The End of Science Fiction
by
Sam Smith

'To assume an eternity is to again hanker after permanence, is to suppose that some part of you will be in circulation always. There probably isn't very much future.'
Barry Popieluszko. Psychotic Android Eats. Fire Dragon.

Tuesday: 09:08

The big room feels like a horizontal slice of the tall building, its desks and bright windows divided by noticeboards on castors. Plastic coffee cups lie among the telephones and wordprocessors on the desktops. Herbie's team occupy their corner. Only a few of the other desks and chairs are being used.
     "What you reckon?" Jim asks Herbie.
     "On what?"
     "This."
     One of the detectives holds up a newspaper. The front page contains only the headline 'SIX DAYS TO END OF WORLD.'
     "What about it?" Herbie asks Jim.
     "You believe it? It's in all the papers. On telly last night. Nothing else but, this morning."
     "Time I did my report, got home last night, Sal was in bed. She said something. Thought she was dreaming."
     Some of his detectives laugh. Laugh laughs.
     "Saw it stuck up outside newsagents when I come in," Herbie says. "Thought it was some gimmick. What, they reckon it's true?"
     "All over. Russians reckon it's going to come earlier."
     "Six days?"
     "That's what the Yanks reckon."
     "Why?"
     "The universe is contracting."
     "Say we got to go out and look at the stars tonight," a detective says from behind his paper. "Got star charts and everything here."
     "What we supposed to see?"
     "More stars. Stars that weren't there before."
     "It's a con." Herbie dismisses it. "When did you lot last look at the stars?"
     By their lack of response the other detectives make known their disagreement with him.
     "Miss Soames get a mention?"
     "Nothing but this in the papers."
     "No sport?"
     "A few results. That's all."
     "You lot believe it?"
     Herbie is answered with shrugs.
     "What's it say we're supposed to do?"
     "Doesn't say."
     "Nothing?"
     "Says we're powerless."
     "Hold on. Get some sense on this." Herbie has picked up a phone, dials. "Mike? Herbie. What's the word on all this is the papers?"
     "End of the world stuff, you mean?"
     "Yeah."
     "Only wish I knew."
     "So what do we do?"
     "Dunno. Carry on as normal until told otherwise, I suppose"
     "That's it?"
     "That's it. You'd better concentrate on Katherine Helen Soames. Let the stake-out ride. Nothing'll happen there until Friday anyway. I got no one to spare so you'll have to manage with what you got."
     "Can I cancel the stake-out?"
     "Better not."
     "Thanks."
     "It's got to be true," one of the detectives is low-voiced saying. "They couldn't pull a stunt like this if it wasn't. Look at the mischief it'll cause. Got to be true."
     "The word is we carry on as normal until told otherwise," Herbie says.
     "What's the point?" the detective says. "If it's all going to come to a full stop in six days?"
     "And what if it doesn't?"
     The detectives are silent.
     "But what if it does?" Jim says. "End, I mean."
     "How can they be so sure it's six days?" Herbie asks them. "Look, it took millions and millions of years for the universe to get this big. Suddenly it's all going to be over in six days? Do me a favour."
     "No," the detective who has been arguing its truth says, "this has already been happening for millions of years. But, because it's been happening at the extremes of the universe, it's only been noticed in the last couple of years. It takes millions of years for their light to reach us."
     "So how's the world going to end?"
     "Because the universe was expanding. Now it's all coming back. And we're slap bang in the way of it all."
     "If it took millions of years for the light from those stars to reach us, then it stands to reason it's going to take as long for the stars themselves to reach us."
     "No. Because they're now travelling faster than the speed of light. And apparently as they collide with other stars they accelerate."
     "OK," Herbie says. "If this has been happening for millions of years, how come it's only six days?"
     "Up until last week," the detective searches rustling through his paper, "they thought it was going to be billions of years. Some of them didn't even believe that the universe was contracting. Then last week they found loads more new stars. They'd underestimated its speed."
     "There you go then," Herbie says. "What's it say in there about those who don't believe the universe is contracting?"
     "They think," he quotes, "it's a load of dangerous rubbish."
     "I'll go along with that. And in seven days time so will everybody else. What exactly do they reckon will happen on this sixth day? Just how, precisely, will it all end?"
     "They say we won't know what hit us. The stuff coming at us is moving so fast, millions of times the speed of light, they say, we won't even have time to blink."
     "Says here," another detective says, "if it happens at night we'll be able to see the first bits and pieces burning up in the atmosphere. 'A fireworks night to end all fireworks nights.'"
     "You mean they don't even know if it'll be day or night? Yet they're rock solid certain it's going to be in exactly six days?"
     "They say here it'll hit us before the sun. But if it was winter and it did hit the sun first we might have just one second's warning. That's how fast it's going."
     "Supposed to be going," Herbie says. "In six days time they'll all be explaining why they were so mistaken. In the meantime we carry on as normal until told otherwise. You get anything on those painters, Jim?"
     The debate is over: it is back to business. The detectives shift their posture.
     "Clean," Jim says. "All of 'em. Saw nothing."
     "Larceny? Nothing?"
     "Their boss checks them out. Got to be left on their tod in people's houses."
     "What about the PM?"
     "Nothing new." Jim looks down the report, reads bits, "Time of death 4:10. Primary cause of death - cerebral haemorrhage, busted brain. Assailant's blood group - from sperm - O positive."
     "Great," Herbie says. "He's sure the assailant is the one who had sex with her?"
     Jim flicks through the pages of the report. "Doesn't say. The assumption is made."
     "Forensic?"
     "Nothing on the prints." Jim changes reports. "They reckon no one, save for victim and assailant, and Mrs Harris next door, was in flat. Spittle on fag ends also blood group O positive. Suit material - from towel - summer lightweight. Residual dust - some dog's hairs. Next door's. London street dirt. Fag ash. Hair on pillow grey. Recently cut. No dyes, no setting lotion. Eyebrows black. Pubic hairs black. Skin tissue pigmentation - white. Age from chromosome count, somewhere between forty and fifty."
     "Sugar daddy?" one detective says.
     "Don't look like it: she earned good money," Herbie tells him. "Night shift reported in?"
     "No one came near the flat last night. Nothing in the bins."
     Herbie nods, arranges the papers Jim has given him on his desk. "We're looking for a boyfriend. A regular boyfriend. He tried to remove anything that could link him to her. Motive? - lover's tiff, got out of hand. Wasn't premeditated. He just tried to clear out as fast as he could after. Her brother's called Ben. One record was given to her by someone called Barry. We got this one photograph of her with a man. We do have it?" Herbie looks around at his team. He is handed two envelopes.
     Removing enlargements of the studio portrait and the one of her in the bar with a man, he pins them both onto a noticeboard.
     "Is he the one?" a detective asks.
     "Not unless," Herbie returns to his desk, "he's gone prematurely grey. But he might be able to tell us who her current boyfriend is. Whoever the boyfriend was he cleared out any photos of himself. If there were any. The only possible witness we've got at the moment is a deaf goldminer's widow." A few of the detectives respond to this, as he intended, with smiles. "But we do," Herbie emphasises, "have his prints and a few odds and ends he might've overlooked. Someone bought a painting for her from this address." He shows his notebook to Jim. Jim starts copying the address. "I want you to check that out," he tells Jim, "see who bought it. Polaroids here. And I want you to organize a rota in the carpark. Show the photos about, see if you can trace the car that parked in D8. With a bit of luck someone may have had a bump or scrape with it. You can take the two off the flat, put a seal on it. The rest of you go on the knocker. Show the photos. Ask if she was ever seen with a man. Any man. Knock up even those you went to yesterday." Herbie looks frowning around the office, "We seem short."
     "Lee and Sanders both called in sick."
     "Did they?" A team leader's sarcasm, not a question.
     Herbie turns a page of his notebook. "I want someone sympathetic to go and see the brother. You. Southampton address." He hands his notebook to the detective. "She got letters from him regularly. So you can suppose she wrote to him. Any man she mentioned at all. The letters if he's kept them. Or any idea he might have who did it. You can bring him up to officially identify her."
     "Thanks, pal."
     "Mind going on your own? Only we're short all round today. Same for everyone."
     The detective gives a shake of his head.
     "You'd better get going." Herbie consults his notebook. "And I want you," he nods to another detective, "to find out who her doctor was, see if you can find out why she was on these pills. Nothing in the PM on that?" he asks Jim. "Pregnant or anything?"
     "Nothing."
     "And then check with the chemist, see if they can remember who collected the prescription. And you," he selects another detective, "can check out the suit material. With a bit of luck it might've been a small batch. Find out which tailors got it, a list of the people they made suits for. I can't see matey buying off the peg." Herbie turns back the pages of his notebook. "OK. That's it."
     "What about you?" Jim asks him.
     "I'm off to Chiswick. See the people she worked with. Meet you back here."
     "What I don't get," Jim says, "is why he left the door open for the dog to run in there?"
     "His one oversight?"
     "If he hadn't we mightn't have found her for days. Maybe never now."