The Middle-Aged Couple

‘Ah! So nice to hear people talking aloud!’

We all looked up. A man and a woman were walking briskly towards our courtyard breakfast table, with a small honey-coloured animal form which after a moment my limited Knowing file recognised as being a dog.

We hadn’t seen any other people in human bodies until we came to the Totem Trail stopover. We were, after all, 55 years late for Day Billion. And as you’ve seen the facilities in some places were a bit rudimentary!

But at this stopover there were several other people in human form, staying in the stone huts that surrounded the restaurant. Most had trouble with spoken language, and Naomi (who’d kept a form of Link active to support her medical role) would politely explain what we were doing. Nods and smiles followed.

Geraldo and Cassie were different. They spoke the 1st century English we’d chosen as our default language just perfectly.

‘Yes, there were quite a few doing your sort of thing back at the time of the celebrations,’ Gerald explained. ‘We had some interesting chats. But then we’ve always stuck to words. No reason to change something that works, is there? Like our bodies.’ He smoothed down the sides of his loose-fitting black jacket. ‘There are a whole load of us living up on the North Escarpment. We call it Skytown because most of us moved up from Earth when they built the sky. You know, the first one, just over this crater. You must pop over and visit.’

I noticed he was looking at Ava when he said that.

She made a curious little facial expression around her nose and eyes that I hadn’t seen before. It brought a flush of blood to her cheeks. ‘We might do that! But first we have to finish the Art Trail or Rick here will be very cross with us.’ Her voice sounded different, too.

‘Oh, you’re doing the Art Trail!’ Geraldo laughed. ‘Well, good luck with that. But most of it’s still there, I think. You’ll be going on to the Gates of Eternity I suppose?’

‘Yes, that’s the plan,’ said Rick. ‘We’ll need to get going soon.’ He sounded like he had that first morning when he’d decided that I was a liability: irritated.

Darina jogged Rick’s arm. ‘Perhaps Geraldo and Cassie could come with us? It’s only a half hour walk.’

‘That would be cool!’ Ava’s face was still flushed, and she was pouting her lips.

I felt a bit strange, my throat dry, my heart going too fast, like some regulating system in my body wasn’t working properly. I looked at Cassie and Pewter the dog. Neither had said a word, and I wondered if they were just adjuncts for Geraldo, not conscious beings at all.

Cassie must have read the expression on my face. She grinned at me and said, ‘We’d love to come along. Pewter could do with a walk, couldn’t you Pewter?’

The dog didn’t reply, and I must have frowned again because she explained that he wasn’t enhanced in any way. ‘He’s just the same little puppy we bought in 2041, really. Life’s just one long walkies for him!’

‘This is the first one I’ve been really looking forward to,’ said Carys. ‘It looks all over the top and science fictional, but there’s more to it than that.’

‘I always think it’s really clever how they keep those stones floating in the sky,’ said Cassie. She was wearing a long red coat over her t-shirt and jeans, because she thought it would be cold inside the Gates. She was right: the warm morning air vanished, replaced by a chill, almost frosty, damp. The sun seemed to carry no warmth.

‘Dimensional symmetry disruption,’ said Geraldo.

‘Yes, I know the words,’ said Cassie. ‘But it still seems like – miraculous, to me. Against common sense.’

Carys had borrowed my phone and was looking at the guide. ‘“The gates themselves are based on Sumerian and Babylonian architectural forms from the late Terrestrial Era, but curved to form a space that has a vaginal form, a birth canal leading to the place of miracles beyond.” That’s what the artist says, Cassie, so you were right about the miracles.’

The little dog was running around the space, jumping and splashing in the shallow water. It ran up to me, and I automatically reached down and petted its head. A sort of shock ran through me. There was something familiar…

‘Do you want to come on with us for a bit?’ Carys asked. ‘The woods look warmer than this.’

‘I don’t think so, thanks,’ said Geraldo. ‘It always find it’s too warm for us there. And we need to get back for lunch.’

So we said our goodbyes and walked on. Geraldo was right: as soon as we left the Gates the air became much warmer, almost hot, and the sun shifted in the sky. The floating stones seemed to move too. My sketchy Knowing informed me that such distortions were to be expected when you messed around with the 11 substrata dimensions of the Universe, thus effectively altering the laws of physics. So it didn’t seem miraculous to me, like it did to Cassie, but that seemed a bit of a shame, really.

There were artworks in the woods: gossamer sheets of colour between the trees, marble pins in the ground, a ‘stream’ made of solid chromium metal. Cerys looked, explained, extemporised. Ava borrowed my phone to make notes. Rick and Darina looked bored and held hands.

Naomi said, ‘I don’t know why they do that. Geraldo and Cassie, and the dog. They could be anything they want to be – and they’ve just stayed the same for nearly a billion days. They won’t even be able to remember a tiny fraction of it all, even with plugins.’

‘They’re happy,’ said Ava without looking up from her notes. ‘That’s all that matters to them. And to Pewter, probably.’

I wondered if they were. I thought Geraldo was, but I wasn’t sure about Cassie. And no-one could ask Pewter.

Pewter. The dog. I had petted the dog and his fur was short and coarse and warm and his tail was thumping the ground…

‘Ava,’ I asked.

She looked up. Her face was bright in the cool green light, as if she were a fairy queen, a natural inhabitant of the forest.

‘Did your family have a dog?’