avevale_intelligencer | Meanwhile, back at the shop...

I didn't sleep well that night.

No matter how I tried to avoid thinking about it, I couldn't get away from it. If the bread and honey and woollen shirts were real, then the people were real, and lots and lots of them had died yesterday because I had made a mistake. I'm sure world leaders don't agonise about that kind of thing as much as I was doing. Then again, maybe they do. Maybe that's why they're all to some degree or another insane.

I read a book once in which a kid started having conversations with the aliens in his space invader game. I envied that kid. The aliens weren't paying his wages, weren't literally putting food on his table. All he had to do was stop them getting killed. I had to keep mine fighting. And just try not to think about the dead.

At 3:08 by the alarm clock I said "Oh, bother," or something that began with the same letter, and got out of bed. The rain had stopped and the sluice trucks had been by on their rounds, getting rid of any residual acidity. It was a reasonable night. I shoved myself back into my clothes and manoeuvred the bike down the stairs, telling myself I'd just ride around for a while till I was tired enough to sleep.

It was no surprise to find myself at the mall. It was, of course, locked up, but I knew the night security system was mostly just for show--if you avoided the functioning cameras and used the skateboarders' secret way into the car park, you could wander around inside to your heart's content. The site was owned by an arms company based in some offshore tax haven; they'd bought it because it was there, the rents were a tiny droplet in their budget, and what went on there was about as important to them as the existential doubts of one of my intestinal bacteria were to me. I climbed the immobile escalator and nodded at the empty box with the lens and the red flashing light that hung from the ceiling. It ignored me completely.

I approached the metal shutter, shoved my nose up to it and peered through one of the slits. There were fitful lights moving about inside the shop. The twilight staff obviously didn't feel the need to switch on the fluorescents. I could glimpse small figures moving around, about the same size as Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula. Maybe he was in there, organising, issuing terse orders in his own language, whatever that was.

How did they get in?

The shutter was still down, and padlocked. There was no other way in or out, unless you punched through the wall of the back office and fell two storeys to the pavement. For a moment I was idiotically peeved at them for not providing at least the semblance of a rational explanation, something I could use to paper over the huge gulf between what was happening and common sense.

I was leaning forward slightly, balanced on my toes, and suddenly my balance went for a moment and the shutter shuddered as I fell against it. There was a frozen moment; all the movement in the shop ceased, and I felt them in there, listening. I held myself still, aware that if I moved at all the shutter would respond again and they would know someone was out here. What would they do? Pack up and go? Take all the stock back? Open the shutter and run me through with swords? I couldn't find an upside.

Then they started moving again, carrying on with what they were doing. I hoped there wasn't much left to do, because the position I was in now was quite painful, and I dared not shift a muscle.

Did they know that I was the reason so many of their soldiers had died? How much did they know about what governed their movements and their lives? What were we to them? Just another ally to be traded with?

Or were we the gods?

The flickering lights began to go out, and I sensed that they were getting ready to leave. As near as I could tell from the silhouetted shapes, all the stock was still there. One by one the bobbing figures disappeared into the back of the shop, and I got myself ready to move.

And just as the last light went out, I heard, through the glass and the metal, the unmistakable bray of a donkey.

The game people used donkey carts to transport stuff around the settlement. Obviously they would use the same method to bring stuff here. It made perfect sense.

Fortunately I managed to hold in the hysterical giggles till the shop was completely dark and empty. Then I went back down to retrieve the bike, and rode home through the paling dawn.