Zygote

2004

The sallow little estate agent led Godwin to the door; wooden,
ill-fitting, flaked, discoloured by the late summer sun. "Fine location
- you get both the feeling of a rural retreat and, of course, the
beach". Godwin surveyed his surroundings silently. He was a clear foot
taller than the agent, and could see clean over that crooked bald pate.
Out to the pebbles of the beach and the lifeless ocean, then swinging
round, to the patches of burnt grass and clumps of weeds by the door.
The cottage was maybe a hundred and fifty years old, the bottom bit
even older, maybe two hundred. Unnerved by the silence and keen to
regain superiority, the agent looked Godwin up and down in the usual
manner of a man keen to learn the weaknesses of others, and to make
money of them. "So?" he sighed. There was a pause. "What do you
do?"

Godwin was economical with his words. "Historian?just retired."
"Historian eh?" The agent hesitated, looking somewhat bemused, like a
formerly cocksure amateur suddenly confronted by the sleek alpha-male,
the seasoned professional, one of the in-crowd. The agent plucked up
his courage, and they discussed in fits and starts the coming
conflagration, history repeating itself. The two power blocs glaring at
each other across the oceans; how the new crusades pitted 'us', 'we',
'ourselves' against a dark, destructive Islam that retained all its
outward fanaticism while galloping at full speed from its inner message
of peace. Increasingly resigned jocularity at the home team;
'Christianity' so called, yet in reality nothing more than the
two-hundred year old death rattle of western civilization. Hollow,
naked, avaricious, yet oddly complacent. History like a re-run of Star
Wars.

The cottage stood back from the suburban road. There was some
opportunity for peace, particularly as there were no neighbours. In
fact some kind of natural circumstance seemed to have factored humanity
out of this particular equation. Godwin would take it. It was perfect.
A true 'retreat', somewhere to flee to, or possibly somewhere to crawl
and die.

Godwin had lived in the cottage for one calendar month. The news flowed
from the East. In fact 'the East' was everywhere, CNN had brought it.
From Sheffield, Boston, Rome, Prague, Toronto, the news was
disquieting. It was nearing midnight, time for the greying academic to
rise, as it were, for bed. He reached for his diary, tradition of all
the Godwins since the time of his great grandfather, perhaps earlier.
Then he noticed Zygote. The solitary goldfish bobbed daintily,
glass-eyed on top of the algae-stricken water, inert, obtuse, as dead
as sand. Without murmur and without ceremony Godwin took the creature
by his translucent tail and flushed him down the toilet.

The wet was obviously the immediate sensation, Godwin pondered. Since
the disappearance of Zygote the old widower could imagine nothing else
than his still silver eyes perceiving everything in those few seconds,
the turd-filled waterfalls, then the adrenaline rush of propulsion
through many oily Victorian pipes. Then cease, calm, recognition,
reverence. Zygote revived, like iced water in the face of a drunken
soak. Alive, more alive than ever before, to re-generate and prosper in
his new domain. Godwin turned over and fell asleep.

2104

Three men huddled at turns over the chessboard. Sometimes one would get
up and go to the library. Then the other two would pause to entreat
over some grand theory, whether it be the purpose of government or the
construction of a spider web. Godwin junior, a robust young man,
bustled into the cottage.

"I got you some books on the great fratricidal war - really help you
get to grips with the causes. Seems amazing now that people thought
that way - religion as a weapon of murder and mayhem, not peace and
gentle civilization. I also got you the collected works of Paul
Ibn-Wattehadi." Godwin was proud of his son. His progeny, his creation,
an organism after himself. What better way to celebrate the coalescence
of two great faiths?

Check. Godwin surveyed the pacific scene through the muslin drapes - to
the west the flat monolithic sheen of the sea; to the east the deserted
scrubland of Boundary Park, barren but for the magnificent,
breathtaking and holy ziggaraut; and further afield the gleaming spires
of New Town Cathedral, reaching a thousand feet to the heavens. Two of
the greatest achievements of the great multi-civilization. Then he
returned to his little grandson's freckled nose. He pressed the boy to
his cheek and kissed his forehead. Bouncing the boy on his knee, he
returned to his chess.

Sometimes they would venture into New Town and sit in the cobbled
center, discussing the rigours of the day. The gradual erosion of the
old industries had made them poor in one sense, rich in many others.
New Town ceased abruptly with the National River - and there were no
railings between it and the last urbanized street. One could look
unimpaired out onto the parched, almost translucent scrubland, out to
God's cottage.

2204

The visitor, the intruder in blue overalls crouched over his cherished
toy. He bent further, intent on perfecting the synthetic creation. From
Godwin's perspective it almost looked as if the man had been beheaded.
Finally he spoke. The Virtua engineer said "Top piece of kit, this.
Strap this thing on and you could be anywhere. You can't even feel the
headset."

Godwin was silent. Unabashed, the intruder continued, without thought
for the niceties of visitor diplomacy. "Great times we live in. And to
think there are some freaks who would do away with all of it. They keep
saying 'the comet is coming' but you and I - the educated few - we know
that humanity will prevail. Just because the space race failed doesn't
mean we can't deflect a body ten times smaller than us.'

Godwin now felt duty-bound to respond. "Oh yes - the space race.
Logical outcome of the human urge to greater and greater
self-indulgence. Narcissism of epic proportions. Those would be
Martians; those men's lives?we can draw a great many truths from that
disaster?to fortify us for the future."

The engineer regarded Godwin with shocked vexation, as if he were a
water main overflowing through his lack of tact. His harsh, bullet-like
exhortations had puzzled the rational technician. He steeled himself
and attempted to change the subject, with misplaced humour and
ultimately a patent lack of success. "What did that terrorist say at
his trial? 'A people that has lost its' fear of God.' Ha! In this day
and age!"

"I think he was a man simply yearning for us to come to terms more with
our own sin." Godwin snarled the words. He wanted the intruder to go
away.

Meekly, defeated, but finally resigned, the engineer shrugged and gave
Godwin his card. The technocrat grunted his goodbyes. "Largest retailer
in the North West - our new one-floor warehouse- they had to demolish
the old Mosque to make way." He regarded the crumbling interior of the
cottage with thinly veiled exasperation, his nose pinched as if
breathing in the worst smell in the world. He was silent for a spell,
pondering in a second whether an apology was in order. Odd egg, that
Godwin. He decided against. "Well? we'll invoice you. Cheerio."

Godwin remained motionless, studying the view from the cracked
windowpane. A period of darkness was coming - whether the human race
would return afterwards was a matter of conjecture. He snapped his
stare away from the visture and reached for his diary. The city is
coming - you could almost feel it. The city could do as much damage as
the comet, maybe even more. Godwin's friend had been arrested the other
week - they held him for eight hours overnight then just released him -
they were just 'checking out enquiries'. He thought to complain, but
perhaps it was not for the best. A historian like his ancestors, Godwin
searched his memory for a buoy to cling to as the storm approached on
the horizon. What did Asquith speak of?was it Asquith??the lights going
out?and Eliot?not with a bang, but with a whimper."

Ten years ago, when he inherited the cottage, Godwin could look out on
the barren scrubland with satisfaction - the city was barely visible
and he could bask in the joy of being twenty miles from the nearest
human being; almost unheard of nowadays. And on the other side; the
eternal, shimmering diamond sea. The bridge into the metropolis now
presented itself, a matter of a mile or two from his door, like an
unwanted, ill-smelling and possibly psychotic sibling returning after a
long absence.

Then there were others, who blamed technology for the comet and for the
city. The anti-historians. Those who sought to buck the temporal flow.
Godwin considered his options as he strolled into the heart of New
City, by the river. He entered the postmodern Ministry, emerging
minutes later, having planted the device and lit the charge. He
trotted, cantered, then broke into a sprint, as if he willed his lungs
to burst.

Godwin returned to the cottage as dusk was oozing from the horizon like
ink squirted into bath water. The diary was becoming a chore. Godwin
almost sensed it becoming larger than himself, an external force
propelling him to write almost against his will. He was tired, and
combined the venture with his new virtua headset.

Saw the news this evening - alarm at the global population. Simply
reiterating that figure serves to make one claustrophobic. Ended up in
the attic sorting through old papers - some of them antique. All the
boxes were full of dead bugs.

2304

The news from Revelations is disquieting in the extreme. There must, I
think, come a time for all of us to prostrate ourselves before God, to
kneel until it hurts. Perhaps if I write the following words they will
endure the coming catastrophe. Impact in five or six days, trajectory
still not confirmed. Our Father, who Art in Heaven?

Godwin read his ancestors' diaries for comfort. He read of the history
of the cottage, and he read of Zygote. Scaled orange organism, stone
dead, and below the ground, in the sewers, beyond dead, if this were
possible. Yet somehow knowing and sentient, somehow alive. Godwin, a
lonely bachelor, could think of no other mechanism to console
him.

2404

Lifeless eyes, that Zygote, and floating, floating in the great
blue-green expanse pitting the man-made against nature. Nature the
danger, the nature of microbes and spores. Zygote, the union of two
gametes, the ying and the yang, life and death, Islam and Christianity,
love and hate, man and God, nature and man, reason and faith. Like a
process, like Godwin from Godwin from Godwin.

Godwin lay against the remaining wall of the cottage and shivered,
pulling his grimy blanket around his shoulders. The wind was first to
hit visitors to the beach and the countryside, and the dark, or rather
the murk. It was July, and perfectly normal. A lot of the debris had
been filtered out of the atmosphere. The landscape had become moribund,
merely commonplace. It had gradually lost its' air of menace in the
years since the comet. It had taken on a more aesthetic turn, odd as
that may sound. Damn it if that old comet hadn't beaten the city in a
straight fight! Godwin cried, became depressed at times, but as long as
he avoided pondering too closely what his neighbours might be planning
to do with him, he could keep the demons, real and imagined, at bay. At
least he could write.

Postman came today. I paid him in green apples.

2504

The audience applauded politely if blankly as Godwin the CEO stepped
forward.

'Knowledge never really dies. Or perhaps that is true of only
utilitarian knowledge, the ability to do things. For two hundred years
we have been emerging from darkness and primitivism, not only the
primitivism of the tribes but the earlier futility of Muslim
Christianity, or Christian Islam, whatever you want to call it; the
futility and self-imposed backwardness of men before the comet. We have
fully, I hope, disavowed ourselves of that plague called religion, and
can now divest ourselves of this Earth which our forebears stubbornly
insisted was some kind of divine creation. Now we have the means,
alongside the re-growth of our historical know-how, to overcome the
traditional barriers to the cosmos that have always beset us. The
launch of this carrier fulfils the wildest dreams of our forebears,
ever since the Mars mission deaths of the twenty third century.
Humanity has come full circle.'

There was rapturous applause. They knelt before one of the many new
gods - the winged woman - and held their arms aloft.

Godwin sat uneasily next to a bored and listless young woman who nodded
politely at his life story. The CEO was plaintive now, diminished, as
if his speech had sucked the life from him. "There is too much pain,
you know? This place carries too many memories. Perhaps when we are up
in space I'll be OK. But for now, please let me be." The woman had
dozed off. He was addressing no other soul but himself. Godwin saw his
cottage, as compact as a matchbox, receding into the seemingly dying
and by now almost lifeless Earth, until, with the thrust of the
carrier's engines, it faded into nothingness. The tears welled, and
burst. Godwin clutched his Quran to his bosom with one hand, caressing
his crucifix with the other.

Among his possessions in the overhead locker, meagre for a CEO, were
some of the collected diaries of the Godwins. Centuries old, some
preserved by brutish post-industrial cellophane, then by the more
astutely conceived, efficiently produced, and above all shinier
synthetics the modern ages could muster. Godwin fortified his fragile
self with them; they were a concrete link to the world of human
civilization, the world of men. Yet all the time they decomposed. There
would come a time, he pondered, when they would cease to exist in the
corporeal sense, in this stale, recycled air. He read, and thought of
Zygote. Eyes open, consoled over the ages by nineteenth century tiles
and twenty first century turds. Still, in the murk. As old as the
centuries, as patient as a rock, as bold as a shark.