Oranges and Lemons
There was a greyness in the sky and in her hands; everything seemed coated with dullness, as if a great painter had swept across the sky with a bucket and offloaded the sodden grey water from his work. The place was a dead body; a great ancient dead body that sat peacefully and strangely in the sea; a techno-organic orgasm of Progress fashioned into a dead old monument to hubris.
Jenny knew this place of old, and didn’t think that anything had been disturbed since she had last came. It was difficult to remember, sometimes; everything faded into each other and became as grey as the sky or the steel or the sand. Great clumps of dead wire erupted from the nightmarish steel frame she walked; trees of veins wailed to the grey sky and their grey-red, grey-yellow, grey-blue forms sat eerily against the dead grey cityscape. She walked the walk she had walked a hundred times; down this piece of steelwork, under the great collapsed arches of steel and concrete and desire, down that piece of steelwork, over a chasm on a pipe like a tightrope-walker – she looked down, and saw the blackness of waiting eyes, though she knew there could be none, so looked back up again quickly at her target – through the twisted steel forest to the last living thing in the universe.
The room was warm and large, and the greys seemed somehow less grey than elsewhere in the city. There were no visible signs of life here; this place was just as still as the rest of the lost city, but she knew better than to assume that it was dead. She walked over to a computer bank set in the wall, dusted off the keys, and pressed a few at random. At once there was a great stirring and dust came up in clouds from where she was; everything seemed in turmoil and her mind and her vision seemed to fall out briefly.
“Jenny,” said a warm, vast voice from above her. “How lovely to see you again!”
She opened her eyes, and at once the room was gone from around her and she felt the gentle breeze that came in off the sea nipping at her cheeks and around the edges of her scarf. In front of her stood a great mechanical being that doubtless would have caused any of her aunts and uncles to faint; a shapely green steel giant sitting casually on the grey platform above the city of Khantonavosik which had once been the capital of the world.
She smiled. “Hello, ShatterScreen,” she said to the heart of the city that had once been a technological marvel. She clambered up onto a giant foot.
“Oh!” said ShatterScreen. “Sorry!”
They manoeuvred their hand down to where she was, and she crawled up onto it. Gently, they brought her up to their shoulder, which she climbed onto, hugging their neck so she didn’t fall off. (She wasn’t afraid of heights, but she thought it better to be on the safe side.) ShatterScreen turned themself around so that they could look out at the grey sea and sky instead of the steel spires that seemed to reach up into the air, desperately grasping for something that lay just out of reach. Jenny clung on tight – she wasn’t scared, she told herself, just the gravitational forces were something to be reckoned with.
The two old friends looked out at the grey sea and the city’s corpse, the former lapping incessantly at the latter.
“It’s been a while,” said ShatterScreen.
“I’ve been busy,” Jenny said, feeling sick to her stomach at the lie.
“I understand,” said ShatterScreen, smiling at the grey sky and the clouds. That only made her feel worse. She didn’t know what to say to them, how to make conversation with somebody who did nothing but sleep and see her because there was nothing else to do, nobody else to see, nowhere else to go.
She kept expecting to see a seagull flying over the sky, calling out to the world, to hear children playing, the sound of machinery, anything… but there was nothing but the distant roar of the sea like traffic and the gentle creaking of her friend. They at least were something. She clung onto the sounds as she clung onto ShatterScreen’s neck.
She thought she should say something. She didn’t. She felt the steady warm rhythm of her friend’s heart against her cheek as she leant into the steel. What a beautiful person they were. It was… nice, seeing them. So very nice.
Shatterscreen was speaking again. “How is your lover?” they asked. “How is your world? Please tell me, I like to hear of other places.”
Jenny cringed internally. She couldn’t bring herself to tell them the truth.
“Laura’s – Laura’s doing well,” she said. “Got herself a new job, she has, she’s very happy with it. Fixing things, building things… well, you know Lor, she’s in her element.” She was throwing herself into the pretence as if her life depended on it, but she couldn’t quite hide the sadness in her eyes. Luckily ShatterScreen was looking out at the sea. “She’s so clever, I couldn’t do that sort of thing. Well, you probably know that stuff and all, I could never wrap my head around it. And the world? I mean it’s great, really great, they’re bringing in a – a bill now, you know, so that all the – the places… well, you know what I mean… they’ve got to have trees and be good for wildlife and stuff. And, uh, President Mamdani’s stopped all the war in the Middle East and given everyone sweeties, and it’s all great!”
She felt the great steel body shift slightly under her, in what she thought was a comfortable way, and breathed out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding in.
“I am glad,” said ShatterScreen. “To hear that you are happy makes me happy also.”
“That’s good,” said Jenny, catching a sob that really oughtn’t to have been in her throat in the first place. Was she crying now? She didn’t cry, damn it all, and certainly ShatterScreen couldn’t see her! Why, it would break their heart… She couldn’t…
The two sat together for a while more, thinking little and feeling little, the only life in the great grey empty universe stretching away farther than anyone could ever imagine. It could have been a minute they sat there or a hundred years; time seemed useless and blurry and strange and wouldn’t quite fit in their eyes. There was only the greyness of the world and each other’s warmth and the unspoken feelings that would stay unspoken forever.
At length, ShatterScreen spoke again.
“Will you sing to me, Jenny?” they asked quietly. “Your voice is so beautiful, I like to hear you sing.”
Jenny smiled. She didn’t like her voice, and never sang except for when she was here. She hadn’t wanted to sing the first time, but ShatterScreen had seemed to want her to, so she had acquiesced, and ever since she would sing to them when she was here but nowhere else. It was a strange thing, the singing; one seemed to lose oneself in it. It frightened her and pleased her all at once.
“Yeah,” she said, “I’ll sing to you.”
A tune came to her lips, an old tune that seemed as familiar to her as her eyes or tongue.
“Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clemen’s,” she sang, uncertainly, and her quavering voice filtered into the great greyness.
A memory sat behind her eyelids; a hand on her hair, gentle, a woman’s voice.
“I owe you five farthings, say the bells of St Martin’s,” continued the song, and it seemed to escape from her like air now, and she couldn’t have stopped it if she wanted to.
It was a memory of her mother.
“When will you pay me, say the bells of Old Bailey,” she sang, and the memory nearly made her stop and cry, but the song barrelled through and seemed to be a sort of crying in itself.
In the memory it was dark and she was small and her mother stood over her.
“When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch,” went the lilting melody, drifting down and down into herself.
She couldn’t remember what her mother looked like.
“When will that be, say the bells of Stepney,” she sang softly, and the voice seemed to be the same as her mother’s, which she did remember now.
She wanted to cry so very badly, but settled for the last phrase.
“I’m sure I don’t know, says the great bell at Bow.” And the song finished, and hung uncertainly in the air.
ShatterScreen shifted.
“I remember that song,” they said. “There’s another bit to it. Will you sing it?”
Jenny remembered the rest of the song, and felt very strange indeed.
“Maybe another time,” she said.
“Alright,” said ShatterScreen. “Thank you for singing.”
There was silence again, a strange silence full of emptiness and forgotten things like molten lead in the hollow of a tree or flecks of gold and silver in a person’s face.
“I should go soon,” said Jenny. “I need to eat something.”
“I understand,” said ShatterScreen, always infuriatingly gentle.
Jenny looked up at the great green steel face. She wanted to cry and scream at it and stamp her foot and run and run until there was nothing but running left for her, but she didn’t.
“Come with me,” she said. “I can take you anywhere in all existence; a new world, a new life, a new start. It’d be fun. It’d be an adventure.”
The face turned slightly, and looked down at Jenny. She saw two great warm eyes of fire and ice, so kind and red and blue in the grey light.
“You know my answer,” said ShatterScreen, smiling slightly and sadly. “I will stay here and wait for the sun to go out, and when the sun dies I shall die as well.”
“Until it does,” said Jenny, “I will come back here forever.”
“Thank you,” said ShatterScreen.
Jenny gulped down a sob again furiously. What was it with her today? She pulled herself up on the neck, and sighed deeply. Stupid. Stupid, stupid Jenny. She felt like throwing up again.
“I – I wasn’t being honest with you earlier,” she said. “About any of it.” She didn’t want the words to come, but they came anyway, surprisingly easily now, in a stream flowing from the open dam. “I’ve not been busy, I’ve been avoiding you, because it makes me sad to see you like this. My world’s fucked, nearly as fucked as yours, perhaps: war, environmental collapse, famine, disease, technology, all of it. And Laura…” She swallowed again. “Laura’s dead. So, yeah, I’ve… I’ve not been doing great, but I didn’t want to worry you and all, because I thought it’d make you sad and I couldn’t bear the thought of you all alone like this feeling sad about me, but I thought you deserved to be told the truth because you’re my friend, and, like, friends shouldn’t lie to each other. So I’m sorry.”
She was breathing very fast, and she felt awful and light-headed, like she was going to fall down and down into the great metal and concrete streets below.
“Oh, Jenny,” said ShatterScreen, smiling, and they held out their hand for Jenny. She climbed on, and ShatterScreen held her up to their great steel face, and Jenny saw an oily tear descend from the eye of fire and it was all she could do not to cry as well. “You are not good at lying. I always knew. But I thank you for trusting me enough to tell me the truth. I will survive it. I have, after all, survived worse.” They seemed to think for a moment. “When I was young,” they said. “I was volatile. Angry. I would lash out, hurt people, not think my actions through. When I look into your eyes I see my younger self. Be better than I was, Jenny.”
Jenny looked up at ShatterScreen. Too overcome to say anything, she vanished, leaving the last living thing in the universe to wait quietly for the sun to go out, green under the grey grey sky.
Here comes the candle to light you to bed,
Here comes the chopper to chop off your head,
Chip chop, chip chop, the last… man’s… dead!
To The Shifter Chronicles