Babushka: Ghosts of Praxis
Chapter 1 — First Cut
Spoiler Alert: The following is an exclusive chapter excerpt from the forthcoming Babushka novella Ghosts of Praxis, set in the years preceding the events of Echoes of Immortality. This story explores the deeper origins of the rise of the city of Gred and the mysterious Babushka AI that governs it.
Ika never thought she’d be a grandmother, but here she was. She stood at the edge of the pasture, counting her sheep. “One, two, three…” Privately, she named each one, the familiar rhythm calming her. Milka, Bosa, Luka… As they grazed in the midday sun, the false brome and feather grass brushed against their thickening woolen coats. November’s chill was setting in, carried on the sharp, biting gusts of the first bura, swirling down from the northern mountains. The sharp wind always made the air feel brittle. The sheep’s wool, thick and matted with the first signs of frost, confirmed that winter was here. Soon, she’d have to cull one of them.
Her eyes traced the flock until they landed on Vuk. Her old ram, named for the wolf he had battled as a nameless lamb. Past his breeding prime at six years old, he still bore the scars of that attack. Zora had fought off the wolf and saved him, his bleating leading her to the scene. Brave Vuk. Despite his lifelong limp, he had revitalized her small flock of three ewes, who birthed four more. Now, they numbered fifteen.
Life is so precarious, Ika mused. From the brink of death to a growing family, we’ve come a long way. These were her children and theirs. She had never had her own.
And children they certainly were, Ika thought, watching the ghostly trail parse through the grass before Zora bounded up beside her. Her Tornjak, sturdy and loyal, had a coat of glossy white spotted with earthy brown that perfectly mirrored Ika’s felted wool fleece.
Zora had something in her mouth — a dead hare…just the right size for a stew.
It had been a while since Ika had eaten meat. She could finally make use of the vegetables and flavors she’d been saving: zucchini, onion, and a sprig of sun-dried basil. The stew would pair well with hob-baked potatoes, finished off with junket pudding and honey, and cold well water. She was tired of borlotti beans and Venetian rice, though perhaps less so than the fungal infection she knew the beans would eventually kill. Tonight though, she could use a break.
“Cheeky girl, what have you got there?” Ika said. Zora’s eyes twinkled, the familiar game beginning. “Let’s see if I can take that off you.”
She reached for the hare, tugging at it with her spare hand. Zora held on, her tail wagging, eyes full of mischief.
If you were a male, would you be more obedient? Ika wondered, though she knew the answer. Zora’s spirit was unyielding, a reflection of her own. But patience won out, as Ika knew it would. When Zora’s tail slowed, acknowledging the end of the game, she released her grip with a soft growl.
“Good girl,” Ika praised, securing the hare. She glanced at her watch, the Rolex Oyster Perpetual gleaming in the midday light — a gift from her late husband, Bare. The classic white watch face read half past three o’clock. Thanks to its automatic movement, it kept wound and was generally accurate. Though she always synced it with the sundial back home — most precise at summer noon, it was less reliable in winter months like these. Yet, it did the trick, getting her and the flock back home an hour before the sun went down each day.
Time to pack it in, she thought, giving Zora a fond pat. Ika took a clean cloth from her shoulder bag, wrapped the hare, and placed it inside. “Let’s get ready for supper.” Zora’s ears perked up at the word ‘supper,’ and Ika tapped her shepherd’s crook against the ground, signaling Zora to round up the sheep.
Tornjaks weren’t the best herding dogs, but Zora was all she had. Obedient to a fault, even if she was a slow learner. Zora circled around the flock, barking and nudging the stragglers with her nose, rounding up the sheep with earnest effort.
Ika watched for a moment, then stepped to the nearby bushes to pick a few sprigs of lavender. By the time she finished, Zora and the flock were already making their way up the well-worn path they had forged over twenty years of visits to this pasture. Ika had walked the rocky trail with flocks large and small, always accompanied by a herding dog — Zora being the third in that time. Her next would likely be her last. If she had the strength or guile left at the age of oh, say, seventy-eight to steal a pup from one of the wild packs, she’d be lucky to see it reach middle age.
The path snaked through fields of wildflowers and groves of olive trees, a comforting constant despite the trials of her rugged life. With the lavender bundled tightly in her hand, and a new friend in her sack, she followed. The promise of stew and tea awaited her after a brisk ascent through Veli Vrh to her humble stone abode on the cliff with a view of the bay.
Ika began the climb, feeling the familiar burn in her lungs. The remnants of chronic pulmonary aspergillosis reminded her she was lucky to even be breathing. Each step up the rocky path felt like doing deadlifts, though she hadn’t set foot in a gym since the 2020s. She remembered reading years ago that hill climbing was a common thread among the Blue Zones, the compound movement supposedly stimulating human growth factor. Only survival matters now…
That and lots and lots of beans, she thought with a tired smile, considering the speckled, cream-and-red pods she had been spooning down three times a day for weeks. Usually with a dash of olive oil to help get the bile out. To be young again… She let her mind drift back to her days at veterinary college in Toronto, a world away from her life now.
She could see the harsh contours of Brutalist concrete from her practice’s corner window, and the elegant facades of Victorian townhouses lining the street below. She was thirty-five years old, single, and had a thriving career caring for animals. She could still feel the softness of the plush furnishings in her beautiful apartment on the top floor of The Regency, see the reflections off the minimalist artwork, and smell the fresh coffee lingering in the air. Her classic BMW 5 Series was always parked in the garage. Evenings at the theater with a new boyfriend whenever it pleased her, followed by cocktails that kept her entertained far longer than a simple farm girl from Croatia could ever have imagined. Back then, she truly thought she had everything she ever wanted.
Then it all came crashing down, like the JNA bombs during her sixth birthday party, in which she had somehow avoided death by refusing to come out of her closet all morning. Because she was still angry at her father. Instinct had told her to return to this wolf’s den of a backwater country when she saw the writing on the waves, so to speak: a strange pre-print from the Journal of Zoonotic Diseases. There had been an unusual mutation of a Gammaproteobacteria in the microbiome of Norway lobsters that received little attention from the scientific community. That was 2019. Three years later, the bacterial pandemic had swept the globe. Unthinkable at the time but antibiotic resistance had been on the rise, especially as strategic population enhancement caused a plunge in public hygiene, much to chagrin of the IRCC.
Luckily, she had already returned home to live with her mother here on Krk. Her intuition — or was it racist paranoia? — had paid off.
Even after all these years, it still bothered her how authorities tasked with the care of so many people could act with such little precaution. The lobsters weren’t even a reservoir host; they themselves were already succumbing to the disease. When it was discovered there were no intermediate jumps, it was too late. The bacterium, with its direct transmission, spread rapidly. From the fisheries to the open seas, it leaped to human populations with devastating speed.
Governments were slow to react, dismissing initial warnings as fearmongering. By the time the World Health Organization declared the second global pandemic in two years, the damage was done. People were still numb from the recent viral pandemic and had difficulty believing that a mere bacterium could cause such widespread chaos. There were rumors of birth defects, whispers of sex selection effects, though only China and India voiced anger at the phenomenon of more female births.
And through it all, Ika had settled back into life on this peninsula, tending to her family’s sheep, her mother by her side, until even she had gone. Her decision to retreat from the disorder of the modern world had been vindicated, even if it left a bitter taste in her mouth. “Though I suppose it’s an island now that the bridge has collapsed,” she muttered under her breath. To be young again…and yet, here she was, living a simpler life, but one that was undeniably more certain.
Don’t die. She could hear it now, echoing through social media shorts of yesteryear. The phrase had replaced memento mori momentarily, until all there was — was death. Millions of fitness influencers streamed their own epitaphs, a generation never reared to face the void, let alone imagine it. Everyone was abuzz with talks of the Singularity then, and the nutrition protocols, peptides, and CRISPR injections that would help you live long enough to get there.
Funny enough, Don’t die had become a mantra of her own in recent years. Between fending off wolves and wild boars, and keeping her sheep alive — though in truth, she knew if she didn’t put in the effort she’d die of loneliness first. She couldn’t bear to eat them anymore, let alone butcher them with the little strength she had left.
Zora brushed up against her palm, breaking her trance. Ika looked down at her loyal defender and reached to pet her behind the ears. Zora’s tail wagged furiously in response, her eyes bright and happy. Ika could tell Zora was desperate for supper, but she refrained from repeating the word. Otherwise, the poor dog would not stop pouting through the rest of their jog to the cottage.
She glanced up at the vista they had reached, their customary stop just a short distance from home. The cliff dropped sharply before her, revealing a sweeping view of the sea, waves rolling rhythmically against the rugged coastline. Below lay the ruins of old Punat, crumbling red-brick rooftops half reclaimed by a forest of aloe. The fallen city seemed to gaze longingly across the water, where the domed metropolis of Praxis lay, its glass skyline glinting faintly like a distant dream.
Hills rose and fell in the distance beyond that dome, framed by a sky painted in hues of deep orange and soft purple, the winter evening sun setting over the horizon. The view, with its jagged beauty, never failed to stir something deep within her. Yet, she was never quite sure if that feeling was disgust or a longing for a world she never truly knew.
Turned out, Ika wasn’t the only one who had seen the writing on the waves. Many had flocked to the Adriatic coast, ahead of the curve just like her. The first network state had bankrolled enough cash to establish a special economic zone right here in Croatia, leveraging human-operated drones and virtual reality-based construction guidance systems to help them set up shop.
The Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development insisted that the project create some employment. This, despite the alleged existence of autonomous agent systems. These were rumored to grow from autocatalytic fungal spores that could complete the city in a matter of days.
To sweeten the deal, local landowners in Krk and the surrounding countryside received generous payments and shares in the new development. Which led to the Consortium: roads, utilities, and public services saw upgrades through them.
Consortium, my ass. More like the mafia, Ika thought. Early birds secured contracts for the best pork, cheese, hand-harvested salt from Nin, and olive oil from the selo barons near Zadar, leaving little for the nearby communities.
Ika had been offered a job as a vet in the shining city but refused — partly out of principle, having just left the cyberpunk dystopia of Canada’s largest metropolis, and partly because she resolved that the simple life was what she always wanted after all. Besides, even though Praxis was close enough, her mother hadn’t seen her in ages and she promised herself she wouldn’t listen to the haranguing of an old Croatian woman ever again.
Even though she had escaped the ear-yanking, she could still hear it over the phone when she arrived in her small flat at Jane and Finch all those years ago. Absconding an early marriage to a drunk potato farmer at eighteen had been traumatic enough. But the last thing she needed when she returned was another round of being told what to do, even if in due time it meant a shotgun middle-aged wedding to one of: a plumber, a party boat slumlord, or a coke dealer. At least they’d be Croatian, she could hear in her mother’s voice. At least she wouldn’t drill a hole in her skull this time. Bare turned out to be just fine though, so fine in fact that the military had other ideas for the only true love she had ever known.
To dodge conscription themselves, the intellectuals, vagabonds and venture capitalists of America, Russia, and even Egypt established new roots in the strange new digital nation. By 2032, the population of Praxis had swollen to four million, surpassing Croatia’s pre-pandemic and pre-war numbers. Decades of out-migration reversed in a blink, and all they had to do to double the small Balkan nation’s headcount was drop taxes to zero — even if nobody had been paying them anyway. Of course, this was a brain drain, not a true population boom, and the rest of the world likely suffered from the absence of the tech gods and billionaires who sought an escape from death and disease — or maybe not.
Of course, the young men were never too upset. The short work that could have been shorter paid better than a few centuries of waiting tables for unruly Brits on Dalmatian wages. Wealth flowed, and the folks in Praxis stayed put, except for the occasional adventurer who ignored their UV exposure guidelines and perished on a mountaintop from dehydration. It wouldn’t be a proper Croatian summer without that happening.
Ika felt something wet running down her hands. She looked down to find Zora had grazed her, just enough to get her attention. Apparently, she’d been daydreaming long and hard again. Zora must have been getting very hungry. But then the dog tugged at her coat sleeve, more persistently this time.
“Hush now, Zora,” Ika muttered, but she could feel the tension. This wasn’t like her at all.
Ika strained her eyes, rubbing them to clear the fog of twilight and failing sight. She squinted toward the horizon, hoping for clarity. There, in the violet sky were a flock of dark…gray…orbs? And they were moving faster than any seabird she had ever seen.
“What on Earth? Must be at least fifteen kilometers out,” she estimated, squinting harder. She hadn’t seen a sailboat in the Kvarner Gulf for over a decade, let alone any drone since Praxis shut its gates. The onset of the third world war had silenced everything. Why now?
Her heart quickened. “Zora, come on, rally the sheep. We need to move,” she urged, tapping her shepherd’s crook sharply against the ground.
Zora barked and ran towards the flock, nudging the stragglers. The clang of their bells mixed with the growing panic in Ika’s chest as they hustled up the last stretch of the hill.
Ika chased after them, her breath ragged from the climb, glancing back over her shoulder every time she could spare a huff. The orbs were closing in, their red blinking lights growing larger as they streamed over the still water. She pushed through the burning in her lungs, reaching the top and guiding the sheep toward the pen built into the rocky outcropping that straddled the far end of her cottage. Zora herded the last of them inside before the gate clicked shut behind them.
Ika ran her hand over the sturdy steel beams and wire fencing, the last thing Bare had built for her and her mother before the war took him as well. Breathless, she leaned against the secure barrier and cast an anxious look at the ominous gray orbs and flashing red lights. They certainly weren’t stopping at Punat; the red glow illuminated the forest floor below, staining the trees with blood as the drones moved relentlessly onward.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Ika scrambled inside her cottage, her mind racing about what to do. If those things were coming for her, and she had no reason to believe they would, Praxis had never been a belligerent in any conflict before it simply stopped operating… The harbor had gone to sleep forever. But if they were armed, equipped with rockets or whatever else, her dry stone construction would be shrapnel on impact, cutting her dog, her sheep and herself into a hundred little pieces.
And she certainly did not want to die.
Ika’s heart pounded as she rushed through the cottage, securing the doors and windows as best she could. She grabbed her old hunting rifle from beneath the bed, the weapon her father had used before he passed, the one Bare had equipped with a high-powered microwave emitter. Running on the 2.45 GHz band, it was mounted under the barrel and powered by a lithium-thionyl chloride battery designed for the one piece of medical equipment she still had that worked after all these years, her portable glucose monitor. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She loaded it with trembling hands, thinking of how she had stopped taking it to pasture out of habit when the wolves let up, just wanting to feel normal again.
She glanced at Zora, who was pacing nervously. “Stay close,” she whispered. The dog looked at her with worried eyes.
She could hear the hum of the drones growing louder outside, beams of vampiric crimson piercing through the small windows above her kitchenette. Ika took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. If this is how it ends, at least I’ll go down fighting, she thought, however futile it might be.
The whole cottage seemed to tremble as the drones approached, closer and closer. She could see them clearly now, hovering in the air with an almost sentient menace. Against the twilight hues of deep orange and soft purple, the red glow of their lights illuminated their once-gray plating, making them stand out even to her poor vision. Ika tightened her grip on the rifle.
She flicked on the juice to the emitter and could feel the buzz in her ears, the hairs on her forearms standing on end. Was it the static or her goosebumps? She said a prayer, Holy Mary, Mother of God, protect us in this hour, kissing the rosary that she had pulled out from under her fleece only moments ago.
With a great force, one of the three drones outside rammed through the glass window and shattered it, sending shards flying everywhere. She shielded herself and Zora with her wool jacket, the thick sheepskin intercepting the last of the shards.
The next thing she knew, she felt the heat of the emitter hum through her hands, followed by a few sudden bursts from her rifle. The drone stopped mid-air, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and dropped to the ground with a hard crash.
A deafening sound followed — an explosion from outside. “Those are my sheep. It’s not even Easter yet,” she spat bitterly.
Suddenly, Zora lunged out of the front door. “You foolish dog, come back!” Ika cried, but Zora wouldn’t listen. Stumbling now, Ika felt the emitter’s powerful, unshielded EMFs, the clicking and buzzing muddling her senses, making it hard to chase after her damned dog. By the time Ika reached the front door, she heard a terrible yelp.
Outside, she saw Zora prone on the ground. A wisp of smoke trailed from the rifle mounted on the drone’s underside. Rage boiled within her, Ika’s vision going red around the edges. The drone that shot Zora turned its gaze toward her now, while the third one barreled into the opening it had created in the sheep’s pen.
With no time to spare, Ika pulled the dead hare from her sack and tossed it into the air, hoping to distract the drone. The drone blasted a hole through the hare mid-air. It was enough. As the drone pivoted momentarily, she charged up the emitter again. Her hands shook as she steadied her aim. She fired, and time stretched thin. The drone wavered, then collapsed with a grinding crunch.
“Zora, I’m so sorry,” she shouted, tears welling up in her eyes as she stole a glance at her fallen companion. No time to spare.
Ika dashed into the pen. The third drone turned to meet her, its weapon pointing right at her. Her heart raced as she engaged the emitter, hoping there was still a charge left. The device buzzed weakly, then fell silent. The drone squared up, locking onto her for a moment before it shuddered, scanning the room with a wall of red light. Then, with a violent explosion, it erupted into hundreds of pieces. Shards of metal, plastic fragments, and circuitry scattered in all directions, clattering against the pen’s walls and roof, embedding themselves in the ground around her.
Wool and entrails splattered everywhere. The blast slammed Ika back into a pile of hay, her vision swimming from the impact. She struggled to catch her breath, her body aching all over. Am I still alive? she wondered. Any missing limbs? She moved her fingers and toes, relieved to feel them all intact.
Groggily, she cleared her vision and looked around. There was debris all over, and above her, a hole in the roof revealed the night sky. Black bled into red as hundreds of them blinked like sinister stars. She could hear the rapid firing and see the muzzle flashes, as she imagined streams of bullets raking the forest floor below.
Are they killing the wildlife? She couldn’t grasp it. All around her, the bodies of her sheep were unrecognizable. The thought of counting them made her stomach churn, and she hurled.
Disoriented, Ika maneuvered under the hay to hide. She clutched her rosary, whispering in silence. The world around her was unraveling, and all she could do was pray. “Holy Mary, Mother of God…”
Martin Erlic is an olive oil producer and science fiction author from the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. In addition to running his family’s orchard and producing authentic Croatian olive oil, Martin has poured his love of Eastern European culture into his debut novel, Babushka: Echoes of Immortality. Set in a post-war metropolis where immortality reigns, the plot follows Doctor Anastasia Zakharovna through a web of power and deceit. When he’s not tending to his olive groves or writing, Martin can be found spending time with his family in their little village by the sea.
