The body of a stork merges with a cloud as it passes through her. The cloud starts at her feet and stops at the base of her neck so only her head is visible. Then that disappears too, as she reaches down to drink from the pond. Beside the pond, piles of sand, perfectly shaped, as if placed by machine. 

 

He wishes they had been. Alas, nothing on this planet had been impacted by man. No houses, no cars, no roads, no coffee shop chains. Just hills and mountains and knee-high, absolutely symmetrical, cone-shaped piles of sand. The pond is the first source of water he has seen in a while. It’s no more than a few metres wide, a droplet on the hilltop’s surface, where he and the stork stand. It has taken him hours to climb this sandy hill, so tall that it keeps clouds as company, and yet he has so much further to climb. The hilltop is so great in size that atop it sits another prominence. A volcano. That is what he needs to reach.

 

Within his space suit, he is nothing but a face. That face is a greasy one, its forehead marked with thick, wormy veins and frown lines. It’s always a little red, but right now it’s redder than usual. On that face is a long, thin nose, and tight lips, the kind that disappear when made into a smile. A short salt and pepper beard hides any imperfections on the bottom half of the face. 

 

He has been walking for a while, and the spacesuit is heavy; he stops by the pond to catch his breath. The neck and head of the stork reappear from beneath the cloud. She looks at him. She seems to point her dark red bill like a finger that says, You. What are you? The eyes are judgemental too—black and narrow. Frowning at him, as if it’s any of the stork’s business what he’s getting up to. He has a good mind to go over and slap it. But its bill looks sharp, so he keeps a distance. 

 

The cloud moves away; drifts from her toward him, so that he can clearly see her white body and black wings. She stands tall, proud. He sees that the black of her wings have been dirtied with the yellow-orange sand and the brown dirt, the two ingredients of the hilltop’s surface. His space suit is white, spotless. The stork is dirty and yet she looks at him so judgemental. She stands so tall and proud. He really does want to slap her.

 

The stork turns away. In turning, he sees a fleck of red in the feathers on the back of her head, an unnatural scarlet. He wonders if it signifies some sort of defect. Another reason to keep a distance.

 

He takes a few strides away from the stork and toward the volcano. A pile of sand loses its perfection as a boot mark is stomped into it. The volcano, covered completely in dark green trees, looked large enough from the bottom of the hill, but it looks truly large now. He sips at the water tube inside his helmet. A bead of sweat runs from his forehead to his lip. A bead of sweat he can’t wipe away. He swallows it and grimaces. He waits for his breathing to normalise, then walks again. The volcano gets larger, and he pays no attention to the clouds passing through his knees. 

 

His helmet visor serves as a computer screen, as well as a view to the outside. By looking into different corners, he can see longitude, latitude, oxygen levels and so forth. Flicking his eyes this way then that, he ascertains that he has between four-hundred-and-twenty and four-hundred-and-fifty minutes to go, roughly, (that’s there and back) and nineteen hours of oxygen left. He gives himself an important nod.

 

*

 

The trees are less dense than they looked from a distance. There is no difficulty in simply walking between them. He scales the volcano without issue. It baffles him that such a commodity is left entirely unguarded.

 

Reaching the summit, a months-old conversation plays in his head. A colleague, Simon Chapman, told him that he was going on this very expedition. He spoke of the mountain, and how excited he was to climb it, to conquer it, to lower himself into its mouth. He had spoken as if it would be some great volcanic obstacle course, in which he would have to leap between stepping stones, over lethal lava, and grasp with his dirtied hands the great jewel of the deadly planet.

 

Simon Chapman, luckily, didn’t get to go on the trip. He died a week after their conversation, of a cocaine-and-sex-related heart attack. Apparently, the sex (and the cocaine, presumably) was not supplied by Simon Chapman’s wife. Regardless, it meant that the expedition had to be taken by someone else in the company.

 

Fortunately, the higher-ups saw sense at last. Everyone should be thankful that events passed as they did, else no one would be getting their money. Simon Chapman should be thankful too; he would have been very disappointed to find that the volcano was not active, and was in fact as cold as marble. Information he would have known if he had read the file before taking on the job. Even that stork should be thankful. Simon Chapman, he is sure, would have engaged it in combat.

 

He sets up the cable, attaches himself to it, lowers himself into the dead volcano and finds himself eye-to-eye with the item. A red jewel, worth between ninety-two and ninety-eight billion pounds. His twelve-point-five percent cut (which he had negotiated up from ten) would be enough to buy him everything currently on his list of things to buy, which was printed on a sheet of paper in size eight font and was filed at the very bottom of his “Plans” folder at the bottom of his bedside cabinet drawer. The first thing on the list, the reason he made the list, is a car. Specifically, a Bugatti, with three different models written in brackets. When he gets home, it will take him at least a day or two to research them, to make a spreadsheet weighing up the pros and cons, and finally to pick the winner. What a weekend that will be.

 

Safely zipped up in a pocket on his left leg, the hundred-billion-pound jewel sits quietly. Just before he uses the cable to pull himself back out of the mountain, he glances at his left leg pocket. One of the greatest things nature has ever produced, so they said. As beautiful as life can get, to look into that jewel, they said. One of the greatest things nature has ever produced. That is what he has picked up. That’s what sits in his pocket, behind that piece of nylon. He looks at his pocket and frowns.

 

*

 

Having climbed out, he begins to make his descent. He keeps his eyes to the floor, noticing every uneven surface, every possible trip hazard, and avoiding it. The ground has a strange composition. Mostly grass, yes; trees rising tall from the dirt. But also rock, like the rock that made up the inside of the mountain. It’s a crumbly, black rock. And he can smell it. He knows he can’t smell it. No smells get through the suit. Yet he can. It smells of fresh tarmac. 

 

No, it doesn’t. If he were to kneel down, take off his helmet without dying, somehow, and smell the crumbly rock, he is sure it wouldn’t smell of anything, and certainly not of tarmac. No, it looks like tarmac. And now he can’t stop smelling it.

 

He stops walking. He is remembering something. The memory is sitting at a distance, out of focus, and he can’t move his eyes to look at it, however hard he tries. He doesn’t know why, but he wants to cry. 

 

He grunts, like an animal. It isn’t planned, it just forces itself out. He looks around, to make sure no one has noticed his strange behaviour. Then starts walking again, and pushes the thought from his mind. The smell goes away. Slowly, he makes his way down the side of the mountain, and heads for the pond.

 

*

 

Four hours twenty to go, according to his helmet visor. The water level is low, which he has foreseen. That is why he had made a point of approaching the pond before. The suit can convert any water into drinking water. Nevertheless, seeing the stork drink from it reassured him.

 

He puts a second boot print in the sand pile he stepped on earlier as he walks up to the water again. This time there is nothing around to disturb him. He crouches down beside the pond. He takes the plastic tube at his waist and opens the lid at the end.

 

Something’s moving. By his side, the red-flecked stork. He jumps, has to put a hand out to stop himself falling. The stork doesn’t jump. They are one metre apart.

​

It angles its head down and narrows its eyes, like an old man trying to read a sign. He knows nothing about storks, let alone alien storks. Was that an aggressive action? How could he possibly know?

 

It does nothing. Just keeps looking.

 

He’ll have to turn away. Just for a second, while he lowers the tube into the water and refills his supply. He should’ve just carried on and risked collapsing due to dehydration.

 

It keeps looking.

 

He turns away, just for a second. He refills his water. He looks back.

 

It’s just looking.

 

He gets to his feet and sips on the water tube in his helmet.

 

‘Go fuck yourself.’

 

He walks hastily away.

 

*

 

Another glance at the top-left corner of his visor. Six minutes to go. Another pat of his left-leg pocket. He can still feel the jewel. 

​

He hasn’t had a single thought since he refilled his water, not a single thought except returning to the ship. Six minutes until he’s back in the ship. Six minutes until he’s finished, until he has succeeded. He hasn’t even thought about the money again, until now. Eleven-point-five billion pounds. That would be his share. He thinks about the Bugattis. He decides he won’t pick one, as he’d planned; he’ll have all three. He imagines the conversation.

​

‘So, which will it be?’ Some man, standing straight, looking official. 

​

But the salesman’s suit isn’t as nice as his. He’s just bought a new one, had it tailor-made. It’s grey, checked. Even the pocket square is designer. The salesman looks poor in comparison.

​

‘The Galassia... ’ the salesman walks to the next car, gestures to it—‘the Cinquecento... or the Mistero?’

​

‘Yes.’

​

He puffs out his chest, grins. The salesman frowns.

​

‘I’m sorry?’

​

‘Yes. I’ll take them.’

​

And what vehicles they are to take. So clean they shine. The bodies twisting and turning in artful shapes. On all three, the signature Bugatti grille, a proud horseshoe, sticking out like his puffed chest. He can already hear the sounds they will make, the stentorian roars of their engines. The keys in his hand, like a crown on his head.

 

He sniffs a violent sniff. He tells himself to focus. Just six minutes left. Now is not the time for daydreaming. He tells himself to be even more careful with his steps. He’s almost there. He will be smart about this. The last obstacle before the sandy plain his ship is parked on is a forest. A forest he has nearly passed through. He has seen no animals; the only danger is of roots underfoot. These he steps over with utmost care. Nothing will stand between he and the three Bugattis. Not stupidity or impatience. And certainly not tree roots.

​

Among the trees is a rock. Two feet tall, a few feet wide, sticking out of the ground. It is of the same material as the volcano. Crumbly and black. The smell returns, stronger than before. Fresh tarmac. He stops walking. 

​

He’s face down, a hand on the back of his head, holding him there. His arms and legs are flailing, and he’s crying like a child. He is a child. Six, or seven. His brother’s nine. His brother is so much bigger than him. And he can’t cry out, because he can’t breathe. Because wet tarmac is going up his nose, and if he opens his mouth it’ll go in there too. Because his brother just won’t stop.

​

He’s laughing, his brother. He keeps laughing.

​

He knows exactly where he is. He’s just in front of his parents’ house, face down in the road in front of their driveway. It’s just been re-laid. There’s tape around it—or was it barricades?—so no one touches it until it’s completely dried.

​

He sees something else. A toy. A little robot that walks, talks and dances for you, voice-controlled. It has a sleek, silver body. It looks so new, so exciting. It begs to be played with. He reaches out and grasps it, with his child hands, but it’s torn from him. His brother, so much taller, so much bigger. 

​

And then he’s back, face down in the tarmac. Suffocating. His brother laughing. And the fumes are making him lightheaded.

​

And then he’s back in the forest. Inside a spacesuit. Middle-aged again. He stays still for a while. He hadn’t remembered that day for... he couldn’t remember how long. Why had he?

​

There’s a tear, running from his eye to his lip. He can’t wipe it away. He swallows it.

​

He’s still lightheaded. Though he’s back in the present. Very lightheaded. His walking slows as he emerges from the trees and sees his ship. A one-man rocket, four minutes ahead, sitting in the middle of an empty plain of sand. He tries to pick up his pace, but he can’t. He checks a corner of his visor that, in his empty-headed hurrying, he hasn’t checked in a while. The corner that displays his oxygen levels. The wormy veins in his forehead bulge.

 

He bends his neck to look at the oxygen tube on his side. Halfway up, there is a hole. No. Not a hole. A bite mark. 

 

He runs. As much as the suit allows, as much as his suffocating mind allows, he runs. The ship gets larger and the ship gets blurrier. Twenty metres away, the door to his rocket opens automatically. An inviting ramp slowly extending from the door to the sand. The ramp reaching the sand is his last sight. His gloved hand slams against the bottom of the ramp, and the jewel stays in his zipped pocket.

 

The stork is there. She walks closer to him, but keeps something of a distance. She does nothing, of course. Just looks at him. And the jewel stays quietly in his pocket.