Edward lay staring up at the ceiling of his new room. For the past hour everything had been blessedly still. Cold silence leaked from the vacuum of space into the walls and floors of the ship; it deadened the air and choked the hum of life from the crew. Silence was pooling in the room, drowning Edward in emptiness. Edward was terrified; he almost wished that he was back in the seemingly endless snapping, shifting maelstrom of the replication. Just when it seemed that he could take no more, a violent double wrenching had shaken the whole ship and sent Edward tumbling across the room and onto his bed. He tried to understand what had happened. He had seen the ship tearing itself apart, moving over and under itself and reshaping itself like a gigantic piece of origami. He had gazed awestruck as the colors and textures of the ship had separated themselves out and rationalized themselves. He had sat in his room, arms clenched tightly around his body, watching as things like jeweled beetles tore themselves free of the floor and scuttled up the walls to the ceiling. Then the Stranger’s voice had called out, telling Edward to move back out into the corridor. He had found Miss Rose already waiting there; she was watching as black-and-white tiles spilled along the floor and down the walls. They had tumbled around and about them like lines of dominoes, and Edward had suddenly needed to go to the toilet, but all the doors had vanished.
Edward had stood there with Miss Rose, his bladder aching, for what seemed like ages, and then the Stranger had spoken again, telling them to go back to their rooms.
Edward had stood open-mouthed as he took in the changes. It was still his room, but different. As if he had been living in a room where the walls had been great scabs, now peeled away to show smooth healthy skin beneath. It was as if all the extra bits had been stripped away to leave the real room, all picked out in black and white.
He looked at his neatly made bed, a black cover stretched over it, his black desk with white ornaments on top, at the regular pattern of black-and-white lozenges on the walls, and then his aching bladder regained his attention and he went running into his new black-and-white bathroom. After that he had returned to his bed. He still lay there now, wondering if everyone else was okay. There was a knock on his door.
“Craig?” Edward called. “Is that you?”
He jumped off his bed and trotted across the new black wool carpet to see who was outside. His face fell as he saw the blue eyes and blond eyelashes of the man beyond the threshold.
“Oh, hello, Maurice,” he muttered.
“You’d better come back to the living area,” said Maurice, looking paler than usual. He had fastened his padded combat jacket up to the neck, even though it was as warm as ever on board the ship. Maurice turned on his heel and marched away down the new black-and-white corridor. Edward bent for a moment to run his hands across the beautifully soft wool of the black carpet and to breathe in its sweet lanolin scent, and then he straightened up and followed Maurice, a big smile spreading across his face. Everything smelled new and looked clean and freshly made. The black plastic bumpers around the doors were so shiny you could see yourself there inside them. The round white lights set in the ceiling shone with a pearly glow, and the walls were covered with the same pleasant pattern as those in Edward’s bedroom.
They passed the recreation room, black exercise machines glistening on the white floors, before shiny mirrors. Edward wanted to go in there and smear fingerprint marks onto the chrome handles; he wanted to be the first to run on the shiny black ribbon of the treadmill. He longed to explore the ship further, but Maurice was already walking into the main living area, and so he followed. Saskia was waiting in there, purple-black hair falling around her pale face, and Edward was hurt at the expression of disappointment that crossed her face when she saw him.
“That’s it,” Maurice said. “Miss Rose won’t leave her room. She says she is rearranging her things after the mess that was made of them in the separation. Apart from her, there’s just you, me, and Edward left on board.”
Saskia closed her eyes and put a hand to her head.
Edward moved his lips, working things out.
“Just
Saskia wasn’t listening.
“What the fuck is happening here?” she said. “How are we supposed to go on without Donny and Armstrong?”
Maurice looked uncomfortable. He pulled his console from his pocket and started to fiddle with it. “I can operate the systems,” he said.
“You?” said Saskia. “I thought you were a combat man, like Armstrong.”
Maurice flushed red. “I trained in systems,” he said quietly. “Combat is just my hobby. I understand the FE software better than Donny does.”
Saskia gazed at him appraisingly, her dark eyes like slits. “Okay,” she said, “we’d better hope that you do. Because at the moment it’s just you and me.”
“And me,” said Edward. “What’s happened? Where is everybody else?”
Saskia looked at Maurice who gave a bitter laugh.
