Chris Beckett: Dark Eden

I took Gela’s ring off my little finger and turned it around in my hand. Of all the things we had in Eden that came from Earth, this was still the most perfect and the most beautiful, this little ring with the words inside it: ‘ To Angela with love from Mum and Dad ’. But we were saying goodbye to Earth here, weren’t we? So perhaps I should leave it behind here, or throw it out into Worldpool, along with the bones of the Three Companions?

‘No! No! No! Don’t leave it!’ called out the voices of future people, looking in on our story, appalled. ‘It’s the most precious thing left! You will never, never be forgiven!’

But other voices said the opposite:

‘Leave it! Leave it behind! It’ll just bring trouble, trouble, trouble, and more blood. You destroyed Circle, you’re leaving the sky-boat behind, so why not leave Gela’s ring as well and be done with it all?’

I turned the ring round in my hand. I held it up close to my face so I could read the message written inside it to the woman who was the mother of everyone. Everyone’s mother, even mine.

I looked back towards the others waiting beside the broken sky-boat.

I slid the ring back onto my little finger.

Starry Swirl shone down. It shone down over everything: the wide forest with its thousand thousand trees, the fatbucks gliding through the shining water, the black black shadow of Snowy Dark, the distant volcano burning red . . . It even shone down over David and his Guards somewhere out there, still far away, but creeping towards us like little angry ants over the great face of Eden.

Tina and Gerry came over to me, and so did handsome gentle hobbling Jeff.

I smiled. These were my Three Companions, I thought, these were my First Three, the ones who were with me from the beginning of all this.

As he reached me, Jeff opened his mouth to speak.

I put my finger to his lips.

‘I know, Jeff, I know. We are here. I just said it back there, didn’t I? I said it for you. We really are here.’

And Tina laughed her sweetly mocking laugh.

Hoom! Hoom! Hoom! went a starbird out there in forest between us and Tall Tree ridge.

Aaaah! Aaaah! Aaaah! another one answered back.

‘We should pick up those loose bits of metal there and take them with us,’ I said. ‘They’ll be useful for spears and knives.’

CHRIS BECKETT is a university lecturer living in Cambridge. He has written over 20 short stories, many of them originally published in Interzone and Asimov’s . In 2009 he won the Edge Hill Short Story competition for his collection of stories, The Turing Test .

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THE HOLY MACHINE

‘Beckett examines the interface between human and machine, rationalism and religious impulse with the sparse prose and acute social commentary of a latter-day Orwell’ — GUARDIAN

‘Incredible’ — INTERZONE

‘Beckett can stand shoulder to shoulder with Orwell and Burgess. A triumph’ — ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION