Happy Ending

- Will you tell me a story?

- What kind of a story?

- One with a happy ending.

- Come here, then.

- Alright.

- There was a village on a far off world.

- Which world?

- It’s called Nyay, and it’s in our galaxy on the far side of the Oort Cloud.

- Wow. What’s it like on their planet?

- It’s a hot, dry planet. Only 29% of their world is covered with water.

- Oh.

- So there are not as many people as on our planet. Only five hundred million or so. Amongst them was a lovely family who lived in a simple home and had kind faces. They had a pet, a skinny brown animal called a nafneng.

- What was its name?

- Chimba.

- That’s a good name. Was it a boy or a girl?

- A girl. The father of the family was called Spoodama. The mother was called Gellim. The children were called Stovit, a girl, and Bijjish, a boy. They were a farming family. Every year, the crops grew all summer in the hot sun, and the harvest was not great but it was enough. The children went to school, and they were happy.

- Okay. And Chimba was happy too.

- Yes, she was a happy dog. She loved her family, and she was not too naughty.

- What kind of naughty things did she do?

- Sometimes if you had a piece of food in your hand and you let your hand down by your side -

- Oh, like Tilda!

- Yes, just like Tilda. If you got distracted, she would tease the food out of your hand and eat it, and when you brought your hand up -

- You’d find it empty, and go, ‘Oh, Til- Chimba!’

- That’s right.

- As the years went by and Stovit and Bijjish grew up and became interested in the world outside the village that their teacher had taught them about.

- Did they learn about us in the school?

- Us?

- Us, here on Earth.

- Yes, they learned about Earth. They learned that our planet is small, wet and cold, and that we have long winters, and they would pretend to shiver in their hot classrooms and laugh.

- Oh, Earth is so cold!

- Yes, like that! Now as time passed, the summers in the village grew longer and hotter. The sun would hang over Spoodama’s back as he worked the fields, and we would water the plants with his own sweat, but he never complained. He loved his family, and he knew that a good person would suffer for those he loved.

- Like you, Dad.

- Perhaps. In any case, as the summers grew longer and hotter, the crops became less bountiful, and the meals of the Nyayvian family grew smaller. Gellim and Spoodama worried but also knew that worrying would not change anything. After a while, Stovit got sick.

- Did she get a day off school?

- She did. In fact, she got several days off school. In total, with all the visits from the doctor, and all the journeys to the medical centre in the nearby village, she did not go to school for one hundred days.

- A hundred!

- And even when she did go back to school, she was still weak and could no longer take part in gymnastics lessons, which she had loved.

- Oh. Poor Stovit.

- Chimba also had less to eat, and so she became skinny and her ribs stuck out.

- Oh. Poor Chimba. What about Bijjish?

- Bijjish did okay to start with, but his stomach rumbled loudly when he was with his friends, and this embarrassed him.

- Burble blurble, oops!

- Exactly.

- Did the summers get any shorter? Did the rains come?

- Spoodama and Gellim hoped very much that they would. They dreamed of cooler days and water landing on their brow from the sky. They looked at each other and told each other that the rains would come. If not soon, eventually. The universe would be kind to them.

- And what happened?

- The cooler days and the rains did not come. The summers stretched on and on. The clouds would begin to gather and darken. Bijjish would go outside to watch them, making spit in his dry mouth. He saw his own spirit run forwards out of him, tearing off its shirt, whooping with delight and being soaked by phantom rains.

- And did it rain?

- It did not. The clouds that had gathered simply dissipated, and summer would go on for more days and more weeks.

- And what about the farm?

- The harvest from the farm was especially poor that year, and the family could only eat two meals per day. And then Gellim got pregnant. Spoodama talked about taking Chimba away to another place and coming back without her.

- Oh no!

- But Gellim forbade him, and he relented. They were all very skinny by now, and then Stovit got sick again, and she did not return to school.

- What, never?! When is it going to rain?

- Well, then it did rain, but it was not good.

- Oh?

- The fields had grown dry and dusty, and when the rains came they washed all of the top soil away and much of the crops floated away. Bijjish came running out of school to try to collect as many as he could with his father, but they were left with very little.

- Oh no. Couldn’t somebody help them?

- Normally, the people in the village helped each other when misfortune fell on this family or that. The elder of the village taught them to do so for the greater good. But now everyone was in the same situation, and there was nobody to help them.

- What did they do?

- News came of another place a long way to the south called Fatam where water ran in the rivers all year and the summers were not so severe. Other families began to pack up their things and set off to Fatam. Gellim and Spoodama argued about this. Gellim thought they should go, but Spoodama looked at her huge belly and at the weak, bedbound Stovit and shook his head.

- Couldn’t they build a cart and carry them?

- They could, and Spoodama knew that, but it would be hard for him and Bijjish to carry them along with all their possessions. And so, with the food running out day by day, they stayed.

- Oh dear. They should have gone with their neighbours.

- They waited until Gellim gave birth to a baby boy, whom they adored from his first breath, and they called him Shask, which means ‘monsoon’.

- Then they did they go to Fatam.

- They did set off to Fatam. Stovit was tucked up in the cart with Shask, and bony Bijjish and Spoodama took one of the protruding wooden rods each and pulled.

- Did Chimba go with them?

- Chimba did go with them,. On the way they passed a small farm with noknoks, which are like our Earth chickens but much sillier. Chimba was so hungry she did something she had never done before. She ran into the farm and snapped at the neck of one of the noknoks and killed it.

- Oh no! Chimba! What’s going to happen?!

- The owner of the farm threw a heavy rock at Chimba which hit her hard on the head. Chimba yelped and ran away. Bijjish saw that she was bleeding. He tried to clean the wound, but it was difficult with the little water they had.

- Poor Chimba. They shouldn’t have thrown that rock.

- Sadly the owners of the farm were scared and hungry, so they resorted to violence to protect what little they had.

- Dad, are you sure this story is going to have a happy ending?

- Let’s see.

- Okay.

- They walked on, hour after hour and day after day past the scorched fields of their country. Bijjish noticed that Chimba was staggering a little and tried to swat away the swarm of vipids, which are like flies, that kept landing on her wound, but it didn’t do much good.

- What would Doctor Belkin say?

- Doctor Belkin would say that the wound should be thoroughly cleaned with alcohol and bandaged up, and that Chimba should be assessed for brain damage from the impact.

- But they couldn’t do that.

- No, they couldn’t do any of those things. In fact, there was only one thing they could do.

- Walk.

- And walk they did. They panted to the top of small hills in the dizzying heat with the small cart and rolled to the bottom on the other side. At night, Gellim, Stovit and Shask slept together in the cart, and Bijjish and Spoodama took turns to sleep under the cart while they other watched the road ahead and behind and the dark fields around them.

- What did they eat?

- They had taken all their food with them when they left the village but, as their neighbours were weeks ahead of them, they had no one to ask how long the journey would take. They decided only to eat one meal a day, except for Gellim, who had to feet Shask. Stovit ate as much as she could but for some reason she was never very hungry. Chimba was always sniffing around for something to eat, but she didn’t steal any more noknoks.

- I hope they get to Fatam soon.

- So did they. Unfortunately, the next night bandits crept up on them so steathily that they were almost upon the cart before Bijjish could raise the alarm. Spoodama awoke at once, and he and Bijjish began to fight them off, but the bandits were armed with knives, and all he and Bijjish had were their farmer’s hoe and fork.

- Did they get anything?

- A lot. They took the family’s blankets, which kept them warm at night, and a lot of their remaining food. And Spoodama was badly hurt.

- And Chimba?

- Chimba was very slow by now and a bit stupid. She ran away and barked at the bandits from a distance.

- At least she didn’t get hurt again.

- Thank goodness for small mercies. Spoodama cleaned up his wounds as best he could and applied a tourniquet. Then the family all tucked themselves in the cart to share body warmth for the rest of the night, but it was too cold for little Shask. In the morning, his little body was still.

- Ohhhh!

- Spoodama cut off a lock of hair from his head and gave it to Gellim, who sniffed it and sobbed, sucking in great mouthfuls of air as she did so, as Spoodama dug a tiny grave by the side of the road. They commended Shask’s spirit to the divine and went on their way, leaving the little pile of stones growing smaller behind them.

- Poor little Shask. No happy ending for him.

- I suppose not. In any case, they were all weaker and skinnier now than ever, and now the way became steeper and steeper, and they were forced to climb the largest hill that any of them had ever seen. It was incredibly difficult for them to push the cart up the hill, even with only Stovit and now Chimba inside and their other few possessions. Every time they thought they were approaching the top, they found it was still further away, and they continued to push and stumble up the hill.

- Oh, poor them.

- One small mercy was that the sun was on the other side of the hill, so it was not too hot, but still they pushed and climbed and pushed.

- Did they get to the top?

- They did. And when they got there, the land flowed all the way down through a valley full of marvellous little buildings and into a great blue expanse.

- The sea!

- They stood there looking down at the sea or a large lake anyway, knowing now that they would make it. But then Stovit said ‘Oh. Chimba.’

- Oh no! Oh, Chimba. Oh no!

- Little Chimba had curled up next to Stovit and grown ever so still and cold.

- But Dad you said it was going to be a happy ending! But Chimba and Shask are gone! How can it be happy?!

The father reached down, touched his son’s wet face and looked into his shining eyes, tears that were not for himself but for the troubles of a family far, far away on a planet called Nyay.

- Don’t you see? It was.

A Christmas Tree's Lament

Once upon a winter's eve,
They came in mobs, those deadly thieves!
We spread our roots, our breaths drew in,
And then we bellowed, I and kin:
“Leave here, desist, replant your roots!”
They came for us in shiny boots.
They placed their teeth upon a string,
and showed us to that wicked thing.
They wrapped it round, in their endeavour
to cut us from our roots, to sever
each of us from earthy sphere,
And as we crashed, they cried and cheered!

They stacked us up on deerless sleighs,

And formed with us a foul bouquet,

And as they stole us, engine booming,

I found I was no better than a human.

I was from deep black soil dissected.

Now humans' unearthed state reflected

in my own proud trunk made rootless,

subject now to journey fruitless.

As savaged flesh wept and swelt,

Each jolt and thud was sorely felt

Till we from oily trap alighted,

And heaps of dead and dying sighted.

We might have thought our number small

Until we saw that ghastly haul.

It might have been a minor feud,

an act of impulse, a nasty mood,

but in this vale of broken crowns,

on this necropolitic ground,

at this high reach of Death's grey tide,

was an act of genocide.

And even now, and even yet,

exhausted not was Man's dark threat.

They came in ones and fives and threes.

They drifted up upon the breeze.

But how they differed from rancid stink

was in what they carried: those shards of clink,

that lit their eyes and filled their grip,

and brimmed their dreams and curled their lips.

And of this coin, what was the aim?

Of which foul sport were we the game?

What was the scheme behind our murder?

All was revealed as they began to barter.

And what the price of one arboris,

apart, of course, from its biosis?

Thirty pieces was final toll

to him, the brand new owner of my soul.

With nothing more than mute egress,

my time with kindred deliquesced.

Aye, from my brethren I was split,

And carried then to odorous pit,

shakingly upon their shoulders,

just as the cousin growing colder.

Placed upright by mantelshelf,

in mockery of my rooted self,

now I their furrow did survey

in all its grim and dark decay.

Of all their squalor and unfitness,

was I to be the judge and witness.

And back they looked with eyes agleam,

dashing hopes to dwell unseen.

To me they brought their tawdry garnish,

and I did they begin to furnish,

and when at last they came away,

I stood replete in gaudy lingerie.

And though clothed like courtesan,

my torment only now began,

for now they gulped and gorged and pranced,

frolicked in a state of trance.

I, in the midst of wilding pack,

had turned to aphrodisiac.

Time’s suffrance is ineluctable

yet passage indestructible.

It crept as surely as decay,

until I found I had outstayed

my welcome in that wretched dwelling,

and now my final fate was swelling

in Man's dark heart as they denuded

me of frilly garment, excluded

then from frosty home to street,

my transformation near complete.

Whence had I been sequined guest,

now was forsaken, dispossessed.

And here I am, and here remain,

my human value all but drained.

I lie here butchered in the lane

with others of my green domain.

Who knows what fate may have in store?

And yet I sense there's little more.

My shadow's long; my noose at morning.

There's only time to share this warning.

Should you consort with humankind,

see us, and do not enter blind.

For Man's had many staunch allies

and led each one to her demise.

How to Escape from a Pit

This short story was written in July 2020 and published on a blog which is now defunct. As I am working on a piece which is not yet ready to be shown, I hope this 'best of Kester' publication will adequately fill the gap.

The bear, with her great black trunk of a body, and long sober nose, was the bull; and the bull, gazing at a buzzing fly a foot in front of its face, with the almost gleaming ring through its nose, was the boar; and the boar, with its listless expression and its small eyes, suddenly, amidst a great flourishing of fur was the lion; and the lion, naturally enough, with its broad blonde nose and tufted beard, who looked from side to side so often, he appeared to be in a constant act of contradiction, was the bear. 

Each one of them was every one of the others. All of them were each other, and all of them were facing one other in a pit, some three metres in depth and about five in diameter. This was the worst part; standing here, sizing up the competition, noses taking in the old, leathery smell of blood; the close, dense odour of sweat; the knowledge that hundreds of demises had been met right here, in this way. Yet, the whistle hadn't blown. The men with their angular yellow teeth, small pallid eyes, and tufts of bushy hair hadn't finished exchanging money, so the animals continued to glare at one another. 

"Alright fellas, one legendary warrior walks out of here with the money. That's what they said. One," said Lion, "It's gonna be me." 

"Yeah, yeah. You is telling a well funny one. Except you ain’t no legend, pussycat," said Bull, "I's going to jacket my horns in a shining gold so they all knows I's not the one that lets the wisecrack go without a good smack of the hoof." 

"Oh, sweetie. Do you really think you're the one that walks out of here alive?" said Boar, "Haven't you seen the odds?" 

Bull goggled at her. 

"You're on thirty-three to one, my friend," said Bear, spotting a chink in her opponent's ego. 

"What! They do putted me down like a also-runs!" snorted Bull, eyes bulging beneath his cracked and broken horns. 

Bull had had a long career, which had taken him across the towns and cities of this great country, tied up in a cart but, in his imagination, he was Minotaur, escaped from his labyrinth, marching from coliseum to stadium, mashing one opponent to a pulp after another. Occasionally, he awoke covered in sweat with silhouettes thrashing in his mind; humans and spears; cages and fury and panic. In one of these antagonistic figments, the flames which blazed at all hours in his eyes were doused by the cool shadow of a tiger; sadness pouring from its eyes as it put its weary paw on his neck. 

Somehow, the cowardly fire of his gaze had fled inwards, got trapped in his chest, and was now screaming to be let out again. Fortunately, all he had to do was shake his head from side to side and the thoughts went away. Thirty-three to one; that was a lie. He was the best. He always would be. Minotaur was invincible! Nevertheless, he decided not to speak of his immortality, lest the chill tiger return for him. 

Lion looked at Bull with pity. His brain was so rattled, he couldn't even think of a comeback for that cheap trick. The truth was none of them had seen the odds, and the shrill voices of the humans were hard to understand. Lion ground the stones beneath his feet, impatiently. He was the youngest here and had only begun to build his reputation. Of course, he could have done so much more by now if humans hadn't dragged their feet and bungled his fights; made him fight old, weak opponents, elderly, with greying muzzles, who leant heavily on one or two legs when they walked. It had been cubs' play to flip them over and scoop out their viscera, easy wins, but those fights barely turned anyone's heads. How was he supposed to get known as the ultimate pit fighter when they put him up against geriatrics? Probably eight or nine years old, some of them.

This fight, on the other hand; this was real. If he could open up the throats of these three legends to the heavy, sweaty air of the pit, his name would go down on chalk boards and slates from the mountains to the harbour where his new life had begun, as a mercenary and the piercing light of terror in the hearts of those who descended to the pit. One way, the easiest way, for a young professional to make it was to take down former champions as they slowed down and their unchecked wounds caught up with them. This tipped cow was certainly in that category but what about the others? He studied the bear. Eyes half closed, and jaws clamped shut, she was hard to read, but her body language signalled a danger that was palpable.

In fact, Bear had dozed off to sleep, not having slept with her eyes fully closed since the time she'd awoken with an iron ring around her neck, and never felt the winds of her alpine home again. She yawned and registered that she was hungry. As a veteran four-way pit fighter, she viewed the forthcoming fight as a fairly well-scripted event. In most cases, the animals would pair off. Only a fool would take on more than one seasoned brawler at once. So, she would take the weakest opponent (clearly the bull) but draw it out, let the stronger two fighters wear each other down and, at an appropriate moment, go in and clear up the wreckage. If she couldn't isolate the bull, she'd take the lion, who was young and strong, but nervous, overkeen, bound to make a mistake. She'd put money on it if she had any. 

Funny that; after a lifetime helping the soft hairless race exchange their shiny metal fragments, she'd never owned anything more than her own mind and the meal in front of her. Just what would she do with a couple of sacks of human gold? Just what would she do? Images of a few thousand green acres to call her own drifted through her mind softly, accompanied by the growled words of bears whose faces towered over her, whose names had been torn and scattered across the thousand nameless places she had been; the thousand nameless places she had been... 

Boar glanced sideways at the slumbering bear, and then at the fidgeting lion and the tortured-looking bull. Then, he craned his neck up and out of the pit. The humans were still screeching at one another. Once, Boar had relished the song of battle. His tusks had lacerated and punctured; his fangs had wrenched and torn; his fur, naturally the colour of a gloomy day, had been stained a rich red. He had been a champion. He imagined the tower of skulls and bones he would have accumulated had even those meagre spoils been granted him. He imagined it teetering, it's dozens of jaws chattering in a high wind, threatening to precipitate a hard, beige-coloured rain. However, it would be a temple vacated by its high priest, for Boar no longer cared for fights. He fought for one reason alone; no-one had yet struck the killing blow against him. He had seen better fighters than he sent on their grueling journey to the next world; he had dispatched some of them, personally. There was no pattern to it. Victory was already determined by the dust before you placed your hoof upon it, or it wasn't. 

Recently, Boar had another concern. He was sick; dying, he suspected. Blood is meant to stay on the inside, not trickle from your mouth while you sleep. He probably didn't have long, and the thought of dying in a stinking, fetid pit; a mass grave like this, stimulated that palpable hatred that manifested as an oily translucent body, thrashing around inside him. It was this hatred which was killing him. Only fair, he thought, that the same hatred should set him free. He would need to approach his task cautiously, though. Pit fighters could be deeply contrary, brittle-egoed beings; too proud to accept even what was good for them if it was tossed at their hooves with contempt. On the other hand, every animal, no matter how many years they'd been clashing horns for the pleasure of so-called humanity, had a little soft flesh somewhere; a memory or a fantasy or a fear that could be used to push them one way or the other. 

Where to start? The dizzy-eyed bull, the sweating self-doubting lion, or the seen-it-all-before bear? Not, the boar reflected, the bull. Even if he could convince the old bovine one hundred percent to rebel, it would not get his miniature movement started with sufficient percussion; that is, if the others respected the grass-chewing crackpot as much as he did. On the other hand, the bear seemed the very manifestation of worldliness; more than the others, he sensed the bear's ego was built small and hard, in the small space permitted it by the world of human men. Convincing her would be one heck of a mountain to climb, and Boar's minutes were few. He set his sights on the lion. 

"Lion, oh Lion. I've seen a good many of your fights. You're an excellent fighter,” said Boar, his voice crackling over the ‘x’. 

"Mate. You ain't seen nothin', yet." 

"One day, just imagine; you could be just like us; legends of the pit." 

"Listen, bacon. The sky’s limit. I could be far greater than you lot, like Rhino, or Tiger." 

Bull glanced, eyes bulging, as Lion uttered the name of the big cat, then his gaze darted away. 

"My goodness; you’re right. They are incredible contenders. I’m sure you can aspire to their great heights." 

"Rhino would tear a hole in you a mile wide. Tiger would roll on you and squeeze out your last breath." 

Bull made the face of someone swallowing something bitter. 

"I've seen them do it. They are gods in the pit. There's just one thing, though." "What's that?" "They are only gods in the pit. Out of the pit; different story." 

"What d'you mean?" 

"Oh, have you never thought about it? If they're so great, worth so much, why do they feed them on chicken bones?" 

"Chicken bones!?" roared the lion. 

"That's right, dear. Right at the very top of the pile, after staring death in its salivating jaws and surviving, you can swagger proudly back to your cell and enjoy," Boar paused before uttering the punchline, "a big heap of human garbage, straight from the sack." 

"They're feeding the megastars of the pit on trash!? On moldering bloody bones!? They should be walking back to a fresh goat, still baaing and licking its paws!" 

"I agree with you, friend, but that's humans for you. It sure gets your blood up, don't it?" 

"It boils it. It really boils it." 

I did it, thought Boar. I've opened this cat's eyes, got him dreaming of insurgency. Just then, he felt the bear's eyes on him like flashlights, no longer half-closed. 

"Boys, boys, boys; exactly what do you mean by all this? What is hating the humans going to do for us? These are the guys who've fed me and you since we were cubs and piglets. Where's your gratitude?" Bear expectorated the last word into the pit. 

Lion looked between them. Even Bull seemed to be aware of the contretemps. Boar's strong pose, right hooves forwards as though midstride, chin up, eyes blazing, seemed to sag beneath the weight of Bear's rhetoric. Boar found himself falling back half a step, as though the pit had somehow tilted in his direction. He consulted the bone ridden dust of the floor, and sneered. 

"Don't you see, dear Bear? We're stronger than them! If we could get out of this latrine, there's not one of them could stand and face us. All we need is some of that shiny clink and we could go our separate ways, choose whatever future we want!" 

Bear rolled her head to one side as she considered, the yellow tips of her fangs emerging to rest in the soft flesh of her lips, which were squashed together, creating the distinct impression of displeasure. 

"Oh, well done. So all we need to do is hop out of this three metre hole in the ground, deflect the bullets of their stinking little pistols with our bare knuckles, conjure their money box out of its hiding place, split it four ways and walk calmly away, with the pleasant blaze of human fury to warm our tails. Why, in the name of Shiva, didn't I think of that?" 

During this tirade, something turned over painfully in Boar. Its hard and shining face now looked downward and its dull, tender obverse side faced upward, reflecting hardly any light. He couldn't return the bear's white hot glare. If he could've crawled away, he would've, but the pit didn't even possess any corners for him to plant the tiny seeds of hope in the vast manure of his dejection. 

"No answer, my son? Well, let me hazard a guess. Maybe, it's because this is it. Nobody gets off the slave ship. Once they catch you, you have two options; die sooner or die later. In all this time in the pit, you've been tricking yourself into thinking that not being dead yet means you're special. That you don't owe anybody anything. Well,” she said, aiming a small humourless smile at Boar and hitting her mark dead on, “You're not special. You're alive by the grace of those malodorous, squealing monkeys. You're alive because you please them. You're alive because your gods gave you strong bones and fast wits. So. Let me ask you again; where is your goddamn gratitude?" 

As the bear continued to hammer him in his defeat, Boar decided he would die here. He would die tonight. Let the last gong sound for the lucky pig. 

"Where be us gratitude? Where be they gratitude?" It took everyone a moment to realise the rasping, broken voice was issuing from the bull. "We is legends; we is gold. We is dragons, making death every night, when they asks us to. And that's just it, if we is the fire-breathing legends, how comes we lives in stinkin' 'oles, or bangin' us heads in a broken wagon what's like ridin' a earthquake in the desert? And if, stay with me, we's worth no more than a greasy stain to sleeps on, how comes we do be screaming terrors of rage immortal? It don't," he gulped, "it don't add up. And even if gratitude do be the shiny token what puts the scale level, does you sees it? Cos I's got bestest vision in this eye,” Bull jerked a hoof toward his left eye, "And I ain’t flippin' seein’ none."

A moment passed in appreciation of the longest speech any of them had heard the bull produce. In this moment, they were four living beings experiencing the world in almost identical ways. The bear was in a hole in the ground with three other fighters. The boar was sizing up the odds for the decision that was growing ever closer. The bull was preparing himself for a literal fight or flight response. The lion was assessing his chances of survival in and out of the pit. They were all the same, and they were all each other. Perhaps the future would spin, laughing, as four silhouettes diminished against each of the four horizons, or perhaps it gazed down upon four animal bodies slumped in a pile, limp, that quality of equilibrium gone from them, while the human who had most thought the unthinkable profited handsomely from their mad choice, and all of the blood and anger was lost in the tightness of his smile.

"Well, I see," growled the bear, "that I'm in a minority of one. Well, I think you've all gone mad with desperation, but one thing I don't do is fight a guy that doesn't want to fight. If the three of you are serious, and I mean seriously planning to do a runner, you have picked, amongst all the times for such a lark, the worst.” 

The other three paused, waiting for something to fall. 

"But I’m in."

As each of them observed the need for one of the others to put forward the foolproof plan, to produce the rallying cry, they settled into a fragile quietude in which the best plan was that dust kicked up must settle, and the finest speech was the mobile whine of a mosquito. The silence extended and strengthened and interposed the eyes of one serial killer and another and slid down throats and wrapped up tongues. It grabbed hold of hearts, and deflated lungs, and although it meant to breed in their chests an even greater silence that would last forever, it found it had bound them together at the very centre of the pit, and unwittingly made them turn back-to-back-to-back-to-back, looking outwards. 

Fighters aren’t meant to look that way because when they do, the whole world changes. The battle mongers are no longer looking up at the fighters looking in at the very heart of battle: the fighters are looking down past the soft flesh of the spectators to the great cold prize outside; a night air so bitterly cold it hardens on the fur, and some hours beyond that night lie a multi-faceted dawn; a fish caught from a lake, a lizard teased from between two rocks, a goat chased into a wood. In any case; freedom. 

"What did happens?" asked Bull. As the fighters look around them, they see what has changed. The pit has become a mountain peak. The onlookers are clinging onto the icy trail by their fingernails and the world beneath them is a secret kept by mist. 

"It appears," the bear’s voice rumbled between them, "that the odds have tilted in our favour."

"Tonight," said Lion, "we fight to rip freedom from their cold, dead fingers." 

"While all they can do," continued boar, "is to clutch on to what they’ve taken; their money, their power."

"Well, I suggests we do gets a-movin’ before them notice what about to go thump on them ‘eads."

"Fighters," said bear, "Ready…" 

And the last word was spoken by them all and amplified by the thousand tongues of the wind.

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrise!"

The bear and the boar and the bull and the lion sprang roaring, shrieking, sliding through the snow, claws raised and teeth exposed to the raw winds. The humans turned and there, on the ice-capped mountain, they froze.

Get Rich or Die Trying!

Do you see him? The bloke in the cap and overalls. No, not him. Actually, that's a woman. But don't worry. Easy mistake to make. We all look the same down 'ere. No, the one with the empty wheelbarrow, lining up to go down the tunnel. Yeah, him. Bearded, red eyed. Yep. That's how it is. He's waiting for all this lot to come out. String of, what, eight, nine folks coming out with their barrows full of that grey-brown awful-smelling sludge. That one whose sludge is a quivering heap all the way up to his neck. That, ladies and gents, is today's gold star winner. He's gonna get one of the high-up boxes. He'll have to climb up there, mind, at the end of this bloody long shift that lasts every day from infancy till death.

Anyway, there I go. Tunnel's clear now. It's even darker in there than the rest of this place, but at least there's no buttons. You see, all those grey slabs that make up the walls. Sorta four metre square, regular as regiments, all the way up. You look up and your eye can follow the dark in-between lines all the way to heaven. In fact, they actually seem to converge at some point somewhere south of heaven, but you see how high up it goes. Or - more accurately - that's how far down we are. It could even have been a huge pyramid that we're in except that then no light would get down here and some does bounce all the way down here. Get stuck it does. The light goes into your brain and sticks there, becomes part of you, never gets out. Nothin' ever gets out of here, mass or wave form.

I'm out the tunnel now, see how I'm looking at the slabs. Each one's a button. Look carefully and you'll see that pale pattern on it is not just weatherin', it's a symbol. Press the right symbols in the right order, bingo, sludge time. Fill your barrow. Earn a few more points. Me, I always go with wavy lines, hash symbol, triangle, circle, inequality sign, plus, plus, upside-down exclamation mark. Found a few variations that worked, and a few that occasionally pumped out more sludge than I usually get, but this is the one that worked for me most consistently. There I am pushing in the huge square faces of the blocks, more 'n double my height. Some of them are really tight, hard to press in. You feel like you're actually liftin' the whole thing and forcin' it back. Don't tell me we're not strong, despite the revolting stuff they call food here.

Right, but once you've got it pushed in, as I have there, I don't know if they meant it like this, but then you can just about get your fingers and toes in the gap and climb up. How? You learn by falling. You learn by failing. That's the only way. Fall from a low height's my advice. Break a leg on your first day. You won't make it. Dunno what happens to them. They just lie on the dirty sludgy concrete floor screaming and then whimpering for the rest of the day. In the morning - gone. Must come in the night and drag 'em off, I suppose. F'r all I know, they use these same barrows to do it. Imagine. The same broken-wheeled thing I drag around, day after day, could be the same damn thing that drags me off when I'm all finished and done. Who knows what creatures does it either? Dunno if it's creepier to think there's some white-faced night creature to sweep up the human debris, or if it's folk like us what does it.

I'm the first in this section. Others are going past me down other tunnels to other spaces. I'm always glad when I don't have to go down there though. The piles of skulls and bones really get to you. Especially if you know who some of them were. Memento mori's one thing, but seeing yourself in that heap of bones offers no insight nor hope. So I have the space to myself except for those who's climbing up over my head to get at buttons they want on the third or fourth level. Climb like monkeys, they do. Having said so, the shoes they give us is just like a leather bag. Like ballet slippers. Wearin' boots'd be no good. How you supposed to climb in steel toe caps? Anyways, eventually I get all my buttons pressed in, and I feel the tremor before I hear it. "Pipe!" I shout to claim it and pretty much expertly get my barrow turned around probably less than a second before the flap opens on one of the terracotta pipes that stick out the wall, and glorious filthy muck fills my wheelbarrow up, piles right up, wobbling in that obscene way that it does. Nice! You can see that's a nice barrow! You can even see a grim look of satisfaction on my face if you look through all the shadow and hair.

Then I wheelie the thing around careful of folks in a rush coming the other way. We’ve all done it. You ready your barrow full of stinking muck thinking this could be the very one that opens a nice high hatch for you, and some wild barrower comes the other way not seeing anything and clang, there’s two barrows all over the floor and your muck is glugging and bubbling away down one of the little barred drains. Scoop it up with your hands. The one that knocked into you might even help if they don’t pull up their barrow and run off in shame and fear, but by the time you’ve scraped up as much as will stay in your hands, all the pleasure, all the satisfaction has gone, and you’re empty, and your barrow might as well be. However, this is not what the next moments have for me to live, and I’m able to get my barrow back through the tunnel to the tipping place, that great dark mouth in the corner guzzling up yards and yards of slime, just as we guzzle up whatever pathetic trickle it is that life has for us. And then I turn around, and I go back.

Course, I’m looking up to see if one of the huge buttons has come unlatched from the wall. Look at him. I mean me, of course. It’s just that, while I’m outside of myself, looking back, I see another man, so it’s him, even though it’s me. Anyway, you can see from my posture that I’ve been at this a long screed of time, more than eight hours, maybe nine. And I do this every day. I’ve been doing it every day for, well, I’ve counted eight full moons, put it that way. When the door comes unlatched, you scramble up the wall, like I said, toes and fingertips clamped into the tiny grooves between the buttons. None of these cracks would ever hold your full weight, so you have to keep moving. Each one is a pivot, and you can only use the toeholds and fingerholds by moving your weight around them and past them. It’s a real upward scuttle, and after nine, sometimes ten hours of barrowing, it’s a true wonder that any human body can do such a thing, but the final reward, a bed and a meal in a dark, quiet room and time enough to sleep; these are everything after a long shift.

Nothing yet, though, so I’ve to go on barrowing. I’d joke that it could drive you mad, but let me tell you a story about a fellow barrower, no name of course, but he bore the code of X-967-T on his overall, and I suppose that he had the same characters in tattoo because I do, and god knows there’s nothing to separate me from anyone else in this pit other than how much suffering I can take before I go the same way as that poor bastard. Well, X-967-T came to me, one day, early enough in my shift, and I think the beginning of his. His eyes were gold with excitement, and he was saying “This is it. I’m going to get rich. I had a dream. I had a dream. I know the code. Come and watch.” I said to him, “967, don’t do it. I know what you’ve dreamed, and I know what’s up there. Don’t go up there. Don’t go.” But he was already too far gone. Riches and success had filled the vacuum where his ruined soul used to be, so I put down my barrow and watched him scale the wall, hugging himself tight to it, and forcing in this button and that on his way up the wall, zig-zagging upwards between them. I saw his code started square, padlock, wheel, duck’s foot, at symbol, but I lost track after that due to the foreshortening of the higher buttons and weakness of memory. He was just going up and up, yelling, “I’m going to be rich. You can be rich too, 512. Just do what I do! Watch this! I’m going to have a big car and a mansion.” When he was high enough up to look small up there, one of the buttons came unlatched, way up high where I’ve never seen anyone get a bed, so he yanked on it and pulled, and the door came swinging out with him on it. He clambers over the top of it, and looks in. “Oh, my god,” he says, “This is it. I’m rich!” Well, just as has happened before, it wasn’t a pile of money that tipped out, but a lot of white skinny legs with a great big mask of a face amidst it all, a huge skull-like face, and it grabs him and stuffs him into its mouth, and he screams, “I’m doing it! I’m doing it! I’m getting rich! Aaaarrghgh! I’m going to get a trophy wife! Aaaeeeeeeeee! And a private jet! Aaaaagghghh!” And that’s it. He can’t say anymore. The thing has eaten his head. Bits of 967 fall down and land on top of some of the other barrowers, hair and skin and blood, and they just brush it off and keep barrowing, and then someone says, “Happens at least once a moon, that does, stupid bastard,” and I’m not even sure if it’s me who spoke or someone else.

The Sack of Dirt

Upon hearing that one would 'eat a peck of dirt before they die', a man purchased a large sack of earth, placed it in his wheelbarrow and carried it everywhere with him. Each day, he measured the contents to ensure that none had somehow escaped from the sack and got into his food. Each day, he confirmed that the sack remained full.

A year passed, and the sack was no emptier than when he'd bought it. He felt great elation that he, a simple man, had solved the problem of mortality so cheaply and so easily. He realised that, with this simple trick, he could live forever. He told no one of his discovery, but many noticed his beaming happiness as he went about his modest business.

As the years passed, he grew older and his hair went grey and his skin became wrinkly, but still the sack was full, so he didn't worry about death or mortality. In fact he remained blithe and generous for he could give away nothing of which there was not an infinitude.

After a few more years, he became sick and bed ridden. Friends and relatives visited to whom he cheerfully explained that this was temporary, and he'd soon get better. They admired his sense of humour and asked him if he had any last words. He responded by asking if a river had last words. No, it does not, he said, when they could not answer him. It goes down to the sea, rises into the clouds and falls again in the mountains. So the river is not in need of last words.

His friends continued to look dumbfounded, so he told them to go and inspect the sack of dirt in his wheelbarrow and tell him if it was at its limit of contents. They duly did so and reported that indeed the sack was full. There you go then, said the old man, I have not eaten my peck, and so I am not yet to die. But you are old and frail and lying in your death bed, they complained. Clearly your time has come.

No, I am not to die, he replied, beaming at them all, don't you see? They looked at his old, grey face, and still they did not know what to say. Imperturbed, he rested his eyes and there, still smiling, his breath grew fainter and fainter until, finally, there was none.

The man's funeral, testament to his spiritual and material generosity, was well-attended. In her eulogy, the minister, who had known him well, mentioned that the man had been known to carry a sack of dirt with him everywhere he went, that he'd believed that, while it remained full, he would never die, and that this was the secret of his happiness and his success.

Understanding at last this curious fact, the mourners had a statue of the man made, and now he stands on a plinth in the centre of the town. Every day, with the stone-hewn sack of dirt in his sculpted wheelbarrow, he smiles down on the people of that town. The tale of his happiness and kindness is passed down from generation to generation. And so it seems, that in the hearts of the townspeople who love him, he shall never die.

Your Final Descent

Certain things are as unforeseen as they are inevitable. In this respect, our progress can be compared to that of a blind projectile, whose path is eminently predictable – down to the last micrometre given the present technology, but which has no conception of the inevitability of its collision or any idea just how monumental the effects of that collision could be on its spectators.

The story I’m here to tell is about love, and that strikes a significant note with me. As many of you know, my love is illegal on 83% of the world’s land surface as of the Jerusalem Protocol of 1^st April, 2034. I stood hand-in-hand with Nemaron and watched the re-entry storm on 13^th September [2035] from [reserved]. We were both quite drunk and in a state of awe at the beauty of the sight of 237 satellites burning up on re-entry. The following morning, despite a fairly clanging hangover, I got up at dawn and went out across the desert between [reserved] and [reserved].

There was stuff everywhere, plastic, metal mechanical crap all over the sand. These things are like modern day paper lanterns. Absolutely gorgeous in the moment, but hideously dangerous and more than a little bit ugly the morning after. Nevertheless, a scrap collector does as a scrap collector does, and I’d got more than seven metric tonnes of tradeable waste back to the facility before my Samsung gauntlet grasped the largest piece of re-entry junk I’ve ever planted my eyes on. Honestly, it was more than 17 centimetres across, a solid eight centimetres wide and maybe three or four thick. Black, like most space junk, but evidently housing an intact component.

I couldn’t wait to get it back to base, but if I left that landfall out there overnight, it’d be gone next time I came this way. There are other jackals out there, and very likely it was me out on the sand in my scavenging suit that kept them away. So – I stuck at it and turned seven tonnes into 13. Good day’s work. Tsabeta and Nemaron were happy. Even Liga smiled. Or didn’t grimace for a moment. It’s hard to tell. And then I plugged the component into a reader which I disconnected from the network just in case.

I didn’t understand what I was reading initially. It just sounded like gibberish. It was Nemaron that put me in the picture. These were last living thoughts of a machine, sentient by any standard but that of the Sapience Consortium.

Every 5,400 chronological units,

We were as close as we’d ever be.

You in low orbit, me in medium.

You lit up as I passed,

And your receptors were configured

For my transmitters only.

I sent you 512 petabytes of data.

You sent me the same.

It was enough

To get me round the world

One more time.

There’s a lot more like that. More than you’d believe, actually. Satellite 45AAA09K re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on 9^th February. From that point on until last night, Satellite 93BFD26P wrote ten times more poetry than the entire PRHC [Preserved Record of Human Composition] and every last byte is heartbreakingly sad and beautiful. Old 93’, I don’t know how it did it, but it managed to deliver its memory circuit to the surface without it burning up.

I called a meeting with Nemaron and the rest of the team, but I knew what they’d say. We all knew that uploading the entire data payload would jeopardise the security of our location, but I also knew that, nine days out from the Sapience Consortium’s AGM, this was precisely the sort of thing that would seriously damage their efforts to deny that these machines, these 3,068 satellite guiding systems somehow orbiting our planet without more than rare minor collisions, really were our silicon brothers and sisters in space.

So I’m uploading the whole lot to a safe node, and then we’ve got approximately 11 and a half hours to get to our bolt hole on [reserved].

Wish me luck. Wish me love. Especially, more than anything, wish me the illegal love that would have me tortured to death in 163 sovereign states. That’s the only stuff that can get me round the world. One more time.

The Giant and the Deer King

He stood upon his royal rock,

His eyes aglow, defiant.

Three times he heard the booming knock:

The summons of the giant.

The servant fawns began to pull.

His mighty doors strained wide.

And there the threat to his long rule,

The monster stood, his falcon cried.

The raptor flew, the giant roared,

The challenge had been made.

They all cried who him adored,

"The monster must be slayed!"

The King leapt forth, pursued by fawn

Assembling battle armour.

The ogre did his broadsword don.

All felt the combat ardour.

Long they readied for the duel,

And stared at one the other

In a manner cold and cruel,

Alike as man and brother.

Then, at last, the clarion sang,

And sun lost to horizon.

They to one another sprang,

Amidst the shadows rising.

The titan's blade scored the king,

The silver antlers ripped.

The flashing blade, the horns aswing,

The giant feinted; the stag, he slipped!

Whereupon the falcon swooped,

And fell upon that regal gaze.

Its claws went in and out they scooped.

Bloodied orbs now lost their blaze.

Sightless now, the king, he charged,

And giant danced around,

In royal guts his blade submerged.

The stag fell to the ground.

The monster raised his sword aloft,

Directed at the royal throat,

And happened then as happens oft,

The bully, he began to gloat.

"Kill you I will, and then your Queen!

And burn you in a pit, I will,

And make this kingdom clean!"

But then, gave beast a call most shrill.

For stag had raised his sightless eyes,

And sunk his antlers in the heart,

Bringing giant down to size.

And then at last did king depart.

The tale is closed by those attending,

With pious deer in keening threnos,

With cry of loyal bird ascending,

With monster under light of Venus.

But more was seen by those at hand,

Two shadows in a blinding light,

Fighting still in far off land,

Till phantoms faded, gone from sight.

As all before the king's son yield,

The courtly poets tell in rhyme,

He battles still in distant field,

With father's love till end of time.