Recursion

They both gazed through the wide picture windows at the tattered wreck of Herb’s spaceship as it plunged to the ground before them. It landed with a jarring thud that both flattened and split it at the same time. It bounced once and skidded to a halt. No explosion. There was nothing on board that would burn. It simply lay, squashed and lifeless, against the side of the building.

“What was that?” asked Herb. “Something tumbled from the ship just before it hit the ground.”

“The Ouroboros VNMs we took from that planet a few jumps back. This place is a mess. It could do with starting again.”

Herb looked up at the twisted towers, the trailing strands of deformed buildings.

“You’re not kidding,” he muttered. “And what about us? What do we do now?”

Robert smiled, but it was a pleasant smile. A friendly smile. Herb found himself warming to it.

“Well,” said Robert. “You like VNMs, Herb. I thought maybe you’d appreciate the opportunity to do something positive. I thought that maybe we could help the transformation along. Would you like that?”

“Do I have any choice?” Herb said, almost out of habit, then he paused. Whether he was the real Herb or not, he’d realized something back on the ship. Something he needed to think about.

His life so far had been a complete waste. Maybe it was time to try acting in a different fashion.

Maybe here would be the perfect place to begin thinking about it. And why not think about it while doing something for someone else for a change?

“Actually, maybe I will help.” Herb began to smile, too. “I think I would like that.”

eva 5: 2051

Eva walked into the Watcher’s lair. Her emotions were all there: fear, curiosity, even excitement, but they were muffled. It was as if her mind was at the end of a very long tu

Alison strode ahead of her across the dusty yellow gravel of the enclosure, heading for an abandoned yellow digger that stood at the center of the flat, cleared area.

Ramshackle buildings cobbled together from concrete and corrugated metal lay silent around them.

Alison began shouting to someone, her head jerking this way and that.

“Well, I’m here! I’ve brought them with me!”

Katie shuffled along behind her, her head down, hands clasped tightly together. Eva paused just inside the gate and looked around in wonder. It was an old quarry site. Nestling among many taller ones, the top of a hill had been sliced away as neatly as the lid of a boiled egg to leave an area where trucks could park to be loaded up with yellow stone. The dusty grey windows of the surrounding buildings gazed blindly on. Long conveyor belts ran back and forth, still bearing fragments of yellow stone. The place looked deserted. Dead. The rusty old digger that Alison headed toward made Eva think of the picked-over skeleton of a dinosaur. Its tail scoop was stretched out on the ground behind it, lifeless as everything else in that dry place.

And yet there were the pylons. Heavy cables, humming with current, trailed to a building at the far side of the square. Something here needed power.

Alison was turning around and around now, spi

“Well?” she shouted again. “I’m here! I want my reward!”

There was a faint metallic creak. All three women spun in its direction. They could see nothing unusual. Only another old building, bright orange rust forming lichen patterns on its roof.

“Come on! Answer me!”

There was another creak and an exhalation, almost as if the breeze had whispered “Very well” as it sighed across the shuttered buildings, and something flickered across the clearing.

Alison’s head fell from her body in a fine mist of blood.

Katie looked at her friend’s body as it slumped to the ground, blood still pumping from the severed neck.

All those emotions at the end of a tu

Then Alison’s body was finally still, the head ceased rolling, and Eva’s feelings came rushing down the tu

“Oh my God!” she whispered. And a voice spoke…

“It’s what she wanted.”

The voice was low and authoritative. It made Eva think of a Shakespearean actor, of pinstripe suits and old port in decanters, rich cigars and ripe Stilton. Who was it? From her expression, Katie knew.

Eva followed her gaze.

The digger was moving.

The front scoop lifted slowly from the ground and the vehicle began to turn. More than ever, the digger reminded Eva of a dinosaur. That great metal shovel on the long, jointed neck, the yellow tail of the trailing scoop flexing gently on the gravel.

The shovel swung toward them. Two cameras were mounted on either side of its grey metal blade, heightening the impression that they were looking at a mechanical monster.

The bottom of the blade dropped slightly and the dinosaur spoke.

“Hello. I’m the Watcher.”

“You killed her,” said Katie. “She did what you wanted, led us here to you, and you killed her.”

“That was the deal,” the Watcher answered. “She never had the courage or the opportunity to do it for herself.”

The head moved a little so that it directly faced Eva. Yellow dust fell from the shovel blade to the ground.

“She envied you that, you know,” it said. “You almost managed it on your own.”

“I know,” Eva said, and then she was silent.

Katie spoke in a little voice. “Couldn’t you have talked her out of it?”

“She loathed what she became whenever she was on a high. She despaired of sinking back into her lows.”

“Couldn’t you have cured her?”

“That’s not what she wanted.”

Katie was slowly nodding her head. “It’s right,” she said, looking at Eva. “This is what she always wanted.”

– But that’s not the point. It’s changed the subject and you didn’t even notice…

The voice was so faint Eva wondered if she had imagined it. She must have imagined it.

Katie was crying. Eva saw one tear run down her cheek, leaving a white trail in the dirt smeared there.

And yet Katie was smiling, too. Smiling sadly. She looked up at the yellow metal dinosaur.

“You know,” she said, “you don’t look like I expected you to.”

“How did you expect me to look?”

The Watcher’s voice had a strange edge to it, as if Katie and it were sharing a strange joke that Eva was not party to.

“I don’t know,” said Katie. “I thought maybe you’d be smaller, darker. Not so rugged maybe but, you know, still strong. I saw you as more of a forklift truck.”

The Watcher said nothing to that, it just continued staring at Katie through its two camera eyes, and Eva realized with astonishment that her impression had been correct. The two of them were joking. Katie was standing barely a meter from her decapitated friend, the blood that had been pumping from the neck now slowed to a gentle trickle, and they were joking. No, more than joking. There was something else there…What was the word…?

– It’s wrong…

The voice again…He was coming back. There, at the edge of her imagination. Don’t look too closely or you’ll chase him away. Think of something else or you’ll lose him. Think of the sound of late afternoon in the quarry. Of dusty stone and the gentle hum of power cables.

– Tell it…It’s wrong.