10) ‘The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul’ by Natalia Theodoridou
Theo is the lone survivor of a crash-landed space mission to find new worlds for human habitation. The planet he finds himself on, Oceanus, is a barren, bleak wilderness. There are signs that animal life once flourished, but is now virtually extinct. There are only the fish, strange, pink-skinned entities that are now Theo’s only source of food. He has managed to survive for eight years, but his position is hopeless:
You know, at first I thought this was a young planet. I thought there was so little here because life was only just beginning. I could still study it, make all this worthwhile. But then, after a while, it became clear. The scarcity of lifeforms. The powdery sand, the absence of seashells, the traces of radiation, the shortage of fish. The fish, the improbable fish. It’s obvious, isn’t it? We are closer to an end than we are to a beginning. This ecosystem has died. We, here, well. We are just the aftermath.
These glimpses of a dying world reminded me intensely of what the Time Traveller sees when he journeys to the ‘end of time’ in H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine. In order to make his ordeal less lonely, Theo has constructed ‘simple Jansen mechanisms’ – mechanical animals – to keep him company. The meaning of the ‘eleven holy numbers’ passed me by. Personally I didn’t mind that – I tend to like stories that keep a part of themselves secret from me – but Lois Tilton gives a concise explanation here that I was pleased to find.
The story has a surprise in its final paragraphs. I won’t go so far as to say that the ending is hopeful, because it can’t be, and this variation on the Robinson Crusoe theme is far too bleak, far too sad to love, even for me. But it is certainly powerful, and compelling, and a useful antidote to all the ‘boldly go’-type tales of space exploration featuring an all-conquering hero. Even if I couldn’t love Theodoridou’s story, I admire its bravery.