CANCRI 55(e) 5

CANCRI EPISODE 5 “WOE TO THEE…”

CANCRI 55(e) EOD + 3 (END OF DAYS +3)

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‘Cleveland’ sits in caldera remnant. Volcano of the old-extinct kind that geologic processes peeled open to leave the left-end-of a parenthesis like a shield higher than the relentless dunes marching across Cancri’s inhabited cummerbund. The East end of the mountain’s mouth spider carved gap-toothed and low. Tangled arachnid towers, gilded as they are durable peek over-and-east (complete with too-cozy covered promenades). Plantings, weaves of single blades of Khal as tall as Earth trees and decorative creep-vines blow like feathery foul tasting (but quite nutritious) hair atop gawky bent-awkward buildings. Gardeners wave to ballooning joy-flyers practicing their piloting above. Flying higher, with serious scowls and scientific instruments, pilots from the Weather Bureau record worried observations at the doom-shroud looming ever larger in that western sky. In the great float web that spans the space between Old Cleveland’s tall masts, for the third straight day, a lot of farmers have arrived in the sky to find little to harvest.

God’s eye height, or close as a spider will ever fly, the city is a lovely mess of sandcastle skyscrapers leaning-on and angling off one-another. One of the oldest settlements on Cancri, Cleveland is a place where layers of history acreted into beautiful chaos. Cleveland is a place so old, the rock’s been worn by little spider toes as if by water. Ancient and still alive.

Day the first, web harvesting (like most care work) is still gendered ‘men’s work’ in Cancrin society. The fat Feast Flies that burst from the sand like Cicadas to live their whole adult lives in the sky held aloft by the wind and wings fine-gossamer are visible far north, far south. West? Not at all. And the fly fodder, the siphonophores and float algae colonies at the base of the Cancrin ecology come to Clevelands farming web scorched and burnt–reeking of brimstone and off-gassing vapors-unknown. So the little fellas did what men do: gossip like motherfuckers. “I heard….” (from a man who ain’t heard shit-about-shit). “I heard” the sky’s black from funeral pyres. It’s a plague-pestilence. “Nope, the real story…” is another Church schism, like they used to do. “It’s gotta be…” the town two- town’s west that wrecked their neighbors with a surprise attack. The bad old days are back next town over coming to raid your farms and steal your man like he was Hank of Troy. The only thing the webmen gossiping could agree upon was the correct guess: “we’re next.”

Second day, town council put many many eyes in the skies, the rational-calming scientific apparatus arrayed making observations and seeking understanding and composing calm-dispassionate theories. Also, the warriors of Cleveland. All the biggest baddest ladies in the spider colonies armed with wicked looking blades and wearing shiny armor and carrying theatrical kit bags almost as big as their abdomens. Their ‘training’–doing runs up and down the town’s great masts (fully geared for a fight) and flexing and posturing along the old city’s walls and telling anxious-looking man-spiders “not to worry their pretty little heads.”

But food is food and by the third day the people of Cleveland are doing the math (when not staring at the doom cloud) and wondering how long the town could live from what they grow on the ground (not long). Three days after the ruined feast day. Three days after the non-arrival of the ‘dignitary’ from the next town west. Two spiders carrying the corpse of a drone show up at the West Gate of Cleveland Town to tell the worried spiders there what they know.

No one ate the messengers when Ruth and Gary arrived at the gates of Olde Cleave-Launde Towne. But that don’t mean the big arachnids in armor didn’t brandish their best war faces at the first visitors their big deal town has seen in days. Three days of standing watch on the walls against a foreboding cloud (and nothing else) made the big bad spider ladies in all that soldier kit very bored and very mean about it. Three days of rumors flying faster and fatter than the Feast Flies (used to) in barracks and bar alike made them more than a little paranoid.

“HALT!” from the biggest meanest Brunhilde as she skitters atop Cleveland’s ramparts, big wicked pole-arm fit for stabbing or lobbing parry-twirled and clanked loudly for emphasis. “Halt! State your business in Cleveland. Traveler.” Guard Captain Brunhilde says the last word vocally but shimmy-speaks contradictory. The guard’s mouth welcomes but her ass accuses: “villain. Rogue. Germ.” One accusation danced for every syllable spoke.

“We two are all that lives from your nearest neighbor to the West. We bring news and better yet evidence of the danger that will follow the wind.” Ruth bows low but speaks boldly (dance cursing for emphasis). She points emphatically with many arms at the doom cloud loom growing above the gale in the western sky. Ruth pulls the lump off her back, the dead drone wrapped in a webbed-tarp (the hasty-lazy like-burlap web work the Cancrins do toting and carrying (not writing or building)).

The guards peek predator curious at the clockwork corpse beyond their craft and reckoning. When Ruth hastily re-shrouds the relic and stomps to the gate, nothing happens (Gary shyly hiding in her shadow, trying to nod and politely wave at each individual guard in turn). “Surely Cleveland’s Conclave already sways and debates and decides? Surely they will wish to see this and hear from us.” No click. No groan of stone on metal on mountain bones. The guards too are stone. Not a shimmy of sympathy.

“There’s word of of plague, right? And that cloud’s your town’s funeral shroud.”

“Really? Word?”

Said by the guard: “Sources. Reliable ones” Danced by the guard: “Those known. To. Me.” “We’ve heard it said the proof is your fool people poisoned all the food that flies with your funeral pyres. And here you come, and with a plague fly on your back like a gift-ticket to the grave.” Chuckles (brief) from the guards.

Ruth cocks her head sarcastically, twists her body for extra-emphasis, “How many visitors have you had the last few days, Captain?” (dancing a very crude obscenity while saying the warriors rank).

“Few travelers” The two spiders, guard on high and Ruth angry at the gates of Cleveland, stand-stare at each other a full three forever spider heartbeats. “Zero visitors. That I know of. It’s a big town.”

“Open the door.” Ruth politely demands of the Guards of Cleveland.

“Take your snack” Gesturing to Gary (while dancing something lude) “and your plague fly and hit the bricks.” And while warriors are cheering and jeer laughing, Ruth starts climbing the wall. Really stomping up it toward the big Captain.

Gary is rubbing his tummy into the sand and getting low and plead-repeating: “I don’t condone this! I am not doing any bad things!” with his arms splayed surrender (the arms not digging sand or covering his carapace in sand).

Ruth climbs half way up the wall, stomping all eight legs angry and with as much authority as an average sized nerd can. “HALT!” Brunhilde notices the climber, rears and risess to her full height, arms arrayed angry and armored and mighty, wicked-tipped spear raised and ready to throw. “Halt! Turn back and take your germs elsewhere, Rat.”

Fuck a footnote. Cancri had its own rats, long ago, plague-bearers and nest raiders rendered extinct in the Bad Old Days. And that’s the thing about Enlightened people, sometimes they want to keep their slurs and fighting words.

Ruth bristles but keeps coming, continues climbing calm(ish), wall-walking on even when the big angry lady grabs a second spear and the others start aiming pointy sticks at she and Gary (who still does not condone any of this and is not doing anything bad (he swears (from deep in a hole (he keeps digging deeper)))).

“I said HALT! One more step and I’ll…” and while Brunhilde is thinking of the phrasing of the oath she’d like to swear, Ruth skitters right up to the big burly guard guard, slaps two spears aside, and coughs in the Guard Captain’s face.

“If I’m sick you’re sick. Take me to the Conclave.”

*

EOT: ARCHIVES

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The problem with event horizons and other hard boundary conditions is that there isn’t one. You ain’t Horatio and the stars aren’t faulty. You and me and we certainly are. The relevant fault to this report/ramble/rant: our inability to accept finality. I came to the conclusion after my first bout of bore-hole psychosis that every ghost involved in Archives: everyone (fuck, probably even the inscrutable balls of light we call Stewards and the bean counter nerds in Probability) are here alive-past-life because we were mortal things that lived and died and hit the double fail jackpot non-zero event of accidentally failing to accept death.

Your problem with event horizons is they’re one-way boundaries and you want to come back to report back, to linger liminal on the threshold-edge like a cat or tardigrade—tipping your vile, wiggly human fingers or toes over the edge (letting them get spaghettified while you holler home about how much it tickles).

Behold the liminal man: the Mad Archivist. There he sit/stand/contorts. He is a man rendered in .gif glitch cycles of pain endlessly reiterated. Eyes long-gone dissolved and gone to Cancri, copper optic nerves tie his body to the text on the desk–complete with solder barbs and bleeding sparks and leaking smoke. Every switch of the speed deck .gif man brings a fast radio burst scream-weep-lamentation and the body contorted in some new hell some fresh portion pulled into the acid-etched text. All archives can think to do is observe and report (and brand ‘heretic’ anyone who asks: “Report to whom?”).

HVAC refused to intervene. And when heaven’s feds showed up, it was an equal opposite partnership: an angel and a demon, flat faced, in the same cheap suits and shades. I couldn’t tell the two apart until the demon (or maybe angel) drew its pistol to mercy the Mad Archivist. Anyway, when the divine fired. The bullet burnt first (and fast). Then the gun. Then the finger on the trigger, all fell to ash. Then the body and the cheap suit that hung off it all wrong. Even the stunner shades (I’m sad to say). The other one? They wept and rent garments and tossed themself into the library well (it’s just as well).

At this sad intervention, each Archivist scribbled furiously, adding self-congratulatory foot notes that affirmed their credo of doing absolutely nothing but observing and reporting.

Along came a Parson.

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CANCRI 55(e) CLEVELAND CONCLAVE

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In the Bad Old Days, when all of Cancrin life was battle and “Survival of the biggest” was the law of the desert and thus all of Cancrin social life as well. That’s when the word gained weight as a mechanism for deciding without dying (or limiting the self-predation): Conclave. For fullest gravitas, the Leptik word must be spoken and danced. The word Conclave carries historical weight and wears epaulets of rank.

There, you can see them, the silly hats on church spiders ready to bless the message holy or hiss boo condemn it to their flock(s). The banners of various guilds and labor unions sway in a thick carpet of spiders. All the constituencies and groups and gaggles and flocks from which political power in the place (very) loosely transliterated to ‘Cleveland Town’ crawl over around and upon each other. Cancrins, even in moments of political strife, in times good and bad (and even in the ‘bad old days’) are cuddlers.

The “Bowl” ampitheatre/market/stadium/meeting place is about as old as the spiders squishy bones. Ancient, rough hewn and age polished by little spider feet. Bottom half of a hollowed out orange at the bottom of town. The bowl is like a ballpark drowning in a metropolis made of drunk sand-castles build rugged enough to support another generation (or tens) ad-hoc on purpose additions. Buildings loom over the Bowl, and if it were a playing field (it is), a few skinny office towers and condos sprout amidst the pea sand that takes the place of pitch.

Spider eyes at windows. Arachnids on break leaning out the office fenêtre to take a cig and hear the news/see the people’s business done. House husbands and their spiderlings peeking over balconies down at the prance-posturing of the debate. Spiders on the underside of balconies and dangling via web from promenades. A great writhing sheet of life with waves upon it like a sea. Eyes are all Ruth sees.

Like so many individuals of so many species, Ruth fears public speaking more than death. All the typical advice comes to her ears in her father’s voice: “If eyes contact is scarry, just picture the whole audience having just molted.” She whispers “Gross dad” to dad’s ghost and leans back while Cleveland’s mayor preens and postures and shimmies about her.

The large-impressively-large spider with mayoral epaulets and gold-braid twist trailing through spiky salt-and-pepper spider fur, circles Ruth and accuses. What does it for her, what gives Ruth the ‘juice’ to do what she’s gotta do and plead her case to the people of Cleveland, is this: the Mayor of Cleveland reminds her of her mom, the big bad opinionated church-bully. “You come here claiming to be tempest tossed, but what I see is what we all see: a harbinger of bad tidings. A plague rat.” The fighting word, the invitation from Mayor to Ruth to slap-and-be-slapped.

But Ruth sees the two Guardians, one behind Mayor Mc-Asshole and one dangling like Damocles tarantula right above her, the whole time, waiting for the excuse to “protect” the Mayor and eat the messenger. Ruth hears her father’s words, him coaching her to learn to spar with mom the word bully (the way that he did): “When she baits you. Don’t eat it. When she dances? Don’t. Stick to your web.”

When the Mayor speculates that Ruth’s people burned down their own town. Ruth doesn’t scream or posture or bare fangs. She points to the drone lying on the ground between she and the spider that runs this town: “Once again. I repeat. Duty to warn. A mechanical flying beast the size of a city guarded by many-past-many of these came to feed on my home. It poured fire and withe some force no Cancrin has seen.” Ruth’s four front legs rise as she evokes the mining rig sucking the abundance of their-earth and the crowd, the sea of writhing spiders is silent. ” It burnt the town to eat the dirt and metals beneath our feat. We two lived by accident and risked life and limb to bring our Cleveland cousins news of the nature of the threat. Duty to warn.” Silence, shocked debate-whiper and white noise nervous chittering. The populated silence in which you can hear the wind above the city the mayor nervous cleaning her fangs. Ruth finishes. “If you treat neighbors as strangers? Fine. If we’ll find no safe harbor here? Fine. Pay us no more mind and we’ll be on our way to warn the rest of the world. But I beg of you, the old. The freshly molted. The spiderlings. Evacuate before it’s too late, or by my troth you will regret it.”

Ruth said her piece, though her back legs shook anxious the whole time. The audience (the whole of Cleveland) is still just thawing, only beginning to murmur and argue loudly-aloud again. The politically desperate Mayor who wanted a spectacle still stammers by the time Ruth has the broken drone slung on her back and has dived off into/over/through the crowd (dragging Gary in tow (by the toe)).

Forget the rest of the Conclave, the posturing and pro-wrestling match political-kitsch. The warriors of Cleveland doing choreographed flying kicks while the mayor postures. Warriors stabbing the air with spears they were about to wield against space-farer tech beyond anything they could yet reckon. Everywhere. Every world. Every kind of Bad Old Days are ready to return as the answer to tomorrows problem–the damn fool ‘plan’ for whatever doom shroud grows on whatever horizon edge of whatever world.

*

Next morning, when the shroud-cloud’s crept to loom close and high, when the Gee-Tee monstrosity mining rig derelict creeps over the horizon, skeleton of its progeny atop its back. Ruth sets sail. When the squadrons, all Cleveland’s Guardians (even the male auxiliaries) march up the web masts and every tall tower ready for war, read to fly to the fight and die. That’s when Ruth set’s sail north on the alkali lake, first to Cleveland’s suburbs and then beyond. Behind her, behind Gary (her shadow), the freshly molted and the family members who watch your back while your pneumato-muscles refill and the bones that hold your carapace up de-jelly. Swimming along beside them are spider fathers with individual babies and whole broods clinging to their backs. The funny hats of the more rational church folk appear among the voluntary-evac flotilla Ruth’s words and warnings conjured into being.

Spiders are still crawling out the water, elders are still being helped off boats on the far shore when the Von Neuman’s Monster arrives back at Cleveland. Ruth and those who took her warning watch and record, both to bear witness and in the seeming-vain hope of witnessing weakness in the all-consuming machine-monster.

Drones swarming about it, the great floating half-orb halts outside town in mocking imitation of a Cancrin visitor. There, the aperture on its belly already glowing red with the promise of hellfire, the monster shows what it knows and has learned: that its strip mine is inhabited by thinking feeling beings that would like to live. There, the Geauntoord functional-derelict does blow a great klaxon thrice. And from some host of megaphone maws on the metal body, and from the many mouths among the legion of little drones comes the voice with no name. The machine speaks a barely intelligible reproduction of the whine-wheezes and chitters of Leptik–reproduces mangled speech it reassembled from the lamentations and desperate prayers of the spiders it has already murdered: “THIS IS WORK HOLE. EVACUATE. EVACUATE. EVACUATE.”

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END CANCRI 5