Aeon Fourteen Read online

  The nameless man sat down, dangled his feet in the boiling surf like a swimmer at a lido testing the temperature of the water. Then a large wave slapped the breakwater, throwing up a cloud of spray and causing the man to sneeze. He didn't waste any time after that. Pinching his nose shut, he plunged beneath the surface, emerging at a different spot a few seconds later. Portly or not, there was little wrong with his technique. He made admirable progress in the first five minutes, stroking swiftly and consistently out to sea before allowing the current to bear him away.

  He was out of sight by the time Vic went back inside. Nobody else seemed to have noticed. Fully accustomed to the idea that he lived in a world where suicide had become a mundane fact of life, he returned his cup to the kitchen and changed out of his damp clothes.

  * * * *

  II

  The nightly illuminations had been bad enough under clear skies, but beneath a dense layer of storm clouds, the eerie displays became all but unbearable. At first, Vic and Penny had stayed in together to watch the grim nocturnal spectacles unfold from the minimal comfort of the flat; but as time progressed and Pen's health deteriorated, Vic had taken to joining the masses gathered on the sand.

  Tonight was no different.

  With the boulevard lights extinguished, a huge bonfire raged before the retreating tide. Vic left a flask of hot soup and a note beside the bed before slipping out of the building at the last minute. The flames leapt higher as the crowd, not to mention the keen sense of anticipation, intensified. Teenagers tossed driftwood, old bits of siding, even a few discarded rubbish bags, onto the strengthening blaze. Not wanting to get too close, Vic leant against a wilting palm and smoked a cigarette.

  Ten after nine, according to his watch. Should be getting started soon.

  He watched in idle fascination as glowing streams of ash drifted skywards. Little knots of friends and acquaintances, sworn allies against encroaching fear, chatted quietly among themselves, feigning indifference. Then a cry rang out. A young woman standing on a rotting bollard pointing frantically out to sea, face chapped red from the searing cold. Or perhaps it was from the excitement, it was difficult to tell. Whatever the cause, several hundred pairs of eyes swivelled in the same direction at once. Vic knew they wouldn't see much. The cloud cover of morning had cleared up somewhat, but not enough to allow the blue plasma glow of the previous nights to shine through. Every now and again, however, the moon did peep from its hiding place among the sodden cumulus, and at such moments nebulous blue washes of light tinted its stony countenance.

  It was a start.

  Vic drew smoke deep into his lungs, pitched the butt of his cigarette into the sand. In the next instant, several billion greenish flecks of light rained silently upon the ocean. The crowd gasped as the shower became an avalanche, sucked in its breath as the avalanche drowned in twisting yellow fountains of light that went leaping back into space. The moist underbelly of cloud glowed magnificently with reflected light. A range of equally beguiling phenomena continued into the early hours, with purple and vermillion helixes dancing vibrantly across the heavens. It were as if the Aurora Borealis itself had come all the way to the coast. The few remaining spectators applauded their appreciation at the finale. Vic would have joined them, only his hands were too numb.

  He snuffed out his last cigarette and went back inside.

  * * * *

  III

  A note was waiting for him when he returned: a vitriolic reply to his own note. Vic crumpled the paper and let it fall to the floor. She'd be back when the last of the local dives shut for the night—sicker, angrier, more critical then ever. It was partially his own fault. At some point in the relationship, he had simply decided to put his own life on hold in order to be a functional partner. The long-suffering husband who did the groceries without complaint and cared unflaggingly for his ailing wife.

  Penny wasn't stupid. She could sense the change in him and resented the implication like hell. Basically, Vic was telling her they had a marriage as long as there was an illness to fight. Hardly the best incentive for improving one's health, he knew. And the worst part of it was, he kind of liked the arrangement. With the world changing in all sorts of sinister and enchanting ways, he needed time and space to think—and a bed-ridden spouse who spent most of the day asleep provided just that.

  Tired of having the same mental conversation with himself night after night, he put his head in his hands and lay back on the bed. Ghostly dawn light permeated the room when he next opened his eyes, catching him off-guard. Was it morning already? Had he slept at all? The same question might be asked of Pen. The space beside him was empty, the flat deathly quiet. Only the mournful cries of the gulls remained. He rolled from bed, swept the tatty drapes aside, suddenly grateful that fresh air and bracing ocean vistas were still free of charge—even to an unemployed circus performer on disability benefit.

  The balcony windows swung open before him. Vic Fenton took a single step, then hesitated. Scented ocean mist pearled in from the Atlantic, partially obscuring the thirty or so silent figures in Doomsday suits circulating on the beach below. Some of those figures advanced in loose rows, using instruments like jury-rigged metal detectors to comb every available inch of shoreline, others stood around looking perplexed and exhausted all at once—although how Vic could sense this when their features were obscured by full-face oxygen masks, he was unable to say.

  He remained motionless as the bizarre spectacle unfolded in unearthly silence. The taxis were absent this morning, and not just because of the previous night. Road blocks straddled the boulevard at every junction, the Doomsday suits manning them armed to the teeth. Every few minutes, a rude blast of static interrupted the otherwise strained atmosphere of calm that hung on the air. Vic came to an abrupt decision. He equipped himself with fresh clothes and cigarettes from the dresser drawer, and wriggled through a first-floor toilet window. A brief reconnaissance had revealed the exits and entrances to all buildings in the area to be thoroughly secured, but that wouldn't stop him. He had to find Penny.

  The neighbouring brown-field site, with its monolithic Coke ad, provided ideal cover, and soon Vic was racing down slumbering side-streets, checking empty bus-shelters for clues, rifling through alleyway dumpsters. He didn't expect to find anything there. Penny got a bit vague if she neglected to take her medicine regularly, and she was quite capable of losing herself for hours at a time, but it'd be weeks before she descended into anything approaching genuine psychosis. Still, no harm in being thorough.

  By the time Vic had scoured every unguarded spot he could think of, he started wondering if he might have done better on the phone. They didn't know many people in the area, generally preferring to keep themselves to themselves, but the one time Pen had left him, she'd ended up spending about an hour napping on some local drug dealer's bathroom floor before ringing him in tears. Maybe she still had that number stashed away in an old jacket somewhere. Unfortunately, with the morning wearing on, it seemed as if every other shop doorway played host to a soldier in an NBC suit.

  And it wasn't just shop doorways. The Mash House was already ranging into view when a figure in funhouse white popped up from behind a parked car, rudely jamming a gun in Vic's face. The masked man's breath hissed like deodorant spray when he exhaled.

  “Name?”

  “Vic Fenton,” said Vic.

  Sssssst.

  “Where d'you live, son?”

  Vic pointed.

  “Prove it.”

  Sssssst.

  Vic plundered his wallet for an item of identification that bore his current address. Found nothing.

  Sssssst. Sssssst. “I'm waiting.”

  “I've only got my keys,” Vic explained, “flat twelve, top floor of the Mash House. If you escort me, I can show you they fit the lock.”

  The soldier thought about this for a bit. “No, that's fine,” he said. “Run along, please, sir.”

  Vic turned to go, but something held him back.

&n
bsp; “What's going on here,” he said.

  The soldier gestured at the sky with the barrel of his semi-automatic. “Collision,” he said, “around three this morning.”

  “Ours or theirs?”

  Sssssst. The soldier just looked at him.

  “Oh, come on. You must be able to share that much with me.”

  The soldier began to get agitated. “One of each,” he said, low under his breath. “We've found only debris so far, but there might be ... other stuff out there somewhere. Stuff we can use. Now get going.”

  “Keep up the good work,” said Vic. He told the man thanks and sprinted the last hundred yards home.

  * * * *

  IV

  The room was still empty when he got in. Penny's note had said she was catching the 01:31 back to Hastings, but so far he hadn't thought to verify the claim. Hollow threats were just her way. A quick examination of the wardrobe's contents told a very different story. Her suitcase was gone, as were the majority of her clothes. Only a pair of denim shorts with a broken zipper remained.

  Vic spent the next couple of hours on the roof chatting to a Liberian prostitute known for her wild flights of fancy. Today she claimed to be an undercover Customs agent burdened with co-ordinating the salvage operation. The two of them shared a joint and a few lame jokes on the subject as a fleet of gleaming military trucks rolled through the deserted streets below. Around ten o'clock, Vic began tiring of the conversation. He was hungry, too, and about to take his leave when something lodged in the dirt of the adjacent brown-field site caught his eye. The object was triangular in shape, though even from up here he could see that the sides were oddly curved. It was about the size of a dinner plate, and glowed like a bronze discus. He must have walked right past it after exiting the toilet window not four hours previously.

  That wouldn't happen a second time.

  * * * *

  V

  The strange object weighed heavily in his lap, one side of it smooth, the other blistered with a rash of knobs and curious-looking dials. Vic rotated the thing in his hands, peered at a shape faintly reminiscent of a three-legged Pi symbol planted firmly at its centre. A line extended from that symbol for about a quarter-inch, and below it a miniscule cluster of constantly changing characters flickered at the speed of milliseconds.

  Milliseconds.

  Was that the key? Vic dumped the object onto the bed and dove for the balcony. Increasing numbers of soldiers patrolled the boulevard, dour phantoms in the receding mist. Beyond them, the sea was lightly scummed with a foam that seemed reluctant to disperse. Even from here, it was possible to make out hunks of broken fuselage churning in the surf. The remains of the collision.

  He retreated in silence. If the thing lying on the quilt really was an alien black box, it was clear he should hand it over to the authorities immediately. It was also fairly clear that a civil-minded gesture of that nature might ultimately lead to his disappearance. And seeing as he'd already dealt with one vanishing act today, he couldn't imagine himself being the cause of another.

  A light rapping at the door interrupted his thoughts.

  For some reason, he found himself expecting Mr Tarlequine—Mash House landlord and all-round fly-by-night—to be loitering at the threshold, but instead the face was one he barely recognised.

  “Vic, right?” muttered the vaguely familiar stranger.

  Vic nodded. The man standing opposite shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot, like a boxer about to enter the ring. A reversed baseball cap held his unkempt, shoulder-length hair in check. He was panting, though whether from emotion or physical exertion was anybody's guess. Maybe it was both.

  “How did you make it all the way here?” said Vic, “The town's rife with olive drab.”

  “Hadn't noticed,” quipped the man, a little sullenly. “Got a phone call from the local constabulary early this morning,” he added, after a suitable pause. “You probably guessed that already. They said my number was in her purse or something when they found her. Look, I'm really—”

  “How?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How did it happen? Penny.”

  “Oh.” The man sounded almost disappointed. “It was a train, according to the supervising officer. Either she jumped or was pushed, I doubt it makes much—”

  Vic closed the door.

  It was a very long time before he moved.

  * * * *

  VI

  Perihelion Day, the following year.

  The beach was busy but not as crowded as it had been in early afternoon. The sun slid lazily down the western side of the sky as families with children tiredly gathered up their belongings ahead of a last meal together, a last prayer, a final kiss goodbye. To the east, a second glassy ball of light grew ever fiercer in the summer sky, leering at the doomed planet like a spectator at a mediaeval execution. Vic Fenton dangled his feet from the boulevard wall and watched the world drift by. Sixteen months since Penny had passed away. Sixteen months in which his own life had changed immeasurably, and for the better.

  Ironic, really. The blazing sphere that would end it all was just eight hours away now, and Vic Fenton had finally got his act together. What a joke. Still, he barely thought about his days at the Mash House any more. A new relationship, a new apartment, a new job selling freshly-cut fruit to the tourists. It was easy money and it was fun. More importantly, it had made him feel good about himself for the first time in months. City kids who'd never seen a fresh slice of melon before, or only knew the taste of mango as an artificial flavouring in drinks, went wild for the real thing.

  Pity. Well, it didn't matter any more. Today he'd taken the afternoon off, eaten the choicest fruit himself, given the rest away. Diane would come looking for him soon. Her parents had driven all the way down from Crawley, and now they were busy catching up together in private. Maybe he'd join them in a while. First he needed to do a little thinking. Like everybody else, Vic had noticed how everything had changed the day after the collision. Humanity's tormentors, who had only toyed with them from deep space until that point, suddenly became belligerent, like spoilt children losing their tempers en masse. No more light shows, no more spontaneous TV transmissions. Just a big lump on a radar screen: a moon-sized hunk of rock plucked from the Kuiper Belt and propelled towards Earth at improbable speed.

  Vic sighed and drew his only memento of that period from the satchel that lay beside him atop the boulevard wall. He'd kept it hidden from Diane all these months, examining it in secret only when circumstances would allow. The odd little characters still flickered as mysteriously as ever. The line extending from the centre had continued to grow, as it had done since being ejected from the alien craft during the collision. If the soldier who spoke to him had been right about the time, it had happened about an hour, perhaps two, before Penny died.

  To this day, Vic couldn't erase the feelings of guilt he harboured about that relationship. If he'd just tried a little harder, been a little more considerate, maybe it could have worked. Vic glanced at the rapidly emptying beach, found himself marvelling at the quirkiness of human nature. The end was mere hours away, yet the departing crowds still took their litter with them. Even the deck-chair attendant was busy collecting his wares. Why? He wouldn't be needing them again. And the very beach people were so determined to keep clean wouldn't even be here tomorrow.

  None of it would.

  He trailed his fingers over the surface of the alien black box device, plagued by questions, vaguely noting the familiar figure of a jogger who passed by at this time every day, just as the sun was nearing the surface of the water. So what did he know? Evidently, the box had travelled further from the crash site than the rest of the debris, and was in better condition. That much was clear. It had also started running while Penny was still alive, and unless he was sorely mistaken, contained the ultimate failsafe mechanism. Only one way to find out.

  The deckchair attendant was nearly done now. The sun had just clipped the surface of
the Atlantic, increasing the glare off the water. Vic exchanged a friendly nod with the jogger, watching his heels kick up little puffs of white sand as he passed by. Without any further delay, Vic depressed the dial at the centre of the obscure device.

  Nothing happened.

  The attendant was making a meal of collecting the last deck-chairs, but apart from that, little had changed. Vic took a deep breath, clutched the useless hunk of hardware to his chest, and willed it to work. Still nothing happened. There was little to do now but wait for the inevitable. Despite the crushing disappointment, a bleak chuckle escaped Vic's throat when he once again glanced in the direction of the deck-chair attendant. For some unfathomable reason, the old boy seemed to have changed his mind, and was shuffling backwards over the sand, restoring the chairs to their former positions.

  That didn't make sense.

  Vic shielded his eyes from the fiery ball of the sun as it dropped close to the surface of the Atlantic. No, wait. Something wasn't right here. Hadn't the sun already been sinking below the skyline the last time he looked? Even as the thought arose in his mind, the jogger from a few moments ago passed by for a second time that afternoon, this time running backwards. He waved at Vic again, but his balance seemed to be all wrong. Vic experienced a moment of supreme disorientation followed by one of dangerously spiralling nausea. Now everyone, it seemed, was walking backwards over the sand. Not only that, the waves were scrolling away from the beach, faster and faster, like a video tape rewinding.

  The failsafe had kicked in after all! Time was reversing, presumably to a point sufficiently prior to the collision to prevent it from happening again. Vic was already hyperventilating when a passenger plane catapulted backwards across the sky, exhaust pipes sucking up contrails that had evaporated hours before, dragging the dawn in its wake. The tide retreated, returned, retreated, returned, night and day exchanging places at dizzying, funhouse speed. Vic was the only one who seemed to be left untouched by the reversal. He was regressing with body and mind intact, the strange artifact still held to his chest. No more Diane, no more Perihelion Day, no more end of the world. At least, not for a while....