The Year of the Fruit Cake Read online

  Four hours later, there was chaos.

  From this point, I’ve reconstructed. Records were improperly kept in the machine room. It is ironic that we have less information about events in the machine room than about events around random café tables in the middle of nowhere. It was assumed that it was a place for the mind-dead to rest before walking under the arc and being restored.

  I must note that this was not an error made by the technicians. It was standard procedure. It is also ironic that in one of the rare circumstances in the making of the fruitcake that standard procedure was followed, it caused problems.

  On with the reconstruction. I’ll start with what was expected to happen. This will help evaluate.

  Diana walked through the arc and into the machine room. In theory, she stood and waited for her memory to return; then she walked through to the waiting room, where she was reminded that there would be one last Download, to complete the records. She made her final decision.

  In a typical theoretical case, Judgement would be followed by a period of adjustment so that her consciousness could be transferred to her body and then she herself returned home. In a typical real case, at this point the power would go off and the doors open: the Judge would discover they were stranded.

  Diana walked through the arc and into the machine room.

  She cannot have stood there long, for she was in the room for the standard two hours. During that time, she inputted a considerable amount of code into the system. We only have the last seventy segments of the equation, and ashes were found but no paper. There was, however, a half-used cigarette lighter. It appears she burned the material she inputted. This fits entirely with her secrecy. She was untrusting.

  Untrusting is too mild a word. Most of the code proved to be unreconstructable, even with the last segment surviving on paper. It had branches. Choices. We surmise that, instead of triggering a normal Judgement, she set our system up to trigger various options. She didn’t need to make the choice until she was asked to make Judgement, using this method. It ensured that her tampering went unseen until too late.

  We can surmise from this that there were only two choices available. If one of them were (as seems likely) the acceptance of the standard situation, then the rest of the code would have been dedicated to…well, we shall see.

  At this stage her tampering was in no way illegal or even unethical: all the usual outcomes were available. She had merely inserted new strings of passive material. People do this all the time. Even if we had noticed the code, it would be no more than an oddity. The fact that it came from her should have been a warning, but machine rooms have not been monitored for a millennium.

  When she walked through the next door, things changed. For this, we’re no longer reconstructing. We have the full picture. It’s disturbing.

  First, the techs demanded of her something they had no right to do: they personally asked her (by voice) for an emotional component to the final Download, a personal view.

  “It will properly capture your last views of this planet,” they explained. “Just for the record.”

  The Judge’s last views are private. They always have been. This is to leave them a modicum of dignity for when they return home. It’s the very small price we pay for stripping so much from them and entasking them with such a decision. If they decide on destruction of a race, they’re entitled to their privacy.

  Diana asked about it, was told it was proper and she gave it due thought, and she agreed. Given her body language, this was when she finally decided the path she would take. The question told her that she was doomed.

  She knew that, even if her Judgement was to destroy the human race, she would never go home.

  As far as we can ascertain, this is where one of the two final points were entered into the system. She used the determination of the group that wanted to bring her down and humiliate her. No-one has ever accused her of being stupid, except that group. There is a poetic justice to her using this illegal request to enter that second last ingredient to produce the fruitcake.

  How did she do it?

  Diana had paid a great deal of attention to the talk of the techs. Also, the machine room was not the only place that had manual functions for backup. In fact, the Download area needed this even more, for it was linked to a different part of the system. Diana had obviously noted that, although it was seldom used, in the Download room, as part of this backup there was the capacity for additional manual entry of data and even programming. We know Diana used it intentionally because she asked about it once.

  “It’s functional,” she was told, “but takes higher maths. Not made for anthropologists.” This was when they thought she thought she was still one, obviously.

  Diana never referred back to that conversation. But she did study, during upload, the mechanism. Her body language demonstrates this very clearly. Her lack of spoken words, part of her personality, led everyone astray. None of the groups plotting against her noticed what she was doing.

  One has to admire her. Even though she created fruitcake. Even though a civilisation is now in ruins.

  This machine was a potential problem. Her memory was never reliable. Would she remember how to use it?

  She looked at it, carefully, that day. Her fingers rehearsed patterns. She remembered.

  Her smile was wry. She could still go home, but she was one step removed from it, now. And there was the question of whether she would be murdered. For every morsel of hope Earth gained, there was a morsel that she lost, personally.

  It took Diana a while to input her remaining data. Now she was being watched, there was a very good chance that her actions would be spotted. The record shows this caution and her concern so very clearly.

  First she asked that processes be verbal. She then looked around and she monitored the relays and she used the quiet moments to ask distracting questions. Mostly, however, she talked. Her download was the most loquacious on record. While she talked, she typed from memory.

  How she did this is still a mystery. Even though we know how much of her memory had returned, it’s still an extraordinary feat. I think we forget who she was before she was shanghaied into Judgment.

  All the way through download, she keyed in her equations by hand, while the rest of her brain handled the material we wanted and distracted the observers. I’ve never seen such a tour de force.

  Her actions, they…

  Let me show you. This is terrifying.

  Normally, when one connects to Download, the lizards—sorry, the technicians—take care of the whole interface. The subject has no control. Diana assumed partial control with her use of the mechanical interface, but no-one monitored that element.

  Someone sent an energy spike into her brain. If she had been fully connected, she would be dead. Her brain would have been wiped. No Diana left to bring back to her waiting body. It would have looked like a mechanical error, and Earth would have been obliterated in her memory.

  But she hadn’t set up the direct connection, for she was using the manual override and verbal reporting. Whoever set that spike wasn’t involved in the final report, for otherwise they would have known she wasn’t fully linked. From off-planet, the input looked the same. From her end the Download stopped. She reset it, and…that was all.

  Diana took a deep breath. They were willing to bring her back braindead and kill Earth. That’s what this was all about.

  She reconnected.

  “Your power is unstable,” she informed the lizards, coolly. “I’ll do the rest entirely manually.”

  “Oh, I thought something was wrong,” the voice came. “That’s fine. Take your time.”

  A second spike was obviously in the works. One that fried everything. It didn’t matter to them if they destroyed a piece of equipment. She typed her heart out, entering equation after equation as if her world were ending.

  Diana
finished and sent it. She set the machine to enter random figures, so that it looked as if she were still working. She stood back.

  Diana watched the mechanism fry.

  Her people couldn’t retrieve her now, even if they’d wanted. They couldn’t retrieve anyone. And she had escaped this attempt at murder.

  She’d sent her Judgement through, despite them. It was not just her Judgement of Earth. The entries she had made, the time she had bought: she’d used them to change the rules. She had Judged the Colonial Service.

  One more thing she had to do. By making Judgement, she would give the seal of authority to the rest. Her actions would be accepted within the system.

  Diana laughed. It was a bitter laugh. It was a tragic laugh. But it was triumphant.

  She made her Judgement. Earth should live, it said. Since only the two courses were possible, she couldn’t put in restrictions or changes of any sort. It was Earth or it was return home. She chose Earth.

  Diana walked out through the final door, her head held high. From now on, she was human. Forever.

  Diana hadn’t actually saved the world. She’d given it a chance. Only a chance. Before that desperate moment in the machine room and then the second moment in the Download room, it lacked even that. So had she.

  At the heart of her virus was one final trigger point. It was invisible to us. At this point, all we knew was that the instruments were fried and that Earth should survive until the mess could be sorted. It wasn’t a priority. Diana was banking on it not being a priority. We had fruitcake, but the fate of Earth was not yet clear.

  If Diana could survive past her ninety-ninth year, even one minute into her hundredth, then the system would collapse. The whole system. Not just Earth. The whole planetary governance system, starting from the Anthropological Corps and the Judgement Body and working outwards would implode. This was her Judgement.

  The virus was set up to look as if it would eat through the anthropological survey mechanics and …almost everything. No-one would get home. No-one would touch Earth again, for Earth would become a plague planet. Anything that destroyed the beautiful symmetry of mathematics did that, and the destruction of symmetry, wholescale, was precisely what she’d fed into the system during the download.

  She didn’t have much leeway if she wanted it to go unnoticed, so she linked it to her perfectly- crafted human narrative. First it would spread throughout her home system and all its allies. Then it would go dormant.

  It would be triggered by her death.

  Diana’s full Judgement was not inevitable. Diana had to outlive the standard package for the second part of her equations to take effect.

  There was one obstacle remaining. It was not a small obstacle.

  The lizards had primed her body to fall apart.

  Diana’s task now was to hold things together long enough. Just long enough. One day. One hour. One minute longer than she was programmed to live in a perfect world where her body had been programmed for perfect health. One second longer would save the world. She had programmed that second into her life to be that final trigger. All she had to do was reach it.

  It was a nothing. A doddle. A breeze.

  Diana went home to the memory of her husband, and, the next day, bought a huge box of chocolates for her friends.

  “What’s this for?” asked Antoinette.

  “Nothing concrete. Just the chance that things will change.”

  The woman’s slow voice...

  was counting again

  One, two, three, four, five.

  I start school today. I’m not allowed to wear my yellow hat. I need to wear my yellow hat. It’s sunny. I have to go to school. I need my yellow hat.

  The woman’s slow voice was counting again.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

  The bus has steps that go down. I walk down and down and jump onto the ground. Where are the steps that go up? Why can’t I remember? Why can’t I remember? Oh God, I’ve lost myself. My memory is all I have and I can’t remember.

  I need to start again. One, two, three, four, five…

  The woman’s slow voice was counting again.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.

  I fit in here. I drink and eat pizza and argue and talk and use so many words. So many words. My life is full of language and pizza and cheese and wine and coffee.

  The woman’s slow voice was counting again.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.

  So many ways of hurting women.

  I can’t look them in the face. Why do I have this job? Why was it waiting for me?

  Why do I have to hurt people?

  She was surrounded by white curtains and nesting in white sheets. Her skin was pale and luminous. Age had curved her body strangely. The nurses took care of her, but she only sometimes repaid this with a glimmer of awareness. When she talked, she counted.

  The woman’s slow voice was counting again.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

  I finished the year and finished university and stopped talking. I remember that I was in love. I remember holding hands. I don’t remember how it felt to be in love. It was so important to me. Why can’t I remember?

  Maybe I don’t remember because of what came later.

  I’m not going to start counting again. I don’t want to hurt. Being here, now, with a catheter and that all-night nurse watching me and listening is bad enough. Yes, I’m talking to you, even though you’re only listening to my tone.

  This is my way of staying alive. I’m not as beyond help as I sound. All the medicines don’t support my efforts to keep going. Counting helps. Counting helps me remember. If I remember, I can make it. I have to make it. If I don’t make it, then it’s not only me who’ll die. Everyone on Earth. Every single human.

  I did my best. I have to live just a bit longer. Just a bit longer. All I need is three digits and I’ve won. We’ve won.

  Oh God, I’m so tired. So very tired.

  I don’t want to remember this.

  I need silence.

  Not too much silence. I have to remember. I have to remember.

  The woman’s slow voice was counting again.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four.

  Marriage and a home and a trendy young set of friends. This isn’t me. This was never me.

  I wish I could remember me at that age. Who were those trendy friends? Whose friends were they?

  I have to remember it as me. Otherwise I have nothing to hold on to.

  The woman’s slow voice was counting again.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

  I will not remember her name. It hurts too much.

  I see her body as if her spirit never animated it, as if she were never alive. I cannot bear this memory. I cannot bear this life. I want it all to end.

  It has to end. I can’t bear it any more. But I can’t let it. Not now. It’s still too dangerous.

  I have to remember my little one. I must. Even the worst memory of all. I have to remember. It’s not about me. It never was about me.

  As she tried to remember, her hands curled into claws. Her
inner self was closer to the surface than it had been since she came to Earth.

  The woman’s slow voice was counting again.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three.

  Why am I alone? I am so very alone. I should not be. No-one should be.

  Why am I alone?

  Where did everyone go?

  The woman’s slow voice was counting again.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight.

  I’m married to him. He’s a good man.

  I’m not lonely any more. That will have to be enough. I can’t ask for any more. Life isn’t generous and won’t give me any more.

  Life is cruel. I hate life. Just remember. I’m thirty-eight and not lonely. Not alone. Not lonely.

  Not lonely.

  The woman’s slow voice was counting again.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty, forty-one, forty-two.