All that was superficially evident, outside the Analysis brain, was the expected rubbish. The sat was firstly passing above the French-English Channel, and was telecasting the usual moronic
DE DE DE
which, entering the space-ceiling of the UK, gave way to the familiar anathema,
IT IT IT
. As always happened. But the Analysis was at work now.
“It told me, Ma’am, that there were, after all, fragments of a message apparent, caught up behind the single two-letter word.” The Analysis began to prepare a mathematic and direction of what it could now perceive. One aspect of the Random Strike also had, luckily, included the assumption that, against all appearances, the two-letter IT might be a cipher, or even abbreviation of something at least
emotively
bigger and more complicated.
T
HE INITIAL INVESTIGATORY
presentations and subsequent results were, it goes without saying, delayed until the next nocturnal, once the daytime
IT
interference cleared. They began to accumulate rapidly between 6 p.m. and 2.32 a.m., tailing off at 3 a.m. when, to Calder’s horror, the
IT
recurred unexpectedly out of synch, and began to dominate all the computer screens he had been using. This did not happen anywhere else inside the Complex, nor, so far as reports show, anywhere else not normally afflicted in this time zone, at least in the UK. The Interference also lapsed, fortunately, though not until 7.21 p.m.
These initial presentations were, as one would expect, purely mathematical structures, although the Analysis brain had, for our information, marked the last short formula in each instance as being the direct sibling of the two-letter
IT
.
As the machines, plus Calder and his trio of human assistants (Ref. File 907 H), started to reassemble the math, definitive evidence was displayed of language. But it was an
alien
language, unknown, and unrelated to any spoken, sung, written, engraved—or otherwise humanly realised—tongue of the Earth. It could only have originated, it seemed, on some other world, some planet far out across the oceans of space.
(How long Mankind had waited for such a communication—in hope, or in dread. Now, if it had really come to us, what must we expect? Sublime intercession—or invasion, the
Vae Victis
of a superior race?)
The fine computer-brains of the Complex wrestled dispassionately with this message from beyond the galaxy.
Being capable of translating almost anything, as it had always been claimed they were, they proved their worth. After due care, and agonizing delay, they rendered up to us, initially to Calder and his team, the sheer
outcry
, the roaring
scream
of the foreign message which had come from space.
For in cold fact, a
message
it decidedly was. In the truest sense. For it had been vocalized, not put down at one remove as words on paper, stone, screen. Its own machineries had recorded, and next transmitted it. The only code common to them and to our own world being math, and even this so extremely unlike, it would take a further two and a half months to achieve the full translation, and so to uncover the secret that lay buried there, in the breaking heart of the universe. An unwritten letter from Otherness, meant only, in this instance, for the inhabitants of the Earth. A last will and testament, of a sort, perhaps, one might say. Calder framed it in such a sentiment when, last night, he placed the full transmission, with all its steely verifyers, before me. Before me, who—during the following day—tomorrow—
today
—must pass on the explanation, and its significance. The News.
(R
EF.
F
ILE
913 XZ/ZA) An attempt (at this stage) to reproduce the syntax of the vocal message, when boiled down into plain English, would be a travesty. Suffice to say that it contained elements (as already suggested) any human would recognize as the products of great frustration, pain, guilt, and fear. There were, (one could now scarcely miss them) portions that demonstrated
prayer
, and blasphemy, to and against some accepted higher ‘Power,’ presumably analogous to our world’s commingled concept of a Life-Force, a multiple pantheon, or God.
The Message itself was perfectly and directly simple, and faultlessly dreadful. One rebutted it at once, and utterly. And yet, it rang so many hollow bells, both of warning and of grieving lament.
It seemed that the world—that was, our world, the Earth—had originally been constructed—
made
—not by any accidental detonation of cosmic ingredients, nor by any deity or demon, in fact only by the brilliant tinkering of some obscure-by-now-to-us super-race, that had, millennia before, roamed the void, playing at such games as world-creation, just as creative children make model planes or build a prize-winning snowman. This Earth had, it seemed, been then one of trillions so built. Although
only
of trillions, for there were certainly other worlds which had genuinely formed in the manner that science, in the recent past, ascribed to
this
one.
The difference, and of course a difference there would have to be, was that all the
made
worlds the genius super-race had so painstakingly fashioned, were always due, after sufficient gulfs of time had worn away,
also
to wear away, to become cantankerous,
inoperable
. At which their unconscionable mechanisms (for such they had, and have, embedded usually deep within their fiery cores), ran down, collapsed, and—it is quickly said—ceased to function. This now, at its due season, was occurring to the Earth.
One will perhaps think of Global Warming, pollution, extremes of earthquake and tsunami, freak weather, the hitherto unforeseen giving way of deep-sea trenches, vast ice-shelves, or the Ozone Layer. All of this, inevitably, always blamed upon Mankind itself. But it would seem, whatever mess we
have
managed to make, it is now shown to be only a minor contribution to World’s End. Which, as it turns out, has already been pre-programmed, a kind of built-in obsolescence, unmendable and inescapable, whatever virtuous and abstinent paths we might have chosen, or courses of destruction we have wrought. World’s End. Yes, it had already begun, is already happening. Irredeemably. Hopelessly. Whatever we do, or may try to do, our planet, and therefore we ourselves, had—
have
—a little more than fifteen, though less than twenty, years left to us.
Our alien messenger, our Foreign Correspondent, in his—or her—or its—tortured confession, offers no clue to its location. Let alone any sane reason as to why, beyond its histrionics, it felt bound to pass on to us these tidings of woe. Decidedly it holds out no solution to the tragedy. There is, it seems, no remotest chance of avoidance or rescue. The creature only
apologised
, begging our forgiveness, and its God’s, and peppering the end of the message with expletives, these projected so violently, and in such (solipsistic perhaps) anguish, that they had corrupted the transmission, punching it full of holes, damaging it to the point that, until last night, it had been inaccessible. Yet, with perhaps the most poignant irony of all, also leaving, by such vehemence, that single remnant, stamped so black, burnt in as if by a brand, and thus able to reach us, and thus, too, incidentally ruining our planet further.
Even as we stood there, Calder and I, and I, I imagine, as drained and pale by then as he, as bereft and bitter and terrified as he; as too, soon enough every thinking animal of the Earth must become (yet locked still in that drab and peculiar box which the condemned are told they must label
Denial
) even then, “And so,” I said to Calder, deadly calm, as someone in my position has learned to be, “the sheer passion of that very last expletive, the creature’s—shall I call it
bad
language—this was what acted as the fixative—at least, upon the last two letters of that one last word. Both prior to, and following, its myriad translations into the varied tongues of Earth. That one word. Which in English—” I paused.
Sadly and gravely he answered, “Is a word, when intact, of four letters. A minor swear-word by today’s standards. Perhaps of more letters and considered
worse
in the language of our alien correspondent. The two English letters left being, of course, I.T.”
Something made me say to him, stonily, “And the letters which precede those two—the word’s beginning:”
Stonily he replied, “In English, S.H.”
I raised my right forefinger to my lips. “Sh...” I said, as we stood on the dying Earth.
Sh...
A NEW ARRIVAL AT THE HOUSE OF LOVE
PAUL CORNELL
Paul Cornell is a writer of SFF in prose, comics and television. He’s been Hugo-nominated for all three, and won the BSFA Award for short fiction. His first urban fantasy novel,
London Falling
, is out in December from Tor.
T
HE HOUSE OF
love was, in the beginning, an individual theme; stuff created by All Metal, and not from any of the basics, either, but from nothing. He’d made it at the highest point of a side he’d created as he ran upwards for joy, looping gravity under him so that the house, when he made it, bloomed out from under the top of the curve, and hung underneath a wave that would never break.
‘Der, der de der, der de der, de der, de der der der de dum!’ he had hummed, making one of his favourite heads to mosh as his new feet for the occasion had hammered out the basics of the house, blurring in shared vision. ‘Guitar!’ he had shouted and, in an act that he would gaze inward later was probably accidental, kicked the house right over the top of the curve, so it landed—slam!—on top of the new cliff.
Oh!
He had hung there in mid-air, then, suddenly realising—
Suddenly, for All Metal, was less suddenly, by many sad moments, than for almost anyone else. But realising, for All Metal, everyone else then realised, before him, as they gazed at him, was somehow greater for him at that lovely moment than everyone else, because—
He’d knocked the house right out of everything ever!
Maybe it was what he’d done with the gravity that had caused it.
Everyone gazed inward to find out how he’d done it. But they couldn’t work it out. So they started to applaud.
As on no previous occasions, All Metal had made something new. And this was extraordinarily new. It was a lovely sign that we continue!
Instead of falling, which might have been fun on any other occasion, he spun and shone and wrapped light about him. Then he took himself out of shared vision. And left everyone talking.
He went up to find out. He peeped over the edge of the thing he’d made, at the house he’d put there. Wherever
there
was.
It seemed safe up here. It seemed just like everything ever.
But it was clearly not quite. It was weird up here. It was where everything ever met everything else. Nobody had known there was an everything else.
And he’d built a house here! Brilliant!
He took an initial step forward into the house. And it was okay. Right, then! He immediately brought in loads of textures beloved to him, and filled the place with them, packed them in until the walls... whispered. Were they supposed to do that? He’d never heard that in shared vision before.
Oh, well.
He decided on three of his favourite styles of architecture, without gazing inward, just by remembering from the textures. Yeah, he had favourite styles of architecture, but he didn’t even know what they were called! That was him being him. He continued.
He gazed inward about colours, and decided on three of those too, ready for when there would be shared vision in the house. He added the colours to the textures, and the textures celebrated and remembered all sorts of extra stuff for him that filled up every bit of the house, like black holes or flowers blooming out of each other, pow-pow-pow!
He boggled in wonder! He would invite everyone ever over!
Just as soon as he’d done a bit of final editing.
A
LL
M
ETAL’S FIRST
guest, before he invited anyone, annoyingly, was Tom8967. All Metal found Tom being near the house, in the place where everything ever met everything else. He was gazing and gazing. One of the things Tom had before been was a dancer in the video for ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You’ by the Boys Town Gang. Which always made All Metal curious about the things he couldn’t find gazing inwards because he himself hadn’t before been. Not in the way the words meant, that he’d been individual, like his favourite textures had been parts of.
All Metal didn’t have to do anything, any more than anyone else did, but it pleased him to invite Tom8967 in. And Tom8967 brought shared vision with him. Which All Metal hadn’t actually considered, but now he’d done that... well, that was all right, All Metal supposed.
Tom8967 gasped pleasingly at the sight of the interior of the house of love, and did back flips. “You did something new!” he said. “I knew you could!”
“I knew I could, too,” said All Metal.
“But I knew it first.”
“Well—” began All Metal.
But Tom had taken three random textures from the walls and was listening to them.
“Hey—” said All Metal.
“These textures are in their own everything ever, created by a long road trip.” He sounded not just fascinated, as All Metal was himself by the textures he’d so carefully picked up in everything ever, but as if he was suffering from nostalgia, which All Metal gazed inward was one of those things that probably approximated to the genre rot he experienced whenever he ran into Nu Metal. “You can hear that up here! You can hear what they were part of! You don’t have to swallow them!” He seemed surprised again. “Oh, they’re reacting to me feeling that. They’re having an alien abduction. Oh, I should have realised.” He quickly put the textures back.