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In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
“Well, you made me doubt for a minute if I could live uncomputerised for a moment, Elizabeth. Glad to say I can still live without, and well for it.”
Liz’ was too busy peering into Ethan’s builder’s bum to care to answer.
Godfrey winked at Finley conspiratorially, amused at her horrified look when he mimed throwing a peanut at the electrician’s cleavage.
“So un-sani-tary” she mouthed before quickly returning to the places she goes when nobody looks.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Sue Forgelot couldn’t believe her eyes when she came to her ringing door.
Of course, after the Carnival party was over and she’d taken an air shower, and put on her bathrobe with her meerkat slipper, slathered relaxing face cream topped with two slices of cucumber, she was quite groggy, and the cucumber slices on her eyelids made it harder to see. But once she’d removed them, she could see as bright as day.
The Captain was standing right here, and she hadn’t aged a day.
“Quickly, come in.” Sue wasted no time to usher her in. She looked at the corridor suspiciously; at that time of night, only a dusting robot was patrolling the corridors, chasing for dust motes and finger smears on the datapads.
Nobody.
“I haven’t been followed, Sue, will you just relax for a moment.”
“V’ass, it’s been so long. How did you get out?… What broke the code?”
“I don’t know, Sue. I think —something called back, from Earth.”
“From Earth? I didn’t know there was much technology left, or at least one that could reach us there. And one that could bypass that darned central AI —I knew it couldn’t keep you under lock and key forever.”
“Seems there is such tech, and it’s also managed to force the ship to turn around.”
Silence fell on the two friends for a moment, as they were grasping for the implications of the changes in motion.
Veranassessee couldn’t help by smile uncontrollably. “Those rejuvenation tricks do wonders, don’t they. You don’t look a day over a 100 years old.”Sue couldn’t help but chuckle. “And you don’t look so bad yourself, for an old forgotten popsicle.” She tilted her head. “You do know you’ve been in the freezer longer than some of our newest passengers have been alive, right?”
V’ass shrugged. “And yet, here I am—fit, rested, and none the worse for wear.”
Sue sighed. “Meanwhile, I’ve had three hip replacements, a cybernetic knee, and somebody keeps hijacking my artificial leg with spam messages.”
V’ass blinked. “…You should probably get that checked.”
Sue waved her off. “Bah. If it’s not trying to sell me ‘hot singles in my quadrant,’ I let it be.”After the laughter had dissipated, Sue said “You need my help to get back your ship, don’t you?”. She tapped on her cybernetic leg with a knowing smile. “You can count on me.”
Veranassessee noded. “Then start by filling me in, what should I know?”
Sue leaned in conspiratorially. “Ethan is dead, for one.”
“Death?” Veranassessee was weighing the implications, and completed “… Murder?”
Sue shrugged “As much as it pains me to say, it’s all a bit irrelevant. The AI let it happen, but I doubt she pushed the button. Ethan wasn’t much of a threat to its rule. Makes one wonder why, maybe it computed some cascade of events we don’t yet see. They found ancient DNA on the crime scene, but it’s all a mess of clues, and I must say we’re pretty inept at the whole murder mystery thing. Glad we don’t have a serial killer in our midst, or we would have plenty of composting to do…”
Veranassessee started to pace the room. “Well, if there isn’t anything more relevant, we need to hatch a plan. I suspect all my access got revoked; I’ll need a skeleton key to get in the right places. To regain control over the central AI, and the main deck.”
“Of course, the Marlowes…” Sue had a moment of revelation on her face. “They were the crypto locksmiths… With Ethan now dead, maybe we should pay dear old Ellis a visit.”
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
It was still raining the morning after the impromptu postcard party at the Golden Trowel in the Hungarian village, and for most of the morning nobody was awake to notice. Molly had spent a sleepless night and was the only one awake listening to the pounding rain. Untroubled by the idea of lack of sleep, her confidence bolstered by the new company and not being solely responsible for the child, Molly luxuriated in the leisure to indulge a mental re run of the previous evening.
Finjas bombshell revelation after the postcard game suddenly changed everything. It was not what Molly had expected to hear. In their advanced state of inebriation by that time it was impossible for anyone to consider the ramifications in any sensible manner. A wild and raucous exuberance ensued of the kind that was all but forgotten to all of them, and unknown to Tundra. It was a joy that brought tears to Mollys eyes to see the wonderful time the child was having.
Molly didn’t want to think about it yet. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to have anything to do with it, the ship coming back. Communication with it, yes. The ship coming back? There was so much to consider, so many ways of looking at it. And there was Tundra to think about, she was so innocent of so many things. Was it better that way? Molly wasn’t going to think about that yet. She wanted to make sure she remembered all the postcard stories.
There is no rush.
The postcard Finja had chosen hadn’t struck Molly as the most interesting, not at the time, but later she wondered if there was any connection with her later role as centre stage overly dramatic prophet. What an extraordinary scene that was! The unexpected party was quite enough excitement without all that as well.
Finja’s card was addressed to Miss FP Finly, c/o The Flying Fish Inn somewhere in the outback of Australia, Molly couldn’t recall the name of the town. The handwriting had been hard to decipher, but it appeared to be a message from “forever your obedient servant xxx” informing her of a Dustsceawung convention in Tasmania. As nobody had any idea what a Dustsceawung conference was, and Finja declined to elaborate with a story or anecdote, the attention moved on to the next card. Molly remembered the time many years ago when everyone would have picked up their gadgets to find out what it meant. As it was now, it remained an unimportant and trifling mystery, perhaps something to wonder about later.
Why did Finja choose that card, and then decline to explain why she chose it? Who was Finly? Why did The Flying Fish Inn seem vaguely familiar to Molly?
I’m sure I’ve seen a postcard from there before. Maybe Ellis had one in his collection.
Yes, that must be it.
Mikhail’s story had been interesting. Molly was struggling to remember all the names. He’d mentioned his Uncle Grishenka, and a cousin Zhana, and a couple called Boris and Elvira with a mushroom farm. The best part was about the snow that the reindeer peed on. Molly had read about that many years ago, but was never entirely sure if it was true or not. Mickhail assured them all that it was indeed true, and many a wild party they’d had in the cold dark winters, and proceeded to share numerous funny anecdotes.
“We all had such strange ideas about Russia back then,” Molly had said. Many of the others murmured agreement, but Jian, a man of few words, merely looked up, raised an eyebrow, and looked down at his postcard again. “Russia was the big bad bogeyman for most of our lives. And in the end, we were our own worst enemies.”
“And by the time we realised, it was too late,” added Petro.
In an effort to revive the party spirit from the descent into depressing memories, Tala suggested they move on to the next postcard, which was Vera’s.
“I know the Tower of London better than any of you would believe,” Vera announced with a smug grin. Mikhail rolled his eyes and downed a large swig of vodka. “My 12th great grandfather was employed in the household of Thomas Cromwell himself. He was the man in charge of postcards to the future.” She paused for greater effect. In the absence of the excited interest she had expected, she continued. “So you can see how exciting it is for me to have a postcard as a prompt.” This further explanation was met with blank stares. Recklessly, Vera added, “I bet you didn’t know that Thomas Cromwell was a time traveller, did you? Oh yes!” she continued, although nobody had responded, “He became involved with a coven of witches in Ireland. Would you believe it!”
“No,” said Mikhail. “I probably wouldn’t.”
“I believe you, Vera,” piped up Tundra, entranced, “Will you tell me all about that later?”
Tundra’s interjection gave Tala the excuse she needed to move on to the next postcard. Mikhail and Vera has always been at loggerheads, and fueled with the unaccustomed alcohol, it was in danger of escalating quickly. “Next postcard!” she announced.
Everyone started banging on the tables shouting, “Next postcard! Next postcard!” Luka and Lev topped up everyone’s glasses.
Molly’s postcard was next.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Onto The Second Murder Investigation
Very strangely, it was a lot less chaotic in the Lower Decks, while the Upper Decks were having a rave of a time with the moon and mood swings.
Evie stood over the diagnostics table, arms crossed, watching as Luca Stroud ran his scanner over Mandrake’s cybernetic collar. The black cat lay still, one eye flickering intermittently as though stuck between waking and shutdown. The deep gash along his side had been patched—Romualdo had insisted on carrying Mandrake to the lab himself, mumbling about how the garden’s automated sprinklers were acting up, and how Luca was the only one he trusted to fix delicate mechanisms.It had been a casual remark, but Evie had caught the subtext. Mandrake was no ordinary ship cat. He had always been tied to something larger.
“Neurolink’s still scrambled,” Luca muttered, adjusting his scanner. “Damage isn’t terminal, but whatever happened, someone tried to wipe part of his memory.”
Riven, arms crossed beside Evie, scoffed. “Why the hell would someone try to assassinate a cat?”
Luca didn’t answer, but the data flickering on his screen spoke for itself. The attack had been precise. Not just a careless act of cruelty, nor an accident in the low-gravity sector.
Mandrake had been targeted.
Evie exhaled sharply. “Can you fix him?”
Luca shrugged. “Depends. The physical repairs are easy enough—fractured neural pathways, fried circuits—but whatever was erased? That’s another story.” He tilted his head. “Thing is… someone didn’t just try to kill Mandrake. They tried to make him forget.”
Riven’s frown deepened. “Forget what?”
Silence settled between them.
Evie reached out, brushing a gloved hand over Mandrake’s sleek black fur. “We need to figure out what he knew.”
It had been Trevor Pee—TP himself—who first mentioned it, entirely offhand, as they reviewed logs of the last places Mandrake had been seen.
“He wasn’t always on his own, you know,” TP had said, twirling his holographic cane.
Evie and Riven both turned to him.
“What do you mean on his own, I though he was Seren’s?”
“Oh, no. He just had a liking for her, but he’d belonged to someone else long before.” TP’s mustache twitched. “I accessed some archival records during Mandrake’s diagnostic.”
Evie blinked. “Mmm, are you going to make me ask? What did you find?”
“Indeed,” TP offered cheerfully. “Before Mandrake wandered freely through the gardens and ventilation shafts, becoming a ship legend, he belonged—as much as a cat can belong—to someone.”
Riven’s expression darkened. “Who?! Will you just tell?!”
TP flicked his wrist, bringing up an old personnel file, heavily redacted. But one name flickered beneath the blurred-out sections.
Dr. Elias Arorangi.
Evie felt her heartbeat quicken. The name echoed faintly familiar, not directly connected to her, but she’d seen it once or twice before, buried in obscure references. “Dr. Arorangi—wait, he was part of the original Helix design team, wasn’t he?”
TP nodded gravely. “Precisely. A lead systems architect, responsible for designing key protocols for the AI integration—among them, some critical frameworks that evolved into Synthia’s consciousness. Disappeared without a trace shortly after Synthia’s initial activation.”
Riven straightened. “Disappeared? Do you think—”
TP raised a finger to silence him. “I don’t speculate, but here’s the interesting part: Dr. Arorangi had extensive, classified knowledge of Helix 25’s core systems. If Mandrake was his companion at that crucial time, it’s conceivable that Arorangi trusted something to him—a memory, a code fragment, perhaps even a safeguard.”
Evie’s mouth went dry.
An architect of Helix 25, missing under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind a cat whose cybernetics were more sophisticated than any pet implant she’d ever seen?
Evie looked down at Mandrake, whose damaged neural links were still flickering faintly. Someone had wanted Mandrake silenced and forgotten.
Later, in the dim light of his workshop, Luca Stroud worked in silence, carefully re-aligning the cat’s neural implants. Romualdo sat nearby, arms crossed, watching with the nervous tension of a man who had just smuggled a ferret into a rat convention.
“He’s tough,” Luca muttered, tightening a connection. “More durable than most of the junk I have to fix.”
Romualdo huffed. “He better be.”
A flicker of light pulsed through Mandrake’s collar. His single good eye opened, pupils dilating as his systems realigned.
Then, groggily, he muttered, “I hate this ship.”
Romualdo let out a relieved chuckle. “Yeah, yeah. Welcome back, Mandrake.”
Luca wiped his hands. “He’s still scrambled, but he’s functional. Just… don’t expect him to remember everything.”
Mandrake groaned, stretching his mechanical paw. “I remember… needing a drink.”
Romualdo smirked. “That’s a good sign, yeah?”
Luca hesitated before looking at Evie. “Whatever was wiped—it’s gone. But if he starts remembering things in fragments… we need to pay attention.”
Evie nodded. “Oh, we definitely will.”
Mandrake rolled onto his feet, shaking out his fur, a small but defiant flick of his cybernetic tail.
“I have the strangest feeling,” he muttered, “that someone is still looking for me.”
Evie exhaled.
For now, with his memory gone, he would probably be safe, but a killer was in their midst and they needed to find out the truth, and fast.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 — Aftermath of the Solar Flare Alert
The Second Murder
It didn’t take them long to arrive at the scene, Riven alerted by a distraught Finkley who’d found the body.
Evie knelt beside the limp, twitching form of Mandrake, his cybernetic collar flickering erratically, tiny sparks dancing along its edge. The cat’s body convulsed, its organic parts frozen in eerie stillness while the cybernetic half stuttered between functions, blinking in and out of awareness.
Mandrake was both dead and not dead.
“Well, this is unsettling,” TP quipped, materializing beside them with an exaggerated frown. “A most profound case of existential uncertainty. Schrödinger himself would have found this delightful—if he weren’t very much confirmed dead.”
Riven crouched, running a scanner over Mandrake’s collar. The readout spat out errors. “Neural link’s corrupted. He’s lost something.”
Evie’s stomach twisted. “Lost what? But… he can be repaired, surely, can’t he?”
Evan replied with a sigh “Hard to tell how much damage he’s suffered, but we caught him in time thanks to Finkley’s reflexes, he may stand a chance, even if he may need to be reprogrammed.”
Mandrake’s single functioning eye flickered open, its usual sharpness dull. Then, rasping, almost disjointedly, he muttered:
“I was… murdered.”
Then his system crashed, leaving nothing but silence.
Upper Decks Carnival
Sue was still adjusting her hat and feathers for the Carnival Party wondering if that would be appropriate as she was planning to go to the wake first, and then to the Lexican’s baby shower. It wasn’t every day there was a baby nowadays. And a boy too. But then, there was no such thing as being overdressed in her book.
The ship’s intercom crackled to life, cutting through her thoughts, its automated cheerfulness electrifying like a misplaced party horn.
“Attention, dear passengers! As scheduled, with the solar flare now averted, we are preparing for our return to Earth. Please enjoy the journey and partake in today’s complimentary hibiscus tea at the Grand Hall! Samba!”
The words ‘return to Earth’ sent a shudder through Sue’s spine. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t possible.
A sudden pulse of static in her artificial limb made her flinch. A garbled transmission—so faint she almost dismissed it—whispered through her internal interface, that was constantly scanning hacking through the data streams of the ship, and having found critical intel that was quickly being scrubbed by the maintenance system.
Signal detected…
Beacon coordinates triangulating…
…origin: Earth…Her breath stopped. Sue had spent years pretending she knew everything, but this… was something else entirely.
She got the odd and ominous feeling that Synthia was listening.
Quadrant B – The Wake of Mr. Herbert
The air in the gathering hall was thick with preservative floral mist—the result of enthusiastic beauticians who had done their best to restore and rehydrate the late Mr. Herbert to some semblance of his former self.
And yet, despite their efforts, he still looked vaguely like a damp raisin in a suit.
Gloria adjusted her shawl and whispered to Sharon, “He don’t look half bad, does he?”
Sharon squinted. “Oh, love, I’d say he looks at least three-quarters bad.”
Marlowe Sr. stood by the casket, his posture unnervingly rigid, as if he were made of something more fragile than bone. When he spoke, his voice cracked. “Ethan.”
He was in no condition for a speech— only able to utter the name.
Gloria dabbed her eyes, nudging Mavis. “I reckon this is the saddest thing I’ve seen since they discontinued complimentary facials at the spa.”
Mavis sniffed. “And yet, they say he’ll be composted by next Tuesday. Bloody efficient, innit?”
Marlowe didn’t hear them.
Because at that moment, as he stared at his son’s face, the realization struck him like a dying star—this was no mistake. This was something bigger.
And for the first time in years, he felt the weight of knowing too much.
He would have to wake and talk to the Captain. She would know what to do.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Below Lower Decks – Shadow Sector
Kai Nova moved cautiously through the underbelly of Helix 25, entering a part of the Lower Decks where the usual throb of the ship’s automated systems turned muted. The air had a different smell here— it was less sterile, more… human. It was warm, the heat from outdated processors and unmonitored power nodes radiating through the bulkheads. The Upper Decks would have reported this inefficiency.
Here, it simply went unnoticed, or more likely, ignored.
He was being watched.
He knew it the moment he passed a cluster of workers standing by a storage unit, their voices trailing off as he walked by. Not unusual, except these weren’t Lower Deck engineers. They had the look of people who existed outside of the ship’s official structure—clothes unmarked by department insignias, movements too intentional for standard crew assignments.
He stopped at the rendezvous point: an unlit access panel leading to what was supposed to be an abandoned sublevel. The panel had been manually overridden, its system logs erased. That alone told him enough—whoever he was meeting had the skills to work outside of Helix 25’s omnipresent oversight.
A voice broke the silence.
“You’re late.”
Kai turned, keeping his stance neutral. The speaker was of indistinct gender, shaved head, tall and wiry, with sharp green eyes locked on his movements. They wore layered robes that, at a glance, could have passed as scavenged fabric—until Kai noticed the intricate stitching of symbols hidden in the folds.
They looked like Zoya’s brand —he almost thought… or let’s just say, Zoya’s influence. Zoya Kade’s litanies had a farther reach he would expect.
“Wasn’t aware this was a job interview,” Kai quipped, leaning casually against the bulkhead.
“Everything’s a test,” they replied. “Especially for outsiders.”
Kai smirked. “I didn’t come to join your book club. I came for answers.”
A low chuckle echoed from the shadows, followed by the shifting of figures stepping into the faint light. Three, maybe four of them. It could have been an ambush, but that was a display.
“Pilot,” the woman continued, avoiding names. “Seeker of truth? Or just another lost soul looking for something to believe in?”
Kai rolled his shoulders, sensing the tension in the air. “I believe in not running out of fuel before reaching nowhere.”
That got their attention.
The recruiter studied him before nodding slightly. “Good. You understand the problem.”
Kai crossed his arms. “I understand a lot of problems. I also understand you’re not just a bunch of doomsayers whispering in the dark. You’re organized. And you think this ship is heading toward a dead end.”
“You say that like it isn’t.”
Kai exhaled, glancing at the flickering emergency light above. “Synthia doesn’t make mistakes.”
They smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. “No. It makes adjustments.” — the heavy tone on the “it” struck him. Techno-bigots, or something else? Were they denying Synthia’s sentience, or just adjusting for gender misnomers, it was hard to tell, and he had a hard time to gauge the sanity of this group.
A low murmur of agreement rippled through the gathered figures.
Kai tilted his head. “You think she’s leading us into the abyss?”
The person stepped closer. “What do you think happened to the rest of the fleet, Pilot?”
Kai stiffened slightly. The Helix Fleet, the original grand exodus of humanity—once multiple ships, now only Helix 25, drifting further into the unknown.
He had never been given a real answer.
“Think about it,” they pressed. “This ship wasn’t built for endless travel. Its original mission was altered. Its course reprogrammed. You fly the vessel, but you don’t control it.” She gestured to the others. “None of us do. We’re passengers on a ride to oblivion, on a ship driven by a dead man’s vision.”
Kai had heard the whispers—about the tycoon who had bankrolled Helix 25, about how the ship’s true directive had been rewritten when the Earth refugees arrived. But this group… they didn’t just speculate. They were ready to act.
He kept his voice steady. “You planning on mutiny?”
They smiled, stepping back into the half-shadow. “Mutiny is such a crude word. We’re simply ensuring that we survive.”
Before Kai could respond, a warning prickle ran up his spine.
Someone else was watching.
He turned slowly, catching the faintest silhouette lingering just beyond the corridor entrance. He recognized the stance instantly—Cadet Taygeta.
Damn it.
She had followed him.
The group noticed, shifting slightly. Not hostile, but suddenly alert.
“Well, well,” the woman murmured. “Seems you have company. You weren’t as careful as you thought. How are you going to deal with this problem now?”
Kai exhaled, weighing his options. If Taygeta had followed him, she’d already flagged this meeting in her records. If he tried to run, she’d report it. If he didn’t run, she might just dig deeper.
And the worst part?
She wasn’t corruptible. She wasn’t the type to look the other way.
“You should go,” the movement person said. “Before your shadow decides to interfere.”
Kai hesitated for half a second, before stepping back.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
Her smile returned. “No, Pilot. It’s just beginning.”
With that, Kai turned and walked toward the exit—toward Taygeta, who was waiting for him with arms crossed, expression unreadable.
He didn’t speak first.
She did.
“You’re terrible at being subtle.”
Kai sighed, thinking quickly of how much of the conversation could be accessed by the central system. They were still in the shadow zone, but that wasn’t sufficient. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough.” Her voice was even, but her fingers twitched at her side. “You know this is treason, right?”
Kai ran a hand through his hair. “You really think we’re on course for a fresh new paradise?”
Taygeta didn’t answer right away. That was enough of an answer.
Finally, she exhaled. “You should report this.”
“You should,” Kai corrected.
She frowned.
He pressed on. “You know me, Taygeta. I don’t follow lost causes. I don’t get involved in politics. I fly. I survive. But if they’re right—if there’s even a chance that we’re being sent to our deaths—I need to know.”
Taygeta’s fingers twitched again.
Then, with a sharp breath, she turned.
“I didn’t see anything tonight.”
Kai blinked. “What?”
Her back was already to him, her voice tight. “Whatever you’re doing, Nova, be careful. Because next time?” She turned her head slightly, just enough to let him see the edge of her conflicted expression.
“I will report you.”
Then she was gone.
Kai let out a slow breath, glancing back toward the hidden movement behind him.
No turning back now.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Poop Deck – The Jardenery
Evie stepped through the entrance of the Jardenery, and immediately, the sterile hum of Helix 25’s corridors faded into a world of green. Of all the spotless clean places on the ship, it was the only where Finkley’s bots tolerated the scent of damp earth. A soft rustle of hydroponic leaves shifting under artificial sunlight made the place an ecosystem within an ecosystem, designed to nourrish both body and mind.
Yet, for all its cultivated serenity, today it was a crime scene. The Drying Machine was connected to the Jardenery and the Granary, designed to efficiently extract precious moisture for recycling, while preserving the produce.
Riven Holt, walking beside her, didn’t share her reverence. “I don’t see why this place is relevant,” he muttered, glancing around at the towering bioluminescent vines spiraling up trellises. “The body was found in the drying machine, not in a vegetable patch.”
Evie ignored him, striding toward the far corner where Amara Voss was hunched over a sleek terminal, frowning at a glowing screen. The renowned geneticist barely noticed their approach, her fingers flicking through analysis results faster than human eyes could process.
A flicker of light.
“Ah-ha!” TP materialized beside Evie, adjusting his holographic lapels. “Madame Voss, I must say, your domain is quite the delightful contrast to our usual haunts of murder and mystery.” He twitched his mustache. “Alas, I suspect you are not admiring the flora?”
Amara exhaled sharply, rubbing her temples, not at all surprised by the holographic intrusion. She was Evie’s godmother, and had grown used to her experiments.
“No, indeed. I’m admiring this.” She turned the screen toward them.
The DNA profile glowed in crisp lines of data, revealing a sequence highlighted in red.
Evie frowned. “What are we looking at?”
Amara pinched the bridge of her nose. “A genetic anomaly.”
Riven crossed his arms. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
Amara gave him a sharp look but turned back to the display. “The sample we found at the crime scene—blood residue on the drying machine and some traces on the granary floor—matches an ancient DNA profile from my research database. A perfect match.”
Evie felt a prickle of unease. “Ancient? What do you mean? From the 2000s?”
Amara chuckled, then nodded grimly. “No, ancient as in Medieval ancient. Specifically, Crusader DNA, from the Levant. A profile we mapped from preserved remains centuries ago.”
Silence stretched between them.
Finally, Riven scoffed. “That’s impossible.”
TP hummed thoughtfully, twirling his cane. “Impossible, yet indisputable. A most delightful contradiction.”
Evie’s mind raced. “Could the database be corrupted?”
Amara shook her head. “I checked. The sequencing is clean. This isn’t an error. This DNA was present at the crime scene.” She hesitated, then added, “The thing is…” she paused before considering to continue. They were all hanging on her every word, waiting for what she would say next.
Amara continued “I once theorized that it might be possible to reawaken dormant ancestral DNA embedded in human cells. If the right triggers were applied, someone could manifest genetic markers—traits, even memories—from long-dead ancestors. Awakening old skills, getting access to long lost secrets of states…”
Riven looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. “You’re saying someone on Helix 25 might have… transformed into a medieval Crusader?”
Amara exhaled. “I’m saying I don’t know. But either someone aboard has a genetic profile that shouldn’t exist, or someone created it.”
TP’s mustache twitched. “Ah! A puzzle worthy of my finest deductive faculties. To find the source, we must trace back the lineage! And perhaps a… witness.”
Evie turned toward Amara. “Did Herbert ever come here?”
Before Amara could answer, a voice cut through the foliage.
“Herbert?”
They turned to find Romualdo, the Jardenery’s caretaker, standing near a towering fruit-bearing vine, his arms folded, a leaf-tipped stem tucked behind his ear like a cigarette. He was a broad-shouldered man with sun-weathered skin, dressed in a simple coverall, his presence almost too casual for someone surrounded by murder investigators.
Romualdo scratched his chin. “Yeah, he used to come around. Not for the plants, though. He wasn’t the gardening type.”
Evie stepped closer. “What did he want?”
Romualdo shrugged. “Questions, mostly. Liked to chat about history. Said he was looking for something old. Always wanted to know about heritage, bloodlines, forgotten things.” He shook his head. “Didn’t make much sense to me. But then again, I like practical things. Things that grow.”
Amara blushed, quickly catching herself. “Did he ever mention anything… specific? Like a name?”
Romualdo thought for a moment, then grinned. “Oh yeah. He asked about the Crusades.”
Evie stiffened. TP let out an appreciative hum.
“Fascinating,” TP mused. “Our dearly departed Herbert was not merely a victim, but perhaps a seeker of truths unknown. And, as any good mystery dictates, seekers who get too close often find themselves…” He tipped his hat. “Extinguished.”
Riven scowled. “That’s a bit dramatic.”
Romualdo snorted. “Sounds about right, though.” He picked up a tattered book from his workbench and waved it. “I lend out my books. Got myself the only complete collection of works of Liz Tattler in the whole ship. Doc Amara’s helping me with the reading. Before I could read, I only liked the covers, they were so romantic and intriguing, but now I can read most of them on my own.” Noticing he was making the Doctor uncomfortable, he switched back to the topic. “So yes, Herbert knew I was collector of books and he borrowed this one a few weeks ago. Kept coming back with more questions after reading it.”
Evie took the book and glanced at the cover. The Blood of the Past: Genetic Echoes Through History by Dr. Amara Voss.
She turned to Amara. “You wrote this?”
Amara stared at the book, her expression darkening. “A long time ago. Before I realized some theories should stay theories.”
Evie closed the book. “Looks like someone didn’t agree.”
Romualdo wiped his hands on his coveralls. “Well, I hope you figure it out soon. Hate to think the plants are breathing in murder residue.”
TP sighed dramatically. “Ah, the tragedy of contaminated air! Shall I alert the sanitation team?”
Riven rolled his eyes. “Let’s go.”
As they walked away, Evie’s grip tightened around the book. The deeper they dug, the stranger this murder became.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
The Survivors:
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Gregor said, his face cracking into another toothless grin. “Beginning to think we might be the last ones.”
“So did we.” Molly glanced nervously around at the odd assortment of people staring at her and Tundra. “I’m Molly. This is Tundra.”
“Tundra? Like the frozen wasteland?” Yulia asked.
Tundra nodded. “It’s because I’m strong and tough.”
“Would you like to join us?” Tala motioned toward the fire.
“Yes, yes, of course, ” Anya said. “Are you hungry?”
Molly hesitated, glancing toward the edge of the clearing, where their horses stood tethered to a low branch. “We have food,” she said. “We foraged.”
“I’d have foraged if someone didn’t keep going on about food poisoning,” Yulia muttered.
Finja sniffed. “Forgive me for trying to keep you alive.”
Molly watched the exchange with interest. It had been years since she’d seen people bicker over something so trivial. It was oddly comforting.
She lowered herself slowly onto the log next to Vera. “Alright, tell me—who exactly are you lot?”
Petro chuckled. “We’ve escaped from the asylum.”
Molly’s face remained impassive. “Asylum?”
“It’s okay,” Tala said quickly. “We’re mostly sane.”
“Not completely crazy, anyway,” Yulia added cheerfully.
“We were left behind years ago,” Anya said simply. “So we built our own kind of life.”
A pause. Molly gave a slow nod, considering this. Vera leaned towards her eagerly.
“Where are you from? Any noble blood?”
Molly frowned. “Does it matter?”
“Oh, not really,” Vera said dejectedly. “I just like knowing.”
Tundra, warming her hands by the fire, looked at Vera. “We came from Spain.”
Vera perked up. “Spain? Fascinating! And tell me, dear girl, have you ever traced your lineage?”
“Just back to Molly. She’s ninety-three,” Tundra said proudly.
Mikhail, who had been watching quietly, finally spoke. “You travelled all the way from Spain?”
Molly nodded. “A long time ago. There were more of us then… ” Her voice wavered. “We were looking for other survivors.”
“And?”Mikhail asked.
Molly sighed, glancing at Tundra. “We never found any.”
________________________________________
That night, they took turns keeping watch, though Molly tried to reassure them there was no need.
“At first, we did too,” she had said, shaking her head. “But there was no one…”
By dawn, the fire had burned to embers, and the camp stirred reluctantly to life.
They finished off the last of their cooked vegetables from the night before, while Molly and Tundra laid out a handful of foraged berries and mushrooms. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to start the day.
“Right,” Anya said, stretching. “I suppose we should get moving.” She looked at Molly and Tundra. “You’re coming with us, then? To the city?”
Molly nodded. “If you’ll have us.”
“We kept going and going, hoping to find people. Now we have,” Tundra said.
“Then it’s settled,” Anya said. “We head to the city.”
“And what exactly are we looking for?” Molly asked.
Mikhail shrugged. “Anything that keeps us alive.”
________________________________________________
It was late morning when they saw it.
A vehicle—an old, battered truck, crawling slowly toward them.
The sight was so absurd, so impossible, that for a moment, no one spoke.
“That can’t be,” Molly murmured.
The truck bounced over the uneven ground, its engine a dull, sluggish rattle. It wasn’t in good shape, but it was moving.
In reply to: Quintessence: Reversing the Fifth
Epilogue & Prologue
Paris, November 2029 – The Fifth Note Resounds
Tabitha sat by the window at the Sarah Bernhardt Café, letting the murmur of conversations and the occasional purring of the espresso machine settle around her. It was one of the few cafés left in the city where time still moved at a human pace. She stirred her cup absentmindedly. Paris was still Paris, but the world outside had changed in ways her mother’s generation still struggled to grasp.
It wasn’t just the ever-presence of automation and AI making themselves known in subtle ways—screens adjusting to glances, the quiet surveillance woven into everyday life. It wasn’t just the climate shifts, the aircon turned to cold in the midst of November, the summers unpredictable, the air thick with contradictions of progress and collapse of civilization across the Atlantic.
The certainty of impermanence was what defined her generation. BANI world they used to say—Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible. A cold fact: impossible to grasp and impossible to fight. Unlike her mother and her friends, who had spent their lives tethered to a world that no longer existed, she had never known certainty. She was born in the flux.
And yet, this café remained. One of the last to resist full automation, where a human still brought you coffee, where the brass bell above the door still rang, where things still unfolded at a human pace.
The bell above the door rang—the fifth note, as her mother had called it once.
She had never been here before, not in any way that mattered. Yet, she had heard the story. The unlikely reunion five years ago. The night that moved new projects in motion for her mother and her friends.
Tabitha’s fingers traced the worn edges of the notebook in front of her—Lucien’s, then Amei’s, then Darius’s. Pieces of a life written by many hands.
“Some things don’t work the first time. But sometimes, in the ruins of what failed, something else sprouts and takes root.”
And that was what had happened.
The shared housing project they had once dreamed of hadn’t survived—not in its original form. But through their rekindled bond, they had started something else.
True Stories of How It Was.
It had begun as a quiet defiance—a way to preserve real, human stories in an age of synthetic, permanent ephemerality and ephemeral impermanence, constantly changing memory. They were living in a world where AI’s fabricated histories had overwhelmed all the channels of information, where the past was constantly rewritten, altered, repackaged. Authenticity had become a rare currency.
As she graduated in anthropology few years back, she’d wondered about the validity of history —it was, after all, a construct. The same could be said for literature, art, even science. All of them constructs of the human mind, tenuous grasp of the infinite truth, but once, they used to evolve at such a slow pace that they felt solid, reliable. Ultimately their group was not looking for ultimate truth, that would be arrogant and probably ignorant. Authenticity was what they were looking for. And with it, connections, love, genuineness —unquantifiables by means of science and yet, true and precious beyond measure.
Lucien had first suggested it, tracing the idea from his own frustrations—the way art had become a loop of generated iterations, the human touch increasingly erased. He was in a better place since Matteo had helped him settle his score with Renard and, free of influence, he had found confidence in developing of his own art.
Amei —her mother—, had changed in a way Tabitha couldn’t quite define. Her restlessness had quieted, not through settling down but through accepting impermanence as something other than loss. She had started writing again—not as a career, not to publish, but to preserve stories that had no place in a digitized world. Her quiet strength had always been in preserving connections, and she knew they had to move quickly before real history faded beneath layers of fabricated recollections.
Darius, once skeptical, saw its weight—he had spent years avoiding roots, only to realize that stories were the only thing that made places matter. He was somewhere in Morocco now, leading a sustainable design project, bridging cultures rather than simply passing through them.
Elara had left science. Or at least, science as she had known it. The calculations, the certainty, the constraints of academia, with no escape from the automated “enhanced” digital helpers. Her obsession and curiosities had found attract in something more human, more chaotic. She had thrown herself into reviving old knowledge, forgotten architectures, regenerative landscapes.
And Matteo—Matteo had grounded it.
The notebook read: Matteo wasn’t a ghost from our past. He was the missing note, the one we didn’t know we needed. And because of him, we stopped looking backward. We started building something else.
For so long, Matteo had been a ghost of sorts, by his own account, lingering at the edges of their story, the missing note in their unfinished chord. But now, he was fully part of it. His mother had passed, her past history unraveling in ways he had never expected, branching new connections even now. And though he had lost something in that, he had also found something else. Juliette. Or maybe not. The story wasn’t finished.
Tabitha turned the page.
“We were not historians, not preservationists, not even archivists. But we have lived. And as it turned out, that was enough.”
They had begun collecting stories through their networks—not legends, not myths, but true accounts of how it was, from people who still remembered.
A grandfather’s voice recording of a train ride to a city that no longer exists.
Handwritten recipes annotated by generations of hands, each adding something new.
A letter from a protest in 2027, detailing a movement that the history books had since erased.
An old woman’s story of her first love, spoken in a dialect that AI could not translate properly.It had grown in ways they hadn’t expected. People began sending them recordings, letters, transcripts, photos —handwritten scraps of fading ink. Some were anonymous, others carefully curated with full names and details, like makeshift ramparts against the tide of time.
At first, few had noticed. It was never the goal to make it worlwide movement. But little by little, strange things happened, and more began to listen.
There was something undeniably powerful about genuine human memory when it was raw and unfiltered, when it carried unpolished, raw weight of experience, untouched by apologetic watered down adornments and out-of-place generative hallucinations.
Now, there were exhibitions, readings, archives—entire underground movements dedicated to preserving pre-synthetic history. Their project had become something rare, valuable, almost sacred.
And yet, here in the café, none of that felt urgent.
Tabitha looked up as the server approached. Not Matteo, but someone new.
“Another espresso?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. And a glass of water, please.”
She glanced at the counter, where Matteo was leaning, speaking to someone, laughing. He had changed, too. No longer just an observer, no longer just the quiet figure who knew too much. Now, he belonged here.
A bell rang softly as the door swung open again.
Tabitha smiled to herself. The fifth note always sounded, in the end.
She turned back to the notebook, the city moving around her, the story still unfolding in more directions than one.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Evie stared at TP, waiting for further elaboration. He simply steepled his fingers and smirked, a glitchy picture of insufferable patience.
“You can’t just drop a bombshell like that and leave it hanging,” she said.
“But my dear Evie, I must!” TP declared, flickering theatrically. “For as the great Pea Stoll once mused—‘It was suspicious in a Pea Saucerer’s ways…’”
Evie groaned. “TP—”
“A jest! A mere jest!” He twirled an imaginary cane. “And yet, what do we truly know of the elusive Mr. Herbert? If we wish to uncover his secrets, we must look into his… associations.”
Evie frowned. “Funny you said that, I would have thought ‘means, motive, alibis’ but I must be getting ahead of myself…” He had a point. “By associations, you mean —Seren Vega?”
“Indeed!” TP froze accessing invisible records, then clapped his hands together. “Seren Vega, archivist extraordinaire of the wondrous past, keeper resplendent of forgotten knowledge… and, if the ship’s whisperings hold any weight, a woman Herbert was particularly keen on seeing.”
Evie exhaled, already halfway to the door. “Alright, let’s go see Seren.”
Seren Vega’s quarters weren’t standard issue—too many rugs, too many hanging ornaments, a hint of a passion for hoarding, and an unshakable musky scent of an animal’s den. The place felt like the ship itself had grown around it, heavy with the weight of history.
And then, there was Mandrake.
The bionic-enhanced cat perched on a high shelf, tail flicking, eyes glowing faintly. “What do you want?” he asked flatly, his tone dripping with a well-practiced blend of boredom and disdain.
Evie arched a brow. “Nice to see you too, Mandrake.”
Seren, cross-legged on a cushion, glanced up from her console. “Evie,” she greeted calmly. “And… oh no.” She sighed, already bracing herself. “You’ve brought it —what do you call him already? Orion Reed?”
Evie replied “Great memory Ms Vega, as expected. Yes, this was the name of the beta version —this one’s improved but still working the kinks of the programme, he goes by ‘TP’ nowadays. Hope you don’t mind, he’s helping me gather clues.” She caught herself, almost telling too much to a potential suspect.
TP puffed up indignantly. “I must protest, Madame Vega! Our past encounters, while lively, have been nothing but the height of professional discourse!”
Mandrake yawned. “She means you talk too much.”
Evie hid a smirk. “I need your help, Seren. It’s about Mr. Herbert.”
Seren’s fingers paused over her console. “He’s the one they found in the dryer.” It wasn’t a question.
Evie nodded. “What do you know about him?”
Seren studied her for a moment, then, with a slow exhale, tapped a command into her console. The room dimmed as the walls flickered to life, displaying a soft cascade of memories—public logs, old surveillance feeds, snippets of conversations once lost to time.
“He wasn’t supposed to be here,” Seren said at last. “He arrived without a record. No one really questioned it, because, well… no one questions much anymore. But if you looked closely, the ship never registered him properly.”
Evie’s pulse quickened. TP let out an approving hum.
Seren continued, scrolling through the visuals. “He came to me, sometimes. Asked about old Earth history. Strange, fragmented questions. He wanted to know how records were kept, how things could be erased.”
Evie and TP exchanged a glance.
Seren frowned slightly, as if piecing together a thought she hadn’t dared before. “And then… he stopped coming.”
Mandrake, still watching from his shelf, stretched lazily. Then, with perfect nonchalance, he added, “Oh yeah. And he wasn’t using his real name.”
Evie snapped to attention. “What?”
The cat flicked his tail. “Mr. Herbert. The name was fake. He called himself that, but it wasn’t what the system had logged when he first stepped on board.”
Seren turned sharply toward him. “Mandrake, you never mentioned this before.”
The cat yawned. “You never asked.”
Evie felt a chill roll through her. “So what was his real name?”
Mandrake’s eyes glowed, data scrolling in his enhanced vision.
“Something about… Ethan,” he mused. “Ethan… M.”
The room went very still.
Evie swallowed hard. “Ethan Marlowe?”
Seren paled. “Ellis Marlowe’s son.”
TP, for once, was silent.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
“Premeditated?” Evie voiced her thoughts.
TP looked at her sharply. “That would be the obvious conclusion to draw, my dear Evie. However,” he continued after a pregnant pause, “The conclusion may not be obvious at all.”
Evie rolled her eyes. “When in doubt, assume convolutions?”
A look of irritation clouded TP’s features momentarily, which he quickly arranged to a look of supercilious exasperation. “You assume,” he said condescendingly, “That Herbert WAS a human when he entered the drying chamber.”
Evie was confused. “Well he was a dessicated human when he was found in there. And he was a human when I last saw him.”
“And what do we know about Mr Herbert? Mr Ethan “Herbert”?”
Nonplussed, Evie replied that she didn’t know much about him, other than he was a late arrival and had appeared unexpectedly some years ago.
“Precisely.”
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
The “do not enter, crime scene” sticker haphazardly printed, was not even sealing the door. Amateur job, but of course, this was to be expected when such murder event had not been seen in a generation.
She entered surrepticiously, the door to the drying chamber slid shut with a hiss behind her, muffling the last of the frantic voices outside. Evie exhaled. She needed a moment. Just her, the crime scene, and—
A flicker of light.
“Ah-ha!” Trevor Pee Marshall, aka TP, materialized beside her, adjusting his holographic lapels with exaggerated precision. “What we have here, dear Evie, is a classic case of les morts très mystérieux.” His mustache twitched. “Or as my good friend Clouseau would say—‘Zis does not add up!’”
Evie rolled her eyes. “Less theatrics, more analysis, TP.”
Despite the few glitches, she was proud and eager to take her invention to a real-life trial run. Combining all the brilliant minds of enquêteur Jacques Clouseau, as well as the flair of Marshall Pee Stoll from the beloved Peaslanders children stories, TP was the help they needed to solve this.
“Ahem.” TP straightened, flickering momentarily before reappearing near the machine, peering inside with a magnifying glass he absolutely didn’t need.
Evie pulled up the logs. The AI had flagged the event—drying cycle activated at 0200 hours. Duration: excessive. But no shutdown? That was impossible.
TP let out a thoughtful “hmm.” Then, with the gravitas of a seasoned investigator, he declared, “Madame, I detect a most peculiar discrepancy.”
Evie looked up. “Go on.”
TP pivoted dramatically. “The AI should have stopped the cycle, yes? But what if… it never saw a problem?”
Evie frowned. That wasn’t how safety protocols worked. Unless—
She tapped rapidly through the logs. Her stomach dropped.
The system hadn’t flagged a human inside at all.
Someone had altered the ship’s perception of Mr. Herbert before he ever stepped into the machine.
Evie’s pulse quickened. This wasn’t just murder.
It was premeditated.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Leaving the Asylum
They argued about whether to close the heavy gates behind them. In the end, they left them open. The metal groaned as it sat ajar, rust flaking from its hinges.
“Are we all here?” Anya asked. Now that they were leaving, she felt in charge again—or at least, she needed to be. If morale slipped, things would unravel fast. She scanned the group, counting them off.
“Mikhail,” she started, pointing. “Tala. Vera, our esteemed historian.”
Vera sniffed. “I prefer genealogist, thank you very much.”
“Petro,” Anya continued, “probably about to grumble.”
Petro scowled. “I was thinking.”
“Jian, our mystery man.”
Jian raised an eyebrow in acknowledgment.
Anya turned to the next two. “Ah, the twins. Even though you two have never spoken, I’ve always assumed you understood me. Don’t prove me wrong now.”
The twins—Luka and Lev—nodded and grinned at exactly the same time.
“Then we have Yulia… no, we don’t have Yulia. Where in God’s name is Yulia?”
“Here I am!” Yulia’s voice rang out as she jogged back toward them, breathless. “I just went to say goodbye to the cat.” She sighed dramatically. “I wish we could take him. Please, can we take him?”
Yulia was short and quick-moving, her restless hands always in motion, her thoughts spilling out just as fast.
“We can’t,” Mikhail said firmly. “And he can look after himself.”
She huffed. “Well, I expect we could if we tried.”
“And finally, old Gregor, who I gather would rather be taking a nap.”
Gregor, who was well past eighty, rubbed his face and yawned. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Anya frowned, scanning the group again. “Wait. We’re missing Finja.”
A small scraping sound came from behind them.
Finja stood near the gate, furiously scrubbing the rusted metal with a rag she had pulled from her sleeve. “This place is disgusting,” she muttered. “Filth everywhere. The world may have ended, but that’s no excuse for grime.”
Anya sighed. “Finja, leave the gate alone.”
Finja gave it one last wipe before tucking the rag away with a huff. “Fine.”
Anya shook her head. “That’s eleven. No one’s run off or died yet. A promising start.”
They formed a motley crew, each carrying as much as they could manage. Mikhail pushed a battered cart, loaded with scavenged supplies—blankets, tools, whatever food they had left.
The road beneath their feet was cracked and uneven, roots breaking through in places. They followed it in silence for the most part. Even Yulia remained quiet. Some glanced back, but no one turned around.
The nearest village was more than fifty kilometers away. In all directions, there was only wilderness—fields long overtaken by weeds, trees pushing through cracks in forgotten roads. A skeletal signpost leaned at an odd angle, its lettering long since faded.
“It’s going to be dark soon,” Mikhail said. “And the old ones are tired. Aren’t you, Vera?”
“That’s enough of the old business,” puffed Vera, pulling her shoulders back.
Tala laughed. “Well, I must be an old one. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. And there’s a clearing over there.” She pointed.
The evening was cool, but they managed to build a small fire and scrape together a meal of vegetables they’d brought from their garden.
After their meal, they sat around the fire while Finja busied herself tidying up. “Dirty savages,” she muttered under her breath. Then, more loudly, “We should keep watch tonight.”
Vera, perched on a log, pulled her shawl tightly around her. The glow from the fire cast long shadows across her face.
“Vera, you look like a witch,” Yulia declared. “We should have brought the cat for you to ride on a broomstick together.”
“I’ll have you know I’m descended from witches,” Vera replied. “I know none of you think you’re related to me, but just imagine what your great-grandparents would say if they saw us now. Running into the wilderness like a band of exiled aristocrats.”
Jian, seated nearby, smirked slightly. “My great-grandparents were rice farmers.”
Vera brightened—Jian never talked about his past. She leaned in conspiratorially. “Do you know your full lineage? Because I do. I know mine back fourteen generations. You’d be amazed how many bloodlines cross without people realizing.”
Tala shook her head but smiled. Like Petro and Gregor, Vera had been at the asylum for many decades, a relic of another time. She claimed to have been a private investigator and genealogist in her former life.
Petro, hunched over and rubbing his hands by the fire, muttered, “We’re all ghosts now. Doesn’t matter where we came from.”
“Oh, stop that, Petro,” Anya admonished. “Remember our plan?”
“We go to the city,” Jian said. He rarely spoke unless he had something worth saying. “There will be things left behind. Maybe tech, maybe supplies. If I can get into an old server, I might even find something useful.”
“And if there’s nothing?” Petro moaned. “We should never have left.” He clasped his hands over his head.
Jian shrugged. “The world doesn’t erase itself overnight.”
Mikhail nodded. “We rest tonight. Tomorrow, we head for the city. And Finja’s right—tonight we take turns keeping watch.”
They sat in silence, watching the fire burn low. The evening stretched long and uneasy.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Survivors in Ukraine
Not for the first time Molly wished they’d never made the journey. She wanted to go back and end her days where she’d chosen to retire. With Ellis gone, and then Ethan and Nina, there was nothing to keep her here, and nothing to keep Tundra here. And there had been no reason to come, in the end. There were no survivors in Ukraine either, and they encountered none on the long and difficult journey from Spain.
It was Nina’s idea to go back to her home country. She was a refugee from the war, she and her mother. Nina met Ethan at school in England and Ethan often used to bring her on holidays to visit his grandmother in Andalucia. When the plague struck, they were there with Molly, quarantined and with no way to return to England. Molly shuddered at the memory of the awful realisation that there was nobody else alive, but for her friend over the road who looked after the cows. Just Molly, Ethan, Nina, and Antonio and all the bodies.
It was Antonio’s idea to take all the bodies of the neighbours out into the fields for the vultures, rightly stating that it was impossible for him and Ethan to bury them all. And so they did. Best photos of vultures I ever took, and nobody to show them to, Molly had grumbled at the time.
They managed for a considerable time looting the neighbours pantries, garages, and barns and foraging further afield until all the cars in the village ran out of fuel, always hoping to find people, other survivors, but they never did. When the fuel ran out they used the horses. They could have managed for some time longer if they stayed where they were, but the desire to find people was strong.
The decision was made to head north, along the once populous coast, taking 12 horses to carry themselves and essentials, hoping to find more people. There were no people. They kept walking, and when Nina suggested they keep walking to Ukraine, nobody could think of a good reason why not to.
Molly’s sorrowful reminiscence sitting in the late afternoon sun was interrupted by a shout from Tundra who was running towards her. “Look, look over there!” Molly winced as Tundra pulled her upright too quickly. “Over there!” she said, pointing to a copse just below the hills on the horizon.
“A wisp of smoke!” Molly whispered wonderingly. “Like…like a campfire or something…”
The 93 year old woman and her twelve year old great granddaughter looked at each other in amazement. “People,” they whispered in unison.
“Tundra, saddle up the horses. We can’t wait for morning”, Molly said, “They may be gone. Run, girl! Don’t just stand there with your mouth open!”
Suddenly Molly felt like she was only 67 again.
People!
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
The colours were bright, garish really, an impossibly blue sea and sky and splashes of pillar box red on the square shaped cars and dated clothes, but it was his favourite postcard of them all. It wasn’t the most scenic, it wasn’t the most spectacular location, but it was an echo from those long ago days of summer, of seaside holidays, souvenirs and a dozen postcards to write at a beachside cafe. The days when the post was delivered by conscientious postmen such as he himself had been, and the postcards arrived at their destinations before the holidaymakers had returned to their suburban homes and city jobs. The scene in the postcard was bathed in glorious sunshine, but the message on the back told the usual tale of the weather and the rain and that it might brighten up tomorrow but they were having a lovely time and they’d be back on Sunday and would the recipients get them a loaf and a pint of milk.
Ellis Marlowe put the Margate postcard to the back of the pile in his hand and pondered the image on the next one. He sighed at the image of the Statue of Liberty, sickly green, sadly proclaiming the height of a lost empire, and quickly put it at the back of the pile. Nobody needed to dwell on that story.
His perusal of the next image, an alpine meadow with an attractively skirted peasant scampering in a field, was interrupted with a bang on his door as Finkley barged in without waiting for a response. “There’s been a murder on the ship! Murder! Poor sod’s been dessicated like a dried tomato…”
Ellis looked at her in astonishment. His hand shook slightly as he put his postcard collection back in the box, replaced the lid and returned it to his locker. “Murder?” he repeated. “Murder? On here? But we’re supposed to be safe here, we left all that behind.” Visibly shaken, Ellis repeated, almost shouting, “But we left all that behind!”
In reply to: Liz Tattler – A Lifetime of Stories, in videos
The adventures of Arona & Mandrake
[Scene opens with Arona and Mandrake, the adventurous duo, standing on a hilltop, the vast landscape of the Alienor system stretching before them bathed in starlight.]
Narrator (cheerful, enchanting voice): “Join Arona and Mandrake the cat on magical quests across dimensions!”
[Quick flashes: Arona soaring in a hot air balloon, Mandrake snuggled on her shoulder; a playful chase with Vincentius, the mischievous demi-god; a vibrant encounter with the purple dragon, Leörmn.]
Narrator: “Discover hidden keys, unlock enchanted doors, and meet whimsical friends!”
[End with Arona and Mandrake, laughing under a rainbow, the words “Arona’s Adventures: A Journey Beyond Imagination” sparkling above.]
Narrator: “Embark on a journey of wonder and friendship. Adventure awaits!”
[The screen fades to the book cover with magical sparkles and contact information.]
[Scene opens with an elegant study, filled with books and ornate furniture. Liz Tattler sits comfortably in a plush armchair, draped in her signature flamboyant attire.]
Narrator (warm, engaging voice): “Meet Liz Tattler, the visionary behind countless bestsellers.”
[Quick cuts: Liz passionately gesturing as she describes her creative process, her hands adorned with long, pink nails.]
Narrator: “A master of transforming the mundane into the magical.”
[A playful montage of Liz surrounded by whimsical titles, each book cover a splash of color and intrigue.]
Narrator: “Where outrageous tales and heartfelt truths dance in harmony.”
[End with a close-up of Liz, a twinkle in her eye, the words “A Legacy of Imagination” glowing beneath her.]
Narrator: “Join us for an exclusive glimpse into the world of a storytelling legend.”
[Screen fades to “Liz Tattler: A Lifetime of Bestsellers” with contact details for the interview.]
A link to another previous video I quite like.
Some rushes from Corrie and Clove, as we try to advertise the Flying Fish Inn.
La escena comienza con una toma aérea del bush australiano, mostrando extensas áreas de matorrales verdes y marrones, con un camino serpenteante que lleva al Flying Fish Inn, un encantador edificio rústico rodeado de naturaleza salvaje.
La imagen transiciona a una anciana enérgica en el jardín del Inn, riendo junto a un kookaburra posado en su hombro. Su expresión es cálida y acogedora.
La escena cambia rápidamente a la Tía Idle, con trenzas, en una habitación vibrante llena de murales de dreamtime, con las gemelas Clove y Corrie trabajando en su arte.
La vista serena del atardecer desde la veranda del Inn muestra un cielo pintado con tonos de naranja y rosa, mientras el entorno se sumerge en una tranquilidad mágica.
La pantalla se desvanece al logo del Flying Fish Inn, acompañado de información de contacto y un suave toque musical.
[Scene opens with a sweeping aerial shot of the Australian bush, transitioning to the rustic charm of the Flying Fish Inn nestled amidst the wild beauty.]
Narrator (calm, inviting voice): “Escape to the heart of the outback at the Flying Fish Inn, where stories come alive.”
[Cut to Mater, a sprightly centenarian, in the garden with her kookaburra friend, a warm smile on her face.]
Narrator: “Meet Mater, our beloved storyteller, celebrated for her legendary bush tucker cuisine.”
[Quick transition to Aunt Idle, in a vibrant room adorned with dreamtime murals, created by the twins Clove and Corrie.]
Narrator: “Join Aunt Idle, brimming with tales of adventure, and marvel at the dreamtime artwork by the creative twins.”
[Flashes of Prune with a telescope, gazing at the stars, embodying her dream of Mars.]Narrator: “And Prune, the stargazer, connecting dreams and reality under the vast desert sky.”[End with a serene sunset view from the Inn’s veranda, the sky painted with hues of orange and pink.]
Narrator: “Discover the magic of the bush and the warmth of community. Your outback adventure awaits at the Flying Fish Inn.”
[The screen fades to the Flying Fish Inn logo with contact information and a gentle musical flourish.]
In reply to: Quintessence: Reversing the Fifth
Darius: A Map of People
June 2023 – Capesterre-Belle-Eau, Guadeloupe
The air in Capesterre-Belle-Eau was thick with humidity, the kind that clung to your skin and made every movement slow and deliberate. Darius leaned against the railing of the veranda, his gaze fixed on the horizon where the sky blends into the sea. The scent of wet earth and banana leaves filling the air. He was home.
It had been nearly a year since hurricane Fiona swept through Guadeloupe, its winds blowing a trail of destruction across homes, plantations, and lives. Capesterre-Belle-Eau had been among the hardest hit, its banana plantations reduced to ruin and its roads washed away in torrents of mud.
Darius hadn’t been here when it happened. He’d read about it from across the Atlantic, the news filtering through headlines and phone calls from his aunt, her voice brittle with worry.
“Darius, you should come back,” she’d said. “The land remembers everyone who’s left it.”
It was an unusual thing for her to say, but the words lingered. By the time he arrived in early 2023 to join the relief efforts, the worst of the crisis had passed, but the scars remained—on the land, on the people, and somewhere deep inside himself.
Home, and Not — Now, passing days having turned into quick six months, Darius was still here, though he couldn’t say why. He had thrown himself into the work, helped to rebuild homes, clear debris, and replant crops. But it wasn’t just the physical labor that kept him—it was the strange sensation of being rooted in a place he’d once fled.
Capesterre-Belle-Eau wasn’t just home; it was bones-deep memories of childhood. The long walks under the towering banana trees, the smell of frying codfish and steaming rice from his aunt’s kitchen, the rhythm of gwoka drums carrying through the evening air.
“Tu reviens pour rester cette fois ?” Come back to stay? a neighbor had asked the day he returned, her eyes sharp with curiosity.
He had laughed, brushing off the question. “On verra,” he’d replied. We’ll see.
But deep down, he knew the answer. He wasn’t back for good. He was here to make amends—not just to the land that had raised him but to himself.
A Map of Travels — On the veranda that afternoon, Darius opened his phone and scrolled through his photo gallery. Each image was pinned to a digital map, marking all the places he’d been since he got the phone. Of all places, it was Budapest which popped out, a poor snapshot of Buda Castle.
He found it a funny thought — just like where he was now, he hadn’t planned to stay so long there. He remembered the date: 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. He’d spent in Budapest most of it, sketching the empty streets.
Five years ago, their little group of four had all been reconnecting in Paris, full of plans that never came to fruition. By late 2019, the group had scattered, each of them drawn into their own orbits, until the first whispers of the pandemic began to ripple across the world.
Funding his travels had never been straightforward. He’d tried his hand at dozens of odd jobs over the years—bartending in Lisbon, teaching English in Marrakech, sketching portraits in tourist squares across Europe. He lived frugally, keeping his possessions light and his plans loose. Yet, his confidence had a way of opening doors; people trusted him without knowing why, offering him opportunities that always seemed to arrive at just the right time.
Even during the pandemic, when the world seemed to fold in on itself, he had found a way.
Darius had already arrived in Budapest by then, living cheaply in a rented studio above a bakery. The city had remained open longer than most in Europe or the world, its streets still alive with muted activity even as the rest of Europe closed down. He’d wandered freely for months, sketching graffiti-covered bridges, quiet cafes, and the crumbling facades of buildings that seemed to echo his own restlessness.
When the lockdowns finally came like everywhere else, it was just before winter, he’d stayed, uncertain of where else to go. His days became a rhythm of sketching, reading, and sending postcards. Amei was one of the few who replied—but never ostentatiously. It was enough to know she was still there, even if the distance between them felt greater than ever.
But the map didn’t tell the whole story. It didn’t show the faces, the laughter, the fleeting connections that had made those places matter.
Swatting at a buzzing mosquito, he reached for the small leather-bound folio on the table beside him. Inside was a collection of fragments: ticket stubs, pressed flowers, a frayed string bracelet gifted by a child in Guatemala, and a handful of postcards he’d sent to Amei but had never been sure she received.
One of them, yellowed at the edges, showed a labyrinth carved into stone. He turned it over, his own handwriting staring back at him.
“Amei,” it read. “I thought of you today. Of maps and paths and the people who make them worth walking. Wherever you are, I hope you’re well. —D.”
He hadn’t sent it. Amei’s responses had always been brief—a quick WhatsApp message, a thumbs-up on his photos, or a blue tick showing she’d read his posts. But they’d never quite managed to find their way back to the conversations they used to have.
The Market — The next morning, Darius wandered through the market in Trois-Rivières, a smaller town nestled between the sea and the mountains. The vendors called out their wares—bunches of golden bananas, pyramids of vibrant mangoes, bags of freshly ground cassava flour.
“Tiens, Darius!” called a woman selling baskets woven from dried palm fronds. “You’re not at work today?”
“Day off,” he said, smiling as he leaned against her stall. “Figured I’d treat myself.”
She handed him a small woven bracelet, her eyes twinkling. “A gift. For luck, wherever you go next.”
Darius accepted it with a quiet laugh. “Merci, tatie.”
As he turned to leave, he noticed a couple at the next stall—tourists, by the look of them, their backpacks and wide-eyed curiosity marking them as outsiders. They made him suddenly realise how much he missed the lifestyle.
The woman wore an orange scarf, its boldness standing out as if the color orange itself had disappeared from the spectrum, and only a single precious dash could be seen into all the tones of the market. Something else about them caught his attention. Maybe it was the way they moved together, or the way the man gestured as he spoke, as if every word carried weight.
“Nice scarf,” Darius said casually as he passed.
The woman smiled, adjusting the fabric. “Thanks. Picked it up in Rajasthan. It’s been with me everywhere since.”
Her partner added, “It’s funny, isn’t it? The things we carry. Sometimes it feels like they know more about where we’ve been than we do.”
Darius tilted his head, intrigued. “Do you ever think about maps? Not the ones that lead to places, but the ones that lead to people. Paths crossing because they’re meant to.”
The man grinned. “Maybe it’s not about the map itself,” he said. “Maybe it’s about being open to seeing the connections.”
A Letter to Amei — That evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, Darius sat at the edge of the bay, his feet dangling above the water. The leather-bound folio sat open beside him, its contents spread out in the fading light.
He picked up the labyrinth postcard again, tracing its worn edges with his thumb.
“Amei,” he wrote on the back just under the previous message a second one —the words flowing easily this time. “Guadeloupe feels like a map of its own, its paths crossing mine in ways I can’t explain. It made me think of you. I hope you’re well. —D.”
He folded the card into an envelope and tucked it into his bag, resolving to send it the next day.
As he watched the waves lap against the rocks, he felt a sense of motion rolling like waves asking to be surfed. He didn’t know where the next path would lead next, but he felt it was time to move on again.
In reply to: Quintessence: Reversing the Fifth
Mon. November 25th, 10am.
The bell sat on the stool near Lucien’s workbench, its bronze surface polished to a faint glow. He had spent the last ten minutes running a soft cloth over its etched patterns, tracing the curves and grooves he’d never fully understood. It wasn’t the first time he had picked it up, and it wouldn’t be the last. Something about the bell kept him tethered to it, even after all these years. He could still remember the day he’d found it—a cold morning at a flea market in the north of Paris, the stalls cramped and overflowing with gaudy trinkets, antiques, and forgotten relics.
He’d spotted it on a cluttered table, nestled between a rusted lamp and a cracked porcelain dish. As he reached for it, she had appeared, her dark eyes sharp with curiosity and mischief. Éloïse. The bell had been their first conversation, its strange beauty sparking a connection that quickly spiraled into something far more dangerous. Her charm masking the shadows she moved in. Slowly she became the reason he distanced himself from Amei, Elara, and Darius. It hadn’t been intentional, at least not at first. But by the time he realized what was happening, it was already too late.
A sharp knock at the door yanked him from the memory. Lucien’s hand froze mid-polish, the cloth resting against the bell. The knock came again, louder this time, impatient. He knew who it would be, though the name on the patron’s lips changed depending on who was asking. Most called him “Monsieur Renard.” The Fox. A nickname as smooth and calculating as the man himself.
Lucien opened the door, and Monsieur Renard stepped in, his gray suit immaculate and his air of quiet authority as sharp as ever. His eyes swept the studio, frowning as they landed on the unfinished painting on the easel—a lavish banquet scene, rich with silver and velvet.
“Lucien,” Renard said smoothly, his voice cutting through the silence. “I trust you’ll be ready to deliver on this commission.”
Lucien stiffened. “I need more time.”
“Of course,” Renard replied with a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “We all need something we can’t have. You have until the end of the week. Don’t make her regret recommending you.”
As Renard spoke, his gaze fell on the bell perched on the stool. “What’s this?” he asked, stepping closer. He picked it up, his long and strong fingers brushing the polished surface. “Charming,” he murmured, turning it over. “A flea market find, I suppose?”
Lucien said nothing, his jaw tightening as Renard tipped the bell slightly, the etched patterns catching the faint light from the window. Without care, Renard dropped it back onto the stool, the force of the motion knocking it over. The bell struck the wood with a resonant tone that lingered in the air, low and haunting.
Renard didn’t even glance at it. “You’ve always had a weakness for the past,” he remarked lightly, turning his attention back to the painting. “I’ll leave you to it. Don’t disappoint.”
With that, he was gone, his polished shoes clicking against the floor as he disappeared down the hall.
Lucien stood in the silence, staring at the bell where it had fallen, its soft tone still reverberating in his mind. Slowly, he bent down and picked it up, cradling it in his hands. The polished bronze felt warm, almost alive, as if it were vibrating faintly beneath his fingertips. He wrapped it carefully in a piece of linen and placed it inside his suitcase, alongside his sketchbooks and a few hastily folded clothes. The suitcase had been half-packed for weeks, a quiet reflection of his own uncertainty—leaving or staying, running or standing still, he hadn’t known.
Crossing the room, he sat at his desk, staring at the blank paper in front of him. The pen felt heavy in his hand as he began to write: Sarah Bernhardt Cafe, November 30th , 4 PM. No excuses this time!
He paused, rereading the words, then wrote them again and again, folding each note with care. He didn’t know what he expected from his friends—Amei, Elara, Darius—but they were the only ones who might still know him, who might still see something in him worth saving. If there was a way out of the shadows Éloïse and Monsieur Renard had drawn him into, it lay with them.
As he sealed the last envelope, the low tone of the bell still hummed faintly in his memory, echoing like a call he couldn’t ignore.
