“It was early spring and the bonnets of bluebells were shooting up through the grass in the meadows, ringing in the silver moonlight. Down in the labs, Elizabeth’s incubator egg popped open…”

“Dawn was fast approaching and Edward had not slept a wink. The blue hour was upon Balmoral and the rough surface of the castle’s stone shone azure. Soon a narrow strip of burning orange would bring morning over the horizon. Everyone knew that today was the culling of the anomalies, and many were dreading it. In many cases these creatures were their friends, lovers or family members, but were now trapped within deformed shells which pounded and battered at their confines. They would destroy...

“The operating theatre was illuminated by blinding lights, from the very same robotic tendrils which had rotated around Elizabeth’s head a decade earlier. But now she was awake, and she could sense what was happening with a greater perception than any of the humans in the room. The printing nibs were building up a base and support structure which would hold the form as it manifested. Edward leaned down to whisper, “The first stage is going to be an injection of fungal culture into the speech...

“Is Cup still alive?” Elizabeth agonised, “and can Dr Buttercake do something to heal him?” Elizabeth remembered Cup’s arm hanging limply from the shower, the veins pulsating against the constraints of the belt around his neck, his eyes rolled back in his head. The last she had seen, Cup was being bundled into an ambulance by key workers who had little interest in him. Elizabeth’s job was to convince Dr Buttercake to have him transported immediately to Balmoral for treatment. Elizabeth had...

“I boomed out, “IT’S OKAY LITTLE ONES, BE BRAVE! COME! COME!” And they poured into me, and piece by piece I began to recall roads and buildings and fruit and friends and snoring and stars, heartache and the ecstasy of finishing exams. “NOT UP MY BUM!” I shouted as I maneuvered my tree-trunk-arm around my backside to flick all the clambering little people away. I was growing and growing and beginning to push up against the edges of the world. My shoulder was now touching the heavens and I had...

“Myselves steadied Knife, Fork and Spoon, and I popped out of their throats like three shooting popcorns. I spiralled down through the air and landed in a triangular formation, facing outward and hands linked. My Red child body hovered above my three rotating selves, and moved in unison as though on a potter’s wheel. The Red soldiers repeated, “Have you come from the Red to defeat the beast?” “Maybe,” I smirked with four mouths. I was three times the height of these little red Cups, who...

“I turned eight flaming eyes back to the remaining three-and-twenty elders who were cowering on the pile of dead and damaged children, at the furthest part of the pier. “Does the heart of the child you tortured still beat?” My four voices roared into the petrified night. “Yes… yes,” the elders trembled. “Good. Feed him the head of your fallen companion.” The elders kneeled and sobbed as they did crack their companion’s head open like a coconut and feed it to the child in messy clumped...

“It was dark inside the mutant’s head. The virgin sea stretched out into the formless void as pure as transparent glass, like unto crystal; but tumultuous and terrifying. Darkness covered the face of the deep, while the wind swept over the face of the waters. Heavy, petrified air forebode a storm. Suddenly the veil of night was shot through with blinding light as a colossal ellipse of fire opened in the heavens. God’s eye! And in the midst of that eye appeared the face of Cup. Then the...

“He lay down and placed the cord around his neck. Elizabeth felt his heart rate slow. Deep lonely breaths. He lurched down, pulling the restraint tight. Red sores burnt where soft tissue stretched and abraded. Spluttering, little coughs, bulging, fading. Again his respiratory and circulatory systems were sucking and pumping desperately, chest undulating. Cup’s fingers twitched as he counted, over and over, 3… 2… 1… Slowing, losing the count, losing consciousness. Now limp. Moments passed and...

“In the distance, she heard the wailing sirens of a security hover car. Then she felt footsteps pounding towards the building. They came faster, faster! A young man, slim with a small head of bushy hair, clutching at some kind of object. He was a crouched figure, skittering along purposefully with his shoulders hunched, led by the sensitive point of his nose. He was stalking, or being stalked. He raced down the street and slipped like a shadow under the arch with the lion keystone, into the...

“‘Well, dear Elizabeth, you are nothing like a horse,’ she told herself. She could feel her surface, smooth and flat, and she could feel an incredible amount of spatial detail from the vibrations in the floor and walls which moved through her and built an image in her mind. Her senses were different, but amazingly clear. She could not see or hear in the traditional sense, but her shell-body tingled as people moved and spoke, generating a landscape around her; a topography beyond walls and...

“The events I am about to describe have not yet come to pass. Our story begins in the boiling, toxic, tangerine summer of 2030. Climate change, disease, and the breakdown of social structures have pushed humanity to the fringes of what we might call normality. The wealthy elite secret themselves away in isolation, aided by their machines, as the mass of key workers toil under increasingly oppressive restrictions to keep society functioning. A new pattern of thought has begun to emerge,...