I need Libby more than ever, and I need the shit she gives me.
"You're in pain," she says, her voice neutral and calm. "Why didn't you call?"
Jeeeeeeesus-H-Christ. Blades along the back of my neck. A crunching in my abdomen. Like yesterday and the day before, but worse.
"Hit me with the M1," I grunt. "Please."
I don't even hear the bleep this time, just a sudden surge, a coldness down below, somewhere around my kidneys.
Within seconds my pain subsides, and the universe collapses to lucid bursts of nostalgia: I am a child again, running along a beach, my playful shouts carried away by the salt breeze; I am a teenager debugging my first project as it begins to take on a life of its own; then at a birthing clinic, watching my daughter being thrust into the world on the last breath from the love of my life; then a newly bed-ridden man, hearing Libby's voice for the first time, hoping that she will be worth the money; finally, a twice-bereaved and embattled septuagenarian, made livid by the swarms, by the global invasion.
And now a kind of heaven, where I feel that everything I have done has been momentous. Even the stupid things, the stuff I fucked up big time. I would not have had it any other way. A crowd gathers somewhere out there beyond me, waiting to applaud me for the work that I have done and the work that I still have to do. Important work. Vital work.
A hand reaches out. It might be Libby's. I take it and squeeze it gently, and the mere act of doing this fills me with a passion, a promise, a dream.
When I die at last, I hope it will feel like this.
***
The bastard plague that is eating my insides has not finished with me yet. I wake in the same bed, eyes fixed on the silver-white ceiling, the pain seething outwards from its nest in my wrecked belly, taunting and pricking like a malevolent ghost. I am tempted, not for the first time, to ask for the M5. To finish this once and for all.
Libby's voice infringes on my indulgent self-pity. "You need a wash," she says, and without waiting for as much as a nod from me, the familiar process begins: the warm jets sluice my most withered parts, a metallic flush expels brown water into the waste pans; an unwelcome whiff sets in as the plumbing shifts beneath me, motors clicking and yacking.
"There we are, all done."
"Always a pleasure," I groan.
"Do I detect sarcasm, Mr. Yeats?"
This makes me smile. Of course she detects sarcasm. It's coded into her.
"I am truly grateful, Libby. Someone has to wash the shit from me."
"May I remind you that you were an accomplished software engineer? Such language is unbecoming of someone so educated. "
"Correction, Libby. I am an accomplished software engineer. My body might be old and largely defunct, but I can still put in a shift. And I am thinking it might be time for your upgrade."
"Your account is low, Mr. Yeats. You can only just afford me, as I am."
This I know to be true. I bought the apartment thirty years ago, when – for want of a better phrase - I was at my fiscal apex. An adaptive suite doesn't come cheap, everyone knows that, and mine has had to adapt more than most, to the demands of an old bastard incapable of even the most basic biology. Hence the absence of doors in this place, and the snaking presence of tubes and pipes and drips everywhere. Hence the lack of warmth.
"Take me to the window," I announce, ignoring Libby’s encoded petulance. "I need to see what’s out there."
A hum of a motor, the click of gears, and the bed glides away, tracking smoothly from room to room on an invisible field, tilting and twisting until we reach our destination; the front room, and the best view from the apartment.
"There you go," says Libby. "I shall leave you alone for a while."
I huff at the statement. I want to shout out that I am always alone. Nobody is with me. Everyone that has ever meant something to me is out there. Out in the tearing chaos of a locked-down world, or somewhere beyond.
The sky begins to darken as I watch. The Thames, once mighty, lies like a broken thread of grey across a forgotten city. It is an hour or so before curfew ends, but the swarms are still visible.
I have always preferred to watch them at dusk, when their threat is ebbing. Tonight I can make out three distinct patches, oil stains against a crystal sky, spreading, dripping, smearing. Sometimes, I find beauty in the swarms, in the way they split, fold, and merge, like the avian murmurations that so engaged me as a child. But there is rot in the beauty, a sinister purpose, a mystery that consumes me.
To the west, behind the jagged ruins of the Shard, I see different shapes; bullet-like oddities leering and shifting, waiting poised until the right moment. This is the government intervention, though God only knows whose government.
I shift my position, and the contours of the mattress shift with me. As I raise my arm a spasm shoots down my left side, as if the government intervention has locked on to me and EM-pulsed my central nervous system. I cannot move my neck, and words will not come forth from my pathetic numb lips. I bang my left hand against the feeding tray, rattle the tubes and valves; a toddler tantrum from a failing husk of a man. It is enough to bring Libby back from her quiescence.
"More M1, Mr. Yeats?"
I slam my hand once more against the tray, and she reads the affirmative like I knew she would.
Outside, the sky throbs, a helicopter-rattle through the still and silent air. Something huge is passing overhead. Are they sending in the heavy weapons again? Or is this something different? I try to ask Libby, to confirm what is happening, but I struggle to form the words and find myself drifting away.
***
I wake to the sound of klaxons. Dozens of them, competing in a twisted orchestral nightmare.
"Infringement, Mr. Yeats," says Libby. As if I hadn't guessed. Motor hum, click of gears and I am off again, my bed pitching in the haste to get to the mesh room. I check my watch: 2 PM, Greenwich mean. I must have had one hell of a sleep.
The gate slides shut, and the curtain falls. We are inside the Mesh room, the F-cage, whatever you want to call it; to me, it always feels like a trap.
"Apartment systems on limited mode," says Libby.
"I know. You don't have to tell me every time."
"Protocol, Mr. Yeats. And besides, it has been almost three weeks since the last incursion. It cannot hurt to remind you."
So here I am. Just me, my bed, my tubes and pipes, listening for signs of a threat that probably won't come. I ask Libby to access the wide-view on the roof of the block. We are in limited mode, so the resolution is poor, but I can see all I need to see. Across the rooftops, between the spires and dishes, the sky is a patchy haze, much denser than I have seen before. The flies are here, and they're here in numbers.
"Libby, have we any breaks in our sealant lines?"
"Of course not, Mr. Yeats. I check them every day, and would order repair if they were compromised. Surely you know that? Are you OK, Mr. Yeats? You seem more nervous than usual."
"I am sick of all this crap. Sick of these bastards trying to get into my apartment."
I refrain from telling her that I am sick of her, too. Protocol.
The picture on the cable feed crackles and splits in response to a local EM pulse. When the feed flickers back to life, I can make out a definite white patch. The pulse has split the swarm. Not that it makes much difference; the flies just push upwards and regroup; they always do.
Jets fly overhead in a pathetic show of force; I hear them before I see their trails slash across the screen. A caustic shadow falls across the image, making it difficult to discern the swarms. Then that modulated throbbing, the belly-bass rumble that I heard yesterday at the window.
"What the hell is that?" I ask, hoping that Libby has some inside information.
"I cannot access," she says. "Limited mode, remember?"
I make a mental note to ask her again, once we're out of the F-cage. That throbbing noise feels wrong to me. I cannot put my finger on it, but something is out of place.
We spend nearly half an hour in the mesh room. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the infringement ends. The swarms gather and push upwards, out of the camera's field of view. The klaxon wails break, and the metal web rolls upwards, inches from the end of my bed. The gate opens and I am free again to be wheeled around my glorious apartment.
"Normal functions resumed, Mr. Yeats. Would you like to go back to the lounge?"
I need to work out what is happening out there, but what good is just watching it? Besides, I feel relatively free of pain for the moment, and I might as well make the most of it.
"To my study, please, Libby, I have work to do."
***
The first thing I notice as my bed eases me into a corner of my favourite room is that the cooling pipes are misting up. I ask Libby to check ambient humidity, and she confirms that it is a little high. One of the drawbacks of living in a swarm-sealed apartment, but still, it feels colder in here than usual. And quieter, somehow.
"Libby. Could you not interrupt us for a while? Not unless, you know, something serious happens."
"Of course, Mr. Yeats. Consider my ears shut."
I beckon for the interface plate, and watch it glide across on quiet servos until it nestles neatly in my lap. Startup is as uneventful and silent as I intended; the last thing I want to do is wake my daughter too abruptly.
Some months ago, I framed an old printed photograph of her and hung it in front of the adaptor plate on her coherent core. Not so much to remind me what she looked like, but to provide me with the sense of actually talking to her, in the flesh.
She comes around slowly, but doesn't speak for several minutes. And then, at last, she notices me.
"Hi Dad. Have you come to work on me again?"
I smile. "I have come to work with you, Sam. Yes. I have some ideas that I would like to share with you."
"Might these ideas, by any chance, necessitate me taking another trip down the Spine?"
"Only if you're agreeable." I know that navigating the main coherent duct of our classified Q-network is a procedure riddled with risk. I would never force her to do it.
"When, ever, have I not been agreeable?"
An image long suppressed rides out into the vast plains of my mind. It is the day I took Sam and a friend of hers to a docklands tech convention. She was, what, eleven years old? Twelve at most. I remember the two girls standing, all hair and smiles, waiting for their turn in the VR domes. But that day I had to leave the hall for an urgent meeting. I was parent and in loco; I could not leave them alone at the fair. I ended up shouting the hell out of Sam. Swearing too, if I remember. Embarrassing her in front of her best friend; which at her age was tantamount to ruining her day.
I was a terrible parent, even then.
"This one will be quite some trip," I tell her. "And you will have to be covert."
"As if I could be anything else."
Not for the first time, I am beset by last-minute nerves. She is my daughter, for Christ's sake.
"I am sending the instructions in now."
This time I am asking a lot of my daughter. Asking her to hack into the swarm’s communications. I want to destroy the bastards.
"Can you do it?"
A few minutes’ quiet, then a stirring, an upping of the hum of her cooling fans.
"I think I can," she says, sounding every bit as mature as the thirty-four-year-old she's supposed to be. "There will be risks, of course. But more to you than to me, I think. Let's face it; I am already dead."
I know she's half-joking, but it makes me sad and angry when she talks in this way. In my weakest moments I have even considered coding this type of talk out of her. But then, she wouldn't be her, would she? She wouldn't be my Sam.
My head begins to pound, my legs feel numb, and a deep pain wrenches and twists in my gut. My brief oasis of normality is over. I need Libby and her drugs.
As Libby eases me out of my study and towards the front room, I have a sudden, horribly rational thought: this could be the last time—I may never hear from my daughter again.
***
The swarms arrived nine years ago, to the day. Next year will be the tenth anniversary, although few will celebrate. Their arrival was global and sudden. Most who were awake on the Earth's daytime side saw them in the skies before the news even hit their feeds. Reactions varied from blithe incomprehension to downright fear. Governments sallied, the military poised itself for conflict, and security forces vied for hopelessly speculative contracts.
Nothing happened. The swarms grew and diversified, but they made no attempt at contact, and neither did they display any signs of aggression. The swarms avoided the night side of the planet, confirming that they received their power from the sun, and they moved in a purposeful fashion between population centres, largely avoiding the wet and the barren parts of the planet, implying an interest in human activity which made their seeming ambivalence even more frustrating.
Occasionally an individual from the swarm would 'die', falling and eddying like a seed to the surface. Naturally these dysfunctional individuals were swept up and subjected to every test imaginable. They were found to be largely organic in composition, but riddled throughout with meshed molecular circuitry. They varied in size, the smallest weighing in at less than a microgram, the largest a gram. There seemed to be tens of thousands of different types, making a systematic study of their collective function difficult. Some had rings of microscopic tendrils that in flight could unravel and extend several metres. Others were enigmatically plain, lacking any obvious means of flight.
Where did they come from? Everyone had their theory: an advanced surveillance for an impending extraterrestrial assault; the accidental result of a secret military project; a punishment from God; a collective hallucination; a bad dream.
For six long, paranoid months the swarms betrayed no hint as to their purpose.
And then the killings began.
***
"Mr. Yeats? Time to come round. Dr. Renner wishes to speak with you."
I open my eyes, and in my half-dream I am in a bathtub. I can move freely. I can twist and slosh about. Hell, I could even stand up if I want to. Stand up and dance the fucking can-can.
"Mr. Yeats?"
Louder and more impertinent. Libby can be officious at times.
I take a deep breath, my world returning slowly to my bed and my tubes and my softly sluiced shit.
"Mr. Yeats, Dr. Renner is on the line."
"I know. I still have a functioning brain."
I tell Libby to patch me in and prepare myself for another nagging lecture from my doctor.
"You haven't taken my last two calls, Mr Yeats. It has been a fortnight since I last checked on you."
"I have been busy," I say, trying not to betray the fact that Jayzus Mother of J.K.Fucking Rowling my stomach is trying to split me open.
"How is the pain?"
I am not going to answer that.
"Your household routine, your..."
"Libby," I manage to spit out. "She's called Libby."
"OK. As you know, she has been passing me your functional data on a daily basis. And, sorry to be so terse, but things aren't looking good."
Too right they're not looking good. My abdomen bulges like a swollen airbag, my legs feel like oversized cotton buds.
"Give me the update, Renner, then leave me alone."
He clears his throat. "Your liver function is well down on the last report. So too are your kidneys. Considering the stage of your disease, and its resistance to previous treatments, the prospect is multiple organ failure..."
"How long?" I interrupt.
Dr Renner clears his throat, but it sounds more like a growl than a cough. "Could be a week. A month perhaps. You will appreciate that it's difficult to give an exact..."
I curl into a ball, the pain like a screwdriver twisting and tearing at nerve fibres. I call Libby for the M1, and feel it slipping into me, probing and cooling. It's not enough.
"Your breathing sounds laboured, Mr. Yeats. I will send Libby something stronger to reduce the inflammation."
The doctor’s signal drops out, and Libby fills the space with empty soothing platitudes.
Christ, I have so much to do. I am learning faster than I ever have, coding quantum algorithms that I wouldn't have believed possible a year ago. Sam and I are this close to cracking the swarm's communications. Ideas burst rampant in my mind, every minute and hour of waking consciousness. It would be just my luck if I keeled over before we had a chance to finish our work.
"Libby, back to my study please."
On the way, I retch into my curled hand. A dry retch, an oily spit of phlegm and blood.
***
Sam is back, and she found something. I patch in to our secure channel and find her waiting, excitedly, busting to tell me.
"They're in there, Dad. In the Spine. Just like you said they would be."
My breathing quickens, tightening and restricting.
"Dad? Are you OK?"
I have tried to shield the worst of my maladies from her, but there is only so much you can do. I clear my throat and hack again, swallowing it back.
"Where did you find them, Sam?"
"They were at the South end. Fully coherent, and gathering in numbers around the TelCo node. Like they were trying to get into the main stream."
This is unbelievable. I have been waiting for something like this for years.
Sam buzzes like a ten-year-old. "They must have got in during the last incursion. Maybe they rode an EMP or something. Or took a Rosen bridge. No, that doesn't seem right. It didn't feel like that. It might have been just my imagination, but they're acting like tourists in there."
It might have been just my imagination. Hell, that brings a smile to my face. "Do you think they saw you?"
"I don't think so. My programmer, don't forget, is something of a genius."
I love this girl, like she was my own flesh and blood.
"They are up to something, Dad. The next phase of their plan. I’m guessing world domination."
Just like when she was fifteen, there is no way of telling whether she's serious or joking. I wait for her to settle down.
"I want to go in again, Dad. To learn more. Maybe we can find out enough to... you know..."
It's as if she's waiting for me to finish her sentence, to resolve the dissonance: maybe we can find out enough to take out the swarming little fuckers. To blow them back to the empty hole they came from.
I tell her to be patient. There are a few things I need to deal with, to sort out in my head before I send her back in.
Libby comes back online as soon as the channel closes.
"Mr. Yeats. Something is happening outside. It's all over the feeds. Not an incursion as such, but there are shadows. Would you like to go to the window?"
***
They always kill in the same way. First, a pulsing knot breaks from the main swarm and swoops down to envelop the head of its victim. Tens of thousands of the little bastards, buzzing, writhing, chewing. In less than a minute, every bone, every fibre, every damn molecule is gone. The headless victim drops to the floor, or sits prone and ludicrous like a broken doll. The flies don't care; a kill is a kill and off they go, returning to the bulk of the swarm.
Half a billion kills globally, if the official feeds are to be believed. A million in the UK alone, most in that first uncertain year. We have become more savvy since then; the daytime curfew, sealed apartments, EMP weapons, laser sweeps; these have all helped but there are still hundreds of kills every day; often military personnel, but also the elderly and confused, the disheartened and the delusional.
The swarms had been here for nearly nine months when I was called to identify Sam's headless body. Midnight in a cloying and quiet room, she lay on a cheap aluminium gurney, one of perhaps twenty undefined lumps beneath stained and bloody sheets. We held hands for the last time, the doctor stretching the tester tubes to prick blood from beneath our skins. The match was confirmed, but I did not need a smart electronic sensor to tell me she was mine. I broke down then, released my pressurized emotion in a spurt of rage and despair. I thought I would die. To this day, I think that that might have been better; if I had died then at the feet of my girl, my only child, my living dream.
"She was brave," the doctor had said, or at least some words to that effect. I know she was brave. Brave and stubborn. Christ alone knows why she joined up with the army, and as a volunteer? I was weak, of course. I didn't think I could stop her, so I didn't even try. My inaction probably ended up encouraging her; opening the border to a pitiful death at the age of twenty-six, a fate that she shared with her mother.
After Sam's death, I threw myself into work. I hardly slept. I wanted revenge, and saw no shame in it. And I had skills; skills that could help bring down our cold invaders. I was confident and proud; if anyone could hack into their network it would be me. I mean, it had to be a network, right? We knew they were partially artificial, that they had some kind of electronic architecture running through their tissue, and we knew that they functioned like a collective, that the loss of individuals was irrelevant to the whole.
I knew I could get to them, somehow. I tried everything. I learned and unlearned, I researched, I innovated, but always with the same outcome; an obsessive scramble down a dead-end track. I couldn't do it. I could gauge their channels, sometimes get a whiff of their communication, but there was no way in, no way to really read them, to influence them, to bring them down.
I still had some friends at the time, and they tried to bring me to my senses. Reminded me that tens of thousands of bright young minds were working on the same thing. In the Americas, in China, Europe, Africa, they were all at it. And they were working together. How could I stand a chance, alone and tormented? I told them to fuck off.
Eventually, I conceded that I was getting nowhere, and that I was making myself ill. I eased back my efforts, but my mind continued to lurch. I needed a change of project, something different to keep me going.
So I began to work on her. She was twenty-six when I started. Next week will be her thirty fifth birthday. We will mark the occasion as we always do, but hopefully this time we will have something to really celebrate.
***
I do not see anything out there. Nothing unusual, at least.
"Libby, you told me there was something happening. You said there were shadows."
I hear a pump pick up, shoving saline into my ailing blood stream.
"The shadows have gone now, Mr. Yeats. Preliminary analysis suggests they were caused by density anomalies in the air. Some kind of pressure modulation, but transient. There is much speculation on the feeds, but nothing decisive.”
A pressure modulation? Could that explain the strange noises, those bass rumbles that I had taken for a new type of intervention?
“Are we testing kind of new weapon?” I ask, but Libby is not forthcoming.
They are up to something, Dad. The next phase of their plan.
I gaze for a while out the window, deep in thought, then ask Libby to take me back to my study.
Whatever is happening out there, we have no time to lose.
***
Sam has been waiting, patiently and quietly. She starts jabbering away as soon as I connect her interface plate.
“You went back in without my permission?”
An awkward silence.
“Their proxies are still there, Dad. In the Spine, gathering around the same node. But you’ll never guess what I found out.”
She has my full attention. “Tell me, Sam.”
"They're planning to leave."
"Leave the Spine?"
"No! They're leaving Earth! I am ninety nine percent sure of it."
“How do you know?” I ask.
"I was less cautious this time, Dad. They detected my presence in there, somehow, and I sensed they were trying to communicate with me. Or, more precisely, to communicate with you.”
The nausea returns, and I strain hard to keep it at bay. The thought of setting up some form of dialogue with the bastards who killed my daughter is almost too much to bear.
"I managed to open a back door, to hear what they had to say,” Sam continues. “And one of their proxies spoke to me, Dad. They said there is something you need to do before they leave.”
“Something I need to do? Are you sure that is what they told you? Might the message have been lost in translation?”
“I don't think so. In fact, I got a strong sense that the reason they were in the Spine in the first place was to find a way to you; a discreet way, a means of one-to-one comms that could not leak to the global feeds.”
Holy shitting coat of many colours. “What do they want from me, Sam?”
I double check that our link is secure. Whatever it is, I don't want Libby to know.
Sam tells me, and it blows my mind.
"You said you're ninety nine percent sure of this?"
Her photograph smiles back at me. "To be honest, it’s more like about ninety."
I laugh with more vigour than I have none for a long time.
I feel like I am twenty-one again.
***
"I want to go out, Libby, and I want to go out now. Please unseal the apartment and unlock the door for me. The rest I can do for myself."
I have been dreading asking her. I know it seems ridiculous—she’s a coded routine, for Christ's sake—but Libby has my best interests at heart. I knew she would be awkward about this. But she cannot keep me under lock down, not against my will.
"I don't know if that's advisable, Mr. Yeats. It is daytime, in case you hadn't noticed. The curfew is in place for another four hours and twenty one minutes. And you cannot stand for very long, let alone walk. I should call Dr. Renner. Or your old business partner, Mr..."
"Mr. Barnes? You have got to be kidding me! I may be old and withering, but I am an adult and I have a right to go out. Do not call anyone. Just...just do it, Libby."
The door hisses as its seals relax. Staring at that open space, I am suddenly nervous as hell.
"Go on then, Mr Yeats," Libby says. "Go out there and finish it all. Go out there and give up."
"Shit on a stick, Libby, I am feeling not suicidal! Quite the opposite, in fact."
"Then why not wait until curfew ends?"
I huff and swing my legs over the side of the bed, take a few deep breaths, allow the world to settle.
"I fear that you might be having one of your episodes, Mr. Yeats. One of your delusions. Perhaps I have been too generous with the medicines."
"I am not fucking delusional! Libby, give me a break. Make yourself useful and help me pull these tubes out."
A pause, then a whirring sound. My catheter slips out, followed by the drip in my arm. Finally, I wrench the plastic tubing from my nose, spluttering snot and caked blood all over the floor. Then, with a lot more effort than grace, I haul myself to a standing position.
"Steady, Mr. Yeats..."
With all the concentration I can muster, I shuffle through the door into the passageway beyond. "Is the lift operating?" I ask, catching my breath.
"Does the pope shit in the woods, Mr. Yeats? Of course the lift is operating."
Did I hear her correctly? Since when have her adaptive humour routines become so sophisticated?
“Then this is goodbye, Libby.”
I manage to stagger across to the elevator and signal my wishes to the outer apartment net. I haul myself in, battling against a wave of dizziness, then drop to the floor. I lie there rasping and gulping like a dying fish as the elevator begins to descend.
The net still recognizes the code for my car, and I find it waiting for me, front door open, as the lift lets me out. I climb ungracefully into the vehicle and tell it where I want to go. As it reaches the barrier, an automated routine warns me loudly that official advice is to stay indoors, ideally in a sealed room. Curfew ends in four hours and ten minutes.
The barrier lifts, and the car takes me out into the streets that I have known all my life. It takes a left, then cuts down a narrow one way alley. Nobody is about. A beautiful crisp February day and nobody is about. There are cats aplenty, though, and foxes that stare at me with suspicious eyes.
Down a tree-lined avenue now, then to a wide and empty junction, where I tell the car to pull over, and take manual control for the last few hundred yards.
Climbing out of the car is easier than getting in, and I manage the short walk to my bench without incident.
I grew up around here. I walked this park with my father, and then later with my wife. This is where I wooed her, and where she—against all odds—succumbed. I can picture us as if it were yesterday, smiling at our reflections in the pond. Bloody hell, why did everything have to turn out as it did?
This is my park. And this is my bench. And let's be honest, I see no fucker around to dispute my claim. With some frustration, I notice that I am becoming short of breath again. In my haste to get out here, I forgot to take Renner's pills. Never mind. I am not moving. Not until nightfall, if that's what it takes.
I look up, above the canopy of birches. The swarms are up there, three big ones, flickering and folding across the hazy blue. I wonder how long it will take for them to notice me, for them to take action? Ten minutes? Half an hour? Despite Sam’s assurance, I am not convinced they even will notice.
I begin to feel the cold. Too much time in a warm, conditioned apartment. I put my hands into my coat pocket and sit slumped on my bench for what must be twenty minutes before I notice that a dark smudge, a knot, has formed in one of the main swarms. As I watch, the smudge peels away from the main group, plummeting like a falcon, lost for a few moments behind the South London skyline.
Bouncing bejeeesus, Sam, I hope you are right.
A car pulls up, startles me from my thoughts. Driverless, it shoves out its crackly message: Official advice is to stay indoors, ideally in a sealed room. Curfew ends in three hours and twenty-nine minutes.
Who cares about the curfew? If I play this right, there will be no curfew. The car drives away, unconcerned by my lack of action.
I look up to see what's coming, to brace myself for the outcome.
A racing, seething cloud stretches across the far side of the park, then splits in two; the bastards are going to come at me from both sides.
Suddenly they are in my mouth, in my hair, my ears. I feel them pushing down my throat like an oily cloth. My nose rips, and blood comes gushing. I try to move my arms but fail. Everything is numb, and everything is black.
And then before the pain has even spiked, I am soaring, looking down on an old man's headless body, on a lifeless husk, with blood and mucus pumping from the ragged remains of its neck.
Above me is the sky. Beneath me is my city.
I can fly! Up, down, left, right. I glide carefully down towards my bench, then glance across to the junction where a jeep has appeared, its windows dark and barred.
Behind me, I hear a voice:
"Dad?"
I look around but there is nobody there.
"It's me, Dad. The real me."
What the fuck?
"Don't be alarmed. I felt this way too, when I was taken. Disorientated, confused. Jesus, it even crossed my mind that I had gone to heaven."
"Where are you? I cannot see you."
"You cannot see me because I am invisible. As are you. There are millions like us, Dad, and the swarms are nearly done. I got to you just in time. Hell Dad, I have been trying to reach you for years!"
My mind—but can it still be my mind?—rushes to put the pieces together. "It was you?” I ask. “You that my Sam found, in the Spine?"
"Me and a few others, yes. I told them that I would find a way in, and I did! I got in, and the Spine led me to your apartment."
Instinctively, I sweep my gaze around, looking for her face, her body. But she is nowhere to be seen!
"It takes a while to get used to, Dad. But don't worry—it gets easier. Come, follow me..."
I sense an absence above me, like a partial vacuum, and I follow it, naturally and effortlessly. Way down below, some guys in military uniform are covering my useless body with a sheet and carrying it to their jeep. Up and up I push. London lies flat beneath me, a faded aerial photo.
"Isn't it amazing!” Sam shouts as we soar ever-upwards. “There are others that you know up here too, Dad. I'll take you to them. But before all that, there's something we need to do. Your payment, if you like, for us getting you out."
I sail with her her high above the city, this new me with no body, no brain. It is an exhilarating, disturbing, unfathomable feeling.
"We would probably do it anyway, but it feels better to get your approval."
"Do what, Sam?"
"You need to destroy her, Dad. You need to destroy the other me. She knows our purpose. She found us out—you found us out. And that cannot be.”
Shit. This is for real, isn't it?
***
One final image, one last reel from this beautiful planet, before we fly away.
An apartment block, somewhere in the frightened expanse of a giant city. A sharp white fire erupts, seals burst, the front window shatters in a hail of molten droplets. An adaptive bed catches fire, its stained sheets turn to ash. An automated routine sends its last feeble warning before quietening forever. In the study, a strange metal construct glows a dull red, then orange, then a furious white. A plastic polaroid photograph of a young woman begins to melt and crinkle in the heat. Smoke pours out of the apartment, billowing, hugging the walls.
"Come on, Dad. It is time to go."
Sirens wail, the firefighters on their way even in the midst of a curfew. By the time they get there, the fire will have burned itself out, and there will be nothing left.
END
