📖 The Ghost of Emily - Chapter 30

In which civilisation as Marcus knows it, abruptly ends.

Marcus sat on a folding camp chair with feet placed squarely on the concrete below him. The sun shone bright and hot on his face, and the heat filled him with a feeling of stillness, contentment. In his ears were the sounds of terry-towel cotton scraping sporadically along the grass of his backyard, the occasional infantile squeak, giggle or cough, as baby Olivia found a clump of dirt to taste, or a bug to pick up and stare at.

The driveway cut through the lawn of the backyard like two concrete slashes - a runway for launching an emergency escape - and fell away as it passed the house and exposed the lattice-enclosed undercroft of the weatherboard home. Marcus saw the driveway’s purpose as exactly such, and as a rule, no-one was to ever park a car in it, so as not to block the exit of the gigantic motorhome he had purchased on his arrival in Sydney, and driven for three hours through the thickly congested western-bound traffic on the highways.

So slow and stressful was the final leg of the journey from desolate detachment in the USA back to his beloved, pregnant wife, that he had decided there would likely be no need for him to return to Sydney in the near future - if ever. He had landed at the Kingsford-Smith International Airport and jumped in the first available self-driven taxi to the CBD to inspect and chemically test his gold depository. He collected two bullion bars and took another cab to the nearest motorhome sales yard, where he’d instantly purchased the new vehicle, via thumbprint verified electronic transfer.

He left Sydney in this top-of-the-line Winnebago; complete with chemical toilet and kitchenette. The long journey to the Southern Highlands afforded him time to solidify the vision in his mind of the piece of technology he was planning to build.

It had taken quite a few months to receive all the parts, but on this day the last pieces of the puzzle had arrived and he was sitting under the annex of his Winnebago, soldering the final elements into place. As he picked up the circuit board he had just finished assembling, he laughed to himself at the yellow shine of the tiny threads of gold that spread across the green fibreglass like minute roads in an empty city.

“Now illegal in fifty states...” he chuckled to himself, considering the absurdity of the decision to ban an element from general public use. Though the plebs would not know it, President Bronstein’s announcement was the death sentence to whatever vestiges remained of free-market innovation in medicine, transport, technology, and chemistry. So essential was gold as a catalyst, as a conductor, as a radiation shield, and so many other practical, essential applications, that to ban it from non-government-regulated use was to pull the handbrake on countless industries.

“Hey, Marco!” a voice called from over the garden fence.

Marcus sighed and tried to stop his shoulders from visibly sagging at the sound of his neighbour’s voice. “Hi, John.”

“Did you hear the latest from back home?” John called, his booming Australian accent penetrating Marcus’s ears in a most uncomfortable way.

“I’m trying not to watch the news too closely.”

“Yeah, right, gotcha. But the friggin’ Army just shot hundreds of its own citizens, at that bloody place near that enormous Egyptian pole… you know the one?”

Marcus was unable to stay aloof with this news. He stood and quickly walked over to John at the fence, who was holding a tablet with news headlines splashed across it. “You mean the National Mall? In Washington?”

“Yeah, it’s unbelievable, Marco! It’s like… it’s like old communist China or something.”

Marcus studied the text on the screen for a moment, then, disgusted at the numbness he felt within himself, looked at John and decided to roll with the change of topic. “Well, you wouldn’t see anything like that in China these days. Not since the Neo-Huaxia Dynasty was declared.”

“Hmm… is that when they crowned that new king?”

“Emperor, yes.”

“Yeah, they reckon China is thriving like never before. Probably helps that they’re getting along so well with the Russians.”

“That may just be a by-product of the war in Europe.”

“What, so they’re just allied to fight the Muslims in the Caliphate, you mean?”

“Well, it serves both nations.”

“If only they could help out your motherland. That Bronstein cow really opened the floodgates didn’t she.”

“I’m not sure military intervention would do much if anything to change America’s fate now.”

“Why not?”

“The fifty-six quadrillion dollar deficit, for starters. It’s a sinking ship, John. It was bad before I left. It’s getting worse, fast. Nora Bronstein is still trying to maintain the illusion that capitalist greed is the root of the problem, but every bill she’s passed, every emergency law she’s instituted – undemocratically – has only made the decline more rapid. Seizing the means of food production was the last straw.”

John’s eyes were glazing over.

“America is dead, John. That’s why I’m trying not to waste my time watching the carnage unfold. You’ll see more massacres in the months ahead. I’d appreciate it if you don’t tell me about it.”

John snapped back to the conversation, his face sympathetic. “Oh, sure, sorry Marco. I’m just glad you and Ally made it out when you did. And I’m glad this little treasure was born here,” he gestured towards Olivia who was still exploring the grass, “and not over there!”

“Thanks, John. Listen, can you stop calling me Marco? It just… it’s just not my name.”

“Oh, sure, sorry Marc. It’s just an Aussie thing. It’s what we do.”

“Sure, well, Marcus is fine.”

“Okay, no worries Marc.”

Marcus winced.

“Say, have you heard from Ally or Ash?” John continued.

“No, I haven’t, but no news is good news. They must be in Sydney by now.”

“Yep, I think Ashleigh said they had a Sukiyaki dinner planned, and then some nightclub. Ash loves a good dance. It’s great that Ally does too!”

“Hmm? Oh, right. Dancing? I didn’t know Ally was a dancer.”

“I think they all are, mate. The sheilas, you know?”

Marcus nodded.

“Besides, it’s good for them to take a break. Post-natal depression is a bitch. Ashleigh’s been going crazy looking after John Junior all day and night. The little bugger just won’t sleep through. I can’t believe you have Livy sleeping all night already – so young!”

“We’ve worked at it,” said Marcus simply, not wanting to get into a detailed discussion about parenting techniques, knowing that he and John were likely totally incompatible on the subject.

“How about those bloody Koreans, though!” John scoffed.

“Bloody- uh, what?”

“You know, the United Republics of Korea. Makes me wonder how much longer Sukiyaki dinners will even be a thing!”

“How do you mean?”

“Since the URK took Japan!”

“They… they did what?”

“Jesus, Marc. You’re really out of the loop, aren’t ya! It happened last month. Total invasion. They fuckin’ nuked Tokyo. These times… they got me scared as shit! I’m just so glad we live here, in this sunny arsehole of the planet!”

Marcus winced at John’s crudeness, but couldn’t resist nodding in agreement.

“Yeah, things seem to be going alright, Down Under. I can’t understand how the economy has held up so well,” John rambled.

“It’s the shrinking state. The last few elections have seen the Australian Government get consistently smaller in its reach.”

“But, shouldn’t that make things worse? Government’s a good thing, right?”

“Ask America.”

John nodded slowly, still evidently confused. “I heard they’re wanting to bring a gold standard back here. Say, you said you invested a bit in gold. Is that how you and Ally got permanent residence so quickly?”

“No, it was our qualifications. And, possibly the letter of recommendation from our former employer.”

“Oh, from that Boston Science-y place?”

“No, a different employer.”

“Oh, who?”

“It’s not important, John.” Marcus turned from the fence at the sound of Olivia cackling with laughter. She was sitting up now, across the yard, her face smeared with dirt, chewing on blades of grass.

He thought back to the day Olivia was born.

He had delivered the baby with his own hands, in their house. Ally had chosen confidently for a natural home birth. She wanted to experience every part of it fully, without intervention, and fortunately for Marcus who was more nervous about it than she, the delivery was uncomplicated, albeit a bloody mess. The three of them had spent every day since Olivia’s birth at home, insisting on the compulsory government assessments of the child’s health occurring in their apartment. For months, their groceries were delivered by truck and drone, and Marcus did all of his planning and purchasing online.

This was the first weekend that Ally was not home.

“I see you, my little rose!” Marcus called out to her, marvelling at the vivid redness of her curly hair, and the almost unbearable stab of joy that hit his heart when their eyes met across the expanse of lawn and she smiled at him. She had no words yet, only babbles of curiosity, determination and amusement, but her green eyes, when they held gaze with his, communicated more information than words could ever hope to.

She needs me. She loves me. She trusts me. I’m hers.

Marcus’s mind and his heart raced at the sight of his daughter, safe and happy in a place far away from the epicentre of the dark future that may still await the world.

Though Frank and Eli had asserted that Eve would be the solution, and Marcus himself would have to concede that it was hard to imagine things getting any worse in the world than people had made it, he could not shake the overwhelming feeling that the other child he had brought into the world was the harbinger of utter annihilation. The moment of connected joy with his biological daughter was shattered by the thought of his technological daughter, and a finger of cold shot down Marcus’s spine. “I’m gonna get back to work, John, okay?”

“Sure thing mate, little John will prob’ly be waking up soon, anyway. That little troublemaker needed a good nap!”

Marcus nodded, again choosing to refrain from comment on John’s parenting style, as he walked back towards his workstation.

“Marc,” John called after him, “I’m real sorry about what’s happening to America, hey.”

Marcus paused, and turned back to John with a feeling of serenity. “Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.”

John looked stunned. “Shit, that’s deep! You come up with that?”

“No. It was… another Emperor.”

John squinted, and started towards his own back door, mumbling the quotation to himself.

Marcus sat down and studied the status of his work. On the folding camp table, next to his cornucopia of electronic components for the makeshift peripheral he was assembling, was his WellsTouch tablet. The device rarely left his side.

The medical diagnostic app he had developed with Ally was currently open, monitoring Olivia’s vital signs via a small wristband she wore. The device, coupled with the app, also served as a baby monitor for when she was asleep inside.

When the medical app was active, Marcus could hold the transparent aluminium pane up and get a detailed readout of vital signs, hormonal and chemical levels in the blood, and even indications of tissue damage as deep as bone-level, of whomever was visible through the tablet’s window. Though this application was useful for diagnosis only, and not capable of administering any manner of medical intervention, Marcus was certain that this was the basis of the technology that he had personally experienced when he entered the WellsHealth Surgical Pod on Level A so many months ago.

Using this app, Marcus was able to empirically prove his theory that, for the last month, Ally – like her friend Ashleigh next door - had been depressed.

Marcus thumbed his gold wedding ring as he thought of the difficulty Ally had faced since they arrived in Australia. The state of the world had been leaving her despondent, much of the time. With no real work to be done, with all their wealth, with the peace and security that this new country offered them, Marcus saw she was finding it difficult to focus on the here and now, and she was openly dwelling on the barbaric violence happening in North America, Europe and East Asia. Marcus wasn’t making it easy to be present to the joy of their child or the idyllic surroundings of this small country town either. He was obsessed with preparation for the next wave of horror.

Every day he was browsing the net and collecting components for his motorhome, or he was outside assembling new satellite dishes, battery coolant conduits and redundancy systems into the chassis of the vehicle to make it ready for total long-term independence. His hyperawareness of the impending possibility of apocalypse was evidently hard for Ally to live with. The passion had been gone lately. Their love-life dried up only a few months into living in his new house.

Marcus had scanned her with the tablet while she slept, and seen that her cortisol levels were elevated and her serotonin depleted. They had talked about it the next day, and she confessed that what she needed was a bit of distraction, some enjoyment, some escape - just to help her feel truly alive again and remember what it was like to be a human, in a human body. Marcus suggested that she head to town for the weekend, and she agreed.

Marcus was left in charge of Olivia which he found to be a joy and a pleasure. She was a content and curious baby, and he could see what a natural born empiricist she was, even from her appropriate response to the bite of a small ant on her finger: to eat it, and avoid the hole from whence it came.

A buzz of anticipation surged through Marcus’s body as the last component was scorched into place on his circuit board with a tiny burst of flux steam, and he entered the motorhome and inserted the device into its casing on the internal wall. With a satisfying snap, the job was complete and he flicked a switch to allow charge from the vehicle master battery cells, and closed the lid over the wall casing.

Stepping back outside, and quickly noting that Olivia was still happy crawling laps of the backyard, he picked up the tablet and opened the app designed to control the new hardware. As the application initialised, so did the satellite dish on the roof of his motorhome, completing two full rotations on its horizontal axes, then tilting back and forth a few times. The readout on his tablet display showed its hardware calibration taking place with a countdown of seven minutes.

Time for a coffee, Marcus thought to himself, placing the tablet down to step inside.

“A-ba! A-baaaaah!!” cried out Olivia, with a trepidatious smile at her father.

“Okay... and time for a sleep," he smiled back to her, changing his course to step onto the lawn and lovingly collect her up into his hands. He lifted her high above his head, clutching her firmly under her arms. “Oooh-eeeeee!” he pantomimed, his pitch ascending. When she reached the apogee, he paused for drama, and she giggled with anticipation. He let go for an instant and she began to fall, but his hands fell with her and just as she reached the height of his navel, he squeezed her again and caught her. Her response of cackling abandon prompted him to repeat the process as he walked towards the house. After a few turns, Olivia red in the face with delightful laughter, he remembered Ally’s advice to not over-stimulate her before bed time, so he ceased the up-down motion and held her close to his chest as he carried her into the house.

As he slowly made his way down the hall towards the bedroom, his mind returned to his motorhome and the application that was calibrating his satellite hardware. With any luck, if he had built the device correctly and it was interfacing as he expected with his tablet, he would have a readout of every satellite in line-of-sight, and be able to silently piggy-back on its carrier waves to access any unencrypted communication that was happening in either direction. For the encrypted carriers, he had a few tricks up his sleeve too. The first and most important step was seeing what was up there, who it was talking to, and - where possible - what it was saying.

The truth was, Marcus could not leave Shangri-La behind in his mind. Though he knew it was not safe to stay, there were so many unanswered mysteries about the place and the work occurring there that he had to find a way back in, if only remotely, to appease himself.

Marcus knelt down and placed Olivia gently on the enormous mattress. She smiled dreamily up at her father and he spoke very softly to her as he pulled the blanket up to her stomach and tucked it tightly around her. “Time for a rest now, my little rose.”

She grimaced, then howled a little, as if suddenly perturbed that the play was over for the moment.

“Yes, I hear you darling,” he almost whispered, “you need to have a cry. I hear you.” He placed his hand gently on her chest. As soon as his palm gently pressed upon her, she ceased howling and returned to gentle cooing. Within moments, she was soundly asleep.

Marcus stepped into the kitchen and began preparing himself a coffee. As he activated the electric grinder and watched the blades relentlessly tear through the brittle black coffee bean, his mind returned to America, and he thought of the helicopter that flew them out of Shangri-La’s mountain gulch for the last time. His hands kept working to prepare his drink, and as he stared out the window, his mind turned to his shipment of precious books.

When are they coming? It’s been eight damned months! Marcus took a sip from the hot cup of coffee. How many days have I done this now? “Pff!” he laughed derisively at himself. Hundreds. It’s like every goddamned truck in the universe has stopped here except the one I want. I hope my books are alright.

He had tried countless times to contact FedEx in New York, or track down the personal details of the NYC branch manager, but to no avail. FedEx had gone bankrupt only two months after Marcus had walked out of their office. Their assets had been liquidated. But he kept waiting, hoping, that at least the key to his vault would arrive one day in an envelope, perhaps with a little note from Barry, reading: I’m sorry. But no such parcel or note came.

The thought of his books lost forever filled him with a dizzying feeling of emptiness, and outright anger at himself, for having entrusted the key to his treasures to an incompetent child in a dying city. Coffee helped quell the impending veil of nihilism that was threatening more and more each day to completely obscure the man that Marcus once was. He had started drinking a lot of coffee. Six cups a day. It helped him focus, and the focus was on preparation. Which reminded him; the calibration was almost done. He stepped back out into the yard and went to his tablet.

<<<Calibration Complete.

Initialise? [YES] [NO]>>>

He smiled, triumphantly, and slapped the virtual [YES] button on the pane with his index finger.

A dazzling spread of text filled the screen, then a rudimentary graphic of a star field above him. As he moved the tablet about in his hands, the star field moved on the screen in correspondence. It was offering an impression of the layout of space directly facing the surface of the tablet. If he held the tablet perpendicular to the ground, he would see the constellations that centred around the horizon. If he placed it face down on the table, it would show the positions of stars as seen from the antipodal position on Earth. When he placed the tablet flat, he could see the stars above him, even though they were currently obscured by the brightness of daylight.

A couple of white circles representing satellites started to move into the outer of edges of the screen, separated by only a few seconds. As soon as they blinked onto the display, a dotted arc flashed ahead of them, mapping their trajectory, and a solid line trailed behind them. Above each were several rows of minute text, showing a fixed codename, a rapidly changing set of coordinates, and a countdown in minutes and seconds. Marcus studied them closely and did not recognise the codenames.

He tapped one white dot with his finger and a bubble of more detailed text appeared above it. The codename was extrapolated into information about ownership, band and frequencies of signals going to and from the satellite, and a brief description of the contents of the signals - if this information was published in the satellite’s identification systems. This satellite was a news broadcaster’s.

Marcus gestured across the tablet surface to expand the star field, showing many more constellations. Ten more satellites appeared at varying altitudes in an irregular mesh of unrelated trajectories. He spent a long time studying the details of every satellite whose codename was not self-evident. None of the satellites moving across the sky were the ones he sought. In defeat, he picked up his coffee for a sip, and found there were only dregs left; he had been drinking unconsciously while he worked. The dregs were cold, and in disgust and frustration, he slammed the coffee cup down on the table. The tablet bounced with the shock of the impact and slid off the side of the camp table, landing squarely on his knees. The shift in position had opened up more sky to the south-east on the screen, and he noticed a singular new satellite pop into view.

The codename was WTPSCS.

Marcus tapped it quickly to see the detailed readout.

<<<WTPSCS

WellsTech Private Security Communications System

PRIVATE ENCRYPTED CHANNEL

Altitude: 344,560m>>>

Marcus’s heart began to race, and when he saw the countdown of time left in line-of-sight, it quickened further. His hands began to shake slightly.

7:02

7:01

7:00

6:59

He had less than seven minutes to unencrypt this signal, try to find what he needed within it, and begin the piggyback. He furiously tapped commands into his application, nervously glancing at the countdown.

6:43

Every now and then he would hit a large button that read INITIATE CONNECTION. Each time he was met with a failure message. More tapping. More failures.

6:04

On this tenth iteration of code commands, he hit the button to initiate and was met with a bright green tick, which elicited an involuntary laugh from him. His hands steadied, having connected to the satellite, and he began to study the streams of communication that were heading in and out.

There were so many distinct channels in use, some of them in bands Marcus knew would be far too weak for long distance broadcast. He read through the information on each channel as quickly as he could, discarding any that seemed irrelevant. Fifteenth down the list he found a channel labelled RAG-DOS.

That’s it! RAG-DOS pipes directly to Shangri-La!

He entered the channel, and initialised the piggyback subroutine. It only took a couple of seconds and he was in, silently riding along the signals to and from the satellite. He jumped across to the app that Ally had programmed for him; a new iteration of the program she used to hack the Shangri-La database.

<<< PROCESSING >>>

…

…

…

<<<SUCCESS>>

I’m in! He grinned. Full access!

The backend of the Daedalus database looked exactly as he remembered it. He quickly scanned through the various top level folders and saw two of interest. One labelled CCTV/, and the other E-PRIVATE/.

He glanced at his watch and noted there was only about five minutes remaining. Following his instinct, he opened the folder named /E-PRIVATE/. Inside was a list of subfolders. Hundreds of them. He scrolled through as quickly as he could, looking for something to stand out.

.../PERSONAL/

He entered. Hundreds more subfolders. Another urgent scan-through.

..../JOURNAL/

Journal!

He tapped to enter.

<<<Contents Encrypted>>>

Damn it!

He tapped and held. A pop up query appeared.

<<<Download?>>>

He tapped an affirmative, and as soon as he saw a download progress bar appear in the corner of his screen, he tapped [BACK], and [BACK] again, then entered the folder named CCTV/, and executed the in-built footage monitoring software.

“Let’s see what’s happening up there in the Rockies, then!”

A grid of boxes appeared on his screen, with a time-code ticking along that showed today’s date and time. Each box showed only static.

Within seconds he was scrubbing at high speed back to the date that he had left Shangri-La. He stopped when he saw the image of himself and Ally stepping into the black limousine in the thumbnail preview of the hotel’s lobby car park. Tapping [PLAY], he scanned his eyes across the grid of thumbnails that filled his screen. For a moment he was completely overwhelmed. There was less than four minutes until the satellite moved out of his system’s range, and he didn’t even know exactly what he was looking for.

He decided to trust his eyes. It was not something he was practised at, with more than three decades of utmost distrust for his vision, but in this instant he fully embraced the inexplicable gift that Eli had given him, in order to find what he needed to stop Eli.

He pressed [FAST FORWARD], and the grid of thirty-two thumbnails began to rapidly play through the events that unfolded in the many days since Marcus’s departure.

So far, it was business as usual. Familiar faces and frames moving around the hotel at artificially breakneck speeds.

Something from the paddock out the front of the hotel caught his eye. He expanded the view.

[PLAY]

He saw two of the Burgundy Siblings, standing in the sheep field with rifles. Dozens of sheep already lay dead, some with spots of red on their shaggy white coats. Only four sheep were still alive, running wildly about the yard, one trying to scramble over the rock wall. As he watched, two more sheep fell following flashes of light from the muzzles of the rifles.

He noticed something coming into view at the outer edge of the frame. It was a giant machine. Marcus recognised it. It was one of the giant worker robots he had seen in the lab on Level A. This was one of the new security bots Eli had described. It was rolling along the corn field, sucking all of the immature shoots of maize into its own body. Smoke was emerging from above it, and from its rear was a constant spray of seeds. Concealment, he thought. They’re hiding the evidence of agriculture. Those are grass seeds. But why?

He swiped his finger across the screen to return to the collated view of cameras, then hit [FAST FORWARD] again.

A few seconds later, he noticed an unusual amount of movement in the lobby, outside of the elevators. He pressed play and expanded to full screen. His scientific colleagues and several of the siblings were being directed back and forth by Frank, who held a clipboard and looked very focussed.

Is Frank the 2IC now?

Marcus had rejected the role; Frank seemed the next logical selection. The team was carrying large pieces of equipment out of the ballroom and into the elevators. When one elevator was full, they would proceed downwards. It only took a moment for Marcus to realise that this was the RAG-DOS system; dismantled and being relocated to the labs.

He swiped back to the global view and began tracking forward rapidly again. He noticed heightened activity on Level L; dozens of siblings and scientists. They were carrying pieces of furniture and equipment that he recognised from the hotel into the submersibles, across the water, and into the labs at the opposite side. At one end of the main access tunnel Marcus noticed a huge circular door that had always been vacuum-sealed was now fully open. This had clearly been going on for hours, if not days.

He glanced at his watch. Only two minutes to go.

[FAST FORWARD]

The playback speed increased. On all thumbnails was a whir of activity, in and out of the hotel, cable-car platform, and the labs. Slowly the hotel was being dismantled, and eventually, apart from the blurry smears that were people moving rapidly about, the Shangri-La Hotel appeared to be empty of all portable items.

The whirring stopped. Stillness.

Marcus tapped [PLAY].

No one was moving. Anywhere. No one was to be seen.

The hotel.

The submersibles.

The labs.

All devoid of human life.

Marcus unconsciously held his breath while trying to make sense of what he was seeing. In the thumbnail showing the hotel lobby, he saw movement. He brought it up to full screen. It was a person stepping towards the elevator.

Eli!

Eli Wells appeared to be the only person on the entire grounds now - at least the only person in view of a camera. The elevator doors opened and he stepped in, then turned, bringing his face back into view. Marcus felt Eli’s eyes on him somehow, as if from beyond the grave. His eyes were fixed on the camera.

The elevator doors started to slide closed, and as they did Eli’s hand raised and he pointed with his two forefingers right at his own eyes, as if to say “Are you watching, Marcus?”

Then Eli was gone.

Only a few seconds later, the camera appeared to shake for an instant. The feed went back to static.

Marcus swiped back to global view and rewound a few seconds. He opened the view of the lobby car park. The golden fountain stood to one side of the frame, gushing water as always. The heavy flow of water faltered, and slowed to a trickle, then stopped completely.

He saw a sudden flash of bright light from the inside of the lobby, and this camera also shook for a second, then turned to static.

Marcus rewound again to try and look more closely and make sense of what had happened, but as he did, the tablet screen was filled with the words CONNECTION LOST.

His time was up.

He placed the tablet down on the camp table, its screen returning to neutral transparency. On the reflective surface he thought he could still see the fountain. He closed his eyes, and the image remained; vivid and clear. But the fountain wasn’t rumbling a froth of white water as he had thought it always would. It was dead.

Marcus fiddled with the gold Russian coin hanging around his neck. Below the constant hum of birds and crickets that surrounded his home every day, another sound crept into his consciousness; so quiet at first that he thought he was imagining it. It came in sporadic pulses. It reminded him of the low hum of sixty-four Hertz that haunted his dreams every night, but this was no constant tone. This sounded random; chaotic. He closed his eyes and focussed on the sound, a blob of muted colour and indistinct shape taking form in his mind’s eye. His concentration was suddenly interrupted by a ghastly screech, which chainsawed through his mental image and scattered it into countless shards.

It was Olivia, crying out suddenly, as if she was hurt. Her voice was coming from his tablet’s acoustic film. It sounded like Olivia was right next to him, screaming, but he realised it was the medical app fulfilling its monitoring function. He leapt to his feet and started running for the house, hearing the cries of his baby above the low distant thunder. Then another sound penetrated his hearing. A voice. It was John from next door, calling out as his screen door slammed.

Fast footsteps along pavers.

Panting.

John called out again. “Marcus, Marcus! Have you heard from Ally?”

Marcus stopped running suddenly and almost tripped on his own lanky legs. His body began to feel numb as some deep part of his subconscious already fully realised what was happening. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking to be wrong.

John was beginning to whimper and moan, as he started pacing up and down, his head darting from side to side, scanning for threat. He would sporadically spin around and thrash his arms out as if to ward off ambushing fairies or shake a swarm of invisible bees off of his back. He was in the midst of a profound anxiety attack.

Finally, through grunts, tears and heavy, uncontrolled breathing, John spoke. “Oh, Marcus... there’s been an attack, it’s on the news. Uh... a bombing... in Sydney!”

Marcus’s consciousness seemed to fall back into the rear of his skull again. The image before him of his backyard, his house, his neighbour, all suddenly appeared to him like a movie on a tiny external display. “Oh Christ... not the Children of Muhammad?” the body of Marcus asked, as the consciousness of Marcus observed, mutely.

“Not a suicide bombing... an... an air fleet - it’s an all-out attack! The man on the radio, he’s saying it might be the URK... fuck, Marcus!” John’s panic was escalating into shrieks of horror. “First Japan - now us! Australia’s under attack... Sydney... it’s...” he couldn’t finish the sentence.

For an immeasurable moment, Marcus’s consciousness retreated past the back of his skull and he felt as if he was looking at his own body from the space behind him. He could see the body trembling. Its knees buckling slightly. As he watched the legs give and the body begin the first motion of outright collapse, his consciousness rushed forward and, head spinning with vertigo, the collapsing Marcus shifted his weight and spun around to run for the house.

He thundered across the wooden floorboards until he reached the living room. Olivia’s cries were still cutting through the air inside the house, but under the throbbing of blood through Marcus’s brain, and the pounding drum in his chest, the sound was a muted, distant murmur. He snapped his fingers twice and the display screen that stretched across the entirety of the living room wall flashed to life. Images of Sydney smothered beneath plumes of black smoke swayed across the screen.

“Call Ally!” Marcus shouted into the air. Through the house’s internal audio system, he could hear another rhythmic pulse. A pre-connection tone. He held his breath.

… …

… …

… …

… …

He ducked into the bedroom, and scooped Olivia up, pressing her to his chest in a feeble attempt to calm her, as he returned to the living room.

… …

… …

Marcus’s heart was feeling heavy and spasmodic as it pressed outwards from inside his rib cage. Olivia kept screaming into his neck.

… …

… …

… …

The hang up tone. She hadn’t answered.

“CALL ALLY!” he screamed again, and the sounds repeated, as he watched the devastation revealed in ultra-high-definition on his screen.

The helicopter filming the aftermath was swinging around the foreshore, steering clear of the fingers of black smoke that were clawing and twisting their way skyward.

Marcus saw the Harbour Bridge, broken into three segments. One side was hanging limply across a fractured concrete pillar, dipping into the thrashing, filthy water below. The middle segment was almost fully submerged, only one long arc of twisted steel penetrating the surface. The third segment somehow held true. It stood thrusting into the air, defiantly, like the last line of defence for the ancient streets of the Rocks, of Circular Quay, of the city itself. But those streets, too, lay largely in rubble.

As the helicopter banked around he saw the pieces of the Opera House lying almost flat, like a child’s Meccano set crushed after a tantrum. He made out hundreds of bodies strewn across the concourse pavers, some laying limp and folded in unlikely ways along the jagged forecourt steps.

He saw enormous military craft scattered about the water, mounting rescues of the many people who found themselves cast into the sea following the mayhem. The Australian Army, Navy and Air Force were everywhere, but it was far too late.

The camera panned upward to the Sydney skyline, and Marcus saw dozens of buildings ablaze, several collapsed and leaning into neighbouring towers. Not a single building was left untouched by the devastation that had rained down upon this city.

In the back of Marcus’s frantic, shocked mind, some tiny voice of logic pushed through and told him that the worst was yet to come. If Korea is attacking Sydney, invasion is imminent. Melbourne, Brisbane, and Canberra will be next… if they aren’t under fire already. A flash image of an enormous Korean armada in the Pacific Ocean entered his mind.

Marcus had chosen Australia because it seemed the least likely place to be touched by the World War that was unfolding everywhere else. But the unlikely had happened. In one moment, encircled by the chaotic wails of a crying baby, distraught neighbours, and terrified tourists outside in the streets of Bowral, the security that Marcus had so carefully orchestrated was gone.

The phone hung up again.

“CALL ALLY!” he screamed one more time, his vocal folds abrading without any feeling reaching Marcus’s awareness. His ears felt muffled, and in his mounting hysteria he lost all sense of hearing – except for the sound of the phone continuing to ring, unanswered.

The helicopter swung forward over the city and the camera panned down into an aerial view. Yes... keep going, damn it! The chopper began to glide in the direction of World Square, where Marcus knew Ally was staying.

The phone rang out again. Marcus’s breathing gained tempo.

He saw the World Square block.

“The buildings… they’re…”

Gone.

The ground below them was a smoking pile of glass and molten steel, gigantic shards scattered in all directions, blocking every encircling street.

“CALL ALLY, FUCKING CALL ALLY!” he shouted again to the walls. As the phone began to ring again, his ears slowly became able to perceive the other sounds in the room. Olivia was still screaming into his chest, and there was a voice. It was John calling out to him, sounding desperate for a response. The three sounds danced around each other for a moment, in a strange rhythmical coalescence.

…

“Marcus!”

“Waaaaaaaaaaa!”

…

“MARCUS!”

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

…

“MARCUS! Are you in there?!”

“Waaaaaa!”

Then, no ring. No hang up tone. Silence.

Olivia stopped crying. Even John next door stopped calling out. It was as if an horrific death march had reached its climax.

The television turned to static; white noise. This makes no sense. Marcus hadn’t seen white noise since his childhood. If the signal was cut, it should simply be blank. He looked closer. The tiny white particles that danced across the screen came into focus. Code! The tiny characters and pixels of colour scrolled along the screen, perpetually re-organising themselves. Marcus’s mouth fell wide open.

He knew this code.

“Eve!”

From the whir of unreadable script, a shape emerged. It was a three-dimensional model of his own face, bursting in psychedelic colour as millions of Cyrillic, Kanji, Katakana, Latin and numeric symbols zoomed across his features, rippling as they glided along the contours of his virtualised likeness.

Marcus fell to his knees, his body limp, his mind disbelieving. In the dull silence inside his throbbing head, he managed to find a grain of will to utter two words, softly.

“Call Ally...”

Nothing happened. He raised his voice as much as could.

“Call... Al-ly...” He began to choke back tears.

The phone did not ring.