The Doors of Eden

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Oxygen is a shortcut to a higher energy lifestyle, a ticket to getting out of the bacterial ghetto to live the high life.

Her name was Lee, short for Lisa Pryor. Which, technically, was short for Lisa Chandrapraiar. But when her grandparents came to England from Pakistan, the immigration authorities had been having a rough day and so Pryor was what went on the paperwork.

Mal was reading English Lit at Oxford—an establishment so exclusive that they had a whole other verb for what you did there.

How very British of me, she considered weakly. I was freezing to death not that long ago, but already it’s too hot.

These insects are the perfect gardeners, and gardeners are the great tyrants of nature.

“There was a time, 1700, 1800, when, if you were a Serious Man Of Learning, you could know the sum total of human knowledge, they said. Philosophy, religion, natural history, classics, whatever they thought there was to know, you could know it. And then, they complained, we discovered too much and you couldn’t be an expert on everything. Except, you know what? It’s all BS. I am willing to bet my warm spot next to the fire that those Serious Men Of Learning did not know how to make a horseshoe or weave a basket or when to plant turnips. They just knew the useless stuff that their posh Enlightenment-bro peers reckoned Serious Men were supposed to know. Stick them here, now, and they’d crap out just like I did. While Farmer Bob would probably have the winter wheat ready for harvest in a month’s time.”

“There will be light. Probably.” Not the most inspiring way to start a new religion, Lee thought, feeling giddy.

“The connection here is good,” she said, as though it was no more complex than Wi-Fi—a facility that, Julian realized, he also didn’t particularly understand.

“Communist cavemen.” Julian shook his head. “There’s something to terrify the Home Secretary.”

Rove’s voice was all solemn regret about the necessity of someone else’s sacrifice.