A Strange Kind of Afterlife

He had decided to die alone on a hill, but things didn't go according to plan.

It’s fair to say that Robert Holborn wasn’t having a good time. He awoke to find his tent had partially collapsed due to the weight of the snow that had fallen on it and the roof of the tent was almost pressing against his face.

With a heavy sigh he pushed the roof back into place and unzipped the inner lining, then he unzipped the front of the little nylon porch, pushing that back into shape too, and crawled outside.

The pain was becoming intense and he had trouble standing up, especially since the snow lay two feet thick all around him, blanketing the hillside in a still, silent, undulating layer of whiteness. As he surveyed the astonishing change that the snowfall had wrought in his surroundings, he gripped his side and winced. He had no appetite, even though he hadn’t eaten for three days, and his hands were beginning to resemble the wizened shrunken hands of a corpse.

Clearly the disease is progressing, he thought to himself. He didn’t have much longer left.

After relieving himself against a nearby bush he crawled back into the tent, feeling rather dizzy, and made a coffee in the porch. To keep his water supply from freezing he’d had to sleep with his two remaining bottles of water inside his sleeping bag, and he was running low on gas.

Even in his weakened and emaciated state, he still appreciated a coffee in the morning. Perhaps, he thought to himself, he could find enough dry wood to build a little fire after the gas ran out. Obviously that would only be possible if the snow cleared. He wondered whether he ought to descend further into the valley, but he was becoming awfully weak and he wasn’t sure he had the strength to try.

After drinking the coffee he lay in the tent and sank into a state halfway between dreaming and wakefulness, or perhaps even halfway between living and dead.

The pain was astonishing. It was making him sweat in spite of the bitter cold. He wondered semi-deliriously whether he could buy painkillers somewhere, but he couldn’t even clearly remember how much money he had left, or where the nearest town was.

A vision of Daisy flashed across his mind. He saw her almost as clearly as if she’d been there, with him on the Austrian hillside. In the vision he was breaking up with her and she was sad and angry, demanding to know what she’d done wrong.

He had done the right thing, hadn’t he? If he had stayed with her, he would have condemned her to watching him waste away and die before her eyes. This way she could forget about him, move on. Perhaps by now she had already found someone else.

But there was still an annoying voice at the back of his mind that said, “No, Rob. You didn’t do it for her. You did it to spare yourself the embarrassment of dying in front of her, and now you’re going to die alone and in pain, like you deserve.”

The pain became worse and worse as the day wore on. He began to moan in agony, curled up on his side. By the time night came, his mind was drifting almost uncontrollably, and although the pain was intense, he was almost beginning to feel as though he didn’t care about it.

Tonight might be the night, he thought. Whatever he had done, whatever the rights or wrongs of the decisions he had made, it was too late to change them now, and soon he would be beyond the reach of pain or regret.

When he awoke the following morning, the pain was gone, and so was the snow. Warm sunlight illuminated his tent. He sat up in his sleeping bag and felt oddly happy.

What was this? Had he entered some previously-unsuspected pre-terminal phase where he was too ill to suffer?

He felt curiously strong.

He unzipped the inner lining and made a coffee. The gas ran out just as the water was boiling on the little stove. For ten minutes he lay propped against his backpack, sipping the coffee.

He couldn’t quite understand it, but he felt as though he wasn’t ill at all. Even so, a knife still twisted in his heart when he thought of Daisy.

“Control your thoughts, Rob.” he muttered to himself, remembering his resolution not to think about her.

When he had finished the coffee, he unzipped the porch all the way and staggered out onto the hillside. Then he stood there, gazing at it in confusion. This wasn’t the hillside he remembered. Not at all.

His tent appeared to be pitched in the middle of a large meadow covered in tiny wild flowers of many different colours. A path leading up a mountainside lay at one end of the meadow, and at the other he saw a path leading downwards. The meadow was edged with magnificent pine trees.

He didn’t remember the flowers, nor so many trees, nor even the mountain, and what’s more, the season seemed to have changed from winter to late spring or summer.

This must be some kind of bizarre freak phenomenon, he thought. Either he had somehow slept through the whole winter, perhaps preserved by the cold, or else, more likely, he had become so delirious that he had forgotten whatever had happened in the past six months. A sudden idea occurring to him, he went back into the tent and found his phone. The little old Nokia still had two bars of charge when he switched it on, but no signal. He checked the date. It still said it was December. In fact, it was apparently Christmas Day.

He went outside again and looked at the blue warm sky and his surroundings.

And then an unsettling but interesting idea occurred to him. Perhaps he was actually dead.

He’d never decided what he thought about the prospect of an afterlife. To Robert, the assertions of religious people seemed like wishful thinking, but the views of atheist materialists didn’t make much sense either.

Why does the universe exist at all? And why do human beings have feelings if they are composed only of matter that feels nothing?

These question had bothered him at times, but he had never felt the need to consider them in any depth. Why consider a conundrum that has no solution, he had always thought.

If this was the afterlife, did that mean he would be spending it alone in an Alpine meadow? And he had just drunk coffee, so he did still need to drink. He had awoken feeling thirsty and caffeine-deprived. Would he need to eat also, or not anymore? A rumble in his stomach answered his question. He was hungry. Clearly he did still need to eat.

He searched in his tent and found a handful of peanuts still left in a plastic food bag. He ate them with relish and then, leaving his tent and most of his belongings where they were, he set off towards the path that led down the hill, hoping to gain a view of whatever lay below.

At the edge of the meadow, an astonishing sight met his eyes. In the distance was an enormous lake, wreathed in early-morning mist. Numerous strange and beautiful buildings dotted the shores of the lake. As he continued to walk, he came to a clearing between some bushes, upon which apricots and figs were growing.

Below he saw a small town, but like no other town he had previously seen. It was constructed in a style reminiscent of the architecure of the Late Medieval period but impossibly beautiful and ornate, with a striking cathedral, strange castle-like structures and several fountains, and all dotted with beautiful trees of various shades of lush verdant green, some purplish and others slightly orange or blueish.

Suddenly he realised he could see the town in minute detail, yet he wasn’t wearing his spectacles. He felt his face in disbelief. There could be no doubt about it. His eyesight was perfect. Then he noticed his hands. These were no longer the hands of a dying man, but the hands of a man in his prime.

Then this was the afterlife. What other explanation could there be?

He began to walk steadily down the hillside towards the village.

When he arrived at the first habitation he thought to knock on the door and ask for information, but then he saw a young woman walking along the cobbled road ahead of him. He quickened his pace and shouted to attract her attention.

“Hey! Hi!”

She stopped and turned. She was strikingly beautiful and perhaps twenty-five years old.

“Are you new?” she said, smiling. She spoke with a faint French accent.

“Yes, I think so.” he said.

“You should go to the town hall.” she said. “They’ll fix you up with a house and explain a bit.”

“Am I dead?” he asked.

She laughed.

“Do dead people ask questions?” she said.

“Then … what is this place?” he said.

“They’ll explain at the town hall.” she replied. “Come with me. I was going that way anyway.”

As they walked, she told him her name was Zoe, he was in a place called Attricia, and she had arrived herself ten years ago.

“I was old when I first came here.” she said. “Eighty-six.”

“Eight-six?” said Robert.

She was watching him with a smile, interested to see his reaction.

“I’m twenty-eight now though.” she said. “Biologically, I mean. Sometimes I miss being old, actually. It’s not all bad. But I don’t miss it enough to go back to being eighty-six again.”

“How can this be?” said Robert. “I don’t understand what’s going on. Where are we?”

“Why are you here?” she said, ignoring his questions. “Were you old too?”

“I’m twenty-four and I was terminally ill.” he said. “I thought I was going to die. Are you sure I’m not dead?”

“They’ll explain everything at the hall.” she said.

Soon they passed a little cafe, where people were sitting at tables outside, eating and drinking.

Robert looked at the food enviously.

“Oh I’m sorry.” said Zoe. “You’re probably hungry. Shall we get something to eat?”

“Do you have time?” asked Robert.

“Of course I do.” said Zoe. “You should have said. You English are absurdly polite.”

They sat down at one of the little tables.

A young man turned around and said, “Oh, you’re new aren’t you?”

“Yes.” said Robert.

“Welcome to Attricia.” said the man. “We’re always happy to see new arrivals. You’ll love it here. My name’s Jurgen.”

“Rob.” said Robert, faintly.

The other people at the table, and the two neighbouring tables, turned around and shouted greetings, introducing themselves. People sitting at tables farther away waved at him and smiled.

“Come on, let him eat.” said Zoe. “He’s in a daze.”

They laughed amicably and went back to their food and conversations.

“We’ll see you around.” said Jurgen.

“What would you like to eat?” said Zoe.

“What do they have?” said Robert.

“Whatever you can think of.” she said. “You’re English, right? Probably you want a full English breakfast. English people eat the most horrendous breakfasts.” she added, teasingly.

“I wouldn’t say no.” said Rob.

She uttered some words in what sounded to Robert like Latin and waved her hand in an odd gesture. A mist formed on the table in front of them, and then plates laden with food appeared, including a full English breakfast right in front of him, orange juice and water, and a croissant for Zoe.

“You’ve got to be joking.” said Robert.

“It’s no joke.” said Zoe. “You’ll learn how to do it. It’s easy when you know how.”

“But … how did you do that?” said Robert.

“It’s not magic.” she said. “Don’t think that. It’s science.”

“I must be dreaming.” he said.

“Eat your terrible English food,” she said, “and tell me if it tastes like a dream.”

After they had eaten she took him to a stone building that looked very much like a house except it had the words “Town Hall” engraved on a wooden plaque above the door. The windows of the building were translucent, making it hard to see inside.

“Go in here and tell them you’ve just arrived.” she said. “I’ll see you around. It was lovely to meet you.”

She walked off.

He looked at the building. It didn’t look like a town hall. There were no posters nor signs of any kind visible anywhere. Nothing about it even looked modern.

He knocked on the door and a voice shouted, “Come in!”.

Inside, Robert found himself in a room that looked a lot like a large living room, except it was decorated with an unusual quantity of plants. At the far end, a man lay on a sofa reading a book. Again the man appeared young; no more than late twenties, he thought.

“Oh, you’re new here!” said the man, looking up.

“Yes.” said Robert.

The man strode forward, extending his hand.

“I’m Simon, but they call me Peter.” he said.

Robert looked puzzled and the man said, “That’s just a silly joke. I am actually just Peter. You’ll be needing a house. What kind of place would you like?”

“I was wondering if you could explain to me where I am and what I’m doing here.” said Robert.

“Oh.” said Peter. “Yes, of course. You see, this planet was terraformed by King Elias. He searches the Earth for people who might like to come here and transfers them here. Probably you were about to die?”

“Yes.” said Robert. “We’re on another planet?”

“Exactly.” said Peter. “Nine hundred light-years from Earth, as a matter of fact.”

“I need to get back to the Earth. I have a fiancé there.”

“You have a fiancé?” said Peter, frowning. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” said Robert. “Well, OK, it’s a little complicated, but I need to get back.”

“No-one goes back.” said Peter. “I’m sorry. We’re allowed to travel anywhere we like in the universe except Earth. It’s a very strict rule.”

“There has to be a way.” Robert persisted.

Peter shook his head.

“We can use spaceships here or you can even build your own, but it’ll stop dead and refuse to go any further if you try to approach Earth. It’s a safety measure built into all our technology here, to protect people on the Earth. It’d blow their minds if they knew about us. They’d never get over it.”

“What if I build a spaceship without that bit of technology?” said Robert.

“There’s no way to do it. Look, I can make you an appointment with the King and you can talk to him about it. He’s very busy though; it won’t be for a year or so.”

“A year?” said Robert. “I can’t wait a year. My fiancé thinks I’m dead.”

“Effectively, you are dead.” said Peter. “At least as far as people on the Earth are concerned. When transfers takes place, the King’s systems substitute a copy of the body of the person who’s transferred. Then he heals the actual person and brings them here. The people on Earth will find the copy soon enough and assume it’s you.”

“Jesus Christ.” said Robert.

“No blasphemy, if you wouldn’t mind.” said Peter.

“You’re a Christian?” said Robert.

“We’re nearly all Christians.” said Peter.

“How come?”

“Because of Jesus dying for our sins.” said Peter. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. There’s no coercion here; you can believe what you like, but if you’d like to attend church with me on Sunday, I think you’ll enjoy it more than you’d expect. Anyway, would you like me to make you an appointment with the King?”

Robert nodded, lost for words.

Peter uttered some words in Latin and made an odd gesture with his hand.

“It’s done.” he said. “I managed to get you one in ten months. I’ll make you a note so you don’t forget. What kind of house would you like?”

After some discussion, Robert was allocated a house just outside the town, in the nearby hills. It appeared the hills and even the town itself were full of unoccupied houses, so it was only a question of finding a residence that wasn’t occupied. The doors of unoccupied houses were unlocked and while the outside doors of the houses could be locked, Peter informed Robert that people rarely bothered, since Attricia had almost no crime.

They travelled to the house in an open-top flying car, and once there Peter instructed Robert in the necessary incantations to make food appear and to make garbage or grime disappear. To make the incantations work it was only necessary to wear a small device embedded in a watch or jewellery. Robert chose a watch.

“How is it possible that saying a few words and performing a gesture can create food?” Robert asked.

“Your words and movements are monitored by a device in the watch and it carries out your instructions. It’s all just physics.” Peter said.

In the following days Robert spent a lot of time in the town, making many new friends. He asked everyone he met whether they knew a way to get to the Earth, and everyone said it was impossible. His new friends seemed extremely pleasant and often very interesting. The town contained people of all ages, but all the elderly people he found had recently come from the Earth and were in the process of ageing in reverse, they informed him. The town also contained many children, all born on Attricia.

On Sunday Peter and the others persuaded him to attend a church with them. The sermon, Robert had to admit, was quite fascinating and quite unlike any other sermon he’d ever heard, and the church beautiful. Everyone seemed to know each other, but there was no trace of any cult-like atmosphere, which he had half-expected. They welcomed his questions, and it appeared that many worshippers were not, in fact, very certain about what they actually believed, but they considered themselves more or less Christian.

By the time six months had passed, Robert had mastered the art of piloting flying cars and flying bikes and had even made a few trips to other planets in one of the many available spacecraft. Spacecraft could be custom-made to order, virtually instantaneously.

Some of the nearby planets had been terraformed in various ways and were visited infrequently purely for amusement. Attricia itself offered an enormous array of different environments and several hundred towns, each more exquisite than the last, but occasionally Attricia’s inhabitants enjoyed visiting a planet containing unusually strange lifeforms, such as giant mushrooms or enormous ground sloths.

One day, without telling anyone, Robert took off in a spacecraft and headed for the Earth. Even though the distance was enormous, the craft was able to travel faster than light and he was able to reach the edge of Earth’s solar system without difficulty, but there, he came to a stop. No matter how he tried, the ship could not be made to enter the solar system containing Planet Earth.

Eventually he gave up in frustration and returned to Attricia.

He wondered if Daisy would forget about him, and perhaps marry someone else, and if so, when.

Eventually his appointment with the King arrived, and he flew to a vast castle on a remote island and was ushered into the King’s presence by a perfectly friendly young woman.

She left him alone with the King in a medium-sized room, tastefully decorated with potted plants, and various maps hanging on the walls. The King rose from an easy chair when he arrived, and shook Robert’s hand, beckoning him to sit down in a chair facing his own.

“I am King Elias.” said the King. “You can call me ‘your majesty’. Tell me, how are you finding Attricia?”

The King appeared to be around fifty years of age, and he exuded a sense of authority that made Robert nervous.

“I love it.” said Robert. “Did you really create it?”

“Not really.” said the King. “Really I’m more of a humble gardener. Only the Creator truly creates. I terraformed this planet and made it what it is. You see, a long time ago, I lived on the Earth, just like you did. I happened to uncover many new astonishing principles of physics, and ultimately I used them to redesign this planet. It was just a lump of rock when I found it.”

“May I ask how old you are,” said Robert “and where are you from?”

“I’m a hundred and forty-two, chronologically. Biologically, I’m fifty. I choose to maintain a certain age appropriate to a ruler. As to where I’m from, I was born in Sheffield, in England.”

“Sheffield?” said Robert incredulously.

“Yes.” said the King, laughing. “I hear it’s gone downhill since I left and it wasn’t all that nice to start with.”

“And you’re a Christian?” Robert asked.

“That’s right.” said the King. “I don’t impose religion on anyone, though. People can choose to believe, or not. Mostly, they believe. I’m careful about who I bring here. I bring people who have a capacity for good, let’s say.”

“What if people don’t believe?” asked Robert. “What if they don’t fit in with Christian teachings?”

“Everyone can enjoy the grace of our Lord Jesus.” said the King. “Those who choose not to believe are as welcome as anyone else. Jesus himself treated the Samaritans kindly. We do not shun them, nor pressure them, nor treat them as lesser people in any way. We believe everyone is made in the image of God.”

“Still, there must be people who don’t like religion at all, or feel they can’t get along with your beliefs.” Robert persisted.

“From time to time, yes.” said the King. “Sometimes they try to found their own communities, away from the others, but it’s rare. Sometimes they leave to explore the universe, but they always come back.”

“Always?” asked Robert.

A troubled expression flitted over the King’s face.

“We did have one fellow who left and never came back.” he said. “A man by the name of Keeling. Samuel Keeling. I hope he will return one day. We will welcome him heartily, like the prodigal son himself. Is this what you came to ask me about?”

“No.” said Robert. “The thing is, I can’t stay here. I have a fiancé on Earth. I must go back to her.”

“Not according to our information.” said the King. “No, I don’t think so. Our systems are very careful not to bring people here who have strong attachments to others. We only bring people here who will be able to adapt to new people and new circumstances. It’s true that you did have a fiancé; I’m aware of that, but you broke up with her.”

“You’ve made a mistake.” said Robert. “I only broke up with her because I was terminally ill. I still love her. She probably still loves me.”

“I know you were ill.” said the King. “I’ve read the notes we made when you were transferred. You were living alone in a tent, on the verge of death. You hadn’t seen her for over a year.”

“I only broke up with her because I received a terminal diagnosis, and then I went off to die, alone.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I didn’t want her to have to see me slowly dying. I didn’t want to ruin her life that way. I’ve always loved hiking. I thought maybe I could find some solace, alone in the mountains.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” said the King.

“Yeah.” said Robert, laughing. “Maybe. But you see I wasn’t free of strong attachments, and I need to return to her.”

“You did break up with her, though. She’s not your fiancé now. She’s your ex-girlfriend. Maybe she’s even found someone else by now.”

“I just need to see her again.” said Robert. “I need to explain.”

The King sighed heavily, shaking his head.

“I’m sorry, Robert.” he said. “That’s not how this works. I can’t make an exception for you. No-one goes back. If I could have shared my scientific work with the people of the Earth, I would have, but I realised they wouldn’t be able to handle it. I realised they’d destroy each other with it. That’s why I terraformed this planet instead, and that’s why I bring people here so they can benefit from my discoveries.

“It’s absolutely vital that no-one on the Earth ever finds out what I have done, or they’ll start trying to follow in my footsteps, and before you know it, the people of Earth will have a whole lot of power that they absolutely are not equipped to handle. I can’t let you return to the Earth.”

“Then bring her here.” said Robert.

“Can’t do that, either.” said the King. “You see, she’s very close to her parents, and she has friends she would miss. We can’t just pluck her out of her life on Earth and transfer her here.”

“Bring her parents and her friends too, then.”

“They’re attached to other people who are attached to other people. If I started on that, pretty sure I’d have to bring half the population of Earth here, and they’d destroy everything I’ve created.”

“That chap you mentioned, Samuel Keeling, he left, you said.” said Robert.

“Yes, he left,” said the King, “but he can’t get to the Earth. He would need my technology to do it, and my technology will automatically refuse to let anyone pass the orbit of Pluto, and Pluto lies four billion miles from the sun. Forget your fiancé. Be happy that you didn’t die as you were expecting.”

Robert left the King’s castle feeling downcast and frustrated, but he was curious about Keeling. The next day he sought out Peter and asked him about Keeling. They were walking down a cobbled street of beautifully-designed old stone houses as they talked.

“I don’t know much.” said Peter. “I know he was an atheist, and for a while he lived with a woman over in Arnisea.”

“Arnisea?” said Robert.

“It’s a town about two thousand miles away, across the Sea of Phrygia.”

“Do you remember the woman’s name?”

“No.” said Peter, “but if you go to Arnisea and ask around, I’m sure you can find her if you really want to know more about Keeling.”

The day after Robert flew a compact ion jet to Arnisea. The craft glided effortlessly over the ocean at a thousand miles per hour, the onboard navigation unit guiding him to his destination.

In Arnisea, a region of stunning gothic spires and hilltop villages carved from sandy stone, he asked around until someone told him that the woman’s name was Sandra Keeling. She was Keeling’s wife and she lived in one of the little villages. As soon as he learned this, Robert flew the jet there directly.

He quickly found Sandra Keeling. She was pottering around a garden, tending to it, two immaculately-groomed dogs lying in the shade of a majestic oak tree.

Like almost everyone on Attricia, Sandra was perfectly happy to talk to him, and she welcomed him into her house, which on Earth would have been considered a small but luxurious mansion.

She was a petite blonde woman, in her twenties like most of the adults on Attricia, with long braided hair.

“Yes, he left, and I don’t think he’ll return.” she said, as they sat in a large room containing a grand piano and several banana trees in pots, light streaming in through enormous tinted windows.

“Why did he leave?” Robert asked.

“He just didn’t fit in.” said Sandra “You know, he was an atheist, for one thing. People talk a lot about God here. He didn’t like it.”

“You were married?” asked Robert.

“Yes,” said Sandra. “but we knew we couldn’t stay with each other. It was more like a close friendship than a marriage. It was always going to be that way. We knew it. I miss him, but he wouldn’t have been happy if he’d stayed here. Another five years and I can divorce him for neglect.”

“Five years?” said Robert in astonishment.

“That’s the rule here.” said Sandra. “If someone leaves, you can divorce them after ten years. We never should have got married in the first place, but you know what Earth’s like. People end up doing things for all sorts of stupid reasons.”

“That’s a long time.” said Robert, gazing into the glass of red-coloured fruit juice she’d given him. She had made it by hand, from fruits grown on her own trees.

“Not really.” she said. “Not when you’re practically immortal. When Sam and I arrived here we were nearly fifty and we’d been married for fifteen not-very-happy years. Now I’m twenty-six and I’ll still be twenty-six in five years. Or I might try being twenty-two; I haven’t decided yet.”

“Do you know anything about where he went?” asked Robert.

“Not to the Earth.” said Sandra. “That’s impossible, but he was obsessed with a distant star called Kepler-54. Sam was something of an amateur scientist. He believed there might be life there. I don’t know why. It’s about 135,000 light years away from Earth, and about the same from here. I’m sure he went there first. Whether he’s still there, who can say? Are you going to try to find him?”

“Yes.” said Robert.

“But why?” said Sandra. “He can’t get back to Earth anymore than you can. He can’t help you.”

“I’m all out of other ideas.” Robert replied.

“Forget about your fiancé.” said Sandra. “That’s my advice. Everything you need is here.”

Robert spent a week preparing for his journey, saying goodbye to the people’d he’d got to know on Attricia. They all told him he’d be back. For the voyage he designed a ship capable of running and supporting his life for, if necessary, several decades, basing his designs off a class-B vivarium ship. There was no shortage of spacecraft designs; some people on Attricia designed spacecraft for a hobby, and powerful computers handled all implementation details.

The computers also ensured the ship could never approach the Earth.

When the ship was ready, molecular assembly machines brought it into being in a hangar outside the city.

Peter and a small crowd of others came to see him off.

“Got something for you,” said Peter, and he threw a bottle of pills for Robert to catch.

“What are they?” Robert asked.

“They’ll heal and rejuvenate you whenever you need it.” said Peter. “Your watch won’t work once you get past a thousand lightyears away.”

Robert boarded the ship, waving as he climbed the little ladder to the ship’s interior, and soon the ship lifted off, bright blue ion jets shining down underneath it

For five months he voyaged towards Kepler-54, keeping himself busy by reading and designing new spacecraft.

Spaceship design was absorbing, but he found it ultimately frustrating. There were aspects of the technology needed that the King didn’t share with anyone, and all attempts to reverse-engineer it had failed. Large parts of the mechanism of Attricia’s spaceships consisted only of what appeared to be lumps of some ordinary metal, but were in fact complex machines.

When he arrived at Kepler-54, the ship’s sensors detected modulated radio waves emanating from a nearby planet. As Robert approached the planet, warning sensors began to sound. “Unknown lifeforms: possibly hostile.”

The ship landed in a desolate plain outside a vast city filled with ugly metallic high-rise buildings, all of them filthy and corroded.

Robert stared in horror at the repulsive vista. He decided to stay in the ship another night, and tackle the town the following day, since it was already evening where he had landed.

During the night numerous soft-bodied creatures flung themselves at the ship, emitting high-pitched shrieks, apparently trying to get it in. Something scratched at the door for about an hour, making hideous growling and whining noises.

When the sun rose, he put on a lightweight suit and helmet and opened the door. The instant he did so, a greenish wrinkled thing with eyes on stalks flung itself into the opening door. Fortunately he was prepared, and he killed it with a plasma rifle.

It took him an hour to cover the five-hundred yards to the town, due to constant attacks from an endless series of repulsive beasts. He passed through a pair of enormous rusted gates, guarded by soldiers, who let him in on the basis of his humanity, as if opening the gates to humans pursued by nightmarish creatures was entirely routine for them.

Immediately inside the gates hung the corpses of at least a dozen people, in varying states of decay.

For three weeks he trawled the town searching for Keeling, sleeping in doorways and abandoned buildings. Several times he was attacked by animals or deranged people while he slept, and he only survived due to the suit’s protection. Every time, he was forced to use one of the pills Peter had given him to repair the resulting bruising.

The town appeared strangely depopulated, and its few inhabitants were covered in scars and rashes. Some of them were hideously deformed in ways that seemed almost incompatible with life.

At last he found someone who had heard of Keeling.

Keeling was living on the fifth floor of a building that would have conjured nightmares on Earth, but on this planet was quite unremarkable. Its corroded metal structure contained numerous reflective windows, many of them cracked or covered in unspeakable filth and slime.

He made his way to the fifth floor and knocked on a blank metal door that he assumed to belong to Keeling, since all other doors on that floor were broken and open, and led into only ruined living quarters.

Keeling opened the door with a plasma sabre in his hand.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Just a few moments of your time.” said Robert. “I’ve travelled for six months to find you.”

“Get lost.” said Keeling, and he tried to shut the door but Robert placed his foot in the doorway, preventing him from closing it.

“Just a few moments of your time.” he said. “Sandra sent me here.”

“Sandra?” said Keeling.

“Your wife.” said Robert.

“Come in then.” said Keeling, with an air of resignation.

Inside, Keeling’s apartment was an incredible tangle of scientific apparatus. Everywhere were blinking lights, machine parts, flasks of chemicals and vats of slime being mixed by metal stirrers.

Keeling was painfully thin and his face marked with scaly patches of irritated skin, much like the rest of the city’s inhabitants. His clothes were torn and ragged and his hair filthy and matted.

Keeling motioned him to sit down at a small metal table that looked as though it would have been more at home in a slaughterhouse.

“So?” said Keeling.

Robert removed his helmet. The air smelt of burning metal and obscure chemicals.

“A year ago I woke up on Attricia.” he said.

Keeling snickered, wheezing slightly.

“I want to find a way to get back to Earth.” said Robert.

“Why don’t you ask your King?” said Keeling.

“I did.” said Robert. “He says it’s impossible.”

“That sanctimonious gimp!” said Keeling. “Of course he says that. Is he still going on about Jesus?”

“He’s still a Christian, yes.” said Robert.

Keeling laughed sarcastically.

“You don’t think he believes that stuff do you?”

“He seemed sincere enough. I don’t mind what he believes.”

“It’s all just for social cohesion. Do you know how he got to be king of a planet?”

“He said he discovered new principles of physics.” said Robert.

“Lies.” said Keeling. “They’re all liars. Judgemental lying hypocrites, the lot of them. I’ll tell you what happened. He invented some kind of artificial brain. That’s the only thing he invented. The brain told him how to terraform a planet. It told him how to master space and matter. It’s the entire source of his power. But it’s not so easy to create a utopia. People get lazy and decadent, teenagers act out, everyone tests the limits of what they can get away with.

“He asked his artificial brain how to fend off the decay. You can bet on that. I’ve pieced it all together. It told him to create some awful pastiche of 1950s England. Or maybe Switzerland, better said. But there are reasons people living in 1950s Switzerland didn’t just keep things that way. There are reasons people wanted change.”

“You know,” said Robert, “I quite liked it there.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Keeling asked.

“I have a fiancé on Earth.” said Robert. “I need to get back to her. I thought you might be able to help me. All the spaceships on Attricia are engineered to stop people going there.”

“I see.” said Keeling. “Yes, I see all right.”

“Can you help me?” said Robert.

“And how’s Sandra?” said Keeling.

It seemed that Sandra was an afterthought to him, or perhaps, thought Robert, the memory of leaving her had been too painful to bring up immediately. Keeling didn’t seem the sentimental type. Quite the opposite.

“Well.” said Robert. “She plans to divorce you if you’re not back in five years.”

“Good for her.” said Keeling.

“Why did you come here?” said Robert. “The entire place is hideous.”

“Wasn’t this bad when I arrived.” said Keeling. “It’s really gone downhill a lot in the past five years. Still, I happen to like a certain amount of degradation. At least people are real here. If they hate you, you know about it. The problem is, the Emperor. He’s lost his mind.”

“The Emperor?” said Robert.

“Another independent inventor of artificial brains.” said Keeling. “For all I know there might be dozens of them. All with the same stupid idea. Create a utopia. Of course it went wrong. The power went to his head. He started creating monstrous lifeforms, just for the fun of it. As far as I can make out, the descent started thirty years ago. Before that this planet wasn’t so different to Attricia, except they didn’t bother with the churches here. Nor the genetic interventions. If you don’t have that stuff, you’ve got to exert a firm grip on people somehow. You need police, a judiciary, executions.”

“What kind of genetic interventions?” said Robert.

“They didn’t tell you about that, eh?” said Keeling. “When a woman gives birth on Attricia, the medical devices manage everything. They don’t even have to touch her. Everything works via forcefields. She feels no pain, and nothing ever goes wrong. But their help comes at a price. They genetically tweak the child so it can fit in properly. Don’t want any criminal tendencies, do we? Attricia is no utopia. It’s a zoo. A zoo of freaks.”

Robert sat quietly for some moments, trying to absorb what Keeling was telling him. But the man was clearly insane. How much of what he said could be relied upon?

Keeling chuckled to himself, wheezing.

“There are no executions in England, and England’s stable.” said Robert.

“Is it, really?” said Keeling. “First sign of decay is people abandon their faith and the temples stand empty. I’m telling you, and I’m an atheist.”

“You honestly prefer this place to Attricia?” said Robert.

“It’s not going to stay like this.” said Keeling. “Another few years and I’ll be Emperor. I’m working on it now. I’m going to develop my own brain. Then I’ll have that charlatan thrown into boiling oil.”

Keeling laughed, half-dried spittle hitting Robert in the face.

“Can you help me get back to Earth?” said Robert.

“Maybe I can.” said Keeling. “Question is, what are you proposing to do for me in return?”

Robert thought carefully.

“I have a spaceship.” he said. “It’s just outside the walls.”

Keeling pursued his lips and shook his head.

“Useless to me.” he said. “That thing won’t last long here.”

“I have pills that can heal all disease.” said Robert.

“Now you’re talking.” said Keeling. “Bring ‘em out then.”

Robert unzipped a pocket in his suit, took out the bottle of pills and placed them on the table.

“Deal’s a deal.” said Keeling, and he held out a hand covered in warts.

“You’ll help me?” asked Robert.

“That I will.” said Keeling, and they shook hands.

“I want the whole bottle, mind.” said Keeling.

“It’s yours.” said Robert.

Keeling unscrewed the cap of the bottle took out a pill and turned it around in his fingers.

“Top quality.” he said, and he swallowed it.

The blemishes on his face immediately began to fade, and his voice became smoother and less rasping.

“There’s a portal.” said Keeling. “I’ll give you a map. It’s on the other side of a desert. Your ship won’t work there. It’ll take you two days to cross it on foot and you won’t be able to sleep or the creatures will take you. The Emperor built a bunch of portals and forgot about them. Or maybe he just stopped caring. Emergency exits. But now only he and I know about them, and he’s insane. And a few others, I suppose, if any of them are still alive. I’ve made a lot of progress with uncovering the Emperor’s little secrets.”

“Why don’t you come with me?” said Robert.

“I like it here.” said Keeling. “Now leave me in peace. If you ever see Sandra again, tell her I’m not coming back.”

Keeling was visibly healing before his eyes. His skin was gradually becoming smoother.

Robert got up to leave.

As he was making his way out of the door, Keeling said, “Hey.”

Robert turned and Keeling pressed a pill into his hand.

“You can keep one of them. You’ll need it.”

He smiled, the first sincere smile Robert had seen since he’d met the man.

“Thanks.” said Robert.

Robert made his way back to the spacecraft, carrying the map Keeling had given him. When he got there he found its exterior was already beginning to suffer a strange kind of corrosion and it was covered in dents from where the beasts of the plain had flung themselves against it.

Keeling was right. The ship wouldn’t last long.

He lifted off and set a course for the start point on Keeling’s map. When he got there the ship’s engines began to cut out, and he narrowly avoided plummeting into the desolate plain below, bringing the ship down on a rocky outcrop.

During the following night, the ship suffered further attacks from the creatures that roamed the plains, but fewer than it had done outside the city gates. In the morning, Robert set off on foot.

For two days he walked without stopping, forcing himself to continue, enduring repeated attacks from repulsive horned cattle with rows of blank green eyes, squid-like things that skittered across the plain emitting screeching noises, and massive tentacled birds that dropped on him abruptly out of the ominous purplish skies and attempted to sever his jugular.

When he reached the cave where Robert had claimed the portal to be located, he was on the verge of falling to the ground and giving up. He was covered in bruises from the continual attacks and his legs burned with exhaustion. He felt his mind to be drifting slightly with a faint but definite delirium.

Finding the cave unleashed an unexpected burst of energy that he hadn’t thought he had left in him, and he staggered on to search for the portal.

After two hours he found it, at the end of a low tunnel. It was nothing but a mass of half-rusted wires and switches, but Robert had scrawled instructions for activating it on the back of the map.

He flipped the correct switches and watched as a space on the wall of the cave turned into a mass of bright purple swirling clouds. Then he stepped into the clouds, or rather, fell into them.

The next thing he was aware of was a collection of people staring at him and talking about ambulances. He removed his helmet. The people wore numbers on tags around their necks and he was still in a cave, surrounded by impressive rock formations.

He was taken to a hospital, where they put him on a drip and, when he was strong enough, gave him food.

A policewoman came to talk to him after a few days, when he was sitting up and pondering his next move.

“Could you tell us who you are?” she asked.

“I don’t remember.” said Robert.

“You don’t know who you are?” she said.

“No.” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“That all right.” she said. “I’m just trying to help you.”

“I know.” he said.

After all, he thought, I’m supposed to be dead. He would have to adopt a new identity. Or perhaps if he used his old identity, people would just assume that mistakes had been made?

“Is there anyone we could contact for you?” said the policewoman.

“I don’t know.” he said.

Then a thought came to him, and he said, “Wait … I remember someone. Her name’s Daisy.”

He gave the woman Daisy’s address.

The next day the policewoman and a policeman took him to Daisy’s flat. They had already shown Daisy a photograph of him, and she had identified him.

“Apparently you’re supposed to be dead.” said the policewoman jocularly.

“Don’t get many dead people round here.” said the policeman.

The door opened, seemingly by itself, and they went inside.

Daisy sat in a wheelchair, her skin ashen-grey and her hair dry and wispy.

“Are you OK to be left alone with him?” asked the policewoman.

“Yes.” said Daisy faintly.

“Are you sure?” said the woman.

“Yes it’s fine.” said Daisy.

When the police left, Robert said, “What happened to you?”

“You’re dead.” said Daisy.

“I’m not dead.” said Robert.

“Do you know who you are?” said Daisy. “They said you’d lost your memory.”

“I lied.” said Robert. “I didn’t know what best to do.”

Daisy coughed painfully.

“I’m sorry I left.” he said, his voice breaking.

“You can’t just waltz in and out of my life this.” said Daisy. “I’ve got enough problems as it is.”

“Let me explain.” said Robert.

He began to explain about his illness, and Attricia, and the hell-planet, and the portal.

“I don’t want to hear any more of this rubbish.” said Daisy angrily, when he had almost finished. “I don’t even know who you are anymore. After you left me, my parents died one after the other and I got ill. You have no idea how hard life’s been. You need to get out of here tomorrow. You can stay one night but that’s it.”

“Is that why you’re in a wheelchair?” Robert asked. “You’re ill?”

Daisy burst into tears. “I tried to kill myself.” she sobbed. “It didn’t work. I’m just waiting to die. Now you come here with some moronic piece of science fiction. That’s all I need.”

The hospital had given Robert some old clothes and placed his suit in a bag. He removed the suit and felt in one of its many pockets. The pill was still there.

He held it out to her in the palm of his hand.

“This will cure you.” he said.

“Screw you.” she said, and she wheeled her wheelchair away.

“Where are you going?” he said.

“To bed.” she said. “You can sleep on the sofa but you’d better be out of here when I wake up tomorrow.”

When the sun rose the next day, he got up and left.

Before leaving, he wrote a short letter to her on the back of an electricity bill and placed it on the table with the pill.

He spent the day wandering around the town, his mind blank with sadness. He managed to sell the spacesuit to a second-hand shop as a fancy dress outfit, and with the little money they gave him, he bought some soup and drank it joylessly.

He spent the night in the doorway of a shop. The night was cold and he regretted not keeping the suit.

Of course, he could see how it looked from her perspective. He understood. He had broken up with her and then reappeared more than two years later, raving like a lunatic.

He wondered if his tent was still there on the side of a hill in Austria. Probably not, he thought. Extremely unlikely, in fact.

All desire, all hope and all fear seemed to have left him, and all that was left was emptiness. He couldn’t marshal his thought and he didn’t want anything but to be warm. He wondered vaguely if this was what it was like to be insane. Had he lost his mind?

Shortly before midday he bought more soup and drank it sitting in the window of a warm cafe. Then he walked outside, blinking in the sunlight.

He heard someone call his name and he turned to see Daisy running towards him; a miraculously healed, rejuvenated Daisy. She ran to him shouting his name and fell into his arms.

“I nearly didn’t take it, Robert.” she said, half-laughing, half-crying. “I nearly threw it away. I thought you were crazy.”

In the distance, a church bell struck noon.