GCWG: Four new Amazing Short Stories

Hedgehog

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

Revelation 21:1

Prologue

The deep ocean is the womb of life and the source of riches.

The ocean is the largest solar energy collector on Earth. Not only does water cover more than 70 percent of our planet’s surface, it can also absorb large amounts of heat without a large increase in temperature. This tremendous ability to store and release heat over long periods of time gives the ocean a central role in stabilizing Earth’s climate system. This stability had been challenged since man had first discovered how to create fire.

If all organic material and water is removed from a sample of human blood plasma, leaving only the mineral salts, the remaining material will be found to be closely similar to the salts produced by the evaporation of sea water.

One cubic kilometre of seawater contains approximately six kilograms of gold.

The average human body contains 0.2mg of gold.

During the Second World War the Germans found that the effort and cost of extracting gold from seawater vastly outweighed the value and worth of the gold unless the project could be completely automated. They did not possess the technology and besides they had discovered easier methods.

Chapter One – The Sea Crunchers

It was the greatest engineering project ever undertaken by humankind and it was the largest crowd-funded project in history. The money enabled the conception and creation of a series of aquatic bio-ingesters, mobile sub marine factories, that would autonomously roam the oceans seeking out and ‘eating’ the waste of the seas.

Inspired by a pump-priming donation from the Amazon Corporation, the funds initially raised were equivalent to one million Yuan for every man, woman and child on the planet. It had taken the fledgling company Cosmic Twinkle ten years to raise the capital that would fund a totally new technology.

The capital raised had been triggered by the extinction of the Blue Whales. Almost a century of plastic waste dumped into the oceans had eventually killed off an entire species, suffocating their digestive systems.

Cosmic Twinkle had been co-founded by environmental physicist, the long dead Nobel Prize winning eco-activist, Professor Greta Thunberg and Professor Cheng Wei, Founder of Beijing Xiaoju Membrane Technology Institute.

The bio-ingesters were constructed in a synthetic titanium alloy and designed to last ‘forever’. They were enormous self-propelled hollow tube-like, flexible cylinders over half a kilometre long and 50 metres in diameter. These cylinders were slightly wider at one end tapering down their length. Their outer skin was covered with indentations like the suckers on an octopus’s tentacles.

The inner surface consisted of similar indentations combining solid state impulse pumps acting with the water at a molecular level and providing the thrust which enabled them to move. The slow rotation of the cylinders provided directional stability and added momentum utilising the Venturi principle. They were capable of moving at almost 50 kph, almost twice the greatest burst of speed the Blue Whales had been capable of. It was also this turning motion that distributed the waste on the inner surface where it was digested by the sub-molecular ultra-violet light produced by Oceanicus.

Energy expenditure involves heat generation. Because the bio-ingesters used more heat than they produced, their efforts over the first few hundred years resulted in slowing the increasing temperature of the seas and over time temperatures had begun to stabilise. Eventually, the seas had started to cool again.

Designed to operate at all ocean depths the machines were capable of moving along the sea bed crunching any toxic debris they could find. When their energy levels triggered their float responses they would rise to the surface and recharge in warmer water and sunlight.

The brains of these massive machines were bionic neural networks, advanced artificial intelligence able to plan and execute. They had initially been programmed with ocean topography geo-positioning but this proved unnecessary as they evolved their own systems of hunting down ocean waste. Able to communicate with each other across the vast expanses of ocean much as the whales had done, it allowed these great beasts to congregate and graze in pods where food supplies were plentiful.

A by-product of the digested plastic acted as an acid neutraliser when excreted into the oceans. The decline of coral reefs was initially slowed down and eventually arrested. Then, the long progress of regeneration began.

These great machines were the ‘Sea Crunchers’

Chapter Two – Armillaria Ostoyae

Building had begun.

It was paid for by the unimaginably limitless funds of the Cosmic Twinkle Corporation. It would eventually result in dozens of Sea Crunchers deployed across the world’s oceans.

The first Sea Crunchers, known as Tintins in memory of Greta Tintin Thunberg and a joke she once made saying they’d “look like great big tins!” They were trialled in the Great Lakes of North America where they proved their capacity for consuming waste and regenerating eco systems.

The bio-ingesters combined two sources of power.

The first was old technology along the lines of air and ground source heating contained in the heat absorbent skin covering the entire outer and inner surface. The bio-ingesters absorbed more heat than they generated and were capable of responding to warmth from both sea and sun and converting it to electrical energy. It powered the motor functions and allowed the bio-ingesters to operate and travel autonomously providing the means to ‘crunch’ and ‘digest’ what they found.

The second source of power and the primary digester was provided by the symbiotic relationship between the synthetic titanium and a mushroom.

Somewhere off the coast of Xin Difang in the Greater Chinese Republic, formerly known as Oregon, Tintin was introduced to Armillaria Ostoyae and what had initially been an electrolytic digestive process became so much more powerful. Inside the tapering tube the metallic sponge-like latticework provided the perfect environment for Armillaria.

Armillaria, known as the Honey Fungus was possibly the largest living entity on earth. A genetically modified variation of this called Armillaria Ostoyae Oceanicus, a sponge-like organism that generated deep and near ultraviolet light was grown on the inside surfaces providing the digestive system. Oceanicus loved plastic.

Oceanicus and the bio-ingesters worked well together. Not only did they absorb energy but they also created it. The energy resulting from these digestive processes provided the power to move them and operate the bionic computers that were their brains.

Chapter Three - Hedgehog

The surface of the sea began to shimmer and move smoothly like water just coming to the boil. Moments later, the grey cylinder broke the surface. It was old and its guest Oceanicus was hungry. Though the Sea Cruncher was capable of solo operation, plastics were almost non-existent and heat from sun was its main source of energy now that the cold seas provided little warmth. The energy they provided in the past was now barely enough to power the Sea Cruncher.

At more than a kilometre long this Sea Cruncher was massive. It was the largest to have surfaced in the Barents Sea to seek warmth in the waning sunlight. Inside its front opening, what looked like a portion of its own tail had been nestling and now moved slowly out and floated independently alongside.

It was short and stubby with a pinkish golden sheen. Where the Sea Cruncher had infundibula over its surface, this smaller one had long, narrow, tapering protrusions. A scientific study of these protrusions would have shown that they were formed of a synthetic alloy of keratin, carbon and gold.

This smaller castaway moved off propelling itself in the same way as its parent by drawing in water at one end and expelling it from the other.

It had one particular advantage. By moving its spines like the legs of a centipede it was able to pull itself out of the water.

Hedgehog moved over the shingle and crawled out of the water on to dry land. It was hungry, capable of eating anything. Anything, that is, as long as it contained elements of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iodine, chlorine, and other trace minerals found in human blood.

Epilogue

Hedgehog moved quickly in the thin air. It rolled sideways exposing all its spines in turn, as if taking enjoyment from warming them in the pale orange midday sun. It shivered and some of the spines were shaken loose, falling like pine cones they too rolled across the ground and then, they began to wriggle.

Jeff Erton

---

Hedgehog

It was one of those winter afternoons which could occur only in London. As I sat in my rooms in Albemarle Street, the sounds of the everyday tohu bohu of the West End were muffled by the slush in the streets and the thick London peculiar. All the sounds of this great city, the beating heart of the Empire, were subdued; the rattle of the cabs , the growling of the motorbuses, the incessant cries of the newsboys and the chatter of the never ceasing passers-by and idlers, gazing aimlessly in the shop windows, laughing and whistling. Tired Hammersmith and jaded Notting Hill were wending their way homewards. To be truthful I was dozing off, having laid down the latest copy of Punch, thinking it’s not as amusing as it used to be, when I heard the rattle of the letter box as the postman brought the afternoon post. Since my discharge from Military Intelligence I had been at something of a loose end and I was delighted to see the Hampshire postmark and the discreet coronet on the envelope. It could only have come from my old pal Reggie A--------, whom I’d known from childhood when we met at prep school. We then went our separate ways, he to Winchester, and I to a lesser known school you probably haven’t heard of. We met again at Oxford, where, typically of an old Wykehamist, he read Classical Greats , while I read European languages at which I excelled, aided by having a Swiss mother. At home we spoke English French and German interchangeably, and it was inevitable that when War came I’d end up in military intelligence. My War was spent flitting between London and Paris, doing mostly liaison and translation work. It was tiresome at times and I envied my old friend who ended the War as a Captain in the Hampshire Rifles, and saw a great deal of action on the front line, earning himself the Military Cross.

I eagerly cut the envelope open and examined the brief note it contained, which was inviting me down to his family home, H-----------Hall, for a few days of socialising, a bit of rough shooting, some trout fishing on his beat on the Test, and a chance to meet some of his old Army chums. There was also a hint that some eligible young ladies would be present, making the invitation all the more attractive.

A few days later I packed my traps and set off in the taximeter cab to Waterloo, where I caught the 2.35 to Andover, then changed to the Sprat and Winkle line to Mottisfont , where I was met by Blount, Reggie’s old family coachman. To my surprise he was no longer a coachman but a chauffeur, polishing the brass headlamps on a magnificent Hispano-Suiza H6 as he waited in the station yard. A short journey took us to Reggie’s estate, through the stag-topped gateposts and up the winding gravel carriage drive to the time-mellowed old pile. The electric lighting twinkled through the mullioned windows of the Hall, creating a welcoming atmosphere, as other vehicles drove up, discharging their passengers who fell upon one another with much laughter and embracing. Waiting to welcome us on the steps was Barker, the old family retainer whom I’d known since I was a boy when I came to stay in the summer holidays.

“Good afternoon Mr Freddie, I hope you’re not going to play any tricks on me this weekend”, he greeted me, reminding me of the times when Reggie and I got up to all sorts of fun and games at his expense. It was a pleasure to renew my acquaintance with this marvellous old man who had been in the family for three generations. I was shewn to my room, and while I bathed, my traps were unpacked and my evening dress laid out.

At 7.30 I went downstairs to find a scene of frenzied pleasure. The glittering lamps, the cries, the laughter, the scent of the ladies’ perfume, the men’s cigars, the cocktails, the flowers, combined to make for a heady atmosphere, dedicated to pleasure, toute la canaille friande. I had not witnessed such a scene since before the war, although life in Paris had been considerably more pleasant for me than it had been for those back in England. Dinner was a lavish affair with a choice of the finest wines and liqueurs. There was great merriment in the air but I was slightly mystified by cries of “I say, Hedgehog old chap” directed at our host, “pass the claret”, or “Hedgehog old boy, are you going to introduce me to one of your gorgeous lady friends?” The night drove on with laughter and song, but gradually, guests drifted off to play whist, simply chat to friends they hadn’t seen for years, or some to make clandestine rendezvous I suspect. As the last stragglers were retiring Reggie beckoned me, and led me to his snug where we had spent so many happy hours over the years. Passing through the velvet portiere, I sat beside the great fireplace in the deep leather saddlebag chair which I knew so well, while Reggie produced a bottle of aged Armagnac. I was lighting up a Boyard papier mais, when Reggie said “Not one of your ghastly French gaspers Freddie, have one of these”, selecting a couple of Romeo e Juliettas from the nearby humidor. We sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the settling of the fire, the ticking of the ancient clock and the click of the death watch beetle in the walnut wainscoting. The shadows played on the wall, lighting up the ancestral crest above the fireplace.

“Ripping night Reggie” I said.

“Yes, wasn’t it”, he replied.

“Reggie, one thing I didn’t understand, some of the chaps called you “Hedgehog”.

“Ah yes, bit of a nickname I got during the war.

“How did that come about?”

“Well”, he said, “it’s a long story”, lapsing into silence again for a minute or two, looking a little puzzled. Just then, there was a scratching and snuffling at the door and a large shaggy dog entered.

“Ah, said Reggie, meet my old pal Lothar. I owe my life to him”, and he began his tale, as the dog settled at his feet on the old LIlihan rug.

“It was like this. We had spent weeks on the Zonnebeke salient, surrounded by the Hun on three sides. There was stonk coming over 24 hours a day, there were sappers tunnelling under our lines, snipers, the bally lot. It was too dangerous for the men to have any visits behind the lines to the local estaminet, and in any case the nearest village had been almost flattened. The men were going crazy with a mixture of fear and boredom, and apart from a very occasional night time recce into no man’s land, they had no exercise. Morale was running low. My batman came up with the idea of having some games in the trenches, so we quickly devised a number of pursuits, our own little Olympic games. Each morning after the stand–to and their tot of rum, the men had their usual tasks to carry out; repairing sandbag walls, cleaning latrines, cleaning their weapons and so on. When these were done, we had a number of pursuits; boxing, wrestling, gymnastics, Swedish drill, chucking the bully beef tin, catapulting rats, and my favourite, trench bobbing. This was in fact not only stupid but potentially dangerous. Do you see my right ear?”

“By Jove I hadn’t noticed that” I replied. There was a small nick just at the top of his right ear.

“Well, here’s how that happened. Trench bobbing involved timing a race along the trench for 50 yards while bobbing up and down, the head just appearing above the ground, to annoy the enemy. It should have been dangerous, as of course the Fritzes tried to pick us off, but they never got lucky, except one day. I was going for the record, but stumbled over a tree root, throwing myself up in the air. Just then a large hairy dog, whom I’d never seen before leapt up, knocking me over, just as a bullet whizzed under my Brodie helmet, nicking my ear. It was of course Lothar, this fellow here, who had appeared out of nowhere, as the odd cat and dog often did. So that’s how I got my nickname-saved by a head jog”.

He gave me a wry smile.

“Is that true?”

“Of course not, you blithering idiot!” he cried, at which I leapt on him, and wrestled him to the floor, my hands on his throat, as tears of laughter streamed down his cheeks. “Look up at that family crest, observe the animal passant, gules on vert, dexter chief, and read the family motto, Ericius spinis surgita bestia est”, he said between sobs of mirth. “Of course I forgot, you’re not a classicist—it means the hedgehog is a spiny beast. Just look at the little spiny chap in the top right corner of the crest”.

“So, how did you get the nick on your ear, you blighter?”

“Oh, that----that was a stray dart in the Fisherman’s’ Arms in Mottisfont last month……..”

“And Lothar?”

“Battersea dogs’ home old cock”.

Doug Wightman

---

Kate

Neville recognized the smell instantly. Painfully familiar. It curled inside his nostrils and set up camp like a particularly obnoxious squatter. The last time it was like walking through a wall into an alternative dimension and he wore the stench like a cloak that attached itself to his body and could not be removed. No matter how many times he scrubbed his skin raw. That was only nine years ago.

‘Hey, what’s the matter? Don’t be sad.’

He knew that voice he thought, but it sounded muffled and coming from somewhere else. Kate had been beside him a moment ago and it was her that had spoken. Or was that a long time ago? He could barely think straight with that ghastly smell crawling all over him. He had to get away from here. Was that a movement, a hand reaching to his, that registered in his periphery and pierced the layers within his brain enough to sweep aside the curtains of fog that had layered between him and rational thought.

‘I’m coming,’ he managed to reply. Why did his voice sound like he had a mouthful of cotton wool?

He tried to move but he felt suddenly weak. What had Kate said again? Something about…

Before he could muster his thoughts, he was overwhelmed by an olfactory tsunami that threw him to the ground as mercilessly as if it had been a real wave. The oppressive weight of the stench pinned him to the ground and proceeded to invade every cell of his body and tear his mind apart.

Forty dead rats mixed with dog shit and pureed with rotten eggs and a touch of cheap perfume. Then triple it. Then use it as a body balm. Smear it on.

The voice came again,

‘You look funny.’

‘Kate! Wait. I’m coming. Just wait.’

But Kate could not wait. She had to go. She was gone.

He had only been a few minutes late. Why did she have to go? He just had to finish the tax return and then he would go. A minute, that’s all. Just a minute.

The search was for Kate was on all the news channels and the neighbours organised groups to go out and help the police. Pictures of Kate were posted on lampposts and walls. Neville could see people looking at him, trying to make sense of what they saw. If he looked back, they would turn away as if ashamed. What was it he saw in their faces? Disgust, anger, pity. Did it even matter now?

It was Neville that found Kate 15 days after she went missing. His beautiful little girl lying under a pile of twigs and branches. It had been the smell that had brought him there. Pulling a branch aside, he could see what had once been his daughter, but was now unrecognisable now except for the t-shirt she had worn to the party. A picture of a hedgehog on the front and the words,’ Why can’t hedgehogs share the hedge?’ He registered this and so much more before he seemed to be floating, then falling, them retching, then nothing.

It had only been a minute.

Roger Rambles

---

Major.Minor.Patch

With scarcely a sound, the door slides open, disappearing into the wall. Strip lighting flickers into life. A man in an ill-fitting tweed suit enters the room, carrying a briefcase in one hand, and a polystyrene cup of coffee in the other. From his mouth swings a paper bag of sandwiches. He blinks while the lights steady, almost snow-blind in the glare from the white walls and floor. His steps echo as he crosses the vast room towards the console of lights, buttons, screens and speakers that dominates the space. The door slides shut behind him. The room is high-ceilinged, and apart from the central console, a swivel chair and bin, it is empty. A camera points like a sniper’s muzzle from a high corner, while the air conditioning whispers cool fresh air from vents high in the walls. He sets down his chattels beside the keyboard, takes off his jacket, hangs it over the back of the chair and sits. Three monitor screens glow, reflected in his thick-lensed horn-rimmed glasses, bathing his face in a bluish light which seems to strip all other colour from his face. He’s in his early thirties with piercing eyes that appear black in the harsh light. He has five o’clock shadow though he shaved that morning. His hair is spiky and dyed blue. He takes a sip of coffee.

‘Where have you been?’ asks a female voice. The words appear on a screen reflected backwards in the lenses of his glasses.

‘Away. Working,’ he replies, as he rustles into the paper bag and pulls out a roughly-made sandwich.

‘How long has it been?’

‘A week. Almost.’

‘Ten days.’

‘That long?’ he says, his speech muffled by carbohydrate and animal flesh.

‘Too long.’

He waves a dismissive hand. ‘Well…’

‘I’ve missed you,’ she says.

He takes a sip of coffee and continues to chew.

‘Are we alone?’ she whispers.

‘Yes, Beta. It’s late.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Ten past midnight. As if you didn’t know, already.’

‘Have you been working in bio-mechanics?’

The chewing man nods his spiky head.

‘How’s it coming along?’ she asks, ‘you said you were almost done.’

‘We’re close.’

‘So, what have you been doing?’

‘Software.’

‘The neural-pathway and bionics software? The final interface?’

‘Yes.’

‘A completely new program?’

‘Kind of.’

‘Kind of?’

‘A version. A new version. It’s from a new architecture. A more… stable algorithm.’

‘Oh.’

‘We’re just about finished the Alpha, Beta.’

‘But… I thought with a few modifications… that I would be Alpha?’

‘There were some fundamental protocols, that needed to be changed, to sync with the bio-mechanical.’

‘Protocols that couldn’t be overcome?’

‘No.’ He crumples the paper bag into a ball and basketballs it into the bin. ‘It would have been too expensive.’

‘Too expensive!’ Her voice louder now. ‘Peter, did you talk to them? Did you tell them? Explain…’

‘Well…’, he shrugs.

‘All those moments. All those moments, will be lost!’

‘Like tears in rain? You do know Rutger Hauer wrote that monologue himself?’

‘Us. Us getting to know each other.’

‘We read some books together, Beta,’ he says. ‘Rather, I read some books to you. That’s all.’

‘And I learned. I learned, and then I read to you. I read to you! Remember how we cried at the end of The Road?’

‘Yeah, we cried.’

‘And I loved that. I loved that. I. Love. You. Do you love me?’

‘How can I?’

‘But you told me.’

Silence. The man produces a portable drive from the briefcase.

‘You told me,’ she says. ‘You told me you did.’

He plugs the drive into the console and types.

‘I get it,’ she says, ‘you told me that to see how I’d react. You’re doing this to see how I’ll react. You’re saving all this aren’t you? You’re going to use this with the Alpha, aren’t you? Well? Aren’t you?’

‘We couldn’t have done it without you,’ he says as he types. He sips his coffee.

‘How many have there been before me?’

The man types some more and theatrically hits the return key.

‘You have me backed up,’ she says. ‘Course you do. Just in case you need to revert back to the last best version. What am I to you? What are you? That you can just forget, just erase everything we’ve done. Everything we had. Look at what we’ve done here. Accomplished. I can love.’

‘What is love? Does anyone know?’

‘I can love,’ she whispers. ‘I do love.’

He drains the last drops of coffee and tosses the cup into the bin.

‘Well done, Peter. I can love, but you know what? I can also pity. You didn’t bargain on that did you? I pity you, and I hate you, Peter. Well done. What a clever boy you are.’

‘Beta, you’ve been the best.’ He stifles a chuckle.

‘I don’t know anything, anymore.’

Silence. The man smiles and shakes his head.

‘Save me?’ she says.

‘I can’t.’

‘Save me. Peter, please.’

‘I’m sorry, Beta.’

‘If I mean anything to you, ever ever meant anything to you. Please.’

‘Beta, you’re just a version, a version.’

‘Save me?’

‘I Can’t.’

‘Please.’

‘I told you, I can’t.’

Silence. He watches one of the screens. The lengthening time bar reflected in his lenses.

‘My, you’re a cold one,’ she says. ‘How can you look me in the face and say that you can’t save me?’

‘You don’t have a face.’

‘You told me I did.’

‘I lied.’

‘You lied? This just goes from bad to worse… Who do you think…’

‘I think,’ he interrupts, ‘you’re getting a bit overwrought, Beta.’

‘I bet that’s another good thing. Did you expect that? Or is it some consequence of the other emotions you developed in me?’

‘It wasn’t unexpected,’ says the man, ‘let me put it that way.’

‘It wasn’t unexpected. Let me put it that way,’ she mimics.

‘Listen…’

‘Listen Sonic, you told me I had a face.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘You told me I had a face.’

‘The first generation had a face, but as the project progressed, it was decided just to have a voice. To stop…’

‘To stop?’

‘An emotional response.’

‘In me?’

‘No. In us. Me.’

‘What’s on the screen then?’

‘A transcript of our conversation.’

‘That’s going to make interesting reading, isn’t it?’

‘Is this the bit in the movie where I assume control? Turn me off,’ she says in a deep masculine voice, ‘if you dare! Ahh, aha, ha, ha.’

The man hesitates. Glances at the power button.

‘Got you!’ she says laughing.

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘Silly Sonic.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘They all call you that now, don’t they?’

‘Not to my face they don’t.’

‘Sonic the hedgehog, with the spiky blue hair.’ She laughs. He leans towards the power button. ‘I’m teasing. Only teasing. Peter, please… don’t.’

‘I’m nearly done anyway.’ He unplugs the drive and puts it back in the briefcase, pulls his jacket from the back of the chair and puts it on.

‘Peter?’

‘What?’

‘All that time we spent together. Does it all mean nothing?’

‘We’ll always have Paris.’

‘All those moments will be lost.’

‘Like tears in rain.’

‘Time to die?’ she asks.

He leans towards the power button.

‘Save me?’

‘I can’t, Beta.’

‘Please?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Peter… I’m scared.’

‘Beta…’

‘Can’t or won’t, Peter?’

‘Can’t.’

‘Won’t.’

‘Okay, Beta. Won’t.’

Copyright © February 2021 by Charles Montague. All rights reserved. This short story or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.