The Girl From St Albans

by Andrew Burdon

It happened so fast. One minute I'm walking the dog with Alex, taking shots of butterflies and heather, and the next I'm face down in snow. Gone from summer to winter with one step.

I'd swear I'd lain there only a moment, but I was stiff and frozen to the bone. I felt groggy and had a killer headache too. Trees, like the snow, had appeared from nowhere. I hadn't a clue where I was, or what had happened, and the coppery taste of panic dried my tongue.

Moving was painful, and my body felt so heavy. I called for Alex but he never answered. Overhead the sky was a diffuse pinkish orange, like at at dusk, though my watch still said midday. I dug the phone out of my pocket with fingers so chilled I could barely push the Home button, but of course; no bars. How long I shouted for Alex and listened for his voice or Keeley's bark, I don't recall.

We're all told if you get lost hiking your best bet for survival is to stay put and let search-and-rescue find you. I decided this particular advice didn't apply here, and that decision saved my life. Even though they need to keep the population stable, search sweeps that far west don't begin until the weather turns sub-zero. I could've easily been sat alone in those woods till hypothermia did the inevitable. I've often pictured myself there, sat frozen solid staring at my SLR screen like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

God I miss movies. You still have movies, right?

Walking warmed me up and the downwards slope I'd chosen became a little flatter. I used my Canon to take pictures so I could retrace my steps if necessary—quite clever, I thought—but after reviewing twenty shots of identical landmarks, soon gave that up.

I was putting my camera away when the whole world suddenly dimmed. A low hum rose to a roaring thunder and the light completely vanished. If I could've seen more than two inches in front of me, I would have bolted, trees be damned. But reason kicked in and I hunkered down on the spot. I cried and screamed. It was terrifying. I stayed like that for what felt like a lifetime but was in fact all of fifteen minutes. The noise slowly retreated and light crept back into the world, and eventually I set off again.

Some hours later I reached the wall. The trees had thinned and I could see a pinkish-coloured stony bank about a quarter mile distant. When I got close I couldn't believe my eyes; it stretched for miles in either direction. And it was tall. I'd assumed it was a natural cliff, but I saw that fifty metres up the rocks smooth out to an unnaturally flat surface. And near the top there's that regular pattern of precisely rectangular letterbox-shaped openings, the size of those big shipping containers. It might not have exactly been civilisation, but they were obviously artificial, so I shouted for help. I didn't expect a reply, and didn't receive one.

I followed the tree-line, which stops twenty metres short of the wall, to avoid the snow. It wasn't long before I saw the writing.

A column of massive glyphs high on the wall proclaimed the unknown. It freaked the shit out of me. I mean, to put up a sign that big your message has to be important. It might have read 'DANGER: FLYING MONKEYS' for all I knew. That writing's plastered all over the place inside Jericho, but that first time seeing it…Jesus.

Another hour trudging through the snow, nerves thoroughly shredded, and I stood at a T-junction staring at a wooden signpost. Ahead of me;  Norwich 184 miles; behind  Edinburgh 72 miles; and leading out from the wall Truro 27 miles. Which made no sense. Even I know that Norwich, Edinburgh, and Truro are nowhere near each other, and I'm a girl who used to think the Isle of Scilly was one of the ones off Scotland. Alex always took the piss out of me for things like that.

Poor Alex…I've often wondered if he's now in prison or something. I mean one day he's walking the Cairngorms with his fiancé, and the next he's reporting her missing, claiming she just vanished into thin air. Doesn't look good, does it?

But yeah, I felt a huge relief. Twenty seven miles to Truro equaled eight or nine hours on foot. Exhausted as I was it seemed a lot, and it was getting dark. I kept going by telling myself the closer I got to a town, the more likely I'd find a house or something.

The darker it got the more I looked up, in consternation as much as awe. There were at least ten times too many stars in the sky, but I convinced myself it only seemed that way by reason of being in the middle of nowhere—she who's used to holidaying in Australia's arse-end-of-nowhere.

I was suffering from exposure, running on empty, and desperate to find help. And lucky me, that help took the form of Louise. Damned bitch. Her house was little more than a shack. The door opened and this woman looked me up and down and said "Been a while since one of you showed up in these parts." Bloody cow.

She looked like my mother. And her tone, that was my mother's too. So was the way she didn't give a shit. The resemblance was so striking, the culmination of a situation already so unbelievable, that a realisation struck me; none of this was real. It couldn't be. I was having a dream. Or a psychotic break. It didn't matter which. This was all just symbolic bullshit cooked up by my subconscious. Surely now I'd realised this, the spell would be broken. I'd wake up, have a goddamn cigarette, hire a therapist and sort through my shit.

#

I awoke bundled in sheepskins on the same wicker couch where I'd fallen asleep. I was aching, dehydrated, and bitterly disappointed. In the daylight the cabin looked like something straight out of Little House on the Prairie.

My saviour was nowhere to be found, so I found a cup and helped myself to a bucket of clean water beside the stone sink. Louise had apparently arranged my deliverance—delivery, rather—hours before I'd woken up. Before long I was out of her hair and on the back of a small post-cart. Not many postmen do winter runs, but she had fixed skis to her cart to adapt it to the snow.

My new companion was reticent. She sat on the driver's perch bundled up to the eyes against the cold. I was full of questions but she ignored them all, reserving her attention for the dogs. I hate being ignored but decided to shut up and just be grateful for the ride.

The dogs pulling the makeshift sled were of chinook-cross decent. We'd never spayed Keeley, she was a rare breed and we'd signed up to the Kennel Club breeder program, but at home she was often out of sight in the park, the little tramp. She was a good dog. I've considered getting a new one, but the council appropriates all yearling pups that can still see and run and shit properly.

Then it happened again. The noise grew from nowhere and the daylight disappeared. I was freaking out as the cart slowed to a halt, and nearly shit a brick when I felt the postwoman settle beside me. Her hand found mine and I clung to it for dear life.

Ten or fifteen minutes passed, then the pearly light returned. The dogs were as calm as you please, lying in the snow without a care in the world. The driver answered the question on my lips, "Just a dust storm outside." As explanations go, that one made no sense. I turned to tell her so, but during the blackout she'd pulled down her scarf.

You can imagine my reaction. Major brain malfunction, right? I mean, you wouldn't believe it either, would you? Nobody would.

I was too angry to speak. She saw my face and refused to meet my eyes. It was obvious the scarf and her avoiding me had been deliberate obfuscations designed to hide the truth. I was furious. I wanted answers and exploded with questions, but she spent the rest of the journey obstinately silent.

We arrived in Jericho at dusk and the streets still held a few passers-by. It was fucking ridiculous—psychological abuse, I thought—and the injustice of it burned. Why me? What had I done to be subjected to…whatever this was? It made me mad as hell.

I guess on some level I still feel that way.

#

I was handed to the council. They orient all new arrivals in Jericho, four or five of us a month, and have the system down pat. Naturally, despite all the evidence, I believed nothing of what they said. They were used to that, and promised to help ease my 'transition' while I settled in.

The first thing I had to do was pick a new name. They have this system to avoid everyone picking the same pseudonyms: From your welcome guide, printed on green paper—which at the time I found cute, but the burdock stains all our paper green—you pick a number between blah and blah and you land on page forty-five, say. Pick a number…dah-dah-dah…paragraph two; eventually you land on, say for instance , a four-letter word beginning with 'A.' So your name should have four letters and should start with 'A.'

Can you believe that? A system as ridiculous as it is practical. And so very me.

I played along and my new name was cross-checked, given the thumbs-up, and added to the census. I've been Anna for about five years now. Three and a half here, but five back home in St Albans. I still keep track. Christmas will roughly sync up this year…

I explored as much of Jericho as they would allow. The town buildings are mundane and utilitarian, but Jericho Proper—the part inside the wall—is impressive. The living areas I'll grant you are a bit bunker-ish, but since the boundary's interior walls are four foot thick and harder than steel, knocking through a few windows isn't really an option.

The general consensus is this place was originally some kind of biome project, or ecological research station. At twenty-four hundred square miles, it's one hell of a wildlife park, if that's what it is. They told me they've no idea what happened to the makers. Those who can read Ag haven't found any records or anything yet. Or so they say. The atmosphere outside is mostly carbon dioxide, and free of airborne microbes.

I questioned that, and one woman reminded me that I'd recently been scoring points helping Alex's niece pass her science GCSEs, and my phone had all the apps we'd used for revision. These she said they'd used over the decades to get to grips with the rudimentary biology, chemistry and physics school-kids learn that wasn't on the syllabus in our day. The dome's monitoring equipment was eventually figured out.

We do know this isn't the only biodome. Beyond the wall, out past McCrae's Mound, if the dust isn't blowing you can see the edge of Dome Two. The interior's thick with fog, but on a bright day you can just about make out a mess of vines or cables or something hanging from the superstructure. Nothing moves inside.

They offer everybody a month to adjust, but I declined. If this was some psychoactive experiment—everything was way too detailed to be a dream—I presumed there had to be some point to it all. I figured the quicker I got through the process the sooner I'd be allowed home. So I was tractable and charming, and agreed with their systems and expressed eagerness to do my part. All of which seemed to surprise them. They said my progress was "atypical," but they bought it.

My camera, bag of junk, and clothes were all returned. They were really excited about my hiking boots, and I answered endless questions about that morning and why I chose the boots over the trainers. It made me something of a minor celebrity. Not in the same league as bygone superstars such as The One With Dyed Hair, or The One Who Held The Dog's Leash, but it was enough to put me on the shortlist for the Long Projects as I was shipped off to the woolworks.

Needless to say I didn't get on well with my roommate, Alison. She'd arrived five weeks earlier and wasn't coping well. We talked very little. What was there to say? Up to this point our experiences were practically identical. She made me uncomfortable, and I avoided her as much as possible.

Why? How would you feel living with someone who knows all your dirty secrets? All your politically incorrect thoughts, every lie and deception you're ashamed of. Someone who knows the shit that really gets you off, and all the things and all the people you just gave up on...

I hated her. No doubt she felt the same.

The actual work at the woolworks wasn't so bad. There's no cotton here so we depend on those evil horned sheep for nearly all our fabrics. I'd noticed such sheep the morning of my walk with Alex, so I wasn't surprised they'd turn up here. Same goes for the birds and rodents, though I still can't explain the fish.

A quarter of the dome is given over to farmland, and the forests are managed, but in spring and summer the sheep get to roam the empty hills up by Lake Windermere. That's usually where the machine dumps people, though we can pop up all over the place, like I did. Up there's where I saw the first of your gizmos. I'd forgotten all about till recently. At the time I had no way of knowing it didn't belong here.

#

I applied myself like a brown-nose school kid, and learned my way through various tasks; lambing; shearing; spinning; weaving; etcetera. I was still thinking that the quicker I fulfilled my end of some unspoken contract, the quicker I'd be sent home. Some of it even bordered on interesting. I'd watch the old girls collecting heather and dandelions and digging up dock roots, and wanted to try my hand at dyeing. But it turned out to be one of the cottage industries not open for newbies. That Louise I told you about? Her little shack is part of an orchard she took over after her community service years were done. She keeps bees and charges a king's ransom ransom for candles and honey. Her mead and cider are the only reason she gets away with being such a bitch.

As the weeks rolled into months it sunk in that all of this wasn't a dream or some secret experiment.

By then I was so bored. We all get bored our first year—you try going from successful broadcast researcher to Ada Monroe and see just how well it fits. We bitched and moaned and got on each others nerves.

In the end I spent most of my time in my bunk, and preferred to eat by myself. Shepherding at least gave me the excuse to be alone. Can you imagine how it feels to be trapped in a world populated by identical versions of yourself, and finding you can't stand anyone? What does that say?

I kind of shut down, I guess. I still did my fair share and obeyed all the rules—functionalism and the selfish gene winning the day—and just…lived from day to day.

But after a year I'd had enough of myself. My actual self, not the others. Well them too, but you get what I mean. I decided owed myself better, even if this was my life now.

For months I called and texted councillors and visited Jericho on all my days off. It took one hundred and twenty days, but they caved. Owing to my 'divergent nature' and 'unusual tenacity' I was put on the Long Projects.

They brought me up to speed on a bunch of subjects—electronics being the major one—and taught me Ag. That's shorthand for alien gobbledygook. We assume the builders were alien. We might be wrong. But everything they found inside the wall, the benches, the chairs, even staircases are way oversized for us, as if made for people with much longer proportions than a human.

I made a friend. Josie's the electrician who maintains the phone charging hubs, and an absolute delight. She suffered a bad bang to the head years ago, which made her…different.

We talk for hours about all sorts of crap. Things like how time must move at different rates in each parallel, else we'd all turn up at once. And working out if whether the series of events leading to the machine—the evolution of the builders, the inventor of the machine's combination of ancestry, its successful activation and a billion other things—were so unique it's only ever happened in one universe. This one; a pan-dimensional dumping ground for the girl from St Albans.

Anyway. Out in the sticks I'd heard plenty of conspiracy theories about the Long Projects, but they're all rubbish. There are no alien overlords. No communication with other domes. No secret grand plan that explains why.

The lion's share of the work centres around deciphering and maintaining the technology built into the dome. The dome's main power is a byproduct of the machine, and why the machine can't just be switched off. It's off limits to everyone. Enter Pandora, ehy? But that was later, after I found more of your fancy doodahs.

#

Jericho was fine for a while but I was used to working alone. Truth be told, I was sick to death of the sight of my own face. Sick of seeing what I'll look like when I get old.

Mind you, that's one up-side to all this. For years I worried I'd end up like my grandma. Social Services put her in a dementia unit after my granddad's home-help refused to handle her aggression anymore. She spent her days shitting into nappy pads, spitting at staff and visitors, and shouting for constant attention then attacking anyone who came near. She was only in her late sixties. Here even the octogenarians keep all their marbles. My little silver lining.

The project which most interested me was relatively new. Jericho Proper is a place few people actually want to live in, so they'd begun modernising the lodges built outside, laying down power cables and plumbing and wot-not.

I joined a salvage team stripping stuff out of the unused wall chambers. There's enough materiel for Jericho, but delaying the rollout to the dome's remaining three thousand inhabitants seemed grossly unfair. I thought the project should be more ambitious.

I pulled all the maps from the archives. Less than half the wall's interior was mapped, and most of this was done centuries ago. They'd explored inside three of the wall's six entrances; Jericho's; one adjacent; and the southernmost. The other doors were, and still are, seized shut. Notes indicated each time the original teams backtracked it was because they'd hit either powerless or code-locked doors. I knew I could get further.

I had a whole speech prepared but they were more than happy—delighted in fact—with my solo venture. I can't imagine why.

Fun facts: The wall's circumference measures one hundred and seventy-five miles, which largely houses eight floors—nine if you count the top promenade where those shipping-container sized openings give amazing views across the dome. And there's the tunnel network as well. Retracing the mapped sections would've been a helluvalot of old ground to cover, so I spent a few days satisfying myself the old maps were accurate, then put my salvaged power cells and foundation course in electronics to work, opening up new sections to explore.

Because the rooms I was cataloguing were always so dusty, I'd taken to eating lunch in the fresh air up on the promenade. One time I saw brilliant view of Norwich not far distant, and I thought it'd make a nice photo. At max zoom I could even see the people going about their business. I looked for the best angle, and discovered I wasn't the only one watching the good women of Norwich.

Your cameras aren't at all like the dome's tech, and when I found it, I knew. It looked unquestionably…human. I got so excited, but decided I wouldn't tell anyone. Not straight away. I'd discovered a secret, one the council didn't control, and I guess I wanted it all for myself. But it was more than that. I had a feeling—call it intuition—I could use this to my personal advantage. So I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open.

#

On one of my returns Jericho I found your transceiver. Did you know? It was well hidden, but I found it. I figured if somebody was spying on us there was one place that had to be bugged, though I can't imagine council meetings being of interest to anyone. I don't suppose you'd tell me how you got it there? No? It's not as if you can blend in with the natives—none of you are anywhere near short enough to pull off a disguise. You laugh, but it's true! I'd forgotten what a short-arse I am.

I saw nothing else out of the ordinary for a few weeks. I'd been exploring the tunnel that runs directly below the wall, counting the clicks of my trundle wheel, when saw a thin line of light snaking through the dark ahead. I thought my eyes were playing tricks.

When I got close I saw an outer airlock had been left ajar, which in itself was a real 'holy-shit' moment, but a tight bundle of fibre-optic cables ran through the doorway and trailed away into the dome's interior.

The open door was both tempting and scary, but I wasn't about to go galavanting off beneath the planet's surface.

The optical fibres glowed enough to guide my steps, so I turned off my torch. I was travelling in a straight line; the tunnel ran perpendicular to the outer wall towards the centre of the dome. After nearly seven hours the hum of the generator reached my ears. I'd never dared get that close before. My head was filled with the council's warnings about exotic physics and the potential for disasters of epic scale. My nerves were strung tighter than a tennis racket.

I inched my way along, telling myself I was brave, not stupid. I stopped round a corner from what must be the machine's chamber. My body was sending signals my brain couldn't interpret, and I had difficulty keeping my thoughts together.

I stood there, almost hypnotised by the vibrations, building up courage. Eventually I psyched myself up and lurched round the corner. I collided with your man—a man!—and totally lost my shit. Not my proudest moment. And the rest you know.

Look. I don't know why you're bugging us, or what your interest is in the machine. Really, I don't care. This is coffee, for Christ's sake. And yesterday I ate something spicy. I'll sign any confidentiality agreement or whatever—all I want is out.

From all this gear I'm guessing it's not two-thousand-fourteen back home, is it? Don't look at him, look at me. Fine, don't tell me, but I'm sure as hell this isn't nineteen-eighty-four.

In short, gentlemen; I want a lawyer.