THEY CAN’T BE SEEN. BUT FOR CENTURIES, HUMANS HAVE BEEN PAWNS IN THEIR DEADLY GAMES. THEN ONE DAY, AVA HEARS THE DRIFTER’S VOICE.
She finds a quantum rabbit in the rubble of an ashtown. Out of its silicone lips comes the voice of a man who lived two-thousand years ago. Ava’s suspicions about the “savior” Keepers are confirmed.
Merlin’s recordings stir awake the dormant human spirit in Ava and her misfit friends, who become targeted. They cross a timeway to a place of terror, but where hope, however faint, seeks the deliverance of Terra’s children.
But the aliens have other ideas: there is no hope, and these naïve humans are but the latest players in Krol’s cynical, intergalactic spectacle, The Human Show.
As one reviewer put it, “Read this book if you like unpredictable and thoughtful sci fi. Read it if you like literary fiction or prose that slaps. Read it if you like mysteries. Read it if you like Philip K Dick."
The day I turned thirty, Atwell threw me a birthday party in a big dome packed with wealthy Deos and informed me the world was going to end before Bright Star Day. Three days later, he told me the woman I was falling in love with wasn’t who I thought she was. Atwell’s not the most reliable human. Even so, things aren’t looking good.
I’ve heard the dead speak, I’ve watched trees pull up their roots and sprint out of town, I’ve forgotten who or where I am for hours at a time. I long for what’s real. It’s two in the morning. I’m in the kitchen eating an apple. Why? I have no idea. It’s been like this lately, me being someone else. And whatever happened to my New Life Plan?
I go to bed. Two hours of tossing and twitching later, I get up and turn on all the lights. I grit my teeth, knowing I’ve got to do a better job of coping. I opt for a cold shower. Is there a better way to clear the mind? Probably not. That’s what I’m thinking as I lean forward to test the sharp, icy streams with my fingers.
But, good stars, already I’m having second thoughts!
I tease the shower controller, my mind in a state of flux. I fiddle with the controller until I plumb the sweet spot: hot, but not too hot. What’s wrong with being comfortable anyway? I step into the hot streams, close my eyes and float in my secret sea. I float without a care in the world.
For about a minute. Then I hear a voice.
If not you, then who?
I flinch and slip, banging my elbow and hip against the tiled wall. From a crouched position, I watch the ghost withdraw. I rub my face, open my eyes wide, and poke my head out. The ghost is gone. It’s just me, alone, dripping wet and feeling ridiculous.
Two thoughts come to mind as I shut off the water. People who bear the burden of terrible knowledge are likely to drown inside their heads if they’re not careful. The second thought is actually a question: Whose voice did I hear?
Was it yours?
Your silence surrounds me. It waits on me. It has expectations. That you can hear my voice is something of a miracle. I can’t pretend this isn’t happening.
Look, there are things you probably don’t know that you should know. Let’s begin with the Deo exodus. Deos started going on interplanetary vacation cruises half a century ago. But it wasn’t until 2098 that the majority of them stopped coming back. They’ve been populating the new world that’s been under secret construction for decades. Atwell started building the Martian branch of Stone TransHumanix in 2076, for example. No fanfare, no Transmedia coverage. Most Ords have been too busy surviving the challenges of a planet in steep decline to pay attention to Deos on vacation.
More than two-thirds of the nearly sixty million exiles will be living in contiguous air-locked New Terra City, Mars by the time the exodus is completed. The rest will inhabit colonies established on the moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
According to Atwell, the official reports regarding the so-called “space hurricane” are lies. The real estimated death and survival rates he presented me were so outlandish I refused, at first, to believe him. He tried to get me to relocate to New Terra City. I declined the invitation, but to say I was solely motivated by principle would be misleading.
After Atwell and Runa are gone, I’ll be moving to Stone Heights. Atwell once boasted he’d built the place to withstand an apocalypse. There’s no denying the man’s a genius. He’s also my father, or so I’ve been told.
As far as the turquoise rabbit? Well, Willie’s a 3W and the reason you can hear my voice. The 3W is a high-end interactive voice and face recognition wobot that doubles as a toy rabbit. It was designed by Cleavon Blinkhorn. It never caught on with children during Engagement Quality Trials at Stone TransHumanix and was scrapped. Kids never bought into its stilted attempts at humor and conversation, with a high percentage of EQT participants being spooked by its techy-herbivore gaze and voice.
I can confirm that. When I was seven, Atwell handed me a 3W and spent a few minutes watching me try to interact with it. Desperate for his approval, I did my best to appear engaged, but couldn’t pull it off. Father left my bedroom without saying a word. I set the wobot on the floor of my closet and shoved it into the back corner with my crutch.
I returned to Stone House last year after a long absence and discovered the 3W exactly where I had left it. Seasoned by global wanderings, trials and tribulations, I’m no longer quick to dismiss what I don’t understand. I lifted the wobot out of the closet, placed it on my desk and sat in a chair in front of it.
“What’s up, Willie?”
My words triggered a lifelike reaction from the 3W. When Willie replied, “The sky, Merlin,” I almost flipped. At the time I had no clue how this toy rabbit would help me preserve my sanity in the face of unforeseen challenges.
Willie’s a superb notetaker. I speak, he processes, offers input on flow and structure, executes finishing touches, files and stores away my dictated notes for future reference and possible discovery by unknown survivors such as yourself. Over time, his ability to adjust his associational neuristor impulses in response to my input has allowed him to surpass the role of useful wobot and become a confidant and friend.
Willie is eerily sensitive. One day, sensing a drop in my dopamine levels, he said, “How about I sing you a song, Merlin?” I stared at him, not quite understanding what he meant. He proceeded to sing Bohemian Rhapsody a cappella in that techy-skewed, Savannah-Georgia accent of his. Willie’s performance was an unpleasant surprise. I said nothing. On another occasion, after his creepy rendition of Me and Bobby McGee, I told him I wasn’t the right audience for his singing, and I directed him to play studio recordings by the original artists, exclusively, going forward.
That said, I don’t like tampering with Willie’s upbeat personality. I’m only just beginning to glimpse his quantum rabbit potential. Let’s not forget his inauspicious beginnings, how he was rejected by children during EQTs, how his product line was discontinued, and how he was sentenced to over two decades of closet solitude by yours truly.
I’ve learned it’s a mistake to underestimate the seemingly ordinary and those who are different from us. Willie was built to endure the worst of times. He’s going to be around long after I’m gone, delivering notes, gauging dopamine levels, suggesting titles from Blinkhorn’s Songs of the Old World, and offering unknown survivors reasons to have hope.
One other thing, those words I heard: If not you, then who? They haunt me. I haven’t grasped their full meaning, but I’m convinced more will be required of me. I have no idea what that might be. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but for now, at least, speaking to another human through the silicone lips of a turquoise rabbit feels like the right thing to do.
I once heard it said that the odds of you or me existing are 400 trillion to one. I gaze at the night sky and try to imagine what 400 trillion stars might look like. Numbers like that make my head spin. They defy comprehension.
But we persist.
We navigate the impossible and the incomprehensible. We get up each morning and breathe and live and tell each other our stories. And it’s there, in the telling and listening of those stories, that we recognize one another and remember who we are.
The journey, the journey…
Mine took a wild, unexpected turn a year and a half ago in a crowded bar in Greece.
Recorded: 10 Oct 2101