Six Moments of a Shard
Everyone in London made sure to keep their phones nearby during the first day of a new month. No one ever knew how the organisers decided what numbers to call, but anyone who was anyone wanted to make sure they were there to pick up the phone. Alice didn’t really care. She kept her phone close because that’s what people did. She was never disappointed, though, when the call failed each month to arrive, when other people got the invitation instead. Therefore, when her ringtone broke through the early morning birdsong as February turned to March, she didn’t even register who might be on the other end of the phone.
“Hello, Alice speaking.”
“Congratulations, Alice.” The voice sounded like it had been sifted through gravel. “Battersea Power Station. 7pm. Plus one.” Click. The connection died.
For the next hour, Alice sat on her bed, staring at the peeling poster of Tina Fey. She had been picked. The idea of it was ridiculous. Why was she chosen? She didn’t even want the invitation. Four times she began to text friends, seeking advice, but each time her fingers tapped clean the words before the text could be sent. If she told her friends about the invitation, she would be opening Pandora’s Box. Who knew what they would do? Would they fight over who would get to go? The idea churned her stomach. She couldn’t tell them. Instead, she sat and waited until the sun drifted higher and she knew her brother would be awake.
“Damien?” Alice said, her voice tiny, as she walked into his bedroom. A grunt echoed out from the duvet. “I got an invite. To, you know.”
In a whirlwind of limbs and bedding, Damien appeared from the bed. Between them, they were the perfect representation of high school and university. Alice, even in her pyjamas, looked tidy. Her thin form covered by a buttoned night short, tucked into her shorts. Her hair was smart, her nails always clean. Damien, though, was a lumbering mess. His hair had grown out, ringlets beginning to form. What had begun as tidy stubble had devolved into a scruffy beard, and it wasn’t clear if he drank or showered more. He was still Alice’s older brother and she wouldn’t change him for the world, except for maybe his early morning odour.
“You got an invite? Shit, grats, sis!” Damien grinned, giving her a hug. She tried not to breathe in. “Where’s it at? Wait, don’t tell me that. Rule number one, right? Who are you taking? How many tickets you get?”
The questions rattled out of Damien’s mouth and Alice felt a surge of relief that she hadn’t told her friends. “Just one. But I don’t know if I’ll go. It’s not really my scene.”
Damien looked as if she uttered the most repulsive of slurs and Alice looked down at her feet. She could feel her brother’s eyes drilling into her. “Not go? Oh geez, you are turning into Mum.”
“I am not!”
“Yes, you are,” Damien said, a smirk breaking out across wide face. “Too afraid to get into trouble; too scared to try new things. Mum chickened out when Dad got an invite too. You are so Mum.”
Alice knew what her brother was doing, and hated and loved him for it. He was goading her into going, to take the experience that he thought she so desperately needed. “Fine, fine,” she said, throwing her hand out in front of her. “I’ll go. But you’re coming with me then and if something bad happens, Mum can kill you for not looking out for me.”
“Shit, you serious, sis?” Damien said. He ran a hand through the knotted rings of his hair. “I mean, I’m sure you’ll be super popular with your friends if…”
“I want my brother there to make sure I’m safe.”
Damien fistpumped the air. “We’re going to Shard, Alice!”
***
Battersea was freezing as the sun fell away beneath the horizon. Every time Alice or Damien would breathe, steam poured forth from their mouths, coiling up towards the sky. They walked together along the pavement, wrapped up in coats and scarves. From side streets and parks, others silently appeared alongside them, everyone anxiously checking their watches. No one wanted to be late. Battersea seemed to shimmer in front of them, waiting to open its door and guard them from the whipping wind. Several people broke out into a run, seeking the false promise of warmth. Alice didn’t. She continued to match Damien’s steady stride.
“Do I,” Alice began, her voice shivering, though not from the cold. “Do I need to worry about anything? Like, what if I have a freak out?”
“Don’t sweat it, sis. I hear that Sharding only gets dangerous if you’re super messed in the head. You’re normal; you’re gonna be fine. Heck, Nige got an invite last month and, I mean, you’ve met Nige, right? Well, even he didn’t get too weird.”
Alice narrowed her eyes as she watched Damien scratch at his reddening cheek. “What is ‘too weird’?”
“He said he went swimming in one hundred kilograms of cat food.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know.” Damien shrugged. “Like I said, you met him; you know what he’s like.”
“No,” Alice said slowly. They were in front of the discarded power station now. A man stood at a chain link fence, ushering people over and directing them through a small gap into the grounds. They stepped into the threshold of Battersea without the man passing comment. “I mean, how did he even weigh how much cat food there was?”
Damien laughed and punched his sister in the arm. “Ha, looks like we’ll get a sense of humour inside you yet.”
***
No effort had gone into transforming Battersea. It was as if the organisers had waited until the construction workers had gone home for the night and then swooped into the building site, setting up shop in one of the large, still untouched halls within the power station proper. They were funnelled into the expansive room and Alice noticed the collective shiver that passed through the group as they caught sight of the ice sculpture placed front and centre. The four proud towers of Battersea Power Station, carved from ice, stared back at them. Somehow the idea that the ice sculpture inside Battersea turned out to be Battersea itself filled every expectation Alice had about Sharding.
Alice didn’t expect there to be so much paperwork involved, though. It was like signing up for her driver’s license. The thrill of being able to get behind the wheel ebbed just below the surface as she stood in line, was questioned, filled in forms, and then as an added form of humiliation, was weighed. A man in a black v-neck and skinny jeans asked Alice if she had ever Sharded before and she shook her head. He jotted something down and wandered off, leaving her to sway aimlessly, looking down at her shoes, until Damien came and saved her. He yammered on about what he expected to see. The words became a security blanket for Alice as she waited for the organisers to have everything ready.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” a man called from one corner of the room. He wore the same black v-neck as the others did. “If you could come forward, please, when you are called to receive your intake.”
They did it by first names, since no surnames were allowed on the forms, and Alice found herself being the first to walk to the corner. Her knees knocked together as she walked. Her hands shook. As she presented herself in front of the desk, spotting sight of the syringes all neatly labelled, something reached in and squeezed hard around her lungs. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t. And yet, with a look back at Damien’s stupid grinning face, she presented her arm and a syringe was eased with care into her veins. It felt cold. Others soon followed her lead. She noticed that some syringes were filled with far more liquid than hers had been. One man, Damien explained in a quiet whisper after they both had been injected, was on his twentieth Shard. The organisers had to plunge two full syringes into his arms.
Once everyone had received their intake, the black v-neck crew came into the crowd and began to lead people to certain spots in the room. Alice picked at her fingernails as she was led away from Damien and placed to stand on a small, black taped cross on the floor. They were being positioned into a circle around the sculptor of Battersea. One of the organisers explained that they were all totally safe, that the ice would not hurt them. Alice could hardly concentrate. She stared down at her arm. She was sure she could feel something sliding up and down her veins and for the first time in her life, she could truly feel the blood inside her. Her entire body was made up of tiny blood cells and skin cells and they all came together to make a human body and Alice couldn’t understand how such a ridiculous thing was allowed to happen.
Then the ice sculpture of Battersea Power Station exploded.
***
Alice stared wide-eyed at the explosion unravelling so slowly around her. Explosions should have been quick. She had seen them on television below, a moment of carnage and then the aftermath. The ice sculpture was slow. Battersea shattered into a million individual shards and they flew outwards, projectiles flying in every direction. A single shard caught Alice’s eye, glinting in the meagre light of the hall, flying straight and true toward the wall. It almost looked like a spaceship fighting free of Earth’s gravity. The more she stared at it, the more it took shape. Then, with a gasp, her arm burned cold and she was flung across the room, barrelling straight into the ice spaceship.
Inside the shard, a rudimentary set of controls waited for her. The walls around her were completely transparent; she could see the entire room. With a jolt, Alice spotted herself, still standing in the circle around the ruined ice sculptor. How odd. Her face looked at peace; her eyes shut. Walking over to the control panel, Alice redirected the shard’s course, flying it across the room to get a better look at herself. The other shards of glass were still easing their way through the air, moving as if the oxygen in the room was as thick as treacle. Her ice spaceship whizzed around with ease. She stared at herself and then found Damien, the same peaceful and vacant look etched onto his face. Alice grinned. This was fun. She wondered what would happen if she attacked another shard.
She selected her target and drove her spaceship straight into it.
*
The new shard smelt horribly. It reminded Alice of the time Damien forgot to throw out months old eggs, the stench lodging deep inside her nostrils. She retched, dry heaving, glad that she didn’t add to the repugnant odour of the ice cavern. Unlike the previous shard, this one was opaque. It glowed a dark blue on the inside, barely enough light for her to see the icy walls surrounding her. Alice walked over to one and went to touch it. She couldn’t. She had no hands. Well, not quite, Alice thought as she brought the stumps up in front of her face. She had hands. They were just slowly dissolving away. Squinting, she thought she could see microscopic, furry worms against her skin, chewing down as her fingers receded like a beach being claimed by high tides. For a second, she considered screaming. It felt like the right response. But the worms didn’t hurt. If anything, they tickled pleasantly.
The smell, though, only grew stronger. The rotten eggs had decimated the defences in her nose and were now mounting an offensive on her throat. The urge to heave came back. With a surge of gratitude, Alice looked down and realised her body had been completely eaten. She was just a head on the icy floor, and she could feel the tickling sensation drawing closer to her chin. It wouldn’t take long for the bacteria to eat her throat and nose and then the smell would be defeated. Except, the tickling didn’t stop. Soon her entire head disappeared. She was a thought, trapped in ice. Alice felt a bubbling of fear corrupt her consciousness and then it slipped away as the shard cracked and she tumbled free.
She fell quickly. The floor rose fast to meet her, ready to smash through her incorporeal form. Alice spotted another shard flying nearby and she aimed for it, tried to pivot her body in such a way that she fell in its path. Then, with a wild laugh, Alice realised she had no body. She was a thought. She was nothingness.
And she entered the next ice shard.
*
The hair upon her arms all stood on end and a shiver passed through her body. Alice was standing in the middle of an aisle of Walmart, some tinny voice announcing over the tannoy system that assistance was required near the changing rooms. She shivered again and she rubbed her body, wondering why she was so cold. Then with a squeak, her eyes caught sight of her bare breasts. She wore not a stitch of clothing. Hurriedly using one hand to cover as much of her lower half as she could, her other arm came across and pressed against her chest. The other people in her aisle didn’t seem to care. They walked past her, her nudity shared with every other shopper. No matter where she turned, her eyes were assaulted either by cheap plastic Walmart goods or an array of breasts, arses, vaginas and penises.
“Hey there, you okay?” someone said from behind her. “You look a little lost.”
Realising that her backside was still on display, Alice spun and walked back until she could feel the shelves pressing against her back. Her cheeks blazed red. Of course, the only person with clothes had stumbled across her. She looked at the friendly face, saw the kind smile and familiar glasses, and wanted to bury her burning face into her hands.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Tina Fey said, patting her bare shoulder. “Let’s get you somewhere private.”
Tina took one of Alice’s hand, letting the girl’s breasts fall into view again, and led her out of the aisle and away from the various shoppers. Alice wanted to run away, to hide, but Tina’s grip was tight and she found herself being drawn into the staff room. It was mercilessly empty. Giving her an impossibly white smile, Tina turned and locked the door behind them.
“You know,” she said, taking a step closer to Alice. “You’re really cute.”
Before Alice could react, Tina was next to her and she could smell her perfume. “Is this okay?” Tina asked, running a finger down her side. Alice nodded and Tina laughed, leaning forward… and the ice shattered all around them.
“No!” Alice yelled as Tina, the staff room and the entire Walmart vanished around her. “No! Not now!”
*
Her mother was waiting for her. She sat in a classroom, her skin pale under the harsh glow of the old, fluorescent light bulbs. With a start, Alice went to cover up her nude body, but she felt the gentle caress of fabric against her fingers. She was dressed again. In fact, she was wearing the same loose, summer dress as her mother was. Cringing at the fashion faux-pas, Alice looked around the otherwise empty room. Behind the solitary window, she spied the wall of ice and her heartbeat slowed.
“Please take a seat, Alice,” her mother said, nodding to the chair on the other side of the desk. “I have something important to tell you.”
“Oh geez, what is it now?” Alice cringed and sat down, glad that the door was closed and there were no spying eyes. When she was a child, all she wanted to do was wear the same clothes as her mother. The desire abruptly stopped when puberty struck, though.
“This won’t be easy to hear,” her mother said, frozen behind the disk, not even a stray hair daring to move. “But I’m your father.”
Alice laughed and her mother didn’t move. She stared at her and her mother didn’t move. She stood up and her mother didn’t move. “Don’t be silly, Mum. What do you really have to tell me?”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“But you’re my mother,” Alice said, feeling stupid even as the words came out of her mouth. She couldn’t believe she was having this debate.
“Exactly. And your father. You see, Alice, our species reproduce like single celled organism. When it comes to off-spring, we merely partition off some of our genetic matter and create a new being. See, look.”
Alice’s mother didn’t move; she hadn’t moved since Alice had entered the shard. Yet there was a small mirror now in her hand. The glass glared at Alice. She screamed. Staring back at her was her mother’s face. Snatching the mirror from the cold, lifeless hand it was ensnared in, Alice moved around the classroom. It had to be some trick of the light. Her hands shook. No matter where she stood, only her mother’s face stared back at. Her heart was threatening to break free of her chest, but with a sickening drop, Alice realised it was her mother’s body, beneath her mother’s dress. She screamed again and hurled the mirror at the frozen figure at the desk.
“Don’t be so melodramatic,” it said.
Alice threw herself at the window, shattering through glass, ice and the universe.
*
She fell. Battersea vanished, the shards gone. There was only total darkness, blacker than black and emptier than anyone could imagine. For a time, planets tumbled around her and stars burned brightly against her skin but they too slipped away. There was nothing and then there was the beach.
The sand was warm against her skin. Looking down, her shoulders slumping in relief, Alice spied her own body. The summer dress had turned to her favourite shorts and top. She sat on an ash black beach, the sky a smear of reds and oranges. There was no sun. The crystal-clear sea lapped lazily at the shore. Behind her, the beach stretched till the horizon and beyond the horizon, she knew there was nothing. Everything made sense to Alice now. She was on the beach at the end of the universe. Next to her, the girl put a hand on her knee.
“Lauren?” Alice’s voice creaked under the strain of the shock. Lauren, one of her oldest friends, sat next to her. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and her glasses were off-balance, like they always were. She was beautiful in that dorky way. Staring into her green eyes, Alice began to cry.
Lauren wrapped an arm around her. “Don’t worry, Alice, I’ve got you now. You’re safe here. You’re always safe with me.”
“What are we doing?”
“Watching,” Lauren shrugged. “Not long now.”
“Till what?”
Lauren nodded at the burning sky. “The end of the universe. We’ve just got to see that out and then you’ll be free.”
They sat in silence. They watched the sky grow darker, the red overpowering the orange until there was just a swirling, angry welt above them. It reached out for the beach and it reached out for the sea, pushing at the edges, reclaiming them, until Alice and Lauren sat together on the tiny remaining patch of existence. Alice leant into her friend, letting their bodies’ touch, the position sparking the universe’s final moment of déjà vu.
“We’ve been like this before,” she said, the words tumbling free before the sky swallowed them.
“When we went on that school camp to Devon?”
Alice remembered the memory; she always remembered it: the warmth of the evening breeze, the sand between her toes, Lauren’s shoulder against her own. “I was going to kiss you. It would have been my first kiss.”
“It would have been mine too.”
Alice didn’t hesitate this time. She didn’t ask for permission. She turned, and as the heat death of the universe closed in around them, she pressed her lips against Lauren’s.
*
Alice opened her eyes and she was back in the spaceship-like shard. Jumping up from the floor, she rubbed her face. Everything was moving quicker now. The shards had broken free from the gravity of the explosion and were hurtling around the room. Alice’s was flying straight at Damien’s face, his eyes still closed, blissfully unaware of the shard of ice shooting toward him. Alice cried out, but she knew he couldn’t hear him. She only had one option.
Her body caught on fire. The flames erupted from the pinprick where the syringe entered her body and fanned up her arms. Alice staggered forward, amazed at how quickly the fire consumed her. Within seconds, she was nothing more than impossible heat. Pressing her palms against the walls of the shard, she willed the ice to melt. Water dripped from the ceiling, trying to extinguish her, to keep the projectile flying. It was no match. The shard fell away, a metre from Damien’s face.
The ashes of Alice scattered over the floor.
***
“Hey, sis,” a voice floated through her mind. It sounded worried. “Oh geez. Sis? You okay, sis?”
Opening her eyes, Alice saw the furrowed forehead of her brother looking up at her. She nodded, swallowing in a lungful of air. Her back pressed against the hard concrete floor. Soaked through, her clothes clung to her skin; Alice couldn’t tell if the dampness was caused by her sweat or the puddles that had formed throughout the room. The ice sculpture was gone. The organisers were packing everything away. The others who had Sharded were leaving, talking excitedly to people who were basically strangers, explaining what they had seen. Damien reached down and offered her a hand up, helping her to her feet.
“So, what did you think?” His concern slipped away to excitement.
“Wow.”
