By full sunrise, over half the perimeter had been scouted and individual soldiers left at strategic guardposts as lookouts. Aleck suspected that the choice of strategy was more due to the aging soldiers’ health concerns than any tactical advantage, as they always left the older men behind in areas of plentiful shade with convenient clumps of bushes. The younger blood continued on to complete the full perimeter, before heading back uphill to the square, where they disbanded and went home to their wives, their shuttered windows, and their ale rations.
Praetor Jones suspended all post-patrol pub outings, regarding them as too frivolous for a time of war. Not that Aleck had been allowed to attend anyway, deemed too immature to be of drinking age by town law. It was really just a way to keep the number of drinkers down, Charlie told him, a way for the elders to eke out the limited supply.
It took a month for the fuss over the sighting to die down. The legion spent a full week constructing a new watchtower on Bluebell Hill to the south, a small hut with a covered pyre. The intention was to have the station manned all the time … even at night. The pyre would be lit at any sign of invasion, giving the town plenty of time to rally into action. So far, no volunteers had come forward to man the post. Jones had suggested that they recruit new blood from the younger folks in town, but none of the children were really ready for such active service.
Aleck didn’t feel like going home even though it was his last few days of living with his mother. Early next week, he would move into his new home, but the thought of the echoing, empty house all to himself left him cold.
Instead, he went searching for Charlie Potato. The old man had not been well lately, but they had spent some good time talking about the old days before the desert. Aleck learned about TV and cars, and how people had strange jobs typing and playing cards with each other over a vast planetwide communications network.
Unable to find Charlie, Aleck returned home, a route that took him past the deserted lane and the creepy hedgerow of the Lowdown. He paused and stared into the hedge, wondering if there were a dead body hidden under the thick hawthorn. How had the wisp gotten there? Who was it? There were other wisp sightings reported over the years, a small cluster down by the dried-up lake, and others in some long-abandoned houses, but this was the only wisp Aleck had ever seen.
He sped past the hedge, for a while running backward so he could keep his gaze on the bush so nothing could sneak up behind. As he topped the hill, he turned and ran down to the main village, never quite able to escape the feeling that something was following him.
He passed his new house on the way into town and stood gazing up at the repointed brickwork and the brand-new solid plank front door. He pushed the door open, went inside, and stood still as his eyes adjusted to the dark. He could see a single chair in the center of the room, a few pots and pans arranged around the kitchen, and the freshly cleaned fire hearth awaiting its first installment of wood.
He brushed passed the chair in the darkness, hands touching the arm and setting it rocking back and forth. The place smelled of soot and cat urine. He wondered if there were any wisps in the house, ones that would rise up through the floor after sunset and suck his soul dry as he slept in bed. He trembled at the thought. There had to be a reason no one lived here … what other reason could there be?
He turned to sit in his new chair and something huge and dark stirred in the corner. He yelled and stumbled across the room to the door, heart jumping so hard it almost burst. As light flooded in from the open door, he stifled another scream as a familiar figure emerged from the shadows. “Charlie! You scared the sherbet out of me.”
“Sorry, lad. I was just passing by, and thought I’d check out your new place.”
“What do you think of it?”
Charlie stood and looked around the meager room with his hands on his hips. “You should be very comfortable here.”
“I would offer you something to drink, but I don’t have anything.”
Charlie tried to talk, but instead burst into a tirade of coughs and splutters. Aleck helped Charlie into the seat, where he rocked gently until the gurgling in his throat subsided and he was able to talk again. “Sorry, lad. I actually came by to ask you to help me with something.”
“What do you need?”
“I want you to help me steal something.”
“Steal something?” A prickle of fear … or was it excitement? … jangled his spine.
“Yes, lad. I need you to help me steal a bicycle.”
But why do you want to ride out? Why do you want to die like that?” Aleck’s eyes flooded with tears. He looked back at Charlie, whose face was full of pain and desperation; his usual nonchalant calm had gone.
“I’ve not long left, lad. Whatever is eating my insides shows no mercy. I’m afraid, Aleck, afraid of the pain. It’s not like in the old days, when we had medicine. There’s barely enough grog in the Land to knock me out for a single night. This is the best way, trust me.”
The two of them teetered through the night, bumping along the western dirt road out of town, using the thin sliver of moon as a guiding light. Aleck stood on the pedals, working hard to keep the bike moving as Charlie sat perched on the wooden saddle, one hand around Aleck’s waist and the other holding his hat on his head.
Aleck’s eyes searched every hedgerow, peered around the shadowed corners. It wasn’t safe to be out at night; everyone knew that. He took some comfort from the fact that Charlie didn’t seem scared, but then by the sound of it, Charlie had nothing much left to lose.
“I’ve also been thinking about those Romans and their bikes.” Charlie’s voice took on a musical vibrato as they juddered down a steep hill and over some particularly rough ground. “Things tend to be invented in a strict sequence, the spear before the arrow, the steam engine before the petrol engine, and the car before the airplane. There’s just an order to things, but sometimes, maybe things get invented out of order. How would the world be different if those Romans had invented the bicycle?”
“I don’t think much would have changed,” Aleck said. “Others would have copied them, and we’d all have bicycles and everything would even out.”
“You may be right, my young friend, or maybe the Romans would have become too powerful and we’d still be living in ancient Rome.”
“Praetor Jones thinks we still are.” They both chuckled into an uneasy silence.
“You don’t believe any of that Duster nonsense, do you, Charlie?”
“I doubt any of the Dusters are alive out there. I suspect they were all pulled apart, dismantled and examined. There’s curiosity in that desert-mind. Why else would we still be alive? It wants to know us; it just doesn’t know what ‘us’ is.”
“I heard someone talking once when they thought I wasn’t listening, and they said the desert is made of millions of tiny machines.”
“You seem like a lad that’s interested in the truth, Aleck.”
“I am. I really am. One day all the old people will be gone and it’ll be just me and Martha and a few others.… How are we going to survive if we don’t know what happened?”
“Most folks nowadays don’t like remembering history or discussing the truth. They hide from it, pretend that this is the way everything is supposed to be.” Charlie let out a short, loud laugh that degenerated into a long, loud cough.
“You can tell me, Charlie, you really can.” He felt the prickle of anticipation. Was he really going to learn something scary and new?
“I believe it’s true, the desert is made of tiny machines, trillions of them and we made them years ago, a great big experiment and an
even bigger mistake. It’s almost a living thing, Aleck, a single mind, but a confused young mind, one with no mentor, no references, and no history. It lashes out, devouring. Playing, if you like, it’s all the same, just destruction until there’s nothing left … just us, a tiny bubble of something different and then comes the fear, the same fear we have suffered with for years: the fear of being totally alone, the only thing left alive. That’s why it keeps us, Aleck, it watches, tries to learn, tries to understand, but is afraid to touch in case we go away and leave it all alone.”
Aleck’s head reeled with thoughts, shocking, terrifying, but so intriguing—a living thing out there watching them like God … but a childish, scared God.
“And that’s where I believe I might be able to help.”
“By riding out and dying?”
“It’s worth a try, lad! Better than sitting around here in agony until I become another wisp. Maybe I can let it see into my mind, see something that’s not full of fear and superstition, but something that’s curious, that knows the past and where we all came from. I’ll fill my head with images of humanity, of everything we ever did and loved to do. At the very least, I hope it sees me as something worth knowing, and realizes the cows are not the intellects around here.” His chuckle turned into a long rolling cough, forcing them to stop while he recovered.
“Okay,” said Aleck sadly, realizing he was not going to change Charlie’s mind. “You can take my bike.”
“No, you’re young. You need your bike for legion patrol and visiting young ladies.” Charlie slapped him playfully on the shoulder. “I’ll pinch old Farthing’s bike. He can barely ride it these days. It’ll take a month for him to notice it’s missing.”
“Why do you even need a bike? Just walk out there, if that’s the way you feel.”
“There’s a kind of resistance as you cross over. It stops the sand coming in, and at least some of our bees and bugs escaping. It slows you down as you pass through. The early Dusters tried walking out, and they got chopped and diced as if walking slowly into a mincing machine. Some tried to come back through in pieces and had to be thrown back. They screamed bloody murder, they did—horrible. The fastest thing we have is a bicycle, so it gets you in there and gets it over good and quick.”
Aleck fell into thoughtful reverie as they approached old Farthing’s dark house. He forced the tears back and considered not helping. He was fond of the old man and couldn’t bear to see him go like this. In the end, he knew he had to help. Without a bike, the man would be forced to take that final journey on foot.
The Farthing house was as quiet as death and nearly as dark. Charlie rested while Aleck took off around the estate, looking for the bike. He stumbled over roots and old fence posts, seeing shadows and imaginary sand-monsters lurking around every corner. He eventually found a shed with a corroded padlock on the door. He followed the chain through the wooden securing loops and found some links that were so badly rusted he could snap them with his fingers.
Inside, he stood and let the trickle of moonlight filter in. The bike stood in the corner, no locks here, just coils of rope and knots that took a long time to pick through in the darkness.
As he wheeled the bike outside, he saw just how close to its own end the bike was. A frame so rusted it looked like a honeycomb, with wheels buckled into polygons by time and wear. The tires were leather straps coiled around the rims, and the crossbar was made of string and bone. Aleck wondered whether he had found the bike that proved his own theory wrong: was this an actual Roman bicycle?
He sat cautiously on the wood-block saddle, expecting the bike to collapse under his weight. It creaked and settled under him, then stabilized and miraculously held.
They headed back into town, Charlie following along on Aleck’s bike, choking and wheezing as he went. Aleck looked up at the scrap of moon, wondering if it were made of tiny machines as well, or whether there was a lonely astronaut still orbiting the silent Earth, looking down, wondering where everyone had gone. Around him the Land felt dark and desolate, a little bubble of preserved life. What would it take to pop that bubble and expose them all to whatever lay outside?
The rattling of the bikes couldn’t drown out the sound of Charlie’s rasping breath as they trundled over Long Meadow and down into the Dell. “Let’s go this way.” Charlie suddenly veered off down a side lane instead of continuing straight back into Tattledale.
“But … that’s toward the church.… No, Charlie, the wisps … it’s dark.…”
“I thought you were in the market for some truths, lad?”
Aleck followed, but suddenly his legs felt heavy with dread. Church Hill seemed steeper and more dangerous than ever before.
They propped the bikes up by the stone porch and rounded the side of the ancient building, passing by some of the oldest graves. Aleck stared at the great stone slabs and crosses that adorned them, but saw no wisps until they rounded the corner and stood looking out over the newer part of the cemetery.
“Charlie, no, please …” Aleck thought he was going to wet his pants, or faint. He felt blood pounding through his veins.
A few dozen wisps floated high above the graves, like ethereal kites bobbing in the breeze. They sparkled and shifted shape as they moved, sometimes winking out of view or burning brighter as they caught the light from the Moon or Venus that glowed low and green in the west.
Charlie lurched forward until he was directly under the wisps. They seemed to pause their delicate motion and began to drop slowly back down toward him. “Charlie …” Aleck stammered, trying to follow, but his legs wouldn’t move.
“It’s okay, lad. I come here all the time.” Charlie reached out a finger and poked it through the body of a wisp. They began moving around him, clustering like slow-motion dust devils. Aleck came to Charlie’s side, curiosity overcoming his fear. The wisps ignored him, seeming to focus their attention on Charlie.
“They like you,” Aleck muttered, reaching out a hand. A wisp passed through his arm. He felt nothing, no heat or cold … no tingle of energy.
“They know there’s a wisp inside of me, one that’ll be ready to leave soon.”
“But I have a soul too. Why don’t they see me?”
“I’m sure you have a soul, lad, but you don’t have a wisp. Only us old ones have those, but not anyone before the mid-twenty-first century. That’s why the wisps are all over this side of the churchyard and not the older part.”
Charlie eased himself onto a comfortable stone. Aleck sat beside him, and they watched the circling spectacle; maybe a hundred had gathered now. Aleck realized that they had no light of their own. The wisps just sparkled in the borrowed rays. “So what are they?”
“Before the desert came, nanotechnology—that’s those tiny machines again—was the new and scary thing. What’s the first thing humans do with anything new they invent, Aleck?”
“Kill people, make war …”
“Smart lad, so the military had it first, and the whole world feared the end was coming, that we’d all be consumed into some gray goop as the tiny machines ate the planet.”
“I guess they were kind of right, then?”
“Kind of. It didn’t quite happen that way, though. The world was pretty stable by this time, no real big wars or terrorist outrages, so the new technology found its way into the medical field. People put these little things inside of them, clusters that formed into smart networks. There, they monitored and adjusted a body’s DNA, metabolism … all sorts of useful stuff to make it live a long and healthy life.”
“That’s why I don’t have a wisp inside of me!”
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“Exactly. I’m afraid you were born after the desert came along. All of us old ones have these networks. That’s why we’ve managed to last as long as we have.”
“So the tiny machines keep you healthy?”
“They used to, but they age and need to connect to a master network for updates and tuneups. When all that went away, they started to lose their functionality. But the machines are pretty much immortal, and after we die, they live on, tiny little confused minds, hanging around without a purpose, latched on to the DNA of the corpses. They all come out after sunset; they rise up and touch and mingle, like a little social gathering, then they fall back into the earth and rest.”
“Why after sunset?”
“Not sure … I suspect that they didn’t do much other than watch during the daytime. Their real work started at night, while we slept, and the healing and rejuvenation all took place. Old habits die hard; with no bodies to fix, they just float around … looking.”
Aleck suddenly felt the sadness. It came from each of the tiny, lost minds. “They’re alive,” he said quietly, reaching out to let one pass through his fingers again.
“Kind of. I guess they think, react … Some of them look bigger than others. I wonder if they find ways to merge. Maybe the bigger they get, the more complex and the more intelligent they grow.”
“Until they are gigantic … like the desert?”
“Maybe.”
“How do you know so much, Charlie?”
The old man shifted uneasily on the cold stone, sending the wisps fluttering up into a spiral around his head. “I worked for the company that made them. I was pretty low down in the ranks, just an observer really. Whenever they made a big software update, people like me were sent out to watch and monitor populations, make sure nothing funny went on during the changeover. It was just after a really big update that the desert came. Someone did a spectacular hack on the software, or something unthought-of just happened. I guess we’ll never know the whole truth.”