Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Fibonacci

Originally published by Flash Fiction Online

One sample of DNA.

One chance to prove herself and silence her peers.

Two viable ammonites eventually swim in their tank, juvenile and tiny. Their spiralled shells may be imperfect Golden Ratios, but their erstwhile association with Fibonacci’s sequence drew her to them as a child. The addition of the sequence’s last number to its predecessor to generate the next, converging on an identical ratio between each one, creates a logarithmic beauty she finds soothing.

Three mass extinctions occurred before the ammonites succumbed to the fourth. With the planet on the brink of another, she’s certain these animals hold the key to survival.

Five times she’s reluctantly turned down Henry’s dinner invitations. She fears the fifth was one refusal too many.

Eight years she’s studied to fulfill her dream of reviving the ancient cephalopods and returning them to the dying ocean. They say de-extinction will create further problems, but they haven’t come up with alternatives.

Thirteen weeks after hatching, the little creatures begin to thrive. It will ever after be her lucky number.

Twenty-one people are invited to Henry’s leaving do, herself among them. She sips half a glass of bubbly before heading back to the lab. The ammonites are most active at night.

Thirty-four proves her greatest birthday. Her ammonites have mated successfully, throwing off the vestiges of their nautilus-hybrid lineage. Nothing can compete with this for a birthday present. Her colleagues celebrate with her. She wishes Henry was still here.

Fifty-five journalists leave messages for her on the day her research is published. She returns only three of their calls.

Eighty-nine hatchlings survive the planktonic stage. Her increase in funding pays for a bigger tank.

One hundred and forty-four specimens aren’t enough to rejuvenate an ecosystem. She hopes the ammonites’ prolific offspring will boost plankton levels while the adults provide a predator’s balance, thereby injecting life force at both ends of the food chain using an ancient animal known for its resilience.

Two hundred and thirty-three juveniles are stolen when the lab is burgled. She discovers empty tanks and smashed equipment. Heartbreak chokes her; the young ones are doomed without her care. She’d been experimenting with new fragments of nautilus DNA to diversify the gene pool. Now she has to start over. She sobs amongst broken glass and scattered utensils.

Three hundred and seventy-seven minutes pass before Henry calls. He’s heard the news. Is there anything he can do? If she’d like his help, she’s got it. She doesn’t need his expertise, but she could use a friend. He books the next train back.

Two hundred and thirty-three glass fragments are swept up while they talk. The act of restoring order to the lab alongside a sympathetic ear calms her nerves and reignites her determination. She hasn’t come this far to balk now. The police can’t promise anything. Henry has faith in her. She uses it to bolster her faith in herself.

One hundred and forty-four letters have been cut from a newspaper to form the most cliched of ransom notes. Despite its comic appearance, it chills her. The ransomer wants £100,000 in exchange for her ammonites. He’s sent the same demand to several rivals. He doesn’t need to declare a time limit; she knows how valuable her specimens would be to another scientist. Her latest research could be usurped before she’s even begun a new round of cloning. She crumples the note in sick fury. She doesn’t have £100,000.

Eighty-nine weeks pass. She clones more hybrids, diversifies the genes, raises new hatchlings. She hears nothing of her abducted ammonites, and no more from the ransomer. If someone else paid up, they’ve been awfully quiet about it.

Fifty-five possible sites are scouted for the trial release of her mature specimens. The Mediterranean is large enough for an oceanic microcosm, and enclosed enough to monitor the experiment. She chooses a quiet Turkish lagoon, a secluded Moroccan beach, and a sea cave in southern France.

Thirty-four tests determine her ammonites’ readiness. She monitors their food intake, hormone levels, water readings, and dozens of other essentials. They are acclimatised over several days in tanks at each site.

Twenty-one hours before the release in Turkey, Henry phones. He’s ecstatic for her, yet she senses contrition. “I paid the ransom for you,” he tells her. “But they’d all died, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I saved their shells; I’ll have them sent to you for study. Forgive me. Please.” She hangs up, hurt and relieved.

Thirteen salty splashes: one for each tagged creature. She watches them join the shoal ahead, and is unprepared for the bittersweet emptiness that takes their place in her heart.

Eight text messages arrive from Henry during the ferry crossing. She replies when they reach Morocco. ‘I’m speechless…thanks for looking out for me. See you in France.’

Five news crews appear at the French site. One of her assistants must have tipped them off. The world might as well be informed; her years of work will either pay off or they won’t. They film the last of the new ammonites swimming away, proving her hopes aren’t the only ones resting on the creatures’ success. As the waves engulf them, Henry rests his arm around her.

Three grants come in at once. She knows Henry’s financial sacrifice safeguarded her success. She asks him to collaborate with her. He grins. “Thought you’d never ask.”

Two years later, the ammonite population is climbing. There are signs of other species stabilising, but it’s premature to draw conclusions. Nevertheless, her doubters are wavering.

One boat sails across the sparkling Med, a scientist at its helm. Another prepares scuba gear. They thought of honeymooning in the Alps, but this is what brought them together. They drop anchor and don their gear for the trip’s first dive. She smiles at Henry and falls backward off the deck.

One ammonite appears before her. And another. Two. Three. Five. A whole school of perfect spirals. Her heart lifts. They’re thriving.

END

Pawprints in the Aeolian Dust

Originally published by Sci Phi Journal

Remaining time: 6 hours 38 minutes

My bootprints look odd in the amber dust. It’s been four months since the transport touched down, and I have been walking this plain nearly every day since we arrived. It’s only just dawned on me what’s wrong with the imprints I leave on the ground. They’re missing their counterpart.

They’re missing your footprints alongside them.

I haven’t cried since losing you, but the tears are welling now, threatening to mist up my visor. I swallow to relieve my tightening throat, but it’s no use. All I can see are the images of every Earth walk of the last fifteen years, superimposed over the rocky ground before me. My bare footprints in the wet sand; your pawprints in perfect outline beside them. My hiking boot treadmarks on the forest trail; your five-padded marks just in front. My shoeprint in the wet, sucking mud; your footprint appearing for a brief moment before water fills it and the mud re-forms. I can see you looking back at me with your lolling grin, delighted to be outdoors with your packmate, roaming, scenting, marking, being.

But I’m alone, and no walk was ever right without you. I took the mission after you died, hoping to leave the painful reminders behind and start new memories. I’d put on a brave face for too long: ‘men don’t cry’ and all that nonsense. I fled the planet to escape my grief. Foolishness. It was never confined to a single orb, but tangled up in my soul. I dragged it with me into space, and now, on Martian soil, here is a stark reminder that your loss still guts me.

There are no dogs here. We have no sheep to herd, no rats to hunt, no kills to retrieve. Our territory needs no defending. We have no blind settlers to guide or smuggled drugs to detect. Yet I miss you more keenly at this moment than ever before. I’m so far from home…so far from our shared haunts. You’ll never again leave an imprint on Earth’s surface, and neither will I.

Aeolis Mons dominates the horizon to my left; the sheer wall of Gale Crater is somewhere off to my right. And in front of me. And behind. The Aeolian Plain seems vast, but only from my vantage point. From space, I’m standing in a circular imprint with a small mound at its centre.

Remaining time: 5 hours 11 minutes

Jorge and I rode the buggy twenty kilometres out from Bradbury Landing this morning. Most of the settlement was still asleep, but we wanted to make an early start. Priya’s tracking a dust storm headed our way, but she predicts it won’t hit before early evening.

“Have you made it to Site 6 yet, Huw?” Jorge’s voice is tinny through my earpiece.

“On my way now, with samples from 4 and 5,” I reply. “How ‘bout you?”

“The drill was stuck at Site 10, so I’ll have to bring Anders along next time to repair it. But I’m hoping to get a couple metres of core from 11. We’ll need plenty to keep us busy if we’re gonna be stormbound for days!”

“That’s for sure. I’ve gathered a few surface rock samples too—there are some interesting fragments out here, possibly volcanic.”

“Possibly?” Jorge laughs. “You seen this mountain?”

“Yeah, all right, smartarse.” I smile at his infectious guffaw. “No harm in keeping an open mind.”

“Well, there’s no doubt in mine, man. The ground up here’s littered with lava frags.”

“Make sure you bring some down with you, then!”

Jorge’s working the foothills while I take the plains. We need samples from both to see how they compare, but scouting Aeolis Mons itself is a task we haven’t got to yet.

The thought transports me back to the Brecon Beacons with you. The steep trails were easier for your four legs than my two. You’d be ahead of me all the way, urging me onward until we reached the top of a bluff and stopped to take in the magnificent view along with our sandwiches. Always fish paste for you…your eternal favourite. Sometimes we’d stay until dark to absorb the dazzling sky. I was ten years old when Brecon Beacons National Park became an International Dark Sky Reserve. I remember begging my da to take me up there after dark. That first camping trip was the night I decided to be an astronaut. The magic of that sky, unobscured by so much as a particle of light pollution, remains the most breathtaking experience of my life. I have never felt tinier, or more massive. I felt the entire universe was mine for that brief moment. The need to get closer to it, to see it for myself, to be more than a passive observer, etched itself onto my bones.

And here I am twenty years on, collecting geological samples on Mars. I shove aside your love of beach pebbles as I pick up an especially smooth rock fragment. I refuse to dwell on your penchant for digging as I nudge soil away from an embedded piece of possible haematite. I can almost feel the sharp sting of sand as your efforts spray my legs.

No. I’m not doing this. Not now. A warehouse door clangs down in my mind, shutting the memory off. It hurts to push you away, but not as much as it would to cling to those times and everything we’ll never share again. I ignore my solo bootprints and continue my work.

The sun moves across the hazy sky as I move across the plain. The chronometer in my helmet tells me there’s plenty of time before Jorge and I have to worry about Priya’s forecast.

Remaining time: 3 hours 52 minutes

It’s wrong.

The dust storm hits just after 1400 hours. It begins as a rusty haze on the horizon, quickly darkening the sky as it approaches. My heart begins to pound as I turn back toward the buggy, which I’ve managed to leave far behind.

“Jorge? Are you seeing this storm?”

“I see it.” His reply is already fuzzed with static. “I’m on my way back, but I’m not going to make it before this thing hits.”

“Me neither. Just fix the buggy’s position and follow your display. I’ll see you there.”

His reply is garbled by static interference. It sounds affirmative, but I can’t be sure he heard what I said. Jorge’s experienced and level-headed; he’ll be fine. I break into a run, not daring to look over my shoulder at the approaching cloud. My vision fogs up as the first powdery particles fill the air like smoke. There’s no buffeting wind like you’d expect on Earth. The atmosphere is so thin here that I’d feel no more than a light breeze were I to strip off my suit. But in minutes I’m consumed by the cloud.

I keep level with the blinking light on my visor’s display, guiding me to the trusty buggy. I’m breathing deeply to stay calm, knowing there’s no real danger as I’ve already crossed this plain. I know there aren’t any sudden drops or ledges to stumble from, but I’m still walking blind. I’ve been out in dust storms before, but never this far from the settlement. Waiting it out isn’t an option—it could rage for days. My suit has already switched to its reserve oxygen supply, which gives me about two hours’ worth at normal exertion. The suit’s atmosphere compressors convert thin Martian air into gas dense enough to breathe, but with the air full of particles, the compressors have shut down to prevent the filters clogging.

I keep going, trusting my display and the ground beneath my feet. A warning blinker is telling me communications are down, but I’d twigged that following my chat with Jorge.

The dust swirls do funny things to one’s vision. The mind’s need to make patterns and sense from chaos creates images that come and go in seconds. It’s hypnotic and disorienting. My feet are taking me forward, but my eyes tell me I’m standing still amidst a maelstrom of moving shapes and whorls. As the dust becomes heavier, the light fades, its dusty orange glow subsumed by the thick brown air.

Something brushes against my leg. It’s the lightest touch through my suit. I look down and see nothing, of course; I can barely make out my own boot. I’m just about to dismiss it as a near-collision with an unseen boulder when I glimpse a shifting motion in the dust ahead. A bushy tail follows trotting brown feet into the curtain of gusting particles.

My treacherous heart leaps for an instant. I stop in my tracks as it falls again, hard. My throat clenches at the vision, so longed-for and so impossible. Damn this dust and my image-starved eyes. I take a breath, blink firmly, and trudge on.

The open-topped buggy looms out of the cloud a moment later. Dust has yet to settle on it, as the intense Martian breeze keeps it all moving. There’ll be a dense layer everywhere when the storm stops, but for now objects in its path are merely stung with millions of tiny grains which then continue on their way.

There’s no sign of Jorge. He must have gone farther than I did today. I take the driver’s seat and wait for him, peering ahead into the storm. Several minutes pass. My senses report nothing but the constant scattered ping of sand against my helmet. I could start driving the buggy toward Jorge and catch him up if I knew his precise direction. But even with the headlights on, I’d risk colliding with him. Or crashing into an unseen ridge.

Remaining time: 3 hours 18 minutes

I switch off the now-defunct storm countdown. My chrono says it’s been over half an hour since I spoke to Jorge. He should be here by now.

“Come on, Jorge,” I mutter, sharply aware that he can’t hear me.

I spot a defined shape in the dust. I lean forward, expecting Jorge’s suited form…but it’s smaller and nearer than I thought. The clogged air shifts, and my heart freezes.

You’re standing there. Your chocolate fur, with its ruffles and tufts, is clear against the red dust. Your back is to me and you’re looking over your shoulder, ears pricked, giving me your ‘what are you waiting for?’ expression. The storm seems to hold its breath—or maybe that’s just me—but only for a moment before the vision is obscured. You walk on just as the dense cloud swallows you up.

I’m rooted to the spot, knowing I’m seeing things but desperate to follow. My heart is thumping and there’s a lump in my throat the size of a walnut. Even as I stand up and step away from the buggy my rational mind is demanding that I sit back down and get a grip. But your face…your eyes, dark and pleading, focusing their will on mine with an expression so familiar it’s like I saw it yesterday. Come with me.

It’s been over a year since I looked into that face. Your eyes were fogged with age, but they still regarded me with their depth of knowing, like you could see into my soul. You always could. It’s why I’m walking away from the buggy now, back into the blanket of dust, in a direction I haven’t walked today, over ground I have no reason to trust.

But I trust you.

I walk forward with a surety I didn’t have earlier, even though my blinking sensor is telling me I’m getting farther from the buggy and its promise of safe return home. The ground is rocky, the dust is all-consuming, and I can barely see my gloved hands before my visor. But every few moments I catch a glimpse of something more: dust re-forming behind a gently waving tail, a ghostly canine shape just a touch darker than the raging motes all around me, poised to make certain I’m close behind.

We hike for a quarter of an hour, and my anxiety at the claustrophobic storm becomes a fading memory. I lull myself into the bittersweet familiarity of walking with you, just the two of us, on a jaunt of exploration and companionship, like all the old times. I can’t see a damned thing apart from your occasional reminders that I’m not alone out here. You were always our scout on unfamiliar terrain; you could find a path if ever there was one.

The ground is sloping now, becoming slowly steeper, and I realise we’re at the foothills of Aeolis Mons. This is craggy country, with dips and drops and gullies, and it’s foolhardy to continue. I slow down, but there’s a nudge of encouragement against my leg and I know you’re guiding me. A rational thought intrudes, and it’ll bring panic along for the ride if I acknowledge it.

Maybe this is crazy, but right now it’s the only thing that makes sense. Later on I can marvel at my stupidity, but not now. Not yet.

I don’t know if I’m following my loneliness and loss. I don’t know if I’m hallucinating as my oxygen supply dips. I don’t know if I’m lost on a distant planet, being led to my demise by a desperate dream that I know can never be. But I do know it’s not just me out here. I do know there’s still no sign of Jorge. I do know I’ve trusted you from the moment you chose me, the one puppy that was more interested in me than his littermates.

I haven’t completely lost it; I know you’re dead. I held you to the last. I buried you in the garden. I’d never known tears could pour out like that, in a broken-dam cascade of exhausting grief. I was helpless to bottle them up until that initial flood had passed. Your remains are hundreds of millions of kilometres away on the planet we once shared. But that doesn’t change the fact that I can feel you here now, guiding me somewhere important.

And then, all at once, I’m there.

The bulk of a Mars suit is sprawled on the ground before me, just visible through the choking haze. I’m kneeling in a flash, reaching for Jorge’s helmet, trying to see whether he’s conscious. He grabs my hand.

“Huw…”

“Jorge, what happened?” Our radios seem to be working at ultra-close range.

“The ledge…I fell.” He jerks his head upward and I realise he’s lodged at the base of a steep drop. “I think my leg’s broken.”

His left leg is crumpled under him, twisted at a nasty angle. He cries out when I help him stand, and he leans heavily against me, favouring his right side.

“Come on. Let’s get you back to the buggy.” We wrap our arms around each other’s shoulders and begin to limp back.

“How did you find me?” he rasps through the pain.

“Doesn’t matter how. Let’s just be glad I did.” He could have lain there for days before the storm cleared enough to discover his body. You knew he was there. You led me to him, recognising an injured packmate in dire need.

You’re here again now, a gentle blur of movement in the stinging dust. My sensor will take me back to the buggy, but I feel safer following your lead. Even with the low Mars gravity, our return is slower with Jorge’s dependence on me and it’s nearly half an hour before the buggy looms through the storm. It’s the most welcome sight I’ve ever seen.

I ease Jorge onto the passenger seat and climb in beside him. He can barely sit and I know every jolt of the vehicle will be agony for him, but there’s nothing for it.

“What do we do now?” he asks. I can just about make out his face through the visor. He’s gritting his teeth.

“We head back.” I start the motor.

“What? You can’t possibly drive in this, man…You can’t see your hand in front of your face out here!”

“We don’t have a choice, boyo. We’ve got to get you back, and our air reserves are dropping fast.” Besides, I’ve got a feeling. “Just sit tight and trust me.”

“Trust you? Don’t give me that Kenobi shit, amigo. You. Can’t. See.”

“Then you’d better lean forward and help me look.”

The buggy’s inertial guidance system will take us back to Bradbury no problem, but there are still an awful lot of boulders out here. Jorge’s right—I can’t see a bloody thing. But you’re waiting, right there in the shifting brown fog. You’ve led us this far, my old friend. Jorge’s given no indication that he can see you, and I’m not about to explain and shatter my illusion of sanity.

I begin driving, easing the buggy forward, squinting ahead as if looking for unseen dangers. In reality, I’m looking for your beckoning shape. I follow your tail through clear passage across the plain, trusting your sure feet and keen nose to guide us past all obstacles. And you do. But it’s slow going. It’s a 40-minute ride back to the settlement at reasonable speed, with clear atmosphere. Under these conditions, we’re looking at over an hour. It’s time we don’t have.

50 minutes oxygen remaining

My display is giving me regular updates now. I’m trying to stay calm, breathing as shallowly as possible, but I know I’m pushing my luck.

“How’s your O2?” I ask, not daring to take my eyes off you.

“Getting low.” Jorge’s reply is tense.

“How low?”

“25, 30 minutes.”

My stomach knots. Our air compressors would have switched off at roughly the same time. Jorge’s lower reserves must be due to his fall and the corresponding pain. He’ll have been breathing harder than me.

“Hang on, mate. Short breaths. We’ll get back.” But I don’t know if we will.

I speed up as much as I dare, watching your nimble form all the while. It’s almost as if you recognise our new urgency. Your pace picks up along with the buggy’s. You shift one way and I follow, realising moments later that we’ve bypassed a boulder hulking in the brown fog. We skirt obstacles I can’t see, time and again, and I can almost feel Jorge squeezing his eyes shut as we rumble along in the blinding haze.

20 minutes oxygen remaining

I risk a glance at Jorge. His head is nodding.

“Jorge! Don’t you pass out on me!”

“Lightheaded,” he mutters.

I’m feeling that way myself as I eke out my remaining supply. Your lithe shape seems to grow clearer even though the dust as is thick as ever. Your fur should be tinged red from the dust, but it isn’t. It’s not even shifting in the light winds. I suddenly long to feel its softness again. Your velvet ears. Your rough pads as you rest your paw on my knee.

Jorge’s head drops against his chest. The movement startles me out of my storm-lulled reverie.

“Jorge. Jorge!” He doesn’t respond.

15 minutes oxygen remaining

We’re not going to make it. A swell of panic rises in me for the first time. I’ve never doubted your ability to get us home. But you can’t help us breathe.

“Baskerville.” I whisper your name, not sure if I’m seeking reassurance or a miracle.

You stop. You look right at me, and I’m pivoting on your gaze, my dizzy head finding an anchor in your eyes. I brake before I know what I’m doing, and suddenly…Behind you. The settlement lights, finally glowing through the dust, beacons of safety in the gloom. We shouldn’t be here yet. Did you find a shortcut, my four-pawed scout?

I pull up beside the nearest airlock and press the activation control. The lock cycles and turns green, and the door slides up. Whooshes of dust precede the buggy inside, and we’re home. Back to safety and clear vision and medical aid. The air clears as the chamber is flooded with breathable atmosphere. I pull off Jorge’s helmet and am relieved to see he’s still breathing, albeit in a ragged wheeze. He gasps in air and coughs on dust, and I tear off my own helmet and do the same. My head clears and I find myself looking for you as the dust dissipates and settles to the ground.

I don’t know what I expect to see. You’re not here. Of course you aren’t. Yet the weight of loss threatens to swamp me again after following you all this way. Jorge groans in pain as he tries to move, and I’m back in the moment, glad of the distraction from my self-pity.

I manage to help him inside, where Priya, Anders, and Lucy are waiting. They welcome us with open arms and smiles of relief. They whisk Jorge off to sickbay and I head back to clean up the buggy and put it away before dust settles firmly into its mechanisms. Alone again, I lean against the bulkhead and breathe deeply, fighting waves of fresh sorrow. I miss you so god-damned much.

Standing here, under bright lights, breathing plentiful air, my face free of its visor and my vision clear right across the airlock, a twist of anxiety forms in my stomach. Was I completely mad to risk so much? Sure, I found Jorge, but I could have killed myself trying, or doomed us both on the journey back. What was I thinking?

The mind plays terrible tricks when one’s senses are impaired. I recall I’d been thinking of you, missing you anew, only moments before the storm hit. Did I really just risk my own life and that of my fellow pioneer on the basis of dust visions and wishful thinking? We’d have been dead if I hadn’t. But even that truth doesn’t ease the lingering panic at the realisation of what an utter fool I’ve been.

I shake my head of the fruitless thought and grab the vacuum brush to clean up the buggy. There’s a fresh layer of dust all over the floor, too. My bootprints mark it as I approach, and there…

I choke back a sob. It can’t be.

It is.

I kneel in the dust and cup its shape in my hands.

It’s a single pawprint, perfectly rendered, perfectly yours, imprinted like none before and none to come, in the ancient Martian dust.

Daddy’s Girl

Originally published by Crossed Genres

Daddy lived in the cupboard under the stairs. I hardly ever saw him. Myra saw her dad twice a week, even though he didn’t live with them. Daddy still lived with us, but his eyes were dim and his limbs were still. Sometimes I’d sneak into the cupboard when Mum wasn’t looking and dust the cobwebs from his skin. I would sit beside him and lift one of his heavy arms around me and pretend he was really hugging me even though the arm hung limply beside me if I let go of his hand. But I could still lean against his steadfast frame and breathe in his faint metallic scent, laced with stale traces of his cologne.

It was the scent of safety, and love, and protection.

I took on two paper routes when Daddy was put away. For the first week he remained lifeless on the sofa, sitting there like he’d just sat down to watch TV or help me with homework. But one day I came home to find him gone. Mum came in from work and told me, in a tight voice, that she’d put him under the stairs. ‘For now.’ Because we didn’t know what had broken, and it was too painful to have him sitting there.

People had started reading the news on paper again with the price of electricity so high. Paper needed delivering, and we needed the money. Mum already worked every available shift, so the more I could help out, the sooner we’d have Daddy home again. Properly home. Sitting at the table while we ate dinner. Waiting for me when I got home from school. Mowing the back lawn on a sunny afternoon. Not slumped in the dusty darkness with the spiders and creaking stair boards.

Months passed and our meagre savings still weren’t near enough. My birthday was coming up, and I cried at the thought of spending it without Daddy. My first ever birthday without him. My thirteenth. It was supposed to be a big day when you became a teenager. I just wanted to stay twelve until we were a family again.

Mum heard me crying and came to sit on my bed. She stroked my hair, not needing to ask what was wrong.

“What if we don’t ever save up enough, Mum?” I asked, my voice hitching on a sob.

“We will, sweetheart. As long as we keep our belts tight and put aside everything we can, eventually we’ll have enough.”

“But that could take years!”

“I know, baby. But we’ll do it. He would never give up on us, and we won’t ever give up on him.”

I knew it was true; I’d known Daddy’s story my whole life. Mum hadn’t given up on him after the accident, either. Even when the doctors told her not to cling to a pipedream. Even when the dream came true and she was offered the uncertainty of testing a prototype that had never been tried before. He was the man she loved. The father of her unborn child. She had to give him a chance, even a radical one on the fringes of science. His body was useless, but his mind was alive and trapped.

So they freed him. His first body was little more than a computer, but they built him a proper one with synthetic flesh and the likeness of his own face. And he was my daddy. The only one I’d ever known.

Most children are told the tale of how their parents met. I was told how mine met all over again, and how Mum had placed the wriggling bundle that was me into Daddy’s brand new arms. How he’d looked into my eyes and longed for real tears to express his overwhelming joy.

I had enough real tears for both of us now. I finished my paper route one evening and rode my bike out to the old quarry. Daddy used to take me to see the city skyline from the top of it, cupped in the lip of brutally gouged stone that formed the quarry’s outer edge. Many of the tallest buildings looked desolate now, even from here. I remembered a time when they’d been gleaming and bright, beacons of human success and financial prowess. The company that built Daddy had been housed in one of them. They’d gone bust just like all the others, leaving us with no hope if anything went wrong. And of course it had gone wrong, and my daddy was sitting lifeless under the stairs waiting in vain for us to scrape enough together to have him mended.

The sobs broke through my chest before I even realised they were building. I screamed a throat-rending yell that bounced off the quarry walls and repeated itself until it diminished to nothing. I grabbed a rock and flung it at the distant skyscrapers, my rage finally finding an outlet in their failure.

I felt a little better, but I realised then that I needed to do more than extra paper rounds. I needed to feel I was contributing something useful. Daddy’s experts were still out there somewhere, scattered into more austere professions, but they were no use without the mammoth funds. Saving up enough was going to take years. So be it. I would put those years to good use.

By the time I was sixteen, my shelves were piled with physics textbooks and robotics manuals. Myra’s bedroom walls were covered in posters of bare-chested hunks I’d never heard of because I had my nose in New Scientist while she was reading Seventeen. I had a picture of Hiroshi Ishiguro above my bed.

“You fancy that guy?” Myra asked one day.

I rolled my eyes in frustration. “I don’t fancy him, Myra. I admire him. He was a robotics pioneer who built one of the first interactive humanoid robots.”

She looked around my room with an expression of disdain. “You seriously need to get out more.”

That was the day I realised I’d outgrown her friendship. I sat under the stairs with Daddy that evening, feeling closer to him than I did to any of my peers. I pulled his arm around me and told him what Myra had said. He listened in stoic silence as always. I kissed him on the cheek and vowed he’d always be more important to me than silly nail-varnish-wearing girls.

By the time I was eighteen, the economy was slowly recovering. Food bank queues were ever shorter, councils were repairing roads again, and most importantly of all, I’d earned a scholarship to Cambridge. I was ecstatic. By now Mum and I had scraped together a few thousand, but still nowhere near enough to have Daddy fixed. Without a scholarship, there was no way I could have gone to university.

I made Mum promise to keep Daddy free of cobwebs and dust while I was away.

By the time I was twenty-three, I was embarking on a Master’s degree in computational neuroscience and cognitive robotics. The depression had stunted the development of android technology, so they were still rare and expensive. The lab had one as a subject for study, but its consciousness was entirely artificial.

I was examining its servomotors late one afternoon. One of my fellow students, Raz, was working on something else two benches over. He stopped to watch me.

“Did you know Edinburgh had an uploaded consciousness model?” he asked. “I’d sell my gran to get my hands on one of those.”

“What happened to it?” I tried to sound casual.

“I dunno.” He flicked dark hair out of his eyes. “Somebody said it got tired of being a lab rat and walked out, but I heard that was just a stupid rumour. It’s not like they have human rights!” He seemed to find this funny.

Until then, I’d been considering the idea of bringing Daddy here. There were enough experts at the university to mend him, possibly at reduced cost, but I realised he would become a coveted object for study. I couldn’t do that to him.

I lowered my head, got on with my work, and politely ignored Raz for the rest of the semester. I was the only Cambridge postgrad who had ever seen an android with uploaded human consciousness, and I never mentioned it to anyone. Daddy wasn’t an android to me. He was my dad, and I missed him terribly.

I studied, and learned, and worked a waitressing job in my spare time. I deposited all but my most basic expenses into the savings account I shared with Mum. For Daddy.

I built my first artificially intelligent model for my dissertation. I’d built smaller robots before; I’d been building them since I was fifteen, but this was the first machine I’d built that could learn and think for itself. I modelled its brain on that of a human toddler, with all the same capacity for growth. I wanted to see how long it took to develop the mental skills of a human adult.

I graduated with honours and received a commendation from the university.

The pioneering research into transferring human consciousness had all but ground to a halt when its funding dried up. But now that the recession was fading, there were new companies eager to invest in up-and-coming technology, and several were vying to be the first to patent prosthetic bodies for living consciousness. Less than a year into my doctorate, I was approached by a headhunter.

“We’d love to have you on board, Miss Landry.”

They would fund my doctorate if I agreed to carry out research on their behalf. It was the foot in the door I’d been dreaming of.

The working atmosphere in the lab was a strange one. We were fellows, all sharing the same passions and goals, relating to one another in ways we couldn’t with others in our daily lives. Yet we were also rivals, competing for that first ground-breaking discovery or technological advancement. The harsh competition meant we closely guarded our discoveries, kept our advancements under wraps, and took every advantage ruthlessly. It was the only way to get ahead.

My closest competitor was a guy named Mark. He seemed decent, but I’d never got close enough to really know him. As the two highest academic achievers and the two most likely to hit a breakthrough, we held each other in mutual respect but kept our distance. Another lab partner, Susie, pulled me up on it one day.

“Do you really have to minimise your computer files every time Mark walks past?”

“Don’t you?” I asked.

“No!” Her tone suggested I was being ridiculous. “I’m not about to let him rifle through my notes, but a glance at my screen won’t tell him anything.”

“Don’t be so sure,” I muttered. “You know he only keeps paper notes in case anyone hacks his system, right? He takes the damned things everywhere with him.”

“So because he’s paranoid, you have to be too?”

“I wouldn’t call protecting my research ‘paranoia’. The guy’s practically a genius, Suse. He doesn’t need any help from the likes of us.”

She laughed. “So said the pot to the kettle…”

I rolled my eyes at her. In truth, we all had our own methods of protecting our work. We shared trivia. We kept our trump cards close to our chests.

Mum was visiting her sister in Scotland. I went to see Daddy for the first time in weeks. He gazed through me when I opened the cupboard and crouched down in front of him.

“Come on, Daddy. It’s time.”

His joints creaked as I shifted him forward. I’d often wondered how Mum had managed to get him in here. His frame was reinforced aluminium, but he still weighed about the same as an average-sized man. He was a dead weight as I dragged him out of the cupboard that had been his home for the past fourteen years. I winced an apology when his head bumped the floor. I heard a tear as his trouser leg caught on an exposed nail. I was breathing hard before I’d got him halfway down the hall.

I wrangled him into an awkward position on the back seat of my car, glad of the fading dusk that gave me some privacy against nosy neighbours. I drove straight to the lab, the hour-long journey giving me time to consider how I’d get Daddy inside unseen. I talked to him about it on the way, marvelling at taking a car journey with my dad for the first time since my childhood.

It was difficult and tiring, but after draping Daddy in a blanket and positioning my access card so the entry scanners could read it without my letting go of him, I managed to negotiate the lift to the second floor and finally get him inside my lab. No one else was there; it was Friday night, and they’d all gone home for the weekend, leaving me two whole days to tinker with the most important project I’d ever taken on.

I heaved him face down onto a workbench, pulling a muscle in my back. I stumbled to a chair and sat, wincing at the pain and trying in vain to massage it away. After a few moments, it eased enough that I could stand and stretch a little. I popped some paracetamol to take care of the rest. No time for distractions; I had work to do.

There was an access port at the base of Daddy’s skull, hidden beneath his hair. I realised straight away that it was an old connection. My cables wouldn’t fit, but there had to be an adaptor around somewhere. I scoured the lab and found one connected to an old computer interface. With its help, I plugged a cable into Daddy and hooked him up to my diagnostic computer. I checked his power supply while it was running. He ran mainly on an ultra-compact gas turbine tucked under his ribcage. I opened the panel and an intense memory hit me: Daddy standing in the kitchen, his torso panel open as he fitted a fresh gas cylinder. I remembered looking for my own panel and wondering why I didn’t have one.

“Little girls have tummies instead,” he’d answered my plaintive query. “They fill them with tasty things like toast and jam to give them energy for the day. My energy goes in here…” he closed his panel “…and yours goes in here!” He’d pounced on my tummy and tickled me into hysterics.

I smiled at the memory and went to check if we had the right model cylinder. When I returned, the computer was flashing its diagnosis. My heart sank. It had flagged two errors, one of which I could handle. But the other problem was beyond my scope. A machine like Daddy would have been built and maintained by a team of people. I’d been a fool to hope I could mend whatever was wrong with him unaided.

I drank coffee as I mulled my options. I could divert my research into the necessary area to gain the knowledge I needed, but it would take months. Now Daddy was finally here, I didn’t intend him to leave until he was fixed. The thought of lugging him home again made my pulled muscle throb, despite the painkillers. I wanted him to walk out on his own, at my side. I wanted Mum to find him waiting for her when she got back from Scotland. My years of patience had run out. He was here, in a laboratory that had all the necessary means to cure him, and I was damned if he was going back in the cupboard.

I knew I only had one choice, but that didn’t stop me wrestling with it. My focus had been so intent I’d barely noticed what others in the lab were working on, but I knew that marked me as unusual. We were all ambitious, but my goals were personal. My fellow scientists would kill for a look at this magnificent piece of machinery. But if I didn’t ask for help, that’s all my dad would ever be.

I finished my coffee, took a deep breath, and phoned a colleague.

Mark’s jaw dropped when he saw my workbench.

“You never said you were working on something like this.” Awe permeated his voice.

“I’m not. He’s broken. I can fix part of the problem, but I need your help with the microprocessors.”

He seemed at a loss for words. “Where did you get this?!”

“Mark.” I made him look at me. “He’s my dad.”

For a long moment, he just stared at me. I met his gaze squarely and turned my monitor around so he could read the diagnosis.

“Why me?” His voice was hushed. “Why not Susie, or James? They both have the experience you need.”

“Yes. But so do you.”

“I’m flattered. Believe me. I’m just stunned that you’d give me this opportunity. I’ve only ever dreamed of seeing one of these up close. An android with living consciousness…and he’s your father? That’s…a colossal amount of trust to put in a direct rival.”

I took a deep breath. It was a risk, but I hadn’t chosen him at random.

“There’s no one else I’d trust with this. I can’t fix him on my own.” I could only hope he’d help me for the right reasons, but it was a gamble I had to take. Maybe he’d demand to experiment on Daddy, or expose my advantage and give others a reason to dimiss my real achievements as a mere rehashing of previous technology. It wouldn’t be true, but it would be enough to tarnish my career.

Either way, Daddy would be mended.

Mark stared at Daddy’s immobile frame. He touched his cold face and looked up at mine, as if noticing the resemblance between the artificial and the organic.

I met his eye again. “Please. He’s been broken for fourteen years.”

He set his shoulders as he reached a decision. “We’ll need parts. Very expensive parts.”

“I know. I have the funds.” Labour costs and lab hire were no longer an issue.

I wanted to ask if he’d sell me out. I wanted to know if he would ask for permanent access to Daddy in return for his assistance. But I couldn’t get the words out. What would I do if he said ‘yes’ to either question? There was no turning back, not now that I was this close. I decided I’d rather not know.

Mark and I didn’t leave the lab all weekend. We pilfered the parts from other projects and I ordered identical replacements. I told Mark all about Daddy, but I don’t think he believed in Daddy’s successfully-transferred consciousness until late on Sunday evening.

Everything was back in place and Daddy lay face up on my bench. I activated the power supply and closed his torso panel. Mark and I held our breath. Several tense seconds passed. And then my daddy opened his eyes and looked at me.

“Bethy?” He squinted and turned his head, clearly trying to orient himself. “Beth, is that you?”

It was like a tight string snapping inside me. My knees buckled and then there were strong, familiar arms around me, keeping me from collapsing, holding me up. I clutched him like I was five years old again and sobbed into his shoulder as he held me. He was warm, and real, and alive, and he was holding me all on his own.

When I finally looked at Mark, his eyes were glistening with tears.

“Mark, this is my dad.”

Mark and Daddy shook hands, though I could see Daddy was still befuddled. “It’s an honour, Mr Landry.”

“Where am I, Beth? You…you’re grown.” He cupped my face. “You’re a woman. What happened to me?”

I sat him down and told him everything. He had no memory of breaking down and no knowledge of time passing since. I was grateful that no part of his consciousness had been active. He didn’t recall the dark, dusty cupboard.

He hugged me close for a long moment. “Thank you. Thank you so much, sweetheart. I’m so proud of you. I can’t even express it.”

“You don’t have to. You’re here. That’s more than enough for me.”

He pulled away and looked at me in earnest. “Where’s Mum? Is she here?”

I smiled, imagining her joy. “She’s not expecting this. I didn’t want to get her hopes up.” I video-called her on my mobile and made sure she was sitting down before I passed the phone to Daddy.

“Hi, love,” he said. I heard a sharp intake of breath from Mum’s end, and then nothing for a long moment, and then crying.

I took Mark aside to give them some privacy. He and I both needed rest; I could see he wanted to get home.

“I’m in your debt, Mark. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

He shook his head with a smile. “You don’t owe me anything. The chance to see him up close, to work on him, to actually meet someone like him in person…I should be thanking you.”

I felt the last shred of tension leave me. He was referring to Daddy as a real person. The way I’d always seen him. I somehow knew then that Mark wasn’t about to turn my lifelong secret to his advantage.

I took his hand. “Thank you. For everything.”

“He’s your dad. I’m sure you’d have done the same if it had been my old man lying on the table.” He looked down at the floor. “I wish I had that chance. My dad died five years ago. Go make up for lost time with yours.”

Before I could say anything, he gently nudged me in Daddy’s direction and picked up his things to leave.

“Any time you want to sit and talk with him, I’m sure he’d be happy to,” I called after him.

He just turned and smiled at me, one friend to another.