White and Other Tales of Ruin

“End of the world?”

The old man surprised him by laughing out loud. “The end of the world. Hell yes, why not? Might as well enjoy it before those damn little robots get their grubby mitts on it.”

The two men drank to that.

“Sun’s coming up,” Doug said after a couple of minutes. “Today will be the day, I reckon.”

“We’ll go for a walk,” Peter said suddenly. “I have a large estate, you know. A herd of deer, a lake, and a walk up into the mountains that you’d kill for. It’ll be wondrous. I’ll do a lunch for us. I bake my own bread, you’ll faint with delight when you taste it, it’s simply heavenly. And I’ll even take a few bottle of wine I’ve been-“

“Saving for a suitable occasion?”

Peter nodded. “Absolutely. A suitable occasion. You’ll see, we’ll have a fine day. We’ll watch the sunset from the mountains. And if it’s not the sunset we get to see … well, we’ll watch the other from up there. I imagine from what I’ve heard about it, it will be quite a sight.”

“Reality being unmade before our eyes. All matter unstitched. Quite a sight, yes.”

“Ah, yes.” Peter sat back in his huge chair and steepled his fingers, peering between the arches.

Doug wondered what he saw. “You’re enjoying this.”

“I suppose I am. Not the circumstances, mind. Just … well, having you here.”

“I thought you didn’t like people.”

Peter looked surprised for a moment, then lowered his eyes slightly. It was the only time Doug ever saw a hint of humility or shame in the old man. “Well, generally maybe … but it’s different. You’re my folk. And as I said, I knew some of my folk would turn up here sooner or later.”

He raised his glass, and the new sunlight streaming through the windows set the liquid aflame.

Before they left the house Peter found Doug in the downstairs bathroom, trying to contact someone on his mobile phone. They’d already tried the TV that morning … a blank screen and an endless repetition of God Save The Queen.

“Selling your shares?” The old man smiled.

Doug could only stare at him for a few seconds, trying to see whatever was behind the joke. “Well actually, I have a couple of friends living in Newcastle. I thought I’d … try them. See if they’re still there.”

“Any reply?”

“No. No, none. Line must be down, or maybe they’re working on it. Or something.”

Peter stared back, chewing his bottom lip for a few seconds, obviously turning something over in his mind before he said it. Then he put his hands on Doug’s shoulders and drew him close, so close that their noses were almost touching. When he spoke, Doug smelled Brandy and tobacco. It was a sweet smell, lively, not at all unpleasant. It inspired a surprising nostalgia for his long-dead grandfather.

“Doug,” the old man said, “let it go. We’ll likely be dead before sunset, all of us, and there’s absolutely nothing you, me or anyone can do about it. And the crazy thing is … it doesn’t matter.”

“How do you figure that?” Doug said, anger rising like the sun in his chest. “Why doesn’t it matter that my wife and my daughter are about to die?”

“Everyone is going to die. Everything is being ruined. Within a day or two, there will be nothing left of the surface of this planet, just a sea of mindless, voracious mini-robots. Nothing animal, mineral, metal. And when there’s nothing left for them to destroy, I guess they start to take each other apart, reconstruct, take apart again. Everything will be pointless, forgotten, and the only physical thing left of humanity will be a few space probes wandering the stars and a century’s worth of radio and TV transmissions winging their way into deep space. Nobody to grieve, nobody to remember, nobody to miss us. It will be like we’ve never even existed. Nothing … will … matter.”

He squeezed Doug’s shoulders as if trying to knead the truth into his unwilling muscles.

Doug stepped to the window, pulled the net curtain aside and stared out at the rising sun. It seemed bigger than usual, redder, and as he glanced away he retained its image on his retinas. Looking at the hillsides, the forests and the sloping moorland leading up into the mountains, the sun’s red after-image touched them all.

It was a beautiful sunrise, maybe because it was one of the first that Doug had ever truly taken note of. It could be that dust in the air further south — dust, or those things — was catching the sunlight and spreading it across the sky, breaking up its colours and splashing an artist’s palette of light over the lowlands. But if this were the case, then it was a gift from the end of the world. There was no way he could refuse it.

He thought about what Peter had said. He didn’t agree with him — he thought that everything mattered now more than ever, because love was still here even when hope was not — and then he turned back to the old man.

“Well we can’t let it beat us, I suppose.”

Peter nodded.

Doug smiled back, pleased at the compromise he had made.