Cages

‘Do you think you’ll be all right outside for a bit?’

Carys and I were standing by one of the huge airlocks that led out of the dome to the Central Plain beyond. Of course there was just as much air outside as inside now, and creepers were growing around the controls, but the original of this towering steel space would have been filled with machines of all sizes, and even a few humans in protective suits, or travelling inside the machines.

‘There’s a bit of the Art Trail I want to show you,’ Carys went on.

I decided I would try. If I was going to stay here, I would have to get used to it.

Once we were through the lock, the sun hit my face and I felt a lurch of panic in my stomach. I took a breath. The air was hot. I was standing on a stony plain, with small tussocks of dry grass here and there. Heat shimmered, distorting the narrow horizon.

‘It’s only over here.’ Carys was walking towards what looked like a red brick wall snaking across the dry plain. It was a couple of hundred metres, so I just followed him.

I felt OK. Sweating a little, anxious, but not dizzy or buzzy in any way.

Thanks, Naomi.

There was no gate in the wall, but Carys just walked through. I hesitated, then followed him. There was no sensation of touching anything at all: the wall just wasn’t there as a solid object.

Inside were cages.

Perhaps a hundred of them, with what looked like dead plants sunk into the ground between them. Some of the cage doors were open, some were closed. I noticed that the ground was now red, more like Mars than the Moon. I remembered Mars Hill, and felt the sweat on my forehead starting to trickle down my face. I turned to go back to the dome and…

Ran into a brick wall. From this side, it was solid.

I was shaking now.

Carys put a hand on my arm. ‘You OK?’

‘I’m starting to feel a bit wobbly,’ I admitted. ‘How do you get back through the wall?’

There was a fractional pause where Carys seemed to be looking into the distance. I guessed he was checking with Naomi.

‘OK, so we’ll do this quickly,’ he said. ‘You get in one of the cages.’

I went to one of the open doors and stepped inside. I could feel the heat radiating from the metal on the floor.

Carys joined me and closed the door. I felt the panic rising – but was jolted out of it by a change of view.

The other cages were gone. The wall was gone. The vast domes towering into the sky were gone. Instead, the red plain dotted with dead plants just went on, and on, and on, to a seemingly infinite horizon.

‘Where -?’

‘Dimensional trick,’ said Carys. ‘It’s a bubbleverse. But do you see the art of it?’

‘Can we just get out? How do we get back?’ My voice was a little shaky.

Carys just opened the cage door and walked out. I almost pushed him over in my eagerness to follow…

And we were back on the Central Plain, the domes and the airlock in front of us, the red brick wall behind us. There was no sign of the cage.

Carys got me inside the domes again, and sat me down in a small cool cafe with blue metal chairs. Darina and Rick were there, sharing a pink cold drink from a tall glass, using a pair of long straws.

‘Of course there’s another way out,’ said Carys after a while.

Rick laughed. ‘I know. We tried it.’

‘You climb up the wall,’ said Darina. ‘It’s easy enough, it’s only a couple of metres. An anthrozeb could jump it in this gravity.’

Rick was still grinning. ‘But you end up in the same place. An infinite plain, hot and dry, no water. So you have to go back.’

‘The only way out is a cage,’ said Carys. ‘See what I mean?’

I took a slurp of the fizzy, sweet drink they’d given me. ‘Sorry but I don’t.’ I was still feeling a bit shaky. I wished Ava was there.

‘Leave him alone, Carys,’ said Darina. ‘He doesn’t get it. And to be honest I’m not sure I do.’

‘If you are everything, you are also nothing,’ said Carys. ‘Your limitations are your cell walls.’

Rick was laughing. ‘I suppose we knew an artist would be a pain,’ he said. ‘That’s why we named him after tooth decay!’

To my surprise Carys was laughing too. ‘Yes, and I had to look that one up, too. You cut the memory clean out of my template!’ He winked at me. ‘At least you got a standard name.’

I stared at my dark drink fizzing in its tall glass. They had cut all the memory out of my template. Had they thought that was a joke too? Was that why Rick had behaved like he did? At least they were trying to look after me now, but…

I didn’t belong with them. I wanted to get up, walk away from the table and start talking to lizards.

Instead I asked, ‘What does “Ava” mean?’

But they didn’t know.

I’m writing this at Little Crater Lake, where we’re going spend a couple of days. There are nice, comfortable, wooden huts in the woods around the lake, and we have one each.

Ava has explained how she’s made it possible for me to stay on the Moon as myself, in my own body, but I need a break, so I’ll tell you about it later. For now, I’m going to take a walk around the crater wall above the lake.

On my own. I need to do some thinking.