Alternative Apocalypse Read online

It’s always about choices, and it had been a long time since Diego’s fate had been his own.

  I saw him go to one knee, head down on the stock of his carbine. The muzzle of his weapon flashed in controlled staccato bursts.

  The archangel began to burn with terrible fire. Energy swirled like vast wings. Zaphrael swept the great dark horn across the pass and the world split asunder with the fearsome sound of it. The very air tore itself apart and the walls came down as stone shattered and the ground shook.

  Then giants bounded from the fog into the rock field.

  And men began to scream.

  Diego was firing at point blank range, or near enough, and for a moment it appeared he might take down the archangel. It was possible, Korpinski and I had done it near this very same spot. For all the good it had done either one of us.

  Diego wasn’t as lucky, or as fast, or as good as we had once been.

  I watched as the horn swept over him and he fell, crumpling into a broken heap on the side of the road. Zaphrael stepped over his body, glanced at me for a moment with black bottomless eyes, without recognition, without pity, without humanity, and then followed the giants into the fog.

  The sound of battle retreated downslope.

  The mule retracted its mast, armor plates snapped up like porcupine quills. It snatched at my arm with an actuator and tried to drag me towards cover. “This way!”

  I know things. I don’t know how I know, or why, I just do. I knew what had to be done.

  “No.” I pulled free of the machine and began walking upslope. “That’s not how this ends. Come on.”

  He was still breathing when I reached him.

  I took his head in my hands and the power flowed through my fingers. The pain came in waves of light and heat. It went on for a long, long time. I could feel the broken bones straighten, and the sound of flesh moving. The smell of raw lamb and charred meat faded.

  I felt him change.

  Then weakness washed over me in waves, the sounds of battle were lost in the buzzing roar and my vision dissolved into blackness and swirling sparks and the world went far away.

  For a while, blessedly, I knew nothing.

  ***

  “Wake up.” I felt the mule’s actuator shaking me insistently. “Wake up.”

  The world came back into focus too far above the ground. After a moment, I realized I was strapped into the mule’s stokes frame.

  My arm hurt.

  “I gave you an injection,” the mule said. “Emergency stimulant and glucose. Your vitals were dangerously low. You should eat something.”

  I undid the straps and sat up on the mule’s back. Gray wet rock rose on three sides. A semi-circle of darkness loomed ahead.

  The mule had brought me over the pass while I was unconscious. Ahead, the box canyon and the mine.

  “He’s in there,” the mule said, helping me down from the litter. “He was determined to go. He’s not the same.”

  “I tried to tell him. He wouldn’t listen.”

  “Tell him what?” the mule asked.

  “He made his choices before he ever left Texas,” I explained. “He’s a fool, but he comes by it honestly. I wouldn’t have listened either. Here, help me walk.”

  A thousand meters down into the living granite, the tunnel widened into an enormous circular cavern.

  We found him there. As I knew we would.

  It was already too late. It had been too late for a long time.

  Diego stood changed beneath the terrible light.

  Cherubim stood like burning statues to one side, but it was the thing in the middle of the space that commanded our attention.

  “I can see it,” the machine said in wonder, awed. At long last it might have found the answers it was seeking. “What...is it? What is it?”

  “It’s you,” Diego answered without turning. If he was surprised at the machine’s curious self-awareness, he gave no sign. And showed no malice. “It’s you in a million years.”

  It was a Throne.

  Ancient text described them as great wheels with wheels covered in eyes, warriors, scholars, the Valiant One, the Seat and the Chariot of God.

  And so, it was all of those things. And more.

  It floated in the center of the huge space and filled the darkness with cascades of blinding light. Energy radiated outward in waves of furious heat that burned without consuming. Thunder crashed in a waterfall of sound without deafening and the still ground trembled with a power so vast it was beyond imagination.

  And in the center of that dreadful maelstrom, Genesis.

  The great beryl wheels of galaxies turned within galaxies, alive in the infinite heavens, their rims jeweled with a hundred billion suns like eyes. Fantastic star fields blazed with the glow of spilled milk beneath the crystalline vault, pulsing within a churning froth of dark matter and wild violet energy, shaped and twisted by gravity and time and vast unknowable forces. The universe, a thousand million universes, folded through each other, dimensions opened and closed like roses in boundless complexity beautiful and terrifying and a million years beyond human comprehension.

  “It’s a Gateway, I think. A door to Heaven. It’s how they travel,” I told the mule, nodding towards the Cherubim. “We’re seeing only a single aspect of it, out of untold trillions. Can you feel it? It’s a link to something far greater, something up there, raw intelligence, information, purpose and if that’s not God, it might just as well be.”

  To look upon the Throne was to look upon the vast face of Creation itself across the endless width and unknowable depths of time. The Gods of human religion were small and petty in comparison, constructs of sticks and wire with glass buttons for eyes.

  We stared into a place beyond understanding and our minds, man and machine, were altered in ways that could not be undone.

  Diego dropped his carbine, forgotten. His pistol followed. He touched a control and his armor fell away to clatter on the stone. After a while, he turned to face me with two eyes clear and brown and terrible in their humanity.

  There are indeed fates worse than mere death.

  He had made his choice. And he would have to live with the consequences and, one day in the not too distant future, he would die with them.

  And after that? I don’t know.

  He nodded to the Cherubim, a single human gesture of understanding. Shapes perhaps vaguely man-like and perhaps not turned within the light, something that might have been a head with a thousand shifting faces looked dispassionately back from the fire.

  Diego placed a hand on my shoulder and left it there for a long moment, power flowed from his fingers.

  Then he went to find his men.

  ***

  I know things.

  And I wish that I did not.

  I watched him walk away for the last time, down the trail away from the cabin. Six former soldiers, all that had survived, followed. He would find the rest of his companions on the long road back to Texas.

  He said he had come to finish my mission, but it was never mine. Our destinies had not been our own for a very, very long time and this path had always been his to walk. His choice.

  “We named him Diego,” I said. “It once meant teacher.”

  I turned to go inside and prepare for the long trip home. I too would have a role to play one day. At the end.

  The mule placed an actuator on my arm. I stopped and waited. After a while the machine said, “I think I now understand what you meant about faith without religion.”

  “I’m glad you found your answers.”

  “You’re his mother,” the mule told me, before it too turned to follow. “Be proud. He will be the greatest of all teachers. He will change the world.”

  “I know,” I agreed sadly. “And they will crucify him for it.”

  Thirteen Things to Do Before the Apocalypse

  Jane Yolen

  Find a windowless room.

  Put a vegetarian cookbook in your backpack.

  Throw away your
journal.

  Study hypnotism.

  Take up knitting.

  Learn Chinese.

  Buy extra guitar strings, eyeglasses, rope.

  Find a complete Shakespeare.

  Stock up on batteries.

  Make cases of jam.

  Gather in your children.

  This time really love your neighbor.

  Don’t invest in futures.

  After that, it’s all downhill.

  The World of Bob

  Rupert McTaggart Brackenbury

  As dawn peeled back across the globe, one by one, Bob woke up.

  As he woke, Bob realised something was profoundly wrong. The bed was too soft, the room too quiet. He was uncomfortably warm under a hill of blankets and threw them off as he leapt out of the bed. With rising panic, he understood that this wasn’t his bed or his room and, more frightening still, he wasn’t alone.

  Another man was there, an imposing silhouette in the darkness.

  Bob fumbled around the bedside table until he found a switch.

  In the rosy bedside light, he could now see the other man was his exact double. This doppelganger was dressed in silk pyjamas too tight and too short. They looked like they belonged to an older woman. All but one of the buttons had popped. The doppelganger looked comical.

  “I woke up,” said Bob hesitantly. “I was here, it was too hot, I thought I should…..”

  “…Open the window?” Finished his doppelganger.

  “You’re me?”

  “I think it’s more like, we’re us.”

  Bob regarded what he was wearing; loose faux-satin boxers and a baggy t-shirt. He went to the nearest set of drawers, pulled out similar clothes, without questioning how he’d known where to find them, and handed them to his doppelganger. Doppelganger-Bob tried to find somewhere to change. Then, realising there was no modesty to be had, merely stripped off his too-small clothes, the last button on the silk pyjamas giving way as he did.

  Bob cast around the room. It was luxurious, but with an oddly impersonal decor, as though none of it was designed to last. He looked at the photos on the nightstands, on the dressers, on the walls. He knew these people, not personally, just from the news.

  “This is the Prime Minister’s bedroom. I’m the Prime Minister.”

  “Yeah. Well, you were. Until just now.”

  “You’re…you were…my wife.”

  “Yeah. I guess,” Doppelganger-Bob replied, looking down at his new outfit.

  The door opened cautiously and a familiar voice enquired awkwardly: “Um...Prime Minister? Sir? Can I come in?”

  A third Bob, dressed in a too small suit, with a conspicuous earpiece dangling from his collar, entered the room.

  The strangest thing was that none of them felt the least bit surprised.

  ***

  Every human on Earth was now Bob in mind and body. Whatever had caused the transformation took great care to cushion Bob’s landing into his new lives. For some it was a hypnagogic jerk; a sudden sense of falling propelled Bob from sleep only to find himself in a stranger’s place.

  For other Bobs, it was like staring at a cupboard and realising he’d forgotten what he was looking for. He woke from an unconscious task to find he was driving to a home he’d never seen, or standing in an office he’d never worked in, suddenly aware of ill-fitting clothes or an uncomfortable chair.

  The system wasn’t perfect. Adjustment took a few seconds and for thousands of Bobs worldwide, those seconds proved deadly. For others, the sudden change in physical size or weight was dangerous, but most found the transition troublingly smooth.

  Nearly eight billion Bobs, each an exact physical copy of the original, yet each Bob retaining the memories of the life he now occupied. The information was technical and dry, without fondness or regret, but whether he found himself performing surgery, flying a plane or parachuting out of one, every Bob knew what to do.

  At least for now.

  ***

  There’d been a terrifying noise a moment before, now it was gone, leaving a singing in Bob’s ears and an echo of fear in his chest.

  Bob got to his feet and looked around the gutted building he was standing in. He was short of breath, his heart beat fast, everything smelled of dust and smoke. He was wearing fatigues, a uniform he didn’t recognise, his pack weighed heavily on his shoulders. Then in a wave he understood and was calm.

  There’d been a tank. He looked for it and saw another version of himself stuck, one arm in and one arm out, of a hatch on the Tank’s roof. The other Bob looked embarrassed as he tried to un-wedge himself. As Bob watched, he felt embarrassed too. He should have stuck to his diet better, done more exercise. But then who could have expected this?

  Bob ran to help, clambering up the vehicle’s side. Tank-Bob froze, not sure if he was in danger. Bob realized he still carried his rifle. He threw it to the ground—momentarily panicked it would discharge—and instantly relieved when it didn’t.

  “It’s OK,” Soldier-Bob said. “It’s me. You. Whatever, I just want to help. Are you alone?”

  From the muffled hatch, he heard another two Bobs inside. He put his arms around his double and pulled as the others pushed until Tank-Bob fell gracelessly out of the hatch. More Bobs arrived and together they helped free Tank-Bob’s comrades.

  Afterwards a dozen Bobs all stood by the tank, their number divided almost evenly into two uniforms.

  “You were going to kill us,” Soldier-Bob said rhetorically.

  Tank-Bob looked ashamed. “Yeah but because you…”

  Tank-Bob stopped. It was pointless. They all knew it was pointless. Not only was an argument going to be like playing chess against himself, it was to assign guilt for something he couldn’t be responsible for.

  “I think I’d like some breakfast,” Tank-Bob said instead.

  Soldier-Bob smiled. “Something light, you’re going to need to squeeze back in that thing, it’s blocking the road!”

  ***

  The first thing every Bob wanted to know, once he’d got his bearings, was what had happened? Where was the original Bob? Bob Prime. He’d been quite content, hadn’t he? Fairly anonymous, pretty average, maybe a little lonely, but he’d had a comfortable life.

  “Maybe Bob, the real Bob, should be our king or something?” the Bobs asked themselves. They liked that idea. Bob wasn’t keen on making decisions for other people, but now Bob would be making decisions for himself.

  In a day or two, the whole world knew Bob Prime was dead.

  The Doctor-Bobs were flummoxed. “We’re an overweight 34-year-old male who doesn’t get enough exercise, but that’s not the cause of death. Maybe the process of copying him was fatal? Maybe you just can’t make Bob more Bob?” one physician said to the Journalist-Bobs.

  All the Bobs wanted to go to their own funeral but obviously, it wasn’t practical. They put it on TV instead. The service was extremely short. Bob hadn’t been religious, and no one wanted to eulogise themselves. There was talk about giving him a huge memorial or monument but that seemed vain. In the end, a large black gravestone was used, impressive but simple. All the Bobs felt good about that.

  None of this resolved the question of what had happened. Scientist-Bobs and Philosopher-Bobs offered half-hearted suggestions. They even dragged the former Pope-Bob out of retirement on the slim chance he’d have some insight, but his guesses were even more unsatisfying.

  No Bob could avoid the obvious: whatever had happened was plainly impossible and explaining it would require reassessing fundamental principles of what is and isn’t reality.

  Ultimately, all any Bob could do was get on with living.

  ***

  Bob was surprised how much he enjoyed his new job.

  He’d never thought of himself as tough or particularly macho but labouring seemed to be both those things. Prime Minister Bob had declared that for the time being every Bob would do the work of their former lives until they heard otherwise, but Bob had been unemployed and h
omeless so he was assigned a job and allowed to live in a motel.

  Bob was happy; he’d been intensely anxious about the future. From what he could remember, the person he’d been before had felt the same way for much of their life.

  “You’re basically me,” the motel owner had said. “I suppose we’re closer than brothers.”

  Homeless-Bob had been so overwhelmed he threw his arms around Motel-Bob. Motel-Bob stiffened up, still unused to a world where everyone’s intentions were transparent, but, realising it was innocent, he relaxed into it.

  No-Longer-Homeless-Bob moved in next door to a pair of Bobs who had been a couple on holiday. They’d decided there was no point returning “home” to lives they had no feelings for and stayed on, though they moved into separate beds.

  The supermarkets and shops had been generous as well. The Bobs who worked there gave him food and clothes for free. He wondered if this outpouring of generosity was just disguised self-interest, but Bob had never been political. He was just relieved, happy, happier than Bob Prime had ever been. He hugged the shopkeepers too. He hugged everyone he could. He became known as “huggy-Bob”, and eventually just “Hug”.

  Word got around. “Hugs shouldn’t die because of some fear of vulnerability or ingrained homophobia,” he told the TV-Bob. “I don’t know how this will play out, but,” he stared down the camera,“ be kind to yourself, Bob. You’re going through a weird time. You need a hug!”

  Hug had started something important.

  ***

  Almost instantly, the world’s economy started changing. Bob didn’t need tampons or bras or contact lenses or allergy medication. He didn’t want dolls or gold watches or fighter jets. There were billions of mass-produced items the world no longer needed or wanted, and so factories and businesses began to transform as well.