World Fixing

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. I wish I could eject these damn babies into it.

I squeeze hard on the brakes and the bike comes to an abrupt stop. That shuts them up.

I turn around, glaring at them with what I hope they perceive as intense ferocity. They’re arranged neatly in the corners of the battered old buggy like chubby potatoes.

“Who was crying just then?” I snap. We don’t have time to be dilly dallying. It’s more dangerous than usual around here.

They sense my anger. Baby1, Technician, raises an incredulous eyebrow. Baby2, Therapist, looks worried. The Triangulator (Baby3) is asleep. Baby 4 – the Muscle – bursts into tears.

“Right,” I say, and get off the bike. I stand over the pram, reaching for Baby4.

Babies 1 and 2 protest:

“Woah -“

“What the hell are you -“

“Come here.” I grab Baby4 and pull her close to my face. She stops crying, eyes wide with terror. “Listen,” I say, the burst of my hot stinking breath making her eyelids flicker. “You know full well the danger we’re in. You know full well what lives around here. What is probably listening to us right now. So if you don’t shut your bloody pie hole –”

Baby4 explodes into a grating, shuddering shriek, more riled up than ever.

Now Baby2 is really alarmed. “Hey!” she protests uselessly.

“You really are stupid, aren’t you,” Baby1 sneers at me, struggling to make himself heard. “You must be the stupidest eunuch to ever-”

Even Baby3 is paying attention now. “Um,” he says loudly, and everyone quietens down a little, surprised that he’s awake. “Um - maybe you shouldn’t be shouting in her face. Maybe that’s not helping?”

“Agreed,” says Baby2.

“I don’t know how you thought that would work, you absolute plonker,” adds Baby1.

I sigh irritably. Baby4 is looking up at me, lips wobbling. “You tell me what I should do then,” I snap at the others. “You’re the damn babies. What does it take to shut you up?”

“Well, you could think about changing your tone, for starters,” says Baby1.

“Just – just do what you feel to be right,” says Baby2 (the so-called Therapist) uncertainly.

Baby4 starts whimpering again. I sense the screams revving up inside of her like a chainsaw.

“Try rocking her,” says Baby3. “I think that’s what I’d like if that was me. Try rocking her.”

A quietness descends. I take a long, deep breath. Slowly, gently, I rock Baby4 backwards and forwards in my arms. Everyone, everything, begins to settle down.

I take in our surroundings. Boarded up old houses. Burnt out shops. Cratered road. Just like everywhere else. But there’s a different feeling in the air here. There’s a feeling that something is about to happen.

Babies 1-3 are watching thoughtfully. After a minute, Baby4’s eyes start to widen and she looks around, dazed. She rubs her forehead. “Bloody hell,” she croaks, her voice hoarse from screaming. “God. I don’t what that was. I’m so embarrassed.” She coughs and wipes her eyes. “I don’t know what that was, guys, honestly. Don’t know where that came from. Really sorry about that.” She looks up at me and pats my arm. “Thanks for that, mate.”

“Nicely done, eunuch,” says Baby1, his voice, for once, not laced with sarcasm. “There may be some hope for you yet.”

“Ok, enough,” I say firmly. “You’re not going to Fix the World if we keep stopping in territory like this.” I get back onto the bike and check that the pram’s chain is still properly clamped to the back of my bike. I look at Baby3, the Triangulator. “Where next?”

Baby3 sits up straight. He looks up at the sky. Eventually he points towards the east, and I start cycling us in that direction.

We travel in silence. The husks of London’s skyscrapers loom in the distance, inching ever closer. I weave between warped, rusted vehicles, some bearing sun-bleached bones.

After a while, Baby1 clears his throat. “How long till the next stop?”

I can’t answer that. I glance back at Baby3. “Um,” he says. “Well, we still need to stop off at the birthing facility for the Therapist, so…” He looks up at the blank red sky, reading it. “Another three hours’ ride?”

I’m relieved; I was worried it would be further. For the first time on our journey, I can feel myself getting tired. Baby2 has aged noticeably since we started out a few weeks ago. We haven’t talked about it, but I can tell it makes all of them uneasy.

“I wonder if there’s much useable tech left in these buildings?” Baby1 asks after a while, seemingly to himself. I hear the dull thuds of the N. bomb’s casing as Baby1 slaps it. “Just something to bear in mind should we need to patch this beauty up at any point.”

“No,” I say. “We aren’t leaving the road. Not at any point. Never.”

“God,” Baby1 sighs. “You’re quite the barrel of laughs, aren’t you?”

I glance at the babies in my side mirror. Baby1 has his back to me, hand on the N. Bomb. Baby2 is peering ahead, eyes squinted in thought, the hot breeze tousling the long ringlets of her hair. Babies 3 and 4 are asleep.

I cycle on.

The sun’s dim pinprick slides lower, dipping behind the skyscrapers. It’s evening now. Gusts of wind blow pre-historic rubbish across the streets. Occasionally, the babies talk amongst themselves. I tune them out.

We cross one of London’s bridges. What used to be the river, now constituted solely of red dust like most other things, stretches to flat wasteland in both directions.

Eventually, bored, I listen in to the babies’ conversation. “One of the greatest indignities of death by natural causes,” Baby2 is saying, “is that we’re remembered for how we were at the end. The abiding memory of us in those we care about is of us as we were at our weakest.”

Baby1 snorts. “Better to die young and suddenly then, eh?”

Baby2 doesn’t answer for a while. Then, eventually: “Quite possibly. I don’t know.”

The dense wall of concrete structures begins to thin out as we reach the suburbs of the city. “How much longer?” I ask.

“Another 30 minutes at this rate,” answers Baby3, after some thought.

It’s getting dark now. I glance at the shadows in the shells of houses on either side of us, watching for movement. My legs are burning. I can see my fat purple veins pulsing like snakes beneath my skin.

When we finally get to the birthing station, it is night-time – or at least, it is the time of day that approximates what used to be considered night. A deep crimson glows on most surfaces; faint embers glitter occasionally in the air.

“It’s just around this corner,” says Baby3. Baby2 looks relieved. I see Baby4 start to wake up. She looks dazed, with the night’s red light sparkling against a big patch of drool on one of her cheeks.

Slowly, quietly, I swing us out of the suburban road we’ve been travelling down. This looks like it used to be a green, grassy type of area. An institute of learning of some kind, perhaps.

We turn the corner for the birthing station.

I slam on the brakes.

The babies pile up against each other comically but are too tense and responsive to fear to make any noises.

“What the… bollocks?” whispers Baby1.

The lights are on in the birthing station in front of us. It’s at the end of the street. Its distinctive white-blue LED glow seeps out from the edges of all the boarded windows.

“But – there’s not meant to be anyone there, right? It’s automated, like all the others?” Baby3 asks these questions, fully aware of the answers.

“It’s not possible,” breathes Baby2, a mixture of wonder and terror in her big baby eyes. “Unless… there are others? Others here that aren’t Recorded?”

I don’t say anything. I cycle slowly towards the birthing station. The others hold their breath. I wince as the bike’s wheels squeak.

“The door!” hisses Baby2 urgently. “The door’s open! There are people in there!”

“Of course there are people in there,” Baby1 responds quietly. “The lights are motion activated.”

At that I stop, surveying the birthing station properly. Every window in the large, dome shaped building is alight. There must be at least thirty rooms in this station. I reach the same conclusion the other four likely did the second they saw the lights: there is a lot of movement going on in there.

The most unnerving thing is the complete lack of sound. Whatever’s running about in there is doing so silently.

We stay put, watching.

“What are we going to do?” whispers Baby4, her voice still thick with sleep.

I can’t answer that. But we have to do something – it’s too dangerous to stay still out here.

The five of us wait for someone to give instructions. Then, suddenly, Baby1 farts with such ferocity that we all jump. The gas comes out in bursts; first one blast, follow by two quick gunshots.

We all look at each other. My heart is racing. The others look mortified; Baby1 has turned grey. We are frozen in time; a moment laced with electricity.

“Look!” screams Baby3.

I snap around to face the birthing centre. Large shadows loom in the open doorway. More shadows quickly amass, blocking out the light. I stay completely still, praying they somehow can’t see us.

But no. Within seconds, they’re sprinting at us. Tongues lolling, long arms flailing; completely, freakishly silent.

“Eunuchs!” Baby1 shrieks, grasping onto the N. Bomb with all his strength.

There is a flood of them. Fifty, sixty, seventy; more of them, each one utterly enormous. They keep pouring from the birthing centre.

“We have to do something! We have to do something!” Baby2 is yelling.

“Baby4” I croak, my throat tight. “We need you now.”

Baby4 splutters, desperately rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “God,” she says, “OK, shit. Hang on. One sec.”

The closest of the eunuchs is about twenty seconds away. I see his eyes rolling wildly in his head, his rotting mouth agape. “Quick!” I shout, struggling to get my feet on the pedals. Baby4 is scrambling around frantically in the pram. More eunuchs are coming out of the birthing centre. Only the quiet rasps of their feet brushing against the road is audible.

“Alright, here we go,” Baby4 says. She leans out of the pram holding a small rectangular box with a gaping black hole at the front of it. She points it at the eunuchs. On the side of the box is an old fashioned winding handle. Baby4 gives it a quick spin, just as the first of the eunuchs is about to land on me.

What sounds like a sigh exits the box. Then, so dense it’s visible, a wall of compressed air shoots out, expanding quickly in all directions. The first eunuchs that meet the wave of air are, for a split second, flattened and stretched strangely backwards. Then, each one of them explodes into red vapour; tiny blobs of internal organs, muscle and crushed bones are suspended in the air briefly before being slammed viciously downwards, ground into the concrete by intense pressure. The large, rectangular shock of compressed air continues to roll through the horde, pulverizing every single one of them. It passes through the birthing station, reducing it and its contents to two-dimensional rubble. Then, suddenly, it dissipates.

There is a long silence. Hot steam rises from the mess on the ground, some of it bubbling away quietly. The air is heavy with the stink of blood.

Eventually, Baby1 speaks. “Well,” he says, addressing Baby4. “You don’t do much, but what you do, you do well.”

“Cheers,” says Baby4. She puts the box back down in the buggy.

Baby2 is looking at the remains of the birthing station forlornly. I look at her, now so much noticeably bigger and more developed than the others. She doesn’t have much time.

“Where’s the next one?” I ask.

“Well, it’s, uh…” Baby3 hesitates. “It’s… well, you know, it’s…”

“It’s in France,” says Baby2 flatly.

France. We’ve all heard the stories. Desolation and danger at near-mythical levels. But it has to be done. We have to Fix the World. And if it means cycling through France, then so be it.

“Get some sleep,” I tell them. I adjust the thick collar about my neck, careful to avoid setting off the explosives. Someone has to get them to where they need to be. And I have to do it quick.

I cycle through the viscera, trying not to recognise it as my own.