Archive for November, 2009
Hotel Antarctica
Monday, November 16th, 2009
Jake jerked his head up. He’d been drooling. He wiped his face on his sleeve, looked around, then saw the message flashing on the screen. The scanning electron microscope had finally finished pumping down. They really needed that new machine.
He groggily clicked thru the startup procedure, finally got an image of the sample. One am. He had 6 hours left till anyone else had the machine scheduled.
Zoom in, focus, zoom in, focus, Jake was reading license plates before it registered that he’d imaged a city on an antarctic meteorite. One of those meteorites that, mineralogically, seemed to have come from Mars.
Jake excitedly scanned the rock surface. The city covered a good part of it. This was incredible! Forget the thesis. Nature, Science, a Nobel prize!
Jake feverishly scanned and photographed streets full of dwellings, temples, public buildings, focusing in on smaller and smaller details. Fountains, park benches, things that could be statues or streetlights, even people. Hundreds of people, all froxen in place, the monochromatic SEM display reminding him of the ash people of Pompeii.
“This stupid machine,” Jake grumbled. No matter how he focused or adjusted the stigmation he could not resolve facial features. He became obsessed with getting the perfect shot. Backscatter electrons didn’t help. He tried an alternative view and suddenly, one of the faces swam into focus. It had a pair of wide-spaced oblong eyes, a thin, sharp nose, and a wide mouth. The martian looked up at Jake, beckoned with a finger.
Jake began to doubt, for the first time, that he was awake.
—
“I don’t know,” Sara said. “Jake was supposed to be on overnight. I unlocked the door, and the place was a mess.”
“Ew. His clothes are here.” Jili poked her foot at the crumpled jeans and T-shirt that lay on the floor between the chair and the SEM. The worksurface was littered with empty Mountain Dew cans, candy wrappers, and a spiral notebook, open to a blank page. “He doesn’t use a laptop?”
“No, and it doesn’t even look like he was working last night. He didn’t take any photographs. Do you suppose he ran out of here naked?”
Jili woke up the screen. “He’s got a sample in there, but at such a high power and so out of focus you can’t see a thing. Well, let’s clean up and get to work.”
end
Glass
Friday, November 13th, 2009
‘Go and have a nice holiday with your auntie.’
Sure. Great idea. That was before whatever it was that happened, happened.
By the time I arrived in Sydney, my auntie was nowhere to be seen, and when I tried to go home the trains had stopped running, with no one to drive them. And the phones had stopped working; my mobile just hummed back at me, same as the public phones and the ones in the private houses I’ve broken into in later days. Sometimes I pick up a handset just to pretend it’s something alive.
I was lucky, I found Billy – or maybe he found me – and brought me to the safe-house. He said he’d show me the ropes, but he disappeared a day later. I waited until I was starving then went out. Only in daylight – you can see things coming at you then, kind of.
Maybe Billy got swallowed by the night. He boasted he’d lasted longer than anyone. That’s why he was so surprised to see me that day, wondering down the Pitt Street Mall like some half-witted lamb, eyes wide, mouth slack, staring at the complete lack of devastation. At the total nothingness.
I haven’t seen proper sun for weeks now. It’s like it’s scared to come out.
I’m braver now, about going out for food and the useful etceteras like bottled water, because what comes out of the taps now is the colour of mud. Sometimes it just looks like blood and I don’t fancy re-hydrating with that. Some days I just wander because I’ve nothing else to do. I go to that big bookstore, Berkelouw, and pick through the stacks. My idea of an apocalypse is no new books – but it should take me an age to get through this lot.
Other days I just stay inside, under a table where nothing can see me. Those are the days I can hear noises from outside.
But here’s the thing: I cut my hand on this piece of glass. It sliced the lines of my palm that are supposed to map out my future, heart, head, and life, all snipped. That worries me especially on the days when all I can hear is the flapping and swooping noises of things that might once have been angels. And some days there’s a voice in the darkness and it knows my name.