Dee opened her eyes. She knew it was morning. Hours after the final quake rocked the earth, she’d linked up with her colleagues across the planet. Project New Baby had begun. They set their clocks and calendars in motion. For two years, the planet rocked and shook but Dee’s instruments showed a quietening this past week and her colleagues confirmed her data. Genevieve in Australia forecast one month before they could venture onto the surface. Dee, Bryan, Katya and the rest, predicted three.
Zippy appeared from her cat bed, her stripy legs stretching and her claws scratching the fraying carpet. Dee lifted the hatch and Zippy climbed into position. It made Dee smile every day to see a cat use a toilet bowl like a human.
Dee sat on her generator bike, pedalling slowly, her body awakening to the gentle exercise. Her skin prickled, her ears buzzed and she stopped, shaking her head and rubbing at her arms. Zippy growled.
A figure hung in the air. The face was blurred but the mouth moved frantically, though no noise came out. The figure became a woman, waving her arms above her head, urgency etched in the frantic movements. Dee reached out a hand over the bike towards her and the buzzing in her ears lowered to a deafening drone. Dee screamed and Zippy yowled. The image faded. Heavy air, filled with silence, squashed Dee to the floor. Sweat coursed over her body, shivers traversing her spine. She crawled to her bed, resting her head on her hands and making soothing noises to the terrified cat.
Dee didn’t believe in ghosts but what other explanation could there be for the phenomenon that had visited her these past weeks? After the first visit, she contacted the group. None of the others had experienced the ghostly visit. No instruments had recorded anything strange.
“I’m not going mad.”
“Of course, you’re not! Just because you can’t explain it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. We both work in a field that confirms that. You been taking your vits?”
“Thanks, Kat and no, but I’ll get on to it.”
“Make sure you do. You can’t expect the mind to function at its best unless you feed the body.”
Dee hung her bedding in the cargo net strung across the ceiling, giving it a chance to air. The fan in the giant vent turned, slowly circulating air from the underground tunnels below. Rent on her inner London house had been exorbitant. Bryan had sent money to help. Sinking her survival pod close to the underground system had been essential to her plans. She never asked Kat how she had acquired the detailed plans of the tunnels and shafts that peppered the earth below London, but the property was perfect. For twelve months, she prepared, filling her basement and then the survival capsule with food and equipment.
Dee pulled the metal box on wheels from beneath her bed and lifted out an archive box. Sat at her battered old desk, with a weighty tome open in front of her, she made notes, stopping often to extricate scraps of paper from the box and attaching them with staples to her notes. Within an hour, she abandoned her desk, pacing her metal cage instead like a captured lion.
Five years ago, she accepted Bryan’s offer to join New Baby, an eager young scientist, flushed with success at having her first paper published on quantum mechanics. Orphaned at two years old, she didn’t remember her parents, having been brought up by her grandparents, but the inheritance she received on her twenty first birthday funded her continued path at University. She grieved the loss of family and siblings for three months but once the idea began for her PhD, she left loneliness behind her and used the academic world as her security blanket. She linked with other brilliant young scientists across the globe, sharing ideas and inspiring each other.
The Large Hadron Collider provided new and exciting data for Dee and Katya to expand their understanding of quantum mechanics. Conference calls lasted hours and were followed by weeks of intense work by both women. Before the ice cap melted and the world began to rock, they had workable theories for alternate universes and were close to a break- through theory on time travel.
After three hundred and sixty-five days underground, they celebrated the success of New Baby. They were alive and working within their specialist fields to be the founders of a new world, once the surface of the planet was habitable. Dee joined them, raising a cup of black tea to the future but doubts were creeping in. She didn’t join the majority who maintained that humanity had brought this disaster on themselves and deserved to die, leaving only the brightest minds to populate the planet. She mourned the deaths of millions of innocents, secretly hoping that some survived, deep in the caverns, caves and tunnels of her beloved earth.
The day of her thirty third birthday arrived and departed without note or celebration from her colleagues, apart from Kat who connected one-to-one and wished her a happy day.
“And plenty more beneath the sun, if this planet ever calms down!”
Dee worked less on her project, recognising the signs of depression but being careful not to voice her diagnosis on NB communications. After the first apparition, she also kept the ghostly sightings to herself, only sharing her experiences with Kat.
“Do you recognise the face?”
“The image is too blurry.”
“Like a hologram?”
“I know I said ‘image’ but that suggests 2D and the woman is definitely 3D.”
“So a ghost then?”
“It’s as good an explanation as any but the pain in my head when she appears really hurts so I wish she’d go away.”
“Hurts how?”
“Feels like my features are being rearranged and slammed into my face. You got an idea?”
“No, but it’s interesting.”
“I chose to be a theoretical scientist! I’m not one of the loonies who want to try their theories on themselves because I don’t like pain!”
“Only Xi Wen does that and nothing seems to affect him, which is also interesting.”
“I’d rather she left me alone.”
“I know but try and keep an open mind. Could it be someone in a tunnel or cave somewhere, trying to communicate with you?”
“Maybe but who else would have that kind of technology?”
“It’s a ghostly conundrum, for sure. I’m going to eat and pedal. Take it easy.”
“I will.”
On the generator bike, Dee allowed her mind to wander. She saw the wave from above, gathering momentum, rising from Neptune’s dominion and crashing onto the face of the earth. Trees lay bare and fallen like a million pencils spilled onto a dusty field. Magnificent architecture, battered and blasted, cast eerie silhouettes against the battle torn sky. Piles of rotting corpses, adults, children and babies, their insides blown to pieces by the forces of nature were predated by hordes of animals and screaming insects. Tears fell from her pale cheeks. Sweat prickled her shaved head, but Dee kept pedalling.
Zippy emerged from her bed, her miaow hungry and pitiful. Dee climbed down to feed her, stroking the soft warm fur behind Zippy’s ears until her purr rang out like a buzz saw. Dee watched her eat, the tiny bundle of life who had zipped into Dee’s back garden and pelted towards the back door while sirens squealed across the city. Dee had scooped the kitten into her arms and run into the house as the first tremor hit. Down the basement steps, she heard her own voice, a whimpering, animal howl. She closed the metal door, the final chinks of daylight she might ever see, blinking out like a snuffed flame.
Everyone in NB berated her for her foolishness and the impracticalities of keeping a pet but Kat laughed and congratulated her for finding a companion for her life in a twenty by ten metal box.
With a string bag over her shoulder, Dee opened the first door to the store and Zippy padded after her. She sat contentedly washing her face while Dee secured one door before opening the other. Her head torch highlighted stacks of labelled boxes and crates, while a gentle whirring confirmed the freezer was working. She lifted the lid enough to slide a hand and then an arm in, her fingers grasping a plastic bag. On closer inspection, she recognised cherries, blackberries and blueberries with the customary chocolate chip cookie. From the o
ther end of the freezer, she extracted a similar bag but this time containing sausages, mashed potato, peas and what used to be broccoli, now a green mush. It had taken months to cook meals to fill the freezer and two years to eat through half of it.
She added two tins to her bag and called Zippy. She saw a stripy leg disappearing behind a huge crate and her vision blurred. The ghostly face was directly in front of her. She cried out and pointed at the head scarf, a psychedelic pattern in green and orange, holding back the ghost’s hair. The mouth moved frantically while the face began to disappear. The Cheshire Cat moment came to an abrupt halt as a deafening boom tipped Dee to the floor. She looked up. The ghost was gone. Zippy miaowed from behind the crate.
Dee turned her head torch to its lowest setting and sat cross legged, rubbing her hip where she’d fallen. Didn’t ghosts haunt places they’d been? How could there be a ghost underground? And did ghosts talk? This one was definitely trying to and like an echo on the breeze, Dee thought she’d heard ‘give up’ escape from the ghostly woman. She sighed and lay back on the floor. She called Zippy, but her miaows only came louder.
This end of the survival pod was stacked with scientific equipment. Dee had gathered a variety, including spare parts, not knowing what would be useful to reboot the planet. Metal shelving sagged beneath the weight of scientific history while the crate that Zippy hid behind, held the bare bones of the equipment to put Dee’s working theory into practise. Shaky and nauseous, she knelt on the floor, her head spinning. She hugged her arms around her. Howls of anguish ricocheted around her prison. Food defrosted on the floor.
With ten minutes before NB communications time, Dee took the mirror from the bottom drawer of her bedside cabinet. She wiped the surface with the cuff of her khaki shirt and looked at herself in the glass. Pale blue eyes ringed with red and pointed cheek bones were prominent. Tears stung again as her hand ran over her razor cut hair. She missed the smooth brown curls that smelled of honeysuckle, soft against her cheek.
Wiping her eyes, she took a mouthful of precious water, moistened her mouth and spat the water back in the cup. She poured the remains over her face. Her moisture collection system, deep within the insulation of the pod, gave her and Zippy sufficient drinking water. There were emergency bottles in the store but the necessity was for frugality with drinking water and inventiveness when it came to washing. It was all a matter of priorities. She was sure that Zippy minded her body odour far less than she did herself. When her period came, she indulged, the contents of her spent hot water bottle making ideal washing water.
Her NB colleagues were arguing when she linked.
“I’m telling you, it’s been quiet here for weeks! You can’t make us wait two more months, Bryan!”
“We agreed from the start, Gen. Twelve weeks from total cessation of turbulent activity. I had a couple of tremors two days ago and Xi Wen, only yesterday.”
“I just want out of this prison!”
“You’re okay, Gen.” Katya’s calming voice, with its rich Russian accent, talked over Bryan. “We understand how you feel but we can’t lose you. You’re too important to NB. Hang in there.”
“I will but I’ll be counting the days.”
“Twelve weeks from today.”
“No! You’ll keep moving it, won’t you?”
“We can’t ignore the evidence, Gen. You know that. It could be another year.”
Dee lay on her back in her bed, Zippy sleeping nestled against her neck and shoulder. As a tiny kitten, she felt safe close to Dee and chose to sleep on her pillow whenever she was scared. Dee loved the tiny heartbeat and purr against her but tonight, she couldn’t sleep, the enormity of Bryan’s words blazing in her mind. Her head told her she’d survived for two years so she could survive another but her heart yearned for a green canopy above her, sunlight glinting through the branches and her feet splashing in a gentle stream. Her stomach flipped. Deep down she knew the surface of the planet above her would be unrecognisable.
Another image crowded out the one of a devastated planet. He was tall and lean with jet black spiky hair and worried brown eyes. His name was Tim. He worked, or rather, had worked in the library at the University. Shy, yet so eloquent when guided to a subject that inspired him, Dee wished she had known him better, maybe pushed their relationship to make that happen. She missed him.
Dee woke, drenched in sweat, to the realisation that Project New Baby was heavily reliant on immaculate conception to succeed. There were four members on each continent, hundreds or sometimes thousands of miles apart.
Deanne Margaret Gardner ‘gave up’ in style. Her positive rebellion excited her. She drank water and washed at will and delved through the freezer for meals. Instead of her project, she read, immersing herself in fiction. One day, she stood in the market square, haggling with Gabriel Oak, while the next, she took soma with Bernard Marx. While Genevieve argued with Bryan, Dee rode on Granny Weatherwax’ broom and shot arrows at a dragon. Zippy purred all day, curled up with her on the bed, below the daylight lamp.
Dee pedalled to survive but she looked in the mirror every morning and asked herself if she wanted to. No one noticed her silent presence at NB comm sessions, busy as they were arguing over what qualified as a significant tremor. Except Katya. Kat communicated every day, one-to-one.
Dee had met Kat at a lecture, soon after her paper was published. Sleek, muscular and fluent in eight languages, as well as a quantum pioneer, Kat knew about the loneliness and frustration that came with genius. They shared tears together over the loss of beloved grandparents who had ignored or stated they were too old to take their granddaughters’ advice, and seek safety below ground.
The next day, Dee woke and asked her question. The woman in the mirror declined to pedal. Zippy padded onto her lap, looked up at her with bright blue eyes and miaowed. Dee lifted the hatch for Zippy and climbed onto the bike.
“Where the hell were you last night?”
“Glad to hear you’re alive and well, Dee. You too, Bryan.”
“Very funny. What happened?”
“Nothing. I was tied up working. There wasn’t time to pedal more than a night’s worth. What did I miss?”
“We didn’t hear from Gen or Charity last night either.” A chill ran down Dee’s spine at the tone of Katya’s voice.
“But they were on the morning comm.”
“And both insisted we had waited long enough.”
“But they’ll both come back and report the situation on their part of two continents. Won’t that be useful?” Dee looked longingly at the fuschia pink sequinned sari, strung on a line, hiding the doorway to the earth above.
“Not if they don’t come back! We’ll have lost vital international links! There’s no one to collate their data!” Bryan was furious.
“But the tests are still running.”
“Until the power runs out.”
Gen’s light lit up on Dee’s panel.
“Gen! Are you okay?” Kat’s voice was shrill with relief. Dee pedalled with renewed vigour.
“There’s nothing left.”
“What do you mean?”
Dee pictured the buxom blond Australian as she responded. Gen’s voice, usually resonant and defiant, shook with emotion. “There’s nothing but rubble. All the trees are gone. Grass and weeds are growing but there’s no other life, I scanned. Nothing. No one. Not a single soul.”
“Buck up, Gen! You’re a team of four, remember. Penny, Mark and Cookie are there with you. When the time is right, you can agree where to rendezvous.”
“Give up, Bryan. It’s a wilderness out there. We’ll never find each other.”
“Gen, you mustn’t give up. Gen? Gen?”
Dee unlinked from NB. Her team, Angus, Derek and Laura connected most days but she’d only met Angus once, in the bar after a talk in Edinburgh. Without a trace of a Scottish accent, he was almost royalty, apparently and after less than two minutes of pleasantries, he’d turned his broad back on her and started a new
conversation. The thick curly hair, escaping up his back via his collar had made her queasy while Derek and Laura, whom she’d met at a lecture in Oxford, had bored her to sleep. None of them communicated one-to-one with her. They had nothing to say to each other. Dee flopped onto the floor.
She found clothes in the store room, a little damp but sound. She wasted power dancing to a swing number in a 1920’s flapper dress she’d acquired for a fancy dress party. She imagined Bryan in his checked shirt, badly buttoned and his thick framed spectacles covered in fingerprints and food, dancing a tango with Genevieve. She played a suitably raunchy Argentinian tango and strutted around the carpet with an imaginary partner before changing the music to a Strauss waltz and imagined huge Angus whisking tiny Charity around the floor. Kat danced on a podium on her own, a small black whip between her teeth. Dee pedalled all evening but there was no spare power for the comm.
Dee woke to a low growl from Zippy. On and on, the guttural rumbling tone shook the cat’s body. The air was oven hot. Pain screamed in Dee’s mouth as her fillings vibrated. Dust motes glistened, crowding together. The resulting cloud transformed into a six foot four man.
“Tim!”
“Dee! Oh, your hair!”
Dee touched her head and stepped forward.
“Don’t touch me! Not sure what will happen.”
“You look…young! How…why’re you here?”
“You…” His words were muffled and the outline of his body wavered as if someone had shaken an Etch a Sketch. A band on his wrist flashed orange and then red.”
“Wait!”
“I came…you told me…you have to…don’t give up…thesis!”
“I’m at a critical point, Kat.”
“Bryan’s furious. He’s banging on about you preparing to join Angus.”
“I can’t go traipsing off now. Why can’t Angus come to me?”
“Good point.”
“I have to do this, Kat.”
“Your ghost been giving you advice?”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing. I just know you saw a ghost, that’s all. Finish your work. Check in with me every day and I’ll take the flack from Bryan.”
“Thanks, Kat. I owe you.”
“See you in a better place sometime.”
Dee carried Zippy in a sling across her chest like a baby. Dust rose from the sari fabric, pulled back for the first time on its wire. The final bolts slid back. She pulled at the door. It wouldn’t budge. Grease squirted from the tin, trickling down the wall and coating the massive hinges. A final tug freed the door from its frame. Dee climbed the basement steps, praying the door to the house would open.
The grey sky above her confirmed her home no longer had a roof and the debris surrounding her resembled a war zone. Few buildings stood unharmed, most were rubble and the stench of rotting vegetation stuck in her throat, wrenching at her stomach. She took a few stumbling steps forward. Zippy clung to her shirt, nose twitching, confusion and dismay evident on her face. Familiar streets were gone beneath the debris of wind and water. Weeds and brambles covered any peeping surface. She saw a hand and then a family of human corpses, part covered by the creeping briars. Dee stumbled back to her prison.
A test run wasn’t possible for this kind of experiment but with Kat’s help, Dee was confident it would work. After Tim’s visitation, Dee knew the ghost was a younger and slightly different version of herself. From some other alternative reality, she had tried to warn herself and that had been the problem. Two Dee’s couldn’t co-exist on one lifeline so the alternative Dee had sent her Tim instead. Once the experiment began, she and all this would disappear. All her work and achievements, all her books and four years of data would vanish. If it worked.
Dee reached out from the duvet and squashed the squawking alarm. A long lean arm reached over her and pulled her close to a warm, naked body.
“Mustn’t get too comfy. We’ve work to do.” Dee snuggled deeper.
Gentle pressure moving up her leg and a paw patting her nose woke Dee into action and she tickled the cat behind the ears. Her purr rocked her stripy body and reverberated through the bed.
“You want breakfast?”
“Miaow.”
“Mmm, please,” said Katya.
Haunted House Arrest
Jennifer Deese