A Certain Number of Hypothetical Scenarios Read online

  Iona reached back for an arrow and nocked it, never once taking her eyes from her quarry. She drew slowly, feeling the tension build. The arrow strained against her like a wolf on a chain. Regardless, she took her time. An expert archer could nail an apple out of a tree on instinct alone, but at moments like this, the hunt took on an almost spiritual aspect. There's a fine line between work and ritual, and hunting is both in equal amount. Some shots deserve to be savoured. The flow of time took a sleepy pace as she controlled her breathing and took careful aim. When everything lined up just right, she loosed her arrow.

  It might have been her imagination, but she thought she saw it split a few raindrops on its way to the target. It bit deep into the deer's throat with feral brutality. The animal darted in shock before slumping forward into the mud. Iona watched it die.

  She closed in on her prize once it had stopped struggling, and the blood that had pumped from its neck had slowed to a trickle. The arrow looked almost like a crocus flower, the canary yellow fletching bright against the tawny fur. Iona retrieved it, plucking it from the deer's flesh.

  Her father told her that long ago, people never had to hunt. From what she heard, they never had to do anything Iona had to do. Hoisting the deer onto her shoulders and starting the journey home, she wondered what the ancients actually did. The breeze caressed her face and her trophy warmed the back of her neck. She listened to the rain as she walked.

  What a tragedy it would be to never experience this, she thought.

  MICROSCOPIC ALLIES

  Admiral Xaxos was reviewing the mission data and growing increasingly concerned. Officially it was reconnaissance, but Agent Ryax was actually, to use a human term, a canary in a coalmine. They'd reached the limit of what they could learn of earth society and biology through probes, drones, and probe drones. What they really wanted to know about was earth defenses.

  It had only been a matter of time until Agent Ryax was compromised. The analysts were all very worried, and the most recent telemetry showed it was worse than they'd feared. The subject's core temperature had risen dramatically, but his dermal temperature had plummeted. Nanoreceptors in his nervous system indicated he was experiencing pain. No sign of physical trauma though. Xaxos didn't bother to read the lab report. It was a chemical weapon, and a nasty one too.

  It appeared to be targeting the respiratory and digestive systems, inflaming the subject's passages and disrupting air intake by inducing coughing and sneezing. His four lungs were only operating at 62% efficiency. How cunning and cruel these humans were. Breaking the supply chain was key to warfare, and they'd taken that tenet to a ruthless extreme. He almost admired them.

  The terrible beauty of the disease was that it not only incapacitated the target, but caused them such discomfort that they reverted to their original Harkonoid form.

  His slitted nostrils flared as he sighed. The invasion was over before it had started, there was no way they could stand up to this kind of assault. He closed down the sensory cognition matrix and ordered a full retreat.

  Influenza, he thought. It even sounded fearsome.

  SEEDS

  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

  Nobody really knows how it happened. From what we've pieced together, the genesis of the germination event was largely due to overdevelopment. We turned their land to concrete and they thought it wasn't fertile enough. That's when the plants discovered the most fertile soil is still alive.

  I remember it blew in like a dust storm. Ridiculous numbers of airborne seeds, like the ones you used to see on dandelions. People were hanging out their office windows and taking pictures on their phones to chronicle the event. At first they were excited, but soon it was panic. When the spores landed on their skin, they took root. I remember I was with Mark when it happened. My fiancée. I watched as he ripped one out of his arm only to sprout from a thousand other places. I saw him collapse and fall apart, screaming, as he turned to flowers and scattered in the wind. Periwinkle petals floated on the breeze, beautiful and horrifying.

  The seeds had no agenda. No malice. Impartial judges of humanity, they found everybody wanting. They killed kings and derelicts alike. There was a mass exodus from the cities, but the countryside was no better. There was no such thing as fresh air anymore.

  Post mortem revealed the bodies were being consumed entirely. Devoured in seconds and dispersed to carry the plague elsewhere before rigor mortis could set in. There was no word on why it had happened, no mea culpa from any scientific organisations. Wild speculation abounded that it had origins in the Amazon. Nobody was saying anything useful. We just had to watch as our friends and families died in pain, as wiry roots coiled around their bones.

  Lamentations aside, those of us still alive wondered how we weren't affected. Over time it became clear. We were all hayfever sufferers, and we all had it bad. Somehow it gave us an immunity, but even we weren't safe. I took Esther to the hospital when a seed took root in her shoulder; we'd tried to dig it out ourselves but it kept growing back. The triage was pandaemonium. It was happening to everyone. I remember suspecting she wasn't quite compos mentis when she started acting paranoid and spasming involuntarily. It wasn't long before she became violent, along with all the other sufferers awaiting treatment. I barely made it out of that place. These days those poor victims are no better than zombies, wandering aimlessly, features obscured or perhaps disfigured by a curtain of flowers. People call them garland men. Personally I don't like to talk about them at all.

  So here we are now. Most of humanity is dead. No in memoriams, no markers to remember them by. Nothing but the sunflowers, the orchids and daffodils. Nothing but the damn plants. You'd think things would be different now, and you'd be right. But they're also still exactly the same. It's easy to become laissez faire about the apocalypse when you've lived in it for five years.

  “You know what I miss most?” asks Judith.

  Nobody asks what.

  “Shampoo,” she says. “And soap.”

  Everyone either stares at her with pure hate for reminding them of shampoo and soap or just nods vaguely to themselves.

  “Wine,” says John eventually, and I look at him, confused. It seems like a non sequitur until I realise he's been slowly weighing up the things he misses.

  “You're drinking wine,” says Daniel. “You're drinking it right now.”

  He shrugs. “Bibo ergo sum. But that's not what I mean. I mean wine.” He holds his bottle aloft and regards it drunkenly as the weak amethyst liquid catches the light. “This is but a facsimile of real wine. Real wine-” he concludes, “is good.”

  Smoke makes my eyes water. There's a salmon cooking over the fire. God knows how John caught it in that state. I think he acts more drunk than he really is.

  Daniel's tracing shapes in the dirt. He's in somewhat of a sombre mood, and who can blame him?

  A noise from the woods startles me, but it's just a deer. Funny how they've never had any trouble with the plants. I watch it investigates a rusted out car and wanders away.

  Judith has resumed talking apparently. She only has a limited repertoire, a handful of subjects in which she can claim to have expertise, but it doesn't matter. She'll happily rattle them off over and over, ad nauseam.

  Over there, across the fire from me, is Joel. He got seeded once, holding his dead wife's body. He'd ended up doing the only thing he could think of to stop the germination. Now he sits there, silent, handless, like that girl from Titus Andronicus. This is the world we live in.

  Anyway, we're out doing reconnaissance for our community. If we seem unfit for the job, it's because we are. There's not many of us left. I'm the de facto leader, I suppose. I try to keep these people together, talk to them, et cetera et cetera. Even so, there's a malaise over the camp that I don't know how to dispel.

  John's looking at an crocus myopically. “As you sow, so shall you reap,” I hear him mumble to himself. You can't stop that man vomiting up asinine proverbs.

  A shad
ow falls over the camp. I spin around to find a garland man right behind us, a strained groan barely audible through a mouth full of flowers, snatches of dirty auburn hair entangled in the stems and leaves.

  More silhouettes appear from the trees.

  I always thought the world would end with flame and lava and lights from outer space. I never imagined it would end with a bouquet.

  FLOWERS

  A city full of flowers. A city full of rain.

  I watch over it through the gap in the crumbling brickwork. There's a little girl wandering in the street below. God knows how she got there. I can't see properly through the scope of my rifle, but it looks like she's crying.

  When I see her face I remember something I haven't remembered for years. I was her age when the evacuations happened. At least they started as evacuations. The word implies that everyone was following a plan, but it was just mass panic within a few hours. Still, we call those days the evacuations, because that was the word they gave us. That's the word my parents used.

  I remember I held my mother's hand all the way through the crowds. I remember the way I slipped out of her grasp on a bridge full of violent people. I remember being jostled and crushed by the rabble as I searched for them. I remember the taste of my tears.

  I brush my hair away from my eyes and watch her through my sights as she picks her way up the road. Tangles of weeds mark the graves of the infected. One of the tangles moves.

  It's a garland man. The girl doesn't see it, she seems to be preoccupied, looking for something. Probably someone. At least she knows enough not to call out.

  Another heap of flowers twitches as she gingerly steps over it. She's going to die if I don't do something.

  I listen up. The garland men are still in the building. Seven, as far as I've been able to tell. I hid in here and barricaded the door, but if something were to set them off, like, say, a gunshot, nothing would stop them crashing their way in here.

  I look at my arm, and the green shoots growing in the festering cut. It itches like hell. The itching is worse than the pain. I've got seven days to live.

  I watch as the little girl notices the flower-covered men following her and falls down in the street as she tries to run. My finger moves to the trigger. The garland men are at my door, one way or the other.

  I've got seven days to live... or seven ways to die.

  The air smells of pollen and petrichor. Full of flowers, full of rain.

  ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

  Elise sunk down with the rest of the ship, dragged down by her brass innards. Wordlessly, she begged her creator to let go, but she knew he wouldn't. He'd brought her to life out of love, and he would do anything to save her. Elise watched him struggle and drown, her perfect sculpted face impassive while her mind whirred and clicked behind it in turmoil.

  She hit the seabed and was swallowed in a cloud of mud as the carcass of the ship broke apart around her. Over the ages her gears seized up and her alabaster curves effervesced and decayed, macerated by the sea. Still her soul lingered on. Aphrodite had infused life into her copper heart, and it would never stop now. Never.

  She lay in the Lethe for the longest time, while the lives of men went on oblivious above. When she was dredged up, she was no longer recognisable as an entity, let alone the paragon of femininity she had once been. She was limbless and worn, a sentient pebble. They held her in their hands and probed her jammed up motors. They scraped away the rust and puzzled over her mechanisms. They called her Antikythera and hypothesised her to be some kind of primitive tellurion. Some time later she found herself in a glass case, on display in some kind of temple. People crowded to see her, but it wasn't the same as it had been when she was new. They looked with awe and amazement, but not with adoration.

  "Unprecedented sophistication," they said. "One of the great mysteries of the ancient world."

  She prayed for a body but received no answer. The gods had died while she slept.

  CHOOSE: THE HALLS OF DEATH

  1-

  You're walking through a forest, a thin curtain of rain filtering through the pines. You've been told that a powerful spirit resides in these hills, holding the reins of life and death. You intend to steal your daughter back to the land of the living. A heavily notched sword is in your right hand, and vial of lightwater hangs at your belt. The path splits in two ahead.

  Go left (Go to 2)

  Go right (Go to 3)

  2-

  You see a stone marker engraved with a crescent.

  Investigate (Go to 4)

  Continue on your way (Go to 5)

  3-

  It starts to snow. You come across the burnt skeleton of a cottage.

  Investigate (Go to 6)

  Continue on your way (Go to 7)

  4-

  You touch the marker and your mind is filled with unbidden knowledge. The spirit you are searching for dwells beneath the ground, bound by the sign of the moon. He is close.

  Go to 5.

  5-

  You climb some rocks and find a large iron door obscured by ferns. It's slightly ajar, but seems to be stuck with rust.

  If you have the rod of iron, go to 11.

  Otherwise: Force it open with your sword (Go to 12)

  Continue on your way (Go to 3)

  6-

  It appears to have once been the home of a smith. The forge is blackened and crumbling, but you find a sturdy iron rod that looks useful. No weapons or armour remain. There is a hatch leading to the cellar. It's pitch black down there.

  Use your lightwater and investigate the cellar (Go to 10)

  Leave (Go to 7)

  7-

  You hear wolves. You think they're following you.

  Run (Go to 9)

  Stand and fight (Go to 8)

  8-

  You wait, sword at the ready, and eventually the wolves make themselves known. You dodge and slash as they pounce, just barely managing to avoid them. All you can hear is snarling and the sounds of your own exertion; it comes as a surprise when it's over. You stand amid seven dead wolves, the snow stained with their blood.

  Go to 5.

  9-

  You're exhausted when the wolves catch up with you. You manage to fend off two of them, but a third tackles you and clamps its jaws around your throat.

  You are dead.

  10-

  You pour the lightwater onto the blade of your sword, and it glows at the touch of steel. You cast away the spent vial and hold your sword aloft like a torch, revealing two skeletons and a message. You're not fluent in the local language, but you believe it says 'do not trust the angel'.

  Go to 7.

  11-

  You wedge the iron rod into the gap and heave, opening the door. It's pitch black inside. If you still have the lightwater, go to 14.

  Otherwise, go to 13.

  12-

  You wedge your sword into the gap and heave, opening the door, but snapping your blade. It's pitch black inside.

  Go to 16.

  13-

  You stumble blindly into the dark. You have no idea where you're going.

  Go to any one of the following:

  18

  20

  21

  14-

  You pour the lightwater onto the blade of your sword, and it glows at the touch of steel. You cast away the spent vial and hold your sword aloft like a torch, revealing two portals and an altar. You can see that one of the portals is marked with a crescent, and the other with a star.

  Venture into the crescent portal (Go to 20)

  Venture into the star portal (Go to 21)

  Investigate the altar (Go to 19)

  15-

  Congratulations! You've found the hidden section! You're clearly not following the rules, so you're killed by a wizard. Any further reading you do is now from the perspective of your ghost, dreaming of the way things could have been if you weren't such a cheating bastard.

  16-

  You pour the lightwater o
nto the remains of your sword, and it glows faintly at the touch of steel. You cast away the spent vial and hold your sword aloft like a torch, revealing two portals and an altar.

  Venture into the left portal (Go to 20)

  Venture into the right portal (Go to 21)

  Investigate the altar (Go to 17)

  17-

  A crescent shaped artefact lies on an altar. You take it, and return to the portals.

  Enter the left portal (Go to 20)

  Enter the right portal (Go to 21)

  18-

  You stumble into an altar and find a crescent shaped object. You take it and continue onwards.

  Go to either of the following:

  20

  21

  19-

  On the altar lies a crescent shaped artefact. You take it, and return to the portals.

  Enter the crescent portal (Go to 20)

  Enter the star portal (Go to 21)

  20-

  You walk down a dark tunnel towards a distant light. Suddenly, a hulking figure looms out of the blackness. Its skin is like tree bark, and its eyes are glazed with mindless fury.

  Attack (Go to 22)

  Run (Go to 25)

  21-

  You are eaten by a grue.

  22-

  You stab at the oaken creature, over and over.

  If your sword is still whole, go to 23

  If your sword was broken opening the door, go to 24

  23-

  You drive your sword all the way into the creature's head. The creature continues to advance and you begin to worry this is the end, but it keels over before it can reach you.

  Go to 25

  24-

  The creature doesn't even seem to notice your efforts to wound it. It grabs you bodily with one hand and slams you into the ground until every bone in your body is broken.

  You are dead.

  25-

  You enter into a pool of light. In the centre is a figure, winged, with a featureless crescent-shaped head. You know in your heart it's the spirit you've been searching for.

  If you have the crescent artefact: