They arrived to protect us, but we treated them shamefully.
Quantum Loop
It had happened very quickly when the Ozone layer across the entire planet collapsed. The fierce heat of the sun melted the polar icecaps, oceans rose and flooded coastal settlements on almost every landmass. Wild fires tore through the townships on lower grounds, in the Americas, in Europe and Asia. Whether it was man-made, or the wrath of God, the result was the same, human life was under threat of extinction, along with everything else. The newspapers, the radio, the internet, all were full of End-of-the-World headlines. And soon the electrics overheated, and most overhead lines carrying our electricity and communications, and the satellites above began to break down. Everyone called it Day Zero, the day everything stopped. And we all waited to die.
But then, they came.
It was just a few days after Day Zero, but it seemed like months of Hell in between. For those of us who saw the arrival, and I was just fourteen, it was an answer to our silent prayers.
I was raised to be strong, living on the farm, but we watched our crops whither and curl, the hard-worked future of my parents, and theirs before them, disappearing forever. I had braved the bright, hot yard to fetch some water from the well and heard a strange sound above, like a thousand locusts, Then looked up. I dropped the bucket and raced back to the porch of our ramshackle, single story farmhouse.
“Dad, Dad, look!” I could see my father in the shadows inside. He was harsh man, tall and imposing, and he left no room for ambiguity in his life.
“What is it now son, I can’t move, it’s too damned hot.”
“Dad—”
“Go and bother your mum.” He wandered further back into the shadows, muttering.
“But Dad, it’s a, some sort of, you know, Dad, it’s a miracle.”
My mother emerged, her eyes squinting. “You bothering your father again? You know how that will end.”
“Yeah, yeah, but look! Up.” By now I was somewhere between desperate and over-excited.
My mother sighed, and raised an eyebrow. Her eyes followed slowly, and then she shrieked! “Ezekiel, you’ve gotta look!” Her husband’s muttering grew closer and from the shadows he joined his wife and son looking towards the white-hot skies.
“Oh my Lord!”
“How is that possible?”
“What is that?”
“Mom, they look like flying robots.” Indeed, the wonder of it was that these elevated forms, thousands of them, like a vast umbrella across the skies just seemed to float there, high, high above us, barely discernible.
“They’re everywhere, all the way to the horizon.”
“I can see the sky beyond, but it isn’t as bright as it was.”
The radio, seemingly dead for a few days, sputtered into life in the front room “…a shield across the heavens, we have reports coming in from around the world, all telling us the same thing: temperatures have plummeted. Whatever this phenomenon is, it’s replacing the effect of the Ozone layer. Perhaps we’re walking back from DayZero.”
“I don’t believe it.” My dad slouched back in, a contrarian at the best of times, he would find it hard not to see the downside of this miracle.
“Not sure I do, but I’ll take it.” My mother laughed. I watched her throw her head back, and relax a little for the first time in weeks, perhaps longer if I had thought about it. I had an insight into this wonderful woman and what she might have been if she’d not met my brute of a father.
The weeks passed, and more information filtered through about our new protection. It seems that the whole planet was covered by the shield of floating mechanical beings. Photos taken by daredevil pilots showed the robots standing in the air, their millions of legs, like tree roots in the sky, and above them a weird structure of spinning blades and translucent, overlapping sails. It was a mystery, but a welcome one.
Inevitably some people felt threatened by what they didn’t know, forgetting those days when we nearly burned up, denying the problem that caused Day Zero, that it even happened. We began to hear reports of our metal heroes occasionally dropping from the sky, crashing into roofs, or cars, and being torn apart by the locals.
“Mum, what’s wrong with these people, it makes me mad.” We looked out of our front window, at the slowly recovering crops.
“Some people don’t want to believe in anything other than the few small things around them, the familiar, the safe, even if it kills them.”
“Yeah well, folk shouldn’t be vilified for protecting their own property.” My father coughed loudly.
My mother whispered to me, and nodded ruefully across at her husband, who held his two bore rifle in the crook of his arm. “Yep, and he’s one of ‘em.”
That night, as I drifted into sleep, I heard a huge rush, a massive impact and our home shook briefly. My father was out drinking with his bar-flies in the nearest town, and my mother would be listening to her music with her headphones on, in the back room.
I rolled out of bed, tucked my shirt in messily and sneaked down the stairs, unexpectedly passing my mother whose roll-up, now smoking a hole in the carpet, trailed from her graceful, fallen hand.
I opened the front door into the darkness outside and switched on the night light. There, in the middle of the yard I saw a large form moving slightly, as though trying to stand up, but failing repeatedly.
“Hello?” I whispered, with the confidence of the naive. The fact that what I could see now was a huge metal creature who could crush me like a bug did not seem to trouble me, and I reached out to touch it. I remember my curiosity, and as much concern as I would feel for any living creature on the farm.
“Ah.” A sound emitted from somewhere, all around perhaps. “I––“ The voice held onto the air, inhaling it seemed, for an age. And, amongst the broken metal of what must be the head I saw a glimpse of a face reflected in the light from the porch, pain stretched across it, but neither male nor female it was utterly beautiful. It stilled me for a moment, and as I sought its eyes I saw they were too were perfect, and they held the fragile breath within me.
“I need to get you out of the yard.” The thought of my father returning suddenly, perhaps with his drunken friends, suddenly worried me. I ran around the slumped form, which seemed to be at least twice the size of my father, and headed for the cattle shed. Quickly opening the door I ran back and tried to figure out what to do.”
“You will help me?” The voice floated around me.
“Of course. But I need to hide you over there. It’ll be safe for a few days. My dad doesn’t deal with the cows anymore, leaves it to me, see.” I babbled, no idea whether I could be understood, as I tried to lift the metal creature as if it was a fallen bullock. “Oh, you’re so light!” I put my strong right arm under what felt like shoulders, and lifted it up, half dragging it to the shed.
“You are kind.” That drifting voice again.
“Well, not as kind as you and your fellows are, saving our planet an all.”
“We have good reason to help you.” The reply was faltering.
“Whatever that is, best to save it till the morning. I’ll need to talk to my mum and see what we can do with you.”
“I will not recover.”
“You will! I’ll make sure of that.”
“Ah. My metal shell has pierced by body…”
“Oh, so you’re not…”
“…a robot.” The impression of a smile spread across my mind, a sort of distant gentle laughter.
“So––“
“We come from your future. If your planet dies, then so do we. Our technology is so far advanced we have harnessed the power of what you call quantum entanglement.”
“As if I know what that is!” But in my head images formed, tiny shapes within atoms, and I saw minute particles separated but still connected by folded space, and technology that harnessed the energy of the sun powered the passage of atoms, then larger objects, through time and space. So ,our future selves brought their technology to the past, creating a virtuous loop to protect the planet far into the future.
“You see, it’s not necessary to protect me, for there are so many others like me, that we are bound to protect your Time.”
“I won’t let you die.” I was shocked by the idea of losing this strange, beautiful creature. I knew I could help, as long as I could keep my father away for long enough.
But that’s another story…
[the end, for now]Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.
Text, image, audio © 2020 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells, Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, Apogee Condenser microphone, and Alfons Schmidt’s fantastic Notebook app.
More Tales
There are many other great stories in this series, including:
- Peak Democracy
- Lifer
- The Good Doctor
- Complicit
- Corn Field
- Age
- Crossroads Hotel
- Cosmic Hall
- Righteous
- Lost Voice
- Break Out
- Daily Mask
- The Big Man
- Bewildered
- Two Faces
- Shaman
- The Three Laws
- Ophelia A.I.
- Henge
Some background on the science behind Hunter and Bain’s adventures: Concepts of Time
And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast with information about submissions.
Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.