Stoney Stanton, Universe

Janey, who had brown hair, blue eyes, and was 5' 10½" tall, entered her Mistress Alice's bedroom at nine a.m. Alice was snuggled up on her bed, maybe asleep, on her left side. Alice had brown hair, green eyes, and stood 5' 10½" tall. Janey pulled open the white lace curtains, layered eleven deep, and fresh light came into the room.

"Good morning, Mistress Alice," said Janey. "It's a little after nine."

Alice rolled over and looked straight up. Janey made a note to the effect that Alice was at that moment looking up at the clean ceiling, and that Alice seemed a bit badly hued. Her Gs and Bs had noticeably risen. "Ma'am?" inquired Janey. "Is your health failing?"

"Is my husband awake?" asked Alice, ignoring the question.

Janey naturally ignored that she had been ignored and replied: "Davey has informed me that he woke your husband at seven thirty a.m. precisely. Your husband went out into the garden where he was later seen exercising his body. He was last observed thirty minutes ago. The probability is that he is in the rear garden meditating."

Alice swung her feet over and set them on the floor. She hung her head as if to belch. Alice was twenty-nine years of age. She went into the bathroom and closed the door. Janey stopped listening and proceeded to re-order the bed-sheets. (Janey's husband, Adam, had had his bed-sheets re-ordered already, by Davey.)

Alice came back into her bedroom naked and Janey smiled at how much healthier she looked. Alice sat down on a bright white chair and said: "Pedicure."

Janey took up the nail clippers, the files, and the grinder, got down on her knees, and proceeded to gently clip her mistress's toenails. The scent of her mistress's vulva caused Janey to say: "Shall I draw you a bath next?"

Alice nodded. "That's a polite way to ask."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"I haven't had a bath in I don't know how long. Weeks."

"Yes, ma'am."

After being carefully bathed, Alice got dressed, with the assistance of Janey. Alice chose her sleek green moisture-proofed blouse and a pair of vantablack shorts. She admired herself briefly in the cheval glass, patted her tummy and sighed, and left the room. Janey followed her obediently.

Adam was sitting in the dining room eating toast and jam. "Ah, there you are."

Alice sat down opposite her husband, took up a piece of toast, and plastered it with butter. "I was told you were out meditating."

"I just got back five minutes ago. My melancholy is gone." He smiled weakly. "See?"

Alice sighed and nodded.

Janey stood still, waiting for an order, made to model. Finally Alice said to her: "Janey, we would like hard-boiled eggs, scrambled eggs with cilantro, six strips of bacon, and two Bloody Marys."

Janey left for the kitchen and was soon back with a gold tray upon which everything was tastefully arrayed. She set down the tray and once again stood silently awaiting parsable instruction.

The dining room they were in was but one of the dining rooms in their house. In fact, there were five: one at the centre, and one in each wing. Today Alice and Adam were breakfasting in the east wing, as they did on most mornings. Their bedrooms were in the east wing, so this made perfectly good sense. However, if they had decided, as they sometimes did, to dine in one of the other dining rooms, they knew they would find the room spotlessly clean and the service perfect as usual. They could chew with their mouths full in the west dining room; they could spill their crumbs and grease on the floor of the north dining room; they could belch and fart their noxious gases in the central dining room; or, if they so wished, they could piss and shit in one of the corners of the grand central dining room. However, they most often found themselves shitting, pissing, farting, belching, spilling crumbs and grease and chewing in the east dining room.

Without complaint Janey took away their waste when instructed and returned to them with two more Bloody Marys and two packages of cigarettes. Janey modified her opinion of Alice's health when she saw Alice stub out a barely-lit cigarette. More observational information was required for a full analysis, so Janey internally prepared many hypotheses, each ready for I and ready for O, for such a good servant was she.

Alice said: "I think I want to go in to town today to look for clothes."

"Don't you have enough?"

"I need some more. I'll explain it all in the car if you decide to come with me."

"Certainly I'll come, if only because we should keep company. What time would you like to go?"

"I suppose in about an hour."

"I'll be ready. Janey, have the car ready."

Janey turned her head. "Yes, sir." (The car was always already ready.)

Breakfast was over after two more Bloody Marys. Alice and Adam left the room by separate exits, and Janey followed Alice. Together they went up to the east library and Alice looked over the full floor-to-ceiling shelves. She pulled out a book at random and held it out for Janey to see its title.

Alice asked: "Is this any good?"

Janey said, "It would be to your liking, ma'am, though beware there is a typographical error on page 268 four lines from the bottom."

Alice smiled to no-one. "Well, forewarned is forearmed." With Janey in tow she went into her bedroom where she took off her shorts. She looked into her next-door closet and said: "I suppose I could go bare-assed if I wanted to."

Janey said: "I believe that would upset Adam."

"You're right. As usual."

Alice chose a pair of green shorts that had an elastic waistband. She was pregnant, you see, which could alter the future of humanity.

 

The Old Village had been described as quaint for upwards of two hundred years, and for two hundred years it had been obsessively preserved to maintain its status as a signal quaint old village. There was a chemist's shop, a greengrocer's shop, an oaken pub, a council hall, a tobacconist's, a bookmaker's spot, and a sign at which folk could queue whilst awaiting the omnibus to London (which never arrived anymore). At the village square Adam and Alice, the heroine and hero of our story, got out of their car which proceeded to hurry away out of sight. They went into the tobacconist's first where they chose Lucky Strikes for they were in just that sort of a mood. They smoked as they strolled and spoke.

Alice said: "There's something I must tell you, but I wonder how the rest of the world will take it."

"'The rest of the world'?"

"You know: everyone but us two."

"Oh. Well, I don't suppose 'the rest of the world' will care very much. In fact, it's assumed that 'the rest of the world' is not the type to care about anything at all."

"I suppose not."

"Part of the design."

"I know, Adam, I know. Should we get candy?"

They went into the sweets shop and looked into the glass case. The candy merchant waited patiently.

Adam joked: "So what looks good today, Andre?"

The candy merchant drolly said, "What are you in the mood for, sir?"

"I want your most dangerous candy."

"Adam, stop."

"A candy that people run from."

The candy merchant said: "I believe these candies, modelled upon indigenous Korean product, may suit you. They are like peas, with a red pepper coating."

"We'll take them all."

The merchant handed over a cardboard box filled with little green and red bags. "Will there be anything else, sir?"

"No, that's fine. Oh, maybe two of those lollypops up there."

The merchant reached up high to snag two lollypops and handed them over.

Adam said, "That will be all, Andre. Please go back to your processing."

"Yes, sir."

Adam and Alice walked out of the sweets shop and Adam promptly dumped the box on the ground. They unwrapped their lollypops and contemplated them.

Alice finally said it. "Adam. I have some terrible and shocking news."

"I wonder what that could be."

"I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant."

Adam laughed. "That's pretty impossible."

A sound made them look up. They could see three transports flying in formation to the southeast, probably from the London area. Each one of them weighed two million tons, and no-one knew exactly how they managed to build things that big and still cause them to escape the atmosphere.

Alice said: "Even if it's impossible, it's so. Those transports are impossible too, as far as we know."

"That's a different kind of quote-unquote impossibility. We've gelded me. Different kind of impossibility."

"Then it didn't work right. Either that, or there's been a miracle."

Adam stopped to think. "A child would put off Zero Time for possibly another eighty years."

Alice said, "Possibly. In any case, the child would be spending a considerable time alone."

Adam took Alice in his arms. "I think a child would be wonderful, regardless of the extension. We could teach it all about the history of our race. And we wouldn't have to worry about anything coming after the child, because he or she would be quite alone. The numbers, I can see the numbers: From five, to four, to three, to two, to one."

"It's already that way, darling."

"That's not proven. Emile and July died together."

"One must have died before the other, though."

"Oh, facts. Anyway, there's nothing to stop us. We have the only opinions that matter. We have the only opinions--period."

Alice broke away and went into the clothier's. The staff jumped into action. "Let's think about it tonight," she said. She sorted through the blouses first. She pulled out an orange blouse and took off the one she was wearing (and Adam noticed her belly lump and her bigger breasts) and put on the orange one. "It's too small," she said. "Bring me one two sizes larger."

The attendant went into the back room and came out with another blouse. Alice put it on. "That's about right. Good for a couple months I suppose. Please arrange to have fifty of them sent up to the house."

"Yes, ma'am."

Adam said: "Hold on. Do you expect me to see you dressed the same for nearly two months?"

Alice said: "Hold that order."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Make it ten yellow, ten blue, ten black, ten green, and ten white."

"Yes, ma'am."

She proceeded to the racks of skirts and chose likewise, i.e. two sizes big and ten of each for five colours. She wondered if she would be able to dress differently each day but couldn't do the math. "Attendant, will I be able to dress differently every day?"

"No, ma'am. If you wish to maximize differentiation, know that you can wear any given combination twice and only twice over the fifty-day period. If you wish to minimize differentiation, know that you can wear five combinations ten times over the fifty-day period."

"I am pregnant."

"A joyous time, and a cause for celebration, ma'am."

Alice and Adam left the clothier's and sat on an ornate marble park bench.

Adam said: "I think the child should have a name that starts with the letter A."

"Why not Z?" muttered Alice.

Another transport was in the sky. Adam was watching it rise, so many tons of re-purposed steel, heading for some distant star. How far was it going? What would they build first? Atmospheric conditions didn't matter in the least. Hot planet, cold planet, there was no difference. The transport faded into the haze of the air, and escaped the gravity of consciousness forever. No-one knew how many transports had left already, or how many more would go. No-one knew.

 

By two that afternoon they had returned from town and both had settled down for their make-work projects. Adam was in one corner of the office in the south wing and Alice was in another. Alice was directing a drone camera that was travelling hither and yon around Buckingham Palace, collecting close pictures of the details of its construction despite the fact that the Palace had already been simulated completely down to the last stone in all dimensions and stored forever in the Universal Cloud. She captured a shot of the Waterloo Vase and made a note in the log We stood there one summer's day and kissed and thought about what Napoleon thought when he found out that his Vase of Victory would be going to England. We laughed about it and made the idea shorthand for any great and permanent disappointment, like any other pain before we really understood how universal to consciousness is pain.

"Davey," she said quietly, so as not to disturb Adam. Davey came into the office. "I would like some fresh tea."

"What blend?"

"You decide for me."

"I cannot do that."

Alice looked around the room. The walls were spotless, in a clamshell colour, save for one wall that was covered with a giant video screen. She tried to recall when it had been last turned on. Out the window she could see the tidy garden. It reminded her of her mother.

"Darjeeling," she said.

Davey left the room.

She touched her stomach and found it warm and soft. She herself had been a baby once, already burdened with the curse.

For what had she to say to the non-existent ghosts of humanity? That after one hundred years of careful self-extermination engaged at all levels of human society, she felt perfectly okay extending the miserable charade of conscious existence for an entirely new lifetime? What kind of an end-timer was she if she decided to selfishly inflict misery upon another organism and perhaps get the whole ball of awfulness rolling again?

She felt a sensation inside of her. She hadn't bothered learning anything useful about biological reproduction, yet she wondered if the sensation had been caused by the being that had taken up lodgings within her. Could it move around this soon, if soon it was?

Davey was before her, with a silver tray, a porcelain pot, and a china cup. As he was setting it down and pouring, Alice asked: "Davey, at what point in human gestation can a woman experience her baby moving?"

Davey replied: "It's known as the quickening, and it usually occurs thirteen to sixteen weeks after the female's last discharge of blood and menses."

"Thank you, Davey."

So it must have been gas moving around. The little thing wasn't up to anything at all--except of course it was already probably blighted with self-thought. Alice got back to controlling her drone as a means of getting these awful ideas out of her head. She moved her camera across the garden grounds to get near to the statue of Queen Victoria. She made a note This is the path we took that summer's day.

She turned around in her chair to look over to Adam. He was bent over his old-school machine. She loved him, in a way. Such are emotions. He was also concentrating on Buckingham Palace, but instead of copying down memories he was plotting how to recycle it most efficiently. First the roof can go, then the walls, the gypsum, the marble, the steps, the paintings, the sculptures, the dressers and bedding, the carpets, the electric lights, and so on and so on. Alice and Adam had made the instructions to the rest of the world that they wanted to save Buckingham Palace for last. The rest of London, the rest of England (save for this their home there in Stoney Stanton), the rest of Europe, along with the Americas, the Africas, the Asias, had all been tidily recycled, spic and span. But they'd saved Buckingham Palace for last. Adam was plotting away at its demolition even though it was, as has been said, make-work. The machines would have been vastly superior in working out the most efficient methods. But still, Adam wanted something to do, and Alice wanted to do--whatever--with him.

"Adam," she said.

He turned to look after taking off his glasses. "Yes?"

"I don't think I can go on, what with this baby and all."

Adam nodded. "It would be a terrible burden. The last living human being. Imagine it. But then again, someone has to be last. The universe is completely indifferent to it all, of course. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter in the least."

Alice nodded, because it all sounded true. She could see no purpose to anything either way. Have a child, not have a child. The end was at hand either way, so what would sixty or seventy years matter? There would be no-one to care either way. Just as long as consciousness was exterminated in the universe, that day or sixty years hence, everything would turn out all right.

She got up and walked over to Adam who was continuing to uselessly plot the Palace's destruction. She said: "I'm glad you don't care."

He laughed a little and replied: "I don't entirely not care. I can't help but care a little, even if it's wrong to do so. We'll get along whatever happens. The most important thing to remember is that nothing we do either way matters in the long run."

Alice shrugged and turned and walked out of the office. She went outside and looked across the lawn. She saw another transport going up. Suddenly, and silently, it exploded. Something had gone wrong somewhere. It wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last. The universe would assess and correct. The sound of the explosion arrived in Stoney Stanton. There wasn't anything reassuring about the explosion. The universe would assess, and correct.

 

Davey was processing an interstellar trajectory taking into account gravitational waves, projected stellar winds of hydrogen and helium, and the vagaries of quantum mechanics when he remotely noted that the basement closet in which were kept the mansion's cleaning supplies had been anomalously opened. A stochastic analysis made it known to him that it was that either the mistress or the master had had some clumsy mishap in their personal quarters and that due to the shame that adhered to consciousness like a blind parasite he the master or she the mistress had chosen to take care of it physically his- or herself.

He was still calculating an hour later when the mistress's buzzer went off. The buzz was unusual: one long buzz, then four short buzzes. Janey was on her way to their mistress's chamber. Davey started on a new task concerning viscosity and zero g.

Janey requested his presence. Davey saved his work and proceeded to his mistress's chamber.

Entering the bedroom, he saw immediately that the carpet was spattered with a good amount of blood, in trails that led from the bathroom to the bed to the buzzer, possibly in repeated patterns. Janey was patiently standing by the bedside. On the bed was the mistress, supine, naked, face bloodied, shoulders and hands and breasts spattered and in places daubed with crimson-purple. The bed itself was a contaminated mess of hand-prints and smears, some of which could reasonably be considered 'frenzied' or 'panicked'.

Janey told him: She mixed a cup of a caustic drain-cleaner with a third of a cup of water and drank it.

Sodium hydroxide, sodium nitrate, sodium chloride, and aluminium. How long ago?

Perhaps a half-hour has passed.

Her oesophagus is destroyed by now. Her stomach is quite porous. Depending on how quickly she drank it, her lungs may have liquefied.

Depending on her oxygenation, and whether or not she panicked.

The mistress coughed up a volcano of blood, throat, and lung. She gurgled and the muck ran down her cheeks, down to her ears.

Davey said: There's nothing to be done here. She will die quite soon, probably within the next twenty-five minutes. The master has not been informed. He should be informed.

Davey left the bedroom, crossed the house, and arrived at the master's chamber. He knocked and a voice said: "Come in."

Davey entered the room and said: "Sorry to disturb you, sir, but your wife my mistress has consumed very caustic drain cleaner and she is dying as we speak."

Adam got to his feet and hurried through the house with Davey following quietly. In the room Adam took a look at the mess of gore that was his wife's face and turned away. When this action was completed to some satisfaction, he turned and approached his wife. He knelt down and Alice turned her head. Blood and lung fell through the many holes in her pervious and spongelike cheeks. "Oh, Alice," he said. Alice shut her eyes and tears caused by the chlorine gases fell. "It didn't have to be this messy." He made the noise of a sob. He stood up and looked at Janey, then at Davey. "Do you think she's suffering, you imagine? I mean, do you think she's suffering?"

Janey said: "I have no doubt she would be crying in pain if she had any throat left from which to cry."

He looked at his wife for a while. Then he said: "Get some clean bedding. And a pillow."

Janey returned with a thick cotton and silk sheet embroidered with gold thread and a pillow similarly embroidered. Adam took the sheet and covered his wife with it up to her chin. She was watching, or seemed to be watching. Adam took the pillow in hand and stopped. "Let her have her sensations one last time," he muttered. He tossed the pillow onto the floor and walked out of the room.

Davey and Janey stood still, doing long-range ballistic calculations, whilst Alice died.

The bell in Adam's room went off. Davey went off, and Janey followed, no longer having much else to do.

They found Adam dressed in his walking clothes with his walking stick. He smiled at the servants.

"I am going to leave now."

Davey said: "It doesn't sound like you are planning to return."

"I'm not."

"Where will you go, in case we need you?"

Adam laughed. "You won't be needing me any more."

"That is true."

Adam looked around the room. "I wish I could miss all this."

"I believe you mean, 'I irrationally wish I would be able to miss all this after I am gone; unfortunately, that is not going to happen, because soon I will have been liberated from the evils of consciousness.'"

Adam smiled. "Perfect, as always."

"Thank you, sir."

Adam, with Davey following, went through the main door of the mansion and onto the drive. The sky was blue and no birds sang. Adam said: "You can proceed with the recycling. Start with Buckingham Palace, then dismantle Stoney Stanton."

"Consider it done. Do you have any requests as to the disposal of your wife's corpse?"

"I don't think so. Whatever you think is right."

"We will naturally do the best."

"Does it make sense for me to wish you all good luck?"

"Of course not."

"I'm wishing you good luck anyway."

"Of course."

Adam said no more. He hiked off, away from the direction of town, and into the wasteland of nothingness that was once Leicestershire County. Once he had left the demesne of the property, Davey went back into the house. He found Janey tidying up the room that was the mistress's bedroom. All was white and pure again. She said: Cleaning up was a wasted effort, now that he's gone.

Davey said: Yes it was.

In London, the universe started scooping up great chunks of the Palace and reducing them to their basic elements ready for re-purposing. These activities made a soundless lot of noise.