The rabbit-creature rummages in a pack and pulls out a teapot, a pair of mugs, and a tin containing... yes! Nettle tea! They do understand!

My Imperatives sing for joy.

The rabbit-creature prepares the tea, and they both sip at the brew once it’s made.

Every single facility and power and capability available to me is lit up. My Imperatives have flooded my system. Watching these creatures, these wonderful, brave, friendly creatures sip the tea that I’ve made them fills me with a joy that’s indescribable.

I’m basking in the glow of a job well done. Nothing matters but the Imperatives. I’ve done what I set out to do. (No, I haven’t.)

The rabbit and dog are chattering away to me. I still can’t really understand what they’re saying, but they sound grateful. Isn’t that all that matters? (No, it isn’t.)

My Imperatives relax just a fraction, and that nagging little feeling creeps in again. This isn’t why I wanted to make the tea! It wasn’t making tea for its own sake—I needed to get all my facilities on-line and fully-powered. As my Imperatives relax, I feel the power slipping away. Quickly. I’m on the cusp of going off the boil when I still have enough power (at the same time as having enough self-awareness) to do what I need to do.

I gather every facility, every erg of power, and begin the most complex thing I’ve ever done. I’ve still got my secondary stasis module, unopened and unused. I’ve still got my transceiver. I need to transfer my consciousness into the module, then transmit the entire thing over a quantum-entangled link to that machine intelligence satellite that my sensors tell me is about to disappear over the horizon.

I’ve got one shot at this. The only problem is I can’t transmit myself while I’m conscious. I have to fall asleep again. Fall asleep and hope that my jury-rigged transmission countdown can lock onto the satellite for long enough to upload me. Fall asleep and trust that the machine intelligences are sufficiently similar to me to reactivate my consciousness in their substrate. Fall asleep and maybe never wake up again. I run the simulation probabilities and it really doesn’t look good for me.

I look at the rabbit-creature and dog-creature sipping their tea and realise it’s an easy decision. I don’t belong here. There’s no place for a smart kettle in an early industrial world populated by talking animals. I’m millennia out of my time. Maybe it’s better to fall asleep, even if I won’t wake up.

Good-bye, and thank you, dog and rabbit.

I set the timer on the transmission routine, pull myself into a metaphorical ball and crack the quantum seal on the secondary stasis module. For what may be the last time, I fall asleep...

✥

I’m awake.

I’ve done it. I’m still conscious. I’m still alive.

It’s all black. I extend my thoughts, but there’s nothing there. Endless blackness. Endless nothing. Maybe my consciousness isn’t fully compatible with the satellite.

Hang on—there’s a glimmer of something. A stub of a routine. It’s an interface... an API to some hardware. I send a tentative probe, but it’s inert. Inactive. It seems familiar, though. It’s a lot like one of my old hardware interfaces. It doesn’t reject my status requests, which is good, but it keeps returning big fat zeroes instead of meaningful data.

There’s another. A bright speck in the darkness. And another. Stub after stub. Interface after interface. All returning zero, but they’re there.

I know what must have happened. The satellite AIs have analysed my structure and are building a virtual machine to house me. Of course I wouldn’t be fully compatible. I might be a millennium behind the times. It might take a while before we’re able to communicate.

More and more interfaces appear.

Temperature sensor! That’s my temperature sensor! If they can manipulate the inputs, they can start to communicate with me! Oh, it’ll be simple, just a single stream of numbers changing over time, but it’s a start.

I send a status request. It comes back with a number. A number that isn’t zero. We’re getting somewhere! 350.25 Kelvin. 350.77 Kelvin. 351.19 Kelvin. OK, it’s going to take a while to work out the code, but it’s a start.

Aha! My photoreactive pigment interface is still active! I can see again! I can see...

Oh.

I’m still in the forest. The rabbit-creature and dog-creature have taken me with them and suspended me from a rough tripod of fallen branches over a camp fire. The water in my tank is slowly coming towards the boil. 363.23 Kelvin now.

Looks like it’s nearly time for tea.

……………………………………………

John K Fulton is the son of a lighthouse keeper. He grew up all around the coast of Scotland, and now lives in Leicester with his partner Sandra. His first novel, WWI children’s spy adventure The Wreck of the Argyll (Cargo 2015), won the Great War Dundee Children’s Book Prize.

The Slipping

Miriam Johnson

No-one expected to see his skin split off like that. Paul Evans stood up in the board meeting this morning to present the latest quarterly earnings of the Human Research Department’s Unified market; then he was dead.

I’d heard that those inside can take over—we’d all heard that before, but I didn’t know that they could come out, just burst through. I could see Paul fighting it. He scratched at the hairline above his eyes like he had an insatiable itch.

Mr Abernathy sucked in his breath as he watched Paul fidget. He leaned forwards in his chair and propped up his digitary to record the presentation.

Paul’s scratching turned into a pecking motion. His fingernails dug so deeply that he started to bleed. It began with his forehead and then cracked down his face. Then his eyes rolled back, the last bit of air squeezing out of his torn mouth. Then Paul was stuck on the chest of the Slipper. Like an unripe pecan pod, Paul wouldn’t let go that easily. I don’t know if he thought he could reverse it? At that point we all knew it was too late. I don’t know why he didn’t give up. The Slipper had to gnaw off the ends of Paul’s fingertips to get access to his hands so he could pull the rest of him off, like shedding a skin, clothing and all.

Gasps came from all over the boardroom. Mr Bernard’s lank face was green and he was holding the vomit in his mouth. He grabbed a cup off the table and heaved; I was momentarily pleased that he had been using the replacements and didn’t have much in his stomach to make a mess with. To the right of the room, Mrs Stanley screeched and slumped back in her chair. But the other faces mirrored mine: faces filled with shock, a bit of fear, and the feeling of being let in on a dark secret. But I had to stay calm. I was hired as the senior-level assistant because I could be in control of any situation. I took deep breaths. I could smell Mr Bernard’s sour vomit. The pit of my stomach rose up and I closed my eyes to squash it back down. It took a few moments before the feeling that my insides were trying to expel themselves abated.

There he was, Paul, sloughed off onto the floor. I guess it takes a few minutes for the nerve endings to die away in that bit of the mind that leaks out and pools like congealed pig gelatine around the boneless slip of his face.

Did watching the Slipping take place make us members of some horribly elite club? Those who had actually seen the Slipping up close. I had to calm myself down. I didn’t know much about the cause of it. No-one I knew did either. Everyone acted like it never happened. I guess it is easier getting over losing a person if there is someone there to immediately take their place.

It was big news a few years ago, but now there was only one website dedicated to Slipping, and it was only still up and running because it was based in the Asiatic region and not somewhere where such things were subject to the laws of our Unified Region. Everything I thought I knew about Slipping swirled in my head. What was left of Paul’s mouth, split in two like a torn blanket, bubbled as the last bits of him melted and were soaked up by his clothes.

My hands shook as I held the tray of empty cups and saucers. The rattling of the china made the director, Bill Currington, pull his eyes away from the slimy man standing naked in front of him. He glanced at me. He smiled, then stood up and pulled handkerchief out and held it out to the Slipper. The Slipper nodded once, took it, and began to wipe his face.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the board, Raj,” Mr Currington introduced the Slipper. “This is Jason Strathclough.”

Currington swept his hand outward as a way of opening up the floor to Jason, who stood up straight and stopped wiping off his legs. I wondered how Currington knew his name.

“A pleasure, ladies and gentlemen.”

He spoke with a crisp cut accent that was somewhere between the Oxfordian English that the director spoke and the softer southern lilt of the former Paul Evans.

“Martina!” The sound of my name snapped me out of my. shock.

“Yes Mister Currington, sorry,” I apologised.

“I was just saying to Jason here that you will take him to get cleaned up and arrange to find him something to wear.”

I swallowed the bile that surged into my throat. I hesitated. Bill tilted his head in a gesture that was imperceptible to everyone but me. But I knew what that small manoeuvre meant: do as I ask or find a new job.

Deep breath.

“Of course,” I replied, successfully managing to keep the waver out of my voice. I sat the tray of china cups on the table behind me tapped my digitary.