---

Oak Hill Lane

By Alasdair Stuart

The day the world ended, Scotch picked a fight. Not that there was much choice. Two fellow Canary Detailers, heads full of redtop bigotry and guts full of Tesco beer, had jumped Scotch’s work partner Billy the previous week and put him in the Infirmary. Scotch was next. It was just maths. Very stupid maths. So, behind the bike sheds at the University none of them could afford to attend but all of them were good enough to clean, Scotch forced the issue.

Honestly, Scotch had rushed the issue; they let their guard down. “The readiness is all” becoming “Oh for fuck’s sake.” It was such schoolyard bollocks too. The bike sheds! The bike sheds for fuck’s sake! Scotch was only marginally surprised no one was making out back there. God knows they had a few times. But no, no such luck. Just clumsy alcohol punches and the angry relentless wave of hormones, homophobia, and homogenous men trying to pound the world into a shape whose familiarity didn’t terrify them. This wasn’t their first time behind the bike sheds either.

The little one got three solid hits in, and Scotch dropped because being punched in the nose sucked. The bigger one, smarter than his carrier bag and alcopop homunculus, hung back. That was a problem. Scotch could either slug it out with the little prick and probably win before the other one got angry enough, or just take the shots and wait for Dickhead and Dickhead, Attorneys At Fist to get bored.

Or Scotch could get just angry.

Yeah. Option C.

Scotch let Dickhead Alpha get close enough before driving a forearm up into his testicles. He screamed, nice and high and folded over Scotch’s shoulder. Scotch stood, dumped him on what probably wasn’t his neck then—

Lightning struck. And struck. And struck. And struck. Scotch turned on the spot and watched lightning bolts like the flashguns of God themselves walk up the road. Scotch’s current opponent had got up, tears in his eyes and blood on his face, hot-red with embarrassment and hematoma.

When a lightning bolt speared the little shit through the skull, he was cursing Scotch out. Scotch saw the back of his throat light up. When it faded, there was a moment of blissful, petrichored silence. Then sirens. Then the smell of cooking meat. Then screaming.

---

They didn’t call it a workhouse. It was a Civil Duty Hostel. They didn’t arrest Scotch. They just didn’t let anyone outside for a week. When they did, Scotch was always alone, aside from the weekly visits from the chaplain.

They also didn’t call the big man with grey hair and a pink face a chaplain. But there were bars on the windows and a dog collar on a bulldog of a neck and Scotch believed in calling a spade a spade and a man of the cloth ‘Padre.’ Every week the same cup of tea and the same kit-kat. Every week the same opening question, delivered in the same mellifluous voice. Like a grandad toffee given form and the right to marry people.

“Where would you like to start, Scotch?”Reprint,

“…Not in prison?”

The prison chaplain was built like a boulder. Big workman’s hands and a face rendered pink by the sun. Scotch liked him. He was funny and kind and let them read during counselling sessions. But those sessions always reminded Scotch a little too much of the fight the day the world began to end. The chaplain was dancing around them, throwing jabs, trying to rock their moral centre.

The big man laughed, a booming Dickensian sound. “No one’s here forever, Scotch. Aside from me.”

Scotch smiled. “What did you do?” The “you” underlined but not italicised.

The chaplain looked at Scotch for a long beat, chin up, proud–point conceded or point won? “Draw him onto pleasures” flicked though Scotch’s mind. Then the chaplain inclined his head. A point conceded, then.

“I spoke up about perceived injustice,” he said.

“Why?”

“I perceived it.” The chaplain tapped his collar.

Scotch laughed this time. It felt great, a little manic. They hadn’t laughed since the morning before Billy had been attacked. Scotch leaned forwards. “Padre?”

“Father,” he corrected.

“Close enough. What happened to Billy?”

The chaplain’s eyes lit up. “Billy Azir, your cellmate?”

“Indeed.”

“Transferred out. Part of a special work release,” he said, the capital letters on ‘Special Work Release’ obvious to Scotch.

“Is he healed up?”

“He was cleared for release, yes.”

Scotch knew this was Official Speak for, “No, but someone needed a warm body that they knew would never vote for them to do something bad.”

“That doesn’t sound promising, Father,” they said.

“Would you like me to look into it for you?”

Scotch nodded, not liking the shape of the feeling in their brain.

“Are you two close?” he asked.

“Billy didn’t annoy me,” Scotch finally said.

The chaplain nodded. “I could make some phone calls. See whether I can find out where he was sent. Would that help?”

Scotch could hear the ‘son’ forming in the chaplain’s brain and then not going any further (which Scotch appreciated.)

“Please,” Scotch forced themselves to say. They hated that word. Hated feeling their weight settle on someone else’s shoulders. Some of that was the program, some of it was their life. Keep moving, don’t be a burden, don’t be a target. Change the subject. Change it now.

“How is…” Scotch gestured outside, towards the Saint and the riots and the lightning that went on every night. The last time they’d let Scotch near a TV, there’d been shaky news footage of an encampment somewhere in the woods near a colossal form, shining as it birthed itself into the world, one electron at a time.

The chaplain looked broken, just for a moment. “Do you want me to answer as a chaplain or as a human?”

“Both is good.”

The chaplain clapped his hands, rocked back on the seat. Took a breath. “As a chaplain, I think a saint is manifesting into the world. Something incredible is happening and we are alive to witness it and that is a blessing.” A deep, shuddering breath.

“And as a human?”

“I did two submarine tours in the 1980’s. I’m more frightened now.”

“I’m really sorry. I know how you feel.” Scotch had been in the program two years and moved to a new city once every six weeks until the world started ending. The last eight weeks had been sunshine in amber over York Minster. Cleaning gutters on Roman walls and not making eye contact with the tourists sequestered in the city. Every meal in empty rooms. Scotch wasn’t alone, not quite. Not yet.

The older man’s eyes shone. Scotch moved and the chaplain gripped their hand for a moment.

The chaplain nodded, stood as if moving away from the space his words had defined, “I’ll ask about Billy. He squeezed Scotch’s shoulder tight.

The next day, Scotch was transferred to London.

---

“Erin Mckay! We want you!”

A scruffy suit with tousled hair and bloviated upper-class bigotry pointed at Sctoch among the other Canaries.

Scotch hated him. They’d hated him the first time he’d elbowed to the front of the express checkout to Downing Street and the bloom had only ever mouldered further off the rose. Being in the same room as this shit-witted little bigot was like sharing an airline seat with an open dumpster, even before he started bafflegabbing his way through the worst Churchill cover version since the last one. They’d put him in charge of the Canaries, and the moment they did, Scotch knew exactly how little the Government cared if they lived or died.

“When we started the Civil Duty Program, we wanted to inspire a generation lost…lost to…tik…tok and social media…hoodies and Drill…” The man floundered for a moment.

“Dissolution and dystopia.”

He thumped the table. “Exactly! You and your compatriots have done sterling work, Erin. Sterling! And now it falls to you, to do the most difficult work of all.” His breath stunk. Whisky and ketosis. His mask hung from one ear. He hadn’t worn it coming in. An industrial Corsi-Rosenthal box thrummed in the corner so that was something at least. The air had the metallic tang of a scrubber system too. Only the finest oxygen for the ruling classes and their scheduled deviant of the day.

“A thousand dead or infected with…whatever this thing is. That…encampment in Berkshire near the site. Civil unrest, the losses to the economy…it has to be stopped.” His voice had broken there, and Scotch absently wondered if that was sincere. They didn’t much care.

He continued. “You can stop it!” Other generic Etonian fugitives had bleated then, drafting chapters of their autobiography in real time. Scotch doubted anyone in the room knew their name or would be able to describe them a minute after they left.

“Do you have any questions?”

”How many of us have you sent to the Saint?” they asked, then added, “and it’s ‘Scotch.’”

The Right Honourable Gentleman for Middle England had fixed Scotch, just for a second, with a look of murderous rage. Scotch thought about the bike sheds, and lightning, and how the good fights were so rarely the ones you got to have. The look faded and Village Fete Churchill bumbled back into the spotlight. “Taken, I’m afraid. The ‘Saint” as it’s being called…absorbed…everyone we’ve sent.” A beat. “If it helps, they didn’t feel a thing.”

Scotch nodded. “Did you?”

---

Another month in a Civil Duty camp. Then the same briefing. Just two soldiers came: one woman in a suit, all masked, and the sort of straight ahead, direct language Scotch respected. Her voice had been pleasant and soft.

“Scotch, we’re offering you the same deal we offered the other Canaries. A full pardon, official recognition of identity and a government stipend for the next five years. We need you to infiltrate the Saint’s Pilgrims who hold the perimeter around the Saint.” She pointed to a map. “Get inside the perimeter. Learn what it is. Help us kill it. Come home.’

Scotch had been issued a toy. A pen, delightfully basic, just a metal tube with a button, a clip, and a GPS locator. All they had to do was get the locator inside Saint Zero (the branding was testing very well, they were told) and something terribly clever and very violent would be done somewhere else and everyone could go back to polite cardigan-wearing bigotry, jumble sales and having nightmares about people like Scotch.

There was no chance it would work.

Scotch signed up straight away.

---

The Pilgrims picked Scotch up right on cue, hiking across open country towards Oak Hill Lane and the Saint growing there.

“Morning! What do you want?” they called.

The welcoming committee hadn’t been armed, but did have the easy physicality of people who didn’t think that would be a problem. The leader was as big as Scotch, shaved head with a braid down one side and a uniform that was one part bouncer, one part biker chick. They had a rounded Irish accent and Scotch liked them instantly.

“To see the new world?” they replied.

Braid smiled. “That is an excellent answer, buddy.” They pointed around the group. “That’s Biz, that’s Pete and Hodge, that’s Coombes, that’s Bunny, that’s Tim, and I’m Maeve. She/them.”

Scotch blinked. “Scotch. They/them.”

Maeve handed Scotch a canteen and a power bar then led the way somewhere Scotch soon realized was not the camp. Those coordinates had been lodged in Scotch’s brain with the shiny clarity only hyper awareness can bring.

They stepped out of the hedge onto a canopied country road. A cat sunbathed on the roof of an abandoned car. A thousand Missing Persons posters shifted like feathers in the wind.

“Where are we going?” Scotch asked.

Maeve had gone quiet, still. Not the stillness before a fight, but the stillness of worship, of respect. She looked at Scotch, questioning. Scotch, their pulse rising at the air buzzing with the presence of something Other nodded. Maeve closed a big hand loosely around Scotch’s. Squeezed. Scotch was grateful for it. Children holding hands in a church.

Maeve directed Scotch’s eyes to the New World.

The heat haze of feverish innovation hanging over a road that still held a Roman mile marker.

The Saint’s assembler cloud covering trees, cars, animals, people. Industrious motes of dust, moving against the breeze. Moving in formations.

The airlock welded into place, the pressure bubble covered in fallen leaves.

The chrome that covered every surface around it. The smooth outlines of the soldiers’ dead bodies at the cordon, Saint Zero’s gleaming flesh written over them and out down the lane, a slow-motion Kanagawa wave of machinery and clean binary gospel.

The air tasted like electricity and communion wafers.

The air tasted like lightning and broken noses.

Scotch was crying before they realised. Maeve was hugging them before the first sob ripped clear, her voice musical and curved, her powerful arms holding Scotch’s quaking shoulders.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” A sniffle. A laugh. “I threw up the first time.”

Laughs fired into broad shoulders that carried too much. Bees buzzing at the edge of the world.

---

The Reverend Brigid Jefferson stood and smiled, holding a callused hand out as Maeve delivered Scotch.

“Hello Scotch, welcome to the diesis. Maeve told me your pronouns, use whatever you’re comfortable with for me. How was the rest of the patrol, Maeve?”

Maeve grinned. “PC Duffy says hi. Sent you some jam.” She handed a dark purple jar over.

“Aw, that’s really sweet. You going back out?”

Maeve smiled. “Got some shopping to do.”

“Got your list?”

Maeve held up a scrap of paper. “And my bail money. Just in case.”

Brigid grinned. “Good girl.”

Maeve turned as she walked away. “See you later, Scotch. And don’t, under any circumstances, ask the Rev here about her past as a Rugby International.”

Brigid threw an apple at Maeve (very accurately), who caught it, smiled, and skipped off.

“Rugby?” Scotch prompted.

Brigid sighed. “I was a prop. Got the knees to prove it. Also?” She looked down the road at Maeve’s exit. “She likes you.”

Scotch nodded, flushed, nodded. “Yeah.”

Brigid grinned, guided Scotch to a seat and gestured to the pot bubbling on an open fire. “Are you hungry? It’s vegetable stew. Chickpeas, too, for added protein. It’s good.”

“Thank you.” Scotch took a bowl and a seat. Brigid sat across from them. Behind her, the Saint’s tank-sized fontanelle caught the sunshine as it peaked over the woods, weaving itself together.

“You saw the contact site,” Brigid said. “How are you doing?”

Scotch considered lying, then shrugged mentally. “I sobbed for about ten minutes, and I still feel sick.”

Brigid ate some stew, talked around it. “Impressive. I threw up. There’s something in the EM field it’s kicking out. Inspires both physiological and existential dread.”

“I couldn’t look away.”

Brigid gestured, shoving another forkful into her mouth. “None of us can. Isn’t it great?”

Scotch chewed and thought. “Can I ask you something?”

Brigid nodded enthusiastically. “Please.”

“You know they’re sending people to infiltrate you,” they paused, awkward. “Including me.”

“I do.” Brigid nodded. “And kill the Saint,” she added.

“What happened to the ones they sent before me?”

Brigid ate a piece of sweet potato doused in tomato and paprika. It smelled incredible. “You’re very direct, Scotch.”

“World’s ending.” Scotch’s shoulders rose. Scotch’s voice dropped. Fear and cooking meat. Lightning in a human mouth. Blood and iron and the janky caffeine hit of PTSD and panic and not knowing who to mask with, what mask was needed if it fitted or if anyone fucking cared.

She swallowed, shaking her head. “The world is changing. Not ending. I’ve had this conversation so many times now and I love having it. I’ll tell you what I told your fellow Canaries: your life is your own. We won’t stop you. We trust you. They don’t.”

“What happened to the others?” Scotch asked again.

“Twelve joined us. Six of them start their pilgrimage tomorrow and you can join them if you like. Eight took the opportunity to go home.” She put her stew down. “Now ask me what you really want to know.”

“…My cellmate was one of them. Billy Azir. What happened to him?”

Brigid smiled. “He went home.” Her face fell as they saw Scotch’s expression. “…Oh shit, Oh Scotch, I’m sorry.”

Scotch shook their head. “Did he leave a message?”

“No. Just hopped a truck back to Bradford.”

Scotch nodded. “Thanks for the stew.” Stood, without looking Brigid in the eye. Time to go.

“Not so fast.” Brigid clapped for their attention. “Billy was your friend. You were hoping he’d waited. I’m sorry he didn’t and I’m guessing from the look on your face and how ready you are to leave that this is an experience you are used to.”

Scotch still stood. Nodded.

Brigid reached behind her, handed Scotch a plate piled with garlic bread. Their nostrils furred at the smell of fresh yeast and butter. Brigid smiled, but the way you do at an old, familiar pain.

“Disappointment. I know it. I blew my knee out one week before the Olympic trials. I never played again. I got sad. I got angry. I got ordained. Twice.”

“Twice?”

“Once in the church. Once as a minister of the First Order of Carbs.”

Scotch wanted to punch something. Scotch wanted to cry. Scotch really wanted some garlic bread.

Scotch sat back down. “Can I ask what happened?”

“He had a panic attack. A massive one. We looked after him, but he …sometimes people just flee. It’s all too big, Scotch. Too wide. I really am sorry.”

Scotch wanted to laugh. The lump in their throat was too big, the feeling of disappointment, of letting Billy down. Scotch ate a big chunk of bread and idly realised how close to crying again they were.

They tried to change the subject. “What do you make of this?”

Brigid leaned forward and Scotch got a brief, confusing double exposure of Brigid’s two lives. The gentle demeanour and emotional awareness of a priest of the new world, and the over-the-top impression of an artist, the mountainous prop forward on their way to wreck every single inch of your shit. Scotch liked both of them.

“We assume this is a world-ending event, but what if it’s a world-saving one and we can’t see that because we don’t think we deserve it?” She sounded desperately sad. “This country has self-harmed since before our grandparents were born, and the Saint is here to close the wounds at last. Those lads under the chrome? We’ve got vital signs on them; they’re sleeping. The animals, too. They’re in REM sleep. They’re dreaming.” She chuckled. “We think they’re batteries, energy being borrowed so the Saint can write itself alive.”

“I’ve seen that movie. The machines are the villains.”

She smiled. “Gets more complicated in the sequels.”

They shook their head. “But a thousand people are missing.”

“A thousand people are on pilgrimage. That Basingstoke suburb they told you got destroyed? We’ll take you there. It’s chromed. Everyone alive, everyone sleeping. Safe. Safer than us.”

Scotch wanted to believe her more than anything. “How do I know that’s true?”

Brigid finished her stew. “Because I only share my homemade garlic focaccia with people I trust. Get some rest, Scotch. We’re going to church tomorrow.”

---

They gave Scotch a tent, a change of clothes, and a toy robot, which was waiting outside their tent when they woke up. Two feet of Norman Rockwell chromepunk vibes. A red tricycle, so perfect and archetypal it looked like it had been pulled from central casting. A block headed toy robot, the sort of thing they’d seen in the corner shop growing up. The kind of ‘knockoff of a knockoff of a knockoff’ toy that washed ashore on the coasts of small places and small lives. Scotch couldn’t remember the last time they’d related so completely to something, let alone another person. Scotch called him Chip because puns were eternal.

“Morning, Scotch.” Brigid waved as she walked up, mud already climbing her combat boots onto her vestments. Scotch thought of the prison chaplain and wondered if he’d ever had kids, and if they’d ever gone into the church too.

“Reverend.”

Brigid beamed. “Come with me.”

Scotch stuck their hands in their pockets against the morning chill, felt the pen, solid and sleek in their hand. They started down the road down to the Saint.

“Scotch, do you know what the coolest thing about being part of the birth of a new way of being is?” she asked.

“The stew.”

Brigid guffawed. “I’ll tell Maeve you liked it. But no, it’s not just the stew. It’s the responsibility. We get to define what this is. What it will be to us. The Saint isn’t just born out of matter; it has a spirit. We’re that spirit. All of us. If you look at the Saint and decide it’s a world-ending threat, it is. If you look at the Saint and decide it’s here to save us, it will.” She smiled at Scotch. “And if you look at it and decide it’s so existentially terrifying you need to run back to Bradford and your mum without leaving a message for your best friend, then you do.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

“I don’t,” she said. “I have faith. So my friends don’t have to.”

That one Scotch let pass. “Thanks for the robot.”

She winked. “I’ll tell Maeve you liked that too.”

They rounded a corner and, like a switch being languidly pulled, Scotch felt the tension of the new wrap around their temples. Scotch slowed, the Saint’s wall of noise like walking through mud that burst eardrums. The Saint’s head was visible through the trees. A row of people knelt at the edge of its influence, their backs to Brigid and Scotch. Toys by their side. A drone. A remote-controlled car. A kite.

Scotch felt the fight/flight fizz rise at the same time as the bile. The visceral reaction to the Saint’s alien nature crawling up their system with barbed, icy fingers. They’d grabbed the pen before leaving (truthfully they’d held it all night like some minimalist teddy bear) and now twirled it between their fingers.

Brigid smiled and motioned for Scotch to join the kneelers. She walked forwards, speaking as she did so.

“Good morning, everyone. We are here, on the edge of the known, for so many reasons. We are explorers, stepping into the future even as it rises to meet us. We are pilgrims, making our way towards a better world. We are survivors. Terrified not because we are alone but, at last, we are together and free. We are children, gazing in awe and horror at something we are not old enough to understand but can do nothing but perceive.”

She reached into her vestments, handed the pilgrim near her a pile of thumb sized white boxes and showed them how to attach one to their toy. The boxes were handed out down the line until one reached Scotch. A dosimeter. Scotch looked at Brigid, raised an eyebrow. She smiled.

“The Saint’s growth cycle throws out a lot of radiation and a lot of heat. It never lasts long but it’s the one part of the Saint that’s dangerous if you aren’t ready. We use the dosimeters to map where the next cycle will hit and then send runners to warn those in the way and help them evacuate. Then, if they wish, they can join us, return to the old world or go on pilgrimage.” She held eye contact with Scotch.

“Not the end of the world, just the end of a day,” she continued. “The edge of the world and the start of the next. What better way to map that edge than with the embodiment of our childhood? Toys repurposed as tools. Play as mapmaking.”

Scotch sat the little robot in front of them on the ground and made themselves look up. The ghost of a brow ridge, the first hints of a nose the size of a city street. Brigid led her congregation, her voice rising.

“Saint Zero, we return to the liminal spaces that surround you to map them into certainty. Our new friends are your new friends, here to bring you forth and welcome those others who wish to follow you. They, and we, bring you this offering. Our old selves, to help you become your new self. Dot e x e.”

“Dot e x e.” The others intoned.

Brigid chuckled, and there was something a little strained around it. “That still sounds a little odd, doesn’t it? We’ll work on it. The truly great thing about being part of a religion as it’s born is you get infinite goes. Anyway!” She clapped her hands. “On three.”

Scotch thought about blood and cooking meat. Scotch thought about prison and Billy Azir’s empty cell. Scotch thought about Saint-induced heart attacks and questions they hadn’t asked. Scotch thought about Maeve’s hair. About rations and stew. About terror and joy and a thousand missing persons posters flapping like the feathers of a colossal wing.

Scotch thought about batteries and how long they had been one.

Scotch took the pen out of their pocket and hurled it into the underbrush.

“Dot e x e,” they said and sent Chip on his way to help map the first Saint of the new world.

---

Host Commentary

By Tina Connolly

And we’re back! Again, that was Oak Hill Lane, by Alisdair Stuart, narrated by Sarah Griffin.

About this story, Alisdair says:

“The end of this story is where it started. The original version of this story was written in response to a visual prompt from the British Science Fiction Association caption competition. Emily Inkpen does great work over there and I did a few of these little pieces (And not so little pieces) just for fun. Oak Hill Lane was one of the first that felt like it could be more and I’m incredibly grateful to Emily, everyone at Escape Pod and Marguerite for encouraging this story to evolve and grow into what you see here. 

“The rest of it is drawn from my life. The chaplain is a nod to my old parish priest, the only man I’ve ever met who could legitimately start conversations with ‘Anyway, when I was on the nuclear submarine.’ Maeve and her team are all named for school friends. I used to walk past Imphal Barracks three times a week. Oh and Oak Hill Lane itself owes a lot to the haunting opening scene of an old British thriller called The Hole.

“But what this story really drew me out of me was the emotions at its core: the desperate need to connect, the unfocused rage of being alive and trapped in a country that, on its worst day, feels like a jumble sale for polite bigots. Most of all though, the deep note of compassion that rings between every one here. No one’s alone, not at the end of the world, not at the start of a new one and never on Oak Hill Lane.”

And about this story, I say:

That last part that Alisdair mentions is one of my favorite things about this story. Scotch does find connection, even in jail, even in a community they are supposed to infiltrate. Time and again, the people in this story (who are not the bigots) are shown reaching out to each other, finding ways to connect even in tough circumstances. Even in cataclysmic, world-changing events. I think it’s a hopeful story for one of our first episodes of the new year, to show a place where the end of one world, is merely the start of the next. There is a whole new world out there for our characters to map, and they’re going to do it together.

Escape Pod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Don’t change it. Don’t sell it. Please, go forth and share it.

How do you share it, you ask? Well! In addition to your social media of choice, consider rating and/or reviewing us on podcast listening sites, such as Apple or Google. More reviews makes for more discoverability makes for more Escape Pod for you.

Escape Pod relies on the generous donations of listeners exactly like you. So remember: Patreon subscribers have access to exclusive merchandise and can be automatically added to our Discord, where you can chat with other fans as well as our staff members. So! If you enjoyed our story this week and would like to come onto Discord and chat with Alisdair about it…then consider going to patreon.com/EAPodcasts and casting your vote for more stories that close with a dot e x e.

Our opening and closing music is by daikaiju at daikaiju.org.

And our closing quotation this week is from Susan Sontag, who said:

“The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.” — Susan Sontag

Thanks for listening! And have fun.