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I – Beginnings
“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.” – Frank Herbert, US science fiction novelist (1920 - 1986)
Consider this. You are just an ordinary person, with nothing special to set you apart from the crowd. You have no unique skills or talents. You live a mundane life in an ordinary house in the suburbs of a run-of-the-mill town. You may be eighteen or eighty, and immersed in no-ones problems but your own. Then one day your world is turned upside down. You find yourself suddenly thrown together with five hundred other souls, severed from the life you once knew. Gone are the securities of technology, resource, and amenity that you once took for granted. In their place are hardship, uncertainty and fear. Now you must fend for yourself. So ask yourself this – how would you fare?
My name is Luke Adams. Unmarried, I lived alone, working as a teacher of English in a local middle school. In that profession I was frequently the subject of mirth, and even cruelty, and for two reasons.
Firstly, I had a nervous disposition – ‘highly strung’, as my mother would have said, though anxiety and mild paranoia is probably closer to the truth! It manifested itself most evidently in my speech, which was invariably sprinkled with an assortment of ‘um’s’ and 'er’s’. Over the years, this had been a source of great discomfort to me, and equally great amusement to others.
Secondly, I carried a metal plate in my head. When I was in my mid-twenties I suffered skull trauma following a traffic accident, resulting in a cerebral aneurysm that was invasively treated by a team of highly skilled surgeons. A titanium alloy plate was used to repair the main bone damage, however the amount of metalwork was small, and over time became wholly unnoticeable, thanks to plastic skin and rather long hair. The driver of the car that ran into me – a delinquent boy named Solomon Cavezon who had ‘borrowed’ his fathers’ car to impress his friends – also sustained some serious injury, but proportionately less than my own. When the case came to court in a criminal prosecution brought by the police, he attended with a leg in a cast. Though I heard he had received metal pinning through his thigh-bone, I still wondered if the cast was more ‘show’ than anything else. Either way, the result was admonishment, a fine, and some penalty points added to his driving license. I received minimal compensation for ‘injuries sustained’. Afterwards we went on with our separate lives. Neither had any way of knowing at the time that our paths would one day cross again…
I was fortunate that there were very few side effects following my accident: scalp irritation around the wound, some headaches, occasional neuralgia and, interestingly, dreams. These usually occurred when the weather changed – hot to cold, cold to hot – and though the details rarely lingered beyond the dawn, the occasional memory was disquieting. In the pattern of these dreams I had a sense of balancing precariously on a wall, with swirling, shapeless mists on either side. There seemed always to be a risk of falling, and the wall itself appeared less and less secure each time the visions came. I had the feeling of being watched, and occasionally thought I heard a voice trying to speak, but always just beyond the limit of my senses. I talked with various authoritative luminaries about these phantasms, but the consensus was that they were a small price to pay for my survival of the original accident. Once or twice I toyed with the idea of seeking clairvoyant help – but I always considered such things as dubious pseudo-science for the weak-minded, ranking alongside astrology and magic, so never took it any further.
Of course, knowledge of things that mark one out as being different, such as having a skull implant, rarely stays private. People, particularly children, have a way of finding out. As a result, unfeeling students would snigger behind my back, taunting me with snide remarks and poor impersonations when they thought I was out of earshot. References to ‘F-F-F-Frankenstein’s monster’ were as common as they were inaccurate – I do not have a stutter in the usual sense. Mostly I managed to ignore them, though it wasn’t easy. I could have switched, changed careers, but I actually liked my job, and sometimes, in a class of thirty, one jewel would shine out who appreciated the beauty of words. My success with them made the ridicule bearable, and so I persevered.
Then one day my world changed. It was a Friday, leading up to Christmas, late in the afternoon of a wintry day, and I had stopped off at the local Sureco supermarket to buy a few necessities on my way home from school. Outside the weather was dour, slashing rain and strong gusts of wind marking the true beginning of winter. Inside it was warm, bright, and busy. It seemed the world and his wife was engaged in the purchase of whatever necessities they felt they had to have for the coming Yule-tide holidays. I entered through the automatic doors to the store, collecting a trolley on the way. I passed a group of workmen in the wide foyer who were tidying their tools in readiness for the next days’ labours, when they would resume their mysterious delving beneath the flagstones.
Along with the other shoppers I browsed the aisles, adding this and that to my trolley: toothpaste, fresh milk; bread rolls; a few ready-meals from the ‘chiller’ cabinets. They were a rather good purchase, I thought, offering one free when you bought any two others of the selection available. The cannelloni was a particular favourite of mine. I took my place in the endless queue to the checkout, idly glancing at fellow shoppers who milled around, dodging one another’s trolleys and avoiding eye contact whenever it seemed their surreptitious glances were about to be discovered. What peculiar creatures we are, I thought. Essentially gregarious and sociable, yet so often shy and reserved in the face of direct social confrontation. The skin around my metal plate began to itch. I hoped I was not about to get a headache, which was often preceded by scalp irritation. I ignored it, and eventually reached the point where I was in a position to begin emptying my trolley on to the counters’ conveyor. I picked out the first item – it was the milk – and placed it on the rubber surface. Without warning, the world turned to night.
There was no prelude that I remember. No flaring or dimming of lights, no cacophony of warning portent. Just one moment when it was bright with the fluorescent illumination of the shops’ overhead tubes, and then absolute blackness, a cloying, tar-like, palpable darkness that suffused my whole body. It enfolded me, moulding itself around me, filling me, invading deep within to stop up my lungs and still my heart, while my brain raced and burned in terror as eternity slipped by. I was adrift and choked in absolute nothingness; and it seemed to me I must surely be dead.
I heard a distant and sonorous sound, like the measured beat of some enormous heart, slowly pounding its’ life away: - one: thump. Two: thump. Three: thump. In the dreadful night a pair of huge, unblinking eyes slowly opened. I was blinded, yet the orbs burned in my mind. They were searching for something, and they focussed on me. I was pinned by the intensity of the gaze. Pupils, burning in sapphire flame, circled around the endless, Stygian depths of irises that threatened to swallow my soul. They encompassed the universe, and seemed to promise that, if I should only let go, I could fall for ever, and learn and know the beauty of all creation, become one with and a part of the whole…
A voice, sensuous and feminine, yet demanding and urgent came from nowhere to explode inside my head, a single word that echoed for eternity.
“SHIMQOL!”
Then it was all gone, with no more fanfare than it had arrived. I felt a firm surface beneath my feet, felt warmth bathe my face and probe the eyelids that reflex had shut tight. A soft gentle swirl of air wafted about my head. The terror of the darkness, the vision of those eyes and the pressure of that voice left me weak and bereft. I opened my own eyes to see a sky replete with stars, and heard the sound of people, far away, but… it was at that point I collapsed.
I awoke to a shadowy face, and a soft hand on mine. I started, but the hand squeezed gently, giving me a certain confidence that I was not, for the moment at least, in danger. I sat up and looked around. It was still dark, but it was a natural dark, the dark of a passing night. The air was warm, and above me an inky sky was emblazoned with the brilliance of a billion distant suns. There was the sound of voices, adult and child, both distant and near, filled with the echoes of fear and worry, but also relief at the realisation they were still alive.
“Are you all right?” I heard someone say. It came from the hand-holder, a woman crouching by my side, her face silver and grey in the rich starlight. She was slim, with short hair, and as we sat together I felt her body tremble. Instinctively I extended my arm, and we drew closer, seeking mutual reassurance from the warmth of our bodies. For no reason other than the comfort of familiar action I glanced at my watch. It said 4:15.
“What happened?” I asked, my usual stuttering speech momentarily put aside. “Where are we?” I felt the shake of her head where she nestled into my shoulder.
“I don’t know. Just… I was shopping, then… I don’t know,” was all she could manage. Around us people stumbled falteringly from one place to another, some silent and alert, others crying and sobbing. Most wandered aimlessly in an almost somnambulist state, occasionally calling out names, though I do not recall many receiving a reply. The woman and I looked at each other, then huddled close, though it was not cold, and remained so until dawn…
…which eventually came, and the light of a strange sun exposed a new world around us. The air smelled clean and dry, the sky was a pale blue, and there were trees, and grass, and rocks, and… and in every way there was familiarity all around. Yet there was something different also, as if everything was new. Warmth began to fill the day and I took off the winter coat that hours before had been so essential, and stood up. The woman stood with me, and together we looked about us. Singly, or in small groups, other people were standing and gaping at what they saw. We were on a gentle slope covered with green and bluish grasses. To one side the slope became a steep bank leading to a craggy tor, beyond which more hills could be seen. On another side, beyond a rise, and the silver ripple of meandering water, lay the marches of a great forest, and in the far distance, the ridges of mountains met a glorious horizon. The slope itself had a meadow-like quality, but was comically strewn with an assortment of mundane and out-of-place items: wire shopping carts and baskets, tins and packages, discarded clothing – flotsam heralding the arrival of a new species, willing or no, to take its’ place in a strange and unknown land. Where were we? How had we got here? Why us? These were questions that begged answers, but none were immediately forthcoming. It turned out, when we all eventually gathered together to consider our situation, that we shared no common history except this: that we were all shopping in the same store at that same time.
In the days and months after there was much conjecture, of course. Many theories were suggested. For example: the supermarket was located at a significant point in space and time, where the universal fabric was particularly thin, allowing a rent to appear, through which we fell. Or, we were abducted by an inhuman intelligence, and marooned in order to fulfil the requirements of some exotic experiment. Or, we had died as the result of a gas explosion, and this was the afterlife. These and numerous others were staple food for many a long night. We eventually found consensus, through observation of the sky and the oddities of nature that surrounded us, that, wherever we were, we were no longer on Earth. For everyone, the experience of the event was the same as mine, except for the voice and the eyes. Were they an hallucination on my part? A figment? Nobody else spoke of anything similar. Somehow I knew they had been for me, alone, and I kept them secret for a long time.
As castaways, we were quite fortunate I suppose, more so than say, Robinson Crusoe. Like him we arrived in the clothes in which we stood; in our case apparel suitable for use in the cold, inclement weather of the season: mackintoshes, raincoats, boots – some even had umbrellas. At the start of his twenty-eight year sojourn, Crusoe had the contents of the ship to fall back on. We, on the other hand, were provisioned with whatever we were holding on to or carrying at the time. There was obviously a finite limit to what the phenomenon was able to transport along with us. Solid, secured things like shelving, cash registers, walls, and so on, did not make the transition. Only objects that we were in firm, physical contact with, and were as potentially mobile as us, joined us on our voyage. Thus till girls brought handfuls of money, or credit cards and receipts; some of the labourers had their tools; whilst we shoppers brought our trolleys, baskets, and bags, in various stages of fullness. We had many personal effects too: wallets, handkerchiefs, small change, not to mention an incredible assortment of mirrors, combs, scissors, brushes, lipsticks, tissues, any number of mobile phones (the value of which disappeared in a very short space of time), and all manner of things held in the copious handbags born by many of the shoppers. It turned out that we had enough foodstuffs to last us, as a group, almost two months, with careful housekeeping. Also, unlike Defoe’s hero, we had each other, and that was a fortune that should not to be underestimated.
Over the next few months we began to acclimatise to our new situation. Arrival, as we universally called the event, had founded us on the slopes of a fertile valley. To afford an idea of direction – and thereby engender a sense of belonging as well as a defence against becoming lost – we made an assumption that the sun rose in the east, which gave us familiar cardinal points for reference. Certainly, by our primitive observations using a piece of twine and a nail file, the world had magnetic poles between which we could describe a north-south axis. There appeared to be seasons. Though our tenure was yet too short to slice the year accurately, we considered we might currently be in the Spring, though a Spring that lasted far longer than we were used to. For several months – an argumentative term, to be sure – a regular, easterly wind sprinkled with showers blew in, following the flow of the wide but shallow Valley River, south of our settlement. It then veered north, to sheer across the face of the escarpment in which were located the Home Caves.
These caverns had become the mainstay shelters for our Community. There were four principal ones, two large and two small, and several other clefts and hollows too shallow to be of much practical use. The two largest provided accommodation for the majority of our people. Of the others, one served as a main storeroom, as well as becoming home to the Greys, the family eventually charged with managing our communal possessions. The other was designated an infirmary, where anyone who exhibited signs of sickness was immediately sent. This was our best effort to limit the spread of any possible contagion. The three women who staffed it on a regular basis – all previously trained to some degree in nursing – had, and still have, my absolute admiration for their unselfishness and courage in placing themselves so directly in the path of potential danger.
In our early weeks of tenure at the caves we constructed makeshift screens of clothes fastened to harvested tree branches, laid across the cave mouths. These, we hoped, would keep out the worst of whatever the weather might bring. The climate was definitely benign; even so the temperature still dropped after nightfall, and then the efficacy of the screens proved inadequate. Eventually, we replaced the screens with a more robust and effective weaving of pliable wood and river mud, mounted on the wheeled frames of shopping trolleys.
I suppose if there was any consideration of benign intent to our transportation, then the caves might have qualified as a sign. Their existence was at least fortuitous. They fostered a feeling of security, a fixed point to which we could refer that gave us a sense of belonging; something that said “Here we are. Here we stay. This is home.” The entrances to caves one and two nestled under an overhang, and extended deeply into the rock. Home Cave Two had the smaller opening, being a rough arch about five feet high and eight across. The aperture led immediately to a wide but low cavern, about the size of a public swimming pool. Two tunnels fed off the back, one petering out at a rock fall, the other dipping to a narrow passage that could only be navigated by crawling. It came out into a modest sized grotto that echoed to the drip, drip, drip, of calcite-rich water that added to the growth of the stalagmites and stalactites that peopled the chamber. Home Cave One had a far grander entrance, being almost twice the height and three times the width of Home Cave Two. It delved back in a long, tapering, curving tunnel with several ‘antechambers’. Such is the perversity of human nature that even in our isolation there was a degree of half-serious snobbery in having ‘One’ as ones address, though for warmth and a more embracing feeling of homeliness, Home Cave Two performed much better!
When we began the exploration of our new domain, the discovery of the caves in the late afternoon of the first day was hugely welcomed. Many people, especially the older children, were keen to move in and explore their depths, until it was pointed out that, in all probability, other inhabitants might have a prior claim. With the only electric torch we had available, that exploration took place with due and appropriate caution. All four caverns were tentatively investigated, and all four found to be occupied. In the main, the occupiers were of the crawling and slithering variety. We scoured the locale, and gathered up as much potential tinder as we could find. We made up bundles, set fire to them, and hurled them into the caverns, driving out a number of strange and unfamiliar creatures. Home Cave Two, however, turned out to be the abode of the first large native animal we saw – a four-legged, man-high beast we named the Critter. When first we encountered it we feared it, because of its’ size and the ferocious yellow fangs protruding forward from the lower jaw, and because of the small scattering of bones just inside the entrance. It succeeded in chasing us off initially, but its’ respite was temporary. Our need for the promised security of the caverns outweighed any qualms we had over tackling it. We used noise and fire to drive it from its’ lair and away to the river. It fled from us, a rolling, lumbering mass of thickly-matted fur, crossing the water to stand and face us from the opposite bank. I remember that the eyes, while not intelligent, had a human character to them, as you might discern in an ape. They had a reproachful look that said ‘But that was my home!’ We did not pursue it, and for two days and nights it patrolled the far side, lowing moodily. The next day it had gone. Later, Foragers, those skilled few amongst us upon whom we relied for fresh meat and fur, found its’ carcase, scavenged and forlorn, deep inside the Great Forest. They left it for Nature to continue to deal with in her own way. Though we sometimes heard the call of Critters far off, I myself never saw one again.
The land itself was beautiful. Early on I, like everyone else, took an opportunity to climb Home Cave Hill. The south-facing cliff was almost sheer, and made of some kind of crumbly sandstone. Approach had to be from the east, through a tangle of undergrowth, consisting mainly of a species reminiscent of gorse. It took a little more than half an hour to reach the summit. From there the view was superb. I have no idea how far we could see, maybe a dozen miles, maybe less. Under the invariably perpetually azure sky vast swathes of thick-foliaged forest stretched almost uninterrupted to disappear over the horizon. Northward and east, scattered thickets of strange trees ranged across the countryside. Hills, dressed in a dozen shades of blue and green, curved gently westward, breaking up the great dark woods driving up from the south. This world was lush, vibrant with life in myriad forms. Even after a year, we had explored less than half a dozen miles in any one direction, yet we found a diversity of flora and fauna no less great than we had known back home. Much of it was highly alien to our senses: plants that behaved like animals (or animals that behaved like plants!) such as the curlybush that appeared to have no roots but was comprised of thousands of interlaced ringlets of twigs. Rolls of it could extend as a tubular mass for tens of yards, lying supine on the ground, quite motionless. At sunset, they could be seen rolling slowly in one direction or another. They were often faced with obstacles to negotiate, which they managed with a serpentine grace. Obstacles such as the cherry tree, for example, which bore fruit that looked and tasted like cherries, but with tiny seeds rather than a stone at the heart. Or the stinker, a two foot high ball of solid matter that appeared to have erupted from the ground, and which exhibited the most odious, foul stench when its’ thick, rubbery skin was cut.
There were creatures that flew, crawled, ran, crept and swam; some nocturnal, some diurnal. Some we still had not yet seen, being shy or cunning, or so well camouflaged as to make their detection all but impossible. We knew of their existence only by virtue of the traces they left behind – droppings, paw-prints, meal remains. Herbivores, carnivores, omnivores – each group had representation in the menagerie of the world. We were grateful that, as yet, we had not come across any predator offering real danger to a determined people armed with fire, clubs, and loud voices! Insects too were plentiful. In places, such as the marsh beds that bordered far sections of the river, they were so numerous as to cause us to avoid those parts altogether. I had been bitten on one or two occasions, when visiting the waters’ edge to bathe or replenish our water supplies, but nobody had taken ill from such, so far as I knew. People might sometimes get headaches or feel nauseous, and make an association with a sting or bite, but who could be sure that these symptoms were not merely the result of microbes from other sources: the food we ate, perhaps, or just the germs brought with us, that we caught from each other in passing?
Our health, by and large, had been good. There were deaths – almost a sixth of our original number, including several who decided that life was not tolerable separated from their loved ones, or driven by cravings that could no longer be supplied – but most could be laid at the feet of old age. This we managed to accept as the natural order, and life as a whole was far more gentle and bearable than we had a right to expect. Coughs and colds came and went, cuts and bruises, sprains and the occasional broken bone were not unknown; but no diseases invaded us. It was almost Eden but, as in that fabled Garden, there was a viper in our midst. There was discord and unpleasantness, and eventually there was murder.
