CUBE: Part Three

I can see the Earth framed in the centre of the window.

You have no idea how . . . miraculous it looks; that tiny, tiny world, hanging in the void. It doesn’t look natural. It hangs in space the same way a hammer doesn’t hang in the air. I press myself to the glass that I don’t think is glass - there’s something metallic about its texture - and long to be there, on the surface once again. My bones ache with it. It’s like being in love with someone you will never have, a drink of water always out of reach.

The loud humming that began when I first felt that initial movement hasn’t subsided. It’s all around me, and I try to imagine what’s going on out there. Am I attached to some kind of satellite? An alien ship? Or am I simply hovering, a tiny lifeboat lost in all that blackness? What if the humming stops? Will I freefall through space? I wrap my blanket around me. I’m thirsty, but I can’t leave the window and the sight of my planet. If it disappeared while I was looking away, I’d never forgive myself.

#

That day when someone knocked on the front door Amy and I jumped, then stared at each other with too-large eyes.

It was early morning. We were eating the last of the toast. Marshmallow was on the counter, eating his half can of cat food, because he was on rations. And then the knock.

We’d had attempted break-ins, a cursory walk around by two police late one night (we hunkered down behind the sofa and eventually they went away) and the occasional visit from a neighbour. But rarely a polite knock, as if the world had returned to normal.

I tip-toed over to the peephole.

And recognised those salt and pepper curls immediately.

When I swung the door open she beamed at me; a small, birdlike woman with a pixie-face that didn’t fool me at all.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello!’ She held up a bottle of wine. A full bottle of wine.

‘They’ve cut the power off,’ she said, as if that was a perfectly ordinary way to start a conversation. Then she peered around me, into the hallway. ‘Power’s still on here,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘Listen, we don’t really . . .’

‘Perhaps I should call the police?’ she asked, smiling like she’d just offered me cookies.

‘For god’s sake, let her in!’ said Amy, brushing past me and opening the door as if she was our dear old grandma. Then she said, ‘Hi, I’m Amy.’ Very politely.

‘Hello Amy, I’m Dorothy. It’s nice to see some people still have manners in this godforsaken world.’

Dorothy swept in, having a good sticky beak as she made her way to the kitchen. ‘Do you want to get some glasses, or do I need to find them myself?’

Because her power had been shut off we made sure to empty her pantry and fridge and cart everything next door. When I say we, I mean Amy and I. Dorothy was on a pool lounger, claiming to have a bad back and brushing Marshmallow.

‘She’s old,’ said Amy, determined to adopt her as we packed tinned soup and frozen bread and bottles of vodka into plastic shopping bags

‘She’s a drunk, and she’s mean. She tried to kick me.’

‘Because you were shouting at her!’

‘She tried to pinch my toast.’

‘She’s an alcoholic who lives on her own. Have you seen how skinny she is? Just be nice.’

Back at the house we packed everything away carefully, freezing what we could because there was the beginnings of a food shortage. Sometimes the shelves at the supermarket stayed empty for days. And sometimes the supermarkets stayed shut because there wasn’t anyone to run the checkouts.

Worse than the empty shelves was the fear they’d close down and be liquidated, like so many other businesses had.

That summer a new god had risen. A saviour that could save you from the Big Scary Rock from Space. And its name was money.

Money would buy you a survival shelter. One of those fancy ones with all the bells and whistles, made for today’s survivalist. One you could fit all your family and friends in, and stock for a whole year.

Of course, to know how to stock it correctly you could go to one of the many seminars that were set up, where, for a price, you could learn all sorts of tips and tricks those sheep out there would never know, to keep you and your loved ones alive through the apocalypse. Live out your dream of being the alpha male in your very own tribe! Keep your children alive! Inherit the Earth! Here, buy this really big gun with things attached to it.

And if you were really serious, and really fucking rich, you could buy a ticket to the Ark Fleet.

The Ark Fleet was a bunch of specialty-built ships hidden off the coast of Norway, or Greenland, or wherever. The story often changed. There were enough places for one million people, the humans that would inherit the new age, a civilisation birthed from billionaires. The conspiracy was that the ships had been built years ago, because the rich and powerful had known about 2023QF5 from the beginning, while the rest of us were only told about Twenty-three before it became visible to the naked eye and couldn’t be kept a secret anymore.

Money was the new saviour, and that meant people lost their jobs, their homes and their cars so someone could have a bit more of it. When the first bank folded and took everyone’s life savings with them people started withdrawing everything they had and paying cash. So robbery and home invasions became constant. Amy and I were robbed twice during the day, while out roaming the city for food. They took our money and whatever we’d found. Once when someone attacked at cashier at Woolworths I snatched the money out of the till before anyone else could, grabbed Amy’s hand and ran.

‘We just have to ride it out,’ said Dorothy that evening, and reached across the island bench to pat Amy’s hand as she pan-fried steak. Only weeks before we would have had a barbecue out in the backyard - we hardly ever had meat in those days - but by then we’d become worried about the smell. About who we’d attract. Lately it seemed there was always some car driving slowly down the street at night, always a shadowing figure darting around.

‘Ride out what?’ said Amy, still shaken. ‘It’s never going to end, is it? Until it does. And we didn’t get anything today. Half the places are shut . . .’

‘Either it hits and we all go to hell. Or it misses and everything goes back to normal,’ broke in Dorothy. ‘Either way, this won’t last, and tonight we have steak.’

She was right, of course. We just had to make it through the year, and see how our fate played out.

#

This is a good place to tell you that I have exactly three tattoos.

You won’t know why I’m telling you this right now. It’s not important. It will become clear later.

The first one says, ‘If not now, when?’ Right where I wrote it in biro all those years ago, when I realised I had to get away from my stoner friends and make a new life for myself.

The second one’s kind of cringey. It’s the word ‘Survivor’ on my left shoulder blade, in loopy writing. You should never get a statement tattoo in your twenties. It should be law. Have you ever met anyone in their twenties who know anything about life?

The third one is a feather, curled around my upper right bicep. No particular reason. I just liked the design.

Before the end of the world I contemplated getting more. There was a strange sense of pride in belonging to the last group of humans. And it wasn’t like I had to worry about being older and embarrassed about it. But I never got around to it. I spent most of my time being joyously happy to be alive and full of hope that Twenty-three would dart past us like a bullet, or getting drunk and trying to put it out of my mind.

Three tattoos. Remember that.

#

Money wasn’t the only deity to rise into power after the discovery of Twenty-three, of course. There was also science and religion, and the subjects of these three gods spent their last days screaming at each other.

But for those of us who had neither cash nor patience for the mythical idols of long-ago, something wonderful happened just as Summer began to wind down into a glorious, mellow Autumn.

I was sweeping a few leaves out of the pool when Amy started shouting.

I dropped the rake and ran into the house, alarmed. I thought the police had turned up. But I found her in front of the television, saying ‘Look! Look at what they’re saying!’ as Dorothy wandered out from the kitchen, morning vodka in her hand.

A balding man was being interviewed on the morning news. The news readers looked positively childlike, their eyes wide, lips parted as they unconsciously leant forward.

The back of my neck prickled.

‘What . . ?’

‘Shhh!’ Amy jabbed me in the ribs as she turned up the sound, and I heard one of them start to talk.

‘So let’s make this clear, you’re saying this deviation has meant . . .’

The balding man was obviously the kind that hated to be interrupted. He waved his hand in that self-important way some people do, and said, ‘Again, the latest data tells us the asteroid now has a thirty-five percent chance of missing Earth entirely . . .’

I heard myself gasp, my body suddenly weak. My head swum.

‘ . . . because its deviated somewhat from its former trajectory. This isn’t unheard of, and though it’s still travelling towards us . . .’

I felt myself dropping onto the couch as a childlike joy rose in me, swallowing his words with the blind trust of the devout. Of course I did. Amy was smiling and hugging herself. Then she hugged me, and Dorothy, who was crying and murmuring, ‘He said that. He really said that, didn’t he?’

People were always predicting that the fuel was going to run out, but that day we didn’t care. We jumped into the hatchback and drove to the beach.

It was packed with families; parents and little kids splashing around in the shallows. It was obvious that everyone there had heard, and on that sunny, perfect-weather day we had left the safety of our homes to feel the sun on our skins, and perhaps to look at one another again, from a safe distance.

We put Marshmallow in his little harness and took turns carrying him, because he’d decided he was terrified of the sand and the water. We never left him in the house alone, always aware Pam and David could return at any moment, or that the police could turn up and throw us out. We walked along the shoreline and kicked our feet through the incoming waves and found seashells. A little boy ran over, wanting to pat Marshmallow, who was incredibly gracious about it.

The shops were all shut, but for some reason a woman in a sarong was handing out apples from a string bag, saying, ‘These are from my tree, share and enjoy,’ to everyone in a singsong voice. We took our apples, sat in the sand and soaked up the communal hope.

Dorothy told us a little about her life. She’d been a hairdresser in her twenties, then married. She was widowed now, and her son had died when he was twenty-one, during his first year as a probationary constable. That’s when she’d started drinking. She drank from sunup to sundown, just to maintain her equilibrium. Amy and I hugged her, and we cried together as the late afternoon sun began to lower.

That Autumn #thiryfive and #wewillsurvive trended hard. People started saying this was a wake-up call for humanity. A new age. A bohemian vibe began to overtake the media. Good news stories about people sticking together were jammed in wherever possible. We heard that people were returning to their jobs, that family businesses were opening again, after cleaning away the broken glass and graffiti. People flocked to them and urged others on social media to support the small business, to bring back the good old days, now that the big supermarkets and let us all down so badly.

Anyone who said the initial scientist was wrong was shouted down and ignored, rumours about their personal lives quickly circulated. We just didn’t want to hear it.

The weather was amazing - warm afternoons and evenings with golden-edged hues. I laughed and wore cute little dresses and sandals, (thanks Pam, you’re the best) and I let Dorothy cut my hair. We made meals together and played poker at the outdoor table near the pool, orphans who had found a family to see out the apocalypse with.

The people behind the counters - and there were a few more of them that autumn - would smile and look you in the eye, and you did the same. ‘Have a nice day,’ took on a new weight. The managers of supermarkets went online and gave speeches about how they were going to stick it out with us, that we were in this together. They weren’t shut so often. People were stacking shelves again.

Suddenly we had real, tangible hope.

For a very short period, Twenty-three no longer trended as much.

We all just wanted to stop, to take a breath. So we did.

#

I’m sure of it now; the Earth is getting bigger.

If I really am moving towards it, does this mean I’m going back? That I really will be able to feel my feet on the ground once again?

I sit and watch and ignore my thirst and my hunger. And because I’m just sitting here and trying not to keep myself busy, and distracted, I can’t help thinking about the things I’ve been furiously pushing down in my mind, in order to hold onto my sanity.

It would seem that I am not entirely myself.