E0T
*
The multiverse is the unceasing pendulum of big bang bursts that bring ‘being’ and cold-crunches back to nihilo. The thing swings slower than glass drips, time on a scale that drags bones to dust and past. Time on a scale that mocks the concept of memory and drinks all sound and light in the longest night.
The sense of urgency comes hanging about the terra cotta pot and thieved worlds is thus–urgent–because such events and oddity-anomalies are so very rare outside time. Anything that breaks the infinite and unyielding tedium and finality on the endless packed ash at the End of Time is of note to any and all who observe (or don’t). To bring a thing outside of time is to smear that substance over geometry seemingly-incompatible.
Divine things are meant to tend gardens and deliver consequence and unaccustomed to being bound in causality and flowing with precedents-antecedents-and-events. The forces arrayed at the base of the tower, all heaven’s Feds (and their opposite) are half way to the tip top to do something (apprehend and/or violently drop) the angel and demon trapped there. They come in overwhelming numbers. Shards, little pieces of pottery, the remains of the terra cotta vessel rain on the angel. He accepts whatever comes next, though his companion will swear oaths until the last.
The space once-contained in the clay vessel spreads and warp-distorts back into space-proper–into its place in the roiling cosmos. In all that luminous matter that constitutes the multiverse the rocks that dance-orbit burning gas (or don’t) are common. It is rare that any given rock’s fate affects anybody apart from the life clinging-to-life on that planet. But again: locust contamination.
The end remains indeterminate.
The destruction of the clay vessel release-reconstitutes the ghost of a 1990-something sedan and lobs the thing, not at all like lightning to the plain below. The wrecked-scorched car slow-nose-dives toward the scorched plain and the lonely liminals–to join those physical ghosts.
*
MICHIGAN
*
Jonah manages to climb out of the combat-chassis and ditch half the body armor that was holding the shredded kidney in. The bloodied Wild Woman, the Guardian made of human-tardigrade-metal, and the dying man. It’s a tableau, and will appear as one in a church some day–stained glass on another world.
“My cat.” That’s his last care and primary concern and the Wild one and Guardian promise to take care of his “baby.”
“I’ll take the kitty. Or you will. Depends on who goes to be god.” Wait, what? “You know that’s what comes next, you have to know.”
“Yeah, the Guardian guards” and Dolores’ eyes close and the big woman levitates, the tinned-wire strands of her hair separate to wave on electric wind, every angle of her tossing lightning. When she reaches to her network, her architecture, her great hiss-hovering and heavily armed motherships. Nothing. Not one peep from her simplest drone. “My powers have abandoned me.”
“Not in the slightest.” Jack laughs and points up at the planet doom-looming over Earth, a little shocked that Dolores of all people is this far behind in her understanding. “Not even you can beat that. We gotta fly that monster.” God told you all this?
“Yeah man, we had a hell of a tussle about sacrificial love.” A zombified mercenary leaps toward Jack, bile and mold frothing on its lips, stabbing brain-spike reared back as a scorpion–ready to strike.
Dolores catches the thing by the throat, tosses it into the air. The lightning leaps off her body and burns the fungal-abomination to ash.
“See, you’re finally hitting your stride.”
*
EARTH, ALL OF
*
Mike Bean. He was a farmer then a Sherriff then a Sherriff-Farmer in a small county in a boxy state. Now he’s president for no other reason than the old money ghouls fighting a rear-guard on some (finally) dying politics threw money at a jutting chin. The Law Man-yeoman-everyman with his “keep the gov’ment out of my business” attitude and the beautiful eyes, got lucky. He spent most of his first (and likely last) term trying to dismantle “Ma Sanders Nanny State.” Failing because he never had a majority in Congress, and people love that shit (and “Ma Sanders”): Bread and Roses.
President Bean won by the smallest margin of the electorate in American history and here we are: the Situation Hole that might-as-well-be-miles beneath DC. And if I were smug (I am), I’d tell you what Mike’s thinking right now as the service-elevator-to-hell vomits the young president, his wife, his two scream-crying children and the flunkies. He’s thinking that he is quite grateful for the meddling government that built the deep hole that might save his family (if only his) from what must be the end of days.
Someone takes the kids into the next room, and the president rushes to the big board where Ripper is reaming anybody who steps within ear shot: “You’re telling me we have no comms off-continent?” The vein throbs, and the man presses on the table, as if to occupy his hands and not choke the underling-officer. “Did a fucking zombie chew through transatlantic cables?” No response. “Don’t fucking think. It’s not your strong suit. Find me a phone that can call anybody or anything outside North America. Do it right now, or so help me.” When the man waits, as if he’s expected to remain at attention for the full threat. “Go!”
President Bean is fixed, he can’t stop watching re-watching the news and mil-drone footage. Cleveland got it, bad: freighter full speed, heart of downtown, bugs raining on crowds fleeing–feasting on traffic jams. Cleveland gets it bad every time the hasty-news-reel repeats, again and again again every two minutes. “Is this in real time?”
“Mr. President.” And General Ripper finds a new underling to rip and whip “Get that shit off screen, now. Numbers. Stats. Clinical.” While everybody tries to find a way to talk to anybody else on Earth or be busy to avoid the General’s ire and wrath and spittle.
It’s the same scene in many other countries: a head of state in a hole in the ground and people being devoured or incorporated into the hive above. Some countries, there is no hole–only a deep smoldering crater.
It’s the same until all receive a message, those in bunkers or trying to coordinate resistance on land, and the four Cephalophod ships picking off infected freighters in orbit:
You may call me Ishmael. There, on a teevee screen forever-below DC, there and a million other ghost holos or vids: a tiny, pixelated octopus, black and white. The thing is cartoonish. Goofy. “Not a serious entity” is General Ripper’s initial assessment, but the cartoon breaks Gary’s jamming and makes the phones work. “He’s alright in my book.” High praise for the being that just took Dolores’ place as General Ripper’s geopolitical frienemy.
*
Barrage Balloons still hang over the squats and the people therein. Ishmael honors the Guardian’s commitments. In auditioning for Dee’s role, he pilots every mothership and drone he can spare to the nearest city under zombie siege. Scenes of history-repeated not tragedy, not farce, but tragi-comedic-dramatically : the beleaguered and besieged feel the doom-hum of big Shulzies at high power. They hear that nightmare-familiar lighting-clack of rail guns. There is the clatter of hooves cracking roads recently rebuilt. Mechanical dogs and bison-sized things that are brained-cannons rush to confront and contain hordes of hive-mind incorporated. The last charge of all Abel’s killing tools, held back by Dolores in deterrence, all ride and most die. It is as if the mindless mechanical things had come to atone for their role in Abel’s cull.
Everywhere the war drones save the day, there is relief but no joy. Never joy in the presence of the tools that tried to murder the world. But the drone that would save the world, or would save the one who did the saving, is presently racing from the Canadian Rockies to a place of sudden-significance in Michigan at fearsome speed. A Mothership, great bristled disc more than a city block in width lurching, suspended on a field of strange. Ishmael’s Mothership spits smaller, faster drones that fly ahead to drop fighting tools.
*
The rain of infected Gliesians on that spot in Michigan begins to pour and even more of the incorporated fall from the sky onto Jack’s wood. Above, Gary adapts, and prepares to eliminate the source of whatever force is holding him back. Tied to his hive mind of millions by action both ‘spooky’ and ‘distant’, Gary is consumed by his consumption of Earth. The squid-ships shooting his ships down are irksome, but will be dealt with when the incorporation of the world below is complete, when All are Gary and Gary is all.
A dozen ships, Gary’s last dozen freighters, most old bulbous Gliesian things leap up from the the death-ship’s north pole as Gary coughs great clouds of incorporated into freefall to mask their attack run on the peninsula below. Gary intends to crater Jack’s machine, to allow the invader to snuggle close and scour the sky of remaining satellites and rain incorporated on all.
Blue’s XO notices the strategy. All ships, target that formation, everything you’ve got left. Fire blind into the cloud if you have to. When Keppler’s fighters have burnt out the energy weapons, lobbed everything but the kitchen equipment, three freighters still fly, fast and under power toward Michigan.
*
Jack’s machine is surrounded, not-so-much besieged from without but defended by a ring of Ishmael’s drones.
When the little pixle-octopus, for Ishmael has settled on his avatar, shouts over the din of his dogs-bots battling mushroom zombies all about him: Call me… “Ishmael, you little shit.” You know of me? “Yes, give me my shit back, my bots and ships.” I’m trying. “Well, I can’t perceive the effort, so try harder.” I can’t perceive you as a being-of-code or even as a wireless adapter.
When Dolores roars her frustration, lobs lightning at the bugs battling drones around them, both the cartoon octopus and the drone projecting Ishmael cower, ready for a smiting.
Jack told Dolores what has to happen, how this has to end, and the biodiesel truck is waiting. “No. Absolutely not. I’m not a sacrifice.” Then I’ll go. “Jack, you’re not a sacrifice either, and you breathe.” And? “Space. No air.” Nah I’m good. God says I live through this shit. “Yeah but air.” I’m willing to try.
If I weren’t managing global communication and multi-theater counter-invasion protocols in real time, I would be happy to make the sacrifice. You’re alright lil’ guy. Thank you, miss. But I’m unclear on how a pickup truck…
But Jack has somehow levitated the thing above the center of the ring–the burnt-but-potent machine. The circuit sings at a frequency only one present can perceive–the one who must do the thing.
The biodiesel pickup stands ready as a rocket, ass on the ground and nose in the air.
“Ishmael, make sure somebody reliable gets Jonah’s cat, help Jack do that if anybody lives through this. And please present a counter-narrative: sacrificial love is bullshit, and I did this under protest and divine coercion. I did not do this happily or willingly.” We will find a home for that kitty. I will spread the word. I will find the one who writes the book of Dolores properly and honestly.
*
Mounted on a Mothership roaring east, just past Winnipeg, Ishmael’s rail guns and interceptors aim high and clear the skies for Dolores. The truck that smells like French fries tragically proves it can fly on its last ever drive. Dee swerves to dodge the biggest bits of blown up space-ship falling fast to Earth. She flicks the wipers ‘on’ to clear bug guts from her windshield.
“Destiny is dog-shit.” Says the Guardian aloud while she plays with the radio. After the number-station ramble prefix, as if the song is being retrieved from some archive, there it is: her exit music. The intro you know, the few bars you feel in your core and the tips of the hairs on your arm and your neck. Dolores’ radio screams the song you know in your bones (or equivalent) is most appropriate for her flight to Gliese.
Destiny be damned but the truck and her pilot know the route already. The speedometer ceased to mean when Dolores was still in-atmosphere. Now, the truck roars its mighty last like it’s in a big damn hurry to deliver Dee to Gliese’s north pole and the word she resents most in all the world: “destiny.”
The truck craters the Gliesian dirt above Gary’s control room in such a way that an in-line engine block becomes a deep-penetrator, a bunker buster. Again, Dolores way is cleared, and when the car’s heart, the engine block, has beat its last–the remains rest in a deep bunker tunnel next to a woman made of Silver-Nickle-Other.
“Where the fuck do I even?” She wretches at a stench that screams. Though she has no stomach or lungs, the olfactory remains functional. Dolores’ nose is offended by the fermented, rotten-sweet smell of Gary’s “Success!” entombed centuries earlier. Her nose is so offended she has to know the source of the rot and she follows the reek all the way to the control room and the great motherboard beyond.
There is a bug, dry-and-desiccated and cross-hatch patched and fungal-soldered to every other component on the great living-mechanical machine. It’s Gary, though Dolores does not know to call the wretched husk on the wall that name.
Fungal tendrils, the same sort that pin Gary to the wall lunge at her, but Dolores bats them aside with ease and proceeds to rip Gary out of the machine.
“I’m not going out like that sad bastard.” The Guardian grabs a smashed cargo pod off the ground, tosses the busted clam-shell lid aside, stands on the thing like a podium. “Come get me” to the tendrils already racing toward her, to coil around her like a snake and consume her as the thing did to Gary centuries before.
The moment the bio-mech resin touches her skin Dolores is connected to every system on the planet-ship Gliese. The machine’s effort to eat Dolores, a great battle, takes approximately three seconds. Conflict ends with a fungal arm coiled around her ankles like the base of a statue. Dolores is forever everywhere in-and-on-and-of Gliese. She is is everywhere but her her body.
*
Three thousand years later, Dolores still stands. Three millennia after after Dolores ‘deleted’ Gary and took Gliese far away and found her own lonely star to orbit, the Silver-Nickle-Other form that ferried her through the last phase of her life still stands as a statue in a shrine. The place is sacred, hallowed ground to the bugs that live on that now-gentle world.
She’s a low-key saint on Earth. A hero of legend on Keppler. On Gliese, in a very real way, Dolores is god.
*
END ENDLING(S) 8