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occupyscifi · 6 years ago

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The astronaut lost in time

As soon as I awoke I knew something had gone wrong with my re-entry. NASA had many rooms in many hospitals but none had crumbling brick walls covered in a hundred years of soot and grime. Nor would NASA have left me in nothing but the torn rags of a spacesuit and wrapped in filthy sheets. Or in a room of cot like beds that stank of the sea and of mildew and the oddities of air conditioning that probably hadn’t been cleaned since the days of Christ.

I sat up alertly, there was always training on what happened if you landed in enemy territory. These days it was only North Korea that counted, and if you landed there your luck was against you anyway. However I doubted that even they would be strange enough to house me in what looked like a cross between a homeless hostel and a Rio prison.

There was no one around me, and that was a blessing because as soon as I looked from the one thin window – shaped like the arrow holes of medieval castles – I realised that my previous assessment was incorrect. By several degrees of magnitude. There wasn’t a word yet for how wrong things had gone, there wasn’t even a way to express it mathematical terms. To say it was totally fucked was not nearly strong enough.

The city I was looking over was one I didn’t recognise, and I don’t mean I was in a country foreign to me. I mean that the city itself was achingly familiar, one I had known intimately in my youth, but it was one changed totally it was impossible to describe. Tower blocks that might have been the one I had my first apartment in were nothing but concrete shells, still occupied but resembling nothing so much as shanty towns in the sky. Blue tarpaulins waved in the breeze on the ninth floor. Washing lines strung out between two concrete hulks that had been the headquarters of a major international bank. I saw children playing only inches from a hundred foot drop, saw them walk on age thinned beams where the floors had fallen through.

Underneath them the whole plan of the city had been worn away, as if it had been eroded by an ocean. Where once angular buildings had marched to the horizon in orderly dignity there just sat shapeless lumps in concrete and brick. Some had clearly suffered damage in wars unknown to me, and others had been cannibalised to build what looked like fortifications. I saw the white stone that had formed the Mayoral office and city hall- a wonderpiece of modern neo classical design- re used to make something that looked more like a bastardised medieval wall for the crumbling spires of the city’s famous College.

“why?” I muttered to myself “since when in the name of god does a College need a fucking defensive wall?”

“S’colussi man” came a voice snuffling from behind me “They’s gonna be attacking toot sweet. s’why we’re getting the fuck out”

I turned around sharply, ready to deal with the danger by using my Navy training. Most astros were civilian these days, but not me. Major Kurt Willis had done his time. Navy pilots still had a place in the modern civilian space program. However the person I was looking at looked less threatening than the average hobo. The person – their gender was impossible to discern – was as shapeless as the city and as beaten down. I had seen tramps in New York and Damascus, seen homeless people beaten and lost from the world. They looked like model citizens compared with this creature. A face that looked like it had only known hard fists and a body hidden under so many layers of clothing that a veritable history of cheap fashion stood before me.

“what?” I said “who’s the colussi? What’s happening here?”

“you forgot again” the tramp said sadly, fingering my rags “wish I had that. You spacemen. Got all the luck” a calculating look in the eye that suggested somewhere an intelligence dimmed by drink or drugs was trying to stage a comeback “then again, maybe not. Time and all that”

“what the hell are you talking about...” I began but I was interrupted by boom from outside.

“no time, man” said the tramp, and began to run towards the door. I turned and looked out the window again. Five seconds later I was running after the tramp.

I had glimpsed out the window the true nightmare of the world I had found myself in. As I turned I saw what had caused the boom, halfway up one of the concrete towers a cloud of dust and pulverised stone was raining down onto the streets below. Then I saw the source of the blast. On the streets far below a column of tanks, their camouflage green looking more like mould than something for battle. As I watched they crunched over the brick rubble, their turrets swivelling back and forth. I glimpsed enough to wonder at them, I am a keen observer of military equipment and though their make and model was more than familiar it left more questions than answers. Why use WWII tanks, and why did they look more like the plastic models a child might put together than the sort of thing a military force might use? However it was what I saw next that finally sent me running.

Some years before my fateful launch I took a holiday in Rome with a sweetheart. We did the usual rounds of museums and ruins, and it was all very romantic. However a ruined empire seemed more like a sad sight of what humanity had lost than a chance to lick Gelato and walk along the Tiber. Nonetheless I remember seeing in the courtyard of the Capitoline museum the remains of a giant statue of the emperor Constantine. I remember being taken aback by the size of this sculpture- how huge must it have been when fully built? What great skill and ambition had belonged to those that had built it?

What I saw walking towards that line of tanks, hurling blocks of masonry like they were tennis balls was a living breathing version of that statue. In a blinding insight I knew what the colussi must have been. In another I realised what would happen to be in the crossfire between those tanks and that monster. So I fled to wherever the tramp was heading. To have survived in such a world so long must have imbued him or her with certain instincts about self preservation.

The room I had woken up in lead out onto a sky garden, cut up by walls into what might have once been bijou little chalets. Now they had the look more of a refugee camp, and I saw I wasn’t the only one fleeing. From the roof of the building I had a panorama of the city, of hills to the west and a winding river and the shining sea to the east. However my memories of the land around the city where a swirling chaos. I knew I had to escape, but to where? And how?

More immediate thoughts struck me. I joined the flow of men and women down echoing concrete stairs, disconcertingly these seemed as ancient as the brick in my room. The steps were worn down to the reinforcing steel which had been polished bright by the passage of many feet. I wondered how many centuries it might have taken and many feet must have passed to cause such erosion. I also wondered why it was ever needed at all. All of the apartment blocks in the city boasted elevators, then I noticed what lit the walls as we hurried down. What looked like electric lights were nothing of the sort. I thought at first they were lumps of some luminescent material, some invention I had missed that lit the darkness without needing power. Then I saw one of them move and I realised they were living creatures, thick and wormlike who crawled slowly across the walls and the ceiling, going about their own sickening progress. I saw as one child reached out almost absent mindedly and peeled one from the wall as he passed. It glowed in his hands and I thought he meant to use it as a torch till he bit off its head and chewed loudly.

“you wanna bit?” he asked, taking my look of horror for one of hunger. I quickly shook my head, thinking I might never be hungry again if this was the cuisine of my new home.

Eventually the stairs let out onto a narrow precinct of what had probably once been a ground level mall. Concrete pillars still advertised wares that were somewhat familiar to me but hinted at some future developments. What were these addons and why were the brand icons featuring emojis with extra hands or simply pictures of an engorged penis? Why were there biohazard symbols next to signs for a toyshop?

Alas there were to be no answers, for the original shops there were no signs, just endless milling people and stalls the like of which you would see on the streets of an undeveloped country. Stalls that were nothing but carts jury built from chunks of plastic lashed together with rope. Stalls that sold items that were nine tenths nonsense and one tenth remembered folk remedy. Tourist handbags jostled next to pharmaceutical goods and dismembered dried animals parts. However I had no time to watch, for I was as keen to get out of here than I was anything else. For not all the people in that underground precinct were civilians.

When you have been in the military of any country you get to recognise soldiers and groups of solders. It doesn’t matter their age, whether they have uniforms or whether they even have weapons. There is a certain stance, a certain way they look at the people around them, a wariness mixed with a pitilessness that suggests they are now outside the rules of the rest of the world and will act accordingly. I imagine it’s the way that slaughterhouse workers look at pigs when they arrive from the farm. It was not a look I wanted aimed at me, and it was certainly not a look I wanted from this group.

I had known, of course, that in many conflict child soldiers were common. That, along with mass rape, is one of the heartbreaking tragedies of most of the wars in human history. However I had not expected, in the heart of the city I had known since childhood, to encounter it. Then again all I had encountered since waking had filled my heart with dread and horror. The sight, though, of twelve and thirteen year old boys and girls moving through that crowd with the determination and single mindedness of soldiers just about broke me. Before I knew what I was doing I was moving towards them rather than away. A part of me wondered what exactly I was going to do, but I’d helped run Scout troops for kids this age. I’d helped them in survival training and I’d realised long since the essential difference that exists between adult and child and even more the essential difference that exists between soldier and civilian. Bad enough that a grown man could kill another, even worse that a child could do it.

“where are you all going?” I asked of the girl in front, her only uniform the hastily biro-ed on designs that covered her bare arms and the warpaint in rainbow shades running in a line across the bridge of her nose and her sharp cheekbones.

“we’re taking the city, boss” she said, her eyes pitiless but recognising in me something of the soldier I saw in her “Colussi Magnus is king in this town and the science fags at the college is gonna get one hell of a surprise”

“who?” I asked “look, I’m not from round here” I added “I’m new”

“you looks old to me” said the girl, regarding the filthy ruin of my clothes and I noticed that instead of boots on my feet there were just plastic wraps, like I was some medieval peasant in some ancient ballad “they got the city” she said “ent for long. Them whitecoats got all the tech. They can breed up a bunch of tanks but they can’t stop the colussi. Can’t stop them at all”

“they’ve got technology?” I asked, regarding the girl’s weapon of a plastic rifle. At first I had hoped it was just a prop but the bandolier of bullets around her waist was real enough. I remembered certain breakthroughs in 3D printing technology. The ease of making solid objects strong enough to fire a bullet. The fact that she had decorated the weapon with tiny glittery stickers of unicorns and rainbows made me even keener to get away from this hellhole.

“they got’s monsters” said the girl, nodding at one of her lieutenants as he ran to secure an exit “and horrors and the like. Magnus says they’re evil and so’s were gonna take em down” her face brightened “you can come, if you like. It’ll be rad fun”

“I’ll let you know” I said cagily “I have to run some errands first. Which way are you going?”

“underground” she said, pointing somewhere to the left “we’ll come up right underneath and give them a hella surprise” she grinned and I noticed that most of her teeth were black and rotted away.

“sounds lovely” I said, and hurried past them.

I figured, of course, that if there was anywhere that still might make sense, where the light of technology and not insanity might shine then it would be the City College. I had also figured that while many things might change the basic layout of the city might not, after all the city of london still had Roman roads with Roman names long after the Romans had gone. While I could only guess how long I had been away- I feared it had to be measured in the centuries- I thought at least the paths I had known that lead to the College might still exist.

Thus I thought if I could get out onto street level I could get my bearings and get towards the university before the band of child soldiers did. If there was anyone to stop me from the College then I could bargain the knowledge of the impending attack, and while I was not naive enough to think it might spare those poor girls and boys lives it might at least prevent some greater bloodshed. For it was obvious to me that whatever insanity had broken out that the last place of rationality and reason would be the college. There they could explain why it was I had woken up not in care of NASA but in this hellish third world version of my cherished home. They might even, and this was a stretch but a person needs hope more than anything, able to get me back to where I should be.

Thus as I burst from one exit onto a rubble choked street I had, not a positive feeling, but one at least of mission. I was lucky, therefore, to still be paying attention enough to realise that I had blundered into the middle of a firefight.

To my left, down the broad boulevard of what had been the older part of town, there were the armies of the colussi. I thanked god I saw not the monstrous commanding beast himself but instead the ragged armies of tramps and lost young things. On the right, coming around the corner of the sandstone edifice that had been a 1920’s department store but was now a melted looking mausoleum, were a line of tanks. I had arrived in the brief pause between their realisation of each others presence and the inevitability of a firefight. In that hushed moment I made my decision.

Seeing that on my side of the street there was nothing but empty buildings, pyramids of bricks and totem poles that had strung on them what I hoped were old shop dummies I knew I could not stay where I was. The College could be reached from the other side of the street, but if I lingered long then I would never make it. I started running just as the first shout went up from the child army. I had reached the dismembered stump of a poplar tree, one of an avenue that had once run down the middle of the street, when the first tank shell whistled down the street to turn a pack of child soldiers into a mass of burning meat.

After that battle was joined and I ran as if the hounds of hell were after me. I could see children that looked no more than ten set up a stand for a machine gun that fired gaily coloured tracer rounds that punched through the armour of the tanks like they were made of paper. One disturbing glance that I hoped was a hallucination was that the holes in the tank bled bright yellow gunk. However I had no time for a double take, knowing that either side would cheerfully butcher me without even giving a second glance. I was also focused in finding somewhere across the street where I could shelter.

Luckily I noticed a miraculously undamaged storefront, the door invitingly open. I knew all these stores had back entrances for loading and unloading, and knew the tiny backstreets beyond would lead me straight to the college. I leapt over mounds of rubble, swerved to avoid the hail of tracer fire and ducked under a fallen concrete sculpture that seemed to bear a resemblance to some children’s cartoon character. As the road exploded behind me I reached gratefully for the shop entrance and there my luck ran out.

I remember when I was younger I visited a city facing bankruptcy, where all the jobs had gone oversees and all the shops left derelict. The city council, in one last show of defiance spent their budget on two things, the first was flowers so that the city would always be in bloom even if it were half abandoned, and the other was massive posters for the shop fronts. These posters were a fantasy of what the city council wished were there. There were pictures of chemists shopfronts and artesanal cheese shops, libraries and art galleries, bakeries and toyshops. Thus the city council decorated its abandoned shops with the imitation of life and could pretend their city was not dead, in much the same way as makeup can be added to a corpse to give the pretence of life – and with about the same sense of creepiness.

It was my misfortune to mistake one of these lifesize posters for a real shop, and its imitation door for a real one. My fingers scrabbled at a picture of a door that would never open, banging on plastic printed windows that would never break, let alone open. Behind me the street erupted into deadly war and I was left without even the hope of shelter.

It was at the moment I was expecting death that I reached salvation. Perhaps it was a memory from the distant pass or the final breath of a god that had clearly long abandoned his people but as the haze of smoke momentarily cleared I realised that from this angle I could see a gap in the wall of the shapeless bulk of the department store. Pausing only to glance once at the horrors of the battle I ran and dived through that gap, taking with me the noise of battle and the chatter of automatic weapons fire. Grovelling in the dirt and dark, the bright light of the day had left after images on my eyes that had left me momentarily blinded. However I assumed that whatever horrors might lurk for me here could be no worse than that left for me outside.

Soon my eyes got used to the gloom and I saw that where I lay had clearly gone through many transformations in the aeons since I had last come here, shopping with my mother when I was a child. What was left of the walls had been stripped back to the hard stone and onto them painted images of a crude, though arresting, quality. I was reminded of something close to cave art but more the medieval images of life and death, heaven and hell that were common in Mediterranean chapels. It was only the figures involved that I found alien, till I realised that most of them were characters from familiar film franchises, but now rendered in crude pigments. I could make out masked figures fighting with bright glowing red and blue swords. Saw others swooping and diving on broomsticks.

However many of these were faint, and had been coloured over by newer works. Those I did not need an introduction to, but still they filled me with horror. For I had hoped that the colussi might refer to a singular gargantuan monster that roamed the city I had once loved. But from the crudely scratched frieze upon the wall showed me many of them, figures that were superficially similar enough to place in the same pantheon but different even in their simplistic painting. I moved closer, crushing underfoot what I hoped were not bones, to look at them in greater detail. There at the head was the one figure I had seen, his name underneath rendered in letters that were alien to me but might have been the bastardised half remembered descendant of written English. But then again it might have just been gibberish.

The other figures alike looked Romanesque, their heads covered with bronzed helmets bigger than the average car. Eyes stared out emptily yet still retained a cruel contempt that I felt even in their drawn form, and at their feet tiny stick men and women ran back and forth. There was what looked like a temple built from a ruined apartment building and I didn’t need to understand the crude words to know what was going on. Human sacrifice is very hard to mistake for anything else.

I would have lingered longer to try and make sense of what little history I could glean from these barely literate walls but I could still hear fighting and the sound of impact rocked the building. I had to keep moving, for it would not be long before the child soldiers found this room and I could not be sure they wouldn’t take me for an enemy.

I made my way deeper into the gloom, reaching out by memory to where the elevators and the stairs had been. If I recalled correctly the department store had entrances and exits on all four sides, but like all department stores was a labyrinth at the best of times. Now, the centuries having not been kind and its residents even less so, I was not convinced of my navigation.

However I managed after several tries to get myself into the central atrium, one that in imitating certain Spanish houses was a single shaft that had led up to a glass ceiling four floors above. That glass ceiling had long gone, along with much of the fourth floor itself, but its purpose still was fulfilled. From here at least I could spy where I was and which way to go. Gingerly I climbed the mounds of rubbish and tried to work out which way was the exit. I would have remained there quite some time, had I not been hailed from above by a friendly, though not familiar voice.

“ah!” the voice cried richly “its you!” I looked up to see a well fed face in a fur coat and Nike tracksuit calling me from the second floor. He held in his hand a glass of what might well have been champagne and was cheerfully waving “come on up, you’ll enjoy this”

I was about to cry something out in reply, but once I had got over my surprise the figure had already pulled back his pomaded head.

I was torn, for while it might have been prudent to carry on my way – all the better to get out of this hellhole – the thought that someone recognised me was not something I could ignore. Against my better instincts then I made my way up the battered staircase, one that had been clearly replaced several times since last I had trod on it. This time with simple planks of what looked like some kind of plastic material had been hammered in place. Carefully I walked up, neither trusting what I was walking in nor what I was about to walk into. Both were things that I feared would turn against me very soon, for there was nothing in this world that did not stink of either decay or madness.

However I reached the second floor intact and made my way towards the sound, not of fighting this time, but of cultivated voices chatting amicably away. I walked through a tall doorway into what might once have been some kind of executive dining area but like everything else in the city had suffered centuries of neglect and some rather obvious looting. However if the room itself had lost some of its grandeur the men and women standing within were determined to make up for it.

I believe they numbered around twenty or so, and while they were dressed outlandishly in clashing styles that seemed to show little regard for fashion or good taste they were clearly people of some degree of wealth. They also seemed to be engaged in the odd sport of watching the fighting below with the same degree of calm detachment had they been watching a game of baseball.

Cautiously I walked forward, knowing that just a stray tank round could bring down this whole room and wary of getting too close to the broad open space where once Art Deco windows had looked down over the broad boulevard.

“looks like the little buggers are getting the better of our science chums, eh?” said the man who had spoken to me before, he gestured over the balcony to the street below. I risked a brief look and saw that many of the tanks lay inert, none of them burning but all of them still bleeding disturbingly from multiple wounds. Several of the child soldiers had taken position behind them and were exchanging fire with other armoured vehicles further down the street. I couldn’t help but notice how the child soldiers were consuming the yellow puslike liquid that wept from the bulletholes in the tank like it was some exquisite candy “perhaps this really is the end, eh?”

I looked at the man next to me, who clearly regarded the fall of his city to the strange forces of the Colussi with a degree of cheerfulness.

“is that a good thing?” I asked, confused still by the company I was keeping.

“oh, I expect the Colussi will have all our throats slit” he said with a smile, running a finger across his own neck “probably hang our corpses from the College walls themselves”

“then maybe you should be evacuating” I said, looking fearfully about “or at least getting to the university. The place looks like a fortress”

“oh no, this is much more interesting” he said “besides, we live, we die, we live again”

“err, what?” I asked, not sure if he was serious about his religious ravings. Who knew what these people believed in? All I knew for sure was that he wasn’t coming back from execution “how does that work?”

“same as its always done my friend” beamed the man, explaining to me as if I was an idiot “have you forgotten again?”

“forgotten what?” I asked, remembering how the tramp had suggested the same. A nasty feeling was forming in the pit of my stomach.

“to be expected” he said loftily “you aren’t as young as you once were, but then again it’s not seemed to matter how many years have passed. People like you don’t really change very much”

“what do you mean, people like me?” I asked urgently, grabbing him by the furred lapels of his coat “what the fuck do you know about me that I don’t?”

“a lot, clearly” he said, then softened “look, we’ve known each other a while – well a while for me, probably not so long for you. we’ve got a lot in common”

I looked at him in his Nike trainers and fur coat, sipping champagne as the city around him died.

“I doubt that very much” I said “I’ve been here about five hours so far, and nothing has made any sense. I expected to be in mission control by now, but instead I’m in a crazy fucking city with a bunch of crazy fucking people. What possibly can we have in common?”

“we’ve both been around. Seen a lot” he said breezily “only you seem to keep forgetting. I suppose that’s an occupational hazard. Your mind is not what it once was”

“what do you mean?”

“age” said the man “it haunts all of us. Well not me. I get to a certain age, then pop my clogs. Just means I wake up in a slime filled vat in the basement of the University. I get a new body every few years. You, well. Let’s just say you’re old fashioned”

“how….how do you know me?” I asked, beginning in terror to see what he might be getting at, but the reality was too horrible to comprehend “how long have I been here?” “we go back” he said, ignoring my second question “way back to when this city was young. Well moderately young at least…”

He continued babbling but already my mind had opened up. I may have had no memory before waking up in that awful garret room but I have a good imagination. I was not newly arrived, my rags were testament enough to that. Had I in fact been here longer than simply today? And if so was I trapped in a loop of forgetting, living each day thinking I was freshly arrived when in fact I had been here for years. Going through the same futile motions again and again?

“I…I forgot?” I asked, looking out over the rubble and the fighting. The armoured cars had now retreated and the cheering children were running delightedly up and down the streets. Some of the older boys had crowbarred open the turret of a tank and were busy scooping out lumps of what looked suspiciously like lobster meat and throwing it cheerfully to the rest. On the margins the other denizens of the city had started to emerge now that the fighting had moved elsewhere. They all looked much the same as the tramp I had met upon waking. The same defeated aimlessness, the same geriatric agelessness. People lacking any purpose or agency, wary and easily startled. They reminded more of pigeons than of people, living on the edges of society. Doing nothing but making do “I must have been here for years” I looked down at my rags. My NASA clothing was hard wearing, I knew that much. It looked like it had been worn very hard, and for a long time.

“don’t be so hard on yourself old bean” said the man next to me, whose name had still not returned to my mind despite his obvious familiarity “like I say, you have your fugues and your little memory blackouts. Takes its toll, but every time you wake up and you try your hardest. Can’t blame a person for that, can we?”

Despite my misery I recognised that at least, the same old fight and fire that had got me into the Navy and then into NASA. The strength of character that even today had prevented me lapsing into denial or insanity. Perhaps it didn’t alter anything that I had always been here, perhaps I could still make some kind of difference.

“the university” I said urgently, turning to my friend “I have to get there. I have to warn them, perhaps together we can still do something”

“ah, still trying then” said my friend, knocking back his drink and briefly baring his teeth against whatever concoction he had in there “good luck to you. we’ll probably see you there, that is the basement isn’t breached and the Colussi decide to torch the whole place” he looked slightly more cheerful at this, as if the end to his cycle of lives might be something worth wishing for.

“I think if anyone has the answer, they do” I said urgently. Thinking that if I had any purpose in this life it was to get to the university and persuade them…well persuade them of something. I was sure I would remember that on the way. However it only took one glance at the street below to tell me I needed to be on my way. The children were capering and running about now they had won their battle, and I knew in my guts it was only a matter of time before the Colussi appeared. That was something I did not think I would ever be ready for.

“this is goodbye then” I said to the strange man who had called me friend.

“no” he said gently as I shook his hand “It really isn’t. but good luck, eh?”

I didn’t have time for any further questions, preferring to make my way back down the stairs to make my way to the back streets. As I did so I could not help but marvel at my own strength of character. How many of the people I had known back home could have dealt so well with being thrown far into the future? How many of them would not have been driven made straight away by the insanity of the world they would find here? No, it did not matter whether I could remember the past or not. What mattered were my actions now, how I behaved whilst I had the chance.

I almost made it to the university without incident, and yet I believe if I had I would be the poorer for it. For I have always been an atheist, an opinion not dented by my orbiting the jewel of our mother earth, and I never thought I would see a god. Then again as my atheism always contained in it a rejection not just of the existence of god but at the injustice that should god exist that cruelty and horror was allowed to continue. I had often told people that if god did exist, he would have to be the worst kind of asshole imaginable.

Thus, when we unwittingly ran into the colussi, I had my chance to meet a god, and it confirmed my belief that these truly were the worst kind of assholes imaginable.

After the department store I ran through winding streets I almost recognised. There was a canal that I didn’t remember that gave the city a nice festive feel, despite the bodies in the water. Perhaps the festive feel also came from the people who despite looking like disaster victims were intent on having a good time. It may have been racial memory from the days when the city had been a major tourist spot and couples from across the globe would come to walk arm in along its wide boulevards and its enchanting bars. Or maybe it was because with the advent of the colussi each and every person was in fear of death and thus wanted to spend their last hours in alcoholic oblivion.

I ran past bars that were little more than canvases stretched over ruined buildings, along streets thronged with people blackout drunk and wearing not a stitch of clothes. I passed loudspeakers throbbing with music I swear no human being could ever have composed and saw human beings feasting on foods that made me never want to eat again.

All in all it was the very definition of culture shock, and yet I could not shake the familiarity of it. I had to reluctantly agree that man I had met must have been right, that my memory had flaked out on me and that I had been here a long time. Hardly a surprise that the human mind would rather erase itself than face the shock of what humanity had turned into. I just tried not to think how long it had been, was there an old man face that would peak out at me if I saw a mirror? Was I some toothless old bird who thought he was still a young man? Luckily I did not find out, instead I was too intent on getting to the university.

As I turned away from the crowds and went down a series of tall streets where the only buildings were high tenements I sighed in relief. At least this area was empty. At least here the sound of desperate partying and even more desperate fornication was obscured by the four and five story buildings. I didn’t think that the reasons for this silence might not be benign, nor that the houses themselves, tattooed head to foot in endless screeds of illegible text, might have some ill will in them.

“mighty strange” I muttered to myself. I could just about make out some of the words on the buildings, it was as if some long insane person had tried to write out an internal monologue consisting mostly of the phrases used in long gone adverts. Strings of superlative adjectives were written crazily on the facade of a brownstone building, rendered in thick white paint. Elsewhere brand symbols were crudely inverted as if created by some aboriginal being who had dreamed them on some kind of spirit quest “mighty, mighty strange”

My reverie, however, was interrupted by something else.

I had assumed the child army would have had little or no training, and that whoever commanded them would have used them as cannon fodder for the enemy guns. I assumed too that children lacked the discipline for any in depth manoeuvres. When the rubble around me erupted with ten or twelve well armed teenagers I was both surprised and a little bit impressed.

“don’t shoot!” I cried, hopeful that they might be keener to follow orders that engage in wonton destruction. To my relief they spared me, thought I realise it was more because I was no threat than anything else.

One boy, the odour of command wafting from him, strode over to me with all the arrogance a twelve year old could muster and squinted up at my face “oh, its you” he said, then walked on to where a body lay on the floor. What I had thought was a dead human in a dogmask turned out on closer inspection to be some hideous dog human hybrid

“that’s dinner then” he said with obvious joy. With a single vicious movement he pulled from his belt a knife and went about dismembering the creature, passing chunks of flesh to a girl no more than nine years old whose angelic face was spoiled by the blood she kept lapping from the dead beast.

“what do you mean?” I said, going over to the boy. The rest of his soldiers, boys and girls alike, seemed to have no more interest in me and were instead scanning the lines of sight and arranging positions to take as they pressed forward.

“he wants to see you” said the boy in charge, not looking at me as he hacked away at the beast

“who?” I asked “why?”

“who do you think?” said the boy in an exasperated voice, as if he were the adult and me the child. He gestured behind him with the gore caked knife “him”

I turned around just in time to see the Colussi Magnus step out from around a corner and into the street.

I had thought myself prepared after a day of horrors for one more, but I was not. I had thought having spied the colussi from the building I had awoken in might take the edge off my shock, but it did not. Coming face to face with a thirty foot tall bronze god in its full armour and regalia cannot be overstated. Those empty eyes. Those long cruel fingers. Those massive sandalled feet that could crush all before it and not care one bit. I looked up at the colussi and I knew instantly why the armies of children had flocked to his banner. I knew as intimately as I knew myself that whilst this figure might be cast in the likeness of a man it was no more a man than a crude stick figure is. And yet I knew that it was not that this was the imitation of a man, rendered in giant form. Rather it was the perfect form of us, and we had been made as an imperfect copy of the Colussi. I knew I was looking at a god, and I could not tell apart my awe from my horror, my desire to run away from my desire to run and kiss his feet.

The colussi looked at me, his empty eyes going right through me. I could feel him read my life from my dirtiest secrets to my most shameful lie to the most banal details of my life. I could see him hoover up everything I was and everything I would be and everything I would never be. The thought that I could conceal anything from him, let alone try to fight him, was so absurd to be laughable. That he was even taking an interest in my continued existence was the most remarkable thing about me. Far more than ever going up into space my most thrilling moment was the one where it seemed he actually spared more than two seconds of his precious time to regard me. Tiny, unimportant me.

“no” he said, a voice that moved around my head and came not from his lips – for they were cast of bronze and utterly immobile “no, this is not who I want” for a nanosecond I felt something that on a lesser being be called confusion, or even such a thing as a mistake “not that at all” he added, and with that the laser of his attention turned away and I could breathe again.

“umm, what?” I said, confused and turning to the boy who still whistling as he skinned the poor dead beast. I had the strangest feeling I had been weighed up, judged and found wanting. I just wish I knew why.

“he told you” said the boy, still not turning around “he ‘ent interested. Bad luck for you I guess. Or maybe good luck. Could be either”

I looked back at the god as it stood in the street, its gaze level with the rooftops as it stared out over the city it had set to conquer. Then it turned its gaze back on me, a gaze that had within it all the malevolence a god could summon. When I had merely piqued his interest the attention of the god had been arresting enough, now I had aroused his anger I was stunned into submission. Even the boy next to me could feel it.

“nope, guess its bad luck then. Hope you had a happy life boss, cos now its over”

with that the colussi strode ten feet towards me, its giant hands ready to end my life in less than the amount of time it would take to cross the street. I felt my knees buckle, my ability to resist shattered before it had even begun. I had accepted death before that beast had even reached me to deal it out.

That was when the other colussi appeared.

To see one god in a day was an awe inspiring experience, to see two was to inspire pant shitting terror. The thought that they might be allies whirled from my mind, for creatures like these there was no other god but them. For while they might unite against the scientists and the whitecoats of popular imagination there was no love lost between them. If you have ever seen two cats war over territory or status then you can imagine this, though instead of felines imagine Bronze monstrosities the size of buildings.

“damn it” said the boy with a sigh, grabbing his weapon and leaping forwards. At the unspoken command of the colossi the children ran towards the newly appeared god. I noticed that he likewise had an army of minors- grubby and undernourished but fanatically loyal. A young girl with flowers in her hair pulled up a machine gun and brought down the boy running at her with a hail of fire.

I glanced up at the colossi- both of them staring at each other with such malevolence it seemed to burn in the air between them. What history of animosity was there between them? What ancient feuds were they now taking out via their child army proxies?

I for one had no desire to find out, and discovering that the attention of the colossi was not upon me decided that it was better to die trying to escape than whatever tortures the colossi might have in store for me.

So I ran, while behind me children who should have been in school cheerfully murdered each other on the whim of two monstrous gods. I ducked down an alleyway that I knew with hallucinatory clarity lead towards the College, and more importantly to a metro station.

I had no illusion, of course, that the metro would be running. No doubt the people who lived down there had evolved into molelike race with dread eldritch rituals. However the metro conveniently had an subway route whereby tender undergraduates might enter the college directly from the metro when the cold of winter was at its worst. This would mean I did not need to scale the large walls that now protected the college, and having seen already what weapons the college possessed I was in no hurry to try and talk my way around them. If I had to talk to the so called scientists it had best be not from the wrong end of a gun.

So with the rattle of machine gun fire and cries of pre teen death I hastened down the ally, seeing my salvation in the broken down remains of the metro station. I just had to pray that there had been no cave ins, or no insane cult had named the station a temple that must remain inviolate.

My luck held. I hammered down worn concrete steps and into the familiar scent of the metro, an aroma overlaid with the all too familiar stink of human beings and burning animal fat. The lights had of course long gone but there were more of those supposedly edible glow worms. By memory I trotted through long rotten halls where a few tramps and lost nomads clung to each other. I wondered why they had not sought shelter in the grounds of the university but as soon as I rounded the corner that should have lead straight into the college I realised why.

Perhaps it had been built recently, or perhaps in some long ago year. It did not matter which but the entrance to my salvation was bricked up and blackened from cooking fires. Desperately I looked for signs of wear and tear or else some weakness in the wall, but alas I could see there was none. It was all I could do not to weep with frustration and give up. Become another lost tramp haunting these tunnels till the colossi came to kill me – I was even dressed for it, my rags perhaps the result of the last time I had given up on the world.

But that thought seemed to galvanise me. It did not matter how many times I had tried this before, what mattered was that I kept going. Images of Knights errant on quests that might cost them their lives, their memories, their sanity went through me. I recalled my navy training, my failures that at the time I felt were the end of the world, but were not. Each time I had been knocked down I had got up again and fought back harder, till I was a part of the space programme. When I qualified for…well I could not remember that part, but suffice to say my presence in this place outside of time must have come about through some mission or other that only I had been qualified for. And my survival through god knew how many years was testament to my grit and determination. I certainly wasn’t going to let some fucking brick wall defeat me.

So I looked around me, engaging the critical and logical faculties that my fellow human beings seem to have long lost. There were more ways, I knew, into the college than just this one. The very tunnels of the metro ran under the college, and the college had a myriad of basements and underground labs. Surely it would not be too much of a stretch to suppose they might meet? And although a part of me thought that these would certainly be bricked up as well I knew better than to suppose that in these end days people were quite so thorough.

So I turned on my heels and sped towards the escalators that lead to the platform. These had long rusted away, leaving only the stone rails like a ski slope into the darkness. I wrinkled my nose, clearly the platforms were not the nest of some blasphemous cult, but rather the place the local residents used to go for a shit.

Undeterred I prepared to go into the stygian depths, looking about me for essential supplies. These were of course the glow worm creatures that lit the metro station itself. Why they did not go deeper I did not want to imagine. Instead I grabbed first a bundle of stinking rags from the floor, tying up the corners to make a makeshift bag. This I then filled with as many of the creatures as I could pry from the walls and taking one in my hand I stepped fearfully into the noisome mess.

I need not describe the mute horror of my descent, suffice to say that I grew filthy and would have lost my lunch had I even recalled when I last ate. Soon though I was on the platform level, my glow worms lighting the way ahead.

Down this far there seemed little enough damage and wandering along the northern platform it seemed that not much except the passage of time had altered this place. But for the dust and the spread of mould it was not unlike the stop where I remember spending time when I dated a girl at the college. However back then I would not have dropped gently from the edge of the platform and walked into the tunnel. Naturally I kept my distance from the third rail, though I was convinced it must be as dead as the rest of the electricity in this place. That and a lingering fear of the northbound train hurtling through the tunnel were reassuring memories of a lost time.

The tunnel itself was almost featureless, and I scanned it for signs of service hatches or fire escape routes. I had almost given up hope when eventually I spied a fairly ordinary looking door that promised access to the world above. Supposing that I was long past the walls that protected the college and anxious to escape the subterranean world before my glow worms expired I hastened to the door. The only barrier between me and freedom the once firm lock of the door.

However time ruins everything, and steel is no exception to that. It was the work of a few moments with an old lump of concrete to smash the lock to pieces and pull open the warped door. There before me lay steps and, wonder of wonders, electric lights.

I had expected to be lead up to some outbuilding of the college or else onto the lawns of the grounds. In my memory the lawns and the gardens had been prodigious, and although I supposed buildings must have erected in the centuries since I had left I was sure they would not have blocked the exit to the surface. I was somewhat surprised then to find that the rungs of the ladder let me out in another service corridor. This I followed warily, though the electric light comforted me somewhat. Nonetheless I felt a great sense of foreboding, the humming machinery and cabling growing thicker as I walked. Not least because the lighting itself quickly grew dim, turning into red light that made everything look like the inside of an intestine.

Not knowing the layout I followed my instincts, hoping I would not be some twist of fate find myself inside the walls of the university. Yet I could feel I was below the college, the corridors branching off leading to sub basements that were clearly in use. What their use was I encountered rather abruptly when I stumbled through an open door and into a large chamber.

It must have been built as a storage room for one of the science labs, perhaps for dangerous chemicals or for equipment. However in its centuries of use it had clearly become home to something else. Something that become clear as my eyes got used to the gloom and made me tremble in terror.

A face. Looking back at me. Eyes wide and sightless. Falling back I hit against cold glass, turning I saw another body, its face wide. It was only as I saw this creature had floating hair I realised that these were tanks, filled with some unknown liquid and these horrifying specimen. As I calmed myself I saw that these tanks were stacked up to the ceiling and each of them had within them a person. I would hesitate to call them human, for while they were certainly humanoid they were more like the creatures I had seen romping around the city or at the banquet with my old nameless friend. Some had long pointed ears, others whose nude bodies revealed nipples like cats and hands that ended in claws. Others seemed normal except for elongated skulls or extra fingers.

‘mutants?” I whispered, wondering if like the collectors of times past they were bodies of mutated people kept for study by the university. It was only as I looked closer that the tanks I realised I was wrong, very wrong.

Firstly with some horror I realised that these were not dead beings. A pad on the side of each square tank had a monitor showing a heart rate and other vital signs. The second realisation was that these were not natural mutations caused by radioactive fallout or generations of inbreeding. Instead they were clearly man made, and made by the college itself. For under each pad there was a copyright notice, insisting that each of these poor creatures DNA was the sole property of the city college and could not be reproduced without permission. The monogram of the college, unchanged since my time, had been embossed onto the chest of each of them.

“good god” I muttered to myself. But I had no time to be messing around looking at horror. I needed to get to the heart of this place. But how? I was in unfamiliar territory, and while I had a hazy memory of the refectory of the college and its various bars that would not help me now.

“or do I?” I murmured to myself. Seeing these half breeds in their tanks had stirred something in me, and it combined with the man I had met on the balcony’s words not least my friends about how he had been reawakened many times in this place. A distant amnesiac bell began to ring.

Quickly I groped around for the exit. Felt the familiarity of a door handle. The corridor beyond I thought I had been through before, even if just once. Following now I felt memory. A dull throb of fear. Sparkling confusion. I had been here before. I had run through these corridors. What direction I do not know but I felt the rooms fall into my memory neatly. I had been here, and not in my other life. In this one.

Anxious and fearing that this sudden memory was just a break in the clouds, and that I would soon be plunged back into the enveloping fog of amnesia, I rushed on. Past labs where eldritch experiments were being conducted, for which I had no time. Time. That was the thing. Time.

“how could I have been here before?” I said to myself, not caring as I passed white coated men and women who regarded me curiously. Curiously for sure, but not with fear or animosity. As if they already knew me somehow “when was I here? What time….?”

That was when I realised it, the chunk of memory still refusing to unfog but the logic inescapable. It was confirmed for me when I rounded a corner and saw the entrance to a massive chamber filled with ancient machinery. Machinery that I knew from instinct could only have one purpose.

“time!” I breathed to myself as I looked under an archway into the chamber that I realised had been my destination all along “it must be! How else could I remember this place?”

And with this realisation came another, that if I had done this once I could do it again. I could undo what had happened, to save the city and myself from eternal torment.

The chamber housing the time travel gate was filled with milling academics who fussed over the chaos of machinery. However the description of academic does not do justice to the men and women who laboured to get their equipment in working order before the Colussi finally breached the walls. The men looked more like grizzled warriors than professors, their faces bearded and covered in scars. Similarly the women amongst them looked fierce with bird sharp faces and I found myself facing down a forest of small arms as I entered the chamber.

“wait!” I cried, out of breath from my journey “for the love of god, wait”

“oh” said one of the academics, looking up from the wall of equipment that powered the gate. In that stack I could see technologies from my own time jostling against biotechnology I could not recognise. At the same time there was machinery I would swear belonged more to the middle ages or even the stone age than a laboratory that had breached the walls of time itself. I also swear that I saw more than one disembodied head, mouth open in a silent scream, who were wired into the machinery. However I had no time for observation and even less for moral judgements “its you” said the academic, then to the others “don’t worry, its harmless”

“look, you have to take me back with you” I said, limping into the room as the academics holstered their weapons and went back to work they considered far more important than me “I can make things better, I can enforce change, I….”

“you?” said the academic, fixing me with a stare that could perhaps have met that of the colussi themselves “you are nothing. You are less than nothing, you are a mistake that should have long since been corrected by fire....”

“Hey” I yelled back “I’m probably the last sane person in this fucking city and I’m your best chance to avert this disaster” I glared about the room, furious that I should be so easily dismissed. I who had been in NASA, who had travelled though time and survived in this madness “I need to go back to my time. I’m the only one with the knowledge and the contacts. I can get NASA to listen to me, the US government will….”

“I’m sorry” said the academic fixing with weary bloodshot eyes “you are what now?” he shook his head “if there is anyone sane in this city it certainly isn’t you. Now get the fuck out before I regret my decision to let you live and have you fed to the machine”

“never” I cried, my finger in his face “I’ve got a right to….”

“you’ve got a right to nothing” said the academic “you are nothing”

“I am major Willis of the US Navy” I said, certain of myself now “A NASA astronaut and a time traveller. I demand you send me back”

The academic looked at me, his face creased in surprise and for a moment I thought he would relent. That my words would have some impact on him. I was right, in a way, but the impact I was looking for was not the gales of laughter that came from him and the other academic around him.

“oh Jesus fucking Christ” said the academic, his tired eyes almost weeping with laughter “still?”

I opened my mouth to reply but was too confused. My memory was still full of holes but my logic felt flawless.

“how many times do we have to go through this?” he began

“look, I’ve worked it out” I gestured at the machinery “I came through this once before, that was how I got here. Decades ago, it must have been. The time travel itself may have scrambled my memory, and I am sure I have frequent fugues but I think I am in control now…”

“must fucking what?” said the academic “ oh come on, take a look at yourself” with that he left his machine and grabbed me about my shoulders. His bearlike grip manhandled me across the chamber to where a mirrored cube stood some ten feet high “take a good look at yourself and tell me what the fuck you are”

I thought at first it was a joke. That the surface of the cube was not mirrored but a glass containing something hideous. Then the perspective clicked and it all came into focus. I wasn’t Major Willis of the US Navy. I wasn’t a fierce warrior or rational man. I wasn’t even a man at all. The person looking back at me was haggard, snaggle toothed and ill favoured. It was also definitely female but judging by the ears I wasn’t entirely sure I qualified as human.

“what….what am I?” I stuttered, my memory flickering as my voice wavered, its cadence I realised much higher than I had realised, the sound cracked and broken as if I had been living on the streets all my life.

“A fucking mistake” hissed the academic “we made you. In the tanks under the academy. We made you by mistake and you started thinking you were some guy from the dawn of the chaotic age. You aren’t him. I don’t think he was even real, and we certainly aren’t taking him with us to infect the past with the insanity of the present” he growled and pushed me into the corner of the room where I sprawled foolishly “we’ve got one chance to get this right. Once chance to prevent the Colussi from ever being created. To stop all this shit happening” he gestured to one of the armed men “get her the fuck out of here”

However before the soldier could grab me an explosion rocked the lab, ancient instrument falling to the floor and a severed head breaking free of its moorings to quickly asphyxiate on the floor.

“what the hell was that?” cried one of the scientists as he tapped away at a screen. Behind him something like a medieval orrery began to turn “colossi?”

“can’t be” said another, her eyes looking at another screen, bisected by lines showing the view from cameras across the campus “perimeter walls have not been breached”

There was a scream and the sound of gunfire from outside the lab.

“how….how the fuck did they get in Renard?” yelled the female scientist as the armed men rushed out to the corridor beyond.

“they must have….” Began Renard, clearly the burly scientist who had assaulted me, then whipped around to fix me with a murderous gaze “how the fuck did you get in here?”

“I…I found a way” I said defiantly “I’m a navy trained…”

“oh, stop that shit” he said, stomping over to me. In the background the sound of fighting got louder. Now I could hear the shouts of children, gleeful cries as they ran amok in the basements of the College “you didn’t…” he glared at me, looking at the fresh filth that caked my clothes, at the glow worm bag cast beside me “oh you fucking did, didn’t you?” “look, I wasn’t followed. I’d have known��” I began, gasping in pain as he grabbed me by the hair, pulling my head back and staring hard into my eyes.

“you spoke to one. Didn’t you? Which one?”

“I…I…”

“Magnus. Must have been Magnus” Renard strode over to a machine and checked the readings. All around him the other scientists were desperately starting up the machine, flicking switches and stroking bio-machine hybrid creatures. The academic whirled around, a revolver in his hand and pointing at my face. I could see his finger already on the trigger “we can’t have him coming here. Can’t have him….”

However before he could end my miserable existence there was an explosion, knocking Renard off his feet.

“No!” he roared as the first children ran into the room. He took down two with quick shots, blowing out the brains of a boy barely ten years old. However behind the boy there were a hundred more and with them came the power of the colossi. It was only a matter of time before those bronze monsters strode into this room, and with them the end of any hope for the human race. Renard realised that and instead began wildly firing at the machines that would have punched a hole in time “destroy it. Blow the fucking thing to pieces…” “but Ren…” began one of the other scientists, but the academic pushed him out of the way.

“we can’t let that monster in here. Can’t let it use the machine. We have to…” But the gods clearly were not smiling on him, before before he could break his creation a limber thirteen year old girl rushed into the room. With startling speed she leapt onto his back, plunging a knife into his spine. He roared once, flinging the girl against the mirrored cube and putting a bullet in her. But he staggered and fell, the knife wound in his back coursing with blood.

Now the lab was a symphony of chaos. The few scientists left were bravely putting up a fight but they were outnumbered and desperate, vacillating between trying to disable the machine and stop the army of children. It was a bitter irony that at the moment they had wanted it least the machine finally came to life.

With a burst of colour that the human race has no name for a circle appeared in the middle of the complex orrery that had been spinning and was now crossing into some place out of time.

“stop them…” cried the last scientist, falling under the knives of smiling urchins who butchered her as cheerfully as opening presents on Christmas morning.

For my part I sat huddled in paralysis. I had thought myself one thing and was now revealed to be quite another. I had thought myself a hero, a man of the past who brought with him rationality and survival. Instead I was just some mad old woman with some stupid fantasy, who had unwittingly doomed the entire human race. That I had brought about the very doom I was seeking to prevent hit me with such bitter irony I welcomed the blades that were sure to slit my throat.

“nah, you’re all right gran” said one girl as I prepared to see my maker “colussi’ll thank you for this one. Give you some lovely new memories. Make your right as rain”

“no….no I don’t want…” I began, feeling weak and old and stupid. Flashes of memory now from behind this evil day. That the man on the balcony had been right, we had know each other. He’d known well the mad hag that capered and acted like she was a NASA astronaut. How I’d performed for them, believing I was this great olden times hero but in fact was little more than the fantasy of some mad mongrel creature bred in the labs under the University. Best the children put me out of my misery, I thought, spying the fallen guns of the scientists who’d died because of me. If I could grab one I could end this charade of life.

But then I had a better idea, looking at the curling vortex of energy. I knew that the scientists had aimed their machine at the past, but did not know when. However any fool could tell that any time was better than now. If I could go back far enough I could even prevent this horror from ever happening. Or at least I could die trying.

With that thought in my mind I scrabbled for a gun, grabbing one and firing it madly. Not into the children, for I could not take a child’s life, not for any reason. But instead I wanted simply to see them dash for cover. At the same time I ran for the pulsing light. Some instinct told me that it was the head in its jar that was the essential ingredient to this machine and as I passed I trained my gun upon it. As I passed into the blinding light I fired five quick shots into it. I felt the machine waver, begin to break down and the spinning orrery began to lose power. Gathering the last of my nerve I dived through the machine, giving myself to death or glory, not caring which it might be.

Lights danced through my skull. I saw the world reverse. A montage of bullets leaving bodies and smoke retreating back to fires. There was a tremor, an error as something broke down. Then everything exploded into light.

As soon as I awoke I knew something had gone wrong with my re-entry. NASA had many rooms in many hospitals but none had crumbling brick walls that looked covered in a thousand years of soot and grime. Nor would NASA have left me in nothing but the torn rags of a spacesuit in filthy sheets in a room of cot like beds that stank of the sea and of mildew and the oddities of air conditioning that probably hadn’t been cleaned since the days of Christ.

#timetravel #sf

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