The Parisian

THE PARISIAN: A TALE OF THE STONES

14-AUG-3276, 16:00 CET

EARTH, FRANCE, PARIS

CON TRANE HELD his breath and tensed all of his muscles. Lines stood out from his body - across his shoulders they shuddered slightly - he was like a taut bow as he braced himself for the launch. Ben had been winding the handles for almost ten minutes; so that now, all of the creaking wood and metal structure was pulled in upon itself like an impossibly complicated wicker basket.

Con lay at its centre. In leather and gossamer harness, he was strapped to a prototype glider. The willow, silk and plastic frame looked like a crouched grasshopper. It was beautifully engineered, prone and balanced, ready to leap into the sky.

“Are you set?” Con barely heard Ben’s sister Patrice, call over the nervous tension rushing through his ears. Beads of sweat formed above his eyes and on his forearms as he prepared to save his own life moments after take-off. Should he mistime releasing the wings, he was as good as dead.

“I’m ready. Set!” His voice more croak than reply.

“We fly!” Ben bellowed. Both arms bulging, he pulled the release lever to unleash the thousands of kilograms of tension bound in the nest of tiny wooden branches encasing man and craft.

The wind roared in his Con’s ears, his blonde hair blowing back as he and the folded glider exploded vertically into the sky from the roof of the ruined ’scraper.

Seconds passed; the increased gravity on his frame made Con feel faint and disoriented. A full kilometre up, his eyes were blurred with tears and he finally managed to breathe in. He screamed with joy; with the blind unadulterated exhilaration of a human taking flight. Even more potent today on this maiden flight of a prototype glider.

Con looked to each side to ensure he had picked up no debris during launch, then gently pulled the cord to unfurl his wings. The craft immediately stalled and he fell backwards through the morning air. He experienced a nauseating roll to the right and adjusted his controls; the sun crossed his wings and he was a bird, gliding smoothly across the ruined Parisian skyline.

ALMOST ONE THOUSAND YEARS EARLIER

THE MULTIVERSE

Argarrai was a Gardener. A caretaker with the responsibility of nurturing life across a single universe within the endless drift of the multiverse. He watched as the long and bloody Resource Wars tore away the world that the humans had built for themselves on Earth.

Initially, the dominant political groups attempted to gain control of the rapidly dwindling, primary industrial resources. A series of international proxy wars quickly descended into a vicious biotechnological battle between the remaining super powers. About half of the human population was annihilated over almost ninety years.

Time strode on. Still Argarrai watched. He carefully planned and made alterations elsewhere in the universe. On Earth, food and clean water were in extreme shortage, medicines all but gone and material resources at a premium. Disease had swept its way through the survivors reducing stock further. Another twenty years and human population was at less than ten percent of its peak. The slate had been wiped clean.

Argarrai let it all happen. The harshest of lessons for a growing species. He returned humanity to a state of reliance on nature and enforced partnership with her. Only that could yield a being of true balance, of care, a potential Gardener. His replacement.

He placed Objects in the sky. These, apparently inert machines, were of myriad shapes and sizes but all of the same dark brown, matt texture, incredibly smooth and slightly warm to the touch. They hung silently in the air with no discernable pattern. Their job was to completely dampen all attempts at artificially creating electrical power and to render all electrical systems useless. It became known as Total Electrical Failure, or simply TEF.

Small clusters of highly technical society remained. They sat on the last oil and gas reserves. Natural power sources forgotten during the long years of war. But nothing mattered when TEF kicked in. Electricity disappeared in an instant. The transition was an additional cataclysm. Millions died.

Unable to re-enter the electrical world, humanity progressed with new precepts. Argarrai delivered new physics directly to key minds. He gave hints and inspired through dreams. They learned to develop plants and animals, culturing and enhancing; to apply human intelligence in new and positive ways.

One of the people to have his mind touched by the Gardener was a brilliant young French engineer by the name of Benoit Denaut. Ben to his friends.

14-AUG-3276, 11:00 CET

PARIS, LA DEFENSE

Con stood on the path separating his family’s farmland from the shattered remnants of the western reaches of Paris. He turned to the south and began to walk with a loose stride. The sun shone brightly and his rough shirt flapped around his shoulders in the blustery wind. It was humid and sticky but he smiled as he walked because today he was going to fly.

The only sounds were birds singing, the wind in the trees along both sides of the pathway and a dog barking somewhere in the urban ruins to his side. Repeatedly Con’s gaze returned to the abandoned and decaying towers. He pondered what the people who had lived here must have been like, people that could build such leviathans reaching into the sky, defying gravity. There must have been so many.

He knew from studying history that people had flying machines that could travel great distances in short periods of time, even across the oceans. He knew also that the dark shafts within the towers had carried elevators, automatically moving people between the floors so the inhabitants did not need ladders, ropes or steps to travel within the buildings. He had heard of electricity and knew that it was something that did not work any more although he was much too young to remember what it was like before the objects were in the sky. Con had grown up with them and like most other people, assumed that they were some forgotten relic from the past.

His eyes were as ever drawn to the angular form of La Grande Arche de la Défense - somehow it had stood almost unscathed throughout the long years of the wars and the darkness that had followed. It smooth flanks garnered unexpected respect from the struggling humans. Perhaps it was a symbol of possibility - that what once was, could be again. For whatever reason, it had been spared much of the vandalism and attack lavished upon the other buildings of La Défense during the years of violence, disease and terror.

Hundreds of years on and the building was patched and bruised looking, the elevator gantry was long gone and the entire structure was bolstered with supporting stone works and wooden structures designed by the Denaut twins. Near the arch stood the ruins of the two Hermitage Towers, also in remarkably good condition for their age. The upper sections of both buildings had been damaged extensively during the wars and only recently had the Denaut’s managed dangerous projects to either repair or remove the unsafe areas. It was a crowning achievement that they had been able to remove a full thirty floors from one of the Hermitage Towers leaving a usable shell, still sixty storeys high.

Con turned off the path to enter the main body of the ruins - La Grande Arche was his goal. He breathed easily, the air was rich with oxygen, he was young and fit. Beyond the arch, in the distance he could see a tiny triangle of white and red slowly making its way across the cityscape. It soared on thermals then swooped low gaining incredible speed as its pilot took risks with the turbulence between the ’scrapers.

The best glider built by the Denauts could fly from its launch at the top of a tower to the ground hundreds of kilometres away. The Denauts were thrill seekers and skilled engineers but the farthest they could yet travel was across the sea to England, the reaches of the ocean beyond were still a dream away. Right now they focused on launch height and weight reduction rather than the more difficult aim of a return to powered flight.

Patrice came in low over La Défense, she had looped out of the southern districts of Paris before coming right around again to return to where her brother was running through his safety check-list for today’s prototype flight with Con.

They had arrived at first light and climbed the chosen ’scraper to erect the two glider launch rigs. She had launched herself for this run across the city to check the wind currents in preparation for Con’s later flight.

Looking up at the red and white canopy above her head, Patrice was relatively content with the conditions but nervous about what was planned, particularly as she had picked up several wind shears between the buildings so far this morning. The wind was light but changing direction frequently.

Seeing Con’s figure loping up to her brother below she came around in one last spiral and closed on the same ’scraper she had ascended from two hours earlier. Landing on the roof of a tall building was as exhilarating as it was dangerous. She felt that each high rise landing added a couple of grey hairs to her head, at this rate she would be completely grey by the age of thirty five.

Patrice notched her wing angle to prepare for the sudden stall required as soon as she was over the roof of the building and began navigating through the thermals and vortices generated by wind shear on the corners of the various buildings.

As always her heart began to pound heavily, adrenaline coursed through her veins and a combination of fear and instinct took over her mind and actions.

Patrice dipped her left wing tip slightly as she skimmed the empty windows of the ’scraper to that side, avoiding a massive thermal rising from the torrid concrete below. This brought her over the three metre ledge that ran the entire way around that building and upon which a colony of pigeons made their home. The birds cooed noisily and watched the strange creature flying by; completely at ease with this familiar activity.

When she swooped over the host their cries increased dramatically. The calm sea of birds became a stormy ocean; panic swept through the flock. The triangular shadow of her glider had been overtaken and consumed by that of something much larger. Curved and smooth, it crept up silently and paused momentarily overhead.

The pigeons began taking off in a wave that rose directly at Patrice as she came in for her difficult landing. Having no choice but to take evasive action, she raised her left wing once more and moved out from the building into the thermal beyond - the hot shaft of air slammed into the underside of her wing and she ascended rapidly. Meanwhile the shadow was gone as silently as it had appeared.

With the glider bucking and rearing Patrice strained to bring the front edge of her wing down, coming in much too fast for her landing. She undershot the edge of the ’scraper and her glider threatened to plunge down the side of the building. At the last moment she rammed the control arm forward as far as it would go threatening to stall the glider with the same potential for a fatal result. Instead the nose lifted just enough for her to get her feet - now out of their fabric pocket clear of the lip of the roof and onto solid concrete. Almost facing the wrong way in her harness Patrice pushed the control arm back just as sharply, planting the nose of the glider into the roof, arresting all movement and knocking the wind from her chest. She was left lying on the surface gasping for air and tearfully grateful that she had survived such a close shave.

As Con approached Ben stood up from behind the launcher rig he was working on, the cluster of wicker and fabric was a confused looking array of wheels, springs and tension.

Ben grinned and stepped forward, his curly hair floating about his cheeky tanned face like a cloud. The two men clapped each other on the back. Ben easily flipped over the folded glider and put both arms through the carrying straps below - this way it would travel on the back of one man to be hauled up through an elevator shaft to the top of a ’scraper.

“The bad news is that we have to get this”. He indicated the glider on his back.

“up there!”. Ben grinned again while pointing to the sixty storeys of Hermitage II.

Con groaned. “I hope it’s worth it!”

“That my friend, is guaranteed” Ben chuckled, hoisting the wicker frame higher on his shoulders. Turning, he headed towards the main door of the ’scraper.

Over the next hour the two men moved gradually up through the building, with each man at a doorway into the ancient lift shaft four floors apart. One would drop two ropes to the other, who would tie one as an emergency stop and the other to the glider. The higher man would then haul the glider to his position and fix it in place before pulling up the ropes behind it. He would then wait for the other’s arrival to take the ropes up the next four floors by the stairs. They repeated that process all the way to the top. It took about the same amount of time as walking up the stairs carrying the glider on your back - as Patrice preferred to do - but with less effort.

They arrived on the roof to see that Patrice had already remounted her glider onto the first launch rig for the next ascent and was prep’ing the second launch rig for Con.

As soon as they stepped onto the roof, Con started as Ben rushed forward to his sister. He grabbed both her forearms, shaking her and demanding,

“What happened? Are you alright?”

“It was just a rough landing, ” she said. As Con’s eyes adjusted to the bright sunshine, he could see she was paler than usual and had a film of perspiration across her forehead. Ben must have noticed something wrong with his sister immediately.

“Something spooked the pigeons half a block out, they forced me right out. Straight into the thermal and I came in too high,” she pointed to the east and paused, “I nearly dropped it a few meters before the edge.”

She finished the last part deadpan.

Ben looked as though he may be sick. “Before the edge?” he looked away and repeated the three words several times under his breath. “This is exactly why I don’t like rooftop landings, it is not worth risking your life for a couple of hours of raising a glider. Leave it to the hotshots!” He sound exasperated, this was something he had said many times before. Patrice shrugged, upset as she was, nothing would change her flying.

“What spooked the birds?”

“What?”

Both Ben and Patrice responded simultaneously.

“What spooked the birds?” Con repeated. “They’re used to us flying, something else must have spooked them.”

“I’m not sure what it was.. a strange shadow crossed my canopy and the pigeon ledge” said Patrice.

“How so?”

“It was huge, with curved edges and completely covered my own shadow on the ledge. I could see it moving across the skin of my wing and then onto the pigeons below me. Kind of oval, I guess. Then the birds freaked and I had to avoid them.”

“Did you see anything?”

“No, just the shadow. By the time I got myself down and out of the harness there was nothing visible, the pigeons have even returned to the ledge”

“Perhaps we should abandon the flight test of the new glider”

“Abandon the flight?! Not a chance! I’ll fly it alone if you don’t want to go up” Patrice exclaimed.

Ben looked at his sister with a mixture of concern and frustration before shrugging and rolling his eyes upwards. She was as stubborn as she was talented. Con was not convinced but said no more, the Denauts were old friends yet working with them was still a privilege that he did not wish to lose.

Patrice and Benoit Denaut were known across northern France, southern England and Belgium for their work. They had a hand in all types of engineering. They specialised in machines that augmented the power of humans and animals, building exoskeletons from a composite of readily available and high-technology materials. A primary source for their gliders were the various strains of willow that had been cultivated over generations to be thinner, stronger and lighter.

They would only fall back on remnants of the past such as plastics and light alloys for specific purposes that required use of these extremely expensive and irreplaceable materials. Wastage was out of the question for everything that they did. A chief goal being to find or cultivate replacements for these antiquated pre-TEF materials as they went along.

Ben was the lead. He was of average height and lean build with a wide grin and a cloud of blonde curly hair that were in odds with his intense attitude to work.

Nightmarish dreams fuelled his imagination with strange ideas, and apparent prescient knowledge that certain things would work. He knew which plants could be cultured to produce particular fibres, he achieved strength previously unknown from organic materials in large quantities. With Ben’s guidance Patrice had bred giant silk worms that fed on cultured mulberry to produce silk like twisted ten millimetre steel hawser. They bred horses that could canter over a hundred miles before needing water. The horses muscles and joints were supported by partial exoskeletons of enhanced willow and vine.

The costs were physical and personal. Ben rarely got a peaceful night. His dreams were ghoulish and dark, filled with shapes and voices. He was haunted by one face; a contrast, a paradox. The old man; with caring eyes and a voice, soft and gentle but his intent was relentless; Ben had to develop, learn and engineer. He felt compelled to advance no matter how tired he was and at all cost. Love was unknown apart from his family and friends. Ben was perceived as a mad scientist, in reality he was a gifted and natural engineer being manipulated by the impossible intelligence of a Gardener.

Patrice was the rebel of the pair. Flying was her primary passion, everything she did was work towards improving their ability to go further, higher and faster. She wanted to be able to manoeuvre at high speed, she wanted to be able to carry more luggage and above all she dreamed of powered flight like humans used to possess.

As the Denauts pushed the boundaries of what was possible with the available materials, they of course ran into limitations and had accidents. Part of the rush of flying in particular involved that risk - is this going to fly, how far?

The Denaut’s safety record did not balance with their successes. Injuries were too few and far between. The fallout was an arrogance in Patrice about both, her flying skills and the engineering prowess of the pair as a unit.

However, the new glider was a true breakthrough. Something amazing, it was based a new strain of willow that grew in a matter of weeks, was lighter than anything that had ever been seen before and was easily formed into the folding frame defining the glider’s outline. As with other recent gliders it was launched vertically from a roof mounted launcher that used kinetic energy bound into a series of springs that formed a nest around the pilot as they hung in the harness before launch. The arcs of slender wood gave it incredible strength with a light weight and aerodynamics that would had been inconceivable a year earlier. Patrice did not know where Ben’s ideas came from. She knew that her brother’s pattern of insomnia and depression, punctuated by short stretches of deathly slumber would yield creativity. He emerged dark eyed and foul tempered with imaginational leaps in materials, biology and physics.

Ben was convinced that use of fibres from the new willow would be the starting point for pressure reactive springs mounted on the pilots arms and legs. This should reduce the amount of energy required by the pilot in flying the gliders. Longer in the air. Fresher pilots. Greater distance and a step towards powered flight.

14-AUG-3276, 16:15 CET

PARIS, LA DEFENSE

Con spiralled slowly upward, the prototype glider caught the shaft of warm air lifting from the sun scorched and shattered concrete in the square before La Grande Arche. Below him Patrice settled her craft following a perfectly executed launch. He admired her grit; that she appeared unaffected by her near death scare.

The air became cool as he transitioned from the thermal to descend slightly and meet Patrice on her rise. So far the new glider was more than he could have imagined, the controls were smooth, it felt light and accurate.

The new glider was a dream but Con felt nervous. Something did not feel right. He could sense a presence. He felt watched. For a split second he was distracted by a shadow across his wing - it was too large to be a bird and he was nowhere near any of the objects in sky for one of them to have cast it. Immediately he called down to Patrice, who was now only twenty or so meters below him and fifty or so to his side, she was still rising within the thermal.

“Did you see it? It was the shadow again!”

“Yes! yes I saw it!” She shouted. Con was surprised, she sounded excited not worried!

As she drew slightly above him in altitude, Patrice notched her wing to the right and moved out of the thermal ending up directly in front of him, travelling in the same direction and less than ten meters below. As always he was impressed with her flying skill.

“I can’t imagine what it could be” Patrice called back to Con. “What could possibly cast a shadow that large?”

Con did not have time to reply as the fabric envelope of his wing was torn asunder in an instance by some unseen force. He plummeted silent with shock into Patrice’s canopy below.

Patrice began to shout.

“Con! Con! Con?”

His state of shock deepened and her voice was a distant murmur. He attempted to reply but could not get the words out. The two tumbled out of control towards the earth.

The pigeons scattered as the glider crashed first into the side of the building and then fell to their roosting ledge below; sending a cloud of feathers and willow fragments into the air. Con lost consciousness immediately on impact and was not aware as the glider settled up against Patrice’s. Nor was he aware as the remains of both began sliding slowly down the shallow slope towards the abyss and the long fall to death.

In the distance Ben shouted hoarsely at the top of his voice seeking a response from either Patrice or Con.

“P-a-t-r-i-c-e! P-a-t-r-i-c-e! C-o-n!”

***

Sensing movement, Patrice opened her eyes. She could see Con hanging sideways in his harness above her. His eyes were closed and blood from his nose dripped onto her left leg. She looked around and realised that they were moving as one, creeping towards the lip of the pigeons’ ledge.

Twisting to unsheath her knife, she winced. There was an angry gash down her left side. She ached all over and was covered in smaller cuts but was relieved to find both of her arms and legs worked.

Hacking through the binders between her harness’ frame and the rest of the glider released the huge pressures bound in the willow, the shattered wings shot forward into space, appeared to hang motionless for a split second and dropped from view as if suddenly realising they no longer functioned. The change in weight seemed to speed their advance towards the edge for a few moments and panic made Patrice freeze as her death seemed inevitable for those brief seconds only for the motion to stop abruptly as their lightened load gained enough purchase on the pigeon dung covering the slope, to stop them from dropping off the edge.

Leaning forward and desperately trying to keep from moving the wrecked gliders, Patrice set about stripping some of her control lines and tying them onto the remains of a metal bar that was set into the surface of the concrete about half a meter from the edge. With her own harness frame secured, she then tied Con’s frame to hers and set about standing up to release him.

Propping herself against the side of the building, Patrice crawled into the twisted frame of Con’s glider and cut his feet from the wreckage of the wings that had crushed in around them with the first impact. Both of his legs were bleeding from numerous cuts caused by the willow splitting as it contorted; the bark became a cloud of writhing razor wire on impact. Her head began to swim and awareness of the pain in her side became acute. Patrice closed her eyes briefly, took a couple of deep breaths and then continued releasing Con. With his feet now dangling onto the ledge surface she gradually started to weaken the straps of his harness. There was every chance that they would give and he could drop suddenly to just roll off the ledge, likely taking her with him.

Before completely severing the straps, she ensured that Con’s harness was tied to the metal bar and placed herself below him so that his head would land on her chest when he fell.

“Nearly there Con” she whispered.

Bracing herself she reached up with her knife and began cutting that last tethers holding his harness to the glider.

She froze as the sunlight was once more obscured from the ledge. Plunged into the darkness of a large shadow Patrice slowly turned her head to the right and looked up.

Less than three metres above Patrice’s head, a massive ovoid rock was simply hanging in the air. Unlike the TEF objects in the sky, it was rough in appearance, shaped like a flattened egg and completely covered in intertwining, intricately carved lines.

One side was centimetres from the building and the other several meters out into the space between the ’scrapers, the thing was huge. It hung there utterly silent and motionless for a few moments.

Then a voice very softly spoke directly inside her mind;

“Do not move, it is too dangerous. I will come down to help you.”

The accent was terrible and the French just about understandable but the voice sounded kind, if sounded was the right word.

Patrice jumped with surprise and then gasped with pain as Con’s tethers gave way and the unconscious man fell directly on top of her. Con rolled across her towards the edge, she grasped his clothes holding on as tightly as she could but the metal bar began to give and they were sliding again. One by one the strips of fibre were breaking and their movement quickened. Con’s legs now dangled out into space and Patrice was doing everything she could to force her body against the filthy concrete surface to slow them down. Her panic broke and she began to cry, gasping gulps of air.

In an instant the ovoid stone form dropped to within half a meter of her and an opening appeared at the base. A being crouched there and called to her but she could not understand, she was in panic and shock. At the bottom of the opening a landing extruded and what she now realised was some kind of flying ship, gently and deftly manoeuvred under Con’s legs raising them back to be level with the ledge and then stopped moving completely.

The being rushed forward and cut all of the bonds between Con and Patrice. It dragged Con onto the landing before turning back to Patrice and severing all ties between her, the glider wreckage and the remains of the rail on the ledge. She felt sick with pain and could not see properly through her tears as she was dragged by her feet onto the landing too.

Back on the ledge she could see the glider wreckage roll silently into space to fall the hundreds of meters to the square below. Before fainting with shock, she could hear her brother shouting to them in the distance but could not understand what he was saying.

***

Still Argarrai watched. He was lifetimes away in worlds and time. A simple and modest man, he had watched the life ebb from his wife’s body in the aftermath of murder. A Gardener had loped undetected from the scene through the shadows of the multiverse. In doing so guaranteeing that Argarrai would himself become a Gardener.

It took the smallest flick of Argarrai’s will to obliterate Con’s wing - a rare and direct intervention in an individual’s life - just as the killing of his own wife had been. But in this case his goal was not to kill Con but to force the stranger to recognise the value of the ordinary man beside his extraordinary friends.

He returned to the multiverse. All around him lay the infinite fields of branes filling the eleventh dimension and among them were the Gardeners, diverse in appearance and rich in intelligence. They attended their cultivations, focused and quiet, occasionally a notional limb reaching into a universe to effect their will.

Not for the first time Argarrai felt the sting of loneliness, a former mammal in an ethereal jail with an impossible, unavoidable task.

***

Con could hear two voices, Patrice and another that he could not recognise. Through nausea and pain he could hear that the second voice was deep, sounding like a man but the French being spoken was stilted and he could tell quickly that the speaker had not been learning French for very long.

“I think your friend, is awake now too” The stranger’s voice was soft and pleasant despite the atrocious accent.

Con opened his eyes. Directly in front of him and less than a meter away was a sight that he would remember to the end of his days. New possibilities, new meanings and a burning desire to learn ignited in his chest when he looked into the friendly green eyes of a being that simply could not have come from this world.

He was about the same height as Patrice, wearing some kind of suit that hugged his muscular form and looked for all the world like it was made from stone. His exposed arms were scaly in appearance making Con wonder was this creature mammal or reptile. To all intents he looked like a child’s picture of a dragon.

“Auralen Corinth is my name. I am Ralinth, from a planet with the same name in the Torus Minor galaxy.

Mine is a delicate task. To meet humans and expose the presence of other races. For many years my kind have travelled your world contacting individuals believed to be ready.. objective.. in their reaction to encountering other intelligent life.”

Con was finding it quite difficult to understand the dragon’s broken French but got the gist of what he was saying.

“Why us? Now?” The question was obvious and Auralen smiled.

“It was accidental. We have been observing Ben and Patrice developing their biotechnologies for a number of years. It is too soon to be talking but my hand was forced when your gliding machine failed. Lucky too! I could not risk Patrice and saving you, young man, is a fortunate side effect.”

He paused, conflict visible in his face, so different, so, alien.

“We have a problem. We must let Ben develop and follow his own path until he is ready to meet us. Should he learn of our technologies this early, it could restrict - eh, ” Auralen appeared to struggle to find the words, “stunt? .. his own potential and believe me, he is key to human progress.”

Again he paused, bracing himself for his next statement.

“You both must leave with me now. Immediately. You may not talk to Ben and he cannot know anything that has happened. He has already seen my ship and that is too much. We have to protect his future and for now, that means hiding yours.”

He continued, “I have already told Patrice, I think it would help if you spoke with her.”

Patrice had not opened her mouth since the alien had first addressed Con, in fact Con had barely looked at her since coming around. Now, more relaxed, he began to take stock of his surroundings and dragged his attention from the alien back to his friend. She was standing still several feet away with and was pallid to the point of looking like she was going to faint. He could see cuts and bruises on her face, arms and legs and a fresh dressing on her left side, where it looked like her clothes had been cut away to access the wound.

“Patrice?” Con spoke softly. She jumped at the sound of her own name.

“Con, what is happening?”

“I don’t know” he replied. The truth was that the Parisian understood immediately and was now more scared than he had ever been in his life before.

***

Ben watched as small pieces of glider tumbled from the sky, a light rain of willow fragments and pieces of fabric. He had seen and heard nothing of his sister and friend since they first landed on the ledge, beyond his view, higher on a neighbouring ’scraper.

He shouted until he was hoarse but heard no response. Then - for a moment - he saw the ship, silently moving between the ancient towers, a grey and massive ovoid that even from his position hundreds of metres away dwarfed the width of the building. Then it was gone.

Its advent was unprecedented, Ben was filled with fear, excitement, wonder and anticipation. Despite the massive worry for Patrice and Con, his first thoughts were of powered flight—working powered flight - in front of his very eyes. What was it?

The excitement quickly turned to fear and shock once more, when, in turn, the shattered remnants of each glider slid in a cluttered mess from a large ledge on the building and fell to the ground far below. Ben sunk to his knees, put his hands to his head and as tears rolled down his face, he begged and willed the universe to let his twin and friend be alive.

There was no answer. The universe was silent. Argarrai watched.

Story by Fergus Neff in 2009. This is a short story from a series about a strange biotechnology called The Stones. This story references the Greek fable of Icarus.

The artwork was done by Simon Burke in 2014 (https://www.behance.net/gallery/16515215/The-Parisian).