Laikanist Times

by

Dylan Malik Orchard

Laikanist Times

© 2014 Dylan Malik Orchard

All rights are reserved to the author. No part of this ebook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Dedicated to Kathleen 'Daish' Winkley

A life well lived is never ended.

EDDY THE SLOTH

Eddy the Sloth plucked another leaf from the tree he’d spent the last three days hanging from and slowly but purposefully started chewing it. This wasn’t the best tree he’d ever hung around in, nor was it the worst. Although if it didn’t hold one particular attraction he’d long ago have started the slow process of moving on to leafier pastures. But it did have at least one thing to hold his interest and Eddy had a lot of time for things which could hold his interest.

On the ground below his lofty perch there was a jumble of metal poles, all connected in a way that suggested someone had meant for them to be there. Sloths didn’t have much time for things like that, for the most part, but Eddy wasn’t like most of his kind. He was a deep thinker and things which looked like they ought to be there always made him wonder why they ought to be there. Slowly craning his head to look at the mess of steel from a new angle he noticed that, if you looked at it right and squinted a little bit, you could kind of make out the image of a dog amidst the confusion of poles. Interesting, thought Eddy. Very interesting.

Eddy thought about that pile of metal for a long time, because sloths are always willing to spare the time when they want to. In the end he concluded that it was quite strange but, ultimately, just one of those things. He found another tree to hang around in and although he occasionally thought about what he’d seen there were, he decided, other interesting things to think about too.

CHIMPS

In another time and another place there was a concrete bunker somewhere in what had once, before a recent bout of continent smashing, been smack bang in the middle of London. Or would have been had it been built then rather than a few million years after the cities destruction. Now though it was area known locally as 'Dog Hill', or rather 'Kinsa Cardon' in the language of the hairless primates. In this bunker there sat three individuals, two female, one male and all bald chimps, that being the only 'sentient' species around at the time. They collectively represented the finest minds their species had to offer and given that their species numbered in the billions that made for no small boast. They'd been convened, at the behest of leaders and trend setters around the world, to discuss and solve the latest in a long, long line of problems to beset the little green planet. Things were, all agreed, going rather tits up.

The first indicators of trouble had been the ghosts, or they would have been had the bald chimps had any concept of a life after death. Something which they'd smartly avoided in their progress from stick poking primitives to metropolitan and urbane tool users. Without the frame of reference though the appearance of translucent figures in the night had been a real head scratcher. The creatures that appeared weren't normal, at least not to them. Some had a little hair on their heads, others were covered in it, some were recognisable as an evolved form of dog, others simply looked like very, very ugly bald chimps with too much around the leg area and they all shared the apparent habit of turning up randomly arout the place and frightening children and the weak of heart. Even worse was the fact that you couldn't throw shit at them, usually a sure fire way to garner a reaction from friend or foe in the social world of the bald chimps. They never spoke, in fact they didn't really seem to do anything beyond wandering around and poking randomly at the air and were it not for the sheer number of creatures which suddenly started appearing and disappearing the whole affair could well have been glossed over with some creative ignoring. But there were millions of them and they were rapidly getting on the nerves of all of Earth's species, sentient or not. Plus the dog like ones kept terrifying their more domesticated and less intellectual relations who largely found their homes keeping an eye on the bald chimps’ property and barking for the shit-slingers should anything go wrong.

And so the intelligentsia were gathered, initially en masse with every half educated scientist, doctor, professor, philosopher and artist around feeling the need to speculate wildly about things which they plainly had no idea about. Reports emerged daily from their meetings and were vociferously consumed by the increasingly irritated masses of bald chimps. When the reports started straying into the absurd and blaming everything from chemically corrupted fruit to the flapping of a butterflies wings on a sunny day on a small island for the emergent crisis the populations' patience started to wear thin. When a request was made for a few thousand servants and any and all material wealth available to be put to the service of the gathered intellectuals most folk gave up on the idea and on a night generally ignored by those who survived it set about burning down the convention centres and meeting places of the seemingly piss taking elite. And for a little while everyone felt much the better for it – but the sightings didn't stop. The point was reached where it was barely possible to leave home without running into some hideously misshapen hairy primate doing something ridiculous and often quite unpleasant. Even going to the bathroom became a nerve shattering event, as the risk of a dog-creature emerging from the hole in the floor and poking his ethereal paws at your nether regions grew. This, it was decided, must not stand.

And so the three were brought together. Mass testing was carried out, mostly of dubious providence, and the top three were rather unceremoniously dragged from their beds in the small wee hours, transported across half the world and locked in the concrete bunker in Kinsa Cardon.

Of the three only one felt justified by the outcome of the testing, the male by the name of Raeget who until very recently had been slinging shit at a professional level in the halls of justice. A respectable job and one which earned him no small amount of admiration from those around him. He'd always felt fairly certain that life had better things in store for him than his current position in the order of things though. His being smarter than everyone else seemed like a fairly obvious truism after all. That he knew sod all about the apparitions beyond the fact that one of them had emerged from his stomach at a very unfortunate moment a few weeks back hardly seemed worth mentioning besides, if they were going to start appearing whenever he was enjoying a moment of personal intimacy in the privacy of his own thinking tree then the buggers would deserve anything he could think to throw at them.

A female called Yessa represented the chance scientific portion of the group. She'd avoided being burnt to death along with most of her colleagues by not actually noticing anything was going on and never attending the meetings in the first place. The apparitions had come as quite the surprise to her when she'd finally looked up from her research into the cause and nature of the giant steel frame that'd been found in the desert some 20 years earlier. That none of her friends or family pointed out the sinister visitors is a testimony to how little attention was paid at the time to people who got their kicks thinking about junk which had been buried under thousands of tons of sand for a few millennia. Although her ability to block out the dog creatures and ugly chimps who'd been routinely wandering around her thinking tree surprised even her once they were pointed out by the heavy handed chimps who'd come to collect her in the middle of the night. She'd complained at the time, protesting that she'd never even done the test so how she could have scored higher than the rest of the species was beyond her but no one likes to be told they're wrong. Especially when they've already prepared a snatch team and parachuted into a random academics thinking tree. After that it didn't really seem worth mentioning given how little attention everyone seemed to pay to her; besides, the new... creatures really were quite interesting and scrap metal in the desert was always going to be scrap metal in the desert – much as she loved it, it really wasn't going to go anywhere.

The third member of the group, the female Gdunk was just glad to be there. After a lifetime of drifting from menial job to menial job in search of something other than mild abuse and derision for her apparently grotesque and certainly surprising facial hair the enforced visit to the bunker where people kept referring to her as the smartest creature alive was something of a holiday. She didn't care much either way about the apparitions though, their appearance being no more troubling to her than the existence of the real, matter based folk around her who terrified and intimidated her to much the same degree. At least, she thought, the visions couldn't and seemingly wouldn't feel inclined to poke fun at her and by her thinking that put them at the top of the very short list of those she felt comfortable dealing with.

And so, once convened in the top secret bunker which no one seemed particularly willing to explain the purpose of they set to work on the task set before them, only mildly discomfited by the fate of their predecessors and acutely aware that asking for anything beyond a bowl of fruit or a toilet break was probably a bad idea given how things had gone last time.

“Has anyone tried communicating with them?” asked Yessa, woefully behind on current events.

“Forget communicating, why don't we try killing them? They're here so they must be alive right?” replied Raeget, to two pairs of rolling eyes from his colleagues.

“If you can't touch them how can you kill them? Why would you kill them anyway? What harm are they doing us?” Gdunk nodded meekly at Yessa's comment.

“I quite like them really, the dog ones always look like they're smiling.”

“The dog ones gave my Sabirus* (*Rottweiler) a heart attack, call that harmless? One of the buggers appeared in her food bowl and started waving its paws about like a lunatic, all I could do not to panic myself – but I held it together, had my poking stick with me, I'm always prepared like that.” said Raeget.

“I'm sure it didn't mean to hurt your pet, the poor things don't even seem to know they're here most of the time. I saw one of the ugly ones with the hair on top crying the other day; appeared right next to me at work and started sobbing – they're as scared of us as we are of them.”

An immediate snort of derision from Raeget sent Gdunk back into timid silence. Yessa, still eye rolling like a pro leaned forward in a manner universally recognised as meaning business.

“We can't kill them because they're not really there, not physically anyway and if they don't know they're here then they can't be upset about being here can they? What we need to do is find out what happened to make them appear, then we can send them back to wherever they came from.”

“Our Ancient over in Questionable Valley once told me that his Ancient had once been told about the time they found a dog sealed in a metal box with windows. They said it fell from up there... Maybe these dog creatures come from the same place?”

The contribution came from Gdunk but the myth was an old one, both Yessa and Raeget offered sceptical looks at each other, children's stories not exactly being in fitting with intellectual discourse.

“There was no dog in a metal box, dogs can't make metal, or boxes for that matter and I'm fairly certain they're no good at windows either. Mind you my Sabirus did once chew through the wire fence at the bottom of my field.”

“Sorry Gdunk, Raeget's right – we've all heard the dog in a box story, it's not true, our dogs are far too stupid to do anything like that and anyway, no one ever mentioned dog creatures like this did they? My Ancient told me the same story but the dog always had four legs and a waggly tail, these creatures have two legs and I've never once seen their tails wag.”

“Maybe our dogs are the babies of the dog creatures and they've come back to collect them? Maybe they come from up there” Gdunk helpfully pointed towards the ceiling and, by default, the sky by means of a visual aid “that'd explain the metal box and the way they look different.”

“I've had lots of dogs, don't remember any of them ever growing up to walk on two legs and start appearing in their food bowl. Seems like something I'd have remembered.”

“They could be the ancestors of our dogs, after all we evolved from something didn't we?” said Yessa.

“Things evolve forwards, not backwards and they certainly don't start appearing randomly and being see through. They could come from space though, that'd make sense.”

Raeget ignored Gdunk's offended look and pretended to himself that he hadn't just repeated what she'd said. As was his self-granted right when dealing with such a hairy and unpleasant looking creature.

“Aliens” he continued “that makes sense, nothing at all to do with our dogs, and the ugly ones are clearly nothing to do with anything on this planet. Certainly never seen one of them in a metal box, with or without windows.”

Gdunk looked defeated; Yessa stared thoughtfully at the table. For a species who had mastered the wonders of the speedboat, blast mining and cosmetic surgery, she thought, they didn't amount to all that much. Still, aliens worked as a solution, as well as anything which immediately sprang to mind at least. Scientific investigation was never a precise art in her experience and guesswork played a big role. It had even earned her great acclaim for her completely random speculations on the possibility of the vast metal frame lost in the desert actually being the skeleton of a giant automata which had wrought devastation and destruction on an ancient civilization known as the 'Appalachians'. It was a blind guess of course but then as now the main thing was that people were willing to believe it, or at least prefer it to complete ignorance.

They agreed to take a break. Despite only having spent ten minutes or so in discussion it was still felt that mental exertion amongst the smartest of the smart was measured less by effort and more by answers, of which they now had at least one which wasn't bad compared to the tally of those previously set to the task.

KAISABOSEN

Outside and far away another illustrious group was finishing up their own meeting. They were congregated in an ancient oak, the thinking tree of one Kaisabosen, a bald chimp so illustrious in his own mind as to need no introduction. This had always confused his acolytes seeing as they had absolutely no idea who he was but the lure of free food and a complimentary glass of something particularly intoxicating on the posters he'd scattered around the sleeping trees had been more than enough to attract their attention.

Kaisabosen had expected an audience, much as he expected a great many other things in life. Although the fact that his expectations had actually paid off was certainly something of a shock. Last time when he'd tried lecturing his peers from a street corner they'd barely even wasted the effort to sling shit at him, this time the tree was almost full and beyond complaining about the paucity of the buffet they'd been almost reverential towards him. It was a vindication; it proved them all wrong and him right – they, he thought, would most certainly be sorry for all their scoffing and slights now. If only he knew who they were he'd have gleefully rubbed his recent success in their faces but they were always a nebulous concept in his mind so it was an opportunity unfortunately lost.

The selling point for his rant this time had been a dog. Last time he'd tried a fish but that hadn't really caught on. It was hard being a trail-blazer and Kaisabosen was most certainly that. He still couldn't quite get it right but the seed of an idea was there – he had pamphlets and everything – the Great Salmon he'd called it last time. A being so much better than everyone that it was always right, so old that it was there at the dawn of time, so beautiful that your eyes would melt to look at it and Kaisabosen was the only one who knew the truth of it all. This time though he had proof, this time he'd really hit on something and Laika was going to be a smashing success, he just knew it. It all made sense after all, the dog creatures appearing, the old legend about the metal box with windows, his finding The Book, this was science in action now. There was so much guesswork involved that even the three smug, sloth loving bastards who'd been chosen as the smartest in the world wouldn't be able to argue with it.

The Book had been the real proving point. He'd found it in a hole in a cave near a sleeping tree on Kinsa Cardon. The language was an ancient one no doubt, he could prove that by not being able to understand a word of it. It didn't even resemble the usual symbols and hieroglyphs of the bald chimps and making no sense always meant something was ancient – it could even be from the Appalachians, on whom he'd read an essay by one of the arrogant 'geniuses' who were supposed to be doing the thinking for a whole species. Of course not being able to understand it he couldn't really say what The Book contained but that was a minor point, there could be no doubt that it all backed up his version of events and Laika was undoubtedly some sort of super being, even if he'd had to make Her up himself.

The story he'd given his newly gathered followers told of Laika, the first dog, who'd been created by the ancient bald chimp inhabitants of somewhere, perhaps the Appalachians. Or the Order of the Dogwood, a secret legion gathered to protect chimp kind from the apparitions and who somehow managed to connect very recent events with a history reaching back into the dark echoey abyss of time. According to a female who'd told him all about it down at the intoxication tree at least. Either way these ancients had created Laika by methods unknown and for reasons which were beyond knowing – and then they'd hurled her into space to look after chimps around the globe. She was their perfect being, the culmination of aeons of work and the pinnacle of chimp achievement. At which point the tale grew rather complicated. According to Kaisabosen's re-telling Laika wasn't actually created by the ancient civilization but simply revealed by them, her essential dogginess having existed since the dawn of time. When they'd thought themselves to be creating Her they'd really just been giving her a body, She Herself having been lurking around the darker corners of the universe since the beginning of everything. And that certainly explained all manner of holes in his recounting of events.

The whole metal box thing was a metaphor, he'd said, Laika's physical form had returned to Earth when the utopias of her worshippers had fallen. The metal box with windows was her tomb and now she existed all the time and everywhere just waiting for chimps to reach the dizzying heights of enlightenment again so She could take them all up into space and reveal to them the inner workings of reality. It was a tenuous story to say the least and on first recounting it with the Great Salmon in place of Laika even Kaisabosen with his iron sense of self-righteousness had thought he was pushing his luck a little bit. Science was science though and even if they didn't believe it no one could doubt that there was some fine guessing in there.

Today’s haul of acolytes however had seemed very receptive to the story. The only shit slung had been thrown with what at least seemed like awe and respect and that was enough for Kaisabosen. There were nine of them all told, three females and six males from across the spectrum of bald chimp kind. Admittedly they were mostly focused on the odder end of chimpanity but the truth of Laika reached out to all sorts Kaisabosen supposed, and besides there was certainly something reassuring about having them on board. Tgynda, for example, was perhaps a little bit twitchy and not the sort of chimp you’d want poking around your sleeping tree late at night but by the same token he’d be very reassuring to have poking around the sleeping trees of your enemies. Even if his eyes seemed to be permanently crossed – a common side effect of gorging on the Wakaka fruit, an increasing habit amongst those who preferred their own hallucinations to the alien apparitions that were imposing themselves. They seemed enraptured by the dynamic sciencing of Kaisabosen. Lilit too, the young and slightly awkward female, would make a good addition to the campaign for accepting that Laika was better than chimps and that Kaisabosen was almost as good as Laika. She was pretty and she seemed convinced, on her the Wakaka glaze was almost endearing and there could be little doubt that any shit flung at her would be wholly complimentary. And now it was all just a matter of making sure the rest of the species started believing too, maybe dealing with apparitions and definitely making sure Kaisabosen got the respect he was so obviously due. Simple.

REX

Rex grinned - but then Rex always grinned. It was the same with all Bulldogs, the grin was a genetic thing along with the ever visible tongue and the psychotic attitude towards anyone and everyone that they came across. When they were in the room they were the most feared of all the breeds, when they were out of it they were the most ridiculed and no matter how many times Whippets and Great Danes and Chihuahuas looked over their shoulders before cracking their inappropriate jokes their victims were still fully aware of it. This irritated them immensely, to the point where there were more yearly maulings at the teeth of incensed Bulldogs overhearing a wry witticism than anything else, even first dining rights. Which in years gone by, before The Civilizing, had led to several acts of mass genocide. Quite why the jokes still circulated no one could say and Rex, alone amongst his kin, didn’t actually care.

Constance, half squatting beside him, was shaking with excitement and behind them both a team from across the breed and pedigree barriers stood, eyes glazed over in awe, marvelling at the wonder before them. She was the reason for it all, Rex knew; she’d made the real breakthroughs, she’d done the deep thinking, she’d dragged him back to the work when he’d felt so defeated that he’d disappeared on a booze and ball licking binge. But then he was the Project Alpha and the credit, of which there would be an awful lot, would fall squarely on his shoulders. Mercifully most of the dogs he’d asked had readily agreed that to try and share the glory would, in the long run, just be too much effort when compared to simply taking it all for himself. It was the right thing to do and Rex had always clung to his moral code.

Today was the first day of a new era. Out in the desert Rex’s team had been given free reign to mess about with the fabric of reality, it was the best place for them, according to the Universal Alpha who’d given them the land, the lab and the one way ticket there. Given the trouble they’d had back in civilization the offer had been impossible to refuse, certainly preferable to the lynching that had almost certainly awaited them after that whole débâcle with splitting the atom. It was unfair, Laika herself couldn’t have predicted the results of that one and they had warned the assembled dignitaries to cover their ears but it had all been recriminations and blame after that – at least from those who weren’t busy trying to reattach their limbs with the power of wishful thinking. Even worse was the reaction of the eight millions dogs who'd been living in the suddenly irradiated area. To this day Rex couldn't fathom the reasons behind their sudden adoption of one sleeved leather jackets, Mohicans and S&M gear but the radiation which killed most of them was almost certainly a factor and it was understandable enough that they'd set their hearts on killing the research team. But the Universal Alpha saved the day; apparently the group had given him certain ideas during their experimenting and he seemed convinced that their fiddlings would hold some pay out for him in the not too distant future and so they'd been spirited away to their new home in the middle of nowhere. Rex didn't understand any of it really, mass murder certainly hadn't been in his brief and he'd really expected to do badly out of the whole affair but as Constance had reminded him – he was the future of dog-kind, mistakes were bound to be made in the service of genius. Now though all of the mistakes, not just the explosion one, were balanced out and the future of the species stood before them gently rotating in its vast perma-steel frame.

It was the culmination of a hundred life-times worth of work, the product of every thought, invention and effort made by the thousands who’d come before him and it was bloody impressive at that. Caught between the two fan shaped metal frames a ball of chaotic electric blue light was rotating, lashing occasionally at the cage that held it but stable, still stable after ten minutes in fact – a miracle of quantum fiddling. Without any interference it could provide enough power to automate the entire planet but that was the least impressive of its abilities. This was the invention which would make dogs omnipotent, the technology at work here could just as easily be turned to creating new stars out of nothing as to powering electric can openers and just about the only limits it set were the ones in the minds of its inventors. Even Laika and the Ancients who’d sent her into the stars to touch the heart of the universe would have been impressed, the new breed had finally surpassed their ancestors and claimed the whole of reality as their playground. Rex’s lolling tongue quivered with excitement and next to him Constance was shaking on her haunches, the rest would be in the same state of nervous wonder too and so would everyone else when they found out what had been achieved here. Even the most fanatical of Laikanists would have to give their paws up for this one and they usually held anything more complicated than a lighter to be meddling in matters best left to the Ancients.

Of course there would still be arguments ahead, the Four-Leggers were still clinging on to their ultra-conservative support base, eternally fixated on the idea that dogs with four legs were made to meddle in the fabric of the universe but ones with two legs were mere puppies sticking metal objects in power outlets. Rex half snarled at the thought of them with all their outdated notions of natural orders and falls from grace – as if Laika and her kin were divine beings rather than simply an ancient step in the evolution of the species.

Behind him the others were starting to stir from their hypnotic revelry and whisper excitedly to each other which, in turn, dragged Rex back from his thoughts.

JINX

Half a world away Jinx, Grand High Alpha Growler of the Four-Leggers found himself face to face with evil.

The Universal Alpha had called them all in, representatives of the various faiths, pack leaders, industrialists, scholars, poets. The greatest meeting of the doggy elite since the great peace conference following the Leaf Wars of the great energy crises some 70 years earlier. The air of distrust was palpable. The Universal Alpha was a sociopath, psychopath and generally untrustworthy individual - on that almost everyone agreed although what to actually do about his death grip on power was always a sticking point. The Laikanists hated him for sparing Rex and his murderous crew, Jinx’s Four-Leggers hated him because they hated almost everyone, the New Confusionists were always yapping about bringing him down if only for something to do and the crazies who followed the Great Salmon were, well, crazy. Even the Whippet Brotherhood apparently had it out for him although they would never tell anyone why that was the case, in fact they’d never tell anyone anything which made them a constantly unknown quality in the great game of power they were all tied up in. Nonetheless they were all in apparent agreement that whatever they’d been called here for wouldn’t do them any good whatsoever and that, should the worst come to the worst, they’d be best off ripping out throats now and asking questions later. Although the gossip was, as ever, less about the act of rebellion itself and more about who’d get the power afterwards; Jinx, like the rest, considering himself to be the only viable option to take the Universal’s place.

Today though the truth would out. They’d all been gathered in the Pack Hall, seat of government and semi-fortress of the Alpha himself. Lackeys of various breeds were lurking on the fringes of the vast hall, assuring any who raised complaints that all their questions would be answered in due course and that no, they couldn’t leave and go to the toilet until the speech had been given.

Conclaves of conspirators had been forming and breaking up around Jinx for the last hour as the Alpha made sure that everyone was thoroughly impressed by his ability to keep them waiting. Jinx himself had been involved in more than one of the surreptitious conversations and the gossip he’d picked up had ranged from prophesying the end of doganity to the return of Laika herself. Both equally tenuous guesses but the apocalyptic air in the hall was palpable and even enthusiastic. Something big was going on, that much was certain and the general will seemed to be that it should be something reality altering and that if it weren’t they’d all be massively disappointed. Lemark and Cochise – his right paw dogs in the Four-Leggers had been behaving like puppies all day, bringing him back conspiracy theories and ridiculous plans as if they expected a pat on the head which was odd given that he’d seen both of them frothing at the mouth and coated with blood which wasn’t theirs but the spirit of the day seemed to be getting to everyone. Except for Jinx himself of course who, beyond his usual hatred of the Alpha, could feel a certain edginess in the air which didn’t exactly bode well. It was the same feeling he’d had when Rex had gleefully started chopping up atoms and wiping out cities, the sort of feeling that proved some dogs were confusing their own egotism with the sort of divinity that should be reserved for Laika herself.

And then he was there.

Saport, half pitbull, half Jack Russell and all psychotic – the Universal Alpha and theoretically the leader of dog kind. Of course, dogs being dogs, authority didn't count for much unless you could smell it in the air so the claim to ruling a whole planet was something of an illusion but as far as official functions went he could be guaranteed to be nearby, ready to bite at the first one to question him. To the billions who'd never seen him he barely merited a thought, unless something was going wrong, but at events like the atom splitting his authority was always evident and even if it never extended beyond a mile or two if the wind was up it was respected. Jinx shuddered as the Alpha slouched towards the podium which stood on the elaborately carved oak stage, depicting in fresco the steel box in which Laika had braved the stars and found enlightenment. He could smell the fear already as a hall full of prophets, politicians and artists cowered beneath their fur, Saport's two bodyguards throwing in a few growls for effect as they passed by. This, thought Jinx, was the problem. In Laika's day dogs had braved the dizzy heights of universe manipulating omnipotence, somehow combining to become the species they were meant to be. These days they barely kept themselves from war but for the careful balance of fear and uncertainty which surrounded the likes of the Alpha. Leadership meant nothing more than 'bite if you can, cower if you can't' – and yet the likes of Saport and Rex still thought themselves ready to manipulate matter like a chimp poking sticks in the mud. The Four-Leggers did what they could to hold back the lust for power which fragmented the species, or at least to refuse its players any weapons beyond their capacity to control but today that tenuous grip on stability would, in all likelihood, be shattered.

Taking to the stage behind an ornately carved lectern, the base of which depicted another frieze of Laika at Her noblest, Saport took to glaring. His bodyguards launched into a barrage of barking as a means to silence the chattering hall and slowly, with much discontent, the assembled masses did eventually shut up sufficiently for the Universal Alpha to start talking.

“Doganity is one pack.”

A tirade of booing broke out immediately as staunch breed separatists aired their disagreement with the sentiment, rapidly being joined by almost everyone else on the grounds that, as Saport had said it, they were obliged to object. Further barkings were done by the bodyguards and a short and bemused Poodle down near the front found a lump being taken out of his arm by one of Saport's more over enthusiastic subordinates. The hall fell quiet once again, each dog brooding on their own grievances. The Universal Alpha almost always made sure some blood was spilt wherever he appeared, it proved a point to everyone involved – that point mostly being that they wouldn't dare to do the same themselves, at least not yet.

“Doganity is one pack. I am the Universal Alpha and as of today you will all do as I command you.”

The Pitbull/Jack Russell’s eyes scanned the audience pointedly, giving special attention to Jinx, The Laikanists and the New Confusionists.

“I have found the answers, the ultimate answers, the answers that Laika knew and which we lost in The Fall. We are no longer simply Dogs, we are Gods.”

The lights in the hall faded down suddenly and an image filled the wall behind Saport. It was a steel frame, a big one by Jinx's judgement and at the centre of it a blazing ball of blue light hovered with all the grim foreboding he'd expected to get out of the meeting. A collective bemusement fell across the hall as dogs who, despite their routine assertions that they should be in charge of everything, completely failed to understand what the glowing ball thing actually meant – although as a matter of pride not one of them asked for enlightenment. It wasn't a confusion which lasted though as all around him Four-Leggers leapt to their paws and started shouting angrily, or out and out barking towards the speaker behind his lectern. Jinx didn't move but did nothing to hold them back either. Whatever it was that Saport was showing off it inevitably wouldn't be good and if it really did match the tech of Laika and her kin then the Four-Leggers had no choice but to object.

Above the sound of snapping jaws and snarling Saport was shouting once more, not bothering to hope for silence again.

“This device makes us Gods. Laika went to the stars, we can create new stars. Or destroy old ones, if I want us to. It can dictate the lives of every dog on the planet. Rex assures me that we have found an end to hunger, to poverty, to war and it's mine, remember that!”

For once Saport had misjudged things though, whatever this new idiocy might have been the crowd was against him. Mentioning Rex had been the worst move the Universal Alpha could make. Dogs didn't appreciate genocide, accidental or otherwise and going by the handful of dogs in the hall wearing one armed leather jackets and Mohawks that particular canine’s past indiscretions were far from forgotten. Things were a hair's breadth away from throat ripping as Jinx finally stood himself up and found himself the centre of attention for the cadre of Four-Leggers around him, each waiting for the order to get the party started. It'd mean war, thought Jinx as he spun out the moment of apprehension that formed a sphere around him. Saport, whether this abomination of his worked or not, had followers of his own and there was no knowing what way the other cliques and factions would swing – almost certainly not towards the Four-Leggers was his guess but then again, if the thing did work then walking away today would just give Saport the chance to use it. Jinx had no idea what to do but the others expected an answer as the chaos in the room grew ever more acute so, with a fairly random sense of certainty, he launched himself through the crowd and at the throat of Saport's nearest lackey.

From there things got messy.

A charge started as the scientists, philosophers and poets who weren't up for a violent brawl swarmed towards the exits, clambering between the combatants and occasionally being brought down by them. Around Jinx things were already getting bloody. The Four-Leggers were laying into Saport's supporters, along with a few casual bystanders who looked like easy targets. Laikanists, New Confusionists, the Whippet Brotherhood – they were all involved in the chaotic brawl although Jinx could make little sense of who was fighting who. Saport hadn't moved, he still stood behind the lectern looking down with confusion as his bodyguards threw themselves into the brawl. He hadn't expected this, clearly, although he had no reason not to. Having a new super tech weapon was all well and good, assuming it really could be a weapon, but unless you were holding it in your paw then dogs were never likely to care about it, theirs was an immediate species and never one given to great forethought.

KAISABOSEN

Back in the present Kaisabosen was howling with delight as he looked down from the meeting tree. The others had just been about to leave, half looking half convinced and half looking a little irritated by the whole affair but now they were all converted, there could be no doubt about that. Around them a war was raging. Hundreds of apparitions had appeared, the dog creatures this time, all tearing at each other, ripping out throats and silently playing out one hell of a slaughter and even though it didn't quite fit Kaisabosen's line about them fighting the ugly creatures on Laika's behalf it was still dramatic enough to prove some sort of point. Anyway, this was science in action, if the dogs were fighting each other then obviously some of them were good and some of them were bad, which gave him all sorts of ideas for the future and his place in the new order he fervently hoped to create.

His new found audience seemed enraptured by the scene. A couple were even mumbling something about Laika saving them, a definite step in the right direction. In fact the whole thing couldn't have played out better if Kaisabosen himself had thought it up. And it dawned on him that he may well have planned it himself without realising, what with him being the sole representative of Laika on earth and all. The slightly insane grin on his face went unnoticed.

REX

Out in the desert somewhere Rex was having problems. Apparently there was a war going on and apparently it was his fault. This seemed a little unfair really given that he hadn't actually done any real damage this time. Granted the atom splitting thing had been down to him and he'd taken responsibility for that with a minimum of grumbling and excuses but this time he really had gotten it right and whatever they'd been up to down at the Universal Alpha's bunker really was nothing to do with him. The calls that had been coming in all day didn't seem to agree with him though. Saport was dead apparently, torn apart by Four-Leggers and buried in a shallow grave by his escaping followers who were now firmly ensconced in the biggest, baddest buildings they could find, trying to wait the whole thing out. That was okay, Rex hadn't much cared for the Alpha anyway, he'd spent far too much time droning on about universal domination and conquest for his liking without ever really seeming to understand what the project was actually about. But Jinx was undoubtedly worse and so were the fundamentalist Laikanists, neither group had done much to hide their hatred for Rex and Jinx had even given him a personal call to confirm that he would be tearing out his throat at the soonest possible opportunity with the only concession being that it might be a rather quicker death if he turned off his sacrilegious machine now rather than later.

Constance was of the opinion that he should use the machine to wipe out anyone who came for him which, Rex granted, was one option although despite the immense power the machine actually held he remained a little unsure as to how that power could actually be used for anything. That was always something of a secondary concern during the design phase and one he'd hoped to have time to figure out but that possibility seemed an increasingly remote one and besides Rex wasn't one for violence, unlike many of his breed. His own idea, limited as it was, tended more towards the extreme in its own way. It was just a hunch and not a particularly well founded one but he nursed a strong suspicion that if he just turned all of the dials on the control panel up to eleven something would probably happen. Exactly what that would be he wasn't sure. The ball would expand presumably and then... well, who could say? It might, possibly, lead to a global wave of enlightenment as the physics bending forces unleashed themselves upon the planet. Or it might just destroy everything. Or, for all Rex knew, it might just turn everything into jam – that was the joy of this sort of thing he thought, all things were possible and if he was honest with himself he was getting rather tired of the lot of them anyway. All of the cliques and power mongers who thought they knew better than anyone else because they'd heard some old myths passed down by dribbling, toothless elders or, even worse, new myths dreamt up by smooth talking and generally slightly insane 'prophets'. If nothing else turning everything to maximum would bring about some change and given the nature of doggy warfare it probably wouldn't be much worse than the slaughter that lay in store for his species anyway.

His research team had been non-committal about the suggestions, in fact they'd almost seemed irritated at him for having any ideas, presumably due to the impending doom he'd brought onto them. Most of them hadn't even bothered to debate the merits of the suggestion, instead choosing to return to their ramshackle temporary accommodation around the lab complex to drink and screw their way through their last hours on earth. Only Constance had given it a fair listen and, although she'd still favoured just killing everyone she had insisted that it was his choice and that she'd go along with it when the time come. So now Rex was sitting before the control panel of his creation staring blankly up at the glowing blue ball, his ever present smile taking on a somewhat maudlin quality as he gently panted in the heat.

YESSA

A few million years and a couple of miles away Yessa stared up at the night sky. A couple of the ugly chimps were cavorting around before her and a dog creature was gleefully waving a small stick to some unheard rhythm and for some unknown purpose. Aliens, she thought to herself, it still seemed like a poor bit of guesswork although she couldn't think of any particular holes in the theory. Even if it was right it didn't suggest any ideas on how to deal with them. Gdunk had suggested going into space and finding out who was responsible for it, a suggestion which Raeget had immediately slated despite it being a perfectly sensible one as far as Yessa could tell. His preferred suggestion was, apparently, inspired by a pamphlet he'd picked up from a certain Kaisabosen who was going around telling anyone and everyone about some creature called Laika who was fighting a war on earth for reasons unknown. Yessa had glanced at the short essay and had even been mildly impressed by some of the sciency guess-work involved in it but far too much of it seemed to revolve around this Kaisabosen being the salvation of chimpanity which, if it were the case, presumably meant he could deal with the whole mess. Although when she'd made that point to Raeget he'd launched into a long and tedious spiel about chimps having to help themselves and Kaisabosen simply being there to offer advice. Even Gdunk had sniggered slightly at the newly found swivel eyed proselytising of their associate and in the end the whole idea had come to nothing.

For a month now they'd been stuck together, guards patrolling day and night to stop them from disappearing into the desert, as if that were much of an option, and Yessa was increasingly starting to miss her own thinking tree and the far more comprehendable mysteries of the giant steel frame. Not only had it made more sense but when she'd been obsessed with desert junk no one had ever shouted at her, or threatened her, or insulted her; all of which seemed to be routine in this new job as every day brought a new angry missive from one functionary or another demanding that progress be made under threat of more than shit being slung should they fail. Things were apparently getting bad back in civilization too. Chimps were starting to go mad, the apparitions hadn't changed but their constant presence had left more than one chimp seeking escape in death and that did nothing to make things easier. Nobody killed themselves over metal things in the desert and for all the joy of scientific guesswork she wasn't certain she wanted to be a martyr to it.

Chimps weren't patient creatures she knew. They'd have, at most, a few months before popular opinion turned on them and the cycle of arson and lynching started again, unless of course they could do something useful about the situation. They could try going in to space. It wasn't her field of expertise but at a guess it would take a while at least before their technology would make it a plausible solution, if it was plausible that is. Time where other scientists would be the ones at the front, the ones who'd take the blame for anything that went wrong. And if they didn't find anything up there then it would at least have been time where she would be left to her own devices without the imminent threat of violence looming over her. She could return to her own research and, who could say, maybe it would lead to some great leap in scientific guesswork that'd solve the problem with the apparitions too. A stretch perhaps but better than the certainty of an imminent end. Raeget would disagree of course, preferring instead to place all of his faith in the clique of lunatics he'd befriended of late but if Gdunk would for once stand her ground they could overrule him. Then if he wanted to carry on endlessly boring people with rambling speeches about the great Dog in the sky then that was up to him, and maybe his friend Kaisabosen had a point, maybe he would solve everything. Either way there was nothing to be lost by letting them all get on with it, in space or on earth, while she got back to work.

A guard walked by looking shaken. He was big by chimp standards, a giant almost, the sort of immovable figure that the security services favoured more for the look of things than their actual ability to provide security. Unless of course the security issue consistently required something to be hit very hard in the face without any pauses to catch breath. But he looked scared to Yessa, in fact he looked terrified as he half walked and half ran his way past her. That was becoming more and more normal these days, that look of a chimp on the edge. Sometimes it was one apparition that would break them, the shock, the trauma, something they saw, it was more than some chimps could handle. They'd calm down eventually though, stop jumping at every half seen movement and get on with their lives. It was the ones who were breaking over the long term who really worried her. She was no student of chimpanity, in fact she rarely managed to notice the majority of her brethren but the constant visions were wearing folks down she knew. Wakaka addiction was up and more obvious than ever, chimps were breaking down on the street, without drama, without trigger, just quietly slumping into semi-insanity before the continual barrage of apparitions. She may not have been the most active member of her society but even Yessa couldn't help but feel obliged to contribute in the midst of all the chaos.

She stood up with a sigh. In her own time, in her own lab she might be able to get somewhere, but here, with the world watching there was nothing to be done. So, space it was, for chimpanity and enlightenment.

REX

Rex put the phone down with a sigh. Calls had been coming in all day, threats mostly, or demands. He'd gotten used to them now and given some of the heavy pawed questions the callers had been asking it was becoming more and more apparent that all those dogs out to lynch him had absolutely no idea where he was. Saport had kept that bit to himself and he certainly wasn't going to be talking any time soon. His followers probably knew too but dogs were nothing if not loyal, they'd go down fighting before they started talking. One of them had called too, full of demands for him to kill everybody and everything who they considered to be their enemy which, apparently, meant about 80% of the global population. They hadn't taken it well when he'd assured them that he had no idea how to do that and by the end of the call they'd joined the chorus of threats and recriminations. Fortunately they were largely trapped in their own hiding places though, scared to head out on to the streets where Four-Leggers were fighting it out with Laikanists, Whippets and Great Salmonists in a series of increasingly bloody riots and clashes as the battle for supremacy heated up. Rex had no idea who would win, politics was an eternal mystery to him beyond the vague knowledge that at least three of the main factions wouldn't just kill him but also destroy his work given half a chance. Only the Whippets had been non-committal on that front but then they never said anything about anything really.

He ran a paw over the control panel before him, brushing the dials and switches which commanded the most powerful machine in the world. The most powerful machine in the history of the planet for that matter, something even the Ancients would have panted with admiration of. He still had no idea what to do. Sooner or later someone would turn up and that someone was unlikely to come bearing praise and awe, chances were it'd be teeth, jaws and big sticks that'd be the order of the day whoever it was that made it first. He could always reach out to doganity, that's what he'd have preferred to do, share all the knowledge, the schematics, the research and hope that the species could find something useful to do with it – with his name at the top of course. Dogs couldn't be trusted though, especially not now that Saport had put the idea of a weapon into their heads, they wouldn't be able to resist and once one faction had figured out how to do it the rest would feel obliged to follow suit – although as the first one to manage it would probably kill everyone else the issue of proliferation was a fairly marginal one. Turning everything up to eleven was seeming like an increasingly valid choice. It might do something good, it probably wouldn't, but it might, whereas every other scenario seemed to lead to a definite bad end, for Rex and his team any way.

When Constance came in Rex's paws were hovering once again over the control panel, a flick of the wrist away from doing something spectacular.

“They've found us”

Rex swung around in his chair with a look of blank confusion on his face.

“Who has?”

“The Whippet Brotherhood, they're rounding up everyone outside, I think they might want to kill us”

The suspicion didn't need voicing as far as Rex was concerned, a lot of dogs seemed to want to kill them. With a heavy sigh he stood up and cast an absent glance back towards the control panel. It was pretty much now or never, outside they'd kill him or at the very least imprison him, although dogs rarely dealt in delayed-justice when it was easier to just bite now and ask questions later. Then they'd destroy the machine, or worse, try to use it to win the war. He couldn't say which way the Whippets would go, their motives being as oblique as ever but going by his experiences with Saport it probably wouldn't involve doing anything for the betterment of the species.

Constance sidled up behind him and placed a paw on his shoulder. She was shaking, she was scared, she was going to die too although Rex struggled to feel anything about that. He should have felt guilt for bringing her along on his apparently suicidal path through life, or sorrow that he'd soon lose her but the machine, that was all he could think of. Dogs would come and go, even he didn't much matter in the grand scheme of things but the machine, that was a miracle, it wouldn't be replicated and it wouldn't be replaced. If they destroyed it then soon enough the whole species would be back to licking its balls and covering up any innovations or aspirations with references to Laika – as if She was their get out clause for attempting to do anything for themselves.

“I'm going to set it to maximum”

Constance's paw tensed on his shoulder.

“What'll happen?”

“I have no idea, but it'll be something and they won't be able to stop it...”

The hollowness in his voice made the decision sound inevitable, the final card to be played in Rex's lifelong quest to make his species into something better. Future generations might understand, he hoped and if it went wrong then there probably wouldn't be any future generations at all, which at least meant that no one would be able to blame him for it.

It was the work of seconds to turn up all the dials. Rex took care to lock the control panel afterwards on the off chance that anyone managed to figure out how to stop the machine. They wouldn't though, Rex himself had no idea how to reverse the process when things were set to maximum, the machine didn't deal in half measures and once you started messing around on a quantum level all the scientists and technicians in the world couldn't put reality back together again.

Through the reinforced viewing window he could see the ball of energy start to expand, almost inhaling matter as it found itself free of the artificial constraints of the frame.

“Let's go see our guests then.”

KAISABOSEN

Kaisabosen stared at Raeget. They were in a cave, stalactites and damp fencing them in and adding to the dramatic quality of the meeting. He didn't trust the chimp, not since he'd found out he was one of the three and that was the reason for the obscure meeting place - but his conversion certainly seemed real enough.

“I brought the papers like you said. They want to go into space.”

Kaisabosen reached out and took the report. It was science, proper science, as guessed at by Yessa. He flicked through it and failed to understand a single word, not something he'd readily admit to but it did mean that she'd done a good job. After all, everyone knew that the less you could understand the smarter something was likely to be. Raeget was staring at him expectantly, waiting for some holy edict on the plan. This annoyed Kaisabosen. Going into space was something he hadn't considered, it hadn't featured in his prophecies and declarations so far but now it was a genuine plan he needed to figure out where it could fit in.

He could just be against it of course, he was gathering enough followers now, he had Raeget, if he wasn't a double agent. It wouldn't be long before he could just click his fingers and have the so called geniuses arrested for heresy. After all, that's what he'd coined the term 'heresy' for, it was the perfect stick for beating down chimps who didn't agree with him but then the whole space thing might just be useful. It wouldn't stop the apparitions of course, only he could do that, probably, with the will of Laika behind him but when you're angling for global domination questions like whether you want to go into space or not start becoming more and more relevant. He could let them start the research and then hijack it when the time was right. It'd only take a little more scientific speculation and guesswork to add space travel to the litany of things Laika wanted of chimpanity and if things did all go wrong down here then it wasn't a bad idea to have an escape route to the stars. But then it wouldn't hurt to have a nicely defined group he could send his followers out to get. They liked knowing who to fight he'd discovered and if he didn't tell them then they'd just get into interminable fights amongst themselves.

This Laikanism business was only half fun, the rest was answering endless inane questions about how many of Laika's hairs could stand on the head of a pin and whether She was completely against having sex with someone else’s mate or completely for it. That one he'd side-stepped quite nicely though by deciding that it was okay for him to have sex with other chimp's mates but not for anyone else, because he was a prophet and no one else was. That everyone had nodded sagely in agreement with him had almost left him in a fit of giggles at the time but he'd managed to resist the temptation. Besides, so far no one had offered to sleep with him at all so it was a bit of a moot point.

The space thing though, that was a bigger choice and one which he couldn't make on libido alone.

“You've done well Raeget, Laika thanks you for your efforts and so do I.”

The swivel eyed pride on Raeget's face was almost pitiable, or would have been if Kaisabosen hadn't gotten such a kick from it.

“Shall I stop them? I can you know, I've got my pointy stick, I can deal with them if it's what you want”

Kaisabosen didn't doubt for a second that he would try, if asked to, although Raeget would probably make for the least effective assassin there could be despite his constant boasting about his martial prowess. Any chimp who kept catalogues of sharp sticks under his bed was almost guaranteed to be the last one you'd want to actually get their hands on one and besides, there were other acolytes who were better suited to the dirty work. That was another lesson Kaisabosen was rapidly learning, the right chimp for the right job and the faces of some of the more Wakaka addicted, sociopathic members of his congregation sprung immediately to mind as the sort you'd want doing the grunt work.

“No, let them continue with their work but stay close to Yessa, her science is strong even if she is but a misguided heretic. I'll be in touch should I need anything else done.”

Raeget looked momentarily crestfallen before bowing obsequiously as he retreated towards the cave's entrance. Kaisabosen ran a hand across his face and sighed, the pressures of power were a heavy burden indeed and the perks could be cold comfort when faced with the rigours of the job. He'd have to head back to his thinking tree and consider this one, maybe over some Wakaka, although he had been hitting that pretty heavily of late. Too much more and he'd start to go cross eyed himself, although as most of his followers already were he couldn't imagine they'd care all that much.

REX

There were two dozen or so Whippets standing outside of the main lab building. For one of the smaller breeds Rex was always surprised at just how intimidating they could be. Bulldogs were the most feared perhaps but as with almost everything about them the air of mystery surrounding the Whippets made them far more unnerving than they had any right to be. The slender dogs who confronted Rex as he came out were more than mysterious though, they were killers. It was the eyes that told him so, the same eyes as Saport, albeit more disciplined. Where the one time Universal Alpha had constantly looked like he wanted to and would kill you these newcomers looked like they wanted to kill you but were willing to wait for permission before doing so. Their leader, an elegant hound with a white ring around his eye to break up his matt black coat, smiled unsettlingly as he saw Rex. The team, around 30 dogs all told, were standing uneasily in a group, ringed by bored and vicious looking Whippets, one of whom broke away from his position and dragged Constance from Rex's side and into the main group. Rex snarled at that, before realising how pointless that was – his breed may have been fierce but given the company he was more or less a puppy growling at a pack of wolves.

“Calm down Rex, there's a good boy” the lead Whippet's voice was mockingly relaxed, half amused at the scientist's attempt at intimidation and wholly unimpressed.

“I'm Cutter, I'm the Alpha-Brother and now that you know that you probably know more than any dog in the world who isn't one of us.”

“What do you want?” Rex spoke with his eyes fixed on the team and especially on Constance who looked like she was ready to spring away at any second. A pretty normal look for a Borzoi but in this instance it was probably backed up with intent.

“What do I want? A good question, one which I've been asked an awful lot without ever giving an answer to. Although in this instance I think I might have to break my vow of silence and actually tell you. What we want Rex is for you to use that machine of yours. We want you to turn the power all the way up and we want you to make sure it stays there and we're here to make sure no one tries to stop you while you're doing it.”

Rex got as far as opening his mouth to protest before his mind caught up with what had been said by Cutter.

“Why?”

“Because I say so? Because we'll kill you if you don't? Because it was foretold? Take your pick, as long as you do it.”

Rex ran a paw along the length of his stunted muzzle as he tried to figure out the seemingly random turn of events that he'd been caught in.

“Well I kind of did that already and it can't be stopped, by anyone.”

Cutter burst out in a half bark, half laugh, his eyes twinkling with genuine delight.

“I should have guessed you would Rex. Any Whippet in your breed at all? You've got the instincts for it.”

The question, Rex guessed, was rhetorical.

“Why did you want me to do it? You can't know what will happen, I don't know what will happen, nobody does. So why?”

Suppressing his fit of laughter Cutter struggled to ratchet up his composure to the level of a vague smile.

“There are more things up there and down here than are understood by your mere science, Rex. There are prophecies, very old prophecies which we've waited a very long time to see come true. Did you know, Rex, that there was another civilization before Doganity? Long before in fact. Did you know that that's where Laika came from? All the nonsense about mystical ancients and her Divine will, all rotten meat - the truth is very different indeed.”

Rex hesitated for a moment. There were always theories about pre-history, even amongst the Laikanists themselves who argued interminably about what breed She had been, why she'd been sent into space, who sent Her there and how many whiskers could fit on the divine muzzle. The Great Salmonists even rambled on about the great Space Fish and how it had created Laika as a prophet for the dogs. He'd always suspected it was largely rubbish but as it was beyond the remit of his research he'd also done his best to ignore it. If the Whippets claimed their own truth then good for them, everyone else seemed to.

“Thinking it's another hollow theory Rex? Thinking that maybe we're just as bad as the Salmonists? Or the Four-Leggers? We've got proof, thousands of years’ worth in fact, you should appreciate that more than most given your scientific background. Before us, before our ancestors and before theirs and before theirs and before theirs dogs really were different. We all know they walked on four legs, which is why anyone with half a brain would realise that they weren't the spaceship building types. They weren't alone though, there was another species, an advanced one, made up of chimps mostly – not like the ones we've got these days, they all died when something happened, although we don't know what.”

Cutter paused to stare at Rex who was paying rapt attention even if he didn't really believe a word of it.

“They sent Laika into space, they went to the Moon, they got wiped out and that's when we started paying attention. Whippets have long memories Rex, longer than you can possibly imagine and unlike the rest of you we did our evolving ahead of schedule. We've got records, real reports from the end days. Our ancestors had no idea what happened to these 'humans'. One day they just stopped living and that was that, but they remembered and they passed the knowledge down, along with the prophecies...”

Rex glanced around and noticed that all of the Whippets within hearing distance, which being dogs meant most of them, had a look of glazed reverence on their face. They believed, they really believed although that made Rex more nervous than certain himself. It made sense, in a way, the Laikanist orthodoxy about two legged dogs being inferior, the Four-Leggers with their militant anti-technologism, that was truly ridiculous. These 'humans' though, that didn't ring true any more than the notion of a Great Salmon did, a few ancient and probably forged scriptures guarded by the Whippets didn't prove anything.

“What prophecies?”

“The prophecies, Rex, the only ones that are real. That which killed the humans will come back to kill the dogs but lo and verily and other such words – a tool shall be created by The Holy Idiot and through turning everything up to eleven shall doganity be spared the fate of its former masters.”

Cutter followed the statement with an elaborate paw gesture which the other Whippets robotically mimicked, the same same look of fanatical reverence on their faces as before. Again Rex took a moment to process things before the idea took hold.

“What? The Holy Idiot?”

“That'd be you Rex, unless you think killing all those dogs last time and letting Saport in on your work were the moves of a smart dog...”

Rex had nothing much to offer by way of protest and instead stared numbly at the ground. It was still a prophecy, still rotten meat in all likelihood but the machine did go up to eleven, that much was surprisingly precise and technically he was probably a bit of an idiot. Plus the machine really was unique, even if you didn't buy into the back story then you'd still have to admit that it was a pretty spectacular machine and if anything was going to stop some unknown evil then this would probably be it.

“What happens next?”

Cutter shrugged indifferently.

“No idea, we wait, I suppose. Others will come soon enough, we'll fight them and probably die sooner or later but the prophecy is fulfilled, the world saved, that's all that matters.”

Rex let his body slouch. He hadn't expected much of an answer and he hadn't gotten much of one. It had taken all of his meagre bravery to come out and face one baying mob today and the anti-climax of being told that his fate wouldn't be decided until the next baying mob turned up had left him feeling rather defeated. Turning around he could see the ball of energy in its frame, pulsating quietly to itself and growing a fraction larger with every passing moment. His best guess was that it would reach some sort of critical mass and then start doing its own thing. The machine had started it and momentarily caged it but it wouldn't take long before it became self-perpetuating and then either something spectacular would happen or they'd all be dead, or quite possibly both. He wondered if anyone else really understood just how big this really was. His team should have understood the idea but he'd always had the sneaking suspicion that there wasn't much behind the nodding and blank smiles he always saw when he started to explain things to them beyond a vague sense of politeness and an unwillingness to admit ignorance. The Whippets were following a prophecy so he could pretty much guarantee that they had no idea what they were really doing. The only one he could be sure would have some idea about the magnitude of what he'd done was Constance and looking back to her he could see that she was far more pre-occupied by the prospect of impending death than the possibilities that had been set in motion.

“My team should be allowed to leave, the machine's on, it makes no difference to you what they do.”

Cutter had the decency to look at least a little sympathetic at that.

“Where do you imagine they'll go, Rex? There's a war going on out there and trust me when I say no one's on your side. Four-Leggers, Laikanists, they know who's on your team and they'll kill them in an instant given half a chance. Hell, the New Confusionists too, they'll probably do it just to be edgy, you know how they are.”

“How about the Whippets then? You've got bunkers of your own, an army, you can look after them right?”

Cutter sighed.

“You're missing a key fact there Rex, we've got a prophecy to fulfil. Chances are none of us will survive either, I know the Great Salmonists were attacking at least three of our fortresses when I left, by now they're probably rubble. Only reason I'm not out there is because of you, when the rest of my Brothers fall and Jinx or any of the others figure out where we are I'm the last line of defence and I really don't expect to last very long. We're all going to die and this still the safest place for all of you. Sorry about that.”

Rex didn't think the Whippet looked particularly sorry but as ever it was hard to tell with the tediously mysterious breed. At any rate he was right, when dogs went to war they didn't half-arse things, it would be death and destruction all the way until the last one still capable of crawling and growling declared themselves Universal Alpha. According to at least some of the scriptures Laika Herself was a lover not a fighter, Rex knew that much even though he tended to avoid matters of faith, but then as most of the fundamentalists seemed to only pay selective attention to holy writ themselves it had never done much to moderate canine brutality.

Nodding dejectedly to Cutter, Rex went over to Constance and joined her as she stared unhappily at the ground, the occasional tremor ruffling her fur. There was nothing else to do but wait.

GDUNK

Gdunk stared blankly at the chimps assembled before her and they stared blankly back. Going into space had initially been Gdunk's idea, Yessa had said, so she should be in charge of the project. Raeget hadn't taken that well at all. In fact he'd still been ranting about the inferiority of female chimps and their inability to master anything more complex than keeping the male's thinking trees clean and churning out babies long after the discussion was done. He'd picked that up from Kaisabosen apparently who had decided Laika wanted females to 'know their place' and 'not ask silly questions in case their brains overheated'. Although his critics had suggested it was a new edict born more of the fact that no one was willing to sleep with the self-declared prophet of the new faith than any epiphany on the chimp's behalf.

Those critics were growing fewer and further between though, in fact Yessa, who as far as their small corner of the world was concerned had been the main voice of deeply cynical opposition, had already done a bunk. Almost before Raeget had finished his rant about why he should be in charge of everything all the time because he had the pointiest stick the one genuine scientist of their group had disappeared into the sunset shouting over her shoulder that they should call her if they needed a hand. The guards had begrudgingly let her go after she told them that she really wasn't smart enough to be involved in the whole salvation of chimp-sanity thing and that Gdunk and Raeget were the real brains of the outfit. Eyebrows were raised at that part, both of the guards having met Raeget but when Yessa started explaining in high falutin science talk about the new space program and how everyone was really into it they'd given up trying to make sense of things and sent her packing. And in fairness there really was quite a buzz around the new plan, as Gdunk was slowly discovering.

The research team had been put together from the few remaining scientists chimpanity could muster up after the last great cull. As they'd shuffled into the research compound, Raeget watching sternly over them and Gdunk looking slightly guilty, for reasons unknown, they'd all confessed that they knew absolutely nothing about how you might go about getting into space. On the plus side though they all seemed very enthusiastic about the prospect of doing so. Gdunk could tell they weren't well suited to the task but then nor was she and she could at least take some comfort in the fact that the huddle of academics and researchers were amongst the few chimps in the world who seemed even more socially awkward than she was.

Apparently they were expecting a speech now, or so the earnest enthusiasm in their eyes seemed to suggest. Gdunk had thought about this moment obsessively, trying to come up with something catchy which wouldn't give her way her complete ignorance about what they were actually planning. 'To infinity and a little further', 'one small step for a chimp, one big leap for all the other chimps' and 'that's not a moon, it's a big ball' had all made the short list before being summarily dismissed as ridiculous and, in the end, she'd grudgingly decided to wing it for want of a better idea. Her eventual opening line of 'Erm, excuse me' rather lacked for the requisite drama but the motley crowd did fall even more silent than they had been and devoted their unnerving attention towards her.

“Well, it's nice of you all to come here today and myself and Raeget really appreciate it. There's fruit for afterwards and I made some juice if you want some.”

Much to Gdunk's surprise the promise of snacks actually seemed to send a ripple of excitement through the crowd, barring Raeget who groaned theatrically for the sake of drawing at least some attention to himself.

“Now you've all seen the... creatures, the dog ones and the hairy ones and I'm sure you'd all like to stop seeing them and that's what we're going to make happen once we go into space. We think, erm, well we're almost half certain that that's where they come from and once we're up there I'm sure we'll be able to do something about all this, probably. I'm sure you all realise how important this is for Chimpanity so, erm, if anyone has any suggestions about how we can get in to space then please do let me know. Really, there are no bad ideas here.”

To Gdunk's relief a couple of hands shot up enthusiastically and picking out a particularly enthusiastic young chimp standing towards the front of the crowd she gestured for her to speak.

She was small by even by chimp standards and after checking over her shoulder to make sure it really was her who'd been chosen to talk she let forth a torrent of words.

“Hi everybody, I'm Sished and before I came here I was researching the life cycle of rocks. It turned out they didn't have one of course but it was a very rewarding six years anyway, I found lots of interesting rocks if anyone would like to see them later. I enjoy long walks on the beach, sitting in trees and making small models of birds. And I think we should make a really big pile of rocks – a really, really big pile, with a lot of rocks – really, a huge amount of rocks.”

Sished's contribution was delivered at a hyperactive pace which left Gdunk and the rest slightly lagging behind when she came to an abrupt halt. It took a few seconds of silence for Gdunk to process the idea and glance over to Raeget who seemed to be paying no attention whatsoever as he poked distractedly at the ground.

“And, erm, you think we could make a pile big enough to reach space? That would take an awful lot of rocks.”

Sished took her turn at looking nonplussed.

“Oh, I'd forgotten the space part, I just thought we could make a really big pile of rocks, it's very relaxing you know, always helps me think more clearly. Mostly about rocks, but I'm sure it would help.”

Gdunk smiled encouragingly and immediately broke off eye contact with the over enthused rock expert. The fact that the idea of a tower of rocks didn't seem like an entirely terrible one worried her given how genuinely terrible it obviously was, still, better would come she assumed. The next contributor to put their hand up was an older male chimp, a smattering of grey hair giving him a tired air of distinction.

“I'm Eress. I study very, very small things. Seriously, very, very small things, in fact I discovered most of them myself so I'd just like to take this opportunity to say that I should probably be in charge but as I'm not-” Eress cast a pointed look at both Gdunk and Raeget, the former of whom shuffled uncomfortably while the latter still seemed to not be paying any attention “- as I'm not I shall simply ask that you all grant me the respect and veneration suitable to my station. That is all.”

With more tired dignity the older chimp looked around at his peers as if to reinforce his point and fell silent.

“Okay, well I'm sure we'll all be nice to each other but did you have any suggestions at all? For going into space that is..?” Gdunk's social skills were being stretched now, she was dimly aware that, as the de facto boss, she should be more in control but for the life of her she couldn't quite imagine what that would require her to do. She was already stood at the front, alongside Raeget, that was just about the only defining quality she'd ever seen from the various employers she'd had. That and they shouted a lot about pretty much everything to prove they were in charge but that wasn't really in her line, besides, everyone could hear her perfectly well already so what was the point? Picking up on her uncertainty Eress sighed heavily and with seemingly herculean effort once again set to talking in his calm monotone.

“Absolutely none. I told you, I study very, very small things, I do not study very, very small things in space. Have you considered a large pile of rocks? That might do the job.”

Gdunk sighed inwardly and glanced once more towards Raeget who was now drawing pictures of dogs in the dirt, seemingly indifferent to events around him. A rarity given his usual love of protracted rants and one, she suspected, designed solely to make her look bad. Which was probably working so he was nothing if not efficient.

The final chimp to brave speaking out was an odd sort of creature. Gdunk didn't like to judge, in fact she'd never really had the opportunity to do so before given the preemptive way almost everyone started to judge her for her own hairy deformity. But this time she had the jump on another and there could be no denying that the chimp who shouldered his way to the front was one seriously ugly looking primate. His back bent crooked his head only reached the chest of Eress as he came to a halt next to him. Above a contorted and lipless perma-grin, presumably the result of some inherent deformity, two ice blue eyes did their level best to escape their owners skull and reach out to float a few inches in front of it. For now they appeared to be securely anchored in their sockets but Gdunk suspected that at any second they'd make the final break from bulging desire to simply popping out and doing their own thing. His hair too was an anomaly, not only did he have some but it was tinted with a luminous green hue which suggested the sort of fungal infection that you really didn't want near you even if you might feel a modicum of guilt as you drove the bearer away from your home with fire and pitchforks. After all, it probably wasn't his fault. As he levelled a stare towards her though he seemed unfazed by his own ugliness and after a period of decidedly unhealthy hacking and coughing he began to speak.

“I'm Karder and I study things and what other things do around them” the unfortunate chimp said, prompting a few in the crowd to go 'Ooooh' out of respect for the general vagueness of his scientific field, a sure sign that he knew his stuff, or at least that no one else was likely to know his stuff. “I say we get a big metal box and blow something up underneath it, something really big, then it'll go upwards and the box will be in space.”

Gdunk nodded hesitantly, wondering if he himself was aware of the somewhat glaring hole in his plan but after waiting a few seconds to see if he'd comment upon it she realised that he probably wasn't going to.

“Erm, well Karder I see what you're getting at there I think and it's a very good idea in its way. But, er, would it not just blow up the box and everyone inside it?”

Karder shrugged indifferently “Perhaps, but at least part of it would probably get into space I should think. You never specified what we had to get up there did you?”

Raeget sniggered and Gdunk looked nonplussed, Karder had a point there. She sighed heavily and sat down on the ground, evidently they had a long way to go.

JINX

Jinx let his tongue flail wildly in the breeze. It wasn't exactly the image a new Universal Alpha should be projecting he knew but it had been a long few days and the self-indulgent break was a welcome one. The world was flashing by before him as the running box rolled across the desert and for the first time since Saport's meeting he actually had the time to think about things. In the seat next to him Kimutai, a diminutive pug and general secretary to the Four-Leggers was distractedly drumming a fore paw on his leg, waiting for his boss to turn back to him and get on with the mountain of work that awaited the new ruler of doganity. Jinx was in no rush though, if only because he had absolutely no idea what he actually wanted to do with his newly won power. Stopping Rex was an obvious one, which was what they were heading to do now, bringing an end to the reality bending meddling of that half-witted pup but beyond that he'd never really planned to do much at all. Up until now it hadn't much mattered, the imperatives of just killing anyone who didn't like him had taken up most of his attention and that had been a simple enough path to follow. Soon enough though people would be expecting him to say something smart and worthwhile, which he was increasingly aware he was wholly unprepared for.

Cleaning up the wreckage of war was probably a bit of a priority he supposed. Dogs of all stripes had done a truly dedicated job of wreaking destruction across the continents in an impressively short space of time. Millions were dead; pretty much every power block other than his own was broken. Admittedly the New Confusionists were still lurking out there somewhere relatively unscathed but Jinx couldn't bring himself to really care, their bouts of ultra-violence were always less consistent than their general attempts to just be odd anyway. And a couple of Great Salmonists were still locked up in their central bunker but really, what harm could fish worshippers do? The rest had crumbled away before his own pack, throats torn, limbs broken and bellies bared in submission. It might, Jinx thought, be nice to have a giant statue of himself erected somewhere – that seemed like a thing worth doing at some point. That and some tidying up.

Kimutai pawed at him annoyingly.

“We're here, Alpha, the complex is just ahead.”

With a sigh Jinx rolled his lolling tongue back into his head and slumped back in his seat.

“Send the troops in first, have them round up anyone who doesn't want to die.”

Kimutai leapt out of the running box as it came to a halt and ran to the vehicles behind. Before long Jinx saw a stream of growling and snarling dogs run by his window to get things started. With lazy indifference he climbed out himself to watch them sprint towards the sparse complex of buildings which housed Rex and his team.

They'd had to do some pretty horrific things to find its location out here in the desolate wastes. Saport's followers were, if nothing else, loyal. And, for the most part, completely psychotic. Before he finally spoke their informant had been down to one limb, the others having been unceremoniously torn off over the preceding six hours. Jinx strongly disapproved of such torture, which was why he'd stayed out of the room where it was going on until the very end. Such were the burdens of leadership though he supposed and it was better by far to be visiting such treatment on Saport's dogs than to have them visiting it upon his own.

He left it for a few minutes before following his packs lead and heading towards the scattered buildings, Kimutai tagging along at his heels. At their centre a handful of dogs were cowering, surrounded by Jinx's own psychopaths. The only two the Universal Alpha recognised were Rex himself and Cutter, from the Whippet Brotherhood. He hadn't expected that, his informants had told him more than once that the Whippet's had died fighting as their last fortress compound fell but they had always been a mysterious breed.

“Hello Jinx, you took your time didn't you?” Cutter was smiling wryly as he spoke, as he always did. It was a smug knowingness that Jinx had always disliked and his disdain doubled now it was coupled with the blood stained and battle worn visage of the Whippet. That he was alive was something of a surprise, the Brotherhood always fought to the last dog so if he'd surrendered it meant he knew something Jinx didn't.

“Cutter, why are you here and why are you alive?”

The Whippet snorted a hollow laugh.

“I'm not going to tell you and because I want to see the look on your face when you figure it out.”

Jinx gestured vaguely to one of his underdogs, who stepped forward and tore a lump of flesh from Cutter's arm. He let out a short, sharp yelp of pain before managing to regain his composure at lightning speed.

“And Rex, good to finally see you. Glad you're not dead, I'd have killed you if I hadn't had the chance to kill you myself.”

Rex smiled awkwardly, he wasn't sure why, but despite the threat he still felt the need to be polite.

“So, what abominations have you been perpetrating here? I notice you haven't managed to blow everything up yet, so that's a plus point.”

Cutter half coughed and half sniggered, which earned him a swift paw to the stomach from one of Jinx's adjuncts. Rex glanced at the Whippet nervously and then back to Jinx.

“Well, I built a machine...”

“And what does this machine do then?”

“I'm not quite sure” Rex replied, his eyes fixed on the floor, vaguely hoping that staring blankly would offer up some sort of answer. “it'll probably change the world.”

Jinx rolled his eyes and waited silently for more.

“Well, it might destroy it, but it'll definitely change it. I turned it up to eleven though, there's nothing you can do about it now.”

Cutter once again took to sniggering, which earned him another hard blow to the gut. Jinx's expression didn't change but instead settled into a moment of blank incomprehension.

“Have you been hacking up atoms again? So help me Laika, if you've done something which is going to kill us all I'll make you suffer.”

Rex's eyes flicked up to meet those of his captor. The first death threat had been terrifying, the second seemed more like a statement of fact, a fact which he was rapidly coming to accept.

“You were going to kill me” the scientist said with all the bravado of one stupid enough to think death is the worst that can come to a dog “at least now it doesn't matter, the machine is working and you can't stop it.”

“Where is this machine? We'll see if I can't stop it. Kimutai, fetch the explosives, we're going to flatten the compound.”

The pug raced off back to the convoy, avoiding the looks of Jinx's cadre of fanatics whose attention to their Alpha's conversation had become more and more focused at talk of world ending machines.

For his part Rex looked over at Cutter, back to Jinx and shrugged.

“Have a look around, you can't miss it. It's the one with the giant pulsating ball of energy.”

GDUNK

Gdunk sighed as she reached the ridge of the still smoking crater. There was no denying that blowing stuff up in the hope of sending other stuff into space was, to some degree, a theory which merited further investigation. There had even been minor successes already. This time for example the metal box had gone up at least a hundred feet. A good start all agreed, although the fact that it had come back down in a few hundred different chunks - pock marking the desert with craters and sending most of those in attendance running howling for cover – presented something of a challenge.

They'd tried other options. Experiments with piling stuff up really high had been rapidly abandoned after a collapse had left three chimps dead and half a dozen more unhappily buried beneath a few tons of rock. A rogue Philosopher, somehow included in the group despite all better sense, had suggested what they referred to as a 'thinking exercise'. If, they postulated, everyone just imagined that they were in space then that would do the job just fine. The hail of aggressively slung shit which marked their exit from the camp had been the consensus reaction to that idea. Gdunk hadn't been entirely comfortable with ostracising the Other from the group, especially given her own past, but there were limits to acceptance and Philosophers stood way beyond them. As others had said at the time, if you let them get away with it once then they'll just keep going on and on and sooner or later an even more aggressive audience would do more than sling shit in reply – and rightly so.

The team was taking such minor setbacks well though, Gdunk thought. They weren't the most coherent group perhaps, each of the scientists feeling free to explore whatever horrifically dangerous and random experiments they fancied without consultation or her permission but it was all done with a sense of fiery intent. A few added explosions, chemical leaks and serious injuries were a small price to pay for the goal of space travel, or so they all eagerly told Gdunk. And for her part their somewhat sporadic acceptance of her apparent authority was perfectly alright. It was enough for her that before they blew up anything really big, or risked more than a couple of lives they would at least ask for permission, even if they did it afterwards regardless of the answer. Plus since Raeget had decided to go off on his own path there had been a sense of communal effort around the project that for Gdunk was a revelation. A long life-time of being mocked, reviled and bullied was rapidly being turned into something new as the scientifically obsessed chimps that made up her team showed again and again that being a bit odd, or something of a genetic freak, was far less important than the pure and unadulterated enthusiasm for doing something. Even though one of the falling lumps of metal from the latest test launch had come within a few inches of crushing her Gdunk still felt like she'd never been happier.

Raeget remained a spider amongst the bananas though. He was still at the compound but his involvement in the actual work at hand had faded to nothing as he instead set himself up as chief Laikanist and pain in the arse.

Out here he didn't have much of a following, a few security guards and the occasional scientist or technician, usually those with the Wakaka glaze in their eyes, had converted but compared to what was apparently going on in the outside world they made up a negligible minority.

Kaisabosen though, out in the world and proselytising like a trooper, was building up a formidable cadre of fanatics by all accounts. Laikanism was sweeping chimpanity with an all consuming passion that chimps almost never mustered for anything. Even Gdunk, with her traditionally dim view of the mass of her fellow chimps was surprised by the readiness of a species which could usually be reliably distracted by a rope, a tree and an interesting cardboard box to commit to a new set of beliefs. Especially ones so completely implausible as to make even the average Philosopher look like a well-rounded and practically minded individual.

And as the numbers following Kaisabosen grew so did the bizarreness of his new found belief. Edicts had been coming thick and fast over the last few months, each one announced with deadly seriousness by Raeget in his daily address to his own followers and anyone else who was unfortunate enough to pass within earshot. Questioning Kaisabosen, doubting Laika, being better looking than Kaisabosen, hats, drinking trees, cats – they'd all gained the opprobrium of the self-declared Prophet of the great Sky Dog. And through a fug of Wakaka, insanity and fear of the apparitions surrounding them each new ruling had been passionately embraced, no matter how contradictory or impossible to enforce. His followers were by no means a majority but for a minority they were punching well above their weight. There had even been riots between the dog worshippers and those who couldn't care less, sharp sticks had been produced and more than one chimp had died in the clashes. If Yessa were there she may have been able to say something, she would have found a way to cut Raeget out with the obscurity and incomprehensibility of her Science but even if the project was going well Gdunk was at a loss as to what she could do. And while the compound itself remained relatively free of Kaisabosen's influence that was a limitation she could live with.

Gdunk's daydreaming was soon shattered as Karder came shambling up beside her. She cast a sideways glance at him before her eyes turned back to the crater. He wasn't an easy chimp to talk to she'd found. He was certainly nice enough, polite to a fault and generally friendly but every conversation she had with him still seemed like an ordeal. If you looked at him it was hard not to feel like you were giving away a measure of revulsion at his appearance and if you didn't look at him it was even harder. Not that he seemed phased in the slightest by the uncomfortable edge which took over whenever he appeared. Gdunk admired that about him, having always been painfully aware of the discomfort which took some when they were asked to deal with her unsightly hairiness his seeming indifference to everyone’s opinion was a refreshing change. Although that didn't make his horrific visage any easier to stomach.

“We're getting there Gdunk, aren't we?”

The effort of talking sent Karder into another of his all too familiar coughing fits and Gdunk waited patiently for the maelstrom of phlegm to clear before replying.

“Well it certainly went better than it did last time, you can almost recognise some of the bits of the metal box. Do you think you could maybe find some way of keeping it all in one piece though?”

Karder stared thoughtfully into the crater.

“Perhaps, perhaps. I still don't think that's all that important though, as long as at least one piece makes it into space that's enough isn't it? I just need to add more exploding things to the mix, a lot more exploding things, could you send for some?”

“I... could do. How much more exploding stuff do you think you'll need though? I'm not sure they'll want to give me too much, especially since that guard lost a leg, they don't seem to trust us that much.”

A half grin, devoid of anything beyond the sheer glee of sciencing, flashed across Karder's face.

“Oh we'll need a lot more for all the science we're going to do. Would you like me to talk to them? They always seem so eager to help when I ask, and in such a hurry too, most efficient of them.”

Whether Karder realised the security team's true reasons for catering to his whims or not Gdunk couldn't tell. That indifference of his always made it hard to know just how much he realised the effect he could have on other chimps. He was right though, they did give him what he wanted with far less arguing and small talk than they demanded of her. So Gdunk nodded her ascent and after dancing a small jig of unrestrained delight Karder ran off to draw up a new list of highly explosive things to play with.

JINX

Jinx ran a paw across his eyes, sighed and looked back up at the machine. It was certainly big and it was certainly intimidating. Kimutai, who claimed to have a working knowledge of all things Scientific, had told him with unconvincing certainty that it was indeed very dangerous because of dark matter and radiation and tiny things which might blow up. And then he'd started running away very quickly and Jinx hadn't liked that at all so he'd had the little pug killed. Four-Leggers didn't fear the machinations of the corrupt, he'd told his heavies and besides, half a ton of explosives would deal with the problem as they did with most other things. There was no point hanging around when he wasn't needed though so with a nod Jinx set off back towards the running box to start wondering where he could get a new assistant at such short notice.

They were a good and safe seeming 500 metres out from the machine when the fireball erupted a hundred feet into the air and sent a wave of dust, dirt and detritus racing across the desert floor. The last henchmen still sprinting towards the convoy and looking sorely disappointed as they spun round and realised that they'd missed the impressive bit. Shrapnel and lumps of concrete showered down on the area around the blast, a few even clattering harmlessly at Jinx's feet. He was impressed. He'd liked to have used more explosives, for good measure, but what they'd had should have done the job and then some. Which made it all the more disappointing when a dog came running up to Jinx with a look of bemusement on his face and declared that while everything else in the compound had been reduced to very small bits of rubble the machine and its ball of energy were still standing.

The prisoners, Rex and Cutter included, had been gathered in a depressive huddle by one of the running boxes. Jinx would inevitably have them killed, that much he'd decided on but first he'd wanted to revel a little bit in their crushing disappointment. Rex over the loss of his life's work, Cutter at the collapse of whatever needlessly mysterious plan he'd been hatching. A desire which had rather back fired as they'd stood there, gone 'ooooh' at the fireball and then tried to suppress the smugness that was battling for attention with the certain knowledge of their looming deaths.

At least Rex had the politeness to look sympathetic when Jinx came over to them though.

"You're a lunatic Rex" Jinx shouted in between snarling and swiping a vicious claw across the scientist’s chest, leaving a neat line of bloodied scratches.

"Do you have any idea what that thing will do?"

Rex stayed awkwardly silent while Cutter sniggered to himself.

"Well it won't be blown up, that's for sure." said the Whippet before yet another blow to the gut sent him reeling.

"Rex, you know you're going to die, I'm going to kill you, but for once could you do the right thing and stop that machine before it kills all of us."

"It might not kill us all, it might save us."

"From what Rex? You're the biggest menace this planet has ever seen and I can kill you myself, no need for any machine."

The silence that came in reply was all the answer Rex could muster and after a few seconds dripping with judgement Jinx gestured for one of his hench dogs and gave the order for all of the prisoners to be loaded up for the journey back. The machine could be bombed, or dismantled, or buried or anything else that stood a chance of stopping it. Rex however wouldn't be around to see it. There were promises to be kept and slightly deranged, Mohawked mutant canines eager for a public execution and some good old fashioned justice.

YESSA

Yessa was starting to worry.

She'd spoken to Gdunk after three months of desperately trying to avoid doing so and she'd immediately regretted breaking her resolve. The outside world was getting worse, from the increased frequency of the visions to the ever more fanatical path the Laikanists were taking, chimpanity was by all accounts readying itself for one of those deep, dark stages that had come along a few times before in their history. And that meant death, destruction and chaos, all of which Yessa would eventually come for her too no matter how out of the way she tried to stay.

On top of that her own work had been getting increasingly bewildering. She'd pretty much given up on Sciencing now, even her razor sharp mind was drawing a blank when trying to decipher recent events around her beloved big metal frame in the desert. It had taken on a life of its own, perhaps even literally for all she knew, the idea of it being some sort of ancient beast was no more implausible than anything else she'd speculated on. If it was alive though it wasn't like any sort of living thing she'd encountered before. Sometimes it would light up with a pulsating core of blue... something. It'd light up the desert around it and in her opinion cast a rather beautiful flash across the barren sand. But then it'd go out and there was no reason for either that she could discern. These flashing interludes had gone from lasting a few seconds, to a few minutes to half an hour at a time. She'd thrown sticks at it but it hadn't done anything and when she checked later on there were never any sticks left behind when it disappeared. Her teacher had once told her that if you threw a stick at something and it didn't bounce off, make the target attack you or do some damage you should just run very fast in the opposite direction. Granted her teacher had been a big fan of the Wakaka but she'd been a smart chimp nonetheless and Yessa couldn't help but suspect that she was being a very stupid one in ignoring the advice.

There were new visions too, or hallucinations or whatever they were. Previously neither the ugly chimps nor the dog creatures had much bothered her when she'd been working. Granted she didn't pay much attention to anything that wasn't her science but since she'd returned from the meetings with Gdunk and Raeget she'd tried to keep at least half an eye open for apparitions and their frequency had definitely taken a sharp upward turn. What made it really interesting though was what the visions were doing out here with her in the desert – they were making sense. There were bald chimps and dog creatures both, all moving around her big metal frame. Not through it, not past it but around it, as if they were actually paying attention to it which threw up all sorts of thoughts which it hurt her head to consider. At first she'd tried to ignore it as simple chance, given long enough of course the creatures would start appearing near her, they'd never been limited to any one place and besides being out here, all alone, perhaps she was starting to imagine things. After all the machine was her obsession, her life's work, if she was going to be forced into not ignoring the visions then was it any surprise that she'd start to include them in her study of the frame? Sure it might be a little insane on her behalf but at least it was good logical insanity.

But then they might really be there for the machine, her machine. It was an odd thought given how long she'd spent with it without dwelling on the possibility of who its creators and users might be. The frame was the frame, set and inviolable in its own way, not that her science could allow for such lazy thinking, which was almost as bad as the unquestioning belief of the Laikanists. Whatever the case though these new developments had Yessa on edge. She'd taken to simply staring at the steel structure for hours on end. She'd stopped conducting her usual experiments, in fact she'd hardly thrown anything at it in weeks and the extent of her thinking had been making up a name for one of the more regular apparitions, which wasn't any sort of sciencing at all.

It was one of the dog creatures that'd she'd picked out. It wasn't one of the cuter ones, not that any of them were particularly adorable but some of them at least had a certain pitiable cuddliness about them, if you squinted to ignore the general deformity. Her dog however, or ‘Squash’ as she'd chosen to name it, was without even that saving grace. He did stand out from the rest though. Yessa was half sure it was male but even with the divide of realities between them looking too closely for confirmation still seemed impolite. Plus the squashed face, which inspired her choice of name with memories of an old experiment in which she'd hurled melons at the metal frame with as much force as she could muster, did little to encourage curiosity. As time passed though she did soften a little to the way Squash's tongue took to breaking out of his mouth and flailing excitedly from time to time, an endearing trait in a slobbery sort of way.

What had really marked Squash out though was the look in his eyes. Yessa had never been vain but she recognised that look as something she'd seen in her own reflection, intelligence. When the dog creature looked at the spot where the frame was, had been or would be he was really thinking about it. Not that the others weren't paying attention too but it hadn't taken long for her to realise that much like chimps they preferred gazing at each other to staring at the metal construction. For Squash though, like Yessa herself, it was the only important thing with his fellow dog creatures being the passing distractions rather than the other way around. So he'd gotten himself a name and Yessa had committed herself to hours of staring at the scene surrounding the frame, waiting for him or one of the others to appear with a patient fixation.

GDUNK

They'd been burning books, and not just for fun or warmth. They said it was a matter of getting rid of things 'which offended Laika' but at the end of each bonfire they just seemed angrier and more full of ideas for what should be burnt next. Gdunk had even taken to sleeping with a large stick by her bed, half suspecting that she'd be next on the list although the Laikanist craze still only had a peripheral presence amongst the self-named 'Space Chimps'. Instead a different mania had been sweeping through them, one Gdunk didn't entirely understand but which seemed to be working for all the members of her eclectic team.

Fuelling their collective mania were Karder and, apparently, herself. The whole space fairing idea, after much destructive trial and error, seemed to have been resolved in favour of the of the 'blowing stuff up faction' with differing degrees of resistance from those putting forward alternative theories. All, Gdunk had been told, thanks to her and her willing acceptance of anyone who asked for a huge amount of explosives for vaguely defined purposes. For the most part she had simply assumed that chimps enjoyed big explosions but repeated assurances were given that there was at least slightly more to it than just that. Blowing stuff up was a path to enlightenment, or life, or the future of chimpanity – all of which she’d apparently become the de facto scion of. And, once they made it work, Karder lispingly told her, the future of the species would be guaranteed and her place in history would be secured. It was a nice thought, especially as the Laikanists continued cutting their destructive path across the world. Which even with her natural uncertainty about the whole space thing she felt would be by far the worst option.

Today was to be the first test run of ‘the one that would work’. As opposed to the dozen previous tests of explosive metal boxes, which ‘definitely wouldn’t work’. It was a refrain Gdunk had heard before, in fact she had heard it almost every time a chimp came to her asking to requisition another few tonnes of high explosives. But as with all of those previous efforts the blind enthusiasm of Karder and the rest very nearly made her believe. Although never quite to the extent of staying out of the specially constructed bunker, built to keep falling chunks of twisted metal from caving in the heads of innocent observers. All morning Karder had been enthusing about their latest attempt. He’d gone so far as to make a small model of the prototype – which had left three guards and two lab assistants with flesh wounds but which had, according to him, been a rousing success.

Raeget had blithely labelled the whole affair an abomination in the eyes of Laika, right before scurrying off to his Laikanist congregation which – despite general indifference – was growing at a steady rate. They’d even tried to hold their own on-site book burning to keep pace with their more militant comrades in the outside world. But as the bulk of the chimps had proven quite attached to their own tomes it had turned into more of a book smouldering. In fact Kaisabosen’s own tract on the nature of Laika’s sublime self – and all the things she strongly disapproved of – had been the only book anyone had cared to spare. But to his credit he had done his best with that and whilst the scientists sniggered at his meagre pyromania he had at least managed to set off a couple of smoke alarms. After that though the reports had come in of another battle between Laikanists and unbelievers on the outside. Six chimps had died for no real reason but as ever the outside world managed to sober everyone up. So today’s test as a big one, Gdunk could sense that. The chimps on her team needed a boost, something beyond the stream of bad news.

In the bunker Karder held the ignition button. Gdunk had been offered the honour but past experience suggested that having both hands free for defensive purposes was always a wise idea. So instead she was squatting in a corner, arms over her head, waiting for the usually inevitable screams of pain from the imminent victims of scientific endeavour. Unabashed Karder stood by the observation slot grinning with an almost maniacal glee, which worried all involved a little bit but which was met with a measure of indulgence from those who knew him.

Beyond the steel reinforced concrete walls and at a moderately safe distance of two hundred feet away stood the latest evolution of the space bound metal box. With her consummate lack of technical savvy Gdunk couldn’t really say what differentiated this one from the previous models. Granted it was still in one piece, which was one glaring difference but then they’d all been in one piece to start with. This one did at least have the obvious addition of thick black stripes running down each side. That had been Raeget’s one contribution to the whole process as he insisted that they’d make it go faster. Gdunk had been unconvinced that speed was as much of an issue as staying in one piece was but the rest of the Space Chimps had grudgingly agreed with the Laikanist and so the stripes had stayed.

As Karder looked around the bunker one last time, surveying his cowering co-workers all such thoughts were laid aside though. His grin did little to improve his looks and it took some effort on Gdunk’s behalf to smile and nod back at him, the silent signal for buttons to be pressed and things to start spewing flames and hopefully not exploding completely or killing anyone. There was a split second of delay between the pushing and the not-nearly-distant-enough roar of what she’d been told were dozens of small explosions firing in (possibly) planned sequence. She had no idea how any of it worked but then, up until that point, nor did anyone else. Karder had a lot of pretty pictures and intricate schematics which he promised made complete sense when combined with page after page of mind-numbing equations but as had been proven his word wasn’t always a reliable source.

It took a couple more seconds for Gdunk to be even vaguely sure that she wasn’t in imminent danger of dying and to leap to her feet. Joining Karder and a couple of others at the viewing point she looked out into the distance where a pillar of flame seemed to be erupting from the earth and steadily boring into the sky. At the pinnacle a flash of light marked the progress of a surprisingly intact metal box, a progress that was mirrored in the eyes of each of those watching. The designer, whose looks could never pass for anything but ugly, came the closest he’d ever been to beauty in that instant as the results of his work finally came to fruition. Gdunk couldn’t help but suppress a gasp of awe at what they were seeing.

That night, they drank.

REX

Rex looked over at Cutter and Cutter looked over at Rex. Constance looked at nothing in particular and shook quietly to herself. There were six of them in the running box, three facing three on opposing wooden benches which had been bolted to the floor.

Constance hadn’t spoken as they were loaded for the journey back at the compound, she’d just stared; mostly at the clouds, or the ground or undecided points on the horizon. Occasionally she’d flashed a glance towards Rex and he’d immediately tried to shrink himself down to the size of a particularly stunted Chihuahua. Part of him felt guilty, quite a large part in fact but the knowledge that he could do absolutely nothing about their situation was crushing even the small amount of courage he generally had available to him.

There were others from Rex’s team in the running box, as well as in another two boxes which had been loaded up with the surviving inhabitants of his team. They all knew it would be their last trip, not that Jinx’s lackeys had said as much but no one could imagine for an instant that it was going to be a pleasure cruise. Show trials would be the order of the day, then terrible, grim deaths. What more was there to do? Only Cutter seemed oddly amused by the whole affair, much to the irritation of his fellow condemned canines. He alone had joked at the guards as they had shuffled on board, although to their credit they hadn’t joked back. And only he had smiled as Jinx, the new Universal Alpha, had watched their departure – getting only a hateful glance in return.

Now though Cutter’s eyes were resting on the shrunken form of Rex, his expression mixing pity and thoughtfulness.

“Rex?”

The bulldog didn’t reply.

“Rex, I need you to listen to me.”

Again Rex showed no sign of acknowledgement. Cutter let out a shallow sigh and forced an out of place smile.

“Rex, you’ve saved the world – whether you know it or not. I don’t know how you did it but that machine of yours is going to do something. And, well, idiot though you are you’re still my Holy Idiot. So…”

As the sentence tailed off Cutter jerked sideways and launched himself at the guard who sat at the end of the running box, scowling at those on the two benches. He was a Mastiff who bore the look of a dog who had shoved his face into a bag of razor blades and come out looking all the better for the experience. Like a canine shaped monolith he turned with glacial reluctance to glare at the leaping form of Cutter – which unsurprisingly proved to be too slow a reaction. The Alpha-Whippet had his teeth sunk into the guard’s throat before the larger dog could send a hefty paw batting at his attacker. Unfortunately for Cutter though his teeth didn’t dig deep enough and a glancing blow sent him staggering backwards into the lap of a terrified looking Dachshund mix from Rex’s team. Only a couple of Cutter’s Whippets had even made it beyond the compound. Most receiving summary executions after their last ditch attempt at martyrdom to the cause and those who had made it out had all been kept apart from their Alpha at Jinx’s command. All of which meant that the Whippet barely bothered to spare a glance at his fellow hostages before giving up any hope of their leaping to his assistance. Instead launching himself back at the Mastiff who, by that point, was on his feet and as upright as he could get in the confines of the running box. Gouts of blood leaked from the wound on his neck but served only to make him look immeasurably irritated.

The ensuing brawl was something of a non-event as each dog battled for space in a clash of muffled growls and snapping jaws. Rex cowered against Constance who in turn cowered against Rex, each one just about terrified enough to imagine that the other could in some way protect them. All around them other members of the team played out much the same process in the time it took for Cutter to emerge once again from the brawl for a moment of respite. Before the guard could drag him back in though Cutter gave a small yelp of surprise and looked down at the prize he’d unwittingly taken with him, gripped in his paw were the guard’s keys. It took the Whippet a moment to fully process what he’d got but as realisation set in he became a blur of motion. First he lurched towards the doors at the rear of the vehicle, grabbing Rex by the scruff of the neck as he went and then, key in lock, he swung the door open and shoved the scientist out onto the desert floor which was speeding by beneath them in a potentially fatal looking way. It was only as the Bulldog was in mid-air that the Alpha realised that Constance was being dragged along behind him, each dog instinctively keeping their grip on the other. There was only a split second for reflection though as the Mastiff guard came bowling towards him and the two were once again caught up in their deadly embrace. A final growling tear at the Whippet’s throat brought an end to the last great Alpha of the Whippet Brotherhood. Although with his own wound still dripping with blood the guard had little time for satisfaction as he too passed away in the back of the running box.

The dogs remaining on the benches spent a good long while frozen in fear. Eventually one of them looked out of the back and after shuddering at the fatally fast looking landscape gently pulled the door closed, stepping delicately over the prone bodies on the way back to their seat.

KAISABOSEN

Kaisabosen was fucked up. For 72 hours now he’d been living on a diet more or less exclusively made up of Wakaka and he had the nagging suspicion that he was losing the plot slightly. He’d been holed up in his newly constructed palace for the duration, the completion of which had triggered the first of his celebratory binges and the building of which had marked the start of a lot of new problems.

The whole thing was getting a little out of hand. Granted his direct line to Laika was winning him all sorts of perks and privileges but even he wasn’t feeling entirely in control of events any more. When they’d started burning chimps for example, well, he hadn’t entirely disapproved of that one as long as he’d been choosing the ones to go but then his followers had started getting carried away. Perhaps he should have seen it coming? It wasn’t a long journey after all from slinging shit and the occasional stick at unbelievers to simply slinging them onto bonfires but Kaisabosen had never imagined things would develop so quickly. He probably hadn’t helped matters by going a little mad with the holy laws and edicts, half of which he didn’t even remember coming up with, but it increasingly seemed as if there wasn’t a chimp left who hadn’t done something to merit a summary trial and a quick burning. Neighbours had turned on neighbours, families had turned on families, friends on friends and even when he’d eventually suggested that they all just take a bit of a break, kick back and maybe spin around in enjoyable circles for a while his supposed followers hadn’t even paused for breath.

Even worse, they’d told him he shouldn’t be getting involved. Chimps he barely recognised had arrived one day and politely informed him, with all the heartfelt and wild eyed reverence of the true believer, that he needn’t trouble himself with the mundane matters of leadership any more. Instead, they’d said, he could take a break. They were building him a palace nice and out of the way, where his holy self could commune peacefully with Laika and be wheeled out for the occasional ceremonial event. And he did like the palace, but the whole loss of power thing had been no fun at all.

He’d tried telling them that it wasn’t right, that prophets with direct lines to deified dogs shouldn’t be told what to do but they’d simply nodded and smiled apologetically while a couple of seriously oversized chimps sidled up on either side of him and proceeded to ‘help’ him on his way. So since then he’d more or less shrugged and surrendered to the experience. As far as prisons went there were certainly worse to be found and to their credit his hosts and supposed servants treated him with sycophantic politeness. So the Wakaka had flowed, because there was little else to do, and the females had been plentiful as, for the first time in his life, Kaisabosen found himself being showered with their adoring attentions. That bit had been a lot of fun even though he vaguely suspected that their adoration was more a result of his jailer’s insistence than any legitimate attraction to the prophet.

His imprisonment was rapidly becoming a lonely one though, hence the latest 72 hour long binge without a break. Beyond the servants and the females, who seemed reluctant to enter into any discussion beyond acknowledging his orders, his only visitors had been strange chimps who asked him to sign blank sheets of paper as a supposed part of his ‘religious duty’ and, even more depressingly, Raeget from the Space Chimps. Kaisabosen had strong suspicions that they’d only let that one through for their own amusement because he certainly had no desire to talk to the wild eyed obsessive. Nonetheless he felt obliged to make some small effort. At least Raeget brought some news from the outside, even if it was largely completely uninteresting with word from the space program being one of the few topics half worth listening to.

Apparently they’d had a successful test launch – or at least one where nobody had died - and all those involved were bristling with excitement. Except for Raeget of course, who had enthusiastically branded the whole affair heresy and eagerly begged for permission to burn all them all and everything they’d done. Kaisabosen had restrained the manic chimp largely out of a sense of curiosity. It had taken a little holy sciencing to make his mind up and there was no question that their going into space would fail to do anything about the apparitions but it was a thing to do and Laika was unlikely to care much either way.

Beyond the rare visits from Raeget and the officials pretty much all of Kaisabosen’s excitement had in fact come from the visions themselves. Heavy Wakaka use, he’d learned, didn’t just leave him increasingly cross eyed but also made the sight of the ugly chimp and dog creatures immeasurably more interesting. If he paid attention to the ones appearing around the palace and its central living tree their muted movements almost made for a coherent story. The ones here, unlike the bulk on the outside, seemed to be important for reasons he couldn’t fathom. Both dogs and ugly chimps paraded around formally waving their hands or paws at each other whenever they passed and occasionally breaking their routines to run around dramatically with serious looks on their faces. The ugly chimps even wearing matching scraps of fabric which, as far as Kaisabosen could tell, served no real purpose but which did have a certain style to them which he was considering trying to mimic. More than that though power told whatever the species. It was Laika at work no doubt, depositing him on a site of mystical authority befitting his natural station in life.

It was whilst walking through a grove of mango trees in the palace’s grounds one day, idly watching servants swing to and fro about their duties, that Kaisabosen came across one of the more interesting visions he’d found. Around half a dozen ugly chimps in drab and uniform fabric sacks, with varying weights of metal hanging off of the front, stood in a huddle around something. Each one took turns to scream mutely at the others before the next one cut in and took over. At the same time their eyes kept flicking back to the whatever it was they were all standing around. It was hard to tell on faces so hideous but Kaisabosen was sure that the lot of them were terrified. And when a new one appeared it definitely was. Dressed in a white fabric sack the new arrival was so repugnant as to make the others seem almost normal as well as sending a shudder down his spine. The latest one came to a halt at the arguing group and, hands shaking, raised a finger to interject. More silent shouting followed which Kaisabosen recognised as the assertive and open bellowing of leadership. By the time the white clad oddity dropped to his knees and started pleading Kaisabosen was wandering around amidst the group. He wasn’t sure if it was the Wakaka, familiarity or the calmingly luxurious surroundings but the show playing out before him was almost entertaining. It even had the vague scent of prophetic vision about it, although through the fruit induced fug it was was hard to figure out what it might mean. Some heavy Science would be needed when he could think in something approaching a straight line. Or failing that he’d take more Wakaka and make up any rotten old fruit, as was the usual way.

Eventually the unappealing group seemed to come to a consensus as the one in white started sobbing to itself and pulling vainly at the fabric that one of the others wore. In slow unison – and with Kaisabosen leaning in to see the irritating empty space between them – the rest of the group turned inwards. From there things got both confusing and anticlimactic as they all placed their hand into what looked like nothing more than an empty void. After a seconds pause and a final grim look at each other they pressed down in unison and, as one, slumped into dejectedness.

Not long after that they disappeared, leaving Kaisabosen craning awkwardly at nothing for a moment before the Wakaka imbalance sent him nose-diving to the floor and into welcoming unconsciousness.

YESSA

Yessa reached distractedly for another banana, her eyes not moving from the frame and the dog creature standing in front of it. The dog was Squash and, at ten minutes, this was the longest he’d appeared for. As the banana missed her mouth and mashed vaguely into her face Yessa gave up and threw it aside. Squash was doing something, which was always the case when he appeared of course but it was only this time that he was doing something undeniably related to the machine. His eyes were darting between the metal frame and something directly in front of him and about twenty foot from its base. Every so often he’d prod at some empty spot in the air and Yessa would inadvertently hold her breath as she tried to memorise the pattern of paw waving and poking.

After perhaps the third flurry of prodding and observing the frame lit up again. The same sphere of light as Yessa had seen before flashed momentarily between the steel fans before blinking out of existence again, taking the mirage of Squash with it.

It took awhile for Yessa’s eyes to adjust to the sudden absence of both dog creatures and big balls of light. She recoiled as a fresh sense of awareness washed over her. She’d heard of this happening before amongst a select handful of Scientists. It was the crossover point between the vaunted realms of theoretical sciencing, where making up plausible sounding stories about the universe and how it might work met with actual, genuine, observable reality. The dog creature had interacted with the machine and the machine had reacted, it was something real and it was blowing away years of her own random speculation. Granted it meant that all of her best guesswork was meaningless but it also meant that whatever she made up next would have enough truth behind it to place her amongst Chimpanities finest thinkers – validation for the unlikely acclaim she’d previously received. The frame and her work on it might finally amount to something genuinely worth knowing. It was a thought which triggered a brief, nervous dance of excitement from Yessa. A dance which segued into a moment of hand flapping, jumping up and down and spinning around on the spot – which by chimp standards was on par with running naked through the streets screaming ‘eureka!’. Rushing over to the spot where Squash had been stood Yessa’s mind raced. Whatever, wherever and whenever the dog creatures had come from they’d had something to do with her big steel frame. The big steel frame was important, Yessa’s work was important and all the doubters were undoubtedly wrong. This was big science, big science which could only get bigger once Yessa figured out what new things she could throw at it and that list was already forming in her mind. Her hands quivered once again as she thought of all the lighting up, flashing, fizzing and exploding things she’d heard the Space Chimps were using under Gdunk’s watchful guardianship – a whole new world of opportunities to mix in with her new found discovery.

A small nagging voice tugged briefly at the back of Yessa’s mind as she experimentally waved her hands in the same general manner as Squash had waved his paws. It was asking ‘what are you actually planning to do here?’ in a voice so mercifully small and polite that within a few minutes she had managed to cast it aside. Whatever came next was going to be fun and that, for Yessa, was reason enough.

REX

Rex rolled over with a groan and groped around for a grip on reality. A quick pawing suggested that he was at least technically in one piece although he had the sneaking suspicion that any sudden movements could rapidly change that. It took some very gentle and hesitant rolling to bring the unconscious form of Constance into sight. She was a few feet away, where she’d come to a halt after their unexpected exit from the running box. The creamy white of her fur was marked by a dash of blood red and streaks of sandy dirt stuck to her wounds. Rex panicked.

Instinctively pulling himself towards Constance the first blast of pain cut through him to a chorus of yelps. On the plus side though, as the agony faded to a mere dull torture, Rex felt fairly sure that nothing had snapped and from there the journey to her side was just about bearable – pitiable whining aside.

“Constance… wake up, please…”

Rex pleaded, a paw stroking clumsily at her back, letting out a gasp of relief as she shuddered with an intake of breath. She was alive, Rex repeated the fact silently to himself a few times by way of reassurance before, drained of his final traces of energy, he passed out.

The next time he came round things were easier. Constance was standing over him for starters, which dealt with one concern. And when she reached out a paw and pulled him to his feet the absence of any all-consuming pain dealt with the more major worries about his possible injuries.

“We’re alive,” Constance said with a reassuring smile.

“Where?”

“I don’t know, somewhere on the road. The running box left, they didn’t even notice that we were gone.”

“Cutter?”

“The Whippet? He didn’t jump off, not here anyway. Why you Rex? Why did he just save you?”

Rex wasn’t entirely sure about that himself. Cutter thought he was the Whippet’s ‘Holy Idiot’, but the machine was was already running and if the Whippet Brotherhood prophecies had anything more in mind for him nobody had said anything about it.

“Pity, I think, or belief. I’m not sure that Whippets really care what they do or why they do it.”

Constance nodded at that, as if it made sense and proceeded to shake herself off, wincing as the grazes on her back offered up a fresh stab of pain.

“What do we do now Rex?”

He had no idea, but after making another quick check for broken bones from the fall he did his best to sound certain.

“We go back to the machine. I don’t think there’s anywhere else we can go.

Again Constance nodded. Her trust always made him feel uncomfortable, now more than ever with the near certainty that Jinx would be back to finish what he’d started with even more fire power. Given that the alternative was certain death at the hands of insane civilization though even a bad choice was the best one he could think of. The war for leadership of doganity may have been over but even with his passing acquaintance with Jinx, Rex felt confident that the peace wouldn’t last, if it ever started. Plus the machine was running. He hadn’t had much time to think about that and now he had the chance he wasn’t sure he wanted to try. It might, he reminded himself, do something really good at some point. It might bring about something great as it expanded, it might change the world. Or it might just kill everything. Cutter, Jinx, Rex himself, they were all just guessing and now that the moment of decisiveness was long passed big, ugly doubts were eagerly making their presence felt.

“Are you sure it was a good idea to turn it up to eleven, Rex?”

Constance’s voice was gentle as she interjected into his stream of doubts but Rex shuddered nonetheless. She’d never asked before, she’d just had faith – either in him or the project, although he could hardly blame her for asking now. If he couldn’t find answers for himself though he was damn sure he had none for her. So with as much tongue lolling confidence as he could muster he replied.

“Of course, it’ll change the world. And doganity,” ‘for better or worse’ he added silently to himself as they both padded back down the road.

RAEGET

‘And Laika did reach down from Her heavenly box and with a mighty paw did deliver the great book to Kaisabosen. ‘None may read the truth herein’, said the Great Dog, ‘save for you, my Prophet’. And Kaisabosen, knowing he alone had been chosen from Chimpanity, did spread the good word to all who would listen and find salvation in a world of apparitions.

The unworthy did scoff at his truth and with great ignorance and sinful anger did hurl shit and other materials displeasing to Laika at the Prophet. ‘He’s talking rotten fruit’ was their heretical cry and ‘look how cross eyed he is, the mental Wakaka fiend’ was their abominable accusation. But lo! One did stand as a shield to the Prophet and did strike down his attackers as Laika’s invisible paw doth swat at the evils of the world – and this hero they did call Raeget, wielder of fire and big stick.’

Raeget skimmed what he’d written already and found that it was good, but not great. Most of it was the standard fodder that he used every time he spoke to the small Laikanist contingent in the compound but this was for something special. He’d asked permission to write it from the serious looking chimps who seemed to surround Kaisabosen these days. He knew from the visits they let him make to the Prophet that they were putting out new revelations themselves, ones which had never come from Kaisabosen himself. Which at first he’d thought was a little bit messed up but as they’d calmly explained to him – no chimp can truly contain all the words of Laika so they were just helping to deal with the overflow. Initially he’d remained unconvinced and he knew the Prophet wasn’t big on their input but after a bit of pestering they’d convinced him. Largely by saying that he could write up one of his own Holy edicts. After that he’d found a sense of clarity hitherto unknown to him, although as he was now on his tenth draft he wasn’t entirely clear on that clarity.

On the first few he’d gotten a bit carried away, as he himself realised when his hand written scripture had him fighting giant fire breathing lizards, leading an army of canine apparitions and finally saving Yessa from a very tall tower for reasons never adequately explained. That last part in particular had worried him given Yessa’s well known indifference to the greater truths of Laika. Plus he was already having enough disconcerting dreams about her without giving her something approaching divine status. So he’d kept on trying and writing and this was as far as he’d gotten.

Raeget had even considered going to Gdunk for advice, before changing his mind after recalling Laika’s views on thinking females. He was uncomfortably aware of the increased importance she held amongst the Space Chimps though. Even Kaisabosen’s assistants had started according her a certain measure of respect in fact. No real decisions had been made about the whole space thing yet. Kaisabosen’s cadre tended to shrug and tell Raeget to keep playing along when the topic came up and the Prophet himself had just giggled through a Wakaka haze when asked for an opinion. Even Raeget had lost some of the fire and fury which had previously driven him to call for the big stick now that he had grander things on his mind.

In that vague indecisiveness the Laikanists kept a certain restraint in their dealings with the Space Chimps, which was probably the main reason why Raeget was being accorded the respect he was. At least he couldn’t quite believe it was entirely down to any special quality on his part, much as he wished it was.

With a sigh he added his latest effort to the ever growing pile of drafts. The holy spirit of Laika just wasn’t with him today, or at least not this morning. Oddly enough it generally only appeared of an evening and after a few hits of distilled fruit mix, although he tried hard not to read too much into that. Besides, today was a meeting day. Gdunk had told him so after sneaking up on him as he practised his big stick hitting skills in the woods. There had been a test of some sort the week before and, apparently, it had gone well. Now they had to decide what came next.

Raeget made his way over to the meeting tree; a huge, gnarled oak affair which had been shipped in at great expense by the first great meeting of scientists in one of their frequent moments of decadence. Gdunk and Karder were already squatting on a branch mid-way up the fifty foot trunk, which left Raeget to scramble up to an out-lying twig just above them – the Big Stick of Laika couldn’t be seen sitting below unbelievers after all. Even if his precarious position did threaten to send him plummeting to earth at any moment. Being within earshot of their conversation didn’t hurt either as they waited for the rest of the chimps to turn up.

“Someone’ll ask sooner or later, won’t they?”

Raeget leant forward with a wobble to listen in as Karder spoke to Gdunk.

“They haven’t so far, they all seem busy with the Laikanists” Gdunk replied.

“The visions though, isn’t that what all this is about?”

Gdunk cast a glance towards Raeget before leaning conspiratorially back to Karder. Carefully avoiding her look Raeget did his best to stop breathing so he could listen in.

“I don’t think the Laikanists want them stopped – the longer they go on the more members they get. I think they’re just trying to ignore us.”

Karder’s face creased in thought before slipping into a half smile. Raeget would like to have heard more but as a voice cried “Hello!” from the base of the meeting tree his delicate sense of balance failed him and with a yelp of dismay he found himself rushing towards the ground, ricocheting off of half a dozen branches as he went.

At the bottom the remaining Space Chimps clustered around him, some sniggering, a couple coo-ing in concern.

GDUNK

Gdunk coughed quietly in the hope of silencing her chattering colleagues enough to get the meeting started. When that failed she coughed a little louder. And it wasn’t until she started a fully-fledged hacking, choking fit that anything even vaguely resembling order seemed to break out.

The meeting tree now boasted a wealth of hanging, squatting and dangling chimps. It was the first meeting since the test run of the exploding box, the one where it hadn’t actually exploded. They hadn’t reached space, not that time, but Karder had assured Gdunk that with the theory proven the rest was merely a matter of time – so she’d called them all together.

“Well I know you’ve all heard about the success of the exploding box and you all know that’s why I’ve called you here. Soon we’re going to be able to do it properly and launch the real thing. And then the hallucinations will stop.”

Gdunk made her best attempt at a confident smile on that point and hoped that no one would question it, which was of course the immediate cue for someone to do just that.

“How will that work then?”

It was Eress who decided to take up the job. Like a lot of others he’d been broadly supportive of the exploding box concept but almost completely uninvolved with its development. As far as Gdunk was aware he’d spent most of his time with them pursuing his studies of very, very small things, which seemed to involve a lot of staring into magnifiers and being constantly surprised by what he saw. He’d gotten along remarkably well with Karder however, once she’d introduced the two of them properly, and the latter had enthused for hours on end about how important really small things were in relation to the exploding box.

“Well, if the, er, apparitions come from space then maybe we can ask one of them up there to stop coming down here and scaring chimps.”

“Why would they be coming from up there?”

Gdunk was stumped on that one. Yessa, when Gdunk had first suggested the theory, had come up with all sorts of science to make it sound plausible but as far as Gdunk was concerned it was just an idea which was as good as any other. Taking a risk she told her team just that.

“Well, it’s as good a theory as any other.”

To her surprise Eress nodded thoughtfully at this and offered no argument. A glance at Karder, her main scientific advisor bought another satisfied nod and all but Gdunk herself seemed satisfied.

“The next important part is to decide who should go and talk to the things up there. I think we’ve agreed that an exploding box with room for one would be the wisest idea just, erm, in case. So, any volunteers?”

Each chimp present instantly guessed what that ‘in case’ referred to and kept their hands down accordingly. Gdunk wasn’t massively surprised. As fond as she’d grown of her team she knew that their courage was highly selective. She’d seen each of them gleefully juggling high explosives or throwing around deadly substances with reckless abandon in the course of their work, completely oblivious to the risk involved. But then she’d also seen them scamper up the highest branches and cower in fear just because one of the burly security chimps looked at them funny. A small part of her had hoped that the allure of going into space would trigger that former enthusiastic bravery but evidently they’d seen too many botched experiments to run the risk. And now they were keeping their eyes fixed on conveniently placed distractions and doing their best to look like they weren’t there.

“No one? Come on, someone has to go, they’ll be the first chimp in space…” or the first chimp to blow up on their way to space, she added to herself.

The awkward silence remained though and a thought Gdunk had been trying hard not to have came floating back to the surface of her mind. She would have to go. The scientists wouldn’t, except perhaps for Karder and he would be needed on the ground in case this attempt went down as another abortive ‘test run’. Besides, if there was anything up there then she could think of few worse ambassadors than the designer of the exploding box, who had enough trouble dealing with his own species without sending them running in disgust, never mind someone else's. They could use one of the guards who were, theoretically, under her command but the same problem of first contact applied as well as the fact that they knew full well the success rate so far and were none of them stupid or obliging enough to take the risk.

So that left Gdunk. Expendable enough not to be missed, sane enough not to offend (she hoped) and brave enough, possibly, to actually do it.

YESSA

Yessa pinned another picture to the base of her thinking tree. Stepping back she passed quietly over her own awareness of how little like science and how much like insanity it was starting to look. There were hundreds of diagrams, patterns and designs there now. Each one an attempt at capturing whatever it was Squash had been doing when he stood before the frame and waved his paws.

There was something there in front of the machine, or had been or would be. Yessa had mimicked his movements enough times without noticeable effect to be half sure of that much. And it was something that somehow connected to the flashing ball of light. That didn’t appear every time Squash did something but she’d only ever seen it after he’d been there – which meant something she was sure. But the ever more maddening diagrams didn’t seem to be leading anywhere. There was no set pattern which led to the light, just a dozen seemingly disconnected ones which might have done.

Her latest obsession, branched off from the main one, was with making something to stand in for whatever Squash saw there. It was a distraction as much as anything. The science of making stuff to do stuff was a real enough one even if the madness surrounding her current obsession was a poor foundation for it. The technicalities of what the device should do were fairly easy for Yessa to brush aside. And while she was well out of her field when it came to filling whatever it was she was making with wires and elaborate bits of plastic it was enough to start with. Complex things always contained stuff like that, she knew, and something told her that she’d need something more complex than anyone had ever thought to make before.

So far Yessa’s efforts had amounted to a wooden box with a top panel covered in dials and buttons. They didn’t do anything, of course, but they certainly did look right and that was more or less all she had to go on at the start. Inside wires dangled into nothingness, with a few connected to each other for the sake of it. A part of Yessa knew that this was no less insane than the diagrams had been but whenever that part reared its ugly head she reassured herself that there really was plenty of good old fashioned guess work going on here and sooner or later that would, probably, lead to something rational.

REX

Rex made an effort to force his tongue back into his mouth. It had been a six mile walk back to the machine and the first real exercise he’d had in nearly a decade. And for the entire journey Constance had been casting uncertain looks at him. He had the worried suspicion that she was trying to figure out if she’d been following a mad dog all this time. He also felt fairly certain that she wouldn’t believe him if he tried to reassure her otherwise.

Once they reached the machine, or at least the edges of the glowing ball that now encompassed it, he’d hoped she would get that old faith in him back. But her eyes just seemed to glaze over, he hoped with wonder but it could just as easily have been fear or regret – he didn’t want to risk asking either way.

Slumping to the ground about thirty feet from the perimeter of the energy ball Rex gave up worrying. The glow of the pulsating energy was too beautiful to regret and he’d known from the start that he could do nothing to stop it – so why worry? So what if even Constance now doubted him, it was hardly a new experience for him to be thought wrong. In fact since the atom splitting business whole swathes of the canine population wanted him dead. And then the Whippets had, in a way, been worshipping him, there was no logic to any of it. If he was clueless about what he was doing he could at least be fairly sure going by experience that the rest of his species didn’t have much of an idea themselves and an uncertainty spread widely enough seemed like a fairly comforting thing.

Rex had drifted off into his own thoughts, the glow of energy filling his eyes as his mind wandered. Beside him Constance was saying something but all he could hear was a distant mumbling, as if he was underwater and she on terra firma; there was no point trying to swim back now, with nothing to offer her. How long he sat like that he wasn’t sure, the noise of her voice didn’t fade away so it couldn’t have been that long but at the end of his thoughtful trance came a moment of certainty. Hauling himself upright Rex nodded vaguely to the universe at large and started walking towards the ball of light. Constance’s voice grew louder but no clearer as he made his way to the boundaries of what he’d started. His machine, for better or worse, was going to do something and sooner or later it’d do it to every dog, bitch and puppy on the planet, it only seemed fitting that he should be the first. So with a sharp intake of breath Rex took that final step and walked into the light.

KAISABOSEN

Kaisabosen waved vaguely at the thronging crowds. The ones at the front hollered their approval, some even hurling fruit as a declaration of their love for him. As it bounced off of the glass box on wheels he was being paraded in he tried to figure out why they loved him but to no avail. It was getting harder and harder to remember a lot of things these days, with the Wakaka fruit casting a constant haze over his thoughts. It would be nice to quit, probably. Some part of him certainly recalled a time when thinking had been easier, it hadn’t been that long ago had it? He wasn’t really sure, the days seemed to have stopped passing properly. They’d told him he was ill – so he needed the Wakaka, that rang true, why had he started taking so much if it wasn’t? And he certainly wasn’t feeling himself, which must have been the illness. But he didn’t need to worry about that, they’d told him so. Kaisabosen wasn’t quite sure who ‘they’ were but ‘they’ looked after him so they couldn’t have been bad chimps. They’d given him his palace, they’d arranged this nice parade and told him he’d be helping launch an exploding box into space, which would save the world and prove to everyone that Laika existed. That would be nice too, especially as he’d recently been getting the strange feeling that he’d just made Her up. The illness talking, they’d assured him.

Some nagging doubts remained though and towards the back of the crowd he could see other chimps, unhappy looking chimps, screaming words he couldn’t make out. Although not for long as a phalanx of hard looking and scarred chimps swept through, plucking the angriest looking protesters up and spiriting them away to… somewhere. For their own good, thought Kaisabosen, or at least his own good – although he was uncertain as to quite how that worked.

By the time they reached the launch site Kaisabosen had more or less given up paying attention. Security guards had more or less carried him out of his glass box and down a path lined with yet more severe looking chimps, each staring at him with a mix of reverence and fanaticism for whatever fuelled them – Laika probably. Eventually he’d been given more Wakaka to ‘keep him well’ before being introduced to a handful of new arrivals, a couple of whom he recognised.

Raeget was there, the odd one with the excessive fondness for big sticks. Gdunk was the first to speak to him though, he knew her from the reports he’d angrily scanned what seemed like a long, long time ago. Unlike the rest she didn’t seem to pay much attention to him, instead launching herself into an enthusiastic stream of words aimed vaguely in his direction, not seeming much bothered if he understood or not. Which was fortunate, because he didn’t, although phrases like ‘space’ and ‘one small step’ did stand out even if he couldn’t quite figure out their value.

After a little polite nodding he moved on down the line until, on trying to shake the paw of a dog shaped apparition, his helpers once again swept him away and to an area roped off from the crowds. Gdunk, still excitedly gibbering about things Kaisabosen couldn’t be bothered to try to understand, accompanied him on to a raised platform.

“And when we get up there we’ll find the-“

“You’ll find Laika,” Kaisabosen cut in as his attention temporarily focused in on what Gdunk was saying. He felt sure that it was the right thing to say and a nod from one of his assistants confirmed it for him. The previously chattering Gdunk came to a mouth flapping halt, her face sinking into uncertainty.

“You will – and Laika will help you stop the apparitions.” This came from the chimp in Kaisabosen’s retinue who’d nodded before and was said with the sort of certainty that brooked no questioning. Which left all three in uncomfortable silence for a minute. Gdunk reluctant to dig herself into a hole stuck to silence while Kaisabosen had largely forgotten what the topic of conversation was in the first place. His handler, seemingly indifferent to any sense of social awkwardness, just stared blankly forward.

It was only when Raeget joined them that the silence was broken.

“Aren’t you fortunate that the Prophet chose to come and witness your launch, Gdunk? With the blessings of Laika’s true voice how can you fail?”

Gdunk nodded and forced a smile.

“Erm, well I’m certainly glad that you’ve all shown such an interest in our work. Of course we can’t be certain of what we’ll find up there but, well, I’ll certainly do my best to stop the apparitions.”

Raeget fixed Gdunk with a stare, happy for once to be in the Laikanist majority when dealing with the awkward scientist. Kaisabosen’s handler gave her his own hard look, betraying no emotions beyond general severity.

“Whatever you may find up there I’m sure you’ll seek understanding through Laika on your return. I understand that you and your… associates, aren’t entirely committed to Her greater truths but it would be most unfortunate if you were to cast doubt on the beliefs so earnestly held by so many chimps. Is it not enough that they must endure the madness of the apparitions without having their one comfort called into doubt?”

Gdunk forced an even more tenuous smile and nodded while her insides churned in fear.

“Yes, I’d, erm, better be off to the exploding box, preparations to make, you know, space stuff.”

Kaisabosen shuddered suddenly, waking up from a pleasant day dream about a giant fish and mumbled something incoherent to himself. Making use of the cue his handler took the dazed Prophet by the elbow and led him to a seat on the podium, with Raeget tagging along behind and Gdunk making her escape off towards the exploding box.

YESSA

Yessa leapt back with a shriek of pain as a shower of sparks struck out at her. It wasn’t the first time it had happened over the past few weeks and, while she’d managed to bring the hand flapping panic when it did down to a minimum, the shock was still something she couldn’t get used to. Making stuff had proven harder than she’d expected, in part because it had proven far, far easier than she’d expected. While she’d started uncertainly adding dials and nodes one at a time with a limited idea of where she was going with her plan there was now an ever expanding and ever more complex design building up in her mind. Every new wire meant she had to add six more, every new button demanded another brass valve and every brass valve meant she had to add more bits of plastic to the innards of the wooden box. Not that she had any idea what any of it would do of course but Yessa was discovering a sort of meditative calm in the process which made every new addition a logical one which, in time, would somehow come to something. The harder part came with her realisation that making stuff really wasn’t something her scientific training had covered. Apparently it was dangerous, for starters, melting things and running electricity through them had far more of an effect than she’d ever considered before and a score of burns, cuts and bruises were testament to her novice state in such things.

As the shock passed though Yessa again found herself looking proudly at her creation, which she’d settled in exactly the same position as whatever it was that Squash saw when he stood before the metal frame. It was coming along nicely she thought and a small part of her knew that if Squash were to appear and notice it he’d recognise her work alongside his own. In fact he had appeared and started pushing buttons and tapping gauges, not that he’d had any physical effect on what she’d built but his paws were certainly hitting the right points which was encouraging.

If she paused for thought though, which in the midst of obsession she rarely found time to do, Yessa did find herself wondering what was actually driving her forward and to what end. Some parts of it were real science, that much she was certain of, but the drive to keep building up the box was more than just speculative guesswork. She wasn’t that good a scientist and nothing had ever come this easy before. But such thoughts sent a shudder down her spine and made her want to retire to her sleeping tree and hide amongst the leafiest branches, which just wasn’t an option any more.

CONSTANCE

Rex had been gone for about an hour now and Constance was pissed off. For years she’d been following that bloody bulldog, reassuring his every doubt, keeping him alive when everyone else wanted him dead, indulging the random, bizarre and destructive whims which led his work. And now he’d disappeared without a word. Just upped and walked into his bloody ball of energy with even a thank you or an invite to join him. Hadn’t she helped him build it? Hadn’t she been the only one who even came close to understanding what it was actually capable of? She had been and all it had earned her was a death sentence.

Kicking the dust in frustration Constance held back a wail of frustration. He was a genius, that was why she’d followed him without a single complaint. Oh the others had joked about her, constantly. Puppy love they’d called it, an unfortunate infatuation which he’d never return but that had only been because they were too stupid to see what she saw – that what he was doing was big. It was so big that all his claims to be on the way to changing doganity for good actually meant something more than being the ramblings of a lunatic. She’d wanted to be in on that and she’d sacrificed her own career to be his lifelong assistant. The frustration was made worse by the fact that she knew it was her failure to be anything more that had caused all of this.

For so long he’d started doing stuff and she’d made sure he could do it without ever stepping in to remind him that some things shouldn’t be done. The atom splitting for one, she’d half guessed how that one would end but the idea was so big that she hadn’t wanted to stop him, not when the moment to push the button came anyway. And now this, something a million times bigger and she’d made exactly the same mistake in letting him turn it up to eleven, deluding herself that it wouldn’t just wipe out all life on the planet. Even he had seemed surprised by that one, almost as if he wanted to be stopped but yet again she’d let him do it and why not? Was she supposed to be his common sense? If he could make stupid choices then why couldn’t she? It took a bit more enraged storming around before she accepted the answer to that one. She was the one who was smart enough to think ahead and Rex, in his blissful ignorance, was stupid enough just to mash the buttons and hope for the best. Stupid enough to walk into the light, while she stood back and tried to figure out what the hell it would do and how many lives could be saved in the near inevitable event that it wasn’t something good. It wasn’t a conclusion which bought her much comfort as she once again sat down and took to unhappy consideration.

GDUNK

The exploding box was standing on a frame of four support struts, glistening in the sunlight of a perfect day. Gdunk stood in front of it, looking dejected. Karder was beside her reading out a checklist to himself seeing as he was the only one who understood what half of the things on it meant. He’d briefed her already although despite his best efforts to spice up his explanations with scientific jargon it still largely boiled down to pushing a big red button and then hoping you didn’t die in the following few minutes. Although with her mind under a few tonnes of unhappiness even that was more than Gdunk wanted to have to worry about.

Whatever she found up there, alien apparitions, a lot of nothing, Laika the Holy Space Dog, she couldn’t imagine it’d lead to a happy ending for her or chimpanity. And it didn’t much matter whether she told them the truth about what she saw if by chance she did get into space in one piece because whatever she said someone would object. The Laikanists had made their position clear and those who stood against them, who’d been worryingly thin on the ground today, were even more eager for a reason to say ‘I told you so’ than they were for a solution to the apparitions. The possibility of dying mid-air wasn’t doing much to cheer her up either.

“Time to suit up, Gdunk, ready to make history?”

Completely unfazed by any possible thoughts of failure Karder was more wheezily excitable than ever. He’d spent the day racing around like an enthusiastic child as the exploding box was manoeuvred into place. Various dignitaries passing by to nod authoritatively and pretend they had the first idea what the ugly little chimp was telling them as he explained the inner workings of his creation. Looking at him, while never a pleasant experience, did make Gdunk feel slightly better about what she was about to do. Endless worries aside it was pretty exciting and for the next ten minutes at least, as she strapped herself in and focused on the dangerous part, there was no point in worrying about all of the many problems that could and probably would arise. The fact that Karder embodied the joyful enthusiasm of simply trying something new made it easier for her to follow suit as he led her towards the specially constructed suit she was to wear and set about strapping her in.

The outfit was uncomfortably heavy, although Karder insisted she’d get used to it soon enough. And as he clamped on a glass bubble over her head she paused briefly to ask exactly what it was going to protect her from. His reply of ‘nothing, there’s lots of nothing up there I reckon’ did little to inspire confidence. And before Gdunk knew it she was climbing up a ladder on the side of the box and through a hatch at the top. Looking into the distance she could see the viewing platforms, podiums and crowds who’d turned out to watch the launch. At least half of them, she reckoned, were there more on the off chance that there was an impressive explosion than anything else but the masses of chimps did send a slither of pride through her. Gdunk, Gdunk the unpleasantly hairy, Gdunk the ignored, Gdunk the awkward was going into space and she was going to be the first and she was going to save the species from its own madness. Perhaps. Well, even if she didn’t she’d still have done more than she’d ever dreamt she would or could or should do and so, with no small measure of pride, she waved towards the assembled masses. And promptly lost her grip and fell into the box in an undignified heap to the wafting sounds of laughter from the distant observers.

YESSA

It was launch day. The thought suddenly dawned on Yessa as she placed the front panel back on her wooden box. She should have been there really, to cheer Gdunk on if nothing else but the timing was all wrong, she’d been so close to finished the box that the thought of trekking cross country to just stand in a gawking crowd seemed like an impossibility.

At times she’d envied Gdunk, in those brief moments where her work hadn’t been consuming her. After all, being the first chimp into space was no small thing and even though she’d long since left the Space Chimps to their own devices she couldn’t help but feel a pang of separation now that they’d actually, apparently, managed to find a way to make things work. If she’d have even vaguely suspected that they might be successful she might even have stuck around but the frame had called to her and now she felt certain that there was a reason for it. All of the hundreds of hours she’d spent perfecting the device, whilst a little insane, had been fuelled by a definite purpose and with the final wire stuck in place she was ready to find out what that purpose was. So moments of thoughtfulness had been glossed over with a shake of the head and the hope that they’d be successful in stopping the apparitions, even if Squash had set her on her own path and made all of this possible.

Quite what the end result of her own efforts would be she had no idea. When she started mashing buttons like Squash had there would be some effect but it was hard to believe that it’d be anything so convenient as stopping the apparitions. Yessa had considered the possibility that the effect might be quite a bad one, albeit only briefly. Maybe she’d been building a weapon, or a doomsday device of some sort but when that unhappy thought came up she could never bring herself to give it any real credit. Squash had done something after all and he didn’t look like a bad dog, as far as she could judge and she certainly wasn’t the type of chimp to go around causing intentional harm – both factors which had to count for something she hoped. Either way it was too late now, she’d come too far and whatever became of it she was determined to make that ball of light appear in her frame and see what it did.

She hadn’t slept the night before, despite being on the edge of nervous exhaustion. Instead she’d double checked wires, valves and dials as well as stockpiling a heap of objects that she was planning to throw at the ball of light to see what would happen. All of which had been interspersed with semi-hallucinatory daydreams of revealing her new found science to the world. She’d invite Gdunk to have the first look, if she made it back from space, then the two of them could really share in some history. Beyond that lay the acclaim of chimpanity, wealth, fame and fortune – well, probably. The path between what she was doing and such material rewards was a bit of a blurry one when she tried to think her way through it. It would all make much more sense after a few days sleep though Yessa assured herself, but first she had to make the first test run. A test run which she was going to start now.

It took a couple of tries to hit the right sequence of buttons. Yessa had practised hundreds of times now, mimicking Squash’s movements and making sure she could reproduce them perfectly but with her vision going blurry and her hands feeling like lead weights it still proved to be no easy task. There was a lot to it and plenty of room for error. Squash had half a dozen different arrangements which he routinely used and more than one of them led to the ball of light. Plus there was no guarantee that the light always appeared for her as it did for him so despite a desperate desire to make things happen she knew there was a measure of trial and error involved. She was starting off with the one which most often matched up with results on his end though, which involved perfectly calibrating certain dials to within a millimetre and hitting buttons at just the right time. But the movements did work, where she flicked her wrist there was a dial, where she pushed down there was a button and as it all fell into place she couldn’t help but let out a maniacal laugh to herself. Granted, that was a little insane but in the moment it didn’t seem to matter much as she finally managed to get the sequence right before looking up expectantly at the frame, waiting for something to happen. Which it did.

At first there was a flicker which Yessa half missed as she tried to rub some clarity into her eyes. Within an instant though there was a full-fledged flash, then another and then another as the space between the fans of the frame flooded with light and the ball started to appear. Standing in awe Yessa felt her mouth widen into a broad grin and in hysterical excitement she started to spin around, double checking every other turn to make sure that the ball of light was still there. Not only did it not disappear but it was getting bigger, quickly and with her jaw dropped in disbelief Yessa gibbered slightly as it spread to engulf the frame itself, moving far quicker than she’d ever seen it do before. Her excitement was undiminished though, even as it started to approach her and the box she was still hopping about excitedly, trying without much luck to pull her mind back to order.

The line between excitement and increasing fear was crossed fairly quickly though. In an instant the rush of accomplishment was consumed by a sudden realisation of what she’d accomplished. It might be something very good, or it might be something very bad and as she backed away from the sphere of light Yessa, for the first time, started considering which it actually was. It was a sobering enough thought to cut through the sleep deprivation and general mania and leave her caught in nervous tension as she stared hypnotically at the product of her efforts.

GDUNK

Five – four – three – two –one…

The roar of a very large controlled explosion not ten feet away from her turned Gdunk’s stomach as the box lethargically shunted forward. She’d hit the big red button and slipped into terrified silence as Karder’s voice gibbered excitedly over the radio link. Any second now she might cease to be, gone in an unfortunate explosion which would be greeted with sorry shrugs and, perhaps, a little mourning back on terra firma. Cold comfort when she knew she wouldn’t be around for the sympathy and sorrow. But there was no going back now and even the briefly considered notion of trying to open the hatch and jump out faded to nothingness as the box got ever higher and the chances of surviving the drop grew ever smaller.

There was only one window on the box and it pointed directly upwards, so as she gained altitude all Gdunk could do was stare at the deepening blue of the clear sky and try to ignore Karder, who’d gone into a coughing fit with his own excitement. No one had told her how long it might take to get up ‘there’ because no one really seemed to know. Karder had guessed at a few minutes, because space seemed like it was a very long way away but Gdunk was half sure that that was just another of the speculative sort of guesses that scientists were prone to when faced with anything to which they didn’t know the answer.

It was only briefly and out of the corner of her eye that she saw a glimmer of light ahead of her, one which hadn’t been there before and which she seemed to lose sight of as the sky ahead darkened to the blackness of space.

YESSA

Yessa backed further away from the sphere. It was expanding steadily now and she hadn’t taken her eyes off of it. It had swallowed up her control box, enveloping it without even breaking stride and with the certain knowledge that she could do absolutely nothing to stop it came a definite sense of panic. Her choices, such as they were, had been drawn down to two; run away or give in to despair, neither of which offered any productive results. Swearing unhappily to herself Yessa kept edging away from the expanding perimeter, trapped in uncertainty.

And then she tripped backwards, her foot caught on the detritus of the pile of things she’d planned on throwing at the ball of light. The last thing she saw was a clear blue sky with a slightly out of place glimmer of light catching in the corner of her eye, just before the ball consumed her.

GDUNK

Everything was black, except for the bits that weren’t. Points of light punctuated the canvas and it was all Gdunk could do to gasp and stare. Space, she’d made it. Until that point it hadn’t dawned on her just how big a thing this would be and besides the gut wrenching terror of knowing that it was a long way down and a long way to civilization she was full of awe. It took a while to even remember to breathe and then a while longer to let any other thoughts into her mind. The first of which was ‘there’s nothing here’, which was hard to countenance with the fact that there was an awful lot here, an awful lot of emptiness and an awful lot of distant lights. But none of that seemed like anything particularly useful. Certainly there weren’t any grinning space dogs or dog creatures or ugly semi-chimps or any of the other things which might have validated the whole dealing with the apparitions plan.

“What do you see?”

Karder’s voice was distant and crackly, not just coming from another place but, as far as Gdunk was concerned, another universe; one with trees and a ground and chimps and all the things which weren’t up here. He had to repeat the question before she could bring herself to offer even a token answer.

“Nothing. Lots of nothing. And lots of stars.”

“You made it! You’re there!”

Karder reeled off into excited chattering to the other chimps down below, leaving Gdunk to take it all in as best she could.

She spent a good ten minutes staring blankly out of the window, her breathing slowing as the vista of emptiness before her sank in. And then there it was again. She’d forgotten about the glimmer of light she’d seen on the way up and now, amidst the stars, it seemed like a rather sorry thing but for the fact that it was there and it was moving. It appeared at the left of her window and seemed to sweep in an arc towards her. That, Gdunk decided, was definitely something. Powerless to do much beyond stare she did just that as it drew closer and grew more obvious against the infinite black backdrop. As it approached it shifted from being a glimmer of reflected light to a red dot, first pin sized and then growing until it took centre stage in her view. And it didn’t stop coming.

It took a few minutes to take any real shape but when it did Gdunk took to further gasping and hypnotised wonder. It was a box like her own, albeit immeasurably bigger. The red light which had marked it out previously was just a tiny point at the centre of a huge hull rendered in sharply cut metal. As it reached the point where she could truly take it in she saw that the surface of the box was completely bare, save for that one light and although size was hard to judge with no point of reference beyond distant stars she could see that it was stunningly vast.

It wasn’t slowing down either, that took a while for Gdunk to realise. It was coming straight for her and it wasn’t slowing down.

“Karder..?”

At the other end of the radio link she could still hear the excitable chimp congratulating his colleagues and marvelling at their collective genius. He wasn’t paying attention to her.

“KARDER!”

“Gdunk? Are you okay?”

“There’s something up here, an exploding box, a big one”, the panic was rising in Gdunk’s voice as it loomed ever larger before her.

“What? Really?”

“Yes really! It’s coming straight for me!”

“Wow, what does it loo-” Gdunk drowned out the rest of his question with a scream as, gaining speed, the box hurtled towards her on a collision course. And then things went dark.

Time didn’t seem to pass properly after that. How long she spent sitting in her box, in the pitch black Gdunk couldn’t say. Between the terror and the disorientation it could have been minutes or it could have been hours and it was only when a blinding light clicked into life and flooded the cockpit that any semblance of normality or reality returned to her mind. Mostly though she found herself filled with a new level of panic as the hatch of her exploding box was hauled open with a metallic groan and she found herself being dragged out of it. Outside the light was even worse, so blindingly stark as to leave her lost until she found herself dropped onto a steel floor and tried blinkingly to adjust to her new environment. Something which she only half regretted when she saw her new surroundings and the creatures who filled it.

They were cats, in a way. Perhaps a dozen of them surrounded her, all varying heights and colours and some vaguely familiar. Standing on two legs and eyeing her indifferently they bore a tenuous resemblance to the feral four legged variety which she knew from home. The bald chimps had never had much time for felines, they demanded too much and gave too little so for the most part they were viewed as a pest to either be ignored or avoided depending on the situation. But then they were nothing like the beings now surrounding her. In the moment of uncomfortable silence that endured just long enough for Gdunk to look around her and try to make sense of things it was hard to imagine these cats digging through rubbish piles or obsessively licking themselves clean. In fact given the aloof expressions on their furry faces she almost felt like she should be the one to be kicked aside for picking through discarded food.

They formed a circle around her, all staring in silent appraisal, or harsh judgement, and it took a minute before one stepped forward. It was a tabby, or would have been if it had been hunting mice on four legs, but the sense of elegance it had made that hard to imagine. With an easy indifference which suited it’s appearance the cat coughed gently and, after a soft meow, started to talk.

“Don’t worry, you’re safe. We’re cats – and we’re here to save you.”

Gdunk nodded dumbly, half aware that she should be asking questions at this point but completely lost as to where to start with them. The tabby didn’t seem surprised by her silence and gestured to two of its fellow felines who padded towards Gdunk and picked her up from the heap she’d collapsed into. She didn’t struggle as they led her across the room, which was big enough to contain her exploding box without looking even the slightest bit full.

From there she was led out of a door and along a maze of corridors, all sided with the same undecorated steel that had made up the exterior of their box and anonymous enough to leave Gdunk completely lost within a couple of turns. Eventually they came to a smaller room, albeit smaller only meaning that you could fit a hundred chimps in their as opposed to five hundred. At the moment though there was only one chimp, along with one dog creature and one of the ugly chimps, not including Gdunk who had achieved a previously unimaginable of level of surprise on seeing them all sat around a metal table with space for about twenty, looking variously bemused, relaxed and indifferent.

The other chimp was Yessa who, with her own squeak of surprise, leapt up and ran over to embrace Gdunk.

“Gdunk! You’re here! You made it into space, I hoped you would!”

The scientist was wild eyed and looked like a month of sleep wouldn’t be a bad idea but Gdunk didn’t dwell too long on that, her eyes staring over Yessa’s shoulder at the others sitting at the table. They’d been joined by the tabby cat who was talking quietly to the dog creature as the two chimps got their greeting out of the way. Eventually Yessa loosened her grip on Gdunk and led her to a seat at the table where she sat down and looked around at her companions in wide eyed confusion. The cat, finishing his hushed conversation with the dog, looked over to Gdunk with what may have passed for a smile, if its species were capable of such a thing.

“I’m Bassard and I suppose you’re wondering what’s going on?”

Gdunk nodded and made a noise which she intended to be a polite ‘yes’, even if it came out a little incoherently.

“Well, as you can see, you’re not alone. Rex here, our canine friend, joined us quite some time ago now, in a way. Or just now, in another way. Parkill,” Bassard nodded to the ugly chimp “has been here a very long time indeed. And Yessa you know of course, she joined us just today after doing something rather unfortunate, although she isn’t the first to have made a mistake eh Rex?” The dog nodded glumly and made no reply.

“You see your planet, well, our planet is rather a peculiar one. There’s a bit of an unfortunate history behind it. Parkill here was the first to do it, which I can tell you was a bit of a disappointment after all we’d done for humans,” Bassard paused to give Gdunk an appraising look, which she answered with one of pure confusion.

“Let me start from the beginning, I understand that there’s a lot you don’t understand. You see we, by which I mean cats, were the first to evolve into what you might call sentience on our planet. Not that we were up to much. We learned how to kill each other and we learned how to make things to kill each other with. Along the way we picked up a few other tricks of course, jet-skis, plastic surgery, hats, the usual detritus of an evolving society but the killing part was always what we really specialised in. Which was unfortunate seeing as we’re not a species famed for our sense of moderation. Anyway, one day we, or at least my ancestors, built something which we were fairly sure could kill every cat on the planet. What the logic behind this was I can’t really say, we’ve done a fair bit of evolving since then and there’s no knowing what was going on in the minds of my primitive predecessors. Besides, that was only the half of it because the thing they built, well, they were only half sure it would kill everyone. It might have done almost anything really, but they knew it would be impressive whatever the case.

It didn’t matter in the end of course. Most of our species managed to get itself killed off through far more mundane means. Nuclear weapons, bombs, diseases, plagues, all used because someone arched their back and hissed at the wrong time – stupid really but then we all make mistakes eh? We were lucky though, comparatively speaking. Before the last of us died off there were enough smart cats left to take that impressive, possibly world ending machine and make a dash for it in a ship ever so slightly like the one you’re on now. From what I can tell they didn’t much know why they were taking their ultimate weapon but someone obviously thought it would come in handy at some point and luckily for us it really did. You see, before switching it on, they took the time to figure out what it might do and as it turned out it could do pretty much anything. It could create worlds for example, and stars and galaxies and anything else you’d care to mention. Which is what they did and that’s why we’re still alive and kicking in the universe.

Others weren’t so lucky though and this is where it gets interesting. For one species to come across a discovery like that, well, these things happen but then another one did it. Parkill here, who’s what they call a ‘human’, is from a species that came quite a while after we’d skipped town. Now we kept a passing interest in what was happening on Earth, after all, if you live as long as we do you’ve got to get your kicks somewhere. And because it seemed like a good idea at the time we decided to get involved with these humans when we saw that they were progressing beyond hitting each other over the head with big sticks and drawing bad art on cave walls. We stopped by, let them think we were Gods and, to be honest, messed with their minds a little. All fun and games really and beyond a few human sacrifices no one got hurt. All good things come to an end though and eventually we decided to bail out and leave them to it, although they always did have a strange fondness for the four legged felines who’re very, very distant cousins of ours. At any rate a few millennia passed and the humans started to perfect the act of wiping each other out themselves which, if you know the universe like we do, is a bit of an oddity. Most species manage to get along without it but then that’s Earth for you, strange place.

They built their own ultimate weapon, which bore a startling resemblance to our own although I promise, we had nothing to do with it. Only they actually went ahead and used the damn thing. Whacked all the dials up to eleven and let it loose. Parkill here was the only survivor, he built the thing after all and we wanted to know why so we plucked him up before he died with the rest. He’s been with us ever since, give or take a few hundred thousand years in stasis,”

Parkill smiled vaguely at Gdunk, “worse places to be I suppose.”

“Quite,” said Bassard “well, there you go, one species down and most unfortunate it was too. We asked Parkill about it all but, much like our own ancestors, he didn’t have much by way of an answer as to why he’d built the thing in the first place so there you go. Fast forward a while, wait for the planet to fix itself up a bit and the whole evolutionary ball to start rolling again, and bang, another species gets going. That’d be Rex heres canine kin.”

Rex, about as ugly a dog creature as Gdunk had ever seen offered her what might have passed for a smile.

“And the same story repeated itself,” the dog picked up from Bassard “we evolved, got good at killing each other and I built the machine. It seemed like a good idea at the time, not that the Laikanists or the New Confusionists agreed of course,”

Both Gdunk and Yessa started at that one but Yessa was the first to express her surprise.

“The Laikanists? We have them! They worship a space dog and like burning books!”

Rex raised an eyebrow, “Sounds about right, ours were big on the same sort of thing, should have listened to them really – might not be a space dog up here, other than me, but the machine really was a bad idea.”

“As I said, we all come from one strange planet” Bassard added before Rex continued.

“Well I decided to turn the machine on, all the way up to eleven, which turned out to be just about the worst thing you can do seeing as it wiped out my entire species. Left quite a few others behind though, which was strange although if it hadn’t you wouldn’t be here I suppose. Anyway, the cats picked me up just as they had Parkill, although I was on the verge of walking into that bloody ball of light at the time. And I’ve been here ever since, I think, it’s a bit hard to tell because it feels like I only got here yesterday.”

Bassard cut in “We’ve had Rex in stasis for the most part I’m afraid, he’s a good dog all things considered but something about him does put the wind up cats a bit.”

Eyes nervy with exhaustion Yessa joined in.

“That’s where the apparitions came from Gdunk. The machine leaves them behind, although I don’t know why they appear when they do because Rex said he’d never seen any in his time. And, well this is the bad bit, I kind of built the machine myself… and turned it on, a little bit…”

Gdunk struggled to digest her new knowledge while Rex mumbled something to Parkill about it being ‘his machine, not hers’. An awkward silence set in while Rex, Bassard, Yessa and Parkill waited for things to sink in. Gdunk tried to think around what Yessa had said, to find a way that it might not mean what she thought it meant.

“So you’ve killed everyone then..?”

Yessa nodded awkwardly.

“And Bassard, Rex, Parkill,” Gdunk looked at each in turn “you can’t do anything to stop this?”

“Afraid not my primate friend,” replied Bassard “once the machine’s switched on and turned up to eleven there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. Sorry. You’re welcome to stay with us of course, as you’ve made it up here already. Eternal life and all that, could be interesting, give it a while and there’ll be another species along no doubt. Might even be able to stop that one from making the same mistake as you all did. I reckon the sloths are due a turn next as it goes.”

Gdunk thought on this for a moment before launching herself across the table at Yessa and proceeding to flail wildly at the chimps face with her fists.

“KARDER, ERESS, RAEGET, KAISABOSEN! ALL DEAD! ALL BECAUSE OF YOU!”

A couple of cats emerged from nowhere and hauled Gdunk off of the bloodied figure of Yessa. Bassard, now on his feet, started pleading for peace while Gdunk carried on raving. Eventually, with no sign of her slowing down, the cat gestured for her to be taken out of the room for some quiet time although she didn’t let up screaming as she left.

“YOU’RE INSANE! ALL OF YOU! MURDERERS MURDERERS MURDERERS MURDERERS!”

KARDER

Karder stared silently at the ball of glowing light. Raeget was next to him praying to Laika.

“I think I’ve got a plan to deal with this… do you think we could get some explosives and a very big pile of rocks?”

THE END

Author's note:

If you enjoyed Laikanist Times then you can find more by me and updates on my new projects at DylanOrchard.com.