Only one spoke, but the nuances shocked her, it was one voice speaking for literally billions, all seemingly p.i.s.sed off with her. She was suddenly glad of the ship around her knowing that this would be affecting it in the same way.

"Don't do this Novie, you know it's wrong... these people are ill, they need our help..." Using her real world eyes and links she saw the small group of refugees on the far side of the dock. It was too late for those who had not reached the ship, but she would be d.a.m.ned if she would give up on those inside she counted nearly a hundred it would make the jump interesting if nothing else.

"And what makes it wrong?" She brought the gun up, waving it in the real world hoping it would distract the attention of the bodies that were being used. It did. Regardless of the location of the actual brains, the bodies were not keen on getting shot. Interesting, if she could make use of it.

The leader stepped forward.

"They mutilate themselves! Then run away to grub like savages in the dirt, and you want to help them? We can see inside you, you agree with us. We can help them..." He smiled, another heftier attack came, the interface faded down to almost alphanumerics and then came back again.

~ouch [dry humour, overlayed with concern, big concern] I can't fend off many more like that, they'll sequestrate me too, unless we take them off line. If you have a plan... now would be a good time to implement it "See," the leader said. "You can't fight us join..." he held out a virtual hand floating before it was a processing matrix a little something to help convince her, she was sure.

"Sorry."

In an instant she dumped an idea to the ship, who started talking quietly to her father.

"We won't let you leave you know - the mind must protect itself..."

She walked down into the docking bay, the gun swinging up under its own power and firing - four of the bodies exploded under the attack. A roar came up from the Consensus and then snapped off she was alone again, the ship had cut off their links. Normally this would wipe out a person inducing severe shock, but for her it was no different to a jump. She looked at the refugees.

"Run! Onto the ship!" They moved quickly whilst the Consensus group were trying to come to a decision. She was almost back onboard when they acted, moving forward as a ma.s.s her gun fired again, as did her fathers but the bodies kept coming, jerking along under external control.

~we're out of here She virtually fell backwards over the edge of the docking lip as the whole structure shuddered. Hands lunged for her, taking hold and for a moment she was caught between the grasp of the refugees in the hold and the zombie like hands beyond. Then the doors closed and the ship wrenched itself away from the dock.

Novie discarded the gun, running for the bridge.

Her grandfather was on the bridge, but vacated the seat as she approached. She dropped into the chair, slipping her hands into the control gloves and closing her eyes.

~You alright?

~been better [damage diagramatic of hull] picked up a few knocks, they didn't want us to go...

~I noticed... Show me those ships...

~[navigation diagrams, overlaid converging vectors] they're not close but some of them are trying...

~Keep plotting an FTL track for Haven and keep us moving...

~about that FTL... [jump status probability of success 82%]

~Fine... anymore good news?

~none that I can think of...

The ship went back to its own business and Novie slipped herself back to the bridge. She turned the seat, looking at her family. Her grandfather was perched on one of the flat ledges running around the chamber. His, and the eyes of the rest of her family were on a display showing the Earthring. The structure was collapsing inwards, the diamond losing its sheen and turning dull. They swept across the terminator showing the night of Earth. Normally the entire planet would be long daisy chains of light, the cities glowing, road and skyways brilliant strings. Instead of all that, the light of a million fires burnt on the surface.

"It's starting," Novie's grandfather remarked.

The Earthring gave a shudder, then tilted by an impossible degree. Below it a ribbon of fire was racing through the night, one of the orbital towers had been released and was falling, burning, into the ocean.

Novie turned her face away from them and the screen, not wanting them to see tears in her eyes.

"There's a signal coming in a ship's appeared from L5 under ma.s.sive acceleration..." Novie accessed the vector diagram.

Vance.

His ship was a courier, designed for speed and agility in comparison to her severely overloaded freighter.

Her cargo was fragile too - the ship's crewed compartments, such as they were, could be shielded from the effects of inertia and acceleration but not so the rest of the ship. Any serious manoeuvring would kill the refugees.

She slipped into the control seat and opened a channel to his ship.

Vance was alone. The ship slipped their minds into synch, allowing her to seem to appear on his bridge. He smiled and stood in greeting, a display on one wall of the cramped compartment showing the distance until her ship was in range of his weapons. He looked perfectly normal, as if nothing was happening. Only if you looked closely and thought about it, was it apparent that there was the tiniest of delays before he acted or spoke, as if his body was being manipulated from afar.

Novie recognised body swapping, she had even indulged herself once or twice, but there was something chilling about this. Something she could not put her finger on, but it was somehow wrong.

"Novie, why are you running?" he asked.

"I'm not running, I'm taking my family to Haven they asked me, I take them. It's my job, remember, I pilot a freighter."

"Piloted," he remarked. "We don't need ships where we're going."

"And just where is that?" she asked, trying to think of a way out. His ship out-gunned hers and always had. Vance looked distant for an even longer period than usual, then looked straight at her.

"Let me show you," and he took her hand...

Instinctively she flinched backwards, but it was too late, she felt a whole series of instructions zinging straight through the protective barriers her ship had erected, peeling her mind open.

It was...

Novie could always remember the difference between the Consensus and normal time like a deep mission a long way out from Consensus s.p.a.ce at the wrong end of a low bandwidth link joining this was a similar feeling. It was as if everything she had previously experienced had been just a shadow of what this existence actually was.

Her normal senses were next to useless, the usual reference of your body or avatar irrelevant, just the shear bulk of knowledge and people and the recognition that everything that went before was a trial run. Everything was converging, a part of her sensing the routines being woven which would once and for all remove the corporeal needs of the ma.s.ses, fusing everyone together into...

Her mind could not grasp the concepts even now, but she knew that as time progressed she was becoming more intelligent, her mind amplified by those around her.

That was, after all, the point of the singularity. Even at this stage of her involvement, trying to comprehend it would be like explaining a starship to a goldfish. She stopped then; there was a last nagging doubt. Vance was with her, his consciousness drawing her further in. But she sensed something wrong.

Something holding her back.

~give it up Novie, let go we can download you now... we have you... it's safe...

She looked at him, or rather his representation and tried to make sense of the people around her this was wrong. Her duty was to her ship and the pa.s.sengers she carried. Without her enhancements it was improbable her family and the ship alone could make the journey.

She started to pull back, perceiving the cabins of both her ship, Vance's, the s.p.a.ce around them and, of course, the information s.p.a.ce of the Unified Consensus. Images impinged on her as she moved backwards: Vance looking saddened but oddly disinterested - his body collapsing like a discarded wrapper onto the deck of his bridge - then dissolving under the attack of a host of atom-sized nan.o.bots, feeding on him and transmitting the information into the consensus. Her family crowded around her on the ship, watching - the incredible light suffusing the whole of Consensus grid, getting brighter seemingly every instant.

It was happening.

Right now, this instant.

The light kept increasing in brightness, only she knew it was not light, it was just the way her mind was handling the information.

Then nothing.

The whole grid of the Consensus was empty, black and cold as the depths of s.p.a.ce. Shut down forever.

Novie teetered on the brink, feeling like she had stepped into the lift shaft only to find the lift missing. In a blink, she could tumble forward and lose herself forever in the infinite darkness.

The voices in her head were all silent now. Everybody else had left, and she, like the Neanderthals in the cargo bays, had been left behind...

She felt herself start to fall and with a shudder allowed it, her avatar tumbling silently into the deep information s.p.a.ce, sobs tearing her body. The dreadful sense of loss too much to bear.

An indefinable amount of time later, Novie sat on a beach under a warm orange sun watching the surf break around the legs of her shuttle. The air was crisp with the tang of ozone, and bird-a.n.a.logues wheeled in the skies above her head.

Haven.

The name said it all really. The planet was a huge distance away from virtually everywhere, a lone main sequence star orbiting at the very edge of the galactic arm the night sky burning with the ribbon of the Milky Way. A low axial tilt gave it little in the way of seasons and the single huge continent was tectonically stable.

It was a paradise.

They had only just made it. By the time Novie had returned to them, waking in the ship's sick bay surrounded by anxious family members, the ship was out beyond Mars. They had limped onwards to Haven, arriving, life support barely functioning, Novie herself only keeping her head clear with a filter mask permanently attached to her face.

What other refugee ships there had been had arrived weeks ahead of them, but in an effort not to tax the ship they had proceeded in small stages, crawling a few dozen light years at a time, it had taken longer but at least they made it.

It was only now. Now, that all the pa.s.sengers were unloaded and being found homes on Haven that she had to decide her future. As far as she knew she was the only person left alive in the conventional sense, to have refused G.o.dhood. She had made her peace with her family, and left with the intention of... well, even now, with the shuttle before her she was unsure. It was too late to join the others, that much she knew, it was also hard to think about leaving this island of humanity.

The sand behind her shifted and she sensed a presence. She didn't have to look around, instead choosing to take a look through the camera on the nose of the shuttle. Ken Terrel was a man of medium height, grey hair, his skin tanned almost to the colour of hers. For several years he had been the defacto leader of Haven. A post, she soon discovered, he only filled with reluctance.

"I came to find out what your plans were," he said, dropping to the sand next to her. Her fingers grubbed around, found a pebble and tossed it into the water. It vanished into a white-topped breaker.

"I haven't decided yet."

Terrel nodded, and found a stone himself, pitching it towards the waves.

"There's room for you here, I wanted to emphasise that." Novie stopped, turning to look at him.

"But is there anything for me here?"

He flinched from her gaze and looked away. She would have to be careful of that; people found her penetrating stare hard to cope with now. Her father had remarked that even her eyes seemed strange.

She averted them, instantly feeling sorry.

"I must be honest and say probably not. You came back from the edge of the singularity in terms of consciousness I doubt if you could share your experience nor really relate to us," he stopped, then smiled, "that's being brutally honest of course."

Novie laughed.

"I have another suggestion though," he looked at her face again, this time ready for it, he met her stare.

"Which is?"

"Find out if we are alone." He glanced up at the sky. "Somewhere out there, there are others who didn't join in. Maybe even some like yourself."

"It's unlikely," she said quickly.

"True, but it's a chance. Alternatively it's a life here." He looked across at her shuttle and then upwards, meaningfully. "But, I would have to insist on the destruction of the ship we can't go back out there, we must come to terms with life here..."

Novie had known this and for a moment considered his words carefully, blending it with her own needs. Then she got to her feet, flexing her toes, feeling the sand scrunching through them, the air on her face, and above all her need to fly again.

"I'll call," she told him, throwing her shoes over her shoulder and brushing sand from her bare legs.

"Good luck," he said simply.

She half turned, opened her mouth to say something but instead just nodded, then tramped out into the water and her waiting shuttle.

[Originally published in Kimota 11, Autumn 1999].

ALWAYS THE PAST.

by Paul Edwards.

I resigned from my post as a recruitment officer in an employment agency, bored and disillusioned with the fast and useless pace of office life.

Instead, I spent time writing down by the brook or the park or the churchyard. Locksley's a small but thriving town on the periphery of the city. The council are planning major renovations to boost commerce in the area. They want to drain the brook and bulldoze some woodland to make way for houses and construction sites. I devoted afternoons picketing with concerned members of the community, staging a peaceful demonstration near East Knell. But the businessmen and property developers will have the renovators in before the year is out. The centre of the city is a depressing place at the best of times. The roads are dirty and over-used. There are rows of derelict houses and slatted windows, vandalised churches and ugly car parks encircled with razor-wire. It's sad to think Locksley will probably go the same way in five, ten years time.

My dole helps pay the rent on my apartment. I live above a dusty antique shop. The old man who owns it is friendly and quiet but is having extensive treatment for bone cancer, so he is in and out of hospital. I don't know what will happen to me once he dies. The back window overlooks the rear of Locksley Church and the cemetery. It is quite eerie at night to look out of the window and see gravestones projecting out of the darkness.

It was in the churchyard that I saw Kieran for the first time. He was wading through the wild nettles and creepers, a camera hanging from a cord around his neck. I pressed close to the window. The long, fine hairline crack in the gla.s.s distorted his body as he wove between the slate tombstones jutting at angles from the earth. He seemed to be captivated by a memorial sculpture of an angel, which stood beneath the twisted limbs of some long dead willow trees. He'd touch her face, tracing his fingers across the smooth, cold marble. The angel stared at the ground with infinitely sad eyes. From the window she appeared to gleam faintly behind the tangle of wild growth and rotting clapboard fencing.

Kieran fascinated me for days. During early evening, just as the sun began to melt behind the sullen church, I'd watch him from the window. Without fail he'd be there, standing in the foliage, encircled by pale memorials and tombstones.

Then one evening he caught me watching him.

My heart skipped a beat. I froze. He stared long and hard at me, then shrugged his shoulders and kicked his way through the creepers. I watched him disappear behind the church. I breathed easy again and shrunk into the long shadows of the room.

That night I dreamed I was at a party in somebody's flat. I thought I recognised the flat at the time, but when I woke I knew I'd never been there before. Loud hip-hop crackled and spat from invisible speakers. I could hear couples laughing as they danced and groped in the living room and in the kitchen. When I looked up all I could see were their knotted and tangled shadows flickering over the walls. I walked to the kitchen to search for alcohol but somebody was standing in the doorway, blocking the way. He was short and strange-looking with pointed ears and the blackest eyes. I wondered whether those eyes reflected everything, or absolutely nothing at all. He was wearing thick red lipstick and mascara. He grinned at me.

"I know you," he said.

"I don't think so," I replied. I tried to squeeze past him but his pale hand was on my shoulder.

"Yes, yes I do. We've met before."

"No." My head was swimming with music and empty, dark shapes. I threw off his hand and slipped past him into the kitchen.