*
EOT
*
Lightning strikes the tower and observers mis-identify a 1990 something silver sedan at relativistic velocities as smite lightning. Their mistake only makes the two at the top seem more mighty.
“What did we learn?” The Metatron’s patronizing, taunting question-not-question to the two at the tip-top of the tower. The Metatron with the bullhorn yells at at the two trapped-top, surrounded by all heaven’s Feds (infernal and the opposite). The LED’s on cop-rides and blacked out fed trucks still flick red-and-blue at the base of the cluttered crime scene.
Fly the cinematic eye up the tower, the smote-skeleton-fossil of a being called Eye, and you’ll find two fugitive-beings divine whose behavior answers the Metatron: not a god damn thing. They have not learned a thing. The demon and angel still stand, quite defiant, atop the spire. Insolent, bold, proud (one of them at least). Trapped. Defiantly trapped. Caged insolence.
This all began with the angel’s desire to be free and see one doomed Earth thrive. To save the Earth, one of them (become three of them, for he stole far more than he thought from the firmament). God blessed the theft, or seemed to; god damned the world’s with contaminated dirt. The ending is indeterminate.
Resolution to the standoff-divine need never come, for the self-hostage situation at the spire sits outside time. But above it, glow-growing and roiling and living and dying and doing it all again and again-again is the cosmos–all that is or will ever be. That universe-of-universes, the pomegranate, the multiverse (the barest fraction of the fractal though it is)–it has pulsars doing their metronome glow, fast-radio-neurons, a pulse to glow and twinkle, a-functionally-infinite number of hearts of beings like yours that beat a finite number of times. If you know where to look in that night-sky that’s all the night skies you can find the Hercules-Carona Barrier Great Wall like a constellation above you at the End of Time–you can find it, and the other great and storied galactic filaments again and again-again. That’s where the sense of urgency here emanates from: all that luminous and dead matter above and all the precious life sprinkled among the rocks and in the seas and in the clouds and beneath dirt and everywhere else life hides and thrives.
The angel can’t hide what he stole, the heavenly/infernal cops preclude that possibility. Despite the demon’s noble-punchy-ness and a desire to protect what’s his (angel and pot), he can’t “take every last one of” the “motherfuckers divine” that besiege their high tower. There’s one place for the worlds in the terra cotta pot to go–lest they die unobserved in an evidence locker or be given to god’s machine, judged anomalous, and excise-obliterated by the mediocre mechanical thing. There’s exactly one space–absence of space to be specific–for the three stolen worlds to go: right back where they belong, the precise place they were stolen from.
The angel looks up the cosmos like you all do sometimes when you pray, when you’re gazing into the night sky after a long day. Or maybe you just glance at Orion before you curse the cold and head-down march to where you have to be. Not the angel. He gazes, cinematically, and utters a prayer asking for aid, to whom I know not–the scene below suggests he’s on shit-lists heavenly and hellish (many times over). The angel prays and tosses the pot, the terra cotta pot, dark coffee dirt and all, just lobs the thing with all his strength. Never been athletic, but it’s a mighty throw and some force (HVAC, it was HVAC) does ease the way. For the pot follows the path of a 1990-something silver sedan in equal-opposite-reverse.
And perhaps when the narrative symmetry lands, all will be harmonious (if you learn how to listen). Maybe when the worlds are back where they belong all will be made whole; maybe one of the three worlds will carry the locust like a blight into that bright, beautiful garden above. The vessel is in motion. The ending is still indeterminate.
*
EARTH(0x7C0)
*
Someplace in Michigan everybody forgot twice. First it rusted. Then pandemic and the war where Abel almost took everything and everywhere and everyone. The maps are all wrong and the roads have no names and the records are incomplete or cost too much to restore and the infrastructure is gone and the UXO is just too thick in the dirt. In the middle of the ugly place, by the pretty little cabin. There’s a circle. It’s a circuit, actually many of them, and many of them short-circuited–and still magically working. Magic is a placeholder. In certain cases ‘woo woo’ isn’t a placeholder but signifies the difference between the pinhole view of what we see/perceive and the vast dancing field of what truly-is-and-might-be. So the circuit ran on ‘woo’, for a lack of a better term.
Dolores lay there, at the heart of the thing, center of the web of mis-assembled-scrap–as if caught. That’s what Jonah thinks. He steps toward her, as if to speak to the Guardian, to shake her awake and unleash the flood of “why-how” sloshing in his brain. Jack growls at him, includes the bared teeth.
“Please use your words.” I’ll use my words when you use your head. Leave her be.
The big man’s bulk sulks off. Returns with coffee and spliff to sit on half a log at Dolores’ feet like it’s a death watch. Jack is cross legged by her head, consuming the same breakfast and occasionally stroking the big lady’s head.
What is the service life of a solder joint? Who is to maintain the great hovering city-block warships (aside from drones that need maintenance themselves)? Who is left to do such work when the motherships previous owner named Abel did butcher so many bakers and farmers and artisans? Who would want to?
If you saw those things ,”Barrage Balloons”, do their work in the bad-before times you would get why. If you’d seen a floating chunk of city disgorge drone swarms and every kind of weapon, you’d dig and dig and never stop. And that’s a historically specific symptom associated with PTSD in this time and place: people who can’t ever feel safe above ground.
In spite of this Dee has friends, in low places, Squattersvilles the world over linked by radio and Marginalia. And that’s where Dee is: ‘sleeping’ on the ground in Michigan; on the airwaves in perfect holographic reproduction.
*
Three odd squawks, like the old Emergency Broadcast System but less jarring. Dee-Tee-Vee and all radio channels and net-streams run-by or in-service-of The Guardian cut to a live shot: Dee and Shim in the Marginalia.
The half-water-bear woman, the tall muscled one who can pop two extra arms out if needed. That one is wanted in the US (for some bullshit she didn’t do except the stuff she did) and everywhere else for immigration shit–for walking out of the pages of books or out of the wall paper on any continent without a passport to visit squats and squatters and -villes. “I’ll Be Seeing You” plays in the background and some coded text hangs for a long time. Dee translates their message into a few dozen tongues on the fly for each regional audience.
“Remain calm.”
Shimm chimes in: “Actually calm. Be actually calm, cool, and collected. Ready kids? And the two say the following together: Echo. Victor. Alfa. Charlie. Charlie. Alfa. Sierra. Tango. Lima. Echo.
The words hang in a blue font long after the screen’s gone black. And everybody knows what to do. With carts and stores and provisions, with bugout bags or backpacks or what they had on them, the people squatting in all the most vulnerable squattersvilles the world over walked to the nearest bookshelf and between the pages of some book they were leaving behind–Malthus or Hayeck or some other trash they read to know but didn’t care to keep. They walked up to an electrical outlet or a seem in some wall paper or a hole in the wall and through it, into the Marginalia and through Earth(0x7C0)’s duct work.
*
KEPPLER (THERABOUTS)
*
The Cephalopods on ring station live a good life–easy work maintaining machines that require little such love. They have the privilege of being the first to get any and all news (and stories and songs) from Earth. In a station with no windows looking out on the highway (for they dare not observe the physics trick), octo-people do the endless-algebra-that’s-not. The math that makes the cheat-FTL is monumental and gives this author pain to contemplate. It’s a big responsibility managing the highway where the kilometer long freighters whip past each other faster than photons (kinda) and an honor.
The “traffic cam” on the Keppler station saw the whole collision–or as much as it could. The filament cannot be observed for the trick to work, so no one looks at the road. It’s all ‘last chance to get gas for forever’ and Godspeed thee literafiguratively–ships on the filament are largely on their own. But when the link, the circuit tied by light, breaks–the FTL cam gets to snapping and a whole host of sensors get to sensing.
Those on the station are the first to see the horror show: the collision between Gliese and ship and the swarm-consumption of the remains by the hive. Shaken and uncertain, they transmit the images home to Keppler.
*
It’s tense in the streets of Jervous Bay. Dance offs and scuffles all over town, in the wake of the putsch attempt. The loss of the Shastakovich muddied the waters worse, and the very visceral footage of that loss has come to dominate the news cycle. Blue wonders when their planet came to have a news cycle?
A Blue cephalopod with dark (usually) amber rings, small things distributed across her face like freckles. Thoughtful eyes. Sharp tongue and same for the wits and the grits. She’s got six arms and two guards flanking her whole way from home to train to the People’s Hall.
Blue does not hold office. She’s not elected to anything (at present). Not a paragon (cephalopods don’t do that). Blue is more a living exemplar, and her kind are asked to weigh in, frankly and unscripted, on issues of importance. The single largest party on planet, her party, the socialists invited Blue to speak on what is to be done about this latest crisis: the gate crashing, rampaging thing on the space highway headed to Earth at high speed. The Keppler Cephalopods do the people’s business in the open, in the twilight of the shallows where enough can be seen. She was invited by the ruling coalition to speak. To dance.
What’s at stake: The same ones that cheered the conniving Senator are the ones proposing Keppler cut ties, again. Cut the filament. Batten down the hatches and arm up for the day when whatever is about to go reap humanity comes for “us” (where us are the octo-people, alone).
The guards escort Blue in case she tries to “boogie”, to shame her with their presence by suggesting she would flee. Blue’s house-arrest for a time-commensurate with the beating she delivered will continue for a spell after this spectacle. For a few minutes though the sea floor and the audience are hers.
My we seem to have gone quite human, almost over night. The crowd murmurs and shimmies, confused. Oh, I’m fond of our new friends. More fond than many of us, but we’re at our worst when we act as they. Now, the crowd speaking and dancing has she joined the other faction? Blue halts her dance to slowly spin and survey the crowd. They’re listening to her, actually listening, reacting to what she said and not her number of arms.
The last time I was here I behaved as they. She gestures to two cephalo-police watching her sternly, waiting to escort her back home. There are nervous chuckles from friends in the crowd and condemnations from foes–how dare she, the audacity.
I behaved as our friends do at their worst and it could’ve cost me and my cause. I stumbled, lost control, I admit it freely. Gasps. Even when cephalopods lose their cool? No they didn’t. Blue continues to dance, the motions languid, as if it’s a lazy Sunday tune. The urgency and importance of the moment are in her eyes though, the way those rings like freckles flit to red like fire as she thinks and speaks and dances. Oh yeah, she’s making it up as she goes. Tried to write a dance-speech all night. Failed. Blue showed up anyway. She’ll speak “from the heart.” Which one? Doesn’t matter. The strongest of the three.
She interrupts their murmurations, reels the crowd back in: I lost control. I stumbled and the people caught me. Outrage from the political “right” (the centrist fuddy-duddies). Get as pissed off as you want. Senator deserved his beating, and I was wrong to deliver it. Both are true. Expel ink and pout about it. Go ahead and stay pissed about the political situation too. Cry about it. The people, the young people are in the streets reaffirming who we are: the People’s Republic of Keppler. Not some authoritarian piss-pants siege state.
“Keppler” is the word-pose she’s holding: Home, Hearth, that sort of stuff. It’s like standing at attention before a flag but the exact opposite–all the pride in a thing, none of the nationalist bullshit. Blue holds this pose while the crowd lose their shit. The conservatives come dancing out onto the floor of the People’s hall. By the time they dance up to blue–all menacing–they find a ring of six socialists (who lay calm-and-camouflaged while she spoke). There are some scuffles. Some intense dancing. Some ink on the brink of a brawl.
A long time later, when the waters are finally calm, when friends and foes of the six-legged phenom look like rival gangs or opposing dance crews, she continues: We are Keppler, and every one of us can handle two problems at once, two conversations at a time, and many of us can do more. We can “walk and chew bubble gum”, “swim and gnaw kelp”, we can secure our future without abandoning our friends. We. Are. Keppler. She’s calm, sanguine (the good version this time).
I will ask a thing and promise a thing. Give me a ship, fast and mean, load it with whatever aid and arms we can carry. Send me. If I die, our friends will know we tried to help. If I make it home? I’ll finish my sentence for that unfortunate little scuffle.
What follows is more-than-scuffle. Shoving. Dancing. Slapping, I’m sad to say. Some old timer tried to bum-rush Blue with violence in his eyes while a young conservative made a mad dash for the ritual-combat-gong (his ego is more bruised than he, but no).
Later, long later, when the waters in the people’s hall are clear again and the ink and the dirt are settled. When Blue has gone home, the waters of the People’s Hall shimmies with the hum of conversation. Not the din of debate, but the steady drum of planning and organization.
*
Less than one Earth-day later four ships of a class not-yet-seen by human eyes and bearing no names but their registry numbers leave dry-dock, The things were berthed (hidden) on a little artificial moon (military base) around Keppler 22B. Again, they remember how to fight, the cephalopods of Keppler simply choose not to. The design logic of the lithe ships that borrow the aspect of the wasp is this: “swim calmly, but carry a large rock.”
Each vessel is heavily armed and leads with an axial-mount mass accelerator–a cannon that lobs shot at relativistic speeds. Each ship carries food, medicine, and a crew of volunteers. Blue was content to lead a single ship co-piloted by ‘ai’, but so great was the wave, the gaggle, that the octo-people had to lottery spots on the mission.
They board the filament in formation, Finger-four, and reach and breach the speed-of-C bound for Sol. All are ready to fight or feed as needed.
*
TARDIGRADE STORY TIME
*
A long time ago two tardigrades on a fact finding mission to Earth did murder a third–because that guy was a total Jackboot and an anti-human bigot. It wasn’t benevolence or beneficence or any other kindness or mercy mild that motivated Abbott and Costello to do Jackboot dirty. The asshole was going to shit on their bender. Yes, both had serious substance abuse problems and had visited Earth(s) previously to party and left a trail of horny trickster god nonsense and many-past-many “oops” babies in their wake.
Jackboot was worse. A real racist asshole who got stranded in Cleveland, Ohio for a century and held a grudge against every last human on the rock. Fortune smiled on Abott and Costello and all the Earth with their timing. Their tag-team backstab came just before Jackboot’s double cross.
Jackboot planned on tossing the two stoners into the sun, then he’d wag his bits at Lake Erie from orbit and report-back that the Earth was a cesspool worthy of destruction. But thanks to Abott and Costello’s couple of neck chops and one hell of a kung-fu kick–Jackboot is buried deep in Jupiter’s gravity well.
A Tardigrade tun can take a lot. Many tonnes of pressure. Extreme environments of all sorts and caustic or corrosive muck. A good long desiccating dip in the big Red Spot coupled with blunt force trauma left this one, Jackboot, truly dead (or as close as a malevolent and nigh-indestructible being can be to death). But a dead god can dream. Less a god and more a supreme being with a shitty attitude, and in the dream the thing called out with whatever hate was left congealed in the withered old husk of water-bear hide. The locust larva meant for Earth answered.
Locust larva, liquid caustic avarice, found it’s way to Gliese when Gary (All is Gary; Gary is All) was a baby bug. The being of pure avarice plopped onto Keppler 1500 years before first contact with Earth. The thing started a thousand year war, the cephalopod’s last war–the one that almost ended them and everything beneath the sea.
But the one that came for Earth, the one that would have arrived just before the Gliesians, it got diverted. The little thing, a dark booger in space. Evil snot, really. It was flying quite fast past the asteroid belt when something surly tugged it toward Jupiter. Yes, it was the gas giant’s gravity, but that metaphysical stench of brimstone, the smell of evil that HVAC rants about when properly-blazed (so all the time), also tugged on the little bit of space snot.
The locust larva, space booger. It’s like fascism: a joke until it’s not. The snot-rock drawn by the magnet-malevolent hits Jupiter’s atmosphere falls fast and true through 500 KPH winds to the thing that called it: Jackboot’s Tun. The Locust presses its flesh to the husk and falls through.
In life, a Tardigrade can project it’s avatar a great distance. In might-as-well-be-death Jackboot served as a conduit, a transmitter, an on-ramp. And that amalgam, that vile alloy of Tardigrade and Locust did land on Earth and take the form of a good and decent being, their exact opposite: a dead industrial bot named Jacob.
*
MICHIGAN
*
Jonah falls into the sleep that shouldn’t come. He’s fed, rested, caffeinated and awed as ever by the woo woo. Jack sits guard over sleeping Dee, and Jonah sits vigil at her feet. Slumber does sneak up to beguile big man like a club to the head. The buzz hum of the machine that shouldn’t work and the static-blanket tingle of the field of strange. Odd at first, then oddly comforting. Jonah dreams, no lived-through shit or clacking machine symbolism this time, just this: the meta-dream of preparation to climb into a too-big bed with a cat in it to meet the “deep, restful sleep” he’s chased most of his life. After, nothing but a cat’s purr that says nothing but everything to him about the rest of his days.
Jonah wakes to Jack, inches from his face. There’s fear. He’s wondering if she has a knife, and if the wild woman watched him sleep.
“Oh, you beautiful man, you may kiss me if you wish.” Maybe if you take the beard off? “Never. That’s what you’re after. My whimsy.” Jack nods to herself as if all things suddenly make sense, leans back in–too close. “From the moment you set eyes on me you’ve been after my whimsy. It would never work.” What? “This, this thing between us, Jonah. You beautiful dummy. Catch up. Us. We can never be a thing. Anymore.” Ok. “You might have to fight, Jonah.” I didn’t kiss you, so you wanna fight me? “No silly man. Let me go. Be free. In the days or hours or moments to come you may be called upon to guard the guardian. You’re gonna have to fight, big boy.” Please do not call me that.
*
Dee’s body is in the dream. Her mind is moving mighty things like pieces on a chess board. Barrage Balloons, every last Mothership on Earth (that can) does. The Shultz-Warren hum-hiss on every city-block-sized monster turns into the dread-hum of full power. Everywhere the Earth shakes beneath the things flying in formation en masse for the first time since First Contact and the Great Re-Deployment. Every DMZ the Guardian loomed over and every “low place” Dolores protected is abandoned to the violence she kept at bay. But the people are safe. Gone. Not disappeared or razed or harried or driven but evacuated-elsewhere to other squats in a constellation of low-places linked by Marginalia and protected by the Guardian, Dolores.
*
NEW YORK
*
Dolores digitally barges into a (relatively) discreet meeting at the UN. “Security Concerns” after the attempt on the Guardian’s life seem to have disappeared, and a series of meetings and addresses to the General Assembly seem to have continued without her, without any formal effort to notify her.
Her ships and weapons are ageing, but the Guardian can-and-does walk through all digital security like it’s not there. There is the sound of a great gong being struck from the Dolores-compromised PA system in the great hall you’ve seen on tee-vee. The sound shakes everyone present to the bone, and there’s the big lady on screen flanking the austere-opulence of the podium. There, Dolores appears projected from the floor and ceiling as a hologram. Her light engulfs the autocrat whose mic she cut, whose rant she ended.
If she were there in person, she’d throw a chair. If the room had a turnbuckle, she’d have leapt from it with a flying elbow. Instead, she clears her throat: “You mother fuckers blew me up and then had a little meeting without me.”
*
END ENDLING(S) 6