Кейт Форсит - Relics, Wrecks and Ruins - Anthology of Speculative Fiction Short Works

The ancient roof led to a train station that led to a virtual imitation for a galactic network that was recreated in the quantum memory banks of a memorial island-ship that might or might not be the same place as the land on which that train station had once stood.

And so I speak of years and trains and spiders and hats and islands, things I have never seen and have never known, constructing the Beijing West Railroad Station of my imagination with sounds and symbols invoking outdated definitions recalling semi-reliable memories wrapped around mythical truths.

If you follow the trails of icons all the way down, you find out where you come from.

You get to go home, even after it no longer exists.

No one has spoken for a long time. The star is only a few kelvins now, a black dwarf that is just barely visible. Soon, all of us on all the island-ships will be dead.

Ancient myths speak of the universe as clinging to one of two parallel branes separated by dark energy, like the two parallel tracks on which those human-moving boxes had once ridden. The two branes collide periodically to crunch and bang out the universe, rejuvenating it in endless cycles.

If winter has already taken away everything, can spring be far away? I seem to sense the approach of the other brane—the way I imagine one would hear an oncoming train.

I pour my last energy reserves into maintaining the integrity of the memory of the glowing hubs. The myths say that the shapes of the sprouting structures in the next cosmic spring will be determined by the seeds of the quantum fluctuations planted this winter.

I am doomed to never see the new cosmic year. None of us will. There will be a brilliant flash, a trillion trillion baby stars, and new island-ships and unimaginable beings of wonder who will be born on those ships and fill the cosmos once again with wonder, beauty, light.

If I give it my all, perhaps one day, on one of those island-ships, someone will sit up and see a pattern of stars in the sky in the shape of a rectangular bridge topped by a multi-storied tower with layers of swooping roof-skirts, and they’ll name it Squat Spider Wearing a Big Hat.

Because they deserve to know something about those who came before them, something about where they come from.

Happy new year, universe

Kanye aims his dad’s nocs at the big, wide open sky. Some folks reckon birds are lucky. Birds mean you can make a wish. Kanye always wishes for another Hercules plane. His vision sweeps in a wide arc, past the stackbots in a blur, past the dump and the concrete buildings, comes to rest upon the Hercules’s sand-scored wreck. Not much left of it, or all the other good things he remembers back from when his mum was here.

He squints at the sky again. The black smudge in the far-off distance might be another Hercules; so hard to tell, with heat haze blurring the edges. Most Hercules turn out to be scrawny birds—occasionally an eagle, vultures mostly, now and then a lost and battered drone.

Kanye raises the nocs to double-check, holds them steady just in case. So much sky, not much of anything else— which is how we want it —his dad reckons. No one tells us what to do out here in the Woomera Badlands.

Kanye’s boss of the compound while his dad’s on R&R. He put Kanye in charge; said they’d only be gone a couple weeks, long enough to get the shit they need, which means he’s due back any day now.

Any minute.

His dad knows all there is to know, like programing the stackbots that are building the ziggurats from crushed-up rocket cubes. Kanye’s dad and his mates built BigZig where Kanye’s sitting now. When they get back, they’ll build a tower and maybe a mighty bridge.

When they get back from the Ram-and-Raid.

If the arseholes messing with the ’bots don’t break them.

One ’bot’s extended arms stack metal cubes like sun-dried bricks while another one injects sharp blasts of spray glue. Gellan’s built a second platform up since yesterday. He must have figured how all on his own.

Another ’bot throws rocks at BigZig.

The persistent slam of stones against BigZig’s side shreds Kanye’s nerves.

“Leave it off!” he hollers down. Gets no answer. Gellan, Slate and their dickhead buddies will keep chucking rocks at BigZig’s prison slits until they think of something else to do. Not much happens in Woomera, especially not with his dad on R&R.

Not since that time Kanye tracked along the railway line, dug under the fence and followed the Chinook trail.

That day still makes him want to puke.

He picks at blister scabs along his arms, sniffs and wipes his nose against his hand. Air smells worse than usual, on account of stackbots stirring up thick dust.

Kanye stands to stretch his legs as another stone clangs against BigZig’s metal hide.

“Give it a rest, ya morons!” he shouts.

Slate yells back, drops his dacks and bares his pasty arse. Others copy, like they always do.

Stackbots screech with random bursts of groaning, grinding metal. His dad’s gonna chuck a fit at all this mess: goats running loose and dogs tearing up the chickens. Nobody gave anyone permission , just like the time those guys built a trebuchet and started flinging cubes at the astronauts.

Still, dry air reeks of diesel and burning plastic, bright sun makes his sweaty skin itch bad. Hot air thick with fat blowflies—the only things that ever get fat round here—comes off the garbage, still piled up to mountain height even though the trains stopped coming ages back. Scavengers rooting through the filth rock up regular enough. Kanye’s dad doesn’t give two shits, so long as they keep away from the big machines.

And BigZig too, goes without saying. His dad says his future’s invested heavy in cash-cow reserves there.

Prison slits were cut to let in air for the cash-cow crop. Kanye’s only been in once—and not for long. Double dared, he’d entered BigZig, then stumbled out pretending he’d seen stuff.

Corridors stank of shit and piss, and rats ran across his foot. Swore he’d never go back in again.

Kanye watches the stackbot’s arm unfurl like a creepy bug antenna. It’s not supposed to be doing that. Those drunken arseholes got no fucken clue. He takes a swig of water, warm from his canteen. Flat and stale, it greases his mouth with petrochemical taint.

He can’t visit his secret place while those drunks are messing with the ’bots, so he aims the nocs at the long, straight stretch of rail. Just checking. Hasn’t been a train forever, not since that one piled high with yellow barrels that had propellers stenciled on the sides. No Chinooks either. No shrieking grind of hot metal at velocity; no Black Hawks buzzing high over the tracks. All of them plowing straight through, never stopping, full speed all the way to the astronauts.

He’s back to scanning the sky for birds when something red-hot snickers past his ear. No wasps left so it can’t be one of them. Fingers come back bloody from his head. One of those drunken fucks is shooting at him.

Not the first time shit has gotten wild and drunk and random. Gunfights have been on the rise, ever since that army convoy—trapped and herded into the BigZig compound. When his dad gets back Kanye’s gonna tell him all about it. Those guys get way too shitfaced to be bosses.

Another bullet scores the ledge. Kanye halts, lost without the Smith & Wesson Uncle Jaxon says he should be packing always. Kanye slings his nocs and canteen, scrabbles on all fours in search of shelter. BigZig’s exposed on every side, making him an open, easy target, the only thing protecting him is the fact those arseholes get too pissed to shoot straight.