Pins (32)

 

Applecross, Scotland
-

The candles were burned down to nubs. Sophie's fingers trailed over the bloated white roots spidering the floors. She found Alisdair. He was lying by the fireplace. She touched his face in the darkness. It was clammy, but he was breathing. She stood and saw the muzzy reflection of her face in the window, superimposed amongst the ashen flakes blowing across the fields. 

Her hair was lank. Her eyes were lidless and egg-white. 

There were more white obelisks in the hills beyond. She felt that she could walk further, soon. She felt that he could visit them. It was exciting. 

'The problem was that they couldn't get them out,' Alisdair said. 'But they've managed to remove two. Two is all you need. Marvellous. You've all worked ever so hard. You're obsessive.'

She turned slowly, as if moving through an unseen, syrupy barrier. Alisdair was sitting by the fireplace. He was jerking and spasming, and she could not see his face. It was a freakish blur. 

'I could have stopped,' she whispered. 'She didn't need to go to the police.'

The three bird-masked men on the sofa looked up at her. Sophie shivered and stepped past them.

'Marvellous,' Alisdair said. She sat down on the sofa opposite the bird-masks. Alisdair was smiling and drooling strings of black mucus. He scooped it up in his hands, stood, and walked towards her. He stepped over branches and knelt down, pressing his dripping fingers to her lips. She licked at them, and some of the tiredness left her. The view outside the window looked clearer. Something was happening in the sky.

'She did like me,' she breathed. 'I didn't mean for it to get like that. I just couldn't stop thinking about her. It's hard to explain... it was nice at first, and then by the end it was like there was a... a wall made up of her, wrapped around the inside of my head. But I didn't mean those things I said at all. They were only texts. And she was replying. I just liked hearing from her.'

The bird-masked men watched her. They looked bored. Alisdair was grinning. He had a champagne flute in his hand. A sibilant screeching noise peaked, and settled back into a low whine.

'You need to see other people,' he said. 'It's not healthy. Even if you think you don't, you need to see other people.'

'No,' Sophie said. 'I don't. You're not listening. I get obsessed. I get obsessed with numbers, people, everything.'

'Marvellous,' Alisdair said. 'You've all worked ever so hard.'

Sophie held her head in her hands and shook violently. When she looked up, she flinched. There was a boy sitting cross-legged on the floor, beside the sofa. He was greyish and indistinct. Mist drifted from his shoulders, and he flickered in and out of existence.

Sophie lowered her hands and peered. The boy was wearing a low-crowned hat with an upturned brim. A filthy cotton shirt, neckerchief, and canvas trousers. The bird-masked men took no notice of him. 

Alisdair dropped his champagne glass and began twitching, but she paid him no mind. Her skin felt tight, and the hairs on her arms stood up. Something she couldn't quite grasp gnawed at her. She reached out towards the boy. He was just across the room, flickering softly, but he seemed so far away.

The boy looked up. His eyes were white. His mouth opened, and he disappeared.

 

HD 85512b, Vela Constellation
2038

The orb hovered. It glowed yellow. Its voice came soft and metallic in their ears.

'Shut down.'

Keys nodded.

'Engine stop.'

Keys nodded.

'The capsule has landed.'

Sophie felt woozy. Her helmet dipped forward. Walden was still in his seat. Alisdair unbuckled and held her gloved hand for a second. He joined Keys as he cracked the hatch, and looked down at the grey plain.

'Pretty rocky. Rocky area.'

Keys heaved on his backpack.

'It'll have to do. We bypassed the some of those damn craters. Saved you that trek.'

Alisdair clucked his tongue. He shouldered his own backpack, turned the oxygen outlet on his chest, and swung out onto the ladder. The orb bobbed curiously. It rose and floated out the hatch. Its grey cloak trailed.

Keys looked round at Sophie and Walden. They saw their own seated figures in the darkness of his visor. He gestured to them, clambered up, and swung out.

Walden unbuckled. He sat forward and gripped the arm rests. Sophie heard heavy breath fuzz in her earpiece.

'How do these fucking things work, Sophie?' he said. 'I don't feel - I don't feel like there's anything certain here, and I - I'm... '

Sophie unbuckled. She squeezed her eyes shut and open. The heaviness would not leave her.

'I don't think I can explain it any better than Alisdair,' she said. 'It's like a branch point... it was going one way, and then you pin it. They can be kept. Revisited. It's - '

Her head throbbed and she winced. Walden eased his backpack on and turned to her.

'And you think you can reverse this here?' he said.

Sophie staggered up and wobbled. The joints of her EMU suit creaked. 

'The signals are the same,' she breathed. 'There has to be some kind of base point. There has to be some kind of organisation. A way of collecting and categorising. There was probably one back home, too.'

Her white eyes swam within the visor. Walden helped her shoulder her backpack. He swung up to the hatch, and Sophie followed him.

*

She stepped off the last rung. The earpiece pitched strange frequencies. For a moment she felt the reduced gravity. The tug in her bones, and the urge to curl up. The pressurised suit adapted. The vibrotactile boots kicked in. The bearings and joints in the suit creaked. She caught a glint in the little mirror mounted on her wrist, and looked up with effort.

The distant parent star gleamed overhead. The dark sky was frosted with cardinal rays and the sense of emptiness and expanse was overwhelming, crushing. The shock of being on another planet rushed in. Another world. For a moment she could not move. She felt disoriented, as if she were experiencing some kind of lucid dream, or astral projection, lost and floating, outside of her own body.

There were enormous metallic hoops suspended in the sky. They hung weightlessly, rusty and discoloured. Sophie swallowed and tried a step forward. Her senses felt dull and constrained, and every movement seemed to be at odds with the EMU suit's natural position.

Alisdair and Keys were already far ahead. The orb danced around them. Its cloak shimmered over a desolate surface covered by dead roots, grooves and streaks. Impact events. Crater chains. Sophie stepped forward. She felt the tiny haptic motors in the boots vibrating. Static buzzed in her ear, and she heard her own breath hissing amongst it. Her peripheral vision was limited inside the helmet, and she flinched when Walden strode past her. 

Strong winds threw up clouds of ashen flakes. They set out. She had to keep leaning forward to check for obstacles. They cut round vast circular depressions and towering white obelisks. Everything was a curious marriage of stillness and stoic propulsion. They closed on Alisdair and Keys. They were standing beneath one of the white columns. It was cracked and stained. A wooden door at its base was open, flapping and banging against the white stone. The orb flared red and bobbed hesitantly. 

Sophie looked up at the dilapidated building. Feedback screeched in her earpiece. Alisdair lifted his arm, and they trooped on through the dust clouds. The orb was bleeping and dancing amongst the flakes. They followed its aimless path, treading slowly in the bulky suits. They cut round huge craters, and saw piles of yellow bones in the grey soot. 

Hours passed. Sophie was dripping with sweat inside the suit. She saw Alisdair and the rest of the group ahead of her. Her earpiece pitched again and she saw another group further ahead, trailing over the bleak terrain. They wore EMU suits, and they glinted and blinked in and out of existence. The strange, flickering group disappeared as she hit the crest of a crater. 

She knew then that they had been there before. 

The orb flitted haphazardly over the wasteland. They saw more bones and corroded metal hoops lying beneath dust dunes. There were strange runes etched along their curves. They passed over a large ridge, and in the dark patch beneath it they found a collection of bones, and a pair of vast scapulae that had maintained their wing-shape in the dirt. Loose feathers blew across the rocks. 

Sophie looked at Alisdair, but could not gauge his response inside the helmet. Beyond the next crater a colossal obelisk broke through the clouds above them. The orb flared a brilliant red colour. Its cloak fell in patterned sweeps behind it as it raced towards the column.
 

 

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