My cocoon crashes into the tarmac in London in 2012, weeks after Wormwood has established itself. I break out of it and I’m on what looks like it should be a busy road. I have never been to London, but the xenosphere tells me what I need to know. The cocoon dissipates within seconds, followed shortly after by a healing of the crack in the asphalt. I am not really here. I can have limited interactions with people, but I cannot change history; this has already happened. This is a collective and collected memory. If I do something at a critical point, I may affect how people remember, which can have consequences for the present, my present, especially if it affects their decision-making. None of my actions are part of that.
So why is this road empty in the middle of the afternoon? There are cars, but they are vandalised: no tyres, no windows, even the doors of many have been ripped off and taken away. It’s quieter than any metropolitan area I’ve ever seen.
I start walking. A road sign tells me it’s Tottenham Court Road. There are rows of shops advertising electronics, home goods, food, and other things that are too obscure to understand. There is a theatre at the end of the road, the Dominion, advertising We Will Rock You with a cut-out of a man. Here is some kind of intersection with traffic lights, but long dead. In fact, I see no sign of electricity at all. There’s an Underground station, which I wonder if I should explore.
Whatever happened here must have happened a while back, because there are plants growing and dirt on the roads. There are no people, dead or alive, that I can see. Other than these structures, it’s like the humans have gone. If I didn’t know I can’t be harmed, I would be worried.
This is freaky to me, because I am not alive at this time. I was born in 2033. I have to keep telling myself that I am walking in archives, exploring information. It’s like being in a really interactive library, or a game, except that I am a non-player character, which is absurd.
I walk into a megastore called HMV. I sing a few notes, which echo back to me. There are rows of shelves, discs of media on the floor, broken or empty. I do not recognise any of the formats.
Oyin Da, what are you doing here? How is this going to help you get to America? Why have you come?
This is the most studied period in recent Western history, with tendrils of popular thought winding out into conspiracy theory. Strange that when it was truly aliens to blame, fringe folk wouldn’t believe it, and blamed the government. London was evacuated, but not everybody left. There is dirt everywhere, dust, plus whatever the wind carries in from the outside. The doors are stuck in the open position. It’s windowless and dark inside because none of the lights work. The refuse is mostly food wrappers, bits of paper and dried-up vegetation. I imagine the latter blowing around like urban tumbleweed.
I climb up the escalator. I am brazen because I’m not in danger here if all I’m doing is mining information. It all feels real, though. And old. My usual instinct is to scavenge electronics, back when I thought… back when I was alive. When I thought I was alive. It’s confusing. Anyway, this shit is so old that none of it is useful. Or it would have been useful if I used real technology.
This level is for film in DVD format. None of the shelves are stacked, so I don’t know what that means, but it must be in physical media, like the music. They have digital music and films, but it won’t be here. I’m turning back down when I hear a sound, like a box falling over.
“Hello,” I say. I know I’ve been heard because there’s that echo effect that you get in a large room without soft furnishings.
Nothing. No other sounds. I stay where I am because it’s dark and the light from downstairs doesn’t penetrate any further.
“Hello, hello?” One last time, then I go down the escalator.
Outside the store I think I see the flap of a coat go round a corner into an alleyway. I sprint, and there he is, my first human of 2012. He is pissing on the wall, his back to me, long dirty coat, collapsing shoes, and very, very dirty. He whistles to himself as he urinates and I take two steps back to give him some privacy. He finishes and turns around, song dying as he notices me.
“Hi,” he says.
I can’t answer because I’m stunned. It is Anthony.
“Anthony?” I say. “Anthony Salermo?”
“Do I owe you money?” he says. I can smell booze on him.
It is him. Him before Wormwood. He looks the same, but with a harder edge than the Anthony I knew. The angles of his mouth turned downwards, lines between the eyebrows permanently etched. His hands shake so violently he is finding it difficult to put his manhood away.
“You don’t owe me money,” I say.
“Good. Because you ain’t gonna get it, see.” His speech is slurred, there is a tangle of thin blood vessels at the tip of his nose, and his watery eyes are yellow-green. Liver disease. “I’m leaving.”
“Where are you going, Anthony?
“How do you know my name?”
“We’ve met. A long time ago, for me, at least, and not in this place.”
“Did we fuck?”
“Eww. No. Besides, I like women.”
“I’ve known women who like women. But I’m leaving. G’bye.”
“May I follow you?”
He squints at me. “You speak funny. You’re a foreigner, arn’ you?”
“I am not from London or the UK, if that is what you’re saying.”
“Do you have any booze on you?”
“No, sir. I don’t drink.”
“Well, what use are you, then?” He tries to turn with a flourish, but he overbalances and falls to the concrete. He picks himself up and starts to weave away. I follow.
Anthony goes west on Oxford Street. We walk past Oxford Circus, Bond Street and Marble Arch Underground stations on our way, but I know where he is going. After forty minutes, we come to what used to be Hyde Park. Marble Arch itself is broken, although one column remains standing, scorched though it is. They used to hang people here and I imagine their ghosts in the xenosphere, still dancing the Tyburn jig or just floating about with floppy heads.
Smoke rises from a crater whose edge stretches off to both sides, and I cannot see the curve for the smoke. The ground trembles beneath me, but not enough to send the drunk man to his knees, so it can’t be that bad. I don’t know how long it has been since Wormwood crashed, but this did not happen today. I notice there is steam mixed in with the smoke at times, the water from the Serpentine.
There are other people now, five or so, standing at the edge, silent. Of Wormwood, nothing is seen.
I don’t know why they are here. From what I know, when Wormwood landed, it irradiated its immediate surroundings. Exotic fissionable material was found at the site ten years later. The xenobiologist Bodard posits that the alien was vulnerable on landing, and had to make sure no native organisms would bother it while it developed, so it irradiated its nest.
I know that Anthony will die here, but I don’t know about the others, so I rush to tell them to flee. They are non-reactive, eyes glazed over, and I think they are proto-reanimates.
Anthony fishes out a plastic water bottle from the bowels of his coat and drinks the last dregs of what is clearly a fermented liquid. He throws the bottle into the crater and takes off his coat.
“Anthony, is there anyone you want me to contact for you? Any family? A wife?” I ask.
“You again? Why don’t you jus’ fack off!”
He tries to take a graceful leap into the crater, but he lacks the coordination and bounces off an outcrop with a sickening crack. He rolls into the billowing smoke and is gone from view.
“Good luck, Anthony Salermo. Till we meet again.” The next time I see him will be 2055, and he will have just survived a particle weapon attack. Kaaro, a cute boy I have a crush on, will dive in front of him to save his life from machine-gun fire. He will surround Wormwood with a dome, and I will stay within the dome, but Kaaro will choose to be without. Rosewater will grow and become a city.
I examine his coat and find a handwritten note: Food at St Anselm’s. Some images of a food kitchen, slapdash, faces of people serving and receiving, fragments of a route. Anthony’s memories are in the xenosphere, but they are broken because of his late-stage alcohol dependency.
I set off, looking at the churches within walking distance of the HMV store. If I’m going to find someone who is American, or has been to America, it’s as good a place to start as any.