The End Has Come

Jessie’s quilt is not only remarkable for surviving the catastrophic asteroid impact of 2017 and the chaos of the subsequent decades. What makes this artwork so special is that the fabrics it has been constructed from provide us with a unique window into the lives of Australian families in the early 21^st Century. We may never know anything about Jessie, or her family, or where in Australia she lived her early life. But in the scraps of clothing that Jessie’s mother has pieced together, we are able to see glimpses of Jessie’s childhood. And something more: This quilt is also a clear statement of a mother’s love for her daughter; a statement that has transcended a period of the grimmest global adversity, to survive to the present day. We can only speculate upon the story of the little girl for whom this quilt was constructed, and hope that, like her quilt, she was a survivor.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Leife Shallcross lives in Canberra, Australia. There is a possum living in a tree by her front gate and sometimes kangaroos visit her front garden in the night. Her work has appeared in Aurealis and several Australian anthologies of speculative fiction. She is the current president of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild. When her family, writing, and day job are not consuming her time and energy, she plays the fiddle (badly). She is currently working on her first novel. Leife can be found online at leifeshallcross.com and on Twitter @leioss.

HEAVEN COME DOWN Ben H. Winters

Pea rises slowly on unsteady legs, her body reeling, her flesh tingling, as her mind fills with the impossible voice of God.

NOW it says, booming like cannon fire, rolling thunder, deeply melodic like the notes of the organ — NOW WE CAN BEGIN.

Imagine! Imagine how she feels to hear it now — to hear at last, after lifelong absence, to hear in her mind the overpowering unmistakable majestic voice of almighty God.

When at last she has found her feet she stands bewildered and shivering, looking all around her, down beyond the fence line into the bubbling fire-pits of the outskirts, back toward the shabby towers of the city. She does not see God, as she knows she will not. Even as she looks, bewildered and tearful, she knows that He is invisible, heard but never seen. This is how He was always described by everyone she knew, for all of Pea’s life, while she pretended: God is everywhere and nowhere. Not to be seen, only to be known.

She doesn’t see Him, but at last — at long, long last! — she is hearing Him, hearing Him speaking, hearing His deep rolling voice like the waves of an endless ocean.

YOU ARE READY FOR ME NOW CHILD, AS I AM FOR YOU.

That voice! Confident and strong. A bear; a saint; a gentle and condoling giant. God’s voice after a lifetime of its absence is a lush breeze tickling the surface of a placid pond. It soothes her and it enlivens her, after the ravishment and confusion and fear of the last two days. She tilts her head up and smells the sulfurous bubbling odor of the outskirts. She is still standing at the fence, where she and Robert were dragging the bodies for disposal. They had set themselves the task of disposing of all of the corpses, the bodies of everyone in the world but them, one at time. And then suddenly Robert attacked her, tried to add her body to their number, and just as suddenly she found incredible powers inside of herself, and she used them, by wild instinct, to send him over the edge, to his own burning drowning death.