by Dylan Harris

“I’m turning down the road now, 10-4.”

Officer Adkins puts the receiver back into its slot on the dashboard of his patrol car. He’s driving down a red dirt road with his windows down.

The air outside is arid. Desert dry. It’s sapping Officer Adkins’s sweat through his pores, causing it to pool in the crook between his nose and his glasses and around the bags under his eyes. Red dust clouds erupt in the wake of the patrol car, hanging in the air as long as possible. Some of the dust will blow over to the sides of the road, coating the otherwise hyper-green ditch weeds.

The heat plays tricks. Ahead of the car, Officer Adkins can see shimmering heat waves, making the dirt road ahead look like broken glass. In the rearview mirror, the reflection looks like the road’s closing in on itself like a tunnel, warped at the edges and pulling into itself.

Not paying attention, he hears a sickening thump under the front passenger side tire. From the side mirror, he can see that he ran over a rattlesnake, at least six feet long and a few feet round. A huge one. In a few minutes it’ll be sucked dry by thirsty crows, which don’t ever seem to far away these days.

Officer Adkins reckons the snake won’t even be there on his way back. He reaches across the car’s center console, taking special care not to touch the cracked hot leather with his bare skin, and flips the lid off his small styrofoam cooler. He plunges his hand into the ice and pulls out a cube, which he quickly brings to his forehead before it melts. He draws little circles across his face, making especially sure to cool the bags under his eyes.

“Let’s see… 18 miles down this road. Then turn left at the oak with the branches that touch the ground. Go a few more miles and look for the patch of cattails on the right.”

It’s a ways more, so he starts humming old hymns to himself to still his beating heart.

Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin,
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb;
There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean,
O be washed in the blood of the Lamb!

*

No one wants the job. No one likes kicking people out of their homes. But he’s the newest one on the force, and he has to do it. He wouldn’t be as worried if he were going after a murderer or kidnapper. But these are just old women. Two old sisters. They used to be a part of the community, years ago. So long ago that people can only tell tales, and even those tales feel older than they should. Like memories of memories. Or like looking at pictures of old ancestors you’ve never met.

The two sisters – Odetta and Odessa – used to play music in town before Prohibition. They also used to skin and process venison. Some people used to buy cane syrup from them. No one remembers when really, just that they did those things.

Their music was especially well remembered. They’d post up at a local whiskey joint and play for hours, sometimes days, without stopping. Their songs would make people do strange things.

They played the blues faster and louder than anyone had heard before. One played the guitar, and the other played the trumpet. They’d take turns singing. Their voices were harrowing and unforgettable. They never made eye contact and sang to the floor. People’d stay at the joint the whole time they played. Then, they’d stumble back to their homes in the early morning. After playing, the sisters would disappear for months; maybe years. They’d go back to their cabin in the woods and into the backs of everyone’s minds.

No one really remembers the last time they were seen. It’s like someone mentions their names, and then their names are carried off by the wind. Lost in the woods. Simultaneously remembered and forgotten. Their tax record, however, was another story.

Thumbing through the records a few weeks back, Ms. Olive found their file. She asked around the office, but no one knew the file existed. It’s like it had always been in the filing cabinet, nestled neatly between other tax records. Ms. Olive read over the paper multiple times, forgetting what she was reading until it finally registered that there were no payment records. The sisters had never paid land taxes for their property. Ms. Olive called the police, and they sent out Officer Adkins the next day to investigate. He had no choice but to tell them that they needed to pay their land tax or be kicked out of their home.

*

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock
That shadows a dry, thirsty land;
He hideth my life with the depths of His love,
And covers me there with His hand,
And covers me there with His hand.

Officer Adkins misses the turn by the cattails the first time. Then, he misses it a second time after turning around. He stops in the middle of the road, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel for a few minutes to collect his thoughts.

With his car at a standstill in the middle of the road, Officer Adkins racks his brain. He thinks about his wife at home. He thinks about the sticky buns she made earlier. He thinks about the children they’re going to have. It brings a smile to his face. He adjusts himself in his seat and rubs the crown of his nose between his index finger and thumb. One more time. He backs the car up and finds the path through the cattails only a few yards down the road.

The path is nothing more than ruts cutting through a nearly impenetrable wall of cattails. Officer Adkins lines his tires up with the ruts the best he can before proceeding, taking special care not to drive off the path and into the feverish swamp on either side. The tips of the cattails are fraying, as they beat against one another in a sudden gust of wind. White cottony seedpods are fluttering around the car, twirling downwards in perfect circular patterns.

The air outside is getting inexplicably wetter. Not cooler but definitely wetter. It feels heavier. Wiping his forehead with his sleeve, Officer Adkins can’t tell if the dampness is his sweat or condensation. Before he had a hard time breathing because of the dry heat, now he feels like he is drowning in the air around him. The pressure of the humidity pushes down on his skull, giving him a headache. He takes a sip of water from the cooler only to find out that it’s just as hot as the air in his car.

Inch by inch, he makes his way along the path through the cattails. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees bright flashes of color. He imagines them as brightly colored birds. He can’t quite focus on the colors, but he knows he sees something. It’s like the experience of the color is a memory, like something hiding just out of sight of his mind’s eye. He chalks up the colors to the heat. It’s just his mind playing tricks on him.

The path is getting more solid and a bit wider. Up ahead, he can see a clearing where the path ends. Officer Adkins pulls his car into the clearing and turns his car off, immediately pulling up his undershirt to wipe his face and eyes. He’s still having a hard time breathing and the headache is sinking further into his skull. Just up ahead, he can make out the warped outline of the sisters’ cabin.

He kicks open his door and slides his legs across the cracked leather bench seat of his patrol car. Heaving and out of breath, he adjusts himself again, pulling up his pants and patting down his sweat-stained shirt over his stomach.

The house is only a couple hundred feet ahead, but it feels impossibly far away. The sweet scent of blooming honeysuckles fills his nose, but it’s mixed with something sour. He looks around and sees rows of wild blackberries, burst open and rotting in the heat. The smell makes his stomach queasy and settles at the back of his throat. The grabby briars of the blackberry bushes wrap around his ankles as he makes his way towards the cabin.

Officer Adkins, after what might have been a few minutes or a few years, stops within yelling distance of the cabin’s front porch. The cabin itself is humble, made of graying pinewood. The roof is a little sunken and covered in brightly colored mosses and lichens. The vinyl lattice around the base of the home is slightly moldy at the bottom but bleach white at the top. One side of the home is blanketed in a honeysuckle blooms.

The front porch is screened in, making it impossible to see inside. He can hear the porch creaking under the weight of some movement. After a few minutes, he can make out that the sound is a pair of rocking chairs, rocking slightly off-kilter from one another. Realizing that they’re home, and right in front of him, Officer Adkins nearly vomits in his mouth. After taking a few minutes to steady himself, he yells to the sisters on the porch.

“Mornin’ ladies… Can I have a word?”

No response. Just rocking.

“I’ve been sent by Town Hall on account of y’all not payin’ your land taxes… Seems like y’all haven’t paid up.”

No response. Just rocking, steady and off-kilter.

“Town Hall says you can’t live here anymore… Not unless you pay your taxes. They’ll be needing some sort of deposit next week or the banks’ll come demanding it.”

He thinks he can hear quiet coughing, but still no response. Just rocking.

His words hang in the air like a fog. Maybe the sound never made it to their ears. It almost like the words are too saturated by the humidity to move past his lips. He wonders if he is even speaking, if anything is coming out of his mouth at all. After another indiscriminate amount of time, Officer Adkins kicks his boots on the ground, knocking away some of the blackberry briars that seem to have crept up his leg.

“M’ams… I… I’ll have to come back next Tuesday for that deposit.”

No response.

“I hate to do it… I really do… but I’ve got no choice in the matter. My job depends on it. G’day to both of you.”

Officer Adkins turns and walks back to his car. He gets in and backs down the cattail path without looking back, keeping his eyes on the clearing ahead. In a few minutes, he is near town without any recollection of the minutes that passed between the cattail path and now. The air’s hot again and he reaches for another ice cube. He smiles to himself, thinking about his wife and unborn children. Twins.

*

They can hear the car coming from miles away. It’s an unusual, mechanical sound that cuts through the otherwise undisturbed swamp noise. A man’s driving, smiling to himself and humming songs. A happy man; a nice man. The sisters can hear every pebble crushing beneath his car like tiny explosions. He can’t come here.

They should’ve listened harder. They should’ve kept him from even finding the old oak tree that touches the ground. They’re getting forgetful and complacent in the summer heat. It’s been so long.

So they send out a snake, one of their pets. She’s large enough to be a distraction. She’ll at least slow him down for a few minutes while the sisters stitch the entrance to the cattail path closed.

She dies, crushed beneath his car. She hissed her last breath into the sisters’ ears. It echoed across the swamp, crashing through the trees like a cold wind. The man didn’t even notice her until after she had been killed. The sisters send crows to make the death swift and meaningful.

He’s still coming. Still singing. Still smiling. A nice man. The sisters don’t want to hurt him, but he can’t find them.

They begin to stitch the cattail path closed. Odessa grabs a handful of chicken knuckles and rattles them in her palm. She blows into her closed fist, causing a stout wind to blow through the cattails. They’ll fray at the tips, sending their seedpods through the air. When the pods land in the mud, new stalks will sprout, cloaking the path.

While Odessa rattles the chicken knuckles, Odetta grabs her tarnished brass trumpet. When she blows, it doesn’t sound like a trumpet. Instead, a deep, guttural whisper spreads from the horn’s mouth. It sneaks along the ground and will eventually catch up to the man. It’ll sneak into his ear, causing him to miss his turn while the path grows closed.

The two sisters get wrapped up in their work – Odessa rattling chicken knuckles in her palm, stitching the path closed, and Odetta whispering illusions through her trumpet to blind the man to their path. They don’t realize that he notices he’s missed the path and is trying to clear his head. They only realize he’s found their path when they hear his car breaking through the cattails.

Odessa grabs another handful of chicken knuckles, trying to close the path. Odetta plucks out on her hairs and pulls it taut across her lips and hisses with her teeth closed. The sound she creates is something between a whistle and a hum. Immediately, she can hear them crashing through the branches, coming to her aid. Birds of paradise, thousands of them. Some are cerulean. Some are candy red. No two are alike. She’ll send them to distract the man, keeping him occupied. It’ll give her enough time to come up with another illusion.

They don’t want to harm the man. They just don’t want to be found.

Odetta’s birds don’t tie him up long enough, and Odessa failed to stitch the path closed before the man reached the clearing. She drops the chicken knuckles and grabs a bottle of whiskey. She takes a long draught and spews it through her lips, creating a fine mist. The mist will create a drowsy humidity, making the man move slowly and unsurely. It’ll give him a headache, at least.

Odetta digs through a basket beside her chair. The basket is made from hair and contains dried weeds, branches, flowers, and leaves. She puts a plume of honeysuckle in her mouth, chewing them to a pulp before spitting them on the walls of their cabin. This’ll cloak the home in honeysuckle, making their cabin look like an overgrown thicket.

Still chewing and spitting honeysuckle onto the walls, Odetta stuffs a tuft of blackberry bramble into her right house slipper. She slides her foot back in, scratching the ball of her foot and drawing blood. She doesn’t want to hurt the man, but this should slow him down. She takes a few steps, the briars sticking her in between her toes. She winces while she continues to spit honeysuckle on the walls. Outside, blackberry bramble creeps towards the car. As he steps out of his car, it begins crawling up the back of his ankles. Combined with the whiskey humidity, the briars will slow him down.

The man is still determined and making his way to their porch. Odessa sprays more whiskey into the air, and Odetta starts stomping on the bramble in her slipper. She’s still stuffing honeysuckle into her mouth and spitting it onto the walls. He’s moving slower, but he’s still coming.

Just before he’s within yelling distance of the front porch, the two sisters drop what they’re doing and move into their rocking chairs. They begin rocking at a pattern that will stop the man in his tracks.

The sisters understand time. The further off-kilter they are from another while they’re rocking, the slower time becomes. They can’t stop time entirely; that’s too dangerous. But they can slow it to a grinding halt, making the atmosphere too heavy for the man to get any closer.

He’s yelling something. His words don’t travel through undulating time. They fall right out of his mouth and are ancient by the time they make it to the sisters’ ears. He seems panicked; uncomfortable.

Odetta and Odessa can barely make out the words, “I’ll be back next Tuesday… G’day to both you.”

A nice man, but he can’t come back next Tuesday.

The sisters slow their rocking and let the man walk back to his car. When he closes the door, the sisters look into each other’s eyes, and grasp each other’s gnarled root hands. Sadly, they know what has to be done to keep the man away.

As soon as the man bends his head to put the car in reverse, the sisters get up from their chairs. By the time the man starts to edge his car backwards, the sisters are already off the porch and winding their way up a creek bed. The bed is coated in a layer of slick mud, pockmarked by worm and snake trails.

The sisters keep their heads low in reverence. The creek bed empties into a gully, and on the other side there’s a perfectly circular pond, surrounded on all sides by a dense thicket of cypress trees. Their knobby roots tangle around one another, making an impenetrable wall. The sisters both reach out their left hands and touch the nearest root, causing it to unfurl into an opening to the water’s edge.

The pond is covered in a blanket of lime green algae. It looks solid enough to walk across. Odetta and Odessa slide out of their house slippers and hike their dresses above their knees before wading into the water, cutting a triangular wake into the pond’s algae-covered surface. The sisters walk carefully, taking small steps to not disturb the sediment on the bottom. The water is painfully cold and black beneath the shade of the algae. Its pitch surface curls like tar around the sisters’ legs, roiling up and over their knees.

By the time their up to their waste in water, nearly a quarter of the way to the middle of the pond, they let their dresses go. The ruffles of their dresses sit on the water a few minutes before sinking below the surface, algae closing in around them. Deep breaths. Steady breaths. He’s a nice man.

Odetta holds out her boney right hand, and Odessa grips it firmly in her left. Standing side by side, they raise their free hands into the sky just above their shoulders. In a few moments, a mosquito lands on the top of Odetta’s hand, digging into her skin and filling with her blood. A few moments later, a couple more mosquitos land on Odessa’s hand. Then, swarms of mosquitos land on their hands. Thousands, millions. The mosquitos make their way down the sisters’ arms to their shoulders.

When they get light headed from blood loss, the sisters submerge their raised arms into the water, pulling them back up slowly. There’s a large, blood-filled mosquito in each of their palms, still sucking. They close their fists, crushing the mosquito. Blood seeps through the spaces in between their fingers. It trails down their wrists. They release their clasped hands and turn towards one another. With their clean hands, they start tracing the lines in their bloody palm, making sure to get blood in every crease and wrinkle.

After tracing the lines in their hands with blood, the sisters put their palms together. With their other hands, they scoop some of the algae from the pond’s surface and put it into their mouths. They fill their mouths until they can hardly breathe and begin chewing, drinking down their saliva mixed with the algae’s juice. When the algae is dehydrated in their mouths, they spit it into their free hands and crush it into a poultice with their fists. Then, they place their algae covered palms together.

Now, standing face to face with their hands together and stretched above their heads, the sisters put their foreheads together and begin to sing one of their old songs.

Their voices don’t resonate; there’s no timbre. Instead, it sounds like dried leaves being crushed underfoot. It sounds like mud bubbling from a spring. Like the sound animals make when they’re mating. It vibrates, reverberating across the pond, sending long ripples beneath the algae. The sisters breathe in each other’s air, singing into each other’s chest. Their bloody palms feel like they’re on fire. Their eyes roll back in their heads, and they lean into each other’s weight.

The woods are getting louder. Around the pond, the cypress trees rattle against one another. Life and death blending together. Tears roll down the sisters’ cheeks from the pain in their hands, but this is the price they pay to be forgotten.

Then, the sound stops. The song ends. Odessa and Odetta release their hands and let them fall into the water. They look at each other. They’re both older. Their skin is looser, hanging like shingles from their boney cheeks. Their eyes are rheumy. Their hair is longer, whiter. They never wanted to hurt anyone. He is a nice man. They just need to be left alone.

After taking a few minutes to collect their breath, the sisters wade out of the pond. They pass through the hole in the cypress roots and find their way back down the creek bed. Their cabin is the same. Their porch is the same. They settle back into their rocking chairs and listen to the tune of the swamp, tapping their feet.

*

Would you be free from your passion and pride?
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood;
Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide;
There’s wonderful power in the blood.

 Rubbing the cool ice on his head, Officer Adkins starts humming hymns again. He’s wondering what he’ll have for lunch. It’s a little late for lunch. Maybe he’ll just grab some pie and a coffee. The diner next to the station will be open. It’s always open.

When he pulls into the parking lot, he notices that no one turns to see his car. When he walks to the counter, he can’t seem to get the waitress’s attention. She smiles and looks at him but doesn’t acknowledge him. He touches her shoulder and she smiles and shrugs it off. He chalks it up to a misunderstanding and walks across the street to the station.

The station is running business as usual. No one seems to pay him any attention. He’s new here, so he doesn’t mind. There’s a fresh pot of coffee boiling. Officer Adkins pours a cup and walks across the hall to the deputy’s office. Eager to prove himself, he walks up to his and slams down his hands.

“I seen the sisters. Told ‘em they had to pay up.”

No response. The deputy stares down at his desk, rustling through reports.

“I seen the sisters…”

No response.

Officer Adkins leaves the station. He’s got a sick feeling churning in the pit of his stomach. The world doesn’t feel right. He trots to his car and immediately drives home.

When he pulls into his yard, bouncing over the curb, he honks his horn twice. The sprinkler’s spraying his new garden. He gathers his things, secures the lid on the cooler, and opens his car door in one quick motion. He unlocks the white vinyl fence beside his home and makes his way through the backyard. From behind a wall of gardenias, he can see his wife sitting on the back patio. She’s staring off in the distance with a cigarette hanging limply between her lips.

Officer Adkins didn’t know she smoked. She especially shouldn’t be smoking while she’s pregnant. In any case, he wants to sneak up behind her and kiss her on the neck. He quietly drops his things behind the bushes and makes his way to the wicker chair where she is sitting with her legs crossed.

He touches her shoulder lightly, running his fingers across the lower part of her neck just above her shirt collar. He leans in slow enough to hear his bones creaking. When he kisses her neck, she just shrugs it off like a mosquito. She shifts in her seat and sucks on her cigarette. He realized that he must’ve done something wrong. He decides he’ll go inside and make some coffee and a sandwich to bring out to her.

“Honey, I’ll be right back. You stay right there.”

No response.

He kicks off his shoes near the backdoor and notices that his other shoes have disappeared. His wife must have moved them earlier that day. He always was a little messy. Maybe that’s why she’s not talking to him. In the kitchen, he puts down his cooler and opens the refrigerator. There’s hardly anything to eat in there, so he puts on some coffee and makes his way back to the bedroom to change his clothes.

The bed’s unmade. The sheets are tangled in a rat’s nest, the blinds are drawn. Although the room’s dark, he notices that there are no photos of him around. There are no photos at all.

Unsettled, Officer Adkins walks across the hall to the nursery he and his wife spent so much painting and decorating. He carved the crib from the cedar tree out back. He spent so much time sanding and oiling the wood, delicately carving its corners often into the night. When pushing open the door, it got caught on something. He pushed harder, rustling paper and plastic and knocking over boxes. The room looked like it had not been touched in a decade. Cobwebs danced lazily in the air blown by the air conditioning vents. The walls were dingy white, not sunshine yellow. There was no crib.

His head began to pulse. The headache from earlier began to boil in the back of his skull. He walked back through the hallway and looked through the kitchen blinds onto the back patio. His wife had started a new cigarette. Her hair was limp, unwashed. She sat with her legs underneath her, staring across the backyard. He followed her gaze to the cedar tree he had cut for the crib. There it was, standing as tall as ever.

Head still pulsing, Officer Adkins grabs a cigarette from his wife’s box. No response. He walks into the yard and sits beneath the cedar tree. With his back against its gnarly bark, he leans his head back, watching as his cigarette smoke disappears in the dense canopy. He closes his eyes and listens. He can hear a tune and starts humming along.

Dylan M. Harris is a PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. He studies the stories we tell (and don’t tell) about climate change and comes up with his own stories from time to time.

This piece is part of Not afraid of the ruins, our series of science fiction and utopian imaginings.

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by Imogen Malpas

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness she called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

She sleeps fitfully. Every light creak of the cottage wakes her, her body in its semi-conscious state always uncomfortable no matter which way she turns. It is her first night out of the Build in months, and though she knows well to expect it now, the uncomfortable encumberment of physicality is always a shock to the system; particularly on the first night, after so long free of form.

She has never been patient with her body – one of the things that had most attracted her to Building in the first place – and when she wakes again not an hour later she slips frustrated out of bed and shuffles to the kitchen before her tired body can mount a protest. Teabag, water, a splash of milk, the plucking out of the teabag by the fingertips, hands curved soft around the cup – the ritual, she had to admit, had been missed in an incorporeal world where hands simply didn’t exist.

Stepping out into the tiny garden, she feels the light wind lift the hem of her nightgown and press soft fingers through the holes of the shawl around her shoulders. A sea black as tar reflects the almost-full moon like an oil slick, far off the edge of the cliff where she stands; the reflection is cut up by the ghostlike pillars of the turbines, tiny from this distance. Of course, she knows well their towering enormity from sea level – she had led her team in the design of their formation to ensure optimal wind-harvesting efficiency. It had been her first time as Lead Builder – she had been younger than many of the team, but her experiential knowledge of the area had swung the decision in her favour. She has lived on these cliffs, in the same small house, since her memory began. She knows the force of the waves and the flow of the wind like a mother knows the changing moods and caprices of her own child.

The night is uncharacteristically calm, and she feels her mind slipping into retrospect, combing over the past month’s work as it always did in the first few days after a major Build. Her partner Jese had taken the lead: her speciality was tall housing structures, and she’d often complained that their team neglected housing in favour of the more highly publicized, ‘sexier’ Builds like solar and wind farms.  She was right, of course, and under her direction they’d created a particularly beautiful enclave of houses near the coast, set in a titanium-alloy structure that descended the cliffs with elevator capsules flowing up and down its sides like cascading water.  

She often tries to imagine how projects of this magnitude might have worked in the past. Of course, all Builders had studied the history of architecture – how the building process had been divided into so many groups, the designers and the constructors bizarrely separate from one another’s work, usually never even communicating – but it was almost impossible to imagine how it might have worked in practice, everything constructed by hand and constrained by the limitations of human labour. Their only constraints now were the limitations of imagination.

*

It had been discovered by accident – quite out of the blue. Every Builder knew the story by heart: a junior architect at a small firm (in Iowa, of all places) working late one night on a complex model, hooked up to the industry-standard electrode set to promote clarity and transmission of thought between brain and design interface, had dozed off thinking about earthquake-proof structures. When she awoke minutes later from running through a forest of glinting skyscrapers waving in the breeze, there they were, scattered around her feet and thick on the desks of the lab: little foot-high models of the same structure she had seen in her dream. She had, understandably, concluded that she was going mad and, having convinced herself that it was an elaborate prank by some telepathically-gifted colleague, swept the models into the bin and left. But the next morning, when someone fished one of the things out of the bin and promptly discovered the scale and precision of the welding was beyond the scope of either human hands or the workshop’s capacity, it quickly became impossible to pretend that nothing had happened. From there, it had snowballed. Hundreds of thousands had been poured into studies trying to recreate what had happened that warm night in Iowa when something had defied every known law of physics to appear out of thin air. And the studies found two things: first, in a very specific dream state as hard to consciously maintain as hovering between two layers of the atmosphere whilst falling down through it to earth, there existed some kind of hugely powerful neurogenerative potential. And second, this potential was available uniquely to women.

The second part got just about as much attention as the first. The public, faced with one of the most unbelievable discoveries of human ability in the past millennium, chose to disbelieve primarily that a woman could do what a man couldn’t. On daytime TV and at scientific conferences, arguments raged about what this meant for feminism; whether political correctness had biased the studies into overlooking men with the same potential; if the whole thing was faked, somehow part of an engine to sway voters towards – nobody was quite sure, but definitely something. But by this time a handful of other women, designers and housewives and doctors, had come forward to report that sometimes when they woke up they’d find a piece of their dreams sitting incongruously on the bedside table. Some of them wanted it gone. Some wanted to know how they could make money. Most, though, wanted to know if, and how, they could help: do something bigger, change the world, the whole bit. Many apologized for being hopelessly idealistic. Few realised that, with a talent like theirs, idealism could stand to be desperately encouraged.

Because the world’s cities had needed something new, and they had needed it desperately. Urban populations were skyrocketing, and they were leaving energy and housing and food in the dust. It wasn’t about a lack of money so much as a lack of imagination – weather patterns were getting harsher, cities were growing fuller, and still buildings were being built in the same way as they always had been – only with more floors stacked on top of each other, each high-rise flimsier than the last. The world needed an architectural revolution. And, within ten years – the time it took to gather and rigorously train women from across the world in how to Build – it had one.

*

The moon is unusually bright tonight, hitting the blades of the turbines sharp and clear as they turn with regal stateliness out above the ocean. She remembers the building of them with a keen pleasure – working overnight, pulling the towers up and then the blades out, skating formlessly on the surface of the water like a dragonfly – it was one of her favourite Building memories. But the simulated moon in the Build hadn’t a patch on the pale glow of the real thing: piercingly soft, an eye gazing steady on its shadowed domain, patient.

*

Nobody – yet – has been able to understand how Building works. There are theories, accepted and contested; countless academic articles; even conferences, now, usually hugely oversubscribed. And still nobody knows; and still it works. How can a person enter an interface (the Build, a virtual platform with unlimited user capacity designed soon after the whole thing had begun) designed to mimic the real world, and make things inside it, and exit to find that those things now existed? It defies logic, people would argue, and she has to acquiesce that yes, it still – even to a Builder as experienced as herself – seems ridiculous. And yet, although she hardly knows how to articulate it to herself, there is a sense to Building that often overwhelms her. Creation is an urge so natural, so powerful, that she can scarcely believe it hasn’t been happening in the nooks and enclaves of human civilisation since the dawn of time. And as for why only women are capable of it – well, privately, that has always been for her the least mysterious element of the whole thing. To her, to be a woman is to be creative: to feel potentiality thrilling through one’s bones. Art, dance, song, science, new life – there is nothing a woman’s mind and body cannot fashion. So, in the disembodied world of the Build – entering, Builders are represented by the interface as small glowing shapes to allow them to move through and within their structures with ease – the last of the limitations slips away. Creation becomes infinite.

She had argued with Jese about this, not long after they’d met. Infinite creation is dangerous, Jese had said, because infinite anything is dangerous – ‘that’s why God made the world, because the nothing was infinite and she was scared’ – and she was shaking her head at the utter ridiculousness of the argument when Jese had said, eyes holding hers, ‘but dangerous doesn’t have to mean bad. Dangerous can be anything you want it to be.’ Had she known, then, that they would end up together, weaving their lives into a partnership of more than just work, of love – she could scarcely imagine the disbelief she would have felt at the idea. But that’s why they work, she thinks – the questioning and the surprises and the curiosity of them both, for each other, for the world. And they make a bloody good team, flowing around each other in the Build even more seamlessly than in real life, enhancing each others’ work subtly; neither’s style overpowering the other’s, but complementing it as sea complements sky. She often indulges a fantasy of sneaking into the Build late at night, meeting Jese under a night sky that would always be cloudless, and Building with nothing to stop them. They’d create towers of glass and gold and cover them with flowers, write their names in metals light as air and hang them from the sky, build galleon ships on dry land and palaces in the shallows of the sea, and when there was nothing left to create they’d run together to find what they had made, and marvel. They’d never leave. They’d run in the echoing halls of their creations forever.

*

It was a beautiful dream. But there was work to be done in the real world. The sky has been lightening as she has been dreaming, and now the edges of the sea glow as if lit from beneath by a flame, the moon hanging pale at the zenith. Above her she hears wings beat, the first gull of the morning cry sharp and wild, and she smiles, turning, hands curled around the still-warm mug; stepping back inside the house that waits behind her, will always wait. The world is moving, and they all must move with it.

Imogen Malpas is a 22 year old human. Recently graduated from University College London with a degree in literature and neuroscience, she lives and works in London but dreams of other times, places and realities frequently.

by Mel Evans

The Government has concluded that it does not see a strategic case to bring forward a tidal energy scheme in the Severn estuary at this time, but wishes to keep the option open for future consideration

– British government, 2010

The project anticipates that the Bristol area will likely experience a sea level rise of 7m by the year 2275

– Alfie Hope, Sea Rise City art project in collaboration with the UN department of Water and Climate Change, 2015

One of the most urgent tasks that we mortal critters have is making kin, not babies

– Donna Haraway, 2016

Were I a man, or had I a woman as partner, I might have made very different choices about marriage and children

– Rebecca Solnit, 2016

The rain was light, but effective in its endeavour. The unwaxed fabric of the marquee roof was starting to give in to the pressure above, and beads of liquid formed and dropped on the sombre faces of the huddled gathering like teardrops. Oh well, thought Esta. Water is a core element of the ceremony.

Esta loosed her attention from the preparatory notes that Mera, the officiant, was delivering to her friends, family and colleagues. Although attentive, they were more focused on playing their parts in this just-familiar ritual than they were on what this might mean for Esta herself, the initiate. Had her mother been honest when she described this as a happy day for all the family, or was she merely playing a new role? Esta wondered if her choice was really worthy of this hub of support and celebration.

She looked over the valley at Avon, both town and river of the same name. For half the year the town was the river and the river was the town, for the bounds of the waters surged dramatically from the dry to wet seasons. With the season of Iver finally drawing to a close, the waters were due to subside, and Esta had hoped today might offer the first signs of Estate, the season for which she was named, and with it, some sun. But no, hopefulness and horizons were not to be hers today it seemed. Instead a weary grief flowed from the clouds.

In the years since the Division, Esta found hope and loss to be increasingly contingent: avenues explored and dead-ended. Possibilities denied and resolve found only in their void. Where Avon’s waters brought power and plenty, they also continually took more land and homes, making stilt-house residents keen to reach ever-higher ground, and making all citizens cautious of the transient valley. Her own boat-home sufficed whatever the shoreline level, but the waters calmed the lower they flowed.

Mera now stepped closer, drawing Esta’s gaze away from the skyline of boat-decks and rooftops above the waters and back to the fountain at the centre of the marquee.

“It is now. The moon has come through. The meeting of light and dark begins.”

Mera offered Esta and the others glasses of the red wine that poured from the fountain, imported from the neighbouring country of Greater Thames no doubt. It was meant to signify the last blood tasted and lost. Esta’s parents were given chocolates, a condolence of sorts, for where the ceremony was meant to be celebratory for her and the many other women who underwent the Commitment, there was no forced suppression of the grief at the loss of a matrilineage that is felt by many parents when their daughter’s time comes. Esta’s own mother had not been offered this opportunity to choose between having or not having children, and Esta had so far failed to ask how she might have considered it.

Mera pressed her forehead to Esta’s, and she awakened to her own presence in the ritual. She felt herself surfacing from below water, from the darks of a river pool into the light of a bright moon. She had chosen this path, and now it was carrying her forward into territories unknown. Mera poured water over their hands and faces from a silver pewter jug engraved with Sheela-na-gigs, a sexuality goddess mistaken as fertility queen from millennia past in the region. Together they began the incantation:

Of fruit that bears seed

Will now the tender corn yield

Of fruit that may flower

Comes now the greater power

All men now find femme

Parental duality within them

For my country’s greater need

I shall not breed.

Hearing her friends speak the words before had half-shocked half-thrilled Esta. It was as if the women became more powerful in rejection of their natural potential to bear offspring than in its enactment, like lionesses refusing to eat a kill. Power withheld is more potent than strength spent. Yet in this moment, giddy with the first alcohol she’d tasted in months, a deeper pain stabbed her from inside, and she didn’t find herself exuding the empowered grace she’d been told to expect.

She glanced at Yannick, once her lover, who was at that moment tending to his belligerent toddler alongside his partner Khalil, a cooing calamity erupting from the warm glow of their familial cocoon. Esta wondered whether the sharp pang she felt high in her chest was for Yannick himself or for what he shared with Khalil and their son. Ever since the Division which split Greater Thames, Avon, Mercia and Cumbria into separate countries, Avon and its shires had been declared formal matriarchies. In practice, however, it was wealth not gender that determined power and influence at the very top, just as before.

The reformation into a matriarchal society came in defiance of the further entrenchment of patriarchy in Greater Thames. When the richer, more powerful Greater Thames cast the rest of the island off from its financial prosperity, the regions-turned-countries sought to define themselves in the negative image of their former ruler. Mercia and Cumbria were now ruled by farmers and miners; Avon was ruled by women, who were mainly engineers. In this matriarchy, the decree that men must nurture and bear full responsibility for child rearing had initially been seen as a rebalancing of respect for care work, one which suited men like Yannick and Khalil who were already partnered in the eyes of the state under the old systems. But Esta, who had not partnered in that way but navigated brief intimacies with women she met through work, or men who lived around her moorings, increasingly felt the men basked in a greater glory for their parenting than ever afforded to women in the past.

Her own parents embraced the change willingly but not wholeheartedly, happy that their only daughter would rise in the ranks of her profession. The decision to employ only women in all areas of public works had proved successful for the recovering economy, post-Division. The female workers remained more efficient, even on better pay, and productivity was unprecedented. Esta was proud of the contributions she had made to the overhaul of energy production following the total destruction of their offshore renewable power infrastructure in the 24 hour military attack by the States some twelve years ago as punishment for Avon’s refusal to sign a trade deal. The ten years since Esta had graduated as an engineer at the age of 17 had scattered around like leaves in a gust of wind, butterflying her from homestead power to geo-thermal projects across the city.

Water-power had its season, and solar likewise, and it was her designs that helped bridge the transition from the lifestyle and rhythms of energy use that went with one generative source to the next. Still, getting power to the outer reaches of the shires was hard outside the protections of the town. In the shires, local transmission was not an option and infrastructure had to be imported, risking theft en route by the smugglers feeding the insatiable hunger of the elites in Greater Thames. Having spurned the regions lack of economic contribution it was joylessly ironic to see what was once a self-sufficient capital city rely on the resources of neighbouring countries via the smuggler’s market.

Esta swallowed the last blood-red drops in her tin cup. A cloying aftertaste remained, sticky as bloodied knickers and used condoms, the trappings of which she’d now have no need. Women still took male lovers, although many men chose to parent. Those men that did not had no prospect of public work since parenting was only an option supported by the state if within a long-term partnership with another man. The ones that chose not to parent lived productively, but quietly, hosting events for workers, tending to small-scale farming and other arts. Theirs was a quiet masculinity which neither translated to Avon’s new traditions nor maintained power in the old ways.

With a façade of the initiate’s readiness for change, Esta mimicked Mera moving along the line of guests echoing the codes of the republic with each of three kisses on the left cheek, “Independence. Productivity. Sisterhood.” The same words screamed at political rallies in years past, now hollow with repetition instead of bursting with resistance. When she reached Yannick in the line, the flushing weight of the wine in her face forced a pause and she accepted his steady gaze.

“You’re scared Est. It’s ok.”

His squeeze of her shoulder was too tempting a warmth in the cool air, which was drawing heat from her skin as the evening closed in and the rain crescendoed.

“It’s not the operation…it’s the expectation. Like I’ve got to fill this supposed void with a thousand other achievements.”

“You’d do everything you do either way. This should be about what you want, not what’s expected of you.”

She thought of all she’d worked for over the past decade of political upheaval.

“All I expect is another surprise.”

Mera had reached the end of the line, her eyes calling Esta onwards, closer into her new self. Her mother’s kiss, the last in line, was simple and forgiving, unquestioning of any choice Esta made with the body she had birthed to her. Suddenly Esta longed to more fully understand the gift her mother had given her. The carriage, effort and majestic trauma necessary to create her own being. This would be an appreciation she could never truly know without sharing in its drama. From a frail emptiness at the base of her spine came a new determination, like a resurgent kite striking high in the sky on a fresh wind. The incantation Mera began breathed into this space inside her.

A new role

A new body

A new meaning

The female eunuch revisited

In sexless, seedless, flowerless power

From milk and honey to muscle and mind

We loose the limits of your body

Upon you.

Elsewhere in Greater Thames at this very moment, women her age would be celebrating pregnancies and embracing the charms and challenges of a life involuntarily devoted to motherhood, prohibited them from any other form of work until the children were 17. Where in Avon parenting was a male duty, in Greater Thames women bore the labour alone, but without glory or credit, simply out of custom and expectation.

Esta recalled the look of condescension and disbelief in the eyes of her colleague’s father during the only ever trade visit to Greater Thames when she told him her and her friends were not, nor did they intend to become mothers. In that moment she held his first grandson at six weeks, his latent fear that her inexperience might at best hurt the child and at worst curse him. She herself was sure the baby quieted like a trusting puppy at her lack of panic about being perceived as a failed woman, palpable in the new mothers present. There was so much expectation on them, yet no emergence in success. Could it be that women on both sides of the border, whether esteemed as mothers or matriarchs were doomed to feelings of perpetual insufficiency? She looked to her own mother once more, and felt the familiar reassurance of her knowing gaze: neither route provided assurances.

The rain had begun in earnest now, and pounded on and through the cloth roof, already soaked and heavy with uncertainty and expectation of waters breaking. Esta’s eyes set on the red tent awaiting her across the hilltop where they stood. Mera’s slender fingers were holding back the curtain from within. It was time to wave goodbye to the possibility of an unworkable surprise. She hugged Yannick one last time, absently kissed his baby’s forehead, and headed down the slope towards the red tent’s opening.

Mel Evans is an artist and activist. Mel has written one non-fiction book (Artwash, Pluto, 2015), contributed to various academic journals and books, and had several pieces of creative writing published (A Woman Alone, with The Dangerous Women Project and poetry in the Poppies edition of Brain of Forgetting).

This piece is part of Not afraid of the ruins, our series of science fiction and utopian imaginings.

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by Kim Goldberg

Somewhere beyond silent streets

and woodlands, beyond upheaved

graveyards, empty schools, dry spillways, vacant

hibernaculums for little brown bats

beyond the last larval foodplant for the last

western tiger swallowtail

an old woman sits by the sea untangling

the nets of each life she can imagine.

Her cabin above the tideline is filled with books

from the Time Before but little else.

She cooks over a burn barrel beside her shack

stokes it with driftwood and whatever tumbles

ashore. Once an old door made a landing

then a desk still intact. She grills any scrap of flesh

the sea hacks up—bull kelp, moon

jellies, three-eyed eels. Eats them with succulent

stems of glasswort growing in the sand.

When evening comes, she flings each newly

sorted net upon the ocean like a bedsheet

for each is a piece of the planetary genome.

She is waiting for the nets to find

one another, reconnect end-to-end, spiral

beneath the waves. Replicate.

But each net returns alone, an enfolded mass

of knots, bone, chitinous exoskeletons, bloated

elongate bodies of the unknown.

Written June 2, 2017, the morning after US President Donald Trump announced he was pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Kim Goldberg is the author of seven books of poetry and nonfiction. She lives close to the sea in Nanaimo, British Columbia, where she wanders, wonders, and watches birds.

This piece is part of Not afraid of the ruins, our series of science fiction and utopian imaginings.

To receive our next article by mailing list, subscribe here.

by Nathaniel McKenzie

The streets around the station had caught a glitter from the early morning rain, and as sunlight poured between the towers, every surface sparkled. In the puddles between the tracks, the city was shattered into shards of the 21st century ambition that built it.

Stillness prevailed—a coiled anticipation. The only permanent denizens idled, ready to serve: law enforcement drones hovered at the end and beginning of their patrols; auto-kiosks stood, shutters open, steam curling from espresso bays; city-roombas lurked in alleys ready to suck up litter; adverts lay ready to broadcast targeted pitches to the coming rush. Behind every wall, floor, and pillar programs and machinery hummed in neutral—an orchestra held by the raised hands of its conductor.

Keith watched the city swell to engulf the train, staring out as the avenue of towers rose around the tracks. His morning music—slow sitar overlain by a duet in Hindi and Portuguese—played languidly, barely drowning out the murmur of the carriage behind him. Normally, this was his favourite part of the day—a meditative peace that washed from his commute through his day, providing him deep, enduring comfort—but, today, it was little comfort. He twisted at his hair and gnawed at his nails.  

Marriage, he thought. It was a terribly old-fashioned idea, but it felt right. He wanted to commit—to declare his intention publicly amongst his friends and family. To tell his truth. But before that lay the question, and the answer. That morning, something had fallen away within him and he’d realized he was unsure what Surinder would say. Surinder, his Surinder: the man who ate tangerines without peeling them and always got juice everywhere; who talked about chemistry the way others talk about movies; who he’d whisked away to Zanzibar for a beach holiday just four months into their relationship only to find him driving them into Stone Town to explore the old slave markets. Surinder with his cross-eyed grins and his irritating way of turning every dinner party into a political brawl. Surinder who was out of his league; Surinder who might say No.

The train jerked to a halt, pulling Keith from his thoughts.

Shimmying and sidling between his fellow commuters as they extracted bags from overhead compartments, he stepped out into the full-bodied petrichor.

The plaza beyond the station was a labyrinth of queues for coffee, dappled by the shadows of drones overhead. Keith walked with purpose, tuning out the adverts that squeezed in between songs and scuttled over every flat surface declaring promises of weekend escapes, resorts, cleaner shaves, and fragrances that might seduce impossibly handsome men.

Faces surfaced briefly from the crowd, throwing up snatches of public profiles—recent Facebook photos, instagram posts, dating, and hook-up profiles. But, caught in his head, Keith avoided eye contact, paying just enough attention to avoid collisions, and headed for the subway.

He clicked through the turnstiles, stepped onto the escalators, and let the ground swallow him. As he stood through his descent, his contact lenses expanded to seize his peripheries. A moment of darkness ensued. Then he was somewhere else. Immersed in an advert—one of his—promoting the newest dating app.

Before him, a full moon hung over mountains bristling with stone pines. He could almost feel the warm summer breeze. A restaurant enfolded him—Italian, Spanish, maybe Greek. Across the table sat a well-muscled white man, slight stubble grazing a square jaw. His new companion laughed inaudibly, biceps tensing as he slapped the table, and a woman’s voice whispered over the pantomime ‘Find your bliss.’  

Keith’s feet found solid ground; the advert dissipated, his contacts shrinking back into transparence. Standing at the base of the escalator, he found himself smiling; it was oddly comforting that the targeting systems hadn’t picked up his intentions, hadn’t known. He’d heard so many stories of the algorithms turning prophet, informing people of their pregnancies, impending breakups, and firings. But what if it knows he’ll refuse, a rogue thought like a bull through the streets, could it know?

He got off the subway a stop early to visit the retail district. Mind still stuck in Surinder, he emerged into sunlight onto a broad boulevard cut by stripes of lush vegetation. Ranks of restaurants lined the street. Suited servers hovered around the breakfast crowd, ready to swoop in to replenish any emptying glass. Artisanal bakeries bustled with personal shoppers of the wealthy, homemakers returning from dropping off the kids, and others— foot tapping, heads cocked or on their phones checking their feeds, email, the time—treating themselves before work. Above them hung a haze of reviews, posts, selfies and pictures, each set in a colour-coded square and sized by their influence, likes, and reach. They formed a digital smog that vaulted from eve to eve, and roiled as new posts puffed up to join the old.  

No adverts pestered him. And, if he looked down, he could pretend he was in a city of old. Still the spreads behind the glass were whispered temptations—a seduction that he feared his diet would not survive. So he kept his eyes down or ahead, looking at the plants and the drying tarmac, tunnel-gaze only flickering as the shadows of drones blinked over the street.

Gradually, the delis, bakeries, and restaurants gave way to boutiques selling reconditioned vintage clothes, artisanal crockery, and antique furniture. Still, he kept his eyes down until his destination towered over him: a four-story building with sleek black walls and gaping displays of white silk and scattered with red pillows. A single piece of jewelry was draped over each pillow, each was a statement of simple, elegant, opulence.  

Keith tried the door. It was locked. Shit, he hadn’t checked. Of course he hadn’t; too wrapped up in his doubts as always. He winced to himself, imagining Surinder’s sardonic smile—the smile that would wrap itself around his man’s face if—when—he told him. Sheepishly, he looked for opening hours on the storefront. There were none displayed on the door, or on the windows: just a simple logo in gold. Keith pulled his phone from his pocket, and searched for the hours: 11:30, guess I’m coming back at lunch.

Gripped by his mistake, he paused, looking at the windows full of jewels and up over the edifice—camera-bulbs, gold skirting, water stains on the black-clad wall. Gradually, he became aware of a presence beside him.

A man stood to his right, hunched, head down. He was dressed—anachronistically—in the loose coveralls of the city’s old waste management service, a department that had been given over to machines a little over a decade before. He noticed the splitting, ragged rubber of the man’s boots, and the dirt beneath his nails before he averted his gaze, frowning. Homeless, he thought, I thought they shipped them all off. Guilt guttered in him. Still, he studiously ignored the man as he struck off to work.  

****

Keith found his intern, Ndidiamaka, in their shared office. She was standing perfectly still in the middle of the room, back to the door. A detached camera-bulb, its cords looping up into the ceiling socket, lay on his desk like a gouged-out eyeball.

Amused and more than a little curious, he lingered by the doorway, watching her.

Alongside her work as his intern, Ndidiamaka was an engineer and a masters student in the sociology of technology; in exchange for her seemingly inexhaustible labour, his firm—AdSight—provided her the data she needed for her thesis project on automation in advertising. Over the months she’d shared his office, he’d seen her devise dozens of bizarre side-projects. More often than not, they failed.  

After a minute stood stock still, she checked a tablet beside the camera. Whatever it showed elicited a stream of frustrated muttering.

Keith cleared his throat; Ndidiamaka jumped.

“Shit! Sorry, sorry—I expected to have this mess cleared up long before you came in!”

“It’s quite alright Ndidi, I didn’t mean to startle you… but what, exactly, are you doing?”

“Well, uh, I stayed late last night crunching data for my thesis—it’s due in two weeks can you believe it? And the lights kept on going out—I’d have to jump around every ten minutes to keep them on! So I tried to fix it, and it kind of spiralled from there…”

“…Oh-kay,” Keith stepped around her to slide his briefcase onto the other side of his desk, “well, I’m going to need my desk back at some point.”

“Right, of course—this camera is refusing to see me when I stand still anyways, something to do with the contrast settings. I can’t seem to get around the firmware, been trying for the last three hours—”

“Ndidi, did you go home last night?” At this question, her face became a rictus of guilt, “Ndidi! We talked about this! Am I going to need to start kicking you out of the office when I leave? It’s not healthy!”

“Right, right… I’m sorry, mum. I won’t do it again…” she rubbed the bridge of her nose, “could you help me get the camera back into the ceiling?”

He sighed, “Alright.”   

He had to stand on a chair to feed the wires back into the gut of the ceiling. It took several attempts to get it to loop just right and, all the while, Ndidiamaka stood behind him, nervously holding the chair and occasionally giving him ‘helpful’ directions. Finally, with a satisfying click, it twisted in. He clambered down to solid ground and, installing himself at his desk, pulled on a VR headset.

Keith’s livelihood was sandwiched between an ocean of algorithms and a ceiling of decision-making programs. Beneath him, programs ran through a century of footage shot on phones, cameras, and whatever other recording equipment. They pulled out anything relevant, trying to find anything that might go viral or enhance the immersive advertising experience. The way the light hit a building, a fragment of graffiti, the sunset over Mount Cameroon, the ranks of cans at a supermarket: everything would be spliced together.

But the programs were not perfect. They did not, for instance, understand the unspoken rules of society, and what rules they did understand they applied mercilessly. For instance, early in his career, Keith had had to press refresh on an entire campaign for Cutesie, a makeup manufacturer’s new line of products for high-school children when the software started spitting out nothing but hardcore porn. Similarly, he’d had to press reset on the campaign for Gladiator Razors after their request for a ‘martial aesthetic’ caused some rogue element to make SS officers the protagonists of every clip.

Thankfully, those extremes were exceptions. Mostly he dealt with the ten percent of adverts that were jumbled mishmashes that made no sense and the other ten percent that, while coherent, accidentally undermined the clients’ brands.
When forced to discuss his job at parties, Keith would tell people that the most interesting part of his job was the subtle art of negotiating the borders of offense. Many of the best advertisements pressed right up against the lines: they threatened transgression. The rules were of marketing were a morass of contradictions that few programs could untangle, none efficiently. Which was lucky, because that was why Keith still had a job. So he sat, VR glasses on, flickering from ad to ad, pushing some through to the automated decision-making processes above him and deleting others.

Most days he felt as though he was trapped between rising flood waters and an impermeable ceiling.

That morning, Keith was faced with a raft of adverts prepared for his agency’s newest client: Saber Security Solutions, a provider of anti-crime systems for supermarkets, homes, and corner stores. He fell into the first ad.

A woman stood before a rack of diapers, grainy in the ancient footage. The scene resolved itself, shedding a century’s baggage to become crisp. It was as though he was there, looking over her shoulder, pondering her choice. She looked a little over forty; a slight grey had snuck into her undyed hair. Hefting a large handbag, she held a box in her hand—a hypoallergenic brand—scrutinising the price. Keith could almost see the calculations writ over her lined face. She sighed, and slid the box back onto the shelf and turned to leave. Then, as though seized by some invisible force, she hesitated. She turned back, lifted the box from the shelf, slipped it into her bag, and walked towards the doors. Alarms blared. Lights flashed. A black tube, terminating in two prongs snaked from the ceiling. Tzack. It jabbed the woman. She collapsed, juddered by the surge of an electric shock. The interlinked triple ‘S’ of Saber Security Solutions descended over the scene, ‘Saber Security Solutions: Presenting the Integrated Anti-Theft System,’ said a stern, male voice.

Not a chance, thought Keith as he emerged from the advert, who wants to see someone’s mother get tased?

The next advert wasn’t much better though it skewed in a different direction. This time the thief was a young, black man dressed in what could only be described as a pastiche of late-20th century ‘urban’ gangster. Wayyy too racist, thought Keith. He nixed it three seconds in.

Of the three ads that followed, only one passed—a gang of rubber-Nixon-masked thieves shaking on a tiled floor.

“Uh, Keith?” He pulled off his goggles. Ndidiamaka stood beside his desk holding two grease-stained paper bags, “my data analysis just finished and it’s given me results that support my thesis so I bought some treats to celebrate.”

“Ndidi! You know I’m on a diet!”

“Hey, I’m not going to eat donuts alone! I got you a dumpling from that Jamaican place, that one you say makes the food better than your grandfather.”

Keith took the paper bag with a smile, “you are such a bad influence.”

“Someone’s got to be—everyone else around here eats like birds.”

She sat on the edge of his desk, pulled down the paper, took a bite of her donut, and released a satisfied sigh. She didn’t bring up her results until they were both halfway through their respective pastries.

“So, Keith, my analysis raises some questions.

“Questions?”

“Yeah, you know I was looking at bias in advertising, right?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Well I’ve been applying Implicit Bias testing methods—” he shot her a blank look, “—they were originally used to demonstrate unconscious biases in humans—on the adverts this agency produces. Well, I inverted the test and…”

“Yes?”

“And it shows that darker skin is strongly linked to more negative images and subjects in this agency’s adverts and lighter skin has a slightly weaker association with positive images and subjects.”

“So the programs are racist?”

“That’s what I thought… but…”

“But?” he said, trying to keep the frost from his voice.

“Well, when I looked at each step of the process, I found bias in the programs but the skew gets slightly worse—not better—after it passes your desk. The average, I mean. You do cut out the worst of it, the outliers.”

“I see,” Keith tried his best not to sound offended; Ndidi’s only real devotion was to pure data, “What about the decision-making levels above me?”

“They’re much, much worse—they account for over a third of the skew alone. I don’t mean to cause offense—”

“No, Ndidi. You didn’t do anything wrong—the data is the data. I guess I have some work to do on myself.” he smiled but knew it looked hollow, “I’m a black man—a gay man—even in this day and age, I’ve had to face prejudice.”

“Right. I, uh, just thought you should have a heads up before I submit my thesis.”

“Good call… Could you send me your results so I can review them?”

“Sure.”  

They finished their food in silence, disturbed only by the passing drones and the mutter of the city.

Afterwards, she sent him her results—a mess of tables and statistics. His first instinct was to prove her wrong. But, try as he might, he couldn’t find anything to undermine her results. When he eventually plunged back into his work, her words pursued him. As he passed through advert after advert, he began to question himself, seeing bias in every decision.

Gradually, he started acting against his instinct, letting ads through which he’d normally delete and deleting some he’d have let go. He let two white children get sprayed with mace for fiddling with the window of a suburban home; allowed an elderly woman get doused with restraint foam for stealing a bag of skittles; approved a gaggle of twenty-something women being tased for shoplifting. The elderly south asian man stealing beer no longer had to suffer a light dusting of pepper spray; the light-skinned black youth avoided getting blasted by a noise cannon. Finally, he deleted a video of a black man in a balaclava shoving jewels into a bag only to be shocked again and again as he struggled towards the open door.

His second job for the day was sorting through adverts made for Matcher, a dating app. Here, his fight began to get interesting. His adversary was his own aesthetic and as such he experimented with its opposite. He waged war on defined muscles, manicured hands, crisp hairlines, and well-groomed beards; he fought youngness, smooth skin, smouldering looks, and his predilection for hooked noses. Out went the elegant plates, cocktails, romantic vistas, and foreign-language films. He cut and cut. Reaching down within his decisions to tear out any remnants of his biases.

The adverts that survived were ungainly, pockmarked by awkward silences and the hubbub of shabby joints. Two women haltingly discussed tax policy over plates of congealing curry. A woman tried to convince her date that the dilapidated dive they sat in ‘wasn’t always like this’ as an ever-expanding bar fight threatened to engulf them. A series of stand up comedians in a small, smokey club threw terrible jokes into deepening silence and then at jeers. Hugs met crossed arms. Drinks spilled. Teeth collided. But still, there were smiles, genuine smiles, fake smiles, laughter—nervous, pitying, and redemptive—conversations about nothing, coy flirtation, long-suffering weariness, moments of profound joy.   

By lunchtime, Keith felt triumphant.

On his way back to the jewellery shop, Keith called Surinder, as was his habit. Though as the phone rang, he hoped that the man he had already begun to label as his fiance would not answer. Therefore, it was a slight disappointment when Surinder picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hey babe,” came his deep, calm voice, “perfect timing. Just sat down in the staff room… Claire’s here, she says hey!” Someone said something faint in the background as Keith tried to remember exactly who Claire was. Then he heard Surinder shift and he knew  he was getting up to go to the window and stare out onto the road and do what Surinder always did when he was on the phone with someone he cared about: pace unendingly.  

“I missed you this morning,” Surinder said, “you were shifting about all night, and then out of bed like a shot when your alarm went off. Is something wrong?”

“Just stressed about work,” Keith lied, “I… uh… well you know how it is.”

“Yeah…” Surinder did not sound convinced, “But you owe me cuddles!”

Despite himself, Keith smiled. It was the exact kind of cutesy behaviour he’d have told anyone he hated, but, coming from Surinder, he felt nothing but delight. Not least because it was a side of the man that few ever saw; no, no-one who knew the grave, sincere professional Surinder would believe just how much of a softie he could be in private.

“So, how’s your day going?” Keith asked, “How was remedial Chem?”

“Oh, fantastic,” Surinder’s voice dripped with sarcasm, “just how I wanted to spend two hours of my life. Today there was almost a fight, so at least something happened to break the monotony of re-teaching kids a bunch of stuff they don’t want to know and will never use—little fuckers will probably all end up on basic.”

“Hey—”

“I know, I know: I shouldn’t say that,” Surinder interrupted before Keith could get out his criticisms, “it’s just so frustrating. But I hear that Gregson is finally retiring this year, so there might be a spot teaching the advanced placement program…”

“Yeah,” Keith grimaced, the principal had been dangling advanced placement in front of Surinder for three years; Gregson, a flinty-eyed octogenarian and the teachers union rep had showed no interest in ever stopping. Keith half expected her to pass away giving some high-strung overachiever the B minus that would define their personality for a decade. His mind digested what Surinder had said previously, “Wait, did you say a fight?”

“Wow, you really are distracted today,” Surinder chuckled, “Yeah, the Chen twins were picking on Gus Ramotar again and I guess he’d had it. He flipped his table—”

“Gus the bus flipped a table.”

“Hey, don’t call him that… and it was a mistake, I think, they were poking him, calling him Gus the bus and he flipped out, had enough, stood up… and you know how big he is and how small those ancient desk-chair combos are. Almost took half a row with him.”

“Oof,” Keith winced, “I’m guessing that only encouraged them.”

“Everyone started laughing.”

“Oh no.”

“He was halfway down the hallway before I caught up,” Surinder sounded unusually bitter—irritatingly but brittly superior despite his terrible grades, Gus was far from Surinder’s favourite student, “He was crying Keith. I asked him what was going on—even if everyone knows he hates them, he’s generally controlled enough not to give the Chens a show. He showed me his news feed using that app—you know that one that lets you share your stream—”

“StreamPorter?”

“Yeah, that. Well, he showed me his stream. It was all dieting supplements, workout tapes, fitbits. Every advert.”

“Fuck. That’s horrible. They’re not meant to be able to market that stuff to kids.”

“Yeah, well, they do…”

Keith had ground to a halt on a corner a few blocks from the jewellery store. In the silence, he became aware of his surroundings for the first time. Across the road, a blank expanse of concrete had been overtaken by a view out onto a white sand beach. Waves lapped and, in the midground, two men faced each other under an awning—a South Asian man with a heavy beard who looked nothing like Surinder and a black man who looked creepily like Keith.

Keith flinched. Immediately, he tried to suppress his reaction. The anxiety that had subsided during his chat with Surinder washed back up his throat and quite suddenly, the last thing he wanted to be doing was be talking to Surinder.

“Listen,” he said, “I should go…”

“I wasn’t criticising your work… it wasn’t your stuff—”

“I know, I’m not hanging up because of that,” Keith said, “I just got back to the office…”

“Ah… well… thanks for calling and listening to me rant. I’ll see you this evening?”

“Can’t wait! Love you.”

“Love you too babe.”

Keith hung up and stood staring at everything except the beach. He hoped his stifled reaction had not been captured, logged as one of the thousands of factors that made his profile. But he’d been too slow and, as he strode towards the store, ads for suits, registries, ministries supplanted the normal barrage of food, beverages, sex, phones, and cologne. He felt naked. He sweated, picking up his pace—head down—even as the auto-ads gave way to the pitches of the well-dressed, beautiful men and women proffering plates of free samples from doorways. An overwhelming awkwardness pressed at him as they tried to appeal to him—it was best not to make eye contact. He kept his focus ahead, at the plants. He cranked up the music, and tried to ignore the promotional messages that shoved themselves between the songs which told him: book now and save 50 percent.

He fled to the jewelers’.         

Bam. Someone jerked away from him, falling back. Keith reached out to steady the man. Calloused hands rasped across his. He caught him before he fell, pulling him upright.

“Are you okay?! I’m so sorry!” he blurted, looking earnestly at the man only to find his gaze avoided, “I wasn’t looking—I’m sorry.

“It’s okay,” mumbled the man, straightening his shabby suit. Before Keith could say another word, the man was off, limping into the rising lunch rush. Shaking his head and feeling a little embarrassed, Keith turned back to the door.

The interior of the jewelers’ was a large, low-lit room with an archipelago of glowing display cases scattered across it. A man in a suit stood behind one these cases, waiting patiently a few feet away from two women—who were looking at the displays the way one might look into a cage at the zoo. The clerk turned to Keith with a calculating look, glanced down at the tablet in front of him, and did an approximation of a smile — it looked as though some puppeteer had tugged on strings hooked to the edges of his mouth.

“Good afternoon.”

Keith nodded at the man and then looked down at the display cases, skimming over them.

“This way, sir” said the clerk, motioning towards a large bank of glass in the middle of the room.

Keith frowned and walked over, skimming the contents of each display case. The one the clerk had indicated was full of rings. How did he know, Keith thought and then; he probably bought some sort of consumer-information package.

Innumerable jewels glittered back at him; yellow, red, blue, pink, lines of diamonds, rubies, and other stones, stones that he did not recognize; square, oval, hexagon, rectangular; bevelled, smooth, a few rough. The metal of the rings were a whole other phylum: plain bands; metal like knotted rope; chains of circles and squares; gold, platinum, silver in all their shades. Panic seized him. He felt as though he was staring down at an ocean of eyes.

“Do you know what kind of ring you are looking for?” said the clerk softly, “Does the lucky man have a stated preference?”

“No diamonds,” Keith replied, trying to shake his shock at being so unceremoniously outed. Pushing aside one part of his anxiety, Keith looked down at the rings once more, “I think he’d prefer rubies—it’s his birthstone. He also says he’s allergic to gold…”  

“I see,” the clerk unlocked a drawer behind the display, pulled out a black felt tray, and pushed it across the top of the display case. Ranks and columns of silvery rings set with red stones glimmered in the dim light, “this is our selection of rubies set in platinum.”   

Keith peered down at the rings, reached towards them, and then hesitated, “may I?

“Feel free.”

He left the store empty handed, though his visit had not been in vain. Of the multitudes of rings, he’d found three or four that he thought Surinder would love, though their price tags gave him pause, despite the clerk’s insistence that the payment plans were affordable. He excused himself, telling the clerk he had to think, and left for his office.

Outside, the midday sun had thickened the air. Sluggish currents shuffled through the streets, disturbed only by the buzz of passing drones. Sweating in his suit, Keith paid for a reprieve from the audio-adverts and tried to focus on his music. Still, the logos of department stores offering discounts on registry as well as sweeping shots of fridges, blenders, tables, stoves, and microwaves called out from bus-stops and billboards, crowding his peripheries. He ignored them until he reached the intersection in front of his office. There, he stood looking up at the collage of videos above, massive images that rippled down the sheets of glass and concrete, a salesman’s rain.

In a way, he supposed, they were good omens.

****

Back in his office, he found Ndidi trying to fit the camera bulb back into the ceiling. He wondered, vaguely, how she’d managed to get it down again, before taking over from her. This time, it only took three attempts before it clicked back into the socket.

“Sorry,” she said as he sat down behind his desk, “It’s been bothering me all day.”

“It’s fixed?”

“Well, kind of?” she looked at him guiltily, “I confirmed that the problem is contrast; it has problems recognising stationary black hair and skin as a living person rather than an inanimate object. I found that I could trick the camera into thinking the room was darker than it is so that it registers my skin as lighter. I don’t understand why they didn’t just program this thing to focus on temperature—you only need like 2 degrees either side of 37.5 to detect every single living human.”

Lacking a response, Keith shook his head sympathetically. The few times he’d stayed late at work, he’d often removed his VR goggles to find himself sitting in darkness. It was irritating, but his work hardly required the light, which buzzed on if he got up to stretch his legs or visit the toilets. It hadn’t occurred to him that the problem was fixable, much less that its cause might lie in the colour of his skin. Still, it seemed a minor problem—not worth the effort Ndidi had put into the solution.  

He picked up his VR goggles but a message from his aunt appeared in his vision, projected on his contacts:

Can I see you in my office?

With a sigh, he put down the goggles.

His aunt’s office was down the hall from his. It was a sizeable room—easily twice the size of his—with an arresting view of the city subsiding into the suburbs, farmland, and then mountains. Framed prints of late 20th century adverts crowded the walls, an audience for the single desk and the elliptical the room contained. There was only one chair: his aunt’s.

His aunt was running on her elliptical, sweat glistening on her freckled skin and her unruly red-frizz pulled back, straining against elastics. He stood, waiting for her to finish. It was a long five minutes before she hopped off the machine, pulled a large tablet off the display and, towel handing over her neck, slid into the seat across the desk.

“Keith!” she said, brightly, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Nothing happened recently?” He noticed a slight edge in her voice, “this morning, perhaps?”

“Not that I can think of,” he kept his voice neutral.

“Well then,” she smiled, “can you account for the precipitous fall in your stats this morning?”  

“I’m sorry—”

“Please do not interrupt.” she swivelled her tablet to face Keith revealing his name atop a column of numbers, “until about eleven this morning, you were among my top-performing employees with over seventy percent of your approved ads moving onto at least the final stage of production. Then, after a break of about ten minutes, you fall to thirty percent. What’s more, when I reviewed your reject feed there were a number of adverts that were clear winners. So you can understand my concern that something might have happened.”   

“I’m sorry, Siobhan. I—”

“Don’t be sorry, be better. I’m not going to lie; your mother’s pestering helped you get this job but you are a talented, reliable, and competent person, which is as much why I hired you over the thousands of other qualified applicants. We all have bad days but you need to communicate if there’s a problem…” she looked at him expectantly.

“I… well…” he fidgeted with his trouser pocket and tried to work out whether telling her about Ndidi’s findings would help—whether she’d do anything about it.

“Listen Kee,” she said sweetly, “communication is really important…”

“Ndidi showed me her results,” he blurted, “they showed racial bias in our advertisements.”

“I see,” she sat back, looking unsurprised, “I thought that might be it. Listen, Kee, I’m not going to sit here and tell you there’s no problem, but we’re not the problem. We are subject to the realities of the market and, quite frankly, people’s biases affect their desire to buy. In the end, we only reflect our culture’s issues.” She pulled out her phone and jabbed at it for a few seconds.

“Our only aim is to help our clients show their product in the best possible light. Sometimes, that task is going to come with some cultural baggage.”

The door opened behind him. Keith turned to see Ndidiamaka sidle into the room. She looked nervous. Sorry, he mouthed at her. Her eyes narrowed.

“Ah Deedee,” continued Siobhan, “Keith was telling me you have some results from your study.”

“Yes,” Ndidiamaka replied timidly, “but they’re only preliminary.”

“I understand,” Siobhan replied sympathetically, “but you can understand how results such as those Keith described might put this agency in an awkward position.”

“I’m not going to name the agency in my thesis.”

“Yes, but you will in your resume and, with me as one of your references, it’s not going to be that hard to put two-and-two together—”

“What are you asking me to do? I can’t change my results.”

A silence unspooled; Siobhan’s jaw clenched. Keith could almost hear her calming herself down.   

“The last thing I want to do is tell you what to write in your thesis,” Siobhan said in a brittle, sugary tone, “but aren’t there a lot of ways this data could be interpreted?”

“Not really.”

“So your results are infallible—no uncertainty?”

“Well… there’s always some uncertainty.”

“Exactly,” Siobhan smiled and it was genuine this time, “You’d be remiss not to mention that uncertainty. For instance is the racial bias worse than that in our society? How do you measure bias? Are there problems with such measurements? How does this agency compare with others? Is there data for that? See, those are just off the top of my head and I’ve never studied sociology.”

“But my thesis—”

“Listen, Deedee” Siobhan’s good humour evaporated, “over half of this agency’s employees are women and a full third are people of colour. I can tell you that no other agency comes close to matching our levels of diversity. Smearing us will only result in us losing clients to other agencies and may force us to lay people off. I would never tell you what to write, but think carefully about the potential impacts of your work. Don’t make us pay for systemic problems.”

****

“I’m sorry,” Keith said as soon as they left the room but Ndidiamaka hurried down the hallway ahead of him, barely acknowledging he’d said anything. He jogged after her, catching up just as she turned into their office, “wait, I’m sorry… you know how she is—she bullied it out of me.”

“I’m not angry at you, Keith. I’m frustrated that months of work is going down the drain for PR reasons.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, “how did she even find out?”

“I tried to be less biased and it tanked my numbers; my aunt figured something happened.”

Ndidiamaka stared at him for a few seconds.

“To be honest,” she said eventually, “I’m surprised you changed your behaviour so quickly. I expected you to do something… But I thought I’d have weeks—enough time to have already submitted my thesis. By then, even if your aunt complained, it would have been out of my hands. ”

She sat at her desk and stared blankly at her computer, lost in thought. Similarly silenced, Keith sat down at his own desk, pulled on his goggles, and found himself immersed in a series of adverts for electric razors. Square-jawed men with rippling abs stood in hyper-modern bathrooms, shaving foam slathered on hairless faces. Waiflike women caressed faces, rubbing chins, cheeks, necks with perfectly manicured hands. He flipped through the ads, allowing his instincts to take over. It was easier than he’d ever admit.  

****

After several torturous hours listening to gravelly voices describe at length just how close a shave could be, Keith stepped out of the office into a cool evening. The package holidays had returned in force, packing the buildings with glimpses of silhouetted palms,  densely forested mountains, and vineyards. Though the sky was a pale blue, the dusk in the adverts gave him the impression of gathering clouds. He hunched over as he wove through the rising commuter rush.

As he approached the jewellery store, the package holidays gave way to adverts for credit cards and banks. Men and women smiled from the walls, gold watches peeked from the cuffs of immaculate suits, children frolicked around sleek kitchen islands. Skies were a cloudless blue; the grass was green.

By the time he walked into the cool, dimness of the shop, he felt calmed and assured. His smile returned by the clerk, he strode over to the display of rings, and asked for the three most likely wedding bands. The clerk—who had set them aside for him—slid them over the glass on individual white satin pillows.

One was a simple circle of platinum with a large, bevelled-rectangle ruby, its deep red glittered ostentatiously even in the low light. It was beautiful but, seeing it again, Keith realized that it was far too showy for Surinder’s tastes.

Tiny rubies snaked around the second ring, oscillating across a broader band of platinum. He picked it up and slipped it onto his left hand. He thought the rubies caught the light beautifully, but the broadness of the metal felt cumbersome; he liked the idea of Surinder forgetting he was wearing the ring, of the admiration of others drawing his attention. He wanted the compliments to be a trail of gifts in the days ahead like petals leading to a bedroom.  

The third was perfect—as thirds are wont to be. The ring itself was made of four thin strands of bright platinum twisted together. The metal half-swallowed the stones. They peeked from within as though the metal swaddled a ring of pure ruby. He slipped it on. It was surprisingly light, almost gossamer. He raised his hand peering at it in the gloom. The door behind him opened and the ring caught the flood of evening light, sparkling. This is it, he thought, this—

“Get down on the ground!” yelled a hoarse voice.

He turned, confused and found himself staring down the barrel of a pistol. He froze. His world turned on that point of darkness. At its edge, he had a dull awareness of chaotic motion—the clerk scrambling back towards the cash.

The barrel turned away. Panic overtook him. He dived sideways, landing on a display case. Glass shattered.

“Don’t try anything!” yelled the voice.

But Keith was already stumbling towards the door.

“Put it in the bag!”

A familiar hum awoke the air. Tendrils unfurled from the ceiling. The door was just a few feet away.

“I’m warning you”.

His hands felt the cool glass of the door. Something moved in his peripheries.

“No—”

Two things happened at once; there was a loud bang and Keith felt a force course through him. Propelled forwards, he spilled from the shop and out onto the street. He fell, the pavement thwacking into his palms. An acrid stench—burning hair—filled everything. Another gunshot resounded behind him. Help, he tried to say, but he could barely croak.

“Citizen, halt. Surrender yourself.” buzzed a voice from above.  

Keith struggled to his feet, stumbling forwards, pushing himself away from the store. The world seemed distant. His heart pounded. He collided with someone, and then someone else. Then suddenly, it seemed the street was clear. He tried to catch his breath. He forced himself to keep moving.  

“Citizen, this is your final warning.”

The approaching sirens were a salve to his panic. They promised salvation—an end to the madness that had overrun his evening. How could anyone possibly think they’d get away with such a brazen robbery, he thought, his first clear thought since it had all started.

A shadow flicked over him. There was an crackle of electricity. He looked up. There was barely time to register the taser-barbs lancing from the wasp-like form of the law enforcement drone, before a surging current pushed him into darkness.

****

His face was pressed against cold metal, its bitter smell mingled with the pungency of saliva. His legs and arse felt leaden, asleep. He tried to push himself up, to get comfortable and found he was handcuffed to a bar in the middle of the metal table.

The walls surrounding him were featureless expanses of brushed metal. On the other side of the table, two empty chairs faced him. A camera bulb sat next to the lone light on the ceiling. Confusion. He had a vague recollection of a jerking passage in a van; of rough hands pushing him through a brief outside into another darkness; of hands taking his phone, his watch, even his contacts; of a flash as he stared dazed; of questions answered automatically; and then of a silent room and the return of the all-embracing darkness.  

“Hello?” In the echoes he felt a stab of panic, “hello?”

An outline of a door appeared on the wall across from him. Silently, it slid back and then sideways, revealing two figures silhouetted by the harsh light of a hallway. Sounds of walking feet, typing, and indistinct conversations spilled into the room.

“I think there’s been a mistake—” Keith began

“Keith Higgins,” rumbled a baritone, “of 32 Pineview Drive?”

“Yes that’s me, but I think there’s—”

“You’ve been read your rights,” said the other figure in a flinty, peremptory tone, “you are facing charges of armed robbery, grievous bodily harm—escalating to first degree murder, if the clerk does not survive surgery.”

The two of them stepped into the room, revealing themselves.

The first voice belonged to a large—but not fat—man. The arms of his suit ended prematurely, revealing shirt cuffs and a hint of a tattoo on his forearm. Stubble speckled his face around a ragged blonde goatee, merging into a crew cut that was about a week overdue for a haircut.

The owner of the second voice was a tall, thin woman wearing a charcoal grey suit, and a blue shirt with a yellow stain on it. Her hair was pulled back into cornrows ending in blue beads that, Keith noted, were the same colour as her shirt. She was holding a tablet under left arm. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick.

“Mr. Higgins,” continued the woman, “I am Detective Beckford and this is Detective Strauss.”

Detective Strauss sat heavily in the seat across from Keith. Detective Beckford leant on the back of the other chair.

“Please, there’s been a mistake, I didn’t do anything!”

Detective Beckford’s jaw clenched. She leaned over and slid the tablet towards Keith, “Mr. Higgins, we have your accomplice in custody. He’s being questioned in the next room.”

“Accomplice? I didn’t have anything to do with the robbery, please believe me.”

“If that’s the case,” said Strauss gently, “I’m sure things will be cleared up soon. But it will be cleared up more quickly if you work with us.”

Detective Beckford tapped on the tablet. The screen flickered and displayed an aerial shot of a street. Two men stood staring at a window display filled with jewellry. With a rising sense of dread, Keith recognised himself.

“Is this you?” asked Detective Beckford

“Yes, but—”

“Standing outside the scene of the crime this morning.”

“Yes, but—”

“Why did you go to the store before opening hours.”

“I made a mistake, I wanted to buy an engagement ring—”

“You went to buy an engagement ring but didn’t check the opening hours of the store?”

“It was a mistake.”

“Right. And the man standing next to you, who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“You had never met him before?”

“No. I didn’t even talk to him.”

Detective Beckford’s eyes glinted and her mouth curled up into a sneering smile, “Mr. Higgins this will be easier if you tell us the truth,” she flicked the screen, changing the display to footage of the store. Keith, head down except for occasional furtive glances, collided with a man, pulled him back to his feet, and then said a few words to him, “here we have you talking to that same man—”

“That’s just a coincidence—I didn’t even realise that was the same person. Maybe he was staking out the store.”   

“Yet, he looks at none of the cameras and you look at every single one and then…” she flipped to another set of footage—a man, his face hidden by a cap, walking into a store,“he avoids every single camera on his entry. Do you know a man named Quentin Jones?”

“No…wait, maybe… the name sounds familiar.”

“It should, you went to highschool with him. You were both on the Rugby team.”

Detective Beckford tapped on the tablet and a yearbook photo popped up. Beneath it was the name Quentin Jones, a few words and a signature which, with a sinking heart, Keith recognised as his own. “Now, Mr. Higgins, we can place you both at the store on three occasions today. Your agency works with Saber Security Systems, so you have the knowledge necessary to identify the alarm. You also have the technical background to disable the system. You pulled the clerk away from the silent alarm, but Mr. Jones came in before you had a chance to disable the system.”

“I did not!” Keith protested, “I was not involved in any way. I only went to the store to buy an engagement ring. Ask the clerk.”

“We would, but he is currently undergoing surgery due to the fact that your accomplice shot him.” retorted Detective Beckford, “You’re looking at 15 years in prison, you understand that? 25 minimum if the clerk dies. Longer, if your friend testifies against you. Ask yourself: how much do you trust Quentin?”

“Mr. Higgins,”  Detective Strauss’ voice was calm and reasonable, “you left the store with a ring during the robbery, a $20,000 ring—six month’s wages for you, right? We’ve run your financials and there’s no way you could afford that ring. Hell, the cheapest rings in the store would be a stretch with your outgoings, even with generous financing. Now, I don’t think you expected Mr. Jones to shoot the clerk and, when he did, you ran. We have footage of the two of you; we have footage of you running; we have footage of you disobeying lawful commands from a law enforcement drone. We have predictive data that flagged your behavior as suspicious, evasive, and conspiratorial from the start of the day. You’ve been caught Mr. Higgins; you’re going to jail. But, if you work with us, we might be able to get you a deal, particularly if you cooperate before the clerk passes. After all, you did not pull the trigger; is it fair for you to face the consequences of Mr. Jones’ actions?”

Keith stared at the two detectives. For a moment, he was convinced, caught in a web of circumstances that reeled him towards the deal. A future hunched over him like a gargantuan spider, mandibles distended. Then it all vanished under the pure heat of the truth; he was not guilty. He had done nothing but flee danger. It seemed impossible that a jury would convict, that anyone would believe this story. He knew all about reasonable doubt.

“No,” he said flatly, “I was not involved in any way. I want a lawyer.”

Detective Beckford clenched her jaw and snatched up her tablet; Detective Strauss gave him a look a pure disgust and stood. As a unit they walked to the door, which slid open as they approached. At the door, Detective Strauss paused and looked back at Keith.

“A lawyer won’t help you.” he spat, “your accomplice has already confessed to everything.”  

The door closed, leaving Keith alone in the sterile light of the interrogation room. He tried to remember Quentin Jones, his teammate twenty years before, but could not recall anything except a few fragments—the motions of play, the feeling of a rugby ball in his arms, the smell of mud and turf. Quentin was a vague shape—a blur at the peripheries of his memory. He didn’t even remember having a five minute conversation with him. He had no idea where the man had been for the past two decades. He tried to imagine what he would do if, with one, small lie, he could claw back a decade of life from the threat of incarceration. He shuddered. There’s still the trial, bail—it’s not all lost. It was a glimmer of hope. But, as the incessant buzz and inscrutable walls stretched the minutes, that hope faded like the mouth of a well above a falling child.

Time dissolved. The slight and random flicker of the light, the only change except Keith’s shifting: hunched, slouched, upright and expectant, arms crossed, slumped back. His legs crossed and uncrossed—up and down—sliding back under the chair and forward under the table. He tried to think of anything but his predicament. But it sat, a black hole at his centre, no matter what he turned his mind to to escape it, to skirt its edges, the gravity of his anxiety made every orbit a decaying one. The room seemed to tighten. It crushed the breath from him. His jaw locked. Fingernails broke as he raked the table. He tasted blood.

The door slid open, revealing two figures—Detective Strauss and Detective Beckford. They strode across the room towards him. Detective Strauss rumbled something, but Keith could not make out his words.

“Please,” he managed to croak, “I didn’t…”

Detective Beckford came to a halt beside the table. She did not meet his gaze. He tried to catch Detective Strauss’s eye, but the man seemed just as unwilling to look him in the eye. Detective Beckford leant towards him. He flinched. She grabbed his hands, pulled them towards her and fiddled with the handcuffs.

Suddenly, he was free. They pulled him to his feet and shepherded him down a hallway, through a bullpen thronging with uniformed officers, and out to a desk where they handed back his phone, keys, wallet, and contacts.

“Again, Mr. Higgins,” said Detective Strauss, “We were acting on the information we had available. We released you as soon as the clerk confirmed that you were a customer, and we verified there had been no electronic communication between Mr. Jones and yourself.” he hesitated and seemed to be selecting his words carefully, “I hope this experience has not affected you adversely.” he said, eventually.

Keith stared at them, both looked away, down at their boots. With a grim, sarcastic laugh, he turned away from them. This seemed to release them from whatever duty they felt to him and they bustled away. Alone beside the desk, he pushed his keys and phone into his pocket and then put in his contacts. That done, he felt less naked. But still tears welled in his eyes. He wanted to be home.        

“Keith!” he turned. A familiar figured strode across the atrium beyond the desk. A tall, broad shouldered man whose stubble was edging on unkempt and whose cross-eyed smile was weighed on by anxious hours of wait and anger. Wordlessly, he walked to Surinder and let his arms pull him in, enfolding in the smell of tangerines and home. Against that chest, he began to sob, “It’s okay,” Surinder said, “you’re safe…come on, let’s go home.”

Outside, the mid morning sun had just begun to dry the rain. The few cars in the car park glittered like damp beetles. The adverts had not yet loaded. Expanses of empty rain-stained wall stared down, a crowd of impassive faces. Then, in unison, they flickered. A horde of men and women in suits strolled into view. Arms crossed, they stared down at him with fierce, determined gaze. Most he did not recognize, but a few were clients—the towering figure of Margaret Anderson of Anderson Litigation smiled reassuringly, Venance Owuor of Mendelson, Ramirez & Owuor stood straight faced. Make a Claim, demanded one advert, Don’t Pay Unless We Win, Fast Case Review, Experience You Can Trust, Personal Injury Litigation, No Win No Fee, Reclaim your Life… The city screamed at him silently, I know; I see.

He fumbled at his eyes—at his contacts. Circuitry tore between his fingers. Shreds of tiny machines falling away, disappearing into the dirt beneath his feet. He blinked back his tears and looked out over a quieted city with naked eyes. Traffic throbbed; trains rattled; indistinct shouts, tone, and alarms rose into the air: it all combined into a threatening mutter.  

With a sigh, Keith opened the car door, swung in, and pulled on his seatbelt. Surinder keyed in their home address and sat back as it rumbled to life. They sat in a heavy silence as it pulled out of the car park and struck along a route towards the motorway, Keith staring out at the city as it swept past; Surinder watching Keith, probingly.

“I got a call from your aunt—your phone is off—” said Surinder eventually, “I told her now’s not a good time—I said you were sick—but I thought you should know.”

“I’ll call her back.”

“Babe, you don’t have to—take a break…”

“No,” Keith said, “I need to focus on something else, I need to do something, I need—”

“Okay,” Surinder handed him a phone, “but you’re not going into work today. Today I get you to myself. We’re going to drive to the mountains and go for a good long hike”

“That sounds perfect,” they shared a smile and Keith felt as though he was sloughing off a brittle layer of anxiety. He dialed his aunt’s number, she picked up on the third ring.

“Ah, Kee! Just who I wanted to talk to!” Though slightly out of breath, she seemed unusually chipper, “I heard you were sick. Well, get well soon because I have a lot more work for you! You’re a genius, you know that?”

“Genius?”

“Your ads—those god-awful ads—went viral!”

“The security ones?”

“No, those were a trainwreck—nothing we could do—the ones for Matcher! Those awkward, awful dates. Well, eight of the ten that made it through final review have over 30 million hits—30 million in less than a day! Holy shit Kee, you’re getting a bonus this year, shit we all are. So get well!”

She hung up.

“Good news, I take it?” asked Surinder.

“Yeah,” said Keith, staring out the window—the towers had given way to strip malls and parking lots, “some ads I chose went viral.”

“That’s amazing, Babe! Really exciting!”

“I guess.” Keith shifted uncomfortably. They lapsed into silence again.

“Keith?” Surinder looked over at him carefully, “I know why you were at that shop.”

“Oh.”

“Well,” Surinder’s smile was the sun rising on a new day, “the answer’s yes.”  

I would like to thank Dylan, Hannah, Lauren, and Solomon for making this story better and more comprehensible than I could have done alone.

Nathaniel McKenzie is a proud citizen of nowhere seeking to turn his writing compulsion into an effective means of stealing time from other people. He enjoys avocados, paying rent, the smell of books new and old, trailing off in the middle of sentences, and

This piece is part of Not afraid of the ruins, our series of science fiction and utopian imaginings.

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