Also by Courttia Newland

Novels

The Scholar

Society Within

Snakeskin

The Dying Wish

The Gospel According to Cane

A River Called Time

Short story collections

Music for the Off-Key: Twelve Macabre Short Stories

A Book of Blues

For Brook Stephenson, who gave the inspiration.

And FlyLo, who gave the music.

In some far off place

Many light years in space

I’ll wait for you.

Where human feet have never trod,

Where human eyes have never seen.

I’ll build a world of abstract dreams

And wait for you.

Sun Ra

PERCIPI

We saw it after dinner, nationwide on a weeknight. Between the celebrity dance competition and hit US soap The Lanes. Everybody had been buzzing for months, the rumour mills were in overdrive, so when the media promised the Buddy 3000 would be unveiled that very evening, the whole town was talking. We all wanted to see what came next, and we made sure we were in front of the VS when the first ads aired.

They said the Buddy was the best of its kind, a new generation. That science had made the final leap and harnessed creation’s power, there was nothing that couldn’t be grasped, the future was limitless. They were mostly Seneca supporters, of course, and usually the ones who stood to gain. Employees, the CEO, the mayor. Others said Mankind was heading for the fall, that playing God would only lead to death and destruction, but no one listened to them. They were the poor or the religious, which in our town pretty much amounted to the same thing. There were leaflets printed on flimsy paper you could see your hand through, proclaiming Man’s inhumanity, the final days. There were panel discussions and news items and petitions, but nothing was going to stop Seneca from launching the Buddy; we must have known that.

We sat in the almost dark for some reason, the flicker of VS light crossing our faces while we waited. The screen went blank for a long time after the dance show finished, but we could still see because the eyes of our long-suffering 1250i were bright enough to bathe the room in a soft, golden glow, as though we’d been submerged in honey. They stood between the sofa and wall, facing the screen like the rest of us, silent apart from the hum of their workings. We ignored them, consumed by our wait for the most part, though we could feel it even then, the uncomfortable way in which we turned our backs betraying our collective guilt.