These are the thoughts Haunt thinks as he walks step by undead step down the corridor. This gloom is a product of his lack of update, he knows.

  He follows Huge through the doorway at the end of the corridor. The others are already looking around another chamber, a vague oval, with walls that are frozen crests and troughs, like they’re inside an art installation of an ocean. Outside of a white circle on the floor they’re standing in, the smooth, rounded room is just a shiny grey metal emptiness, the walls again made of that same squirmy, edgy stuff.

  “Echo?” says Huge.

  Nothing. Indeed, the word dies in the air, like this is also a soundproof space for some reason. Or possibly no reason at all. That sense of being in an auditorium before the main event, of anticipation, is even more powerful here. “Can you feel that?” he asks. His inherited memories are telling him about recording studios, pristine clean, smelling of overnight polish, and ready for radio drama to cut the air in front of fluffy microphones. But he knows these references will mean nothing to the others. They mean little to him.

  “Yes,” whispers Diana. “And I suppose that’s why I’m whispering.”

  “Greetings.” Quin flies forward. “We come in peace.”

  “Shoot to kill,” whispers Bob.

  Silence.

  “It feels,” says Diana, “either like something has just happened here and we missed it, or that something else may happen at any moment.”

  “Fucking weird vibes,” says Bob. “Match day. The crowd’s getting excited. ’Cept it’s only us.”

  “How can we even have those feelings?” asks Haunt. “How can human beings have evolved them? What are they a response to?”

  “One of our other memories says,” adds Quin, “that we are leaving the area, having decided, by vote, to get to somewhere where we can signal the Company.”

  “Wow,” said Huge, worriedly, “I hope we’re going to be okay. I mean . . . those we. I think we here are . . . pretty okay.”

  “Why would you say that?” Haunt says, with a wry grin.

  “Because I think we’re way beyond pirates now, and I don’t think there are any actual aliens here. Because what sort of ship would take a good look at boarders, take a biological sample, then go ahead and let them in, but not to see the crew, just to go stand in a room?”

  “The crew might be along in a moment,” says Diana.

  They wait for a while. Nobody arrives.

  “I am so glad we’re here,” says Huge. “I’m glad we’re us and not those others who went back to the ship.”

  “But we are both,” says Quin. “We are, we thought, at heart, our backed-up memories in the next world. That is who we are. Moment by moment, the essential us is departing.” Their voice has a sound to it now like something is cracking inside the giant wasp, like its wings are being pulled from it.

  “I’m so sorry, Quin,” says Diana, and she means it.

  Haunt takes a breath in. It feels like he’s required to say something similar. But he can’t quite get there. It’s so not like who he is. “The ship,” he says, finally, “has, once we had demonstrated peaceful intent, used this strange time defence it possesses to let us aboard rather than attacking. It has now given us access without any expectation as to what we might do. I believe Huge is right. There are no aliens here. There is a low intellect ship, like our own in that one respect, that is treating us as if we are familiar but puzzling. I wonder if it’s considering whether or not we are its crew, or at least the same race as its crew.”

  “How can we be anything like its crew?” asks Huge. “Look at us.”

  “The sheer variety may have confused it,” says Diana.

  “Indeed,” says Haunt, “but the fact it regards that as a possibility, and that statue being of a fairy . . .” He’s already filled in those who didn’t know what fairies were. “That is suggestive.”

  “Of what?” asks Bob.

  “If I knew that,” says Haunt, knowing that Bob was just sighing at him rather than genuinely wanting an answer, “then it would be more than a suggestion.” Which is sheer bullshit, but Haunt feels vulnerable about sharing extraordinary conclusions, particularly when nearby is someone as continually scornful as Bob.

  “Fucking poof,” says Bob.

  “Of everything I’ve said,” says Haunt, “that is what set you off?”

  “Also,” says Huge, “aren’t we all, post selves, post bodies, post everything, really quite a long way past ‘poof’?”

  “Gotta meet the quota,” says Bob. Which is so not an apology.

  “Of course,” says Huge, who knows as well as any of them Bob still feels, or is designed to never stop feeling, that he has to make derogatory comments a certain number of times every day. They’ve all experienced that moment late at night (when they’ve decided they’ll try having night and day) when a balloon ducks into their personal space and calls them a cunt. Then it departs. Often, that’ll be followed, when they’ve opted for local space parameters, by them hearing the encounter recur nearby with someone else. Because midnight, when there is midnight, is Bob’s abuse deadline. This does not seem to have changed, even while, sans updates, they’re all feeling horrible new freedoms of thought.

  “If there do turn out to be aliens, Bob,” says Diana, “please avoid communicating with them.”

  “Fuck you,” says Bob, but it’s clear from the tone it’s contractual rather than heartfelt.

  “We’ve waited long enough, I think,” says Diana. She steps forward out of the circle. “Hello?”

  And the whole room suddenly shifts in some way. The colour, the light, what?

  “What just happened?” says Huge.

  There’s no weirdness in Haunt’s head this time. So that wasn’t a time thing. “The walls,” he says, “I think they . . . changed texture. So wherever the light is coming from, and that is another fascinating question, they’re reflecting it in a slightly different way.” One couldn’t even say the walls are now a different colour. They just . . . look different.

  “It’s about touch,” says Diana. Carefully, she squats down and puts a palm to the surface.

  Everything around them changes again. Haunt realises he can feel something else. And it’s in a particular direction. He steps toward one of the walls. Beyond it, he can feel a great . . . potential. As if this is the direction one should be looking for the firework display or the meteor shower. “There’s something past the wall,” he says.

  “That is where one of the big magnetic fields is being generated,” says Quin.

  “And I’d guess that’s where they keep their supply of paired particles,” says Diana.

  “Wait,” says Quin, sounding desperate, “there is another possibility. Strong magnetic fields can interface with biological brains. Perhaps that is what our new bodies are feeling concerning all these spooky moments? Perhaps there is no time change at all and my external memories are just becoming muddled? Please?”

  “I’m sorry, but no,” says Huge. “The nervous systems in bodies like these are designed, not evolved. The brains of these we’re wearing aren’t like natural brains, and they’re deliberately protected so they won’t be messed with by EM fields, like the forms themselves are mostly spaceproofed.”

  “And yet,” says Haunt, “all the feelings we have had are interpreted, in my brain, in metaphors relating to the human condition, via my inherited memories.”

  “A lot of the systems in these bodies copy those of humans, or in the case of Quin, big wasps,” says Diana, “and I’m pretty sure Bob’s a human baseline with added tiger. If there isn’t a protective function involved, you’re probably feeling what a human would feel.”

  “Interesting,” murmurs Haunt, wondering again about that stray conjecture in his mind which won’t go away. “So if we’re not feeling the magnetic field through there, what are we feeling?” He puts his hand to the wall. It slides back to reveal another of those nonechoing, expectant grey spaces, always doing something at the edge of Haunt’s vision and then squirming away when he turns to look. Except in the middle of the space sits a sphere, like the craft itself, but this one is a deep, right on the edge of human-visible, purple.

  “My suit says that’s where the electromagnetics are coming from,” says Diana, looking at the readings on her cuff monitor. “Structured pulses going in and out of that thing. That looks like programming going in both directions.”

  “So it’s being programmed by the world around it but is also sending commands back?” says Huge.

  “Half of that sounds like a gaming environment,” says Haunt. “But if it is, it’s a gaming environment that’s keeping paired particles inside, and one that’s at the wheel of this spaceship.”

  “Well, what does that remind you of?” says Diana. Then she answers before anyone else can. “One of these.” And she points at her own head. Then she visibly realises she has to continue rather than wait for them all to get it. “A mind.”

  Haunt wishes he’d been the one to come to that conclusion. “The mind of the ship.”

  “It’s certainly not hiding from us now,” says Huge. “That’s . . . either charming or really scary.”

  “I don’t think,” says Haunt, “that these people like expressing their vulnerability. In that, and perhaps only that, we are quite similar.”

  “I’m not similar,” says Bob. He strides toward the sphere and slaps it with a tiger paw. “Nope. I’m not feeling anything except—” Haunt thinks the next word would probably have been “hungry,” but before the H can leave the jaws, Bob vanishes in a blur of motion. He seems to have gone into the sphere.

  For a pico they’re all too shocked to move. Then they rush to the spot where he was standing. “Oh my God,” says Huge. “Why does he keep thumping things?!”

  But Haunt has been considering. This place is obviously seeking to understand the people who’ve boarded it. And everything he’s felt about what was behind that wall, all the associations, are positive. Of course, the others could be wrong about these bodies and perhaps he is indeed being led astray by the wonders of electromagnetic radiation. But as a game character that hardly scares him. It used to be his whole lifestyle. He steps toward the sphere. “If I don’t return,” he says, and then he pauses. “Do what you were going to do anyway.” And before any of them can stop him, he slams his palm against it.

  4

  And then he’s somewhere cold. And oh, he can feel the cold. He’s only ever felt the cold before whenever some terrible people wanted him to, and that one time when they were all fighting over the ambient settings in the Rosebud.

  So has he been put here by terrible people?

  Where is here?

  He can hardly see through the flurries of snow. Snow in the air, snow under his feet, darkness all around. He’s outside. He can feel the chill air on his face. He must look great, Dracula standing in the snow, black on white. It’s night on what looks like Earth, but there’s no moon so he isn’t sure, and there’s a sort of rocky outcrop in front of him. Inside the outcrop there’s a gap, and through the billowing snow he can now see there’s a light in there, a flickering light, a fire. He can smell it. That’s an indication this must be a very advanced simulation. A simulation that’s mapped this body and all it feels into itself by means of him being pulled through a wall. A simulation indistinguishable from reality. He wonders where his physical body is right now?

  He supposes this is rather like being a player in a game. He’s always thinking about what that would feel like. What grand agency that is, and how completely oblivious players are of having it. He’s been making choices in a group, but here he is, alone to make a meaningful decision: go into the cave or freeze. And of course, of course, that’s no decision at all. He heads for the cave, cautiously taking a step inside. He realises immediately that the light was only a thing because it was the only bright feature in the landscape. It was reflected off many turns of many rock walls. He proceeds inside. The cave goes back quite a long way. It gets warmer the further in he goes, though, so that’s better.

  The look of the rock walls changes. Now they’ve got symbols painted on them: concentric circles. And on the sandy floor there the circles are repeated as waves, as if a rock was dropped on the sand and the waves spread out along the natural corridor ahead. Haunt comes to a stop. He can hear noises ahead, human noises, movement and language, but not one he knows. Suddenly, there is silence. And then there’s a single note, “ahhhhhh!” which echoes precisely along the corridor and hits him where he stands, reflecting off the wall and surrounding him. Then it’s gone again.

  He realises what this is. And it’s clever. He’s never sung a note. He’s never had cause to. He opens his mouth and does his best to make exactly the same note back in the other direction. He watches the fine dust on the floor in front of him get disturbed by the sound, just a little, that wave pattern being slightly reinforced by that sound as the movement of the air sorts the dust. This is the signal you make at this point, pass friend and be recognised, and the circles are there on the wall to say this is the spot where you should do this, and the pattern on the sand is because many people do this every day. It’s a complete, pleasing, shape. Is it an alien culture he’s being shown? Surely not. These circles all feel very human. What’s this simulation for? If it does turn out to be a game, some sort of test perhaps, he’s going to get a really high score. The conversation ahead has resumed, so presumably whoever’s ahead now feels he’s an approaching friend. Perhaps whatever these people are afraid of can’t make that note? He heads around two more corners, where he could easily have been ambushed if he’d made the wrong sound, and then into a large cavern, in which are sitting several families of, yes, humans, or perhaps not yet exactly humans, dressed in furs decorated with amber and polished stones, clustered around a fire, above which a roasting carcass of perhaps a pig is suspended on sticks. One of these people is dressed in an extraordinary manner, in a sort of cone of furs painted in red and white stripes, and he has pouches and bags slung all around him and a big one beside him. Oh, he’s a sort of Father Christmas, and he’s been caught in the middle of handing out mushrooms to all the good little boys and girls. In a pico, Haunt realises what he’s seeing. This lot are getting fucked out of their brains on magic mushrooms before a feast. Maybe they’re trying to get to a state similar to what he’s experienced several times today. There’s also a powerful smell in the cave, over all the other powerful smells: alcohol. Haunt isn’t used to real smells at all, he’s getting his knowledge from a vast beer-centric database that was one of the many things flung into him and stirred together. Smells like this are way too much. He’s about to put a hand over his nose when one of the humans, at slow human speed, looks over their shoulder to check who’s come in, sees him, and leaps up screaming.

  A moment later, all the others have leapt up screaming too. They’re running from side to side, making themselves look bigger than they are, baring their teeth at him in horrible smiles.

  It seems odd to feel afraid in a simulation or game, but nevertheless it’s getting to him. He stands as tall as he can and wraps his cape around him, giving them an imperious glare. But he knows it’s all front. Where’s this going? Is Father Christmas going to fight Dracula?

  But then, suddenly, he’s on the other side of the cave, beside a thin fissure he hadn’t noticed in the low light, and he’s hiding from the humans, still unseen. In his memories, there’s a whole other . . . no, it’s like that old version is a story. He can remember both entering through the front door and using the sound signal, and he can remember sneaking in the back way. This is exactly like what Quin described. But he doesn’t normally have access to exterior memories like that. It’s like someone has provided him with that insight as an example. He has the distinct feeling he’s just been . . . shown something. As if this is part of a game, but still the training phase, where a player is shown their capabilities.

  Oh. This is what they do. Whoever made that craft, this is how they work. They’re showing him their . . . yes, he’s sure now, it has to be a defence mechanism. But why show him it in a simulation depicting his parent species?

  He realises the humans are acting differently now. They’re looking all around them, cowed, scared, but not of anything immediate, of . . . something beyond. Mushroom Santa is busy chattering to himself, making ritual movements, over and over again. Then when he seems to feel he can’t avoid the big emotions any longer, he leaps up, runs to the wall, grabs lumps of pigment from a rock and starts to draw, symbols Haunt doesn’t understand, then a very quick sketch, as if he’s done this often, of a human with wings.

  Is that meant to be him? No. They haven’t seen him. Not in this version of events. They can only feel something has passed over them. That mystery, the ineffable, the grand unseen, is nearby.

  The picture is perhaps of God, or at least an angel. These people are reacting to it . . . because they’re familiar with it. Haunt lets his unvoiced speculations from earlier become a whole, solid theory: humans, and those given the evolved ingredients of humans, like himself and some of his colleagues, can only know this feeling, can only have developed this feeling, as an evolutionary response to something in their environment. The beings who made this craft must have been in that environment. That’s what he’s being shown here, what those beings did in exactly these circumstances. They’d have to have been in that environment for a very long time for humans to have changed in response to them. Many humans without the ability to sense the occult nearby must have died in order for natural selection to have done this. Is that because these beings were sometimes antagonistic to them or sometimes helpful and one needed to sense them in order to get that help? Perhaps a mixture of both. Had humans evolved beside them? Surely not. Even if you can rewrite time to make sure you aren’t seen, you’d have to do that a hell of a lot to hide the rise of a technological civilisation that can make spaceships. So perhaps these beings are visitors to Earth, but ones that stayed for a long, long time.