Babylon. Unfinished

Part 3. Nature, posture and junk

In the crashed flyer Baby felt like a little naked octopus in a crumpled plastic bottle. The environment was familiar, but weird.

She touched the intercom button.

"Mom?"

There was silence.

"Dad?"

Silence.

"Nigel?"

"I'm here", Nigel said.

"Where is everyone?"

Silence.

"Nigel?"

"I hear you", Nigel said. "I think somebody may be listening as well, but it's just kind of a one-way malfunction."

"Do you think they all died?"

"Hard to say", Nigel said.

Baby blinked. Fine dark dust who is the spirit of the ancient Outer Land was flowing outside as serenely as dark space itself.

"Should I check it?"

"I don't know", Nigel said. "If I were you, I'd have it checked out."

Baby found her family flyer at a launch pad near the apartment building. It was unbroken, it had oxygen tanks and it knew Baby's ID. Well, it was small, but Baby was small, too. Baby climbed through the trap door on the underside into the flyer and typed her ID. The flyer bleeped, and a message with voltage, altitude and flying range flashed up on the screen. Baby typed the Information Department's coordinates.

"Well, either way, there must be someone there."

"Pretty good", Nigel said. "For human child."

Now it was Baby's turn to make an unintelligible sound.

The flyer went shooting up to the sky, and black dust swirled after.

The dome was dark, with multiple black holes in it. The air from the dome mixed in with dead birds and sweepings still smoked outside of breaches.

The intercom suddenly flashed up on a high-frequency ultra and went to gurgle with unfamiliar sounds.

"I don't think it is human," Nigel said. "It would be good to know what they're talking about."

The flyer flew through the city, and all Baby could do was stare at millipedes ru

"Try to switch to manual control," Nigel said at last. "Or the flyer will land at its destination, and you probably won't like it."

The Information Department towered over the city. It was dark now, and darkness swelled out of it literally as a corruption. No people were seen anywhere.

Baby circled over the city twice before getting the flyer out of it, into the Outer Land.

In the Outer Land she landed ten kilometers away from the city, on the ice shelves. The intercom still chirped as a lunatic insect.