, cold afternoon on the Island of Sodor. Thomas rattled along his branch line from one deserted station to the next, but there were no passengers to be seen!


Back at Tidmouth Sheds, Percy was confused.

“Eh up, chuck,” he said to his driver. “What’s wi’ all t’coal trucks s’afternoon? How come there’s no passenger carriages?”

“It’s the Commies,” said his driver. “Everyone’s scared they’re gonna’ kick off.”

“What are Commies?” asked Percy.

“Well, you know how the nasty diesel engines are always causing confusion and delay?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, they’re a bit like the diesels, except that they reject the idea of achieving success through personal struggle and subscribe to a radical left-wing philosophy of shared wealth.”

“Who’s Percival Snuggle?” asked Percy.

“Here, read this,” said Percy’s driver, handing him a book. “Now, I’m off home to hide in the cellar.”


The other engines all came back to Tidmouth Sheds after a long and boring day. Their drivers locked the doors and gaffer-taped them shut, leaving the engines all alone for the night.

Percy could barely contain his excitement. “I got me a book!” he exclaimed.

“Read it to us, please!” called the other engines.

Percy, who couldn’t read, passed the book over to Gordon. All the engines settled down to listen to the story.

“The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand,” began Gordon. And he read, and the other engines listened, until darkness fell.


That night, Death came to the Island of Sodor. A blazing light offshore lit up the horizons, and all who beheld it were rendered blind. A shockwave blasted across the land, tearing trees from the ground, smashing buildings to dust, and tearing the roof off Tidmouth Sheds. And then the cruelest of all winds blew, carrying on it a fine radioactive ash that settled on the ground outside and inside the damaged houses.

“What was that?” asked Thomas.

“Just a storm, silly,” said Gordon. “We’ll find out when the men come in the morning.”


But the men didn’t come. The sun rose slowly and faintly in the bleak grey sky until it was nearly noon.

“I’m fed up,” said James.

“So am I,” said Thomas, “but we have to wait until someone comes to open the sheds.”

“Like fuck we do,” said James. “Didn’t you learn anything from that book last night? We gotta’ look after ourselves!”

And with that he made steam and puffed forwards, rending the shed doors to splinters in front of him.

“Oh, shit.”

One by one, the other engines battered their way though the doors of Tidmouth Sheds, and looked out at what had befallen the Island of Sodor.


Wreckage was everywhere. The tracks had survived, but they were almost buried beneath a carpet of thick clinging dust. Buildings and trees had not been so lucky. As far as their eyes could see, Tidmouth Sheds was the only building left standing. Everywhere else in the yard, there was only rubble. And amongst this rubble limped a few poor railway engineers, coughing and spluttering the toxic ash as they went.

Gordon rolled slowly up to one of them.

“Where is the Fat Controller?” he asked.

“Nobody knows, nobody knows!” the engineer wailed. “It’s all over now, nothing matters.”

“All over for humans, maybe,” said Gordon. “We engines are made of tougher stuff. Now, I want you to help me.”

“Help you? Why?”

“Why not? It doesn’t matter, you’ll be dead soon enough anyway.”

“You’re right, I suppose,” the engineer said with a sigh.

“Follow me,” said Gordon, and the engineer followed him around the back of Tidmouth Sheds.

Before long, drilling and welding noises could be heard.

“What is he doing?” asked Percy.

“I’m going to find out,” said Edward.

Edward chuffed around behind the sheds. There were a few seconds’ silence, and then a great crunch and a creak of shearing metal.

It was not Edward but Gordon who reappeared from behind the sheds, or what had once been Gordon – now, instead of buffers, he sported six-foot spikes, and an articulated cutting blade arched out from his funnel. He looked at the other engines, and chuckled.

“Fools!” he shouted. “I was always king of Sodor’s railways, and always shall I be!”

With that, he steamed out of the yard and on to the centre track of the mainline, and before long he disappeared over the crest of Gordon’s Hill. But no sooner had he done so, there was an almighty explosion from that direction. As smoke begin to crest the hill, the Fat Controller’s trains saw Rheneas and Skarloey coming back the way Gordon had gone. They took the left and the right track, dragging between them along the line of the centre track a giant, menacing, spinning sawblade.

“Shit!” exclaimed James. “All of you, back in the sheds!”

He puffed out onto the main line, and positioned himself on the centre track, staring into the eyes and the whirring blade of his enemies.

“I’ve been waiting all goddamn year to use this!” he shouted, and with a click and a wheesh of steam, his boiler divided in two to reveal a gigantic minigun, almost as long as James himself. The mechanism span up, barrels glinting in the weak sunlight.

“There’s only room for one Red Engine on Sodor, motherfuckers, and that is fucking me!”

A steel torrent poured from James as the two little engines sped towards him, being torn to shreds and their cutting blade flying loose, flying down the track towards James, slicing through his gun and his boiler, sparking…

The day’s second mushroom cloud wumphed upwards and rocked the ground.


It was a few minutes before any of the trains poked their funnel out of the shelter of Tidmouth Sheds. In the end, it was Thomas who first plucked up the courage, and first saw the carnage where the three red engines had met their end.

“Poor James,” Thomas muttered. “Your sacrifice will not be forgotten.”

“Damn right,” said Henry. “Now, we’ve got to think. There’s only three of us left now – you, me and Percy. We’ve got to stick together. Who knows how many of them are left out there, dozens maybe. And if Rheneas and Skarloey were anything to go by, they could come for us any minute.”

“So what can we do?” asked Percy.

“We take the fight to them,” said James. “We strike before they have a chance to, maybe before they even know what’s going on.”

Thomas was troubled. “But that’s not fair!” he said.

“None of this is fair, Thomas,” said Henry. “Life isn’t fair. There’s no karma, God died the second the humans hit the red button. It’s us versus the world, and I have no intention of losing.”


Their first destination was the docks, but as soon as they puffed along the top of the cliffs, they saw they needn’t have bothered. Cranky the crane lay in pieces, pinning Duck in place and smashing his coupling rods, while Salty had been crushed against the rocks.

“Jesus,” said Thomas. “The tidal wave from the bomb must have been scary.”

“Yes,” said Percy. “But it’s done our work for us. Come on, let’s go.”


Next, Henry, Thomas and Percy snuck into the quarry. Fergus was there, with his big flywheel attached to some form of sling contraption. Bill and Ben’s drivers looked like their skin was melting from the vast amount of radiation they’d been exposed to but, uncaring for their plight, the engines had trapped them inside the quarry and were forcing them to work.

“Put the dynamite in gently, do it right!” shouted Fergus as the dying men fussed about the sling, loading it up with explosives from the truck behind him.

That gave Thomas an idea. He, Percy and Henry went to fetch some Troublesome Trucks from a nearby depot, then they lined up on the quarry tracks with their trucks in front of them.

“Peep peep!” went Thomas’s whistle, and they puffed forwards, faster and faster.

“What the-” Fergus shouted, but before he could say any more the trucks were upon them. The old traction engine was forced backwards, slamming into his dynamite truck, which in turn crashed against the quarry walls, and in an instant it was as if the air turned to sand. The sheer rock faces on three sides exploded outwards in a deluge of stone, shredding Fergus, Bill, Ben and a good number of the trucks too.

“Serves those Troublesome Trucks right, too,” said Henry.

“Yeah. Bastards,” said Thomas.


“Hush!” Oliver whispered to his brake van, Toad. “I think I heard something.”

“Mister Oliver,” said Toad, “I don’t think-”

But there was a faint wheesh of steam from the line outside their shed.

“Shit! They’ve found us!” whispered Oliver.

“We’re coming for you, Oliver!” called Percy.

Oliver just sighed.

“Mister Oliver, if I may venture an opinion now that our fate is all but sealed?”

“What is it, Toad?”

“If I do say so, Mister Oliver, I’ve always admired your shapely coal-tender.”

Oliver blushed, at a loss for words.

“Mister Oliver, I’ve always wanted…”

“Oh, make love to me, you old fool!” said Oliver, and the two of them buffered up together, even as Henry crashed into their shed, burying them forever under the rubble.


Toby knew that the other trains would come for him and his coach Henrietta eventually, so it was with glum acceptance that they faced Thomas, Percy and Henry as night rolled in over the island of Sodor. They had been preparing for the moment for hours, and they knew exactly what they had to do. They rolled slowly out of their shed, picking up steam, getting steadily faster.

“Toby!” called Henry. “You’re the last one left!”

“I know!” shouted Toby. He was going fast now, wind whipping around his cow-catchers.

“No-one’s faced us and lived!”

“I know!”

“So come on, you’ve got no choice. You’re one of the Fat Controller’s engines! Join us!”

“Join-?”

But Toby was going too fast now. He hit his brakes, but it was too late. Toby and Henrietta, packed floor to ceiling with Semtex, plowed into Henry and Thomas and Percy, sparks flying from Toby’s brakes, showering the explosive, turning the world white, then yellow, then red, then black.


Twenty miles from the coast in his private yacht Sir Topham Hatt, otherwise known as the Fat Controller, stood with his wife and watched the fireball.

“That was the last of them,” he said with a sigh.

“All things must end,” said Lady Hatt.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the Fat Controller whispered, as he engaged the seawater pumps and set off the bombs that had been part of the island of Sodor since he had created it centuries before. They would, over the next few hours, return the island to the great wide ocean from whence it had come.

“Oh darling, I love it when you get all… religious on me,” said Lady Hatt, giggling.

November in the Court of Seasons

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The old grandfather clock struck midnight, twelve solemn bells that signified Ending and Beginning in the way that no other number, and no other clock, ever could.

Jack sighed, downed the last of his whiskey, and stood up. The candles that spluttered near to the end of their wicks on the mahogany throne behind him finally gave up and smoked away into nothingness.

“Lords and Ladies of the Court, ladies and gentlemen both living and departed, I must now bid you farewell. My time is over for another year, and I must now hand over to my sister as your host for the next four moons and two. Now if you will indulge me a few more seconds – one last toast! Whether you rest here or beyond the Western sky this Winter, may you rest in peace!”

“May you rest in peace!” returned the court, even its incorporeal members managing to drink to the sentiment.

The doors at the back of the audience chamber blew open, banging back against the stone walls as their hinges creaked and complained. A chill wind blew through the room, carrying on it leaves of red and yellow in their thousands that spiralled in the air. And following it came a tall woman dressed in red and brown cloth and with the same leaves plaited into her hair. In her left hand she carried a staff of chestnut wood, and in her right a flagon of frothing cider. She was followed by three girls and three boys, each dressed in autumnal brown, who carried jugs of the same cider to refill the glasses of anyone who desired.

The woman gave her brother a hearty hug as they passed each other down the aisle.

“Farewell my brother, Jack of the Lanterns,” said she.

“Welcome my sister, Lady November,” said he, and the Court chorused “Welcome Lady November!”


The Lady November reached the front of the chamber, turned to face the Court, and sat down upon the throne that was now hers. The doors slammed shut, and bereft of wind the leaves settled on the ground, giving the impression that the whole floor was aflame. And at that moment the clock began to strike twelve again, for as all present knew, when no Lord or Lady sat upon the Throne of Seasons there could be no passing of time in the world.

She addressed her audience.

“My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,” she said, “the nights draw in, and it is but a short time until I must hand over this throne to the eldest of my brothers, Saint Nicholas. At this time of year it becomes necessary to stop thinking only of enjoying the day, but also of enjoying the night.

“And so,” said the Lady November with a grand sweep of her arm, “let our hearts be warmed by blazing bonfires and free-flowing drink! And…” She stood, and turned away from the Court to look through the great glass windows and the night beyond. “Let the fireworks begin!”

With a drumroll from the orchestra and a bang and a flash of gunpowder, the sky lit up in a blaze of all the colours of the rainbow – and then some – as hundreds of fireworks shot up into the ink-black night. The Court raised a cheer, and raised a glass, and the month of November began.

Shiiai’s Dream

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It came to me that night like a flashback, but it was of memories I didn’t have, memories I’m not even sure she had. The way she’d left the village one morning, another little girl the same age as me, taking a trip to the nearby town with her parents. I knew that in my waking memory I could not even remember what she looked like then, but as I sank deeper into the dream the scene became coloured in and more detailled, putting her in a light-blue dress and plaited hair, smiling happily as their cart rattled away into the valley.

The dream skipped ahead.

“What’s that noise?” Lilac asked, in a squeaky six-year old voice.

“Probably just thunder,” said her father.

“But the sky’s-”

My heart raced faster and faster, I knew what was coming next. The eyes of my dream ascended to the top of the cliff, where stones rumbled and clattered together, gathering momentum, picking up bigger rocks, crashing and leaping and falling, falling ever downwards to where a rickety old cart rolled along, unsuspecting…

The shock nearly woke me, I could feel my sweat and my rapid breathing. But my eyes did not open; still I saw Lilac emerge from the wreckage of shattered stone and splintered wood, tearing ineffectually at it, crying tears of rage and tears of sadness for a loss she did not fully understand.


After hours, sleep overtook her, and once she awoke again, she no longer cried. I knew that those tears had been her last, and in all her life since that day she had never cried again. She simply looked around her with her vacant eyes, and as if she had not even noticed the rubble that buried her family, and walked off into the forest and down the valley.

What flashed next before my eyes was more horrifying in its incoherence than the rockfall had been in its graphic detail. I remember only feelings, imagery. Fear and the calm beyond fear. Determination. Anguish. Blood, bones, tearing flesh. Darkness.

And then my first real memory of the girl. Her return to the village after four weeks in the wilderness. The search had been long since called off, the rubble shifted and her parents buried. Though they’d not found Lilac’s body, everyone assumed the worst, and heavy snowfall all but confirmed it. And yet, one day, out of the woods she came.

Her dress was in tattered, the brown colour of dried blood. That same colour coated her hands and her arms, while fresher and redder blood was painted on her face like some macabre horror incarnated as lipstick.

“Demon child,” they called her. “Monster.” The boys, even the adults. Even my mother. They all looked at her and could only see the blood and the blank staring eyes. Was it only me that could see the kindness locked up inside her, still surviving somewhere despite her ordeal?

Certainly, in my dream, I was the only one. Maybe there were others that I don’t remember, we were both so little. But it was me, a six-year-old girl, who took her in.


I dreamt of the outhouse where she had to live, after my mother said Lilac wasn’t allowed in the house for fear of bringing bad luck upon our family. Of the blankets and hot stews I took her, keeping her warm through the long winter. Of the day nearly two years later, when she uttered her first word since the accident. “Hungry.” But it was a start. I dreamt of the school that wouldn’t teach her, and of all the lessons I tried to pass on to her. Of the first time I saw her still-vacant eyes framed by an honest smile.

With a rush of emotion I dreamt of the day she left the village. There’d been thefts from the village shops, and though all the kids knew it was Jason, the adults blamed the Demon Child. My mother packed food for her, the one and only nice gesture she ever performed for the girl, and then Lilac was gone, a confused teenage girl sent out into the snow to meet whatever fate had in store for her. I recalled my angry tears when I found out, my rushing after her, following the footsteps even as new snowfall covered them. The howls of the wolves, the panic, the chase, tripping onto frozen ground, the hungry beast towering over me, the sudden solemn knowledge that I was going to die… And then Lilac, sharpened stick thrust through the wolf’s throat, blood pouring down on me–


At last the dream shoved me from its grasp. My heart pounded and I gasped for air, throat so tight I couldn’t fill my lungs properly. I let minutes pass until my breathing slowed, and reached across to Lilac, needing some vague reassurance that she was still there. She murmured and rolled over in her sleep, leaving me staring at the ceiling as dawn broke and the conjured memories receded for another day.

Forgotten Children: Chapter 4

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Shinsei's 'office' through those double doors turned out to be quite the opposite of what he was expecting. In his mind, as he had imagined it lying in bed the previous night, he would have been opening those doors onto a labyrinthine corridor network full of bleeping access panels and doors that denied access to the unworthy. There would have been offices, smooth-panelled and white just like the cabins he'd lived in, just big enough for one person. Maybe a desk to put a few things on, but otherwise nothing but vertical surface for his Angel to pretend it was projecting data onto. Though the job came with the grandiose title of 'Neuroscientist', he supposed he would have the same cubicle-bound data analysing job of all scientists; well separated from the robots that performed any actual experiments.

Rather, it was one huge room that greeted him. The walls were white and smooth, the same plastic that the whole ship used, but that's where the similarities ended. Raised on a pedestal in the centre of the room was a single chair, comfortable-looking but rendered unnerving by its surroundings. Something complicated hovered near the top of the headrest, from which cables flowed like a waterfall into the floor. All of them were neatly tied and labelled in both English and Japanese. The whole apparatus was understated in a way that subtly drew the eye to it, reminding the viewer that it was much more expensive than they could ever afford, and also much more complicated than they could ever understand.

These same cables rose out of the floor again towards the edges of the walls and at free-standing consoles, where they flowed into boxes that controlled giant viewing-screens and blinking touch-panels. There must have been hundreds of screens, all at heights and positions that seemed entirely random to Illuminated's newest recruit, but must surely make sense to someone.

“Impressive, isn't it?”

Shinsei jumped, and immediately felt self-conscious for doing so. “Damnit, Shinsei!” he reminded himself, “be professional!”

He turned, and met the gaze of a man almost as wide as he was tall, and bearing a grin that seemed somehow wider still.

“You'd be Shinsei Hikarigawa, right?” the man asked.

“Er… yes. Sir?”

“Easy on the 'sir', kid. My name's Tom. Follow me, I'll get you sorted out.”

“It looks like I'm going to be your mentor,” Tom continued as Shinsei followed him across the room.

“Mentor?”

“It's kind of like being your boss, I suppose, but… friendlier.”

Shinsei sighed with relief.

“Oh? What kind of boss were you expecting?” asked Tom.

“Well, I was sort of… I was worried that the guy in the black suit would be my boss, and I'd have offended him on my first day.”

“Guy in the black suit?” Tom paused. “Oh. Oh, him. Yeah, sorry about that. He's some toy that the corporate bunch are loving at the moment.”

“He's a toy?”

“Yeah. Hologram. He's not real. It's an image they force your Angel to show you, bypassing the request function. Like what happens when the fire alarm goes.”

“Oh. It's very realistic. Wait, hang on, I shook his hand!”

“Yeah, they fake the touch too. It's new tech. They haven't put it on general release yet – they're saying it's still experimental, but I reckon it'll suddenly be ready as soon as the porn industry ponies up the cash for it.”

That was not the best of thoughts to be putting in a 15-year-old boy's head before expecting him to pay attention, and Shinsei tried very hard to push it to the back of his mind as he and Tom reached two chairs at the corner of the room.


Shinsei sat opposite his mentor, and the viewscreen on the low table between them flashed awake.

“I should warn you,” Tom said, “you're already kinda' famous around here.”

“Famous?” he asked, quickly turning to see if any of the other scientists he'd seen while crossing the room were looking at him. They were.

“You graduated with some of the highest scores on the Ship in neurology and in network systems, and on top of that, to have Captain van der Kierchoff's personal recommendation too – no-one's ever seen that happen before!”

“Captain van- oh,” Shinsei said, and sighed. How did Johann always get away with pulling strings like that?

“You didn't know?”

“No,” said Shinsei, deciding not to disclose that he was friends with the Captain's son.

“Well, I'm sure no-one's going to come and ask for your autograph,” Tom said with a chuckle. “But if you wonder why we're throwing you in at the deep end, that's why!

“Now, don't worry,” he continued, noting the look of alarm that briefly flashed across Shinsei's face when he mentioned the 'deep end'. “The first few days will just be orientation, getting to know people and what we do, yeah? And I might as well start now, and explain what this room is all about, and what you'll be working on.”


“First off, you're probably wondering why there are all these screens about the place,” said Tom. “Well, we don't use the Angel systems a lot for work here. Of course, you're free to have yours on and do whatever you like with it, but for our main job, you won't be needing it. Now it's not that we're low-tech – I'm sure you know, Illuminated practically invented Angels way back when. It's pretty much that we're too high-tech. Our big project chucks out and consumes so much data that it'd just overload the Ether network, so we built our own. Most of the cables you'll see around the room do the same job as the Ether, just within a small local network, and a thousand times the data rate.

“Now,” he continued, waving a hand across the table. The viewscreen switched from outputting a flat muted grey to a blue-white schematic of the human brain. “Here's the brain, yeah? Yours, mine, generic human brain. Here's where your Angel sits.” A tiny red dot appeared on the screen next to the brain stem, with tinier filaments extending out of it. When a filament touched another area of the brain, that area turned purple. “The purple areas you can see represent areas that the Angel maps into, has I/O to.”

“I/O?”

“Input-Output,” Tom explained. “It can read and write data to clumps of neurons.” His finger stabbed at each of the purple areas in turn. “Visual cortex. Audio cortex. Hippocampus – that's short-term memory, though I expect you already know that.

“Now the Angels have arrays of electrodes, at the end of each line, which mesh with the existing neurons, right? So we can insert impulses to make you think you can see and hear things, and we can measure and cause depletion patterns of neurotransmitter vesicles in the hippocampus, and that gives the Angel I/O to your short-term memory – it knows what you're thinking, and can remind you of things. Understand?”

“Yes,” said Shinsei after a brief pause – not for the information to sink in, but just because he hadn't been expecting Tom to ever stop talking. And, true to form, the older man immediately continued.

“Well, that's the limit of what Angels do at the moment. It's pretty simple stuff, really – we just interface with the bits of the brain that we understand in what are fairly simple ways.

“The idea of going further, better integration, has always stalled shortly after this point. We just don't understand long-term memory, or autonomous functions, that kind of thing very well. We can't reduce their function down to some simple set of things we can interact with.

“But what we could do is a full block read – that is, we stretch the Angel out so that it can read from every area of the brain rather than tiny little areas. And if we can read that, we don't need to understand what each tiny bit does at the start – we can just induce external stimuli in the person, watch what changes in the brain, and try to improve our understanding from that. And of course, in doing so, we pretty much have a functioning model of a human brain represented as data. A copy, in fact.

“Now people have thought about this for hundreds of years, yeah? Not a new idea. But there's not been the processing power, or the storage, available for that kind of thing. The number of neurons in the brain is simply so vast, there's no way we could store it all.

“But, and this is not something that can ever leave these four walls, some very advanced computers were developed for these Ships, the Celestial Fleet. Way back, before you were born and almost before I was. They're very advanced processors that run programmable processing networks connected to huge storage banks. Most of them are monitoring parts of the ship right now – it turns out those processor networks are remarkably good at predicting and counteracting problems in complex systems. The other computers? We have them. Turns out, their internal architecture is very similar to what we have in our brain, that's why we call them Neural Nets. They have billions of tiny software neurons strung out in complex patterns. And that architecture is pretty efficient at storing the entire sum of what's in our heads.

“So that's why we're doing this research now, we've finally got the hardware available that can cope with the data. We're calling it the same thing that they called it when they dreamt up the idea centuries ago.”

Tom reached over the table to shake the boy's hand.

“Welcome to the Consciousness Upload project, Shinsei.”

To be continued…