The Abbey at the World's End

By L L Watkin

Keldaren just wanted an easy life. A job where the boss wouldn’t scream if she was five minutes late. A nice boyfriend. Treasure worth a not so small fortune. To go a week without a bomb going off in her near vicinity. Was that so much to ask? Unfortunately, when your best friend is a three thousand year old ghost with a chip on her insubstantial shoulders, it might be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L L Watkin
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301707522

L L Watkin

LL Watkin is the pen name for writing partnership Liz Smith and Louise Smith, two sisters from the North of England who've been writing together since, well, forever. We write a mixture of short stories and full length novels in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and while some stories may be more Louise's and others more Liz's, all spring from a collaborative process.In summer 2022 we will publish our new four part novel series, The Snowglobe, which is a double-stranded narrative set in a multi-dimensional universe. It concerns a criminal investigation by Divine Law Enforcement (DLE), which aims to locate and arrest a psychotic demi-god, Kaelvan, who is determined to murder a specific human child. Although the plot includes fantastical elements, most often ESP and telekinesis, the settings are all post-industrial societies, some of them more technologically advanced than our own and others steam-punk in feel.

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The Abbey at the World’s End

By L L Watkin

Published by L. L. Watkin at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 L. L. Watkin

Dedicated to our long-suffering parents, in the hope they can now put something on a shelf at last.

Chapter 1

Keldaren woke up. There was a low humming close to her head, but after a moment’s pause she decided that the buzz was unobtrusive and easily ignorable. So she ignored it, trying instead to recapture the dream recently fled. When the hum was augmented by the sound of flowing water her eyes popped open, and she began to listen more carefully. A quick glance at the clock beside her bed told her it was 8.45am, and either her morning alarm had not gone off at all, or she had slept through it.

Knowing instinctively that the day was going to start badly and go downhill only made Keldaren more inclined to bury her head under the covers and pretend it was still last night. Last night had had relaxing incense and a marvelously sinful takeaway, which this morning was lodged like a rock in her abdomen. When the lights came on at full intensity, making even her cocoon too uncomfortably bright to recover sleep she sighed and heaved herself reluctantly out to face the morning. It was just her luck to buy an apartment with an auto-system bully.

The bedroom looked the same as it had yesterday, which meant the overnight program she’d ordered to recolor it from off white to blue hadn’t worked. Or the puritanical decorating aide program had kicked in already and corrected her poor colour co ordination. The only colour that went with white was white. Even the dye in the blue rug she’d put down a few days ago was slowing leaching out, which shouldn’t be possible since the auto decorate only applied to the walls, fixtures and fittings. In theory.

Trying to look on the bright side was hard for Kel when she was still more than half asleep but she still noticed that nothing in her immediate vicinity was smoking, burning, beeping or leaking. Overall a pleasant change from her normal morning routine.

The sound of running water intruded onto this happy thought with its hint that the rest of the apartment was possibly not faring so well. Following the noise Keldaren moved into the bathroom, which had taken the opposite position to the bedroom. The walls and floor were defiantly holding a peppermint green tiling effect with only the occasional blotch of brilliant white intruding, but on the down side the bath had started running a half hour ago, supposedly aligned with her alarm clock, and it hadn’t gotten around to switching off yet. A waterfall of suds had cleared the bath itself and covered the deeper green tiled floor with a steadily rising foam of vanilla scented bubbles which spilled out into the bedroom as soon as Kel opened the door, soaking her up to the ankles and doing no help at all to the fading rug.

Glad for once that she wasn’t a cuddly pyjamas kind of girl Keldaren slopped over and stopped the tap. Halfway back to the door she slipped and landed on her rump in oil-scented water, thus ruining her fine linen slip and making herself wish she was a cuddly, and easily cleanable, pyjamas kind of girl. Flopping down to lie flat on her back for a moment while her rear end was still numb she let loose a self pitying sigh.

It didn’t make the situation any better so she dragged herself back to her feet and through the bedroom into the open plan kitchen living area.

The kitchen was filled with an aggressive conflict of smells – stewing coffee, burning toast and sour milk. The first two were the result of starting to make breakfast half an hour ago and not switching anything off yet; the second was down to Keldaren’s choice to buy new summer beach shoes for the holiday she now wasn’t going on, instead of investing in essential grocery supplies. It had seemed like the best idea at the time.

She should have known better. If the decorating, cleaning, bathroom and timing systems were all misbehaving what right had she to think the kitchen could accurately check for food spoilage? The worst of it was that the only system that hadn’t worked this morning was the alarm. If she’d woken up on time it would have been perfect. It would have been the first time this month. Well, the decorating thing would still have been annoying. And she hadn’t checked everything yet. But it still would have been the best day.

She got a small electric shock when turning off the toaster, probably because her fingers were still wet, and then, since stewed coffee at 8.55am was a hundred times better than no coffee at all before leaving for work, she poured herself a huge mug and gulped half of it down in one mouthful, strong and black and very hot.

Keldaren woke up. The caffeine hit her brain like a bullet train, finally allowing her to process that only an alarm clock issue or not, her apartment was flooded, there was no breakfast and she was already late for work. The day was only 15 minutes old and if her luck continued it would get an awful lot worse once it actually got started.

Shit!

Swallowing more coffee on the go Keldaren ran back across the still disappointingly magnolia sitting room into the off-white bedroom, grabbed a huge pile of already fading peppermint towels from a cupboard and dashed on into the bathroom, coffee balanced precariously on top of the stack of cotton. Towels on floor, housemaid switched off, damp extractor fan on and she was back in the bedroom trying to brush her hair, dry her rear and determine if she really could bluff work without a bath. And drinking coffee.

Almost all of her work clothes were out at the dry cleaners following last week’s disaster when the washing machine had decided that most of her wardrobe was composed of covers for the soft furnishing, and so should be re-coloured to match the rest of the décor. It was costing her a month’s pay to get the bleach out reversed. She ended up in a pale lilac dress and jacket combination which was firstly much too formal for her current job, secondly far too warm for the summer weather and thirdly failing to complement the new shoes she’d promised to wear today to show the other girls at work. It was the only outfit left to her which didn’t need ironed.

Two further cups of coffee and a lightening round with the hair straightener later Kel left the flat. While putting her keys away she realised that she had the wrong id pack in this bag and had to turn back to pick up her work badge. After rummaging around in her other handbag for longer than she’d thought it would take to find anything she spotted it lying on the arm of the sofa, grabbed it and set off again. She got slightly further this time before remembering she’d promised to lend Trintje’s wife Corrina a style magazine full of useful hints and tricks, and since she wasn’t wearing the new shoes she needed something else to talk about at work, so she went back for that too.

On her third trip down the hall her alarm clock went off behind her, but since it was 9.15am already and if she didn’t move her butt Trintje was going to fire her ass, Kel decided that she was jinxed for the day/month/year and left anyway. She couldn’t remember when she’d turned into such an airhead; surely she’d been more together than three attempts to leave the house at some point?

Keldaren bounded hurriedly down the stairwell then pushed open an emergency door to exit the building into a side alley. She was immediately glad of her choice of route, as the main streets to either side of her were so packed tight she probably wouldn’t have been able to get out the front door without shoving. Being on the main through-fare to the downtown office blocks was one of the reasons her apartment was affordable despite its central location, the others being that it was small, run down and a bit eccentric in deciding what constituted soft furnishings. She missed her old flat. It had been large, teched out to a high quality, and she’d owned it outright so no rentals to pay. It hadn’t been in as fashionable an area – but then she actually preferred life in the not-everyone-is-quite-legitimate South side. Damn the interfering city guard for chasing her out of it.

Seachester’s city centre was pedestrianized. The only vehicle transports allowed were the cable cars strung between four and ten stories high bringing the majority of commuters in from outlying areas where their private transports were docked. Kel’s apartment block was just inside the no-fly zone, one block further down the road the housing had been torn down to make way for towering parking garages. A space in one cost more than her flat. On workdays, even workdays like today which was almost a public holiday in the city, the recently parked masses crowded the road in a queue between their parking lots and the cable car station two blocks over.

A smart entrepreneur a few years ago had found a legal loophole that only mechanical transports were banned and started his own stables marketing animal drawn transport. The very rich now moved around the city centre on horseback, or in a variety of coaches and chariots, causing havoc as they wove around, or over, the walkers. Protestors argued that to close the loophole and ban the horse-drawn transports would be straightforward, but instead the church laid a tax on the purchase of horseflesh to cover the additional street-cleaning. Seachester was now the only city in the Tren Theocracy where a horse and cart combo could set you back more than a flyer, and it still suffered badly from congestion.

At this time of year the crowd was even worse than normal. Seachester’s coastal location made it popular with anyone seeking a spot of illicit sandcastle building, and it was a top destination with tourists, and their money, all summer. To cover the fact that the city was profiting from an illegal activity, namely defacing the natural beauty and religious importance of the Holy Sea by swimming in it or straying impolitely close to its edge, the city council had invented the Festival of the Second Moon, a month long religious celebration strangely coincidental with the best beach combing weather. All sides were happy, the merchants made money, the tourists got to both swim and enjoy free entertainment, the guard got to lock up a few sea-swimmers as a token gesture, the church was rewarded both with high service attendance and with tax revenues and residents who’d slept in but knew a quick way to work were provided with a great excuse for their tardy arrival.

Keldaren’s own short cut was a work in progress. She hadn’t had either job or apartment long enough to work out the most efficient route between the two. Most days it still beat the cable car queue by fifteen minutes and walking the public streets by twenty. She slipped out of the alley beside her apartment block and into the city baths next door, straight through the entrance hall, through a security door and into the service corridor which exited out into the lobby of the hotel next door. Climbing down two floors there was an underground stable and carriage park which the hotel shared with the shopping centre over the road. The shopping centre covered the first five floors of a skyscraper block and by working her way through it via an office staff entrance on the fifth floor, passing through the secular office and climbing to the sixteenth storey church tax offices and then over a skywalk Keldaren passed into the priests’ quarters built above the Cathedral. From there it was simple to navigate into the public area of the nave, out through the main vestry and over the street to the side door of her office building.

Apart from the trek across the shopping centre where she had to contend with early bird shoppers and late running staffers the walk was blissfully free of crowds, and Keldaren could make a trip normally taking 40 minutes in 20. Of course she needed five different ids and work permits to pass through various employee only entrances and security checks, but she’d been using the path a few months now and had down perfectly which badge went with which door. In fact she’d become so used to going this way that she stopped en route to pick up a staff-discounted coffee in the ecclesiastical offices, since the coffee brewed in the church was much finer, and cheaper, than that available at her own work. Finding an even faster route was just an intellectual exercise, this one had its perks.

By the time she sneaked back out into the street and allowed the crowd to carry her around the last corner to the office’s front door Keldaren was feeling much more like herself. There was nothing like reminding yourself that you knew things others didn’t to cheer you up on a depressing summer morning when you’d much rather not be at work.

Trintje was watching from the reception as Kel threaded her way across the thoroughfare, narrowly avoiding being brained by a colt panicked by the noise and bustle. Knowing he was there Keldaren surreptitiously checked she had only her legitimate id in her hand as she buzzed in, the rest safely hidden in her purse, and treated her boss to her best distracting dizzy blonde grin, making a breathless comment about how much more busy than usual the streets were. As an afterthought she thrust the style magazine into his hands and reminded him airily that Corrina had wanted to borrow it.

The worst thing about Trintje as a boss was that he was smart. He’d had three months of Keldaren’s shenanigans and oversleeps and wasn’t buying any of her traffic related excuses. If he could have proved she had a fast route to work he’d have been more trouble, but he only suspected, so he contented himself with warnings.

You’ve lived here your whole life he grumbled, Time enough to learn to get up earlier in the summer. Damn festival slows everything up, but you’re the last in again. Second time this week, and its only Tuesday!

Keldaren deflated theatrically, turning from dizzy flirt to contrite girl-child in the time it took to blink. It was so blatantly false that Trintje laughed despite himself as she gave him huge blue eyes filled with fake wetness.

If it was busy I’d have to sack you, but it’s as dead as atheism, so get inside and consider yourself warned.

Keldaren batted her eyes at him a little, and then bounced off up the stairs towards her console with him in tow. She didn’t have to bounce, being perfectly capable of more sensible gaits, but Trintje was doing her a favour by not calling undue senior management attention to her, and he appreciated the effect of the bounce, so she bounced.

Seachester Pride was one of the largest insurance companies in the Theocracy, with its head office in Haven, over a week away on the fastest transport. Its most profitable business was in corporate insurance for the big inter planetary shipping craft. The regional offices on Theril, specialising in private in atmosphere flyers, homes and the new range of horse cover were small fry to its corporate agenda. The company only kept offices in Seachester at all in order to maintain that its name wasn’t a complete fraud, and for the tax benefit.

Tithe breaks offered by the local Temple to any firm owning or renting at least a hundred desks in a city centre office led to telephone monitor being the second most common job in the city. Only retail assistant had a higher headcount. But the office space was too expensive still, so every firm had as few employees as they could get away with and still qualify for the tax saving, and each skyscraper building housed dozens of corporate tenants. Seachester Pride was no different, with a quarter floor office space catering for twice as many employees as it had desks and a two shift staff rota.

Before Kel had started work here she’d thought that filing was her least favourite office chore amongst a plethora of detested office work. In the last three months manning the call centre had stolen the top prize. It was bad enough when the calls flowed thick and fast and at least kept her nominally occupied, but on a day when most of the local consumers assumed all offices were closed for the festivities it was a nightmare. She had two calls in the three hours leading to lunch, and Jetta and Ghia sitting alongside her had three each. Of the eight five had come through to customer care only because the sales line was closed and two were raving complainers demanding to speak to the manager, who was on holiday. Trintje denied all responsibility as he was a mere supervisor and so whoever took the call was stuck with the grousing. Keldaren realised her boredom was hitting new lows when she found herself wishing it had been her turn to pick up the phone halfway through the second tirade.

Missra had told Kel once that the ability to be idle is a great skill, one of the most important taught at any university. Kel didn’t know who the ghost had been quoting but had always liked the idea. For herself she’d never gotten to the end of state compulsory schooling never mind degrees and being happily idle was not a skill she possessed. It was all very well to mooch around in the comfort of her own apartment, stay in bed for an extra two hours or watch talk shows on TV; but when awake, laced into smart clothes and tied to her work desk by the phone cable leading to her headset she could feel a headache coming on through sheer inaction.

The lunch breaks were done in two shifts, Keldaren and Jetta then Trintje and Ghia, so that a skeleton phone cover would be in place the whole day. Since the office caterers had the festival off work and given the crowds it would have been impossible to get out of the building, buy lunch and get back in the time allowed everyone except Kel had brought packed lunches. Keldaren had brought change for the vending machine, and so sat in the near deserted canteen munching her way through packets of zero nutrition junk food while Jetta ate her organic salad.

Number 4 Museum Plaza was a typical example of Seachester’s central office blocks, fourteen storeys tall with the first two given over to retail, restaurant and coffee bar lets and the top twelve at capacity seating over 4’000 employees for its 37 clients. It was set up with multiple common areas including three cafeterias on different floors and sides of the building. The fifth floor room they were sitting in today was the closest to their desks but also the smallest of the eateries, and afforded a great view of the mile long queue to get into the museum of antiquities out of the floor to ceiling windows.

You know that junk has no nutritional value whatsoever? Jetta was training outside of work to move into healthcare, where she was convinced she’d get a higher salary for working fewer hours. She always mocked Keldaren’s lunch choices no matter how healthy they were, so it had to be a dream come true for her to be justified in her criticism.

I know. I forgot to shop. Want one? Kel’s offer of a crisp was scornfully refused, as she had expected.

It’s a scandal they serve that stuff here in any case.

I guess. Keldaren surveyed the ingredients list in mock concern. Yep, you’re right. Full of preservatives every pack. Not a hint of divine nature in them. She continued eating regardless.

I bet you drink too. Jetta sniffed.

Alcohol? Kel frowned. No. Not for any religious reason, it had just never agreed with her. In fact her few experiments in that direction had turned dangerous very quickly, but Jetta didn’t have to know that.

Good. That’s half the battle you know. Jetta’s tone turned instructional. It’s actually very easy to follow the food guidelines in the scriptures. All you have to do is opt for fresh every time. You can’t go far wrong. It’s the alcohol that gets most people. She sighed in fake commiseration. Keldaren was betting Jetta had never touched a drop of the stuff in her life. She was almost as up the church’s collective ass as Ghia.

Rather than voicing her own opinion Keldaren nodded her agreement then let her eyes wander. Despite her tacit concurrence that the salted wheat snacks were verging on heretical she continued to munch through them as Jetta attacked her own lettuce as though undressed salad was the most interesting food in the Theocracy. Fresh food wouldn’t have bothered Kel so much. It wasn’t as though you had to cook it, even Kel’s disaster prone apartment normally managed to prepare dinner on her behalf. If you adhered strictly to scripture though salt, dried spices and oils were out of your grasp. So was seafood, since fishing was forbidden on the Theril seas due to their religious significance and shipping in from another planet required either adding preservatives to the food or freezing it, both of which were outlawed. Even the things you could eat you had to pay three time the going rate for the privilege of it being organically produced within a day’s shipment of the city. None of this really mattered to Keldaren, who had decided at an early age that she wouldn’t last two days without coffee.

She found herself staring out of the window down into the crowds queuing into the city museum. The view from this canteen was the consolation prize of accepting the call centre job. Keldaren had applied to every corporation in this building in order to win this view and usually she spent her lunch-break, and indeed every break she got, scoping out the museum security, the number of people they let in at once, the guard shift changes, the key combinations on the doors and anything else she could pick up. With her sharp eyesight it was amazing how much you could glean from having a bird’s eye view of proceedings.

Today there just wasn’t enough covering noise in the canteen to indulge her hobby without it being noted that she had an odd obsession so after a moment Keldaren turned back to Jetta and started a lively monologue on shoes, dresses, sunbathing, self tanning and the cute band playing at the main arena tomorrow, all topics on which her dining companion had little interest or a vested dislike of. She liberally sprinkled her conversation with offers to share vended food, just to be particularly annoying. Even without her religious prejudices Jetta was trying to diet herself away to nothing as proof of her own good health so Kel ended up eating enough to feel bloated as well as headachy all afternoon.

You may have been right about that last chocolate bar. She confided on the way back to their desks, I’m definitely feeling a bit sick now. The older woman tried unsuccessfully to hide a tight, smug grin. Keldaren didn’t like her much either and had decided almost as soon as they met that she wouldn’t be able to hide it over the long term, so she’d tailored her work personality to have nothing in common with Jetta at all, perfectly explaining their lack of rapport.

As he left for his own break Trintje leaned over her screen to whisper Tomorrow I’ll arrange for her to go with Ghia. No one should have to put up with her two days running. Kel snorted as she tried to stifle her laugh and Jetta glanced over with a suspicion which made them both start guiltily.

Since there was still no work Kel logged onto the Ethernet and ran a half hearted search for new apartments. She still had nine months on her current lease and so would only be moving for police related issues, but it was nice to know what was out there. Her old flat had been put back on the market by the authorities who’d confiscated it. It was now marketed at less than she’d originally paid but she still couldn’t afford to buy it back. She’d been so stupid to sink so much of her cash into one place. At least she’d only rented the new apartment.

Something wrong? Jetta queried with the sickly sweet tone of someone hoping there was while pretending to be concerned. Kel realised she was scowling and smoothed her face as she closed the viewer window. Damn interfering police.

Not really. My apartment tech is busted, I was pricing the rewiring jobs. She winced, Not pretty reading.

Yes. You live quite central but East side, right? Kel nodded, waiting for the punchline. Yes, Daryl and I lived in that area before his promotion. Dreadful landlords, they would never come out to fix anything. Of course, now we’ve moved north things are much more comfortable.

Keldaren hid her scowl again. She’d done background research on her colleagues as a matter of course when she took the job. No point getting the perfect cover story, short term financing and job research opportunity in one if the person sitting next to you was a snitch on the side. Jetta only lived in the upmarket North of Seachester in that she lived north of the Main line. She still went due east from the office to get home, and her apartment was a lot further into the suburbs than Kel’s.

Kel had actually cased it out a few weeks back when she was finding Jetta particular annoying and thought a burglary might shake the woman’s superior attitude at the same time as helping Kel fund her apartment repairs. Nothing worth stealing. It looked like what it was, lower middle class suburbia. Kel could have rented a better flat any day of the week and she thought of her current finances as verging on a horror story. None of which stopped the woman from boasting constantly about the Northern home her husband had bought after