Nudetopia

I

‘Oh. My. Lord.’ But He would have been covering His eyes and praying to His God.

Their legs were shock-locked. Mouths muted. Necks craned and heads dropped. Mothers smothered

the eyes of their children; fathers covered the eyes of the mothers, but some just had to see the sight to see

what it was that they didn’t want to see. Fingers rammed into ears to block the filth swirling around the

gully. Echoing moans and dirty talk had hijacked the forest air and didn’t care where they crashed.

‘Oh. My. Lord.’

Isaac, still ogling with mouth agape, ‘He didn’t help you the first time Ted so I doubt he’s listening

now.’

This was a site of sin by anyone’s book – not just His; and if the devil’s singed eyes had been

smeared with this sight, he would have poked them out with his pitchfork, dusted off his harp, and auditioned

for his old job back.

Charles buried his eyes in the cold damp forest floor that had been soft on his soles. It was then that

the ground began to pulse. His body swayed as his blood betrayed him. Being the leader of the Exiles and a

disciple of science, Charles always used his head. But in the depths of the gully, these feral animals sucked

the mind out of it. He fell like a fir in the forest and everybody heard it.

II

24 Hours Earlier...

Professor Charles Hawkings was a weatherman with a dismal forecast. More accurately, he was a

climatologist with climactic data. He had known about it for months: a great tidal wave was brewing and

would soon drown the land. Charles had tried to warn everybody from the President to the Science Minister

to the paperboy, but only little Zac pretended to listen. He couldn’t get the numbers behind him, despite

having the figures in front of him, for in the Kingdom of Falleria, religion was the party and science was the

pooper – which is why Charles was always just a weatherman.

He had forecasted that in a few minutes, the first leviathan of water would rise up from the ocean. As

such, this atheist scientist led his 101 faithful disciples – the self-styled Exiles – on an epic hike that tested

their cardio and camaraderie. Charles calculated that he and his small band of backers would be safe on the

highest plateau of Messenger Mountain. Now, as the hands wound down the final hour, they stood and gazed

at the vista from 9800 feet above sea level – their soon-to-be former nation a distant stage in the natural

amphitheatre of the valley. But even up that high they could taste the sea salt in the cold mountain air that

swirled amongst the blue mist of the crowded eucalypts. It had been whipped up by the same howls that

ripped the rings off the trees down below and up high it shook their shivers as they watched.

The tsunami warning alarm blared like drill sergeants with a chronic case of Short Man syndrome. A

screaming flood of Fallerians spilled onto the streets and flowed uphill, given an extra push by the shrieking

horns. Some trickled back down when they realised they’d never get high enough. Instead, they joined the

huddles of bowed heads in the town centres, and drowned out the warning bells with prayer and denial.

Charles had tried to set off the alarm about 20 years earlier but the Fallerians thought he was just

being an alarmist, which he of course was, hence the whole alarming them bit. Now those that were left

behind were blaming him and the rest of the underfunded and politically castrated Ministry of Science for

not doing anything about it. But ever by the Book, they reconciled the coming deluge with prophecy, a

greater flood than the Great Flood to wash away the non-believers. Charles figured god must have rinsed his

china with a fire hose and brushed his teeth with napalm.

Their insides drummed as they waited for the executioner. And the sirens cried as death stirred the

waters. They hoped – some even prayed – that it wouldn’t be as brutal as Charles said it would be. But no

one, not even the professor, was prepared for it being of supernatural proportions. Those left in prayer looked

up to heaven and felt God shaking His fist or at the very least stubbing His toe, probably His big one.

Charles and most of the Exiles knew it wasn’t god, let alone God; rather it was nature – objective,

emotionless, fistless and no doubt toeless. But the crack that tore through the clouds did sound vengeful and

the lightning that bolted down looked a lot like a middle finger.

Dr. Caroline Hawkings, 15 year-old Libby and six year-old Katie stood on each side of their husband

and father. They clung tight, especially Katie who dug her nails deeper into his leg with every strike from

above. As the cracks hit harder, Katie ripped her right hand from her father to puff on her inhaler – this

altitude was stingy with its air.

Reverend Ted James, an old friend and sparring partner, stood behind Charles. Ted also stood beside

God, in whom he still had faith. But with today’s weather, the line to heaven crackled like the clouds. And

when the sky rumbled again Ted knew it wasn’t God returning the call. It scared the cheeks off little Ellie

and Kim, twin five year-old girls, who wrapped themselves even tighter around their single-mother Jackie.

Being an historian at the University of Falleria, Jackie acted as the time-capsule of the group. She had

packed her great-grandfather’s journal – a family heirloom – in the hope of keeping a record of Fallerian

history. Thus she held her daughters and braced her backpack.

Pieces fell from the cracking sky. Clouds shot down nails and needles – it wasn’t meant to be like

this. Streaming faces pleaded with Charles for answers. He looked up and around, seeking the same.

Heathen-seeking lightning (some started taking it personally) opened pockets of hell on the hillside. Too late

for raincoats and no place for turncoats, the Exiles took to shrieking and running around in circles, ellipses

and other futile shapes. They clambered for a natural bomb shelter but one unlucky bastard took a direct hit

and was cooked faster than the noodles in his ration pack. Those around him seemed to grow an extra leg

after that – that’s evolution. Some managed to cower under a hanging rock as flashes went off all around

them. One flash, and surely this must have been deliberate, lasered the rock and sent it onto those that it was

meant to protect.

Clouds that hovered like bullies over a fat kid in a cubicle upped the ammo and fired round after

round of armour-piercing rain. It sealed up hell and covered the hills in mist and smog but the reprieve was

as short lived as shore leave. The bullets of water bored through the ground, turning it into sludge. Someone

near Charles, whose name he’d forgotten, lost the ground beneath him and splattered onto his stomach.

Another man that looked like he had a foreign sort of name lent a hand but lost his feet and the two men

tumbled down the hill into the misty abyss. The saviour may have walked on water but not even He would

have been able to climb this mudslide.

A howling gale joined in the blitzkrieg, hitting them from every cardinal point. Easterlies conspired

with westerlies, which were in a triple entente with the northerlies and southerlies. The Exiles scattered the

hill, blowing about in their search for firmer terra firma. Ted tagged along with Charles, riding his footprints

in the gloop. Charles, as always, treaded his own path and as always, someone failed to follow. Ted watched

Charles’s feet but not his hands and grabbed onto the wrong branch. It snapped, sending Ted down on his

way into the bowl of the valley that would soon be filled with the ocean and the naturally unselected.

Charles, sharp for a middle-aged scientist, turned to help but fell for his charity.

His wife and daughters watched on with their stomachs in their throats. Charles rode Ted’s trail

down the hill, figuring Ted had smoothed out a path of least resistance. He was vindicated as he caught up to

Ted and latched onto Ted’s right arm. All that was left was to grab a tree but all that remained were drooping

saplings. His panic levels hit a peak that had never before been climbed. He clawed at the ground but got

nothing but mud under his nails. He scratched again at the face of the Earth. He was going down and had to

let Mother Nature know that she was a two-timer. Didn’t she remember all that he did for her? That he went

toe-to-toe with the sceptics? That he drove an overpriced hybrid? That he pretended to enjoy an hour of

Blues and Roots at an environment rally? As he and Ted headed towards the edge of a cliff, he loaded his

hand to deliver one last impotent smack. But just as his palm came down to slap the slop, it was plucked out

of the air in an immaculate interception.

Charles and Ted jolted to a stop and in one motion were dragged behind the safety of a rock. The two

men whose names he couldn’t remember, he would soon know very well. Fernando Ramirez clutched

Charles’s arm, while Juan Ramirez, a smaller, younger version of his handsome brother gripped Fernando’s.

Juan’s other hand dug its calloused fingers into a benevolent rock and those four hardened digits were the

only things that kept them from joining their countrymen below sea level.

The brothers were athletic and as fate would have it – or coincidence as atheists call it – rock

climbers. Their dark skin was made darker by years of scrambling up cliff faces that made this mountain

look like an escalator at a shopping mall, if it weren’t for the conditions. Behind the rock, they hid from the

storm as it blew its blitz.

With his squinting eyes shielding him from the whipping winds, Juan still managed to find a smile.

‘Light showers huh?’

Being wrong bothered Charles just as much as the weather. He had placed the mountain conditions

somewhere between I Knew I Should’ve Brought in the Washing (yellow) and At Least it’s Good for the

Farmers (orange). But this was a Check Your Insurance Covers Armageddon (bleeding red) kind of a storm.

Was it his formula? Did he mistake a three for an eight? It didn’t matter, as Charles and the Exiles were now

like all other creatures in the muddy soup of evolution, swimming for their survival.

‘Well thanks for saving us.’

Fernando was even darker than Juan from several extra summers of climbing. ‘We’ve climbed

widow makers covered in ice but this is crazy.’

Juan scanning the sight below, ‘what time did you say it was going to hit?’

‘13:43.’

Juan flung the mud from his watch. ‘Well what do you know?’

On the second, as tick turned to tock, what seemed like the entire ocean rose up in a great wall of

water. It towered over the land and stiffened its bricks. From up high on Messenger Mountain, the Exiles

watched as it collapsed onto their tiny nation, taking the Kingdom of Falleria to the bottom of the sea.

III

‘Caroline! Katie! Libby!’

Charles squelched about, his boots filling with ooze. One by one he ripped his feet from the sucking

mud and plunged them back in again as he scanned the plateau. The muck grew heavy in a hurry and forced

Charles to hunch over with his hands on his knees. His chest pulsated as he sucked in the thin freezing air

that made him wince as it flowed over his ageing teeth.

Ted trudged along with Charles, who at this point was nearer than God. He grimaced as he pumped

his way through the swamp, whose dankness overpowered the freshness that had once promised salvation.

‘I know they’ll show up. I just know they will.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because… you need to think positively Charles. Good things happen when you think positively.’

‘And the right thing happens when you act rationally.’

The line between dead and alive wouldn’t be drawn by smiles and pithy affirmations. Even with his

beautiful girls missing, Charles could not bow to irrational thinking. It’s not that he was a glass-half-empty

sort of a guy – he never understood the obsession with one perception over the other (to him the volume of

water relative to the glass was irrelevant so long as the water was sufficient for its purpose). Here, they were

alive or they were not, or a combination of both. This was a simple binary equation that could be solved with

a logic board and instead of their faces in his mind’s eye he saw ones and zeroes in eight different

combinations from 000 (all dead) to 111 (all alive).

Ted’s faith kept him rosy even though nature held back its colours and left the lucky ones scattered

over a desolate landscape. The blue mountain had turned brown while the sky stayed black. Trunks lay

snapped and others stood burnt. Ted’s lips turned purple as the wind continued to haunt, giving his soaked

goose bumps another reason to shake. He cupped his warm breath for some relief and while his hands were

together, snuck in a quick prayer for Charles.

Drops fell from the black sky and it didn’t take a weatherman to know that they would soon unleash

more. Exiled voices boomed and shrieked over the distant crackles, combining in amplitude, frequency and

urgency as they raced against the charcoal clouds.

‘Ellie! Ellie!’ Jackie continued to yell, funnelling her voice through her frozen hands. Her screams

pitched higher as her hopes got lower. Her body pulsed as her heart rattled her ribcage. She glued Kim to her

side as she waded through the mud, looking for Ellie who had slipped from her grip. She was one of many.

‘Dad!’

‘Libby!’

That was at least 001.

‘Daddy!’

‘Katie!’

011. One to go.

‘Mummy, Libby found daddy.’

111. Now he let the feelings trickle, which for Charles was not much more than a sigh.

Jackie also found Ellie. Only she was a 0. She dropped to her knees and sank into the sad earth.

Beside her was the body of a small girl lying face down, swallowed by mud. Kim clung onto her wailing

mother and buried her face deep in her mother’s chest. Jackie howled as she dragged out her limp daughter.

Her tears streaked the dirt on her face as she squeezed both her girls.

Dr. Caroline Hawkings rushed to Jackie. She wanted to get to her before the shock but she was

beaten – and it wouldn’t be the only time.

Some survivors carried the wounded, while others cradled the dead. Wailing walls of grief closed in

on the mire, forming an emergency ward and makeshift morgue. Surviving with Caroline were doctors

Alexandra Chang, Harminder Gurung, and Dimitri Polov. They dragged their legs about in the mud, doing

their best to keep death in the waiting room. Dr. Gurung set up a sterilization station on the mud that sank

him the least. Dr. Chang bossed around anyone with the requisite medical training – that is, anyone that

could peel a band-aid, no experience necessary. The first aiders wrapped up all things minor and reported

back anything major. Doctors Polov and Hawkings took the most urgent cases, such as a lacerated arm and

an idle foetus.

‘Come on mate, on your feet.’ Ben Wycliffe, stuck out a hand. His monkey grip was more like a

gorilla’s. He had bigger arms than a rogue militia and a jaw that inspired cinder blocks to harden up. He

latched onto a soggy boy whose head drooped like the punished leaves and yanked him onto his feet. With

his position in society, he had the authority to do that.

‘It’ll be alright – promise.’

The survivor, quivering in his red and white football jersey that was two sizes too big, eked out,

‘wow – I can’t believe you’re talking to me.’

Ben smiled and patted his fan on the back. ‘I don’t think the mountain cares for trophies.’

Libby Hawkings didn’t dare unlock a single finger from her little sister Katie’s intertwined hand.

They stood in one place as the grown ups did what grown ups do. But being a restless 15 year-old, she

wanted to join them.

‘Want to play a counting game?’

Katie took a puff from her inhaler as she nodded. She was only six years-old but had counted to

infinity twice. ‘What are we counting?’

‘Come on...’

Meanwhile, buried in the mud, their father found a row of pearls. Krystall Candy couldn’t help but

smile. She had the eminent professor Charles Hawkings kneeling before her, splinting a suspected sprained

wrist.

‘Take your time – professor.’

Charles looked up and reassured her with a nod. He shot his eyes back on her arm, blurring out her

drenched blonde hair and wet T-shirt that clung like body paint. Caroline, watching them out of all corners of

her eyes (and the bits in between), rushed over.

On their way up the mountain, Caroline had spied Charles surveying peaks that had nothing to do

with their survival. It was just a quick flick of the eyes that could have been sweeping across the trees but

Caroline was familiar with his clandestine reconnaissance of the female kind. Krystall was the kind of girl

that would show up in Charles’s browser history before he learned how to sneak through the dark corridors

of private browsing.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Caroline’s words flew out like pepper spray at a prostitute resisting arrest.

‘My wrist. I’m better now though.’

Charles gave his eyes over to his wife and assured her, ‘I’m almost done.’

‘Dad!’ Libby called out as she and Katie swooshed towards Charles.

‘Caroline you can take it from here.’

He trudged off, leaving Caroline and Krystall in his muddy wake.

Krystall watched in awe as the tireless professor bounded away to greet his girls. ‘I’m so glad he’s

our leader.’

‘I’m so glad he’s my husband.’

Charles met Libby and Katie, who were fast becoming ladies.

‘46 dad,’ said Libby, panting.

‘46 what?’

‘Dead.’

‘We need to dig the graves before it gets too dark,’ added Katie.

‘How did you girls get so smart?’

IV

Juan and Fernando led the gravediggers, who dug like dogs, scooping goop with their cupped hands.

Splashes of slosh found their way into mouths and noses and tasted as dull as they looked. As the mud

splattered onto sloppy piles, Fernando glanced upward. Daylight was fading fast, as if it itself were afraid of

the dark. He got his second wind, which was more like a gale. He emptied three holes to everyone else’s one

and took over when others took a break.

Ted floated around taking tears on his shoulders as they fell from the mourners. He sought his

comfort in mumbling passages from God and tried to translate His words into his words. But to an atheist,

dead is dead, no reason was reason enough, and Heaven was a whorehouse on Main Street. He figured most

of the Exiles wouldn’t understand and with nothing left to say, all he could do was listen.

The last clump of dirt hit a heap of slop. The digging stopped and the silence said what no one else

could – it was time. Fernando flung his hands as clean as he could get them and looked around, wondering

where to start first. As a construction engineer, workflow was everything to him.

Marty Jay didn’t want to look up. He knew tools had been downed but he had to hold his wife for a

little longer. The hard rain had softened his tattooed body. He didn’t cry – men don’t do that – but he did

scowl at the earth and shake his head, swearing vengeance against nobody in particular. He pressed his

stubbled cheek into her clammy face and tried to get some warmth from the cold touch.

A woman nearby was twitching to dump the body in her arms. He had saved her from a falling tree

only to be impaled by it. She tried to drag him herself but couldn’t yank him through a puddle let alone a

swamp.

Juan waded over to her and took the guilt from her hands. He snatched the body and lugged it onto

his right shoulder. He sank a little further into the ground with the extra weight before re-adjusting. He got to

the closest hole and tossed in the John Doe. The diggers became fillers and led a procession of corpses to

graves. Pallbearers bore all the weight, working solo, and one by one the holes were filled.

Jackie was last. Still a muddy mess, she blubbered her way to a ditch in the mud. She ran her gritty

fingers through Ellie’s soiled hair and brushed the back of her earth-coated hand on Ellie’s plush cheeks that

were further softened by the rain. And, just as she’d always done, she put Ellie to rest. Except this time she

didn’t have a story to tell.

Nobody did. The surviving Exiles gathered around the graveyard waiting for someone else to say

something. Anyone. Anything. Libby and Katie looked to their father but his mind’s eye was on

reconnaissance, looking for a site tough enough to take their pegs. It was a difficult eye to focus though and

would often flicker to the past and re-read the calculations that he had got so wrong. Poor Charles. Had he

got the math right and scouted the full artillery of the storm, they still would have been stuck in the mud.

Ted scanned the fallen faces. Their lips offered nothing but quivers and the odd sob. So Ted said

what he could. ‘Our Father in heaven, please take these poor souls and guide them into your kingdom.

Forgive them of their sins and love them as you love us. I know not why you spared us, perhaps it was them

that you spared. Amen.’

It was echoed by the few that were faithful. Isaac Peters though, was more practical. ‘Umm, guys...

As much as I love the idea of sleeping in a graveyard in a puddle of mud, I reckon somewhere else, like

anywhere else, would be heaps better.’

Gildo Fractar agreed. ‘Fatty’s right.’

‘Don’t call him that!’ Isaac’s just-as-fat mum, Faye, had somehow managed to wrap her batwings

around the coarse trunk of a bending tree. She had squeezed her eyes shut and clung on as the rain and wind

lashed her back. Even with the howling gale whipping past her ears, she could hear the roots tearing. She

hadn’t been this close to death since her last burger and instead of having her lungs refilled by an off-duty

paramedic that happened to enjoy a pattie as much as her, she was saved when the storm stopped for a

breath.

‘I can handle this mum. Don’t call me fat.’

‘I called you fatty.’

‘Then don’t call me fatty.’

‘Don’t argue with me son. Do you have any idea how much I’m worth?’

Isaac cracked half a smile. ‘No idea mate but look around you. Do you have any idea how much

you’re not worth?’

Gildo didn’t need to look anywhere to know that the black and brown landscape outweighed all of

his gold and silver.

‘Guys! This isn’t helping.’ Fernando then turned to Charles. ‘We can’t sleep here boss.’

Charles snapped back, ‘yeah I figured that.’

He reflected on the original plan, which entailed tents, campfires and kumbayah until the water

receded. The new plan had them up shit creek without a canoe.

Charles turned his head and ran his eyes over every blot in the landscape. Mud, mush, puddles and

gush. The sludge that seeped its way into his boots that felt more like slime and the chill in the air that

brushed their faces told him that he didn’t need to look any further. Either they could try to camp in the mud

or they could... try to camp in the mud. With grief and loss as near as the night, it was a painful truth to

consider.

Ted also looked over God’s green Earth only to find brown. ‘Charles you have a plan right?’

‘I had a plan, yeah. But I’m sort of scratching my head on the plan B and if anyone else wants to

chip in that would be great.’

Ted didn’t like his tone – neither did Charles. He wasn’t used to being so wrong.

Krystall’s chest hadn’t felt this tight since she first got her implants. ‘We’re fucked aren’t we?’

‘Hey! Watch your mouth there’s kids around!’ barked Jackie.

Krystall’s eyes were weary but she was annoyed enough to roll them.

‘Fine – we’re effed aren’t we?’

The soft rain hardened, answering her question before night fell and inevitability dawned – in a flash

of lightning the armistice was off.

Reinforcements were called in to support the occupying rain and a bombardment heavier than the

first began to melt the pre-softened hills. The pelting deluge filled their ears with water and clatter. Cold skin

tightened and goose bumps stiffened. Dirt washed down panicked faces and flooded pursed lips, giving them

a taste of what was to come. Nature it seemed had emptied its barracks.

Jackie squeezed her little Kim tight. The salt of her tears mixed with the pure rain as she prayed

they’d meet Ellie on the other side in which they had never before believed. Fernando and Juan embraced in

stoic silence as brothers and best friends. Others latched onto whomever they could. Ted decided to let go of

Charles. He clasped his hands and dropped his head – it had to pay off sooner or never.

The Hawkings family held each other without a gap between them. They packed in so tight that if

they were wrong and there really was a God, it would be impossible for Him to condemn one soul from the

other.

The mud rose from their ankles to their knees. Death crept up their thighs like a sea of spiders that

killed with volume rather than venom. They sank as the sludge surged, doubling the velocity of fate.

‘Daddy what happens when we die?’

Charles gave Libby the only answer he could. He kissed her on the forehead and closed his eyes and

waited to find out for himself. It set off a flood of tears, whose accompanying wail was drowned out by the

firing rain. Water ran down the cracks of broken faces. Left without light, frozen blue on a muddy mountain

under a moonless sky, the Exiles of Falleria were set to not meet their non-maker.

But just when it seemed that their devolution back into earth was complete, a halo rose behind the

hill. It glided towards them like an angel of mercy and hovered above them – but this angel had no wings.

V

The sinking refugees lobbed mud as they pointed at the sky with mouths agape. Charles blinked,

shook his head and wiped his eyes (albeit with dirt) but it was still there. He had never trusted the

eyewitnesses who claimed to see such things. And now that he was one himself, he doubted his own sight.

Caroline stared at the sky with unblinking eyes that swelled like balloons at a school fair.

‘Charles, do you see what I see?’

‘If you’re looking at a black flying saucer hovering above us, then yes.’

‘Just checking.’

The giant levitating disc bobbed in the air, as if judging the drowning. As the mud smothered necks

and tickled chins, the saucer reached its verdict. In another feat of science defiance, it shot out an amber

tractor beam. The laser life buoy hummed as it fired out of the black hovering plate. It radiated the gentle

warmth of an autumn sun around each of the Exiles and they rose as one from the primeval mud, into the

heavens and disappeared inside the craft.

‘Charles... Where are we?’

‘I have no idea.’

Alexandra Chang’s chin dragged along the pristine white floor as she stumbled about like a

hypnotised zombie entranced by a warlock that performed one-man comedy-magic shows under a stage

name prefixed by The Amazing. ‘This is... irrational.’

She thought back to her much-loved sci-fi films. Never did she think the CGI and studio sets would

lose the box around them and stand up in her world. She ran her filthy hands along the frictionless white

walls like a cavewoman touching silk. Not a spot of mud stuck, instead the dirt from her palms slopped to the

floor in submission. ‘It’s like something I would’ve written in third grade. All I need is a unicorn...’

Every surface appeared to illuminate itself. The round room had a brand-new freshness that made

new car-smell reek like a musty pick-up on a rainy day. There was no noise nor vibration and it seemed that

there was no movement at all. There were no visible entry points nor seams. There was a high ceiling – about

12 feet tall – that prevented any feeling of stuffiness.

Jackie squeezed Kim even tighter than when on Earth. She pinned her back against the curved outer

wall and bounced her eyes side to side, waiting for the captors to show themselves. Kim felt her mother’s

chest beating against the back of her head and couldn’t hold back the warm trickle from running down her

leg. Ben Wycliffe backed up beside them and clenched his arse-cheeks – just in case.

Charles ran his palms all over the polished white walls and had them cleaned in the process. He tried

to rationalise the situation but it made about as much sense as an audio book of carpet samples. Of all the

branches of science, Charles decided to perch upon physics but it soon wilted under the weight of anti-

gravity and black saucery. ‘Impossible...’

The Exiles felt some hovering, as if the disc were waiting for tardy passengers like a sympathetic

train conductor. They wondered if it would take off and to where.

But they had already left and they had already arrived. Without warning, the floor of the saucer

snapped opened like a camera lens, revealing an abyss as black as the dark side of Pluto. They screamed out

in panic but were calmed by the invisible net that lowered them. They touched down on a firm foreign floor

and were left in the dark.

Isaac looked around at the faces he couldn’t see, hoping they weren’t as puzzled as his. ‘Umm, what

just happened?’

Fernando was just as perplexed but after a beat, managed to stammer out, ‘we were rescued by a

flying saucer.’

‘Thought so.’

VI

The Exiles huddled together like penguins in the trough of winter. Their already-tense bodies

tightened further, hunching their shoulders, bracing for cold and death. Linked arms shook, conducting body

warmth and fear. They looked around, hoping their eyes would adjust to the black but saw nothing but

darkness.

Out on his feet but still on his toes, Juan dropped his shoulders and stuck his face into the night air.

He tightened the lids over his eyes and tuned his expert ear into the surrounds. He picked up distant roars,

nearby coo-ees, chirps, hoots, and hisses.

Fernando, just as well trekked in the outdoors, used his nose. He flared his nostrils and tugged in the

evening air, pulling in streams of wild freshness. ‘It’s so pure.’

‘Charles where are we?’

‘I have no idea Caroline.’

Juan, accounting for the obvious shift to darkness, ‘at the very least we’re in a different time zone.’

‘And at the very most?’ asked Caroline.

‘Another planet.’

Caroline curled her toes and rubbed the ground between them, oblivious to her lost boots. The gentle

dirt was moist and its fineness belied any earthliness. Petals of wild flowers seemed to be scattered around

the turf and were softer than fairy wings.

Jackie trembled and shook more fear into her remaining daughter Kim. ‘What do we do?’

‘Wait. That’s all we can do.’ Charles stayed rational. But if he were defeated, his answer would have

been the same.

They pressed in closer, tightening the links between arms until Isaac broke the chain. He stretched

out his collar and invited the evening air to flow over his boobs. ‘Anyone else really hot?’

Ben unlinked his arms, shook himself free and pulled at his mud-soaked shirt. ‘Come to mention it...’

He fanned his face with a flopping right hand.

Katie did the same and then dropped onto the damp ground. Caroline tried to pull her back up. ‘What

are you doing?’

‘I’m tired.’ She slid her moist arm out of her mother’s grip. She leaned back on her palms and felt

tingles run through her as her legs throbbed from her toes to her hips.

Caroline felt others drop around her. Ted patted the earth beneath him and hoped it was indeed Earth.

‘I suppose if anything is going to bite us it could always climb up our legs anyway.’

The rest rumbled a concordant mumble and ached their way onto the ground. Libby put her head in

Charles’s lap and closed her eyes, replacing darkness with darkness. Charles stroked Libby’s coarse wet hair

and gazed up at the black cloak that he hoped was sky. Ted couldn’t sleep either and he too looked to heaven

as others laid their heads on the dirt.

‘It’s a miracle.’

‘It was... something.’

‘God works in mysterious ways.’

‘If he needs a flying saucer then he’s not really working at all.’

‘Either way it was a miracle.’

‘Miracles are made with the same hands as sandcastles.’

‘And flying saucers?’

‘I don’t know what hands built those.’

As they drifted into dreamland, they both hoped for their saviour to return.

VII

The sun peeked over the trees and tipped buckets of light over the Exiles. They shot up onto their

behinds as the warmth washed over them. A cacophony of cheeps chirped all around, welcoming them into

the new day.

Libby, with eyes wider than ever, ‘this is incredible.’

And Faye, with mouth as loud as ever, ‘shut up – I’m listening to the birds.’

The freshness that wafted through last night’s air was joined by scents flowing out of wildflowers

that opened to disciplined hymns. It flooded the Exiles’ senses and poured out of their noses. But they

pinched their allergies as their soles connected with the untamed Earth. Birds stroked by the same bright

brush as the bloom carried their harmonies as if the world wasn’t watching – it wasn’t, and it never had.

This was Mother Earth when she was still a virgin, before she had been gang-raped by industry and

its cronies. Chirpy and with full bush intact, foliage that dripped with wet green, soaked by morning sun;

reds, blues and other hues colouring the forest floor – if the footprints of sinners had not marked the first

garden, it may have blossomed into this.

Juan licked the morning dew from his lips as he took in the colours, scents and sounds. ‘Elysium...’

Libby raced up onto her father’s shoulders for a better view. She scouted the pristine wilderness

before taking off like a leprechaun that had just spotted a glint of gold.

‘Libby!’ But Charles was too late.

Her parents put on a panicked dash and the rest of the herd followed. After brushing past silky

foliage on their chase, they found their rainbow beyond a green grove.

Fernando stopped beside Juan and concurred, ‘it is paradise brother.’

The clear unspoiled stream trickled over smooth rocks and pebbles and was licked up by the tamest

of wild deer. It seeped into alluvial flats that blossomed with berries. Libby had been drawn by the morning

sun that glistened off the moving water like hope on the horizon. Now, that hope flowered into belief.

Libby scooped a handful of lukewarm water and slurped it with all of her faith. It ran down her chin

as she closed her eyes and smiled as if she were hamming it up in a tourism promotion for these parts

unknown.

‘Dad it’s better than in the pictures.’

‘It’s better than... anything.’

Baked by sunshine, standing in paradise, the Exiles forgot that they were covered in mud. Their

backpacks had been shrugged off to cope with the muck and their shoes kicked off to lighten their legs. But

in the midst of the miracle, Jackie hadn’t forgotten that they had left everything behind.

‘Sorry to rip up your doilies but we were taken away by a UFO! We don’t even know where we are!

This isn’t anything but normal and you people are acting like you’ve won extra child support!’

Isaac, whose eyes were fixed on the sparkling water, ‘but you’ve gotta admit we got lucky.’

‘My daughter’s dead – you call that lucky?’

But we did get lucky. Isaac was standing in what seemed to be an enchanted wood that was tended to

by blonde nymphs. He plucked a berry and dropped it into his mouth. He moaned as it melted over his

tongue in all its organic macrobiotic goodness. Oh that’s some good luck.

Ted sidled up to Jackie and put a compassionate hand on her shoulder. ‘Jackie, God works in

mysterious ways.’

Charles cringed at the hackneyed, cop-out of a line, but after being bashed by the weather, he was in

no mood for a fight. ‘My brain is still mashed by it all but the point is we’re here and we’re alive.’

Jackie kept Ted on her shoulder and argued, ‘but we don’t even know where here is.’

‘Well I’d rather be here than there!’ Isaac ripped off his shirt like it was the last chip packet in the

cupboard. He ran, or at least did his version of running, which was a jiggle and a shuffle, down to the water.

‘Wahoo!’

The warm stream kept its cool even after being bombed by a fat bastard. He closed his eyes as the

mud swam off his purified body. Isaac took in deliberate mouthfuls as he bobbed and blobbed through the

water. ‘It’s like it’s been filtered through God’s fingers! Come on! What are you all waiting for? The

rapture? Well it just came and we kicked its arse!’

Krystall looked to those beside her. She waited for someone else to follow Isaac’s flat feet into the

river. But when none were forthcoming, she ran to the shore, dove like a seal and glided towards the

shimmering rays that blessed the water. The river washed off any fear and soaked her in optimism. Her smile

popped up through the surface as she ran her nails from her dark roots to her blonde tips. ‘It’s so warm!’

They laughed as they splashed around like college kids on spring break. But when Juan caught a

shadow on the other shore, he played the role of the campus pastor. ‘Shhh! Quiet guys.’

Their splashing dropped to a ripple and all ears waited for the next beat.

On the other side of the river, a naked man stepped out of the bushes. Appearing beside the naked

man was a nakeder woman. Although one cannot be more naked than completely starkers, Isaac got that

impression as he could see two lots of naughty bits, since a woman is twice as naughty as a man. He was so

overawed by her perfect breasts that he thought nakeder was a real word and wanted to use it in his blog,

which of course had been taken offline by the apocalypse. And it got nakederer – he couldn’t even think

straight – when two more women popped out, doubling the group and tripling the boobies.

The same rays that had coated their smooth uniform skin with a gentle tan lit them in the most

favourable light. Their taut bodies stood out from the greenery and took the attention away from the bush.

They were fit and athletic, looking like they’d spent a lot of time in the jungle gym.

The naked foursome, probably in their mid twenties, stood on the riverbank and screwed up their

quizzical faces. The sight on the other side of the river – strangers swathed in cloth and mud, like a troupe of

method actors auditioning for the role of a blind potter – caused them to stare with enough curiosity to neuter

a feral cat. After some conferring whispers the skinny dippers exchanged nods and caused yet another splash.

They waded into the water and flowed with it before rising towards the sky for air. They glistened in the sun

as they wiped their hair from their faces and the river from their eyes. Invigorated by the water, they stroked

across stream towards the clothed strangers.

Charles patted around for a hand to hold as they swam closer. He found Caroline’s, who wrapped her

maternal arms around her girls and pulled them to her bosom. Isaac sunk his body further into the water. He

was now certain that they hadn’t survived the flood and had instead gone to atheist heaven – his version of it

at least. Paradise got wild – and a lot less virginal.

The naked man and three nude women slowed into polite paddles, careful not to spray the outsiders.

They stood up and smiled like ambassadors, with the stream covering them up to their knees. On the

riverbank, the two tribes faced off with more than just faces.

The refugees bunched together, bound by their racing hearts. Jackie covered Kim’s eyes as a

precaution while Ted kept his eyes on his toes.

Ben stole glances of the firm figures of the females and nicked off with a few more. Isaac though,

checked out the ladies with the subtlety of an armed hold up with a shotgun, and it threatened to go off at any

second. But there was no need for a heist – the main recipient of his attention didn’t mind. She had her

jewels out without him even asking. And had he asked for the combination to her vault, she’d have opened it

herself.

This particular stunning naked woman, Ana, stepped forward. The men drooled as the river ran over

her tanned breasts. Next to her, beauty was a half-eaten pie at a truck stop. Her proportions were more

precise than an atomic clock; her eyes shone with more green than a jade mine; and her lips were packed

with more fun than a long weekend.

‘We’ve never seen you around here before.’

Charles, being the leader, ‘we’ve never been here before.’

‘Who are you?’

The skinny dippers listened and nodded with all their attention while Charles recounted the

cataclysm that claimed their country. He linked the chains of chaos that swung in all directions, bringing

nations to naught around them. Their eyebrows jumped and their mouths widened as he regaled them with

the story of Mother Nature’s morning sickness and how she spewed out lava from her volcanoes; how the

over-stressed stress fractures in her bones finally snapped, razing buildings and raising oceans; and how she

coughed out of her lungs all the years of passive smoking she was forced to inhale, blasting away her

impurities. ‘...We hoped to return in three months – and now we’re here.’

‘Wow, no wonder you look so awful. So how did you get here?’

‘Well, that’s the weird bit.’

The nudes came forward, eyes and ears wide open in anticipation of an exclamation mark to

punctuate the end of the strangest of the strangers’ days.

‘So just as we were about to die a flying saucer came and saved us.’

‘So what was the weird bit?’

‘The flying saucer.’

‘What was weird about it?’

‘Well it was a saucer and it was flying.’

Ana looked to her naked friends and they didn’t get it either.

But Caroline did. ‘Sorry, you mean to tell me that flying saucers are common place?’

‘What planet are you from?’

‘Earth – what planet are you from?’

‘That was rhetorical.’

Caroline relaxed her lungs a little – at least they were on the same planet.

Another of the gorgeous naked ladies stepped forward and whispered in Ana’s ear. She nodded and

turned back to Charles.

‘Kiki here thinks that you should come with us. And I agree. We’ll get you cleaned up and checked

out.’

‘Wait, where are we?’

Kiki smiled. ‘Come with us and we’ll show you.’

‘Where?’

Kiki pointed across the river. ‘The other side.’

IX

Isaac and Krystall crossed the river with carefree strokes. They treaded water in a sea of sun and

closed their eyes. They floated on their backs and threw their faces up to the sky, soaking themselves in rays.

There they waited for the others who weren’t as ready to freestyle across foreign waters.

Ana and her skinny-dipping playmates strutted along the opposite riverbank and led the herd to a

ford. She turned and looked over her shoulder to check on the new arrivals and slowed her slender feet into a

shuffle to let the ditherers catch up.

Libby and Katie clung to their mother Caroline as if they were back in the muck; Jackie carried her

remaining daughter Kim in her vigilant arms and scanned the trees for unknowns; and Fernando and Juan

followed up from the rear. The elder brother bobbed his head as he counted cattle, ensuring the drove stayed

at 56.

Charles felt the warm water lap up against his ankles as he crossed to the other side. He trailed

behind his family and dragged his eyes along the ground, daring only to go near the nudes with his voice. ‘So

how far is it?’

Ana glanced over her shoulder and shot, ‘just through these trees.’

Caroline waited instinctively for the naked quartet to pick up their clothes. But when they left the

bank with nothing but their skin, she called out, ‘wait – aren’t you forgetting your clothes?’

Ana turned, confused. ‘My what?’

‘Clothes.’ Caroline pinched at her muddy shirt. ‘These things.’

Ana shook her head. ‘No.’

Ana continued on, brushing past leaves that were more like petals and left Caroline frozen for a

moment. Caroline then rushed forward and made sure her body was a buffer between the skinny dippers and

Charles – for if Krystall were the town bike, this trio of women were the city metro.

They weaved their way into a cooler part of the jungle whose crisp air flowed over their skin without

drawing any bumps. Leaves that padded their feet like baby ducks coated in silk carpeted the plush ground.

Beams of sunlight snuck through the canopy and lit the path and kept dankness away from the darkness,

ensuring the forest freshness wafted through the shade of the woods.

Libby and Katie stumbled with their heads tipped back and their eyes in the treetops as gibbons

swung and birds fluttered through the branches. Amongst this air, Katie’s lungs forgot they had asthma,

which was lucky as her inhaler hadn’t made the trip up into the saucer. The sisters smiled in wonderment as a

wildlife documentary played out in flesh. But when the group went beyond the tall teaks that seemed to stand

as guards, a different kind of scene with a different kind of flesh came out to play.

‘Oh. My. Lord.’ But He would have been covering His eyes and praying to His God...

In the shadows of the trees, in the dark of the jungle, the forest floor throbbed with bucking bodies,

naked as the day evolution squeezed them out. This patchwork of sweaty skin of all shades moaned,

screamed and begged for more in profane ways as it changed shaped and reconfigured itself like a beast with

many backs. An invisible cloud of tang hung over the heaps of ecstasy where women piled on men, women

piled on women, men surrounded women, men surrounded men, and indistinguishable bodies snaked in

daisy chains. Adults of all ages, all bodies and all orientations were welcome.

They pounded, slurped, licked, rubbed, grimaced and smiled with parts that jerked out of time. Other

naked natives encircled the throbbing throng and watched while eating and drinking. Their hands strayed

down low as they chatted amongst each other as if standing by the forest water cooler. It seemed like a pit

stop as they soon joined in. Spaces opened up and greeted them as the pile got bigger, louder and dirtier.

Nothing was off limits.

Ana addressed the group of Fallerians. ‘So let’s get you checked out.’

The Exiles turned to each other. They looked upon what must have been the birthplace of four-letter

words and the place where sin first learned to crawl.

Ana turned to Charles and became confused when she noticed the colour draining from his cheeks.

She wondered what had suddenly gone wrong. But her confusion rose when Charles collapsed.

***

‘Dad!’

‘Dad!’

‘Charles!’ Caroline rushed to Charles’s side. Her heart thudding through her ears, she patted his face

with double taps and broke the beat with a periodic, ‘Charles... Charles...’

Curious nudes seemed to sprout out from behind every tree as the commotion beckoned them. They

rushed over before slowing into cautious steps. They surrounded the Exiles that had circled Charles and

peeked between the clothed bodies at the fallen man.

‘What happened?’

‘Who are they?’

‘What are they wearing?’

He began to stir as Dr. Alexandra Chang elevated his legs and Caroline rained down her slaps a little

harder.

‘Charles! Charles!’

Charles snapped his eyes open. He shot to his feet, forcing Caroline to dodge his rising head with the

deftness of a bantamweight. His heart pulsed like a blender. He staggered before propping himself by

clutching Caroline’s bony shoulder. As his head slowed its spin, nakedness came into focus. A wave of bare

skin and dangly bits crashed in on him. Nipples threatened to stab him in the eye. Still-glistening penises

radiated the ick of a truck-stop toilet rim. And the same ick crusted and flaked on the insides of smooth legs.

He grimaced as he sniffed the air. In his indignation, Charles had grown the nose of a pregnant

woman. The tang of sweat and private fluids streamed through the thickened air, forcing him to inhale

droplets of depravity. He scraped his tongue off with his teeth and spat the zest into the dirt. Surrounded, the

Exiles huddled together as their eyes darted about.

An old nude man put a kind – although moist and wrinkled – hand on Charles’s shuddering shoulder.

‘Are you okay there?’

Charles shrugged him off like an AIDS infected leech. He brushed off his shirt and wiped his arms

but his hand absorbed the imaginary coating of warm stickiness carried on the sex-charged air. ‘Get away

from me!’

The old man put up his palms and backed off.

Caroline hid behind her husband; Libby and Katie fused themselves to her legs. Ted moved in closer

and tried to steady his trembling legs behind Charles’s wobbly ones. Fernando and Juan towered behind with

their arms folded across their protruding chests in a conscientious display of force.

Some, like Isaac Peters, weren’t exactly sure where they stood but they shuffled closer to Charles

just to be safe.

(Un)Dressed in a manner that would make a naughty-nurse look like a frumpy matron, Ana squeezed

through the crowd to get to her patient. ‘Come on Charles, we’d be better get you looked at right away.’

‘You’re joking right? We’re not going anywhere with you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not? What do you mean why not?’

Ana smiled. ‘Look at yourselves you silly silkworms! Come with us and we’ll help you.’

Jackie, with her right hand choking the light from Kim’s eyes, ‘look at us? Look at you!’

Ana stammered, ‘have... we done something to offend you?’

Affronted, Jackie huffed, ‘what do you think?’

‘What did we do?’

‘I think you know.’

Ana searched her mind for answers and found her manners. She threw a hand up to her face, smiling

with embarrassment. She shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry – did you want to join in?’

The Exiles gasped and grimaced. Charles turned to his people. ‘Come on let’s go. Right now!’

Ana was taken aback. ‘Go? Where are you going?’

‘Home.’

‘But you’re not from around here.’

‘And don’t we know it!’

Charles stormed back along the path on which they came. His people bunched up behind him –

single file would have had them too far apart. They ripped their way back through the forest like a swarm of

locusts, leaving snapped branches in their wake.

Ana and her nude cohorts watched as the strange clothed tribe disappeared into the jungle.

‘What’s their problem?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Do they even know where they’re going?’

‘They don’t even know where they stand.’

The Exiles reached the spot at which they had landed and turned to each other with disgust and

confusion splattered over their faces. Exasperated huffs puffed up the silence, and they shook their collective

head to flick the taste off their tongues.

Katie struggled to find her breath and fumbled through her pockets. ‘My puffer! I lost my puffer!’

Now her lungs remembered. The little one wheezed and clutched her throat. Her mother dropped to a knee

and attended to her, as did the other doctors. ‘Try to breathe sweetheart.’

Sickened, puzzled and scared, the Exiles were left standing around gazing in a daze at the blue sky,

shell-shocked at the lost world that had found them. The Exiles were again in exile but this time it was self-

imposed.

They stared wide-eyed, unable to crack the shell shock. Stomachs began to stir up yesterday’s

rations. Leaving the site behind was easy but leaving the sight was impossible. Ted rocked back and forth

and shook his head, wishing he could take the bubbling acid in his stomach and splash it over his mind’s eye

and pour it into his mind’s ears.

X

Libby, being a 15 year-old, was curious. She sidled up to her mother and snuck in some girl talk.

‘Mum, what was going on out there?’

Charles and Caroline had made sure that Libby went to the right school. As open-minded secular

liberal left-leaning progressives, sex education was paramount. Diagrams of sperms, ova and ovaries; and

explanations of love, sex and disease spanned the pages of the syllabus, covering everything they wanted

their daughter to know about sex. However anything beyond basic reproduction was left to the margins of

after-school Internet research. But Libby was not that kind of girl and if she were, the filter applied by her

parents would have rerouted any suspect query to the Conservative Party website.

Although his head was still scattered amongst the trees, Charles managed to overhear her furtive

words. ‘Libby – forget what you saw.’

Her father had always encouraged her to ask questions. Long drives on family vacations meant hours

of ‘why?’ Charles and Caroline never tired of it and loved the opportunity to educate their daughters,

especially as the girls were trying to annoy them. Unlike other dads, Charles loved being asked why the sky

was blue and usually it was the kids who turned up the radio in submission. But this was a test for which

Charles could not have studied. Now all he could think of was sex. And all he wanted was for his daughters

to do the opposite.

Katie, having recovered from her asthma attack, had other things on her mind. ‘Daddy what were all

those men doing to that other man?’

He’d just dodged a bullet only to step on a mine. He searched for an explanation – logical or not – to

placate Katie but could only find a feeble, ‘they were... wrestling him,’ giving the term rear naked choke a

whole new meaning.

Fernando bounced his index finger and mouthed numbers as he again counted cattle. He wasn’t a fan

of what he wished he hadn’t seen but rationally, survival took precedence. For the group’s sake, he was able

to put the sight of the site on his things-not-to-do list and file it away. ‘56 Charles, there’s a bit of good

news.’

Charles nodded a thank you. At this point, that was as nice as he was going to get.

Ted rocked onto his feet and shot up off the ground. He turned to Charles and fired, ‘what are we

going to do now?’

Jackie fired straight back, ‘we’re not going back there!’

Charles, having a natural aversion to stating the obvious, rolled his eyes. ‘You don’t say.’ He gazed

across the river to the other side. He then tilted his head back and looked to the sky that had dropped them

off. He continued gazing up into the blue, as if his thoughts would be enough to conjure a flying saucer.

‘They’re going to come back for us.’

Libby too turned her eyes to the skies. ‘How do you know that dad?’

‘You just have to have...’ Charles caught himself. Ted put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and

nodded.

XI

The Earth turned and put them into shadow. Charles continued to stare at the sky with pleading eyes.

His mouth twitched as he willed his rescuers to return. He searched every whiff of white for a hint of black

but found nothing but fluff.

He didn’t notice that Libby had sidled up to him. ‘So you really think they’re coming back dad?’

‘Think about it – why would someone pluck us from the middle of the Earth, save us and bring us

here only to dump us with savages? It doesn’t make sense.’ A monkey laughed as it swung past Charles,

breaking his moment with his daughter. They watched it leap away before Charles added, ‘there must be a

reason we’re walking amongst these animals.’

‘Then where are the saviours?’

‘Probably... flying around saving others.’

‘And what –’

‘Libby! Just relax okay? They’re coming.’

It wasn’t a raised voice but Charles did give his words an extra shove. Libby’s knees buckled as she

wilted like an unwanted rose.

Charles looked around at the group that he had led up the mountain. Heads drooped over knees and

adult sobs laid the bass for the high-pitched cries of the children. The morale of the rabble had been reduced

to rubble and Charles, yet again, had to rebuild. ‘Okay everybody on your feet! We’ve got work to do.’

Heads lifted and turned to his confident voice like flowers to the sun.

Isaac had stayed clear of the shadows. He lay fat on his back, shirtless, every inch of his black skin

absorbing golden rays. His flab spilled off to his sides like chocolate fondue. With his hands supporting his

head, ‘you know what? Let’s get some food. My stomach’s been grumbling like my grandpa in a room full

of immigrants.’

Charles nodded, pleased with Isaac’s positivity. ‘Exactly what I was thinking.’

Krystall concurred, ‘yeah I’m sick of immigrants.’

‘Umm... anyway, listen up everyone. Whomever it was that brought us here will be back for us soon.

But until then we need to take care of things ourselves. I’m sure there are more fruits than just berries.’

Katie’s eyes widened. ‘And then they’ll be back?’

‘Exactly.’ Charles clapped his hands together to punctuate his proclamation. ‘Let’s go.’

XII

There was such thing as a free lunch. Fruits weighed down the branches that dangled them so that

heavy hands didn’t have to reach too high. Vine leaves cupped water while keeping their constitution. And

fish swam to the shore in sacrifice. Well, that’s how it looked to them. In truth, the Exiles got lucky with low

hanging trees, durable foliage and naive marine life.

After an hour of fishing and foraging, the food was sorted in communal heaps. The freshest fish

fumes flowing from the ad hoc oven carried more protein than regular earthly barramundi. The pure taste and

crispness of fish flesh made up for any lack of flavourings and presentation.

As they tore white flakes of rainbow trout and stuffed them into their gaping holes, they watched the

sky as the Earth inched its way around its axis. As each moment passed, longer shadows were cast and every

empty hour left them deeper in the dark.

But Juan wanted to speed up the light. He sat down next to Charles, whose lips were painted pink by

berries. ‘You know Charles, I was thinking, we might be able to speed this up a little.’

‘Does your plan involve time travel?’

‘The nudists on the other side sounded like they knew what was going on.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘Look, I know they’re a bit... wrong, but they could help us here.’

‘A bit? You know I wouldn’t be surprised if they were forsaken and we were brought here to save

their civilisation – whatever that may be.’

‘It couldn’t hurt to ask. I mean, they did offer to help.’

Charles put his berries aside and gave Juan a full face. ‘When I was at uni I hitchhiked up the coast

of Dokien and one day it was raining lions and jackals. The most cliched pick-up truck splashed by with a

couple of red-necks in the cab. Now I could have hopped in but you reckon I was going to jump into a truck

with a White Pride bumper sticker on the back?’ Juan shook his head at the rhetorical question. ‘And you

know what happened? I got picked up by a nice black guy 10 minutes later. We’re in the outlands Juan and

we’re dealing with lawless ferals. And goodness knows what they’d do with us – with our wives and

daughters – if we did go into the sticks with them.’

Juan nodded but didn’t quite understand. As a brown-skinned man himself he understood the part

about not jumping into a truck with a couple of guys that would sooner lynch a man based on the colour of

his skin than practice dental hygiene based on the colour of their own teeth. But not hopping into bed with

the nudists due to a distaste of their sexual tastes was one righteous stand that they might regret in the

morning.

Juan didn’t want to admit it, not even to himself, but he wasn’t as disgusted as the others. He didn’t

know why his threshold was a little higher and where others saw memories that they wanted filtered from

their stream of consciousness, he saw answers.

Now he looked around for some help with the question. He found it leaning against a tree, hands

behind head. Juan marched over with his chest swelled with gall. ‘You had enough to eat?’

Fernando wiped his mouth with his thick hirsute forearm. ‘I could do with another banana.’

‘Can you grab one on the way?’

‘On the way to where?’

‘The other side.’

‘But Charles said to stay on this side.’

‘He’s wrong.’

‘Before we set out we all swore to stick together and unite behind one leader. Things will fall apart

pretty quickly if we split up and do our own thing.’

‘Yeah, because it’s all so together right now. Now come on.’

‘They’ll see us crossing.’

‘I know, that’s why we have to be invisible.’

XIII

Juan trekked along the bank, and as always, upstream and against the current. He kept his head

straight and his eyes like lasers as he ignored the pricks of protruding branches. Fernando followed his little

brother and swivelled his head in constant recon, paranoid of Big Brother.

‘This doesn’t feel right.’

‘Feelings are subjective. Charles said that himself in his book.’

‘But we’re meant to stick together.’

‘We are... it’s just our glue is a little more flexible.’

Once they were far enough, they did a quick scan of nearby bushes and reeds to check if anyone was

looking.

Juan smirked. ‘Ready to put on your invisibility cloak?’

‘Reminds me of Mad Monday.’

‘Well that’s what you get for not scoring a goal all season.’

‘I stopped hundreds but that never counts does it glory boy?’

Juan ripped off his shirt and pulled down his pants. Fernando went pants first then shirt.

‘Dudes!’

The brothers spun around to the one bush that they somehow missed. Isaac popped out shirtless. He

had wandered off in search of more exotic fruits – and he appeared to have found them.

‘I’ve already seen enough for one day. So can you please find somewhere private to bum your

brother?’

Fernando threw his hands over his crotch. ‘I’m not bumming my brother.’

‘I don’t care who’s the toilet and who’s the plunger just do it somewhere else.’

‘No one’s plunging anyone’s anything – we’re crossing the river.’ Juan continued to explain their

ruse and how they hoped to hop between the pings and pongs of Charles’s radar.

As soon as Juan finished speaking, Isaac ripped his pants to the ground. ‘I’m in.’

Juan looked up and down Isaac’s sagging layers of blubber – his squadron of stealth fighters had just

recruited a blimp. ‘Look... I don’t know...’

‘What?’

‘It’s just... I reckon they might recognise you.’

‘He won’t be able to make out my face from this far.’

‘You have a body that is... distinguishable, even at a distance.’

‘Are you saying I’m fat?’

‘I’m just saying this mission probably isn’t for you.’

‘Well, then try stopping me.’

Isaac splashed into the water. He did something akin to paddling, as fast as his flab would allow him.

Fernando turned to Juan. ‘I guess that means let’s go.’

‘Uh huh.’

The brothers dove in and stroked their way to the other side.

As they rose onto the bank, their faces were masked by their nudity. Their naked bodies caught the

ire of some of the Exiles who had done what they were told and remained on the right side of the river.

Jackie shook her head. ‘Let’s hope the natives stay up that end.’

The ruse worked. They rushed from the shore and ran into the wild.

XIV

Fernando scanned the untamed bush as the trio penetrated the depths of the other side. ‘Is this all

they do?’

Juan swallowed as he strode along the path. ‘Looks like it. What is this place...’

The atmosphere was charged with the same sex particles as before. The monkeys were the only ones

that weren’t swinging: the wild flowers of the forest linked in daisy chains around the gully. As for the

wildest ones, they bunched together in colourful bouquets in the most exotic arrangements.

The trio treaded with caution, making sure they didn’t step on any diseases. Their faces were tight,

braced for goo. Isaac was sure that no one in the history of medicine had contracted herpes while

bushwalking but he still wished he had his shoes on.

Juan began to question himself. He turned to the other two and asked, ‘so... should we just go up to

someone?’

‘And say what? Hi I’m Isaac, would you mind not putting that in there and help us out for a second?’

‘Shhh! They might hear you.’

‘Wow you’ve lost your rags!’

The boys turned to find Ana’s radiant visage popping up and shining from behind a bed of poppies.

She had been laying on her back – alone. She sprang to her feet and bounced over to the trio. ‘I was hoping

to see you people again.’

‘I was hoping to see you too.’ Isaac beamed as he returned the compliment.

Ana smiled before glancing down at their crotches. The force of her widened eyes jolted her head

back as if she’d been hit by a sniper. She wanted to know what they’d been hiding under there – and now she

knew.

‘Whoa! No wonder you were covering them up!’ Ana looked up at their faces with genuine concern.

‘What happened to you?’

Isaac shined his eyes on his penis in a panic. He lifted it up and patted around his balls as if looking

for his keys. His was considered small for a black man but he never bought into the patriarchal myth of size

matters. Knob bit – check. Veiny bits – check... That’s about all there is to a penis right?

He checked out the brothers’ and saw the same knobular attributes.

Fernando gave his a twice-over and couldn’t find fault. ‘What’s wrong?’

Nor could Isaac. ‘It’s all there.’

‘Where’s the skin at the end?’

Isaac snorted, ‘oh – we’ve been circumcised.’

‘You’ve been what?’

‘Circumcised.’

‘Circumcised? What’s that?’

‘Getting your foreskin cut off.’

‘In a fight?’

‘No not in a fight. It was done properly.’

‘What do you mean properly?’

‘By a guy who knew what he was doing.’

‘What... what did you do to provoke him?’

The three Fallerians turned to each other, puzzled by what was either naivety or the result of

generations of inbreeding. Ana ran through images of professional penis assassins practicing their sword

strokes on baby carrots.

Isaac answered, ‘My parents asked him to.’

Juan jumped in and stated his case. ‘Actually it was our grandparents that organised ours.’

‘What? Why did they want to hurt you?’

Fernando shrugged. ‘Tradition I suppose.’

‘So you agreed to this?’

Juan laughed, ‘of course not – we were only babies.’

Ana’s body began to retreat into itself. Her skin tightened as her muscle fibres contracted and her

nervous system took an adrenalin dump on her chest. She pressed her smooth thighs together and wondered

out loud what happened to baby girls. The civilised atheists assured her that clitoral cleaving and labial

lacerations were indeed illegal in Falleria, despite some sects claiming it customary.

Isaac finished off the explanation, assuring her, ‘...and there’s no way we’d ever let that happen to

poor little girls.’

‘But what about the poor little boys? That’s okay with you?’

‘No but...’

Inaction speaks louder than words. Isaac wondered why he’d fight against one but tolerate the other

and like a circumcision gone wrong he was stumped.

Ana – being in the company of male baby mutilating, violence tolerating, foreskin hating

psychopathic savages – needed a bit of back up. ‘Kiki!’

Her call reverberated through the forest. It drummed in Kiki’s ears and she sat up like a dog upon

hearing its master. She pulled out her male companions and leapt through the forest.

She ran for Ana and slid to a halt as she saw the three foreigners. ‘What are you doing here? Whoa!

What happened to your –’

Isaac snapped, ‘we’ve been through this.’

Ana clasped Kiki’s hand. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

Fernando, worried that their absence would soon be noticed, jumped in. ‘Flying saucers aren’t weird

to you but circumcision is – why is that?’

Ana and Kiki turned to each other bemused, unsure if these men had lost more than just their

foreskins.

‘Because one is technological advancement for the betterment of humanity and the other is... hacking

up a baby.’

Juan edged forward. ‘Do you know anything about flying saucers or not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then tell us!’

Kiki turned to Ana, ‘we have to show them.’

Ana nodded. ‘Will you be happy to follow us?’

‘I think I speak for all of us when I say we’ll be right behind you.’ By that, Isaac meant all men in

the history of men.

Ana screamed, ‘Chigano!’

XV

Where there were predators there were protectors. Chigano stormed through the bushes after hearing

Ana’s call for help. The Fallerians recognised him as Ana’s male skinny dipping friend. He was about as big

as Ben Wycliffe but looked bigger in the buff.

Ana and Kiki led the way along a tight path. Chigano followed up behind the group. He wasn’t a

paranoid man but foreign eyes had a different slant to them, thus he ran his pupils over the strangers and set

his snarl to fixed.

Isaac studied the ladies’ perfect curves. He loved the way Ana’s hips swayed as she walked. He

salivated at Kiki’s side-boob every time she turned to check on the rearguard. But when the luscious ladies

led them over the trunk of a giant fallen tree, Isaac voluntarily tore his eyes away from their figures. ‘And

here I was thinking the greatest wonder of the world was behind you.’

Juan gazed upward and jaw downward. ‘Incredible.’

Fernando shook his head. ‘You call this a village?’

Nestled between trees, nudging the foliage with the greatest of care, were 20-something hovering

black discs. The saucers were about 16 metres in diameter and seven metres off the ground. They bobbed in

silence like ships anchored in a tranquil harbour, oblivious to the tempest of the nearby ocean. They listed

like politely tipped hats when birds glided through the shared airspace. And they were just as kind to the

monkeys, holding still while the agile arboreal primates scrambled over the black matte saucer shells, leaping

from one to the other.

Ana turned to the stunned Fallerians, whose eyes stayed in the treetops. ‘Do you want to come inside

mine?’

Isaac dropped his eyes to meet hers. ‘You’re referring to your saucer right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And by saucer you mean of those things?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh. Yeah alright.’

She ushered them to a disc and stood under it. She looked up as a low frequency hum resonated,

lifting her like an angel into heaven, prompting Isaac to rush in like a pervert to a peep show.

What would have had them placed on the registry for life back home didn’t even register here. Juan

tried not to look up at Kiki but gave up half way up and dropped his head backwards. Fernando didn’t

struggle – he had Chigano dangling over him. If there were any questions as to why upshorting had never

taken off, this would answer them.

They landed inside and the floor closed beneath them. The three Exiles spun around and absorbed

the views, as the walls of the craft were fully transparent. The saucer felt like an open plate surrounded by

lush. A circle of 36 white pods fanned out near the perimeter, leaving enough space for the chamber to be

circumnavigated. There were some double pods and a few that looked like lounges. There were no visible

vents but the raw crisp scents of the forest wafted through the accommodation chamber. In the centre of the

ceiling was a circle that led to the cockpit. There was no ladder leading up and Fernando presumed it

operated in the same way as the lift on the outside. Homely warmth radiated around them as they wandered

around the craft.

‘Welcome to our world away from the world,’ said Ana.

Fernando counted up the pods. ‘How many of you live here?’

‘About 40 at the moment.’

Juan drifted about, running his abrasive hands over the seamless pods. ‘It’s amazing...’

Ana furrowed her brow, bemused. ‘It’s just a room.’

Isaac threw a leg up over the side of a pod and thudded into it. He stretched out. ‘Where we come

from, we don’t have anything like this.’

‘Really? How do you live?’

Isaac replied, ‘in houses, on the ground.’

Ana and Kiki turned to each other, hoping that the other knew what Isaac meant.

Juan leaned against the wall and looked out at the other saucers. ‘Who gave you these things?’

Ana’s forehead grew more lines. ‘What do you mean? We built it.’

‘You? How?’

Kiki shrugged, ‘just follow the plan.’

Chigano piped up, ‘and use the right tools.’

Fernando treaded toward the three nudes. ‘Where did you get the materials? No offence but you

don’t look like the most technologically advanced race of people.’

The warning did nothing to temper Ana’s offence. ‘Excuse me? While you were busy defying nature

and mutilating children, we were defying gravity.’

Kiki, just as affronted, ‘we don’t waste a single brain cell on anything imaginary.’

‘Where did you get the materials?’ asked Fernando

‘It’s a big forest.’

Chigano began to get agitated. He stuck out his chest and edged in front of the ladies. ‘There’s a lot

more to us than you can see.’

Isaac raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ll say.’

Juan moved away from the window. ‘Was it you that picked us up?’

Ana shook her head. ‘I don’t know who picked you up.’

‘How many of you are there?’

‘Like I said, it’s a big place. This is just one village.’

‘Any ideas on why we’d get picked up?’

‘No.’

‘What do you call this place?’

‘A forest. What do you call it?’

‘I mean does your country have a name?’

‘Country? What do you mean by that?’

‘This land that you live in, what do you call it?’

‘I just told you, we call it a forest.’

Kiki reiterated, ‘forest, you know, like... jungle... wilderness...’

Chigano emphasised, ‘the wild.’

Isaac shook his head. ‘So... whose land are we on? Aliens? Subterranean reptile overlords?’

Ana sucked in a breath. ‘This is no man’s land. Those of us that live in this forest don’t have a lot of

rules.’

Isaac rolled his eyes and muttered to himself, ‘wow you’re just full of surprises...’

‘But one thing that we have to be mindful of is to ensure that no one has any dominion over it.’

Fernando nodded, finally understanding. ‘So it’s no one's?’

Ana returned his nod and added, ‘how on earth can one own the Earth?’

‘Okay... okay... let me get this straight... you’re living in a nude... Utopia – a virginal forest unknown

to the rest of civilisation – and you have technology that is more advanced than our military?’

‘I don’t know what military means but as for the rest – yes.’

‘Right... Okay that still doesn’t help.’

A beat of silence was left as Fernando drifted into his own confused thoughts. Juan, rushing in to fill

the gap, ‘how did you come to be here?’

‘We’ve always lived here.’

‘Do you know of the outside world?’

Kiki jumped in, ‘enough to know it’s best to stay hidden.’

Isaac clambered out of the pod. ‘So what are we doing here?’

Ana shrugged. ‘No idea.’

Juan swallowed. ‘Do you think the saucer that brought us here is coming back for us?’

‘I don’t know who was piloting it so I can’t say.’

‘Was it one of your people?’

‘It was someone from this land. But no one is anyone else’s person. So no, they’re not my people.

And neither is Kiki nor Chigano. We are all our own.’

Fernando turned to his people and pulled them aside. ‘We need to tell Charles. He’s running from the

same people he’s waiting for.’

Juan nodded. ‘But then what?’

‘He’s the leader – let him decide.’

Isaac though wasn't so sure. He whispered, ‘he’ll never believe it. I mean, these two hotties look like

they’d screw anything but a light bulb. Who would believe that they could build an advanced gravity-defying

saucer?’

Fernando mulled on a it for a moment before conceding, ‘you've got a point.’

Juan's eyes were on the floor as he thought. He flicked them up at Ana and Kiki and concurred with

Isaac. The ladies weren't stereotypical engineers or scientists. Instead, it looked as if the only laboratory they

had ever seen was the ne where they were they were genetically engineered by porn addicts and groomed by

veteran clergymen. But there was a simple solution staring them in the... well, that they were staring at all

over.

‘Ana, can you fly this thing?’

XVI

‘I say God.’

‘And I say spacemen.’

Ted smiled. The two old friends had recovered just enough for another round of sparring. They sat

beside each other on the riverbank and watched the gentle clear stream roll over rocks. It couldn't quite wash

away what they had seen – only hydrochloric acid applied directly to the visual cortex combined with a dose

of early onset dementia held any hope for them – but it did fill their field of vision. They fixed their eyes on

it and shut out the perils of their periphery.

‘At least we can agree that we were spared. So how’s the head?’

‘Blood’s back. How’s the gut?’

‘Still churning.’ Ted postured up as thoughts turned serious. ‘Charles, what if they do come over

here? I mean, it’s just a river between us.’

‘We’re still better off. Besides,’ Charles swept his eyes around the surrounds, ‘we’re probably

surrounded by them anyway.’

Ted swivelled around, scoping out the bush. ‘We can never go back over there.’

‘No. We were put here for a reason. And you know what, we shouldn’t have strayed.’

‘Are we still talking about –’

‘Shut up Ted.’ Charles flicked Ted with a backhand. The old friends eked out a smile, reminded of

their old wrangles. ‘Who knows – in the time we were over there they may have been back here for us.

Either way, it’s better here than –’ Charles snapped his head back and looked up with eyes as wide as his

gaping mouth. A shadow had eclipsed anything he had to say. Both Charles and Ted jumped to their feet.

‘They’re back! I told you they’d be back! Everybody they’re back!’

The scattered Exiles sitting around rocked onto their feet. Libby and Katie ran to their father,

dragging their mother behind them.

‘Daddy they’re back!’

‘It’s them!’

‘They’re here!’

‘I know! What did I tell you!’

The rest of the Fallerians gathered around and dropped their heads back. Charles put out his arms

and ushered the mob to one side. ‘Make some space so they can land.’

The craft lowered itself to within a few metres of the ground. Charles bounced like a five year-old

fighting a full bladder as he watched the saucer steady itself. He wasn’t aware of his movements and luckily

neither was anyone else.

He willed space-time to hurry up along its continuum so that he could at last thank his rescuers and

ask to explore their technology. But when three familiar faces floated down with their accompanying bodies

wrapped in rags, Charles’s mind fell through a wormhole. His hopeful face angled its eyebrows in confusion.

‘You three? What... what’s going on?’

Fernando stepped forward, ‘Charles –’

‘And why are you wrapped in rags? When did they pick you up?’

Fernando looked up into the saucer. ‘I think you’d better come down.’

Ana, Kiki and Chigano floated down like bad news. Charles glowed red and Caroline redder. She

stepped up beside her husband and folded her arms like a bodyguard.

‘Now you three?’

Ana smirked. ‘Hello again Charles.’

Fernando stood between the two camps. He looked to Ana and prompted, ‘I think you’d better tell

him straight up.’

Ana repeated what she’d explained to the others and Charles reacted as expected.

‘You build these? You couldn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re too primitive.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Evolution doesn’t work like that. You can’t go from hunter-gatherer to technological geniuses and

skip the invention of pants.’

‘We know all about evolution. In fact, this particular craft was designed by me,’ replied Ana.

Kiki proudly stuck out her already stuck-out chest, ‘I calibrated the stabilisers.’

‘And I took care of the thrusters.’ Chigano punctuated his assertion with a firm nod.

‘That’s his specialty,’ winked Kiki.

Fernando jumped in, hoping a more familiar voice would be more convincing. ‘Charles you should

see the cockpit.’

Juan couldn't hold back his enthusiasm either. ‘Ana just put on a helmet and flew it with her mind!’

Isaac nodded like an over-excited dog and sprang forth with, ‘and the view from up there!’

Charles raised his hand, having heard enough from the three rats. He focused his glare on Ana and

shot out with frosted fire, ‘so you picked us up?’

Ana shuffled back, unused to such cold in the tropics. She swallowed before spilling out, ‘as I told

the boys, I have no idea who picked you up or why. However we can help you and can accommodate you.

So if you’d like to come with us –’

‘Absolutely not. No way.’

Ana furrowed her brow, almost crushing her nose. ‘Why not?’

‘The fact that you have to again ask “why not” is why not.’

‘Can you elaborate?’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes.’

Explaining secular morality was the chorus in the song of Charles’s life. His words came out with

such ease and consistency that it would have been fair to accuse him of lip-syncing. He had taken on teams

in mock debates on television and in lecture halls of the most prestigious universities of Falleria. He was

undefeated – although no one other than Charles was really keeping score – but for him it was his opus

Morality Without God that ended the argument and got everyone talking. It was the book for those that didn’t

believe in the Book and smote the myth that atheists believed in nothing and were therefore prepared to do

anything.

His tome cut down God to a lower case, before casting him into the fires of factual hell and filling

his seat with an upper case Human. This Human stood above every god that had the cruelty to hurl down

thunderbolts at their hapless subjects, the sickness to plague their beggars with disease and the narcissism to

turn up in the victory speeches of professional athletes.

Charles explained to Ana – as if reading from his own book – that atheists had morals and ethics and

that most advances in those fields had in fact come from secular humanists. There were standards of

behaviour regarding how one treated others, how humans should interact, and what was considered decent.

There were acts that were appropriate in public and deeds that were inappropriate even in private.

This particular brand of atheism earned him his following. It swayed agnostics like Jackie – who

wanted a righteous secular path on which to walk – to jump off the fence and land in his yard. It

deprogrammed formerly religious folk like Fernando and Juan who needed an ethical framework in which to

live but could do without the dogma. And atheists like Alexandra just liked having someone to articulate

how they felt.

The debate followed Charles off the lectern. To be the figurehead of such a movement and to counter

ad hominem attacks, Charles had to become that Human. He had to prove that an atheist could be as moral as

any religious leader – not only to his opponents but also to himself. This came naturally to him. He despised

the raunch culture that denigrated women – be it pornography, strippers, excessive cleavage or even

cheerleaders; he fought against misogyny that inevitably led to sexual assault; and he discouraged

promiscuity which he believed lowered self-esteem. He was a cubicle man and a stall-in-the-locker room

kind-of-a-guy. He made love in the dark to his wife and only his wife and he did so tenderly.

‘...so you see we have rules – we’re not just savages.’

Ana felt her breath leave her chest but not come back. She scrambled every bit of her lungs for air as

she felt something she had only tasted once before. It had been served up by Fernando when he offended her

earlier. But this time it was more intense. She scanned her body and felt every last fibre tighten; her fingers

seemed to want to curl her hands into fists; and her insides felt like they were trying to become her outsides.

The feeling was as foreign to her as the Fallerians. Her nostrils flared and her lips snarled as she

struggled to regain control of her body. She began with her breath, feeding her head with air before her blood

carried it elsewhere. As her composure returned, she heaved in before heaving out, ‘let me be clear.

Everyone in the forest has free will. We are healthy and tend toward peace. Our resources are plentiful and

used only as needed. And as to that thing with which you seem most concerned, grown adults and other

grown adults consent to do whatever it is they consent to do. Now tell me Charles, what are the negative

consequences of our actions?’

Charles asked himself the question: in a perfect world, what are the consequences? The irony was

that if the natives of this jungle looked like traditional third-world tribes people, the Exiles would have gone

along with condescending nods and acceptance of the ‘cultural differences’ – as it would be politely and

euphemistically put. But seeing as the nudes were mainly white, looked like common Fallerians and spoke

the same language as them, the Exiles passed judgement on their exposed bits and cultural practices – that is,

the wild shit that went down earlier. Context and reference points – things that only existed in their minds –

shaped their thinking.

‘Civilisation would fall apart if we were to live like this.’

'Yet here we stand naked in front of you. Besides, don’t mistake morality for civility. Doing things

for survival en masse is not a moral issue – it’s a logistical one. Now knowing that our civilisation is robust,

I’ll ask you again – what are the negative consequences of our actions?’

Charles hesitated for a few beats as he looked for the negatives. He wished he had goggles on to see

them as he was met with a flood of cons and couldn't discern one from another and therefore grumbled out a

vague and inarticulate, ‘it’s just wrong.’

Ana took a deep breath. ‘Veil what you will. Now – would you like our help?’

Fernando and Juan watched Charles, willing him with truncated nods. They had anticipated resistance,

reluctance, and recalcitrance but nevertheless a yes. But instead, Charles defied anti-gravity with a firm,

‘no!’

In sync, the brothers drew their lids over their eyes and let out an oh shit of a sigh.

Ana shook her head before shrugging her bare shoulders. ‘So what are you going to do? Stay in the

jungle?’

‘We managed last night. Besides, in three months we’ll be home.’

Kiki scoffed, ‘do you know what crawls in the night?’

‘It couldn’t be worse than what lays in the day.’

Chigano, sharpening his teeth, ‘then good luck in the dark.’

Ana turned to her friends and motioned towards their saucer. As one they rose up the light that they

called an Up Down. The Exiles watched as the dish bobbed above the tree line and glided away.

Still searing from the betrayal, Charles shot a glare at Fernando, Juan, and Isaac and set fire to the

three rodents. ‘What were you thinking?’

Juan, still with blood in his balls, ‘Charles I really think we should have –’

‘No!’

Juan opened his mouth to confess his sins but his big brother took the nails. Fernando nudged Juan

out of the way and offered, ‘I'm sorry Charles. just wanted to speed things up.’

‘Actually it was –’

‘Shut up bro.’

‘Well you shouldn’t have gone over there!’ Charles spat as he spoke. He swiped a glistening blob of

drool from his chin before adding, ‘we’ve got to stick together!’

Fernando dropped his head and nodded like a schoolboy scolded by the headmaster. ‘Sorry Charles.’

His apology was followed by a non-consensual silence. Vocal cords were throttled by throats that

understood that it was best to stay silent, lest the low morale amongst the survivors fall deeper than the

bottomless pit it was already in. Juan found it hard to choke them back, still fuming from the gift that they

had just passed up. Isaac let his shaking head speak for him.

His mother though was never one for decorum. ‘Isaac – it’s nice to see you with a bit of confidence

for once!’

Charles snapped, ‘sorry but you’re not helping.’

‘Neither are you! That offer was better than my two-for-one bingo coupon – and I love bingo!’

‘Excuse me but I’m the leader here.’ With the silence shattered, Charles shoved away the shards and

didn't care if his hands bled. ‘Why did you take off your clothes?’

The three of them looked to each other before Fernando spoke up, ‘we wanted to fit in.’

‘With that? With those savages?’

‘You know, they’re actually quite nice once you get to know them,’ sprayed Isaac, perhaps imbued

by his mother's spirit.

Charles glowered at Isaac. He ran his eyes up and down Isaac’s bread-dough body and stopped at the

sheet wrapped around his waist. ‘Go get your clothes.’

‘Charles, as a scientist you need to see what they’ve got.’

As a guilty reflex, Charles flicked his eyes over to his wife. Caroline swallowed. ‘I’ve seen enough.

Alright listen up everyone.’

The flock shuffled like zombies and made a ring around Charles. He looked at them and knew from

their tired faces that the temptation of mixing with the natives had grown with the hours. Charles huffed as

he thought for a moment. After a few seconds he settled on a line of attack. He decided to hold the herd

together with a reference frame and for that, there was nothing like division. ‘These savages are feral inbred

outlanders. They are the bikies at the clubhouse. They are the hicks that you would shoot if they got

anywhere near your daughters. That’s what they do in the open – in front of children! Imagine what they do

behind closed... whatever it is that they close their saucers with. We wouldn’t have gone anywhere near their

kind at home and we’re not mixing with their kind now.’

Juan rolled his eyes and shook his head. ‘They have flying saucers! They must be good for

something.’

‘It doesn’t make them good. Do you really think we can trust them – especially with our women?

With our sons and daughters? You think they’re not infested with paedophiles?’

Charles stopped for a breath but needed six. His chest rose and slumped like a stone trapdoor. ‘Look,

do you remember where we were yesterday? We were about to die and if we had survived, we would have

been stuck in a swamp. Now look at where we are. We couldn’t go from swimming about in the mud to

walking around up here for no reason. Whoever it was that saved us will be back for us. They wouldn’t have

left us here for nothing.’

Ted stepped up and stood beside Charles. ‘Everything happens for a reason right Charles?’

Charles ground his teeth. He could feel his old friend rubbing it in, although Ted didn’t mean it that

way – for once. ‘Let’s just stick to the plan.’

‘And what is the plan Charles?’ huffed Juan, still ruing the missed opportunity.

‘Same as before.’

Isaac mumbled, ‘I don’t remember any of this in the original plan.’

‘Then you need to read the updated version. They’re coming.’

‘This “they” that you have so much faith in is the same as them.’ Juan pointed across the river for

emphasis and wanted to swim over to prove his point.

But Charles was fixed in his stance. ‘No – they couldn’t be. Now let’s be happy campers. Ted – start

collecting the wood.’

XVIII

A stock-take of extant equipment unearthed not much more than a soggy compass, surprisingly intact

bottles of medicine and a couple of tourniquets. With last night’s sleep on nothing more than the unknown

dark beneath their feet, the Exiles wanted to make this night right. Without a knife between them, they tooled

up with teeth and nails. They scattered like sand on the wind and scoured the surrounding forest for anything

useful. Giant ferns and palms were ripped from their stems. They laid leathery leaves to pad the palms that

would bed the banished. Tropical fruits were twisted from their vines and stockpiled like ammunition at a

zombie outbreak. Life was breathed into dead wood, as armfuls were clutched to weary chests and clunked

onto sprawling heaps.

Charles oversaw the operation. It built from a trickle into an efficient workflow, rendering his role as

an overseer redundant. He joined the other ants and got wood while while calculating probabilities. Despite

deeming Ana an enemy combatant, he trusted that she was truthful about the dangers of the dark. At night,

anything could bite. Last night they were lucky that no creepies crawled or crawlies crept their way, making

it two miracles in one day. Charles thought such luck improbable and directed every pair of hands to ready

piles of branches to be lit as decoys to attract any bloodsuckers away from the camp.

He began a pile at the edge of the clearing. He grated his forehead with his forearm, clearing the

sweat away from his eyes, before wandering into the forest in search of tomorrow night’s fuel. Alone, he

took a moment to himself and was generous enough to allow his body to slump against a tree. He reflected

on the madness of the past two days – the bigger-than-biblical flood, the rescue by alien-tech, and of course

their current location. Memories of the day saturated his thoughts, as if his mind’s eye were held hostage by

a swinging voyeurs. His chest grew heavy with his stomach rising into it. He weaved through the beautiful

natural naked bodies that so repulsed him and zoomed up to Ana. His mind settled on her. Those lips. Those

eyes. That voice. The golden locks. Without realising it, his reliable right hand found its way down to his

crotch. Light was fading and Charles found himself in a dark spot. He wrapped his hand around his dick and

found it harder than it had ever been, like a lump of clay baked in a nuclear-powered kiln. He stopped for a

beat and wondered what the hell he was doing but his body wondered the same thing and told him to keep

going. He pulled away, away from his conscience and toward the dark light. He pictured Ana and Kiki doing

what their compatriots did, which was more extreme than the unwritten lost history of his internet browser. It

brought him to the edge and threw him over it.

He spilled more than a sack’s worth over the dirt in front of him. He panted and like a priest after a

poke with a prostitute, Charles felt he had a foot in hell. He needed a shower to wash off the past 45 seconds.

He put his penis away and straightened up. That’s when he heard, ‘Was that fun?’

The gentle voice knocked the wind out of him. He twisted his neck to his left. In the grey haze of

twilight, he could make out the flesh of a naked body. The last of the day’s light caught the edges of her

blonde hair, giving her an ethereal glow. Confronted with this figure, Charles did what he had to – he ran.

Breathless, rudderless and scared shitless, Charles ran.

As he snapped the fallen branches below him with his panicked strides, thoughts flew by him like

neon billboards. Surely the first layer of night concealed him; no, it couldn’t have – he realised that the sun

was behind the woman and therefore spilled all over him. It then hit him – right in the stomach – who the

blonde must have been. Of all the places I could have gone.

Back home in Falleria, any sex scandal would immediately destroy the professional life of a

politician. Sex itself was a scandal. A by-election was once called when a high-ranking minister was caught

using a government e-mail address to send a picture of his genitals to his own wife. It didn’t help that he’d

included diplomats from four neighbouring trading partners on the list of addressees and that his wife

replied-to-all with a down-the-blouse shot. The public outrage made his position untenable, although the

response behind closed curtains ensured he and his wife were taken care of by the private sector.

Charles feared he would be hung in disgrace. He’d never felt guilt for masturbating before, but this

was a politically charged and hypocritical wank, one that could make a missile crisis look like a lovers’ tiff.

He stumbled his way away from the river and broke into a jog. He scraped through the thick foliage and

broke into the clearing. His stride shortened and slowed as he tried to hide his urgent dash.

‘It’s looking good Charles.’

He snapped his neck to the left and found Ted. Behind Ted’s semi-relieved face were strategically

placed piles of wood, busy bodies bringing bright fruits to a table made of branches driven into the ground

and supporting sturdy ferns, and children testing the comfort of the improvised beds.

Charles swallowed. ‘Of course it is. We’ll be right.’

Ted put a fraternal hand on Charles’s shoulder. ‘It’s nice to know that you’re on my side.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be on your side? What kind of person do you think I am?’

Ted picked up the defensiveness in Charles’s voice. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Of course I am.’

Charles had always believed that whether drawn by man or ruled by God, there was a line between

right and wrong. It may have snaked in some parts and even whipped from side to side; it may have been

faded in forgotten sections and blurred in others, but it was there. Here though, in the naked land that veiled

itself from the rest of the world, there was no line – only wrong. That he had crossed it – again – was

something he had to at least pretend didn’t happen, for the sake of his own survival.

‘What happened on that side was clearly wrong. Unequivocally, self-evidently, undeniably wrong. If

nature wanted us to do... those... things then it would’ve given us evolutionary cues.’

‘Replace “nature” with “God” and we’re not just in the same camp – we’re in the same tent.’

The old friends stood side-by-side, and looked to the horizon, mindful of the onset of sunset.

‘Get ready to light the fires scoutmaster.’

The day left them alone with the night. They readied themselves as well as they could have, given

the circumstances. Charles puffed out his chest, pretended to be the Human that he wanted to be, stuck his

fingers to his lips and whistled the tops off the trees. The Exiles raised their heads and obeyed their master’s

call. Charles watched them come with the cold face of a general, having already acclimatised to the forest

night.

‘Alright listen up everyone. I think we’ve got enough to lie on and enough food to last us through to

morning. Ted – make sure that any fire you light is contained. Fernando, Juan, I need you to take first

watch.’

Fernando nodded with a kind of defeated respect. ‘Will do.’

Juan tongued his teeth before questioning with belligerence, ‘And what are we looking out for

exactly?’

‘You’ll find out when you see it. Ben, you’re on second.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Alright – Libby, Katie... Libby? Katie?’

He paused when he realised his girls were not in front of him. He jerked his head from side-to-side

as he scanned the crowd. ‘Libby! Katie! Have you seen them Caroline?’

‘They said they were getting some more leaves.’

‘There they are,’ said Krystall as she spotted them.

Charles craned his neck and scouted around and found them facing a bush, about 50 metres from the

group.

Caroline called out, ‘Libby! Katie! Come here now!’

‘Girls there’s no time for mucking around!’ Charles thundered, trying to shake the two statues.

‘Libby, Katie – please come here now.’

Charles shook his head, unable to fathom why they would disobey him. He stormed towards the

girls, reminded of the impotence he’d face if word of his one-man tryst got out.

‘What are you girls doing?’

He snatched Katie’s arm and the moment he yanked it and jolted her tiny body was the instant he

realised he had the most obedient, clever and collected daughters in the known universe. He had taught his

daughters that should they ever encounter a snake, it was best to stand completely still and if possible, slowly

back away from it. In this case, with leaves past their ankles, any movement could have caused calamity.

And now, the moment Charles yanked Katie’s arm and jolted her tiny body was the instant he realised that

he had made the biggest mistake of his life – yes, even bigger than the jungle jerk off that was not even an

hour old. As she was pulled backwards, the snake lunged forward and snapped its fangs. It pierced deep into

her chest and knocked her over. Libby screamed louder than Katie but the elder played the hero. She seized it

and squeezed it, forcing it to hiss its anger at her instead. She catapulted it as far as she could and cradled her

baby sister. Charles stood stunned. The crawlies had crept but it was Charles that made them bite.

He bent down and plucked Katie from Libby. Her life – what Charles usually considered to be a

random string of events – was now on the edge of his trembling fingertips. ‘Caroline! Caroline!’

Caroline was already on her way. She found her husband holding their daughter and dropped down

to join them. ‘What happened?’

Charles’s voice quivered as if clocked by his jittering hands. ‘A snake! A snake... I didn’t see it... it

just leapt up and bit her...’ He was no longer thinking. Shock and guilt severed mind from brain. He was all

feeling. Raw, visceral. It consumed him, turning him inside out. He clutched at his stomach, instinctively

trying to stop it from coming out of his mouth.

‘Did you get a good look at it? What kind of snake? Charles!’ Caroline barked, finally getting

Charles’s eyes to drift towards her. ‘What kind of snake?’

‘I don’t know... It all happened so fast.’

‘It was a brown snake,’ said Libby, still with her wits.

‘A brown snake?’

‘Definitely.’

‘I’m okay. It doesn’t even hurt.’ Katie tried to sit up but her head was too heavy. She collapsed onto

her elbows and then sunk her back into Charles’s lap.

Caroline put on her doctor's hat but it didn't supersede her mother's cap. ‘You need to stay as still as

you can.’

By now the rest of the Fallerians had rushed over. Again she tried to sit up but now her head was

heavier. She peeled a shoulder off Charles but it fell back down before it could even get to an inch.

‘Mum I can’t move.’

‘Bring her to a bed,’ ordered Caroline.

Charles hesitated.

‘Dad, bring her to a bed.’

He snapped to and sprang up and rushed her to a bed of leaves and laid her down.

Caroline crouched beside her, ‘you’re going to be okay sweetie. I promise.’ It was then that the

symptoms spiralled.

XVIII

Stars grew in the black sky as the hours passed. Charles knelt beside Katie with his hands full of

head and head full of fault. His stomach ate its way to his chest as he recalled his recoil that made the snake

snap. He darted periodic glances at Katie before shuttering his eyes – he had done enough already. Caroline

tried to play the role of doctor but the mother in her pulled rank. She dabbed Katie’s forehead for no

particular reason. It looked comforting but had a lot less bite than the venom. She clutched Katie’s hand and

put it to her forehead and did her best to not look at Charles, lest she pull her fangs on him.

Katie’s chest barely rose as she sipped the air. Asthma, her old bane, had colluded with her new one.

The other doctors in the group surrounded her but their medicine was as useless as an altar boy on his knees

– praying that is.

Juan’s frustration was like a vice on his head. It crushed his temples and he stormed up to Charles as

his brain throbbed. ‘Take her to Ana.’

Charles snapped, ‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘I’ve seen what they have over there!’

Libby watched her father argue with reason as her little sister slipped in and out of worlds. She

pushed off the ground and marched to Charles, as Juan stomped off in the other direction.

‘Dad he’s right. We need to take her to them. They have saucers – they’d definitely have medicine.’

‘I said I know what I’m doing!’

Juan scurried like a hunchback. The shy moon and extroverted teaks that towered like alpha males at

a urinal smuggled him across the river. Juan then slowed his run to a walk, having expected the freakiness to

rise at nightfall. But the gully was empty. He pushed on and stumbled towards the path to the village in the

sky.

He remembered that theirs was the southern most saucer and ran for the faint green beam and stood

under it. He threw his head back and held out his arms as he felt the ground move away from his feet. For a

moment, weightlessness outweighed his fear and nerves.

Juan touched down on the accommodation chamber floor. He anticipated everything from an all-out

all-in orgy to an elite gerbil training academy. He strained his eyes as he stuck his face further into the room

and found restful souls asleep in near darkness. He treaded around the circle of sleeping pods. His heart

drummed as he peered into each capsule. He passed naked breasts that rose and fell with peaceful breaths.

Some bodies were wrapped around others while some slept alone. He reached Kiki’s nude taut physique and

Juan guessed Ana would be close by. She was nearer than he thought. Pressed against the inside wall of the

capsule was the tall lithe frame that – despite having only met her twice – he could never forget. The body

rolled over and laid a gentle hand with slender fingers on Kiki’s belly. Kiki stroked the back of Ana’s hand

as she smiled in her slumber.

Juan stood over the top of them but was still so far from what he wanted. Shit. What do I do now? He

leaned into the pod and put his face over Ana’s ear. ‘Ana. Ana.’ With his words falling on sleeping ears, he

shook Ana by the shoulders. ‘Ana!’

Ana stirred, then simmered before going off the boil. She sprang up and screamed at the sight of the

foreigner in bizarre clothing standing over her as she slept. Kiki sprang up like a brand new recliner and

roused the rest from their sleep. Steele – a young man that had been involved in the multidimensional forest

tryst – jumped out of his capsule and stood beside Ana’s. ‘You? What are you doing here?’

Juan took a step back and put his hands in the air. ‘I come in peace.’

Ana wiped her eyes and brought Juan into focus. ‘Juan? What do you want at this unnatural hour?’

‘A girl’s been bitten by a snake.’

‘Is she dead?’

‘No! What an awful thing to say!’

‘No it’s quite pertinent actually.’

‘Ana we need your help. Do you have any anti-venom?’

‘Any what?’

‘Anti-venom. Just give me a vial or whatever it comes in and I’ll do the rest.’

Kiki threw her hands on her hips and tsked, ‘didn’t we tell you that it was dangerous?’

Chigano nodded and added, ‘you’re lucky the girl didn’t get eaten by an anaconda.’

‘This isn’t helping,’ Juan said calmly. ‘She’s dying. Can you help her?’

Ana yawned and rolled her eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘Great, give me the anti-venom – we have no time to waste.’

‘We’ll have to come with you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you can’t carry the machine.’

‘Machine? Don’t you mean medicine?’

Kiki sighed. ‘What are you, a caveman?’

XIX

While Juan was on his clandestine mission, Libby was off on her own.

‘Libby can you please get some water?’

Libby stomped off to fulfil her mother’s request. After plunging a dirty rag into a pit of water, Libby

paused. Despite her lack of medical training she knew it was a futile mission. She knew that she needed to

convince her father to cross to the other side but couldn’t think of any words that could talk him into seeking

help from a potentially paedophilic sex cult that may want something in return while their own noble

saviours may be back at any moment. In a few seconds Libby thought and thought. She made her choice –

she dropped the rag.

Juan’s plot was Charles-proof. The Exiles didn’t know one saucer from another and by the time the

benign beams would have snatched them from the ground, it would be too late to undo the deception.

Charles would have to accept the treatment, Katie would be saved and perhaps they’d have a better place to

lay their heads. It was a conservative and sensible stratagem – but he should have shared it with Libby, who

should have shared hers with Charles.

Both Libby and Juan should have known better. Charles wasn’t an extremist and wouldn’t let his

daughter die. A heady mix of faith and fear kept him from going to the other side. But he did set a deadline

for his act of brinkmanship and with an hour almost up, he was about ready to concede and risk exposing

himself, after having exposed himself. He scooped Katie into his arms and stood. He stared at the moon that

hid behind heavy clouds and hoped it would light the way.

This was about the same time Juan was rousing the nudes. It was also the same moment that Libby

was up to part Z of her plan B. She crouched down to be sure and scampered towards the most distant flame

like a rat to a scrapheap. The emanating light was littered with tiny winged bugs, grateful for the decoy, as

was Libby. The burning wood sped up the sweat that would have bored out on its own accord and the pine-

like fumes of the plumes drew tears that would have done the same. She flashed her nervous eyes from side-

to-side and all around, took a lungful of breath and bugs and... committed...

She ignored her pounding heart and followed the one that bled for her sister. She wiped her eyes

before kicking away an arc of stones from the ring that contained the fire. She waited for it to spread but the

tamed flames stayed in captivity. The little fire starter then reminded them of their wild origins and coaxed

them out with leaves and twigs. The building breeze blew the cage wide open and the monster leapt out.

Libby ran back.

‘Have you got the water?’

‘Oh, sorry mum, I forgot.’

‘Then what have you been doing this whole time?’

‘I was –’

‘Shit!’ Isaac’s black face glowed orange as he pointed. The blaze crackled, erupted, and moved like a

wave. The huddled masses turned and felt the heat. The air coagulated with charcoal, sparking coughs and

tears. The flames ate up trees and burnt the black sky. And it was coming right for them.

The Exiles, faced with fire, were frozen.

Krystall, panicked, ‘what do we do?’

Isaac squealed, ‘what do you think?’

He fought his fears and found his reflexes. He grabbed his mother Faye and rushed to the ford. Libby

latched onto her father’s arm, armed with an irrefutable argument. ‘Dad we need to go.’

Fernando, who had already been watching Charles, turned his eyes to Libby. They widened with the

soaring flames as he caught sight of her calculating face, illuminated by the inferno. She pointed and

gesticulated as she redundantly implored her father. She couldn’t have... Forced out by flood and now by

fire, he sprinted back to help his people with their latest flight. But when he realised his brother wasn’t

amongst them, he began to panic.

The burning bush roared and absolved Charles of any wrong doing. Part of him was relieved that the

decision to cross the river wasn’t his and he could not be held to account should it turn out badly. He ran for

the ford with the rest of the herd.

Following Isaac’s lead, they crossed the river. Libby yelled over the top of the roaring flames, ‘we

need to keep going. The fire could jump the water.’ Fernando noted her coolness in the midst of the fire. His

logical mind agreed it was wise to move but his heavy heart sensed a gambit. He kept a suspicious eye on her

as the group pushed on, into the floating village as the wildfire lit its way to the river. Alexandra, still finding

time for awe, ‘this is better than a unicorn.’

They were dragged further into the pages of make-believe when three saucers darted out and broke

formation. They zoomed towards the river and in their urgency ignored inertia with their sudden stop. They

sucked the stream with their tractor beams then reversed the direction of the force and fired the water at the

inferno. The heat-resistant properties of the flying saucers allowed them to straddle the flames as they fought

them, making it a simple ground-and-pound victory for the discs. Libby’s heart continued to pound but relief

spread mercy through her nerves. It worked.

XX

The smoke that rose from the ashes wafted the Exiles’ way across the river. It set off another

clamour of coughs as well as wells of tears. Libby still had the vision to see through it all and, like her father,

looked for salvation in the sky above.

A saucer sought them out. Libby stumbled through the haze, fell underneath it and looked up at it

like a beggar with an empty bowl. It was charitable. It lent a beam, raised her up and with its infrared eyes,

searched out the others before lifting them to safety.

The Fallerians landed inside, blackened by the hard night. Nudes surrounded them with cynical eyes.

Their crossed arms locked tight across their chests and sealed away their helping hands.

‘Juan! I was worried when I didn’t see you out there,’ coughed a relieved Fernando.

‘Yeah... I felt the same about you.’

Ana, with her hands stuck to her hips, ‘what happened? How did the fire start?’

Safety-first Ted teetered before finding Fernando’s shoulder. I’m sure I checked them all. I always

check them all.

‘Well? How did it start?’

Ted stammered, ‘it... was an accident.’ He plopped onto the ground, heaving, as he tried to recall his

actions. He replayed the night and saw rings of stones around his fires. I did check them all... didn’t I?

Fernando watched Libby as she told her tells. She swallowed, scratched and shook as she tried to

bluff her way through with silence. But Fernando could read her hand.

Ana looked at the limp child in Charles’s arms. ‘I guess she’s the one with the snake bite.’

Charles furrowed his brow, ‘how did you know there was a snake bite?’

Juan stepped forward. ‘Just hand her over! They can help – probably.’

Charles, still in a hazy daze, couldn’t argue. He stood in a waking coma as Steele snatched Katie and

ran her to a large white capsule with an open lid where Kiki was waiting. He laid Katie down and Kiki

slammed the lid shut. The machine whirred as lights blinked, pulsed, flashed, and flickered while on another

display, waveforms wavered and diagrams of anatomies were checked for incongruities.

Steele watched with the keenest of peepers as the diagrammatic bodies melded into one another. Kiki

had her calm hands on two dials and calibrated with care. ‘You have to remember not to rush.’

Steele nodded with the respect an apprentice gives to his master. The precision of the

instrumentation required four eyes and a sixth sense but they just had to do with the five they had. Although

the displays outputted the pertinent parameters, there was an art to healing the sick that could only be

mastered through absolute concentration. As such, they kept their heads down and eyes on the monitor even

though Caroline had rushed over and repeatedly asked them, ‘what are you doing with my daughter?’ to

which they would have replied, ‘saving her life. Now shut up so I don’t kill her instead.’

After a minute of tuning and monk-like focus, Kiki breathed, ‘oh shit.’

Steele turned to her and asked, ‘what is it?’

‘She’s going.’

Caroline, already in the pits of panic, broke through to another layer of crust. She stuck her face in

front of Kiki’s and said, ‘going?’

Charles foundered his way over to be of no assistance. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Will someone please tell us what is happening?’

Kiki raised her voice. ‘Shut up lady!’

‘Someone tell us what is going on? How did you know she had a snake bite?’

Steele backed up his master. ‘You need to be quiet.’

Lights went red as the display went black and Kiki went white. She mouthed inaudible obscenities as

Caroline’s growls grew greater. Kiki spun the dials with wild elbows, oblivious to the Fallerians that had

gathered around her.

Jackie held her Kim tight, feeling lucky that she still had one. Charles went pale, with guilt and grief

draining him of colour. And Libby watched on as her bushfire flared into backfire. Then came the beep. Its

pitch slit eardrums as it rang out from the capsule.

‘Open that damn capsule!’ Caroline stretched her skin with her gaping mouth as she screamed over

the sound with an urgency that whipped Kiki into irrational action. Kiki worked the knobs harder and faster,

but no matter which way she twisted them, she was always going against the clock that turned only one way.

‘I can’t save her. She has to go.’ Kiki mashed a glowing green button with a hammer-fist.

Steele asked his master, ‘has she gone?’

‘Yes.’

Caroline yelled, ‘open it!’ Caroline pounded the capsule. The beep persisted. Kiki slammed her hand

on a latch and popped open the hydraulic lid – Katie was gone.

XXI

The three remaining Hawkings huffed beside the open capsule. It was worse than they had expected.

Caroline, with fear and panic smeared on her face, ‘what did you do to her?’

‘She’s gone to a better place.’

Charles huffed, ‘where?’ Katie was indeed gone – the capsule was empty.

‘To a purpose-built medical facility. I did everything I could to save her. But there are hands more

skilled than mine.’

Charles shook his head ‘I don’t believe you.’

Kiki shook hers in return. ‘It doesn’t matter what you believe.’

Charles patted his hands around the interior of the capsule and stuck in his head, looking for a

trapdoor. He turned to Kiki’s not-so-lovely assistant with a cold stare tempered by fire and felt like sawing

him in half.

‘You killed her didn’t you?’

Steele replied, ‘no – the snake did.’

‘She’s dead?’

‘Of course. That’s why we sent her off.’

‘You couldn’t have!’

‘Why not?’ replied Kiki, curiously.

‘Because it’s impossible.’

‘Clearly not.’

‘This is just some sick magic trick.’

‘Science is magic Charles and if your bag doesn’t have these tricks then you need to check it for

holes.’ A quick succession of beeps rang out from the open capsule. ‘And the witches are done with her.’

Kiki wrapped her fingers around the lid and slammed it shut. Charles slipped his head out of the way just in

time.

Caroline, ashen faced, asked, ‘what did they do with her?’

‘We’ll know in seven seconds.’

Praying eyes watched as the machine lit itself back into action. Red lights came to life. Green ones

were even livelier. Hearts hammered as the seconds counted down. In five, four, three, two, one, they would

either open a capsule or a casket.

Kiki gestured to the latch and turned to Caroline. ‘She’s your daughter.’

Caroline flowed on from Kiki’s words and whacked the latch without hesitation. The lid rose.

Charles, Caroline, Libby, Kiki and Steele surrounded the capsule and hung their heads over it as their hearts

threatened to explode. The lid peeled away – she was back. Her body lay still with her eyes closed. Her feet

flopped outwards. Her index finger and corresponding thumb touched on each of her hands as her arms were

outstretched on each side of her body.

Charles leaned closer. ‘Katie can you hear me?’

Caroline snatched Katie’s wrist. She closed her eyes and tuned out of the world as she felt for a

pulse. The beat got Caroline dancing. Her eyebrows jumped with the momentum of her leaping eyelids as

she turned to Charles and Libby. ‘She’s alive!’

Libby, excitedly, ‘she is?’ She grabbed the edge of the capsule and leaned into Katie’s face. Katie’s

lashes fluttered as her eyelids strained. She overcame their heaviness as the light found her eyes.

‘Katie!’

The light was too much. She snapped her eyes shut and winced.

‘Why are the lights so bright?’

‘It’s okay, just rest.’

‘Turn them down.’

‘Pimpim turn down the lights,’ commanded Kiki. The room dimmed. ‘It’s okay now Katie, you can

open your eyes.’

Katie’s lids fluttered before shutting down again. ‘It’s so bright.’

Charles and Caroline looked at each other in confusion, lit by a faint glow.

‘The lights are hardly on,’ said Charles.

Kiki stood at the foot of the capsule and leaned in. ‘What do you remember?’

‘I don’t know.... I felt things.’

Charles interrupted, ‘you were eating bananas earlier in the afternoon. You had five of them,’ added

Charles. In between heightened pulses, Charles refortified the walls where scepticism was king. He dug

moats and manned turrets with a wooden face as he reminded Katie that potassium coupled with carbon

dioxide were just two of the physiological factors that contributed to the occurrence of a near death

experiences. And in this instance, bananas and bush fires were the ingredients that gave Katie a taste of

delusion.

Kiki shouldered Charles and got closer to Katie. ‘Shut up Charles. She’s been to the place between

mind and matter. What did you see when you were dead?’

‘I don’t... I was dead?’

Kiki nodded. ‘Did you have a choice to stay or did you have to come back?’

Charles spat, ‘stop it! You’re putting ideas into her head. All that matters is she’s safe now.’

‘You need to tell us everything – anything – that you remember.’

‘It’s like I was a kite in an electrical storm.’

‘That’s enough you’re scaring her!’ snapped Charles.

‘Your daughter just came back from the dead.’

‘You’re not the only one with machines. We’ve got defibrillators that restart hearts everyday.’

Caroline, employing a more diplomatic tone, ‘thank you for saving her. But we need to be with our

daughter now.’

Ana stepped forward and took Kiki aside. ‘Best we leave it for now.’

‘But Ana this is the best chance I’ve ever had. Her senses are amplified and her mind has grown

dimensions!’

‘There will be more opportunities.’

Kiki threw her hands on her hips and shook her head at the lost chance. Ana rubbed Kiki’s shoulder

before turning to the Hawkings family.

‘I’m glad you made it little one.’

As the Hawkings reunited, Juan thought about the small matter of accommodation. ‘Charles, maybe

now would be a good time for you to re-think their offer,’ he said.

Charles looked at Juan and swallowed, before dropping his eyes to the floor. With the evening’s

events behind them, his hard line stance buckled at the knees. But those same events of tonight hardened the

nudes’ soft touch.

‘After what we’ve seen tonight, I think it’s us that should re-think our offer,’ said Kiki. Steele

nodded in agreement. Juan looked to Ana, with a look that pleaded for clemency.

Ana thought for a few beats. She cast her eyes onto the dangers of darkness before bringing her gaze

back into the saucer and turning it onto the hazards of the unknown. She sighed. ‘You’re both right.’

‘So where does that leave us?’ asked Juan.

‘Up in the air,’ answered Ana. ‘I have a saucer that was built long ago. It is about to be

decommissioned. However it will be adequate for at least another three months. Three months Charles – isn’t

that your magic number?’

Juan nodded. ‘It’s all win Charles.’

‘What about the people that brought us here?’ asked Charles.

‘Like I said, I don’t know who they are but it’s not important,’ responded Ana.

‘Of course it’s important who brought us here. They’re the whole reason we’re here.’

Katie mustered up the strength to sit up in the capsule. ‘Excuse me miss, can snakes get into your

flying saucers?’

‘That’s one of the reasons we’re in the air. We’re safe up here and they’re safe down there.’

‘And it’s ours?’

‘For three months.’

Kiki leaned into Ana’s ear. ‘Are you sure about this? With a bit of wood and flint they burn the place

down, imagine if they had control of one of these.’

‘If they’re still lighting fires, chances are, they won’t realise the power that sits on their fingertips.’

‘And if they learn to tap it?’

‘Then they’ll have the wisdom to know what to do with it – that’s the nature of it.’

‘I’m not so sure.’

‘Neither am I.’

A ready-made camp and a way back home. Juan was right – this was the most comprehensive win-

win situation since the networking conference where raisins were seated next to sliced bread. Charles’s plan,

albeit with a few genetic modifications, could finally bear fruit.

XXII

Ana led them up the Up Down – the levitation field that elevated them to their home out of this

world. The accommodation quarters were similar to Ana’s. The walls of the chamber were set black, keeping

in sync with the night. There was a ladder near the middle of the room (it was an older model after all) that

led up to the cockpit. Sleeping pods were strewn throughout the circular lodgings in no particular

configuration.

The Exiles fanned out, shuffling their weary legs across the white floor. They had seen enough

action in one day to fill a work of fiction and gravitated towards the beds that would end this chapter.

They peered into the pods and looked to each other; unsure whether they’d be safe to sleep in. Isaac

knocked on one to check if it was structurally sound. The dull tap barely bounced back, reassuring him that

the sleeping capsule could handle his rotund figure.

Jackie was more concerned about hygiene. What the nudes did in public had her suspecting

inconceivable shenanigans must have gone on in these beds. She ran her fingers along the inside of one to

scrape for dirt but couldn’t get her righteous nails past the cleanliness.

Ana pointed to a panel by a window. ‘The washrooms are through there. Please make your beds as

you like to lie in them.’

Juan bowed his head. ‘Thank you Ana, for everything.’

‘You’re welcome. I’m sure you can take care of yourselves from here. Good night.’

As Ana turned for the Up Down, Kiki shot up with a naked young man and lady.

‘Charles – I’ve got some people that want to say hello. This is Mooki and this is Witke.’

Mooki shrugged. ‘We didn’t really want to say hello. She made us come up here.’

Witke scanned the foreign faces. ‘So who’s Charles?’

Charles flicked his head up toward the naked young man with the snarl.

‘We’re your saviours.’

‘What?’

‘You still got mud in your ears? I said we saved you.’

‘You two?’

‘You need to give this guy a medical. I think he may have landed on his head when we dropped them

off.’

‘Why did you save us?’

Mooki looked at the floor sheepishly. ‘This is a bit embarrassing but we were actually lost and by

lost I mean drunk. Probably not a good time to take a saucer for a spin. Anyway, we happened to see you and

thought you could use some help.’

Witke added, ‘and sorry to just dump you like that. We were pretty loaded by that point and weren’t

in the mood to explain anything.’

Mooki nooded ‘Some are mean drunks. Some are ugly drunks. We’re just lazy drunks.’

‘So now you know the hows and whys...’

Kiki looked at Charles smugly. ‘Happy?’

‘Is this some kind of a set up?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘That’s the stupidest story I’ve ever heard. If you wanted to trick us into whatever it is you’re trying

to trick us into, the least you could’ve done is come up with something believable.’

‘You don’t believe us?’

‘Of course not!’

Mooki began to back away toward the Up Down. ‘Yeah look, whatever. We’ve got a girl waiting for

us.’

Witke and Mooki somersaulted down the Up Down and hollered like a cowboy and cowgirl at a barn

dance, all the way to the forest floor.

‘You set this up didn’t you Ana?’

‘Set it up?’

‘A minute later and we would have been one with the mud. You’re telling me that two yahoos just

happened to glide by in a flying saucer and pluck us to safety?’

‘That’s what they told us,’ said Kiki. ‘Just take the saucer. We need our rest.’ She took Ana’s hand.

They turned their naked bodies toward the Up Down when Caroline surged forward.

‘What was that machine?’

Kiki replied, ‘you know, after meeting you, I think it’s best we keep those things to ourselves. Now

try not to get yourselves killed. Good night.’

‘Wait – how does this ship work?’ asked Fernando.

‘Any questions about this ship, just ask Pimpim.’

‘Who’s Pimpim?’

But before the question mark could even curl, the two naked ladies had left for the wild.

Charles shook his head. ‘I’ve seen septic tanks with less crap than that!’

‘So you don’t believe them?’ asked Fernando.s

‘Of course not! Do you?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know what to believe anymore.’

Charles surveyed the accommodation quarters where more than half of the faces had fallen. ‘You

people believe them?’

‘So what if it is true?’ asked Isaac.

‘It can’t be.’

‘Why not? It makes sense when you think about it.’

‘Then you’re thinking wrong. Come on, we’re here for no reason? Our survival is a random event?

How can any of you believe that?’

‘So they’re lying?’ goaded Juan.

‘Yes.’

‘So why are we here Charles?’ Isaac pinned his eyes on Charles as he waited for his answer. Charles

swallowed as he thought. The Exiles’ dropped heads turned up the silence.

‘Look, listen up everyone. I know it’s late and you all want to lay your heads. But I’ve got one last

thing to say before lights out. I don’t know why we’re here, how we got here or what we’re meant to do here,

but there is no way in the permutations of probability that this was an accident. Now the plan was to make

camp, wait for the waters to recede and then go home. We’re 66.6 repeater percent of the way there. And I

promise that we will return home.’

Jackie, clutching Kim tight, ‘we’re already in hell and home’s under high water so that’s one heck of

a promise.’

‘Trust me – I’m a scientist. I’ve got a whole book of forecasts that say we’ll have our home back.

Three months in the wilderness. And then home.’

The refugees turned to each other. In collective thought, they contemplated three months walking

with savages. In 48 hours they had found themselves in a world without meaning, a kingdom with no

boundaries, a place without pants. Now they were left to find themselves again.

Jackie huffed, ‘so how are we supposed to live alongside them? Gosh – how are we supposed to

live?’

‘By sticking together. By having each other’s backs, just as we agreed when we set out in the first

place.’ Charles paused for effect before adding, ‘by being Fallerians. If we hold onto what makes us who we

are, we will never lose sight of our homeland.’

Charles beamed an affirming look to back up his words. He met every eye in the crowd and assured

them with a straight and determined face. The mob nodded with patriotic fervour and Charles nodded back.

But before it could fully evolve into a slow-clap moment, Libby shot out, ‘oh my god.’

The Fallerians snapped their heads towards her.

‘What is it?’

‘55!’

‘What?’

‘55! I just did a head count.’

Caroline bobbed her head as she counted. Others looked around and tallied their totals.

Alexandra said, ‘I got 55 too.’

Ben added, ‘same.’

Krystall, with breath shortening, ‘who’s missing?’

Libby may have saved her sister but someone else had died for her sin.