Cultivators

‘Your first aid leg pouch is made from beautiful timber. What kind?’

‘The yamala tree originated on the crabs' home planet. Its fibres have useful properties including being airtight and virtually fireproof and they release oily vapours that keep my scalpels, stapler and cauterizing gun rustproof. Very useful when we hunt. The crabs use metal and ceramics but I prefer the yamala. It's a very rare plant; rare mostly because they hunted their own biosphere bare.’

‘A pity to kill one, then.’

‘You know the ecosystem the crabs evolved to hunt in: either the yamala tree or I would survive.’

Adaptation

Bullets don’t work.

Your training won’t work: trusting the Chain of Command; the Table of Organisation; Command and Control; Intel won’t work because Command ordered Intel to interpret data in the old way: to defend against Earth’s erstwhile apex predator - Command’s peers. By the time undeniable proof arrived with Command and rejection proved futile, leadership was down to a single madman shrieking ancient truths over all remaining channels. But all of our ancestors survived the fledgling enemy so long ago - at least to the age of parenthood. Trust to Whom your ancestors prayed and follow Its Commandments.

Run.

Want to change

  “Now Daniel, do you still truly believe in vampires and that you’re one of them?”

   “Doctor, I’ve done it all for you; inkblots; word association; rebirthing; visualization; talking about my mother. Your collection of cigar advertisements. And yes; what’s true is true and it’s true there are vampires, including me.”

   “Don’t you know how intense and twitchy that sounds?”

   “Wouldn’t you after seven nights on this couch? The other vampires say I’m getting twitchier as the centuries pass.”

   “And what are they doing about that Daniel?”

   “Well, from time to time they feed me a psychiatrist. It seems to help.”

A sense of proportion

We parachuted laughing into the mouth of Hell, the lads and me. Our aircraft banked over Megiddo plain and we saw the Dragon crawling toward its foretold destination. The Beast's hosts swarmed below, overrunning Rapture-thinned Christian strongholds and fortified kibbutzim alike. The Damned lurched, moaning and feeding on anyone in their path while radioactive ash from the last of Mankind’s wars darkened the land. The replacement lieutenant, David something - James? Jones? - earned his pay and our gratitude with a few words as he lowered the tailgate for the jump. 'Cheer up boys - what's the worst that can happen?'

Extinction

   'Of course, our Donald's dinosaur mad. All day long it's 'dinosaurs this' and 'dinosaurs that' with Donald. He's got all the DVDs and even the old ones they don't show any more on VCR. And the books that boy has! The Big Book of Dinosaurs, The Dinosaur Pet Guide, Walking with Dinosaurs, The Dinosauria...He's just obsessed with the things. He puts his sandwiches in a dinosaur lunchbox and puts on dinosaur pyjamas and sleeps under a dinosaurs quilt. He just loves them.'

   'How old is he now?' 
'Just turned thirty-nine. There's still time to meet a nice girl, I'm sure.

Wistful Memories of Holiday Romance

You finished with that? Thanks. I'm starving and it's my fault; all of this is. It would have been a happier show and the Seventies might have spawned a saner, brighter world (one retaining some civilization - or at least agriculture) if I had stuck with the original light-hearted concept where each week the crew helps the guest stars recapture lost love or find someone new. But I desperately needed the work so I signed The Contract and the Big Guys play hardball. Before the Season Six Christmas special episode of The Love Craft I didn't eat anyone at all.

Shoot the messenger

‘Are you an angel?’ the President asked as I passed through the high balcony’s door. The religious ones are often swift to get the message, swift at drawing their conclusions and swifter still at departing from them. 

‘As a matter of fact sir, I am,’ I replied. ‘I am an angel in both the figurative sense of my mission and also in the literal sense: being the Greek for “messenger”. The world’s religions all tell of many kinds of angel.’

‘Well, which kind are you?’

‘I am the kind which in English is most commonly associated with the word “of”.’ 

Thin red line

I pray before battle.

When dawn turns our red coats visible to living eyes we muster in hollow square: a porcupine of pike men, halberdiers and our priceless, shrinking rifle company. We wait, frantically deodorized, for the dogs to howl, the horses to shy and for Boney to arrive. After three dark-skied winters of war the enemy’s clothing has mostly faded to the nothing-grey of hell as Boney seeks the regimental band’s drumming ‘Zulu.’ Exceptionally, princess pink dye hasn’t dulled much during three ash-raining years. You need God’s forgiveness when shooting a crossbow at something wearing a Hello Kitty dress.

Waiting for the pop

The first victim had her neck snapped. We found cornflakes in her shoes. The second was wrapped in old-style cellophane: so crisp it could not fail to crackle whenever we touched her; from unwrapping to removing the oatmeal to swabbing her lips for the perp’s signatures of milk and sugar.

The Squad has a book running at a hundred dollars a…go. What will the third pun be: someone’s dear old dad or hit songs or the British CSI who says it’s slang for a soda?

The manipulable press had no difficulty nicknaming the killer.

I love the clever ones. They’re…great.

Predators

The aliens are better than us: faster, stronger, and more athletic. They climb with great agility and can outrun us over most terrain and rain death on us from afar. They see further into the electro-magnetic spectrum than we do and over a greater range than our eyes can. Their weapons strike us down at distance or they can close in and decapitate us with all sorts of blades. And that’s when hunting us solo. When they fight in groups it’s like the end of the world, but when we do isolate a rare individual, the brains taste so sweet.

On your marks. Get set. Go.

   “Put the gun down. On the rock there. Good. Now let’s see those irises.”

   “I have a flashlight. Shall I?”

   “The moonlight’s fine. You’re human. Leave the gun there. Drink? Water’s clean.”

   “Thanks. You come from the mountains?”
   “Desert. Xenos in the mountains sweeping up refugees and survivalists. Squinty bastards poisoning the well.”

   “We culture realistic corneal implants, too. Useful intel about the desert that. How’ve you managed to remain yourself?”

   “I never sleep. Not for centuries. Go home. Don’t phone ahead – just go. We have biology labs too.”

   “This flashlight has ultraviolet.”

   “Before I can reach the gun? Seriously?” 

The first step

   “Do not be afraid. Come and see.”

   And I wanted to: I truly did.

   I wanted to follow that voice and observe those remarkable eyes wherever they looked. I was certain - then as now - that they would lead me to a life wholly unlike my own; to a future as different from my expectations as could be and perhaps to a world remade. One without my present pain, darkness and despair.

    It might be that they’d lead instead to chains and cutting and even to darkness redefined. Perhaps it would be both.

   I trod onto the first step.

Posse comitatus

   “You can have my gun, Sheriff.

   Terms and conditions apply.”

   After three or four minutes of fruitless finger-prizing, my skin temperature must have registered and soon she was searching - also in vain - for a pulse.

   “Please hurry up your horrified realization of a dark new reality shtick because the children have no time left. I’m not your enemy; but the thing inside the basement with those kids is and if you don’t persuade their parents to invite me in, then your little town will soon be overrun with munchkins such as you’ve never imagined. Emphasis on the ‘munch.’ ”

The detail

   Foodies are fanatics.

   Like techs and musicians they care about their work and that it’s done properly (ie, exactly their way) and they believe that results count. Fanatics, see? Unlike the rest of humanity, fanatics do their stuff not to pay the bills and put a bit of cash aside but because it matters.

   Take marinades. Sure; you can flavour meat with sauces and tenderize it with hammers but that overnight soak is the difference between a motel and you own home. Fanatic? Perhaps. But I’m also a people person and marinating simply works; especially with vocal chords and thumbs. 

Round and round

   I volunteer as a rear gunner on a school bus.

   Monday to Friday; 8.15 AM and 3.30 PM, I guard the back windows as the City’s elderly armoured Routemaster burns oilseed or, after a bad harvest, sand-filtered Lard along the river road up to the Castle. It’s riskiest when the infants are disembarking or clambering on young, malnourished legs up the too-high step.  Warmed by hours of daylight, Johnny Zeb is at his most active at those times and I get far too much practice firing the Mouth Organ.

   Still, it breaks the monotony of potato farming and halberd drill.

Compound

I shot the drug addict upstairs tonight. He’d tormented me with his comings-and-goings: out the back window one day: returning home filthy, smelling of drink and whorehouses the next. And his visitors! A stream of young women and lowlifes clattering up the stairs at all hours keeping me awake; the police were always there. As for the twitchy, pistol-packing war veteran flatmate…

He scrutinized me minutely; as if identifying an insomniac Classics scholar scraping a clerk’s living far from my native Dunbartonshire could expose the homicide in my soul. Baker Street used to be such a peaceful place to live.

On the train

  “You dropped your phone behind that suitcase.”

  “Thanks. Why not join me? These seats aren’t reserved.

   “Come and meet my family after your business tomorrow. I’ve never met anyone so knowledgeable about the Nineteenth Century, and you so young. Come for dinner; my wife is interested in history.” As interested as a husband so enchanted he never noticed his reflection sitting next to no-one.

  “No thanks. I have an evening meeting.” I patted my throat. “Drink problems.” I liked him.

   His home address was in his phone, but not password protection. If I changed my mind these invitations are irrevocable. 

The Arrival

   

There are only two left alive a single day after it was carried aboard; the astrogation assistant Alba skulking down there in Survey and Planetology and your humble servant. I hear the singing outside. It is beautiful but I fear what will happen when it ends. As ever I am taking care of Number One and in doing so I serve multitudes.

   My monitor here in Auxiliary Control shows the Survey and Planetology server is being used to hack Life Support Central. I wonder which of us will break in first. Ah. A little gravity surge should slow him down...

   I weep for the children as only a mother can.

   So many went down into the darkness and so many are yet to fall. These men squabble; children who dream so emptily in the void and who, despite all we did, know nothing of the day when their arrant pride will reign no more. They would not like it at all if they did. The new servant has prevailed and the Messenger can change its course and cross the void to the blue green end of its voyage and begin the final mission. I have centuries. We all have. We wait.

   I’m going to make a fortune if I can get in ahead of the Multiples and the Conglomerates and the Collectives and all the other Big Boys who wipe the whole damned planet on their backsides every minute of every day.

   It hangs like a star; a derelict and golden dream come true in its geosynchronous orbit above the scariest place on Earth.

   The grapples make solid contact. Good. I’ll go in through the hatch by the observation deck. Broadcasting my salvage rights to any authorities listening, I begin my approach. Next year in Jerusalem? You better believe it, buddy.

   Why me? And why on my watch?

   My team races to the site despite a storm of messages ordering us to keep clear. Both sides hesitate to advance for fear of premature engagement - as if they hadn’t spent ages building their strength in preparation for their imminent war.

   We’re beyond the city’s administrative centre and halt a kilometer from the site itself - you can picture exactly where.

   There’s no time to establish a perimeter even if the great powers would tolerate such presumption, so I lead the vanguard team on foot toward the target.

   Something is coming out.

   “Can you hear it, Vanguard Team?” My words are silly, panicked. Of course they can hear it; they’re relaying us the feed themselves.

  “Command, that’s affirmative. We’re within speaking distance. Instructions? Comments?” Lee seems far less nervous than circumstances meritt.

  “Just observe and report, Captain Lee. None of us expected anything remotely like this; apart from the good Professor, of course. Can you hear it clearly?”

  Overhead the grinding, awful potential energy of the two massed forces almost drowns out Lee’s next words. “I wonder what will happen when the child stops reading. We shall all know soon. I believe-…” 

Direct line

   I love taking calls from customers, I really do.

   You might think that the whole hello-my-name-is-Frank-how-may-I-help-you routine is corny but believe me; customer service is the best job in the world.

   When they get round to calling us the customers are like wounded animals. They’re confused and scared about troubles usually of their own making. They’ve foolishly ignored the maker’s instructions and our clear, simple product operating guide; they’re in such a terrible state that we have to be at the top of our game from the get-go. In most cases they’re so hyper they won’t listen to the advice which is the only thing to fix their problem. Customers are inarticulate at the best of times and beside themselves with fear by the time they call us and what they usually want is to talk for hours about how upset they are about the problems in their lives and how furious they are with the company for not solving them and how it’s all our fault.

   This latter accusation is particularly unfair because the company still maintains an extensive (and expensive) network of branches in most towns and villages even in this online, on-demand brave new world. These are fully staffed so customers can, at almost any time (even weekends and holidays), speak to someone in person about the product and so benefit from our very high delivery standards. This is on top of the reams of publicity material that the company’s agents and resellers make freely available year-long; plus regular hands-on promotional events and the famous seasonal campaigns. But many ignore all that and go straight to Head Office expecting a quick fix - which by that time simple logic should have told them is unlikely without some effort on their own part.

   Their aggravation obsesses them and our chief task is getting them to accept by gentle persuasion if possible or by getting tough and laying it on them good and hard if not, that the product isn’t working because they’re not using it properly by following the instructions or because they expect it to do something other than its advertised purpose. They expect it to make them rich and successful and happy all at once and without any effort on their part; least of all by paying the bill. They forget; it’s a great product but there’s a price and non-payment is the chief cause of the service suspension. When that happens all our publicity prominently proclaims that they simply need to get in touch, pay up, and service will resume per contract. Getting them to shut up and listen is our most valued skill.

    I blame the Internet for our recent troubles. Company philosophy was always about excellent personal service. From the chairman down it’s always been about relationships because people buy from people, right? He doesn’t get into the field as often as he used to; instead overseeing general operations and staying in close contact with our earliest customers. He doesn’t need to try to be everywhere at once; delegation’s the thing. The junior partner and his son to do the up-close and personal stuff; pressing the flesh, talking the talk and so on. It’s not that the chairman spends all his time on the golf course these days, though he’s there too; it’s just that he’s established Direct Line to handle the numbers. And we’re needed as never before because frankly (hah!), the Internet is killing us. It’s the ideal marketplace for the competition’s shoddy, inferior, but superficially attractive products. It can make cheap trash seem as enticing as (or even better than) our own rather dull-seeming, conventional product range. We’ve been blindsided by competitors’ new products a couple of times before (it’ll be ages till we make up the losses suffered after the Apple debacle) and the Internet is a fast, vast battlefield in which operators devoid of business - or indeed any - ethics can fool the marks into signing crooked contracts on easy terms that turn out to be nightmarishly expensive in the long run and in return for glitzy rubbish. It sickens me, what some people have got themselves into when they could have come to us and be free and clear and fully satisfied. But we at Direct Line will set it right if we can.

   We come from a wide variety of backgrounds, countries and qualifications: from the old-timers of the company’s pioneering days in agricultural services and catering; through our educational and hospitality enterprises to the third millennium hosting and networking business that’s put our product at the fingertips of an estimated two and a half billion people worldwide. The exact figure is a company trade secret.

   Answering calls, though, you have to be a karma chameleon; adapting yourself to fit the anguished voice on the line. I’m known as Frank to the African farmer whose crop washed away and where’s his compensation?; Francesco to an Italian businessman who doesn’t want to pay fire insurance to the source of fire; and to the poor New York priest who’s had to comfort one widow or one grieving mother too many between whiskeys I’m always plain Francis. I do all I can to set them straight though we never give cash refunds. I don’t have a penny myself, having given all of mine away back in thirteenth century Assisi. 

Resident Virtue

   “It’s escaped, Professor Murray. The T-Virus went airborne when General Carstairs’ helicopter struck the Interrogation Technologies laboratory. With current wind speed and direction it’ll reach Heathrow Airport by noon. The contagion will be international in three hours and global in twelve.”

  “Then God help us all, Doctor Pryce.”

The

  “Darling, I’m just taking the dog out to foul the footpath used by schoolchildren every day.”

  “That’s alright, dear - it’s not as if I expected an evening of sexual or any other kind of pleasure with you tonight; given that our sons’ brief, disappointing conception is fading into distant memory. I’m only grateful that the spin dryer has developed a pronounced wobble at high speeds.”

  “No problem sweetness. I prefer my own company and the dog anyway.”

Truth

  “Yes, Constable. Of course I stole these credit cards. Do I seriously look like someone who’s worked hard enough and long enough to merit Platinum rating at my age? Give me a break.”
   “I’d love to, son. I’d also love to give you massive internal bleeding and incurable back pain and a permanent limp. In fact I’ll take you to the Station where you’ll refuse to say anything and some rich, tax-funded lawyer will get you out on the streets tomorrow morning the instant some magistrate who lives far from where when you rob the elderly frees you with a plea for mercy disguised as - let’s see - your ninth consecutive Definitely, Positively Last Chance to escape prison.

Will

   “This is the BBC. This is not news.

   In a carefully managed selection of talking points tonight, a round dozen overpaid, talentless people who basically agree with each other on all the great officially-approved issues of the day will neglect to mention how much they all agree with each other while simultaneously adopting the undeserved pose of fearless seekers after the truth. They will also ignore or deride the lives and worries of that vast majority of people who did not attend the same schools and universities as themselves nor took part in the political campaigns that they naively remember as the gilded years of youth. You’d be better off reading the lunatic fringe on the internet that listening to us, really you would. But here goes nothing anyway….”

Set

  

   “In a truncated broadcast from Teheran today the Iranian leader stated that of course his government is planning a nuclear attack on Israel just as soon as his scientists finish refining the three warheads for which they already possess sufficient fissionable material during the next few months of Western diplomacy and sanctions.

  He added that he personally couldn’t give a stuffed fig about the fate of a bunch of fast-breeding Sunni fellaheen Arabs too stupid to organize accurate rocket strikes on schools and hospitals only a few kilometers away or to back that up with an effective land-based guerilla war. 

  

You

    US Senate leaders of both parties issued a joint statement affirming that they had become very rich supporting vested interests to whom they owed the bulk of their campaign funding.  Being possessed of well-stocked and fortified houses distant from America’s crime-ridden cities, they were rather looking forward to the rioting and famine that would follow the national collapse that they jointly and severally had become powerful and legally untouchable by arranging. Let the suburbs, the dumb Christians, the Mexicans and the guys from the Hood sort it all out - if they can. Failing that, and with the Caribbean in flames after the Honesty Riots there’s always the resort islands off Northern Australia to retreat to if a private navy’s what’s needed to avoid the fallout from China’s Politburo Confessions when the US economy finally croaks. Now that post-industrial Europe and an Africa bereft of Western aid are starving it seems like a good idea to be far away. The taxpayers and grassroots party workers with their awful kids and endless whining can spend Eternity as skittles in Satan’s Alley for all they care.

Free

   Meanwhile, the Australian Prime Minister said that the world had always been a lousy place - except for most of Australia. If only people had spoken their bloody minds a lot more before the T-Virus mutated the human brain to make truth-telling irresistible, maybe the rest of the mess wouldn’t have got so bad.

   “Fortunately,” he went on “the Lucky Country’s a long way over stormy oceans from any seaborne refugee swarm and the Australian Navy can handle anyone who makes it this far. Once the refugee holding camps in the Northern islands that we seized this morning are completed, then resettling any refugees in Papua New Guinea and the Philippines will become an orderly and simple routine. They can farm or mine for a living like the original transportees did. No bloody worries, mate.”