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DaisyDonnie dreamed...
They were walking; walking through wet, cold undergrowth.
Without stopping, they glanced around, trying to make sense of their surroundings.
A forest perhaps? Certainly there were a lot of trees around.
Although it appeared to be the middle of the night, they didn't feel the cold. They were detached; a watcher wandering through a dreamscape.
They decided to settle in and enjoy the ride, ignoring a bizarre tug of familiarity. Deja-vu was a complete bitch at the best of times.
The treeline flowed into low scrub, then to a grassy clearing of perhaps an acre in size. Conical structures were dotted here and there, looking like hi-tech teepees.
The dream had revealed itself. They were walking through memories, dreaming of their first home. This was the village where they lived as children.
DaisyDonnie looked up into the sky with a sad smile, hoping to get a glance at the moons. Alas, it was the wrong time of the month.
Looking down once more, they surveyed the clearing, realising how big these homes really were. Everything looks big to an eight year old. Even bigger to two of them.
It was a pity it was the middle of the night, too. DaisyDonnie made a mental note to have a word with their subconscious to include some lights the next time they dreamed of home. And some people. Some sound would have made this place a little less creepy.
A child began to cry; a fearful, scared sound which broke through the dark silence like nails on a blackboard, tapping straight into the right nerve.
DaisyDonnie was now very frightened.
Note to self: ps, don't be so bloody literal-minded.
Another child cried out in shock.
Without knowing why, DaisyDonnie ran toward the sound and found two children in one of the homes kneeling on the floor.
A moment of distraction hit DaisyDonnie; they'd run straight through a wall to find the children. This shock passed in a flash as they realised where they were, and the adrenaline of fear kicked-in properly.
The children looked up from the bodies with shock; a shock that was shared by DaisyDonnie.
'You have to leave,' said DaisyDonnie. 'You have to leave now!'
The door behind DaisyDonnie opened with a theatrical creak of rusty hinges.
'Hello there,' said The Assassin.
Bzornt!
DaisyDonnie screamed with eyes open.
'Daisy!' said a familiar voice. Prime.
Daisy pushed down the feeling of nausea; the feeling of weightlessness was bizarre and difficult to shift.
Her eyes focussed on pinpricks of light against a black sky.
'Daisy,' repeated Prime. 'Daisy!'
Her eyes refocussed on a glass dome in front of her. She held a hand in front of it.
All the perspectives clicked into place; she was in a spacesuit.
A spacesuit? What the hell am I doing in a spacesuit? Where am I--
'Can you answer please?' said Prime.
'Yes. I'm here,' said Daisy momentarily. 'I'm fine.'
She couldn't think what to say next.
'You don't sound it,' said Prime, urgency slipping away from her voice. 'Why haven't you come back in yet? You've done what you went to do and you're not good at being out there.'
'Um, yes,' said Daisy and added for want of anything else to say, 'taking in the view.'
'The view normally makes you vomit all over your suit.' said Marcus, a smile in his voice. 'They're expensive to replace and we're running out of cash.'
'Okay, coming back in.'
Daisy tuned and grasped a handle on the side of what she assumed was a ship. Grasping the next rung, and then the rung after that she pulled herself along the metal and arrived finally at a circular airlock. It was about a meter in diameter and had a large black '2' painted in black on the grey metal.
The doors parted in the middle and slid open. She climbed inside, turned and pressed a red button.
The doors slid closed.
* * *
The Lash hung in space, suspended like oil in water.
Nearby was another oil droplet, but this one far larger, elongated and with a bulge at the bottom. It was mostly in shadow and difficult to make out.
* * *
Daisy hung the suit up and breathed deeply. She blinked; her eyes hurt, still used to the darkness outside.
Prime strode into the cloak-room. 'Are you okay?'
Daisy glanced up.
'You're useless out there,' said Prime with a smile. 'I don't know why I agreed to let you go.'
Daisy frowned and unconsciously extended her lower lip.
'But you fixed the scanner array,' said Prime. 'That's all what counts. And we've got the signal.'
* * *
A screen displayed a wireframe image that rotated slowly.
Marcus looked up as Daisy and Prime entered the bridge.
'So, a signal,' said Daisy. 'That's nice.'
She looked up and past Marcus. On the other side of the ship, between it and the planet was an enormous guitar.
'Bloody hell,' she said. 'A guitar? What's that doing there?'
'Yes,' said Prime, looking at Daisy with an eyebrow raised. 'Haven't we had this conversation?'
'But it's enormous!' blathered Daisy. 'I mean, I've heard of a big sound, but this is--'
'Not just any guitar,' said Marcus. 'It's a Fender Telecaster, the same one that was stolen from The King after the '68 comeback special.'
Daisy stopped in her tracks. Prime kept walking and sat down in a chair.
'It's a bit big,' said Daisy after a few moments thought. 'Isn't it?'
Marcus shrugged.
'We know,' said Prime patiently. 'But it's definitely the one. Just magnified. Made bigger. By someone.'
'How can it be the same instrument?' asked Daisy again, like a dog worrying at a bone. 'Last time I saw The King, he was, oh, about this tall.'
She held an arm up to around six feet and indicated the height of The King.
'And the signal is just what we were promised,' said Prime.
'Fancy a walk?' said Marcus, addressing Daisy.
* * *
'When you said a walk,' yelled Daisy through the driving snow and wind, 'I was thinking nice grass, a meadow. Perhaps even some bloody sun!'
Two shapes, barely human in appearance, trudged through driving snow and wind.
The snow swirled around Daisy and Marcus. The ice underfoot was slippery, hard and like everything else, astonishingly cold.
'This really sucks!' yelled Daisy, trying desparately to hide from the cold. Three jumpers, a pair of thermals and a great big coat was keeping her only slightly freezing. She looked like a sumo wrestler. Marcus looked like a tall one.
Sub-zero conditions would have been like a sunny day compared to this. If they stopped moving, Marcus and Daisy would have been buried by the snow, perhaps to be found a million years hence by some very startled archaeologists.
Daisy stomped her feet resulting in her feet going out from under her. Her fall was broken by a drift of unsubstantial snow over the solid ground. She bounced, but only just.
'I've got things planned for the rest of the afternoon,' she yelled, gasping from the impact, and fought to get herself upright again. 'And becoming a snowman - woman, whatever - isn't one of them!'
'We're almost on top of the signal,' yelled Marcus, walking over to a mound of snow. He yanked a shovel from the straps over his back and began to dig the snow away. Eventually he hit something solid.
* * *
High above the clouds, Prime watched the screens and waited. A finger tapped out a soulless rhythm on the black perspex panel in front of her.
* * *
'Give us a hand,' yelled Marcus.
Daisy stepped forward and took a look. A solid-looking black coloured corner of what could have been a box had been revealed.
Together they knelt, Marcus using the shovel to smash at the ice around the box to free it. Finally, they dragged the small yet heavy box from the shattered ice. The wind, astonishingly, picked-up, deafening them both, while the snow continued to pound them relentlessly. Together they toppled over, hanging onto the box while trying desperately to regain their footing.
'Marcus to Prime,' Marcus yelled into his microphone-earpiece communicator. 'We need a lift please!'
He didn't hear her response.
After a few moments,another roaring sound assaulted their ears: the engines of their ship. It rocked slightly but hovered lower.
A hatch on the underside of the ship opened and a platform lowered on four rods, listing with the ship and the wind.
Together, Marcus and Daisy hefted the box onto the platform and then helped each other onto it.
'We're on!' Marcus yelled into the communicator. 'Let's go!'
The platform lifted into the ship and the hatch closed.
The engines roared and soon there was silence. They were back in orbit.
* * *
They stood and looked into the box. Inside was a small, black book.
The Book of Cubes
'Why did we come here for this?' asked Daisy after a moment, remembering the first time she had seen the book.
Madame pink glanced back. 'The book of cubes.'
Daisy shuddered at the still fresh memory. That was odd, she thought suddenly. My memories aren't usually this coherent after a jump. And where's the headache?
'We came because we had to,' said Prime. 'Because it's got answers.'
'Who left it here?'
'The King,' said Marcus. He stood and kicked the box in irritation, then walked off in silence.
'What's up with him?' asked Daisy.
'He's got some... issues,' said Prime, standing up and stretching her neck. She held the book, and it flipped open.
The words on the page said this:
You are only as good as those things you believe.
Prime blinked, and closed the book once more.
* * *
Marcus sat in his room, staring at the wall.
‘I mean it!’ yelled Elvis above the din of the engines. ‘Someone has to carry on the fight. Two is better than one!’
‘I can help,’ said Marcus, disbelieving.
‘No,’ Elvis's statement was final. ‘Go with Prime.’
Knuckles tapped on the aluminum door.
Marcus took a deep breath. 'Damn.'
He looked up at the door.
'Yes?'
The door opened and Prime entered. 'You okay?'
'Yes,' said Marcus, he looked down then up at her. 'I didn't expect to feel like this.'
'I know,' she nodded. 'It's been hard. For all of us. Time heals--'
An alarm went off.
'Hello?' said Daisy over the PA system. 'I think there's a problem.'
* * *
A gigantic six-sided ship hovered, providing further scale to the gigantic guitar and utterly dwarfing the Lash.
'They just appeared out of nothing,' said Daisy, turning to face Marcus and Prime as they walked onto the bridge. 'I didn't know what to do.'
'It's the Cubists,' said Marcus. 'They'll be wanting their book.'
He settled down into the co-pilot's seat.
'We are the Cubists,' said a harsh voice, confirming the obvious. 'Open your hearts and prepare to be manipulated.'
'Subtle as ever,' said Marcus.
'So it's full of cubists?' asked Daisy, getting up from Prime's seat.
'No,' said Prime, sitting down. 'It's a Jag.'
'A--'
'Jag. Justifiable Aggression Generator.'
Daisy stared blankly at Prime, whose attention was on the control systems before her.
'It's a mind-bender; turns people against one-another,' explained Marcus. 'Distracts them and then the Cubists come in later and wipe them out.'
Daisy blinked, trying desperately to prevent her eye from twitching in confusion, and looked up at the box once more.
Suddenly she recognised the shape.
'It's a Jack in a box?!' declared Daisy.
'A what,' asked Prime, momentarily distracted from the screen.
The lid of the box popped up.
'Hang onto something,' said Prime, ramming the controls forward.
The ship dived down toward the planet, leaving Daisy momentarily weightless. As Prime navigated the ship away, Daisy was thrown across the control deck like a rag-doll in a clothes dryer.
After a moment they saw the black of space and the stars of countless solar systems. This was followed by the sudden acceleration of the ship's engines kicking in properly.
Bzornt!
She woke with a killer headache and instinctively felt between her legs.
Her face felt sticky, like it was covered with jam or, worse still, blood.
She opened her eyes and realised where she was.
The deck was vertical to her point-of-view, the pilot and co-pilot chairs over to the left and hard metal to the right.
She pushed upwards slowly, the image righting itself as she began to stand. Staring at the floor as she rose, she saw a small pool of blood where her face had lain; her hair was sticky with it.
They were in the vicinity - as far as these things go - of a huge blue nebula. Inside it, new stars glowed brightly.
A planet was beneath them. It looked a lot like the one they had just left. The only difference was the absence of the Cubist ship and The King's Fender.
'What's going on?' asked Daisy, her voice a distant echo. Her ears felt like they were stuffed with wool.
'You did it,' said Marcus, turning suddenly in his chair, eyes angry. 'It was your fault.'
Daisy's mind didn't process the statement, and she stared uncomprehendingly at him.
'Marcus,' said Prime, shocked.
'If it wasn't for you he wouldn't be dead.'
Daisy swayed slightly, partly from the concussion, partly because her mind had finally caught-up with what her friend was saying to her.
'He's been affected by the Jag,' said Prime after a moment.
'You bitch,' yelled Marcus, turning on Prime. He pushed up and grabbed her chair, swinging it around and leaning hard on the armrests.
'I don't even know who the hell you are,' he exclaimed, leaning forwards, only millimeters from her face.
'Marcus, stop,' said Prime calmly, and repeated, 'you've been affected by the Jag. Just --'
He pushed up and off of the chair.
'You're both delusional,' he raged on. 'I was there! I saw it!'
'What did you mean,' asked Daisy in a quiet voice.
'What did I mean,' he turned slowly to face her and spoke while slowly walking closer. 'I mean that he rescued you on a constant basis.'
He stopped before her and delivered the final blow.
'And in the end it cost him his life!'
Daisy tried to hold Marcus's blowtorch gaze.
'Marcus. Back-off,' said Prime, now standing. She was poised, ready to jump into action.
He backed Daisy against the wall and placed his hands on the bulkhead on either side of her head.
'You killed him,' he said in a low growl.
'I didn't,' she pleaded, looking away. The blood on the deck caught her eye.
'Marcus,' said Prime in a louder voice.
'And you know you did,' he continued, leaning back a little. 'You got yourself captured, he went in again to save you. Didn't he?'
Daisy wilted under his gaze.
He grabbed her face with one hand, thumb and forefingers embedding themselves in her cheeks.
'Didn't he,' he yelled, pushing back, his hand moving away.
'Marcus,' screamed Prime, covering the distance between them in a single stride.
Before she got there, the back of Marcus's hand struck Daisy's face so hard she fell to the floor.
* * *
As Marcus and Prime grappled on the Bridge, Daisy made her escape, running blindly, eyes full of tears down the length of the ship.
Her conscious mind on autopilot, her subconscious took-over, and she ended up in the rear of the ship by the escape capsules. She tapped out a location on the panel and pressed the 'Open' button.
A small hatch whooshed open and she pushed herself inside.
The PA crackled as the door hissed closed.
'Daisy, come back to the bridge,' said Prime over the PA in a careful voice. 'We need to talk. Marcus has recovered, it wore off. It's okay. It was the Jag.'
A readout panel next to the door flashed red, then green.
* * *
A yellow light on the console flashed and changed to green. The ship shuddered slightly.
Prime looked at the tactical display screen and cursed.
A small dot was tracking away from the ship.
Marcus sat down heavily and hung his head.
'Oh no,' he said in a quiet voice.
* * *
Daisy stood on a dusty blasted landscape. Ash-covered corpses of trees protruded from the earth, branches in terrible claw-shapes.
It had once been a forest, but fire had destroyed it all.
She walked away from the escape pod and through the dead trees. Her footsteps were the only sounds. Every so-often she would step onto a fallen branch and the whipcrack sound of it snapping under her weight was loud and strange.
After some time, she emerged in a clearing.
Here the ground was not quite so devastated. Here and there clumps of grass grew, weeds mostly; flowers with bright colours so much more vibrant against the dusty grey surroundings than they would otherwise have been.
Daisy crouched on her haunches and picked one of them; a yellow flower, probably a weed, a species she didn't know the name of.
Without consciously intending to, she sat down and crossed her legs while picking more flowers.
Soon she had created a daisy-chain.
'Poor flowers,' she murmured with the voice of a child, more tears in her eyes. 'I'm sorry I picked you.'
A terrible shiver rushed up into the back of her head and she glanced around suddenly.
The chain fell from her hands onto the grey earth, with a puff of ash.
It couldn't be. Could it?
She walked quickly to the centre of the clearing to the trunk of a blasted tree that stood, split but still upright.
She knelt down and scrubbed at the earth in desperation, teeth grit. She moved around the tree, on hands and knees, using her hands to scrape at the earth around its roots.
Her fingers found something.
Ignoring the pain in her fingertips, the blood running from a thousand tiny cuts, she cleared around the rectangular object, and then, leaning close, took a deep breath and blew the earth from it.
It was a plaque, possibly bronze (though it was difficult to tell). She read the inscription aloud;
'The first oak. May we live as long as this mighty tree.'
She pushed upwards too quickly and toppled backwards onto one side, still staring at the tree.
'Oh my,' she said in a terrified whisper. 'Home?'
'Daisy?' asked Prime in a careful voice from the other side of the clearing. She was obscured by the corpse of the oak.
Daisy pushed upwards, but all the strength had gone from her body. She didn't register her friend's presence.
Prime walked over, her industrial boots crunching the ground as she got closer.
'Daisy,' asked Prime once more. She held a hand out for Daisy to grip and helped her up.
'What are you...' began Daisy, blinking at Prime, then her conscious mind took-over. 'What happened here?'
'We don't know,' Prime admitted. 'We've only heard rumors.'
Daisy's attention focussed once-more on the tree.
'They were all killed,' she said. 'But... two children... escaped?'
She looked up at Prime, expectantly.
Prime shook her head slowly, disturbed by the place.
'No. They were all killed. The bodies of the children were found about a kilometer over there.'
She nodded upwards, indicating the direction.
Daisy stared uncomprehendingly.
'Why?' asked Daisy, now standing unsupported. She stepped away a little to face Prime.
Prime had no answers. 'We don't know.'
They faced each other for a moment.
'We need to keep together,' said Prime at last, taking a deep breath. 'What Marcus said--'
'Was true,' said Daisy, an air of fatality in her voice.
'No, no it wasn't-'
'In a way it was. I didn't cause it directly, but I was there and if he hadn't come back for me he wouldn't be gone.'
Prime held Daisy's gaze.
'So in a way, I was responsible,' said Daisy, turning to look over the clearing.
'Just like here,' she murmured.
'You're only as good as the things you believe,' said Prime, repeating what the book had said.
'So what do you believe?' asked Daisy, facing Prime once more. 'And what did Marcus mean when he said he didn't know you?'
'I believe we have to stay together. I believe we can survive if we do this.'
'Survive what?'
'This was only the beginning. Many more worlds have been wiped out since this occurred.'
Daisy listened, but only half-heartedly. She had spied her home, partially collapsed over on the east of the clearing.
'In the last year, fifteen worlds have been attacked and destroyed,' said Prime. 'And what's left bears some resemblance to this village.'
'What, lots of ash?'
Prime nodded. 'But there's an inconsistency.'
Daisy waited for the answer.
'This wasn't a human settlement.'
Daisy stared. She hoped her mouth wasn't open. Finally she came to her senses.
'Then...' she took a breath. 'Who were they?'
'Novus Hominis,' said Prime, looking around. 'New Humans, superior.'
Prime looked around her at the devastated earth.
'Lot of good it did them.'
* * *
Daisy refused to go back to the ship until she had looked in a particular home. Inside she found nothing but ash.
* * *
Daisy stood on one side of the command deck as the ship took-off, engines roaring.
Prime flicked switches and navigated the ship upwards and out of the atmosphere. Now the only sound was that of the ship, systems humming...
And of footsteps approaching.
Daisy turned suddenly, hiding herself in a corner.
Marcus stepped onto the bridge slowly and with considerable care. He made sure there was an exit-route for her before speaking.
'I'm very sorry,' he said in a whisper and held something out for her. 'I tried. I tried to resist.'
Daisy didn't meet his gaze, but the colour of flowers caught her attention.
A daisy chain sat in his open palm.
Bzornt!
'Oh...'
She knew the drill:
Headache? Check.
Feeling of being beaten-up? Check.
Quick grope to determine gender in this reality: Check
Daisy Penfolde opened her eyes and saw a computer screen.
Frowning, she closed her eyes and opened them again. Yes, there it was.
On the screen was a newspaper report - labelled "Breaking News" - about strange lightening in the skies, denied by the CIA, MI5, ASIO, American and Australian governments together with the local member for Lower Templestowe as being in any way caused by any of them.
Scientists had been asked, and they were being uncharacteristically quiet about the whole thing. When pressed, one mentioned that it was probably just one of those meteor storms that periodically intersected with the orbit of the planet. Nothing to worry about. He wouldn't give his name, however.
'That's a bit strange,' Daisy murmured.
Collingwood and the 86 (Junkie Express) tram
September - October 2006
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