A path led between lush growths either side, ending at a nearby fountain, whose sparkling waters caught the light and chattered at her softly, as if laughing at her concern. The lawns were clipped, the bushes and trees all around well maintained. Her father would have been proud. In fact, this quiet place was so much like the gardens of Elegia that Deidre harboured a momentary hope she might actually be
home
, or that she might yet wake up from this final dream, but when she looked skyward and could not see the familiar suns, suspended from their cradles, nor the sky they hung from, her hopes were dashed.
Instead, overhead, a single reddish orb glared down at her, set against a pale cerulean that appeared infinite, with no visible walls or boundaries . . .
She looked away. Afterimages, burned onto her retinas, eventually faded from her vision. What she had also seen, just above the treetops, was unmistakably a shimmering barrier.
She was in a cage.
That voice, almost whispering in her ear now, said, “Do you like it, Deidre? We made this just for you.”
“I do not,” Deidre said. And then, because she could not help herself, “I want my mom. And I want to see my dad. He’s an Orchard Keeper, you know. He can have your head on a platter, so you’d better arrange for me to go home. You better let me go. You’d better.”
“Deidre, that isn’t possible. Your biological, uh, parents, they remain inside.”
“Inside? Inside what? Where are they?” Through the trees she saw two of the horrid angels now, flying high beyond the barrier, and she cowered. “Can they get in?”
“Who? Your mother and father? No, they . . . Oh, I see. Those creatures. No. They can’t get in. You’re safe here. And Deidre, I want to make this very clear. It was never our intention to harm you. The creatures were instructed to go in and retrieve you with
no
injuries whatsoever.”
“They are monsters.”
“I’m sorry to hear you say that, Deidre. They were all we had to work with. But you’re here now, you’re healthy, and you’re perfect. That’s all that counts.”
“I’ve been kidnapped. I’m in a cage.”
“No. The seed terminal is not a cage. It’s here to
protect
you. It’s large enough to roam around in freely. I’m sure the accommodations will meet your approval. Conditions outside are arid and hot, to say the least. All the provisions you’ll ever want are in here. The water in the fountain is real, enriched, filtered. There is food, produced by a cabinet behind the bed . . .
“We have two days to kill, Deidre. All I ask in the interim is that you stay calm and hear me out. Will you do that? Please?”
“You really expect me to stay here for two days? With you? You’re crazy.” But the warmth of the odd red sun — if that single orb overhead could be considered a sun — made Deidre feel drowsy. And her feet throbbed. So she set off, hobbling down the path towards the fountain. A bench was shadowed there, under overhanging leaves. “All right, voice,” she said, “here’s your chance. Tell me why I’m here.”
“You were hurt, Deidre.”
“I
know
that! But
why
?” She took a deep breath to calm herself. “Anyhow, it was you that hurt me!”
“Not me, Deidre.
Them
. The locals. The monsters, as you called them.”
“They work for you. You said that. Therefore you’re responsible.”
“We had to get you out. The operation was a success.”
“What’s become of Elegia? My family?”
“Everything you refer to still exists. There is trouble there, I’ll grant you that. Trouble we didn’t count on, but for now everything exists.”
Deidre had reached the bench. Exhausted, she sat down carefully, feeling immediate relief. She closed her eyes briefly, then stood again to plunge both hands into the cold water, letting it run through her fingers and splash deliciously up her arms for a moment before bringing her hands to her face and wetting her skin. She drank deeply from her cupped palms and sat back down, dripping from her chin and hair and cheeks and feeling another fraction of a degree better.
“I’m still leaving,” she said. “I’ll sit for a while, get a little stronger, but I am getting out of this cage. Have you found anything for me to wear yet?”
“I’m working on it.”
There were no birds to be seen or heard. No animals, no insects, no small mammals. Just like home. She would like to see a moth, or even a beetle, scurrying along the ground. If this place were truly just for her, as the voice had said, insects should have been added.
Maybe the larvae had been a concession in that direction? Had they only appeared to her as she’d seen them, because she was familiar with caterpillars?
Now that she thought about it, the layout of this place, down to the fountain and the bench she sat on, could have been lifted straight out of childhood memories.
What would Mingh straw’s cage have looked like, had the girl lived, and been the one brought here? What did this place really look like under the veil of illusion she was sure the voice cast over it?
“Talk to me, voice.” She tried to stave off the recalled image of Mingh straw’s terrible fall. Light played through her lashes. “Explain everything to me.”
“Okay. For the first part, you’ll have to look. I’m going to show you something, if you can stay awake.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.” She opened her eyes; before her was a crude gram. Through it, the fountain sparkled. Drops set the image quivering. Whatever the source might be of
this
illusion it was very high, somewhere above the treetops or even above the barrier itself. From the infinite blue? Deidre moved from side to side to focus better on the projection, but what the blurred gram depicted, or even what scale it might be, she could not tell. Some large lumpy growth? A convoluted mound? The reception was atrocious. A living thing? Yet there were hard edges, hints of construction. A tumourous machine, resting on a fairly smooth surface.
Was it a skin lesion, magnified by a million? The only visible result of a parasite, buried subcutaneously?
It bristled with numerous whiskers — some thin as threads, others fatter, hollow, emitting something that looked like smoke or steam or other gas — jutting up at various angles. Around the base, apertures slowly vomited forth slag or maybe pus that rolled glutinously and appeared to gradually harden. The configurations altered, adjusted, settled.
If this thing
was
a machine, it had a form of autonomy and had mutated in ways surely unfathomable to its inventor. Expanding in different, unpredicted directions of its own accord, the randomness of components betrayed no logic of singular design.
And if alive? Then its tortured shape had been created by a lunatic, in a lunatic’s lab, and should be put to death immediately.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Movements glimmered like dull sparks. Detail was occluded. She squinted. Were there fans turning in there? Yes, those were fans. Hundreds of them.
“This is where you lived,” the voice said. “The structure you lived in. This was taken over the past few weeks.”
Indignant, Deidre said, “
That
is not my home. I never lived
there
.”
“Allow me to clarify, Deidre. Where you lived is being looked at here from, well, from high above. You’ve never seen your home from this perspective. Of course, we can’t see the inside from this angle. But wait . . .”
As if suddenly diving, the vantage of the gram moved, swooping closer to the cancerous buboes and then rapidly among their folds, coming in to corkscrew dizzyingly between the stacks, past tense guy wires and massive sails that turned slowly in unfelt winds, past those fans she had spotted earlier and then through them too, between the blades, past other devices that looked like buildings and others that looked like creatures watching her, past growths that might have been heaped feces and past numerous other protrusions whose functions she could not imagine nor ever wished to, all whipping up at her so swiftly she had to grip the bench with both hands to fight the vertigo —
The rushing sensation slowed; the gram steadied; she could breathe again. Her grip relaxed.
“There,” the voice said.
“What am I looking at?” These words leaked out of her, like a breath. She wanted to vomit. The unpleasant belief that truths were being presented to her, and that larger, even more profound truths were coming, had settled in.
“See the dark spot?” the voice asked, whispering in her ear from nowhere. “See it? Right beneath you, as it were?”
She did see it. There it was: dark spot against a field of static grey. Malignant. An ugly hole. She tried to peer beyond the darkness but vapour puffed out from the aperture, a quick burst that made her recoil, as if she might possibly catch a whiff of the gas or feel the exhalation on her skin. “I see it.”
“That’s where you came from. That’s the hole we impelled the creatures to make. We brought you up, out of there.”
Like a black fleck on a portion of exposed skull, she thought. And through it? Inside that monstrosity? What? Her home? Her parents? Everything she had known and loved?
“Are you all right, Deidre? Your vitals show stress.”
“No kidding.” She leaned forward now, hoping again to change the perspective, to see the beauty in there that had once been her life. “You’re telling me this is my world? This thing is my world?”
“You’re looking at the uppermost part of where you lived. The part that lies
above
ground. Where you live — or where you lived, rather — is under the surface.”
“Under?”
“Yes. Precisely. You lived inside an ancient artifact, under the crust of this planet. We learned of its existence recently. You see, we thought the entire planet was dead.”
“This is the surface? Here? What’s up here?”
“Not much. Mostly desert. And those flying creatures, of course. There are a few tribes of people trying to get by, but their genes are ruined, useless for our purposes. I don’t even think you’d recognize them as your own species if you saw them. I dare say they could not tie their shoes, if they ever wore any, let alone make the staggering connections you’ve made since you’ve been here.”
“Others? Like me?”
“Trust me, Deidre, they are nothing like you. You are
perfect
.”
“Don’t patronize me.” She looked up at that bleary red orb, flickering through the leaves. The air seemed to make a slight humming sound. “Do you call that a sun?”
“It’s a star. But yes, it is our sun.”
“And my ancestors, the people who built my world, they came from up here? They all lived up here, once, on the surface?”
“Yes, Deidre . . . For the record, I’m not patronizing you. I truly am astounded by your observations . . . I have to admit that I was expecting a
much
more difficult time explaining things to you. I was ill prepared for your intelligence . . . And, frankly, Deidre, for your physical perfection.”
Deidre chose to ignore the disturbing implications of this. “I still don’t understand. Where did they all go?”
“Who?”
“Everybody. My ancestors. Obviously, they must’ve been able to tie their shoes at one point.”
After a moment, the voice replied: “Most of the people passed away. Fewer and fewer viable children. Ruination of the habitat. That sort of thing. Same old story. A few escaped. But the point is Deidre, humanity left behind a
refuge
. Buried under the surface, in a forgotten resort, of all places, they left behind a genetic gold mine.”
“Why did you get angels to make the hole? Why didn’t you do it yourself?”
“Angels?”
“The things that came in for me.”
“Angels? That’s an interesting name for them . . . Regardless, the question is another excellent one. And the answer is, in fact, quite simple. I have no hands, Deidre. At least, not here. Not
now
. You see, after discovering the underground trove, as it were, we seeded the planet from afar with these terminals, hundreds of programs, just like me, and we released, on a probe, the buds that eventually attached themselves to the, uh, angels, for training purposes. But, physically, my hands exist elsewhere. Else
when
. All we could do is wait for their signal, and get ready to activate the seed terminal that they brought you to.
“Angels are common here. They’re able, with the proper amount of coaxing, to perform menial tasks. So they became our hands . . . Though I must say, I don’t know what took them so long once they had broken through. We were frantic with concern. We thought we’d miss the window of opportunity.”
“They built a nest.”
“What? A
nest
?”
She looked away, into the trees, wondering if they were real or if she only imagined them to look like trees. “What are you planning to do to me?”
“Liberate you, Deidre! Destiny has deemed that we shall soon meet. In a mere two days, we shall be here — for a moment, against all odds,
together
, in time and in physical space. We’ll meet, my dear. We’ll meet. We’re coming to collect you.”
Impossible to ignore the undertone this time. Even the strange sun above her had suddenly chilled. “You let me out of here,” she said. “You let me go home.”
“I can’t do that, Deidre.”
The gram depicting her world crackled and vanished, only to reappear, for a second, clear and defined before fading again to a blur.
“I can’t release you. Discovering you has assured our future, Deidre. The future of our species. We
need
you. You’ll never know what you mean to us. To our future. As humans. You are the savior of our race.”
Tears stung Deidre’s eyes. She turned her head. “You can’t be human. Please. Let me out of here. Let me see my family again. I’ll do anything . . .”
“I’m so sorry to make you sad, Deidre.”
After a long while, she asked, “Why me?”
“Luck,” said the voice. “And I’m also sorry if the beasts have hurt you; they shall be reprimanded for those scars on your shoulder. They shall fly these barren skies no longer. Is that solace to you?”
“No.” Weeping now, she understood that what was behind the voice was more frightening than the angels.
By far
. She wiped her tears away angrily. “It’s not fair! I want to go back home! I want you to put me back inside! I demand it!”