Quon

The thick iron gates parted and opened slowly, squealing on their large hinges. We walked cautiously through the opening and entered what looked to be another commune. A number of tents and shacks squatted around the colossal vessel, each pegged into the solid earth with iron rods. Steam rose in the distance. There was the clang of metal on metal from an undetermined location, and then the clanging stopped.

At first, there appeared to be no one.

Gradually, men, women and children began to emerge from their shaded nooks. More and more of them, hundreds of people, slipping from the shadows. They walked into the dusty road that lay before us—the road leading to the entrance of Chang’e 11. They stayed close to each other and stared at Gideon and me with empty eyes and blank, impassive faces. Their clothes were torn, dusty and rumpled. Their hair was tangled and dishevelled, their skin leathery and dark. These desert people were shadows of their former selves, I could tell. For whatever reason they had chosen to dwell beside Chang’e 11, their time in that place had eaten away at them, their souls and their minds bled from their bodies by an ever-thirsty vampire.

They said nothing to welcome or rebuff us. It was hard to tell whether they knew we were really there at all.

“We’re here to see Quon,” I said, my voice whipped away by a hot breeze. For a moment they did not react to my words, and then, with perfect synchronicity, they broke into a terrible laughter. They cackled and howled and threw their wrinkled faces to the sky. The commune filled with their inflated roar.

As suddenly as it had begun, the laughter stopped. The joke was over. The vacant faces returned. The hollow eyes.

And then a collective breath, drawn in deeply before they roared as one: “I. AM. QUON.”

I looked to Gideon but he did not look back. He wouldn’t take his eyes off them.

The many synched voices rumbled: “PLEASE. COME IN. MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME.”

“There was a man once,” I said loudly. “Just one man. Quon. I want to see him.”

“WHAT DOES IT MATTER?” they all said. “ONE MAN OR MANY?”

“You’re a coward, Quon! Hiding—”

“HIDING?” they bellowed mechanically—men, women, children. And I could now hear something else under their collective words: the mutterings of individual voices, soft and distant. The droning white noise of the people they had once been, the inner stirrings of terror and confusion. A voice here, a voice there: Don’t go in, where am I, why me, no, no, no, I can’t do this, oh god, oh god, help me, has anyone seen my child, I don’t belong here, take me with you, I’m looking for my father, please, I don’t know where I am, why, why, why, is anyone there …

It didn’t last long. A silence quickly befell them all, as if an anxious puppeteer had pulled their strings taut, and then the unified voice went on: “I AM NOT HIDING. I’M HERE. THIS IS IT. THE RENASCENCE. THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ONE. THIS IS WHAT YOU ALWAYS WANTED, ALWAYS DREAMED OF—UNITY.”

“You don’t impress me,” I said. “Show your face.”

The communers paused. They edged back to the sides of the road, opening the path to Chang’e 11 … They raised their right hands and in perfect unison waved in the direction of the entrance. On each face I saw the same smirk, and then a quiet snicker hummed through the crowd. A cruel prank awaited us and they could not contain their mutual glee. As Gideon and I walked along the desert road, lined with those puppeteered people, their heads swivelled as we passed.

Had these automatons been lured into the desert or had they chosen to submit themselves? Perhaps they too had come on a pilgrimage. A journey not unlike our own, to meet their “maker”—to question him, or destroy him or even to hail him. Whatever the reason, their maker had not allowed them to leave. I promised myself then, no matter what happened, no matter what Quon said or did, I would fight with all my strength and will against such a fate.

Gideon said nothing as we walked through the commune. As we reached the end of the road the large section of the massive structure creaked into life and lowered to the ground, like the drawbridge of an ancient castle. I looked back at the hundreds of faces turned in our direction and then Gideon and I walked into the dark confines of Chang’e 11.

A long and dark passage stretched into the belly of the ship. A memory hit me: Jai-Li’s walk along the well-lit corridor towards the underground house in the tower. I felt what she must have felt. She had wanted to escape her life of imprisonment. She had wanted answers.

It took a while for our eyes to adjust to the dark interior of the vessel. All heat was gone, replaced by the industrial cold of non-operational machinery. The walls of the passage were made of welded sheets of metal, studded with heavy levers and hung with faded warning signs. Each step on the iron grating of the walkway caused a clanking echo that rippled into the congealing darkness. I worried for a moment that the door would close behind us, sealing us in a gigantic mechanical tomb, but that was a chance we had to take. We would not walk back out until we had what we had come for: answers.

The interior was dank. Oily liquid gathered in the corners of the ceiling and dripped through the grate beneath us. Eventually we came to a corner and turned, deeper into Chang’e 11, away from the light of day. I could hear my breath, and Gideon’s. We approached an iron door that stood partially open and stepped through into a large room sloppily furnished with defunct equipment and dusty panels of instruments. A dim blue light shone from the corner of the room, but we couldn’t see any power source.

“There,” Gideon said, and pointed his blue-lit arm to another door at the far end. We walked through another door and along another passage and then another.

The ship groaned, contracting and expanding under its own weight. The further we walked, turning and turning in endless, maddening circles, the more it seemed that the byzantine corridors would never end. We were dooming ourselves to an impossible maze. The air began to thin as we pushed forward into the iron gut of Chang’e 11. I could no longer see Gideon beside me, but I could hear him. I could feel the faint warmth from his body.

Then the warmth was gone.

The breathing had stopped.

I spun in my spot, fanning out my hands to get a sense of where I was. There were no walls alongside me. Gideon was gone and there was nothing around me but the darkness. Panic settled swiftly; my breath came out in ragged gasps. I swung my head from side to side, my hands flailing before me.

“Gideon,” I called. There was no reply. “Gideon.”

(If the light won’t have me, let the dark. The light, I’ve learned, is happier to whore itself)

I stopped. Breathed deeply to calm myself. I closed my eyes then, embracing the darkness instead of fighting it. My breathing slowly returned to normal. My hands came down slowly at my sides. As the sound of my own fear began to subside, a faint sense of orientation took its place.

Listen, Kayle. Listen. You don’t have to see where you are. You know where you are. You’re here. You’re not lost. You are here and you are now. You are here and now and it is all and it is everything. Do not fear it. Move forward, move slowly, and do not fear anything. You’ll find your way.

Just listen.

“Mr. Kayle,” I heard. “Here.”

I opened my eyes and the hulking shadow of Gideon stood before me. There was a dull groan of metal on metal and then there was light. Gideon had his hand on the handle of a large door. He swung the door out carefully and the rest of his features materialised in the widening gap between door and frame. I smiled and made my way towards him, entering another division of the vessel.

Gideon stepped in after me, into what appeared to be a vast iron hall. (The room was the hall of Valhalla itself: an incomprehensibly unwarranted amount of space with almost nothing inside it) The far walls were lined with broken screens and dashboards and all was weakly lit by a large, circular skylight. Sunlight, struggling to reach the depths of the vessel, probably refracted into the hall from large mirrors lodged within the hull above. But such a skylight would be useless in space, I thought, unless it had been used to provide the astronauts with a heaven of sorts—to keep a long-travelling crew orientated beneath the cosmos.

Nine years in space was a long time to be away from home. What were the unspoken necessities for such a long voyage? Could we handle being away from something as matter-of-fact as an overhead sky? What would happen to us if we were denied the staples of our earthbound environment? Our bodies might survive these missing things, but could our minds? Could we truly last without a sky, an open plain, a horizon, or fresh air?

Could Jai-Li?

Gideon and I walked towards the centre of the hall. The weak light met the floor, illuminating a man. He was seated on a big black chair—the throne of a commander, a captain, or a king—raised off the floor and attached to a metal pole that pivoted from the ceiling. He was wearing an astronaut’s suit without the helmet, his arms loose on each of the rests. His head drooped listlessly to the side. He was frail and studiedly languorous, uninterested in our arrival in the court of his castle.

“Quon,” I said. “Quon!”

The astronaut’s head lifted slowly and he turned to look at me. He smiled drunkenly, twisting his neck from side to side, clicking it into place.

He sat up in his chair and cleared his throat.

“You,” he said, leering. “Old chap.”

Gideon and I stopped on the outskirts of the beam of light. Quon ran his tongue around his lips and gums, taking his time. He slumped back in his chair and wove his fingers into each other, cracking his knuckles.

“You’ve come a long way,” he said.

“I want you to tell me where to find my son.”

Quon snorted, amused. “Right, right. Your son. Andy. Is that right?” He leaned to his side and grabbed a can of Diet Coke. He sucked it down, his long, pallid neck convulsing as he swallowed. He crushed the can in his hand and threw it across the floor.

“That’s right.”

“Right,” he said again. “Young Andy. But that’s not all. Surely. Hm? And this man beside you. Gideon, is it?”

Gideon said nothing. Quon offered him a smile. The same smile as when he’d come down from the woods to watch me pull Gideon’s dead body on the logs. I was acutely aware that at any moment he could cast us both into such a place, a place without time, with no escape. A place where we would live long enough to forget who we were, lose ourselves to lunacy. He could condemn us to such a place with just a thought.

I wondered how many people had attempted to stop him, if, indeed, there had been any. Perhaps every person in the commune outside had tried and each was now trapped somewhere in an incomprehensible version of reality. How could anyone have come close enough to pull a trigger, or take out a knife? He’d have simply looked them in the eye, and cast them into an eternity of his making. No paradise, either, I imagined.

“I want Andy,” I said. “Do you know where he is or not?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you know.”

“I think you might be right, Kayle.”

“Then tell me.”

“Why on earth should I? Can you give me one good reason?”

I said nothing. He was probably reading my mind, knowing I had no next play. I tried to think of nothing, to quell the fear that swirled in my thoughts like poisonous dust.

He looked up to the skylight. “The sun,” he said, “is so weak. We fear it and admire it, but against the other suns in the universe, it’s nothing exceptional. Trust me. Our sun is a dying ember. There are real fires raging out there, but to us they’re just pinpricks in the night. Pretty little stars. Nothing like our precious and mighty sun. No!” he laughed. “You humans know nothing about who you are, or even where you are. So you scramble for scraps and paint them gold. You call what you do ‘living’, but you’re just like the sun that bore you—nothing but self-important, dying embers.”

“I’m not interested in your stories. I’ve heard enough.”

“I see.”

“I just want my son.”

“Of course you do. And he’s here.”

“Where?”

“Hm, well …” Quon tapped his finger against the side of his head. “Somewhere in the mess.”

“You don’t have him. Only his memories. His past. Those aren’t him.”

“Ah,” he said, gaining curiosity. “So there’s more to you than just your memories, hm? Are you sure about that? Hasn’t really been my experience, but I appreciate your conviction. You really believe it.” He paused, stared me down, and then broke the gaze, rolling his eyes across the walls of the large room. “I must apologise for how things look around here; it’s a bit of a mess. Not particularly homely at the moment, but … well, we are in the process of relocating. You know how these things go. We’re expanding, you see, planning for the future.” He held his bony white hands up to his face and seemed to study them, front and back. “My mental endeavours have taken a toll on my body, but then not much can be said for the human body. It’s a flimsy vessel. Doesn’t quite live up to the ambitions of the mind, does it? No, the mind, oh, it yearns to explore, to expand, to crash through barriers—to live a thousand years! But the body—the flesh is an anchor. A dead weight, as they say. And in my case, it seems the body has been less willing than usual to support the architecture of my … vast consciousness. Which is why I’ll be leaving this terrible sack and moving on. I hear there’s a temple up in the mountains that’s quite lovely this time of year. A place where the fruit and vegetables are the largest and sweetest, the water is the purest, and the flesh … well, the flesh is less reluctant to rot on your bones. Yes, you know this place too, don’t you? We have a mutual friend with a newborn child making her way there as we speak. Making her way to a man named Sun Zhang—still wandering around up there with his three daughters—a man whose slow-ageing body should accommodate my transferred consciousness most suitably, for a time.”

Quon grinned. I shuddered to think he’d be waiting for Jai-Li in the one place she was hoping to find solace from this broken world, but I also knew he’d told me with the intention of throwing me off, of exposing my insecurities. I couldn’t deny that it worked: Jai-Li had shared her tale of the secret sanctuary in confidence, yet Quon had fished it out of my mind and turned it against us with no effort at all.

“Tell me,” he continued. “How were those long years on the beach? Did you learn anything?”

“If you can read my mind, then you’ll know.”

“That’s true. And I am, as we speak. But actual conversation is so scarce these days. I really struggle to have a decent chat. Everyone’s so preoccupied with everything they don’t know. It’s dull. So let’s say, just for the sake of it, I won’t read a thing, and you just go ahead. Keep talking, and I’ll pretend I’m just a regular man, trying his best to listen.”

I was not convinced, not for a moment, that he would hold his end of the bargain, but was left with little choice. “Fine.”

“It’s not easy being a god, you know,” he added.

(This Quon fancies himself a god, yes? Well, I don’t know much, but I have never known a true god to ever be scared of a man)

“Is that what you think you are?” I asked. “A god?”

“An archaic principle, steeped in rubbish. But by definition I suppose I would be, wouldn’t I?”

(After all, life is the will to connect. It is all life has over chaos. If you offer nothing to life you will be trimmed like the fat from a piece of meat. Similarly, if you choose to sit on a throne—to monopolise—you are doomed to stagnation, to collapse back into chaos)

“Okay, so we’re just talking,” I said. “No mind reading? Man to man.”

“I like that! Man to man.”

“Then I do have something else to say. Something I know about you. And you can figure out whether I’m telling the truth or not. Like a game.”

“Condescending, but okay. Why not? A game.”

I smiled back at him, holding him in my grasp. No tricks. Simple fearlessness. The longer I waited, the greater his curiosity. I could see it in his eyes. What did a man like Quon need with such a thing as curiosity anyway? If he had the ability to know everything, what possible value could curiosity have?

My mind was a deluge of the details of every story and memory of the journey:

The first time Moneta had called me to the greenhouse, sitting at Jai-Li’s side as she told me about her father’s empire, Anubis’s story about the activists, the prophecy of human evolution, the family of machines …

I saw the thread that ran through them all, the one Shen had woven through each connected experience, and the purpose of being sent out to find this twisted king.

I knew how to end it all. I knew what had to be done.

“I can offer you something you don’t have,” I said.

“You have my attention.”

“On one condition.”

“Andy.”

“That’s right. If I have something you don’t have, something you want, you’ll tell me where to find my son.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Then I’ll give myself over willingly. I’ll join your drones outside.”

“I could make you join them if I wanted. Easily.”

“I’m sure. But how often have you had someone choose to join you, knowing what you are? Surely that’s worth something? That’s real power, Quon. Having people want to join you instead of tricking them into joining you.”

“Interesting,” he said, and tapped his chin. “All right. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Not yet,” I said quietly. “First you tell me where he is. It’s the only deal I’ll make. It’s not like you’d let me get away without giving you what I’ve offered.”

Quon chortled. “I like you,” he said. “I can see why Shen sent you, pointless as it will turn out to be. It’s a deal.”

Quon narrowed his eyes, a slitted smirk curling and tightening on his mouth. I held my resolve and offered no expression at all. He could read my mind but I’d never give more than I needed. I needed to be calm. Patient. Confident.

“He’s here,” Quon said, nonchalantly. “In the commune. I knew you’d be coming for him so I had him brought here. Always make sure you’ve got your bargaining chip close at hand—it simplifies transactions, yes? I had a feeling about your little visit. And, as it turns out, I was right. As usual.”

Andy. Right outside. There was a swell of exhilaration, and my heart walloped, but I remained calm, controlling my actions since I knew I could not own my thoughts.

“Now,” Quon said. He rotated his lower jaw and winked an eye. “It’s your turn.”

I waited again. He was fidgeting in his seat now, hands clutching the rests, his long neck extended like a turtle’s from its shell, his head lolling.

Gideon and I didn’t move. I held my poise, took a breath and said, “Before I tell you, I want to give you something.”

I grabbed the shoulder strap of the bag on my back and lowered it to the ground.

“Oh, this is most interesting, Mr. Kayle!” Quon said.

I glanced up at him, got down on my haunches and opened the bag. I pulled out an object wrapped in paper: the apple Klaus had given me.

(It’s from the jungle. Of course, I don’t have to tell you not to eat it. You know that. But trust me when I say I think you should keep it. It won’t go bad. It won’t rot. It’ll last for as long as you need it. And something tells me you will need it)

I held the shiny green apple out to Quon.

“An apple,” he said. Was that a surprised look on his face? I couldn’t tell.

“That’s right,” I said, rising.

He sat back in his seat. “I’m very tempted to read your mind, I must say.”

He stared at me intently.

“You can if you like.” I held his gaze. “It wouldn’t change a thing. But if you want to keep playing …”

“I’ll play,” he said.

“This is what I know about you, Quon. You’re bored.”

Quon paused and twitched his head to the side. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

He sat back in his seat, turning his head and biting his knuckle in contemplation. “That’s all?”

“All and everything.”

He burst out laughing. “My terrible secret! That I’m bored!”

“And you’re becoming more bored by the day,” I cut him off. “It’s growing in you. And I know why. You may have people’s memories, but that’s all you’ve got. You can only know what everyone else already knows. Nothing more. That’s not omniscience, Quon. Not even close. It’s nothing but a trick. A cheap one. And that’s why you haven’t figured this out—because nobody has been able to tell you.”

He waggled a long-nailed finger at the apple. “And you want me to eat that, do you?”

“It’ll show you everything you are, everything you have and don’t have. Truth. That’s all I’m offering. If you don’t believe me, go on, do your trick, read my mind.”

“I already have.”

“Then you already know.”

“You’re putting a lot of faith in that apple, Mr. Kayle, hoping it will end me, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then why should I eat it?”

“Because you need to eat it. You need to know the truth, whatever that truth is. It’s the only thing you’ve got left. If you don’t eat it, you’re just another old man, scared of nothing more than himself.”

“The truth could be that I am destined to be God.”

“It could. There’s only one way to know.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, that’s why your mind-reading means nothing,” I said steadily. My heartbeat had slowed to normal and I knew as surely as I had ever known anything that these were the right words to say. “You see, you thought killing Shen would complete you. Give you all the power. But there’s something missing, isn’t there? And it haunts you. And you’re afraid it always will. Because life is the will to connect, and there’s nothing to connect with, is there? You’re at the top. Alone. Stagnant. And with nowhere else to go, you’ll crumble, deteriorate, and slowly, slowly … waste away.”

Quon paused for a moment, making sure I was done speaking, then threw his head back and chuckled. “Nicely done, old chap! Very convincing!” He clapped his hands twice. “This is all very familiar, isn’t it? The forbidden fruit. The promise of knowledge. Very, very good, old chap. I know precisely what you’re hoping for and, I must say, I appreciate the offer, but will have to decline.”

“No, you won’t,” I continued without hesitation.

“Excuse me?”

“You’ll eat it,” I said. “They say you have our memories. But for what? A single man doesn’t even have enough years on this earth to explore the expanse of his own consciousness, and yet here you are, laying claim to billions of them. You must only be skimming the surface of who we are. You’d have to live ten billion lifetimes to understand all the intricacies, the details of each one of us—every one of our dreams and hopes and fears. But you don’t have that kind of time, do you? After all, you said it yourself, all hopes and desires are crushed by the weight of time. So what am I offering you? A catalyst. A chance to go from the highest peaks of our collective hopes to the lowest pits of our fear. To see what ten billion people truly desire, what they truly fear, and who we all really are. But I can’t fool you. You’ve seen what this apple can do … to an ordinary man. An ordinary man’s incapable of facing the paradox of his own existence. He might have to take his own life just to come to terms with his own realisations. But if you’re a god, well, then there’s nothing to worry about. You’d survive it. You’d thrive on it. If you’re a god, then what I’m offering you is precisely what you want. The full spectrum of your supreme consciousness in a single moment, without the waiting, the dull figuring out, the time to sift through this, through that, to see which memories should be tossed back to us like small fish. A chance to confront the paradox of existence, the stuff that gods are made of, and come out the other side, Quon, more powerful than you are now. Right here. In my hand. All in a bite.”

Quon nodded. “Everything you say is true. I can’t fault you on your logic. And yet … you don’t believe that, do you?”

“I don’t think you’re a god at all. I think you’re just a man. But the question isn’t whether I believe this; it’s whether you do.”

The chair lowered itself to the ground and Quon stood up slowly. Ponderous and awkward in the heavy suit, he made his way towards me. His white boots thumped on the ground. I could now make out the features of his face. A man, like any other man. Greying around his ears. Dark, tapered eyes. Cracked lips and rubber skin. I didn’t move, just stood there, keeping the apple up, urging him to take it.

“Such a simple thing,” he said. “Ridiculous, really.”

Quon paused and studied the apple, the large shiny apple. He was thinking about what I had said, and knew it was true. He’d never go on without knowing; his obsession was with knowledge itself—a delusion of acquiring omniscience—and he’d take whatever knowledge he could get, even though, paradoxically, it was the very knowledge he secretly knew would destroy him.

But there was something else in his eyes. He was being compelled by something more primal than a need for knowledge. The irrational compulsion of ordinary men and women. And in Quon’s case, billions of ordinary people, in that one place and one moment, desiring one more thing—just one more—as always. It was the scent of the apple. That sweet, sickly sweet scent. His lips began to work and his eyes began to bulge. His tongue flicked from his slit of a mouth. His nostrils flared and his torso heaved as his breath grew restless in his chest.

“Don’t do it,” he said, although I could not tell whether he was talking to me or to himself. There seemed to be a panel of voices, each fighting for its turn. “I must do it. No, that’s what he wants and you know why. He doesn’t know these things … he doesn’t know things the way we know things, he’s only hoping. This is a mistake. It’s not a mistake. This is what we need … no more secrets … no more waiting … it’ll destroy you. It won’t! Oh yes it will! Look at it! You know he’s right. No, you’ll survive the truth. And then you’ll see … you’ll see that I was right all along. And you will be satisfied. Complete. And there’ll be no more questions, no more doubt …”

I remembered the power of the fruit from my time in the jungle, but wasn’t as overwhelmed by it as I had been that first time. Gideon wasn’t reacting to the apple at all, but Quon …

Quon was reacting.

His desire to consume it, coupled with the need for its secrets, began to bubble up, rising in him like magma from beneath a cracked mantle.

Then, like the man in the woods who’d snatched Moneta’s sandwich, Quon grabbed the apple from me and tore through it with his teeth. He took enormous bites, chewing and chomping and slurping it down. The juices ran over his chin and along his hands and arms. I took a step back.

“That other earth,” I said, moving slowly away, “it knew. It had everything. But it sent you back here for a reason, Quon. A reason you never figured out. As powerful as that earth was, as complete in itself, it was alone. It needed to connect with something else. So it sent you here to advance this earth. To help it connect with something new, with us … and now you’re in a similar position, aren’t you? Powerful and stuck.”

Quon was still grinding and shredding off huge chunks of the apple, trying to swallow it all, but chunks were spilling from the sides of his mouth. After finishing the apple in his hand, he got on his knees and ate the remains from the floor like a dog.

“Yes,” he said faintly, and then louder. The fruit was streaming through him, flooding him with awareness. It took almost no time at all. “Yes! I was right! I am! Oh yes, I am a … god.”

Quon got to his feet. He was grinning from ear to ear, his eyes wide with horrific delight. He held up his glistening hands and threw out his chest. A laugh bellowed from deep within him.

“I am … a … god,” he said, his voice a loud croak. “I am a god! There is nothing and no one above me! Nothing and no one!”

Gideon and I moved away as he strained towards the sky in praise of himself. I thought I had made a terrible mistake, but then I told myself to wait, just wait, because there were two sides—always two sides—and the other would come down like the ill-fated head of a flipped coin.

“Nothing and no one more powerful than me! Nothing and no one …” His laughter resounded through the hall and the iron plates creaked and groaned again. “Nothing and no one! Nothing and no one! Nothing … and no one!”

(Stupid, stupid animals … stupid, stupid animals)

The veins in Quon’s neck bulged as the muscles tautened within the hard circular rim of his collar. His jaw cranked open, baring his big teeth. Saliva flew from his mouth as he bellowed, triumphantly, manically.

His words rolled on and on, becoming louder and louder: “Nothing and NO ONE! NOTHING AND NO ONE!”

Finally, he paused and breathed weightily, clenching his teeth, his bulging eyes flitting to the dark walls of broken machinery folded in the shadows.

“Nothing … and no one,” he said under his breath. Something was slipping away from him. His own words were no longer a praise song, but a blunt reminder of what he had left in his life, whom he had left to conquer: “Nothing and no one …”

(My father shook my mother and told her to come around, come around baby, but her gaze turned on my father and all he could see in her eyes was fear. Fear like he’d never seen in anyone before, and it sent him reeling backwards in shock. A deep, deep panic grew and grew in her until she was screaming and she held up her hands and her hands were like gnarled claws)

Quon’s grin began to shrink and wilt, but his eyes continued to race around the room. He was beginning to panic, fear sprouting within him, growing like a rampant weed from the seed of his own insecurities. He twisted his limbs, panting, frenziedly looking for an escape from the prison that had shot up around him. “Nothing …” he said with mounting fear. “No one. Nothing … and no one …”

He grabbed the rim of his steel collar and pulled on it, extending his neck, ricking his head up to the skylight (of the weak old sun, right Quon?) and shutting his eyes. He screamed—a scream of absolute terror, and loneliness, and acceptance of the truth. The damning truth: the dead end of absolute power …

(The rest of it, the levels of crazy, that’s all you, man.Your deepest fears and insecurities brought to the surface, where you get to see how ugly and awful they are … horrible things in the basement of our s-suh-suh-souls, Raft Man)

“Nothing and no one …” he bawled.

Gideon slung the bag off his back, unzipped it and pulled out the knife we’d taken from the abandoned town. Quon didn’t notice him. Quon was entombed in the hell of his own making, ripping out his hair and scratching his face with his long fingernails, just as Burt had done amid that swarm of angry hornets …

Gideon walked forward slowly, got down on one knee and placed the knife on the floor before Quon. The knife glittered in the light from above. Gideon got up and walked back towards me. “Come. There’s nothing more to see. He’ll end it when he’s ready.”

We walked towards the exit of the hall and I looked back to see Quon, contorting, trying to rip off his suit with his hands. The bulky gear seemed to be tightening around him, straining the air from his lungs.

“Nothing and no one … and no one … no one …”

Gideon and I exited the hall, turned, and sealed the heavy iron door behind us. Quon’s screams rippled, echoing through the metal bones of the ship. And his screams were the voice of Chang’e 11 itself, the countless wails of stolen memories.

“He was a silly man,” Gideon said dryly.

We walked back through the dim corridors of Chang’e 11. The way out was far easier than the way in, and finally we were at the exit, where the light of day was waiting like the warm and benevolent hands of something greater than ourselves.

Some true god.

The members of the commune were frenzied. Quon’s anguish was being channelled through them, and they spun and twisted, ripping off their clothes and shrieking and digging their fingers into their own flesh. They clawed at their skin as if they could reach down to their true selves, layered beneath their fat and muscle. Some of them were curled on the ground in foetal positions, trembling and twitching and yowling.

Gideon and I walked down the lowered iron door and passed through the communers. There was nothing that could be done for them—nothing until Quon finally picked up that knife and put it to his throat, or across his wrists, or directly into his heart.

I searched for my son. I looked from tormented face to tormented face. My son would be older than the last time I’d seen him, but how old?

I grabbed people by the cuffs of their shirts and turned them over, hoping to recognise my son. They did not resist me; they were too caught up to realise I was there. I saw a boy lying on the hard ground, scraping away the chalky dust of the desert with his feet, his right hand shoved almost all the way down his throat. His eyes rolled up in his head as he spewed over his arm. I pulled out his arm and looked at him closely. No, it wasn’t him. He was too young.

I spun around. Gideon was there in the distance, standing among the chaos like the last sane man alive, a rock amid the crashing waves of spinning, retching, scrambling people. He looked back at me through the crowd. I knew he couldn’t help. There was no way to describe Andy. I could barely recall the boy myself. If he was under Quon’s control, then he was on the ground somewhere, tearing himself apart like everyone else.

I looked to my side.

At the far end of the commune a number of huge trees reached up into the sky. They looked entirely out of place, thick towering trunks sitting flush against the side of Chang’e 11. The foliage was sparse but the branches stretched out on the sides like crooked arms. Perhaps they grew along the edge of a water source, an oasis that provided for the commune. My eyes ran up their trunks and then I noticed that one of them ended precisely at an elevated entrance in the side of Chang’e 11. An old docking station perhaps, or a runway for an escape pod. The cavity was about fifteen or twenty feet from the ground.

Gideon’s eyes followed mine, and we hurried through the communers towards the base of the trees. I pushed and pulled people from my way, ran between the tents and found myself on the edge of a shallow body of water. I craned my neck and looked up at that one tree. (I’m walking in a beautiful forest. That’s how it starts. How it always starts. There are many tall trees. But I see one tree in particular in the centre of the forest, enormous in width and height. It’s wider and taller than the rest)

Gideon stayed by my side as I walked toward the base of the tree, my eyes fixed on the open mouth of the iron cavern.

“He’s up there,” I said. “I know it.”

As I approached the base of the tree I spotted a red object lying between the surface roots and tussocks of grass.

(At my feet, a red shoe is lying in the dirt. It’s a child’s shoe. I recognise it as my son’s, then look up and consider the possibility he dropped it while climbing that very tree)

I was staring at a shoe—a red shoe at the bottom of the tree—the one I had seen in my recurring dream.

“How do know you he’s up there?” Gideon asked.

“I’ve always known,” I said, turning my gaze to the top of the tree once more. “Right since the start. Shen’s very first clue.”

And then I put my hands up to the tree and, grabbing the first broken branch, pulled myself up and began to climb.